Sir Keir Starmer may think Donald Trump is a reliable ally. But Britain’s security services do not. ‘We can’t risk sharing our human intelligence with the United States now,’ an intelligence service source told me. ‘There’s a danger of our assets being compromised. Trump is too close to Putin. Within the service, he’s regarded as a possible agent of influence.’
The question is what sort of agent. Fantastical rumours that the US President was literally a Russian mole began to circulate in 2016, around the time he launched his first election campaign.
They peaked three years later with the publication of the Mueller report, which uncovered widespread Russian interference in that presidential election on Trump’s behalf, but concluded there was insufficient evidence of direct collusion between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin.
Now, following Trump’s dramatic pivot away from Ukraine, Nato and Europe and towards Moscow, the rumours are circulating again.
So what is the truth? It seems Trump first attracted the interest of Soviet intelligence sometime in the late 1970s, when he married Czechoslovakian-born Ivana Zelnickova. In the depth of the Cold War, long-term relationships between Westerners and Eastern Europeans were relatively rare, and the Czech security service – the StB – opened a file on him.
In later years, as Trump’s profile as a businessman began to increase, he became the subject of an active surveillance and intelligence-gathering operation, with information being shared with the KGB.
At which point, according to Trump’s own account in his book The Art Of The Deal: ‘In January 1987, I got a letter from Yuri Dubinin, the Soviet ambassador to the United States, that began, “It is a pleasure for me to relay some good news from Moscow.”‘
The ‘good news’ was an invitation to travel to Russia to discuss the possibility of constructing a new hotel in Red Square. Trump accepted, and arrived in Moscow on July 4. At the time, Russian intelligence was making specific efforts to target, compromise and recruit Western businessmen.
Three former KGB intelligence officers have separately claimed this was the moment Trump became successfully turned into a Soviet asset. But they have been unable to provide any evidence to support their allegations. Trump and his associates have dismissed the claims as a ridiculous fiction. And no one else has been able to find a shred of evidence to corroborate them.
But what is a matter of documented record is that on his return from Moscow, Trump did an unusual thing. Though he had not previously displayed any significant interest in foreign affairs, on September 2, 1987, he spent $94,801 on three full-page adverts in the New York Times, Washington Post and Boston Globe that declared: ‘Why America should stop paying to defend countries that can afford to defend themselves’.
The primary focus of the ads appeared to be the US’s engagement in the Gulf and Pacific. But immediately following their publication, Trump appeared on television and said: ‘If you’re looking at the payments we’re making to Nato, they’re totally disproportionate with everybody else’s, and it’s ridiculous.’
Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump meet during the 2019 G20 summit, during Trump’s first term
At the time there was speculation this intervention was a prelude to Trump entering the 1988 presidential race.
But no campaign ensued. Instead, Trump concentrated on building his business empire, with the help of a number of Russian contacts. Two of the most significant were Tevfik Arif, a former Soviet official, and Felix Sater, a Russian-born, Brooklyn-raised business executive who had established the Bayrock real estate company and moved its headquarters into Trump Tower. ‘Bayrock knew the people, knew the investors,’ Trump later declared.
It was his partnership with Bayrock that assisted him in rebuilding his fortunes after a series of high-profile failures, including the Trump Taj Mahal in Atlantic City, and the Trump Shuttle.
Then, in 2015, Trump announced his intention to run for president. What followed has been well-documented, and was set out in exhaustive detail in the Mueller Report. Mueller revealed that there was a concerted attempt by Russia to sway the 2016 campaign in Trump’s favour. And it documented numerous links between Trump officials and Russian state actors.
The most infamous of these was the meeting held in Trump Tower on June 9, 2016. It was attended by Donald Trump Jnr (Trump’s son), Jared Kushner (his son-in-law) and Paul Manafort (Trump’s campaign manager) and a number of Russian ‘lobbyists’, who claimed they had information that could be used to damage his Democrat rival Hillary Clinton.
Trump later claimed this ‘opposition research’ was not acted upon, and that the relationship with the ‘lobbyists’ was immediately severed.
Mueller concluded the meeting and other contacts did not constitute a criminal conspiracy. But Trump’s recent statements and actions now place those relationships in a different light.
Even after links between Trump’s inner circle and Moscow were supposedly ended, Trump continued to adopt and construct policy positions favourable to Putin. Especially in relation to Ukraine.
In the weeks and months following the Trump Tower meeting, he claimed the US was supporting Nato ‘far more than we should’ and described the organisation as ‘obsolete’.
The US President shakes hands with Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer last month
At the Republican convention – held in July – his foreign policy adviser opposed an amendment to the party’s foreign policy platform that advocated sending arms to Ukraine and condemning Russian aggression in the region.
And most significantly – especially given the events of the past fortnight – Trump’s campaign manager Manafort continued to develop what became known as the Mariupol Plan, a ‘peace deal’ that would have annexed eastern Ukraine and effectively turned it into a Russian puppet state. What’s more, he did so in conjunction with a long-standing contact, Konstantin Kilimnik, who was later unmasked by the Senate Intelligence Committee as an active Russian intelligence officer.
The rumours swirling around Trump are hard to pin down and verify. But the following facts are not contested. He was targeted by Soviet intelligence services. With the Cold War at its height, he was charmed by the Soviets, and visited Moscow. On his return, he began to publicly adopt foreign policy positions favourable to the Kremlin. He revitalised his fortune with major support from Russian business contacts.
Russia actively campaigned for his election. Even before he entered the White House, he and his inner circle continued to advocate for, and adopt, policy stances favourable to Putin.
And upon his re-election, he has pivoted so far towards Russia that, in the gleeful words of official Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov: ‘The new [US] administration is rapidly changing all foreign policy configurations. This largely coincides with our vision.’
The truth is that Britain’s intelligence services no longer trust the President of the United States. It isn’t hard to see why.
