He appeared on RT, and also toured and gave lectures to their security apparitus.
PRIEST: Let me ask me about Russia. There has been a lot in the news about your trips …
FLYNN: One in the military [while director of the Defense Intelligence Agency]. I went there on a fully approved trip. I had a great trip. I was the first U.S. officer ever allowed inside the headquarters of the GRU [Russian intelligence]. I was able to brief their entire staff. I gave them a leadership OPD. [Professional development class on leadership] and talked a lot about the way the world’s unfolding.
PRIEST: Tell me about the RT [state-run Russian Television] relationship?
FLYNN: I was asked by my speaker’s bureau, LAI. I do public speaking. It was in Russia. It was a paid speaking opportunity. I get paid so much. The speaker’s bureau got paid so much, based on our contract.
...
PRIEST: To broaden the discussion on the Russia question a little bit, there’s [Trump adviser] Carter Page having business interest and Paul Manafort have business interests there.
...
FLYNN: You know what? I don’t know what their business interests are. I’ve talked with Paul Manafort, met him, but if Carter Page walked in here, I wouldn’t know who he is …
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/checkpoint/wp/2016/08/15/trump-adviser-michael-t-flynn-on-his-dinner-with-putin-and-why-russia-today-is-just-like-cnn/?utm_term=.0a84778b118c
Carter Page sounds like a small time player trying to make it bigger in the International scene. He picked Russia, and would tout his experience with Merril Lynch there to try to get bigger and better things.
Enter Carter Page, a 44-year-old Ph.D., and business school graduate who claims an expertise in Russia and energy, yet who, I quickly discovered, was known by neither Russia experts nor energy experts nor Russian energy experts. (“I can poll any number of people involved in energy in Russia about Carter Page and they’ll say, ‘Carter who? You mean Jimmy Carter?’” says one veteran Western investor in Russian energy.) Page also, as I would be surprised to discover, appears largely unknown to Trump’s own campaign.
What I did find, however, is that while Page might not be helping Trump, Trump has been a significant help to Page. Since being named by Trump as an adviser, Page, who has spent his career trying to put together energy deals in Russia and the former Soviet Union, has finally begun to be noticed in the region. He is being treated in Russia as a person with potentially important ties in America. “He’s an extremely well-informed, authoritative expert on Russia,” says Mikhail Leontiev, a pro-Kremlin talking head and spokesman for Rosneft, Russia’s state oil giant. “People really respect him in this industry. He’s a very serious guy, and he has a good reputation.” According to the Yahoo report, U.S. intelligence believes Page had an audience with top Russian officials—including Rosneft head Igor Sechin—during a summer trip to Moscow. From what I could find about him, it’s hard to imagine he could have secured those meetings without that mention by Trump.
...
Both claimed to me that the FBI was investigating Page for allegedly meeting with Igor Sechin and Sergei Ivanov, who was until recently Putin’s chief of staff—both of whom are on the sanctions list—when Page was in Moscow in July for that speech.
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/09/the-mystery-of-trumps-man-in-moscow-214283
Manafort was heavily involved in Russia, and the Ukraine. Especially in a political role.
Paul Manafort, the adviser hired by Donald Trump to add stability and institutional know-how to Trump’s often scattershot presidential campaign, has long and deep reported ties to pro-Russian politicians in Ukraine.
http://www.politifact.com/global-news/article/2016/may/02/paul-manafort-donald-trumps-top-adviser-and-his-ti/
NBC News reported in August that Manafort was a key player in multi-million-dollar business propositions with Russian and Ukrainian oligarchs — one of them a close Putin ally with alleged ties to organized crime — which foreign policy experts said raised questions about the pro-Russian bent of the Trump candidacy.
A few days later, amid other reporting on Manafort's Ukraine ties, Manafort was ousted from the campaign.
...
Manafort was paid millions of dollars — $12.7 million in cash, according to The New York Times—representing a pro-Russian politician in the Ukraine.
http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/fbi-making-inquiry-ex-trump-campaign-manager-s-foreign-ties-n675881
Roger Stone:
Is mostly tied in due to the wikileaks connection.
Stone, a longtime GOP operative and one of the youngest members of Richard Nixon’s infamous 1972 reelection bid, has taken on an outsized role in the murky world of the WikiLeaks documents thanks to his personal boasts of having regular contact with the group’s founder, Julian Assange, through “mutual friends.”
http://www.politico.com/story/2016/10/roger-stone-fbi-wikileaks-russia-229821
In an interview with the state-run news agency, Interfax, Russian deputy foreign minister Sergei A. Ryabkov said "there were contacts" with Trump’s "entourage" throughout the election, according to multiple translations of the interview. "I cannot say that all of them, but quite a few have been staying in touch with Russian representatives."
But the Trump campaign denied that this ever happened, and the Foreign Ministry clarified to the New York Times that Ryabkov meant Russian officials had met with Trump’s political allies and supporters, not his campaign staff directly.
Ryabkov told Bloomberg that the Russian embassy held meetings with the Trump camp on a "sufficient, responsible level" as part of "routine, everyday work." Ryabkov said the Russian embassy also had "sporadic" contact with the Clinton team, though it was "not always productive," according to Bloomberg.
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2016/dec/18/russia-love-was-trump-campaign-touch-foreign-gover/
With such heavy involvement in the country, why is there any surprise that they talked to anybody, even intelligence officers...knowingly or not? Flynn obviously did.
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