From the end of the 20th century, many Russians gravitated towards the New York businessman. Far from suspecting that he will one day become president, they may have bet on the right horse. Impossible to demonstrate. However, in 2017, when 17 US intelligence agencies claimed that Russia interfered in the 2016 election process, Donald Trump replied: “I asked Vladimir Putin the question and he assures me that it is not true.” Quite simply…
1/ The art of betting on the right horse
“In the early 1990s, his delirious investments in the Taj Mahal, a gigantic Atlantic City casino dripping in gold and marble, drove Donald Trump into bankruptcy. He was close to 5 billion dollars in debt, with nearly 1 billion in personal guarantees. Pointing to a homeless man he met on the streets of New York, he said to his wife: ‘This man has 900 million more than me.’ Suddenly, a ‘miracle’ happens. His ruinous casino finds new investors and Trump is making a comeback.
Looking closer, you can see the shadow of strange fairies around this ‘miracle’. We meet Tamir Sapir, a Georgian who became a billionaire thanks to the oil export licenses reserved for him by the KGB, Sam Kislin, an immigrant from Odessa who made his fortune with him, Tewfik Arif, a former Soviet foreign trade official, and Aras Agalarov , a former communist executive from the Republic of Azerbaijan converted to import-export. All are key players in laundering black KGB money according to Yuri Shvets, a former Soviet intelligence officer who bluntly asserts: ‘They clearly saved Trump from bankruptcy.’
The relationships forged at that time will last. Sapir and Kislin are co-funding the construction of Trump Tower in Manhattan’s SoHo neighborhood. Agalarov organizes the Miss Universe pageant (owned by Trump) in 2013 in Moscow and pays 20 million dollars to the American mogul to host the evening. Arif, for his part, joins forces with a man convicted in 1998 by the American justice system for his links with the Russian mafia, Felix Sater, in order to create a real estate development company, Bayrock Group, which they install in the Trump Tower of the Fifth Avenue, one floor below the Trump Organization headquarters. They then offer a golden deal to their prestigious neighbor: Bayrock finances the construction of luxury real estate projects in the United States or elsewhere in the world and pays him a percentage (18%) simply to have the right to use his name.
Other good Russian fairies appear whenever Donald Trump is in desperate need of cash. Fertilizer magnate Dmitri Rybolovlev thus bought in July 2008, at a time when the future American president was again flirting with bankruptcy, for 95 million dollars the mansion he owned in Palm Beach, a ridiculously high sum given the prices of the market. Rybolovlev allows Trump to make a capital gain of 56 million dollars and to bail himself out when he has absolutely no interest in this mansion which he will have destroyed before reselling the land, obviously at a loss.
2/ Moscow celebrates Trump’s victory
“When Donald Trump begins his presidential campaign, the group of businessmen linked to the KGB is well introduced into the close guard of the candidate. Felix Sater works closely with Michael Cohen, Trump’s personal lawyer and handyman, whom he has known since childhood and to which he wrote in October 2015 (in a letter about a Trump Tower project in Moscow): ‘I’ll get Putin in and we’ll get Donald elected.’ Aras Agalarov organized the June 9, 2016 meeting, which then made headlines, between Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya and Donald Trump Jr – during which she offered her services to collect information on Hillary Clinton.
In the wake of that meeting, Agalarov promises Trump’s team a “significant birthday present” on June 14. A few days later, the news falls: the computer servers of the Democratic National Convention have been hacked by a group of Russian hackers, Guccifer 2.0, an offshoot of the GRU (the Russian military intelligence service) according to American intelligence. Wikileaks publishes the e-mails hacked by the Russians and these ‘revelations’ play a key role in the surprise victory of the bankrupt former owner of the Taj Mahal casino.
In August 2020, the US Senate Intelligence Committee released a report establishing that Russian spies actively supported Trump’s campaign. Led by the Republicans, this bipartisan commission focuses on a new protagonist: Konstantin Kilimnik. This is Trump’s other campaign Russian connection. No longer his own networks of the 1990s and 2000s, but those of his campaign manager, Paul Manafort. A prominent Republican figure, Manafort earned tens of millions of (undeclared) euros working in Ukraine for pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych.
He met Kilimnik there and has continued to work with him ever since. Including during the 2016 presidential campaign. The Senate report […] clearly identifies Kilimnik as a Russian secret agent. ‘Taken together, Mr. Manafort’s high level of access and willingness to share information with individuals considered close to Russian intelligence, specifically Mr. Kilimnik and associates of Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska, very close to Putin, posed a serious threat”, concludes the commission.
On the morning of November 9, 2016, when Trump’s victory is confirmed, the Russian Parliament interrupts its work, all the deputies stand up and applaud wildly. Ultra-nationalist Boris Chernyshov enthuses: ‘Yes we did it, yes we did!’ The Kremlin spokesman, Dmitri Peskov, cowardly with a huge smile: ‘It’s phenomenal!’ A man surrounded for decades by businessmen linked to the KGB and having benefited during the campaign from the active help of the Kremlin has been elected president of the United States. To appreciate the danger this represents for Europe itself, bear in mind that we depend on American security guarantees within the Atlantic Alliance and ask yourself this simple question: what would have happened if Donald Trump had been in the White House at the time of the invasion of Ukraine? […]
An elected official or a leader who sells himself to a foreign power flouts our institutions and tramples on our sovereignty. But its actions change in nature when said power attacks our vital interests and aims to destabilize or subjugate our cities. Corruption then becomes treason. The chancellors, ministers or other European captains of industry who have sold themselves to the Kremlin have not simply disloyalty to our Republics, they have put themselves at the service of their most dangerous enemy.”