The second day after Trump’s election finds multiple Russian officials communicating to the media that “the Russian government … maintained contacts with Trump’s ‘immediate entourage’ during the campaign.”74 Russian deputy foreign minister Sergey Ryabkov speaks at slightly more length on the issue, telling a journalist, “I cannot say that all [of Trump’s entourage], but a number of them maintained contacts with Russian representatives.… I don’t say that all of them, but a whole array of them supported contacts with Russian representatives.”
