On Aug. 19, 2016, Arron Banks, a wealthy British businessman, sat down at the palatial residenceof the Russian ambassador to London for a lunch of wild halibut and Belevskaya pastila apple sweets accompanied by Russian white wine.
Banks had just scored a huge win. From relative obscurity, he had become the largest political donor in British history by pouring millions into Brexit, the campaign to disentangle the United Kingdom from the European Union that had earned a jaw-dropping victory at the polls two months earlier.
Now he had something else that bolstered his standing as he sat down with his newRussian friend, Ambassador Alexander Yakovenko: his team’sdeepening ties to Donald Trump’s insurgent presidential bid in the United States. A major Brexit supporter, Stephen K. Bannon, had just been installed as chief executive of Trump’s campaign. And Banks and his fellow Brexiteers had been invited to attend a fundraiser with Trump in Mississippi.
Less than a week after the meeting with the Russian envoy, Banks and firebrand Brexit politician Nigel Farage — by then a cult hero among some anti-establishment Trump supporters — were huddling privately with the Republican nominee in Jackson, Miss., where Farage wowed a foot-stomping crowd at a Trump rally.
Banks’s journey from a lavish meal with a Russian diplomat in London to the raucous heart of Trump country was part of an unusual intercontinental charm offensive by the wealthy British donor and his associates, a hard-partying lot who dubbed themselves the “Bad Boys of Brexit.” Their efforts to simultaneously cultivate ties to Russian officials and Trump’s campaign have captured the interest of investigators in the United Kingdom and the United States, including special counsel Robert S. Mueller III.
Both inquiries center on questions of Russia’s involvement in seismic political events that have shaken the world order, with the European Union losing a key member and U.S. voters electing a president critical of Washington’s traditional alliances.
[Trump associate Roger Stone reveals new contact with Russian national during 2016 campaign]
In Britain, recent revelations about Banks’s Russian contacts have triggered scrutiny of whether the Russians sought to bolster the Brexit effort. In the U.S., congressional Democrats who recently obtained a trove of Banks’s communications have begun exploring a different question: Did the Brexit leaders serve as a conduit between the Kremlin and Trump’s operation?
Banks rejected the notion that he was a go-between, insisting his contacts were routine business and diplomatic exchanges — and that the investigations are a “witch hunt.” But he acknowledged that the interactions raised reasonable questions about whether the Brexiteers were “a back channel to the Russians,” as he put it.
“The only problem with all of that is that not one shred of evidence has been produced. . . . It doesn’t go anywhere,” Banks said in one of two interviews with The Washington Post in Bristol this week.
Asked whether Russians had been probing them or seeking to win influence or intelligence, Banks conceded, “They may have. But if so, it wasn’t a very good probe.”
Throughout the 2016 campaign, the wealthy insurance executive built a first-name rapport with the Russian ambassador as Banks briefed him on the breakaway campaign — exchanging frequent, chummy texts and emails, and meeting with him in person four times in about 12 months, according to Banks. At the same time, he and other Brexit backers also intently pursued entree to Trump’s world, according to interviews and dozens of emails and text messages Banks provided to The Post.
Texts between Brexit donor Arron Banks and Russian Ambassador Alexander Yakovenko.
As both relationships deepened, Banks and his associates discussed Trump’s bid and the U.S. presidential campaign with Yakovenko, theBrexit backers acknowledge. At least two of the meetings between Banks and the ambassador came shortly before or after meetings with Trump.
In recent weeks, British parliamentary investigators have sought information about Banks’srelationship to Russia and allegations that he was offered financial inducements, including a potentially lucrative gold-mine deal with a Russian businessman he met through the Russian ambassador.
The interactions between the Brexit leaders and the Trump campaign have also drawn the interest of Mueller as part of his investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 campaign, which is examining contacts between Trump associates and Russians.
Two people — former Trump communications official Michael Caputo and another person, who spoke on the condition of anonymitybecause of the ongoing investigation — told The Post that Mueller’s investigators asked about Farage’s relationship to Trump associates in witness interviews this year, including Caputo just last month.
A spokesman for the special counsel declined to comment.
Meanwhile, congressional Democrats are examining the role of the Brexit leaders after a whistleblower gave a cache of documents detailing Banks’s interactions with the Russian ambassador to members of the House Intelligence Committee earlier this month, according to three lawmakers on the panel.
Rep. Adam B. Schiff (Calif.), the top Democrat on the committee, said he has questions about whether Banks and his associates “served as a conduit of information to and from the Russians on behalf of the Trump campaign.” Another committee member, Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Tex.) said the material “opens a whole new chapter” in the ongoing inquiry into Russian efforts to intervene in the 2016 U.S. election.
A White House spokesman did not respond to a request for comment. Bannon, who led Trump’s campaign in the final months of the 2016 race, declined to comment.
Trump’s lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani, said he was not aware of any questions from Mueller about the Brexit backers and had seen nothing about the topic in documents he has reviewed. “I never heard anything about the Russian ambassador [to London] nor have I ever talked to the president about this,” he said.
Farage and Banks said they have not been contacted by Mueller’s investigators and disputed the idea that they ferried information for the Trump campaign or the Kremlin.
“There seems to be a culture of throwing hysterical accusations around without any evidence whatsoever,” Farage said in an email response to questions.
Banks said he and his fellow Brexit leaders have sought to be transparent about their dealings with Russia. Shortly after Trump’s election, he said, they reached out to officials from the U.S. Embassy in London in the wake of a report suggesting they were pro-Russian actors.
Banks said he and Farage each met once with American embassy officials to describe their contacts. Their associate Andrew Wigmore said he sat down with U.S. diplomats five or six times and turned over numerous documents.
A spokesman for the U.S. Embassy in London confirmed that leaders of the Brexit movement met with American diplomats, including Thomas E. William, a top political officer at the State Department, but declined to discuss the subject of the meeting.
Banks said he was releasing documents to The Post to show he has nothing to hide, and he said he would be happy to speak to Mueller.
“We had so much fun at a parliamentary select committee,” he said, referring to his recent appearance before British lawmakers. “We’d love to be called in.”
The connections between the men who would become the Bad Boys of Brexit and Trump’s future inner campaign circle stretch back to 2013, when Farage said he first met Bannon — then at the helm of the far-right website Breitbart. The conservative media executive quickly bonded with the populist politician, who at the time was leading the UK Independence Party, an anti-immigration, make-Britain-great-again force that helped fuel a backlash against the European Union.
Soon, the Brexit leaders also began to forge Russian ties.
In the fall of 2015, during UKIP’sannual convention at the Doncaster racecourse several hours north of London, Wigmore, a Farage confidant, met a Russian diplomat named Alexander Udod, who then helped arrange alunch for the UKIP leaderswith the Russian ambassador, Yakovenko. (Udod was one of 23 suspected Russian intelligence officers ejected from Britain this year after the nerve agent attack against Sergei Skripal, a Russian double agent, and his adult daughter, in Salisbury in south England.)
Banks and Wigmore said they were interested not only in briefing the Russians on Brexit, but also in seeking possible Russian backers for their various offshore investments, including banana plantations in Belize.
More at: https://www.washingtonpost.com/poli...08400242c2e_story.html?utm_term=.cc8d15808630
Banks had just scored a huge win. From relative obscurity, he had become the largest political donor in British history by pouring millions into Brexit, the campaign to disentangle the United Kingdom from the European Union that had earned a jaw-dropping victory at the polls two months earlier.
Now he had something else that bolstered his standing as he sat down with his newRussian friend, Ambassador Alexander Yakovenko: his team’sdeepening ties to Donald Trump’s insurgent presidential bid in the United States. A major Brexit supporter, Stephen K. Bannon, had just been installed as chief executive of Trump’s campaign. And Banks and his fellow Brexiteers had been invited to attend a fundraiser with Trump in Mississippi.
Less than a week after the meeting with the Russian envoy, Banks and firebrand Brexit politician Nigel Farage — by then a cult hero among some anti-establishment Trump supporters — were huddling privately with the Republican nominee in Jackson, Miss., where Farage wowed a foot-stomping crowd at a Trump rally.
Banks’s journey from a lavish meal with a Russian diplomat in London to the raucous heart of Trump country was part of an unusual intercontinental charm offensive by the wealthy British donor and his associates, a hard-partying lot who dubbed themselves the “Bad Boys of Brexit.” Their efforts to simultaneously cultivate ties to Russian officials and Trump’s campaign have captured the interest of investigators in the United Kingdom and the United States, including special counsel Robert S. Mueller III.
Both inquiries center on questions of Russia’s involvement in seismic political events that have shaken the world order, with the European Union losing a key member and U.S. voters electing a president critical of Washington’s traditional alliances.
[Trump associate Roger Stone reveals new contact with Russian national during 2016 campaign]
In Britain, recent revelations about Banks’s Russian contacts have triggered scrutiny of whether the Russians sought to bolster the Brexit effort. In the U.S., congressional Democrats who recently obtained a trove of Banks’s communications have begun exploring a different question: Did the Brexit leaders serve as a conduit between the Kremlin and Trump’s operation?
Banks rejected the notion that he was a go-between, insisting his contacts were routine business and diplomatic exchanges — and that the investigations are a “witch hunt.” But he acknowledged that the interactions raised reasonable questions about whether the Brexiteers were “a back channel to the Russians,” as he put it.
“The only problem with all of that is that not one shred of evidence has been produced. . . . It doesn’t go anywhere,” Banks said in one of two interviews with The Washington Post in Bristol this week.
Asked whether Russians had been probing them or seeking to win influence or intelligence, Banks conceded, “They may have. But if so, it wasn’t a very good probe.”
Throughout the 2016 campaign, the wealthy insurance executive built a first-name rapport with the Russian ambassador as Banks briefed him on the breakaway campaign — exchanging frequent, chummy texts and emails, and meeting with him in person four times in about 12 months, according to Banks. At the same time, he and other Brexit backers also intently pursued entree to Trump’s world, according to interviews and dozens of emails and text messages Banks provided to The Post.
Texts between Brexit donor Arron Banks and Russian Ambassador Alexander Yakovenko.
As both relationships deepened, Banks and his associates discussed Trump’s bid and the U.S. presidential campaign with Yakovenko, theBrexit backers acknowledge. At least two of the meetings between Banks and the ambassador came shortly before or after meetings with Trump.
In recent weeks, British parliamentary investigators have sought information about Banks’srelationship to Russia and allegations that he was offered financial inducements, including a potentially lucrative gold-mine deal with a Russian businessman he met through the Russian ambassador.
The interactions between the Brexit leaders and the Trump campaign have also drawn the interest of Mueller as part of his investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 campaign, which is examining contacts between Trump associates and Russians.
Two people — former Trump communications official Michael Caputo and another person, who spoke on the condition of anonymitybecause of the ongoing investigation — told The Post that Mueller’s investigators asked about Farage’s relationship to Trump associates in witness interviews this year, including Caputo just last month.
A spokesman for the special counsel declined to comment.
Meanwhile, congressional Democrats are examining the role of the Brexit leaders after a whistleblower gave a cache of documents detailing Banks’s interactions with the Russian ambassador to members of the House Intelligence Committee earlier this month, according to three lawmakers on the panel.
Rep. Adam B. Schiff (Calif.), the top Democrat on the committee, said he has questions about whether Banks and his associates “served as a conduit of information to and from the Russians on behalf of the Trump campaign.” Another committee member, Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Tex.) said the material “opens a whole new chapter” in the ongoing inquiry into Russian efforts to intervene in the 2016 U.S. election.
A White House spokesman did not respond to a request for comment. Bannon, who led Trump’s campaign in the final months of the 2016 race, declined to comment.
Trump’s lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani, said he was not aware of any questions from Mueller about the Brexit backers and had seen nothing about the topic in documents he has reviewed. “I never heard anything about the Russian ambassador [to London] nor have I ever talked to the president about this,” he said.
Farage and Banks said they have not been contacted by Mueller’s investigators and disputed the idea that they ferried information for the Trump campaign or the Kremlin.
“There seems to be a culture of throwing hysterical accusations around without any evidence whatsoever,” Farage said in an email response to questions.
Banks said he and his fellow Brexit leaders have sought to be transparent about their dealings with Russia. Shortly after Trump’s election, he said, they reached out to officials from the U.S. Embassy in London in the wake of a report suggesting they were pro-Russian actors.
Banks said he and Farage each met once with American embassy officials to describe their contacts. Their associate Andrew Wigmore said he sat down with U.S. diplomats five or six times and turned over numerous documents.
A spokesman for the U.S. Embassy in London confirmed that leaders of the Brexit movement met with American diplomats, including Thomas E. William, a top political officer at the State Department, but declined to discuss the subject of the meeting.
Banks said he was releasing documents to The Post to show he has nothing to hide, and he said he would be happy to speak to Mueller.
“We had so much fun at a parliamentary select committee,” he said, referring to his recent appearance before British lawmakers. “We’d love to be called in.”
The connections between the men who would become the Bad Boys of Brexit and Trump’s future inner campaign circle stretch back to 2013, when Farage said he first met Bannon — then at the helm of the far-right website Breitbart. The conservative media executive quickly bonded with the populist politician, who at the time was leading the UK Independence Party, an anti-immigration, make-Britain-great-again force that helped fuel a backlash against the European Union.
Soon, the Brexit leaders also began to forge Russian ties.
In the fall of 2015, during UKIP’sannual convention at the Doncaster racecourse several hours north of London, Wigmore, a Farage confidant, met a Russian diplomat named Alexander Udod, who then helped arrange alunch for the UKIP leaderswith the Russian ambassador, Yakovenko. (Udod was one of 23 suspected Russian intelligence officers ejected from Britain this year after the nerve agent attack against Sergei Skripal, a Russian double agent, and his adult daughter, in Salisbury in south England.)
Banks and Wigmore said they were interested not only in briefing the Russians on Brexit, but also in seeking possible Russian backers for their various offshore investments, including banana plantations in Belize.
More at: https://www.washingtonpost.com/poli...08400242c2e_story.html?utm_term=.cc8d15808630
