FBI agent arrested for ties to Oleg Deripaska

Charles McGonigal, who was the special agent in charge of counterintelligence in the FBI's New York Field Office, is under arrest over his ties to Oleg Deripaska, a Russian billionaire who has been sanctioned by the United States and criminally charged last year with violating those sanctions.

McGonigal retired from the FBI in 2018. He was arrested Saturday afternoon after he arrived at JFK Airport following travel in Sri Lanka, the sources said.

[...]

He was charged along with a court interpreter, Sergey Shestakov, who also worked with Deripaska.

McGonigal, 54, is charged with violating U.S. sanctions by trying to get Deripaska off the sanctions list. McGonigal is one of the highest ranking former FBI officials ever charged with a crime.

[...]

Both face money laundering charges in addition to charges for violating sanctions. Each of four counts carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison.

[...]

After leaving the FBI, McGonigal subsequently worked for Deripaska through a law firm representing the Russian oil tycoon.

[...]

McGonigal then worked directly for Deripaska, getting an initial payment of $51,000 and then payments of $41,790 each month for three months from August 2021 to November 2021.

  ABC

You may recall Deripaska was in the news a lot when the Russia, Russia, Russia "hoax" brought about impeachment charges against Donald Trump.

"The FBI is committed to the enforcement of economic sanctions designed to protect the United States and our allies, especially against hostile activities of a foreign government and its actors," FBI Assistant Director in Charge Michael Driscoll said in a statement. "Russian oligarchs like Oleg Deripaska perform global malign influence on behalf of the Kremlin and are associated with acts of bribery, extortion, and violence."

[...]

The U.S. Attorney's Office in Washington, D.C., unsealed a separate case Monday against McGonigal on charges he received $225,000 in cash from an individual with business interests in Europe who McGonigal knew was an employee of a foreign intelligence service.

When I learned of this story, I first thought of another story about which I'm currently reading: "The Fourth Man". It's an account of former CIA official Bob Baer about a double agent passing information to Russia who has never been caught, who is/was in either the CIA or the FBI. I think maybe that person would be older than McGonigal, because the evidence of the spying dealt with incidents in the mid-eighties, and the spy is believed to have been in the top ranks, probably of the CIA. On the other hand, we haven't been told McGonigal has been involved in espionage per se. Still, we probably won't know the extent of what's been going on because neither the CIA nor FBI like to air their dirty laundry.

And, of course, it still leaves the question of whether any double agents are currently working in our intelligence agencies. I think it's almost certain there are some.

An interesting conclusion in the Baer account is that this country may be at least partially responsible for ex-KGB officer Vladimir Putin's current position because with Saint Ronnie Regan's acclaimed destruction of the Soviet Union, the US stopped keeping close track of Russian intelligence agencies. I would have to argue then, that was not only a huge mistake for the world, it was a huge mistake for the US leading to the election of Donald Trump.

If you're interested in the fourth man story, there's also a 2-part podcast on it. And a YouTube investigative video. In July last year, a former CIA official who was a prime suspect came forward to deny he was the spy.  He would of course, wouldn't he?

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

UPDATE 02/17/2023:  McGonigal story in Rolling Stone.

Get that money flowing again

He's got an election to steal.

Mueller investigation offshoots are still going

Mueller’s team ended its work earlier this year, referring several matters to other U.S. prosecutors. Many of those haven’t been made public.

[...]

According to Mueller’s report, one-time Trump campaign chairman Manafort had a business dispute with Deripaska that he was looking to resolve, and he offered Deripaska briefings and internal polling data. Manafort was convicted of multiple crimes and is serving a sentence of more than seven years; Deripaska wasn’t accused of wrongdoing.

[...]

[F]ederal authorities are seeking records seized from a U.K. company associated with [Russian oligarch Oleg] Deripaska, according to documents filed in a London court this week. As part of the previously undisclosed inquiry, U.S. authorities are seeking evidence of “money laundering, tax offenses and fraud offenses” from 18 individuals and companies including Terra Services Ltd., a real estate firm that until last year was controlled by Deripaska, the filings say.

The inquiry is “live and ongoing,” according to a U.K. government filing Thursday. Terra, in another filing, said the search request appears to have been made “in connection with the special counsel investigation being conducted in the U.S.” into Russian election interference.

The investigation came to light because Terra is challenging a search warrant that led to the December 2018 seizure of at least 25,000 electronic documents from a British storage unit it owned. Terra asked a London judge to prevent the documents from being handed over to the Americans.

  Bloomberg

The payoff

Pretty good odds, I'd say.  

Why doesn't the US want to find Bob Levinson?

On December 10, 2018, a former Air Force intelligence officer named Bob Kent was planning to board a plane in New York for the Middle East on a most improbable secret mission: freeing Robert Levinson from Iran.

Levinson, an ex–FBI agent well into a second career as a private detective, had disappeared over a decade earlier from a hotel on Iran’s Kish Island. He had been seen only twice since then, first in a hostage video his family received from unknown intermediaries in 2010, then in photos three years later, showing the then-63-year-old increasingly haggard and begging for help.

At first, the U.S. government claimed it had no knowledge of why Levinson, an expert on Russian organized crime, had gone to Iran. [...] But in 2013, the Associated Press and other news outlets revealed that the ex-agent had gone to Kish on an off-the-books CIA mission to probe high-level Iranian money laundering.

[...]

He was an embarrassment to both the FBI and CIA. The possibility also existed that rival factions in Iran had not been able to agree on his release after years of denying it had him.

  Newsweek

Being fairly ignorant of some undercover escapades, I wonder why looking for Iranian money laundering would have to be off-the-books.

March 9 will mark the 12th anniversary of [Levinson's] disappearance.

[...]

Kent would be just the latest in a chain of unlikely players in the hunt for the missing man, including a onetime Iranian assassin, a retired detective with CIA connections, an ex–FBI agent, a former federal prosecutor, a Philadelphia truck driver and Russian mobsters.

And why are Russian mobsters looking for him?

One such was Oleg Deripaska, the Russian aluminum tycoon who would be sanctioned by the Treasury Department in 2018 for “a range of malign activity around the globe.” A decade earlier, hoping he might earn points toward solving his visa problems with the U.S., “Deripaska announced he was willing to fund a search [for Levinson] and pay any ransom needed to free Bob,” according to Meier’s authoritative account. “Bureau officials were elated.” In the end, nothing came of it.

Deripaska is also a name involved in the Trump-Russia collusion case.

The same offer came from an even more odious Russian figure with U.S. legal problems. Notorious mobster Semion Mogilevich, who occupies a spot on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list in connection with an alleged massive stock swindle, telegraphed U.S. officials through intermediaries that he would finance a Levinson rescue effort. The involvement of Mogilevich, often dubbed “the most dangerous criminal in the world,” was hugely ironic: As an FBI agent and private investigator, Levinson had been tracking Mogilevich for years. “I don’t know his motivation,” Kent says of Mogilevich, but “he backed out.“

Downright weird.

Kent’s mission, like all the other private efforts to locate and win Levinson’s release, came to nil. Not for lack of resources—money men “with CIA connections,” as three sources involved in the case described them, had offered to pay Kent’s Iranian helpers $100,000 for a proof-of-life package, including fingerprints, a blood sample and what they claimed was a recent, 41-second video clip of Levinson, who would be 71 on March 10. “Another $150,000” would be needed “for the rescue,” Kent says. But just as Kent readied to leave for the airport three months ago, the federal government got in the way, he says, refusing to issue the Americans a waiver from the Trump administration’s sanctions on Iran to permit the payments.

Now that's downright puzzling. The US government, apparently, does not want this man to be found. Why?

“I received a phone call informing me that the funding was withdrawn because the State Department and/or FBI threatened my sponsors” with prosecution, Kent tells Newsweek.

To Levinson family attorney David McGee, a former federal prosecutor who had several meetings with government officials on the case over the years, the last-minute abort of Kent’s mission fit a long pattern of official neglect and sometimes outright interference in efforts to free the former FBI agent.

[...]

“He was taken by enemies of this country while in its service. There is no moral justification for their failure to do what is necessary to bring him home.”

There must be a political one.

“While we cannot discuss how we handle particular investigations, over the past 12 years, the FBI has worked diligently to follow every credible lead to determine the whereabouts of Bob Levinson and will continue to do so,” the bureau says in a statement to Newsweek. “Bob spent 22 years serving as an FBI special agent, and as we mark the anniversary of his disappearance, our resolve to find him only increases.”

Meanwhile, the bureau has posted a $5 million reward for "information that could lead to Bob Levinson’s safe return."

So either the FBI is lying, or it's the Estate Department who threatened prosecution. The FBI announced it was raising the reward from $1M to $5M three years ago.

Hoping to land a government intelligence contract, [Kent] reached out to FBI counterterrorism agents. But they were skeptical about his sources, he says; as a kind of test, they “sarcastically” told him to "find Bob Levinson." Two months later, he came back with assurances he could obtain proof-of-life evidence and perhaps even more.

Kent’s main FBI contact (a counterterrorism agent whose name Newsweek is withholding at the bureau’s request) “thanked me for sharing my information, promised to investigate the background information I shared and told me repeatedly that arranging the proof-of-life meeting in Iraq would be ‘incredibly complex,’” Kent says. The agent said he would get back with an update within 10 days. He also “recommended I not contact McGee,” Kent says—the FBI privately dismisses the lawyer as “a meddler”—but Kent rejected the suggestion. Since July, he’s been “working for McGee pro bono,” he says.

Months went by without further word from the FBI.

[...]

[I]n an early February [2019] meeting, Kent and McGee had with several officials at the State Department, Robert O’Brien, the special presidential envoy for hostage affairs, told them that if OFAC cleared the deal and the Defense Department authorized it, the Joint Special Operations Command might be able to assist with the Levinson mission.

McGee soon got a personal meeting scheduled with a sanctions official at Treasury to pursue the waiver issue. At the last minute, however, the department canceled the February 8 appointment. [...] (A Treasury spokesman asked that Newsweek not identify the official by name and refused to discuss the case further.) Kent’s appeals to various congressional offices were also fruitless.

[...]

A former senior intelligence official responsible for Iran tells Newsweek the government believes, privately, that Levinson is dead. Officially, it maintains he’s alive, with the FBI calling the 12th anniversary of his disappearance “an opportunity for the leadership of the government of Iran to demonstrate its commitment to basic freedoms and civil rights and return Mr. Levinson home to his family.”

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

Nothing suspicious here

Senate investigators want to question a Moscow-based American businessman with longstanding ties to President Donald Trump after witnesses told them he could shed light on the President's commercial and personal activities in Russia dating back to the 1990s, multiple sources have told CNN.

[...]

Geovanis helped organize a 1996 trip to Moscow by Trump, who was in the early stages of pursuing what would become a long-held goal of building a Trump Tower in the Russian capital, according to multiple media reports at the time.

Years later, Geovanis worked for the Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska, whose ties to Trump's 2016 campaign chairman Paul Manafort have also been of interest to investigators.

[...]

A [...] witness has alleged in written testimony, seen by CNN, that Geovanis may be valuable in the mystery of whether Russia has material on Trump that could be personally embarrassing to him.

[...]

It's not known whether Geovanis is also of interest to the investigation into alleged Russian election meddling by special counsel Robert Mueller.

[...]

It is not clear what prompted the Senate Intelligence Committee's interest in Geovanis. But multiple sources familiar with its activities tell CNN their inquiries date back to spring last year when it sent him a letter requesting he give evidence. The sources say he has not yet done so but added that he had appointed US legal counsel.

[...]

Geovanis, who married a Russian woman, obtained a Russian passport in 2014. He was last seen by family members in the US in early 2017 after the death of his mother. He is not believed to have returned to the US since then, and his decision to remain in Moscow means US congressional investigators can't easily find out what he knows.



[...]

The President's legal team declined to comment on his relationship to Geovanis. A lawyer for the Trump Organization also declined to comment.

  CNN

Here's another interesting picture from the article:



I'd like to think that woman is in the process of slapping the shit out of Individual-1.  He looks like he's registering that she is.

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

Follow the Russian money

I'm always speculating who's been compromised by payments from Russian-linked individuals, and assuming those slime balls who most block the investigation into Trump's Russia connections are those who are also implicated.  I've tagged Lindsey Graham as taking money from NRA, which took money from Russians, but it turns out he's more directly connected than that.

The following is taken from an article published in May of last year.

Buried in the campaign finance reports available to the public are some troubling connections between a group of wealthy donors with ties to Russia and their political contributions to President Donald Trump and a number of top Republican leaders. And thanks to changes in campaign finance laws, the political contributions are legal. We have allowed our campaign finance laws to become a strategic threat to our country.

An example is Len Blavatnik, a dual U.S.-U.K. citizen and one of the largest donors to GOP political action committees in the 2015-16 election cycle. Blavatnik's family emigrated to the U.S. in the late '70s from the U.S.S.R. and he returned to Russia when the Soviet Union began to collapse in the late '80s.

[...]

Blavatnik's campaign contributions dating back to 2009-10 were fairly balanced across party lines and relatively modest for a billionaire. During that season he contributed $53,400. His contributions increased to $135,552 in 2011-12 and to $273,600 in 2013-14, still bipartisan.

In 2015-16, everything changed. Blavatnik's political contributions soared and made a hard right turn as he pumped $6.35 million into GOP political action committees, with millions of dollars going to top Republican leaders including Sens. Mitch McConnell, Marco Rubio and Lindsey Graham.

  Dallas News

Dum-da-dum-dum-DUUUUUUM.

In 2017, donations continued, with $41,000 going to both Republican and Democrat candidates, along with $1 million to McConnell's Senate Leadership Fund.

[...]

Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., the ranking Democratic leader on the House Intelligence Committee, told ABC News in September: "Unless the contributions were directed by a foreigner, they would be legal, but could still be of interest to investigators examining allegations of Russian influence on the 2016 campaign. Obviously, if there were those that had associations with the Kremlin that were contributing, that would be of keen concern."

[...]

Should Blavatnik's contributions concern Mueller's team of investigators? Take a look at his long-time business associates in Russia.

Oleg Deripaska is said to be one of Russian President Vladimir Putin's favorite oligarchs, and he is founder and majority shareholder of Russia's Rusal, the second-largest aluminum company in the world. Blavatnik holds a stake in Rusal with a business partner [Viktor Vekselberg, one of the 10 richest men in Russia].

[...]

Andrew Intrater, according to Mother Jones, is Vekselberg's cousin. He is also chief executive of Columbus Nova, Renova's U.S. investment arm located in New York. (FEC records list his employer as Renova US Management LLC.)

Intrater had no significant history of political contributions prior to the 2016 elections. But in January 2017 he contributed $250,000 to Trump's Inaugural Committee. His six-figure gift bought him special access to a dinner billed as "an intimate policy discussion with select cabinet appointees," according to a brochure obtained by the Center for Public Integrity.

[...]

Earlier this year, The Associated Press reported that Paul Manafort, Trump's former campaign manager, began collecting $10 million a year in 2006 from Deripaska to advance Putin's interests with Western governments. Deripaska's name turned up again in an email handed over to Mueller's team by Manafort's attorneys. According to The Washington Post, in the email dated July 7, 2016, just two weeks before Trump accepted the Republican nomination for president, Manafort asked an overseas intermediary to pass a message on to Deripaska: "If he [Deripaska] needs private briefings, tell him we can accommodate."

And now that Adam Schiff has gained control over the House Intel Committee, perhaps we'll see some action.

Alexander Shustorovich, chief executive of IMG Artists, attempted to give the Republican Party $250,000 in 2000 to support the George W. Bush presidential campaign, but his money was rejected because of his ties to the Russian government, according to Quartz. So why didn't the Trump team reject Shustorovich's $1 million check to Trump's Inaugural Committee?

Simon Kukes is an oil magnate who has something in common with Intrater. From 1998 to 2003, he worked for Vekselberg and Blavatnik as chief executive of TNK. Redacted CIA documents released in 2003 under the Freedom of Information Act said "TNK president Kukes said that he bribed local officials." The CIA confirmed the authenticity of the reports to The Guardian newspaper but would not comment further. In 2016, Kukes contributed a total of $283,000, much of it to the Trump Victory Fund. He had no significant donor history before last year's election.

[...]

In total, Blavatnik, Intrater, Shustorovich and Kukes made $10.4 million in political contributions from the start of the 2015-16 election cycle through September 2017, and 99 percent of their contributions went to Republicans.

[...]

McConnell surely knew as a participant in high level intelligence briefings in 2016 that our electoral process was under attack by the Russians. Two weeks after the Department of Homeland Security and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence issued a joint statement in October 2016 that the Russian government had directed the effort to interfere in our electoral process, McConnell's PAC accepted a $1 million donation from Blavatnik's AI-Altep Holdings. The PAC took another $1 million from Blavatnik's AI-Altep Holdings on March 30, 2017, just 10 days after former FBI Director James Comey publicly testified before the House Intelligence Committee about Russia's interference in the election.

[...]

[Steve] Mnuchin owned Hollywood financing company RatPac-Dune with Blavatnik until he sold his stake to accept Trump's appointment as the Treasury secretary.

[...]

The contributions are legal because the Supreme Court's 2010 ruling, Citizens United, and several subsequent decisions, allowed American corporations and citizens to give unlimited amounts of money to PACs and non-profit 501c4 organizations, regardless of how they make their money, where they make their money, or with whom they make their money.

[...]

The changes to our campaign finance laws created an avenue for Russia to try to influence our elections. There are holes in our firewall and they aren't on the internet.

Ditch Mitch. Also Lindsey Graham. Overturn Citizens United. Enact serious campaign finance reform. Impeach Trump.

To get the names and summaries of all the crooks in the two graphics in this post, go to the Dallas News article and hover your mouse over (or touch on touchscreen devices) the slime ball in question.

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


UPDATE 2/22:  Ditch Mitch Fund

Sanctions lifted, sanctions applied

The Trump administration on Sunday lifted sanctions against the business empire of Oleg V. Deripaska, one of Russia’s most influential oligarchs.

Congressional Democrats had tried to block the move this month, assailing it as a capitulation to the Kremlin and a key ally of President Vladimir V. Putin. But they failed to win enough Republican support to enforce the sanctions.

[...]

The Treasury Department announced a deal last month to lift the sanctions in exchange for a restructuring that it said would reduce Mr. Deripaska’s control and ownership of the companies.

Yet a confidential, legally binding document detailing the agreement showed that Mr. Deripaska and his allies would retain majority ownership of EN+.

[...]

After the sanctions were officially lifted, EN+ announced the appointment of seven new directors under the deal, including Christopher Bancroft Burnham, a banker who served on Mr. Trump’s State Department transition team and worked in George W. Bush’s State Department.

  NYT

The Trump cabal will continue operating until they're forced to stop.

The Trump administration is sanctioning Venezuela’s state-owned oil company, adding significant pressure on President Nicolás Maduro to step down and transfer power to the US-backed resistance leader who is challenging his claim to the presidency.

[...]

Based on an executive order President Donald Trump issued on Monday, the US Treasury Department has enacted financial penalties on Petroleos de Venezuela (PdVSA), the behemoth state-owned oil and natural gas company that provides the country with thousands of jobs and billions in revenue.

[...]

Venezuela is currently in the midst of a political standoff between two men who both claim to be the legitimate president of Venezuela: Nicolás Maduro, who was reelected president in May 2018, and opposition leader Juan Guaidó.

Guaidó claims the 2018 election was rigged and that he, as the head of the National Assembly (the country’s legislative body), is now the rightful president according to the country’s constitution.


The United States has officially recognized Guaidó as Venezuela’s interim president and called Maduro’s claim to the presidency “illegitimate.”

[...]

However, refineries can still import Venezuelan crude as long as the profits don’t go to Maduro’s regime.
  Vox

Where else would they go?

This may all seem good in theory. And indeed, Maduro critics like Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), who has championed the Trump administration’s hardline stance toward the Venezuelan leader, applauded the effort.

But in practice it’s possible that the move could backfire — and potentially compel Maduro to hold on to the presidency.

That’s because one of his greatest excuses for his country’s economic woes is that America is to blame — and now may strengthen his argument.

Not to mention, Russia and China - and other countries - can pick up any slack in US sales.

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

A crack in the GOP wall

In a major rebuke of President Trump, the House overwhelming passed a resolution Thursday formally disapproving of the Trump administration's rolling back of sanctions on companies owned by Oleg Deripaska, an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

In a 362-53 vote, the House sounded its disapproval of the lifting of sanctions, with 130 Republicans breaking with Trump and backing the Democratic measure.

[...]

The vote comes after legislation to prevent the rolling back of sanctions failed Wednesday on a procedural vote in the Senate. Eleven Republicans voted in the Senate to prevent the lifting of sanctions.

  The Hill

Not enough, but an indication of Trump losing support and GOP finding their substantially weak backbones.

One of Deripaska's companies is an aluminum producer (Rusal) - one of the largest in the world - so there's a component of the tariffs involved in the decision. I haven't researched the issue, so have no opinion on whether the sanctions should be lifted or not. I do find it a good sign, though, that GOP congress critters are breaking with Trump on ANYthing.

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

Will Mnuchin show up in Mueller's report?

We know that Treasury was infiltrated by Russian agents. 



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

Manafort campaign data update

As a top official in President Trump’s campaign, Paul Manafort shared political polling data with a business associate tied to Russian intelligence, according to a court filing unsealed on Tuesday. The document provided the clearest evidence to date that the Trump campaign may have tried to coordinate with Russians during the 2016 presidential race.

Mr. Manafort’s lawyers made the disclosure by accident, through a formatting error in a document filed to respond to charges that he had lied to prosecutors .

  NYT

What's the problem with these guys? I seem to recall that Manafort himself got caught when he couldn't figure out how to change a document to pdf format.

The document gave no indication of whether Mr. Trump was aware of the data transfer or how Mr. Kilimnik might have used the information. But from March to August 2016, when Mr. Manafort worked for the Trump campaign, Russia was engaged in a full-fledged operation using social media, stolen emails and other tactics to boost Mr. Trump, attack Mrs. Clinton and play on divisive issues such as race and guns. Polling data could conceivably have helped Russia hone those messages and target audiences to help swing votes to Mr. Trump.

[...]

Prosecutors and the news media have already documented a string of encounters between Russian operatives and Trump campaign associates dating from the early months of Mr. Trump’s bid for the presidency, including the now-famous meeting at Trump Tower in Manhattan with a Russian lawyer promising damaging information on Hillary Clinton. The accidental disclosure appeared to some experts to be perhaps most damning of all.

[...]

Both Mr. Manafort and Rick Gates, the deputy campaign manager, transferred the data to Mr. Kilimnik in the spring of 2016 as Mr. Trump clinched the Republican presidential nomination, according to a person knowledgeable about the situation. Most of the data was public, but some of it was developed by a private polling firm working for the campaign, according to the person.

Mr. Manafort asked Mr. Gates to tell Mr. Kilimnik to pass the data to two Ukrainian oligarchs, Serhiy Lyovochkin and Rinat Akhmetov

[...]

Why Mr. Manafort wanted them to see American polling data is unclear. He might have hoped that any proof that he was managing a winning candidate would help him collect money he claimed to be owed for his work on behalf of the Ukrainian parties.

About the same time, Mr. Manafort was also trying to curry favor with Oleg V. Deripaska, a Russian billionaire close to the Kremlin and an associate of Mr. Kilimnik. In July 2016, Mr. Manafort, then the Trump campaign chairman, told Mr. Kilimnik that he could offer Mr. Deripaska “private briefings,” according to emails reported by The Washington Post.

“This is the closest thing we have seen to collusion,” Clint Watts, a senior fellow with the Foreign Policy Research Institute, said of the data-sharing. “The question now is, did the president know about it?”

The president's only defense is ever going to come down to: the president didn't know anything. The president, your honor, as is obvious to even a baby, knows nothing about everything.

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

Did you think Mitch McConnell wasn't ass deep in Russian shit?

Ukrainian-born billionaire Len Blavatnik, who holds dual U.S.-U.K. citizenship, used to be a fairly run-of-the-mill campaign contributor, donating relatively modest amounts in a bipartisan fashion — and then the 2016 election cycle hit.

Beginning in 2015, Blavatnik lavished contributions on Republicans, with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell alone on the receiving end of $3.5 million between 2015 and 2017.

  The Intellectualist

Yeah, who else? Lindsey Graham wouldn't be one, would he? How about Chuck Grassley?  Orrin Hatch?

Blavatnik, whose family emigrated to the U.S. in the late 1970s, is a longtime business associate of Russian oligarchs Oleg Deripaska and Viktor Vekselberg, both of whom have ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

And the Trump campaign.

Along with McConnell, Republican Senators Marco Rubio and Lindsey Graham received hefty sums from Blavatnik as well.

Well, well, well.

Apparently, this is old news, but I'm just coming to it.

This column originally published December 15, 2017

[...]

As Special Counsel Robert Mueller's team probes deeper into potential collusion between Trump officials and representatives of the Russian government, investigators are taking a closer look at political contributions made by U.S. citizens with close ties to Russia.

Buried in the campaign finance reports available to the public are some troubling connections between a group of wealthy donors with ties to Russia and their political contributions to President Donald Trump and a number of top Republican leaders. And thanks to changes in campaign finance laws, the political contributions are legal. We have allowed our campaign finance laws to become a strategic threat to our country.

[...]

Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., the ranking Democratic leader on the House Intelligence Committee, told ABC News in September: "Unless the contributions were directed by a foreigner, they would be legal, but could still be of interest to investigators examining allegations of Russian influence on the 2016 campaign. Obviously, if there were those that had associations with the Kremlin that were contributing, that would be of keen concern."

Under federal law, [foreign] nationals are barred from contributing directly or indirectly to political campaigns in local, state and federal elections.

  Dallas News

And, as we just saw, that's being challenged in the courts.

McConnell surely knew as a participant in high level intelligence briefings in 2016 that our electoral process was under attack by the Russians. Two weeks after the Department of Homeland Security and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence issued a joint statement in October 2016 that the Russian government had directed the effort to interfere in our electoral process, McConnell's PAC accepted a $1 million donation from Blavatnik's AI-Altep Holdings. The PAC took another $1 million from Blavatnik's AI-Altep Holdings on March 30, 2017, just 10 days after former FBI Director James Comey publicly testified before the House Intelligence Committee about Russia's interference in the election.

[...]

In total, Blavatnik, Intrater, Shustorovich and Kukes made $10.4 million in political contributions from the start of the 2015-16 election cycle through September 2017, and 99 percent of their contributions went to Republicans.

[...]

Even if the donations by the four men associated with Russia ultimately pass muster with Mueller, one still has to wonder: Why did GOP PACs and other Trump-controlled funds take their money? Why didn't the PACs say, "Thanks, but no thanks," like the Republicans said to Shustorovich in 2000? Yes, it was legal to accept their donations, but it was incredibly poor judgment.

[...]

And consider Steve Mnuchin, Trump's campaign finance chairman. Could he have known that the Trump Victory Fund, jointly managed by the Republican National Committe and Trump's campaign, took contributions from Intrater and Kukes? Mnuchin owned Hollywood financing company RatPac-Dune with Blavatnik until he sold his stake to accept Trump's appointment as the Treasury secretary.

Jesus. The whole lot of them.

The contributions are legal because the Supreme Court's 2010 ruling, Citizens United, and several subsequent decisions, allowed American corporations and citizens to give unlimited amounts of money to PACs and non-profit 501c4 organizations, regardless of how they make their money, where they make their money, or with whom they make their money. The only caveat is that PACs and non-profits cannot coordinate their activities with the political candidates they support.

The man who led the winning fight for Citizens United was David Bossie, president of the conservative non-profit since 2001. In 1996, Bossie was hired by Republican Rep. Dan Burton to lead an investigation into President Bill Clinton's campaign fundraising. Burton fired him 18 months later for manipulating recordings of conversations among law officials and Webb Hubbell, a Clinton confidant who resigned as associate attorney general and pleaded guilty to tax fraud during the Whitewater investigation. CNN reported at the time that Newt Gingrich, who was speaker of the House, called Bossie's tampering with the Hubbell recordings an embarrassment to the Republicans.

Bossie served as Trump's deputy campaign chairman.

[...]

The changes to our campaign finance laws created an avenue for Russia to try to influence our elections. There are holes in our firewall and they aren't on the internet.

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

UPDATE 12/11:



Oh, yeah.  There's dirty Russian money in Hatch's coffers.

The Deripaska connection

If you have felt confused or uncertain about what was happening regarding the investigation into possible Trump collusion with Russia prior to the 2016 election, this New York Times article about the connections linking FBI agent Bruce Ohr, Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska, Paul Manafort and Christopher Steele will not help sort you out.

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

He "fell" out of his window

CIA and Russian fixers favor the long falls.

A Russian investigative journalist who wrote about the deaths of mercenaries in Syria has died in hospital after falling from his fifth-floor flat.

Maxim Borodin was found badly injured by neighbours in Yekaterinburg and taken to hospital, where he later died.

Local officials said no suicide note was found but the incident was unlikely to be of a criminal nature.

  BBC

Of course not. Grown men fall out of their windows all the time.

Vyacheslav Bashkov described Borodin as a "principled, honest journalist" and said Borodin had contacted him at five o'clock in the morning on 11 April saying there was "someone with a weapon on his balcony and people in camouflage and masks on the staircase landing".

Borodin had been looking for a lawyer, he explained, although he later called him back saying he was wrong and that the security men had been taking part in some sort of exercise.

After he was found badly injured at the foot of the building on Thursday, regional authorities said the door of his flat had been locked from the inside, indicating that no-one else had either entered or left the flat.

Borodin covered very sensitive subjects including crime and corruption. He had been the subject of comment at the national level several times in recent months in connection with his reporting on the involvement of Russian mercenaries in Syria, the scandal surrounding the oligarch Oleg Deripaska and the controversy about the Russian film “Matilda.”

  Reporters Without Borders

Oleg Deripaska. Now that name sounds reeeeeeeeeeal familiar.

Still wondering why Manifort doesn't flip? American courts will let him spend the rest of his life in jail. At least he'll live.

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

Trump-Putin relationship souring?

The Trump administration announced Friday it will sanction seven Russian oligarchs and a dozen companies they own and control, its most aggressive effort yet to curb the activities of influential Russian business elites.

The sanctions were imposed under a law Congress overwhelmingly passed last year to punish Moscow for interfering in the 2016 presidential election and other destabilizing activities, including its military intervention in Ukraine and involvement in the Syrian civil war.

“The Russian government engages in a range of malign activity around the globe,” Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said in a statement. “Russian oligarchs and elites who profit from this corrupt system will no longer be insulated from the consequences of their government’s destabilizing activities.”

“This [is a] response to Russia’s continued attacks to subvert Western democracies,” a senior administration official said.

Those now sanctioned include Oleg Deripaska, an oligarch with ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin and President Trump’s former campaign manager, Paul Manafort, who has been indicted in the special counsel’s investigation into the Kremlin’s election-meddling efforts.

The Treasury Department is also sanctioning the chairman of Russian energy giant Gazprom, Putin adviser Suleiman Kerimov and Kirill Shamalov, who married Putin’s daughter in 2013.

Sanctioned companies and people will have any U.S. assets frozen and Americans will be banned from dealing with them.

In total, 38 Russian people and entities are being sanctioned, including 17 senior government officials and a state-owned weapons trading company that the U.S. says has aided Syrian government forces in the country’s civil war.

  The Hill

Why do I feel there must be some catch?

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

UPDATE:

It's No Coincidence These Russian Sanctions Took a Year to Show Up: Just enough time for the oligarchs to move their assets around.

Is a sex worker a link between Trump and the Kremlin?

Well, it's a question for the New York Times.

Anastasia Vashukevich [...] is a Belarusian woman, a self-described “sex expert,” who is now in a Thai jail and who claims, in a desperate Instagram video, to be the “the missing link in the connection between Russia and the U.S. elections.”

It sounds, of course, like an outrageous scam, and perhaps it is. But Vashukevich, who goes by the alias Nastya Rybka, has a documented link to Oleg Deripaska, an oligarch who figures prominently in one of the scandals surrounding the Trump campaign. Indeed, that link may be why she’s locked up in the first place. Whether you believe her or not, her bizarre, sordid story offers real clues to the chain connecting Trump’s circle to the highest level of the Russian government.

[...]

Deripaska, remember, is the oligarch that the former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort offered to brief privately on the American presidential campaign. He’s been connected to Russian organized crime, and Manafort appeared to owe him a lot of money.

[...]

Vashukevich had posted video from an August 2016 trip to Norway on Deripaska’s yacht with several other escorts. And on that yacht was a Russian deputy prime minister, Sergei Prikhodko. In the video, you can even hear Deripaska and Prikhodko talking about Russia’s bad relations with the United States, for which Deripaska blamed Victoria Nuland, Barack Obama’s assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs.

[...]

Deripaska filed a claim against Vashukevich and Aleksandr Kirillov, a self-styled “sex guru” she’s close to, for invasion of privacy. And at some point Vashukevich and Kirillov took off for Thailand.

They were arrested there last Sunday, while teaching a “sex training” seminar for Russian tourists in the resort city of Pattaya. (The charges were working without a permit.) From what was apparently the back of an open-air police vehicle, Vashukevich made an Instagram video begging Americans for help. “I’m ready to give you all the missing puzzle pieces, support them with videos and audios, regarding the connections of our respected lawmakers with Trump, Manafort and the rest,” she said, according to CNN’s translation.

[...]

Vashukevich and Kirillov really are being detained, and, speaking from a police van, Kirillov told The Associated Press that he believes Russia is behind their arrests. He has reportedly sent a handwritten letter to the American Embassy in Thailand pleading for asylum in exchange for information.

[...]

Could a social-media-obsessed escort help explain the degrading nightmare of the Trump presidency? It seems like the preposterously lazy plot of a sub-B movie. But these days, so does everything else in our politics.

  NYT

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

Reminder of Manafort's situation when he got on Trump's campaign as manager

From April 26, 2016 Washington Post:

Paul Manafort was hired by Donald Trump to bring the wisdom of an old Washington hand to a campaign of political novices and provide expertise on the arcane art of counting convention delegates.

  WaPo

That was the ruse, anyway. Manafort wasn't actually hired, if by hired you mean contracted for pay.

Manafort, 67, is in many ways a natural choice to be Trump’s top campaign adviser. His firm was hired by Trump in the mid-1980s to lobby on gambling and real estate issues, said Manafort’s former business partner Charlie Black. In addition, Manafort has owned an apartment in Trump Tower since January 2015, property records show. And another former Manafort business partner, Roger Stone, has been an informal adviser to Trump for years.

[...]

More than many traditional political consultants, Manafort has demonstrated a willingness to forge unconventional alliances and cut deals in a way that makes him well suited to help Trump secure the nomination in a fractured GOP.

That's one way to put it. Apparently the Washington Post didn't have much information on Manafort - or perhaps any on the FBI investigation into Russian interference in the election that would come that fall.

Manafort also built a high-powered lobbying practice that did not shy from clients others shunned. They included two corrupt dictators, Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire and Ferdinand Marcos of the Philippines, both of whom stole billions of dollars from their countries.

Always works with the best people.

Deripaska already knew Davis, who with Manafort had helped arrange meetings for him with Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) in January and August 2006 as McCain prepared to run for president.

Hmmmmm...I wonder if anybody in the FBI looked into that.

Deripaska was interested in building his contacts in the United States, which in July 2006 revoked his visa. The Wall Street Journal reported at the time that his visa was pulled amid concerns that he might be linked to organized crime, something he has vigorously denied. He later received visas to travel to the United States.

So, by August, McCain would have been able to find out he should stay away from Deripaska.

[Oleg Deripaska], a Russian aluminum magnate has accused Manafort in a Cayman Islands court of taking nearly $19 million intended for investments, then failing to account for the funds, return them or respond to numerous inquiries about exactly how the money was used.

[...]

The court filing describes a complicated business plan in which Manafort and his partners would establish companies in Cyprus known as “special purpose vehicles” for tax and regulatory purposes.

Let's cut to the chase: Deripaska was likely talking about ill-gotten funds. I'm guessing the $19 million intended for investments was money waiting to be laundered and/or avoiding taxes.

At one point, attorneys for the Russian businessman, Oleg Deripaska, claimed that they could not locate Manafort or his partner, Richard Gates. The tycoon hired a private investigator to track them down, according to a 2014 petition that Deripaska’s attorneys filed in a Cayman Islands court seeking recovery of the money.

“It appears that Paul Manafort and Rick Gates have simply disappeared,” the petition states.

[...]

A week after the petition was filed in Virginia, Judge Gerald Bruce Lee issued an order allowing Deripaska’s team to move ahead. Arlington, Va.-based private investigator Deborah C. Martin filed documents with the court showing that subpoenas were delivered to Gates at his Richmond home and to the wife of Davis at their home. Martin made no mention in her court filings of Manafort. She declined to comment to The Post.

[...]

Court records show that, as of August 2015, seven years after Deripaska requested his money back, the Russian businessman was still seeking to recover the funds. A Deripaska representative said last week that the matter still angers Deripaska and that the tycoon’s “accountants and lawyers are looking at this right now.”

[...]

Another case, in which Manafort tried to develop a 65-story Manhattan luxury apartment building in 2008, illustrates how he has tapped into his global political relationships to pursue financial deals.

That suspiciously look like money laundering?

In a bid to build the $850 million project on the site of the historic Drake Hotel, Manafort relied in part on funds from Dmitry Firtash, a Ukrainian energy tycoon with a history of legal troubles around the world.

And, speaking of Oleg Deripaska, this happened yesterday:

Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska plans to step down as the president of aluminium giant Rusal, the company said in a statement on Friday.

The change comes less than a month after the inclusion of Deripaska and dozens of tycoons on a U.S. government list of Russian oligarchs. While it is not a sanctions list, Western banks may be reluctant to deal with companies whose owners are included.

Deripaska also plans to quit the same role in En+ Group, another company he controls, two sources familiar with the matter told Reuters on Feb. 19.

  CNBC

Knowing how Deripaska is connected to Manafort, I'm astonished that CNBC doesn't address the why of his "retirement" beyond getting put on a list of tycoons who probably have connections to the Kremlin. That doesn't make sense to me. Or to some other people.

Before Deripaska's announced resignation, the Russian business daily Kommersant cited his appearance on the Treasury's "Kremlin list" as a reason for why he was planning to quit his Rusal post.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters earlier this week that he was doubtful Deripaska would leave because he appeared on the "Kremlin list," but Peskov did not deny Kommersant's report that the well-connected tycoon was planning to step down.

  RadioFreeEurope RadioLiberty

Kommersant newspaper reported claims by sources in Mr Deripaska's companies that he was leaving the top posts due to his inclusion last month in the “Kremlin list” of Russian oligarchs, which the Trump administration issued under US sanctions legislation.

But the list's impact has been called into doubt since it named all Russians with a net worth of at least $1 billion. A source at the company told The Telegraph that the tycoon simply wanted to focus on developing his automobile concern GAZ and its partnership with German carmaker Volkswagen.

[...]

Mr Deripaska's ties to former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort, whom he had previously hired as a consultant, have come under scrutiny. In addition, Republican senator Charles Grassley last week sent a letter asking whether the oligarch had ever employed former British spy Christopher Steele, the author of a controversial dossier claiming Russia had compromising material on Mr Trump.

This month, opposition leader Alexei Navalny discovered recordings allegedly showing that Mr Deripaska had discussed US relations with deputy prime minister Sergei Prikhodko on a yacht trip with young women. According to records found by Mr Navalny, the trip took place the month after Mr Manafort reportedly offered the oligarch private briefings on the Trump campaign.

[...]

Mr Deripaska has sued Anastasia Vashukevich, the model who posted the video and audio recordings of him speaking with Mr Prikhodko to her Instagram, for violating his privacy.

Russian authorities forced Instagram to delete Ms Vashukevich's recordings and temporarily blocked Mr Navalny's website.

  UK Telegraph

Ver interesting.

I wonder if Gates' plea deal and subsequent pressure on Manafort comes into play in Mr. Deripaska's decision. I don't suppose he'll ever get his money out of Manafort now, but at least he knows where he is.

But now, I'm reminded of a report in the March 2018 issue of The Atlantic.

Manafort must have also believed that money would eventually come, just as it always had, from the influence he would wield in the campaign, and exponentially more so if Trump won. So might other favors and dispensations. These notions were very likely what led him to reach out to Oleg Deripaska almost immediately upon securing a post within the campaign, after having evaded him for years. Through one of his old deputies, a Ukrainian named Konstantin Kilimnik, he sent along press clippings that highlighted his new job. “How do we use to get whole,” Manafort emailed Kilimnik. “Has OVD operation seen?” Manafort’s spokesman has acknowledged that the initials refer to Oleg Vladimirovich Deripaska. In the course of the exchanges, Kilimnik expressed optimism that “we will get back to the original relationship” with the oligarch.

All of Manafort’s hopes, of course, proved to be pure fantasy. Instead of becoming the biggest player in Donald Trump’s Washington, he has emerged as a central villain in its central scandal. An ever-growing pile of circumstantial evidence suggests that the Trump campaign colluded with Russian efforts to turn the 2016 presidential election in its favor. Given Manafort’s long relationship with close Kremlin allies including Yanukovych and Deripaska, and in particular his indebtedness to the latter, it is hard to imagine him as either a naive or passive actor in such a scheme—although Deripaska denies knowledge of any plan by Manafort to get back into his good graces.

[...] Last year, a group of Manafort’s longtime friends, led by an old Republican hand named Bill Greener, tried to organize a cadre of surrogates to defend Manafort from the allegations against him, including the worst one: that he collaborated with a hostile foreign power to subvert the American democratic process. Manafort’s old partner Charlie Black even showed up for a meeting, though the two had largely fallen out of touch. A few of the wheel men from the old firm wanted to help too. Yet, when volunteers were needed to go on TV as character witnesses, nobody raised his hand. “There wasn’t a lot to work with,” one person contacted by this group told me. “And nobody could be sure that Paul didn’t do it.” In fact, everything about the man and the life he chose suggests that he did.

  The Atlantic

No sooner had Manafort secured a position with Trump's campaign than he reached out to Deripaska to ask about clearing up his debt.  By helping the Kremlin-tied oligarch (and likely money launderer) get a hold on Trump's presidency?

And Konstantin Kilimnik, mentioned in that article?  He's allegedly Person A in Mueller's pleading charging Van der Zwaan (who pleaded guilty) just a few days ago.

Person A, who Weissmann said lives largely in Ukraine, appears to be Konstantin Kilimnik, Manafort’s longtime business associate in the country. Prosectors have previously suggested that Kilimnik has ties to Russian intelligence. He also functioned in 2016 as an intermediary between Manafort and Oleg Deripaska, an aluminum oligarch suspected of providing intelligence on the US presidential election to Russian President Vladimir Putin in 2016. In one email Manafort sent while he chaired Trump’s campaign, he told Kilimnik that he was willing to privately brief Deripaska on the 2016 presidential contest. Kilimnik’s involvement appears to further tie Van Der Zwaan’s case to Mueller’s broader investigation.

  Mother Jones

I wonder if Kilimnik will disappear, too.

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

The story of Paul Manfort

We've had this information before, in bits and pieces, an article here, an article there, letting us know that Paul Manafort into the Trump campaign is very likely his way of paying his debts to Russians he owes. (Remember the email where it appears Manafort asked how they could use his position with the Trump campaign "to get whole" with the Russians?) Anyway, here it is laid out in a  Max Bergmann Twitter thread. Excerpts:














The thread seems to be based on this Atlantic article extensively reporting Manafort's fantastic history and his entry into the Trump cabal, the key bits on that being:

When Manafort offered Trump his services, he resisted his tendency to slap a big price tag on them; he would provide his counsel, he said, free of charge. To his family, Manafort described this decision as a matter of strategy: If Trump viewed him as wealthy, then he would treat him as a near-equal, not as a campaign parasite.

But Manafort must have also believed that money would eventually come, just as it always had, from the influence he would wield in the campaign, and exponentially more so if Trump won. So might other favors and dispensations. These notions were very likely what led him to reach out to Oleg Deripaska almost immediately upon securing a post within the campaign, after having evaded him for years. Through one of his old deputies, a Ukrainian named Konstantin Kilimnik, he sent along press clippings that highlighted his new job. “How do we use to get whole,” Manafort emailed Kilimnik. “Has OVD operation seen?” Manafort’s spokesman has acknowledged that the initials refer to Oleg Vladimirovich Deripaska. In the course of the exchanges, Kilimnik expressed optimism that “we will get back to the original relationship” with the oligarch.

All of Manafort’s hopes, of course, proved to be pure fantasy. Instead of becoming the biggest player in Donald Trump’s Washington, he has emerged as a central villain in its central scandal. An ever-growing pile of circumstantial evidence suggests that the Trump campaign colluded with Russian efforts to turn the 2016 presidential election in its favor. Given Manafort’s long relationship with close Kremlin allies including Yanukovych and Deripaska, and in particular his indebtedness to the latter, it is hard to imagine him as either a naive or passive actor in such a scheme—although Deripaska denies knowledge of any plan by Manafort to get back into his good graces.

[...]

Last year, a group of Manafort’s longtime friends, led by an old Republican hand named Bill Greener, tried to organize a cadre of surrogates to defend Manafort from the allegations against him, including the worst one: that he collaborated with a hostile foreign power to subvert the American democratic process. Manafort’s old partner Charlie Black even showed up for a meeting, though the two had largely fallen out of touch. A few of the wheel men from the old firm wanted to help too. Yet, when volunteers were needed to go on TV as character witnesses, nobody raised his hand. “There wasn’t a lot to work with,” one person contacted by this group told me. “And nobody could be sure that Paul didn’t do it.” In fact, everything about the man and the life he chose suggests that he did.

  The Atlantic

Not Sure This Helps Matters

Trump's personal lawyer is also attorney for a couple of shady Russians with whom Trump has been/is involved.

The hard-charging New York lawyer President Trump chose to represent him in the Russia investigation has prominent clients with ties to the Kremlin, a striking pick for a president trying to escape the persistent cloud that has trailed his administration.

  WaPo

From what I've read, he had little choice as several attorneys refused to take him on for fear - in the words of one: he won't listen and he won't pay.

Marc E. Kasowitz’s clients include Oleg Deripaska, a Russian oligarch who is close to President Vladimir Putin and has done business with Trump’s former campaign manager. Kasowitz also represents Sberbank, Russia’s largest state-owned bank, U.S. court records show.

[...]

The Associated Press reported in March that [one-time Trump campaign manager Paul] Manafort “secretly worked for” Deripaska as far back as 2006 to influence politics and business dealings inside the United States to benefit Putin’s government.

[...]

Deripaska has denied the report, and he sued the AP for libel last month.

[...]

In 2006, the United States revoked his visa to enter the country, citing possible ties to organized crime.

[...]

Michael J. Bowe, a partner at the law firm Kasowitz Benson Torres, declined to say whether the firm had discussed the possibility of potential conflicts arising from its Russian clients. Bowe added that their representation of the Russian firms and Trump “are totally unrelated.”

Sure they are. Sure.

Sberbank was one of the sponsors of the 2013 Miss Universe pageant in Moscow produced by Trump, who owned the competition. The deputy head of the bank at the time was Sergey Gorkov, who met with Kushner in December. Gorkov, a graduate of the academy of the Federal Security Service, or FSB, the domestic successor of the former Soviet KGB intelligence bureau, was named to head VEB in February 2016.

VEB has maintained that Gorkov’s meeting with Kushner was part of a new business strategy and was conducted with Kushner in his role as the head of his family’s real estate business. The White House has said the meeting was unrelated to business and was one of many diplomatic encounters the soon-to-be presidential adviser was holding ahead of the inauguration.

Jesus. They can't even agree on what to say publicly about their shady dealings.

Kasowitz filed a lawsuit against Timothy O’Brien, arguing that the author of “TrumpNation: The Art of Being the Donald” had libeled Trump by understating the businessman’s wealth. Trump lost the case in 2011.

I should hope to fuck so.

Kasowitz also wrote a letter during the presidential campaign threatening to sue the New York Times for an article that said two women had accused Trump of touching them inappropriately. Kasowitz said at the time it was “nothing more than a politically motivated effort to defeat Mr. Trump’s candidacy.” No suit has been filed.

Still making threats, but wise enough now not to think he could follow through on them.

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

Must Be a Trump Buddy

“The New York Times ‘story’ claims that I have inside information on Russia’s election interference, but I am not ready to make them public until I get immunity. Both of these statements are absolute lies,” wrote Deripaska, whose net worth is estimated at $5.2 billion by Forbes.

  RT

"Fake news", eh?

“I actually have proof, unpleasant as this may be for some, of the opposite of what is being said, in terms of Russia’s election meddling,” he wrote.

Sure you do, pal. How can you prove they didn't meddle?

“Stopping the spread of libel and other types attacks by anonymous representatives of the US authorities are a condition of my participation and cooperation,” Deripaska wrote.

A new condition.

Does anybody actually want him to testify?

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