Quotes from Craig Unger

According to research conducted jointly by experts from the University of California at Berkeley and Swansea University in Wales, no fewer than 150,000 Twitter accounts linked to Russia began to tweet inflammatory and divisive messages about Brexit, Muslims, and immigrants

recurring horror show" as Fintan O'Toole wrote in the Irish Times in April 2020, "in which all the neuroses that haunt the American subconscious dance naked on live TV.

According to Mustafa Elhussein, secretary of a center for Muslim intellectuals known as the Ibn Khaldun Society, "There is a great deal of bitterness that such groups have tarnished the reputation of mainstream Muslims" because "self-appointed leaders . . . spew hatred toward America and the West and yet claim to be the legitimate

According to the New York State attorney general's office, the upshot of the deal was that the Russian Mafia had just laundered money through Donald Trump's real estate.

In other words, according to Vasquez, Epstein saw Trump Model Management as a prototype to emulate while working with Brunel to lure minor children in to participate in sexual activity for money. After all, if you were looking for success in the world of sex trafficking, what better role model than Donald Trump?

And two former models said that Trump's agency suggested they lie on customs forms about where they planned to live. All of which meant they were perpetually scared of getting caught and pretty much at the mercy of the agency. All of which was ironic indeed, given Trump's hard-line immigration policies as president and his assertions that undocumented immigrants are taking American jobs.

Under Trump, norms were violated so frequently that conflicts of interest became the rule rather than the exception. The thieves and kleptocrats, or their lawyers, really, were in control.

Now, with Trump in command, the Justice Department was further transformed into an institution that embraced the most extreme interpretation of the unitary-executive doctrine imaginable by making the president truly above the law.

In effect, Trump was saying, If you won't help my campaign by drumming up a phony investigation against my opponent, I'll let the Russians do as they please.

Dear friends, respected colleagues!" Nikonov said. "Three minutes ago Hillary Clinton admitted her defeat in US presidential elections and a second ago Trump started his speech as an elected president of the United States of America and I congratulate you on this."1 Even though Nikonov did not add what many in the Kremlin already knew, his brief statement was greeted by enthusiastic applause. Donald J. Trump had just become Vladimir Putin's man in the White House.

And many, if not all of those transactions, must be viewed not just as dubious financial deals with formerly Soviet entities, but as part of a long, ongoing Russian intelligence operation.

There was nothing illegal, for example, about naturalized American citizens like the Odessa-born billionaire oligarch Len Blavatnik and his businesses contributing millions to Mitch McConnell's GOP Senate Leadership Fund and to the Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee, as he did in 2016.

Trump may not have been doing anything illegal at the Mayflower, but the Russians were there and in a position to expose him. That was kompromat. That was how it worked. The press covered the event as something that was completely normal. In fact, nothing illegal was taking place. Nevertheless, Russian intelligence had essentially hijacked Trump's foreign policy in plain sight and nobody noticed.

From the KGB's point of view, the most appealing quality about Trump was probably that he had a personality that was ideal for a potential asset—vain, narcissistic, highly susceptible to flattery, and greedy.

Later, long after he took up residence in the White House, people asked again and again what the Russians had on Trump. And in a way, it's really quite simple: They owned him.—

In terms of his personality," Shvets added, "the guy is not a complicated cookie, his most important characteristics being low intellect coupled with hyperinflated vanity. This combination makes him a dream for an experienced recruiter.

In other words, America was in crisis and there was no coordinated national health policy. And worse, like a slow-motion Reichstag fire, the disease itself was being weaponized and politicized by Trump and his followers. Much like the 1933 arson attack that allowed Germany's newly elected chancellor Adolf Hitler to consolidate power, the pandemic provided cover for Trump and Barr to do likewise.

IN 1993, after First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton put an end to smoking in the White House, Bill Clinton would sometimes retreat there to smoke a cigar in a celebratory moment, as he did after the United States rescued a soldier in Bosnia.

Trump was a dream for KGB officers looking to develop an asset," Shvets told me. "Everybody has weaknesses. But with Trump it wasn't just weakness. Everything was excessive. His vanity, excessive. Narcissism, excessive. Greed, excessive. Ignorance, excessive.

Shvets's assessment is strikingly similar to those of various CIA officers. "Trump is extremely vulnerable to flattery," Rolf Mowatt-Larssen told me. "He almost defines relationships entirely by who flatters him and who doesn't, as opposed to the intrinsic value of what people say. He doesn't care at all about the fact that Russians are masters at manipulation.

Finally, one would have to put all this information together to shape a continuum, a narrative in which the House of Bush and the House of Saud dominated the world stage together in one era after another. Having done so, one would come to a singular inescapable conclusion: namely, that, horrifying as it sounds, the secret relationship between these two great families helped to trigger the Age of Terror and give rise to the tragedy of 9/11.

Oil, they had discovered, could be used as a weapon. Suddenly, Saudi Arabia took on the position Texas itself had once had and became the swing oil producer for the great industrial nations of the world. The biggest transfer of wealth in human history was under way. Hundreds of billions of dollars in oil revenues poured into the Saudi Kingdom. The Saudis were drowning in petrodollars.

It was often said that he was in the CIA, but [James] Bath denied that to Time. Later, he equivocated. There's all sorts of degrees of civilian participation [in the CIA], he says. It runs the whole spectrum, maybe passing on relevant data to more substantive things. The people who are called on by their government and serve- I don't think your're going to find them talking about it.

The Bohemian Grove has held secret meetings for the global elite since 1873 in a redwood forest of northern California. In addition to Republican presidents Eisenhower, Nixon, Reagan, and George H. W. Bush, members have included James Baker, Richard Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, David Rockefeller, William Casey, and Henry Kissinger. Each year, the members don red, black, and silver robes and conduct a ritual in which they worship a giant stone owl.