NO COLLUSION!

The Friends of Russia money laundering group.

I'm waiting for His Lardship to say he never met Arron Banks.

Arron Banks, a British financier who bankrolled the campaign for Britain to leave the European Union, has long bragged about his “boozy six-hour lunch” with the Russian ambassador eight months before the vote.

Some also wondered about Mr. Banks’s Russian-born wife and their custom license plate, X MI5 SPY, after the British intelligence agency, MI5.

[...]

Now, a leaked record of some of Mr. Banks’s emails suggest that he and his closest adviser had a more engaged relationship with Russian diplomats than he has disclosed.

While Mr. Banks was spending more than eight million British pounds to promote a break with the European Union — an outcome the Russians eagerly hoped for — his contacts at the Russian Embassy in London were opening the door to at least three potentially lucrative investment opportunities in Russian-owned gold or diamond mines.

One of Mr. Banks’s business partners, and a fellow backer of Britain’s exit from the European Union, or Brexit, took the Russians up on at least one of the deals.

Much as in Washington, where investigations are underway into the possibility that Donald J. Trump’s campaign may have cooperated with the Russians, Britain is now grappling with whether Moscow tried to use its close ties with any British citizens to promote Brexit.

In Washington, the investigators for the special prosecutor, Robert S. Mueller III, and Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee have also obtained records of Mr. Banks’s communications, including some with Russian diplomats and about Russian business deals.

And they have taken a special interest in close ties Mr. Banks and other Brexit leaders built to the Trump campaign.

On Nov. 12, 2016, Mr. Banks met President-elect Trump in Trump Tower. Upon his return to London, Mr. Banks had another lunch with the Russian ambassador where they discussed the Trump visit.

  NYT

Mr. Mueller's team has a viper's nest to unravel.

The first contacts between Mr. Banks and the Russian Embassy came in September 2015, during a conference for the pro-Brexit United Kingdom Independent Party, or UKIP.

He and [his media advisor, Andrew] Wigmore met a Russian diplomat, Alexander Udod, who was later among a list of 23 suspected spies expelled from Britain after the recent poisoning of a former Russia spy, Sergei V. Skripal, on British soil.

In the interview, Mr. Banks said he and Mr. Wigmore had asked Mr. Udod if they could meet the ambassador, “because we thought it would be interesting.”

"Interesting."

At the first meeting with the ambassador, over lunch, Mr. Banks recalled in his memoir, the ambassador served him a special bottle of vodka that he claimed was made for Stalin.

And Banks believed him. "Easy mark, here, Vladimir."

In August, Mr. Banks had lunch with the Russian ambassador and discussed the Trump campaign. At their lunch after Mr. Trump’s victory in November, the two men discussed what role Jeff Sessions, then a senator, might play in the cabinet, according to people who have reviewed the records of his emails.

Mr. Banks, though, said he doubted that the Russians had cultivated him for reasons other than routine trade promotion.

"Very easy."

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.