A birthday gift

Well, what was the gift that they didn't want the Secret Service seeing it?  Let me guess:  Mueller knows. 

Has Rhona been interviewed?

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Fun with Trump

This is the first of two excerpts adapted from Russian Roulette: The Inside Story of Putin’s War on America and the Election of Donald Trump (Twelve Books), by Michael Isikoff, Chief Investigative Correspondent for Yahoo News, and David Corn, Washington bureau chief of Mother Jones. It will be released on March 13.

[...]

While in the Russian capital [Nov. 9, 2013], Trump was also scouting for new and grand business opportunities, having spent decades trying — but failing — to develop high-end projects in Moscow. Miss Universe staffers considered it an open secret that Trump’s true agenda in Moscow was not the show but his desire to do business there.

[...]

Once in Moscow, Trump received a private message from the Kremlin, delivered by Aras Agalarov, an oligarch close to Putin and Trump’s partner in hosting the Miss Universe event there: “Mr. Putin would like to meet Mr. Trump.” That excited Trump. The American developer thought there was a strong chance the Russian leader would attend the pageant. But as his time in Russia wore on, Trump heard nothing else. He became uneasy.

“Is Putin coming?” he kept asking.

[...]

Trump’s trip to Moscow for the Miss Universe contest was a pivotal moment. He had for years longed to develop a glittering Trump Tower in Moscow. With this visit, he would come near — so near — to striking that deal. He would be close to branding the Moscow skyline with his world-famous name and enhancing his own status as a sort of global oligarch.

During his time in Russia, Trump would demonstrate his affinity for the nation’s authoritarian leader with flattering and fawning tweets and remarks that were part of a long stretch of comments suggesting an admiration for Putin.

[...]

Trump’s brief trip to Moscow held clues to this mystery. His two days there would later become much discussed because of allegations that he engaged in weird sexual antics while in Russia — claims that were not confirmed. But this visit was significant because it revealed what motivated Trump the most: the opportunity to build more monuments to himself and to make more money. Trump realized that he could attain none of his dreams in Moscow without forging a bond with the former KGB lieutenant colonel who was now the president of Russia.

  Yahoo

Rewind to June 15, Los Angeles. Aras Agalarov and his pop star son Emin planned a big dinner at a restaurant in the Palazzo hotel and casino.

Much to their surprise, they received a call from Keith Schiller, Trump’s longtime security chief and confidant, informing them that his boss wanted to join their party. Sure, they said, please come.

[...]

After the dinner, part of the group headed to an after-party at a raunchy nightclub in the Palazzo mall called the Act. Shortly after midnight, the entourage arrived at the club. The group included Trump, Emin, [Rob] Goldstone, [the reigning Miss Universe, Olivia] Culpo, and Nana Meriwether, the outgoing Miss USA.

[...]

The Act was no ordinary nightclub. Since March, it had been the target of undercover surveillance by the Nevada Gaming Con­trol Board and investigators for the club’s landlord — the Palazzo, which was owned by GOP megadonor Sheldon Adelson — after complaints about its performances. The club featured seminude women performing simulated sex acts of bestiality and grotesque sadomasochism — skits that a few months later would prompt a Nevada state judge to issue an injunction barring any more of its “lewd” and “offensive” performances. Among the club’s regular acts cited by the judge was one called “Hot for Teacher,” in which naked college girls simulate urinating on a professor. In another act, two women disrobe and then “one female stands over the other female and simulates urinating while the other female catches the urine in two wine glasses.”

Hmmmm. Maybe that's where Old Lard Ass got hooked on the idea of golden showers.

(The Act shut down after the judge’s ruling. There is no public record of which skits were performed the night Trump was present.)

Oh, OK. But there is a list of people who might be able to tell us. Goldstone likes to talk.

Back to November when Trump flew to Moscow for the big Miss Universe event.

Trump was soon whisked to a gala lunch at one of the two Moscow branches of Nobu, the famous sushi restaurant. [...] An assortment of Russian businessmen was there, including Herman Gref, the chief executive of Sberbank, a Russian state-owned bank and one of the co-sponsors of the Miss Universe pageant.

Trump was treated with much reverence. He gave a brief wel­coming talk. “Ask me a question,” he told the crowd. The first query was about the European debt crisis and the impact that the financial woes of Greece would have on it. “Interesting,” Trump replied. “Have any of you ever seen ‘The Apprentice’?” Trump spoke at length about his hit television show, repeatedly noting what a tre­mendous success it was.

[...]

Trump next went to the theater in Crocus City Hall. It was the day before the show. This was Trump’s chance to review the con­testants and exercise an option he always retained under the rules of his pageants: to overrule the selection of judges and pick the con­testants he wanted among the finalists. In short, no woman was a finalist until Trump said so.

I'm surprised in this day and age we still have beauty contests, but I would have assumed there was some sort of fix on them. Still, that Trump himself got to make the finalist decisions - why would any contestant waste time doing the beauty pageant routine? Why not just get a date with Old Lard Ass?

At each pageant, Miss Universe staffers would set up a special room for Trump backstage. It had to conform to his precise require­ments. He needed his favorite snacks: Nutter Butters and white Tic Tacs. And Diet Coke. There could be no distracting pictures on the wall. The room had to be immaculate. He required unscented soap and hand towels — rolled, not folded.

In this room would be videos of the finalists who had been selected days earlier in a preliminary competition and the other contestants, particularly footage of the women in gowns and swim­ suits. Here, a day or two before the final telecast, Trump would review the judges’ decisions.

[...]

“If there were too many of women of color, he would make changes,” a Miss Universe staffer later noted. Another Miss Universe staffer recalled, “He often thought a woman was too ethnic or too dark-skinned. He had a particular type of woman he thought was a winner. Others were too ethnic. He liked a type. There was Olivia Culpo, Dayanara Torres [the 1993 winner], and, no surprise, East European women.” On occasion, according to this staffer, Trump would reject a woman “who had snubbed his advances.”

[...]

“If he didn’t like a woman because she looked too ethnic, you could sometimes persuade him by telling him she was a princess and married to a football player,” a staffer later explained.

Jesus Christ.

After the event, there was a rowdy after-party with lots of vodka and loud music. A 26-year-old aspiring actress, Edita Shaumyan, made her way into the VIP section, entering the roped-off area at the same time as a famous Russian rap singer named Timati. Shaumyan caught Trump’s eye. He approached her, gestured to Timati, and asked, “Wait, is this your boyfriend? You’re not free?” She said no, she wasn’t there with Timati. “You’re beautiful,” Trump told her. “Wow, your eyes, your eyes.” According to Shaumyan, “He said, ‘Let’s go to America. Come with me to America.’ And I said, ‘No, no, no. I’m an Armenian. We’re very strict. You need to meet my mother first.’”

I doubt if Mama Shaumyan would approve of a man on his third marriage and fifth child.

Trump later had somebody give Shaumyan his business card with his phone number on it. She never called.

Sad!

And shortly after the Miss Universe event, Agalarov’s daughter showed up at the Miss Universe office in New York City bearing a gift for Trump from Putin. It was a black lacquered box. Inside was a sealed letter from the Russian autocrat. What the letter said has never been revealed.

Let me guess. There was no gift from Putin, nor any letter from him. More hype.

[In 2014] the Obama administration and the European Union imposed tough sanctions on Russia in response to Putin’s annexation of Crimea and his military intervention in Ukraine. It would be a kick to Russia’s already faltering economy, struggling because of the plummeting price of oil. And one round of sanctions imposed by the EU targeted Russian banks in which the Russian government held a majority interest — that included Sberbank, which had agreed to finance the Trump deal. Its access to capital was now hindered.

In this environment, the plans for the Trump Tower in Moscow crumbled.

Another, very big, reason for Trump to hate Obama.

According to the Trump Organization, Ivanka Trump, after touring Moscow with Emin, killed the deal for business reasons. But Rob Goldstone suspected that the demise of Trump’s project with the Agalarovs influenced Trump’s view of sanctions: “They had interrupted a business deal that Trump was keenly interested in.”

Sater Rears His Ugly Head - Again

In December 2015, an Associated Press reporter asked Donald Trump why he had appointed Felix Sater, a man who’d been convicted for stock fraud, his senior advisor. “Felix Sater, boy, I have to even think about it,” Trump told the AP. “I’m not that familiar with him.”

The feeling is not mutual.

  TPM

This is the link that is going to get Trump busted.

Continue reading.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

The Eighth Man, and WTF?

That was quick. Thought he was going to remain anonymous for a while. It is damned hard to keep up these days.

Ike Kaveladze’s presence was confirmed by Scott Balber, an attorney for Emin and Aras Agalarov, the Russian developers who hosted the Trump-owned Miss Universe pageant in 2013. Balber said Kaveladze works for the Agalarovs’ company and attended as their representative.

Balber said Tuesday that he received a phone call from a representative of Special Counsel Robert Mueller over the weekend requesting the identity of the Agalarov representative , which he said he provided.

  WaPo

So now we have confirmation that Mueller is on this meeting like flies on shit.

Balber said Kaveladze works as a vice president focusing on real estate and finance for the Agalarov’s company, the Crocus Group. Aras Agalarov requested that Kaveladze attend the meeting on his behalf, Balber said.

Oh. So not accidentally as an interpreter when there was already an interpreter at the meeting?

Balber said Kaveladze believed he would act as a translator, but arrived to discover that the lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya had brought her own translator, a former State Department employee named Anatoli Samochornov.

So which is it? To act as an interpreter or as an Agalarov representative?

Samochornov has declined to comment, citing a non-disclosure agreement he signed as a professional translator.

Wait till he gets into Mueller's offices.

And why did Agalarov, "the son of a billionaire Azerbaijani real estate developer who once planned to build a hotel in Moscow with Donald Trump" (citation), need representation? Or, asked, as Trump says he did Putin, a second time in a totally different way: Why did the Trump Cabal feel the need to hide the fact that he was there?

Kaveladze “was asked to attend the meeting purely to…make sure it happened,” said Balber.

  LA Times

Is that not ominous?

“He literally had no idea what the meeting was about until he showed up right before.”

Sure. Sure. He's completely innocent. But why did Agalarov have to "make sure the meeting happened"?

This shit is getting deeper and deeper.

Balber [...] said his client was “cooperating fully,” with investigators.

That's probably not so good for the Trump Cabal.

Balber said Kaveladze did not recall saying anything at the half-hour meeting on June 9, 2016.

Wouldn't be necessary if you're just there as an enforcer.

“He’s absolutely baffled,” said Balber. “Even the Agalarovs are absolutely baffled. Nobody had any expectation this would be what it’s become, especially this poor guy, who had not been involved before."

Oh. Oh. The Agalarovs are baffled, but they sent a guy to make sure it happened.

What they didn't expect was that Junior would spill the beans on the meeting and that there would eventually be a special prosecutor looking into their business.

According to Balber, Veselnitskaya - who had done real estate work for the Agalarovs in Moscow - asked one of the Agalarovs to provide an introduction to the Trumps.

The Agalarovs then asked a publicist, Rob Goldstone, to contact Donald Trump Jr.

“This was not a highly important item to the Agalarovs," Balber said. "If it were, I suspect it would have happened very differently.”

Like what? He would have gone personally to make sure it happened?

After giving Trump Jr. papers purporting to describe illegal donations, Veselnitskaya and Akhmetshin shifted the conversation to the Magnitsky Act.

I missed the part where we know for certain she gave him that particular information. I was under the impression that was just speculation at this point. Damn, it's hard to keep up.

Rinat Akhmetshin, a Russian-American lobbyist who served in the Soviet military, told The Associated Press on Friday that the lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya, presented documents that she believed detailed the flow of illicit funds to the Democratic National Committee.

  Business Insider

Aklmetshin was there.

In Akhmetshin's recounting, Veselnitskaya suggested to those in the meeting [...] that they make the contents of the documents public. She said that doing so could help Trump's campaign, Akhmetshin said.

"This could be a good issue to expose how the DNC is accepting bad money," he recalled her saying.

And Junior told us the meeting was a wash - that he got nothing. And what a shame that was, he told Sean Hannity on national TV.

Trump Jr. did not disclose Akhmetshin's participation in the meeting, nor has he made mention of any documents presented or left behind.

[...]

Akhmetshin said Trump Jr. then asked whether she had evidence to back up the assertion, to which Veselnitskaya said the campaign would have to do more research on the subject. That's when Trump Jr. lost interest, Akhmetshin said.

I see. He got SOMEthing, but not enough. The campaign would have to do research? Really? Who needs that?

And you know what? I'm dubious. I think I'll wait to see what documents Mueller's people dig up.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Will the Mystery Guest Please Sign In

Federal investigators want information from an as-yet unidentified individual who attended a Trump Tower meeting last year that was billed as part of the Russian government’s efforts to help Donald Trump’s campaign, CNN reported Tuesday.

“The eighth person has been identified by prosecutors and we are cooperating fully with prosecutors as a result of the investigation. To preserve the integrity of the investigation we are declining to identify him at this time,” the unidentified attendee’s attorney, Scott Balber, told CNN.

[...]

Sources familiar with the meeting told CNN that the as-yet unidentified eighth person in the room was a representative of Emin Agalarov and his father, Aras, previous business partners of the Trump family who Goldstone said in the email chain had asked him to set up the fateful meeting.

[...]

Balber told the news outlet that his client has not yet been interviewed by special counsel Robert Mueller.

[...]

Balber, the unidentified individual’s attorney, told CNN that the person is a U.S. citizen who speaks fluent Russian and was asked to serve as Veselnitskaya’s translator and realized she had already brought a translator with her when he arrived.

  TPM

Maaaaaybe. But, yeah, good idea to go with that.

Can We Apply the Chris Hayes Rule?*

*

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Makes You Wonder

How long was Trump mulling a 2016 run for president and how long was he angling to get some help from Russia? Why did he hold the 2013 Miss Universe pageant in Moscow?

During the summer of 2013, Donald J. Trump mused about whether President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia would meet him at the Miss Universe pageant in Moscow that fall. “If so, will he become my new best friend?” Mr. Trump posted on Twitter.

Mr. Putin did not make it, but the beauty competition in Moscow put the Trump family in touch with other people with connections to the Kremlin.

[...]

[Rob] Goldstone told The Washington Post that he had arranged the June 9, 2016, meeting with Donald Trump Jr. on behalf of a client and had attended it along with the lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya. On Monday, Mr. Goldstone identified the client as Emin Agalarov, a pop star in Russia.

  NYT

Roger Stone, Steve Bannon, Rob Goldstone...why do many of the people surrounding Donald Trump look like gangsters?

Mr. Goldstone, who did not respond to an email seeking comment, has worked with Mr. Agalarov, who along with his father, Aras, develops major real estate projects in Russia.

Aha. I was wondering why Agalarov would be involved in this business. Real estate deals - the money laundering, racketeering side of the Trump organization's business.

Mr. Trump, an owner of the Miss Universe pageant at the time, selected the Agalarovs to host the worldwide competition in 2013 in Moscow, and has discussed collaborating on a tower in Moscow with them. He also appeared in one of Emin’s music videos, which featured pageant contestants.

And here's another answer to my question of how long Trump was angling toward getting help from Russia for his 2016 run...

“I called it my weekend in Moscow,” said Mr. Trump, who had announced his candidacy for president a few months earlier. He added: “I was with the top-level people, both oligarchs and generals, and top of the government people. I can’t go further than that, but I will tell you that I met the top people, and the relationship was extraordinary.”

A braggart who will hang himself in the end.

The Agalarovs appear to have a good relationship with Mr. Putin. Shortly before the Miss Universe pageant, Mr. Putin presented Aras Agalarov with the Order of Honor, one of Russia’s highest civilian awards.

[...]

After Mr. Trump’s victory in the presidential election last fall, Mr. Goldstone and Emin Agalarov celebrated the results in separate social media posts, with Emin posting a photo of himself, his father, and Mr. Trump on Instagram with the message, “The sky is the limit! Congratulations Mr. President.”

Woohoo! The money tap is full open!

For nearly three decades before he became president, Mr. Trump sought business deals in Russia, chasing that goal with little success .

[...]

It was in the mid-2000s, as the Trumps aggressively sought to license the family name for international real estate projects, that they began coming to Moscow regularly.

[...]

[Felix] Sater [who continued to work with the Trump Organization even after it came to light that he had pleaded guilty to a role in a stock manipulation scheme involving Mafia figures and Russia criminals and has served as an American government informant,] worked on a plan for a Trump Tower in Moscow as recently as the fall of 2015, but he said that had come to a halt because of Mr. Trump’s presidential campaign.

More to come, I'm sure.