Did Soviet Russia recruit Trump as Agent Krasnov, a KGB spy? Here’s the truth

The USSR reportedly recruited Donald Trump as a KGB agent in 1987, a former Soviet Intelligence officer has claimed. This officer, Alnur Mussayev, was the head of the Kazakhstan’s National Security Committee. Mussayev said his job was to recruit “businessmen from capitalist countries” and claimed that Trump was one of his recruits. The now-US President was then a 40-year-old New York real estate developer.

The timing of the post is interesting, as Trump seems to have called the war in Ukraine in favour of Russia. The US has held negotiations in Riyadh with Russian officials on the Russia-Ukraine war, and excluded Kyiv from them.

In a stunning move, the US also sided with Russia at the UN in a vote on the Ukraine war on Monday.

Amid these developments, people are seeing a conspiracy.

The former Kazakh intelligence officer made this claim in a Facebook post and has further increased the chatter about Trump’s ties to Russia, now being traced to four decades ago.

Trump had made the visit to explore the possibility of building a hotel in the capital.

Soviet officials facilitated this trip, but now questions are being raised about its nature. Several years ago, a report stated how, in 1985, the KGB had updated a secret personality questionnaire distributed to its officers, discussing how to identify “prominent figures in the West”. The aim was to “draw them into some form of collaboration with us… as an agent, or confidential or special or unofficial contact.”

Mussayev’s claims suggest Trump might have been one of them.

This was during the Cold War when the USSR, Russia’s predecessor, fought the US for influence across the globe and even in space. Espionage and counter-espionage were order of the day.

However, this is not the first time Trump has been linked to Russia.

TRUMP, STEELE DOSSIER OF 2017 AND THE GOLDEN SHOWER

In 2017, just as Trump was about to assume office in his first term, a report put together by former British intelligence operative Christopher Steele was brought to the forefront.

The document contained accusations from Russian intelligence operatives and stated that Moscow had sensitive information on Trump dating back to his several visits to Russia – including the “golden shower” videotape with Trump and a sex worker in a Moscow hotel.

The ‘Steele dossier’ has been refuted by Trump supporters.

Mussayev has also confirmed the existence of compromising material on Trump.

“Donald Trump is on the FSB’s hook and is swallowing the bait deeper and deeper. This is evidenced by numerous indirect facts published in the media. There is such a thing as the recruitability of an object. Based on my experience of operational work in the KGB-KNB [the Kazakh successor to the KGB], I can say for sure that Trump belongs to the category of ideally recruitable people,” he wrote in his February 18 post.

“I have no doubt that Russia has kompromat on the US President, that over the course of many years the Kremlin has been promoting Trump to the post of President of the main world power,” he added.

In 2018, Mussayev said that the ruling elite in the US knew that their President was dependent on the Kremlin, but they would not admit it openly and jeopardize the US’ superpower status.

Mussayev’s claims are not alone.

In ‘American Kompromat’, a 2021 book by Craig Unger, former KGB officer Yuri Shvets claimed that Trump had been recruited by Moscow in the 1980s.

“Donald Trump was cultivated as a Russian asset… and proved so willing to parrot anti-Western propaganda that there were celebrations in Moscow,” Shvets told The Guardian in 2021.

Semyon Kislin, a Soviet émigré who co-owned Joy-Lud electronics on Fifth Avenue, nearby.

In 1979, Trump was the target of a spying operation overseen by Czechoslovakia’s intelligence service in cooperation with the KGB. This happened after he married a Czech model, Ivana Zelnickova.

In 1987, Donald Trump and Ivana visited Moscow and St. Petersburg, where KGB operatives flattered Trump and suggested he enter politics. Czech spies also monitored the couple in Manhattan, opening Ivana’s letters to her father, Milos, a non-agent with ties to the Czech secret police.

During their visits to Czechoslovakia, further surveillance occurred. According to Luke Harding’s 2017 Politico article, Trump’s recruitment by Russian agents wasn’t a calculated plan but part of a broader effort to recruit many potential assets.

Even Shvets discussed how Trump was the perfect target for the 2016 election.

“His vanity and narcissism made him a natural target to recruit. He was cultivated over a 40-year period, right up through his election”.

IS THE CLAIM THAT TRUMP WAS A KGB AGENT TRUE?

There is no evidence, other than the Facebook post, that Trump was recruited as a KGB agent. There would have been some mention of Trump in some declassified file or some chatter, but there’s none.

Then there is the big question. If indeed Trump was a KGB spy, could the American intelligence agencies in the Cold War period have missed it?

In 2016, the FBI must have done extensive background checks on Trump, as it does for all presidential nominees. Nothing suspicious emerged.

Trump rose from being a real estate developer to a TV star to a politician, but all the while there was no mention of him being a KGB spy. There is no high-profile officer who has backed the Kazakh agent’s claims.

What’s more, Democrats, who had all the secret services at their disposal, would have loved to dig out all the muck and dirt on Trump to derail his campaign. That they didn’t use Trump’s KGB past is proof enough that he has no KGB past. At least that is what all the evidence in the public leads us to.

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