During the pageant, Trump and Agalarov announce their plans to build Trump Tower Moscow, and ten days later more than $2 billion in funding is announced by a state-owned Russian bank, Sberbank, whose CEO, Herman Gref, is both a close associate of Putin’s and has met directly with Trump during his trip to Moscow.41 Gref will later tell Bloomberg he was impressed by Trump’s “attitude toward Russia”; both Gref and Agalarov will subsequently refuse to reveal who attended any of Trump’s meetings while he was in Moscow.42
During one of Trump’s meetings on his first day in Moscow, either Emin Agalarov or a Russian associate of his tells Trump’s bodyguard, Keith Schiller, that five prostitutes can be sent to Trump’s hotel suite at the Ritz-Carlton that night if he so desires.43
On the day he returns from Moscow—November 10, 2013—Trump tweets, “I just got back from Russia—learned lots and lots. Moscow is a very interesting and amazing place! U.S. MUST BE VERY SMART AND VERY STRATEGIC.”44 The next day he adds to his prior tweet about American foreign policy by tweeting about the deal he announced in Moscow: “Aras Agalarov, I had a great weekend with you and your family. . . . TRUMP TOWER MOSCOW is next.”45
In December 2013, just over a month after his return from Moscow, Trump begins formally reaching out to influential Republicans on the subject of a presidential run, which he predicts in conversations with politicians in New York will begin in 2015.46 In August 2018, a top Trump adviser back in 2012 and 2013, Sam Nunberg, will tell Michael Isikoff of Yahoo News, “In 2013 I knew he was running for president. I knew he was running for president the minute Obama won Virginia [in 2012].”47 On January 22, 2014, Yulya Alferova, an agent of the Agalarovs, tweets, atop a picture of her and Trump in Moscow, “I’m sure Donald Trump will be [a] great president! We’ll support you from Russia! America needs [an] ambitious leader!”48 On March 22, 2014, Alferova retweets Trump four times in succession, including this tweet from the then businessman: “The situation in Russia is much more dangerous than most people may think—and could lead to World War III. WE NEED GREAT LEADERSHIP FAST.”49 On March 29, 2014, the Agalarov employee retweets Trump three times in succession, with all three tweets on the subject of the Agalarovs’ new business partner running for president.50 According to both Emin Agalarov and Donald Trump Jr., the Agalarovs and Trumps are still planning a Trump Tower Moscow at this point. Indeed, in early February 2014, less than two weeks after the first of Alferova’s flurry of tweets about a Trump presidential run in 2016, Ivanka Trump arrives in Moscow to scout possible locations for an Agalarov-built Trump Tower Moscow.51 Meanwhile, Trump is telling the media that he had contact with Putin as he was negotiating and finalizing the Trump Tower Moscow deal in Moscow. He tells Fox News on February 10, 2014, that Putin “contacted him” when “he went to Russia with the Miss Universe pageant” and that during that “contact” Putin was “so nice.”52 Soon afterward, Russia’s effort to annex Crimea leads to sanctions from the United States, which forces Trump to put plans for Trump Tower Moscow on hold because the project’s funder, Sberbank, is one of the sanctioned entities.53
Three months later, in May 2014, Trump speaks at the National Press Club and tells the assembled reporters that when he was in Moscow for the Miss Universe pageant he spoke, both “indirectly and directly, with President Putin, who could not have been nicer, and we had a tremendous success.”54 Trump adds some detail on the content of the conversation, saying, “[T]o do well, you have to get the other side to respect you, and he [Putin] does not respect our president, which is very sad.”55
In the fall of 2015, a Politico reporter contacts an unnamed Trump adviser to ask him “about memos saying the New York businessman was involved in an orgy in Russia”; the reporter explains that “the information [is] from a document made by Fusion GPS that [is] floating around.”56
The Fusion GPS document is being financed, per the New York Times, by “a wealthy Republican donor who strongly oppose[s] Mr. Trump.” The Republican donor hires a journalist-owned and -operated D.C. research firm to “compile a dossier about the real estate magnate’s past scandals and weaknesses.”57 The Republican-funded allegation of Russian kompromat against Trump (see chapter 3) will be republished in mid-2016 by Christopher Steele, a former MI6 agent who had been the head of the agency’s Russia desk.58 When Fusion GPS’s new client is later discovered to be a law firm under contract with the DNC, Trump will tweet on October 19, 2017, about the “discredited and Fake” dossier and ask whether it was “paid for” by “Russia, the FBI or the Dems (or all)?”59
When the dossier is released in January 2017, Americans read for the first time the allegations from 2015—based on research funded by a Republican Trump opponent—that someone sent prostitutes up to Trump’s room in Moscow on November 8, 2013.60 The dossier alleges, based on multiple sources, that what happened in Trump’s room at the Ritz-Carlton was recorded for the purposes of maintaining, in secret, substantial leverage over Trump for the foreseeable future—including for the entirety of his political career (see chapter 3).61 The dossier also includes raw intelligence—meaning intelligence that hasn’t been confirmed—on Putin using proposed real estate deals in Russia to seal Trump’s loyalty.62
The Trump-Agalarov letter of intent will remain active, according to Aras Agalarov, for three and a half years—a period covering the entirety of the presidential campaign.63 It expires only on Trump’s inauguration, according to a February 2017 statement to a Russian construction website by the elder Agalarov.64 However, in a mid-2017 Forbes interview, Agalarov’s son throws even this expiration date into doubt, revealing that the Agalarovs are still in negotiations with Trump’s sons to do additional business—possibly including the building of a tower in Moscow.65 Because Trump has not fully divested himself from the Trump Organization, he will benefit directly should the Agalarovs and his sons perform on the letter of intent he signed in 2013.66
Annotated History
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Trump invites a powerful, Kremlin-linked developer to go into business with him while he is dramatically increasing his political profile—and after he’s conducted exploratory polling to test a 2016 White House bid.
On May 27, 2013, just days before Trump invited Aras Agalarov and his son to Las Vegas for the Miss USA pageant, the New York Post announced, in an article entitled “Trump Researches 2016 Run,” that the notoriously frugal Trump had just spent $1 million on pre-election research.67 The same day, Politico reported that “Trump is musing about running for president,” noting that Trump had just told a GOP county dinner in Michigan that “everybody” was telling him to “run for president.”68 Trump’s May 2013 polling expenditures studied all fifty states to determine his popularity in each. When asked about this substantial financial outlay, Trump lawyer Cohen underscored that Trump was serious about a potential run. “We didn’t spend $1 million on this research for it to sit on my bookshelf,” said Cohen. “Trump is exactly what this country needs.”69
Trump’s preoccupation with politics before and during his Moscow trip has been confirmed by one of the members of his entourage, Agalarov employee and 2013 Miss Universe pageant organizer Yulya Alferova. A November 9, 2013, tweet from Alferova reads, “I’m tweeting, Donald Trump is talking . . . again and again about Obama.”70 The picture below the tweet shows Alferova, Trump pal Phil Ruffin, and Trump himself lounging in chairs as Trump talks on a cell phone. That Trump would be discussing politics on the phone while in Moscow—despite being in the city for only forty-eight hours and responsible for overseeing an international beauty pageant during that time—is noteworthy. In a January 2017 interview with the Daily Beast, Alferova added a new gloss to Americans’ understanding of what was on Trump’s mind while he was in Moscow for a couple of days, working on a beauty pageant and a real estate deal: “[Trump] calculated every little detail coming to Moscow, knowing that our countries had serious tensions.”71 Alferova’s comment and earlier tweet seem to confirm that Trump’s preoccupations during his Moscow trip were as
much political as financial.
Trump knew who and what Aras Agalarov was when he entered into a letter of intent with him in November 2013. The Daily Mail has referred to Agalarov as an “oligarch who brings Putin ‘solutions not problems’ ” and as the “Russian leader’s go-to for tough projects (like wooing Trump).”72 The Mail called Agalarov a Kremlin “insider” who is “Putin’s main property developer” and the “liaison between Putin and Trump.”73 Agalarov is known as “Putin’s right-hand man when it comes to carrying out development projects,” wrote the Mail, and the Russian president is reportedly “fond” of him.74 The Washington Post, on July 21, 2017, called Agalarov “a trusted executor for the Kremlin,” noting also that “[t]he Kremlin expects the country’s wealthiest business executives to take on, when asked, large-scale infrastructure projects, sometimes at a loss, to . . . promote Russia’s national interests. The fortunes of Russia’s rich can rise and fall precipitously based on the outcome of these prestige projects.”75
These claims are substantiated by Putin’s twice using Agalarov or his family to send gifts to Trump and choosing Agalarov for the Kremlin’s grandest and most difficult land-development projects, including, as the New York Times has noted, Far Eastern Federal University, “a stretch of superhighway ringing Moscow,” and “two troubled stadiums for the 2018 World Cup, including one in a Baltic swamp.”76 After the last of these, reported the Times, “Mr. Putin pinned a blue-ribboned state medal, the Order of Honor, on Mr. Agalarov’s chest at a dazzling Kremlin ceremony.”77 In view of all this, the Times called Agalarov “a fixer for the Kremlin’s toughest jobs.”78
Not only did Putin award Agalarov Russia’s Order of Honor—one of the highest honors any Russian civilian can receive—but the Kremlin builder received the medal, Putin’s clearest possible imprimatur, just ten days before Trump went into business with him.79
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In June 2013, Donald Trump invites Aras and Emin Agalarov to join him at the Miss USA pageant in Las Vegas. Aras is a billionaire developer who does building projects for the Kremlin; Emin is an aspiring pop star.
Emin was married, at the time, to the daughter of Azerbaijan’s president, which had already put him in Trump’s orbit, for Azerbaijani government officials are so notoriously corrupt that they habitually become deeply engaged in large domestic building projects.80 Trump had signed a big deal in Azerbaijan—for an edifice to be called “Trump International Hotel and Tower Baku”—in 2012.81 So when Trump met Aras and Emin in June 2013, the Agalarovs were implicitly able to help Trump bring not one but two dream deals to fruition: the completion of self-branded towers in both Moscow and Baku. Trump knew, too, that if hosted by the Agalarovs in Moscow, the pageant would be held in the same development for which his new tower was slated. This juxtaposition of the pageant and Trump’s ambitions in real estate—and his ambitions in politics—was evident in Trump’s tweet announcing the Trump-Agalarov deal to bring the 2013 Miss Universe to Moscow. “A big deal that will bring our countries together!” Trump wrote on Twitter.82 In Trump’s press conference, he added that “Moscow right now in the world is a very, very important place. We wanted Moscow all the way. One of the great families in Russia is our partner.”83 Trump also quickly and quite publicly invited Putin to his pageant, seemingly confirming that in his mind this would be, in the flurry of activity surrounding his presidential exploratory phase, a Trump-Putin political event.84
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Trump and the Agalarovs bond immediately.
An unnamed veteran Western diplomat in Moscow told the Daily Mail, for an article dated July 13, 2017, that “[i]f there are skeletons in Trump’s dealings with Russia, Aras knows where they are. And if Aras Agalarov knows Donald Trump’s skeletons, you wouldn’t bet on Vladimir Putin not also knowing.”85 In March 2018, Mother Jones painted a vivid picture of the Trump-Agalarov weekend in Las Vegas. At an intimate twenty-person VIP dinner the night before the Miss USA pageant, Trump talked business with Michael Cohen, Aras and Emin Agalarov, Emin’s British publicist Rob Goldstone—who would later set up and attend the now infamous June 9, 2016, meeting at Trump Tower—and Ike Kaveladze, an Agalarov employee who would join Goldstone at Trump Tower in June 2016.86 After dinner, the group headed to a nightclub to watch performances featuring semi-nude women; while there is no public record of the specific acts performed that night, popular acts at the club include one in which “naked college girls simulate urinating on a professor” and another in which “one female stands over the other female and simulates urinating while the other female catches the urine in two wine glasses.”87 According to Goldstone, Trump said to Emin, as the two men watched provocatively attired women dance for them, “When it comes to doing business in Russia, it’s very hard to find people in there you can trust. We’re going to have a great relationship.”88
On another night less than five months later, either Emin or an associate (depending on whether you believe a source who spoke to the Daily Caller or Trump bodyguard Keith Schiller’s Congressional testimony) would tell Schiller that prostitutes could be sent up to Trump’s room at the Ritz-Carlton Moscow if he wanted.89 And Christopher Steele’s dossier reports that that nocturnal visit did in fact come to pass—and that Trump requested the women sent to him perform acts of urination.90
Pictures on social media confirm that Trump maintained his relationship with the Agalarovs throughout 2014, with Emin boasting to Forbes in July 2017 that after November 2013 “every time I was in America—in New York, in Miami—I performed at one of [Trump’s] events. . . . I visited his office, and we stayed in touch. He stayed in touch with my father as well. They’ve exchanged numerous letters. It’s been a great relationship so far.”91
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In Las Vegas in 2013, the Agalarovs promise Trump not only $20 million but also, more important, an opportunity to meet with Vladimir Putin and the prospect of building a Trump Tower Moscow on the site where the 2013 Miss Universe pageant will be held.
The Washington Post wrote on March 9, 2018, of Trump’s 2013 trip to Moscow that when Putin didn’t appear at the 2013 pageant, his absence created, in Aras Agalarov’s words, “a very complicated situation . . . because I promised Trump he would meet Putin.”92
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Trump arrives in Moscow in early November 2013 with two U.S. business partners in tow, Alex Sapir and Rotem Rosen, whose ties to powerful Russians are substantial. He immediately begins conducting business meetings with bankers and other influential Russians who can help him and Aras Agalarov move forward with their Trump Tower Moscow project.
Trump later said of the pageant after-party that “almost all of the oligarchs were in the room,” but he would not name them.93 He also said in a 2015 interview with Fox News’s Sean Hannity that he “doesn’t want to say” if he spoke to Putin in Moscow.94 This was out of character for Trump, who drops names when boasting about people with whom he has spent time. Trump has even been evasive about how long he was in Moscow, telling radio host Hugh Hewitt on Monday, September 21, 2015, that he spent a “weekend in Moscow,” but telling the New York Times on July 19, 2017, by the time the trip had become controversial, “I went there for one day for the Miss Universe contest, I turned around, I went back.”95 In a 2017 press conference he went even further in insisting on the brevity of his contacts with Russia and Russians: “I have no deals that could happen in Russia because we’ve stayed away,” he said.96
Trump went to Moscow prepared in 2013. He brought with him Alex Sapir and Rotem Rosen, two New York–based developers who’d previously worked with Trump on Trump SoHo in New York City. According to Washington Monthly, Alex’s then living Soviet-born father, Tamir, had “ties to Russian intelligence.”97 Rosen, then CEO of the Sapir Organization—of which Tamir had been the founder—was also known as the right-hand man of Soviet-born Lev Leviev, whom the Israeli daily Haaretz has called “a close friend of Putin.”98 Just two days after the pageant, Sapir and Rosen reported to Real Estate Weekly that “a lot
of [Russian] people from the oil and gas businesses have come to us asking to be partners in building a product like Trump SoHo [in Moscow].”99 In Trump’s own discussion with Real Estate Weekly, he claimed that he was simultaneously in serious negotiations with not just one or two but four Russian developers—only one of which was Agalarov—to build a Trump-branded tower in Moscow.100
In addition to meeting with Putin’s permits man, Vladimir Kozhin, Trump also met with Herman Gref, CEO of a state-owned Russian bank, Sberbank. The result was that on November 8 and 9, 2013, Trump had the developer (Agalarov), permits (Kozhin), and money (Gref) he needed for Trump Tower Moscow all in one place. This enabled him to announce the Trump Tower Moscow deal prior to the pageant on November 9.
Trump’s excitement over the agreement had hardly diminished by the time he returned to the States on November 10. His first tweet post-Moscow, on November 11, reads as follows: “I just got back from Russia. Learned lots and lots. Moscow is a very interesting and amazing place. UNITED STATES MUST BE VERY SMART AND VERY STRATEGIC.”101 Once again, Trump was seamlessly conjoining corporate and political rhetoric, his own interests and those of America. Trump also had a public message for the Agalarovs on November 11, which he likewise delivered by tweet: “I had a great weekend with you and your family. You have done a FANTASTIC job. TRUMP TOWER MOSCOW is next.”102
Proof of Collusion Page 6