Trump Says He Knew of No Russian Ties. Documents Say Different.
Attorney General Jeff Sessions and
President Trump stated in early 2017 that no campaign advisers had
contact with Russians. However, new court documents show that a foreign
policy adviser, George Papadopoulos, had contacts that he told them
about in 2016.
Photo by Stephen Crowley/The New York Times.
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WASHINGTON
— Standing before reporters in February, President Trump said
unequivocally that he knew of nobody from his campaign who was in
contact with Russians during the election. Attorney General Jeff
Sessions has told the Senate the same thing.
Court
documents unsealed this week cast doubt on both statements and raised
the possibility that Mr. Sessions could be called back to Congress for
further questioning.
The special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, unsealed his first charges Monday
in a wide-ranging investigation into Russian attempts to disrupt the
presidential election and whether anyone close to Mr. Trump was
involved. Records in that case show that George Papadopoulos, a foreign
policy adviser, had frequent discussions with Russians in 2016 and
trumpeted his connections in front of Mr. Trump and Mr. Sessions.
For
months, journalists have revealed evidence that associates of Mr. Trump
met with Russians during the campaign and the presidential transition.
But the court documents represent the first concrete evidence that Mr.
Trump was personally told about ties between a campaign adviser and
Russian officials.
At
a March 31, 2016, meeting between Mr. Trump and his foreign policy
team, Mr. Papadopoulos introduced himself and said “that he had
connections that could help arrange a meeting between then-candidate
Trump and President Putin,” according to court records.
“He
went into the pitch right away,” said J. D. Gordon, a campaign adviser
who attended the meeting. “He said he had a friend in London, the
Russian ambassador, who could help set up a meeting with Putin.”
Mr. Trump listened with interest.
Mr. Sessions vehemently opposed the idea, Mr. Gordon recalled. “And he
said that no one should talk about it,” because Mr. Sessions thought it
was a bad idea that he did not want associated with the campaign, he
said.
Several
of Mr. Trump’s campaign advisers attended the March 2016 meeting, and
at least two of those advisers are now in the White House: Hope Hicks,
the communications director, and Stephen Miller, a senior policy
adviser.
After Mr. Trump was sworn in, he could not escape questions about Russia. At a Feb. 16, 2017, White House news conference,
a reporter asked Mr. Trump, “Can you say whether you are aware that
anyone who advised your campaign had contacts with Russia during the
course of the election?”
“No,” Mr. Trump said. “Nobody that I know of. Nobody.”
The White House has sought to portray Mr. Papadopoulos as an insignificant figure in the campaign.
Ty
Cobb, the White House lawyer dealing with matters related to Mr.
Mueller’s investigation, said the White House stood behind the
president’s comments.
“The
media’s willingness to inflate Papadopoulos, a young unpaid volunteer
and supposed energy expert, into an important thought leader in the
campaign or Russian operative is ludicrous,” Mr. Cobb said. “The
evidence so far suggests he attended one meeting, said something about
Russia and was immediately shut down by everyone in the room. It’s very
important to remember that he is not a criminal now because of anything
he did for the campaign — he is a criminal because he initially lied to
the F.B.I.”
A Justice Department spokesman declined to comment.
Another
member of the foreign policy team, Carter Page, said on Thursday that
he told Mr. Sessions in passing in June 2016 that he planned to travel
to Russia for a trip “completely unrelated” to his volunteer role in the
campaign. “Understandably, it was as irrelevant then as it is now,” Mr.
Page said. Mr. Page traveled twice to Russia in 2016.
Democrats
in the Senate said on Thursday that they would push to have Mr.
Sessions return to the Judiciary Committee for further questioning.
“He
now needs to come back before the committee, in person, under oath, to
explain why he cannot seem to provide truthful, complete answers to
these important and relevant questions,” said Senator Patrick J. Leahy,
Democrat of Vermont, who is on the Judiciary Committee.
Senator
Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, another Democrat on the committee,
pointed out that Mr. Sessions’s testimony was under oath and “wasn’t
just some random comment he made in passing on the street.”
Mr. Sessions faced similar questions in January before the Senate Judiciary Committee,
when Senator Al Franken, Democrat of Minnesota, asked him about
contacts between the campaign and Russia. “I’m not aware of any of those
activities,” Mr. Sessions said. He denied having any such contacts
himself.
Democrats condemned those remarks as misleading when it was revealed that Mr. Sessions held meetings with the Russian ambassador during the campaign. Last month, Mr. Franken renewed his questioning.
“You don’t believe that surrogates from the Trump campaign had communications with the Russians?” he asked.
“I did not, and I’m not aware of anyone else that did,” Mr. Sessions replied. “And I don’t believe it happened.”
He
did not make any reference to Mr. Papadopoulos. Mr. Sessions has said
he answered honestly because he was being questioned in the context of
Russian officials continuously exchanging information with campaign
advisers.
Mr.
Gordon said that while the March 2016 meeting technically contradicted
Mr. Sessions’s testimony, he defended the attorney general.
“This
is something he heard way back in March from some young man who was not
authorized to speak for the campaign,” he said. “I don’t blame Senator
Sessions for not remembering that.” He said that only in the political
“gotcha game” could the matter be considered significant.
The
court documents in the Papadopoulos case represent the most explicit
evidence yet that Mr. Trump’s campaign was eager to coordinate with
Russian officials to undermine his rival, Hillary Clinton. Federal
investigators suspected that Russian intelligence services used
intermediaries to contact Mr. Papadopoulos to gain influence with the
campaign, offering “dirt” on Mrs. Clinton in the form of “thousands of
emails.” Mr. Papadopoulos pleaded guilty to lying about those contacts
and is cooperating with the F.B.I.
On
Thursday, as news of Mr. Papadopoulos’s Russian ties continued to
ripple through Washington, Mr. Franken sent a stern letter to Mr.
Sessions. “This is another example in an alarming pattern in which you,
the nation’s top law enforcement official, apparently failed to tell the
truth, under oath,” he wrote.
The
case against Mr. Papadopoulos was unsealed at the same time as an
unrelated indictment against two other former campaign advisers, Paul J.
Manafort and Rick Gates. Taken together, the three charges sent a
foreboding message to a fourth adviser to Mr. Trump’s campaign, Michael
T. Flynn.
White
House officials and others in the case are bracing for charges against
Mr. Flynn, a retired three-star general who had a short and tumultuous
tenure as national security adviser. Mr. Mueller is investigating Mr.
Flynn for not disclosing his Russian contacts or his foreign lobbying
work.
Mr.
Manafort was indicted on seldom-used charges of concealing foreign
lobbying, as well as for lying on federal documents — the same
activities for which Mr. Flynn is being investigated.
“It’s
a bad sign,” said Paul Krieger, who until recently was the top federal
fraud prosecutor in Manhattan. “It shows that the special counsel’s
office will not hesitate to charge individuals connected to the
administration or campaign with obstruction-like offenses.”
Mr. Flynn, one of the architects of Mr. Trump’s “America first” foreign policy, did not disclose payments from Russia-linked entities on financial disclosure documents. He did not mention a paid speech he gave in Moscow, and he belatedly disclosed, after leaving the White House, that the Turkish government had paid him more than $500,000 for lobbying services.
Charging
people for not disclosing their foreign lobbying is extremely rare, a
point that Mr. Manafort’s lawyers made in documents filed in court on
Thursday. Since 1966, his lawyers wrote, only six such cases have been
filed and only one person has been convicted. Such violations are
typically handled administratively.
“It
is far from clear what activity triggers a requirement to file a report
as a foreign agent,” said Kevin M. Downing, Mr. Manafort’s lawyer.
Mr.
Manafort and Mr. Gates appeared in court briefly on Thursday. Lawyers
discussed the conditions of their house arrest and the possibility of a
trial in April.
White
House officials have long been anticipating the indictments of Mr.
Manafort and Mr. Flynn, and have tried to distance themselves from both
men. They were caught by surprise, however, by Mr. Papadopoulos’s guilty
plea and the fact that he had been cooperating with the F.B.I. since
July.
That
cooperation agreement fueled speculation that Mr. Papadopoulos had
secretly recorded his conversations with White House officials this
summer. But Mr. Cobb said he had seen no evidence that Mr. Papadopoulos
had visited the White House or had recent conversations with staff
members.
“We
have no indication that this George Papadopoulos came to this White
House,” Mr. Cobb said, adding that a different person with the same name
had entered the White House this year.
Court
documents do not explain the extent of Mr. Papadopoulos’s cooperation
with Mr. Mueller’s investigation, but prosecutors said they showed him
emails, chat transcripts, text messages and other records “in an attempt
to refresh his recollection” about his contacts with Russians and with
members of the Trump campaign.
