WASHINGTON
— A top Trump campaign official had repeated communications during the
final weeks of the 2016 presidential race with a business associate tied
to Russian intelligence, according to a document released on Tuesday by the special counsel investigating Russian interference in the election.
The
campaign official, Rick Gates, had frequent phone calls in September
and October 2016 with a person the F.B.I. believes had active links to
Russian spy services at the time, the document said. Mr. Gates also told
an associate the person “was a former Russian Intelligence Officer with
the G.R.U.,” the Russian military intelligence agency.
The
special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, is investigating numerous
contacts between President Trump’s advisers and Russia-linked
individuals and entities leading up to and after the November 2016
election. The document, filed in Mr. Mueller’s name, stated that the
communications between Mr. Gates and the individual were “pertinent to
the investigation.”
The
individual is identified only as “Person A,” and the document describes
him as someone who worked for Mr. Gates and Paul Manafort, Mr. Trump’s
campaign chairman, as part of their earlier representation of
Russia-aligned parties and politicians in Ukrainian, including the
former president of Ukraine. A person with knowledge of the matter
identified Person A as Konstantin V. Kilimnik, who for years was Mr.
Manafort’s right-hand man in Ukraine.
Mr.
Manafort has told associates that he does not believe that Mr. Kilimnik
has ties to Russian intelligence, but the document released on Tuesday
shows that Mr. Gates told others of his history in the intelligence
services. That history was widely discussed for years among people who
worked with Mr. Manafort and Mr. Gates in Ukraine.
At
the time of the calls, Mr. Gates was the Trump campaign’s liaison to
the Republican National Committee and, before that, he was the
campaign’s deputy chairman. Mr. Manafort served as the campaign chairman
until August 2016, when he resigned amid the growing controversy about
his work in Ukraine.
Continue reading the main story
Both
Mr. Manafort and Mr. Gates were indicted last year for money laundering
and other financial crimes committed while, the charges said, they
tried to hide the money they received for their Ukraine work. Last
month, Mr. Gates pleaded guilty to financial fraud and lying to
investigators and has agreed to cooperate with Mr. Mueller’s
investigation.
Mr.
Manafort has vowed to fight the charges. In February 2017, he told The
New York Times he had “never knowingly spoken to Russian intelligence
officers, and I have never been involved with anything to do with the
Russian government of the Putin administration or any other issues under
investigation today.”
But, he added, “It’s not like these people wear badges that say, ‘I’m a Russian intelligence officer.’ ”
Mr.
Kilimnik was born in Ukraine when it was still part of the Soviet
Union, and he served in the Russian Army as a linguist. Last year, as
scrutiny mounted of his work with Mr. Manafort and Mr. Gates in Ukraine,
he steadfastly denied any association with Russian intelligence. An
investigation by Ukrainian prosecutors into Mr. Kilimnik’s possible
links to Russian spy agencies was closed late last year without charges.
Mr.
Kilimnik has maintained residences in Moscow and Kiev, the capital of
Ukraine, and has traveled regularly between them during years of working
for Mr. Manafort and Mr. Gates on behalf of various Russia-aligned
oligarchs and political parties.
The
new document is a sentencing memorandum for Alex van der Zwaan, a
lawyer who pleaded guilty in February to lying to federal investigators
about his conversations with Mr. Gates in 2016 about work the two men
did in Ukraine.
Mr.
van der Zwaan was an attorney at a firm that worked with Mr. Manafort
and Mr. Gates to prepare a report used to defend Viktor F. Yanukovych,
the former Ukrainian president, from international criticism over the
prosecution and incarceration of one of his political rivals.
Mr.
van der Zwaan “worked closely” on the report with Mr. Gates and Person
A, according to a court filing submitted Tuesday night by Mr. van der
Zwaan’s lawyers asking the judge for leniency in sentencing.
Mr.
van der Zwaan originally told Mr. Mueller’s investigators that he had
not spoken to Mr. Gates since August 2016, but subsequently admitted he
had lied after prosecutors confronted him with evidence of
conversations.
The
sentencing document describes an observation by one unidentified
witness in the investigation who said Mr. van der Zwaan had “gone
native.”
“That is, he had grown too close to Manafort, Gates, and Person A,” the document stated.
According
to the filing by his lawyers, Mr. van der Zwaan “had explored
opportunities to leave Skadden to work directly for Gates and Manafort”
in 2012 and 2013.
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