Russia has cultivated Donald Trump as an asset for 40 years, says ex-KGB spy
The KGB has cultivated Donald Trump as an asset for 40 years, which has proven to be a great asset in repeating Russian anti-Western propaganda in the United States, a former KGB agent said. Yuri Shvets is a key source in "American Kompromat", journalist Craig Unger's new book detailing the decades-long relationship between Donald Trump and Russia. The book, which is based on interviews with former Russian and American agents, details the KGB's attempts in the 1980s to cultivate dozens of unwilling businessmen in the United States as useful Russian assets.
Yuri Shvets told The Guardian newspaper that the KGB identified then-booming real estate developer Donald Trump as a potential asset in the 1980s. "This is an example of people being recruited when they weren't. were only students and then rose to prominent positions; something like that was happening with Donald Trump, "Yuri Shvets told the newspaper. The author of the book claims that the future US president became a target for Russians in 1977, when he married his first wife, Czech model Ivana Zelnickova.
"He was an asset. It wasn't with such a grand and ingenious plan that we developed this guy and he became president 40 years later," Craig Unger told The Guardian. But "Donald Trump was the perfect target in many ways: his vanity, his narcissism made him a natural target for recruiting. He was cultivated over a period of 40 years, until his election." According to his 1987 book "The Art of the Deal", Donald Trump went to Moscow to discuss the construction of "a large luxury hotel opposite the Kremlin in partnership with the Soviet government".
Russian agents reportedly advised Donald Trump to get into politics
In fact, Russian agents used the trip to flatter Donald Trump and tell him he should get into politics, Yuri Shvets said. He told the Guardian that KGB agents were stunned to discover that Donald Trump had returned to the United States, raised the possibility of running for office, and ran a full-page ad in several. newspapers, which covered several anti-Western talking points in Russia. The ad, which ran in The Washington Post, The New York Times, and The Boston Globe, was headlined, "There is no harm in America's foreign defense policy that a little courage won't. may heal ".
Donald Trump attacked Japan in the aftermath for "taking advantage" of the United States and claimed that his country should stop paying to defend other rich countries - arguments that would become the backbone of its foreign policy when he would become president decades later. Yuri Shvets said the ad was seen as an "unprecedented" success in Russia's attempts to promote anti-Western talking points in the US media.
Donald Trump has long denied that he has financial ties to Russia, tweeting in 2017: "Russia never tried to use leverage on me." "I HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH RUSSIA - NO AGREEMENTS, NO LOANS, NOTHING!" Special Advisor Robert Mueller's extensive and high-profile investigation into Russia's potential interference in the 2016 election ultimately concluded that Donald Trump's campaign had not been coordinated with Russia to unduly influence the election.
Several prominent members of Donald Trump's campaign, including former national security adviser Michael Flynn and campaign adviser George Papadopoulos, had previously pleaded guilty to lying to prosecutors about their contacts with people linked to the Russian government. Michael Cohen, Donald Trump's personal lawyer, also pleaded guilty in 2018 to lying to a Senate committee about attempts to build a Trump tower in Moscow.
