Thread by @SethAbramson

(THREAD) It's time to tell the story of "mission control" for Trump's plot to steal the 2020 election via illegal foreign interference. The command center for the operation was Trump International Hotel in D.C.—under a mile from the White House. I hope you'll read on and RETWEET.

1/ There's a reason Trump has resisted calls to divest himself of Trump International Hotel in DC, despite years of evidence that foreign nationals use it to nakedly transfer money to him—booking expensive rooms they never stay in, a direct act of bribery. salon.com/2019/10/03/raw…

2/ That reason is that Trump International Hotel *is* the command center for Trump's crimes, and it's conveniently located under a mile from the White House. Trump donor Lev Parnas says that for years it's been the chief meeting place for those looking to crime on Trump's behalf.

3/ Until recently, our understanding of what the Trump International Hotel meant to Trump's corruption was limited—it was merely understood to be a place where those looking to aid Trump by whatever means necessary (like the infamous Robert Hyde) milled about. Now we know more.

4/ In an interview with Lev Parnas, a longtime Trump associate and donor, earlier this year, MSNBC learned of something called the "BLT Prime Team." The name of the team is taken from the restaurant inside Trump International Hotel, a chief meeting spot for Trump collaborators.

5/ We now know much more about the BLT Prime Team—who was on it, how often it met, what operations it conducted, its purpose. I wrote about the team extensively in Proof of Corruption, and on Tuesday @LitHub will publish a chapter from the book *specifically* focused on the team.

6/ What I'd like to do today, though, is introduce you to the Trump collaborators who've been working behind the scenes at Trump International Hotel for *over two years*—yes, the operation is a longstanding one—to steal the 2020 election via illegal foreign election interference.

7/ I'll start by saying that the notion that the BLT Prime Team is working to "steal the 2020 election via illegal foreign election interference" isn't mine...

...it's Trump's. How do I know? Because of statements that Donald Trump has made about (of all people) Hillary Clinton.

8/ As Proof of Corruption details, Trump has spent years talking publicly and privately about actions he claims Clinton engaged in with the Ukrainian government—actions he deems an attempt to steal a US election via illegal foreign election interference. There's just one problem:

9/ The actions that Trump describes are *precisely* the operations of his own "BLT Prime Team." There's no evidence Clinton engaged in any of the actions Trump describes—and my book looks at the allegations very closely—and *only* evidence Trump is doing what he says Clinton did.

10/ Indeed, it now seems clear that Trump's allegations of Clinton-Ukraine collusion were intended to obscure a course of Trump-Ukraine collusion that's been going on since 2017—coincidentally the first time Trump started accusing Clinton of having done what he in fact was doing.

11/ Those who read Proof of Collusion (Simon & Schuster, 2018) will be familiar with Trump's "National Security Advisory Committee," the Trump advisory group responsible for an overwhelming percentage of the 2016 Trump-Russia collusion the bipartisan Senate report just confirmed.

12/ Whereas Donald Trump permitted certain collusive activities to happen outside that Committee—for instance, the Manafort-Kilimnik meetings; the June 2016 Trump Tower meeting; Michael Flynn's ongoing six-nation "grand bargain"—once he became POTUS, he became more brazen by far.

13/ The "BLT Prime Team" is to Trump-Ukraine collusion in 2020 what the Trump's campaign's "National Security Advisory Committee" was to 2016 Trump-Russia collusion—with the key difference that the latter group is much closer to Trump and holds its operations *much* more closely.

14/ MEMBERS OF THE BLT PRIME TEAM: KEY

{use this color key for the tweet after this one}

🟥 Intelligence
🟧 Legal
🟨 Overseas Operations (Ukraine)
🟩 Proxy
🟦 Media
🟪 Domestic Guests
🟫 Foreign Guests
⬛️ Trump

This key gives you a sense of how versatile Trump's operation was.

14/ BLT PRIME TEAM MEMBERS

🟥 Devin Nunes
🟥🟩 Derek Harvey
🟨🟩 Lev Parnas
🟨🟩 Igor Fruman
🟧🟨 Rudy Giuliani
🟧🟨 Joe diGenova
🟧🟨 Victoria Toensing
🟦🟩 John Solomon
🟧🟪 Jay Sekulow
🟫🟨 Viktor Shokin
🟫🟨 Yuri Lutsenko
🟫🟨 Andrii Telizhenko
🟫🟨 Other Ukrainians
⬛️ Trump

15/ The unofficial birth of the BLT Prime Team came in spring 2018, as Team Trump began to think past the 2018 mid-terms—though it was hard, as Trump was singularly focused on them. The *moment* the mid-terms were past, in fall 2018, the BLT Prime Team sprung into full operation.

16/ BLT Prime Team ops included—among much else—

🔹 Clandestine trips to multiple European nations
🔹 Shakedowns of top Ukrainian officials
🔹 Clandestine reports issued abroad and transmitted internationally
🔹 Seven-figure legal contracts
🔹 Threats
🔹 Disinformation campaigns

17/ When Trump solicited a bribe and illegal foreign election interference from Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky in 2019, it was because he was impatient to hurry the ops of the BLT Prime Team up—so he made the mistake of creating non-Team witnesses. It got him impeached.

18/ What Trump was impeached for was only a hint of the BLT Prime Team ops. What Trump and his team were doing was so illegal that the moment even the smallest portion of it peaked out of hiding, it was sufficient for one of the only presidential impeachments in American history.

19/ And I've left something out—not for drama, but to make a point. I've only listed the core BLT Prime Team members for you thus far in this thread. The BLT Prime Team operating out of Trump's hotel also had a *host* of adjuncts, which included (among many others) the following:

20/

🟥 Congressional staffers of Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA)*
🟨 Dmitry Firtash, international fugitive and Kremlin agent
⬛️ William Barr, Attorney General of the United States
🟦 Jimmy Finkelstein, Trump and Giuliani friend and publisher of The Hill

* At least 4, but likely more.

21/ If you look at the BLT Prime Team core/adjunct roster, therefore, you find: the President of the United States; several Trump lawyers; Trump mega-donors; the Attorney General of the United States; Kremlin agents; powerful media figures; former members of Ukraine's government.

22/ The wildest thing: this thread only covers a *corner* of the Trump-Ukraine scandal. The BLT Prime Team was involved in dangerous, clandestine, illegal activities around the world—with the sole aim of stealing the 2020 presidential election—but it's just a piece of the story.

23/ I don't intend any mystery here: the Trump-Ukraine scandal, as complex as it is—and involving scores of people I haven't mentioned, and a host of Ukrainian energy companies—is only part of the story because when you scratch the surface of the scandal something... odd happens.

24/ As you scratch and scratch at the many layers of the Trump-Ukraine scandal—and there are so many, including ones that take the narrative well beyond Ukraine—the face of one man becomes clear, like one of those pie tins where you have to eat the pie to see an image beneath it:

25/ Proof of Corruption is out in a matter of hours. I hope you'll preorder it now—see below—and read the @LitHub excerpt on the "BLT Prime Team" Tuesday. In the post after this one, I link to my website, which has *eleven* excerpts from the 576-page book. amazon.com/dp/1250272998?…

MORE/ I've done all I can to get as much info from this massive book—576 pp. in print, 440 pp. of additional digital content—to readers online. My website has 11 excerpts; another arrives Tuesday; and I've been tweeting about these topics daily for months. sethabramson.net

PS/ And I want to give the incredible ebook of Proof of Corruption some love here, as I haven't done nearly enough of that. This is a book with 5,000 hyperlinked major-media citations—not a typo—so a cheaper-than-hardcover ebook is genuinely indispensable. amazon.com/Proof-Corrupti…