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UPDATE: I initially wrote this chapter on March 8, 2018-today is March 14, 2019 so over a year ago. We still don’t know definitively if the pee tape does or doesn’t exist-while a number of claims in the Steele Dossier have since been verified. But his bodyguard Keith Schiller’s testifying to Congress that the Russians offered to send five women to Trump’s room in the 2013 Moscow trip make it at least a real live possibility. Remember the big question is not the lurid idea of the pee tape but that it could be used as blackmail-a la Kompromat.
“Trump landed in Moscow on Nov. 8, having flown there with casino owner Phil Ruffin on Ruffin’s private jet. (Ruffin, a longtime Trump friend, was married to a former Miss Ukraine who had competed in the 2004 Miss Universe contest.) Trump headed to the Ritz-Carlton, where he was booked into the presidential suite that Obama had when he was in Moscow four years earlier.”
There was a brief meeting with Miss Universe executives and the Agalarovs. Schiller would later tell congressional investigators that a Russian approached Trump’s party with an offer: He wanted to send five women to Trump’s hotel room that night. Was this traditional Russian courtesy — or an overture by Russian intelligence to collect kompromat (compromising material) on the prominent visitor? Schiller said he didn’t take the offer seriously and told the Russian, “We don’t do that type of stuff.”
Hmmm. ‘We’ don’t?
UPDATE: Trump is a long time womanizer so it’s clear the Russians knew his preferences when they offered it. Some people suggest that Trump may have been a womanizer in his time but now he’s a little old-even the hush money payments we know of were all from a decade ago-which hardly means they don’t matter-as the GOP demanded and got Ken Starr’s investigation into Whitewater from two decades ago.
But we actually have some evidence that Trump remains the pig he always was just recently a 2016 campaign aide accuses him of forcibly kissing her.
What’s amazing is how the MSM has buried this story. While the print and online media reported on it, cable news largely ignored it-other than I think Chris Hayes-and we’ve heard very little since the first day or two it was reported. This would never have happened to the Clintons. If during the 2016 campaign news that Bill Clinton forcibly kissed a young woman a couple of years go-or even with consent-this would have been the story in the MSM for months-interrupted only by the damn emails.
End of UPDATE:
Back to Yahoo:
“About 1:30 a.m., Trump left the party and headed to the Ritz-Carlton hotel a few blocks from the Kremlin. This would be his only night in Moscow. According to Schiller, on the way to the hotel, he told Trump about the earlier offer of women, and he and Trump laughed about it. In Schiller’s account, after Trump was in his room, he stood guard outside for a while and then left.”
However there’s a pattern that suggests ‘we do do that type of stuff’ at least sometimes:
(But Schiller by other accounts was accustomed to being a go-between for Trump. In a 2011 interview with In Touch Weekly magazine that was not published until early 2018, Stormy Daniels, a porn star who claimed she had an 11-month-long affair with Trump, identified Schiller as the Trump aide who facilitated her secret liaisons with Trump. “That’s how I got in touch with him,” Daniels said. “I never had Donald’s cellphone number. I always used Keith’s. I went up to the room and he said, “Oh yeah, he’s waiting for you inside.’”)
Gref, a close Putin adviser, was pleased with his face time with Trump. “There was a good feeling from the meeting,” he later said. “He’s a sensible person … [with] a good attitude toward Russia.”
High praise indeed.
Remember ‘I don’ know Putin?’ That’s not what he said in 2013:
“Do you have a relationship with Putin and any sway with the Russian leader? Roberts asked him. Trump was unequivocal: “I do have a relationship.” He paused. “I can tell you that he’s very interested in what we’re doing here today. He’s probably very interested in what you and I are saying today. And I’m sure he’s going to be seeing it in some form.”
Trump could barely contain his praise for Russia’s president: “Look, he’s done a very brilliant job in terms of what he represents and who he’s representing. If you look at what he’s done with Syria, if you look at so many of the different things, he has really eaten our president’s lunch. Let’s not kid ourselves. He’s done an amazing job. … He’s put himself at the forefront of the world as a leader in a short period of time.”
But Trump’s comments about a “relationship” with Putin were, at this point, wishful thinking. The word had spread through the Miss Universe staff that Trump fiercely craved Putin’s attendance at the pageant. In preparation for Putin’s possible appearance, Thomas Roberts and Mel B were taught several words in Russian to welcome the Russian president: “hello,” “thank you,” and so on. With her cockney accent, Mel B had trouble pronouncing the Russian words. She was told she had to get this right because Putin might come.”
“By late afternoon, Trump’s anxiety was palpable. There had been no word. He kept asking if anybody had heard from Putin. Then Agalarov’s phone rang. “Mr. Peskov would like to speak to Mr. Trump,” Agalarov said.
UPDATE: Aras Agalarov is a key person in figuring out who set up the Trump Tower Russia meeting in June, 2016 with Donald Jr, Kushner, and Manafort. According to Goldstone’s letter to Jr on June 3, Agalarov had spoken with the Russian Crown Prosecutor. Goldstone later claimed that he just made the whole thing up but the fact that Vesselnitskaya really had spoken to Russia’s chief federal prosecutor was yet another total coinkydink.
“Trump and Peskov spoke for a few minutes. Afterward, Trump recounted the conversation to Goldstone. Peskov, he said, was apologetic. Putin very much wanted to meet Trump. But there was a problem nobody had anticipated: a Moscow traffic jam. King Willem-Alexander and Queen Maxima of the Netherlands were in town, and Putin was obligated to meet them at the Kremlin. But the royal couple had gotten stuck in traffic and was late, making it impossible for the Russian president to find time for Trump. Nor would he be able to attend the Miss Universe pageant that evening.”
P”utin wanted to make amends, though. Peskov conveyed an invitation for Trump to attend the upcoming Olympics, where perhaps he and Putin could then meet. He also told Trump that Putin would be sending a high-level emissary to the evening’s event — Vladimir Kozhin, a senior Putin aide. And, Peskov told Trump, Putin had a gift for him.”
“It was a crushing disappointment for Trump. But he quickly thought of how to spin it, suggesting to an associate that, after the telecast, they could spread the word that Putin had dropped by. “No one will know for sure if he came or not,” he said.
UPDATE: Note that Peskov was a point person for Michael Cohen and Felix Sater on the Trump Tower Moscow deal in 2016.
Meanwhile, regarding Rob Goldsone who we discussed above, he had a role in the 2013 trip as well
“One reason Trump’s hoped-for meeting with the Russian president never materialized was his attention to another project. Trump was originally scheduled to spend two nights in Moscow — which would have yielded a wider window for a get-together with Putin. But Trump had decided to attend the celebration of evangelist Billy Graham’s 95th birthday on Nov. 7 at the Grove Park Inn in Asheville, N.C. In Russia, Trump told Goldstone that it had been necessary for him to show up at the Graham event: “There is something I’m planning down the road, and it’s really important.”
“Goldstone knew exactly what Trump was talking about: a run for the White House. Franklin Graham, the evangelist’s son, was an influential figure among religious conservatives. When Trump two years earlier was championing birtherism — the baseless conspiracy theory that Barack Obama had been born in Kenya and was ineligible to be president — Graham joined the birther bandwagon, raising questions about the president’s birth certificate. Appearing at this event and currying favor with Franklin Graham was a mandatory stop for Trump, if he were serious about seeking the Republican presidential nomination. And it paid off: Trump and his wife, Melania, were seated at the VIP table, along with Rupert Murdoch and Sarah Palin. Franklin Graham later said that Trump was among those who “gave their hearts to Christ” that night.”
The mysterious letter:
“Trump was finally on his way in Russia. 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.”
That Agalarov-in this case his daughter was the messenger-was who gave Trump the letter from Putin again buttresses the point that Agalarov is an important point person in figuring out Trump’s relationship with Putin.
Regarding the eytomlogy of Trump’s opposition to Russian sanctions:
“In this environment, the plans for the Trump Tower in Moscow crumbled. 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.”
UPDATE: Of course, in fact Trump continued to try to get the Trump Tower Moscow deal well into the 2016 election-and as we saw in Chapter A, maybe even after the election; the project may have been handed off from Cohen-Sater to George Papadopoulos and Sergei Millian.
FN: For more on Millian and his desire for a place in TrumpWorld 2016 see this recent WaPo piece.
A new scoop for authors Michael Isikoff and David Corn:
That deal was dead. But Trump’s involvement with Russia and Putin was not done. He still had a close bond with an influential oligarch, Aras Agalarov, who was wired to the Kremlin. And he stayed in touch with his Miss Universe pals, Emin and Goldstone. In January 2015, nearly a year after Putin’s invasion in Ukraine, Trump had Emin and Goldstone as guests to his office in Trump Tower — a meeting that was never publicly revealed during the investigations that followed the 2016 election. As Goldstone recalled it, they found Trump listening to the blaring sounds of a “hideous” rap video about Trump. The lyrics were ridiculing Trump, and Goldstone asked, “Have you listened to the words?” Trump replied, “Who cares about the words? It has 90 million hits on YouTube.” While they chatted, Trump was encouraging to Emin, who had performed at the Miss Universe contest in 2013: “Maybe next time, you’ll be performing at the White House.”
“Seventeen months later, in June 2016, Goldstone would return to Trump Tower — this time escorting a Russian-led delegation dispatched by the Agalarovs, offering potentially derogatory information on Hillary Clinton, courtesy of the Kremlin, to the top officials of Trump’s presidential campaign.”
UPDATE: Overall there are a lot of leads from this chapter that at least in public we’ve gotten no closure on. This is yet another example of why I suspect Senator Richard Blumenthal is correct-beyond the fact that he is privy to a lot more information than we are. There are so many loose ends Mueller has given us no information on yet.
Agalarov is a key connection while Goldstone’s claims to basically have known nothing-just a humble music publicist doing right by his client and making stuff up that just happened to be 100% accurate doesn’t really pass the laugh test.
As for the pee pee tape, Putin doesn’t deny it exists
Asked directly by an Associated Press reporter whether it’s true that Russian intelligence has compromising material, or “kompromat,” that it can use to blackmail Donald Trump, Russian President Vladmir Putin did not exactly deny it.
The reference is to a claim in the Steele dossier that Russian intelligence has a secretly recorded tape of Trump in a Moscow hotel with prostitutes whom he hired to pee on the bed Barack and Michelle Obama slept in during their visit to Russia.
Putin, though, did not say the tape doesn’t exist. Instead, he argued that he was not personally aware of Trump’s trip to Russia and also mentioned that foreign businessmen visit Russia frequently, before asking, “Do you think that we try to collect compromising material on each and every single one of them?”
I tend to think he probably does.
For us this issue — and now to the compromising material. Yeah, I did heard these rumors that these allegedly collected compromising material on Mr. Trump when he was visiting Moscow.
Distinguished colleague, let me tell you this: When President Trump was in Moscow back then, I didn’t even know that he was in Moscow. I treat President Trump with utmost respect, but back then when he was a private individual, a businessman, nobody informed me that he was in Moscow.
Let’s take St. Petersburg economic forum, for instance. There were over 500 American businessmen, high-ranking, high-level ones. I don’t even remember the last names of each and every one. Do you think that we try to collect compromising material on each and every single one of them? Well, it’s difficult to imagine on a bigger scale of this. Please disregard these issues and don’t think about this anymore again.
Here he’s being modest-as if anyone can be at that forum without his ok. And Trump even then was hardly just ‘any run of the mill businessman’ but someone who had forged close ties to Russia going back to the 1980s when his Trump Towers were a very convenient pass through for Russian money launderers-he was like only one of three NYC landlords in the 1980s to allow anonymous buyers-to the 1ate 1990s when no big Western bank-other than Deutsche Bank would lend him money, to after the financial crash when he was even more dependent on Russian money. But by 2013 Trump was also clearly a political entity-he’d become Mr. Birtherism and run in 2012 during the primary.
Of course, Putin denies some things but sometimes deigns not to-maybe thinking that it’s not a bad rumor to exist wether it’s true or not.
Then late last year Democratic Senator Jeff Merkley opined something close to the pee tape exists.
Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR) said that “something close” to the long-rumored “pee tape” exists, saying he “think[s] it’s likely” that Vladimir Putin has something on President Donald Trump. As the first summit between Trump and the Russian president unfolded in Helsinki, Merkley told BuzzFeed’s AM to DM that it was typical behavior of Russian intel to want compromising information on important individuals that visit the country—including pairing up a person with prostitutes and recording everything that happens in their hotel rooms. When asked directly if he thinks the “pee tape is real,” Merkley replied, “Something close to that. Something close to that.”
Between the Mueller report-if we ever see it-and the Dem investigations in Congress may answer this question sometime hopefully in the near future.
UPDATE: Then there’s the fact that a letter from Trump asking for girls has come out. But that’s for next chapter.