We know that the Russian government worked in 2016 to help get Donald Trump elected president.
The question that remains, however, is whether Trump or any of his associates offered any kind of boon to Russia in exchange for its assistance.
The Daily Beast reports that special counsel Robert Mueller "is preparing court filings that are expected to detail Trump associates’ conversations about sanctions relief—and spell out how those offers and counter-proposals were characterized to top figures on the campaign and in the administration."
The report, which cites three separate sources, claims that "several individuals in Trump’s inner circle were developing their own plans to put pressure on other parts of the government to roll back" sanctions against Russia that were implemented in retaliation for Moscow's interference in the 2016 presidential election.
One person who talked about Russian sanctions during the transition period in 2016 was former national security adviser Michael Flynn, who is being sentenced on Tuesday for lying to the FBI about his contacts with former Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak. The report does not name any of the other individuals who tried helping Russia get sanctions relief.
If the filings are made public, they could provide a clearer picture of what Russia hoped to get from the Trump administration in exchange for its assistance in getting the president elected.
"[Mueller's] continued focus on the evidence that members of the Trump campaign discussed sanction relief with Russians shows that his evidence of a criminal violation continues to sharpen," Paul Pelletier, a former senior Department of Justice official, tells the Daily Beast. "This has to come as especially bad news for the President."
