Here is the video of our interview with Craig Unger. Below it is the text of that interview. This interview will also appear on Oaklandsocialist’s podcast. Also, see our review of Craig’s book, “House of Trump, House of Putin” and of “American Kompromat“

John Reimann
So we’re talking here with Craig Unger and Craig does Craig does this website here.

He’s also, as you see, the author of that of this current book that just came out. And also, in particular. I wanted to talk with Craig about these two books, “House of Trump, House of Putin” and “American Kompromat”, which are about Trump in particular. And obviously the reason I wanted to talk with him is that Trump will be coming back into office soon. So welcome, very, very happy to talk with you, Craig, in my opinion, those two books of yours, and in particular, House of Trump, House of Putin, are the best books I’ve read about Trump, because what they do is explain a lot of the historical background of what created Trump, what created Putin and what created their relationship. So I’d like to get started you talked a lot about the development of the different criminal gangs in Russia, starting in the Soviet Union, in the Soviet gulag, and how those gangs then morphed into kind of the Russian mafia afterwards. Can you explain a little bit about that.

Craig Unger
Sure, well, I think the most important difference in between the Russian mafia and the American mafia as we know the American mafia, whether it’s through movies like The Godfather or crime reporting – in Russia, the mafia works hand in hand with the KGB, or did in the days of the Soviet Union and and it was sort of a, almost a secondary arm of Russian and Soviet intelligence. So that became very, very important when the Russian mafia started migrating to the United States in the 70s and 80s. And when that happened, I interviewed a former head of counter intelligence for the KGB, general Oleg Kalugin, who now lives in Maryland, and he told me about it When, at the time in the 70s, Russia was heavily criticized for being anti semitic, for sort of going after Jews and not allowing them to emigrate to the United States and and at a certain point In the in the 70s, United States passed an amendment that that encouraged there were sanctions against Russia unless they allowed Jewish immigration. And the KGB said, “wow, this is a great opportunity for us. We’ll allow Jews to emigrate, but there’ll be our Jews.” In other words, they would be secretly working for the KGB, and they moved into Brighton Beach and Brooklyn. I lived in Brooklyn for five or six years, and it’s still an area that’s dominated by former Russians and Ukrainians. There’s some excellent Russian restaurants there, and that’s where they sort of settled, and that was their base of one of their bases of operations. The other, as I found it, was Trump Tower. They started laundering their money through Trump real estate 40 years ago.

John Reimann
I want to get to that, but I’d like to get back to another part of what your book explains about how, when they were, when a lot of that those prison gangs were released from prison under Khrushchev, in a way, they formed the earliest capitalists in Russia. And so it’s like gangster capital, or gangster mafia gangster ism was baked into Russian capitalism before capitalism even made its return,

Craig Unger
Well, there were, there was no private property in the Soviet Union. So even if you wanted to buy a pair of blue jeans. You would essentially get it on the black market through a mafioso, but the mafia gangs grew into major multinational, multi billion dollar multinational enterprises that included sex trafficking, drugs, international crime syndicates, really.

John Reimann
So then, in your book, you describe one, one of the earliest connections between the between the FSB and so on, and Trump, or between, I should say, between that Russian mafia and Brighton Beach and Trump was through the Cohn family and Club Caribe. The Roy Cohn right family owned that social club, right, right?

Craig Unger
Well, Roy Cohn, of course, became Trump’s lawyer, and in many ways, I think he is the model for Trumpism. He was absolutely ruthless. I was I wear it as badge of honor. Roy Cohn yelled at me once and tried to suppress a story I was working on when I was at New York Magazine, and we just ran it anyway. But he was ruthless, and he taught Donald Trump the lessons of deny, deny, deny, and just never admit any defeat whatsoever or that you were ever wrong. And that’s the way Trump has operated. And the he Trump, of course, I mean, Cohn, of course, became a lawyer for the big Italian mobster families as well as Trump, the Russian mafia. Meanwhile, was growing up in Brighton Beach, and by 1984 one of them, a guy named David Bogatin, had went to Trump Tower just after Trump Tower had been built, and he put $6 million in cash on the table and said, “I’d like five condos.” And Bogatin, according to FBI files, was a member of the Russian mafia, and in effect, he was laundering money through Trump real estate. He didn’t live in those places. It was simply a way of washing the money so that when he sold the apartments, he would have cash and he could say it came out of real estate.

John Reimann
I want to get to that issue of the money laundering, which has hardly been discussed anywhere. But before I do one other, maybe detail that I found very interesting, you talk in your book about Trump’s trip to Czechoslovakia in 1978 with his then wife who was Czechoslovakian, Ivana, and you seem to think that that was where the KGB made its first links with Trump, or some of its first links.

Craig Unger
Well, it’s certainly possible, and there’s been a lot of speculation. That’s true. It may well be true. The question is, hekatolaki, of course, was part of the East Block, and they were very close to the Soviet Union, and they presumably shared their intelligence with the KGB, as it is. We do know, by 1980 the KGB reached out to Trump through a guy named Semyon Kislin, who is still around and back in 1980 he was, he was what is known as a spotter agent for the KGB. That meant he was trying to spot new talent for them to recruit as agents or assets. And this was the time of Donald Trump’s first and perhaps greatest and maybe only real triumph in real estate, it was in developing the Grand Hyatt Hotel. And like any hotel, once it was built, it needed a lot of TV sets, and Trump bought them through this Semion Kislin, who was a spotter agent who made him an offer that he couldn’t and didn’t refuse, but it was a way of establishing a link with Trump for the KGB and through them, not two months later, KGB reached out to Trump and it was in 1987 that They set up his first trip to Moscow.

John Reimann
Now you talk about Trump having been a money launderer for the Russian mafia capitalists, and I’d like you to talk a little bit more about that in detail, and also why it is that there’s been almost no coverage of that aspect of Trump, right?

Craig Unger
Well, I think one of the reasons it’s, I mean, obviously I would love it to get more coverage. I wrote a book on this. You know, one is it’s hard to prove when the Russian mafia is laundering its money. Trump has never been prosecuted for this, and it’s hard to prosecute him, because in order to prosecute him, you have to prove that he acknowledged that the money came from illicit sources. That’s extremely hard to prove in terms of his state of mind. And I think he’d have to be an idiot to say, “Gee, where did you get the this money? David Bogatin? Did it come from sex trafficking?” Trump isn’t is stupid enough to ask. He wants deniability, and it’s simply by pleading ignorance. And it’s very hard to prove otherwise, but, but it was easy enough to prove that Bogdan bought real estate in there, and so did I believe I came up with a total of 13 members of the Russian mafia who bought, lived in or bought property in Trump Tower.

John Reimann
But it wasn’t just Trump Tower, and it wasn’t just Bogtin, right? I mean, there was that real estate deal in Florida, for instance, and just all kinds of different Russian mafia mafioso, who were, you know, buying property from Trump left, right and center right.

Craig Unger
It went on in different forms and came back again and again over the years, Trump, I think had a total of six bankruptcies. And he, when he expanded into Atlantic City, he sort of went, Uh, hog wild and over expanded. And that led to one bankruptcy after another, and it was the Russian mafia, in a way, that came to to his aid. There was a firm named Bayrock, which was run by, among other people, a man named Felix Sater, whose father was part of the Russian mafia. A lot of the money, and they offered Trump terrifically remunerative deals by using his name in later years. That is, Trump wasn’t really developing real estate. Other people were doing it, and they were calling these places Trump, they were using his name. He was just branding them, much as a fashion manufacturer might make blue jeans with, you know, with their brand on it, and Trump’s franchise, is exorbitant. I think he would get as much as 25% of the profits, which is far more than a than a blue chip company like Hyatt or Marriott might get for franchising hotels.

John Reimann
So, you know, I read this book, [“American Kleptoracy” by Casey Michel] I don’t know if you’re familiar with it. And in that book, they talk about money laundering in general, the role of limited liability companies and all that sort of thing, and how money laundering is so integrated into the major banks and so on, and also real estate development in general. And so I have always wondered why, whether the media in general is reluctant to open up that can of worms. It costs a whole lot of other dirt might start crawling out,

Craig Unger
Well, well, um, you know, I was going to say that, no, it’s clearly true. And I mean, I’ve lived in New York on and off for over 40 years, and one could not escape seeing these huge towers with these pencil thin buildings going up 100 stories, with real estate where individual apartments would go for $200 million or so, and yet they’re empty. The lights are off at night because no one lives there. It’s a haven for money, and there’s no penalty. The real estate regulations are against money laundering are just pathetically weak, and the real estate industry doesn’t want to stop that. They make a lot of money as a result of it. Sometimes their ads still get into newspapers like the New York Times. You know, I’ve written about it. It’s also the kind of thing I guess people don’t find it to be a sexy story or something. Right? But it’s enormously important in that you have billions and billions of dollars in hidden funds that come from credible enterprises and have gone to support Donald Trump, and also real estate developers in general.

John Reimann
Yeah. So you mentioned, you mentioned Felix Sater. My impression from the book is that he was quite central to Trump’s real estate development money laundering schemes. Would would you agree with that? 

Craig Unger
Well, he and Bayrock did played a very important role. I’m trying to remember the exact years, but I think it was after 2000 and helping Trump come back from his failures in Atlantic City. And you know, I think it was a great source of income for Trump.

John Reimann
So I want to come back to that. But before I do another thing that you mentioned in your book that I found extremely interesting was this guy, Robert Hanssen, who you say was probably the most successful Soviet spy, and his connection with that Catholic society, Opus Dei and you mentioned number of others who were, who are members of Opus Dei. You mentioned Louis Freeh, former FBI director, Rick Santorum, Bill Barr and and and others. And how the Federalist Society, which basically controls the supreme court now is also connected with Opus Dei. Can you talk about that a little bit? Right?

Craig Unger
Well, Opus Dei grew out of fascist Spain under under Franco, and it really put together the judiciary there. It’s an extremely it’s a right wing sect within Catholicism and in in Washington, they have headquarters there. They actually they have one in New York as well. But it became very closely linked to, and there was an overlap with people who were in the Federalist Society, which has been run by Leonard Leo, who’s probably been the most significant single figure in reshaping the United States Supreme Court as a right wing court with a super majority. And, of course, I think everyone knows what’s happened with Roe v Wade and Citizens United. And it’s, it’s really reshaped American politics and pushed it significantly to the right and taken over a large part of our judiciary.

John Reimann
I want to skip to another aspect of American US politics that you mentioned, and that is lobbying. And I want to read just a couple sentences from what you write about that you say, “in so many ways, Russians were baffled by the unusual business practices they encountered in the West.” And then you talk about “an aspiring oligarch who was all too familiar with the dark practices in Bratva. And when lobbying was described to him, you say, then it was as if, light bulb went off. ‘You mean, you have firms with highly paid professionals who are paid to bribe Congressman?’ he asked. So seems to me that the whole practice of lobbying has played a big role in in how American politics works today.

That’s connected with with Trump’s connections internationally and so on.

Craig Unger
Well, absolutely, you have people like Paul Manafort, who, of course, was Trump’s campaign manager in 2016 and Manafort and Roger Stone were essentially, they were known as the torturers lobby. This goes back 40 years. When they started out, they would hire themselves than any dictator across the world, anywhere in the world, for the highest bidder and be paid millions of dollars to put forth that dictator’s case in trying to get, say, favored trade relations, or whatever the case may be, and Manafort specifically was paid. His firm was paid over $75 million on behalf of lobbying for Putin’s candidate Yanukovich as president of Ukraine. So they were effectively paid agents for Vladimir Putin. And you see it again and again and when the period you’re referring to was the period at which the Russian Federation. This is just after the fall of the Soviet Union, but the Russian Federation effectively was becoming a mafia state. And during that period, you had oligarchs who controlled various industries, and they were sort of, they had to make sure they were in had a good relationship with Vladimir Putin, and if so, their their their great wealth, would be protected.

John Reimann
Well, it seems to me that that is related to another issue that you raised in your book, and that is the Mueller investigation, which you say should have been a counter intelligence investigation rather than a criminal investigation. And one thing that I noticed in both that investigation and also the House Intelligence Committee is they never interviewed Felix Sater, so can you talk about those two issues, right?

Craig Unger
Well, as we were discussing earlier, I mean, this is the difference. There’s a huge difference between a criminal investigation and counter intelligence, and we’ve touched on some of those differences obliquely already. For example, the issue of laundering money for the Russian mafia. I think it would be very, very difficult to prosecute Trump for that. You have to be able to prove his state of mind, unless you have recordings. That’s going to be hard to do. But it’s easy to prove, from a counter intelligence point of view, that he sold those, apartments, to the Russian mafia, and that can then gives him very significant ties in the 10s of millions of dollars, perhaps hundreds of millions of dollars. So so you can see right in front of your eyes, from a counter intelligence point of view, how deeply tied Donald Trump is to Vladimir Putin and Russia, and that’s what I mean by going after him on a counter through a counter Intelligence investigation.

John Reimann
I think you listed 59 individual Russian mafia, people that Trump had connections to, right?

Craig Unger
Well, I’m sure I can’t name them all off the top of my head, but this was a significant part of his life. And you’re right in that it my book did become a New York Times best seller briefly, but it did not get to the point of changing the national conversation. That’s one thing I think is really gone. The power of the press has waned so much in recent years, and when I started out in journalism, there were stories like Watergate or the pentagon papers or the me lie massacre, where one piece of journalism could change the national conversations and change the series of events that would unfold and we would remember it 50 years later. Today, that’s harder and harder to do, and with social media, everyone’s in their little silo, and I’m sure the vast majority of Americans don’t know about Trump’s ties to the Russian mafia, but they’re important.

John Reimann
You know, it seems to me that, you know, in certain segments sectors of society, Trump is seen or is portrayed as being Putin’s puppy dog, and seems to me that that is the explanation for it.

Craig Unger
Oh, absolutely, he knows he can turn to Russia for help. And, you know, it was very interesting watching. I can’t believe he won the election, but if he’d lost, really, he would risk going to jail for the rest of his life. So he had everything at stake. And one had to wonder, if he had lost, would he leave the country? Would he go to Russia? What? How would the Soviet How would Russia bail him out?

John Reimann
Yeah, so that kind of brings us to the present, because barring a health crisis, he’s going to return to office in a month, or a little bit more than that. So What are your perspectives for the new Trump administration, I guess that’s the whole other 45 minute conversation, but particular some of his appointments, or proposed appointments, Tulsi Gabbard [for Director of National Intelligence], who is connected to both Assad and presumably Putin and and others,

Craig Unger
well, I think it’s very, very scary. And I take almost all the appointments he’s announced show that we are risking the end of our democracy. Have Pete Hegseth as Secretary of Defense. I mean, some of these are… Tulsi Gabbard, really…. You know, I can’t go cite chapter on verse, but I think it’s a huge security problem. Donald Trump is the biggest security problem. He already told us he trusts Vladimir Putin more than his own intelligence services. And he told us that back during his first term, putting Tulsi Gabbard in there only reaffirms it and would institutionalize it. And I cannot be imagine being an honest, patriotic American who’s in a CIA agent, uh, doing, uh, intelligence analysis of of Russia and having Tulsi Gabbard as your boss. I mean, it’s as if suddenly we’ve switched sides. I mean, and we’re working for the bad guys, and I think it’s going to be a huge problem.

John Reimann
I mean, if I were a spy for the United States, living in Russia right now, I’d be packing my bags, because I think it’s going to be a direct pipeline from the CIA to the FSB, right?

Craig Unger
So it’s very, very scary. And how this will unfold, I think, is anybody’s guess, but I’m think there’s going to be, it’s going to be bloody in one way or another.

John Reimann
And just one last thing: I was talking with somebody recently, for instance, he’s a Russian refugee who doesn’t think that Trump is going to totally sell out Ukraine, because he said it’s not in American interest, and what’s your view of that?

Craig Unger
Well, I would, I would be petrified that he would sell out Ukraine. I think I mean when he says he’s going to end Ukraine war on day one. He means he’s going to get Zelensky to capitulate. I can’t understand. I mean, I just don’t see any other way. Presumably he’s going to withdraw American aid for Ukraine, which will make it very, very difficult for them to continue the fight as they’ve been. And I would be stunned if I hope I’m wrong, but I would be stunned if there’s a different outcome.

John Reimann
I would be too honestly. So with that, do you have any future plans, any books that you’re working on now or

Craig Unger
I’m still promoting “Den of Spies” And to me, it’s, it’s an important part. This is about the 1980 presidential election, and it shows, it puts in perspective, I think, what we’re going through now. This was a covert operation by the Republican Party that I believe was an act of treason and sabotage the 1980 presidential election on behalf of Ronald Reagan against Jimmy Carter. And at the time, Iran held 52 American hostages, and the Reagan administration made a secret deal with Iran in which they said, Look, we’re going to give you weapons, which is illegal. Iran was a hostile foreign power at the time, and in return for giving you those weapons, we want one thing, we want you not to return the hostages. We want you to prolong their detention, their incarceration, until after the election.

John Reimann
Well, there you have it. There’s the book. And I thank you very much, Craig for your time, and we look forward to reading den of spies and other articles that you might be publishing on your website.