If there was collusion with Russia, here's where it might have occurred [View all]
From the outset, President Trump’s refrain on the investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential campaign and any coordination with his campaign has been consistent. Since May 2017 — shortly after Robert S. Mueller III was appointed special counsel to investigate the issue — Trump has tweeted some variant of “no collusion!” no fewer than 65 times. That refrain has been constant despite the evolving nature of the investigation, the myriad indictments and the sprawling assessments of who in Trump’s orbit knew what and when.
In reality, the question of collusion isn’t clear. At the poles are those who insist it is: On one end, there are those who, like Trump, seize on the uncertainty or on truncated investigations run by congressional Republicans to say that the absence of proof is proof of absence; and on the other are Trump critics who point to events such as the June 9, 2016, meeting at Trump Tower as proof of collusion in and of itself. In the middle is a lot of gray, no clear line from Trump’s campaign to the Russians seeking to get him elected.
Such a line may emerge. If it does, here are five places it might show up, listed in order from most to least likely.
Paul Manafort’s interactions with Konstantin Kilimnik
What we know: We know that, while serving as Trump’s campaign chairman for several months in the middle of 2016, Manafort had repeated email and in-person conversations with Kilimnik, a longtime business partner of Manafort’s who is believed to have links to Russian intelligence. That includes, among many other things, an in-person meeting in early August 2016 down the street from Trump Tower in New York that included Manafort’s business partner Rick Gates (who was also Manafort’s deputy on the campaign).
To some extent, this is a fairly simple point of interaction to identify as significant because a lawyer working for Mueller himself said that the Manafort-Kilimnik interactions and that Aug. 2 meeting in particular get “very much to the heart of what the Special Counsel’s Office is investigating.”
That comment came in a heavily redacted document detailing a hearing between Mueller’s team and Manafort’s attorneys in which a judge was asked to evaluate the extent to which Manafort might have lied to federal investigators. Those redactions include most of the details about what was discussed during that August meeting, leaving only that tantalizing sentence from attorney Andrew Weissmann.
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