When one of Simes’s key Kremlin contacts in the United States, Maria Butina, is arrested in Virginia in August 2018, the reaction of the Trump campaign’s trusted Russia adviser is telling.207 Within a matter of days, Simes, a man the Washington Post calls “the Washington expert most well connected in Moscow and whose organization [CNI] provides a unique link between the two cities’ elite,” leaves the United States for Moscow—and a job running a political talk show on a Kremlin-owned television network for a mid-six-figure salary.
