Russiagate

name, slang

name, slang ·Uncommon ·College level

Definitions

Proper Noun
  1. 1
    A scandal in the late 1990s in which billions of dollars were laundered out of Russia by the bureaucracy of president Boris Yeltsin with the assistance of Western banks such as the Bank of New York.

    "Nauru, a small Pacific atoll, was involved in the largest money laundering case in history, the so-called Russiagate scandal of the late 1990s, which involved the Bank of New York."

  2. 2
    The controversy and Russia investigation that ensued after the US presidential election in 2016 regarding the discovery of myriad secretive links between Trump associates and Russian officials. US, informal

    "Her [Fiona Hill's] time as special assistant to the president and senior director for European and Russian Affairs, a role that put her at the center of domestic and geopolitical intrigue, follows the arc of the Russiagate scandal that dogged Trump’s presidency almost from its inception."

Example

More examples

"Nauru, a small Pacific atoll, was involved in the largest money laundering case in history, the so-called Russiagate scandal of the late 1990s, which involved the Bank of New York."

Etymology

From Russia + -gate.

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.