New revelations seem to support one of the Dossier's key claims:
Meanwhile,
on Dec. 9, 2016, a month after the election, Russia made a deal with Qatar to sell 19.5 percent of Rosneft. Reuters reported at the time:
The privatization deal, which Rosneft Chief Executive Igor Sechin called the largest in Russia’s history, was announced by Rosneft in a meeting with President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday. Its success suggests the lure of taking a share in one of the world’s biggest oil companies outweighs the risks associated with Western sanctions imposed on Russia over the conflict in Ukraine. Rosneft had been under pressure to secure a sale of the 19.5 percent stake to help replenish state coffers, hit by an economic slowdown driven by weak oil prices and exacerbated by sanctions.
The deal falls squarely in the middle of a time when Kushner, Michael Flynn, and Page were communicating with Russians in ways that would later prove very embarrassing and potentially suspicious. Here is that timeline, which I initially compiled for my blog in June:
Dec. 1:
Just eight days before this oil megadeal, Flynn and Kushner met Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak at Trump Tower, and Kushner proposed a secret communication link with the Kremlin through the Russian embassy. After it was revealed in the press and he was interrogated by congressional investigators, Kushner acknowledged that he was seeking to offer the Russians a “secure line” to the transition team. Congressional investigators would later be curious as to whether or not this back channel might have been intended for the purposes of finding someone to help bail out his family’s real estate company.
Dec. 8:
Carter Page—as he later confirmed in his own congressional testimony—meets with Rosneft executives, and then flies to London to discuss new business opportunities in Kazakhstan with Gazprom officials.
Dec. 9:
The “largest oil deal in Russia’s history” is announced.
Dec. 13:
Kushner meets Sergey Gorkov, who chairs Russia’s government-owned VE Bank (VEB) and is Putin’s close confidant. Analysts have described VEB as Putin’s “private slush fund,” a source of money independent from official Russia budgeting. VEB is under strict U.S. sanctions.
Dec. 14:
Gorkov reportedly immediately flies to Japan to meet with Putin.
Dec. 29:
Obama orders new Russian sanctions for election hacking and interference.
On the same day: Flynn calls Kislyak five times about Russian sanctions. Trump tweets about Putin the next day, calling him “very smart” for not responding to Obama’s sanctions before Trump has had a chance to transition into office.
The Rosneft sale was right after Trump’s victory but before the inauguration. It was also right after Kushner’s push for a secret communications link to the Kremlin through the Russia embassy that U.S. intelligence couldn’t access, and right before Kushner’s meeting with Putin’s banker and confidant Gorkov.
Again, while Page has denied meeting with Rosneft boss Sechin, who is strictly limited by U.S. sanctions, he acknowledged he “had a brief lunch with Andrey Baranov.”
“Mr. Sechin is under sanctions, is he not?” Schiff asked Page during congressional questioning. “And as someone working on investor relations for a CEO who is under sanctions, would it be advantageous for that head of investor relations [Baranov] to see those sanctions go away?”