Most Popular Choices
Share on Facebook 23 Printer Friendly Page More Sharing
OpEdNews Op Eds    H4'ed 11/20/17

Russia Has Owned Trump For Quite Some Time And Mueller Knows It; Tick, Tock Impeachment Clock

By       (Page 1 of 2 pages)   11 comments
Message Daily Kos

See original here

By ursulafaw

Vladimir Putin & Donald Trump at APEC Summit in Da Nang, Vietnam, 10 November 2017
Vladimir Putin & Donald Trump at APEC Summit in Da Nang, Vietnam, 10 November 2017
(Image by (From Wikimedia) Kremlin.ru, Author: Kremlin.ru)
  Details   Source   DMCA

Guardian journalist Luke Harding has written a book, Collusion: Secret Meetings, Dirty Money and How Russia Helped Donald Trump Win. The book contains conversations with former spy Christopher Steele, who admonished Harding to follow the yellow brick road, which in Trump's case is gold and extends all the way from Moscow to Trump Tower. Good advice and Robert Mueller is following it. Vanity Fair:

"In December of last year, Steele informed Luke Harding, a journalist for the Guardian, that 'the contracts for the hotel deals and land deals' between Trump and individuals with the Kremlin ties warrant investigation. 'Check their values against the money Trump secured via loans,' the former spy said, according to a conversation detailed in Harding's new book, Collusion: Secret Meetings, Dirty Money, and How Russia Helped Donald Trump Win. "The difference is what's important."

"According to his book, Steele did not elaborate on this point to Harding, but his implication was clear: it's possible that Trump was indebted to Russian interests when he descended Trump Tower's golden escalator to declare his candidacy. After the real-estate mogul suffered a series of bankruptcies related to the 2008 financial crisis, traditional banks became reluctant to loan him money -- a reality he has acknowledged in past interviews. As a result, the Trump Organization reportedly became increasingly reliant on foreign investors, notably Russian ones. As Donald Trump Jr. famously said in 2008, 'Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross section of a lot of our assets. We see a lot of money pouring in from Russia.'

"The significance of such transactions is not lost on Special Counsel Robert Mueller. Citing a person familiar with the F.B.I. probe, Bloomberg reported in July that Mueller's team is investigating a series of deals Trump struck, including the Trump Organization's failed SoHo development that involved Russian nationals, the 2013 Miss Universe pageant in Moscow, and the president's sale of a Palm Beach estate in 2008. All three deals have drawn scrutiny for their ties to Russian interests; as Craig Unger outlined for the Hive, the 2014 Trump SoHo development is likely of interest to Mueller thanks to the involvement of Felix Sater -- a Moscow-born, Russian-American businessman who did time for stabbing a man in the face with a margarita glass -- and the now-defunct company he worked for, the Bayrock Group. Similarly, Russian developer Aras Agalarov, whose son Emin helped broker the controversial Trump Tower meeting last June between Donald Trump Jr. and Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya, paid $20 million to bring Miss Universe to Moscow. And Russian fertilizer magnate Dmitry Rybolovlev bought the Florida mansion for a staggering sum of $95 million in 2008 -- despite Trump having paid just $41 million for the property four years prior."

Quite a cast of characters in that last paragraph and quite a connecting of dots. Here's even more. Politico:

"When did the KGB open a file on Donald Trump? We don't know, but Eastern Bloc security service records suggest this may have been as early as 1977. That was the year when Trump married Ivana Zelnickova, a twenty-eight-year-old model from Czechoslovakia. Zelnickova was a citizen of a communist country. She was therefore of interest both to the Czech intelligence service, the StB, and to the FBI and CIA.

"According to files in Prague, declassified in 2016, Czech spies kept a close eye on the couple in Manhattan. (The agents who undertook this task were code-named Al Jarza and Lubos.) They opened letters sent home by Ivana to her father, Milos, an engineer. Milos was never an agent or asset. But he had a functional relationship with the Czech secret police, who would ask him how his daughter was doing abroad and in return permit her visits home. There was periodic surveillance of the Trump family in the United States. And when Ivana and Donald Trump, Jr., visited Milos in the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic, further spying, or 'cover.'"

Christopher Steele said that the KGB, "was cultivating Trump for at least five years," as a useful idiot. That estimate is conservative at best.

"As Trump tells it, the idea for his first trip to Moscow came after he found himself seated next to the Soviet ambassador Yuri Dubinin.This was in autumn 1986; the event was a luncheon held by Leonard Lauder, the businessman son of Este'e Lauder. Dubinin's daughter Natalia 'had read about Trump Tower and knew all about it,' Trump said in his 1987 bestseller, The Art of the Deal.

"Trump continued: 'One thing led to another, and now I'm talking about building a large luxury hotel, across the street from the Kremlin, in partnership with the Soviet government.'

"Trump's chatty version of events is incomplete. According to Natalia Dubinina, the actual story involved a more determined effort by the Soviet government to seek out Trump."

Next Page  1  |  2

(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).

Valuable 3   Must Read 2  
Rate It | View Ratings

Daily Kos Social Media Pages: Facebook page url on login Profile not filled in       Twitter page url on login Profile not filled in       Linkedin page url on login Profile not filled in       Instagram page url on login Profile not filled in

articles reprinted from Dailykos.com

Go To Commenting
The views expressed herein are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of this website or its editors.
Writers Guidelines

 
Contact AuthorContact Author Contact EditorContact Editor Author PageView Authors' Articles
Support OpEdNews

OpEdNews depends upon can't survive without your help.

If you value this article and the work of OpEdNews, please either Donate or Purchase a premium membership.

STAY IN THE KNOW
If you've enjoyed this, sign up for our daily or weekly newsletter to get lots of great progressive content.
Daily Weekly     OpEd News Newsletter
Name
Email
   (Opens new browser window)
 

Most Popular Articles by this Author:     (View All Most Popular Articles by this Author)

Just Read FBI Deputy Director McCabe's Statement Regarding His Firing By Trump... Just Read It.

Rush Limbaugh's Sponsor List

Comcast favors Fox News, charges $204 more for MSNBC package. ACTION NEEDED

A Christmas Present From Hucky Boo Boo Sanders, She's Leaving WH The End Of The Year

Ron Paul takes lead In Iowa, Newt Gingrich falls off cliff

Republican Bill Bans Non-Church Marriages

To View Comments or Join the Conversation:

Tell A Friend