The Senate Report on Russian interference was well covered by the media and it validated the damning evidence provided in Volume I of the Mueller Report. More importantly, the Senate Report has offered new significantly more damning evidence that reveals Trump’s connections with Russian operatives that commenced years before the campaign.
According to Facebook posts: While in Moscow for his Miss Universe Pageant in 2013, Trump met with the same Russian Social Media Consultants who planned and executed “influence operations” in support of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
I’m surprised that we haven’t seen more attention paid to this issue. If I’m missing something and this was in itself disinformation, then I’m sure many will let me know. Anyway, it has been interesting research.
The Senate Report references two 2016 Facebook posts by Konstantin Rykov, gloating over the success of the Russian social media influence operation that he helped develop and execute to boost Trump’s candidacy. Rykov is a Russian Social Media Consultant specializing in influence operations.
The two Facebook posts are publicly forgotten pieces of evidence that have been available for a couple of years. Rykov played a nefarious role according to the Senate Report. He wrote about the following subjects almost in diary form:
- Rykov associates Artem Klyushin and his then-wife Yulya Klyushina made contact with President Apprentice Trump in 2013 during the Miss America Pageant in Moscow.
- Rykov despised Obama and was pissed that Obama was winning and then won the 2012 election, “...if Barack Obama was re-elected for a second term, it would be a disaster for the world.”
- Rykov sent Trump a Twitter Direct Message expressing his frustration with the US 2012 election, and Trump responded to him with a Twitter Direct Message.
- Rykov claims to have worked for several years with Cambridge Analytica, Trump’s social media data mining and analytics organization, to develop social media influencer software, a “secret super weapon”.
Entities
Business Entities
- 2013 Miss Universe Pageant — Contemporaneously owned by Donald Trump; held in Moscow on November 9th, 2013.
- Artem Klyushin, Konstantin Rykov, and Associates — Social media consulting and software development company specializing in social media influence operations. It played a primary role in the 2016 election influence program.
- Cambridge Analytica — Owned by the Mercers, a family of Trump mega-donors; performed data mining and statistical analysis of Facebook profiles; The Mercers shut it down after the FBI started an investigation into its practices.
- Trump2016.ru and DonaldTrump2016.ru — two websites registered by Konstantin Rykov; DonaldTrump2016.ru is no longer registered as an active domain; Trump2016.ru takes you to a parking page with the following message: “THE SITE IS TEMPORARILY BLOCKED”
Key People
- Emin Agalarov — Russian Singer; son of Russian Aras Agalarov; associate of Artem Klyushin; one of the actors in the email chain that Trump Jr. disclosed regarding the lead-up to the Russian Summit held in Trump Tower.
- Artem Klyushin — Kremlin-linked Russian Bot Developer; Agalarov employee; partner in Artem Klyushin, Konstantin Rykov, and Associates after being fired by Agalarov.
- Konstantin Rykov — Kremlin-linked “Chief Troll” and Russian Social Media Specialist working with influencing operations; there is a lot of redacted information in the Senate report about Rykov.
- Donald Trump — President Apprentice Trump.
Donald Fredovich — Russian code-name for Donald Trump; everyone knows that “Fred” is Trump’s father, “ovich” is a Russian suffix meaning “son of”, hence “Donald Fredovich”; Son of Fred. Fredovich paid $5 million over several years for an influence operation, a software “secret super weapon”.
- Yulya Klyushina — Social Media Specialist; former wife of Artem Klyushin; met with Trump in 2013.
1. Rykov Associates Artem Klyushin and Yulya Klyushina meet with Trump.
Senate Report Page 241
Trump met with Social Media Consultant and Bot Developer Klyusin in Moscow.
(U) Around the time of the 2013 Miss Universe pageant in Moscow, the Agalarovs
employed Artem Klyushin to help promote Emin Agalarov on social media. In that capacity, Klyushin and his then-wife spent some time with Trump during the pageant weekend. Klyushin is a Kremlin-linked bot developer who has supported Russian social media influence operations in other countries [heavily involved in influencing operations supporting the Russian invasion of Ukraine]. The Committee did not find information indicating that Trump had awarenessof this at the time, or any subsequent communication with Klyushin.
Senate Report Page 395
Trump was the subject of emails between Goldstone, Agalarov, and Klyushin before and after the Miss Universe Pageant.
During the 2013 trip to Moscow for the Miss Universe Pageant, two Agalarov employees, Artem Klyushin and his then-wife Yulya Klyushina, spent time with Donald Trump... Klyushina and Klyushin had some interaction with Trump at several points throughout the day…
Klyushin and Klyushina were included on a number of Emin Agalarov and Rob Goldstone' s emails prior to and following the Miss Universe pageant. Some of those emails related to Trump…
Rob Goldstone was also the impetus behind Trump Jr.’s Russian Summit in Trump Tower. He was the most active author of emails in that email chain.
Senate Report Page 396
Klushin and Rykov were involved in the 2016 election influencing operation.
Klyushin and Klyushina, along with Klyushin's associate Konstantin Rykov, were active regarding the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign…
Agalarov said that he terminated his work with them following the Miss Universe pageant because they were focused on self-promotion and Trump, rather than on the work for which they were originally hired...
Mueller Report Volume I, Page 66, footnote 288
Rykov registered two websites, Trump2016.ru and DonaldTrump2016.ru
...the publication’s [Vzglyad] founder (and former Russian parliamentarian) Konstantin Rykov had registered two Russian websites — Trump2016.ru and DonaldTrump2016.ru
2. Konstantin Rykov was upset that Obama won the 2012 election.
In 2012, Rykov was reminiscing about his anger at the Obama and possible victory in 2012, and what could be done about it. It explains the start of his relationship with Donald Trump.
The translations used in this article are Facebook automated translations, and a few of the translations include awkward idioms and phrases, but they’re clear enough. Washington Monthly has summarized translations that might be a bit easier to read: A #TrumpRussia Confession in Plain Sight.
First Facebook Post:
It's time for wonderful stories. I'll tell you about (now it's possible) how Donald Trump and I decided to free America and make it great again. This took us 4 years and 2 more days.
It all started at night from 6 to 7 November 2012.
This was the night of the presidential election. Sparring between Obama and Romney Republican. I was crazy Twitter fan then and entertained myself with live streaming and commenting on the results.
It's no secret that I always sympathized with the Republicans (except for McCain) and drowned against the Democratic State Department. Professor Майкл Makfol [Michael McFaul, Stanford University] remembers this story well and we will return to his role in it.
So! So! It was obvious to all normal people then that if Barack Obama was re-elected for a second term, it would be a disaster for the world.
Already then, we understood perfectly that the Arab Spring will not end and ahead of ours awaits Ukraine, sanctions, Syria and so on. Obama's victory will be destructive not only for Russia, but the whole world.
To say that I was very worried.. means nothing to say. I was furious. Wrote anger tweets and sent curses.
Unfortunately, Romney was not able to pull out the victory from the evil liberals and at 8:20 am admitted his defeat. He's just a weak-character politician. Nothing personal.
3. Rykov reaches out to Trump via Twitter Direct Message, and Trump responds.
Continuation of Rykov’s first Facebook post.
Trump tweeted: “We should march on Washington.” That inspired Rykov to send a Twitter Direct Message to Trump: “I’m ready, what should I do?”
[Trump] lifted his plane to the sky and flew between New York and DC, calling the whole world through his twitter - to start a march on Washington!
The tweet that Rykov was referring to:
We can't let this happen. We should march on Washington and stop this travesty. Our nation is totally divided!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 7, 2012
Further continuation of Rykov’s first Facebook post.
Rykov gets a Direct Message reply from Trump.
Without thinking for a second, I wrote him a replay that sounded like this in Russian: ′′I'm ready. What should be done?"
But.. no response from Trump has been followed.
I'll admit honestly, thought then that Donald went off the topic. I got even more upset and decided to go to bed.
Couldn't sleep. Laying down. I looked into the ceiling and scrolled through the horrifying images of the future ahead in my head. The wars. Global terrorism. Coup-ties.
What a sudden! A thin squeak of the alert in DM was distributed.
I opened my iPad and didn't believe my eyes.
This was a message from Donald Trump. More precisely the photo. In the picture, he was sitting in his jet chair, smiling and showing me the thumb of his right hand.
To be continued… [second Facebook post follows.
4. Rykov worked with Cambridge Analytica to develop a social media “secret super weapon”.
Rykov details how the “super weapon” was developed in cooperation with Cambridge Analytica over several years.
Second Facebook post:
What was our idea with Donald Trump?
In four years and two days.. it was necessary to get into everyone's brain and capture all possible means of mass perception of reality. Ensure Donald's victory in the presidential election of the United States. After that, create a political union between the United States, France, Russia (and several other states) and establish a new world order.
The four-year plan to develop a software package, harvest user profiles from Facebook, and target them with “influencer” posts and ads:
Four years and two days are a very long time on the one hand, and on the other very small. Our idea was crazy, but realizing.
In order to figure this out first, you had to ′′ digitize ′′ all possible types of modern person.
Donald decided to invite a special scientific department of Cambridge University for this task.
British scientists from Cambridge Analytica have proposed to make 5 thousand existing human psychotypes - the ′′ perfect image ′′ of a possible Trump supporter. Then.. put this image back on all psychotypes and thus pick up the universal key to any and everyone.
The development as a result cost Donald Fredovich [code name for Donald Trump] $ 5 million. But He got into his hands - a secret super weapon.
Next, it was only necessary to upload this data to information streams and social networks. And we began to look for those who could handle this task better than others.
At the very beginning, there were not many brave and romantics. Couple of hacker groups, civil journalists from Wikilix and political strategist Михаил Kovalev [Mikhail Kovalev]
The next step was to develop a system of transmission of tasks and information so that no Gabukha and NSA could burn it.
How to make sure that even people who do not speak each other can exchange information faster, understand each other from half-word, feel trends and influence their development?
It took about a year to program such a system. Another year went to tests and finalization. In the end. In a year with a little, we installed a ′′ Media Filter ′′ to everyone who managed to pull into our conspiracy and opened the portal Trump-2016. on August 18, 2015
August 19th. At 9:00, I received a message from Vladimir Volfovich in DM.
We can get an idea of what Mikhail Kovalev’s role was. This is his tagline on his Facebook page: “Social fiction and soft power”. I imagine “social fiction” is an English-translated euphemism for “disinformation” in Russian. Oh, and his nickname is “Fantastic”. No ego there [eyes roll].
After his second post, someone must have told Rykov to quit posting about the Russian social media influencing operations. Although the second part ends with “To be continued...”, Rykov never posted the third part. So at this point, we don’t know what role Vladimir Volfovich played or what he had to say.
I can’t wait for Biden to take the Oath of Office. The minute he does, Trump’s Executive Privilege and imaginary Blanket Immunity evaporate faster than spit on an Arizona sidewalk. The many ongoing investigations in multiple states and multiple law enforcement jurisdictions will resume with reinvigorated enthusiasm — hopefully, including a real investigation into Trump’s Russian connections.