Assets aren’t always used for the big score. In fact, it’s rare AFAIK. Small bits of information, favors done, etc. is more the action. They don’t want the asset to become known by fucking up some big operation. It’s a long game they’re playing.
The score they may be most concerned with is the number of assets the recruiter can, with barest plausibility, report back to Moscow.
The equivalent on our side could be the ICE daily arrest quota. It doesn’t matter if the arrested person is really a criminal – all that matters is making your numbers.
SHould have called him Pakled instead.
As I said on the BBQ Clusterfuck thread he is way beyond the release of any kompromat. Putin himself could confirm it and add more evidence yet in Impeachment 3 that will be played off as Russia meddling in America, which of course they are on the record for never doing.
Would the Soviet KGB really name an asset after an infamous anti-Communist and Nazi collaborator?
If nothing else, it would be a bit of a jinx, wouldn’t it?
Seriously? What are they gonna call him Pyotr I Alekseyevich (aka “Peter the Great”) or Kuznetsov, one of the greatest field Marshall’s anywhere, anytime? Call him Rommel, then. Or Catherine the Great.
In 1987 he was still well known as a serial bankruptcty-type-guy and slum-lord. I think his reasons for going to the Soviet Union was something about the beauty pageants? Something a Huge Trustable & Respected Real Estate Developer from the Great State of New York would not be called for.
Also known as the honey pot ploy.
Given his slovenly appearance and weird irrational hypnotic hold on people, Rasputin might have fit him better.
It also translates as beauty or red. Red is close to orange! And Beauty fits with the pageants.
Red Square was originally called Beautiful Square but got renamed after a new set of red paving stones were laid down. The Russians decided to keep the name, but change the meaning of the word. Saved a fortune by not having to replace the signs or update all the maps.
To be clear: a Facebook post by someone claiming to be a former KGB officer claims that Trump was recruited as a Russian spy in 1987. The Economic Times calls the whole thing “alleged” and the Daily Beast, which evidently first broke the story, ended up deleting it.
That’s got more credibility than 95% of the MAGA/Q/Trump admin posts combined!
I’ve tried checking a few of the KGB archives for the word “Krasnov” and not found anything. That said, I’m not confident that they’ve all been properly digitized and made available to internet search so I wouldn’t say that I’ve ruled it out.
Mitrokhin probably only has files preceding 1985 and is probably the only Russian source (everything else is a local repository from one of the break-off countries of the USSR), so it’s unlikely that there would be anything to be found. But, if anyone has physical access to one of these, it might be worth a visit.
A reference to a Krasnov, in a document preceding 1987, would largely invalidate the story. It would have to be someone else.
Assets often don’t realise they are assets, or they think they’re working for somebody entirely different.
Yeah, this. I’d need something more substantial before I trust the story.
26 women separately made claims that he assaulted them, and he boasted about grabbing them by the pussy. That is pretty substantial evidence that he is a predator.
He was caught with stolen classified documents in his house, that’s substantial proof that he stole and kept classified documents, unsecurely.
He admitted actions that constitute business fraud, but claimed the banks should have done more checking, that is substantial proof that he committed business fraud.
Somebody on the internet says he’s a spy, not so much.
An asset. Not always spying. Trump can’t even use a regular camera. He totally sucks at hiding secret documents. And cheats at golf.
Six or whatever years ago when he met Putin and both declared, essentially, “No Russian meddling in the election” (despite CIA and FBI saying otherwise) and the unspoken suggestion that “these were not the droids we were looking for” showed who is master and servant.
I remember when trump said, of Putin, “I don’t know why he would”. Sometime later he corrected himself, and said, “I don’t know why he wouldn’t”. Anybody remember the “correction”? I don’t think it even got explored a little by the media. Of course, as always, no follow up.
Correction accepted. It’s still a dubious story told by an anonymous person on the internet. Not going to accept it without some supporting evidence.
And introductions. Remember all those photos of Trump hanging out with important people, like the Clintons? He was famously at that White House Correspondents dinner with Obama. He was in a position to introduce “friends” to lots of people that would be very difficult for regular folks to ever meet.
This alone would be worth getting your hooks into him, if the opportunity presented itself. And he’d be completely on-board with this, as it feeds his personality defects. “I’m so popular that even the Russians want to hang out with me, and meet all my important friends!”
Is anyone else getting serious flashbacks to 2012 and the endless “is Ulfric Stormcloak a Thalmor asset” discussion about Skyrim? Life imitates art I suppose!
I don’t find the ‘Krasnov’ story plausible, but it’s not necessary for the story to be true to believe that there is something very fishy going on between trump and Russia.
Russia ‘loans’ trump a lot of money at a time when he needs it very much and no American bank would have anything to do with him. Does anybody think that trump ever paid those ‘loans’ back, with plenty of interest? Or I should say, paid back with money? Putin is a murderous dictator who has killed enemies and detractors inside and outside of Russia, often in very public ways. Payback is what Putin is all about, one way or another. The money Russia gave trump was no favor.
trump in his first term started meeting with Putin with only translators present, and demanded his translators’ silence on what was spoken. After that he started meeting with Putin alone, with only Putin’s translators, something that would be unthinkable in previous administrations. trump has spoken well of Putin, and supported Putin and Russian interests at every turn; a very stark, bizarro, ‘white is black’ 180 degree reversal of Republican beliefs and policy going back many decades.
If it looks like a rat, and scurries and squeaks like a rat…