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