BREAKING NEWS: Research I did a year ago—which included information from Russian websites and obscure interviews with Russian developers—has now been confirmed by McClatchy. If you've been reading this feed, nothing in this breaking news will surprise you. amp.mcclatchydc.com/news/nation-wo…
2/ Parts of this McClatchy report are wrong. It says the deal was active through September '14 and died at that point, but the point man on the Trump side, Trump Jr., says the deal was active through December '14 and in fact *never* officially died (consistent with my research).
3/ Moreover, all the evidence we have suggests that the initial financing was coordinated at the 2013 Miss Universe pageant itself, and announced by Sberbank just 10 days after the pageant. So things moved *much* more quickly than McClatchy is suggesting here. And that's not all.
4/ Emin Agalarov says that the letter-of-intent (LOI) was either signed or in some other way made official *at the pageant itself*, not months after. He said this in an interview with Forbes. But even this is only a small part of the larger story that research has since revealed.
5/ The deal had permitting approval as result of the direct intervention and involvement of Vladimir Putin's permits man, Vladimir Kozhin. Putin sent Kozhin to the 2013 Miss Universe pageant *in his stead* for *precisely* this purpose: to help green-light Trump Tower Moscow.
6/ But wait! There's more. Because Trump's business partner in this Trump Tower Moscow deal, Aras Agalarov, says the deal was active through February '17, that means a deal that Putin assisted Trump with was active for the entirety of the presidential campaign. It's jawdropping.
7/ As I wrote over a year ago, the speed with which the Trump Tower Moscow deal moved forward *at the pageant* indicates, as McClatchy confirms, that negotiations started on or before the day Trump decided to bring the pageant to Moscow. The implications of this are significant.
8/ What this would mean is that Trump selected Moscow for the '13 pageant over nearly 20 other nations in what was supposed to be an open and fair bidding process because he wanted to meet Putin and had a secret building deal he needed to cement in Moscow by meeting Putin there.
9/ But it's bigger than that, as if in fact Trump wanted from Putin what he ultimately got in Moscow in November 2013—a permits blessing/clearance for his tower—it also means when he spoke to Putin by phone in Moscow (as he himself says he did) they discussed Trump Tower Moscow.
10/ So now let's return to Aras Agalarov, who says the *only* reason his LOI with Trump is presently disabled is because Trump "can't do deals" *as president*. That means Trump's Trump Tower Moscow deal with Putin's top developer is likely *back on* when Trump gets out of office.
11/ The timeline Trump Jr. offered for the 2013 LOI is that it was active at least through the end of 2014. That means it became (unofficially) "inactive" right as Trump was preparing his presidential run. So the deal should be seen as merely *on pause*, not a relic of the past.
12/ So the problem with McClatchy's report isn't just that parts of it are inaccurate. More importantly, it leaves the false impression that even though the 2013 LOI lasted longer than we previously knew, the deal it undergirds is dead. Trump Jr. may say that, but it's not true.
