The Russian connection"Kompromat": Russian agents offered to send women to Trump's hotel room in 2013

Published 10 November 2017

Keith Schiller, who had served for many years as Donald Trump’s personal body guard and who later became director of Oval Office relations – a post he left last month – told a congressional panel that when Trump was in Moscow to attend the Miss Universe Pageant, Russian operatives offered to send five attractive women to his hotel room to spend the night. Christopher Steele, a respected former MI6 agent in Russia who put together the memos which came to be known as the Steele Dossier, quoted Russian sources referring to secretly recorded tapes which captured Trump and some of the women engaged in unorthodox sexual activities. The U.S. intelligence community has confirmed most of the contents in the dossier, but the existence of the tapes is one of the few topics in the dossier which remains shrouded in mystery.

Keith Schiller, who had served for many years as Donald Trump’s personal body guard and who later became director of Oval Office relations – a post he left last month – told a congressional panel that when Trump was in Moscow to attend the Miss Universe Pageant, Russian operatives offered to send five attractive women to his hotel room to spend the night.

Christopher Steele, a respected former MI6 agent in Russia who put together the memos which came to be known as the Steele Dossier, quoted Russian sources referring to secretly recorded tapes which captured Trump and some of the women engaged in unorthodox sexual activities.

The U.S. intelligence community has confirmed most of the material contained in the dossier, as it dovetailed with the information independently gathered by U.S. intelligence agencies about Russian efforts, dating back to 2012-2013, to get close to Trump.

Former U.S. intelligence officials theorize that the Kremlin regarded Trump as the American equivalent of a Russian oligarch – a rich individual who wields influence beyond narrow business circles – and decided to groom him as an unwitting agent of influence to serve the interests and advance the goals of Russia’s foreign policy. These intelligence officials – for example, Steve Hall, a retired CIA operations officer and currently a CNN national security analyst – note that Russia has approached the grooming of Trump the way the Russian intelligence services usually do it – with carrots and potential sticks. Russian banks affiliated with Putin offered Trump businesses large loans on generous terms, and Russian businesses affiliated with the Kremlin negotiated large real estate deals with members of the Trump family (as far as can be ascertained, these real estate deals have not been concluded).

But Russian intelligence also tried what the Russian call “kompromat”: In Russian politics, kompromat, literally “compromising material,” is damaging information about a politician or other public figures used to create negative publicity, for blackmail, or for ensuring loyalty. Sending five attractive women to Trump’s hotel room and secretly recording what happens there is part and parcel of the kompromat tactics routinely employed by Russian intelligence.

These former intelligene officials say that Russia’s broad, systematic, and effective disinformation and hacking campaign to help Trump win the GOP presidential nomination and then help him defeat Hillary Clinton in November 2016, would be consistent with their earlier grooming efforts of him.

Wheter the five women ever made it to Trump’s room, after Schiller left to go to bed, is not known, and CNN reports that the existence of the tapes was one of the few topics in the dossier which remains shrouded in mystery.

One lawmaker told NBC News that Schiller told the panel that before the 2013 Miss Universe Pageant ― which was then owned by Trump and which took place in Moscow that year ― a Russian participant offered to “send five women” to Trump’s hotel room.

Schiller told the lawmakers that he thought the offer was a joke, and responded: “We don’t do that type of stuff.” He said he discussed the conversation with Trump as the two were walking to Trump’s hotel room that night, and that they both had a laugh about it before Trump went to bed — alone.

Schiller testified that he remained outside Trump’s room for an amount of time (he could not remember exactly for how long) before also going to bed – telling the lawmakers that he “could not say for sure what happened during the remainder of the night.”

Schiller disputed those memos included in the dossier compiled by Steele which contained salacious allegations about Trump’s nightly activities in Moscow.

Specifically, the most salacious allegation claim that while staying at the Ritz Carlton Hotel in Moscow, Trump and a number of Russian prostitutes engaged in certain sexual activity on the bed on which he knew President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama had once slept.

One of the sources told Steele that the incident occurred in 2013.

Trump has vehemently denied the validity of the dossier’s claims. Most of the dossier’s assertions about ties between members of the Trump family or the Trump campaign and Russian business, political, and intelligence figures have been confirmed by the U.S. intelligence community – but not the allegations about the nightly activities at the Ritz Carlton Hotel.

Special Counsel Robert Mueller and his investigative team is looking into the dossier as part of his investigation.