How Do Counterintelligence Professionals Assess Trump’s Relationship with Russia? - Part Two (with Peter Strzok) - podcast episode cover

How Do Counterintelligence Professionals Assess Trump’s Relationship with Russia? - Part Two (with Peter Strzok)

Nov 06, 202443 minSeason 3Ep. 9
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Episode description

How are the Russians getting Trump to do what they want? There are many theories, but we've reached our own conclusion.

Transcript

Speaker 1

This episode was recorded before the election on November fifth.

Speaker 2

She was out of Czechoslovakia and she had committed an illegal act, and she had illegally emigrated with this illegally gotten passport to Canada, and then she filled in forms to come to the United States that she filled in illegally, and she met and married Donald Trump.

Speaker 3

I'm John Cipher and I'm Jerry o'she. I served in the CIA's Clandestine Service for twenty eight years, living undercover all around the world.

Speaker 2

And in my thirty three years with the CIA, I served in Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Middle East.

Speaker 3

Although we don't usually look at it this way, we created conspiracies.

Speaker 2

In our operations. We got people to believe things that weren't true.

Speaker 3

Now we're investigating the conspiracy theories we see in the news almost every day.

Speaker 2

We'll break them down for you to determine whether they could be real or whether we're being manipulated.

Speaker 3

Welcome to Mission Implausible.

Speaker 1

This is a two parter on whether Trump is a Russian asset, Beginning with a business trip to Moscow thirty seven years ago. Immediately after he returned, he began doing interviews, obsessed with many of the same things he still speaks about today. We continue with the conversation with Peter Struck. He's a former deputy Assistant director of the FBI's Counterintelligence Division, and he led the investigation into the Russian interference in

the twenty sixteen United States elections. He's an author and hosts the popular podcast Clean Up in Aisle forty five.

Speaker 4

Would it surprise me at all if Donald Trump is a businessman in the seventies and the eighties traveled to Moscow or had Soviet then Russian businessman or private citizens coming in and wanting to invest in his real estate or casinos anywhere else. Wouldn't surprise me at all. Would the Russians try and look at that information that they obtained to say, Hey, who is this person? How can we leverage him now or even ten, twenty thirty years in the future. Because maybe in ten years that person

is suddenly a prominent real estate mugel. Maybe in twenty years that person's president of the United States. But just because somebody is there in Moscow, somebody is there dealing with people who have either director in direct contacts with the Russian intelligence, doesn't make them, oh they're a source, right they're in bed with the Russians. It doesn't work that way.

Speaker 2

It's often not a binary thing. I think it's important for people to realize that they think that you're either a spy or you're not right, there's a big spectrum in between and on the long game, this is something that the Russians have been doing for a long time. There's this famous story from nineteen sixty eight that Hubert Humphrey was running for president and he and Johnson were

not getting along. Humphrey had a much softer line on Vietnam, and the Humphrey campaign was really low on money because Johnson wasn't getting the big donors to contribute to his campaign, and the KGB then asked Soviet Ambassador to the US Dobreenen, to have breakfast with Humphrey, and he offered Humphrey money for his campaign and a way to get the money to Humphrey without it being obviously from the Soviet Union.

Humphrey turned him down flat and one of the reasons for that, Humphrey said later was that he knew that once he took the money, it's not as though he was their spy, but they would have leverage on him. For the rest of his life.

Speaker 4

Yeah. I think that's a great example, and a couple of takeaways from that. One is that you're absolutely right. The recruited agent, the recruited source on whichever side. The person who is sitting there, they know they were working for a foreign intelligence service. There engaged in clandestine intelligence collection. They're using covert communications to respond to the tasking and

receive that tasking. They're getting paid clandestinely. That is, in my experience, the tiny, small number of percentage of people that you get information from, either foreign collectors, Russians, Chinese here in the United States, the number of people they have actually working in that context are tiny compared to the number of people who are agentsy influence, who have mental red lines or fig leafs that they want to maintain or Jerry to your point, they don't want to

take money because they feel if they do that they'd be exposed to coercion, and they want to be able to say they never took it. Even though they're doing favors. They're willing to do things short of Hey, I want you to be in on the book's asset, and we're going to give you a code name, and again wants you to behave in all these very specific ways that you have to do if you're going to operate at

that level. And the second point to your example, Jerry is you know, our political system in so many ways relies on people having the good sense and also a sense of morality to say I'm not going to take this money because it would expose me to coercion and it would look bad. When you look at Donald Trump, that's one of the concerning things is there's no apparent

compunction to not take that money. Has statements about, you know, towards the end of his administration, well, if she offered me apoh on Biden, I'd probably take it, or at least said look at it before I'd consider telling the FBI. There's this recent reporting, again without saying whether it's true or not, from Carolina at the at the Washington Post, that there was this alleged payment of ten million dollars

from the government of Egypt to Trump. But those sort of traditional ways in which intelligence services seek to exploit people to gain leverage short of formal recruitment, that's the area where he's a counterintelligence guy. When you look at Trump, he's extraordinarily susceptible to that, but also doesn't mean the guy's like a formal everybody's like, oh, he met Putin and he got his tasking for the next court and he didn't get his fucking next tasking for the next quarter.

They were just talking and Putin was playing him like he's played him the entire time through. And it wasn't like a little card or a one time pad where he could use that to decrypt what the seventeen documents where they wanted.

Speaker 3

To imagine Trump try to decrypt one time?

Speaker 4

Oh my god, no, fuck no. Can you imagine like sitting there and like doing the math, and.

Speaker 2

Well, there was a corrupt politician was taking money for the Egyptians for political favors. But it wasn't Donald Trump. It was Senator Menendez, right, And his sin was that he got the money in gold bars and one hundred dollars bills that he stuck in his freezer. If he'd been a little smarter on how he did it, he might not have gone to jail.

Speaker 5

So, Peter, let me ask you a question.

Speaker 3

Was the Mueller investigation a counter intelligence investigation? And how would it have been different if it were?

Speaker 4

So the answer is No. And one of the frustrating and confounding things is that we the FBI, after Director Comy was fired, a case was opened on Trump. So one of the takeaway is there was not some case on Trump going back to the summer twenty sixteen. That case on Trump was not opened until whenever that was spring is twenty seventeen, and it was a twofold opening. Right. One was did he engage in the crime of obstruction

by firing Comy? And there's a criminal statute that lays out the elements of the crime to obstruction, it would be just a traditional criminal investigation. But there was a second component of that case, which was a counterintelligence case about Trump, which was designed to sit there and ask those questions that I talked about earlier about what is Russia trying to do? What has Russia done with Trump in the past.

Speaker 3

Was that an investigation of Trump or of the campaign.

Speaker 4

That was Trump? There was never an investigation in the campaign. Now another lot that you'll hear out of the far right. There was never an investigation of the campaign. We don't

investigate campaigns. And what is frustrating to me is I talked with Amie McCabe, who was the acting director of the FBI at the time and said, okay, in addition to going and working with Muller with agents and investigators to investigate those crimes, at the same time, the FBI contingent was going to do this counterintelligence investigation and recognizing that Muller couldn't and didn't want to and didn't have

the authority to do it. But the only place where all that sort of information came together was sitting there in the Special Counsel's office. And then when I was removed, to my surprise and Amie McCabe saying his surprise, that never continued. It essentially stopped. And I think that is to the FBI's discredit, to the harm of the nation.

That again, when you look at whose job is it to take the lead on counter intelligence within the United States, what's the fbis, and that nobody has ever looked at the very I think reasonable question of counterintelligence concerns surrounding Trump is a problem, is a gap, is a failure, and we haven't done it, and frankly, I don't think at this point in our history we're ever going to do it. Because my suspicion is if he's elected never

going to happen. If he's not elected, people are going to he's an old man, he's at least four years later down the line. Just let it go because it is also hard to do right with somebody like Trump. That's an extraordinarily daunting prospect. So the short takeaway from that is, this person, where it's been demonstrated, has extraordinary counter intelligence concerns around him, will never ever be subjected to a professional counterintelligence investigation to try and understand it.

Speaker 2

In two and eight, and this is something that Trump talks about. It's effect. In two thousand and eight, he sold a six acre Palm beach piece of real estate to Russian billionaire Dmitri Rabolov got the name bolovv Ribolovov. Trump initially bought the real estate for forty million dollars. Now, Ribolovov is very close to Putin, he's a Russian oligarch, and he bought it several years later in two thousand and eight, when the market was bad for real estate,

he bought it for one hundred million. So it's a sixty million dollar increase in the price of the real estate, which my understanding was only frimerally fixed. Up and renovated. So, from a counterintelligence point of view, was this a way to funnel money into Donald Trump? And from a law enforcement point of you, is that anything illegal?

Speaker 4

Again, Jim, that's a great question because the sort of evil glory of Trump is that his overlay of vulnerabilities from account intelligence perspective, overlay with the shadiness of a lot of is. In my opinion, business empire real estate is well suited for corrupt actors to take advantage of for very specific reasons and ways that you pointed out right. On the one hand, you can have false valuations to evade taxes, which Trump has been convicted of in New York.

The other thing that's been done is that you can either inflate or deflate costs to engage in the transaction. And you're the example you gave. Both parties knew that the property was not worth what it eventually sold far, but they ultimately agreed to sell it at that price because it's hard to show that it wasn't in fact worth, that there was a buyer's premium, that they found it was worth that, and how do you prove that in a court. To show it's illegal is very difficult.

Speaker 2

So well, as you leverage buy you influence.

Speaker 4

And that comes up in two contexts, right. One could be this is absolutely a payment for influence. It's a payment for an action to be taken that's already been taken. The other thing, where it comes up in real estate all the time, is to launder money. If you have illicit money, whether you're an oligarch, whether you're a drug dealer, one of the ways that you take these illicit moneies that you've gotten and make them turn them into legitimate,

tangible things of value is to buy real estate. And that's why it's concerning when I think it was Eric Trump, not Donald. I think it was Eric who said at some point in the twenty sixteen campaign a disproportionate amount of the Trump's real estate holdings were from Russian entities. So that's an alarm belt, right, because one, Russians may be trying to buy real estate because they want to park value in the West, but two, they could be

laundering moneys through there. And if you look at Trump, it's like his entire career, in my opinion, has been doing that. It's real estate, but it's also look at his casinos. Another amazing way for laundering moneies that are ill gotten gains that you go and you buy chips and then maybe lose ten percent, But when you cash out, you can take illegal moneies and make them more legal.

So Trump has spent his entire business career in and around business that is well suited to illicit movements of money. And one of his casinos, if I remember correctly, got in trouble, I think because they failed to do sufficient to know your customer type checks when somebody rolled in with a bunch of money. Their state and other licensing entities require you as a casino to go out and do a certain amount of due diligence to make sure

that these are legal moneies. And if I recall correctly, his casino, at least one of them was written up for not doing that sufficiently. So he's got a history of this. On the one hand, it serves him in my opinion on shady business dealings, but it also serves him in a making himself vulnerable in an intelligence context.

Speaker 3

So, Peter, do you have a theory of the case on Trump vis a VI compromised with the Russians? And let me just put out my case around just around the twenty sixteen election, is that Donald Trump's lifestyle business practice has made him uniquely vulnerable to blackmail and extortion by the country that is un arguably the best in the world at those dark arts. His campaign team, with its own unusual shady ties of Russia, was willing to work with a hostile form power and eager to accept

material stolen from Americans. None of them went to the authorities to report the illicit contexts, and many of them were subsequently arrested. When the issue of Russian involvement surfaced publicly, every single one of them lied and covered up their actions. Trump then attacked the very institutions and people you one of them that could hold him on account, and sought to obstruct the investigations, eventually then pardoning anyone who could

provide evidence of wrongdoing. And then, even after all of that, even his most fervent supporters have been unable to provide any innocent explanation why a domestic political campaign would need such deep engagement with a hostile form power. To me, that is very damning and suggests that there should be a counterintelligence investigation around the twenty sixteen election and Trump, if nothing else.

Speaker 2

His campaign manager. Man Form admits publicly in his book that he was meeting with a Russian an intelligence officer and passing him information from the campaign that the Russians could then use to manipulate our election.

Speaker 4

Intelligence agencies. Typically, certainly when you look at the Russians are competent right broadly, they're going to play somebody with a view towards the long game. They're not going to push an issue to cause that person to turn away or put them in a position where it's going to

make them not want to do something. So what I mean by that is if you're Russia and you are well versed in the ways to identify vulnerabilities and people, and again it isn't just you and the three of us sitting around having a beer and shooting the shit

about how somebody might be vulnerable. I mean, it's like the agentcy like any intel service, you have teams of people who are sitting there through a formal process looking at somebody to identify their vulnerabilities, to evaluate their psychology and what makes them tick, and to go out there and leverage that. Some of that has got sense as a case officer, but a lot of is backed up by a huge organization, well resourced. It's looking into it.

And when you look at Trump, the things that motivate Trump are his ego, his insecurity, his affection and love of authoritarian figures. And the psychologists can figure out if that's like a daddy issue when he was little, and money and all of those are things that the Russian

intelligence services are extraordinarily competent and exploiting. And again this isn't and would never be the SVR is showing up at some sidebar between Putin and Trump and handing him over a bag of money or a wallet full of bitcoin. It's going to be ways that are explainable, that are hard to trace. And to your point, during the twenty sixteen election, Michael Cohen was convicted and went to jail, was literally in and around Moscow dealing with Russian folks

about the prospect of a Trump Tower of Moscow. Literally at the moment Trump was on the campaign trail saying I have no financial ties to Russia, none, which is obvious bullshit. And Trump knew that Cohen was dealing with Moscow at the moment he said that, and of course the Russians knew that Michael Cohen was dealing them. So the minute that happen happens, the Russians are like, wait

a minute, Trump denied it and we're doing it. So therefore we've got this ongoing back and forth that gives us leverage because Trump just denied it, and if we go there and publicize it's going to hurt him politically. Trump knows they know that, and so it's this unspoken agreement between those two parties. Then you know, wink and a nod, this is fine. And again, look at Trump's sexual history, look at what's been proven with Egene Carroll, look at what's been alleged by the scores of women

in the US. You can't tell me knowing what you know. And the way Russians are willing to use compromise in women to target Westerners in your experience, what you saw happening in Russia, that they don't have the ability to one understand that appetite and Trump and to apply that it's ridiculous.

Speaker 2

We'll be right back in a moment, welcome back.

Speaker 3

When Donald Trump pushes back against the stuff he always says, Russia, Russia, Russia. And you said something which I thought was really interest you said that these kind of things, this gangster mentality, doesn't just work with Russia and Russian intelligence, it could work with others. If you look into Trump's experience and his family and money coming from China, that there's as much a concern with China and perhaps the Egypt or others as it would be with Russia.

Speaker 4

I mean, you look at Jared Kushner. After the administration, you got wet like some of more than one one to two billion dollars of investment money from the Saudi having Wealth Fund and others within weeks and hasn't turned a profit and has made one two hundred million. I forget the exact amount in fees for managing that money for zero return for their investors, and that fund has little to nothing to show for it has no competence

in it. The Saudi Sovereign Wealth Fund advisors were saying, don't put your money here because it doesn't make sense financially from a risk perspective. But nonetheless that money is flowing in there. There are other countries. We talked about Egypt earlier. There's some I think the Katari's there's some indication that they're making licensing deals with Trump for a high rise, not that he's building just to put his

name on it. But any time you get countries who are willing to pay tribute through some legally coverable way, Trump is going to take it. And then the other thing, of course, is this odd like he does have a fascination with strongman. He talks about Kim Jong un and not just this stupid no he wrote me love letters, but comments he made to White House staff about when he Kim Jong un talks, his people will snap to attention. And Trump sees that as something he wants emulated. Right.

He wants his people, he wants, whether that's his government or the US population, to snap to attention. And they have big parades and cry hysterically singing his praises on the evening news. And Trump is the mark in the bizarre. He is the guy that walks in and everybody's like, there's the sucker that we are going to get ten thousand dollars to this two hundred dollars carpet, and everybody knows it.

Speaker 3

For you or for the audience. I would like to aim people towards An article I wrote in twenty nineteen for Just Security called is Trump a Russian agent, which tries to lay out the terms and the explanations, which comes to that same conclusion, it's more of this gangster culture than it is. He's likely a controlled asset of any foreign intelligence zone.

Speaker 2

When I was on the inside, I know of an instance where there was a young agency officer and he was posted to an authoritarian government, met a young woman, fell in love. And the way the agency works that is that when an agency office is going to marry a foreign or, she has to be polygraphed, and on her polygraph she said yeah. At one point in the

dating processes it was getting serious. The local service, the local intelligence service from this authoritarian government which has close ties to Russia, came to her and didn't say, don't fuck with us, you need to work with us, but said, we would like to persuade you to talk to us from time to time through a family member. You know, we'll talk to your dad or he or she is willing to do it, and from time to time we

can chat. And she said no. So she admitted this on the polygraph, and the agency said, you know what, we think this match is for real. They really love each other. But to the CIA officer We said, you need to choose either to remain in the agency and not get married to this woman, or you need to leave because she will always be vulnerable her family members. Two or three years from now, something will happen. So

it's just set the stage. So in nineteen seventy seven, way back then, Donald Trump, the real estate bogul, married a Czech citizen. Czechoslovakia at the time. You're smiling, You know the story. Czechoslovakia at the time was a really hardcore like the East German Stalinist government with a really hardcore intelligence service. Now she was out of Czechoslovakia and

she had committed an illegal act. She had entered into a sham marriage with an Austrian Evanna did, and she had eagerly emigrated with this illegally gotten passport to Canada, and then she filled in forms to come to the United States that she filled in illegally. She made claims that she had a veil at Austrian passport and she did not. And she met and married Donald Trump. This is a tremendous honor for me. I guess in a lot of ways, my wife is sitting right over here.

She just became an American citizen, and that's a honor. We do know from the Czech files left over from when the turn of the Fall of the Wall and so forth, that the Czech Service, the STB opened an investigation into her, that we know her father, who I understand informally was a hardcore communist, her father was talking to the Chech Service, and that they opened an operational file. I they had a specific operation in mind for this

young influential entrepreneur. That file has disappeared, that's never been found, so there is no smoking gun. And this is conspiracy

theory light. But in the counterintelligence world, if I was the Czech Service working closely with the Russians, I would probably use that to bump into Donald Trump, to have Evanna or her father who was working with a Czech Service engineer or relationship, or bump somebody into him to just talk to you know, we could talk from time to time, perhaps to begin this operation.

Speaker 3

But you're mentioning, Jerry, is a failure of the FBI to investigate properly this young woman or there.

Speaker 2

This is almost a conspiracy theory, but it's not right, as the sets of facts that lead to suspicion is all it is. But what's your sense of that?

Speaker 4

Yes, so look one my sense is like, at least on the counterintelligence side, this is absolutely what the Soviets and Soviet client states would do, whether it is the Soviet In many cases like I, as good as the KGB was, the size of these Germans were better. In my opinion. The checks were amazing, the polls were very,

very good. And when it came to the immigrant communities, in particular, levaging those personnel who moved into the West, and whether it was immediately or just you know, you've got a huge field and you put out a thousand seeds and you just watch which ones grow up. No good intelligence service. They're not going to wield their power

and influence like a blunt instrument. It is what. You're not going to say something that is going to force somebody to an uncomfortable choice of either I'm in with you one hundred percent or I'm going to walk away. You give people latitude and leeway so that whether consciously or subconsciously, they think they're okay, and you maintain that relationship. And so again, going back to the earlier question about the counter intelligence investigation of Trump, without saying one way

or the other. It is a reasonable question to ask. Because the Bureau had a vibrant counter intelligence program during the Cold War, they looked at emigrats like this. Did anybody ever look at Evanna Trump? Did anybody look if not her, the people that she was connected to, who were in contact with the Czech services, did anybody look

at them? That's one of the things you do. If you had a counterintelligence case on Trump, you would go back and say, let's look at all these factors and see potential intersections between Soviet or Soviet client state intelligence

services and not only Trump but anybody around them. And Avana screams, I mean, it was a weird Like if you go back and look at the timeline that's known about her movement to the West and the time she spent in Canada and what she did or didn't do, and where this lie that I think Don Trump Junior is saying my mom was an Olympian. No, she was never an Olympian. Never, And so where, you know, where

did that story come from? What was the timing of her application for permanent residency in the United States, the data that was put down to support that permanent residency, Whether there's sham marriages or not. All those a reasonable questions because those are techniques that were used by the checks, by the polls, by the East Germans, by the Soviets to get immigrats into the United States.

Speaker 3

I have a question for you, Peter, what was it like to work with the CIA.

Speaker 2

I'll be honest, Yeah, were you in Awe? How did you the name was?

Speaker 4

It was good. I mean a lot of it was just learning, you know, and my I grew up around the world and overseas, so I think and then just through education, I think at a little bit of a different appreciation of what the CIA did and how they work than the average bureau agent.

Speaker 3

Right.

Speaker 4

I remember my agents getting frustrated because they would have some back and forth to somebody at headquarters and then

give them different names. But I don't know if your listeners know you've got your true name, and then you've got potentially a cover name which you might use if you're overseas, but then also internally you have a pseudo or a different name, so you all walk around with multiple different names, which all makes sense if you're on the inside, because you know, every email's got your funny

name or whatever. But for an agents sitting there saying, well, I talked to John, but really he called himself storm Hammer. I don't know what the fuck that's all about. And so they're not trustable and storm Hammer, storm Hammer.

Speaker 2

John and I are pseudos. Were pretty lame.

Speaker 4

Yeah, that most of them are, Like I can count on one hand. I'm like, oh, that's badass. The other one.

Speaker 2

The funny thing is that it's you get a first name, a middle initial that doesn't have a name, and then you get a weird name. And I remember there was the this is a Nicaragua a long time ago, but they shot down an airplane that the Sandin Easts did it. It was Eugene J. Hassen Fuss And I'm like, that is a pseudo, but it was it sound like yeah.

Speaker 4

But and so setting aside that and and some of this dependent on the officer. Like the biggest thing that aggravated me is like occasionally come across people that, in addition to working with you, would try to case office you you know what I mean by that. I don't know if your listeners do, but like we are colleagues, I am not a recruitment target. So don't sit there and all of a sudden started launching into pro questions. But when you go to school own no kidding, what

did you major? And don't don't I know what you're fucking doing. Stop asking me question.

Speaker 3

I'm a poor case officer because every.

Speaker 4

That is a poor case officer, because like, yeah, John, you've been doing it to me for like five years now, and I have no fucking clue right way to get an f.

Speaker 3

THEI officers just pay for his food.

Speaker 4

That's or travel or travel. Hey, we need to take it, and we need to take it into the UK and we'll pay for business class whatever you want.

Speaker 3

All right, I'm in Thank you very much for coming on with us. You're not only you're a good profession, but you're a good friend and that we hope we can have you on again sometime soon.

Speaker 4

Yeah, yeah, it would be great.

Speaker 3

Hold on just a second, well we take a quick break.

Speaker 6

All right, back to Mission implausible.

Speaker 5

Now, let's bring back Adam Davidson, so.

Speaker 6

Can I Here's what I think the single best defense Trump has, which is he's so obviously an agent of the Russians that he can't possibiz.

Speaker 3

We'll use the term asset because asset has two terms. I'm resourcing benefit, he's a benefit to Russian talking points Russia.

Speaker 6

But I mean on the idea that he's an actual agent. He's not acting like an agent, right. An agent would be the leading voice against Russia.

Speaker 7

Right, if you use the dictionary term, he's an agent, right, someone who does something on behalf of someone else.

Speaker 6

But I mean when you guys have an agent at an agent back, you know, many years ago before you became old and retired and had wouldn't you tell them, like, don't go defending America and don't feed the loudest voice in favor agent.

Speaker 3

I'd like to think, Adam, you read my definitive article called is Trump a Russian Agent? In Just Security in twenty nineteen. But I go through it all of how the CIA looks at recruiting sources and what it means, and how you handle them, how you communicate with them, and then also look at the history of how Russians do it. Russians have a different way. They look at a much wider variety of things. They don't have to have that same sense of control and things that we do.

But I come to the same conclusion is he may be of value to them in the fact that they can put stuff in front of him and hope that he doesn't know any better and regurgitates it. But the notion that he would actually follow their direction or could report to them on what's going on, or that he could follow any direction and do communications with them or something is crazy. He just doesn't have the discipline to

do those kind of things. So the notion that he would be a spy in the sense that we and CIA run spies just doesn't make any sense. But whether he's of value to the Russians and that he's somehow compromised or treated by them in a way that helps them, it certainly is possible.

Speaker 2

The former Chancellor of Germany, Gerhard Schruder, I think he is depending on your definition, he is certainly an agent of the Russian government now right.

Speaker 7

They hit even the Trump Yeah, yeah, And I think they have appealed to his ego, They've appealed to his sense of wanting to remain important, and they have said to him, you can build a bridge intellectually. And of course they're paying him a shitload of money through nord Stream almost and yeah, two shiploads of money.

Speaker 2

And he has consistently defended Putin and defended the invasion of Crimea by not criticizing, by saying, you need to understand the Russian point of view. Ukraine's aren't perfect either.

Speaker 7

They get it common and I don't think they said, hey man, we got dirty pictures of it.

Speaker 2

He's been married five times, so it's not going to work anyway. We've got we've got.

Speaker 7

Dirty pictures, or you've done this, we are going to blackmail you into this. You blahahaha a spine now, but he is an agent of the Russian government.

Speaker 2

Now. I don't get to use the word indubably all that often, but it was a it fits there.

Speaker 3

Got to be a professional journalist. Would you use the word indubitably?

Speaker 6

First of all, I know how to pronounce it, which is an important part.

Speaker 2

Of using it.

Speaker 6

But indubitably, yeah, but I was you know, I was trained don't use a ten dollars word when a nickel word'll do. Although you know the New Yorker has been known to use a ten dollar word every now and again.

Speaker 5

So do we do that?

Speaker 6

Are there, maybe in Russia, or in China or in other countries, people who are working on our behalf without being agents or is that not something we do as much.

Speaker 3

I mean, we're a bigger, richer country, so there might be people who believe in our system better. But as a bureaucracy, the CIA, the clandestine Service, we get promoted by recruiting someone who is in a position that can give us secrets, follows our direction, is under our control, so that they can say John or Jerry recruited this source. This source is providing us information we can't get any

other way. And this person is going to take a turnover to another officer and will continue to work for us, and is motivated to do so. But as a Russian system, when we've seen it over the decades, they have what they call useful idiots, and they have agents of influence, and they have fellow travelers, and they have a journalist who they talk to, and the journalist says mildly pro Russian things. They're comfortable with that that's good, that's a

benefit to their system. So they have a much wider view of how they run sources than we see how you do.

Speaker 6

So I really look at this. It's my background through economic eyes and capital flight from the former Soviet Union. So like oligarchs sending their money to the US and the UK and some other offshore havens. It's like half the wealth. It is trillions of dollars. Like one of the largest industries in the world is capital flight from former Soviet states and oil rich states, and that money that has flowed disproportionately to a handful of cities London,

New York, Miami, LA, disproportionately into real estate. When your capital flight is not investment, you're not like picking small startups based on your sophisticated analysis of which ones might be successful. You know you're going to lose it around twenty percent on average of your money. So you have a billion dollars in Moscow or bak Who or tush

Kent or whatever. If you have a billion, you're willing to have eight hundred million in London because that's eight hundred million in London or eight hundred million in New York is worth a lot more than a billion in toush Kent. So as a result, you have this very corrosive lubrication of American business activity. Where the way I think about it is, if you're in New York real estate, say I'm just randomly picking one industry just in geographic area out of the blue. You know, New York real

estate was basically a bunch of oligarchs. It was a handful of families that owned everything, and it was very close to the mob and every like. I think Trump's dad was a sketchy dude, but there were a bunch of Trump's dads. But in the nineties into the two thousands, what you saw is a professionalization. The families that endured, they got real accountants, they built real systems, and they

became much more established businesses in a modern sense. So you have that option, But then you have this other option, which is you just facilitate this capital flight, this money laundering. It's an easier option. I don't think you really become a billionaires easily that way.

Speaker 2

But if you pick your facilitator, they owe you, right. It's like I'm going to wash my money through you, but you need to do me a favor too, so it's not a one way transaction. So both get dirty and both become vulnerable.

Speaker 6

Now what's interesting about Trump though, So there's the people who are coming to New York or Miami or la or London, and that is billions and billions of dollars of people buying over priced houses, buying condos that they'll visit once for eighty million dollars. So that's a thing,

and there's lots of people who touch on that. And then there's international you know, Exon Mobile or Bechtel or whatever, like massive conglomerates that have to do work in kind of sketchy countries and they somehow find a way to do business. But what Trump has done is really interesting is he's essentially become a partner of local developers. There's not a Trump Tower Paris, There's not a Trump Tower London, Baku, Azerbaijan. He tried and failed a project in Batumi, Georgia. He

tried and failed projects in Kazakhstan. Has five big projects in sort of second tier cities in India, a couple projects and second tier cities in Indonesia, and really working in the local economy, facilitating in every one of those cases, the people sketchy in the context of that kind of those highly corrupt nations, like people who are not if you compare it to four Seasons or Ritz Carlton, who are also doing business. Very often they will have a

local oligarch, but they'll have the international oligarch. The person whose kids go to Harvard, who is hiring like American law firms, American accounting firms, to really make sure this project. So the Ritz Carlton whatever. I don't want to make any specific accusations that this project is clean, even if

the partner is not clean. But Trump's stuff. The reporting I did on Azerbaijan, this was the bottom tier oligarch, like a mini gark who's paying people in duffel bags full of cash, like in Azerbaijan, one of the most highly corrupt nations in the world. It was the guy who everyone laughed at how crudely corrupt he was that Trump did business with, And that to me is so risky, it's so stupid. It's not that other business people aren't doing it because they're more moral. It's that it's way

too little money. You know, Trump's making a million bucks here, five million bucks there. So I think when I think about Trump, it's he's a salesman who's trying to just get these piece of crap little deals, and he thinks that by saying these things, he's helping. But that got him into a situation where they do have things on him. These deals are inherently corrupt. He is no legal way, non corrupt way to do what he did.

Speaker 2

I just want to underline this with so the two times he tried that we know of for a Moscow tower, Moscow Trump Tower, he used Felix Sayer, who is this Russian low level mafiosa guy, And that was one of the guys he was trying to use to build Trump Tower.

Speaker 6

So I anyway, I think there's a very clear and clean story that doesn't require he's an official agent. It's a very simple story. He doesn't dispute it. There's no dispute. There's all this money pouring in to the US. It's relatively easy money. He took advantage of it. No question Trump Tower, Trump Soho filled with dirty Russian money. But so are all these new apartment towers in Manhattan, Florida too. So in that sense, Trump's not an outlier, but nobody's

going there. And forget about Moscow going to these like third tier cities to work with the fifth tier oligarch. It is such an outlier from how American business people behave, and it's guarantees that you're going to have profound dirt. There's a feign corrupt practices act that you can't. You can go to jail for bribing a foreign official. He was part of a ton of deals where they were fundamentally bribing foreign officials. There's taking money from Iran's Revolutionary Guard.

Trump took money, it was cleaned through this guy, Ziamamadov, but from the Runnian Revolutionary Guard. You could go to jail for that. These are crazy, stupid risks that he took that exposed him to a level of compromise that's unimaginable. He did lots and lots of things that if all the evidence came out, it would reveal how little money he has and how little money he got from these deals. And the evidence of those are in file cabinets in Baku,

in Batumi and Tubilisi. And there's just a whole world of people who have dirt on him. As Felix Sayer actual, they said to me once, Trump is what a Russian man thinks a man.

Speaker 1

Should be like.

Speaker 6

That's and they liked him for all of those reasons. But I don't think they were like, oh, let's collect information on this guy because this guy might wan day be president. We can use it. It's and John, you know, this better than I do. Going way back to Soviet and even pre Soviet days, Russia collects intelligence on people that they can then use if those people happen to

get out of line or become powerful. So I think there's a very simple story to tell that's pretty much undisputed, that he is an asset of not just Russia, but a whole bunch of important people in the former Soviet Union, a whole bunch of people in the Gulf, a whole bunch of people in Indonesia, in Malaysia, in in China. And I think if we asked him that, and he'd be like, yeah, man, you know, like, I don't like this.

To me, isn't even like a content like the is he an actual and relisted agent of the FSB or something? Is like a distraction? We don't need that.

Speaker 1

Who cares?

Speaker 6

Maybe he is.

Speaker 4

I don't think.

Speaker 3

What's interesting about that is, in a sense, he would have been fine if he didn't run for president.

Speaker 6

Yeah, he would have been totally fine.

Speaker 3

But he's so angry now that he's getting accountability or attention for this. But he hasn't hasn't occurred to him that it's a different level. If you're the president of the United States, You're expected to have a certain sense of security values.

Speaker 6

So this is depressing.

Speaker 2

Guys, welcome to the world of counter rescionage.

Speaker 6

But from your standpoint, like John, when you you were in Moscow when there were lots of American business people going over leaving aside the presidency, does he seem like a dime a dozen?

Speaker 3

Or does he seem he fits exactly the kind of people who do business in places that are wild West and crazy like that, where they can make a quick buck and they don't mind dealing with corruption. What's odd about this is that those people don't usually then apply for serious national security positions that require a security class.

Speaker 2

Do we have people rainmakers assets that mainly often generally don't pay. Rich influential guys who like to sit down. And I could think of one individual in a country I was in where he could meet with the prime minister of this country, he could meet with a defense minister, he could meet with a Russian ambassador, and he'd like the agency, he liked the US, he wanted his kids

to go to school in the US. Basically, you would sit with him, he'd say, could you go talk to the president for me, He's like, yeah, sure, I'll go talk to him. And then when you would debris from he would say, oh, the President said this and the other thing, and you'd write it down. And then he'd say, and what I think about that is And one time is he was going on what his interpretation what the President said is. I put my pen down and he's Jenny,

you're not writing this down. I'm like, oh, because we only care what the president said. I don't actually care what.

Speaker 1

You're about that.

Speaker 5

There's no way that's not intelligence.

Speaker 7

It is intelligence, your relationship, what he said to you or what you're saying.

Speaker 2

He said, Trump could be just one of these guys that struck the lottery and ended up running for president.

Speaker 1

I think.

Speaker 8

So yeah.

Speaker 5

To wrap this up, let's hear a little more of Rob Quadr's recitation of Trump's nineteen ninety interview with Playboy.

Speaker 8

I think of the future, but I refuse to paint it. Anything can happen. But I often think of nuclear war. It's a very important element in my thought process. It's the ultimate, the ultimate catastrophe, the biggest problem this world has, and nobody's focusing on the nuts and bolts of it. It's a little like sickness. People don't believe they're going

to get sick until they do. I believe the greatest of all stupidities is people believing it will never happen because everybody knows how destructive it will be, so nobody uses weapons.

Speaker 1

What bullshit.

Speaker 9

The Mission Implause is produced by Adam Davidson, Jerry O'shay, John Seipher, and Jonathan Stern. The associate producer is Rachel Harner. Mission Implausible is a production of honorable mention and abominable pictures for iHeart Podcasts.

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