During the 2016 presidential race in the U.S., Donald Trump and his support team contacted the representatives of Russian government and Wikileaks (or their mediators) at least 100 times. The New York Times reported that, referring to the intensive correspondence between the two sides.
These contacts include over a hundred of personal meetings, phone converssations, emails, SMS and Twitter chats.
'The special counsel has also investigated connections between the Trump campaign and WikiLeaks, which released thousands of Democratic emails that were hacked by Russia before the election,' the outlet wrote.
Specifically, when Trump announced he would run for the presidency, he received an invitation to the party organized by Russian bilionnaire Aras Agalarov, the ally of Russian leader Vladimir Putin.
'Aras Agalarov, a Russian billionaire who hosted a Miss Universe pageant with Mr. Trump in Moscow, and the billionaire’s son, Emin, reached out to Mr. Trump several times. (Separately, both men helped arrange the now-famous June 2016 Trump Tower meeting with a Kremlin-linked attorney about getting information that could be damaging to Hillary Clinton.) Mr. Trump was also pursuing a plan to build a Trump Tower in Moscow', the NYT reported.
The list of Trump's associates includes his son Donald Trump, Jr., his former lawyer Michael Cohen, Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner, ex-advisors Michael Flynn and Roger Stone.
