TRUMP’S RUSSIA CONNECTIONS

Donald Trump has long aspired to do business in Russia.

He took his first trip to Moscow in 1987. He has done business with Russian immigrants in the United States.

He has been fined for violating an anti–money laundering law by failing to properly report transactions at the Trump Taj Mahal.

Members of his campaign also have or had ties to Russia, some of which have raised flags for the FBI. Members of his cabinet also have business connections with Russia.

These descriptions explain Trump’s many and sometimes complex ties with Russia.

TRUMP BUSINESS PARTNERS

FELIX SATER is a Russian immigrant, former felon, longtime government informant, and longtime business partner of Trump’s.

Jailed for slashing a man in the face with the stem of a broken margarita glass, Sater also pleaded guilty to a stock fraud scheme run with members of the Russian mafia, which flourishes in Russia with Putin’s consent.

Operating out of a Trump-owned building, Sater and his partners bilked elderly investors, some of whom were Holocaust survivors, out of about $40 million. He became a government informant in exchange for leniency.

The Trump family launched Trump SoHo with Sater when he worked for Bayrock, a company founded by a former Soviet official named Tevfik Arif and funded with a $10 million investment from Arif’s brother in Russia.

ARAS AGALAROV is a Russian billionaire known as “Putin’s Builder” for completing projects at the Russian leader’s behest. Putin awarded Agalarov an Order of Honor medal. Agalarov helped Trump secure permission and a location to host the Miss Universe pageant in Moscow in 2013.

Russian pop star Emin Agalarov, Donald Trump, and Aras Agalarov, a Russian billionaire known as “Putin’s builder.” (Victor Boyko/Getty Images)

EMIN AGALAROV is son to Aras. He is a pop star who performed at the Miss Universe pageant in Moscow and featured a Trump cameo in one of his videos. His manager offered the Trump campaign, through the Agalarovs, information from the Russian government that would allegedly incriminate Hillary Clinton.

TRUMP AND THE RUSSIAN MOB

In 1998, Trump paid a $477,000 fine for breaking anti–money laundering rules at his Trump Taj Mahal casino.

Casinos are supposed to report gamblers who cash out more than $10,000 in a single day, and the Trump Taj Mahal failed to do this 106 times in its first eighteen months, when the Taj Mahal was where Russian mobsters living in Brooklyn liked to gamble.

WHO ATTENDED JUNE 9, 2016, TRUMP TOWER MEETING

Trump’s business associate Aras Agalarov, through an intermediary, offered assistance to the campaign from the Russian government. Don Trump Jr. scheduled a meeting to receive the information. Here’s who attended:

• DON TRUMP JR.
• JARED KUSHNER, Trump’s son-in-law
• PAUL MANAFORT, Trump’s campaign manager
• ROB GOLDSTONE, Emin Agalarov’s publicist
• NATALIA VESELNITSKAYA, a Russian attorney who acts as an informant to the Russian prosecutor general
• RINAT AKHMETSHIN, a Russian-American lobbyist and Soviet military veteran
• IKE KAVELADZE, vice president of the Crocus Group, the Agalarovs’ company. Also investigated for money laundering; he denies wrongdoing.
• ANATOLI SAMOCHORNOV, intepreter

TRUMP CAMPAIGN STAFF WITH CONNECTIONS TO RUSSIA

• PAUL MANAFORT, Trump’s unpaid campaign manager. Manafort has worked with:
• VIKTOR YANUKOVYCH, former president of Ukraine and political ally of Putin
• OLEG DERIPASKA, Russian oligarch with ties to Putin (Manafort owed Deripaska millions of dollars)
• KONSTANTIN KILIMNIK, Russian-Ukrainian political operative who once was part of the GRU, Russia’s military intelligence agency. Kilimnik, an employee of Manafort’s, has been charged by special counsel Robert Mueller with obstruction of justice for alleged witness tampering.
• CARTER PAGE, foreign policy adviser to Trump campaign; also oil and gas consultant. The FBI had been watching Page since at least 2013, when a wiretap of suspected Russian spies revealed they were trying to recruit Page.
• GEORGE PAPADOPOULOS, an energy expert/foreign policy adviser to Trump campaign. Pleaded guilty on October 3, 2017, for lying to FBI about contacts he had with foreign nationals connected to the Russian government. He’d been promised “dirt” on Hillary Clinton to benefit the campaign.
• MICHAEL FLYNN, informal adviser to Trump campaign and then Trump’s national security adviser. Was paid for his appearance on Russian propaganda network. As director of Defense Intelligence Agency, made an unusual visit to the GRU in 2013. Resigned as national security adviser after caught lying to the vice president and White House officials about his contacts with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak.
• JARED KUSHNER, Trump son-in-law and senior adviser. Met secretly with Flynn and Kislyak after election but before Trump was inaugurated. Tried to set up “secret and secure” way for transition team to communicate with Kremlin. Also met with Sergey Gorkov, head of a Russian state-owned bank prohibited from doing business in the United States because of sanctions.