Short answer: this POLITICO archive is a good start. Longer answer: it's only OK; there are people missing/miscategorized—try to find the two Sessions lieutenants who met with Kislyak in Sessions' office on 9/8/16—and those here are only broadly summarized.politico.com/interactives/2…
2/ If Panos Kammenos is in there, I don't see him. Likewise, Jacob Heilbrunn (Center for the National Interest) claims—maybe falsely—to have been responsible for the Mayflower VIP event where Trump and top aides met Kislyak. CNI is said to have Russian ties. Where's Heilbrunn?
3/ Gazprom advisor Richard Burt helped write the Mayflower Speech—a key event in the Trump-Russia story. I don't see him here. Likewise, Russia pipeline advocate Bud MacFarlane was at the VIP event, helped get mentee K.T. McFarland her job, secretly lobbied Trump on Saudi Arabia.
4/ POLITICO seems to have decided that the Mayflower Hotel speech and VIP event weren't important, as three of the biggest players in that event aren't present in this roster of 270 Trump-Russia figures. That's a big oversight, one hopefully POLITICO will correct in any updates.
5/ I'm surprised Greek president Alexis Tsipras isn't here. In May 2016, he and Kammenos meet with Putin—Putin's only trip to an EU country during the campaign—explicitly to discuss the dropping of sanctions. Kammenos then goes to the inauguration to see Priebus and Papadopoulos.
6/ Mark Corallo hired not just Victoria Toensing but her husband, Joe diGenova. She's in the archive but he isn't—surprising, given his long history as a figure in the conservative (FNC) wing of the GOP. And he reps Trump's spokesman now—possibly a *critical* Obstruction witness.
7/ I guess my point is that the Trump-Russia case is bigger than 270 people—as I've found 8 missing people in the POLITICO archive in about 8 minutes. That we're really looking at 300+ people underscores that *no one* can be an "expert" on the entirety of the Trump-Russia probe.
8/ You're kidding—Leon Black isn't there? He's the former RDIF guy who hung out with Jared, Ivanka, and Putin girlfriend Wendi Deng at the U.S. Open and elsewhere. He is definitely a witness in the Trump-Russia case. As is Deng! That's 11 people missing from the archive so far...
9/ And no Kata Sarka! Miss Hungary 2013 is a key witness in the Ritz Moscow—kompromat—investigation, as Trump trying to entice her into an adulterous liaison in his hotel room in November 2013, after the Miss Universe pageant, gives the lie to everything he said about that night.
10/ Not sure what to make of this (and I realize it sounds like sour grapes, but it also happens to be true, which is far more important): POLITICO put its team on creating a compendium of figures involved in the Trump-Russia case, and I've found 12 missing people in 20 minutes.
11/ I think the more complicated issue is, what do you do with tangential figures like Stormy Daniels? She proved Trump *always* caves to blackmail—a key issue in the Trump-Russia probe—*and* that Cohen's a Trump fixer who uses shell corporations to hide payments. Seems relevant?
12/ Like I said, though, even with 14 people already known to be missing from the POLITICO Trump-Russia archive, it *is* an important start to creating a holistic view of (and archive for) public research into the investigation. But yes, POLITICO could've used some outside help.
13/ Ah hell—Artem Klyushin and Konstantin Rykov are missing, which is unacceptable. Rykov—called the "Kremlin's chief propagandist"—claims he assisted Trump, and there *is* corroborating evidence for that claim. Klyushin and his wife straight up are key to *major* events in 2013.
14/ Currently we have 17 people missing from POLITICO's 270-person archive (and since I know POLITICO reads this feed, as angry as they may be at it at the moment, we *are* helping them fix their oversights) so is there anyone else you caught in our first half-hour of looking?
15/ Someone wrote to say that Nunes is missing and I thought, no, he can't be, but yes, he is. No Nunes in this archive.
16/ Obviously the archive shouldn't include every pro-Trump Congressman, but those like Nunes and Jordan (also missing) who are provably Trump agents based on their own statements, and are aiding him in obstructing the probe... I just don't know how we can call them not involved.
17/ (h/t DM): Ukrainian billionaire (controversial Trump Foundation donor, Crowley employer, et. al.) Victor Pinchuk is missing. I think that gets us to 20 names missing.
18/ Obviously I'm not surprised Miss Universe 2002 Oxana Fedorova and her beau Vladimir Golubev are missing—her other boyfriend, Vladimir Putin, is there—but given Trump tried to throw that pageant for Putin's sake, Golubev is a mobster in real estate...they're part of the story.
19/ A flood of missing names now coming in via DM, some of them very big ones: Lev Leviev, Viktor Medvedchuk, Dmytro Firtash, Andrey Rozov, Len Blavatnik, Serhiy Lyovochkin.
I'll add Phil Ruffin, Trump's friend and wingman throughout his critical November 2013 trip to Moscow.
I'll add Phil Ruffin, Trump's friend and wingman throughout his critical November 2013 trip to Moscow.
20/ I'm going to lose count, but I think we're up to 27 missing names in under an hour. The point here really has nothing at all to do with POLITICO—they're working hard—but with the *scope* of the Trump-Russia case (which is actually many different cases and staggeringly large).
21/ On a brighter note, the raw *power* of Trump-Russia crowd-sourcing is on *spectacular* display in this thread: in less than an hour, we've increased the size of POLITICO's Trump-Russia archive (which they had many people working on for quite some time) by 10%. That's a *lot*.
22/ An intrepid Trump-Russia researcher is—via DM—flooding POLITICO with free assistance and the following missing names: Tevfik Arif, Arkady Dvorkovich, Semion Mogilevich, Alexander Yakovenko, Dmitry Rogozin, Yuri Vanetik, Serhiy Rybalka, Christodoulos Vassiliades—that's 35 now.
23/ How is NRA President Pete Brownell not there? He met with Torshin face-to-face, and there are now allegations the Russians (via Torshin) illegally contributed to the presidential campaign via the NRA. That's, like, a *big* deal in the Trump-Russia probe—Brownell has to be in.
24/ This one's a jaw-dropper: Sebastian Gorka isn't there. He made trips to Hungary—as did Schmitz, Gordon and Page—which is the European HQ of FSB, and he got his job without the necessary qualifications (very reminiscent of Papadopoulos). How is he not in there?
37 names now.
37 names now.
25/ Other names people are proposing to me: Sean Hannity (confirmed domestic policy advisor to Trump); Arthur Finkelstein (if Hungary matters at all, he was part of whatever happened there, but I thought perhaps he's died since then—not sure); Viktor Orban (for obvious reasons).
26/ I'm not adding (in my mind) any of the names from Tweet #25, but we *must* add these eight, which are all stunning omissions: Roman Abramovich, Dasha Zhukova, Rex Tillerson(!), Yuri Chaika, Wilbur Ross, Stalbek Mishakov, Sergey Gorkov(!), Dmitry Rybolovlev(!).
45 names now.
45 names now.
27/ I wish this intrepid DM source were willing to be named, as s/he is absolutely incredible and caught some additional big names (besides those in Tweet #26): Preet Bharara, Dana Boente, Mike McSherry. I'll add—holy cow! how is he not there already?—Eric Schneiderman. 49 names.
28/ Incredible: I just saw that Rudy Giuliani is missing. And "Thomas Paine" (True Pundit). 51 names, and *lord* if this thread hasn't suddenly become stunningly inspiring proof—in real time—of how badly media needs independent, citizen and freelance journalists. 51 names, folks!
29/ How is Rebekah Mercer on here, but not Robert Mercer? That one I can't explain. Readers are also suggesting Jeanine Pirro (borderline), Viktor Vekselberg, Rotem Rosen, Alex Sapir, Tamir Sapir, Vadim Trincher and Josef Ackerman. Mercer is in, but I have to check on the others.
30/ (And yes, I know Tamir Sapir passed away in 2014, I'm just not sure if POLITICO is willing to count people who may have left evidence *behind*—in the form of letters, ledgers, bank accounts, and so on—after passing.)
31/ Vekselberg, Rosen, (Alex) Sapir, Trincher, Ackermann are in. With (Bob) Mercer, that's 57 names we've added in 90 minutes. I'm adding Alimzhan Tokhtakhunov—as he's a Russian mobster and international fugitive who ran an illegal casino *a floor below Trump in Trump Tower*. 58.
32/ I agree with those saying David Clarke has to be added. There's just nothing for it. That's 59 names, and I'm reviewing another six just sent to me via DM.
33/ I have to go work on another project (yes, I work on many other things besides this!) so I'll just put here the names I haven't been able to check yet: Alisher Usmanov, Ruslan Stoyanov, Sergei Mikhailov, Kirill Shamalov and Katerina Tikhonova. So we could have up to 64 names.
