Ivanka Trump Under Scrutiny, as Emails Reveal Efforts to Connect Her Father to Putin

Seriously, you can’t shake a tree around Team Trump without a Russian falling out.

Knowing this, no one should question why the Russia probe has not seen a considerable slow down. Things just keep coming up.

As this game of Moscow Musical Chairs plays out, it has hit the periphery of Trump’s campaign circle, and has worked it’s way in, ever closer.

To date, the most devastating personal hit (other than the discomfort it causes the president, himself) has been seeing Donald Trump Jr. swept up in the investigation, thanks to the June 2016 Trump Tower meeting with the Russian attorney, Natalia Veselnitskaya.

I can only imagine how it must cause him to panic, as a father.

Now things are getting interesting, however. The favored child, Ivanka Trump, who has otherwise kept relatively free from the Russia nightmare, to date, just popped up in another twisted Russia connection.

Buzzfeed News is reporting on details to emerge from a congressional investigation. Emails, as well as four sources, show that Ivanka Trump, a senior adviser to her father, put Michael Cohen, her father’s longtime “fixer” in touch with a Russian weightlifter, who had contacted her and suggested that he could arrange a meeting between Donald Trump and Russian Vladimir Putin, in order to facilitate the construction of a Trump Tower in Moscow.

 There is no evidence that Ivanka Trump’s contact with the athlete — the former Olympic weightlifter Dmitry Klokov — was illegal or that it had anything to do with the election. Nor is it clear that Klokov could even have introduced Trump to the Russian president. But congressional investigators have reviewed emails and questioned witnesses about the interaction, according to two of the sources, and so has special counsel Robert Mueller’s team, according to the other two.

The contacts reveal that even as her father was campaigning to become president of the United States, Ivanka Trump connected Michael Cohen with a Russian who offered to arrange a meeting with one of the US’s adversaries — in order to help close a business deal that could have made the Trump family millions.

This particular development is tied in with what has already been known about Cohen, and a 2015 deal he was attempting to work through with Felix Sater, a longtime Trump business associate.

A Russian developer had already been named. Donald Trump had already signed a nonbinding letter of intent on October 28, 2015. This was well into the primary season of the 2016 election, and in fact, on the same day as the third GOP debate.

The agreement stated that the Trump Organization would have the option to brand the hotel’s spa and fitness facilities as “The Spa by Ivanka Trump” and that Ivanka Trump would be granted “sole and absolute discretion” to have the final say on “all interior design elements of the spa or fitness facilities.”

Daddy’s little girl.

To date, Ivanka is avoiding questions about Klokov, saying her only involvement with talks of a Trump Tower in Moscow came after the letter of intent had been signed. That, she claimed, was only to contact Cohen and insist that the building be built to meet the high standards of the Trump organization.

Of course. But about those emails…

In November 2015, Ivanka Trump told Cohen to speak with Klokov, according to the four sources. Cohen had at least one phone conversation with the weightlifter, they said. It is not known what the men discussed over the phone, but they exchanged a string of emails that are now being examined by congressional investigators and federal agents probing Russia’s election meddling.

In one of those emails, Klokov told Cohen that he could arrange a meeting between Donald Trump and Putin to help pave the way for the tower. Later, Cohen sent an email refusing that offer and saying that the Trump Organization already had an agreement in place. He said he was cutting off future communication with Klokov. Copying Ivanka Trump, the Russian responded in a final brusque message, in which he questioned Cohen’s authority to make decisions for the Trump Organization. Frustrated by the exchange, Ivanka Trump questioned Cohen’s refusal to continue communicating with Klokov, according to one of the sources.

According to Buzzfeed, it’s unclear how Ivanka Trump and Klokov are connected or how they even know each other. It’s also unclear as to whether Klokov has any sort of real relationship with Putin.

It’s a mystery, and nobody is willing to clear it up. Cohen referred Buzzfeed to his attorney, but the emails between he and Klokov were turned over to the Senate Intelligence Committee, as part of the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.

Klokov initially told BuzzFeed News that he did not “send any emails” to Cohen. “I don’t understand why you ask me about this,” Klokov said in text messages. “I’m weightlifter, not a political.” When told that he had sent at least two emails to Cohen and had had a phone conversation with him at Ivanka Trump’s request, Klokov stopped responding.

Given Ivanka’s closeness and oversized influence over her dad, this latest adds a bit more intrigue to everything we already know.

She was with her brother Donald Trump Jr. and Sater when they visited Moscow in 2006 to scout locations for a possible tower there, famously sitting in Putin’s office chair during a visit. She was also instrumental in the development of Trump SoHo, a troubled hotel and condominium tower in Manhattan. New York City prosecutors considered criminal fraud charges against Ivanka Trump and her brother Donald Jr. for allegedly misleading prospective buyers at Trump SoHo, ProPublica reported last October.

So she’s not squeaky clean, but no one who has followed this family should be surprised.