AdamSmith Posted January 4, 2018 Posted January 4, 2018 The noose tightens. This is big. Russian Social Media Giant Gave Info on Trump Contacts to Senate Probe The Russian social media giant Vkontakte has given information to Senate investigators about contacts between an executive at the company and the Trump campaign, TPM has learned. The Russian tech firm appears to be cooperating with the Senate Judiciary Committee by providing documents related to communication between Russian nationals and Dan Scavino, a Trump campaign staffer who now works as the White House social media director. Vkontakte, a social network similar to Facebook, ranks as the most popular website in Russia and is owned by the publicly traded Mail.Ru. The nature of the documents obtained by the Committee isn’t clear, but previous reports in the press have detailed emails exchanged in 2016 between Konstantin Sidorkov, VKontakte’s director of partnership marketing, and Scavino. The Washington Post first reported on an email exchange last month, citing “people familiar with the messages.” Sidorkov emailed Scavino and Donald Jr., offering to help make Trump’s campaign “the top news in Russia,” the Post reported. In response, Scavino expressed interest, but it isn’t clear that the conversation progressed beyond that introduction. The Post added that Scavino’s liaison with Vkontakte was Rob Goldstone, the music publicist who also brokered the Trump Tower meeting between Donald Trump, Jr, and a Kremlin-linked lawyer. On Wednesday, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, sent letters to Scavino and Brad Parscale, the Trump campaign’s digital director, asking about the campaign’s contacts with Russia. “[T]he Committee has received information that you may have corresponded with Russian nationals regarding Trump campaign social media efforts,” Feinstein wrote to Scavino. Vkontakte is broadly used in Russia, but its English-language users tend to be politically aligned far to the right of the mainstream, the Post reported... Cont.: http://talkingpointsmemo.com/muckraker/russian-social-media-giant-gave-info-on-trump-contacts-to-senate-probe Quote
