When Russia approached, Trump officials gladly obliged
Mike AllenThe flashing siren in the "known knowns" of the Russia probe is how often people close to Vladimir Putin approached people close to Donald J. Trump — and how often they gladly connected. And then lied about it.
Why it matters: Two court filings last evening on Michael Cohen — one by federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York, followed an hour later by special counsel Robert Mueller — put new meat on those bones, show that the contacts go back to 2015, and allude to multiple ongoing investigations. All that broadens the legal risk for Mueller's "Individual 1," the president of the United States.
Connecting the dots I ... Garrett M. Graff writes on WIRED that Mueller’s court filings, "when coupled with other investigative reporting, paint a picture of how the Russian government, through various trusted-but-deniable intermediaries, conducted a series of 'approaches' over the course of the spring of 2016 to officials in Trump's orbit:
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https://www.axios.com/when-russia-approached-trump-officials-michael-cohen-obliged-a12f3ec1-f0b0-4bff-a17b-8f06751d5471.html
