KGB groomed Trump as an asset for 40 years, former Russian spy says | The Times of Israel
For those still trying to deny the many and longstanding reasons why Donald Trump first started being investigated by the CIA and FBI...
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
Former US president Donald Trump was nurtured as a Russian asset for decades, starting in 1980, a new book claims, with Moscow actively encouraging the businessman to enter politics many years before he won the presidency and supporting him through numerous failed business ventures as it built a "deep" relationship with the mogul.
"He was an asset," former KGB spy Yuri Shvets, who worked for the KGB in Washington DC for years in the 1980s, told journalist Craig Unger in the new book American Kompromat.
Unger's book is based on interviews with numerous sources, including Soviet defectors and ex-CIA agents. In it he makes the assertion that Trump's relationship to Russia as president — one in which he appeared repeatedly averse to criticize Moscow and often took actions seen as desirable to leader Vladimir Putin- was directly tied to his cultivation by Russia over long years.
The book says Russian officials repeatedly helped Trump get through dire financial straits over the years, providing him with laundered money to support his businesses.
"Trump was the perfect target in a lot of ways: His vanity, narcissism made him a natural target to recruit. He was cultivated over a 40-year period, right up through his election," Shvets told the Guardian.
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Must see: Watch me and Yuri Shvets, fmr KGB officer who is great source forAmerican Kompromat, on Narativ TV, telling for the 1st, straight from the horse's mouth, how the KGB cultivated Donald Trump. Buy now: https://t.co/0kmwTkVLldhttps://t.co/bi3sdDdSRy — Craig Unger (@craigunger) January 28, 2021
Shvets said Trump first came to the attention of Soviet officials in 1977 when he married his first wife Ivana Zelnickova, a Czech model.
Former President Ronald Reagan shaking hands with President Donald Trump and Ivana Trump during the State Visit of King Fahd of Saudi Arabia at the state dinner in the Blue Room, 1985 (White House/ Ronald Reagan Presidential Library)
When Trump opened the Grand Hyatt New York hotel in 1980, he bought hundreds of televisions from a Russian immigrant who was a KGB spotter and who highlighted him as a potential asset, being an up-and-coming businessman.
And when Trump visited Moscow in 1987, he was unknowingly in contact with KGB agents who launched "a charm offensive" on the real estate developer, Shvets said.
"They had collected a lot of information on his personality so they knew who he was personally. The feeling was that he was extremely vulnerable intellectually, and psychologically, and he was prone to flattery," Shvets said.
"They played the game as if they were immensely impressed by his personality and believed this is the guy who should be the president of the United States one day: It is people like him who could change the world."
In this March 1988, file photo, Donald Trump stands next to one of his three Sikorsky helicopters at New York Port Authority's West 30 Street Heliport (AP Photo/Wilbur Funches, File)
Shortly after his return, Trump first mulled running for president, and put out major ads touting the same talking points he would wield in 2016, criticizing US support of NATO and suggesting "America should stop paying to defend countries that can afford to defend themselves."
In Russia, the KGB celebrated, Shvets said.
"It was unprecedented. I am pretty well familiar with KGB active measures starting in the early 70s and 80s, and then afterwards with Russia active measures, and I haven't heard anything like that or anything similar — until Trump became the president of this country — because it was just silly. It was hard to believe that somebody would publish it under his name and that it will impress real serious people in the West but it did and, finally, this guy became the president."
Shvets, stressed, however, that "it was not this grand, ingenious plan that we're going to develop this guy and 40 years later he'll be president. At the time it started, which was around 1980, the Russians were trying to recruit like crazy and going after dozens and dozens of people."
Donald Trump, right, waits with his brother Robert for the start of a Casino Control Commission meeting in Atlantic City, N.J., March 29, 1990 (AP Photo)
US authorities have long said Russia meddled in the 2016 election to get Trump elected. His campaign's ties to Russia were investigated by Special Counsel Robert Mueller. The probe concluded that Russia interfered in the election through hacking and a covert social media campaign and that the Trump campaign embraced the help and expected to benefit from it. But Mueller did not charge any Trump associates with conspiring with Russians.
But Trump's attitude toward Russia throughout his presidency often raised eyebrows. He appeared loath to criticize Moscow on multiple occasions and repeatedly and openly cozied up to Putin.
The president sometimes described Russia as a misunderstood potential friend, a valued World War II ally led by a wily president who actually may share American values, like the importance of patriotism, family and religion.
Trump was roundly criticized by both Democrats and Republicans in 2018 after he refused to challenge Putin over interference in American elections, accepting his word over the pronouncements of US intelligence officials.
US President Donald Trump (L) and Russia's President Vladimir Putin shake hands before attending a joint press conference after a meeting at the Presidential Palace in Helsinki, on July 16, 2018. (AFP Photo/Yuri Kadobnov)
In 2018 a senior Justice Department lawyer reportedly said a former British spy told him Russian intelligence believed it had Trump "over a barrel."
Yet despite Trump's rhetoric, his administration also plowed ahead with some of the most significant actions against Russia by any recent administration: Dozens of Russian diplomats were expelled, diplomatic missions closed, arms control treaties the Russians sought to preserve were abandoned and weapons were sold to Russian foe Ukraine.
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Beginning in 2014 and continuing right up to election day 2016 Don Trump was in secret negotiations with clandestine agents of the Russian State Intelligence Services to build Trump Tower in Moscow and lying about it. Could the CIA and FBI have ignored all that?
The first thing Trump did was to say he distrusted American intelligence agencies.
Trump has always been and will always be a criminal.
Well, it seems like certain agencies were out to dig up dirt on him...as ordered by Obama
Nope, Obama didn't order it. Trump earned it.
It is what he got for secret Russian dealings...
or those still trying to deny the many and longstanding reasons why Donald Trump first started being investigated by the CIA and FBI...
Lol Try again.
You should probably read your seeds before posting them.
If you actually want to know why Trump was investigated, you should look up this thing called the Mueller report.
Has the unredacted Mueller Report been released?
No...
Sure. Hang your hat on that. The unredacted report that all Democrats in Congress have access to actually contradicts the published report. Mueller is that dishonest and Democrats are colluding to keep that secret.
Get serious.
You can keep posting fringier and fringier conspiracy theories or you can read the Mueller report, or any of the dozens of links that have been provided to you to correct your misinformation.
Be honest, or not. That's your choice. .
You do know that Trump was investigated by our CIA and FBI prior to the 2016 campaign.
Don't you? Why do you think the CIA began?
Do you deny they had good reasons for that?
Show me unredacted copy of Mueller's Report.
Exactly, whenever has the CIA done something without good reasons?
Searching out foreign spys was good enough.
I did hear some rumors about something called the Bay of Pigs. There's no evidence that the CIA has gotten any smarter since then.
You know Trump had Russian spy contacts...
Those began before Clinton's 2016 campaign.
Trump's own acts got him investigated first...
Sean, it's neither TDS nor believing wacky conspiracy theories. If they didn't keep obsessing about Trump, they wouldn't be able to deflect from the moronic and criminal performance of Joe Biden. And, no, Joe is not losing his cognitive ability due to age; he's never been that smart.
Yet here you are deflecting from this topic!
Trump was already being investigated by American intelligence and law enforcement his many secret ties to multiple known clandestine Russian agents before there even was a 2016 Clinton Campaign...
You keep forgetting to provide any proof of it.
Brainlessly repeating a falsehood doesn't make it true. No different than endlessly repeating Obama was born in Kenya.
Prove it. I already gave you timelines from all left wing sources. The only reason the FBI started an investigation of Trump was Carter Page; who the FBI lied about being an asset for the CIA. Instead they used him as a Trojan Horse to get access to spying on the Trump campaign; and then widened that spying using the bogus Steele Dossier to get FISA warrants.
The sheer amount of left wing stupidity to continue to buy this tripe from every stooge and moron looking to make a buck is beyond the pale. How many times does this shit need to be disproven before it sinks in. The FBI illegally spied on Trump; period. They took a paid political hit piece by the Clinton Campaign and made it into an investigation.
Your timelines have to do with the CIA and FBI investigations of Russian interference in the Clinton campaign. The CIA and FBI were already investigating Trump for his Russian dealings long before Hilary Clinton's 2016 campaign!
Why are you purposely avoiding these facts?
The origins of CIA investigations of Trump's clandestine dealings with known members of Russian Intelligence Services predated 2016.
It is all explained in this article you're ignoring.
It's been long seen that Trump is a serious [scumbag.Deleted]
Sure. But for such a scumbag, it's amazing how dishonest the attacks of on him are. If he's as bad as everyone claims, it should be easy to discredit him using actual facts. There's enough out there.
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The facts are out there.
Donald Trump is one of the worst fascist, stupid, assholes on the planet
That's complete bullshit.
Many people (QLoons) believe that Democrats eat Republican babies. Do you?
Most reactionaries think "alternative facts" have some relation to reality.
Oh wait... "reactionaries think" is a total contradiction.
That's cute you make that claim in this seed The irony go right over your head?
That make no sense. Care to explain yourself?
Just how was Trump an "asset" to Putin? How did Putin benefit when Trump was president?
Can you provide a credible source for Comment #1. Of course not.
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You have seen the evidence many times.
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Look it up. Don Jr and Rudy both admitted to it...
Michael Cohn also. He was negotiating the deal.
There are many sources you can verify this with.
Propaganda sales are the only contribution the Democrats have made to the economy in years. I can't blame the guy for jumping on the bandwagon KGB pensions aren't exactly generous and it's just so easy, just make up a bunch of lies about Trump and you automatically get a book deal. I'm sure he'll be on all the Leftwing talk shows. The only thing that could give these lies any credibility is if Yuri Shvets dies from polonium-210 poisoning in the next two months, if not you can be sure it's just more of the same false propaganda that leftwing publishers have been pumping out the last few years. TDS sufferers just can't get enough of their favorite Villain, just remember when you go to the Library all these books are in the Fiction section.
That is a nonsensically mindless denial of fact.