The beauty queens, the mansions and the secret meetings: Trump’s tangled Russian web

Trump has assiduously courted Russian oligarchs with a view to going into business with them

Donald Trump

As recently as last Thursday, US president Donald Trump has insisted that he has “nothing to do with Russia” and that, “to the best of my knowledge, no person who I deal with does”.

It is one of almost two dozen denials that have been issued by him or his surrogates since last July, when evidence of Russian meddling in the US election first came to light. But it wasn’t always so. In ...