[Fedora]

Halper, a former Cambridge professor, rattled off the names of the Russians, Vyacheslav Trubnikov, Leonid Shebarshin, and Yuri Traughtoff, according to a transcript of the secretly recorded conversation released on Thursday.

It's possible Halper may have been dangling names to see if Papadopoulos took the bait.

[Fedora]

Halper ping.

[piasa]

Possibly except for Trubnikov's name... if this story is accurate he had some real contact with Trubnikov :

Halper hosted Trubnikov at two intelligence seminars at Cambridge in 2012 and 2015, and interviewed the former Kremlin insider for a 2015 study on China-Russia relations he did for the Pentagon’s Office of Net Assessment (ONA).

And if other story's accurate, Trubnikov was close to Primakov.