BREAKING: Trump Campaign Aides Had Repeated Contacts With Russian Intelligence
The New York Times is reporting that Donald Trump’s campaign aides had repeated contacts with Russian intelligence.
The Times notes that the aides were picked up during standard counterintelligence monitoring. And that the Trump campaign had repeated contacts with senior Russian intelligence officials in the year before the election.
The New York Times report story sources four current and former American officials that confirm that multiple Trump had contact with Russian intelligence.
The intercepted calls are part of a larger FBI investigation into the connection between Russia and the Trump campaign. Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort was one of the campaign aides who was named to be in contact with Russian intelligence during the campaign.
The New York Times notes that these new revelations of conversations between the Trump campaign and Russian intelligence are not the same as the conversations that led to Michael Flynn’s resignation. However, according to the Times, “the cases are part of the routine electronic surveillance of communications of foreign officials by American intelligence and law enforcement agencies.”
The Times went on to note that the FBI is investigating at least four people including, “Carter Page, a businessman and former foreign policy adviser to the campaign; Roger Stone, a longtime Republican operative; and Mr. Flynn.”
From the New York Times:
Phone records and intercepted calls show that members of Donald J. Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and other Trump associates had repeated contacts with senior Russian intelligence officials in the year before the election, according to four current and former American officials.
American law enforcement and intelligence agencies intercepted the communications around the same time that they were discovering evidence that Russia was trying to disrupt the presidential election by hacking into the Democratic National Committee, three of the officials said. The intelligence agencies then sought to learn whether the Trump campaign was colluding with the Russians on the hacking or other efforts to influence the election.
The officials interviewed in recent weeks said that, so far, they had seen no evidence of such cooperation.
But the intercepts alarmed American intelligence and law enforcement agencies, in part because of the amount of contact that was occurring while Mr. Trump was speaking glowingly about the Russian president, Vladimir V. Putin. At one point last summer, Mr. Trump said at a campaign event that he hoped Russian intelligence services had stolen Hillary Clinton’s emails and would make them public.
The officials said the intercepted communications were not limited to Trump campaign officials, and included other associates of Mr. Trump. On the Russian side, the contacts also included members of the Russian government outside of the intelligence services, the officials said. All of the current and former officials spoke on the condition of anonymity because the continuing investigation is classified.
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