Former Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about talking in April 2016 to a professor with close ties to the Kremlin who told Papadopoulos that Moscow had "dirt" on Hillary Clinton. The professor told him about thousands of emails the Russians had from the Clinton campaign.
Donald Trump Jr., Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner, and former campaign chairman Paul Manafort met with a Russian attorney at Trump Tower in June 2016 after being promised "dirt" on Clinton. The campaign later communicated to meeting organizers that they were disappointed they didn't get what they were promised.
In July 2017, the president and White House advisers put together a misleading statement about the nature of the Trump Tower meeting, saying that it was for the purpose of discussing Russian adoptions.
The Trump campaign knew through Papadopoulos that the Russians had obtained thousands of emails from the Clinton campaign. Then-candidate Trump publicly asked the Russians in July 2016 to hack Clinton and find her "30,000 emails that are missing" from the personal email server she used while secretary of State. WikiLeaks began posting emails from the Clinton campaign in October, just weeks before the November election.
Former White House national security adviser Michael Flynn held secret conversations with Russian officials in December 2016 during the presidential transition period, promising to undermine sanctions imposed against Russia by the Obama administration for meddling in the U.S. election. Flynn pleaded guilty late last year to lying to the FBI about those conversations.
"All of this is evidence of collusion," said Schiff, a former federal prosecutor. "Now, I've never said that there was proof beyond a reasonable doubt. That's for Bob Mueller to decide. But to say there's no evidence of collusion, you'd have to ignore all this."
Schiff: 'Ample evidence' of collusion between Trump campaign, Russians
