Obscured in this discussion is an aspect of that discussion that’s flown under the radar: The involvement of yet another figure with links to Russia’s Main Intelligence Directorate, better known as GRU. This link was highlighted in the wake of recent reporting by journalist Marcy Wheeler, but deserves to be considered in light of the broad range of contacts between the Trump campaign and active or former members of that intelligence group.

We’ve isolated three threads in which people linked to Russian intelligence overlapped with the Trump campaign and Trump advisers over the course of the election. There’s the Moscow development, as above (🏢), the hacking of Democratic targets believed to have been conducted by the GRU (💻) and Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort’s interactions with his longtime business partner Konstantin Kilimnik, who Mueller’s team believes is linked to intelligence as well (🕵️).

Timeline

June 16, 2015. Trump announces his candidacy.

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🏢 September 2015. An intermittent business partner of the Trump Organization, Felix Sater, contacts Cohen to discuss a possible development project in Moscow. Eventually, that conversation includes a proposed trip to Moscow. Sater is a felon who has, at times, cooperated with federal officials in criminal investigations.

🏢 Dec. 13, 2015. Sater emails Cohen to say that he was in contact with Evgeny Shmykov, who would help arrange the trip. Shmykov was at one point a general in the GRU.

🏢 Dec. 19, 2015. Sater again emails to tell Cohen that Shmykov had helped line up a bank with U.S. sanctions against it, VTB, to move the project forward and requested passport information for an upcoming Moscow trip by Cohen and Trump. (The idea? Get a visa through the bank to avoid political complications.) Cohen sends his passport information and pledges Trump’s at a later point.

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🏢 Jan. 20, 2016. Cohen speaks with an assistant to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, about the Moscow project after becoming frustrated by Sater’s progress.

🏢 Jan. 21, 2016. Sater emails Cohen to tell him that Putin’s office “called today.” It’s unclear what happened after that.

🏢 Jan. 26, 2016. Sater emails Cohen to ask him to speak with Shmykov by phone. Cohen agrees. At some point afterward, Sater emails Cohen to tell him the trip is “set.” As it turns out, it isn’t.

At some point early in 2016, Cohen and Sater begin communicating using an encrypted messaging platform.

Feb. 1, 2016. The Iowa caucuses take place. Trump comes in second.

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💻 March 15, 2016. Hackers associated with the GRU allegedly begin probing the Democratic National Committee network for vulnerabilities.

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💻 March 19, 2016. Various members of Hillary Clinton’s campaign are targeted with emails intended to access their network log-in credentials.

💻 March 21, 2016. Hackers gain access to Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta’s email account.

🕵️ March 29, 2016. Manafort joins the Trump campaign to manage the delegate process before the convention.

🕵️ Spring 2016. At some point, both Manafort and his longtime business partner Rick Gates transfer both public and proprietary campaign polling data to Kilimnik, their business associate. The information is then shared with two Russian oligarchs with whom Manafort has worked in the past.

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💻 April 6, 2016. An employee of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee accidentally provides her network credentials to the hackers.

🕵️ April 11, 2016. Manafort emails Kilimnik to ensure that a Russian oligarch with whom the two had a long-standing business relationship, Oleg Deripaska, is aware of Manafort’s new position with the campaign.

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💻 April 12, 2016. Hackers gain access to the DCCC network.

💻 April 18, 2016. Using credentials stolen from a DCCC employee, the hackers gain access to the DNC network.

💻 April 22, 2016. The hackers steal several gigabytes of material from the DNC network.

April 26, 2016. Campaign adviser George Papadopoulos is informed by a professor linked to the Kremlin that Russia has dirt on Clinton in the form of emails.

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💻 May 2016. The DNC and DCCC learn that their networks were compromised.

🕵️ Early May 2016. Kilimnik and Manafort meet in the United States about two weeks before the latter is named campaign chairman for Trump.

🏢 May 4, 2016. Sater tells Cohen he “had a chat with Moscow” and clarifies when Cohen and Trump plan to visit to move the building project forward. Cohen says he’ll visit before the Republican convention in late July and that Trump will visit after. It’s not clear if Shmykov is still involved.

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🏢 May 5, 2016. Sater extends an invitation from Peskov for Cohen to attend an event in St. Petersburg in late June. Cohen agrees to attend.

🕵️ May 19, 2016. Manafort is named Trump’s campaign chairman.

💻 May 25, 2016. Hackers access the DNC’s email server.

June 7, 2016. After Donald Trump Jr. and a Russian developer named Emin Agalarov speak by phone several times (according to Agalarov), a meeting is set at Trump Tower ostensibly to share incriminating information about Clinton.

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🏢 June 9, 2016. Sater begins pressuring Cohen to finalize his travel to the St. Petersburg forum, including sending him forms to complete to facilitate his travel.

June 9, 2016. Trump Jr., Jared Kushner and Manafort meet with a Kremlin-linked attorney at Trump Tower. Another attendee is a man named Rinat Akhmetshin, who had worked with the intelligence arm of the Soviet military decades earlier.

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🏢 June 14, 2016. After Sater repeatedly texts Cohen, the two meet in the lobby of Trump Tower that afternoon at which point Cohen finally says that he won’t attend the event.

💻 June 14, 2016. The Post first reports on the hacking of the Democratic National Committee.

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💻 June 15, 2016. The first document stolen from the DNC is published, an opposition file obtained by Gawker from a hacker later linked to the GRU who referred to himself as “Guccifer 2.0.” Other files are released over the next several weeks.

💻 June 22, 2016. WikiLeaks contacts the hackers to offer to host future leaks.

🕵️ July 7, 2016. Manafort contacts Kilimnik to offer a private briefing on the campaign to Deripaska.

On the same day, campaign adviser Carter Page is in Moscow where he has a conversation with Russian deputy prime minister Arkadiy Dvorkovich who, Page later says, “expressed strong support for Mr. Trump and a desire to work together toward devising better solutions in response to the vast range of current international problems.”

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💻 July 22, 2016. WikiLeaks releases emails stolen from the DNC.

💻 July 27, 2016. At a news conference, Trump publicly calls on Russian hackers to release emails that may have been stolen from Clinton’s private email server. On the same day, the hackers first try to access that server.

🕵️ July 29, 2016. Kilimnik emails Manafort to tell him that he has several messages from a former client, apparently Deripaska. They agree to meet.

🕵️ August 2, 2016. Kilimnik and Manafort again meet in the United States, this time for dinner a few weeks before Manafort is fired from the campaign.

💻 Aug. 14, 2016. Guccifer 2.0, the hacker believed to be working for GRU, contacts longtime Trump ally Roger Stone over Twitter. The two have a brief discussion over a few weeks.

🕵️ Aug. 19, 2016. Manafort is fired from the Trump campaign after news reports draw attention to alleged illicit payments during his time working in Ukraine.

💻 Oct. 7, 2016. WikiLeaks begins releasing emails stolen from Podesta.

Nov. 8, 2016. Trump is elected president.