George Papadopoulos

A former Trump campaign adviser, George Papadopoulos, has become the first person to plead guilty to charges linking the campaign with Russian attempts to interfere in the 2016 US election.

Papadopoulos joined Trump’s campaign early in March 2016. A week later in Rome Papadopoulos bumped into an unnamed professor – identified by the Washington Post as Joseph Mifsud – who claimed to have “substantial connections with Russian government officials”. Interviewed by the Washington Post in August, he said he was not connected to the Russian government.

The professor introduced him first to a Russian woman falsely identified as Vladimir Putin’s niece, and later to an official, thought to be Ivan Timofeev, with ties to the Russian foreign ministry and the Valdai discussion club, a government organisation that invites western academics for an annual audience with Putin.



On 31 March, Papadopoulos took part in a meeting in Washington with Trump, who was the Republican frontrunner, and his national security team. He was pictured seated four chairs away from the candidate. Papadopoulos made an interesting pitch, according to the FBI: he told those seated around the table he could broker a ground-breaking meeting between Putin and Trump.

The meeting never happened but at a breakfast meeting in April 2016, the professor is said to have told Papadopolous that Russia had “thousands of emails” on Trump’s Democratic rival for the presidency, Hillary Clinton.

Paul Manafort and other aides



Trump’s former campaign manager, Paul Manafort, and a business associate, Rick Gates, have been indicted on charges of money laundering, tax evasion, failure to register as agents for foreign interests and conspiracy to defraud the US government.

Although the indictment says the pair’s moneymaking activities lasted until at least 2016, the charges do not mention the role of the two men in the Trump campaign.

The charges allege the two men worked extensively for political figures and parties in Ukraine and laundered millions of dollars in payment for that work by channelling it through a web of companies, mostly in the US and Cyprus. They are accused of constructing elaborate schemes to hide their earnings from the US government, and failing to register the foreign interests for which they were lobbying.

The indictment alleges $75m in payments flowed through offshore accounts, of which Manafort laundered more than $18m to buy property, goods and services in the US, hiding the income from the government. It says Gates transferred $3m from the offshore accounts to other accounts he controlled. Both men have pleaded not guilty to all the charges.

Jeff Sessions

Jeff Sessions, now attorney general, met Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak twice while advising Trump’s presidential campaign.

In January, when asked at his confirmation hearing “Have you been in contact with anyone connected to any part of the Russian government about the 2016 election, either before or after election day?” Sessions responded: “No.”

In March, Sessions then announced he would recuse himself from the investigation into Russian interference in last year’s presidential election. Over the summer he defended the decision calling his choice “consistent for the rule of law”.

Michael Flynn

Michael Flynn resigned after barely three weeks as national security adviser after failing to disclose contact with a Russian officials during the Trump presidential campaign and transition. The retired general reportedly spoke five times with Sergey Kislyak , Moscow’s man in Washington, on the same day Barack Obama announced sanctions against Russia for attempting to influence the presidential election last November.

When details of the contacts emerged during the transition, incoming vice-president Mike Pence denied that Flynn and Kislyak had discussed sanctions. Flynn then revised his account to claim he “couldn’t be certain” sanctions were not covered before apologising to Pence for misleading him.

Carter Page and Michael Cohen



Carter Page, a businessman whom Trump appointed as a foreign policy adviser, was alleged to have met Russian officials in July 2016 according to a dossier compiled last year by a former MI6 officer, Christopher Steele.

Steele’s sources describe Page as an “intermediary” between Manafort and Moscow, who had met a Putin lieutenant and head of the Russian energy giant, Rosneft, and a senior Kremlin official, Igor Diveykin. Page denied meeting either man on his trips to Moscow, which he has said were for business purposes and not connected to his role in the Trump campaign.

Trump’s lawyer, Michael Cohen, is also said to have met Russian officials in August 2016 to discuss the fallout from Manafort’s resignation from the Trump campaign and also emerging media speculation about Page’s activities in Moscow. Cohen has strenuously denied these allegations.

Rex Tillerson

Trump’s pick for secretary of state forged close ties with Russia during more than 40 years working for ExxonMobil. He was the oil and gas corporation’s head of operations there before serving as its chairman and chief executive from 2006 until his surprise nomination.

Tillerson joined forces with Rosneft on several major projects, which came to be hindered by economic sanctions against Russia. He said the policy was harmful after the US and EU placed sanctions on Russia over its annexation of Crimea and military action in Ukraine. Despite this, Tillerson denied knowledge of any lobbying by ExxonMobil against sanctions at his congressional confirmation hearing in January.

Senior Republicans such as John McCain have questioned Tillerson’s ability to remain objective given the depth of his past involvement with Russia. In 2013, the Kremlin gave Tillerson an Order of Friendship award and the Texan is said to be close to Igor Sechin, the head of Rosneft and Putin’s de facto number two.

Sechin was one of the senior Kremlin officials said to have met with Trump aides in alleged contacts detailed in the Steele dossier. Tillerson denied at his congressional confirmation hearing that ExxonMobil had ever dealt with Manafort and Page.



