Talk:Timeline of Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections/Archive 2

Archive 1

Archive 2

Archive 3

Archive 4

Archive 5

Irrevelant events

The bail agreement for Manafort seems not to be anything of note. In addition, what does the exclusion of Russian athletes from the Winter Olympics mean for the investigation. I am going to merge the Manafort and comment out the Olympics statement.Theoallen1 (talk) 15:31, 28 December 2017 (UTC)

• Also, I excluded the gag order, since that does not appear to relate directly to anything of note.Theoallen1 (talk) 15:47, 28 December 2017 (UTC)
• Events like the Inauguration of Obama should not be included. While there is no consensus on dividing up this article (primarially because of where to break up the article), pending such division, there is consensus to remove irrelevant information.Theoallen1 (talk) 23:58, 28 December 2017 (UTC)

I removed entries about prior Russian and U.S. elections. Keeping one about 2011 protests in Russia because they are allegedly linked to Putin's "beef" against Clinton, which would in turn reportedly justify the 2016 interference. — JFG ^talk 02:40, 8 January 2018 (UTC)

The 2013 reeelection of Vladimir Putin is relevant, however. The link between the protests, the denouncement by Hillary Clinton, and Putin’s re-election may be a cause of the interference in the 2016 Elections.Theoallen1 (talk) 17:26, 9 January 2018 (UTC)

Too speculative imo. — JFG ^talk 21:44, 9 January 2018 (UTC)

Fire and Fury

Due to a revert, there is a question as to the release of Fire and Fury being listed. I strongly believe that, based on the relaxed correlation standard applies to this page, the release should be included.Theoallen1 (talk) 01:08, 6 January 2018 (UTC)

Do we have any RS reporting on specific Russia-related actions mentioned in Wolff's book? That would be the thing to include. Otherwise no. — JFG ^talk 14:28, 6 January 2018 (UTC)

Concur.Slatersteven (talk) 14:31, 6 January 2018 (UTC)

External links modified

Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified one external link on Timeline of Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:

• Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20170613053011/http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory/senate-gop-dems-agree-sanctions-russia-47997685 to http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory/senate-gop-dems-agree-sanctions-russia-47997685

When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.

This message was posted before February 2018. After February 2018, "External links modified" talk page sections are no longer generated or monitored by InternetArchiveBot. No special action is required regarding these talk page notices, other than regular verification using the archive tool instructions below. Editors have permission to delete these "External links modified" talk page sections if they want to de-clutter talk pages, but see the RfC before doing mass systematic removals. This message is updated dynamically through the template {{source check}} (last update: 5 June 2024).

• If you have discovered URLs which were erroneously considered dead by the bot, you can report them with this tool.
• If you found an error with any archives or the URLs themselves, you can fix them with this tool.

Cheers.—InternetArchiveBot (Report bug) 01:00, 13 January 2018 (UTC)

Donald Trump holding a pageant in Russia? Really?

At best, that would be circumstantial evidence. It's not Russia interfering in an election nor is it related in any way to Russia interfering in an election. I bet that the overwhelming majority of international businesspeople who have worked for decades on thousands of deals have struck some deal or held an event in Russia. This article is loaded with this type of thing, but is labeled as though it documents actual Russian interference in a time-based manner. Apparently on purpose to mislead readers. What an embarrassment to wikipedia. 67.82.83.27 (talk) 12:22, 16 January 2018 (UTC)

Can someone actually make a valid case for inclusion?Slatersteven (talk) 12:59, 16 January 2018 (UTC)

Assuming that you're asking for someone to make a case for including the Pageant information, I'd also prefer that they explain why previous Miss Universes, including the 2011 in Brazil, the 2009 in the Bahamas, and others, are not evidence of Brazilian or Bahamian interference. Otherwise, it's wild circumstantial claims. On top of that, there are also events listed that are "believed" to be Russian interference by certain politicians. Those would actually belong in an article titled "Timeline of Accusations of Russian Interference." Not one that states Russian interference as fact. But there's of course a ton of questionable material in this article. 67.82.83.27 (talk) 15:54, 16 January 2018 (UTC)

That is irrelevant, all they have to do is make a valid argument that this was different in some way. It does not matter if other articles do or do not exist.Slatersteven (talk) 16:00, 16 January 2018 (UTC)

It is relevant because that is how to make it clear that one needs to show that it's different. By listing solely that a pageant was held in Russia, it implies that that is noteworthy or out of the ordinary for the pageant, when in fact the pageant has a history of being held in various international locations. 24.184.166.109 (talk) 21:07, 17 January 2018 (UTC)

The Steele dossier is very important to the history of the scandal, and according to it, certain events at the pageant led to the creation of blackmail materials and set the stage for collusion.Arglebargle79 (talk) 13:09, 17 January 2018 (UTC)

Then that is what we should be saying, and the events as far as I am aware were not Linked to the pageant so maybe those events are what should be listed.Slatersteven (talk) 13:15, 17 January 2018 (UTC)

Yes. 24.184.166.109 (talk) 21:07, 17 January 2018 (UTC)

The pageant in Moscow also, based on other sources, where Trump Tower Moscow was announced. The other pageants do not have meaning to this article. Theoallen1 (talk) 06:08, 18 January 2018 (UTC)

section 2016

confusing. Some events are 2015 and some events are 2016. Lisa Page is def 2016 whilst DJT announcement of his candidacy is 2015

Government shutdown

I believe that this article already has too many minor points. That the Mueller investigation is essential during a government shutdown should not be mentioned in this article.Theoallen1 (talk) 20:31, 21 January 2018 (UTC)

Removal of RS DUE content

Please review this edit [3]. Contrary to the misleading edit summary, it removes well-sourced significant information. Is there consensus to restore this edit? Thanks. SPECIFICO talk 23:11, 21 January 2018 (UTC)

The info added does not tie into Russian interference. Would need more background on why that would be considered significant. PackMecEng (talk) 23:35, 21 January 2018 (UTC)

This article is just the timeline. The connection with Russian kompromat and interference is on other article pages. Do you agree with the revert's edit summary that Bloomberg citing a document is not RS? At least we can narrow down the problems with that revert. SPECIFICO talk 00:07, 22 January 2018 (UTC)

From what I can tell at RSN Bloomberg new and politics section seems to be fine for a RS and was written by a staff writer. Also the article does state by 2004 for the event. I still think on it's own, the text added does not put the information into context of how it related to Russian interference. I know what you mean with the later Russian loans and the reasons for them, but that is not what was added. @TheTimesAreAChanging: what are your thoughts on it? PackMecEng (talk) 00:24, 22 January 2018 (UTC)

The current version of this article already devotes several paragraphs to Simpson's claims, including seven sentences on his November 14, 2017 testimony before the House intelligence Committee. However, Simpson is a primary source and not reliable for factual statements in Wikipedia's voice. There is no reason to ignore this article's chronological structure and to repeat Simpson's November 2017 testimony under a new "2004" section, this time with the false implication that Simpson is a neutral observer making uncontroversial observations of fact with regard to the Trump Organization's finances in 2004. We should not restructure this article to reflect contentious claims by primary sources; Simpson's testimony is adequately covered (and more properly connected to the supposed subject of this article) in the "November 2017" section. I do not support reinstating this poorly-done and redundant IP edit.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 00:28, 22 January 2018 (UTC)

We don't bite the newbies or the IP's, so you can forget that. The rationale stated in the edit summary was absurd on its face. Now this rationale, equally flawed, is quite different and even less intelligible. Please reinsert the content and leave it until you are able to gain policy-based support for some alternative. SPECIFICO talk 00:42, 22 January 2018 (UTC)

SPECIFICO, please review the current "Before Trump's Candidacy" section: It consists of nine brief statements of largely uncontroversial fact, such as "November 2013: The Trump-owned Miss Universe pageant is held in Moscow, sponsored by VTB Bank" and "March 2014: U.S. president Barack Obama initiates international sanctions on certain Russian individuals, businesses and officials, in response to the Russian military intervention in Ukraine and Annexation of Crimea." In that context, is "2004: Per Glenn R. Simpson's [2017] House Intelligence Committee interview, 'Donald Trump was not able to get bank credit and and if you're a real-estate developer and you can't get bank loans, you know, you've got a problem'" not obviously UNDUE and lending an absurd amount of weight to Simpson's extraordinary claim that 2004 was a kind of turning point for the Trump Organization? Why does Simpson belong at all in this short introductory section, when he already has several paragraphs in the subsequent chronological entries?TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 01:00, 22 January 2018 (UTC)

Instead of assigning work to the rest of us, please state a policy based edit summary to justify your removal of RS content and then we can all consider whether there's consensus for your removal. SPECIFICO talk 01:35, 22 January 2018 (UTC)

Well, I tried. SPECIFICO's inability to grasp WP:DUE and WP:ONUS, ect., is really not my problem, but I hope that she is more mindful about violating Discretionary Sanctions in the future—I'd hate to have to report her!TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 01:38, 22 January 2018 (UTC)

Please stop the daily chronicle of the investigation

New entries in this timeline keep getting longer and more detailed. Readers can't make sense of all the back-and-forth and he-said-she-said. We are not writing a book or a daily chronicle of minutiae related to the investigations. We must stick to a few distilled facts directly relevant to the article subject. Jasonanaggie, please be mindful of the encyclopedic writing style: Wikipedia is not news, and I hate to come back and trim your contributions repeatedly. — JFG ^talk 09:41, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

I fully agree. The statistics of information on this page show 559 bullets. However, this page is significantly more detailed with recent news. Based on number of separate events, there is a significant increase in detail since the middle of September. This page needs to be trimmed.Theoallen1 (talk) 15:53, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

I also agree. The article has become tedious to review and is an unencyclopedic news catalog, violating WP:RECENT and WP:NOTCATALOG. --Zefr (talk) 16:32, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

All these politics articles are heavily biased toward inclusion of undue recent developments, but they get removed as time passes and their insignificance comes into focus. Many examples, e.g. doctors calling Trump nuts, doctors saying he's healthy, doctors saying he's not healthy... The UNDUE recent stuff will be winnowed down, just as undue content is eventually improved in all of our articles. This is not an argument to remove the article. We're all volunteers here, so nobody is forced to spend any time removing undue recent news if that ruffles their feathers. SPECIFICO talk 17:01, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

I agree we do not have to include every damn news report of who said what to who. This is nowt but a live news feed, not an article. If it is important we can wait a while until it's importance becomes clear, if it is not important it is far more effort to put it in a take it out then waiting a week before adding trivial twaddle. We should only include major developments.Slatersteven (talk) 17:54, 1 February 2018 (UTC)

Andrey Artemenko, Preet Bharara, Mark Corallo, Marc Kasowitz, Felix Sater, Oleg Deripaska, and Sberbank

These individuals and entity should be included in the Glossary of relevant individuals.67.53.214.86 (talk) 01:58, 4 February 2018 (UTC)

WHY, who are they?Slatersteven (talk) 09:44, 4 February 2018 (UTC)

Preet Bharara was fired by Trump, others are Trump lawyers, a Russian with mob ties, etc.

This brings up the purpose and usefulness of that Glossary. The glossary's usefulness is limited by not knowing where these people fit on the timeline, and that's the only justification for having such a list, since all entries should be listed at the relevant spots elsewhere on the page. Some of the names above aren't included, and they should be, but place them on the timeline first, and then in the Glossary.

Solution: There should be a date(s) after each name so people can look at the date(s) and see their roles in this mess. Without that date, they should be removed from that Glossary.

I'd rather see it as a Cast of characters in a 3-column table with name, nationality, and date(s). It could be hideable. I'd be happy to make the table if someone would add the dates.

Pinging Jasonanaggie, whose hard work here deserves recognition. -- BullRangifer (talk) 16:32, 4 February 2018 (UTC)

What ties do they have to interference?Slatersteven (talk) 16:36, 4 February 2018 (UTC)

I don't know if this question is a sincere one, but I will answer it as I see it:

Andrey Artemenko - In late January 2017, Artemenko met with Felix Sater and Michael D. Cohen, the personal lawyer of Donald Trump, at the Loews Regency in Manhattan to discuss a plan to lift sanctions against Russia. The proposed plan would require that Russian forces withdraw from eastern Ukraine and that Ukraine hold a referendum on whether Crimea should be "leased" to Russia for 50 or 100 years.

Preet Bharara - Preet was given assurances from Trump, before Trump realized he was under investigation that Bharara would be able to keep his job as the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York, which includes all of Manhattan (where the Trump Tower meeting took place) putting the conspiracy against the United States, potential charge against those participants, within Preet's jurisdiction. When Trump found out that he was being investigated, he fired a large swath of U.S. Attorneys which included Preet even after he had a personal assurance he would remain in his job.

Mark Corallo - Spokesperson for Trump's outside legal counsel (Kasowitz), has extensive experience with other people charged with obstruction of justice, was present when the "Air Force One Cover Story" was written and he resigned after what he saw as a crime in progress (intently misleading the American People, and Obstruction of Justice), he is a key witness as to the state of mind of the participants in that event.

Marc Kasowitz - Trump's longtime personal attorney, was his initial counsel for the Russia investigation.

Felix Sater - Russian Mob Figure that has worked with Trump for many years and was an important go between in discussions with Kremlin linked individuals.

Oleg Deripaska - Magnitsky Act sanctioned Russian Aluminum Oligarch, that has deep ties to Paul Manafort and is the person who Manafort was truly working for when providing his services as campaign manager for Trump for free. Oleg has sued Manafort for millions that he claims were 'loans.'

Sberbank - Russian-Government Bank sanctioned by the the United States, Jared Kushner met with Sergey Gorkov (the deputy chairman of Sberbank and head of VEB bank, Russian KGB Academy Graduate). Sberbank's interactions are being looked into carefully with Kushner as he was seeking financing to pay off his troubled property at 666 5th Avenue.

That's my quick summary of this list, hope it helps.

Jasonanaggie (talk) 17:02, 4 February 2018 (UTC)

OK let me phrase it a different way, do any RS make any link?Slatersteven (talk) 17:18, 4 February 2018 (UTC)

The Bharara case was discussed earlier; his firing is demonstrably unrelated to Russian interference, see our article on the 2017 dismissal of U.S. attorneys. I can't comment much on the other individuals named here, because I haven't seen much news connecting them to Russian interference (aside from speculation and opinion pieces, which we should not report). For example, Kasowitz is Trump's attorney, so he is involved in some statements made in defense of Trump, but has he been alleged to personally do anything to interfere in the election or to collude with Russian government figures? Deripaska was Manafort's client years before Manafort even met Trump, so where's the beef? Do we have RS claiming that Deripaska conspired to interfere in the US election? — JFG ^talk 22:42, 4 February 2018 (UTC)

The Bharara case is anything but unrelated, he was the only U.S. Attorney specifically told by the incoming administration that he would be keeping his job, this was also explained to Senator Dianne Feinstein. To suggest otherwise is to be willfully blind to what was happening. Jasonanaggie (talk) 04:12, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

if you are interested in the Oleg Deripaska link to Trump via Manafort here is a piece from the Atlantic: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/10/emails-suggest-manafort-sought-approval-from-putin-ally-deripaska/541677/

Jasonanaggie (talk) 04:09, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

Thanks Jasonanaggie. This source claims that Manafort may have tried to use his position in the Trump campaign to "curry favor" for himself with Deripaska. Kinda sounds like reverse collusion to me. Definitely off-topic to Russian interference. — JFG ^talk 04:14, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

Manafort was very low on cash and was looking to clear his debts with Deripaska; Trump took him on as he was offering his services for free (not something a man like Manafort does for free). So he got into a position in which he could help a man who is as close to Putin as you can get and was looking to do whatever he could to help Deripaska and Putin, to get himself clear of his debts. I don't see how this can be seen as unrelated, and I am really trying to see your side of this. Jasonanaggie (talk) 04:20, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

As I said, if what this source says is true, Manafort was attempting to help himself by using his newly-acquired position with Trump; quite the opposite from the Russian government trying to help Trump, which is the article subject. — JFG ^talk 04:44, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

You are really going into a circular logic here, but I would just ask you to ponder the question, if Manafort, who had recently been low on cash, was on the Trump campaign and doing the gig for "free"; who was he really working for? Whose interests was he looking out for? I tend to look out for interests that pay me or who I think will pay me, or forgive my debts and I am less money-hungry than Manafort appears to be.Jasonanaggie (talk) 05:07, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

First, I'm not aware that Manafort worked for free during the Trump campaign. Second, I'm not interested in doing our own guesswork about his motives, per WP:OR and WP:NOT#FORUM. — JFG ^talk 05:13, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

OK, I see the Trump campaign did not pay some of their top advisors,[4] but again jumping from this tidbit to an inference that Deripaska somehow acted as an influencer on Trump on behalf of Putin via Manafort would be wild speculation. — JFG ^talk 05:27, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

It isn't wild speculation, see here: https://www.apnews.com/122ae0b5848345faa88108a03de40c5a | You seem to not want to see the connection for some reason, there are plenty of credible sources publishing these facts. Manafort has been wiretapped by the feds for years so it will all be included in Mueller's report in the end; I am really more concerned about keeping up with smaller facts that seem to drop daily that can get lost in the sauce. Jasonanaggie (talk) 05:35, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

Actually, I wish I could see the connection! Look at what your AP article says: Manafort proposed in a confidential strategy plan as early as June 2005 that he would influence politics, business dealings and news coverage inside the United States, Europe and former Soviet republics to benefit President Vladimir Putin’s government June 2005! How is that possibly related to purported Russian interference during the 2015–2016 presidential campaign? As Spicer said, quoted by the same AP source, To suggest that the president knew who his clients were from 10 years ago is a bit insane. Let's wait until something concrete comes out of the Mueller cauldron; in the meantime, we can discount such flimsy links as journalistic or political speculation indeed. Note that Manafort was charged with money laundering for some of his earlier activities, he wasn't charged for anything related to his Trump campaign work. — JFG ^talk 06:42, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

The emails were provided to The Atlantic on condition of anonymity? so there is no actual way to confirm they are real. what kind of circus has wikipedia allowed itself to devolve into?96.40.207.96 (talk) 04:28, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

Useful Guardian, New York Times, and ICIJ articles about Yuri Milner, Facebook, Twitter, & Jared Kushner

Guardian Paradise Papers: Russia funded Facebook and Twitter investments through Kushner investor

Institutions with close links to Kremlin financed stakes through investor in Trump son-in-law’s venture, leaked files reveal

by Jon Swaine and Luke Harding https://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/nov/05/russia-funded-facebook-twitter-investments-kushner-investor

New York Times Kremlin Cash Behind Billionaire’s Twitter and Facebook Investments: Leaked files show that a state-controlled bank in Moscow helped to fuel Yuri Milner’s ascent in Silicon Valley, where the Russia investigation has put tech companies under scrutiny.

By Jesse Drucker November 5, 2017 https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/05/world/yuri-milner-facebook-twitter-russia.html

International Consortium of Investigative Jounalists Russian Connections: Kremlin-owned Firms Linked to Major Investments in Twitter and Facebook The Russian government quietly held a financial interest in U.S. social media.

By Spencer Woodman November 5, 2017 https://www.icij.org/investigations/paradise-papers/kremlin-owned-firms-linked-major-twitter-facebook-investments-icij/

Yuri Milner is also an investment associate of Sergy Brn of Google.67.53.214.86 (talk) 03:35, 6 February 2018 (UTC)

Timeline of the creation of the dossier

Some of this content should be included here:

• Timeline: The making of the Christopher Steele Trump-Russia dossier

The reference is already formatted, ready to use. -- BullRangifer (talk) 17:29, 10 February 2018 (UTC)

We do include some if it, what do we do not have you think we should?Slatersteven (talk) 17:54, 10 February 2018 (UTC)

I haven't checked. I just provided it as a useful resource. -- BullRangifer (talk) 19:02, 11 February 2018 (UTC)

Then I am not sure this thread should go any further.Slatersteven (talk) 10:04, 12 February 2018 (UTC)

Relevance to Russian interference in the 2016 elections?

What is the relevance of these entries to the article's premise, Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. elections?

The United States Government accused Russia of engineering a series of cyberattacks targeting United States and European nuclear power plants and water and electric systems.

Trump fires Tillerson and Steve Goldstein, the fourth highest ranking official at the State Department, who had been sworn in on December 4. Trump announced his intention to nominate Mike Pompeo to replace Tillerson.

Tillerson publicly condemns Russia for the use of a nerve agent in the poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal in the United Kingdom.

Any links between Rex Tillerson's firing and Russian influence are unsubstantiated and just mere speculation. And general Russian cyberwarfare is not really relevant to Russian interference. If it was then why don't we include the 2015 White House and State Department hacks? Why not include the alleged compromise of a Burlington Vermont utility company by Russian hackers as reported by WaPo in 2016?18Things (talk) 00:42, 16 March 2018 (UTC)

Trump Tower server

My recent edit about Trump Tower server was reverted by BullRangifer with the comment "Old report and not what the source said. The server was in connection with the bank." That was not the issue. The server never was at Trump Tower and was owned by a firm that operates servers and is a contractor for a firm that did email marketing campaingns for Trump. The server was not in communication with and was not controlled by Trump. I know the FBI continued to use the server to investigate Trump but have never seen any reason for them to continue doing so. Alfa Bank's cyber security consultant denies any communication with Trump. If there is later or conflicting information please inform me here.Phmoreno (talk) 03:34, 23 February 2018 (UTC)

My main objection was that Snopes did not "debunk" the story. They rated it "Unproven", and the FBI is still investigating the matter. It may not prove to be anything, so I have restored and tweaked the entry. -- BullRangifer (talk) PingMe 06:21, 23 February 2018 (UTC)

There is much more to this story as you will find out in due time.Phmoreno (talk) 13:58, 23 February 2018 (UTC)

Could you link to your source for that claim?Slatersteven (talk) 13:59, 23 February 2018 (UTC)

The Trump Tower server was found to be fabricated evidence. A hacker was discovered hacking into Alfa Bank. The server pings seem to have come from the U.S. The story was pushed by someone backing Hillary Clinton. Phmoreno (talk) 01:21, March 24, 2018‎ (UTC)

Slatersteven, that explains Phmoreno's POV. They use unreliable sources. -- BullRangifer (talk) PingMe 01:31, 24 March 2018 (UTC)

Bloomberg also covered this. Phmoreno (talk) 01:47, March 24, 2018 (UTC)

Remember to sign all your comments. I'm adding them for you.

Yes, RS have indeed commented on it. That one documents a denial by a suspect. Keep in mind that a suspect's comments should never be taken at face value or fact. -- BullRangifer (talk) PingMe 01:53, 24 March 2018 (UTC)

References

Template:Editnotices/Page/Timeline of Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections ?

An odd posting on my Talk page from User:Politrukki about Template:Editnotices/Page/Timeline of Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections. She is stating it is in effect here, but when they posted it to my Talk page, it was the only place the Template was linked. Odd, no? X1\ (talk) 20:57, 23 March 2018 (UTC)

Politrukki's post is copied below, for reference:

Guten Abend,

Do you understand that at Timeline of Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections, per page restrictions outlined in Template:Editnotices/Page/Timeline of Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections, you are not allowed to reinstate any edits that have been challenged? I have undone this and this revert of yours, which reinstated challenged [5][6] edits without talk page consensus and included violations of biographies of living persons policy either by citing court documents or stating Adam Schiff's unproved allegation in Wikipedia's voice.

Also, in this edit you reinstated challenged edits saying "I don't see consensus", when in fact, per page restrictions, you need consensus to reinstate challenged edits (see also WP:ONUS). Politrukki (talk) 20:45, 11 March 2018 (UTC)

X1\ (talk) 21:01, 23 March 2018 (UTC)

Nothing odd here, except that Coffee imposed page page restrictions to the article (see WP:DSLOG), added separate editnotices to the article and talk page, but apparently forgot to add a talk page notice, which is shown to the editors reading this talk page (as opposed to editing). Any editor may be sanctioned for violating page restrictions outlined in the editnotice if the editor is aware of discretionary sanctions. An article talk page notice is not a requirement.

I have asked Coffee to add a talk page notice here, but they have not responded. Politrukki (talk) 06:53, 24 March 2018 (UTC)

Toronto

"2010: The Trump International Hotel and Tower in Toronto receives timely financing from Vnesheconombank, a Russian state-run investment bank."

This text is sourced to a WSJ article to which I lack access. But according to The Week, which reported the WSJ story, the Russian-Canadian developer sold a company in Ukraine to the Russian government for $850 million, which used the VEB for financing. Subsequently, the developer provided an additional $15 million to the Toronto project, although it is not clear whether this was money from the Ukraine sale.[7]

The current phrasing is misleading. Is there any reason why this information is relevant to the article?

TFD (talk) 17:38, 13 March 2018 (UTC)

Doesn't look relevant to Russian interference, just innuendo about "shady" real estate financing. I would remove this item. — JFG ^talk 20:07, 13 March 2018 (UTC)

It's not shady. Russians are people too. But it is compromising and so yes it's relevant. SPECIFICO talk 20:14, 13 March 2018 (UTC)

Again, this article is not Timeline of everything somebody connected to Trump ever did that may be compromising or has the word "Russia" in it, it's about Russian interference in the 2016 election. — JFG ^talk 09:45, 14 March 2018 (UTC)

yes it is just look at most of the line items for example the first item trump praises putin well so did obama and many others the only line item i haven't seen yet is the times Trump has eaten russian dressing. עם ישראל חי (talk) 14:12, 14 March 2018 (UTC)

References

Definitely looks relevant. WSJ says: U.S. investigators are looking into any ties between Russian financial institutions, Mr. Trump and anyone in his orbit ... they're examining interactions between Mr. Trump, his associates and VEB ... The Toronto deal adds a new element to the list of known connections between Mr. Trump's associates and Russia. And there's some stuff about Kushner and VEB.

I agree that the current phrasing is misleading. Your summary seems accurate. Politrukki (talk) 21:55, 14 March 2018 (UTC); edited 06:56, 24 March 2018 (UTC)

70 contacts with Russia-linked operatives

Jasonanaggie, this is an extremely well-sourced website and page. The Moscow Project should not be cited, but its sources can be used:

• Trump’s Russia Cover-Up By the Numbers – 70 contacts with Russia-linked operatives

I'm on their mailing list, and this was part of today's mailing:

Today, the House Intelligence Committee voted to conclude their investigation into alleged collusion between Trump’s 2016 campaign and the Russians. Here is what the committee is choosing to ignore:

• at least 70 known contacts between Trump’s team and Russia-linked operatives during the campaign and transition;

• at least 22 of these known contacts were meetings;

• at least 12 members of the Trump team had contacts;

• at least another 10 people knew about these contacts; and

• 81 percent of the 70 known contacts received little or no scrutiny from the committee.

Have fun. -- BullRangifer (talk) PingMe 02:47, 23 March 2018 (UTC)

What is you proposed edit? Politrukki (talk) 06:56, 24 March 2018 (UTC)

??? I'm not sure how many places this info could be placed. It depends on which of the many RS are used. I'm just placing it here for the benefit of those more familiar with this list. Maybe they can use it. The source above cannot be used, but its numerous RS can be used. You don't have to do anything with it and can safely ignore it. Others may want to use it. -- BullRangifer (talk) PingMe 07:18, 24 March 2018 (UTC)

Why are you promoting an unreliable source if you very well know that it is not reliable – someone's Myspace page might contain useful links to reliable sources, but we should not link to someone's Myspace page at Wikipedia talk page – and why are you citing, and hence promoting, a mailing list in a serious discussion? Seems a tad spammy to me. Politrukki (talk) 19:05, 24 March 2018 (UTC)

Timeline

Jasonanaggie, here is their Timeline. It'S worth investigating for missing information or sources. -- BullRangifer (talk) PingMe 02: 50, 23 March 2018(UTC)

What is you proposed edit? Politrukki (talk) 06:59, 24 March 2018 (UTC)

Same reply as above. If you don't want to research it and use the many RS, you can safely ignore this and let others use it if they wish. -- BullRangifer (talk) PingMe 07:19, 24 March 2018 (UTC)

Just to give you an idea of just one article, try this one. Then start clicking on the highlighted words leading to their sources. Many are RS which we can use. The Moscow Project is a content rich source, much like Wikipedia's articles, which have a wealth of RS at the bottom of each article. -- BullRangifer (talk) PingMe 07:22, 24 March 2018 (UTC)

I would rather suggest reading mainstream newspapers/news sources: many have their own timeline articles, and many have clickable tags related to Russia investigation. Politrukki (talk) 19:07, 24 March 2018 (UTC)

Article size causing issues with templates

This article is now large enough and has enough template transclusions to be included in the Category:Pages where template include size is exceeded category. That category contains pages which exceed one of the WP:template limits, other than the limits on expensive parser functions and template argument size. When this happens the page needs to be simplified by removing or simplifying calls to templates, or they will not render properly. Note that non-rendered expansions still count towards the limit. Help:Template#Template limits has more information about this. You can see this at the very bottom of the article where the {{Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections}} navbox is a link and is no longer transcluded into the article.

My suggestion is to find a way to somehow split this article. Perhaps into pre- and post- election sections? Another option is to make sure there are no duplicate references and resolve any cleanup templates immediately so they can be removed from the article. Any other ideas? - Paul^T+/_C 04:19, 12 April 2018 (UTC)

I've tried that twice and was reverted. So have others. IT's extremely necessary at the moment. I hereby declare that I'll do it on my own in 48 hours if nobody objects. Arglebargle79 (talk) 11:48, 12 April 2018 (UTC)

I assume the extraordinary number of citation templates is the main factor. Removing duplicate references would be a good start. Before we trim the article, I would prefer we trim the trivial detail such as:

• he Internet Research Agency translator project grows to over 80 employees.
• Ever other event from Internet Research Agency (or spin those events into a new article)
• Kellyanne Conway is named Trump campaign manager. (She's not Russia is she?)
• Trump names Sam Clovis as a campaign national co-chairman
• Rosenstein is confirmed by the Senate by a vote of 94-6.

We need to remember, we are an encyclopedia, WP:NOTADIARY.- MrX 🖋 12:10, 12 April 2018 (UTC)

This is a timeline of events. The Internet Research Agency was a major Russian player influencing the election. Putting all of their events in the timeline shows people when the events happened in relation to each other and other events. What positions Clovis held in the campaign and when is directly relevant to Papadopoulos's and Carter Pages's actions and communications with campaign officials regarding the campaign's willingness to pursue Russian government connections.173.167.126.201 (talk) 20:21, 12 April 2018 (UTC)

I get that, but as you can see, it's breaking the internet. Not every detail arises to the level of encyclopedic.- MrX 🖋 20:32, 12 April 2018 (UTC)

Arglebargle79, that is probably not a good idea without getting consensus here. Perhaps it might be a better idea to suggest how you would split the article? - Paul^T+/_C 02:42, 13 April 2018 (UTC)

MrX, I agree that trimming some of the less important items might be an option too. - Paul^T+/_C 02:42, 13 April 2018 (UTC)

Problem solved. See next section. -- BullRangifer (talk) PingMe 04:20, 13 April 2018 (UTC)

 Not fixed - Paul^T+/_C 06:14, 13 April 2018 (UTC)

Reflist and templates disabled by one edit, and fixed by reverting that edit

This edit and its restoration both had the same effect; they disabled references and templates. Check individual refs and the References section. Undoing the edit in both cases removes the problem. I have no idea why, but that's what happens. Don't take my word for it; test it. Check them immediately before and after those edits. Then check what happens immediately after those edits are reverted; the problem disappears. Pinging User:Psantora. -- BullRangifer (talk) PingMe 04:21, 13 April 2018 (UTC)

User:BullRangifer, see the above section. This was already an issue. Your reversion has similar issues. For example the navbox {{Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections}} at the bottom of the page does not display correctly, nor do many of the references in the references section and further reading section. I would be impressed with myself if my adding the one template managed to send this article over the edge, but I'm fairly confident I don't have that kind of power. - Paul^T+/_C 04:28, 13 April 2018 (UTC)

ec. I would hope not! There may well be something else going on. I don't understand some of these things. All I know is that I did what I often do when I encounter a problem on a page; I went back through the history until I found where the change happened that was related to the problem. I didn't have to go far when I found your edit. Right before it there was no problem. Then your edit seemed to cause a problem, and that problem continued until I had reverted it.

I don't pretend to understand the full nature of what's happening, or if other things are also going on. I only noted that all the references and templates were suddenly disabled, and that reverting your edit fixed all that problem. -- BullRangifer (talk) PingMe 04:47, 13 April 2018 (UTC)

I just converted the link to use regular markup to display the same information without calling the template. The page is still having issues. Read WP:template limits and Help:Template#Template limits for more information. Bottom line this page has just gotten too big! - Paul^T+/_C 04:41, 13 April 2018 (UTC)

I just made a test edit by removing that part. The problem still exists.

Yet, my observation above is still true. Actually test the diffs I provided and you see what I mean. My earlier revert did fix the problem. -- BullRangifer (talk) PingMe 04:52, 13 April 2018 (UTC)

Look closer in that diff. It is the same one I referenced above. Many templates still don't load, usually the ones near the bottom of the page. You can also pull up the raw HTML on the page to see if there were any failed transclusions, just search for "NewPP". If any of the limits are reached it means the page is too big and some things won't load. This is the one for the 664->753 diff:

&diff=836171664&oldid=836170753

NewPP limit report Parsed by mw1258 Cached time: 20180413045612 Cache expiry: 1900800 Dynamic content: false CPU time usage: 6.296 seconds Real time usage: 6.484 seconds Preprocessor visited node count: 44118/1000000 Preprocessor generated node count: 0/1500000 Post‐expand include size: 2097152/2097152 bytes Template argument size: 22576/2097152 bytes Highest expansion depth: 15/40 Expensive parser function count: 5/500 Unstrip recursion depth: 1/20 Unstrip post‐expand size: 1462541/5000000 bytes Lua time usage: 3.719/10.000 seconds Lua memory usage: 4.32 MB/50 MB

This is the current version of the page:

oldid=836183347

NewPP limit report Parsed by mw1276 Cached time: 20180413045739 Cache expiry: 1900800 Dynamic content: false CPU time usage: 6.320 seconds Real time usage: 6.510 seconds Preprocessor visited node count: 44153/1000000 Preprocessor generated node count: 0/1500000 Post‐expand include size: 2097152/2097152 bytes Template argument size: 22452/2097152 bytes Highest expansion depth: 15/40 Expensive parser function count: 5/500 Unstrip recursion depth: 0/20 Unstrip post‐expand size: 149280/5000000 bytes Lua time usage: 3.967/10.000 seconds Lua memory usage: 4.28 MB/50 MB

Kinda cool right? The page is just too large and needs to be dealt with - Paul^T+/_C 05:08, 13 April 2018 (UTC)

I'm sure it is. I don't doubt you when you say the page is too large. Apparently it's caused by too much transclusion. Can that be whittled down somehow?

Otherwise, we still need the refs and most of the templates to function, and quickly. The refs are the most important for our readers. Reverting your edit still fixes the problem. -- BullRangifer (talk) PingMe 05:52, 13 April 2018 (UTC)

The references work with this edit. -- BullRangifer (talk) PingMe 05:58, 13 April 2018 (UTC)

Nope, still hits the limit. Regardless, I changed {{reflist}} to a manual <references /> tag (with {{subst:reflist}}). This will force the references to always display, but no promises for any of the citation templates. - Paul^T+/_C 06:13, 13 April 2018 (UTC)

Alright! That worked. Thanks so much. -- BullRangifer (talk) PingMe 06:59, 13 April 2018 (UTC)

Michael Cohen inclusion

The following text seems to be outside the scope of the article. In addition, the attorney client reference seems to be extraneous material.

The FBI raided the New York City office, residence, and hotel suite of Michael D. Cohen, seizing records related to several topics. The FBI seized Cohen’s computers, phones and personal financial records, including tax returns, as part of the raid on his office in 30 Rockefeller Plaza. The raid was referred to the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York by the special counsel and was not carried out by Mueller's team. Further, due to the sensitive nature of the raid and the attorney-client privilege, a special team is required to review the documents to carefully separate out privileged and protected documents that may have been seized in the raid to ensure those inadmissible documents are not passed on to investigators.Theoallen1 (talk) 03:05, 10 April 2018 (UTC)

I don't have an opinion one way or the other on this, but I do think this text should be present somewhere on Wikipedia. I actually had just added a similar section here: Special Counsel investigation (2017–present)#Financial investigations. I'm not sure if it is more appropriate here, there, or in another place entirely. - Paul^T+/_C 03:36, 10 April 2018 (UTC)

It should be included for the simple reason that it might get Rosenstein and Meuller fired and that would be relevant to pretty much everything. Remember, the article is heading towards either Trump's impeachment or an exoneration report. The possible impeachment of Rosenstein (Nunes threatened it on Fox News last night), should be included but not as the end.Arglebargle79 (talk) 23:07, 11 April 2018 (UTC)

Special counsel has evidence Michael Cohen traveled to Prague: McClatchy, Reuters -- BullRangifer (talk) PingMe 06:54, 14 April 2018 (UTC)

References

Proposals to shrink article

This Article is over 600000 bytes. See Special:LongPages. A proposal to split seems to be the best solution. The answer appears to be multi fold.

• First, the timeline should not be consolidated with the timeline of the Trump Presidency. The main page on the timeline should probably cross reference this page, however.
• Second, the glossary of individuals should probably be kept or expanded here and a page be created for those listed here if none exists.
• This timeline probably should be split up by quarters for the presidency, with the transition and pre campaign seperate. Also, the campaign can probably be 2015, 2016 January-June, and 2016 July-November.Theoallen1 (talk) 21:34, 16 April 2018 (UTC)

Good suggestions. -- BullRangifer (talk) PingMe 23:30, 16 April 2018 (UTC)

I agree, good suggestions, this has my support. Persistent Corvid (talk) 21:04, 17 April 2018 (UTC)

how come when I suggested it, no one liked it?Arglebargle79 (talk) 00:33, 30 April 2018 (UTC)

Pinging Arglebargle79. Probably because in September, the page was about 153 kB. Now, it is 168 bytes short of 600 kB. It is more about the templates. That is why the timeline has not been updated much recently.Theoallen1 (talk) 01:40, 1 May 2018 (UTC)

To allow additional comment, I am adding to the main page a Split reference. Although there is no listed opposition, I do not believe this silence is enough consensus.Theoallen1 (talk) 00:55, 24 April 2018 (UTC)

@Theoallen1:@BullRangifer:@PersistantCorvid:@Arglebargle79:@Psantora:@JFG:@Jasonanaggie:@Websurfer2: This has been seen coming by various people (see March, "plan to divide article due to increasing size, find natural breaking point") and we still hit the iceberg. There is currently an easy, non-political break at the end of 2017 (December 31, 2017) or item 4 on my November 2017 suggestion. It would be relatively easy to do, incorporating some of the suggestions above. To be clear, I am only in favor of breaking what we currently have at the 2017/2018, not in arguable "trimming". That should be done on an individual item basis, by consensus. I have been gone a awhile, and likely won't have consistent large chunks of time in the near future; is someone already working on this? X1\ (talk) 20:38, 22 May 2018 (UTC)

Here (Draft:Timeline of Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections list) is a suggested starting place; see 2017/2018 break. X1\ (talk) 20:51, 22 May 2018 (UTC)

"Glossary of relevant individuals" could be made into a template (Draft:Template:Timeline of Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections Glossary). X1\ (talk) 21:34, 22 May 2018 (UTC)

I agree a 2017/2018 break is a good start. I also agree that “trimming” is a separate topic. There are things that originally seemed out-of-scope that have since turned out to be part of the Mueller investigation. Websurfer2 (talk) 21:14, 22 May 2018 (UTC)

@Websurfer2: What do you think of the Draft pages I started? (list, Dec'17/Jan'18, & glossary template) A redirect could be made to "list". X1\ (talk) 21:20, 22 May 2018 (UTC)

Some of the references will need to be duplicated across pages. X1\ (talk) 21:31, 22 May 2018 (UTC)

I may need to go soon. Please still post responses here. X1\ (talk) 21:34, 22 May 2018 (UTC)

(pinged) I would suggest that the article be split at the beginning of the Trump administration. This way, it fits a natural boundary of existing headers and keeps election-related events on the first page. The second page could be called "Timeline of investigations into Trump and Russia", because that's really what it is over 2017–2018. A split at 2018 would look arbitrary, as no particular event distinguishes what happened in late 2017 from what happened in early 2018. — JFG ^talk 22:01, 22 May 2018 (UTC)

"Arbitrary" avoids argument of why the split is chosen there. X1\ (talk) 22:23, 22 May 2018 (UTC)

But it sounds a bit silly to have an article called "Timeline of Russian interference in 2016 elections (2018–present)" — JFG ^talk 22:36, 22 May 2018 (UTC)

Lede is "This is a timeline of major events related to election interference that Russia conducted against the U.S. in 2016. It also includes major events related to investigations into suspected inappropriate links in 2016 between ...". What is silly is letting the article break due to lack of action. X1\ (talk) 23:50, 22 May 2018 (UTC)

@JFG, that is a more natural break. Just eyeballing my scroll bar, it looks like roughly 1/3 would fall into the pre-Administration page. That would solve the page size problem. We may run into the template limit problem again later this year for the investigations page. At that point, we could start breaking it up by year. My only concern with the page names is that the investigations started in 2016. Websurfer2 (talk) 22:34, 22 May 2018 (UTC)

How about these three page titles and breakpoints:

• Timeline of Russian interference in the 2016 United States Elections
  • Pre-Trump Administration
• Timeline of investigations into Trump and Russia (Trump Administration 2017)
  • Trump Administration through the end of 2017
• Timeline of investigations into Trump and Russia (2018-)
  • 2018 onwards

This allows for future splits of the third page by year, start of the next Administration, or other major milestones, when the page gets too large again.

Websurfer2 (talk) 08:46, 23 May 2018 (UTC)

Sounds good to me. I would keep titles simple with just "(2017)" and "(2018)" though. And the "cast of characters" section could be transcluded in all three articles for reference. That's nicer for readers than forking it out into a separate page. I'll happily do the transclusion if somebody does the split first. — JFG ^talk 08:55, 23 May 2018 (UTC)

Hey, whatever works...this does. Go for it.Arglebargle79 (talk) 12:10, 23 May 2018 (UTC)

I'll take this as consensus on the page names. I have some time over the next couple of days to work on this. I will take two of the pages @X1\: started and rename them:

• "Draft:Timeline of Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections (up to December 2017)" will become "Timeline of investigations into Trump and Russia (2017)"
• "Draft:Timeline of Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections (January 2018 to present)" will become "Timeline of investigations into Trump and Russia (2018)"

I will follow Wikipedia:Splitting as much as I can. Afterwards, I will delete the copied content in "Timeline of Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections", fix-up the remaining citations, and add links to the new pages. Websurfer2 (talk) 21:45, 23 May 2018 (UTC)

The article (Timeline of investigations into Trump and Russia (2017)) has been created and the 2017 data has been moved. @JFG:, the page is ready for transcluding the cast of characters. Websurfer2 (talk) 01:13, 24 May 2018 (UTC)

The article (Timeline of investigations into Trump and Russia (2018)) has been created and the 2018 data has been moved. @JFG:, the page is ready for transcluding the cast of characters. Websurfer2 (talk) 02:20, 24 May 2018 (UTC)

 Done — JFG ^talk 02:30, 24 May 2018 (UTC)

Added the new timelines to the {{Donald Trump series}} sidebar, and to the relevant navboxes {{Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections}} and {{Trump presidency}}. — JFG ^talk 02:42, 24 May 2018 (UTC)

Wish I had more time and knowledge to help, but you all are doing a good job. Since I was pinged, just popping in to add my name to the consensus. Persistent Corvid (talk) 23:36, 24 May 2018 (UTC)

Thank you for shrinking these articles significantly. Since the consensus was completed, I agree.Theoallen1 (talk) 12:34, 26 May 2018 (UTC)

Content incomplete

The articles as transferred are particularly low on information based from about April 10, 2018 to May 18, 2018. This is because of the template problem. Adding more info would be good.Theoallen1 (talk) 12:40, 26 May 2018 (UTC)

How far back do the threads of the investigation into Trump and Russia actually go?

Good article:

How far back do the threads of the investigation into Trump and Russia actually go?

Sources

BullRangifer (talk) PingMe 02:32, 31 May 2018 (UTC)

2016 presidential campaign

Why does the section headed "2016 presidential campaign" begin with the date that Donald Trump announced his candidacy? Any thoughts on this? BeenAroundAWhile (talk) 05:20, 14 June 2018 (UTC)

Looks like a rather natural starting point. What else would you suggest? — JFG ^talk 10:57, 14 June 2018 (UTC)

CNN's Investigation Tracker

CNN has updated its investigation tracker, making it easier to explore past developments in the Russia probe and keep tabs on new ones as they emerge:

• Tracking the Russia investigations

Sources

BullRangifer (talk) PingMe 03:35, 1 June 2018 (UTC)

I added it to the External Links section. Websurfer2 (talk) 19:19, 14 June 2018 (UTC)

Irish confusion?

Wuerzele expanded the acronym "IRA" to "Internet Research Agency" everywhere in the article, in order to avoid confusion with the Irish Republican Army. I reverted, pointing to MOS:ABBR#Formation and usage, and I don't think readers would believe that a 20th-century separatist movement in Ireland would have anything to do with Russian intervention in the 2016 U.S. elections. More opinions welcome. — JFG ^talk 10:55, 14 June 2018 (UTC)

Why not? The Irish movement in America was (and may well still be, there seems to still be organisations that back parties like Sinn Féin and may still be funding Irish terrorists [8]) large and vocal. In fact I have never heard of the Internet Research Agency, and thus associate IRA with Irish terrorists.Slatersteven (talk) 11:06, 14 June 2018 (UTC)

Purely anecdotal: a survey of people I know on the meaning of "IRA" ranged from Irish Republican Army to "I don't know." It was mainly a generational breakdown, with younger people not knowing what it meant. Personally, my first thought is Irish Republican Army. However, I agree with JFG that defining "IRA" at the top and then using the initials in the body is proper usage. The problem is that the original definition of the initials gets lost in the lengthy article because very few people are going to read the timeline from beginning to end. I have seen "IRA" increasingly used for "Internet Research Agency" in news articles. I suggest the way forward is to wikilink all instances of "IRA" to "Internet Research Agency" so that readers have immediate access to the definition. Websurfer2 (talk) 19:03, 14 June 2018 (UTC)

Definitely a generation gap here. Not a fan of adding too many wikilinks, as this goes against our style guide. However, given the central role of the Internet Research Agency in this affair, I would suggest adding them to the top-section glossary. Will do that now. — JFG ^talk 08:25, 15 June 2018 (UTC)

Horowitz report

It seems as if the Horowitz report should be referenced in the 2018 page.Theoallen1 (talk) 20:50, 24 June 2018 (UTC)

That is appealing. I would only put in the parts apropos the Russia investigation. I don't think we need to explore the Page-Strzok affair or Clinton's email server investigation (Midyear), except for the parts where the Midyear and Russia teams competed for resources. I only skimmed the report. There may be more there. Websurfer2 (talk) 07:33, 28 June 2018 (UTC)

Split Article

This article needs to be split into a timeline of the interference and a timeline of the investigations. Under this proposal, most of what occurred pre election stays here and most of what occurred post election goes into the investigation timeline. Theoallen1 (talk) 20:43, 5 March 2018 (UTC)

Agree to split, but disagree to keep any events before the election campaign started in 2015 (a bunch of stuff was added recently). Stick to Russian interference in the elections, not hypothetical "grooming" of Trump since 1987. — JFG ^talk 02:34, 7 March 2018 (UTC)

This is unworkable because the investigation deals with anything historical which might play into the interference. We're talking about huge amounts of duplication using an artificial line. That line (a date) sounds nice, clean, and easy, but reality is messy. The interference was under preparation a long time ago, with Trump's cooperation and planning with Russians, and the investigation goes back and deals with that stuff. That was his "witting" cooperation. The Russians and Putin had been grooming him long before as a "unwitting fool", right from the time he married Ivana. The final "cooperation" (blackmailed-plus-bribed) leading to the mess we have now was the fruition of a successful grooming operation. Putin is a master at this. Motivation for current and future events starts in the past. The best predictor of future behavior is past behavior. Putin and Mueller understand this. The article also deals with it, past, present, and future.

This "split" idea just won't work. It's much better and easier to work with what we have, but delimit the content with clearly stated inclusion and exclusion criteria, as I've suggested. If that also means we should tweak the title, so be it. Feel free to suggest a better title which describes the actual content and the scope I have described. -- BullRangifer (talk) PingMe 03:55, 7 March 2018 (UTC)

@BullRangifer: The split as discussed may not be easy to handle, but neither is this monstrosity of a timeline. Back in the early days of this article, I had suggested some inclusion criteria, which would still make sense today and include some of the related earlier events. For example, the mutual dislike between Putin and Clinton was reportedly a factor in Putin's "retaliation" against her Russia policy. On the other hand, a tweet from 2013 announcing that Miss Universe would take place in Moscow does not belong in a serious examination of what the Russian government did or did not do to influence U.S. politics. Luke Harding can be rather creative with connecting unrelated dots, and we should treat his scenario of "Kremlin grooming Trump for decades" with caution.

Unfortunately, since roughly September 2017, the article has become a newsfeed of all the minutiae leaking out of the Mueller probe on a daily, sometimes hourly, basis. I maintain that this is not encyclopedic, and if some editors want to indulge in copying the daily news, they should do it in another place. — JFG ^talk 06:52, 7 March 2018 (UTC)

Perhaps the U.S . special counsel investigation requires it's own timeline? Persistent Corvid (talk) 07:10, 7 March 2018 (UTC)

For reference, see Archive 1, such as "plan to divide article due to increasing size, find natural breaking point". X1\ (talk) 20:34, 9 March 2018 (UTC)

I tried to split the article before, but they wouldn't let me. I still think it's a good idea. It should be split at the natural breaking points, as mentioned above, and should end when either Mueller steps down or Trump is impeached. whichever comes first. "Watergate" was not just the break-in, but all the detritus that came with it including the resignation of Spiro Agnew, which was totally separate. The cluster of scandal is something like this: The prologue (the grooming of Trump, Flynn and others by the Russians and the setting up of the troll farms.) The Campaign and the actual information warfare. The attempted payback to the Russians during the transition and the early administration, including the coverup...we can discuss exactly what when the time comesArglebargle79 (talk) 12:54, 14 March 2018 (UTC)

The article is now officially too large. If you open the entire page for editing and hit the preview button, you see this warning near the top:

Warning: Template include size is too large. Some templates will not be included.

The result is the references list not getting displayed. Basically, it looks like there are too many references for the Reflist template to handle.Websurfer2 (talk) 07:54, 12 April 2018 (UTC)

The 2017 and 2018 entries for the Trump Administration have been moved to Timeline of investigations into Trump and Russia (2017) and Timeline of investigations into Trump and Russia (2018). Websurfer2 (talk) 02:23, 24 May 2018 (UTC)

The article needs to include everything from Trump's alleged recruitment into the GRU in 1987 to his meeting with Putin in 2018 and whatever else happens that is relevant. It the article is too long, then we need to shorten the various sections and spin off the material to other articles. For example we could briefly mention the Helsinki meeting in this article, but have a lengthy article elsewhere. TFD (talk) 05:00, 19 July 2018 (UTC)

time to re-add some version of Trump's first visit to Soviet/Russia (1987)?

Previously there was something, such as the below, in the timeline:

July 4: Donald Trump makes his first visit to the Soviet Union, at the invitation of Ambassador Yuri Dubinin. British journalist Luke Harding will allege in 2017 that this trip likely marks the beginning of a long-term cultivation operation typical of the Political Intelligence Department of the KGB, under written directives initiated by First Chief Directorate head Vladimir Kryuchkov, to recruit politically ambitious Westerners susceptible to flattery, egoism and financial greed. Per Harding book "The KGB wouldn’t invite someone to Moscow (1987) out of altruism."

Maybe re-adding some version of it would be appropriate at this time? X1\ (talk) 22:05, 9 July 2018 (UTC)

References

No. This is pure speculation by Harding. — JFG ^talk 08:37, 19 July 2018 (UTC)

beginning of timeline and topic of Russian interference

I suggest the first item Readers see in the Timeline is not Paul Manafort; it should be Russian in particular Putin's motivation, as I had added:

• 2005: In Putin's address to Russian political leaders, states "The breakup of the USSR was the greatest geopolitical tragedy of the 20th century." (or at least words close to that)

I understand one of Manafort's trials is this month, but it still doesn't warrant the lede. He didn't do it (himself), it was the Russians, who are dominated by Putin. X1\ (talk) 00:35, 19 July 2018 (UTC)

References

The 2005 proposal by Manafort directly refers to peddling influence in the United States and elsewhere. The 2005 speech by Putin does not address anything of the sort. Off-topic. — JFG ^talk 08:39, 19 July 2018 (UTC)

"Right to Bear Arms" interlanguage link to ru:Право на оружие (движение) ?

Butina's "Right to Bear Arms" group appears to be ru:Право на оружие (движение), although движение translates to "movement" presumably "social movement" (ru:Общественное движение (социология)). The Russian article while may be RS, I have my concerns as this topic involves geopolitical foreign influence. If I don't get a response, I will add, and see what happens. X1\ (talk) 00:40, 25 July 2018 (UTC)

Seth Rich conspiracy theories

• Seth Rich, a Democratic National Committee (DNC) employee, is murdered in the Bloomingdale neighborhood of Washington, D.C., which sets off a flurry of fake news and conspiracy theories from pro Republican party media outlets including Roger Stone's Twitter account Tweets that try to falsely implicate him in DCLeaks, Wikileaks, and Guccifer 2.0 releases of information damaging to the DNC and the Hillary Clinton Campaign.

References

There have been numerous attempts to add the Seth Rich murder to this page, and the standard reaction is to immediately remove it. That reaction makes sense since most of the attempts to add Rich have been poorly written. While the murder itself does not appear to be related to Russian interference, it seems appropriate to include the fact that people central to the interference campaigns, like Roger Stone, tried to distract from Russia by blaming the activities on Seth Rich. Does it make sense to add Rich-related info if it is couched in terms of the distraction campaign? Websurfer2 (talk) 05:17, 30 July 2018 (UTC)

I agree it is better written, but seems tangential. X1\ (talk) 20:24, 6 August 2018 (UTC)

Was he Russian too? Does not belong here. — JFG ^talk 21:49, 6 August 2018 (UTC)

The National Interest and the Center for The National Interest

2015

• February: Dimitri Simes meets with Putin and other Russian officials in Moscow. Simes is the publisher of The National Interest and CEO of the think tank Center for the National Interest. The Center arranges meetings between Torshin, Butina, and U.S. government officials in April, and also arranges Trump's April 27, 2016, speech at the Mayflower Hotel.
• Early April:
  • Butina and Torshin meet with Treasury undersecretary for international affairs Nathan Sheets to discuss U.S. Russian economic relations during the Obama administration. The meeting is arranged by the Center for the National Interest.
  • Torshin and Butina participate in discussions about the "Russian financial situation and its impact on Russian politics" at a private event moderated by Hank Greenberg and organized by the Center for National Interest.
• April 7: Torshin and Butina meet with Federal Reserve vice chairman Stanley Fischer to discuss U.S. Russian economic relations during the Obama administration. The meeting was arranged by the Center for the National Interest.
• June 12: In an article in The National Interest, Butina argues that only a Republican president can improve relations between the U.S. and Russia.

April–June 2016

• April 27:
  • Trump, Sessions and Jared Kushner greet Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington D.C. This contact is repeatedly omitted from testimony or denied. Afterward, Kislyak reports the conversation with Sessions to Moscow. Kushner is the first to publicly admit the Kislyak meeting took place in his prepared statement for Senate investigators on July 24, 2017.
  • Trump speaks at the Mayflower Hotel at the invitation of The National Interest, the magazine of the Center for the National Interest. He delivers a speech edited by Papadopoulos that calls for improved relations between the US and Russia. Papadopoulos brings the speech to the attention of Mifsud and Polonskaya, and tells Timofeev that it should be considered "the signal to meet".

References

Summary of above:

1. In February 2015, the CEO of The Center for The National Interest, a conservative American think tank, goes to Moscow and meets with Putin and other Russian government officials.
2. In April, the center arranges for Butina and Torshin to meet with U.S. government officials and to participate in a private panel discussion held by the center.
3. In June, the center's magazine publishes an article by Butina arguing that better relations between Russia and the U.S. requires a Republican president.
4. During April-July, Butina interacts with Scott Walker and Trump, both of whom declare their candidacies during this time period (in the timeline, but not included above).
5. April 2016, the center invites Trump to give a speech at the Mayflower Hotel in NYC. Trump and friends meet Kislyak at the venue, and Papdopoulos tells his Moscow contacts the pro-Russia speech is a signal for a Trump-Putin meeting.

My question is, how is The Center for The National Interest's activities not relevant to Russian influence in the election? #1 shows that the center has a direct connection to Moscow beyond the center's CEO originally being from Russia. #3 and #4 show that around the birth of Scott Walker's and Trump's presidential campaigns, Butina, a Russian agent, was publicly advocating in the U.S. for the election of a Republican president while she interacted with Trump and Scott Walker. #5 shows the center was directly involved in a highly suspicious Trump-Russia event the Trump campaign has been slow to admit the details of. #2 establishes there is more of a relationship between Butina and the center than merely publishing her article, though I am not wedded to including those entries. Websurfer2 (talk) 20:58, 7 August 2018 (UTC)

Websurfer2, it's very relevant. Conservatives have been approaching Russian interests more and more in the later years, something unheard of before. It shows how Putin and his interests are no long communist/left-wing, but extreme right-wing, and he is now labeled a right-wing autocrat. This is just one example of open (plus lots of secret, hence the lying about it) cooperation to further Russian interests in American/European/global politics, which harms democracy.

BTW, you write above: "...both of whom declare their candidacies during this time period...". Go ahead and add that mention, since it's important that items have context demonstrating their relevance. -- BullRangifer (talk) PingMe 07:02, 8 August 2018 (UTC)

@BullRangifer: Advocating for a fellow editor to commit the sin of WP:SYN? — JFG ^talk 08:26, 8 August 2018 (UTC)

Nah....only if the edit can be done properly. -- BullRangifer (talk) PingMe 08:32, 8 August 2018 (UTC)

unsure of mass deletions by JFG

I don't know, as of yet, the value of these items:

• 2014
• May 5: Maria Butina visits former NRA President David Keene at the NRA headquarters.
• September 3: Paul Erickson attends a "Right to Bear Arms" forum in Moscow where he is a featured speaker.
• 2015
  • Butina and Torshin meet with Treasury undersecretary for international affairs Nathan Sheets to discuss U.S. Russian economic relations during the Obama administration. The meeting is arranged by the Center for the National Interest.
  • Torshin and Butina participate in discussions about the "Russian financial situation and its impact on Russian politics" at a private event moderated by Hank Greenberg and organized by the Center for National Interest.
• April 7: Torshin and Butina meet with Federal Reserve vice chairman Stanley Fischer to discuss U.S. Russian economic relations during the Obama administration. The meeting was arranged by the Center for the National Interest.
• April 16: Butina gives a speech at the University of South Dakota titled "The Right to Bear Arms in Russia...Where Neither Currently Exists." About a dozen students attend the lecture hosted by a civic leadership group and two student groups. Butina was recommended to the university as a guest lecturer by Paul Erickson.
• May 13: Butina speaks to high school stdudents about women and entrepreneurship at an Academy of Finance workshop at Sioux Falls CTE. The event was arranged by Erickson who is a volunteer with Junior Achievement of South Dakota.
• June 12: In an article in The National Interest, Butina argues that only a Republican president can improve relations between the U.S. and Russia.
• July 15: Butina is a guest on the conservative radio program The Eric Metaxas Show.
• July 21: Butina gives a speech at the Teen Age Republicans camp in Black Hills, South Dakota. Dusty Johnson, the former chief of staff of South Dakota Governor Dennis Daugaard, organizes the event at the request of Paul Erickson. South Dakota State Representative Mathew Wollmann and Republican activist Steve Sibson are in attendance.
• 2016
• February: Erickson and Butina form Bridges LLC. Erickson later tells McClatchy the South Dakota-based company was created to provide financial assistance for Butina's graduate school tuition. As of January 2018, McClatchy was unable to find any of the company's financial transactions.
• May 19: Butina gives a speech during the Heroes for Freedom and Liberty Dinner fundraiser at the Mellwood Arts Center in Louisville, Kentucky. Kentucky Governor Matt Bevin, Lt. Governor Jenean Hampton, former Lt. Governor Steve Henry, singer Lee Greenwood, and former Miss America Heather French are in attendence. Butina is a last-minute addition, and space has to be made to accommodate her and her Russian companions. In July 2018, event planner Mike King tells the Louisville Courier Journal, "She was considered a celebrity."

X1\ (talk) 00:10, 8 August 2018 (UTC)

Now that we know Butina has been Butin is accused of acting as an active Russian agent (a regular Red Sparrow-type!), not just some innocent exchange student, it becomes quite relevant. She had many suspicious contacts with Americans, including NRA, GOP, and Trump campaign. -- BullRangifer (talk) PingMe 07:09, 8 August 2018‎ (UTC)}}

Sources

Re: we know Butina has been acting as an active Russian agent, do we "know" that? She's being accused of various things related to her gun advocacy, but under the law she is innocent until proven guilty. And we certainly don't "know" that she interfered in U.S. elections, the subject of this article. This is why I erased most of the recital of her meetings with figures unrelated to the Trump campaign. — JFG ^talk 08:30, 8 August 2018 (UTC)

Good point. Now it's changed from "know" to "accused". Keep in mind that gun advocacy is just one aspect to this. She is accused of far more than just gun advocacy. -- BullRangifer (talk) PingMe 08:38, 8 August 2018 (UTC)

Also,...."Russian interference" involves far more than the Trump campaign. The GOP seems to be compromised, especially its top leaders, and prominent conservatives, think tanks, and celebrities also seem to be involved as willing targets for Russians interests. -- BullRangifer (talk) PingMe 08:41, 8 August 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for correcting. I'm still wary of drowning readers with trivial factoids. In my edits, I kept a few of the Butina/NRA entries, which look at least somewhat connected to ongoing election campaigns. Her gun advocacy and socializing activities are of no interest here. — JFG ^talk 09:56, 8 August 2018 (UTC)

Why the ‘Manhattan Madam’ Is Ensnared in the Mueller Inquiry

So she too is involved:

• Why the ‘Manhattan Madam’ Is Ensnared in the Mueller Inquiry

BullRangifer (talk) PingMe 10:37, 8 August 2018 (UTC)

Active Measures (2018 film)

• Active Measures (film)

Filmmaker suggests that Vladmir Putin is behind a 30-year history of covert political warfare.

• https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8135494/
• https://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/25/fashion/jack-bryan-a-little-philosophy-a-lot-of-filmmaking.html
• https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2018/05/donald-trump-russia-documentary-active-measures-jack-bryan
• https://variety.com/2018/film/news/active-measures-documentary-trump-putin-relationship-release-1202893861/
• https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/review/active-measures-1109820
• https://www.theguardian.com/film/2018/apr/30/active-measures-review-documentary-putin-trump-election-meddling

69.181.23.220 (talk) 10:57, 19 August 2018 (UTC)

What do you suggest to add to the article? — JFG ^talk 11:16, 19 August 2018 (UTC)

Even though Active Measures is "first major documentary to address the allegations of collusion between the Trump campaign and agents of the Russian state" wouldn't Fahrenheit 11/9 be more of significance? X1\ (talk) 00:36, 5 September 2018 (UTC)

Timeline of Russian interference in the 2018 United States elections?

Per this article: Russian interference in the 2018 United States elections. Should we expand and rename this article or start a new article that is related to this one called Timeline of Russian interference in the 2018 United States elections.Casprings (talk) 01:38, 13 August 2018 (UTC)

Not enough material to justify a split. — JFG ^talk 16:10, 13 August 2018 (UTC)

@Casprings: Could you elaborate on your idea? X1\ (talk) 21:42, 13 August 2018 (UTC)

Some 2018 interference information has been added to Timeline of investigations into Trump and Russia (2018). Should the pages be merged? The 2018 Russian interference campaign is really a continuation of their 2016 efforts. Websurfer2 (talk) 22:32, 15 September 2018 (UTC)

How much content has been accrued so far? X1\ (talk) 00:30, 19 September 2018 (UTC)

RfC: Should this article mention Trump's trip to Moscow in 1987?

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

Should this article mention Trump's trip to Moscow in 1987? — JFG ^talk 10:19, 8 August 2018 (UTC)

Rationale: This article is called "Timeline of Russian interference in the 2016 United States election". Some events from before the 2016 campaign have been included because they can be construed as related, e.g. Putin's animosity towards Hillary Clinton which reportedly started at the time of U.S.-supported protests in 2011–2013, or Trump Jr.'s statement in 2008 that they have lots of Russian clients for their real estate projects. However, some other events are totally devoid of a connection, including this Moscow trip. Trump made a trip to the Soviet Union in 1987, and journalist Luke Harding has alleged that this date could have been the start of a secret "cultivation" of Trump by the KGB, which somehow was a prelude to his candidacy for U.S. president 28 years later. This is spy-novel speculation, and all sources peddling this story refer back to Harding's writings. In his book, Harding himself admits that he is only speculating, with these quotes: "When did the KGB open a file on Donald Trump? We don’t know," – "At this point it is unclear how the KGB regarded Trump." – "Dubinin wouldn’t have answered to the KGB. And his role wasn’t formally an intelligence one." – "Dubinin’s invitation to Trump to visit Moscow looks like a classic cultivation exercise, which would have had the KGB’s full support and approval." (emphasis on conditionals indicating speculation). For more details, see Talk:Trump–Russia dossier/Archive 12#Harding's KGB speculation irrelevant to Steele dossier. Therefore, we don't know if the KGB ever had a file on Trump, the Soviet Union is long gone, and nobody could foresee back then that this non-notable real estate developer would become an important political figure, let alone U.S. President. In summary, the 1987 Moscow trip is undue for a timeline of Russian interference in 2016. — JFG ^talk 10:19, 8 August 2018 (UTC)

Survey

• No per rationale above. — JFG ^talk 10:20, 8 August 2018 (UTC)

WP:DEADHORSE X1\ (talk) 19:53, 10 August 2018 (UTC)

You DEADHORSE. It takes two to tango, and starting an RFC in the face of limited discussion and non-existent consensus is usually not considered animal cruelty. Why is starting an RFC not the proper thing to do? Nowhere above do I see consensus regarding the changes, just a few sections and some back and forths that solve nothing. Why is it improper to bring in extra eyes to break up the echo-chamberi-ness that might exist above? Also, can you please work your response to/under Websurfer2 into your survey response below that to prevent confusions?^Thanks, L3X1 ◊distænt write◊ 16:55, 17 August 2018 (UTC)

@L3X1: WTF are you talking about "You DEADHORSE"? The information attributed to Luke Harding was removed long ago (December 2017), which is to what WP:DTS (DeadHorse) refers. Are you attempting to threatening me L3X1, in ignorance of the situation (since I haven't noticed you editing here? Per this, the editors that have contributed over 1% are: @Jasonanaggie: (39.8%), Websurfer2 (28.1%), @Cpaaoi: (13.6%), X1\ (6.9%, see directly related Timelines too), @Arglebargle79: (3.8%, creator), JFG (2.8%), BullRangifer (1.4%), IP 2601:644:302:8FB0:F5A1:926E:C165:D04A (1.4%), Nico404 (1.3%), and Neutrality (1%). X1\ (talk) 00:40, 23 August 2018 (UTC)

• No I agree this should be left out of the timeline unless more damning details come out. Websurfer2 (talk) 20:50, 9 August 2018 (UTC)

I change my vote to Yes for reasons I gave in the discussion section below. Websurfer2 (talk) 21:14, 25 August 2018 (UTC)

Extended comments below

• Yes, of the current description. Being invited on an an all-expenses-paid trip to a relatively closed authoritarian society, an adversary at that, and then going is significant. The Cold War (1947–1991) was continuing in the 1980s. This the first time Trump had been to Russia. The event was widely covered, and Trump even (ghost-) wrote about it in his book. This is the same society whose currently leader, Putin himself said he directed his officials to help get Trump elected in 2016.

Mason also asked Putin, "President Putin, did you want President Trump to win the election and did you direct any of your officials to help him do that?" and Putin responded, "Yes, I did. Yes, I did.

Trump had repeatedly denied any contact with Russians (in spite of a long history of being obviously not true) during the campaign. This event is far more than just non-trivial. Of course it is significant enough to be included in the timeline. X1\ (talk) 20:57, 10 August 2018 (UTC)

For reference 02:42, 12 December 2017 for the previous version. X1\ (talk) 00:42, 23 August 2018 (UTC)

• Yes, The event is connected by WP:RSes. A timeline should be holistic, per Wikipedia:Timeline standards. We should ask ourself this basic question. Would an average reader want to know about this event? If yes, we should include it.Casprings (talk) 18:24, 12 August 2018 (UTC)
• Yes. This is relevant. RS show that something which was common for all notable westerners traveling in the USSR also likely happened to Trump. It would be weird if it didn't. This doesn't imply any misdeeds on his part, but shows the methods used then and now by Russia. Things start somewhere, and this is the earliest indication of Russian interest in Trump, enough to invite him to visit. -- BullRangifer (talk) PingMe 18:47, 12 August 2018 (UTC)
• Yes (Summoned by bot) I disagree with whatever X1 is trying to say about JFG, but I do agree that the material should be included, it is on scope. ^Thanks, L3X1 ◊distænt write◊ 16:50, 17 August 2018 (UTC)

@L3X1: "disagree with whatever"? WP:NOTBATTLE. X1\ (talk) 00:45, 23 August 2018 (UTC)

Remove for the time being, until we have more info. Talked with some other people, examined the statements given here and in the sources provided on the article page, and concluded it can be removed without failing censorship or NPOV guidelines. As per Websurfer, I am not opposed to having it readded if more "damning details come out", or we can just reexamine it in 6 months. Thanks for putting up with my AFKness. ^Thanks, L3X1 ◊distænt write◊ 02:42, 22 August 2018 (UTC)

@L3X1: care to update your comment in light of continued discussion? X1\ (talk) 22:24, 27 August 2018 (UTC)

I refresh myself tomorrow or Wednesday and get back to you. ^Thanks, L3X1 ◊distænt write◊ 02:26, 28 August 2018 (UTC)

• No If the article is about Russian interference in the 2016 election then I do not think a reasonable person could say Russia was planning on interfering in the 2016 election back in the 80's. Pure guesswork and speculation. PackMecEng (talk) 17:00, 17 August 2018 (UTC)

Extended comments below

@PackMecEng: care to update your comment in light of continued discussion? X1\ (talk) 22:28, 27 August 2018 (UTC)

That passed through my head, and I find it compelling, except the fact that everything happening today is based on something that happened afar off. No one had WW2 or a militant rebuilt Germany with an axe to grind in mind when they were signing the Versailles treaty. ^Thanks, L3X1 ◊distænt write◊ 18:22, 17 August 2018 (UTC)

@L3X1: Your analogy with Versailles 1919 is actually reinforcing the case to remove the Moscow 1987 entries. No one in the KGB had in mind that Trump would some day run for U.S. President, or that the future head of the successor state to the Soviet Union would agree with his future inklings of détente to be peddled in the 2016 campaign… — JFG ^talk 18:44, 17 August 2018 (UTC)

@JFG: what people do or don't have in mind is speculation. X1\ (talk) 20:37, 17 August 2018 (UTC)

And that's why speculation about the 1987 trip should not be in this timeline. — JFG ^talk 21:33, 17 August 2018 (UTC)

Just for clarity I hadn't responded yet because I am busy ATM and also couldn't think up a "best" coherent response. The gist of my reply is speculation should be removed, but perhaps just bare bones mention of the visit sans speculation of pundits or OR could remain? I am still reading up on what everyone else is saying, and if I change my survey response it will be aorund Tuesday probably. ^Thanks, L3X1 ◊distænt write◊ 22:02, 18 August 2018 (UTC)

L3X1, wouldn't it be better to add it with attribution? That's how we're supposed to deal with opinions and speculation. We now have several sources dealing with that same situation. -- BullRangifer (talk) PingMe 06:02, 19 August 2018 (UTC)

• No: the almost 20-yr gap between 1987 and 2005 is a bit jarring. The questions that may come up, why was this trip significant? What happened in-between? Etc. Best start with 2005. --K.e.coffman (talk) 01:41, 18 August 2018 (UTC)

@K.e.coffman: Yes "jarring", but not a reason to remove. Yes, "questions that may come up". Timeline is a WIP. X1\ (talk) 00:47, 23 August 2018 (UTC)

@K.e.coffman: care to update your comment in light of continued discussion? X1\ (talk) 22:30, 27 August 2018 (UTC)

@X1:I'm still not conviced that it's necessary to start at 1987. 04:24, 28 August 2018 (UTC)

• No:As stated by others, the Soviet Union of 1987 is a different country than Russia in 2016. Most of the people in power then are likely dead now. The politics and economy are different. As Putin said recently, Trump was one of 500 foreign businessmen at a conference in Russia a few years ago.Phmoreno (talk) 03:33, 22 August 2018 (UTC)

@Phmoreno: Putin wants Russia to go back to Soviet times, or at least its borders. See previous discussion, such as Talk:Timeline of Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections/Archive_2#beginning of timeline and topic of Russian interference. It would not have been difficult for the Soviets to track "500 foreign businessmen". Putin was born in Soviet times, as was Trump. Putin joined the KGB in Soviet times (1975). But Putin did not become Director of FSB, a successor to the KGB, until after its dissolution. It has been said Putin has been playing chessref></ref> but by others poker, roulette, or the lottery. Failure of imagination can be an issue here. Phmoreno, care to expand on your comments? X1\ (talk) 22:50, 27 August 2018 (UTC)

I own shares of a mutual fund that invests is Russian small cap stocks, something that was unheard of in the old days. I could also travel around the country if I had the desire to, something that would have been difficult to do years ago. Lots of other differences, but I am no expert.Phmoreno (talk) 03:20, 28 August 2018 (UTC)

....which still sidesteps the fact that the intelligence services of most countries are a continuous function. They still keep records on the same people and collect information on them. Their cultivation efforts don't just stop because of a regime change. -- BullRangifer (talk) PingMe 04:07, 28 August 2018 (UTC)

@Phmoreno: You are proving the point of how significant Trump's invite and trip in the USSR was, during the Cold War. X1\ (talk) 21:37, 31 August 2018 (UTC)

Discussion

• JFG has severely misrepresented the current situation (again). See current excerpt from the article below:

1986

• Soviet Ambassador Yuri Dubinin invites Trump on all-expenses-paid trip to the Soviet Union.

1987

• July: Trump makes his first visit to the Soviet Union (which included the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, now Russia).

X1\ (talk) 20:02, 10 August 2018 (UTC)

Sources

• @PackMecEng: See clarified lede:

  This is a timeline of major events related to election interference that Russia conducted against the U.S. 2016 elections. It also includes major events related to investigations into suspected inappropriate links between associates of then-presidential candidate Donald Trump and Russian officials.

  X1\ (talk) 20:31, 17 August 2018 (UTC)

@X1\: If we go by that the issue is "between associates of then-presidential candidate Donald Trump". Trump associates are not mentioned in this material and he certainly was not a candidate at that time. There is a strong point to be made if we are going back that far and that wide the name and scope of this article should be changed. PackMecEng (talk) 20:28, 17 August 2018 (UTC)

@PackMecEng: I've cleared out some more confusing garbage. X1\ (talk) 20:32, 17 August 2018 (UTC)

@X1\:The issue is not the lead, it is the title and scope of the article. That is why I do not think it fits here. It might go better in an article like links between Trump associates and Russian officials if we had one for Trump and not just Trump associates. PackMecEng (talk) 20:35, 17 August 2018 (UTC)

@PackMecEng: in the past we could not find a manageable title that is this scope, the Timeline. Do you have suggestion that fits this scope? X1\ (talk) 20:44, 17 August 2018 (UTC)

Depends on how broad you think it should be. Is it basically Timeline of Trump's interactions with Russia? It all seems a little open ended for a timeline style article. What would you see as a cutoff for this article? PackMecEng (talk) 00:42, 18 August 2018 (UTC)

• In 1987 Trump was openly discussing running for president. JFG, you wrote above: "No one in the KGB had in mind that Trump would some day run for U.S. President". Not even remotely true. On the contrary. "Donald Trump: Russian ‘Asset’ Since 1987 When KGB ‘Compromised’ Him On Moscow Trip, According To New Book" The article discusses a new book by Craig Unger: House of Trump, House of Putin: The Untold Story of Donald Trump and the Russian Mafia. It also mentions coverage by Newsweek at the time. It turns out that Trump was already openly discussing running for the presidency at the time, making him even more a target for surveillance and cultivation than he already was as a rich American who voiced anti-American sentiments in his attempts to kiss up to Russians to get their backing and money. -- BullRangifer (talk) PingMe 05:21, 18 August 2018 (UTC)

It's fascinating how, since Trump's election, some British or American journalists suddenly have intimate knowledge of the Soviet KGB's habits of targeting foreigners for surveillance and cultivation. All. Of. This. Is. Speculation. Unrelated. To. Russian. Interference. In. 2016. Elections. But it sure sells books! — JFG ^talk 05:32, 18 August 2018 (UTC)

??? Where have you been for the last 60 years? This is old knowledge, nothing new at all. I knew this as a child. Even Trump has mentioned that travelers to Russia must be careful. When the KGB arranged his trip, they weren't just sponsoring a nice vacation for him. They had reasons. He was married to Ivana and was seeking business in Russia. He already had Russian contacts back then. -- BullRangifer (talk) PingMe 05:40, 18 August 2018 (UTC)

Of course KGB tactics are common knowledge. My point is that any relationship between Trump's Moscow visit in 1987 and Russian interference in the 2016 elections is pure speculation by various people, and therefore undue in this timeline of interference. Sorry for the shouting, but I'm kind of puzzled that objections repeatedly fail to address the central point of this RfC. — JFG ^talk 05:48, 18 August 2018 (UTC)

I agree with @JFG: on this one. There needs to be more solid evidence showing a direct link to warrant inclusion other than "Trump was cultivated by the KGB," "Putin was in the KGB," and "Putin ordered his minions to help Trump get elected," as compelling as that may be. Evidence has been coming out suggesting that Russia was interested in helping Scott Walker in 2015 before they glommed onto Trump (not just the Scott Walker mentions in the timeline). Websurfer2 (talk) 08:10, 21 August 2018 (UTC)

@Websurfer2: there is no speculation here, Trump went on their/his trip. It is a fact and significant, as I have stated previously. PS, is the 2015 "Scott Walker" stuff related to Maria Butina? X1\ (talk) 00:36, 23 August 2018 (UTC)

@X1\: OK, I did some more reading and have come around on including the trip to the Soviet Union. I find it beyond coincidental that two months after he returns to the U.S. he runs full page ads in major newspapers attacking American foreign policy, and then goes to New Hampshire a month later to make campaign speeches full of 2015-2016 rhetoric and says he is going to run for president some day. Trump ran for president twelve years later (1999-2000) and explored running for president in 2012. Wittingly or unwittingly, directly or indirectly, he has been involved with Russian's offshoring their funds and laundering money since the '90s (Russians invested heavily in his condos and hotels, bought real estate from him at highly inflated prices, and Deutsche Bank lent him a lot of money when no-one else would at the same time they were laundering many billions from Russians). Combine that with the fact that the KGB and its successors usually compensate (witting or unwitting) agents of influence through exclusive business deals — yeah, his first trip to the Soviet Union is worth mentioning as a significant likely inappropriate contact. Websurfer2 (talk) 20:55, 24 August 2018 (UTC)

All interesting stuff. But, it’s still speculation. O3000 (talk) 21:03, 24 August 2018 (UTC)

@Objective3000: See above, there is no speculation here. This is the discussion page, not the article itself. X1\ (talk) 21:19, 24 August 2018 (UTC)

@Websurfer2: The new Unger book and the "Active Measures" film tie more history together (as you have just detailed). Nice summary. X1\ (talk) 21:21, 24 August 2018 (UTC)

@Websurfer2: Coincidence and speculation are fun, but remember Occam's razor. The most likely explanation for Trump's similarity between his political message in 1987 and his political message in 2015 is that he has been rather consistent in his opinions of American foreign policy. (Hard to believe, right?) Speculating that it was all a grand master plan orchestrated by the KGB over 30 years, and miraculously surviving the collapse of the Soviet Union, is material for entertainment books, not for this encyclopedia. — JFG ^talk 04:35, 25 August 2018 (UTC)

@JFG: Wikipedia:Disruption and Wikipedia:Drama can be fun, but remember to support Wikipedia:Five pillars. Occam's razor is not about what is "likely", it is about simplicity which is still completely explanatory. Wikipedia is not about "likely", it is about RSs. All of the facts Websurfer2 had in their summary I have seen RSs which are supportive. Your deletion storms and hyperbole feel Wikipedia:Tendentious and tedious. X1\ (talk) 20:41, 25 August 2018 (UTC)

@JFG: I'm not saying there was a 30-year plot. I'm saying it is likely the KGB and its successors maintained a relationship with a wealthy American, whether or not that American was aware of it or cared. They most likely encouraged Trump's presidential aspirations to feed his ego, but that doesn't mean they told him to run for president or gave him any material support before 2015. Butina and Torshin sought out and talked to several of the GOP hopefuls at the 2015 NRA convention, and then focused on Walker and Trump while saying they also liked Cruz. The Soviet trip establishes the beginning of Trump's relationship with the Soviet government and intelligence agencies — they didn't hand out all expenses paid trips to rich people for altruistic reasons. For example, in 2013, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs was accused by the FBI of handing out free trips to recent American college graduates, including luxury accommodations, as a tool for developing intelligence assets. Websurfer2 (talk) 21:04, 25 August 2018 (UTC)

Per Trump’s ties to the Russian mafia go back 3 decades; Journalist Craig Unger talks Russia, Trump, and “one of the greatest intelligence operations in history.”, in Craig Unger's book, "House of Trump, House of Putin"; Unger found about 1,300 real estate transactions Trump conducted with Russian mobsters. Unger explains there is a pattern in Trump's history where anonymous shell companies that were fronts for criminal money-laundering operations bought properties, condos, or apartments from Trump, paying in all cash. X1\ (talk) 00:35, 19 September 2018 (UTC)

• Signs of Trump-Putin collaboration, starting years before the campaign?, Washington Post

"Of all the allegations contained in the “Steele dossier,” the urtext of President Trump’s possible ties to Russia, one has long stood out as the most compromising, because it would be evidence of a political and business relationship between Trump and Russia that predated his campaign for the White House."

Interesting article. -- BullRangifer (talk) PingMe 20:00, 18 August 2018 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Trump secretly planning his election run with Russians in 2011???

@BullRangifer: When you reverted my removal of the mostly off-topic life and works of Maria Butina meetings of Torshin and Keene in 2011–2012,[9] you stated: Since Trump was already secretly planning his election run with Russians in 2011, this is quite relevant. I don't think your edit summary reflects anything else than speculation or personal opinion. Accordingly, I would ask you to self-revert. — JFG ^talk 10:28, 7 August 2018 (UTC)

Regardless of the early and public statements by Russians supporting Trump's plans for the presidency (at a time when Americans knew nothing of them, but Russians did), which I mentioned, the content you deleted does seem to fit quite nicely in that section of the timeline. It's seems very relevant, especially since we now have even more information about the role of Torshin and the NRA in funneling illegal money to the Trump campaign. Russian funding and interference was already starting way back then, and that is the subject of the Timeline. -- BullRangifer (talk) PingMe 10:34, 7 August 2018 (UTC)

Again, you are speculating. We don't know anything about Butina's connection to Russian election interference. And even if she is involved in the 2016 plot, the diary of people she had breakfast with since 2011 is totally off-topic. — JFG ^talk 11:22, 7 August 2018 (UTC)

I don't know why you're talking about Butina. I didn't notice anything about her in that edit, nor did I have her in mind in any mannner. -- BullRangifer (talk) PingMe 12:01, 7 August 2018 (UTC)

I'm sorry, I thought you had reverted my pruning of her collected works and deeds.[10] I see now you only reverted my followup edit.[11] No worries. I still believe the anecdotal mention of Torshin/Keene NRA meetings in 2011–2012 is off-topic for this article. — JFG ^talk 13:07, 7 August 2018 (UTC)

Back in 2011, Trump and Bannon were also planning a Trump presidency. -- BullRangifer (talk) PingMe 00:40, 19 September 2018 (UTC)

NYTimes special report

Today's Times has a full, ten page section titled: "The plot to subvert an election" with a detailed timeline.[12] O3000 (talk) 12:38, 20 September 2018 (UTC)

and?Slatersteven (talk) 12:41, 20 September 2018 (UTC)

Our coverage is already more comprehensive than theirs. Perhaps they even used our article as a source. — JFG ^talk 13:59, 20 September 2018 (UTC)

Just an FYI. It’s an entire, separately printed section with what appears to be a more detailed timeline than the web version. I doubt they used WP as a source. If they did, seems to me we’d have to remove them as an RS. O3000 (talk) 14:28, 20 September 2018 (UTC)

As there are now 34 cites to this article, looks like it might turn out to be useful. O3000 (talk) 00:35, 21 September 2018 (UTC)

Claim, Accuse, Allege, Suppose, Proport, Intend

When I search for variations of synonyms and find hundreds of them sprinkled throughout an article it makes Me think they are less factual and more a lesson In creative writing. Why not scrutinize what is included because I can't put much weight on accusations. We've had a media churn for the past 2 years and it'S impossible to filter out fact vs. supposition. Jawz101 (talk) 18: 29, 23 March 2018(UTC)

... Let'S not forget Trump had to beat out 12+ Republican candidates just to get on that final ballot. https://wiki.riteme.site/wiki/Republican_Party_presidential_candidates,_2016 and yet the premise here is that Trump and Putin are grand master chess strategists.

Where is the interference?

How much evidence do we have the Russians interfered with the elections? Whatever there is should be presented and the irrelevant information needs to be removed.Phmoreno (talk) 00:02, 2 November 2018 (UTC)

Still got a WP:CIR problem? How many times are you going to repeat this denialist mantra of yours? Read our articles and the RS used to create them. But don't stop there. You should believe them, or you're turning your back on evidence, and choosing to continue your belief in the false narrative from unreliable sources. That's not good, and you could do better. Do your homework, using only RS. It's not our job to do it for you. -- BullRangifer (talk) PingMe 01:39, 2 November 2018 (UTC)

Edit warring

Hello X1\. I don't want to edit-war with you. I wish you stopped reflexively undoing all my edits, and we could attempt to improve the article together. I'll stop editing for today, but please consider my arguments. — JFG ^talk 00:50, 28 December 2018 (UTC)

Beware of the Consensus Required restrictions, which you violated again with this recent revert:[13] I'm sure it was not on purpose, so please self-revert and let's discuss. — JFG ^talk 00:59, 28 December 2018 (UTC)

Names - Links

For many articles on the names section, there are dead links, apparentally linking to Russian pages. Is there a fix to this?Theoallen1 (talk) 00:18, 9 January 2019 (UTC)

@Theoallen1: Adding deadlinks (Template:Deadlink) to what you find would be appreciated, so we can find viable links as replacements. X1\ (talk) 01:02, 10 January 2019 (UTC)

transition from Soviet to Russian Federation

In order to "clarify "the Soviet Union (which included the RSFSR, now Russia)" in 1987 for the wp:Reader, I had added:

1990 June 12: Declaration of State Sovereignty of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic ratified

1991 December 26: Dissolution of the Soviet Union occurs, wherein the RSFSR becomes the Russian Federation (commonly simplified to "Russia")

As was made clear in the edit summary of the deleting editor, this article is not the History of Russia article, and that comment illustrates the the value of that which they deleted. "Russia" has a long history, whose borders have changed greatly, and has gone by various names. "Russia" was a part of the Soviet Union, even though people often call the USSR "Russia". The confusion readers might often find in the transition from the Soviet Union to the Russian Federation can be eased by including these items. X1\ (talk) 23:33, 27 December 2018 (UTC)

This is ridiculous, and quite condescending to the intellect and culture of our readers. Next thing you're going to add Putin's nomination by Yeltsin on 31 December 1999, and the founding of the KGB in 1954. Have fun, but beware of WP:OWNERSHIP. — JFG ^talk 23:43, 27 December 2018 (UTC)

By the way, X1\, according to editing restrictions in force at this article, the WP:ONUS is on you to obtain consensus for this addition after I challenged it by reversion. In the meantime, please self-revert the undoing of my revert. — JFG ^talk 23:46, 27 December 2018 (UTC)

@JFG: I am not being condescending in anyway. Intellect and knowledge are two separate things. One can be ignorant and intelligent.

As you are aware, don't edit storm here, by combining deletion items. When you tangle items together, it is disruptive. X1\ (talk) 00:06, 28 December 2018 (UTC)

Please self-revert or get ready to face sanctions. All three entries I removed are unsourced and unrelated to Russia's 2016 interference, therefore out of scope for this article. — JFG ^talk 00:08, 28 December 2018 (UTC)

@JFG:@X1\: While details of the collapse of the USSR and the Russian Federation becoming it's successor may seem obvious to older readers who lived through it, it happened nearly thirty years ago, and most college-age readers were born after the events. I agree with X1\ that it belongs in the timeline because it shows the historical continuity between the two countries commonly referred to by the same name (Russia). — Preceding unsigned comment added by Websurfer2 (talk • contribs) 00:32, 28 December 2018 (UTC)

The Soviet Union should not even be mentioned in this article at all. It was dissolved 25 years before the 2016 events that are the main topic of this timeline. In any case, if we want to mention the Soviet Union for context, it's better to inform readers in prose instead of adding entries for historical events in 1990 and 1991. For example, say that Trump made his first trip to Russia in 1987 (then part of the Soviet Union). — JFG ^talk 00:38, 28 December 2018 (UTC)

The Soviet Union is in multiple references. X1\ (talk) 01:11, 28 December 2018 (UTC)

Trump did not travel in 1987 to "Russia", they went to the Soviet Union. X1\ (talk) 01:26, 28 December 2018 (UTC)

As far as I understand from reading various sources, they visited Moscow and St-Petersburg (then called Leningrad), both parts of Russia. Did they go to any other Soviet Republic? — JFG ^talk 01:49, 28 December 2018 (UTC)

@JFG: ≠ , and (again) nor does the Russian Federation equal the Soviet Union (or the "Soviet Empire") or the Russian Empire. If this isn't clear, your Competence is in question. X1\ (talk) 20:43, 30 December 2018 (UTC)

It is very clear that the term "Russia" can designate both the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic and the 1991 state sometimes called "modern Russia". And yes, obviously the RSFSR was part of a political entity called the Soviet Union, which itself was the successor of the Russian Empire (also called Russia back then). My point is that Trump only visited the Russian part of the Soviet Union, so that it is absolutely appropriate to say he visited Russia. This is why I have suggested the wording "visited Russia (then part of the Soviet Union)", rather than the convoluted "visited the Soviet Union (which included the RSFSR, now Russia)". Do you understand how my version would be clearer for readers? — JFG ^talk 22:54, 30 December 2018 (UTC)

@JFG: What is very clear is you don't want to say Trump visited the USSR. "Russia" is sloppy slang shorthand. This is not pedantic, to say "Russia" is inaccurate; sloppy slang can be used after the Reader is correctly oriented. By your misleading logic, one could say Trump visited the the Russian Empire ("Russia") or the Grand Duchy of Moscow & the Novgorod Republic, or the Russian principalities vassals of the Mongolian Empire. They didn't go to the Kievan Rus' federation, either. It is not only simple to be accurate, we have a responsibility to the Readers to do so. The USSR as the sovereign state. X1\ (talk) 01:48, 3 January 2019 (UTC)

I intended to close (hat) this soon as "Consensus: Keep", as was done with "Trump Tower Moscow" and "Bogatin story" soon. X1\ (talk) 22:36, 4 January 2019 (UTC)

I can't see any consensus here, only you and me disagreeing on relevance of the history of Russia and the Soviet Union. Unhatted. — JFG ^talk 09:34, 15 January 2019 (UTC)

@JFG: it is not "only you and me", it is about factually improving the article. Your efforts to inject sloppy slang shorthand and non-RS information, and remove RS-supported content is not supported by Wikipedia. X1\ (talk) 21:51, 16 January 2019 (UTC)

The term "Russia" is not "sloppy slang". Geez. But keep your RSFSR if you like it. — JFG ^talk 23:55, 16 January 2019 (UTC)

@Websurfer2:@JFG:@BullRangifer:@Arglebargle79:@Jasonanaggie: are we okay to Archive this now? 22:42, 18 January 2019 (UTC)

After a week since "keep your RSFSR", I plan to archive this thread. X1\ (talk) 22:05, 21 January 2019 (UTC)

vision of "Trump Tower Moscow" starting in 1987

1987 further Trump Tower Moscow

is part of the Special Counsel investigation (2017–present), as noted in my ES. From the "Trump Tower Moscow" wp article,

Donald Trump is reported as having first envisaged a Trump building in Moscow during a visit to Moscow in 1987.

This item very much belongs in the Timeline continuum. X1\ (talk) 01:22, 28 December 2018 (UTC)

I agree that it belongs, especially with the revelations of Michael Cohen and Felix Sater actively pursuing such a deal during the campaign. Websurfer2 (talk) 01:38, 28 December 2018 (UTC)

@JFG: consensus, or you don't care that much to oppose? X1\ (talk) 01:45, 28 December 2018 (UTC)

Well, that's what I said in my edit summary when removing this "Further information" hatnote. There is no further information in the target article: it only repeats that Trump considered building something in Moscow in 1987, and we already say that much here. — JFG ^talk 01:48, 28 December 2018 (UTC)

References

• The Result of this discussion has been a defacto: Kept. I suggest it be hatted to keep the discussion topics clean and organized. @Websurfer2:, @JFG: article editors care to comment otherwise? X1\ (talk) 01:34, 3 January 2019 (UTC)

nope Arglebargle79 (talk) 12:55, 3 January 2019 (UTC)

@X1\: Please refrain from declaring "consensus" and hatting discussions in which you are involved. You still have not addressed my point, namely that the Trump Tower Moscow link actually does not offer any "further information". — JFG ^talk 09:39, 15 January 2019 (UTC)

@JFG:@X1\: two votes to keep and one against after nearly three weeks sounds like a consensus. Websurfer2 (talk) 21:23, 15 January 2019 (UTC)

Wikipedia is not a democracy, and 2-1 would not be enough editor participation to show consensus anyway. Proponents of the content must address the objections of opponents. I have not seen any substantive reply yet, besides WP:ILIKEIT. — JFG ^talk 09:30, 16 January 2019 (UTC)

Reminder: I do not oppose mentioning the Trump Tower Moscow project, just the link to "further information" which does not provide any. A link in the text is sufficient. — JFG ^talk 10:10, 16 January 2019 (UTC)

It is more than obvious Trump Tower Moscow article provides more info. (currently has 22 refs, and shows timeline of Trump's interest in the project for decades). X1\ (talk) 21:26, 16 January 2019 (UTC)

Any further discussion on items within the year of 1987 would be better just in Talk:Timeline of Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections#1987 for clarity on context. To reiterate, I suggest closing this thread and folding any further discussion into that thread. X1\ (talk) 23:03, 16 January 2019 (UTC)

I've got a proposal to get rid of this awkward hatnote while preserving the link. In the July entry talking about his trip to Russia with Ivana, add this:

They scout potential construction sites for a Trump Tower Moscow.

@X1\: How about that? — JFG ^talk 00:08, 17 January 2019 (UTC)

 Done I made the change; looks claner. — JFG ^talk 08:19, 18 January 2019 (UTC)

Trump's new found interest in international politics after their time to the Soviet Union

1987 September 1: Trump spends $94,801 on full-page ads in the Boston Globe, Washington Post, and New York Times, calling on NATO countries and other allies to pay for their protection.

Assumed Discussion, so copied here, since JFG deleted twice, with an ES of "c/e" X1\ (talk) 00:47, 28 December 2018 (UTC)

My c/e was simply moving the word "wife" out of the link to Ivana Trump. Had not noticed your intermediate restoration of this line. Happy to discuss. — JFG ^talk 00:51, 28 December 2018 (UTC)

@Websurfer2:, did you originally add this? X1\ (talk) 01:48, 28 December 2018 (UTC) It appears to have been first added by User:Tanath 28.Oct.2018 with an ES of "Trump working to further Russia's goals in 1987". Tanath appears inactive. X1\ (talk) 20:07, 30 December 2018 (UTC) @Tanath: you still around? X1\ (talk) 20:45, 30 December 2018 (UTC)

If there is no discussion on this, I plan to re-add this item that has been in the article since October, without a problem. X1\ (talk) 22:29, 3 January 2019 (UTC)

That's not the way it works, and you know it. If you add something, and somebody reverts it, the onus is on you to obtain consensus on the talk page. Meanwhile, the contents should stay out. In this case, you did not obtain any support for your text, and you added it back anyway. You are in violation of DS and should self-revert. — JFG ^talk 09:36, 15 January 2019 (UTC)

@JFG: your discussion so far on this item has been to say "c/e". This is yet another example of disruptive editing. X1\ (talk) 21:59, 16 January 2019 (UTC)

No. My substantive comment was "No connection with 2016 Russian interference".[14] The "c/e" came from an edit conflict when I moved the word "wife" out of a link to Ivana Trump[15] while you had restored[16] the content I had removed. Now can we get back to the question at hand, viz. how is a foreign policy position published by Trump in 1987 related to Russian interference in the 2016 election? That's pure innuendo. — JFG ^talk 23:51, 16 January 2019 (UTC)

see reference update at Talk:Timeline of Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections#1987. X1\ (talk) 21:16, 21 January 2019 (UTC)

As this thread has been superceded by 1987 thread, I plan to Archive this soon. X1\ (talk) 22:03, 24 January 2019 (UTC)

References

Links on first mention only

My edit [17] was reverted.[18] I don't see anything controversial in there, just straightening out some links, and a mild copyedit to simplify a sentence ("Barack Obama has a private meeting with Mark Zuckerberg" → "Obama privately meets Mark Zuckerberg"). @X1\: Could you let me restore this, or explain what you disagree with? I don't understand your edit summary talking about another editor: besides its history, similar to AlsoWukai. — JFG ^talk 10:07, 16 January 2019 (UTC)

@JFG: my ES was "inaccurate/incomplete edit summary ... another chimeric aggregate clump of edits, avoid disentangling ... besides its history, similar to AlsoWukai also: diff=prev&oldid=877140484 (ex. at (2017))", which is yet another form of disruptive editing. X1\ (talk) 22:15, 16 January 2019 (UTC)

Right. And I asked you about the part of your edit summary that I did not understand. Repeating exactly what you wrote in the ES does not help me understand it. Besides, could you please answer my question: what was wrong with my edit? — JFG ^talk 23:37, 16 January 2019 (UTC)

• It appears to be rather non-controversial copy editing and adding some wikilinks. I to fail to see the issue here as well. PackMecEng (talk) 16:29, 17 January 2019 (UTC)

A Commons file used on this page has been nominated for deletion

file removed and replaced by inline citation
The following discussion has been closed by Websurfer2. Please do not modify it.
The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page has been nominated for deletion: Letter of intent for the Trump World Tower Moscow project.pdf Participate in the deletion discussion at the nomination page. —Community Tech bot (talk) 18:42, 6 December 2018 (UTC) Per Commons:Deletion requests/File:Letter of intent for the Trump World Tower Moscow project.pdf discussion, User:Magog the Ogre stated: "I've been a bit lazy but I will upload as fair use to English Wikipedia soon." X1\ (talk) 01:21, 10 January 2019 (UTC) @Websurfer2: when this is done could you put a notice here, or just Archive this? X1\ (talk) 22:45, 18 January 2019 (UTC) @X1\: The Magog the Ogre never uploaded it into English Wikipedia, so I added a link to the document source as a citation. Websurfer2 (talk) 02:37, 19 January 2019 (UTC)

Purported made-up citation

Late 2012 or 2013: Manafort becomes acquainted with Assange.

JFG (talk · contribs) removed this item claiming "This story by Harding was made up." This is a strong claim that needs to be substantiated. I restored the item and added "according to a report in The Guardian" to clarify that it is single sourced, and noted Manafort's and WikiLeak's denial. Joe Pompeo's article in Vanity Fair (cited on Hardings's Wikipedia page) points out "both Manafort and WikiLeaks deny it—which doesn’t mean it’s not true." Many principals in the Trump-Russia sphere denied meetings that later were proven real (see Mifsud/Papadopoulos and every Russian the Trump campaign talked to in 2016). For example, Mifsud repeatedly denied knowing Papadopoulos, including in his last interview before he disappeared, even though he hired Papadopoulos and they worked together in the same small office in London for months. Websurfer2 (talk) 22:04, 15 January 2019 (UTC)

That's not the way it works. Content should be left out until a positive consensus to include is obtained. Please self-revert. Here are sources establishing that the Guardian story was a fake, probably planted by an Ecuadorian rival of Rafael Correa, and gleefully relayed by Harding. — JFG ^talk 09:19, 16 January 2019 (UTC)

• Yeah if several sources are saying it was a fabrication on the part of the Guardian why would we repeat it? PackMecEng (talk) 16:34, 17 January 2019 (UTC)

@PackMecEng:@JFG: Considering that Manafort is a proven liar, how are his denials relevant to the veracity of an article about him? Regardless, the Salon article makes valid points that sway me to omitting this item unless more information comes out. In the future, discuss such items here before deleting them for being allegedly being "made up" when the items come from a properly cited RS. "Made up" is a serious allegation for an RS that usually leads to the journalist involved being fired and needs to be backed up with evidence before making the accusation and deletion. Otherwise, the deletion just looks like another one of the WP:DISRUPT incidents plaguing this page. Websurfer2 (talk) 08:55, 19 January 2019 (UTC)

References

2004

Manafort begins his relationship with his patron, Deripaska.

November 22: The Orange Revolution begins, eventually resulting in a revote ordered by the Supreme Court of Ukraine.

ES by @JFG: is "Ukrainian orange revolution is irrelevant here; plus unsourced" 00:54, 16 January 2019 (UTC)

Well, indeed, what's the connection? — JFG ^talk 09:20, 16 January 2019 (UTC)

What does the orange revolution have to do with Russian interference in the 2016 election? PackMecEng (talk) 16:32, 17 January 2019 (UTC)

I will track-down the reference to this context, as time permits, since I stumbled-on it previously. The "flood the zone" overwhelming edit-storm has distracted me from tracking this one down. There are ten active (or re-animated after months) discussion sections, besides the January 17-18 JFG edit storm.‎ X1\ (talk) 00:19, 22 January 2019 (UTC)

See example at page 155, placed in "talk quote block". X1\ (talk) 20:44, 2 February 2019 (UTC)

Added full Template:R for citation. 01:22, 12 February 2019 (UTC)

References

1987

Further information: Trump Tower Moscow

March: Three years after attending the closing with Trump, Bogatin pleads guilty to taking part in a massive gasoline-bootlegging scheme with Russian mobsters. After Bogatin flees the country, the government seizes his five condos at Trump Tower in New York City, saying that he had purchased them to "launder money, to shelter and hide assets."

July: Trump and his wife Ivana, who speaks Russian, make their first visit to the Soviet Union (which included the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR)).

September 1: Trump spends $94,801 on full-page ads in the Boston Globe, Washington Post, and New York Times, calling on NATO countries and other allies, such as Japan, to pay for their protection.

October 22: In what is considered as Trump's first campaign speech, Trump delivers a message about the United States in New Hampshire during a high-profile trip.

ES by JFG is "A campaign speech in 1987 for the 2016 election???" X1\ (talk) 01:08, 16 January 2019 (UTC)

@JFG: did you read the titles of the references?: see " The True Story of Donald Trump's First Campaign Speech — in 1987 ". X1\ (talk) 01:08, 16 January 2019 (UTC)

Yes of course. That was considered a campaign speech for a hypothetical 1988 presidential run, which did not happen. Nothing to do with 2016. — JFG ^talk 09:01, 16 January 2019 (UTC)

@JFG: the RSs make the connection. X1\ (talk) 22:01, 16 January 2019 (UTC)

You have provided two sources for this 1988 event. One of them, Politico, only mentions the 2016 election in passing ("Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign is often derided as a seat-of-the-pants affair, driven by publicity and surrounded by a fog of improvised policy ideas. But to an extent that would shock anyone who wasn’t there, Trump’s speech in 1987 forecast exactly the worldview that would catapult him to surprise GOP front-runner status in this year’s race.", and "This was exactly the man Dunbar wanted to run for president. And he would. In 2016."), and it makes absolutely no connection with Russia. I don't have Abramson's book, but I'd be happy to read a quote in which he connects Trump's 1987 policy speech to Russia's interference in 2016. Otherwise the proposed content is WP:SYNTHESIS and must stay out. — JFG ^talk 23:14, 16 January 2019 (UTC)

@JFG: so, again, we are not to trust what you say, since you stated I have read the sources and made a reasoned case for removing this information.. X1\ (talk) 23:19, 16 January 2019 (UTC)

I have added a reference to "$94,801" September 1987 item, of "TrumpRussia" page 14. X1\ (talk) 21:12, 21 January 2019 (UTC)

I plan to point and consolidated my comments at both #Trump's new found interest in international politics after their time to the Soviet Union and #vision of "Trump Tower Moscow" starting in 1987 to this 1987 section, as stated previously in those sections. X1\ (talk) 00:10, 22 January 2019 (UTC)

I plan to Archive this thread, as I have created #Consolidated discussion / Bogatin story to avoid overlap. X1\ (talk) 20:25, 27 January 2019 (UTC)

I have answered this in the #2000 thread. Now please stop deflecting and show us what the source says. — JFG ^talk 23:32, 16 January 2019 (UTC)

The reference to money spent on the 1987 ad is cool, but it still does not explain how Trump's 1988 speech is related to Russian interference in 2016. Again, lacking a source, this is WP:SYNTHESIS-level speculation and must stay out. — JFG ^talk 11:14, 29 January 2019 (UTC)

References