FBI and DoJ unsuccessfully tried to turn ‘Putin’s oligarch’ Deripaska into an informant on Russian organized crime and Trump’s 2016 campaign. Deripaska then notified the Kremlin.
NY Times has the story:
… In one dramatic encounter, F.B.I. agents appeared unannounced and uninvited at a home Mr. Deripaska maintains in New York and pressed him on whether Paul Manafort, a former business partner of his who went on to become chairman of Mr. Trump’s campaign, had served as a link between the campaign and the Kremlin.
The attempt to flip Mr. Deripaska was part of a broader, clandestine American effort to gauge the possibility of gaining cooperation from roughly a half-dozen of Russia’s richest men, nearly all of whom, like Mr. Deripaska, depend on President Vladimir V. Putin to maintain their wealth, the officials said.
Two of the players in the effort were Bruce G. Ohr, the Justice Department official who has recently become a target of attacks by Mr. Trump, and Christopher Steele, the former British spy who compiled a dossier of purported links between the Trump campaign and Russia. ….
In NY in Sept 2016, FBI agents investigating ties between Russia and Trump’s campaign showed up at Deripaska’s door to ask if Manafort served as a link to the Kremlin while campaign chairman. Perhaps they were face-to-face with Manafort’s link to Russia, Manafort had offered private briefings to his previous employer, Deripaska.
Trump has been attacking Ohr and threatening his security clearance because Ohr, the Russian organized crime and racketeering expert who investigated the Russian mafia, also investigated Trump’s and Manafort’s Russia connections.