Donald Trump seems to really like Vladamir Putin, President of Russia. He refers favorably to Putin often, and I’ve yet to hear him criticize the Russian President, which is notable because criticism comes easily to Trump. His policies favor Russia, and he opposes policies from former administrations designed to sanction the former Soviet flagship. But does that mean Trump is a Russian asset? I don’t know, but…
I hate to make the claim that Trump is a Russian asset because, to the best of my knowledge, there is no clear evidence to back up that claim. However, there is circumstantial evidence. Lots of circumstantial evidence.
For instance, as far back as 1984, Trump met with David Bogadan, who the FBI claims was a member of the Russian mafia. Bogadan was in New York and put down $6 million on five condos in Trump Tower. Over the years, again, according to the FBI, thirteen members of the Russian mafia owned condos or otherwise lived in Trump properties in the United States.
A few years later, in 1987, Trump met with an undercover KGB agent in New York. At the time, the KGB was recruiting U.S. businessmen. Previously, they had recruited Armand Hammer, the president of Occidental Petroleum, who became a close ally of the USSR during the Cold War. Hammer was aging (he was 89 years old at the time), and Russia needed a prominent businessman to take his place.
The KGB didn’t need businessmen to spy for them. They needed people who were prominent and influential, and who were open to wielding that influence and prominence on behalf of the USSR. They were willing to pay handsomely with business transactions, travel opportunities, as well as access to morally casual Soviet women. Trump was at the top of their recruitment list.
In 1987, Trump was developing the Grand Hyatt Hotel in New York, and like every new hotel, he needed a lot of televisions. He sourced those TVs from an electronics store that was a front for the KGB. Later that year, Trump traveled to Moscow on a trip that was reportedly arranged by the Russian intelligence service.
According to a book by Russophile Craig Unger (House of Putin, House of Trump), Trump was groomed by the KGB while in Moscow, and returned to the U.S., where he made a brief run for President in 1988. As part of his campaign, Trump took out a full-page ad in the New York Times assailing the United States’ alliance with NATO. Of course, at that time during the Cold War, the Soviets hated NATO and felt, as they do now, that NATO would collapse if the United States broke ties with the alliance.
Today, Trump continues to push for the United States to withdraw from NATO, and has made it clear that he does not support Ukraine in their war with Russia. This, despite the fact that previous administrations have strongly supported Ukraine, and Republicans, until recently, have advocated for military and humanitarian aid for Ukrainians. And despite strong support among Americans for Ukraine, Trump has moved the country’s alliance much more strongly toward Putin and the Russians.
When Trump again ran for President in 2016, the Russians had his back. They conducted a covert campaign to prop him up as a candidate and damage the candidacy of Hillary Clinton. Trump denies that Russia worked on his behalf, but investigations conducted by the FBI, the Justice Department, and the Republican-led Senate Intelligence Committee all confirmed that Russia worked to get Trump elected.
While running for president in 2016, Trump campaign officials met with a Russian attorney, Natalia Veselnitskaya, who represented Putin’s government. Veselnitskaya was later charged with money laundering and obstruction of justice. The purpose of Don Jr., Jared Kushner, Paul Manafort, and others meeting with the Russian attorney was to share dirt on Hillary Clinton. Later in the campaign, Trump confided in Russian diplomats that sanctions against Russia would be lifted if Trump was elected. Amazingly, during a debate with Clinton, Trump asked Russian intelligence to find and expose the former Secretary of State’s emails, a stunt that was as audacious as it was potentially treasonous.
During Trump’s first term as President, he met with Putin in Helsinki, and told reporters during a press conference that the Russian president told him that Russia was not involved in the 2016 election, and that he trusted Putin over U.S. intelligence sources. Think about that for a minute. The President of the United States offered to the media, in front of Putin, that he trusted the former KGB agent more than he trusted the entire U.S, intelligence community. That really is quite extraordinary.
When Covid hit the United States in 2020 and we were short on Covid testing machines, Donald Trump sent four such devices directly to Vladimir Putin, denying U.S. hospitals and American citizens use of the machines. This, despite the fact that Putin had put a bounty on killing American soldiers in Afghanistan just a year or so earlier. That’s how badly Trump wanted to be in Putin’s good graces. What happened to America First?
Since he was re-elected in 2024, Trump has continued to make moves that tend to indicate his closeness to Russia. Others would say he is demonstrating how compromised he is. Again, the evidence is circumstantial, but there’s a lot of it.
First, he nominated former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard to be Director of National Intelligence. Gabbard has long been rumored to be a Russian asset, and even while serving in the U.S. Army Reserve as a lieutenant colonel, frequently criticized U.S. policy toward Russia. Whether or not Gabbard is a Russian asset is a tough call. What isn’t a tough call is that Gabbard, a former Democrat, is not particularly well-qualified for the position of Director of National Intelligence, and that there were certainly many more people who were better qualified and didn’t carry the baggage of being a supposed Russian asset. Even so, Trump chose Gabbard over those better qualified and less hampered candidates.
Trump chose Pam Bondi to run the Department of Justice (after the disaster of Matt Gaetz), and the first thing Bondi did in her new job was to disband the DOJ task forces on foreign influence and Russia sanctions. The Foreign Influence task force was responsible for investigating violations of the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), a law passed by Congress to make sure that agents for foreign governments trying to influence American lawmakers first had to register so we had a record of who these people represented and who they spoke to.
The task force responsible for enforcing sanctions against Russia was also disbanded, making it much easier for the sanctions to be violated without consequence. In other words, without the DOJ task force, the Russian sanctions become much weaker without Congress ever having to vote to weaken them.
On the same day Bondi disbanded the two task forces, she also ended the FBI’s effort into fighting foreign influence in U.S. politics. The FBI unit was in the process of investigating Russian, Chinese, and Iranian efforts to influence U.S. elections. In 2024, the unit exposed a scheme by Russian-backed media that funneled $10 million to conservative social media influencers to spread Russian propaganda and talking points. The were apparently effective, but Bondi eliminated them anyway.
Bondi’s gutting of the FBI’s efforts to track foreign influence also impacted the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) within Homeland Security, where several cybersecurity experts were either fired or reassigned. This allowed Elon Musk to essentially take over CISA as part of his efforts with DOGE, where he installed a 19-year-old cyber hacker with a history of criminal hacking and ties to Russia.
In January of this year, Trump signed an Executive Order allowing the government to give temporary security clearances to anyone he might choose without requiring so much as a background check, which can turn up things like financial improprieties and foreign connections. These security clearances would allow individuals access to some of our most highly classified documents without ever having to be vetted. Why?
On February 19, the CIA announced the largest round of mass firings in 50 years. That came on the heels of newly installed CIA Director John Ratcliffe sending a list of CIA employees—some of them in covert positions—to the White House in an unclassified email, which Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA) termed a “counterintelligence disaster.” Why do we suddenly need many fewer CIA agents? Reducing the size of the CIA doesn’t seem to be in the US’s best interest. So, who does it help?
To my mind, one of the most damning bits of circumstantial evidence is Trump’s decision to go after the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) as Elon Musk’s first target for DOGE. USAID provides humanitarian aid to countries around the world. The money spent by USAID is less than one percent of the federal budget (since 2001, USAID’s budget has ranged from 0.7% to 1.4% of the federal budget), but it is among the most effective dollars spent by the government. Not only does that money help people badly in need, but it also wins the United States a tremendous amount of goodwill throughout the world, strengthening alliances and making peace much more likely. Yet, Trump’s attack dog (Musk) claimed, without providing any evidence, that USAID was riddled with waste, fraud, and abuse, and closed down the entire agency. And despite a court order telling the administration they could not close down the agency without distributing funds that had already been allocated, reports indicate that the money has not started flowing again.
Obviously, shutting down USAID hurts the United States’ reputation and standing throughout the world, but who does it help? Russia, for one. In the Moscow Times, a government-run newspaper in Russia, a front-page headline welcomed the news of USAID’s demise. Russia not only wants to see America’s standing in the world diminished, but the end of USAID gives them an opening to take over our role as a good Samaritan, stealing the goodwill that once was ours.
Among many other things, the stop to USAID funding affected support for Ukraine’s power grid. Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Putin has targeted Ukraine’s power grid with near constant missile and drone attacks. It is only with help from a USAID grant that Ukraine has been able to keep the lights on. Without our help, Ukraine will plunge into darkness, making it all the more difficult to defend themselves from Russian assaults.
Trump’s Defense Secretary and former Fox News host, Pete Hegseth undermined Ukraine’s position further when he spoke to a group of leaders in Europe and said it was unrealistic for Ukraine to win their war with Russia or to ever go back to their pre-2014 border. He went on to state—as if he has authority to make this decision—that Ukraine would not be admitted to NATO, now or in the future. This was exactly what Russia wanted to hear, and it eroded Ukraine’s negotiating position in any potential peace talks
Hegseth, like many of Trump’s cabinet nominees, was wildly unqualified for the position he now holds. In fact, he is the least qualified Secretary of Defense in our nation’s history. Trump had his choice of any number of qualified people to head the DOD, but he chose Hegseth because he knew Hegseth would do his bidding without question or complaint. And as if on cue, one of Hegseth’s first actions as Secretary of Defense was to begin the abandonment of Ukraine in favor of Russia.
This past week, Trump completed our abandonment of Ukraine when he and Vice-President JD Vance ambushed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in front of reporters (including a reporter from Russian-state controlled TASS) in the Oval Office. They berated and disrespected Zelenskyy—a United States ally—making it clear that our country’s allegiance had shifted from Ukraine to Russia. It was the most disgusting, shameful act I have ever witnessed done by a U.S. president, and it firmly announced to our allies around the world that the United States, at least for the next three years and eleven months, cannot be trusted. It was an insulting display, and a slap in the face to every person who has ever put on the uniform of the United States military and swore an oath to the Constitution.
So, I return to the original question: Is Donald Trump a Russian asset? I don’t know, but if he were a Russian asset, he’d be doing and saying the exact same things he is doing and saying right now. And it makes me sick to think that we have someone like that in the White House.
Addendum: After I completed writing this post, it was reported that Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has informed the U.S. military’s cyber command to “stand down” from all cyber planning against Russia. According to the Trump Administration, the change in policy was an attempt to bring Vladmir Putin to the negotiating table in his war of aggression against Ukraine. But does that make sense? I don’t think so. What I think does make sense is that the change was made to curry favor with Putin and has nothing to do with potential peace talks. The move is just another tick on the side of the ledger that indicates that Trump is owned by the Russians, and as U.S. President, he is working to benefit the Kremlin.
Addendum 2: On Monday evening, it was announced that Trump has cut off all military aid to Ukraine, including aid that was approved during the Biden Administration. This cannot be viewed as anything other than a pro-Putin move, designed to cripple the Ukraine military from defending themselves from Russian aggression. The impoundment of funds earmarked by Congress for Ukraine is almost certainly illegal (under the Impoundment Control Act) and unconstitutional. I don’t think Trump cares. He may get a slap on the wrist from a court some time in the future, but in the meantime, he gives Russia what they want: a weaker Ukraine. Ironically (or not), impounding funds meant for Ukraine to get them to do his bidding is exactly what Trump was impeached for the first time. It’s unlikely (understatement of the year) that the current House of Representatives will impeach him again.
Addendum 3: Another day, another bit of circumstantial evidence. On Tuesday, CIA Director John Ratcliffe announced that the U.S. would no longer share intelligence with Ukraine. The announcement also indicated that the UK would not be allowed to share intelligence either, which is an oddity considering that the Trump Administration does not control UK intelligence services, and I’d have to assume that the Brits do not take kindly to Trump giving them orders. This development is bad for two reasons. First, not sharing intelligence with Ukraine hurts their efforts to fight Russia. Second, intelligence is a two-way street. Ukraine shares information with the U.S. involving Russia military capabilities and equipment specs. By shutting off intelligence channels, the U.S. hurts it’s own intelligence efforts. All so Trump can stay in Putin’s good graces.
Addendum 4: With America’s turn away from Ukraine and toward Russia, and the freeze the Trump Administration put on military aid to Ukraine, our allies in NATO–including Canada, the UK, and Germany–have begun re-evaluating their relationship with the United States. These other countries do not want to share intelligence with the U.S. for fear that the intelligence will find its way into Russian hands. These same countries have begun working on ways they can continue to provide military aid to Ukraine without our involvement, have begun talks to navigate a future without America’s military involvement. This is exactly what Putin has been trying to do for years. Trump was able to accomplish it in just six weeks.
