The bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee’s final Russia report lays out new claims about Donald Trump‘s ‘relationships with women in Moscow’ – including new allegations about a ‘tape’ of the future president in a luxury hotel elevator.
The explosive 1,000 page report caps off a multi-year investigation where investigators concluded that Russia sought to influence the 2016 campaign and that some officials in Trump’s orbit welcomed the assistance.
The fifth volume in the probe, which began after Trump’s 2016 victory, points to the role played by Trump’s disgraced former campaign chair Paul Manafort, who is currently serving a 7 1/2 year sentence on fraud and corruption charges. It accuses Manafort of collaborating with Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska and feeding internal Trump campaign information to Konstantin Kilimnik, who it identifies for the first time as a Russian intelligence officer. Democrats on the committee wrote in their own addendum that Kilimnik ‘may have been connected’ to the Russian military intelligence unit that carried out the 2016 election hacking of Democratic emails.
“This is what collusion looks like,’ they wrote.
The report, which took investigators years to compile, did not ‘establish that the Russian government collected kompromat on Trump.’ However it does run down streams of information about David Geovanis, who witnesses told the panel ‘alleged that he had information about Trump’s relationships with women in Moscow.’
Geonvanis is a Russian-American businessman the committee identifies as having ties to Kremlin-linked oligarchs. He refused to cooperate with the inquiry, but is believed to have ‘told a number of people in Moscow,’ including expatriates, about his information.
The Senate Intelligence Committee tracked down information on witnesses who said businessman David Geovanis ‘alleged that he had information about Trump’s relations with women in Moscow’
‘While the Committee is not specifically aware of Geovanis sharing his alleged information regarding Trump with the Russian government, he has not been discreet with it,’ the committee found.
During the 1990s and 200s, Geovanis developed a reputation as a ‘host for visiting businessmen.’ The report notes that in some circles it is common for visiting businessmen to be taken to ‘nightclubs or parties where prostitutes are present.’
The committee did not know of any ‘direct connection’ between Geovanis and the Trump campaign, although he did talk up his ties in his own emails.
He likely first met Trump in 1996 on a trip where Trump was exploring real estate deals – although a long section after the statement is blocked out. Trump is thought to have gone to Russia in 1987, 1996, and 2013. A friend said Geovanis was assigned to show Trump ‘around town’ and take him to dinner.
The report references a cocktail party for Trump on his 1996 trip to Moscow
Investigators spoke to various men who had contact with Geovanis abou the events in question
The report describes a 1996 cocktail party that Geovanis helped organize with Trump at the Baltschug Kempinski Hotel in Moscow where ‘Trump may have begun a brief relationship with a Russian woman named [name blocked out].’
A ‘historical report’ from 1998 quoted by the committee has Trump regaling the unidentified Russian woman during a speech. ‘Donald Trump warmly welcomed the guests, among whom was the charming [redacted] , “Miss Moscow [redacted]. Trump recalled that two years ago, during his stay in Moscow, [redacted] was for him the most beautiful hostess of the capital, whose charms were not overshadowed even by Claudia Schiffer and Tina Turner, who lived in the same hotel. He recalled with pleasure the excellent company with which he spent time in Moscow.’
Another stream of information relates to allegations about Trump and women in an elevator at the Moscow Ritz Carlton hotel – the scene of unverified allegations about Trump contained in the infamous Steele Dossier.
One witness included in photographs obtained by the committee, Leon Black, did not recall any compromising behavior. ‘Black later added that he and Trump “might have been in a strip club together,”‘ according to the report. Black is identified as identified as serving on the board of the Russian Direct Investment Fund, reportedly met once with Vladimir Putin, and Black told the committee he also has a personal but not close relationship with Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner.
The report also goes into the allegation about the Ritz Carlton.
‘Separately, a former executive at Marriott International, of which Ritz Carlton is a part, said that shortly after the 2013 Miss Universe contest he overheard two other Marriott executives at a small corporate gathering discussing a recording from one of the elevator security cameras at the Ritz Carlton Moscow,’ according to the report.
‘One of the Marriot executives who was involved in the conversation – previously a manager of the Ritz Carlton Moscow – had clearly seen the video, which allegedly showed Trump in an elevator involved with several women who the discussant implied to be “hostesses.”‘
‘The executive who had seen the video had asked the other, more senior, executive what to do with the recording. The former executive said the two discussants then left to continue the conversation in a more private location, and he did not hear anything further,’ says the report.
However, ‘neither executive who allegedly had the conversation recalled it, nor did they recall seeing the recording. The Committee was not able to resolve these discrepancies,’ the committee’s report says.
The committee justified its look at Trump’s personal conduct in Moscow by mentioning Russia’s longstanding practice of seeking to obtain compromising information to ‘influence or coerce’ people. It cited allegations from the 2016 campaign that Russia had compromising information on Trump – who campaigned calling for warmer relations with Russia and sometimes praising Russian President Vladimir Putin.
‘The Committee sought, in a limited way, to understand the Russian government’s alleged collection of such information, not only because of the threat of a potential foreign influence operation, but also to explore the possibility of a misinformation operation targeting the integrity of the U.S. political process,’ it wrote.