Trump adviser Roger Stone reveals new meeting with Russian

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Trump adviser Roger Stone reveals new meeting with Russian

2018-06-18 11:04 Last Updated At：11:04

Special counsel Robert Mueller is examining a previously undisclosed meeting between longtime Donald Trump confidante Roger Stone and a Russian figure who allegedly tried to sell him dirt on Hillary Clinton.

The meeting between Stone and a man who identified himself as Henry Greenberg was described in a pair of letters sent Friday to the House Intelligence Committee and first reported by The Washington Post.

Stone and Michael Caputo, a Trump campaign aide who arranged the 2016 meeting, did not disclose the contact in their interviews with the committee. But they now believe the man was an FBI informant trying to set them up in a bid to undermine Trump's campaign. Greenberg could not immediately be reached for comment, but in a text to the Post he denied he was working for the FBI when he met with Stone.

The letters obtained by The Associated Press and written by Stone and Caputo's lawyers say that, in late May 2016, Caputo received a call from his Russian business partner introducing him to Greenberg, who claimed he had information about Clinton that he wanted to share with the campaign.

Caputo suggested Greenberg meet with Stone, who had left the campaign in 2015 but remained an informal Trump adviser.

At Caputo's request, Stone met with Greenberg at a Florida cafe, where Greenberg asked for $2 million in exchange for the information, according to Stone's lawyer. Stone swiftly rejected the offer, explaining that neither he nor Trump would ever pay for "political information," his lawyer wrote.

Both men say they quickly forgot about the episode, which marks the latest in a long list of unusual contacts between Russians and Trump campaign officials as well as offers of help.

The special counsel has spent months investigating Russian meddling in the 2016 election and whether Trump campaign aides played any role in the foreign interference plot. Trump and his lawyer, meanwhile, have tried to discredit the investigation, insisting it's unfounded and plagued by misconduct and political bias.

"WITCH HUNT!" Trump tweeted on Sunday, insisting: "There was no Russian Collusion. Oh, I see, there was no Russian Collusion, so now they look for obstruction on the no Russian Collusion. The phony Russian Collusion was a made up Hoax. Too bad they didn't look at Crooked Hillary like this. Double Standard!"

As part of their campaign, Trump and his loyalists have tried to convince the public that the FBI violated its usual operating procedures, including installing "spies" inside Trump's campaign, though there's no evidence that's the case.

Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, a member of Trump's legal team, on Sunday dismissed the significance of the Stone meeting.

"So, yes, sure, there was contact, as there was in that meeting. But that meeting led to nothing. This led to nothing. So, if anything, it's proof there was no collusion," he said in an interview with CBS's "Face the Nation," adding that Mueller's team "can investigate from here to, you know, to Timbuktu, and they're not going to find a darn thing."

Both Stone and Caputo failed to disclose the Greenberg meeting in their interviews with the House Intelligence Committee — an omission their lawyers said was accidental, but that Rep. Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on House Intelligence Committee, said was part of a pattern of deception.

"In multiple respects now, the testimony of Roger Stone appears inaccurate or deliberately misleading. Similarly, Michael Caputo's testimony omitted mention of this interaction with a Russian offering dirt on Hillary Clinton, something which could not plausibly have escaped his recollection," Schiff said in a statement. He pressed Republicans on the committee to make the interview transcripts available to Mueller's team "for a determination whether any witnesses committed perjury before our committee."

Caputo's lawyer, Dennis Vacco, said his client had "simply forgotten about this brief encounter in 2016," and only remembered it as he was preparing for his interview with Mueller's team.

Caputo told the AP that Mueller's team asked him at length about the meeting.

"They knew more than I did, which set off alarms. I thought — was this a setup?" he recalled.

Caputo said he hired investigators using money from his legal defense fund to dig into Greenberg's background and has produced a "dossier" with the findings, which Stone endorses.

"Mr. Stone believes it is likely that Mr. Greenberg was actively working on behalf of the FBI at the time of their meeting with the intention of entrapping Mr. Stone and to infiltrate and compromise the Trump effort," his lawyer, Grant J. Smith, wrote.

The FBI declined to comment, but has said its counterintelligence investigation didn't begin until July 2016, two months after the meeting.

The Washington Post, citing interviews and documents, reported that Greenberg has at times used the name Henry Oknyansky, and claimed in a 2015 court filing that he had been providing information to the FBI for 17 years.

The Post notes the meeting happened around the same time that others members of the Trump campaign were being approached by people with Russian ties offering dirt on Clinton.

Several members of the campaign were also approached by another U.S. government informant in a possible bid to glean intelligence on Russian efforts to sway the race. Several news outlets including the Post, The Wall Street Journal and NBC News have identified an FBI confidential source as Cambridge University professor Stefan A. Halper.

2 Russian businessmen linked to Alfa Group win court case over EU sanctions

2024-04-10 19:48 Last Updated At：19:50

BRUSSELS (AP) — Russian businessmen Mikhail Fridman and Petr Aven won a court case Wednesday over a European Union decision to sanction them for their alleged role in Russia’s war against Ukraine.

The EU General Court said a lack of evidence justified their removal from a list of persons who faced restrictive measures between February 2022 and March 2023. The EU in March last year kept Aven and Fridman on the lists. The two have also challenged that decision in separate cases still pending.

Fridman is a founder of Alfa Group and ranks as one of Russia’s wealthiest tycoons. The group’s Alfa Bank, Russia’s largest non-state bank, was sanctioned by the EU in March 2022, prompting Fridman to leave the board to try to help the bank skirt sanctions. Aven headed Alfa Bank until March 2022, but like Fridman left the board after the EU move.

The EU has imposed several rounds of sanctions on Russia since Putin ordered his troops into Ukraine. The measures have targeted the energy sector, banks, the world’s biggest diamond-mining company, businesses and markets, and subjected Russian officials — including Russian President Vladimir Putin — to asset freezes and travel bans.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov welcomed Wednesday's ruling.

“Of course representatives of big business have the opportunity to challenge these sanctions decisions ... and they are doing that,” Peskov told reporters. “In any case, we consider all these sanctions illegal, unfair and destructive."

Neither Fridman nor Aven had directly criticized the war. They instead asked well-known anti-war Russians to sign a letter asking that EU sanctions against them be lifted.

Leonid Volkov, the chief of staff to Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, signed the letter and later said he regretted doing so.

Volkov said the decision to delist Fridman and Aven was “very bad” because it showed that tycoons could have sanctions lifted without publicly criticizing Putin or the war in Ukraine.

“What the Europeans have done now makes no sense,” Volkov wrote on social platform X.

“Fridman and Aven never said a word in public against the war and did not go into conflict with Putin. The EU Court simply gave them what they wanted on a silver platter. For what? What signal is the court sending to Putin, his friends, and Russian oligarchs?” he added.

Aven, of Russian and Latvian nationality, and Fridman, who holds Russian and Israeli passports, were placed on the list for restrictive measures after Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

The two challenged the decision and the General Court said their inclusion was not justified because there was insufficient evidence that they provided material or financial support to Russian decision-makers, or were associated with war efforts undermining Ukraine.

“The General Court considers that none of the reasons set out in the initial acts is sufficiently substantiated and that the inclusion of Mr Aven and Mr Fridman on the lists at issue was therefore not justified,” the Luxembourg-based court said in a statement.

Fridman has called the war a tragedy and for the “bloodshed” to end. He previously lived in Britain but reportedly returned to Moscow after fighting between Israel and Hamas began.

Last year, the U.S. Treasury Department imposed financial sanctions against four Russians on the board of Alfa Group, including Aven and Fridman.

Rulings by the General Court can be appealed to the European Court of Justice.

Emma Burrows in London contributed to this report.