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Jeffrey Epstein claimed he gave Russians insight into TrumpNewly released emails show the late convicted sex offenders extensive network of foreign contacts, whom he corresponded with about Trumps policy decisions.
By KYLE CHENEY and NAHAL TOOSI
Politico, 11/12/2025
Nearly a month before President Donald Trump met Russian leader Vladimir Putin in Helsinki in 2018, Jeffrey Epstein attempted to pass a message to Russias top diplomat: If you want to understand Trump, talk to me.
I think you might suggest to putin that lavrov can get insight on talking to me, Epstein wrote in a June 24, 2018, email to Thorbjorn Jagland, a former prime minister of Norway who was leading the Council of Europe at the time of the exchange. Lavrov was an apparent reference to Sergei Lavrov, Russias longtime foreign minister.
In the email exchange, one of hundreds released Wednesday by congressional investigators, Epstein indicated he had previously talked about Trump with Vitaly Churkin, Russias forceful ambassador to the United Nations, before Churkin died in 2017.
Churkin was great, Epstein, the late convicted sex offender, wrote. He understood trump after our conversations. it is not complex. he must be seen to get something its that simple.
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https://www.politico.com/news/2025/11/12/jeffrey-epstein-donald-trump-russia-emails-00648919

Above, Lavrov in the Oval Office. Blackmail. It works.
BOSSHOG
(44,738 posts)And show him the pictures. He is nothing. He has never had anything of real value. He has never had a friend. Never. He has never had marketable skills. He can only do things involving crime and mendacity. A great candidate to be the leader of the Republican Party.
Kid Berwyn
(24,393 posts)The KGB played the game as if they were immensely impressed by his personality, Yuri Shvets, a key source for a new book, tells the Guardian
by David Smith
The Guardian, January 29, 2021
Donald Trump was cultivated as a Russian asset over 40 years and proved so willing to parrot anti-western propaganda that there were celebrations in Moscow, a former KGB spy has told the Guardian.
Yuri Shvets, posted to Washington by the Soviet Union in the 1980s, compares the former US president to the Cambridge five, the British spy ring that passed secrets to Moscow during the second world war and early cold war.
Now 67, Shvets is a key source for American Kompromat, a new book by journalist Craig Unger, whose previous works include House of Trump, House of Putin. The book also explores the former presidents relationship with the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein.
This is an example where people were recruited when they were just students and then they rose to important positions; something like that was happening with Trump, Shvets said by phone on Monday from his home in Virginia.
Shvets, a KGB major, had a cover job as a correspondent in Washington for the Russian news agency Tass during the 1980s. He moved to the US permanently in 1993 and gained American citizenship. He works as a corporate security investigator and was a partner of Alexander Litvinenko, who was assassinated in London in 2006.
Unger describes how Trump first appeared on the Russians radar in 1977 when he married his first wife, Ivana Zelnickova, a Czech model. Trump became the target of a spying operation overseen by Czechoslovakias intelligence service in cooperation with the KGB.
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https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jan/29/trump-russia-asset-claims-former-kgb-spy-new-book
Not a single redeeming quality: Donald John Trump. If only he had read more as a child, instead of throwing rocks at the neighbors baby
Kid Berwyn
(24,393 posts)Donald J Trump represents the most successful spy operation of all time. And thanks to Just-us John Roberts redefining the meaning of "Insurrection" and the very words of the Constitution of the United States of America, an active Russian agent has been allowed to return to the Oval Office to again "serve" as the pee-resident.

Normally, I'd say: "Think about that!" But, destroying truth is what tyrants do. It's why they hate a free press.
It's why trumpf is doing all he can to sue anyone who ever wrote anything bad about him. Now he has the DoJ doing his dirty work and handing the legal bill to the U.S. taxpayer.
The photo of Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and dip above was taken by TASS, the official Russian news agency. The US media were not informed about the 2017 visit. We learned about it because the Unstable Moron himself spread the pic proudly on social media.
How many people do you know whove seen that picture or the one below, taken on an earlier date in the Oval Office? Again, very few.

I just fired the head of the FBI. He was crazy, a real nut job," Trump said, according to The Times. "I faced great pressure because of Russia. That's taken off.
"I'm not under investigation," he added.
Sources:
https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/05/10/527755991/trump-meets-with-russias-lavrov-at-the-white-house-today
https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-nut-job-james-comey-russia-2017-5
And this is the man leading the "restructuring of American government" today winking at Putin at a diplomatic affair during his first madministration.

Theres a reason why Putin, the Kremlin and the GRU and whatever the KGB is called these days call him "America's Gorbachev." Gorby sped up the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Now Putin returns the favor through Trump and his destruction of America's economy, hailed just before the 2024 election by The Economist as "The Envy of the World."
bif
(26,997 posts)Granted, he's limping and obviously not in great physical condition.
Kid Berwyn
(24,393 posts)They call the shots. For instance:
John Roberts' Wife Made Millions From Elite Law Firms, Major Companies

John Roberts' Wife Made Millions From Elite Law Firms, Major Companies: Whistleblower Docs
"It almost makes you wonder whether the Supreme Court of the United States is suffering a massive, systemic ethics crisis," said one critic.
by Julia Conley
Common Dreams, April 28, 2023
A whistleblower from the legal recruiting firm Major, Lindsey & Africa says Jane Sullivan Roberts, the wife of U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, was paid $10.3 million in commissions over seven years from her job as a headhunter at the company, where she placed attorneys with law firmsincluding at least one that argued a case before the Supreme Court after the placement was made.
Sullivan Roberts was paid the money between 2007 and 2014, having taken a job with the company two years after her husband was confirmed to the Supreme Court, according to a report out Friday from Business Insider.
The whistleblower, Kendal Price, said in a sworn affidavit in December that he believed "at least some of [Roberts'] remarkable success as a recruiter has come because of her spouse's position."
Price's complaint was reported on earlier this year by Politico and The New York Times, and Insider published new documents regarding the case.
"When I found out that the spouse of the chief justice was soliciting business from law firms, I knew immediately that it was wrong," Price, who worked alongside Sullivan Roberts from 2011-2013 at Major, Lindsey & Africa, told Business Insider. "During the time I was there, I was discouraged from ever raising the issue. And I realized that even the law firms who were Jane's clients had nowhere to go. They were being asked by the spouse of the chief justice for business worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, and there was no one to complain to. Most of these firms were likely appearing or seeking to appear before the Supreme Court. It's natural that they'd do anything they felt was necessary to be competitive."
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https://www.commondreams.org/news/jane-roberts-whistleblower
It is less than surprising and more than disappointing to see how little the story of the Supreme Court and its support of the superrich has made upon democracy and government. Makes me grateful for DU and DUers like you, bif!