President Donald Trump was recruited as a KGB agent in the late 1980s, according to a new but familiar smear being pushed in the mainstream media.
The former head of Kazakhstan’s intelligence service, Alnur Mussayev, recently claimed on Facebook that Trump was recruited by the KGB when he visited Moscow in 1987.
Other KGB officers, including Yuri Shvets, who was a source for the book America Kompromat: How the KGB Cultivated Donald Trump, and Related Tales of Sex, Greed, Power, and Treachery, have made similar claims.
A second KGB agent has reportedly “confirmed” Mussayev’s story to a Ukrainian reporter, stating that Trump would have been surrounded by KGB 24/7 while in Moscow and suggesting he could have been caught in a honeytrap with a Russian prostitute or compromised by other mean, such as being recorded offering a bribe to a Russian official. At the time of his visit, Trump wanted to build a hotel in the Russian capital.
Alexander Motyl, writing for The Hill, claims that, although there’s “no documentary evidence” for the claim Trump was recruited by the KGB, the possibility should not be dismissed out of hand.”
“None of these former KGB operatives has provided evidence, but the fact that three KGB agents located in different places and speaking at different times agree on the story suggests this possibility should not be dismissed out of hand. If there’s one thing we’ve learned from the first Trump administration and from the initial weeks of the second, it is that everything, including what appears to be impossible, is possible.”
Motyl goes on to suggest, on the principle of Occam’s Razor, Trump must be a KGB agent, because it offers the simplest explanation of his “ animus toward NATO, Europe and Ukraine, his admiration of Vladimir Putin and his endorsement of authoritarian rule.”
“We could then dispense with contorted explanations that focus on Trump’s mercurial and narcissistic personality on the one hand and American party realignments on the other. Indeed, even if true, these explanations could be accommodated as bells and whistles adorning the central narrative propounded by three KGB agents.”
The viewpoints expressed in Motyl’s opinion piece, which was published days before Ukrainian President Zelensky’s disastrous meeting at the Oval Office on Friday, have been widely parroted in the aftermath, in the mainstream media and on social media.
Zelensky’s meeting with President Trump and Vice President Vance in the Oval Office descended to a shouting match as Trump and Vance berated Zelensky for his ingratitude and disrespect, and Zelensky appear to issue veiled threats that the US might soon experience war on its own territory.
Zelensky was promptly removed from the White House. He later made an appearance on Fox News where he tried to excuse the embarrassing row and suggested he and Trump could still come to an agreement about the future of his country.
According to The Washington Post, which cited a “senior administration official,” “the Trump administration is considering ending all ongoing shipments of military aid to Ukraine in response to President Volodymyr Zelensky’s remarks in the Oval Office on Friday and his perceived intransigence in the peace process.”
Billions of dollars’ worth of radars, vehicles, ammunition and missiles are currently awaiting shipment to Ukraine and would presumably be affected by the decision.
CBS News has also confirmed that the threat to cut off military aid is real. Reporter Jennifer Jacobs Tweeted, “US military aid to Ukraine could be in jeopardy.”
“US senators warned Zelenskyy as recently as this morning not to try to litigate with Trump,” Jacobs added.
“Teams were already working ahead to get to a more detailed level of agreement for Ukraine after today’s minerals deal, but the damage done in Oval Office was serious, sources told me. Trump officials who talked with the Ukrainian team after Zelenskyy left the Oval that some of his circle were dismayed by his behavior.”
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who was present in the Oval Office for Zelensky’s car-crash meeting with President Trump and Vice President Vance, has already stopped all US aid for restoring Ukraine’s power grid.