Welcome to Rabbit Hole, a breaking-news analysis that helps you get smart on the one story everyone’s obsessing over—for Beast Inside members only.
The most anticipated book of the year comes out tomorrow and it holds at least the promise of answering many of the questions that everyone has been trying to answer for the past three years. While the Special Counsel’s office has cleared up some issues over the course of 34 indictments and a mountain of court filings, there are still important gaps in the public record.
Were all those Russians really working for Putin? We’ve learned about a slew of Russian nationals and their acolytes popping out of the woodwork to claim that they could set up meetings between Trump and Putin. Trump lawyer Michael Cohen fielded a pitch from a Russian who offered “political synergy” with the Kremlin and the chance to set up a meeting between Trump and Putin. Joseph Mifsud, the mystery professor who told George Papadopoulos that Russia had hacked Hillary Clinton back in April 2016, showed off a fictitious Putin niece to the Trump campaign advisor and bragged that he could set up a meeting with Putin for Trump. The Agalarov family, wealthy friends of Trump who helped him put on his Miss Universe pageant in Mosocow, midwifed a meeting between senior Trump campaign officials and Natalia Veselnitskaya, a lawyer who had worked for Russian prosecutors, on the promise of dirt about Hillary Clinton, courtesy of the Russian government.