WASHINGTON
— One lasted only 24 days as President Trump’s national security
adviser, done in by his lack of candor about conversations he had with
the Russian ambassador. Another has been hauled in front of a federal
grand jury investigating Russia’s interference in the election.
A third has pleaded guilty to lying to federal agents about his own contacts with Russians.
Such
is the fate of some of the earliest foreign policy advisers that Donald
J. Trump announced with great fanfare in early 2016, a time when he was
closing in on the Republican presidential nomination. It was a team
born out of a political problem: Mr. Trump’s surprise march to the
nomination had left the party’s establishment openly questioning whether
he had the foreign policy experience and was too much of a loose cannon
to be entrusted with the presidency.
Mr.
Trump’s solution was to cobble together a list of men who were almost
immediately written off as a collection of fringe thinkers and has-beens
and unknowns in Washington foreign policy circles. Some from that group
have now created far deeper problems for Mr. Trump, providing federal
and congressional investigators with evidence of suspicious interactions
with Russian officials and their emissaries.
Court
documents and interviews with some of the advisers themselves revealed
that many on the team embraced a common view: that the United States
ought to seek a rapprochement with Russia after years of worsening
relations during the Obama administration. Now, however, their suspected
links to Russia have put them under legal scrutiny and cast a shadow
over the Trump presidency.
White
House officials and former campaign aides insist that two of the three
foreign policy advisers now under scrutiny by federal authorities had
very little influence on Mr. Trump’s campaign. They say that George
Papadopoulos, who secretly pleaded guilty
to charges of lying to federal agents in early October, was a young,
low-level volunteer who served the campaign for only a few months.
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They have described Carter Page, an energy executive who F.B.I. agents suspected had
once been marked for recruitment by Russian spies, as a gadfly who had
been “put on notice” by the campaign and whom Mr. Trump “does not know.”
Mr. Page’s trip to Moscow in July 2016 was one of the triggers leading
the F.B.I. to open a counterintelligence investigation into the Trump
campaign, and he has appeared before a grand jury in the investigation
led by Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel.
It is harder for the White House to distance itself from Michael T. Flynn, a retired military intelligence officer who was forced out
in February after less than a month as Mr. Trump’s national security
adviser. The White House has said Mr. Flynn resigned after it became
clear he had not been forthright about conversations he had in late
December with Sergey I. Kislyak, who was then the Russian ambassador.
The
fact that so many of Mr. Trump’s foreign policy aides from that period
have now acknowledged contacts with Russian officials or their
intermediaries hints at Moscow’s eagerness to establish links to his
campaign.
Mr. Flynn’s pro-Russian tilt
was well established before he joined the Trump campaign. He had pushed
for greater cooperation with Russia on counterterrorism issues while
director of the Defense Intelligence Agency from 2012 to 2014. He became
even more vocal after he was forced to retire by President Barack
Obama, arguing that Russia was a necessary ally in a “world war” against
Islamist militancy. Mr. Flynn even traveled to Russia in December 2015
for a paid speaking engagement with RT, the Kremlin-financed news
network that American intelligence says is a propaganda operation. The
trip also included an invitation to RT’s anniversary dinner, where he
was photographed sitting at the elbow of President Vladimir V. Putin of
Russia.
It has since become clear that the White House knew before the inauguration
that Mr. Flynn was already under federal investigation for secretly
working as a paid agent of Turkey during the campaign. That
investigation has widened to examine possible money laundering and
failure to disclose payments from Russian companies, including RT.
Although
as a candidate Mr. Trump touted the “many great national security
people” at his side, he was reduced in large part to unknowns or
carry-overs from other failed campaigns, even as late as March 2016,
when he was the clear front-runner. More than 50 conservative foreign
policy experts signed an open letter condemning his national security views.
And his own statements were confusing: “Yes, there is a team. There’s not a team. I’m going to be forming a team,” Mr. Trump said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” on March 8, 2016.
Finally, in late March, Mr. Trump presented his team,
led by Jeff Sessions, the Alabama senator and future attorney general.
Among the other five he named were Mr. Page and Mr. Papadopoulos, whom
he described as “an energy and oil consultant, excellent guy.”
Mr.
Papadopoulos, then 28, had some minor campaign experience. After he
promised to raise substantial sums from the Greek-American community,
Ben Carson’s campaign hired him for $5,000 a month to serve on its
national security and foreign policy advisory committee.
After
Mr. Carson’s campaign collapsed, Mr. Papadopoulos moved into Mr.
Trump’s orbit. According to interviews and the court papers released
Monday, he discussed the campaign’s priorities with Sam Clovis, then a
top policy adviser and campaign supervisor, and “understood that a
principal foreign policy focus of the campaign was an improved U.S.
relationship with Russia.”
In a statement from his lawyer, Victoria Toensing, Mr. Clovis denied that. “That was not Dr. Clovis’s view,” it said.
Sarah
Huckabee Sanders, the White House press secretary, told reporters
during a news briefing on Tuesday that the Trump campaign had
voluntarily given Mr. Papadopoulos’s emails to investigators.
“That is what led to the process and the place that we’re in,” Ms. Sanders said, adding that the campaign had been “fully cooperating and helping with that.”
“That is what led to the process and the place that we’re in,” Ms. Sanders said, adding that the campaign had been “fully cooperating and helping with that.”
Who Is George Papadopoulos?
Mr. Papadopoulos, formerly a Trump
campaign foreign policy adviser, pleaded guilty to lying to the F.B.I.
about meetings he had with a professor who had close ties to the Russian
government.
By BARBARA MARCOLINI and A.J. CHAVAR on Publish Date October 30, 2017.
.
Watch in Times Video »
In
late March last year, Mr. Papadopoulos emailed Mr. Clovis and others
that he had discussed with his contacts — a London-based professor with
Moscow ties and a Russian woman whom he described as a relative of Mr.
Putin’s — the possibility of a meeting between the Trump campaign and
Russia’s leadership.
“Great work,” Mr. Clovis responded, according to the court documents and interviews.
At
a March 31 meeting in a foreman’s lounge at the Trump Hotel in
Washington, which was under construction, with Mr. Trump and the rest of
the foreign policy team, Mr. Papadopoulos pitched the idea of a
personal meeting between Mr. Trump and Mr. Putin. Mr. Clovis and others
immediately expressed doubts about the wisdom of the idea, noting that
Russia was under United States sanctions and denouncing the “optics” of a
meeting with Mr. Putin, according to a former campaign aide who
attended the meeting.
But
Mr. Trump listened with interest and asked questions of Mr.
Papadopoulos. Mr. Trump “didn’t say yes, and he didn’t say no,” said the
former aide, who agreed to describe the meeting on the condition of
anonymity.
Finally,
Mr. Sessions, as the campaign’s top national security official, spoke
vehemently against the idea, asking others not to discuss it again. Mr.
Trump did not challenge him, the former aide said.
Nonetheless,
Mr. Papadopoulos continued to pursue the notion of some sort of meeting
for several months, updating Trump campaign officials on his efforts,
the court records showed.
He
emailed one high-ranking campaign official saying that the Russian
Ministry of Foreign Affairs had asked if the campaign would send a
representative to Russia, and he offered to go. In August 2016, Mr.
Clovis wrote Mr. Papadopoulos encouraging him and another adviser to
make the trip, “if it is feasible.” It never took place.
Ms.
Toensing, Mr. Clovis’s lawyer, said that Mr. Clovis agreed that Mr.
Papadopoulos should travel as a private individual, not as a campaign
aide.
“He was hitting on everyone,” she said. “And they all ignore him and the trips didn’t occur.”
Former
campaign officials say Mr. Papadopoulos peppered them with unwanted
emails. After he criticized the British leadership on television, he
wrote asking if he would be fired.
Stephen K. Bannon, then the campaign chairman, did not bother to respond.
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