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Scott Stedman @ScottMStedman
, 13 tweets, 4 min read Read on Twitter
Wow: Washington Post reports that Viktor Vekselberg and Natalia Veselnitskaya attended Trump's inauguration.
The Post, while producing an incredible story, misses a couple of CRUCIAL facts.
They refer to Konstantin Rykov as a "Putin supporter" - this couldn't be more of an underrepresentation.
Rykov is not just a Putin supporter. He brokered a quid pro quo between Marine Le Pen in France and top Kremlin officials. Le Pen recognized the Crimean annexation and then subsequently got tens of millions of dollars in loans from Russian banks. Rykov was the key.
Rykov also appears to know Ambassador McFaul well. They have corresponded dozens of times and Rykov has posted a picture of McFaul in what looks like a fairly private meeting instagram.com/p/aJeSMNPkjH/
Finally, Rykov boasted on his Facebook in 2016 that he worked with Cambridge Analytica, a hacking team, and Russian political strategists to help elect Trump medium.com/@ScottMStedman…
Rykov is not a "Putin supporter" - he is much more than that. Political scientist @evgenymorozov said in one of his books that "Russian leaders follow [Rykov’s] lead.”
On Vekselberg, the Post doesn't mention that he owned the largest share of the Bank of Cyprus during Wilbur Ross's tenure as Vice Chair of the bank. It is highly probable that they worked together.
Ross's official position is that he didn't lend to Russians under EU or US sanctions. I believe this position needs to be under more scrutiny. The Bank of Cyprus was consistently doing business with bad Russian actors during Ross's time there.
One more quick note on Rykov - at his election night party there was an American in attendance. Former Fox News producer Jack Hanick who now lives in Russia. A former associate of Hanick's told me that he still keeps in touch with his Fox News colleagues.
Hanick is close associates of the sanctioned Konstantin Malofeev - they started a TV channel in Russia called Tsargrad. Here he is speaking at Rykov's election night party:
I haven't seen Hanick mentioned at all in the Trump/Russia story, but given his proximity to top Russian figures and the US media, he is an interesting figure.
I hope @PostRoz, @craigtimberg, @ARothWP, and @CarolLeonnig will take a look at this thread and hopefully update their story.
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