Proof of Collusion: How Trump Betrayed America
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About this ebook
Looking back at this moment in history, historians will ask if Americans knew they were living through the first case of criminal conspiracy between an American presidential candidate turned commander in chief and a geopolitical enemy. The answer might be: it was hard to see the whole picture. The stories coming in from around the globe have often seemed fantastical: clandestine meetings in foreign capitals, secret recordings in a Moscow hotel, Kremlin agents infiltrating the Trump inner circle...
Seth Abramson has tracked every one of these far-flung reports and now in, Proof of Collusion, he finally gives us a record of the unthinkable—a president compromising American foreign policy in exchange for the promise of future business and covert election assistance. The attorney, professor, and former criminal investigator has used his exacting legal mind and forensic acumen to compile, organize, and analyze every piece of the Trump-Russia story. His conclusion is clear: the case for collusion is staring us in the face. Drawing from American and European news outlets, he takes readers through the Trump-Russia scandal chronologically, putting the developments in context and showing how they connect. His extraordinary march through all the public evidence includes:
—How Trump worked for thirty years to expand his real estate empire into Russia even as he was rescued from bankruptcy by Putin’s oligarchs and Kremlin agents.
—How Russian intelligence gathered compromising material on him over multiple trips.
—How Trump recruited Russian allies and business partners while running for president.
—How he surrounded himself with advisers who engaged in clandestine negotiations with Russia.
—How Trump aides and family members held secret meetings with foreign agents and lied about them.
By pulling every last thread of this complicated story together, Abramson argues that—even in the absence of a Congressional investigation or a report from Special Counsel Mueller—the public record already indicates a quid pro quo between Trump and the Kremlin. The most extraordinary part of the case for collusion is that so much of it unfolded in plain sight.
Seth Abramson
SETH ABRAMSON is a former criminal defense attorney and criminal investigator who teaches journalism and legal advocacy at the University of New Hampshire. A graduate of Harvard Law School and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, he is a political columnist at Newsweek and the author of over fifteen books, including Proof of Conspiracy and Proof of Collusion. He lives in New Hampshire with his wife and two rescue hounds, Quinn and Scout.
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Reviews for Proof of Collusion
32 ratings6 reviews
What our readers think
Readers find this title to be a complete fraud, filled with wild accusations and no base in facts. However, there are positive reviews that praise the book for its well-researched and documented content. The book has been highly rated by readers and has been described as a richly documented indictment of power and corruption. Overall, the summary is positive, highlighting the book's horrifying and mind-blowing contents and urging everyone to read it.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5WOW. Brilliantly researched and written, the contents are both horrifying and mind-blowing. My interest was piqued by the excellent write-up in Kirkus Review, which does a much better job than I can of breaking it down, so I’ll just copy it here and urge everyone to read the book. As the Washington Post reminds us daily: “Democracy dies in darkness.”
KIRKUS REVIEW
One-time attorney Abramson extends the argument begun in Proof of Collusion: How Trump Betrayed America (2018) by widening the net of culprits.
Donald Trump entered the field of presidential contenders without a discernible ideology save receiving money for nothing, a penchant that many actors were glad to serve. In this long, complex study, the author adds evidence concerning the principal actor, Russia, while layering on other parties: Saudi Arabia, Israel, Egypt, Bahrain, and the United Arab Emirates. Each has served Trump in various ways—Saudi Arabia, for example, by once bailing Trump out from bankruptcy—and each has been rewarded in turn, with Egypt removed from sanctions, given more military aid than it requested, and legitimated even as elected members of the Muslim Brotherhood were branded as terrorists. There are geopolitical issues surrounding this network of “Red Sea conspirators,” as Abramson dubs them: All are committed to the continued supremacy of the oil economy, all are positioned to contain Iran and Syria, and all are autocratic to one extent or another—and there’s not much Trump likes better than an autocratic leader. Russia remains the principal villain of the piece, but, as the author writes, “the Saudis and Emiratis marked…the additional slate of possibilities opened up by the Kremlin’s burgeoning interest in a political neophyte with malleable ethics.” By Abramson’s extensive account, malleability has shifted into full-blown corruption, as Trump and his associates accepted Israeli intelligence here, Russian offers of support there, and the like. The author’s deft tracing of the undeclared international shuttling back and forth between interested parties of former Trump aide Michael Flynn will make readers wonder why he’s not locked inside a maximum security prison. Abramson closes by connecting the dots in current newspaper headlines: Netanyahu wins reelection in Israel, Saudi Arabia declares war on dissidents and neighboring nations alike, Trump pledges an additional 10,000 American troops for deployment in the Middle East, a prelude to war in Iran….
A richly documented indictment of power and corruption that bears urgent discussion in the coming electoral cycle.9 people found this helpful
- Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5This book was simply a collection of rumors and theories that were similar to watching CNN for a week. I was open to hearing facts that all of these rumors were true so that I could make the best decision come the 2020 election but it was just a bunch of wild accusations with no base in facts. Disappointed that Scribd would even entertain a bunch of garbage like this.
3 people found this helpful
- Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5Based off of FAKE NEWS!!! Lies, lies and more lies!!!
6 people found this helpful
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Subtitle: Subtitle: How Trump Betrayed AmericaFirst, obviously things move so fast in Trump-world that many books are out-of-date before they are published. And this book is no exception. Abramson has written three books (so far) each covering an aspect of the Trump phenomenon. This one sets forth in exquisite detail all the information known as of the time of its publication in 2018 (thus predating the Mueller Report) about Russian efforts to influence the 2016 election to help Trump get elected, and of Trump's knowing acceptance of those efforts (collusion by any definition). It is valuable for that reason.The book is organized chronologically from 1987 through 2018. I took lots of notes, which I won't reiterate here, other than to set forth a long quote. The author concludes, somewhat prophetically, in the Afterword:"The volume and scope of Trump's deceit, along with his indefensible domestic and foreign policies, could well produce, in short order, the crashing of the American economy, multiple costly military adventures abroad, and continued degradation of American cultural and political discourse that will take many years to heal. Ironically, the chances that Trump will cause dramatic harm to the very party that elevated him to the presidency are far higher than many people suppose; we cannot expect that Trump will go quietly into the good night while he retains his power or at any time thereafter. He will pursue vengeance against anyone he perceives as having been an instrument of his accountability, whether those in his sight are Democrats or, as he might see it, disloyal Republicans."America will survive this period; to do so, however, it will have to finally accept the unthinkable: it elected a man capable of corporate crime, astonishing greed, and personal cruelty."3 1/2 stars
2 people found this helpful
- Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5I read Mueller's report and watched the recent congressional kangaroo court hearings. This book is a complete fraud. There is no evidence of "collusion" or anything else. The perpetrators of the Russian collusion hoax are now under criminal investigation, and it's only a matter of time before indictments are handed down by a federal court against several of the president's official accusers.
4 people found this helpful
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5NONE of this book is OPINION. Everything in this book is well researched and documented. Those who say it is propaganda are completely wrong. This book has been on the NY Times Bestseller list - as is its sequel - PROOF OF CONSPIRACY, which came out today (9/3/19)- already #1 on Amazon. The sequel has been described as a "richly documented indictment of power and corruption bearing urgent discussion" —Kirkus
Among other credentials, Seth Abramson is a graduate of Dartmouth College and Harvard Law School, a former criminal defense attorney and criminal investigator. As of today, 90% of the 591 reviewers on Amazon have rated this book a 4.7/5.0 - 89% have given the book a 5 star rating.
"By pulling every last thread of this complicated story together, Abramson argues that ...the public record already confirms a quid pro quo between Trump and the Kremlin. The most extraordinary part of the case for collusion is that so much of it unfolded in plain sight." - Simon and Schuster. This "plain sight" evidence exists in reputable worldwide news reports and other public sources that have been pulled together and organized comprehensively by Abramson.
I have followed Seth Abramson on Twitter for a few years, and I highly recommend this book. The information within it is vital in helping to preserve our Democracy.3 people found this helpful
Book preview
Proof of Collusion - Seth Abramson
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CONTENTS
Epigraph
Author’s Note
Introduction: A Theory of the Case
CHAPTER ONE Russia and the Trumps—1987 to 2012
CHAPTER TWO Trump and the Agalarovs—2013
CHAPTER THREE Kompromat—November 2013
CHAPTER FOUR The Campaign Begins—2013 to 2015
CHAPTER FIVE The National Security Advisory Committee—January to March 2016
CHAPTER SIX The Mayflower Hotel—April 2016
CHAPTER SEVEN The Back Channels—May to June 2016
CHAPTER EIGHT The Republican National Convention—July 2016
CHAPTER NINE The Hunt for Her Emails—July to September 2016
CHAPTER TEN The October Surprise—October 2016
CHAPTER ELEVEN The Transition—November 2016 to January 2017
CHAPTER TWELVE The Firings of Flynn and Comey—February to May 2017
CHAPTER THIRTEEN Testimony and Plea—June to December 2017
CHAPTER FOURTEEN A Nation in Suspense—2018
AFTERWORD The Death and Rebirth of America
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Notes
To all the public defenders
Mr. Trump’s claims of no collusion
are, in a word, hogwash.
—Former CIA director John Brennan, August 16, 2018
AUTHOR’S NOTE
The index for Proof of Collusion has been published online rather than in print, because of both its size and the likelihood some readers will want to search it electronically. You can find the book’s index at www.sethabramson.net or http://proofofcollusionindex.com.
INTRODUCTION
A THEORY OF THE CASE
THE TRUMP-RUSSIA INVESTIGATION MAY BE the most multifaceted, wide-ranging, high-stakes federal criminal investigation in American history. It crosses continents and decades and has swept into its vortex more than four hundred people, millions of pages of financial records, and scores of unanswered questions about the state of our democracy. It has already resulted in dozens of indictments and a host of guilty pleas and prison sentences. If President Trump colluded with Kremlin agents to secure his election or to benefit his real estate empire down the road, or if he knows that any of his associates did so, it gives the Kremlin leverage over him in a way that endangers our national security and even our national sovereignty. Whatever your political views, and whatever your opinion of Donald Trump, you have a vested interest in finding out the truth about Trump-Russia collusion if you want America to be governed by the consent of the people and not the Kremlin.
In view of all this, you may be surprised to learn that, as a legal term, collusion
is meaningless outside antitrust law. In lay terms, collusion is simply a clandestine agreement between two or more parties, implicit or explicit, to act in a mutually beneficial way. That collusion is always clandestine underscores that it is almost always a transgression, no matter the venue or the participants. That certain acts of collusion can violate criminal statutes means that collusive behavior is sometimes criminal behavior as well. The notion of an American politician colluding with a foreign power, let alone a hostile one, is antithetical to our values and has been since the nation declared its independence in 1776. Because foreign nationals are not permitted by U.S. law to interfere in our elections, foreign governments generally refrain from commenting on our electoral processes and certainly do not seek to contribute money or other benefits to our candidates. Doing so is a federal crime. In the few instances in which politicians have been caught receiving money or in-kind contributions from foreign entities, it’s been regarded as a rare scandal. Should it also be discovered that the politician and his staff reached out to that foreign entity with the aim of securing a hard-money or in-kind contribution, the scandal would become generationally significant. And should that politician be running for president, and should the nation he sought contributions from be a hostile foreign power that was waging cyberwar on America’s critical infrastructure, that generationally significant scandal would become unprecedented. In short, it is likely that the Trump-Russia story ends with Americans choosing a new archetype for American traitor
besides Benedict Arnold.
Proof of collusion in the Trump-Russia case is in plain sight. When the president or his allies say there was no collusion,
what they mean is that the type of collusion the president undoubtedly engaged in does not constitute a criminal offense—whether or not it constitutes an impeachable one. This latter distinction is important: Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani has taken great pains in the latter half of 2018 to say that the Trump-Russia case is predominantly a political one, and to the extent most legal scholars believe a sitting president can’t be indicted, he is correct. The House of Representatives has to vote to bring charges against a president, and the Senate has to preside over his trial and find him guilty. In this current climate, there is a chance that may not happen.
That said, it so happens that much of this president’s collusion may in fact be criminal. The particular forms of collusion in which Trump, members of his family who are also political advisers, and his presidential campaign engaged may include aiding and abetting or conspiracy connected to electoral fraud, computer crimes, bribery, and money laundering, as well as acts of witness tampering, making false statements, obstruction of justice, and much more. Conspiracy occurs when two or more persons have a meeting of the minds
and set as their ambition the commission of a criminal act; the federal conspiracy statute is violated when the parties take an act in furtherance
of the commission of the intended crime. But the crime does not have to be committed for a violation of the conspiracy statute to be found.
• • •
In America’s system of justice, those designated to prosecute a case are obligated by the rules of professional ethics to be relentlessly zealous advocates for their position. The system doesn’t work, otherwise; without zealous advocates, we might as well adopt the so-called inquisitorial system of justice employed in most of Europe’s courtrooms rather than the adversarial system we have here in America. To an outside observer, zealous advocacy often looks like radicalism; in fact, it’s a civic duty for trial advocates, and one that’s emotionally and intellectually exhausting to fulfill. That’s certainly the case with my ongoing public accounting of the Trump-Russia investigation, though the work is made easier, I’ll confess, by the almost historic absence—I say this advisedly—of any exculpatory evidence suggesting the president of the United States did not conspire with our enemies to violate federal law. I make that statement not as a political partisan but as an American citizen and legal professional who for many years pored over thousands of police reports, witness statements, lab results, and documentary and photographic evidence, looking for any trace of information that could exculpate my clients. I am trained, by years of experience and habit, to search for an alternative explanation besides the obvious one: that the defendant is indeed a criminal, responsible for either the charges as leveled against him or some lesser offense included in or ancillary to the ones he’s currently facing. That roughly 95 percent of defendants in criminal cases in America accept responsibility for their actions and enter a guilty plea in exchange for a fair punishment is at times a testament to law enforcement and at times an indictment of our ability to give defendants the resources to adequately defend themselves; most commonly, though, it denotes a body of evidence that is overwhelmingly inculpatory.
It’s within this framework of experience, principle, and philosophy that I say that I have never before encountered a criminal investigation in which the entirety of the evidence is as damning as it is in the Trump-Russia investigation. From a professional rather than partisan perspective, the conclusion of the Trump-Russia scandal is all but certain: an untold number of indictments, prison sentences, and dispiriting revelations about public figures, all of which will momentarily cast doubt on our ability to move forward as a functioning democracy. That the evidence against Trump and his associates is so thoroughly in one direction makes it all the more startling that there has yet to be any published defense of Trump or his allies on the facts whose contentions would be taken seriously in a court of law. I’m as surprised by that fact as anyone, especially given who the defendant is here and what is so conspicuously at stake in the investigation.
As a longtime criminal defense attorney, I have long sympathized most—philosophically, at least—with the role of defense counsel in our adversarial system of justice. Defense teams are commonly under-resourced, outgunned by a state or federal apparatus with a built-in investigatory arm, a judiciary systematically tilted toward the needs and values of the government, and well-trained prosecutors who are ruthlessly ambitious if not always efficient. But Donald Trump is a different type of defendant; his defense team is a different sort of defense team; and the defense he and his team have mounted so far is not recognizable to an attorney as any sort of legal defense at all.
From his Twitter feed, Trump launches daily baseless ad hominem attacks against prosecutors, investigators, and witnesses alike, and he does so with a seeming impunity from the allegations of witness tampering and obstruction of justice that any of my clients at public defender offices in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, or D.C. would have faced had they behaved similarly. His attorneys daily play semantic games that don’t so much advance their client’s interests as function as a pervasive campaign to misinform Americans about how our system of justice works and why. For instance, their contention that collusion is not a crime
goes beyond mere rhetoric and into a profoundly unethical misrepresentation of the real state of affairs: within the umbrella term collusion
there are dozens of federal criminal statutes that federal law enforcement can and does routinely enforce. As for the broader defense strategy Trump and his attorneys have fashioned against his critics, the strategy seems to be a political, not a legal, one. Every time I see Giuliani or Jay Sekulow on television implying, if not outright alleging, a deep state
conspiracy to frame this president, I do not see a fellow brother at the bar
but a high-priced political operator.
• • •
While several chapters of this book contain original reporting, the bulk of Proof of Collusion aggregates and curates information rather than reporting it. The book is a compilation, at times in summary form and at times in minute detail, of not just the evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign (now administration) and Russian nationals, but also of the criminality born of that collusion. The book’s subchapters are drawn from major-media news stories linked to on my Twitter feed since January 2017 and supplementary news stories and factual updates supporting and expanding upon the materials available on my feed. Taken in sum, these articles and analyses compose the current state of affairs in the Trump-Russia investigation—at least that part of the investigation that is open to public view. My hope is that readers will not only benefit from this presentation but also find many opportunities to discover new connections within the curated pieces of evidence.
An accounting of this evidence is made necessary not just by the frenetic pace of Trump-Russia news and the gravity of the investigation behind it, but the fact that Americans are likely to remain in the dark for months. What originally was six investigations in Congress—the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, the House Judiciary Committee, the Senate Judiciary Committee, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, and the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Terrorism—is now just one: the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. The other investigations have either been shut down or turned their attention toward harassing, impeaching, and in some cases even seeking criminal charges against the law enforcement officials and U.S. intelligence partners who have been, and in many cases still are, investigating the president and his team. While a separate congressional investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election—better classified as a hot
cyberwar than interference
—is ongoing, it has yet to lead to new election safeguards by the Trump administration or to new funding for election security. Meanwhile, the one professional, nonpartisan investigation of Trump-Russia ties, conducted by Special Counsel Robert Mueller at the Justice Department, is at once virtually leak-free and under constant assault and threat of termination by Trump, his allies in Congress, and his advocates in the media.
The result of all this chaos is that Americans are either misled by partisan evidentiary summaries released by Trump allies in Congress; disheartened by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and its lack of progress and odd unwillingness to subpoena critical witnesses; or bewildered by the lack of information forthcoming from the Office of the Special Counsel under the direction of the Department of Justice. Every few weeks or months a new indictment or plea hits the news, or a leak from the White House by an attention-seeking staffer gives the public some insight into what might be going on behind the scenes. But it’s never enough; nothing ever seems to get resolved. This is the state of America in 2018: we wait for news on the possibility that our president may be beholden to a foreign power and the final verdict never arrives, despite feeling tantalizingly close.
America deserves and demands an accounting of the evidence compiled by media outlets, congressional investigators, and law enforcement in advance of a final, comprehensive special counsel report that might not arrive until mid- to late 2019 or even 2020. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who is currently overseeing the investigation, isn’t obligated to make that report public once he receives it—though as a fellow attorney I certainly hope and expect he will, for the good of the nation. So the public might never get the full details of what went on between the Kremlin and Donald Trump, the Republican Party, and allies of Trump in and out of government.
Proof of Collusion aims to move forward the public discussion of the most significant criminal investigation of our lives. But readers should know that there is one type of evidence that is absent from this book entirely: financial records. Breaking a forty-year tradition, Trump refused to release his tax returns prior to Election Day, and we’ve since come to learn that they will never be released. And, breaking a tradition much longer than forty years, the U.S. Congress has refused to subpoena or otherwise force the disclosure of any financial records through any of its investigations, even though they may well hinge on the flow of money into shell corporations and hidden bank accounts. Even the Treasury Department has recently been accused of failing to turn over documents that might have informed America much sooner of suspicious transactions involving accused Russian spy Maria Butina (also spelled Mariia
) and her boyfriend, GOP operative and NRA member Paul Erickson.¹
Unfortunately, these are derelictions of duty and lapses of honor that no public investigation can remedy—we in the public do not have the subpoena power and can only encourage those who do to do their jobs by how we vote every two years and during special elections. So while the Trump-Russia investigation may end up revealing one of the most audacious money-laundering schemes in the last century, perhaps involving one or more European banks or banks in Cyprus under investigation for Russian money laundering, this book cannot go there yet.²
That said, the investigatory model my Twitter feed and this book uses to contribute to public discussion of the Trump-Russia case relies on the development of a theory of the case
—a narrative that connects all other narratives. A good theory of the case
must be dynamic as well as encompassing; it must adapt as new facts emerge and must quickly supplant old presuppositions with fresh analyses. To develop a theory, a criminal investigator must first know all the facts of a case—a task that, with a fact pattern as complex and wide-ranging as that of the Trump-Russia investigation, can feel daunting or even impossible. Nevertheless, a committed investigator builds a timeline of events, a mental gallery of major witnesses and suspects, and a compendium of hard and circumstantial evidence. In doing so, the investigator is able to author a grand narrative that works in concert with, rather than against, the presently available evidence.
In the case of the ongoing Trump-Russia probe, the only plausible theory of the case that coordinates with all the existing evidence is that Donald Trump and a core group of ten to twenty aides, associates, and allies conspired with a hostile foreign power to sell that power control over America’s foreign policy in exchange for financial reward and—eventually—covert election assistance. This theory doesn’t contend that anyone in the president’s sphere participated in any hacking or even knew about Russia’s cyber-intrusions in advance; it doesn’t allege that the conspiracy many members of the Trump team were involved in was finely wrought, as opposed to chaotic, amateurish, and quickly capable of producing a mountain of incriminating evidence; it doesn’t require that all elements of its grand narrative take place in private, as indeed many of them occurred in the plain sight of millions of Americans; and it doesn’t allege that any of the actions involved rose to the level of statutory treason—a federal criminal statute that applies only if America is in a declared state of war. What this theory of the case does do is explain decades of suspicious behavior by Donald Trump, his family, and his closest associates, behavior that suggests that these bad actors expected and received a massive financial reward for taking policy positions friendly to the Kremlin and adverse to the interests of the United States. The theory further maintains that once Trump had sufficient knowledge of Russian crimes to be legally responsible for not aiding and abetting them with promises of policies unilaterally beneficial to the Kremlin—a point Trump reached on August 17, 2016, at the very latest—any additional actions taken to advance Russian interests were criminal. The theory organizes a clear and discrete roster of those Trump aides, associates, and allies who were complicit in Trump’s financially motivated appeasement of a hostile foreign power, and in so doing it explains why nearly every name on that list attaches to a Trump campaign, transition, or administration figure who has lied about his associations with Russian nationals.
In a criminal investigation, even a single significant lie can signal a witness’s or suspect’s guilty conscience; in the Trump-Russia investigation, the combined half-truths and outright falsehoods spread by ten to twenty Team Trump
coconspirators now number in the dozens. Right now, the inaction of congressional Republicans—a failure to prosecute those who have lied to Congress or to subpoena those who won’t speak to Congress at all—enables these lies to continue.
Proof of Collusion aims to provide a careful, comprehensive, and compelling presentation of the evidence supporting the only theory of the case that answers the question of what’s happening in America right now and how we can stop it.
CHAPTER ONE
RUSSIA AND THE TRUMPS
1987–2012
Summary
AFTER FIFTEEN YEARS OF FINANCIAL failures in Russia—failures born not of a lack of desire to succeed but a lack of access to the people in Russia who make wealth creation possible—the Trumps discover that the key to making a fortune in real estate in Russia is greasing the skids with influential Russian officials.¹ When the Trumps finally learn this lesson in the early 2000s, the result is the Russian riches that the family, particularly its patriarch, Donald Trump Sr., has long sought. The family gains, too, a new set of Russian, Russian-American, and Soviet-born allies who will in time rescue the family from its business struggles in the recession of the late 2000s and early 2010s, when many U.S. banks are declining to lend to the Trump Organization.² Many of these new allies have criminal histories, dubious business practices, close ties to the Kremlin, or all three.
But the Trumps’ many years of candor about their fondness for Russia, as well as their boasts of the money their many business ties to that nation have brought them over the years, will dissipate instantly once Donald Trump decides to run for president of the United States not long after the 2012 presidential election.³
The Facts
UP UNTIL 1987, DONALD TRUMP is not regarded as a particularly political public figure. However, in 1987 he publishes The Art of the Deal and takes a trip to Moscow—one or both of which send him in the direction of a political career.⁴
Trump’s trip to Moscow in 1987 comes at the invitation of Russia’s ambassador to the United States, Yuri Dubinin. In Moscow, Trump stays in the Lenin Suite of the Hotel National, which, as Jonathan Chait of New York Magazine notes, certainly would have been bugged
in 1987.⁵ Trump holds meetings on the possible construction of a Trump hotel with Soviet officials, coming away from the meetings certain that the officials are eager
to do business with him.⁶
On returning to the United States, Trump spends nearly $100,000 on politically charged newspaper ads, attacking American allies like Japan and Saudi Arabia for spending too little on their own defense.⁷ He urges America to tax these wealthy nations
and shortly thereafter makes a high-profile trip to New Hampshire—the sort of trip that is often considered a prelude to a presidential bid.⁸
Trump’s 1987 bid for a Trump hotel in Moscow falls through, according to the Washington Post, only because Trump was preoccupied with other business projects.
⁹
Once Trump’s companies recover from a string of bankruptcies in 1991 and 1992, he returns his attention to the Russian market.¹⁰ In 1996, he returns to Moscow with Howard Lorber, one of his two closest friends,
according to the Post.¹¹ Together they scout locations for an office tower and eventually find both a location for the tower and a prospective Russian partner for the project. Trump announces plans for a Trump International–branded building in November 1996; the deal will see him investing $250 million and licensing his name to two buildings.¹² We have an understanding we will be doing it,
Trump says.¹³ At the press conference promoting the deal, he says he doesn’t think he’s ever been as impressed with the potential of a city as I have been with Moscow.
¹⁴
However, Trump has a problem: American banks will no longer lend to him, citing his track record for paying back only pennies on the dollar
—what the banks call the Donald risk.
¹⁵
By 1997, though no construction has begun on Trump’s hoped-for Moscow projects, the New Yorker is writing of the breadth of Trump’s hopes for Moscow investment and business connections.
¹⁶ Trump’s plans for the expansion of his real estate portfolio into Russia go well beyond a single Trump International Hotel; Trump envisions a much larger series of investments. He tells the New Yorker, [I]t would be skyscrapers and hotels. . . . [W]e’re working with the local government, the mayor of Moscow, and the mayor’s people. So far, they’ve been very responsive.
¹⁷
As Trump’s 1996 plans finally fall through for good, Russia begins a period of political upheaval that sees the nation led by five successive prime ministers appointed by Boris Yeltsin over a fifteen-month period in 1998 and 1999. The last of these prime ministers is a man by the name of Vladimir Putin.¹⁸
Putin, the former first deputy chairman (the equivalent of a deputy mayor) of St. Petersburg, develops a fondness for Miss St. Petersburg, Oxana Fedorova, sometime before she is crowned Miss Russia in 2001.¹⁹ It is widely known that he has a picture of her in his office.²⁰ After Fedorova wins the 2001 Miss Russia pageant, rumors abound—spurred in part by the presence of Putin’s domestic intelligence service, the FSB, acting as security at the competition—that the pageant has been rigged so that Fedorova will win.²¹ Local media say that either the pageant was corrupt or its organizers knew instinctively it would be unwise—not politically correct,
according to the Telegraph—to let anyone but Fedorova win.²²
In winning the Miss Russia pageant, Fedorova becomes Russia’s entrant to the 2002 Miss Universe pageant, an international competition owned by Donald Trump. Though the 2002 pageant is scheduled to take place in Puerto Rico, anticipation for the event is high in Russia because of Putin’s admiration for Fedorova and because no Russian woman has ever won the Miss Universe pageant in its then half century of continuous operation.²³
At the time of the 2002 Miss Universe pageant, Fedorova’s publicly acknowledged boyfriend is Vladimir Golubev, a St. Petersburg crime boss heavily involved in the construction industry.²⁴ But the scuttlebutt in Moscow is that Fedorova is actually with a different Vladimir; a May 2002 article published immediately after the 2002 Miss Universe pageant calls Fedorova Putin’s girl.
²⁵ There is substantial press attention on the pageant in Moscow as Fedorova wins the competition and makes pageant history as the first Miss Universe from Russia.
On November 2, 2017, an eyewitness to the judging process at the 2002 Miss Universe contest will contact this author to say that the contest was rigged.
²⁶ After the eyewitness’s identity has been verified, the eyewitness recounts the following: after there are only ten contestants left in the 2002 Miss Universe pageant—an elimination process that Trump directly participates in at this point in the pageant’s history—Trump addresses the pageant’s celebrity judges and indicates that he wants Miss Russia crowned Miss Universe.²⁷ The source reports Trump saying, There’s definitely, clearly one woman out there who’s head and shoulders above the rest. She’s the one I’d vote for.
²⁸ Given the context of the statement—Trump issuing his formal instructions to the judges as they prepared for the conclusion of the pageant—as well as his demeanor while speaking, the eyewitness asserts that Trump told the judges who to vote for,
adding that a subsequent conversation among the celebrity judges revealed that several had had the same impression.²⁹
The judges vote for Miss Russia, who thereby becomes Miss Universe until her dethroning 120 days later for failure to faithfully execute the duties of her office.³⁰ The contest’s celebrity judges are later told by parties affiliated with the pageant that Fedorova has been dethroned because of unspecified criminal conduct by her boyfriend, Vladimir Golubev.³¹
In the forty-eight months following the 2002 Miss Universe pageant, Trump’s fortunes in Russia change dramatically. After fifteen years of failed attempts to break into the Russian market—the Moscow market specifically—Trump finds that Russia is suddenly a critical component of the Trump Organization’s investment portfolio, as Donald Trump Jr. will explain in a 2008 speech to investors at a Manhattan conference.³² While this is partly attributable to the fact that the push to sell units in Trump World Tower to Russians expand[s] in 2002
—when Sotheby’s International Realty begins partnering with Kirsanova Realty, a Russian company—another reason is that a matter of months after the Miss Universe pageant, a Russian émigré associated with the Russian criminal underworld, accompanied by his Soviet-born business partner Tevfik Arif, approaches Trump about a business partnership.³³ The émigré, Felix Sater, will for the next few years deliver a large number of Russian clients to Trump and be instrumental in finding Russia-born partners for the biggest Trump construction project of the 2000s, Trump SoHo.³⁴
Sater’s access to the highest levels of the Russian government is made evident when, in 2006, he arranges for Ivanka Trump to sit in Putin’s office chair during a tour of the Kremlin.³⁵ According to Daniel Treisman, a professor of political science at UCLA and an expert on Russian politics, anyone able to get a visitor to the Kremlin into Putin’s chair would have to have the highest [Russian] security clearances and [be] personally trusted by Putin.
³⁶
The same year, Paul Manafort moves into a forty-third-floor apartment in Trump Tower, paying $3.6 million for it at a time when he is making millions working for pro-Russian politicians in Ukraine.³⁷ Just a year earlier, Manafort proposed in a confidential strategy plan . . . that he would influence politics, business dealings and news coverage inside the United States, Europe and former Soviet republics to benefit President Vladimir Putin’s government.
³⁸ Manafort’s proposal is eventually accepted, and he is paid $10 million in 2006 by close Putin ally
Oleg Deripaska—the same year he buys his apartment in Trump Tower.³⁹
Down on the twenty-fourth floor of Trump Tower, Sater and his company, the Bayrock Group, have become critical to Trump’s business success—especially with Russian investors and business partners.⁴⁰ Yet when asked at a civil deposition in November 2013 whether he knows who Felix Sater is, Trump, under oath, says he has seen Sater only a couple of times
and that he wouldn’t know what [Sater] look[s] like.
⁴¹ At a deposition six years earlier, in 2007, Bloomberg reported that Trump had testified under oath that Sater’s Bayrock brought Russian investors to his Trump Tower office to discuss deals in Moscow . . . and he [Trump] was pondering investing there.
⁴² It’s ridiculous that I wouldn’t be investing in Russia,
Trump says at the time. Russia is one of the hottest places in the world for investment.
⁴³ Indeed, Trump had signed a one-year development deal with Bayrock for a Trump Tower Moscow in 2005; though the deal fell through, a site had been selected.⁴⁴
In 2006, Trump’s partners on a real estate project in Panama go on an investor-recruiting trip to Moscow.⁴⁵ In 2007, Trump again, through Bayrock, line[s] up with Russian investors . . . a deal for a Trump International Hotel and Tower in Moscow.
⁴⁶ According to Trump, [i]t would be a nonexclusive deal, so it would not have precluded me from doing other deals in Moscow, which was very important to me.
⁴⁷ After this deal falls through as well, Trump says—in the same 2007 deposition in which he speaks glowingly of Sater’s real estate development company—We’re going to do [another Moscow deal] fairly soon. [Moscow] will be one of the cities where we will be.
⁴⁸
That year, Trump attends the Moscow Millionaire Fair, at which he unveils Trump Vodka for the Russian market.⁴⁹ He also partners with Russian Alex Shnaider to salvage an ailing project, Toronto’s Trump International Hotel and Tower.⁵⁰ In 2005, Forbes had written a profile on Shnaider referencing his participation in the shadowy,
murky,
violent Ukrainian steel business, where to get along with other steel traders and avoid death (at least seven steel executives were assassinated in Ukraine in the 1990s
) you had to hire their relatives, give them gifts—whatever could be done.
⁵¹ Trump would [claim] to have a financial stake [in the Trump International Hotel and Tower in Toronto], only later to admit that it was a licensing deal. . . . Trump family members [also] presented inflated sales figures when the towers, in reality, stood nearly empty.
⁵²
In 2010, when the Toronto project falters yet again, it is rescued with nearly a billion dollars in new investment by the Kremlin-owned development bank Vnesheconombank, or VEB.⁵³ In December 2016, during the presidential transition, Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, will meet secretly at Trump Tower with VEB’s chairman, Sergei Gorkov, who graduated from the academy of Russia’s chief intelligence agency, the FSB.⁵⁴ Observing that VEB is known for advancing the strategic interests of Russian President Vladimir Putin,
the Washington Post will report that VEB called the meeting with Kushner part of a new business strategy
and that its chairman met with Kushner in his role as the head of his family’s real estate business.
⁵⁵ Hope Hicks, a White House spokesperson, will insist instead that it was merely a diplomatic
meeting.⁵⁶
In 2008, Trump strikes a deal with Russian heavyweight mixed martial artist Fedor Emelianenko—who Rolling Stone will note in May 2018 has very close ties to Vladimir Putin
—for a reality show in Russia that never materializes.⁵⁷ Trump even forms a company with Emelianenko, Affliction Entertainment, to manage and promote their joint venture; he makes his attorney Michael Cohen Affliction’s COO.⁵⁸
All of this helps to explain how, by 2008, Donald Trump Jr., speaking to a group of investors on the topic of emerging overseas markets, could boast that Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our [Trump Organization] assets.
⁵⁹ He adds that the Trump Organization primarily
looks for new real estate in Russia.⁶⁰
Trump Jr.’s comments are striking for both their clarity and boldness. eTurboNews (eTN), the global travel industry news website that reports on Trump Jr.’s address, writes that, per Trump Jr., [i]f he were to choose his top A-list for investments in the emerging world . . . his firm [the Trump Organization] would choose China and Russia.
⁶¹ eTN quotes the eldest Trump son as saying, Given what I’ve seen in Russia’s real estate market as of late relative to some of the emerging markets, [Russia] seems to have a lot more natural strength [than China], especially in the high-end sector where people focus on price per square-meter. In Russia, I really prefer Moscow over all cities in the world.
⁶²
Trump Jr. reveals to the investors that he has made half a dozen trips to Russia
in the preceding eighteen months—one trip every ninety days—and that on these trips he brings clients to the Trump Organization’s projects
in Moscow; his travel partners are, he says, buyers [who] have been attracted to our projects there.
⁶³ In September 2017, Trump Jr. will testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee and say that he has been to Russia only four or five
times in his life.⁶⁴
Trump Jr. does, however, note to investors in 2008 some potential obstacles for those who want to invest heavily in Russia. He explains that, based on his significant experience seeking investments in Russia, investor concerns about the Russian market are not an issue of [not] being able to find a deal—but . . . ‘can I actually trust the person I am doing the deal with?’
⁶⁵ He explains that success in the Russian market is finally attributable to who knows who
and whose brother is paying off who.
⁶⁶
eTN describes Trump Jr.’s depiction of Trump Organization activities in Moscow this way: "Despite a current [Russian] government that projects a ramrod posture, to Trump the current leaders [of Russia] make the scene more scary. Holding back his grin, he said, ‘It’s so transparent—everything’s so interconnected that it really does not matter what is supposed to happen as what it is they want to happen is ultimately what happens’ " (emphasis added).⁶⁷ It is unclear from eTN’s coverage of the Trump Jr. speech who the they
is that the young Trump Organization executive is referring to.
Trump Jr. also discusses the Trump Organization’s reliance on Russian investors investing in the United States. We see a lot of money pouring in from Russia,
he says, adding that the soon-to-be-completed Trump SoHo is also specifically targeting investors in the United Arab Emirates.⁶⁸ Trump Jr.’s boast is not an empty one; from sixty-five Russians buying units in a single Trump building in the late 1990s to a Bloomberg report finding that by 2004 fully one-third of units on floors seventy-six through eighty-three in Trump World Tower involved people or companies connected to Russia or neighboring states,
the Trump Organization has for years counted Russian clients among its most enthusiastic customers.⁶⁹ The New Republic describes how Trump International Beach Resort in Florida was so popular among Trump’s Russian clientele that the area, Sunny Isles Beach, came to be known as Little Moscow.
⁷⁰
One of the deals Trump Jr. may be referring to in saying the Trump Organization see[s] a lot of money pouring in from Russia
is a deal his father is working on the very summer Trump Jr. makes his claim. In November 2004, Trump had bought for $41 million a parcel of land in Florida that—despite the improvements he thereafter made to it—he couldn’t unload.⁷¹ In 2006, it was on the market for $125 million, more than three times what Trump paid for it; by the time the Great Recession begins in the latter half of 2007, Trump has had to drop the price by 20 percent, to around $100 million.⁷²
In the summer of 2008, a Russian billionaire named Dmitry Rybolovlev offers nearly the full asking price for the property—$95 million—despite Trump’s having no competing offers.⁷³ Trump thereby makes $54 million in forty-eight months. Rybolovlev immediately destroys the structures on the property that Trump had renovated and divides the land into three parcels; by 2018, he is hoping to make a mere $18 million profit—one-third of Trump’s—in over a decade of holding the land.⁷⁴
The Charlotte Observer will note in March 2017 that Rybolovlev’s plane was parked next to Trump’s in Charlotte, not briefly but for hours, five days before Election Day in 2016.⁷⁵ The two men—whose planes likewise met
at a Las Vegas airport four days prior to their second meeting in Charlotte—claim that they’ve never met each other.⁷⁶ A representative for Rybolovlev declined to say whether the oligarch had been aboard the plane when it landed in Charlotte,
according to the Observer.⁷⁷ The representative also declined to say whether anyone associated with Trump was a passenger [on Rybolovlev’s plane] or whether its arrival was in any way connected with Trump’s campaign.
⁷⁸ As the Observer concluded, If Rybolovlev were somehow assisting the campaign, it would constitute an illegal foreign donation.
⁷⁹
The same questions raised by the Trump-Rybolovlev transaction—both at the time and in the ten days before Election Day—can likewise be asked for a number of payments Trump has received from Russian oligarchs in recent years. In March 2017, Reuters reports that just sixty-three Russians have invested a total of nearly $100 million in Trump’s Florida properties, adding,
The tally of investors from Russia may be conservative. The analysis found that at least 703—or about one-third—of the owners of the 2044 units in the seven Trump buildings are limited liability companies, or LLCs, which have the ability to hide the identity of a property’s true owner. And the nationality of many [other] buyers could not be determined. Russian-Americans who did not use a Russian address or passport in their purchases were not included in the tally.⁸⁰
The influence Putin wields over his billionaire acolytes is such that if he wanted to turn off the spigot of their money flooding to Trump Organization properties in America he could do so—and quickly. Says Thomas Graham, codirector of the Russian studies program at Yale University, if you’re a Russian oligarch, You can lose your property overnight if you run afoul of the government.
⁸¹
In 2010, Trump SoHo is sued for deceptive sales practices. The building is partly financed by Soviet-born Alexander Mashkevitch, an Israeli citizen who owns homes in Belgium and London.⁸² Mashkevitch has been accused at various points, writes Bloomberg, of "laundering a $55 million bribe by