American Kompromat: How the KGB Cultivated Donald Trump, and Related Tales of Sex, Greed, Power, and Treachery

“Shvets’s assessment is strikingly similar to those of various CIA officers. “Trump is extremely vulnerable to flattery,” Rolf Mowatt-Larssen told me. “He almost defines relationships entirely by who flatters him and who doesn’t, as opposed to the intrinsic value of what people say. He doesn’t care at all about the fact that Russians are masters at manipulation.”

“And many, if not all of those transactions, must be viewed not just as dubious financial deals with formerly Soviet entities, but as part of a long, ongoing Russian intelligence operation.”

“And two former models said that Trump’s agency suggested they lie on customs forms about where they planned to live. All of which meant they were perpetually scared of getting caught and pretty much at the mercy of the agency. All of which was ironic indeed, given Trump’s hard-line immigration policies as president and his assertions that undocumented immigrants are taking American jobs.”

“dictator in waiting who would intentionally allow hundreds of thousands of his fellow citizens to die so long as it helped him stay in power.”

“According to the New York State attorney general’s office, the upshot of the deal was that the Russian Mafia had just laundered money through Donald Trump’s real estate.”

“Even though he had implemented anti-science-based policies that had led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans, he could do no wrong—thanks to a cult of personality created and aroused by his Trumpian spectacles and amplified by a sycophantic right-wing media. He was America’s own autocrat.”

“In effect, Trump was saying, If you won’t help my campaign by drumming up a phony investigation against my opponent, I’ll let the Russians do as they please.”

“In terms of his personality,” Shvets added, “the guy is not a complicated cookie, his most important characteristics being low intellect coupled with hyperinflated vanity. This combination makes him a dream for an experienced recruiter.”

“In other words, America was in crisis and there was no coordinated national health policy. And worse, like a slow-motion Reichstag fire, the disease itself was being weaponized and politicized by Trump and his followers. Much like the 1933 arson attack that allowed Germany’s newly elected chancellor Adolf Hitler to consolidate power, the pandemic provided cover for Trump and Barr to do likewise.”

“Under Trump, norms were violated so frequently that conflicts of interest became the rule rather than the exception. The thieves and kleptocrats, or their lawyers, really, were in control.”

“In other words, according to Vasquez, Epstein saw Trump Model Management as a prototype to emulate while working with Brunel to lure minor children in to participate in sexual activity for money. After all, if you were looking for success in the world of sex trafficking, what better role model than Donald Trump?”

“Time had collapsed. It had no meaning to tens of millions of Americans who stayed home day after day, locked down in semi-isolation. And truth had collapsed as well.”

“From the KGB’s point of view, the most appealing quality about Trump was probably that he had a personality that was ideal for a potential asset—vain, narcissistic, highly susceptible to flattery, and greedy.”

“Trump was a dream for KGB officers looking to develop an asset,” Shvets told me. “Everybody has weaknesses. But with Trump it wasn’t just weakness. Everything was excessive. His vanity, excessive. Narcissism, excessive. Greed, excessive. Ignorance, excessive.”

“Now, with Trump in command, the Justice Department was further transformed into an institution that embraced the most extreme interpretation of the unitary-executive doctrine imaginable by making the president truly above the law.”

“For more than three decades, at least thirteen people with known or alleged links to the Russian Mafia held the deeds to, lived in, or ran criminal operations out of Trump Tower in New York or other Trump properties.”

“My book will show how kompromat works by examining Jeffrey Epstein’s pedophile sex-trafficking operation, where he got his money from, his links to Israeli intelligence and to Robert Maxwell, Ghislaine Maxwell’s father, who worked so closely with the KGB. Similarly, it will look into how Russian intelligence penetrated Epstein’s operation and placed within it Russian nationals who infiltrated the highest level of Silicon Valley and America’s tech sector as part of Vladimir Putin’s assault on America.”

“recurring horror show” as Fintan O’Toole wrote in the Irish Times in April 2020, “in which all the neuroses that haunt the American subconscious dance naked on live TV.”

“Later, long after he took up residence in the White House, people asked again and again what the Russians had on Trump. And in a way, it’s really quite simple: They owned him.—”

“In effect, as attorney general, Barr, a leading figure in the newly emergent Catholic right—with its ties to Opus Dei, a mysterious fringe sect with roots in fascist Spain—was bringing in a new strain of religious authoritarianism and theocratic nationalism to join forces with Trumpism on their way to collision after collision with the US Constitution. All this in a world of decadence and depravity tied to figures like Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, whose pedophile operation trafficked in underage girls as young as eleven, and also had links to Russian intelligence.”

“The explosion of the Black Lives Matter movement didn’t take place in a vacuum. It materialized in the midst of the greatest health crisis of the century—the COVID-19 pandemic. And in the United States, the pandemic was being handled with all the proficiency that one might expect to find in a corrupt and dysfunctional regime led by a superstitious, science-defying authoritarian leader of a banana republic who had decided to let the people fend for themselves—and die accordingly. Notices about COVID-19 had appeared in the president’s daily briefings (PDB) as early as January 2020, but, as was usually the case with PDBs, Trump didn’t bother to read them.”

“There was nothing illegal, for example, about naturalized American citizens like the Odessa-born billionaire oligarch Len Blavatnik and his businesses contributing millions to Mitch McConnell’s GOP Senate Leadership Fund and to the Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee, as he did in 2016.”

“Escrivá’s tome is full of aphorisms that can be interpreted as being in service to autocratic, nationalistic, and fascist leaders by glorifying war,[22] secrecy, and blind obedience to authority.”

“Next came the professional evaluation, for which Trump would have had to meet with an experienced operative at least three or four times. “In terms of his personality,” Shvets added, “the guy is not a complicated cookie, his most important characteristics being low intellect coupled with hyperinflated vanity. This combination makes him a dream for an experienced recruiter.”

“Trump may not have been doing anything illegal at the Mayflower, but the Russians were there and in a position to expose him. That was kompromat. That was how it worked. The press covered the event as something that was completely normal. In fact, nothing illegal was taking place. Nevertheless, Russian intelligence had essentially hijacked Trump’s foreign policy in plain sight and nobody noticed.”