From Greg Fallis:

Over the last couple of days I’ve seen a few social media posts and online articles repeating a claim made by Alnur Mussayev, the former head of Kazakhstan’s National Security Committee. In the British tabloid The Mirror, Mussayev wrote: “In 1987, our directorate recruited Donald Trump under the pseudonym Krasnov.”

I don’t believe that. I simply don’t believe Comrade Donald Trump was recruited to be a Russian intelligence agent. Part of my objection is semantic; recruitment involves getting folks to enlist–which literally means to sign your name on a list. I don’t believe ANY intelligence services in ANY nation would consider enlisting Trump as an intelligence agent. He’s not qualified to be an agent. He simply doesn’t have the skills, the temperament, or intelligence to be an agent.

On the other hand, he’s an ideal intelligence asset. An asset is just a person (or a thing) that can be used to gather or disseminate information that might be useful to an intelligence service. An ideal human intelligence asset is somebody who is 1) easily manipulated through intimidation or flattery, 2) gullible and/or ignorant, 3) vulnerable to various forms of kompromat, 4) impulsive, 5) immoral or amoral, and 6) has access to useful information and/or can serve as a conduit for misinformation/disinformation. As an intelligence asset, Comrade Trump is a whole protein–he contains all the essential ingredients.

I totally believe Trump has been a Russian intelligence asset for decades. I absolutely believe Trump has knowingly served Russian geo-political interests. It’s indisputable that Russia engaged in coordinated disinformation campaigns to help get Trump elected, both in 2016 and in 2024. Back in 2021, The Guardian published a report stating the newspaper had possession of a Kremlin report of a 2016 meeting between Putin and his senior intelligence ministers outlining an intelligence operation to help Trump become POTUS. They felt electing Trump (who is described as an “impulsive, mentally unstable and unbalanced individual who suffers from an inferiority complex”) would “definitely lead to the destabilisation of the US’s sociopolitical system.”

And hey, bingo. Look at us now. You know Vlad Putin is a happy boy.

Even before his 2016 election, Trump was promoting Russian interests. Remember, when candidate Trump’s team established the GOP party platform for the 2016 election, the ONLY change they made was to weaken support for Ukraine’s defense. The original GOP platform promised to “provide lethal defensive weapons to the Ukrainian government” in response to Russia’s invasion of Crimea and their ongoing attempt to militarily annex the Donbas region. Trump’s people had that strong anti-Russia language removed (at the insistence of Paul Manafort, who was Trump’s campaign manager at the time AND who, according to the Mueller Report, made at least US$75 million for supporting Russian interests in Ukraine).

Now that he’s been re-elected, Trump is more openly supporting Russia and Russian interests. He may not have actually been recruited as an agent back in the 1980s, but there’s little doubt that he has now enlisted in the service of Russia.