Important members of the Trump campaign met regularly with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak—but it may be that the Russian ambassador, not the campaign itself, was trying to network his way into a more favorable relationship with the United States.
The Trump campaign took a lot of meetings with the Russian ambassador over the course of the campaign.
Besides Lt. Gen. Mike Flynn’s contacts with Kislyak in January, the Russian Ambassador also pestered now-AG Jeff Sessions, whose interactions with Kislyak led to an embarrassing denouement this week: Sessions recused himself from any Federal criminal investigation involving Russia’s meddling in the U.S. presidential election.
At the Republican National Convention, Kislyak also spoke with Trump national security aides JD Gordon and Carter Page. (The latter was also accused,in dossiers leaked to the press in January, of trying to carve out a relationship with Russia for the Trump campaign.)
Flynn also met “for about 10 minutes” with Kislyak in December, that time accompanied by Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner. The meeting was part of a “getting to know you” series of interactions with various dignitaries.
Kislyak, reportedly, pushed for these encounters, trying to network himself into Trump’s inner circle, to influence Trump’s foreign policy..
According to Democrats, these meetings, taken together, are evidence that Trump’s top aides were colluding with Russia to undermine the presidential election. While none of the meetings was necessarily “improper,” as the Times points out, given what the Russians are suspected of trying to accomplish, they become sinister.
The sheer number of encounters also seem to cast an air of shadiness over Trump’s campaign—there were certainly more than enough meetings with the Russian Ambassador to draw the conclusion that he was trying to establish a relationship. It’s hard to believe Trump’s team didn’t recognize the pattern.
But it also turns out that Kislyak, an “over-the-top” personality, was the kind of guy who didn’t take no for an answer, and when he saw an opportunity to improve American-Russian relations, he took it. Not just with the Trump campaign, but also with the Obama Administration.
Kislyak has been wining and dining American diplomats—especially those who could make changes to the U.S.’s relationship with his home country—since the beginning of President Obama’s second term. His job is to network, and he does it exceptionally well.
In fact, he does it so well that the Obama State Department included him in a group of ambassadors they sent to the RNC as part of a “Global Partners in Diplomacy” program. In was at that event that he had one of his two interactions with then-Senator Jeff Sessions, who was the program’s keynote speaker. According to the story, Obama aides actually facilitated the ambassadors’ visit, including serving as handlers for each individual diplomat.
While they were also, apparently, taking notes.
It’s clear Kislyak saw it as his job to secure new, favorable contacts with Trump’s team and worked hard at it. It’s not clear whether the Trump team realized that Kislyak was on a charm offensive and gave Kislyak indications that Trump, once in office, would be more favorable to Putin’s administration than his predecessors.
So far, though, evidence seems to suggest Sessions and Kushner, at least, were just doing their jobs. Flynn, who got the closest to the Russian Ambassador, got in trouble for lying about his contacts not for having them. Sessions, too, is under fire for potentially lying about his contacts with Kislyak under oath, not necessarily for meeting the Ambassador in the first place.
