Some back story about our piece on the politically connected Russians who were in Washington during Trump’s inauguration, helmed by @craigtimberg @PostRoz @arothwp @CarolLeonnig
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It started with a tip about Alexey Repik, a wealthy Russian pharmaceutical executive, who attended the inauguration with his wife Polina.
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A venture fund backed by Repik’s company and the Russian government invested in late 2016 in Bonti, a U.S. pharmaceutical company. Another Bonti investor was a company founded by Darren Blanton, a Texas venture capitalist who advised the Trump transition. 
Here’s a story we did last year about Darren Blanton, whose company was paid by the Trump campaign for social-media work done by an associate of Michael Flynn:
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washingtonpost.com/politics/the-m…
As we sought to learn more about Repik, we were struck by the incredible access he had at the inauguration to senior administration officials – including incoming CIA Director Mike Pompeo and the new president himself.
Repik told us that it wasn’t politics that drew him to Washington but the prospect of fostering better business relations between Russia and the United States. “It was a great, amazing experience,” he said of the inauguration.
The Repiks said they were invited to the inauguration by an American associate. Among the perks they received: ticketed seats in front of the U.S Capitol for the swearing-in ceremony.
The inaugural committee said it kept proper records of contributors but that it was impossible to track who ultimately used all of the tens of thousands of tickets that went to donors. The committee said that all attendees received required physical screening at events.
Several U.S. business executives with ties to Russia together donated $2.4 million to the inaugural committee, campaign finance records show.
Among them were colleagues of Viktor Vekselberg, a tycoon closely aligned with Putin’s government. Vekselberg was in DC to witness Trump take office – his first time at a U.S. presidential inauguration, a spokesman said.
Some of the Russians at inaugural events already had interacted with people in Trump’s orbit during the 2016 campaign.
Maria Butina, a Russian gun rights activist, attended an inaugural ball. She’s an assistant to Alexander Torshin, a former Russian senator who had brokered ties with top National Rifle Association officials.
Natalia Veselnitskaya , the Russian lawyer whose June 2016 meeting at Trump Tower with Donald Trump Jr. has become a focus of the Russia investigation, attended a black-tie inaugural party hosted by the campaign committee of Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.),
She was joined by Rinat Akhmetshin, a Russian American lobbyist and Soviet army veteran, who had also been at the Trump Tower meeting.
A spokesman for Rohrabacher’s congressional office said the campaign has no record of Akhmetshin’s invitation to the party or of tickets purchased by him or Veselnitskaya.
The presence of politically connected Russians at Trump's inauguration caught the attention of FBI counterintelligence officials according to former U.S. officials, although it is not clear which attendees drew U.S. government interest.
FBI officials were concerned at the time because some of the figures had surfaced in the agency’s investigation of the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia, the officials said.
