Since the appointment of Special Counsel Robert Mueller, five people who worked on Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign have been convicted of crimes, from tax fraud to illegal campaign contributions to lying to federal investigators. Though Trump’s defenders claim the verdicts have nothing to do with collusion, even a cursory understanding of the connections between the campaign and the Kremlin proves them wrong. In fact, the five convicted individuals collectively accounted for 49 of the Trump campaign’s 87 known contacts with Russia-linked operatives.

All five of these convicted felons served as key middle-men between Trump and the Kremlin. Here’s how:

• George Papadopoulos:
  • Learned from a Kremlin-linked professor that Russia had “dirt” on Hillary Clinton in the form of “thousands of emails” months before any emails were released.
• Michael Flynn
  • Coordinated with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak about Russia’s response to the Obama administration’s efforts to sanction Russia for its unprecedented and unprovoked attack on the 2016 election.
• Michael Cohen
  • Worked on developing Trump Tower Moscow, with financing from a sanctioned Russian bank, during the 2016 campaign.
  • Coordinated to deliver a “peace plan” for Crimea, developed by a pro-Kremlin Ukrainian politician, to Michael Flynn.
• Rick Gates
  • Communicated with a suspected Russian intelligence operative during the campaign.
• Paul Manafort
  • Attended the June 9, 2016, meeting in Trump Tower with Kremlin-linked individuals for the explicit purpose of obtaining damaging information on Hillary Clinton.
  • Emailed a suspected Russian intelligence operative to offer private briefings to an aluminum magnate considered a close associate of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

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