ROBERT MUELLER/RUSSIA INVESTIGATION/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “Key pieces of special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation appear to be falling into place. In three court filings Friday, prosecutors for the first time connected President Donald Trump to a crime involving hush money payments to a porn actress. They revealed new details about outreach from Russia early in Trump’s presidential campaign. They detailed how they say two central figures, lawyer Michael Cohen and onetime campaign chairman Paul Manafort , were continually tripped up by lies. ome takeaways from the latest round of court documents from Mueller’s investigation: Trump announced his presidential candidacy in June 2015. By that November, the Russians were reaching out about ‘political synergy.’ The court papers provide new details about one of the earliest known contacts between Russia and a Trump campaign associate. In fall 2015, Cohen was months into his work on a proposed Trump Tower in Moscow when an unidentified Russian national proposed a meeting between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin. This person, prosecutors say, claimed to be a ‘trusted person’ in Russia who could offer the Trump campaign ‘political synergy’ and ‘synergy on a government level.'”
–The Associated Press, “Early Russian Outreach to Trump Campaign Detailed by Mueller,” The New York Times online, December 7, 2018