President Trump meets with Russian President Vladimir Putin at the G-20 Summit in Hamburg. (Evan Vucci/AP)
On Sunday night, The Washington Post reported that President Trump’s private business was actively pursuing a real estate deal in Russia in late 2015, only to abandon it shortly before the 2016 presidential primaries. The revelation adds a new layer of context to Trump’s repeated insistence over the past year that he has no business ties to the country, suggesting that his avowed indifference toward making money in Russia was a function less of resolve than of circumstance.
Broadly, Trump’s attitude toward business in Russia mirrors his behavior when it comes to Russian President Vladimir Putin. Before he was a political candidate, Trump repeatedly said that he had a relationship with the Russian president. (Among the examples he cited as evidence he knew Putin? They were both on the same episode of “60 Minutes” — though Trump was filmed in the United States and Putin in Russia.) After that relationship became politically inconvenient, his tune changed sharply. In the third presidential debate, he preemptively responded to a question about Russian interference in the election by saying, “I don’t know Putin.”
As we did with Trump’s claims about knowing Putin, in light of the most recent Post reporting, it’s worth reviewing Trump’s long history of seeking a business deal in Russia — and his change in tune once such a deal would no longer be personally helpful.
We begin at the beginning.
1987
Trump — and his business, the Trump Organization — explores opening a hotel in Moscow while the country was still under Communist control.
1990
In an interview with Playboy, he explains why that project didn’t work.
“I told them, ‘Guys, you have a basic problem. Far as real estate is concerned, it’s impossible to get title to Russian land, since the government owns it all. What kind of financing are you gonna get on a building where the land is owned by the goddamned motherland?’
They said, ‘No problem, Mr. Trump. We will work out lease arrangements.’
I said, ‘I want ownership, not leases.’
They came up with a solution: ‘Mr. Trump, we form a committee with ten people, of which seven are Russian and three are your representatives, and all disputes will be resolved in this manner.’
I thought to myself, [S—], seven to three — are we dealing in the world of the make-believe here or what?
Despite that concern, Trump warned of an imminent revolution in the country because premier Mikhail Gorbachev was too lenient.
“I was very unimpressed” with Russia, he said. “Their system is a disaster. What you will see there soon is a revolution; the signs are all there with the demonstrations and picketing. Russia is out of control and the leadership knows it. That’s my problem with Gorbachev. Not a firm enough hand.”
China, by contrast, did it right.
“When the students poured into Tiananmen Square,” Trump explained, “the Chinese government almost blew it. Then they were vicious, they were horrible, but they put it down with strength. That shows you the power of strength.”
1996
Trump announces a $250 million investment in two residential buildings in Moscow near the old Olympic Stadium. At a news conference, he says that he has never been as “impressed with the potential of a city as I have been with Moscow,” according to the New York Times. The deal is never finalized.
That same year, he is granted a number of trademarks for real estate property in the country.
1999
Putin becomes president of Russia.
2005
Working with a longtime business partner named Felix Sater, Trump explores building a high-rise on the site of an old pencil factory. Sater ran the Bayrock Group, once a real estate development firm located in Trump Tower.
Sater, who was also involved in the project outlined in the new Post’s report, is cooperating with an international investigation into money laundering, according to the Financial Times.
2007
During a deposition about the Bayrock Group, Trump addresses his interest in investing in Russia.
“It’s ridiculous that I wouldn’t be investing in Russia,” he said. “Russia is one of the hottest places in the world for investment. … We will be in Moscow at some point.”
2008
In an interview linked to a conference about real estate investments in developing countries, Trump’s son Donald Trump Jr. explains the Trump Organization’s relationship with Russian investors.
“In terms of high-end product influx into the US,” he says, “Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets … We see a lot of money pouring in from Russia.”
That same year, Trump sells a house in Palm Beach, Fla., to a Russian oligarch named Dmitry Rybolovlev for $95 million. Trump had purchased the house for $40 million in 2004.
2013
The Trump Organization, which owns the Miss Universe pageant, announces that the pageant will be held in Moscow that November.
Trump’s enthusiasm about the event spurs a number of tweets. Among them are ones praising Putin.
For the pageant, Trump partners with a developer named Aras Agalarov and his son, Emin, who has a side job as a musician. Trump stars in one of Emin’s music videos.
As part of the pageant media circus, Trump tells the Russian-government-operated RT: “I have plans for the establishment of business in Russia. Now, I am in talks with several Russian companies to establish this skyscraper.” That includes the Agalarov’s company, Crocus Group, but this, too, comes to nothing.
September 2015
Discussions about a new project in Moscow begin, according to Post reporting. The project is driven by Sater.
Later that month, Trump appears on journalist Hugh Hewitt’s radio show. The subject of business dealings in Russia is raised in the context of the 2013 pageant.
“[T]wo years ago, I was in Moscow. And a lot of the people, Hugh, they were there, and they had an amazing time. And they’re terrific people. You know, I was getting along with them so great. I really loved my weekend, I called it my weekend in Moscow. But I was with the top level people, both oligarchs and generals, and top of the government people. I can’t go further than that, but I will tell you that I met the top people, and the relationship was extraordinary.”
January 2016
Michael Cohen, an attorney for the Trump Organization and occasional advocate for Trump on the campaign trail, emails Putin’s top press aide to ask for assistance in advancing the project.
“As this project is too important, I am hereby requesting your assistance,” the email read, as the Post reported on Monday. “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.”
Despite that request, the proposed project comes to nothing.
In an interview with Talking Points Memo, Sater blames the campaign for killing the project. “Once the campaign was really going-going, it was obvious there were going to be no deals internationally,” he told TPM’s Sam Thielman.
June 2016
Emin Agalarov helps facilitate a meeting between a lawyer linked to the Russian government and the Trump campaign, predicated on dirt the Russian government dug up on Hillary Clinton.
July 2016
With emails from the Democratic National Committee that were allegedly stolen by the Russians being shared by WikiLeaks, questions about Trump’s relationship to Russia take on a new urgency.
At his last news conference before the election, Trump is repeatedly asked about business deals in Russia.
He says he will release tax returns that prove he had no business in the country — once the returns are out of audit. He goes on:
“I built an unbelievable company, tremendous cash, tremendous company with some of the great assets of the world. You’ve seen it. You were all very disappointed when you saw it actually but that’s okay. Far, far greater than anybody ever thought. I have a great company. I built an unbelievable company but if you look there you’ll see there’s nothing in Russia.” …
“No, I have nothing to do with Russia, John (ph). How many times do I have say that? Are you a smart man? I have nothing to with Russia, I have nothing to do with Russia. And even — for anything. What do I have to do with Russia? You know the closest I came to Russia, I bought a house a number of years ago in Palm Beach, Florida.” …
“Excuse me, listen. We wanted to; we were doing Miss Universe four or five years ago in Russia. It was a tremendous success. Very, very successful. And there were developers in Russia that wanted to put a lot of money into developments in Russia. And they wanted us to do it. But it never worked out. Frankly I didn’t want to do it for a couple of different reasons. But we had a major developer, particular, but numerous developers that wanted to develop property in Moscow and other places. But we decided not to do it.”
He doesn’t mention the project described by Sater.
October 2016
During the second presidential debate, the subject comes up again.
“I know nothing about Russia — I know about Russia, but I know nothing about the inner workings of Russia. I don’t deal there, I have no businesses there, I have no loans from Russia. I have a very very great balance sheet. So great that when I did the old post office, on Pennsylvania Avenue, the United States government because of my balance sheet, which they actually know very well, chose me to do the old post office between the White House and Congress. They chose me to do the old post office — one of the primary things, in fact, perhaps the primary thing was balance sheet. But I have no loans with Russia.”
Nov. 8, 2016
Trump is elected president. The same day, four Trump Organization trademarks in Russia are renewed.
Early 2017
With new revelations about Russian interference in the 2016 election emerging, Trump repeatedly denies any link to the country.
May 2017
Trump has his attorneys release a summary of his business dealings with Russia.
“…[Y]our tax returns do not reflect (1) any income of any type from Russian sources,” the letter reads, “(2) any debt owed by you or [The Trump Organization (TTO)] to Russian lenders or any interest paid by you or TTO to Russian lenders, (3) any equity investments by Russian persons or entities in entities controlled by you or TTO, or (4) any equity or debt investments by you or TTO in Russian entities.”
But the first part of that paragraph is what seizes the public’s imagination: That lack of business dealings holds true, the lawyers say, “[w]ith few exceptions.”
The exceptions are the sale of the house in Palm Beach and the Miss Universe pageant. But that those were the only exceptions was not, it seems, for lack of trying.
HOUSTON — Rain pelted this battered city anew Monday as emergency teams — aided by a growing contingent of citizen-rescuers — plunged into waist-deep water seeking people stranded by devastating, historic flooding in the wake of Hurricane Harvey.
Officials in Texas said Monday afternoon that at least eight people appear to have died as a result of the storm battering the state. That toll includes six people in Harris County, home to Houston; one person in Rockport, near where Harvey made landfall; and another person in La Marque, near Galveston.
Authorities expect the toll to rise as rescue efforts continue and more rain, rising rivers and surging floodwaters pummel the Gulf Coast.
About 2,000 people had been brought to safety with more still in need of help. Yet even with several deaths attributed to the storm, the full toll of Harvey’s destruction remained unclear in Houston and across Texas and Louisiana, with officials warning that the flooding would linger and saying more than 30,000 people would be forced from their homes.
“We are not out of the woods yet,” Elaine Duke, the acting Homeland Security secretary, said during a Monday morning briefing in Washington. “Harvey is still a dangerous and historic storm.”
Fears also grew beyond Texas, where the floodwater pounding this city and others was measured in feet, not inches. President Trump on Monday declared “emergency conditions” in Louisiana, where forecasts have called for as much as two feet of rainfall in some areas.
[‘Water is swallowing us up’: In Houston, desperate flood victims turn to social media for survival]
Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards (D) had asked Trump for an emergency disaster declaration, similar to one signed for Texas last week, saying that Harvey posed a “serious danger to life and property” in the state, which is just a year removed from a massive flood disaster. A flash flood watch was issued Monday morning for part of the state as well as part of Mississippi.
The immediate focus for many remained Houston, the country’s fourth-largest city and a sprawling metropolitan area, which faced dire circumstances and National Weather Service forecasts warning of more heavy rainfall.
Harvey flooding will get worse before it gets better View Graphic
Two reservoirs were opened to release water to relieve the stress the downpour has caused in the region, which has seen as much rain in a few days as it averages in an entire year.
“We are seeing catastrophic flooding, and this will likely expand and it will likely persist as it’s slow to recede,” Louis W. Uccellini, the NWS director, said at the Monday morning briefing.
Parts of Harris County, which encompasses Houston, were pelted with 30 inches of rain in the past 72 hours, the Weather Service reported early Monday.
The Weather Service said Harvey’s rain is causing “catastrophic and life-threatening flooding over large portions of southeastern Texas,” and it warned of more agony to come, estimating that Harvey could produce up to an additional 25 inches of rainfall through Friday along the upper Texas coast and part of Louisiana. Some areas in Texas could see as much as 50 inches of rain in total, forecasters said.
“We have not seen an event like this,” William “Brock” Long, administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, said Monday morning at a news briefing. “You could not draw this forecast up. You could not dream this forecast up.”
The National Hurricane Center said Monday that Harvey is expected to gradually shift on Tuesday before its center moves “just offshore of the middle and upper coasts of Texas through Tuesday night.” Harvey could make a second landfall northeast of Houston in Texas on Wednesday, but forecasters say that will not necessarily lead to a repeat of the damaging rain that pummeled the city.
Authorities in Texas fielded scores of calls for help throughout the night from people stranded by water, although many areas had imposed curfew overnight Sunday in hopes of cutting down on the number in need of being rescued from vehicles. Help was pouring in from swift-water rescue teams from around the country.
The Houston police dispatched officers on boats that were sent through streets where the floodwater reached the pumps at gas stations. While urging residents to stay off the roads, police have asked people with high-water vehicles and boats to assist in rescue efforts.
In Houston, the fire department responded to more 4,000 water-related calls for service. Police rescued 2,000 people in the city, and another 185 critical rescue requests were still pending, Art Acevedo, the Houston police chief, said at a news briefing Monday.
“The goal is rescue,” Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner said at the briefing. “That’s the major focus for the day.”
Acevedo also disputed social media claims suggesting that looting had erupted in the city, saying that police had arrested four people for attempting to loot.
Across Houston and suburbs many miles away, families scrambled to get out of fast-flooding homes. Rescuers, in many cases neighbors rescuing one another, used fishing boats, huge dump trucks and front-end loaders to battled driving rains.
[Neighborhood hero leads flood rescue missions]
In downtown Houston, some of the floodwater had receded. The swollen Brays Bayou had gone down several feet overnight, while some streets that had been flooded were dry as the sun rose over Houston.
Abandoned cars were left in intersections and alongside roads, and in one case, a school bus had been parked on a high grassy area and left behind. A brief respite overnight had given way to people wandering the streets in the morning, looking at the scattered debris. A woman wearing hospital scrubs, knee-high rubber boots and a backpack, carrying an umbrella, trekked through the water toward a hospital.
But by midmorning Monday, a hard rain had begun to fall again.
Austin city officials said they had been asked to shelter thousands of evacuees and were figuring out how many people they could take. A shelter at the M.O. Campbell Center in North Houston had begun turning people away Sunday evening, leaving hundreds stranded, according to local emergency officials.
All day, local fire departments, the Army Reserves and good Samaritans had brought people from their flooded homes to a fire station before transporting them to the M.O. Campbell shelter. But when it reached capacity, the shelter’s doors were shut, and at least 300 people were stranded at the fire station.
[Here’s how you can help South Texas residents affected by Harvey]
The firefighters put a call out for help, asking if anyone could take the evacuees in. One local youth pastor answered the call. The rescue teams picked up Pastor David McDougle, 26, and his wife from their flooded home so they could open the First Baptist Church North Houston as a makeshift shelter for those stranded.
McDougle said he got a call Sunday evening asking if he would let evacuees sleep at the church, so he and his wife took all the food and water they had gotten and brought it to the church.
Though they now have a roof over their heads, the church is not a designated shelter and has no food or water for the evacuees. The church reached capacity with nearly 300 people laying on the floor of the gym, and the food supply ran out around 5 a.m. People are nervous to drink tap water. The restrooms at the church will not flush, creating a mess of the place.
“It’s frustrating, but I’m just relying on God to fulfill his promises to us,” McDougle said. “We’re all praying.”
[Devastating flooding after Harvey will get worse before it gets better]
The Brazos River, which runs southwest of Houston, is expected to reach record heights in the coming days. National Weather Service models showed the river rising to 59 feet by Tuesday, topping the previous record of 54.7 feet.
Early Monday morning, the Fort Bend Office of Emergency Management issued voluntary and mandatory evacuation orders for wide areas along dozens of miles of Brazos River banks. River banks are expected to overflow across that part of the state as trillions of gallons of rainfall runoff consolidates over coming days.
“A 59-foot river level threatens to over top many of the levees in out area,” said Fort County Judge Robert Hebert. “It exceeds the design specifications of our levees.”
Herbert said anyone who ignores mandatory evacuation orders — issued for an area that includes a part of Houston with sprawling mansions — will not be aided by first responders when the waters rise.
[Rains from Harvey obliterate records, flood disaster to expand]
Gov. Greg Abbott (R) on Monday activated the entire Texas National Guard in response to the storm, pushing the total deployment to 12,000, his office said.
“It is imperative that we do everything possible to protect the lives and safety of people across the state of Texas as we continue to face the aftermath of this storm,” Abbott said in a statement.
On Monday, the Pentagon said that active duty units were heading to staging areas in anticipation of a formal request for help, saying national guard units from across the country had readied cargo jets, Black Hawk helicopters and others to help with the response. In addition, a Pentagon search and rescue team was deploying to Fort Worth, Tex., to help, according to spokesman U.S. Army Col. Robert Manning.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency said federal agencies have more than 5,000 employees working in Texas, and the White House said Trump plans to visit parts of the state on Tuesday.
The devastation that evoked Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans was also reverberating around the world from the Houston area’s large international community. In India, foreign minister Sushma Swaraj posted a tweet Monday saying 200 Indian students were “marooned.”
“They are surrounded by neck deep water,” she wrote.
[Cost of clean up a test for Trump and GOP]
Officials said Houston, a major center for the nation’s energy industry, had suffered billions of dollars in damage and would take years to fully recover. Oil and gas companies have shut down about a quarter of their production in the Gulf of Mexico. Spot prices for gasoline are expected to jump on Monday, but the full extent of damage will not be clear for days, companies and experts said.
Harvey’s sheer size also became apparent Sunday as heavy rains and flooding were reported as far away as Austin and even Dallas. What started with a direct impact on the tiny coastal town of Rockport on Friday night turned into a weather disaster affecting thousands of square miles and millions of people — with no clear end in sight.
The Texas National Guard has deployed across the state, including engineers in Corpus Christi and an infantry search-and-rescue team in Rockport. Another search-and-rescue unit was staging in San Antonio and was likely to be deployed to affected areas shortly, officials said.
[FEMA director calls storm a ‘devastating disaster,’ says it could be the worst in Texas history]
As the extent of the disaster became sharper, some criticized Houston officials for not calling for an evacuation of the city.
Turner had defended the decision not to evacuate, noting that it would be a “nightmare” to empty out the population of his city and the county all at once.
Trump has praised the way officials were handling the flood, and he signed a disaster proclamation for Texas on Friday night after Abbott made a dire request warning that the storm would be deadly and lead to billions in damages.
Both of Houston’s major airports were closed, and many tourists and visitors found themselves stranded in hotels with no hope of leaving anytime soon. While Houston was spared Harvey’s initial onslaught, disaster suddenly beset the city, as severe storms Saturday evening gave way to flooding Sunday morning.
The Weather Service said Sunday that at least five people had been reported dead because of Harvey. Local officials have confirmed that at least three people have died as a result of the storm, and officials in the hardest-hit counties expect that as the waters recede the number of fatalities will rise.
As it scrambled to open shelters across Texas, the Red Cross command center in Houston was “physically isolated” because of floodwaters, said Paul Carden, district director of Red Cross activities in South Texas, which includes Corpus Christi.
“The advice is, if you don’t have to be out, don’t be out,” said Bill Begley, a spokesman with the Joint Information Center in Houston. He said most of the calls for help the center had received had come from residents who tried to drive through the storm and got stuck in high water.
In some cases, people could not wait. Early Monday morning, a man came running into the lobby of the Marriott Courtyard hotel in Southwest Houston. He said he had a pregnant woman in his truck who was about to deliver.
Crystal Manker, the hotel’s operations manager, was shocked enough that anyone made it to the hotel, which had been surrounded by deep, impassable floodwaters and abandoned, submerged cars since the night before. Nobody had gotten in or out for 24 hours. But hotel staff went with the man through the swamped parking lot, and finally into waist-deep water where his truck had stalled, with a pregnant woman and her husband inside.
The man said he had seen the husband’s desperate call on Twitter that his wife was in labor and they couldn’t get out of their home. It was close by, so he and a friend drove through the deep water and picked them up. They started toward Texas Children’s Hospital, but as they got closer to the overflowed Brays Bayou, the water became too deep to pass.
As their truck started stalling, saw the Courtyard, which is on the banks of the Bray, and ran inside to get help. Manker said she called 911, and got through after ten minutes. She told the operator the woman’s contractions were eight minutes apart, and the operator told her to call back when they got closer.
At that point Manker said the baby seemed destined to be born in a hurricane-marooned Marriott, so she and her staff rolled a bed into a ground-floor meeting room. They hurried in with sheets, towels, water, pillows and scissors.
Manker remembered that three nurses from Louisiana had been relocated to the hotel. She called them and they rushed down — even though none of them had ever delivered a baby.
As the mother-to-be lay in the bed in the meeting room for more than an hour, Manker called 911 again and told the operator contractions were down to two minutes apart. The nurses were getting ready.
Then a huge city dump truck appeared. Several men helped the woman into the truck, which then headed off into the 4-foot deep water, across the swamped bridge across the bayou and toward the hospital.
Maker was still waiting for word Monday morning on how everything went. She was most amazed at the men who answered the Twitter call for help.
“They had to be her angel,” she said.
Sullivan reported from Houston and Berman reported from Washington. Emily Wax-Thibodeaux in Katy, Tex.; Angela Fritz, Robert Samuels, Fred Barbash, Derek Hawkins, Brian Murphy, Thomas Gibbons-Neff, Susan Hogan, Wesley Lowery and Steven Mufson in Washington; Annie Gowen in New Delhi; Justin Glawe in Dallas; Brittney Martin, Stephanie Kuzydym and Dylan Baddour in Houston; Tim Craig in Rockport and Corpus Christi; Ashley Cusick in New Orleans; Mary Lee Grant in Port Aransas, Tex.; and Sofia Sokolove in Austin contributed to this report.
Further reading:
‘All night of slam, bang, boom,’ then a scramble to assess the hurricane’s damage
A photo of a dog carrying a bag of food after a storm hit Texas went viral. Here’s his story.
How Hurricane Harvey will impact prices at the gas pump
