The attempts by Hillary Clinton's campaign to paint Donald Trump as the candidate of President Vladimir Putin has led to an intense search for the Republican nominee's Russian connections. Not much has turned up. But Russian oligarchs are among the Clinton campaign donors.
As of today, Trump's links to Russia are tenuous. His adviser Carter Page once worked for the natural gas giant Gazprom. His campaign manager Paul Manafort once worked for the deposed Ukrainian president, Viktor Yanukovych, who is often described as pro-Russian even though he spent most of his career trying to set Russia and the European Union against each other. Manafort also had unsuccessful dealings with a Russian billionaire, Oleg Deripaska, who is still trying to recover millions of dollars from him. Trump himself once sold a very expensive house in Florida to Dmitri Rybolovlev, who made billions selling Russian potash. "I mean I do that," Trump said on ABC on Sunday. "I have lots of condos."
No prominent Russian-Americans have surfaced among Trump's donors. Even Leonard Blavatnik, the owner of Warner Music, who made most of his fortune — estimated by Bloomberg Billionaires at $16.2 billion — in Russia in oil and other industrial assets and who sprinkled donations generously among Republican candidates, has not given anything to Trump. His wife, Emily, has pitched in $33,400 to the Democratic Party and the maximum for a personal contribution, $2,700, to Clinton.
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