Individuals (not discussed much) Linking Trump to Putin

In previous posts, I have written about the DNC hack and how WikiLeaks published the information. In this post I'm going to switch to discussing some individuals who haven't gotten as much press as General Michael Flynn, Paul Manafort, and others.



Boris Epshteyn


Recently Rachel Maddow has discussed the Trump presidential Inauguration and how money was raised far beyond what was needed. She asks a key question, where is the left-over money. Well, Boris Epshteyn ran the inaugural committee. He resigned from the administration March 31, 2017 before we got to know him and perhaps to ask him where the money went.

He was born in Moscow, Russia and came to America at age 11 (with his Jewish parents). Naturally, he speaks Russian fluently. He went to Georgetown University where he roomed with Donald Trump's son, Eric Trump. Was that accidental or arranged? He graduated from Georgetown cum laude and began working in law, investment banking and later in politics. He was an adviser to the McCain-Palin campaign in 2008!

He says he was "Managing Director of Business and Legal Affairs" at West America Securities Corp. from 2009-2013. But, it was expelled from the financial industry by the Financial Industry Regulation Authority (FINRA) in 2013 when its CEO was charged with fraud.

More recently, it has been suggested he was "Source E" in the (now famous) Dossier on Trump, created by Christopher Steele (former MI-6 operative).



Pyotyr Levashov


He was recently arrested in Spain and got some press coverage for that. He is suspected of being one of the world's top bot-net creators. While he was being questioned by the authorities his wife was interviewed by the press. She said he was being held because of something he did which was related to the U.S. election and Trump's victory. He has been indicted in Connecticut, should the U.S. ever get their hands on him.

There are possibly two separate connections of him to Trump & Co. There are allegations that he was recruited by Boris Epshteyn to do the election work and the other is that he created the Kehlios botnet which infected computers through Facebook and perhaps collected information on Americans. The kicker is that experts who have studied the Trump Organization computer servers which regularly communicated with the Russian Alfa Bank (note: previously and erroneously written "Alpha Bank" by Christopher Steele and others) believe the Trump servers were part of the botnet Levashov created and may have been a "command and control" center for the botnet.

Note: Levashov is not the same as Petyr Chayanov who ran Hostkey & Guccifer 2, hacked the DNC, and then fed the information to WikiLeaks.




Rick Davis


He worked in the Reagan White House from 1985 - 3/1987.

He was Manafort's deputy in orchestrating the 1996 Republican National Convention.

Later they joined Bob Dole's presidential team.

He worked with Paul Manafort from 1998-2008. In the middle of that he was campaign manager on the McCain-Palin presidential campaign. He has a lot of international experience running political campaigns with Manafort. Many of the places Davis-Manafort did work were parts of the former Soviet Union. Their work in Ukraine has gained Manafort most of the attention because of the big connections to Russia -- especially in the natural gas business where Russia sends natural gas through Ukrainian pipelines into Europe.

In 2006 he arranged (or set-up) a private meeting in Sweden between Senators John McCain, Saxby Chambliss, and John E. Sununu (son of former governor and Reagan White House Chief of Staff John H. Sununu) with Russian Oleg Deripaska (one of the Oligarchs).



Michael Caputo "The Publicist"


He worked for the U.S. House of Representatives before 1992 and was director of media services for the Bush-Quayle presidential campaign of 1992. Since 1992 he has done public relations work, much of it involving Russia.

He lived in Russia through the 1990s, under contract with Gazprom media -- partly to improve the public image of Putin.

He married a Russian woman.

He resigned the Trump campaign communications department 6/2016.



Dmitry Firtash


One of the richest men in Ukraine and a supporter of relations with Putin's Russia. Former Prime Minister of Ukraine, Yulia Tymoschenko charged that he was behind the efforts to have her removed from office (which occurred in 2011) and jailed. Tymoschenko also claims it was Paul Manafort who executed the plan. The charge was dismissed as being more political than criminal.

However, Firtash was indicted and arrested and is in Austria. In February 2017 he was indicted in Chicago, USA and extradition was requested from Austria. Firtash was to be released, but was arrested in Spain for money laundering.

It has been suggested Firtash is also a quiet investor in Cambridge Analytica (a U.K. firm which analyzes big data to help political campaigns, such as Trump 2016). It isn't easy to prove that connection, but he has investments in the U.K. which correlate with a real estate developer named Robert Tchenguiz.


Robert Tchenguiz


(from Wikipedia) Robert Tchenguiz was born in Teheran to an Iraqi-Jewish family, the son of Victor and Violet Khadouri. His family left Iraq in 1948 and settled in Iran, where his father, a jeweller, worked for the Shah and ran the country's mint. He also changed the family surname from Khadouri to Tchenguiz. Do not confuse Robert with his brother Vincent, though they have worked together at times.

I don't know much about him as a real estate person. Perhaps he knows Trump directly.

He owned a company called Wheedon Ltd. Wheedon invested in Zander Group which also had Dmitry Firtash as an investor.

Tchenguiz is more known for his investment in Cambridge Analytica. But, curiously he is also invested in a comany called SCL Group UK and one of their subdivisions is SCL Elections and one of theirs was called SCL USA until its name was changed to (get this) Cambridge Analytica. Confusing? You bet!



Mikhail Fridman


He is one of the Russian oligarchs who arose from near poverty to tremendous wealth. He founded Alfa Bank with several other people, including Pyotr Aven, a close Putin ally.

Alfa Bank computer servers were communicating regularly with Trump Organization servers (there were two) until it was revealed.


Fridman has sold his Alfa Bank investment and formed a new investment firm (LetterOne) in 2013 in Luxembourg with Pyotr Aven. It has a subsidiary called "Pamploma" funds, created in 2001 (presumably purchased by LetterOne). Pamploma advisers to the board of directors includes Thomas "Mack" McLarty III, Bill Clinton's Chief of Staff, and Richard Burt (McLarty and Burt are business partners).



Richard Burt "The Banker"


He is/was the chairman of the National Interest's advisory board. National Interest is the in-house journal of the Center for the National Interest. This is where Donald Trump gave his first (only?) national security speech. It has been suggested he wrote the speech.

A few of the N.I. Directors are notable: Henry Kissinger is an honorary director, but Dov Zakheim (of Neocon, New American Century fame), Senator Pat Roberts (R-Kansas), Leslie Gelb, Grover Norquist, John Huntsman, and Mike Mullen are better known.

He is a former ambassador to Germany and a State Department official during the Reagan administration. He was an unpaid adviser to the presidential campaign of Rand Paul, but was enlisted by Paul Manafort for the Trump campaign.

He also lobbied for Nord Stream II, a natural gas pipeline from Russia to Europe (though avoiding Ukraine or Belarus) for which he was paid $350,000 from 1/2016 - 6/2016. Russia's Gazprom owned 50% of the company which would have built the pipeline.

He also sits on the senior advisory board of Alfa Bank.



Paul Manafort


I've tried to find the connection from him through Dmitry Firtash to Alfa Bank, but it is elusive. Louise Mensch has said the connection exists, but offers no proof.



Conclusions?


There an inordinant number of people connected to Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin. It's really amazing. Is it a smoking gun that crimes were committed? Not by itself. But, when you consider the actions of each and how they all seem to be connected, it's hard to not see this as a typical RICO group or at least a Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy.