Your Guide to Understanding the Trump-Russia Saga
How Putin Became the Symbol of Russian Power
By now, few American leaders -- other than President Donald Trump, on occasion -- dispute that Russia interfered in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. What remains unproven is whether anybody from Trump’s winning campaign assisted in that interference. A wide-ranging criminal investigation that has produced indictments against Russian nationals and former Trump advisers hasn’t directly tied any of the Americans to Russia’s influence campaign, but it has produced hints that some people in the Trump campaign at least wanted to play ball.
The most intriguing one at the moment involves Roger Stone, a political operative who advised Trump. He hinted during the 2016 campaign that he knew in advance that the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks would release unflattering information hacked from the campaign of Trump’s rival, Hillary Clinton. Since that hacking was carried out under the guidance of Russian intelligence, according to U.S. investigators, Stone -- who was arrested on Jan. 25 on charges of witness tampering and making false statements -- is seen as a possible link between Trump and the Russian election meddling. Furthering that idea, Trump’s onetime personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, now says that he overheard Stone tell Trump that he was communicating with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange about "a massive dump of emails that would damage Hillary Clinton’s campaign.”