Since Donald Trump was a 2016 candidate for president of the United States, multiple suspicious links between Trump associates and Russian officials were discovered by the FBI, a special counsel investigation, and several United States congressional committees, as part of their investigations into Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections. Official source Following intelligence reports about the Russian interference, Trump and some of his campaign members, business partners, administration nominees, and family members were subjected to intense scrutiny to determine whether they had improper dealings during their contacts with Russian officials. Several people connected to the Trump campaign made false statements about those links and obstructed investigations. These investigations resulted in many criminal charges and indictments.
Starting in 2015, several allied foreign intelligence agencies began reporting secret contacts between Trump campaigners and known or suspected Russian agents in multiple European cities. In November 2016, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov contradicted Trump's denials by confirming the Trump campaign had been in contact with Russia, stating in a 2016 Interfax news agency interview: "Obviously, we know most of the people from his entourage," adding "I cannot say that all of them but quite a few have been staying in touch with Russian representatives."
The bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee Russia report described how "secretive meetings and communications with Russian representatives... signaled that there was little intention by the incoming administration to punish Russia for the assistance it had just provided in its unprecedented attack on American democracy." Ultimately, Mueller's investigation "did not establish that members of the Trump campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities".
Overview 1977–1987 alleged cultivation and recruitment of Trump by KGB For many years, there has been intensive public scrutiny of Trump's ties to Russia. In a book excerpt published in Politico, former Guardian Russia correspondent Luke Harding stated that files declassified in 2016 indicated that Czech spies closely followed Trump and then-wife Ivana Trump in Manhattan and during trips to Czechoslovakia in the time after their marriage in 1977. Claims made by ex-KGB official Yuri Shvets were a basis of these allegations. Natalia and Irina Dubinin, daughters of then-Soviet ambassador Yuri Dubinin, are cited as indicating that a seemingly chance meeting of their father with Trump in the autumn of 1986 was part of Dubinin's assignment to establish contact with America's business elite and a determined effort by the Soviet government to cultivate Trump in particular.
This effort extended through a series of subsequent events, also documented in Donald Trump's ghost-written book The Art of the Deal, including a meeting in 1986 between the Ambassador and Trump at Trump Tower and Dubinin's subsequent invitation to Trump to visit Moscow (which was handled via KGB-affiliated Intourist and the future Russian Permanent Representative to the United Nations Vitaly Churkin). Harding also asserts that the "top level of the Soviet diplomatic service arranged his 1987 Moscow visit. With assistance from the KGB... The spy chief [Vladimir Kryuchkov] wanted KGB staff abroad to recruit more Americans." Harding cited Trump as writing in The Art that the trip included a tour of "a half dozen potential sites for a hotel, including several near Red Square" and that he "was impressed with the ambition of Soviet officials to make a deal".
In February 2025, The Hill reported on three cases where claims were made by ex-KGB officials that Trump had been cultivated, recruited (with the codename "Krasnov") in 1987, and/or compromised. The aforementioned claims by Shvets, which were also a significant basis for Craig Unger's best-selling book, American Kompromat: How the KGB Cultivated Donald Trump, and Related Tales of Sex, Greed, Power, and Treachery, were also backed by Alnur Mussayev, former head of Kazakhstan's intelligence service, and Sergei Zhyrnov, an ex-KGB officer living in France. Mussayev also asserted that Trump is compromised:
Number of contacts by Trump associates with Russians By April 19, 2019, The New York Times had documented that "Donald J. Trump and 18 of his associates had at least 140 contacts with Russian nationals and WikiLeaks, or their intermediaries, during the 2016 campaign and presidential transition."
The Moscow Projectan initiative of the Center for American Progress Action Fundhad, by June 3, 2019, documented "272 contacts between Trump's team and Russia-linked operatives ... including at least 38 meetings.... None of these contacts were ever reported to the proper authorities. Instead, the Trump team tried to cover up every single one of them."
2015–2016 foreign surveillance of Russian targets In late 2015, the British eavesdropping agency GCHQ, during the course of routine surveillance of "known Kremlin operatives already on the grid", used "electronic intelligence" to collect information from these Russian targets. They found that "Russians were talking to people associated with Trump...According to sources in the US and the UK, [the conversations] formed a suspicious pattern." The British passed this information about "suspicious 'interactions'" between "members of Donald Trump's campaign team" and "known or suspected Russian agents" to US intelligence agencies.
Over the next six months, European and Australian allies began to "pass along information about people close to Mr. Trump meeting with Russians in the Netherlands, Britain and other countries." Reports of these "contacts between Trump's inner circle and Russians" were shared by seven allied foreign intelligence agencies (reportedly those of the United Kingdom, Germany, Estonia, Poland, Australia, France, and the Netherlands). The New York Times also reported that British and Dutch agencies had evidence of meetings between "Russian officialsand others close to Russia's president, Vladimir V. Putinand associates of President-elect Trump".
James Clapper confirmed that the following information was "accurate" and "also quite sensitive": "Over the spring of 2016, multiple European allies passed on additional information to the United States about contacts between the Trump campaign and Russians."
Later, U.S. intelligence overheard Russians, some of them within the Kremlin, discussing contacts with Trump associates, with some Russian officials arguing about how much to interfere in the election.
Then cyber attacks on state electoral systems led the Obama administration to directly accuse the Russians of interfering.
Because they are not allowed to surveil the private communications of American citizens without a warrant, the "FBI and the CIA were slow to appreciate the extensive nature of these contacts between Trump's team and Moscow."
2016 campaign During the 2016 campaign, Trump repeatedly praised Russian president Vladimir Putin as a strong leader. Peter Conradi, in GQ magazine, described this relationship as a "bromance".
Between 2013 and 2015, Trump stated "I do have a relationship with" Putin, "I met him once", and "I spoke indirectly and directly with President Putin, who could not have been nicer." From 2016, during his election campaign, his stance changed. During a press conference in July 2016, he claimed, "I never met Putin, I don't know who Putin is ... Never spoken to him", and in a July interview said, "I have no relationship with him."
In November 2016, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov told the Interfax news agency, "Obviously, we know most of the people from his entourage", and "I cannot say that all of them but quite a few have been staying in touch with Russian representatives."
2017 Several Trump advisers, including former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn and former campaign manager Paul Manafort, have been connected to Russian officials, or to Viktor Yanukovich and other pro-Russian Ukrainian officials.
The New York Times wrote on May 24, 2017, citing intelligence sources, that Russian agents were overheard during the campaign saying they could use Manafort and Flynn to influence Trump. Members of Trump's campaign, and later his White House staff, particularly Flynn and Jared Kushner, were in contact with Russian government officials both before and after the November election, including some contacts which they initially did not disclose.
Newspaper reports The Wall Street Journal reported that United States intelligence agencies monitoring Russian espionage found Kremlin officials discussing Trump's associates in the spring of 2015. At the time, U.S. intelligence analysts were reportedly confused, but not alarmed, by these intercepted conversations. In July 2017, the conversations were re-examined in light of a recently disclosed Trump Tower meeting involving Donald Trump Jr. and Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya.
The New York Times reported that multiple Trump associates, including Manafort and other members of his campaign, had repeated contacts with senior Russian intelligence officials during 2016, although officials said that, so far, they did not have evidence that Trump's campaign had cooperated with the Russians to influence the election. Manafort said he did not knowingly meet any Russian intelligence officials.
Meetings with Kislyak
After Senator Jeff Sessions, who was part of the Trump campaign, first denied he had any contact with Russians during the campaign, even though he had met with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak, and Michael Flynn, also a member of the campaign, lied twice about meetings with Kislyak, the media focused negative attention on Kislyak. National security experts "generally agree that Sessions and other Trump campaign officials have handled the Russia issue poorly. Sessions, they say, should have told Congress about his meeting with Kislyak. And they say Flynn was reckless and wrong to speak with Russian diplomats about sanctions during the transition period when Obama was still president."
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told CNN that the "electoral process" was not discussed during these meetings, and that Kislyak had also met with "people working in think tanks advising Hillary or advising people working for Hillary" during the campaign.
In particular, Kislyak met with several Trump campaign members, transition team members, and administration nominees. Involved people dismissed those meetings as routine conversations in preparation for assuming the presidency. Trump's team has issued at least twenty denials concerning communications between his campaign and Russian officials; several of which later turned out to be false.
The Trump administration reportedly asked the FBI for help in countering the news reports about alleged contacts with Russia.
Former ambassadors Michael McFaul and John Beyrle said they were "extremely troubled" by the evidence of Russian interference in the U.S. election. Both supported an independent investigation into the matter, but dismissed as "preposterous" the allegations that Kislyak participated in it, particularly through his meetings with the Trump campaign: "Kislyak's job is to meet with government officials and campaign people," McFaul stated. "People should meet with the Russian Ambassador and it's wrong to criminalize that or discourage it."
December 2016 Trump Tower meeting