Thursday, March 28, 2024 | Ramadan 17, 1445 H
broken clouds
weather
OMAN
23°C / 23°C
EDITOR IN CHIEF- ABDULLAH BIN SALIM AL SHUEILI

Ostrich jacket, fake rallies, therapy dogs in Trump-Russia probe

1149182
1149182
minus
plus

WASHINGTON: Question: What do you get when you combine Russian agents, a therapy dog and a $15,000 ostrich-skin jacket? Answer: A criminal investigation that could decide the fate of a US president. Donald Trump’s presidency has produced no shortage of eyebrow-raising moments — such as the former acting head of the FBI, Andrew McCabe, saying that Trump might be a Russian asset. And US Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation has turned up some surreal anecdotes as he examines whether the 2016 Trump election campaign worked with Russia to win the White House.


Some of those episodes resemble reality television, fitting perhaps because Trump was once the star of his own show, “The Apprentice.” Moments of heightened drama appeared to be legitimate, but in fact involved paid actors and off-site directors.


On July 9, 2016, a Facebook group called United Muslims of America staged a rally in Washington to support the Republican presidential nominee’s Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton.


According to US prosecutors, the event was engineered by Russian agents working to undermine Clinton. Moscow has denied the allegations and the conclusions of US intelligence agencies that it ran an operation to meddle in the election.


In a criminal indictment, Mueller’s team says Russians set up the Facebook group, organised the campaign event. It was one of several events that year orchestrated by the Internet Research Agency, a Kremlin-backed troll farm in St Petersburg that spent millions of dollars to disrupt the US democratic process, according to court documents filed by Mueller’s office.


Using fake personas, employees of the agency staged political rallies in New York, Pennsylvania, Washington and Florida, recruiting unwitting local activists, and, at times, Trump campaign officials to help out, prosecutors said.


A volunteer for the Trump campaign agreed to provide signs for a Russian-organised “March for Trump” event in New York in June 2016 and sent out a press release for a “Down With Hillary” rally a month later, the indictment said.


A Trump campaign official in Florida helped Russian organisers pick out sites for rallies there in August 2016.


One of those rallies featured a person dressed up as Clinton in a cage on a flatbed truck, wearing a prison uniform. Russians paid for the actor and the cage, prosecutors said.


After the election, Russian agents staged duelling rallies in New York — one to support Trump, one to protest his victory.


The Russian government has denounced the allegations as absurd and ridiculed the notion that so few Russian nationals could undermine US democracy.


Jesse Ferguson, a former Clinton campaign official, said the campaign thought these were legitimate grassroots events.


“You can see where voters would have no way to figure out whether this is a rally of sympathizers — or subversives,” he said.


THE $15,000 OSTRICH-SKIN JACKET


Mueller’s team also revealed the lavish lifestyle of Trump’s former campaign chairman Paul Manafort — and his disregard for lobbying laws and financial regulations.


Prosecutors built their successful financial-fraud conviction of Paul Manafort last summer on a mountain of bank records and other financial documents.


But one piece of evidence convicted Manafort in the court of public opinion: a $15,000 ostrich-leather bomber jacket. A Washington Post fashion critic called the garment “an atrocity — both literal and symbolic.” Prosecutors introduced the jacket as evidence of the high-flying lifestyle that they say Manafort funded by lying to banks and hiding more than $16 million from tax authorities.


— Reuters


SHARE ARTICLE
arrow up
home icon