Comments by "" (@DavidJ222) on "CITIZEN by CNN: Fiona Hill on election safety and Russian interference" video.
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“There are few things better than receiving a sensational gift from someone you admire — and that’s what I’ve received from you,” Trump wrote to Aras Agalarov on June 17, 2016. He continued, “I’m rarely at a loss for words, but right now I can only say how much I appreciate your friendship and to thank you for this fantastic gift. This is one birthday that I will always remember.” One week earlier, Agalarov had sent an expensive painting to then-candidate Trump on the eve of his birthday. And just one day before the painting arrived, Agalarov had helped deliver a very different kind of gift to Trump Tower: a delegation from the Russian government with promised opposition research on Trump’s political foe, Clinton. There are hints that Trump may have been aware of the delegation’s arrival and welcomed whatever boon it might bring.
The Trump Tower meeting on June 9 forms the core of collusion to date. It demonstrates the Trump campaign’s willingness to accept assistance from a foreign government in its bid to win the presidency. Campaign finance experts have noted that, simply by virtue of taking the meeting with an envoy from the “Crown prosecutor of Russia,” the prosecutor general of the Russian Federation, the campaign may have broken federal election laws. These laws strictly prohibit soliciting or accepting anything of value, which would include opposition research, from a foreign national or government to advance a domestic campaign.
Against the background of the Trump Tower meeting, several multimillion-dollar transactions executed through Agalarov’s accounts emerge in stark relief and raise questions as to their purpose. On June 3—the same day Don Jr. received the email from Rob Goldstone offering assistance from the Russian government—to which he eventually replied, “I love it”—Aras Agalarov initiated a transfer of $3.3 million to the U.S. Irakly Kaveladze, Agalarov’s representative at the Trump Tower meeting, facilitated the transfer. Specifically, Kaveladze also used his own accounts, thereby making the money trail harder to follow. Three separate banking institutions reportedly flagged the relevant transactions as highly suspicious.
On June 20, 11 days after the June 9 meeting, Agalarov transferred almost $20 million from Russia to his bank account in the U.S. Bank officials, perplexed as to the money’s ultimate destination, flagged the transaction. Even for a bonafide oligarch—Agalarov, known as the “Donald Trump of Russia,” is reportedly worth $1.6 billion—this sum is not trivial. Twenty million dollars is what Agalarov paid Trump to bring the Miss Universe pageant to Moscow in Novembe 2013. Twenty million is also more than a third of the $50 million Trump forgave his campaign that same month.
Agalarov used a Swiss bank account and a British Virgin Islands shell corporation to ostensibly layer the transaction, wiring $19.5 million to his Morgan Stanley account in the U.S. Ilya Bykov, Agalarov’s New York-based accountant, said that in May, he had incorporated a Delaware-based corporation specifically to receive this transfer. Yet, the money was ultimately sent directly to Agalarov’s bank account. It is not clear why the created shell company was not used as intended. The Delaware company, bearing the generic name Silver Valley Consulting, was meant to provide anonymity, meaning it was set up so to conceal any links to Agalarov. Bykov was listed as the company’s president and director in the incorporation documents filed with the Delaware secretary of state. Had Agalarov used this Delaware shell as intended, bank and FinCEN investigators would likely not have spotted the large money transfer.
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Russian GRU officers accused of hacking the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and the DNC used cryptocurrency to pay for the necessary computer infrastructure in the U.S. Mueller’s indictment found that the defendants “conspired to launder the equivalent of more than $95,000 through a web of transactions structured to capitalize on the perceived anonymity” of bitcoin, among other cryptocurrencies. The GRU hackers used hundreds of different email accounts to purchase servers to avoid creating a “centralized paper trail.” They also enlisted several third parties that “facilitated layered transactions through digital currency exchange platforms, providing heightened anonymity.” The extensive laundering of the funds was intended not only to further a crime, but also to obscure the origin of the funds, providing the operation a degree of plausible deniability.
It is not unusual for discussions of foreign political influence operations to pivot to embassies. Former Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, in particular, is a key figure in the narrative of alleged collusion between the Russian government and the Trump campaign. He held a series of secret meetings with Trump campaign officials, including Kushner, Jeff Sessions, Michael Flynn, former Trump adviser Carter Page, and former Trump adviser J.D. Gordon. During one private meeting Kislyak held with Kushner and Flynn, they discussed the possibility of establishing a secure communications channel between the Kremlin and the Trump campaign. During the transition, Kislyak had also brokered a meeting between Kushner and the head of a sanctioned Russian government bank, Vnesheconombank. The bank maintains the meeting was about Kushner’s family business; Kushner denies this and says the meeting was a diplomatic one related to his role in the presidential transition.
On top of these controversial meetings, Kislyak’s embassy also carried out several suspicious transactions that U.S. bank investigators have flagged to U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network.
First, in November 2016—10 days after Trump won the presidency—the Russian government wired Kislyak a lump-sum payment of $120,000. Both the timing and the amount raise questions, as the sum was more than twice Kislyak’s normal salary payments.
Second, the Russian Embassy attempted to make a $150,000 cash withdrawal just a few days after Trump’s inauguration in January 2017. The bank reportedly blocked this transaction, because it questioned the embassy’s justification that it needed cash in Washington to pay employees who had already returned to Russia.
Third, the embassy paid $2.4 million to a small construction company controlled by a Russian immigrant in the United States, who was reportedly not equipped to carry out the work commissioned. What’s more, the bank investigators found that the money was “cashed quickly or wired to other accounts.” Manafort’s trial showed, small vendors can be instrumental, intentionally or not, to laundering large amounts of money from abroad.
US law bans foreign nationals from donating to political campaigns, but they can circumvent the restrictions by routing financial support through anonymous bank accounts, shell corporations, and front companies. it is easy to set up a company without disclosing its purpose or the identity of its true owners.
Foreign adversaries can then use these companies to execute anonymous financial transactions that facilitate attacks on free and fair democratic elections.
A network of shell corporations could be used to hide the origin of foreign funds pumped into a political action committee, or a social media political ad campaign. The Kremlin has long had expertise in this area. During the Soviet Union’s heyday, the KGB perfected the craft of anonymously moving funds to seed foreign political campaigns. The FSB and the GRU, the KGB successors, are well-versed in these techniques as well.
Law enforcement and congressional investigations have revealed that Kremlin-linked actors paid considerable sums of money to support Trump and curry his favor. A Russian organization controlled by an oligarch close to Putin spent more than $1 million a month just on social media campaigns favoring Trump, according to the special counsel. A Russian American energy tycoon—who boasted to a Kremlin official in July 2016 of being “actively involved in Trump’s election campaign”—donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to the Trump Victory fund. And a company affiliated with a sanctioned Russian oligarch paid $1 million to Michael Cohen, then Trump’s personal lawyer, for unspecified services after the election. These and other transactions examined throughout the report establish that, during the campaign and presidential transition, Trump had several compromising financial entanglements with actors representing a hostile foreign power.
Russian oligarch Aras Agalarov’s transferred $20 million to an American bank account just days after a meeting that he organized between Trump senior campaign officials, including Manafort, Kushner, and a Russian government attorney. Hackers, troll farms, and spies cannot operate without money. Following the money trail helps investigators discover who is funding these entities.
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