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Even before Trump took office in January, questions arose about the numerous links between his campaign and Russian officials. Prosecutors working for special counsel Robert Mueller and congressional committees are reportedly investigating whether campaign officials sought out cooperation with Russia or accepted offers of cooperation. Among the areas under scrutiny: whether the campaign secretly helped Russian "trolls" target specific voters with propaganda attacking the Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton, in misleading Facebook ads and fake news stories.

Yet out in the open and indisputable the entire time was Trump's daily praise of WikiLeaks in the final weeks of the campaign, starting right after the Oct. 7 release of the "Access Hollywood" tape that seemed capable of sinking his candidacy. That tape contained his boast that he could grab women by the genitals because of his celebrity. WikiLeaks began releasing a new batch of damaging-to-Democrats emails within an hour after the tape story broke, and Trump began talking up those emails in his campaign speeches days later.

"WikiLeaks! I love WikiLeaks," Trump proclaimed at a Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, rally on Oct. 10, 2016.

"You see so much from these WikiLeaks," he told a Panama City, Florida, audience the next day.

"This WikiLeaks stuff is unbelievable," he said the following day at an Ocala, Florida, rally. "You've got to read it!"

In total, Trump referred to WikiLeaks by name 137 times in public appearances and media interviews between Oct. 10 and Election Day, according to PolitiFact. There were another two dozen times when he referred to the emails but did not name the entity.

During that whole time, Trump had access to U.S. intelligence stating that WikiLeaks was acting as an agent of Russian spy agencies, which had stolen the material from Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta and the Democratic National Committee.

Donald Trump said Wednesday he would consider recognizing Crimea as Russian territory and lifting the sanctions against the country if he's elected president.

Donald Trump invited Russia to hack Hillary Clinton's emails on Wednesday, asking one of America's longstanding geopolitical adversaries to find "the 30,000 emails that are missing" from the personal server she used during her time as secretary of state.

"I will tell you this, Russia: If you're listening, I hope you're able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing," the Republican nominee said at a news conference in Florida. "I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press."

Trump's comments set off an immediate uproar from the Clinton campaign, which blasted the remarks as a threat to national security.

"This has to be the first time that a major presidential candidate has actively encouraged a foreign power to conduct espionage against his political opponent," Hillary for America policy adviser Jake Sullivan said in a statement. 

"Clearly the chances of sanctions being lifted on Russia have risen substantially," Charles Robertson, Renaissance Capital's global chief economist, said. "That would improve the investment climate for Russia."

Russia's rouble currency and stocks gained on the Trump election victory. Ukraine's dollar-denominated bonds tumbled to multi-month lows, reflecting pessimism about what a Trump presidency means for the divided and indebted country.

The Kremlin had been bracing for fraught relations if the White House had been won by Hillary Clinton - a politician Putin once accused of stirring up protests against him and who state media portrayed as an anti-Russian warmonger.

Trump was portrayed in a more positive light. Putin described him as "very talented" and in Kremlin-backed media he was cast as a plucky political maverick.

Still, few in Moscow had believed the Republican candidate would win, apart from a group of Trump-supporting nationalists who gathered in a Moscow bar decorated with a triptych of Putin, Trump and French Front National leader Marine Le Pen.

Once it became clear he had won, Russia's parliament erupted in applause and Putin told foreign ambassadors he was ready to fully restore ties with Washington.

It was Dec. 29, 2016, and President Barack Obama had just imposed sanctions against Russia for that country's alleged interference in the election. [...]

Ruddy said in an interview that he had a prior conversation in which Trump was "very excited" about the prospect of resetting relations with Russia. The issue didn't come up that day. Trump seemed relaxed, Ruddy said, and returned to the library, where he met with health care executives.

That night, Trump stood with King and greeted reporters in the doorway of Mar-a-Lago's ornate stone entrance. He rejected the idea there was a need to punish Russia, saying, "I think we ought to get on with our lives."

The next morning, the Obama White House announced it was imposing the new sanctions on Russian entities and individuals and ordered 35 Russian diplomats to leave the country.

Russia "intended to influence the election, erode faith in U.S. democratic institutions, sow doubt about the integrity of our electoral process, and undermine confidence in the institutions of the U.S. government," the White House said in a statement.

Many of Trump's top advisers were absent as the president-elect absorbed the news. The president-elect's son-in-law and adviser, Jared Kushner, was on vacation in Hawaii with his wife, Ivanka Trump. Vice President-elect Mike Pence, who was in charge of the transition, was at home in Indiana and did not call into the foreign policy briefing on that day, a spokeswoman said.

McFarland was slated to brief Trump, according to a schedule of his day provided to reporters. It is not known what they discussed.

Like Flynn, McFarland supported the idea of resetting relations with Russia. A former foreign policy and Pentagon aide in the Nixon, Ford and Reagan administrations, she wrote in a 2013 Fox News commentary "Vladimir Putin is the one who really deserves that Nobel Peace Prize," referring to Russia's role in Syria at the time.

At some point on Dec. 29, Flynn called McFarland to strategize a plan about what to tell Kislyak about the sanctions, according to court documents and people familiar with her role. The two "discussed that the members of the Presidential Transition Team at Mar-a-Lago did not want Russia to escalate the situation," according to court filings.

Flynn then immediately called Kislyak, urging Russia "not escalate the situation," according to the documents. After he spoke to the Russian ambassador, he called back McFarland and briefed her on the discussion.

President Donald Trump's administration moved quickly to try and lift economic sanctions on Russia and other punishments former President Barack Obama had put in place as soon as it took office in January, according to multiple sources who have spoken with Yahoo News.

"There was serious consideration by the White House to unilaterally rescind the sanctions," according to Dan Fried, who retired in February as Coordinator for Sanctions Policy at the State Department.

Fried told veteran investigative journalist Michael Isikoff, a former national investigative correspondent for NBC News and Newsweek alumnus, that in the early weeks of the administration he got several "panicky" calls from U.S. officials. They asked: "Please, my God, can't you stop this?"

President Trump's former national security adviser Michael Flynn told a former business associate that sanctions against Russia would be "ripped up" early in the new presidency, according to a whistle-blower's account made public on Wednesday.

On Thursday The New York Times revealed that over the summer Trump urged members of the Senate--including those leading the Senate Intelligence Committee's Russia investigation--to wrap up their investigations. [...]

Writing about a rare private meeting between the president and his top law enforcement official in February, Comey said Trump tried to pressure him into "letting Flynn go." The request came after Flynn misled Vice President Mike Pence about contact he had had with the Russian ambassador. Trump made a similar request to him in a phone call, Comey said.

During closed testimony before Burr's committee and in separate interviews with Mueller's legal team in June, two top Trump administration intelligence officials said the president approached them to defend him publicly against the investigations, multiple sources told CNN.

Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats and National Security Agency Director Mike Rogers said Trump asked them to state publicly that his campaign did not work with Russia to interfere in the election. A report by The Wall Street Journal in June cited sources who said Trump also called Rogers to state publicly that there is no evidence his campaign colluded with Russia.

Officials who spoke with The Washington Post in June said that Trump applied pressure to CIA Director Mike Pompeo in March when he kept Pompeo and Coats behind after a meeting to complain about Comey's handling of the Russia investigation. Coats reportedly told other officials that Trump had asked for an intervention. It is not known whether Trump asked Pompeo directly to intervene.

Trump's request came after Comey testified before Congress that the FBI was investigating whether Trump's campaign worked with Russia during the election campaign.

"Who believes at this point he didn't obstruct justice?" former Department of Justice public affairs director Matthew Miller‏ wrote on Twitter Thursday.

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