A former Soviet intelligence official says the KGB chose Donald Trump in 1987 and called him “Krasnov.” Four decades later, Krasnov is positioned to finish the job.
“The two most powerful warriors are patience and time.”
— Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
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Art credit: Nicholas Roerich, Mount “M” (1931), tempera on canvas, Nicholas Roerich Museum, New York. Public domain. The long game is difficult to see from the valley. By the time the summit comes into view, decades of ascent have vanished.
FBI Director Kash Patel plans to travel to Russia on October 14–15, 2026, less than three weeks before the November 3 midterm elections. Politico reported that Patel plans to visit Moscow and St. Petersburg, with Russia’s Federal Security Service, the FSB, likely to host him. Under Patel, the FBI has spent 15 months developing law-enforcement collaboration with Russia targeting violent criminal networks. He told Reuters that the bureau’s new relationships with Russia and China were “new and dynamic.”
Reuters described the partnerships as a major break with past FBI practice and reported counterintelligence concerns from former bureau officials. Patel acknowledged Russia’s continuing adversarial conduct but defended engagement with Russian law enforcement, even as U.S. intelligence repeatedly identified Russia as a leading foreign-interference threat to American elections.
Murdoch’s New York Post endorsed Reagan in November 1979. By January 1983, the White House called Murdoch a “staunch supporter”; Reagan received him in the Oval Office. Murdoch became an American citizen on September 4, 1985, as Fox pursued six Metromedia stations. The FCC later called those acquisitions the foundation of a fourth national broadcast network.
Two years after Murdoch became an American citizen, Donald Trump traveled to Moscow in July 1987. He went to explore a hotel project with Soviet officials. Former KGB officer Alnur Mussayev later alleged that Soviet intelligence recruited Trump during that visit. Mussayev said the KGB assigned Trump the codename “Krasnov.”
Former KGB major Yuri Shvets separately described KGB cultivation efforts involving Trump. Shvets said Soviet intelligence encouraged Trump through flattery, sustained attention, and encouragement of his political ambitions.
Weeks after returning from Moscow, Trump purchased full-page advertisements in three major American newspapers. They appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Boston Globe. Trump attacked American defense commitments and demanded that wealthy allies shoulder substantially greater military costs. Shvets later characterized Trump’s intervention as a successful Soviet influence operation.
Trump’s July 1987 Moscow visit preceded his paid national attack on American alliance policy by only weeks. Trump publicly challenged security commitments Washington had spent decades building and defending. His arguments advanced objectives Moscow had long pursued: weakening American alliances and reducing Washington’s international commitments.
Russian strategic and geopolitical writing, including Aleksandr Dugin’s 1997 Foundations of Geopolitics, has contemplated weakening the United States through internal fracture rather than military invasion. Dugin prescribed separatism, racial conflict, extremism, political disorder, and American isolationism. John B. Dunlop found the book extraordinarily influential among Russian military and police institutions.
News Corp held 79 percent stakes in News Outdoor Russia and News Outdoor Romania, then sold both to a VTB Capital-led group. Its SEC filing reported approximately $360 million from the combined transaction.
The Senate Intelligence Committee identified Konstantin Kilimnik as a Russian intelligence officer and longtime Paul Manafort associate. Manafort repeatedly sought to share internal Trump campaign information with Kilimnik. The committee found Manafort’s campaign position created opportunities for Russian intelligence to obtain confidential campaign information.
Special Counsel Robert Mueller found Russian election interference “sweeping and systematic.” The Kremlin-backed Internet Research Agency built American-facing networks and impersonated Americans. Its operatives also purchased political advertisements. They exploited racial grievances and organized opposing demonstrations.
That Russian commercial history later intersected with Murdoch’s American media empire. Some Fox personalities amplified Russian allegations of American biological-weapons activity in Ukraine, giving Kremlin narratives access to a major American audience. By 2024, Russian state television was also giving Trump favorable treatment.
In July 2024, U.S. intelligence identified Russia as the predominant foreign threat to American elections. Russian actors sought to influence electoral outcomes and undermine election confidence. U.S. intelligence reported that foreign actors were conducting broader influence operations intended to undermine America’s global role and Washington’s international standing.
Former Attorney General Pam Bondi disbanded the Justice Department’s Foreign Influence Task Force in February 2025. Her memorandum limited FARA and Section 951 criminal charges to conduct resembling traditional espionage by foreign governments. Trump ordered agencies to prepare large-scale reductions in force across the federal workforce. Trump ordered withdrawal from 66 international organizations on January 7, 2026.
Christopher Armitage, publisher of the Substack The Existentialist Republic, documented the elimination and reduction of federal capabilities for detecting foreign election interference in his August 19, 2026 watchdog report. Storm-1516 more than doubled its output during early 2026 and approached daily production by spring. The Russian operation had created at least 200 fictional media websites and more than 1,000 fake journalist personas.
As that operation accelerated, Trump’s administration dismantled FBI, CISA, State Department, and ODNI capabilities for detecting foreign interference. CISA froze election-security work and ended funding for the Election Infrastructure Information Sharing and Analysis Center. Secretary of State Marco Rubio closed the Counter Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference office on April 16, 2025.
ODNI eliminated the Foreign Malign Influence Center while cutting its workforce by more than 40 percent, assigning foreign-influence monitoring elsewhere in the intelligence community. The Federal Election Commission lost its quorum on May 1, 2025. On July 9, 2026, Trump fired Democratic Election Assistance Commissioners Thomas Hicks and Benjamin Hovland as Republican Commissioner Christy McCormick resigned, leaving the four-member commission vacant.
Republican Representative Anna Paulina Luna hosted a sanctioned Russian State Duma delegation in Washington on March 26, 2026. Members Vyacheslav Nikonov, Boris Chernyshov, and Mikhail Delyagin met with congressional and executive-branch officials. Senators Jeanne Shaheen and Roger Wicker warned the delegation pursued Kremlin strategic aims, including gathering useful intelligence. Luna later supported reciprocal congressional travel to Russia, while Russian officials said she and other lawmakers planned to visit after the new State Duma convened.
To reconstruct the federal system after the Trump-Republican era, a successor government must reverse the election-security and counterintelligence dismantling. Congress must also confront changes to the Supreme Court and broadcast-ownership rules made during the Trump-Republican era and back to the Regan period. Congress can repopulate the Election Assistance Commission. Moreover, lawmakers can reactivate ODNI’s Foreign Malign Influence Center under 50 U.S.C. § 3059. A successor attorney general can rescind Pamela Bondi’s February 5, 2025, restrictions on FARA and § 951 prosecutions as well.
Federal law established the Supreme Court’s nine-seat composition, leaving lawmakers authority to alter the number by statute. If the judiciary invalidates statutes restoring election-security and counterintelligence protections, legislators may authorize additional seats. The president would nominate new justices, with the Senate deciding confirmation. Article III creates the Supreme Court but does not cap the membership number.
The FCC eliminated the 39-percent national television ownership cap on August 6, 2026. Congress can impose a statutory ceiling that future commissioners cannot erase administratively. Lawmakers can require political broadcasters to identify the people and corporations financing their programming. Federal law can also expose foreign money concealed through domestic intermediaries.
Congress can restore CISA operations and revive ODNI’s foreign-influence functions. Trump administration officials eliminated positions and dismantled offices that employed veteran CISA and ODNI specialists. A successor government must rebuild intelligence-sharing relationships with allied and partner services.
Forty-seven years after Reagan carried Hollywood performance into the presidency, Trump drove the Republican experiment with celebrity politics to its ugliest conclusion. An actor opened the door; a salesman with six corporate bankruptcies turned political theater into presidential power—and left the country fractured and broke. After nearly half a century, voters know the trick. The next political confidence person will not inherit a blank stage; he or she will inherit the wreckage and an electorate that already knows exactly what the con costs.
“Freedom means the capacity to begin, to start something new.”
— Hannah Arendt
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Sources
Jana Winter, Reuters, Under Patel, FBI Forges Unprecedented Law Enforcement Ties With China, Russia, August 5, 2026.
Nahal Toosi, Kyle Cheney, and John Sakellariadis, Politico, FBI Director Kash Patel Plans Russia Trip, July 20, 2026.
Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, White House Presidential Briefing Papers, Meeting with Rupert Murdoch, January 18, 1983.
Christopher Armitage, The Existentialist Republic, Watchdog Report: The 2026 Midterms Are Wide Open to Foreign Interference, August 19, 2026.
Federal Communications Commission, In re Application of Fox Television Stations, Inc. for Renewal of License of Station WNYW-TV, New York, New York, Memorandum Opinion and Order, FCC 95-188, May 4, 1995.
Estelle Nilsson-Julien, Euronews/Euroverify, Fact-Checking Online Claims That Donald Trump Was Recruited by the KGB as “Krasnov”, March 13, 2025.
David Smith, The Guardian, “The Perfect Target”: Russia Cultivated Trump as Asset for 40 Years—Ex-KGB Spy, January 29, 2021.
Howard Kurtz, The Washington Post, Between the Lines of a Millionaire’s Ad: New Yorker’s Foreign-Policy Foray Follows Political Overtures, September 1, 1987.
John B. Dunlop, Aleksandr Dugin’s Foundations of Geopolitics, Demokratizatsiya, Vol. 12, No. 1, 2004, pp. 41–57; Stanford University Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies.
News Corporation, Annual Report on Form 10-K for the Fiscal Year Ended June 30, 2012, U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, 2012.
Reuters, News Corp Sells Russian, Romanian Outdoor Ads Business, July 22, 2011.
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Robert S. Mueller III, Special Counsel, U.S. Department of Justice, Report on the Investigation into Russian Interference in the 2016 Presidential Election, Vol. I, March 2019.
David Klepper and Angelo Fichera, Associated Press, Russia’s Bioweapon Conspiracy Theory Finds Support in US, March 11, 2022.
Reuters, Russian State Media Flatters Trump, but Kremlin Cool on Him and Harris, October 22, 2024.
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Pamela Bondi, Attorney General, U.S. Department of Justice, General Policy Regarding Charging, Plea Negotiations, and Sentencing, memorandum to all Department employees, February 5, 2025.
The White House, Implementing the President’s “Department of Government Efficiency” Workforce Optimization Initiative, February 11, 2025.
Reuters, US Suspends Some Efforts to Counter Russian Sabotage as Trump Moves Closer to Putin, March 19, 2025.
Christina A. Cassidy, Associated Press, Trump Administration Halts Funding for Two Cybersecurity Efforts, Including One for Elections, March 10, 2025.
Marco Rubio, U.S. Department of State, Protecting and Championing Free Speech at the State Department, April 16, 2025.
Reuters, Top US Spy Gabbard Announces Staff Cut of Over 40% From Her Office, August 20, 2025.
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Congressional Research Service, Federal Election Commission: Membership and Policymaking Quorum, In Brief, R45160, updated March 2, 2026.
The White House, Withdrawing the United States from International Organizations, Conventions, and Treaties That Are Contrary to the Interests of the United States, January 7, 2026.
Nicole Sganga, CBS News, Trump Zeroes In on Election Security. His Team Has Cut Thousands of Election-Focused Federal Workers, July 16, 2026.
Jeanne Shaheen and Roger Wicker, U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, Ranking Member Shaheen, Chair Wicker Press Administration for Answers on Sanctioned Russian Delegation Visit to United States, April 3, 2026.
Reuters, Back in the USA—Russian Lawmakers Make First Visit for Years, March 26, 2026.
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50 U.S.C. § 3059, Foreign Malign Influence Center.
28 U.S.C. § 1, Number of Justices; Quorum.
U.S. Constitution, art. II, § 2, cl. 2; art. III, § 1.
David Shepardson, Reuters, US Agency Ends 39% Household Cap on Local TV Station Owners, August 6, 2026.
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