YEAH, BUT LET'S HEAR FROM THE PRO-PUTIN SIDE...:

A Russian deputy prime minister secretly met with oligarch Oleg Deripaska to discuss US relations after Paul Manafort reportedly offered Mr Deripaska briefings on the Trump campaign, according to videos discovered by a Russian opposition activist. 

While a recorded snippet of Mr Deripaska's alleged conversation with Sergei Prikhodko, deputy prime minister and head of the government executive office, does not specifically mention Donald Trump, the fact of their meeting on a yacht raises further questions of collusion with Vladimir Putin's government.  [...]

Mr Prikhodko has been a key Kremlin figure. A diplomat who became an aide to president Boris Yeltsin in 1997, he was in charge of foreign policy in Putin's first administration and served as a presidential aide until 2012.

Mr Deripaska hired Mr Manafort on a $10 million annual contract in 2006 after the Washington insider proposed a campaign to "greatly benefit the Putin government" by influencing US politics and media, Associated Press reported last year.

Tweet   @brothersjudd