(THREAD) BREAKING: Allegations Trump spoke to Putin via speakerphone at the 2013 Miss Universe pageant, discussing both his plan to run for president and his desire to see Trump Tower Moscow built with Putin's blessing—implying a quid pro quo—are 90% confirmed. Please read/share.
WARNING/ This thread will be long, and there are a number of news items in it not yet reported by major media—though they will be—which will also make this thread confusing. "Confusing" is not "far-fetched." The facts in this thread have been drawn from public, reliable sources.
1/ The first thing to understand is that in January 2017, a celebrity friend of Trump made a startling accusation that never got picked up by the media—that Trump spoke with Putin via speakerphone at the 2013 Miss Universe pageant, others heard the call, and it was incriminating.
2/ On January 9, 2017, Tom Arnold tweeted to Trump, publicly, that "Chuck LaBella [NBC Talent Development Executive] was not only listening on speakerphone when Putin called (you lied to 60 Minutes, by the way) but he knows everything else, and just in case, Putin filmed it all."
3/ Subsequent tweets from Arnold referencing LaBella, in January and thereafter, confirmed that Arnold was speaking of the 2013 Miss Universe pageant. It should be emphasized that Trump has never acknowledged this phone call or this contact with Putin in any way, shape, or form.
4/ The next things one has to understand are: (a) the so-called "pee tape" does not involve any sexual behavior by Trump; (b) a tape "of a sexual nature" from this night has been confirmed by the CIA to the BBC (January 2017); (c) there are eight confirmed witnesses...
5/ ...who've been located by major media or intelligence agencies who can speak to events relevant to these allegations from the Steele Dossier (because they immediately preceded them); (d) this issue has nothing to do with sex—and everything to do with Trump being compromised...
6/ ...by a blackmail-enabling video that is confirmed to exist and—the evidence now suggests—a phone call that directly suggests a "quid pro quo" smoking gun connecting Trump's run for the presidency and his thirty-year desire to build Trump Tower Moscow; and (e) we now have...
7/ ...so much more intel about the events of November 9, 2013—and the wee hours of November 10, 2013—than has been reported in U.S. media that to relay it creates the sense I'm making it up. I am not. The media is behind on this story and you can either accept that fact or not.
8/ Here is the first thing we know that hasn't been widely reported: the roster of people Trump spent his self-described "lost weekend in Moscow with" (November 8 to the morning of November 10, 2013, during which time he held business meetings and attended a pageant and a party):
9/ Here are the people who were with Trump for all or some of his 2013 trip to Moscow:
Keith Schiller
Phil Ruffin
Emin Agalarov
Aras Agalarov
Chuck LaBella
Bob Van Ronkel
Yulya (Yulia) Alferova
Artem Klyushin
Herman Gref
Vladimir Kozhin
Alex Sapir
Rotem Rosen
Roustam Tariko
10/ Several other people had brief, consequential encounters with Trump—like Miss Hungary 2013, Kata Sarka—and their stories are part of this story as well. There are many fine articles about this weekend, and here's a particularly good one:
11/ Here's another good article about that weekend (note that Trump referring to this as a "weekend in Moscow" itself underscores a key lie that he's now telling about it, as once the Russia scandal began he changed it from a "weekend" to a one-day trip):
12/ And here's a third and final (for now) article about the events of that weekend in Moscow.
Public reporting gets us many of the names of the people in Trump's entourage, but several others were discovered by independent journalists. More on that now.
13/ First, we have to see Trump's November '13 entourage as "paired": Schiller the ever-present bodyguard, Ruffin the ever-present friend; Emin and Aras Agalarov, father and son; Yulya Alferova and Artem Kluyshin, husband and wife; Herman Gref and Vladimir Kozhin, Putin agents...
14/ ...Alex Sapir and Rotem Rosen, Trump's "Trump Soho" business partners; Chuck LaBella and Bob Van Ronkel, Hollywood fixers; Roustam Tariko, a vodka magnate who had a brief encounter with Trump, much like Kata Sarka (and she deserves to be added to this group of key figures).
15/ I'm going to start with LaBella and Ronkel because they get us directly to the Putin phone call and I'm not trying to stall here—just trying to explain things clearly—so to prove that I'll go right to them, then discuss the others. First, you have to know who these guys are.
16/ Ronkel (pictured here with Trump at the pageant) is an American expat who lived in Moscow for 10 years with one job: get Hollywood talent to Russia. Ronkel's specific talent is selling Hollywood stars on the idea that they can get rich by doing business in and with Russia.
17/ Ronkel is good at his job—which is why when you go to his site you're assaulted immediately by several photos of him with Vladimir Putin. Ronkel and Putin became friendly in part because Ronkel does a great service for Russia by bringing the world's biggest celebrities there.
18/ Here's is Ronkel's November 2013 list of accomplishments, taken directly from his website:
19/ At least three of those events—the bottom three—occurred at the 2013 Miss Universe pageant, which LaBella and Trump attended. It's not clear if Van Ronkel met with Seagal at the pageant or elsewhere—though in either case it should be noted that Seagal is Putin's good pal now.
20/ LaBella—who Arnold claims was with Trump the entirety of the pageant—was then an NBC Talent Development Executive. But beyond that, he'd been involved as producer in several Miss Universe pageants (2010, 2011, 2012) and a judge in others (particularly Miss Teen USA pageants).
21/ LaBella's role with respect to the 2013 Miss Universe pageant is unclear: IMDB doesn't list it at all for him, but other sites say he was a producer for that show as he was in 2012, 2011, and 2010. We do know he worked on five episodes of "The Apprentice" with Trump in 2013.
22/ Again, Tom Arnold has claimed—repeatedly—that LaBella was also tasked with being NBC's liaison to Trump during the pageant (NBC co-owned the pageant with Trump) and was therefore with him for any and all incriminating behavior that may have occurred during Trump's 2013 trip.
23/ Going back to Van Ronkel, it's important to understand not just that he met with LaBella in Moscow and was tasked with helping stars like Trump find business opportunities in Moscow—he also was a Putin favorite because he tried to make a glowing TV show about the KGB in 2001:
23 SOURCE/ A 2001 newsletter published by the Association of Former Intelligence Officers (AFIO) and available online.
24/ In 2015, Buzzfeed News published an article that spoke in some detail about Van Ronkel, and established that his job is not just to get stars like Trump to Russia, but to be certain they understand that doing so will lead to business deals with Russians and lots of money:
25/ So this is the part of the thread where I remind you that Van Ronkel—the Hollywood fixer who gets U.S. stars big-time Russian money—didn't just go to the 2013 Miss Universe pageant and hang out briefly with Trump, he had a meeting with him (and seems to have been a VIP, too):
26/ Here's a fuller shot of Van Ronkel with Trump at the 2013 Miss Universe pageant in Moscow (November 9, 2013):
27/ Did I mention that Van Ronkel's professional calling-card as a Moscow-based fixer is not just the ability to get U.S. celebrities like Trump big Russian money but also to connect them with Putin himself? Well, it is, as the Financial Times noted in a July 14, 2017 article:
28/ But FT goes even farther, noting Van Ronkel was at the VIP-only post-pageant party with Trump and "worked on the pageant" itself. So now we have a Putin pal who introduces celebrities like Trump to Putin and gets them Russian deals partying and working with Trump in Moscow.
29/ Here's where things get odd. To FT, Van Ronkel said Trump "looked bored" at the after-party. But he told VICE that Trump was "meeting anyone he could and trying to do business." The latter is much more consistent with Trump's stated intentions for the trip and his itinerary.
30/ Note also that Van Ronkel is a "longtime acquaintance"—per VICE—of Emin Agalarov: a constant presence with Trump in Moscow, the son of Putin's real estate developer Aras Agalarov, and the man set up the infamous June '16 Trump Tower meeting between Don Jr. and Kremlin agents.
31/ All this is context for Trump inviting Putin to the pageant and Putin cancelling his planned appearance there just hours before the event.
In his place he sent (a) a gift for Trump, and (b) Vladimir Kozhin—the man who gives out permits for new building projects in Moscow.
32/ Putin also had (c) Herman Gref, the CEO of Putin's bank (Sberbank), meet with Trump.
The three things you need to build Trump Tower Moscow are: a real estate developer (Aras, Trump's pageant partner, was Putin's), a permits man (Kozhin was Putin's), and money from a banker.
- To understand the entirety of how Trump acquired a deal to build Trump Tower Moscow at the 2013 Miss Universe pageant, see the thread below. Here I'm going to just review the basics—so we can talk about prostitutes and then come back to Vladimir Putin.
@SethAbramson
My longest-ever Russia thread—on the subject of Trump Tower Moscow, Putin, and the so-called "pee tape"—on one page: demu.gr/10029554787
34/ The upshot is this: Putin was supposed to meet Trump directly, but suddenly cancelled; he sent instead the people needed to complete a Trump Tower Moscow deal; Trump announced such a deal on Twitter the day after the pageant; Emin confirmed the "letter-of-intent" to Forbes.
35/ Ten days after the pageant, Sberbank publicly announced funding for the project. The letter-of-intent signed in Moscow the day of the pageant was "active" until Aras Agalarov declared it dead just this February—in the midst of the Flynn scandal, after Trump's inauguration.
36/ See Tweet #33 for links to the Sberbank announcement and Agalarov's announcement the deal was dead (but only as of this February). Here's a link to Emin's article with Forbes (in which he tried—transparently—to retract his confession about the letter):
37/ As you can see, given Trump's entourage (filled with Putin agents sent by Putin to help Trump, which they did); the presence of Van Ronkel (whose job is to help stars meet Putin); and Putin's own original plan to meet Trump in person, a speakerphone call is hardly surprising.
38/ What some may find harder to accept is that when Putin called—instead of showing up—Trump talked not just Trump Tower Moscow (which is unsurprising, as he was there to get that deal done and did) but also plans to run for the presidency: a conjunction that'd be incriminating.
39/ It'd be incriminating because the position of the Trump Organization, as laid out by Trump Jr. to investors in 2008, is that the only thing that makes investments in real estate in Russia dangerous rather than purely lucrative is that the deals can't be done without help.
40/ In the article below, we find Donald Trump Jr. underscoring that the Trump Organization wants to do deals in Russia—and has many Russian investors—but is concerned that, without government protection, deals can fall through or fail once begun:
41/ So Putin sending his permits man to deal with Trump, and discussing Trump Tower Moscow with Trump by phone, would be an imprimatur—a promise the deal had Putin's blessing and wouldn't be suddenly stolen away from Trump via state-sponsored graft or (as Don feared) legal fiat.
42/ Trump choosing that moment to tell Putin, and only him, he'd be running for the presidency—when that fact had never been uttered by Trump in the U.S., and wouldn't be for a year and a half—would create a prima facie case that Trump was leveraging one fact against the other.
43/ That is, it would suggest to U.S. voters that Trump used his run for the presidency as a chit—a valuable asset to be offered to Putin—to ensure Putin's assistance with the multi-billion-dollar Trump Tower Moscow deal, a deal Trump had been unsuccessfully seeking for 25 years.
44/ This is where two more members of the entourage—Yulya Alferova and Artem Klyushin—come into play.
Alferova and Klyushin appear to have been—per Alferova's LiveJournal account—at the Summer 2013 Miss USA pageant in Las Vegas to convince Trump to bring Miss Universe to Moscow.
45/ Alferova and Klyushin—then married—are friends of the Agalarovs, and were instrumental in making sure Trump came to Moscow. It's clear that money (a $20 million offer) lured Trump there, but also the promise of being able to discuss business deals and meet Russian oligarchs.
46/ As we can see in Putin's actions—he sent Trump his developer, permits man and banker—the plan was to get Trump to Moscow to seal a deal on Trump Tower Moscow. It was also to a) confirm Trump would deliver value to Putin in return by running for POTUS, and b) to get kompromat.
47/ It's through Alferova—who has an unusually chatty Twitter account—that we get proof that those who hung out with Trump in November almost immediately thereafter were in possession of the knowledge he'd be running for president (18 months before any of us Americans knew it):
48/ The date of that tweet is January 22, 2014. Not 2015—2014.
And it doesn't appear to be the only tweet of that character Alferova put out.
Remember: Arnold's claim is Trump was telling Russia he was running for president in November 2013. If he told Alferova, why not Putin?
49/ Arnold's claims—remember, he's a fellow celebrity, friend of Trump, and someone with substantial Hollywood and media connections—therefore check out as to every particular we can verify, including the circumstantial fact that everyone involved lied about that whole weekend.
50/ Emin gave Trump a fake alibi for the "pee tape" by pretending the allegation was from November 8th, not the 9th; Alferova pretended to The Guardian that she was just a blogger meeting Trump for the first time in Moscow, with no additional knowledge of his trip; Trump lied...