By GEOFF EARLE, DEPUTY U.S. POLITICAL EDITOR FOR DAILYMAIL.COM and KATELYN CARALLE, U.S. POLITICAL REPORTER and EMILY GOODIN, SENIOR POLITICAL REPORTER and WILL STEWART
Vladimir Putin personally ordered a top secret spy operation to help a ‘mentally unstable’ Donald Trump win the 2016 election, according to documents the left-leaning Guardian newspaper says were leaked from the Kremlin – in a report President Trump calls ‘disgusting fiction.’
The Russian strongman held a meeting with his spy chiefs and senior ministers in January 2016 where they agreed to support Trump – who was then fighting to be the Republican nominee – in order to achieve Moscow’s objectives of sowing ‘social turmoil’ in the US and weakening the American presidency, the papers suggest.
Asked for comment, former President Donald Trump tore into the report in comments to DailyMail.com by spokeswoman Liz Harrington.
‘This is disgusting. It’s fake news, just like RUSSIA, RUSSIA, RUSSIA was fake news. It’s just the Radical Left crazies doing whatever they can to demean everybody on the right,’ the former president said.
Trump then defended his own record on Russia, and touted sanctions his administration slapped on Moscow. ‘It’s fiction, and nobody was tougher on Russia than me, including on the [Nord Stream 2] pipeline, and the sanctions. At the same time we got along with Russia. Russia respected us, China respected us, Iran respected us, North Korea respected us.’
‘And the world was a much safer place than it is now with mentally unstable leadership,’ he said, ripping a term from the purported Kremlin documents and using it on his successor.
A decree bearing Putin’s signature ordered Russia‘s three agencies to find practical ways to support the then-Republican frontrunner, according to The Guardian who have seen the documents, recommending the use ‘all possible force’ to ensure that Trump became the 45th president of the United States.
Helping him secure victory ‘will definitely lead to the destabilization of the US’s sociopolitical system’, the report predicts.
The British newspaper doesn’t say where the documents came from or how they have been authenticated. The Kremlin has rejected their authenticity and Putin’s spokesman Dmitri Peskov dismissed the story as ‘great pulp fiction’ and ‘utter nonsense’.
He told RT it was ‘a continuation of an absolutely poor-quality publication.
‘The newspaper is either trying to somehow increase its popularity, or carries on with its rabid Russophobic line.’
He said of The Guardian report: ‘This has nothing, and cannot have anything, to do with the truth. This is in fact not true.
‘This is a continuation of exercises in total demonisation of Russia and Putin, which The Guardian sometimes likes to do. Or else this is a desperate attempt to attract some new readers by publishing such fables.’
The Guardian showed the purportedly leaked documents from the January 22 meeting to Western spy agencies who carefully examined them and believe them to be genuine. Independent experts say the tone of the papers is consistent with the Kremlin’s style.
U.S. intelligence has long assessed the Russia interfered in the 2016 election and had a preference for Trump – but has never identified a single meeting where key players all gathered in a room to forge a strategy which would then be memorialized on paper.
DailyMail.com has contacted The Guardian asking for more information about the authenticity of the documents. Dailymail.com also has also asked Twitter and Facebook whether they will take down or limit sharing of the story base on questions over the origins of the supposed report.
The story was still circulating on their platforms on Thursday morning despite The Guardian saying the documents ‘appear’ to be from The Kremlin and without explaining from where they were obtained.
In October 2020, Twitter and Facebook limited articles about Hunter Biden’s laptop from their feeds because the material had allegedly been ‘hacked’.
A bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee report released last April said Putin ‘approved and directed aspects’ of Russia’s interference campaign.
‘The Committee found that specific intelligence as well as open source assessments support the assessment that President Putin approved and directed aspects of this influence campaign,’ the report said.
In January of 2016, Trump was one of 12 GOP contenders fighting it out for the Republican nomination for president. While he was doing well in the polls, and leading his rivals in January, there hadn’t yet been a primary contest yet (the Iowa caucuses, the first in the nation, took place on February 1).
Many observers at the time were not even sure Trump’s run was serious, or whether it was an effort designed in part to gain publicity and boost his golf, real estate, and branding business. U.S. opinion leaders in an environment the Kremlin monitors closely were arguing that a more traditional candidate like Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, or former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush might ultimately walk away with the nomination.
On the Democratic side, Hillary Clinton was fighting it out with Bernie Sanders for her party’s nomination.
The Kremlin papers, which have not been verified by DailyMail.com, include a psychological assessment of Trump, describing him as an ‘impulsive, mentally unstable and unbalanced individual who suffers from an inferiority complex’.
The documents also allude to compromising material the Kremlin held on the New York business tycoon turned reality star from an earlier visit to Moscow.
They refer to ‘certain events’ during the reality star’s trips to Moscow but offer no details. But the document references an appendix, and the Guardian reports it is ‘unclear’ what the appendix contains.
The line evokes unverified information in the salacious dossier by former British intelligence officer Christopher Steel about Trump’s alleged conduct in a Moscow hotel room during the 2013 Miss Universe Pageant.
The Guardian showed the leaked documents from the January 22 meeting to Western spy agencies who carefully examined them and believe them to be genuine. Independent experts say the tone of the papers is consistent with the Kremlin’s style.
The proposition of a documented meeting on Trump also came in for criticism online including from former Guardian journalist and Intercept founder Glenn Greenwald.
He tweeted in reference to ‘fabricated stories’ at his former publication, which he said ‘needs to stimulate its subscribers,’ then chastised the U.S. media for treating it ‘as credible no matter how many times it turns out to be a fraud?’
The document: ‘Report no 32-04’ calls Trump ‘most promising candidate’ for Russia
The report, named ‘No 32-04 \ vd’ is classified as secret and says Trump is the ‘most promising candidate’ for Russia.
Special Counsel Robert Mueller, in his investigation of Russia’s role in the presidential contest, concluded the Russian government ‘interfered in the 2016 presidential election in sweeping and systematic fashion.’
His report found the Russians used a social media campaign to boost Trump and disparage Clinton during the general election and that the Russian military intelligence agency GRU hacked into email accounts owned by volunteers and employees of the Clinton presidential campaign.
The documents outlined in Thursday’s report is not the first mention of the Russians having kompromat on Trump.
Echoes of Miss Universe 2013 and ‘dossier’ allegations denied by Trump
The infamous Steele dossier contained allegations about Trump’s Russia ties as well as unverified information about his alleged conduct in a Moscow hotel room during the Miss Universe Pageant in 2013.
Written by ex-British spy Christopher Steele, the document outlines the incident, which allegedly took place in the Ritz-Carlton’s presidential suite.
Because Barack and Michelle Obama, whom Trump despised, had stayed in that room, Trump allegedly hired ‘a number of prostitutes to perform a ‘golden showers’ (urination) show [on the bed] in front of him’.
The act, which Trump has vehemently denied, was allegedly recorded using microphones and cameras by the Russian secret service (FSB) to ensure he bowed to the Kremlin’s wishes.
Steele compiled the 35-page dossier between June and December, 2016, for a firm that had ties to the Democratic National Committee.
Buzzfeed published the dossier in January of 2017, before Trump took office. But intelligence officials knew of its existence long before it became public.
Then FBI director James Comey briefed then President Barack Obama on its contents and Comey later briefed Trump on its existence at Trump Tower during the transition.
In his memoir, Comey wrote Trump interrupted him as he described the material in the dossier.
He ‘strongly denied the allegations, asking — rhetorically, I assumed — whether he seemed like a guy who needed the service of prostitutes.’
