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The Long, Twisted, and Bizarre History of the Trump-Russia Scandal

Byadmin

Apr 6, 2018
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The Trump-Russia scandal—with all its bizarre and troubling
twists and turns—has become a controversy that is defining the
Trump presidency. The FBI recently disclosed that since July it has
been conducting a counterintelligence investigation into possible
coordination between Trump associates and Russia, as part of
its probe of Moscow’s meddling in the 2016 election. Citing “US
officials,” CNN reported
that the bureau has gathered information suggesting coordination
between Trump campaign officials and suspected Russian operatives.
Each day seems to bring a new revelation—and a new Trump
administration denial or deflection. It’s tough to keep track of
all the relevant events, pertinent ties, key statements, and
unraveling claims. So we’ve compiled what we know so far into the
timeline below, which covers Trump’s 30-year history with
Russia.  We will continue to update the timeline regularly as
events unfold. (Click here to go directly to the most recent
entry.) If you have a tip or we’ve left anything out,
please email us at trumprussia@motherjones.com.

1986: Donald Trump is seated next
to Russian Ambassador Yuri Dubinin at a lunch organized by
Leonard Lauder, the son of cosmetics scion Estée Lauder, who at the
time is running her cosmetics business. “One thing led to another,
and now I’m talking about building a large luxury hotel across the
street from the Kremlin” in partnership with the Soviet government,
Trump later writes in his 1987 book, The Art of the
Deal. Also present at the
event is Russian diplomat Vitaly Churkin, later the Russian
ambassador to the United Nations. (Churkin died in
February 2017 at age 64.)

January 1987: Intourist, the Soviet agency for
international tourism, expresses
interest in meeting with Trump.

“Almost all of the oligarchs were in the room,” Trump said of his
2013 visit to Moscow for his Miss Universe contest.

July 1987: Trump and his then-wife, Ivana, fly
to Moscow to tour potential hotel sites. Trump spokesman Dan Klores
later tells the Washington
Post that during the trip, Trump “met with a lot of the
economic and financial advisers in the Politburo” but did not see
Mikhail Gorbachev, then the USSR’s leader.

December 1, 1988: The Soviet mission to the
United Nations announces
that Gorbachev is tentatively scheduled to tour Trump Tower while
the Soviet leader is visiting New York, and that Trump plans to
show him a swimming pool inside a $19 million apartment.

December 7, 1988: Trump welcomes the wrong
Gorbachev to New York—shaking hands with a renowned Gorbachev
impersonator outside his hotel.

December 8, 1988: President Ronald Reagan
invites Donald
and Ivana Trump to a state dinner, where Trump meets the real
Gorbachev. According to Trump’s spokesman, the real estate
mogul had a lengthy discussion with the Soviet president about
economics and hotels.

January 1989: For $200,000, Trump signs a group
of Soviet cyclists for a road race from Albany, New York, to
Atlantic City, New Jersey, dubbed the Tour de
Trump, that will take place that
May.

November 5, 1996: Media
reports note that Trump is trying to partner with US tobacco
company Brooke Group to build a hotel in Moscow.

January 23, 1997: Trump meets with
Alexander Lebed, a retired Soviet general then running to be
president of Russia, at Trump Tower. Trump says they discussed his
plans to build “something major” in Moscow. Lebed reportedly
expressed his support, joking that his only objection would be that
“the highest skyscraper in the world cannot be built next to the
Kremlin. We cannot allow anyone spitting from the roof of the
skyscraper on the Kremlin.”

2000: Michael Caputo, who later runs Trump’s
primary campaign in New York during the 2016 race, secures a
PR contract
with the Russian
conglomerate Gazprom Media to burnish Russian President
Vladimir Putin’s image in the United States.

2005

Date unknown: Trump reportedly
signs a development
deal with Bayrock Group, a real estate firm founded by a former
Soviet official from Kazakhstan, to develop a hotel in Moscow and
agrees to partner on a hotel tower
in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Trump works on the projects with
Bayrock managing partner Felix Sater,
a Russian American businessman. The New York Times will
later publish a story revealing Sater’s criminal record, which
includes charges of racketeering and
assault.

June: Paul Manafort, later Trump’s campaign
chairman, pens a strategy
memo to Russia oligarch and Putin confidant Oleg Deripaska,
with whom he would sign a $10 million lobbying contract the
following year. “We are now of the belief that this model can
greatly benefit the Putin Government if employed at the correct
levels with the appropriate commitment to success,” Manafort
writes, noting that the effort “will be offering a great service
that can re-focus, both internally and externally, the policies of
the Putin government.” (Manafort later denies working to advance
Russian interests as part of this contract, first reported by the
Associated Press. Deripaska later calls the
AP story a “malicious…lie” and says, “I have never made any
commitments or contacts with the obligation or purpose to covertly
promote or advance ‘Putin’s Government’ interests anywhere in the
world.”

2007

September 19: Sater and the former Soviet
official who founded Bayrock, Tevfik Arif, stand next to Trump
at the launch
party for Trump SoHo, a hotel-condominium project co-financed
by Bayrock.

November 22:  Trump Vodka
debuts in Russia, at the Moscow Millionaire’s Fair. As part of its
new marketing campaign, Trump Vodka also unveils an ad featuring
Trump, tigers, the Kremlin, and Vladimir Lenin.

At the Millionaires’ Fair, Trump meets Sergey Millian, an
American citizen from Belarus who is the president of the
Russian-American Chamber of Commerce in the USA (RACC).
Subsequently, Millian later
recounted, “We met at his office in New York, where he
introduced me to his right-hand man—Michael Cohen. He is Trump’s
main lawyer, all contracts go through him. Subsequently, a contract
was signed with me to promote one of their real estate projects in
Russia and the CIS. You can say I was their exclusive broker.”
According to Millian, he helped Trump “study the Moscow market” for
potential real estate investments.

December 17: The New York Times
publishes a story about Felix Sater’s controversial past, which
includes prison time for stabbing a man with a margarita glass stem
during a bar fight and a guilty plea in a Mafia-linked racketeering
case. The article characterizes Sater as a Trump business associate
who is promoting several potential projects in partnership with
Trump.

December 19: In a
deposition, Trump is asked about his plans to build a hotel in
Moscow. He says, “It was a Trump International Hotel and Tower. It
would be a nonexclusive deal, so it would not have precluded me
from doing other deals in Moscow, which was very important to
me.”

2008

April: Trump announces he is partnering with
Russian oligarch Pavel Fuks to license his name for luxury
high-rises in Moscow, St. Petersburg, and Sochi, the site of the
2014 Winter Olympics. But Fuks ultimately balks at Trump’s price,
which the Russian business newspaper Kommersant estimated
could have been $200 million or more.

July: Billionaire Dmitri Rybolovlev, a Russian
oligarch, buys a Palm Beach mansion owned by Trump for $95 million,
despite Florida’s crashing real estate market and an appraisal on
the house for much less.
Trump bought the property for $41.35 million four years
earlier. Rybolovlev goes on to give conflicting
explanations for why he bought the property.

September 15: Donald Trump Jr. speaks at a real estate
conference in Manhattan, where he says, “Russians make up a
pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets…We see
a lot of money pouring in from Russia.”

Date unknown: Trump’s team reportedly invites
Sergei Millian to meet Trump at a horse race in Florida, where,
according to Millian, they sit in Trump’s private suite at the
Gulfstream race track in Miami. “Trump team, they realized that we
have a lot of connection with Russian investors. And they noticed
that we bring a lot of investors from Russia,” Millian told
ABC News in
a 2016 interview. “And they needed my assistance, yes, to sell
properties and sell some of the assets to Russian investors.”
Millian says that following this meeting with Trump, he worked as a
broker for the Trump Hollywood condominium project in Miami,
selling a “nice
percentage” of the building’s 200 units to Russian
investors.

2010

May 10: Jody Kriss, a former finance director
at Bayrock, files
a lawsuit
against the company. The suit alleges that Bayrock financed Trump SoHo
with mysterious cash from Kazhakstan and Russia and calls the
building “a Russian mob project.” (The complaint notes that “there
is no evidence that Trump took any part in” Bayrock’s interactions
with questionable Russian financing sources.)

Date unknown: Bayrock’s Sater becomes a
senior
adviser to Trump, according to his LinkedIn profile. Though
Trump later claims he would not recognize Sater, Sater has a Trump
Organization email address, phone number, and business
cards.

2013

January (date unknown): At an energy conference
in New York, energy consultant Carter Page meets Victor Podobnyy, a
Russian intelligence operative who in 2015 will be charged with
being an unregistered agent of a foreign government, along with two
other Russians. Until June 2013, Page will continue to meet, email, and
provide documents to Podobnyy about the energy business,
thinking that he is an attaché at the Russian mission to the United
Nations who can help broker deals in Russia. Meanwhile, Podobnyy
and one of his colleagues discuss efforts to recruit Page as an
asset.

May 29: Emin Agalarov, a Russian pop star and
the son of billionaire real estate developer Aras Agalarov,
releases a music video for his song “Amor.” In the video, he
pursues Miss Universe 2012, Olivia Culpo, through dark, empty
alleys with a flashlight. Following the
video’s release, representatives of Miss Universe, which Trump
at the time owns, discuss with the Agalarovs the option of holding
the next pageant in Moscow. The Agalarovs persuade them to host
Miss Universe at a concert hall they own on the outskirts of
Moscow.

June 18: Following the Miss USA contest in Las
Vegas, Trump announces he will bring the Miss Universe pageant to
Moscow.

He also wonders if Putin will attend the pageant, and if Putin
might “become my new best friend?”

June (date unknown): Defense Intelligence
Agency head Michael Flynn visits Moscow at the invitation of Igor
Sergun, the chief of the GRU, Russia’s military intelligence
agency. During his visit, Flynn gives an
hourlong lecture on leadership and intelligence to a group of
GRU officers at the agency’s headquarters. He is reportedly the
first US intelligence officer ever allowed inside the
headquarters.

June 21: Vladimir Putin awards Rex Tillerson,
now Trump’s secretary of state, with Russia’s Order of Friendship. As the
CEO of Exxon Mobil, Tillerson had developed a long-standing
relationship with the head of Russia’s state-owned oil company,
Rosneft, dating back to 1998.

October 17: In an interview with David Letterman,
Trump says, “I’ve done a lot of business with the Russians,” noting
that he once met Putin.

November 5: In a deposition, Trump is asked
about a 2007 New York
Times story outlining the controversial past of Felix
Sater. Trump replies that he barely knows Sater and would have
trouble recognizing him if they were in the same room.

“Putin even sent me a present, a beautiful present,” Trump boasted.

November 8: Trump, in Russia for the Miss
Universe pageant, meets with more than a
dozen of Russia’s top businessmen at Nobu, a restaurant 15
minutes from the Kremlin. The group includes Herman Gref, the CEO
of the state-controlled Sberbank PJSC, Russia’s biggest bank. The
meeting at Nobu is organized by Gref—who regularly meets with
Putin—and Aras Agalarov, who owns the Nobu franchise in Moscow.

– According to a source
connected to the Agalarovs, Putin asks his spokesman, Dmitry
Peskov, to call Trump in advance of the Miss Universe show to set
up an in-person meeting for the Russian president and Trump. Peskov
reportedly passes on the message and expresses Putin’s admiration
for Trump. Their plans to meet never come to fruition because of
scheduling changes for both Trump and Putin.

November 9: Trump spends the morning shooting a
music video with Emin Agalarov.

– The Miss Universe pageant takes place near Moscow. A notorious
Russian mobster, Alimzhan Tokhtakhounov, attends the event as a
VIP, strolling down the event’s red
carpet within minutes of Trump. At the time, Tokhtakhounov
was under federal indictment in the United States for his alleged
participation in an illegal gambling ring once run out of Trump
Tower. Emin Agalarov performs two songs at the pageant.

– MSNBC’s Thomas Roberts asks Trump
if he has a relationship with Putin. Trump
replies, “I do have a relationship and I can tell you that he’s
very interested in what we’re doing here today.”

November 11: Trump tweets his appreciation to
Aras Agalarov, the Russian billionaire with whom he partnered to
host Miss Universe, also complimenting Emin’s performance at the
pageant and declaring plans for a Trump tower in Moscow.

November 12: Trump tells Real Estate
Weekly that Miss Universe Russia provided a networking
opportunity: “Almost all of the oligarchs were in the room,” he
says. The same day, two developers who helped build the luxury
Trump SoHo hotel meet with the Agalarovs to discuss replicating the
hotel in Moscow. Aras Agalarov, whose real estate company secured
multiple contracts from the Kremlin and who once received a medal
of honor from Putin, later claims he and Trump signed a
deal to build a Trump Tower in Moscow following the pageant.
(The deal
never moved past preliminary discussions.) 

November 20: Emin Agalarov releases a new music
video featuring Trump and the 2013 Miss Universe contestants.

2014

March 6: Trump gives a
speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference and
boasts of getting a gift from Putin when he was in Russia for the
2013 Miss Universe pageant. “You know, I was in Moscow a couple
months ago, I own the Miss Universe pageant, and they treated me so
great,” Trump said. “Putin even sent me a present, beautiful
present, with a beautiful note.”

May 27: At a National Press
Club luncheon, Trump says, “I was in Moscow recently and I
spoke, indirectly and directly, with President Putin, who could not
have been nicer.”

October 8: The counsel’s office of the Defense
Intelligence Agency responds to
an inquiry from Michael Flynn about ethics restrictions that will
apply to him after his Army retirement. The office explains in a
letter that he can not receive foreign government payments without
prior approval, due to the Constitution’s emoluments clause. “If
you are ever in a position where you would receive an emolument
from a foreign government or from an entity that might be
controlled by a foreign government, be sure to obtain advance
approval from the Army prior to acceptance,” the letter
states.

2015

September: FBI special agent Adrian Hawkins
contacts the
Democratic National Committee, saying that one of its computer
systems has been compromised by a cyberespionage group linked to
the Russian government. He speaks to a help desk technician who
does a quick check of the DNC systems for evidence of a cyber
intrusion. In the next several weeks, Hawkins calls the DNC back
repeatedly, but his calls are not returned, in part because the
tech support contractor who took Hawkins’ call does not know
whether he is a real agent. The FBI does not dispatch an agent to
visit the DNC in person and does not make efforts to contact more
senior DNC officials.

September 21: On a conservative radio show,
Trump says, “I was in Moscow not so long ago for an event that we
had, a big event, and many of [Putin’s] people were there…I was
with the top-level people, both oligarchs and generals, and
top-of-the-government people. I can’t go further than that, but I
will tell you that I met the top people, and the relationship was
extraordinary.”

September 29: Trump praises
Putin during an interview with Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly: “I will
tell you, in terms of leadership he is getting an ‘A,’ and our
president is not doing so well.”

November: WikiLeaks
founder Julian Assange writes to a private Twitter group stating his
organization’s preference for a Republican victory in the 2016
election: “We believe it would be much better for GOP to win.
Dems+Media+liberals woudl then form a block to reign in their worst
qualities. With Hillary in charge, GOP will be pushing for her
worst qualities., dems+media+neoliberals will be mute.” He adds,
“She’s a bright, well connected, sadistic sociopath.”

November 10: At a Republican presidential
primary debate, Trump says he “got to know [Putin] very well
because we were both on 60 Minutes, we were
stablemates.”

November 11: The Associated
Press, Time, and other media outlets report that Trump
and Putin were never in the same
studio. Trump was interviewed in New York, and Putin was
interviewed in Moscow.

December 10: Retired General Michael Flynn, the
former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency who was reportedly
forced out in 2014, attends and is paid more than $30,000 to
speak at Russia Today’s 10th-anniversary
dinner in Moscow, where he is seated next
to Putin.

December 16: Then-CIA Director John
Brennan writes in an internal memo that some members of Congress
don’t “understand and appreciate the importance and gravity” of
Russian interference in the presidential election. The criticism is
reportedly directed at Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell
(R-Ky.) and Majority Whip John Cornyn (R-Texas), according to a
BuzzFeed article published in August
2017. Brennan’s memo also says then-FBI Director James Comey and
then-National Intelligence Director James Clapper agree on the
scope of Russian involvement.

December 17: Putin praises Trump in his
year-end press
conference, saying that he is “very talented” and that “he is
an absolute leader of the presidential race, as we see it today. He
says that he wants to move to another-level relations, a deeper
level of relations with Russia…How can we not welcome that? Of
course, we welcome it.” Trump calls the praise “a great honor” from
“a man so highly respected within his own country and beyond.” He
adds, “I have always felt that Russia and the United States should
be able to work well with each other toward defeating terrorism and
restoring world peace, not to mention trade and all of the other
benefits derived from mutual respect.”

2016

February 17: At a rally in South
Carolina, Trump says of Putin, “I have no relationship with
him, other than that he called me a genius.”

March 14: While
traveling in Italy, George Papadopoulos, a member of the Trump
campaign’s foreign policy team, meets London-based professor Joseph
Mifsud. The professor claims to have connections to Russian
government officials, which piques Papadopoulos’
interest.

March 21: In an interview with the Washington
Post, Trump identifies Carter Page as one of his foreign
policy advisers. He also names George Papadopoulos, whom he describes as “an energy
and oil consultant, excellent guy.”

March 24: George Papadopoulos sends an email to Trump
campaign officials saying he “just finished a very productive lunch
with a good friend of mine”—Joseph Mifsud. This professor, he says,
introduced Papadopoulos to a female Russian national that
Papadopoulos describes as “Putin’s niece” and Russia’s
ambassador to the United Kingdom, who also functions as the
country’s deputy foreign minister. Papadopoulous writes that the
main discussion at lunch was the possibility of setting up a
meeting between the Trump campaign and members of Russian
leadership “to discuss US-Russia ties under Trump.”

March 30: Bloomberg
Businessweek reports on Page’s past advising of Gazprom,
Russia’s state-owned gas company. Page tells Bloomberg
Businessweek that after Trump named him as an adviser,
positive notes from his Russian contacts filled his inbox. “There’s
a lot of excitement in terms of the possibilities for creating a
better situation” in terms of easing US sanctions on Russia, Page
explained.

March 31: George
Papadopoulos attends a national security meeting with Trump and his
foreign policy advisers, including Jeff Sessions. There he says he has connections who can help
arrange a meeting between Trump and Putin.

April 18: Joseph
Mifsud emails George Papadopolous to introduce him to Ivan
Timofeev, the director of programs at the Russian International
Affairs Council, a think tank with ties to the Russian Ministry of
Foreign Affairs, based in Moscow. Over the next few weeks,
Papadopolous and Timofeev speak several times over Skype. In
subsequent email exchanges, Timofeev will tell Papadopolous that
he has access to Russian government
officials.

April 22: Timofeev emails
Papadopolous to thank him
for “an extensive talk” and proposes that they meet in London or
Moscow. Papadopolous replies to suggest that they set up
the meeting in London.

April 25: Papadopolous
emails a senior policy adviser for the Trump
campaign to say that
the Russian government has an “open invitation” from Putin to meet
with Trump.

April 26: The
Washington Post reports that Paul Manafort, then
Trump’s convention manager (who would later be promoted to campaign
chairman), has long-standing
ties to pro-Putin Ukrainian officials. Between 2007 and 2012,
Manafort worked as a political consultant to Putin ally Viktor
Yanukovych and his pro-Russia party. He helped Yanukovych remake
his image following the Orange Revolution and mount a successful
bid for the Ukrainian presidency.

– Papadopolous meets Mifsud for breakfast at a
London hotel. Mifsud tells Papadopolous that he’s just returned
from Moscow, where he met with Russian government officials. The
professor says he learned that the Russian government has “dirt” on
Hillary Clinton, in the form of “thousands” of emails.

April 27: Trump gives his
first foreign policy speech at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington,
DC. During the speech, he calls for an “easing of tensions” and
“improved relations” with Russia. Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak
is in attendance, as is Sen. Jeff Sessions. According to the
Wall Street Journal, before Trump’s remarks, he “met at a VIP
reception with Russia’s ambassador to the U.S., Sergey
Ivanovich Kislyak. Mr. Trump warmly greeted Mr. Kislyak and three
other foreign ambassadors who came to the reception.”

– Papadopolous emails a senior
policy adviser for the
Trump campaign. He writes, “Have some interesting messages coming
in from Moscow about a trip when the time is right.”

– Papadopolous emails a
high-ranking member of the Trump campaign “to discuss Russia’s interest in hosting
Mr. Trump. Have been receiving a lot of calls over the last month
about Putin wanting to host him and the team when the time is
right.”

April 30:
Papadopoulos thanks Mifsud, the professor, for his “critical help”
in arranging a possible meeting between the Trump campaign and the
Russian government.

April and May:
The DNC’s IT department contacts the FBI about unusual computer
activity and hires cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike to investigate.
In May, Crowdstrike
determines that hackers affiliated with Russian intelligence
infiltrated the DNC’s network.

May 4: Timofeev emails
Papadopoulos to say that
he’s spoken to his colleagues at the “MFA”—Russia’s Ministry of
Foreign Affairs—and they are “open for cooperation.” Timofeev
offers to set up a meeting with them in Moscow. Papadopoulos replies that he is “[g]lad the MFA is
interested” and forwards Timofeev’s email
to Corey Lewandowski, then
the campaign manager for the Trump campaign, asking, “Is this something we want to move
forward with?”

May 5: Papadopoulos has a phone call with Trump campaign
policy adviser Sam Clovis and then forwards Timofeev’s email to
him.

May 13: Mifsud
emails Papadopolous, writing, “We will continue to
liaise through you with the Russian counterparts in terms of what
is needed for a high level meeting of Mr. Trump with the Russian
Federation.”

May 14:
Papadopolous tells the campaign’s Lewandowski
that the “Russian government” has
relayed to him that “they are interested in hosting Mr.
Trump.”

May 21: Papadopolous emails Paul Manafort, then a
high-ranking staffer for the Trump campaign, with the subject line: “Request from Russia to
meet Mr. Trump.” The email includes the May 4 email from Timofeev, and
Papadopolous adds, “Russia has been eager to meet Mr. Trump for
quite sometime and have been reaching out to me to
discuss.”

June: The Moscow-based Russian Institute for
Strategic Studies (RISS), a government think tank run by retired
foreign intelligence officials appointed by Vladimir Putin, drafts
and circulates a strategy paper among top Russian government
officials. According to
Reuters, it recommends that the Kremlin help spur a propaganda
campaign—via social media and state-controlled news outlets—that
would help elect a more pro-Russia US president. This is based on
information provided to Reuters by seven current or former US
officials in April 2017.

June 1: George Papadopolous emails Corey Lewandowski,
a high-ranking Trump campaign
official, to ask about
Russia. The official refers Papadopolous to the campaign
supervisor. Papadopolous then emails the campaign’s Sam Clovis, writing, “I have the Russian MFA
asking me if Mr. Trump is interested in visiting Russia at some
point. Wanted to pass this info along to you for you to decide
what’s best to do with it and what message I should send (or to
ignore).”

June 3: Rob Goldstone, the publicist for Emin
Agalarov, emails Donald Trump Jr. to say that Russia’s crown
prosecutor met with Aras Agalarov—Emin’s dad and a Russian
oligarch—and told him that he possessed “official documents and
information that would incriminate Hillary” and that could be
shared with the Trump campaign. Goldstone adds that the information, “is
obviously very high level and sensitive information but is part of
Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump.” Trump Jr.
responds by asking to speak to Emin about the material described in
Goldstone’s email, and he adds, “If it’s what you say I love
it.”

June 6: Goldstone tries to coordinate a phone
call between Trump Jr. and Emin over email.

June 7: Goldstone emails Trump Jr. to say that
Emin asked that Trump Jr. meet with a “Russian government attorney”
in New York. They set a time over email for June 9, and Trump Jr.
responds that Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and Trump’s
son-in-law, Jared Kushner, will also likely sit in on the
meeting.

June 8: Trump Jr. forwards the email with the
updated meeting time to Kushner and Manafort.

June 9: Promised damaging
information on Clinton, Trump Jr., Manafort, and Kushner meet with a Kremlin-tied Russian lawyer,
Natalia Veselnitskaya. She says she has evidence
that individuals linked to Russia are funding the DNC. Trump Jr.
will later characterize her statements on this topic as “vague” and
“ambiguous” and will claim that the discussion turned to the
Magnitsky Act and Russia’s policy on US
adoptions of Russian children.

June 14: The Washington Post reports that
Russian hackers penetrated the Democratic National Committee and
stole opposition research on Donald Trump.

June 15: Guccifer
2.0, an online persona that US intelligence officials link to
Russia’s military intelligence service, takes credit for the DNC
hack and posts hacked DNC documents. Guccifer will go on to post
additional hacked documents—from the DNC and the Democratic
Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC), and purportedly from the
Clinton Foundation—at least nine more times in the months leading
up to the election. (Some reports
contest that the documents came from the Clinton Foundation
itself.)

– During a private
meeting, Republican leaders discuss the DNC hack. House
Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy remarks, “There’s two people I think
Putin pays: Rohrabacher and Trump.” (Rorhbacher is California
Republican Dana Rohrbacher, a steadfast defender of Putin and
Russia.) When his colleagues laugh, McCarthy adds, “Swear to God.”
(McCarthy later says he was joking.)

June
19: George Papadopolous emails a Trump campaign supervisor
with the subject line “New message from Russia.” In his email,
Papadopolous says the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs had asked
if a representative of the Trump campaign might be willing to make
the trip to Russia if Trump couldn’t. Papadopolous volunteers to
make an “off the record” trip himself.

July 7: Trump campaign foreign policy adviser
Carter Page criticizes US sanctions against Russia during a speech at the
New Economic School in Moscow. Politico later reports that
Page asked for and received permission from Trump’s then-campaign
manager, Corey Lewandowski, to speak at the Moscow event. Page’s
trip spurs the FBI—which has had an interest in the investor since
discovering in 2013 that a Russian operative had tried to recruit
him—to begin
investigating the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia.

July 18: The Washington
Post reports that the Trump campaign worked with members
of the Republican Party platform committee in advance of the
Republican National Convention to soften the platform’s position
related to Russia’s annexation of Crimea from Ukraine. The platform
reportedly included a provision that promised to provide arms to
Ukraine in its fight against Russia, but Trump campaign staffers
encouraged the committee to jettison this language.

– Trump surrogate Sen. Jeff Sessions meets with Sergey Kislyak,
the Russian ambassador, on the
sidelines of a Republican National Convention event put on by
the conservative Heritage Foundation.

July 20: New Yorker reporter Ryan
Lizza asks Sam Clovis, Trump’s top policy adviser, about
allegations that the Trump team worked with the Republican Party to
soften the party platform’s position on Russia in advance of the
RNC. Clovis responds, “I can’t talk about,” and walks away.

July 18-21: Trump campaign
staffers Carter Page
and J.D. Gordon, the campaign’s director of national security, also
meet with the
Russian ambassador during the convention.

July 22: WikiLeaks
publishes nearly 20,000 hacked DNC emails in advance of the
Democratic National Convention. Some of the
emails indicate that DNC officials favored Clinton over Sen.
Bernie Sanders.

July 24: Paul Manafort, Trump’s campaign
chairman, appears on ABC’s This
Week, where he is asked whether there are connections
between the Trump campaign and the Putin regime. Manafort says,
“No, there are not. And you know, there’s no basis to it.”

July 25: Trump tweets about the hacked DNC
emails:

July 26: US intelligence
agencies tell the White House they now have “high confidence”
that the Russian government was behind the DNC hack. This is
reported by media outlets but not publicly confirmed by
intelligence agencies.

– In an interview
with NBC News, President Barack Obama says hacks are being
investigated by the FBI, but that “experts have attributed this to
the Russians.” He notes, “What we do know is that the Russians hack
our systems. Not just government systems, but private systems. But
you know, what the motives were in terms of the leaks, all that—I
can’t say directly. What I do know is that Donald Trump has
repeatedly expressed admiration for Vladimir Putin.”

– Trump tweets, calling the Russia allegations
“crazy”: 

July 27: Trump encourages Russia to hack
Clinton’s emails, saying during a news
conference, “Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to
find the 30,000 emails that are missing. I think you’ll probably be
rewarded mightily by our press.” At the same event, he declares, “I
never met Putin. I don’t know who Putin is.”

July 31: On ABC’s This
Week, Trump again denies knowing Putin, saying, “I have no
relationship with him.” Trump also denies that his campaign played
any role in getting the Republican Party to soften its platform on
arming Ukraine.

– On Meet the
Press, Manafort denies that he or anyone within the Trump
campaign worked to change the platform.

– Sen. Jeff Sessions defends Trump’s efforts to cultivate a
friendship with Russia during an appearance on CNN:
“Donald Trump is right. We need to figure out a way to end this
cycle of hostility that’s putting this country at risk, costing us
billions of dollars in defense, and creating hostilities.”

Late July: The FBI launches a
counterintelligence investigation into contacts between Trump
associates and Russia. There is no public confirmation of this
investigation at the time, but FBI Director James Comey later
confirms the investigation in a March 2017
hearing before the House Intelligence Committee.

August 4: In a phone call with Alexander
Bornikov, the head of Russia’s FSB, an intelligence agency, CIA
Director John Brennan puts his
counterpart on notice about further interference in the US
election. Bornikov denies efforts targeting the election.

August 5: Trump spokeswoman Hope Hicks, asked
by the Washington
Post about Carter Page’s July speech in Moscow, downplays
his role as a foreign policy adviser to the Trump campaign, saying
he “does not speak for Mr. Trump or the campaign.”

– Longtime Trump adviser Roger Stone writes an article for
Breitbart in which he
denies that Russia was behind the DNC hack. He argues that Guccifer
2.0 has no ties to Russia.

August 6: NPR confirms
the Trump campaign’s involvement in encouraging the Republican
Party to soften its platform’s pro-Ukraine position on Russia’s
annexation of Crimea.

August 14: The New York
Times reports that Ukraine’s anti-corruption bureau has
discovered Manafort’s name on a list of “black accounts” compiled
by ousted Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, a Putin ally. The
tallies show undisclosed payments designated for Manafort totaling
$12.7 million between 2007 and 2012, the years that Manafort worked
for Yanukovych as a political consultant. (Manafort denies
receiving any illicit payments.)

August 15:
After communicating about a possible “off the record” trip to
Moscow for weeks, a
campaign supervisor encourages George Papadopolous and another
foreign policy adviser to “make the trip” to Russia, “if feasible.”
(The trip never happens.)

August 17: Trump receives his first classified
intelligence briefing as the GOP nominee for president. He
brings Michael Flynn with him to the meeting, which includes
discussion of the intelligence community’s assessment that Russia
was interfering in the US election.

August 19: Manafort resigns from
the Trump campaign.

August 21: Roger Stone tweets:

August 29: Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid
(D-Nev.) pens a
letter to the FBI, asking the bureau to investigate the
possibility of election-tampering by Russia in the upcoming
presidential election. “I have recently become concerned that the
threat of the Russian government tampering in our presidential
election is more extensive than widely known,” Reid writes.
“The prospect of a hostile government actively seeking to undermine
our free and fair elections represents one of the gravest threats
to our democracy since the Cold War and it is critical for the
Federal Bureau of Investigation to use every resource available to
investigate this matter thoroughly.”

August 29: Yahoo
News reports that the
FBI has found evidence that the state voter systems in Arizona and
Illinois were breached by hackers possibly linked to the Russian
government.

August 30: House Democrats send a
letter to FBI Director James Comey calling on the bureau to
investigate ties between the Trump campaign and Russian officials
and any impact these ties may have had on the hacking of the DNC
and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

September 5: The Washington
Post reports that US intelligence agencies, including the
FBI, are investigating possible plans by Russia to disrupt the
presidential election.

– Putin and Obama have a tense meeting at the G-20
summit in China, where they discuss Syria, Ukraine, and
cybersecurity. In December,
Obama will tell reporters that he confronted Putin about Russia’s
alleged interference in the election and told him to “cut it
out.”

September 7: Director of National Intelligence
James Clapper suggests
publicly for the first time that Russia may have been
responsible for the DNC hack, pointing to Obama’s July statement
that “experts have attributed this to the Russians.” Clapper adds
that “the Russians hack our systems all the time.”

September 8: Trump responds to
Clapper’s comments in an interview with RT, the
English-language arm of a Russian state-controlled media
conglomerate, casting doubt on whether Russian hackers were
responsible for the DNC hack. “I think maybe the Democrats are
putting that out,” Trump says. “Who knows, but I think it’s pretty
unlikely.”

– Jeff Sessions meets with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak in
his Senate office. He is the only one of
the Senate Armed Services Committee’s 26 members to meet with the
ambassador in 2016. The meeting occurs days after Putin and Obama’s
tense G-20 meeting.

September 20: WikiLeaks’ Twitter account sends a private direct message to Donald Trump
Jr., the Republican nominee’s oldest son and campaign surrogate. “A
PAC run anti-Trump site putintrump.org is about to launch,” the
message reads. “The PAC is a recycled pro-Iraq war PAC. We have
guessed the password. It is ‘putintrump.’ See ‘About’ for who is
behind it. Any comments?”

September 21: Donald Trump Jr. responds to the message from WikiLeaks: “Off
the record I don’t know who that is, but I’ll ask around, Thanks.”
Trump Jr. then proceeds to act on his promise: he emails senior
Trump campaign officials, including Steve Bannon, Kellyanne Conway,
Brad Parscale, and Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner, to tell them
about the note from WikiLeaks. Kushner then forwards the email to
campaign communications staffer Hope Hicks.

September 22: Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.),
vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, and Rep. Adam
Schiff (D-Calif.), the ranking member of the House Intelligence
Committee, release a
statement about Russia’s interference in the US election.
“Based on briefings we have received, we have concluded that the
Russian intelligence agencies are making a serious and concerted
effort to influence the U.S. election,” they wrote. “We believe
that orders for the Russian intelligence agencies to conduct such
actions could come only from the very senior levels of the Russian
government.”

September 23: Yahoo
News reports that US intelligence officials are
investigating whether Trump foreign policy adviser Carter Page
discussed the possible lifting of US sanctions on Russia and other
topics during private communications with top Russian officials,
including a Putin aide and the current executive chairman of
Rosneft, who is on the Treasury Department’s US sanctions list.
Trump campaign spokesman Jason Miller claims Page “has no role” in
the Trump campaign and says that “we are not aware of any of his
activities, past or present.”

September 25: In a CNN
interview, Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway denies that
Page is affiliated with the Trump campaign. “He’s certainly not
part of the campaign that I’m running,” she said.

In response to a question about Page’s possible connections to
Russian officials, Conway says, “If he’s doing that, he’s certainly
not doing it with the permission or knowledge of the campaign,” She
adds, “He is certainly not authorized to do that.”

September 26: Page takes a
leave from the campaign.

– During the first
presidential debate, Clinton brings up the allegations that
Russia orchestrated the DNC hack. Trump responds, “I don’t think
anybody knows it was Russia that broke into the DNC. She’s saying
Russia, Russia, Russia. I mean, it could be Russia, but it could
also be China. It could also be lots of other people. It also could
be somebody sitting on their bed that weighs 400 pounds, okay?”

October 1: Roger Stone tweets:

October 3: Roger Stone tweets:

October 7: US intelligence agencies issue a
joint
release saying they are “confident” the Russian government
interfered in the US election, in part by directing the leaking of
hacked emails belonging to political institutions like the DNC.
This is the first official government confirmation that Russia
orchestrated the hacking and leaks during the election.

– Late on Friday afternoon, a leaked video of Trump boasting of
groping and kissing women without their consent is published by the
Washington Post. Half an hour
later,
WikiLeaks begins to release several thousand hacked emails from
Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta.

October 9: During the second
presidential debate, Clinton accuses Trump of benefiting from
Russian hacking and other interference in the election. Trump
responds, “I don’t know Putin. I think it would be great if we got
along with Russia because we could fight ISIS together, as an
example. But I don’t know Putin.”

Referring to Trump campaign staffers, Russia’s deputy foreign
minister said the day after the election, “A number of them
maintained contacts with Russian representatives. There were
contacts. We continue to do this and have been doing this work
during the election campaign.”

October 11: The Obama White House promises a
“proportional” response following the US intelligence community’s
conclusion that Russia was responsible for hacking the DNC and
other groups.

October 12: Sources briefed on the FBI
examination of Russian hacking say the
agency suspects that Russian intelligence agencies are behind the
hacking of the emails of Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta and
a Florida election systems vendor.

– Roger Stone says he has “back-channel
communications” with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange through a
mutual friend.

October 19: During the final
presidential debate, Trump casts doubt on the US intelligence
community’s conclusion that the Russian government interfered in
the election. He also denies having ever met or spoken to Putin,
despite his previous statements to the contrary. “I never met
Putin,” Trump says. ” I have nothing to do with Putin. I’ve never
spoken to him.”

October 30: The plane belonging to Dmitri
Rybolovlev, the Russian oligarch who purchased Trump’s Florida
mansion in 2008, is in Las
Vegas the same day Trump holds a rally there.

– Outgoing Senate Minority Leader Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.) sends
a letter to FBI Director James Comey calling on him to release what
Reid calls “explosive” information about Trump’s Russia ties. “In
my communications with you and other top officials in the national
security community, it has become clear that you possess explosive
information about close ties and coordination between Donald Trump,
his top advisors, and the Russian government,” Reid writes. “The
public has a right to know this information.”

October 31: Mother
Jones reports that a veteran of a Western intelligence
service has given the FBI memos saying that Russia had mounted a
yearslong operation to co-opt or cultivate Trump and that the
Kremlin had gathered compromising information on Trump during his
visits to Moscow that could be used for blackmail. The article
notes that the FBI has requested more information from this
source.

October: Russian government think tank RISS
drafts and circulates a document among top Russian officials
warning that Hillary Clinton is likely to win the US presidential
election. According to
Reuters, the memo advises the Kremlin to revise its strategy
for influencing the election: Instead of focusing on pro-Trump
propaganda, it should instead seek to undermine Clinton’s
reputation and the legitimacy of the US electoral system by stoking
fears about voter fraud.

Date unknown: Prior to
Election Day, Flynn contacts Kislyak. It’s unknown how often
the pair communicated or what they talked about.

November 1: NBC News reports that the FBI is
conducting a preliminary inquiry into Paul Manafort’s business ties
to Russia and Ukraine. Manafort tells NBC, “None of it is true.” He
denies having dealings with Putin or the Russian government and
says any allegations to the contrary are “Democratic
propaganda.”

November 3: Dmitri Rybolovlev’s plane lands in
Charlotte, North Carolina, about 90
minutes before Trump’s plane lands at the same airport in
advance of a Trump rally to be held that day in nearby Concord.

November 9: Trump wins the presidential
election.

November 10: Interfax news agency reports that
the Russian government had contact with the Trump campaign during
the campaign. Referring to Trump campaign staffers, Sergei Ryabkov,
Russia’s deputy foreign minister, says, “A number of them
maintained contacts with Russian representatives” in the Russian
Foreign Ministry. And he adds, “There were contacts. We continue to
do this and have been doing this work during the election
campaign.”

– Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov tells the Associated
Press that Russian foreign policy experts have been in contact
with the Trump campaign. “And our experts, our specialists on the
U.S., on international affairs…Of course they are constantly
speaking to their counterparts here, including those from Mr.
Trump’s group,” Peskov said.

November 11: Trump campaign spokeswoman Hope
Hicks tells the Associated Press that the allegations of contact
between the Trump campaign and Russian officials are false. “It
never happened,” she says. “There was no communication between the
campaign and any foreign entity during the campaign.”

November 16: The director of the National
Security Agency, Admiral Michael Rogers, implies that he believes Russia
interfered in the US election. In response to a question about
WikiLeaks hacks during the election, Rogers says, “This was a
conscious effort by a nation-state to attempt to achieve a specific
effect.”

November 17: Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), the
top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, sends a
letter to Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah), the committee’s top
Republican, calling for an investigation into Russia’s interference
in the election.

November 23: The Wall Street
Journal reports that in October 2016, Donald Trump Jr.
spoke at a meeting of a French think tank run by a
couple, Fabien Baussart and Randa Kassis, who have “worked
closely with Russia to try to end the conflict” in Syria. Kassis is
the leader of a Syrian group endorsed by the Kremlin that seeks to
cooperate with Moscow ally President Bashar Assad.

November 29: Seven members of the Senate
Intelligence Committee write a
letter to Obama asking him to declassify relevant intelligence
on Russia’s role in the election.

Early December: Two Russian intelligence
officers who worked on cyber operations and a Russian computer
security expert are arrested in
Moscow and charged with treason for providing information to
the United States. (There is no indication of whether the arrests
are related to the Russian hacking of the 2016 campaign.)

December 8: Carter Page, no longer a foreign
policy adviser to Trump, visits
Moscow, where he tells a state-run news agency that he plans to
meet with “business leaders and thought leaders.”

December 9: The Washington
Post reports that a secret CIA assessment concluded that
Russia intervened in the 2016 election to help Trump win the
presidency. In response, the Trump transition team issues a
statement attempting to discredit the CIA’s conclusion: “These are
the same people that said Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass
destruction. The election ended a long time ago…It’s now time to
move on and ‘Make America Great Again.’”

December 11: In an appearance on Fox News
Sunday, Trump again casts doubt on the US intelligence
community’s findings on Russia’s interference in the election.
“They have no idea if it’s Russia or China or somebody,” Trump says
of the CIA’s findings. “It could be somebody sitting in a bed
someplace. I mean, they have no idea.”

December 13: Trump names Rex Tillerson, the
former CEO of Exxon Mobil, as his secretary of state nominee.
Tillerson has long-standing ties to Russia and Putin. Tillerson
helped Exxon cut several oil-drilling deals with Rosneft, Russia’s
state-owned oil company, and in 2013 Putin awarded Tillerson the
Russian Order of Friendship.

December (date unknown): Michael Flynn and
Jared Kushner meet with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak at Trump
Tower. Kislyak was not caught on tape entering the building,
suggesting that he may have been brought in through a back
entrance.

December (date unknown): Kislyak requests
another meeting with Kushner. Kushner sends a deputy, Avrahm
Berkowitz, to meet with the Russian ambassador in his stead. At
that meeting, Kislyak requests that Kushner meet with Sergey N.
Gorkov, the chief of Vnesheconombank, Russia’s state-owned
development bank. Kushner meets with Gorkov later that month.

December 29: Obama announces
sanctions against Russia for the country’s alleged interference
in the presidential election. The measure includes the ejection of
35 Russian diplomats from the United States; the closure of Cold
War-era Russian compounds in Long Island, New York, and in
Maryland; and sanctions against the GRU and the FSB (Russian
intelligence agencies), four employees of those agencies, and three
companies that worked with the GRU.

– Michael Flynn holds five phone
calls with Kislyak, during which they at some point discuss US
sanctions on Russia. (White House press secretary Sean Spicer later
claims falsely that they held just one call, in which they
merely discussed “logistical information.”)

2017

January 4: According to the New York
Times, Flynn tells Don McGahn, who at the time was the
transition team’s top lawyer, that he is under investigation for
failing to disclose his work as a lobbyist for Turkey during the
campaign.

January 5: President Obama meets with FBI Director James Comey and other
national security officials, and they discuss how much information
concerning Russia they should share with Trump’s transition team.
According to notes of the meeting taken by national security
adviser Susan Rice, Obama stated that he wanted the Trump-Russia
probe handled “by the book.”

January 6: Flynn’s attorney and transition team
lawyers hold another discussion about the investigation involving
Flynn.

–Top intelligence officials, including Director
of National Intelligence James Clapper, CIA Director John Brennan,
FBI Director James Comey, and National Security Agency head Mike
Rogers, brief Donald Trump at Trump Tower on the highly
classified intelligence supporting the case that Russia interfered
in the 2016 election. After the meeting, Comey privately briefs
Trump on the Steele dossier.

– The Office of the Director of National Intelligence releases
a report
saying that the CIA, the FBI, and the NSA believe there is evidence
that Russia actively tried to help Trump win the election. They
also conclude with “high confidence” that Russian military
intelligence used the Guccifer 2.0 persona and a website called
DCLeaks.com to release the hacked documents and that Russia’s
military intelligence branch channeled hacked material to
WikiLeaks.

Early January: Concerned that classified
material relating to Russia’s meddling in the 2016 election might
disappear once the Trump administration takes office, Obama
administration officials create a
list containing the serial numbers of key documents. An
administration official hand-delivers this list to senior members
of the Senate Intelligence Committee.

January 10: CNN reports
that Obama and Trump received classified briefings that covered
allegations contained in the Russia-Trump memos authored by the
Western intelligence official that Russian intelligence possessed
compromising material on Trump.

– BuzzFeed publishes the Trump-Russia memos in
full.

– Trump calls the Russia memos story “#fakenews” on Twitter.

– During his Senate confirmation hearing, Jeff Sessions responds
to questions about alleged contacts between the Trump campaign and
Russia by saying, “I have been called a surrogate at a time or two
in that campaign and I did not have communications with the
Russians.”

– FBI Director James Comey testifies at a Senate Intelligence
Committee hearing. He is asked whether the FBI is investigating
Trump campaign staffers’ ties to Russia. Comey declines to
answer the question.

– According to McClatchy‘s reporting
in May 2017, Obama’s national security adviser, Susan Rice, informs
Michael Flynn of the Pentagon’s plan to use Syrian Kurdish forces
to retake the Islamic State’s de facto capital, Raqqa. Flynn asks
Rice to delay the operation, a position that “conformed to the
wishes of Turkey.”

January 11: Trump again denies the allegations
in the Russia memos in a series of tweets. Also in reference to the
Russia allegations, he asks, “Are we living in Nazi
Germany?”

– At his first news
conference since being elected, Trump acknowledges that Russia
was behind the hacks, saying, “As far as hacking, I think it was
Russia. But I think we also get hacked by other countries and other
people.”

Around January 11: A secret meeting takes place
in the Seychelles between Blackwater founder Erik Prince, a major
Trump campaign donor and brother of Education Secretary Betsy
DeVos, and a Russian close to Putin in an effort to establish an
unofficial back channel between Moscow and Trump. According to
sources who would later speak to the Washington
Post, the meeting was allegedly coordinated by the crown
prince of Abu Dhabi, Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed al-Nahyan, and his
brother. It occurred shortly after a December visit to the United
States by Zayed, which the United Arab Emirates did not disclose to
the Obama administration.

January 13: Trump again calls claims about his
Russian connections “fake news.” His tweet refers to a comment by a
Kremlin
spokesman earlier in the month that called the US intelligence
community’s conclusion that Russia interfered in the US election
“absolutely unfounded.”

January 15: In an appearance on Face the
Nation, Vice President-elect Mike Pence says Michael Flynn
told him that he did not discuss US sanctions during his
conversations with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak.

January 19: The New York Times
reports that
the FBI, the NSA, the CIA, and the Treasury Department’s financial
crimes unit are investigating Paul Manafort, Carter Page, and Roger
Stone for their possible contacts with Russia during the campaign.
As part of their investigation, the Times reports, these
agencies are examining intercepted communications and financial
transactions.

January 20: Trump is inaugurated as the 45th
president of the United States.

January 23: White House press secretary Sean
Spicer holds his first White House press briefing. He insists that
national security adviser Michael Flynn’s conversations with the
Russian ambassador included no discussion of US sanctions.

January 24: The FBI
interviews Flynn about his phone conversations with the Russian
ambassador. Flynn reportedly
denies having discussed US sanctions on Russia.

January 26: Sally Yates, the acting attorney
general, informs White
House counsel Don McGahn that Flynn had discussed US sanctions
on Russia with the Russian ambassador, despite Flynn’s claims to
the contrary in his FBI interview.

– McGahn informs
Trump of Yates’ report that Flynn had a conversation with the
Russian ambassador in December that included a discussion about US
sanctions. This reveals that Flynn misled Pence when he said he had
not had substantive conversations with the Russian ambassador.

January 27: In a one-on-one dinner at the White
House, Trump reportedly asks FBI Director James Comey whether he is
personally under investigation by the FBI for possible Russia ties,
according to a May 2017 NBC
interview with Trump. Trump claims that Comey reassured him
that he was not under investigation. Two of Comey’s associates who
speak to the New York
Times in May 2017 have a different account of the dinner:
They say that Trump asked Comey for loyalty. Comey reportedly
declined but offered “honesty.”

– Former Trump campaign foreign policy adviser George
Papadopolous is interviewed by FBI agents. He makes a number of
materially false statements: He lies about the timeline of his
communications with professor Josef Mifsud and the female Russian
national, saying that both relationships began before he joined the
Trump campaign.

January (date unknown): Michael Cohen, Trump’s
personal attorney, meets at a Manhattan hotel with Felix Sater and
a pro-Putin Ukrainian lawmaker to discuss a potential peace plan
for Ukraine and Russia. The New York
Times reports that Cohen delivered this plan to Flynn.
Cohen confirms he
met with Sater and the Ukrainian lawmaker but denies that they
discussed a Ukraine-Russia peace plan or that he delivered such a
plan to Flynn or the White House.

February 7: Trump tweets:

February 8: In an interview with the Washington
Post, Flynn denies discussing US sanctions with
the Russian ambassador.

February 9: A spokesman for Flynn softens the
national security adviser’s denial, telling the Washington
Post that “while he had no recollection of discussing
sanctions, he couldn’t be certain that the topic never came
up.”

February 10: Speaking to reporters aboard Air
Force One, Trump says
he is not aware of reports that Flynn has discussed US sanctions
with the Russian ambassador. He has in fact been aware of Flynn’s
contacts with Kislyak since late January.

– Dmitri Rybolovlev’s plane lands in
Miami, the day before Trump is set to arrive at Mar-a-Lago for
the weekend.

February 13: Flynn resigns
following reports that
the Justice Department warned the White House that Flynn had misled
senior members of the administration, including Pence, about
whether he discussed US sanctions with the Russian ambassador.

February 14: The New York
Times reports that American intelligence and law
enforcement agencies have intercepted repeated communications
between Trump campaign officials and other Trump associates and
senior Russian intelligence and government officials.

– Spicer denies that
Trump or his campaign had any contacts with Russia during the
election.

February 15: During a joint press
conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu,
Trump does not answer a question about potential connections
between his campaign and Russia during the election. He blames
Flynn’s ouster on leaks. This is a different position than the one
taken by the White House previously: that Flynn was asked to resign
because he misled Pence about his communication with the Russian
ambassador.

– Reince Priebus, Trump’s chief of staff, asks the FBI
to publicly knock down media
reports that the US intelligence community was investigating
the Trump campaign’s alleged contacts with Russia intelligence
operatives during the election. The FBI refuses to
do so. The administration then enlists the
help of the intelligence community and several members of
Congress, including Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.) and Rep. Devin Nunes
(R-Calif.)—the chairmen of the Senate and House intelligence
committees, both of which are conducting investigations into
Trump’s Russia connections—to call media outlets to counter stories
about contacts between Trump staffers and Russians.

– In an appearance on PBS
Newshour, Carter Page denies that he had any meetings with
Russian officials in 2016.

February 16: At a news
conference, Trump is asked whether anyone in his campaign had
been in contact with Russia. He replies, “Nobody that I know of.”
He also denies having any contact with Russia, saying, “Russia is a
ruse. I have nothing to do with Russia.”

February 17: FBI Director James Comey meets
with members of the Senate Intelligence Committee. That same
day, the committee sends letters to more than a dozen agencies,
groups, and individuals, asking them to preserve all communications
related to the committee’s investigation of Russian interference in
the 2016 election.

February 19: During an interview on Fox News,
Priebus denies that the Trump camp had any contact with Russia.

February 28: Republicans on the House Judiciary
Committee vote down a
Democrat-sponsored resolution that would have required the Trump
administration to disclose information about Trump’s ties to Russia
(and his possible financial conflicts of interest).

– White House lawyers ask Trump
staffers to preserve any materials related to possible Russian
interference in the 2016 election.

March 1: The Washington
Post reports that Jeff Sessions, Trump’s attorney general,
did not disclose in his January confirmation hearings that he twice
met with Sergey Kislyak, the Russian ambassador. Sessions had said
during a confirmation hearing that “I did not have communications
with the Russians.” Sessions’ Justice Department spokeswoman
says
Sessions met with Kislyak in his capacity as a senator on the Armed
Services Committee, and that the question during the confirmation
hearing was about the Trump campaign’s Russian connections.

March 2: Facing criticism over the revelations
that he withheld information regarding his meetings with the
Russian ambassador during his confirmation hearings, Sessions
announces that he will recuse
himself from any investigations of Russian interference in the
2016 election.

– On NBC,
Sessions denies that he ever discussed the Trump campaign with
Russians. “I have not met with any Russians at any time to discuss
any political campaign, and those remarks are unbelievable to me
and are false,” he said. “And I don’t have anything else to say
about that.”

– Alex Oronov,
a Ukrainian billionaire businessman who was connected by marriage
to Michael Cohen, Trump’s longtime lawyer and associate, dies
unexpectedly. Oronov’s daughter was married to Cohen’s brother.
Oronov reportedly set up a January 2017 meeting between Cohen and
Russian officials to discuss a possible “peace plan” between Russia
and Ukraine that would have formalized Putin’s control over Crimea.
The New York Times reported that this peace
proposal was hand-delivered to Michael Flynn prior to his
forced resignation.

– The White House acknowledges
that Jared Kushner and Flynn met with Sergey Kislyak at Trump Tower
in December. The meeting was first reported by The New
Yorker.

– The Wall Street
Journal reports that Donald Trump Jr. was paid at least
$50,000 for his October 2016 appearance before a French think tank
run by a couple allied with Russia on ending Syrian conflict.

– USA
Today reports that two other Trump advisers, Carter Page
and J.D. Gordon, met with Sergey Kislyak during the Republican
National Convention.

– In an MSNBC
appearance, Page says he doesn’t deny that this meeting took
place.

– J.D. Gordon tells CNN that
during the Republican National Convention, he did in fact push to
alter the Republican platform’s draft policy on Ukraine to align it
with Trump’s views on Russia.

March 3: Trump dresses down senior staffers in
a meeting in
the Oval Office over Jeff Sessions’ recusal and over news reports
connecting the Trump administration to Russia.

March 4: Without providing any proof, Trump
alleges that President Obama wiretapped his phones during the
election.

March 5: Press secretary Sean Spicer
says the White House is requesting that the congressional
intelligence committees examine Trump’s allegations that Obama
wiretapped Trump during the campaign as part of their investigation
into Russia’s election activity. Spicer also says the White House
will not comment further on the wiretapping allegation until the
completion of this investigation.

March 10: Trump adviser Roger Stone
acknowledges that during the 2016 campaign he exchanged direct
messages on Twitter with Guccifer 2.0, the online persona that US
intelligence agencies believe was a front for Russian intelligence.
Stone claims the conversations were so “perfunctory” and “banal”
that he had forgotten about them.

– The yacht belonging to Russian billionaire Dmitri Rybolovlev
anchors in a
cove in the British Virgin Islands. Another yacht anchors next
to Rybolovlev’s—the Sea Owl, owned by Robert Mercer, one of Trump’s
biggest donors during the 2016 election and an investor in the
conservative Breitbart News.

March 15: Asked about his decision to accuse
Obama of wiretapping him without evidence, Trump hints that
information will soon emerge to back up his claims. “I think you’re
going to find some very interesting items coming to the forefront
over the next two weeks.”

March 20: Shortly before the House Intelligence
Committee holds its first public
hearing on its investigation into Russia’s interference in the
US election, a senior White House official tells
The New Yorker’s Ryan Lizza, “You’ll see the setting of
the predicate. That’s the thing to watch today.” Lizza later
reports:

He suggested that I read a piece in
The Hill about incidental collection. The article posited
that if “Trump or his advisors were speaking directly to foreign
individuals who were the target of U.S. spying during the election
campaign, and the intelligence agencies recorded Trump by accident,
it’s plausible that those communications would have been collected
and shared amongst intelligence agencies.”

The White House clearly indicated to me that it knew Nunes would
highlight this issue. “It’s backdoor surveillance where it’s not
just incidental, it’s systematic,” the White House official said.
“Watch Nunes today.”

– In his opening statement at the hearing, Nunes asks,
“Were the communications of officials or associates of any campaign
subject to any kind of improper surveillance?” The day’s biggest
news, however, comes from FBI Director James Comey, who testifies
at the hearing that the bureau has since July been “investigating
the nature of any links between individuals associated with the
Trump campaign and the Russian government, and whether there was
any coordination between the campaign and Russia’s efforts.” Both
Comey and NSA Director Admiral Michael Rogers dismiss Trump’s claim
that Obama wiretapped him during the election.

– In response to questions from Mother Jones‘ David
Corn, Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), chair of the House Intelligence
Committee, tells
reporters he has never heard of key figures connected to the
Trump-Russia scandal, including Carter Page and Roger
Stone. 

– Spicer tells
reporters that Paul Manafort, who ran Trump’s campaign from
April 2016 to August 2016, “played a limited role” on the campaign
“for a very limited amount of time.”

March 22: The Associated Press reports that,
starting in the mid-2000s, Manafort worked on behalf of Russian
oligarch Oleg Deripaska to “influence politics, business dealings
and news coverage inside the United States, Europe and the former
Soviet republics to benefit the Putin government.” The news service
quotes a 2005 strategy memo authored by Manafort, who writes, “We
are now of the belief that this model can greatly benefit the Putin
government if employed at the correct levels with the appropriate
commitment to success.” Manafort denies working on behalf of
Russian interests.

– Mother Jones reports that Manafort tried to help
Deripaska secure a visa to the United States. The aluminum magnate
had been denied entry to the United States at various points
because of suspected ties to the Russian mafia.

– Rep. Devin Nunes, without briefing Rep. Adam Schiff
(D-Calif.), his Democratic counterpart on the Intelligence
Committee, or other members of the panel, calls a surprise press
conference, announcing
that he has seen evidence that the intelligence community
“incidentally” picked up communications by Trump transition
officials in the course of lawful surveillance on foreign parties.
He claims that the names of Trump officials were “unmasked” and
that “none of this surveillance was related to Russia.”

– In a remarkable departure from intelligence committee norms,
Nunes visits the White House to brief Trump on his findings. The
president later says he feels “somewhat” vindicated by the
information Nunes shared.

– Schiff releases a statement expressing “grave concerns” about
Nunes’ actions and casting doubt about whether a “credible
investigation” can be conducted under these circumstances.

– Schiff tells
MSNBC’s Chuck Todd that there is “more than circumstantial evidence
now” of potential collusion between Trump officials and Russian
operatives. 

– CNN, citing “US officials,” reports that
the “FBI has information that indicates associates of President
Donald Trump communicated with suspected Russian operatives to
possibly coordinate the release of information damaging to Hillary
Clinton’s campaign.”

March 23: The Associated Press reports that
US Treasury Department agents have obtained records of “offshore
financial transactions” by Paul Manafort, in conjunction into an
ongoing anti-corruption investigation into his work in Eastern
Europe. According to the new service, “As part of their
investigation, U.S. officials were expected to look into millions
of dollars’ worth of wire transfers to Manafort. In one case, the
AP found that a Manafort-linked company received a $1 million
payment in October 2009 from a mysterious firm through the Bank of
Cyprus. The $1 million payment left the account the same day—split
in two, roughly $500,000 disbursements to accounts with no obvious
owner.”

– Trump tweets:

– Rep. Nunes apologizes
to Democratic members of the Intelligence Committee for failing to
brief them on the new information he obtained and instead taking it
straight to the White House, but he won’t explain why he took this
unusual action. 

March 24: Rep. Devin Nunes holds a press
conference, where he announces
that Paul Manafort has volunteered to testify before the House
Intelligence Committee. He also announces that the committee will
be delaying its next open hearing, which had been planned for March
28.

March 27: The New York
Times reports that in early December 2016, Jared Kushner
met with Sergey Gorkov, the chief of Russia’s state-owned
development bank at the request of Russian Ambassador Sergey
Kislyak. The paper also reports that the Senate Intelligence
Committee has informed the White House that it will seek to
question Kushner about this meeting and his interactions with
Kislyak.

– The New York Times reports that on the evening of
March 21, Rep. Nunes met with a source on White House grounds. The
source reportedly showed Nunes “dozens” of classified intelligence
reports. The next day, Nunes announced he had viewed evidence that
showed that US intelligence agencies had “incidentally” collected
communications among Trump transition team members while
surveilling other parties.

– House Democrats, including Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and
Adam Schiff, call on Nunes to recuse
himself from the House Intelligence Committee investigation
into Russia’s election interference. 

– Trump tweets:

March 28: The Washington Post reports that
the Trump administration has tried to prevent former acting
Attorney General Sally Yates from testifying before the House
Intelligence Committee. Yates—who was fired by Trump in January
after she instructed Justice Department lawyers not to defend the
administration’s executive order temporarily blocking immigration
from seven Muslim-majority countries—was scheduled to testify
before the committee in a public hearing that was canceled by
Nunes. The White House denied it had tried to block Yates from
testifying, calling the Post‘s story “entirely false.”

– NBC reports:

A bank in Cyprus investigated accounts associated with Trump’s
former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, for possible
money-laundering, two banking sources with direct knowledge of his
businesses here told NBC News.

Manafort—whose ties to a Russian oligarch close to President
Vladimir Putin are under scrutiny—was associated with at least 15
bank accounts and 10 companies on Cyprus, dating back to 2007, the
sources said. At least one of those companies was used to receive
millions of dollars from a billionaire Putin ally, according to
court documents.

Banking sources said some transactions on Manafort-associated
accounts raised sufficient concern to trigger an internal
investigation at a Cypriot bank into potential money laundering
activities. After questions were raised, Manafort closed the
accounts, the banking sources said.

According to a Manafort spokesman, “All were legitimate entities
and established for lawful ends.”

March 29: Sens. Richard Burr (R-N.C.) and Mark
Warner (D-Va.), respectively the chairman and vice chairman of the
Senate Intelligence Committee, hold a press
conference. They vow a tough, bipartisan investigation into
Russia’s interference in the 2016 election. “This investigation’s
scope will go wherever the intelligence leads,” Burr says.
According to Burr, seven committee staffers have been assigned to
the probe and the committee has begun to schedule the first of 20
interviews.

March 30: The Senate Intelligence Committee
convenes its first
hearing into Russian interference in the presidential
election.

– The New York Times reports that
two White House officials, Ezra Cohen-Watnick and Michael Ellis,
“played a role in providing” Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) access to
intelligence reports showing that “President Trump and his
associates were incidentally swept up in foreign surveillance by
American spy agencies.” Cohen-Watnick was brought on to the
National Security Council by Michael Flynn, for whom he had worked
at the National Security Council. After Flynn’s ouster, his
replacement, national security adviser Lt. General H.R. McMaster,
attempted to “sideline” Cohen-Watkins, according to
Politico. Jared Kushner and White House strategist
Stephen Bannon intervened on the NSC staffer’s behalf, taking the
matter all the way to Trump. Ellis worked for Nunes before taking a
job in the White House as a lawyer working on national security
matters.

– The Wall Street
Journal reports that Flynn has told the FBI and the
congressional committees investigating ties between the Trump
campaign and Russia that he will agree to be interviewed in
exchange for immunity from prosecution. Flynn’s attorney says in a
subsequent
statement that the retired general “certainly has a story to
tell, and he very much wants to tell it, should the circumstances
permit.”

March 31: NBC reports
that the Senate Intelligence Committee has denied Flynn’s request
for immunity, telling Flynn’s lawyer the request was “wildly
preliminary” and currently “not on the table.”

March (date unknown): Weeks after its former
CEO, Rex Tillerson, becomes secretary of state, Exxon Mobil
files an
application with the Treasury Department for a waiver from US
sanctions on Russia. Exxon seeks the waiver in order to resume an
exploration and drilling project with Russian-state oil giant
Rosneft. Tillerson has said he will recuse himself from State
Department decisions that could benefit Exxon for one year.

April 4: The Pentagon launches an investigation into Michael Flynn
for accepting payments from a foreign government without prior
approval, in potential violation of the Constitution’s emoluments
clause.

April 6: The House Ethics Committee announces that it
is investigating Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), the chairman of the
House Intelligence Committee investigating Russian interference in
the 2016 election, due to allegations that he made “unauthorized
disclosures of classified information.” In a statement,
Nunes says he will temporarily remove himself from the House
Intelligence Committee’s investigation while the House Ethics
Committee investigates, “despite the baselessness of the charges”
against him.

April 11: In an interview with the Daily
Telegraph, Eric Trump says the Trump administration’s
decision to launch missiles at a Syrian military target shows there
is no connection between President Trump and the Russian
government, which backs the Assad regime.

– The Washington
Post reports that in the summer of 2016, the FBI and the
Justice Department obtained a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance
Court warrant to monitor the communications of Trump campaign
foreign policy adviser Carter Page. “This is the clearest evidence
so far that the FBI had reason to believe during the 2016
presidential campaign that a Trump campaign adviser was in touch
with Russian agents,” notes the Post.

April 12: The Associated Press
confirms that at least $1.2 million in payments listed next to Paul
Manafort’s name on a “black accounts” ledger in Ukraine that was
uncovered in August 2016 were in fact received by Manafort’s
consulting firm. Manafort had initially denied receiving illicit
payments and told the AP that “any wire transactions received by my
company are legitimate payments for political consulting work that
was provided. I invoiced my clients and they paid via wire
transfer, which I received through a U.S. bank.”

– CNN reports
that both Republican and Democratic lawmakers have reviewed
documents related to allegations that Obama administration national
security adviser Susan Rice had improperly requested the
“unmasking” of Trump transition team members in intelligence
reports. The lawmakers who reviewed these reports “have so far
found no evidence that Obama administration officials did anything
unusual or illegal,” CNN reported, though Trump had previously
called the allegations a “massive story.”

– In an interview on the Fox Business Network, Trump
says it is “not too late” to fire FBI Director James Comey, but
also that he still has confidence in him.

April 13: House Democrats
send a letter to FBI Director James Comey and the head of the
National Background Investigations Bureau, calling for the
suspension of Jared Kushner’s security clearance. Kushner, they
write “failed to disclose key meetings with foreign government
officials during his application process,” including Russian
Ambassador Sergei Kislyak and Sergei Gorkov, the head of
Vnesheconombank, a Russian state-owned development bank. “Knowingly
falsifying or concealing information on a SF-86 questionnaire is a
felony, punishable by up to five years in prison,” the lawmakers
write.

April 14: Legistorm reports
that Andrii Artemenko, the pro-Putin Ukrainian lawmaker that in
January met with two Trump associates to discuss a possible peace
plan for Ukraine and Russia, is paying $30,000 a month to a
pro-Trump preacher in Pennsylvania who has ties to Russia and
Ukraine. According to Legistorm, the funds were for “strategic
counseling and representation to advance US-Ukraine relations,
including engagement with public officials, legislators and
government agencies,” and a filing from Armstrong’s LLC notes
the payments were not financed by a foreign government. The
preacher, Dale Armstrong, helps run two
groups focused on bringing biblical values to Ukraine
and other
former Soviet republics.

April 19: Reuters
reports that Russian government think tank RISS, described by
officials as the Kremlin’s in-house foreign policy think tank and
staffed by Putin-appointees, had developed plans to interfere
with the US election. Seven current or former US officials describe
documents produced and circulated by RISS in June and October 2016,
first calling on the Kremlin to mount a propaganda campaign to help
elect a pro-Russia president and later to stoke concerns about
Hillary Clinton and voter fraud.

– The Justice
Department confirms that Mary McCord, the acting assistant
attorney general in the department’s national security division,
will leave the department in May 2017. McCord heads the
department’s investigation into Russia interference in the
presidential election.

April 21: CNN reports
that in the summer of 2016, at the height of the presidential
campaign, US and European intelligence found that Russian
intelligence operatives were attempting to infiltrate the Trump
campaign through Trump advisers, including Carter Page. Citing US
officials, the network reports that Page and several other Trump
advisers were repeatedly in contact with Russian officials and
other Russians on the radar of intelligence agencies.

April 23: The Daily
Beast reports that the committee’s investigation into ties
between the Trump campaign and Russia is floundering. More than
three months after the probe was launched, none of the seven
staffers assigned to the investigation are working on it full time,
none have investigative or legal experience, and most have no
Russia expertise.

April 25: Leaders of the House Oversight
Committee tell
reporters that Michael Flynn may have broken the law by failing
to disclose a $34,000 payment from RT, a Russian state-owned media
outlet, on his 2016 application to renew his security clearance.
Flynn received the fee for speaking at a 2015 gala hosted by RT,
where he was seated beside Vladimir Putin.

“As a former military officer, you simply cannot take money from
Russia, Turkey or anybody else,” Oversight Committee Chairman Jason
Chaffetz (R-Utah) said. “And
it appears as if he did take that money. It was inappropriate. And
there are repercussions for the violation of law.”

The revelation comes after Chaffetz, the committee’s chairman,
and Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), its ranking member, asked the
White House and other federal agencies to provide documents related
to Flynn’s foreign communications and payments, including his
security clearance application. The Defense Intelligence Agency
provided documents to the committee, according to Chaffetz and
Cummings, but the White House has
declined to comply with the document request.

– Flynn’s attorney issues a statement
implying that Flynn obtained all necessary permissions related to
his appearance at the RT event: “General Flynn briefed the Defense
Intelligence Agency, a component agency of the Department of
Defense, extensively regarding the RT speaking event trip both
before and after the trip, and he answered any questions that were
posed by DIA concerning the trip during those briefings.”

April 27: The Department of Defense confirms
that Michael Flynn has been under investigation by the Pentagon
since April 4 for accepting payments from a
foreign government, allegedly without informing the appropriate
Defense officials.

– Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), the ranking Democrat on the
House Oversight Committee, releases documents showing that in October
2014, Flynn was warned by the Defense Intelligence Agency about
accepting payments from foreign governments. The documents released
by Cummings show that the DIA counsel’s office responded to an
inquiry from Flynn with a letter
explaining that he could not receive foreign government payments
without prior approval because of the Constitution’s emoluments
clause.

– The DIA documents released by the House Oversight Committee
also state
that, contrary to the implication of Flynn’s attorney on April
25, the DIA has no record of Flynn seeking permission to receive
payments from a foreign source.

May 1: During an Oval Office
interview with CBS’s John Dickerson, Trump says, “I don’t stand
by anything,” when asked about his claims that President Barack
Obama tapped his phones during the 2016 election. Trump then
proceeds to double down on the wiretapping accusation: “I think our
side’s been proven very strongly and everybody’s talking about it
and frankly, it should be discussed.” Trump cuts the interview
short when Dickerson presses him on his claims.

May 2: During a Q&A, Hillary Clinton
blames her
election defeat on Russian hacking and FBI Director James
Comey’s October 28
letter to Congress stating that the bureau was examining newly
discovered emails possibly related to its investigation of
Clinton’s use of a private email server. “I was on the way to
winning until the combination of Jim Comey’s letter on October 28
and Russian WikiLeaks raised doubts in the minds of people who were
inclined to vote for me but got scared off—and the evidence for
that intervening event is, I think, compelling [and] persuasive,”
she said.

– Donald Trump
tweets:

May 3: FBI Director James Comey testifies
before the Senate Judiciary Committee, saying, “It makes me mildly
nauseous to think that we might have had some impact on the
election. But honestly, it wouldn’t change the decision.”

May 5: 

In an interview
with Boston radio station WBUR, golf journalist James Dodson says
Eric Trump told him that funding for Trump golf courses came from
Russia.

“So when I got in the cart with Eric,” Dodson says, “as we were
setting off, I said, ‘Eric, who’s funding? I know no banks—because
of the recession, the Great Recession—have touched a golf course.
You know, no one’s funding any kind of golf construction. It’s dead
in the water the last four or five years.’ And this is what he
said. He said, ‘Well, we don’t rely on American banks. We have all
the funding we need out of Russia.’ I said, ‘Really?’ And he said,
‘Oh, yeah. We’ve got some guys that really, really love golf, and
they’re really invested in our programs. We just go there all the
time.’ Now that was three years ago, so it was pretty
interesting.”

Eric Trump later denies saying
this.

May 8: Donald Trump issues a pair of tweets
ahead of a hearing where former acting Attorney General Sally Yates
is expected to testify that she warned the Trump administration
that Michael Flynn had lied about his interactions with Russian
Ambassador Sergey Kislyak weeks before Trump ultimately fired his
national security adviser.

– Hours after
Trump took to Twitter to imply that his hiring of Flynn was Obama’s
fault, NBC News
reported that Obama had warned Trump against hiring Flynn during
their meeting in the Oval Office on November 10—two days after
Trump was elected and months before Trump appointed Flynn as his
national security adviser.

May 9: Donald Trump
fires FBI Director James Comey, following recommendations to do
so from Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Deputy Attorney General
Rod Rosenstein. Rosenstein’s memo recommending Comey’s firing
explains that his recommendation is the result of Comey’s
mishandling of the Clinton email investigation during the 2016
presidential campaign. Read Trump’s letter firing Comey, along with
Sessions’ and Rosenstein’s memos recommending Comey’s termination,
below:

 
DV.load(“https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3711455-James-Comey.js”,
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“#DV-viewer-3711455-James-Comey” });

– Following Comey’s firing, CNN reports
that the US attorney’s office in Alexandria, Virginia, has issued
grand jury subpoenas to associates of Michael Flynn, marking an
escalation of the FBI’s investigation into Russia.

– Within hours of Comey’s firing, more than 100
lawmakers, including several Republicans, have called for an
independent investigator or special prosecutor to be assigned to
the FBI’s investigation into Trump’s ties to Russia, particularly
now that the new FBI head will be chosen by Trump himself. “It is
critical that the FBI can continue all of its pending work with
independence and integrity—especially the investigation into the
Russian government’s efforts to influence our last election and
undermine American democracy,” said Rep. Curbelo, a Republican
congressman from Florida.

May 10: Early in the morning, Trump takes to
Twitter to defend his firing of James Comey. “Comey lost the
confidence of almost everyone in Washington, Republican and
Democrat alike. When things calm down, they will be thanking me!”
he writes.

– CNN reports that a source claims Roger Stone urged Trump to fire
Comey. Within minutes, Trump responds to the report on Twitter,
calling out CNN and saying the report is “fake news.”

Stone says
on Twitter that he “never made such a claim” but supports Trump’s
decision “100%.”

– As controversy swirls surrounding Trump’s firing of Comey, the
White House
announces that press secretary Sean Spicer will be gone for the
rest of the week fulfilling his US Navy Reserve duty and Sarah
Huckabee Sanders, the principal deputy press secretary, will cover
for him, including running the first press briefing since Trump’s
firing of the FBI director.

– Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov arrives in
Washington for meetings with top officials, including Trump. At
a press conference with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson welcoming
the Russian foreign minister, a reporter asks a question about the
Comey firing. Lavrov responds, ironically, “Was he fired? You are
kidding, you are kidding!” before walking away. On May 15, the
Washington
Post will report that while meeting with Lavrov at the
White House, Trump shares highly classified information with him
and the Russian ambassador.

– In remarks on the Senate floor, Senate Majority Leader Mitch
McConnell rejects calls
for a special prosecutor to take over the Russia probe. “Today
we’ll no doubt hear calls for a new investigation, which could only
serve to impede the current work being done,” he said.

May 11: Acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe
testifies in
a Senate hearing that the White House has misled the public about
the FBI’s Russia investigation and regard for Comey at the agency.
He says the Russia probe is “highly significant” and that “Comey
enjoyed broad support within the FBI and still does to this
day.”

– The New York Times and CNN each
report via
sources close to Comey that part of Trump’s motivation for firing
him was the FBI director’s refusal to swear political loyalty to
the president. The Times
details a conversation between Trump and Comey
during a one-on-one dinner that took place at the White House on
January 27—just one day after former acting Attorney General Sally
Yates warned the Trump White House that then-national security
adviser Michael Flynn was vulnerable to blackmail by the
Kremlin. Three days before the dinner, on January 24,
Flynn had been interviewed by the FBI about his contacts with the
Russian ambassador. In the conversation with Yates the day
before the Comey dinner, White House Counsel Don McGahn asked Yates how
Flynn did in the FBI interview, and Yates declined to
answer.

– Trump says in an NBC
interview that he asked Comey three times whether he is
personally under investigation by the FBI for possible Russia
ties—twice on the phone and once at the January 27 dinner. Trump
claims Comey reassured him that he was not under investigation.
(Sources close to Comey say this never happened.)

May 15: The Washington
Post reports that Trump revealed highly classified
information to Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and
Ambassador Sergey Kislyak in their White House meeting on May 10. A
US official tells the Post that the information had one of
the highest available classification levels. “This is code-word
information,” the official tells the Post, adding that
Trump “revealed more information to the Russian ambassador than we
have shared with our own allies.”

– White House national security adviser H.R. McMaster reads a
statement to the press denying the Washington Post’s
report while mischaracterizing the substance of it. He says, “The
story that came out tonight, as reported, is false. The president
and the foreign minister reviewed a range of common threats to our
two countries, including threats to civil aviation. At no time—at
no time—were intelligence sources or methods discussed.” The
Post didn’t report that sources and methods were
disclosed; the paper reported that the information discussed could
be used to discern intelligence sources or methods. After reading
his statement, McMaster refuses to take questions.

May 16: Trump defends himself on Twitter
without denying that he shared highly classified material with
Russia’s foreign minister and ambassador.

– A senior European intelligence official tells the Associated
Press that his country may stop sharing intelligence with the
United States if it is confirmed that Trump shared classified
information with Russian officials.

– In a press briefing, H.R. McMaster clarifies that in calling
the Washington Post‘s reporting “false,” he was disputing
the “premise” of the article: that Trump had done “anything
inappropriate” or that he had compromised national security by
revealing information to Russian officials. In response to multiple
questions, McMaster refuses to confirm whether or not the
information the president revealed was classified. McMaster also
refuses to clarify why White House officials called the NSA and the
CIA after Trump’s conversation with Lavrov and Kislyak. McMaster
says it was “wholly appropriate” for Trump to discuss the
material.

– The New York
Times reports that
during an Oval Office meeting in February, Trump asked then-FBI
Director James Comey to drop the agency’s investigation into
Michael Flynn, who had resigned the day before amid controversy
over his discussions of US sanctions with the Russian ambassador.
“I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting
Flynn go,” Trump said to Comey, according to a two-page memo Comey
drafted after the meeting. “He is a good guy. I hope you can let
this go.” The Washington Post and Politico
subsequently confirmed the Times’ account. According to
the paper, Comey kept detailed records of all his conversations
with the president.

– The Washington
Post reports that Comey shared his memos with a small
number of people at the Justice Department. (It’s unclear whether
those officials include Rod Rosenstein or Jeff Sessions, who were
involved in Comey’s firing.)

– At the International Republican Institute’s Freedom Awards,
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) likens Trump’s mounting Russia scandal
to Watergate: “I think we’ve seen this movie before. I think
it’s reaching a point where it’s of Watergate size and scale, and a
couple of other scandals that you and I have seen. It’s a centipede
that the shoe continues to drop.”

– ABC reports that
“federal investigators have subpoenaed records related to a $3.5
million mortgage that former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort
took out on his Hamptons home just after leaving the campaign,
according to a source familiar with the matter.”

May 17: House Democratic leaders hold a press
conference in which they announce that they are circulating
a discharge
petition among their congressional colleagues to try to force a
vote on legislation that would create a 12-person independent
commission to investigate Russia’s interference in the US
election.

– Eleven
Democratic senators send a letter to the Justice Department
inspector general asking him to investigate whether Attorney
General Jeff Sessions violated his pledge to recuse himself from
any investigations connected to the 2016 election when he took part
in the firing of FBI Director James Comey.

– During a press conference in Sochi, Russia, Putin calls
the allegations that Trump had revealed classified information to
Lavrov and Kislyak “political schizophrenia.” He also offers to
provide the US with a transcript of Lavrov’s Oval Office meeting
with Trump.

– Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein appoints former
FBI Director Robert Mueller to serve as a special counsel to
investigate Russian interference in the 2016 election.

– The Washington Post reports that during a
private June 2016 meeting with Republican leaders, House Majority
Leader Kevin McCarthy said he believed Trump was on Putin’s
payroll. “There’s two people I think Putin pays: Rohrabacher and
Trump,’ McCarthy said, referring to Rep. Dana Rohrbacher
(R-Calif.), a steadfast defender of Putin and Russia. When his
colleagues laughed, McCarthy added, “Swear to God.” (McCarthy says
he was joking.)

– The New York
Times reports that Michael Flynn told the Trump transition
team’s chief lawyer in early January—before the inauguration—that
Flynn was under investigation for failing to disclose more than
$500,000 of work as a paid lobbyist for Turkey.

– McClatchy
reports that 10 days before Trump’s inauguration, Flynn asked to
delay an Obama administration plan to fight ISIS that Turkey
opposed.

May 18: Reuters
reports that Michael Flynn and other members of Trump’s
campaign had at least 18 previously undisclosed calls and emails
with Russian officials in the last seven months of the 2016
presidential campaign.

– Trump tweets:

– During a White House news conference with the Colombian
president, Trump denies any collusion with Russia and again calls
the investigation a “witch hunt.” “I respect the move,” Trump said
of the DOJ’s appointment of special prosecutor Robert Mueller III
to oversee the Russia investigation. “But the entire thing has been
a witch hunt. And there is no collusion between, certainly, myself
and my campaign—but I can always speak for myself—and the Russians.
Zero.”

– Two sources close to Michael Flynn tell Yahoo
News that at a dinner on April 25, more than two months
after leaving his post as national security adviser, Flynn told a
group of close friends that he was still in regular communication
with the president. “I just got a message from the president to
stay strong,” he reportedly told the group, on the heels of a day
when two congressmen announced that Flynn may have broken the law
by failing to disclose a $34,000 payment from RT, a Russian
state-owned media outlet, on his 2016 application to renew his
security clearance.

May 19: The Washington
Post reports that people familiar with the investigation
into Trump’s Russia ties have identified a senior White House
adviser as a “significant person of interest.”

– The New York
Times reports that in Trump’s May 10 Oval Office meeting
with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Russian Ambassador
Sergey Kislyak, Trump called former FBI Director Comey a “nut job”
and expressed relief at his ouster. “I just fired the head of the
FBI. He was crazy, a real nut job,” Trump said, according to a
document summarizing the meeting, which an American official read
to the New York Times. “I faced great pressure because of
Russia. That’s taken off.”

– McClatchy
reports that the investigation into Russia’s interference into the
2016 election has been expanded to include the possibility of a
cover-up by the White House, according to members of Congress who
were briefed by Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein.

– CNN reports
that White House lawyers have begun researching impeachment
procedures, despite public assurances by many Republicans and
Democrats that impeachment is still a distant option.

– Citing “multiple government officials,” CNN reports
that during the presidential campaign Russian
officials bragged about their strong ties to Michael Flynn and
believed they could use him to influence Trump.

May 22: The Associated Press
reports that Michael Flynn will refuse to
comply with a subpoena from the Senate Intelligence Committee
that is investigating Russia’s interference in the 2016 election,
invoking the Fifth Amendment protection against self-incrimination.
Below is the letter sent to the committee by Flynn’s lawyer and
obtained by AP:

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– Speaking to reporters in Jerusalem, Trump denies
mentioning “Israel” in his May 10 conversation with the Russian
foreign minister and ambassador in the Oval Office. In making this
statement, Trump tacitly implies that he did in fact discuss
classified information with these Russian officials and also
appears to confirm that the classified information originated with
Israel—a statement that no US official has made publicly.

– NBC reports that Paul Manafort and Roger Stone have turned
over documents to the Senate Intelligence Committee.

May 23: Testifying
before the House Intelligence Committee, former CIA Director John
Brennan says he grew alarmed during the election that the Russian
government was trying to influence members of the Trump campaign to
act on its behalf: “I encountered and am aware of information and
intelligence that revealed contacts and interactions between
Russian officials and US persons involved in the Trump campaign
that I was concerned about because of known Russian efforts to
suborn such individuals.” He notes, “I
saw interaction that in my mind raised questions of whether it was
collusion,” but says that at the time he left his post in January
it was unclear “whether such collusion existed.”

– During his House Intelligence Committee testimony, Brennan
also describes calling Alexander Bortnikov, the head of the FSB,
Russia’s intelligence agency, on August 4, 2016, to caution him
against further interference in the election. According to Brennan,
Bortnikov denied any meddling by Russia.

May 24: The Justice Department tells CNN
that Jeff Sessions did not disclose his meetings with Russian
Ambassador Sergey Kislyak and other foreign dignitaries when
applying for security clearance.

– House Democrats send a letter to Deutsche Bank’s CEO
requesting information on “whether loans Deutsche Bank made to
President Trump were guaranteed by the Russian Government, or were
in any way connected to Russia.” 

May 25: The New York
Times reports that conversations intercepted by American
intelligence in the summer of 2016 showed that senior Russian
officials discussed how to influence Trump’s presidential campaign,
zeroing in on Michael Flynn and then-Trump campaign chairman Paul
Manafort.

– The Washington
Post reports that Jared Kushner has been
identified as a focus of the FBI’s investigation into Russian
interference in the election and possible ties between Trump’s team
and Russian officials, according to people familiar with the
investigation. This makes him the first White House official
revealed to be central in the FBI’s probe.

May 26: The Washington
Post reports that Jared Kushner and the Russian ambassador
discussed setting up a secure and secret back channel between the
Trump team and Russian officials during the transition. According
to intercepted communications reviewed by US officials, Russian
Ambassador Sergey Kislyak told his superiors in Moscow that during
a December meeting at Trump Tower, Kushner proposed the
back-channel idea and suggested using Russian diplomatic facilities
in the United States to avoid detection. Trump’s incoming national
security adviser, Michael Flynn, was also at the meeting. (Sources
close to Kushner tell the New York
Times that the purpose of the secret channel was to
facilitate discussions on Syria strategy and other security issues
between Russian military officials and Flynn.)

– The New York
Times reports that Oleg Deripaska, the Russian aluminum
magnate with ties to Trump’s former campaign chairman, Paul
Manafort, offered to cooperate with congressional committees
investigating Russian meddling in the election in exchange for full
immunity. The committees reportedly turned down Deripaska’s
offer.

May 27: Reuters
reports that according to seven US officials, Jared Kushner had
at least three previously undisclosed discussions with the Russian
ambassador during and after the 2016 campaign, including two phone
calls in April and November 2016.

May 28: The top Democrat on the House
Intelligence Committee, Rep. Adam Schiff, says in an appearance on
ABC News that Jared Kushner’s security clearance should be
reviewed in light of revelations that he discussed setting up a
secret back channel of communication with Russian officials.
“There’s another question about his security clearance and whether
he was forthcoming about his contacts on that,” Schiff says. “If
these allegations are true and he had discussions with the Russians
about establishing a back channel and didn’t reveal that, that
would be a real problem in terms of whether he should maintain that
kind of security clearance.”

May 29: The New York
Times reports that the federal and congressional
investigations into possible ties between the Trump campaign and
Russia are looking into Jared Kushner’s December 2016 meeting with
Sergei Gorkov, the chief of Vnesheconombank, Russia’s state-owned
development bank currently under US sanctions due to Russia’s
annexation of Crimea. Former and current US officials tell the
Times that the meeting has piqued investigative interest
because it may have been part of Kushner’s efforts to create a
secret communication back channel with Russian officials.

May 30: CNN reports
that conversations intercepted by the United States during the 2016
election picked up Russian officials saying they have “derogatory”
information about Trump and some of his top aides. One source told
CNN that these discussions suggested the Russian officials believed
“they had the ability to influence the administration through the
derogatory information.”

– ABC News
reports that the congressional investigation into possible ties
between the Trump campaign and Russia has been expanded to include
Michael Cohen, Trump’s long-time personal attorney. The committees
asked Cohen for his voluntary cooperation in providing testimony
about contacts he had with Russian officials, but Cohen
declined.

May 31: CNN reports that congressional
investigators are looking into whether Jeff Sessions may have had
another private meeting with the Russian ambassador on April 27,
2016—when both attended Trump’s first foreign policy speech at the
Mayflower Hotel in Washington, DC.

– As part of its probe into Russian interference in the US
election, the House Intelligence Committee issues its first seven subpoenas, asking for
testimony and documents from Michael Flynn and Trump’s personal
attorney, Michael Cohen. Three of the subpoenas were sent to the NSA,
the FBI, and the CIA requesting information about requests made by
Obama administration officials to “unmask” the names of Trump
staffers in intelligence reports that were later leaked to the
press. Committee aides claimed that Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.)
issued the subpoenas unilaterally, without consulting Democrats on
the committee, despite the fact that he recused himself in April
from leading the Russia investigation following outrage at a secret
visit to the White House and the start of an ethics investigation
into whether he mishandled classified documents.

June 1: The Washington
Post reports that the Trump administration is considering
returning two diplomatic compounds—one in New York and one in
Maryland—to Russia. In December 2016, the Obama
administration—which said the compounds were being used by Russia
for intelligence activities—required Russian officials to vacate
the premises as part of sanctions for their interference in the
election.

– The Guardian reports that
British politician and Brexit movement leader Nigel Farage is a
“person of interest” in the FBI’s investigation of possible ties
between the Kremlin and the Trump campaign.

– Speaking to reporters in St. Petersburg, Russia, Putin shifts
away from the Kremlin’s many blanket denials of Russian
meddling in the US election, saying instead that it’s possible that
“patriotically minded” individuals may have instigated hacking
related to the US election. “Hackers are free people, just like
artists, who wake up in the morning in a good mood and start
painting,” Putin said.

Putin also calls Trump a
“direct and genuine person” with “a fresh view of things.”

June 2: Stories from the Associated
Press and Reuters
report that special counsel Robert Mueller has expanded the
investigation into the Trump campaign and Russia to include
additional allegations about Michael Flynn and former Trump
campaign chairman Paul Manafort; Mueller will assume control of a
federal grand jury investigation in Virginia looking into Flynn’s
work as a paid lobbyist for Turkish businessman Ekim Alptekin.
Mueller is also reportedly taking over a separate criminal probe,
initiated by the Justice Department in July 2016, into Manafort and
his possible ties to corrupt dealings by the pro-Putin president of
Ukraine. Separately, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein tells
the AP that Mueller may also expand his investigation to include
the roles of Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Rosenstein in the
firing of FBI Director James Comey.

– At the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum in Russia,
NBC News reporter Keir Simmons repeatedly asks Sergey Gorkov, the
chief of US-sanctioned Vnesheconombank, about his December meeting
with Jared Kushner. Gorkov refuses to answer the question.

June 5: The Intercept publishes a
classified National Security Agency
document reporting that Russia’s military
intelligence service “executed a cyberattack on at least one U.S.
voting software supplier and sent spear-phishing emails to more
than 100 local election officials just days before last November’s
presidential election.” (Russia’s attempts to hack into voter
registration systems have previously been reported, but the NSA
intelligence report provides details of how one such operation
occurred.) Shortly after the story goes live, an NSA
contractor named Reality Winner is charged with leaking classified
information.

– The White House says Trump will not assert executive privilege to block
former FBI Director James Comey from testifying before the Senate
Intelligence Committee later that week.

June 6: Mother Jones reports that Roger Stone says he brokered a
meeting between British politician Nigel Farage—who the
Guardian reported is a “person of interest” in the FBI’s
Russia investigation—and Trump sometime after the 2016 Republican
National Convention. 

– Yahoo News reports that lawyers with at least four top law
firms declined to represent Trump in connection with the various
ongoing Russia investigations.

– The Washington Post reports that on
March 22, Trump asked Director of National Intelligence Daniel
Coats and CIA Director Mike Pompeo whether he could ask then-FBI
Director James Comey for the bureau “to back off its focus” on
Michael Flynn. Coats reportedly discussed the meeting with some of
his associates, deciding that this sort of intervention would not
be appropriate. “The events involving Coats show the president went
further than just asking intelligence officials to deny publicly
the existence of any evidence showing collusion during the 2016
election,” the Post reports. “The interaction with Coats
indicates that Trump aimed to enlist top officials to have Comey
curtail the bureau’s probe.”

– The New York Times reports that the
day after a February Oval Office meeting in which Trump asked James
Comey to drop the bureau’s investigation of Michael Flynn, Comey
asked Attorney General Jeff Sessions to ensure that Comey was never
left alone with the president. According to several law enforcement
officials, Comey did not reveal what was said during his meeting
with Trump but told Sessions it was inappropriate for the FBI
director to speak privately with the president.

– ABC reports that the relationship between Jeff
Sessions and Trump has grown so tense that the attorney general
recently suggested to Trump that he could resign. The conflict
between them stems, the network notes, from Sessions’ decision in
March to recuse himself from the Russia investigation, after it
came to light that he had undisclosed conversations with the
Russian ambassador. According to ABC, “Two sources close to the
president say he has lashed out repeatedly at the attorney general
in private meetings, blaming the recusal for the expansion of the
Russia investigation.”

June 7: Four military officials tell the
Daily Beast that before his firing as
national security adviser, Michael Flynn pushed to expand the
“deconfliction channel” between Russia and the
United States in Syria—a move that, had it happened, would have
likely run afoul of the law. The channel, established in 2015, has
the narrow purpose of helping the United States and Russia—which
are backing different sides in Syria’s civil war—coordinate their
planes in Syria’s crowded airspace, avoiding collisions. Flynn
repeatedly suggested that the Pentagon expand the channel, using it
to discuss the possibility of teaming up with Russia to fight ISIS.
“If put into effect, such a proposal would clearly violate the NDAA
[National Defense Authorization Act] prohibition on cooperation
with Russia,” the Daily Beast reported. Ultimately, the
proposal never took effect due to Pentagon opposition and Flynn’s
ouster.

– During an event at Australia’s National Press
Club, former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper
says the Trump-Russia scandal “pales” in
comparison to Watergate. “I lived through Watergate. I was on
active duty then in the Air Force, I was a young officer. It was a
scary time,” Clapper said. “I have to say, though, I think if you
compare the two, Watergate pales really in my view compared to what
we’re confronting now.”

– Testifying before the
Senate Intelligence Committee, Director of National Intelligence
Dan Coats and National Security Agency Director Mike Rogers refuse to answer questions about whether Trump
had asked them to intervene in the FBI’s Russia
investigation.

– The Senate Intelligence Committee releases the opening statement James Comey will
deliver on June 8 at a hearing before the committee. The statement
confirms that Trump asked then FBI-Director Comey to drop the
investigation of Michael Flynn that has become a focus of the FBI’s
Russia probe.

June 8: James Comey testifies before the
Senate Intelligence Committee. He notes that he started keeping
detailed memos of all his interactions with Trump because during
their first conversation “I was honestly concerned he might lie
about the nature of our meeting.” Comey also said the president
lied about his reasons for firing him. “The administration then
chose to defame me—and, more importantly, the FBI—by saying the
organization was in disarray and that it was poorly led, that the
workforce had lost confidence in its leader,” Comey said. “Those were lies, plain and
simple.”

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The Most Powerful Comey Moment So Far

His voice broke a little, but the message was clear: “Those were
lies, plain and simple.”

Posted by Mother
Jones on Thursday, June 8, 2017

June 9: During a Rose Garden press
conference, Trump is asked whether he would be willing to testify
under oath about conversations he had with former FBI Director
James Comey in advance of his firing. Trump answers, “100 percent.”

June 10: In an interview with Fox
News, Donald Trump Jr., the president’s eldest son, appears to
confirm James Comey’s version of his conversation with President
Trump in which Trump said. “I hope you can let this go,” in
reference to the FBI’s investigation into Michael Flynn. In his
June 8 testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee, Comey
said he perceived this statement to be a directive to drop the
Flynn investigation. Trump’s lawyer released a statement saying
that Trump “never, in form or substance, directed or suggested that
Mr. Comey stop investigating anyone.” In his Fox News
interview, Donald Trump Jr. appeared to confirm Comey’s
account: “When he tells you to do something, guess what?
There’s no ambiguity in it. There’s no, ‘Hey, I’m hoping. You and I
are friends: Hey, I hope this happens, but you’ve got to do your
job.’ That’s what he told Comey. And for this guy, as a
politician, to then go back and write a memo: ‘Oh, I felt
threatened.’ He felt so threatened—but he didn’t do anything.”

June 11: Preet Bharara, the former US
attorney for the Southern District of New York, tells ABC News that before being fired by Trump in
March, he received a series of phone calls from the president that
made him uncomfortable because it appeared that Trump was trying to
“cultivate some kind of relationship.” Bharara reported one of
these calls to the Department of Justice. Bharara says that
listening to Comey’s June 8 testimony about his own conversations
with Trump, in which he perceived efforts by Trump to influence the
Russia investigation, “felt a little bit like déjà vu.”

– Trump attorney Jay Sekulow says on ABC that he would not rule out the
possibility that Trump will fire Robert Mueller, the special
counsel who took over the Russia investigations following James
Comey’s firing.

June 12: The New York Times reports details of the
intelligence that Trump allegedly revealed to Russian Foreign
Minister Sergei Lavrov and Russian Ambassador Sergei Kislyak during
their May Oval Office meeting. Trump allegedly told the Russians
that Israel had penetrated ISIS’s computer network, uncovering an
elaborate plot to detonate bombs on planes, using explosives in
laptops made to fool airport security. “His disclosure infuriated
Israeli officials,” the Times reported.

– During a White House press briefing, press secretary
Sean Spicer appears to deny that Trump offered to testify under
oath about his conversations with James Comey before the FBI
director’s firing. Spicer says that in his Rose Garden comments,
Trump was actually expressing his willingness to speak to special
counsel Robert Mueller. When asked whether Trump would be willing
to give sworn testimony before Congress, Spicer responds, “I don’t
know. I have not had a further discussion with that.”

– A close friend of Trump’s, Chris Ruddy, the CEO of Newsmax,
tells PBS that he believes Trump is considering
firing Mueller. The White House releases a statement saying that Ruddy “never spoke to
the President regarding this issue. With respect to this subject,
only the President or his attorneys are authorized to comment.”

June 13: Three people familiar with the
investigation into Russia’s cyber intrusions into US voting systems
tell Bloomberg News that these incursions were much
broader than had previously been reported. According to one of
these sources, Russia gained access to voter databases and software
systems in 39 states. The activity concerned the Obama
administration so much, sources tell Bloomberg, that the White
House contacted the Kremlin “to offer detailed documents of what it
said was Russia’s role in election meddling and to warn that the
attacks risked setting off a broader conflict.”

– Jeff Sessions testifies before the Senate Intelligence
Committee, where he repeatedly refuses to discuss his conversations
with Trump and calls the notion that he colluded with the Russians
as they interfered in the 2016 election “an appalling and
detestable lie.” Throughout his testimony, the attorney general
frequently answers with “I don’t remember” or
“I don’t recall.”

June 14: Special counsel Robert Mueller
meets with members of the Senate Intelligence
Committee.

– The Washington Post reports that special counsel Robert Mueller is
investigating Trump for obstruction of justice. 

June 15: In a tweetstorm, Trump decries
the Russia investigation as a “witch hunt”:

– The Washington Post and other outlets report that Vice President Mike Pence has
retained a personal attorney to represent him in connection with
the various Russia probes.

June 16: Trump appears to confirm that he
is under investigation for obstruction of justice and seems to lash
out at Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein.

– NBC reports that Trump’s private attorney, Michael Cohen, has
retained his own legal counsel.

June 18: ABC News reports that Deputy Attorney General Rod
Rosenstein privately told his colleague, Associate Attorney General
Rachel Brand, the Justice Department’s new third-in-command, that
he may have to recuse himself from the Trump-Russia investigation,
since it is possible he will have to serve as a witness, given his
role in Trump’s firing of former FBI Director James Comey. Such a
recusal would prompt Brand to take over the investigation. (While
Rosenstein appointed special counsel Robert Mueller to oversee the
investigation, he is still in charge of allocating resources to it
and ultimately deciding if prosecutions will be necessary.)

June 21: During testimony before the Senate
Intelligence Committee, the Department of Homeland Security’s
acting director of the Office of Intelligence and Analysis Cyber
Division, Samuel Liles, says hackers connected to the Russian
government attempted to penetrate election-related computer systems
in 21 states before the November 2016 election. Liles says they
successfully got into a “small number” of networks.

June 22: Trump tweets that he doesn’t know
if there are recordings of his conversations with former FBI
Director James Comey, contradicting earlier tweets in which he
implied such “tapes” existed. 

– CNN reports that Director of National Intelligence
Dan Coats and Director of National Security Agency Admiral Mike
Rogers each separately told Senate investigators and special
counsel Robert Mueller’s team that Trump suggested they publicly
deny there was any collusion between his campaign and Russian
officials. Both intelligence officials said they were surprised by
the suggestion and found it uncomfortable but did not perceive
these statements as orders from the president.

June 23: The New York Times reports that the FBI is
investigating a series of real estate deals and other financial
transactions involving former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort
and his son-in-law Jeffery Yohai. The Times says it is not
clear if the FBI’s interest is tied to Manafort’s role in the
Trump-Russia investigation.

June 25: The Washington Post reports that Jared
Kushner’s real estate company received a $285 million loan from
Deutsche Bank one month before the November 2016 election. That
October, Kushner was advising his father-in-law’s presidential
campaign, and Deutsche Bank was facing several legal actions in New
York, including charges from state regulators that the bank had
aided an alleged Russian money-laundering scheme.

June 27: Paul Manafort’s consulting
firm retroactively files foreign lobbying disclosures showing that
the firm received $17.1 million from a pro-Russia political party
in Ukraine between 2012 and 2014. The payments were for work aimed
at influencing US policy on Ukraine. Manafort’s spokesman, Jason
Maloni, tells the Washington Post that Manafort began
preparing his filing in September “before the outcome of the
election and well before any formal investigation of election
interference began.”

July 8: The
New York Times reports that Donald Trump Jr. met with a
Kremlin-tied Russian lawyer, Natalia
Veselnitskaya, in June 2016, shortly after his father clinched the
Republican presidential nomination. Also attending the meeting were
Paul Manafort and Jared Kushner. Trump Jr. tells the
Times, “It was a short
introductory meeting. I asked Jared and Paul to stop by. We
primarily discussed a program about the adoption of Russian
children that was active and popular with American families years
ago and was since ended by the Russian government, but it was not a
campaign issue at the time and there was no follow up.” And he
noted, “I was asked to attend the meeting by an acquaintance, but
was not told the name of the person I would be meeting with
beforehand.”

July 9: The New
York Times reports that, prior to meeting with Russian
lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya, Donald Trump Jr. had been
promised damaging information on Hillary Clinton. Trump Jr. offers
the paper a different account of the meeting from his statement the
previous day: “After pleasantries were exchanged, the woman stated
that she had information that individuals connected to Russia were
funding the Democratic National Committee and supporting Mrs.
Clinton. Her statements were vague, ambiguous and made no sense. No
details or supporting information was provided or even offered. It
quickly became clear that she had no meaningful information.”

July 10: Donald Trump
tweets: 

– Donald Trump Jr. responds to the New York Times‘
reporting:

– The New York Times reports that prior to
meeting with Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya, Donald Trump Jr.
was informed in an email that the damaging information about
Hillary Clinton was part of a Russian government effort to aid his
father’s candidacy. That email came from Rob Goldstone, the
publicist for Russian pop star Emin Agalarov, who asked Goldstone
to set up this meeting between Veselnitskaya and Trump Jr.

July 11: Donald Trump Jr. corroborates the
New York Times‘ story in a statement posted on Twitter. In tweets, he also publishes his email exchange
with Goldstone in full. The emails show that Goldstone wrote to
Trump Jr. in June 2016, stating that Russia’s crown prosecutor had
told Aras Agalarov—the father of Goldstone’s client Emin—that he
possessed “official documents and information that would
incriminate Hillary” that could be shared with the Trump campaign.
Goldstone also added that the information “is obviously very high
level and sensitive information but is part of Russia and its
government’s support for Mr. Trump.” Trump Jr. responded by asking
to speak to Emin about the material described in Goldstone’s email,
and added, “If it’s what you say I love it.”

– Donald Trump Jr. appears on Sean Hannity’s Fox show, where he
says of his meeting with a Kremlin-tied lawyer,
“In retrospect, I probably would have done things a little
differently.” He also says, “I wanted to hear them out and play it
out.”

– ProPublica reports that Mark Kasowitz, the lawyer
representing Donald Trump in the Russia inquiries, does not possess
a security clearance and does not plan to seek one, a curious
decision in a case involving some of the government’s most closely
guarded secrets. The news outlet notes his decision might stem from
the lawyer’s alleged struggles with alcohol, which could make it
difficult to obtain a clearance. (A spokesman for Kasowitz
subsequently released a statement saying, “Marc Kasowitz has
not struggled with alcoholism.”) 

– In an interview with NBC, Russian attorney Natalia
Veselnitskaya describes her June 9, 2016, meeting with Trump Jr.,
Kushner, and Manafort at Trump Tower. She says she never had any
damaging information on Hillary Clinton and, contrary to emails
sent by Goldstone to Trump Jr., never promised such information in
order to procure the meeting.

July 12: McClatchy reports that
“investigators at the House and Senate Intelligence committees and
the Justice Department are examining whether the Trump campaign’s
digital operation—overseen by Jared Kushner—helped guide Russia’s
sophisticated voter targeting and fake news attacks on Hillary
Clinton in 2016.”
– Donald Trump defends his eldest son in a tweet, saying he’s
“innocent”

– The Senate Judiciary Committee holds a confirmation hearing
for Christopher Wray, Trump’s pick for FBI director. During the
hearing, Sen. Lindsey Graham asks Wray about whether he’s heard
about “the email problems we’ve had with Donald Trump Jr.
the last few days.” When Wray says he isn’t caught up on the
controversy because he’s been in meetings with senators, Graham
reads part of the email chain aloud and then asks Wray if Trump Jr.
should have taken the meeting or alerted the FBI. Wray first avoids
directly answering the question but after a heated exchange with
Graham concludes that “any threat or effort to interfere with our
elections, from any nation-state, or any nonstate actor, is the
kind of thing the FBI would want to know.” Here’s the full
exchange:

– The Democratic members of the House Judiciary Committee
write to Attorney General Jeff Sessions
requesting information about the Justice Department’s decision to
settle United States v. Prevezon Holdings, a money
laundering case targeting a Cyprus-based entity owned by a Russian
businessman. Natalia Veselnitskaya, the Kremlin-linked lawyer who
met with Donald Trump Jr. and other members of the elder Trump’s
inner circle, represented Prevezon, remarking after the settlement
that the penalty was so small it seemed like “almost an apology
from the government.”

July 18: The Washington Post reports that the
eighth person at the June 2016 Trump Tower meeting was Irakly “Ike”
Kaveladze, a Georgia-born businessman who is a vice president of
Crocus Group International, a division of Crocus Group, the
construction and development company owned by Aras Agalarov.
Kaveladze, who says he has worked for Crocus Group since the late
1980s, was once at the center of a US government
investigation into Russian money laundering.

– Mother Jones reports that Sen. Chuck
Grassley, who heads the Senate Judiciary Committee’s probe of
Trump’s firing of Comey and possible collusion between the Trump
camp and Russia, is “conducting a series of alternative
investigations into tangential subjects” in a way that seems to be
designed “to minimize the culpability of Trump and his aides and to
deflect attention from the core issues of the controversy.”

July 19: The White House confirms that Trump and Russian
Putin had a second, previously undisclosed, meeting at the G-20
Summit on July 7, and it lasted “nearly an hour.”

– The New York Times reports that Paul
Manafort was in debt to pro-Russia interests by as much as $17
million before joining Trump’s campaign as chairman in March 2016.
This is reflected in financial records filed in Cyprus, which show
that Manafort may owe up to $9.9 million to a Cyprus shell company
connected to Ukraine’s pro-Russia Party of Regions and $7.8 million
to a company in the British Virgin Islands connected to Russian
aluminum magnate and Putin ally Oleg Deripaska. A spokesman for
Manafort told the Times that the Cyprus records are “stale
and do not purport to reflect any current financial arrangements,”
and did not address whether the debts shown in the records may have
existed previously.

– The New York Times reports that Trump
quietly ended a secret American program to provide arms to Syrian
rebels fighting Bashar al Assad’s government in Syria’s civil war.
The move aligns with Russian interests; Russia has backed Assad’s
government and attacked the rebel forces.

– The New York Times reports that banking
regulators are reviewing Trump’s massive loan portfolio with
Deutsche Bank to see if Trump’s debt “might expose the bank to
heightened risks.” The paper notes that Deutsche Bank has already
been in contact with federal investigators about Trump’s accounts.
The Guardian separately reports that
executives at the bank are expecting to soon receive subpoenas or
other requests for information from special counsel Robert
Mueller.

– Trump sits down for an Oval Office interview with three New York
Times reporters. In their conversation, Trump says that if he
had known Jeff Sessions would recuse himself from the Russia
investigation, he would not have nominated him to be attorney
general. “Sessions should have never recused himself, and if he was
going to recuse himself, he should have told me before he took the
job, and I would have picked somebody else,” Trump says. Trump also
says that if special counsel Robert Mueller were to start delving
into his finances or his family’s, that would be a “violation,” but
refuses to answer whether or not he would fire Mueller over
it. 

– Twenty-two Democratic members of Congress send a letter to the FBI expressing concerns over
possible discrepancies in Ivanka Trump’s application for a security
clearance. As part of the application, Ivanka Trump had to disclose
foreign contacts. Her husband, Jared Kushner, has updated his own
clearance multiple times with more than 100 meetings and phone
calls—a number of them with Russian officials—that he failed to
disclose initially. “We are concerned that Ivanka Trump may have
engaged in similar deception,” reads the letter.

July 20: Bloomberg reports that special counsel Robert
Mueller has expanded the Trump-Russia probe to include a range of
transactions with Trump businesses; these include apartment
purchases by Russians in Trump buildings, the 2013 Miss Universe
pageant in Moscow, and Trump’s 2008 sale of a Florida mansion to
Russian oligarch Dmitry Rybolovlev.

– The Treasury Department fines Exxon Mobil $2 million for violating
Russian sanctions by signing contracts with Igor Sechin, the head
of Russia’s state-owned oil company Rosneft, while Rex Tillerson,
now the secretary of state, was Exxon’s CEO.

– CNN reports that Mueller has sent a notice to
the White House requiring them to preserve all documents related to
Donald Trump Jr.’s June 9, 2016, meeting with Russian lawyer
Natalia Veselnitskaya.

– Mark Corallo, a spokesman for Trump’s legal team, abruptly resigns.

July 24: Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner,
spends two hours behind closed doors with the Senate Intelligence
Committee answering questions related to the Trump-Russia
investigation. In a statement to the committee and at a press
conference following the closed-door session, he denies any collusion with Russia. “Let me be
very clear: I did not collude with Russia, nor do I know of anyone
else in the campaign who did so,” he says.

July 25: Mother Jones reports that Carl Levin,
a onetime chairman of the Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on
Investigations who left Congress in 2015, sent a letter the
previous day to special counsel Robert Mueller and the chairman and
vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee highlighting a
2000 investigation of possible money laundering by the company run
by Ike Kaveladze—the eighth person in the June 2016 meeting with
Donald Trump Jr. and Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya.

During that probe, an official at Citibank, where Kaveladze
established dozens of bank accounts on behalf of Delaware-based
shell companies, noted that Kaveladze’s main client at the time was
Crocus International, a company headed by Aras Agalarov, who in
2013 partnered with Donald Trump to bring the Miss Universe contest
to Moscow.

– The Senate Judiciary Committee issues a subpoena compelling former Trump
campaign chairman Paul Manafort to appear at a open hearing of the
committee the following day. Hours later, the committee withdraws
its subpoena, reportedly because Manafort has begun to produce
documents and voluntarily agreed to negotiate an interview
time.

– By a margin of 419-3, the House passes a bill levying new sanctions against
Russia and inhibiting the president’s ability to weaken them.

– Paul Manafort, Trump’s former campaign chairman, provides Senate investigators with notes he
took during the June 2016 meeting that Donald Trump Jr. arranged
with Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya. The notes, which could
confirm or refute Trump Jr.’s claim that he did not receive
damaging information about Hillary Clinton, have not been released
to the public.

July 26: FBI agents raid Paul Manafort’s Virginia home and seize
documents related to special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation
after obtaining a search warrant from a federal judge. The raid
signals a new, aggressive approach by Mueller.

July 27: Bill Browder, founder of the
hedge fund Hermitage Capital Management, testifies before the
Senate Judiciary Committee. Browder is a longtime investor in
Russia who spearheaded the passage of the Magnitsky Act, the package of Russia sanctions
allegedly discussed by Natalia Veselnitskaya, the Kremlin-linked
Russian lawyer, during her June 2016 meeting with Donald Trump Jr.,
Jared Kushner, and Paul Manafort. During the hearing, Browder
discusses how Veselnitskaya and several other political operatives
lobbied to repeal the Magnitsky Act without registering as foreign
agents, a possible violation of the Foreign Agents Registration
Act. Browder says “there’s no doubt” Veselnitskaya was acting
on behalf of the Russian government when she met with members of
Trump’s inner circle.

– By a vote of 98-2, the Senate approves the House’s sanctions bill, sending it
to the president’s desk.

– George Papadopoulos is
arrested at Washington’s Dulles airport.

July 28: The White House says Trump
will sign the sanctions legislation. 

– Russia retaliates against the new sanctions by seizing
two properties used by American diplomats and ordering the
reduction of US Embassy staff by September.

July 30: Putin says Russia will expel 755 US diplomats and support staff
in retaliation for the new sanctions.

July 31: BuzzFeed reports that the Republican
National Committee has instructed its employees to preserve all
documents covering the 2016 presidential campaign. Citing RNC
lawyers, BuzzFeed reports this is a “precautionary”
measure “as investigations continue into Russia’s meddling in the
election.”

– The Washington Post reports that while
flying back from the G-20 summit in Germany in early July, Trump
dictated his son Donald Trump Jr.’s response to revelations that
he’d met with a Kremlin-linked Russian lawyer. The statement, given
to the New York Times as they prepared a story about the
meeting for publication, said Trump Jr. and the Russian lawyer
“primarily discussed a program about the adoption of Russian
children,” and that the meeting was not about “a campaign issue.”
Over the next few days, it became clear this statement was
misleading, as Trump Jr. acknowledged he met with the lawyer after
being promised dirt on Hillary Clinton. The revelation that Trump
crafted the misleading statement, the Post notes, could
lead to additional scrutiny from investigators and eventually place
Trump and his inner circle in “legal jeopardy.”

August 1: A lawsuit (first reported by NPR) is filed alleging that Fox News and a Texas
Republican donor who backs Trump worked with the White House to gin
up a conspiratorial story concerning the murder of Democratic
National Committee staffer Seth Rich in an effort to deflect
attention from the Russia scandal. The lawsuit is brought by former
Washington, DC, detective (and longtime Fox contributor) Rod
Wheeler, who has been investigating Rich’s murder on behalf of Ed
Butowsky, a wealthy Dallas investor and frequent Fox commentator.
Wheeler claims a Fox reporter fabricated quotations appearing in a
retracted May 2017 article reporting that Rich had been in contact
with WikiLeaks prior to his death, implying that he—not Russian
hackers—had provided the site with DNC documents and emails. The
complaint includes a text message from Butowsky in which the
investor says Trump had read the story prior to its publication and
wanted it to come out “immediately.”

August 2: Trump signs into law new sanctions
against Russia but issues a statement calling the measure
“seriously flawed.” He notes, “By limiting the Executive’s
flexibility, this bill makes it harder for the United States to
strike good deals for the American people, and will drive China,
Russia, and North Korea much closer together. The Framers of our
Constitution put foreign affairs in the hands of the
President.”

August 3: Two bipartisan Senate bills are
introduced by members of the Judiciary
Committee that would restrict Trump’s ability to fire special
counsel Robert Mueller. One, by Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) and Chris
Coons (D-Md.), would allow Mueller to challenge his dismissal
before a panel of three federal judges. The others, by Sens.
Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Cory Booker (D-N.J.), would require
this judicial panel to review the Justice Department’s reasoning
for his dismissal before Mueller could be fired.

– The Wall Street Journal reports that Mueller has convened a grand jury
to probe Russian interference in the 2016 election.

– Michael Flynn files an amended version of his federal
disclosure form that includes new details about his contracts
and income. The updated disclosure shows that that Flynn was hired
as an adviser to SCL Group, which at the time was the parent
company of the data firm Cambridge Analytica, which worked on
behalf of Trump’s campaign. One of Cambridge Analytica’s biggest
financial backers is hedge fund mogul and Trump backer Robert
Mercer, and White House strategist Stephen Bannon was a Cambridge
Analytica vice president before joining the Trump campaign. The
disclosure of Flynn’s ties to the SCL Group are significant because
Trump’s campaign data operation has come under scrutiny as one
source of possible collusion with Russians seeking to influence the
2016 election. 

August 4: NBC reports that special counsel Robert Mueller
has tapped multiple grand juries in Washington, DC, and Virginia as
part of the Trump-Russia investigation, a sign that the
investigation is gearing up.

– The New York Times reports that Robert
Mueller’s investigative team has asked the White House for records
related to former national security adviser Michael Flynn. This is
the first known instance of Mueller’s team asking the White House
for documents as part of their investigation into possible
collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign.

– Politico reports that two Republican
staffers on the House Intelligence Committee traveled to London
earlier this summer to track down Christopher Steele, the former
British intelligence operative who compiled the Trump-Russia memo
published by BuzzFeed in January. The previously
unreported trip increases tensions with the House Intelligence
Committee’s Democratic staff, the Senate Intelligence Committee,
and Mueller’s office. The staffers didn’t end up talking with
Steele during the trip.

August 6: In an appearance on Fox News Sunday, Deputy Attorney
General Rod Rosenstein says special counsel Robert Mueller can
investigate any crimes uncovered as part of the Trump-Russia
probe.

August 10: Bloomberg reports that special counsel Robert
Mueller’s team has sent subpoenas to global banks requesting
transaction records and account information tied to Paul Manafort
and several of his companies. A source tells Bloomberg that Mueller
has reached out to Manafort’s son-in-law and a Ukrainian oligarch,
hoping to convince Manafort to be more cooperative.

– Taking a break from a vacation at his New Jersey golf club,
Trump holds a brief press conference. The president tells reporters that he is grateful that Putin
has expelled hundreds of US diplomats from Russia in response to US
sanctions. “I want to thank him because we’re trying to cut down
our payroll and as far as I’m concerned I’m very thankful that he
let go of a large number of people because now we have a smaller
payroll,” Trump says. Following outrage over Trump’s comments,
press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders tells the New York Times that the president’s
remarks were meant to be funny and “sarcastic.”

August 11: Rinat Akhmetshin, the Russian
lobbyist who attended the Trump tower meeting with Donald Trump Jr.
in June 2016, testifies before a grand jury impaneled by special
counsel Robert Mueller, according to a report from the Financial Times.

August 14: The Washington Post reports on a set of
Trump campaign emails showing persistent efforts by campaign
foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos to coordinate a meeting
about US-Russia ties between Trump and Russian leaders “including
Putin” according to one email subject line. The exchanges—which
were read to or confirmed to the Post by three sources
with access to the emails—were sent between March and September
2016, as the presidential race heated up. The emails were included
in more than 20,000 pages of documents the Trump campaign turned
over to congressional committees investigating Russian interference
in the 2016 election.

August 16: The New York Times reports that a
Ukrainian hacker known as Profexer—whom American intelligence
agencies have identified as the creator of a program used in
Russian hacks targeting the US election—has turned himself over to
the Ukrainian police and has become a witness for the FBI. “It is
the first known instance of a living witness emerging from the arid
mass of technical detail that has so far shaped the investigation
into the election hacking and the heated debate it has stirred,”
notes the Times.

– The Daily Caller reports that Rep. Dana
Rohrabacher (R-Calif.) met with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange at
the Ecuadorian Embassy in London. According to Rohrabacher, who
openly admires Putin, Assange can prove that hacked Democratic
Party emails did not come from Russia.

August 18: BuzzFeed reports that special counsel
Robert Mueller’s office is investigating Donald Trump Jr. A source
tells BuzzFeed that prosecutors are particularly
interested in discovering what information Trump Jr. received at
the June 2016 meeting with a Russian lawyer.

– Bloomberg reports on the friendship
between Ivanka Trump and Dasha Zhukova, the wife of Russian
billionaire and Putin ally Roman Abramovich. Bloomberg notes that
Ivanka Trump’s husband, Jared Kushner, has met three or four times
with Abramovich, and that Trump and Kushner disclosed their ongoing
social relationship with the couple—which included a four-day trip
to Russia in 2014 at Zhukova’s initiation—on their security
clearance forms.

August 21: The New York Times reports that Rinat
Akhmetshin, a Russian immigrant who attended the July 2016 Trump
Tower meeting, has much deeper ties to the Russian government and
Kremlin-supported oligarchs than previously known. The
Times also reports that Akhmetshin, who is being
investigated by special counsel Robert Mueller, has worked for
Russian oligarchs whose opponents faced sophisticated hacks.
Akhmetshin’s sister, father, and godfather joined Russian
intelligence services, but Akhmetshin has denied allegations that
he is a Russian spy.

August 22: Glenn Simpson, the founder of
opposition research firm Fusion GPS, which hired Christopher Steele
to compile the Trump-Russia dossier, meets with the Senate
Judiciary Committee in a nearly 10-hour closed-door session to
answer questions about the financing and sourcing for the dossier.
ABC News reports that Steele has already met
with FBI investigators and provided them with the names of his
sources for the dossier’s allegations.

August 27: Citing emails that will soon be
turned over to congressional investigators, the Washington Post reports that Trump’s
company was pursuing a plan in late 2015 and early 2016 to build a
“massive” Trump Tower in Moscow, well after he announced his
presidential run in June 2015. Felix Sater, a Russian-born real
estate developer, told Trump he could get Putin to say “great
things” about Trump, according to the emails, which the
Post reports suggest additional connections between
Trump’s associates and Russia-connected individuals.

August 28: The Washington Post reports that Michael
Cohen, a top Trump organization executive and lawyer for the
president, emailed Putin’s personal spokesman during the
presidential campaign to push for the Trump Tower deal in Moscow.
According to the Post, Trump cut a letter of intent with
I.C. Expert Investment Co., a Moscow-based developer, in October
2015 and began to solicit designs and discuss funding.

– NBC News reports that special counsel Robert
Mueller’s team is “keenly focused” on what Trump may have known
about the infamous June 2016 meeting in Trump Tower between Russian
operatives and Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner, and Paul
Manafort—and whether the president may have tried to help conceal
that meeting’s purpose once it was uncovered by the media.

August 29: CNN reports that special counsel Robert Mueller
has subpoenaed Paul Manafort’s former lawyer and current
spokesman.

August 30: Politico reports that special counsel
Robert Mueller is working with New York Attorney General Eric
Schneiderman as part of his investigation into former Trump
campaign chairman Paul Manafort’s financial transactions. Unlike
possible federal crimes resulting from Mueller’s investigation, the
president does not have the power to pardon state crimes.

August 31: NBC News reports on notes that Paul Manafort,
Trump’s former campaign chairman, took during a June 2016 meeting
at Trump Tower that Donald Trump Jr. arranged with a Russian lawyer
promising dirt on Hillary Clinton’s campaign. Manafort’s
contemporaneous notes included the word “donations” in possible
relation to the Republican National Committee. According to NBC
News, congressional investigators are trying to determine if
participants discussed the possibility of Russian sources making
illegal campaign contributions.

September 1: CNN reports that House
Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes is threatening to hold Attorney
General Jeff Sessions and FBI Director Christopher Wray in contempt
of court, a jailable offense, if they don’t provide documents
related to Christopher Steele’s Russia dossier. According to CNN,
Nunes has continued to look into Trump-Russia matters, despite
recusing himself from the committee’s investigation in April
2017.

September 6: Facebook discloses that $100,000 worth of ads
were purchased on the platform by suspected Russian agents.
Facebook said the roughly 3,000 ads, which ran from June 2015 to
May 2017, were linked to 470 fake accounts and pages that were
“likely operated out of Russia.”

September 8: The Washington Post reports that special
counsel Robert Mueller has told the White House that he will seek
to interview six high-ranking current and former advisers to Trump,
including communications aide Hope Hicks, former press secretary
Sean Spicer, and former chief of staff Reince Priebus.

Sept 11: The Daily Beast reports that Russian
operatives used Facebook ads to organize and promote domestic
political events, including protests such as an August 2016
anti-refugee rally in Twin Falls, Idaho.

– CNN reports on additional details from the
letter of intent that Trump signed to build a Trump Tower in Moscow
during the presidential campaign. According to CNN, the deal would
have provided his company a $4 million upfront fee, a percentage of
sales, and a spa named after his daughter Ivanka.

September 13: NBC News reports that Michael Flynn Jr., the
son of Trump’s former national security adviser, is being
investigated by special counsel Robert Mueller. According to three
former and current government officials interviewed by NBC News,
federal investigators are focused in part on the work he did for
Flynn Intel Group, his father’s lobbying firm.

– The Wall Street Journal reports that
Michael Flynn, while he was working as Trump’s national security
adviser, promoted an idea to build nuclear power plants across the
Middle East—a deal that would have benefited both Flynn’s former
private sector employer and Russian companies. The project, valued
at hundreds of billions of dollars, had previously proposed that
Russian companies could provide fuel and manage the plants’ waste.
According to former National Security Council staffers who spoke
with the Journal, Flynn continued to meet with a group of
military officers tasked with promoting the power plan on behalf of
US firms even after NSC ethics advisers asked him to cease
communications—actions that the former staffers called “highly
abnormal.”

The House Oversight Committee also released documents confirming
that Flynn had traveled to the Middle East in June 2015 to promote
this nuclear power plan to foreign officials. Flynn omitted this
trip from the list of foreign contacts he submitted when applying
for his Trump administration security clearance.

September 15: The Wall Street Journal reports that Rep.
Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.) proposed a deal to White House chief of
staff John Kelly that would involve pardoning WikiLeaks founder
Julian Assange in exchange for evidence that Rohrabacher said would
show Russia was not the source of hacked Democratic Party
emails.

September 17: The New York Times reports that White
House counsel Don McGahn is clashing sharply with Ty Cobb, a lawyer
brought in to help coordinate the White House’s response to the
Russia investigation, over how much the White House should
cooperate with Robert Mueller’s team. The Times was tipped
off to the conflict after overhearing Cobb badmouthing McGahn at a
Washington, DC, steakhouse, claiming that the attorney is
withholding certain documents.

September 18: The New York Times reports that when
federal agents searched Paul Manafort’s home in July 2017 as part
of the Trump-Russia probe, they told him that he should expect to
be indicted.

– CNN reports that, according to multiple sources,
investigators wiretapped Manafort, Trump’s former campaign
chairman, both before and after the election. The wiretap
reportedly continued early this year, after Trump took office and
during a period when he was known to have had communications with
Manafort. 

September 19: Reuters reports that Trump is using
donations to his reelection campaign and the Republican National
Committee to pay for his legal defense against special counsel
Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation.

– CNN reports that the Republican National
Committee spent more than $230,000 in August to cover some of
Trump’s legal fees in the Russia investigation.

– During his confirmation hearing for the post of ambassador
to Russia before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, former
Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman says that, unlike Trump, he believes Russia
interfered in the US election. “There is no question, underline no
question, that the Russian government interfered in the US election
last year.”

September 20: The Daily Beast reports that the Facebook
and Twitter accounts of the group “Being Patriotic,” a suspected
Russian propaganda front, helped organize more than a dozen
pro-Trump rallies in Florida in August 2016. The rallies “brought
dozens of supporters together in real life,” notes the Daily
Beast. “They appear to be the first case of Russian
provocateurs successfully mobilizing Americans over Facebook in
direct support of Donald Trump.”

– The Washington Post reports that, less
than two weeks before Trump accepted the Republican nomination,
Paul Manafort offered to provide campaign briefings to a Russian
billionaire closely aligned with the Kremlin. The email making the
offer is among tens of thousands of documents turned over to
special counsel Robert Mueller and congressional investigators.

September 21: Facebook says it will hand over the more than
3,000 Russia-connected political ads to congressional
investigators.

September 25: Roger Stone is grilled by the
House Intelligence Committee for three hours behind closed doors.
He refuses to disclose the identity of the claimed
go-between that facilitated his communication with WikiLeaks. Rep.
Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), the top Democrat on the panel, threatened
to subpoena Stone over the omission, saying that Stone refused to
address a “seminal area of importance to the committee.”

September 26: Sen. Richard Blumenthal says he is “99 percent sure” there will be
criminal charges against former Trump campaign chairman Paul
Manafort and former national security adviser Michael Flynn.

– CNN reports that the criminal division of the
Internal Revenue Service has begun sharing information with Robert
Mueller’s investigative team.

September 27: Multiple news outlets report that
the Senate Intelligence Committee has asked Facebook, Twitter, and Google to testify
as part of the investigation into Russian interference in the
election.

– The Daily Beast reports Russian agents
impersonated a real nonprofit, United Muslims of America, to spread
racist memes and fake news on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

September 28: CNN reports that, according to two sources
familiar with the matter, a social-media campaign calling itself
“Blacktivist” that is linked to the Russian government used
Facebook and Twitter to stoke racial tensions in the United States
during the 2016 election.

– Twitter discloses that it found and removed 201
accounts that may have been used by Russian agents after meeting
with congressional investigators. 

October 2: The Washington Post reports that
associates of Trump and his company turned over documents to
federal prosecutors revealing two previously undisclosed
interactions with Russia during the presidential campaign. One
email exchange involved Michael Cohen, Trump’s personal attorney,
possibly traveling to a conference in Russia that Putin was
planning to attend.

– Facebook estimates that ads bought by Russian agents
reached about 10 million people in the United States.

October 3: Bloomberg reports that special counsel Robert
Mueller’s top legal adviser, Michael Dreeben, is researching if
there are limits on Trump’s pardon power.

October 4: CNN reports that highly sophisticated
Russia-linked Facebook ads targeted key demographic groups in
pivotal parts of Michigan and Wisconsin.

October 5: CNN reports that special counsel Robert
Mueller’s team met over the summer with Christopher Steele, the
former British spy who produced the memos on Trump’s alleged Russia
connections. CNN also reports that the intelligence community last
year took the dossier more seriously than they acknowledged
publicly.

October 6: NBC reports that Christopher Steele, author of
the Trump-Russia memos, is in talks with the Senate Intelligence
Committee about meeting with the leaders of the panel.

October 9: The Washington Post reports that an
internal Google inquiry has found evidence of Russian agents
exploiting its platform in an attempt to meddle with the
election.

October 10: CNN reports that House Intelligence Committee
Chair Devin Nunes signed subpoenas for the heads of Fusion GPS, the
research firm that paid Christopher Steele to investigate Trump’s
Russia ties.

– Former Trump foreign policy adviser Carter Page says he is
planning to plead the Fifth Amendment if called
to testify in the Senate Intelligence Committee probe of potential
collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia. 

October 11: Trump blows by an October 1 deadline for starting to
implement new sanctions on Russia. Sens. Ben Cardin (D-Md.) and
John McCain (R-Ariz.) say the delay calls into question Trump’s
commitment to stepping up sanctions imposed by the bill Congress
passed in July with overwhelming support.

– The Daily Beast reports that the House
Intelligence Committee is looking into data firm Cambridge
Analytica’s work for the Trump campaign as part of its
investigation into Russian election meddling. Former White House
chief strategist Steve Bannon invested between $1 million and $5
million in Cambridge Analytica, where he was a one-time VP, and the
company was founded by Robert Mercer, a hedge fund billionaire and
major Trump campaign donor.

October 13: Members of Robert Mueller’s
investigative team spend all day interviewing former Trump’s
ex-chief of staff Reince Priebus.

October 15: NBC reports that Paul Manafort, Trump’s former
campaign manager, engaged in $60 million worth of business dealings
with Oleg Deripaska, a Russian oligarch closely tied to the
Kremlin. According to NBC, a company wholly owned by Deripaska
loaned $26 million to a company linked to Manafort.

October 16: Foreign Policy publishes the memo
Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya took to the June 2016 Trump
Tower meeting. It focuses on Bill Browder, an American businessman
whom Veselnitskaya accused of defrauding the Russian government,
and only makes a passing mention of Hillary Clinton.

– Former Trump press secretary Sean Spicer meets with Mueller’s investigators
for almost a full day. He is asked about Trump’s firing of FBI
Director James Comey and about Trump’s Oval Office meeting with
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and then-Russian Ambassador
Sergei Kislyak.

October 17: A federal judge dismisses a libel suit brought by Oleg
Deripaska against the Associated Press for reporting that he paid
Manafort to advance the goals of the Russian government and
Putin.

– The Russian newspaper RBC publishes an investigation into
2016 election meddling by the Internet Research Agency (IRA), a
notorious Russian “troll factory” based in St. Petersburg and
linked to the Kremlin. Among the story’s many revelations: The IRA spent about $2.3
million during the 2016 election cycle to meddle in US politics,
paying the salaries of 90 “US desk” employees who helped wage
disinformation campaigns via social media, while also funneling
thousands of dollars to unwitting US activists to organize protests
on divisive issues, including race relations.

– ABC News reports that the Senate Intelligence
Committee will likely subpoena Mike Flynn Jr., the son of Trump’s
ousted national security adviser. The younger Flynn was his
father’s chief of staff during the presidential transition period
but was pushed off the Trump team after it was revealed
that he had spread alt-right conspiracy theories online.

October 18: CNN reports that a group tied to Russian trolls
who ran thousands of fake Facebook ads paid personal trainers to
run self-defense classes for African Americans as part of an
apparent attempt to generate fear and gather contact
information.

– The Daily Beast reports that several key
Trump campaign staffers, including Kellyanne Conway and Donald
Trump Jr., promoted tweets during the election from @Ten_GOP, an
account linked to the Internet Research Agency, the notorious
Russian “troll factory.”

– Former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski meets with Senate
Intelligence Committee investigators for more than three hours.

– Attorney General Jeff Sessions testifies before the Senate
Judiciary Committee and changes his story on his contacts with Sergey
Kislyak in the spring and summer of 2016, saying that it was
possible he discussed campaign matters with the ambassador. (When
news of his meetings with Kislyak first broke in March, Sessions
said he met with the Russian ambassador solely in his capacity as a
US senator and that they never discussed campaign matters.)

Sessions also refused to elaborate on his communications with
Trump about the firing of FBI Director James Comey by asserting an
odd, preemptive form of executive privilege—saying he can’t
disclose his communications lest the president one day decide to
invoke executive privilege to keep them private.

October 19: Politico reports that Trump has
personally interviewed at least three candidates for US attorney
jobs in the Eastern and Southern districts of New York and in the
District of Columbia. The Southern District of New York has
jurisdiction over Trump Tower, which means it would have the power
to bring indictments against the Trump Organization and associates
in various cases, including the ongoing Russia investigation.
 “To be very blunt, these three jurisdictions will have
authority to bring indictments over the ongoing special counsel
investigation into Trump campaign collusion with the Russians and
potential obstruction of justice by the president of the United
States,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) tells
Politico.

– While speaking at a national security forum, CIA Director Mike
Pompeo mistakenly says that when US intelligence
agencies released their January 2017 assessment about Russian
interference in the 2016 election, they also found the interference
did not affect the outcome. In fact, the report did not come to a
conclusion on that. The CIA issues a statement correcting
Pompeo.

October 24: The Wall Street Journal reports that the
Manhattan US attorney’s office has launched an investigation into
possible money laundering by Paul Manafort.

– NBC News reports that special counsel Robert
Mueller is investigating whether Democratic lobbyist Tony Podesta’s
work to promote Ukraine’s image in the West violated the Foreign
Agents Registration Act.

October 25: The Wall Street Journal reports that the
head of Cambridge Analytica, a data analytics firm that worked for
the Trump campaign, offered to help WikiLeaks founder Julian
Assange organize the emails his site was releasing about the
Clinton campaign. The firm is partly owned by Republican megadonor
Robert Mercer, and former Trump campaign chief executive Steve
Bannon sat on its board before joining the administration.

– McClatchy reports that Michael Cohen, Trump’s
personal lawyer, made as much as $20 million by selling four
properties to mysterious buyers.

October 26: Twitter bans RT and Sputnik Media from using its
advertising network, citing US intelligence reports that the
organizations attempted to interfere with the election.

– BuzzFeed reports that Senate Judiciary
Committee chair Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) requested confidential
banking information on close to 40 people from the Treasury
Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network. The request
is seen as a sign that Grassley has stepped up his committee’s
Russia investigation.

October 30: Facebook says content created by Russian
operatives may have reached as many as 126 million people in the
United States, a far higher number than the 10 million people the
company said saw paid Russian ads.

– Federal investigators led by special counsel Robert Mueller
charge former Trump campaign manager Paul
Manafort and his onetime business associate Rick Gates, who also
worked on the campaign, with money laundering. Both plead not
guilty to the 12-count indictment, which ranges from conspiring to
launder money to working as unregistered agents of Ukraine’s former
pro-Russian government.

– The Department of Justice reveals that George Papadopoulos,
the Trump campaign foreign policy adviser, pleaded guilty in early October to lying to federal
investigators. The plea reveals that Papadopoulos met during the
campaign with a London-based professor (later revealed to be Joseph
Mifsud) who claimed Russia had damaging information on Hillary
Clinton.

– Jay Sekulow, one of Trump’s attorneys, tells CNN’s Wolf Blitzer that the indictments
are not related to the Trump campaign and says there is no
connection between George Papadopoulos’ plea and Trump.

October 31: Trump claims on Twitter that there was no
collusion between Russia and his campaign. Trump also calls George Papadopoulos a “young, low level
volunteer” and a liar who few people knew.

November
1: CNN
reports that Joseph
Mifsud, a London-based professor who was in contact with George
Papadopolous, told a business contact in April 2016 that Moscow had
a large collection of information about Hillary Clinton.

– The House Intelligence
Committee releases
a selection of 3,000 ads that
Russian operatives bought on Facebook, which further reveal the
sophistication of Russia’s campaign to promote Trump and attack
Clinton during the 2016 campaign.

November 2:
The Wall Street
Journal reports that the Justice Department has identified more
than six Russian government officials involved in the hacking
operation that targeted the Democratic National Committee during
the 2016 campaign. Prosecutors are considering bringing charges in
2018, according to the paper.

November 3: CNN
reports that former
Trump foreign policy adviser Carter Page told the House
Intelligence Committee that he informed then-Sen. Jeff Sessions
that he was traveling to Russia during the 2016 presidential
campaign. In June, Sessions told the Senate Intelligence Committee
that he didn’t know if Page met with Russian officials during the
campaign.

– The Washington
Post reports
that Keith Schiller, Trump’s
longtime confidant and body guard and former White House aide, will
be questioned by the House Intelligence Committee about Trump’s
2013 Moscow trip. Investigators plan to ask Schiller about
allegations made in the Steele memos that Russians obtained
compromising information on Trump during the trip.

– Three conservative
Republicans introduce a resolution calling on special counsel Robert
Mueller to recuse himself because he was the FBI director in 2010
when government officials approved the sale of Uranium One, a
Canadian energy firm, to a Russian nuclear energy
company.

– CNN
reports that Jared
Kushner has turned over documents to special counsel Robert Mueller
related to his role in the firing of FBI Director James
Comey.

November
5: NBC News
reports that special
counsel Robert Mueller has enough evidence to bring charges against
former White House national security adviser Michael Flynn and his
son, Michael Flynn Jr. Mueller’s team is investigating whether
Flynn lied to investigators and laundered money, as well as whether
he tried to remove a chief rival of Turkish President Recep Erdogan
from the United States.

November 6:
Natalia Veselnitskaya, the Russian lawyer who attended the 2016
Trump Tower meeting, says
Donald Trump Jr. told a her that a
law that places sanctions on some Russian officials would be
reexamined if his father won the election. She also says Trump Jr.
asked for written evidence that Hillary Clinton’s campaign received
money that evaded US taxes.

November 8:
The Daily
Beast reports
that Democrats on the Senate
Foreign Relations Committee have been privately investigating
Russian interference in Eastern Europe without their Republican
colleagues. The Senate Democrats are trying to chart how the
Kremlin used propaganda and voter suppression to advance its
interests.

November
9: CNN
reports that special
counsel Robert Mueller’s team has interviewed White House senior
policy adviser Stephen Miller—bringing his investigation into
Trump’s inner White House circle. Miller was asked about his role
in the firing of FBI Director James Comey as part of Mueller’s
effort to determine whether the firing constitutes obstruction of
justice, according to CNN.

November 10: CNN
reports that Keith
Schiller, Trump’s former White House aide and longtime confidant,
told the House Intelligence Committee that he rejected a Russian
offer to send five women to Trump’s room during a 2013 trip to
Moscow. Schiller said he and Trump thought the offer was a
joke.

November 13:
The Atlantic publishes Twitter direct messages
exchanged in September 2016 between
WikiLeaks and Donald Trump Jr. In the messages, WikiLeaks gave
Trump Jr. the password to PutingTrump.org, a site that would
document then-candidate Trump’s Russia ties.

November 14: The New York Times reports that the
State Department’s Office of Acquisitions has awarded a $2.8
million no-bid contract to Elite Security
Holdings to provide security guards at the American Embassy in
Moscow and at consulates in St. Petersburg, Yekaterinburg, and
Vladivostok. The company, reports the Times, is “closely
linked to the former top K.G.B. figure, Viktor G. Budanov, a
retired general who rose through the ranks to become head of Soviet
counterintelligence.”

November 17: ABC News
reports that Trump will be
presented with a recommendation from the National Security
Council to sell Ukraine $47
millions of arms including powerful anti-tank missiles. If Trump
decides to take these recommendations, it would signal support of
Ukraine in its ongoing hostility with Russian and would also mark a
shift from the GOP party platform’s softer stance on arming
Ukraine.

November 23: CBS News
reports that the White House will
not cover any legal fees incurred by former national security
adviser Michael Flynn and former campaign chairman Paul
Manafort related to special counsel Robert Mueller’s
investigation.

November 28: The top Democrats on the House Oversight
Committee and Foreign Affairs Committee call
on Trump’s longtime friend Tom
Barrack to speak with them about conversations he had with Michael
Flynn regarding a plan to build nuclear reactors in the Middle
East.

December 1: Michael Flynn, Trump’s former
national security adviser, is charged with and pleads
guilty to lying to the FBI about
conversations he had with the Russian
ambassador. Court
documents suggest Flynn is likely to face between zero and six
months in prison.

Read the charging document below: 

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December 2:
Trump tweets
that he “had to fire General Flynn
because he lied to the Vice President and the FBI.” Legal
experts say Trump’s
tweet suggests he could have been obstructing justice when he told
former FBI Director James Comey to stop investigating
Flynn.

December 4:
Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s office drops
its support for Paul Manafort’s
bail deal after Manafort secretly writes an editorial with a colleague who has ties to
Russian intelligence.

December 5: Reuters reports that special counsel Robert
Mueller subpoenaed Deutsche Bank for data on accounts held by Trump and his family. Jay
Sekulow, one of Trump’s lawyers, denies the bank was
subpoenaed.

December 8:
The New York
Times reports that
the FBI warned Hope Hicks, one of Trump’s top aides, that Russian
operatives were attempting to contact her during the presidential
transition. There is no evidence Hicks did anything wrong,
according to the Times.

December
12: Axios reports that Jay Sekulow, a member of Trump’s
legal team, is calling for a special counsel to investigate Robert
Mueller’s office after a Fox News
article shows the wife of a
demoted Department of Justice official worked for Fusion GPS, the firm
responsible for the Steele dossier.

– BuzzFeed reports that Justice Department filings show
Russia Today’s original distribution company has been “winding
down” since earlier in 2017.

December 13:
Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein says
there is no cause for firing
special counsel Robert Mueller during testimony before the House
Judiciary Committee.

– Radio Free Europe reports that US prosecutors are defending a
widely criticized decision by the Justice Department to
settle United States v.
Prevezon Holdings, a
money laundering case connected to a Russian tax fraud scheme.
Assistant Attorney General Stephen Boyd says prosecutors had no
contact with Trump, his family, and his staff in the
Prevezon case. (The
case received renewed attention after it was reported that
Kremlin-linked lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya met with Donald Trump
Jr. and other members of the elder Trump’s inner circle in June
2016. Veselnitskaya represented Prevezon in the lawsuit.)

December 14:
Russian President Vladimir Putin praises Trump and claims
the United States is gripped by
unfounded “spymania” related to the Russia
investigation.

– The top Democrats on the House
Judiciary and Oversight committees call
for subpoenaing Cambridge Analytica
and Giles-Parscale, two data consulting firms that worked for the
Trump campaign. Democrats want to find out if the firms helped Russia target political
messages to boost Trump
during the 2016 campaign.  

December 15:
The Washington
Post reports that
Jared Kushner and his legal team are looking to hire a crisis
public relations firm.

– Trump says
he is not ruling out a pardon for
his former national security adviser Michael Flynn.
 

December 17:
Trump says
he has no intention of firing
special counsel Robert Mueller and insists there was “no collusion
whatsoever” between Russia and his campaign.

December 18:
Trump gives
a national security speech that
makes no mention of Russian election interference. In the
speech, Trump says Putin thanked
him for sharing intelligence about a possible terrorist attack in
St. Petersburg.  

December 19: FBI Deputy
Director Andrew McCabe testifies before the House Intelligence
Committee for hours behind closed doors. During the testimony,
McCabe corroborates that when James Comey was serving as FBI
director, he informed McCabe that Trump requested Comey’s “loyalty”
and asked the then-FBI director to go easy on Michael Flynn in the
Russia investigation. Trump has disputed these conversations took
place.

– The Senate Intelligence
Committee announces that as part of its probe into Russian election
interference, it is looking into possible links between Russia and
the presidential campaign of Jill Stein, the Green Party
candidate in 2016.

December
20: Politico reports that Rep. Devin Nunes has been leading
a group of Republican congressman who are working outside the House
Intelligence Committee’s own Russia probe to pull together
materials discrediting the DOJ and the FBI’s handling of the Russia
investigation.

– Members of the House
Intelligence Committee interview longtime Russian American Trump
associate Felix Sater in New York City as part of the committee’s
Russia probe.

– Trump signs an executive order expanding the
Magnitsky list, a key package of US sanctions on Russia. Artem
Chaika, the son of Yuri Chaika, is on the list. Yuri Chaika is the
prosecutor general of Russia and also the person who Rob Goldstone,
Emin Agalarov’s publicist, credited with possessing dirt on Hillary
Clinton when emailing with Trump Jr. in advance of the June 2016
meeting in Trump Tower. 

December 21: In an interview with Fox News, White House
press secretary Sarah Huckabee
Sanders says the administration does not intend to fire special
counsel Robert Mueller and that she hopes his “hoax” investigation
wraps up soon. 

– NBC reports that, under orders from Attorney
General Jeff Sessions, the FBI and the DOJ have begun  to look
into a 2010 Obama administration deal that approved the sale of
Canadian energy firm Uranium One to a Russian nuclear energy
company. The State Department was one of nine federal agencies that
approved the deal, and Hillary Clinton was the secretary of state
at the time.

– Bloomberg reports that special counsel Robert
Mueller is looking into the Human
Rights Accountability Global Initiative (HRAGI) as part of the
probe into Russian election interference. The American
foundation received more
than $500,000 from powerful Russia financiers, and one of the
foundation’s representatives, Rinat Akhmetshin, also attended the
June 2016 meeting at Trump Tower with Donald Trump Jr. and other
members of the Trump campaign.

December 22: Politico reports anonymous Republican
congressional aides are investigating contacts between FBI General
Counsel James Baker and Mother Jones DC Bureau Chief David
Corn near the time Corn broke the news of the Steele dossier—a move
suggesting Baker was a source for Corn’s story. Corn denies that
Baker was a source for the article.

– Members of the House
Intelligence Committee interview Trump’s longtime assistant at the
Trump Organization, Rhona Graff, in New York City. 

– The New York
Times reports that
prosecutors in Brooklyn have subpoenaed Deutsche Bank records
related to Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner’s real estate company,
which has borrowed hundreds of millions of dollars from the German
bank. There is no clear indication that this subpoena is related to
Mueller’s Trump-Russia investigation. 

December 24: The
Guardian reports that the FBI is investigating the now
defunct FBME Bank in Tanzania, likely as part of Mueller’s
investigation into Russian election interference—and specifically
the finances of Paul Manafort, Trump’s former campaign
chairman. 

December 27: The
Washington
Post reports that
Trump’s legal team is preparing to attack Michael Flynn’s
credibility following the news of his cooperation agreement with
special counsel Robert Mueller’s team. 

December 28: Former Trump
aide Rick Gates, who is on house arrest following his indictment in
the Mueller investigation on charges of conspiracy and money
laundering, asks the DC district court to modify
his house arrest to go to a New
Year’s party. (The judge denies his request two days
later.)

December 30: The
New York
Times reports that
in May 2016—two months before leaked Democratic National Committee
emails started to become public—Trump’s foreign policy adviser
George Papadopoulos told Australia’s top diplomat in Britain,
Alexander Downer, that he knew Russia had thousands of emails that
had been stolen in an effort to hurt Hillary Clinton’s campaign.
The revelation that a member of the Trump campaign had prior
knowledge of the DNC hacking is what led the FBI to begin its
inquiry into Russian election interference and possible collusion
by the Trump campaign.

2018

January 3: Sen. Dianne Feinstein
(D-Calif.) sends two letters to former Trump campaign staffers
Dan Scavino and Brad Parscale, asking for information related to
the Russia investigation. In one of the letters, Feinstein alleges that Scavino, who served as the campaign’s
social-media manager, “may have corresponded with Russian nationals
regarding Trump campaign social media efforts.” 

– Paul Manafort files a lawsuit in federal court against the
Department of Justice. He claims the DOJ violated the law in appointing
Robert Mueller as the special counsel on the Russia probe, and also
challenged the “overly broad” scope of the investigation, claiming
the special counsel exceeded his authority in indicting Manafort on
conspiracy and money laundering charges.

– In a leaked excerpt of a new book about the Trump
administration, Fire and
Fury by Michael Wolff,
Wolff reports that former Trump adviser Steve Bannon called the
June 2016 Trump Tower meeting between Donald Trump Jr. and a
Kremlin-linked Russian lawyer “treasonous,” and later said of the
government probe into possible collusion between Russia and the
Trump campaign, “They’re
going to crack Don Junior like an egg on national TV.”

– The Justice Department and the
House Intelligence Committee reach a deal to grant the committee access to documents and
sources from the DOJ’s Russia probe. On the House side, the deal’s
primary advocate was Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), who wrote letters lashing out at the DOJ and
the FBI for withholding documents. 

January 4: The
New York
Times reports that
in March 2017, Trump directed his general counsel, Don McGahn, to
stop Attorney General Jeff Sessions from recusing himself from the
Russia investigation. McGahn followed through on the orders, two
sources familiar with the episode told the Times. Sessions still recused
himself in March 2017.

January 8: NBC reports that the Mueller probe is preparing
for a possible interview with Trump. Trump’s legal team met with
representatives from the special counsel’s office in late December
to discuss the format of the interview, a source familiar with the
meeting tells NBC.

January 9: Sen. Dianne
Feinstein, the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary
Committee, breaks
with Republican colleagues by
releasing the committee’s interview of Glenn Simpson of Fusion GPS,
the firm that produced the Steele dossier.

January 11: Trump accuses
Peter Strzok, the FBI agent who criticized Trump and other
politicians in text messages, of “treason” in an interview with the Wall Street Journal.  

– Reuters reports that Trump’s former campaign chairman
Steve Bannon, will appear before the House Intelligence Committee
as part of its Russia probe. 

January 16: While
testifying before the House Intelligence Committee, Steve Bannon
is subpoenaed by the panel on the spot after refusing to
discuss his work in the White House and on Trump’s transition team.
Bannon’s lawyer responds by contacting the White House, which
insists that Bannon not cooperate.

– The New York Times reports
that Bannon was subpoenaed by
special counsel Robert Mueller. It is the first time Mueller is
known to have used a subpoena to get information from a member of
Trump’s inner circle.

January 17: Steve
Bannon agrees
to be interviewed by Robert
Mueller’s team instead of testifying before a grand jury,
suggesting that he is cooperating with Mueller’s investigation.
  

– Former Trump campaign manager
Corey Lewandowski refuses
to answer the House Intelligence
Committee’s questions about the Trump campaign and his relationship
with the president. Lewandowski does not cite Trump’s potential
assertion of executive privilege, saying instead that he was
unprepared to answer the committee’s questions.

January 18: McClatchy reports
that the FBI is investigating
whether Alexander Torshin, a top Russian banker who is close to
Putin, illegally funneled money to the National Rifle Association
to support Trump’s campaign.

January 19: Conservatives
demand the release of a classified memo drafted by aides to House
Intelligence Committee Chair Devin Nunes (R-Calif.). The memo,
which Democrats see as part of an effort to undermine the Russia
investigation, accuses the FBI of improperly obtaining a warrant
under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to surveil Carter
Page, the former Trump campaign foreign policy adviser.

January 20: CNN
reports
that House Republicans may use an
obscure committee rule to circumvent the executive branch’s
declassification process to release the Nunes memo.

January 23: Axios reports
that Attorney General Jeff Sessions
pushed FBI Director Christopher Wray to fire his deputy Andrew
McCabe, whom Trump has repeatedly criticized. Wray reportedly threatened to resign because
of pressure from Sessions.

January 24: The Justice
Department confirms that Attorney General Jeff Sessions
was questioned the week before as part of Robert Mueller’s
investigation. Sessions is the first Cabinet member to be
interviewed by Mueller’s team.

– Two Democrats on the Senate
Judiciary Committee say
they want to provide Robert Mueller
with transcripts of the panel’s interviews with Donald Trump Jr.
and other key Russia witnesses. The move suggests that Sens.
Sheldon Whitehouse (R.I.) and Richard Blumenthal (Conn.) believe
witnesses may have made false statements to their committee.
 

– Trump says he is “looking forward” to speaking with
special counsel Robert Mueller and that he would do so under
oath.

– Trump grows angry while flying
to Davos, Switzerland, after learning that Associate Attorney
General Stephen Boyd said in a letter to the House Intelligence
Committee that it would be “extraordinarily reckless” to release
Rep. Devin Nunes’ classified memo, according to a Bloomberg report. Trump reportedly views Boyd’s warning
as part of the Justice Department’s efforts to undermine
him.

January 25: The
New York Times
reports
that the previous June Trump
commanded White House counsel Donald McGahn to fire Robert Mueller
but McGahn refused to carry out Trump’s order,  threatening to
resign.

January 28: Sens. Susan
Collins (R-Maine) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) say Congress should pass legislation to protect
special counsel Robert Mueller from being ousted.

– Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.), a
top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, says
he has “100 percent” support for
special counsel Robert Mueller and says he told Republican
colleagues to “leave him the hell alone.”

January 29: Deputy FBI
Director Andrew McCabe steps down after facing public attacks from
Trump. Attorney General Jeff Sessions had also pressured FBI
Director Christopher Wray to fire McCabe.

– Former FBI Director James
Comey tweets that “McCabe stood tall over the last 8 months,
when small people were trying to tear down an institution we all
depend on…America needs you.

– Republicans on the House
Intelligence Committee vote to release the controversial Nunes memo,
giving the White House five days to approve or block its
release.

– Deputy Attorney General Rod
Rosenstein warns White House chief of staff John Kelly that the
memo could threaten classified information and urges Trump to
reconsider his support for releasing it, according to a
Washington Post
report. FBI Director Christopher Wray also tells
Kelly that he opposes making the memo public.

– The Trump
administration announces it will not impose sanctions on countries that
buy Russian arms. 

– The Daily Beast reports
that a Sean Hannity impersonator
received a direct message on Twitter from WikiLeaks founder Julian
Assange, who claimed to have “some news” on Sen. Mark Warner
(D-Va.)

January 30: Following his
State of the Union address, Trump says
on a hot mic that he is “100
percent” in favor of releasing the Nunes memo. The White House had
said earlier in the day that it would conduct a national security
and legal review before making a decision.  

– Senate Majority Leader Mitch
McConnell (R-Ky.) dismisses concerns about Trump firing special counsel
Robert Mueller, saying that Mueller “”seems to need no
protection.”

January 31: The
FBI says
in a statement that it has “grave
concerns about material omissions of fact that fundamentally
impact” the accuracy of the Nunes memo. It also says it was
“provided a limited opportunity to review this memo the day before
the committee voted to release it.”

– The New York Times reports
that special counsel Robert Mueller
is investigating the statement that Trump and his staff crafted on
Air Force One about the June 2016 Trump Tower meeting between
Russians and Trump campaign officials, including Donald Trump Jr.
Hope Hicks, a top aide to Trump, reportedly said at the time that
emails discussing obtaining dirt on Hillary Clinton “will never get
out.” According to the Times, Mark Corallo, the former
spokesman for Trump’s legal team, has received an interview request
from Mueller. Corallo resigned from his post in July, reportedly over concerns that the
president and his staff may have obstructed justice in connection
to their handling of the response to the Trump Tower
story.

February 1: CNN reports
that top White House officials are
worried FBI Director Christopher Wray will resign if House
Republicans release the Nunes memo.

– The New York Times reports the White House plans
to release the Nunes memo without
requesting any redactions.

– House Minority Leader Nancy
Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer
(D-N.Y.) call
on Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.) to
remove Devin Nunes as the head of the House Intelligence
Committee.

February 2: House
Republicans release the Nunes memo, which accuses
the FBI of withholding the
political nature of the Steele dossier from the Foreign
Intelligence Surveillance Court when the bureau applied for a
warrant to surveil Carter Page. The Washington Post reports later that day that the bureau did in
fact disclose that the dossier had been funded by political
entities.

– Former FBI Director James
Comey tweets, “Dishonest and misleading memo wrecked the
House intel committee, destroyed trust with Intelligence Community,
damaged relationship with FISA court, and inexcusably exposed
classified investigation of an American citizen.”

– Trump sidesteps questions about whether he still has confidence
in Deputy FBI Director Rod Rosenstein, telling reporters to “figure
that one out.”

– Sen. John McCain
(R-Ariz.) says
in a statement, “The latest attacks
on the FBI and Department of Justice serve no American interests—no
party’s, no president’s, only Putin’s.”

– Sen. Ron Wyden sends letters to the Treasury Department and
the National Rifle Association to ask for more information about
possible election-related donations to the gun rights group from
Russian officials, including ex-politician and Putin ally Alexander
Torshin.

February 4: Time
reports that in an August 2013
letter, Carter Page bragged that he was an adviser to the
Kremlin. “Over the past half
year, I have had the privilege to serve as an informal advisor to
the staff of the Kremlin in preparation for their Presidency of the
G-20 Summit next month, where energy issues will be a prominent
point on the agenda,” Page wrote in the letter, which he sent to an
academic press that was reviewing a manuscript of his for
publication. Page sent the letter two months after the FBI
 interviewed him about his contacts with Russia and warned
that the bureau believed Russian intelligence was trying to recruit
him as an asset.

– Donald Trump Jr. describes the release of the Nunes memo as
“sweet revenge” for his family during a Fox News
interview.

February 5: President
Trump accuses Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), the House Intelligence
Committee’s top Democrat, of leaking information. Trump provides no
evidence to support his claim.

– During
an
appearance on Fox & Friends, Rep. Devin Nunes
acknowledges that the FBI disclosed the
political origins of the Steele dossier when it applied for a FISA
warrant targeting Carter Page. This contradicted a key claim of the
memo compiled by his staff, which contended the bureau failed to
reveal the political nature of Steel’s research. In the same
interview, Nunes claimed that Trump had never met with George
Papadopoulos, the Trump campaign foreign policy adviser who in
early 2016 claimed the Russians possessed damaging information on
Hillary Clinton. In fact, Trump himself had once tweeted out a
photo that pictured him meeting with Papadopoulus and other
campaign officials.

– Sen. Charles Grassley
(R-Iowa), releases a heavily redacted version of the
criminal referral of Christopher Steele that he and Sen. Lindsey
Graham (R-S.C.) sent to the FBI.

– The House Intelligence
Committee votes
unanimously to release a
classified Democratic memo that rebuts the claims of the Nunes
memo. The vote gives Trump five days to review the memo and decide
whether he will approve or oppose its release.

– The New York Times
reports that Trump’s lawyers have counseled him
to decline a “wide-ranging” interview with special counsel Robert
Mueller over concerns that the president, “who has a history of making false statements and contradicting
himself, could be charged with lying to investigators.”

February 6: Democratic
lawmakers reveal
that in December Justice Department
officials told the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee
that a whistleblower who Republicans claimed had information
linking Hillary Clinton to the Uranium One deal was unreliable and
had never mentioned Clinton to the FBI. 

February 8: CBS News
reports that “Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee plan to
construct a wall—a physical partition—separating Republican and
Democratic staff members in the committee’s secure spaces. The move
highlights the escalating partisan tensions between committee
Democrats and Republicans over the panel’s Russia probe.

– Politico reports
that a January 2017 phone
conversation about Russia between former Trump foreign policy
adviser Carter Page and former White House adviser Steve Bannon may
have been intercepted by the FBI.

– Fox News reports
that it has exclusively obtained
text messages between Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) and lobbyist Adam
Waldman. The messages, leaked a little over a week after WikiLeaks
founder Julian Assange promised a Sean Hannity impersonator “some
news” on Warner, show Waldman offered to connect Warner with
Christopher Steele.

– Sen. Marco Rubio
(R-Fla.) tweets
that Warner disclosed the texts to
the Senate Intelligence Committee four months before, adding that
it has “had zero impact on our work.”

– In a 25-minute
video published on
YouTube, Russian opposition activist Alexei Navalny accuses Deputy
Prime Minister Sergey Prikhodko—a top Russian foreign policy
official—of having been a conduit between the Kremlin and Oleg
Deripaska, an oligarch linked to the Trump campaign. Navalny builds
his case using the instagram posts, videos, and the memoir of
Nastya Rybka, an escort who claims to be Deripaska’s
mistress.

February 9:
Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) releases an analysis
that refutes the criminal referral
of Christopher Steele sent in January by Sens. Chuck Grassley
(R-Iowa) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.).

– The New York Times and the Intercept report that, in an effort to
recover stolen National Security Agency hacking tools, American
intelligence officials had been negotiating with a Russian who
claimed to also have compromising material on Trump. “Instead of providing the hacking tools, the Russian produced
unverified and possibly fabricated information involving Mr. Trump
and others, including bank records, emails and purported Russian
intelligence data,” according to the Times.

February
10: Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), the ranking
member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, asks the Treasury Department to hand over
records concerning the 2004 sale of Trump’s Palm Beach estate to
Russian billionaire Dmitry Rybolovlev.

February 12: NBC reports that the Justice Department’s No. 3
official, Associate Attorney General Rachel Brand, resigned from
the agency in part over concerns that she would be tapped to
oversee the Russia probe if Deputy Attorney
General Rod Rosenstein were fired.

– Foreign Policy reports that Anthony Ferrante, a former FBI and
White House official, has been secretly trying to verify the Steele
dossier on behalf of BuzzFeed, which is fighting a lawsuit
by a Russian technology executive who was named in the reports
compiled by ex-British spy Christopher Steele.

February 13:
At a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing, the
heads of the nation’s top intelligence agencies concur that Russia
is likely planning to interfere in the 2018 midterm
elections.  “There should be no doubt
that Russia perceives its past efforts as successful and views the
2018 US midterm elections as a potential target for Russian
influence operations,” Director of National Intelligence Dan
Coats testifies. Coats and the directors of the CIA,
the FBI, and the National Security Agency also say Trump has
never directed them to do anything to stop
Russian election interference. 

– The Russian government mandates that the Navalny video, and
Rybka’s Instagram posts that contributed to it, be scrubbed from
the internet. But as of this writing, much of the prohibited
content is still available.

February 14: CNN reports that Trump “remains unconvinced that
Russia interfered in the presidential election.”

– At an event sponsored by Axios, Vice
President Mike Pence falsely claims the nation’s intelligence
agencies determined that Russian interference had no impact on the
2016 election. The intelligence community’s assessment, in fact,
did not take up that question.

– Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.)
tells reporters, ”There is already, in my view,
ample evidence in the public domain on the issue of collusion if
you’re willing to see it. If you want to blind yourself, then you
can look the other way.” He also says, “There is certainly an abundance of
non-public information that we’ve gathered in the investigation.
And I think some of that non-public evidence is evidence on the
issue of collusion and some…on the issue of
obstruction.”

February
15: Steve Bannon, under a congressional subpoena,
appears before a closed-door session of the
House Intelligence Committee, where he once again refuses to answer key questions
concerning his time in the White House and on Trump’s transition
team. The panel considers holding him in contempt of
Congress.

– NBC reports that Bannon was interviewed over
multiple days earlier in the week by special counsel Robert
Mueller.  

– CNN reports that Paul Manafort’s former business
associate Rick Gates is finalizing a plea deal with the special
counsel’s office.

– Mark Corallo, the former spokesman
for Trump’s legal team, meets with Robert Mueller for more than two
hours. 

– The National Rifle
Association responds to Sen. Ron Wyden’s February 2
letter requesting information on its ties to Putin ally Alexander
Torshin. The NRA says it doesn’t accept donations related to US
elections from foreign nationals, in compliance with election
law.

February 16:
Special counsel Robert Mueller indicts 13 Russians for their role in a
wide-ranging plot to sow discord in the US political process and
interfere in the 2016 election. FBI Director Christopher Wray and
Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein brief Trump on the
indictments before they are made public.

– Yevgeniy Prigozhin, one of the indicted
Russians, responds.

– Trump tweets:

February 17: Speaking at the Munich Security
Conference, White House national security adviser H.R. McMaster
says evidence of Russian inference in the 2016
election “is now really incontrovertible.” – Russian Foreign
Minister Sergey Lavrov, also attending the Muchich Security
Conference, calls the indictment of 13 Russian nationals “just blabber.”

– CNN reports that Rick Gates, a former Trump
campaign adviser and business associate of Paul Manafort, is
nearing a plea deal with special counsel Robert Mueller’s
office.

February 19: CNN
reports that “special counsel Robert Mueller’s interest in Jared Kushner has
expanded beyond his contacts with Russia and now includes his
efforts to secure financing for his company from foreign investors
during the presidential transition.”

February
20: Robert Mueller’s office charges lawyer Alex van Der Zwaan—son-in-law of
Russian oligarch German Khan—with making false statements to
investigators in connection with a September 2016 conversation he
had with Rick Gates. According to Zwaan’s indictment, he also
deleted or failed to turn over records sought by the special
counsel’s office.

February 22: Special
counsel Robert Mueller files a new indictment against Paul Manafort
and his longtime business partner Rick Gates, charging the pair
with a combined 32 counts of various financial fraud. Both Manafort
and Gates plead not guilty to the charges. 

– Following the indictment,
Gates’ team of three lawyers applies to withdraw from the case.
They explain their reasons to the court in a sealed
filing.

– ABC News
reports that Rick Gates
has hired a new lawyer, Thomas Green. A former federal prosecutor,
Green is known for representing and negotiating plea deals for
high-profile clients,
including former House
Speaker Dennis Hastert.

February 23: Rick
Gates strikes a
deal to cooperate with
special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation. As part of the
deal, he pleads guilty to charges of conspiracy and lying to
federal agents.

– The special counsel targets
Paul Manafort with another
indictment. It alleges that
Manafort secretly paid former European politicians more than 2
million euros to lobby on behalf of Ukraine’s pro-Russia
government. 

February 24: The House
Intelligence Committee releases a redacted 10-page memo written by the panel’s Democrats
that rebuts Republican allegations that omitted important
information—including political origins of the Steele dossier—when
it sought a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court warrant
targeting Carter Page, the Trump campaign’s foreign policy
adviser.

Februaryy 26: Six
Republican leaders of various congressional committees, including
those currently investigating possible collusion between Russia and
the Trump campaign, tell CNN
that they do not believe it is
necessary to dig into Trump’s finances as part of the congressional
Russia probes.

February 27: White House
communications director Hope Hicks is interviewed for nine hours
behind closed doors by the House Intelligence Committee.
She
admits to having told
“white lies” on Trump’s behalf but says she has not lied about
anything related to the Russia investigation.

February 28: NBC
reports that before the
2016 election, American intelligence agencies had evidence that state
websites and voter registration systems in seven states were
accessed by Russia-linked hackers but did not pass this information
to the relevant states. 

– The New York Times reports that Hope Hicks plans to resign from
her post as White House communications director. 

– Bloomberg reports that New York’s banking regulator has
requested information from Deutsche Bank and two other lenders
concerning “their relationships with Jared Kushner, his family and
the Kushner Cos.”

March 1: The New York
Times reports that the Senate Intelligence Committee
has determined that the leak of Sen. Mark Warner’s text messages to
Fox News came from Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee,
chaired by Rep. Devin Nunes. According to the Times, Sens.
Richard Burr (R-N.C.) and Warner (D-Va.), respectively the chair
and vice chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, sought a rare
meeting with House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) to inform him of
their findings and express concerns over Nunes’ handling of the
Russia probe in the House Intelligence Committee.

March 4: In an interview on NBC, Putin says Russia will
never extradite the Russian nationals that have been indicted by
special counsel Robert Mueller, and he denies that the Kremlin
interfered in the US election.

March 5: Sen. Ron Wyden sends a second letter to the National Rifle
Association to ask for more information about donations to the gun
rights group from powerful Russian actors, including Alexander
Torshin. “I remain concerned about the inability to get clear
answers to several questions about the possibility that Russian
actors funneled foreign funds into NRA electioneering activity,”
Wyden writes.

– Nastya Rybka, who claims to be
Oleg Deripaska’s
mistress and who has been
jailed in Thailand on charges of working in the country without a
visa, announces that she has more than 16 hours of recordings
that can shed light on Russian meddling in the US election. She
offers to turn these over to US authorities in exchange for
asylum.

– Former Trump adviser Sam Nunberg goes on a number of TV news
shows, threatening to defy the subpoena he has received from
special counsel Robert Mueller. Ultimately, he changes his mind and
says he will comply with the subpoena.

March 6: Director of
National Intelligence Dan Coats says
the Trump administration has not
put together “a coherent strategy” to combat Russian interference
in the 2018 midterm elections.

– The Washington
Post reports that a
January 2017 meeting in the Seychelles between Blackwater founder
and Trump supporter Erik Prince and Kirill Dimitriev, a Russian
official close to Putin—a meeting characterized by Prince as a
chance encounter—was in fact arranged in advance by the Trump
transition team. This information was provided to Mueller by
cooperating witness George Nader, who also attended the Seychelles
meeting. Nader alleges the meeting was arranged with the aim of
creating a back channel with a Kremlin emissary to discuss
US-Russia relations.

March 7: The New York Times reports that in at least
two instances, Trump has asked key witnesses—White House counsel
Don McGahn and former chief of staff Reince Priebus—for information
on what they discussed during their interviews with the special
counsel.

March 8:
A federal district court sets Paul Manafort’s trial for
July 10,
2018, after he pleads
not guilty to tax and fraud charges leveled against him by special
counsel Robert Mueller.

March 12: The House
Intelligence Committee says
it has completed interviews in its
Russia investigation and will soon issue a final report, over the
objections of Democrats on the committee. In a summary of their
report, the GOP lawmakers write that the committee has found
“no evidence of collusion,
coordination, or conspiracy between the Trump campaign and the
Russians.”

March 13: Democrat Rep.
Adam Schiff, the ranking member of the House Intelligence
Committee, says Democrats on the panel are not
done with the Russia
investigation. He says they plan to complete more interviews and
will issue their own report.

– CNN
reports that the FBI has
tried to meet with Nastya Rybka, the self-described mistress of
Oleg Deripaska imprisoned in Thailand. The meeting attempt came
after Rybka issued a plea for asylum in the United States in
exchange for hours of audio recordings she says she has of her time
with Deripaska that will shed light on Russian election
interference. FBI agents contacted Thai immigration officials to
set up a meeting with Rybka but were denied access, reportedly
because only family or lawyers can visit detainees.

March 15: The
New York
Times reports that
special counsel Robert Mueller has subpoenaed Trump Organization
records, including some related to Russia. This is the first known
instance of Mueller demanding documents tied directly to the
president’s businesses.

March
16: Politico reports that the Federal
Election Commission has launched an inquiry into potentially illegal
donations made to the National Rifle Association by Russian
individuals and businesses in support of Trump’s 2016
campaign.

– McClatchy
reports that according to two anonymous sources, Cleta
Mitchell, who served as a lawyer and board member for the NRA, had
concerns about the group’s ties to Russia. Mitchell denies this
claim, but Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee plan to
interview her, McClatchy reports.

– Andrew McCabe, former deputy
director of the FBI, is fired
by Attorney General Jeff Sessions
26 hours before his scheduled retirement, putting McCabe’s pension
in jeopardy. Sessions justifies the firing by saying that McCabe
was dishonest about a
conversation he authorized between FBI officials and a journalist.
McCabe responds
to the firing with a written
statement denying any dishonesty and says the firing was a
politically motivated attempt to discredit the Russia
investigation. McCabe previously testified that he could
corroborate former FBI Director James Comey’s accounts of Comey’s
conversations with the president.

March 17: Trump tweets
about McCabe’s firing, calling it a “great day.”

March 19: Britain’s Channel 4
News airs an
undercover investigation on Cambridge Analytica, the data analytics
firm that worked on
Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign. The broadcast includes video of
Cambridge Analytica CEO Alexander Nix talking about the company’s
methods for influencing foreign elections—including, according to
Nix, spreading propaganda online and entrapping candidates by
sending Ukrainian “girls” to their homes. (Cambridge
Analytica denies using entrapment and says Nix was just
playing along with someone who he thought was a potential
client.)

March 20: Channel 4 airs
a second
undercover segment on
Cambridge Analytica, in which CEO Alexander Nix describes what he
claims was the company’s expansive role in the digital campaign to
help Trump during the election. “We did all the research, all the data, all the
analytics, all the targeting,” Nix says. “We ran all the digital
campaign, the television campaign, and our data informed all the
strategy.” The chief data officer for Cambridge Analytica says in
the video that the firm’s work was responsible for Trump’s
Electoral College performance. “When you think about the fact that
Donald Trump lost the popular vote by 3 million votes but won the
Electoral College, that’s down to the data and the research,” he
says. “That’s how he won the election.” Cambridge Analytica announces it has suspended
Nix, pending an investigation into the Channel 4 videos.

March 21: ABC News
reports that Mueller’s team is
looking into ties between the Trump campaign, Cambridge Analytica,
and the Republican National Committee.

– Having concluded their Russia
investigation, House Intelligence Committee Republicans vote to release their full report. The
committee insists it found no evidence of collusion and recommends
instead a crackdown on leaks to the press and a repeal of the Logan
Act, a statute that criminalizes efforts by private citizens to
interfere in US foreign policy. Some legal experts had suggested
that Michael Flynn’s contacts with the Russian ambassador during
the presidential transition period may have run afoul of that law,
though special counsel Robert Mueller did not charge him with
violating it

March 22: John Dowd, the
head of a team of White House lawyers representing Trump in the
Russia probe, resigns. According to two sources who spoke to
the New York
Times, Dowd tendered
his resignation because the president “was increasingly ignoring
his advice” on how to respond to the special counsel’s
investigation.

Additional updates by Daniel Schulman, Noah Lanard, and
Kanyakrit Vongkiatkajorn

The Trump-Russia scandal—with all its bizarre and troubling
twists and turns—has become a controversy that is defining the
Trump presidency. The FBI recently disclosed that since July it has
been conducting a counterintelligence investigation into possible
coordination between Trump associates and Russia, as part of
its probe of Moscow’s meddling in the 2016 election. Citing “US
officials,” CNN reported
that the bureau has gathered information suggesting coordination
between Trump campaign officials and suspected Russian operatives.
Each day seems to bring a new revelation—and a new Trump
administration denial or deflection. It’s tough to keep track of
all the relevant events, pertinent ties, key statements, and
unraveling claims. So we’ve compiled what we know so far into the
timeline below, which covers Trump’s 30-year history with
Russia.  We will continue to update the timeline regularly as
events unfold. (Click here to go directly to the most recent
entry.) If you have a tip or we’ve left anything out,
please email us at trumprussia@motherjones.com.

1986: Donald Trump is seated next
to Russian Ambassador Yuri Dubinin at a lunch organized by
Leonard Lauder, the son of cosmetics scion Estée Lauder, who at the
time is running her cosmetics business. “One thing led to another,
and now I’m talking about building a large luxury hotel across the
street from the Kremlin” in partnership with the Soviet government,
Trump later writes in his 1987 book, The Art of the
Deal. Also present at the
event is Russian diplomat Vitaly Churkin, later the Russian
ambassador to the United Nations. (Churkin died in
February 2017 at age 64.)

January 1987: Intourist, the Soviet agency for
international tourism, expresses
interest in meeting with Trump.

“Almost all of the oligarchs were in the room,” Trump said of his
2013 visit to Moscow for his Miss Universe contest.

July 1987: Trump and his then-wife, Ivana, fly
to Moscow to tour potential hotel sites. Trump spokesman Dan Klores
later tells the Washington
Post that during the trip, Trump “met with a lot of the
economic and financial advisers in the Politburo” but did not see
Mikhail Gorbachev, then the USSR’s leader.

December 1, 1988: The Soviet mission to the
United Nations announces
that Gorbachev is tentatively scheduled to tour Trump Tower while
the Soviet leader is visiting New York, and that Trump plans to
show him a swimming pool inside a $19 million apartment.

December 7, 1988: Trump welcomes the wrong
Gorbachev to New York—shaking hands with a renowned Gorbachev
impersonator outside his hotel.

December 8, 1988: President Ronald Reagan
invites Donald
and Ivana Trump to a state dinner, where Trump meets the real
Gorbachev. According to Trump’s spokesman, the real estate
mogul had a lengthy discussion with the Soviet president about
economics and hotels.

January 1989: For $200,000, Trump signs a group
of Soviet cyclists for a road race from Albany, New York, to
Atlantic City, New Jersey, dubbed the Tour de
Trump, that will take place that
May.

November 5, 1996: Media
reports note that Trump is trying to partner with US tobacco
company Brooke Group to build a hotel in Moscow.

January 23, 1997: Trump meets with
Alexander Lebed, a retired Soviet general then running to be
president of Russia, at Trump Tower. Trump says they discussed his
plans to build “something major” in Moscow. Lebed reportedly
expressed his support, joking that his only objection would be that
“the highest skyscraper in the world cannot be built next to the
Kremlin. We cannot allow anyone spitting from the roof of the
skyscraper on the Kremlin.”

2000: Michael Caputo, who later runs Trump’s
primary campaign in New York during the 2016 race, secures a
PR contract
with the Russian
conglomerate Gazprom Media to burnish Russian President
Vladimir Putin’s image in the United States.

2005

Date unknown: Trump reportedly
signs a development
deal with Bayrock Group, a real estate firm founded by a former
Soviet official from Kazakhstan, to develop a hotel in Moscow and
agrees to partner on a hotel tower
in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Trump works on the projects with
Bayrock managing partner Felix Sater,
a Russian American businessman. The New York Times will
later publish a story revealing Sater’s criminal record, which
includes charges of racketeering and
assault.

June: Paul Manafort, later Trump’s campaign
chairman, pens a strategy
memo to Russia oligarch and Putin confidant Oleg Deripaska,
with whom he would sign a $10 million lobbying contract the
following year. “We are now of the belief that this model can
greatly benefit the Putin Government if employed at the correct
levels with the appropriate commitment to success,” Manafort
writes, noting that the effort “will be offering a great service
that can re-focus, both internally and externally, the policies of
the Putin government.” (Manafort later denies working to advance
Russian interests as part of this contract, first reported by the
Associated Press. Deripaska later calls the
AP story a “malicious…lie” and says, “I have never made any
commitments or contacts with the obligation or purpose to covertly
promote or advance ‘Putin’s Government’ interests anywhere in the
world.”

2007

September 19: Sater and the former Soviet
official who founded Bayrock, Tevfik Arif, stand next to Trump
at the launch
party for Trump SoHo, a hotel-condominium project co-financed
by Bayrock.

November 22:  Trump Vodka
debuts in Russia, at the Moscow Millionaire’s Fair. As part of its
new marketing campaign, Trump Vodka also unveils an ad featuring
Trump, tigers, the Kremlin, and Vladimir Lenin.

At the Millionaires’ Fair, Trump meets Sergey Millian, an
American citizen from Belarus who is the president of the
Russian-American Chamber of Commerce in the USA (RACC).
Subsequently, Millian later
recounted, “We met at his office in New York, where he
introduced me to his right-hand man—Michael Cohen. He is Trump’s
main lawyer, all contracts go through him. Subsequently, a contract
was signed with me to promote one of their real estate projects in
Russia and the CIS. You can say I was their exclusive broker.”
According to Millian, he helped Trump “study the Moscow market” for
potential real estate investments.

December 17: The New York Times
publishes a story about Felix Sater’s controversial past, which
includes prison time for stabbing a man with a margarita glass stem
during a bar fight and a guilty plea in a Mafia-linked racketeering
case. The article characterizes Sater as a Trump business associate
who is promoting several potential projects in partnership with
Trump.

December 19: In a
deposition, Trump is asked about his plans to build a hotel in
Moscow. He says, “It was a Trump International Hotel and Tower. It
would be a nonexclusive deal, so it would not have precluded me
from doing other deals in Moscow, which was very important to
me.”

2008

April: Trump announces he is partnering with
Russian oligarch Pavel Fuks to license his name for luxury
high-rises in Moscow, St. Petersburg, and Sochi, the site of the
2014 Winter Olympics. But Fuks ultimately balks at Trump’s price,
which the Russian business newspaper Kommersant estimated
could have been $200 million or more.

July: Billionaire Dmitri Rybolovlev, a Russian
oligarch, buys a Palm Beach mansion owned by Trump for $95 million,
despite Florida’s crashing real estate market and an appraisal on
the house for much less.
Trump bought the property for $41.35 million four years
earlier. Rybolovlev goes on to give conflicting
explanations for why he bought the property.

September 15: Donald Trump Jr. speaks at a real estate
conference in Manhattan, where he says, “Russians make up a
pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets…We see
a lot of money pouring in from Russia.”

Date unknown: Trump’s team reportedly invites
Sergei Millian to meet Trump at a horse race in Florida, where,
according to Millian, they sit in Trump’s private suite at the
Gulfstream race track in Miami. “Trump team, they realized that we
have a lot of connection with Russian investors. And they noticed
that we bring a lot of investors from Russia,” Millian told
ABC News in
a 2016 interview. “And they needed my assistance, yes, to sell
properties and sell some of the assets to Russian investors.”
Millian says that following this meeting with Trump, he worked as a
broker for the Trump Hollywood condominium project in Miami,
selling a “nice
percentage” of the building’s 200 units to Russian
investors.

2010

May 10: Jody Kriss, a former finance director
at Bayrock, files
a lawsuit
against the company. The suit alleges that Bayrock financed Trump SoHo
with mysterious cash from Kazhakstan and Russia and calls the
building “a Russian mob project.” (The complaint notes that “there
is no evidence that Trump took any part in” Bayrock’s interactions
with questionable Russian financing sources.)

Date unknown: Bayrock’s Sater becomes a
senior
adviser to Trump, according to his LinkedIn profile. Though
Trump later claims he would not recognize Sater, Sater has a Trump
Organization email address, phone number, and business
cards.

2013

January (date unknown): At an energy conference
in New York, energy consultant Carter Page meets Victor Podobnyy, a
Russian intelligence operative who in 2015 will be charged with
being an unregistered agent of a foreign government, along with two
other Russians. Until June 2013, Page will continue to meet, email, and
provide documents to Podobnyy about the energy business,
thinking that he is an attaché at the Russian mission to the United
Nations who can help broker deals in Russia. Meanwhile, Podobnyy
and one of his colleagues discuss efforts to recruit Page as an
asset.

May 29: Emin Agalarov, a Russian pop star and
the son of billionaire real estate developer Aras Agalarov,
releases a music video for his song “Amor.” In the video, he
pursues Miss Universe 2012, Olivia Culpo, through dark, empty
alleys with a flashlight. Following the
video’s release, representatives of Miss Universe, which Trump
at the time owns, discuss with the Agalarovs the option of holding
the next pageant in Moscow. The Agalarovs persuade them to host
Miss Universe at a concert hall they own on the outskirts of
Moscow.

June 18: Following the Miss USA contest in Las
Vegas, Trump announces he will bring the Miss Universe pageant to
Moscow.

He also wonders if Putin will attend the pageant, and if Putin
might “become my new best friend?”

June (date unknown): Defense Intelligence
Agency head Michael Flynn visits Moscow at the invitation of Igor
Sergun, the chief of the GRU, Russia’s military intelligence
agency. During his visit, Flynn gives an
hourlong lecture on leadership and intelligence to a group of
GRU officers at the agency’s headquarters. He is reportedly the
first US intelligence officer ever allowed inside the
headquarters.

June 21: Vladimir Putin awards Rex Tillerson,
now Trump’s secretary of state, with Russia’s Order of Friendship. As the
CEO of Exxon Mobil, Tillerson had developed a long-standing
relationship with the head of Russia’s state-owned oil company,
Rosneft, dating back to 1998.

October 17: In an interview with David Letterman,
Trump says, “I’ve done a lot of business with the Russians,” noting
that he once met Putin.

November 5: In a deposition, Trump is asked
about a 2007 New York
Times story outlining the controversial past of Felix
Sater. Trump replies that he barely knows Sater and would have
trouble recognizing him if they were in the same room.

“Putin even sent me a present, a beautiful present,” Trump boasted.

November 8: Trump, in Russia for the Miss
Universe pageant, meets with more than a
dozen of Russia’s top businessmen at Nobu, a restaurant 15
minutes from the Kremlin. The group includes Herman Gref, the CEO
of the state-controlled Sberbank PJSC, Russia’s biggest bank. The
meeting at Nobu is organized by Gref—who regularly meets with
Putin—and Aras Agalarov, who owns the Nobu franchise in Moscow.

– According to a source
connected to the Agalarovs, Putin asks his spokesman, Dmitry
Peskov, to call Trump in advance of the Miss Universe show to set
up an in-person meeting for the Russian president and Trump. Peskov
reportedly passes on the message and expresses Putin’s admiration
for Trump. Their plans to meet never come to fruition because of
scheduling changes for both Trump and Putin.

November 9: Trump spends the morning shooting a
music video with Emin Agalarov.

– The Miss Universe pageant takes place near Moscow. A notorious
Russian mobster, Alimzhan Tokhtakhounov, attends the event as a
VIP, strolling down the event’s red
carpet within minutes of Trump. At the time, Tokhtakhounov
was under federal indictment in the United States for his alleged
participation in an illegal gambling ring once run out of Trump
Tower. Emin Agalarov performs two songs at the pageant.

– MSNBC’s Thomas Roberts asks Trump
if he has a relationship with Putin. Trump
replies, “I do have a relationship and I can tell you that he’s
very interested in what we’re doing here today.”

November 11: Trump tweets his appreciation to
Aras Agalarov, the Russian billionaire with whom he partnered to
host Miss Universe, also complimenting Emin’s performance at the
pageant and declaring plans for a Trump tower in Moscow.

November 12: Trump tells Real Estate
Weekly that Miss Universe Russia provided a networking
opportunity: “Almost all of the oligarchs were in the room,” he
says. The same day, two developers who helped build the luxury
Trump SoHo hotel meet with the Agalarovs to discuss replicating the
hotel in Moscow. Aras Agalarov, whose real estate company secured
multiple contracts from the Kremlin and who once received a medal
of honor from Putin, later claims he and Trump signed a
deal to build a Trump Tower in Moscow following the pageant.
(The deal
never moved past preliminary discussions.) 

November 20: Emin Agalarov releases a new music
video featuring Trump and the 2013 Miss Universe contestants.

2014

March 6: Trump gives a
speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference and
boasts of getting a gift from Putin when he was in Russia for the
2013 Miss Universe pageant. “You know, I was in Moscow a couple
months ago, I own the Miss Universe pageant, and they treated me so
great,” Trump said. “Putin even sent me a present, beautiful
present, with a beautiful note.”

May 27: At a National Press
Club luncheon, Trump says, “I was in Moscow recently and I
spoke, indirectly and directly, with President Putin, who could not
have been nicer.”

October 8: The counsel’s office of the Defense
Intelligence Agency responds to
an inquiry from Michael Flynn about ethics restrictions that will
apply to him after his Army retirement. The office explains in a
letter that he can not receive foreign government payments without
prior approval, due to the Constitution’s emoluments clause. “If
you are ever in a position where you would receive an emolument
from a foreign government or from an entity that might be
controlled by a foreign government, be sure to obtain advance
approval from the Army prior to acceptance,” the letter
states.

2015

September: FBI special agent Adrian Hawkins
contacts the
Democratic National Committee, saying that one of its computer
systems has been compromised by a cyberespionage group linked to
the Russian government. He speaks to a help desk technician who
does a quick check of the DNC systems for evidence of a cyber
intrusion. In the next several weeks, Hawkins calls the DNC back
repeatedly, but his calls are not returned, in part because the
tech support contractor who took Hawkins’ call does not know
whether he is a real agent. The FBI does not dispatch an agent to
visit the DNC in person and does not make efforts to contact more
senior DNC officials.

September 21: On a conservative radio show,
Trump says, “I was in Moscow not so long ago for an event that we
had, a big event, and many of [Putin’s] people were there…I was
with the top-level people, both oligarchs and generals, and
top-of-the-government people. I can’t go further than that, but I
will tell you that I met the top people, and the relationship was
extraordinary.”

September 29: Trump praises
Putin during an interview with Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly: “I will
tell you, in terms of leadership he is getting an ‘A,’ and our
president is not doing so well.”

November: WikiLeaks
founder Julian Assange writes to a private Twitter group stating his
organization’s preference for a Republican victory in the 2016
election: “We believe it would be much better for GOP to win.
Dems+Media+liberals woudl then form a block to reign in their worst
qualities. With Hillary in charge, GOP will be pushing for her
worst qualities., dems+media+neoliberals will be mute.” He adds,
“She’s a bright, well connected, sadistic sociopath.”

November 10: At a Republican presidential
primary debate, Trump says he “got to know [Putin] very well
because we were both on 60 Minutes, we were
stablemates.”

November 11: The Associated
Press, Time, and other media outlets report that Trump
and Putin were never in the same
studio. Trump was interviewed in New York, and Putin was
interviewed in Moscow.

December 10: Retired General Michael Flynn, the
former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency who was reportedly
forced out in 2014, attends and is paid more than $30,000 to
speak at Russia Today’s 10th-anniversary
dinner in Moscow, where he is seated next
to Putin.

December 16: Then-CIA Director John
Brennan writes in an internal memo that some members of Congress
don’t “understand and appreciate the importance and gravity” of
Russian interference in the presidential election. The criticism is
reportedly directed at Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell
(R-Ky.) and Majority Whip John Cornyn (R-Texas), according to a
BuzzFeed article published in August
2017. Brennan’s memo also says then-FBI Director James Comey and
then-National Intelligence Director James Clapper agree on the
scope of Russian involvement.

December 17: Putin praises Trump in his
year-end press
conference, saying that he is “very talented” and that “he is
an absolute leader of the presidential race, as we see it today. He
says that he wants to move to another-level relations, a deeper
level of relations with Russia…How can we not welcome that? Of
course, we welcome it.” Trump calls the praise “a great honor” from
“a man so highly respected within his own country and beyond.” He
adds, “I have always felt that Russia and the United States should
be able to work well with each other toward defeating terrorism and
restoring world peace, not to mention trade and all of the other
benefits derived from mutual respect.”

2016

February 17: At a rally in South
Carolina, Trump says of Putin, “I have no relationship with
him, other than that he called me a genius.”

March 14: While
traveling in Italy, George Papadopoulos, a member of the Trump
campaign’s foreign policy team, meets London-based professor Joseph
Mifsud. The professor claims to have connections to Russian
government officials, which piques Papadopoulos’
interest.

March 21: In an interview with the Washington
Post, Trump identifies Carter Page as one of his foreign
policy advisers. He also names George Papadopoulos, whom he describes as “an energy
and oil consultant, excellent guy.”

March 24: George Papadopoulos sends an email to Trump
campaign officials saying he “just finished a very productive lunch
with a good friend of mine”—Joseph Mifsud. This professor, he says,
introduced Papadopoulos to a female Russian national that
Papadopoulos describes as “Putin’s niece” and Russia’s
ambassador to the United Kingdom, who also functions as the
country’s deputy foreign minister. Papadopoulous writes that the
main discussion at lunch was the possibility of setting up a
meeting between the Trump campaign and members of Russian
leadership “to discuss US-Russia ties under Trump.”

March 30: Bloomberg
Businessweek reports on Page’s past advising of Gazprom,
Russia’s state-owned gas company. Page tells Bloomberg
Businessweek that after Trump named him as an adviser,
positive notes from his Russian contacts filled his inbox. “There’s
a lot of excitement in terms of the possibilities for creating a
better situation” in terms of easing US sanctions on Russia, Page
explained.

March 31: George
Papadopoulos attends a national security meeting with Trump and his
foreign policy advisers, including Jeff Sessions. There he says he has connections who can help
arrange a meeting between Trump and Putin.

April 18: Joseph
Mifsud emails George Papadopolous to introduce him to Ivan
Timofeev, the director of programs at the Russian International
Affairs Council, a think tank with ties to the Russian Ministry of
Foreign Affairs, based in Moscow. Over the next few weeks,
Papadopolous and Timofeev speak several times over Skype. In
subsequent email exchanges, Timofeev will tell Papadopolous that
he has access to Russian government
officials.

April 22: Timofeev emails
Papadopolous to thank him
for “an extensive talk” and proposes that they meet in London or
Moscow. Papadopolous replies to suggest that they set up
the meeting in London.

April 25: Papadopolous
emails a senior policy adviser for the Trump
campaign to say that
the Russian government has an “open invitation” from Putin to meet
with Trump.

April 26: The
Washington Post reports that Paul Manafort, then
Trump’s convention manager (who would later be promoted to campaign
chairman), has long-standing
ties to pro-Putin Ukrainian officials. Between 2007 and 2012,
Manafort worked as a political consultant to Putin ally Viktor
Yanukovych and his pro-Russia party. He helped Yanukovych remake
his image following the Orange Revolution and mount a successful
bid for the Ukrainian presidency.

– Papadopolous meets Mifsud for breakfast at a
London hotel. Mifsud tells Papadopolous that he’s just returned
from Moscow, where he met with Russian government officials. The
professor says he learned that the Russian government has “dirt” on
Hillary Clinton, in the form of “thousands” of emails.

April 27: Trump gives his
first foreign policy speech at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington,
DC. During the speech, he calls for an “easing of tensions” and
“improved relations” with Russia. Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak
is in attendance, as is Sen. Jeff Sessions. According to the
Wall Street Journal, before Trump’s remarks, he “met at a VIP
reception with Russia’s ambassador to the U.S., Sergey
Ivanovich Kislyak. Mr. Trump warmly greeted Mr. Kislyak and three
other foreign ambassadors who came to the reception.”

– Papadopolous emails a senior
policy adviser for the
Trump campaign. He writes, “Have some interesting messages coming
in from Moscow about a trip when the time is right.”

– Papadopolous emails a
high-ranking member of the Trump campaign “to discuss Russia’s interest in hosting
Mr. Trump. Have been receiving a lot of calls over the last month
about Putin wanting to host him and the team when the time is
right.”

April 30:
Papadopoulos thanks Mifsud, the professor, for his “critical help”
in arranging a possible meeting between the Trump campaign and the
Russian government.

April and May:
The DNC’s IT department contacts the FBI about unusual computer
activity and hires cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike to investigate.
In May, Crowdstrike
determines that hackers affiliated with Russian intelligence
infiltrated the DNC’s network.

May 4: Timofeev emails
Papadopoulos to say that
he’s spoken to his colleagues at the “MFA”—Russia’s Ministry of
Foreign Affairs—and they are “open for cooperation.” Timofeev
offers to set up a meeting with them in Moscow. Papadopoulos replies that he is “[g]lad the MFA is
interested” and forwards Timofeev’s email
to Corey Lewandowski, then
the campaign manager for the Trump campaign, asking, “Is this something we want to move
forward with?”

May 5: Papadopoulos has a phone call with Trump campaign
policy adviser Sam Clovis and then forwards Timofeev’s email to
him.

May 13: Mifsud
emails Papadopolous, writing, “We will continue to
liaise through you with the Russian counterparts in terms of what
is needed for a high level meeting of Mr. Trump with the Russian
Federation.”

May 14:
Papadopolous tells the campaign’s Lewandowski
that the “Russian government” has
relayed to him that “they are interested in hosting Mr.
Trump.”

May 21: Papadopolous emails Paul Manafort, then a
high-ranking staffer for the Trump campaign, with the subject line: “Request from Russia to
meet Mr. Trump.” The email includes the May 4 email from Timofeev, and
Papadopolous adds, “Russia has been eager to meet Mr. Trump for
quite sometime and have been reaching out to me to
discuss.”

June: The Moscow-based Russian Institute for
Strategic Studies (RISS), a government think tank run by retired
foreign intelligence officials appointed by Vladimir Putin, drafts
and circulates a strategy paper among top Russian government
officials. According to
Reuters, it recommends that the Kremlin help spur a propaganda
campaign—via social media and state-controlled news outlets—that
would help elect a more pro-Russia US president. This is based on
information provided to Reuters by seven current or former US
officials in April 2017.

June 1: George Papadopolous emails Corey Lewandowski,
a high-ranking Trump campaign
official, to ask about
Russia. The official refers Papadopolous to the campaign
supervisor. Papadopolous then emails the campaign’s Sam Clovis, writing, “I have the Russian MFA
asking me if Mr. Trump is interested in visiting Russia at some
point. Wanted to pass this info along to you for you to decide
what’s best to do with it and what message I should send (or to
ignore).”

June 3: Rob Goldstone, the publicist for Emin
Agalarov, emails Donald Trump Jr. to say that Russia’s crown
prosecutor met with Aras Agalarov—Emin’s dad and a Russian
oligarch—and told him that he possessed “official documents and
information that would incriminate Hillary” and that could be
shared with the Trump campaign. Goldstone adds that the information, “is
obviously very high level and sensitive information but is part of
Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump.” Trump Jr.
responds by asking to speak to Emin about the material described in
Goldstone’s email, and he adds, “If it’s what you say I love
it.”

June 6: Goldstone tries to coordinate a phone
call between Trump Jr. and Emin over email.

June 7: Goldstone emails Trump Jr. to say that
Emin asked that Trump Jr. meet with a “Russian government attorney”
in New York. They set a time over email for June 9, and Trump Jr.
responds that Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and Trump’s
son-in-law, Jared Kushner, will also likely sit in on the
meeting.

June 8: Trump Jr. forwards the email with the
updated meeting time to Kushner and Manafort.

June 9: Promised damaging
information on Clinton, Trump Jr., Manafort, and Kushner meet with a Kremlin-tied Russian lawyer,
Natalia Veselnitskaya. She says she has evidence
that individuals linked to Russia are funding the DNC. Trump Jr.
will later characterize her statements on this topic as “vague” and
“ambiguous” and will claim that the discussion turned to the
Magnitsky Act and Russia’s policy on US
adoptions of Russian children.

June 14: The Washington Post reports that
Russian hackers penetrated the Democratic National Committee and
stole opposition research on Donald Trump.

June 15: Guccifer
2.0, an online persona that US intelligence officials link to
Russia’s military intelligence service, takes credit for the DNC
hack and posts hacked DNC documents. Guccifer will go on to post
additional hacked documents—from the DNC and the Democratic
Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC), and purportedly from the
Clinton Foundation—at least nine more times in the months leading
up to the election. (Some reports
contest that the documents came from the Clinton Foundation
itself.)

– During a private
meeting, Republican leaders discuss the DNC hack. House
Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy remarks, “There’s two people I think
Putin pays: Rohrabacher and Trump.” (Rorhbacher is California
Republican Dana Rohrbacher, a steadfast defender of Putin and
Russia.) When his colleagues laugh, McCarthy adds, “Swear to God.”
(McCarthy later says he was joking.)

June
19: George Papadopolous emails a Trump campaign supervisor
with the subject line “New message from Russia.” In his email,
Papadopolous says the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs had asked
if a representative of the Trump campaign might be willing to make
the trip to Russia if Trump couldn’t. Papadopolous volunteers to
make an “off the record” trip himself.

July 7: Trump campaign foreign policy adviser
Carter Page criticizes US sanctions against Russia during a speech at the
New Economic School in Moscow. Politico later reports that
Page asked for and received permission from Trump’s then-campaign
manager, Corey Lewandowski, to speak at the Moscow event. Page’s
trip spurs the FBI—which has had an interest in the investor since
discovering in 2013 that a Russian operative had tried to recruit
him—to begin
investigating the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia.

July 18: The Washington
Post reports that the Trump campaign worked with members
of the Republican Party platform committee in advance of the
Republican National Convention to soften the platform’s position
related to Russia’s annexation of Crimea from Ukraine. The platform
reportedly included a provision that promised to provide arms to
Ukraine in its fight against Russia, but Trump campaign staffers
encouraged the committee to jettison this language.

– Trump surrogate Sen. Jeff Sessions meets with Sergey Kislyak,
the Russian ambassador, on the
sidelines of a Republican National Convention event put on by
the conservative Heritage Foundation.

July 20: New Yorker reporter Ryan
Lizza asks Sam Clovis, Trump’s top policy adviser, about
allegations that the Trump team worked with the Republican Party to
soften the party platform’s position on Russia in advance of the
RNC. Clovis responds, “I can’t talk about,” and walks away.

July 18-21: Trump campaign
staffers Carter Page
and J.D. Gordon, the campaign’s director of national security, also
meet with the
Russian ambassador during the convention.

July 22: WikiLeaks
publishes nearly 20,000 hacked DNC emails in advance of the
Democratic National Convention. Some of the
emails indicate that DNC officials favored Clinton over Sen.
Bernie Sanders.

July 24: Paul Manafort, Trump’s campaign
chairman, appears on ABC’s This
Week, where he is asked whether there are connections
between the Trump campaign and the Putin regime. Manafort says,
“No, there are not. And you know, there’s no basis to it.”

July 25: Trump tweets about the hacked DNC
emails:

July 26: US intelligence
agencies tell the White House they now have “high confidence”
that the Russian government was behind the DNC hack. This is
reported by media outlets but not publicly confirmed by
intelligence agencies.

– In an interview
with NBC News, President Barack Obama says hacks are being
investigated by the FBI, but that “experts have attributed this to
the Russians.” He notes, “What we do know is that the Russians hack
our systems. Not just government systems, but private systems. But
you know, what the motives were in terms of the leaks, all that—I
can’t say directly. What I do know is that Donald Trump has
repeatedly expressed admiration for Vladimir Putin.”

– Trump tweets, calling the Russia allegations
“crazy”: 

July 27: Trump encourages Russia to hack
Clinton’s emails, saying during a news
conference, “Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to
find the 30,000 emails that are missing. I think you’ll probably be
rewarded mightily by our press.” At the same event, he declares, “I
never met Putin. I don’t know who Putin is.”

July 31: On ABC’s This
Week, Trump again denies knowing Putin, saying, “I have no
relationship with him.” Trump also denies that his campaign played
any role in getting the Republican Party to soften its platform on
arming Ukraine.

– On Meet the
Press, Manafort denies that he or anyone within the Trump
campaign worked to change the platform.

– Sen. Jeff Sessions defends Trump’s efforts to cultivate a
friendship with Russia during an appearance on CNN:
“Donald Trump is right. We need to figure out a way to end this
cycle of hostility that’s putting this country at risk, costing us
billions of dollars in defense, and creating hostilities.”

Late July: The FBI launches a
counterintelligence investigation into contacts between Trump
associates and Russia. There is no public confirmation of this
investigation at the time, but FBI Director James Comey later
confirms the investigation in a March 2017
hearing before the House Intelligence Committee.

August 4: In a phone call with Alexander
Bornikov, the head of Russia’s FSB, an intelligence agency, CIA
Director John Brennan puts his
counterpart on notice about further interference in the US
election. Bornikov denies efforts targeting the election.

August 5: Trump spokeswoman Hope Hicks, asked
by the Washington
Post about Carter Page’s July speech in Moscow, downplays
his role as a foreign policy adviser to the Trump campaign, saying
he “does not speak for Mr. Trump or the campaign.”

– Longtime Trump adviser Roger Stone writes an article for
Breitbart in which he
denies that Russia was behind the DNC hack. He argues that Guccifer
2.0 has no ties to Russia.

August 6: NPR confirms
the Trump campaign’s involvement in encouraging the Republican
Party to soften its platform’s pro-Ukraine position on Russia’s
annexation of Crimea.

August 14: The New York
Times reports that Ukraine’s anti-corruption bureau has
discovered Manafort’s name on a list of “black accounts” compiled
by ousted Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, a Putin ally. The
tallies show undisclosed payments designated for Manafort totaling
$12.7 million between 2007 and 2012, the years that Manafort worked
for Yanukovych as a political consultant. (Manafort denies
receiving any illicit payments.)

August 15:
After communicating about a possible “off the record” trip to
Moscow for weeks, a
campaign supervisor encourages George Papadopolous and another
foreign policy adviser to “make the trip” to Russia, “if feasible.”
(The trip never happens.)

August 17: Trump receives his first classified
intelligence briefing as the GOP nominee for president. He
brings Michael Flynn with him to the meeting, which includes
discussion of the intelligence community’s assessment that Russia
was interfering in the US election.

August 19: Manafort resigns from
the Trump campaign.

August 21: Roger Stone tweets:

August 29: Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid
(D-Nev.) pens a
letter to the FBI, asking the bureau to investigate the
possibility of election-tampering by Russia in the upcoming
presidential election. “I have recently become concerned that the
threat of the Russian government tampering in our presidential
election is more extensive than widely known,” Reid writes.
“The prospect of a hostile government actively seeking to undermine
our free and fair elections represents one of the gravest threats
to our democracy since the Cold War and it is critical for the
Federal Bureau of Investigation to use every resource available to
investigate this matter thoroughly.”

August 29: Yahoo
News reports that the
FBI has found evidence that the state voter systems in Arizona and
Illinois were breached by hackers possibly linked to the Russian
government.

August 30: House Democrats send a
letter to FBI Director James Comey calling on the bureau to
investigate ties between the Trump campaign and Russian officials
and any impact these ties may have had on the hacking of the DNC
and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

September 5: The Washington
Post reports that US intelligence agencies, including the
FBI, are investigating possible plans by Russia to disrupt the
presidential election.

– Putin and Obama have a tense meeting at the G-20
summit in China, where they discuss Syria, Ukraine, and
cybersecurity. In December,
Obama will tell reporters that he confronted Putin about Russia’s
alleged interference in the election and told him to “cut it
out.”

September 7: Director of National Intelligence
James Clapper suggests
publicly for the first time that Russia may have been
responsible for the DNC hack, pointing to Obama’s July statement
that “experts have attributed this to the Russians.” Clapper adds
that “the Russians hack our systems all the time.”

September 8: Trump responds to
Clapper’s comments in an interview with RT, the
English-language arm of a Russian state-controlled media
conglomerate, casting doubt on whether Russian hackers were
responsible for the DNC hack. “I think maybe the Democrats are
putting that out,” Trump says. “Who knows, but I think it’s pretty
unlikely.”

– Jeff Sessions meets with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak in
his Senate office. He is the only one of
the Senate Armed Services Committee’s 26 members to meet with the
ambassador in 2016. The meeting occurs days after Putin and Obama’s
tense G-20 meeting.

September 20: WikiLeaks’ Twitter account sends a private direct message to Donald Trump
Jr., the Republican nominee’s oldest son and campaign surrogate. “A
PAC run anti-Trump site putintrump.org is about to launch,” the
message reads. “The PAC is a recycled pro-Iraq war PAC. We have
guessed the password. It is ‘putintrump.’ See ‘About’ for who is
behind it. Any comments?”

September 21: Donald Trump Jr. responds to the message from WikiLeaks: “Off
the record I don’t know who that is, but I’ll ask around, Thanks.”
Trump Jr. then proceeds to act on his promise: he emails senior
Trump campaign officials, including Steve Bannon, Kellyanne Conway,
Brad Parscale, and Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner, to tell them
about the note from WikiLeaks. Kushner then forwards the email to
campaign communications staffer Hope Hicks.

September 22: Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.),
vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, and Rep. Adam
Schiff (D-Calif.), the ranking member of the House Intelligence
Committee, release a
statement about Russia’s interference in the US election.
“Based on briefings we have received, we have concluded that the
Russian intelligence agencies are making a serious and concerted
effort to influence the U.S. election,” they wrote. “We believe
that orders for the Russian intelligence agencies to conduct such
actions could come only from the very senior levels of the Russian
government.”

September 23: Yahoo
News reports that US intelligence officials are
investigating whether Trump foreign policy adviser Carter Page
discussed the possible lifting of US sanctions on Russia and other
topics during private communications with top Russian officials,
including a Putin aide and the current executive chairman of
Rosneft, who is on the Treasury Department’s US sanctions list.
Trump campaign spokesman Jason Miller claims Page “has no role” in
the Trump campaign and says that “we are not aware of any of his
activities, past or present.”

September 25: In a CNN
interview, Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway denies that
Page is affiliated with the Trump campaign. “He’s certainly not
part of the campaign that I’m running,” she said.

In response to a question about Page’s possible connections to
Russian officials, Conway says, “If he’s doing that, he’s certainly
not doing it with the permission or knowledge of the campaign,” She
adds, “He is certainly not authorized to do that.”

September 26: Page takes a
leave from the campaign.

– During the first
presidential debate, Clinton brings up the allegations that
Russia orchestrated the DNC hack. Trump responds, “I don’t think
anybody knows it was Russia that broke into the DNC. She’s saying
Russia, Russia, Russia. I mean, it could be Russia, but it could
also be China. It could also be lots of other people. It also could
be somebody sitting on their bed that weighs 400 pounds, okay?”

October 1: Roger Stone tweets:

October 3: Roger Stone tweets:

October 7: US intelligence agencies issue a
joint
release saying they are “confident” the Russian government
interfered in the US election, in part by directing the leaking of
hacked emails belonging to political institutions like the DNC.
This is the first official government confirmation that Russia
orchestrated the hacking and leaks during the election.

– Late on Friday afternoon, a leaked video of Trump boasting of
groping and kissing women without their consent is published by the
Washington Post. Half an hour
later,
WikiLeaks begins to release several thousand hacked emails from
Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta.

October 9: During the second
presidential debate, Clinton accuses Trump of benefiting from
Russian hacking and other interference in the election. Trump
responds, “I don’t know Putin. I think it would be great if we got
along with Russia because we could fight ISIS together, as an
example. But I don’t know Putin.”

Referring to Trump campaign staffers, Russia’s deputy foreign
minister said the day after the election, “A number of them
maintained contacts with Russian representatives. There were
contacts. We continue to do this and have been doing this work
during the election campaign.”

October 11: The Obama White House promises a
“proportional” response following the US intelligence community’s
conclusion that Russia was responsible for hacking the DNC and
other groups.

October 12: Sources briefed on the FBI
examination of Russian hacking say the
agency suspects that Russian intelligence agencies are behind the
hacking of the emails of Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta and
a Florida election systems vendor.

– Roger Stone says he has “back-channel
communications” with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange through a
mutual friend.

October 19: During the final
presidential debate, Trump casts doubt on the US intelligence
community’s conclusion that the Russian government interfered in
the election. He also denies having ever met or spoken to Putin,
despite his previous statements to the contrary. “I never met
Putin,” Trump says. ” I have nothing to do with Putin. I’ve never
spoken to him.”

October 30: The plane belonging to Dmitri
Rybolovlev, the Russian oligarch who purchased Trump’s Florida
mansion in 2008, is in Las
Vegas the same day Trump holds a rally there.

– Outgoing Senate Minority Leader Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.) sends
a letter to FBI Director James Comey calling on him to release what
Reid calls “explosive” information about Trump’s Russia ties. “In
my communications with you and other top officials in the national
security community, it has become clear that you possess explosive
information about close ties and coordination between Donald Trump,
his top advisors, and the Russian government,” Reid writes. “The
public has a right to know this information.”

October 31: Mother
Jones reports that a veteran of a Western intelligence
service has given the FBI memos saying that Russia had mounted a
yearslong operation to co-opt or cultivate Trump and that the
Kremlin had gathered compromising information on Trump during his
visits to Moscow that could be used for blackmail. The article
notes that the FBI has requested more information from this
source.

October: Russian government think tank RISS
drafts and circulates a document among top Russian officials
warning that Hillary Clinton is likely to win the US presidential
election. According to
Reuters, the memo advises the Kremlin to revise its strategy
for influencing the election: Instead of focusing on pro-Trump
propaganda, it should instead seek to undermine Clinton’s
reputation and the legitimacy of the US electoral system by stoking
fears about voter fraud.

Date unknown: Prior to
Election Day, Flynn contacts Kislyak. It’s unknown how often
the pair communicated or what they talked about.

November 1: NBC News reports that the FBI is
conducting a preliminary inquiry into Paul Manafort’s business ties
to Russia and Ukraine. Manafort tells NBC, “None of it is true.” He
denies having dealings with Putin or the Russian government and
says any allegations to the contrary are “Democratic
propaganda.”

November 3: Dmitri Rybolovlev’s plane lands in
Charlotte, North Carolina, about 90
minutes before Trump’s plane lands at the same airport in
advance of a Trump rally to be held that day in nearby Concord.

November 9: Trump wins the presidential
election.

November 10: Interfax news agency reports that
the Russian government had contact with the Trump campaign during
the campaign. Referring to Trump campaign staffers, Sergei Ryabkov,
Russia’s deputy foreign minister, says, “A number of them
maintained contacts with Russian representatives” in the Russian
Foreign Ministry. And he adds, “There were contacts. We continue to
do this and have been doing this work during the election
campaign.”

– Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov tells the Associated
Press that Russian foreign policy experts have been in contact
with the Trump campaign. “And our experts, our specialists on the
U.S., on international affairs…Of course they are constantly
speaking to their counterparts here, including those from Mr.
Trump’s group,” Peskov said.

November 11: Trump campaign spokeswoman Hope
Hicks tells the Associated Press that the allegations of contact
between the Trump campaign and Russian officials are false. “It
never happened,” she says. “There was no communication between the
campaign and any foreign entity during the campaign.”

November 16: The director of the National
Security Agency, Admiral Michael Rogers, implies that he believes Russia
interfered in the US election. In response to a question about
WikiLeaks hacks during the election, Rogers says, “This was a
conscious effort by a nation-state to attempt to achieve a specific
effect.”

November 17: Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), the
top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, sends a
letter to Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah), the committee’s top
Republican, calling for an investigation into Russia’s interference
in the election.

November 23: The Wall Street
Journal reports that in October 2016, Donald Trump Jr.
spoke at a meeting of a French think tank run by a
couple, Fabien Baussart and Randa Kassis, who have “worked
closely with Russia to try to end the conflict” in Syria. Kassis is
the leader of a Syrian group endorsed by the Kremlin that seeks to
cooperate with Moscow ally President Bashar Assad.

November 29: Seven members of the Senate
Intelligence Committee write a
letter to Obama asking him to declassify relevant intelligence
on Russia’s role in the election.

Early December: Two Russian intelligence
officers who worked on cyber operations and a Russian computer
security expert are arrested in
Moscow and charged with treason for providing information to
the United States. (There is no indication of whether the arrests
are related to the Russian hacking of the 2016 campaign.)

December 8: Carter Page, no longer a foreign
policy adviser to Trump, visits
Moscow, where he tells a state-run news agency that he plans to
meet with “business leaders and thought leaders.”

December 9: The Washington
Post reports that a secret CIA assessment concluded that
Russia intervened in the 2016 election to help Trump win the
presidency. In response, the Trump transition team issues a
statement attempting to discredit the CIA’s conclusion: “These are
the same people that said Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass
destruction. The election ended a long time ago…It’s now time to
move on and ‘Make America Great Again.’”

December 11: In an appearance on Fox News
Sunday, Trump again casts doubt on the US intelligence
community’s findings on Russia’s interference in the election.
“They have no idea if it’s Russia or China or somebody,” Trump says
of the CIA’s findings. “It could be somebody sitting in a bed
someplace. I mean, they have no idea.”

December 13: Trump names Rex Tillerson, the
former CEO of Exxon Mobil, as his secretary of state nominee.
Tillerson has long-standing ties to Russia and Putin. Tillerson
helped Exxon cut several oil-drilling deals with Rosneft, Russia’s
state-owned oil company, and in 2013 Putin awarded Tillerson the
Russian Order of Friendship.

December (date unknown): Michael Flynn and
Jared Kushner meet with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak at Trump
Tower. Kislyak was not caught on tape entering the building,
suggesting that he may have been brought in through a back
entrance.

December (date unknown): Kislyak requests
another meeting with Kushner. Kushner sends a deputy, Avrahm
Berkowitz, to meet with the Russian ambassador in his stead. At
that meeting, Kislyak requests that Kushner meet with Sergey N.
Gorkov, the chief of Vnesheconombank, Russia’s state-owned
development bank. Kushner meets with Gorkov later that month.

December 29: Obama announces
sanctions against Russia for the country’s alleged interference
in the presidential election. The measure includes the ejection of
35 Russian diplomats from the United States; the closure of Cold
War-era Russian compounds in Long Island, New York, and in
Maryland; and sanctions against the GRU and the FSB (Russian
intelligence agencies), four employees of those agencies, and three
companies that worked with the GRU.

– Michael Flynn holds five phone
calls with Kislyak, during which they at some point discuss US
sanctions on Russia. (White House press secretary Sean Spicer later
claims falsely that they held just one call, in which they
merely discussed “logistical information.”)

2017

January 4: According to the New York
Times, Flynn tells Don McGahn, who at the time was the
transition team’s top lawyer, that he is under investigation for
failing to disclose his work as a lobbyist for Turkey during the
campaign.

January 5: President Obama meets with FBI Director James Comey and other
national security officials, and they discuss how much information
concerning Russia they should share with Trump’s transition team.
According to notes of the meeting taken by national security
adviser Susan Rice, Obama stated that he wanted the Trump-Russia
probe handled “by the book.”

January 6: Flynn’s attorney and transition team
lawyers hold another discussion about the investigation involving
Flynn.

–Top intelligence officials, including Director
of National Intelligence James Clapper, CIA Director John Brennan,
FBI Director James Comey, and National Security Agency head Mike
Rogers, brief Donald Trump at Trump Tower on the highly
classified intelligence supporting the case that Russia interfered
in the 2016 election. After the meeting, Comey privately briefs
Trump on the Steele dossier.

– The Office of the Director of National Intelligence releases
a report
saying that the CIA, the FBI, and the NSA believe there is evidence
that Russia actively tried to help Trump win the election. They
also conclude with “high confidence” that Russian military
intelligence used the Guccifer 2.0 persona and a website called
DCLeaks.com to release the hacked documents and that Russia’s
military intelligence branch channeled hacked material to
WikiLeaks.

Early January: Concerned that classified
material relating to Russia’s meddling in the 2016 election might
disappear once the Trump administration takes office, Obama
administration officials create a
list containing the serial numbers of key documents. An
administration official hand-delivers this list to senior members
of the Senate Intelligence Committee.

January 10: CNN reports
that Obama and Trump received classified briefings that covered
allegations contained in the Russia-Trump memos authored by the
Western intelligence official that Russian intelligence possessed
compromising material on Trump.

– BuzzFeed publishes the Trump-Russia memos in
full.

– Trump calls the Russia memos story “#fakenews” on Twitter.

– During his Senate confirmation hearing, Jeff Sessions responds
to questions about alleged contacts between the Trump campaign and
Russia by saying, “I have been called a surrogate at a time or two
in that campaign and I did not have communications with the
Russians.”

– FBI Director James Comey testifies at a Senate Intelligence
Committee hearing. He is asked whether the FBI is investigating
Trump campaign staffers’ ties to Russia. Comey declines to
answer the question.

– According to McClatchy‘s reporting
in May 2017, Obama’s national security adviser, Susan Rice, informs
Michael Flynn of the Pentagon’s plan to use Syrian Kurdish forces
to retake the Islamic State’s de facto capital, Raqqa. Flynn asks
Rice to delay the operation, a position that “conformed to the
wishes of Turkey.”

January 11: Trump again denies the allegations
in the Russia memos in a series of tweets. Also in reference to the
Russia allegations, he asks, “Are we living in Nazi
Germany?”

– At his first news
conference since being elected, Trump acknowledges that Russia
was behind the hacks, saying, “As far as hacking, I think it was
Russia. But I think we also get hacked by other countries and other
people.”

Around January 11: A secret meeting takes place
in the Seychelles between Blackwater founder Erik Prince, a major
Trump campaign donor and brother of Education Secretary Betsy
DeVos, and a Russian close to Putin in an effort to establish an
unofficial back channel between Moscow and Trump. According to
sources who would later speak to the Washington
Post, the meeting was allegedly coordinated by the crown
prince of Abu Dhabi, Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed al-Nahyan, and his
brother. It occurred shortly after a December visit to the United
States by Zayed, which the United Arab Emirates did not disclose to
the Obama administration.

January 13: Trump again calls claims about his
Russian connections “fake news.” His tweet refers to a comment by a
Kremlin
spokesman earlier in the month that called the US intelligence
community’s conclusion that Russia interfered in the US election
“absolutely unfounded.”

January 15: In an appearance on Face the
Nation, Vice President-elect Mike Pence says Michael Flynn
told him that he did not discuss US sanctions during his
conversations with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak.

January 19: The New York Times
reports that
the FBI, the NSA, the CIA, and the Treasury Department’s financial
crimes unit are investigating Paul Manafort, Carter Page, and Roger
Stone for their possible contacts with Russia during the campaign.
As part of their investigation, the Times reports, these
agencies are examining intercepted communications and financial
transactions.

January 20: Trump is inaugurated as the 45th
president of the United States.

January 23: White House press secretary Sean
Spicer holds his first White House press briefing. He insists that
national security adviser Michael Flynn’s conversations with the
Russian ambassador included no discussion of US sanctions.

January 24: The FBI
interviews Flynn about his phone conversations with the Russian
ambassador. Flynn reportedly
denies having discussed US sanctions on Russia.

January 26: Sally Yates, the acting attorney
general, informs White
House counsel Don McGahn that Flynn had discussed US sanctions
on Russia with the Russian ambassador, despite Flynn’s claims to
the contrary in his FBI interview.

– McGahn informs
Trump of Yates’ report that Flynn had a conversation with the
Russian ambassador in December that included a discussion about US
sanctions. This reveals that Flynn misled Pence when he said he had
not had substantive conversations with the Russian ambassador.

January 27: In a one-on-one dinner at the White
House, Trump reportedly asks FBI Director James Comey whether he is
personally under investigation by the FBI for possible Russia ties,
according to a May 2017 NBC
interview with Trump. Trump claims that Comey reassured him
that he was not under investigation. Two of Comey’s associates who
speak to the New York
Times in May 2017 have a different account of the dinner:
They say that Trump asked Comey for loyalty. Comey reportedly
declined but offered “honesty.”

– Former Trump campaign foreign policy adviser George
Papadopolous is interviewed by FBI agents. He makes a number of
materially false statements: He lies about the timeline of his
communications with professor Josef Mifsud and the female Russian
national, saying that both relationships began before he joined the
Trump campaign.

January (date unknown): Michael Cohen, Trump’s
personal attorney, meets at a Manhattan hotel with Felix Sater and
a pro-Putin Ukrainian lawmaker to discuss a potential peace plan
for Ukraine and Russia. The New York
Times reports that Cohen delivered this plan to Flynn.
Cohen confirms he
met with Sater and the Ukrainian lawmaker but denies that they
discussed a Ukraine-Russia peace plan or that he delivered such a
plan to Flynn or the White House.

February 7: Trump tweets:

February 8: In an interview with the Washington
Post, Flynn denies discussing US sanctions with
the Russian ambassador.

February 9: A spokesman for Flynn softens the
national security adviser’s denial, telling the Washington
Post that “while he had no recollection of discussing
sanctions, he couldn’t be certain that the topic never came
up.”

February 10: Speaking to reporters aboard Air
Force One, Trump says
he is not aware of reports that Flynn has discussed US sanctions
with the Russian ambassador. He has in fact been aware of Flynn’s
contacts with Kislyak since late January.

– Dmitri Rybolovlev’s plane lands in
Miami, the day before Trump is set to arrive at Mar-a-Lago for
the weekend.

February 13: Flynn resigns
following reports that
the Justice Department warned the White House that Flynn had misled
senior members of the administration, including Pence, about
whether he discussed US sanctions with the Russian ambassador.

February 14: The New York
Times reports that American intelligence and law
enforcement agencies have intercepted repeated communications
between Trump campaign officials and other Trump associates and
senior Russian intelligence and government officials.

– Spicer denies that
Trump or his campaign had any contacts with Russia during the
election.

February 15: During a joint press
conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu,
Trump does not answer a question about potential connections
between his campaign and Russia during the election. He blames
Flynn’s ouster on leaks. This is a different position than the one
taken by the White House previously: that Flynn was asked to resign
because he misled Pence about his communication with the Russian
ambassador.

– Reince Priebus, Trump’s chief of staff, asks the FBI
to publicly knock down media
reports that the US intelligence community was investigating
the Trump campaign’s alleged contacts with Russia intelligence
operatives during the election. The FBI refuses to
do so. The administration then enlists the
help of the intelligence community and several members of
Congress, including Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.) and Rep. Devin Nunes
(R-Calif.)—the chairmen of the Senate and House intelligence
committees, both of which are conducting investigations into
Trump’s Russia connections—to call media outlets to counter stories
about contacts between Trump staffers and Russians.

– In an appearance on PBS
Newshour, Carter Page denies that he had any meetings with
Russian officials in 2016.

February 16: At a news
conference, Trump is asked whether anyone in his campaign had
been in contact with Russia. He replies, “Nobody that I know of.”
He also denies having any contact with Russia, saying, “Russia is a
ruse. I have nothing to do with Russia.”

February 17: FBI Director James Comey meets
with members of the Senate Intelligence Committee. That same
day, the committee sends letters to more than a dozen agencies,
groups, and individuals, asking them to preserve all communications
related to the committee’s investigation of Russian interference in
the 2016 election.

February 19: During an interview on Fox News,
Priebus denies that the Trump camp had any contact with Russia.

February 28: Republicans on the House Judiciary
Committee vote down a
Democrat-sponsored resolution that would have required the Trump
administration to disclose information about Trump’s ties to Russia
(and his possible financial conflicts of interest).

– White House lawyers ask Trump
staffers to preserve any materials related to possible Russian
interference in the 2016 election.

March 1: The Washington
Post reports that Jeff Sessions, Trump’s attorney general,
did not disclose in his January confirmation hearings that he twice
met with Sergey Kislyak, the Russian ambassador. Sessions had said
during a confirmation hearing that “I did not have communications
with the Russians.” Sessions’ Justice Department spokeswoman
says
Sessions met with Kislyak in his capacity as a senator on the Armed
Services Committee, and that the question during the confirmation
hearing was about the Trump campaign’s Russian connections.

March 2: Facing criticism over the revelations
that he withheld information regarding his meetings with the
Russian ambassador during his confirmation hearings, Sessions
announces that he will recuse
himself from any investigations of Russian interference in the
2016 election.

– On NBC,
Sessions denies that he ever discussed the Trump campaign with
Russians. “I have not met with any Russians at any time to discuss
any political campaign, and those remarks are unbelievable to me
and are false,” he said. “And I don’t have anything else to say
about that.”

– Alex Oronov,
a Ukrainian billionaire businessman who was connected by marriage
to Michael Cohen, Trump’s longtime lawyer and associate, dies
unexpectedly. Oronov’s daughter was married to Cohen’s brother.
Oronov reportedly set up a January 2017 meeting between Cohen and
Russian officials to discuss a possible “peace plan” between Russia
and Ukraine that would have formalized Putin’s control over Crimea.
The New York Times reported that this peace
proposal was hand-delivered to Michael Flynn prior to his
forced resignation.

– The White House acknowledges
that Jared Kushner and Flynn met with Sergey Kislyak at Trump Tower
in December. The meeting was first reported by The New
Yorker.

– The Wall Street
Journal reports that Donald Trump Jr. was paid at least
$50,000 for his October 2016 appearance before a French think tank
run by a couple allied with Russia on ending Syrian conflict.

– USA
Today reports that two other Trump advisers, Carter Page
and J.D. Gordon, met with Sergey Kislyak during the Republican
National Convention.

– In an MSNBC
appearance, Page says he doesn’t deny that this meeting took
place.

– J.D. Gordon tells CNN that
during the Republican National Convention, he did in fact push to
alter the Republican platform’s draft policy on Ukraine to align it
with Trump’s views on Russia.

March 3: Trump dresses down senior staffers in
a meeting in
the Oval Office over Jeff Sessions’ recusal and over news reports
connecting the Trump administration to Russia.

March 4: Without providing any proof, Trump
alleges that President Obama wiretapped his phones during the
election.

March 5: Press secretary Sean Spicer
says the White House is requesting that the congressional
intelligence committees examine Trump’s allegations that Obama
wiretapped Trump during the campaign as part of their investigation
into Russia’s election activity. Spicer also says the White House
will not comment further on the wiretapping allegation until the
completion of this investigation.

March 10: Trump adviser Roger Stone
acknowledges that during the 2016 campaign he exchanged direct
messages on Twitter with Guccifer 2.0, the online persona that US
intelligence agencies believe was a front for Russian intelligence.
Stone claims the conversations were so “perfunctory” and “banal”
that he had forgotten about them.

– The yacht belonging to Russian billionaire Dmitri Rybolovlev
anchors in a
cove in the British Virgin Islands. Another yacht anchors next
to Rybolovlev’s—the Sea Owl, owned by Robert Mercer, one of Trump’s
biggest donors during the 2016 election and an investor in the
conservative Breitbart News.

March 15: Asked about his decision to accuse
Obama of wiretapping him without evidence, Trump hints that
information will soon emerge to back up his claims. “I think you’re
going to find some very interesting items coming to the forefront
over the next two weeks.”

March 20: Shortly before the House Intelligence
Committee holds its first public
hearing on its investigation into Russia’s interference in the
US election, a senior White House official tells
The New Yorker’s Ryan Lizza, “You’ll see the setting of
the predicate. That’s the thing to watch today.” Lizza later
reports:

He suggested that I read a piece in
The Hill about incidental collection. The article posited
that if “Trump or his advisors were speaking directly to foreign
individuals who were the target of U.S. spying during the election
campaign, and the intelligence agencies recorded Trump by accident,
it’s plausible that those communications would have been collected
and shared amongst intelligence agencies.”

The White House clearly indicated to me that it knew Nunes would
highlight this issue. “It’s backdoor surveillance where it’s not
just incidental, it’s systematic,” the White House official said.
“Watch Nunes today.”

– In his opening statement at the hearing, Nunes asks,
“Were the communications of officials or associates of any campaign
subject to any kind of improper surveillance?” The day’s biggest
news, however, comes from FBI Director James Comey, who testifies
at the hearing that the bureau has since July been “investigating
the nature of any links between individuals associated with the
Trump campaign and the Russian government, and whether there was
any coordination between the campaign and Russia’s efforts.” Both
Comey and NSA Director Admiral Michael Rogers dismiss Trump’s claim
that Obama wiretapped him during the election.

– In response to questions from Mother Jones‘ David
Corn, Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), chair of the House Intelligence
Committee, tells
reporters he has never heard of key figures connected to the
Trump-Russia scandal, including Carter Page and Roger
Stone. 

– Spicer tells
reporters that Paul Manafort, who ran Trump’s campaign from
April 2016 to August 2016, “played a limited role” on the campaign
“for a very limited amount of time.”

March 22: The Associated Press reports that,
starting in the mid-2000s, Manafort worked on behalf of Russian
oligarch Oleg Deripaska to “influence politics, business dealings
and news coverage inside the United States, Europe and the former
Soviet republics to benefit the Putin government.” The news service
quotes a 2005 strategy memo authored by Manafort, who writes, “We
are now of the belief that this model can greatly benefit the Putin
government if employed at the correct levels with the appropriate
commitment to success.” Manafort denies working on behalf of
Russian interests.

– Mother Jones reports that Manafort tried to help
Deripaska secure a visa to the United States. The aluminum magnate
had been denied entry to the United States at various points
because of suspected ties to the Russian mafia.

– Rep. Devin Nunes, without briefing Rep. Adam Schiff
(D-Calif.), his Democratic counterpart on the Intelligence
Committee, or other members of the panel, calls a surprise press
conference, announcing
that he has seen evidence that the intelligence community
“incidentally” picked up communications by Trump transition
officials in the course of lawful surveillance on foreign parties.
He claims that the names of Trump officials were “unmasked” and
that “none of this surveillance was related to Russia.”

– In a remarkable departure from intelligence committee norms,
Nunes visits the White House to brief Trump on his findings. The
president later says he feels “somewhat” vindicated by the
information Nunes shared.

– Schiff releases a statement expressing “grave concerns” about
Nunes’ actions and casting doubt about whether a “credible
investigation” can be conducted under these circumstances.

– Schiff tells
MSNBC’s Chuck Todd that there is “more than circumstantial evidence
now” of potential collusion between Trump officials and Russian
operatives. 

– CNN, citing “US officials,” reports that
the “FBI has information that indicates associates of President
Donald Trump communicated with suspected Russian operatives to
possibly coordinate the release of information damaging to Hillary
Clinton’s campaign.”

March 23: The Associated Press reports that
US Treasury Department agents have obtained records of “offshore
financial transactions” by Paul Manafort, in conjunction into an
ongoing anti-corruption investigation into his work in Eastern
Europe. According to the new service, “As part of their
investigation, U.S. officials were expected to look into millions
of dollars’ worth of wire transfers to Manafort. In one case, the
AP found that a Manafort-linked company received a $1 million
payment in October 2009 from a mysterious firm through the Bank of
Cyprus. The $1 million payment left the account the same day—split
in two, roughly $500,000 disbursements to accounts with no obvious
owner.”

– Trump tweets:

– Rep. Nunes apologizes
to Democratic members of the Intelligence Committee for failing to
brief them on the new information he obtained and instead taking it
straight to the White House, but he won’t explain why he took this
unusual action. 

March 24: Rep. Devin Nunes holds a press
conference, where he announces
that Paul Manafort has volunteered to testify before the House
Intelligence Committee. He also announces that the committee will
be delaying its next open hearing, which had been planned for March
28.

March 27: The New York
Times reports that in early December 2016, Jared Kushner
met with Sergey Gorkov, the chief of Russia’s state-owned
development bank at the request of Russian Ambassador Sergey
Kislyak. The paper also reports that the Senate Intelligence
Committee has informed the White House that it will seek to
question Kushner about this meeting and his interactions with
Kislyak.

– The New York Times reports that on the evening of
March 21, Rep. Nunes met with a source on White House grounds. The
source reportedly showed Nunes “dozens” of classified intelligence
reports. The next day, Nunes announced he had viewed evidence that
showed that US intelligence agencies had “incidentally” collected
communications among Trump transition team members while
surveilling other parties.

– House Democrats, including Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and
Adam Schiff, call on Nunes to recuse
himself from the House Intelligence Committee investigation
into Russia’s election interference. 

– Trump tweets:

March 28: The Washington Post reports that
the Trump administration has tried to prevent former acting
Attorney General Sally Yates from testifying before the House
Intelligence Committee. Yates—who was fired by Trump in January
after she instructed Justice Department lawyers not to defend the
administration’s executive order temporarily blocking immigration
from seven Muslim-majority countries—was scheduled to testify
before the committee in a public hearing that was canceled by
Nunes. The White House denied it had tried to block Yates from
testifying, calling the Post‘s story “entirely false.”

– NBC reports:

A bank in Cyprus investigated accounts associated with Trump’s
former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, for possible
money-laundering, two banking sources with direct knowledge of his
businesses here told NBC News.

Manafort—whose ties to a Russian oligarch close to President
Vladimir Putin are under scrutiny—was associated with at least 15
bank accounts and 10 companies on Cyprus, dating back to 2007, the
sources said. At least one of those companies was used to receive
millions of dollars from a billionaire Putin ally, according to
court documents.

Banking sources said some transactions on Manafort-associated
accounts raised sufficient concern to trigger an internal
investigation at a Cypriot bank into potential money laundering
activities. After questions were raised, Manafort closed the
accounts, the banking sources said.

According to a Manafort spokesman, “All were legitimate entities
and established for lawful ends.”

March 29: Sens. Richard Burr (R-N.C.) and Mark
Warner (D-Va.), respectively the chairman and vice chairman of the
Senate Intelligence Committee, hold a press
conference. They vow a tough, bipartisan investigation into
Russia’s interference in the 2016 election. “This investigation’s
scope will go wherever the intelligence leads,” Burr says.
According to Burr, seven committee staffers have been assigned to
the probe and the committee has begun to schedule the first of 20
interviews.

March 30: The Senate Intelligence Committee
convenes its first
hearing into Russian interference in the presidential
election.

– The New York Times reports that
two White House officials, Ezra Cohen-Watnick and Michael Ellis,
“played a role in providing” Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) access to
intelligence reports showing that “President Trump and his
associates were incidentally swept up in foreign surveillance by
American spy agencies.” Cohen-Watnick was brought on to the
National Security Council by Michael Flynn, for whom he had worked
at the National Security Council. After Flynn’s ouster, his
replacement, national security adviser Lt. General H.R. McMaster,
attempted to “sideline” Cohen-Watkins, according to
Politico. Jared Kushner and White House strategist
Stephen Bannon intervened on the NSC staffer’s behalf, taking the
matter all the way to Trump. Ellis worked for Nunes before taking a
job in the White House as a lawyer working on national security
matters.

– The Wall Street
Journal reports that Flynn has told the FBI and the
congressional committees investigating ties between the Trump
campaign and Russia that he will agree to be interviewed in
exchange for immunity from prosecution. Flynn’s attorney says in a
subsequent
statement that the retired general “certainly has a story to
tell, and he very much wants to tell it, should the circumstances
permit.”

March 31: NBC reports
that the Senate Intelligence Committee has denied Flynn’s request
for immunity, telling Flynn’s lawyer the request was “wildly
preliminary” and currently “not on the table.”

March (date unknown): Weeks after its former
CEO, Rex Tillerson, becomes secretary of state, Exxon Mobil
files an
application with the Treasury Department for a waiver from US
sanctions on Russia. Exxon seeks the waiver in order to resume an
exploration and drilling project with Russian-state oil giant
Rosneft. Tillerson has said he will recuse himself from State
Department decisions that could benefit Exxon for one year.

April 4: The Pentagon launches an investigation into Michael Flynn
for accepting payments from a foreign government without prior
approval, in potential violation of the Constitution’s emoluments
clause.

April 6: The House Ethics Committee announces that it
is investigating Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), the chairman of the
House Intelligence Committee investigating Russian interference in
the 2016 election, due to allegations that he made “unauthorized
disclosures of classified information.” In a statement,
Nunes says he will temporarily remove himself from the House
Intelligence Committee’s investigation while the House Ethics
Committee investigates, “despite the baselessness of the charges”
against him.

April 11: In an interview with the Daily
Telegraph, Eric Trump says the Trump administration’s
decision to launch missiles at a Syrian military target shows there
is no connection between President Trump and the Russian
government, which backs the Assad regime.

– The Washington
Post reports that in the summer of 2016, the FBI and the
Justice Department obtained a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance
Court warrant to monitor the communications of Trump campaign
foreign policy adviser Carter Page. “This is the clearest evidence
so far that the FBI had reason to believe during the 2016
presidential campaign that a Trump campaign adviser was in touch
with Russian agents,” notes the Post.

April 12: The Associated Press
confirms that at least $1.2 million in payments listed next to Paul
Manafort’s name on a “black accounts” ledger in Ukraine that was
uncovered in August 2016 were in fact received by Manafort’s
consulting firm. Manafort had initially denied receiving illicit
payments and told the AP that “any wire transactions received by my
company are legitimate payments for political consulting work that
was provided. I invoiced my clients and they paid via wire
transfer, which I received through a U.S. bank.”

– CNN reports
that both Republican and Democratic lawmakers have reviewed
documents related to allegations that Obama administration national
security adviser Susan Rice had improperly requested the
“unmasking” of Trump transition team members in intelligence
reports. The lawmakers who reviewed these reports “have so far
found no evidence that Obama administration officials did anything
unusual or illegal,” CNN reported, though Trump had previously
called the allegations a “massive story.”

– In an interview on the Fox Business Network, Trump
says it is “not too late” to fire FBI Director James Comey, but
also that he still has confidence in him.

April 13: House Democrats
send a letter to FBI Director James Comey and the head of the
National Background Investigations Bureau, calling for the
suspension of Jared Kushner’s security clearance. Kushner, they
write “failed to disclose key meetings with foreign government
officials during his application process,” including Russian
Ambassador Sergei Kislyak and Sergei Gorkov, the head of
Vnesheconombank, a Russian state-owned development bank. “Knowingly
falsifying or concealing information on a SF-86 questionnaire is a
felony, punishable by up to five years in prison,” the lawmakers
write.

April 14: Legistorm reports
that Andrii Artemenko, the pro-Putin Ukrainian lawmaker that in
January met with two Trump associates to discuss a possible peace
plan for Ukraine and Russia, is paying $30,000 a month to a
pro-Trump preacher in Pennsylvania who has ties to Russia and
Ukraine. According to Legistorm, the funds were for “strategic
counseling and representation to advance US-Ukraine relations,
including engagement with public officials, legislators and
government agencies,” and a filing from Armstrong’s LLC notes
the payments were not financed by a foreign government. The
preacher, Dale Armstrong, helps run two
groups focused on bringing biblical values to Ukraine
and other
former Soviet republics.

April 19: Reuters
reports that Russian government think tank RISS, described by
officials as the Kremlin’s in-house foreign policy think tank and
staffed by Putin-appointees, had developed plans to interfere
with the US election. Seven current or former US officials describe
documents produced and circulated by RISS in June and October 2016,
first calling on the Kremlin to mount a propaganda campaign to help
elect a pro-Russia president and later to stoke concerns about
Hillary Clinton and voter fraud.

– The Justice
Department confirms that Mary McCord, the acting assistant
attorney general in the department’s national security division,
will leave the department in May 2017. McCord heads the
department’s investigation into Russia interference in the
presidential election.

April 21: CNN reports
that in the summer of 2016, at the height of the presidential
campaign, US and European intelligence found that Russian
intelligence operatives were attempting to infiltrate the Trump
campaign through Trump advisers, including Carter Page. Citing US
officials, the network reports that Page and several other Trump
advisers were repeatedly in contact with Russian officials and
other Russians on the radar of intelligence agencies.

April 23: The Daily
Beast reports that the committee’s investigation into ties
between the Trump campaign and Russia is floundering. More than
three months after the probe was launched, none of the seven
staffers assigned to the investigation are working on it full time,
none have investigative or legal experience, and most have no
Russia expertise.

April 25: Leaders of the House Oversight
Committee tell
reporters that Michael Flynn may have broken the law by failing
to disclose a $34,000 payment from RT, a Russian state-owned media
outlet, on his 2016 application to renew his security clearance.
Flynn received the fee for speaking at a 2015 gala hosted by RT,
where he was seated beside Vladimir Putin.

“As a former military officer, you simply cannot take money from
Russia, Turkey or anybody else,” Oversight Committee Chairman Jason
Chaffetz (R-Utah) said. “And
it appears as if he did take that money. It was inappropriate. And
there are repercussions for the violation of law.”

The revelation comes after Chaffetz, the committee’s chairman,
and Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), its ranking member, asked the
White House and other federal agencies to provide documents related
to Flynn’s foreign communications and payments, including his
security clearance application. The Defense Intelligence Agency
provided documents to the committee, according to Chaffetz and
Cummings, but the White House has
declined to comply with the document request.

– Flynn’s attorney issues a statement
implying that Flynn obtained all necessary permissions related to
his appearance at the RT event: “General Flynn briefed the Defense
Intelligence Agency, a component agency of the Department of
Defense, extensively regarding the RT speaking event trip both
before and after the trip, and he answered any questions that were
posed by DIA concerning the trip during those briefings.”

April 27: The Department of Defense confirms
that Michael Flynn has been under investigation by the Pentagon
since April 4 for accepting payments from a
foreign government, allegedly without informing the appropriate
Defense officials.

– Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), the ranking Democrat on the
House Oversight Committee, releases documents showing that in October
2014, Flynn was warned by the Defense Intelligence Agency about
accepting payments from foreign governments. The documents released
by Cummings show that the DIA counsel’s office responded to an
inquiry from Flynn with a letter
explaining that he could not receive foreign government payments
without prior approval because of the Constitution’s emoluments
clause.

– The DIA documents released by the House Oversight Committee
also state
that, contrary to the implication of Flynn’s attorney on April
25, the DIA has no record of Flynn seeking permission to receive
payments from a foreign source.

May 1: During an Oval Office
interview with CBS’s John Dickerson, Trump says, “I don’t stand
by anything,” when asked about his claims that President Barack
Obama tapped his phones during the 2016 election. Trump then
proceeds to double down on the wiretapping accusation: “I think our
side’s been proven very strongly and everybody’s talking about it
and frankly, it should be discussed.” Trump cuts the interview
short when Dickerson presses him on his claims.

May 2: During a Q&A, Hillary Clinton
blames her
election defeat on Russian hacking and FBI Director James
Comey’s October 28
letter to Congress stating that the bureau was examining newly
discovered emails possibly related to its investigation of
Clinton’s use of a private email server. “I was on the way to
winning until the combination of Jim Comey’s letter on October 28
and Russian WikiLeaks raised doubts in the minds of people who were
inclined to vote for me but got scared off—and the evidence for
that intervening event is, I think, compelling [and] persuasive,”
she said.

– Donald Trump
tweets:

May 3: FBI Director James Comey testifies
before the Senate Judiciary Committee, saying, “It makes me mildly
nauseous to think that we might have had some impact on the
election. But honestly, it wouldn’t change the decision.”

May 5: 

In an interview
with Boston radio station WBUR, golf journalist James Dodson says
Eric Trump told him that funding for Trump golf courses came from
Russia.

“So when I got in the cart with Eric,” Dodson says, “as we were
setting off, I said, ‘Eric, who’s funding? I know no banks—because
of the recession, the Great Recession—have touched a golf course.
You know, no one’s funding any kind of golf construction. It’s dead
in the water the last four or five years.’ And this is what he
said. He said, ‘Well, we don’t rely on American banks. We have all
the funding we need out of Russia.’ I said, ‘Really?’ And he said,
‘Oh, yeah. We’ve got some guys that really, really love golf, and
they’re really invested in our programs. We just go there all the
time.’ Now that was three years ago, so it was pretty
interesting.”

Eric Trump later denies saying
this.

May 8: Donald Trump issues a pair of tweets
ahead of a hearing where former acting Attorney General Sally Yates
is expected to testify that she warned the Trump administration
that Michael Flynn had lied about his interactions with Russian
Ambassador Sergey Kislyak weeks before Trump ultimately fired his
national security adviser.

– Hours after
Trump took to Twitter to imply that his hiring of Flynn was Obama’s
fault, NBC News
reported that Obama had warned Trump against hiring Flynn during
their meeting in the Oval Office on November 10—two days after
Trump was elected and months before Trump appointed Flynn as his
national security adviser.

May 9: Donald Trump
fires FBI Director James Comey, following recommendations to do
so from Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Deputy Attorney General
Rod Rosenstein. Rosenstein’s memo recommending Comey’s firing
explains that his recommendation is the result of Comey’s
mishandling of the Clinton email investigation during the 2016
presidential campaign. Read Trump’s letter firing Comey, along with
Sessions’ and Rosenstein’s memos recommending Comey’s termination,
below:

 
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– Following Comey’s firing, CNN reports
that the US attorney’s office in Alexandria, Virginia, has issued
grand jury subpoenas to associates of Michael Flynn, marking an
escalation of the FBI’s investigation into Russia.

– Within hours of Comey’s firing, more than 100
lawmakers, including several Republicans, have called for an
independent investigator or special prosecutor to be assigned to
the FBI’s investigation into Trump’s ties to Russia, particularly
now that the new FBI head will be chosen by Trump himself. “It is
critical that the FBI can continue all of its pending work with
independence and integrity—especially the investigation into the
Russian government’s efforts to influence our last election and
undermine American democracy,” said Rep. Curbelo, a Republican
congressman from Florida.

May 10: Early in the morning, Trump takes to
Twitter to defend his firing of James Comey. “Comey lost the
confidence of almost everyone in Washington, Republican and
Democrat alike. When things calm down, they will be thanking me!”
he writes.

– CNN reports that a source claims Roger Stone urged Trump to fire
Comey. Within minutes, Trump responds to the report on Twitter,
calling out CNN and saying the report is “fake news.”

Stone says
on Twitter that he “never made such a claim” but supports Trump’s
decision “100%.”

– As controversy swirls surrounding Trump’s firing of Comey, the
White House
announces that press secretary Sean Spicer will be gone for the
rest of the week fulfilling his US Navy Reserve duty and Sarah
Huckabee Sanders, the principal deputy press secretary, will cover
for him, including running the first press briefing since Trump’s
firing of the FBI director.

– Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov arrives in
Washington for meetings with top officials, including Trump. At
a press conference with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson welcoming
the Russian foreign minister, a reporter asks a question about the
Comey firing. Lavrov responds, ironically, “Was he fired? You are
kidding, you are kidding!” before walking away. On May 15, the
Washington
Post will report that while meeting with Lavrov at the
White House, Trump shares highly classified information with him
and the Russian ambassador.

– In remarks on the Senate floor, Senate Majority Leader Mitch
McConnell rejects calls
for a special prosecutor to take over the Russia probe. “Today
we’ll no doubt hear calls for a new investigation, which could only
serve to impede the current work being done,” he said.

May 11: Acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe
testifies in
a Senate hearing that the White House has misled the public about
the FBI’s Russia investigation and regard for Comey at the agency.
He says the Russia probe is “highly significant” and that “Comey
enjoyed broad support within the FBI and still does to this
day.”

– The New York Times and CNN each
report via
sources close to Comey that part of Trump’s motivation for firing
him was the FBI director’s refusal to swear political loyalty to
the president. The Times
details a conversation between Trump and Comey
during a one-on-one dinner that took place at the White House on
January 27—just one day after former acting Attorney General Sally
Yates warned the Trump White House that then-national security
adviser Michael Flynn was vulnerable to blackmail by the
Kremlin. Three days before the dinner, on January 24,
Flynn had been interviewed by the FBI about his contacts with the
Russian ambassador. In the conversation with Yates the day
before the Comey dinner, White House Counsel Don McGahn asked Yates how
Flynn did in the FBI interview, and Yates declined to
answer.

– Trump says in an NBC
interview that he asked Comey three times whether he is
personally under investigation by the FBI for possible Russia
ties—twice on the phone and once at the January 27 dinner. Trump
claims Comey reassured him that he was not under investigation.
(Sources close to Comey say this never happened.)

May 15: The Washington
Post reports that Trump revealed highly classified
information to Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and
Ambassador Sergey Kislyak in their White House meeting on May 10. A
US official tells the Post that the information had one of
the highest available classification levels. “This is code-word
information,” the official tells the Post, adding that
Trump “revealed more information to the Russian ambassador than we
have shared with our own allies.”

– White House national security adviser H.R. McMaster reads a
statement to the press denying the Washington Post’s
report while mischaracterizing the substance of it. He says, “The
story that came out tonight, as reported, is false. The president
and the foreign minister reviewed a range of common threats to our
two countries, including threats to civil aviation. At no time—at
no time—were intelligence sources or methods discussed.” The
Post didn’t report that sources and methods were
disclosed; the paper reported that the information discussed could
be used to discern intelligence sources or methods. After reading
his statement, McMaster refuses to take questions.

May 16: Trump defends himself on Twitter
without denying that he shared highly classified material with
Russia’s foreign minister and ambassador.

– A senior European intelligence official tells the Associated
Press that his country may stop sharing intelligence with the
United States if it is confirmed that Trump shared classified
information with Russian officials.

– In a press briefing, H.R. McMaster clarifies that in calling
the Washington Post‘s reporting “false,” he was disputing
the “premise” of the article: that Trump had done “anything
inappropriate” or that he had compromised national security by
revealing information to Russian officials. In response to multiple
questions, McMaster refuses to confirm whether or not the
information the president revealed was classified. McMaster also
refuses to clarify why White House officials called the NSA and the
CIA after Trump’s conversation with Lavrov and Kislyak. McMaster
says it was “wholly appropriate” for Trump to discuss the
material.

– The New York
Times reports that
during an Oval Office meeting in February, Trump asked then-FBI
Director James Comey to drop the agency’s investigation into
Michael Flynn, who had resigned the day before amid controversy
over his discussions of US sanctions with the Russian ambassador.
“I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting
Flynn go,” Trump said to Comey, according to a two-page memo Comey
drafted after the meeting. “He is a good guy. I hope you can let
this go.” The Washington Post and Politico
subsequently confirmed the Times’ account. According to
the paper, Comey kept detailed records of all his conversations
with the president.

– The Washington
Post reports that Comey shared his memos with a small
number of people at the Justice Department. (It’s unclear whether
those officials include Rod Rosenstein or Jeff Sessions, who were
involved in Comey’s firing.)

– At the International Republican Institute’s Freedom Awards,
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) likens Trump’s mounting Russia scandal
to Watergate: “I think we’ve seen this movie before. I think
it’s reaching a point where it’s of Watergate size and scale, and a
couple of other scandals that you and I have seen. It’s a centipede
that the shoe continues to drop.”

– ABC reports that
“federal investigators have subpoenaed records related to a $3.5
million mortgage that former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort
took out on his Hamptons home just after leaving the campaign,
according to a source familiar with the matter.”

May 17: House Democratic leaders hold a press
conference in which they announce that they are circulating
a discharge
petition among their congressional colleagues to try to force a
vote on legislation that would create a 12-person independent
commission to investigate Russia’s interference in the US
election.

– Eleven
Democratic senators send a letter to the Justice Department
inspector general asking him to investigate whether Attorney
General Jeff Sessions violated his pledge to recuse himself from
any investigations connected to the 2016 election when he took part
in the firing of FBI Director James Comey.

– During a press conference in Sochi, Russia, Putin calls
the allegations that Trump had revealed classified information to
Lavrov and Kislyak “political schizophrenia.” He also offers to
provide the US with a transcript of Lavrov’s Oval Office meeting
with Trump.

– Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein appoints former
FBI Director Robert Mueller to serve as a special counsel to
investigate Russian interference in the 2016 election.

– The Washington Post reports that during a
private June 2016 meeting with Republican leaders, House Majority
Leader Kevin McCarthy said he believed Trump was on Putin’s
payroll. “There’s two people I think Putin pays: Rohrabacher and
Trump,’ McCarthy said, referring to Rep. Dana Rohrbacher
(R-Calif.), a steadfast defender of Putin and Russia. When his
colleagues laughed, McCarthy added, “Swear to God.” (McCarthy says
he was joking.)

– The New York
Times reports that Michael Flynn told the Trump transition
team’s chief lawyer in early January—before the inauguration—that
Flynn was under investigation for failing to disclose more than
$500,000 of work as a paid lobbyist for Turkey.

– McClatchy
reports that 10 days before Trump’s inauguration, Flynn asked to
delay an Obama administration plan to fight ISIS that Turkey
opposed.

May 18: Reuters
reports that Michael Flynn and other members of Trump’s
campaign had at least 18 previously undisclosed calls and emails
with Russian officials in the last seven months of the 2016
presidential campaign.

– Trump tweets:

– During a White House news conference with the Colombian
president, Trump denies any collusion with Russia and again calls
the investigation a “witch hunt.” “I respect the move,” Trump said
of the DOJ’s appointment of special prosecutor Robert Mueller III
to oversee the Russia investigation. “But the entire thing has been
a witch hunt. And there is no collusion between, certainly, myself
and my campaign—but I can always speak for myself—and the Russians.
Zero.”

– Two sources close to Michael Flynn tell Yahoo
News that at a dinner on April 25, more than two months
after leaving his post as national security adviser, Flynn told a
group of close friends that he was still in regular communication
with the president. “I just got a message from the president to
stay strong,” he reportedly told the group, on the heels of a day
when two congressmen announced that Flynn may have broken the law
by failing to disclose a $34,000 payment from RT, a Russian
state-owned media outlet, on his 2016 application to renew his
security clearance.

May 19: The Washington
Post reports that people familiar with the investigation
into Trump’s Russia ties have identified a senior White House
adviser as a “significant person of interest.”

– The New York
Times reports that in Trump’s May 10 Oval Office meeting
with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Russian Ambassador
Sergey Kislyak, Trump called former FBI Director Comey a “nut job”
and expressed relief at his ouster. “I just fired the head of the
FBI. He was crazy, a real nut job,” Trump said, according to a
document summarizing the meeting, which an American official read
to the New York Times. “I faced great pressure because of
Russia. That’s taken off.”

– McClatchy
reports that the investigation into Russia’s interference into the
2016 election has been expanded to include the possibility of a
cover-up by the White House, according to members of Congress who
were briefed by Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein.

– CNN reports
that White House lawyers have begun researching impeachment
procedures, despite public assurances by many Republicans and
Democrats that impeachment is still a distant option.

– Citing “multiple government officials,” CNN reports
that during the presidential campaign Russian
officials bragged about their strong ties to Michael Flynn and
believed they could use him to influence Trump.

May 22: The Associated Press
reports that Michael Flynn will refuse to
comply with a subpoena from the Senate Intelligence Committee
that is investigating Russia’s interference in the 2016 election,
invoking the Fifth Amendment protection against self-incrimination.
Below is the letter sent to the committee by Flynn’s lawyer and
obtained by AP:

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– Speaking to reporters in Jerusalem, Trump denies
mentioning “Israel” in his May 10 conversation with the Russian
foreign minister and ambassador in the Oval Office. In making this
statement, Trump tacitly implies that he did in fact discuss
classified information with these Russian officials and also
appears to confirm that the classified information originated with
Israel—a statement that no US official has made publicly.

– NBC reports that Paul Manafort and Roger Stone have turned
over documents to the Senate Intelligence Committee.

May 23: Testifying
before the House Intelligence Committee, former CIA Director John
Brennan says he grew alarmed during the election that the Russian
government was trying to influence members of the Trump campaign to
act on its behalf: “I encountered and am aware of information and
intelligence that revealed contacts and interactions between
Russian officials and US persons involved in the Trump campaign
that I was concerned about because of known Russian efforts to
suborn such individuals.” He notes, “I
saw interaction that in my mind raised questions of whether it was
collusion,” but says that at the time he left his post in January
it was unclear “whether such collusion existed.”

– During his House Intelligence Committee testimony, Brennan
also describes calling Alexander Bortnikov, the head of the FSB,
Russia’s intelligence agency, on August 4, 2016, to caution him
against further interference in the election. According to Brennan,
Bortnikov denied any meddling by Russia.

May 24: The Justice Department tells CNN
that Jeff Sessions did not disclose his meetings with Russian
Ambassador Sergey Kislyak and other foreign dignitaries when
applying for security clearance.

– House Democrats send a letter to Deutsche Bank’s CEO
requesting information on “whether loans Deutsche Bank made to
President Trump were guaranteed by the Russian Government, or were
in any way connected to Russia.” 

May 25: The New York
Times reports that conversations intercepted by American
intelligence in the summer of 2016 showed that senior Russian
officials discussed how to influence Trump’s presidential campaign,
zeroing in on Michael Flynn and then-Trump campaign chairman Paul
Manafort.

– The Washington
Post reports that Jared Kushner has been
identified as a focus of the FBI’s investigation into Russian
interference in the election and possible ties between Trump’s team
and Russian officials, according to people familiar with the
investigation. This makes him the first White House official
revealed to be central in the FBI’s probe.

May 26: The Washington
Post reports that Jared Kushner and the Russian ambassador
discussed setting up a secure and secret back channel between the
Trump team and Russian officials during the transition. According
to intercepted communications reviewed by US officials, Russian
Ambassador Sergey Kislyak told his superiors in Moscow that during
a December meeting at Trump Tower, Kushner proposed the
back-channel idea and suggested using Russian diplomatic facilities
in the United States to avoid detection. Trump’s incoming national
security adviser, Michael Flynn, was also at the meeting. (Sources
close to Kushner tell the New York
Times that the purpose of the secret channel was to
facilitate discussions on Syria strategy and other security issues
between Russian military officials and Flynn.)

– The New York
Times reports that Oleg Deripaska, the Russian aluminum
magnate with ties to Trump’s former campaign chairman, Paul
Manafort, offered to cooperate with congressional committees
investigating Russian meddling in the election in exchange for full
immunity. The committees reportedly turned down Deripaska’s
offer.

May 27: Reuters
reports that according to seven US officials, Jared Kushner had
at least three previously undisclosed discussions with the Russian
ambassador during and after the 2016 campaign, including two phone
calls in April and November 2016.

May 28: The top Democrat on the House
Intelligence Committee, Rep. Adam Schiff, says in an appearance on
ABC News that Jared Kushner’s security clearance should be
reviewed in light of revelations that he discussed setting up a
secret back channel of communication with Russian officials.
“There’s another question about his security clearance and whether
he was forthcoming about his contacts on that,” Schiff says. “If
these allegations are true and he had discussions with the Russians
about establishing a back channel and didn’t reveal that, that
would be a real problem in terms of whether he should maintain that
kind of security clearance.”

May 29: The New York
Times reports that the federal and congressional
investigations into possible ties between the Trump campaign and
Russia are looking into Jared Kushner’s December 2016 meeting with
Sergei Gorkov, the chief of Vnesheconombank, Russia’s state-owned
development bank currently under US sanctions due to Russia’s
annexation of Crimea. Former and current US officials tell the
Times that the meeting has piqued investigative interest
because it may have been part of Kushner’s efforts to create a
secret communication back channel with Russian officials.

May 30: CNN reports
that conversations intercepted by the United States during the 2016
election picked up Russian officials saying they have “derogatory”
information about Trump and some of his top aides. One source told
CNN that these discussions suggested the Russian officials believed
“they had the ability to influence the administration through the
derogatory information.”

– ABC News
reports that the congressional investigation into possible ties
between the Trump campaign and Russia has been expanded to include
Michael Cohen, Trump’s long-time personal attorney. The committees
asked Cohen for his voluntary cooperation in providing testimony
about contacts he had with Russian officials, but Cohen
declined.

May 31: CNN reports that congressional
investigators are looking into whether Jeff Sessions may have had
another private meeting with the Russian ambassador on April 27,
2016—when both attended Trump’s first foreign policy speech at the
Mayflower Hotel in Washington, DC.

– As part of its probe into Russian interference in the US
election, the House Intelligence Committee issues its first seven subpoenas, asking for
testimony and documents from Michael Flynn and Trump’s personal
attorney, Michael Cohen. Three of the subpoenas were sent to the NSA,
the FBI, and the CIA requesting information about requests made by
Obama administration officials to “unmask” the names of Trump
staffers in intelligence reports that were later leaked to the
press. Committee aides claimed that Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.)
issued the subpoenas unilaterally, without consulting Democrats on
the committee, despite the fact that he recused himself in April
from leading the Russia investigation following outrage at a secret
visit to the White House and the start of an ethics investigation
into whether he mishandled classified documents.

June 1: The Washington
Post reports that the Trump administration is considering
returning two diplomatic compounds—one in New York and one in
Maryland—to Russia. In December 2016, the Obama
administration—which said the compounds were being used by Russia
for intelligence activities—required Russian officials to vacate
the premises as part of sanctions for their interference in the
election.

– The Guardian reports that
British politician and Brexit movement leader Nigel Farage is a
“person of interest” in the FBI’s investigation of possible ties
between the Kremlin and the Trump campaign.

– Speaking to reporters in St. Petersburg, Russia, Putin shifts
away from the Kremlin’s many blanket denials of Russian
meddling in the US election, saying instead that it’s possible that
“patriotically minded” individuals may have instigated hacking
related to the US election. “Hackers are free people, just like
artists, who wake up in the morning in a good mood and start
painting,” Putin said.

Putin also calls Trump a
“direct and genuine person” with “a fresh view of things.”

June 2: Stories from the Associated
Press and Reuters
report that special counsel Robert Mueller has expanded the
investigation into the Trump campaign and Russia to include
additional allegations about Michael Flynn and former Trump
campaign chairman Paul Manafort; Mueller will assume control of a
federal grand jury investigation in Virginia looking into Flynn’s
work as a paid lobbyist for Turkish businessman Ekim Alptekin.
Mueller is also reportedly taking over a separate criminal probe,
initiated by the Justice Department in July 2016, into Manafort and
his possible ties to corrupt dealings by the pro-Putin president of
Ukraine. Separately, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein tells
the AP that Mueller may also expand his investigation to include
the roles of Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Rosenstein in the
firing of FBI Director James Comey.

– At the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum in Russia,
NBC News reporter Keir Simmons repeatedly asks Sergey Gorkov, the
chief of US-sanctioned Vnesheconombank, about his December meeting
with Jared Kushner. Gorkov refuses to answer the question.

June 5: The Intercept publishes a
classified National Security Agency
document reporting that Russia’s military
intelligence service “executed a cyberattack on at least one U.S.
voting software supplier and sent spear-phishing emails to more
than 100 local election officials just days before last November’s
presidential election.” (Russia’s attempts to hack into voter
registration systems have previously been reported, but the NSA
intelligence report provides details of how one such operation
occurred.) Shortly after the story goes live, an NSA
contractor named Reality Winner is charged with leaking classified
information.

– The White House says Trump will not assert executive privilege to block
former FBI Director James Comey from testifying before the Senate
Intelligence Committee later that week.

June 6: Mother Jones reports that Roger Stone says he brokered a
meeting between British politician Nigel Farage—who the
Guardian reported is a “person of interest” in the FBI’s
Russia investigation—and Trump sometime after the 2016 Republican
National Convention. 

– Yahoo News reports that lawyers with at least four top law
firms declined to represent Trump in connection with the various
ongoing Russia investigations.

– The Washington Post reports that on
March 22, Trump asked Director of National Intelligence Daniel
Coats and CIA Director Mike Pompeo whether he could ask then-FBI
Director James Comey for the bureau “to back off its focus” on
Michael Flynn. Coats reportedly discussed the meeting with some of
his associates, deciding that this sort of intervention would not
be appropriate. “The events involving Coats show the president went
further than just asking intelligence officials to deny publicly
the existence of any evidence showing collusion during the 2016
election,” the Post reports. “The interaction with Coats
indicates that Trump aimed to enlist top officials to have Comey
curtail the bureau’s probe.”

– The New York Times reports that the
day after a February Oval Office meeting in which Trump asked James
Comey to drop the bureau’s investigation of Michael Flynn, Comey
asked Attorney General Jeff Sessions to ensure that Comey was never
left alone with the president. According to several law enforcement
officials, Comey did not reveal what was said during his meeting
with Trump but told Sessions it was inappropriate for the FBI
director to speak privately with the president.

– ABC reports that the relationship between Jeff
Sessions and Trump has grown so tense that the attorney general
recently suggested to Trump that he could resign. The conflict
between them stems, the network notes, from Sessions’ decision in
March to recuse himself from the Russia investigation, after it
came to light that he had undisclosed conversations with the
Russian ambassador. According to ABC, “Two sources close to the
president say he has lashed out repeatedly at the attorney general
in private meetings, blaming the recusal for the expansion of the
Russia investigation.”

June 7: Four military officials tell the
Daily Beast that before his firing as
national security adviser, Michael Flynn pushed to expand the
“deconfliction channel” between Russia and the
United States in Syria—a move that, had it happened, would have
likely run afoul of the law. The channel, established in 2015, has
the narrow purpose of helping the United States and Russia—which
are backing different sides in Syria’s civil war—coordinate their
planes in Syria’s crowded airspace, avoiding collisions. Flynn
repeatedly suggested that the Pentagon expand the channel, using it
to discuss the possibility of teaming up with Russia to fight ISIS.
“If put into effect, such a proposal would clearly violate the NDAA
[National Defense Authorization Act] prohibition on cooperation
with Russia,” the Daily Beast reported. Ultimately, the
proposal never took effect due to Pentagon opposition and Flynn’s
ouster.

– During an event at Australia’s National Press
Club, former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper
says the Trump-Russia scandal “pales” in
comparison to Watergate. “I lived through Watergate. I was on
active duty then in the Air Force, I was a young officer. It was a
scary time,” Clapper said. “I have to say, though, I think if you
compare the two, Watergate pales really in my view compared to what
we’re confronting now.”

– Testifying before the
Senate Intelligence Committee, Director of National Intelligence
Dan Coats and National Security Agency Director Mike Rogers refuse to answer questions about whether Trump
had asked them to intervene in the FBI’s Russia
investigation.

– The Senate Intelligence Committee releases the opening statement James Comey will
deliver on June 8 at a hearing before the committee. The statement
confirms that Trump asked then FBI-Director Comey to drop the
investigation of Michael Flynn that has become a focus of the FBI’s
Russia probe.

June 8: James Comey testifies before the
Senate Intelligence Committee. He notes that he started keeping
detailed memos of all his interactions with Trump because during
their first conversation “I was honestly concerned he might lie
about the nature of our meeting.” Comey also said the president
lied about his reasons for firing him. “The administration then
chose to defame me—and, more importantly, the FBI—by saying the
organization was in disarray and that it was poorly led, that the
workforce had lost confidence in its leader,” Comey said. “Those were lies, plain and
simple.”

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The Most Powerful Comey Moment So Far

His voice broke a little, but the message was clear: “Those were
lies, plain and simple.”

Posted by Mother
Jones on Thursday, June 8, 2017

June 9: During a Rose Garden press
conference, Trump is asked whether he would be willing to testify
under oath about conversations he had with former FBI Director
James Comey in advance of his firing. Trump answers, “100 percent.”

June 10: In an interview with Fox
News, Donald Trump Jr., the president’s eldest son, appears to
confirm James Comey’s version of his conversation with President
Trump in which Trump said. “I hope you can let this go,” in
reference to the FBI’s investigation into Michael Flynn. In his
June 8 testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee, Comey
said he perceived this statement to be a directive to drop the
Flynn investigation. Trump’s lawyer released a statement saying
that Trump “never, in form or substance, directed or suggested that
Mr. Comey stop investigating anyone.” In his Fox News
interview, Donald Trump Jr. appeared to confirm Comey’s
account: “When he tells you to do something, guess what?
There’s no ambiguity in it. There’s no, ‘Hey, I’m hoping. You and I
are friends: Hey, I hope this happens, but you’ve got to do your
job.’ That’s what he told Comey. And for this guy, as a
politician, to then go back and write a memo: ‘Oh, I felt
threatened.’ He felt so threatened—but he didn’t do anything.”

June 11: Preet Bharara, the former US
attorney for the Southern District of New York, tells ABC News that before being fired by Trump in
March, he received a series of phone calls from the president that
made him uncomfortable because it appeared that Trump was trying to
“cultivate some kind of relationship.” Bharara reported one of
these calls to the Department of Justice. Bharara says that
listening to Comey’s June 8 testimony about his own conversations
with Trump, in which he perceived efforts by Trump to influence the
Russia investigation, “felt a little bit like déjà vu.”

– Trump attorney Jay Sekulow says on ABC that he would not rule out the
possibility that Trump will fire Robert Mueller, the special
counsel who took over the Russia investigations following James
Comey’s firing.

June 12: The New York Times reports details of the
intelligence that Trump allegedly revealed to Russian Foreign
Minister Sergei Lavrov and Russian Ambassador Sergei Kislyak during
their May Oval Office meeting. Trump allegedly told the Russians
that Israel had penetrated ISIS’s computer network, uncovering an
elaborate plot to detonate bombs on planes, using explosives in
laptops made to fool airport security. “His disclosure infuriated
Israeli officials,” the Times reported.

– During a White House press briefing, press secretary
Sean Spicer appears to deny that Trump offered to testify under
oath about his conversations with James Comey before the FBI
director’s firing. Spicer says that in his Rose Garden comments,
Trump was actually expressing his willingness to speak to special
counsel Robert Mueller. When asked whether Trump would be willing
to give sworn testimony before Congress, Spicer responds, “I don’t
know. I have not had a further discussion with that.”

– A close friend of Trump’s, Chris Ruddy, the CEO of Newsmax,
tells PBS that he believes Trump is considering
firing Mueller. The White House releases a statement saying that Ruddy “never spoke to
the President regarding this issue. With respect to this subject,
only the President or his attorneys are authorized to comment.”

June 13: Three people familiar with the
investigation into Russia’s cyber intrusions into US voting systems
tell Bloomberg News that these incursions were much
broader than had previously been reported. According to one of
these sources, Russia gained access to voter databases and software
systems in 39 states. The activity concerned the Obama
administration so much, sources tell Bloomberg, that the White
House contacted the Kremlin “to offer detailed documents of what it
said was Russia’s role in election meddling and to warn that the
attacks risked setting off a broader conflict.”

– Jeff Sessions testifies before the Senate Intelligence
Committee, where he repeatedly refuses to discuss his conversations
with Trump and calls the notion that he colluded with the Russians
as they interfered in the 2016 election “an appalling and
detestable lie.” Throughout his testimony, the attorney general
frequently answers with “I don’t remember” or
“I don’t recall.”

June 14: Special counsel Robert Mueller
meets with members of the Senate Intelligence
Committee.

– The Washington Post reports that special counsel Robert Mueller is
investigating Trump for obstruction of justice. 

June 15: In a tweetstorm, Trump decries
the Russia investigation as a “witch hunt”:

– The Washington Post and other outlets report that Vice President Mike Pence has
retained a personal attorney to represent him in connection with
the various Russia probes.

June 16: Trump appears to confirm that he
is under investigation for obstruction of justice and seems to lash
out at Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein.

– NBC reports that Trump’s private attorney, Michael Cohen, has
retained his own legal counsel.

June 18: ABC News reports that Deputy Attorney General Rod
Rosenstein privately told his colleague, Associate Attorney General
Rachel Brand, the Justice Department’s new third-in-command, that
he may have to recuse himself from the Trump-Russia investigation,
since it is possible he will have to serve as a witness, given his
role in Trump’s firing of former FBI Director James Comey. Such a
recusal would prompt Brand to take over the investigation. (While
Rosenstein appointed special counsel Robert Mueller to oversee the
investigation, he is still in charge of allocating resources to it
and ultimately deciding if prosecutions will be necessary.)

June 21: During testimony before the Senate
Intelligence Committee, the Department of Homeland Security’s
acting director of the Office of Intelligence and Analysis Cyber
Division, Samuel Liles, says hackers connected to the Russian
government attempted to penetrate election-related computer systems
in 21 states before the November 2016 election. Liles says they
successfully got into a “small number” of networks.

June 22: Trump tweets that he doesn’t know
if there are recordings of his conversations with former FBI
Director James Comey, contradicting earlier tweets in which he
implied such “tapes” existed. 

– CNN reports that Director of National Intelligence
Dan Coats and Director of National Security Agency Admiral Mike
Rogers each separately told Senate investigators and special
counsel Robert Mueller’s team that Trump suggested they publicly
deny there was any collusion between his campaign and Russian
officials. Both intelligence officials said they were surprised by
the suggestion and found it uncomfortable but did not perceive
these statements as orders from the president.

June 23: The New York Times reports that the FBI is
investigating a series of real estate deals and other financial
transactions involving former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort
and his son-in-law Jeffery Yohai. The Times says it is not
clear if the FBI’s interest is tied to Manafort’s role in the
Trump-Russia investigation.

June 25: The Washington Post reports that Jared
Kushner’s real estate company received a $285 million loan from
Deutsche Bank one month before the November 2016 election. That
October, Kushner was advising his father-in-law’s presidential
campaign, and Deutsche Bank was facing several legal actions in New
York, including charges from state regulators that the bank had
aided an alleged Russian money-laundering scheme.

June 27: Paul Manafort’s consulting
firm retroactively files foreign lobbying disclosures showing that
the firm received $17.1 million from a pro-Russia political party
in Ukraine between 2012 and 2014. The payments were for work aimed
at influencing US policy on Ukraine. Manafort’s spokesman, Jason
Maloni, tells the Washington Post that Manafort began
preparing his filing in September “before the outcome of the
election and well before any formal investigation of election
interference began.”

July 8: The
New York Times reports that Donald Trump Jr. met with a
Kremlin-tied Russian lawyer, Natalia
Veselnitskaya, in June 2016, shortly after his father clinched the
Republican presidential nomination. Also attending the meeting were
Paul Manafort and Jared Kushner. Trump Jr. tells the
Times, “It was a short
introductory meeting. I asked Jared and Paul to stop by. We
primarily discussed a program about the adoption of Russian
children that was active and popular with American families years
ago and was since ended by the Russian government, but it was not a
campaign issue at the time and there was no follow up.” And he
noted, “I was asked to attend the meeting by an acquaintance, but
was not told the name of the person I would be meeting with
beforehand.”

July 9: The New
York Times reports that, prior to meeting with Russian
lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya, Donald Trump Jr. had been
promised damaging information on Hillary Clinton. Trump Jr. offers
the paper a different account of the meeting from his statement the
previous day: “After pleasantries were exchanged, the woman stated
that she had information that individuals connected to Russia were
funding the Democratic National Committee and supporting Mrs.
Clinton. Her statements were vague, ambiguous and made no sense. No
details or supporting information was provided or even offered. It
quickly became clear that she had no meaningful information.”

July 10: Donald Trump
tweets: 

– Donald Trump Jr. responds to the New York Times‘
reporting:

– The New York Times reports that prior to
meeting with Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya, Donald Trump Jr.
was informed in an email that the damaging information about
Hillary Clinton was part of a Russian government effort to aid his
father’s candidacy. That email came from Rob Goldstone, the
publicist for Russian pop star Emin Agalarov, who asked Goldstone
to set up this meeting between Veselnitskaya and Trump Jr.

July 11: Donald Trump Jr. corroborates the
New York Times‘ story in a statement posted on Twitter. In tweets, he also publishes his email exchange
with Goldstone in full. The emails show that Goldstone wrote to
Trump Jr. in June 2016, stating that Russia’s crown prosecutor had
told Aras Agalarov—the father of Goldstone’s client Emin—that he
possessed “official documents and information that would
incriminate Hillary” that could be shared with the Trump campaign.
Goldstone also added that the information “is obviously very high
level and sensitive information but is part of Russia and its
government’s support for Mr. Trump.” Trump Jr. responded by asking
to speak to Emin about the material described in Goldstone’s email,
and added, “If it’s what you say I love it.”

– Donald Trump Jr. appears on Sean Hannity’s Fox show, where he
says of his meeting with a Kremlin-tied lawyer,
“In retrospect, I probably would have done things a little
differently.” He also says, “I wanted to hear them out and play it
out.”

– ProPublica reports that Mark Kasowitz, the lawyer
representing Donald Trump in the Russia inquiries, does not possess
a security clearance and does not plan to seek one, a curious
decision in a case involving some of the government’s most closely
guarded secrets. The news outlet notes his decision might stem from
the lawyer’s alleged struggles with alcohol, which could make it
difficult to obtain a clearance. (A spokesman for Kasowitz
subsequently released a statement saying, “Marc Kasowitz has
not struggled with alcoholism.”) 

– In an interview with NBC, Russian attorney Natalia
Veselnitskaya describes her June 9, 2016, meeting with Trump Jr.,
Kushner, and Manafort at Trump Tower. She says she never had any
damaging information on Hillary Clinton and, contrary to emails
sent by Goldstone to Trump Jr., never promised such information in
order to procure the meeting.

July 12: McClatchy reports that
“investigators at the House and Senate Intelligence committees and
the Justice Department are examining whether the Trump campaign’s
digital operation—overseen by Jared Kushner—helped guide Russia’s
sophisticated voter targeting and fake news attacks on Hillary
Clinton in 2016.”
– Donald Trump defends his eldest son in a tweet, saying he’s
“innocent”

– The Senate Judiciary Committee holds a confirmation hearing
for Christopher Wray, Trump’s pick for FBI director. During the
hearing, Sen. Lindsey Graham asks Wray about whether he’s heard
about “the email problems we’ve had with Donald Trump Jr.
the last few days.” When Wray says he isn’t caught up on the
controversy because he’s been in meetings with senators, Graham
reads part of the email chain aloud and then asks Wray if Trump Jr.
should have taken the meeting or alerted the FBI. Wray first avoids
directly answering the question but after a heated exchange with
Graham concludes that “any threat or effort to interfere with our
elections, from any nation-state, or any nonstate actor, is the
kind of thing the FBI would want to know.” Here’s the full
exchange:

– The Democratic members of the House Judiciary Committee
write to Attorney General Jeff Sessions
requesting information about the Justice Department’s decision to
settle United States v. Prevezon Holdings, a money
laundering case targeting a Cyprus-based entity owned by a Russian
businessman. Natalia Veselnitskaya, the Kremlin-linked lawyer who
met with Donald Trump Jr. and other members of the elder Trump’s
inner circle, represented Prevezon, remarking after the settlement
that the penalty was so small it seemed like “almost an apology
from the government.”

July 18: The Washington Post reports that the
eighth person at the June 2016 Trump Tower meeting was Irakly “Ike”
Kaveladze, a Georgia-born businessman who is a vice president of
Crocus Group International, a division of Crocus Group, the
construction and development company owned by Aras Agalarov.
Kaveladze, who says he has worked for Crocus Group since the late
1980s, was once at the center of a US government
investigation into Russian money laundering.

– Mother Jones reports that Sen. Chuck
Grassley, who heads the Senate Judiciary Committee’s probe of
Trump’s firing of Comey and possible collusion between the Trump
camp and Russia, is “conducting a series of alternative
investigations into tangential subjects” in a way that seems to be
designed “to minimize the culpability of Trump and his aides and to
deflect attention from the core issues of the controversy.”

July 19: The White House confirms that Trump and Russian
Putin had a second, previously undisclosed, meeting at the G-20
Summit on July 7, and it lasted “nearly an hour.”

– The New York Times reports that Paul
Manafort was in debt to pro-Russia interests by as much as $17
million before joining Trump’s campaign as chairman in March 2016.
This is reflected in financial records filed in Cyprus, which show
that Manafort may owe up to $9.9 million to a Cyprus shell company
connected to Ukraine’s pro-Russia Party of Regions and $7.8 million
to a company in the British Virgin Islands connected to Russian
aluminum magnate and Putin ally Oleg Deripaska. A spokesman for
Manafort told the Times that the Cyprus records are “stale
and do not purport to reflect any current financial arrangements,”
and did not address whether the debts shown in the records may have
existed previously.

– The New York Times reports that Trump
quietly ended a secret American program to provide arms to Syrian
rebels fighting Bashar al Assad’s government in Syria’s civil war.
The move aligns with Russian interests; Russia has backed Assad’s
government and attacked the rebel forces.

– The New York Times reports that banking
regulators are reviewing Trump’s massive loan portfolio with
Deutsche Bank to see if Trump’s debt “might expose the bank to
heightened risks.” The paper notes that Deutsche Bank has already
been in contact with federal investigators about Trump’s accounts.
The Guardian separately reports that
executives at the bank are expecting to soon receive subpoenas or
other requests for information from special counsel Robert
Mueller.

– Trump sits down for an Oval Office interview with three New York
Times reporters. In their conversation, Trump says that if he
had known Jeff Sessions would recuse himself from the Russia
investigation, he would not have nominated him to be attorney
general. “Sessions should have never recused himself, and if he was
going to recuse himself, he should have told me before he took the
job, and I would have picked somebody else,” Trump says. Trump also
says that if special counsel Robert Mueller were to start delving
into his finances or his family’s, that would be a “violation,” but
refuses to answer whether or not he would fire Mueller over
it. 

– Twenty-two Democratic members of Congress send a letter to the FBI expressing concerns over
possible discrepancies in Ivanka Trump’s application for a security
clearance. As part of the application, Ivanka Trump had to disclose
foreign contacts. Her husband, Jared Kushner, has updated his own
clearance multiple times with more than 100 meetings and phone
calls—a number of them with Russian officials—that he failed to
disclose initially. “We are concerned that Ivanka Trump may have
engaged in similar deception,” reads the letter.

July 20: Bloomberg reports that special counsel Robert
Mueller has expanded the Trump-Russia probe to include a range of
transactions with Trump businesses; these include apartment
purchases by Russians in Trump buildings, the 2013 Miss Universe
pageant in Moscow, and Trump’s 2008 sale of a Florida mansion to
Russian oligarch Dmitry Rybolovlev.

– The Treasury Department fines Exxon Mobil $2 million for violating
Russian sanctions by signing contracts with Igor Sechin, the head
of Russia’s state-owned oil company Rosneft, while Rex Tillerson,
now the secretary of state, was Exxon’s CEO.

– CNN reports that Mueller has sent a notice to
the White House requiring them to preserve all documents related to
Donald Trump Jr.’s June 9, 2016, meeting with Russian lawyer
Natalia Veselnitskaya.

– Mark Corallo, a spokesman for Trump’s legal team, abruptly resigns.

July 24: Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner,
spends two hours behind closed doors with the Senate Intelligence
Committee answering questions related to the Trump-Russia
investigation. In a statement to the committee and at a press
conference following the closed-door session, he denies any collusion with Russia. “Let me be
very clear: I did not collude with Russia, nor do I know of anyone
else in the campaign who did so,” he says.

July 25: Mother Jones reports that Carl Levin,
a onetime chairman of the Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on
Investigations who left Congress in 2015, sent a letter the
previous day to special counsel Robert Mueller and the chairman and
vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee highlighting a
2000 investigation of possible money laundering by the company run
by Ike Kaveladze—the eighth person in the June 2016 meeting with
Donald Trump Jr. and Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya.

During that probe, an official at Citibank, where Kaveladze
established dozens of bank accounts on behalf of Delaware-based
shell companies, noted that Kaveladze’s main client at the time was
Crocus International, a company headed by Aras Agalarov, who in
2013 partnered with Donald Trump to bring the Miss Universe contest
to Moscow.

– The Senate Judiciary Committee issues a subpoena compelling former Trump
campaign chairman Paul Manafort to appear at a open hearing of the
committee the following day. Hours later, the committee withdraws
its subpoena, reportedly because Manafort has begun to produce
documents and voluntarily agreed to negotiate an interview
time.

– By a margin of 419-3, the House passes a bill levying new sanctions against
Russia and inhibiting the president’s ability to weaken them.

– Paul Manafort, Trump’s former campaign chairman, provides Senate investigators with notes he
took during the June 2016 meeting that Donald Trump Jr. arranged
with Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya. The notes, which could
confirm or refute Trump Jr.’s claim that he did not receive
damaging information about Hillary Clinton, have not been released
to the public.

July 26: FBI agents raid Paul Manafort’s Virginia home and seize
documents related to special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation
after obtaining a search warrant from a federal judge. The raid
signals a new, aggressive approach by Mueller.

July 27: Bill Browder, founder of the
hedge fund Hermitage Capital Management, testifies before the
Senate Judiciary Committee. Browder is a longtime investor in
Russia who spearheaded the passage of the Magnitsky Act, the package of Russia sanctions
allegedly discussed by Natalia Veselnitskaya, the Kremlin-linked
Russian lawyer, during her June 2016 meeting with Donald Trump Jr.,
Jared Kushner, and Paul Manafort. During the hearing, Browder
discusses how Veselnitskaya and several other political operatives
lobbied to repeal the Magnitsky Act without registering as foreign
agents, a possible violation of the Foreign Agents Registration
Act. Browder says “there’s no doubt” Veselnitskaya was acting
on behalf of the Russian government when she met with members of
Trump’s inner circle.

– By a vote of 98-2, the Senate approves the House’s sanctions bill, sending it
to the president’s desk.

– George Papadopoulos is
arrested at Washington’s Dulles airport.

July 28: The White House says Trump
will sign the sanctions legislation. 

– Russia retaliates against the new sanctions by seizing
two properties used by American diplomats and ordering the
reduction of US Embassy staff by September.

July 30: Putin says Russia will expel 755 US diplomats and support staff
in retaliation for the new sanctions.

July 31: BuzzFeed reports that the Republican
National Committee has instructed its employees to preserve all
documents covering the 2016 presidential campaign. Citing RNC
lawyers, BuzzFeed reports this is a “precautionary”
measure “as investigations continue into Russia’s meddling in the
election.”

– The Washington Post reports that while
flying back from the G-20 summit in Germany in early July, Trump
dictated his son Donald Trump Jr.’s response to revelations that
he’d met with a Kremlin-linked Russian lawyer. The statement, given
to the New York Times as they prepared a story about the
meeting for publication, said Trump Jr. and the Russian lawyer
“primarily discussed a program about the adoption of Russian
children,” and that the meeting was not about “a campaign issue.”
Over the next few days, it became clear this statement was
misleading, as Trump Jr. acknowledged he met with the lawyer after
being promised dirt on Hillary Clinton. The revelation that Trump
crafted the misleading statement, the Post notes, could
lead to additional scrutiny from investigators and eventually place
Trump and his inner circle in “legal jeopardy.”

August 1: A lawsuit (first reported by NPR) is filed alleging that Fox News and a Texas
Republican donor who backs Trump worked with the White House to gin
up a conspiratorial story concerning the murder of Democratic
National Committee staffer Seth Rich in an effort to deflect
attention from the Russia scandal. The lawsuit is brought by former
Washington, DC, detective (and longtime Fox contributor) Rod
Wheeler, who has been investigating Rich’s murder on behalf of Ed
Butowsky, a wealthy Dallas investor and frequent Fox commentator.
Wheeler claims a Fox reporter fabricated quotations appearing in a
retracted May 2017 article reporting that Rich had been in contact
with WikiLeaks prior to his death, implying that he—not Russian
hackers—had provided the site with DNC documents and emails. The
complaint includes a text message from Butowsky in which the
investor says Trump had read the story prior to its publication and
wanted it to come out “immediately.”

August 2: Trump signs into law new sanctions
against Russia but issues a statement calling the measure
“seriously flawed.” He notes, “By limiting the Executive’s
flexibility, this bill makes it harder for the United States to
strike good deals for the American people, and will drive China,
Russia, and North Korea much closer together. The Framers of our
Constitution put foreign affairs in the hands of the
President.”

August 3: Two bipartisan Senate bills are
introduced by members of the Judiciary
Committee that would restrict Trump’s ability to fire special
counsel Robert Mueller. One, by Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) and Chris
Coons (D-Md.), would allow Mueller to challenge his dismissal
before a panel of three federal judges. The others, by Sens.
Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Cory Booker (D-N.J.), would require
this judicial panel to review the Justice Department’s reasoning
for his dismissal before Mueller could be fired.

– The Wall Street Journal reports that Mueller has convened a grand jury
to probe Russian interference in the 2016 election.

– Michael Flynn files an amended version of his federal
disclosure form that includes new details about his contracts
and income. The updated disclosure shows that that Flynn was hired
as an adviser to SCL Group, which at the time was the parent
company of the data firm Cambridge Analytica, which worked on
behalf of Trump’s campaign. One of Cambridge Analytica’s biggest
financial backers is hedge fund mogul and Trump backer Robert
Mercer, and White House strategist Stephen Bannon was a Cambridge
Analytica vice president before joining the Trump campaign. The
disclosure of Flynn’s ties to the SCL Group are significant because
Trump’s campaign data operation has come under scrutiny as one
source of possible collusion with Russians seeking to influence the
2016 election. 

August 4: NBC reports that special counsel Robert Mueller
has tapped multiple grand juries in Washington, DC, and Virginia as
part of the Trump-Russia investigation, a sign that the
investigation is gearing up.

– The New York Times reports that Robert
Mueller’s investigative team has asked the White House for records
related to former national security adviser Michael Flynn. This is
the first known instance of Mueller’s team asking the White House
for documents as part of their investigation into possible
collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign.

– Politico reports that two Republican
staffers on the House Intelligence Committee traveled to London
earlier this summer to track down Christopher Steele, the former
British intelligence operative who compiled the Trump-Russia memo
published by BuzzFeed in January. The previously
unreported trip increases tensions with the House Intelligence
Committee’s Democratic staff, the Senate Intelligence Committee,
and Mueller’s office. The staffers didn’t end up talking with
Steele during the trip.

August 6: In an appearance on Fox News Sunday, Deputy Attorney
General Rod Rosenstein says special counsel Robert Mueller can
investigate any crimes uncovered as part of the Trump-Russia
probe.

August 10: Bloomberg reports that special counsel Robert
Mueller’s team has sent subpoenas to global banks requesting
transaction records and account information tied to Paul Manafort
and several of his companies. A source tells Bloomberg that Mueller
has reached out to Manafort’s son-in-law and a Ukrainian oligarch,
hoping to convince Manafort to be more cooperative.

– Taking a break from a vacation at his New Jersey golf club,
Trump holds a brief press conference. The president tells reporters that he is grateful that Putin
has expelled hundreds of US diplomats from Russia in response to US
sanctions. “I want to thank him because we’re trying to cut down
our payroll and as far as I’m concerned I’m very thankful that he
let go of a large number of people because now we have a smaller
payroll,” Trump says. Following outrage over Trump’s comments,
press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders tells the New York Times that the president’s
remarks were meant to be funny and “sarcastic.”

August 11: Rinat Akhmetshin, the Russian
lobbyist who attended the Trump tower meeting with Donald Trump Jr.
in June 2016, testifies before a grand jury impaneled by special
counsel Robert Mueller, according to a report from the Financial Times.

August 14: The Washington Post reports on a set of
Trump campaign emails showing persistent efforts by campaign
foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos to coordinate a meeting
about US-Russia ties between Trump and Russian leaders “including
Putin” according to one email subject line. The exchanges—which
were read to or confirmed to the Post by three sources
with access to the emails—were sent between March and September
2016, as the presidential race heated up. The emails were included
in more than 20,000 pages of documents the Trump campaign turned
over to congressional committees investigating Russian interference
in the 2016 election.

August 16: The New York Times reports that a
Ukrainian hacker known as Profexer—whom American intelligence
agencies have identified as the creator of a program used in
Russian hacks targeting the US election—has turned himself over to
the Ukrainian police and has become a witness for the FBI. “It is
the first known instance of a living witness emerging from the arid
mass of technical detail that has so far shaped the investigation
into the election hacking and the heated debate it has stirred,”
notes the Times.

– The Daily Caller reports that Rep. Dana
Rohrabacher (R-Calif.) met with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange at
the Ecuadorian Embassy in London. According to Rohrabacher, who
openly admires Putin, Assange can prove that hacked Democratic
Party emails did not come from Russia.

August 18: BuzzFeed reports that special counsel
Robert Mueller’s office is investigating Donald Trump Jr. A source
tells BuzzFeed that prosecutors are particularly
interested in discovering what information Trump Jr. received at
the June 2016 meeting with a Russian lawyer.

– Bloomberg reports on the friendship
between Ivanka Trump and Dasha Zhukova, the wife of Russian
billionaire and Putin ally Roman Abramovich. Bloomberg notes that
Ivanka Trump’s husband, Jared Kushner, has met three or four times
with Abramovich, and that Trump and Kushner disclosed their ongoing
social relationship with the couple—which included a four-day trip
to Russia in 2014 at Zhukova’s initiation—on their security
clearance forms.

August 21: The New York Times reports that Rinat
Akhmetshin, a Russian immigrant who attended the July 2016 Trump
Tower meeting, has much deeper ties to the Russian government and
Kremlin-supported oligarchs than previously known. The
Times also reports that Akhmetshin, who is being
investigated by special counsel Robert Mueller, has worked for
Russian oligarchs whose opponents faced sophisticated hacks.
Akhmetshin’s sister, father, and godfather joined Russian
intelligence services, but Akhmetshin has denied allegations that
he is a Russian spy.

August 22: Glenn Simpson, the founder of
opposition research firm Fusion GPS, which hired Christopher Steele
to compile the Trump-Russia dossier, meets with the Senate
Judiciary Committee in a nearly 10-hour closed-door session to
answer questions about the financing and sourcing for the dossier.
ABC News reports that Steele has already met
with FBI investigators and provided them with the names of his
sources for the dossier’s allegations.

August 27: Citing emails that will soon be
turned over to congressional investigators, the Washington Post reports that Trump’s
company was pursuing a plan in late 2015 and early 2016 to build a
“massive” Trump Tower in Moscow, well after he announced his
presidential run in June 2015. Felix Sater, a Russian-born real
estate developer, told Trump he could get Putin to say “great
things” about Trump, according to the emails, which the
Post reports suggest additional connections between
Trump’s associates and Russia-connected individuals.

August 28: The Washington Post reports that Michael
Cohen, a top Trump organization executive and lawyer for the
president, emailed Putin’s personal spokesman during the
presidential campaign to push for the Trump Tower deal in Moscow.
According to the Post, Trump cut a letter of intent with
I.C. Expert Investment Co., a Moscow-based developer, in October
2015 and began to solicit designs and discuss funding.

– NBC News reports that special counsel Robert
Mueller’s team is “keenly focused” on what Trump may have known
about the infamous June 2016 meeting in Trump Tower between Russian
operatives and Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner, and Paul
Manafort—and whether the president may have tried to help conceal
that meeting’s purpose once it was uncovered by the media.

August 29: CNN reports that special counsel Robert Mueller
has subpoenaed Paul Manafort’s former lawyer and current
spokesman.

August 30: Politico reports that special counsel
Robert Mueller is working with New York Attorney General Eric
Schneiderman as part of his investigation into former Trump
campaign chairman Paul Manafort’s financial transactions. Unlike
possible federal crimes resulting from Mueller’s investigation, the
president does not have the power to pardon state crimes.

August 31: NBC News reports on notes that Paul Manafort,
Trump’s former campaign chairman, took during a June 2016 meeting
at Trump Tower that Donald Trump Jr. arranged with a Russian lawyer
promising dirt on Hillary Clinton’s campaign. Manafort’s
contemporaneous notes included the word “donations” in possible
relation to the Republican National Committee. According to NBC
News, congressional investigators are trying to determine if
participants discussed the possibility of Russian sources making
illegal campaign contributions.

September 1: CNN reports that House
Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes is threatening to hold Attorney
General Jeff Sessions and FBI Director Christopher Wray in contempt
of court, a jailable offense, if they don’t provide documents
related to Christopher Steele’s Russia dossier. According to CNN,
Nunes has continued to look into Trump-Russia matters, despite
recusing himself from the committee’s investigation in April
2017.

September 6: Facebook discloses that $100,000 worth of ads
were purchased on the platform by suspected Russian agents.
Facebook said the roughly 3,000 ads, which ran from June 2015 to
May 2017, were linked to 470 fake accounts and pages that were
“likely operated out of Russia.”

September 8: The Washington Post reports that special
counsel Robert Mueller has told the White House that he will seek
to interview six high-ranking current and former advisers to Trump,
including communications aide Hope Hicks, former press secretary
Sean Spicer, and former chief of staff Reince Priebus.

Sept 11: The Daily Beast reports that Russian
operatives used Facebook ads to organize and promote domestic
political events, including protests such as an August 2016
anti-refugee rally in Twin Falls, Idaho.

– CNN reports on additional details from the
letter of intent that Trump signed to build a Trump Tower in Moscow
during the presidential campaign. According to CNN, the deal would
have provided his company a $4 million upfront fee, a percentage of
sales, and a spa named after his daughter Ivanka.

September 13: NBC News reports that Michael Flynn Jr., the
son of Trump’s former national security adviser, is being
investigated by special counsel Robert Mueller. According to three
former and current government officials interviewed by NBC News,
federal investigators are focused in part on the work he did for
Flynn Intel Group, his father’s lobbying firm.

– The Wall Street Journal reports that
Michael Flynn, while he was working as Trump’s national security
adviser, promoted an idea to build nuclear power plants across the
Middle East—a deal that would have benefited both Flynn’s former
private sector employer and Russian companies. The project, valued
at hundreds of billions of dollars, had previously proposed that
Russian companies could provide fuel and manage the plants’ waste.
According to former National Security Council staffers who spoke
with the Journal, Flynn continued to meet with a group of
military officers tasked with promoting the power plan on behalf of
US firms even after NSC ethics advisers asked him to cease
communications—actions that the former staffers called “highly
abnormal.”

The House Oversight Committee also released documents confirming
that Flynn had traveled to the Middle East in June 2015 to promote
this nuclear power plan to foreign officials. Flynn omitted this
trip from the list of foreign contacts he submitted when applying
for his Trump administration security clearance.

September 15: The Wall Street Journal reports that Rep.
Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.) proposed a deal to White House chief of
staff John Kelly that would involve pardoning WikiLeaks founder
Julian Assange in exchange for evidence that Rohrabacher said would
show Russia was not the source of hacked Democratic Party
emails.

September 17: The New York Times reports that White
House counsel Don McGahn is clashing sharply with Ty Cobb, a lawyer
brought in to help coordinate the White House’s response to the
Russia investigation, over how much the White House should
cooperate with Robert Mueller’s team. The Times was tipped
off to the conflict after overhearing Cobb badmouthing McGahn at a
Washington, DC, steakhouse, claiming that the attorney is
withholding certain documents.

September 18: The New York Times reports that when
federal agents searched Paul Manafort’s home in July 2017 as part
of the Trump-Russia probe, they told him that he should expect to
be indicted.

– CNN reports that, according to multiple sources,
investigators wiretapped Manafort, Trump’s former campaign
chairman, both before and after the election. The wiretap
reportedly continued early this year, after Trump took office and
during a period when he was known to have had communications with
Manafort. 

September 19: Reuters reports that Trump is using
donations to his reelection campaign and the Republican National
Committee to pay for his legal defense against special counsel
Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation.

– CNN reports that the Republican National
Committee spent more than $230,000 in August to cover some of
Trump’s legal fees in the Russia investigation.

– During his confirmation hearing for the post of ambassador
to Russia before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, former
Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman says that, unlike Trump, he believes Russia
interfered in the US election. “There is no question, underline no
question, that the Russian government interfered in the US election
last year.”

September 20: The Daily Beast reports that the Facebook
and Twitter accounts of the group “Being Patriotic,” a suspected
Russian propaganda front, helped organize more than a dozen
pro-Trump rallies in Florida in August 2016. The rallies “brought
dozens of supporters together in real life,” notes the Daily
Beast. “They appear to be the first case of Russian
provocateurs successfully mobilizing Americans over Facebook in
direct support of Donald Trump.”

– The Washington Post reports that, less
than two weeks before Trump accepted the Republican nomination,
Paul Manafort offered to provide campaign briefings to a Russian
billionaire closely aligned with the Kremlin. The email making the
offer is among tens of thousands of documents turned over to
special counsel Robert Mueller and congressional investigators.

September 21: Facebook says it will hand over the more than
3,000 Russia-connected political ads to congressional
investigators.

September 25: Roger Stone is grilled by the
House Intelligence Committee for three hours behind closed doors.
He refuses to disclose the identity of the claimed
go-between that facilitated his communication with WikiLeaks. Rep.
Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), the top Democrat on the panel, threatened
to subpoena Stone over the omission, saying that Stone refused to
address a “seminal area of importance to the committee.”

September 26: Sen. Richard Blumenthal says he is “99 percent sure” there will be
criminal charges against former Trump campaign chairman Paul
Manafort and former national security adviser Michael Flynn.

– CNN reports that the criminal division of the
Internal Revenue Service has begun sharing information with Robert
Mueller’s investigative team.

September 27: Multiple news outlets report that
the Senate Intelligence Committee has asked Facebook, Twitter, and Google to testify
as part of the investigation into Russian interference in the
election.

– The Daily Beast reports Russian agents
impersonated a real nonprofit, United Muslims of America, to spread
racist memes and fake news on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

September 28: CNN reports that, according to two sources
familiar with the matter, a social-media campaign calling itself
“Blacktivist” that is linked to the Russian government used
Facebook and Twitter to stoke racial tensions in the United States
during the 2016 election.

– Twitter discloses that it found and removed 201
accounts that may have been used by Russian agents after meeting
with congressional investigators. 

October 2: The Washington Post reports that
associates of Trump and his company turned over documents to
federal prosecutors revealing two previously undisclosed
interactions with Russia during the presidential campaign. One
email exchange involved Michael Cohen, Trump’s personal attorney,
possibly traveling to a conference in Russia that Putin was
planning to attend.

– Facebook estimates that ads bought by Russian agents
reached about 10 million people in the United States.

October 3: Bloomberg reports that special counsel Robert
Mueller’s top legal adviser, Michael Dreeben, is researching if
there are limits on Trump’s pardon power.

October 4: CNN reports that highly sophisticated
Russia-linked Facebook ads targeted key demographic groups in
pivotal parts of Michigan and Wisconsin.

October 5: CNN reports that special counsel Robert
Mueller’s team met over the summer with Christopher Steele, the
former British spy who produced the memos on Trump’s alleged Russia
connections. CNN also reports that the intelligence community last
year took the dossier more seriously than they acknowledged
publicly.

October 6: NBC reports that Christopher Steele, author of
the Trump-Russia memos, is in talks with the Senate Intelligence
Committee about meeting with the leaders of the panel.

October 9: The Washington Post reports that an
internal Google inquiry has found evidence of Russian agents
exploiting its platform in an attempt to meddle with the
election.

October 10: CNN reports that House Intelligence Committee
Chair Devin Nunes signed subpoenas for the heads of Fusion GPS, the
research firm that paid Christopher Steele to investigate Trump’s
Russia ties.

– Former Trump foreign policy adviser Carter Page says he is
planning to plead the Fifth Amendment if called
to testify in the Senate Intelligence Committee probe of potential
collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia. 

October 11: Trump blows by an October 1 deadline for starting to
implement new sanctions on Russia. Sens. Ben Cardin (D-Md.) and
John McCain (R-Ariz.) say the delay calls into question Trump’s
commitment to stepping up sanctions imposed by the bill Congress
passed in July with overwhelming support.

– The Daily Beast reports that the House
Intelligence Committee is looking into data firm Cambridge
Analytica’s work for the Trump campaign as part of its
investigation into Russian election meddling. Former White House
chief strategist Steve Bannon invested between $1 million and $5
million in Cambridge Analytica, where he was a one-time VP, and the
company was founded by Robert Mercer, a hedge fund billionaire and
major Trump campaign donor.

October 13: Members of Robert Mueller’s
investigative team spend all day interviewing former Trump’s
ex-chief of staff Reince Priebus.

October 15: NBC reports that Paul Manafort, Trump’s former
campaign manager, engaged in $60 million worth of business dealings
with Oleg Deripaska, a Russian oligarch closely tied to the
Kremlin. According to NBC, a company wholly owned by Deripaska
loaned $26 million to a company linked to Manafort.

October 16: Foreign Policy publishes the memo
Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya took to the June 2016 Trump
Tower meeting. It focuses on Bill Browder, an American businessman
whom Veselnitskaya accused of defrauding the Russian government,
and only makes a passing mention of Hillary Clinton.

– Former Trump press secretary Sean Spicer meets with Mueller’s investigators
for almost a full day. He is asked about Trump’s firing of FBI
Director James Comey and about Trump’s Oval Office meeting with
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and then-Russian Ambassador
Sergei Kislyak.

October 17: A federal judge dismisses a libel suit brought by Oleg
Deripaska against the Associated Press for reporting that he paid
Manafort to advance the goals of the Russian government and
Putin.

– The Russian newspaper RBC publishes an investigation into
2016 election meddling by the Internet Research Agency (IRA), a
notorious Russian “troll factory” based in St. Petersburg and
linked to the Kremlin. Among the story’s many revelations: The IRA spent about $2.3
million during the 2016 election cycle to meddle in US politics,
paying the salaries of 90 “US desk” employees who helped wage
disinformation campaigns via social media, while also funneling
thousands of dollars to unwitting US activists to organize protests
on divisive issues, including race relations.

– ABC News reports that the Senate Intelligence
Committee will likely subpoena Mike Flynn Jr., the son of Trump’s
ousted national security adviser. The younger Flynn was his
father’s chief of staff during the presidential transition period
but was pushed off the Trump team after it was revealed
that he had spread alt-right conspiracy theories online.

October 18: CNN reports that a group tied to Russian trolls
who ran thousands of fake Facebook ads paid personal trainers to
run self-defense classes for African Americans as part of an
apparent attempt to generate fear and gather contact
information.

– The Daily Beast reports that several key
Trump campaign staffers, including Kellyanne Conway and Donald
Trump Jr., promoted tweets during the election from @Ten_GOP, an
account linked to the Internet Research Agency, the notorious
Russian “troll factory.”

– Former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski meets with Senate
Intelligence Committee investigators for more than three hours.

– Attorney General Jeff Sessions testifies before the Senate
Judiciary Committee and changes his story on his contacts with Sergey
Kislyak in the spring and summer of 2016, saying that it was
possible he discussed campaign matters with the ambassador. (When
news of his meetings with Kislyak first broke in March, Sessions
said he met with the Russian ambassador solely in his capacity as a
US senator and that they never discussed campaign matters.)

Sessions also refused to elaborate on his communications with
Trump about the firing of FBI Director James Comey by asserting an
odd, preemptive form of executive privilege—saying he can’t
disclose his communications lest the president one day decide to
invoke executive privilege to keep them private.

October 19: Politico reports that Trump has
personally interviewed at least three candidates for US attorney
jobs in the Eastern and Southern districts of New York and in the
District of Columbia. The Southern District of New York has
jurisdiction over Trump Tower, which means it would have the power
to bring indictments against the Trump Organization and associates
in various cases, including the ongoing Russia investigation.
 “To be very blunt, these three jurisdictions will have
authority to bring indictments over the ongoing special counsel
investigation into Trump campaign collusion with the Russians and
potential obstruction of justice by the president of the United
States,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) tells
Politico.

– While speaking at a national security forum, CIA Director Mike
Pompeo mistakenly says that when US intelligence
agencies released their January 2017 assessment about Russian
interference in the 2016 election, they also found the interference
did not affect the outcome. In fact, the report did not come to a
conclusion on that. The CIA issues a statement correcting
Pompeo.

October 24: The Wall Street Journal reports that the
Manhattan US attorney’s office has launched an investigation into
possible money laundering by Paul Manafort.

– NBC News reports that special counsel Robert
Mueller is investigating whether Democratic lobbyist Tony Podesta’s
work to promote Ukraine’s image in the West violated the Foreign
Agents Registration Act.

October 25: The Wall Street Journal reports that the
head of Cambridge Analytica, a data analytics firm that worked for
the Trump campaign, offered to help WikiLeaks founder Julian
Assange organize the emails his site was releasing about the
Clinton campaign. The firm is partly owned by Republican megadonor
Robert Mercer, and former Trump campaign chief executive Steve
Bannon sat on its board before joining the administration.

– McClatchy reports that Michael Cohen, Trump’s
personal lawyer, made as much as $20 million by selling four
properties to mysterious buyers.

October 26: Twitter bans RT and Sputnik Media from using its
advertising network, citing US intelligence reports that the
organizations attempted to interfere with the election.

– BuzzFeed reports that Senate Judiciary
Committee chair Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) requested confidential
banking information on close to 40 people from the Treasury
Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network. The request
is seen as a sign that Grassley has stepped up his committee’s
Russia investigation.

October 30: Facebook says content created by Russian
operatives may have reached as many as 126 million people in the
United States, a far higher number than the 10 million people the
company said saw paid Russian ads.

– Federal investigators led by special counsel Robert Mueller
charge former Trump campaign manager Paul
Manafort and his onetime business associate Rick Gates, who also
worked on the campaign, with money laundering. Both plead not
guilty to the 12-count indictment, which ranges from conspiring to
launder money to working as unregistered agents of Ukraine’s former
pro-Russian government.

– The Department of Justice reveals that George Papadopoulos,
the Trump campaign foreign policy adviser, pleaded guilty in early October to lying to federal
investigators. The plea reveals that Papadopoulos met during the
campaign with a London-based professor (later revealed to be Joseph
Mifsud) who claimed Russia had damaging information on Hillary
Clinton.

– Jay Sekulow, one of Trump’s attorneys, tells CNN’s Wolf Blitzer that the indictments
are not related to the Trump campaign and says there is no
connection between George Papadopoulos’ plea and Trump.

October 31: Trump claims on Twitter that there was no
collusion between Russia and his campaign. Trump also calls George Papadopoulos a “young, low level
volunteer” and a liar who few people knew.

November
1: CNN
reports that Joseph
Mifsud, a London-based professor who was in contact with George
Papadopolous, told a business contact in April 2016 that Moscow had
a large collection of information about Hillary Clinton.

– The House Intelligence
Committee releases
a selection of 3,000 ads that
Russian operatives bought on Facebook, which further reveal the
sophistication of Russia’s campaign to promote Trump and attack
Clinton during the 2016 campaign.

November 2:
The Wall Street
Journal reports that the Justice Department has identified more
than six Russian government officials involved in the hacking
operation that targeted the Democratic National Committee during
the 2016 campaign. Prosecutors are considering bringing charges in
2018, according to the paper.

November 3: CNN
reports that former
Trump foreign policy adviser Carter Page told the House
Intelligence Committee that he informed then-Sen. Jeff Sessions
that he was traveling to Russia during the 2016 presidential
campaign. In June, Sessions told the Senate Intelligence Committee
that he didn’t know if Page met with Russian officials during the
campaign.

– The Washington
Post reports
that Keith Schiller, Trump’s
longtime confidant and body guard and former White House aide, will
be questioned by the House Intelligence Committee about Trump’s
2013 Moscow trip. Investigators plan to ask Schiller about
allegations made in the Steele memos that Russians obtained
compromising information on Trump during the trip.

– Three conservative
Republicans introduce a resolution calling on special counsel Robert
Mueller to recuse himself because he was the FBI director in 2010
when government officials approved the sale of Uranium One, a
Canadian energy firm, to a Russian nuclear energy
company.

– CNN
reports that Jared
Kushner has turned over documents to special counsel Robert Mueller
related to his role in the firing of FBI Director James
Comey.

November
5: NBC News
reports that special
counsel Robert Mueller has enough evidence to bring charges against
former White House national security adviser Michael Flynn and his
son, Michael Flynn Jr. Mueller’s team is investigating whether
Flynn lied to investigators and laundered money, as well as whether
he tried to remove a chief rival of Turkish President Recep Erdogan
from the United States.

November 6:
Natalia Veselnitskaya, the Russian lawyer who attended the 2016
Trump Tower meeting, says
Donald Trump Jr. told a her that a
law that places sanctions on some Russian officials would be
reexamined if his father won the election. She also says Trump Jr.
asked for written evidence that Hillary Clinton’s campaign received
money that evaded US taxes.

November 8:
The Daily
Beast reports
that Democrats on the Senate
Foreign Relations Committee have been privately investigating
Russian interference in Eastern Europe without their Republican
colleagues. The Senate Democrats are trying to chart how the
Kremlin used propaganda and voter suppression to advance its
interests.

November
9: CNN
reports that special
counsel Robert Mueller’s team has interviewed White House senior
policy adviser Stephen Miller—bringing his investigation into
Trump’s inner White House circle. Miller was asked about his role
in the firing of FBI Director James Comey as part of Mueller’s
effort to determine whether the firing constitutes obstruction of
justice, according to CNN.

November 10: CNN
reports that Keith
Schiller, Trump’s former White House aide and longtime confidant,
told the House Intelligence Committee that he rejected a Russian
offer to send five women to Trump’s room during a 2013 trip to
Moscow. Schiller said he and Trump thought the offer was a
joke.

November 13:
The Atlantic publishes Twitter direct messages
exchanged in September 2016 between
WikiLeaks and Donald Trump Jr. In the messages, WikiLeaks gave
Trump Jr. the password to PutingTrump.org, a site that would
document then-candidate Trump’s Russia ties.

November 14: The New York Times reports that the
State Department’s Office of Acquisitions has awarded a $2.8
million no-bid contract to Elite Security
Holdings to provide security guards at the American Embassy in
Moscow and at consulates in St. Petersburg, Yekaterinburg, and
Vladivostok. The company, reports the Times, is “closely
linked to the former top K.G.B. figure, Viktor G. Budanov, a
retired general who rose through the ranks to become head of Soviet
counterintelligence.”

November 17: ABC News
reports that Trump will be
presented with a recommendation from the National Security
Council to sell Ukraine $47
millions of arms including powerful anti-tank missiles. If Trump
decides to take these recommendations, it would signal support of
Ukraine in its ongoing hostility with Russian and would also mark a
shift from the GOP party platform’s softer stance on arming
Ukraine.

November 23: CBS News
reports that the White House will
not cover any legal fees incurred by former national security
adviser Michael Flynn and former campaign chairman Paul
Manafort related to special counsel Robert Mueller’s
investigation.

November 28: The top Democrats on the House Oversight
Committee and Foreign Affairs Committee call
on Trump’s longtime friend Tom
Barrack to speak with them about conversations he had with Michael
Flynn regarding a plan to build nuclear reactors in the Middle
East.

December 1: Michael Flynn, Trump’s former
national security adviser, is charged with and pleads
guilty to lying to the FBI about
conversations he had with the Russian
ambassador. Court
documents suggest Flynn is likely to face between zero and six
months in prison.

Read the charging document below: 

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December 2:
Trump tweets
that he “had to fire General Flynn
because he lied to the Vice President and the FBI.” Legal
experts say Trump’s
tweet suggests he could have been obstructing justice when he told
former FBI Director James Comey to stop investigating
Flynn.

December 4:
Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s office drops
its support for Paul Manafort’s
bail deal after Manafort secretly writes an editorial with a colleague who has ties to
Russian intelligence.

December 5: Reuters reports that special counsel Robert
Mueller subpoenaed Deutsche Bank for data on accounts held by Trump and his family. Jay
Sekulow, one of Trump’s lawyers, denies the bank was
subpoenaed.

December 8:
The New York
Times reports that
the FBI warned Hope Hicks, one of Trump’s top aides, that Russian
operatives were attempting to contact her during the presidential
transition. There is no evidence Hicks did anything wrong,
according to the Times.

December
12: Axios reports that Jay Sekulow, a member of Trump’s
legal team, is calling for a special counsel to investigate Robert
Mueller’s office after a Fox News
article shows the wife of a
demoted Department of Justice official worked for Fusion GPS, the firm
responsible for the Steele dossier.

– BuzzFeed reports that Justice Department filings show
Russia Today’s original distribution company has been “winding
down” since earlier in 2017.

December 13:
Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein says
there is no cause for firing
special counsel Robert Mueller during testimony before the House
Judiciary Committee.

– Radio Free Europe reports that US prosecutors are defending a
widely criticized decision by the Justice Department to
settle United States v.
Prevezon Holdings, a
money laundering case connected to a Russian tax fraud scheme.
Assistant Attorney General Stephen Boyd says prosecutors had no
contact with Trump, his family, and his staff in the
Prevezon case. (The
case received renewed attention after it was reported that
Kremlin-linked lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya met with Donald Trump
Jr. and other members of the elder Trump’s inner circle in June
2016. Veselnitskaya represented Prevezon in the lawsuit.)

December 14:
Russian President Vladimir Putin praises Trump and claims
the United States is gripped by
unfounded “spymania” related to the Russia
investigation.

– The top Democrats on the House
Judiciary and Oversight committees call
for subpoenaing Cambridge Analytica
and Giles-Parscale, two data consulting firms that worked for the
Trump campaign. Democrats want to find out if the firms helped Russia target political
messages to boost Trump
during the 2016 campaign.  

December 15:
The Washington
Post reports that
Jared Kushner and his legal team are looking to hire a crisis
public relations firm.

– Trump says
he is not ruling out a pardon for
his former national security adviser Michael Flynn.
 

December 17:
Trump says
he has no intention of firing
special counsel Robert Mueller and insists there was “no collusion
whatsoever” between Russia and his campaign.

December 18:
Trump gives
a national security speech that
makes no mention of Russian election interference. In the
speech, Trump says Putin thanked
him for sharing intelligence about a possible terrorist attack in
St. Petersburg.  

December 19: FBI Deputy
Director Andrew McCabe testifies before the House Intelligence
Committee for hours behind closed doors. During the testimony,
McCabe corroborates that when James Comey was serving as FBI
director, he informed McCabe that Trump requested Comey’s “loyalty”
and asked the then-FBI director to go easy on Michael Flynn in the
Russia investigation. Trump has disputed these conversations took
place.

– The Senate Intelligence
Committee announces that as part of its probe into Russian election
interference, it is looking into possible links between Russia and
the presidential campaign of Jill Stein, the Green Party
candidate in 2016.

December
20: Politico reports that Rep. Devin Nunes has been leading
a group of Republican congressman who are working outside the House
Intelligence Committee’s own Russia probe to pull together
materials discrediting the DOJ and the FBI’s handling of the Russia
investigation.

– Members of the House
Intelligence Committee interview longtime Russian American Trump
associate Felix Sater in New York City as part of the committee’s
Russia probe.

– Trump signs an executive order expanding the
Magnitsky list, a key package of US sanctions on Russia. Artem
Chaika, the son of Yuri Chaika, is on the list. Yuri Chaika is the
prosecutor general of Russia and also the person who Rob Goldstone,
Emin Agalarov’s publicist, credited with possessing dirt on Hillary
Clinton when emailing with Trump Jr. in advance of the June 2016
meeting in Trump Tower. 

December 21: In an interview with Fox News, White House
press secretary Sarah Huckabee
Sanders says the administration does not intend to fire special
counsel Robert Mueller and that she hopes his “hoax” investigation
wraps up soon. 

– NBC reports that, under orders from Attorney
General Jeff Sessions, the FBI and the DOJ have begun  to look
into a 2010 Obama administration deal that approved the sale of
Canadian energy firm Uranium One to a Russian nuclear energy
company. The State Department was one of nine federal agencies that
approved the deal, and Hillary Clinton was the secretary of state
at the time.

– Bloomberg reports that special counsel Robert
Mueller is looking into the Human
Rights Accountability Global Initiative (HRAGI) as part of the
probe into Russian election interference. The American
foundation received more
than $500,000 from powerful Russia financiers, and one of the
foundation’s representatives, Rinat Akhmetshin, also attended the
June 2016 meeting at Trump Tower with Donald Trump Jr. and other
members of the Trump campaign.

December 22: Politico reports anonymous Republican
congressional aides are investigating contacts between FBI General
Counsel James Baker and Mother Jones DC Bureau Chief David
Corn near the time Corn broke the news of the Steele dossier—a move
suggesting Baker was a source for Corn’s story. Corn denies that
Baker was a source for the article.

– Members of the House
Intelligence Committee interview Trump’s longtime assistant at the
Trump Organization, Rhona Graff, in New York City. 

– The New York
Times reports that
prosecutors in Brooklyn have subpoenaed Deutsche Bank records
related to Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner’s real estate company,
which has borrowed hundreds of millions of dollars from the German
bank. There is no clear indication that this subpoena is related to
Mueller’s Trump-Russia investigation. 

December 24: The
Guardian reports that the FBI is investigating the now
defunct FBME Bank in Tanzania, likely as part of Mueller’s
investigation into Russian election interference—and specifically
the finances of Paul Manafort, Trump’s former campaign
chairman. 

December 27: The
Washington
Post reports that
Trump’s legal team is preparing to attack Michael Flynn’s
credibility following the news of his cooperation agreement with
special counsel Robert Mueller’s team. 

December 28: Former Trump
aide Rick Gates, who is on house arrest following his indictment in
the Mueller investigation on charges of conspiracy and money
laundering, asks the DC district court to modify
his house arrest to go to a New
Year’s party. (The judge denies his request two days
later.)

December 30: The
New York
Times reports that
in May 2016—two months before leaked Democratic National Committee
emails started to become public—Trump’s foreign policy adviser
George Papadopoulos told Australia’s top diplomat in Britain,
Alexander Downer, that he knew Russia had thousands of emails that
had been stolen in an effort to hurt Hillary Clinton’s campaign.
The revelation that a member of the Trump campaign had prior
knowledge of the DNC hacking is what led the FBI to begin its
inquiry into Russian election interference and possible collusion
by the Trump campaign.

2018

January 3: Sen. Dianne Feinstein
(D-Calif.) sends two letters to former Trump campaign staffers
Dan Scavino and Brad Parscale, asking for information related to
the Russia investigation. In one of the letters, Feinstein alleges that Scavino, who served as the campaign’s
social-media manager, “may have corresponded with Russian nationals
regarding Trump campaign social media efforts.” 

– Paul Manafort files a lawsuit in federal court against the
Department of Justice. He claims the DOJ violated the law in appointing
Robert Mueller as the special counsel on the Russia probe, and also
challenged the “overly broad” scope of the investigation, claiming
the special counsel exceeded his authority in indicting Manafort on
conspiracy and money laundering charges.

– In a leaked excerpt of a new book about the Trump
administration, Fire and
Fury by Michael Wolff,
Wolff reports that former Trump adviser Steve Bannon called the
June 2016 Trump Tower meeting between Donald Trump Jr. and a
Kremlin-linked Russian lawyer “treasonous,” and later said of the
government probe into possible collusion between Russia and the
Trump campaign, “They’re
going to crack Don Junior like an egg on national TV.”

– The Justice Department and the
House Intelligence Committee reach a deal to grant the committee access to documents and
sources from the DOJ’s Russia probe. On the House side, the deal’s
primary advocate was Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), who wrote letters lashing out at the DOJ and
the FBI for withholding documents. 

January 4: The
New York
Times reports that
in March 2017, Trump directed his general counsel, Don McGahn, to
stop Attorney General Jeff Sessions from recusing himself from the
Russia investigation. McGahn followed through on the orders, two
sources familiar with the episode told the Times. Sessions still recused
himself in March 2017.

January 8: NBC reports that the Mueller probe is preparing
for a possible interview with Trump. Trump’s legal team met with
representatives from the special counsel’s office in late December
to discuss the format of the interview, a source familiar with the
meeting tells NBC.

January 9: Sen. Dianne
Feinstein, the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary
Committee, breaks
with Republican colleagues by
releasing the committee’s interview of Glenn Simpson of Fusion GPS,
the firm that produced the Steele dossier.

January 11: Trump accuses
Peter Strzok, the FBI agent who criticized Trump and other
politicians in text messages, of “treason” in an interview with the Wall Street Journal.  

– Reuters reports that Trump’s former campaign chairman
Steve Bannon, will appear before the House Intelligence Committee
as part of its Russia probe. 

January 16: While
testifying before the House Intelligence Committee, Steve Bannon
is subpoenaed by the panel on the spot after refusing to
discuss his work in the White House and on Trump’s transition team.
Bannon’s lawyer responds by contacting the White House, which
insists that Bannon not cooperate.

– The New York Times reports
that Bannon was subpoenaed by
special counsel Robert Mueller. It is the first time Mueller is
known to have used a subpoena to get information from a member of
Trump’s inner circle.

January 17: Steve
Bannon agrees
to be interviewed by Robert
Mueller’s team instead of testifying before a grand jury,
suggesting that he is cooperating with Mueller’s investigation.
  

– Former Trump campaign manager
Corey Lewandowski refuses
to answer the House Intelligence
Committee’s questions about the Trump campaign and his relationship
with the president. Lewandowski does not cite Trump’s potential
assertion of executive privilege, saying instead that he was
unprepared to answer the committee’s questions.

January 18: McClatchy reports
that the FBI is investigating
whether Alexander Torshin, a top Russian banker who is close to
Putin, illegally funneled money to the National Rifle Association
to support Trump’s campaign.

January 19: Conservatives
demand the release of a classified memo drafted by aides to House
Intelligence Committee Chair Devin Nunes (R-Calif.). The memo,
which Democrats see as part of an effort to undermine the Russia
investigation, accuses the FBI of improperly obtaining a warrant
under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to surveil Carter
Page, the former Trump campaign foreign policy adviser.

January 20: CNN
reports
that House Republicans may use an
obscure committee rule to circumvent the executive branch’s
declassification process to release the Nunes memo.

January 23: Axios reports
that Attorney General Jeff Sessions
pushed FBI Director Christopher Wray to fire his deputy Andrew
McCabe, whom Trump has repeatedly criticized. Wray reportedly threatened to resign because
of pressure from Sessions.

January 24: The Justice
Department confirms that Attorney General Jeff Sessions
was questioned the week before as part of Robert Mueller’s
investigation. Sessions is the first Cabinet member to be
interviewed by Mueller’s team.

– Two Democrats on the Senate
Judiciary Committee say
they want to provide Robert Mueller
with transcripts of the panel’s interviews with Donald Trump Jr.
and other key Russia witnesses. The move suggests that Sens.
Sheldon Whitehouse (R.I.) and Richard Blumenthal (Conn.) believe
witnesses may have made false statements to their committee.
 

– Trump says he is “looking forward” to speaking with
special counsel Robert Mueller and that he would do so under
oath.

– Trump grows angry while flying
to Davos, Switzerland, after learning that Associate Attorney
General Stephen Boyd said in a letter to the House Intelligence
Committee that it would be “extraordinarily reckless” to release
Rep. Devin Nunes’ classified memo, according to a Bloomberg report. Trump reportedly views Boyd’s warning
as part of the Justice Department’s efforts to undermine
him.

January 25: The
New York Times
reports
that the previous June Trump
commanded White House counsel Donald McGahn to fire Robert Mueller
but McGahn refused to carry out Trump’s order,  threatening to
resign.

January 28: Sens. Susan
Collins (R-Maine) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) say Congress should pass legislation to protect
special counsel Robert Mueller from being ousted.

– Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.), a
top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, says
he has “100 percent” support for
special counsel Robert Mueller and says he told Republican
colleagues to “leave him the hell alone.”

January 29: Deputy FBI
Director Andrew McCabe steps down after facing public attacks from
Trump. Attorney General Jeff Sessions had also pressured FBI
Director Christopher Wray to fire McCabe.

– Former FBI Director James
Comey tweets that “McCabe stood tall over the last 8 months,
when small people were trying to tear down an institution we all
depend on…America needs you.

– Republicans on the House
Intelligence Committee vote to release the controversial Nunes memo,
giving the White House five days to approve or block its
release.

– Deputy Attorney General Rod
Rosenstein warns White House chief of staff John Kelly that the
memo could threaten classified information and urges Trump to
reconsider his support for releasing it, according to a
Washington Post
report. FBI Director Christopher Wray also tells
Kelly that he opposes making the memo public.

– The Trump
administration announces it will not impose sanctions on countries that
buy Russian arms. 

– The Daily Beast reports
that a Sean Hannity impersonator
received a direct message on Twitter from WikiLeaks founder Julian
Assange, who claimed to have “some news” on Sen. Mark Warner
(D-Va.)

January 30: Following his
State of the Union address, Trump says
on a hot mic that he is “100
percent” in favor of releasing the Nunes memo. The White House had
said earlier in the day that it would conduct a national security
and legal review before making a decision.  

– Senate Majority Leader Mitch
McConnell (R-Ky.) dismisses concerns about Trump firing special counsel
Robert Mueller, saying that Mueller “”seems to need no
protection.”

January 31: The
FBI says
in a statement that it has “grave
concerns about material omissions of fact that fundamentally
impact” the accuracy of the Nunes memo. It also says it was
“provided a limited opportunity to review this memo the day before
the committee voted to release it.”

– The New York Times reports
that special counsel Robert Mueller
is investigating the statement that Trump and his staff crafted on
Air Force One about the June 2016 Trump Tower meeting between
Russians and Trump campaign officials, including Donald Trump Jr.
Hope Hicks, a top aide to Trump, reportedly said at the time that
emails discussing obtaining dirt on Hillary Clinton “will never get
out.” According to the Times, Mark Corallo, the former
spokesman for Trump’s legal team, has received an interview request
from Mueller. Corallo resigned from his post in July, reportedly over concerns that the
president and his staff may have obstructed justice in connection
to their handling of the response to the Trump Tower
story.

February 1: CNN reports
that top White House officials are
worried FBI Director Christopher Wray will resign if House
Republicans release the Nunes memo.

– The New York Times reports the White House plans
to release the Nunes memo without
requesting any redactions.

– House Minority Leader Nancy
Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer
(D-N.Y.) call
on Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.) to
remove Devin Nunes as the head of the House Intelligence
Committee.

February 2: House
Republicans release the Nunes memo, which accuses
the FBI of withholding the
political nature of the Steele dossier from the Foreign
Intelligence Surveillance Court when the bureau applied for a
warrant to surveil Carter Page. The Washington Post reports later that day that the bureau did in
fact disclose that the dossier had been funded by political
entities.

– Former FBI Director James
Comey tweets, “Dishonest and misleading memo wrecked the
House intel committee, destroyed trust with Intelligence Community,
damaged relationship with FISA court, and inexcusably exposed
classified investigation of an American citizen.”

– Trump sidesteps questions about whether he still has confidence
in Deputy FBI Director Rod Rosenstein, telling reporters to “figure
that one out.”

– Sen. John McCain
(R-Ariz.) says
in a statement, “The latest attacks
on the FBI and Department of Justice serve no American interests—no
party’s, no president’s, only Putin’s.”

– Sen. Ron Wyden sends letters to the Treasury Department and
the National Rifle Association to ask for more information about
possible election-related donations to the gun rights group from
Russian officials, including ex-politician and Putin ally Alexander
Torshin.

February 4: Time
reports that in an August 2013
letter, Carter Page bragged that he was an adviser to the
Kremlin. “Over the past half
year, I have had the privilege to serve as an informal advisor to
the staff of the Kremlin in preparation for their Presidency of the
G-20 Summit next month, where energy issues will be a prominent
point on the agenda,” Page wrote in the letter, which he sent to an
academic press that was reviewing a manuscript of his for
publication. Page sent the letter two months after the FBI
 interviewed him about his contacts with Russia and warned
that the bureau believed Russian intelligence was trying to recruit
him as an asset.

– Donald Trump Jr. describes the release of the Nunes memo as
“sweet revenge” for his family during a Fox News
interview.

February 5: President
Trump accuses Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), the House Intelligence
Committee’s top Democrat, of leaking information. Trump provides no
evidence to support his claim.

– During
an
appearance on Fox & Friends, Rep. Devin Nunes
acknowledges that the FBI disclosed the
political origins of the Steele dossier when it applied for a FISA
warrant targeting Carter Page. This contradicted a key claim of the
memo compiled by his staff, which contended the bureau failed to
reveal the political nature of Steel’s research. In the same
interview, Nunes claimed that Trump had never met with George
Papadopoulos, the Trump campaign foreign policy adviser who in
early 2016 claimed the Russians possessed damaging information on
Hillary Clinton. In fact, Trump himself had once tweeted out a
photo that pictured him meeting with Papadopoulus and other
campaign officials.

– Sen. Charles Grassley
(R-Iowa), releases a heavily redacted version of the
criminal referral of Christopher Steele that he and Sen. Lindsey
Graham (R-S.C.) sent to the FBI.

– The House Intelligence
Committee votes
unanimously to release a
classified Democratic memo that rebuts the claims of the Nunes
memo. The vote gives Trump five days to review the memo and decide
whether he will approve or oppose its release.

– The New York Times
reports that Trump’s lawyers have counseled him
to decline a “wide-ranging” interview with special counsel Robert
Mueller over concerns that the president, “who has a history of making false statements and contradicting
himself, could be charged with lying to investigators.”

February 6: Democratic
lawmakers reveal
that in December Justice Department
officials told the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee
that a whistleblower who Republicans claimed had information
linking Hillary Clinton to the Uranium One deal was unreliable and
had never mentioned Clinton to the FBI. 

February 8: CBS News
reports that “Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee plan to
construct a wall—a physical partition—separating Republican and
Democratic staff members in the committee’s secure spaces. The move
highlights the escalating partisan tensions between committee
Democrats and Republicans over the panel’s Russia probe.

– Politico reports
that a January 2017 phone
conversation about Russia between former Trump foreign policy
adviser Carter Page and former White House adviser Steve Bannon may
have been intercepted by the FBI.

– Fox News reports
that it has exclusively obtained
text messages between Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) and lobbyist Adam
Waldman. The messages, leaked a little over a week after WikiLeaks
founder Julian Assange promised a Sean Hannity impersonator “some
news” on Warner, show Waldman offered to connect Warner with
Christopher Steele.

– Sen. Marco Rubio
(R-Fla.) tweets
that Warner disclosed the texts to
the Senate Intelligence Committee four months before, adding that
it has “had zero impact on our work.”

– In a 25-minute
video published on
YouTube, Russian opposition activist Alexei Navalny accuses Deputy
Prime Minister Sergey Prikhodko—a top Russian foreign policy
official—of having been a conduit between the Kremlin and Oleg
Deripaska, an oligarch linked to the Trump campaign. Navalny builds
his case using the instagram posts, videos, and the memoir of
Nastya Rybka, an escort who claims to be Deripaska’s
mistress.

February 9:
Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) releases an analysis
that refutes the criminal referral
of Christopher Steele sent in January by Sens. Chuck Grassley
(R-Iowa) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.).

– The New York Times and the Intercept report that, in an effort to
recover stolen National Security Agency hacking tools, American
intelligence officials had been negotiating with a Russian who
claimed to also have compromising material on Trump. “Instead of providing the hacking tools, the Russian produced
unverified and possibly fabricated information involving Mr. Trump
and others, including bank records, emails and purported Russian
intelligence data,” according to the Times.

February
10: Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), the ranking
member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, asks the Treasury Department to hand over
records concerning the 2004 sale of Trump’s Palm Beach estate to
Russian billionaire Dmitry Rybolovlev.

February
12: NBC reports that the Justice Department’s No. 3
official, Associate Attorney General Rachel Brand, resigned from
the agency in part over concerns that she would be tapped to
oversee the Russia probe if Deputy Attorney
General Rod Rosenstein were fired.

– Foreign Policy reports that Anthony Ferrante, a former FBI and
White House official, has been secretly trying to verify the Steele
dossier on behalf of BuzzFeed, which is fighting a lawsuit
by a Russian technology executive who was named in the reports
compiled by ex-British spy Christopher Steele.

February 13:
At a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing, the
heads of the nation’s top intelligence agencies concur that Russia
is likely planning to interfere in the 2018 midterm
elections.  “There should be no doubt
that Russia perceives its past efforts as successful and views the
2018 US midterm elections as a potential target for Russian
influence operations,” Director of National Intelligence Dan
Coats testifies. Coats and the directors of the CIA,
the FBI, and the National Security Agency also say Trump has
never directed them to do anything to stop
Russian election interference. 

– The Russian government mandates that the Navalny video, and
Rybka’s Instagram posts that contributed to it, be scrubbed from
the internet. But as of this writing, much of the prohibited
content is still available.

February 14: CNN reports that Trump “remains unconvinced that
Russia interfered in the presidential election.”

– At an event sponsored by Axios, Vice
President Mike Pence falsely claims the nation’s intelligence
agencies determined that Russian interference had no impact on the
2016 election. The intelligence community’s assessment, in fact,
did not take up that question.

– Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.)
tells reporters, ”There is already, in my view,
ample evidence in the public domain on the issue of collusion if
you’re willing to see it. If you want to blind yourself, then you
can look the other way.” He also says, “There is certainly an abundance of
non-public information that we’ve gathered in the investigation.
And I think some of that non-public evidence is evidence on the
issue of collusion and some…on the issue of
obstruction.”

February
15: Steve Bannon, under a congressional subpoena,
appears before a closed-door session of the
House Intelligence Committee, where he once again refuses to answer key questions
concerning his time in the White House and on Trump’s transition
team. The panel considers holding him in contempt of
Congress.

– NBC reports that Bannon was interviewed over
multiple days earlier in the week by special counsel Robert
Mueller.  

– CNN reports that Paul Manafort’s former business
associate Rick Gates is finalizing a plea deal with the special
counsel’s office.

– Mark Corallo, the former spokesman
for Trump’s legal team, meets with Robert Mueller for more than two
hours. 

– The National Rifle
Association responds to Sen. Ron Wyden’s February 2
letter requesting information on its ties to Putin ally Alexander
Torshin. The NRA says it doesn’t accept donations related to US
elections from foreign nationals, in compliance with election
law.

February 16:
Special counsel Robert Mueller indicts 13 Russians for their role in a
wide-ranging plot to sow discord in the US political process and
interfere in the 2016 election. FBI Director Christopher Wray and
Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein brief Trump on the
indictments before they are made public.

– Yevgeniy Prigozhin, one of the indicted
Russians, responds.

– Trump tweets:

February 17: Speaking at the Munich Security
Conference, White House national security adviser H.R. McMaster
says evidence of Russian inference in the 2016
election “is now really incontrovertible.” – Russian Foreign
Minister Sergey Lavrov, also attending the Muchich Security
Conference, calls the indictment of 13 Russian nationals “just blabber.”

– CNN reports that Rick Gates, a former Trump
campaign adviser and business associate of Paul Manafort, is
nearing a plea deal with special counsel Robert Mueller’s
office.

February 19: CNN
reports that “special counsel Robert Mueller’s interest in Jared Kushner has
expanded beyond his contacts with Russia and now includes his
efforts to secure financing for his company from foreign investors
during the presidential transition.”

February
20: Robert Mueller’s office charges lawyer Alex van Der Zwaan—son-in-law of
Russian oligarch German Khan—with making false statements to
investigators in connection with a September 2016 conversation he
had with Rick Gates. According to Zwaan’s indictment, he also
deleted or failed to turn over records sought by the special
counsel’s office.

February 22: Special
counsel Robert Mueller files a new indictment against Paul Manafort
and his longtime business partner Rick Gates, charging the pair
with a combined 32 counts of various financial fraud. Both Manafort
and Gates plead not guilty to the charges. 

– Following the indictment,
Gates’ team of three lawyers applies to withdraw from the case.
They explain their reasons to the court in a sealed
filing.

– ABC News
reports that Rick Gates
has hired a new lawyer, Thomas Green. A former federal prosecutor,
Green is known for representing and negotiating plea deals for
high-profile clients,
including former House
Speaker Dennis Hastert.

February 23: Rick
Gates strikes a
deal to cooperate with
special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation. As part of the
deal, he pleads guilty to charges of conspiracy and lying to
federal agents.

– The special counsel targets
Paul Manafort with another
indictment. It alleges that
Manafort secretly paid former European politicians more than 2
million euros to lobby on behalf of Ukraine’s pro-Russia
government. 

February 24: The House
Intelligence Committee releases a redacted 10-page memo written by the panel’s Democrats
that rebuts Republican allegations that omitted important
information—including political origins of the Steele dossier—when
it sought a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court warrant
targeting Carter Page, the Trump campaign’s foreign policy
adviser.

Februaryy 26: Six
Republican leaders of various congressional committees, including
those currently investigating possible collusion between Russia and
the Trump campaign, tell CNN
that they do not believe it is
necessary to dig into Trump’s finances as part of the congressional
Russia probes.

February 27: White House
communications director Hope Hicks is interviewed for nine hours
behind closed doors by the House Intelligence Committee.
She
admits to having told
“white lies” on Trump’s behalf but says she has not lied about
anything related to the Russia investigation.

February 28: NBC
reports that before the
2016 election, American intelligence agencies had evidence that state
websites and voter registration systems in seven states were
accessed by Russia-linked hackers but did not pass this information
to the relevant states. 

– The New York Times reports that Hope Hicks plans to resign from
her post as White House communications director. 

– Bloomberg reports that New York’s banking regulator has
requested information from Deutsche Bank and two other lenders
concerning “their relationships with Jared Kushner, his family and
the Kushner Cos.”

March 1: The New York
Times reports that the Senate Intelligence Committee
has determined that the leak of Sen. Mark Warner’s text messages to
Fox News came from Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee,
chaired by Rep. Devin Nunes. According to the Times, Sens.
Richard Burr (R-N.C.) and Warner (D-Va.), respectively the chair
and vice chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, sought a rare
meeting with House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) to inform him of
their findings and express concerns over Nunes’ handling of the
Russia probe in the House Intelligence Committee.

March 4: In an interview on NBC, Putin says Russia will
never extradite the Russian nationals that have been indicted by
special counsel Robert Mueller, and he denies that the Kremlin
interfered in the US election.

March 5: Sen. Ron Wyden sends a second letter to the National Rifle
Association to ask for more information about donations to the gun
rights group from powerful Russian actors, including Alexander
Torshin. “I remain concerned about the inability to get clear
answers to several questions about the possibility that Russian
actors funneled foreign funds into NRA electioneering activity,”
Wyden writes.

– Nastya Rybka, who claims to be
Oleg Deripaska’s
mistress and who has been
jailed in Thailand on charges of working in the country without a
visa, announces that she has more than 16 hours of recordings
that can shed light on Russian meddling in the US election. She
offers to turn these over to US authorities in exchange for
asylum.

– Former Trump adviser Sam Nunberg goes on a number of TV news
shows, threatening to defy the subpoena he has received from
special counsel Robert Mueller. Ultimately, he changes his mind and
says he will comply with the subpoena.

March 6: Director of
National Intelligence Dan Coats says
the Trump administration has not
put together “a coherent strategy” to combat Russian interference
in the 2018 midterm elections.

– The Washington
Post reports that a
January 2017 meeting in the Seychelles between Blackwater founder
and Trump supporter Erik Prince and Kirill Dimitriev, a Russian
official close to Putin—a meeting characterized by Prince as a
chance encounter—was in fact arranged in advance by the Trump
transition team. This information was provided to Mueller by
cooperating witness George Nader, who also attended the Seychelles
meeting. Nader alleges the meeting was arranged with the aim of
creating a back channel with a Kremlin emissary to discuss
US-Russia relations.

March 7: The New York Times reports that in at least
two instances, Trump has asked key witnesses—White House counsel
Don McGahn and former chief of staff Reince Priebus—for information
on what they discussed during their interviews with the special
counsel.

March 8:
A federal district court sets Paul Manafort’s trial for
July 10,
2018, after he pleads
not guilty to tax and fraud charges leveled against him by special
counsel Robert Mueller.

March 12: The House
Intelligence Committee says
it has completed interviews in its
Russia investigation and will soon issue a final report, over the
objections of Democrats on the committee. In a summary of their
report, the GOP lawmakers write that the committee has found
“no evidence of collusion,
coordination, or conspiracy between the Trump campaign and the
Russians.”

March 13: Democrat Rep.
Adam Schiff, the ranking member of the House Intelligence
Committee, says Democrats on the panel are not
done with the Russia
investigation. He says they plan to complete more interviews and
will issue their own report.

– CNN
reports that the FBI has
tried to meet with Nastya Rybka, the self-described mistress of
Oleg Deripaska imprisoned in Thailand. The meeting attempt came
after Rybka issued a plea for asylum in the United States in
exchange for hours of audio recordings she says she has of her time
with Deripaska that will shed light on Russian election
interference. FBI agents contacted Thai immigration officials to
set up a meeting with Rybka but were denied access, reportedly
because only family or lawyers can visit detainees.

March 15: The
New York
Times reports that
special counsel Robert Mueller has subpoenaed Trump Organization
records, including some related to Russia. This is the first known
instance of Mueller demanding documents tied directly to the
president’s businesses.

March
16: Politico reports that the Federal
Election Commission has launched an inquiry into potentially illegal
donations made to the National Rifle Association by Russian
individuals and businesses in support of Trump’s 2016
campaign.

– McClatchy
reports that according to two anonymous sources, Cleta
Mitchell, who served as a lawyer and board member for the NRA, had
concerns about the group’s ties to Russia. Mitchell denies this
claim, but Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee plan to
interview her, McClatchy reports.

– Andrew McCabe, former deputy
director of the FBI, is fired
by Attorney General Jeff Sessions
26 hours before his scheduled retirement, putting McCabe’s pension
in jeopardy. Sessions justifies the firing by saying that McCabe
was dishonest about a
conversation he authorized between FBI officials and a journalist.
McCabe responds
to the firing with a written
statement denying any dishonesty and says the firing was a
politically motivated attempt to discredit the Russia
investigation. McCabe previously testified that he could
corroborate former FBI Director James Comey’s accounts of Comey’s
conversations with the president.

March 17: Trump tweets
about McCabe’s firing, calling it a “great day.”

March 19: Britain’s Channel 4
News airs an
undercover investigation on Cambridge Analytica, the data analytics
firm that worked on
Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign. The broadcast includes video of
Cambridge Analytica CEO Alexander Nix talking about the company’s
methods for influencing foreign elections—including, according to
Nix, spreading propaganda online and entrapping candidates by
sending Ukrainian “girls” to their homes. (Cambridge
Analytica denies using entrapment and says Nix was just
playing along with someone who he thought was a potential
client.)

March 20: Channel 4 airs
a second
undercover segment on
Cambridge Analytica, in which CEO Alexander Nix describes what he
claims was the company’s expansive role in the digital campaign to
help Trump during the election. “We did all the research, all the data, all the
analytics, all the targeting,” Nix says. “We ran all the digital
campaign, the television campaign, and our data informed all the
strategy.” The chief data officer for Cambridge Analytica says in
the video that the firm’s work was responsible for Trump’s
Electoral College performance. “When you think about the fact that
Donald Trump lost the popular vote by 3 million votes but won the
Electoral College, that’s down to the data and the research,” he
says. “That’s how he won the election.” Cambridge Analytica announces it has suspended
Nix, pending an investigation into the Channel 4 videos.

March 21: ABC News
reports that Mueller’s team is
looking into ties between the Trump campaign, Cambridge Analytica,
and the Republican National Committee.

– Having concluded their Russia
investigation, House Intelligence Committee Republicans vote to release their full report. The
committee insists it found no evidence of collusion and recommends
instead a crackdown on leaks to the press and a repeal of the Logan
Act, a statute that criminalizes efforts by private citizens to
interfere in US foreign policy. Some legal experts had suggested
that Michael Flynn’s contacts with the Russian ambassador during
the presidential transition period may have run afoul of that law,
though special counsel Robert Mueller did not charge him with
violating it

March 22: John Dowd, the
head of a team of White House lawyers representing Trump in the
Russia probe, resigns. According to two sources who spoke to
the New York
Times, Dowd tendered
his resignation because the president “was increasingly ignoring
his advice” on how to respond to the special counsel’s
investigation.

Additional updates by Daniel Schulman, Noah Lanard, and
Kanyakrit Vongkiatkajorn

Read more

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