Why the Feds Never Truly Investigated Trump's Russia Connection
Julie Roginsky
No one should be surprised that the FBI never fully got to the bottom of Donald Trump’s relationship with the Kremlin. This is not because there is nothing to see. Indeed, there has always been so much to see that following the trail felt like drinking from a firehose. Russian buyers, post-Soviet intermediaries, mob-adjacent money, Moscow real-estate promises, Deutsche Bank loans, Russian beauty pageants, oligarchs, backchannels, and inexplicable policy alignments. The threads to pull are endless.
The problem was never the absence of smoke. It was the number of powerful people whose careers, reputations, clients and paychecks depended on treating the smoke as fog, so that it would be impossible for anyone to make out what was behind it.
Now, as Trump once again positions himself to dictate Ukraine’s future through his own circle of envoys, that old failure looks less like a mystery than an indictment. Russia has said that it expects Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner to resume Ukraine-related contacts soon, with Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov praising their “constructive” approach. That is, of course, the giveaway. Vladimir Putin wants Trump’s people in the room because he knows exactly whom he is dealing with.
Trump’s fascination with Moscow did not begin in 2016, when Russia did everything it could to throw the election his way. In 1986, Trump met Soviet ambassador Yuri Dubinin, when the Soviets appear to have identified him as a potential witting or unwitting asset to cultivate. In January 1987, Dubinin sent Trump a letter relaying Moscow’s interest in a joint hotel venture. Later that year, Trump and his first wife, Ivana, traveled to Moscow to explore the project. Nothing came out of it — much like nothing has ever come out of any Trump real estate project in Moscow.
https://saltypolitics.substack.com/p/why-the-feds-never-truly-investigated
Jared will fuck it up like he did Iran.
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