"It’s incontrovertible that the American conservative national security axis, Israeli Likudniks (and their quislings in the US) and Russian mobster-oligarchs all have a plethora of substantial ties to Trump and the Trump team. While it’s pretty easy to explain each group’s involvement with Trump individually, it’s much more difficult to determine if there’s any reciprocity between said groups and, if there is reciprocity, what its nature is.
The conservative national security axis’s motivation for orbiting and in many cases explicitly bolstering Trump is very clear — 1) he’s a manipulable strongman, something the right-wing can’t seem to get enough of; 2) he espouses the kind of militaristic, unilateralist views they absolutely love; and 3) he’s been adjoined to their tight-knit clique for decades through people like Roy Cohn, Roger Stone, Rupert Murdoch, Adnan Khashoggi and apparently even his father, who was an ardent Goldwater supporter and backer. (He’s also had plenty of relations with liberal internationalists like Henry Kissinger through New York high society.) Sure, the more predictable Ted Cruz, who also has national security ties, may have been their first choice. Indeed, this appears to be the case — James Woolsey and Frank Gaffney, two pillars of this faction, were behind Cruz before they were behind Trump. But Trump will certainly do for them, and has. What’s most significant about this is that it shows Trump was not a political outsider in the United States before being elected. That Trump was an “outsider” is literally a blatantly false canard reiterated by both the alternative and mainstream that doesn’t hold up to even the slightest bit of scrutiny.
The hard-right Zionist Likudniks, who by the way have been completely and utterly in bed with the hard-right and Jewish neocons in America since at least the days of James Jesus Angleton, support Trump because of his unyielding pro-Israel stance. This stance comes from his past and recent collaboration with Likud-allied national security circles (the Israel lobby think tank network) in the US and him and his family’s long-standing connections to Israel and international Jewry, most eminently today through Jared Kushner, who is the main Trump backchannel with Israel. Remember — Kushner and Flynn, at the request of the Likudniks, attempted to undermine US policy regarding Israeli settlements before Trump was even sworn in and now the administration is even making secret agreements with Israel and its Saudi-Emirati goons about attacking Iran, Lebanon and Qatar. Russia is by far the most complex issue to analyze. It’s pretty apparent at this point that there has been an on-and-off Kremlin intelligence cultivation and support operation targeting Trump that probably originated in the late ’80s, survived the “collapse” of the Soviet empire and was aggressively revamped somewhere around 2013 at around the time of the 2013 Miss Universe pageant when talks about the development of a Trump Tower in Moscow (to be financed by KGB/FSB-front VTB Bank, according to Felix Sater) were resurrected. But to be clear, Trump is not a Russian puppet, at least not a knowing one."
Comment: I still think that the Clinton-Trump opposition is a kabuki theater to distract from the fact that Trump was chosen. They have been friends many years. I am reposting these 176 pages of a highly complex article by Akamai Tree for research even though some things in it don't make sense to me - here is a more simplified assumption:
Brandon Smith: “Look at his cabinet. It is filled with ghouls from Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, the Rothschild banking syndicate, the Council on Foreign Relations, etc. The same people he spent his entire campaign criticizing as “swamp creatures”. They control Trump, and the White House. Trump is following their script exactly – Increasing tensions with Iran, Syria, Russia and keeping North Korea on a back burner, while also initiating a trade war while America is at its weakest economically. This trade war rather conveniently is hiding the detrimental activities of the Federal Reserve, which is pulling the plug on stimulus support and creating crash conditions that will eventually be blamed on conservatives. I’m not even mentioning all the surveillance state policies that Trump has signed off on. There is no “game” between the parties. Trump is pushing the ball forward for the globalists just like every other president for the past century. He is only different in rhetoric. If the democrats scare you more than the globalists, it is only because you do not grasp the true amount of control the globalists have over both sides of the political paradigm”
- edit, CN
_________
Deep Politics’ and Supranational Aspects of the Trump Era
'Every American president is covertly backed by a consortium of
“deep political” factions and interest groups. These groups invariably
wind up stacking the administrations they help parlay into power with
members and associates of their clique. This factional quarreling and
proxy activity is usually largely confined to the domestic sphere and in
the United States almost always at its core runs along the lines of
fundamental foreign policy differences. On the one hand, a
liberal-internationalist-“globalist” wing supports multilateral foreign
policy (the United Nations), typically restrains from interventionist
misadventures (instead preferring to utilize soft power)
and generally opposes increases in defense spending. On the other hand,
a militaristic conservative-ultranationalist wing advocates unilateral
foreign policy, is highly supportive of military intervention/rollback
(hard power) and is fanatically in favor of increased defense spending
and “national security” measures. Both of these viewpoints exist in both
American political parties and along a gradation. The most important
takeaway from this is that literally not a single American president has
ever in any way been a “political outsider”. They virtually always have
clandestine and/or open ties to foreign policy interest groups and
think tank networks. From a deep political standpoint, domestic and
economic policy is almost always an accessory to be used in the
furtherance of some kind of foreign agenda. What’s special about the 2016 election and the Trump apparatus is the
extensive involvement of foreign groups (namely Russia, Israel and the
Gulf States) that further complicates an analysis of the political
circles involved. This article will examine not only the domestic covert
politics behind the Trump presidency but also the numerous foreign
reciprocities that are apparently present.
The Hard-Right National Security Establishment
Most of my research on Trump, his entourage and his benefactors up
until this point has revolved around their deep-seated ties to the
primarily US-based right-leaning ultranationalist national security establishment
centered around the Pentagon (and in particular its internal advisory
bodies), conservative elements in the CIA and militaristic national
security-boosting think tanks and foreign policy interest groups such as
the Center for Security Policy, American Security Council,
Foundation for Defense of Democracies, Jamestown Foundation, American
Foreign Policy Council, Henry Jackson Society, Hudson Institute,
Association of Former Intelligence Officers/OSS Society, the Project for
a New American Century (PNAC) before it was disbanded and last but not
least, the Committee on the Present Danger (probably the most elite). Founded
in 1950 and populated by CIA men, top generals, and
researchers/scientists around the RAND Corp. and its wartime
predecessors, the Committee on the Present Danger (CPD) was along with
the American Security Council (the originator of the “peace through
strength” doctrine) one of the original hard-right militarist foreign
policy pressure groups and military-industrial complex lobbying
organizations.[0] The
CPD — which remains dormant for extended periods of time before
springing into action again — and American Security Council were
immensely influential in establishing long-term US national security
protocols and successful in lobbying for a post-World War II
remilitarization and troop deployment that helped initiate the Cold War (NSC 68),
for more aggressively articulating the Soviet threat and pulling away
from detente, containment and the “mutually assured destruction”-arms
control doctrine in favor of rollback and arms build-up in the ’70s and
’80s (CIA’s Team B)
and for a number of actions taken by the Bush administration in the name
of the “War on Terror” and 9/11, including initiating the Iraq War,
identifying the “Axis of Evil” and seeding calls for regime change in
Iran, a thread that carries on into the present and is quite obviously
the conservative national security apparatus’s current favored
undertaking.[1][2][3][4]
Pictured: RAND Corp. headquarters in Santa Monica, CA.
In 1978 the ASCF created the “National Strategy for Peace
through Strength,” and has been cited numerous times with providing the
overall foreign affairs theme for the administration of former
President Ronald Reagan. President Reagan personally gave the ASCF
credit for this on several occasions and said America won the Cold War
based upon the ASCF’s “National Strategy for Peace through Strength”
doctrine.[5]
Beginning in the ’70s (right around the time CIA-Mossad liaison James
Angleton joined the American Security Council) this network shed its
original anti-Zionist, “old right” baggage and has morphed into today’s
“neoconservatives” and “Scoop Jackson Democrats” by joining with — and
becoming almost indistinguishable from — the “pro-Israel” lobby which
exists to promote the militaristic right-wing Likud elements in Israel
by identifying Israeli national security issues with American national
security and at this point constitutes a fifth column within the US
establishment. Organizations representing this Israeli (Likud) fifth
column include AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee), JINSA
(Jewish Institute for National Security of America), CPMAJO (Conference
of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations) and WINEP (Washington
Institute for Near East Policy), the Israel lobby’s primary liaison with
the Eastern Establishment.
Senator Henry Jackson and Bob Kennedy
After the Cold War ended, much of the American Security Council’s
funding dried up and it was replaced by its spiritual and intellectual
successors — stereotypically “neoconservative” think tanks such as the
Center for Security Policy, American Foreign Policy Council and
Foundation for Defense of Democracies, all of which are as militaristic
as its predecessors and overlap considerably with the Israel lobby and
pro-Israel interest groups.[6] Several
key members of this group today such as Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle,
Edward Luttwak, Frank Gaffney, Douglas Feith and Elliott Abrams sprang
out of the offices of anti-communist, pro-Zionist Cold Warrior senator
and ultra-right CIA asset Henry “Scoop” Jackson, who ran a small army of
nuclear alarmists and anti-Kissinger “detente-wreckers” during the Cold
War. Perle and Wolfowitz were dispatched to Jackson’s office by
proto-neoconservative RAND nuclear strategist, Albert Wohlstetter.[7][8]
Indeed, a large number of those in this conservative faction appears
to simply be high-level informal liaisons between the United States and
hard-right Likud factions in Israel. Top neoconservative Richard Perle
and his aide, Stephen Bryan, were actually caught passing
classified information to Israel embassy officials while working for
Henry Jackson in the ’70s. In 2004, the FBI was engaged in a frantic molehunt
for a suspected Israeli spy in the Pentagon passing classified
information on US deliberations on Iran to Israel who had close ties to
Jewish neoconservatives Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith. However, this
is not to say that neoconservatism/hard-right national security is
purely an Israeli or Jewish project. Virtually every hawkish policy coup
involving Jewish neoconservatives (NSC 68, Team B, Reagan
administration/”Star Wars”, Rumsfeld Commission, Iraq War, etc.) has
been enabled and managed at the higher levels by non-Jewish, typically
more moderate hawks/unilateralists such as George H.W. Bush, Donald
Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, Paul Nitze, Dean Acheson, Bill Casey, Jeane
Kirkpatrick, Frank Carlucci, Cap Weinberger (ethnically half-Jewish,
religiously Episcopalian), etc. All of these people know that the Likud
interlopers like Perle, Wolfowitz and Feith are there, but never do
anything about it because they’re protected — there has been deep
national security state support for Israel since the days of James Jesus
Angleton intrigue with the Mossad and Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon,
Henry Kissinger and Richard Helms giving Israel carte blanche
to develop nukes, even going so far as to not even bother taking any
action against Israel after it was caught stealing highly enriched
uranium from NUMEC and smuggling it out of the country. While
many in conspiracy circles try to ascribe very abstruse, esoteric and
sometimes almost occult-like or racial motives and beliefs to this
war-hungry hard-right network, this is misguided. While certain bodies
aligned with the American conservative defense establishment such as the
hyper-shadowy, bizarre, extreme-right Le Cercle
“black network” do have essentially unknowable motives, the foreign
policy school of thought held by the hard-right faction in the United
States (and Britain, to an extent) can be traced back to a school of
thought in the development of systems analysis, operations research,
applied science and war-gaming by the WWII-era Office of Scientific
Research and Development and later the RAND Corp. under people like
Albert Wohlstetter, Andrew Marshall (Office of Net Assessment), James
Conant and Vannevar Bush (CPD & Raytheon). Author Craig Unger
writes, “to join Team Wohlstetter, apparently, one had to embrace
unquestioningly his worldviews, which eschewed old-fashioned
intelligence as a basis for assessing the enemy’s intentions and
military capabilities in favor of elaborate statistical models,
probabilities, reasoning, systems analysis, and game theory developed at
RAND … Even a small probability of vulnerability, or a potential future
vulnerability, could be presented as a virtual state of emergency … If
you look down the road and see a war with, say, China, twenty years off,
go to war now.”[9][10] This fusion of highly rigorous and
technically/mathematically-informed game theory and strategy with
paranoid, survivalist, preemptive instincts (very present in Israel and
in Zionist Jews such as Wohlstetter and his pupils Richard Perle and
Paul Wolfowitz) seen in the CPD, American Security Council and similar
hard right think tanks contrasts sharply with the realist-realpolitik-“geo-strategic”-“grand
chessboard” worldview found in most (but certainly not all) Eastern
Establishment types like Henry Kissinger, Brent Scowcroft and Zbigniew
Brzezinski, who constitute the core of liberal “realist” think tanks
such as the CFR, Trilateral Commission, etc. The kernel of the rift that
evolved between the anti-detente game theorists and the pro-detente
“geo-strategists” during the Cold War was a game theoretic dispute over
whether a nuclear conflict would consist of preemptive nuclear strikes
on only military and nuclear installations (the scenario envisaged by
the proto-neoconservatives) or of a tit-for-tat
escalation precipitating retaliatory strikes on population centers (the
“mutual assured destruction” scenario subscribed to by liberal
“realists”).
Nuclear exchange payoff matrix
Most mainstream nuclear strategists theorized that nuclear stand-off was essentially an “iterated prisoners dilemma” in which both countries merely possessing even
a small amount of thermonuclear weapons was sufficient for nuclear
deterrence/”cooperative” stand-off and preventing the outbreak of
thermonuclear war. This was the so-called “balance of terror”. On the
other hand, nuclear strategists around the CPD and ASC (Wohlstetter in
particular) believed, because of asymmetric capabilities and information
between the US and USSR and many other granular technical and game
theoretic considerations, that the payoffs involved in a nuclear
exchange were unclear; that complete and utter annihilation of civilian
population centers in both countries was not guaranteed and therefore a
nuclear exchange was 1) “winnable” in some sense even though both sides
would likely suffer major casualties (i.e., it may not be a mutual
assured destruction/prisoners dilemma) and 2) actually much more likely
than anyone would like to admit. Because of this, they vigorously, and
in many cases successfully, advocated for the development of aggressive
“second strike” capabilities, exotic space-based, other experimental and
conventional missile defense systems and nuclear countermeasures in
order to ensure effective deterrence and possibly enable a US first
strike on the USSR that would not involve mutually assured destruction. This kind of thinking permeates the neoconservative foreign policy
establishment today even though the Soviet threat disappeared — they are
basically transcendentally militaristic and still display the same
preemptive first strike mentality in regards to “rogue” nuclear powers
such as North Korea and possibly Iran (the “axis of evil”). They are
intensely paranoid — they place zero trust in other countries (except
for Israel and sometimes the UK), have no faith in diplomacy or
multilateralism (usually when they conduct diplomacy it’s part of a
trap) and have a strategy of minimizing downside risk, even if that risk
is small and distant. They are constantly scanning the horizon for
potential threats, real or imagined, to threats to US global domination
(as well as Israeli regional domination) and developing weapons,
technology and plans to combat those threats.
Very simple military/arms build-up payoff matrix. This is a traditional prisoners dilemma, therefore the Nash equilibrium, or expected outcome is the bottom right corner.
As a result, this American-Israeli hard-right/”neoconservative” national security apparatus is:
Generally skeptical of the rules-based international order:
multilateralism, international law and international diplomatic forums
(particularly the United Nations) that facilitate cooperative strategies
among world powers. Instead prefers unilateral/bilateral action and
(wasteful) competitive strategies without regard for any kind of
international or even transatlantic consensus. This applies to
defense/foreign relations and often trade as well, which is itself
closely related to the former. Tends to view international relations as a
zero-sum game.
Always promotes continual military/defense build-up and employing
hard power (direct, aggressive and usually preemptive military and
covert actions) and militaristic “peace through strength” strategies
over soft power (diplomatic maneuvering, economic and cultural
co-opting) strategies. This advocacy for military expansion is one of
the main reasons it receives so much support from the defense industry
and the “military-industrial complex”. Generally expansionist and
interventionist. Pro-rollback, pro-first strike/preemption,
pro-SDI/”Star Wars”. Anti-containment, anti-detente and anti-realist/realpolitik.
Typically prioritizes the US-Israeli special relationship over
transatlantic (NATO) and other relations, or at least elevates it to the
same level. Although, despite sometimes being skeptical of NATO as an
organization, it generally promotes US-led NATO expansion in line with
its expansionism.
Has a penchant for using almost rogue-like American, pan-European
and Israeli private intelligence/”parallel CIA” black networks to
conduct covert operations in a manner both more deniable and more
expedient than using official channels. Examples of these kinds of
almost rogue-like private networks include Erik Prince’s Blackwater,
BCCI, the Western Goals Foundation, Rupert Murdoch’s clandestine network, Ted Shackley’s renegade covert operations cliques (Le Cercle, 6I, Safari Club, etc.) and a whole bevy of private Mossad/Shin Bet/IDF spin-offs.
Because of its wide placement in the Pentagon-CIA-national security
bureaucracy and ties to defense contractors, is deeply involved in “deep
black”, usually unaccountable technical projects such as secret weapons
systems, novel espionage technology and experimental energy sources.
Large swaths of the Pentagon bureaucracy including the DIA, NRO and NSA
are basically a permanent private playground for this group.
Highly supportive of domestic “homeland security” measures such as
blanket mass surveillance, militarization of law enforcement, etc.
How is this all relevant? Well, the Trump administration is not only
connected to think tanks that purport these views, but also displays
this kind of thinking in spades itself: aggressive increases in military
expenditures, allowing the Pentagon to operate more independently from
the rest of the executive, neutering the State Department (traditionally
liberal-“globalist” territory), predominantly unilateral/bilateral
foreign policy, diplomacy and trade, hawkish unilateral actions against
China, floating the idea of a “Space Force” (which was a side project
of Donald Rumsfeld & friends in the late ’90s and later
incorporated into PNAC), advocacy for rollback and/or attacks on Iran
tied in with the unilateral US dismantling of the Iran deal, the use of
Erik Prince-associated and Israeli private intelligence networks,
ambivalence if not outright hostility towards the UN, expansion of NATO
into Montenegro, arming the Ukrainian government, etc. Additionally, the above general foreign policy subscriptions manifest
most visibly today in bizarre Islamophobic “counter-jihad” and “Axis of
Evil” propaganda seen throughout the conservative and alternative media
(replacing Cold War-era anti-Soviet propaganda) as well as support for
military and/or covert actions against the current Iranian regime (a
major theme in the Trump administration), which is seen as the principal
regional threat to Israel and other US allies in the region such as
Saudi Arabia. And these anti-Iranian aspirations are part of a wider scheme embraced initially by Ariel Sharon and Rafael Eitan
(the Mossad operative who oversaw NUMEC and Jonathan Pollard) and
backed by elements in the US and the ruling Likud political alliance in
Israel to balkanize and destabilize the Middle East as a means of
establishing “Greater Israel”. Iran-Contra, an operation run entirely
out of the same hard-right circles within the US and Israeli national
security establishments now backing Trump, was, in addition to being an
anti-communist effort, a plot to destabilize Iran internally through
arming and funding a moderate faction within Ayatollah Khomeini’s regime
that supposedly sought rapprochement with the United States, a result
that would have greatly benefited Israel as well.
“Anti-Eastern Establishment books produced and supported by the ultraright national security state.” Credit: ISGP
The right-wing foreign policy-centered axis described above is
attached domestically to domestic policy/politics, media and economics
think tanks and interest groups like the Council for National Policy
(CNP), Heritage Foundation, Intercollegiate Studies Institute, Olin
Foundation, American Enterprise Institute, Mont Pelerin Society, etc.
“Old right” John Birch-style Christian conservatives, mainline moderate
Republicans, neoconservatives, newfangled “alt-right” types and even
many libertarians are all represented in this. However, this more
intellectual, “movement”-oriented domestic group that more or less
hijacked the previously Eastern Establishment-dominated GOP in the ’60s
and dragged it rightward never really existed as an independent entity,
as throughout history it appears to have always ultimately been run and
funded by higher-level CIA/military intelligence and foreign
policy/defense-centered networks essentially as a media and financing
arm to combat the Eastern Establishment-dominated legacy media and
bankroll favored politicians. Same goes for the so-called “New Left”,
which is alternatively financed by liberal CIA “globalist” establishment
groups such as the Soros, Ford, Carnegie & Rockefeller Foundations.Most of the above think tanks mentioned above (particularly the
Heritage Foundation) are controlled and financed by the likes of Edwin
Fuelner (ASC & Le Cercle) and wealthy legacy right-wing CIA
financiers such as the Mellon-Scaife, DeVos, Bechtel, Coors, Hunt and
Forbes families. The John Birch Society, World Anti Communist League and
Liberty Lobby were completely controlled at the higher levels by
American Security Council-tied CIA and military intelligence assets (Roy
Cohn, John Rees, John Singlaub, Larry MacDonald, N.B. Hunt, etc.)
primarily through the Western Goals Foundation,
an intelligence clearinghouse for hard-right anti-communist operatives
whose members were fed any intelligence they collected to the CIA, FBI
and NSA and is widely believed to have received off-the-books CIA
financing[11][12].
Legendary conservative think tanker and intellectual William F. Buckley
was recruited into the CIA by covert operations specialist E. Howard
Hunt of Watergate infamy, who remained a confidante of Buckley’s until
his death.[13] Hunt, Buckley and others such as Rush Limbaugh, the John Birch
Society, Ann Coulter, Ludwig von Mises, Russell Kirk, Whittaker
Chambers, Friedrich Hayek, Newt Gingrich, David Horowitz, Mike Pence and
Donald Trump would later be published and promoted by the CIA-financed
Regnery Publishing company, owned by the Regnery family that was part of
the American Security Council and the ASC-operated America First
Committee. Today, William Regnery II is running Richard Spencer and the
National Policy Institute from behind the scenes.[14]
On a related note, many alternative media characters and conspiracy
promoters come from military intelligence in particular. This isn’t
surprising given how the Department of Defense is so thoroughly
infiltrated by hard-right extremists from the conservative defense
establishment. Steve Bannon (Breitbart) and Jack Posobiec (pro-Trump Pizzagate promoter) both come from Naval intelligence.[15][16] In
fact, Bannon even served as “special assistant” to the Chief of Naval
Operations in the Pentagon and, according to investigative reporter
Daniel Hopsicker, was indirectly associated with a Costa Rica-based
stock swindler and cocaine trafficker whose network included former CIA,
US military intelligence and Genovese mafia members.[17][18] Alex Jones, who hired a “former” employee of Erik Prince’s Blackwater as head of security at Infowars, admits that his family is tied in with the Texas CIA-oilman crowd and Army intelligence.[19] Pizzagate-promoter Mike Flynn comes out of the DIA, as does his collaborator and former aide at the NSC, Ezra Cohen-Watnick, a Zionist national security troll who assembled the dossier
of classified files which showed that members of the Trump campaign had
been swept up in US intelligence agencies’ monitoring of foreign
individuals and which was later arranged by the Trump administration to
be funneled to Trump surrogate, Devin Nunes.
Pictured:
A sampling of some of the deranged, incoherent and often weirdly
militaristic propaganda coming out of the ‘QAnon’ crowd. Just query any
image search engine for ‘qanon’ and it will return literally hundreds of
similar graphics. Sometimes it’s hard to believe that these are made by
real people. Who knows, maybe they aren’t. After all, it is widely
known that Pentagon contractors have developed software
to manipulate social media and online discourse using both automated
bots and actual people running sock puppet accounts to disseminate
targeted propaganda.
Trump Ties To Conservative National Security
Principal members and key operatives within the American-Israeli
right-wing national security combination include neoconservatives (both
Republican and Democrat and many of whom were Cold Warriors),
underhanded political and media operatives, GOP megadonor billionaires,
CIA-Mossad assets and “national security”-boosters: James Woolsey, Frank
Gaffney, Edwin Meese, Oliver North, Erik Prince, Joe Lieberman, Rupert
Murdoch, Roger Stone, Paula Dobriansky, Newt Gingrich, John Bolton,
Peter Thiel, Robert Mercer, Sheldon Adelson, Dick Cheney, Tom Barrack,
Elliott Broidy, Roger Ailes (deceased), Michael Ledeen, the
Mellon-Scaife family and the DeVos family — all of whom are inextricably
linked to the Trump apparatus. Indeed, even the above-ground Trump
administration is itself riddled with members and associates of this
network — Mike Pompeo, John Bolton, Bill Shine, Keith Kellogg, Mike
Pence, Nikki Haley, and the disgraced Oliver North-like Michael Flynn,
who was apparently run by ultra-connected neoconservative and
CIA-Pentagon insider James Woolsey and appears to have been the most
important pointman between the Trump camp, broader American
ultranationalist faction and foreign bodies in Israel, Russia, Turkey
& the Gulf States. This
same loose confederation – which can probably be described as a
successor to the John Birch-American Security Council-Western Goals
Foundation conspiracy and private intelligence network of the 50s
through the early 80s sans its occasional anti-Semitic leanings – was
also responsible for bolstering Ted Cruz (who very well may have been
their first choice for president in 2016), Ronald Reagan, Rudy Giuliani,
Barry Goldwater, Richard Nixon, Newt Gingrich, George Wallace, Ross
Perot, Sarah Palin, Douglas MacArthur and, to a marginally lesser
extent, George W. Bush and Bob Dole. The network can be credited almost
exclusively for the creation and rise of conservative and hard-right
media outlets such as Fox, Breitbart, Drudge, Newsmax, etc. as well as for much of the “alternative media“, which has since the 90s been responsible
for the emergence of a cottage industry of conjuring up cartoonish
anti-Democrat, anti-liberal and often times Islamophobic conspiracy
theories in line with the anti-UN, anti-liberal establishment
rhetoric that originated with the “old right” John Birch Society,
America First Committee, World Anti Communist League and Liberty Lobby. Of particular interest is the neoconservative national security
fraternity, a subset of the hard-right US-Israeli coalition described
above. In its current iteration, almost all of the characters in this
hawkish unilateralist faction were Reagan White House notables and
somehow involved in Iran-Contra, pro-Iraq War influence operations,
anti-Iran advocacy and the Project for a New American Century. And with
the appointment of the rabidly anti-UN arch-unilateralist and the
right-wing think tank network’s top State Dep’t/UN asset John Bolton —
who ticks all of the above boxes — as National Security Advisor and the
equally unsubtle anti-Iran hawk and unilateralist, Mike Pompeo as
Secretary of State, this ring is now nestled in the administration at
the highest level and the current White House foreign policy leadership
is among the most hawkish in modern history alongside the Bush II
administration’s. Bolton, who was appointed Ambassador to the UN by the
Bush II administration as a deliberate affront to the UN itself, openly
advocates for preemptive military strikes and regime change operations
against Iran and North Korea and was a major promoter of backing out the
Iran deal.[20] Paula Dobriansky, a neoconservative Bush 43 State Dep’t official,
right-wing think tanker (CSP & PNAC member) and daughter of
anti-communist and American Security Council member Lev Dobriansky, will
be joining Mike Pompeo as Under Secretary of State for Political
Affairs.[21] It was widely rumored in the “alternative” media that Bolton
attempted to sabotage the North Korean “denuclearization” summit by
making a reference to the “Libya model” for denuclearization (a
reference to Gadaffi’s gruesome demise after entering into nuclear
negotiations with the US) in a television appearance and then
subsequently sidelined, but this isn’t true. Firstly, Bolton played an
important behind the scenes advisory role in the Singapore summit and
secondly, he was hired on as National Security Advisor after having gone on Fox News
several times advocating for a diplomatic trap whereby North Korea
would eventually and inevitably infract some aspect of the
denuclearization agreement, potentially paving the way for the use of
force.[22][23] This
suggests that the Libya model comment was likely an accurate
representation of the Trump national security team’s strategy, though it
certainly didn’t look good from a PR standpoint. As it turns out, the
North Korea “deal” appears more and more to have been an elaborate PR
stunt as opposed to a trap or a diplomatic achievement, as it has so far
been utterly substance-free. Perhaps the most unexpected character involved in this pro-Trump
national security clique is James Woolsey, who served as the Trump
campaign and transition team’s national security advisor.
Woolsey is a neoconservative Democrat and former CIA director with a
somewhat shrouded and under wraps past whose influence has been felt in
every administration since Carter and has been an anchor of the
neoconservative foreign policy wing for decades. He’s possibly the most
widely influential and connected foreign policy and international
relations personality living after Henry Kissinger and maybe one or two
others such as George Schultz and Brent Scowcroft. Woolsey, who was
highly involved in the SALT and START US-Soviet nuclear arms
negotiations, is a member of seemingly almost every major foreign policy
think tank/NGO and Pentagon-CIA advisory board and also serves in an
advisory capacity to every major defense conglomerate and contractor in
the United States.[24][25][26] Recently,
he’s joined advisory boards of private equity companies that invest in
high-tech companies with defense and intelligence applications.
James Woolsey (center) with Allied military intelligence officer Victor Jones and French Spy Jeannie de Clarens.
Among the think tanks and secretive lobbying/advisory groups Woolsey
has been a member of include the Center for Security Policy, JINSA,
WINEP, PNAC, Atlantic Council, Foundation for Defense of Democracies,
Pentagon Defense Advisory Board, CSIS, CFR, AFIO/OSS Society and the
ultra-elite Committee on the Present Danger (CPD), where Woolsey is a co-chair along with George Shultz and Joe Lieberman,
a “Scoop Jackson” Democrat neoconservative who was a finalist in the
running to become the Trump administration’s FBI director.[27][28][29][30] Woolsey
is also chair of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a principal
pro-Israel, anti-Iran advocacy think tank funded by the likes of the
Bronfmans, Mellon-Scaifes and Sheldon Adelson and populated by
neoconservatives such as Richard Perle, Bill Kristol & Michael
Ledeen, is chaired by Woolsey.[31][32][33] The
FDD overlaps considerably with the Committee on the Present Danger. In
2006, Woolsey and John Deutsch were forced to resign from an obscure
annual meeting called the Intelligence Summit after its primary
financier, Russian-Israeli oligarch Michael Cherney,
was exposed as having ties to Russian-Jewish-Eurasian organized crime.
Cherney, who in 1995 was the target of an Israeli-foiled FSB/KGB
assassination, is deeply involved with high-level Israeli officials and
politicians (in particular fellow Soviet-Israeli, Avigdor Lieberman).[34]
In 2003, he founded the Jerusalem Summit, an elite meeting of American
neoconservatives, radical Christians and Israeli Likudniks.[35]Mike
Flynn (center) & James Woolsey (right) at the Institute for World
Politics, a national security studies graduate school in the tradition
of the American Security Council.
Despite the fact that he resigned as national security advisor to the
Trump campaign and claimed he was being cut out of the Trump inner
circle (which was a face saving measure after Trump’s inflammatory
remarks about the intelligence community), Woolsey remained covertly
embedded in the Trump apparatus through his apparent proxy, former DIA
director and Trump national security advisor, Michael Flynn, whose Flynn
Intel Group featured Woolsey as a board member.[36][37] Woolsey attended
a meeting with Flynn (who was on the payroll of Recep Erdogan) and
representatives of the Turkish government where the primary topic of
discussion was kidnapping then extrajudicially renditioning Turkish
Islamic leader Fethullah Gulen out of the United States to Turkey, to
face likely execution by the Erdogan government.[38] At
the same time as he was advising the Trump campaign, Woolsey and his
wife were shopping a PR campaign aimed at smearing and discrediting
Gulen to allies of Erdogan.[39] All of this was
occurring while Flynn’s consulting firm was being paid by an ally of
the Erdogan government to “investigate” Gulen’s activities in the United
States.[40] After Woolsey’s resignation as an advisor to the Trump campaign,
Trump downplayed his advisory role, but this was clearly a sham — after
the election, incoming national security advisor Mike Flynn
offered Woolsey the position of CIA director, which would have made
Woolsey the only person to have ever held the position twice.[41] It
is impossible that Trump wouldn’t have known about this. Additionally,
in late 2017 at Mar-a-Lago, Woolsey had a “friendly, lengthy
conversation” with Trump at the main dining table surrounded by several
of Trump’s friends, associates, and political allies.[42] The
exact nature of the conversation is unknown, but it was clearly very
significant seeing as how no one gets a private audience with Trump
unless they are of the utmost importance to him. Woolsey’s closeness to the Trump campaign’s favored middleman and
deniable wheeler-dealer, Mike Flynn, indicates high-level involvement in
the Trump apparatus. Furthermore, Trump ran on somewhat of a unique
“realist” (Kissinger-Brzezinski-Scowcroft)-Jacksonian quasi-isolationist
hybrid foreign policy and locked horns publicly with more high-profile
neoconservatives such as Bill Kristol, yet there arch-neoconservative
Woolsey was along with other idealist cohorts nestled in the Trump
transition team’s foreign policy advisory team. His support of Trump is
particularly confounding because Woolsey, despite being a
neoconservative, fits the profile of an anti-Trumper — highly respected
among the entire national security establishment, scandal-free, a
Democrat, not merely a Likud stooge, maintains backchannels with the
Atlanticist foreign policy wing, etc. His placement within the Trump
ecosystem is very significant and possibly indicates a more profound
push from deep within the broader defense establishment for a president
like Trump.
Mike Flynn speaking at the OSS Society [Source]The
fact that Michael Flynn was so embedded with Woolsey is significant in
itself. This indicates that Flynn — who made a number of extremely
unorthodox and questionable decisions including taking large sums of
money in the form “consulting fees” from the Turkish government and an Israeli spyware company
originating from Unit 8200 (the Israeli equivalent of the NSA) — was
probably doing more than just running around trying to procure contracts
with every entity willing to pay in some frantic attempt to enrich
himself. It was almost surely involved in some kind of informal private
intelligence network.
Flynn appears to have also answered to K.T. McFarland, an obscure
foreign policy hawk who, before joining the Trump campaign and later
transition team as a foreign policy advisor, had been inactive (other
than a few appearances on Fox News) since the Reagan
administration. During the ’70s, McFarland worked on Henry Kissinger’s
NSC staff writing briefs for the president and remained on the NSC
during the Ford administration as a purported Kissinger protege.[43] In
the ’80s, McFarland was one of defense secretary Caspar Weinberger’s
closest aides as well as his speechwriter and communications chief.
According to McFarland, her speeches were used to “short-circuit layers
and layers of conflicting interests” in the defense bureaucracy.[44] In December 2016, after the Obama administration levied sanctions on Russia for election meddling, McFarland,
who according to sources was apparently more senior than Flynn, met
Flynn at Mar-a-Lago to discuss “what, if anything, Flynn was to
communicate to the Russian Ambassador [Sergey Kislyak] about the US
sanctions”, the potential impact of the sanctions on the incoming Trump
administration’s foreign policy and how the transition team did not want
Russia to escalate the situation.
Flynn later called Kislyak to request that “Russia not escalate the
situation and only respond to the US sanctions in a reciprocal manner.”[45]
McFarland briefly served as Deputy National Security Advisor in 2017
before being pushed out by H.R. McMaster, where she had been not-so-subtly pushing for
the agitation of North Korea and convened a meeting of national
security officials to solicit proposals for a first-strike on North
Korea. It is a virtual certainty that McFarland at the very least knows
James Woolsey, as McFarland served as an advisor to the Woolsey-chaired
Foundation for Defense of Democracies and is a member of the Jamestown
Foundation, a think tank of which Woolsey is a member.[46] In 2016, The Field of Fight, a book co-authored by Mike Flynn and his compatriot, neoconservative CIA asset and foreign policy consultant, Michael Ledeen,
was published in which Iran was identified as the linchpin of a vast
international conspiracy against the United States that also includes
North Korea, China, Russia, Syria, Cuba, Bolivia, Venezuela, and
Nicaragua. No evidence is offered in support of this deranged,
incoherent fantasy. Despite keeping a relatively low profile, Ledeen is
very connected as one of the foremost presences at the Iran-obsessed
Foundation for Defense of Democracies as well as JINSA. Ledeen played a
pivotal role in brokering meetings between Iranian, American and Israeli
representatives in Iran-Contra (while working with Ted Shackley), ran
intelligence-sponsored anti-Carter disinformation campaigns
and during the Bush years, was the only international relations analyst
Karl Rove consistently sought counsel from, having been instrumental
in inventing and then forwarding among the Bush national security
establishment the idea that Saddam Hussein had procured and sourced
yellowcake uranium from Niger while working with Douglas Feith.[47] Disturbingly,
Ledeen is still kicking today — during the election season, his wife, a
Senate judiciary committee staffer, arranged a covert investigation
into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server that enlisted the
help of Newt Gingrich, Judicial Watch and a few unnamed defense contractors in attempting to acquire pilfered Clinton emails on the “dark web.”[48]
“It’s taken us 13 years to get here, but we’ve arrived.” — Frank Gaffney,
speaking at a dinner honoring the “Keepers of the Flame” (unilateralist
neocons surrounding Bush 43) and referring to the CSP’s domination of
the national security apparatus after 9/11, a position they hadn’t held
since Reagan years (Bush 41 somewhat marginalized them).
The Center for Security Policy (CSP), a successor to the legendary
American Security Council as the key nerve center for the conservative
defense establishment, seems to be a hub for pro-Trump national
security, Pentagon and foreign policy insiders. Its membership list
turns up a substantial list of “national security” hardliner
heavyweights: James Woolsey, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Richard
Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, Norman Augustine, Jeane Kirkpatrick, Edward
Teller, Richard Mellon Scaife, James Schlesinger, Elliott Abrams, James
L. Jones, Paula Dobriansky, Dov Zakheim and a sea of other defense
establishment insiders.[49] The CSP was successful in lobbying for the creation of the Commission to Assess the Ballistic Missile Threat (nicknamed
the “Rumsfeld Commission”), which was instrumental in seeding the idea
of an “Axis of Evil” in foreign policy circles and keeping the missile
defense lobby alive even after the Cold War ended.[50][51] As it happens, Frank Gaffney, the CSP’s president was a foreign policy advisor
on the Trump transition team. Gaffney, a former Reagan Pentagon
official who worked closely with other neocons such as Richard Perle and
convinced Newt Gingrich and Dick Armey to make National Missile Defense
a plank in their 1994 political credo, was slated to become Ted Cruz’s
National Security Advisor, had he won.[52][53]
A number of Trump network figures such as Mike Pompeo, Sebastian Gorka,
Mike Flynn & Steve Bannon have conducted numerous interviews on
Gaffney’s obscure radio show and podcast and the Trump administration as
a whole seems to get many of its talking points from Gaffney and the
CSP, often times even explicitly citing CSP studies and statistics
usually relating to Muslims in the United States and the Middle East.[54][55]“Sharia
has become an increasingly significant force in American capitalism,
thanks to the embrace by Wall Street and the U.S. government of
so-called Sharia-Compliant Finance. Indeed, this country’s taxpayers now
own the largest purveyor of sharia-compliant insurance products in the
world: AIG.” — just a sampling of some of the sheer insanity that comes out of Gaffney
Gaffney is a major proliferator and originator of many hysterical
conspiracy theories embraced by the alternative media and right-wing,
such as the idea that Barack Obama is a secret Muslim communist, that
the Obama administration was a vehicle for the “Iran lobby”, that US
intelligence agencies are infiltrated by the Muslim Brotherhood, that
Huma Abedin is a Muslim Brotherhood operative and that Saddam Hussein
was behind the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.[56] These talking points then percolate down through so-called alternative media shops like Breitbart News, Infowars, Intelius, WorldNetDaily, ZeroHedge, Drudge, etc.
The Gatestone Institute, headed by John Bolton, Rebekah Mercer, Elie
Wiesel and James Woolsey, bolsters similar Islamophobic lines, warning
of a looming “jihadist takeover” and “Islamization” of Europe leading to
a “Great White Death.”[57][58][59] The
comical “Secure America Now Foundation”, funded by influential Zionist
billionaire and Trump friend, Ron Lauder and run by an aide of Lauder’s,
peddles similar crazed theories.[60][61] While
it is true that mass third world immigration poses a grave threat to
Western countries, most anti-immigrant propaganda unfairly targets Islam
as a malady in itself and, more often than not, is informed by a
malicious foreign policy agenda.Frank Gaffney & John Bolton
In 2013, Mother Jones reported that Gaffney, Steve Bannon
and John Bolton were at the helm of a confab of conservative Washington
insiders called “Groundswell” that was orchestrating a sprawling PR
campaign aimed at undermining Obama administration policies, hyping the
Benghazi controversy, smearing the GOP “establishment” and marginalizing
Karl Rove, who was viewed by Groundswell as too moderate, and Grover
Norquist, who Bolton and Gaffney literally believe is a secret Muslim
Brotherhood agent.[62]
Another evidence of Gaffney and Bolton’s association is Bolton’s
concerted rehabilitation of Gaffney’s image in mainstream conservative
circles in the run-up to the 2016 election, including having Gaffney
unbanned from CPAC in 2016.[63]
Another
confluence of Trump network associates is the Council for National
Policy (CNP), an intensely secretive and influential think tank dating
back to the Reagan era teeming with hard-right megadonors, politicians,
generals, political operatives and media pundits that seems to be
centered more around domestic politics and media than foreign policy and
international relations, as opposed to the CSP. It is so secretive that
CNP members were instructed to deny its existence until recently. John
Singlaub, Frank Gaffney, John Bolton, Irving Kristol, Edward Teller,
Jeane Kirkpatrick, Pat Robertson, Pat Buchanan, Jerry Falwell, Jerome
Corsi, Chris Ruddy, the Coors family, the Hunt family, the Scaife
family, Edwin Meese, Steve Forbes, Erik Prince (and the greater
DeVos-Prince family, which is a major bankroller of the CNP), Oliver
North, Robert Mercer, Steve Bannon and Kellyanne Conway have all been
members of the CNP.[64][65][66]
The DeVos networkSteve Bannon’s entry in a leaked CNP membership directory
CNP member Oliver North has even been involved in assisting
Blackwater (private intelligence network) founder and CIA asset, Erik
Prince lobby the White House and CIA director Mike Pompeo to contract
with business partners of Prince to establish what could be described as
a private “parallel CIA” that reports only Pompeo, circumventing the
official CIA bureaucracy.[67] Steve
Feinberg, head of Cerberus Capital (which owns defense contractor
DynCorp) and chair of the Trump Intelligence Advisory Board, was courted
by Prince to help him in privatizing the war in Afghanistan and other
Pentagon functions.[68]
Prince fashions himself as a torch bearer for the legacy of the CIA
“oldboys” network of JFK assassination fame that evolved into Nixon
private intelligence circles and later the Iran-Contra network (for more
on this, see the Western Goals Foundation). Prince wields tremendous influence as an informal advisor and envoy
within the Trump administration and maintains connections to many in the
“anti-establishment” right, including Steve Bannon and Dana
Rohrabacher.[69] Betsy
DeVos, Trump’s education secretary, is Erik Prince’s sister. The DeVos
family’s political ties hearken back to Nixon circles and is now a
veritable pillar of insider Republican politics and one of the most
prolific financiers of GOP candidates and policy initiatives, having
provided the seed money for what came to be known as the “Republican
Revolution” and “Contract with America” when Newt Gingrich became
Speaker of the House in 1994.[70][71] Joseph
E. Schmitz, who was an official foreign policy advisor to the Trump
campaign, was a former executive at Prince’s Blackwater and a senior
fellow at the Center for Security Policy. Schmitz’s father, John G. Schmitz, was an ultraconservative congressman and leading member of the John Birch Society.[72][73] Walid Phares, another Trump campaign advisor, was a former senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.[74]
Oliver North (left) & Erik Prince
Cofer Black, who was a top candidate for CIA director within the
Trump administration and formerly part of Erik Prince’s Blackwater
clique, ran the CIA’s Counter Terrorist Center and was aware of several
members of Mohammed Atta’s cell having been in the United States prior
to 9/11, did not put the men on any terror watchlists until right before 9/11 and never reported them to the FBI.[75][76] Additional
key 9/11 suspects Dick Cheney, Rudy Giuliani and Donald Rumsfeld have
emerged as surrogates of the Trump administration. Cheney has served as
an unofficial bridge between the Trump team and skeptical Republican
politicians and power brokers.[77][78] Giuliani, who mirrors Trump in their shared authoritarian tendencies and is now the Trump legal team’s figurehead, has a mile-long laundry list of connections to the neoconservative movement, Israel lobby and national security establishment.[79]
Edwin Meese, a key powerbroker and gatekeeper in the Reagan White House
(and involved in every scandal of the era, including Iran-Contra
and PROMIS), serves in a similar capacity, having founded the Reagan
Alumni Advisory Council for Trump-Pence, which promotes massive tax cuts
and a rebirth of the American Security Council’s “peace through
strength” foreign policy.[80]
The ultra-connected Mellon-Scaife family of Alcoa-Gulf Oil fortune
appears to have backed Trump. According to an investigation by
the Pittsburgh Post Gazette, the Scaife Foundation has a laundry list of
ties to the Trump network primarily through its preferred conduit, the
Heritage Foundation, which is funded in large part by the Scaife
Foundation and is riddled with Scaife trustees and board members.[81] The
Heritage Foundation, which is one of the most influential conservative
think tanks in the US and has been described as “the most effective
media operation in US politics”, was reported as having been one of the
dominant forces in the Trump transition team, constituting somewhat of a
“shadow transition team” building bridges between the incoming Trump
camp and high-level conservative politicians, donors and think tankers.
Prominent Heritage Foundation members on the transition included Edwin
Meese, Edwin Feulner, Rebekah Mercer and at least two others.[82][83]
The
Mellon-Scaife family has long had very deep ties to post OSS-Anglo
American intelligence and neoconservative think tank networks, which
might explain their political involvement.[84]
Richard Mellon Scaife (now deceased), the most politically engaged
Mellon in recent memory, was an ultra-right CIA asset belonging to both
the American Security Council and Committee on the Present Danger and
financed seemingly every conservative politician and influence
operation/PR campaign in the past 40 years, including most of the
journalists, private investigators and media outlets behind the Clinton
scandal and rumor mill of the ’90s.[85] Most
interestingly, Rex Armistead, a private investigator who worked for
Scaife, was responsible for seeding the Vince Foster murder conspiracy
by pitching the story to American Spectator staff writer, David Brock.[86] Scaife
was a linchpin and major financier in the establishment of the
insurgent right-wing think tank network of the Reagan era and was among
those who ran the secret, underground parallel government headed by vice
president George H.W. Bush that covertly ran the Reagan administration.[87]
Trump & Khashoggi
Another thread in Trump’s past with sordid national security assets
is glamorous Saudi CIA-cavorting arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi — at one
point the world’s wealthiest man. Khashoggi sold Trump his yacht, the Nabila,
at a bargain basement price (Trump later sold it to finance the
faltering Taj Mahal casino), attended Trump’s 1993 wedding to Marla
Maples and, according to investigative journalist Daniel Hopsicker, was
given shelter by Trump at Mar-a-Lago while Khashoggi was being pursued
by INTERPOL for defrauding a Thai bank.[88][89]
Khashoggi’s centrality in both above and below ground arms/weapons
markets and rapport with American defense companies afforded him a role
in an impressive assortment of conspiratorial chapters orchestrated in
large part by covert “parallel CIA”-private intelligence networks,
including Iran Contra/BCCI (Khashoggi was a key middleman for weapons
transfers), Ted Shackley’s Safari Club, Nixon dirty tricks teams, the Imelda Marcos affair, and Bush family-City of London front company Barrick Gold.[90][91][92]
The Trump campaign’s foremost sugar daddy, Robert Mercer, is a
reticent and taciturn James Bond villain-like computer scientist turned
hedge fund billionaire with deep ties to the hard-right think tank
network involved in all manner of bizarre activities such as
volunteering as a deputy sheriff in rural New Mexico with Navy SEALs and
defense contractor mercenaries as well as bankrolling the storage of a
gigantic stockpile of human urine in Oregon for some probably insane
reason.[93] Mercer
was formerly co-CEO of hedge fund, Renaissance Technologies (whose
success comes from the novel application of sophisticated mathematical
and statistical techniques) and is famous for hoping to drastically
shrink the government and financing insurgent underdog
“anti-establishment” politicians such as Ted Cruz and Trump and
political movements such as Brexit — a contrarian philosophy he carried
over from Renaissance, which doesn’t employ anyone from a Wall Street
financial background because of their “herd-like” mentality.[94][95]
Robert & Rebekah Mercer
After initially backing and financing Ted Cruz, Mercer and his daughter Rebekah Mercer shifted their allegiance to Trump.[96]
Robert Mercer was ranked the #1 donor in the 2016 election cycle and
was by far the largest contributor to pro-Trump PACs (having given at
least $15.5 million) and a direct contributor to the Trump campaign.[97] Nick Patterson, a former colleague of Mercer’s said in 2017 that Trump would not have been elected without Mercer’s support.[98] According to the New Yorker‘s Jane Mayer, the Mercers eclipsed the Kochs as the most influential donors on the right in the 2015-2016 election cycle.[99] The
secretive father-daughter duo wielded tremendous influence in the Trump
White House directly and through their stooge, Steve Bannon, who was
introduced to Trump by the Mercers and whose involvement with the
Mercers dates at least back to his collaboration with them at the
so-called Government Accountability Institute, which spawned the Clinton
Cash documentary.[100][101][102]
Mercer surrogates Bannon and Kelly Anne Conway were secured positions
in the Trump administration by the Mercers while Rebekah sat on the
transition team.[103][104] Trump
National Security Advisor John Bolton was also the beneficiary of
Mercer money — his PAC was funded to the tune of $5 million by Mercer —
as well as the services of the largely Mercer-owned psychographic data
mining firm, Cambridge Analytica, which will be discussed later.[105] The Mercers, Bannon and Conway — all members of the secretive Council for National Policy[106]
— joined in establishing the anti-Clinton media ecosystem (the “vast
right-wing conspiracy”) and neutralizing mainstream media talking points
in the run-up to the 2016 election.[107] The Mercer family is additionally an owner and financier of far right propaganda outlet and virtual Trump rallying point Breitbart News, which was run by Bannon, who also owned a large stake of Breitbart and pitched the site to the Mercers, from 2012 to 2017.[108][109][110]Breitbart
relentlessly aired ludicrous rumors about Hillary Clinton as well as
Islamophobic talking points that seem to have come from Frank Gaffney’s
Center for Security Policy. Further reinforcing US conservative ties to
Israel, Israeli political elements even had an ambiguous role in the
foundation of Breitbart according to its co-founder, Larry Solov:
A lot of people don’t realize this but Breitbart News
Network really got its start in Jerusalem. It was the summer of 2007,
and Andrew had been invited to tour Israel as part of a media junket. I
agreed to tag along as his lawyer and best friend. What neither of us
knew at the time was that the trip would change our lives and give
us the inspiration for Breitbart News Network … We were blown away by
the spirit, tenacity, and resourcefulness of the Israeli people on that
trip … One thing we specifically discussed that night was our desire to
start a site that would be unapologetically pro-freedom and pro-Israel.
We were sick of the anti- Israel bias of the mainstream media and
J-Street. By launching Breitbart Jerusalem, the journey comes full
circle and a promise between two friends is fulfilled. And in a very
real sense, Breitbart News Network returns to its roots. — Larry Solov
Andrew Breitbart (left) and Benjamin Netanyahu (bottom) with other co-founders of Breitbart News. [Source]In its work for Robert Mercer’s super PAC, Cambridge Analytica disseminated anti-Clinton propaganda.[111] Kelly
Anne Conway’s husband, George Conway, who was at one point being
considered for a position in the Trump administration as solicitor
general, was a critical player in the Monica Lewinsky scandal. Conway, a
long-time government attorney, helped set his friend Linda Tripp up
with a lawyer when she “finally decided” to go public with her knowledge
of the Lewinsky affair. In addition, Conway even helped feed the story
to Matt Drudge of the Drudge Report.[112]
The Drudge Report‘s breaking of the
Lewinsky scandal turned it from an obscure, fledgling operation into
the news aggregation giant it is today. And, of course, Linda Tripp was
far more than just some innocent friend of Lewinsky’s whose conscious
got to her — she was a Bush political operative and loyalist who held
ultra-sensitive posts in military intelligence and was later embedded as
a high-level mole and secret antagonist in the Clinton White House
legal office (where she “befriended” Monica Lewinsky) and later the
Pentagon.[113]
Contrary to the naive assertion of those in both right and left-wing
alternative media that neoconservatives “hijacked” the Trump
administration, neoconservatives were ingrained in the Trump apparatus
from the very beginning, although their involvement did seem to
accelerate after Ted Cruz’s defeat. Cruz appears to have been the other
candidate the hard-right foreign policy wing was cultivating, perhaps
even having been their first choice. Woolsey, Frank Gaffney and a cadre
of other prominent neoconservatives were advisors to the Cruz campaign
before joining the Trump team. Although what is certain is that the
neoconservatives were legion against Hillary Clinton and immediately
embraced Trump in preparation for the general election.
The Roy Cohn Nexus
Trump & Roy Cohn
Donald Trump and his family’s ties to hard-right and pro-Israel
political circles is not at all a recent development. Donald’s father,
Fred Trump, was a critical advocate and financial backer of the American
Security Council’s handpicked candidate, Barry Goldwater, and was a
major promoter of Jewish causes (mostly through cash and land donations)
along with his closest collaborator and advisor Bunny Lindenbaum, a
prominent New York-area legal fixer and well-known Zionist.[114]
Bunny Lindenbaum and his son, Sandy Lindenbaum — both members of
Chabad-Lubavitch — later went on to serve as legal counsel to Donald as
well.[115][116] Fred
Trump was also among the largest initial buyers of Israel Bonds, debt
securities issued by the Israeli government in the United States whose
proceeds go towards the Israeli government and were apparently
instrumental in helping to establish Israel’s infrastructure and defense
apparatus.[117] His
success as a real estate developer was critically dependent upon his
connections to the Brooklyn-New York Democratic political machine, which
was — and still is to an extent — largely controlled by Zionists such
as Lindenbaum, Abe Beam (the first Jewish mayor of New York) and
publicist Howard Rubenstein.[118]
Fred’s
political connections were instrumental in procuring subsidies and
lucrative no-bid contracts from various government institutions
including the Federal Housing Authority and Navy for his real estate
business.[119]
Many have speculated as to whether the Trump family is actually
covertly Jewish or merely assuaged prominent Jews as a means of breaking
into New York political circles. Fred Trump became acquainted with
Benjamin Netanyahu in the ’80s during Netanyahu’s time as the Israeli
ambassador to the UN and Donald Trump has personally known Netanyahu
since at the very least the early ’00s when Netanyahu met him at Trump
Tower, though the relationship probably goes back much further given
Fred’s ties.[120][121] Following his father’s lead, Donald has been a prolific donor
to Jewish and Israeli causes since the ’70s and later lent office
space, telephones, equipment and his private jet to the 1980 Reagan
presidential campaign.[122]
Perot at OSS Society dinner [source]In
2000, Trump was fingered by his close friend Ross Perot to run for
president on the Reform ticket. Perot, despite having been portrayed by
the media as a political outsider, was a consummate political insider
with deep ties to the hard-right national security establishment and
Reagan circles, having financially backed several of Oliver North’s
off-the-book, private intelligence network projects. Perot was neck deep
in intelligence connections through his company Electronic Data
Systems, which had lucrative government-defense IT & management
outsourcing contracts and typified CIA involvement in the Dallas
business community. He was in fact so tied to intelligence that he was
placed on Reagan’s Presidential Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (a
group of civilian presidential appointees that advise the president on
intelligence and covert operations matters) and regularly attended AFIO
(Association of Former Intelligence Officers)/OSS Society meetings.[123]Credit: Fitzpatrick Informer
Donald Trump had many benefactors who abetted his penetration of the
Manhattan real estate market and consequent rise as a developer, however
the most important were Fred Trump and anti-communist crusader and
political fixer Roy Cohn. Not only did Fred incubate Donald’s real
estate business with injections of cash, Fred’s political connections
were transferred to Donald and he underwrote most of the loans he
received early in his career, as Donald had few assets of his own. Most
only know Roy Cohn as Donald Trump’s attorney, but he was much more than
that — he was Trump’s mentor, foremost advisor and one of his most
intimate friends until his death in 1986. [124] Besides
his Goldwater-backing father, Cohn is Trump’s earliest link to the
ultranationalist hard-right political in-group that backed his
presidency and procured innumerable important political connections for
Trump.
[Cohn] assumed a role in Donald’s life far transcending that of a lawyer. He became Donald’s mentor, his constant adviser. – Wayne Barrett, Trump: The Deals and the Downfall
Cohn, who made himself a name as Joseph McCarthy’s chief counsel (a job he was recommended
for by J. Edgar Hoover) and as the lead Department of Justice
prosecutor on the Rosenberg case and who later went on to become perhaps
the most infamous legal and political fixer in history, instructed
Trump to be aggressive and unrelenting in his dealings, handled
sensitive public relations matters for him, secured his sister her judgeship and, most critically, was involved in
brokering and running interference for many of his early Manhattan
business and real estate deals, securing him critical tax abatements and
zoning variances.
Credit: EIR
Cohn was highly connected to and involved in conservative and
pro-Israel political circles. Initially cultivated and later protected
by founding CIA director Allen Dulles, Cohn was highly placed in the
American Security Council-based hard-right power structure as an outside
advisor and counsel to Republican presidents Richard Nixon and Ronald
Reagan and as a point-man between right-wing pro-Israel politicians and
the intelligence community, having been one of the central figures in
the John Birch Society as well as the Western Goals Foundation private
intelligence ring (whose successors fully backed the Trump presidency).[125][126] His list of entanglements in conspiratorial intrigue is a mile long:
Was on the board of CIA-Mossad front company, Permindex, and was
president of the Lionel Company. Both are believed to have been involved
in the JFK assassination and were both tied to Mossad-cavorting mobster
Meyer Lansky and the powerful Zionist Bronfman family among others.[127][128]
Gave Roger Stone — who was working on Reagan’s 1980 presidential
campaign in New York — a briefcase containing blackmail material and/or
bribes for him to deliver to lawyers for New York’s Liberal Party in
order to get John B. Anderson the nomination for the Liberal Party, which would fracture the opposition to Reagan in the state.[129]
Mediated a Reagan-era early 1980s “perception management”
campaignspearheaded by CIA director William Casey and Richard Mellon
Scaife that utilized Rupert Murdoch’s media assets to promote Reagan’s
foreign policy agenda and combat the “liberal media”. This operation
engendered the birth of Murdoch’s Fox News with the help of Republican media strategy virtuosos Roger Ailes and Lee Atwater.[130][131][132]
Christine Seymour, Cohn’s courier and secretary, noted that Cohn spoke
almost daily with William Casey and Nancy Reagan, as well as Donald
Trump.[133] Rush
Limbaugh’s ascension was instigated through this network when Bill
Casey, still pursuing his agenda of assembling a pro-Reagan hard-right
media network, used Capital Cities to purchase ABC, whose executives
recruited Limbaugh to work for them because of his spirited defense of
Oliver North and Iran-Contra.[134]
Along with his aide, David Schine, took part in an European
underground spy hunting ring with several former communists and exiled
Nazis counting among its ranks.[135]
Operated CIA-sanctioned pedophile entrapment and blackmail rings in
league with various CIA and Army Intelligence men. One which took place
in CIA asset Craig Spence’s home reached all the way up to the Reagan
White House.[136]
Allegedly, along with James Jesus Angleton and Meyer Lansky, had
blackmail material on J. Edgar Hoover. Cohn himself was a pederast and
central player in the “lavender Mafia”
– a secretive and closely knit group of closet homosexuals in the
American political right, and in particular the Reagan administration.[137][138][139]
…According to the former head of the vice squad for
one of America’s biggest cities, ‘Cohn’s job was to run the little boys.
Say you had an admiral, a general, a congressman, who did not want to
go along with the program. Cohn’s job was to set them up, then they
would go along. Cohn told me that himself.’” Cohn was a good friend of Craig Spence and together with top CIA
and Army men, as well as politicians and businessmen, he once threw his
birthday party at Spence’s house. Spence was later investigated for
running a CIA-sanctioned homosexual and pedophile entrapment ring at his
house with operations going straight up to the White House.[140] … … When New York attorney John Klotz began to investigate Roy Cohn
on behalf of a client…declassified New York government files and
spadework by a private detective substantiated the allegation that there
was indeed a ‘blue suite’ at the Plaza, Suite 233. ‘Roy Cohn was
providing protection,’ Klotz discovered. ‘There were a bunch of
pedophiles involved. That’s where Cohn got his power from—blackmail.[141]
Cohn connected Trump with numerous political elites and power brokers
including several future political allies, namely Rupert Murdoch, Paul
Manafort, Roger Ailes (both of Fox News) and Roger Stone, an
underhanded GOP dirty tricks operative, media hatchetman and former Cohn
partner who got his start as a Nixon goon working on the CREEP
reelection campaign and who’s served as Trump’s most trusted political
advisor since Cohn’s death in the mid ’80s. All four of them were
personally introduced to Trump by Cohn.[142][143] Former
Clinton political strategist and pollster Dick Morris is a first cousin
once removed of Roy Cohn and his family benefited both politically and
financially from Cohn’s lucrative mob connections.[144]
Morris, who has been secretly advising Donald Trump since at least
early 2016, turned against the Clintons after having been exposed as a
saboteur and leaker in the Clinton White House and is now a purveyor of
anti-Clinton talking points both in writing and in YouTube videos.[145]
Credit: EIR
Cohn, like most other powerful lawyers, had preferred mouthpieces in
the media through which he planted stories to serve him and his clients’
purposes. The most significant of those was the New York Post,
Rupert Murdoch’s right-leaning tabloid newspaper which almost
singlehandedly turned Donald Trump into a celebrity in the late ’70s and
maintained his image as the symbol of wealth and grandeur throughout
the ’80s and ’90s. Cohn would plant gushing, aggrandizing and utterly
dishonest articles in the Post about Trump.[146] This kind of unabashed flack coverage was most definitely signed off on by the Post’s owner, Rupert Murdoch, himself a major power broker throughout the Anglosphere and United States.Roy Cohn at home, posing with stuffed toy frogs and holding a photo of him and Trump.
Rumored to have been recruited by the CIA’s Ted Shackley while
Shackley was station chief in Australia, Murdoch runs in both
hard-right/Zionist and liberal political circles and is without a doubt
the most powerful media executive in the world.[147]
Murdoch controls nearly half of the British and Australian medias and
virtually all aspiring national British and Australians politicians
require his affirmation and good graces lest they be torn apart by his
influential network of newspapers and television holdings, which
generally seem to be preoccupied with running interference for the
broader pro-Israel, neoconservative foreign policy agenda. Bill Kristol
and Norman Podhoretz’s uber-neoconservative TheWeekly Standard was even bankrolled by Murdoch. For this reason, Murdoch is consistently showered with praise
by the Israel lobby. Murdoch has had a close relationship with Trump at
least since the beginning of the 2016 election season and, according to
the New York Times, commiserates and plots strategy with Trump over the phone on a weekly basis.[148][149]
I would actually sit there where (Cohn) would have a
(New York Post) reporter on the phone, and he would be dictating the
story, dictating word for word: ‘Donald Trump made a billion-dollar deal
with the Saudis today, period, paragraph.’ You know, it was
extraordinary. – Roger Stone
Comically uncritical coverage of Trump at Fox News shouldn’t
be a surprise since it is also owned by Rupert Murdoch through News
Corp. Roger Ailes, the former CEO of Fox News, has been a media
consultant to every Republican president since Nixon and was, along with
Lee Atwater, one of the key architects of modern Republican media
strategy and turned television into a political propaganda medium for
the GOP. This was, quite literally, the model for Fox,
which Ailes founded with Rupert Murdoch in 1996. Contrary to the
Twitter theater between Trump and Ailes that was played up in the media
early in election season, the two have been close for decades. Ailes
was, in fact, the figure responsible for thrusting Trump into politics
by giving him a daily call-in segment on Fox & Friends and had been a close advisor of Trump’s up until his death. Never mind the fact that Michael Cohen, Trump’s lawyer, is in bed with Fox News‘s preeminent pro-Trump flack, Sean Hannity. The importance of Murdoch’s Fox shouldn’t be underestimated — Trump vociferously consumes Fox content, it quite literally appears to control his rhetoric and has probably spurred some executive decisions.
Trump & Murdoch
Contrary to the handwringing about anti-Trump bias in the media by
both left and right-leaning “alternative” political crowds who engage in
all manner of shameless apologia for Trump, the media was and still is a
knowing and intentional abettor of Trump and the “Trump phenomenon”.
And it’s not just right-wing media like Fox. At CNN, staffers complain of Jeff Zucker (Trump’s self-described friend and “personal booker“) and his insistence on constantly covering Trump at the expense of other important stories.[150] Zucker previously worked with Trump at MSNBC on The Apprentice and enjoyed a special relationship with him all throughout the election season which he used to turn CNN’s deteriorating ratings and viewership numbers around.[151] Over at MSNBC, Joe Scarborough, Mika Brzezinski (both of whom have communed with Trump at Mar-a-Lago) and their producers allow Trump to personally dictate what
they can and cannot ask him. The media gifted Trump full control of the
news cycle, almost $2 billion in free advertising and massively
disproportionate coverage compared to both rival GOP nomination
contenders (even before he registered in the polls) and Clinton.[152][153]
In fact, according to several analyses, Trump may have received more
net positive coverage than Hillary Clinton, whose scandals were also
relentlessly aired in the mainstream media. (For a more in-depth look
into the media’s role in catapulting Trump to the White House, see this article.)Credit: WILLismsCredit: Vox
Trump’s Liberal-“Globalist” Ties
At the same time, the core of the American pro-UN, pro-transatlantic,
“globalist” liberal establishment centered around the State Department,
liberal elements in the CIA, legacy media and think tanks such as the
Council on Foreign Relations (core leadership), Atlantic Council,
Brookings Institute and Trilateral Commission has generally positioned
itself squarely against
Trump, who is vilified by the legacy media (though it’s not clear
whether this negative attention ultimately harms or benefits Trump). The
largely hard right-controlled altmedia has latched onto this antagonism
and uses it to make the false claim that the entire American elite is
opposed to Trump. There are even strong indications that the entirety of
the liberal Republican/Eastern Establishment wing is not anti-Trump, or
at the very least isn’t completely alienated from the administration. Henry
Kissinger, probably the most well-connected representative of the
American foreign policy and diplomatic establishment alive, with deep
ties to pretty much every conspiratorial bloc on earth be it
liberal/globalist, conservative or Zionist, has positioned himself as an
intermediary between the Trump administration and Putin and as part of
his effort to forge a “new relationship” between the US and Russia has
advised Trump to accept Crimea as part of Russia ostensibly as part of
an effort to have Russia pull troops out of eastern Ukraine.[154][155] Kissinger
additionally pitched to Trump and Jared Kushner a strategy of closer
relations between Russia and other countries as a means to counter
China’s growing geopolitical weight in South and Central Asia.[156]
Kissinger, who has a colorful history of secret diplomacy and
backchanneling, reared his head in the Trump White House in relation to
the Iran deal, Chinese diplomacy and North Korea as well. According to
some sources, Kissinger connected Jared Kushner with Chinese
politicians, an action which greased the wheels for a series of
high-profile meetings between Trump and Chinese president Xi Jinping,
who reportedly has sought Kissinger’s advise in navigating the Trump
administration.[157]
I’m hoping for an Augustinian moment, for St.
Augustine … who in his early life followed a pattern that was quite
incompatible with later on when he had a vision, and rose to sainthood.
One does not expect the president to become that, but it’s conceivable …
— Henry Kissinger on Donald Trump
Kissinger, who’s been a regular advisor and counselor of both Trump
and Putin (Kissinger has always been noted for his unusually close
relationship with Putin) and has spoken positively of the Trump
phenomenon and presidency, has apparently extended the olive branch to
Russia, breaking with the rest of the core liberal/”realist” diplomatic
establishment, possibly indicating a schism within the Atlanticists and
greater Eastern Establishment.[158] John
Huntsman Jr., son of longstanding GOP insider John Huntsman Sr.,
Kissinger protege and chairman of the CFR & Trilateral-aligned
Atlantic Council, is Trump’s ambassador to Russia and was under
contention to become secretary of state. In May 2018, Mikhail Fridman
and Petr Aven, the pro-Western integration, anti-nationalist Russian
oligarchs behind Alfa Group (whose owners are alleged by the Steele
dossier to have colluded with Trump and Putin), held “friendly”
closed-door talks with members of the Atlantic Council.[159]
Strangely, this incident went virtually unreported in the legacy
American media. This apparent Kissinger-Huntsman-Atlantic axis adds yet
another layer of complexity to the relationship between the Trump
administration and Russia and indicates that there may be a very
concealed side operation being conducted either running alongside or
routing the prevailing neoconservative Trump foreign policy apparatus
and its usual nefarious machinations.
Kissinger, Ivana and Donald Trump in 1985. “Henry
Kissinger has been a friend of mine… I’ve liked him. I’ve respected
him. But we’ve been friends for a long time, long before my emergence
into the world of politics, which has not been too long.” [source]Jim
Mattis, a hawkish right-wing Atlanticist whose appointment as Secretary
of Defense was lobbied for by John McCain, holds policy prescriptions
mostly in line with those of the liberal-GOP establishment, such as
support for a two-state solution in the Middle East, support for a
multilateral international order (UN and NATO), containment of perceived
Russian encroachment into NATO’s sphere of influence and opposition
towards withdrawal from the Iran deal (though he is generally very hawkish
on Iran). Mattis, the last more mainstream Atlanticist-liberal
establishmentarian standing in the Trump cabinet, has emerged as
possibly the most powerful member in the administration (rivaling
Bolton) and reportedly has the president’s ear. In fact, Mattis appears
to be protected within the administration by someone.
Mattis’
closest ally and ideological counterpart, Rex Tillerson, was forced
out, but Mattis remained untouched. Before being confirmed as secretary
of defense, Mattis drew a fat $419,000 a year salary as a distinguished
visiting fellow at the Hoover Institute, which then proceeded to blast
out emails to potential donors that touted its ties to the Trump
administration through Mattis and others on the transition team,
promising to influence policy.[160] The
Hoover Institute connects more hardline conservative elements with
liberal Republicans. Members include George Schultz, the Bechtel family,
Edwin Meese, Condoleezza Rice, William Perry, Peter Thiel and Donald
Rumsfeld.[161] Tillerson, former secretary of state and chairman-CEO of ExxonMobil,
was an asset of the liberal establishment inside the Trump White House
before being jettisoned by the prevailing hard right and Zionist faction
because of his apparent refusal to take part in pulling out of the Iran
deal.[162] Tillerson,
who was promoted to the Trump inner circle as secretary of state by
Condi Rice, Kissinger, Dick Cheney, James Baker and Donald Rumsfeld, has
been a member of the CFR, Business Council and CSIS (Center for
Strategic & International Studies) liberal think tanks.[163]
He was previously chairman of Exxon Neftegas, Exxon’s Russian venture
arm that sought to develop oil resources in and off Sakhalin Island.
He’s spent almost as much time face-to-face with Vladimir Putin as Henry
Kissinger and is a close friend of Putin’s “de facto deputy” in charge of Russia’s security/military apparatus Igor Sechin.[164] Being
tied to both the Atlantic establishment and Russia, it’s very likely
Tillerson was part of the post-Dulles Russian relations network.
Depiction
of H.R. McMaster as a “globalist” Soros puppet by Ben Garrison, a
leading apostle in the intelligence-controlled, post-John Birch Trump
media complex
Another node in the Trump administration’s liberal-diplomatic
pro-NATO establishment axis was HR McMaster, who was advocated for by
Mattis and John McCain. For this reason, McMaster from his first day in
the White House quite obviously became the victim of an intense and
vitriolic media campaign throughout the controlled alternative and
right-wing media (both of which Trump personally consumes on an hourly
basis) which sought to discredit him among hardcore Trump boosters as a
contemptible globalist George Soros stooge. Strangely, McMaster’s
ideological and policy confederates, Mattis and Tillerson, were not
subject to near the same degree of insane internet-fueled smear tactics.
Might this PR operation been part of the long-running effort to parlay
conservative national security and defense lobby asset John Bolton into
the White House? Where did this whole anti-McMaster enterprise
originate? Perhaps Sheldon Adelson was part of it — the Adelson-backed
Zionist Organization of America called for Trump to take McMaster out of the National Security Council through Bannon’s Breitbart News.Trump & Schwarzman
Additionally, a coterie of ‘Eastern Establishment’, ‘Rockefeller
Republican’ Wall Street financial insiders led by ultra-connected
chairman and CEO of private equity giant, Blackstone Group, Stephen
Schwarzman, and leveraged buyout billionaire Wilbur Ross appears in the
Trump arena.[165] Schwarzman,
former chair of the Trump White House Strategic & Policy Forum
before it was disbanded, is part of the Trump inner circle; one of his
closest advisors and counselors, particularly on matters related to
China, internal White House management and foreign policy.[166]
Peter Peterson, co-founder of Blackstone, was Schwarzman’s mentor in
addition to having been chairman of the Council on Foreign Relations,
where he succeeded David Rockefeller, whose family coaxed Peterson’s
career along. In the ’70s, Peterson was chairman of the US-Soviet
Commercial Commission and his aptly-named Peterson Institute — an
international economics think tank stacked with Eastern Establishment
“liberal CIA” heavyweights like Larry Summers, George Shultz, Lynn
Forester de Rothschild and Maurice Greenberg — teamed up with Zionist
oligarch Viktor Pinchuk and the Yeltsin government to economically
co-opt and exert US soft power on Russia.[167]’90s Russian economic reform network. Credit: ISGP
It appears Schwarzman may be following in his mentor’s footsteps — he
is a member of several high-level think tanks such as the CFR, Business
Council & Atlantic Council, was a member of Skull & Bones with
George W. Bush (whose presidency Schwarzman backed) and is a member of
the advisory board of the Russian Direct Investment Fund, Russia’s
sovereign wealth fund, which acts as a catalyst for foreign investment
in Russia’s economy.[168][169][170][171] RDIF CEO and Putin confidante Kirill Dmitriev was present at the infamous Erik Prince Seychelles meeting, where a secret communications backchannel between the Trump administration and Russia was discussed.While working in the bankruptcy restructuring advisory practice of N M
Rothschild & Son’s New York office, current secretary of commerce
and early Trump supporter Wilbur Ross (in league with Carl Icahn) helped
Donald Trump retain control of three of his utterly bankrupt Atlantic
City casinos (one of which was the Taj Mahal, which will later be shown
to be involved in Russian mob money laundering) by convincing
bondholders to strike a lenient restructuring deal with Trump.[172][173] During
the Clinton administration, Ross was on the board of the US-Russia
Investment Fund and today has a litany of financial ties to Russian
oligarchs and business interests, chief among them the Bank of Cyprus
PCL, where Ross is vice chairman of the board along with an appointee of
Vladimir Putin. The Bank of Cyprus is a dirty bank that has served as
one the top three offshore destinations for Russian and former Soviet
Union flight capital, most of it motivated by tax dodging, kleptocracy,
and money laundering.[174]
Introduction To Foreign Connections
Certainly, it can now be said that something of a domestic
understanding of the 2016 election has been established, however
underreported it may be. However, there most definitely seems to be an
international understanding lying primarily with Russia, Israel and the
international Russian-Jewish-Eurasian criminal and clandestine network binding
New York, Tel Aviv & Moscow — and it’s gotten much more attention
both in the mainstream and alternative press. Of course, in this case,
the domestic and international components of covert support for the
Trump presidency cannot be untangled because since the days of Jewish
mobster and CIA-Mossad-Naval Intelligence collaborator Meyer Lansky, Mossad-allied CIA counterintelligence chief James Jesus Angleton and ultra-right red-baiting Trump mentor Roy Cohn
there has been a near seamless relationship between the
ultranationalist conservative wing of American deep politics, the
basically unchallenged far-right Likudnik wing of Israeli politics and
the international Russian-Zionist dual criminal-espionage network, which
has always been deeply connected to the Kremlin, Russian state and now
Putin, who was parlayed into the Russian presidency by Boris Yeltsin and the Russian-Jewish mobster-oligarchs behind him. In the mainstream press, parts of this relationship are expressed in
the form of “Russiagate” — the lurid and usually vastly oversimplistic
theory posited by most in the New York-Washington media and many within
the US government that the Trump camp directly and explicitly colluded
with Putin and the Kremlin to help Trump win the 2016 presidential
election. Many mainstream journalists have extensively investigated ties
between the Trump camp and Russian oligarchs (i.e., the Russian-Jewish
mafia, though you’ll never hear them say this), but the overarching
theme and thrust of the theory is concerned with the Kremlin and
Vladimir Putin first and foremost. Putin and the Kremlin’s motive in supporting Trump was, according to
the DNI office and much of the mainstream press, to prevent Hillary
Clinton from ascending to the presidency, as Putin abhors Clinton,
assumed she would win the 2016 presidential election and believes her to
be a threat to Russian plans to encroach physically, economically and
politically on Eastern and Central European countries that are part of
the NATO/Western orbit. In other words, the Kremlin prefers Trump to
Clinton not necessarily because of anything the Trump administration
will actively do to promote Russian interests, but because it will
apparently not do things that might otherwise happen under a Clinton
administration. This makes sense if the mainstream media’s claims about Putin’s
distaste for Hillary Clinton are taken to be true, but it also makes the
core prediction of Russiagate essentially unfalsifiable, since
regardless of what actions the Trump administration takes in regards to
Russia/Eastern Europe, the Russiagate theorists will always be able to
claim that they are preferable in the eyes of the Kremlin to the actions
that would have likely been taken by a Clinton administration. And,
although there is somewhat of a discontinuity between Trump and his
national security apparatus on certain foreign policy matters, the
administration as a whole has been substantially hawkish towards Russia
in a direct sense, taking actions such as expelling Russian diplomats,
expanding NATO into Montenegro, attacking Russian mercenaries in Syria,
approving arms sales to Ukraine’s government, imposing sanctions, etc.
However, it could be argued that the Trump presidency has certainly
abetted Russian geopolitical interests in a more indirect — and probably
more profound — sense. According to the infamous Steele dossier (several parts of which have been verified or corroborated),
Putin and the Kremlin’s aim in supporting Trump was to “sow discord and
disunity both within the US itself, but more especially within the
Transatlantic alliance which was viewed as inimical to Russia’s
interests” and that the effort “should be seen in terms of Putin’s
desire to return to Nineteenth Century ‘Great Power’ politics anchored upon countries’ interests rather than the ideals-based international order established after World War Two.” Russia’s covert support for ultranationalist, right-wing populist movements in the UK (Brexit/UKIP/Nigel Farage), France (National Front/Marie le Pen) and Germany
(AfD) makes sense in the context of a broader agenda aimed at
sabotaging the Atlantic (US-UK-EU) special relationship as a means of
bolstering a Eurasian political coalition.
“This is something of huge significance, way above party politics.” — Christopher Steele, commenting on his dossier
If subverting the Transatlantic alliance as a means to promote
Eurasian integration is the central premise of Russiagate (as opposed to
the president being necessarily friendly to Russia), this inspires much
more confidence in the narrative, seeing as the Trump administration
has consistently thumbed its nose at the UN, destabilized and diminished
NATO, strained US relations with European allies, trashed the EU,
torpedoed the Iran deal that sought to act as a springboard for
normalization of relations between the US and Iran and gradually bring
Iran into the fold of the West, backed off of Russian and Israeli ally
Bashar al-Assad, systematically disassembled the State Department and
pulled out of a number of international treaties backed by a large
portion the US liberal diplomatic establishment (Paris Agreement, TPP,
TTIP, etc.), among other things. The most interesting consideration here is what role and/or knowledge
the seemingly pro-Trump militaristic American ultranationalist national
security establishment tracing its roots back to the American Security
Council and World Anti-Communist League had in the effort to boost
Eurasia at the (at least medium-term) expense of the Trans-Atlantic
alliance and the UN-centered international order that its domestic
counterpart, the liberal diplomatic establishment, has spent the better
part of a century building up. After all, the neoconservative national security-boosters do, to an
extent, share in Russia’s skepticism and occasional outright opposition
to the “ideals-based” world order and the transatlantic alliance, which
definitely raises some questions about their knowledge of Russian
involvement in the election. Certainly, the neoconservatives’ deep
involvement in the Trump support effort that has been documented
extensively in previous articles on this blog makes it unlikely that
those who participated in the covert Trump support effort couldn’t have
known or at the very least had serious suspicions. Even though many
specifics regarding the Trump support effort, the domestic and
international characters behind it and the ensuing legal spectacle are
still unclear or unknown, it’s quite obvious at this point that the
aforementioned events have been a manifestation of deep politics at the
very highest levels. While solid, unimpeachable evidence of direct collusion between Trump
or people around him and the Kremlin remains elusive, a pattern of
Trump camp involvement with Russian-Jewish oligarchs and other figures
connected to the Russian and Israeli governments is definitely evident,
and there have even been a few pretty damning explicit statements from a
few individuals that certainly raise questions. On an individual basis,
many of the instances of questionable interactions between Trump
apparatus figures and characters tied to the Russian state can be
explained away innocently, but as more and more of these incidences crop
up, the odds of all of this having been random or mere coincidence
crater precipitously. Vox‘s Matt Yglesias
puts it best — “Trump–Russia skeptics, legion in the political press,
brush all this aside in a gesture of faux sophistication, positing a
bizarre series of coincidences complete with a massive cover-up all—for
no particular reason.” Because of this, the apparent international
Russian-Zionist component of the Trump effort cannot be ignored,
dismissed out of hand or labeled a complete fabrication as the altmedia
is so fond of doing, along with dragging a bevy of extraneous
distractions about the evil Democrats into the discussion or
ridiculously framing Russiagate as some kind of sinister “deep state”
stratagem to oust Trump from the White House or start war with Russia.
But before delving into the Trump-Russia-Israel triangle, the Russian
interference investigation and all the alternative media talking points
swirling about in regards to it should be addressed.
Intelgate
First, it’s prudent to call attention to the fact that Russiagate has
been a boon for the media. Keep this in mind when judging the media’s
motives not only relating to Russia-related stories but also really
anything else. According to CNN producer Jeff Bonifield,
the mainstream media largely pushes and sensationalizes Russiagate as a
means of boosting cable news viewing numbers and ratings and has been
miraculously effective seeing as how CNN‘s viewership and ratings are both through the roof. According to Bonifield, Jeff Zucker, CNN‘s CEO, directed CNN staff to cover old Russiagate news items over other important national stories, just as he did with Donald Trump during election season as part of an effort to shore up CNN‘s faltering performance as a news network. Many have speculated as to what role Hillary Clinton and the Clinton
campaign had in promulgating the Russia thesis. Alt media pundits are
always eager to point out that the Clinton campaign funded Christopher
Steele’s opposition research in the latter half of election season after
his initial Republican funding dried up subsequent to the GOP primary.
Therefore, according to the rampaging pro-Trump shock troops in the
altmedia, Christopher Steele is just a dastardly pro-Clinton apparatchik
and his dossier must have been a complete fabrication or at the very
least extreme hyperbole. Firstly, Steele was a highly credible and
respected former intelligence officer (formerly the head of MI6’s Russia
desk) and investigator who had no significant political predilections;
secondly, anyone familiar with the world of private investigations and
opposition research knows that their research and conclusions are never
fabricated nor are they paid huge sums of money to simply spin tales out
of nothing; and, finally, Steele wasn’t even aware he was working for
Clinton and the DNC for much of his investigation because of the
firewall and legal barrier put up between the Clinton campaign/DNC and
Steele’s private intelligence firm Orbis Intelligence by the Democrats’
primary law firm Perkins Coie. The Clinton campaign allegedly wasn’t
aware that Steele was conducting opposition research for them either.[175] Although it’s unlikely that the Clinton team had anything to do with
the content of the Steele dossier, people within the Clinton orbit may
have been familiar with the Russian interference talk brewing behind the
scenes in Washington because two longtime Clinton confidantes, Sidney
Blumenthal and Cody Shearer, had authored a research memo — shared with
the FBI and numerous media outlets — that came to similar conclusions as
the Steele dossier.[176] Glenn
Simpson, the head of Fusion GPS (the opposition research firm that
hired Steele) has connections to the old Jackson Stephens-centered Arkansas political machine that was behind Bill Clinton’s rise.[177]
Deep politics of Bill Clinton’s Arkansas [source]Furthermore,
after it became obvious Clinton would lose the election, Clinton people
fed the Russian interference narrative to an array of friendly media
outlets, which undoubtedly helped fuel the story. According to the
definitive account of the Clinton campaign, Shattered, the campaign felt
(maybe rightly so)
that the election results were suspect, which is the only reason they
launched a risky and unorthodox PR effort aimed at questioning the
integrity of the election. (On a somewhat related note, the Clinton
campaign also propped up Trump
in friendly media outlets hoping to elevate him to the GOP nomination
since he would be ostensibly easy to beat.) Ultimately, however, Hillary
Clinton and people in her orbit probably had very little to do with
formulating Russiagate or with any profound counter-Trump undertaking
within the establishment. It’s much more interesting to consider the
role of the FBI & broader Obama intelligence community.[178]
Most in the alternative and conservative media frame Robert Mueller
as an attack dog of the “globalists” and liberal establishmentarians out
to destroy Donald Trump. However, Mueller’s history as a prosecutor and
investigator is not one of sabotaging politicians opposed to the
establishment’s agenda, but one of cover up, obfuscation and misdirection,
having been involved in covering up corruption in the FBI’s Boston
field office, diverting attention away from the true culprits behind the
Lockerbie bombing and 2001 Anthrax attacks, obscuring the CIA’s
involvement with BCCI/Manuel Noriega and covering up several aspects of
9/11 as well as derailing and subverting Operation Green Quest,
the interagency investigation into the financing of Al-Qaeda and the
9/11 attacks. His expertise seems to be in handling sensitive legal
matters that might if not handled in a particular manner end up exposing
conspiratorial machinations within the intelligence community. Given
this pattern of behavior, why should anyone suspect Mueller will do
anything other than conceal some sort of political conspiracy or
intrigue — perhaps a deeper domestic involvement in the promotion of the
Trump presidency than has been reported so far?Robert Mueller covering for the CIA’s involvement in the Lockerbie bombing, a garden variety false flag intended to create an excuse for regime change in Libya
Stefan Halper, a Cambridge international relations researcher and
former deputy CIA director Ray Cline’s son-in-law on the payroll of the
Pentagon’s internal think tank, was recently officially outed as one of
the FBI’s “top secret” informants working on Mueller’s Russia probe.
Halper has long had deep ties to the intelligence community and
Republican politics (the Bush family specifically) having occupied posts
in the Nixon, Ford and Reagan administrations and later working on both
Reagan and George H.W. Bush’s presidential campaigns. Halper’s career
in politics was ended when he was exposed as having played a central
role in the 1980 Reagan-Carter spying scandal in which Halper (whose
alleged handler was George H.W. Bush himself) and several other Reagan
aides spied on the Carter campaign using retired CIA agents.[179]
The
altmedia has glommed onto this character and make the misleading claim
that Halper was a spy embedded in the Trump campaign. He was no such
thing, although his involvement in the probe is admittedly quite odd and
the possibility that Halper and maybe others were dispatched by the
counterintelligence division of the Obama FBI to entrap or ensnare Trump
campaign officials in some kind of Russia-related scandal in order to
delegitimize the Trump campaign cannot be ruled out. However as of now,
as far as anyone knows, Halper was only requested by the FBI to feel out
Trump campaign aides (Papadopoulos and Page) who were already known to
the FBI regarding any potential Trump connections to Russia. He was
stonewalled by Papadopoulos and the outcome of his interactions with
Page is still unclear. It’s extremely unlikely that even if Halper had
attempted to become a spy planted directly in the Trump campaign that
such an operation would have succeeded since Halper is a known entity to
anyone in politics and because anyone who does know of him is almost
certainly familiar with his peculiar and potentially criminal history.
No one in their right mind would let him anywhere near a campaign. What
exactly Halper’s participation ultimately means is unclear, at least for
now.
More insane propaganda from the national security state shock troops
What is clear is that a number of agents, namely Peter Strzok, former
head of FBI counterintelligence and pointman on the Russia
investigation, and FBI attorney Lisa Page were vehemently opposed to the
idea of a Trump presidency and discussed stopping Trump from reaching
the Oval Office over text message. A “secret society” of FBI agents
opposed to Trump congregating offsite and off hours was even referenced.
This may at first glance seem to confirm the altmedia’s narrative about
the Mueller investigation being a sham designed to tear down the
current administration, but clearly given the fact that this “secret
society” and its activities had to be carefully hidden and conducted
offsite and off hours means it’s unlikely Mueller and his top deputies
are part of the venture.[180] Additionally,
Strzok also made disparaging remarks about Hillary Clinton in his
now-public texts and supported the reopening of the Clinton email server
investigations, having authored a draft of the infamous “Comey letter”
that upended the Clinton campaign just days before the general election.[181] So,
as far as anyone knows, it’s unclear as to whether Strzok’s actions
while head of the FBI’s counterintelligence division on net hurt or
helped Trump.And, as it happens, there was another secret society compartmented
off from other parts of the FBI that acted in favor of then-candidate
Trump. This circle was based mainly out of the New York FBI office,
which (along with the NYPD) has for many years contained a large
contingent of politically biased agents harboring a “deep and visceral
hatred of Secretary Clinton,” according to the same OIG report that
brought so much attention to Peter Strzok. This sect was responsible for
many of the leaks that significantly undermined Clinton in the media
(Rudy Giuliani even bragged about having been leaked information from
the FBI) and for pressuring James Comey into reigniting the Clinton
email controversy by releasing the ‘Comey letter’ to Congress only a few
days before the general election.[182][183] Furthermore,
if the FBI in general were so hell bent on destroying Trump, how come
there were virtually no leaks about the FBI investigation into Trump’s
connections to Russia as there were with the Clinton email scandal? Key
elements forwarded by Intelgate proponents just don’t seem to comport
with the general picture of events. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4IrE6FMpai8 Increasingly it’s looking as if former CIA director under Obama, John
Brennan, may have been the individual ultimately responsible for
provoking Russian interference claims and therefore the subsequent FBI
probe into said interference. By late 2015 Brennan was receiving and/or
soliciting reports from foreign intelligence agencies (namely GCHQ as
well as Estonian and Dutch intelligence) pertaining to “suspicious
interactions” between figures connected to Trump and known or suspected
Russian intelligence agents/assets. Brennan in fact testified himself
that he likely played a key role in triggering the opening of the FBI’s
probe and was preoccupied throughout his entire last year as CIA
director with frantically shopping the Russiagate narrative and the
accompanying Steele dossier around D.C. to anyone who would listen,
including John Kerry, the Congress’s so-called “Gang of Eight”, the
president and James Clapper, who joined in Brennan’s efforts.[184][185]
Other members of the Obama intelligence community were involved in
selling the Russian threat as well. For example, Mike Rogers, former
head of the NSA and US Cybercommand under Obama, claimed that “we [the
NSA] watched” Russia hack Emmanuel Macron’s campaign in France despite
the fact that the head of France’s cybersecurity
agency said that there was no evidence that Russia specifically hacked
the campaign and that the hack “was so generic and simple that it could
have been practically anyone.”[186] But even if there was a concerted and possibly politically-motivated
effort by a clandestine network within the Obama-era intelligence
community and FBI counterintelligence to bring the incoming Trump
administration down via Russiagate — and it appears there may have been,
particularly in regards to the orchestration of entrapment schemes and
the stovepiping of politicized intelligence — this has little bearing on
the merits of the Russiagate thesis particularly when the potential
evidentiary body is so large. Both deep politics and garden variety
party politics played significant roles in exposing Iran-Contra,
Watergate & every single scandal engulfing the Clinton
administration, yet they did actually occur and were substantial
scandals. They were not fake news regardless of how central a role
politics had in uncovering them. Not only that, but even if the
allegations about the surreptitious entrapment network operating out of
Obama intelligence are true, it’s probable that such an operation was at
the very least ethically justified, as it’s simply undeniable at this
point that there are very significant criminal & political
Trump-Russia/Israel connections that go far beyond “a few business
deals”.
Russia & Israel: The Historical & Political Context
Ever since the release of the explosive Steele dossier, an ongoing
gaslighting campaign of epic proportions has been orchestrated by
alternative media outlets both on the right and left whose objective is
to misdirect anyone with one iota of political curiosity away from the
most damning evidences of a joining of the Trump network with Russian
parties and towards the most sensational claims made by the likes of
Rachel Maddow (many of which are unsubstantiated), which are used to
discredit the existence any Russian connection. Make no mistake — there
is a preponderance of evidence indicating, if not direct interference in
the election process, a much deeper marriage between the current
administration and Russian elements which very likely entails some
degree of collusion. A large body of research into Trump and his questionable dealings
with criminal syndicates & clandestine fronts dating back to the
early 1980s exists, but is lost in the noise of the mainstream and
alternative media, neither of which ever seem willing to put current
events in any kind of historical context. In doing such a
contextualization, it’s usually useful to look at one instrumental
example or critical event in the past to then branch out from and
establish a pattern with. In Trump’s case, this event is his acquisition
of the Taj Mahal casino in Atlantic City from a clandestine front
company called Resorts International.
Allen Dulles
Resorts International began its life as the Mary Carter Paint Co. and
was originally bankrolled by founding CIA director Allen Dulles, who
was the ranking member of the right-wing division of the Eastern
Establishment (“Wall Street CIA”, “Rockefeller Republicans”) and
probably its premier kingmaker at the time.[187]
The company served as a money laundering front for factions within the
CIA and various Israeli intelligence bodies which were facilitating the
Meyer Lansky criminal syndicate in its own laundering, gambling and drug
trafficking operations, many of which supported American and Israeli
intelligence operations.[188] Lansky
was the ranking member of the Jewish mafia and intelligence network in
the United States (sometimes called the “kosher nostra”) for most of the
20th century.He aided the foundation of the Zionist state of Israel by assisting
the Haganah — the underground forerunner of the Israel Defense Forces —
in smuggling arms out of the United States and into Palestine.[189]
Earlier, Lansky, in league with the Italian mob, had assisted the US
Navy and military intelligence in patrolling the Port of New York and
cracking Nazi spy rings during WWII.[190] Legendary
political fixer and Donald Trump’s long-time mentor and lawyer, Roy
Cohn, was on a first-person basis with Lansky throughout much of his
life. Both Lansky and Cohn are alleged to have run sophisticated
espionage and blackmail rings utilizing Mossad-related figures and
pro-Israel elements of the American intelligence community and in the
process obtained blackmail material on J. Edgar Hoover and many other
powerful government officials.[191] Later, with the financial backing of Meyer Lansky himself, the Mellon
family, Baron Edmond de Rothschild and Mossad money launderer of JFK
intrigue Tibor Rosenbaum,
the company was spun-off as Resorts International after it moved into
the business of operating casinos and resorts in the US and Bahamas as a
means of laundering money for the American and Israeli clandestine
services.[192][193] Resort’s “internal security” subsidiary, Intertel,
along with providing internal “security” at Resorts properties, offered
its services to other lovely parties such as Howard Hughes, the Shah of
Iran and Anastasio Somoza. In a highly peculiar deal brokered in 1988 (and not the only strange casino deal
Trump’s been involved in), Donald Trump entered into a $60 million
management contract with Resorts by which he would in effect be paid to
supervise his own investment in the company – the construction of the
Taj Mahal. After Resorts’ chairman, CIA man James Crosby died, Trump
bought a 93% controlling interest in Resorts in order to finance the Taj
Mahal project, after which he bought out the rest of the company then
almost immediately sold most of its assets to Merv Griffin, retaining
ownership only of the Taj Mahal.[194] However,
this was clearly not just some relatively innocuous corporate
maneuvering – Trump apparently carried on Resorts’ criminal legacy, as
Trump’s Taj Mahal has had to pay tens of millions in fines over its 25
years in existence for “willful non-compliance” with money-laundering
laws and according to federal investigators became the preferred
gambling and money laundering spot for Russian mobsters from
Brooklyn. Interestingly, Trump’s other casinos curiously have near
perfect compliance histories, indicating that there is something special
about Taj Mahal — Trump and the people around him apparently don’t just
“look away” from potential criminal activity in general.[195] Vyachelsov Ivankov,
a top vor (the Russian mob analogue to the Italian mafia’s don) in the
legendary Russian-Jewish mobster and dual Russian-Israeli citizen Semion
Mogilevich’s Solntsevskaya bratva criminal syndicate (much more on this
later) with ties to Russian state intelligence organizations, used to
regularly visit the Taj Mahal along with other members of Mogilevich’s
mob. There’s no question that the Taj Mahal remained an essentially
criminal enterprise even after ownership shifted from Resorts to Trump,
but did it retain its intelligence and state ties? It’s certainly
fascinating that a casino previously owned by an American-Israeli
intelligence money laundering front would eventually end up being used
by the Russian mafia (comprised mostly of ethnic Jews) to launder money. This connection is perhaps not quite as mystifying when two facts are
taken into account: 1) since Israel’s conception, there has been a
longstanding marriage between it and elements of the Russian state
apparatus; and 2) Russian-Jewish criminal syndicates, all of which are
deeply involved with what are called “Russian oligarchs”, are more often
than not simply arms of Russian and/or Israeli state security and
intelligence. The “Russian oligarchs” emerged as an identifiable group in during
the Gorbachev-initiated process of “market liberalization” whereby
state-owned enterprises and assets were systematically sold off and
handed over piecemeal to a small handful of young Russian Jews connected
to and promoted by Communist party insiders and Russian organized
crime. This process was greatly accelerated under Boris Yeltsin, who
oversaw the most dramatic stage of privatization and was for most of his
time as president of Russia a puppet of the oligarchs, who to this day
constitute a covert underground KGB-successor government.[196]
Yeltsin was particularly under the thumb of Russian-Jewish oligarch
Boris Berezovsky, who, along with Russian-Israeli oligarch Roman
Abramovich (who recently surfaced
in Israel), plucked ex-KGB officer Vladimir Putin from the entirely
mob-controlled St. Petersburg political machine and maneuvered him into
becoming prime minister and later president of Russia.[197]
Credit: ISGP
Today, Russian oligarchs as a group control much of economic and
political life in Russia, but jockey for power amongst themselves, as
oligarchs and political factions in the west do (though you’ll hardly
ever hear the media refer to that kind of activity as such). Putin
himself along with a clique of think tank elites and hyper-militaristic
Russian nationalists — many based out of St. Petersburg — constitutes
somewhat of an oligarchic faction on its own. Putin personally gained a
considerable amount of power himself after aligning with other oligarchs
to oust Boris Berezovsky (the very man who put him into power) as well
as other oligarchs such as Mikhail Khodorkovsky who were tied into State
Department-CIA-Wall Street-liberal think tank efforts to fully subsume
post-Soviet Russia into the orbit of the West and are to this day
subjects of Kremlin-orchestrated harassment and intimidation campaigns
even while living in exile in places like the UK and Switzerland.[198]
Simply put, business oligarchs in Russia may as well be treated as
parts of the state apparatus. It also turns out that much of the Russian
mafia can also be considered an appendage of the state.Just as Israel — itself a mafia state
— utilized Meyer Lansky’s criminal network to further its end in the
United States and elsewhere, Russian state security utilizes the
Russian-Jewish mafia that internationalized in the 1990s after the
collapse of the USSR and ensuing capital outflow to perform deniable
operations that the Russian government can’t risk being exposed as doing
such as money laundering, arms smuggling and trafficking,
assassinations, running drugs to raise funds for covert operations,
computer hacking, moving spies across international borders, etc. The
Kremlin utilizes local organized crime structures co-opted and/or
controlled by Russian mobsters directly linked to the Russian state in
fomenting separatist movements, most notably in Donbas, Crimea, South
Ossetia and Abkhazia.
Meyer Lansky
Organized crime is also instrumental in the Kremlin’s cultivation of
foreign businessmen and government officials (the “captured
constituency” as Russia experts call it) through blackmail, co-opting,
flattery and bribery. Most major Russian-Jewish mobsters According to
slain FSB defector Alexander Litvinenko, Russian state security and
intelligence services (FSB, GRU, SVR) directly control many of the
country’s domestic and transnational organized crime networks. Call it
mafia statecraft. According to former Russian spy Stanislav Lunev,
“from the end of the Cold War, Russian spy activity against the West
and the U.S. has decreased until the middle of the 90’s, when it
increased dramatically. Now, it would be comparable to the coldest days
of the Cold War.”[199][200][201]In the ’70s, Senator Henry “Scoop” Jackson, a pro-Israel,
anti-communist Democrat who ran a “Zionist fifth column” in the senate
(from which many of the famous neocons of today such as Richard Perle
& Paul Wolfowitz sprang) aided the internationalization of the
Russian-Zionist mafia — in particular into the United States — by
linking trade concessions with Jewish emigration from the Soviet Bloc
through the Jackson-Vanik amendment.[202] This,
along with the passing of the RICO act, began the process by which any
remnants of the old Italian mafia (which had been slowly waning in
influence since the ’60s) left were displaced by the Russian-Jewish
mafia, a process which was complete by 1990.
“Henry
Jackson is proof of the old belief in the Judaic tradition that at any
moment in history goodness in the world is preserved by the deeds of 36 just men who do not know that this is the role the Lord has given them.” — Patrick Moynihan
Since Joseph Stalin’s open embrace of Zionism during WWII, there has
been a special relationship between Russia and international
Jewry/Israel. A massive influx of Jews from Germany and Central Europe
into the USSR occurred after the German invasion of the USSR, leading to
the establishment of a large Jewish population in Russia that ended up
establishing extensive organized crime networks allowing them to
virtually dominate the black market economy that kept the Soviet economy
afloat throughout the ’70s and ’80s and still exists to this day. These
refugees’ survivalist vigor and political organization was exploited by
the Soviets who recruited them en masse into the war effort. The
majority of the spies exposed by the Army Signal Intelligence Service’s
famous Venona project were not only Soviet spies and/or communists but
were also involved in Zionist circles:
On December 14, 1998, The Spotlight was the only
newspaper on the planet to publish a suppressed fact about the otherwise
widely-publicized secrets about KGB espionage that were revealed with
the release of the fabled Soviet diplomatic cables that were secretly
decrypted beginning in 1946 by the U.S. Army Signals Security Agency and
code-named “Venona.” Military historian Ulick Steadman described the Venona venture as
“an historic achievement,” but noted that there was “a shocking twist.”
In fact, a vast majority of the alien agents unmasked by the decoded
Soviet cables turned out to be active in Zionist circles rather than
merely in the Communist underground. According to H. Dexter Gamage, who
served as a Pentagon cryptography analyst, the Venona files revealed
that Zionists “made up three-fourths of the enemy spies recruited by the
Soviets” in the United States. As a consequence, at the time the Venona project was under way,
Gen. Omar Bradley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, ordered the
intercepts withheld from President Truman, because—according to
Steadman—Bradley was “concerned that anything known to the White House
would soon become known to the Zionist insiders [surrounding the
president] and subsequently to the Soviets” who would discover that
their cables were being intercepted. — The Judas Goats, Michael Collins Piper
A massively disproportionate number of the publicly known spies for
the Soviet Union have been Jews, and in particular Jews born in or
descended from the Soviet bloc — Samuel Dickstein, Julius & Ethel
Rosenberg (along with most in their ring), George Koval, Nathan
Silvermaster, etc. The USSR paved the way for Israel to become a state through its
vigorous lobbying in the UN on behalf of Israel in support of the plan
to partition Palestine into two states — one Arab and one Jewish.[203] One of the prerogatives
Soviet spies in Britain had during the ’40s was hampering their British
intelligence colleagues in their efforts to defeat the Zionist
movement. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, many Russian Jews
immigrated to Israel. Many, such as Avigdor Lieberman, eventually made
their way into government (with some reporting back to the KGB) and others established Russian-Jewish organized crime outposts.[204]
Today, about 1.5 million native Russians live in Israel (almost 17% of
its population) and over 100,000 Israeli citizens live in Russia.[205]
“Russia
and Israel have developed a special relationship. 1.5 million Israeli
citizens come from the former Soviet Union, they speak the Russian
language, are the bearers of Russian culture, Russian mentality. They
maintain relations with their relatives and friends in Russia, and this
make the interstate relations very special.” — Vladimir Putin
Since the pro-Russian Ariel Sharon entered office as prime minister
of Israel, Russia-Israel relations have been warmer than ever. Vladimir
Putin is know for being virulently pro-Israel having been the only
Russian leader in memory who’s never even so much as tacitly fomented
anti-Semitism and is arguably the closest (both personally and
politically) world leader to Benjamin Netanyahu, with Donald Trump &
friends being the only real competition. In 2014, Putin and Netanyahu
established a special encrypted direct hotline between themselves in
order to route American electronic eavesdropping efforts.[206][207] Recently, it has become clear that Israel is willing
to advance the cause of Eurasian integration and multilateralism (at
the expense of the US, its greatest ally, I might add) given its seeming
eagerness to enter or at least closely partner with the Eurasian Economic Union, a Kremlin project that seeks to establish a Eurasian free trade bloc that will eventually merge with China’s “Silk Road Economic Belt“, the EU and the Middle East.
Chabad Lubavitch & Israeli Intrigue
In addition to state relations, a massive constellation of NGOs — all
of which have significant ties to the Russian-Jewish international
criminal syndicate — facilitate Russian-Israeli relations. Some of these
include the World Jewish Congress, Russian Jewish Congress and the
Federation of Russian Jewish Communities. Today, one of the core nexuses
between the Kremlin, Israel, the international Russian-Zionist crime
network and the Trump team is a mystical, messianic Hasidic Jewish
movement called Chabad Lubavitch originating from what is now Belarus
but is currently largely centered in the Crown Heights neighborhood of
Brooklyn. It has over 200,000 followers and is the most sprawling Jewish
organization in the world, with representation in basically every
single major city in the world through “Chabad houses”.
As the closest thing the Jewish world has to
evangelism—much of its work is dedicated to making Jews around the world
more involved in Judaism—Chabad serves many more Jews who are not
full-on adherents. According to Schmuley Boteach, a prominent rabbi in New Jersey
and a longtime friend of Democratic Sen. Cory Booker, Chabad offers Jews
a third way of relating to their religious identity. “You have three
choices as a Jew,” he explained. “You can assimilate and not be very
affiliated [Reform Judaism]. You can be religious and Orthodox, or
there’s sort of a third possibility that Chabad offers for people who
don’t want to go the full Orthodox route but do want to stay on the
traditional spectrum.” — Politico
Chabad is highly politically connected. According to professor of
Jewish history at the University of Denver, David Shneer, Chabad is “a
movement that cultivates ties with political leadership as part of a
broader strategy to make a home wherever they happen to be.” He compares
this to the medieval practice of shtadlanut, in which European Jews
lobbied local rulers for rights.[208]
Roman Abramovich & Lev Leviev
Chabad’s chief rabbi in Russia, Berel Lazar — sometime’s called “Putin’s rabbi” — was elevated
to the position of de facto leader of the Jewish community in Russia by
Vladimir Putin and his cohorts after becoming acquainted with
Russian-Jewish oligarchs and Putin confidantes Lev Leviev (born in what
is now Uzbekistan) and Roman Abramovich, who installed Lazar as the head
of their Jewish vehicle, the Federation of Russian Jewish Communities.
Lazar serves as somewhat of an ambassador for the Chabad movement and
met with former Trump Organization lawyer and current Trump
administration “special representative for international negotiations”
and Israel advisor Jason Greenblatt to discuss “Russian society” and
“anti-Semitism”.[209]
Chabad is the dominant sect of Judaism in Russia and among Russian
Jews. According to Russian-Jewish PR executive Ronn Torossian, “all
Russian Jews [in foreign countries) go to Chabad. Russian Jews are not
comfortable in a Reform synagogue.” This of course applies to Russian
oligarchs, many of whom are followers of Chabad.[210][211] A
few oligarchs particularly close to Putin such as Leviev (the top donor
to Chabad) and Abramovich are used as envoys to the greater Jewish
community, using Chabad as a base of operations and networking tool.Rabbi Schneerson
Russian Jew Menachem Mendel Schneerson — a messianic figure in Chabad
— was one of the most influential Jewish leaders of the 20th century
and oversaw Chabad’s transformation from a relatively small and obscure
Hasidic group into the most widespread Jewish movement in the world.
Schneerson, despite claiming to have been non-political and non-Zionist,
was very politically astute, having been a political force in his own
right in Israel and ceaselessly promoted the Zionist state of Israel’s
interests throughout his life and spoke glowingly of it.[212]
Schneerson served in an advisory capacity to many top Israeli
politicians and military leaders, most notable among them being Benjamin
Netanyahu, Ariel Sharon, Shimon Peres, Menachem Begin and Yitzhak
Rabin. Based in Brooklyn for much of his life, Schneerson’s advise was
additionally sought by many American politicians including John F.
Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Jr, Ronald Reagan, Jimmy
Carter, Jacob Javits, Ed Koch, Rudy Giuliani, David Dinkins and Joe
Lieberman.[213][214]Trump associate Felix Sater (right) at Chabad of Port Washington, NY
Rabbi Levi Shemtov, the ranking Chabad member in the greater
Washington, D.C. area, handles government and diplomatic relations for
Chabad Lubavitch, maintaining close relationships with members of
Congress, intelligence & military officials, Administration
officials and diplomats and often being spotted at the White House,
Pentagon, Department of State and other venues in the D.C. area. Shemtov
has a number of nicknames among beltway insiders — “the rabbi of
Capitol Hill”, “a Washington institution”, “a fixture on the diplomatic
circuit” and “one of the most savvy politicos in town.”[215][216]Many figures in the orbit of Donald Trump are members of
Chabad-Lubavitch including Jared & Ivanka Kushner (along with the
extended Kushner family), Michael Cohen, Felix Sater, Tevfik Arif and
Tamir Sapir, all of whom seem to interface through Chabad houses,
particularly ones in Manhattan and Port Washington, an affluent Long
Island town that both Michael Cohen and Felix Sater have owned homes
near.[217] Sater,
a globe-trotting international businessman and consultant with deep
ties to the Russian mafia, is a member of Chabad of Port Washington,
having been named its “man of the year” in both 2010 and 2014. was
intimately involved in several highly suspect ventures involving Trump
that seemed to be of a transactional nature with his childhood friend
and fellow Chabadnik, Trump lawyer Michael Cohen. These included a scheme to get Russian sanctions imposed after its
invasion of Crimea revoked, a Russia-Ukraine “peace plan” and
negotiations to develop a Trump tower in Moscow with backing from VTB
Bank, a Russian intelligence-FSB front. (Sater’s numerous episodes of
criminal involvement and international intrigue will be covered in more
detail later.) Even more, members of Chabad of Port Washington
facilitated direct talks between Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko
and Trump through Michael Cohen after Poroshenko aides reached out to
the Chabad house.[218][219] More
and more, Chabad appears to be some kind of clearinghouse for
Russian-Jewish and Israeli political and intelligence operations.
Jared Kushner at Harvard Chabad-Lubavitch branch alumni reception [source]The
Trump foundation as well as the Kushner family foundation have donated
hundreds of thousands of dollars to Chabad institutions in the past 10
years. Kushner, who was the de facto chairman of the Trump campaign and
is one of Trump’s closest advisors in the White House, is a devout and
highly enthusiastic follower of Chabad and lives within walking distance
of Washington, D.C.’s Chabad-Lubavitch center in D.C.’s swanky Kalorama
neighborhood.[220] On
January 27th, 2017, Jared and Ivanka Kushner invited several Trump
administration officials including Wilbur Ross, Gary Cohn, Steve
Mnuchin, Dina Powell and Hope Hicks to a Shabbat meal with the
aforementioned Rabbi Levi Shemtov.[221]Charles Kushner (right) with Bill Clinton. Jared and Ivanka Kushner are good friends with Chelsea Clinton.
The Kushner family has deep ties to Israel. Jared Kushner’s father,
Charles Kushner, was a highly influential New Jersey-based Democratic
party mega donor, kingmaker and real estate tycoon who donated
generously to pro-Israel causes (including to an illegal settlement in
the West Bank), financially supported many of Benjamin Netanyahu’s
election campaigns and even hosted the Israeli prime minister in his own
home in New Jersey when Netanyahu visited the US.[222]
In the early 2000s, Charles Kushner almost single-handedly thrust Jim
McGreevey into the governorship of New Jersey. After McGreevey – then
governor – started refusing to return Kushner’s favors, Kushner
dispatched a gay Israeli friend of his to seduce and entrap McGreevey.
The relationship was exposed, McGreevey was forced to admit his
homosexuality and was then blackmailed with the threat of sexual
harassment lawsuits from the Israeli, which forced his resignation.[223] In
2005, Charles was imprisoned for two years on counts of illegal
campaign donations, witness tampering & tax evasion after
blackmailing his sister and her family, who were cooperating with
investigators looking into some of Kushner’s problematic political
donations and ties. It’s possible that Charles Kushner was himself a
direct Mossad asset. Before joining the Trump campaign (where he was instrumental in
orchestrating the Trump digital operation and was likely aware of
Palantir, Cambridge Analytica and Russian-Israeli involvement), Kushner
succeeded his father in managing the Kushner real estate empire, which
had shifted operations to New York City after Charles Kushner was
released from prison. Kushner’s business was aided and underwritten by
the Steinmetz family, one of Israel’s wealthiest oligarchic families
that also happens to be entangled in several investigations into alleged
money laundering and bribery around the world.[224] In
his role in the Trump administration, Kushner acts as somewhat of an
unofficial gatekeeper, ambassador and go-between for his usually
clueless father-in-law, liaising
with such characters as Henry Kissinger, Rupert Murdoch, Paul Ryan,
Roger Ailes (before his death), powerful CEOs and numerous foreign
leaders including Benjamin Netanyahu, whose first post-inaugural sit
down with Trump was brokered by Kushner.[225]
Much of Netanyahu’s evident influence in the Trump administration is
probably exercised through Kushner. In a speech given after the meeting,
Trump referred to Netanyahu as a long-time friend and Netanyahu claimed
that “there is no greater supporter of the Jewish people and the Jewish
state than President Donald Trump.”[226] Both Kissinger and Murdoch regularly counsel Kushner on various matters.[227][228] It
was also Kushner who evidently handled Trump on matters relating to
Israel. After Trump claimed that he would remain “neutral” in dealings
with Israel and Palestinians, Kushner worked the phones to placate angry
Republicans and urged Trump to deliver a pre-written, unequivocally
pro-Israel speech in front of AIPAC.[229]
It should be unsurprising then that Kushner was instrumental in the
most solid case of Trump team collusion with foreign agents in which
Kushner, on behalf of the Israeli government, directed Michael Flynn
(telling him “this is a top priority to the president”) to lobby members
of the UN Security Council, including then Russian ambassador to the US
Sergey Kislyak, to help undermine a UN Security Council resolution
backed by the Obama administration condemning illegal Israeli
settlements in the West Bank. Ron Dermer, Israel’s ambassador to the US,
confirmed that the Israeli government reached out to the Trump
transition team requesting help upsetting the Obama administration’s
Middle East policy.[230][231]
This is not the only example of the Trump camp colluding with Israel
to subvert Obama-era policy. In 2017, Trump aides hired Israeli private
intelligence firm Black Cube — staffed entirely by “former” Mossad and
Shin Bet operatives — to carry out a “dirty ops” campaign to smear and
discredit key individuals from the Obama administration who negotiated
the Iran deal, which Israel has always been intensely opposed to. The
discrediting of the Obama diplomats and advisors would have made it
easier to justify pulling out of the Iran deal, which the administration
has now done.[232][233] In July 2018, the Times of Israel
reported that in a leaked video clip, Benjamin Netanyahu, speaking to
senior members of Likud, boasted of having personally convinced Donald
Trump to back out of the Iran deal. In the clip, Netanyahu is
briefly interrupted by an unidentified person off-screen who says,
“[Iran] will disappear with the help of God.” In response, Netanyahu
says, “You said it. From your mouth to God.”[234] It’s very clear at this point that Iran is in the sights of the Trump
administration and has long been in the sights of Israel and the
American right-wing defense/national security establishment. The
administration is of course stacked with Iran hawks such as John Bolton,
Mike Pompeo, Jim Mattis and Jared Kushner, who’s been dispatched to
build a Sunni coalition composed of Persian Gulf States and Egypt to
take some kind of significant geopolitical action against Iran in the
near future.[235] Some
American and Arab sources have said that this could possibly be
parlayed into an even broader counter-Iran Sunni Muslim “Arab NATO”,
tentatively known as the Middle East Strategic Alliance (MESA).[236]
According to a report from an Israeli TV station (later confirmed by
the White House), a secret bilateral agreement was reached between
Israeli and American officials for both countries to take a variety of
coordinated actions against Iran and its allies in the Middle East,
particularly Lebanon.[237]
Part of the agreement included a wind down of the Obama-initiated
American intervention and accompanying covert war in Syria that almost
openly aimed to topple Bashar al-Assad. Assad’s leadership in Syria is
favored by Israel because Assad is allied with the Kremlin, which is an
Israeli ally and will vet all of Syria’s policies towards Israel as well
as help Israel in ousting Iranian elements from Syria.[238]
Participants
in Erik Prince’s Seychelles meeting. From left to right, top to bottom:
Erik Prince, Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan and his entourage, George
Nader and Kirill Dmitriev.
Erik Prince — an anchor of the hard-right national security-boosting
circle within the US — was an “unofficial” envoy for the Trump
administration in a UAE-brokered meeting held in the Seychelles with
Trump Middle East liaison George Nader, de facto ruler of the UAE
Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan and Kirill Dmitriev, CEO of Russia’s
sovereign wealth fund and confidante of Vladimir Putin, in which the
primary topics of discussion were establishing a secret communications
backchannel between the incoming Trump administration and the Kremlin as
well as curtailing Russia’s relationship with Iran, including and
especially in Syria.[239][240]
Indeed, Syria appears to be a major agenda item for the
Trump-Russia-Israel alliance and was likely discussed at length during
the private Trump-Putin Helsinki meeting in July of 2018. Certainly, it
cannot be denied that recent events in Syria — enabled by the Trump
administration — amount to a colossal win for Israel, Russia and the
Eurasian axis. Prince also arranged an August 2016 meeting between himself, a
collection of Saudi and UAE princes, Donald Trump Jr., Trump team Middle
East liaison, George Nader and the previously mentioned Joel Zamel, the
Israeli-Australian businessman who owns several businesses staffed
primarily by former Israeli intelligence operatives specializing in
social media manipulation, war-gaming, influence operations and private
intelligence and whose firms were reportedly operating a network of fake
social media accounts to promote Trump. In this meeting,
representatives of Saudi Arabia and the UAE voiced their support for
Trump’s presidential bid and Nader promoted a covert plan to use private
contractors to destabilize Iran. Zamel, who offered his companies’
digital and social media campaign services at the meeting, received a
large payment from Nader after the election and a company linked to
Zamel provided Nader with an elaborate presentation about the
significance of social media campaigning to Trump’s victory.[241] Three
exceedingly shady billionaires and major Trump fundraisers, Tom
Barrack, Sheldon Adelson and Elliott Broidy, appear to be additional
channels through which the Trump camp coordinates Middle East policy.
Barrack, the head of real estate investment firm Colony Capital who
wielded influence in Nixon and Reagan political circles and has
conducted business with Trump since the ’80s, was the chairman of the
Trump Presidential Inaugural Committee, where he hired on Russiagate
luminary Rick Gates and recommended Gates’ former boss, Paul Manafort to
Trump as his campaign manager. Barrack and Elliott Broidy even paid
Gates to “help navigate the new administration.”[242]
Now Barrack, who is personally close to Saudi and UAE royalty, serves
as the key intermediary between the Trump inner circle and Arab royalty,
presumably involved in the Trump administration’s effort to bring the
UAE, Qatar and other Gulf States closer to Israel and the US.[243] According
to legacy Trump-GOP political consultant Roger Stone, “[Barrack] is the
only person I know who the president speaks to as a peer… Barrack is to
Trump as Bebe Rebozo was to Nixon, which is the best friend.” Barrack’s
closeness to Trump extends to Jared Kushner. Barrack acquired a a large
chunk of the debt owed by Kushner on his troubled 666 Fifth Avenue New
York property and later, after a call from Trump, bailed Kushner out by
agreeing to reduce Kushner’s obligations to keep him out of bankruptcy.[244][245]
Elliott Broidy
Elliott Broidy, another Trump donor, is a venture capitalist and
defense industry big connected to the Israel lobby (through membership
in the Likudist Republican Jewish Coalition)
with direct access to the president. Broidy began accumulating clout
after having played a critical role in fundraising for George W. Bush’s
reelection campaign. From 2006 to 2008, Broidy was chair of the RNC
finance committee and was named to the Homeland Security Advisory Board
by Zionist Michael Chertoff. Broidy has been embroiled in a number of
controversies, including bribing the New York State Comptroller on
behalf of Israeli business interests, funding payoffs of Playboy models
with whom Donald Trump has had affairs and engaging in political
advocacy in the US and Middle East on behalf of Russian intelligence
front, VTB Bank.[246] In March 2018, the New York Times reported
that Lebanese-American businessman and lobbyist George Nader “worked
for more than a year to turn Broidy into an instrument of influence at
the White House for the rulers of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab
Emirates, according to interviews and previously undisclosed documents.
…High on the agenda of the two men…was pushing the White House to remove
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, backing confrontational approaches to
Iran and Qatar and repeatedly pressing the president to meet privately
outside the White House with the leader of the UAE.”[247]Trump & Adelson
Militantly Zionist casino magnate, power broker and enforcer for the
Israel lobby, Sheldon Adelson, who gave the Trump general election
effort $25 million, wields tremendous influence in the White House,
having been actively involved in lobbying for hawkish actions against
Iran, pushing Rex Tillerson out of the administration, advocating for
undermining Iran, and pushing the US’s recognition of Jerusalem as the
capital of Israel through.[248][249][250] Adelson is known to by an ally of John Bolton, who, while in Las Vegas meeting with Adelson, persuaded Trump to
commit to specific language pledging to pull out of the Iran deal if
Congress and America’s European allies did not go along with demands for
major changes that were clearly calculated to ensure the deal would
fall apart. According to a CBC interview, Adelson has had private meetings with Trump, Mike Pence, John Bolton and others.[251]
The GOP megadonor and kingmaker who fashions himself as an anti-George
Soros pretty much openly flaunts his dodging of campaign finance laws
has long been involved in conservative political circles and the
pro-Israel lobby and think tank network.[252]Many important (and very strange) billionaire megadonors tied to the
Israel lobby and associated conservative political circles in the US are
connected to or have backed and financed the Trump network:
Lewis Eisenberg, current US Ambassador to Italy.[253] As
it happens, Eisenberg was chairman of the Port Authority during 9/11
and prior to 9/11 negotiated a long-term lease for the World Trade
Center with Larry Silverstein and his partner, Frank
Trump & Michael Glassner
Lowy. Michael Glassner, the Trump campaign’s national political
director, was a senior advisor to Eisenberg during Eisenberg’s tenure as
chairman of the New York Port Authority.[254] Glassner,
a Zionist political operative and fixer, was formerly an AIPAC director
and has a history of handling politicians endorsed by the Israel lobby,
including Sarah Palin, Bob Dole, George W. Bush and of course Donald
Trump.
Paul Singer,
billionaire hedge fund manager on the board of JINSA and the Republican
Jewish Coalition with long-standing ties to Republican politics, having
been a major donor to George W. Bush, Rudy Giuliani and the Foundation
for Defense of Democracies. Strangely, Singer initially financed
Republican Trump opposition groups and in large part funds the Washington Free Beacon, the initial sponsor of anti-Trump opposition research by Fusion GPS.[255]
Bernard Marcus, the co-founder of Home Depot who was born to Russian-Jewish immigrants. Marcus co-founded the Israel Democracy Institute.
Ron Lauder,
heir to the Estee Lauder fortune, president of the World Jewish
Congress and former Ambassador to Austria under Reagan, who Lauder and
the broader pro-Likud Jewish community were very supportive of. Lauder
has been personally acquainted with Donald Trump for half a century, has
quietly supported his presidency and is now an informal Middle East
advisor.[256] Lauder
used to be a confidante and advisor of Netanyahu’s but has reportedly
fallen out of favor with the prime minister as a result of disagreements
over the Israel-Palestine “peace process”.
Sexual Blackmail: Jeffrey Epstein & Les Wexner
Donald Trump is connected to pedophilia and blackmail not only
indirectly through Cohn but also directly through convicted pedophile
and close friend since at least 1987, Jeffrey Epstein. Epstein, who is
rumored to have moved money for the Mossad, CIA and prominent dynastic
political families such as the Rockefellers, managed a sprawling
pedophile blackmail ring stretching from the Virgin Islands to Palm
Beach to Manhattan that entangled everyone from Trump to Bill Clinton to
Prince Andrew to Alan Dershowitz to Ehud Barak.[257]
Trump’s entry in Epstein’s “Little Black Book” (credit: Gawker)
Donald Trump’s contact — which listed virtually every possible way to get a hold of him — was circled in Epstein’s contact book by Epstein’s Palm Beach butler as a material witness and/or accomplice to Epstein’s pedophilic activities.[258] Furthermore, Trump, who has a history of accused sexual impropriety (including hitting on teenagers),
was sued along with Epstein by a woman with intimate knowledge of
Epstein’s arrangements who accused the pair of having raped her when she
was 13 years old and was listed as a witness to Epstein’s lurid
lifestyle in an unrelated lawsuit.[259] The Miami US attorney who brokered the
federal non-prosecution deal for Epstein was none other than Alex
Acosta, the current secretary of labor under Trump. Given these facts,
it’s utterly inconceivable that Trump wasn’t at the very least well
aware of Epstein’s child abuse. He was likely far more involved.Trump & Ghislaine Maxwell
Epstein and his manipulative female deputies procured underage girls
from around the world to abuse through modeling agencies (an industry
Trump has been involved with – his modeling agency recruits girls as
young as 14) and enticements of career opportunities in modeling, acting
and fashion. Epstein’s chief aide and procurer was Ghislaine Maxwell, a
Manhattan-London socialite who was responsible for recruiting one of
Epstein’s victims, Virginia Roberts, into Epstein’s ring while Roberts
was a towel girl at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago.[260] Ghislaine
— a close associate of both the Trump family and the Clintons — is the
daughter of British media mogul, Mossad spy and Iran-Contra conspirator
Robert Maxwell.Maxwell, a potential Chabad-Lubavitch follower who Donald Trump has
personally known since at least 1989, was at the confluence of Israeli
intelligence, the Russian-Zionist mafia and Soviet leadership. While
serving in the British military, Maxwell utilized his contacts with
Czech communist leaders to convince them to covertly arm Israel in the
build-up to Israel’s 1948 War of Independence.[261] Later,
Maxwell built a British media empire mainly through a series of
acquisitions which he used to attack Israel’s enemies. Maxwell’s
additional ties to the Soviet bloc and international communism through
the KGB, Mikhail Gorbachev and Leonid Brezhnev comports with Israel’s
general entanglement with the Soviets. He concocted and designed complex
money laundering schemes with Russian intelligence-connected mobster
Semion Mogilevich and another Mossad asset, billionaire banker Edmund
Safra. Maxwell’s circuitous schemes came in handy to the Mossad and CIA
as well, which used them to mask their arms trafficking activities.
According to former FBI director John O’Neil, these laundering schemes
became the model for the Russian-Jewish mafia and therefore Russian
intelligence. Mogilevch’s procurement of an Israeli passport was helped
along by Maxwell.[262]
Trump & Robert Maxwell (far right)Ghislaine & Rupert Murdoch
Maxwell was exposed as a spy for the Mossad by a former employee of
Israel’s Military Intelligence Directorate who also alleged that Maxwell
had leaked to the Israeli embassy in London that Mordechai Vanunu had
had given about Israel’s nuclear capabilities to one of Maxwell’s
newspapers as well as one owned by Rupert Murdoch.[263] Given
the Mossad’s penchant for blackmail, it’s definitely worth asking if
Robert Maxwell and/or Ghislaine Maxwell were involved in the blackmail
component of Epstein’s ring. Interestingly, another character who bears
resemblance to Maxwell seems very likely to have been involved with — if
not ultimately in control of — Epstein’s blackmail material. Epstein’s
homes in Palm Beach and New York contained elaborate covert surveillance
systems – hidden CCTV cameras, taps on all landlines within the homes,
sophisticated computer network monitoring and high-end security suites
installed on all computers, etc. According to the testimony
of Epstein’s personal pilot Larry Visoski, a dedicated technician who
flew into Palm Beach from New Albany, Ohio maintained all surveillance
equipment and handled any recorded footage (read: blackmail material)
from the hidden cameras strewn throughout Epstein’s properties where him
and his network of friends sexually abused children.[264]
Now why would anyone need to fly in a technician from a small town in
Ohio every single week just to maintain video equipment? Well, New
Albany happens to be the residence of Leslie Wexner, the billionaire
founder and CEO of apparel conglomerate L Brands. Wexner’s presence in
New Albany is so outsize that it is sometimes nicknamed “Wexley”. Wexner
also happens to be Epstein’s ostensible “investment management” firm’s
only publicly listed client and is apparently the source of much of
Epstein’s billions, having been Epstein’s mentor and advisor since the
’80s. The two are so close that Epstein has fiduciary responsibility
over Wexner’s private trusts and foundations. [265][266] Wexner
is a legacy GOP megadonor (playing a particularly important role in
fundraising for George W. Bush) with rumored ties to organized crime
(according to a murder file on an attorney for Wexner’s company
destroyed by Columbus, Ohio’s chief of police) and his Wexner Foundation
once hired Republican pollster Frank Lutz to craft a PR strategy portraying Israel and the invasion of Iraq in a positive light.[267] Enter ‘Mega’:
For a brief period of time in early 1997, the Central
Intelligence Agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the
National Security Agency engaged in a frantic mole hunt for an Israeli
spy, believed to be operating inside the highest levels of the Clinton
Administration national security establishment. By the time the mole
hunt was made public–in a May 7, 1997 Washington Post leak–the hunt had
been abruptly ended, and for all intents and purposes, the story
disappeared from the news within a matter of days. According to the Post account, in January 1997, the National
Security Agency (NSA) had intercepted a phone conversation between an
Israeli official at the embassy in Washington, and Danny Yatom, the head
of the Mossad, Israel’s foreign intelligence service. The official
sought permission from the spy boss to “go to Mega” in order to obtain a
copy of a confidential letter that had been sent by then-U.S. Secretary
of State Warren Christopher to Palestinian Authority President Yasser
Arafat, concerning U.S. assurances about a recently negotiated agreement
for an Israeli military withdrawal from the Hebron area in the West
Bank. Yatom, according to the NSA intercept, rejected the request,
admonishing his agent, “This is not something we use Mega for.” — Jeffrey Steinberg, Executive Intelligence Review
Les Wexner
As it turns out, ‘Mega’ stood for the Mega Group, a small, reticent
and obscure informal meeting of Jewish billionaires indelibly linked to
the Israel lobby founded by Leslie Wexner and Charles Bronfman that
counted among its ranks not only Leslie and Charles but also former
World Jewish Congress head Edgar Bronfman, politically connected Zionist
hedge fund titan Michael Steinhardt, Laurence Tisch of the Loews
conglomerate, GOP megadonor Max Fisher and US Healthcare founder Leonard
Abramson. According to Jeffrey Steinberg of Executive Intelligence
Review, Mega’s purpose was “to add greater clout to the Israeli lobby,
by establishing an informal, but all-powerful policymaking group, able
to deploy billions of dollars in “charitable” funds for the maximum
effect on U.S. policy toward Israel, the Mideast, and other issues of
paramount importance to the Jewish megabillionaires.”[268] It
is very possible that someone within Mega Group or its orbit was in
fact one of Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard’s handlers (“Mr. X” or the “X
Committee”). On a related note, much of the intelligence Pollard was
directed to gather was very likely redirected and/or brokered to the
Soviets, long-time Israeli bedmates.[269][270]
Without a doubt, Mega Group was deeply involved in the broader Israeli
penetration of the Clinton White House and national security apparatus,
which was entirely liberal/”globalist” with the exception of CIA
Director James Woolsey.The core members of the Mega Group in league with right-wing
megadonors Sheldon Adelson and Paul Singer have bankrolled and backed
the foundation of two other bodies in the right-wing Israeli orbit — 1)
Emet, a think tank dedicated to generating long-term strategies that
will present Israel in a positive light as well as to bolstering the
hawkish hard-line approach to the “peace process” in Israel; and 2) the
Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, set up right after 9/11 and
stacked with neoconservative extremists such as James Woolsey, Louis
Freeh, Richard Perle, Michael Ledeen & Steve Forbes.[271][272]
So, to summarize, a high-ranking member of a group that an Israeli
spy was apparently authorized to answer to also almost surely has the
president of the United States on video tape (doing god knows what) at a
convicted serial pedophile’s mansion. Truth really is stranger than
fiction.
Cambridge Analytica & Secret Data Operations
Psychographic data mining and predictive analytics firm Cambridge
Analytica (CA), which reportedly ran the entire Trump digital campaign,
has emerged as a fulcrum in Trump and broader right-wing populist
efforts. Analytica used both traditional statistical regression methods
and newer ‘machine learning’ methods (machine learning essentially being
computer-aided iterative applications of traditional statistical
regression methods) to develop models that predict various things, such
as voter outcomes. Although the effectiveness of Analytica’s
psychographic micro-targeting techniques (essentially targeting voters
with bespoke messages) is disputed and the company appears to have
exaggerated its abilities and taken liberties in marketing its services
to an extent, it’s still worth exploring as an apparent nexus of
hard-right political cirlces in the US and UK in addition to Israeli and
Russian parties. Analytica was founded in 2013 as an offshoot of a
British company called SCL Group by right-wing billionaire megadonor
Robert Mercer (the source of most of Analytica’s funding and one of its
owners), Rebekah Mercer and former Breitbart head and Trump White House
“Chief Strategist”, Steve Bannon, who occupied high-level executive and
strategic roles at the company. Mercer, who since at least 2011 has
accelerated his support for the political right, largely controlled the
company.[273][274][275] SCL, Analytica’s parent company, was a mysterious UK-based behavorial research and strategic communications shop with deep ties
to British royalty and the Tory party that worked extensively with
militaries, defense contractors and governments (including the Pentagon
and UK Ministry of Defense) around the world on influence operations,
sentiment manipulation, psychological operations and “sophisticated
campaigns of mass deception”, even going so far as to claim it has
fomented coups in developing countries.[276]
Vincent Tchenguiz, a shady Jewish-Iranian billionaire and Tory donor
based in the UK who was until 2015 one of SCL Group’s largest owners and
investors, has advisory and business ties to Russian-Ukrainian
oligarchs both directly and indirectly through his PR advisor David
Burnside, a pro-Brexit, pro-Tory Northern Irish politician who also has
Eurasian ties mainly through his PR business (which is a hub for
pro-Russian “counter-NATO” propaganda outlets) and has courted wealthy
Russians for donations to the Tory party.[277] Analytica
and SCL Group became defunct after their well-publicized Facebook data
scandal erupted, but core employees and backers of both companies
continue to operate through successor companies Emerdata and Data
Propria, which is currently electioneering for the RNC and Trump 2020
campaign.[278]
Vincent Tchenguiz, one of the largest property owners in Britain
Major clients of Analytica included the 2016 Trump campaign, Ted Cruz’s 2016 campaign, Brexit and John Bolton’s PAC.[279][280] As
early as 2014 — before Analytica had any affiliation with Trump — the
company was testing Americans’ reactions to slogans such as “drain the
swamp” and “deep state”. Not only that, but CA under the direction of
Steve Bannon also assembled focus groups to test Americans’ feelings
towards building a wall along the Mexican border and, fascinatingly,
towards Russian expansionism and Vladimir Putin, who CA discovered was
admired as a strong authoritarian leader by many Americans given the
right framing.[281] It
was around this same time in 2014 that CA began working for John
Bolton’s Mercer-backed PAC, which sought to “make people more
militaristic in their worldview,” according to Cambridge Analytica
whistleblower Christopher Wylie.[282][283] This
lends further credence to the idea that a secret team of national
security boosters and neoconservatives was behind the scenes the whole
time pushing for a right-wing authoritarian president like Ted Cruz (who
channeled a Bush II-style persona) or Donald Trump. Another odd personality that shows up around Trump and Cambridge
Analytica is Peter Thiel, the “anti-establishment” billionaire Silicon
Valley fixture, Facebook board member and Bilderberg Steering Committee
member behind PayPal and Palantir, a CIA and Pentagon predictive
analytics and data mining contractor.[284]
Like Robert Mercer, Thiel is immersed in a lot of fringe endeavors,
such as preparing for an artificial intelligence-induced apocalypse by
building a massive redoubt in New Zealand.[285] He
was a major donor to the Trump campaign, was one of the Trump
transition team’s top advisors and remains in Trump’s orbit to this day.[286][287] He’s
reportedly the impetus behind rumblings from within high level policy
circles about limiting Jeff Bezos’s influence in the Pentagon through
Amazon and breaking up internet giants Google and Facebook. Several
Palantir and Thiel veterans have made their way into Jim Mattis’s inner
circle and/or on to the National Security Council staff.[288][289]
Trump & Thiel
Employees of Thiel’s venture capital and investment firms were seconded
to work on the Trump campaign and employees of Palantir worked
extensively with Cambridge Analytica on building psychographic models
based on Facebook data.[290] According to a Forbes expose,
the Trump digital campaign “delved into message tailoring, sentiment
manipulation and machine learning” – machine learning the crux of
cutting edge predictive analytics, the type Thiel’s Palantir focuses on
almost exclusively. This means that a CIA-Pentagon analytics appendage’s
expertise and know-how was weaponized for direct use in the
“anti-establishment” Trump digital campaign. Given Analytica’s sometimes
dubious capacity as an effective digital campaigning firm, Palantir may
very well have been the real engine behind the Trump digital campaign.
Certainly, Thiel’s involvement would make sense, given the fact that he
and Palantir have everything to gain from Trump and his administration’s
advocacy for the vast expansion of the surveillance state both in scope
and scale. However, regardless of what the exact details are, it’s
clear that Thiel was indispensably involved in the campaign in some way
given the fact that he almost became the chairman of the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board before turning the position down.
In July of 2018, BuzzFeed reported that Mark Zuckerberg
secretly congratulated Donald Trump on winning the 2016 election and
that Facebook, which collaborated with Trump and Clinton campaigns on
their data operations, celebrated Trump’s win internally as “one of the
most imaginative uses of the company’s powerful advertising platform. ”
Simply put, Facebook was enthralled at the chance to work with the Trump
campaign to further develop the platform as a means of predicting and
manipulating its users’ attitudes and behavior. According to BuzzFeed,
“the Trump campaign was able to sway voting sentiment via Facebook
advertising with a rapid testing approach, according to a late-2017
Facebook marketing team note on TLA, which discusses the example set by
the Republican candidate’s advertising strategy to drive donations and
voter turnout.”[291] Facebook
data was instrumental to the Trump campaign and in particular Cambridge
Analytica, which built most of its predictive models on Facebook data —
some of which was illicitly pilfered and mishandled, something that
Facebook knew for a full two and a half years and didn’t do anything
about until the Analytica-Facebook scandal broke.[292] Political
strategists from the Leave.EU Brexit campaign also stated that Facebook
was eminently useful in targeting and swaying voters to their campaign
as well.[293]
Digital campaigning wasn’t the only activity going on at Analytica
apparently. It was additionally a hub for dirty tricks and black bag
operations and was used by Robert Mercer’s PAC and the Brexit campaign
(which Mercer donated Analytica services to through close friend Nigel
Farage[294])
to circumvent campaign financing laws. Alexander Nix, CEO of the
company, admitted that himself and other executives hired British and
Israeli private intelligence firms to set up surveillance operations,
honey traps, entrapment schemes, bribery stings and prostitutes for
opposition research.[295] Analytica
also formed a strategic partnership with a private intelligence firm
called PsyGroup — founded Australian-Israeli businessman Joel Zamel —
whereby the two companies could cooperate on a case-by-case basis to
provide intelligence and social-media services, or pitch business to an
array of clients.[296]
Joel Zamel owns several businesses staffed primarily by former
Israeli intelligence operatives specializing in social media
manipulation, war-gaming, influence operations and private intelligence.[297] According to the New York Times, one of Zamel’s companies had at some point been “working on a proposal for a covert multimillion-dollar online manipulation campaign to help elect Mr. Trump” reportedly using “thousands of fake social media accounts to promote Mr. Trump’s candidacy on platforms like Facebook.”[298] One of Zamel’s companies, Wikistrat,
a geostrategic analysis consulting platform, is stacked with hard-right
foreign policy power players such as Mike Hayden, Elliott Abrams and
Daniel Pipes, the son of Richard Pipes, who headed up the CIA’s anti-detente Team B that produced a highly aggressive assessment of Soviet Union military capabilities Yet another complication arises in the universe of Trump data operations around Michael Flynn associate, Jon Iadonisi.
Iadonisi, a CIA-collaborating Navy special operations veteran and
“cybersecurity expert”, runs a company called VizSense specializing in
“millennial engagement” and “viral social media” whose services where
purchased by the Trump campaign but never reported in FCC filings. In
2017, VizSense promised on its website to
“weaponize your brand’s influence” through “military-grade influencer
marketing and intelligence services.” The company was spun out of
another Jon Iadonisi entity called White Canvas, an intelligence
consulting firm that shared offices with Flynn Intel Group in Virginia
and whose founders once described as a “privatized DARPA” and has
received numerous Pentagon contracts, including $150,000 in 2016 from
the Navy for “deep and dark web capability and gap analysis,” according
to contracting records. Iadonisi’s partner in White Canvas was paid to
assist Flynn in his “investigation” into Fethullah Gulen’s activities in
the United States.[299] The
extent of this group’s participation in Trump data operations or with
the Trump campaign digital coordinator, Cambridge Analytica, is still
unknown. During the 2016 election, there was very clearly a massive online
campaign to deploy and disseminate pro-Trump, anti-Clinton messages
through both paid trolls (who even generated some original content) and
automated bots. American, Russian, Israeli and probably even other
organizations were probably involved in this, but the Russian angle has
been most explored. According to sources from within FBI
counterintelligence probe into Russian bot-engineered traffic, Russian
operatives appear to have strategically timed their online bots to blitz
social media with links to pro-Trump stories during the contentious
race. The result was millions of Twitter and Facebook posts carrying
links to stories on Breitbart News and Infowars as well as other conservative sites – and on the Kremlin-backed Russia Today and Sputnik News.[300] One unnamed former intelligence official told McClatchy the Russian cyber-operation “may be one of the most highly impactful information operations in the history of intelligence.”[301] Former US officials have told Reuters that
the operation was masterminded by a think tank controlled by the
Kremlin through a retired ultra-nationalist SVR general called the
Russian Institute for Strategic Studies (RISS). Though, according to
sources, closer towards the general election, the RISS increasingly
believed that Clinton would win the election and pivoted away from
promoting Trump and towards advocating messages about voter fraud in
order to undermine the legitimacy of the US electoral system and a
Clinton presidency.[302]
Today, all presidential campaigns employ online bots, but the Trump
effort was obviously in a whole other league in terms of its scale.
According to Samuel Woolley, who heads the Computational Propaganda
project at Oxford’s Internet Institute, a hugely disproportionate amount
of pro-Trump messaging was conducted by bots and Trump bots outnumbered
Clinton bots five to one at the time of the election.[303] According to The Guardian, Trump’s
campaign was using bots to test “40-50,000 variants of ads every day
that were continuously measuring responses and then adapting and
evolving based on that response.”[304] Automated tweeting played a small but potentially decisive role in Trump’s win, according to a paper released by the National Bureau of Economic Research.
The research (which admits that some confounders are probably at play)
suggests that bots touting Trump or attacking rival Hillary Clinton
could have accounted for 3.23 percentage points of the vote for
president, putting Trump over the top.
Bots and social media influence operations typically don’t have a large
effect on vote counts, but even a very small added margin in critical
districts could have put Trump over the top in some states and affected
the electoral college total. The research also suggests that the bots
may have handed Brexit a win by influencing just 1.76 percent of the
tally.[305]
In addition to possibly swaying the vote, the propagation of
pro-Trump messages and content all across the internet (more shares,
more likes, more comments, etc.) most definitely would have aided all
the data mining and analytics firms working for the Trump campaign by
providing them with more data to feed into their predictive voter
models, this improving the predictive power of said models. Perhaps unsurprisingly at this point given how incestuous all of this
has been so far, Cambridge Analytica has connections to Wikileaks,
which in turn has connections to Russia. CA CEO Alexander Nix reached
out to Julian Assange, requesting help in “locating” Hillary Clinton’s
state department emails. The request was turned down according to
Wikileaks.[306] In
February of 2017, a Cambridge Analytica director who funneled donations
and cryptocurrency payments to Wikileaks met Julian Assange to “discuss
the US election.” Robert Murtfeld, a legal assistant who worked under
the lawyer that represented Assange in his extradition case against the
Swedish government and did legal work for Wikileaks, went on to become
head of sales at Cambridge Analytica’s New York office.[307][308] Assange and Wikileaks were quite obviously extremely conducive in the
triple-pronged US national security-Russian-Israeli operation to
dismantle Hillary Clinton, who Assange has a well-established animus
towards.[309]
Wikileaks’ release of the Podesta and DNC emails were immeasurably
damaging to the Clinton campaign, especially when considering the fact
that they were strategically timed in such a way as to damage Clinton —
the DNC emails released 3 days before the Democratic convention and the
Podesta emails released only hours after the Access Hollywood “pussygate”
tape was released. Quite obviously, coordination of some kind was
occurring. US intelligence agencies and several cybersecurity firms are
“highly confident” that Russian government hackers purloined the DNC
emails and shared them with Wikileaks. Although it is true that it’s often basically impossible to tell
conclusively who conducted a hack just by looking at a hacked computer
network due to the fact that almost everything is tamperable and because
of the ability for intelligence agencies (or really anyone for that
matter) to frame other parties by spoofing IP addresses and using or
imitating stolen/cataloged malware from other countries, there is a
wider, holistic body of evidence, both circumstantial and forensic, that
suggests that Russian state-backed hackers (mostly tied to the SVR) did
carry out hacks on the DNC, Podesta and US state/local election
systems. What can be said for sure is that the hacks utilized highly
sophisticated methods requiring nation state-level resources. Americans,
Israelis and others were surely involved in some way as well, if not in
executing the hacks in nominating Russia to do them. It’s really too
much to get into here, so instead see this investigative timeline. For summaries of evidence for the hacks being Kremlin-sponsored, see here and here. Take of that what you will, but what can be said for sure is that
without those timed email dumps, the swarm of automated pro-Trump bots,
the barrage of leaks about the Clinton email server investigation out of
the anti-Clinton New York FBI office (that was apparently in bed with
Trump accomplice Rudy Giuliani) and the bizarre Comey letter, it’s
extremely doubtful that Trump could have won the election given how
miraculously narrow the margin of victory for Trump was, even if the
total effect was relatively marginal. Apart from this, Assange and Wikileaks are even problematic in other
ways. Assange was compromised and very likely “turned” by US law
enforcement when he was caught hacking several US government and
military organizations in his 20s, an act for which he served virtually
no prison time. That by itself is a glaringly huge red flag that so far
hasn’t been convincingly accounted for by anyone and perhaps indicates
he was for some time or possibly still is an asset of some faction in
the US government or intelligence apparatus.German weekly magazine Focus reported
that according to a confidential German government dossier, Wikileaks
had long since been infiltrated by Russian agents aiming to
discredit NATO governments.
Roger Stone: bisexual swinger, Wikileaks backchanneler and GOP dirty tricks operative
The magazine added that French and British intelligence services had
come to the same conclusion and said Vladimir Putin and Dmitry
Medvedev receive details about what Wikileaks publishes before
publication.[310] The Focus report followed a New York Times story
that suggested that Wikileaks may be a laundering machine for
compromising material about Western countries gathered by Russian spies.[311] Adam
Waldman, a lobbyist for Putin inner circle member and Russian oligarch
Oleg Deripaska (one of Paul Manafort’s clients while he was in Ukraine)
and former counsel for Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov, secretly
visited Julian Assange nine times at the Ecuadorian embassy in London in
2017.[312] This
of course isn’t the only backchannel Wikileaks had — Wikileaks
additionally had secret channels of communication with Donald Trump Jr.
and Trump political consultant Roger Stone (who had advance knowledge of Wikileaks releases), something that all three parties have frantically attempted to cover up.[313][314][315]
Donald’s First Trip to Moscow
It was around the time when Russian mobsters from Brighton
Beach/”Little Odessa” (many of whom were connected to Semion Mogilevich
and the Solntsevskaya mafia) began scarfing up units in Trump Tower that
Soviet intelligence potentially began cultivating Trump as either a
knowing agent of influence or merely a dupe. Beginning in the mid ’80s,
the KGB began an aggressive campaign to ramp up the recruitment of
Americans as intelligence assets (including businessmen and politicians)
through bribery, blackmail, graft and other means. As discussed
previously, this is often outsourced by the Russian intelligence
services to the international Russian mafia, but in the most sensitive
cases, it is handled by the KGB itself. One of the instances in which
the KGB directly participated in a potential bid to recruit an American
asset was the Trump-Soviet effort beginning in 1987 to develop a Trump
luxury hotel in the Red Square across the street from the Kremlin.[316] The very fact that an American national (Donald Trump) was even in
the running to develop any kind of property in Moscow’s entirely
government-controlled core sector is suspicious enough on its own, but
its gets even worse. The Kremlin, KGB and Soviet diplomatic service made
a concerted effort to make Trump Moscow happen by first having
then-Soviet ambassador Yuri Dubinin strike up a conversation with Trump
about building a hotel in Moscow in cooperation with the Soviet
government and then later arranging Trump’s first visit to Moscow in
1987, where the development of the property was first discussed.[317]
So far, the project hasn’t gone anywhere, but not for a lack of trying —
Trump, Russian oligarchs and the Kremlin have attempted to finalize a
Trump Moscow deal on five separate occasions since 1987. However,
despite the fact that Trump Tower hasn’t gotten off the ground so far,
Trump has expanded other aspects of his licensing business and various
television programs to Russia, making the Trump brand one of the most
well-known American brands in Russia.
Credit: Newsweek
The KGB’s targeting of Trump was almost surely not random. It has
long been known particularly among Russian intelligence services that
vane, suggestible, corruptible and egoistic people susceptible to
flattery, graft, bribery and blackmail often make good assets and are
much easier to recruit. Additionally, they preferred to recruit already
well-connected, up-and-coming figures such as businessmen, high-end
lawyers, international consultants and politicians. Trump, a celebrity
businessman, was widely known as having been sexually promiscuous and
his real estate business was scrambling to survive due to its enormous
debts and was having significant problems acquiring lines of credit.
Partnership with the Soviets and the Russian mafia were a way for Trump
to buttress his faltering businesses. The KGB probably had much time to
familiarize itself with Trump, his habits and the (hard-right Roy
Cohn-associated) circles he ran in through the Soviet-allied
Czechoslovakian intelligence service, which had been monitoring and
collecting intelligence on Trump since 1977 when he married Czech model,
Ivana Zelnickova, who somehow managed to leave Czechoslovakia at a time
when it was basically impossible to do so without a nod from the
government.[318]Credit: NYBook
Only two months after Trump’s first visit to Moscow in July of 1987,
he began publicly mulling a run for president and took out full-page ads
in the Boston Globe, Washington Post, and New York Times calling for the United States to stop spending money to defend Japan, Europe, and the Persian Gulf.[319]
Whether Trump already had political ambitions or an anti-transatlantic
and anti-NATO bent before his involvement with the Soviets beginning in
1986 or not is unclear, since Trump’s pre-1987 politics (if he even had
any at all) are rather obscure and not well-documented. Given Fred
Trump’s history of backing anti-Atlanticist isolationalists like Barry
Goldwater and the company Donald kept with characters openly hostile
towards the UN-NATO international order such as Roy Cohn, it’s certainly
possible that Trump’s political ties were a rationale for his being
targeted by the Soviets, who were inclined to focusing in on potential
assets who already held political inclinations and ties possibly
beneficial to the USSR.
The Russian Mafia, Oligarchs and Money Laundering
Trump’s ties to Russia date all the way back to the 1980s when the US
real estate market (Manhattan’s in particular) benefited greatly from
the vastly increased capital inflows into the US from the former Soviet
Union when its economy was on the verge of collapse and
Russian-Eurasian-Jewish organized crime was internationalized. Untold
millions from the former USSR flowed into Trump residential properties
and casinos, particularly after a wave of bankruptcies forced Trump to
seek out questionable sources of funding because no American bank would
lend to him. This influx of suspicious money from Russia, Ukraine,
Kazakhstan and other assorted former Soviet countries into the United
States being parked in Trump owned and/or licensed properties may well
have saved
Trump Tower, a safe haven for Russian-Jewish mobsters since the ’90s
Trump’s faltering real estate business, which was mired in debt and
litigation by the beginning of the 90s, making it very possible that
Trump has owed some kind of debt to and/or has somehow been compromised
by Russian crime organizations (and therefore probably elements of the
Russian state tied in with Russian mobsters) since the early ’80s. There
are many instances of major legitimate Russian banks (all of which have
ties to the Kremlin) bankrolling Trump owned or branded properties as
well. And this pattern of dubious investments being made in Trump and
Trump circle projects continues to this day. Donald Trump Jr. boasted at
a real estate conference in 2008, “Russians make up a pretty
disproportionate cross section of a lot of our assets… We see a lot of
money pouring in from Russia.” Eric Trump told golf reporter James Dodson, “we have all the funding we need out of Russia [for Trump golf courses]”.Purchasing high end real estate is a relatively common but still
startlingly effective method of laundering (or “washing”) dirty money
and parking illicitly obtained assets, and this is exactly what Russian
mobsters began doing in Manhattan, Miami Beach and a select few other
real estate markets in the ’80s and ’90s. A series of Financial Times investigations
have concluded that Trump and his properties not only received massive
infusions of cash that potentially saved Trump personally from complete
and irreversible insolvency after a string of utterly failed business
ventures, but were also at the center of a massive money laundering
operation whose purpose was to spirit the ill-gotten gains of
Russian-Jewish oligarchs out of Russia and into the United States.
Semion Mogilevich, the “boss of bosses” in the Russian mob
Chief among the prolific money laundering entities that began
cropping up in the United States was Semion Mogilevich’s crime
syndicate, known as the Solntsevskaya Bratva. Mogilevich — an oligarch
in his own right — is described by American and European law enforcement
agencies as the “boss of bosses” of the Russian mafia and, like most
other Russian mobsters and oligarchs, has very close ties to Vladimir
Putin and the Ukrainian government, has worked hand-in-hand with Russian
intelligence services for decades and has been extensively involved
with many other mysterious transnational figures connected to various
episodes of conspiratorial intrigue, such as Mossad spy Robert Maxwell.
His expertise is in designing sophisticated financial frauds and money
laundering schemes that are “virtually undetectable”. A 1998 FBI report
reportedly said Mogilevich’s organization was involved in trafficking
nuclear materials, weapons, and money laundering.[320]
In the early ’90s, Mogilevich and his top associates settled in Israel,
where they received Israeli citizenship. Mogilevich “succeeded in
building a bridgehead in Israel” and “developing significant and
influential [political] ties,” according to an Israeli intelligence
report. In Europe and Russia, the “corruption of police and public
officials has been part of the Semion Mogilevich Organization’s modus
operandi,” says a classified FBI document.[321]Core businesses of the Russian mob
Mogilevich’s crime syndicate is in several instances directly tied to
Trump and Trump properties, in particular the flagship Trump Tower,
which has apparently served as a base of operations for
Mogilevich-sponsored criminal enterprises. In 1984, David Bogatin, one
of Mogilevich’s senior deputies in the New York area, bought five condos
in Trump Tower for six million dollars to help launder profits from a
gasoline bootlegging ring operated by the Russian mob. Trump personally
attended the closing.[322]
In 2014, alleged Russian mobsters Anatoly Golubchik and Vadim Trincher
were arrested for operating a massive illegal gambling and international
money laundering ring catering to oligarchs and criminal from the
former Soviet sphere out of Trump Tower, which reportedly took up the
entire 51st floor of the building.[322]Golubchik and Trincher’s ring ultimately answered to a Mogilevich
associate at one point on the FBI’s Top 10 Most Wanted list and dual
Russian-Israeli citizen, Alimzhan Tokhtakhounov, who lived in Trump
Tower and attended Trump’s 2013 Miss Universe pageant in Moscow as a
special VIP guest. In addition, unit 63A — a condo directly below one
owned by Trump — served as the headquarters for a Tokhtakhounov-managed
“sophisticated money-laundering scheme” that moved an estimated $100
million out of the former Soviet Union, through shell companies in
Cyprus, and into investments in the United States.[323]
Vyachelsov Ivankov, the Mogilevich operative in charge of laundering
illicit mob proceeds through Trump’s Taj Mahal casino in the ’90s also
lived in the Trump Tower while on the run from the FBI and reportedly
had in his personal phone book the private telephone and fax numbers for
the Trump Organization’s office in that building.[324]
Trump World Tower
One third of the priciest floors of the 72-story Trump World Tower in
Manhattan were purchased by individual buyers from former Soviet
countries or shell companies connected to Russia after its construction
was completed in 2001.[325] The building was in fact so popular with wealthy Russians that Bloomberg
has nicknamed it the “tower full of oligarchs.” The Trump brand became
so well-known among Russians that the Trump Organization even used it to
market condos to Russian buyers in the United States. One case of such
marketing was Trump Sunny Isles, where Trump struck a deal with a
developer building high-rises in Sunny Isles near Miami Beach whereby
Trump would license his name to be placed on the towers in return for a
cut of the profit. About a third of the Trump-branded units sold in
Sunny Isles went to wealthy Russian speakers.[326]
So many were sold to Russians that the area became known as “Little
Moscow”. Another third of the units were sold to shell companies.
An investigation by the Miami Herald found that
at least 13 buyers in the Florida complex have been the target of
government investigations, either personally or through their companies,
including “members of a Russian-American organized crime group.” One of the financial institutions Trump turned to for financing after
becoming toxic to American banks was German Deutsche Bank, which is
widely known to be a major money laundering facilitator and the go-to
financial institution for foreign businessmen looking to circumvent US
and European sanctions. In January 2017, the bank was fined a whopping
$425 million by the the New York state government and £163 million by
the UK Financial Conduct Authority regarding accusations
of laundering $10 billion of oligarch money out of Russia mostly through
relatively simple mirror trading schemes.[327]
The investigations that precipitated the fines largely focused on
Deutsche’s cozy relationship and numerous lucrative business deals (not
typically afforded to Western banks) with Russian state-owned bank, VTB,
which is known to be a front for Russian intelligence/FSB and whose
executive team is composed largely of former FSB officers.[328]
Trump & Lev Leviev
Deutsche is by far the largest creditor to Trump (in addition to
being one of Jared Kushner’s largest creditors), having dispensed over
$1 billion in loans to him and currently owns more than $360 million of
Trump’s debt in the form of outstanding loans.[329] Trump’s
relationship with Deutsche began in 1998 after he had been almost
completely blacklisted by every American Wall Street lending institution
as a result of Trump’s tendency to stiff lenders. Even after Trump
failed to repay loans from Deutsche, they continued doing business with
Trump, allowing him to repay loans from Deutsche’s real estate division
with separate incoming loans from the bank’s private wealth division, an
almost completely unprecedented arrangement.[330]
It was around the time that Deutsche was laundering Eurasian oligarch
money that Trump began acquiring massive new lines of credit from the
bank. At the heart of the FBI inquiry into Deutsche Bank’s relationship
with Trump is whether VTB or Russian state development bank, VEB (also
headed by spies), purchased parts of Trump’s debt from Deutsche Bank.[331]
In December 2016, Russian ambassador to the US, Sergey Kislyak,
arranged a meeting between Jared Kushner and the head of VEB, Sergey
Gorkov, another former FSB officer.[332]
In 2015, Kushner’s real estate development company purchased several
floors of the old New York Times building in Manhattan from the US
branch of one of Russian-Jewish oligarch and Putin confidante Lev
Leviev’s company, Africa Israel Investments. Later, Deutsche Bank
refinanced the deal for $74 million more than Kushner paid initially,
essentially extending with almost no strings attached a massive line of
low interest credit.[333] In 2008, Leviev invited Trump to his Madison Avenue jewelry store hoping to work with him on real estate deals in Moscow.[334]
Yuri Milner, a Russian-Jewish oligarch and Putin surrogate who founded
Russian online service Mail.ru and is now a tech investor living in
Silicon Valley, staked a large investment (nearly $1 million) in a real
estate investment start-up co-founded by Jared Kushner called Cadre.
Earlier, Milner acted as a deniable conduit through which Russian
intelligence/FSB front, VTB Bank, invested hundreds of millions of
dollars in both Facebook and Twitter.[335] Mark Zuckerberg is a close friend of Milner’s. Perhaps unsurprisingly at this point, both Jared and Ivanka Kushner
are close to Russian-Israeli oligarch Roman Abramovich and his wife,
Dacha Zhukova, who was introduced to Ivanka through Rupert Murchoch’s
then-wife and Kushner family friend, Wendi Deng. Deng, now divorced from
Murdoch, was dating Vladimir Putin as of around March 2016.[336]
Ivanka and Zhukova have been friends for over a decade and Jared
Kushner has interacted with Abramovich at least four times (that we know
of) ostensibly in a “social setting”. According to former Russian oil
magnate Mikhail Khodorkovsky, “there’s no oligarch among those still
accepted in the West who’s closer and more trusted by Putin than
Abramovich.”[337]
666 Fifth Avenue, New York
Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, who is reportedly close to
Trump, rushed to retire from the Supreme Court so that Trump could name
someone to the bench before the 2018 midterms. Anthony Kennedy’s son,
Justin Kennedy, was Deutsche’s former global head of real estate capital
markets during the period in which Trump began working with the bank
and developed a close with Trump during that time. After leaving
Deutsche, Justin Kennedy became CEO of LNR Partners (owned in part by
Steve Roth/Vornado Realty, a major Trump donor), which was the special
servicer of the debt on Jared Kushner’s woefully over-leveraged 666
Fifth Avenue New York property during Kennedy’s tenure as LNR’s CEO.[338]
Sergei Millian, head of the Russian-American Chamber of Commerce and
an alleged source for the Steele dossier, was identified by the Financial Times as a participant in potential money laundering schemes involving Trump properties.[339]
FT quotes former Russian MP Konstantin Borovoi in identifying the
chamber as a front for intelligence operations during Soviet times. On
its website, the chamber claimed it had “signed formal agreements” with
the Trump Organization and two other companies to “jointly service the
Russian clients’ commercial, residential and industrial real-estate
needs”. Millian boasted of his extensive business dealings and
friendship with Trump, ties to American business interests and the
potential for Trump’s presidency to enhance Russian-American relations
and project Russian soft power in an interview with a Russian news
network in 2016.[340]
Millian at Trump’s inauguration
In the same interview, he claimed he was the Trump Organization’s
“exclusive broker” with Russian buyers and later told ABC Television
that the Trump Organization had received “hundreds of millions of
dollars” through deals with Russian businessmen. In 2011, Millian
invited 50 American businessmen on a trip to Moscow in what the FBI
suspected was a Russian intelligence operation to recruit the men.
Mikhail Morgulis, a board member of the Russian-American Chamber, told
the Financial Times that Millian had explained to him he was
helping Trump and the Republican Party. “We have soft power and we are
trying to change relations now,” Morgulis said. Millian is connected to
other Russiagate luminaries such as Oleg Deripasksa, Jared Kushner,
George Papadopoulos and Michael Cohen, who allegedly told Millian to
stop talking to the press after it got wind of Trump’s Russian
connections.[341]Donald Trump co-financed the Trump Tower and Hotel in Toronto with
Alex Schnaider, a Russian-Canadian billionaire who owes much of his
success to his ex-father in law, Boris Birshstein, who was a long-time
business associate of Sergei Mikhalyov, co-head of the Solntsevskaya
mafia with Semion Mogilevich.[342] According
to the Financial Times, documents show that Shnaider paid a $100
million “commission” to middlemen representing Kremlin interests who
helped facilitate the sale of Shnaider’s stake in a Ukrainian steel
mill. The sale of the stake for $850 million was financed by Russian
bank VEB, which was chaired by Vladimir Putin at the time. A large
portion of the proceeds from the sale were later earmarked for the Trump
Tower Toronto project.[343]
Trump SoHo Manhattan
Another Financial Times investigation turned up a likely
money laundering operation around a supremely shady New York-based real
estate development group called Bayrock Group.[344]
Bayrock was founded by Kazakh emigre Tevfik Arif and financially backed
by the Eurasia Group, another dubious entity spearheaded by
Kazakh-Israeli billionaire, World Jewish Congress regional director and
Chabadnik, Alexander Mashkevich. Mashkevich and two other Kazakh
oligarchs behind the Eurasia Group and other Kazakhstan-based businesses
are collectively known as “the Trio” and have been on numerous
occasions involved in international resource grabbing, money laundering,
bribery, and racketeering.[345][346]
Trump and Bayrock also jointly developed properties in Florida,
Arizona, Colorado, Turkey, Poland, Russia and Ukraine. However, the
Trump-Bayrock development that attracted attention from investigators
was Trump SoHo, a luxury hotel-condo complex in Lower Manhattan and
among the most famous Trump-branded properties.It was certainly no ordinary real estate development deal – Bayrock
and the Sapir Organization (a partner of Bayrock’s) put up all the money
for the building, while the Trump Organization was contractually
entitled to 18% of the profits without putting up any investment at all.
Similar brand licensing agreements definitely occur, but 18% is a
peculiarly high profit share figure. The Financial Timesconcluded,
after a lawsuit against Bayrock was levied by several real estate
executives and former Bayrock employees, that Trump SoHo was part of an
international money laundering network that involved the Eurasia Group
(Mashkevich) and a former Kazakh energy minister. The lawsuit stated
that Bayrock was “backed by oligarchs and money they stole from the
Russian people” and “substantially and covertly mob-owned and operated.”[347]
Another major investor in Trump SoHo was FL Group, an obscure Icelandic
private equity firm with an impenetrable, labyrinthine ownership
structure that is rumored to have a number of Russian owners and has a
history of making peculiar loans to Russian oligarchs and their
businesses.[348]
Unsurprisingly, further investigation into the players behind Bayrock
and SoHo yields more connections to Simeon Mogilevich, the
Russian-Jewish mafia, the KGB, Chabad-Lubavitch and one of the most
powerful oligarchs in Russia.
From left to right: Trump, Tevfik Arif and Felix Sater
Arif, Bayrock’s founder, got his start working for the Soviet
Ministry of Commerce and Trade for 17 years and later worked as the
billionaire Reuben brothers’ “agent on the ground”. In 2001, Arif
founded Bayrock and began working with Trump (often offering him 20-25%
of the profits from his overseas developments) as well as introducing
him to investors from Russia.[349]
In 2010, Arif was arrested aboard his yacht in the Mediterranean along
with Alex Mashkevich and a cadre of other prominent Russian, Kyrgyz and
Kazakh businessmen and government officials. Arif was charged with
running a prostitution and human trafficking ring that involved underage
girls.[350]
Blackmail was also almost certainly involved. Tamir Sapir, the founder
of the Sapir Organization that partnered with Bayrock in the development
of Trump SoHo, was a Georgian-born Jewish billionaire and Chabad donor.
Sapir reportedly maintained close ties with Lev Leviev, another
Eurasian crime syndicate associate and top Chabad backer.[351]
In the ’80s, Sapir moved to the United States, where he started a
high-end electronics (read: covert surveillance equipment) distribution
business whose clientele mainly consisted of KGB agents and Russian
criminal syndicate members.[352] According to the FBI, Sapir’s partner in the firm was an associate of Vyachelsov Ivankov’s Brighton Beach mafia.[353] As mentioned previously, Ivankov was Simeon Mogilevich’s foremost henchman and enforcer in New York.However, the most fascinating character in the SoHo chapter is Felix
Sater, who was brought on by Arif as Bayrock’s managing director and
chief operating officer. Sater was born into a Russian-Jewish-Chabadnik
family in Moscow and moved to Brighton Beach, Brooklyn in 1974, where he
was reportedly childhood friends with Trump lawyer and fellow
Chabadnik, Michael Cohen.[354]
The Sater-Cohen friendship likely developed through Cohen’s uncle’s
ownership of a Brooklyn club, event space and catering hall that rented
space primarily to members of the Brighton Beach Russian-Jewish mob.
Sater’s father, Mikhail Sheferovsky, was an underboss in Simeon
Mogilevich’s mafia clan. After Sater’s career in the stock brokering
industry was derailed by an assault conviction (he stabbed someone in
the face with a broken margarita glass during a bar fight, in true
mobster fashion), he turned increasingly to real estate, consulting (at
one point working for Neil Bush’s TxOil[355])
and working with the Russian mafia, where among other things, he helped
it orchestrate a $40 million pump-and-dump penny stock fraud. While engaged in nefarious mob activities, Sater also became involved
in real estate, serving as an advisor to real estate groups hoping to
do business with Russian mob associates. One such group was the Trump
Organization, where Sater held the title of “Senior Advisor to Donald
Trump” and conducted Bayrock business out of Trump Tower. By Sater’s
account, in sworn testimony, he was very tight
with Trump. He flew to Colorado with him, accompanied Donald Jr. and
Ivanka on a trip to Moscow at Trump’s invitation, and met with Trump’s
inner circle “constantly.” In Trump Tower, he often dropped by Trump’s
office to pitch business ideas—“just me and him.”[356] In November 2015 (about a year before the election), during a round
of negotiations regarding the development of a Trump tower in Moscow,
Sater sent an email to Michael Cohen stating that he and others in his
circle could “engineer” a Trump presidency and that he could “get
Putin’s team to buy in on this.” “I will get Putin on this program and
we will get Donald elected,” he wrote in another email to an
unidentified Russian contact. “If he says it we own this election.”[357][358]
It was around this time that Sater, Mike Flynn and Cohen were also
working on a Russia-Ukraine “peace plan” and a scheme to get US
sanctions levied on Russia over its invasion of Crimea lifted.[359]
Sater and Cohen were also critically involved in the 2015 Trump Tower
project. In November 2015, a few months after Trump announced he was
running for president, Sater wrote an email to Cohen saying Russian
intelligence/FSB front, VTB Bank, had agreed to bankroll a Trump Tower
Moscow project.[360] Given the above facts, anyone in their right mind might suspect Sater
is, in effect, a Russian spy. He may very well have been at one point,
but that is not confirmed. What is confirmed is that — shockingly —
Sater has been a fairly effective spy for American intelligence since at
least 1996 when he was recruited as an asset by the Defense
Intelligence Agency (DIA) while working as a consultant in Moscow. At
the time, Sater was consulting on a number of business deals involving
Russian military officials whose activities were of interest to the DIA.
Later, Sater began informing for the CIA, helping it pursue Stinger
anti-aircraft missiles lost in Afghanistan, track down North Korean
military intelligence operatives working on its nuclear program and
collect intelligence on al-Qaeda — Sater was reportedly even able to get
a hold of some of Osama bin Laden’s personal satellite phone numbers at
one point. After returning to the United States, Sater became an
informant for the FBI on matters relating to the Russian mafia and
national security and remains an FBI source to this day according to two
current FBI agents.[361][362]
In 2014, Sater attended an event at a federal building in New York
where he was praised by dozens of intelligence officers from several
separate agencies as a “national hero.” One officer said Sater “probably
saved tens of thousands of US lives, maybe even millions… through the
brave work that he’s done.”[363] So what in the blue hell is a decades-long CIA-DIA-FBI asset and
informant with apparent ties to the Bush family doing running around
brokering deals for Russian intelligence fronts to fund a presidential
hopeful’s property in Moscow? Is there some kind of bizarre reciprocity
between the Russian-Jewish Chabad network (which is beginning to look
more and more like a Russian and/or Israeli intelligence front) and
factions in US intelligence we’re not aware of? Keep in mind that in his
FBI work on the Russian mafia, Sater reported to the New York FBI
office — which apparently considers him a hero — the majority of the
time. As discussed previously, this is the same FBI office that was
ravenously anti-Clinton during the 2015-2016 election season and the
source of several leaks
about the Clinton email investigation. It’s certainly worth asking
whether Sater ever discussed his effort to parlay Trump into the
presidency with the FBI and if the FBI and other intelligence agencies
Sater has worked with ever had any kind of understanding of such
operation. It’s also curious that the New York FBI office has never even so much
as investigated Trump (until it became associated with the Mueller
investigation) despite the fact it’s been an open secret among law
enforcement and New York real estate/business circles that he’s been in
bed with the oligarchic Russian-Jewish criminal syndicate for decades.
As it happens, most, if not all, Trump properties (including at least
one of his golf courses, which are funded by Russians) are laced with
highly intrusive covert surveillance equipment — phone taps, embedded
microphones, hidden cameras, etc. — far beyond what anyone would expect
to find in a normal property.[364][365]
Certainly, this begs the question as to whether there were others
besides Trump and his security staff listening in to conversations that
took place in his properties. Perhaps the Eurasian-Jewish mob or Russian
intelligence services. It wouldn’t be too far a stretch to suggest the
FBI as a party to this behavior given Trump’s history of cooperation with
the FBI regarding potential mob activity around his Atlantic City
casinos (which undoubtedly involved permitted FBI surveillance) and the
unusual number of FBI arrests made out of Trump Tower. Just a sampling
of such busts include an FBI surveillance operation that busted a
gambling and money laundering ring headed up by the Russian mafia that
operated out of a suite in Trump Tower (among many other mob-related
busts) and a separate covert operation that led to the arrest of
a Brazilian FIFA official who had accepted bribes. Perhaps it’s not
merely a coincidence then that Trump’s many sloppy and cavalier business
and financial dealings and questionable personal ties have never been
scrutinized and pressured by the FBI – him and the people around him
play both sides. Miscellaneous Financial Ties To Oligarchs:
Len Blavatnik, an oligarch of Ukrainian Jewish descent who is very close to Benjamin Netanyahu and the Alfa Group[366],
has been a major political donor in the United States for years, giving
roughly equally to both Republicans and Democrats and widely
distributing said donations to 30 or 40 different candidates. In the
2015-2016 election season, his pattern was disrupted when he began
donating heavily to Donald Trump and the RNC. Although he didn’t donate
directly to Trump’s campaign, after Trump won, Blavatnik’s Access
Industries gave $7 million to the Presidential Inaugural Committee.
Blavatnik gave $12,700 in April 2017 to a Republican National Committee
fund that was used to help pay for the team of private attorneys
representing Trump in the probe of Russian interference in the 2016
election. He’d given the RNC legal fund $100,000 in 2016. Two top Trump
administration officials, one in the Department of Justice and the other
in the Department of Interior, were former lobbyists for Blavatnik’s
company, Access Industries.[367]
Columbus Nova, a small American holding company that manages assets
on behalf of Renova Group, a conglomerate controlled by Russian-Jewish
oligarch Viktor Vekselberg through American businessman Andrew Intrater,
allegedly funneled $500 thousand to Michael Cohen, who was hired by
Columbus Nova as a “consultant” after Trump’s inauguration.[368] Eleven
days before Donald Trump’s presidential inauguration, Cohen met with
Vekselberg and Andrew Intrater, an American business partner of
Vekselberg’s, in Cohen’s office on the 26th floor of Trump Tower. Days
after the inauguration, Columbus Nova awarded Cohen a different $1
million consulting contract.[369] Vekselberg,
who made his fortune in metals, has close ties to the Kremlin, Len
Blavatnik, Oleg Deripaska and the Alfa Group. For a time, Vekselberg was
president of the Skolkovo Foundation, which sought to build a
“technology hub” in Russia with several American technology companies
and is alleged by the FBI to be a front for the Russian government to
help facilitate industrial espionage and technology transfers to Russia.[370]
Michael Cohen solicited a $150,000 donation
to the Trump Foundation from pro-NATO, pro-EU Ukrainian oligarch Viktor
Pinchuk. This wouldn’t really be too interesting if it weren’t for the
fact that in 2017 Pinchuk also paid
John Bolton $115,000 to speak at conferences he sponsors in Europe (he
also received over half a million dollars from Murdoch’s Fox News as a contributor).
In 2008 (incidentally when Trump suffered a massive financial
setback from the financial crash), Russian fertilizer oligarch Dmitry
Rybolovlev, bought a mansion from Trump for a hugely inflated price of
$95 million. Trump had purchased the mansion for only $40 million four
years prior.[371] It was the largest single family home sale in US history.
Palm Beach mansion Trump sold to Rybolovlev
Paul Manafort
From left to right: Manafort, Roger Stone & Lee AtwaterRoger Stone & Roy Cohn
In March of 2016, Trump hired Paul Manafort as his campaign manager
on the advise of Middle East advisor, Tom Barrack. Manafort has been
presence in Republican politics since the late ’70s, having worked on
presidential campaigns for Reagan, Bush I and Bob Dole. In 1980,
Manafort founded political consulting firm Black, Manafort & Stone
with the flagrantly dirty political operative, Roy Cohn protege and
long-time Trump ally, Roger Stone, who also worked extensively on the
Trump campaign and remains a mouthpiece for Trump in the media. Black,
Manafort & Stone became known as the “torturers’ lobby” after taking
on extensive consulting and lobbying work for an impressive assortment
of unsavory characters including Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos,
Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire and several other unsavory third world
characters. Beginning in the 2000s, Manafort — who mind you managed and
advised the American president’s presidential campaign — was neck deep
in a comprehensive and well-financed secret campaign backed by Putin
allies to pull Ukraine back into the orbit of Moscow in which he worked
hand-in-hand with at least one full-fledged Russian intelligence
operative, Konstantin Kilimnik.On and off from 2004 to 2015, Manafort, who by 2004 already had a
breadth of foreign electioneering experience, performed rather intricate
lobbying on behalf of pro-Putin and completely Putin-backed Ukrainian
president Viktor Yanukovych and the pro-Russian Party of Regions, which
were instrumental in pulling Ukraine back into a mode of Russian
integration and away from Europe. His efforts to rehabilitate
Yanukovych’s image and parlay him back into power were reportedly
incredibly effective. In fact, Manafort was even placed in charge of a
clandestine “black ops” media campaign intended to champion Yanukovych
and discredit his pro-Western adversaries (particularly Yulia
Tymoshenko) in the press. According to The Guardian, the strategies included[372]:
Proposing to rewrite Wikipedia entries to smear a key opponent of the then Ukrainian president.
Setting up a fake think tank in Vienna to disseminate viewpoints supporting Yanukovych.
A social media blitz “aimed at targeted audiences in Europe and the US”.
Briefing journalists from the right-wing website Breitbart to attack Clinton when she was US secretary of state.
“Placing” articles containing anonymous anti-Clinton briefings in the Wall Street Journal (Rupert Murdoch) and other US websites
This PR operation tied into another suspicious enterprise undertaken
by Manafort and Gates whereby they secretly retained and bankrolled a
group of former senior European politicians informally referred to as
the “Hapsburg Group” to use their influence to lobby in Europe and the
United States on behalf of Manafort and his Ukrainian clients, who in
turn were more or less Kremlin surrogates. In a June 2012 memo labeled
“Eyes Only”, Manafort outlined what he described as a “Super VIP” part
of the effort led by former Austrian chancellor Alfred Gusenbauer to
“assemble a small group of high-level European highly influential
champions and politically credible friends who can act informally and
without any visible relationship with the Government of Ukraine”.[373] Former
US ambassador to Ukraine William Taylor even requested that Manafort
cease his activities in Eastern Europe as they were undermining US
interests in the area, but Manafort cavalierly blew him off, apparently
without consequence.[374]
Putin & Oleg Deripaska
After Manafort’s entry into Eastern European politics, he developed a
rapport with Oleg Deripaska, a Russian aluminum oligarch. Deripaska, an
ally of Roman Abramovich, has been described as “Putin’s favorite industrialist.” Leaked US diplomatic cables from
2006 described Deripaska as “among the 2-3 oligarchs Putin turns to on a
regular basis” and “a more-or-less permanent fixture on Putin’s trips
abroad”.[375]
Starting in 2005, Manafort negotiated a $10 million annual contract
with Deripaska to influence politics, business dealings and news
coverage inside the US, Europe and former Soviet republics in favor of
Putin’s government. Manafort told Deripaska he was pushing policies as
part of his work in Ukraine “at the highest levels of the U.S.
government — the White House, Capitol Hill and the State
Department.” “We are now of the belief that this model can greatly
benefit the Putin Government if employed at the correct levels with the
appropriate commitment
to success,” Manafort wrote in a 2005 memo to Deripaska. The effort,
Manafort wrote, “will be offering a great service that can re-focus,
both internally and externally, the policies of the Putin government.”[376] During
his time as a campaign manager and advisor with the Trump campaign,
Manafort offered to provide briefings on political developments to
Deripaska through Kiev-based Russian military intelligence operative
Konstantin Kilimnik, who was an employee of Manafort’s consulting firm
and his right-hand man during Manafort’s time as a political consultant
for Yanukoych.[377][378] Dmytro Firtash, a pro-Russian Ukrainian billionaire with widely
reported ties to Semion Mogilevich who featured prominently in the
Yanukovych administration, was another important Manafort client.
According to the former chairman of the former Ukrainian government’s
anti-corruption committee, “Firtash has always been an intermediary… He
is a political person representing Russia’s interests in Ukraine.”[379]
Firtash, a former used car salesman, was elevated to the position of
half ownership in RosUkrEnergo (which control’s Gazprom’s gas sales to
Europe) by Putin.[380]
Eurasian-Jewish mafia kingpin and deniable Russian intelligence asset
Semion Mogilevich is also a “silent partner” in RosUkrEnergo and its
co-owner Firtash.[381] Bankers close to Putin granted Firtash credit lines
of up to $11 billion, which helped Firtash to back Yanukovich who won
power and went on to rule Ukraine for four years. The relationship had
great geopolitical value for Putin — Yanukovich ended up steering the
Ukraine away from the West and towards Moscow until he was overthrown in
February 2014.[382]
In 2008, when Donald Trump was reeling from the fallout of the
2007-2008 crash, Manafort teamed up with a former manager of the Trump
Organization to purchase the Drake Hotel in New York for up to $850
million, with Firtash agreeing to invest $112 million. According to a lawsuit brought against Manafort and Firtash,
the key point of the deal was not to make a carefully-planned
investment in real estate, but to simply launder part of the huge
profits that Firtash had skimmed while brokering dodgy natural gas deals
between Russia and Ukraine, with Mogilevich acting as a “silent partner.”[383]
The deal ultimately fell through when Firtash pulled out after the
collapse of a bank one of his company’s had a significant investment in,
but ultimately further reinforces Trump’s business ties with
Kremlin-tied kleptocratic oligarchs from the post-Soviet sphere.
Meetings & Backchannels
Mike Flynn, Rob Goldstone, George Papadopoulos and Carter Page appear
to have been part of a parallel Russian intelligence cultivation
operation alongside Trump. At least one of them was almost surely an
Israeli agent at one point as well. The Trump camp has repeatedly lied
about and attempted to cover up the below events, While
Carter Page, who took frequent trips to Moscow, was running an oil
& gas consulting business specializing in the Russian and Central
Asian energy business, SVR agents operating a spy ring in New York
attempted to recruit him as an asset, though it’s unclear how successful
the operation was, as the SVR agents considered Page an “idiot”.[384]
Page became a foreign policy advisor to the Trump campaign in March of
2016, where he essentially touted a cartoonishly pro-Kremlin,
pro-Eurasian integration foreign policy approach that may as well have
come directly from Vladimir Putin. In July of 2016, while working on the
Trump campaign, Page was invited to Moscow give a speech at a
university, but that clearly wasn’t the real purpose. During this trip,
Page secretly visited Putin’s “de facto deputy” Igor Sechin, Russian
deputy prime minister Arkady Dvorkovich and Kremlin official Igor
Diveykin, reportedly having discussed the lifting of sanctions on
Russia.[385][386] FBI
documents released by the Trump administration said “the FBI believes
that the Russian government’s efforts are being coordinated with Page
and perhaps other individuals associated with” Trump’s campaign. They
also said Page “has established relationships with Russian government
officials, including Russian intelligence officers”.[387]
In June 2016, former British tabloid writer and publicist Rob
Goldstone emailed Donald Trump Jr. on behalf of his client, Emin
Agalarov:
Emin just called and asked me to contact you with something very interesting. The Crown prosecutor of Russia met
with his father Aras [Agalarov] this morning and in their meeting
offered to provide the Trump campaign with some official documents and
information that would incriminate Hillary and her dealings with Russia
and would be very useful to your father. This is obviously very high level and sensitive information but is part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump – helped along by Aras and Emin.[388]
Rob Goldstone
Trump Jr. responded, “…perhaps I just speak to Emin first. Seems we
have some time and if it’s what you say I love it … Could we do a call
first thing next week when I am back?”[389] This
email exchange culminated in a meeting at Trump Tower attended by
Goldstone, Trump Jr., Manafort, Jared Kushner, Russian lawyer Natalia
Veselnitskaya, Agalarov associate Ike Kaveladze and former Soviet
counterintelligence officer Rinat Akhmetshin who has ongoing ties to
Russian intelligence and has worked closely with allies of Putin for
years.[390][391] At
the time, Veselnitskaya, known as a “trusted insider” among Russian
government officials, was an informant for Russia’s prosecutor general
Yuri Chaika, who she coordinated with in an intense, years-long campaign
to repeal the Magnitsky Act US sanctions law, which along with other US
sanctions freezes up oligarch assets, making them unreachable.[392][393]
At the meeting, Veselnitskaya offered to provide the Trump team
evidence that Bill Browder — an American financier with extensive
business ties to Russia who lobbied for the passing of the Magnitsky Act
— and the billionaire Ziff brothers had evaded taxes in Russia and
funneled money in a potentially illicit manner to the Democratic
National Committee and Hillary Clinton.[394][395][396] Browder and the Ziffs did indeed donate quite generously to the Clinton Foundation and Democratic National Convention.[397] According to Michael Cohen, Donald Trump personally approved the meeting.[398]Trump & Aras Agalarov
Azerbaijani-Russian real estate oligarch and Kremlin fixer Aras
Agalarov (Emin Agalarov’s father) was critical in bringing Donald
Trump’s Miss Universe pageant to Moscow in 2013. The Agalarovs began
courting Trump in 2013 and ended up paying Trump $20 million to have
them host the 2013 Miss Universe pageant in a suburb of Moscow.[399] While
in Moscow attending the pageant, Trump met with Aras Agalarov and the
head of Russia’s Sberbank among other prominent Russian moguls
about building a Trump Tower in Moscow as part of a $3 billion real
estate project involving hotels, a shopping center and office space. The
Sberbank executive offered to provide 70 percent of the financing and
Agalarov and Trump came to an agreement on the deal, which Trump had to
pull out of when he decided to run for office.[400][401]
“Almost all of the oligarchs were in the room,” Trump bragged to Real Estate Weekly upon returning home.[402] During
this time, Agalarov, who remained in contact with Trump at least until
2017, served as liaison between Putin and Trump and had attempted to set
up a meeting between the two. The meeting never materialized, with
Putin sending Trump a Russian fedoskino miniature doll as a consolation
prize instead.[403]
An obscure “oil, energy & international relations” consultant,
George Papadopoulos was recruited onto the Trump campaign by Sam Clovis,
a high-ranking campaign official, who allegedly told Papadopoulos that
improving US-Russia relations was a top priority for the campaign.[404]
In March of 2016, Papadopoulos met Joseph Mifsud, a slippery Maltese
academic who claimed to have connections with high-ranking Russian
officials and was a regular attendee of meetings held by the Valdai
Discussion Club, a Moscow-based pro-Putin think tank populated by
Kremlin officials (including Vladimir Putin) that has been described as
an instrument of Kremlin soft power and as a “high-profile Russian
equivalent to Davos.”[405][406]
At a London hotel, Mifsud told Papadopoulos that he had just learned
from high-level Russian officials in Moscow that the Russians had “dirt”
on Hillary Clinton in the form of “thousands of emails”.[407]
After meeting Mifsud, Papadopoulos engaged in a frenzied effort to
arrange a meeting between Trump and Russian officials including Putin
and members of the Russian Foreign Ministry and discussed with several
senior campaign officials about his connections to Russia. After Papadopoulos began touting his ties to “the Russians”
throughout the campaign, Clovis (the advisor that initially recruited
Papadopoulos) and Paul Manafort encouraged Papadopoulos to fly to Russia
to meet with agents of the Russian Foreign Ministry, who were in
contact with Papadopoulos.[408]
On May 21st 2016, Papadopoulos sends an email to Manafort. The subject
line reads, “Request from Russia to meet Mr. Trump,” and the body of the
email reads, “Russia has been eager to meet Mr. Trump for quite
sometime and have been reaching out to me to discuss.” To another
colleague, Manafort writes, “We need someone to communicate that DT
[Donald Trump] is not doing these trips. It should be someone low level
in the campaign so as not to send any signal.”[409]
George Papadopoulos
Papadopoulos later told an Australian diplomat in England, Alexander
Downer, about the Russians’ supposed dirt on Hillary Clinton. In a
bizarre twist, the New York Times reported that the meeting
between Papadopoulos and Downer was actually arranged by someone from
within the Israeli embassy in London.[410]
Papadopoulos’ wife, Simona Mangiante, claims that Papadopolous took
Mueller’s office’s plea deal and pled guilty because Mueller had
threatened to charge Papadopoulos with being an Israeli agent.[411] The Washington Post reported
afterwards that the special counsel’s office had evidence that
Papadopoulos, who has written several op-eds in the Israeli media, had worked on behalf of Israel
without registering as a foreign agent under the US Foreign Agents
Registration Act during a stint working as an energy consultant, before
he joined the Trump campaign.[412]
In 2013, during Mike Flynn’s tenure as director of the Defense
Intelligence Agency (US military intelligence), he was invited into the
headquarters of Russian military intelligence (GRU), making him only the
second DIA director to be allowed into his Russian counterpart’s
headquarters. “Flynn thought he developed some rapport with the GRU
chief,” a former senior U.S. military official said.[413]
Former colleagues of Flynn at the DIA said that while he was director
of the DIA, on top of being somewhat a renegade figure generally,
developed an all-consuming, almost crippling obsession with annihilating
secret Islamist terrorist networks throughout the Middle East and
Central Asia he believed were out to destroy the United States. This
obsession led him to try to ally with Russia in combating this supposed
Islamist network, ignoring Russia’s escalating assertiveness on the
world stage.[414]
Trump & Kislyak
Former Russian ambassador to the US, Sergey Kisylak, was almost
surely essential in arranging backchannels and coordinating with the
Trump team. Kislyak covertly communicated with Mike Flynn, Jeff
Sessions, Carter Page, campaign official J.D. Gordon and Jared Kushner,
who discussed with Kislyak establishing a secret, secure channel to
communicate with the Kremlin that would not be monitored by US
intelligence.[415] Only
a couple weeks after Kushner spoke with Kislylak about establishing a
backchannel, Erik Prince (who was acting as Trump’s surrogate) held the
now-infamous Seychelles meeting with Kremlin insider Kirill Dmitriev in
which further backchanneling and Russia’s ties to Iran and Syria were
discussed.[416][417] As
mentioned previously, Flynn also discussed with Kislyak the incoming
Trump administration’s handling of economic sanctions escalation (having
been coached by hard right national security asset K.T. McFarland) and
having Russia abstain from a UN vote officially condemning illegal
Israeli settlements in the West Bank at the direction of Jared Kushner. Michael Flynn’s first contact with Sergey Kislyak, was during his
visit to GRU headquarters to Moscow. This apparently precipitated a
close relationship that developed between the two — a relationship that
became Flynn’s downfall after he repeatedly lied to the FBI by denying
its existence. While ambassador, Kislyak was known for his lavish
parties and assiduous cultivation and patronage of high-level American
officials.[418] Records
show that Flynn collected nearly $68,000 in fees and expenses from
Russia-related entities in 2015. The bulk of the money (more than
$45,000) came from Russia Today (RT), a vehicle of Kremlin soft power
and propaganda, where he made semi-regular appearances as an analyst
after retiring from the DIA.[419]
In 2015, he was invited to a gala in Moscow in honor of RT, where he
sat directly next to Vladimir Putin, and at the same table as Green
Party candidate Jill Stein.[420]
Mike Flynn and Jill Stein with Putin and his inner circle at 2015 RT gala (credit: NBC)
Flynn, through his consulting firm, was also paid $11,250 that year
by the American subsidiary of a Russian cybersecurity firm, Kaspersky
Lab, and another $11,250 by a US air cargo company affiliated with the
Volga-Dnepr Group, which is owned by a Russian businessman.[421]
Additional clients of Flynn’s consulting firm included Palo Alto
Networks, Adobe Systems and Francisco Partners, a Silicon Valley venture
capital firm. Palo Alto Networks and NSO Group (where Flynn was an
advisor through Francisco Partners, an investor in NSO) were founded by
alumni of Israel’s Unit 8200, the Israeli equivalent of the NSA.[422][423] Palo
Alto Networks is a network security company and the NSO Group sells
spyware to intelligence agencies and law enforcement agencies around the
world.[424] It
is highly unusual and generally frowned upon for high-ranking former US
officials to join foreign companies, particularly ones connected to
Israel and Russia, which are both constantly spying on the United States
and its allies.Peter W. Smith
During the 2016 election, Flynn was working with Chicago investment
banker, political donor and GOP operative Peter W. Smith. Smith, who was
a member of several think tanks including the Atlantic Council, CSIS,
the Heritage Foundation and the Brookings Institute, was engaged in
subsidizing and organizing anti-Clinton media orchestrations similar to
the ones conducted by Richard Mellon Scaife.[425] Smith was instrumental in exposing the Clinton administration “Troopergate” scandal by setting Arkansas state troopers with American Spectator reporter David Brock.[426]
He also tried to orchestrate a paternity suit against Clinton, trying
to find a woman who would claim she had an illegitimate child with
Clinton.[427]
While working with Flynn, Smith contacted computer experts to trawl
hacker forums in an effort to find Hillary Clinton’s 33,000 deleted
State Department emails. Smith told the Wall Street Journal that
he ultimately received some emails from hacker groups he suspected of
being tied to Russian intelligence prior to the election, but urged
those groups to pass the emails along to Wikileaks so he would not have
to personally vouch for their authenticity.[428][429][430] So far, the emails have not surfaced. A strange IP traffic pattern between a bizarrely configured server
registered to the Trump Organization, Russian-Israeli oligarch and
Mikhail Fridman’s Alfa Bank (a major instrument of Russian soft power)
and Spectrum Health (whose chairman is Dick DeVos – husband of Trump
Education Secretary Betsy DeVos) that seemed to indicate secret
communication/coordination between the three parties was noticed by
a number of forensic computer networking professionals in late 2016.
Although evidence of secret communication is far from conclusive and
despite the fact that the particular networking configuration between
the three servers was far from optimal for establishing an almost
undetectable and untraceable communication line (i.e. – why not just
skip public domain registration entirely and just set up a private
network?), the fact that Trump, Mikhail Fridman and the DeVos-Erik
Prince clique are all represented exclusively together on a server is
suspicious enough, seems incredibly unlikely to have been a coincidence
and warrants serious investigation.
Mikhail Fridman (second from left) and Netanyahu
One possible explanation for
what was occurring is SQL server database replication, i.e. the Trump
Organization, Alfa Bank/Fridman and Spectrum Health/DeVos/Prince were
sharing large volumes of data through automated interval synchronization
of databases. For what reason this data was being shared and what the
data was are the big unanswered questions we’re left to speculate on.
Fridman (Russian-Israeli co-founder of the Russian Jewish Congress) and
his Alfa Group colleague Petr Aven — both close to Putin and Netanyahu —
are alleged by the Steele dossier to have colluded with the Trump
campaign and Putin to get Trump elected.[431] According to a leaked Stratfor
report, Fridman and Aven are “pillars” of the Putin regime and, despite
their relatively unvarnished record and history of promoting
Russian-Western integration, are, like virtually all other Russian
oligarchs, tied in with Semion Mogilevich and Sergei Mikhailov’s
Solntsevskaya mafia through money laundering operations.[432]Richard Burt
Richard Burt, a former State Department official, US ambassador and
think tanker, is a member of Alfa Bank’s advisory board. While Burt was
serving as a foreign policy advisor to the Trump campaign (advising him
to take a less interventionist approach) was simultaneously lobbying for
the expansion of the Nord Stream pipeline which would allow Russian gas
to reach Western Europe without going through Ukraine or Belarus.[433]
Burt arranged and in large part crafted one of Trump’s first major
foreign policy speeches, held at the Center for the National Interest, a
think tank promoting foreign policy realism whose board features Richard Burt, Henry Kissinger, Maurice Greenberg, Dov Zakheim and Grover Norquist, among others.[434][435]
Brian Benczkowski, who formerly served as an attorney for Alfa Bank
while working at elite GOP-connected law firm Kirkland & Ellis, is
the Trump administration’s assistant attorney general for the DoJ’s
criminal division, despite having zero prosecutorial experience.[436]Russian agent Maria Butina, who worked for Russian politician and
mafia money launderer, Aleksandr Torshin, was aggressively attempting to
set up backchannels between the Trump campaign and Republican political
circles (including a couple between Trump and Putin) beginning in
2013-2014 in an attempt to mitigate the hawkish policies towards Russia
that the GOP has traditionally embraced.[437]
She even brazenly claimed that she had been part of the Trump
administration’s communications with Russia at a party she hosted after
the election.[438] Butina recruited highly connected GOP operative and Jack Abramoff-associate Paul Erickson
to work with her. In particular, the Butina-Torshin-Erickson trio
targeted Dana Rohrabacher, the National Prayer Breakfast (run by “The Fellowship“,
a secret diplomacy facilitator) and the NRA, which is being
investigated by the FBI as a possible intermediary for financial
donations to the Trump campaign coming from Torshin and ultimately the
Russian government. [439] According
to government filings, in October 2016, Erickson emailed an
acquaintance that he’d helped secure “a VERY private line of
communication between the Kremlin and key [Republican] leaders through,
of all conduits, the [NRA].”[440]
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