Special Counsel, Robert Mueller has submitted his report to the Attorney General, William Barr. Barr is expected to release the report to Congress as early as this weekend. We can’t tell you what Mueller concluded but here’s what to expect. (updated).

While it’s tempting to think of Trump-Russia as a single crime like a jewelry heist with the American Presidency substituting for priceless gems, it is not that simple. In reality, the operation was a series of interconnected, simultaneous crimes, all setting up the right conditions for the taking of the most powerful throne on the planet.

There is no crime called “Stealing the American Presidency,” so Mueller’s first task is to identify whether a crime was committed to effect the election result for the benefit of the conspirators. To continue our jewelry heist analogy, this would be akin to our jewelry thieves disrupting traffic to create a distraction so they can slip past police with the loot. Because of this, Mueller’s case will be largely circumstantial and we don’t expect a smoking gun.

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Mueller’s second task is to determine if the crime was a conspiracy. To qualify as one, Mueller needs to show two or more parties conspiring in the execution of a crime. Conspirators usually try to hide their involvement from being detected by using cut-outs or intermediaries to execute their crime. Mueller may not have any direct evidence that Putin and Trump were directly conspiring but he will likely have evidence their subordinates did.

Important note, even if the actual crime was never carried out, the very fact that two or more parties planned to execute an offense together makes it a conspiracy.

Mueller’s third task is to prove the involvement of Russia or its agents or agencies on the one hand, and the Trump campaign or its associates on the other hand, in the execution of this conspiracy and crime. That is the scope of Mueller’s mandate.

Does Mueller have the goods?

If Mueller can determine Trump-Russia was a conspiracy, he’ll need to show a coordinated operation to defraud America and its citizens during the 2016 Presidential Election. There’s an actual law called “Conspiracy to Defraud the United States” (923.18 U.S.C Section 371) as defined by Hammerschmidt v. United States as:

To summarize, Mueller needs to determine if a crime was committed, whether it was a conspiracy and if it involved Russia and the Trump campaign or their delegates. Fortunately, Mueller already has a significant amount of evidence, and most of it has already been tested before grand juries and judges through various indictments and hearings.

Other countries, interest groups, politicians, organizations – criminal or otherwise – and some very wealthy people may also have been involved in the planning and execution of the conspiracy and the underlying crime or crimes. All told, we may find the number of people with direct knowledge of the crime to be in the hundreds or more, but Mueller’s primary interest is specifically Russia and the Trump Campaign.

One operation, many conspiracies.

Trump-Russia was one operation consisting of a many possible crimes, or conspiracies. These include known operations to influence the NRA, the use of stolen Facebook data to shift sentiment, an attempt to hand over dirt on HRC’s campaign and could even include the mysterious death of a GOP operative in Chicago.

Each of these operations appears to have their own conspiracies and their own crimes but one operation stands out among them as having the clearest connective tissue between the Russian state and the Trump campaign, and that is:

The DNC hack and the subsequent publication of emails by WikiLeaks is likely to be ground zero of Mueller’s report.

This operation has it all. Donald Trump himself pleading for help from Russia and WikiLeaks, an actual intrusion into the DNC servers by cyber hackers at Russia’s military intelligence, GRU, and a motley crew of Trump associates with a demonstrable timeline of contacts with WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange, including Roger Stone and the president’s son.

There are four known key nodes of this operation.

• The GRU hack of DNC servers. Twelve GRU officers were already indicted as part of this conspiracy.
• The publication of the contents from the hacked servers by WikiLeaks.
• Coordination between Trump associates and WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange including regular contact with Paul Manafort and Roger Stone.
• The GRU also coordinated its activities with a troll farm in St. Petersburg which spread fake news on social media.

Mueller’s indictment of the 12 GRU officers gives us a clear indication of the many crimes that could fall under this conspiracy. “From phishing attacks to gain access to Democratic operatives, to money laundering, to attempts to break into state elections boards, the indictment details a vigorous and complex effort by Russia’s top military intelligence service to sabotage the campaign of Mr. Trump’s Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton,” says the New York Times.

A note on the front page of Roger Stone’s indictment from January 24, 2019, refers to his possible inclusion in a more significant case of conspiracy. The related case number refers to the indictment of the twelve GRU officers. “The Stone indictment was a conspiracy indictment without any conspirators,” says legal analyst Glenn Kirshner.

In today’s announcement we learned that Stone’s prosecution will continue in November albeit under a different office. Another strand of prosecution into the inauguration committee will also continue.

Expect no more indictments from Mueller

Mueller let it be known today that there would be no further indictments from his office but this doesn’t preclude further indictments as a result of the remaining investigations or state investigations. Thos are still likely according Rep Adam Schiff and Senator Richard Blumenthal, who told MSNBC: “I think there’s a strong possibility of additional indictments, including the president’s family.”

We know that Paul Manafort’s deputy at the Trump Campaign, Rick Gates, has provided extensive cooperation to state investigator particularly in New York. The SDNY is also investigating campaign finance violations resulting from Michael Cohen plus other investigations.

One big question that remains unanswered is the involvement of Saudi Arabia, UAE and Israel in the Trump-Russia conspiracy. Mueller’s team has been investigating this thread but has obviously chosen not to indict anyone. Why he declined to prosecute will be an area of interest.

Mueller may also issue his findings on whether there was a Conspiracy to Obstruct Justice in the firing of James Comey. We will also watch with interest Michael Flynn’s involvement in an upcoming case relating to Turkey.

The investigation into the Trump campaign’s possible crimes does not end with the Mueller report, nor does it end with state or congressional investigations. Judgement on Trump will likely only be delivered at polling booths in 2020.

Will Mueller indict Donald Trump?

This is the big question. Mueller has evidence Trump was aware of the hacking, timing and context of the publication of the hacked material. This was one of the biggest revelations to emerge from Michael Cohen’s testimony before the House Oversight Committee.

Trump also publicly conspired when he called on Russia and Wikileaks to help during the campaign. This suggests Trump could be an un-indicted co-conspirator but it seems likely he will escape exposure in the report. That does not mean he will escape indictment by the SDNY.

This has been a long road, and whatever Mueller decides, perhaps one of the most important results of the entire process is that he be allowed to complete it. It is actual proof that we still have a functioning Justice Department and that the “rule of law” still prevails in the U.S. Many challenges lie ahead, but Mueller’s decision needs to be peacefully accepted for what it is, no matter what it is.

We need to give investigators time to complete their work. Our impatience shouldn’t have any more influence over the timing of Mueller’s work than Donald Trump’s indignance. As one old proverb puts it, the wheels of justice turn slowly but grind exceedingly fine.

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Billionaire Oleg Deripaska is at the middle of the central crime of Trump-Russia. Is he a spy, the conspiracy’s mastermind or a double agent?

Showdown at Pikalevo

The 2009 global liquidity crisis ground Russian manufacturing to a near-halt. In Pikalevo, Russia, workers at the local aluminum refinery had gone unpaid for weeks. Oleg Deripaska, the plant’s 41-year-old owner, was inside and expecting word of a guest. Just months earlier, the oligarch had been named Russia’s richest man by Forbes – worth $28 Billion. Now he was facing financial ruin and a visit from the (then) Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.

Putin strode into town, media in tow, and into a meeting with the owners. He accused them of “ambition, incompetence and pure greed,” in a dramatic dressing down that was later broadcast on national TV.

“These are real people, and if you can’t [reopen the factory], we’ll do it without you,” he continued.

Putin then passed around contracts which committed the owners to pay the late salaries from their own pockets. That’s when he noticed a hold-out.

“Deripaska, have you signed?” The then 56-year-old Prime Minister stared at the oligarch.

Deripaska must have known that his boss was in no mood for negotiation. Despite the pretense of private ownership, Russia remains an oligarchy. Deripaska may be the aluminum king but like all the owners of Russia’s biggest companies, Putin exerts ultimate control over him.

Deripaska made his way to where Putin was seated at the front of the room, leaned his 6-foot frame over the table and signed using Putin’s pen, only to be further humiliated when Putin asked for his pen back.

The showdown in Pikalevo makes clear how Deripaska has survived as Putin’s closest oligarch for over two decades. His is a loyalty forged out of expediency.

Deripaska should have gone broke over this crisis, but Putin was there to facilitate a $50 Billion loan from the state bank, Vneshtorgbank (VTB). Putin uses access to money and loans from VTB as a way to control his oligarchs.

Putin’s secret agent

Oleg Vladimirovich Deripaska has until recently run Russia’s global aluminum company ‘Rusal’ and the investment company ‘Basic Element.’ At 51 years old, he is still spectacularly wealthy (worth $3.5 Billion), Jewish and the father of two children. The oligarch is divorced and is dogged by rumours of a wild sex life. While his marriage didn’t fare so well, his loyalty to Putin seems unshakeable.

Deripaska is known as “Putin’s oligarch” and is often sent on state missions which exist outside the bounds of traditional diplomacy or legality – often on one of his private yachts or planes in order to ensure secrecy. “I don’t separate myself from the state,” he told the Financial Times in 2007.

The next year in 2008, Deripaska and his best friend, Nat Rothschild, were spotted on the deck of his yacht with British business secretary Lord Mandelson and shadow chancellor George Osbourne. The resulting scandal in the UK newspapers was huge and went on for years. What emerged was a pattern of buying influence through luxury vacations, which Deripaska continues until today.

The Russian magnate has a knack of turning politicians into puppets. Buying political influence abroad helps the oligarch in two ways. It gives him leverage against other oligarchs and Putin domestically, but it is mostly self-serving. In one 2012 trip with Rothschild and Lord Mandelson, Deripaska clinched a $500 million deal with Alcoa, America’s largest aluminum manufacturer.

It’s hard to tell where business ends and organized crime begins in Russia. They are one and the same thing, allowing the elite to get away with almost anything. Deripaska denies he has ties to organized crime but authorities have investigated him for money-laundering, murder, illegal wiretapping, bribery, extortion and racketeering. When the U.S. banned him from entering the country, Putin gave him a diplomatic passport to get around the travel ban. he has spent millions and lobbied the U.S. government for years to reverse the ban.

Deripaska, his companies or direct associates have been linked to intelligence operations which allegedly disrupted elections in at least four of Russia’s neighbouring states. In December, Russian intelligence agent Alekseyevich Boyarkin was linked to Deripaska in a plot to interfere in Montenegro’s 2016 election.

The oligarch is not a spy, nor does he work for Russia’s military intelligence, yet somehow wherever he goes, spies seem to follow. That could mean one of two things: He plays a role in state-run military intelligence operations or the GRU is freelancing for him. One exiled oil oligarch says both are possible if you think of the Kremlin as being run by mobsters. “The criminal gang in the Kremlin can sometimes call on the services of the GRU,” Mikhail Khodorkovsky told the BBC.

Either way, Deripaska’s involvement with the GRU and its political interference arm may have gained him inside knowledge of the operation to hack the DNC in 2016. The very crime for which Special Counsel Robert Mueller indicted 12 GRU officers last July.

Deripaska’s proximity to power and his ties to military intelligence has also made him an attractive prospect for U.S. intelligence recruiting for over a decade.

Flipping Oleg

In 2014, The Justice Department began a documented two-year effort to recruit Deripaska as an informant as part of “Operation Outreach”. Intriguingly, it was former MI-6 spy Christopher Steele – the famous author of the dossier that bears his name – who approached DOJ to suggest potentially flipping Deripaska.

It wasn’t the first time Deripaska worked with the FBI. In 2009, the FBI enlisted the oligarch for an attempted rescue of Bob Levinson, the American held hostage in Iran. The mission didn’t succeed but Deripaska got enough information out of the Iranians to get what he wanted out of the deal: A legal U.S. visa.

The recent effort to flip Deripaska began in earnest in September 2015. The Justice Department’s Bruce Ohr met Deripaska to ask about Putin’s ties to organized crime. Deripaska reportedly rebuffed the advance but by the beginning of 2016, the oligarch’s rehabilitation was underway.

We know this because the FBI helped Deripaska get another U.S. visa in February 2016. The oligarch was “encouraged” by the “softening of the agency’s stance,” according to emails released by Republican lawmakers. “We reckon that the forthcoming OVD contact represents a good opportunity for the USG,” Steele texted Ohr. Deripaska’s initials are OVD.

Keep in mind, this was all happening at the same time Christopher Steele was writing his dossier. As it turns out, Steele had worked for Deripaska in 2012. While it’s unclear if the two men were in direct contact, Deripaska was sending Steele messages through his U.S. lobbyist, Adam Waldman. Was Steele working for Deripaska? No one can say for sure but FBI Director Christopher Wray refused to discuss it in an unclassified setting when Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) asked him at a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing in February last year.

Later in February 2016, Deripaska was the subject of a U.S. inter-agency meeting. Prior to the meeting, Steele shared sensitive documents which showed Putin was exerting pressure on the oligarchs and that “Deripaska was not a tool,” according to Steele.

Contacts between Steele, Deripaska, Waldman and Ohr, continued almost all the way up to the election. The last contact was in September 2016, when Ohr and Steele showed up unannounced at Deripaska’s New York apartment.

“We think Russia is colluding with the Trump campaign, and we think Manafort is the key guy,” a knowledgeable source told David Ignatius of the Washington Post.

According to the source, Deripaska responded: “I hate Manafort, and I’m suing him.”

That may have been true but it was also an artful dodge because we now know Deripaska was receiving regular updates from Manafort throughout 2016. It’s equally noteworthy Deripaska was in New York in September 2016, two months before the election, under a mile away from Donald Trump, his kids, Michael Cohen and Felix Sater on a visa provided to him because of the efforts of the FBI.

In Trump, Manafort saw a way out

Deripaska met Paul Manafort through Rothschild. The two billionaires hired Manafort in 2004 to help suppress a popular uprising in Ukraine. Deripaska teamed up his new American operative with Konstantin Kilimnik, a former Soviet soldier with ties to the GRU. The two men worked side-by-side for the next 11 years in Ukraine, Georgia, Kryzghstan and the U.S., always with a pro-Putin agenda.

Manafort inked a lucrative a $10 million a year contract with the oligarch in 2005 to “influence politics, business dealings and news coverage to benefit President Vladimir Putin’s government.” That work allegedly continued through 2009. Deripaska’s spokespeople deny all these contacts and allegations.

Manafort’s directive was to get a president elected who would be more inclined to keep Ukraine out of NATO. Along with Kilimnik, Manafort’s American deputy Rick Gates and pollster Tony Fabrizio, Manafort remade the image of pro-Putin Victor Yanukovich and helped engineer his election as President in 2010. Manafort and Kilimnik stayed on as Yanukovich’s advisers until he was ejected from power in 2014 by the Maidan revolution.

Barely two years later, this same cast of political tricksters would turn their attention to the US elections, and what would soon become the single biggest scandal of all time.

After the revolution, Manafort faced an uncertain future. His work in Ukraine had rendered him unemployable, and his finances were in bad shape as the result of a court fight with Deripaska over a failed investment scheme worth $16 million.

By 2015, Manafort was down and out. His wife had discovered he was cheating. He was broke and ended up in a rehab facility in Arizona. It may have been the desert air or group therapy, but Manafort left that rehab center with a clear focus: Donald Trump.

Manafort had known Trump for decades and owned an apartment in Trump Tower, yet the prevailing narrative is that he needed his friend Thomas Barack to get him in contact with the Republican candidate. Barack came through and Trump hired Manafort, for no pay.

From the start, Deripaska was tracking Manafort

Manafort had barely been on the job at the Trump campaign for two weeks when he got word to his old patron Deripaska via Konstantin Kilimnik.

“I assume you have shown our friends my media coverage, right?” Manafort asked Kilimnik.

“Absolutely,” Kilimnik replied. “Every article.”

“How do we use to get whole,” Manafort asked. “Has OVD operation seen?

“Frankly the coverage has been much better than Trump’s,” Kilimnik quipped. “In any case, it will hugely enhance your reputation no matter what happens.”

Throughout those early days, Manafort kept Deripaska abreast of what was going on via Kilimnik. At one point Manafort shared internal campaign research with the oligarch via Kilimnik and at another time offered Deripaska regular briefings on the campaign.

In an interview with Radio Free Europe, Kilimnik confirmed Trump was a regular topic of their email correspondence. “We discussed a lot of issues, from Putin to women,” Kilimnik told Radio Free Europe. “Of course we discussed Trump and everything,” he said.

Kilimnik fled Kyiv as soon as he was indicted on Obstruction of Justice charges for attempting to convince witnesses to back Manafort’s cover-up story. He now lives in a gated community north of Moscow, out of the reach of the Special Counsel.

Deripaska’s involvement in Trump-Russia is no longer just conjecture. His history with Manafort, Kilimnik and Rick Gates, combined with emails and other evidence directly implicating him, along with his history of running destabilizing influence campaigns, reveals he was not only connected to the GRU at the time the DNC was hacked, but he was also tracking every move Manafort made as Trump’s campaign chair. And now we also know he was tapped into Julian Assange as well.

Finding Julian

Deripaska’s associates visited Julian Assange of WikiLeaks at least twelve times between 2013 and 2017. Paul Manafort alone visited Assange three times in the Ecuadorian Embassy. The last visit came in March 2016, while he was working for Donald Trump and a month before the GRU successfully hacked into the DNC servers. Manafort also attempted to secure Assange’s release on a visit to Ecuador.

The other Deripaska associate to visit Assange was the oligarch’s American lobbyist Adam Waldman, who visited Assange nine times in 2017. One of those visits came just days after Waldman was spotted with Deripaska at the oligarch’s hotel Aurelio in Lech, Austria. Video of Waldman and his wife at a bar with Deripaska was shot by Deripaska’s former mistress who until recently was imprisoned in a Thai jail.

Waldman claims Assange is a client and that at the time, he was attempting to negotiate the WikiLeaks founder’s a possible release with the DOJ. Waldman – like many D.C. lobbyists – is the very definition of ‘conflict of interest’ in a town where everyone is conflicted, but having Deripaska, Assange and Manafort as clients at the same time is a feat few would attempt.

Even if Waldman were solely acting for Assange, it’s suspicious that his outreach to the WikiLeaks founder, only began after Manafort’s had ended. Mysteriously, both men tried to secure Assange’s release. Why was Deripaska so invested in this relationship? Was he worried he’d be implicated if Assange was indicted? It does appear Assange has been indicted under seal.

Mastermind, secret agent or confidential source?

No matter how you look at it, Oleg Deripaska is the central figure connecting all aspects of the main crime of Trump-Russia. The oligarch is the only known person with access to the three identified nodes of the WikiLeaks operation: the GRU, Manafort’s campaign tenure and Julian Assange, at the time of the crime.

Was Deripaska a source for Christopher Steele’s dossier? We don’t know the answer, but there can be no doubt about his loyalty to Putin.

Lat month Deripaska used a million-dollar lobbying effort to convince U.S. senators to exclude his companies from sanctions. While he placed some of his Rusal shares in trust with VTB, the moves were mostly viewed as window-dressing as he still indirectly controls the majority of shares, only without the pressure of sanction bearing down on the company’s bottom line.

Deripaska remains unindicted.

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Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman appears to have ‘lost’ the world’s most expensive painting. The Leonardo da Vinci masterpiece, Salvator Mundi, may hold the key to the Trump-Russia investigation. And, the artwork itself could be evidence of collusion.

Leonardo da Vinci’s ‘last’ masterpiece was to be unveiled on September 18 at the spellbinding new Louvre in Abu Dhabi, but the exhibit was put on a temporary hold, amid rumours the painting was lost.

The art world has become increasingly alarmed. After all, Salvator Mundi is the most expensive artwork ever sold. “Nobody outside the immediate Arab hierarchy knows where it is,” Da Vinci scholar Martin Kemp told The Times.

Questions are being raised. First, why did the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, an art novice, buy the masterpiece? Secondly, why did he overpay for it by $300 million? Even for the stupendously wealthy Prince Mohammed bin Salman, that’s not just a simple rounding error. How do you misplace a $450 million painting anyway?

We can also reveal Special Counsel Robert Mueller is investigating both the buyer and the seller of the Da Vinci masterpiece as part of the Trump-Russia investigation.

All the intrigue suits Salvator Mundi’s already storied past well, but as I write this, no-one has seen the rare masterpiece in over a year, and its exact whereabouts have been unknown for over 100 days.

Masterpiece or Fraud?

Leonardo da Vinci is said to have painted the Salvator Mundi, which literally translates to ‘Savior of the World’, as a male counterpart to his Mona Lisa, and an homage to his other Christ masterpiece, The Last Supper. The result of those intersecting ideas is an eerie portrait of Jesus Christ in a blue renaissance robe, offering benediction with his right hand raised and while holding a glass orb in his left.

Da Vinci was not prolific. He only pained 20 great works his entire life. That’s why the art world heralded Salvator Mundi’s rebirth over a decade ago with a messianic zeal only it could muster. “A painting of the most iconic figure in the world by the most important artist of all time,” gushed Loic Gouzer, co-chairman of post-war and contemporary art at Christie’s. “The opportunity to bring this masterpiece to the market is an honour that comes around once in a lifetime.”

Salvator Mundi has a pedigree, but also a bit of a sketchy past. The painting was first recorded in the collection of King Charles I in the early 1600s, but since then ‘Salvator’ was inauspiciously passed down from one lesser royal collection to the next, until it eventually sold for a mere £45 at a Sotheby’s auction in 1958, before disappearing for more than half a century.

In 2005, ‘Salvator Mundi” had its second coming when a consortium of businessmen acquired the damaged masterpiece from the estate at a small regional auction house. The Savior needed saving itself. Christ’s hair and face were painted over, and the canvas ripped on the side of his face.

It took six years of painstaking research and inquiry by the world’s ‘leading authorities on the works and career of Da Vinci’ to not only authenticate the lost masterpiece but to completely restore it, allowing Christie’s to present it to the world as it would have looked when Da Vinci painted it.

The reborn Salvator Mundi was unveiled at London’s National Gallery in 2011 to much fanfare, although you’d be hard-pressed to find mention of the masterpiece in the gallery’s official guide. You can read a back-pedaling attribution to Da Vinci in the Gallery’s statement: “an important opportunity to test this new attribution by direct comparison with works universally accepted as Leonardo’s.”

As if that weren’t enough, a quick reading of Jonathan Jones’ review in The Guardian would convince any ardent art follower something was afoot. “The transparent orb is far too brilliantly painted to be the work of one of his disciples,” Jones wrote, referring to a painting technique not yet invented in Leonardo’s time. Some doubted it was a genuine Da Vinci, others thought the reconstruction was heavy-handed. Despite the question marks over its authenticity, the world’s wealthiest art collectors scrambled to acquire it.

A Russian in the House

Dmitry Rybolovlev’s story is typical of many Russian oligarchs. He made his fortune as a potash miner until the Kremlin bought him out, sending him into a friendly “exile”. Rybolovlev chose the Grimaldi House of Monaco to set up shop. He bought the luxurious penthouse “La Belle Epoque” on Monaco’s famous seaside cliffs, the AC Monaco football team, 10% in the Bank of Cyprus and allegedly an extensive network of corruptable judges, ministers and other officials.

He also met Swiss art dealer Yves Bouvier, from whom he bought about $2 billion in art. Rybolovlev officially paid Bouvier a 2% commission per painting, but he later found out the Swiss art dealer was also acting for the seller, marking up prices and pocketing the margin along with both buyer’s and seller’s commissions.

That is how Rybolovlev came to own The Salvator Mundi for $127 million, instead of its valued $80 million. The two men have been squabbling in court ever since. Both have been arrested. And Rybolovlev is suing Sotheby’s for knowing and not telling, he was being ripped off. The case itself could be a scam: money launderers often sue each other to wash their money with a judge’s order.

Since March 2013, the now $127 million ‘Salvator Mundi’ has been hanging in Rybolovlev’s penthouse in New York City. Rybolovlev sees no shame in the $47 million he lost in the purchase of the masterpiece. It wouldn’t be the first time someone’s accused him of overpaying.

In addition to several corruption investigations in Monaco and Europe, Rybolovlev is also under investigation by Special Counsel Robert Mueller for the $95 million purchase of Donald Trump’s home in Palm Beach in 2006, which Trump had bought four years earlier for $41 million. There was no market reason for the $ 54 million mark-up, except to save Trump from another bankruptcy.

After struggling to sell it, Rybolovlev demolished the property to sell it for its seafront land. Experts point out all three of Rybolovlev’s investment interests – football, art and real estate – are prime vehicles for money laundering.

The corruption investigations into Rybolovlev may connect his finances directly to the Kremlin. Especially if they prove he manages the assets of Russian deputy premier Yuri Trutnev, as claimed in Der Spiegel in November.

Rybolovlev occupies the same proximity to Putin as Oleg Deripaska, making him extremely rich and powerful and a loyal ally of the Russian president. Rybolovlev regularly mixes affairs of state with his personal business. In 2016, he met Donald Trump twice in the final days of the campaign. Both men deny the meetings took place, but radar tracking reveals their planes coincided on airport tarmacs in both Charlotte, NC and Las Vegas, just days before the election.

The ‘Other’ Don Jr. Meeting

There has been a lot of ink spilled on the June 9 meeting at Trump Tower, involving Donald Trump, Jr., Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya and a significant offer of dirt on Hillary Clinton, to which Don, Jr. famously responded, “I love it.”

But a far more significant meeting took place at Trump Tower three weeks later which has received far less coverage, and yet it may be the most important evidence of collusion Robert Mueller has uncovered. The August event may well become “the single most important event of Trump-Russia,” Seth Abramson, author of “Proof of Collusion” told me this week.

Erik Prince arranged the meeting. Prince is a mercenary who is notorious for his work with Blackwater. He is still a gun for hire working for the Chinese and Emiratis yet somehow, Prince still played a pivotal, yet unofficial role for the Trump Transition and coordinating this meeting was as significant as they come.

Prince planned to meet his guests at a nearby hotel to avoid the glare of the media assembled in Trump Tower’s gilded lobby.

You’re wondering who the guests were? George Nader, a Lebanese-American businessman who was acting as an emissary for both the Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohamed Bin Salman (MbS) and the de facto leader of the UAE, Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed (MbZ). Nader was accompanied by Joel Zamel, the Australian-born Israeli founder of Psy-Group, and an expert in social media manipulation.

As the three men made small talk, President Obama was on TV pleading with the Republican Party to reject Trump as their candidate, and calling him “unfit to serve.” Prince smiled and checked his watch. He knew Obama’s criticism would only strengthen Trump’s chances. “We have the green light to go up,” Prince told Nader and Zamel.

The three men made their way out of the hotel for the short walk to Trump Tower through rush-hour traffic, passed the media in the lobby and up to the 26th floor in one of those golden elevators. Donald Trump, Jr. was already in the conference room with Stephen Miller, when the three men walked in.

The Plot To Elect a President

Nader began his pitch. The Saudi and Emirati princes “were eager to help your father win election as president,” Nader said. He said Zamel’s Psy Group was particularly successful at social media manipulation and the two crown princes would bankroll a multi-million dollar plan drawn up by Zamel, to help elect his father president.

Psy-Group had figured out how to shift public sentiment by creating fake news, publishing it on fake news sites and then amplifying it through a network of some 5,000 fake social media accounts. The company’s side-hustle was providing services in the dark arts of honey-trapping, hacking and blackmail, for a fee.

Not surprisingly Don. Jr. “responded approvingly” to the pitch, according to the New York Times but he later claimed he turned down the offer. There are no contracts or invoices to prove the campaign was ever executed. Lawyers for both sides deny any campaign collaboration. Of course, if they had, it would have been illegal.

The Facts Don’t Concur

In reality, there is evidence Psy-Group carried out some work for the campaign. For one thing, the Trump Campaign’s main digital partner, Cambridge Analytica, didn’t have the tools to deliver the social media content the campaign constantly credits for its victory.

Cambridge Analytica’s raison d’etre was psychographic profiling using stolen Facebook data. Psy-Group brought to the table a fake news factory proven to sway minds.

CamAnalytica and Psy also appeared to let the cat out of the bag when, one month after Trump’s victory, they publicly announced they would partner on future campaigns together, including a joint pitch the U.S. State Department, but failed to explain how they were introduced to each other.

Sources also tell the Daily Beast contacts between Psy-Group and the Trump Campaign were far more extensive than first reported, involving at least two other members of Trump’s inner circle. Company founder Zamel also spoke to Trump officials about helping Saudi Arabia and regime change in Iran.

Psy-Group is based in Israel but it is registered in Cyprus and corporately aligns in off-shore holding databases with companies owned by Russian oligarchs and banks. Mueller has also taken a specific interest in Zamel, and his close relationship with two of Putin’s most powerful oligarchs, the aforementioned Oleg Deripaska and Dmitry Robolovlov.

In February, Mueller subpoenaed the Cypriot bank accounts of the Psy-Group and dispatched a team of investigators to Israel this Spring to interview Zamel. This clearly struck a nerve. Within a week, Psy-Group shuttered the entire operation.

And remember, George Nader is cooperating with the investigation and he was in on every conversation with Don, Jr., Zamel, Kushner and the two crown princes. Nader has already testified before a grand jury and acknowledged making a $2m payment to Zamel. Psy-Group almost certainly worked for the campaign, the question is how did they get paid?

Art of the Deal

$300 million. That’s the incredible profit Rybolovlev made on the sale of Salvator Mundi. $300 million is also the amount Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (acting through an intermediary) “accidentally” overpaid for the artwork.

At first, laundering hundreds of millions of dollars in full view of a global audience, may not seem like the smartest move, but the facts support this may have been what the two crown princes and Dmitry Rybolovlev tried to do.

Rybolovlev put the masterpiece up for auction through Christie’s in November 2017. The estimated price for Lot 9B was between $80 and $120 million. Christies’s auctioneers were stunned when bidding quickly surged past $80 million in just seconds and then, just as effortlessly over $130 million. Two anonymous bidders continuously outbid each other, not stopping until they had run up the price to $450.3 million, making it the single most expensive work of art ever sold at auction.

In the ensuing days, The New York Times unmasked Crown Prince Mohamed bin Salman as the masterpiece’s real buyer but the identity of the second bidder stayed hidden for months.

In March, The Daily Mail revealed the counter-bidder was Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed (MbZ). The princes claimed they had no idea the other was bidding and dismissed the whole thing as a mistake.

To be clear, these are the very same crown princes George Nader represented at the August 3rd meeting with Donald Trump, Jr. and whom, Nader promised, would pay for the social media campaign.

On the seller’s side, Dmitry Rybolovlev was not only well-acquainted with Psy-Group’s founder but as an owner of the Bank of Cyprus, he could quietly carve out payments to Psy-Group, along with any kickbacks to Putin, without anyone noticing

It’s worth noting that four months after the Da Vinci auction Mueller sent investigators to Israel to ask about specific deposits to Psy-Group’s Cypriot bank accounts. The FBI travelled to Israel in February, a month before the Abu Dhabi Crown Prince was outed as Salvator Mundi’s second bidder.

Savior of the World

I started writing this piece after watching the giddy display of backslapping by Vladimir Putin and Mohammed at the recent G20 summit. The two looked like they had gotten away with something big, Is it possible the high fiving was over this transaction?

The whereabouts of Salvator Mundi remain unknown; there are no plans to exhibit the artwork; the mystery of what happened at auction is deepening and Mueller’s relentless investigation into Psy-Group continues. These are all things that suggest to me there is much more to discover about the August 3 meeting and the Saudi, UAE and Israeli involvement in Trump-Russia.

The entire affair supports the new prevailing theory about the direction of the Mueller investigation.

Up until now, Robert Mueller’s focus has been squarely on Russian collusion but as citizens from other countries are implicated, it seems the Special Counsel has widened his purview from just collusion with Russia, to a multinational conspiracy of at least four countries including Russia: Saudi Arabia, The United Arab Emirates and Israel.

Gregg Smith, the former CEO of Prince’s Frontier Services Group told me this week he believes “the Israelis, Emiratis and Saudis all had a role and [Erik] Prince was [Steve] Bannon’s conduit to them.”

There can be no certainty when the game is subterfuge, and we need to wait for Mueller’s final report before we reach any conclusions, but if Leonardo’s Salvator Mundi proves to be a key which helps unlock Trump-Russia, “Savior of the World” could prove to be nothing short of prophetic.

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