Real News

An Investigative Reporter Uncovers the Foundations of the Trump-Russia Conspiracy

Scott Stedman

• Publisher: Skyhorse
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781510746794
• Topic: Politik & Internationale Beziehungen
• Subtopic: Politische Korruption & Fehlverhalten

Documented Evidence of the Trump-Russia Conspiracy Investigative reporter Scott Stedman has made waves worldwide with his hard-hitting investigative journalism, going as far as anyone has to uncover the deep roots of the Trump-Russia Conspiracy. His research has been cited by the Washington Post, BBC, Reuters, CNN, McClatchy, the Daily Mail, the Guardian, and Vice, and has even helped guide Congress's investigations. Real News collects, for the first time in print, Stedman's eye-opening research into and evidence of every level of the Trump-Russia Conspiracy, from the 2016 Trump Tower Meetings to the dirty-money deal for Trump Tower Moscow, from the "coffee boy" George Papadopoulos and his mysterious wife to Russian infiltration of the National Rifle Association, from Cambridge Analytica's sketchy business deals and influence operations to the battle for true journalism that will combat cries of "Fake News!" Full of real, exclusive evidence including ownership records, flight logs, banking information and statements, meeting transcripts, maps, quotes, stats and figures, cease and desist letters, and more, Real News not only enables readers to see and evaluate the arguments for the existence of the Trump-Russia Conspiracy for themselves, it also fully explains how Stedman went about his investigations to discover the truth. Anyone who is interested in the evidence—the real news about the Trump-Russia Conspiracy—needs to read this book.

Suspicious Business Dealings, Flights, and a Confession in Plain Sight

Who’s Who:

• Konstantin Kilimnik: Russian intelligence-trained political adviser and strategist.

• Oleg Deripaska: One of Russia’s most powerful billionaires, on whom Mr. Putin regularly relies.

• Carter Page: Former Trump campaign foreign policy adviser.

Overview

Encompassing Mr. Trump’s campaign and subsequent election and inauguration were a series of suspicious business deals, mysterious overnight flights from Moscow to New York, and a confession of sorts on social media from one of the Kremlin’s chief propagandists.

Among the most dubious advisers that Mr. Trump onboarded in early 2016 were Paul Manafort and Carter Page. Both men had a large portfolio of financial dealings around the globe, with Mr. Page being in the energy business and Mr. Manafort strategizing for political leaders from DC to Kiev.

Both Mr. Page and Mr. Manafort had caught the attention of federal authorities in the United States well before they joined the Trump campaign. Mr. Manafort and his business and political partner Richard Gates represented the pro-Russian former President of Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovych, in the 2000s. The two men created a web of offshore accounts wherein they received payments from dubious political leaders like Mr. Yanukovych. Mr. Manafort and Mr. Gates also had a multimillion dollar relationship with one of the most powerful Russian oligarchs, Oleg Deripaska. Their connections in Ukraine and Russia had authorities in the United States on alert.

Manafort/Kilimnik/Deripaska

Mr. Manafort spent nearly four decades as a political advisor, starting in the United States on Bob Dole’s 1980 presidential campaign but eventually branching off to Africa, the Middle East, and Eastern Europe. In the years leading up to joining the Trump campaign, Mr. Manafort worked for Mr. Yanukovych’s Party of Regions in Ukraine.

The financial support that Mr. Manafort received from this political consultancy work ended up in various offshore locations, which made the source of his funding difficult to ascertain. The secrecy laws in the countries where Mr. Manafort kept his money allowed him not to declare the ultimate source of the money. Public reporting on his financial profile, including links to organized crime in Eastern Europe, was one of the reasons that Mr. Manafort was forced out of his position on Mr. Trump’s campaign in August 2016.

Mr. Manafort’s proximity to the Kremlin-backed Mr. Yanukovych allowed him to develop relationships with two Russians who would ultimately play a critical role in the Mueller probe: Oleg Deripaska and a well-known Russian intelligence–trained asset, Konstantin Kilimnik.

Mr. Deripaska is one of the most powerful Russian billionaires not named Vladimir Putin. He is the founder of the second-largest aluminum company in the world, as well as two other multi-billion-dollar Russian energy companies. His network of businesses reaches all corners of the globe, providing him with substantial political power in Russia and elsewhere. Mr. Deripaska’s relationship with Mr. Putin has been tumultuous, but by most accounts he remains in close contact with Mr. Putin.

Earning his fortune in the notoriously brutal environment of the violent “aluminum wars” in Russia in the 1990s, Mr. Deripaska has been banned from entering the United States for years as authorities grew concerned about his connections to the Russian mob. In 2012, Mr. Deripaska publicly admitted to paying criminal gangs to protect himself during the height of the battles over the control of various aluminum factories. He has long sought to lift his restriction from traveling to the United States, but to no avail.

Mr. Manafort’s business relationship with Mr. Deripaska dates back at least a decade, when the Russian oligarch hired Mr. Manafort to the tune of $10 million per year to promote Russian interests around the world. For his work in Mr. Yanukovych’s government in Ukraine, Mr. Manafort and his aide Konstantin Kilimnik were once again financially supported by Mr. Deripaska.

Originally hired by Mr. Manafort as a translator, Mr. Kilimnik quickly became Mr. Manafort’s right-hand-man in Ukrainian politics. Educated at the Military University of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation, Mr. Kilimnik served in the Soviet Army, working alongside Russian intelligence operatives. His proximity to Russian intelligence and Mr. Manafort’s activities in Ukraine and elsewhere put Mr. Kilimnik in the good graces of Mr. Deripaska, who regularly paid Mr. Kilimnik to meet Russian businessmen and political leaders.

By the time that Mr. Manafort joined the Trump campaign, his relationship with Mr. Deripaska had turned sour, with the latter filing lawsuits accusing Mr. Manafort of not repaying nearly $20 million in loans. Mr. Manafort took over as Mr. Trump’s campaign chairman in June 2016 in an enormously uncomfortable position: deeply in debt to a mafia-linked Russian billionaire on whom Mr. Putin himself regularly relied.

In an effort to get even, Mr. Manafort reached out to his old friend, Mr. Kilimnik, to give Mr. Deripaska private briefings about the Trump campaign. In one email sent to Mr. Kilimnik in early April 2016, Mr. Manafort referred to press reports naming him as a Trump campaign strategist and said, “I assume you have shown our friends my media coverage, right?”

“Absolutely,” Mr. Kilimnik responded, “Every article.”

“How do we use to get whole?” Mr. Manafort asked. “Has OVD operation seen?” referring to Mr. Deripaska by his initials OVD.

Seeking to leverage his newly rediscovered American political power into a way to get even with the Russian billionaire, Mr. Manafort offered private briefings to Mr. Deripaska in July as Mr. Trump secured the nomination.

“If he needs private briefings we can accommodate,” Mr. Manafort wrote to Mr. Kilimnik with the understanding that he would pass the message along to Mr. Deripaska. Later in July, the correspondences between Mr. Manafort and Mr. Kilimnik became extremely cryptic.

“I met today with the guy who gave you your biggest black caviar jar several years ago,” Kilimnik wrote. “We spent about 5 hours talking about his story, and I have several important messages from him to you. He asked me to go and brief you on our conversation. I said I have to run it by you first, but in principle I am prepared to do it, provided that he buys me a ticket. It has to do about the future of his country, and is quite interesting. So, if you are not absolutely against the concept, please let me know which dates/places will work, even next week, and I could come and see you.”

Investigators believe that “black caviar” is a reference to financial transactions. Mr. Manafort agreed to the meeting and the two men planned to meet in New York on the following Tuesday, August 2nd.

“I need about two hours,” Mr. Kilimnik wrote to Mr. Manafort on July 31, “because it is a long caviar story to tell.”

Mr. Manafort and Mr. Kilimnik met over cigars in Manhattan on the evening of August 2nd, days after the Russian-intelligence trained political strategist told the Trump campaign manager that he would be delivering messages from Mr. Deripaska. Make no mistake, these messages from Mr. Deripaska represented a line of communication from the Russian government to Mr. Trump’s campaign just days after WikiLeaks had released the first batch of emails from the Democratic National Committee, which investigators have concluded were stolen by Russian intelligence operatives. It remains unclear what the men discussed.

Hours after Mr. Manafort and Mr. Kilimnik met in Manhattan, Mr. Deripaska was filmed on his yacht in Norway alongside the Russian Deputy Prime Minister, Sergei Prikhodko. The videos, taken by Mr. Deripaska’s alleged mistress, Nastya Rybka, include the men discussing Russian–US relations, fueling speculation that Mr. Deripaska was acting as a conduit between the Trump team and the Russian government.

Mr. Manafort’s financial dealings, his August 2016 meeting with Mr. Kilimnik, and the surrounding circumstances comprised my two reports in February and March of 2018.

The Process

Mr. Manafort’s financial empire spanned many locations, from the Cayman Islands to Cyprus to Florida. With the experience I had under my belt with Cypriot documents from my research into Trump Tower Moscow, I turned to Mr. Manafort’s various shell companies registered on the small Mediterranean island.

One company in particular, Lucicle Consultants Limited, had already been named by Mr. Mueller’s prosecutors in their indictment against Mr. Manafort and Mr. Gates as a vehicle for money laundering and tax evasion. The company had also garnered press attention for the loans it had received from Russian and Ukrainian-connected entities. With this intrigue, I wrote to the Cypriot government a request for all documents filed by Lucicle Consultants Limited.

The folder of documents contained twelve PDFs including audited financial statements, something not always required by the government. On page twenty-three of the financial statements was a list of loans received by the company in the years of 2012 and 2013. Four of the five loans had been identified by various media reports. But the fifth loan, which was by far the biggest, had not been disclosed. This loan, exclusively reported by myself, would be identified by Mr. Mueller’s prosecutors some three weeks after my article.

February 1, 2018

The Unreported Loan: Paul Manafort Received Seven Million Dollars in Cyprus from Unidentifiable Company

The 2012 loan came from a company with no public records.

Days before Paul Manafort received a loan from mob-connected Ukrainian politician Ivan Fursin, one of Manafort’s Cypriot companies received $7 million from a company that doesn’t appear to have existed at the time.

Newly obtained financial statements from one of Manafort’s shell companies — Lucicle Consultants Limited — show that Manafort received his biggest loan from Telmar Investments Limited. The loan was issued to Manafort in February 2012, during the period of time that he was advising President Yanukovych of Ukraine.

In the Manafort and Rick Gates indictment, Special Counsel Robert Mueller argued that the two men used Lucicle to avoid paying taxes and to purchase lavish items in the United States. Among the purchases made by Manafort using money from Lucicle include three Range Rovers, a Mercedez-Benz, and a $14,000 piece of art. Manafort also sent $1.9 million from Lucicle to a real estate trust in Virginia to purchase his Arlington home.

A New York Times report from June 2017 identified Lucicle, months before the Special Counsel’s indictment. In the report, the Times found that Manafort had been in debt to pro-Russia interests by as much as $17 million before he joined Trump’s presidential campaign. One of the companies that transferred money to Lucicle is owned by Ukrainian Party of Regions member of Parliament Ivan Fursin. A Daily Beast article in November of 2017 reported that Fursin was a senior member in the Semion Mogilevich criminal organization, citing a fellow at Johns Hopkins-SAIS Center for Transatlantic Relations.

By far the largest expenditure to Manafort was the $7 million from Telmar in 2012 — something the Times did not mention. It appears that this money was then transferred to Manafort in the United States. Telmar is the only company that loaned Manafort money that was not mentioned by the Special Counsel’s office in the October indictment of Manafort and Gates. The omission is especially noteworthy because of the meticulous details in the indictment, listing every Manafort-involved Cypriot monetary transaction over a period of nearly a decade.

An analysis of Telmar Investments Limited (also spelled ‘Temar’ in ...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Half-Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface: Journalism that Combats Cries of Fake News
• Introduction
• Trump Tower Moscow and Dirty Russian Money
• The Secret 2016 Manhattan Meetings
• The Coffee Boy and His Mysterious Wife
• Russian Infiltration of the National Rifle Association
• Suspicious Business Dealings, Flights, and a Confession in Plain Sight
• Epilogue
• Who’s Who: A Glossary of Key Trump-Russia Figures
• Personal Acknowledgments
• About the Author