ACtive Measures

A important neutral meeting point between officials of the Trump campaign and their Russian counterparts was the city of Prague in Hungary. In pursuit of his geopolitical agenda, Alexander Dugin has established an extensive list of contacts that comprise his “Eurasian network,” which include Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán.[1] According to Andras B. Göllner, a Hungarian political dissident now based in Montreal, where he is emeritus professor at Concordia University, Arthur J. Finkelstein, a longtime Donald Trump associate who was working for Hungary’s right-wing Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, was at the center of the Russian collusion conspiracy. Since rising to power, Orbán has been closely aligned with Vladimir Putin and has allowed the Kremlin to do what it likes within Hungarian borders.[2] Göllner pointed out that various Trump campaign advisers spent time in and around Budapest. In July 2016, Orbán became the first foreign leader to endorse Trump for President, claiming that his immigration and anti-terrorism policies make him a better option for Hungary and Europe than his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton.[3] Orbán, who has a close relationship to Benjamin Netanyahu, having known him for decades, is described as “one of Mr Netanyahu’s closest allies in Europe.”[4] Israel’s Black Cube campaigned against liberal NGOs linked to financier George Soros before Hungary’s election in April 2018, supporting Orbán’s battle against organizations that oppose his policies.[5]

If Putin’s aim in helping Trump’s win was to undermine America’s authority in the world, it’s working. According to sources of the Trump Dossier, authored by Christopher Steele, a former head of the Russia Desk for British intelligence (MI6), the aim of the Russian influence campaign was to sow discord and disunity within the US itself, but more especially within the NATO alliance which was viewed as inimical to Russia’s interests. Source C, a senior Russian financial said the Trump operation should to seen in terms of Putin’s desire to return to nineteenth century politics of “Great Power,” anchored upon individual nations’ interests, instead of ideals-based international order established since World War II, as the source had overheard Putin discussing with his close associates on several occasions.

For as much as Trump admires Putin as a “great leader,” Putin is his opposite. Trump has spent decades building his personal brand, banking on his popularity and image as a stereotypical tycoon to bolster his business endeavors. He is brash. Trump brought the same approach to his politics, naively believing that his fabricated reputation as a “deal maker” would allow him to barge through the world’s political challenges and impose solutions. Putin is the opposite. In contrast, he is quiet and unassuming. Likely derived from his experience as a KGB spy, Putin has learned what can be accomplished furtively. Which is why the world failed to suspect the grandeur of his ambitions or the depth of his cunning.

As a veteran spy, Putin has learned the efficacy of soft power from American’s multiple successes in the use of the tactic, and turned it to Russia’s advantage. Studies of American broadcasting into the Soviet bloc, and testimonials from Czech President Vaclav Havel, Polish President Lech Walesa, and Russian President Boris Yeltsin, support that soft power efforts of the United States and its allies during the Cold War were ultimately successful in creating the favorable conditions that led to the collapse of the Soviet Union.[6] America was therefore caught completely off-guard when, after successfully restructuring itself since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia has since embarked on a grand, broad and long-range strategy to revive its place and perception in the world as a global player.

As indicated by Keir Giles in a research paper for the Royal Institute for International Affairs, there are widespread misconceptions about the nature of Russian information warfare and how best to counter it. Particularly false is the notion that Russian campaigns are failing because of their implausible narratives, or that they can be combatted by countering the disinformation with rational counter-arguments. “But by applying Western notions of the nature and importance of truth,” as Giles has pointed out, “this approach measures these campaigns by entirely the wrong criteria, and fundamentally misunderstands their objectives.”[7] As explained by Peter Pomerantsev, “The point of this new propaganda is not to persuade anyone, but to keep the viewer hooked and distracted—to disrupt Western narratives rather than provide a counternarrative.”[8]

Citing research by Adrian Chen, Andrew Weisburd and Clint Watts compared Russian tactics during the 2016 US election to Soviet Union Cold War strategies.[9] Watts is a former FBI agent, senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute and senior fellow at the Center for Cyber and Homeland Security at George Washington University. According to Watts, who has been called to testify at the congressional hearing on Russian interference, Russian tactics are a survival of Soviet-era “active measures,” which called for the use of the “force of politics” rather than the “politics of force” to undermine American democracy from within.[10] Retired KGB Major General Oleg Kalugin described active measures as “the heart and soul of Soviet intelligence” and “Not intelligence collection, but subversion: active measures to weaken the West, to drive wedges in the Western community alliances of all sorts, particularly NATO, to sow discord among allies, to weaken the United States in the eyes of the people of Europe, Asia, Africa, Latin America, and thus to prepare ground in case the war really occurs.”[11]

Details of Soviet active measures were exposed by the official historian of the MI5 Christopher Andrew, and based on the Mitrokhin Archive, a collection of handwritten notes made secretly by Vasili Mitrokhin, during his thirty years as a KGB archivist in the foreign intelligence service and the First Chief Directorate. When he defected to the United Kingdom in 1992, he brought the archive with him. The Mitrokhin Archive described active measures that included: JFK assassination theories of Mark Lane’s Rush to Judgement, went onto become the bestselling paperback of 1967; discrediting of the CIA, using Philip Agee, a CIA case officer and writer, best known as author of the 1975 book, Inside the Company: CIA Diary. Spreading unconfirmed rumors that the FBI director J. Edgar Hoover was a homosexual. Inciting racial tensions in the United States by mailing bogus letters from the Ku Klux Klan, placing an explosive package in “the Negro section of New York” (operation PANDORA), and spreading conspiracy theories that Martin Luther King, Jr.’s assassination had been planned by the US government.[12] Among the agents working for the KGB that Mitrokhin identified was Alexandre Kojève, the friend of Leo Strauss and Carl Schmitt.[13]

Politico reported that, according to more than half a dozen current and former officials, the Obama administration received multiple warnings from national security officials between 2014 and 2016 that the Russians were stepping up their intelligence operations and building disinformation networks to be used to disrupt the American political system. As early as 2014, the administration received a report circulated among the NSC, intelligence agencies and the State Department via secure email and cable in the spring of 2014 as part of a larger assessment of Russian intentions in Ukraine, the official said.[14] The report included a quote from the Russian source warning US officials in Moscow, “You have no idea how extensive these networks are in Europe… and in the U.S., Russia has penetrated media organizations, lobbying firms, political parties, governments and militaries in all of these places.”[15]

In September, 2015, the FBI made its first attempt to alert the Democratic National Committee (DNC) that its computer network had been compromised. In November, the FBI alerted the DNC that the information was being transmitted back to Russia. On March 19, 2016, Russian hackers successfully hacked Clinton campaign head John Podesta’s email account. The emails stolen by Russian intelligence agency hackers and subsequently published by DCLeaks in June and July 2016 and by WikiLeaks on July 22, 2016. Russia’s offensive might have been anticipated in February 2016 when Andrey Krutskikh, a top Kremlin official, told a conference of Russian computer security officials that the Putin government would be unleashing an attack which would cause U.S. officials to gain respect for Russia’s cyber capabilities.[16] In May 2016, a Russian military intelligence officer of the GRU bragged to a colleague that their organization was getting ready to take their revenge on Hillary Clinton for what Putin perceived to have been was an influence-operation she had orchestrated against him five years earlier as Secretary of State. The GRU, he said, was going to cause chaos in the upcoming US election.[17]

The US Office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI), representing 17 intelligence agencies and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) jointly concluded that Putin personally “ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the U.S. presidential election,” and turned from seeking to “denigrate” Hillary Clinton to developing “a clear preference for President-elect Trump.”[18] Cybersecurity firms, including CrowdStrike, Fidelis Cybersecurity, Mandiant and ThreatConnect stated that the cyber attacks were committed by Russian intelligence groups Fancy Bear and Cozy Bear.[19] The agencies concluded “with high confidence” that Russia’s GRU created a “persona” called Guccifer 2.0 and a website, DCLeaks.com, to release the Podesta emails.[20] Some of the documents released were discovered to be forgeries assembled from public information and previous hacks, which they then interspersed with disinformation.[21] When those disclosures received what was seen as insufficient attention, the report said, the GRU “relayed material it acquired from the DNC and senior Democratic officials to WikiLeaks.”

According to Andrew Weisburd, Clint Watts & Jim Berger in “Trolling for Trump: How Russia is Trying to Destroy Our Democracy,” sites such as Wikileaks and DC Leaks:

 …overtly claim to be exposing corruption and promoting transparency by uploading private information stolen during hacks. But the timing and targets of their efforts help guide pro-Russian themes and shape messages by publishing compromising information on selected adversaries.[22]

The CIA, FBI, and NSA concluded in January 2017 that WikiLeaks had “actively collaborated” with Russia’s “principal international propaganda outlet RT” in the leak of DNC emails.[23] Assange has denied that Russia was the source of the emails.[24] Trump however denied the charges with his usual eloquence: “I don’t believe they interfered” in the election, he told Time magazine. The hacking, he said, “could be Russia. And it could be China. And it could be some guy in his home in New Jersey.”[25]

Trump Tower, Moscow

According to the Trump Dossier, citing Source A, the interference operation was both supported and directed by Putin. Source A and B, a former top-level Russian intelligence officer, asserted that the Russian authorities had been cultivating their relationship with Donald Trump for at least five years. Source A shared that the Russian government had been feeding Trump and his team valuable intelligence on his opponents, including Clinton, for several years. Source E, who is described as “an ethnic Russian close associate of Republican US presidential candidate Donald TRUMP,” confided that the Russian regime had been behind the recent leak of emails from the Democratic National Committee (DNC), which used WikiLeaks for reasons of “plausible deniability,” and the operation had been conducted with the full knowledge and support of Trump and senior members of his campaign team. In return, the Trump team had also agreed to avoid Russian intervention in Ukraine as a campaign issue. Cash payments to the hackers working on behalf of Russian intelligence were effected at a secret meeting in Prague between Trump’s personal lawyer and fixer, Michael Cohen and Kremlin representatives in August 2016.

Donald Trump’s first of several attempts to construct a Trump Tower in Moscow in 1987, according to The Art of the Deal, was planned in cooperation with Intourist, the leading Soviet state agency for international tourism, which functioned as a subsidiary KGB branch, and had a reputation for being used as a source of “kompromat” on foreign visitors during Soviet times. As Trump recounted in Art of the Deal, Intourist had expressed interest in pursuing a joint project to construct and manage a hotel in the city. Intourist’s former flagship hotel is now the Moscow Ritz Carlton, the hotel mentioned in the Steele Dossier where Trump is alleged to have engaged in salacious behavior that provided the Russian government compromising material on him.[26] In December of that year, Gorbachev made a historic three-day trip to the US for a summit with Reagan that included a White House state dinner. Reagan invited Trump, where he met again with Gorbachev. Trump subsequently recounted their conversation to The Washington Post: “They want to have a great hotel, and they want me to be the one to do it.”[27]

CNN reported on February 1, 2019, that Senate investigators wanted to question David Geovanis, a Moscow-based American businessman with longstanding ties to Trump, after witnesses told them he might be able to shed some light on Trump’s business and personal dealings in Russia dating back to the 1990s. CNN also reported seeing written testimony from a third witness who has alleged that Geovanis may be valuable in the question of whether Russia has compromising material on Trump. Years later, Geovanis would work for Putin ally Oleg Deripaska.[28]

Geovanis helped organize a 1996 trip to Moscow by Trump, for yet another failed attempt at building a Trump Tower in Russia. At the time, Geovanis began his career in Russia working for a venture of a company called Brooke Group, which owned land earmarked for the site of a proposed Trump Tower. Also on the trip were Brooke Group’s owners, the real estate moguls Bennett LeBow and Howard Lorber, who were friends and business partners of Carl Icahn. Lorber’s holdings included Liggett-Ducat, America’s third largest tobacco company, and major real estate assets in both New Yorks and Moscow. LeBow had begun partnering with Vadim Rabinovich, a pro-Russia Ukrainian oligarch who spent seven years in jail for embezzlement. Only a month before their Moscow meeting, Rabinovich had participated in a summit in Tel Aviv where Simeon Mogilevich was granted control of the Ukraine energy trade.[29]

An archive video report of Trump’s 1996 Moscow trip emerged online in January 2019, showing Lorber, Lebow and Trump in discussion with Moscow's then deputy mayor, Vladimir Resin, and his staff, with Geovanis looking on. The city’s mayor, Yuri Luzhkov, was deeply in bed with Mogilevich.[30] Lebow and Lorber, who went on to become substantial donors to Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, changed their company name from Brooke Group to Vector Group, whose top three shareholders include Renaissance Technologies, the hedge fund once run by Robert Mercer.[31] Trump personally acknowledged the pair from the podium after he won the 2016 New York Republican primary, referring to them as “some of the great businessmen of the world.”[32]

Again, on January 22, 1997, Alexander Lebed, a retired Russian general who aspired to be president of Russia, came to the United States and met with Trump. Their hour-long meeting at Trump Tower was not open to the press. Trump told reporters that they discussed plans to build “something major” in Russia. In that same year, Trump worked with a Russian artist named Zurab Tsereteli on a plan to erect a giant statue of Christopher Columbus on the Hudson River, six feet taller than the Statue of Liberty. Trump claimed the statue was being donated by the Russian government.[33]

In November 2018, Trump’s former lawyer and “fixer” Michael Cohen pleaded guilty to lying to Congress about yet another Trump Tower Moscow project that was pursued during the campaign, despite Trump’s repeated denials that he had “nothing to do with Russia.”[34] In trying to make arrangements with Moscow, Cohen worked closely with Felix Sater, who was then a broker for the Trump Organization. In 2005, the Trump Organization signed a one-year contract for a construction project in Moscow with the Sater’s Bayrock Group. After holding the Miss Universe pageant in Russia in 2013, Trump tweeted “TRUMP TOWER-MOSCOW is next.”[35]

It was at the time of the same pageant that Trump purportedly signed a deal to build a Trump Tower in Moscow with Aras Agalarov, the Azerbaijani-Russian billionaire who served as a liaison between Trump and Putin.[36] It was Agalarov’s son Emin who helped arrange the infamous Trump Tower meeting on June 9, 2016, between Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya and Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner, and Paul Manafort.

According to Sater, he and Cohen discussed the possibility of giving a $50 million penthouse in the tower to Russian president Vladimir Putin, saying that Putin living there would increase the value and saleability of the other units.[37] Andrey Rozov, the Russian real-estate developer who was CEO of IC Expert who co-signed the Trump Tower Moscow “letter of intent” with Donald Trump, listed the same New York City address as Carter Page.[38] Rozov, who was negotiating with Michael Cohen and the Trump Organization, also appears to have an unaccounted 6 billion rubles or $90,000,000 after IC Expert received a loan from Sberbank in the weeks following the agreement with Trump.[39] Sater and Ilya Bykov, a tax accountant for Aras Agalarov, represented Rozov in the sale and purchase of a New York office building, respectively, in 2015.[40]

While Trump was running for president in late 2015 and early 2016, Sater wrote a series of emails Michael Cohen, in which he promised to engineer a real estate deal with the aid of Putin, but that never materialized. Sater expected the project would highlight Trump’s deal-making skills and boost his pursuit of the candidacy for president. Sater said he had lined up financing for the tower with the state-controlled VTB Bank.[41] VTB is 60.9% owned by the Russian government, and also has close ties to Putin’s FSB intelligence agency. The bank’s chairman, Andrey Kostin, is a former KGB foreign intelligence operative, it has been reported, who has received several state decorations from Putin.[42] Both VTB and Gazprom are now under US sanctions for involvement in Moscow’s efforts in the Ukraine.

Cohen, whose wife is Ukrainian, has maintained a relationship with Trump for many years operating in New York commercial real estate. According to the Dossier, Cohen’s wife is of Russian descent and her father a leading property developer in Moscow.[43] In his testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee, Glenn Simpson of Fusion GPS, which commissioned the Trump Dossier, stated, “We learned that Cohen’s job included dealing with inquiries about Russia and he seemed to get all of the serious inquiries, investigative inquiries about Russia.”[44]

In an email to Cohen on November 3, 2015, referring to the time when he helped arrange a trip that Ivanka took to Moscow in 2006, Sater boasted:

Michael I arranged for Ivanka to sit in Putins private chair at his desk and office in the Kremlin. I will get Putin on this program and we will get Donald elected. We both know no one else knows how to pull this off without stupidity or greed getting in the way. I know how to play it and we will get this done. Our boy can become president of the USA and we can engineer it. I will get all of Putins team to buy in on this, I will manage this process.[45]

According to the Trump Dossier, Cohen played a “key role” in the Trump-Russia relationship by maintaining a “covert relationship with Russia” arranging cover-ups and “deniable cash payments,” and that his role had grown after Manafort had left the campaign. In the fallout of revelations about Manafort and Page, according to the Dossier, Trump’s lawyer Michael Cohen met secretly with officials of Russia’s Presidential Administration Legal Department clandestinely in Prague in August 2016, to discuss damage control. Although Cohen has denied ever being in Prague, McClatchy reported that Justice Department special counsel Robert Mueller has evidence to the contrary, according to two sources familiar with the matter. Apparently, investigators have traced evidence that Cohen entered the Czech Republic through Germany, claimed the sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the investigation is confidential.[46]

According to the Dossier, Cohen was accompanied on his secret Prague meeting by three colleagues for discussions with representatives of Ivanov’s Presidential Executive Office and associated operatives and hackers. The meeting agenda, according to the Dossier, included how to process deniable cash payments to operatives, contingency plans for covering up operations, and what to do in the event of a Clinton victory. One of their main Russian interlocutors was Oleg Solodukhin operating under cover of Rossotrudnichestvo, Putin’s primary soft power agency. Both sides agreed to stand down various “Romanian hackers” and that other operatives should head for a “bolt-hole” in Plovdiv, Bulgaria, where they should “lay low.”

In May 2017, Alfa Group, which had partnered with Vekselberg’s Renova Group, filed a defamation lawsuit against BuzzFeed for publishing the Trump Dossier, which alleges financial ties and collusion between Putin, Trump, and Alfa Bank’s owner. According to the Trump Dossier, a top-level Russian government official reported that the Alfa Group, led by Mikhail Fridman, and his partners Petr Aven and German Khan, are on very good terms with Putin, providing him informal advice on foreign policy, and especially about the US. A key intermediary is Oleg Govorun, currently Head of a Presidential Administration department. Govorun was a close ally of Alexander Dugin’s partner in mischief, Vladislav Surkov, who worked with Alfa Bank from February 1997.[47] Govorun apparently previously served as Alfa’s “bag man” delivering illicit cash to Putin when he was mayor of St Petersburg. The Dossier alleges that Alfa held these details as “kompromat” on Putin, who in turn was able to use his own political influence to induce Alfa do his bidding.

On October 31 and November 2, 2016, Slate reported that there had been unusual repeated activity from between two computer servers registered to Alfa Bank in Moscow and a server owned by the Trump Organization. The activity also included communications to a server at Spectrum Health, a medical facility chain led by Dick DeVos, the husband of Betsy DeVos.[48] On March 10, 2017, CNN reported that the FBI was continuing to investigate the unusual computer activity between Alfa Bank and the Trump Organization which had occurred in the summer of 2016, and which had been reported in the media just before the U.S. presidential election.[49] In June 2017, President Trump nominated Brian Benczkowski, Alfa’s former attorney, to be to become Assistant Attorney General for the Criminal Division of the United States Department of Justice.

In 2017, the daughter of Alfa Group co-founder and co-owner German Khan married Alex Van der Zwaan, the Dutch lawyer who pleaded guilty in February 2018 in the Special Counsel investigation. Van der Zwaan has Russian roots and US prosecutors have said the business associate had active links to Russian intelligence.[50] He assisted Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich’s businesses in relation to mining assets in Ukraine.[51] In February 2018, Van der Zwaan was charged with lying to the FBI and Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigators about his interactions with Rick Gates and an unidentified Ukrainian-based long-term associate of Paul Manafort.

Van der Zwaan worked for a New York-based international law firm Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, and assisted in producing a report, commissioned by the government of Yanukovych via Manafort, that defended the prosecution of Yanukovych’s rival, the country’s former prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko. Van der Zwaan traveled to Ukraine to work on the report, and served as rule-of-law consultant to the Ministry of Justice of Ukraine. his firm’s client and central to the indictment. The $4 million payment for the report came from an unnamed Ukrainian oligarch and was funneled through a Cyprus bank account controlled by Manafort and Gates, according to the US government’s sentencing memorandum in Van der Zwaan’s case.[52]

Kremlin Crew

Andras B. Göllner, Arthur J. Finkelstein introduced Paul Manafort Putin’s pro-Russian Ukrainian oligarchs, and also played a large hand in Manafort’s addition to the Trump campaign team.[53] In The Plot to Hack America: How Putin’s Cyberspies and WikiLeaks Tried to Steal the 2016 Election, retired United States Navy Senior Chief Petty Officer Malcolm Nance discusses individuals with ties to both Russia and Trump, whom he refers to as the “Kremlin Crew,” including Manafort, Roger Stone protégée Michael Caputo, Carter Page, and Ret. Lieutenant General Michael T. Flynn, Trump’s initial choice National Security Advisor, before finally being forced to resign after questionable contacts with the Russian government and revelations that he lied about them to the vice president and the FBI.

Michael 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. He worked for the Reagan Administration with Oliver North injecting propaganda for Reagan in Central America and South America and served 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.[54] He worked for Gazprom Media in 2000 where he helped improve the image of Vladimir Putin in the US.[55] 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, and met his second wife while in Kiev.[56]

Additionally, Trump recruited Carter Page, who is well familiar with Russian politics, as one of his foreign-policy advisors. Page, who maintains close ties to a number of prominent Russian politicians and businessmen, worked to open a Merrill Lynch office in Moscow.[57] Page is known as a staunch defender of Russia’s ambitions as well as a routine critic of current US policymakers. By his own admission, his “e-mail inbox filled up with positive notes from Russian contacts” who were enthusiastic at the prospect of strengthening ties with the US.[58] Page lived in Moscow from 2004 to 2007 while working as a junior investment banker for Merrill Lynch. Page subsequently started Global Energy Capital, a New York investment fund and consulting firm specializing in the Russian and Central Asian oil and gas business. His partner in that venture is former Gazprom executive, Sergei Yatsenko. Page was wrapped up but not charged in an FBI investigation in 2013 that targeted people suspected of being Russian intelligence officers in New York. One of the of three men who was later charged with being an unregistered agent of a foreign power had met Page at an energy symposium.[59] In January 2017, Page, whose name appeared repeatedly in the Trump Dossier, was under investigation by the FBI, CIA, NSA, ODNI, and FinCEN.

In July 2016, Page asked J.D. Gordon, his supervisor on the campaign’s National Security Advisory Committee, for permission to make a trip to Russia, and Gordon strongly advised against it. Gordon formerly served under Secretaries Donald Rumsfeld and Robert Gates at the Pentagon. Andras Göllner pointed to the six trips which Gordon took to Budapest, where he publicly took positions on Ukraine that were in line with the Kremlin.[60] In July 2016, just prior to the Republicans’ 2016 Convention in Cleveland, Gordon successfully advocated with elected delegates to soften a proposed amendment to the Republican National Committee's policy platform that called for providing “lethal defensive weapons” to the government of Ukraine. Although the Trump campaign had denied any contacts with Russian diplomats, Gordon met with Russian Ambassador to the US Sergey Kislyak a week after the platform amendment controversy.[61] “We very much admire and respect Prime Minister Orbán and what he is doing to make Hungary great again,” Gordon said at a conference in Hungary on December 2, 2016. “Mr. Trump’s team deeply admires and respects Viktor Orbán.”[62]

According to a former campaign adviser, Page then emailed Lewandowski who told him he could make the trip, but not as an official representative of the campaign. Page testified that in addition to Lewandowski, he had also informed Jeff Sessions, Hope Hicks, and campaign co-chairman Sam Clovis, who became the senior White House adviser to the United States Department of Agriculture, about his trip.[63] Page also indicated that Clovis had asked him to sign a non-disclosure agreement about his trip.[64]

Although he had previously denied such contacts, in a meeting with investigators, Page finally disclosed that he met with Arkadiy Dvorkovich, Russia’s deputy prime minister, a top official at Rosneft, and an employee at Gazprom.[65] Page’s disclosures support the allegations of the Trump Dossier, which asserts that Page met with Igor Sechin, the head of Rosneft and former KGB and FSB security officer and Putin’s “de facto deputy.”[66] According to his associate, they discussed future bilateral energy cooperation and lifting Ukraine-related sanctions against Russia. An official close to Seirgei Ivanov, who was the Chief of Staff of the Presidential Executive Office, confided to a senior colleague that Page met with Igor Divyekin, who allegedly revealed that the Kremlin had in its possession compromising information on Hillary Clinton and discussed releasing it to the Trump campaign.

The New York Times reported that, shortly after the trip, Page sent an email to at least one Trump campaign aide describing insights he gained after conversations with Russian government officials, legislators and business executives, according to one person familiar with the contents of the message. “I’ll send you guys a readout soon regarding some incredible insights and outreach I received from a few Russian legislators and senior members of the presidential administration here,” he wrote.[67] During the trip, he gave a speech at a graduation ceremony at the New Economic School (NES), a university there, in which he criticized American policy toward. NES is sponsored by the Russian Alfa Bank’s Petr Aven. Russian Deputy Prime Minister and NES board member Arkadiy Dvorkovich also spoke before the event. “Washington and other Western capitals have impeded potential progress through their often hypocritical focus on ideas such as democratization, inequality, corruption and regime change,” Page said in his speech.[68]

Konstantin Malofeev’s Tsargrad covered Page before, during and after his speech to the NES. Dugin also tweeted his support for page, whose speech was also broadcast live by Katehon.[69] Page however said that he did not know Malofeev or Dugin.[70]

However, Lewandowski said, “I’ve never met or spoken to Carter Page in my life.”[71] The campaign fired Lewandowski on June 20, 2016. Paul Manafort, who replaced Lewandowski, said he had no knowledge of any aspect of Page’s trip, including whether Lewandowski or anyone else approved it. Though Page has repeatedly denied wrongdoing in connection with his Moscow visit, he made contact two weeks later with Sergey Kislyak at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland. Just days after Kislyak talked to Page, Gordon and Jeff Sessions, WikiLeaks disseminated the DNC emails.[72]

The Professor

Page made his trip to Russia soon after George Papadopoulos, Trump’s former policy adviser to his campaign, who requested to set up a meeting between Russian officials and Trump campaign members. Papadopoulos lived in London and worked as a researcher for the Hudson Institute, where he served as an intern and then a contract researcher from 2011 to 2014, assisting on publications related to Israel, Cyprus and Greece. During those years, Papadopoulos became acquainted with Eli Groner, who has served since 2015 as a top aide to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. In October 2015, he wrote a column for Haaretz titled “Natural Gas Isn’t Just about Israel.” He also attended a series of energy conferences in Israel, including one held in April 2016, just days after he was named to Trump’s campaign.[73] Before he joined the Trump campaign, Papadopoulos had been recommended to Ben Carson’s campaign manager, Barry Bennette, for Ben Caron’s campaign, by Kenneth R. Weinstein, the CEO of the Hudson Institute, who is on the board of the directors for the Forum for Jewish Leadership with Josh Spinner, the CEO of Ronald Lauder’s Lauder Institute.[74]

On May 10, 2016, at an upscale London wine bar with Alexander Downer, the Australian ambassador to Britain—to whom he had been introduced to by an Israeli diplomat—Papadopoulos informed him that Russia possessed damaging information on Hillary Clinton.[75] Downer found the claim so troubling that he shared it with Australian officials, who passed it on to their American partners, thus officially triggering the FBI’s investigation of Trump’s ties with Russia.

Court documents show that an unnamed Trump “campaign supervisor” encouraged Papadopoulos to fly to Russia to meet with agents of the Russian Foreign Ministry, after being told that Russia had “dirt” on Hillary Clinton in the form of “thousands of emails.” The “campaign supervisor” was later identified as Sam Clovis. In a meeting on March 6 2016, the official reportedly told him that “a principal foreign policy focus of the campaign was an improved U.S. relationship with Russia,” but Clovis denies having said that.[76]

“The Russians had emails of Clinton,” Papadopoulos was told by an unnamed professor with ties to Russia during a breakfast meeting at a London hotel in March 24, 2016. This occurred before there was public knowledge of the hack of DNC. The court papers do not name the professor, but the Associated Press show him to be Joseph Mifsud. Boris Johnson, a prominent member of Vote Leave of the Brexit campaign, is also facing scrutiny after a picture emerged of him at a dinner with Mifsud.[77] Mifsud is a member of the Valdai Discussion Group[78] and also of the Council of the European Council of Foreign Relations (ECFR), a pan-European think-tank with offices in Berlin, London, Madrid, Paris, Rome, Warsaw and Sofia. ECFR’s main supporter is the George Soros’ Open Society Foundations.[79] Mifsud introduced Papadopoulous to the Russian ambassador to England days after he was named a Trump foreign policy adviser. Mifsud also introduced Papadopoulos to a third unnamed person who claimed he had connections to the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The two men then exchanged emails about a possible meeting between Trump campaign aides and Russian government officials.[80]

The day before he learned about the hacked emails, Papadopoulos emailed Stephen Miller, then a senior policy adviser to the campaign, saying Trump had an “open invitation” from Putin to visit Russia. The day after, he wrote Miller that he had “some interesting messages coming in from Moscow about a trip when the time is right.”[81] Papadopoulos repeatedly promoted the idea of a “history making” meeting between Trump and Putin. The recipients of emails about outreach to the Russian government reportedly were Clovis, Corey Lewandowski, Manafort, Gates, representative of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs Ivan Timofeev, and others. In May, Manafort replied to one such request by saying that “Trump is not doing these trips. It should be someone low-level in the campaign so as not to send any signal.”[82] Papadopoulos then proposed that he himself, perhaps with another campaign official, travel to Moscow to meet with the Russians.

However, Trump denied the importance of the revelations by claiming that Papadopoulos “has already proven to be a liar.” White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said his role was “extremely limited” and that “no activity was ever done in an official capacity on behalf of the campaign.”[83] When Trump was pressed by the Washington Post in March 2017, the same week Papadopoulos was meeting with Mufsid, to name his foreign policy team, he read out five names including Keith Kellogg, Carter Page, Walid Phares and Joseph Schmitz and Papadopoulos.[84] Trump then referred to Papadopoulos as “an energy and oil consultant, excellent guy.”[85] Shortly afterward, Trump tweeted a photo of his advisory council meeting, with Papadopoulos among a handful of advisers at the president’s table. Papadopoulos even helped edit Trump’s fforeign policy speech at the Mayflower Hotel.[86] From March to August 2016, Papadopoulos “was identified as having contacts with senior members of the Trump campaign on at least a dozen occasions.”[87] On January 22, 2017, shortly following Trump’s inauguration as President, Papadopoulos met with the head of Israel’s Shomron Regional Council, Yossi Dagan, in Washington D.C. Papadopoulos was reported to have communicated to Dagan the Trump administration’s desire to work closely with Israel on the question of settlements.[88]

On October 5, 2017, Papadopoulos pleaded guilty to making false statements to the FBI about this contacts with the Russians. However, Papadopoulos’ wife, Simona Mangiante, said her husband was not involved in collusion and that he pleaded guilty to avoid facing charges that he was an agent of the Israeli government.[89]

Trump Dossier

According to the Trump Dossier, a senior Russian Foreign Ministry figure confided that the Kremlin has been feeding Trump and his team valuable intelligence on his opponents, including Hillary Clinton for several years. This was confirmed by Sergei Millian, referred to as “source D,” a close associate of Trump, who had organized and managed his recent trips to Moscow.[90] Millian, who also worked with Rossotrudnichestvo, has described himself as an exclusive broker for the Trump Organization with respect to the company's potential real-estate dealings in Russia. Millian boasted in an interview with Russian state news agency Ria Novosti that he had built extensive ties with Trump and his organization, of how Russia-US relations would improve under his presidency. “I can assure you he is very positive and friendly,” he told Ria Novosti.[91] Millian told associates in 2016 that he was in regular touch with George Papadopoulos. Epshteyn said the meeting never happened.[92] Millian was also photographed at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum in June 2016 with Oleg Deripaska. [93]

Millian came under suspicion as part of a wider FBI probe due to US intelligence concerns that Russia was activating networks long thought defunct after the end of the cold war.[94] Millian, head of the Russian-American Chamber of Commerce (RACC), was one of the people who said he brought Russian money into Trump projects. Millian was mentioned in a Financial Times article that places Trump in the middle of a money laundering scheme, in which his real estate deals were used to hide not just an infusion of capital from Russia and former Soviet states, but for laundering hundreds of millions looted by oligarchs. The article quotes former Russian MP Konstantin Borovoi in identifying the chamber as a front for intelligence operations during Soviet times. Borovoi, who is also an expert on the KGB, said “The chamber of commerce institutions are the visible part of the agent network… Russia has spent huge amounts of money on this.”[95] One of the RACC’s main backers is Mikhail Morgulis, a prominent Soviet émigré who also serves as Belarus honorary consul to the US. Morgulis told the Financial Times Millian explained to him he was helping Trump and the Republican party. “We have soft power and we are trying to change relations now,” Morgulis said.[96]

Source E, a Russian close associate of Trump, admitted that there was a “well-developed conspiracy of cooperation” between them and the Russian leadership, which was managed on the Trump side by Manafort and Carter Page. According to the Dossier’s sources, at their meeting in Prague, Divyekin also hinted to Page that the Russians possessed “kompromat” on Trump, which he should keep in mind in his dealings with them. The most explosive allegations in the dossier originally came from source D, which claim that Trump had hired prostitutes at the Moscow Ritz-Carlton and that the Kremlin has kept recordings of the encounter. Moscow Ritz Carlton was once the flagship hotel Intourist, Russia’s official tourism agency with a reputation for being staffed by the KGB and used as a source of kompromat. Intourist was also the same agency that had first proposed to built a Trump Tower Moscow in 1987. For a time, Intourist was run by Vladimir Strzhalkovsky, the former KGB officer who succeeded Wilbur Ross as vice-chairman of the Bank of Cyprus. A another major shareholder in the bank is Viktor Vekselberg.[97]

These same allegations were also corroborated by Source E. According to the dossier, source E and several of the staff were aware of the incident. Source E had provided an introduction for a company Russian operative to source F, a female staffer at the hotel. An additional source, with direct knowledge, said that Trump’s minimal investment profile in Russia was not for want of effort. Trump had made efforts in the real estate sector in St. Petersburg and Moscow, but, according to the source, he had to settle for the extensive use of the sexual services of the local prostitutes.

Rumors maintain that source E is former senior Trump campaign advisor Boris Epshteyn, which Joseph Cannon was able to confirm from an anonymous informant.[98] Epshteyn is a Jewish Russia-born American Republican political strategist, investment banker, and attorney. Epshteyn moderated a panel at an October 2013 conference in New York City called “Invest in Moscow!” The panel was mainly comprised of Moscow city government officials, like Sergey Cheremin, a city minister who heads Moscow’s foreign economic and international relations department. Epshteyn previously worked on the McCain-Palin campaign. Epshteyn had met Trump’s son Eric at Georgetown University, and following Trump’s election, he was named director of communications for the Presidential Inaugural Committee, and then assistant communications director for surrogate operations in the administration, until he resigned in March 2017.

Epshteyn was then hired by the Sinclair Broadcast Group, headquartered in Hunt Valley, Maryland, which is the second-largest television station operator in the United States (behind Nexstar Media Group) by number of stations, and largest by total coverage. Regarding the appointment, Scott Livingston at Sinclair said in part, “We understand the frustration with government and traditional institutions.”[99] Jared Kushner told a private business luncheon in December 2016 that Sinclair executives worked with the campaign to spread pro-Trump messages in Sinclair newscasts, which reach 81 markets in key heartland regions that supported Trump, which Sinclair had “vehemently denied.”

Papadopoulos emailed Epshteyn and offered to connect him with his friend Sergei Millian in September 2016, according to The Washington Post.[100] According to Epshteyn, as reported in the Dossier, “the aim of leaking the DNC e-mails to WikiLeaks during the Democratic Convention had been to swing supporters of Bernie Sanders away from Hillary Clinton and across to Trump. These voters were perceived as activist and anti -status quo and anti-establishment and in that regard sharing many features with the TRUMP campaign, including a visceral dislike of Hillary Clinton. This objective had been conceived and promoted, inter alia, by Trump’s foreign policy adviser Carter PAGE who had discussed it directly with the ethnic Russian associate [Epshteyn].” However, Epshteyn also admitted that there was a fair amount of anger and resentment within Trump’s team at Putin exploiting the objective of weakening Clinton and bolstering Trump, to undermine the US government and democratic system more generally.

Epshteyn, or source E, also confirmed that Russia was behind the DNC leak, which used Wikileaks as plausible deniability. The operation was conducted with the full knowledge and support of the Trump and senior members of the campaign team. According to the Trump Dossier, an associate of Sergei Ivanov, Russian operatives and hackers involved had been paid by both Trump’s team and the Kremlin, though their orders and ultimate loyalty lay with Ivanov, who as the Chief of Staff of the Presidential Executive Office was ultimately responsible for the operation. On 12 August 2016, Ivanov was fired from his Chief of Staff position by Putin and replaced by Anton Vaino. Sources cited in the Dossier report that Ivanov’s dismissal was related to the exposure of the Russian operation.

Trading Dirt

There has long been speculation was to whether Donald Trump knew his son met with Russians at Trump Tower on June 9, 2016 offering dirt on Hillary Clinton, pointing to phone calls that Donald Trump Jr. received from a blocked number around the time of the meeting. The New York Times named Howard Lorber as one the one who spoke with Donald Jr. from blocked numbers.[101] The purported purpose of the meeting, which included Donald Jr., Paul Manafort and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and a Russian lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya, was to discuss receiving damaging information on Hillary Clinton in exchange for relief on sanctions. “It’s clear the interest and goal in that meeting was to repeal the Magnistky Act, said Bill Browder before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Browder was CEO and founder of Hermitage Capital Management, an American who founded and ran one of the largest investment firms in Russia, from 1996-2005.[102] When he and his lawyer Sergei Magnitsky discovered a massive corruption scheme, they went to the authorities. However, instead, Browder was denied access back into the country while Magnitsky was tortured and killed. Following advocacy by Browder, in 2012, Congress passed the Magnitsky Act. The law targets Russian human rights abusers by freezing their American assets and banning them from entering the U.S.

Veselnitskaya had become what Browder called “the point person” for Russia’s fight to repeal the law and has been lobbying against the act for years.[103] In an interview broadcast April 27, 2018, by NBC News, Veselnitskaya acknowledged that she is not just a private lawyer but a source for Yuri Y. Chaika, the Kremlin’s prosecutor general. “I am a lawyer, and I am an informant,” she said. “Since 2013, I have been actively communicating with the office of the Russian prosecutor general.”[104] In a series of emails exchanged prior to the meeting, Trump Jr. was told Veselnitskaya would have incriminating information about Hillary Clinton supplied by the Russian government in an effort to help his father’s presidential campaign. Veselnitskaya told the Senate Judiciary Committee that Trump Jr. asked her whether she had evidence of illegal donations to the Clinton Foundation, and that when she answered no, he lost interest in the meeting.[105]

Also in attendance was Rinat R. Akhmetshin, a former Soviet military officer who served in a counterintelligence unit, and who is also a well-known Washington lobbyist who worked for an organization run by Veselnitskaya. Akhmetshin has been reported to have ties to Russian intelligence but he denies the allegations, calling them a “smear campaign.”[106] Upon arriving in the U.S. in the 1990s, Akhmetshin launched his own think tank called the International Eurasia Institute with Akezhan Kazhegeldin, a former prime minister of Kazakhstan. In 2010, he submitted an op-ed to The Washington Times on behalf of Viktor Ivanov, one of Putin’s closest allies and the former head of the Narcotics Service of Russia. When asked by a lawyer if he knew that Ivanov had worked for the KGB, Akhmetshin responded: “I might have.”[107] Around 2010, Akhmetshin collaborated with Paul Manafort’s associate and GRU agent Konstantin Kilimnik in trying to sell a book disparaging one of Yanukovych’s opponents.[108]

 “I think I just have a talent for media,” Akhmetshin told lawyers in 2012. “Living in the United States, I observed political life, especially in Washington. And I think I understand this political system quite well. And news cycle, I understand it better, probably, than most Americans.”[109] According to the New York Times, Akhmetshin, who boasts about his skill with computers, was accused of being involved in two hacking campaigns and reportedly had a web of Russian connections.[110] Akhmetshin was employed by an alliance of businessmen led by Suleiman Kerimov, a financier close to Putin who was in a dispute with competitor Ashot Egiazaryan. Akhmetshin pushed negative stories on Egiazaryan in the American and Russian press, and looked into political firms that might help manipulate internet search results.[111] In 2015, International Mineral Resources (IMR), a Kazakh mining company alleged it had been hacked by Akhmetshin who stole sensitive and confidential materials as part of an alleged black-ops smear campaign against the company.[112]

Akhmetshin was linked to Fusion GPS in Washington, DC, the same firm that retained Christopher Steele who produced the Trump Dossier. Fusion GPS was founded by Glenn R. Simpson, an American former journalist with The Wall Street Journal. Simpson is co-author of Dirty Little Secrets: The Persistence of Corruption in American Politics with Larry Sabato, the founder and director of the Center for Politics.

Bill Browder accused Simpson and Fusion GPS of evading registration as foreign agents for campaigning to influence and overturn the Magnitsky Act.[113] In 2013, the US Department of Justice, represented by Preet Bharara, sued Prevezon Holding, a corporation from Cyprus registered in the US as a foreign business corporation, under the Magnitsky Act for money-laundering. The sole shareholder of Prevezon is Russian citizen Denis Katsyv, whose father is Petr Katsyv, vice president of Russia’s state-run rail monopoly and a business associate of Vladimir Yakunin, a confidant of Putin.[114] Because Katsyv’s lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya, is not licensed to practice in the US, Katsyv hired the law firm of BakerHostetler to represent Prevezon, who in turn hired Fusion GPS early in 2014 to provide research help. In May 2017, two months after Trump had dismissed Bharara, the lawsuit was settled for $6 million, without Prevezon admitting to any wrongdoing and with both sides claiming victory.[115]

On July 27, 2017, Fusion GPS accused the White House of trying to “smear” it for investigating the president’s alleged ties to Russia. White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders pointed to Browder’s testimony as vindication of Trump’s claims. But Fusion GPS countered that it worked only with a law firm in New York “to provide support for civil litigation” unrelated to Russian efforts to do away with the Magnitsky Act, saying it had no reason to register under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA).[116] Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Grassley and ranking Democrat Dianne Feinstein made arrangements in July 2017 for Glenn Simpson to testify before their committee. Senators were expected to also use the hearing “to press Justice Department officials on what they know about Veselnitskaya, Prevezon, Fusion GPS and their connections to both the Trump campaign or the Russian government.”[117]

The Trump Tower meeting was arranged by publicist Rob Goldstone on behalf of his client Russian pop star Emin Agalarov. In his June 3, 2016, email to Trump Jr., Goldstone wrote, “This is obviously very high level and sensitive information but is part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump – helped along by Aras and Emin [Agalarov].”[118] Goldstone is a British music publicist whose association with the Trumps dates back to the Miss Universe 2013 pageant held in Moscow that was co-owned by Donald Trump. Emin’s father, is Aras Agalarov, the founder of Crocus Group, one of Russia’s largest real estate developers, sometimes called the “Trump of Russia,” who is close to Putin. Agalarov had a contract with Putin to build the first section of a vital new ring road around Moscow. In November 2013, Putin awarded Agalarov the Russian Order of Honor.[119]

Caught in the Act

Trump first met with Goldstone, Aras and Emin Agalarov in Las Vegas during the 2013 Miss USA pageant. They attended a dinner party along with Michael Cohen, as well as Michael Cohen, and another Trump associate Ike Kaveladze, the US-based vice president of Agalarov’s Crocus International. In 2000, a Government Accountability Office report identified a business run by Kaveladze was responsible for opening more than 2,000 bank accounts at two US banks on behalf of Russian-based brokers. The accounts were used to move more than $1.4 billion from individuals in Russia and Eastern Europe around the globe in an operation the report suggested was “for the purpose of laundering money.” Crocus was Kaveladze’s main client at the time.[120]

After the dinner, they went to a risqué nightclub called The Act, which featured seminude women forming acts involving faux urine. After complaints about its obscene performances, The Act became the target of undercover surveillance by the Nevada Gaming Con­trol Board and investigators for the club’s landlord, the Palazzo, which was owned by Sheldon Adelson. The Act shut down after the judge’s ruling. The next night, the Agalarovs and Trump signed the contract to host the Miss Universe pageant in Moscow. Agalarov paid Trump $20 million to host the event, which was held at his Crocus City Hall on November 9, 2013, where his son Emin performed.[121] The following morning, Trump then appeared in a music video with Emin alongside many of the contestants.

Aras Agalarov told the Washington Post that Putin was planning to meet with Trump during his visit to Moscow in 2013. The Washington Post reported that Trump was so eager to have Putin attend the Miss Universe pageant that he wrote a personal letter to invite him, according to multiple people familiar with the document. At the bottom of the typed letter, Trump added a postscript saying he looked forward to seeing “beautiful” women during his trip.[122] Prior to the event, Trump conjectured on Twitter, “If so, will he become my new best friend?” MSNBC’s Thomas Roberts asked Trump at the time if he had a relationship with Putin. “I do have a relationship and I can tell you that he’s very interested in what we’re doing here today,” Trump answered. “He’s probably very interested in what… I am saying today, and I’m sure he’s going to be seeing it in some form.”[123] Trump received a private message from the Kremlin, delivered by Aras: “Mr. Putin would like to meet Mr. Trump.” Instead, Putin had to cancel due to a scheduling conflict and the Agalarovs passed along a friendly note from Putin and a traditional Russian box as a gift.[124]

According to the Trump Dossier, two knowledgeable St. Petersburg sources claim Trump has paid bribes and engaged in sex parties there, and believe that Aras Agalarov knows the details. Emin, who is known for being accompanied by beautiful women, and was once married to the daughter of the president of Azerbaijan, reportedly offered to send prostitutes to Trump’s hotel room at the Ritz Carlton the night before the event, coinciding with the evening of the golden showers claims described in the Trump Dossier.

According to the Dossier, Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) has kompromat on Trump, referring to compromising material which could be used to blackmail him, including allegations about Trump’s sexual and financial activities in Russia. According to a leaked annex to the combined US intelligence agencies’ report on Kremlin intrigues during the American elections, Russian security agents watched Trump engaging in “perverted sexual acts” that were “arranged/monitored by the FSB.”[125] The FSB apparently “employed a number of prostitutes to perform a golden showers (urination) show in front of him.” According to the anonymous Russian sources, Trump deliberately chose for his escapade “the Ritz Carlton hotel, where he knew President and Mrs. Obama (whom he hated) had stayed on one of their official trips to Russia and defiling the bed where they had slept.”[126]

According to Mueller’s report, Michael Cohen received a text on October 30, 2016, from Giorgi Rtskhiladze, a US-based Russian businessman who was involved in a deal with the Trump organization to build a Trump Tower in Batumi, Georgia. Rtskhiladze’s text to Cohen said, “Stopped flow of tapes from Russia but not sure if there’s anything else. Just so you know…” Rtskhiladze told investigators in 2018 that the “tapes” referred to “compromising tapes of Trump rumored to be held by persons associated with the Russian real estate conglomerate Crocus Group, which had helped host the 2013 Miss Universe Pageant in Russia,” according to the report. Cohen told investigators that he spoke to Trump “about the issue” after receiving Rtskhiladze’s texts in 2016. Rtskhiladze, however, later told investigators that he had been told the tapes were fake, but that had failed to communicate that to Cohen.[127]

In his book, A Higher Loyalty, former FBI head James Comey, whom Trump later had fired, wrote that after he briefed Trump, then the president-elect, who asked him to investigate and prove the report was a lie. “He brought up what he called the ‘golden showers thing’… adding that it bothered him if there was ‘even a one percent chance’ his wife, Melania, thought it was true,” Comey wrote. “He just rolled on, unprompted, explaining why it couldn’t possibly be true, ending by saying he was thinking of asking me to investigate the allegation to prove it was a lie.”[128]

But, the repeated offers were supposedly rejected by Keith Schiller, Trump’s longtime bodyguard.”[129] (But Schiller by another account was accustomed to being a go-between for Trump. In a 2011, interview with In Touch Weekly magazine that was not published until early 2018, Stormy Daniels, the porn star who claimed she had an 11-month-long affair with Trump, identified Schiller as the Trump aide who facilitated their secret trysts.[130]

The pageant put Trump in contact with influential people in Russia, as he explained in a September 2015 interview on “The Hugh Hewitt Show.” “I called it my weekend in Moscow,” said Trump. He added: “I was with the top-level people, both oligarchs and generals, and top-of-the-government people. I can’t go further than that, but I will tell you that I met the top people, and the relationship was extraordinary.” In the following days, various media outlets in Russia and the United States reported that Trump had used his visit to Moscow to launch “Russian Trump Tower.” Joining Trump to meet the Agalarovs to discuss the project in Moscow was Alex Sapir and his son-in-law Rotem Rosen.[131]

Soon after plans for Trump Tower Moscow, the Obama administration and the European Union imposed sanctions on Russia in response to Putin’s annexation of Crimea and his military intervention in Ukraine, which ultimately killed the deal. But Rob Goldstone suspected the demise of Trump’s project with the Agalarovs influenced Trump’s view of sanctions: “They had interrupted a business deal that Trump was keenly interested in.”[132]

Trump was originally scheduled to spend two nights in Moscow, but he had decided to attend the celebration of evangelist Billy Graham’s 95th birthday on November 7 in North Carolina. In Russia, Trump told Goldstone that it had been necessary for him to show up at the Graham event: “There is something I’m planning down the road, and it’s really important.” In January 2015, Trump invited Emin and Goldstone as guests to his office in Trump Tower. While they chatted, Trump remarked to Emin, “Maybe next time, you’ll be performing at the White House.”[133]

The day after the Trump Tower meeting, Aras had “an expensive painting” delivered to Trump. A report by the Democrats cites an email with the subject line, “Birthday gift for Mr. Trump,” from Goldstone to Rhona Graff, Trump’s longtime assistant. A week later, the Democrats’ report states, Trump sent Aras a thank-you note. According to sources cited by BuzzFeed, Trump Jr. exchanged a “series of text messages” with Emin weeks after his father was elected president. A November 28, 2016, email from Goldstone to Graff said that “Aras Agalarov has asked me to pass on this document in the hope it can be passed on to the appropriate team.” Later that day, Graff forwarded the email to Steve Bannon with Agalarov’s document regarding the Magnitsky Act as an attachment, explaining, “The PE [President Elect] knows Aras well. Rob is his rep in the US and sent this on. Not sure how to proceed, if at all.” Trump’s team has denied there was any follow up after the Trump Tower meeting.[134]

[1] “Tools of the Kremlin: an exclusive list of agents of Russian influence in European countries.” Teksty.org.ua (December 3, 2014).

[2] András Göllner. “The Budapest Bridge: Hungary’s Role in the Collusion Between the Trump Campaign and the Russian Secret Service (Part 2).” Hungarian Free Press (April 14, 2017).

[3] “PM Orbán Becomes World’s First Leader To Endorse Donald Trump As US President.” Hungary Today (July 25, 2016).

[4] “Binyamin Netanyahu is soft on anti-Semitism when it suits him.” Economist (Aug 26th 2017).

[5] Lili Bayer. “Israeli intelligence firm targeted NGOs during Hungary’s election campaign.” Politico (April 8, 2018).

[6] Greg Miller, Greg Jaffe & Philip Rucker. “Doubting the intelligence, Trump pursues Putin and leaves a Russian threat unchecked.” Washington Post (December 14, 2017).

[7] Keir Giles. “Russia’s ‘New’ Tools for Confronting the West Continuity and Innovation in Moscow’s Exercise of Power.” Russia and Eurasia Programme (Chatham House: Royal Institute for International Affairs, March 2016).

[8] Peter Pomerantsev. “Russia and the Menace of Unreality.” The Atlantic (Sepember, 9, 2014).

[9] Andrew Weisburd and Clint Watts. “Trolls for Trump - How Russia Dominates Your Twitter Feed to Promote Lies (And, Trump, Too).” The Daily Beast (6 August 2016).

[10] Andrew Weiburd, Clint Watts & Jim Berger. “Trolling for Trump: How Russia is Trying to Destroy Our Democracy.” War On The Rocks (November, 2016).

[11] Interview of Oleg Kalugin. CNN COLD WAR production team (January, 1998).

[12] Vasili Mitrokhin & Christopher Andrew. The Mitrokhin Archive: The KGB in Europe and the West (Gardners Books, 2000).

[13] Keith Patchen. “Alexandre Kojeve: Moscow’s Mandarin Marxist Mole in France.” National Observer (No. 58 , Spring 2003).

[14] Ali Watkins. “Obama team was warned in 2014 about Russian interference.” Politico (August 14, 2017).

[15] Ibid.

[16] Peter Stone & Greg Gordon. “FBI’s Russian-influence probe includes a look at Breitbart, InfoWars news sites.” McClatchy (March 20, 2017).

[17] Massimo Calabrese. “Inside Russia’s Social Media War on America.” Time (May 18, 2017).

[18] David E. Sanger. “Putin Ordered ‘Influence Campaign’ Aimed at U.S. Election, Report Says.” New York Times (January 6, 2017).

[19] Dan Goodin. “‘Guccifer’ leak of DNC Trump research has a Russian’s fingerprints on it.” Arstechnica (Retrieved June 16, 2016).

[20] David E. Sanger. “Putin Ordered ‘Influence Campaign’ Aimed at U.S. Election, Report Says.” New York Times (January 6, 2017).

[21] Jonathan Vankin. “READ: Guccifer 2.0 Clinton Foundation Hacked Documents”. Heavy.com (November 4, 2016). ; Katie Bo Williams. “Alleged Guccifer 2.0 hack of Clinton Foundation raises suspicions.” The Hill (November 4, 2016); Sean Gallagher. “Guccifer 2.0 posts DCCC docs, says they’re from Clinton Foundation.” Ars Technica (November 4, 2016).

[22] Andrew Weiburd, Clint Watts & Jim Berger. “Trolling for Trump: How Russia is Trying to Destroy Our Democracy.” War On The Rocks (November, 2016).

[23] Natasha Bertrand. “Wikileaks’ Julian Assange reportedly turned down a trove of documents related to the Russian government.” Business Insider (August 17, 2017).

[24] David E. Sanger. “Putin Ordered ‘Influence Campaign’ Aimed at U.S. Election, Report Says.” New York Times (January 6, 2017).

[25] “Donald Trump on Russia, Advice from Barack Obama and How He Will Lead.” Time (December 7, 2016).

[26] John Reed. “Following the Money: Russia, Cyprus, and the Trump Team’s Odd Business Dealings.” Just Security (March 30, 2017).

[27] Cited in Scott Feinberg. “Donald Trump Angled for Soviet Posting in 1980s, Says Nobel Prize Winner (Exclusive),” The Hollywood Reporter (May 26, 2017).

[28] Nina dos Santos. “Senate investigators pursue Moscow-based former Trump associate.” CNN (February 21, 2019).

[29] Craig Unger. House of Trump, House of Putin: The Untold Story of Donald Trump and the Russian Mafia (Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition).

[30] Ibid.

[31] Nina dos Santos. “Senate investigators pursue Moscow-based former Trump associate.” CNN (February 21, 2019).

[32] Ibid.

[33] Abbie VanSickle. “Confused by Trump’s Russia Ties? This timeline breaks it down for you.” Medium (March 21, 2017).

[34] Aaron Rupar. “Rudy Giuliani lied about a Trump Tower Moscow letter of intent. CNN has receipts.” Vox (December 19, 2018).

[35] Ken Dilanian & Allan Smith. “Scuttled Trump Tower Moscow project back in limelight after Cohen guilty plea.” NBC News (November 29, 2018).

[36] Tom Hamburger, Rosalind S. Helderman and Michael Birnbaum. “Inside Trump’s financial ties to Russia and his unusual flattery of Vladimir Putin.” The Washington Post (June 17, 2016).

[37] Cristina Alesci & Caroline Kelly. “Trump Tower Moscow concept included idea of giving penthouse to Putin” CNN (November 30, 2018).

[38] Jonathan Vankin. “Trump Tower Moscow Developer Had Same NYC Address As Carter Page, Key Russia Dossier Figure And Trump Adviser.” Inquisitr (January 31, 2019). Retrieved from https://www.inquisitr.com/5274864/trump-tower-moscow-developer-same-address-carter-page-russia-dossier/?fbclid=IwAR23b1Jx49ck0Ha8O23EwrMgARIrrQqdFLu3B9ynE0Asz2g-HfI69JJQ4l0

[39] Scott Stedman. “The Moscow Project and the missing 6 billion rubles.” Medium (January 25, 2019).

[40] Scott Stedman. “IC Expert CEO Andrey Rozov behind mysterious purchase of NY building tied to Felix Sater and Aras Agalarov.” Medium (January 22, 2019).

[41] Matt Apuzzo & Maggie Habermanaug. “Trump Associate Boasted That Moscow Business Deal ‘Will Get Donald Elected’.” New York Times (August 28, 2017).

[42] Jon Swaine & Luke Harding. “Russia funded Facebook and Twitter investments through Kushner associate.” The Guardian (November 5, 2017).

[43] John Marshall. ““Says Who?” – Piecing Together the Michael Cohen Story.” Talking Points Memo (March 1, 2017).

[44] Nathan Guttman. “Fusion GPS Testimony: Michael Cohen Is A ‘Very Intimidating Person’.” Forward (January 10, 2018).

[45] Matt Apuzzo & Maggie Habermanaug. “Felix Sater, Trump Associate, Boasted That Moscow Business Deal ‘Will Get Donald Elected’.” New York Times (August 28, 2017).

[46] Peter Stone & Greg Gordon. “Sources: Mueller has evidence Cohen was in Prague in 2016, confirming part of dossier.” McClatchy (April 13, 2018).

[47] “В Кремль вернулся опытный кремлевец,” Kommersant, (October 12, 2013).

[48] Franklin Foer. “Was a Trump Server Communicating With Russia?” Slate (October 31, 2016).

[49] Pamela Brown & Jose Pagliery. “Sources: FBI investigation continues into ‘odd’ computer link between Russian bank and Trump Organization.” CNN (March 10, 2017).

[50] Kadhim Shudder. “Skadden partner who worked for Ukraine leaves firm.” Financial Times (April 24, 2018).

[51] Kadhim Shubber, Arash Massoudi & Barney Thompson. “Skadden’s oligarch work comes into focus after Mueller charges.” Financial Times (February 23, 2018).

[52] Shudder. “Skadden partner who worked for Ukraine leaves firm.”

[53] András Göllner. “The Budapest Bridge: Hungary’s Role in the Collusion Between the Trump Campaign and the Russian Secret Service (Part 1).” Hungarian Free Press (April 13, 2017).

[54] Javier C. Hernandez. “The Provocateur Loading Paladino’s Slingshot.” The New York Times (September 24, 2010).

[55] Peter W. Stevenson. “Which Trump associates are being investigated by Congress? A running list.” The Washington Post (June 1, 2017).

[56] Ben Jacobs. “Former Trump adviser asked to testify to House committee on Russia.” The Guardian (May 21, 2017).

[57] Dustin DeMoss. “From Russia With Love: Trump’s Alliances With Putin.” Huffington Post (June 30, 2016) [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/from-russia-with-love-trumps-allegiance-ties-to-putin_us_577589dfe4b0746f56479290]

[58] Zachary Mider. “Trump’s New Russia Adviser Has Deep Ties to Kremlin’s Gazprom.” Bloomberg Politics (March 30, 2016).

[59] Mark Mazzetti & Adam Goldman. “Trump Campaign Adviser Met With Russian Officials in 2016.” New York Times (November 3, 2017).

[60] Liz Wahl. Twitter (March 2, 2017), Retrieved from https://twitter.com/lizwahl/status/837486323418206208

[61] Steve Reilly. “Exclusive: Two other Trump advisers also spoke with Russian envoy during GOP convention.” USA Today (March 2, 2017).

[62] Christian Keszthelyi. “Trump adviser: Orbán aims to ‘make Hungary great again’.” Budapest Business Journal (December 2, 2016).

[63] Greg Price. “Carter Page Says Russia Trip Was Approved by Trump Campaign Manager Lewandowski.” Newsweek (November 7, 2017).

[64] Manu Raju, Jeremy Herb & Katelyn Polantz. “Carter Page reveals new contacts with Trump campaign, Russians.” CNN.com (November 8, 2017).

[65] Thomas Frank & Vera Bergengruen. “Carter Page’s Testimony May Be The Most Surreal Part Of The Whole 2016 Election Investigation Yet.” BuzzFeed (November 7, 2017).

[66] Luke Harding. “What we know – and what’s true – about the Trump-Russia dossier.” The Guardian (January 11, 2017).

[67] Manu Raju & Jeremy Herb. “Carter Page reveals new contacts with Trump campaign, Russians.” CNN (November 7, 2017).

[68] Mark Mazzetti & Adam Goldman. “Trump Campaign Adviser Met With Russian Officials in 2016.” New York Times (November 3, 2017).

[69] Isabelle Mandraud. “Troubling Connections between Trump and Putin.” Le Devoir (Canada) (July 9, 2016); Translated from French by Elijah Bassett. Edited by Helaine Schweitzer.

[70] Kevin G. Hall. “Why did FBI suspect Trump campaign adviser was a foreign agent?” McClatchy (April 14, 2017).

[71] Josh Meyer & Kenneth P. Vogel. “Trump campaign approved adviser’s trip to Moscow.” Politico (March 7, 2017).

[72] Julia Ioffe. “Why Did Jeff Sessions Really Meet With Sergey Kislyak?” The Atlantic (June 13, 2017).

[73] Rosalind S. Helderman. “Mueller was investigating Trump adviser as unregistered agent of Israel, his wife says.” Washington Post (June 5, 2017).

[74] Retrieved from https://www.jewish-leadership.com/about

[75] Adam Entous. “Donald Trump’s New World Order.” New Yorker (June 18, 2018).

[76] Sarah N. Lynch & Mark Hosenball. “Former Trump campaign adviser denies encouraging aide on Russia dealings.” Reuters (October 31, 2017).

[77] Caroline Mortimer. “Boris Johnson met ‘London professor’ linked to FBI’s Russia investigation.” Independent (November 12, 2017).

[78] “Controlled or uncontrolled migration – a fortress EU or a global response?” University of Stirling. Retrieved 31 October 2017.

[79] “About the European Council on Foreign Relations.” ecfr.eu [accessed February 6, 2015].

[80] Stephen Braun and Steve People. “Trump blasts former aide at centre of Russia probe as ‘liar’” The Associated Press (October 31, 2017).

[81] Sharon LaFraniere, David D. Kirkpatrick, Andrew Higgins & Michael Schwirtz. “A London Meeting of an Unlikely Group: How a Trump Adviser Came to Learn of Clinton ‘Dirt.’” New York Times (November 10, 2017).

[82] Tom Winter & Tracy Connor. “Secret Guilty Plea of Ex-Trump Campaign Adviser George Papadopoulos Reveals Russian Ties.” NBC News (October 30, 2017).

[83] Scott Shane. “Trump Campaign Got Early Word Russia Had Democrats’ Emails.” New York Times (October 30, 2017).

[84] Louis Jacobson. “How important was George Papadopoulos on Donald Trump’s foreign-policy team?” PolitiFact (October 30, 2017)

[85] Scott Shane. “Trump Campaign Got Early Word Russia Had Democrats’ Emails.” New York Times (October 30, 2017).

[86] Sharon LaFraniere, David D. Kirkpatrick, Andrew Higgins & Michael Schwirtz. “A London Meeting of an Unlikely Group: How a Trump Adviser Came to Learn of Clinton ‘Dirt’.” New York Times (November 10, 2017).

[87] Robert Farley & Eugene Kiely. “Was Papadopoulos a ‘Low-Level Volunteer’?” FactCheck.org. Annenberg Public Policy Center, University of Pennslyvania (October 31, 2017).

[88] “Trump advisor: ‘We look forward to new ties with Judea and Samaria’”. The Jerusalem Post (January 22, 2017).

[89] Chuck Ross. “Papadopoulos’ Wife: Trump Aid Was ‘Absolutely Not’ Involved in Russian Collusion.” The Daily Caller (June 4, 2018).

[90] Rosalind S. Helderman & Tom Hamburger. “Who is ‘Source D’? The man said to be behind the Trump-Russia dossier’s most salacious claim.” Washington Post (March 29, 2017).

[91] Catherine Belton. “The shadowy Russian émigré touting Trump.” Financial Times (October 31, 2016).

[92] Natasha Bertrand. “Fusion GPS testimony brings alleged dossier source Sergei Millian back into the spotlight.” Business Insider (January 19, 2018).

[93] Ibid.

[94] Catherine Belton. “The shadowy Russian émigré touting Trump.” Financial Times (October 31, 2016).

[95] Ibid.

[96] Ibid.

[97] John Reed. “Following the Money: Russia, Cyprus, and the Trump Team’s Odd Business Dealings.” Just Security (March 30, 2017).

[98] Joseph Cannon. “Watersportsgate: Did Trump’s inauguration czar “leak” Donnie’s dirty secret?” Cannonfire (January 13, 2017).

[99] Cynthia Littleton. “Trump Spokesman Boris Epshteyn Joins Sinclair Broadcast Group as Political Analyst.” Variety (April 17, 2017).

[100] Rosalind S. Helderman, Karen DeYoung & Tom Hamburger. “For ‘low level volunteer,’ Papadopoulos sought high profile as Trump adviser.” Washington Post (October 31, 2017).

[101] Nicholas Fandos, Maggie Haberman & Michael S. Schmidt. “Senate Evidence Clarifies Mystery Calls Around Trump Tower Meeting.” New York Times (January 31, 2019).

[102] Miles Parks. “Businessman Paints Terrifying And Complex Picture Of Putin’s Russia.” NPR (July 28, 2017).

[103] Ibid.

[104] “Russian Trump Tower Lawyer: ‘I Am an Informant’ for Kremlin.” Daily Beast (April 27, 2018).

[105] Ken Dilanian & Natasha Lebedeva. “Donald Trump Jr. asked Russian lawyer for info on Clinton Foundation.” NBCNews.com (December 6, 2017).

[106] Chad Day & Eric Tucker. “Lobbyist in Trump Tower meeting spoke to grand jury: source.” Globe and Mail (August 30, 2017).

[107] Jonathan Easley, Jordan Fabian & John Solomon. “Russian who attended Trump Jr. meeting: ‘I just have a talent for media.’” The Hill (July 17, 2017).

[108] Andrew E. Kramer. “He Says He’s an Innocent Victim. Robert Mueller Says He’s a Spy.” The New York Times (7 April 2018). p. A7.

[109] Easley, Fabian & Solomon. “Russian who attended Trump Jr. meeting.”

[110] Sharon LaFraniere, David D.Kirkpatrick & Kenneth P. Vogel. “Lobbyist at Trump Campaign Meeting Has a Web of Russian Connections.” New York Times (August 21, 2017).

[111] Easley, Fabian & Solomon. “Russian who attended Trump Jr. meeting.”

[112] Kevin Poulsen, Nico Hines & Katie Zavadski. “Trump Team Met Russian Accused of International Hacking Conspiracy,” The Daily Beast (July 14, 2017).

[113] Max Greenwood & Megan Wilson. “Fusion GPS: White House Trying To Smear Us On Russia.” The Hill (July 27, 2017).

[114] Kelly Phillips Erb. “Lawyer With Key Evidence In Russian Corruption Scandals Falls From Building Before Testifying,” Forbes (March 24, 2017).

[115] Neil MacFarquhar & Andrew E. Kramer. “Natalia Veselnitskaya, Lawyer Who Met Trump Jr., Seen as Fearsome Moscow Insider,” The New York Times (July 11, 2017).

[116] Max Greenwood & Megan Wilson. “Fusion GPS: White House Trying To Smear Us On Russia,” The Hill (July 27, 2017).

[117] Bryan Logan. “Senate Intel Committee Subpoenas The Research Firm Tied To The Bombshell Trump-Russia Dossier.” Business Insider (July 21, 2017).

[118] Priscilla Alvarez & Elaine Godfrey. “Donald Trump Jr.’s Email Exchange With Rob Goldstone.” The Atlantic (July 11, 2017).

[119] Megan Twohey & Steve Eder. “How a Pageant Led to a Trump Son’s Meeting With a Russian Lawyer.” The New York Times (July 11, 2017), p. A16.

[120] David Corn & Michael Isikoff. “What Happened in Moscow: The Inside Story of How Trump’s Obsession With Putin Began.” Mother Jones (March 8, 2018).

[121] Neil MacFarquhar. “A Developer and Kremlin Fixer With a Web of Trump Contacts.” The New York Times (July 17, 2017), p. A1.

[122] Shane Harris, Rosalind S. Helderman and Karoun Demirjian. “In a personal letter, Trump invited Putin to the 2013 Miss Universe pageant.” Washington Post (March 9, 2018).

[123] “Trump and Putin Tried to Meet in Moscow Three Years Ago: Source.” NBC News (July 28, 2016).

[124] Megan Twohey & Steve Eder. “How a Pageant Led to a Trump Son’s Meeting With a Russian Lawyer.” New York Times (July 10, 2017).

[125] Jeff Stein. “Trump, Russian Spies and the Infamous ‘Golden Shower Memos’.” Newsweek (October 1, 2017).

[126] Ibid.

[127] Tasneem Nashrulah. “Here’s What The Mueller Report Says About The Alleged Pee Tape.” BuzzFeed (April 19, 2019).

[128] Cited in Tessa Stuart. “Here’s What the Mueller Report Says About the Pee Tape.” Rolling Stone (April 18, 2019).

[129] “Unlikely Middlemen: Trump Jr. Emails Point to Father-Son Duo.” Associated Press via The New York Times (July 12, 2017).

[130] Corn & Isikoff. “What Happened in Moscow.”

[131] Michael Crowley. “When Donald Trump brought Miss Universe to Moscow.” Politico (May 15, 2016).

[132] Corn & Isikoff. “What Happened in Moscow.”

[133] Ibid.

[134] Chris Geidner. “Trump Jr. And Emin Agalarov Stayed In Touch Throughout The Transition.” BuzzFeed (April 27, 2018).

Volume Six

1. Culture Wars

2. Red Mafia

3. From Russia With Love

4. #MeToo

5. Conservative Media

6. Atl-Reich

7. Multipolar World Order

8. Katehon

9. Collusion

10. Russia House

11. Military-Digital Complex

12. Military-Digital Complex

13. Fake News

14. Memetic Warfare

15. Big Data

16. Make America White Again!

17. In Trump We Trust

18. Israel First