UNMASKING RUSSIA: Trump’s Mayflower Address
Unmasking Russia! Trump’s Mayflower AddressChapter 17 of our series on how Russia attacked the 2016 U.S. election to help Trump win.
Last week, we wrote about Operation Crossfire Hurricane, the FBI’s counterintelligence investigation into whether anyone connected to Donald Trump’s campaign had cooperated with Russia’s election attack, and how Carter Page, with his long trail of Kremlin entanglements, further deepened those suspicions. This week, we turn to Trump’s first major foreign-policy address. It was organized by Dmitri Simes, who would later be charged with funneling Kremlin funds and signaling an openness to Moscow, while quietly aligning Trump’s candidacy with Moscow’s strategic ambitions. On April 27, 2016, in the gilded ballroom of Washington’s Mayflower Hotel, Trump delivered what would become one of the most consequential foreign-policy speeches of the 2016 campaign — an address that, in retrospect, reads as an early, unmistakable articulation of a worldview aligned with the strategic objectives of Vladimir Putin. Before an audience of diplomats, policymakers, and Beltway insiders, Trump unveiled a sharply defined “America First” doctrine that repudiated decades of bipartisan consensus on alliances, embraced a transactional understanding of global commitments, and signaled a willingness to reset relations with Russia at a moment when Moscow was illegally occupying Crimea, waging a bloody war across eastern Ukraine, intervening militarily in Syria to support Assad’s atrocities and crimes of aggression, and actively attacking the U.S. election to install Trump. The event was hosted by the Center for the National Interest, a Washington think tank led by the Russian-born foreign-policy operative Simes, whose proximity to the Kremlin had long been an open secret in Washington and who had for years served as a soft-power channel for Moscow’s operations. Sitting in the front row was Sergei Kislyak, Russia’s ambassador to the United States and one of the central figures in the Kremlin’s influence operations, a man whose mission in Washington extended far beyond ceremonial diplomacy and whose presence at this event would later take on significance as the full scope of Russia’s 2016 attack came into view. The idea for Trump to deliver a formal foreign-policy address in Washington did not come from the campaign’s policy staff but from its innermost circle. Trump’s son-in-law and close advisor, Jared Kushner, later told investigators that the event had been his idea and that he had overseen every stage of its planning, from the initial outreach to the Center for the National Interest to the final layout of the room. In late March 2016, he contacted Simes to ask whether CNI would host the speech. Simes — long viewed in Washington foreign-policy circles with quiet unease because of his deep ties to Moscow — agreed immediately. Within days, he and Kushner were in steady contact, discussing both the logistics of the event and the themes Trump should emphasize. CNI, publisher of The National Interest, had spent years promoting a brand of foreign-policy “realism” that aligned with the Kremlin’s strategic goals. Simes himself had appeared with Putin at the 2013 Valdai Club forum in Russia, where he praised Putin’s “tough stance” in Syria and spoke about the possibility of a new opening in U.S.- Russia relations. Now, that worldview was poised to find a powerful new vehicle in the presidential candidate preparing to take the stage at the Mayflower. The Mueller investigation later detailed Simes’s direct interactions with Kushner throughout the campaign, including instances where Simes provided Kushner with Russia-related talking points for Trump to use. By early April, the think tank was no longer simply offering to host the speech but helping shape it. Stephen Miller, Trump’s policy aide, provided an initial outline, and in parallel, Carter Page offered feedback on an early draft of Trump’s foreign-policy remarks. From that point forward, Simes, CNI Executive Director Paul Saunders, and CNI advisory board member Richard Burt reviewed the evolving drafts, returning detailed revisions that emphasized themes long associated with the Kremlin’s preferred framework for U.S. relations, including the need for a “new beginning” with Russia. Burt — a former U.S. ambassador to Germany who at the time was earning hundreds of thousands of dollars lobbying for Nord Stream 2, the controversial Gazprom-linked pipeline that would deepen Europe’s energy dependence on Moscow — later acknowledged that he had helped craft Trump’s address and that portions of his draft survived into the final text. The fact that individuals with direct financial and political ties to Russian interests shaped the content of a major presidential candidate’s first foreign-policy speech is not speculative, and the Mueller investigation cemented it in the public record. The logistics behind the event followed the same deliberate pattern. CNI had initially planned to hold the speech at the National Press Club, but as media attention intensified, Kushner demanded a larger and more controlled venue. Simes proposed the Mayflower — a hotel steeped in Washington political history — and Kushner agreed. On April 25, Saunders booked both the grand ballroom and an adjoining room for a VIP reception. The guest list, curated by Simes and his team, blended Trump loyalists with select Washington insiders, foreign ambassadors, and longtime CNI associates — a mix that included Senator Jeff Sessions, chairman of Trump’s newly formed National Security Advisory Committee, former ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad, conservative activist Grover Norquist, several House members, and ambassadors from Italy, Singapore, the Philippines, and, most notably, Russia. That the entire operation ran through Simes only heightened its significance. For decades, officials in Republican and Democratic administrations had viewed Simes with quiet concern, noting his unusually close relationships with Russian officials and oligarchs, and his pattern of advancing policy positions that tracked with Moscow’s strategic objectives. Those concerns proved well-founded. The VIP reception that preceded the speech was equally revealing. One week before the event, Simes personally invited Kislyak and assured him he would have an opportunity to meet Trump. Kislyak was not a peripheral diplomatic figure but one of Moscow’s most seasoned operatives – a diplomat whose Washington portfolio intertwined ceremonial duties with political influence and intelligence objectives. His mission in 2016 was to assess the U.S. political landscape, cultivate relationships, and report potential openings to Moscow. When Trump entered the reception room, the organizers formed a receiving line. Sessions introduced Trump to members of Congress; then Simes took over, personally introducing CNI’s selected guests, including Kislyak. The exchange was brief and cordial, but Kislyak listened intently, and moments later told Kushner, “We like what your candidate is saying… it is refreshing,” a clear signal that Moscow understood Trump’s message and viewed it favorably. What would eventually emerge from U.S. intelligence assessments showed that these interactions were not the benign diplomatic pleasantries Sessions and others later portrayed. According to U.S. intercepts reported in 2017, Kislyak told his superiors in Moscow that he and Sessions had discussed campaign-related matters during this same period – including Trump’s positions on issues central to Russia, from sanctions policy to the future of U.S.-Russia relations. Those intelligence reports contradicted Sessions’s repeated public denials that he had ever discussed campaign topics with Russian officials. U.S. officials told The Washington Post that Kislyak was known for accurately relaying his conversations to the Kremlin, and his descriptions reinforced what the Mayflower encounter already suggested: even seemingly brief exchanges with Trump’s advisers carried substantive political meaning for Moscow. There is no evidence of a private or substantive Trump–Kislyak conversation that day. Everything occurred in public view. But Russian operations do not depend on secrecy when a target has already shown clear receptivity. By the time the Mayflower event took place, Trump had repeatedly signaled positions favorable to Moscow, and Kislyak would have recognized that the groundwork for cultivation was already in place. Kislyak did not need a clandestine meeting; he needed to watch Trump’s speech, assess his posture, and report back that the candidate’s worldview was already closely tracking with the Kremlin’s preferred restructuring of the international order. Trump’s speech itself confirmed that alignment. Reading from a teleprompter, he delivered a sweeping condemnation of the U.S. foreign-policy establishment, attacked NATO allies for insufficient defense spending, and warned that the United States might no longer uphold its commitments if allies did not pay more. Then he pivoted to Russia, declaring that the United States and Russia were not bound to be adversaries and that an easing of tensions was “absolutely possible.” He spoke of shared interests, suggested a reset, and insisted that the “cycle of hostility” must end. In Moscow — where analysts were following Trump’s public statements very closely — this articulation of a new reset was a strategic gift. What followed in the immediate aftermath of the Mayflower speech reveals with remarkable clarity how Moscow interpreted the signals emanating from Trump’s campaign. On the very same day that Trump delivered this foreign-policy address — an address that Russian officials would have understood as a public overture — George Papadopoulos sent emails to senior campaign officials describing the speech as “great” and urging them once again to pursue a meeting between Trump and Putin, a proposal that aligned perfectly with the Kremlin’s ongoing attempts to open channels into the campaign and underscored just how rapidly the campaign’s Russia-related outreach accelerated. At the same time, Maria Butina and Alexander Torshin were already deep into a years-long infiltration campaign inside Republican political circles – an operation that began in 2014, accelerated through 2015 with their NRA-focused outreach, and by the spring of 2016 had become an active, well-established channel in Moscow’s broader influence objectives. What this moment underscored was how clearly the signals emerging from the Trump campaign aligned with influence efforts Russia had been cultivating for years. In July 2015, those signals were already unmistakable. That month, Butina, publicly presenting herself as a gun-rights activist while operating at the direction of senior Kremlin and intelligence officials, asked Trump whether he would maintain sanctions on Russia. His response, that sanctions “would not be necessary” and that he would “get along” with Putin, offered the clearest public indication yet that he was open to the reset Moscow sought. That same year, The National Interest, published by Simes’s organization, gave Butina a platform to amplify her message as she expanded her outreach inside Republican circles, reinforcing an influence channel already well underway. And in June 2015, she delivered her most explicit public overture when she authored an article for The National Interest titled “The Bear and the Elephant,” arguing that Russia’s interests were naturally aligned with those of the Republican Party — directly echoing the message she was privately relaying to Moscow. Also, news reports would later reveal that CNI arranged meetings for Butina with senior U.S. economic officials, including at the Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve – efforts that paralleled her covert penetration operation. From there, Kislyak’s role only grew. In the weeks following Trump’s election victory, he met Kushner at Trump Tower, where Kushner asked about establishing a secure, secret backchannel using Russian diplomatic facilities – a proposal that alarmed U.S. intelligence officials who intercepted Kislyak’s communications with Moscow. At the same time, National Security Adviser-designate Michael Flynn was speaking with Kislyak repeatedly, including on December 29, 2016, the day the Obama administration imposed sweeping new sanctions and expelled Russian operatives in response to the Kremlin’s election interference. Flynn urged Kislyak not to retaliate, signaling that the incoming administration would take a far softer line. Russia complied, a move that immediately drew the attention of U.S. counterintelligence. Flynn later lied to the FBI about his calls with Kislyak, concealing the extent of the transition team’s engagement with Moscow. Also that December, Kushner, Flynn, and Kislyak discussed arranging a meeting between a Trump representative and a Kremlin-linked “Russian contact” in a third country. In early January 2017, that concept materialized when Erik Prince — acting as an unofficial emissary for the Trump transition – traveled to the Seychelles to secretly meet Kirill Dmitriev, the Kremlin’s messenger, bag man, and head of Russia’s sovereign wealth fund, in what U.S. officials later described as an effort to establish a secret communications conduit outside the reach of American intelligence agencies. This Seychelles channel mirrored the same objectives raised in Kushner’s earlier Trump Tower meeting. The most extraordinary moment came months later, on May 10, 2017. One day after Trump fired FBI Director James Comey, he hosted Kislyak and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in the Oval Office. The meeting was closed to American media and only open to TASS, the Russian-run news agency long used as a cover for Russian spies. Photographs released by TASS showed Trump laughing with Lavrov and Kislyak. Accounts later revealed that Trump not only told the Russians that firing Comey had relieved “great pressure” on him with respect to the Russia investigation and referred to the former FBI director as a “nut job,” but also disclosed highly classified Israeli intelligence about ISIS operations during the same Oval Office meeting — an extraordinary breach that stunned U.S. and allied intelligence services. To have Russia’s top diplomat and its Washington operative inside the Oval Office under those circumstances, with American journalists barred and only Russian state media present, was unprecedented. Last September 2024, long after the Mayflower event had faded from the news cycle, the Justice Department unsealed two federal indictments against Simes and his wife, Anastasia, charging them with laundering money and violating U.S. sanctions to benefit Channel One Russia, the Kremlin’s flagship propaganda network. Prosecutors alleged that the couple received more than one million dollars in compensation – including a Moscow apartment stipend, a driver, and personal staff – in exchange for their services. By the time those charges were announced, Simes and his wife were already living in Russia, safely outside the reach of U.S. law enforcement. The Mayflower speech, on its own, did not establish a conspiracy. Yet it stood as another unmistakable Russian connection, a moment in which Trump articulated a foreign-policy worldview that Moscow greeted with clear satisfaction, prompting operatives such as Kislyak and Butina to reinforce their ongoing efforts. His remarks, shaped in part by the Kremlin-aligned Simes, conveyed that a warmer U.S.–Russia relationship would be welcome should Trump win. Moscow received that message clearly and proceeded to increase its operations to help ensure that a Trump victory would become a reality.
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