Conversation
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Agent of a Foreign Power
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I think it is a mistake to center stories about the corrupt deal Trump made with Vladimir Putin yesterday around Donald Trump’s tweet (which I have corrected for accuracy).
The tweet is propaganda: the ask that his handler, Vladimir Putin, demanded before he agreed to his own side of the bargain. Putin’s own statement does not mention the word “diesel” — and does not mention any oil deals at all until after mentioning “the Ukraine crisis” and “the situation surrounding Iran.”
During the October 9 telephone conversation with US President Donald Trump, considerable focus was on prospects for settling the Ukraine crisis, while the situation surrounding Iran and various aspects of bilateral relations were touched upon as well.
When discussing the state of affairs in the global energy market, the Russian side confirmed its willingness to supply oil and petroleum products to the US market and global markets at large. I am convinced this will have a positive impact on the entire global economy.
An agreement was reaffirmed to maintain personal contacts between the presidents of the two countries and to continue cooperation across their respective administrations, security services, and agencies.
The purported deal for diesel — for Russia to export diesel they do not have — is not the drone warfare you’re looking for. Just in the last three days, we heard of a Lukoil deal that would benefit a guy who gave Trump $2 million which requires both Putin and Trump’s approval (and offers the kind of US corruption that Trump has so enjoyed with his theft of Venezuela’s oil).
The deal, for a worldwide portfolio of oil fields, refineries and gas stations now owned by the sanctioned Russian energy giant Lukoil, has become intertwined with the U.S. talks with Russia over ending the war in Ukraine, The New York Times reported last week.
The United States government, through the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation, would get a stake of about 15 percent in the deal, without investing any cash up front, the people said.
The leader of the investor group, Todd Boehly, an American billionaire who has donated $2 million to pro-Trump causes in the last two years, would get a smaller minority stake.
But more than half of the equity will be cumulatively held by investors in the Middle East, according to three participants in the negotiations. The investors include entities tied to the royal family in Abu Dhabi and to two billionaire Syrian-born Qatari brothers, who are business partners with Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law, and Ivanka Trump, the president’s daughter.
The deal is structured in such a way that the United States — through Mr. Boehly and the government — would control a majority of the board of the resulting entity, some of the people close to the deal said. A senior administration official said the deal included a “substantial upfront payment and profits interest for the United States,” would enhance American “energy dominance” and outlast the current administration.
We also learned of a Nord Stream deal that would start selling gas to Europe, and benefit Kushner.
Top Russian and US officials, including US Special Envoy Jared Kushner, have held talks about bringing a US investor into the Nord Stream pipelines that delivered gas to Germany before Russia invaded Ukraine, five people with knowledge of the situation said.
The discussions included Kirill Dmitriev, a close adviser to Russian President Vladimir Putin, and Kushner, the son-in-law of US President Donald Trump, the people said.
Nothing about Putin’s statement makes sense if this deal is about diesel. It all makes sense if this deal is about bribing people close to Trump to betray Ukraine and Europe.
The point of Trump’s statement about Ukraine is, first, to continue to blame Ukraine — rather than Trump’s own incompetence — for sky high diesel prices. And, just as importantly, to rationalize cutting off Ukrainian intelligence (and, if that were to happen, probably Starlink as well).
- They were told that Trump decided to move forward after Ukraine ignored multiple requests to stop strikes on Russian oil refineries, which were directly affecting U.S. consumers.
- A Ukrainian official claimed that during the talks, Witkoff and Kushner threatened that Trump could cut off Ukraine from U.S. intelligence if it continued to ignore his requests.
- The U.S. official denied such a threat was made and said Witkoff and Kushner told the Ukrainians that the U.S. was a strong partner, providing munitions and intelligence. Ukraine therefore shouldn’t take actions that hurt American consumers, Witkoff and Kushner said.
- “The attacks on the refineries cause pain in Russia, but it causes pain for the U.S., too,” the U.S. official said.
Trump is not the agent of this deal — or rather, he is the Agent of a Foreign Power here. But he is not the architect of it.
I predicted back in March that one way the Iran war would end is if Putin recruited Trump to join his side in a world war, which at this point puts the dictatorships of the world against a Europe struggling to stave off right wing extremists just as winter hits.
Trump has two options to get the Strait of Hormuz open, neither of which would restore the status quo from before Trump’s disastrous attack, if they work at all: to use the cover of other quasi-negotiations to capitulate on Russia’s terms, effectively losing the war to Iran for Russian assurances that Iran will keep the Strait open, or to send those 20,000 troops to conduct incredibly difficult operations with degraded local facilities.
I’m not saying that Trump has already decided to capitulate to Russia. Though it is the kind of neat solution — one that likely comes with financial benefits for his family and his developer buddy — that would allow Trump to go back to gaudying up more of the White House, his real passion. I’m saying that until Trump’s two insanely unqualified and conflicted “volunteer” negotiators are replaced with grown-ups, this will continue to be a real possibility.
It took Lindsey Graham’s death, Trump’s complete incompetence to claim an Iran win, and billions of dollars in bribes — some of which may never deliver. The mention of “cooperation across their respective administrations, [including] security services,” likely means that Kash Patel is traveling to Russia next week to collect the kind of disinformation (likely implicating Jim Comey and John Brennan) he has been chasing for a decade.
But Vladimir Putin seems to have finally completed the complete recruitment of Trump that Russia has been pursuing for decades.
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