Michael Gaeta and FBI Counterintelligence -- Part 7

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6

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Christopher Steele's Dossier begins with these three sentences:

Russian regime has been cultivating, supporting and assisting TRUMP for at least five years. Aim, endorsed by PUTIN, has been to encourage splits and divisions in western alliance.

So far TRUMP has declined various real estate business deals offered him in Russia in order to further Russia's cultivation with him.

This idea -- that for several years, the Russian regime cultivated Trump in an effort to split the Western alliance -- was not new to Steele in June 2016. Steele had perceived Ukraine's 2010 election to be a political battle that Russia had won against the Western alliance. Russia had supported Viktor Yanukovych, who won that election for the position of Prime Minister, while the Western alliance had favored Yulia Tymoshenko, who was voted out of the office.

In 2011, the year after that election, Tymoshenko had filed a lawsuit in New York against Dmytro Firtash, a rich Ukrainian businessman who had supported Yanukovych. Steele had studied and summarized the documents that the lawsuit had made available. Those documents had convinced Steele that Firtash was stealing money from the Ukrainian natural-gas industry and was using the money to buy real estate in New York. Firtash intended to employ a New York real-estate company that was co-owned by Paul Manafort and Brad Zackson and that seemed to be associated with Fred Trump, the father of Donald Trump.

As Steele had studied Tymoshenko's lawsuit documents in 2011, he wondered why the pro-Russia Firtash was enabling the Trump family to profit from that international political battle in Ukraine. Steele figured that the pro-Russia alliance must be recruiting the Trump family as a new ally. Steele began to develop that idea in 2011. 

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Steele was introduced to FBI official Michael Gaeta by Justice Department official Bruce Ohr in London in April 2010 (pages 10-11). Gaeta says that at that first meeting, Steele told him about (page 12) ...

... high-level criminal activities about these 'actors' .... very wealthy businessmen, organized crime members, politicians -- a real tight mix between all three of these groups.

During the following couple years (2010-2012?) , Steele and Gaeta met a couple more times in London and once in Washington DC (page 13).

 
In a later year, Gaeta made Steele a paid FBI source in relation to (page 15) ....

... a very large case for us -- the Bureau and Department of Justice -- a very successful matter in our eyes. At that stage in [year redacted], we had three or four cooperating witnesses that we had developed in [redacted] who had already agreed (everything under seal) to cooperate and plead guilty and forfeit significant amounts of money.

So, at that time, the [FBI] thinking was, it's probably right to open him [Steele] as a [paid] source, because we [DOJ/FBI] are to really start to develop this information that he [Steele] has provided.

I suppose that this "very large case" was the 2015 FIFA corruption case and that Gaeta made Steele a paid FBI source in the fall of 2015 (page 14, first full line). In that regard, I point out the following considerations:

Gaeta hired Steele as a paid source after the FBI already had "three or four cooperating witnesses" in its FIFA case.

The FBI never charged any Russians or other former-Soviet-bloc culprits in its FIFA case.

The FBI made Steele a paid source in order to really start to develop this information.

In other words, the FBI made Steele a paid source in order to start a new investigation based on the FIFA investigation, which already was being concluded. I speculate that the new investigation focused on the consideration that the three or four cooperating witnesses in the FIFA case had operated in Trump Tower.

Chuck Blazer looked out the window of his $18,000-a-month Trump Tower apartment, with its view of New York's Central Park. Most tourists on Fifth Avenue below could only dream of his kind of high-rise life. But after years of lavish excess, he was no longer fixated on the trappings of his success. On this day, standing only in an adult diaper as a small team of FBI agents prepared to wire him with a recording device, Blazer just wanted to stay out of prison.

The native New Yorker hardly resembled his image as a statesman of soccer -- an infamous bon vivant who made so much money for the game's international governing body, FIFA, that he was hailed as its virtuoso deal maker. He dined often with sheikhs and heirs at the trendiest restaurants and attended society events with a rotating cast of striking companions. His personal travel blog pictured him with the likes of Bill Clinton and Vladimir Putin and Miss Universe. At 400 pounds, with an unruly white beard and mane, he looked like Santa Claus, talked like a bricklayer and lived like a 1-percenter.

Blazer's big secret, as he looked down on the Manhattan streets, seems so obvious now: He had embezzled his fortune through kickbacks and bribes. And the people who would uncover the scam were with him today, in his apartment, about to dispatch him to take down FIFA.

Gaeta made Steele a paid source in order to investigate the possibility that Donald Trump was involved with Russian organized crime and Russian Intelligence. Perhaps the FIFA investigation served as a cover to justify the beginning of payments to Steele, already in the fall of 2015, for his actual, anti-Trump investigation.

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James Comey was particularly interested in a person named Alimzhan Tokhtakhounov (aka Tutakhanov). In the year 2002, Comey had indicted Tokhtakhounov for rigging the figure-skating contest, to benefit Russians, at the Olympic games in Salt Lake City.

In 2013, the year when Comey had become the FBI Director, Tokhtakhounov was indicted again -- this time for operating an international-gambling ring based in Trump Tower in New York City. That FBI investigation was managed by Michael Gaeta, then an official in the FBI's New York Field Office (NYFO).

Perhaps there is a relationship between

1) the appointment of Comey to be the FBI Director, and

2) the investigation of the international-gambling ring in Trump Tower

Perhaps that appointment caused the investigation. Or, perhaps the investigation caused the appointment. In the year 2012, Trump had claimed he had information that Barack Obama's birth certificate was a fraud. That trouble-making claim perhaps motivated the Obama Administration to cause some trouble for Trump.

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At some point after 2013, Gaeta was transferred from the NYFO to the US Embassy in Rome, Italy. There, Gaeta supposedly worked for the FBI Legal Attaché (Legat), but Gaeta was quite insubordinate to the Legat. In 2016, Gaeta deceived the Legat about what he was doing with Dossier reports. The Legat thought that Gaeta was sending the reports to the FBI Counterintelligence Division.

Gaeta indeed was sending the reports to the Division Chief, but not through official channels. Rather, Gaeta was sending the reports to the Division Chief secretly. Through official channels, Gaeta was sending the reports to the NYFO, where they were kept by the Chief Division Counsel, who did nothing with them.

This bizarre arrangement concealed the fact that Gaeta was sending the Dossier reports directly to Bill Priestap, the Chief of the FBI's Counterintelligence Division. There were no records that Gaeta sent any of Steele's Dossier reports to Priestap -- or that Priestap received them. Instead, there were records that Gaeta sent the reports to the NYFO, where they were received and kept by the Chief Division Counsel (who did nothing with them).

From this arrangement, I speculate that Gaeta's position working for the Legat was a cover for his real position -- working as Priestap's secret agent in Europe. This secret arrangement was known to FBI Director Comey. One of Gaeta's main assignments was to control Steele in Comey's effort to collect information about Trump's activities in Europe and, especially, in East Europe, Russia, and other former Communist countries.

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Continued in Part 8

Michael Gaeta and FBI Counterintelligence -- Part 6

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5

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Christopher Steele's Dossier begins with these three sentences:

Russian regime has been cultivating, supporting and assisting TRUMP for at least five years. Aim, endorsed by PUTIN, has been to encourage splits and divisions in western alliance.

So far TRUMP has declined various real estate business deals offered him in Russia in order to further Russia's cultivation with him.

However, the publicly available Dossier reports do not provide any information about the various real-estate deals that the Russian regime had offered to Trump in order to cultivate, support and assist Trump during the preceding five or more years.

All of the 16 publicly available Dossier reports are numbered, beginning with #80 and continuing as follows:

1) Report 80, dated June 20, 2016

2) Report 86, dated July 26, 2015 (twenty-fifteen)

3) Report 94, dated July 19, 2016

4) Report 95, undated, but apparently written in late-July 2016

5) Report 97, dated July 30, 2016

6) Report 100, dated August 5, 2016

7) Report 101, dated August 10, 2016

8) Report 102, dated August 10, 2016

9) Report 105, dated August 22, 2016

10) Report 111, dated September 14, 2016

11) Report 112, dated September 14, 2016

12) Report 113, dated September 14, 2016

13) Report 130, dated October 12, 2016

14) Report 134, dated October 18, 2016

14) Report 135, dated October 19, 2016

15) Report 136, dated October 20, 2016

16) Report 166, dated December 13, 2016

I speculate that all of Reports 81-93 were written before the year 2016, that all of those older reports were given to the FBI Counterintelligence Division, and that many of them did provide information about the various real estate deals that were offered to Trump in order to cultivate him.

Furthermore, I speculate that Steele wrote or altered those older reports to create a false impression that Steele had collected such information from a vast array of networks of informants inside Russia and its neighboring former-Soviet countries. Furthermore, I speculate that the FBI Counterintelligence Division believed that Steele indeed did manage such an array of networks.

In fact, however, Steele collected his information largely from publicly available documents and from gossips located in the West.

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In my previous blog article, Part 5, I speculated that Steele had collected much information from the documents of a lawsuit that Ukrainian politician filed against Ukrainian financier Dmytro Firtash in New York in the year 2011. I speculated that Steele studied those lawsuit documents and then wrote reports that created a false impression that he had collected such information from his vast array of informants in Russia and Ukraine.

The lawsuit documents mentioned over a hundred "John Doe" individuals and companies that allegedly were associated with Firtash's misdeeds. Surely, Steele was able to figure out many of the "John Doe" identities and to name them in his reports. Steele pretended that he had been informed about those named associates by his array of informants in Russia and Ukraine.

For example, I speculate, Steele wrote that Firtash considered hiring a New York real-estate firm to manage a proposed real-estate fund. Although the real-estate firm and its owners were referred to by "John Doe" names in Yulia Tymoshenko's lawsuit documents, Steele figured out that the firm was owned by Paul Manafort and Brad Zackson. Further, Steele learned that Zackson previously had worked as a manager in a real-estate firm owned by Fred Trump, the father of Donald Trump.

Although Steele actually learned or figured out these particular associations by studying Tymoshenko's lawsuit documents and other publicly available information, Steele's reports created a false impression that Steele collected the information from his vast array of informants in Russia and its neighboring countries.

The FBI Counterintelligence Division believed that false impression -- believed that Steele really did control such an array of informants.

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Some insight about such information can be found in the book Russian Roulette: The Inside Story of Putin's War on America and the Election of Donald Trump, written by Michael Isikoff and David Corn, who were granted special access to the Dossier.

The book's Chapter 1 begins by describing some events that took place at the Miss Universe contest that Donald Trump presented in Moscow on November 9, 2013. The book points out (page 16) that the contest was attended by a person named Alimzhan Tokhtakhounov.

Other celebs and local notables [who prominently attended Trump's contest in Moscow] ... included ... a curious guest: Alimzhan Tokhtakhounov, aka "the Little Taiwanese", one of Russia's most prominent suspected mobsters and a fugitive from U.S. justice. Tokhtakhounov had an odd link to Trump's signature property: Seven months earlier he had been indicted in the United States for protecting a high-stakes illegal gambling operation run out of Trump Tower.

Later in their book (page 143), Isikoff and Corn elaborate about Tokhtakhounov. Their elaboration includes James Comey and also Michael Gaeta, an FBI official who in 2016 was based at the US Embassy in Rome, Italy. (I speculate that the Gaeta's embassy position was a cover for his actual position -- a secret agent for the FBI's Counterintelligence Division chief, Bill Priestap.)

[In the year 2010], he [Steele] rang up an FBI agent named Mike Gaeta, whom he had recently met at a conference in Oxford. Gaeta specialized in Russian organized crime and was then assigned to the New York field office.

I have got some material I'd like to show you, Steele told him. Gaeta was interested, and soon Steele was flying to the United States for meetings with FBI officials in New York and Washington D.C. to share intelligence he had collected about the unsavory connections of various FIFA [Fédération Internationale de Football Association] officials.

He [Steele] gave the FBI intelligence reports that amounted to a dossier on FIFA corruption. One especially damning piece of evidence was a 2005 photograph Steele had uncovered showing Sepp Blatter, the longtime FIFA president, laughing and clinking glasses at a Moscow nightclub with Alimzhan Tokhtakhounov, the alleged Russian organized crime boss known as the "Little Taiwanese".

Tokhtakhounov was on the Bureau's "most wanted" list, a fugitive from U.S. justice who had been indicted in 2002 for allegedly scheming to fix the Winter Olympics figure skating competition that year to insure a gold medal for Russia. The indictment was announced by James Comey, then a U.S. Attorney. (Tokhtakhounov would be indicted again in 2013 for allegedly protecting a high-stakes transatlantic gambling ring, which operated in Trump Tower and laundered millions of dollars for Russian oligarchs through shell companies in Cyprus.)

So, in the year 2002, Comey, then a U.S. Attorney, had indicted Tokhtakhounov for fixing international contests that were the objects of international gambling rings. At some point in time, Tokhtakhounov managed an international gambling ring that was based in Trump Tower in New York. In 2010, Gaeta was working at the FBI's New York Field Office, and he brought Steele to the USA to brief FBI officials about corruption in international contests and about international gambling rings. The FBI officials were particularly interested in a photograph that Steele had obtained and that showed Tokhtakhounov dining with a key official of international soccer competitions.

Gaeta purported to have some special access to Tokhtakounov, which enabled Steele even to obtain photographs of Tokhtakhounov dining in Moscow with international-sports officials.

When thinking about the FBI's interest in international contests and international gambling rings, it's important to keep in mind that Donald Trump owned Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino in Atlantic City during the years 1984 - 2014 and owned the Miss Universe Organization during the years 1996 - 2015.

Keep in mind also that Comey -- who personally had indicted Tokhtakounov in 2002 -- became the FBI Director in 2013, the year when Tokhtakounov was indicted the second time.

I pose two questions:

1) In what year did Comey himself begin to suspect that Russian Intelligence was cultivating Donald Trump by offering real-estate deals and facilitating his involvement in international gambling rings?

2) Did Comey himself, after he became the FBI Director, arrange for Gaeta to be transferred from the New York Field Office to the Rome Embassy? 

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Gaeta was interviewed by the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence in in December 2017.

During that interview, Representative Adam Schiff asked Gaeta to summarize his investigation of Tokhtakounov (spelled Tutakhanov in the House transcript). Gaeta summarized as follows (page 50):

It was an illegal-gambling / money-laundering investigation, where the individual, Tutakhanov, -- also known by the nickname Taiwanchik -- had been indicted by the Southern District [i.e. by Comey] in the early 2002 as the result of a bribery scheme involving one of the figure-skating competitions in the Salt Lake City Olympics. And he [Tutakhanov] was a fugitive out of Southern District.

We learned from other, independent-source [Steele?] information that he [Tutakhanov] had ties to individuals [Trump?] in New York City who were running an illegal gambling operation ... a massive gambling operation done internationally ... being controlled by two individuals who resided in Trump Tower, being controlled ultimately by this individual, Taiwanchik, who was overseas in Russia.

When Schiff asked Gaeta to summarize the money-laundering aspect of his investigation of the Trump Tower operation, Gaeta summarized as follows (page 52, 54, 55):

There was a real-estate aspect to it. .... Funds that came into this operation, that came from overseas, worked its way to the US, where real estate was purchased.

Real estate in the United States is the end goal for a lot of this money that's been generated illegally. You know it's safe; it's in the United States. It's a solid place to put money by these individuals. ...

The money used at the time of the purchase may have been legitimized by washing it or moving it through numerous shell corporations and covering up transfers through loan arrangements. ... They do it in places such as Miami and Vegas and New York.

When asked by Republicans whether Gaeta had found in his investigation that the illegal-gambling and money-laundering activities involved Donald Trump or his family, Gaeta answered that he had not found any such involvement.

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I speculate that some of Steele's Dossier reports that are not available to the public but that were delivered to FBI Counterintelligence -- especially Reports 81-93 -- discussed Tokhtakhounov, aka Tutakhanov.

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Continued in Part 7