CHAPTER 14

A Treasonous Aspect

Any final assessment by a trained intelligence professional would conclude that Trump was a spy’s dream. His poor personal characteristics and indifference to anything or anyone but himself would be exploitable. Perhaps as far back as 1987, Russia had their sights on Trump as a potential asset. Little did they realize that as President he would become almost as effective as a witting trusted agent.

When 45th President of the United States Donald J. Trump speaks, little comes from his mouth that was not put there by shaping actions and experiences with Russians, and was carefully planned to benefit the Russian Republic. There is a reason for that. It is not just his personal disposition toward Putin and his affiliation with the pan-European conservative network that motivates him. It is not brainwashing per se. It’s that Trump has really come to embody Russia’s interest. He believes what he is doing will benefit his base, which includes seeking the approval of Vladimir Putin and the Russian people who made him feel more welcome than the people who did not vote for him.

That the Russians established a plan to hijack the perceptions of the American public and steer it to the benefit Donald Trump in order to make him President of the United States is now without question. However, the combination of the Directorate of National Intelligence’s estimate on the hacking, and the Mueller indictment of the Internet Research Agency, along with Trump’s own words and actions, would give any intelligence analyst high confidence that he was complicit in this plan.

To the public, the jury is out on the level of culpability and cooperation he has provided to the Russian Federation, though the circumstantial evidence is overwhelming. One could allow that he may have been an unwitting asset when he sent his first tweet in 2012 promising to Make America Great Again, but by 2018 it was clear he was no longer unwitting.

In the parlance of an intelligence professional, he is a Witting Asset. In the legal arena, he has betrayed his oath to protect and defend the Constitution. In the words of the common person on the street, he is considered by many to be a traitor.

How Trump’s Decisions Were Made for Him

NATO practitioners in Russian active measures and cyber warfare are given a study so that they understand their ideological opponents in the information warfare battle space. The Handbook on Russian Information Warfare is a brilliant study which introduces the practitioner to the formerly Soviet, now Russian, concept of “Reflexive Control.” NATO defines it as “… the practice of predetermining an adversary’s decision in Russia’s favour, by altering key factors in the adversary’s perception of the world.”¹

The Russian General Staff changed the name of this process to “perception management.”

The Russians have been applying perception management against the United States on a near continuous basis since 2010. But, in 2012 to 2013, they focused their strategy to impact the 2016 election. The Russians decided that they would be the ones to set the parameters for what American citizens and their choice for President should be seeing. Done correctly, Russian perception management ensures that situations that confront American leadership would be seen through a lens that the leader believes is his own formulation. In fact, when Russian political, propaganda, and information warfare were applied correctly, the leader actually sees the situation through the lens that is crafted for him. In other words, if the leader sees the world through rose colored glasses, the Russian information dominance process will not only give him the rose colored lenses, they will have also created the circumstances where the leader will believe that it was his decision to put the rose glasses, not the yellow ones, on in the first place. This is performed by creating metanarratives—framing a situation on a strategic level well before the opponent enters the equation. The NATO handbook states:

“Control of an opponent’s decision is achieved by means of providing him with the grounds by which he is able logically to derive his own decision, but one that is predetermined by the other side.”²

British information warfare analyst Charles Blandy noted a Ukrainian study, The Fog of War: Russian Strategy of Deception and the Conflict in the Ukraine, in which the stages of shaping a perception management campaign around an opponent after applying force (or in peacetime a lack of force) can be achieved in four major stages:

“By assisting the opponent’s formulation of an appreciation of the initial situation.

By shaping the opponent’s objectives.

By shaping the opponent’s decision-making algorithm.

By the choice of the decision-making moment.”³

Since the rise of Putin as the leader of the Russian Federation, Russian perception management is a key psychological warfare component of Russia’s intelligence preparation of its new information battlefield. When Putin would decide to implement this policy would depend on several factors, the most important of which was the American political environment, especially the level of intensity of the opposition to Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, the will of the President to understand and oppose Russia’s moves in the information domain, and the level of legitimacy that Russian PM techniques could be given through the global media. On the whole, George W. Bush was a tough President, and he was surrounded by the National Security staff of his father, an ardent anti-Communist. Though Bush saw “Putin’s soul” and nicknamed him “Pooty-Poot,” he would have been a poor choice by which to try to craft the right environment to change US policy toward Russia. President Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton tried to reset tough relations with Russia after their interference in Georgia and Estonia, and their constant hacking attempts on the American administration. They were even worse choices. As the run-up to the American elections began, it was clear that Russia had managed to see that they could operate against Washington in the information sphere with their state media achieving parity with US cable news. WikiLeaks was still a credible “transparency” organization. Julian Assange hated Hillary Clinton, so combined with the incessant Republican attacks on her truthfulness and her emails, he could be helpful.

The Republican field had many players, but only one would fit all the parameters of Charles Blandy’s perception management matrix. And he was very well known to Russian intelligence.

Creating a global change by introducing Russia’s metanarratives into the mind of an American presidential prospect would require him to be handled by Russia’s Spymaster-in-Chief personally. With every asset, witting or unwitting, would come an evaluation as to his or her suitability to be handled by the human intelligence officers of the FSB and SVR. As Yuri Bezmenov said, the old KGB (and now the new clandestine service) preferred self-centered conservative narcissists who are greedy and lacked moral principles. Those vulnerabilities and character flaws of a perfect ideological blank slate who would do whatever was whispered in his ear by the Russian leader and his oligarchy were written all over the most egotistical person in the Western Hemisphere: Donald J. Trump.

Trump was historically known as a transactional leader who would do whatever it took to benefit himself. He was ready to make a deal no matter how bad. Several times Trump had proven that he was, in fact, an extremely poor businessman—the man had managed to bankrupt a casino! He failed at every venture he had taken part in. Had it not been his inheritance of up to $200 million from his father, he would be a destitute braggart.

Recruiting Trump by Chasing MICE

The basic recruiting methodology used by intelligence officers around the world to recruit an unwitting person to become a spy or asset is an acronym that spells MICE.⁴

Naveed Jamali, a US naval intelligence officer and former FBI double agent, was recruited by Russian intelligence to spy on America. For three years, he was supervised by a GRU officer, a Russian Navy captain assigned to the Russian embassy in New York City. Jamali said, “The goal [of the Russian agent] is to cultivate a source and begin a relationship with them. As the relationship progresses it moves from overt to covert with the handler directing the asset to complete [his or her] operational tasking.” This explains Trump’s relationship with Putin—how would Trump come to know what Putin was up to? How would he ever believe anything other than that Putin was his friend? Russia scholars Fiona Hill and Clifford Gaddy accurately assessed the folly of this endeavor: “The most obvious reason we cannot take any story or so-called fact at face value when it comes to Vladimir Putin is that we are dealing with someone who is a master at manipulating information, suppressing information, and creating pseudo-information.”⁵

M—Money. No matter if the person wants to or not, once cash or another form of payment changes hands, they have become an asset to an intelligence agency. If the person decides to ally themselves and join with the agency and sign a contract of service, they are an agent. One can be tricked into thinking they are working for law enforcement and still be an agent of a hostile intelligence service, which we call a false-flag. In 1986, Ronald Pelton was arrested by the FBI for espionage. He was an NSA Russian-speaking analyst who sold secrets to Russia for five years. Pelton was deeply in debt. Though he had left the NSA, he contacted the Russians and sold Top Secret national security information for a total of $37,000. The CIA’s spy in Russia, Vitaly Yurchenko, became privy to this and exposed Pelton.

In the case of Donald Trump, the Russians had long known that he was in fact one of the worse dealmakers in the world. He was in a near constant quest for money. None of his inheritance, or his many endeavors from Trump steaks to Trump wines, could ever bring him to the level of respect he thought he deserved. He always fell back on real estate. Russia made up a major part of his portfolio and the Kremlin tested if he was a suitable MICE. They first tested his level of avariciousness. Trump sold a Palm Springs mansion to Russian oligarch Dmitry Rybolovlev for $91 million. He made a 130% profit off the deal. It was a perfect cash dangle to see what Trump would do for money.⁶

This is what makes Trump such a perfect target to be influenced by a foreign power. Trump exercises no impulse control, and this makes him easily manipulated by the Russian formula for assets that watches his every action and move. A good agency can see where opportunity arises. Recklessness and impulsivity can give Russian diplomats, oligarchs, and spies a chance to step in to take market shares away from America and into Putin’s coffers.

I—Ideology. Recruited assets often become agents due to their desire to become useful to the nation or cause with which they are ideologically aligned.

Aras Agalarov, billionaire investor in the CROCUS Group, organizer of the Miss Universe pageant, and Russian oligarch was also the owner of the Nobu restaurant in Moscow. In November 2013, Agalarov quietly arranged a private two-hour meeting between Trump and a dozen of Russia’s richest men. They were sequestered with Trump and spent that time presenting to him Russia’s worldview. The group, including Herman Gref, CEO of the Russian state bank, Sberbank JPSC, and German Khan, the banking and oil magnate, opposed the Atlantic-European axis. Their perspectives, allied with those of the American conservatives, would create an impenetrable sphere of anti-global sentiment, which Trump would adopt. Jamali revealed that “The targeting of an asset by Russian intel often starts with overt and legitimate meetings. These early interactions are both innocuous and butter up the target by stroking their ego.” During this meeting, Trump heard, and appears to have adopted, the positions of Russia in the way a compliant puppy relishes the food and treats given to him. In a room with the global elite—multibillionaires who were close personal friends of Vladimir Putin, the man who could OK his lifelong dream project, Trump Tower Moscow—Trump would have adopted any position he saw as beneficial to himself. Assets tend to become pliant when both money and ideology converge with people they admire and who could facilitate their dreams; Trump would have sold his own child for Moscow at this point. The Nobu meeting was likely the point where Trump accepted his witting subornation by Moscow.

C—Coercion/Cooption/Compromised. Once an asset starts operations it is quite possible that the handlers will explain the gravity and seriousness of the betrayal, that many will come to fear that they have been caught in something, and that their family will be left destitute from exposure. This approach ensures compliance from the asset. It can also be followed with death threats or threats of physical torture. In many instances, the intelligence officer will have Kompromat, compromising information on the person, which could be used to threaten exposure or public humiliation.

As far back as 1988, Soviet and the Communist Czechoslovakian intelligence agencies were told by informants that Trump harbored presidential aspirations. According to German news magazine Bild, and Czech Television 24, the Czechs had been tasked with collecting information on Trump, starting in 1977.⁷ Documents marked Top Secret were drafted by the Czechoslovakian State Security Agency, the StB (Státní Bezpečnost). Czech agents were monitoring Trump and his wife Ivana, who was born in Czechoslovakia. She would take Trump to visit her father, Miloš Zelníček, in the 70s and 80s, before they divorced.⁸ The StB reported directly to the KGB. They would receive all of this information and fuse it with intelligence on Trump that was collected in the United States and during his 1988 trip to Russia. These high-value target intelligence dossiers would be in a state archive at the Lubyanka Headquarters of the KGB when Putin was director of the FSB. These dossiers were automated and available for exploitation teams. When Trump visited Moscow in 2013 for the Miss Universe pageant, numerous Russians had done business with him. Trump had people friendly to Moscow on his staff and was desperate to seek an audience with Putin. All of this was very well known. Trump was a business competitor with the Russian oligarchs whether he knew it or not. Trump would have been designated a Special Collections Target (HVP-SCT). SCTs are usually reserved for heads of state or extremely wealthy businessmen like Bill Gates or George Soros. They were also reserved for CIA officers and former intelligence agency visitors. Having handled national level high-value targets, it’s been my personal experience that these targets required special handling. They would target Trump’s personal telephone and other voice communications. They would collect wiretaps on telephones in his hotel and from wires worn by people designated to collect private conversations with the celebrity. The FSB would have been reading Trump’s activities and reporting in real time to the Kremlin anything of significance. The FSB would have had an Imagery Collections Team (aka Kompromat Evidence Team) operating independently with still and video cameras, both hidden and embedded into the walls to catch Trump in any compromising situation that could be used for exploitation. Every woman he kissed was videotaped. Every ass he pinched was recorded. Every sweet nothing he said to a mistress or side deal was the property of the Russian Federation. Being coerced is evidenced by the very fact that Trump would never, ever disparage or insult President Putin. The only credible explanation is that Moscow has information or evidence that could bring down the only thing Trump cares about—the Trump financial empire. This form of coercion would be revealed to Trump openly and blatantly so that there would be no confusion about the role that he is expected to play. It has been joked that Putin obviously has a non-disclosure agreement that Donald Trump will never ever violate. Considering the ability of Russian intelligence to gain virtually any information that Trump would have tried to hide while in Moscow, Trump would be trapped. Many former US intelligence analysts in the news media have publicly assessed that Trump’s behavior as President validates this assessment.

E—Ego/Excitement. With an ego like Trump’s, he could be led anywhere to do almost anything, given the right amount of compliments and promises of riches. The excitement of the game is a huge part of what Trump thrives on. He is his own Chaos Agent. He thrives on chaos—the excitement of his attacks on personalities, the back-and-forth with his enemies, and the adoration of the masses. Stroke his ego and he rolls over like a compliant puppy. Trump operates without a true political strategy as a form of excitement. He lacks impulse control and indulges beliefs he holds without any basis or grounding. It makes for a personally interesting world to watch people jump through his hoops. This irrationality makes him easily manipulated by foreign leaders and their spies who can guarantee certain words and actions that can throw him into a Twitter rage, or issue compliments that turn him into a puddle of obsequiousness.

Trump would think every idea put in by Moscow was his own brilliant thought in his big, beautiful mind. One cannot give Putin credit for controlling every aspect of this strategy. There are too many variables and the Kremlin would have to roll sevens every time. But he tasked the FSB/SVR to try it, and in 2013 after learning that Trump was serious about a presidential run, they threw the dice.

The Russian intelligence metanarrative they would be tasked to push would be simple—convince Trump to believe that he already believed that:

1. NATO strangling Russia with military bases and aggressively encroaching on its borders.

2. Russia was a new, rich, glorious empire with a strong fearless leader whose personal relationship could help Trump join the global elite oligarchy where borders mean nothing—only money matters.

3. The European Union, with its immigrant Muslim hordes, was finished—help start a new white ethno-nationalist conservative alliance worldwide with Moscow’s help.

They buttered Trump up and convinced him that he could be one of the boys; that his country was poor and he could make a difference. Other methods of shaping his initial impression of the situation was contact through his more extreme allies in the NRA, and supporters of the American Evangelical movement, who would be repeating the same metanarrative he was hearing at Miss Universe and every conversation after that—Russia was an ally.

An additional aim of the Russian perception management strategy is “Shaping the Opponent’s Objectives”—meaning that an information sphere is created in which the opponent adopts goals already crafted for him by Russian propagandists.

During the 2016 campaign, Trump adopted positions that would shock his allies and surprise the news media. He questioned NATO’s usefulness and how NATO nations were not paying the United States for their defense. He did the same on the viability of the European Union and shared Marine Le Pen’s desire to break it up.

While Russia invaded Crimea on March 18, 2014, and the world condemned Russia, Trump was complimenting Putin and criticizing Obama. Just 72 hours after Crimea had been seized by Russian army troops, on March 21, 2014, Trump tweeted, “Putin has become a big hero in Russia with an all-time high popularity. Obama, on the other hand, has fallen to his lowest ever numbers. SAD.”

Trump would also tweet “I believe Putin will continue to re-build the Russian Empire. He has zero respect for Obama or the U.S.!” The phrase “Russian Empire” are the very same words used by the Russo-European alt-right. It embraces the Russian Federation’s imperial goals. It was now Trump’s view of the world.

After the defeat of Mitt Romney by Barack Obama, Trump had tweeted on November 6, 2012, that “We can’t let this happen. We should march on Washington and stop this travesty. Our nation is totally divided!” On November 19, 2012, Donald J. Trump for President, Inc., his nonprofit organization, registered the “Make America Great Again Political Action Committee.”

The Miss Universe pageant would provide a perfect backdrop for convincing Trump he had a major role in changing the East-West dynamic. On the surface, it appeared that he was primarily interested in getting a deal to build a Trump Tower. He would tweet after leaving Russia “@AgalarovAras I had a great weekend with you and your family. You have done a FANTASTIC job. TRUMP TOWER-MOSCOW is next. EMIN was WOW!”⁹

Trump Tower Moscow was a treasure he had been wanting since 1988. They would even propose to name the spa Ivanka. In intelligence parlance, Trump Tower Moscow, an object Trump could not acquire for 15 years, could be called “a dangle.” This is when the spy who is handling you offers you something made of that rare metal “unobtainium.” It’s the shiny object that lures the fish right onto the hook. As noted before, Trump had been briefed by the Russian oligarchy at the Nobu dinner about their objectives for him should he become America’s leader. Likely after that discussion, and a pledge for their underground support, he decided definitively to run for President.

This is further evidenced by the fact that on January 22, 2014, a Kremlin apparatchik, Yulya Alferova, who lists her role as “Advisor to the Minister of Economic Development of the Russian Federation,” tweeted a picture of herself next to Trump. She is in fact the ex-wife of Artem Klyushin, a Russian oligarch closely tied to Putin. It was taken at the Miss Universe pageant planning meeting the previous June. Her tweet said, “I’m sure @realDonaldTrump will be great a president! We’ll support you from Russia! America needs ambitious leader!”¹⁰

This was a statement of support made completely out of the blue.

Interestingly, in June 2013 in Las Vegas, she was present at a private dinner hosted for Trump by Aras Agalarov and his wife, Irina, and attended by his son, Emin; the 83-year-old billionaire Phil Ruffin, who is married to the 36-year-old former Miss Universe Oleksandra Nikolayenko; British promoter Rob Goldstone; and Trump’s bodyguard Keith Schiller. After that meeting, Alferova was hired to work for the pageant organization.

Trump most likely told her he intended to run for President before January 22, 2014. As a Kremlin apparatchik, if she knew it, Russian intelligence knew it before her tweet was even sent. They would have passed it directly to Vladimir Putin.

Another piece of evidence that Russia deeply impacted Trump’s decision-making came in an indictment by the US Justice Department’s special counsel Robert Mueller who wrote that the entire senior management of the FSB’s Internet Research Agency was a criminal enterprise designed to influence the American election.

One piece of evidence that Russia was preparing for Trump was also in the indictment issued against the IRA. It stated that the first hires for the “translator project,” a team of 90 English-fluent social media analysts that would shape the American public’s perception of Russia and Trump, were in August 2013, just 60 days after the Miss Universe pageant was announced. In January 2014, about the time of Miss Alferova’s tweet, they went into strategic cyber planning to change the perception of the American public, by using fictitious US profiles on social media to favor Donald Trump.¹¹

When Trump started looking into running for President in late 2012, it was likely provisional. For almost two years, he never mentioned it on Twitter or even gave a hint that this was a possibility. Though Trump may have been busy, it’s no coincidence that Russian intelligence, including Vladimir Putin’s chief propagandist, had already organized a system to seize both Twitter and Facebook and harness the exponential power of social media to assist him.

In September 2014, Trump announced he was going to run for President. He tweeted: “I wonder if I run for PRESIDENT, will the haters and losers vote for me knowing that I will MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN? I say they will!”¹²

It may have been Trump’s idea to run but the actual decision would be based on a mechanism in place to get him elected. Trump does not realize that he only made the decision well after it was made for him.

A Trump Conspiracy with Russia? Rykov’s Confession

There have been many accusations rendered about the level of cooperation that Donald Trump and his campaign may have accepted from the Russian Federation but most of those are built on desire rather than fact. As the special prosecutor moves through his investigation, the facts may implicate Trump as not only being aware of the Russian plan to impact the American election, but he may also have been an active coordinator of the plot to outright hijack the thoughts of the American public and bring the country into the Russian fold.

Two days after the election of Donald Trump, Konstantin Rykov, former member of the Duma in Putin’s United Russia Party, wrote what would amount to a confession of how Russia elected Donald Trump. Prior to the indictment of the Internet Research Agency this account was generally dismissed as puffery. Now it had essentially been corroborated by the details of the IRA’s internal workings.

Rykov is best known for being Vladimir Putin’s TV and media propagandist. He was head of cybermedia for Channel One, Russia’s principal television network and the first channel allowed to broadcast in the post-Soviet Russian Federation. He also established a network of Russian political websites and became an internet celebrity for his fiery Tweets and Facebook posts including posting on Facebook under the nom de plume of “Jason Foris.” It is alleged that he is the creator of the Russian Craigslist for escorts, Dosug.

The night after the election of Barack Obama in 2012, Donald Trump tweeted that he was disgusted with the result that the African American President was reelected. In his fury and frustration, he tweeted, “We should march on Washington!”

Minutes after Trump’s tweet, Rykov claims he sent a private direct message (DM) to Trump offering to bring Russia’s assistance to helping him become President. Trump responded with a DM photo showing him on a private jet giving the thumbs-up. The only way to DM on Twitter is if the two parties follow each other, which is an informal way of giving permission to send private messages. Trump had given Rykov that permission earlier.

In 2016, Rykov wrote a Facebook post, in Russian, which started “It’s time for great stories. I’ll tell you about it now, as Donald Trump and I have decided to free America and make it great again.”¹³

The schedule Rykov noted was a planning period that went from November 6, 2012, to November 8, 2016, the span of the second term of Obama’s presidency. It was during this time that the FBI’s investigation reported that the RF-IRA was being organized and almost 100 people were hired to manipulate the election though social media. Rykov confirmed the strategy should be to conduct a Russian intelligence–style perception management campaign using the best minds he could find. Rykov continued:

“What was our idea with Donald Trump? In four years and two days. It was necessary to get into the brain and seize all possible means of mass perception of reality. Ensure Donald’s victory in the US President’s election. Then create a political union between the United States, France, Russia (and other states) and establish a new world order.

Four years and two days is a very long time, and the other is very small. Our idea was crazy, but feasible.”¹⁴

Rykov claimed that Trump somehow made him aware of the efforts of the British scientists at Cambridge Analytica. He said that “British scientists from Cambridge Analytica offered to make out of 5 thousand existing human psychotypes [psychological profile]—the ‘perfect image’ of Trump’s possible supporter. Then put that image back on all the [psychological profiles] and thus find the universal key to anyone and everyone.”¹⁵

Rykov implies that Trump himself briefed him on this matter. “Donald has decided to invite the special science division of Cambridge University for this task.” Additionally, he claims that Trump secured these services for $5 million. “But! He got into his hands a secret super weapon,” said Rykov. Rykov said that they started searching for the best people who could “upload these data to information flows and social networks.” They were assisted in what he called a “couple of hacker factions, civil journalists from WikiLeaks and political strategist Kovalev [Mikhail Kovalev].” They then took steps so that foreign intelligence agencies and “NSA” could not interfere.¹⁶

The Russians gamed out how to universalize the platform so that “Even people [who] do not speak each other’s language, could exchange information faster than everyone, understand each other with completely, feel trends and influence their development…”

According to Rykov, the social media hijack bot programs took a year to write the code between 2013 and 2014. He also says it took a year to beta test and perfect a working weaponized social media system (2014-2015). According to the Mueller indictment of the RF-IRA, these dates match the employment and operations records of their staff. Rykov notes that the botnet and “Media-filter” were launched on Trump-2016.com on August 18, 2015. About the same time the GRU, Russian military intelligence’s FANCY BEAR, was savaging the servers of the Democratic National Committee.

Trump Made the Kremlin Great Again!

In democracies, it is the laws which usually manage to act as guardrails to the tendencies of autocrats and tyrants. However, laws can only act as a defensive line to limit abuse by leaders when they are strictly enforced, and compliance is safeguarded by a moral and ethical political class. If the leader is rooted solely for self-enrichment or the creation of a personal family dynasty, then the laws and political class must provide a hard check or suffer their dissolution.

In my opinion, Trump is willingly working with Putin to pull America down to capitalize on the Trump Organization’s investments. There is ample evidence that Russia and Trump seek an American single-family and money-based autocracy with all the trapping of the original republic but without the force of law to affect or investigate anything but what the ruling family desires. Intelligence agencies of China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea find Trump easily understood and his recklessness offers chances to economically exploit the US and manipulate Trump to behave in a way that damages America but helps them. In each case the American interest generally does not align with the Trump family interest, unless there is money in it.

Trump campaigned for removing the United States from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP)—a massive trade agreement that would give America an advantage to entering the markets of every nation with a coast in the Pacific—Trump declared it a “potential disaster.” He pledged over and over to immediately remove the US from the agreement. Outgoing Secretary of Defense Ash Carter noted that the TPP was important due to its ability to create powerful financial leverage and the ability to control blocs within the Asia-Pacific market. On his fourth day as President, Trump signed an order to withdraw. Yet while he was publicly destroying America’s ability to trade openly on the Asian market, his son-in-law and daughter were secretly dealing with China.

In April 2017, Chinese President Xi Jinping visited Trump at Mar-a-Lago. On the same day Chinese regulators awarded Ivanka Trump, now a US government employee, with valuable trademark approvals. Although she claimed to have separated her business from her government work, it appeared to have been in lip service. Ivanka’s trademarks could make her even more wealthy, but should have run afoul of the Criminal Conflict of Interest Statute. By May 2017, Jared Kushner’s sister, Nichole Kushner Mayer, was found to be selling access to Trump while pitching Chinese investors to come to the US for US E5B visas. These controversial visas offered foreigners permanent residency for investing in American businesses. She mentioned how much their investment would mean to her “… and her family.”¹⁷ In both instances the Trump administration did nothing to punish his children for trading on America’s interest using the Trump name.

If the leader of a populist movement cites “the will of the people” as allowance for crimes, then there is nothing that a tyrant cannot do. When the mind of the voter is the target of a hacking, then all illicit actions and behaviors for that nation are permissible.

As a political analyst, I once joked that Trump appeared to have a Russian Autocrat Advisory Team (a RAAT?) assigned to the White House. That may not be far from the truth. In the whirlwind of controversy about his ties to Moscow, on multiple occasions he met with the Russian Foreign Minister, Russian Ambassador, Vladimir Putin, and other Russian dignitaries and oligarchs while under FBI investigation for conspiracy.

The day after the firing of FBI Director James Comey, Trump met with Foreign Minister Lavrov and Ambassador Kislyak in the Oval Office. In a meeting closed to the American press, he stated that he fired the FBI Director to get pressure off of him over the Russia investigation. He also coordinated with Putin and made an announcement of his desire to create “an impenetrable Cyber Security unit” with Russia to get to the bottom of the election hacking.

In January 2018, the directors of the FSB, SVR, and GRU secretly met with their American counterparts in Washington at Trump’s request, even though the country was under US sanctions. When Trump wants an opinion, he gets one he can trust… from Moscow.

Trump adopted the tools and methods of the Kremlin that got Putin and other autocrats elected for multiple terms. He sees what works and what does not in European states such as Poland, Hungary, and Austria. From his actions it’s clear he understands that deliberately sowing divisiveness within the citizenry is good for him personally. A divided voting base won’t focus on a specific issue like the conservative authoritarian-leaning voters. His base will vote for the leader, not saving the whales, keeping streets clean, or gun control. Whatever he says goes and they vote that way. The others are just single-issue voters who can be ignored. By splitting the opposition, through a wave of divisiveness, he can isolate the two-thirds of the country who are thinking democratically from a unified remainder who are his loyalists. Loyalists get rewarded, opponents get punished. That Trump and his base have essentially adopted the communist/fascist moves of the KGB is not surprising.

His most dictatorial trait is the embracing of violence against his political opponents. Trump openly expressed his desire for the arrest and imprisonment of those who dare cross him personally. During the 2016 campaign, Donald Trump threatened to arrest Hillary Clinton at every turn. When in office, he demanded (but did not get) investigations into every Democrat who defied him including Clinton, Obama, Comey, Congressman Adam Schiff, Senator Chuck Schumer, Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi, and MSNBC host and former Republican Congressman Joe Scarborough. He set the stage to bring about a shift in the minds of his voters—enemies are to be abused, attacked, and degraded. At his rallies, protesters were beaten, spat on, and insulted. Trump would urge his supporters to beat up protesters and promised to pay the legal fees of anyone who did. When it happened, Trump ignored the assailant’s pleas for financial help. Still, he promised the American system would be changed so that people who are racially, culturally, and politically different can be confronted, harmed, and tossed from our midst. Trump did not limit himself to insulting Hillary Clinton. He has similarly insulted Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell, John McCain, Senator Lindsey Graham, his own Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, his National Security Advisor, General H.R. McMaster, the entirety of the FBI, the CIA, the Democratic Party, 65% of America, the Pope, and Oprah Winfrey. In his estimation, they are all “haters and losers.” On the other hand, he did not dare criticize two people on this planet: Vladimir Putin… and MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow.

Since George Washington, every president has had issues with the news media. Donald Trump is no different. But from the first day he announced his candidacy to his January 20, 2017, inauguration, he has been critical of his news coverage. That coverage often portrayed him as a buffoon and his behaviors did not challenge that impression. However, once he won the election his ire took a dark turn. Trump openly declared war on the American TV media and print press, declaring them enemies of the American people. He started to describe any accurate news reporting that did not please him as “fake news.” For example: “The FAKE NEWS media (failing @nytimes, @NBCNews, @ABC, @CBS, @CNN) is not my enemy, it is the enemy of the American people.”¹⁸ Trump generally makes assertions without any evidence, tweeting that most major media stories are fake news well over 100 times.

This brings to mind the question as to whether Trump is aware that the press is specifically protected under the First Amendment of the same Constitution he swore an oath to protect. The First Amendment to the US Constitution guarantees the freedom of religion, of speech, to assemble, and the right to petition the government for redress—that includes printed and spoken words. Trump apparently decided to disregard this freedom and substituted in its place “the right to determine what is free speech.”

Trump is in fact executing a tried and true policy of psychological and propaganda warfare: If you control what is the “Truth,” then you determine what is real and what is not. Trump understands and is aware of the Kremlin playbook and immediately started creating an exclusive information bubble his followers would listen to. For it to be successful, he must discredit everything outside of that bubble. It is information control of the highest order. It’s the tool of a tyrant.

On the surface, Trump’s calling “fake news” is a way to maintain support with his voters by dismissing reports that are contrary or have a negative image toward him. The danger of this is that Trump is well aware that he essentially makes his followers believe what he says over empirical fact. This is demagoguery.

CNN’s global reach in the news world is a primary reason that Trump attacks their coverage above all other networks. CNN is the go-to news channel for national crises and international breaking news. CNN’s investigative reporting and critical eye toward the wave of quantifiable lies that come from Trump meant that their force of journalistic integrity had to be discredited.¹⁹ Trump tweeted “@ FoxNews is much more important in the United States than CNN, but outside of the U.S., CNN International is still a major source of (fake) news, and they represent our Nation to the WORLD very poorly. The outside world does not see the truth from them!”²⁰

The media to Trump is strictly a weapon of disinformation—a platform for disseminating his hard-right ideological views. He is equally an easily misled consumer of fake news. Unless it comes from what he believes is a trusted source, it is a lie.

Trump is known to watch the morning show Fox and Friends to get talking points on whatever he hears that he agrees with and then later on pass these “original thoughts” on his Twitter account, as if he conceived them himself. It’s the way a five-year-old sees the world. All is original once it crosses his mind.

Trump is certainly aware of how Putin attacked his news media detractors directly and won. In fact, Putin used the FSB and his state media agencies to turn his anger against the few independent news organizations and almost completely eliminated independent media in Russia.

In 2017, Trump wondered aloud why the public airwaves were allowing his critics to criticize him and if something could be done about it. He tweeted “Fake News coming out of NBC and the Networks, at what point is it appropriate to challenge their licenses?” He also had the Justice Department state that they were looking into CNN interfering with the Time Warner merger. Trump also pulled his signature move to wonder aloud if he should sue CNN. He told an audience, “These are really dishonest people. Should I sue them? I mean, they’re phonies. Jeff Zucker, I hear he’s going to resign at some point pretty soon. I mean these are horrible human beings.”²¹ Former US Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul noted that this was familiar. “[It is] exactly what Putin did in Russia in 2000.”²²

The Kremlin had no problem taking heat for the hacking or electing of Trump. Their state media, WikiLeaks, and Trump’s American allies gave them a reasonable level of deniability. Putin could maintain the fig leaf of being a strategic opponent or even adversary. America remains a military power whose projection across the Middle East, Asia, and Europe is a force that he could use to keep the Russian people supporting the Kremlin’s new global adventurism and increases in defense. All of Russia’s opposition to Trump was far more Potemkin village than Kabuki theater. A Potemkin village is a fake face of dirt and grime, whereas Kabuki is precision, art, and beauty. That was not Putin’s game. His game was action. Like a low-key street fighter from St. Petersburg, Putin’s government was operating more like an industrial robot forging steel in a foundry. Covered in grime and immersed in heat, it was ruthlessly efficient and not dependent on human intervention when set to task. Although his plan took a lot of luck, it was well planned and factored in all the foibles of the Americans’ current bout of self-hatred.

Putin was sure that Trump would eventually lift sanctions and give Russia an economic breakout while the United States descended into political chaos. It was in Russia’s interest to keep Trump in office even with some friction. Trump believed in Putin’s worldview, not Washington’s or Reagan’s… and not Barack Obama’s.

From the beginning of Trump’s rise one question loomed over his administration that eclipsed all others. Why? Why did Russia appear to pull out all the stops short of war to support a man who could barely read a teleprompter and whose sanity would be openly questioned? It was a word that every journalist, pundit, postman, and seamstress asked themselves each time Donald J. Trump sent an early morning tweet storm, made a seemingly unhinged decision, or ranted about himself lovingly on television. Why did he behave the way he did? It is an intriguing question. Based on what was has happened, and what could happen, one would not be faulted for assessing that American democracy has entered a great period of peril because no one could seem to answer the question Why? To old spies and mafia bagmen the answer was simple. Trump was in debt.

The Debt

The personal and financial debt owed by Trump on November 9, 2016, was not a mere humbled obligation to return a polite courtesy to the Russian leader and his allies who kept the faith. No, the election was fixed to benefit him personally. Russia set up for four years to put Trump in the position to win by the smallest of margins. They expended large quantities of illegal, covertly appropriated money; they used a large part of its clandestine and covert intelligence services and the power and goodwill of Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin himself. Donald J. Trump was now a debtor. He owed Moscow, who bought for him Cambridge Analytica, Julian Assange’s WikiLeaks, the evangelicals, and even more money from the NRA than all before him. Moscow had its hands shaping the global support for Trump that would make him the leader of the alternative to the Atlantic alliance. He is the first American populist president and it is all owed to Moscow. It is a debt in the manner of a drug dealer who owes millions to a Colombian drug lord or Mafia chief. Like a gambling addict is indebted to a loan shark. Putin made the debt with so high a payoff that, as long as Trump can survive each day without decisive evidence on how much he really owes Putin, he can look forward to surviving the next day. Like all who survive such morally deadly people, they feel exuberant until they have to wake up and do their master’s bidding for another 24 hours. Every day, debtors like Trump rejoice when they have been spared the collection of their mortal souls particularly when their most cherished asset is their self-made reputation. This is not just about traditional financial insolvency. That is easy to remedy. When faced with bankruptcy to a bank or other traditional lender, the elite rich laugh on their way to Monaco and forget they ever had a payment to make.

Trump has placed his bet on the number given to him by a corrupt casino owner and has taken home a massive jackpot—yet the spoils are not his. Having won the presidency, Trump became a vessel for Russia. He would carry any amount of water they chose to give him. Would there be a reckoning of the engineered luck? Yes, like all who make a deal with the devil, there must be repayment with interest. That’s the devil’s bargain.

The sword of Damocles that hangs over Trump’s head is surely more than the fact that Moscow elected him President. His complete and total political and financial survival depends on Vladimir Putin keeping his mouth shut and his vaults inaccessible to US intelligence. Clearly Trump is working extra hard to make his payments on time every time, especially when he owes his own life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness to the Pirate King who leads a global den of thieves.

Speculation in the news media as to why President Trump aligns himself so closely to Vladimir Putin falls into one of three categories: 1) Was he the Manchurian candidate, a foreign agent infiltrated as a brainwashed drone to do Putin’s bidding? 2) Was he a Fellow Traveler, who had read, heard, and adopted the neo-Eurasian ideology and believes exactly as the Kremlin? Or 3) was he just an idiot who could be told anything by people of influence, and when he saw money he would fervently stay as close to it as possible?

One thing is certain; he is not the Manchurian candidate. It is clear to all who see that Donald Trump is in fact a willing participant in Russia’s plans to break up global democracy. The Russians spent years crafting a pro-Moscow perception bubble so that when he was ready to run for President or participate in American politics, he would already have been indoctrinated in where he should enter foreign policy—the correct worldview would come from the Kremlin’s worldview. His interactions with Russian money, women, politicians, and fake news had already shaped his perception of who and what Russia was—a personal ally. As he rose to prominence, the perceptions and data he was taking in were run through his own personal perception filter. That filter was also crafted in Moscow, as it was built from his experience with Russians. Much of the news Trump receives about Russia, if from American alt-right conservative news (Breitbart Media and Fox News), has already been run through the fuel interjectors of Russian propaganda warfare distribution systems. By 2016 Russia could run virtually any anti-Hillary Clinton story and have it on Trump’s lap in hours. All there is to know about Donald Trump and Russia is that he had no other frame of reference by which to form an opinion. He hated mainstream news media. As a functional illiterate he never read papers, and now as President he must have intelligence reports briefed to him. He eschews anything that smacks of political and foreign policy literacy that he did not form from his own personal experiences.

Bottom line: In his own estimation, anyone who opposes Russia opposes Trump. Anyone who opposes Trump is his enemy. What we have witnessed is peak psychological warfare. Unless Russia moves against Trump personally in a blatant betrayal, such as releasing some form of embarrassing Kompromat that disables his Presidency, he will be loyal to his friends in Red Square. This willful participation in Putin’s clique shows Donald Trump is far from being a Manchurian candidate. If anything, he is a product of the first successful global cyber propaganda campaign to seize control of an enemy’s leadership. He is a Cyberian candidate.

Moscow’s Man in Washington

Donald J. Trump never really won his seat in the Oval Office—he is a cardboard cutout for the real power behind him, the former Russian KGB spymaster turned American Republican. Trump could possibly fill the role of President, but Vladimir Putin would always be the shadow broker that put him into power. This thought so terrifies Trump that he would spend every waking day of his time in office refuting the accusation that he and his campaign had worked with Russia to betray the nation to seize power. His most utterly terrifying thought must be that even as one of the most powerful men in the world, everyone believes he was owned lock, stock, and barrel by the Kremlin. He was right.

Testifying before the House Intelligence Committee former Director of the CIA John Brennan spoke on the matter of how Russia handles its assets and agents:

“They have been able to get people—including inside of CIA—to become treasonous, and frequently, individuals who go along that treasonous path do not even realize they’re along that path until it gets to be a bit too late…”²³

Trump has definitively convinced me that he transitioned from an unwitting asset of Vladimir Putin to a witting asset working in league with the Russian Federation. Which of the following could provide the key bit of data for that assessment? Was it his thumbs-up photo to Konstantin Rykov’s offer to assist his campaign in 2012? Was it his telling Rykov that Cambridge Analytica was working on voter profiles and somehow they fell into the hands of the RF-IRA? Was it his numerous meetings with Aras Agalarov? Was it the private two-hour dinner with the Russian Oligarchy and his subsequent belief that Trump Tower Moscow was happening? Was it his casual comments to Yulya Alferova on his run for President in 2014? Was it his public endorsement of Russia’s invasion of Crimea? Was it his son’s desperation to meet with the lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya to get dirt on Hillary Clinton in violation of numerous laws? Was it that he orchestrated lie after lie to the American people about his son meeting with Russian agents? Was it his openly begging Russia to hack and release Hillary Clinton’s emails? Was it his professed love of WikiLeaks’s crimes? Was it keeping his son-in-law cleared after it was learned that he had met with a Russian spy bank, sought loans from Qatar, or asked the Russian ambassador for special communications to be hidden from the CIA?

Keep in mind that Trump has publically complimented Putin over 100 times in a year where he insulted over 425 people.

The New York Times reports that former CIA Director John Brennan made some informed speculation “… the fact that [Trump] has had this fawning attitude toward Mr. Putin, has not said anything negative about him, I think continues to say to me that he does have something to fear and something very serious to fear…”²⁴

As President, the New York Times would write about Trump’s inability to comprehend the meaning of the words Top Secret. It said Trump “simply did not possess the interest or the knowledge of the granular details of intelligence gathering to leak specific sources and methods of intelligence gathering that would harm American allies.” This is almost the definition of a man unfit to be President of the United States. It would also be the definition of the perfect unwitting fool, the simpleton with a security clearance whose personal need to massage his ego and garner flattery, adulation, and approval from richer men than he exceeded the fundamental security needs of his nation.

Trump ordered his National Security Council staff to investigate the possibility of removing American troops from Europe as a reward to Putin. He also ordered the Director of National Intelligence and the CIA to meet with the three heads of Russian intelligence, one of whom was under sanctions, in secret and in Washington. Either one of these would be the basis for an indictment for Conspiracy against the United States.

A thought experiment: Replace the word “Russia” with “ISIS” in the above listed activities. If any person in the United States had this same level of communication, coordination, and complicity in an active conspiracy with a threatening group such as ISIS, al-Qaeda, or even the Chinese intelligence, there would have been a warrant for their arrest issued in record time. At the very least, an American with suspicious contacts with overseas agents entering government would have had federal investigators start a process to determine if there was in fact a secret desire to act as an espionage agent for a foreign power, if others were involved, and how deep it went.

Even Trump has reluctantly come to find out that no American is above the law or so high that they are above suspicion—even the President. Enter the Special Counsel, former FBI Director, Robert Swan Mueller III.

As further information emerges from the Mueller investigation, the level of Trump’s complicity will determine if it was all coincidence or a plot to commit treason.