Ray Locker

USA TODAY

The rapidly unfolding saga of President Trump and the connections between the Russian government, Trump's 2016 presidential campaign and the Trump administration involves a series of political operatives, government officials and diplomats worthy of a John le Carré novel. Here are some of the key players.

Paul Manafort

Manafort, Trump's former campaign manager, represented the former leader of Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovych, when the longtime ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin ran Ukraine. A longtime lobbyist in Washington and international political consultant, Manafort signed on to run Trump's campaign but left in August following disclosures that his name surfaced in secret ledgers kept by the Yanukovych government that showed he was paid $12.7 million. The New York Times reported Wednesday that Manafort spoke last year to Russian intelligence officials in telephone calls that were monitored by U.S. intelligence agencies. On Wednesday, Manafort denied any contact with Russian officials, either directly or indirectly.

Michael Flynn

The recently departed national security adviser worked for the state-owned Russia Today after he was fired by former president Barack Obama as the head of the Defense Intelligence Agency. He advocated for closer relations with Russia. In 2015, Flynn traveled to Moscow to speak at the 10th anniversary gala for Russia Today in an event also attended by Putin. Flynn has acknowledged he was paid for the visit, which — if not approved by the secretaries of Defense and State — would violate federal law. He has not said how much he was paid or whether it was approved.

His downfall started when U.S. intelligence agencies intercepted a telephone call from Flynn to Sergey Kislyak, Russia's ambassador to the United States, in which the two discussed new sanctions to be placed on Russia by the Obama administration.

Russia Today was identified in an intelligence assessment as one of the Kremlin's top purveyors of propaganda and misinformation in the 2016 presidential election, leading to a heightened sensitivity over Flynn's participation in the event, which Flynn said was arranged by a speaker's bureau. House Democrats have called for an investigation into those connections.

Carter Page

Page, who runs an investment company called Global Energy Capital, was named as an early foreign policy adviser to the Trump campaign. He was accused last year by former Senate minority leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., of being a conduit between Trump and the Russian government, which Page denied. Last year, Page gave a speech in which he accused the U.S. government of having a “hypocritical focus on ideas such as democratization, inequality, corruption and regime change” toward Russia and other former Soviet republics.

Vladimir Putin

The president of Russia has been the source of fascination for Trump for years. During the 2016 election, both Trump and Vice President Pence, then the governor of Indiana, praised Putin's leadership style in contrast to Obama's.

The Kremlin has denied that Putin had anything to do with the Russian-led hacking of the Democratic National Committee emails, which spawned a series of leaks from the website WikiLeaks during the final weeks of the 2016 general election campaign. WikiLeaks published multiple emails from John Podesta, a longtime associate of Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, that cast Clinton and the campaign in a negative light.

Sergey Kislyak

Kislyak, the Russian ambassador to the United States, received a telephone call from Flynn last December in which the two men discussed new sanctions that were to be placed on Russia by the Obama administration. The Obama administration also expelled 35 Russian diplomats from the United States for their alleged role in interfering with the U.S. elections, a move that was expected to bring a Russian response. Instead, Putin elected to do nothing. On March 1, the Washington Post reported that then-Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama, a Trump campaign surrogate and now attorney general, met twice with Kislyak in 2016 but told the Senate Judiciary Committee during his confirmation hearings that he had not. On March 2, Sessions recused himself from any involvement in whatever investigations the FBI and Justice Department were conducting into the Russian role in the elections.

Contributing: Gregory Korte

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