EXCLUSIVE. Trump Staffer Tried to Recruit Lobbyists for Russian Oligarch Roman Abramovich
Source: The Daily Beast
EXCLUSIVE
MEET THE NEW BOSS
Trump Staffer Tried to Recruit Lobbyists for Russian Oligarch Roman Abramovich
Once he worked to get Donald Trump into the White House. Then he started doing favors on behalf of someone else—one of Russia’s richest men.
BETSY WOODRUFF
08.15.18 9:00 PM ET
In the time since the election, a little-known Trump campaign staffer named Daniel Gelbinovich reached out to a number of Washington lobbyists with an eyebrow-raising ask: to shield a Putin ally from U.S. sanctions.
Two lobbyists—speaking anonymously because of the sensitivity of the matter—told The Daily Beast that Gelbinovich approached them and told them he was trying to help Roman Abramovich, a Russian oligarch worth more than $11 billion, find a lobbyist to help keep him from being added to the Treasury Department’s sanctions list. Gelbinovich confirmed this reporting.
“I approached the lobbyists on behalf of a private equity firm that requested outreach for this type of work,” he said in an email to The Daily Beast. “The firm claimed that this outreach was on behalf of the individual you mentioned. I do not have a direct connection to Mr. Abramovich myself.”
Gelbinovich’s claims to have worked on behalf of Abramovich, if true, are another piece of the web of connections between Trump World and powerful Russians. And that web is already thick: Besides President Trump’s much-vaunted personal friendliness with Russian President Vladimir Putin himself, Trump and his allies have a long history of doing business with Russian power players. His daughter is longtime friends with Abramovich’s former partner; his commerce secretary, Wilbur Ross, invested in a shipping firm linked to Putin’s judo partner, who is under U.S. sanctions, according to The New York Times; and Trump himself teamed up with oligarch Aras Agalarov to put on the Miss Universe pageant in Moscow in 2013.
Read more: https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-staffer-tried-to-recruit-lobbyists-for-russian-oligarch-roman-abramovich?ref=home
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Very interesting story.
