By Brian E. Frydenborg (LinkedIn, Twitter @bfry1981, YouTube, Facebook)  September 27, 2020

In response to the bombshell report on Trump’s taxes that was released today, I am releasing a chapter on the scandals, bankruptcies, and financial problems of Trump from my eBook published on November 23, 2019.  These controversies surrounding the financial and business history of the Trump Organization (which even Steve Bannon has apparently described as a “criminal enterprise”) are of greater interest in light of this new New York Times report, but they should have been of far greater, sustained interest from 2015, when Trump began his candidacy for the presidency and when most of this information was already publicly available.  This research of mine was mainly conducted and published in different forms in 2016 and 2017, though some important segments came later., and the resulting material is best understood by reading my full eBook, eBook, A Song of Gas and Politics: How Ukraine Is at the Center of Trump-Russia, or, Ukrainegate: A “New” Phase in the Trump-Russia Saga Made from Recycled Materials, available for Amazon Kindle and Barnes & Noble Nook (preview here), a detailed look at Trump-Russia and how its Ukraine machinations led to Trump’s impeachment, including Trump’s deeply relevant and deeply shady business history.  For helpful and important background on some of the figures mentioned, but not fully introduced, below—including Russian President Vladimir Putin’s top Russian mafia “godfather,” Semion Mogilevich, and his intricate work in Ukraine with Ukrainian oligarch Dmitry Firtash (and his front-company Highrock) and now convicted-by-Mueller’s-team-felon Paul Manafort for Putin stooge Viktor Yanukovych in Ukraine, his Party of Regions and benefactor Rinat Akhmetov, and their schemes to bend Ukraine to Moscow’s will and fight pro-Western Ukrainian leader Yulia Tymoshenko; including Manafort’s work with Russian oligarch and top Putin operative Oleg Deripaska to advance Russian interests; including background on another of Putin’s top men in Ukraine, Viktor Medvedchuk; including how Rudy Giuliani’s longstanding ties with Mogilevich-connected Sam Kislin are also of interest, as is the history of Kislin’s old partner Tamir Sapir in Trumpworld; including interesting background on Felix Sater; including Alexander Shnaider’s ties to Russia and Ukraine, as well as those of his father-in-law, Boris Birshtein and his company Seabeco, as well as oligarch Alexander Mashkevich’s ties to all that—see my articles How Cohen’s and Manafort’s Ukraine Ties Tell the Deeper Story of Trump-Russia and the Mueller Probe and Think You Know How Deep Trump-Russia Goes? Think Again: This Chart/Info Will Blow Your Mind, which link to some more detailed work of mine on some of these individual subjects.  You can see all my Trump-Russia coverage here.

UPDATE: Sept 29: The new New York Times second bombshell report on Trump’s finances, this one about The Apprentice TV show being a screen onto which to project Trump’s “success” amidst a reality of failure behind it, discusses a dynamic that I already noted here close to a year ago and beginning in 2016. In other words, Trump’s “success” amounted to his obtaining shady Russian-/former Soviet-linked financing, letting others take the fall in disastrous deal after disastrous deal, outlitigating anyone trying to hold him accountable, and self-promotion on The Apprentice that helped to obscure his many scandals.

Now, let’s jump into my eBook chapter and Trumpworld in the mid-2000s…

VIII. Russian and Former Soviet Money Rife with Putin Ties Came to America and Trumpworld when Trump was Hurting for Cash

Around this time, key figures in these operations in Ukraine began reaching out to U.S. lobbyists and political consultants for assistance (noted in a 2007 Wall Street Journal article by none other than Glenn Simpson, who, as mentioned earlier, testified to congressional committee staff years later on Trump’s ties to Russia). Among the interactions he and a colleague catalogued:

• Semion Mogilevich himself enlisted the services of William Sessions, a Republican who was the only FBI director to be fired… at least until Trump fired James Comey for investigating Trump and his people’s ties to Russia.  Mogilevich retained Sessions’s services at least during 2007 in an unsuccessful effort to get his criminal charges cleared with the U.S. Government and his name removed from the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list.  The middleman for that particular effort was consultant Neil Livingstone, whose firm GlobalOptions employed many Russians and people from former Soviet republics (Livingstone eventually ran unsuccessfully in 2012 for the Republican nomination for the Montana governor’s race with Ryan Zinke—the Trump Administration’s disgraced and former Secretary of the Interior who resigned mired in scandal in December, 2018—as his running mate).  
• Furthermore, two-time Mississippi governor and major Republican operative Haley Barbour founded a consulting firm that in 2004 introduced Livingstone’s GlobalOptions to Firtash’s Highrock, which engaged GlobalOptions in at least two contracts, one of which was mysteriously referenced in a lawsuit involving an unnamed member of Ukraine’s government.  Notice here how Mogilevich and Firtash are working hand-in-hand, just a bit removed from each other: their modus operandi. 
• Beginning in 2003, Deripaska engaged 1996 Republican presidential nominee Bob Dole to lobby for the visa to the U.S. he was being denied because of his organized crime ties.  Manafort worked on Dole’s presidential campaign and was working with Deripaska on Putin’s agenda when Dole’s efforts were successful, briefly getting Deripaska a visa before the FBI had it revoked shortly after.

Beyond these acts, there were plenty of interesting moves made by Russians and Russian-linked characters in the 2000s that directly involved Trump and his family.

In understanding why and how the moves below were made, it is crucial to understand that by the mid-2000s, Donald Trump had been abandoned by every major Wall Street bank as an unreliable and difficult partner.  The one exception to the Wall Street bank Trump boycott was Deutsche Bank, which has loaned Trump some $2 billion and in recent years has been caught in massive scandals, including two major Russian money laundering scandals.  One such scam involved Deutsche orchestrating some $10 billion in illegal fake trades from 2011-2015 that seem to have been part of an enormous Russian money laundering scheme.  New York State and UK officials levied $630 million in massive fines (the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority portion of the fine is the largest that body has ever assessed) against Deutsche at the end of January, 2017, separate from a Department of Justice investigation that has stalled under Trump but is still ongoing.  It was also revealed back in March, 2017, that Deutsche was involved in another major laundering scam of Russian money for some $24 million, including the specific division that Trump owes $300 million, part of a massive global Russian “Laundromat” laundering scheme with many banks involving $20-$80 billion from 2010-2014, the very years of Yanukovych’s presidency in Ukraine.  Among those involved in the scheme include Russian oligarchs and the F.S.B., with some of the money in the scheme apparently being used to further Putin’s and Russia’s interests.

So, back to Trump, who was hurting for money, especially after he had to declare a bankruptcy for one of his businesses in 2004, his fifth such bankruptcy up to that point (with another still to come) and with Deutsche as one of his only sources of money.  But another other major source?  Russian and former-Soviet-republic-connected money.

Just a mere four years after the 2004 bankruptcy, Trump’s son, Donald Trump Jr., publicly remarked that “Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets” and that “we [the Trump Organization] see a lot of money pouring in from Russia.”

In other words, the 2000s were years when Donald Trump Sr. was aggressively and desperately courting Russian business and investment with few other significant options.

And that “business” and “investment” that would be done would be quite astounding: a series of spectacularly scandalous, high-profile development deals detailed below that would roughly total $1.5 billion and that would involve people, structures, and results ripe for, and attractively (perhaps best), explained by money laundering.

They would end in failure, scandal, and lawsuits.

Nearly all of these deals exploited lax regulations in the U.S., Canada, or other real estate markets.  And there are so many other crooked deals and Russians involved—over the years and continuing into his presidency, at least 3,500 lawsuits have been filed against Trump and/or his companies, by far unprecedented for any U.S. presidential nominee of a major party—that it can be overwhelming.  Just one report from Reuters noted nearly $100 million was invested by Russians (including some “politically connected” elites but not including Russian-Americans who did not purchase units using a Russian address or passport) in seven Trump properties in South Florida, and that over a third all of the units in the seven properties were owned by shell company LLCs often designed to mask their owners’ identities.  But here, we will stay focused on those players who have or will play prominent roles in our Ukraine-focused saga.

In Manhattan, Ukrainian Vasily Salygin—who would later become an official in Ukraine’s Party of Regions at the same time Manafort was advising it—would buy an apartment in Trump World Tower, among the first to do so after the skyscraper opened in 2001. This purchase would be brokered by fellow-Ukrainian Sam Kislin, who, as mentioned before, had done business with Trump decades earlier, had become particularly close to Rudy Giuliani, and was considered part of a Mogilevich Russian mafia organization by the U.S. law enforcement officials.

The Bayrock/Sater Deals: Russian-Linked, Shady Money and Colossal Failure Become Trump’s Style

Meanwhile, Kislin’s old business partner selling Trump televisions, Tamir Sapir, can be seen as a major catalyst for some of the wildest, most scandalous series of Trumpdeals covered in this entire exploration. Living in Trump Tower, Sapir had easy access to Trump and the families of the two men became friends.  In the early 2000s, Sapir would introduce Trump to Bayrock, ostensibly a real-estate firm led by Tevfik Arif, an ex-Soviet government official from Kazakhstan whose rise to fortune is at least somewhat questionable.  None other than our Felix Sater was then Chief Operating Officer (and eventually the dominant force) within Bayrock, the office of which was even in Trump Tower itself.  Saterdirectly partnered with Trump repeatedly throughout this period, trying to help him land real estate deals in Moscow, even showing Ivanka Trump and Donald Trump Jr. around the Russian capital in 2006 (in which capacity, he let Ivanka spin around in Putin’s chair in the Russian president’s Kremlin office) and introducing the Trumps to influential Russians.  None of these potential Moscow deals ever went through, but other massively scandalous deals with Bayrock did go further in America.

One of Bayrock’s partnerships with Trump in the U.S. in Fort Lauderdale was originally conceived of as the Trump International Beach Club.  According to a lawsuit—spearheaded by a pair of former Bayrock employees, Jody Kriss and Michael Ejekam, who were seeking damages against Bayrock, Arif, and Sater, and assisted by the aforementioned attorneys Oberlander and later Lerner—Arif put up an initial $2 million in capital.  Then, the lawsuit alleges, Arif and Sater conned Elizabeth Thieriot—a friend of Arif’s who was also Sater’s landlord—by lying about the value of the club, hiding their own investment in the project and convincing her to provide a $1 million investment for a mere 4% of the Club.  That lawsuit claims her investment was 12 times the value of that percentage, allowing Sater and Arif to make a 1,125% profit on her investment, and that the pair committed tax and financial fraud and defrauded Thieriot of her rightful share.  Others may have been victims, too, but after she took the pair to court in 2006, it is unclear how or if the case was resolved.  The project was apparently eventually reconceived of as the Trump Las Olas Beach Resort, but was suspended in a declining market by Trump himself in October, 2007.

Bayrock’s most prolific partnership with Trump, however, was an infamous deal to develop a SoHo property in Manhattan.  The deal was concocted in 2006 by Trump, Sater, Arif, and Sapir.  In an arrangement specifically approved by Trump, the SoHo deal had a significant portion of its Sater/Arif facilitated financing—some $50 million for it and three additional projects—flow from Icelandic firm FL Group. 

FL Group was later linked to the Panama Papers revelations and was widely known as a hub for the money of wealthy Russians, apparently those “in favor with Putin,” according to the Kriss v. Bayrock lawsuit.  In addition, cumulonimbus-size clouds of well-founded suspicion of involvement with big-time Russian money-laundering then surrounded the incredibly deeply interconnected Icelandic financial system of which FL Group was a key part.  Financing for these four projects was also secured from Mashkevich, formerly of Mogilevich-summit host Birshtein’s Seabeco and a major business partner with Deripaska concurrent with Deripaska’s work with Manafort on behalf of Putin.  This FL Group financing happened to come at a time both when Mogilevich and his network (including Manafort) were laundering money for the massive Ukraine scheme and Deripaska seems to have been engaged in money laundering with Manafort and Gates.

The Trump SoHo deal itself was deliberately structured to cheat authorities out of tens of millions in revenue, as the investments were illegally restructured as loans to avoid paying hefty taxes on them, “loans” that would also give FL Group a big chunk of theoretical future profits over time.  Furthermore, some of the transactions involving the Trump SoHo were clearly carried out by shell corporations for the virtually certain purpose of laundering money, transactions from which Trump profited.  Specifically, there was investment for the purpose of alleged money laundering linked to Mashkevich—who, as noted, has his own separate history of alleged money laundering—involving the family of prominent Kazakh politician Viktor Khrapunov, once the mayor of Almaty. Sater has been helping federal authorities investigate Khrapunov’s alleged money laundering for years, but Sater himself was recently sued by a Kazakh Bank and the city of Almaty, Kazakhstan, alleging he worked with Khrapunov’s son, Ilyas Khraphunov, to launder millions in part to help build a potential (an infamous) Trump Tower Moscow (to be discussed later).  A similar U.S. suit from the same parties targeting Viktor Khrapunov that had added information about Sater to its filings just recently had all its claims against Viktor dismissed because of the terms of a previous legal settlement. 

The bottom line is that, given all the general shadiness surrounding Trump, the Khrapunovs, Sater, Sapir, Arif, Mashkevich, and FL Group, there are plenty of reasons to be extremely suspicious of Trump SoHo’s various funding streams.     

In the end, the Trump SoHo project went terribly awry for Trump, who was sued for fraud along with his children Ivanka and Eric Trump, both of whom had inflated the level of interest in order to attract buyers.  In a 2011 settlement, Trump refunded 90% of the deposits for the building’s condos and the property went into foreclosure in 2014.  The Manhattan District Attorney’s office had even been building a serious criminal case against Ivanka and Eric for some two years, but, mere months after longtime-Trump lawyer Marc Kasowitz discussed the matter with the Manhattan District Attorney—one of whose top donors before and after was Kasowitz himself—the D.A., Cyrus Vance, rather incriminatingly dropped the case in 2012, overruling his own prosecutors in the process and saving the Trump kids from serious legal trouble (Vance would also give Harvey Weinstein a free pass with a sexual groping allegation in 2015). As a denouement, in November, 2017, the Trump Organization was paid by the SoHo’s corporate owner—weary of the scandals and the negative attention brought on by Trump’s political career—to terminate their contract early, with the Trump Organization ending its management role and fully disassociating itself from the building by the end of the month.

Even as construction on Trump SoHo began in 2007, a second of the Trump/Bayrock projects with the FL Group financing was rising in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.  This second Trump/Bayrock project there, the Trump International Hotel & Tower, would also result in disaster and lead to over a dozen lawsuits, with over 100 condo buyers suing for $7.8 million.  The project was supposed to have been completed by the end of 2007 but fell way behind schedule, and Sater and his Bayrock partners may have secretly cashed out their stakes in this project and the three FL Group–linked other projects in an arrangement made with FL Group equal to the initial $50 million “investment” loan.  Trump eventually pulled his name from the project, and when its buyers learned this in May, 2009, this only increased their outrage and added to lawsuits already in motion accusing both Trump and Bayrock of fraud.

As in the SoHo deal, confidential settlements, this time with dozens of buyers, ensued, with Trump refusing to accept any responsibility and blaming the problems on the housing bubble bursting and the Great Recession.  Florida courts declined to rule that Trump or his partners had committed fraud, including a state appeals court in 2016, but most of the lawsuits against Trump and his partners resulted in undisclosed settlements.  The project finished years late, cost some $200 million, and was eventually sold for a relatively mere $115 million at a foreclosure auction.

A third deal among the four which received FL Group financing was a failure that never even got a concrete start. When Trump began eyeing the Phoenix, Arizona, area’s Camelback location for a luxury residential tower back in late 2003, Trump’s team, and later Trump himself, met with the mayor, who was not impressed with Trump nor the proposal.  At a January 2005 meeting, when plans were unveiled, local residents even showed up to argue against the development. Still, by September, the appropriate city bodies had approved the plans.  It seems Sater’s people organized intimidation, bribery, and deception as tactics to deter residents from gathering enough petition signatures to force a public referendum that could have overridden the city bodies’ approvals, but under this public pressure, the city council voted to reverse its decision anyway and pressed the developers and the neighborhood association to reach a compromise.  At that point, Trump himself abandoned the project for at leas the stated reason of not wanting to be part of anything that would be scaled down any further in scope and ambition.

Ernie Mennes, the owner of the Camelback property who had gone into a partnership with the Bayrock/Trump developers, sued Bayrock in 2007 in federal court, accusing Sater of both threatening to “cut off his legs and leave him ‘dead in the trunk of his car’” as well as of stealing money from the project.  The judge oversaw a settlement and the case was sealed, likely because of Sater’s special relationship with the federal government.  By June of 2009, Bayrock was relieved of the property, which it had left $36 million in debt, when it was “sold out from under” the company at a trustee auction for a mere $10 million.

The final in the group of four projects of Bayrock tied to the faux $50 million “investment” by FL Group was Queens, New York, property called Waterpointe.  Bayrock bought the property in 2008 for $25 million, but its soil was contaminated and had to be replaced, which Bayrock did with other soil that was even more contaminated and, thus, Bayrock was fined $150,000; when Bayrock defaulted on a loan in 2011, the lender took over Waterpointe, then sold it for roughly $11 million, less than half the amount Bayrock had paid for it.

Unsurprisingly, Bayrock would later find itself facing heavy legal problems.  Emerging out of a process that began in 2008 in Delaware was a lawsuit filed with the New York State Supreme Court in May of 2013 by aforementioned former business partners of Sater’s at Bayrock—Kriss and Ejekam—against Bayrock, Sater, Arif, and their associates.  The plaintiffs sued for damages and nonpayment related to Sater’s hiding of his criminal past and what their lawsuit, moved to federal court, says was his use of Bayrock primarily as a criminal organization for criminal activities, especially alleged money laundering and fraud.  In this suit, Donald Trump, Ivanka Trump, and the Trump Organization are named as defendants.

The state court process removed the Trumps and their Organization from the suit in a way that left unresolved their guilt, responsibility, or innocence.  The case dragged on and on, over years, but was finally settled in February, 2018, after a number of the accusations against Sater were withdrawn, but the details of the settlement have not been revealed.

Confusing?  Of course.  That likely by design.  What we do know overall is that these deals were going down at a time when Mogilevich, Manafort, Firtash, and others were involved in the Ukraine gas plot and were eager to move and allegedly launder billions of dollars out of Ukraine as part of that scheme.  Starting in late 2007, they were facing increased scrutiny from the new Ukrainian Prime Minister, Yulia Tymoshenko—Yushchenko’s right-hand woman during the Orange Revolution—and her allies in the Ukrainian government.  If Sater’s father really was part of Mogilevich’s crew, as the U.S. Supreme Court writ of certiorari asserts without evidence, or if Sater was himself connected to Mogilevich, as Simpson with his legal counsel present asserted to U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee staffers and after being reminded that lying to Congress is a prosecutable federal offense that can land someone up to five years in prison, then it seems highly likely that Mogilevich would have been running Ukraine gas scam money through these Bayrock deals.  If these claims of ties between Mogilevich and Sater are unfounded, Mogilevich still has some entry points—most likely Mashkevich and FL Group, but also others—into these deals besides Trump himself that could have been on his radar, too, that should also be looked into for possible money laundering related to the giant Ukraine gas scam.

It was also clear from these deals and others that Trump and the people around him were hardly rigorous vetters, let alone eager to turn down deals coming in from people with suspicious business practices and questionable, even criminal pasts tied to organized crime or to hostile foreign governments and even those governments’ intelligence agencies.  Thus, selecting Trump as either an unwitting or willing conduit for money that needed to be moved stealthily, even laundered, was pretty much a no-brainer, especially since his playboy celebrity status made it much easier to attract additional “partners” to further distract and normalize, lending an air of respectability to these murky deals.  And in all of these details, it is those additional folks who paid the biggest prices by far.

When Sater left Bayrock in 2008, none of those disastrous deals stopped him from being brought into the Trump Organization in 2010 as a “Senior Advisor to Donald Trump” even after Trump was made aware of Sater’s criminal past.  For his part, Trump has issued his typically contradictory and slippery statements—more aptly called lies—in regards to these dealings and, in particular, his relationship with Sater, as Trump lied repeatedly in sworn testimony about it and his ties to Bayrock in an attempt to falsely minimize them.  And there is no distancing Trump from Bayrock: one of Bayrock’s flagship presentations from as late as 2008 lists three of the Trump-named projects discussed above before all others, lists the Trump Organization as its first “strategic partner” (followed by FL Group), and lists Donald Trump as its first “reference” and “Trump Tower” in New York as its address.

On top of all that, it was revealed in March of 2017 that Sater owned several shell corporations tied to Don Jr., the Trump Organization, and/or another executive with shady ties, shell companies that had sold no products, had no customers, and were ideal for money laundering.  More on Sater later… 

As for Arif, Sater’s main partner at Bayrock, he was arrested in Turkey in September 2010 when he was at a sex party with, of all people, Mashkevich and apparently underage girls on board a yacht (which had been once belonged to none other than Atatürk, founder of modern Turkey) under suspicion of running a complex prostitution and human trafficking ring of which it seems Mashkevich was also a part.  Arif was later acquitted under mysterious circumstances and Mashkevich was never charged.

Trump Tower Toronto: Connecting Putin, Mogilevich, and Ukraine Even More with Donald Trump

Another scandal-ridden Trump deal would involve a major property development in Toronto. 

To understand this deal, we must go back again to Ukraine, where we left the Zaporizhstal steel mill—Ukraine’s fourth largest—in the possession of Alexander Shnaider, former Seabeco employee and son-in-law of Boris Birshtein, Seabeco’s owner and the Mogilevich-summit-host from back in 1995.  By 2006, Shnaider was turning down a $1.2 billion offer for the mill.

But in 2007, Shnaider and Trump began building the Trump International Hotel and Tower, Toronto.  It was partly funded by Raiffeisen Zentralbank (RZB) of Austria, which, according to Glenn Simpson, is “the go-to bank for top-level Russian dirty stuff.”  And in 2008, FL Group conspicuously loaned Shnaider €45.8 million ostensibly for a yacht at the same time Shnaider’s former Seabeco colleague Mashkevich was also working closely with FL Group and Trump on the Bayrock projects.  After investors were slammed during the ensuing global financial crises that exploded that same year, Shnaider sought to sell his company’s near-total stake in Zaporizhstal to help finance his Trump project, which he did in 2010 for some $850 million passed through five shell companies.  The Zaporizhstal buyer was an unknown Russian acting on behalf of the Russian government and who, in turn, was funded by the Russian state-run bank VEB (Vnesheconombank), which had as the chairman of its board at that time none other than Vladimir Putin himself and which has been sanctioned because of Russia’s 2014 invasion of Ukraine.  Then-Ukrainian President Yushchenko saw much of VEB’s activity in Ukraine at the time as infringing on his nation’s sovereignty and said that he tried looking into the transactions for Zaporizhstal and other privatizations of national assets, but was blocked by pro-Russian lawmakers.

Furthermore, selling Zaporizhstal to a Russian fit well into Putin’s scheme of trying to extend Russian influence over Ukraine’s industry and natural resources using Russia state-owned assets, such as Kremlin-run banks and energy companies, in tandem with the likes of oligarchs such as Dmitry Firtash and Rinat Akhmetov.  Shnaider had carried out a similar operation in Armenia with a company that ran the electrical grid there in 2002, handing it off to a Kremlin-run company and giving Russia further leverage in another former Soviet Republic.  2003 saw him pick up a steel mill in Russia, then sell it to a Russian state military subsidiary company, but was given a quarter-stake in return, making him a business partner with Putin’s government.  The pattern is clear: Shnaider was expanding Putin’s power.

It was reported by the Financial Times in mid-2018 that Shnaider was able to attract the VEB-funded Russian buyer because he had secretly agreed he would pay $100 million “commission” to “introducers” speaking for the Kremlin.  Legal filings in a dispute between Shnaider and his then-main business partner, Shifrin with whom he had bought up Zaporizhstal to begin with, suggest that some of that $100 million ended in the hands of officials in the Russian government.  The $100 million seems to have been a bribe and would make the whole Trump Tower project one huge money laundering machine.  Shifrin claims Russian officials made clear threats that his Russian holdings would be in trouble if he did not sell Zaporizhstal to them.  After the sale, VEB seems to have operated in such a way as to ensure Kremlin control over the steel mill, too.

Akhmetov had seemingly narrowly missed out on acquiring Zaporizhstal from Shnaiderback in 2010, and the $850 million price was $160 million more than Akhmetov had offered.  But in a stellar example of the amount of cross-collusion going on, of that difference, $50 million went to Akhmetov (all while Akhmetov was backing the parties to the gas scheme), $10 million to Shnaider and Shifrin’s company, and $100 million, as noted, to the “introducers.”  This deal was set up by the Ukrainian Igor Bakai, who had served in Kuchma’s government and in Naftogaz before fleeing Ukraine to Russia during the Orange Revolution.  Though the succeeding Yushchenko government wanted him for financial crimes, Moscow declined to hand him over and clearly found him useful in 2010.  A lawyer of Birshtein’s indicated in 2017 that $15 million from the Zaporizhstal sale went into the Trump Tower Toronto project, but the newer Financial Times report suggests this figure was $40 million.  After that further investment from Shnaider, Trump would earn millions through the deal. In July, 2011, just a year after Shnaider and Shifrin sold Zaporizhstal, Akhmetov was able to gain majority ownership of it, when he was a sitting member of Ukraine’s parliament with the Party of Regions.  Incidentally (or not), with just days until Trump’s 2016 electoral win, Shifrin was granted Russian citizenship.

Like the other deals discussed above, the Toronto deal fell into the same pattern of coming apart amid scandal and lawsuits from dozens of investors saying they were lied to and who are apparently still suing both Trump and Shnaider. Late in 2016, the property was placed into bankruptcy receivership, and in the summer of 2017 Trump’s stake in the project was completely bought out, his name removed from the building that July.

Rinse, Repeat for Panama

Still another massive scandal-ridden deal from this period was just exposed by an NBC News/Reuters/Global Witness joint series of exposés on the Trump Ocean Club International Hotel and Tower in Panama City, Panama.  Ivanka Trump was particularly involved in this project, and Eric Trump was also involved substantively, though there is, as of yet, no evidence that shows any of the Trumps were aware of the criminality swarming their project; as usual, their best defense is that they are just incredibly stupid.  This project, which began in 2005 and opened in 2011, became a massive hub for organized crime—including the Russian mafia—to use for money laundering, as demonstrated by the overwhelming evidence presented in the reports. 

Notably, in 2007, Bear Stearns “underwrote a $220 million bond issue” that would help finance the project’s construction, less than a year before Bear Stearns’s meltdown initiated the Great Recession.

In 2011, the Trump Ocean Club’s Board of Directors voted to end Trump’s management of the building, claiming TRUMP was engaged in financial wrongdoings.  His response was to sue them and a bitter fight ensued, ending in a confidential settlement that still left Trump managing the building.  By 2013, the company Trump had partnered with to make the whole Trump Ocean Club happen was filing for bankruptcy.  The Club’s majority owners kept trying to remove Trump’s name and end his involvement entirely, which they were finally able to do in 2018—including taking physical control of the property away from Trump’s security staff with actions of a Panamanian judge and the assistance of armed police on the site—and court rulings soon after this in New York and Panama affirmed that result, paving the way for Marriott to take over management of the property later that year.  Legal filings made in June, 2019, by the majority owners who pushed out Trump even argue the Trump Organization evaded paying Panamanian taxes while running the property and claim both to have the financial records to prove evasion and that auditing by Panamanian authorities has demonstrated such tax evasion.

But the shady Trump Panama deal also has a link to our Ukraine drama.  A Ukrainian businessman named Igor Anopolskiy was involved in several companies dealing with Trump Ocean Club units and in marketing the Club’s units to Ukraine.  In 2014, he was convicted in Ukraine for forging travel documents, but had his three-year prison sentence strangely first suspended and then, in 2017, purged from his record.  Even more suspiciously, he has since 2005 been a shareholder in a Ukrainian travel agency that once had among its other shareholders one Oxana Marchenko, who, according to Global Witness, “is believed to be the wife” of Viktor Medvedchuk.

While Oxana (or Oksana) is a major Ukrainian TV personality who dabbles in Russian oil drilling through a Cyprus-based company, Medvedchuk is an even more connected individual.  He was one of Ukraine’s first post-Soviet oligarchs and in none other than the natural gas business, and by 1999 he was a close ally of then-Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma, supporting him in tandem with Oleksandr Volkov, who at the time was funneling money from Birshtein to Kuchma and was the latter’s campaign manager, as discussed previously.  Medvedchuk later became Kuchma’s chief of staff from 2002-2005, yet also became very close with Putin’s number-two, then-Russian Prime Minister and later-President Dmitry Medvedev.  But Medvedchuk is even closer with Putin himself, who is the godfather to Medvedchuk’s and Marchenko’s daughter (Medvedev’s wife is the godmother) and has pushed for, and seen, Medvedchuk take leading roles in Ukraine’s politics.  In such roles Medvedchuk backed Yanukovych, has worked to steer Ukraine away from the West and closer to Russia, and has played a major role as a negotiating representative “for” Ukraine in major disputes with Russia on everything from gas deals to the current war. 

Clearly, there is a distinct possibility of some sort of cash flow from Ukraine into the Trump Ocean Club in Panama, and this possibility should be of keen interest to American, Ukrainian, and Panamanian officials, among others.

The Manafort, Firtash, and Mogilevich Manhattan Money Laundering Moves

As Tymoshenko moved to fight the overall Kremlin-serving gas scheme, laundering the gas-generated proceeds became even more important to the people involved.

To this end, Manafort may have engaged in money laundering, possibly including his 2006 cash purchase of a $3.675 million Manhattan Trump Tower apartment using one of the shell companies cited in Special Counsel Mueller’s October, 2017, indictment.  If that property was involved, it means a direct link between alleged money laundering that was part of Putin’s Ukraine gas plot and Trump himself. In 2008, Manafort and Gates were personally involved in moving money—alleged laundering—to the U.S. through multiple deals involving Manhattan properties, according to court documents.  Those documents detail how Manafort ran a shell corporation that was part of the machinery that pushed money into real estate deals on behalf of Firtash and their mutual allies, with Firtash in one case allegedly laundering some $25 million in an $895 million deal involving the Drake Hotel.  But that deal never came fruition, resulting a number of parties that felt cheated and defrauded.

Another major money laundering case involved the arrest of Mogilevich-linked Russian mobsters in Trump Tower itself.  A Mogilevich-outfit Russian mafia boss, Alimzhan Tokhtakhounov (somewhat famous for allegedly rigging figure skating in the 2002 Winter Olympics in Utah to get Russians gold medals), and his lieutenants Vadim Trincher and Anatoly Golubchik were allegedly overseeing an illegal high-stakes international gambling ring.  The scheme drew rich participants and was, in part, operated out of the Trump Tower. The whole caper ended up being the subject of the recent Jessica Chastain movie Molly’s Game.  Important for our story, the gambling ring was popular with Russian and Ukrainian oligarchs in both Russia and Ukraine and its ringleaders engaged in some $100 million in money laundering.  In 2009, Trincher purchased a Trump Tower unit just below one owned by Donald Trump himself. In his own apartment, Trincher almost held a fundraiser two years later for future-Trump-ally and bigwig Republican Newt Gingrich.  A mold problem ended up derailing the plans for the fundraiser, with a water leak being detected. Other mobsters in this overall Mogilevich cell also owned Trump properties.  Many of these folks did not escape justice in 2013 raids orchestrated by U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York (SDNY) Preet Bharara, a noted foiler of Kremlin plots but who was later fired by Trump soon after Trump became president.  Tokhtakhounov did manage to get away, though, and was soon after a red-carpet VIP guest at Trump’s very own 2013 Miss Universe Pageant in Moscow. The two men arrived within minutes of each other, and it is certainly possible they interacted there.  Tokhtakhounov is regularly spotted at trendy public places in the Russian capital, easily still evading justice.

How does one make sense of so much scandal?  Just the Trump deals involving Bayrock, Toronto, and Panama alone amounted to some $1.5 billion, and there was a clear pattern with each: money connected one way or another to the Kremlin or the Russian mafia, failure, scandal, lawsuits, an overwhelming stench of money laundering, and the Trump name being removed by Trump backing out or Trump being forced out.  Taken together, it is pretty improbable that so much disaster could surround one person without a greater, deliberate purpose behind such losses, that people would risk so much money without money laundering being the real reason behind these deals.  And those deals certainly match the model of the Manafort, Gates, Firtash, and Mogilevich Manhattan money moves for Yanukovych, the Party of Regions, and Putin that were clearly money laundering, even if a court case has not yet produced a guilty verdict regarding those deals.  These were the big deals he was doing while he was rebuilding himself and using his TV show The Apprentice to build a huge national fanbase

Let us also pause here to note Trump’s direct involvement with two major financial firms—Bear Stearns and FL Group—just before they failed and were the two major catalysts for the worst global economic crises since the Great Depression.  FL Group failed spectacularly in 2008, along with Iceland’s other major banks and funds.  The firm’s failure was a major factor in the collapse of Iceland’s financial sector, a collapse that served as a catalyst for the 2008 global financial crisis and America’s Great Recession.  Furthermore, since FL Group was a stupendously bad performer even by the standards of the 2008 financial crisis, and given its close (direct and/or indirect) ties to Kremlin-connected Russian money, one could also be forgiven for thinking that they were acting more out of Kremlin interests than business ones.  In the case of Bear Stearns, its collapse would be the first big domino on the U.S. side of the global financial crises and the catalyst for the U.S. Great Recession.  The Trump deals were not insignificant and were important factors in both firms’ collapses, so, it would not be without accuracy to say that Donald Trump played an important role in causing the economic crises that erupted in 2008.

In the interest of full disclosure, Brian interned for Joe Biden from September-December, 2006.

This article is an excerpt from Brian’s eBook, A Song of Gas and Politics: How Ukraine Is at the Center of Trump-Russia, or, Ukrainegate: A “New” Phase in the Trump-Russia Saga Made from Recycled Materials, available for Amazon Kindleand Barnes & Noble Nook (preview here). Also be sure to check out Brian’s new podcast!

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Originally published by Hill Reporter August 1, 2018

(Russian/Русский перевод) By Brian E. Frydenborg (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter @bfry1981), March 6, 2019

See related article: Cohen’s Shady Family Business Dealings’ Unexplored Links to Key Trump-Russia Figures Demand Scrutiny

AMMAN — To many people following the Trump-Russia investigation for the start, it might be surprising that Michael Cohen, a longtime Trump “lawyer” and soldier, and Paul Manafort, a longtime Republican operative, political wizard for a rogue’s gallery of dictators over decades, and Campaign Chairman for Trump’s campaign during arguably the most crucial stretch of 2016, would become two of the most significant current centers of gravity in the Trump-Russia investigations.

But to those who have been paying close attention, this is not surprising at all (I’ve been writing about Manafort for over two years and Cohen for over a year).  And their specific work that raises significant concerns about Kremlin attempts to co-opt Trump and people close to him over the years overlaps in meaningful ways, an overlap that has generally been overlooked, but that merits a closer inspection.

Currently, Cohen is the subject of “many” inquiries that have been ongoing for months, and it seemed as though he could have been arrested at any moment. Now, Cohen seems both to have turned on Trump and to be cooperating with authorities (rather enthusiastically, it seems, with Team Cohen releasing a profoundly relevant and incriminating conversation of a private conversation with Trump and more potential tapes on the way). Cohen’s apparent change of heart occurred after he started feeling as if Trump betrayed him and left him out to dry, taking his loyalty for granted.

Meanwhile, Manafort is, yet again, being further investigated and is locked up in jail because of his attempts to obstruct justice and tamper with witnesses with the assistance of his old long-time colleague, Konstantin Kilimnik. Kilimnik, U.S. officials, including Special Counsel Robert Mueller, assert was (and may still be) a Russian military intelligence operative, and is now starting what looks to be a grueling trial in federal court in Virginia, with another trial set to begin in Washington in September.

But one must go back decades to correctly understand why both Cohen and Manafort are so central to the Trump-Russia probe.  And no, this is not about the surprisingly and impressively graceful and tenacious pornstar Stephanie Clifford (a.k.a. Stormy Daniels), who, if anything, has received a disproportionate amount of coverage that has drowned out some of the deeper, more complex aspects of the Trump-Russia scandal.

*****

In the 1980s, Donald Trump bought some 200 televisions for one of his hotels from an electronics store run by Semyon “Sam” Kislin and Tamir Sapir, immigrants from the then-Soviet Republics of Ukraine and Georgia, respectively.  Their store was a known hot-spot for senior government officials, spies, and politicians all from the Soviet Union.

Sapir may have (once) been part of or even come to the U.S. secretly working for the Soviet Ministry of Internal Affairs (at whose academy he had apparently studied). Rumors swirled around the sources of his extremely unlikely and massive wealth.  One of his primary business partners pled guilty to longtime scams with the Gambino Crime family.

As for Sapir’s partner, as I noted in more detail previously, Kislin was a longtime ally of Rudolph Giuliani: a prolific repeat donor to the future-Trump-ally’s mayoral campaigns, with Giuliani as mayor even appointing Kislin to his economic council where he served until Giuliani’s final year as mayor. Kislin would also later serve on another of the city’s economic advisory groups.  By at least the mid-1990s, U.S. authorities believed Kislin had helped launder millions for the Russian mafia, had helped bring in a suspected hired assassin to America, and specifically had been linked by the FBI to Vyacheslav Ivankov’s Russian mob crew based in Brighton Beach as a “member or associate.”

Ivankov—one of the Russian mafia’s top men in America—lived in Trump Tower, had the Trump Organization’s private contact numbers in his address book, and also loved frequently spending time—along with other Russian mobsters at Trump’s Taj Mahal casino in Atlantic City, NJ.

Ivankov reported to Russian mafia “boss of bosses” Semion Mogilevich, perhaps the most powerful mobster in the world today, a financial mastermind known for long-term schemes, a top concern of the FBI for decades, and a longtime-friend and ally of current Russia President Vladimir Putin, who shields him to this day from U.S. (and other) authorities.

Mogilevich set up a front company in America in 1995 that would perpetrate a massive stock fraud worth $150 million on the Toronto Stock Exchange. Its ostensible “CEO” was Jacob Bogatin, who made repeated donations in this role to the National Republican Congressional Committee. Jacob’s brother, David Bogatin, had served in the Soviet Army in Vietnam during the Vietnam War, targeting U.S. aircraft.  By the mid-1980s, Bogatin had purchased five Trump Tower apartments that Trump had personally sold to him. By 1990s, he was also a key soldier for Mogilevich.

A man that a U.S. Supreme Court petition for a writ of certiorari alleges was another Mogilevich lieutenant, Mikhael Sheferovsky, had a son, Felix Sater, who, even without his father’s possible relationship with Mogilevich (which Felix denies), ended up having his own ties to the Russian mafia.

Sater was involved in a massive stock fraud and money laundering scheme worth tens of millions. Sater ran his illegal operation in the mid-1990s from an office in none-other-than-Trump-owned 40 Wall Street. It’s well-known that Sater’s plan involved the Russian mafia, but it is not publicly known if Mogilevich was involved. If Mogilevich were involved, it would hardly be surprising because of his involvement in similar stock fraud and money laundering in the U.S. and Canada during the same period.

Many details of Sater’s case remain sealed because he later mysteriously cooperated with the U.S. government on national security issues in a deal made on the government’s side by Andrew Weissmann, then a federal prosecutor and now a key member of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team.

Glenn Simpson (a Fusion GPS opposition research lead investigator on numerous Russian cases including Trump’s connections to Russia and the infamous Prevezon/Magnitsky case, discussed later) also testified to U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee staff that Sater has strong ties to the Mogilevich crew. Specifics on which basis Simpson is alleging this are not clear.

Sater also grew up in Brighton Beach—a neighborhood notorious for being a Russian mafia enclave—and had a friend since childhood from that neighborhood whose uncle ran a catering establishment in New York then popular with Russian mafia figures.  That friend was Michael Cohen, the same Michael Cohen close to Trump and at the center of the Stormy Daniels saga.

*****

Mogilevich was hardly only focused on North America.  In 1995, he attended a major summit for Eastern European mafia bosses in Tel Aviv hosted by Boris Birshtein, a Russian émigré living in Canada who ran a number of ostensible businesses under the Seabeco name.  The main agenda was laying out plans for their Ukrainian operations.

Not long after, Mogilevich would be making major moves in Ukraine’s energy sector.

Those moves were all related to corrupt relationships and arrangements with Ukraine’s pro-Russian (then-)President Leonid Kuchma, who was close with Putin and other major Ukrainian politicians. At one point, $5 million was delivered by Birshtein and his Seabeco associates to Kuchma’s campaign manager, Oleksandr Volkov, known for his ties to Russian organized crime. Volkov also just happened to be Seabeco’s representative in Ukraine.

Meeting at Birshtein’s Seabeco and working for it throughout the 1990s were two men who would come to dominate large parts of Kazakhstan’s natural resource sector and forge very close ties with that country’s corrupt political leadership as two members of a corrupt Kazakh “Trio” of oligarchs, one being Alexander Mashkevich.

At the same time, Russian-born Canadian Alexander Shnaider also began working for Seabeco in 1991 while in law school; he would eventually marry his boss’s daughter, Simona Birshtein, and he rose quickly in Seabeco’s steel sector.  Shnaider and a partner would later found a company that began aggressively buying up the Ukrainian government’s shares in Ukraine’s fourth-largest steel mill, Zaporizhstal.

Also in Ukraine was Ukrainian businessman Viktor Topolov. By the late 1990s, Topolov’s construction company was allegedly employing multiple Russian mobsters, including as a “vice president” Leonid Roytman, whom the FBI has found to be a Mogilevich-associated (confessed) hitman and who said that the company regularly functioned to set up mafia meetings.

It seems Topolov was also involved in a scandal involving alleged money laundering and embezzling with Ukrainian state gas company Naftogaz, the giant Russian state gas company Gazprom, and a Ukrainian football team named CSKA Kiev.  The football team was managed by Topolov until he handed it off to Andrii Artemenko in 1999. Artemenko was himself involved in, and later took much of the fall for, the laundering/embezzling scandal.

*****

In the 2000s, these relationships would explode into billions of dollars in scandal and shake the foundations of a nation.

By at least 2000, Ukraine’s President Kuchma seemed to tacitly approve of, or at least not try to block, whatever designs Mogilevich had for Ukraine and was also aware both of the mafia don’s longstanding relationship with Putin and that the two were already plotting something big for Ukraine.

Kuchma tried to fix the 2004 Ukrainian election to install his chosen successor Viktor Yanukovych, and the well-known 2004-2005 Orange Revolution thwarted this election fraud.  The disgraced Yanukovych needed a political rebirth, and it was none other than Paul Manafort, who was brought in to help him try to beat the Orange Revolution and then to rehabilitate him.  With his deputy Rick Gates, Manafort was effectively the political manager for Yanukovych and his political party, the Party of Regions.

Essentially, Putin would arrange to have Gazprom sell natural gas cheaply to Firtash, who ran the relevant intermediary company called RosukrEnergo (RUE), and Firtash would then generally sell that gas to Ukraine at much higher rates.  The profits would then be laundered by Mogilevich and others and used both to bribe Ukrainian politicians to do Russia’s bidding and to fund Yanukovych and his party.

Manafort and Gates even allegedly worked directly with Firtash to launder some of this money into fraudulent Manhattan real estate deals using shady shell companies.

One of the shell companies mentioned in Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s indictments of Manafort (John Hannah LLC) is the same one Manafort used in 2006 for a cash purchase of a $3.675 million Trump Tower apartment, raising a distinct possibility the property was used for Ukraine-related money laundering.

Manafort and Gates also partnered with close Putin ally and Russian aluminum oligarch-billionaire Oleg Deripaska on various projects serving Russia’s and/or Putin’s interests and funneling Yanukovych’s private fortune and those of his inner circle away from prying eyes.

Over the years, Manafort would end up owing Deripaska no less than a staggering $60 million.

Also at this time, from 2004-2007, future-Trump-campaign-advisor and repeated FISA superstar Carter Page advised both Gazprom and another Russian state-owned energy company—RAO UES—all the way on the other end of this massive Ukrainian gas scam, making it highly unlikely he was not at least partly aware of what was going on.

Michael Cohen would also become heavily involved in Ukraine in the 2000s. Cohen started his business career as a personal injury lawyer, then pursued some other business interests that ended in dozens of lawsuits and involved mafia-linked associates.  Both he and his brother, Bryan Cohen, married Ukrainian women, Bryan marrying Oksana Oronov, daughter of Alex Oronov, a “longtime” business partner of Mogilevich-linked Topolov (linked to the earlier alleged money laundering that had involved Gazprom and the Kiev soccer team), who had now become a powerful Ukrainian politician.

Together, the Cohens, Alex Oronov, and Topolov all joined a Ukrainian ethanol business venture.  In 2006, the Cohen brothers personally tried to convince Americans to invest in building a factory for the business and failed to do so, though they did meet Topolov in the process. Others funded the investment to the tune of millions, and no ethanol was produced at the factory.  All this was at the same time that the Ukrainian gas scheme and money laundering of Mogilevich and Manafort were in full effect.

Going back to Sam Kislin, after his work with Giuliani, in the early 2000s, he brokered a deal for a condo in Trump World Tower for Vasily Salygin, who would soon become an official in Ukraine’s Party of Regions at the same time Manafort was running its political affairs and then some.

Around this time, Kislin’s old partner Sapir—who now owned a $5 million apartment in Trump Tower, with Trump calling Sapir and his family “great friends”—introduced Trump to Bayrock, ostensibly a real-estate firm led by Tevfik Arif, an ex-Soviet government official from Kazakhstan whose rise to fortune is at least somewhat questionable.

The earlier-introduced Sater now enters Trump’s orbit as the COO of Bayrock, the office of which was even located in Trump Tower. Sater now famously partnered with Trump (and sometimes his children Ivanka Trump and Donald Trump, Jr.) in a series of potential deals (including the infamous Trump Tower Moscow with his old friend Cohen) and actual deals, most of which ended in disaster, failure, lawsuits, and scandal, with hundreds of millions in losses.

The most famous of the actual deals was the Trump SoHo, and none other than Alexander Mashkevich was one of its chief financiers.  By this time, Mashkevich was also a dominant player in aluminum and orchestrated a huge aluminum deal with Deripaska in 2004 at a time when Deripaska’s relationship with Manafort was taking off, while the other two members of Mashkevich’s Kazakh “Trio” had been dealing with Gazprom.

Four specific deals, SoHo included, of Bayrock’s that had been signed-off on by Trump personally received $50 million in “financing” from an Icelandic firm—FL Group—known as a hub for Russian investors, investors apparently linked to Putin and money laundering. FL Group’s $50 million investment was illegally structured as a “loan” designed to cheat governments of taxes and helped precipitate some of FL Group’s woes that led to its meltdown, which helped spark the 2008 global financial crises.

Sater was the point man for these deals, which were alleged, in a settled-in-late-February long-running lawsuit, of being RICO money-laundering scams.

Meanwhile, back in Ukraine, by 2001, Shnaider and his business partner had acquired a 93 percent stake in Zaporizhstal for some $70 million. They managed the deal at a time when steel was the country’s most significant industry, accounting for about 25% of Ukraine’s GDP.  By 2006, Shnaider was turning down a $1.2 billion offer for the mill.

Then came 2007, when Shnaider partnered with Trump to begin building the Trump International Hotel and Tower, Toronto.  And in 2008, FL Group conspicuously loaned Shnaider €45.8 million ostensibly for a yacht at the same time Shnaider’s former Seabeco partner Mashkevich was also working with FL Group and Trump on the Bayrock projects.

After investors were pounded during the ensuing global financial crises that exploded that same year, Shnaider sought to sell his company’s near-total stake in Zaporizhstal to help finance his Trump project, which he did in 2010 for some $850 million through five shell companies.  His buyer was an unknown Russian acting on behalf of the Russian government and who, in turn, was funded by the Russian state-run bank VEB (Vnesheconombank), and the chairman of its board at that time was Vladimir Putin himself.  Subsequent chairman Sergei Gorkov, a graduate of the F.S.B.’s academy, would meet Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, in December 2016, just after Trump’s victory against Clinton and while the bank was under U.S. sanctions because of the war in Ukraine).

Zaporizhstal fit well into Putin’s and Mogilevich’s scheme of trying to extend Russian influence over Ukraine’s industries and natural resources.  Yanukovych financier Akhmetov had apparently narrowly missed out on acquiring Zaporizhstal from Shnaider back in 2010 but was able to gain majority ownership in July 2011, when he was a sitting member of Ukraine’s parliament with the Party of Regions.

Like the other deals discussed above, the Toronto deal fell into the same pattern of coming apart amid scandal and lawsuits from dozens of investors saying they were misled and who are still suing both Trump and Shnaider.

Still another massive scandal-ridden deal from this period involves the Trump Ocean Club International Hotel and Tower in Panama City, Panama, which began in 2005, with the Tower opening in 2011.  To get to that point, in 2007, Bear Stearns “underwrote a $220 million bond issue” that would help finance the project’s construction, less than a year before Bear Stearns’s meltdown (along with FL Group’s) initiated the global financial crises of 2008.

(Pause: This means that scandalous Trump projects were major catalysts in the two main corporate collapses that were themselves the catalysts for the global financial crises!)

The Panama project involved Ivanka Trump, Eric Trump, drug cartels, the Russian mafia, and a Ukrainian businessman named Igor Anopolskiy, who has strong financial ties to Oxana Marchenko, apparently the same Marchenko who is the wife of Viktor Medvedchuk…

Medvedchuk was one of Ukraine’s first post-Soviet oligarchs (and in none other than the natural gas business), and by 1999 he was an important ally of then-Ukrainian President Kuchma, supporting him in partnership with Volkov, who at the time was funneling money from Birshtein to Kuchma as previously discussed.  Medvedchuk later became Kuchma’s chief of staff from 2002-2005 and also became very close with Putin’s number-two, Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev.  But he is even closer with Putin himself, who is godfather to Medvedchuk’s and Marchenko’s daughter (Medvedev’s wife is the godmother).

Putin has pushed for and seen Medvedchuk take leading roles in Ukraine’s politics.  In such positions, Medvedchuk helped Yanukovych, has worked to steer Ukraine away from the West and closer to Russia, and has played a significant role as a negotiating representative “for” Ukraine in major disputes with Russia on everything from gas deals to the current war.  He was also one of the first officials sanctioned by the U.S. government in 2014 after Russia’s annexation of Crimea for his role in that affair. That same year Medvedchuk met Manafort whom Medvedchuk has praised as “the best, both among foreign and domestic political consultants,” which makes the fact that Medvedchuk was reported to be in contact with the Trump campaign during 2016 concerning “U.S.-Russia cooperation” unsurprising yet still very troubling.

Even now, a prostitute in a Thai Jail has been exposed by suppressed Russian opposition figure Alexey Navalny as being connected with Oleg Deripaska. She was with him, and Russian Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Prikhodko, who is a big-time foreign policy guy in the Kremlin, on a yacht at the height of the 2016 election, shortly before Manafort had offered to brief Deripaska on Trump’s campaign (presumably) on behalf of Putin.  The prostitute, known as “Nastya Rybka,” recorded video of Deripaska and Prikhodko talking about Russian relations with the U.S., and noted more such interactions in writing.

Rybka is threatening to share damning evidence she claims to have—including audio recordings she claims proves collusion between Manafort, Deripaska, and Prikhodko to interfere in the U.S. election. Rybka has asked the U.S. for asylum and protection from Russian authorities in exchange for the information she says she can offer.

If only Deripaska had a fixer like Michael Cohen, who apparently allegedly regularly paid women who had extramarital sexual affairs with Trump (and at least one other significant Republican Party figure, Elliott Broidy) to be quiet and go away.

Outside a courtroom in mid-April of this year in which the business inside centered on criminal inquiries into his own business dealings, Cohen took time to share cigars with Rotem Rosen and other friends.

Rosen married Tamir Sapir’s daughter, Zina Sapir, in 2007 at a ceremony hosted by Donald Trump himself at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort, and the next year, Trump and Kushner attended the newlywed couple’s bris for their newborn.

Rosen was the longtime right-hand man of Lev Leviev, a famous Israeli diamond oligarch from the former Soviet republic of Uzbekistan.  Leviev is close and, it seems, a friend to Vladimir Putin, but also is close with the Sapirs, Deripaska, and (another) Russian aluminum oligarch named Roman Abramovich, who is himself close to Putin and was apparently the first to recommend Putin to then-Russian President Boris Yeltsin as a successor.  Abramovich owns the UK club football team Chelsea, and until recently lived in the UK. Following Russia’s shocking recent Skripal chemical nerve agent attack on British soil, the UK declined to renew Abramovich’s visa, and he made aliyahto Israel, instantly becoming that nation’s wealthiest citizen).

When former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko, who had been talking on tape about Putin’s “good relationship” with Mogilevich, among other things, was assassinated with radioactive material in the UK in 2006 on the orders of the Kremlin (not that different from the Skripal poisoning), he was helping both British and Spanish intelligence look into money laundering and organized crime ties surrounding Abramovich.

Ivanka has been very close with Dasha Zhukova, Abramovich’s wife during this period (they separated in mid-2017, and Abramovich has since curiously been spotted with Polina Deripaska, Oleg’s “estranged” wife) for over a decade (introduced, interestingly, by Wendi Deng, then Rupert Murdoch’s wife and more recently a rumored lover/girlfriend of, yes, Vladimir Putin).  Abramovich became acquainted with both Kushner and Ivanka as a result.

His and Putin’s friend Leviev, whose company’s U.S. operations were headquartered at Trump’s 40 Wall St. property (where Sater ran his 1990s’ massive scam), was a business partner of Denis Katsyv, scion of a Putin ally, through Katsyv’s company Prevezon. Their dealings were at the heartof the whole Magnitsky money laundering and Russian sanctions saga that, in turn, led to the infamous June 2016, Trump Tower meeting hosted by Manafort, Kushner, and Donald Jr. with a variety of Russian operatives with deep Kremlin connections.

Leviev later conducted a major business deal with Kushner in 2015 and financing from Deutsche Bank related to that deal is under scrutiny by federal authorities. Deutsche also helped finance Donald Trump for years when few other banks would, and financed the Prevezon deal between Katsyv and Leviev. The Prevezon deal later became the subject of a settled civil case from the local U.S. Attorney’s office and is still the subject of a criminal probe there (a piece I wrote on Prevezon/Magnitsky was even censored in Russia). “Magnitsky” has since become synonymous with a human-rights crusade against Putin, and his Kremlin allies carried out by one Bill Browder, who has been a repeated target of Putin and Russian authorities as a result.

Another money laundering case of note involved the arrest of Mogilevich-linked Russian mobsters in Trump Tower when local boss Alimzhan Tokhtakhounov and his minions Vadim Trincher and Anatoly Golubchik were allegedly overseeing an illegal high-stakes international gambling ring. The ring targeted wealthy clientele and was, in part, operated out of the building (and was the subject of the recent Jessica Chastain movie Molly’s Game).  The gambling ring was popular with Russian and Ukrainian oligarchs in both Russia and Ukraine, and besides the gambling, its ringleaders also engaged in some $100 million in money laundering.

In 2009, Trincher bought an apartment in Trump Tower just below an apartment owned by Donald Trump, in which Trincher nearly held a fundraiser for future-Trump-ally Newt Gingrich two years later. The fundraiser never occurred after a mold problem, and a water leak was detected. Other mobsters in the outfit also owned Trump properties.  The minions did not escape justice in 2013 raids orchestrated by Preet Bharara (later fired by Trump), but Tokhtakhounov did and was soon after a red-carpet VIP guest at Trump’s 2013 Miss Universe Pageant. The two men arrived within minutes of each other, and it is certainly possible they interacted there in Moscow, a city where, to this day, Tokhtakhounov is regularly spotted at trendy public places.

*****

Meanwhile, Manafort’s and Gates’ work led to the triumphant rise of Yanukovych’s Party Of Regions and of Yanukovych’s ascent to Ukraine’s presidency in 2010.  Ultimately, the gas scam that empowered those wins precipitated the 2014 (Euro)Maidan revolution, the ouster of Yanukovych, Russia’s annexation of Crimea, and today’s civil war in Ukraine.  At this time, Manafort and Gates were lobbying the U.S. government to improve the corrupt image of Yanukovych’s government, and it was for lying about this work that Alexander van der Zwaan, son-in-law of major Putin-linked Russian oligarch billionaire German Khan, was sentenced in April, the first defendant in Mueller’s Russia probe sentenced to time in prison.

After Trump’s presidential win and eleven days before Trump’s inauguration in January 2017, Cohen met with a Russian oligarch close to Putin and the Kremlin named Viktor Vekselberg, who has been sanctioned by the U.S. government in response to Putin’s hostile actions. The two men discussed Russian-American relations in Trump Tower in New York; probably not coincidentally, a company of Vekselberg’s ended up sending Cohen substantial sums of money amounting to more than half a million dollars.

A diplomatic episode from the beginning of Trump’s presidency ties all this together.  Early in 2017, Cohen teamed up with his old friend Sater and Topolov’s old associate Artemenko from the alleged Gazprom-related laundering scam in an unofficial diplomatic meeting in Manhattan regarding Ukraine. This meeting was organized by Alex Oronov, whom Artemenko described in March 2017 as a “partner, mentor, teacher and friend.” His statement was made shortly after Oronov had mysteriously died.

The purpose of the meeting was to discuss a “peace” plan for Ukraine that had support from senior Putin aides, one that would cede to Russia official control over Crimea, which Russia illegally annexed with a 50 or 100-year “lease.”  At the meeting were also discussed ways to undermine Ukraine’s current anti-Putin president, Petro Poroshenko.  Cohen personally delivered the proposal to National Security Advisor Michael Flynn, who had attended a Russian gala dinner in 2015 while seated at Putin’s table, which was next to Vekselberg’s table. Flynn would later resign from Trump’s team because of his Russian entanglements that would then lead to his indictment by the Special Counsel.

Such excellent Ukraine work assisting Russian interests would have made Manafort proud, and Manafort may even have played a role in it.  Manafort few to Europe in July, 2013, on a private plane owned by a company co-founded by Artemenko’s father, and Manafort made at least 19 trips to Kiev in the 20 months after Yanukovych was overthrown in 2014 to work for the Opposition Bloc, Artemekno’s party and the successor to the Party of Regions, even possibly partnering with Medvedchuk.

Soon after the last trip, he and Gates joined the Trump campaign, just in time for the campaign to defang the Republican Party Platform’s harsh language on Russia’s actions in Ukraine.

Cohen’s work on the 2017 “peace plan” would, had it been adopted, have been the long-worked-for culmination of over a decade of work by Manafort and Gates. This “peace plan” would have basically put an official stamp of approval on the latest in the long series of Putin, Yanukovych, Medvedchuk, and their whole crew’s efforts to enforce Russian domination of Ukraine through corruption, politics, lobbying, laundering, annexation, and war. Russia’s any means necessary approach was often orchestrated in no small part by Manafort.

With Manafort sidelined by the clouds hanging over his head, Cohen, along with his old friend Sater, were virtual representatives of Manafort, both in agenda and in spirit, ready to carry the pro-Russian torch Manafort had so diligently carried steadfastly for so long.

What is clear at a minimum is that an awful lot of people with deep ties to the Russian government, the Russian mafia, especially to Mogilevich, and involvement in (sometimes alleged) money laundering surround both Cohen and Manafort in profound, sustained ways. Those ties also appear to pertain directly to their relations to Trump the businessman, Trump the candidate, and Trump, the president.  At worst, this could go way beyond collusion.

In particular, large-scale involvement by a network of Russian operatives ties dealings in Ukraine to dealings in America, suggesting some sort of coordinated effort by a network spanning continents and oceans.  This network and the way it engaged Trump and his (future) people for years—all out there for those willing to give them the time and scrutiny they deserve—have been woefully undercovered by major American news outlets, with too little coverage and too little depth, often just scratching surface layers and eschewing the core while foregoing any deeper, larger-picture analysis, perhaps mentioning in a major article or two, but failing to connect the dots or revisit when another look is warranted.

If this all looks suspicious to you, we can be sure it all looks suspicious to Mueller, and that he is being more thorough than the news media or most Republicans in Congress.

Manafort and Cohen are at the center of this saga, now more than ever, with law enforcement zooming in on their activities ever more closely with each passing day, getting closer to the truth, far closer than the myopia of the journalistic and editorial class has allowed the news media to reach.

This overlap in pro-Russia work and connections between Manafort and Cohen would be as good a place to start as any if the news media is to unearth the deeper layers of this story and help voters be armed with a far larger sense of the truth than that which has been presented thus far as they consider their votes in the coming midterms and beyond.

Adapted in part from author’s earlier work published on July 31^st, 2016, November 4^th, 2016,March 28^th, 2017, and July 27^th, 2017.

© 2019 Brian E. Frydenborg all rights reserved, no republication without permission, attributed quotations welcome

See related article: Cohen’s Shady Family Business Dealings’ Unexplored Links to Key Trump-Russia Figures Demand Scrutiny

Also see how Manafort and Cohen fit into the larger Trump-Russia saga and an explanation of the below chart in article: Think You Know How Deep Trump-Russia Goes? Think Again: This Chart/Info Will Blow Your Mind

Also see my eBook, A Song of Gas and Politics: How Ukraine Is at the Center of Trump-Russia, or, Ukrainegate: A “New” Phase in the Trump-Russia Saga Made from Recycled Materials, available for Amazon Kindle and Barnes & Noble Nook (preview here), and be sure to check out Brian’s new podcast!

If you appreciate Brian’s unique content, you can support him and his work by donating here

Feel free to share and repost this article on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. If you think your site or another would be a good place for this or would like to have Brian generate content for you, your site, or your organization, please do not hesitate to reach out to him!

Brian E. Frydenborg is an American freelance writer and consultant from the New York City area who has been based in Amman, Jordan, since early 2014. He holds an M.S. in Peace Operations and specializes in a wide range of interrelated topics, including international and U.S. policy/politics, security/conflict/(counter)terrorism, humanitarianism, development, social justice, and history. You can follow and contact him on Twitter: @bfry1981

Originally published on LinkedIn Pulse June 8, 2017

By Brian E. Frydenborg (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter @bfry1981) June 8th, 2017

Andrew Harnikfi

AMMAN — On one level, I can’t blame the media for having days-long count-downs and hyping today’s hearing as much as any anticipated domestic non-election event in living memory. And there certainly was a singular, unprecedented historical significance in having a recently fired FBI Director who was fired while investigating the associates and administration of a sitting president only a few months later come and testify publicly before Congress and under oath that, essentially, the president was a liar and directed that he as FBI Director back off said investigation. That is certainly a big deal to anyone who can appreciate reality, politics, the rule of law, and what makes the American system of government fairly unique in the world.

And yet, there was little new in today’s proceedings: Comey released his main account the day before, and even much of that and other relevant details had dripped out in media reports over the course of previous days, weeks, and months. These media outlets are not perfect, but are by and large credible, and the way these details were reported left only the most conspiratorial among us to flat-out deny their credibility. Still, even with Comey’s public testimony today, we still have a he said/she said situation (Comey said Trump was a liar, then Team Trump said Comey was a liar), and anyone who wants to believe Trump over Comey has seen nothing new today to incline them to believe otherwise: these were still private moments between two men that can’t be legally proven without some sort of recording.

While I give “credit” to the Republicans of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence for being less nakedly partisan than many GOP senators serving on other committees, we still saw today plenty of evidence that Republicans, by and large, are finding ways to more subtly cover for Trump and shift the focus to leaks or Hillary Clinton’s email server woes (oh, McCain…) rather than to hold Trump accountable, and many other Republicans are being far less subtle. More importantly, we need to acknowledge that this hearing, for all its hype, is unlikely to actually change much, if anything, outside of experts and aficionados recognizing its unprecedented nature.

Not “the public” – Doug Mills/Twitter

For one thing, the media made much of the long lines of members of “the public” who were waiting to get a seat in the hearing room before the hearing. In the interest of full disclosure, I lived in the Washington, DC, area for some seven-and-a-half years, including spending four months interning on Capitol Hill, and the pictures and video of the lines made clear that these were not members of the general public; no, just looking at the outfits they were wearing, it was clear these were Congressional interns and staffers, media folks, and other DC politicos (there is a fairly narrow range of how such people dress for work and it is most certainly not the same as the rest of the general public). The point I am making here is, as interested as people like myself are in things like this, and as much as this was undoubtedly a hearing that generated far more public interest than usual, there are still going to be many people who either do no watch this or pay close attention. And most Americans have their mind made up about Trump at this point, one way or another; only a small sliver would possibly change their mind, and, despite all the hoopla about today’s proceedings, there is no reason to think that Trump’s supporters saw or heard anything today that would make them dramatically change their mindset, a mindset that believes the media, liberals, the government, and others are unfairly out to destroy Trump, regardless of the facts.

Sure, the president may see a dip in his poll numbers, but he has plenty of time for new outrages, distractions, even a war to make today’s events seem like a distant memory. I am nowhere near convinced that anyone who voted Trump or Republican in November won’t do so again because of what happened today, let alone switch to the left, or that people not already planning to vote for Democrats will now be convinced that, as of today, supporting the Democratic Party is the course of action to take. Bernie Sanders will not suddenly announce tomorrow that he will formally join the Democratic Party, nor will he stop slamming it or stop prioritizing his “movement” over registering Democrats and strengthening the Democratic Party. It won’t make anyone who voted Green or Libertarian in November even though they knew Trump was worse (or even if they didn’t) start supporting the Democratic Party. And it won’t change the minds of Trump supporters who already don’t trust the media, Comey, or the “Deep State” FBI over Trump.

However, in the near future, we may be able to test is there is any effect: the special election in Georgia’s Sixth Congressional district, exit pollers have a chance to ask if today’s hearing affected anything. Yet even if Democrat John Ossoff beats Republican Karen Handel, that is hardly proof that this hearing made a difference, and I doubt it will do so; if he loses, it becomes harder to make that case, and the possibility that it did make a difference but that it still didn’t affect the final outcome would indeed be a bitter pill to swallow for excited liberals prematurely plotting Trump’s impeachment and reveling in visions of sugar plumbs dancing in a Democratic House.

What we saw today was a preview of what Special Counsel Mueller is investigating, but he has far more information that anything we saw in the reports leading up to today’s hearing or that was “revealed” in today’s hearing. But that investigation is a long way from being completed, and that investigation will carry far more weight and have far more substance than today’s hearing and, if anything is to have a serious impact, that will be what does.

People expecting today’s events to have major substantive effects are simply setting themselves up for disappointment. In our era of hyperpartisanship and alternative realities, it will take more than objectively damning and historically unprecedented sworn testimony from a non-partisan, career civil servant to sway hearts and minds, sadly, much, much more.

What we are generally hearing about as far as Trump’s people being investigated might result, eventually, in some resignations or criminal prosecutions, but that is just part (if more than just a tip) of an iceberg that still remains submerged and out of public view; no, if Trump is brought down, it will be because of his long-term business deals that involved laundering Russian money tied to Putin and the Russian mafia, as I’ve been writing about for close to a year now.

My pre-hearing predictions turned out to be spot on: today’s hearing was a big deal for history and the pundit class, but not myopic Trump voters and purist liberals whose grip on reality and objectivity loosened long, long ago.

See related work:

The Trump-Russia-Mob Connections Details You Won’t Find Anywhere Else

The (First) Russo-American Cyberwar: How Obama Lost & Putin Won, Ensuring a Trump Victory

Welcome to the Era of Rising Democratic Fascism Part I: Defining Democracy, Fascism, and Democratic Fascism Usefully, and Spin vs. Lies

If you appreciate Brian’s unique content, you can support him and his work by donating here. 

Feel free to share and repost this article on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter (you can follow him there at @bfry1981). If you think your site or another would be a good place for this content, or would like to have Brian generate content for you, your site, or your organization, please do not hesitate to reach out to him!

How a longtime political ally of Giuliani’s own ties to the Trump-Russia network fit in key ways to an already overflowing number of shady ties and criminal dealings

January 27th, 2019. Originally published on LinkedIn Pulse June 3, 2018

by Brian E. Frydenborg (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter@bfry1981) June 3rd, 2018

Don /GETTY

AMMAN — A longtime supporter and even government partner of former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani is part of the network of mafia and Russian government operatives that has long been, and is increasingly, raising questions about collusion or manipulation of Donald Trump and those close to him. 

This man, Ukrainian Semyon “Sam” Kislin, also had important and questionable ties to Trump. Such connections, while not proving that Giuliani did anything wrong or illegal, raise questions about his role representing Trump on matters related to Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into all things Trump-Russia.

Kislin was a prolific repeat donor to Giuliani’s mayoral campaigns to the tune of $46,250. In 1998, Kislin and his wife were even listed as “co-chairs” of one of Giuliani’s fundraising events, and Kislin was also listed as a co-chair of one of Giuliani’s fundraising events that brought in $2.1 million for his abortive U.S. Senate campaign.

But the relationship hardly ended with financing.

Giuliani as mayor would appoint Kislin to the Mayor’s Council of Economic Advisors in 1994, and he remained on it until 2001, serving every year Giuliani was mayor. In 1996, Kislin would also fill a political spot on the New York City Economic Development Corporation board.

But there seems to have been a much darker side to Kislin.

By at least the time he was appointed by Giuliani to the Mayor’s Council, U.S. authorities believed Kislin had helped launder millions for the Russian mafia, had helped bring in a man named Anton Malevsky who was believed by the FBI to be a Russian mafia hitman, and specifically had been linked by the FBI to Vyacheslav Ivankov’s Russian mob crew based in Brighton Beach as a “member or associate.”

Ivankov—then one of the Russian mafia’s top men in America—lived in Trump Tower, had the Trump Organization’s private contact numbers in his address book, and also loved frequently spending time (along with other Russian mobsters) at Trump’s Taj Mahal casinoin Atlantic City, NJ. He reported to Russian mafia “boss of bosses” Semion Mogilevich, perhaps the most powerful mobster in the world today, a financial mastermind for long-term schemes, a top concern of the FBI for decades, and an ally of Vladimir Putin, who shields him to this day from U.S. authorities.

Mogilevich is seen as the central money launderer for many years in a byzantine plot by the Kremlin to twist Ukraine’s political system to Putin’s will using natural gas contracts and proceeds, one that began at least before the Orange Revolution and precipitated the (Euro)Maidan Revolution, Ukraine’s civil war, and Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea. Central to this effort was Trump’s future Campaign Chairman Paul Manafort, who, along with his deputy Rick Gates, ran the political operations of Putin’s preferred candidate in Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovych, and his political party, the Party of Regions.

Both Manafort and Gates find themselves now in considerable trouble with Special Counsel Robert Mueller as a result of these activities and others involving work on behalf of Putin and his allies, and Putin’s Ukraine operation has a surprising amount of overlap with his 2016 American plot.

As for Kislin, he also has important ties to Donald Trump. In the 1980s, Donald Trump bought 200 televisions for one of his hotels from an electronics store run by Kislin and Kislin’sbusiness partner, Tamir Sapir, from the then-Soviet Socialist Republic of Georgia. Their store was a known hot-spot for senior government officials, spies, and politicians from the Soviet Union.

Sapir himself may have (once) been part of—or even come to the U.S. secretly working for—the Soviet Ministry of Internal Affairs (at whose academy he had apparently studied), and rumors swirled about the sources of his extremely unlikely and massive wealth. One of his major business partners even pled guilty to longtime scams with the Gambino crime family.

Even after the AP, New York Post, and Moscow Times reported on Kislin’s alleged Russian mafia connections in 1999, in the early 2000s, Kislin brokered a deal for Trump for a condo in Trump World Tower for buyer Vasily Salygin, who would soon become an official in Ukraine’s Party of Regions at the same time Manafort was its chief political strategist.

Around this time, Kislin’s old partner Sapir—who now owned a $5 million apartment in Trump Tower, with Trump calling Sapir and his family “great friends”—introduced Trump to Bayrock, ostensibly a real-estate firm located in Trump Tower. Bayrock’s then-COO was Felix Sater, who a U.S. Supreme Court petition for a writ of certiorari alleges is the son of a Mogilevich Russian mafia lieutenant. In addition, according to testimony for the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee of Glenn Simpson (a Fusion GPS opposition research lead investigator on numerous Russian cases including Trump’s connections to Russia and the infamous Prevezon/Magnitsky case), Sater has his own strong ties to the Mogilevich crew, though the specifics on which basis Simpson is alleging this are not clear.

When Sater began with Bayrock he was a convicted felon from a suppressed case with ties to Russian organized crime and money laundering (conducted in the 1990s from a Trump-owned property, to boot), but he ended up being point-man for a series of potential and actual deals with Trump, most of which ended famously in disaster, failure, lawsuits, and scandal, culminating in hundreds of millions in losses. The most famous of these was the Trump SoHo, and Sapir was one of the main financiers. That and the other deals were alleged in a just-recently settled long-running lawsuit of being RICO money-laundering scams.

Sapir’s daughter married one Rotem Rosen at a ceremony at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago getaway, hosted by Trump himself. Rosen is friends with longtime Trump lawyer and less-than-successful “fixer” Michael Cohen, who has also been friends since his Brighton beach childhood days with Sater. Rosen was also at the time of his marriage the longtime right-hand man of Lev Leviev, a famous Israeli diamond oligarch from the former Soviet republic of Uzbekistan. Leviev is close to and apparently friends with Putin, the Sapirs, Russian aluminum oligarch Roman Abramovich (himself close to Putin and apparently being the first to recommend Putin to then-Russian President Boris Yeltsin as a successor), and Oleg Deripaska, also very close to Putin and strongly tied to Manafort in multiple expensive pursuits of Kremlin interests.

Ivanka Trump at this time became very close with Dasha Zhukova, Abramovich’s wife.

When former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko was assassinated in the UK in 2006 (not that different from Russia’s recent attempt to murder the Skripals using a chemical nerve agent), he was helping both British and Spanish intelligence look into money laundering and organized crime ties surrounding Abramovich.

Abramovich owns the popular UK club football team Chelsea, and until recently resided in the UK, but, on the heels of this poisoning international incident, Abramovich’s UK visa was declined for renewal by the UK and he just made aliyah to Israel, becoming that nation’s wealthiest citizen overnight.

As for his friend Leviev, whose company’s U.S. operations were headquartered at Trump’s 40 Wall St.property (where Sater ran his massive laundering scam), Leviev was a business partner of Denis Katsyv, scion of a Putin ally, through Prevezon in dealings that were at the heart of the whole Prevezon/Magnitsky money laundering and Russian sanctions saga and that led to the infamous June, 2016, Trump Tower meeting hosted by Manafort, Ivanka’s husband Jared Kushner, and Donald Trump Jr. with variety of Russian operatives with deep Kremlin connections. Leviev later did a major business deal with Kushner, and financing from Deutsche Bank related to this deal is under scrutiny from federal authorities and perhaps even Special Counsel Mueller; Deutsche also helped finance the Prevezon deal between Katsyv and Leviev that later became the subject of a settled civil case from the local U.S. Attorney’s office and is still the subject of a criminal probe there.

*****

That last leg may have been a bit confusing and overwhelming, part of the much larger overall Trump-Russia mega-puzzle.

But what is clear is that Sam Kislin is close to the center of a web of sketchy relationships between Team Trump and Team Putin, with many key threads passing through Kislin over the years.

And while Giuliani is not implicated in any of these (alleged) crimes, given his longstanding relationship with Kislin and the cast of shady characters involved in the Trump-Russia saga in Kislin’s orbit, there are only more questions that need to be answered by everyone, including Giuliani. At the very least, Giuliani’s new position of point man for Trump on Russia deserves a much higher level of scrutiny than has thus far been applied, and a good starting point for this scrutiny would be Rudy’s Kislin connection.

© 2018 Brian E. Frydenborg all rights reserved, permission required for republication, attributed quotations welcome

Brian E. Frydenborg in an American freelance writer, academic, and consultant from the New York City area currently based in Amman, Jordan. The views here represent only his own You can follow and contact him on Twitter: @bfry1981

If you appreciate Brian’s unique content, you can support him and his work by donating here 

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(Russian/Русский перевод) Author’s note: the odyssey of “Nastya Rybka”—real name Anastasia Vashukevich—has only recently become even more complex with her deportation from Thailand and rough apprehension, detention, and shady release by authorities in Russia at the apparent behest of Russian billionaire oligarch and close Putin ally Oleg Deripaska, who clearly felt threatened enough by her to take drastic action to silence her. That it was also recently revealed that Manafort shared internal polling data during the 2016 campaign (i.e., collusion) with Konstantin Kilimnik, a longtime Manafort partner with clear ties to Russian intelligence and who was acting as a go-between for Manafort and Deripaska, only adds to the importance of this saga withing the Trump-Russia saga.

Originally published on LinkedIn Pulse February 19, 2018

By Brian E. Frydenborg (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter @bfry1981) Updated April 26, 2022, to use the more sensitive term “sex-worker;” UPDATE: Instagram bowed to Kremlin pressure and removed the content in question

Support Brian and his work by donating here.

AMMAN—While I am proud of the following analysis, I want to point out that the brave Russian dissident, Alexey Navalny, deserve the real credit: he is placing his career as an activist and would-be politician, his family, his freedom, and his very health and life at risk in exposing the blatant, sordid truth about Putin and his henchmen and, in this case, their ties to Trump.

Navalny, who was trying to run against Putin for the presidency but whom Russian authorities have barred from competing in the election and have charged with bogus crimes, has been famous for some time for creating incredibly sharp YouTube videos exposing the corruption of top Russian officials à la Bill Browder (English/Russian Русский) of Magntisky Act fame.

One of Navalny’s latest videos was sparked by a group of apparent call girls who descended upon his office and tried to manufacture controversy for Navalny; this effort backfired as one of the young women, a sex-worker who calls herself “Nastya Rybka,” was easily identifiable from social media, and the much of the rest of the information presented in this video was from her online posts and a book she wrote. Navalny was able to put together what seems to be incontrovertible proof from public data and the verifiable information provided by “Rybka” to place her, Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska, and a special guest on a yacht in Scandinavian waters in August of 2016.

If Deripaska’s name sounds familiar, it is because he is at the center of a good chunk of the intrigue surrounding Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. elections. He is a fabulously wealthy Russian billionaire, an aluminum magnate and close Putin ally who has his own history with organized crime that has prevented him from getting a U.S. visa (even with 1996 Republican presidential nominee Bob Dole lobbying on his behalf). Deripaska partnered for years with Paul Manafort, Trump’s Campaign Chairman when Trump as a candidate closed out the Republican primaries and accepted the nomination at the Republican National Convention, and Rick Gates, a longtime aide to Manafort, on a number of shady multimillion-dollar shadow deals. One scheme involved a failed effort at trying to bend the tiny Balkan nation of Montenegro to Moscow’s will (interesting in light of an apparent recent Russian-backed failed coup attempt there late in 2016).

Another one of their projects involved Deripaska paying Manafort millions for promoting Putin’s and Russia’s interests, and a third, which Rick Gates joined, involved laundering millions for then-Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych and his inner circle, who were living astoundingly exorbitant lifestyles with the funds. That third caper eventually left Manafort and Gates in a messy financial dispute with Deripaska in the Cayman Islands, and after NBC News revealed the existence of a previously unknown $26 million loan with which Deripaska has graced Manafort, the level of publicly known business dealings between the two men rose to some $60 million. So one could say that Manafort, and to a lesser extent Gates, owed Derispaska bigtime after their joint work helping Putin and Yanukovych.

The pro-Russian Yanukovych was then-outgoing-Ukrainian (also pro-Russian) President Leonid Kuchma’s chosen successor back in 2004, and Kuchma tried to rig the election in Yanukovych’s favor, sparking Ukraine’s Orange Revolution that ended up seeing more pro-Western, more anti-Russian leaders come to power. After this, it would be the task of Manafort (with the help of Gates) to restore Yanukovych’s image and electoral prospects. Yanukovych was essentially Putin’s stooge in a dramatic stage play that eventually helped to subvert Ukraine to the Kremlin’s will, increasing the power of Yanukovych’s pro-Russian political party—the Party of Regions—and finally seeing Yanukovych emerge as the victor in the 2010 Ukrainian presidential election. This remarkable comeback was accomplished with a massive political and lobbying effort—run by Manafort with Gates’s help—on behalf of Yanukovych and his Party of Regions (and its successor)—conducted side-by-side with an even more massive alleged money laundering scheme worth billions involving Ukrainian-Russian gas deals and the Russian mafia. Manafort is alleged to have played key roles in this operation, too, working with oligarchs and the Russian mafia to launder money through sham New York real estate deals. The proceeds of this overall scam allegedly went to fund Yanukovych and his political party and to bribe and control other Ukrainian politicians in order to bring them along to the Russian way of thinking at a time when the U.S. was working hard to strengthen its relations with Ukraine, meaning Manafort and Gates were acting against U.S. interests. This work of theirs continued until just before they ended upon Trump’s presidential campaign in 2016. They have now both been indicted by Special Counsel Robert Mueller in part because of money laundering related to this work in Ukraine. 

In putting the pieces together, Navalny was able to show that Deripaska was in close consultation on Russian policy with that special guest on his yacht: one of Russia’s deputy prime ministers, Sergei Prikhodko, a rare longtime survivor in Russia’s top leadership (one of the only major players from the days of Boris Yeltsin, Putin’s predecessor, to still be in place) who has a tremendous amount influence over Russian foreign policy, even greater than Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, according to Navalny. 

Navalny was able to piece all this together because that particularly entrepreneurial Russian escort, who claims to be Deripaska’s mistress, captured pictures and videos of the two Russian giants talking over such matters on board Deripaska’s yacht, enjoying a holiday in Scandinavian waters with the company of young escorts. In one of “Rybka’s” videos, Deripaska and Prikhodko and were discussing that favorite Russian punching bag, Victoria Nuland, a prominent former U.S. State Department official known for fighting against Russian geopolitical schemes, and the intrepid escort notes that they talked about many other political issues. She alleges in her book that Prikhodko (named only as “Papa” in the book) engaged in aggressive sexual harassment against her and others, and that Deripaska (given the moniker “Ruslan”) did not lift a finger to stop it, the only person to which the billionaire gave that kind of deference. 

Manafort reached out to Deripaska on July 7th, 2016, when he was still Trump’s Campaign Chairman, offering to brief him on Trump’s presidential campaign, presumably because of Deripaska’s closeness to Putin and senior Russian government officials. Deripaska’s yacht trip with Prikhodko began on August 6th, less than a month after Manafort offered to brief Deripaska. 

This is direct evidence that Deripaska was in contact with senior Russia government officials, discussing policy, at roughly the same time that Manafort was reaching out to him, and makes an even more compelling argument that Deripaska is still acting as an intermediary for the Kremlin and that Manafort’s relationship with Deripaska is one that could have compromised national security and American interests. 

Russia is already trying to block Navalny’s video in Russia and Deripaska is threatening to sue media outlets that report on it, and in an attack on Navalny in response to his video, Prikhodko referred to Deripaska as “my friend,” hardly denying their closeness.

Correction appended: this article originally misstated that Manafort’s home was raided by the FBI July 26th, 2016, but it was actually 2017.

See related article: Think You Know How Deep Trump-Russia Goes? Think Again: This Chart/Info Will Blow Your Mind

© 2018 Brian E. Frydenborg all rights reserved, permission required for republication, attributed quotations welcome

If you appreciate Brian’s unique content, you can support him and his work by donating here. 

Feel free to share and repost this article on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter (you can follow him there at @bfry1981), and here are many more articles by Brian E. Frydenborg. If you think your site or another would be a good place for this content, or would like to have Brian generate content for you, your site, or your organization, please do not hesitate to reach out to him!

Originally published on LinkedIn Pulse August 30, 2017

By Brian E. Frydenborg (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter@bfry1981) August 30th, 2017 (based heavily on research from my four previous related articles)

The April 2012 opening of Toronto’s Trump International Hotel and Tower. From left, Jim Petrus, COO of Trump Hotel Collection, Alex Shnaider, Donald Trump, Ivanka Trump, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump — Alex Urosevic/ Agency

Note: Earlier readers may have been confused because somehow, someone got into my post and edited out names like Topolov, Shnaider, & Seabeco. I have made security adjustments so that will not happen again.

AMMAN — The best prism through which to understand the big picture of how deep and incriminating Team Trump’s connections are with Team Putin/Russia is that of the many crooked business deals Trump and his associates embarked upon with operatives of Putin/the Russian government and the Russian mafia (two entities which can, in fact, be difficult to distinguish or separate from each other). The devil is in the details, and only a full exploration can truly expose the magnitude of this story.

This article is not that full story, but a much shorter gateway to that full story, itself the culmination of a year of meticulous research and involving some 70 close Trump associates, Putin associates, Russian government operatives, and Russian organized crime figures and their associates involved in dozens of crooked business deals totaling many billions of dollars that included international energy giants and over a dozen major luxury real estate deals; nearly all of the people and deals involved criminality and/or scandal.

Perhaps the foundational pillar in this story—besides Donald Trump’s penchant for unethical and criminal business practices and for teaming up with business partners who share it—is a meeting in Tel Aviv in October of 1995. This meeting was hosted by Russian-Canadian “businessman” Boris Birshtein and brought together leading members of Russian and Ukrainian organized crime in order to discuss mutual plans for their activities in Ukraine, which would almost certainly have included some of the later moves discussed below. Among the mafia bosses present was Semion Mogilevich, the “Boss of Bosses” in the Russian mafia and known as the “Brainy Don” because of his wizardry at orchestrating complex financial schemes that took years to plan and set up. And one need not be an expert to realize that so many high-level organized crime bosses would not congregate at one place at one time unless they were discussing something big, very big¸ with enormous amounts of money at stake.

By this time, it should be noted that Mogilevich had already had two major mob lieutenants who had bought units in Trump Tower in Manhattan: David Bogatin and Vyacheslav Ivankov, and Bogatin personally dealt directly with Donald Trump. There was also the case of Felix Sater, who ran a Wall Street fraud and money laundering scheme worth tens of millions of dollars with unspecified elements of the Russian mafia in the mid-1990s from one of Trump’s major Manhattan properties, 40 Wall Street. This was at a time when Mogilevich was also engaged in his own massive stock fraud and money laundering operation in the U.S. and Canada with his Russian mafia crew, and one should remember how hierarchical organized crime generally is, meaning there is a high chance Mogilevich was involved in Sater’s scheme. And, of course, there is the (potential) little detail that I was the first to report: that Sater’s father was alleged to be a captain in Mogilevich’s Russian mafia crew.

At the time of the 1995 Tel Aviv meeting, Birshtein was close to Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma, close enough to send him, along with others at Seabeco (the company Birshtein ran), at least $5 million to help him win reelection, and Kuchma would be aware by at least 2000 that Mogilevich had major operations in Ukraine underway and that he was working with Putin and had been close with him for some time. Possibly involved in these efforts, a Mogilevich lieutenant named Leonid Roytman was a “vice president” for a construction company run by Ukrainian oligarch Viktor Topolov, who was himself heavily involved with organized crime. Topolov would be part of a money laundering and embezzlement scandal in the late 90s and early 00s involving Ukraine’s state-owned gas company, Naftogaz, the Russian state-controlled gas giant, Gazprom, a Kiev soccer team, and Ukrainian Andreii Artemenko, who took over the team from Topolov in 1999.

This may have been a for Mogilevich for a far more epic money laundering scheme involving Gazprom and Naftogaz.

*****

As Putin took charge of Russia in 1999, a Ukrainian named Dmitry Firtash became a major shadow broker for the transport and sale of Central Asian gas into Ukraine. And among the employees of Birshtein in the 90s were Alexander Mashkevich and Patokh Chodiev, who just a few years after their Seabeco days would form two parts of a notorious “Trio” of Kazakh oligarchs that would become famous for dominating the Kazakh natural resources sector, for money laundering, and for ties to organized crime; also employed by Seabeco was Alexander Shnaider, who would marry Birshtein’s daughter. By 2001, Shnaider, with a partner, had his own company that owned a 93-percent stake in Zaporizhstal, Ukraine’s fourth largest steel mill when steel was roughly 25% of Ukraine’s GDP, while the “Trio” had become a thing and had been engaged in orchestrating deals with Russian gas giant Gazprom at the same time a massive plot involving the state-owned giant was being put into motion by Putin and his operatives, especially Mogilevich and Firtash, who in the early 2000s, engineered a stranglehold on Ukraine’s gas network through a series of shady-yet-profitable deals and front shell companies. 

Mogilevich was even getting prominent Republicans to lobby to have his name removed from the FBI’s “Ten Most Wanted” list, and one man involved in these efforts, Neil Livingstone, would also end up being connected business-wise to Firtash through an introduction by Mississippi GOP-governor Haley Barbour’s consulting firm (Livingstone would later run unsuccessfully to be Montana’s governor, and his running mate in the effort, Ryan Zinke, is now Trump’s Secretary of the Interior).

While those lobbying efforts were underway, Kuchma (who had been a pro-Russian leader) selected the corrupt pro-Russian Viktor Yanukovych as his chosen successor for the 2004 elections. The problem for him was that many Ukrainians wanted closer ties with the West and wanted to reject the old Soviet-style corruption of the Kuchma/Yanukovych wing of Ukrainian politics. So Kuchma tried to have the election fixed for his protégé, but it was pretty obvious and masses of Ukrainians took to the streets; the country’s Supreme Court ordered an election redo, and Yanukovych lost. 

In this effort to elect Yanukovych, a Republican political operative from the United States, famous for his work with unscrupulous “Third Word” dictators, was assisting him as a political consultant and would stay after the loss, leading efforts to rebrand Yanukovych and his pro-Russian political party, the Party of Regions. His name was Paul Manafort, and he had already done informal work for Donald Trump by this time as a partner of Roger Stone and would end up running Trump’s presidential campaign in 2016 during the crucial stretch when Trump racked up delegates and officially secured the Republican nomination; both in Ukraine and on Trump’s in presidential election effort, Manafort’s junior partner, Rick Gates, would heavily assist. It would be in part under Manafort’s watch when Trump’s presidential campaign would become the most explicitly pro-Russian of any major candidate since WWII. Alongside his political work for Yanukovych and his Party of Regions, Manafort also took on a gig worth millions through Russian aluminum oligarch Oleg Deripaska to lobby on behalf of Russian interests and for Putin, with whom Deripaska was close. In 2004, Deripaska, who is also tied to organized crime, had also done a massive aluminum deal with Mashkevich, formerly of Birshtein’s and then of the Kazakh “Trio.”

Even as the 2004 Ukrainian election was being decided, Mogilevich’s and Firtash’s gas scheme was in place and working: Firtash’s shell companies would buy gas from Gazprom at low rates, then sell it at much higher rates to Ukraine, partnering with Ukraine’s Naftogaz; the profits would then be used to bribe Ukrainian politicians and bend them to Putin’s will and fill the Party of Region’s coffers so it would be flush with cash, and in exchange, Firtash would be given billions in credit from Putin-linked bankers to buy up major sectors of key Ukrainian industries. Where Firtash was the public face, Mogilevich was moving the money around behind the scenes, laundering away from prying eyes. 

By 2006, this scheme had grown to include RAO UES, a Russian state-owned electric company, which meant Russia was selling its Gazprom-transported gas to Ukraine at marked up rates and then getting some of the fruit of that gas back at a discount when a portion of the gas was used to generate electricity for RAO, which then sold the electricity for even further profit; an American man named Carter Page advised both Gazprom and RAO at this time, and he is smart enough on these matters (if not others) to make it near-impossible to believe he did not know what was going on to a significant degree.

Page would go on to become one of the only foreign policy advisors to Trump’s campaign that Trump could name in 2016, but by then Page had already been under a secret federal surveillance warrant since 2014 on suspicion of being a Russian agent.

Around the time RAO was being integrated into the massive Ukrainian gas scheme, in 2006 a lawyer named Michael Cohen with a shady history had worked his way into Trump’s employ as a key legal advisor; he had married a Ukrainian, and so had his brother, Bryan, whose wife was the daughter of Alex Oronov, who was a major business partner of Topolov, who, as mentioned, had ties to Mogilevich and had been involved in the soccer/Naftogaz/Gazprom scheme from before that also involved Artemenko, who, in turn, would later describe Oronov as his mentor. Both Cohen brothers went into an ethanol business with Oronov and Topolov; the venture did not go as planned and raises natural questions as to if anything illicit was involved.

By 2007, Trump was partnering with non-other than Alexander Shnaider, Birshtein’s son-in-law, to develop a Trump Tower in Toronto. The following year, received a massive loan from FL Group, an Icelandic “investment” firm that was well-known for handling money for close Putin associates and that played a major role in the global financial crises at the end of the decade; the loan was given, ostensibly, to purchase a yacht. That same year, Shnaider sold his stake in the Ukraine steel mill for some $850 million to an unknown buyer tied to the Russian government and who was financed by VEB (Vnesheconombank), a Russian state-owned bank whose board was then chaired by Putin himself. This furthered the Kremlin’s goal of having allies dominate key industries and natural resources in Ukraine, and the following year the mill was sold to Rinat Akhmetov, a super-wealthy Ukrainian oligarch close to Yanukovych. As for the Toronto Trump Tower, the project fell apart in scandal, lawsuits, and bankruptcy, with Trump’s name even being taken off the building just this July.

Also throughout the 2000s, Trump partnered with Felix Sater on a number of shady real estate deals that all failed, ended in scandal and/or lawsuits, and almost certainly involved massive amounts of Russian money laundering. Sater’s real estate business, Bayrock, was even located in Trump Tower, and its five deals with Trump included, most infamously, the Trump SoHo in Manhattan. Sater and his Kazakh partner, Tefik Arif, also secured financing from none other than Alexander Mashkevich and from FL Group; the “financing” was a $50 million package that went to four of the five Sater-brokered deals and was illegally structured as a loan for tax fraud purposes. Given Sater’s possible ties to Mogilevich and known ties to the Russian mafia, it is valid to suspect that some of the money involved could have been related to the whole Eurasian gas scheme.

The Soho deal in involved financing from Tamir Sapir from the former Soviet Republic of Georgia, who lived in Trump Tower, was a graduate of the Soviet Ministry of Internal and who had longstanding close ties to a myriad of Soviet officials; an old business partner of his named Sam Kislin had earlier brokered a deal for a condo in Manhattan’s Trump World Tower for Vasily Salygin, who would go on to be an official in Yanukovych’s Party of Regions during the whole gas scam era. At a ceremony hosted by Trump in Mar-a-Lago, Sapir’s daughter also married Rotem Rosen, a close business partner with an international diamond magnate from the former Soviet Republic of Uzbekistan, Lev Leviev, who is close with Putin and worked on issues for him with Russian aluminum oligarch Roman Abramovich, who himself has ties organized crime; Ivanka Trump would become quite close with Abramovich’s wife, while her now-husband, Jared Kushner, would do business with Leviev, who would sell Kushner high-end real estate in 2015. But back in 2008, Leviev sold posh Manhattan real estate to Prevezon, a company owned by Denis Katsyv, the son of a former Russian government minister, Petr Katsyv, who worked with a close Putin ally, Vladimir Yakunin, who publicly endorsed Trump’s run for president in June 2016; Prevezon used the Leviev transaction to help launder millions of the Russian government’s illegal proceeds from its Magnitsky-related historic tax fraud scam (an issue on which Denis Katsyv and Yakunin both lobbied U.S. lawmakers), which was one of the issues discussed at the now infamous meeting with Donald Trump Jr., Paul Manafort, Jared Kushner, and a number of notorious Russians tied to Putin and the Russian government; at the time, Leviev’s business that conducted the transactions was headquartered at Trump’s 40 Wall Street, the same building Sater had used many years ago in conducting his fraud and money laundering.

Manafort was in on the whole Ukraine gas scheme, too, and starting at least in 2008 even helped, along with Gates, to launder vast sums of money through sketchy Manhattan real estate deals that were never completed, ended in scandal, and helped keep the money away from authorities, helping to give Yanukovych and his Party of Regions their crooked edge over their rivals. A Ukrainian politician, Yulia Tymoshenko—who led the efforts to crack down on this Ukraine gas scheme before she ran for president and lost in 2010 to a Yanukovych who had been successfully rehabilitated by Manafort and who was then imprisoned by Yanukovych on trump-up show charges after her loss—sued Manafort, Gates, Mogilevich, Firtash, and Yanukovych in a New York federal court from Ukrainian prison, arguing that those crooked Manhattan real estate deals had helped enable her enemies to do her harm, both politically and “legally.” The court agreed with some of her claims but felt it lacked the jurisdiction to rule on them and that the evidence did not meet the higher RICO standards.

Yanukovych remained in power until 2014, when his own people drove him out, precipitating the current civil war and Russia’s annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea. Soon after Trump was inaugurated president, he dispatched Michael Cohen—who had become something of an infamous spokesman for the Trump campaign in 2016 (“Says who?”)—and Felix Sater to meet with Adreii Artemenko to discuss a “peace plan” that had the approval of top Putin aides and that would have handed Russia formal control of Crimea, with the meeting organized by Alex Oronov. Only a few months later, Oronov mysteriously died.

While the latest New York Times story on Sater begs the question of how Sater can claim to have access to Putin, it is quite possible that the answer to that question is Mogilevich himself.

*****

A lot of these Russian-tied real estate deals were so spectacularly poorly executed that they only make sense if viewed primarily as criminal vehicles for Russian and Ukrainian money laundering. Considering that so many of these people and deals can likely be linked to that 1995 Russian and Ukrainian mafia bosses’ meeting in Israel hosted by Boris Birshtein, that is not surprising. 

Even only looking at this portion of the story, it seems the machinery of that major Putin operation designed to dominate Ukraine using natural gas and money laundering was likely set in motion by that 1995 Tel Aviv meeting, and that, eventually, multiple parts of that machine engaged Trump both in what may have been related money laundering scams and then, later, in a political plot to help him win the American presidency using and information operations to both boost him and attack the candidacy of Hillary Clinton and her Democratic Party. A single operation? No. Multiple related operations that used some of the same people and machinery? Most certainly, and the overlap is where the real story—and questions—rise.

Again, keep in mind that this is only a part of the Trump-Russia saga. You can read about these events in more detail and other people and crooked deals involving Trump, his people, Putin’s people, and the Russian mafia in my more exhaustive earlier article.

See the related article that contains this chart: Think You Know How Deep Trump-Russia Goes? Think Again: This Chart/Info Will Blow Your Mind.

Correction appended to note the alleged nature of the claim that Sater’s father was tied to Mogilevich

© 2017 Brian E. Frydenborg all rights reserved, permission required for republication, attributed quotations welcome

See author’s Amazon eBooks here!

See related articles:

U.S. Settlement of Prevezon Case Raises More Questions on Trump/Russia Ties; Bharara Led Case Before Trump Fired Him (CENSORED IN RUSSIA)

The (First) Russo-American Cyberwar: How Obama Lost & Putin Won, Ensuring a Trump Victory

Welcome to the Era of Rising Democratic Fascism Part I: Defining Democracy, Fascism, and Democratic Fascism Usefully, and Spin vs. Lies

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Feel free to share and repost this article on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter (you can follow him there at @bfry1981). If you think your site or another would be a good place for this or would like to have Brian generate content for you, your site, or your organization, please do not hesitate to reach out to him!

Sometimes seeing the bigger picture requires enough steps back to realize there are parts you didn’t even know were there, and in an age of 140-character Tweets, information overload, fake news, short attention spans, and a frequency and scale of scandals unheard of in the history of Western democratic politics, seeing that big picture can be harder than ever, even with the most-covered story in the world. 

Yet in Putin’s cynical salsa with Team Trump, when so many people connected to Trump and Putin are involved in similar money laundering schemes involving Russians and the Russian mafia and each other and Trump properties, we pass out of the realm of allowing for reasonable doubt and suspicion to the point where the crimes become so obvious that what remains to be answered is no longer “if” but simply “how much” these people are guilty and/or stupid.

Below you have the deepest exploration of the big picture of Trump’s crooked Russian business ties you can get from any single account, with a significant amount of information reported here not reported in this context by anyone else, and every detail is from a publicly available, credible, and cited source.

January 23rd, 2019. Originally published on LinkedIn Pulse July 27, 2017 (over 77,000 unique views) and republished by Ir.net March 15, 2018 (over 36,000 unique views); many major updates in my Nov, 2020, eBook A Song of Gas and Politics,  available for Amazon Kindle and Barnes and Noble Nook (preview here) 

By Brian E. Frydenborg (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter @bfry1981) July 27th, 2017

Built on part on these earlier pieces from: July 30/31 2016: Trump, Putin, Russia, DNC/Clinton Hack, & WikiLeaks: “There’s Something Going on” with Election 2016 & It’s Cyberwarfare & Maybe Worse

November 4, 2016: EXCLUSIVE: Top Trump Aides’ Deeper & Linked Roles in Putin Agenda Revealed; Russian Mafia Nexus With Trump & Aides Goes Back Years

March 28, 2017: Trump’s Russia & Mafia Dealings Expose Him As Fool or Criminal (Traitor?) or Both: Biggest Scandal in U.S. History, Too Many Ties to Be Nothing

Also, see his related piece from December 7, 2016: The (First) Russo-American Cyberwar: How Obama Lost & Putin Won, Ensuring a Trump Victory

Support Brian’s work by donating here

AMMAN—This story of 1.) DONALD TRUMP, 2.) VLADIMIR PUTIN, and their operatives is exceedingly complex, so I ask readers’ patience in going through this historic tale of political cunning and intrigue, conspiracies and crimes.

CLICK HERE TO ZOOM IN ON CHART

1990s: Laying Foundations

Russian mafia “boss of bosses” 3.) SEMION (Semyon) MOGILEVICH makes moves in North America. Throughout this piece, remember that MOGILEVICH, also known as “the Brainy Don,” has an economics degree and is famous for designing elaborate financial schemes that are extremely difficult, even impossible, to detect, the planning and setup of which can take years and involve a wide range of people in various positions of power whose roles/identities are sometimes never even discovered.

MOGILEVICH starts up a fake company called YBM Magnex International in Pennsylvania in 1995 that would be used to perpetrate a massive stock fraud worth $150 million on the Toronto Stock Exchange. The ostensible “CEO” of YBM was 4.) Jacob (Yakov) Bogatin. His brother, 5.) David Bogatin, had served in the Soviet Army in an anti-aircraft battery in North Vietnam during the Vietnam War, targeting U.S. aircraft; in the mid-1980s, Donald 1.) TRUMP had personally sold David five apartments in I.) Trump Tower, and by the 1990s, he was, like his brother, a key figure in MOGILEVICH’s mafia organization’s presence in the U.S. Another major MOGILEVICH lieutenant who would rise to be one of the senior Russian mobsters in America, 6.) Vyacheslav Ivankov, also lived in I.) Trump Tower, had the Trump Organization’s private contact numbers in his address book, and also loved frequently spending time—along with other Russian mobsters—at TRUMP’s VIII.) Taj Mahal casino in Atlantic City, NJ.

Another alleged (according to an apparently uncorroborated U.S. Supreme Court writ of certiorari) 3.)MOGILEVICH lieutenant, 7.) Mikhael Sheferovsky (aka Michael SATER), had a son named 8.) FELIX SATER (sometimes Satter), who ended up having, predictably, ties to the Russian mafia; FELIX SATER was involved in an at least $41 million (and up to $60 million) stock fraud and money laundering scheme and ran it in the mid-1990s from an office in II.) 40 Wall St., another TRUMP-owned property. We know this scheme involved the Russian mafia, but the details of that case remain sealed because SATER later cooperated with the U.S. government on national security issues (there is currently a court fight to get this information released on the grounds that it is a national concern, now that TRUMP is president, and some details about SATER have been released in previous court fights, including his father’s alleged link to MOGILEVICH, which I was the first to report). It must also be mentioned that—as 3.) MOGILEVICH was already heavily engaged in money laundering with the Russian mafia in North America and he was already very powerful in that very hierarchical organization, already had a history of close Russian mafia associates linked to TRUMP-owned entities, and would already have known 8.)SATER if hewas the son of one of his own mafia captains as a U.S. Supreme Court writ of certiorari alleges—it would be far more likely than not that MOGILEVICH was somehow involved in 8.) SATER’s scheme.

3.) MOGILEVICH was also connected to a Russian émigré living in Canada, 9.) Boris Birshtein, who ran a number of ostensible businesses under the Seabeco name that were staffed heavily by Russians and others from former Soviet republics. In 1995, Birshtein hosted a meeting in Tel Aviv at which 3.) MOGILEVICH and another major Russian mafia godfather—10.) Sergei Mikhailov (Mikhaylov), also a close business partner of Birshtein and who would later develop his own relationship with Russia’s political elite—were present, as were other Russian and former-Soviet-republic mob bosses. They discussed joint plans for their Ukrainian operations, plans that may have set the stage for much of what is discussed below and that would likely have included MOGILEVICH’s moves that acquired influence over significant chunks Ukraine’s economy, particularly the energy sector. This was all related to corrupt relationships and arrangements with Ukraine’s president—then 11.) Leonid Kuchma, close with 2.) PUTIN—and other major Ukrainian politicians, including some $5 million sent by Birshtein and his Seabeco associates to Kuchma’s campaign manager, 12.) Oleksandr (Alexander) Volkov, known for his ties to Russian organized crime. Two men who would come to dominate large parts of Kazakhstan’s natural resource sector and forge very close ties with that country’s corrupt political leadership as two members of a Kazakh “Trio” of oligarchs, 13.) Alexander Mashkevich (sometimes Machkevich)and 14.) Patokh Chodiev, would meet at Seabeco and work for it throughout the 1990s. At the same time, Russian-born Canadian 15.) Alexander Shnaider (Shneider) began working for Seabeco in 1991 while in law school; he would eventually marry his boss’s daughter, 16.) Simona Birshtein Shnaider, and he rose quickly in Seabeco’s steel sector. Shnaider and a partner founded a company, Midland Resource Holdings, which began aggressively buying up the Ukrainian government’s shares in Ukraine’s fourth largest steel mill, Zaporizhstal; they were clearly well-funded and well-connected to be able to do so.

Another Ukrainian, 17.) Dmitry (Dmytro) Firtash, went into business in post-Soviet Ukraine and quickly amassed a fortune through his commodities business, KMIL. This would eventually bring him into the region’s natural gas business by the late 1990s, when he began trading commodities for gas. At this time, Firtash’s KMIL was struggling and would be absorbed into the soon-to-be-Cyprus-based Highrock Holding, a front for none-other than 3.) MOGILEVICH; one Ukrainian associate of MOGILEVICH, who was a senior executive in his YBM front, was also helping to run Highrock in the late 1990s: the Ukrainian 18.) Igor Fisherman. Firtash came to direct Highrock in 2001, running it along with MOGILEVICH, who also controlled a significant chunk through a shell company run by his ex-wife until Firtash took that over, too, in 2003, giving him a strong majority control of Highrock. 

As Firtash was transitioning to Highrock, Ukrainian businessman 19.) Viktor Topolov ran a construction company, Kyiv-Donbas, that by the late 1990s employed multiple Russian mobsters, including 20.) Leonid Roytman, a 3.) MOGILEVICH hitman, who is employed as a vice-president and who said that the company regularly functioned to set up mafia meetings. It seems Topolov was also involved in a scandal involving money laundering and embezzling with Ukrainian state gas company Naftogaz, the Russian state gas company Gazprom, and a Ukrainian football team CSKA Kiev, which he ran at the time before handing the team off to 21.) Andrii (Andriy/Andrey) Artemenko in 1999, who was also involved in, and later took much of the fall for, the scandal.

2000s: Advanced Plots in Motion

By at least 2000, 11.) Kuchma seemed to tacitly approve of, or at least not try to block, whatever designs 3.) MOGILEVICH & co. had for Ukraine (designs that had apparently been discussed in Tel Aviv). At this time, Kuchma was also aware that MOGILEVICH had a relationship with 2.) PUTIN that went back years, and that the two were already plotting together for some time (even today, PUTIN is shielding MOGILEVICH in Russia from U.S. and other international authorities’ extradition requests).

17.) Firtash was also rising in his gas role. It was he who established (with 3.) MOGILEVICH’s lawyer 22.) Zeev Gordon aka Vladimir Averbukh) and ran Eural Trans Gas (ETG) in 2002, a joint project with Gazprom and Naftogaz (Naftogas/Naftohaz), the state-run gas companies of Russia and Ukraine, respectively; immediately after ETG’s creation, it played the role of the dominant intermediary for Russian/Eurasian gas deals for Ukraine, a role previously played by the company ITERA, whose leader, 23.) Igor Makarov, would now be a partner of Firtash’sin Highrock.

Also of note: in the years immediately after this, MOGILEVICH enlisted the lawyerly services of 24.) William Sessions (a Republican who was the only FBI director to be fired until TRUMP fired James Comey, firing him in relation to an investigation into what is discussed herein) in an effort to get his criminal charges cleared with the U.S. Government; the middleman for that effort was consultant 25.) Neil Livingstone , whose firm GlobalOptions was heavily staffed by Russians and people from former Soviet republics (fun/suspicious fact: Livingstone ran unsuccessfully for the Republican nomination for Montana’s 2012 governor’s race with 26.) Ryan Zinke, now the TRUMP Administration’s Secretary of the Interior, as his running mate); two-time Mississippi governor and major Republican operative 27.) Haley Barbour founded a consulting firm that introduced Livingstone’s GlobalOptions to Highrock, which engaged GlobalOptions in at least two contracts, one of which was mysteriously referenced in a lawsuit involving an unnamed member of Ukraine’s government (notice how MOGILEVICH and Firtash are working hand-in-hand, just a bit removed from each other).

As (pro-Russian) President 11.) Kuchma’s second term was coming to end, he made a major deal with his ally 2.) PUTIN in 2004 to replace ETG with a new company, Swiss-registered RosUkrEnergo (RUE), to facilitate an ostensibly joint venture between the countries to bring in gas from Turkmenistan and in much the same role as ETG, but, in reality, the shady deals around this were orchestrated by Gazprom, the gas would pass through Gazprom-owned pipes and Russian territory, and 50% of RUE was owned by Gazprom, with 45% was owned through a complex arrangement of shell companies owned by Firtash acting, in part, as a front for MOGILEVICH.

But as I’ve detailed repeatedly before, this was about far more than gas.

While RUE was being set up, Kuchma was also grooming a potential successor in 28.) Viktor Yanukovych, Kuchma’s already-scandal-mired prime minister. 

Enter 29.) PAUL MANAFORT, who had already done informal work for TRUMP at the turn of the century as a partner of Nixon devotee Roger Stone in controversially lobbying against a Mohawk casino that would have competed with TRUMP’s casinos, lobbying that TRUMP failed to properly disclosed and for which he was fined; MANAFORT was an old-hand Republican operative with a specialty for consulting for unscrupulous Third World dictators. At this point, MANAFORT was ostensibly in Ukraine to do work for 30.) Rinat Akhmetov, Ukraine’s richest man for much of the past decade and major patron of Yanukovych; in reality, he was there to run the political campaign of Yanukovych and his political party, the pro-Russian Party of Regions, also heavily backed by Akhmetov. In the process, MANAFORT would become acquainted, and partner with, a whole host of Ukrainian and Russian oligarchs and operatives connected to PUTIN and working for Yanukovych, including 3.) MOGILEVICH and 17.) Firtash.

As is now famously known, Kuchma tried to fix the 2004 election for Yanukovych through widespread fraud; the people rose up and took to the streets and Ukraine’s Supreme Court demanded a redo, one which Yanukovych would lose in what would become known as the Orange Revolution. But MANAFORT would stick around, trying to rehabilitate Yanukovych over the years and work his political magic for Yanukovych’s Party of Regions. In these efforts, MANAFORT brought in his protégé, 31.) Richard “Rick” Gates.

On multiple projects, 29.) MANAFORT would partner with Russian aluminum oligarch and close 2.) PUTIN ally 32.) Oleg Deripaska, who has his own history with organized crime that has prevented him from getting a U.S. visa (even with 1996 Republican presidential nominee Bob Dole lobbying on his behalf); one scheme involved a shady effort trying to bend Montenegro to Moscow’s will, another one of their projects involved Deripaska paying MANAFORT millions for promoting PUTIN’s and Russia’s interests, and another, which involved 31.) Rick Gates, involved laundering millions for 28.) Yanukovych and his inner circle, who were living astoundingly exorbitant lifestyles with the funds.

On one level, MANAFORT and his protégé Gates ran the politics for 28.) Yanukovych and his Party of Regions working with various Yanukovych and PUTIN allies; on another level they all worked with 17.) Firtash and 3.) MOGILEVICH in one of the most elaborate and complex money laundering schemes in history, and perhaps the one with the most far-reaching consequences. If it seemed strange that RUE was so strongly controlled by Gazprom and Firtash, there was a reason for that: Gazprom sold gas at a relatively low price to Firtash via RUE, who then sold the gas directly to Ukraine at a much higher rate; the profits were then used to bribe and control Ukrainian politicians to bend them PUTIN’s will and get them to back Yanukovych and the Party of Regions, and while Firtash was the public face of RUE and other related shell companies, MOGILEVICH was moving the money behind the scenes. Billions were laundered in this way in order to hide the money being used to corrupt Ukraine’s political system and pull Ukraine towards Russia. 

17.) Firtash was also given billions in credit from 2.) PUTIN-linked banks so that Firtash could buy up valuable sectors of industries that controlled Ukraine’s natural resources, allowing him and his allies to further tighten their grip on Ukraine and wield even greater influence. Other allies of 28.) Yanukovych and/or PUTIN, like 30.) Akhmetov, were also moving to make big acquisitions in important sectors of Ukraine’s economy at the time.

Obviously, this arrangement did not sit well with many Ukrainians, and politicians not in PUTIN’s pocket resisted. This led to a major dispute over the gas deals in January, 2006, in which Russia shut off the flow of gas into Ukraine. A new deal was struck that would make RUE the exclusive, direct supplier of all Russian and Central Asian gas imports, one that would, along with Gazprom and Gazexport (Gazprom’s subsidiary selling non-Russian produced gas), sell to a new joint venture between RUE and Naftogaz called UkrGazEnergo (or UkrGaz-Energo) that would sell all gas going to Ukraine’s industrial customers while RUE would sell to Naftogaz to sell to Ukraine’s residential and municipal customers. This dramatically increased the markup opportunities and laundering involving Ukraine’s gas. 

Another part of the deal—which I was the first, and apparently only journalist, to point out in the context of this larger scheme—involved the major Russian state-owned power company RAO UES: RAO would pay for and import Ukrainian-generated electricity to sell in Russia; Ukraine would provide this power from the gas Ukraine was paying RUE for that had been bought by UkrGazEnergo to sell within Ukraine; Ukraine would deliver the electricity to RAO in return for the gas needed to generate it, with RUE or another Firtash company, apparently, buying the gas from UkrGazEnergo and the gas then being sent to Ukrainian power plants, which would then generate the electricity that would go to RAO, which would then sell that electricity in Russia. Obviously, this scheme would give Firtash additional points at which he could mark up prices and generate a profit, and it is telling that gas already being transited by Russia’s Gazprom pipelines into Ukraine through RUE—itself half-owned by Gazprom—was being used, after it was paid for by Ukraine for a high price, to generate electricity that would be used in Russia. This makes no logistical sense, as it would be easier for Russia to just bring gas from Gazprom to RAO through Russia, but when viewed through the prism of generating illicit funds used to dominate Ukraine politically, then it makes sense.

An American named 33.) Carter Page is key here: he moved to Moscow in 2004 to set up Merrill Lynch’s office there, working there until 2007. During this period he advised both Gazprom and RAO on major deals, and, despite his warped worldview, he is clearly steeped in knowledge of the energy sector and regional geopolitics, possessing a master’s degree and a PhD from highly prestigious universities; he very likely knew what was going on, at least to some degree, with the whole Eurasian gas scheme detailed above, as he was advising not just one but two major entities involved on opposite ends of the corrupt process.

As two Americans on different sides of this, did MANAFORT and Page connect at this time? As both men became involved in the 1.) TRUMP campaign in 2016 and since we still aren’t sure who hired Page to work for TRUMP’s presidential campaign, this question is certainly a valid one to ask.

14.) Chodiev and the third member of that aforementioned Kazakh “Trio,” 34.) Alijan Ibragimov, had already partnered with Gazprom, too, and, the most famous member of the “Trio,” 13.) Mashkevich, had, since his days at Birshtein’s Seabeco, risen to be close to Kazakhstan’s ruling family and to be a kingpin himself in the world of Kazakh natural resources as head of Eurasian Natural Resources Corporation (ENRC), including the realm of gas for a time when a lot of business was going down with 23.) Makarov’s ITERA, just before Makarov handed off that role to 17). Firtash and joined him at Highrock; this was also a time when newly-elected-PUTIN was having Gazprom set the stage for deep relationships with the Kazakh and Central Asian gas industries. At the time, Mashkevich  and the rest of the “Trio” came under investigation by Belgian authorities for money laundering related to gas deals in a longstanding case that was eventually settled. Mashkevich was also a dominant player in aluminum, and orchestrated a huge deal with 32.) Deripaska in 2004.

Jumping to 9.) Birshtein’s son-in-law 15.) Shnaider: by 2001, he, along with his partner, had acquired a 93 percent stake in Ukraine’s Zaporizhstal steel mill for some $70 million; he managed to do this at a time when steel was Ukraine’s biggest industry, accounting for about 25% of the country’s GDP, and by 2006, Shnaider was turning down a $1.2 billion offer for the mill.

There is another set of Ukrainian business dealings that are of interest to our narrative here for multiple reasons. Let us return to 19.) Topolov, who ran into problems, along with 21.) Artemenko, with a money laundering scheme involving Gazprom and a Kiev football team at the turn of the century, as previously described. Topolov had a “longtime” business partner named 35.) Alex Oronov, whose daughter, 36.) Oksana (Oxana) Oronov Cohen, was at this point married to 37.) Bryan Cohen. And Bryan was brother to 38.) Michael Cohen (also married to a Ukrainian), whose uncle ran a catering establishment once popular with the Russian mafia. Before his rise, Michael was a personal injury lawyer who also ran a taxi business. He helped run a failed casino boat business in Florida that ended in dozens of lawsuits and whose lawyer, David Goldstein, was well-connected to the mob. One of Cohen’s major partners, Ukrainian Arkady Vaygensberg, ran another casino, and among the managers were 39.) Tatiana Varzar and her husband Michael Varzar; Michael had served prison for mob-related activity, while Tatiana was a Russian immigrant and a pillar of the Russian immigrant community in America who ran nightclubs in Brooklyn and South Florida that are hubs for that community; her restaurant in Brighton Beach—an area notorious for its Russian mafia presence—burned down in highly suspicious circumstances in 2003; New York State found her guilty of tax evasion worth over $230,000 for the years 2004-2006; and 1.) TRUMP himself is known to have patronized one of her clubs in Florida, while she also opened a catering service in one of his Florida properties.

Back to 38.) Michael Cohen: Beginning in 2001, he started buying sets of apartments in multiple TRUMP properties, got his family to buy TRUMP condos as well, and was a big fan of TRUMP, having read his The Art of the Deal twice. As is generally the case with TRUMP, he warmed up to an admirer and brought Cohen in to help with a dispute he was having in 2006 with some of the owners in one of his buildings. Cohen was so helpful that TRUMP quickly brought him on officially as a key advisor, giving him an office close to his own inside I.) Trump Tower, and he has been with TRUMP ever since. Also at this time, Michael and 37.) Bryan joined Bryan’s father-in-law, 35.) Oronov, in a Ukrainian ethanol business venture, one in which 3.) MOGILEVICH-linked 19.) Topolov—now a powerful Ukrainian politician—was Oronov’s co-partner; in 2006, the Cohen brothers tried to get Americans to invest in building a factory for the business and failed to do so (but they met Topolov in the process), but others funded the investment to the tune of millions, which is rather strange considering no ethanol was ever produced by the ensuing factory. 

38.) Michael wouldgo on to be an important public face of 1.) TRUMP’s presidential campaign (remember the infamous “Says who?” incident?, and two days after it, Cohen’s vehement denials were shown to be hollow) and was named in a partially unverified dossier compiled by ex-British MI6 intelligence official Christopher Steele as having met one or more Russian officials in Prague during the 2016 campaign season to discuss the Russian hacking efforts against TRUMP’s opponents. Cohen would also carry out unofficial diplomacy for TRUMP after he was inaugurated president: 38.) Cohen teamed up with 8.) SATER (whose relationship with TRUMP had already mushroomed, as noted below) and 21.) Artemenko in a meeting in Manhattan organized by none other than 35.) Oronov, who was also a major “partner, mentor, teacher and friend” to Artemenko, as Artemenko described him one month later, this March, after Oronov had mysteriously died. The purpose of the meeting was to discuss a “peace” plan for Ukraine with support from senior 3.) PUTIN aides, one that would cede to Russia official control over Crimea for a 50 or 100-year “lease.” At the meeting were also discussed ways to undermine Ukraine’s current anti-PUTIN president, Petro Poroshenko. Cohen personally delivered the proposal to National Security Advisor Michael Flynn, shortly before Flynn resigned because of his own Russian entanglements.

Going back to the ethanol venture, it is important to remember that 35.) Oronov’s partner 19.) Topolov had strong ties to 3.) MOGILEVICH and was already linked to a money-laundering scheme involving Gazprom, and that when 38.) Michael and 37.) Bryan Cohen met Topolov, MOGILEVICH was actively trying to launder billions involving Gazprom as part of his Ukraine/Eurasian gas scheme; at the very least, the money involved in the ethanol venture and all profits Michael made from it—including any he may have invested in TRUMP properties—need to be traced, if possible.

As for all the gas scheme money going to fuel the rise of 28.) Yanukovych and the Party of Regions, his now extremely well-funded Party was winning more and more seats under 29.) MANAFORT’s leadership, taking power away from pro-Western, pro-US politicians. This did not sit well with the pro-Western Yulia Tymoshenko, who rose to be Ukraine’s Prime Minister in 2007 and directed her oversight powers against her rivals Yanukovych and 17.) Firtash, trying to close off the spigot of corrupt Russian money and influence that was twisting her country’s political system. With her using her office to fight this scheme, laundering its funds became even more integral to said scheme’s success, and anyone doing business with its perpetrators could have been involved, knowingly or not.

29.) MANAFORT and 31.) Gates were also personally involved in laundering money as part of this overall gas scheme through several deals in 2008 involving Manhattanproperties, one involving the b.) Drake Hotel and another the c.) St. John’s Terminal. These deals would never be finalized, but would easily serve their main purpose of laundering money away from Ukrainian and other authorities, and MANAFORT may even have engaged in additional money laundering, which may have included his cash purchase of a multi-million I.) Trump Tower apartment in 2006.

In fact, those Manhattan money laundering scams fit a pattern of transactions that included other shady deals that exploited lax regulations in the U.S. and Canadian real estate markets and that involved 1.) TRUMP and Russians at a time when he was finding other investors and investment hard to come by. As I have noted before, by the mid-2000s, TRUMP had been abandoned by every major Wall Street bank as an unreliable and difficult partner, and was hurting for money, especially after he had to declare a bankruptcy for one of his businesses in 2004; the one exception to the Wall Street bank boycott was Deutsche Bank, which would later be involved in massive Russian money laundering scandals (see below).

By 2008, 40.) Donald Trump Jr. was able to publicly remark that “Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets” and that “we [the Trump Organization] see a lot of money pouring in from Russia;” yes, this was a time when TRUMP was aggressively courting Russian business.

Apart from the aforementioned 5.) Bogatin, 6.) Ivankov, and 8.) SATER from before the 2000s, other notables as far as our tale is concerned later rented apartments from TRUMP: 41.) Vasily Salygin, who would later become an official in Ukraine’s Party of Regions at the same time 29.) MANAFORT was advising it, would buy an apartment in New York City’s IX.) Trump World Tower in a deal orchestrated by another Ukrainian, 42.) Semyon “Sam” Kislin, who had done business with Trump decades earlier.

In fact, a report from Reuters from March noted nearly $100 million was invested by Russians (some “politically connected” elites) in seven Trump properties in South Florida, and that over a third of the units in the seven properties were owned by LLCs often designed to mask their owners’ identities.

Over part of the last decade, 43.) Igor Zorin, a Russian government official, once owned three units in Trump Palace in Sunny Isles Beach, Florida, valued at some $5.4 million, which, with his modest government salary, screams money laundering; two were likely paid for in cash and one unit was mysteriously transferred to him by former F.S.B. intelligence officer 44.) Svyatoslav Mangushev, who does business with Zorin and who helped found a Russian biker group named after Russian Spetsnaz special forces and that was trying to associate with a PUTIN-linked biker group active in hostilities in Ukraine known as the Night Wolves and subject to U.S. government sanctions; Zorin seems to have transferred that condo to one of Mangushev’s relatives for $1.5 million, and Mangushev was arrested for beating his wife in 2014, though charges were later dropped.

Other deals were far more complex, far more scandalous, and involved TRUMP far more directly; here we get into the next phase of 1.) DONALD TRUMP’s relationship with 8.) FELIX SATER, of multiple deals with Sater’s company, Bayrock, which I have discussed in great detail before.

TRUMP had been acquainted with 45.) Tamir Sapir, from the former Soviet republic of Georgia, who had decades ago established ties to numerous important Soviet officials after immigrating to the U.S., who may have very well (once) been part of—or even come to the U.S. secretly working for—the Soviet Ministry of Internal Affairs (at whose academy he had apparently studied), whose sources of his extremely unlikely and massive wealth had long been objects of rumor-fueled suspicion, and whose former business partner had pled guilty to racketeering conspiracy charges spanning 13 years with the Gambino crime family. Sapir had done some business with 1.) TRUMP decades ago, selling him some 200 televisions with then-business partner 42.) Kislin. By the 2000s, Sapir would own a $5 million apartment in I.) Trump Tower and TRUMP would call Sapir and his family “great friends.”

It was 45.) Sapir who introduced 1.) TRUMP to Bayrock, ostensibly a real-estate firm led by 46.) Tevfik Arif, an ex-Soviet government official from Kazakhstan whose rise to fortune is at least somewhat questionable, where 8.) SATER was then Chief Operating Officer and eventually the dominant force within Bayrock, the office of which was even in I.) Trump Tower itself. SATER repeatedly directly partnered with Trump throughout this period, trying to help him land real estate deals in Moscow, even showing 47.) Ivanka Trump and 40.) Donald Trump Jr. around the city in 2006 and introducing the Trumps to influential Russians. None of these potential Moscow deals ever went through, but some spectacularly scandalous deals did go further in the U.S.

One of Bayrock’s partnerships with TRUMP in Fort Lauderdale was originally conceived of as V.) the Trump International Beach Club; an initial $2 million in capital was provided by 46.) Arif in 2003, and from that point, 8.) SATER and Arif conned a friend of Arif’s who was also SATER’s landlord, Elizabeth Thieriot, lying about the value of the club, hiding their own investment in the project, and convincing her to provide a $1 million investment for a mere 4% of the Club, 12 times what they had paid for that percentage and allowing them to make a 1,125% profit on her investment; they illegally labeled the investment a loan to avoid paying taxes on it and were using their fraud to hide skimming $1 million off the top; on top of that, when there was income finally generated in 2005, they defrauded their partner Thieriot of her rightful share; eventually Theiriot figured out some of what was going on and sued her scammers in court in 2006, and they pulled similar scams on other investors/members in the Club. The project was apparently eventually reconceived of as the Trump Las Olas Beach Resort, but was suspended in a declining market by TRUMP himself in October 2007.

Bayrock’s most famous partnership with 1.) TRUMP was an infamous deal to develop a SoHo property in Manhattan. The deal was concocted in 2006 by TRUMP, 8.) SATER, 46.) Arif, and 45.) Sapir. In a move specifically approved by Trump, it turns out that the SoHo deal had a significant portion of its SATER/Arif facilitated financing—some $50 million for it and three other projects—flow from a firm in Iceland—FL Group—linked to the Panama Papers revelations and apparently a hub for money of wealthy Russians “in favor with Putin.” Financing for these projects was also secured from 13.) Mashkevich, whom we may recall from earlier: was connected to 9.) Birshtein, 15.) Shnaider, and possibly 3.) MOGILEVICH through his work at Seabeco, had a history of money laundering related to gas deals, and had done business with Gazprom and 32.) Deripaska. Besides the above financing, some of the transactions involving the property were clearly carried out by shell corporations for the purpose of laundering money and from which Trump profited. Specifically, there was investment for the purpose of money laundering linked to Mashkevich involving the family of prominent Kazakh politician 48.) Viktor Khrapunov. Furthermore, the III.) Trump SoHo deal was structured to cheat authorities out of tens of millions in taxes, as the investments were illegally set up as loans to avoid paying hefty taxes on them, loans that would also give FL Group a big chunk of theoretical future profits over time.   In the end, the deal went terribly for 1.) TRUMP, who was sued for fraud along with his children 49.) Eric Trump and 47.) Ivanka, who had inflated the level of interest in order to attract buyers, and in a 2011 settlement, Trump refunded 90% of the deposits for the building’s condos; the property went into foreclosure in 2014.

Even as construction on Trump SoHo began in 2007, a second of the TRUMP/Bayrock projects with the FL Group financing was rising in Fort Lauderdale, Florida; this one, the IV.) Trump International Hotel & Tower, would also result in disaster and lead to over a dozen lawsuits, with over 100 condo buyers suing for $7.8 million. The project was supposed to have been completed by the end of 2007 but fell way behind schedule; 8.) SATER and his Bayrock partners secretly and seemingly cashed out their stakes in this project and the three FL Group-linked others—including the SoHo project—in an arrangement made with FL Group for $50 million, equal to the initial “investment”/”loan.” 1.) TRUMP eventually pulled his name from the project, and when its buyers learned this in May, 2009, this only increased their outrage and added to lawsuits already in motion accusing TRUMP and Bayrock of fraud. As in the SoHo deal, confidential settlements, this time with dozens of buyers, ensued, and TRUMP refused to accept any responsibility, blaming the problems on the economic crises. Florida courts declined to rule that TRUMP or his partners had committed fraud, including a state appeals court just last year. The project finished years late, cost some $200 million, and was eventually sold for merely $115 million at a foreclosure auction. And while the evidence of money laundering in this case is not as explicit or solid as the information publicly reported on in the SoHo deal, it is still a similarly structured deal with the same partners that led to a similarly dubious result, making it more likely, not less, that similar laundering was taking place.

A third deal among the four which received FL Group financing was a failed project that never even got off the ground in Phoenix, Arizona. 1.) TRUMP began eyeing the Camelback area of Phoenix, Arizona, for a luxury residential tower back in late in 2003, a project similar to the others; Trump’s team, and then TRUMP himself, met with the mayor, who wasn’t impressed with TRUMP, and at a meeting in January, 2005, when plans were unveiled, local residents showed up to argue against the development, yet by September, the appropriate city bodies had approved the plans. It seems 8.) SATER’s people organized intimidation, bribery, and deception as tactics to deter residents from gathering enough signatures to force a public referendum that could have overridden the city bodies’ approval; under this pressure, the city council voted to reverse its decision and pressed the developers and the neighborhood association to reach a compromise, at which point TRUMP himself abandoned the project, not wanting to be part of anything that would be scaled down any further in scope and ambition. Ernie Mennes, the owner of the VI.) Camelback propertywho had gone into a partnership with the Bayrock/TRUMP developers, sued Bayrock in 2007 in federal court, accusing SATER of both threatening to “cut off his legs and leave him ‘dead in the trunk of his car’” and of stealing money from the project. The judge oversaw a settlement and the case was sealed, likely because of SATER’s special relationship with the government. This property was part of the $50 million pseudo-offloading to Iceland’s FL Group, and by June of 2009, Bayrock was relieved of the property, which it had left $36 million in debt, when it was “sold out from under” the company at a trustee auction for a mere $10 million.

The final in the group of four projects of Bayrock tied to the $50 million “investment” of FL Group was a.) a Waterpointe property in Queens that apparently did not involve TRUMP beyond his approval of the FL Group financing but is still illustrative of the rest of their deals. Bayrock bought the property in 2008 for $25 million, but the soil was contaminated and had to be replaced, which Bayrock did with other soil that was even more contaminated and thus was fined $150,000 for doing so; when Bayrock defaulted on a loan in 2011, the lender took over Waterpointe and sold it for roughly $11 million, less than half what Bayrock had paid for it.

As for FL Group, it failed in spectacularly 2008, along with Iceland’s other major banks/funds and many others in the world during the great global financial meltdown.

In a lawsuit filed with the NY State Supreme Court in May of 2013 rising from a process that began in 2008 in Delaware, former business partners of SATER’s at Bayrock—Jody Kriss and Michael Ejekam—sued 8.) SATER and his accomplices for damages and nonpayment related to SATER’s hiding of his past and his use of Bayrock primarily as a criminal organization for criminal activities, especially money laundering and fraud; in this suit, 1.) DONALD and 47.) Ivanka Trump and the Trump Organization  are named as defendants and the federal government is accused of illegally concealing SATER’s past and crimes in a way that defrauded previous victims from his 1998 Wall Street scam—including Holocaust Survivors—and subsequent victims of his other schemes discussed above of many millions in restitution. The NY State Supreme Court removed the Trumps and their Organization from the suit; they had been the lowest levels of defendants and the plaintiffs had only sought declaratory relief in regards to them, i.e., they asked the court to determine what liability, if any, the Trumps had in regards to the case, and they were removed “without prejudice,” meaning that the removal was in no way a comment on their guilt, responsibility, or innocence and that the plaintiffs were free to sue them on the same grounds in the future. A version of the lawsuit is still an ongoing case in federal court. 

For the same earlier-discussed reasons that it would be a smart bet to consider it likely that 3.) MOGILEVICH was linked to SATER’s 1998 scam, we can also make the same bet in regards to the Bayrock deals with 1.) TRUMP but for several additional reasons, namely that these deals were going down at a time when 3.) MOGILEVICH and his people involved in the Ukraine gas plot(including 29.) MANAFORT, who had his own history with Trump) were eager to launder billions of dollars out of Ukraine as part of that scheme and at a time when they were facing increased scrutiny from Prime Minister Tymoshenkoand her allies in the Ukrainian government; under such conditions, why wouldn’tMOGILEVICH reach out to SATER, who had: experience in real estate and laundering money, such a close alleged family connection in his father, his father’s penchant for organized crime, and the protection of the U.S. Government? It was also clear at this point that Trump and the people around him were hardly rigorous vetters, let alone eager to turn down deals coming in from people with suspicious business practices and questionable, even criminal pasts, so selecting Trump as either an unwitting or even willing conduit for money that needed to be laundered was pretty much a no-brainer, especially since his playboy celebrity status made it much easier to attract additional partners (or dupes).

What is even more incriminating for 1.) TRUMP is that after 8.) SATER left Bayrock in 2008, none of this stopped him from being brought into the Trump Organization in 2010 as a “SENIOR ADVISOR TO DONALD TRUMP” even after TRUMP was made aware of SATER’s criminal past, and circumstantial evidence points to SATER still being connected to the Russian mafia. For his part, Trump has issued his typically contradictory and slippery statements—more aptly called lies—in regards to these dealings and, in particular, his relationship to SATER, with TRUMP lying repeatedly about it and his ties to Bayrock in an attempt to falsely minimize them. And there is no distancing TRUMP from Bayrock: one of Bayrock’s flagship presentations from as late as 2008 lists three of the Trump-named projects discussed above before all others, lists the Trump Organization as its first “strategic partner” (followed by FL Group), and lists DONALD TRUMP as its first “reference” and “I.) Trump Tower” in New York as its address.

It was also recently discovered this March that 8.) SATER owns three shell companies—Global Habitat Solutions (GHS), United Biofuels Company LLC, and Sands Point Partners GP LLC—that are apparent fakes that “sell no products and have no customers,” ideal for being used to launder money; GHS had collaborated with another company named Titan Atlas in promoting itself, a company co-founded by 40.) Donald Trump Jr. and in which Trump Jr. also invested; SATER used promotional images from Titan Atlas’ website for GHS’s own after Trump Jr. introduced him to Titan Atlas’ other co-founder, Jeremy Blackburn (with an unsurprisingly troubled corporate past), and Titan is now owned by another company controlled by the Trump Organization, run by Trump Jr. since his father became president.

8). SATER even donated the maximum amount allowed to Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign before he was selected to help run back-channel Ukrainian “diplomacy” in 2017, as mentioned before. He is also currently engaged in a nasty fight with 46.) Arif over legal fees, and threatened to reveal dirt both about Arif’s relationship with 8.) TRUMP (“The headlines will be, ‘The Kazakh Gangster and President Trump,’” wrote SATER) and Arif’s ties to organized crime. 

As for 46.) Arif, he was arrested in Turkey in September 2010 when he was at a sex party with both 13.) Mashkevich and apparently underage girls on board a yacht (which had been once belonged to none other than Atatürk) under suspicion of running a complex prostitution and human trafficking ring in a scheme of which it seems Mashkevich was also a part, though Arif was later acquitted under mysterious circumstances and Mashkevich was not charged.    

Another major scandalous deal would involve a major property development in Toronto. But to understand this, we must first go back to Ukraine, where we left 15.) Shnaider (son-in-law of 9.) Birshtein,who had in the past partnered closely with 3.) MOGILEVICH, other Russian/Ukrainian mafia figures, and also with 13.) Mashkevich), in charge of Ukraine’s huge Zaporizhstal steel mill. In 2007, Shnaider and 1.) TRUMP began building the VII.) Trump International Hotel and Tower, Toronto. And in 2008, FL Group, interestingly, loans Shnaider  €45.8 million for a yacht. After investors were hit hard during the ensuing global financial crises, Shnaider sought to sell his company’s near-total stake in Zaporizhstal to help finance his TRUMP project, which he did in 2010 for some $850 million through five shell companies to an ?.) unknown Russian buyer acting on behalf of the Russian government, who, in turn, was funded by the Russian state-run bank VEB (Vnesheconombank), whose chairman of its board at that time was none other than 2.)PUTIN. Of course, this fit into PUTIN’s scheme of trying to extend Russian influence over Ukraine’s industry and natural resources in tandem with the likes of 17.) Firtash and 30.) Akhmetov. And, like the other deals just discussed, it fell into the same pattern of coming apart amid scandal and lawsuits from dozens of investors saying they were misled and who are suing both 1.) TRUMP and 15.) Shnaider. Late in 2016, the property was placed into bankruptcy receivership, and just last month Trump’s stake in the project was totally bought out, his name taken off the building about a week ago. Akhmetov had also apparently narrowly missed out on acquiring Zaporizhstal from Shnaider back in 2010, but was able to gain majority ownership in July, 2011, when he was a sitting member of Ukraine’s parliament with the Party of Regions; Akhmetov, though, now seems caught in the middle of the war in Ukraine, with Zaporizhstal itself becoming a flashpoint.

One must wonder why FL Group and their very likely Russian investors and VEB were so eager to invest so much in these projects, and if it was more of an excuse to launder money, rather than an actual investment, as was the case with the Manhattan deals led by 29.) MANAFORT and aided by 31.) Gates for 3.) MOGILEVICH, 17.) Firtash, and 28.) Yanukovych; that MANAFORT Manhattan model would seem to be repeated by Bayrock again and again in deals involving 1.) TRUMP and seems also to fit the mold of 15.) Shnaider’s ill-fated venture, even if his intent may be less suspect.

Actually, the performance of these partners was so bad, one would not be faulted for concluding they cared little about performance. And that could be right on the mark: it seems, if anything, these schemes were designed to move large amounts of money, often Russian-tied, into temporary projects that never came to fruition and that would benefit 2.) SATER, 46.) Arif, 1.) and/or TRUMP, but rarely the partners they recruited outside their circle; it seems these other swindled partners and especially TRUMP would lend an air of respectability to clearly criminal schemes. When you look at these deals as if their primary impetus was for RICO money laundering (in the complaint against Bayrock, the word “launder” or one of its derivatives appears 39 times), these deals that were once seemingly mind-bogglingly stupid and miserably executed all of a sudden make a lot of sense. Furthermore, since FL Group was a stupendously bad performer even by the standards of the 2008 financial crisis, and given its close ties to Kremlin-connected Russian money, one could also be forgiven for thinking that they were acting more out of Kremlin interests than business ones.

Taken together, these examples amount to a clear pattern of catastrophic losses, colossal mismanagement, gross negligence, and stupendous incompetence of 1.) TRUMP and his partners at best; he might have been aware of some of what was going on and turned a willful blind eye or he might have been in on it, and though there is no evidence to support this other than his considerable and risky efforts to obstruct investigations into these dealings, the sheer number of them is enough to suggest some level of complicity on TRUMP’s part personally, the only other reasonable explanation being that he is a gigantic fool.

There is yet another case of Russian money laundering would be tied to 1.) TRUMP, albeit in different ways. The roots of the case go back over a decade to Russia, and for a thrilling read on its origins, you can pick up Red Notice: A True Story of High Finance, Murder and One Man’s Fight for Justice, by Bill Browder. Browder was running the wildly successful Hermitage Capital Management in Russia throughout the late 1990s and the 2000s. But when he fell out of favor with the Russian Government for trying to take on the corrupt system of doing business in Putin’s Russia, 2.) PUTIN started playing hardball, having Browder deported in late 2005 through the hands of the F.S.B. and labeling Browder, essentially, an enemy of the Russian state. In 2007, Hermitage’s Moscow offices were raided, one of its employees roughed-up; soon after, Browder’s intrepid lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky, eventually helped to uncover a massive $230 million tax refund fraud scheme in Russia, the largest tax scam in Russian history and one carried out through collusion between senior Russian government officials and members of the Russian mafia. Together, they conspired to use profitable companies like Browder’s by seizing control of them on false legal pretexts, throwing a bunch of fake lawsuits at them, and then erasing the companies’ profits from the books and claiming the taxes those companies had paid as a refund since the profits generating those taxes had magically disappeared.

Naturally, it made sense for the culprits to launder this money in order to hide it, and that they did; the U.S. government was able to find enough evidence to accuse a Cyprus-based apparent real estate company Prevezon Holdings of being one of the beneficiaries of the $230 million Russian tax scheme. In charges filed by then-U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York Preet Bharara in a lengthy complaint submitted in September, 2013 (final amended complaint here), the U.S. Government affirmed Magnitsky’s findings and accused Prevezon of receiving, through a convoluted series of transactions involving shell companies through 2007-2008, at least (roughly) $2 million (possibly more) of the $230 million of Russian scam money related to what Magnitsky had uncovered, some of which Prevezon then laundered through the purchase of luxury Manhattan real estate properties.

If the name Preet Bharara sounds familiar, it should: he was fired by TRUMP this March, and rather controversially, as TRUMP had told Bharara that he would not be firing him. As I have written before, a number of past, current and potential cases involving Trump fell, fall, and would fall under Bharara’s jurisdiction, and Bharara had a solid history of going after corporate crime, the Russian mafia, and Russian government operatives—including a whole spy ring—while a U.S. Attorney, and that history involved the arrest of Russian mobsters in I.) Trump Tower. In this case, 3.) MOGILEVICH-associated Russian mafia boss and apparent all-around celebrity 50.) Alimzhan Tokhtakhounov was overseeing an illegal high-stakes international gambling ring for wealthy clientele that in part operated out of I.) Trump Tower in New York. Among other prolific activities, Tokhtakhounov had gained notoriety for apparently fixing 2002 Olympic ice skating matches to help get a gold medal for a fellow Russian, as well as one for a pair of French skaters in exchange for a French visa, but was soon after in Russia and safe from prosecution. The gambling ring connected to Trump Tower, run by two of his capos, 51.) Vadim Trincher and 52.) Anatoly Golubchik, was popular with Russian and Ukrainian oligarchs in both Russia and Ukraine, and besides the gambling ring, they also engaged in some $100 million in money laundering. Trincher himself in 2009 bought an apartment in Trump Tower just below an apartment owned by 1.) TRUMP himself, in which he nearly held a fundraiser for Newt Gingrich (later enthusiastic TRUMP supporter) two years later, but had to cancel because of a mold problem and a water leak; it was from this apartment that Trincher ran a branch of said gambling ring. Another linked gambling/laundering ring was run by one of Trincher’s sons, who owned an entire floor in Trump tower, and another son of Trincher’s ran multiple illegal poker rooms throughout New York City. 52.) Golubchik owned a unit in a TRUMP building in Florida, where 53.) Michael Sall, a Russian mobster in the very same outfit, also owned a unit. An indictment naming 50.) Tokhtakhounov and his people was filed by Bharara that led to a 2013 raid on 51.) Trincher’s I.) Trump Tower apartment, and arrests made there and elsewhere nabbed 29 suspects. A mere seven months after he was indicted, a nonchalant Tokhtakhounov was a red-carpet VIP guest at 1.) TRUMP’s 2013 Miss Universe Pageant in Moscow, a city where, to this day, he is regularly seen at trendy public places.

Going back to Magnitsky, he was arrested for his efforts on trumped-up charges, and, once in custody, was beaten by guards and denied medical care in Russian prison, dying from his wounds and deliberate lack of medical attention in 2009. Magnitsky’s death turned Browder into a crusader to expose 2.) PUTIN and his operatives and to honor Magnitsky’s memory; in 2012, when a Russian whistleblower named Alexander Perepilichnyy who had already moved to the UK to escape persecution in Russia began working with Browder to help, he mysteriously died while jogging near his home, almost certainly the victim of a Kremlin operation, with an investigation into his death still underway. This mirrored the death and murder of Alexander Litvinenko, a former K.G.B./F.S.B. operative who turned on PUTIN and the Kremlin when he began speaking out against them and exposing some of their dirty deeds; in particular, he elaborated on tape about 2.) PUTIN’s “good relationship”with 3.) MOGILEVICH, about whom Litvinenko “knew too much;” because of this, in part, he was poisoned by radioactive polonium-210 by Kremlin agents in November 2006 and died later that same month; he and Perepilichnyy are just two of fourteen suspected hits by Russian government operatives on UK soil in recent years alone.

Browder bravely continued his efforts by pushing the U.S. Congress to pass the Magnitsky Act in 2012, allowing for harsher punishments and sanctions of Russian officials involved in these crimes, and pushing the EU to pass a similar law in 2014. This infuriated 2.) PUTIN, and when the U.S. applied sanctions to dozens of Russians under the authority of the new law in 2013, he responded by banning Americans from adopting Russian children and barring 18 U.S. current and former officials, including Bharara. And among those who would end up helping Bharara with his case against Prevezon’s money laundering was Browder. The lawyer working against the Kremlin on behalf of Magnitsky’s family, Nikolai Gorokhov, was thrown out of his fourth-story Moscow apartment window on March 21st of this year, just one day before a major Russian court appearance concerning the same crimes (such “accidents” are not uncommon with Putin critics); Gorokhov suffered severe head injuries, but has since vowed to fight on; he had provided key evidence for Bharara’s prosecution team and was set to be a star witness in the trial that was to start May 15th. Unsurprisingly, Bharara and his team were actually very concerned that something exactly like this would happen to Gorokhov and submitted a formal letter expressing that concern to the presiding judge back in October 2015.

Keeping all this I mind, I noted at the time (in a piece censored in Russia!) that it was odd that Bharara’s successor had chosen, just two months after Bharara’s firing and not even three full days before the trial would have started, to settle with Prevezon for a small fine and no admission of wrongdoing; I didn’t (and don’t) question his motives, but I did and still do want to know the exact reasons why that was the decision and if anyone in the Trump Administration pressured or suggested this move when, after people had been murdered or nearly murdered by Kremlin agents to obstruct this investigation and related ones, it is hard to imagine Bharara settling after so much effort, cost, blood, and risk.

There is also the number of related “coincidences” that involve the Prevezon case that get to be a bit astounding: the essential head of Prevezon is 54.) Denis Katsyv, the son of 55.) Petr (Pyotr) Katsyv, a former Russian government minister who currently helps to run Russia’s state-owned Russian Railways, which until recently was led by 56.) Vladimir Yakunin, a close PUTIN ally with a history of corruption who began publicly backing TRUMP’s presidential candidacy since at least June 2016; Yakunin and Petr Katsyv ran Russian Railways together for about a year. 56.) Yakunin had also partnered with 54.) Denis Katsyv and Republican Congressman 57.) Dana Rohrbacher in 2016 to lobby against a stronger version of the Magnitsky Act under consideration that would expand to cover any government officials around the world involved in human rights abuses, with this version known as Global Magnitsky; the efforts to fight it included promoting a controversial “documentary” trashing Magnitsky and Browder and accusing them of orchestrating the tax fraud, which is Russia’s official version of who is responsible for the $230 million fleecing of Russian taxpayers. Rohrbacher was even specifically given instructions from the office of Russia’s Prosecutor General 58.) Yury (Yuri) Chaika, a point-man for the Kremlin’s anti-Magnitsky/Browder efforts, as to how to proceed in these tasks. Rohrbacher also met this May with an old Soviet military counterintelligence officer-turned 1.) PUTIN lobbyist named 59.) Rinat Akhmetshin (not to be confused with 30.) Rinat Akhmetov) and specifically discussed the Prevezon case with him; the two had also worked with 54.) Katsyv on opposing Global Magnitsky. Just a few days ago, Browder actually filed a formal complaint with the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) against 57.) Rohrbacher and one of his staffers, Paul Behrends, for violations of the Magnitsky Act.

Additionally, one of the Katsyv family/Prevezon lawyers was a woman named 60.) Natalia Veselnitskaya, who is very active as an anti-Magnitsky lobbyist and who has strong ties to the Russian government, including having the F.S.B as a client, a friendship with 58.) Chaika, and a former marriage to 61.) Alexander Mitusov, who was big in Russian law enforcement circles before serving as deputy to 55.) Petr Katsyv. When Veselnitskaya had that infamous June, 2016, meeting with 40.) Donald Trump Jr., then-TRUMP-campaign-manager-29.) MANAFORT, and 62.) Jared Kushner (1.) TRUMP’s son-in-law and top advisor and 47.) Ivanka’s husband), it was Chaika who seems to have provided the supposed information on Hillary Clinton that Veselnitskaya was offering; she was also accompanied by 59.) Akhmetshin and 63.) Ike Kaveladze, from the former Soviet republic of Georgia, who has been linked by a U.S. congressional investigation to major money laundering efforts from a few decades ago. And literally just before that meeting, 60.) Veselnitskaya was at a courthouse in New York for legal proceedings of the Prevezon case. Trump Jr. repeatedly lied about the meeting with Veselnitskaya, and both MANAFORT and Kushner failed to previously mention the meeting in interviews and/or disclosure forms. The meeting itself arose from 1.) TRUMP’s relationships with Russian real estate oligarch 64.) Aras Agalarov and his son, pop star 65.) Aras Agalarov, who are close to 1.) PUTIN and who partnered with TRUMP to bring his Miss Universe Pageant to Moscow in 2013, with Emin’s publicist Rob Goldstone reaching out to Donald Jr. about the Veselnitskaya meeting.

Also of interest are that 62.) Kushner has notable contacts with both Deutsche Bank and VEB (the two banks have a “cooperation agreement” with each other)¸ as well with famous Israel diamond oligarch from the former Soviet republic of Uzbekistan 66.) Lev Leviev.

Leviev is close to and apparently friends with 2.) PUTIN and was also close with 45.) Sapir and his family: Leviev’s “right-hand man,” 67.) Rotem Rosen, married Sapir’s daughter, 68.) Zina Sapir, in 2007; the wedding was held at 1.) TRUMP’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida, hosted by TRUMP himself; the next year, TRUMP and 62.) Kushner attended the couple’s bris for their newborn. Leviev and Russian aluminum oligarch 69.) Roman Abramovich were two of the world’s largest supporters of the Jewish organization Chabad and had cooperated in helping 1.) PUTIN gain influence over Russia’s Jewish community, with Abramovich being particularly close to PUTIN, having gifted PUTIN a $35 million yacht and even helping PUTIN in his rise to power, apparently being the first to recommend PUTIN to Boris Yeltsin as a successor. Abramovich himself rose to fortune in part through shady dealings with Russia’s underworld, his relationship with PUTIN, and the bloody “aluminum wars” of post-Soviet Russia. He is also close with and a major business partner of PUTIN-linked 32.) Deripaska, who came out even more on top after the “aluminum wars.” Not incidentally, when Litvinenko was assassinated in the UK in 2006, he was helping both British and Spanish intelligence look into both money laundering and organized crime ties surrounding Abramovich. 47.) Ivanka Trump and 62.) Kushner would marry in 2009, and while she would become very close with 70.) Dasha Zhukova, 69.) Abramovich’s wife, during this period, Kushner would cultivate ties to Leviev. Leviev, whose company Israel Africa Investments’ U.S. operations were registered as being at TRUMP’s II.) 40 Wall St. property, was a business partner of 54.) Katsyv through Prevezon, with Prevezon buying stakes in some of Leviev’s subsidiaries and Leviev selling to Prevezon some condos in Manhattan at d.) 20 Pine St., condos that the U.S. said Prevezon was using to launder the Magnitsky money; this would mean that PUTIN had allies in Katsyv and Leviev on BOTH sides of that transaction that was used for money laundering that helped the Russian government cover up a massive crime; both Prevezon’s stakes in Leviev’s subsidiaries and the condos Leviev sold to Prevezon were held by authorities while Prevezon was charged by the U.S. Attorney’s office until the settlement was reached a few months ago. Prevezon was also able to go through with the Magnitsky-related laundering partly because of $90 million in financing from Deutsche.

66.) Leviev and a partner company, Five Mile Capital, also sold 62.) Kushner a major piece of Manhattan real estate in May, 2015, for $296 million, one month before Trump announced his run for the presidency; the sale price was suspiciously below what Leviev had paid for it back in 2007, and Deutsche would provide Kushner a suspiciously generous $285 million loan a month before the 2016 presidential election as part of a refinancing effort for the property that amounted to $74 million more than what was paid for it; 62.) Kushner initially failed to disclose the loan when he joined the Trump Administration. When Leviev and Five Mile sold to Kushner in 2015, they were represented by Trump lawyer 71.) Marc Kasowitz’s firm, which also represents Russia’s largest state-owned bank, Sberbank and from which another firm partner, David Friedman, was chosen as the U.S. Ambassador to Israel and another partner, Edward McNally, is apparently under consideration to replace the fired Bharara. In fact, it seems Kasowtiz was personally instrumental in having 1.) TRUMP fire Bharara, with Kasowitz telling TRUMP “This guy is going to get you” and bragging to his friends about getting Bharara ousted. At the time, Bharara was said to be looking vigorously into Deutsche’s dealings, particularly those involving Russian money laundering.

Deutsche had been 1.)TRUMP’s sole major Wall Street lender for years, and has loaned TRUMP over $300 million since 2012, a sum that is still owed. This amount presented a major conflict of interest for the newly inaugurated President TRUMP in late January 2017, because Deutsche was under investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) for orchestrating $10 billion in illegal fake trades from 2011-2015 that seem to have been part of a massive Russian money laundering scheme; U.S. and UK officials levied $630 million in massive fines against Deutsche at the end of January 2017, separate from DoJ’s investigation. Deutsche is also under pressure to allow an independent investigation into its TRUMP family accounts.

It was revealed just this March that Deutsche was also involved in another major laundering scam of Russian money for some $24 million, including the specific division that Trump owes $300 million, part of a massive global Russian laundering scheme with many banks involving $20-$80 billion from 2010-2014; among those involved in the scheme include Russian oligarchs and the F.S.B., and some of the money in the scheme was apparently being used to further PUTIN’s and Russia’s interests.

62.) Kushner had also met in December, 2016, with then-VEB Chairman 72.) Sergei (Sergey) Gorkov—a graduate of the F.S.B.’s academy—in New York, at a time when the Russian state-owned bank was under U.S. sanctions because of Russia’s actions in Ukraine, a meeting which, like the meeting with 60.) Veselnitskaya, the Deutsche loan, and many other things, he had initially failed to properly disclose; in his recent disclosure, Kushner noted “I have not relied on Russian funds to finance my business activities in the private sector;” relied, of course, does not mean he did not receive any Russian funds…

*****

While many of TRUMP’s deals were falling apart and while Prevezon was laundering money from Russian’s massive tax scam, the MOGILEVICH-MANAORT-Firtash-led efforts in Ukraine to serve 28.) Yanukovych, his Party of Regions, and 2.) PUTIN were coming to fruition. Despite some success for Tymoshenko in cracking down on those efforts, early in 2010, Yanukovych won the presidential election, defeating Tymoshenko in the runoff, the culmination of years of work with 29.) MANAFORT and the whole gas scheme crew. Not long after, Tymoshenko lost her position as prime minister in a vote of no-confidence. Meanwhile, in the wake of his victory, Yanukovych worked to restore the gas scam and undo many of the Orange Revolution reforms. Most notably, in December, 2010, Tymoshenko was retroactively charged with abusing her power during her recent stint as prime minister, and, after a widely condemned (including by the U.S.) politically-motivated show trial, was sentenced to prison in October 2011.

29.) MANAFORT and 31.) Gates actually lobbied U.S. lawmakers on behalf of 28.) Yanukovych’s government from 2012-2014, defending the imprisonment of Tymoshenkoand trying to discredit her, as well as trying to improve the image of Yanukovych and Ukraine, lobbying paid in part by 30.) Akhmetov; they did this without disclosing their lobbying activities as required by U.S. law. But the spirited Tymoshenko would fight back; during her trial and from prison, she filed a lawsuit in a U.S. District Court in Manhattan in April 2011; in it she names 17.) Firtash, 29.) Manafort, 31.) Gates, 3.) MOGILEVICH, 28.) Yanukovych, and others, arguing that the proceeds from their crimes, including the Manhattan real estate scams, were used to harm her, resulting in her defeat and imprisonment. A fourth and final version of the suit was rejected in September, 2015, on largely jurisdictional grounds and that the higher-than-average RICO standards were not met, but in a longer ruling, it was noted that “the Court accepts as true the allegation that some of the money that passed through the U.S. Enterprise was ‘funneled back to Ukraine’ — albeit by unidentified actors — and somehow used as ‘financing’ for Tymoshenko’s ‘persecution.’”

Interestingly, after 28.) Yanukovych was ousted in the 2014 (Euro)Maidan protests—the grassroots reaction to the years of successful schemes described above—17.) Firtash fled Ukraine to Austria and is wanted by U.S. authorities for other crimes, but the U.S. is competing with Spain, which also wants to try Firtash; it would be very interesting to know just how hard the Trump Administration is trying to extradite Firtash.

In the end, 29.) MANAFORT came to run 1.) TRUMP’s campaign during the crucial stretch where TRUMP closed out the primaries, clinched the Republican Party’s presidential nomination, and began the general election against Clinton; he also brought with him 31.) Gates, who infamously ended up being in charge of Melania Trump’s Republican National Convention speech, which was largely plagiarized from a speech Michelle Obama gave at the 2008 Democratic National Convention; this was after both men had been working for years in Ukraine and on Russia-related work, and though both were forced to eventually resign from their Trump work because of these ties, both men seem to, one way or another, still have access to TRUMP. After advising two major Russian companies involved in the Ukraine gas scam, 33.) Carter Page was one of a handful of foreign policy advisors TRUMP was able to name in 2016, and Page, whose views are closely aligned with the Kremlin’s, was under a FISA-warrant FBI surveillance investigation, having had numerous meetings with Russian officials while attached to TRUMP’s campaign. That campaign was the most pro-Russian campaign of any major party nominee since the end of WWII, and the only changes that it insisted be made to the 2016 Republican Party Platform were to weaken statements of support for Ukraine in relation to its conflict with Russia. 38.) Michael Cohen and 71.) Marc Kasowitz, each with numerous ties to the issues in question, are both still representing TRUMP. And, since coming to power, the Trump Administration has pushed for policies favorable to Russia and PUTIN’s agenda, even when seemingly going against U.S. interests.

Taking a step back and knowing what we know about “the Brainy Don,” it seems that 3.)MOGILEVICH had been making moves to control Ukrainian gas with Gazprom and money laundering that could at least go back to the late 1990s with 19). Topolov and 21.) Artemenko and their Kiev football team and would seem to go back even earlier, which lends credibility to the idea that the 1995 Tel Aviv meeting hosted by 9.) Birshtein—in which he, MOGILEVICH, and other top Russian and Ukrainian gangsters met to discuss their Ukraine plans—was a catalyst for the events discussed above (you don’t put that many wanted men in one place at the same time except for something big). That big Ukraine scheme would unfold all while MOGILEVICH-linked mobsters were engaging TRUMP.

That is hardly to suggest that in 1995, a plot to install Trump in the White House was hatched. But it does seem that around then, a massive plot was hatched that came to pass over time in Ukraine, and that to some degree the machinery and personnel behind this plot devoted some of its collective energy to engaging TRUMP, laundering money through his businesses and, eventually, trying to infiltrate and/or manipulate and/or collude with him and/or some of his senior associates during his presidential campaign and/or later during his presidency.  

We can be sure that Special Counsel Mueller is digging into all of this…

What’s important to keep in mind here is that viewing these components apart, you miss the real story; they must be seen as a whole, a massive series of related plots, part of something between an overall conspiracy and a targeted strategy in which Trump was a prime target along with Ukraine. In this light, the overall picture paints a dramatically darker, far more incriminating portrait that erases all doubt that something massive and nefarious was going on involving both Trump and Putin. Clearly, Trump is either breathtakingly stupid or is less stupid than that and is guilty of some degree of treason.

Yes, this is an overwhelming number of ties, deals, relationships, and criss-crossing threads, incredibly confusing and complex, not easy to understand or explain in a tweet or a soundbite; at first glance, it all sounds insane. Yes, the forces that prevailed in these plots bet not on our ability to be able to sift through the noise but on our ability to be consumed by it. Though initial skepticism would be a sensible responsible reaction to such a story and it takes a lot of effort to understand or explain it, the day we lose the ability to overcome these challenges to understand the truth is the day we lose our right to be respected as worthy of our free institutions, for the day we allow complexity to deter us from the path of truth-seeking is the day we surrender the very sovereignty of our minds and, in essence, our nation to those cynically betting on our laziness and credulity, whether agents of Putin’s Kremlin or our own agents of chaos, cynicism, disinformation, and misinformation.

Correction appended to note the alleged nature of the claim that Sater’s father was tied to Mogilevich- 11/30/2018

For some of the latest in Brian’s analysis putting related pieces together, see his eBook from late 2019, A Song of Gas and Politics: How Ukraine Is at the Center of Trump-Russia, or, Ukrainegate: A “New” Phase in the Trump-Russia Saga Made from Recycled Materials, available for Amazon Kindle and Barnes and Noble Nook (preview here) and its related articles: Ukrainegate Proves the Media Has Learned Almost Nothing from 2016, The Untold Story of the Bidens and Burisma, and Time to Play Hardball with Russia

Also see my eBook, A Song of Gas and Politics: How Ukraine Is at the Center of Trump-Russia, or, Ukrainegate: A “New” Phase in the Trump-Russia Saga Made from Recycled Materials, available for Amazon Kindle and Barnes & Noble Nook (preview here), and be sure to check out Brian’s new podcast!

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© 2017 Brian E. Frydenborg all rights reserved, permission required for republication, attributed quotations welcome

Originally published on LinkedIn Pulse May 10, 2017

By Brian E. Frydenborg (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter @bfry1981) May 10th, 2017 (Executive summary of previous work from March 28, 2017; War Is Boring versions available here and here)

Danil Shamkin/NurPhoto via ZUMA

Executive Summary of Eurasian Natural Gas Scheme, Manafort Manhattan Scheme, Trump/Sater/Bayrock Schemes, & Other Russian Financing for Trump

AMMAN — In the 2000s, Trump was hurting for outside investment: no major Wall St lender would loan to him, save for Deutsche Bank. Deutsche would later be exposed in massive Russian money laundering schemes totaling billions and there are questions as to whether the money loaned to Trump was involved; it is unclear how strongly Trump’s Department of Justice will move on the ongoing Deutsche investigations.  

Apart from some information on his 2005 taxes, we have no information on Trump’s tax returns from any other years during this period in question. While Trump was hurting for money, he turned to very shady Russian/former Soviet financiers in general. Deals involving the very strange sale of a Florida mansion to a Russian oligarch, selling condos to Russians and shell companies (including a Russian mafia boss—Alimzhan Tokhtakhounov, linked to the Russian mob “boss of bosses” mentioned below—who was busted in Trump Tower by then-U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York Preet Bharara, later controversially fired by President Trump), and deals with a company, Bayrock (largely run and financed by Russian-organized-crime-linked crooks/money), a company whose office was located in Trump Tower. The Bayrock/Trump deals will be explained below.

At the same time Trump was getting lots (“a pretty disproportionate” amount, according to Donald Jr. in 2008) of his money from Russians, there were lots of Russian connected to Putin looking to funnel large amounts of money away from prying authorities, a centerpiece of these efforts being part of one of the largest and most convoluted series of crooked business deals in modern history, deal related to Ukraine’s energy sector.

In my earlier version of the piece of which this is a summary, I revealed significantly deeper relationships than previously understood from all other previous public reporting between associates of Donald Trump, his presidential campaign, and entities related to them on one hand and associates of Russian President Vladimir Putin, his Russian government, and entities related to them on the other hand, relationships concerning efforts to advance the Putin’s interests, Russian government interests, and Russian organized crime interests. 

Two figures in particular, former Trump Campaign Chairman Paul Manafort and former Trump Campaign foreign policy advisor Carter Page, were key figures (Page at least claims to be; at least he was involved) behind major geopolitical events and entities that convulsed Ukraine beginning in 2004 with the Orange Revolution and through a massive Eurasian gas and money laundering scheme designed to facilitate Russian dominance of Ukraine whose effects are still being directly felt up today with the war in Ukraine. 

Manafort and Page were linked by lines of power and influence connecting them through a short chain of major players and entities, and their presence and roles in the region overlapped in key areas for several years as they worked for Putin’s key allies to enact a plan designed to corrupt and dominate the Ukrainian state and to serve the purposes of Vladimir Putin’s anti-Western, anti-American agenda. 

Page operated on one end as an advisor not only to the Russian energy giant Gazprom, whose pipes much of the gas involved in the scheme passed through on its way to Ukraine (a fact well-reported), but also to another major Russian company, a large domestic power company called RAO UES (which I was the first to report in the context of Putin’s gas scheme) that ended up using some of the Gazprom gas—after passing through Putin-allied middlemen—to power its Russian power plants in a circular scheme returning the fruits of the gas to their country of origin.

Manafort’s part—far more pivotal, central, and direct than Page’s—was working with pro-Russian, pro-Putin Ukrainian political elites (especially Ukrainian on-and-off-again President Viktor Yanukovych, which the Orange Revolution had exposed and deposed,and his Party of Regions, for whom Manafort was the top political advisor) and business elites (especially oligarch Dmitry Firtash) and with Russian political and business elites (especially oligarch Oleg Deripaska); Firtash was linked to Putin friend and Russian mafia “boss of bosses” godfather Semion Mogilevich, who worked together to launder billions to profit themselves, Yanukovych, and Yanukovych’s political allies so they, flush with cash, could be bribed to do Putin’s bidding, bribe others to do the same, outspend rivals, and thus, overall, dominate Ukraine’s political system.

Manafort himself worked with Firtash and Mogilevich to set up a massive money laundering scheme in 2008 involving a Manhattan development project that defrauded its partners of millions and for which all of them were later sued by the former Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, whose loss in Ukraine’s 2010 presidential race to Viktor Yanukovych and subsequent politically motivated imprisonment at the hands of his government were facilitated in part by the Manafort-led Manhattan scheme. Manafort also worked with Deripaska to help launder millions in order to hide/protect the personal fortunes of Yanukovych and his allies. For these efforts, Manafort was paid many millions. A partner of Manafort’s—Richard “Rick” Gates—was also involved with burnishing his efforts there and in efforts to lobby U.S. official to help Yanukovych’s comeback government and hurt the imprisoned Tymoshenko’s reputation. Deripaska also brokered a deal in which Manafort worked to help further the general interests of Putin and the Russian government, apart from these other deals.

Manafort, Gates, and Page ended up on Trump’s campaign, from which they are easily among the primes suspects responsible for Donald Trump’s and his campaign’s unprecedented pro-Putin, pro-Russian positions that have made them the most pro-Russian (and pro-Putin) candidate and campaign in American history.

Additionally, but hardly of least concern, Mogilevich is the link from the realm of the first scandal set to another roughly concurrent scandal set that ties directly to Trump at the time it unfolded (a fact not reported elsewhere before my previous piece): a series of at least three real estate deals—one in Manhattan, one in Fort Lauderdale, and one in Phoenix—all spearheaded by a company called Bayrock and that all ended in scandal and disaster. One of the point-men for Trump on all of these deals was the son of Mikhael Sheferovsky—AKA Michael Sater—an alleged Mogilevich capo (an allegation not reported by any major news outlet before my previous piece); this son, one Felix Sater, has a mysterious but clearly Russian mafia-linked violent criminal past of his own that may have even (and likely) involved working for Mogilevich as my exclusive analysis shows. Sater and his Bayrock business partner Tevfik Arif helped bring in significant financing and financiers who were either Russians/former Soviets with Putin and/or Russian/Soviet ties and/or people with shady and/or criminals pasts, often tied to money laundering, especially Tamir Sapir, Alexander Mashkevich and the notorious and heavily Russian-financed FL Group of Iceland.

Bayrock, with Sater as a point-man, financed three deals with Trump that ended in disaster, failure, lawsuits, criminal wrongdoing, and/or scandal: the Trump SoHo in NYC, the Trump International Hotel & Tower in Ft. Lauderdale, FL, and a Camelback property deal in Phoenix, AZ; a fourth FL/Bayrock project that has not been connected to Trump was in Queens, NY, involving a Waterpointe property and that also ended in scandal and failure. Another Bayrock/Trump deal—Trump International Beach Club/Trump Las Olas Beach Resort—went into litigation and scandal.

The only logical explanation for all these grossly incompetent business dealings with entities losing so much money involving Bayrock, Trump, and/or FL Group is that the forces Driving the deals (mainly Bayrock and FL Group) were not looking for success, but an excuse to be able to launder Russian money and skim off the top for themselves in the process.

Through Mogilevich and cores of illicit Russian funding and financiers, then, three international illegal money laundering schemes—the Ukrainian Eurasian laundering plot, its related Manhattan money laundering deal, and the series of Bayrock deals with Trump that all either involved, likely involved, or were likely set up for money laundering—are all linked together at roughly the same time (facts reported before in my pre-election piece, and to this degree here, in this context for the first time).

These laundering schemes bear a striking resemblance to the scheme for which Manafort, Firtash, Mogilevich, and Yanukovych were sued by Tymoshenko. Certainly the possibility that money from the Ukraine scheme was laundered not just in that scheme, but also the Bayrock/Trump schemes, must be explored given these similarities and the timing. 

Sater even has three apparently fake shell companies, one of which has worked closely with a company co-founded and financed by Donald Trump Jr. and now owned by the Trump organization, and Sater has already conducted unofficial back-channel diplomacy on behalf of the Trump Administration regarding none other than Ukraine.

The best case scenario that is he was too stupid to see that his people were playing him for a fool or were abusing their power in a way that could destroy his businesses and potential presidency and do the nation irreparable harm. But if Trump himself in any way knew about any possible (criminal) collusion with Russia(ns), that takes us from disqualifying incompetence into the realm of criminality and/or treason 

But in this case the devil—and the Trumps—are in the details…

Full details/research here in my full article; every fact is backed by a hyperlinked publicly available source that is reputable and/or credible and stands up to scrutiny.

Correction appended: changes made to reflect the alleged nature of Sater’s father’s ties to Mogilevich 

© 2017 Brian E. Frydenborg all rights reserved, no republication without permission, attributed quotations welcome

See related article: The (First) Russo-American Cyberwar: How Obama Lost & Putin Won, Ensuring a Trump Victory

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*****

EXCLUSIVE analysis of information not yet reported in the necessary context shows that Trump the businessman, at best, was an unwitting tool used for Russian (mafia and government-tied) money laundering and that Trump the president is, at best, an unwitting tool for Vladimir Putin; at worst, Trump the businessman was a partner in Russian (organized and governmental) crime and Trump the president is the biggest scandal in American history. Even if Trump is an extraordinarily stupid leader with spectacularly terrible judgment and he is totally innocent of knowing what was really going on, it has been clear for some time that key associates of Trump are far less likely to be innocent when it comes to complicity and collusion and therefore treason, with the latest reports only confirming fire when the smoke was already suffocating. However the fire finally comes to light and whatever his personal involvement, since the best case scenario is that Trump is easily duped and manipulated, Trump is clearly unfit to be president.

Originally published on LinkedIn Pulse March 28, 2017 

By Brian E. Frydenborg (Twitter @bfry1981) March 28th, 2017 (Updated 4/3; Update of my pre-election piece.); War is Boring version in two parts

Built on part on these earlier pieces from July 30/31 2016: Trump, Putin, Russia, DNC/Clinton Hack, & WikiLeaks: “There’s Something Going on” with Election 2016 & It’s Cyberwarfare & Maybe Worse

November 4, 2016: EXCLUSIVE: Top Trump Aides’ Deeper & Linked Roles in Putin Agenda Revealed; Russian Mafia Nexus With Trump & Aides Goes Back Years

See major follow-up piece:July 27, 2017: Think You Know How Deep Trump-Russia Goes? Think Again: This Chart/Info Will Blow Your Mind

Also, see his related piece from December 7, 2016: The (First) Russo-American Cyberwar: How Obama Lost & Putin Won, Ensuring a Trump Victory

Trump, Tevfik Arif, & Felix Sater (of whom Trump testified under oath: “If he were sitting in the room right now, I really wouldn’t know what he looked like”) © Mark Holden/WireImage

AMMAN — This information concerns business dealings over the last decade and then some of Donald Trump, who at the time was hurting for investors and investment as Wall Street had all but shut down its loaning operations to him; this information involved criminal dirty money laundering coming from Russia, Russian organized crime, and associates of Russian President Vladimir Putin at a time Putin, his government, his close associates, and future associates of Trump—most notably Paul Manafort, his future Campaign Chairman—were involved in a massive Eurasian natural gas and criminal money laundering scheme worth billions of dollars that was part of Putin’s grand plan to control Ukraine. Updates also discuss context involving lobbying efforts, financing for Trump’s projects, and new or related developments that, in terms of Russian intrigue, incriminate even further both associates of Donald Trump and his successful presidential campaign (and, therefore, perhaps even his very presidency).

At best, Trump himself may have had no knowledge of this money laundering and these ties, but even this scenario highlights serious deficiencies in Trump’s judgment in terms of who he did business and politics with and how he did business and politics, pillars of his management style and of urgent interest to the American people as Trump manages the nation as president.   

While there is no direct proof of Trump’s knowing involvement or collusion in any single aspect of these dealings when it comes to laundering money or tilting a U.S. election with Russian help, the sheer number of them over a period of years and his close association with a number of key players in these crimes, combined with his positions and public statements as a presidential candidate that are the most pro-Russian of any major presidential candidate or sitting president, create a picture that stinks to high heaven and makes it more likely—not less—that something nefarious is going on between Team Trump and Team Putin. 

We may never know exactly what happened or exactly who is responsible or exactly what Trump was and wasn’t aware of, but, despite ludicrous claims to the contrary, this has nothing to do with the media or with irresponsible speculation; with so many questionable people, actions, and circumstances, the only sane and responsible course forward is to continue to vigorously demand more answers to the questions Trump and his associates have raised because of their actions and no one else’s, especially since their accounts of these events and people keep shifting as more and more evidence comes to light. After all, contrary to American civil criminal law, in the court of public opinion, the burden is on a sitting President with so many questionable connections to shed light on his dealings and to clear any hint of suspicion if he wants to earn the benefit of the doubt.

Time to go over what we do know, and what, when put together and given proper context, what that information makes clear and what it suggests.

Executive Summary

In earlier work, I revealed significantly deeper relationships than previously understood from all other previous public reporting between associates of Donald Trump, his presidential campaign, and entities related to them on one hand and associates of Russian President Vladimir Putin, his Russian government, and entities related to them on the other hand, relationships concerning efforts to advance the Putin’s interests, Russian government interests, and Russian organized crime interests. 

Two figures in particular, former Trump Campaign Chairman Paul Manafort and former Trump campaign foreign policy advisor Carter Page, were involved in major geopolitical events and entities that convulsed Ukraine beginning in 2004 with the Orange Revolution and through a massive Eurasian gas and money laundering scheme designed to facilitate Russian dominance of Ukraine whose effects are still being directly felt up through today with the war in Ukraine. 

Manafort and Page were linked by lines of power and influence connecting them through a short chain of major players and entities, and their presence and roles in the region overlapped in key areas for several years as they worked for Putin’s key allies to enact a plan designed to corrupt and dominate the Ukrainian state and to serve the purposes of Vladimir Putin’s anti-Western, anti-American agenda. 

Page operated on one end as an advisor not only to the Russian energy giant Gazprom, whose pipes much of the gas involved in the scheme passed through on its way to Ukraine (a fact well-reported), but also to another major Russian company, a large domestic power company called RAO UES (which I was the first to report in the context of Putin’s gas scheme) that ended up using some of the Gazprom gas—after passing through Putin-allied middlemen—to power its Russian power plants in a circular scheme returning the fruits of the gas to their country of origin.

Manafort’s part—far more pivotal, central, and direct than Page’s—was working with pro-Russian, pro-Putin Ukrainian political elites (especially Ukrainian on-and-off-again President Viktor Yanukovych, which the Orange Revolution had exposed and deposed, and his Party of Regions, for whom Manafort was the top political advisor) and business elites (especially oligarch Dmitry Firtash) and with Russian political and business elites (especially oligarch Oleg Deripaska); Firtash was linked to Putin friend and Russian mafia godfather Semion Mogilevich, who worked together to launder billions to profit themselves, Yanukovych, and Yanukovych’s political allies so they, flush with cash, could be bribed to do Putin’s bidding, bribe others to do the same, outspend rivals, and thus, overall, dominate Ukraine’s political system.

Manafort himself worked with Firtash and Mogilevich to set up a massive money laundering scheme in 2008 involving a Manhattan development project that defrauded its partners of millions and for which all of them were later sued by the former Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, whose loss in Ukraine’s 2010 presidential race to Viktor Yanukovych and subsequent politically motivated imprisonment at the hands of his government were facilitated in part by the Manafort-led Manhattan scheme. Manafort also worked with Deripaska to help launder millions in order to hide/protect the personal fortunes of Yanukovych and his allies. For these efforts, Manafort was paid many millions. A partner of Manafort’s—Richard “Rick” Gates—was also involved with burnishing his efforts there and in efforts to lobby U.S. official to help Yanukovych’s comeback government and hurt the imprisoned Tymoshenko’s reputation.

Manafort, Gates, and Page ended up on Trump’s campaign, from which they are easily among the prime suspects responsible for Trump’s and his campaign’s unprecedented pro-Putin, pro-Russian positions that have made them the most pro-Russian (and pro-Putin) candidate and campaign in American history.

Additionally, but hardly of least concern, Mogilevich is the link from the realm of the first scandal set to another roughly concurrent scandal set that ties directly to Trump at the time it unfolded (a fact not reported elsewhere before my earlier piece): a series of at least three real estate deals—one in Manhattan, one in Fort Lauderdale, and one in Phoenix—all spearheaded by a company called Bayrock and that all ended in scandal and disaster. One of the point-men for Trump on all of these deals was the son of Mikhael Sheferovsky—AKA Michael Sater—an alleged Mogilevich capo (an allegation not reported by any major news outlet before my previous piece); this son, one Felix Sater, has a mysterious but clearly Russian mafia-linked violent criminal past of his own that may have even involved working for Mogilevich. Sater and his Bayrock business partner Tevfik Arif helped bring in significant financing and financiers who were either Russians/former Soviets with Putin and/or Soviet ties and/or people with shady and/or criminals pasts, often tied to money laundering, especially Tamir Sapir, Alexander Mashkevich and the now-notorious FL Group of Iceland.   

Through Mogilevich and cores of illicit Russian funding and financiers, then, three international illegal money laundering schemes—the Ukrainian Eurasian laundering plot, its related Manhattan money laundering deal, and the series of Bayrock deals with Trump that all either involved, likely involved, or were likely set up for money laundering—are all linked together at roughly the same time for the first time here.

But in this case the devil—and the Trumps—are in the details.

Setting the Stage in Ukraine: Page & Manafort Arrive

To begin to understand the big picture, one has to go back to 2004.

In 2004, Carter Page moved to Moscow and set up Merrill Lynch’s branch there. His bio on the website of Global Energy Capital LLC, which Page founded and where he is currently a managing partner, states that “[h]e spent 3 years in Moscow where he was responsible for the opening of the Merrill office and was an advisor on key transactions for Gazprom, RAO UES and others.”

As Page was setting up shop in Moscow, Paul Manafort began running Victor Yanukovych’s political life. 

Yanukovych is a notorious, scandal-ridden Ukrainian politician that first attracted global attention in the Ukrainian presidential election of 2004. Leonid Kuchma, the outgoing president during these elections, had appointed Victor Yanukovych as his prime minister late in 2002 and had backed him as a pro-Russian (and pro-Putin) candidate in the 2004 election, even to the point of trying to rig and steal the election for Yanukovych, which sparked the Orange Revolution that, in turn, led to the Ukrainian Supreme Court-ordered redo election that resulted in the defeat of Yanukovych and victory for the more pro-Western Viktor Yushchenko, who had almost been killed by a mysterious poisoning incident (with poisoning hardly an unheard-of fate for opponents of the Kremlin and Putin). 

Yanukovych had already developed a reputation for extreme corruption by this time, but that did not stop Paul Manafort from running Yanukovych’s campaign late in 2004 for the redo election. Despite the loss, Manafort stuck around and was hired to take charge of both rehabilitating the disgraced Yanukovych and strategizing for his political party, the Party of Regions, helping them helping them over the ensuing years to gain power at the expense of Ukraine’s pro-U.S., pro-Western, post-Orange Revolution government.

This type of work was hardly out of the ordinary for Manafort, as his client list includes dictators like the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s (then Zaire’s) Mobutu Sese Seko, the Philippines’ Ferdinand Marcos, Somalia’s Siad Barre, Sani Abacha of Nigeria, and Kenya’s Daniel arap Moi; other clients include Jonas Savimbi (the leader of the Angolan human-rights-abusing rebel guerilla group UNITA), and the Kashmiri American Council (a front for the terrorist-dealing Pakistani government intelligence service ISI that had helped create the Taliban, among other nefarious activities).

Interestingly enough, the Associated Press (AP) just a few days ago revealed a bombshell of a story in which it was revealed that Manafort proposed (through a formal memo, no less) a massive lobbying effort designed to discreetly help promote Putin, the Russian government, and their agenda while undermining their critics, with efforts concentrated in the United States, Europe, and former-Soviet republics and targeting government officials, political groups, the news media and journalists, and businesses by acting to “influence politics, business dealings and news coverage inside the United States, Europe and the former Soviet republics to benefit the Putin government.”

The proposal was pitched to Oleg Deripaska in 2005, a fabulously wealthy Russian oligarch with ties to Russian organized crime who has a very close, generally good—if not always great—relationship with Putin and who, as I noted before, was then working with Manafort to promote Russian interests in Montenegro in a campaign designed to get Montenegro to secede from its union with Serbia and allow greater Russian (and Deripaskan) influence with that result (Montenegro would secede anyway in 2006 but not under Russian auspices, and it is quite telling that only a few months ago a Russian plot to overthrow Montenegro’s government and assassinate its prime minister, who is now trying to join NATO, was exposed and foiled). 

Under the terms Manafort proposed, a contract was agreed upon in 2006 and lasted until at least 2009, one in which Manafort was paid $10 million a year and Manfort used a Delaware shell company—LOAV Ltd.—of his to conduct official business and transactions.

AP obtained numerous documents, memos, and wire transfer records to corroborate its story. 

Later, as I also wrote about before, Deripaska and Manafort had a dramatic falling out c. 2014 that resulted in a Cayman Islands court battle over $19 million related to their efforts to launder money for Yanukovych and his allies, but not before the aforementioned working relationship was well established. The recent AP story broke just hours before CNN reported that FBI officials have information describing how “associates of President Donald Trump communicated with suspected Russian operatives to possibly coordinate the release of information damaging to Hillary Clinton’s campaign.,” and AP soon after reported that U.S. Treasury officials are investigating Manafort’s offshore financial dealings. 

If these interactions seem dramatic, Manafort’s machinations involving Ukraine are even more so.

Criminal Scheme #1: Part I: Manafort & Putin Allies Oversee Flooding of Ukraine with Dirty Gas Money to Establish Russian Dominance

Court documents allege that Manafort first became acquainted with Yanukovych in 2003, a time when he also began cozying up to some of Ukraine’s and Russia’s most powerful oligarchs, at least ones allied with Yanukovych and Putin. Throughout the rest of the decade, Manafort entered into a variety of shady business deals with some of these oligarchs and others, deals that generally seemed to have some ulterior motive in advancing Putin’s agenda in the background. In particular, around the same time he began interacting with Yanukovych, Manafort befriended Ukrainian oligarch, natural gas businessman, and Putin ally Dmitry (Dmytro) Firtash, according to court documents. Firtash, featured in the Panama Papers revelations, had been the main middleman bringing in both Russian and Central Asian natural gas to Ukraine since 2002 and was linked to the essential head, or “boss of bosses”, of the Russian mafia, Semion Mogilevich, also a friend of Putin’s and on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list from 2009-2015.

A Swiss-registered company called RosUkrEnergo (RUE) was created in mid-2004 by the outgoing pro-Russian Ukrainian President Kuchma and the not-going-anywhere Putin to replace the company represented by Firtash that was handling Ukraine’s Russian-related natural gas imports. The imports ostensibly came from the former Soviet republic of Turkmenistan but through shady deals that seemed mostly orchestrated and subsidized by Gazprom, the Russian gas giant company then dominated, and soon to be majority-owned, by the Russian Government and close Putin allies; additionally, the gas traveled through pipes wholly owned by Gazprom that went mostly through Russian territory. But not much changed with RUE in that Firtash ended up owning 45% of the new company, a stake that is partially a front for Mogilevich to control the company. A total of 50% of RUE was owned by Gazprom, making clear the incestuous nature of the entire arrangement.

But there was a bigger picture, a greater purpose, to all these machinations than just Gazprom dominance of the region’s gas industry, and the specifics of the deal make the following scheme quite easy to understand: Gazprom would basically sell billions of dollars of gas to Firtash through RUE at a steal of a price; Firtash would then sell billions of dollars of the gas at hiked-up prices to Ukraine; the profits would then be used to fund pro-Russian politicians in Ukraine with billions of dollars; and, finally, bankers that were close Putin allies would open up lines of credit for Firtash in the billions of dollars so that Firtash could buy key Ukrainian assets and multiply his influence even further.

It’s no coincidence that this scam came into being not long after Yanukovych’s defeat at the hands of a more pro-Western candidate and as that candidate-turned-president’s relatively pro-Western government was trying to limit Russian influence in Ukraine. Unsurprisingly, some of the disputes between Ukraine and Russia involved fighting over gas deals. This all culminated in a January, 2006, shut-off of Russia’s gas flow into Ukraine and therefore into much of Europe as well, which received the vast majority of its gas from pipes passing through Ukrainian territory. 

Soon after the shutoff, a new arrangement was made: RUE would now be the exclusive and direct supplier of all natural gas coming from Central Asia (Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Kazakhstan) and Russia, and, along with Gazprom and Gazexport (Gazprom’s export subsidiary selling non-Russian produced gas), it would sell to the Ukrainian market to all of its industrial customers through a joint venture with Naftogaz Ukrainy, Ukraine’s state-owned energy company, the joint venture being called UkrGazEnergo (or UkrGaz-Energo), and would sell gas to Naftogaz to distribute among Ukrainian households and municipalities.

But there was another key factor in the deal: RAO UES—Russia’s major and majority-state-owned power company—would buy and import Ukrainian-generated electricity into European Russia, with the Ukrainian government providing that energy from the gas that RUE was being paid by Ukraine to import from Turkmenistan into Ukraine that had been purchased by the joint-venture UkrGazEnergo to sell within Ukraine; the government of Ukraine would deliver the electricity to RAO in exchange for the gas needed to generate it, with RUE (or another Firtash firm) apparently acting as the intermediary, buying the gas from UkrGazEnergo; that gas would then be delivered to Ukrainian power plants, which would produce the electricity that would then be sold to RAO to sell in Russia. One of the reasons for this confusing complexity is that at each stage along the way there was the possibility of marking up or down the price when it suited the purposes of those who set up the system in the first place.

Naturally, this overall deal was so unpopular with Ukrainians—who felt cheated at getting sold gas at hiked-up prices and allowing entities with little (or no?) supervision in a process that presented opportunities for massive corruption—that Ukraine’s parliament voted against the deal, albeit it ended up being a nonbinding vote and the agreement went ahead anyway. This arrangement would last from 2006 through early 2009, when another dispute derailed it.

A Page-Manafort Connection Through Gazprom, RAO UES, Firtash, & Mogilevich?

It is important here to note that Carter Page’s tenure at Merrill Lynch was from 2004-2007; the only two companies his aforementioned current bio mentions in relation to this tenure are Gazprom and RAO EUS, claiming that he was an advisor on “key transactions” of theirs; it is hard to imagine transactions more “key” than those involving gas being transported from Central Asia and Russia to Ukraine and Europe and being sold to both, than the creation of RUE, than RAO’s subsequent deal with Ukraine; if Page is telling the truth about his role, it is virtually inconceivable—considering that he advised both Gazprom and RAO and the way they would be tied together starting in 2006—that he would not be aware of what was going on. 

After all, as someone with a PhD and an MBA and a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, Page would certainly have been aware of the geopolitics of these deals and that they went against American interests at a time when Ukraine was trying to align itself with America and Europe and thus escape the stranglehold of the Kremlin.

However, Julia Ioffe’s profile of Page raises important questions about whether Page is exaggerating his role, and is filled with anecdotes from people knowledgeable about these types of deals who had never heard of Page and people who did know (of) him suggesting he was actually a nobody (though the veracity of their claims are unverifiable as well, some perhaps being of the sour-grapes variety, others perhaps not wanting information on him to get out and acting to throw the curious off his trail, others saying nothing to confirm that they had actually worked closely or directly alongside Page); maybe Page himself deliberately kept a low profile, staying under the radar purposefully. Without a more formal investigation, it is impossible to know what the full picture is; even if Page exaggerated his role, if he was still talking to people at both Gazprom and RAO at this time—even if his discussions interactions may have been more informal than formal (he was apparently often tasked with meeting and greeting, setting up meetings and seeing them through, presenting opportunities for many informal conversations and meetings)—it is certainly a realistic possibility that he still knew a lot and performed an advisory role, one that was perhaps unknown by his colleagues at Merrill.

Finally (and I raised this possibility last July), if he knew what was going on and was involved, there is certainly a possibility of interest being piqued if he came to know that another American in Manafort was involved on the other side of these deals, with the same being able to be said of Manafort, and that interest on either side could have led to either one making contact with the other, contact that may have led to some sort of coordination.

This is admittedly speculative, but a real possibility nonetheless, and is certainly not one bit less speculative than an enormous portion of the mainstream media discussion and reporting on both the e-mail/server situation with Hillary Clinton and the Clinton Foundation. The question of about a possible Manafort and Page link, and the fact that they were involved on one level or another in the massive Eurasian gas scheme, deserve more official scrutiny and need to be answered through a formal investigation because it is clear that those in question have no intention of sharing the truth.

Criminal Scheme #1: Part II: Manafort & Putin Allies Use Dirty Gas Money to Prep Yanukovych Comeback

Russian Government

As for the dispute that derailed the 2006 gas deal, the foundations were laid with the popularly unpopular 2006 deal itself. 

A former prime minister and gas tycoon in her own right and a co-leader of the Orange Revolution, Yulia Tymoshenko, rose to become prime minister again in December 2007, and it was clear that she was on a mission to drive out Russian domination of the whole gas system and push against Russian influence in Ukraine overall: this meant taking on Firtash, Mogilevich and the Russian mafia, and RUE. 

The first step was to get rid of UkrGazEnergo, run by RUE and Naftogaz, but then Tymoshenko set her sights on taking RUE and Firtash (and thus Mogilevich and the mafia) out of the loop, an admittedly more ambitious step, which lead to a series of hostile exchanges between Russia and Ukraine. But in October of 2008, Tymoshenko finally worked out a deal with Putin to remove RUE from Ukrainian gas deals, but they were subsequently unable to agree on pricing, leading to another shutdown on the part of Russia of gas going into Ukraine, and by extension, most of Europe, for almost three weeks in January. But on January 19th, a long-term, ten-year agreement was reached, and only a few days later normal flows were restored, much to the relief of not only Ukraine, but also Europe, as it was the middle of winter; additionally, the parties agreed to take future disputes to arbitration in an international commercial dispute court in Stockholm, Sweden.

If it seemed the players of Team Putin gave up too easily on having RUE taken out of the game, they had other plans in motion to counter Tymoshenko’s effort to limit Russian influence in Ukrainian politics…

Criminal Scheme #2: Manafort Key Agent in Laundering Dirty Gas Money to U.S. During Crackdown

Even before Putin agreed to let Tymoshenko kill RUE, his agents—including Firtash, Mogilevich, and Yanukovych (the latter with Manafort acting as his right-hand man)—were already putting in place plans to go around and escape her efforts; some of these involved setting up a fake U.S. investment fund that was initially capitalized with $100 million; Firtash (acting on behalf of himself and Mogilevich) paid Manafort and his people—including Rick Gates, (who had joined Manafort’s efforts as part of his consulting firm in 2006)—$1.5 million to handle the money. The main purpose of said fund was to act as a conduit to launder money from the Firtash/Mogilevich gas dealings that were being scrutinized by the Tymoshenko government.

Among the various fraudulent deals they went into was one in 2008 for $895 million for the site of the famous Drake Hotel on Park Avenue in New York, with Firtash wiring $25 million towards the project to make it look legitimate, and a further $25 million was later laundered through the project, but rather than truly move forward and apply the money to the project, the Drake property was never actually purchased: the deal, like their other deals, never closed and eventually fell through after many third parties had spent a lot of time and money trying to close it out and after many employees were not paid, but not before Manafort, Firtash, Mogilevich, Yanukovych, and their allies were able to keep substantial funds away from the prying eyes of Tymoshenko and Ukrainian authorities during crucial periods of her time as prime minister (remember this model, it will return…).

Unfortunately for Firtash, Mogilevich, and their backers, unlike money, natural gas is not something that can be laundered: in early 2009, Tymoshenko orchestrated a seizure by Ukraine’s own state-run Naftogaz—a seizure allowed under the agreement she made with Putin—of 11 billion cubic meters of gas from RUE’s gas stockpiles, a quantity worth billions of dollars at the time; Timoshenko had effectively cut out the middlemen who had been hiking up prices and using those profits to poison and pollute Ukrainian politics for Putin’s plans. 

Playing a longer-term game, Firtash initiated a lengthy arbitration process through Stockholm…

Other planted crops were already bearing fruit: unfortunately for Tymoshenko, though she had risen to be Prime Minister late in 2007, in that election and even in the prior 2006 parliamentary elections, Manafort had groomed Yanukovych’s Party of Regions into a party that campaigned using modern, highly effective techniques and tactics; in both elections, the Party of Regions ended up having the most seats in parliament of any single party by significant margins, but ended up being in the opposition because of alliances made between Tymoshenko’s bloc and other parties. Of course, Manafort and The Party of Regions were operating with a gigantic advantage: the enormous amount of money flowing from the massive Eurasian gas scam. All this meant that Yanukovych’s opposition was certainly within striking distance of taking over the government, and that even by 2006 Manafort and the gas scheme had already achieved great success in rehabilitating Yanukovych and his party and in making them together a smoother political machine with more power and influence.

The distance would close, and that strike would happen, in 2010.

Uniting Criminal Schemes #1 and #2: the Downfall of Tymoshenko & Setting the Stage for War

Early in 2010, Yanukovych won the presidential race (with a lot of money from Firtash, who had made over $3 billion from these crooked gas deals), defeating Tymoshenko in a runoff election, the culmination of over five years of work with Manafort and the whole gas scheme crew. Not long after, Tymoshenko lost her position as prime minister in a vote of no-confidence. Meanwhile, in the wake of his victory, Yanukovych worked to undo many of the Orange Revolution reforms, curbing democratic freedoms in areas ranging from the courts to the press. Most notably, in December, 2010, Tymoshenko was retroactively charged with abusing her power during her recent stint as prime minister, and, after a widely condemned(including by the U.S.) politically-motivated show trial, was sentenced to prison in October 2011. 

Manafort and Gates actually lobbied American lawmakers on behalf of Yanukovych’s government from 2012-2014, defending the imprisonment of Tymoshenko and trying to discredit her, as well as trying to improve the image of their client and his government; they did this without disclosing their lobbying activities as required by U.S. law. Incidentally, in these efforts—paid in part by Rinat Akhmetov: Ukraine’s wealthiest man for the last eight years, one of Yanukovych’s main patrons, and a client of Manafort’s since Manafort’s earliest days in Ukraine and for whom Manafort helped arrange a meeting with Vice President Dick Cheney—they utilized the services of two Washington, DC, lobbying firms, including Podesta Group Inc., run by the brother of John Podesta, Hillary Clinton’s 2016 Campaign Chairman and later victim of Russian-government hacking and WikiLeaks disclosures (the day after this information was made public in mid-August, 2016, Manafort resigned from his role as the Campaign Chairman of the Trump campaign during a week in which his role had already been eclipsed by the addition of Kellyanne Conway and extreme-right-wing Breitbart News’s Stephen Bannon to run the Trump campaign; as for Gates, it was unclear at the time if he had stayed on board or left and the Trump campaign was refusing to clarify the matter). 

Lobbying efforts throughout this period for this circle were also hardly limited to Manafort and Gates, with those efforts for years having for years been tied to prominent Republicans in the United States.

Perhaps most prominent among the lobbyists, former Senator and 1996 Republican presidential candidate Bob Dole—for whom Manafort had been a strategist—was paid over half a million to lobby for Deripaska, who was then, and is still, denied a U.S. visa for his links to the Russian mafia. 

Yuri Boyko, a pro-Russian Ukrainian politician who is a close Yanukovych ally, former minister of several energy related sections of Ukraine’s government, and was heavily involved in setting up the Eurasian gas scheme, paid nearly $100,000 to a Washington lobbyist to meet with top Republicans. 

Barbour Griffith & Rogers, co-founded by the former Republican Governor of Mississippi and major GOP insider/activist Haley Barbour, was paid over $800,000 for lobbying efforts by a lawyer who “structured” the legal aspects of the Eurasian gas scheme. 

Though he had been on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted List, Mogilevich strangely enough has been able to retain the lawyerly services of Republican William Sessions, who was the FBI director from 1987-1993, to lobby on Mogilevich’s behalf for deals with the U.S. government to clear his charges; those talks, which failed, were arranged by Neil Livingstone, a prominent consultant whose firm, GlobalOptions, serviced many Russians and former-Soviet-republic-businessmen; GlobalOptions was introduced by Barbour Griffith & Rogers to a shell company called Highrock Holding(s) used by none other than Firtash as a prominent vehicle for his money laundering in the Eurasian gas scheme; Highrock paid GlobalOptions for at least two projects, one a mysterious “special operation” as named in a subsequent lawsuit for an unnamed member of the Ukrainian government. And just to give one example of Firtash’s European outreach, Firtash’ relationship with several Conservative MPs in the UK may prompt an official investigation.

For his part in engineering Yanukovych’s comeback and Tymoshenko’s downfall, Firtash also got some $3 billion in gas assets returned to him that had been seized by Tymoshenko’s government as a result of proceedings at the arbitration court in Sweden, as once Yanukovych was in power, Ukraine and Firtash essentially became the same party in the case, with Ukraine’s lawyers dropping opposition to Firtash’s attempts to recover the seized gas, now only too happy to see $3 billion in gas go from the ownership of the Ukrainian people back to Firtash; it was clear in this matter that the Yanukovych government was willing to fight for the interests of Putin and Firtash, but not its own people; without Ukraine’s representatives making any case whatsoever, the court simply sided with Firtash in June of 2010. 

Firtash also got his aforementioned credit lines from Putin’s bankers not long after Yanukovych’s victory, specifically some $11 billion in credit from a consortium of banks arranged by Gazprombank, the flagship banking arm of Gazprom (the corruption is so blatant that the companies apparently do not care that their names announce it to the whole world); Gazprombank would not disclose which other banks were part of this arrangement, but by itself it lent him $2.2 billion, the largest possible amount under Russian law and almost one-quarter of the bank’s total capital, making him Gazprombank’s single largest individual borrower; Firtash used this cash to expand his holdings (especially in the chemical and fertilizer industries) and power in Ukraine, all while staying close to Yanukovych. These moves actually made him the fifth-biggest fertilizer maker in Europe and helped him establish relationships with politicians throughout Europe; when reporters asked him where all the money came from to enable him to do all this, he coyly replied: “It’s a secret.” From January 2011 on, Firtash was again buying Gazprom gas at a discount through shady international front companies, then selling that gas back at a far higher price to his new assets, to the tune of billions in questionable profits to his shell companies, in something of a return to the old system before Tymoshenko had rocked the boat.

But the spirited Tymoshenko was not content to only be on defense during this period; during her trial and from prison, she filed a lawsuit in a U.S. District Court in Manhattan in April 2011; in it she names Firtash, Manafort, Mogilevich, Yanukovych, and their front companies as defendants, including initially RUE (but RUE was switched out to name the front companies that controlled it for Firtash and Mogilevich in later amended complaints); the suit accused them of setting up a series of racketeering, fraud, and money laundering enterprises in the U.S. designed to keep dirty gas money away from Ukrainian authorities when she was prime minister and that such activities resulted in material harm for her since they contributed to the downfall of her government and her unjust trial and imprisonment. After being rejected several times, a fourth and final version of the suit was rejected in September, 2015; while not ruling out criminal wrongdoing on the part of the defendants, the judge ruled that the higher-than-average standards for convictions under the RICO statute were not met; still, in the longer ruling rejecting the third complaint, it was noted that “the Court accepts as true the allegation that some of the money that passed through the U.S. Enterprise was ‘funneled back to Ukraine’ — albeit by unidentified actors — and somehow used as ‘financing’ for Tymoshenko’s ‘persecution.’”

*****

Yes, after the 2010 election, everything was going perfectly in regards to Ukraine for Putin, Yanukovych, Manafort, Gates, Firtash, Mogilevich, and their teams, but, as in 2004, there was one thing that they did not plan well for, and it was the same thing that confounded Soviet leaders for decades and led to the downfall of the USSR: the people had other ideas. 

Many Ukrainians—especially younger ones—realized what was happening to their country, and were hopeful of better opportunities and a better future by having Ukraine orient itself more to the West, towards Europe and the U.S. and less corruption. Yanukovych sought to placate these desires by courting a major trade deal with the EU.

But in November 2013, protests erupted over Yanukovych’s about-face backing out of this long-desired EU trade deal in the face of a Russian counteroffer. In particular, protests erupted in a main square (the Maidan Square) in Kiev, Ukraine’s capital, protests that did not go away and came to be known as the Euromaidan protests. After months of a tense situation, security forces shot and killed dozens of protesters on February 20th, 2014; in response to the government’s use of violence, the protests swelled exponentially, fueled by mass public outrage at the bloodshed, and by the end of February 22nd, the Ukrainian parliament had voted Yanukovych out of office, security forces had melted away in Kiev, protesters had taken over the capital, Tymoshenko was freed from prison (in a wheelchair, recovering from what she said was physical abuse and ill-treatment at the hands of her guards and authorities), and Yanukovych has fled the city; soon, he would flee the country to Russia with the help of none other than Putin; today, he is still wanted by Ukrainian authorities for the deaths of the protesters, but he hopes to one day return to Ukraine again as president, which he still contends he is legally. 

Putin had overplayed his hand: his royal straight flush of an ace of natural gas, a king in Yanukovych, a queen in Firtash, a jack in Mogilevich, and a 10 in Manafort did not anticipate a wild-card joker in the form of Yanukovych’s allies fleeing him; that joker lined up with four 2s consisting of many of the Ukrainian people to make five of a kind, the people beating Putin’s flush. But Putin had invested a lot into Ukraine over many years, into controlling its politics and energy sector through gas, Yanukovych, Mogilevich, Firtash, and Manafort: faced with his whole house of cards collapsing in on itself in the face of popular resistance, and with a government hostile to him and his intentions once again in place after a decade of effort designed to restore and maintain Russian hegemony over Ukraine, Putin went to Plan B: the dismemberment of Ukraine and war.

Which is exactly where the situation is today (and, of course, gas is in the middle of the conflict).

Firtash has fled Ukraine as well, and is also wanted by U.S. authorities for a separate racketeering and bribery scheme; he was living in a sort of exile in Austria, but just late last month, a U.S. extradition request based on bribery and corruption charges in a Chicago-based case was approved in Austrian court (the ruling is almost unappealable), though in a bizarre twist he was arrested mere minutes after the ruling by Austrian authorities on a Spanish warrant related to charges of money laundering and organized crime.

In light of ties to Manafort and the related implications for Trump’s presidency, as well as the scandals and ensuing war in Ukraine, his relationship with the Russian mafia, and importance to Putin, this could be one of the most sensational and important internationally focused trials in many years. And, not to be macabre, but it is highly doubtful that either Putin or the Russian mafia will give Firtash the chance to prove his loyalty or show his disloyalty, as powerful men willing to orchestrate murder for far less have little reason to allow him to be tried and risk so much, especially as they have demonstrated a willingness to act through any means necessary to silence individuals who put them at risk.

In the end, Manafort made millions and Gates profited too to the tune of who knows how much off the activities mentioned here (e.g., hand-written records from the office of Yanukovych’s Party of Regions show the Party had set aside payments totaling $12.7 million specifically for Manafort from 2007-2012 alone; Gates was also involved with Manafort in the $19 million Cayman Islands fiasco with Deripaska, who accused both of the other two of illegally bailing out on him the fate of that $19 million is still unknown; all this is totally apart from the newly-revealed annual $10 million Manafort got from his Deripaska-brokered deal), profiting to an obscene degree all while helping to weaken and corrupt Ukraine’s democracy, assisting massively crooked international energy deals, undermining U.S. interests, helping Putin and his allies profit enormously, and helping Russia dominate Ukraine. The culmination of their work for over a decade can be seen in the first war on European soil in two decades. And it was this resume which earned them spots on Trump’s campaign as he sought to become the leader of the free world and succeeded. For some time it even seemed Manafort had more influence on Trump than anyone whose last name was not Trump.

Manafort and Gates have plenty of other questionable dealings, including one particularly scandalous piece of drama with a Russian oligarch featured in the Panama papers revelations and close to Putin. There are at least two U.S. government inquiries into Manafort and one into Page, and Trump associate and Republican political operative Roger Stone is being investigated by the FBI for his ties to WikiLeaks and its founder Julian Assange, who have questionable ties to Russia and who the whole world knows is receiving information stolen by Russian government hacks related to Clinton, Podesta, and the Democratic party. There are also other Trump campaign staff and/or associates with questionable ties to Russia: Michael Caputo and retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, and one American ex-spy alleges a plot by the Kremlin to co-opt Trump against the backdrop of all this.

Less is known about Gates and his role, but after he was brought onto the Trump Campaign by Manafort), he was important enough to be trusted with the vetting of Melania Trump’s Republican National Convention speech—Donald Trump’s wife’s introduction to the nation as a whole—a task at which he famously failed, and failed miserably. It was not clear what the status of Gates was once Manafort resigned, but recent reporting has shown that kept a low profile after and acted a link between the campaign and the RNC; once Trump won, he was apparently planned Trump’s inauguration, and since then he was shipped off to a pro-Trump and strangely quiet-ish nonprofit called America First Priorities (which also landed Trump All Star Katrina Pierson), where he has stayed until this the new reporting on Manafort, after which it seems he was deemed too much of a liability and was nudged out just days ago.

As for Page, it still isn’t even clear who brought him into the Trump Campaign (Julia Ioffe’s account of Page, the most exhaustive yet, illustrates how multiple answers have been given and none have been confirmed, but people sure seem angry about being asked about him); what is known (and it isn’t much) is that he was one of only five foreign policy advisors Trump could actually name in a Washington Post interview from a year ago, suggesting his influence on Trump could be far from insignificant. As his relationships with important Russians are being looked into by the U.S. government, to simply dismiss him as being a charade would be premature, indeed—especially in light of information on Page apparently meeting with Russian officials coming out of the as of yet only partly-substantiated dossier from an ex-MI6 intelligence officer—despite questions of how serious his role was at Merrill and how deep his ties to Gazprom and RAO UES actually were. What is certain is that questions about his role remain, questions which need to be answered, especially in light of his incredibly anti-American, pro-Russian views that could just as easily be coming from Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov or a “pundit” on RT and his continued investment in Gazprom. 

Direct Trump Involvement

Trump might have enough to worry about were it just for what has been described above; still, while both of the previous schemes are relevant to Trump insofar as three future Trump Campaign staff—Page, Gates, one of the most important and powerful people in his entire presidential run: Manafort—were involved in various ways in the just-outlined past criminal schemes and/or in the future acted to further the interests of Putin and his Russian government, now we get into territory where Trump himself was directly involved, and in not just one, but roughly a half-dozen situations linked to Russian organized crime.

A piece of context that is important to note for all of the following cases is that the setting for the following suspicious deals was a Donald Trump and a Trump Organization that was reeling financially.

By the mid-2000s Trump was having a hard time finding investors: he had just declared bankruptcy in 2004 for one of his major casino businesses to the tune of $1.8 billion in debt (and would declare another business bankruptcy in 2009, his fifth and sixth overall business bankruptcies, respectively) and all major Wall Street lenders—whose relationships with Trump had been souring for years—stopped offering Trump loans, in part because of his frustrating and suspicious business practices.

That is, all but one: Deutsche Bank, yet even that relationship “frayed” starting in 2008 because of Trump’s untrustworthiness as a business partner (Deutsche itself would later become involved in major money laundering scandals involving Russia, but more on that later).

So Trump was clearly hurting for investment after that 2004 bankruptcy, and yet, somehow, by 2008, Donald Trump Jr. was able to publicly remark that “Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets” and that “we [i.e., the Trump Organization] see a lot of money pouring in from Russia;” yes, this was a time when Trump was aggressively courting Russian business (it should now be obvious why Trump has not released his taxes and why that information could, and likely will be, so crucial to the investigations into his Russia ties and to the public’s evaluation of Trump).

In fact, a report from Reuters from less than two weeks ago noted how in just seven Trump luxury towers in southern Florida, 63 Russian passport/address-holders have bought $98.4 million in property; they include “politically connected businessmen and other elites,” though “none of the buyers appear to be from Putin’s inner circle;” one buyer, Alexander Yuzvik, was senior at Spetstroi, a Russian state-owned company that has done construction for Russian military and intelligence, including the G.R.U. and the F.S.B. intelligence agencies that were heavily involved the 2016 American election hackings, with Yuzvik only stepping down in March 2016, after the hacking operations had begun, though as of now, no evidence has surfaced linking him to these operations.

The above figures may even be a conservative estimate: at least 703 out of 2,044 of the units in the seven towers were owned by limited liability corporations (LLCs), often designed to mask their owners’ identities; many owners’ nationalities could not be identified; and Russian-Americans without a Russian passport/address were not included.

*****

At the same time the aforementioned Eurasian gas and Manafort-led New York real estate dual schemes were taking place, and while Donald Trump was losing investors in the U.S., Trump was cultivating Russian/former-Soviet business relationships. One of his point men in these efforts was Felix Sater, the son of an alleged mob captain of Mogilevich’s Russian mafia operation; the offices of Bayrock, Sater’s real estate company where he was Chief Operating Officer and eventually the dominant force within, were even in Trump Tower itself.

Sater, a man with a violent, criminal, mafia-rife past of his own, had himself previously been caught up in an elaborate 1990s $41 million stock fraud scheme on Wall Street that had used the Russian mob to launder money at a time, it should be noted, when Mogilevich was active in large-scale stock fraud and laundering in North America. Sater ended up assisting U.S. authorities for years, even, apparently, on CIA-related national security issues involving missile terrorism-related purchases in either Afghanistan or Russia, and the details on all this remain something of mystery: his operations with the government remain secret and the juiciest details of the Wall Street case were sealed and remain so despite repeated efforts to unseal them (they were sealed at the time, interestingly enough, by then-U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, Loretta Lynch, who just stepped down as U.S. Attorney General the day Trump was inaugurated president). 

As a result, there is also virtually no information on the specifics of the Russian mafia’s activities in Sater’s Wall Street scam, but there is a reasonably good chance or even higher that Mogilevich was running the Russian mob’s involvement in it, or was at least involved, since he was actively pursuing similar schemes in the U.S. at the time, possibly had a connection to his alleged old capo in Sater, and since Mogilevich was already such a major figure in the Russian mob at this point, keeping in mind that hierarchy matters quite a bit in organized crime; in fact, it is far less likely that the Russian mafia would be involved without Mogilevich when considering the points just mentioned. 

Now, that last point should not be taken lightly, considering that, just a few years later, Mogilevich was a primary actor in laundering billions of dollars on behalf of Firtash, Manafort, Yanukovych, and Putin; is it more or less likely that he would turn to an old connection—one with experience laundering money who had come to have the favor of the U.S. government, no less—to help with the laundering? Even without the Wall Street capers, Sater would have been an attractive candidate based on (possible) family ties alone, as would his nominal entry into real estate, as the real estate market in the U.S.has been an ideal avenue for money laundering for some time and is a top concern of U.S. officials, in part due to lax state, local, and federal laws.

Sater began working with Trump in in the early 2000s, trying to help him land real estate deals in Moscow, even showing Ivanka and Donald Jr. around the city in 2006 and introducing the Trumps to influential Russians. None of these potential Moscow deals ever went through…

Criminal Scheme #3: The Trump/Sater/Bayrock Deals

But a number of deals in the United States between Trump and Bayrock produced a far more interesting—and incriminating—history. 

Perhap’s Sater’s most famous partnership with Trump was an infamous deal to develop a SoHo property in Manhattan. The deal was concocted in 2006 by Trump, Sater, and two other partners from former Soviet states: one was Bayrock chairman Tevfik Arif, an ex-Soviet government official from Kazakhstan who’s rise to fortune is at least somewhat questionable; the other was Tamir Sapir from Georgia, who had decades ago established ties to numerous important Soviet officials after immigrating to the U.S., who may have very well been (once) part of—or even come to the U.S. secretly working for—the Soviet Ministry of Internal Affairs (at whose academy he had apparently studied), whose source of his wealth had long been subject to rumor-fueled suspicion, who introduced Trump to Bayrock, and whose former business partner had pled guilty to racketeering conspiracy charges spanning 13 years with the Gambino crime family (incidentally or not, at the time of the SoHo deal, it seems Sapir was not exactly mentally fit).

It turns out that the SoHo deal had a significant portion of its Sater-and-Arif facilitated financing—some $50 million specifically approved by Trump for it and three other projects—flow from a firm in Iceland, FL Group, linked to the Panama Papers revelations and one apparently known as a hub for the money of Russians “in favor with Putin.” Financing for these projects was also secured from Alexander Mashkevich (or Machkevich), a Kazakhstani billionaire with a history of money laundering.

Considering Sater had helped pave the way for this investment and recalling his possible Mogilevich connections, it is hardly unreasonable to assume that there is a high probability that some of the money coming in from Russians was in one way or another tied directly or indirectly to the giant Eurasian gas scheme worth billions, as this period was especially a time when Russians tied to Putin and operating through Manafort, Firtash, and Mogilevich were aggressively trying to funnel money away from prying eyes of the likes of Tymoshenko. Besides the Russian financing, some of the transactions involving the property were clearly carried out by shell corporations for the purpose of laundering money, transactions from which Trump profited. Furthermore, the SoHo deal was structured to cheat the U.S. government out of tens of millions in taxes, as the investments were illegally restructured as loans (not incidentally tax-free) to avoid paying hefty taxes on them, loans that would also give FL Group a big chunk of theoretical future profits over time. 

In the end, the deal went terribly for Trump, who was sued for fraud—his children Eric and Ivanka had inflated the level of interest in order to attract buyers—and in a 2011 settlement, he refunded 90% of the deposits on the building’s condos. 

One must wonder why likely Russian investors were so eager to invest $50 million in this deal, and if it was an excuse to launder money, rather than an actual investment, as was the case with the Park Avenue deal involving Manafort & Co, and that model would seem to be repeated by Bayrock again and again, Repeated in deals with Trump and with Sater serving again as a point-man.

Even as construction on Trump SoHo began in 2007, another of the Trump/Bayrock projects was rising in Fort Lauderdale, Florida; this one, the Trump International Hotel & Tower, would also result in disaster and led to over a dozen lawsuits, with over 100 condo buyers suing for $7.8 million. The project was supposed to have been completed by the end of 2007 but fell way behind schedule; Sater and his Bayrock partners secretly and seemingly cashed out their stakes in this project and several others—including the SoHo deal—in a deal with the aforementioned Icelandic firm, FL Group. Trump eventually pulled his name from the project, and when its buyers learned this in May, 2009, this only increased their outrage and added to lawsuits already in motion accusing Trump and Bayrock of fraud. As in the SoHo deal, confidential settlements, this time with dozens of buyers, ensued, and Trump refused to accept any responsibility, blaming the problems on the economic crises. Florida courts declined to rule that Trump or his partners had committed fraud, including a state appeals court just last year. The project finished years late, cost some $200 million, and was eventually sold for merely $115 million at a foreclosure auction. And while the evidence of money laundering in this case is not as explicit or solid as the information publicly reported on in the SoHo deal, it is still a similarly structured deal with the same partners that led to a similarly dubious result, making it more likely, not less, that similar laundering was taking place.

Another Bayrock partnership with Trump in Fort Lauderdale (not part of the FL Group ventures) was originally conceived of as the Trump International Beach Club; an initial $2 million in capital was provided by Arif in 2003, and from that point, Sater and Arif conned a friend of Arif’s who was also Sater’s landlord, Elizabeth Thieriot, lying about the value of the club, hiding their own investment in the project, and convincing her to provide a $1 million investment for a mere 4% of the Club, 12 times what they had paid for that percentage and allowing them to make a 1,125% profit on her investment; as in the SoHo deal, they illegally labeled the investment a loan to avoid paying taxes on it and were using their fraud to hide skimming $1 million off the top; on top of that, when there was income finally generated in 2005, they defrauded their partner Thieriot of her rightful share; eventually Theiriot figured out some of what was going on and sued her scammers in court in 2006, and they pulled similar scams on other investors/members in the Club. The project was apparently eventually reconceived of as the Trump Las Olas Beach Resort, but was suspended in a declining market by Trump himself in October 2007.

Another deal among the four which received FL Group financing was a failed project that never even got off the ground in Phoenix, Arizona. Trump began eyeing the Camelback area of Phoenix, Arizona, for a luxury residential tower back in late in 2003, a project similar to the others; Trump’s team, and then Trump himself, met with the mayor, who wasn’t impressed with Trump, and at a meeting in January, 2005, when plans were unveiled, local residents showed up to argue against the development, yet by September, the appropriate city bodies had approved the plans. It seems Sater’s people organized intimidation, bribery, and deception as tactics to deter residents from gathering enough signatures to force a public referendum that could have overridden the city bodies’ approval; under this pressure, the city council voted to reverse its decision and pressed the developers and the neighborhood association to reach a compromise, at which point Trump himself abandoned the project, not wanting to be part of anything that would be scaled down any further in scope and ambition. Ernie Mennes, the owner of the Camelback property who had gone into a partnership with the Bayrock/Trump developers, sued Bayrock in 2007 in federal court, accusing Sater of both threatening to “cut off his legs and leave him ‘dead in the trunk of his car’” and of stealing money from the project for himself. The judge oversaw a settlement and the case was sealed, likely because of Sater’s special relationship with the government. This property was part of the $50 million pseudo-offloading to FL group, and by June of 2009, Bayrock was relieved of the property, which it had left $36 million in debt, when it was “sold out from under” the company at a trustee auction for a mere $10 million.

The final in the group of four projects of Bayrock tied to FL’s “investment” involved a Waterpointe property in Queens (apart from approving FL’s money, Trump was otherwise not involved as far as we know). Bayrock bought the property in 2008 for $25 million, but the soil was contaminated and had to be replaced, which Bayrock did with other soil that was even more contaminated and was fined $150,000 for doing so; when Bayrock defaulted on a loan in 2011, the lender took over Waterpointe and sold it for roughly $11 million, less than half what Bayrock had paid.

As for FL Group, it failed in spectacularly 2008, along with Iceland’s other major banks/funds and many others in the world during the great global financial meltdown.

In a 2013 NY State Supreme Court lawsuit rising from a process that began in 2008, former and then-business partners of Sater’s at Bayrock—Jody Kriss and Michal Ejekam—sued Sater and his accomplices for damages and nonpayment related to Sater’s hiding of his past and his use of Bayrock primarily as a vehicle for criminal activities; in it, Donald and Ivanka Trump and the Trump Organization are named as defendants and the federal government is accused of illegally concealing Sater’s past and crimes in a way that defrauded previous victims from 1998 scam—including Holocaust Survivors—and subsequent victims of the other above schemes of many millions in restitution. The NY State Supreme Court removed the Trumps and their Organization from the suit; the plaintiffs had only sought declaratory relief in regards to the Trumps, i.e., they asked the court to determine what liability the Trumps had in regards to the case, and they were removed “without prejudice,” meaning the removal was no comment on their guilt/responsibility/innocence and that they could be sued again on the same grounds later. 

*****

Taken together, these examples amount to catastrophic losses and colossal mismanagement on the part of Sater and Bayrock and, at the very least, gross negligence and incompetence on the part of Trump; at most, he might have been aware of some of what was going on and turned a willful blind eye, or, even worse, he might have been in on it, though no evidence exists that proves this).

Actually, the performance of Bayrock was so bad, one would not be faulted for concluding they did not care at all about performance. And that seems to be right on the mark: it seems, if anything, these schemes were designed to move large amounts of money, often Russian-tied, into temporary projects that never came to fruition, but that would benefit Sater, Trump, and others high-up in the deals, but rarely if ever the investing partners outside this upper echelon; it seems these other duped partners and especially Trump would lend an air of respectability to clearly criminal schemes that were so poorly managed that the only logical conclusion is that Sater and his friends at Bayrock did not care about the future success of the projects nearly as much as they cared about laundering money and skimming from the top. Furthermore, since FL Group was a stupendously bad performer even by the standards of the 2008 financial crisis, and given its close ties to Kremlin-connected Russian money, one could also be forgiven for thinking there was something more going on there than met the eye. We may never know all the details or whose money was laundered and for what reasons—and if I had a magic wand I’d love to see if any the Manafort/Yanukovych/Firtash/Mogilevich Eurasian gas scheme money made its way into any of these Trump ventures—but it seems clear a lot of dirty Russian money was involved.

When considering Sater, it is important to remember that he has been busted multiple times by law enforcement and yet has not served jail time in America (with the exception of one year for stabbing a man in the face with a margarita glass and severing a nerve in the man’s face, or, as Trump put it under oath, Sater “got into a barroom fight, which a lot of people do.”) and enjoys the favor of the U.S. government, suggesting he is anything but a generally and especially stupid person; also remember that Sater has a long history of money laundering. 

So, in fact, once you look at the Bayrock deals and Sater assuming Bayrock’s primary reason to exist is for RICO money laundering, these deals that were once seemingly mind-bogglingly stupid all of a sudden make a lot of sense, and, in series of lawsuits beginning primarily on behalf of two of Sater’s Bayrock partners—Jody Kriss and Michael Ejekam, who weren’t in on the fun—for money they say is owed to them, Bayrock is precisely described as a RICO criminal organization, of which money laundering is one of its primary activities (in the main complaint, the word “launder” or one of its derivatives appears 39 times in the document).

Sater Saga

After Sater left Bayrock in 2008, none of this stopped him from being brought into the Trump Organization in 2010 as a “Senior Advisor to Donald Trump” even after Trump was made aware of Sater’s criminal past, and circumstantial evidence points to Sater still being connected to the Russian mafia. For his part, Trump has issued his typically contradictory and slippery statements—more aptly called lies—in regards to these dealings and, in particular, his relationship to Sater, with Trump lying repeatedly about his relationship with Sater and Bayrock in an attempt to falsely minimize them. And there is no distancing Trump from Bayrock: one of Bayrock’s flagship presentations from as late as 2008 list its three Trump-named projects discussed above before all others and lists The Trump Organization as its first “strategic partner” (followed by FL Group), Donald Trump as its first “reference,” and “Trump Tower” in New York as its address.

The Huffington Post also recently discovered just a few days ago that Sater owns three shell companies—Global Habitat Solutions (GHS), United Biofuels Company LLC, and Sands Point Partners GP LLC—that are apparent fakes that “sell no products and have no customers,” ideal for being used to launder money; GHS had collaborated with another company named Titan Atlas in promoting itself, a company co-founded by Donald Trump Jr. and in which Trump Jr. also invested; Sater used promotional images from Titan Atlas’ website for GHS’s own after Trump Jr. introduced him to Titan Atlas’ other co-founder, Jeremy Blackburn (with an unsurprisingly troubled corporate past), and Tital is now owned by another company controlled by the Trump Organization, run by Trump Jr. since his father became president. .

Sater even donated the maximum amount allowed to Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, and the White House is even using Sater as a back-channel diplomatic go-between for Trump’s person lawyer, Michael Cohen, and a heavily-pro-Russian/pro-Putin Ukrainian legislator, Andrii Artemenko, who are discussing a Ukraine “peace plan” being pushed by close Putin aides; Artemenko also claims he has information damaging to Petro Poroshenko, Ukraine’s anti-Russian president facing off against Putin and his proxies in the Ukrainian Civil War. In an only partially-verified-by-U.S.-officials 35-page dossier on Trump and his people compiled by a respected ex-MI6 British intelligence officer, Christopher Steele, Cohen is said to have secretly met with Russian government officials during the late stages of the presidential campaign, though it is not clear if this—or what—specific information has been corroborated by U.S. officials, with journalists having been unable to thus far verify the information on Cohen, who denies playing this role.

The reason a lot of what is known about Sater and his past misdealings is publicly available, besides a then-revelatory late-2007 New York Times article, is because of the intrepid efforts of two of the lawyers who often represented plaintiffs against Sater in court: Richard Lerner and Frederick Oberlander.

Going back to that 2013 lawsuit, because Assistant U.S. Attorney Todd Kaminsky was included in these accusations for allegedly illegally aiding and covering up for Sater, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York (SDNY) Preet Bharara (more on him on in a bit) ended up being involved tangentially in defending him in his capacity as a U.S. Attorney, playing a role in trying to moving the suit from the state court system to SDNY jurisdiction, but it was ultimately moved because of Sater and his ties to the government, not Kaminsky. Once in the hands of the federal court, Kaminsky was removed without prejudice from the proceedings.

Which brings us to one of the untold stories of this election, and one which may never be told in full: how Sater’s cooperation with the government gave him government protection from being held liable in many cases for his misdeeds while also helping to suppress information about him and these misdeeds, and how, had his past and crimes been front and center over the past decade, this knowledge could have done much to derail and discredit Donald Trump, his brand and family at a time when he was building a national following with his hit show The Apprentice, which he even used to promote his fraudulent, money-laundered SoHo deal. 

That the public, including Trump’s and Bayrock’s clients and customers, were kept in the dark about Sater—a fact which undoubtedly helped all of these related deals and others advance, which was not lost on partners of Sater’s, and which is at the heart of much of the legal action against Sater—and were kept in dark because Sater cooperated with the U.S. government, adds quite a what-if twist to the tale of Trump and his dramatic rise over the last decade to become the most powerful man in the world: what if the government hadn’t protected Sater, and all that evidence was out in the open while Trump and Bayrock were courting buyers and were fighting court battles? What would that have done to Trump’s reputation if he became most known for defrauding customers and money laundering with a Russian mafia-deluged violent felon, to his hit show The Apprentice (one can just imagine NBC saying “You’re fired!” to Trump), and to his political aspirations? 

In a much less chaotic, less exciting world than the insanity that confronts us today, one can be sure such a salacious story involving a playboy New York tycoon would have been front, center, and dominant in national and international media coverage; lawsuits, trials, and investments may also have gone differently for Trump if such information was common knowledge, too; he may have just faded away in disgrace, or least into a sideshow, if not landing in jail.

Yes, if not for the favors the U.S. government did in protecting and, thus, abetting, Sater, it is far more likely that Trump would have collapsed in scandal than risen to be our current president. This abetting may very well be unwitting, but the two aforementioned lawyers—Lerner and Oberlander—believe differently, that the government cooperation with Sater yielded disappointing results, that Sater fooled and tricked the government into helping him in exchange for dubious assistance of questionable value and that this arrangement may have been such an embarrassment for the government that they covered up this and his past to save face and protect the careers of those involved. No court rulings have affirmed these assertions, yet it is notable that in the U.S. Supreme Court proceedings involved in arguing over Sater’s information being withheld from the public, the Court tacitly admitted that at least some of the points made by Lerner and Oberlander were valid when they ordered many of the documents surrounding Sater be made public, the only reason that much of information about him is now publicly available.

Epilogue of Intrigue

As for Arif and Mashkevich, two other major players in the whole Trump/Bayrock/FL Group saga, Arif was arrested in Turkey in September 2010 when he was at a sex party with apparently underage girls on board a Yacht (which had been once belonged to none other than Atatürk) under suspicion of running a complex prostitution and human trafficking ring in a scheme of which it seems Mashkevich was also a part, though Arif was later acquitted under mysterious circumstances and Mashkevich was not charged.

Going back to Trump’s sole major Wall Street lender, Deutsche Bank, since 2012, it has loaned trump over $300 million, a sum that is still owed. This amount presented a major conflict of interest for the newly inaugurated President Trump in late January 2017, because Deutsche was under investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) for orchestrating $10 billion in illegal fake trades from 2011-2015 that might have been part of a massive Russian money laundering scheme; U.S. and UK officials levied $630 million in massive fines against Deutsche at the end of January 2017, but DoJ was not part of this and is still investigating, raising the question of the independence and impartiality of Trump’s own new Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, himself under fire for possible improper interactions with Russian officials and forced to pledge to recuse himself from any investigations of into the 2016 election and Russian interference in it. Deutsche itself is under pressure to allow an independent investigation into Trump’s accounts with the Bank (his family also has accounts with Deutsche), even after its own investigation apparently found no link to Trump’s accounts and Russia. 

It was just revealed that Deutsche was also involved in another major laundering scam of Russian money to the tune of $24 million, including the specific division that Trump owes $300 million, with the overall laundering scheme—known as the Global/(Great) Russian Laundromat—involving dozens of Western banks and a sum ranging from $20-$80 billion through the years 2010-2014; the hundreds involved in the scheme include Russia’s notorious oligarchs and Russia’s F.S.B., the main successor to the famed Soviet K.G.B. intelligence agency, with Putin having longstanding intimate ties to both and with some of the money in the scheme apparently being used to further Putin’s and Russia’s interests.

As if there weren’t enough bad connections to Trump Tower, Mogilevich-associated Russian mafia boss and apparent all-around celebrity Alimzhan Tokhtakhounov was overseeing an illegal high-stakes international gambling ring for wealthy clientele that in part operated out of Trump Tower in New York. Among other prolific activities, Tokhtakhounov had gained notoriety for apparently fixing 2002 Olympic ice skating matches to help get a gold medal for a fellow Russian, as well as one for a pair of French skaters in exchange for a French visa, but was soon after in Russia and safe from prosecution. The gambling ring connected to Trump Tower, run by two of his capos, Vadim Trincher and Anatoly Golubchik, was popular with Russian and Ukrainian oligarchs in both Russia and Ukraine, and besides the gambling ring, they also engaged in some $100 million in money laundering. Trincher himself in 2009 bought an apartment in Trump Tower just below an apartment owned by Trump himself, in which he nearly held a fundraiser for Newt Gingrich two years later, but had to cancel because of a mold problem and a water leak; it was from this apartment that Trincher ran a branch of said gambling ring. Another linked gambling/laundering ring was run by one of Trincher’s sons, who owned an entire floor in Trump tower, and another son of Trincher’s ran multiple illegal poker rooms throughout New York City. 

An indictment naming Tokhtakhounov and his people was filed by U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara, mentioned earlier, and the same Preet Bharara fired controversially by Trump just last month after Trump had promised Bharara he would not fire him, and it should be noted that several of the past and ongoing cases involving Trump and/or his associates occurred in the jurisdiction of SDNY and that a number of potential future cases would also occur there if they moved forward and would have been handled by Bharara if he had not been fired. It was Bharara’s indictment that led to a 2013 raid on Vadim Trincher’s Trump Tower apartment, and arrests made there and elsewhere nabbed 29 suspects. A mere seven months after he was indicted, a nonchalant Tokhtakhounov was a red-carpet VIP guest at Trump’s 2013 Miss Universe Pageant in Moscow, a city where, to this day, he is regularly seen at trendy public places.

We also have the curious case of the Trump’s fabulously ostentatious mansion—the “Maison de l’Amitie”—in Palm Beach, Florida, that he bought back in 2004 for $41 million. A representative of Trump claimed Trump put $25 million of his own money into renovating the house, but this is doubtful; plans obtained who improvements were relatively minor, and, Typical of Trump, he seemed to be lying through his teeth: when taking a local reporter on a tour, he claimed he installed gold fixtures in bathroom, but when the report scratched a faucet, gold paint came off to reveal not-gold underneath. Trump set his asking price at $125 million when he listed early in 2006, but had trouble finding a buyer; then, in March 2008, he brought his price down to $100 million, but it still wasn’t until that July that he got Russian oligarch billionaire Dmitry Rybolovlev to buy the mansion for $95 million after some haggling in a deal said to be the largest U.S. residential real estate deal ever. If you’re thinking that Trump might have swindled Rybolovlev, that’s very possible: he has a habit of falling for tricksters, especially when it comes to art deals; the house was appraised at less than only $59.8 million in 2013, and though it rose to $81.8 million in the summer of 2016, that was still about 15% less than what he had paid. Just months after he bought the house, he ended up in a messy divorce drama with his wife, who was after the house; there are plans to demolish the house, and Rybolovlev has not even physically entered the house, which may be demolished.

But unlike other major Russian oligarchs doing business with Trump or his allies, either directly or indirectly, Rybolovlev is no apparent friend or ally of Putin or the Russian mafia, which seems to put this story in the category of mere trivial.

But then, multiple reports that Rybolovlev’s private jet had repeatedly been tracked to cities where and when candidate and later president Trump was: Las Vegas in October, just five days before Election Day in North Carolina, and in Miami in February, creating a sense of intrigue. One might be tempted to say this is meaningless, yet on top of this, his accounts of the mansion deal have changed, making people wonder if he has something to hide.

At the very least, this Palm Beach mansion saga is a good reminder that Trump is a swindler and a liar, and if you’re still not convinced, google Trump University, Trump Steaks…

And oh, we just found out that during the campaign, Republicans paid a private intelligence firm that works closely with an ex-K.G.B. officer to dig up dirt in Clinton.

Putting the Pieces Together: Not a Pretty Picture

Sorry, Trump fans, but it’s time a reality check: it’s more likely that you will soon be struck by lighting than that all of these threads together and tied together by a Russian mafia godfather end up as innocent, harmless coincidences when it comes possible connections between Team Trump and Team Putin.

It is also crucial to note that the whole Russian operation in Ukraine—using Russia’s natural resources, deals related to them, and the profits from selling them to dominate and corrupt political elites of neighboring and other countries along with hacking and (mis/dis)information operations—is hardly unique to Ukraine; Putin is trying to do much the same thing throughout Europe, and it was clear he successfully threw his weight around last year during our election to help Trump win in what I called the (First) Russo-American Cyberwar, part of his overall war on Western Democracy and promotion of what I call democratic fascism.

The question is now about whether or not there was treason going on during that (First) Russo-American Cyberwar. If (and we don’t know yet) Putin was able co-opt agents people Manafort, Gates, Page, and/or others, this would simply be current Russian standard operating procedure for how it spreads its power throughout the world in the era of Putin; such hybrid warfare and “Cold War”-type or non-hot warfare being directed at America should not only not surprise Americans, it should be expected. And it seems that, along with Manafort and Page, the record-fast-recently-resigned-due-to-Russian-related-stuff Trump National Security Advisor Gen. Michael Flynn and longtime Manafort and Trump confidante Roger Stone are all under an official FBI “counterintelligence”—to use FBI Director James Comey’s exact word—investigation, and Manafort, Page, and Stone all just volunteered to testify before Congress.

Should those hearings be public, that would be epic.

Conclusion originally a Part II published here

Donald Trump, Paul Manafort, and Ivanka Trump on stage for a rehearsal at the Republican National Convention- NBC

Conclusion: Trump Has Terrible Judgment or Is a (Treasonous) Criminal or Both

I will never forgive the news media or the American people for not caring enough about the aforementioned information when it mattered most and had the chance to change the outcome of this election, since any one of these main three threads alone carried more weight than Clinton’s and yet got only a fraction of the coverage that red-herring of a “scandal” got. Nor will I forgive Comey for his political tone-deafness, the politically-suicidal liberals who empowered Trump by myopically and narcissistically not voting for Clinton, or the Republican Party for so willingly spreading its buttocks for Putin; anyone who doubts me on that last point can watch the disgraceful behavior of Republicans on the supposedly relatively non-partisan House Intelligence Committee, especially its Chairman Devin Nunes and shallow grandstander Trey Gowdy, the latter of whom led the partisan witch-hunt that was the last “Benghazi”—really Clinton e-mail—investigation. Yes, I have no faith in Trump—Team Trump has lied at least 20 times about its ties to Russia as of early March and only continues to do so in the most outlandish and unprecedented and Orwellian of ways, making the possible reality of a serious cover-up more and more likely—but seeing Nunes as the Intelligence Committee Chairman act in such an unprecedented way—blatantly covering for the president—made me tear up and almost cry because his behavior is such a dramatic sign of how our government is failing us and how the last bastion protecting this country from what I call democratic fascism—that bastion now being that the party in power won’t twist every organ of government it can to benefit itself politically no matter the cost—may be crumbling. As historian Douglas Brinkley (who implored the public after Trump won to “give…[Trump]…a chance”) said of all of this: “There’s a smell of treason in the air.”

Trump repeatedly claimed during his campaign he would surround himself with “the best people;” I’m sure he believed himself, and that is the problem. What has been outlined here is probably one of the strongest cases (if not the strongest) against Trump’s judgment as leader, whether in business or in politics; if you surround yourself on a regular basis with mobsters and criminals and those who favor the worldview (or purse) of America’s greatest enemy over America itself, there is no more discussion to be had: Donald Trump is too stupid and too incompetent a leader to be president as he simply cannot be trusted to make decisions about whom to give power to (for every supposed hit there are far more misses and we can’t delegate the fate of our nation a game of chance; sorry, but I’m nearly convinced that Trump picked Gen. Mattis to run the Pentagon simply because he like Mattis’ nickname of “Mad Dog”); Trump’s selection of Paul Manafort alone would be disqualifying enough, and that’s just the beginning.

And that is the best case scenario that he was too stupid to see that his people were playing him for a fool or were abusing their power in a way that could destroy his potential presidency and do the nation irreparable harm. But if Trump himself in any way knew about any possible collusion with Russia, that takes us from disqualifying incompetence into the realm of treason. Even if that is not the case, the newest revelations are making it more and more likely that some sort of treason from within his camp will be uncovered—Comey recently noted that this counterintelligence investigation began in July, some ten months ago, and if it was clear there was no collusion it would probably have ended long ago—and it is increasingly likely that this issue will cripple Trump’s presidency in ways not seen since the later nineteenth-century, when Reconstruction’s war between President Andrew Johnson and Congressional Republicans, as well as the scandals of the Gilded Age, dramatically weakened the presidency.

Russia is as defiant as ever, just in recent months and weeks assassinating—or trying to assassinate-—opponents, arresting hundreds of peaceful protesters and Russian’s main opposition leader (Alexey Navalny, again) during Russia’s largest protests in five years, trying to overthrow democratically elected foreign governments (Montenegro), hacking foreign politicians in ways designed to sway elections (from Hillary Clinton to France’s Emmanuel Macron and beyond), fanning the flames of war in Ukraine, slaughtering civilians in Aleppo, and assaulting the world of norms the West has known since the end of WWII.

And Donald Trump is in the White House and wants to be Putin’s friend.

*****

Sometimes, if there’s enough smoke, it’s undeniable that there is a fire even if the flames are obscured or not visible from afar. Back in July, when I began my in-depth exploration around the same time the FBI did, I wrote that

… it’s possible there is  some sort of coordinated effort going on between Trump or people in his campaign and Putin or people associated with him. But I wouldn’t be terribly surprised if we also have two groups of actors here  acting mostly independently yet with common purpose. I also wouldn’t be surprised if some of Trump’s associates, especially Manafort, are part of some sort of deal (tacit or otherwise) to promote Putin’s agenda within Trump’s campaign between several staffers or just himself on one side and Putin’s agents on the other, given Manafort’s and several staffers’ histories. And it’s certainly believable—in fact,  almost certain—that Putin would like to see Clinton defeated and Trump in the White House, since it would be  hard to envision a leader that would or could play more into Putin’s hands than Trump. 

This may yet backfire on and Trump and Putin, since the  Russian interference is so obvious…

Sometimes I hate being right.

© 2017 Brian E. Frydenborg all rights reserved, no republication without permission, attributed quotations welcome

See related articles:

The (First) Russo-American Cyberwar: How Obama Lost & Putin Won, Ensuring a Trump Victory

Trump, Putin, Russia, DNC/Clinton Hack, & WikiLeaks: “There’s Something Going on” with Election 2016 & It’s Cyberwarfare & Maybe Worse

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*****

New threads in the Team Trump/Team Putin tangled web show Manafort and Page linked to each other as part of a Russian plot to control Ukraine and also show a mutual Russian mafia godfather linking them with each other and Trump, providing even deeper and more fertile ground on which to question Trump’s pro-Russia, Pro-Putin positions and their origins. Note: this is the most important article I have ever written in my life; please share with as many people as possible as soon as possible, as this is a matter of national importance before the election that the major media outlets have missed and not to their credit.

January 20th, 2019. Originally published on LinkedIn Pulse November 4, 2016 

By Brian E. Frydenborg (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter @bfry1981) November 4th, 2016

Built on part on this earlier piece from July 30/31 2016: Trump, Putin, Russia, DNC/Clinton Hack, & WikiLeaks: “There’s Something Going on” with Election 2016 & It’s Cyberwarfare & Maybe Worse

See major follow-up pieces: March 28, 2017: Trump’s Russia & Mafia Dealings Expose Him As Fool or Criminal (Traitor?) or Both: Biggest Scandal in U.S. History, Too Many Ties to Be Nothing

July 27, 2017: Think You Know How Deep Trump-Russia Goes? Think Again: This Chart/Info Will Blow Your Mind

Also, see his related piece from December 7, 2016: The (First) Russo-American Cyberwar: How Obama Lost & Putin Won, Ensuring a Trump Victory

Photo illustration by Slate. Images by Pool/Getty Images, Brendan McDermid/Reuters, Sarah Rice/Getty Images

AMMAN — EXCLUSIVE research and analysis reveal a significantly deeper relationship than previously understood between current and former members of the Donald Trump presidential campaign with agents and allies of Russian President Vladimir Putin concerning efforts to advance the Russian government’s interests, including a major Russian mafia godfather. 

Two figures in particular, former Trump Campaign Chairman Paul Manafort and (presumably-still) foreign policy advisor Carter Page, were key figures (Page at least claims to be) behind major geopolitical events that convulsed Ukraine beginning in 2004 with the Orange Revolution and whose effects are still being directly felt as a result up through today with the war in Ukraine. Manafort and Page were linked by lines of power and influence connecting them through a short chain of major players and entities (including one major Russian company beyond Gazprom: RAO UES, reported here for the first time), and their presence and roles in the region overlapped in key areas for several years as they worked for Putin’s key allies—pro-Russian Ukrainian political (especially Viktor Yanukovych) and business elites (especially Dmitry Firtash) working with Russian political and business elites (especially those at Russian oil-giant Gazprom)—to enact a plan designed to corrupt and dominate the Ukrainian state and to serve the purposes of Vladimir Putin’s anti-Western, anti-American agenda. A partner of Manafort’s—Richard “Rick” Gates—was also involved with burnishing his efforts there, and both of them and Page ended up on Trump’s campaign in key positions, positions from which they are easily the figures most likely responsible for Donald Trump’s and his campaign’s unprecedented pro-Putin, pro-Russian positions that have made him the most pro-Russian (and pro-Putin) candidate in American history. Additionally, there is a shared Russian mafia godfather—Putin-linked Semion Mogilevich, at least through Felix Sater, the son of an alleged Mogilevich capo (also reported here in this context for the first time)—in connection with this Ukrainian plot, a major money laundering real-estate deal in Manhattan, and a major Trump real estate deal that was also in Manhattan (first reported here), all three criminal activities occurring within the same time period (also not pointed out in earlier reporting).

To begin to understand the big picture, one has to go back to 2004.

In 2004, Carter Page moved to Moscow and set up Merrill Lynch’s branch there. His bio on the website of Global Energy Capital LLC, which Page founded and where he is currently a managing partner, states that “[h]e spent 3 years in Moscow where he was responsible for the opening of the Merrill office and was an advisor on key transactions for Gazprom, RAO UES and others.”

As Page was setting up shop in Moscow, Paul Manafort began running Victor Yanukovych’s political life.

Yanukovych is a notorious, scandal-ridden Ukrainian politician that first attracted global attention in the Ukrainian presidential election of 2004. Leonid Kuchma, the outgoing president during these elections, had appointed Victor Yanukovych as his prime minister late in 2002 and had backed him as a pro-Russian (and pro-Putin) candidate in the 2004 election, even to the point of trying to rig and steal the election for Yanukovych, which sparked the Orange Revolution that, in turn, led to the Ukrainian Supreme Court-ordered redo election that resulted in the defeat of Yanukovych and victory for the more pro-Western Viktor Yushchenko, who had almost been killed by a mysterious poisoning incident. 

Yanukovych had already developed a reputation for extreme corruption by this time, but that did not stop Paul Manafort from running Yanukovych’s campaign late in 2004 for the redo election. Despite the loss, Manafort stuck around and was charged with rehabilitating the disgraced Yanukovych and strategizing for his political party, the Party of Regions, helping them helping them over the ensuing years to gain power at the expense of Ukraine’s pro-U.S., pro-Western post-“Orange Revolution” government.

This type of work was hardly out of the ordinary for Manafort, as his client list includes dictators like the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s (then Zaire’s) Mobutu Sese Seko, the Philippines’ Ferdinand Marcos, Somalia’s Siad Barre, Sani Abacha of Nigeria, and Kenya’s Daniel arap Moi; other clients include Jonas Savimbi (the leader of the Angolan human-rights-abusing rebel guerilla group UNITA), and the Kashmiri American Council (a front for the terrorist-dealing Pakistani government intelligence service ISI that had helped create the Taliban, among other nefarious dealings).

Criminal Scheme #1: Part I: Manafort & Putin Allies Flood Ukraine With Dirty Gas Money

Court documents allege that Manafort first became acquainted with Yanukovych in 2003, a time when he also began cozying up to some of Ukraine’s most powerful oligarchs, at least ones allied with Yanukovych and Putin. Throughout the rest of the decade, Manafort entered into a variety of shady business deals with some of these oligarchs and others, deals that generally seemed to have some ulterior motive in advancing Putin’s agenda in the background. In particular, the court documents also maintain that he befriended Ukrainian natural gas businessman and Putin ally Dmitry Firtash around the same time he began interacting with Yanukovych. Firtash, featured in the Panama Papers revelations and linked to the essential head of the Russian mafia, Semion Mogilevich (also a friend of Putin’s and on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list from 2009-2015), had been the main middleman bringing in both Russian and Central Asian natural gas to Ukraine since 2002.

A Swiss-registered company called RosUkrEnergo (RUE) was created in mid-2004 by the outgoing Ukrainian President Kuchma and the not-going-anywhere Putin to replace the company represented by Firtash handling Ukraine’s Russian-related gas imports. The imports ostensibly came from the former Soviet republic of Turkmenistan but through shady deals that seemed mostly orchestrated and subsidized by Gazprom, the Russian gas giant company then dominated, and soon to be majority-owned, by the Russian Government and close Putin allies; additionally, the gas traveled through pipes wholly owned by Gazprom that went mostly through Russian territory. But not much changed with RUE in that Firtash ended up owning 45% of the new company, a stake which is partially a front for Mogilevich to control the company. A total of 50% of RUE was owned by Gazprom, making clear the incestuous nature of the entire arrangement.

But there was a bigger picture, a greater purpose, to all these machinations than just Gazprom dominance of the region’s gas industry, and the specifics of the deal make the following scheme quite easy to understand: Gazprom would basically sell billions of dollars of gas to Firtash through RUE at a steal of a price; Firtash would then sell billions of dollars of the gas at hiked-up prices to Ukraine; the profits would then be used to fund pro-Russian politicians in Ukraine with billions of dollars; and, finally, bankers that were close Putin allies would open up lines of credit for Firtash in the billions of dollars so that Firtash could buy key Ukrainian assets and multiply his influence even further.

It’s no coincidence that this scam came into being not long after Yanukovych’s defeat at the hands of a more pro-Western candidate and as that candidate’s pro-Western government was trying to limit Russian influence in Ukraine. Unsurprisingly, some of the disputes between Ukraine and Russia involved fighting over gas deals. This all culminated in a January, 2006, shut-off of Russia’s gas flow into Ukraine and therefore into much of Europe as well, which got the vast majority of its gas from pipes passing through Ukrainian territory. 

Soon after the shutoff, a new arrangement was made: RUE would now be the exclusive and direct supplier of all natural gas coming from Central Asia (Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Kazakhstan) and Russia, and it would sell to the Ukrainian market through a joint venture with Naftogaz Ukrainy, Ukraine’s state-owned energy company, the joint venture being called UkrGazEnergo. 

But there was another key factor in the deal: RAO UES—Russia’s major and majority-state-owned power company—would buy and import Ukrainian-generated electricity into European Russia, with the Ukrainian government providing that energy from the gas that RUE was being paid by Ukraine to import from Turkmenistan into Ukraine that had been purchased by the joint-venture UkrGazEnergo to sell within Ukraine; the government of Ukraine would deliver the electricity to RAO in exchange for the gas needed to generate it, with RUE (or another Firtash firm) apparently acting as the intermediary, buying the gas from UkrGazEnergo; that gas would then be delivered to Ukrainian power plants, which would produce the electricity that would then be sold to RAO to sell in Russia. One of the reasons for this confusing complexity is that at each stage along the way there was the possibility of marking up or down the price when it suited the purposes of those who set up the system in the first place.

Naturally, this deal was so unpopular with Ukrainians—who felt cheated at getting sold gas at hiked-up prices—that Ukraine’s parliament voted against the deal, albeit it ended up being a nonbinding vote and the agreement went ahead anyway. This arrangement would last from 2006 through early 2009, when another dispute derailed it.

A Page-Manafort Connection Through Gazprom, RAO UES, Firtash, & Mogilevich?

It is important here to note that Carter Page’s tenure at Merrill Lynch was from 2004-2007; the only two companies his aforementioned current bio mentions in relation to this tenure are Gazprom and RAO EUS, claiming that he was an advisor on “key transactions” of theirs; it is hard to imagine transactions more “key” than those involving gas being transported from Central Asia and Russia to Ukraine and Europe and being sold to both, than the creation of RUE, than RAO’s subsequent entry into the Gazprom/Firtash/Ukraine scheme; if Page is telling the truth about his role, it is inconceivable—considering that he advised both Gazprom and RAO—that he would not be aware of what was going on.

However, Julia Ioffe’s profile of Page raises important questions about whether Page is exaggerating his role, and is filled with anecdotes from people knowledgeable about these types of deals who had never heard of Page and people who did suggesting he was actually a nobody (though the veracity of their claims are unverifiable as well, some perhaps being of the sour-grapes variety, others perhaps not wanting information on him to get out, others saying nothing to confirm that they had actually worked closely or directly alongside Page); maybe Page himself deliberately kept a low profile, staying under the radar purposefully. Without a more formal investigation, it is impossible to know what the full picture is; even if Page exaggerated his role, if he was talking to people at both Gazprom and RAO at this time—even if his discussions were and interactions may have been more informal than formal (he was apparently often tasked with meeting and greeting, setting up meetings and seeing them through)—it is certainly a realistic possibility that he still knew a lot and performed an advisory role, one that was perhaps unknown by his colleagues at Merrill.

Finally, (and the author of the article the reader is currently reading raised this possibility at the end of July) if he knew what was going on and was involved, there is certainly a possibility of interest being piqued if he came to know that another American in Manafort was involved on the other side of these deals, and that interest could have led to him making contact, perhaps even coordinating, with Manafort. The reverse is also true of Manafort reaching out to Page.

This is admittedly speculative, but a real possibility nonetheless, and is certainly not one bit less speculative than an enormous amount of discussion and reporting on the e-mail/server situation with Hillary Clinton. The questions about a possible Manafort and Page link deserve more official scrutiny and need to be answered through a formal investigation because it is clear that those in question have no intention of talking.

Criminal Scheme #1: Part II: Manafort & Putin Allies Use Dirty Gas Money to Prep Yanukovych Comeback

Russian Government

As for the dispute that derailed the 2006 gas deal, the foundations were laid with the popularly unpopular 2006 deal itself. 

A former prime minister and gas tycoon in her own right and a co-leader of the Orange Revolution, Yulia Tymoshenko, rose to become prime minister again in December 2007, and it was clear that she was on a mission to drive out Russian domination of the whole gas system and push against Russian influence in Ukraine overall: this meant taking on Firtash, the Russian mafia, and RUE. 

The first step was to get rid of the UkrGazEnergo entity run by RUE and Naftogaz, but then Tymoshenko set her sights on taking RUE and Firtash out of the loop, an admittedly more ambitious step, which lead to a series of hostile exchanges between Russia and Ukraine. But in October of 2008, Tymoshenko finally worked out a deal with Putin to remove RUE from Ukrainian gas deals, but they were subsequently unable to agree on pricing, leading to another shutdown on the part of Russia of gas going into Ukraine, and by extension, most of Europe, for almost three weeks in January. But on January 19th a long-term, ten-year agreement was reached, and only a few days later normal flows were restored, much to the relief of not only Ukraine, but also Europe, as it was the middle of winter; additionally, the parties agreed to take future disputes to arbitration in an international commercial dispute court in Stockholm, Sweden.

If it seemed the players of Team Putin gave up too easily on having RUE taken out of the game, they had other plans in motion to counter Tymoshenko’s effort to limit Russian influence in Ukrainian politics.

Criminal Scheme #2: Manafort Key Agent in Laundering Dirty Gas Money to U.S. During Crackdown

Even before Putin agreed to let Tymoshenko kill RUE, his agents—including Firtash, Mogilevich, and Yanukovych (the latter with Manafort acting as his right-hand man)—were already putting in place plans to go around and escape her efforts; some of these involved setting up a fake U.S. investment fund that was initially capitalized with $100 million; Firtash (acting on behalf of himself and Mogilevich) paid Manafort and his people—including Rick Gates—$1.5 million to handle the money. The main purpose of said fund was to act as a conduit to launder money from the Firtash/Mogilevich gas dealings that were being scrutinized by the Tymoshenko government.

Among the various fraudulent deals they went into was one for $895 million for the site of the famous Drake Hotel on Park Avenue in New York, with Firtash wiring $25 million towards the project to make it look legitimate, and a further $25 million was later laundered through the project, but rather than truly move forward and apply the money to the project, the Drake property was never actually purchased: the deal, like their other deals, never closed and eventually fell through after many third parties had spent a lot of time and money trying to close it out and after many employees were not paid, but not before Manafort, Firtash, Mogilevich, Yanukovych, and their allies were able to keep substantial funds away from the prying eyes of Tymoshenko and Ukrainian authorities during crucial periods of her time as prime minister.

Unfortunately for Firtash, Mogilevich, and their backers, unlike money, natural gas is not something that can be laundered: in early 2009, Tymoshenko orchestrated a seizure by Ukraine’s own state-run Naftogaz—allowed under the agreement she made with Putin—of 11 billion cubic meters of gas from RUE’s gas stockpiles, a quantity worth billions of dollars at the time; Timoshenko had effectively cut out the middlemen who had been hiking up prices and using those profits to poison and pollute Ukrainian politics for Putin’s plans. 

Playing a longer-term game, Firtash initiated a lengthy arbitration process through Stockholm…

Unfortunately for Tymoshenko, though she had risen to be Prime Minister late in 2007, in that election and even in the prior 2006 parliamentary elections, Manafort had groomed Yanukovych’s Party of Regions into a party that campaigned using modern, highly effective techniques and tactics; in both elections, the Party ended up having the most seats in parliament of any single party by significant margins, but ended up being in the opposition because of alliances made between Tymoshenko’s bloc and other parties. Of course, Manafort and The Party of Regions were operating with a gigantic advantage: the enormous amount of money flowing from the massive gas scam. All this meant that Yanukovych’s opposition was certainly within striking distance of taking over the government, and that even by 2006 Manafort and the gas scheme had already achieved great success in rehabilitating Yanukovych and his party and in making them together a smoother political machine with more power and influence.

The distance would close, and that strike would happen, in 2010.

Uniting Criminal Schemes #1 and #2: the Downfall of Tymoshenko and Setting the Stage for War

Early in 2010, Yanukovych won the presidential race (with a lot of money from Firtash, who had made over $3 billion from these crooked gas deals), defeating Tymoshenko in a runoff election, the culmination of over five years of work with Manafort and the whole gas scheme crew. Not long after, Tymoshenko lost her position as prime minister in a vote of no-confidence. Meanwhile, in the wake of his victory, Yanukovych worked to undo many of the Orange Revolution reforms, curbing democratic freedoms in areas ranging from the courts to the press. Most notably, in December, 2010, Tymoshenko was retroactively charged with abusing her power during her recent stint as prime minister, and, after a widely condemned politically-motivated show trial, was sentenced to prison in October 2011. 

Manafort and Gates actually lobbied American lawmakers on behalf of Yanukovych’s government from 2012-2014, defending the imprisonment of Tymoshenko and trying to discredit her, as well as trying to improve the image of their client and his government; they did this without disclosing their lobbying activities as required by U.S. law. Incidentally, in these efforts, they utilized the services of two DC lobbying firms, including Podesta Group Inc., run by the brother of Hillary Clinton’s current Campaign Chairman, John Podesta (the day after this information was made public in mid-August, 2016, Manafort resigned from the Trump campaign during a week in which his role had already been eclipsed by the addition of Kellyanne Conway and extreme-right-wing Breitbart News’ Stephen Bannon to run the Trump campaign; it is unclear if Gates also resigned or stayed on board, and the Trump campaign has refused to clarify). 

For his part, Firtash also got some $3 billion in gas assets back which had been seized by Tymoshenko’s government at the arbitration court in Sweden, as once Yanukovych was in power, Ukraine and Firtash essentially became the same party in the case, with Ukraine’s lawyers dropping opposition to Firtash’s case and happy to see $3 billion in gas go from the ownership of the Ukrainian people back to Firtash; it was clear in this matterthat the Yanukovych government was willing to fight for the interests of Putin and Firtash, but not its own people; without Ukraine’s representatives making a case, the court simply sided with Firtash in June of 2010. 

Firtash also got his aforementioned credit from Putin’s bankers not long after Yanukovych’s victory, specifically some $11 billion in credit from a consortium of banks arranged by Gazprombank, the flagship banking arm of Gazprom (the corruption is so blatant that the companies apparently do not care that their names announce it to the whole world); Gazprombank would not disclose which other banks were part of this arrangement, but by itself it lent him $2.2 billion, the largest possible amount under Russian law and almost one-quarter of the bank’s total capital, making him Gazprombank’s single largest individual borrower; Firtash used this expand his holdings (especially in the chemical and fertilizer industries) and power in Ukraine, all while staying close to Yanukovych. These moves actually made him the fifth-biggest fertilizer maker in Europe and helped him establish relationships with politicians throughout Europe; when reporters asked him where all the money came from to enable him to do all this, he replied: “It’s a secret.” From January 2011 on, Firtash was again buying Gazprom gas at a discount through shady offshore front companies, then selling it back at a higher price to his new assets, to the tune of billions in questionable profits, in something of a return to the old system before Tymoshenko had rocked the boat.

But the spirited Tymoshenko was not content to only be on defense during this period; during her trial and from prison, she filed a lawsuit in a U.S. District Court in Manhattan in April 2011; in it she names Firtash, Manafort, Mogilevich, Yanukovych, and their front companies as defendants, including initially RUE (but RUE was switched out to name the front companies that controlled it for Firtash and Mogilevich in later amended complaints); the suit accused them of setting up a series of racketeering, fraud, and money laundering enterprises in the U.S. designed to keep dirty gas money away from Ukrainian authorities when she was prime minister and that such activities resulted in material harm for her as they resulted in the downfall of her government and her being put on trial and in prison. After being rejected several times, a fourth and final version of the suit was rejected in September, 2015; while not ruling out criminal wrongdoing on the part of the defendants, the judge ruled that the higher-than-average standards for convictions under the RICO statute were not met; still, in the longer ruling rejecting the third complaint, it was noted that “the Court accepts as true the allegation that some of the money that passed through the U.S. Enterprise was ‘funneled back to Ukraine’ — albeit by unidentified actors — and somehow used as ‘financing’ for Tymoshenko’s ‘persecution.’”

Yes, after the 2010 election, everything was going perfectly in regards to Ukraine for Putin and his people working with Manafort, but, as in 2004, there was one thing that they did not plan well for, and it was the same thing that confounded Soviet leaders for decades and led to the downfall of the USSR: the people had other ideas. Many Ukrainians—especially younger ones—realized what was happening to their country, and were hopeful of better opportunities and a better future by having Ukraine orient itself more to the West, towards Europe and the U.S. and less corruption. Yanukovych sought to placate these desires by courting a major trade deal with the EU.

But in November 2013, protests erupted over Yanukovych’s about-face backing out of this long-desired EU trade deal in the face of a Russian counteroffer. In particular, protests erupted in a main square (the Maidan Square) in Kiev, Ukraine’s capital, protests that did not go away and came be known as the Euromaidan protests. After months of a tense situation, security forces shot and killed dozens of protesters on February 20th, 2014; in response to the government’s use of violence, the protests swelled exponentially, fueled by mass public outrage at the bloodshed, and by the end of February 22nd, the Ukrainian parliament had voted Yanukovych out of office, security forces had melted away in Kiev, protesters had taken over the capital, Tymoshenko was freed from prison (in a wheelchair, recovering from what she said was physical abuse and ill-treatment at the hands of her guards and authorities), and Yanukovych has fled the city; soon, he would flee the country to Russia with the help of none other than Putin; today, he is still wanted by Ukrainian authorities for the deaths of the protesters, but he hopes to one day return to Ukraine again as president, which he still contends he is legally. Firtash has fled Ukraine as well, and is also wanted by U.S. authorities for a separate racketeering and bribery scheme; he is living in a sort of exile in Austria.

Sergey Ponomarev for The New York Times

Putin had overplayed his hand: his royal straight flush of an ace of natural gas, a king in Yanukovych, a queen in Firtash, a jack in Mogilevich, and a 10 in Manafort did not anticipate a wild-card joker in the form of Yanukovych’s allies fleeing him; that joker lined up with four 2s consisting of many of the Ukrainian people to make five of a kind, the people beating Putin’s flush. But Putin had invested a lot into Ukraine over many years, into controlling its politics and energy sector through gas, Yanukovych, Mogilevich, Firtash, and Manafort: faced with his whole house of cards collapsing in on itself in the face of popular resistance, and with a government hostile to him and his intentions once again in place after a decade of effort designed to restore and maintain Russian hegemony over Ukraine, Putin went to Plan B: the dismemberment of Ukraine and war.

Which is exactly where the situation is today (and, of course, gas is in the middle of the conflict).

Criminal Scheme #3: Trump Manhattan SoHo Deal

At the same time this was all going on in Ukraine and on Park Avenue in New York, Donald Trump spent years working on a project involving the famous SoHo property in Manhattan. Trump’s point man on this deal? Felix Sater, the son of an alleged mob captain of Mogilevich’s mafia operation; the offices of Bayrock, Sater’s real estate company, were in Trump Tower itself. 

Sater, a man with a violent past, had himself previously been caught up in an elaborate 1990s $41 million stock fraud scheme on Wall Street that had used the Russian mob to launder money at a time when Mogilevich was active in large-scale stock fraud and laundering in the U.S. and Canada. Sater ended up assisting U.S. authorities for years, even on CIA-related national security issues involving missile purchases in either Afghanistan or Russia, and the details on all this remains a mystery: his operations with the government remain secret and his file from the Wall Street fraud case remains sealed, and was sealed at the time, interestingly enough, by then-U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, Loretta Lynch, currently the U.S. Attorney General. In fact, the whole case was and remains sealed, so there is also virtually no information on the specifics of the Russian mafia’s activities in the Wall Street scam, but there is a reasonably good chance or even higher that Mogilevich was involved since he was already such a major figure in the Russian mob at this point, was actively pursuing similar schemes in the U.S. at the time, and may have had a connection to his alleged old capo in Sater.

As for Trump’s SoHo deal, this was a time when Trump was aggressively courting Russian business, and Sater had other business dealings with Trump before and after the SoHo deal, even showing Trump’s kids around in Moscow. It turns out that a significant portion of the deal’s Sater-facilitated financing—some $50 million into it and three other projects—came from a firm in Iceland—FL Group—linked to the Panama Papers revelations and one widely known as a hub for the money of Russians “in favor with Putin;” considering Sater paved the way for this investment, it is hardly unreasonable to assume that there is a high probability that this money came from those Russians. Furthermore, the SoHo deal was structured to cheat the U.S. government out of tens of millions in taxes. 

In the end, the deal went terribly for Trump, who was sued for fraud—his children Eric and Ivanka had inflated the level of interest in order to attract buyers—and in a 2011 settlement, he refunded 90% of the deposits on the building’s condos. None of this stopped Sater from being brought into the Trump Organization as a “Senior Advisor to Donald Trump” even after Trump was made aware of Sater’s criminal past. Circumstantial evidence points to Sater still being connected to the Russian mafia Trump and has lied repeatedly about his relationship with Sater in an attempt to falsely minimize it (either that or his memory is terrible).

One must wonder why likely Russian investors were so eager to invest $50 million in this deal, and if it was an excuse to launder money, rather than an actual investment, as was the case with the Park Avenue deal involving Manafort & Co.

Most recently, Sater donated the maximum amount allowed to Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.

Putting the Pieces Together: Not a Pretty Picture

It is also crucial to note that the whole Russian operation in Ukraine—using Russia’s natural resources, deals related to them, and the profits from selling them to dominate and corrupt political elites of neighboring and other countries along with hacking and (mis/dis)information operations—is hardly unique to Ukraine; Putin is trying to do much the same thing throughout Europe, and if he is trying to do this by gaining influence over a U.S presidential candidate—in this case Donald Trump—through agents like Manafort, Gates, Page, and/or others, this would simply be current Russian standard operating procedure for how it spreads its power throughout the world in the era of Putin; such hybrid warfare and “Cold War”-type or non-hot warfare being directed at America should not only not surprise Americans, it should be expected.

In the end, Manafort and Gates made millions off the activities mentioned here (e.g., hand-written records from the office of Yanukovych’s Party of Regions show the Party had set aside payments totaling $12.7 million specifically for Manafort from 2007-2012 alone), profiting to an obscene degree all while helping to weaken and corrupt democracy as well as major international energy deals, to undermine U.S. interests, to help Putin and his allies profit enormously, to help Russia dominate Ukraine. The culmination of their work for over a decade can be seen in the first war on European soil in two decades. And it was this resume which earned them spots on Trump’s campaign as he sought to become the leader of the free world. For some time it even seemed Manafort had more influence on Trump than anyone whose last name was not Trump. 

Less is known about Gates and his role, but he was important enough to be trusted with the vetting of Melania Trump’s Republican National Convention speech—Donald Trump’s wife’s introduction to the nation as a whole—a task at which he famously failed, and failed miserably. 

What is known about Page is that he was one of only five foreign policy advisors Trump could actually name in a Washington Post interview, suggesting his influence on Trump was far from insignificant. As his relationships with important Russians are being looked into by the U.S. government—despite questions of how serious his role was at Merrill and how deep his ties to Gazprom and RAO actually were—to simply dismiss him as being a charade would be premature, indeed. What is certain is that questions about his role remain, questions which need to be answered, especially in light of his incredibly anti-American, pro-Russian views that could just as easily be coming from Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov or a “pundit” on RT. 

Manafort and Gates have plenty of other questionable dealings, including one particularly scandalous piece of drama with a Russian oligarch (Oleg Deripaska) featured in the Panama papers revelations and close to Putin. There are at least two U.S. government inquiries into Manafort and one into Page, and Trump associate and Republican political operative Roger Stone is being investigated by the FBI for his ties to WikiLeaks and its founder Julian Assange, who have questionable ties to Russia and who the whole world knows is receiving information stolen by Russian government hacks related to Clinton, Podesta, and the Democratic party. There are also other Trump campaign staff and/or associates with questionable ties to Russia: Michael Caputo and retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, and one American ex-spy alleges a plot by the Kremlin to co-opt Trump against the backdrop of all this.

*****

Information on all of these incidents, people, and connections have been available for some time, but parts of it have not been reported on in the context of this election year and Donald Trump. The new analysis presented here is the first show A.) that the virtual godfather of the Russian mafia, Semion Mogilevich, links during the same time period the triumvirate of 1.)Trump’s criminal SoHo deal run by Felix Sater (and this article being the first to point out that Sater is), alleged Mogilevich’s capo’s son and a likely associate of Mogilevich himself, 2.) the criminal laundering scheme in New York for which Tymoshenko sued Mogilevich, Manafort, Firtash, Yanukovych, et al., and 3.) the whole Putin-orchestrated Russian scheme to dominate Ukraine over the last decade and then some, to put Yanukovych and his Party of Regions in power, a scheme run by Manafort, Firtash, and Mogilevich, of which the second scheme was a part, and is also B.) the first to raise the very possibility of a link between Manafort and Page as part of the overall Ukraine gas operation, as Page claims he was advisor to not only Gazprom but also—as first pointed out here—RAO UES at the time of a major deal in which both companies were key players and that was part of the just-mentioned giant Eurasian gas scheme designed to help Putin control Ukraine.

Added onto the number of other well-reported connections, relationships, deals, investments, trips, and associations—both direct and indirect—between Donald Trump, his family, multiple close associates, campaign surrogates, and multiple people directly part of his campaign (all the way up to and including his Campaign Chairman for the second half of the primaries through Trump’s winning the nomination, the Republican National Convention, and beyond: Paul Manafort, the man who got Trump across the finish line to put him within striking distance of the White House) on one side and Vladimir Putin, Russian and Ukrainian business oligarchs close to Putin, Ukrainian politicians corrupted by and/or allied with Putin all the way up to Ukraine’s presidency, and the Russian mafia and associates of it on the other hand, the new information presented here means there are enough pieces of a puzzle being put together that there is now by far the sharpest, clearest picture of the overlapping worlds of Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin that has been reported to date.

Yes, they may be two pictures, but the boundaries between each are blended into each other. FBI investigators recently announced that they did not suspect a direct link or an improper relationship between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin themselves, so the least likely problematic situation—that Donald Trump himself was a willing Manchurian Candidate who had willingly consented to be Putin’s puppet—can almost certainly be ruled out, but the cause for serious, unprecedented concern hardly begins or ends with that scenario.

After all, with this new analysis, one can now tie the de facto head of the Russian mafia—Mogilevich—to Trump through Sater on that SoHo deal, and the financing that came through the Icelandic firm for that project has a good chance of having come from Putin-linked business oligarchs. And some of these oligarchs could very well be tied to the giant Eurasian gas scheme—in which Gazprom and RAO are key players and both of which Carter Page was advising at this time—that Putin uses as a tool of domination, where Mogilevich works hand in hand with Firtash and Firtash works hand in hand with Manafort and Yanukovych.

And Manafort, Gates, and Page all ended up on the Trump campaign.

Possibly giving a huge assist to Putin’s grand scheme? The American people—who seem not to care enough about possible Russian interference in their election—the American news media—which seems to far prefer parsing through every sentence and word of every Clinton-related e-mail, rather than examine what could be a very real plot to influence a major-party candidate to have more pro-Russian positions that has ever before been conceivable in a presidential election—and the Republican Party—which seems generally only too happy to be silent on this since it is playing out to the benefit of its candidate—are all failing to do their part to shine a giant spotlight on this issue, far more an issue of national security than anything involving Hillary Clinton’s e-mails ever was.

“Questions: Questions That Need Answers”

Individually, none of these things would be particularly damning. A couple might raise eyebrows. But this many connections that go this deep and overlap both with the people involved and the times during which they occurred should set off nuclear alarms if the subject is a major-party candidate and a major-party nominee for the U.S. presidency who is closer than many past candidates at having a shot to actually win. Even more than causing concern and worry, the facts reported here raise immensely important questions that intensely need clear and immediate answers from not only the Trump campaign and Trump himself, but also from the news media and robust federal investigators, namely:

• Who advised Donald Trump to take the positions he has on Russia, Putin, Ukraine, NATO, Syria, etc.?
• How exactly did Manafort, Gates, and Page come to be involved in the Trump campaign? (In Julia Ioffe’s account of Page—the most exhaustive yet—multiple answers were been given and none have been confirmed but people sure seemed angry about being asked about him)
• Is Trump getting information from Russian propaganda outlets masquerading as news—as this report suggests—and if so, who is feeding him this information?
• Regardless of the possibility of any recent possible payments/arrangements that could have been made between the Kremlin and/or Kremlin-linked sources and Manafort, Page, Gates, and others, can people like Manafort and Gates—who have made millions working on behalf of Russian interests and someone like Page who has a long relationship with, and is apparently still an enthusiastic investor in, an entity like the Russian majority-state-owned and Putin dominated Gazprom—be trusted to be American political advisors, or do past dealings like the ones in which they engaged make them a national security threat and/or a liability capable of being manipulated/utilized by hostile foreign governments? If so, how can the U.S. better guard itself from infiltration by American citizens working on behalf of foreign powers, agents, or interests? (This election cycle it can sadly yet definitively be said that the Fourth Estate of the news media cannot be trusted to shine a bright enough spotlight for long-enough to make this something that disqualifies)
• Is Rick Gates still with the Trump campaign, and is he still being investigated along with Manafort?
• Is anyone else tied to Trump under investigation for matters pertaining to Russia?
• What do Trump’s lifelong tax returns show in relation to Russia, Russian oligarchs tied to Putin, and companies known for hosting their money and/or laundering their money?
• Was there any effort by Russian oligarchs and Sater to launder money through Trump’s SoHo deal, and were there any other reasons, if Russian money was definitely involved, that they wanted to invest money into Trump? If Russian money is definitely involved, whose money was it and where did they get it from? Were they involved in the giant gas scheme, directly or indirectly?
• What was the role Merrill Lynch—an American company—played for Gazprom and RAO when they were engaged in highly illegal activities that undermined American interests in Ukraine and destroyed democracy there, and what exactly did Page do while he was there?
• Finally, and perhaps most important: what did Trump personally know about the pasts of Manafort, Gates, and Page?

*****

Conclusion: Trump Has Terrible Judgement in Selecting Associates

Especially for a candidate with no previous political background, the two most important decisions such a candidate can make during a campaign are the selection of a vice presidential candidate and the selection of a campaign manager, followed by selections of other senior staff. For a candidate who repeatedly claims he will surround himself with “the best people,” the selection of Paul Manafort alone raises a deeply troubling doubt about Trump’s competence in choosing his personnel. Either Trump knew about Manafort’s corrupt past—in part or in full—or he did not know—in part or in full; either situation shows that he cannot be trusted to choose people to be in his closest of inner circles without that are clean, either because this does not bother him or he is too lazy or too incompetent to properly vet.

NBC

And all the relationships and ties and dealings all have too much in common taken together to be mere coincidence. As Trump is fond of saying, “there’s somethin’ going on,” and it is imperative that Americans know exactly what is going on when it comes to Trump, Putin, and all their little men’s interactions with each other. So far, Trump and his people have stonewalled all attempts to clarify these matters, and Manafort, Gates, and Page are nowhere to be found. The American people, news media, and government must demand answers, and demand them now.

Time is running out. Get to it.

Correction appended: this article earlier misstated that as part of the RAO/Ukraine power deal, RUE would buy gas from UkrGazEnergo that UkrGazEnergo had already sold to Naftogaz and sell it to Ukrainian powerplants.  It was also updated to note the alleged nature of Sater’s Father’s ties to Mogilevich.

© 2016 Brian E. Frydenborg all rights reserved, no republication without permission, attributed quotations welcome

If you appreciate Brian’s unique content, you can support him and his work by donating here. 

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*****

A close look at the tangled web of relationships involving Trump, his Campaign Chairman Paul Manafort, his campaign in general, Putin, Russia, and WikiLeaks in light of the DNC and Clinton-aimed related hacking is not reassuring. Trump is fond of using the phrase: “There’s something going on!” when he wants to imply a scandal without going into detail. Well, “There’s something going on” here and we will go into detail in this in-depth special report, more than any single article you will find anywhere, period. Here is the one article to read on Trump, Putin, the Russian hacks, and political cyberwarfare in election 2016.

January 19th, 2019. Originally published on LinkedIn Pulse July 30/31, 2016, with major updates August 8 and 15, 2016

By Brian E. Frydenborg (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter @bfry1981 July 30th/31st

See major follow-up pieces: November 4, 2016 EXCLUSIVE: Top Trump Aides’ Deeper & Linked Roles in Putin Agenda Revealed; Russian Mafia Nexus With Trump & Aides Goes Back Years

March 28, 2017: Trump’s Russia & Mafia Dealings Expose Him As Fool or Criminal (Traitor?) or Both: Biggest Scandal in U.S. History, Too Many Ties to Be Nothing

July 27, 2017: Think You Know How Deep Trump-Russia Goes? Think Again: This Chart/Info Will Blow Your Mind

Also, see his related piece from December 7, 2016: The (First) Russo-American Cyberwar: How Obama Lost & Putin Won, Ensuring a Trump Victory

Andrew Harnik/AP; Reuters; The Washington Post

AMMAN — When it comes to President Obama, Donald Trump is very fond of saying “There’s something going on!”, often in relation to the president’s views on, responses to, and efforts to fight Islamic terrorism, and most recently, regarding his body language…

Well, we can return Donald the courtesy: there’s something going on with Trump, Putin, Russia, WikLeaks, the DNC/Clinton hack/reveal, and the 2016 election, up to an including the possibility of some kind of secret deal between Putin and Trump or between some of their people, though Putin acting without coordination with Trump’s campaign—trying to undermine America and weaken America’s global standing and its position with its allies, most notably NATO allies—is also very much a possibility; so is some sort of combination of these.

Maybe this sounds ridiculous, and it should. But the facts of Trump and his associates’ ties to Putin and Russia are what are most disturbing of all.

As with any complicated situation, the best place to begin is the beginning…

Trump’s Business History with Russia & Russians:There’s Something Going On!

Starting in the 1980s, Trump began both seeking business opportunities in Russia, including a 1987 trip to Moscow and Leningrad, and began taking money from Russian investors, to the degree that, by 2008 his, one of his sons, Donald Jr., was able to remark to a business conference that “Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our [the Trump Organization’s] assets,” and that “We see a lot of money pouring in from Russia.” Trump made numerous other trips to Russia since his first in 1987, as did Donald Jr., to pursue business interests there, exploring a variety of ventures. Trump’s business partners in one deal went to Moscow to sell Russian investors condos in 2006, and in 2008 Trump sold Russian oligarch Dmitry Rybolovlev a Palm Beach mansion for $95 million. Donald Jr. alone made over a half-dozen trips during the financial and sub-prime mortgage crises that began in 2008, when Russia was on the Trump Organization’s “A-list” for potential real estate deals.

Around this time, Trump also went into a deal structured to deprive the U.S. government of tens of millions of dollars in legitimate tax revenue that involved the construction and financing of Trump’s marquee SoHo property in New York City. The main partner driving this project was Bayrock, a company run by Tevfik Arif, a man who in the Soviet-era was an economic official for the USSR. His point man for the deal, Felix Sater, was a convicted Russian mobster; financing involved money from an Iceland firm known for drawing money from Putin-linked Russians (FL Group), as well as from a financier hailing from the former Soviet Republic of Kazakhstan named Alexander Mashkevich, who had been charged in a corruption case but settled in exchange for not having to admit any wrongdoing. Trump recalled only light, possible interaction with Sater, but evidence shows that Sater worked closely with Trump on the deal, as did Arif, who personally set trump up with Russian investors. The other major partner in the deal was from the former Soviet Republic of Georgia, one Tamir Sapir. 

The deal did not go well. Trump was sued for defrauding buyers of condo units in the SoHo because he and his children Ivanka and Eric had falsely inflated the level of buyer interest, and settled late in 2011, refunding 90% of $3.16 million in deposits on condos, though not admitting that he or the Trump Organization had done anything wrong. Arif was later arrested in Turkey, charged with running a prostitution ring from a yacht in a situation that involved Mashkevich, but was later acquitted, though the details of the case remain murky. As for Sater, he was later brought into the Trump Organization, being given a business card that named him a “Senior Advisor to Donald Trump,” years after Trump is publicly said to have been aware of his earlier criminal record.

Perhaps most famously, in 2013, Trump even brought his Miss Universe beauty pageant to Moscow, invited Russian President Vladimir to the pageant, and publicly speculated on a new friendship between himself and the Russian president should Putin attend; a meeting was set up for the two men, and though Putin canceled just before the meeting, he sent a Trump a traditional Russian gift with a “warm” written message. In attendance of both the pageant an afterparty at a Moscow nightclub were many of Russia’s notorious business oligarchs, mingling with Trump, discussing potential future deals.

He Said, He Said: There’s Something Going On!

Fast forward two years later, to when Trump announced his candidacy for the U.S. presidency, and Putin and Trump have had something of a lovefest: neither has opted to criticize the other, instead choosing to hurl compliments at each other from opposite sides of the world:

Trump on Putin:

Trump remarked last September that: “I will tell you that, in terms of leadership, he’s getting an “A” and our president is not doing so well.”

Trump also said: “I think that I would probably get along with him [Putin] very well. And I don’t think you’d be having the kind of problems that you’re having right now.”

Trump also released a statement praising Putin as “a man so highly respected within his own country and beyond” and that “I have always felt that Russia and the United States should be able to work well with each other towards defeating terrorism and restoring world peace, not to mention trade and all of the other benefits derived from mutual respect.”

When Putin said nice things about Trump, Trump said those compliments were an “honor.”

Trump also said he would not denounce Putin: “A guy calls me a genius, and I’m going to renounce?” and that “I’m not going to renounce him.”

Putin on Trump:

Putin recently said of Trump that “He is a bright and talented person without any doubt” and “an outstanding and talented personality.”

In response to Trump’s stated desire to improve U.S.-Russian relations, Putin remarked “What else can we do but to welcome it? Certainly, we welcome it.”

Putin also referred to Trump as “the absolute leader of the presidential race.”

When pushed on his compliments on Trump, Putin slyly doubled down and reiterated them.

The Russian Press on Trump

But it’s not just Putin saying nice things about Trump: Putin’s massive media propaganda machine now seems to have swung solidly behind Trump and his candidacy as well, lavishing praise on him across the boardwhile it clearly does not favor Clinton and demonizes her.

Putin’s choice in 2016 is clear: he dislikes Clinton and prefers Trump.

Trump’s Positions More Favorable to Russia than Any Other Candidate: There’s Something Going On!

In addition, Trump has put forward policies closer to the Kremlin’s policies than any other major candidate for the presidency. Notably:

Trump wants the U.S. to defer to Russia in Syria and let it “fight ISIS” there, and agreed with Putin’s backing of Syrian’s murderous President Bashar al-Assad.

Trump is against the U.S. taking a large role in helping Ukraine defend itself against Russian aggression, and his campaign people also aggressively saw to it that language calling for the U.S. government to supply arms to the Ukrainian government to help it defend itself against “Russia’s ongoing military aggression in Ukraine” and expressing American “admiration and support” for Ukraine in this struggle was removed from the 2016 Republican Party platform, shortly before the Republican National Convention, removing stances that virtually all Republican national security and foreign policy leaders shared; factoring in that the Trump campaign was pretty agnostic when it came to the platform in general, this is indeed curious (Trump’s people have distinctly avoided going into detailed or adequate explanations for this decision). Trump also just recently said at a press conference that he is considering lifting sanctions on Russia and recognizing its annexation of Crimea.

Trump also doesn’t think that there is enough evidence to blame Russia for the downing of MH17.

Trump defended Putin against accusations that he was behind the murders of numerous Russian journalists critical of Putin.

Most recently, Trump signaled less-than-enthusiastic, vague, and conditional support for NATO and has calling it “obsolete,” while the weakening of NATO is a chief aim of Putin.

*****

But ties to Russia in the Trump campaign don’t end with Trump and his family.

How Paul Manafort, Agent of Despots, Gave Ukraine to Putin, & Manafort’s Other Russian Ties: There’s Something Going On!

The Daily Beast

Trump’s Campaign Chairman, Paul Manafort, is a notorious spin doctor for Third World dictators, a leader of the “torturer’s lobby” who represented and lobbied for a true rogue’s gallery, including the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s (then Zaire’s) Mobutu Sese Seko, the Philippines’ Ferdinand Marcos, Somalia’s Siad Barre, Sani Abacha of Nigeria, and Kenya’s Daniel arap Moi; other clients include Jonas Savimbi, the leader of the Angolan human-rights-abusing rebel guerilla group UNITA, and the Kashmiri American Council: a front for the terrorist-dealing Pakistani government intelligence service ISI that had helped create the Taliban, among other nefarious dealings.

Manafort has also had dealings with Russian business oligarch and Putin ally Oleg Deripaska going back to 2005 on a project to help Montenegro secure independence from Serbia, a move that would help Deripaska economically but also advance Russian interests in extending Russian influence into Montenegro, which has coastline on the Mediterranean Sea. UPDATE 8/15: Another deal was later put together by Manafort and Deripaska using offshore accounts for almost $19 million, set up to launder money personally to Yanukovych’s and his closest associates to enable them to live like ostentatious royalty. This was the only deal the shell company they set up for it ever orchestrated.  Later, Deripaska claimed in 2014 in a Cayman Islands court that Manafort, along with Manafort partner Richard (“Rick”) Gates, took that almost $19 million that was supposed to be invested jointly with Deripaska, but which disappeared without a trace, much like Manafort did at the time; Deripaska, even with the aid of private investigators, was unable to track down Manafort in the years before today, when Manafort emerged to work for Donald Trump. Deripaska is still seeking the money, which he has asked to be returned for eight years running now. Gates also works for Trump’s presidential campaign, and, incidentally, it was Gates whose ultimate responsibility it was to vet and approve Melania Trump’s now infamously plagiarized speech. UPDATE 8/15: Deripaska has also been denied a U.S. entry visa by the State Department on suspicion of being linked to the Russian mob.

Perhaps the most intense story of Manafort’s saga are his business dealings in Ukraine. Manfort’s Ukrainian career officially began over a decade ago when Manafort arrived to serve the interests of Ukrainian billionaire Rinat Akhmetov, then Ukraine’s richest businessman. Akhmetov was a close ally of Viktor Yanukovych, then the country’s prime minister, who was a close ally of Vladimir Putin in a Ukraine whose political fault lines very much ran (and still run) along the ethnic Ukrainian and ethnic Russian divide within Ukraine, with Yanukovych allying with the ethnic Russian camp that feels strongly tied to Russia. Russian President Vladimir Putin in particular has a history of trying to manipulate, strong-arm, and dominate Ukrainian politics, with Yanukovych acting as key agent for advancing Russian interests in Ukraine.

Behind the scenes and unofficially, Manafort worked as a campaign consultant for Yanukovych, already surrounded by a cloud of corruption at this time, who was running for Ukraine’s presidency against Viktor Yushchenko in 2004; Yanukovych was running in part on a campaign to stay close with Russia, while Yushchenko was running in part on bringing Ukraine closer to the West. During the campaign, Yushchenko was even poisoned with dioxin and was incredibly lucky to live; the sitting president and Yanukovych colluded to falsify the election’s results, which in reality were a victory for Yushchenko, to hand the win to Yanukovych, who was quickly congratulated by Putin. 

But the people roared to the street and independent observers cried fraud, and the Orange Revolution began, in which the Ukrainian Supreme Court sided with Yushchenko, a redo of the election was ordered, and Yushchenko rode a people-powered revolution over the course of about a month to victory (much to Putin’s chagrin). Paul Manafort had worked on behalf of Yanukovych, against democracy, against the overall will of the Ukrainian people. 

But Manafort stuck around, helping to resurrect Yanukovych’s career over the course of the following years, sometimes working in direct opposition to express American interests and engineering Yanukovych’s 2010 comeback victory in Ukraine’s presidential election. Manafort even brought in Tad Devine, who would be one of the top senior staffers on Bernie Sanders’s 2016 presidential campaign, to aid with Yanukovych’s 2010 election campaign, among other people. Manafort also helped to shape the strategy of Yanukovych’s political party, the pro-Russian Party of Regions. UPDATE 8/15: Evidence from Ukraine has emerged that the Party of Regions set aside unreported payments for Manafort for $12.7 million from 2007-2012. The evidence comes from a series of secret handwritten accounting ledgers (the “black ledger”) detailing illegal dealings with political overtones and include Ukrainian political officials. Just for one six-month period in 2012, the payments to all parties reached $66 million. Said one former leader in the Party: “This was our cash…They had it on the table, stacks of money, and they had lists of who to pay.” Overall, Manafort seems to have been one of the main driving forces behind the overall political reversal in Ukraine and return of Yanukovych to power.

Concurrent with much of his work for Yanukovych, Manafort also linked up closely with Ukranian power-broker Dmitry Firtash, who worked closely with Semion (or Seymon) Mogilevich, a godfather of the Russian mafia. But, even more importantly, Firtash was one of Putin’s top agents in Ukraine: Russia’s state-owned gas giant, Gazprom, would sell Firtash huge amounts of gas at a discounted rate, who would then sell that gas to Ukraine for a sizable profit, profit that Firtash funneled to pro-Russian politicians in Ukraine, including—yes—Yanukovych. 

On top of this, Firtash used millions out of the billions he made from this scam to partner with Manafort and “a longtime Trump family aide” to hatch an elaborate business venture on prime real estate on New York’s Park Avenue, investing $25 million into the project in 2008; he also set up a $100 million investment fund, which Manafort and his associates were paid $1.5 million to run (that same year, Manafort was considered for the role of McCain’s campaign convention chair, but was not chosen because of these very relationships). This was at a time when Yulia Tymoshenko, who was a partner of Yushchenko during the Orange Revolution and was appointed as the Prime Minister under President Yushchenko, had herself recently returned to power again as Prime Minister, before Yanukovych’s 2010 comeback; Tymoshenko, who had first risen to prominence as a gas tycoon herself, moved to seize Firtash’s gas business assets and cut him out of the gas loop and thus cut off a source of Russian influence in Ukrainian politics. It should, thus, be no surprise that Firtash was suc enthusiastic a supporter of Yanukovych. Once Yanukovych came to power on the back of Manafort’s years of consulting and rehabilitating him, Tymoshenko was imprisoned as a result of a controversial, politically motivated trial (UPDATE 8/15: a trial and imprisonment that Manafort helped Yanukovych’s team publicly defend amid the controversy) while Firtash was awarded back $3 billion in gas assets, also reopening the Kremlin’s gas-scheme line to dominating Ukrainian politics at the expense of Ukrainian interests and sovereignty. In many ways, this set the stage for the 2014 Maidan protests that erupted into the current Ukrainian mess.

Tymoshenko could sense a money laundering scheme in that Park Avenue New York real estate deal, the end state of which never came to be and with much of the money going back to Ukraine, exactly what her government’s actions were trying to prevent; after she was imprisoned, she sued Firtash, Manafort, Mogilevich, and others in New York for racketeering whose proceeds had been used to persecute her, but the suit was dismissed on questions of procedure and jurisdiction; still, the U.S. District Court ruling acknowledged that foul play was indeed going on, that “the Court accepts as true the allegation that some of the money that passed through the U.S. Enterprise was ‘funneled back to Ukraine’ — albeit by unidentified actors — and somehow used as ‘financing’ for Tymoshenko’s ‘persecution.’” Manafort also helped Yanukovych’s team publicly defend its controversial prosecuction and imprisonment of Tymoshenko. (As for Firtash, there is currently a U.S. arrest warrant out for him on bribery charges, and as a result he is living in Austria in exile from Ukraine). 

As Yanukovych became ever closer to Putin and tried to steer Ukraine closer to Russia, Manafort’s role was kept quiet and confidentiality agreements were signed, and he profited handsomely from this work (UPDATE 8/15), further made clear by this new New York Times story showing at least $12.7 million in authorized payments. His role in Ukrainian politics over the last few years is even cloudier. UPDATE 8/15: Some of Manafort’s subordinates were still operating in Ukraine even in 2016, and no evidence has come to light that Manafort has formally closed up shop there. But what is clear is that, fed up with the stagnation, corruption, and cronyism of President Yanukovych’s government, hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians took to the streets early in 2014 after he went back on pledges to increase ties to the EU, culminating with Yanukovych fleeing the country with Russian help and a new, more pro-Western government being formed. In response, Yanukovych, in exile in Russia and facing charges in Ukraine, requested Putin intervene militarily in Ukraine. Russia soon invaded, annexed Ukraine’s Crimea region and directly and indirectly assisting separatist rebels in eastern parts of Ukraine, where a state of civil war still exists today.

None of the above lines up with Manafort’s terse explanations and contentions that he was working to push Ukraine to orient itself more democratically and more with Western interests.

Both before and after the seismic recent events in Ukraine, Manafort maintained minimal contacts with his American friends and colleagues and avoided responding to media inquiries; for years his location and activities were not known with specificity. One of these colleagues, Roger Stone, a former Nixon advisor and close confidante of Donald Trump, sent an email to other mutual colleagues in the midst Russia’s invasion and annexation of Crimea early in March 2014 titled “Where is Paul Manafort?” The e-mail then included some options for answers to this question: A.) “Was seen chauffeuring Yanukovych around Moscow,” B.) “Was seen loading gold bullion on an Army Transport plane from a remote airstrip outside Kiev and taking off seconds before a mob arrived at the site,” and C.) “Is playing Golf in Palm Beach.”

*****

If that was exhausting to go through, remember: that was just one person.

The Trump Campaign’s Additional Russian Relationships: There’s Something Going On!

Yes, there are others around Trump with ties to Russia.

Michael Caputo, a leader of Trump’s New York Republican primary campaign, lived in Russia and worked as political consultant there in 1990s, where he at least once butted heads with the U.S. State Department for working against U.S. interests there. When he came back to the U.S. at the end of the decade, he founded a PR firm and, through that firm, helped to lead an effort to improve the then-recently-newly-elected Russian President Vladimir Putin’s public image in the U.S. at a time when he was coming under criticism from the U.S. government for attacking free press in Russia. He has expressed regret for that work for Putin.

Then there is retired General and former Defense Intelligence Agency head Michael Flynn, a foreign policy advisor to Trump who gave an intense pep-rally-style speech at the recent Republican National Convention.  In December 2015, he sat near Putin at a Moscow dinner celebrating Russia Today (RT), the international Russian TV network and website funded by the Russian government that is a notorious anti-U.S. propaganda machineadvancing Putin’s agenda. His appearance raised eyebrows, and he was invited to address the dinner, and both RT and Flynn at first declined to answer if he was paid for his speech, though Flynn later deflectively and evasively confirmed that he was. Gen. Flynn has also been a repeat guest on RT’s programming. He is a true hawk when it comes to ISIS and Islamic extremist terrorism, and has issued blistering criticism of the Obama Administration’s counterterrorism strategy for not emphasizing the Islamic nature of the threat (to do so would actually be a very counterproductive move), among other reasons. His strong stance against Islamic terrorism may be a posture that he feels he shares with Putin, and Gen. Flynn is on record advocating closer U.S. ties with Russia, in particular on the issues of Syria and terrorism. August 8th update: interestingly, the Green Party’s candidate for president for 2016, Dr. Jill Stein, also attended the RT gala dinner and proudly advertised this fact on her campaign website, addressed an RT-organized panel before the dinner (begging the question if she was paid by RT for this), and sat at Putin’s table along with Gen. Flynn. She recently suggested Clinton could be worse than Trump and has also been featured heavily on RT, and while in Moscow she very pointedlyand extensively criticized U.S. foreign policy, “American exceptionalism” (similar to Putin’s views on this subject), and U.S. human rights abuses while only offer relatively very muted criticism on the same issues of Russia, if at all.

On to Carter Page, who is another Trump foreign policy advisor. Page used to be the head of Merrill Lynch’s Moscow branch for three years, beginning in 2004, helping to advise the Russian state-run gas behemoth Gazprom. Gazprom was active at this time in Firtash’s political laundering scheme, funneling money to pro-Russian politicians in Ukraine, and throughout this period Firtash was working with Paul Manafort, raising the possibility that Manafort and Page might have connected during this period, even worked together on the Gazprom scheme (such a possibility surely deserves investigative scrutiny). 

Today, Page is still an investor in Gazprom and attends its annual investor meeting, and seems to lament the effects of U.S. sanctions on Russia enacted in response to Putin’s invasive military moves in Ukraine. And just this month in Moscow, Page gave a speech heavily criticizing U.S. policy towards Russia that would have been completely in line with the editorial slant of RT, excoriating American “hypocrisy,” actions directed at regime change, and criticism of Russia for corruption, a corruption level that he opined was not any worse than corruption in the U.S. When asked by a Russian student if he really believed that America was a liberal democracy, Page noted with a smile that “I surround the word ‘liberal’ with quotes,” and that ”I tend to agree with you that it’s not always as liberal as it may seem,” concluding with an “I’m with you.”

Shortage of Big U.S. Investors for Trump = Opening for Russian Investment? There’s Something Going On!

Then there is the issue of Trump’s relationships with the banking industry.

Many major U.S. bank won’t lend to Trump anymore; after doing business with him throughout the 1980s and 1990s, today Wall St. banks have “pulled back in part due to frustration with his business practices but also because he moved away from real-estate projects that required financing, according to bank officials,” to quote The Wall Street Journal; these banks include Citigroup, J.P. Morgan Chase, and Morgan Stanley. Additionally, one Goldman Sachs executive noted that its people “know better than to pitch” any deals with the Trump name on them.

One of the banks with which Trump has one of his largest relationships is the German giant Deutsche Bank, which has loaned Trump billions ($2.5 billion in loans and $1 billion in loan guarantees to Trump/Trump-affiliated companies), but executives there, too, have found him difficult to deal with and the relationship has been rockier of late. Deutsche Bank, is, in fact, the only Wall Street bank of a larger scale that still loans to Trump, and overall, he owes “at least” $250 million to banks, mostly small banks.

But it should be noted that Deutsche Bank seems to have had a huge problem when it came to dealing with Russian transactions of an illegal or suspect nature: between 2012 and 2014, some $10 billion was found to have passed through Deutsche Bank from Russia fitting a “suspected money-laundering pattern” due to “systemic” failures of internal safeguards, and it was revealed that bank officials “ignored” or “dismissed” warning signs for a whole year. Included among the people whose money is being scrutinized are several close associates of Vladimir Putin, who, as the Panama Papers recently made abundantly clear (among other investigations), is hardly new to money laundering. The bank is currently under U.S. investigation. And, without access in recent years to major U.S. banks, the move by Trump to seek shadier investment from shadier sources, as with the SoHo deal, is not surprising, given Trump’s long history of flirting with and courting business with and in Russia and with Russians.

*****

Individually, these aspects might raise an eyebrow but not more. But all of this taken together? Is it possible “there’s something going on,” as Trump is fond of saying? It seem reasonable to believe that, yes, “there’s something going on.”

But wait, this is even without going into the hacking…

The Other Democratic E-mail Scandal: There’s Something Going On!

This mid-June, the Democratic National Committee (DNC)—the national leadership and braintrust of the Democratic Party—and the cybersecurity company CrowdStrike announced that two different groups of Russian hackers working for two different Russian government intelligence agencies had been successfully hacking the DNC’s servers. A week later, it was announced that the same Russians seemed to have penetrated the Clinton Foundation’s network. 

The first group planted spying software on DNC servers last summer in June, giving it full access to DNC communication passing through DNC servers for almost a whole year. The DNC eventually suspected it had been hacked and called in CrowdStrike early in May of this year to assess the situation. Hillary Clinton’s campaign headquarters in Brooklyn, NY, also seemed to have been attacked but without a clear picture as to if data was stolen. Crowdstrike was able to drive out the hackers from the DNC servers earlier that June. The DNC only seems to have had “standard cyberprotections” wholly incapable of protecting against focused and persistent hackers acting with the support of foreign governments and intelligence agencies. This first hacking group has been nicknamed Cozy Bear by CrowdStrike and is also known as APT 29, and seems to be the one that had previously hacked into unclassified e-mail systems of the White House and State Department; the cleansing process for the State Department infection resulted in a few shutdowns throughout 2014 and 2015, at the height of negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program and international sanctions. This group is tied to the F.S.B., the modern version of the K.G.B., from which Putin emerged years ago,and is thought to be the better of the two hacking groups. The other group, labeled Fancy Bear and also known as APT 28, apparently hacked the DNC this April; it is thought to be run by Russia’s military intelligence service, the G.R.U., and has hacked aerospace and military installations in the West (including in the U.S.), Japan, and South Korea. The two hacking groups do not appear to have coordinated their efforts. Among the many pieces of information stolen by the hackers was the DNC’s opposition research on Trump, stole in the second April hack.

The story basically faded from the public consciousness until a few days before the Democratic National Convention began and one day after the Republican National Convention ended; on that Friday, the quixotic activist organization known as WikiLeaks posted nearly 20,000 e-mails taken from the DNC servers. As is normal with WikiLeaks, the organization and its controversial founder and leader, Julian Assange, decline to offer any details on how they obtained the information, but experts suspect the Russian hackers were the ones who handed them over to WikiLeaks. The e-mails contained information that showed controversial hostility to Bernie Sanders and discussions as to how to put Sanders on the defensive on the part of seven DNC staffers, including some senior ones (one staffer whose comments were felt to be the most offensive offered an apology). While no evidence was found on the e-mails that demonstrated a concerted DNC policy of working actively against Sanders in a material way (as one old college friend summed up the incident on social media: “so, lemme get this straight: some staffers from a national political committee expressed personal political opinions on their work email? ok, gotcha.”), the revelations nevertheless led to a massive outrage, especially with Bernie Sanders’ supporters, a group already prone to conspiracy theories and victimized thinking and that often feeds off of outrage.

Almost lost in the scandal about the DNC’s impartiality coming into question was the issue of the timing of the leaks and who orchestrated then. Obviously, releasing this information the day after Trump’s Republican National Convention ended and just at the beginning of the weekend before Clinton’s Democratic National Convention is designed to provide maximum benefit to Donald Trump and the Republican Party while inflicting massive harm and embarrassment upon Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party. Especially after the embarrassment and disorganization of the divided and divisive Republican National Convention, Clinton and the Democrats were poised to begin their convention in a particularly strong position; with the e-mail leak dominating the headlines all weekend and even Monday as the Democrats’ convention began, focus was driven away from Clinton’s announcement of Virginia Senator Tim Kaine and Bernie Sanders supporters began to stew in a rage that fomented and grew and boiled over the weekend and on Monday before the evening’s Convention proceedings. 

Because of the leak, the Democratic Party’s raw wound was reopened and was in danger of becoming seriously infected at the very moment when it was the most important time to project Party unity. The scandal threatened to blow up and ruin the Democratic National Convention, and possibly Hillary Clinton’s chances of winning the presidency, and only some furious and frantic last-minute scrambling on the part of both Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton, as well as their campaigns and the staff of the DNC, including the new interim DNC Chairwoman Donna Brazile who had taken over only on Monday, averted what could have been a historic disaster for Clinton.

The first and only tangible casualty thus far was DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a congresswoman from Florida, who tenure of late was marred by difficulty; this DNC e-mail leak was the straw that broke the proverbial camel’s back, and Sunday, not even 48 hours after the WikiLeaks release and on the day before the Convention, it was announced that she would be stepping down from her position at the DNC, but only after the Convention. This did little to assuage the concerns of Democrats, the Clinton campaign, and especially Bernie Sanders supporters, especially as Wasserman Schultz made clear she still planned to gavel-in and gavel-out the Convention and publicly address it while in session. 

Reality seemed to set in Monday, when both Rep. Wasserman Schultz and Sen. Bernie Sanders were booed loudly and continuously during dayime meetings, making clear the reality that more had to be done. Within a few hours, all talk of Rep. Wasserman Schultz gaveling and appearing at the convention disappeared and she agreed to stay away from the Convention; as a face-saving gesture for her long years of hard work on behalf of the Democratic Party, the Clinton campaign named her an honorary chair of the campaign’s “50-state program,” a move that failed to placate some and was seen by many in and of itself as a controversial mistake. Only deft political maneuvering, both behind the scenes and on the convention floor during the actual convention throughout the convention, up to and including Clinton’s culminating acceptance speech on Thursday, prevented far worse damage that might have resulted in a spectacle of sustained chaos and potentially ruined the Convention and Clinton’s candidacy, as the capacity of Bernie Sanders supporters for disruption had been well demonstrated several months earlier at Nevada’s Democratic Convention, which was closed out amid security forcing an end to the events as concerns for safety passed a red line. 

Also on Monday as the Democratic National Convention’s first day unfolded, it was learned that government investigators had tried to warn the DNC of a possible intrusion months before the DNC took substantive action to address it, raising questions as to how competently the hacking problem was handled, and that the FBI was now investigating the hack.

In just a short period of time, WikiLeaks was able to do real damage to the Democratic Party, and nearly succeeded in doing far more damage. Was this all in the name transparency and fairness?

Questioning WikiLeaks’ Motives: There’s Something Going On!

As for WikiLeaks, its leader Julian Assange has made it abundantly clear that he harbors a great animus, both personal and professional, for Clinton, describing her and her policies in strident language—saying that a vote for Clinton is “a vote for endless, stupid war”—and making it clear that he deliberately timed the release of the DNC e-mails just before the Democratic National Convention to harm Clinton and her candidacy. 

But beyond that, there are serious questions as to if WikiLeaks has a relationship with the Russian government. For starters, after Assange took up residence in the Ecuadorian Embassy to the UK in London to avoid arrest, the state-funded Russia Today (RT) network gave Assange a TV show for a time, which was extremely critical of the U.S. even as it praised the founder of Hezbollah. In one of this show’s episodes, Assange quite hypocritically supported the crackdown on Ecuador’s free media by the Ecuadorian president, who is increasing his ties to Russia. There was also an incident that saw documents in the possession of WikiLeaks given by a WikiLeaks staffer to the government of the pro-Putin dictator of Belarus, which it used to arrest and suppress Belarusian pro-democracy activists. Since Assange was close to that staffer, that staffer apparently was not criticized or reprimanded for this act. 

It may very be that WikiLeaks is unwittingly playing into serving Russia’s interests, rather than in a spirit of collusion, but the picture is murky and either way, it does not look good; either way, it seems Russia has “weaponized” WikiLeaks for its own anti-American purposes. But this also fits what seems to be Assange’s agenda, which is more anti-American and anti-Western than anything else; Assange even criticized the Panama Papers leaks, which detailed a lot of embarrassing information about Putin’s private fortune and those of Russian elites, as serving American interests. Assange had promised to reveal information embarrassing for and damaging to Russia in 2010, but never did (perhaps because of thinly veiled F.S.B. threats from Russia? Perhaps he’s been intimidated and/or co-opted into serving Russian interests? We may never know for sure. Notably, he threatened to release that info before he was given his Russian TV show). Oh, and contrary to the many other sources agreeing that Russia is behind the DNC hacking, Assange claims there is “no proof” of that…

On a disturbing side note, the WikiLeaks DNC release was not very discriminating, including Social Security and credit card numbers of DNC donors, certainly violating their right to privacy, with even Edward Snowden (who has been helped greatly by WikiLeaks, especially in his getting asylum in Russia) criticizing this aspect of the leak.

The DNC Hacks: Putin Penetration? There’s Something Going On!

As the political drama around the hacks faded away with the fading away of Debbie Wasserman Schultz, more oxygen was given to the other aspects of the hack, which pundits seemed to miss the significance of at first, but slowly (at least in terms of a 2016 24-hour news cycle) it began to dawn on them: an outside force was trying to alter the outcome of a U.S. election, tipping the scales in favor of Donald Trump and against Hillary Clinton, in a clear, substantive, and indisputable way.

So people started caring again about who had hacked the DNC servers.

Wait, didn’t people say that it was the Russian government? Does that mean Russia and Putin are messing with an American election? Is this cyberwarfare??

At first, that suggestion seemed conspiratorial and the media and public seemed reluctant to embrace it, as if that narrative was perhaps mostly a plot by Democrats to divert attention away from their internal scandal, another “he said/she said” in a long war of words between Trump and Clinton. Maybe the delay was in part because the story broke over the weekend, maybe it just seemed too fantastical for people to take seriously. But as expert opinion began weighing in, and it seemed to be consistently unanimous when it came to those with direct knowledge of the hack, it became clear that it is very likely that Russia and Putin aremessing with the current U.S. election, with American intelligence reaching a consensus with “high confidence” that Russia was the culprit of the crime. 

It could be that they are out “to stir the pot” and destabilize the U.S. political landscape; it could also be that they are trying to get Donald Trump elected (many would argue that that itself is tantamount to destabilization).

How are we almost certain it’s Russia?

The details pointing to Russia are numerous and clear. The initial findings by CrowdStrike, citing the Russian government-backed hacking groups APT 28 and APT 29, were later confirmed by two other private-sector cybersecurity firms. Relative to other similar cases, the evidence linking the hacking to these two groups was significantly more compelling. Apt 28 often uses a tactic of setting up a domain spelled very similarly to the actual domain in a bid to get users to unknowingly disclose their usernames and passwords. For the DNC hack, APT created misdepatrement.com (as opposed to misdepartment.com), to confuse staff at MIS Department, which managed the DNC’s network. And previous hacks by the group has used the same IP address and malware software, a discovery that helped to point to patterns. This process “sometimes included unique security or encryption keys, a kind of digital fingerprint,” a fingerprint found in other significant attacks, which both government intelligence and private sector experts believe are also tied to APT 28. 

Both hacking groups use also approaches and technology “consistent with nation-state level capabilities” and choose foreign military entities and military contractors in a way that “closely mirrors the strategic interests of the Russian government,” according to a CrowdStrike report and echoed by other reports. Another firm noted that the hackers seemed to operate during the Moscow and St. Petersburg time zone business hours and to take holidays during official Russian holidays.

Within on day of the DNC disclosing to The Washington Post in mid-June, a person styling himself Guccifer 2.0 began a WordPress blog and claimed that he, and only he, was behind the hack, and to back up his claim, he posted DNC documents on the blog and leaked others to the press and to WikiLeaks. He chose the name Guccifer to honor an imprisoned Romanian hacker of that same name, who earned; the original Guccifer claims to have hacked Clinton’s private e-mail server that has consumed American politics for the last year, but this claim has not been verified. However, we know Guccifer did hacked Clinton friend and confidante Sidney Blumenthal’s e-mail, which, in turn, revealed the existence of Clinton’s oft-criticized private e-mail server to congressional investigators in the first place.

Kind of crazy how all this ties together, right?

While Guccifer 2.0 claimed Russia had nothing to do with the hackings, his very actions provided investigators with evidence backing up the initial claims that Russia was behind the hackings: metadata from the information he posted had Russian digital signatures and showed that systems running on Russian language setups had accessed the files; one document had been modified by a user named Felix Edmundovich, the letters spelled out in Cyrillic and an obvious homage to Felix Edmundovich Dzerzhinsky, the founder of the Soviet Union’s secret police. This information was exposed by a researcher on security issues operating under the Twitter handle @pwnallthethings, who also exposed the fact that error messages in the documents were in Russian; all these imprints were made before WikiLeaks obtained the files. The aforementioned points were echoed by another analyst writing for Ars Technica soon after. 

Other telling evidence indicated that Guccifer 2.0 might be little more than a Russian public relations smoke-and-mirrors operation: Guccifer 2.0 made himself accessible to the media for interviews, a rarity for criminal hackers who tend to be paranoid of being caught and therefore reclusive; he strongly asserted that Russia had never penetrated the DNC, but that is something that he would be incapable of knowing as an independent hacker, as he claimed to be; he claimed to be Romanian, but then seemed unable to converse in Romanian without using only short statements and making repeated grammatical mistakes as noted by native Romanian speakers; metadata in his e-mails indicated he sent them from Russian networks, and some evidence even pointed to the use of the same or similar networks used by APT 28. It seems Guccifer 2.0 was concocted by Russian intelligence right after The Washington Post reported that DNC officials and investigators suspected Russia, a tactic of “deception and disinformation” or “denial and deception” that is standard operating procedure for Russia and codified officially in Russian military doctrine. A few such examples were noted in a just-released RAND report:

“Russian propagandists have been caught hiring actors to portray victims of manufactured atrocities or crimes for news reports (as was the case when Viktoria Schmidt pretended to have been attacked by Syrian refugees in Germany for Russia’s Zvezda TV network), or faking on-scene news reporting (as shown in a leaked video in which “reporter” Maria Katasonova is revealed to be in a darkened room with explosion sounds playing in the background rather than on a battlefield in Donetsk when a light is switched on during the recording).”

The Rand Report notes how incredibly common and prolific these propaganda efforts have become since at least Russia’s 2008 war with Georgia and how current, traditional counterpropaganda efforts are falling short in correcting this “firehose of falsehood.” All this just points even more strongly to the Russians being behind the DNC hack.

Hacking and Political Warfare: Russia’s Newest Weapons System, Eagerly Deployed: There’s Something Going On!

Hacking and cyberwarfare are also certainly part of the new Russian way of foreign policy and hybrid warfare, including (mis/dis)information and propaganda operations like those noted above. But another major aspect of Russian policy involves trying to meddle with foreign elections and politics, and the hackings of the DNC can be seen to be part of just such a larger effort. In fact, Paul Manafort can even be thought of as a (indirect?) mercenary general in this exact type of political warfare, where he was on the front lines of Putin’s operations in Ukraine from the Orange Revolution until (and possibly even after) Yanukovych’s 2014 overthrow. 

But such operations were hardly limited to Ukraine, as there are other examples in Eastern Europe; lately, Putin has actually been funding right-wing, pro-Russian parties and demagogues all over Europe, helping to fuel an ongoing continental right-ward drift. Perhaps most notably, this Russian support has been a factor in France, which is lurching even more rightward in the wake of recent terrorist attacks like the one in Nice and where Putin’s chosen candidate, Marine Le Pen, may very well win France’s 2017 presidential election, but Putin has also been trying to destabilize German politics using the issue of refugees to weaken Chancellor Angela Merkel and empower German extremists. 

Another factor that must be acknowledged is that Putin is still simmering over Western expansion of NATO, over two Western military interventions against Russian ally Slobodan Milosevic of Serbia in 1990s, against support for Kosovo’s independence from Serbia. Putin also seen the U.S. as having orchestrated the “color revolutions” of the last decade rather than viewing them a natural expression of post-Soviet peoples’ desires to be free from Russian domination and to not be ruled by Putin’s corrupt puppets; Putin similarly blames the U.S. for the 2014 overthrow of Yanukovych. The Russian president also in particular blames the U.S. for massive demonstrations in Russia in 2011 that erupted after fraudulent parliamentary elections. In fact, at the time, he specifically blamed Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Seen in this context, the hacking of the DNC, the DCCC, and the voter database used by Clinton’s presidential campaign serve multiple purposes: in the eyes of Putin and many Russians, this is revenge for U.S. support for democracy in former Soviet republics and the continued post-Cold War expansion of NATO, for perceived U.S. aggressive roles in countering Russian interests, and against Hillary Clinton specifically, who enraged Putin when she called him out on Russian election fraud in 2011.

Conclusion: There’s Something Going On!

Arnau Busquets Guàrdia/POLITICO (Source images KLIMENTYEV/AFP/Getty Images)

Interference in U.S. elections and politics would not be unprecedented: the UK intelligence at Churchill’s direction interfered to try to empower Roosevelt against Republican isolationists; South Vietnam played with peace talks to give Nixon an edge in 1968 after it negotiated secretly with Nixon’s campaign; Iran’s ayatollahs may have conspired with Reagan in 1980; and Israel worked to undercut the Obama Administration’s standing in the U.S in 2012 and 2015 over the Iran issue. Russia even seems to be supporting a secessionist movement in Texas that is still sizable while also only being a fringe minority.

Of course, Russia has categorically denied any involvement in the recent hacks.

As for Trump, he has a lot of questions to answer about Russia, both in terms of him and his family but also about his associates. Trump’s taxes may or may not yield information about his business ties to Russia, and for now, the Trump team denies it has any ties to Russia, but provides no evidence to support this, only repeated assertions. 

Even now as I write some of this, Trump is baselessly speculating at a press conference that the entity behind the hacking is “probably not Russia, nobody knows if it’s Russia,” contrary to all the expert analysis given. At this same press conference, he seemed to actually invite Russia to hack Hillary Clinton, even tweeting that call in writing on his Twitter account soon after (and later unconvincingly claiming he was being “sarcastic” after massive shock and outrage ensued). 

Since then, just yesterday, one week after the WikiLeaks DNC release, we learned that there were new hacks, likely by Fancy Bear/APT 28, of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, a congressional fundraising group for Democrats, and of a voter information database used by the Clinton campaign and other Democratic organizations. The U.S. is trying to determine how to respond to these cyberattacks as the FBI and Department of Justice investigate. And there are likely to be more hacks, with WikiLeaks’ Assange promising are more “a lot more” information on American politics coming from files he already has.  

To be sure, hacking a U.S. political party’s central leadership organization at the height a presidential election cycle is dangerous, unsettling new territory for an already fraught American-Russian relationship. If Congress is to even retain an ounce of non-partisan credibility, a major investigation must be undertaken as soon as possible, and Republicans must put as much zeal into it as they put into their Benghazi “investigations.”

What we do know is that Trump and his family tried to do business for many years in Russia; that he sought to have a relationship with Putin; that both men have been publicly supporting each other as Trump seeks the American presidency; that Trump is by far the most pro-Russian, pro-Putin of the major presidential candidates of this entire election cycle; that he did business with Russian nationals (some of ill repute) and took massive amounts of money coming from Russia; that his Campaign Chairman has a sordid history of helping Putin allies of ill repute to the detriment both of Western interests and, more specifically, of democracy in Ukraine, help that helped precipitate bloodshed and war; that other Trump campaign staff and advisors have questionable links to Russia; that Russia has a pattern of hacking America and others for political purposes; that Russia has a pattern of interfering in elections; that Putin clearly prefers Trump over Clinton; that all the evidence points towards the hacks being committed by the Russian government; that the Russian government, along with WikiLeaks, had the means and motive to harm Clinton and the U.S. and have thus far acted to do so; and that Russia and WikiLeaks have a suspect relationship.

Thus, taken together, there does seem to be some sort of relationship between Trump, his confidantes, and his presidential campaign on one side, and Putin, Putin-linked Russian operatives, and key Putin-and/or-Russian-oriented business and political operatives on another. It remains to be seen how direct, conscious, and centralized these relationship are, and while the sheer number of connections all but rules out sheer coincidence, the likely relationship can range from direct coordination between Putin and Trump themselves at the top, to between low-level staffers working directly or indirectly for both parties with no knowledge of or approval on the part of higher ups; the intent, also, can range from conspiring to tilt an election and to work in the interests of Russia to simple personal enrichment on the part individuals. 

More likely than not, none of these extremes are probably the case, and the truth is probably somewhere in the middle. Given everything I’ve discussed here, it’s possible there is some sort of coordinated effort going on between Trump or people in his campaign and Putin or people associated with him. But I wouldn’t be terribly surprised if we also have two groups of actors here acting mostly independently yet with common purpose. I also wouldn’t be surprised if some of Trump’s associates, especially Manafort, are part of some sort of deal (tacit or otherwise) to promote Putin’s agenda within Trump’s campaign between several staffers or just himself on one side and Putin’s agents on the other, given Manafort’s and several staffers’ histories. And it’s certainly believable—in fact, almost certain—that Putin would like to see Clinton defeated and Trump in the White House, since it would be hard to envision a leader that would or could play more into Putin’s hands than Trump. 

This may yet backfire on and Trump and Putin, since the Russian interference is so obvious that it might cause more Americans to rally against Trump and for Clinton, riled up by an American presidential candidate being the target of Russian intelligence operations. But that remains to be seen, and for now, America is under attack from Russia in a way never seen before, something that is an objective, bi-partisan, national security issue that should concern all Americans. We may never know all the details, but one thing is for sure: this is one of the most disturbing, worrisome, and troubling developments in a year brimming with disturbing, worrisome, and troubling developments, and there must be both fierce consequences and fierce investigations because, clearly, there’s something going on, to quote Donald. Trump.

And one final thing: we haven’t even gotten into the possibility of voting machines being hacked by the Russians on Election Day…

© 2016 Brian E. Frydenborg all rights reserved, no republication without permission, attributed quotations welcome 

Also see my eBook, A Song of Gas and Politics: How Ukraine Is at the Center of Trump-Russia, or, Ukrainegate: A “New” Phase in the Trump-Russia Saga Made from Recycled Materials, available for Amazon Kindle and Barnes & Noble Nook (preview here), and be sure to check out Brian’s new podcast!

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