Michael Caputo

Michael R. Caputo (born March 24, 1962) is a Republican political strategist, and media consultant. He became enamored with Ronald Reagan while serving in the military and became a Republican, later working for politicians including Jack Kemp. He worked for the Reagan Administration with Oliver North, then as assistant director of the House of Representatives Gallery of the Radio and Television Correspondents' Association. He left that role to serve as director of media services on the campaign for President George H.W. Bush in the 1992 United States presidential election. Caputo moved to Russia in 1994 after the fall of the Soviet Union, and was an adviser to Boris Yeltsin and helped elect Yeltsin to a second term as President of Russia. He worked for Gazprom Media in 2000 where he helped improve the image of Vladimir Putin in the U.S. He moved back to the U.S. and founded a public relations company, and then moved to Ukraine to work on a candidate's campaign for parliament. Caputo worked as the campaign manager for Carl Paladino in his 2010 bid for Governor of New York. In 2016, Caputo joined the Donald Trump campaign, and was put in charge of communications for New York. He left the campaign after publicly voicing his approval for the replacement of campaign manager Corey Lewandowski with Paul Manafort. Caputo was investigated by the United States House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence as part of their investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 US presidential election. In May 2016, Caputo and Roger Stone met with Henry Greenberg, a Russian national who claimed to have damaging information about Hillary Clinton. Caputo later denied contact with Russian officials or having discussed Russia with Trump or with other campaign aides. Caputo stated it was not until prosecutors informed him that Greenberg was Russian that he learned the man he had spoken with in 2016 was not a US citizen.