Thread by @karolcummins

‼️When Trump won, Putin deployed his oligarchs

After an election marred by Moscow's attempts to buoy Donald Trump's candidacy, the Russian president wanted to cash in.
politico.com/story/2019/04/…

In December 2016, a few weeks after Trump’s surprise election victory, Putin convened what a Russian oligarch described as an “all-hands” meeting with some of his country’s top businessmen. A main topic of discussion: U.S. sanctions against Russia.
politico.com/story/2019/04/…

One of the oligarchs present was Petr Aven, co-founder of Alfa Bank, Russia’s biggest commercial bank. Aven had recently met with with Putin one on one to discuss the sanctions and what to do about them.
politico.com/story/2019/04/…

Putin said he had been struggling to get messages to Trump’s inner circle, and urged Aven to take steps to protect his bank from additional U.S. penalties, according to special counsel Robert Mueller’s report, which details the episode.
politico.com/story/2019/04/…

📌Aven perceived that as an order, not a request, according to Mueller, and understood “that there would be consequences if he did not follow through.”
politico.com/story/2019/04/…

📌Aven quickly understood that his mission was to contact the Trump transition team, and began an effort to contact Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner.
politico.com/story/2019/04/…

‼️IMPORTANT‼️

Mueller’s nearly 450-page report granularly describes this & related episodes, revealing how Putin explicitly encouraged his country’s wealthiest & most powerful businessmen to make contact with Trump’s transition team after the election.
politico.com/story/2019/04/…

📌The directives help explain the “flurry” of contact the oligarchs made with Trump’s associates in the weeks following the reality TV star’s unexpected victory, Mueller wrote.
politico.com/story/2019/04/…

The special counsel’s report shows how important it was to Putin to establish a backchannel line of communication to Trump’s transition team — and how receptive Trump’s associates were to the overtures.
politico.com/story/2019/04/…

‼️”As soon as news broke that Trump had been elected President, Russian government officials and prominent Russian businessmen began trying to make inroads into the new Administration,” Mueller’s team wrote in their final report.
politico.com/story/2019/04/…

📌In other words, after Trump pulled off his surprise victory in an election marred by Russia’s attempts to sow discord and buoy Trump’s candidacy, PUTIN WANTED TO CASH IN.
politico.com/story/2019/04/…

AT THE HEART OF THIS CONSPIRACY SANCTION RELIEF - Repeal of the Magnitski act.

And continued 💰💦

‼️Key point‼️

The attempts entailed outreaches “sanctioned at high levels of the Russian government, through business rather than political contacts.”
politico.com/story/2019/04/…

‼️SANCTION RELIEF‼️

Putin’s chief concern, according to Mueller, was getting the incoming Trump administration to roll back the U.S. sanctions hampering the Russian economy.
politico.com/story/2019/04/…

Among the oligarchs working to make inroads with Trump was Aven, the co-founder of Russia’s biggest private financial institution, Alfa Bank; &
politico.com/story/2019/04/…

Kirill Dmitriev, the head of Russia’s sovereign wealth fund; and Sergey Gorkov, the head of the Russian-government owned bank Vnesheconombank, or VEB.
politico.com/story/2019/04/…

Dmitriev was able to get a Putin-approved U.S.-Russia “reconciliation plan” to Kushner, who passed it to SOS Rex Tillerson. And Gorkov scored a meeting with Kushner during the transition period to discuss U.S.-Russia relations, according to Mueller.

politico.com/story/2019/04/…

It wasn’t just, 'we need to build bridges for the sake of future dialogue,'

“It was designed to head off further sanctions and, in Dmitriev’s case, to create a blueprint for recasting U.S. relations with Russia.”
politico.com/story/2019/04/…

And although Aven was rebuffed in his overtures, it was not for a lack of effort. At one point, Aven enlisted an American business associate, Richard Burt, formerly a U.S. ambassador to Germany, to help get through to Kushner.
politico.com/story/2019/04/…

According to Mueller, Aven told Burt that “someone high in the Russian government” had expressed “interest in establishing a communication channel between the Kremlin and the Trump transition team.”
politico.com/story/2019/04/…

Burt apparently found Aven’s request odd, but nonetheless approached Dmitri Simes, head of the Center for the National Interest, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank founded by Richard Nixon, about setting up a meeting.
politico.com/story/2019/04/…

📌But Simes demurred, according to the report, citing the heightened media scrutiny surrounding Russia’s election interference.

📌Aven then dropped the matter.

📌Putin didn’t.
politico.com/story/2019/04/…

📌The report says Putin “continued to inquire about Aven's efforts to connect to the Trump Administration in several subsequent quarterly meetings.”
politico.com/story/2019/04/…

📌Steve Hall, who served as the CIA’s chief of Russian operations during Barack Obama’s second term, said that tasking oligarchs to conduct “hybrid wars and information operations” is par for the course for Putin.
politico.com/story/2019/04/…

📌But Hall, said it is “inconceivable” that the oligarchs were Putin’s only method of infiltrating Trump’s inner circle.

📌”He’s going to rely on all the tools in his toolbox to go after these important targets,” he said.
politico.com/story/2019/04/…

‼️Indeed, Mueller’s report includes a hefty section detailing the myriad ways Kremlin intermediaries — including fake online personas and others hiding their Moscow links — tried to woo those in and around the unlikely presidential candidate.
politico.com/story/2019/04/…

‼️But the Mueller Report did not address one of the most confounding mysteries that lingers from the election.

‼️The communications between Alfa Bank👉🏼Trump Tower👉🏼Spectrum Health Servers 👉🏼Cambridge Analytica & micro targeting the 2016 US electorate.

politico.com/story/2019/04/…

‼️Is this Investigation part of the counter intel probe, which has not been revealed yet?

2017: FBI investigation continues into 'odd' computer link between Russian bank and Trump Organization
cnn.com/2017/03/09/pol…

‼️What about the Connection Between a Russian Bank and the Trump Campaign?

‼️A team of computer scientists sifted through records of unusual Web traffic in search of answers.
newyorker.com/magazine/2018/…

Major Alfa Bank-Trump Tower Breakthrough
teapainusa.wordpress.com/2018/06/05/maj…

‼️Alfa Bank, the institution Aven co-founded, had a computer server pinging a Trump Organization server during the 2016 race.

politico.com/story/2019/04/…

📌The FBI reportedly investigated the pinging, but never provided a conclusive reason for the server activity. 🤔

politico.com/story/2019/04/…

Still, where Aven failed, Dmitriev seemingly triumphed, using many of the same tactics.

📌Dmitriev scored meetings with both Erik Prince — an informal Trump campaign and transition team adviser — and a Kushner friend named Rick Gerson.
politico.com/story/2019/04/…

📌Dmitriev, who Mueller says referred to Putin as his “boss,” worked with Gerson on the reconciliation proposal, implying that Putin had blessed the plan.

politico.com/story/2019/04/…

.📌The offer apparently involved “jointly fighting terrorism” and “developing ‘win-win’ economic and investment initiatives.”
politico.com/story/2019/04/…

📌The Russian machinations portray “both how real that effort was and how much high-level buy-in it had within the Kremlin,” said Weiss.
politico.com/story/2019/04/…

📌“And the fact that Kushner passed this along to Tillerson suggests that these policies were not a nonstarter — they had the attention of Trump’s senior-most staff.”
politico.com/story/2019/04/…

‼️2017: At the G20 summit in Hamburg, Germany:

"Putin & I discussed forming an impenetrable Cyber Security unit so that election hacking, & many other negative things, will be guarded ... and safe," Trump wrote.
cnn.com/2017/07/09/pol…

Dmitriev’s intermediary to Trump’s team was George Nader, a business associate who worked for the United Arab Emirates’ royal court.
politico.com/story/2019/04/…

📌Nader told Mueller that Dmitriev pressed him for an intro to Kush & DonJr.

📌Dmitriev wanted Nader to convey to the incoming Trump administration that Russia wanted “to start rebuilding the relationship in whatever is a comfortable pace for them.”
politico.com/story/2019/04/…

📌According to Mueller, Nader did just that over dinner with Erik Prince in January 2017. Prince then agreed to meet with Dmitriev in the Seychelles later that month.
politico.com/story/2019/04/…

📌Nadler set up a meeting in the Seychelles between Prince and Russian sovereign wealth fund CEO Kirill Dmitriev, mere days before Trump was inaugurated.
abcnews.go.com/Politics/muell…

📌Blackwater founder Erik Prince held secret Seychelles meeting to establish Trump-Putin back channel
washingtonpost.com/world/national…

📌Prince said that he met Dmitriev by chance at the bar & talked “over a beer.”

📌Per Mueller, however, the two met in Nader’s villa for 30-45 minutes the same day Prince arrived. They met again at a restaurant to discuss Russia’s involvement in Libya.
politico.com/story/2019/04/…

📌And then there’s Sergey Gorkov, the CEO of Russia’s state-owned Vnesheconombank.
foreignpolicy.com/2017/07/25/why…

Who is Sergei Gorkov, the powerful Russian banker who met Jared Kushner?
theguardian.com/world/2017/jun…

Gorkov secured a meeting with Kushner in December 2016 through Russian ambassador Sergei Kislyak, who insisted that Kushner meet “with someone who had a direct line to Putin,” according to Mueller.
foreignpolicy.com/2017/07/25/why…

Vnesheconombank was hit with U.S. economic sanctions as a result of Russia’s role in the Ukraine crisis and its 2014 annexation of Crimea and is keen to see them lifted.

📌Is this bank at the heart of the mystery Supreme Court case?
foreignpolicy.com/2017/07/25/why…

As you can se above there are lingering questions and yet to be revealed investigations.

The Mueller Report is the opening salvo, much more to come & be revealed.

Ignore the gaslighting media spinning the MR is a nothingberger ‘move along folks’ narrative

Much more to come.

@threadreaderapp unroll please and thank you.