Is Agent Krasnov God’s imperfect vessel?

It’s out there!

Donald Trump was recruited by the KGB in 1987 and given the codename “Krasnov”, claims a former Soviet intelligence officer.

The bombshell allegation was made by Alnur Mussayev, a former Kazakh intelligence chief, in a Facebook post, reports the Mirror. The 71-year-old, who previously headed Kazakhstan’s National Security Committee, said he had served in the 6th Directorate of the KGB in Moscow, which was responsible for counter-intelligence support within the economy.

One of the directorate’s primary objectives, he claimed, was “recruiting businessmen from capitalist countries.” According to Mussayev, Trump, then a 40-year-old New York real estate developer, was one of those recruits. “In 1987, our directorate recruited Donald Trump under the pseudonym Krasnov,” he wrote.

Mussayev’s post did not include evidence to support his claim, but in a further comment he made another shocking allegation. “Today, the personal file of resident ‘Krasnov’ has been removed from the FSB. It is being privately managed by one of Putin’s close associates,” he alleged. His allegations come amid years of speculation over Trump’s ties to Russia, dating back to his first visit to Moscow in 1987.

At the time, Trump, then a rising star in the New York property market, travelled to the Soviet Union to explore the possibility of building a hotel in the capital. Soviet officials reportedly facilitated the trip, raising questions among intelligence analysts about whether it was a routine business opportunity or something more scandalous.

This story is all over the international media this morning, but US sources are refusing to publish it so far (The Daily Beast had it up briefly but took it down).

The key point here I suppose is there’s nothing remotely implausible about it, which in itself is as significant as whether we’re supposed to take it literally or seriously or both.

. . . How is the fact that the former head of a former Soviet Republic’s security service, who was also a high-ranking KGB agent prior to that, claiming that the president of the United States was recruited as a Soviet intelligence asset not as gigantic a news story in this country as it’s possible to imagine? This isn’t some guy on a blog somewhere. It’s somebody who absolutely was in a position to know if this was the case.

The more salient point is that Trump’s behavior towards Putin and Russia has been indistinguishable from that of a long-time Russian intelligence asset.

“But seeing what the man will do unbribed, there’s no occasion to.”