vrijdag 5 januari 2018

Trump trusted Bannon the most, and that could now cost him very dearly



Afbeeldingsresultaat voor the independent


  1. Voices

Trump trusted Bannon the most, and that could now cost him very dearly

It's the biggest political bust-up of the presidency so far



There are few things more painful than when hot love turns cold.
For a long time, Donald Trump and Steve Bannon were hard to separate. The former naval officer was one of just a few who genuinely believed the reality television star could win the White House.
When he did so, Trump rewarded Bannon with an office in the West Wing and a top job. Trump’s daughter and son-in-law thought Bannon was vulgar and uncouth and the President smarted when his special advisor got better press coverage, but in the abrasive, aggressive Bannon, with his motto of “always attack”, Trump had found someone he could relate to. Someone whom he could trust.
Even when Bannon was forced from the White House, a victim of competing factions and the arrival of former general John Kelly as the Chief of Staff, Trump continued to dial Bannon’s cell phone and seek his counsel.
That bromance now seems over. After excerpts of a forthcoming book were leaked in which Bannon was quoted as criticising Trump’s eldest son and son-in-law, and saying a meeting they held with a Russian lawyer was “treasonous”, the President hit back in a way Bannon may quietly have approved of.
“Steve Bannon has nothing to do with me or my presidency. When he was fired, he not only lost his job, he lost his mind,” Trump said in a statement, that would have been staggering had it come from someone else. 
“Now that he is on his own, Steve is learning that winning isn’t as easy as I make it look. Steve had very little to do with our historic victory, which was delivered by the forgotten men and women of this country.”
He added: “Steve pretends to be at war with the media, which he calls the opposition party, yet he spent his time at the White House leaking false information to the media to make himself seem far more important than he was. It is the only thing he does well.”
Trump was stung after excerpts were published, first by the Guardian, from journalist Michael Wolff’s forthcoming book Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House. In it, Bannon is quoted as saying the meeting Trump Jr held with Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya was “treasonous and unpatriotic”.
“The three senior guys in the campaign thought it was a good idea to meet with a foreign government inside Trump Tower in the conference room on the 25th floor – with no lawyers. They didn’t have any lawyers,” the former strategist is quoted as saying.
When Bannon left the White House, he speculated that he was just as powerful outside, back at the controls of Breitbart News, as he was in the West Wing.
“I’ve got my hands back on my weapons,” he told one interviewer. “I built a f***ing machine at Breitbart. And now I’m about to go back, knowing what I know, and we’re about to rev that machine up. And rev it up we will do.”
The danger for Trump attacking Bannon in such stark, personal terms is what his former confidante does next. Bannon and Breitbart are backed by the Mercer family, Republican mega-donors whose wealth was established by tech entrepreneur Robert Mercer.
The Mercers were also financial supporters of former judge Roy Moore in the Alabama senate race, one of a series of insurgent candidates Bannon intends to put his support behind between now and the midterm elections of November.
Many of Trump’s supporters obtain their news through sources such as Bretibart. While admirers of Bannon have to date largely been hard to separate from supporters of Trump, if the 64-year-old decides to use his news site to attack the President, will it impact his base? Trump’s White House press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, claimed it would not.
“I don’t think it does anything to the President’s base. The base and the people that supported this President supported the President and supported his agenda,” she told reporters. “Those things haven’t changed. The President is still exactly who he was yesterday as he was two years ago when he started out on the campaign trail.” 
Breitbart News’ reporting of the spat on Wednesday was pretty straightforward. But if he wanted to twist the knife, Bannon has a powerful weapon in his hands.
Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller has so far charged four former Trump associates as he continues to probe Russia’s alleged meddling in the election. While Trump may try to airbrush Bannon from history, Bannon was a central figure during the transition and in setting the tone during the first six months of this strangest of presidencies. He helped draft his “America First” inauguration speech.
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My Comments :  
1. Robert Mercer - the man who (together with fellow super-PAC donor Sheldon Adelson) propelled Trump in the WH and employed Bannon on several leading positions on several of his companies - had recently been forced, to sell his (majority) stake at the Breitbart Company to his daughters, of whom in this respect Rebekah Mercer especially seems to be worth mentioning.

2. Mercer has been forced to act that way because his strong affiliation with Trump and his controversial policy initiatives seemed to negatively effect the credibility of the successful and exclusive Renaissance hedge fund that he participates in (be it no longer in a prominent boardroom position, which he also recently had to give up).

3. Rebekah Mercer - qualified by some as a political animal by her own right, with possibly presidential ambitions of her own - was (at the time together with her father) the central figurehead in the rather successful effort to have Trump elected plus to deliver the GOP a majority in both Houses of Congress.

4. She in fact more or less supervised the last part of the Trump campaign and she was highly influential during the WH transition period in deciding who had to possess what executive post and she also more or less determined (directly or through Bannon) what policies had to be accentuated.   

5. Rebekah Mercer most probably will - in close cooperation with her conspiracy theory addicted father no doubt - continue to advertise the preferred main policy-direction of her father so far : "Upsetting the Washington establishment" (including the GOP establishment).

6. She is also highly active on the political front of selecting and supporting "alternative candidate names" for GOP Congress nominations, but in the process completely miscalculated the heavily Mercer/Bannon supported Moore nomination.

7. Do also not underestimate the covert political influence on the Trump administration of the aforementioned right-wing, notorious birth-right organiser and super-PAC Trump supporter Sheldon Adelson, who - together with middle man and self-acclaimed ME peace envoy, Jahred Kushner - can be held highly, if not exclusively responsible for the extremely controversial, and highly counterproductive USA recognition of Jerusalem as the "undivided capital of the Jewish State".

8. Idem for the recently deployed, highly aggressive approach towards the Shiite Teheran regime (following the militant neo-Conservative motto of "crushing the Shiite crescent") and the intentional stimulation of the ever decreasing Palestinian Rights.

9. Bannon himself - who after his dismissal from the WH, already predicted, that Trump most probably would disappear from the presidency within the second half of his term - knows probably in great detail about the inner-secrets of the Trump family and the inner-secrets of the Trump campaign and seems to anticipate on the resignation of Trump.

10. So when Bannon indeed might have presidential ambitions by himself, he simply has to distance himself profoundly and in time from Trump, in order to prevent any political contamination from - for example - the possibly highly toxic outcome of the Mueller / FBI investigation against Trump and his cohorts.

11. I do estimate as well, that Trump - who has a history of threatening with mafia-style intimidating legal actions against his enemies - will not go to court for the apparent breech by Bannon of the usual WH gag-clause, because the possible revelations on his presidential tenure (and/or pre-presidential misbehaviour) during a legal procedure most probably will hurt Trump infinitely more than Bannon can ever be damaged.

12. Meanwhile the world undoubtedly will be able to enjoy many more colourful specimens of (the political equivalent of) revenge porn during the belligerent interactions between Trump and Bannon in the near future... 

13. This not at least, because "Teflon Trump" might soon have to conclude that his political future might be in existential danger when even more damaging revelations will touch the surface.

14. Revelations, maybe including the revival of the (apparently highly substantiated / corroborated) accusation of the brutal rape by the notoriously sexually obsessed predator Trump of a thirteen year old youth some decades ago. 

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By lashing out at Steve Bannon, Trump has tripped head over heels into his own political coffin – but not for the reason you'd think



Afbeeldingsresultaat voor the independent

By lashing out at Steve Bannon, Trump has tripped head over heels into his own political coffin – but not for the reason you'd think

The bromance is reaching its logical endpoint: if Steve can’t have Donald, then apparently neither can we





There’s nothing sadder than a messy divorce. They just bring out the worst in people, and you can understand why. Divorce obliterates the foundations of all your hard-won hopes and dreams for the future. The end of a marriage can turn your world upside down, erode your sense of trust and really make you want to lash out at the person who’s betrayed you.
One of the easiest ways to make your turncoat lover hurt? Plaster all of your hushed bedroom whispers far and wide for everybody to gawk at.
Those spilt secrets have the ability to bulldoze somebody’s entire career. They destroy lives – and if Steve Bannon gets his way, they’ve got enough power to destroy a presidency, too.
But let’s backtrack for a minute: does anybody actually remember who Steve Bannon is?
In case you’ve already forgotten, Bannon’s the ominously off-kilter head of the ultra-conservative Breitbart News Network – which has this nasty habit of comparing birth control to the Holocaust.
Bannon is often prepared to deploy a good homophobic slur, apparently thinks we’re all at war with Islam and is treated like some sort of political messiah by the far right. Hell, Bannon’s own ex-wife claimed the guy made antisemitic remarks – but you get the idea. He’s totally toxic.
But to a friendless political outsider like Donald Trump, none of that mattered.
You see, nobody but Steve Bannon thought Trump had a snowball’s chance in hell of beating the 17 actual Republicans vying for the party’s 2016 presidential nomination. And so when Trump realised he had a firm friend in Steve, the world’s most unpleasant bromance was born.
They did everything together – attack the media, belittle women, incite religious hatred – it was just Trump and Bannon against the world.
That’s why a victorious Trump defied all logic by handing Bannon one of the most important (and made-up) jobs in the White House. As Chief Strategist, Bannon was effectively the President’s right-hand man. He was privy to everything, and was often yelling in Trump’s ear. The way most people told it, Steve Bannon was the one really calling the shots, too.
That’s ultimately why Bannon got sent to the chopping block back in August. After all, Steve was supposed to be Trump’s personal cheerleader – not de facto leader. And despite publicly thanking Bannon for his service and reportedly keeping him on speed dial for months after the break-up, Trump had to move on.
But Steve Bannon couldn’t move on. Donald Trump was his entire world – his ticket to eternal fame and glory. And if Steve can’t have Donald, apparently neither can we.
This week, the White House has gone to Defcon One after Bannon accused Trump’s son of treason for meeting with Russian operatives at Trump Tower in 2016. And ever the textbook definition of a bull in a china shop, Trump has already hit back by declaring Bannon a total failure who’s “lost his mind”. Lawyers are getting involved, and this is definitely going to get pretty messy.
And you know what? By lashing out at Bannon, Donald Trump has tripped head over heels into his own political coffin – but not for the reason you think.
At this point, America’s Teflon Don has been pretty much untouchable. Accusations of sexual assault, racism or dodgy business dealings don’t faze him anymore. There’s no dirt icky enough to force him to resign or convince his congressional minions to issue a pink slip – and to be honest, Steve Bannon probably hasn’t got anything grimy enough to immediately rid us of Trump, either.
But in lashing out at Steve Bannon, the President has foolishly driven a sharp, bloody stake right through the heart of his own extremist support base. The voters who flocked to the couple’s shared banner must now choose a side, and this is going to be even more traumatic for the fans than when Brad split from Jen.
Are they going to pick the political heretic who’s already flip-flopped on half his campaign promises, or do they stick with the alt-right prophet and true believer?
You can probably guess who the neo-Nazis will side with, but either way America’s most unpopular president loses. After all, by alienating the radicals and castigating America’s emphatic alt-right media scene, Donald Trump has totally squandered the biggest and loudest weapons in his arsenal. He’s just lost a huge chunk of his political capital, and there’s no way to claw that power back.
Is this the end for Donald Trump? Probably not – but things are only going to get worse for the guy.
----------------------------------
My comments :
1. I do consider the author a bit over-enthusiastic in framing the repulsive extreme-right Breitbart outlet exclusively towards the anti-semitic neo-nazi clan that is supposed to be its biggest consumer.

2. After all the founder of Breitbart was from Jewish denomination and the main share holder of Breitbart since the founder suddenly past away, is the orthodox Jew Robert Mercer, who recently (forcefully) handed over the Breitbart shares to his daughters.

3. Mercer has been one of the main participants, that - by funding Trump et al. via a Super-PAC - shuttled white supremacist Trump into the White House in the first place.

4. Bannon had been employed by the Mercer family for some considerable time, and he had been given the responsibility by Mercer for a. the Trump campaign and b. Breitbart and c. Cambridge Analitica and d. (during the first months of the Trump presidency) the function of the main political prompter in the direction of Trump.  

5. Bannon - by knowing what he knows about the most intimate inner circles of Trump and himself pretending to have the ambition of gaining the crown of the USA presidency - had no choice, but breaking badly with Trump, after he had been shovelled out of the WH by the Kushner clan and the new chief of the WH staff.

6. If Bannon had not done so, he must have feared, that he might become embroiled in the political fate of Trump once the (as to be expected, rather toxic) Mueller report will be published.

7. I furthermore hardly belief that Trump will really go to court, to attack the Bannon revelations - revelations, that one could easily consider as political revenge porn - because the political fall-out will only increase dramatically by such actions..

.



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woensdag 3 januari 2018

How the Russia Inquiry Began: A Campaign Aide, Drinks and Talk of Political Dirt


Afbeeldingsresultaat voor logo the new york times

How the Russia Inquiry Began: A Campaign Aide, Drinks and Talk of Political Dirt


By SHARON LaFRANIERE, MARK MAZZETTI and MATT APUZZO
George Papadopoulos was working as an energy consultant in London when the Trump campaign named him a foreign policy adviser in early March 2016. 
via Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
WASHINGTON — During a night of heavy drinking at an upscale London bar in May 2016, George Papadopoulos, a young foreign policy adviser to the Trump campaign, made a startling revelation to Australia’s top diplomat in Britain: Russia had political dirt on Hillary Clinton.
About three weeks earlier, Mr. Papadopoulos had been told that Moscow had thousands of emails that would embarrass Mrs. Clinton, apparently stolen in an effort to try to damage her campaign.
Exactly how much Mr. Papadopoulos said that night at the Kensington Wine Rooms with the Australian, Alexander Downer, is unclear. But two months later, when leaked Democratic emails began appearing online, Australian officials passed the information about Mr. Papadopoulos to their American counterparts, according to four current and former American and foreign officials with direct knowledge of the Australians’ role.
The hacking and the revelation that a member of the Trump campaign may have had inside information about it were driving factors that led the F.B.I. to open an investigation in July 2016 into Russia’s attempts to disrupt the election and whether any of President Trump’s associates conspired.
If Mr. Papadopoulos, who pleaded guilty to lying to the F.B.I. and is now a cooperating witness, was the improbable match that set off a blaze that has consumed the first year of the Trump administration, his saga is also a tale of the Trump campaign in miniature. He was brash, boastful and underqualified, yet he exceeded expectations. And, like the campaign itself, he proved to be a tantalizing target for a Russian influence operation.
While some of Mr. Trump’s advisers have derided him as an insignificant campaign volunteer or a “coffee boy,” interviews and new documents show that he stayed influential throughout the campaign. Two months before the election, for instance, he helped arrange a New York meeting between Mr. Trump and President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi of Egypt.
The information that Mr. Papadopoulos gave to the Australians answers one of the lingering mysteries of the past year: What so alarmed American officials to provoke the F.B.I. to open a counterintelligence investigationinto the Trump campaign months before the presidential election?
It was not, as Mr. Trump and other politicians have alleged, a dossier compiled by a former British spy hired by a rival campaign. Instead, it was firsthand information from one of America’s closest intelligence allies.
Interviews and previously undisclosed documents show that Mr. Papadopoulos played a critical role in this drama and reveal a Russian operation that was more aggressive and widespread than previously known. They add to an emerging portrait, gradually filled in over the past year in revelations by federal investigators, journalists and lawmakers, of Russians with government contacts trying to establish secret channels at various levels of the Trump campaign.
The F.B.I. investigation, which was taken over seven months ago by the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, has cast a shadow over Mr. Trump’s first year in office — even as he and his aides repeatedly played down the Russian efforts and falsely denied campaign contacts with Russians.
They have also insisted that Mr. Papadopoulos was a low-level figure. But spies frequently target peripheral players as a way to gain insight and leverage.
F.B.I. officials disagreed in 2016 about how aggressively and publicly to pursue the Russia inquiry before the election. But there was little debate about what seemed to be afoot. John O. Brennan, who retired this year after four years as C.I.A. director, told Congress in May that he had been concerned about multiple contacts between Russian officials and Trump advisers.
Russia, he said, had tried to “suborn” members of the Trump campaign.

‘The Signal to Meet’

Mr. Papadopoulos, then an ambitious 28-year-old from Chicago, was working as an energy consultant in London when the Trump campaign, desperate to create a foreign policy team, named him as an adviser in early March 2016. His political experience was limited to two months on Ben Carson’s presidential campaign before it collapsed.
Mr. Papadopoulos had no experience on Russia issues. But during his job interview with Sam Clovis, a top early campaign aide, he saw an opening. He was told that improving relations with Russia was one of Mr. Trump’s top foreign policy goals, according to court papers, an account Mr. Clovis has denied.
Traveling in Italy that March, Mr. Papadopoulos met Joseph Mifsud, a Maltese professor at a now-defunct London academy who had valuable contacts with the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Mr. Mifsud showed little interest in Mr. Papadopoulos at first.
But when he found out he was a Trump campaign adviser, he latched onto him, according to court records and emails obtained by The New York Times. Their joint goal was to arrange a meeting between Mr. Trump and President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia in Moscow, or between their respective aides.
Sam Clovis, a former co-chairman of Mr. Trump’s presidential campaign, denies that he told Mr. Papadopoulos that improving relations with Russia was one of Mr. Trump’s top foreign policy goals during Mr. Papadopoulos’s interview for a job with the campaign. Win Mcnamee/Getty Images
In response to questions, Mr. Papadopoulos’s lawyers declined to provide a statement.
Before the end of the month, Mr. Mifsud had arranged a meeting at a London cafe between Mr. Papadopoulos and Olga Polonskaya, a young woman from St. Petersburg whom he falsely described as Mr. Putin’s niece. Although Ms. Polonskaya told The Times in a text message that her English skills are poor, her emails to Mr. Papadopoulos were largely fluent. “We are all very excited by the possibility of a good relationship with Mr. Trump,” Ms. Polonskaya wrote in one message.
More important, Mr. Mifsud connected Mr. Papadopoulos to Ivan Timofeev, a program director for the prestigious Valdai Discussion Club, a gathering of academics that meets annually with Mr. Putin. The two men corresponded for months about how to connect the Russian government and the campaign. Records suggest that Mr. Timofeev, who has been described by Mr. Mueller’s team as an intermediary for the Russian Foreign Ministry, discussed the matter with the ministry’s former leader, Igor S. Ivanov, who is widely viewed in the United States as one of Russia’s elder statesmen.
When Mr. Trump’s foreign policy team gathered for the first time at the end of March in Washington, Mr. Papadopoulos said he had the contacts to set up a meeting between Mr. Trump and Mr. Putin. Mr. Trump listened intently but apparently deferred to Jeff Sessions, then a senator from Alabama and head of the campaign’s foreign policy team, according to participants in the meeting.
Mr. Sessions, now the attorney general, initially did not reveal that discussion to Congress, because, he has said, he did not recall it. More recently, he said he pushed back against Mr. Papadopoulos’s proposal, at least partly because he did not want someone so unqualified to represent the campaign on such a sensitive matter.
If the campaign wanted Mr. Papadopoulos to stand down, previously undisclosed emails obtained by The Times show that he either did not get the message or failed to heed it. He continued for months to try to arrange some kind of meeting with Russian representatives, keeping senior campaign advisers abreast of his efforts. Mr. Clovis ultimately encouraged him and another foreign policy adviser to travel to Moscow, but neither went because the campaign would not cover the cost.
Mr. Papadopoulos was trusted enough to edit the outline of Mr. Trump’s first major foreign policy speech on April 27, an address in which the candidate said it was possible to improve relations with Russia. Mr. Papadopoulos flagged the speech to his newfound Russia contacts, telling Mr. Timofeev that it should be taken as “the signal to meet.”
“That is a statesman speech,” Mr. Mifsud agreed. Ms. Polonskaya wrote that she was pleased that Mr. Trump’s “position toward Russia is much softer” than that of other candidates.
Stephen Miller, then a senior policy adviser to the campaign and now a top White House aide, was eager for Mr. Papadopoulos to serve as a surrogate, someone who could publicize Mr. Trump’s foreign policy views without officially speaking for the campaign. But Mr. Papadopoulos’s first public attempt to do so was a disaster.
In a May 4, 2016, interview with The Times of London, Mr. Papadopoulos called on Prime Minister David Cameron to apologize to Mr. Trump for criticizing his remarks on Muslims as “stupid” and divisive. “Say sorry to Trump or risk special relationship, Cameron told,” the headline read. Mr. Clovis, the national campaign co-chairman, severely reprimanded Mr. Papadopoulos for failing to clear his explosive comments with the campaign in advance.
From then on, Mr. Papadopoulos was more careful with the press — though he never regained the full trust of Mr. Clovis or several other campaign officials.
Mr. Mifsud proposed to Mr. Papadopoulos that he, too, serve as a campaign surrogate. He could write op-eds under the guise of a “neutral” observer, he wrote in a previously undisclosed email, and follow Mr. Trump to his rallies as an accredited journalist while receiving briefings from the inside the campaign.
In late April, at a London hotel, Mr. Mifsud told Mr. Papadopoulos that he had just learned from high-level Russian officials in Moscow that the Russians had “dirt” on Mrs. Clinton in the form of “thousands of emails,” according to court documents. Although Russian hackers had been mining data from the Democratic National Committee’s computers for months, that information was not yet public. Even the committee itself did not know.
Whether Mr. Papadopoulos shared that information with anyone else in the campaign is one of many unanswered questions. He was mostly in contact with the campaign over emails. The day after Mr. Mifsud’s revelation about the hacked emails, he told Mr. Miller in an email only that he had “interesting messages coming in from Moscow” about a possible trip. The emails obtained by The Times show no evidence that Mr. Papadopoulos discussed the stolen messages with the campaign.
Not long after, however, he opened up to Mr. Downer, the Australian diplomat, about his contacts with the Russians. It is unclear whether Mr. Downer was fishing for that information that night in May 2016. The meeting at the bar came about because of a series of connections, beginning with an Israeli Embassy official who introduced Mr. Papadopoulos to another Australian diplomat in London.
It is also not clear why, after getting the information in May, the Australian government waited two months to pass it to the F.B.I. In a statement, the Australian Embassy in Washington declined to provide details about the meeting or confirm that it occurred.
“As a matter of principle and practice, the Australian government does not comment on matters relevant to active investigations,” the statement said. The F.B.I. declined to comment.
A House Judiciary Committee session last month at which Attorney General Jeff Sessions testified. Mr. Sessions was head of the Trump campaign’s foreign policy team. Al Drago for The New York Times

A Secretive Investigation

Once the information Mr. Papadopoulos had disclosed to the Australian diplomat reached the F.B.I., the bureau opened an investigation that became one of its most closely guarded secrets. Senior agents did not discuss it at the daily morning briefing, a classified setting where officials normally speak freely about highly sensitive operations.
Besides the information from the Australians, the investigation was also propelled by intelligence from other friendly governments, including the British and Dutch. A trip to Moscow by another adviser, Carter Page, also raised concerns at the F.B.I.
With so many strands coming in — about Mr. Papadopoulos, Mr. Page, the hackers and more — F.B.I. agents debated how aggressively to investigate the campaign’s Russia ties, according to current and former officials familiar with the debate. Issuing subpoenas or questioning people, for example, could cause the investigation to burst into public view in the final months of a presidential campaign.
It could also tip off the Russian government, which might try to cover its tracks. Some officials argued against taking such disruptive steps, especially since the F.B.I. would not be able to unravel the case before the election.
Others believed that the possibility of a compromised presidential campaign was so serious that it warranted the most thorough, aggressive tactics. Even if the odds against a Trump presidency were long, these agents argued, it was prudent to take every precaution.
That included questioning Christopher Steele, the former British spy who was compiling the dossier alleging a far-ranging Russian conspiracy to elect Mr. Trump. A team of F.B.I. agents traveled to Europe to interview Mr. Steele in early October 2016. Mr. Steele had shown some of his findings to an F.B.I. agent in Rome three months earlier, but that information was not part of the justification to start an counterintelligence inquiry, American officials said.
Ultimately, the F.B.I. and Justice Department decided to keep the investigation quiet, a decision that Democrats in particular have criticized. And agents did not interview Mr. Papadopoulos until late January.

Opening Doors, to the Top

He was hardly central to the daily running of the Trump campaign, yet Mr. Papadopoulos continuously found ways to make himself useful to senior Trump advisers. In September 2016, with the United Nations General Assembly approaching and stories circulating that Mrs. Clinton was going to meet with Mr. Sisi, the Egyptian president, Mr. Papadopoulos sent a message to Stephen K. Bannon, the campaign’s chief executive, offering to broker a similar meeting for Mr. Trump.
After days of scheduling discussions, the meeting was set and Mr. Papadopoulos sent a list of talking points to Mr. Bannon, according to people familiar with those interactions. Asked about his contacts with Mr. Papadopoulos, Mr. Bannon declined to comment.
Mr. Trump’s improbable victory raised Mr. Papadopoulos’s hopes that he might ascend to a top White House job. The election win also prompted a business proposal from Sergei Millian, a naturalized American citizen born in Belarus. After he had contacted Mr. Papadopoulos out of the blue over LinkedIn during the summer of 2016, the two met repeatedly in Manhattan.
Mr. Millian has bragged of his ties to Mr. Trump — boasts that the president’s advisers have said are overstated. He headed an obscure organization called the Russian-American Chamber of Commerce, some of whose board members and clients are difficult to confirm. Congress is investigating where he fits into the swirl of contacts with the Trump campaign, although he has said he is unfairly being scrutinized only because of his support for Mr. Trump.
Mr. Millian proposed that he and Mr. Papadopoulos form an energy-related business that would be financed by Russian billionaires “who are not under sanctions” and would “open all doors for us” at “any level all the way to the top.”
One billionaire, he said, wanted to explore the idea of opening a Trump-branded hotel in Moscow. “I know the president will distance himself from business, but his children might be interested,” he wrote.
Nothing came of his proposals, partly because Mr. Papadopoulos was hoping that Michael T. Flynn, then Mr. Trump’s pick to be national security adviser, might give him the energy portfolio at the National Security Council.
The pair exchanged New Year’s greetings in the final hours of 2016. “Happy New Year, sir,” Mr. Papadopoulos wrote.
“Thank you and same to you, George. Happy New Year!” Mr. Flynn responded, ahead of a year that seemed to hold great promise.
But 2017 did not unfold that way. Within months, Mr. Flynn was fired, and both men were charged with lying to the F.B.I. And both became important witnesses in the investigation Mr. Papadopoulos had played a critical role in starting.
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