Hmmm… Interesting… What struck me first was the Derepaska connection – and then there’s the connection to the blocked-number calls that Trump Jr. made, bookending the Trump Tower meeting. Most startling was the statement that Geovanis may be a good person to query about whether or not there is kompromat on Trump! That merits a .
Senate investigators want to question a Moscow-based American businessman with longstanding ties to President Donald Trump after witnesses told them he could shed light on the President’s commercial and personal activities in Russia dating back to the 1990s, multiple sources have told CNN.
The Senate Intelligence Committee, which is probing allegations of Russian interference in the 2016 elections, has been keen to speak with David Geovanis for several months, the sources say.
Geovanis helped organize a 1996 trip to Moscow by Trump, who was in the early stages of pursuing what would become a long-held goal of building a Trump Tower in the Russian capital, according to multiple media reports at the time.
Years later, Geovanis worked for the Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska, whose ties to Trump’s 2016 campaign chairman Paul Manafort have also been of interest to investigators.
This is the first time that Geovanis’ name has been revealed in connection with the various investigations underway into Russian influence on US politics…
The Senate Intelligence Committee’s interest in Geovanis indicates its investigation is delving further back into Trump’s past in Russia than previously thought…
A third witness has alleged in written testimony, seen by CNN, that Geovanis may be valuable in the mystery of whether Russia has material on Trump that could be personally embarrassing to him.
After starting his career in finance, Geovanis went to Moscow to work for a Russian venture of a company called Brooke Group, which owned land earmarked for the site of a proposed Trump Tower. When Trump came to town to promote the project, sources say, it was Geovanis’ job to show him around.
Also on the trip were Brooke Group’s owners, the real estate moguls Bennett LeBow and Howard Lorber, who went on to become substantial donors to Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign. Trump personally acknowledged the pair from the podium after he won the 2016 New York Republican primary.
An archive video report of Trump’s 1996 Moscow trip emerged online in late January. The news report – misidentified on YouTube as dating from 1995 – shows Lorber, Lebow and Trump in discussion with Moscow’s then deputy mayor, Vladimir Resin, and his staff, with Geovanis looking on from the background.
Lorber has already been linked to the Senate investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 elections. The New York Times named him earlier this month as one of the Trump family associates who spoke with Donald Trump Jr. from blocked numbers around the time of a highly scrutinized 2016 meeting at Trump Tower in New York…