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Table of Contents
The chapter you are now reading is in bold. Any chapters already published are active links to those chapters as published here at Proof in 2023.
Introduction: A Theory of the Case
Date: October 2018
Chapter 1: Russia and the Trumps
Dates: 1987 to 2012
Chapter 2: Trump and the Agalarovs
Date: 2013
Chapter 3: Kompromat
Date: November 2013
Chapter 4: The Campaign Begins
Dates: 2013 to 2015
Chapter 5: The National Security Advisory Committee
Dates: January to March 2016
Chapter 6: The Mayflower Hotel
Date: April 2016
Chapter 7: The Backchannels
Dates: May to June 2016
Chapter 8: The Republican National Convention
Date: July 2016
Chapter 9: The Hunt for Her Emails
Dates: July to September 2016
Chapter 10: The October Surprise
Date: October 2016
Chapter 11: The Transition
Dates: November 2016 to January 2017
Chapter 12: The Firings of Flynn and Comey
Dates: February to May 2017
Chapter 13: Testimony and Plea
Dates: June to December 2017
Chapter 14: A Nation in Suspense
Date: 2018
Afterword: The Death and Rebirth of America
Date: 2019
Chapter 4: The Campaign Begins
2013 to 2015
Summary
Not long after the 2012 presidential election, the Kremlin begins its preparations for the 2016 election in the United States, dispatching two spies to America with the goal of infiltrating the right-wing National Rifle Association and creating a backchannel between Moscow and national leaders of the Republican Party. At the same time, the Kremlin becomes more aggressive in its efforts to reach out to Donald Trump, as the signs that he is going to run for the U.S. presidency are by mid-2013 unmistakable.
The Kremlin is successful in its plan to infiltrate the NRA, as well as in its efforts to push Trump toward a foreign policy more favorable to Russia by dangling Moscow land-development deals in front of him. It is unclear as of 2015 whether the Kremlin plans to simply influence NRA brass into contributing a record amount of money to Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign or whether it wants to funnel illegal campaign contributions directly to Trump through the organization. In 2018, Special Counsel Robert Mueller will investigate both possibilities. What will be clear by Election Day 2016 is that an unprecedented volume of NRA political contributions was essential to the success of Trump’s 2016 presidential run.
As soon as Trump announces his candidacy on June 16, 2015, at Trump Tower in New York City, he begins lauding Russian president Vladimir Putin, denigrating sanctions on Russia, and harping on the need for better relations with the Kremlin—even as a longtime business partner of his with ties to both the Kremlin and the Russian mafia is trying to help him parlay his pro-Russia foreign policy into a sizable payday in the Russian real estate market. Meanwhile, both Trump and his eldest son Donald Trump Jr. strengthen their bonds with the NRA—which will, in May 2016, issue an unusually early endorsement of Trump.
As the Weekly Standard will note in February 2017, “There are many claimants to the honor of having nudged Donald Trump over the top in the presidential election. But the folks with the best case are the National Rifle Association and the consultants who made their TV ads.”
The Facts
Alexander Torshin, Russian who courted NRA leaders, sanctioned by US Treasury - ABC News
ABOVE: Aleksandr Porfiryevich Torshin.
From 2013 through 2017, Alexander Torshin (a.k.a Aleksandr Porfiryevich Torshin)—a Russian politician with ties to Russian intelligence—and his mentee Maria Butina, a twentysomething Russian student who will eventually be charged with Conspiracy and Acting As An Unregistered Foreign Agent, seek to infiltrate the NRA as part of a plot to create a backchannel between the Kremlin and Republican Party leaders. The tripartite plot involves making a social connection with powerful NRA members and GOP operatives; constructing a bogus “gun rights” organization in Russia to create sympathy of purpose with American gun owners; and finally encouraging the NRA to give generously to one 2016 presidential candidate in particular: Donald Trump.
As related by Rolling Stone in April 2018, Torshin is a member of Putin’s political party with “close ties to Russia’s internal security service, the FSB, which awarded him a medal in 2016.” According to the CIA’s former Russian operations chief Steven Hall, “[Putin] decided Mr. Torshin [was] going to be the guy to do it for him”—“it” being, as Rolling Stone phrases it, “exploit[ing] the American gun lobby.” That exploitation involves “forg[ing] a quick friendship” between NRA president David Keene and a Russian sister organization to the NRA, despite the fact that, as Hall puts it, “the idea of private gun ownership is anathema to Putin.”
As Torshin is working on connecting the Kremlin to powerful NRA members and, later on, Republican politicians, prosecutors in Spain—who, according to Bloomberg, deem Torshin a Russian mafia “boss”—are investigating him for money laundering. In May 2018, Spanish officials, suspecting Torshin of “involvement in money laundering and organized crime”, will turn wiretaps from their investigation to the FBI, saying publicly of the recordings—on which Torshin is referred to by Alexander Romanov, a mob-linked former Russian banker, as “El Padrino”, meaning “godfather”—that “Mr. Trump’s son [Donald Trump Jr.] should be concerned.”
Prosecutors eventually decide not to charge Torshin—not due to lack of evidence, but because they don’t believe the Kremlin would extradite him to Spain.
Lover or cover? Maria Butina and the romance at the heart of an alleged Russian influence operation - ABC News
ABOVE (left): Maria Butina.
In 2013, the then twenty-four-year-old Maria Butina begins a romantic relationship with the then fifty-four-year-old Paul Erickson, an influential GOP operative and NRA member. Per a July 2018 Mother Jones summary of NRA-Russia collusion and subsequent indictments against Butina, Butina was hoping, through Erickson, to establish a backchannel between the Kremlin and Republican leadership. In short order she is cohabiting with Erickson, and Erickson has begun paying many of her expenses through a company established for this purpose called “Bridges, LLC.”
By the fall of 2013, Erickson has assisted Butina in getting close to NRA president David Keene. In November, Butina and Torshin host Keene in Moscow. In January 2014, Keene publishes an essay by Torshin in the Washington Times, where Keene is editor of the opinion pages. Torshin and Butina both then “join Keene for meetings” at the 2014 NRA convention in Indianapolis, Indiana. In the fall of 2014, Erickson travels to Moscow with Butina for a gun-rights event.
Lover or cover? Maria Butina and the romance at the heart of ...
ABOVE: Paul Erickson (left) with Butina. In November of 2019, Erickson pleaded guilty to Wire Fraud and Money Laundering in federal court in relation to an oil development scheme. Erickson would have served seven years in prison beginning in July 2020, but on his last day in office President Trump granted him a full pardon.
In February 2015, Trump declines to renew his contract with the NBC reality show The Apprentice, confirming something that had been an open secret in GOP circles since 2013—that he plans a run for the presidency. The assumption that Trump will seek the White House in 2016 is predicated in part on statements made by Trump to Republican leaders in New York in December 2013, at which point he “predicted he would begin [his presidential run] in 2015.”
In March 2015, Trump and Torshin attend the annual NRA conference in Nashville, Tennessee, and have a “jovial exchange” according to Torshin. Butina is also at the conference and has a “private meeting” with a “political candidate”; it’s not known whether the candidate was Trump. Regardless, Torshin leaves the NRA conference considering himself now an “acquaintance” of Trump’s. On November 8, 2015, he will tweet from his personal Twitter account, in response to allegations of racism against Trump, “I know Donald Trump (through NRA). [He is] a decent person.” In 2017, he will secure an invite to the National Prayer Breakfast and, afterward, a spot on then-President Trump’s schedule for a private audience. According to five Yahoo News sources, Trump’s team cancels the post–Prayer Breakfast Trump-Torshin meeting because Torshin is suspected of being a “godfather” in the Russia mafia. The White House will later say that no such meeting was ever scheduled and—for good measure—Trump will deny having ever met Torshin at the White House or anywhere else.
From the moment Trump formally announces his presidential candidacy on June 16, 2015, he tends to discuss two topics with great regularity: first, how good he will be at “getting along” with the Russians and “making deals” with them; second, how well he knows Vladimir Putin and, moreover, Putin’s perspective on whom he can (and whom he wants to) “make deals” with.
Less than a month after he announces his candidacy, on July 11, 2015, Trump is at a libertarian event in Las Vegas called “FreedomFest” conducting a Q&A session. He calls on a young woman from Russia—as we now know, Maria Butina—who says she would like to know Trump’s position on sanctions, and also what sort of relationship he’d like to have with Putin and Russia if he’s elected president. The press conference is being recorded. Trump answers her question by saying, “I know Putin, and I’ll tell you what, we get along with Putin. Putin has no respect for President Obama. Big problem. Big problem. . . . I believe I would get along very nicely with Putin. . . . I don’t think you’d need the sanctions. I think that we would get along very, very well. I really believe that.” Trump also expresses the view that the United States “has driven [Russia and China] together with the big oil deals that are being made”—the implication being that it would be better for Russian oil to flow westward rather than eastward, and that the anti-Russia policies of the Barack Obama administration have engendered greater Russian-Chinese cooperation.
Trump doubles down on immigration comments in Vegas speech | PBS News Weekend
ABOVE: Donald Trump at FreedomFest in Las Vegas in July 2015.
Ten days after he says at a televised event that he opposes sanctions on Russia, Trump receives an invitation to come to Moscow from Aras Agalarov. The invitation, communicated by Emin Agalarov’s publicist Rob Goldstone to Trump’s secretary, is ostensibly for Aras’s birthday party in November 2015—but contains a promise that Trump can meet with President Putin in person if he comes to the party. Goldstone tells Trump’s secretary Emin will set up the meeting with Putin if Trump agrees to it.
Within sixty days of Trump telling Butina at FreedomFest that he doesn’t see the need for sanctions on Russia, longtime Trump business partner and Russian mafia-linked fixer Felix Sater has approached Trump’s lawyer Michael Cohen with a new business opportunity. Sater has been promising Trump a new Moscow tower deal since 2005 but has been unable to deliver for a decade; now, suddenly, he has a willing investor by the name of Andrey Rozov. Sater and Rozov have both been on the executive board of a Moscow real estate company called Mirax Group since 2008, but until Trump makes his announcement of a presidential run and airs his staunch opposition to American sanctions against Russia, Rozov betrays no interest in partnering with Trump. Now, he agrees to let Sater approach Cohen with the idea.
Trump's Business Partners Allegedly Involved In Human Trafficking, Mafia Matters, Probable Money Laundering
ABOVE: Trump (center) with Aras Agalarov (right) and his son Emin Agalarov (left).
تويتر McAleer & Rushe على تويتر: "Graham talking to Andrey Rozov head of real estate UFG WM Russian investment partners. #IHIF2016 #Berlin https://t.co/Kha3mf0WEk"
ABOVE (right): Andrey Rozov. Per this news report, the Kremlin unexpectedly granted Rozov amnesty on a Negligent Homicide charge just 120 days before he approached Donald Trump with an offer to build a Trump Tower Moscow with him.
Saterfollows a September 2015 email proposing the idea to Cohen and Trump with an October email containing a signed Letter of Intent from Rozov and a note from Sater saying that Trump agreeing to build a Trump World Tower Moscow would “possibly fix relations between the countries [Russia and the United States].” It appears that at least the September communication between Sater and Cohen has been kept from everyone at the Trump Organization but Trump; on September 30, 2015, Alan Garten, the chief legal officer of the Trump Organization, tells ABC News that “there’s really no direct relationship” between Sater and the Trump Organization and “I don’t know that he ever brought any deals.” The statement is false.
In October of 2015—while Cohen is communicating with Sater on a Trump Tower Moscow deal even as his client, Donald Trump, runs for president—Cohen receives yet another offer from Russia (Trump’s third since 2013, at a minimum) to build a Trump Tower in Moscow. This new proposal comes from Russian billionaire Sergei Gordeev, whom the Washington Post calls a “Moscow real estate mogul who served through 2010 as a Russian legislator.” Gordeev indicates, through an intermediary—“an international financier [Gordeev] had worked with in the past, Giorgi Rtskhiladze”, according to the Post—that the deal he’s offering Trump would involve a “Trump-branded residential development.” That month, Gordeev and Rtskhiladze send Cohen a thirteen-page proposal and pictures of the prospective site. Cohen turns down the request, but only because—as he explains to Rtskhiladze—Trump is already working on a deal for a Trump Tower in Moscow.
Businessman involved in Trump Tower Moscow discussions tells his side of the story
ABOVE: Giorgi Rtskhiladze, the Michael Cohen business associate who would eventually write the Trump attorney to confirm that the Kremlin indeed had kompromat material on Trump collected at the Ritz Moscow in November 2013.
Felix Satertells Cohen in his October 2015 note that “we” (Sater and Cohen) “will help [Putin] agree on [the] message” the construction of the tower is intended to embody: “that commerce & business are much better and more practical than politics.” Sater tells Cohen and Trump that the goal of this deal is to “help world peace and make a lot of money.” What exactly Trump must do to “help world peace” in order to “make a lot of money” is not specified in Sater’s note, but when Trump mentions Russia on the campaign trail, much of the time he emphasizes the need to get along with Moscow and—more particularly—to make deals with Putin that would include eliminating all U.S. sanctions against Russia. It is the fifth month of his 2016 presidential campaign.
How a Lawyer, a Felon and a Russian General Chased a Moscow Trump Tower Deal - The New York Times
ABOVE: Trump with Felix Sater. After years of working one-on-one with Sater, Trump will say under oath in a deposition that he can’t picture his face and is not sure he knows him. The Washington Post reports Trump told 30,573 lies as president.
On November 3, 2015, Sater writes Cohen to say, “I know how to play it, and we will get this done. Buddy, our boy can become President of the United States of America and we can engineer it. I will get all of Putin’s team to buy in on this.” By the time he sends this note, Sater has lined up financing for the Trump-Rozov tower with VTB—a then sanctioned Kremlin-owned bank. The next month, however, new sanctions are leveled against VTB, meaning that unless Trump wins the presidency and removes U.S. sanctions on Russia, he won’t be able to get the money Sater has secured for him.
Sater, knowing the connection between Trump’s Russia policy and his ability to get a Trump Tower Moscow approved by the Kremlin, adds in his November 2015 email to Cohen that he is “eager to show video clips to his Russian contacts of instances of Mr. Trump speaking glowingly about Russia, and . . . he would arrange for Mr. Putin to praise Mr. Trump’s business acumen.” “If he [Putin] says it we own this election”, Sater writes Cohen. “America[’]s most difficult adversary agreeing that Donald is a good guy to negotiate [with].” Sater’s view is that Trump announcing—and Putin implicitly blessing—a Trump Tower Moscow in late 2015 or early 2016 will help propel Trump’s presidential campaign forward. It is the most explicit juxtaposition of politics and business that any of Trump’s business associates have proposed to date.
In January 2016, however, this mark will be bested. Cohen contacts Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin’s spokesman, to directly ask for the Kremlin’s help with Trump’s Trump Tower Moscow deal with Rozov. That Cohen seeks Kremlin assistance on a financial transaction even as Trump is pushing his pro-Russia foreign policy with voters—and that Trump has chosen to hide this transaction not only from voters but from many at his own company—is an indication that Trump and members of his inner circle are working on two simultaneous tracks with the hope that each will reinforce the other.
By late 2015, Alexander Torshinis hosting two dinners in Moscow for a high-level NRA delegation that includes NRA president David Keene, NRA mega-donor Joe Gregory, NRA board member Pete Brownell, and Sheriff David A. Clarke, a Trump supporter who will later become a key Trump surrogate. These men are joined at one of their Moscow dinners by Dmitry Rogozin, a “hardline deputy to Putin” who is at the time (and still is) under U.S. sanctions. During the delegation’s visit, members are also introduced, according to reporting by McClatchy, to other “influential Russian government and business figures.”
In December 2015, retired U.S. Army lieutenant generalMichael Flynn, who has been advising Donald Trump and four other GOP candidates on national security issues for at least two months, goes to a gala in Moscow in celebration of the Kremlin’s media outlet, RT, for whom Flynn works as an analyst. He is seated immediately to the right of Putin. Former U.S. ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul will later tell NBC, “Of course, it is not coincidence that General Flynn was placed next to President Putin. Flynn was considered a close Trump advisor. . . . Why else would they want him there?” Flynn will fail to report any of his income from the event—roughly $40,000.
President Trump Says Michael Flynn Is 'a Very Good Person' | Time
ABOVE: Michael Flynn.
One of the other candidates Flynn is advising is Ben Carson. One of Carson’s national security advisers is George Papadopoulos. Papadopoulos will be hired as a member of Trump’s national security team, after an interview with Trump campaign cochair Sam Clovis and at a time when Flynn and the only just-onboarded Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) constitute the entirety of the Trump campaign’s national security advisory apparatus.
In 2016, the annual NRA conference is held in Louisville, Kentucky, and once again Torshin and Butina attend. Several days before the conference, Butina’s boyfriend, Erickson, writes Trump campaign aide Rick Dearborn to inform the Trump campaign that the Kremlin is “quietly but actively seeking a dialogue with the United States that isn’t forthcoming under the current administration”, adding that “the Kremlin believes that the only possibility of a true reset in this relationship would be with a new Republican in the White House.” Erickson notes that Torshin will attempt to make “first contact” with the Trump campaign at the NRA convention. Erickson adds, “Putin is deadly serious about building a good relationship with Mr. Trump. He wants to extend an invitation to Mr. Trump to visit him in the Kremlin before the election.”
George Papadopoulos asked Trump for a pardon
White House blocks former top Trump aides from testifying - ABC News
TAKEAWAYS: Trump's safe for now, but company's in hot water – Oneida Dispatch
ABOVE (top to bottom): George Papadopoulos, Rick Dearborn, and Alan Futerfas.
At the same time that Torshin approaches Dearborn through Erickson, he also uses Rick Clay, whom the New York Times describes as “an advocate for conservative Christian causes”, to get the same message to Dearborn: Putin wants to meet with Trump, and Torshin wants to meet with Trump first to set up the meeting. Dearborn sends the email from Clay on to Jared Kushner, who nixes the idea, according to two sources interviewed by the New York Times. It’s unknown who else if anyone Dearborn or Kushner pass the email to after reading it, but what is certain is that in fact Torshin does end up dining with Donald Trump Jr. at the NRA convention just a few days later.
Per Vanity Fair, Trump Jr.’s attorney Alan Futerfas says the two men engaged in no more than “gun-related small talk”, but according to McClatchy and the New York Times, Torshin was in fact trying to set up a one-on-one meeting between himself and candidate Trump at an event honoring wounded veterans being hosted at a location near the convention; he even told the campaign he was bringing a gift to the event for Melania Trump.
NRA expenditures on the 2016 presidential primaries and general election were far higher than the NRA initially reported, and will eventually reach and possibly exceed $70 million according to a McClatchy report in January 2018. The figure is a record-shattering one for the NRA. Trump, who had originally promised voters he would spend $1 billion of his own money on his campaign, by the end of the primary season has spent only about 6.5% of that total—while paying his own companies $12 million from his campaign coffers in reimbursements for travel, lodging, meals, and other services. In May 2016, upon clinching the nomination, he announces that he will not be financing his general election campaign and will take funds from the Republican National Committee (RNC) instead. Massive spending by the NRA and the RNC on Trump’s behalf make it possible for him to abandon his self-funding promise from the primary and nevertheless be adequately funded for the November election.
In the end, the NRA spends more than the billionaire Trump does on his own election.
The FBI and Special Counsel Robert Mueller will eventually reveal they have initiated an investigation into whether Torshin and Butina affected the NRA’s historic outlay of funds on Trump’s behalf. Torshin will be sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury Department and Butina will be indicted, imprisoned, and deported. As noted by Vanity Fair in June 2018, “The FBI and special counsel Robert Mueller are investigating meetings between NRA officials and powerful Russian operatives, trying to determine if those contacts had anything to do with the gun group spending $30 million [in direct support] to help elect Donald Trump—triple what it invested on behalf of Mitt Romney in 2012. Use of foreign money in American political campaigns is illegal.”
On October 4, 2016, just a month before the presidential election, Paul Erickson writes an email to an acquaintance that reads, “Unrelated to specific presidential campaigns, I’ve been involved in securing a VERY private line of communication between the Kremlin and key [GOP] leaders through, of all conduits, the NRA.”
Annotated History...