America, we have collusion. All over the media and the Internet are stories and articles about the latest aspect of the Trump-Russia scandal. If viewers and readers have accumulating minds, they have already put together a case of collusion against Trump in their heads. But if their minds are more like data storing card catalogs, creating the Big Picture is more difficult, especially when by now, we all have thousands of cards up there. This diary is my attempt to assemble a big picture out of thousands of pieces to give readers a cohesive view of what’s before us. I won’t use “comprehensive view.” Here’s why not in a short aside.
My starting position is that Mueller’s investigation will eventually expose a huge set of conspiracies, not just one. Here are a few that I’ve identified:
- Conspiracy to collude to defeat Hillary Clinton and elect Donald Trump (what my case is about)
- Conspiracy to interfere with American elections by cyber-warfare focused on social media
- Conspiracy to commit espionage on and sabotage of American electoral systems and governmental institutions
- Conspiracy to commit fraud against the American government
- Conspiracy to launder illegal foreign political contributions through the Trump Organization and the NRC (what my case will touch on)
- Conspiracy to launder Russian money through the Trump Organization for purposes outside the USA (what my case will touch on)
- Conspiracy to create an international criminal “mafia” controlled by Putin and Russia
I assert that Mueller’s investigation has made the case or is making it for at least all of the above identified crimes.
Now, on with our case.
It all begins years ago when Trump was a deeply indebted failure as a businessman and Putin was an ambitious KGB agent who saw the communist empire collapse around him. Trump needed money and was finding it difficult to get, using acceptable financial methods of acquiring financing. Putin needed power for himself and his country and pursued methods to recreate the Soviet Union. making unholy alliances to achieve his goals. Finally, the time came when fate and events brought the two men with their disparate ambitions together and a conspiracy to collude was born that would grow into the greatest political scandal in history. Fortunes would be made, participants would rise and fall, governments would collapse, accusations would fly, actors would lie and betray, and people would even die.
Key Players
Felix Sater: Russian born American; business partner with Trump; FBI informant
Paul Manafort: Long-time Republican operative; political advisor to Russia-backed Ukranian presidential candidate; money launderer to oligarchs; Trump campaign manager; owed millions to Russian oligarch
Oleg Vladimirovich Deripaska: aka, OVD; Russian oligarch; Putin intimate; owed $19M by Manafort; owns D.C. “Hart Mansion”; USA persona non grata; reports to Sergei Prikhodko*, deputy prime minister and head of the Kremlin executive office since the 1990s
Union of Concerned Nerds: Group of computer scientists with skills in cyber security
Aras Agalarov: Russian billionaire real estate developer who hosted 2013 Miss Universe Pageant at his Crocus City venue and offered to pass on information about Clinton from Russia's “top prosecutor” to help the Trump campaign.
Emin Agalarov: Son of Aras, pop singer, Trump’s procurer
Robert Goldstone: British music publicist of Emin who set up meeting between Trump Jr. and “top prosecutor”
Natalia Veselnitskaya: “top prosecutor” who is actually Russian lobbyist to get sanctions lifted
Dana Rohrabacher R-CA48: pro-Russian US Representative with Russian code name; Julian Assange contact
Roger Stone: Long-time Republican political dirty tricks meister; back channel co-conspirator with Assange to undermine Hillary Clinton
Julian Assange: WikiLeaks founder; nihilist; fugitive and recent Equadorian citizen
*Sergei Prikhodko: little known lifelong Russian “public servant” serving Yeltsin, Putin, and Medvedev; real director of Russian foreign relations
Anastasia Vashukevich: aka, Nastya Rybka (“dear fish”?); Russian sex worker currently awaiting deportation to Russia in Thai jail; paramour of OVD; author; has tapes of OVD and Prikhodo meeting on yacht and possibly other secret recordings; seeking asylum in USA
The Story Begins
Today’s breaking news is about Nastya Rybka’s alleged tapes in her possession that she claims are secret recordings of conversations between OVD and Minister Prikhodko concerning Kremlin meddling in American elections. We’re here because of a combination of official USJD investigation by Robert Mueller into an alleged conspiracy by Donald Trump concerning the firing of former FBI Director Jim Comey.
The scope of Mueller’s investigation, it is now apparent, far surpasses its initial declared mission and covers topics bulleted above. Interestingly, Trump has only focused on the aspect that he and his presidential campaign colluded with Russia in an attempt to “fix” the election. He has admitted his “guilt” regarding Comey’s firing during an interview with Lester Holt. But insists he’s “vindicated” with any collusion with Russia to “fix” the election. “I am not involved in Russia.”
. . .I have nothing to do with Russia. I have no investments in Russia, none whatsoever.
I don't have property in Russia -- a lot of people thought I owned office buildings in Moscow. I don't have property in Russia. And I am in very -- I -- I mean I -- I'm in total compliance in every way. . .(snip)
. . .I built a great company, but I'm not involved with Russia. I have had dealings over the years where I sold a house to a very wealthy Russian many years ago.
I had the Miss Universe pageant, which I owned for quite a while. I had it in Moscow a long time ago.
But other than that, I have nothing to do with Russia. (snip)
. . .I have a certified letter, just so you understand. I'm not just saying that. I've given the letter -- I've given the letter to Senator Lindsay Graham. (snip)
. . .I assume he's going to give the letter out.
But it says: "I am not involved in Russia." No loans, no nothing.
Just a minute, DJT. Let’s look at the facts. Assembled in one place, they make a compelling case for collusion, if not out and out capitulation.
Trump’s dealings with Russia begin outside Russia. As far back as 2002 and until 2011, Felix Sater and DJT engaged in putting together various real estate deals. It all began when Trump, Donald Jr, and Ivanka partnered with “a dormant real-estate development firm, the Bayrock Group, which once operated just two floors beneath the president's own office in Trump Tower.”
Trump testified under oath in a 2007 deposition that Bayrock brought Russian investors to his Trump Tower office to discuss deals in Moscow, and said he was pondering investing there.
"It's ridiculous that I wouldn't be investing in Russia," Trump said in that deposition. "Russia is one of the hottest places in the world for investment."
During that era, one Bayrock associate left the company (more about him below), convinced it was a front for laundering money. A principle of the company at that time was Felix Sater, who had ties to Russian and American organized crime groups and a storied but ignoble past that led him to flee Russia. It was Sater who sought out Trump, getting an introduction from Trump Organization employees. Bayrock employees state that Sater and Trump met frequently at the Trump Organization HQ in Manhattan. However, Trump has always slighted his acquaintance of the man who once escorted his children around Moscow. Why?
Sater made the front page of the New York Times in February (2017) for his role in a failed effort — along with Trump’s personal attorney, Michael Cohen — to lobby former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn on a Ukrainian peace proposal.
Thus we have evidence of Trump having a business, and a personal, and a political relationship (through his personal lawyer) with the man he “barely knows.” And we know Trump has an interest in having interests in Russia. Meanwhile, Sater had got himself in trouble with American legal officials on racketeering and money laundering charges. He had an interest in sharing information about his Russian interests with American intelligence in an effort to get out of his legal troubles. His proposal was good enough for him to start his life in America as an informant. Years later, he began to dabble in real estate. In 2012, after his informant role with the IC ended, he joined Bayrock and moved into his office downstairs from DJT’s Trump Organization in Trump Tower.
It was then that Sater began partnering with Russian “contacts,” beginning with Tevfik Arif, a “deep-pocketed” native-born Kazakh investor whose fortune came from several hotels in Turkey that catered to Russians and an interest in a Kazakhstan chromium refinery. Another investor was Alexander Mashkevich (AM), who you can read more about here.
Bayrock was initially funded, in part, with a $10 million investment transferred to the firm by Arif's brother in Russia, who, according to Kriss's lawsuit, was able to tap into the cash reserves of a Kazakh chromium refinery. (snip)
. . .(AM), an oligarch born in the former Soviet Union, was one of Bayrock's primary sources of funding. Mashkevich's firm, the Eurasian Natural Resources Corporation, was based in Kazakhstan and elsewhere and had interests in chromium, aluminum, coal, construction, and banking. (snip)
Bayrock never seemed to be short of money. (snip)
If times got tight, Bayrock's owners would "magically show up with a wire from 'somewhere' just large enough to keep the company going."
But the year is 2002. While Sater seems to have no money troubles in his business dealings, the same cannot be said for DJT whose “brand” needs a boost as does the man himself who has just narrowly escaped personal responsibility in the 1990s. Bayrock seems the ideal partner to market it.
In 2004, Trump became a TV star, which was a good thing since his casino businesses were failing. It was good for Sater and Bayrock, too, when “Trump” became a brand worth marketing due to DJT’s fake portrayal of a successful tycoon that played every week in millions of American living rooms. With little care for due diligence, Trump garnered investors from around the world, who thanks to the “Panama Papers” we know to be various crooks who hid behind shell companies. [In November 2017 the “Paradise Papers” revealed further details about Trump Administration officials. “Among the people whose offshore interests are revealed in these documents are 13 Trump administration members, advisers and major donors.” — NPR]
DJT acquired an 18% interest in Bayrock (and an 18% interest in its source of funds). Strangely, deals the new partners tried to put together seemed to always fail, in spite of an influx of new money from an Icelandic company called the FL Group. According to a former Bayrock associate, Jody Kriss (I promised he’d come up again). . .
. . .the money behind Icelandic banks “was mostly Russian” — and that they had to take FL’s funds for deals they were doing with Trump because the investment firm was “closer to Putin."
Jody Kriss, has been involved in ongoing lawsuits with Sater and Trump over disagreements that arose when he was associated with Bayrock. As a consequence of some court victories, he has suffered personal attacks. Beginning around 2014. . .
. . .he started receiving threatening email from websites carrying versions of his name (“JKrissInfo.com,” for example). He soon discovered there were hundreds of other new websites that also contained false, disparaging information about him. (snip)
He says he also was able to use the court order to untangle the provenance of the websites, discovering that their registration tracked back to Sater’s home address in Sands Point. (snip)
Kriss says that goons once showed up at real-estate developments he was overseeing in Brooklyn, asking his employees if they knew the true story about their boss. Waves of letters questioning his bona fides have arrived at his office and in the mailboxes of every resident in two separate buildings where Kriss kept apartments.
It is a mystery to Kriss how Sater always seems to have the money to carry on. It is mystery where the money came from to fund all the Web pages, pay the goons, and imburse the letter-writers and mailbox stuffers, much less finance all of Sater’s frivolous lawsuits against him. Especially since he really needs to collect the money he claims his former Bayrock partner, Tevfik Arif, owes him.
. . .if he isn't paid he'll publicize what he describes as Arif's ties to organized crime and to tainted dealings in Kazakhstan’s metals business.
Do Kriss’ recent experiences remind readers of the Russian internet trolls rolled out by the Kremlin against Hillary Clinton in 2016? Or do they remind them more of Roger Stones’ “black ops” employed by the Republican Party since the Nixon era? Might Felix Sater have some debt problems along the lines of the ones that put Paul Manafortt between a rock and a hard place? Hints abound that DJT is still the “King of Debt.” Is he trying to settle with his debtholder(s) in unconventional ways like his former campaign manager tried to do? As I have shown, Trump has suffered money troubles for at least the past 15 years, and during that time has never shirked from linking himself and his business interests to criminals and mobsters. Quite a number of them Russian. He appears to downright enjoy escaping paying “Peter” by wheeler-dealering with Russian mafia “Pauls.” In short, he is not risk averse to dealing with Russians in order to get what he wants or to get out of what he doesn’t. The years long habits of an old man are hard to break.
This is just the beginning. More to come on at least part of the case I believe Mueller is building and intends to indict DJT for.