5mo ago

Former intelligence officer claims KGB recruited Trump

www.thedailybeast.com

The Daily Beast

Summary

Former Kazakh intelligence chief Alnur Mussayev alleges that the KGB recruited Donald Trump in 1987 under the codename “Krasnov.”

In a Facebook post, Mussayev claimed that the KGB targeted Western businessmen and that Trump’s file is now privately controlled by a Putin associate.

Though unverified, the claims fuel speculation about Trump’s ties to Russia, which he has denied.

Concerns about Trump’s relationship with Vladimir Putin persist, with former officials like Anthony Scaramucci suggesting an unexplained “hold” on him but offering no further details.

75 comments

Trump is a Russian asset. This has been known for years.
Our alphabet soup (FBI, CIA, NSA, etc.) have far more information about this than the general public. This has been known for years.
His base does not care. This has also been known for years.
Congress, who has the power to impeach and remove a Russian asset sitting in the Oval Office, will do exactly nothing about it. This has also been known for years.
In other words: We know, nobody cares, it doesn't matter. Nobody's going to do anything about it.
- It does seem odd that the intelligence community seems to have been totally compromised. You'd think the cia, who has done quite a few coups themselves would have seen this coming and done something about it.
  
  To be fair the CIA and FBI, like all other law enforcement, has spent literal decades training their agents to view US citizens as "the enemy."
  
  They have simply have no way to wrap their heads around the idea of doing anything about it. The CIA was created as a weapon for the government to point at their enemies. They don't know how to respond when that government is the enemy.
- Congress, who has the power to impeach and remove a Russian asset sitting in the Oval Office,
  they tried repeatedly, but republican shitbird turncoat traitors protected him.
- I get that you're saying this out of frustration, and it's true. But it doesn't help. We need people like this to come forward. We need to beat this drum enough that even some of the idiot Trump supporters get it.
  The most important thing is that he still has something like 45% public support. Until that number drops, we're stuck with this. If this can help chip away at that 45% then it's more than welcome.
I think we can see that pretty clearly considering the sudden love for Russia throughout our entire administration and pulling out of Ukraine, the best value for our military spending in decades.
On the other end, my fellow citizens are extremely stupid too.
- It's not 'sudden.'
  Trump Tower has been selling luxury housing the Russians for decades.
  Story from 2017
  https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-trump-property/
  
  Also here's him criticizing NATO after visiting Russia in 1987
  https://rollcall.com/factbase/trump/transcript/donald-trump-letter-foreign-policy-september-2-1987/
  https://www.politico.eu/article/donald-trump-russia-the-hidden-history-of-trumps-first-trip-to-moscow/
I'm always skeptical of claims like this. Don't get me wrong, Trump is actively working to advance the Russian agenda, and Russia has actively supported him financially and through propaganda. But I'm wary of tales of kompromat or clandestine, decades long KGB plots.
Occam's razor, I think Trump is a piece of shit that would destroy his own country to make a quick buck, and Putin offered him a quick buck. Honestly, elaborate Manchurian Candidate conspiracies would probably be less scary than the idea that our entire democracy can collapse because one real-estate conman was willing to sell us all out.
- Yeah, I don't think it's some long-running scheme to get Trump into power or whatever. More that he happened to be the right idiot on the payroll when the shit hit the fan.
  Trump's ties to Russia have been known forever. The FBI has been trying to pin him for his ties to Russian crime organizations for decades, with all the "gifts" of yachts and planes that they've given him and all the real estate that they own in Trump Towers and the like.
  I think he just happened to be there when all the greed and flaws in our system finally broke under the weight of actual schemes to foster extremism in the population for various reasons and the short-sightedness of corporate interests looking to wring the country dry.
  
  Yeah, I think that's about it. I think Russia has been encouraging oligarchs and mobsters to make contact with prominent Americans they thought they could influence, and a lot of those connections went nowhere. When Trump started winning the primary, Putin probably realized he could use him, so he had some oligarchs cut a deal. But this KGB agent's Facebook post about making direct contact with Trump, recruiting him as a spy, and giving him a codename, as well as his claim that he may be assassinated for sharing this? It seems like it's either some sort of disinformation campaign or just some old man embellishing a story for attention.
- He has almost no filter and I think if he was a secret KGB operative, that would not be a secret by now because it would have just come out at random at some point.
  He's extremely malleable, loves rich people and authoritarians, and will agree with almost anyone who kisses his ass. So it's pretty easy for Putin to just wrap him around his little finger.
  
  Sometimes pretending to be too socially stupid to be deceptive has advantages. This seems naive.
- With most things like this, I truly, honestly think the man is just too dumb to carry out what he's accused of. Now, stupidity is absolutely not an excuse to get you out of the dumb shit you've done (in fact, it now seems to be a prerequisite for his position along with being incredibly wealthy and comically old), but I don't think he's behind a lot of these elaborate plans he's accused of.
  I think at the end of the day, he's just a very old, very rich, incredibly gullible and dumb man who is very easily controlled by those around him.
  
  He's not the one behind the elaborate plans. That's Putin.
  I followed r/ the_donald when it first started. It was a joke, and rightfully so. It was fun. However, when anyone tried to call it out as the joke it was, they'd be banned within seconds. Any time of day. Those aren't volunteer moderators.
  I assume similar schemes were happening on Facebook and other social media. Honestly it was a master class in modern propaganda. I expected more research papers covering it by now.
  They picked the horse. The horse didn't pick them.
  You'll notice they love to fall back on this "just a joke" thing. It's a theme. Like when you've ironically used the word "rizz" enough that it's no longer ironic. That's what they're going for.
  
  Was it Eric that said Russia pays for everything?
  E: It was, someone else provided the quote
- Probably the KGB had lot of people, because survivorship bias we don't know about the great majority of them
  
  I mean, I'm sure the KGB was interested in influencing prominent Americans, and it's very likely they were using Russian businessmen (and mobsters) to influence Trump. The CIA plays similar games with foreign business leaders. But do I believe that KGB directly recruited Trump, asked him to be their spy, gave him a codename, and kept him on as a sleeper agent through the fall of the Soviet Union? No, it's going to take more than one guy's Facebook post to make me believe that. It's very possible there is some truth in what he's saying, but I would take it with several grains of salt.
- So what would be the difference between Trumps current behavior in destroying the US "just so" and "because he is an official GRU employee"? He is a traitor, and should be dealt with accordingly. Remember: All enemies foreign and domestic.
  
  There is no difference in that sense. That doesn't mean the truth is fungible.
  
  As someone else already said, there is functionally no difference in terms of what he's doing to our country. But if we elevate unverified nonsense about Trump being a secret sleeper agent, it makes credible evidence of Russian influence seem less credible.
- Your logic ("I can't believe it so it's likely untrue") is flawed. "I can't believe the world is round so Occam's razor it must be flat because that I can understand."
  Putin is very smart and the KGB were smart and they bested US intelligence, according to the now deleted article, not in those exact words. Why is that so implausible?
  There could just as easily be other bought or compromised US officials, not just Trump. The thinking "but this couldn't really happen, it's too sneaky and complicated!" is a pretty naive counterpoint.
  
  "I can't believe it so it's likely untrue," is a fundamental misinterpretation of what I'm saying. "There is enough evidence of a Trump/Russia connection without unreliable sources," would be more accurate.
  Believing unverified claims has consequences. Remember the Steele dossier, with its wild allegations of blackmail and urinating prostitutes? It's now pretty much entirely discredited due to unreliable sources, and the very real, very clear connection between Trump and Russia lost credibility with it.
  Similarly, the Mueller investigation was also undermined by outlandish claims. Left-leaning grifters like Louise Mensch and the Krassenstein brothers made predictions of imminent arrests and treason charges. When the Mueller Report was finally released, it stated that, while there wasn't enough evidence to say Trump definitively colluded with Russia, there was no evidence to clear him of that charge, and he committed criminal obstruction of justice during the course of the investigation. That should have been a damning conclusion, but after months of wild speculation and overhype, it was labeled a nothing-burger.
  So, I'm going to remain skeptical of an old KGB agent's Facebook post about a 38 year plot to recruit Donald Trump as a spy, and instead stick to what is known: Trump has long had business dealings with Russian oligarchs, the Russian government supported him through online propaganda, there were credible accusations of collusion between his campaign and Russia, and he is now promoting a pro-Russia foreign policy. That's significant enough.
  And that is not saying, "I can't believe the world is round so Occam's razor it must be flat because that I can understand." That's saying, "I can see the Earth is curved, and while some people claim we're actually on the back of giant turtle, Occam's Razor says it's probably just round."
the claims fuel speculation about Trump’s ties to Russia, which he has denied.
“We don’t rely on American banks. We have all the funding we need out of Russia.”
-Eric Trump
In the 60's someone with ties to KGB would be arrested (and death sentence) for treason, now it can be president and no one does anything
- It’s worst than that.
  Not only no one does anything but the majority of American voters voted for the guy.
  
  A plurality, not a majority.
  He may only have been short of the majority by a fraction of a percent, but no sense in giving him any more credit than is due or contributing to the myth of a mandate.
  
  Spanish and pro-Palestine people voted for him, the same ones getting deported and shocked for no giving a fuck about Gaza.
  It's like jews voting for Hitler, after him repeatedly said that they are the problem
  
  No, the machines were likely rigged in the swing states. Needs some forensic analysis to confirm.
- In a way it's a credit to your democracy, for whatever consolation that brings.
Donnie Jr. publicly boasted that the Russian banks loved his daddy.
It was pretty widely known in the intelligence community that Trump was compromised, yet here we are
- Whole lotta magats were rubbing one out over pictures of Putin shirtless way back under Obama, because something something "Obama in mom jeans". They love worshipping what they feel are "powerful" men.
  I bet many of them will be JUST FINE with that connection even if proven true and even if they accept the evidence, because they believe that Russia is some white xtian ethnostate that they view as a paradise for cishet white xtian right-wing men.
Either that, or doing everything exactly like he would be doing if he were.
page suddenly gone
- https://web.archive.org/web/20250221155926/https://www.thedailybeast.com/former-intelligence-officer-alnur-mussayev-claims-kgb-recruited-donald-trump-under-codename-krasnov/
- https://archive.vn/hRPy0
They removed the article? Anyone know why?
- Probably because there is no factual way to prove it (he said, she said) and maybe even got legal threats.
Isn’t it known that Melania is his handler?
- Yes but she's only trained to handle small packages.
  For the larger work efforts there is someone else appointed.
- That's mostly the problem, it is all "known" just by being obvious, no actual proof. But you'd think being obvious would at least be enough to prevent him from getting elected, lol. Hell, at this point, I'm not even sure if proof would have done the trick...
Thanks, most of us figured that out in ~2018
- Unfortunately it wasn't most of us.
  
  I’m inclined to believe the vast majority of Americans see through his bullshit. Winning the popular vote through malicious voter suppression and election interference efforts does not equal popular support.
There were several (3 or 4) reddit posts about this yesterday that rose to the top or r/all yesterday. After a few hours they were removed/deleted.
News sites they linked to (non reddit) were also removed, "page not found".
Very conspiracy theory suspicious.
Oh no, I was told by the Tone Police, the far right, the "liberal media", online leftists, and by podcasters like The Useful Idiots that talking about the Bronzo the Clown-Russian connection was VERY BAD, MMMKAY?
No way!
He listened so well.
Blew up decades old missile treaties.
Kept arming ukraine iduring Trump 1.
Stops all aid but made a special exception for ukraine.
lol

75 comments