Email offered line to Kremlin

Operative with ties to NRA urged Trump, Putin meeting

WASHINGTON -- A conservative operative trumpeting his close ties to the National Rifle Association and Russia told a Trump campaign adviser last year that he could arrange a back-channel meeting between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, according to an email sent to the Trump campaign.

A May 2016 email to the campaign adviser, Rick Dearborn, bore the subject line "Kremlin Connection." In it, the NRA member said he wanted the advice of Dearborn and Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama, then a foreign policy adviser to Trump and Dearborn's longtime boss, about how to proceed in connecting the two leaders.

Russia, he wrote, was "quietly but actively seeking a dialogue with the U.S." and would attempt to use the NRA's annual convention in Louisville, Ky., to make "'first contact.'" The email, which was among a trove of campaign-related documents turned over to investigators on Capitol Hill, was described in detail to The New York Times.

The emailed outreach from the conservative operative to Dearborn came around the same time that Russians were trying to make other connections to the Trump campaign. Another contact came through an American advocate for Christian and veterans causes, and together, the outreach shows how, as Trump closed in on the nomination, Russians were using three foundational pillars of the Republican Party -- guns, veterans and Christian conservatives -- to try to make contact with his unorthodox campaign.

Both efforts, made within days of each other, centered on the NRA's annual meeting and appear to involve Alexander Torshin, a deputy governor of the Russian central bank and key figure in Putin's United Russia party, who was instructed to make contact with the campaign.

"Putin is deadly serious about building a good relationship with Mr. Trump," the NRA member and conservative activist, Paul Erickson, wrote. "He wants to extend an invitation to Mr. Trump to visit him in the Kremlin before the election. Let's talk through what has transpired and Senator Sessions's advice on how to proceed."

It is not clear how Dearborn handled the outreach. He forwarded a similar proposal, made through Rick Clay, an advocate for conservative Christian causes, to Jared Kushner, the president's son-in-law and a top campaign aide. Kushner rebuffed the proposal at the time, according to two people who have seen Kushner's email.

Sessions told investigators from the House Intelligence Committee that he did not recall the outreach, according to three people with knowledge of the exchange. Dearborn did not return requests for comment, and Ty Cobb, the White House lawyer dealing with matters related to the investigations, declined to comment. Repeated attempts to reach Erickson were not successful.

"The Kremlin believes that the only possibility of a true reset in this relationship would be with a new Republican White House," Erickson wrote to Dearborn, adding, "Ever since Hillary compared Putin to Hitler, all senior Russian leaders consider her beyond redemption."

Congressional investigators obtained the email as part of their inquiry into Russia's interference in the 2016 presidential election and whether Trump's campaign aided the efforts. Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California, the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, penned letters to several Trump campaign foreign policy advisers last week asking for all documents related to the NRA, Erickson, Torshin, Clay, Dearborn and others.

A Section on 12/04/2017

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