Timeline Of Investigations Into Donald Trump And Russia (January–June 2019)

This is a timeline of events in the first half of 2019 related to investigations into links between associates of Donald Trump and Russian officials that are suspected of being inappropriate, relating to the Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections. It follows the timeline of Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections, both before and after July 2016, until November 8, 2016 (election day), the transition, the first and second halves of 2017, the first and second halves of 2018, and followed by the second half of 2019, 2020, and 2021.

These events are related to, but distinct from, Russian interference in the 2020 United States elections.

Relevant individuals and organizations

2018

January–June 2019

January

* January 2: The foreign company fighting a grand jury subpoena filed under seal its reply to Mueller's brief to the Supreme Court. Alston & Bird is an involved law firm. In October 2020, CNN reveals that the company is a state-owned Egyptian bank that may have been the source of funds for Trump's $10 million loan to his campaign on October 29, 2016.
* January 3:
** The 116th United States Congress convenes with the House under Democratic control.
** Congressman Brad Sherman refiles articles of impeachment against Trump. The article charges Trump with obstructing justice by firing James Comey.
** Jerome Corsi asks U.S. District Court Judge Richard J. Leon to take his December 10, 2018, lawsuit against Mueller. Corsi claims the FBI and Mueller's team used "illegal, unconstitutional surveillance" in a "politically-motivated" criminal investigation against him. Judge Leon accuses Corsi's lawyer of "judge shopping" and grants a Justice Department motion to randomly assign the case to another judge.
* January 4: District Judge Beryl A. Howell extends the term of Mueller's grand jury in Washington, D.C., for an unknown amount of time. The grand jury's term was due to expire on January 5.
* January 7: D.C. District Judge Dabney L. Friedrich strongly rebukes the attorneys for Concord Management and Consulting for repeatedly making personal attacks on Mueller's team. The rebuke was triggered by a January 4 filing that questions the trustworthiness of Mueller's office. Friedrich called Concord's recent filings "unprofessional, inappropriate, and ineffective," and said their "relentless personal attacks" would not affect her decision.

* January 8:
** The US Attorney for the Southern District of New York (SDNY) indicts Natalia Veselnitskaya, known for her participation in the meeting in the Trump Tower with top campaign officials on June 9, 2016, for obstruction of justice in an unrelated case. The prosecution alleges that while defending Russian investment company Prevezon Holdings in a New York court, she helped Russian Prosecutor General Yuri Chaika fabricate evidence supporting Prevezon's defense.
** Paul Manafort's attorneys file response to Mueller's accusations of malfeasance to the DC judge. Portions of the filing that were meant to be redacted are still readable because of incorrectly applied formatting in the document. The redacted portions reveal that prosecutors accused Manafort of lying because he denied and then admitted when prompted that he met with Kilimnik in Madrid, discussed a proposed Ukrainian peace plan with Kilimnik on several occasions, and shared polling data with Kilimnik while working for the Trump campaign.
** ''The New York Times'' reports that while Manafort worked for the Trump campaign he provided Kilimnik with internal polling data for Kilimnik to pass on to Ukrainian oligarchs Serhiy Lyovochkin and Rinat Akhmetov, both of whom Manafort previously did work for in Ukraine.
** The Supreme Court removes without comment a temporary stay in the legal battle by a "Corporation" from "Country A" fighting a grand jury subpoena. The stay had paused the accrual of fines by the company while it appealed the District Court of Appeals decision from December 18, 2018. This is believed to be the first U.S. Supreme Court decision related to the Mueller investigation.
** The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals (D.C. Cir.) issues its full opinion in the appeal by a "Corporation" from "Country A" against a grand jury subpoena. The judges write, " he companyfailed to satisfy its burden of showing that Country A's law would prohibit complying with the subpoena, we agree with the district court that enforcing the subpoena is neither unreasonable nor oppressive." The company immediately appeals the decision to the Supreme Court. In October 2020, ''CNN'' reveals that "Country A" is Egypt.
* January 9: The Senate Intelligence Committee interviews Robert Foresman.
* January 10: The first Russia-related hearing of the newly Democratic majority House takes place: Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin testifies in a closed-door hearing on the Treasury Department's decision to ease sanctions on companies aligned with Oleg Deripaska. After the hearing, Speaker Nancy Pelosi calls it "one of the worst classified briefings we've received from the Trump administration". She says they spent "most of the time reading an unclassified document". Other Democrats echoed Pelosi.
* January 11:
** ''Mother Jones'' reports that the NRA appears to have coordinated ad buys with Republican candidates in at least three U.S. Senate races. Like the scheme reportedly used by the NRA and the Trump campaign, National Media Research, Planning and Placement (NMRPP) CFO Jon Ferrell placed scores of ad buys on behalf of the three senate campaigns and the NRA to air ads within minutes of each other on the same local television stations. The three senate campaigns were Senator Richard Burr's 2016 reelection campaign in North Carolina, Missouri Attorney General Josh Hawley's successful 2018 campaign to unseat Missouri Senator Claire McCaskill, and the unsuccessful 2018 campaign by Montana state auditor Matt Rosendale to unseat Montana Senator Jon Tester.
** ''The New York Times'' reports that the FBI opened counterintelligence and criminal investigations against Trump a few days after he fired Comey in May 2017. They were alarmed by Trump's actions and concerned that he may have been working for Russia against American interests. The investigations were eventually combined and taken over by Mueller.
** Giuliani tells ''The Hill'' that Trump's legal team should be allowed to make corrections to Mueller's final report before it is seen by Congress or the public.
** The Senate Intelligence Committee interviews Nunberg.

* January 12:
** ''The Washington Post'' reports that Trump ordered his translator for the second Putin meeting at the G20 summit in Hamburg on July 7, 2017, to hand over their notes and not discuss the meeting. The Hamburg meeting was one of five Trump-Putin interactions where no detailed records exist.
** Trump tells Jeanine Pirro on ''Justice with Judge Jeanine'' that Cohen made a plea deal to protect his father-in-law from prosecution. The Mueller report refers to his statements on Cohen in the interview as evidence of witness intimidation.
* January 14:
** ''The New York Times'' reports on the unusually large expenses claimed by the Trump inauguration fund.
** ''The Daily Beast'' reports that Mueller's office and the SDNY are investigating a breakfast meeting involving Flynn, Nunes, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu, and 50–60 other foreign officials at the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C., on January 18, 2017. This line of inquiry is part of their investigations into the Trump inauguration fund.
** The Senate Intelligence Committee interviews Robert Curran.

* January 15:
** Mueller's team requests a delay in Richard Gates' sentencing because he is still helping with their investigations.
** Mueller's team files FBI special agent Jeffrey Weyland's partially redacted statement detailing the ways in which they believe Manafort lied to them, including about his contacts with Trump administration officials and his work to help people get positions in the administration. 157 pages of mostly redacted exhibits are included in the filing. They allege Manafort made contradictory statements to the Mueller team on several occasions as well as to the grand jury contradicting himself, other witnesses, and documents.
** William Barr appears before the Senate Judiciary Committee for his confirmation hearing to become the next Attorney General. Barr refuses to commit to recusing himself from the Mueller investigation or release Mueller's eventual report. He also states that he would not fire Mueller if asked to do so by Trump without good cause. Barr circulated a memo among Trump administration members in 2018 in which he criticized the Mueller investigation.
** Judge Howell imposes $50,000 a day fines on the foreign company fighting a grand jury subpoena from Mueller for not complying with the subpoena.

* January 17:
** The Justice Department announces that Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom agreed to pay the U.S. government $4.6 million and retroactively register as a foreign agent for the work they performed for Manafort and the Ukrainian government. $4.6 million is the amount of money Skadden received from the Ukrainian Ministry of Justice and Manafort's offshore bank accounts. In the settlement agreement, which details the actions taken by Skadden on the behalf of Manafort and Ukraine, attorney and former White House counsel Gregory B. Craig is referred to as "Partner-1".
** '' BuzzFeed News'' reports that Cohen gave Trump, Trump Jr., and Ivanka Trump regular and "very detailed" updates about the Trump Tower Moscow project during the 2016 campaign, including that he was discussing the project with Russian government officials. They also report that Cohen told Mueller's team that Trump directed him to lie to Congress about the project.
* January 18:
** Mueller spokesman Peter Carr refutes some of the information in the January 17 ''BuzzFeed News'' article that claimed Trump directed Cohen to lie to Congress. He says, "BuzzFeed's description of specific statements to the special counsel's office, and characterization of documents and testimony obtained by this office, regarding Cohen's congressional testimony are not accurate". ''BuzzFeed'' top editor Ben Smith responds, "We stand by our reporting and the sources who informed it, and we urge the Special Counsel to make clear what he’s disputing".
** Mueller's team interviews Bannon for the fourth and final time.
** Trump tweets that Cohen lied to reduce his sentence, and finishes with, "Watch father-in-law!" The Mueller Report refers to this tweet as evidence of witness intimidation.
* January 20: Giuliani tells Chuck Todd on ''Meet the Press'' that the Trump Tower Moscow project continued through October or November 2016. His statement confirms what Cohen told Mueller's team about the project.
* January 21:
** In a ''New York Times'' interview, Giuliani quotes Trump as saying discussions about the Trump Tower Moscow project were "going on from the day I announced to the day I won." His statement confirms what Cohen told Mueller's team about the project.
** Giuliani walks back his recent statements on the Trump Tower Moscow project. He issues a public statement saying, "My recent statements about discussions during the 2016 campaign between Michael Cohen and candidate Donald Trump about a potential Trump Moscow 'project' were hypothetical and not based on conversations I had with the president. Trump's personal counsel also sends a letter to Mueller's team stating that Giuliani's public comments "were not intended to suggest nor did they reflect knowledge of the existence or timing of conversations beyond that contained in the President's ritten responses to the Special Counsel's Office"
* January 22: The Supreme Court grants a motion from the "Corporation" from "Country A" to file its appeal under seal in its case challenging a subpoena from Mueller's grand jury. A redacted version of the petition will be made public.
* January 23:
** Cohen delays his Congressional testimony, citing threats to his family. Senate Intelligence Committee subpoenas Cohen to testify in closed session on February 12.
** Mueller's team submits followup questions to Trump about the extent of his involvement in the Trump Tower Moscow project.

* January 24:
** A grand jury in the District of Columbia indicts Stone on 7 counts; one count of obstructing a congressional proceeding, five counts of false statements, and one count of witness tampering. In the indictment, CrowdStrike is identified as "Company 1", WikiLeaks as "Organization 1", Assange as "the head of Organization 1", Corsi as "Person 1", Credico as "Person 2", and Bannon as "the high-ranking Trump Campaign official". The unnamed reporter mentioned in the indictment is Matthew Boyle of Breitbart News.
** Corsi's stepson Andrew Stettner testifies before Mueller's grand jury.
* January 25: Trump campaign associate Roger Stone is arrested by the FBI in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
* January 28:
** Acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker announces that the Special Counsel investigation is "close to being completed".
** Stone pleads not guilty in DC courtroom.
** Judge T. S. Ellis of the District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia (E.D. Va.) postpones Manafort's February 8 sentencing date to an unspecified date, pending resolution of a dispute in his separate case before the DC District Court (D.D.C.).
*January 29: Mueller's team interviews former Associate Attorney General Rachel Brand.
*January 30: As part of the prosecution of Concord Management and Consulting, a court filing states that Russians leaked confidential evidence collected by the Mueller investigation.

February

* Early February: The unnamed foreign company fighting a grand jury subpoena from Mueller (an Egyptian bank) gives the Mueller investigation documents totaling around 950 pages, many of which were translated into English. Judge Howell stops the daily fines imposed on the company.
* February 1: Stone appears in court. The judge warns she may impose a gag order. A court filing by Mueller's prosecutors reveals that the FBI seized "voluminous and complex" evidence from Stone's home in Florida, containing emails and financial records.
* February 4:
** During a closed-door DC District Court hearing, Mueller prosecutor Andrew Weissmann tells judge Amy Berman Jackson that Manafort's lying to investigators about his communications with Konstantin Kilimnik "goes, I think, very much to the heart of what the special counsel's office is investigating" suggesting that Mueller's office continues to examine a possible agreement between Russia and the Trump campaign.
** Federal prosecutors in Manhattan subpoena documents concerning donors and finances from Trump's inaugural committee. Investigators are particularly interested in potential conspiracy to defraud the U.S., mail fraud, wire fraud, false statements, election fraud, foreign donations, and money laundering.
** Federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York request interviews with executives at the Trump Organization.
** ''BuzzFeed News'' reports that Akhmetshin received suspicious payments before and after the Trump Tower meeting totaling $500,000 from Denis Katsyv. Wells Fargo and Bank of America reported the payments to the U.S. Treasury Department, and the reports were passed on to Mueller's team.
*February 5:
** Thomas J. Barrack Jr., chairman of Trump's inaugural committee, confirms to the Associated Press that he was interviewed by the Mueller team in 2017, but says he was not a target of the investigation.
** The Democratic-controlled House Intelligence Committee votes to refer dozens of witness testimony transcripts and thousands of other documents to Mueller's office. Committee Republicans had blocked Democrat efforts to release the documents to Mueller's office when Republicans controlled the Committee in 2018.
* February 6: Trump's personal counsel declines to provide Mueller's team with the additional information about the extent of Trump's involvement in the Trump Tower Moscow project that they requested on January 23.
* February 7: Corsi sues Stone for defamation, assault, and intentional infliction of emotional stress in an attempt to prevent him from testifying against Stone.
* February 8: The House Judiciary Committee holds a hearing on Acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker, focusing primarily on the Mueller probe and his relation to it.
* February 11: Cohen's testimony under subpoena before a closed session of the Senate Intelligence Committee is postponed a third time, at Cohen's request, to an unspecified date.
* February 13:
** Judge rules that Manafort 'intentionally' lied to the FBI, special counsel and grand jury, negating his plea agreement, including his contacts with his Russian associate during the campaign and later.
** CNN reports Tyler McGaughey, the husband of William Barr's youngest daughter, was hired by White House Counsel's office, whose work intersects with the Russia investigation. Walter Shaub, the former director of the United States Office of Government Ethics, said McGaughey's beeline for the White House was "concerning."
** Date for the trial of Michael Flynn's business partner Bijan Kian, the second of a Mueller derived case, is set for July 15.
** Mueller's team interviews Chris Christie.

* February 14:
** Mueller's team interviews Gordon the final of four times since August 7, 2017. Further unredacted text restored by the Department of Justice and released on June 19, 2020 in response to a court order.
** William Barr is confirmed as Attorney General by the U.S. Senate.
** Flynn sends outspoken Mueller critic Republican Representative Matt Gaetz images of a bald eagle and an American flag with no accompanying text. In May, the Twitter direct message is revealed in a court filing as evidence of Flynn's outreach to Mueller critics while he was cooperating with the Mueller investigation.
* February 15:
** U.S. District Judge Amy Berman imposes a limited restriction on the kind of public statement Roger Stone can make about his court proceedings in order to ensure a fair trial and "to maintain the dignity and seriousness of the courthouse and these proceedings." Stone, his lawyers, and his witnesses are banned from making public statements as they enter or exit the courthouse.
** Sarah Huckabee Sanders confirms to the press that she is "happy to voluntarily" sit for an interview with Mueller's investigators and says that the President urged her to "fully cooperate."
** The New Jersey Attorney General subpoenas the Trump inaugural committee for records relating to fundraising events and "solicitations" conducted in New Jersey, copies of ledgers, tax forms, contracts and "all documents related to any benefits provided to donors."
* February 17: ''The Guardian'' reports that Brittany Kaiser, former business development director of SCL Group, the parent company of Cambridge Analytica, was subpoenaed by Robert Mueller. Her spokesman said she was cooperating fully with his investigation. She is the first person with links to both Brexit and the Trump campaign known to have been questioned by Mueller.
* February 20:
**Judge William Pauley grants Cohen's request to postpone his prison surrender date from March 6 to May 6 so he can further recover from recent shoulder surgery.
** Cohen agrees to testify before open session of House Oversight Committee on February 27.
** The Senate Intelligence Committee interviews international political consultant George Birnbaum.
* February 21: Senate Intelligence Committee reportedly pursuing David Geovanis for questioning.
* February 26:
** Cohen testifies in closed session before the Senate Intelligence Committee.
** A three-judge panel of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals rules that Mueller was legally appointed. The judges let stand a July 31, 2018, lower court ruling ordering Andrew Miller, a former aide to Roger Stone, to obey a grand jury subpoena from Mueller. The case was brought by Miller in an attempt to avoid testifying before Mueller's grand jury.
* February 27: Cohen testifies before open session of House Oversight Committee.
* February 28:
**Cohen testifies in closed session before the House Intelligence Committee.
** House Oversight Committee chairman Elijah Cummings states his intention to interview Trump Jr., Ivanka Trump and Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg. House Intelligence Committee chairman Adam Schiff states he will call Weisselberg to testify.
**In the Concord Management case, Mueller's team argues that over three million documents should not be exported to Russia under discovery rules.
** Mueller's team interviews McGahn for the final of six times.
** The Senate Intelligence Committee interviews Kushner.

March

* March 4: House Judiciary Committee sends letters seeking information and documents from 81 organizations and individuals associated with Trump.
* March 6: Cohen gives additional testimony before House Intelligence Committee.
* March 7: Manafort is sentenced by Judge T. S. Ellis III (of E.D. Va.) to 47 months in prison in Virginia for tax evasion and bank fraud, "far lighter than the 19- to 24-year prison term recommended under sentencing guidelines".
* March 8: Corsi and Larry Klayman file a defamation lawsuit against Alex Jones and InfoWars. The suit claims InfoWars gave Stone a platform to "improperly influence the Mueller investigation," and that Stone and Jones made defamatory statements about Corsi and Klayman in videos posted on the InfoWars website.
* March 11: The Senate Intelligence Committee interviews Mangiante.
* March 12: Mueller prosecutors and Mike Flynn jointly requested and received a 90-day extension for his sentencing, originally scheduled for March 18, stating that his cooperation with the Mueller investigation was complete but he may cooperate further in the prosecution of his former business partner, Bijan Kian, scheduled to begin in July.
* March 13:
** Manafort is sentenced in DC District Court (D.D.C.) to 73 months in prison, thirty of which to be served concurrently with his previous sentence in Virginia. The length of his federal prison sentences is expected to total 7.5 years.
** Minutes after his sentencing, New York State announced that Manafort had been charged with 16 state felonies, including residential mortgage fraud.
* March 15:
** U.S. District Judge Henry E. Hudson dismisses Scott Comer's, Roy Cockrum's, and Eric Schoenberg's lawsuit against the Trump Campaign and Stone, which was originally filed on July 12, 2017, for failing to plead viable privacy claims and lacking a substantive cause of action for conspiracy, but not for the First Amendment defense made by Stone and the Trump Campaign.
** Aleksandr Kogan, the data scientist hired by Cambridge Analytica to harvest Facebook data in 2015, sues Facebook for defamation over their claims that he deceived the company about his activities.
* March 18: Propublica reports federal authorities raided Republican fundraiser Elliott Broidy's office in July 2018, seeking materials related to foreign officials dealings with Trump administration associates, including Gates and Nader, regarding conspiracy, money laundering, and crimes associated with illegal lobbying on behalf of foreign officials.

* March 19:
** The Michael Cohen search warrants are unsealed by a federal judge in New York.
** Mueller's team interviews Cohen for the seventh and final time.

*March 20: Ukrainian Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko

HOME


Content is Copyleft
Website design, code, and AI is Copyrighted (c) 2014-2017 by Stephen Payne


Consider donating to Wikimedia



As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases