Russias Sexual Blackmail Didnt Die With the Soviets
.....But, according to uncorroborated and highly defamatory memos prepared by a former British intelligence operative for a Washington political and corporate research firm, the Ritz has remained a place where foreign guests, including Donald J. Trump, can fall victim to the Russian art of “kompromat,” the collection of compromising material as a source of leverage.
A summary of the former spy’s findings was presented last week to President Obama and President-elect Trump, who at a news conference on Wednesday denounced publication of the allegations as “fake news.” A spokeswoman for the Russian Foreign Ministry dismissed the accusations as “mind-boggling nonsense” and “outrageous drivel.”........
.......Whatever did or did not happen in Mr. Trump’s hotel suite in 2013, when he visited Moscow to attend a Miss Universe contest, Russia has a long and well-documented record of using kompromat to discredit the Kremlin’s foes and to lean on its potential friends.......
...Before becoming president, Mr. Putin played a prominent role in a particularly successful kompromat operation. As head of the F.S.B. in 1997, he won the trust of President Boris Yeltsin by helping destroy the career of Russia’s prosecutor general, Yury Skuratov. After starting an investigation into Kremlin corruption, the prosecutor was disgraced on national television by the broadcast of a video that showed a man who looked like him in bed with two young women. Mr. Putin certified in public that the man in the video, widely believed to have been arranged and then filmed by the F.S.B., was indeed the prosecutor general. Mr. Skuratov resigned, the corruption investigation ended and a grateful Mr. Yeltsin named Mr. Putin prime minister, clearing his path to the presidency......
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/11/world/europe/donald-trump-russia.html?google_editors_picks=true&_r=0