Collusion Quotes

“Trump’s pick for secretary of state? Rex Tillerson, a figure known and trusted in Moscow, and recipient of the Order of Friendship. National security adviser? Michael Flynn, Putin’s dinner companion and a beneficiary of undeclared Russian fees. Campaign manager? Paul Manafort, longtime confidant to ex-Soviet oligarchs. Foreign policy adviser? Carter Page, an alleged Moscow asset who gave documents to Putin’s spies. Commerce secretary? Wilbur Ross, an entrepreneur with Russia-connected investments. Personal lawyer? Michael Cohen, who sent emails to Putin’s press secretary. Business partner? Felix Sater, son of a Russian American mafia boss. And other personalities, too. It was almost as if Putin had played a role in naming Trump’s cabinet. The U.S. president, of course, had done the choosing. But the constellation of individuals, and their immaculate alignment with Russian interests, formed a discernible pattern, like stars against a clear night sky. A pattern of collusion.”
― Luke Harding, Collusion: Secret Meetings, Dirty Money, and How Russia Helped Donald Trump Win

“As a candidate, Trump’s praise of Putin had been a steady theme. In the White House, his fidelity to Russia’s president had continued, even as he lambasted other world leaders, turned on aides and allies, fired the head of the FBI, bawled out his attorney general, and defenestrated his chief ideologue, Steve Bannon. It was Steele’s dossier that offered a compelling explanation for Trump’s unusual constancy vis-à-vis Russia. First, there was Moscow’s kompromat operation against Trump going back three decades, to the Kryuchkov era. If Trump had indulged in compromising behavior, Putin knew of it. Second, there was the money: the cash from Russia that had gone into Trump’s real estate ventures. The prospect of a lucrative deal in Moscow to build a hotel and tower, a project that was still being negotiated as candidate Trump addressed adoring crowds. And then there were the loans. These had helped rescue Trump after 2008. They had come from a bank that was simultaneously laundering billions of dollars of Russian money. Finally, there was the possibility that the president had other financial connections to Moscow, as yet undisclosed, but perhaps hinted at by his missing tax returns. Together, these factors appeared to place Trump under some sort of obligation. One possible manifestation of this was the president’s courting of Putin in Hamburg. Another was the composition of his campaign team and government, especially in its first iteration. Wherever you looked there was a Russian trace.”
― Luke Harding, Collusion: Secret Meetings, Dirty Money, and How Russia Helped Donald Trump Win

“Putin’s method, Steele said, was unseen. “Nothing was written down. Don’t expect me or anyone to produce a piece of paper saying please X bribe Y with this amount in this way. He’s not going to do this.” He added: “Putin is an ex-intelligence officer. Everything he does has to be deniable.” The oligarchs were brought in to disguise the Kremlin’s controlling role, Steele said, according to The Sunday Times.”
― Luke Harding, Collusion: Secret Meetings, Dirty Money, and How Russia Helped Donald Trump Win

“Comey had turned away from his upbringing and embraced various kinds of evangelism. He wrote his thesis on how the evangelist teacher Jerry Falwell somehow embodied the teachings of Reinhold Niebuhr. Niebuhr was America’s greatest mid-twentieth-century theologian. His work Moral Man and Immoral Society: A Study in Ethics and Politics, published in 1932, is a classic of Christian thinking. Niebuhr’s view of the world was pessimistic. He described himself as a member of a “disillusioned generation” and wrote from an age of war, totalitarianism, racial injustice, and economic depression. Individuals were capable of virtuous acts, he thought, but groups and nations struggled to transcend their collective egoism. This makes social conflict inevitable. Niebuhr was brutally honest about human failings. American contemporary culture was “still pretty firmly enmeshed in the illusions and sentimentalities of the Age of Reason,” he wrote. He didn’t see much room for goodness in politics. Instead he identified “greed, the will-to-power and other forms of self-assertion” at the level of group politics.”
― Luke Harding, Collusion: Secret Meetings, Dirty Money, and How Russia Helped Donald Trump Win

“Before signing on with Trump in spring 2016, Manafort spent over a decade working in Ukraine.”
― Luke Harding, Collusion: Secret Meetings, Dirty Money, and How Russia Helped Donald Trump Win

“instructions from Trump, or people close to him. These instructions were to send a message to the Russians via Kislyak that the Trump administration was minded to scrap sanctions.”
― Luke Harding, Collusion: Secret Meetings, Dirty Money, and How Russia Helped Donald Trump Win

“So crooked Hillary Clinton, leave this race now!” Even by the standards of the 2016 contest, this was a defining low—an inglorious and squalid attack from a man who, unbeknownst to Republican supporters and the American voters, was actually on Moscow’s payroll. The Kremlin was the only party that knew the detail.”
― Luke Harding, Collusion: Secret Meetings, Dirty Money, and How Russia Helped Donald Trump Win

“Facebook would eventually admit that Russia had employed 470 “inauthentic accounts and pages” as part of its influence campaign.”
― Luke Harding, Collusion: Secret Meetings, Dirty Money, and How Russia Helped Donald Trump Win

“We assess Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the US presidential election. Russia’s goals were to undermine public faith in the US democratic process, denigrate Secretary Clinton, and harm her electability and potential presidency. We further assess Putin and the Russian Government developed a clear preference for President-elect Trump. All three agencies agree with this judgment. CIA and FBI have high confidence in this judgment; NSA has moderate confidence.”
― Luke Harding, Collusion: Secret Meetings, Dirty Money, and How Russia Helped Donald Trump Win

“A Reuters investigation found that at least sixty-three individuals with Russian passports or addresses bought $98.4 million worth of property in seven Trump-branded towers in Florida. The true figure was probably higher. Nearly one-third of all units were sold to limited liability companies, whose buyers were unidentified.”
― Luke Harding, Collusion: Secret Meetings, Dirty Money, and How Russia Helped Donald Trump Win

“For four decades Trump’s property empire effectively functioned as a laundromat for Moscow money.”
― Luke Harding, Collusion: Secret Meetings, Dirty Money, and How Russia Helped Donald Trump Win

“All of this was happening in private. U.S. electors knew nothing of Sater’s Kremlin outreach scheme. Trump did, though. So did Cohen. Cohen said he talked to Trump about the Moscow tower three times. When it appeared that the project was faltering, despite a letter of intent, Cohen took a bold step. He sent an email to someone big: Putin’s press secretary, Dmitry Peskov. The email was a petition, a meekly phrased plea for help. It was sent in mid-January 2016. Cohen wrote: Over the past few months I have been working with a company based in Russia regarding the development of a Trump Tower-Moscow project in Moscow City. Without getting into lengthy specifics, the communication between our two sides has stalled. As this project is too important, I am hereby requesting your assistance. I respectfully request someone, preferably you, contact me so that I might discuss the specifics as well as arranging meetings with the appropriate individuals. I thank you in advance for your assistance and look forward to hearing from you soon. Cohen dispatched the email to a generic address, rather than to Peskov’s personal account. Nonetheless, the email would have been found and closely examined. The email’s recipient, Peskov, wasn’t only Putin’s long-serving mouthpiece—he was also in charge of the operation to compromise Clinton, according to the Steele dossier, and someone who saw Russia’s president practically every day. Cohen insisted there was no collusion. And yet this is precisely what his email looked like: a direct (and covert) request for assistance from Team Trump to Team Putin. Was this politics or business or both? As always with Trump, it was hard to tell.”
― Luke Harding, Collusion: Secret Meetings, Dirty Money, and How Russia Helped Donald Trump Win

“Sater was confident he could arrange everything. On November 3, 2015, he wrote to Cohen: I will get Putin on this program and we will get Donald elected. We both know that no one else knows how to pull this off without stupidity or greed getting in the way. I know how to play it and we will get this done. Buddy our boy can become President of the USA and we can engineer it. I will get all of Putins team to buy in on this, I will manage this process. We don’t have Cohen’s reply. But the emails lay out Sater’s plan for glory—a ribbon-cutting ceremony in Moscow and praise from Putin of Trump’s peerless business skills. To achieve this, Sater said he could show video clips to his Russian contacts of Trump speaking glowingly of Russia: “If he [Putin] says it, we own this election. America’s most difficult adversary agreeing that Donald was a good guy to negotiate.”
― Luke Harding, Collusion: Secret Meetings, Dirty Money, and How Russia Helped Donald Trump Win

“With or without his senior advisers, this was the moment for Trump to make the American interest clear—namely, that the Kremlin’s hacking of the election amounted to ill-considered interference. And that any attempt by Moscow to do the same in 2018 or 2020 would lead to a stringent U.S. response—more sanctions, travel bans, even a cutoff of Russia’s access to the SWIFT banking payments system. Putin would interpret anything less than this as American weakness. And, practically, a green light for his operatives to tamper again in Washington’s affairs. All done, of course, under the same cover of plausible deniability. There was no official hacking, the government wasn’t involved, et cetera. Apparently, Trump said none of this.”
― Luke Harding, Collusion: Secret Meetings, Dirty Money, and How Russia Helped Donald Trump Win

“Niebuhr’s view of the world was pessimistic. He described himself as a member of a “disillusioned generation” and wrote from an age of war, totalitarianism, racial injustice, and economic depression. Individuals were capable of virtuous acts, he thought, but groups and nations struggled to transcend their collective egoism. This makes social conflict inevitable. Niebuhr was brutally honest about human failings. American contemporary culture was “still pretty firmly enmeshed in the illusions and sentimentalities of the Age of Reason,” he wrote. He didn’t see much room for goodness in politics. Instead he identified “greed, the will-to-power and other forms of self-assertion” at the level of group politics.”
― Luke Harding, Collusion: Secret Meetings, Dirty Money, and How Russia Helped Donald Trump Win

“The question being asked inside the FBI was a troubling one: Was the president of the United States a patriot? Increasingly, the answer was no. “Trump’s priority is to take care of his personal interests. These may not align with the interests of the country,” the source said, adding: “Russia is a point of great sensitivity.” The source continued: “Most [intelligence community] people haven’t seen a president like that. They frequently have ones they disagree with on policy. They don’t fundamentally question whether they are patriots.”
― Luke Harding, Collusion: Secret Meetings, Dirty Money, and How Russia Helped Donald Trump Win

“Manafort’s specialty, according to Kovzhun, is running expensive campaigns and targeting the “big unwashed.” “It’s the same element who voted for Putin, supported Brexit, back Erdogan, and who like Trump. Manafort works the lowest common denominator. I find him repulsive and his message ugly. He leaves destruction in his wake.”
― Luke Harding, Collusion: Secret Meetings, Dirty Money, and How Russia Helped Donald Trump Win

“There was speculation inside the Kremlin that Trump might be forced to withdraw from the presidential race, “ostensibly on grounds of his psychological state and unsuitability for high office.”
― Luke Harding, Collusion: Secret Meetings, Dirty Money, and How Russia Helped Donald Trump Win

“Overall the CIA-FBI-NSA report was persuasive: Moscow had indeed sought to tilt the election in Trump’s favor, even if the result—a Trump victory—had caught the Kremlin by surprise. It omitted one big truth. Namely that the operation was so successful because it exploited preexisting fault lines in American society.”
― Luke Harding, Collusion: Secret Meetings, Dirty Money, and How Russia Helped Donald Trump Win

“Great. It will likely be Paul Manafort, my brother in law [Jared Kushner] and me. 725 Fifth Avenue 25th floor.”
― Luke Harding, Collusion: Secret Meetings, Dirty Money, and How Russia Helped Donald Trump Win

“Trump repeated his demand: “I need loyalty.” Comey replied: “You will always get honesty from me.” Trump then said: “That’s what I want, honest loyalty.”
― Luke Harding, Collusion: Secret Meetings, Dirty Money, and How Russia Helped Donald Trump Win

“No American press was allowed in to record the meeting. Lavrov, however, had brought a photographer who worked for the state news agency Tass. In Soviet times, journalists for Tass were typically KGB or GRU officers. The photographer took equipment into the Oval Office. What, exactly? The photos show Trump warmly shaking Lavrov’s hand. Another reveals him patting Lavrov on the shoulder. Trump and Kislyak posed together. The president grins.”
― Luke Harding, Collusion: Secret Meetings, Dirty Money, and How Russia Helped Donald Trump Win

“His father had once been mayor of the city of New Britain and leader of the Italian American community there.”
― Luke Harding, Collusion: Secret Meetings, Dirty Money, and How Russia Helped Donald Trump Win

“In the period between Obama’s announcement on sanctions and Putin’s clement response, General Michael Flynn spoke to Kislyak, Moscow’s Washington ambassador. Flynn was about to become Trump’s national security adviser. There were five phone calls.”
― Luke Harding, Collusion: Secret Meetings, Dirty Money, and How Russia Helped Donald Trump Win

“Facebook would eventually admit that Russia had employed 470 “inauthentic accounts and pages” as part of its influence campaign. It worked. One page, Secure Borders, got 133,000 followers before it was closed down. The page dubbed immigrants “freeloaders” and “scum.” Moscow spent $100,000 on more than three thousand ads, Facebook said. The numbers could be higher, Mark Zuckerberg, its CEO, acknowledged later.”
― Luke Harding, Collusion: Secret Meetings, Dirty Money, and How Russia Helped Donald Trump Win

“Julian Assange, WikiLeaks’ editor in chief, disputes this and says the leaks didn’t come from a “state party.” The agencies don’t believe him. The report suggests that WikiLeaks had become, in effect, a subbranch of Russian intelligence and its in-house publishing wing. In September WikiLeaks moved its hosting to Moscow.”
― Luke Harding, Collusion: Secret Meetings, Dirty Money, and How Russia Helped Donald Trump Win

“One key area of U.S.-Russian tension was Ukraine. According to Steele’s sources, the Trump team agreed to sideline Russia’s intervention in Ukraine during the campaign. Instead, and in order to “deflect attention,” Trump would raise U.S.-NATO defense commitments in the Baltics and Eastern Europe. This would help Putin, “who needed to cauterize the subject.”
― Luke Harding, Collusion: Secret Meetings, Dirty Money, and How Russia Helped Donald Trump Win

“International Republican Institute in Moscow.”
― Luke Harding, Collusion: How Russia Helped Trump Win the White House

“For four decades Trump’s property empire effectively functioned as a laundromat for Moscow money. Funds from the former Soviet Union poured into condominiums and Trump apartments. Even as Trump was campaigning in Iowa and New Hampshire, his associates were chasing Kremlin permission—and cash—for the candidate’s elusive Moscow tower.”
― Luke Harding, Collusion: Secret Meetings, Dirty Money, and How Russia Helped Donald Trump Win

“Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross section of a lot of our assets. We see a lot of money pouring in from Russia. —DONALD TRUMP, JR., speaking in Moscow in 2008 about the Trump Organization”
― Luke Harding, Collusion: Secret Meetings, Dirty Money, and How Russia Helped Donald Trump Win