One of the deals Trump Jr. may be referring to in saying the Trump Organization “see[s] a lot of money pouring in from Russia” is a deal his father is working on the very summer Trump Jr. makes his claim. In November 2004, Trump had bought for $41 million a parcel of land in Florida that—despite the improvements he thereafter made to it—he couldn’t unload.71 In 2006, it was on the market for $125 million, more than three times what Trump paid for it; by the time the Great Recession begins in the latter half of 2007, Trump has had to drop the price by 20 percent, to around $100 million.72
In the summer of 2008, a Russian billionaire named Dmitry Rybolovlev offers nearly the full asking price for the property—$95 million—despite Trump’s having no competing offers.73 Trump thereby makes $54 million in forty-eight months. Rybolovlev immediately destroys the structures on the property that Trump had renovated and divides the land into three parcels; by 2018, he is hoping to make a mere $18 million profit—one-third of Trump’s—in over a decade of holding the land.74
The Charlotte Observer will note in March 2017 that Rybolovlev’s plane was parked next to Trump’s in Charlotte, not briefly but for hours, five days before Election Day in 2016.75 The two men—whose planes likewise “met” at a Las Vegas airport four days prior to their second meeting in Charlotte—claim that they’ve never met each other.76 A representative for Rybolovlev “declined to say whether the oligarch had been aboard the plane when it landed in Charlotte,” according to the Observer.77 The representative also declined to say “whether anyone associated with Trump was a passenger [on Rybolovlev’s plane] or whether its arrival was in any way connected with Trump’s campaign.”78 As the Observer concluded, “If Rybolovlev were somehow assisting the campaign, it would constitute an illegal foreign donation.”79
The same questions raised by the Trump-Rybolovlev transaction—both at the time and in the ten days before Election Day—can likewise be asked for a number of payments Trump has received from Russian oligarchs in recent years. In March 2017, Reuters reports that just sixty-three Russians have invested a total of nearly $100 million in Trump’s Florida properties, adding,
The tally of investors from Russia may be conservative. The analysis found that at least 703—or about one-third—of the owners of the 2044 units in the seven Trump buildings are limited liability companies, or LLCs, which have the ability to hide the identity of a property’s true owner. And the nationality of many [other] buyers could not be determined. Russian-Americans who did not use a Russian address or passport in their purchases were not included in the tally.80
The influence Putin wields over his billionaire acolytes is such that if he wanted to turn off the spigot of their money flooding to Trump Organization properties in America he could do so—and quickly. Says Thomas Graham, codirector of the Russian studies program at Yale University, if you’re a Russian oligarch, “You can lose your property overnight if you run afoul of the government.”81
In 2010, Trump SoHo is sued for deceptive sales practices. The building is partly financed by Soviet-born Alexander Mashkevitch, an Israeli citizen who owns homes in Belgium and London.82 Mashkevitch has been accused at various points, writes Bloomberg, of “laundering a $55 million bribe by purchasing property outside Brussels” (the case has since been settled for an undisclosed fine and no admission of fault), “[paying] hundreds of millions of dollars in potential bribes . . . to acquire mines in Africa,” and “corruption in Kazakhstan.”83 The investigation of Trump SoHo involves two of Trump’s children, Don Jr. and Ivanka, and mirrors the investigation of the Trump Tower in Toronto a year earlier, with the new claims contending the Trumps “made misleading statements as to what percentage of the units had been sold.”84
The Trump family’s candor is called into question again in 2014, when Eric Trump tells a reporter for Golf magazine, James Dodson, that the Trumps’ golf courses are all financed by Russian banks—and that the Trump Organization has “all the money we need from Russia.” Dodson will report the quote in 2017, after Trump’s election; Eric will contend that Dodson “completely fabricated” it.85
In the 2010s, the New York Police Department arrests twenty-nine people suspected of having connections to a Russian money-laundering scheme headquartered in a Trump Tower condo right below one owned by Trump himself.86 The alleged ringleader of the scheme is notorious Russian organized crime boss Semion Mogilevich—a man who has repeatedly been on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list.87 In the decade’s early years Trump pursues numerous projects in the former Soviet republics, including a deal announced in 2011 to build “Trump Tower Batumi” in Georgia, a 2012 signed contract to build “Trump International Hotel & Tower Baku” in Azerbaijan, and a failed bid to build an “obelisk-shaped tower” near the presidential palace in Astana, Kazakhstan.88 As McClatchy writes in June 2017, “Trump dreamed of his name on towers across the former Soviet Union.”89
Craig Unger, a former editor for both the New York Observer and Boston Magazine, argues in his book House of Trump, House of Putin that, based on his own research and additional investigation by a former federal prosecutor, Trump was, through Felix Sater’s Bayrock Group, “indirectly providing Putin with a regular flow of intelligence on what the [Russian] oligarchs were doing with their money in the United States.”90 Unger’s research suggests “Putin wanted to keep tabs on the [Russian] billionaires—some of them former mobsters—who had made their post–Cold War fortunes on the backs of industries once owned by the state. The oligarchs . . . were stashing their money . . . beyond Putin’s reach. Trump, knowingly or otherwise, may have struck a side deal with the Kremlin . . . secretly rat[ting] out his customers to Putin, who would allow them to keep buying Trump properties.”91
On January 11, 2017, just nine days before his inauguration as president of the United States, Trump will tweet the following: “Russia has never tried to use leverage over me. I HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH RUSSIA—NO DEALS, NO LOANS, NO NOTHING!”92
Annotated History
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Trump’s trip to Moscow in 1987 comes at the invitation of Russia’s ambassador to the United States, Yuri Dubinin. In Moscow he stays in the Lenin Suite of the Hotel National, which, as Jonathan Chait of New York Magazine notes, “certainly would have been bugged” in 1987. Trump holds meetings on the possible construction of a Trump hotel with Soviet officials, coming away from the meetings certain that the officials are “eager” to do business with him.
In March 2018, the New York Times reported that Mueller’s “investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election has expanded to include President Trump’s family business, with the special counsel subpoenaing the Trump Organization for documents related to Russia.93 “For more than 30 years, Mr. Trump has repeatedly sought to conduct business in Russia,” the Times wrote, adding, “[H]is children and associates have met with Russian developers and government officials on multiple occasions in search of joint ventures.”94
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By 1997, though no construction has begun on Trump’s hoped-for Moscow projects, the New Yorker is writing of “the breadth of Trump’s hopes for Moscow investment and business connections.” Trump’s plans for the expansion of his real estate portfolio into Russia go well beyond a single Trump International Hotel; Trump envisions a much larger series of investments. He tells the New Yorker, “[I]t would be skyscrapers and hotels. . . . [W]e’re working with the local government, the mayor of Moscow, and the mayor’s people. So far, they’ve been very responsive.”
The Washington Post quotes America’s then ambassador to Russia, John Beyrle, as saying of Moscow’s then mayor, Yuri Luzhkov, “Corruption in Moscow remains pervasive with Mayor Luzhkov at the top of the pyramid. Luzhkov oversees a system in which it appears that almost everyone at every level is involved in some form of corruption or criminal behavior.”95
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Russia begins a period of political upheaval that sees the nation led by five successive prime ministers appointed by Boris Yeltsin over a fifteen-month period i
n 1998 and 1999. The last of these prime ministers is a man by the name of Vladimir Putin.
Trump’s answers on whether he has ever spoken to or developed a relationship with Vladimir Putin—in the 2000s or anytime after—run the gamut. The closest he came to contradicting Putin’s claim that the two men never spoke before, during, or in the immediate aftermath of the 2002 Miss Universe pageant was in a 2015 interview with radio personality Michael Savage, well before Trump’s relationship with Russian nationals had become controversial. Trump told Savage, in response to a question asking whether he’d ever met Putin, “Yes—one time, yes. Long time ago. Got along with him great, by the way.”96 Trump did not specify how long before 2015 he met Putin.
At various points Trump has said he knows Putin, while at other times he has denied it. According to a July 2017 Associated Press report, ever since the Russia investigation began, Trump has categorically denied having ever met Putin.97 At a July 2016 press conference, Trump said, “I never met Putin. I don’t know who Putin is. . . . I never met Putin. Never spoken to him. I don’t know anything about him. . . .”98 Shortly thereafter, Trump told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, “I have no relationship with [Putin] . . . I’ve never met him.”99 Pressed by Stephanopoulos on his prior statements to the contrary, Trump said,
I have no relationship with Putin. I don’t think I’ve ever met him. I never met him. I don’t think I ever met him. . . . I don’t think I’ve ever met him. I mean if he’s in the same room or something. But I don’t think so. . . . I don’t have a relationship with him. I didn’t meet him. I haven’t spent time with him. I didn’t have dinner with him. I wouldn’t know him from Adam except I see his picture and I would know what he looks like.100
Even Trump’s pre-campaign statements about meeting and knowing Putin exhibit an unusual evasiveness for a man known to brag about inconsequential encounters with famous people. In November 2015, Time described an incident in which Trump said, “I got to know [Putin] very well” because “we were stablemates” on the television program 60 Minutes; in fact, the two men had appeared via satellite from different continents and had never spoken.101
As noted by the Associated Press in its compilation of Trump’s contradictory statements about his relationship with Putin, in a 2013 NBC News interview Trump said—twice, in fact—“I do have a relationship [with Putin].”102 In October of that year, he said to talk show host David Letterman, of Putin, “He’s a tough guy. I met him once”—implying the two men had met prior to 2013.103 After his alleged speakerphone conversation with Putin on November 9, 2013 (see chapter 2), but before his relationship with the Russian leader had become controversial, Trump maintained his claim to have had contact with Putin in the past, while adding a new wrinkle: “I spoke indirectly and directly with President Putin [during the 2013 Miss Universe pageant],” he told the National Press Club in May 2014, “[and he] could not have been nicer” (emphasis added).104 It is unclear what speaking with someone “indirectly” could mean; certainly, a speakerphone conversation is one possibility. Notable across all of these statements is that not only does Trump insist he has met Putin, but that the two men have established enough of a connection for it to be characterized: “I can tell you that he’s very interested in what we’re doing here today,” Trump said in his 2013 NBC News interview at the Miss Universe pageant in Moscow; “[Putin] couldn’t have been nicer [to me],” he said the next year; “got along with him great,” he said the year after that.105
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On November 2, 2017, an eyewitness to the judging process at the 2002 Miss Universe contest will contact this author to say that the contest was “rigged.”
Trump has enormous influence over which Miss Universe contestants will advance at the annual pageant. In 2009, TMZ secured an audio recording of Trump that revealed the pageant had since 1996 operated under the “Trump Rule,” pursuant to which Trump himself got to choose the pageant’s semifinalists.106 On the recording Trump can be heard saying, “We get to choose a certain number [of contestants who will be guaranteed to make it through the first round]. You know why we do that? Because years ago when I first bought it [in 1996], we chose ten people, I chose none and I get here and the most beautiful people were not chosen. And I went nuts. So we call it the ‘Trump Rule.’ ”107 In September 2009, the New York Daily News called the pageant’s annual winners “hand-picked [by Trump],” quoting the pageant’s then choreographer, who said that “Donald Trump hand picks six of the fifteen finalists in the pageant” and that he does so “single-handedly.”108
In March 2018, Newsweek reported that Trump applied the “Trump Rule” with two considerations: whether a contestant was “too ethnic” (meaning whether her skin tone strayed too far from white) and whether she had “snubbed his [sexual] advances.”109 The magazine cited multiple pageant staffers. The accounts of these whistle-blowers erase any confusion about whether Trump was joking when, as reported by Rolling Stone, he said on The Howard Stern Show in 2009 that he couldn’t say if he’d ever slept with any contestants, because “it would be a conflict of interest,” adding, “[B]ut you know, it’s the kind of thing you worry about later—you tend to think about the conflict a little bit later on.”110 He finished the thought by arguing that a pageant owner in fact has an “obligation” to sleep with contestants.111
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The judges vote for Miss Russia, who thereby becomes Miss Universe until her dethroning 120 days later for failure to faithfully execute the duties of her office.
Trump’s most extensive comments on Oxana Fedorova’s dethroning, which came in New York on the day Fedorova was replaced by Justine Pasek of Panama, saw him admit that his organization had conducted an investigation to determine if Fedorova was secretly married to Golubev. The notoriously spiteful Trump—who Miss Universe 1996, Alicia Machado, said repeatedly called her “fat” and “ugly” and was “scary” to her, according to a September 2016 Washington Post report—was unusually gracious as he dethroned a Miss Universe for the first time in 2002.112 “We worked hard with Oxana,” he said of the object of Putin’s fascination, according to a September 2002 report by the Sydney Morning Herald.113 “But a lot of these events are for charity and you just have to be there. She wasn’t able to be there, so we had no choice but to terminate.”114 Trump added—surprisingly, given his public penchant for firing contestants in his competitions—that he gave Fedorova a chance to resign so that everything could be “done nicely,” but she refused (though he added that she “graciously” returned her tiara).115 Besides Trump going out of his way to note that Fedorova was a “very nice person,” perhaps Trump’s most unusual comment regarding Fedorova was his reference to her home country during the press conference. “Was she homesick?” the Herald reports Trump asking rhetorically. “ ‘Well, she certainly enjoyed being in Russia,’ he said, adding quickly that he had ‘great respect’ for Russia as a country.”116
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Sater’s access to the highest levels of the Russian government is made evident when, in 2006, he arranges for Ivanka Trump to sit in Putin’s office chair during a tour of the Kremlin. According to Daniel Treisman, a professor of political science at UCLA and an expert on Russian politics, anyone able to get a visitor to the Kremlin into Putin’s chair would have to have “the highest [Russian] security clearances and [be] personally trusted by Putin.”
As Business Insider reported in August 2017, in November 2015 Sater wrote to Trump’s then attorney Michael Cohen to simultaneously boast about getting Ivanka access to Putin’s office in 2006 and his present ability to get Putin to agree to a Trump Tower Moscow deal for Ivanka’s father.117 The confluence of the two claims is striking. The former claim received a nonconfirmation confirmation from Ivanka, who wouldn’t say if she’d sat in Putin’s chair, but simply stated that she’d “never met President Vladimir Putin.”118
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Sater and his company, the Bayrock Group, have become critical to Trump’s business success in the 200
0s—especially with Russian investors and business partners. Yet when asked at a civil deposition in November 2013 whether he knows who Felix Sater is, Trump, under oath, says he has seen Sater only a “couple of times” and that he “wouldn’t know what [Sater] look[s] like.”
The question should have been an easy one for Trump, given that Sater, “the moving force behind Trump SoHo,” according to New York Magazine, had by then, as noted by the Nation in September 2017, been “work[ing] on and off for a decade with the Trump Organization,” sending Russian and other businessmen looking for luxury properties in Trump’s direction.119 Yet when asked about Sater just days before he headed off to Moscow for the 2013 Miss Universe pageant (see chapter 2), Trump said, “I’ve seen him a couple of times. I have met him. [But] if he were sitting in the room right now, I really wouldn’t know what he looked like.”120 Trump maintained that story into December 2015, when, per a Chicago Tribune report, in response to a question from an Associated Press reporter about whether he knew Sater he responded, “Boy, I have to even think about it.”121
Trump’s denials and obfuscation on the question of whether he knows Sater is particularly notable given the role Sater has played in Trump’s life since 2002. As Forbes wrote in October 2016, “[Sater] has said under oath that he represented Trump in Russia.” But the timing of Sater’s entrance into Trump’s orbit is also notable—it coincided with Trump’s selection of a Russian mobster’s girlfriend as Miss Universe in 2002.122 As Forbes recounts, from the time Sater joined Bayrock, the Trump Tower–housed entity that often sent property-seeking clients to the Trump Organization, Sater would pitch business ideas directly to Trump (“just me and him”) “on a constant basis.”123 And as detailed by Guardian journalist Luke Harding in his book Collusion, Sater “worked on various licensing deals for Trump properties” and had a Trump Organization–issued business card that called him a “senior advisor” to Trump himself.124
Proof of Collusion Page 3