Teenagers are testing positive for HIV and syphilis in large numbers in this city

Yahoo – Health

Teenagers are testing positive for HIV and syphilis in large numbers in this city

Elise Solé, Yahoo Lifestyle March 9, 2018

At least 125 people — including a dozen high school kids — in Milwaukee have been infected with HIV, syphilis, or both in one of the biggest outbreaks ever reported in the city.

According to Milwaukee’s Journal Sentinel, which broke the story on Tuesday, the outbreak has been identified as a “cluster,” meaning a large number of people have become infected in a particular time and place.

According to local reports, 125 people in Milwaukee, including teens, have been diagnosed with HIV, syphilis, or both. (Photo: Getty Images)

“This is an epidemic people are not talking about enough, and it leads to people taking unnecessary risks,” public health consultant Melissa Ugland told the Journal Sentinel. Those involved may have all connected with one another during a 12-month period, added Ugland, who could not be reached for comment by Yahoo Lifestyle. Many of the infected are men, 45 percent of which are HIV-positive, according to Ugland and other health care advocates.

Representatives from the Wisconsin Department of Health Services, the Milwaukee Health Department, and Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS) did not return Yahoo Lifestyle’s request for comment.

Less than 10 percent of those infected attend MPS, though the numbers could rise. The district sent a statement to the Journal Sentinel which read, “Because schools have a significant number of students in the 15-18 age group, we are working with the Milwaukee Health Department, in a collaborative and preventive effort, to share information with young people in middle schools and high schools to keep them healthy and to protect their health.”

The news outlet also reports that the cluster is being called a “sentinel event” due to the number of youth infected with HIV and because three area babies were born with syphilis in 2016. “It’s a really big deal,” Ugland told Journal Sentinel.

The National Coalition of STD Directors, which called the Milwaukee case a “crisis,” published a statement Friday calling out lawmakers. “This is unacceptable,” wrote executive director David C. Harvey. “Those of us working in the field know that STD prevention works when it’s funded. Investing just 10 cents per person per year in syphilis prevention could cut the number of syphilis cases by almost a third.”

He added, “Congress must recognize that these epidemics will continue to rage if federal investment does not rise to meet the ever-rising tide of STD rates, and we call on Congress to increase federal funding for STD prevention at CDC.”

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), syphilis is a sexually transmitted disease that during the first two stages causes painless genital sores, swollen lymph nodes, and fever. The final stage involves no symptoms but can damage the heart and brain, as well as other major organs. Mothers may also pass syphilis to their unborn children during pregnancy and experience complications such as stillbirth. Syphilis is treated with antibiotics.

HIV, which stands for human immunodeficiency virus, is an autoimmune disease contracted through unsafe sex or sex with multiple partners. The virus, for which there is no cure, destroys white blood cells called T-helper cells, and spreads throughout the body, presenting itself with a variety of symptoms, including fever, fatigue, swollen lymph nodes, and night sweats. The late stage of HIV is AIDS, which greatly weakens the immune system and the body’s ability to fight other infections.

“HIV and syphilis spread efficiently within the first few months, often with the person experiencing nonspecific symptoms or those that mimic the flu,” Jeffrey Klausner, MD, a professor of medicine and public health at the University of California, Los Angeles, tells Yahoo Lifestyle. “And because doctors rarely ask questions about patients’ sexual activity — either because they’re embarrassed or untrained — the diagnosis could be missed.”

He adds, “We’ve seen a massive erosion in public health resources due to the 2008 recession. Many city clinics were shut down and never refinanced.”

Klausner says syphilis is treatable if done so timely, and that “HIV is manageable and treatable — not the death sentence it was 20 years ago.”

Industrial meat is making people and the planet sick.

EcoWatch

March 6, 2018

Industrial meat is making people and the planet sick. So we asked ourselves, when the grown-ups don’t step up, what would a six-year-old do?

via Greenpeace International

Team Plant

Industrial meat is making people and the planet sick. So we asked ourselves, when the grown-ups don’t step up, what would a six-year-old do?via Greenpeace International

Posted by EcoWatch on Tuesday, March 6, 2018

Bernie Sanders: Pharma Guys Are Crooks!

Let the Revolution Begin. Peacefully of Course. shared U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders‘s video.

U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders — US Senator for Vermont

March 6, 2018

These guys in the pharmaceutical industry, in my humble opinion, are crooks.

Pharma Guys Are Crooks

These guys in the pharmaceutical industry, in my humble opinion, are crooks.

Posted by U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders on Tuesday, March 6, 2018

Trump’s EPA allowing a nerve gas pesticide to be sprayed on your food.

MoveOn.org shared NowThis Politics‘s video.

March 7, 2018

“It’s always suspicious when an EPA administrator overrules the agency’s own scientists.”

The NRDC (Natural Resources Defense Council) president on Trump’s EPA allowing a nerve gas pesticide to be sprayed on your food.

Trump's EPA and Nerve Gas Pesticide

Trump's EPA is allowing a nerve gas pesticide to be sprayed on your food

Posted by NowThis Politics on Sunday, March 4, 2018

Interior to spend $139,000 on new doors for Zinke’s office

Good Morning America

Interior to spend $139,000 on new doors for Zinke’s office

Stephanie Ebbs, Good Morning America March 9, 2018

The Interior Department plans to spend more than $139,000 on new doors and repairs for Sec. Ryan Zinke’s office at the department’s headquarters in Washington, D.C., the agency confirmed to ABC News on Thursday.

The purchase is the latest in a series of questionable agency expenses connected to President Donald Trump’s cabinet leaders. Last week the Department of Housing and Urban Development canceled an order for a $31,000 dining set for Sec. Ben Carson’s office suite.

Federal contracting records show that the Interior Department signed an order for $139,669.68 described only as “Secretary’s Door” on Nov. 6 of last year. The order was supposed to be completed by the end of that month but was later amended to be completed by the end of January.

Interior Spokeswoman Heather Swift said in a statement that Secretary Ryan Zinke was not aware of the order before the Associated Press report on Thursday and agrees that it is too expensive. The AP first reported the story.

“This project was requested by career facilities and security officials at Interior as part of the decade-long modernization of the historic FDR-era building. The secretary was not aware of this contract but agrees that this is a lot of money for demo, install, materials, and labor,” Swift said in a statement to ABC News. “Between regulations that require historic preservation and outdated government procurement rules, the costs for everything from pencils to printing to doors is astronomical. This is a perfect example of why the Secretary believes we need to reform procurement processes.”

The order has been planned since last summer to replace three sets of double doors in the secretary’s office, according to a statement from Joe Nassar, director of the office of facilities and administrative services at Interior Department.

Nassar said in his statement that two sets of doors that lead outside have been in disrepair and allow air and water into the office during inclement weather, which then damages the wooden floor. The order would replace those with fiberglass and repair an interior set of doors while preserving the existing fixtures.

He said the doors were last replaced about 11 years ago.

“The cost is reasonable when taking into account there are two sets of double doors, the doors must be custom built, they must meet historic building requirements, includes both sets of door frames, demo of the current structure and installation,” Nassar said in the statement. “In order to control costs, the contractual documents included a request to use existing door handles, locks and latches. The contract and the amount also included repairs to the interior double doors.”

Zinke has been under scrutiny for his spending on travel, which has been an issue with several other cabinet officials. Interior’s inspector general is currently looking into whether all of Zinke’s spending followed proper procedures.

Democrats on a committee with oversight of Interior quickly weighed in on Twitter asking Zinke to explain the expense.

And Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff tweeted “think how many dining sets” or private jets Zinke could have chartered with that money.

‘Stand down’: How the Obama team blew the response to Russian meddling

Yahoo News

‘Stand down’: How the Obama team blew the response to Russian meddling

Michael Isikoff and David Corn, Yahoo News March 9, 2018

From left, Russian President Vladimir Putin, presidential candidates Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, CIA Director John Brennan, President Barack Obama and national security adviser Susan Rice. (Photo illustration: Yahoo News; photos: AP (7), Getty Images)

This is the second of two excerpts adapted from Russian Roulette: The Inside Story of Putin’s War on America and the Election of Donald Trump (Twelve Books) by Michael Isikoff, Chief Investigative Correspondent for Yahoo News, and David Corn, Washington bureau chief of Mother Jones. It will be released on March 13.

CIA Director John Brennan was angry. On Aug. 4, 2016, he was on the phone with Alexander Bortnikov, head of Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB), the intelligence agency that succeeded the KGB. The phone call was one of their regularly scheduled ones, the main subject once again the horrific civil war in Syria. By this point, however, Brennan had had it with the Russian spy chief. For the past few years, Brennan’s pleas for cooperation in defusing the Syrian crisis had gone nowhere. And after they finished discussing Syria — again with no progress — Brennan brought up two other issues not on the official agenda.

First, Brennan raised the problem of Russia’s harassment of U.S. diplomats — an especially pressing matter at Langley after an undercover CIA officer had been beaten outside the U.S. Embassy in Moscow two months earlier. The continuing mistreatment of U.S. diplomats, Brennan told Bortnikov, was “irresponsible, reckless, intolerable and needed to stop.” And, he pointedly noted, it was Bortnikov’s own FSB “that has been most responsible for this outrageous behavior.”

Then Brennan turned to an even more sensitive issue: Russia’s interference in the American election. Brennan was now aware that at least a year earlier Russian hackers had begun their cyberattack on the Democratic National Committee. We know you’re doing this, Brennan said to the Russian. He pointed out that Americans would be enraged to find out Moscow was seeking to subvert the election — and that such an operation could backfire. Brennan warned Bortnikov that if Russia continued this information warfare, there would be a price to pay. He did not specify the consequences.

Bortnikov, as Brennan expected, denied Russia was doing anything to influence the election. This was, he groused, Washington yet again scapegoating Moscow. Brennan repeated his warning. Once more Bortnikov claimed there was no Russian meddling. But, he added, he would inform Russian President Vladimir Putin of Brennan’s comments.

This was the first of several warnings that the Obama administration would send to Moscow. But the question of how forcefully to respond would soon divide the White House staff, pitting the National Security Council’s top analysts for Russia and cyber issues against senior policymakers within the administration. It was a debate that would culminate that summer with a dramatic directive from Obama’s national security adviser to the NSC staffers developing aggressive proposals to strike back against the Russians: “Stand down.”

*****

At the end of July — not long after WikiLeaks had dumped over 20,000 stolen DNC emails before the Democratic convention — it had become obvious to Brennan that the Russians were mounting an aggressive and wide‑ranging effort to interfere in the election. He was also seeing intelligence about contacts and interactions between Russian officials and Americans involved in the Trump campaign. By now, several European intelligence services had reported to the CIA that Russian operatives were reaching out to people within Trump’s circle. And the Australian government had reported to U.S. officials that its top diplomat in the United Kingdom had months earlier been privately told by Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos that Russia had “dirt” on Hillary Clinton. By July 31, the FBI had formally opened a counterintelligence investigation into the Trump’s campaigns ties to Russians, with sub-inquiries targeting four individuals: Paul Manafort, the campaign chairman; Michael Flynn, the former Defense Intelligence Agency chief who had led the crowd at the Republican convention in chants of “Lock her up!”; Carter Page, a foreign policy adviser who had just given a speech in Moscow; and Papadopoulos.

Brennan spoke with FBI Director James Comey and Adm. Mike Rogers, the head of the NSA, and asked them to dispatch to the CIA their experts to establish a working group at Langley that would review the intelligence and figure out the full scope and nature of the Russian operation. Brennan was thinking about the lessons of the 9/11 attack. Al-Qaida had been able to pull off that operation partly because U.S. intelligence agencies — several of which had collected bits of intelligence regarding the plotters before the attack — had not shared the material within the intelligence community. Brennan wanted a process in which NSA, FBI and CIA experts could freely share with each other the information each agency had on the Russian operation — even the most secret information that tended not to be disseminated throughout the full intelligence community.

Brennan realized this was what he would later call “an exceptionally, exceptionally sensitive issue.” Here was an active counterintelligence case — already begun by the FBI — aiming at uncovering and stopping Russian covert activity in the middle of a U.S. presidential campaign. And it included digging into whether it involved Americans in contact with Russia.

*****

While Brennan wrangled the intelligence agencies into a turf-crossing operation that could feed the White House information on the Russian maneuver, Obama convened a series of meetings to devise a plan for countering whatever the Russians were up to. The meetings followed the procedure known in the federal government as the “interagency process.” The protocol was for the deputy chiefs of the relevant government agencies to meet and hammer out options for the principals — that is, the heads of the agencies — and then the principals hold a separate (and sometimes parallel) chain of meetings to discuss and perhaps debate before presenting choices to the president.

But for this topic, the protocol was not observed. Usually when the White House invited the deputies and principals to such meetings, they informed them of the subject at hand and provided “readahead” memos outlining what was on the agenda. This time, the agency officials just received instructions to show up at the White House at a certain time. No reason given. No memos supplied. “We were only told that a meeting was scheduled, and our principal or deputy was expected to attend,” recalled a senior administration official who participated in the sessions. (At the State Department, only a small number of officials were cleared to receive the most sensitive information on the Russian hack; this group included Secretary of State John Kerry; Tony Blinken, the deputy secretary of state; Dan Smith, head of the department’s intelligence bureau; and Jon Finer, Kerry’s chief of staff.)

For the usual interagency sessions, principals and deputies could bring staffers. Not this time. “There were no plus ones,” an attendee recalled. When the subject of a principals or deputies meeting was a national security matter, the gathering was often held in the Situation Room of the White House. The in‑house video feed of the Sit Room — without audio — would be available to national security officials at the White House and elsewhere, and these officials could at least see that a meeting was in progress and who was attending. For the meetings related to the Russian hack, Susan Rice, Obama’s national security adviser, ordered the video feed turned off. She did not want others in the national security establishment to know what was under way, fearing leaks from within the bureaucracy.

Rice would chair the principals’ meetings — which brought together Brennan; Comey; Kerry; Director of National Intelligence James Clapper; Defense Secretary Ash Carter; Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson; Treasury Secretary Jack Lew; Attorney General Loretta Lynch; and Gen. Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff — with only a few other White House officials present, including White House chief of staff Denis McDonough; homeland security adviser Lisa Monaco, and Colin Kahl, Vice President Joe Biden’s national security adviser. (Kahl had to insist to Rice that he be allowed to attend so that Biden could be fully briefed.)

Rice’s No. 2, deputy national security adviser Avril Haines, oversaw the deputies’ sessions. White House officials who were absent from the meetings were not told what was being discussed. This even included other NSC staffers — some of whom bristled at being shut out. Often the intelligence material covered in these meetings was not placed in the President’s Daily Brief, the top-secret document presented to the president every morning. Too many people had access to the PDB. “The opsec on this” — the operational security — “was as tight as it could be,” one White House official later said.

*****

As the interagency process began, there was no question regarding the big picture being drawn up by the analysts and experts assembled by Brennan: Russian state-sponsored hackers were behind the cyberattacks and the release of swiped Democratic material by WikiLeaks, Guccifer 2.0 (an internet persona suspected of being a Russian front), and a website called DCLeaks.com. “They knew who the cutouts were,” one participant later said. “There was not a lot of doubt.” It was not immediately clear, however, how far and wide within the Russian government the effort ran. Was it coming from one or two Russian outfits operating on their own? Or was it being directed from the top and part of a larger project?

The intelligence, at this stage, was also unclear on a central point: Moscow’s primary aim. Was it to sow discord to delegitimize the U.S. election? Prompting a political crisis in the United States was certainly in keeping with Putin’s overall goal of weakening Western governments. There was another obvious reason for the Russian assault: Putin despised Hillary Clinton, blaming her for the domestic protests that followed the 2011 Russian legislative elections marred by fraud. (At the time, as secretary of state, Clinton had questioned the legitimacy of the elections.) U.S. officials saw the Russian operation as designed at least to weaken Clinton during the election — not necessarily prevent her from winning. After all, the Russians were as susceptible as any political observers to the conventional wisdom that she was likely to beat Trump. If Clinton, after a chaotic election, staggered across the finish line, bruised and battered, she might well be a damaged president and less able to challenge Putin.

And there was a third possible reason: to help Trump. Did the Russians believe they could influence a national election in the United States and affect the results? At this stage, the intelligence community analysts and officials working on this issue considered this point not yet fully substantiated by the data they possessed. Given Trump’s business dealings with Russians over the years and his history of puzzling positive remarks about Putin, there seemed ample cause for Putin to desire Trump in the White House. The intelligence experts did believe this could be part of the mix for Moscow: Why not shoot for the moon and see if we can get Trump elected?

“All these potential motives were not mutually exclusive,” a top Obama aide later said.

Obama would be vacationing in Martha’s Vineyard until Aug. 21, and the deputies took his return as an informal deadline for preparing a list of options — sanctions, diplomatic responses, and cyber-counterattacks — that could be put in front of the principals and the president.

*****

As these deliberations were under way, more troubling intelligence got reported to the White House: Russian-linked hackers were probing the computers of state election systems, particularly voter registration databases. The first reports to the FBI came from Illinois. In late June, its voter database was targeted in a persistent cyberattack that lasted for weeks. The attackers were using foreign IP addresses, many of which were traced to a Dutch company owned by a heavily tattooed 26-year‑old Russian who lived in Siberia. The hackers were relentlessly pinging the Illinois database five times per second, 24 hours a day, and they succeeded in accessing data on up to 200,000 voters. Then there was a similar report from Arizona, where the user name and password of a county election official was stolen. The state was forced to shut down its voter registration system for a week. Then, in Florida, another attack.

One NSC staffer regularly walked into the office of Michael Daniel, the White House director of cybersecurity, with disturbing updates. “Michael,” he would say, “five more states got popped.” Or four. Or three. At one point, Daniel took a deep breath and told him, “It’s starting to look like every single state has been targeted.”

“I don’t think anybody knew what to make of it,” Jeh Johnson later said. The states selected seemed to be random; his agency, the Department of Homeland Security, could see no logic to it. If the goal was simply to instigate confusion on Election Day, Johnson figured, whoever was doing this could simply call in a bomb threat. Other administration officials had a darker view, and believed that the Russians were deliberately plotting digital manipulations, perhaps with the goal of altering results.

Michael Daniel was worried. He believed the Russians’ ability to fiddle with the national vote count — and swing a national U.S. election to a desired candidate — seemed limited, if not impossible. “We have 3,000 jurisdictions,” Daniel subsequently explained. “You have to pick the county where the race was going to be tight and manipulate the results. That seemed beyond their reach. The Russians were not trying to flip votes. To have that level of precision was not feasible.”

But Daniel was focused on another parade of horribles: If hackers could penetrate a state election voter database, they might be able to delete every 10th name. Or flip two digits in a voter’s ID number, so when a voter showed up at the polls, his or her name would not match. The changes could be subtle, not easily discerned. But the potential for disorder on Election Day was immense. The Russians would only have to cause problems in a small number of locations — problems with registration files, vote counting, or other mechanisms — and faith in the overall tally could be questioned. Who knew what would happen then?

Daniel even fretted that the Russians might post online a video of a hacked voting machine. The video would not have to be real to stoke the paranoids of the world and cause a segment of the electorate to suspect — or conclude — that the results could not be trusted. He envisioned Moscow planning to create multiple disruptions on Election Day to call the final counts into question.

The Russian scans, probes and penetrations of state voting systems changed the top-secret conversations under way. Administration officials now feared the Russians were scheming to infiltrate voting systems to disrupt the election or affect tallies on Election Day. And the consensus among Obama’s top advisers was that potential Russian election tampering was far more dangerous. The Russian hack-and-dump campaign, they generally believed, was unlikely to make the difference in the outcome of the presidential election. (After all, could Trump really beat Clinton?) Yet messing with voting systems could raise questions about the integrity of the election and the results. That was, they thought, the more serious threat.

Weeks earlier, Trump had started claiming that the only way he could lose the election would be if it were “rigged.” With one candidate and his supporters spreading this notion, it would not take many irregularities to spark a full‑scale crisis on Election Day.

Obama instructed Johnson to move immediately to shore up the defenses of state election systems. On Aug. 15, Johnson, while in the basement of his parents’ home in upstate New York, held a conference call with secretaries of state and other chief election officials of every state. Without mentioning the Russian cyber-intrusions into state systems, he told them there was a need to boost the security of the election infrastructure and offered the DHS’s assistance. He raised the possibility of designating election systems as “critical infrastructure” — just like dams and the electrical grid — meaning that a cyberattack could trigger a federal response.

Much to Johnson’s surprise, this move ran into resistance. Many of the state officials — especially from the red states — wanted little, if anything, to do with the DHS. Leading the charge was Brian Kemp, Georgia’s secretary of state, an ambitious, staunchly conservative Republican who feared the hidden hand of the Obama White House. “We don’t need the federal government to take over our voting,” he told Johnson.

Johnson tried to explain that DHS’s cybersecurity experts could help state systems search for vulnerabilities and protect against penetrations. He encouraged them to take basic cybersecurity steps, such as ensuring voting machines were not connected to the internet when voting was under way. And he kept explaining that any federal help would be voluntary for the states. “He must have used the word voluntary 15 times,” recalled a Homeland Security official who was on the call. “But there was a lot of skepticism that revolved around saying, ‘We don’t want Big Brother coming in and running our election process.’”

After the call, Johnson and his aides realized encouraging local officials to accept their help was going to be tough. They gave up on the idea of declaring these systems critical infrastructure and instead concluded they would have to keep urging state and local officials to accept their cybersecurity assistance.

Johnson’s interaction with local and state officials was a warning for the White House. If administration officials were going to enlist these election officials to thwart Russian interference in the voting, they would need GOP leaders in Congress to be part of the endeavor and, in a way, vouch for the federal government. Yet they had no idea how difficult that would be.

*****

At the first principals’ meeting, Brennan had serious news for his colleagues: The most recent intelligence indicated that Putin had ordered or was overseeing the Russian cyber operations targeting the U.S. election. And the intelligence community — sometimes called the “IC” by denizens of that world — was certain that the Russian operation entailed more than spy services gathering information. It now viewed the Russian action as a full-scale active measure.

This intelligence was so sensitive it had not been put in the President’s Daily Brief. Brennan had told Obama personally about this, but he did not want the information circulating throughout the national security system.

The other principals were surprised to hear that Putin had a direct hand in the operation and that he would be so bold. It was one thing for Russian intelligence to see what it could get away with; it was quite another for these attacks to be part of a concerted effort from the top of the Kremlin hierarchy.

But a secret source in the Kremlin, who two years earlier had regularly provided information to an American official in the U.S. Embassy, had warned then that a massive operation targeting Western democracies was being planned by the Russian government. The development of the Gerasimov Doctrine — a strategy for nonmilitary combat named after a top Russian general who had described it in an obscure military journal in 2013 — was another indication that full-scale information warfare against the United States was a possibility. And there had been an intelligence report in May noting that a Russian military intelligence officer had bragged of a payback operation that would be Putin’s revenge on Clinton. But these few clues had not led to a consensus at senior government levels that a major Putin-led attack was on the way.

*****

At this point, Obama’s top national security officials were uncertain how to respond. As they would later explain it, any steps they might take — calling out the Russians, imposing sanctions, raising alarms about the penetrations of state systems — could draw greater attention to the issue and maybe even help cause the disorder the Kremlin sought. A high‑profile U.S. government reaction, they worried, could amplify the psychological effects of the Russian attack and help Moscow achieve its end. “There was a concern if we did too much to spin this up into an Obama‑Putin face‑off, it would help the Russians achieve their objectives,” a participant in the principals’ meeting later noted. “It would create chaos, help Trump and hurt Clinton. We had to figure out how to do this in a way so we wouldn’t create an own goal. We had a strong sense of the Hippocratic Oath: Do no harm.”

A parallel concern for them was how the Obama administration could respond to the Russian attack without appearing too partisan. Obama was actively campaigning for Clinton. Would a tough and vocal reaction be seen as a White House attempt to assist Clinton and stick it to Trump? They worried that if a White House effort to counter Russian meddling came across as a political maneuver, that could compromise the ability of the Department of Homeland Security to work with state and local election officials to make sure the voting system was sound. (Was Obama too worried about being perceived as prejudicial or conniving? “Perhaps there was some overcompensation,” a top Obama aide said later.)

As Obama and his top policymakers saw it, they were stuck with several dilemmas. Inform the public about the Russian attack without triggering widespread unease about the election system. Be pro‑active without coming across as partisan and bolstering Trump’s claim the election was a sham. Prevent Putin from further cyber aggression without prompting him to do more. “This was one of the most complex and challenging issues I dealt with in government,” Avril Haines, the NSC’s No. 2 official, who oversaw the deputies meetings, later remarked.

The principals asked the Treasury Department to craft a list of far‑reaching economic sanctions. Officials at the State Department began working up diplomatic penalties. And the White House pushed the IC to develop more intelligence on the Russian operation so Obama and his aides could consider whether to publicly call out Moscow.

*****

At this point, a group of NSC officials committed to a forceful response to Moscow’s intervention started concocting creative options for cyberattacks that would expand the information war Putin had begun.

Michael Daniel and Celeste Wallander, the National Security Council’s top Russia analyst, were convinced the United States needed to strike back hard against the Russians and make it clear that Moscow had crossed a red line. Words alone wouldn’t do the trick; there had to be consequences. “I wanted to send a signal that we would not tolerate disruptions to our electoral process,” Daniel recalled. His basic argument: “The Russians are going to push as hard as they can until we start pushing back.”

Daniel and Wallander began drafting options for more aggressive responses beyond anything the Obama administration or the U.S. government had ever before contemplated in response to a cyberattack. One proposal was to unleash the NSA to mount a series of far-reaching cyberattacks: to dismantle the Guccifer 2.0 and DCLeaks websites that had been leaking the emails and memos stolen from Democratic targets, to bombard Russian news sites with a wave of automated traffic in a denial-of-service attack that would shut the news sites down, and to launch an attack on the Russian intelligence agencies themselves, seeking to disrupt their command and control nodes.

Knowing that Putin was notoriously protective of any information about his family, Wallander suggested targeting Putin himself. She proposed leaking snippets of classified intelligence to reveal the secret bank accounts in Latvia held for Putin’s daughters — a direct poke at the Russian president that would be sure to infuriate him. Wallander also brainstormed ideas with Victoria Nuland, the assistant secretary of state for European affairs and a fellow hard-liner. They drafted proposals to dump dirt on Russian websites about Putin’s money, about the girlfriends of top Russian officials, about corruption in Putin’s United Russia party — essentially to give Putin a taste of his own medicine. “We wanted to raise the cost in a manner Putin recognized,” Nuland recalled.

One idea Daniel proposed was unusual: The United States and NATO should publicly announce a giant “cyber exercise” against a mythical Eurasian country, demonstrating that Western nations had it within their power to shut down Russia’s entire civil infrastructure and cripple its economy.

But Wallander and Daniel’s bosses at the White House were not on board. One day in late August, national security adviser Susan Rice called Daniel into her office and demanded he cease and desist from working on the cyber options he was developing. “Don’t get ahead of us,” she warned him. The White House was not prepared to endorse any of these ideas. Daniel and his team in the White House cyber response group were given strict orders: Stand down. She told Daniel to “knock it off,” he recalled.

Daniel walked back to his office. “That was one pissed-off national security adviser,” he told one of his aides.

At his morning staff meeting, Daniel matter of factly said to his team it had to stop work on options to counter the Russian attack: “We’ve been told to stand down.” Daniel Prieto, one of Daniel’s top deputies, recalled, “I was incredulous and in disbelief. It took me a moment to process. In my head I was like, Did I hear that correctly?” Then Prieto asked, “Why the hell are we standing down? Michael, can you help us understand? “Daniel informed them that the orders came from both Rice and Monaco. They were concerned that were the options to leak, it would force Obama to act. “They didn’t want to box the president in,” Prieto subsequently said.

It was a critical moment that, as Prieto saw it, scuttled the chance for a forceful immediate response to the Russian hack — and keenly disappointed the NSC aides who had been developing the options. They were convinced that the president and his top aides didn’t get the stakes. “There was a disconnect between the urgency felt at the staff level” and the views of the president and his senior aides, Prieto later said. When senior officials argued that the issue could be revisited after Election Day, Daniel and his staff intensely disagreed. “No — the longer you wait, it diminishes your effectiveness. If you’re in a street fight, you have to hit back,” Prieto remarked.

*****

Obama and his top aides did view the challenge at hand differently than the NSC staffers. “The first-order objective directed by President Obama,” McDonough recalled, “was to protect the integrity of election.” Confronting Putin was necessary, Obama believed, but not if it risked blowing up the election. He wanted to make sure whatever action was taken would not lead to a political crisis at home — and with Trump the possibility for that was great. The nation had had more than 200 years of elections and peaceful transitions of power. Obama didn’t want that to end on his watch.

By now, the principals were into the nitty-gritty, discussing in the Sit Room the specifics of how to respond. They were not overly concerned about Moscow’s influence campaign to shape voter attitudes. The key question was precisely how to thwart further Russian meddling that could undermine the mechanics of the election. Strong sanctions? Other punishments?

The principals did discuss cyber responses. The prospect of hitting back with cyber caused trepidation within the deputies’ and principals’ meetings. The United States was telling Russia this sort of meddling was unacceptable. If Washington engaged in the same type of covert combat, some of the principals believed, Washington’s demand would mean nothing, and there could be an escalation in cyberwarfare. There were concerns that the U.S. would have more to lose in all-out cyberwar.

“If we got into a tit-for-tat on cyber with the Russians, it would not be to our advantage,” a participant later remarked. “They could do more to damage us in a cyberwar or have a greater impact.” In one of the meetings, Clapper said he was worried that Russia might respond with cyberattacks against America’s critical infrastructure — and possibly shut down the electrical grid.

The State Department had worked up its own traditional punishments: booting Russian diplomats — and spies — out of the United States, and shutting down Russian facilities on American soil. And Treasury had drafted a series of economic sanctions that included massive assaults on Putin’s economy, such as targeting Russia’s military industries and cutting off Russia from the global financial system. One proposal called for imposing the same sorts of sanctions as had been placed on Iran: Any entity that did business with Russian banks would not be allowed to do business with U.S. financial institutions. But the intelligence community warned that if the United States responded with a massive response of any kind, Putin would see it as an attempt at regime change. “This could lead to a nuclear escalation,” a top Obama aide later said, speaking metaphorically.

After two weeks or so of deliberations, the White House put these options on hold. Instead, Obama and his aides came up with a different plan. First, DHS would keep trying to work with the state voting systems. For that to succeed, the administration needed buy‑in from congressional Republicans. So Obama approached Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Speaker Paul Ryan to try to deliver a bipartisan and public message that the Russian threat to the election was serious and that local officials should collaborate with the feds to protect the electoral infrastructure.

Obama and the principals also decided that the U.S. government would have to issue a public statement calling out Russia for having already secretly messed with the 2016 campaign. But even this seemed a task fraught with potential problems. Obama and his top aides believed that if the president himself issued such a message, Trump and the Republicans would accuse him of exploiting intelligence — or making up intelligence — to help Clinton. The declaration would have to come from the intelligence community, which was then instructed to start crafting a statement. In the meantime, Obama would continue to say nothing publicly about the most serious information warfare attack ever launched against the United States.

Most of all, Obama and his aides had to figure out how to ensure the Russians ceased their meddling immediately. They came up with an answer that would frustrate the NSC hawks, who believed Obama and his senior advisers were tying themselves in knots and looking for reasons not to act. The president would privately warn Putin and vow overwhelming retaliation for any further intervention in the election. This, they thought, could more likely dissuade Putin than hitting back at this moment. That is, they believed the threat of action would be more effective than actually taking action.

A meeting of the G-20 was scheduled for the first week in September in China. Obama and Putin would both be attending. Obama, according to this plan, would confront Putin and issue a powerful threat that would supposedly convince Russia to back off. Obama would do so without spelling out for Putin the precise damage he would inflict on Russia. “An unspecified threat would be far more potent than Putin knowing what we would do,” one of the principals later said. “Let his imagination run wild. That would be far more effective, we thought, than freezing this or that person’s assets.” But the essence of the message would be that if Putin did not stop, the United States would impose sanctions to crater Russia’s economy.

Obama and his aides were confident the intelligence community could track any new Russian efforts to penetrate the election infrastructure. If the IC detected new attempts, Obama then could quickly slap Russia with sanctions or other retribution. But the principals agreed that for this plan to work, the president had to be ready to pull the trigger.

*****

Obama threatened — but never did pull the trigger. In early September, during the G-20 summit in Hangzhou, China, the president privately confronted Putin in what a senior White House official described as a “candid” and “blunt” talk. The president informed his aides he had delivered the message he and his advisers had crafted: We know what you’re doing. If you don’t cut it out, we will impose onerous and unprecedented penalties. One senior U.S. government official briefed on the meeting was told the president said to Putin, in effect: “You f*** with us over the election and we’ll crash your economy.”

But Putin simply denied everything to Obama — and, as he had done before, blamed the U.S. for interfering in Russian politics. And if Obama was tough in private, publicly he played the statesman. Asked at a post-summit news conference about Russia’s hacking of the election, the president spoke in generalities — and insisted the United States did not want a blowup over the issue. “We’ve had problems with cyber-intrusions from Russia in the past, from other counties in the past,” he said. “Our goal is not to suddenly, in the cyber arena, duplicate a cycle escalation that we saw when it comes other arms races in the past, but rather to start instituting some norms so that everybody’s acting responsibility.”

White House officials believed for a while that Obama’s warning had some impact: They saw no further evidence of Russia cyber-intrusions into state election systems. But, as they would later acknowledge, they largely missed Russia’s information warfare campaign aimed at influencing the election — the inflammatory Facebook ads and Twitter bots created by an army of Russian trolls working for the Internet Research Agency in St. Petersburg.

On Oct. 7, the Obama administration finally went public, releasing a statement from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and Department of Homeland Security that called out the Russians for their efforts to “interfere with the U.S. election process,” saying that “only Russia’s senior-most officials could have authorized these activities.” But for some in the Clinton campaign and within the White House itself, it was too little, too late. Wallander, the NSC Russia specialist who had pushed for a more aggressive response, thought the Oct. 7 statement was largely irrelevant. “The Russians don’t care what we say,” she later noted. “They care what we do.” (The same day the statement came out, WikiLeaks began its month-long posting of tens of thousands of emails Russian hackers had stolen from John Podesta, the CEO of the Clinton campaign.)

In the end, some Obama officials thought they had played a bad hand the best they could, and had succeeded in preventing a Russian disruption of Election Day. Others would ruefully conclude that they may have blown it and not done enough. Nearly two months after the election, Obama did impose sanctions on Moscow for its meddling in the election — shutting down two Russian facilities in the United States suspected of being used for intelligence operations and booting out 35 Russian diplomats and spies. The impact of these moves was questionable. Rice would come to believe it was reasonable to think that the administration should have gone further. As one senior official lamented, “Maybe we should have whacked them more.”

Trump and the Russians: A new book describes how it all began — at a Las Vegas nightclub

Yahoo News

Trump and the Russians: A new book describes how it all began — at a Las Vegas nightclub

Jerry Adler, Senior Editor March 8, 2018

Photo illustration: Yahoo News

The seeds of the relationships between Donald Trump and key figures in the Russian business and political worlds — now the subject of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation — were planted at least five months before Trump’s now famous 2013 trip to Moscow, during a previously unreported visit to a raunchy Las Vegas nightclub with the son of a prominent oligarch and Putin ally, according to a new book about Trump and his Russian ties. The book is excerpted today in Yahoo News and Mother Jones magazine.

The book also reveals a January 2015 meeting at Trump Tower between Trump and two key figures in the Russia probe — the oligarch’s son, pop singer Emin Agalarov, and his publicist, Rob Goldstone — during which the real estate mogul strongly hinted about his plans to run for president. Both Emin Agalarov and Goldstone have come under scrutiny because of their pivotal roles in setting up the notorious June 2016 meeting at Trump Tower by promising Trump campaign officials “high-level and sensitive” information from the Kremlin that would “incriminate” Hillary Clinton.

Some of the contacts and meetings among Trump, Russian billionaire Aras Agalarov, his son, Emin, and the British publicist Goldstone are detailed for the first time in the book, “Russian Roulette: The Inside Story of Putin’s War on America and the Election of Donald Trump,” by authors Michael Isikoff, the Chief Investigative Correspondent for Yahoo News; and David Corn, the Washington bureau chief for Mother Jones. The book will be released on Tuesday, March 13.

The excerpt being published today by Yahoo News and Mother Jones explores the events surrounding Trump’s November 2013 visit to Moscow to oversee the Miss Universe pageant, and to vigorously pursue his long-standing dream of building a Trump Tower in the Russian capital. A deal was reached for the project with Aras Agalarov, an oligarch known as “Putin’s builder,” with financing by a bank controlled by the Russian government.

That agreement, in turn, grew out of a June trip to Las Vegas, where Trump was presiding over the Miss USA pageant, a preliminary to Miss Universe. It has previously been reported that Trump dined with the Agalarovs, Goldstone and others at a Las Vegas restaurant while there. But as the book reveals, Trump later that night joined Emin Agalarov, Goldstone and the reigning Miss Universe, Olivia Culpo, for an after-party at a nightclub called the Act, known for shows, extreme even by Vegas standards, that simulated acts of sadomasochism and bestiality and one (called “Hot for Teacher”) in which female dancers pretended to be college students urinating on their professor. (The club, the book notes, laid in a supply of Diet Coke for the teetotaling Trump.) The club was the target of an undercover investigation by the Nevada Gaming Commission at the time of Trump’s visit, and many of its acts — including those involving simulated urination — were later banned by a Nevada state judge as “lewd” and “offensive,” court records obtained by the authors show. The Act has since closed.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, Aras Agalarov, Rob Goldstone, Emin Agalarov, Donald Trump and Olivia Culpo. (Photo illustration: Yahoo News; photos: Mikhail Svetlov/Getty Images, Jeff Bottari/AP, Adriel Reboh/Patrick McMullan via Getty Images, Victor Boyko/Getty Images, Maxim Shemetov/Reuters)

There is no record of what acts were performed there the night Trump attended. The so-called Steele dossier, prepared by former British spy Christopher Steele, contains allegations that while in Moscow later that year Trump had prostitutes urinate on a bed in his hotel room — an episode that was supposedly secretly captured by Russian intelligence agents on tape. Trump has strongly denied that allegation.

According to an account that Goldstone provided the authors, Trump’s main interest during the nightclub visit in Vegas was in securing a business deal with Agalarov and his father.

“When it comes to doing business in Russia, it’s very hard to find people in there you can trust,” Trump told Emin Agalarov, according to Goldstone’s account. “We’re going to have a great relationship.”

The excerpt published today portrays Trump in Moscow as obsessed with scoring a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, whose approval would be necessary for the Trump Tower project to proceed, and with whom Trump was cultivating a largely one-sided bromance. As the time of the pageant broadcast approached, Trump kept asking, “Is Putin coming?” the authors write — and they describe how he was stood up by the Russian president, who cited a previously scheduled meeting with the Dutch royal family, which had been delayed by a Moscow traffic jam. Instead, Putin sent a gift of a lacquered box, which was later delivered to Trump Tower, containing a personal letter whose contents have never been disclosed.

But, the authors write, Trump sought to hide his disappointment with a suggestion to an associate that the Miss Universe pageant could still announce Putin had attended anyway. “No one will know for sure if he came or not,” Trump said.

It was during this visit that Trump reached his deal with Agalarov’s company, the Crocus Group, to build a Trump Tower Moscow. As the authors report, the deal was memorialized with a formal “letter of intent” between the Trump Organization and Crocus — and the project was to be financed by Sberbank, which was majority-owned by the Russian government. Donald Trump Jr. was placed in charge of the project.

In February 2014, Ivanka Trump flew to Moscow to scout potential sites for the project with Emin Agalarov. But international events would quickly intervene. Weeks after Ivanka’s visit, the Obama administration and the European Union imposed tough sanctions on Russia in response to Putin’s annexation of Crimea and his military intervention in Ukraine. It would be a kick to Russia’s faltering economy, already struggling because of the plummeting price of oil. And one round of sanctions imposed by the EU targeted Russian banks in which the Russia government held a majority interest — that included Sberbank.

In this environment, the plans for the Trump Tower in Moscow crumbled. According to the Trump Organization, Ivanka Trump, after touring Moscow with the younger Agalarov, killed the deal for business reasons. But Goldstone, Emin Agalarov’s publicist, suspected the demise of Trump’s project with the Agalarovs influenced Trump’s view of sanctions: “They had interrupted a business deal that Trump was keenly interested in.”

Still, Trump stayed in touch with Emin Agalarov and Goldstone. In January 2015, nearly a year after Putin’s invasion in Ukraine, Trump had Emin Agalarov and Goldstone as guests to his office in Trump Tower.

The future president, Goldstone recalled, was watching a rap video that ridiculed him. Goldstone asked, “Have you listened to the words?”

Trump replied, “Who cares about the words? It has 90 million hits on YouTube.”

And Trump said something telling to Emin, who was still seeking fame as a singer after performing at the Miss Universe contest in 2013: “Maybe next time, you’ll be performing at the White House.”

Seventeen months later, in June 2016, Goldstone would return to Trump Tower — this time escorting a Russian-led delegation dispatched by the Agalarovs, offering potentially derogatory information on Hillary Clinton, courtesy of the Kremlin, to the top officials of Trump’s presidential campaign. That visit — and the Trump White House’s responses to questions about it — have become a prime focus of Mueller’s investigation.

Emin Agalarov has not yet performed at the White House.

What Happened in Moscow: The Inside Story of How Trump’s Obsession With Putin Began.

Mother Jones

What Happened in Moscow: The Inside Story of How Trump’s Obsession With Putin Began.

His 2013 visit paved the way for a scandal that shook the world.

By David Cone and Michael Isikoff March 8, 2028

This is the first of two excerpts adapted from Russian Roulette: The Inside Story of Putin’s War on America and the Election of Donald Trump (Twelve Books), by Michael Isikoff, chief investigative correspondent for Yahoo News, and David Corn, Washington bureau chief of Mother Jones. The book will be released on March 13.

It was late in the afternoon of November 9, 2013, in Moscow, and Donald Trump was getting anxious.

This was his second day in the Russian capital, and the brash businessman and reality TV star was running through a whirlwind schedule to promote that evening’s extravaganza at Moscow’s Crocus City Hall: the Miss Universe pageant, in which women from 86 countries would be judged before a worldwide television audience estimated at 1 billion.

Trump had purchased the pageant 17 years earlier, partnering with NBC. It was one of his most prized properties, bringing in millions of dollars a year in revenue and, perhaps as important, burnishing his image as an iconic international playboy celebrity. While in the Russian capital, Trump was also scouting for new and grand business opportunities, having spent decades trying—but failing—to develop high-end projects in Moscow. Miss Universe staffers considered it an open secret that Trump’s true agenda in Moscow was not the show but his desire to do business there.

Yet to those around him that afternoon, Trump seemed gripped by one question: Where was Vladimir Putin?

From the moment five months earlier when Trump announced Miss Universe would be staged that year in Moscow, he had seemed obsessed with the idea of meeting the Russian president. “Do you think Putin will be going to The Miss Universe Pageant in November in Moscow—if so, will he become my new best friend?” Trump had tweeted in June.

Once in Moscow, Trump received a private message from the Kremlin, delivered by Aras Agalarov, an oligarch close to Putin and Trump’s partner in hosting the Miss Universe event there: “Mr. Putin would like to meet Mr. Trump.” That excited Trump. The American developer thought there was a strong chance the Russian leader would attend the pageant. But as his time in Russia wore on, Trump heard nothing else. He became uneasy.

“We all knew that the event was approved by Putin,” a Miss Universe official later said. “You can’t pull off something like this in Russia unless Putin says it’s okay.”

“Is Putin coming?” he kept asking.

With no word from the Kremlin, it was starting to look grim. Then Agalarov conveyed a new message. Dmitry Peskov, Putin’s right-hand man and press spokesman, would be calling any moment. Trump was relieved, especially after it was explained to him that few people were closer to Putin than Peskov. If anybody could facilitate a rendezvous with Putin, it was Peskov. “If you get a call from Peskov, it’s like you’re getting a call from Putin,” Rob Goldstone, a British-born publicist who had helped bring the beauty contest to Moscow, told him. But time was running out. The show would be starting soon, and following the broadcast Trump would be departing the city.

Finally, Agalarov’s cellphone rang. It was Peskov, and Agalarov handed the phone to an eager Trump.

Trump’s trip to Moscow for the Miss Universe contest was a pivotal moment. He had for years longed to develop a glittering Trump Tower in Moscow. With this visit, he would come near—so near—to striking that deal. He would be close to branding the Moscow skyline with his world-famous name and enhancing his own status as a sort of global oligarch.

During his time in Russia, Trump would demonstrate his affinity for the nation’s authoritarian leader with flattering and fawning tweets and remarks that were part of a long stretch of comments suggesting an admiration for Putin. Trump’s curious statements about Putin—before, during, and after this Moscow jaunt—would later confound US intelligence officials, members of Congress, and Americans of various political inclinations, even Republican Party loyalists.

What could possibly explain Trump’s unwavering sympathy for the Russian strongman? His refusal to acknowledge Putin’s repressive tactics, his whitewashing of Putin’s abuses in Ukraine and Syria, his dismissal of the murders of Putin’s critics, his blind eye to Putin’s cyber-attacks and disinformation campaigns aimed at subverting Western democracies?

Trump’s brief trip to Moscow held clues to this mystery. His two days there would later become much discussed because of allegations that he engaged in weird sexual antics while in Russia—claims that were not confirmed. But this visit was significant because it revealed what motivated Trump the most: the opportunity to build more monuments to himself and to make more money. Trump realized he could attain none of his dreams in Moscow without forging a bond with the former KGB lieutenant colonel who was the president of Russia.

This trek to Russia was the birth of a bromance—or something darker—that would soon upend American politics and then scandalize Trump’s presidency. And it began in the most improbable way—as the brainstorm of a hustling music publicist trying to juice the career of a second-tier pop singer.

Trump’s Miss Universe landed in Moscow because of an odd couple: Rob Goldstone and Emin Agalarov.

Goldstone was a heavyset, gregarious bon vivant who liked to post photos on Facebook poking fun at himself for being unkempt and overweight. He once wrote a piece for the New York Times headlined, “The Tricks and Trials of Traveling While Fat.” He had been an Australian tabloid reporter and a publicist for Michael Jackson’s 1987 Bad tour. Now he co-managed a PR firm, and his top priority was serving the needs of an Azerbaijani pop singer of moderate talent named Emin Agalarov.

Emin—he went by his first name—was young, handsome, and rich. He yearned to be an international star. His father, Aras Agalarov, was a billionaire developer who had made it big in Russia, building commercial and residential complexes, and who also owned properties in the United States. After spending his early years in Russia, Emin grew up in Tenafly, New Jersey, obsessed with Elvis Presley. He imitated the King of Rock and Roll in dress, style, and voice. He later studied business at Marymount Manhattan College and subsequently pursued a double career, working in his father’s company and trying to make it as a singer. He married Leyla Aliyeva, the daughter of the president of Azerbaijan, whose regime faced repeated allegations of corruption. After moving to Baku, the country’s capital, Emin soon earned a nickname: “the Elvis of Azerbaijan.”

Emin cultivated the image of a rakish pop star, chronicling a hedonistic lifestyle on lnstagram by posting shots from beaches, nightclubs, and various hot spots. He brandished hats and T-shirts with randy sayings, such as “If You Had a Bad Day Let’s Get Naked.” But his music career was stalled. For help, he had turned to Goldstone.

During a January 2015 meeting, Trump told Emin, “Maybe next time, you’ll be performing at the White House.”

In early 2013, Goldstone was looking to get Emin more media exposure, especially in the United States. A friend offered a suggestion: Perhaps Emin could perform at a Miss Universe pageant. The event had a reputation for showcasing emerging talent. The 2008 contest had featured up-and-comer Lady Gaga. (Trump would later brag—with his usual hyperbole—that this appearance was Lady Gaga’s big break.) About the same time, Goldstone and Emin needed an attractive woman for a music video for Emin’s latest song—and they wanted the most beautiful woman they could find. It seemed obvious to them that they should reach out to Miss Universe.

This led to meetings with Paula Shugart, the president of the Miss Universe Organization, who reported directly to Trump. She agreed to make the reigning Miss Universe, Olivia Culpo, available for the music video. (Within the Miss Universe outfit, Culpo, who had previously been Miss USA, was widely considered a Trump favorite.) And over the course of several conversations with Shugart, Goldstone and Emin discussed where the next Miss Universe contest would be held. At one point, Emin proposed to Shugart that Miss Universe consider mounting its 2013 pageant in Azerbaijan. That didn’t fly with Shugart.

At a subsequent meeting, Emin revised the pitch. “Why don’t we have it in Moscow?” he suggested. Shugart was interested but hesitant. The pageant had looked at Moscow previously. It had not identified a suitable venue there, and it was fearful of running into too much red tape. “What if you had a partner who owns the biggest venue in Moscow?” Emin replied. “Between myself and my father, we can cut through the red tape.”

The venue Emin was referring to was Crocus City Hall, a grand 7,000-seat theater complex built by his father. Moreover, the influential Aras Agalarov could help smooth the way—and bypass the notorious bureaucratic morass that was a regular feature of doing business in Russia.

A native Azerbaijani, Aras Agalarov was known as “Putin’s Builder.” He had accumulated a billion-dollar-plus real estate fortune in part by catering, like Trump, to the super-wealthy. One of his projects was a Moscow housing community for oligarchs that boasted an artificial beach and waterfall. Agalarov had been tapped by Putin to build the massive infrastructure—conference halls, roadways, and housing—for the 2012 Asian-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Vladivostok. He had completed the project in record time. That venture and others—the construction of soccer stadiums for the World Cup in Russia and the building of a superhighway around Moscow—had earned Agalarov Putin’s gratitude. Later in 2013, Putin would pin a medal on Agalarov’s lapel: “Order of Honor of the Russian Federation.”

When Shugart first mentioned to Trump the idea of partnering with a Russian billionaire tight with Putin to bring the Miss Universe contest to Moscow, the celebrity developer was intrigued. At last, here was an inside track to break into the Russian market. And Agalarov agreed to kick in a good chunk of the estimated $20 million pageant budget. Trump was all for it. A Putin-connected oligarch would be underwriting his endeavor.

But the deal had to include something for Emin. Trump’s Miss Universe company guaranteed that Emin would perform two musical numbers during the show. He would be showcased before a global television audience. He and Goldstone believed this could help him achieve his dream: cracking the American pop market.

Even before that, there would be a payoff for Emin. In May, Culpo showed up in Los Angeles for the one-day shoot. Emin was filmed strolling through a deserted nighttime town looking for his love—to the tune of his song “Amor”—and a sultry woman played by Culpo walked in and out of the beam of the flashlight he carried. A few weeks later, the video was done. Emin held a release party at a Moscow nightclub owned by his family. It was a lavish affair. Russian celebrities dropped by. Shugart and Culpo flew in to join the celebration.

In June 2013, Trump arrived in Las Vegas to preside over the Miss USA contest, which was owned by the Miss Universe company. Goldstone, Aras Agalarov, and Emin were in town for the event. Emin posted a photo of himself outside Trump’s hotel off the Vegas strip wearing a Trump T-shirt and boasting a hat exclaiming, “You’re Fired”—the tagline from Trump’s hit television show, The Apprentice. Trump had yet to meet the Agalarovs. But when they finally got together in the lobby of his hotel, he pointed at Aras Agalarov and exclaimed, “Look who came to me! This is the richest man in Russia!” (Agalarov was not the richest man in Russia.)

On the evening of June 15, the two Russians and their British publicist were planning a big dinner at CUT, a restaurant located at the Palazzo hotel and casino. Much to their surprise, they received a call from Keith Schiller, Trump’s longtime security chief and confidant, informing them that his boss wanted to join their party. Sure, they said, please come.

At the dinner for about 20 people in a private room, Emin sat between Trump and Goldstone. Aras Agalarov was across from Trump. Michael Cohen, Trump’s personal attorney who acted as the businessman’s consigliere, was on the other side of Goldstone. Also at the table was an unusual associate for Trump: Ike Kaveladze, the US-based vice president of Crocus International, an Agalarov company. In 2000, a Government Accountability Office report identified a business run by Kaveladze as responsible for opening more than 2,000 bank accounts at two US banks on behalf of Russian-based brokers. The accounts were used to move more than $1.4 billion from individuals in Russia and Eastern Europe around the globe in an operation the report suggested was “for the purpose of laundering money.” His main client at the time was Crocus International. (Kaveladze claimed the GAO probe was “another Russian witch-hunt in the United States.”)

Trump was charming and solicitous of his new partners. He asked Aras what kind of jet he owned. A Gulfstream 550, Aras answered. But the Russian billionaire quickly noted that he had a Gulfstream 650 on order. “If that was me,” Trump replied, “I would have said I was one of only 100 people in the world who have a Gulfstream 650 on order.” It was a small Trumpian lesson in self-promotion. And Trump, proud of himself, turned to Goldstone to emphasize his point: “There is nobody in the world who is a better self-promoter than Donald Trump.”

“When it comes to doing business in Russia, it’s very hard to find people in there you can trust,” Trump told Emin Agalarov. “We’re going to have a great relationship.”

After the dinner, part of the group headed to an after-party at a raunchy nightclub in the Palazzo mall called The Act. Shortly after midnight, the entourage arrived at the club. The group included Trump, Emin, Goldstone, Culpo, and Nana Meriwether, the outgoing Miss USA. Trump and Culpo were photographed in the lobby by a local paparazzi. The club’s management had heard that Trump might be there that night and had arranged to have plenty of Diet Coke on hand for the tea-totaling Trump. (The owners had also discussed whether they should prepare a special performance for the developer, perhaps a dominatrix who would tie him up onstage or a little-person transvestite Trump impersonator—and nixed the idea.)

The group was ushered to the owner’s box, where Emin had an unusual encounter. Alex Soros, the son of George Soros, the billionaire philanthropist who funded opposition to Putin, was there as Meriwether’s date. Emin started chatting with Soros and invited him to see him in Moscow. “You should know,” Soros replied, “I’m no fan of Mr. Putin.” And, he added, he was a big admirer of Mikhail Khodorkovsky—the oligarch turned Putin critic then serving time in a Siberian prison. Emin laughed it off.

The Act was no ordinary nightclub. Since March, it had been the target of undercover surveillance by the Nevada Gaming Control Board and investigators for the club’s landlord—the Palazzo, which was owned by GOP megadonor Sheldon Adelson—after complaints about its obscene performances. The club featured seminude women performing simulated sex acts of bestiality and grotesque sadomasochism—skits that a few months later would prompt a Nevada state judge to issue an injunction barring any more of its “lewd” and “offensive” performances. Among the club’s regular acts cited by the judge was one called “Hot for Teacher,” in which naked college girls simulate urinating on a professor. In another act, two women disrobe and then “one female stands over the other female and simulates urinating while the other female catches the urine in two wine glasses.” (The Act shut down after the judge’s ruling. There is no public record of which skits were performed the night Trump was present.)

As The Act’s scantily clad dancers gyrated in front of them late that night, Emin, Goldstone, Culpo, and the rest toasted Trump’s birthday. (He had turned 67 the day before.) Trump remained focused on Emin and their future partnership. “When it comes to doing business in Russia, it’s very hard to find people in there you can trust,” he told the young pop singer, according to Goldstone. “We’re going to have a great relationship.

The next night, toward the end of the Miss USA broadcast, Trump hit the stage to announce that the Miss Universe pageant would be held the coming November in Russia. In front of the audience, the Agalarovs and Trump signed the contract for the event. Trump declared, “This will be one of the biggest and most beautiful Miss Universe events ever.” On the red carpet earlier that evening, Trump had hailed Emin and Aras Agalarov: “These are the most powerful people in all of Russia, the richest men in Russia.”

Two days later, Trump expressed his desire on Twitter to become Putin’s “new best friend.” Emin quickly responded with his own tweet: “Mr. @realDonaldTrump anyone you meet becomes your best friend—so I’m sure Mr. Putin will not be an exception in Moscow.”

The Moscow event held great potential for Trump to score in Russia. Now he was partnering with a Russian billionaire connected to other oligarchs and favored by Putin. (Trump already had a controversial venture underway in Baku, where he was developing a hotel with the son of the transportation minister of the corrupt regime. This project would soon founder.) “For Trump, this Miss Universe event was all about expanding the Trump Organization brand and getting his names on buildings,” a Miss Universe associate recalled.

And anyone who wanted to do big deals in Russia—especially an American—could only do so if Putin was keen on it. “We all knew that the event was approved by Putin,” a Miss Universe official later said. “You can’t pull off something like this in Russia unless Putin says it’s okay.” Trump would only be making money in Russia because Putin was permitting him to do so.

Immediately, the contest was slammed by controversy. A few days before the announcement in Las Vegas, the Russian Duma had passed a law that made it illegal to expose children to information about homosexuality. The new anti-gay measure was the latest move by Putin to appeal to the conservative Orthodox Church and ultranationalist forces. It came amid a disturbing rise in anti-gay violence throughout Russia. In the southern city of Volgograd a few weeks earlier, a gay man’s naked body was found in a courtyard, his skull smashed, his genitals scarred by beer bottles. The atmosphere was “ugly and brutal,” a US diplomat who then served in Moscow later said. “There would be these hooligans who would go after gay people in bars and beat them up. There was a pretty vicious campaign against the LGBT community.”

Human rights and gay rights advocates in Russia and around the world denounced the new law. Vodka boycotts were launched. There was a push to relocate the Winter Olympics, scheduled to be held the following year in Sochi, Russia. In the United States, the Human Rights Campaign called on Trump and the Miss Universe Organization to move the event out of Russia, noting that under the new law a contestant could be prosecuted if she were to voice support for gay rights.

The uproar over the Russian anti-gay act confronted Trump with a dilemma—how to distance himself from the law without jeopardizing his big Russia play. The Miss Universe Organization issued a statement asserting that it “believes in equality for all individuals.” That didn’t stop the protests. Bravo talk-show host Andy Cohen and entertainment reporter Giuliana Rancic, who had previously co-hosted the pageant, quit the show. Miss Universe officials scrambled and found replacements: Thomas Roberts, an openly gay MSNBC anchor, and former Spice Girl Mel B.

Roberts explained his decision in an op-ed on MSNBC.com: “Boycotting and vilifying from the outside is too easy. Rather, I choose to offer my support of the LGBT community in Russia by going to Moscow and hosting this event as a journalist, an anchor, and a man who happens to be gay. Let people see I am no different than anyone else.

This was a godsend for Trump. He granted Roberts an interview on MSNBC. “I think you’re going to do fantastically,” he told Roberts, “and I love the fact that you feel the same about the whole situation as me.” Inevitably, the conversation turned toward Putin and whether he would appear at the pageant. “I know for a fact that he wants very much to come,” Trump said, “but we’ll have to see. We haven’t heard yet, but we have invited him.”

Though US relations with Moscow were at this point deteriorating, Trump was touting Putin as a wily and strong leader. In September, Putin published an op-ed in the New York Times that opposed a possible US military strike against the government of Bashar al-Assad in Syria (in retaliation for its use of chemical weapons) and that denounced President Barack Obama for referring to American exceptionalism. The next day, Trump on Fox News commended Putin’s move. “It really makes him look like a great leader,” he said.

The following month, Trump appeared on David Letterman’s late-night show. The host asked if Trump had ever done any deals with the Russians. “I’ve done a lot of business with the Russians,” Trump replied, adding, “They’re smart and they’re tough.” Letterman inquired if Trump had ever met Putin. “He’s a tough guy,” Trump said. “I met him once.” In fact, there was no record he ever had.

Trump landed in Moscow on November 8, having flown there with casino owner Phil Ruffin on Ruffin’s private jet. (Ruffin, a long-time Trump friend, was married to a former Miss Ukraine who had competed in the 2004 Miss Universe contest.) Trump headed to the Ritz-Carlton, where he was booked into the presidential suite that Obama had stayed in when he was in Moscow four years earlier.

There was a brief meeting with Miss Universe executives and the Agalarovs. Schiller would later tell congressional investigators that a Russian approached Trump’s party with an offer: He wanted to send five women to Trump’s hotel room that night. Was this traditional Russian courtesy—or an overture by Russian intelligence to collect kompromat (compromising material) on the prominent visitor? Schiller said he didn’t take the offer seriously and told the Russian, “We don’t do that type of stuff.”

Trump was soon whisked to a gala lunch at one of the two Moscow branches of Nobu, the famous sushi restaurant. (Nobu Matsuhisa, its founder, was one of the celebrity judges for the Miss Universe telecast. Agalarov was one of the co-owners of the restaurant; another co-investor was actor Robert De Niro.) An assortment of Russian businessmen was there, including Herman Gref, the chief executive of Sberbank, a Russian state-owned bank and one of the co-sponsors of the Miss Universe pageant.

“[Trump] often thought a woman was too ethnic or too dark-skinned. He had a particular type of woman he thought was a winner. Others were too ethnic. He liked a type. There was Olivia Culpo, Dayanara Torres [the 1993 winner], and, no surprise, East European women.”

Trump was treated with much reverence. He gave a brief welcoming talk. “Ask me a question,” he told the crowd. The first query was about the European debt crisis and the impact that the financial woes of Greece would have on it. “Interesting,” Trump replied. “Have any of you ever seen The Apprentice?” Trump spoke at length about his hit television show, repeatedly noting what a tremendous success it was. He said not a word about Greece or debt. When he was done with his remarks, he thanked them all for coming and received a standing ovation. (Later, Aras Agalarov, reminiscing about this lunch, would note, “If [Trump] does not know the subject, he will talk about a subject he knows.”)

Gref, a close Putin adviser, was pleased with his face time with Trump. “There was a good feeling from the meeting,” he later said. “He’s a sensible person…[with] a good attitude toward Russia.”

Trump next went to the theater in Crocus City Hall. It was the day before the show. This was Trump’s chance to review the contestants and exercise an option he always retained under the rules of his pageants: to overrule the selection of judges and pick the contestants he wanted among the finalists. In short, no woman was a finalist until Trump said so.

At each pageant, Miss Universe staffers would set up a special room for Trump backstage. It had to conform to his precise requirements. He needed his favorite snacks: Nutter Butters and white Tic Tacs. And Diet Coke. There could be no distracting pictures on the wall. The room had to be immaculate. He required unscented soap and hand towels—rolled, not folded.

In this room would be videos of the finalists who had been selected days earlier in a preliminary competition and the other contestants, particularly footage of the women in gowns and swim suits. Here, a day or two before the final telecast, Trump would review the judges’ decisions.

Frequently, Trump would toss out finalists and replace them with others he preferred. “If there were too many women of color, he would make changes,” a Miss Universe staffer later noted. Another Miss Universe staffer recalled, “He often thought a woman was too ethnic or too dark-skinned. He had a particular type of woman he thought was a winner. Others were too ethnic. He liked a type. There was Olivia Culpo, Dayanara Torres [the 1993 winner], and, no surprise, East European women.” On occasion, according to this staffer, Trump would reject a woman “who had snubbed his advances.”

Once in a while, Shugart would politely challenge Trump’s choices. Sometimes she would win the argument, sometimes not. “If he didn’t like a woman because she looked too ethnic, you could sometimes persuade him by telling him she was a princess and married to a football player,” a staffer later explained.

That night, Aras Agalarov hosted a party at Crocus City Hall to celebrate his 58th birthday. Various VIPs were invited. Trump by now was exhausted. He spent much of the time sitting with Shugart and Schiller. At one point, Goldstone approached him with a request from Emin. The pop star was filming a new music video. Could Trump the next day shoot a scene that would be based on The Apprentice? Trump agreed, but it had to be early— between 7:45 and 8:10 in the morning. Sure, Goldstone said. Twenty-five minutes of Trump would have to do.

At about 1:30 a.m., Trump left the party and headed to the Ritz-Carlton hotel a few blocks from the Kremlin. This would be his only night in Moscow. According to Schiller, on the way to the hotel, he told Trump about the earlier offer of women, and he and Trump laughed about it. In Schiller’s account, after Trump was in his room, he stood guard outside for a while and then left.

(But Schiller by another account was accustomed to being a go-between for Trump. In a 2011 interview with In Touch Weekly magazine that was not published until early 2018, Stormy Daniels, a porn star who claimed she had an 11-month-long affair with Trump, identified Schiller as the Trump aide who facilitated her secret liaisons with Trump. “That’s how I got in touch with him,” Daniels said. “I never had Donald’s cellphone number. I always used Keith’s. I went up to the room and he said, “Oh yeah, he’s waiting for you inside.’”)

The morning of November 9, Trump showed up for Emin’s shoot. He was needed for the final scene. The video would open with a boardroom meeting with Emin and others reviewing Miss Universe contestants. Emin would doze off and dream of being with the various contestants. Enter Trump for the climax—Emin wakes up with Trump shouting at him: “What’s wrong with you, Emin? Emin, let’s get with it. You’re always late. You’re just another pretty face. I’m really tired of you. You’re fired!” Trump’s bit would only last 15 seconds. Yet soon Emin would release a video that he could promote as featuring the world-famous Trump.

The rest of the day was as hectic as the first: a press conference with 300 Russian reporters and more interviews, including one with Roberts in which Trump was pressed again about Putin.

Do you have a relationship with Putin and any sway with the Russian leader? Roberts asked him. Trump was unequivocal: “I do have a relationship.” He paused. “I can tell you that he’s very interested in what we’re doing here today. He’s probably very interested in what you and I are saying today. And I’m sure he’s going to be seeing it in some form.”

Trump could barely contain his praise for Russia’s president: “Look, he’s done a very brilliant job in terms of what he represents and who he’s representing. If you look at what he’s done with Syria, if you look at so many of the different things, he has really eaten our president’s lunch. Let’s not kid ourselves. He’s done an amazing job…He’s put himself at the forefront of the world as a leader in a short period of time.”

But Trump’s comments about a “relationship” with Putin were, at this point, wishful thinking. The word had spread through the Miss Universe staff that Trump fiercely craved Putin’s attendance at the pageant. In preparation for Putin’s possible appearance, Thomas Roberts and Mel B were taught several words in Russian to welcome the Russian president: “hello,” “thank you,” and so on. With her cockney accent, Mel B had trouble pronouncing the Russian words. She was told she had to get this right because Putin might come.

By late afternoon, Trump’s anxiety was palpable. There had been no word. He kept asking if anybody had heard from Putin. Then Agalarov’s phone rang. “Mr. Peskov would like to speak to Mr. Trump,” Agalarov said.

Trump suggested to an associate that after the telecast they could spread the word that Putin had dropped by. “No one will know for sure if he came or not.”

Trump and Peskov spoke for a few minutes. Afterward, Trump recounted the conversation to Goldstone. Peskov, he said, was apologetic. Putin very much wanted to meet Trump. But there was a problem nobody had anticipated: a Moscow traffic jam. King Willem-Alexander and Queen Maxima of the Netherlands were in town, and Putin was obligated to meet them at the Kremlin. But the royal couple had gotten stuck in traffic and was late, making it impossible for the Russian president to find time for Trump. Nor would he be able to attend the Miss Universe pageant that evening.

Putin wanted to make amends, though. Peskov conveyed an invitation for Trump to attend the upcoming Olympics, where perhaps he and Putin could then meet. He also told Trump that Putin would be sending a high-level emissary to the evening’s event—Vladimir Kozhin, a senior Putin aide. And, Peskov told Trump, Putin had a gift for him.

It was a crushing disappointment for Trump. But he quickly thought of how to spin it, suggesting to an associate that after the telecast they could spread the word that Putin had dropped by. “No one will know for sure if he came or not,” he said.

One reason Trump’s hoped-for meeting with the Russian president never materialized was his attention to another project. Trump was originally scheduled to spend two nights in Moscow—which would have yielded a wider window for a get-together with Putin. But Trump had decided to attend the celebration of evangelist Billy Graham’s 95th birthday on November 7 at the Grove Park Inn in Asheville, North Carolina. In Russia, Trump told Goldstone that it had been necessary for him to show up at the Graham event: “There is something I’m planning down the road, and it’s really important.”

Goldstone knew exactly what Trump was talking about: a run for the White House. Franklin Graham, the evangelist’s son, was an influential figure among religious conservatives. When Trump two years earlier was championing birtherism—the baseless conspiracy theory that Barack Obama had been born in Kenya and was ineligible to be president—Graham joined the birther bandwagon, raising questions about the president’s birth certificate. Appearing at this event and currying favor with Franklin Graham was a mandatory stop for Trump, if he was serious about seeking the Republican presidential nomination. And it paid off: Trump and his wife Melania were seated at the VIP table along with Rupert Murdoch and Sarah Palin. Franklin Graham later said that Trump was among those who “gave their hearts to Christ” that night.

Before the Miss Universe broadcast, there was the obligatory red-carpet event. Camera crews from around the world recorded the strutting celebrities. A triumphant-looking Trump posed with Aras and Emin Agalarov for the paparazzi. Trump dodged a question about whether Emin had been booked to perform based on merit.

“Russia has just been an amazing place,” Trump exclaimed. “You see what’s happening here. It’s incredible.” Behind him was a banner featuring the logos of the Trump Organization, Miss Universe, Sberbank, Mercedes, and NBC. The NBC peacock was in black and white, without its usual rainbow of colors. Officials at Agalarov’s company had ordered Miss Universe staffers to eschew the rainbow, fearing it would be seen as a gay pride message.

Edita Shaumyan caught Trump’s eye. “You’re beautiful,” Trump told her. “Wow, your eyes, your eyes.” According to Shaumyan, “He said, ‘Let’s go to America. Come with me to America.’”

Thomas Roberts walked the red carpet with his husband. He wore a bright pink tuxedo jacket—something he would never do back home in New York. He was sending his own message. In interviews, he explicitly denounced Putin’s anti-gay laws.

Other celebs and local notables strolled past the entertainment reporters. The group included Kozhin and a curious guest: Alimzhan Tokhtakhounov, a.k.a. “the Little Taiwanese,” one of Russia’s most prominent suspected mobsters and a fugitive from US justice. Tokhtakhounov had an odd link to Trump’s signature property: Seven months earlier, he had been indicted in the United States for protecting a high-stakes illegal gambling operation run out of Trump Tower. Additional Trump guests included Chuck LaBella, an NBC executive who worked on Trump’s Celebrity Apprentice, and Bob Van Ronkel, an American expatriate who ran a business specializing in bringing Hollywood celebrities to Russian events. (Van Ronkel once had tried to produce an American television show extolling the KGB and its heroic exploits.)

The show went off well. Trump sat in the front row next to Agalarov. Emin performed two of his Euro-pop numbers. Aerosmith’s Steven Tyler, one of the judges, pumped out his classic hit “Dream On.” For the finale, Culpo crowned Miss Venezuela the new Miss Universe. There was no mention during the broadcast of the controversy over the anti-gay law.

After the event, there was a rowdy after-party with lots of vodka and loud music. A 26-year-old aspiring actress, Edita Shaumyan, made her way into the VIP section, entering the roped-off area the same time as a famous Russian rap singer named Timati. Shaumyan caught Trump’s eye. He approached her, gestured to Timati, and asked, “Wait, is this your boyfriend? You’re not free?” She said no. “You’re beautiful,” Trump told her. “Wow, your eyes, your eyes.” According to Shaumyan, “He said, ‘Let’s go to America. Come with me to America.’ And I said, ‘No, no, no. I’m an Armenian. We’re very strict. You need to meet my mother first.’” When other women approached, trying to get photographs with Trump, he took hold of Shaumyan’s arm and said, “Don’t go. Stay. Stay.” Shaumyan took selfies with him. (She later produced five photos and a video of her with Trump that night.) But nothing further happened. Trump later had somebody give Shaumyan his business card with his phone number on it. She never called.

From the party, Trump headed to the airport. He was going straight home on another Ruffin jet. The next day, he called Roberts. He told him he was pleased with the show and that it had been a smash, with great ratings. That was not accurate—at least not in the United States. The telecast drew 3.8 million viewers, much less than the 6.1 million who had watched it the previous year.

In the following days, various media outlets in Russia and the United States reported that Trump had used his visit to Moscow to launch a major project in the Russian capital. “US ‘Miss Universe’ Billionaire Plans Russian Trump Tower,” declared the headline on RT, the Russian government-owned TV channel and website. The Moscow Times proclaimed, “Donald Trump Planning Skyscraper in Moscow.” Trump’s partners in the Trump SoHo project he had developed in New York City—Alex Sapir and Rotem Rosen—had come to Moscow for the event and met with Agalarov and Trump to discuss the possibilities.

Agalarov’s daughter showed up at the Miss Universe office in New York City bearing a gift for Trump from Putin…Inside was a sealed letter from the Russian autocrat. What the letter said has never been revealed.

It seemed things were moving fast. The state-owned Sberbank announced it had struck a “strategic cooperation agreement” with the Crocus Group to finance about 70 percent of a project that would include a tower bearing the Trump name. If the deal went ahead, Trump would officially be doing business in Moscow with the Russian government.

“The Russian market is attracted to me,” Trump told Real Estate Weekly. “I have a great relationship with many Russians.” He added, with his customary exaggeration, “Almost all of the oligarchs” had been at the Miss Universe event.

Back in the United States, Trump tweeted out the good news: “I just got back from Russia—learned lots & lots. Moscow is a very interesting and amazing place!” The next day he tweeted at Aras Agalarov, “I had a great weekend with you and your family. You have done a FANTASTIC job. TRUMP TOWER-MOSCOW is next. EMIN was WOW!

The project moved further along than publicly known. A letter of intent to build the new Trump Tower was signed by the Trump Organization and Agalarov’s company. Donald Trump Jr. was placed in charge of the project.

Trump was finally on his way in Russia. And shortly after the Miss Universe event, Agalarov’s daughter showed up at the Miss Universe office in New York City bearing a gift for Trump from Putin. It was a black lacquered box. Inside was a sealed letter from the Russian autocrat. What the letter said has never been revealed.

In February 2014, Ivanka Trump flew to Moscow to scout potential sites for the Trump Tower project with Emin Agalarov. “We thought that building a Trump Tower next to an Agalarov tower—having the two big names—could be a really cool project to execute,” Emin later said.

But international events would quickly intervene. Weeks after Ivanka’s visit, the Obama administration and the European Union imposed tough sanctions on Russia in response to Putin’s annexation of Crimea and his military intervention in Ukraine. It would be a kick to Russia’s faltering economy, already struggling because of the plummeting price of oil. And one round of sanctions imposed by the European Union targeted Russian banks in which the Russia government held a majority interest—that included Sberbank, which had agreed to finance the Trump deal. Its access to capital was now hindered.

Rob Goldstone suspected the demise of Trump’s project with the Agalarovs influenced Trump’s view of sanctions: “They had interrupted a business deal that Trump was keenly interested in.”

In this environment, the plans for the Trump Tower in Moscow crumbled. According to the Trump Organization, Ivanka Trump, after touring Moscow with Emin, killed the deal for business reasons. But Rob Goldstone suspected the demise of Trump’s project with the Agalarovs influenced Trump’s view of sanctions: “They had interrupted a business deal that Trump was keenly interested in.”

That deal was dead. But Trump’s involvement with Russia and Putin was not done. He still had a close bond with an influential oligarch, Aras Agalarov, who was wired into the Kremlin. And he stayed in touch with his Miss Universe pals, Emin and Goldstone. In January 2015, nearly a year after Putin’s invasion in Ukraine, Trump had Emin and Goldstone as guests to his office in Trump Tower—a meeting that was never publicly revealed during the investigations that followed the 2016 election. As Goldstone recalled it, they found Trump listening to the blaring sounds of a “hideous” rap video about Trump. The lyrics were ridiculing Trump, and Goldstone asked, “Have you listened to the words?” Trump replied, “Who cares about the words? It has 90 million hits on YouTube.” While they chatted, Trump was encouraging to Emin, who had performed at the Miss Universe contest in 2013: “Maybe next time, you’ll be performing at the White House.”

Image credit: Pavel Golovkin/AP; Olivier Douliery/CNP/ZUMA; Mikhail Klimentyev/Sputnik/AP

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Nationalist autocrats are on the march. Trump yawns.

Yahoo News – Matt Bai’s Political World

Nationalist autocrats are on the march. Trump yawns.

Matt Bai, National Political Columnist – Yahoo News March 8, 2018

Yahoo News photo illustration; photos: AP, Getty

At this time seven years ago, what came to be known as the Arab Spring was blossoming across the Middle East, spreading the ideal of reform. It was possible to think then that what the conservative theorist Francis Fukuyama had predicted at the end of the Cold War, in a book called “The End of History and the Last Man,” was actually coming to pass — that eons of autocracy were ending, and a global age of democratic self-determinism had dawned.

As it turns out, though: not really. And not just because Egypt is back to military rule, while Syria and Yemen and Libya are each engaged in all-out civil war.

What you might have missed over the last week or so — with all this mesmerizing spectacle about coming tariffs and an exodus of White House aides and a guy who briefly worked for the campaign publicly melting down on a string of cable shows — is a rush back toward the repression and militarism of the 20th century in some of the world’s most powerful nations.

In China, Xi Jinping just woke up one morning and made himself president for life. In Russia, Vladimir Putin, on the verge of achieving the same status, threatened last week to unleash a new generation of nukes on Florida. In North Korea, the strongman Kim Jong Un has managed to reopen talks with the South by menacing the region with missiles.

It really is stupefying, as others have pointed out, that the American government, currently administered by the party of Ronald Reagan, offers zero response to any of this. (You would think President Trump would at least rise to defend the territorial integrity of Mar-a-Lago, considering what nuclear annihilation might mean for property values.)

But there’s a deeper, more vexing question here about where this president fits into the moment. Is Trump’s presidency causing this sharp turn in the historical current, or is he merely a product of it?

If you’re not quite old enough to remember the fall of the Berlin Wall or Boris Yeltsin standing on the tank (or, for that matter, Boris Yeltsin), then let’s very roughly revisit the sweep of recent history. The end of the Cold War between East and West, after nearly 50 years of proxy wars and client states around the world, unleashed a series of forces that are only now coming into focus.

First came the sudden release of nationalist and religious tensions that had been bottled up during the long conflict between capitalism and communism. This led to wars, persecution and waves of immigration. And all of that was exacerbated by the revolution in digital technology, which displaced whole industries and created the tools for both spreading ideologies and organizing movements.

At the same time, though, as all of these modern forces were destabilizing communities and causing people everywhere to seek solidarity in national or religious identity, elites in the industrialized nations were talking about something completely different: integration, open borders, global markets. They were exhorting citizens to abandon old identities, rather than cling to them.

“Part of the internationalization effort was to say that cultures aren’t different, that we are all the same,” the Yale professor John Lewis Gaddis told me this week. “That, I think, was a mistake.”

I called Gaddis because he’s one of the nation’s preeminent scholars of the Cold War period, and I wondered if he thought we were now headed back to something more like the period he had studied.

But Gaddis told me that he now looks at the Cold War as a kind of brief intermission in the longer drama of world events, which is driven less by heady ideology than by nationalist identity and absolutism.

What we’re actually moving toward, in other words, is a continuation of exactly where we had been heading for centuries before the advent of nuclear weapons forced the world to temporarily divide between ideological spheres of influence. We’re going back to the time of czars and kings ensconced behind walls of ethnic pride.

“What’s happening now,” Gaddis said, “is a pretty widespread, fast-moving backlash against internationalism.”

So, to get back to my initial question, what’s Trump’s role in all of this re-entrenchment and creeping authoritarianism — cause or effect?

The answer, I think, is some of both.

You could make an argument, certainly, that Trumpism is a close cousin of the nationalist movements in Europe and Russia, which preceded it. The backlash against internationalism that Gaddis talks about, the simmering outrage at cultural and economic integration, is exactly why a lot of white, working-class Americans so resented Barack Obama by the end of his presidency, more than simple racism or political ideology.

In his rhetoric and policies, and even more so in his personal journey, Obama symbolized the blurring of lines, the mashing together of cultures and countries and economic fortunes into one big pile of haves and have-nots.

But if Obama personified internationalism, then Trump came to personify the inevitable response — “America First.” Trump didn’t create the anti-internationalist wave. He was enveloped and carried along by it, no less than Putin or the far-right nationalist parties in Europe.

But that doesn’t mean Trump isn’t also helping to embolden repressive nationalist rulers to tighten their grips — or that he’s helpless to stop it. Trump leaves the impression that his administration isn’t interested in checking the brazen power of dictators, mainly because it’s true.

By now, Putin, Xi and all the rest of them have seen enough to know that Trump isn’t like other American presidents — that he doesn’t really aspire to safeguard the world or champion ideals of liberty. Not only can you seize and abuse power with impunity, but you can even threaten to obliterate Guam or Florida without much fear of conflict, as long as you’re only really upsetting the media commentators who worry about that kind of thing.

The real danger here isn’t that Trump will decide that he too wants to suspend free speech or become president for life, as he joked last week. The flashing neon danger sign is that at some point — bank on it — one of these nuclear-armed strongmen is going to overshoot and do something we can’t actually afford to ignore. Someone is going to mistake our temporary self-absorption for indifference to our own national interest.

And in a world of tweets and bots, the kind of confrontation that used to move in slow motion — in the form of naval embargoes or Security Council resolutions — might get out of control very quickly.

“No one has time to back off and reflect now,” Gaddis told me. “It seems to me the potential for misinterpretation or misunderstanding is greater than it was in the past.”

Which is why the sooner Trump starts standing up to nationalist dictators and letting them know where the line is, the safer we’ll all be. As Franklin Roosevelt or John Kennedy or George W. Bush could testify, presidents don’t get to decide when it’s time to confront aggression.

History does, and it hasn’t ended yet.

‘Act of War’: British Lawmakers Fume Over Russian Spy Poisoning

Daily Beast

‘BRAZEN AND RECKLESS’

‘Act of War’: British Lawmakers Fume Over Russian Spy Poisoning

British politicians publicly point the finger toward Russia as Sergei Skripal and his daughter remain critically ill.

Jamie Ross March 8, 2018

British lawmakers have voiced their anger over the “brazen and reckless” attempted murder of a former spy using a deadly nerve agent, with one accusing Russia of having potentially committed an “act of war.”

Former spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia, remain in critical condition in the hospital after they were found unconscious on Sunday as a result of being exposed to an as-yet unspecified nerve agent. The police officer who first responded to the scene, who had been in intensive care, is now “stable and conscious” and has been named as Sergeant Nick Bailey.

Local newspaper the Salisbury Journal reported that police had cordoned off the graves of Skripal’s wife and son, appearing to confirm previous reports that their deaths are now part of the ongoing investigation by British counter-terrorism police. Liudmila Skirpal died of cancer in 2012, and Alexander Skripal died in St. Petersburg last year.

As speculation mounted that Russia was responsible for the attack, the British government’s Home Secretary, Amber Rudd, said: “The use of nerve agent on UK soil is a brazen and reckless act. This was attempted murder in the most cruel and public way.”

But she added: “If we are to be rigorous in this investigation we must avoid speculation and allow the police to carry on their investigation. The investigation now involves hundreds of officers following every possible lead to find those responsible.

“We are committed to doing all we can to bring the perpetrators to justice, whoever they are and wherever they may be. As the Foreign Secretary [Boris Johnson] made clear, we will respond in a robust and appropriate manner once we ascertain who was responsible.”

Both Rudd and Prime Minister Theresa May refused to be drawn into questions over Russian involvement on Thursday. In a session in the British Parliament, Rudd repeatedly swatted away questions from lawmakers, both from her own party and the opposition, about what the government’s retaliatory measures would be if Russia was implicated.

Conservative MP Sir Edward Leigh told Rudd: “The circumstantial evidence against Russia is very strong. Who else would have the motive and the means? … Those of us who seek to understand Russia know that the only way to preserve peace is through strength If Russia is behind this, this is a brazen act of war, of humiliating our country.”

Labour MP Ben Bradshaw said: “[We] have warned for several years about the growing threat of the terrorist Russian state under President Putin whether it’s money laundering in the City of London, targeted murders… and the interference in our political and democratic system.”

Rudd insisted that the government had “not been asleep at the switch as to where our international enemies are,” saying Britain has been vocal over its opposition to Russia’s actions in Ukraine and Syria. She said the government would “go further if we needed to do so.”

Prime Minister Theresa May said: “We will do what is appropriate, we will do what is right, if it is proved to be the case that this is state-sponsored.”

Russia has continued to vociferously deny any involvement in the attempted murder after the Russian Foreign Ministry rejected the “groundless” speculation on Wednesday. The unusually outspoken Twitter account of the Russian Embassy in London spent Thursday correcting reports that called Skripal a Russian spy, insisting he was a British one who worked for MI6.

The account also tweeted: “When Boris Berezovsky and Alexander Perepilichny died in Britain, there was a lot of speculation in the media, then all the conclusions were classified, and no data provided to Russia. Same happening now, with MI6 agent Sergei Skripal poisoning.”

Although British police officially declared Perepilichny and Berezovsky’s deaths non-suspicious, a BuzzFeed News investigation from last year claimed that the British government suppressed evidence that Russia was responsible for both deaths and seven others.

The Russian Embassy account also complained of “Russophobia” from a British lawmaker who had pointed the finger towards Russia.

Counterterrorism police continued their investigation on Thursday with a fingertip search of Skripal’s home as hundreds of analysts and detectives worked to reconstruct his movements before he was found collapsed with his daughter on a bench outside a shopping center.

A source on the investigation told the BBC the nerve agent used was likely to be rarer than the sarin gas which is thought to have been used in Syria or the VX substance used to kill Kim Jong Un’s half brother last year.

When Rudd was asked outright if she believed the poisoning was a Russian assassination attempt, she said: “I’m determined to wait before any attribution [is made] until we have the facts. I’m completely confident that the police will be able to get that.”

Police again appealed to potential eyewitnesses to get in touch.