cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/25921559

Link above goes to the Daily Kos post that discovered the scrubbing. Here’s the text of the original article:

Former Intelligence Officer Claims KGB Recruited Trump

Isabel Van Brugen – The Daily Beast – 21 February 2025

A former Soviet intelligence officer has alleged that Donald Trump was recruited by the KGB in 1987 and given the codename “Krasnov.”

Alnur Mussayev, 71, a former Kazakh intelligence chief, made the explosive claim in a Facebook post on Thursday. He claimed that he served in the 6th Directorate of the KGB in Moscow, which was responsible for counter-intelligence support within the economy. One of its key objectives, he claimed, was “recruiting businessmen from capitalist countries.”

Mussayev wrote that in 1987 “our directorate recruited Donald Trump, a 40-year-old American businessman, under the pseudonym Krasnov.”

He reiterated that the department specialized in recruiting spies and intelligence sources from the West, asserting once again that Trump had been brought into the fold.

“I hope I’ll survive a third assassination attempt,” he said in a comment below his post.

He made another shocking allegation in another comment, saying: “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.”

Mussayev’s allegations, while unfounded, add to ongoing speculation about Trump’s connections to Russia. Trump’s first visit to Moscow as a real estate developer in 1987 drew intense scrutiny and speculation that the trip was arranged by the KGB for dubious reasons.

According to Politico, in 1985, the KGB updated a secret personality questionnaire distributed among the agency, advising case officers what to look for in a successful recruitment operation.

The document instructed agents to target “prominent figures in the West” with the goal of drawing them “into some form of collaboration with us… as an agent, or confidential or special or unofficial contact.”

Trump has denied any improper ties to Moscow or collusion with President Vladimir Putin.

The Daily Beast has reached out to the White House and Russia’s Foreign Ministry for comment.

U.S. officials have also expressed concerns about Trump’s relationship with Putin.

Anthony Scaramucci who briefly served as Trump’s White House communications director in 2017, said during an episode of “The Rest Is Politics: US” podcast with co-host Katty Kay on Friday that he thinks there is a mysterious “hold” on the president.

Scaramucci did not elaborate on what he believes that “hold” might be, adding only: “I don’t know why it’s like this. [H.R.] McMaster couldn’t figure it out, [James] Mattis couldn’t figure it out, [John] Kelly couldn’t figure it out.”

  • ansiz@lemmy.world
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    1 hour ago

    I think Trump has a thing for Slavic women and that combines with the Putin strong man vibe, and Trump clearly has daddy issues. He’s the definition of a useful idiot.

  • Cosmic Cleric@lemmy.world
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    19 hours ago

    The next step to ask would be, say for arguments sake this is true, then what comes next?

    Would Congress actually act on this and impeach him?

    If not, does the CIA and Joint Chiefs have a conversation and then act, to eliminate a domestic enemy?

    Dark times to be had, either way. Sucky timeline to live in.

    Edit: Addendum. Since one of the links articles is four years old, why hasn’t something been done by Congress by now?

    • peoplebeproblems@midwest.social
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      19 hours ago

      I don’t particularly remember this story, but I also remember in 2016 some pretty damn clear links to Russia were made.

      But, it was also all described perfectly in the Russian playbook to defeat the US, so congrats Soviets, you did it

      At what cost?

      • ZMonster@lemmy.world
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        28 minutes ago

        Before being invited to an interview on RT, even Alex Jones said Trump was “too mobbed up with the russians”… Of course it would take a moron like trump to make AJ right about anything…

    • snooggums@lemmy.world
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      23 hours ago

      Some of knew he was compromised back when he ran in 2016, or did you mean the fear of the US falling for it twice?

      • Clinicallydepressedpoochie@lemmy.world
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        22 hours ago

        We were fucked the moment the votes came in. I still hold a grudge against Devin Nunes for setting the entire tone of how the next 8 years would go by halting all election interference investigations in the house.

        Devin Nunes is an absolute creatin but he is far from America’s biggest issue.

        • snooggums@lemmy.world
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          20 hours ago

          All of the people who refused to follow through on investigations are complicit.specially the ones that used an upcoming election as a reson not to do anything. Maybe if you fuxking followed throigh we wouldn’t be running nazi.org v2

          • Clinicallydepressedpoochie@lemmy.world
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            20 hours ago

            I know. This guy held the power in his hand to rewrite countless years of history and he flushed every single American down the toilet for a shit unmeaningful job in a country that will be in ruins for who knows how long.

      • tehn00bi@lemmy.world
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        21 hours ago

        Or, that the free media is be washed away. Or that media is losing its ability to report on certain topics due to government retaliation.

  • BedSharkPal@lemmy.ca
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    23 hours ago

    Are VPNs still good at getting around government restrictions of blocking sites? Only a matter of time now…

    • sp3ctr4l@lemmy.zip
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      6 minutes ago

      There are only a few VPNs that actually don’t keep logs and thus can’t be subpoenaed by governments for info.

      All the popular ones you commonly see advertised or written about in ‘best of’ type reviews… they’ll protect you from a man in the middle attack (which almost no one does or falls victim to), and allow you to bypass region restrictions… but all a government has to do is say nope, thats illegal now, as is already the case in many more restrictive countries.

      Oh, you’re paying for your VPN with your debit card? Credit card? Oh cool, now we know which VPN company to get your data from.

      This is one of the few legit use cases for crypto, monero anyway (all the others can be de-anonymized fairly easily by someone who knows how), paying covertly for a VPN.

      Mullvad is probably the best actually safe VPN to use.

      I might also suggeat you look into I2P, which functionally turns all your internet traffic into an anonymized, decentralized shared torrent protocol.

      Its quite slow compared to high powered VPNs, but basically, because everyone in the system is their only little miniature routing hub for everyone else, and everyones data is mixed together in shared, but partitioned and encrypted packets, its quite hard to definitively nail down exactly what any particular user is doing.

      https://i2pd.website/

      It is a bit more conplicated to set up, in general, than most modern VPNs which usually just have an app that ‘just works’.

    • polakkenak@feddit.dk
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      23 hours ago

      The technology of VPN works great for circumventing censorship. VPN can be blocked, but it’s a game of whack a mole between the state and private actors. The main vulnerability in hosted VPN is that the provider has the ability to sell you out if law enforcement comes knocking. Picking a trusted provider is key. Alternatively, there’s TOR but that isn’t perfect either, as anyone may participate in the network.

      • twelvegoats@lemm.ee
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        20 hours ago

        I use Mullvad which isn’t based in the US. They claim no logs and that nothing is retained. It’s about $5.75 a month, pretty good for what you get

        • floofloof@lemmy.caOP
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          16 hours ago

          NordVPN is based in Panama (and its parent company is a Lithuanian), also claims no logs, and often has very cheap deals. People get irritated with their adverts but the service itself seems good. Of course, you can’t know for sure who is trustworthy but Nord looks OK.

          Though if Trump invades Panama it might be time to look for another VPN provider.

    • dual_sport_dork 🐧🗡️@lemmy.world
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      21 hours ago

      Nah. If it’s here it’s here. You’re literally looking at it right here right now, so obviously this thread has not been deleted or blocked in any way.

      If you’re signed in your visible feed is influenced by your community subscriptions and default sorting preferences. Lemmy does not hide content based on any “algorithm” other than communities you have outright blocked under your account. Signing in might have prompted your client/UI to sort this off of your front page, but it’s not being nefariously hidden from you.

      • pelespirit@sh.itjust.works
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        16 hours ago

        Sorry man, that’s not true. There’s a reason I’m not on lemmy world anymore. It was probably a rogue admin, but still it’s a thing.

        • dual_sport_dork 🐧🗡️@lemmy.world
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          16 hours ago

          I am literally on lemmy.world right now, it is my only instance, and I’m commenting on this thread because it appeared on my front page. I don’t know what to tell you other than you don’t seem to understand how this works.

            • dual_sport_dork 🐧🗡️@lemmy.world
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              16 hours ago

              .world has been doing server maintenace today. There was a sticky about it and everything. So there are probably federation delays and timeouts to contend with but your inmediate go-to is to start spouting nonsense about “rogue admins.”

              Yeah, okay. Sure.

              • pelespirit@sh.itjust.works
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                15 hours ago

                Wow, you’ve spent a lot of time reddit. I had my comments removed a couple of times that didn’t show up in the log, but was by a certain admin. He said so. Wtf do you care anyway?

                • dual_sport_dork 🐧🗡️@lemmy.world
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                  15 hours ago

                  I know this might be a difficult concept for you to grasp, but when you post something… in the comments… in public, it prompts people to respond to your comment. Especially if what you said was nonsense.

  • alykanas@slrpnk.net
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    23 hours ago

    If you think the people running Trump and the GOP - and I mean the documented ones - like the Mercer’s, Thiel, Adelson, Tim Mellon, etc, would cede control of their man to Russia, please say why.

    • futatorius@lemm.ee
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      5 hours ago

      If their interests align with Russia’s-- the breakdown of the rule of law, attacking civil society, promoting oligarchy, controlling the media, damaging NATO and the EU, then they’ll let Trump continue to serve Putin. They might think they can end it later. Whether that’s true or not remains to be seen. And it may be that Trump is using the American billionaires, but will backstab them once they’ve served his and Putin’s purposes. It wouldn’t be the first time that people have throught they could ride the fascist tiger, only to later be eaten by it. And it certainly wouldn’t be the first time that Trump has betrayed those around him.

    • cannibalkitteh@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      22 hours ago

      Do you honestly think any of them have competing interests? The greedy ones stand to make money either way, and the ideologically driven ones are salivating at the idea of destroying the country if it means they could possibly steer a new government.

    • 0x0@infosec.pub
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      19 hours ago

      Cute of you still believing the people running shit being limited by nations lol

    • Hux@lemmy.ml
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      23 hours ago

      They got there too late to be a primary influence, but Trump won’t ever say no to a hand out.