There's now new information about Donald Trump's shady alleged dealings with Russia. This latest tidbit traces the Trump-Russia collusion back to 2013, when he influenced the location of the Miss Universe pageant to be held in Moscow, according to a new report from The New Yorker.
As a co-owner at the time of the 2013 pageant, many contestants alleged that they felt Trump had a major say in which women would advance to the final rounds of the competition. "‘I’ve been to that country.’ ‘We’re building a Trump Tower there.’ It was clear the countries that he liked did well," Adwoa Yamoah, who competed as Miss Canada, said. Many of the contestants, and even the judges, became aware of the strength of Trump's influence, realizing that the women representing countries he had or wanted to do business with were typically picked as finalists—sometimes against the judges' own picks.
Trump's business strategy went beyond picking beauty contestants, however, as his real angle for bringing Miss Universe to Moscow was to leverage a relationship with Putin and the Agalarov family. The Agalarov family, who have been dubbed the "Trumps of Russia," were major real estate and pop culture moguls in Russia. Trump struck a deal to hold the pageant on their property—they even negotiated a performance by singer Emin Agalarov, at the pageant.
There's also this very real tweet from the President's personal account that he hasn't bothered to delete.
Although Trump's dream of captivating Putin did not come to fruition that day, he did manage to lay the groundwork for establishing his Russian partnerships. But perhaps one of the most disturbing revelations however comes from an email exchange between Trump's personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, and Russian mob-connected criminal Felix Sater. The criminal corresponded with Cohen and wrote in an email: "I will get Putin on this program and we will get Donald elected. . . . 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." If true, this latest information could add some much-needed fuel to the investigation of Trump's collusion with Russia.
Read the full piece from the New Yorker here.
