MAJOR BREAKING NEWS: Source of the Money for $91 Million Bond in Trump’s Defamation and Rape Case Appears to Have Major Kremlin Ties

America is now in the midst of a five-alarm national security crisis—as the presumptive Republican nominee for president looks to be compromised by a hostile foreign power via foreign entanglements.

{Update on March 8, 2024 at 6:12 PM: The New York Times is now confirming that prior to Mr. Trump getting this supersedeas bond on an emergency basis—as today is the last business day before a court-mandated deadline—“there [was] clearly a problem [for the Trump team]…in acquiring a bond.” The exclusive reporting below appears to be the shibboleth that explains why this particular bond-seeker was able to get a bond from this particular carrier at a time when no other carrier worldwide was willing to involve itself due to Mr. Trump’s long history of debt evasion.}

Just days after Donald Trump ally and war criminal Vladimir Putin—now engaged in an invasion of Europe Trump not only endorses but said he will reward with the gift of a sizable piece of Ukraine to Russia—swore that the Kremlin wouldn’t interfere in the 2024 U.S. presidential election on Trump’s behalf as it did in 2016 and 2020, it appears it may have done just that via an intermediary who has made possible Trump paying the massive $91 million bond in his Rape and Defamation case in New York.

Trump has paid approximately 10% of the bond’s value as a non-refundable purchase, with the rest of the bond value thereafter being put up as a returnable outlay of funds by Chubb. Needless to say, if Trump had $91 million in liquid assets (he recently said in a sworn deposition that he had $400 million, a statement that now appears to have been an act of Perjury), it would have saved him almost $10 million to put up the $91 million himself. Apparently neither this nor—until Chubb stepped in to save the day—a bond purchase was an option for Trump until just a matter of hours ago.

But none of this is shocking. What is shocking is who at Chubb would have approved this otherwise inexplicable decision by the major, ordinarily well-respected carrier.

The background of this major breaking news is easy to relate. Known Kremlin agent Dimitri Simes, who presently works as a Kremlin-approved propagandist for Russian state television, was a top advisor on Russia for Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign at a time he was also head of the Center for the National Interest in Washington, DC.

Simes quickly fled the United States for Moscow—and employment by the Kremlin—after the arrest of the top Russian “honey trap” spy inside the United States in 2015 and 2016, the eventually caught and indicted Maria Butina, who had been in contact with the Trump campaign as well as in a romantic relationship with Trump advisers Patrick Byrne and Paul Erickson. By fleeing the United States literally under cover of darkness, Simes thereby evaded any interrogation by the FBI about his ties to Butina, her handler (Trump campaign ally Alexander Torshin), or the Kremlin whose employ he was fleeing to following Butina’s surprise arrest.

But neither Butina nor Torshin nor Putin were Simes’s most important contacts in the United States as Trump publicly sought Kremlin aid in winning the presidency: those were Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner, Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort, and Putin’s chief spymaster in the United States, Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak (the man Trump National Security Advisor Michael Flynn coordinated with illegally on the subject of dropping all sanctions on Russia for invading Ukraine in early 2014, just a matter of weeks after Trump self-admittedly met with Kremlin agents in Moscow).

During the 2016 presidential campaign, Simes worked closely with Kushner, Manafort and other top Trump campaign advisors (such as Kremlin agent Richard Burt, self-described Kremlin adviser Carter Page, and proud, self-admitted Kremlin go-between George Papadopoulos) to (a) devise the most pro-Russia foreign policy platform in the history of American politics and (b) connect Trump campaign officials and advisors—even Trump himself, at an event Simes and his Center for the National Interest jointly orchestrated with Mr. Kushner and the later indicted and convicted Kremlin agent Manafort—with the aforementioned Kremlin spymaster Kislyak, who has since fled America. Following his April 2016 meeting with Kislyak, Trump infamously disclosed classified intelligence to him and another top Kremlin agent, Sergey Lavrov (widely reported to have been the Kremlin’s lead on 2016 pro-Trump election interference) in the Oval Office in early 2017. (You can find an English translation of a long Russian-language interview of Lavrov by Kremlin agent and former Trump campaign adviser Simes at this Russian government link.)

Prior to fleeing the United States, Simes had spent most of his career at the Center for the National Interest acting hand-in-glove with the Chairman of that controversially pro-Kremlin entity, Maurice Greenberg. While Greenberg departed CNI in 2014, as of March 8, 2024, his son Evan Greenberg remains one of CNI’s nine Advisory Council members.

Readers will be interested to know that the elder Greenberg was at the 2016 Trump campaign’s Transition Offices during the period of time Trump, Kushner, and other top Trump advisers were holding meetings with Kremlin agents and officials for which entry into Trump’s home was routinely made through a door not under media surveillance. Indeed, Greenberg’s December 12, 2016 private meeting with Trump and/or his transition team in Trump Tower came just 24 hours before Kushner met with Russian-intelligence-linked banker and known Kremlin agent Sergey Gorkov in the same space. Kushner had met with Sergey Kislyak in the transition offices a week and a half before Greenberg’s arrival, during which meeting he told the spymaster that Trump wanted to find a way to establish “a secret back-channel for communications” with the Kremlin.

As The Daily Beast reports, Greenberg’s ties to Russia are so significant that he owned a sizable piece of a Russian bank and communicated directly with Maria Butina, the aforementioned Russian spy overseen at the highest level by Kislyak. The Butina-Greenberg meeting, which also involved Butina’s immediate supervisor as a Kremlin spy, Torshin, came just weeks before Trump announced his 2016 run in June of 2015.

Mr. Greenberg has also been received at the Kremlin by Vladimir Putin himself, a rare honor deemed significant enough to be captured by Getty Images.

Greenberg set up a lucrative ongoing business partnership with Putin as early as 2003, not long after Putin came to power in Russia and Trump awarded the Miss Universe crown to Putin’s rumored then-girlfriend, Oxana Federova. As revealed with sourcing in the New York Times bestseller Proof of Collusion (Simon & Schuster, 2018), Trump worked to rig that contest so that Federova would win it. Not long after, a man then representing himself as a Kremlin whisperer, Felix Sater, took up residence at Trump Tower and began assisting Trump in trying to do real estate deals with Putin’s Russia.

Maurice Greenberg was Chairman of CNI in 2014, the year Mr. Trump began privately revealing to associates that he would be running for President of the United States in 2016, and the year Mr. Putin launched his first invasion of Ukraine with the aid of the by-then-fully-activated Kremlin agent Paul Manafort (who was advising the Kremlin-puppeted Kyiv government at the time). Two years later, Manafort—who passed key proprietary campaign data to Russian intelligence during the 2016 presidential race—would be working with Maurice Greenberg’s associate Dimitri Simes to get Trump in the same room as Putin’s spymaster (Kislyak) at the Mayflower Hotel, a scheme that succeeded. 2014 was also the year Eric Trump told a reporter that the Trump Family “has all the funding we need out of Russia”, apparently referencing Russian banks—perhaps even one Greenberg co-owned, though Trump’s second son didn’t specify.

As noted above, Maurice Greenberg’s son is a man named Evan Greenberg, one of just nine Advisory Council members at the pro-Kremlin Center for the National Interest, the entity whose head was for many years Kremlin agent and Trump adviser Dimitri Simes and which hosted Trump’s public announcement of his historically pro-Kremlin foreign policy in April 2016. It was at a VIP party just before the event hosted by Evan Greenberg’s group that Trump met Putin’s spymaster Kislyak for the first time, under a year before he would leak classified intelligence to the aged spy in the White House.

Evan Greenberg is the man who just green-lit a $91 million bond for Donald Trump to help him evade consequences for defaming and raping journalist E. Jean Carroll. (Yes, a federal court confirmed that Trump’s finding of liability for Sexual Abuse was in its practical form and function a finding that a rape had occurred.)

Greenberg is CEO of Zurich-based Chubb Limited, Trump’s newest lender, as well as a Chairman Emeritus like his father: in his case, of the US-ASEAN Business Council.

None doubt that Chubb’s CEO would have to have been closely consulted prior to the issuance of a loan this politically explosive and objectively dangerous for Chubb.

And Trump would have had no confusion at all about the fact that this largesse—a multimillion dollar loan to a rapist who is not only apparently approaching personal bankruptcy and a known career criminal but infamously doesn’t pay back his loans (and even lies to, then sues into oblivion, those lenders who dare to attempt to collect debts from him)—had come to him via individuals sympathetic to, familiar with, and who in the past have worked to advance the cause of top officials at the Kremlin and Russia generally.

{Note: Nor has new Donald Trump lender Evan Greenberg remained aloof from his father and Simes’s infamously pro-Kremlin Center for the National Interest; here he is at a CNI event, should anyone need evidence that being a CNI Advisory Council member is not merely a title. The appearance of the CNI and its extended family once again leaping to aid Trump in his attempts to assist Putin and Russia in illicit international designs is therefore unmistakable. Moreover, Chubb has a major subsidiary operating in Russia as Chubb Insurance Co., LLC.

While Evan Greenberg left AIG, the company run by his father, in September of 2000, he had worked there for 25 years before departing—meaning that if the massive Kremlin-AIG pact signed in February 2003 had been in the works for several years, as would seem necessary, the younger Greenberg might well have been in a position to directly work on it with the Kremlin.

What is certain is that the last time Trump sought to sell future U.S. foreign policy to Russia in exchange for aid, he did so while working with the top brass at CNI. The court about to deny or approve Trump’s new $91 million bond in New York City is almost certain to take into account that Trump is again a candidate for President of the United States as he was in 2016; again in possession of classified intel that he has made clear he believes he can trade, as he was in 2016; and is again receiving a massive benefit in part due to the otherwise inexplicable largesse of the top brass at CNI. The last time such a confluence of strange events occurred, it led to the largest federal criminal investigation of the last century besides the January 6 probe, at least six federal congressional investigations, and a series of events that finally ended with the first impeachment trial of then-President Trump. Both E. Jean Carroll and the court in New York overseeing Trump’s Sexual Abuse and Defamation case would appear to have just cause to apprehend that Trump’s shockingly sourced, eleventh-hour-issued new bond could in the future be invalidated by a state or federal investigation into both its provenance and any collateral—whether real or inchoate—Trump might have privately promised to secure it.

Certainly, as The Associated Press reports, as recently as three days ago Trump was so sure he would not be able to secure a supersedeas bond that he was begging for a new trial, instead.}

The New Republic further notes that “In 2018, Trump appointed Chubb’s CEO Evan Greenberg to a White House advisory committee for trade policy and negotiations.”

2018 was, of course, at the height of the Trump-Russia scandal. Thus, more broadly, the possibility that Trump could have held out a promise of future employment in a second Trump presidential administration to someone who was previously a Trump adviser is certainly yet another reason to think the court in E. Jean Carroll’s New York City case might schedule a show cause hearing after it leans of all this new evidence on Monday, March 11. At such a hearing, one imagines Evan Greenberg—possibly even Maurice Greenberg as well—being cross-examined by Carroll lawyer Roberta Kaplan.

Almost no banks will lend to Trump—a situation that’s been well-publicized since at least the first decade of this century—but now the Kremlin-linked Greenberg Family has done so at a time Trump needs to pay his bills to stay in the 2024 presidential race, and needs to win the 2024 election in order to aid the Kremlin with its illegal invasion of Europe and its scheme to destroy the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).

We don’t yet know whether the Kremlin was directly involved in the otherwise truly inexplicable generosity of the Greenbergs, but surely it’s now imperative for the U.S. intelligence community not only to find out but to immediately report to Congress its findings. What is clear is that a family that has long worked to advance the position of the Kremlin in the United States and abroad has now effectively done so yet again by assisting the Kremlin’s favorite American politician when no one else would do so—and was refusing to do so for unassailable business reasons.

News of Donald Trump again becoming entangled with Kremlin allies in a way that meets the conventional definition of compromise comes just a day after major media reports confirmed that Trump will begin receiving classified intelligence briefings this summer. He remains on trial in a federal court in Florida for illegally retaining classified documents following his presidency, and has made clear in interviews that he believes himself entitled to sell any classified information in his possession (often falsely citing a precedent allegedly involving disgraced former Republican President Richard Nixon in doing so).

Candidate Trump’s evasion of consequences for his crimes and torts is now arguably being sponsored by Kremlin allies. Given that Trump is the presumptive Republican Party presidential nominee, this places America into a state of national emergency.

Addendum

Despite its ties to Russia—among many other countries—the involvement of Chubb as an entity is, as noted above, far less significant to this major breaking news than is the apparent sign-off by its CEO on a supersedeas bond for Trump apparently no other reputable carrier would issue.

Nevertheless, it is worth noting that Chubb, with Evan Greenberg at the helm, has led the charge to underwrite Russian oil and gas expansion—which, as it happens, is key to Trump’s 2024 energy agenda. Despite the fact that, under President Joe Biden, the United States is producing more oil than any country ever has in the history of the world, candidate Trump has been adamant in lying about this unchallenged fact as part of his bid to get American voters to back his energy plans, instead. And what do those plans entail? Readers of national bestseller Proof of Corruption (Macmillan, 2020) will have an idea, but the upshot is that Trump and his inner circle have always been avidly invested in the success of—and this will come as no surprise to Proof readers—the Russian and Ukrainian energy sectors. Indeed, this ongoing obsession of Trump’s is one of the themes that runs through all three books of the bestselling Proof Trilogy.

Certainly, Biden’s surprisingly aggressive (one might even say “America First”) drilling policy is bad for the Russian oil and gas industry Chubb and Greenberg are invested in, and bad for the long-range business designs and investments of his associates. But it is good for Trump’s odds of receiving continued Russian election interference in his favor.

There is clearly much more to be learned about the relationship between Trump, the Greenberg Family, and the Kremlin. For instance, Maurice and Evan Greenberg are members of the well-known Council on Foreign Relations, an organization whose April 1, 2016 event in Hawaii Carter Page felt it necessary to attend—along with only a small group of others—rather than be at the first and only live gathering of candidate Trump and his National Security Advisory Committee. A picture of Mr. Page at the Hawaii event is below; Kremlin sympathizer (and possible 2024 Trump running mate) Tulsi Gabbard is at its center.

It is significant that Page is also a member, just like the Greenbergs, of the Council on Foreign Relations, as the elder Greenberg was at Trump Tower during the very period of time self-described “Kremlin adviser” Page was selected—an election that shocked the national security establishment inside the United States—to be the first member of Trump’s national security advisory corps. To date, there has been no explanation as to how or why someone who had previously been investigated as a possible Kremlin spy got so close to the national security apparatus of a major-party political candidate. A recommendation from the Council on Foreign Relations has long been suspected.