A life-loving Jewish group linking Trump and Putin.

Ben Schreckinger

 The Chabad Jewish Community Center of Port Washington on Long Island in Manhasset Bay is housed in a squat brick building opposite a Shell gas station and shopping mall. This is an unremarkable house on an unremarkable street, if you do not take into account one peculiarity. The shortest paths connecting Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin run through it.

 20 years ago, when the Russian president began to consolidate his power in the country, he launched a project to eradicate the structures of the Jewish civil society that existed in the country and to replace them with a parallel structure loyal to him. And on the other side of the world, a cheeky Manhattan real estate developer was trying to grab some of the huge flow of capital that poured out of the former Soviet Union in search of stable Western assets (especially real estate) and partners in New York with access to the entire region.

 Such aspirations led these two people, as well as Trump's future son-in-law Jared Kushner, to form a close and overlapping relationship in a small world centered on the international Hasidic movement Chabad, completely unknown to most people.

 In 1999, Putin enlisted the support of two of his confidants and the oligarchs Lev Leviev and Roman Abramovich, who later became the main patrons of Chabad around the world, and created the Federation of Jewish Communities of Russia under the leadership of Chabad Rabbi Berl Lazar, who is now called "Putin's rabbi."

 Several years later, Trump began searching for Russian projects and Russian capital, joining forces with Bayrock-Sapir, which was headed by Soviet emigrants Tevfik Arif, Felix Sater and Tamir Sapir, who maintained close ties with Chabad. The company's projects have been the subject of numerous fraudulent lawsuits, and a criminal investigation has been carried out into a Manhattan residential complex.

 Meanwhile, ties between Trump and Chabad have gradually strengthened and expanded. In 2007, Trump organized the wedding of Sapir's daughter and Leviev's closest aide, which took place at his posh Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach. Months after the ceremony, Leviev met with Trump to discuss potential deals in Moscow, and then arranged for the couple's first son to be circumcised in the most sacred site of Chabad Judaism. Trump attended the ceremony with Kushner, who later bought a $ 300 million house from Leviev and married Ivanka Trump. She, in turn, became close friends with Abramovich's wife Daria Zhukova. Zhukova hosted the influential couple in Russia in 2014 and attended Trump's inauguration as their guest.

 Thanks to this transatlantic diaspora and some global real estate tycoons, Trump Tower and Moscow's Red Square sometimes seem to be part of the same close-knit neighborhood. Now that Trump from the Oval Office has announced his desire to reorient the world order towards a better relationship with Putin, and the FBI is investigating inappropriate connections between Trump aides and the Kremlin, the small world of Chabad has suddenly taken on disproportionate importance.

 Trump Jews

 The Chabad-Lubavich movement was founded in 1775 in Lithuania, and today it has tens, and possibly hundreds of thousands of followers. Chabad makes up for its small size with enthusiasm. This movement is known as the most resilient form of Judaism.

 The president of the Zionist Organization of America, Mort Klein, recalls the impression made on him by this feature of Chabad. It was at one wedding. Two tables were occupied by the groom's cousins, the Chabad rabbis. They outdid all the other guests. “These guys were dancing like fire. I thought they were black. But no, they only had black hats, ”Klein said, referring to traditional Hasidic headdresses.

 Despite its small size, Chabad became the largest Jewish movement in the world. It is present in more than a thousand cities, including places like Kathmandu and Hanoi, where very few Jews live. The movement is known for its "Chabad houses" (Beit Chabad), which operate as community centers and are open to all Jews. “Take any godforsaken city in the world and there’s a McDonald’s restaurant and a Chabad home,” says New York-based Jewish public relations specialist Ronn Torossian.

 Chabad adherents differ from other Hasidim in numerous ways in customs and traditions. Men from Chabad wear hats instead of fur hats. Many members of this movement consider the leader of this movement, Rabbi Menachem-Mendel Schneerson, who died in 1994, as their messiah, and some believe that he is still alive. According to Klein, Chabad followers are very good at organizing fundraising.

 Paying serious attention to the preaching work, and attracting an increasing number of Jews around the world to Judaism, Chabad provides services to those Jews who are not fully believers.

 According to the famous New Jersey rabbi and longtime friend of Democratic Senator Cory Booker, Schmuley Boteach, Chabad offers Jews a third path to religious identity. “The Jew has three choices,” he explains. - A Jew can assimilate without maintaining close ties with religion. He can be religious and orthodox. And there is also a third opportunity that Chabad gives people who do not want to follow the path of the Orthodox, but who want to stay inside the religious field. "

 This third path precisely explains the closeness that Trump developed with many enthusiasts and supporters of Chabad, that is, with those Jews who shy away from liberal and reformist Judaism, preferring traditionalism, but are not too devout.

 “It is not surprising that Trump's associates are associated with Chabad,” Torossian said. - Chabad is the place where strong and stubborn Jews feel comfortable. Chabad is the place where no one judges anyone, where non-traditional people who are not used to living by the rules feel comfortable. "

 Speaking about the approaches of Chabad, which are less strict than those of the orthodox, he makes his conclusion: "If you cannot fulfill all the commandments, do those that you can."

 Torossian, who said, among other things, that he is a friend of Sater and his public relations representative, explained that this balance is especially attractive to Jews from the former Soviet Union, who value the combination of traditional trappings and an indulgent attitude towards observance of customs and rituals. “All Russian Jews go to Chabad,” he said. "Russian Jews are uncomfortable in a reformed synagogue."

 Jews of Putin

 As is often the case in Putin's Russia, the state began to support Chabad as a result of inter-factional power struggles.

 After becoming prime minister in 1999, Putin enlisted the support of Leviev and Abramovich in creating the Federation of Jewish Communities of Russia. Its goal was to weaken Jewish civil society in Russia and its umbrella organization, the Russian Jewish Congress, led by oligarch Vladimir Gusinsky, who posed a potential threat to Putin and President Boris Yeltsin. A year later, Gusinsky was arrested and forced to emigrate.

 At that time in Russia there was already Chief Rabbi Adolf Shaevich, who was recognized by the Russian Jewish Congress. But Abramovich and Leviev put the Chabad rabbi Berl Lazar at the head of the rival organization with the congress. The Kremlin removed Shayevich from its religious affairs council, and has since recognized Lazar as Russia's chief rabbi. As a result, two candidates for this post appeared in the country.

 The Putin-Chabad alliance benefits from both sides. Under Putin, anti-Semitism is discouraged, and this is an important departure from the centuries-old tradition of discrimination and pogroms. In addition, the state supports them with a sanctioned version of Jewish identity, calling Jews an integral part of the nation.

When Putin began to consolidate his power in Russia, Lazar was derisively called "Putin's rabbi." He accompanied the Russian leader to the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem and attended the opening ceremony of Putin's favorite project for the Sochi Olympics, which took place on Saturday, when Jews have Shabbat. As a token of gratitude, Putin ordered the security service not to search the rabbi, as this is a violation of Shabbat rules.

 In 2013, under the auspices of Chabad and with Abramovich's money, a Jewish Museum and Tolerance Center was opened in Moscow. Putin donated his monthly salary to the project, and the KGB's successor, the Federal Security Service, offered the museum relevant documents from its archives.

 In 2014, Berl Lazar was the only Jewish leader present at the meeting at which Putin made his triumphant declaration of annexation of Crimea.

 But the rabbi had to pay for his loyalty to Putin. After the annexation, he continues to support the Russian dictator, and because of this, he has split with the leaders of Chabad in Ukraine. In addition, the Russian state has for many years responded with a refusal to a US court order to transfer the Chabad texts, which are called the "Schneerson collection," to the headquarters of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement, which is located in Brooklyn. Soon after the opening of the center of tolerance, Putin ordered the transfer of this collection to his funds. Thus, Lazar became the custodian of the most valuable library, which his Brooklyn comrades consider to be theirs by right.

 If Lazar has any remorse for participating in this internal Chabad dispute, then he does not show it. “Challenging the authorities is not Jewish,” the rabbi said in 2015.

 Trump, Bayrock, Sapir

 Meanwhile, across the world, Trump embarked on a search for projects and investors from the former Soviet Union in the early years of the 21st century, and as a result forged a strong relationship with Bayrock-Sapir.

 One of its leaders was Felix Sater, who was convicted at one time for links with the mafia.

 Sater and fellow Bayrock employee Daniel Ridloff, who later worked directly for the Trump Organization, are members of the Port Washington Chabad Jewish community. Sater told Politico magazine that he serves on the board of Beit Chabad Port Washington, and also serves on the leadership of many Chabad organizations in the United States and abroad, but not in Russia.

 The extent of Sater's and Trump's ties is controversial. While working at Trump Tower, Sater has worked with the famous developer on many projects and sought deals for him in the former Soviet Union. In 2006, Sater accompanied Trump's children Ivanka and Donald Jr. on a tour of Moscow in search of potential projects. He worked especially closely with Ivanka on the Trump SoHo project, which includes a hotel and residential complex in Manhattan. In 2006, this project was covered in the TV program "Pupil".

 In 2007, it became known that Sater was charged with a stock exchange scam. This did not stop Trump, and in 2010 he made Sater a "senior advisor to the Trump Organization." In 2011, several Trump SoHo apartment buyers sued Trump and his associates for fraud, and New York prosecutors opened a criminal investigation into the sales. But the buyers settled the issue with the company and agreed not to cooperate with the investigation, which was later dropped, according to the New York Times. The two former managers filed a lawsuit against Bayrock, accusing the firm of tax evasion, money laundering, racketeering, bribery, extortion and deception.

 Sater spoke under oath of close relations with the Trumps, and Trump himself also said under oath that he hardly knew Sater and would not be able to distinguish his face in the crowd. Some people who worked with Trump during this period and agreed to talk on condition of anonymity, as they feared revenge on the part of both, laughed at Trump's testimony, saying that he often met with Sater and called him almost constantly. One person recalled that Trump and Sater often dined together, including at the now defunct Kiss & Fly restaurant in Manhattan.

 “Trump called Felix in his office about a day later. So his words that he does not know him are complete nonsense, - said a former colleague of Sater. - They were constantly in contact, that's for sure. They talked on the phone all the time. "

 In 2014, the Chabad center of the Jewish community, Port Washington, named Satera "Person of the Year." At a ceremony in his honor, Chabad founder Shalom Paltiel recalled Sater spilling out about being a national security informant.

 “I recently told Felix that I hardly believed anything of his words. It seemed to me that he had seen enough of James Bond films, read the novels of Tom Clancy, - said Paltiel at the ceremony. - All of Felix's acquaintances know that he is a master of storytelling. I just didn't really believe in them. "

 But then Paltiel said that several years later he received special permission to accompany Sater to a ceremony at a federal building in Manhattan. There, according to Paltiel, representatives of all American intelligence agencies praised Sater for his secret work and told "more fantastic, more incredible things than anything he told me." Video footage of that event in honor of Sater has been removed from the Beit Chabad Port Washington website, but can be viewed on YouTube.

 While preparing this article for publication, I called Paltiel, but he hung up as soon as I introduced myself. I had to ask him about some of the connections that I learned about in the process. Paltiel not only maintains a relationship with Sater, he is also on a short leg with "Putin's rabbi" Lazar. In a short note about meeting him at Schneerson's grave in Queens, Paltiel calls Lazar his "dear friend and mentor."

 According to Boteach, this is not surprising, because Chabad is such a community where everyone knows everyone. “In the world of Chabad, we all went to yeshiva together, we were all ordained together,” Boteach said. “I knew Berl Lazar from the days of my studies at the yeshiva.”

 The Chabad home in Port Washington has another Bayrock devotee. Among the 13 main benefactors of this community are Satera's partner and founder Tevfik Arif.

 Arif is a former Soviet official turned wealthy property developer. He owns a mansion in Port Washington, located in a wealthy suburb. But this is a very curious patron of the local Chabad. Arif has a Muslim name, was born in Kazakhstan, and is a citizen of Turkey. Arif is not a Jew, as the people who worked with him say. In 2010, he was arrested during a police search in Turkey on a yacht that once belonged to the founder of the modern Turkish state, Mustafa Kamal Ataturk. Arif was accused of running an international criminal network employing underage prostitutes. All charges were later dropped from him.

Prior to the Ataturk yacht scandal, Arif worked extensively with Trump, Ivanka Trump and Sater as part of the Trump SoHo project. He was also a partner of the Sapirov family. It's a dynasty of New York real estate dealers and the other half of Bayrock-Sapir.

Its patriarch, the late billionaire Tamir Sapir, was born in Soviet Georgia, and in 1976 came to New York, where he opened an electronics store in the Flatiron area. According to the New York Times, this store mainly served KGB agents.

Trump called Sapir his "big friend." In December 2007, he arranged the wedding of his daughter, Sapira zina, at Mar-a-Lago. Lionel Richie and the Pussycat Dolls performed there. The groom Rotem Rosen worked as the CEO of the American branch of the holding company of Putin's oligarch Levayev Africa Israel.

Five months later, in early June 2008, Sapir and Rosen performed a circumcision ceremony for their newborn son. In invitations to this ceremony, Rosen was named Levayev's "right-hand man." By then, Levayev had become the largest sponsor of Habad worldwide and personally ensured that the circumcision ceremony was held at Schneerson's tomb, which Habad's followers consider the most sacred place.

Trump was present at the ceremony. A month earlier, in May 2008, he and Levayev discussed possible real estate projects in Moscow, as Russian media were writing about at the time. Photos taken during the meeting show Trump and Levayev shaking hands and smiling.

In the same year, Sapir, who was actively involved in the financing of Khamad, visited Berlin with Levayev, where they visited the Habada centers.

Jared, Ivanka, Roman, Dasha

Kushner, who along with his wife Ivanka Trump, and his wife, Ivanka, also attended the ceremony, and his own ties to Putin's Habad allies. The Kushner family, which belongs to modern orthodoxy, has long been and has been actively involved in charitable activities throughout the Jewish world, including in The Habad institutions. During his studies at Harvard, Kushner was active in the work of The Habad University House. Three days before the presidential election, the Kushner-Trump couple visited Schneerson's grave, where they prayed for Trump. In January, they bought a house in the Washington neighborhood of Kalorama and visited the nearby Habada Synagogue, which became their prayer home.

In May 2015, a month before Trump officially entered the Republican presidential race, Kushner bought Levayev's controlling stake in the old New York Times building on West 43rd Street for $295 million.

Kushner and Ivanka Trump also have a close relationship with Abramovich's wife, Dasha Shchukova. The big businessman Abramovich, whose fortune is estimated at more than seven billion dollars, owns the British football club Chelsea, and formerly was the governor of the Russian province of Chukotka, where he is still revered as a hero. He made his fortune thanks to the victory in the post-Soviet "aluminium wars" in which more than 100 people were killed trying to seize control of aluminum plants. In 2008, Abramovich admitted to cobbling together his business empire by paying billions of dollars in bribes. His former business partner, the late oligarch Boris Berezovsky, quarreled with Putin, went to New York, where he settled in the Trump International building near Central Park. In 2011, he accused Abramovich of threats against him, blackmail and intimidation, filing a lawsuit in a British court. That process was won by Abramovich.

Abramovich was reportedly the first to recommend Yeltsin to Putin as his successor. In a 2004 biography of Abramovich, British journalists Dominic Midgley and Chris Hutchins wrote: "When Putin needed the secret power to speak out against his enemies from behind the scenes, he could always rely on Abramovich, who became a voluntary accomplice to him." Biographers write that the two men have developed a relationship between both father and son, and report that Abramovich personally interviewed candidates for positions in Putin's first cabinet. According to the available information, he gave Putin a yacht for 30 million dollars, although Putin himself denies this.

Abramovich's business interests and personal life overlapped with Trump's world many times and in many different directions.

Researchers at Cornell University in 2012 produced a report that said Evraz, partly owned by Abramovich, had entered into a series of contracts under which it would supply 40 percent of the steel needed to build the Keystone XL pipeline, a project that Trump approved after years of delay. And in 2006, Abramovich bought a large stake in the Russian oil company Rosneft, which is now being scrutinized for possible collusion between Trump and Russia. Trump and the Kremlin have snubbed the dossier, which claims that the recent sale of Rosneft shares is part of a scheme aimed at easing sanctions against Russia.

Meanwhile, Abramovich's wife, Shchukov, has long been in the same secular circles as Kushner and Ivanka Trump. She became a friend and business partner of Rupert Murdoch's ex-wife Wendy Deng, who has long been friends with Ivanka. She also befriended Kushner's longtime girlfriend Josh Karlie Kloss.

Gradually, she became close to Jared and Ivanka. In February 2014, a month before the illegal weaning of Crimea from Ukraine, Ivanka Trump posted a photo on Instagram of her sitting behind a bottle of wine with Shchukova and Wendy Deng. Underneath the photo, the caption read: "Thank you for an unforgettable four days in Russia!" Other photos make it clear that Kushner was also in Russia at the time.

Last summer, Kushner, Ivanka Trump, Shchukova and Deng sat in the same box at the U.S. Open. In January, she attended Trump's inauguration as a guest of Ivanka.

On March 14, a journalist for The Daily Mail noticed Josh Kushner and Shchukova having dinner together at a New York restaurant. According to the publication, Josh Kushner "hid his face and quickly left the establishment with Dasha."

A week later, while Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump were vacationing in Aspen with her two brothers and their families, Abramovich's plane flew from Moscow to Denver, according to the dispatch service. Abramovich owns two properties in Aspen.

A spokesman for Abramovich declined to comment on the coincidence in Colorado. The White House referred questions about the pair's vacation to Ivanka Trump's private press secretary. Spokeswoman Risa Heller said she would answer questions about the men's vacation in Colorado and their recent contacts, but did not.

President Trump is reportedly pushing for Kushner and Ivanka to be allowed access to state secrets as they play an increasingly important role in the White House. According to senior intelligence officials, any other person who maintains a close personal relationship with the family of an important confidant of Putin would find it very difficult to obtain such a clearance, but political pressure is sure to prevail over security considerations.

"Yes, such ties with Russia should be important for the security agencies conducting the checks," said Steve Hall, a former head of the CIA's Moscow residency. "The question is whether they will pay attention to it."

"I don't think members of the Trump family will have any trouble accessing state secrets unless a polygraph is used," said Milt Bearden, former head of the CIA's Eastern European division. "It's absolute madness, but there won't be any problems here."

***

For now, Washington is abuzz with rumors of an investigation into contacts between Trump's inner circle and the Kremlin, which is being conducted by the FBI, the groups and organizations that link them remain the subject of scrutiny and scrutiny.

In March, the New York Times reported that Lazar met with Jason Greenblatt, the Trump administration's special representative for international negotiations, who was a lawyer for the Trump Organization at the time. Both described the meeting as a routine action by Greenblatt to engage with Jewish leaders and said they discussed russian society and anti-Semitism. The meeting was organized by New York public relations specialist Joshua Nass, and Lazar said he did not discuss it with the Russian authorities.

In late January, Sater met with Trump's personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, to discuss a proposal for a peace deal in Ukraine that would end U.S. sanctions against Russia. Cohen then reported on the meeting to Trump's former national security adviser, Michael Flynn. Cohen himself made various comments about the episode.

According to one Republican Jew, Cohen often comes to the Habada Community Center on Fifth Avenue, which is a dozen blocks from Trump Tower and six blocks from Cohen's office at 30 Rockefeller Plaza.

Cohen denied the allegation, saying, "I have never been to Habad's houses, and I have never been to Habad's house in New York." He then said he was last at Habad's home more than 15 years ago when he attended the circumcision ceremony. He said he was at an event related to the Habad on March 16 at a Newark hotel honoring U.S. Secretary of Veterans Affairs David Shulkin. That dinner was organized by the Chabad Rabbinical College of America movement.

To those unfamiliar with Russian politics, the world of Trump and Hasidic Judaism, all these ties to Chabad seem completely incomprehensible. And someone just shrugs indifferently.

"The interconnectedness of the Jewish world through Chabad is not a surprise, because Chabad is one of the main Jewish players," Boteah said. — 

I would add that the world of New York real estate is also quite small."

And it is worth adding the entire period 2020-2021, due to the newly discovered circumstances, which once long ago, back in 2015 in European patents Richard Rothschild called COVID-19, and registered a patent under this historical brand. It is worth noting that no one has yet asked questions that it was not decided to answer. And the question is simple, as well as the Editorial itself 'Obvious Incredible', we easily repeat this question to all readers: What is this patent of Richard's Company in the number (19) filed in the patent office in 2015 and subsequent years, with updating in September 2020, it seems? 
https://telegra.ph/19-patents-by-inventor-Richard-A-de-Rothschild-Part-2-03-05

The author's note in relation to material affecting one of the nationalities. My attitude is simple:

 'Crime has no nationality'. In this regard, you can add to this list of suspects of any nationality and any religion.

Thank you attention ! 

𝚼𝖔𝖚𝖗 𝕵𝖔𝖐𝖊𝖗 🃏