I have no doubt that the DJT campaign collaborated.
Paul Manafort was an adviser to Viktor Yanukovych
Michael T. Flynn appeared regularly on RT and gave speeches in Russia often
Carter Page became an adviser to the Russian energy giant Gazprom after Putin reestablished the Russian government’s majority ownership of the private/public conglomerate and made a trip to Russia in July 2016 right after Trump named him as senior foreign-policy consultant to the campaign
Richard Burt is also a member of the senior advisory board of Russia’s Alfa Bank ("On Oct. 31, reporter Franklin Foer broke the story that a group of cybersecurity experts had tracked regular internet communications between Donald Trump’s organization and Alfa Bank." from fourth article linked below)
Michael Caputo was under contract for Gazprom Media. And one goal of Caputo’s contract with Gazprom Media in 2000 was to improve Vladimir Putin’s image in the United States, as he admitted to his hometown paper, The Buffalo News.
The Donald has had ties to Russia for years:
When Donald Trump Was More Anti-NATO Than Vladimir Putin
Everything you always wanted to know about Russia and Trump but were afraid to ask (like, when’s World War III?)—Part I.
Michael Weiss
11.04.16 1:03 AM ET
Michael Morrell, a former acting director of the Central Intelligence Agency, broke dramatically with the protocol of most ex-spies when he used spook parlance to describe Republican nominee Donald Trump as “an unwitting agent of the Russian Federation,” albeit in the course of endorsing Hillary Clinton for president.
The colloquial term for the sort of person Morrell was talking about is “useful idiot,” someone enlisted in the Kremlin’s cause through sympathy, or shared interests, or, indeed, ignorance, without actually intending to be a pawn. But, as Putin certainly knows, the problem with useful idiots is that they tend to be insecure and erratic, whereas witting agents are tutored in how to be disciplined and self-controlled.
Trump is too illogical and self-contradictory to be of much use to a hostile foreign power except as a naturally occurring battering ram against the very institutions and beliefs that power would like to see weakened or destroyed. Trump’s opponent (whom Putin assuredly does not want to see inhabit the White House) and U.S. democracy at large are the truer objects of a Russian state-run information and cyber-espionage program. That Trump’s vulgar and demoralizing campaign is ripping apart America on the path to making it “great again” is simply an added bonus for the former KGB colonel.
Without dismissing the gravity of the Trump-Putin alignment, what our reporting makes clear is that the Republican does genuinely admire the Russian, but the feeling is not necessarily mutual. Putin has been discreet, if not cryptic, in his characterization of Trump. (See the next installation in this series for more.) One might say the relationship between the two is that of an amateur authoritarian taking cues from an aloof and bemused professional, but the performance delivered, to any outside observer, looks more like an oblivious farce than a credible imitation.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/11/04/when-donald-trump-was-more-anti-nato-than-vladimir-putin.html
Donald Trump’s Unrequited Love for Vladimir Putin
The second in a series of articles examining Donald Trump’s alleged ties with the Russian government looks at his not-quite-mutual admiration with Putin.
Catherine A. Fitzpatrick
Pierre Vaux
11.05.16 12:01 AM ET
Donald Trump’s oft-stated admiration for Russian President Vladimir Putin isn’t just about macho admiration or authoritarian envy. It’s more in the spirit of a locker-room rivalry, a matter of camaraderie and competition—and to some extent deterrence. Searching for an analogy, one thinks of the way Russia-friendly U.S. Congressman Dana Rohrbacher once reportedly arm wrestled with Putin to decide who really won the Cold War. (One should note that Rohrbacher lost.)
Trump’s frenemy strategy—or ambivalence, it’s hard to know which—may account for why he went from asking aloud on Twitter in 2013 before the Miss Universe Pageant, will Putin “become my new best friend?” to saying during the candidates’ debate on Oct. 19, “I don’t know Putin. I have never met Putin. He is not my best friend”—prompting a lot of weepy Putin memes on social media.
While Trump’s business dealings with Russia and his foreign policy advisors’ ties to Russia have been intensely scrutinized by the media and now the FBI, evidence of direct Russian manipulation of Trump with the intent of affecting the U.S. election has been elusive.
The Russian leadership’s own statements and the Russian domestic media and English-language propaganda outlets have been easier to document. But even those organs are careful to keep at least a semblance of balanced reporting on the U.S. presidential campaign, while Putin and top officials have repeatedly stressed their neutrality.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/11/05/donald-trump-s-unrequited-love-for-vladimir-putin.html
Trump’s Russia Towers: He Just Can’t Get Them Up
Despite a lot of boasts and some shady fixers, Trump has spent decades trying and failing to get a foothold in the Russian market.
Michael Weiss, Catherine A. Fitzpatrick, James Miller
11.06.16 7:59 AM ET
Donald Trump's infatuation with Russia goes back more than 30 years, to the glasnost period of the Soviet Union when communism proved no impediment to get-rich-quick artists with loose scruples and gaudy tastes. In 1988 Trump was famously hoodwinked by Ronald Knapp, a Gorbachev impersonator, who stopped by Trump Tower and shook The Donald’s hand in what the latter clearly imagined was a rare moment in history, not to mention a wide enough slit in the Iron Curtain for capitalists on the make to wriggle through.
In 1986, Yuri Dubinin, Soviet ambassador to the United Nations, invited Trump to Moscow to discuss building a hotel that could stand as a symbol of the mogul’s international reach. Trump sought to erect his signature “Trump Tower” as an unmistakable totem to himself in the once-impenetrable capital of the world’s only other superpower.
And yet, not then, and no since, have we seen a gilded monstrosity rising in above the onion domes of Saint Basil’s Cathedral. Russia, it seems, has proven too elusive for Trump to establish his highly touted name-brand, even though he and his scions have boasted of the steady stream of rubles pouring their way.
“Russia is one of the hottest places in the world for investment,” Trump said in a 2007 court deposition (about which more anon). “We will be in Moscow at some point.”
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/11/06/trump-s-russia-towers-he-just-can-t-get-them-up.html
Trump and Russia: All the Mogul’s Men
Why do so many of Trump’s campaign staffers have dodgy ties to Russian energy companies or Russian state clients?
James Miller
11.07.16 1:00 AM ET
Between the summer of 2015 and the GOP convention a year later, a great many pundits were surprised by the rise of Donald Trump. Although polls consistently placed him ahead of his Republican peers, his style was so vulgar, his policy pronouncements so bizarre, that many pundits dismissed Trump’s chances. And still he kept winning.
Then came the drafting of the Republican Party platform by the Republican National Committee—a solemn 66-page document stating in a succinct 35,000 words the positions of the Grand Old Party. By all indications, Trump, who doesn’t care much for reading, was willing to let virtually all of it pass.
But there was one point in that mass of verbiage where the Trump team fought for a change. It wanted to remove a call for arming Ukraine against Russian-backed militants (and covert Russian troops) and softening language on Russia’s aggressive actions in Eastern Europe.
Despite the fact that multiple news agencies confirmed the original Washington Post story, Trump’s then-campaign manager Paul Manafort repeatedly denied any such thing happened, and witnesses to the change even accused the Republican leadership of trying to cover up the incident.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/11/07/trump-and-russia-all-the-mogul-s-men.html
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