Craig Unger

... described... to me in great detail... the most successful intelligence operation in history... ending... with a Russian asset in the ...

"Trump was a dream for officers looking to develop an asset," Shvets told me. "...with Trump it wasn't just weakness. Everything was excessive. His vanity ...Narcissism ...Greed ...Ignorance, excessive."

, who lived in until his death... helped bail out Trump by funding... Trump SoHo...

[D]uring the 2016 election cycle, the... FSB... found plenty of ways to subvert America’s elections without breaking the law.

[T]he Jackson–Vanik Amendment to the allowed the Soviet Union... normal trade relations... General ...saw it as a great opportunity for the . ..."We told [the émigrés] ...you will provide ...information. And they pledged their services..." ...the KGB had leverage on any family left behind. ...And what was their task ..? "To penetrate... Western institutions. Government ...and ...high technology... And some did succeed" ...huge numbers of Russian criminals and KGB spies ...did inundate the United States ...fueling the growth of the and a new generation of KGB assets... one of whom was Donald Trump.

John Brennan declared Trump... "...in the pocket of Putin" and... on ... he... called Trump’s behavior "treasonous, which is to betray... trust and aid and abet the enemy..."

[I]ntelligence operations are designed to operate within the law... [L]ax regulations... enforcement, and the... nature of counterintelligence, has given the Russians... latitude.

... based in ... [with] ties to the , came up with a... business model to franchise Trump condos after he'd lost billions... which made the perpetually bankrupt... Trump rich again and would lead to a... ... America... injected with... oligarchy... with Donald Trump in the .

Trump... had a personality that was ideal for a potential asset—vain, narcissistic, highly susceptible to flattery, and greedy.

Yuri helped Litvinenko assemble and analyze a dossier linking senior officials, including... Putin, to the Tambov organized crime group, which laundered money and facilitated drug trafficking for the Colombian cartel.

Shvets... had a front-row seat at the birth of post-Soviet Russia as a Mafia state and on the waves of kleptocrats and oligarchs... sweeping into the West, along with authoritarian right-wing populist politicians.

[A] ... 1999 article by... Knute Royce... cited a 1994 FBI file characterizing [Kislin] as a "member/associate" of the mob organization headed by ... "godfather of Russian organized crime in the United States." ...Kislin had started Trans Commodities Inc. ..."...known to have laundered millions of dollars from Russia to New York." ...Trans Commodities, and Anton Malevsky... contract killer for the , were... allegedly tied to... Mikhail Chernoy... a major figure in the... Aluminum Wars... marked by embezzlement, money laundering, and murder. ...[T]he report said... Kislin was... a "close associate" of... arms smuggler Babeck Seroush and that he... cosponsored a visa for Malevsky.