New Jewish group in Labour Party backs right to BDS

Asa Winstanley Activism and BDS Beat 

17 August 2017

Jewish members of the Labour Party have founded a new group. Jewish Voice for Labour will launch at the UK main opposition party’s conference in Brighton next month.

The new initiative presents a challenge to an existing Israel lobby group that positions itself as the representative of Jewish members of Labour.

“Our mission is to contribute to making the Labour Party an open, democratic and inclusive party, encouraging all ethnic groups and cultures to join and participate freely,” the new group said.

Jewish Voice for Labour’s founding document upholds “the right of supporters of justice for Palestinians to engage in solidarity activities, such as boycott, divestment and sanctions,” or BDS.

It adds that it opposes “attempts to widen the definition of anti-Semitism beyond its meaning of hostility towards or discrimination against Jews as Jews.”

This has been a key goal of the Jewish Labour Movement, an existing Israel lobby group within the Labour Party, that has sought to advance Israel’s agenda of delegitimizing BDS activism by equating criticism of Israel and its Zionist state ideology with anti-Semitism.

Jewish Voice for Labour criticizes the Jewish Labour Movement for its promotion of Israel. Unlike the JLM, Jewish Voice for Labour says it “does not make promoting the centrality of Israel to Jewish life a condition of membership.”

Celebrate and debate
Jewish Voice for Labour’s chair is Jenny Manson, a former Labour councillor and parliamentary candidate. A retired tax inspector, she is a long-standing member of the Labour Party in Finchley and Golders Green, an area of North London with a large Jewish population.

It is also the constituency where Jewish Labour Movement chair Jeremy Newmark stood as a candidate for parliament in June’s general election. He failed to win the seat back from the ruling Conservative Party.

Manson said the new group Jewish Voice for Labour would “provide a much-needed forum for Jews who want to celebrate and debate the long and proud history of Jewish involvement in socialist and trade-union activism.”

She said they “invite everyone of Jewish heritage in the Labour Party to join us in continuing these great traditions.”

Israel lobby’s voice
The existing Jewish Labour Movement is a group run by an Israel lobbyist, which works closely with the Israeli embassy in London. It was at the forefront of the campaign against Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn last year, claiming the party under him was a cesspit of anti-Semitism.

The Jewish Labour Movement is affiliated to the UK Labour Party and says it “supports” the Israeli Labor Party. It is also a part of the World Zionist Organization – one of four key “national institutions” in Israel which aim to foster Jewish settlement on Palestinian land.

Although an older organization, the Jewish Labour Movement was moribund until the beginning of 2016. It was then taken over by longstanding Israel lobbyist Jeremy Newmark, who became its chair in February 2016.

Former Israeli embassy officer Ella Rose was then hired as its first director in August of that year.

A former president of the Israeli-government-funded Union of Jewish Students, Rose was later investigated by the Labour Party after being caught on camera wishing her enemies would “die in a hole.”

The footage was part of an undercover investigation by Al Jazeera into the Israel lobby’s influence on UK political parties.

It also showed Newmark working closely with Israeli ambassador Mark Regev during a closed door meeting at the Labour Party conference.

Newmark has a history of making false accusations of anti-Jewish bigotry as part of his efforts to silence and discredit the UK Palestine solidarity movement.

Implicit support for settlements
Newmark’s Jewish Labour Movement says that it supports the World Zionist Organization’s Jerusalem Program, which states as one of its goals: “Settling the country as an expression of practical Zionism.” The program defines “the country” as “Eretz Yisrael” – a term Zionists use to designate the whole of historic Palestine, including the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip.

The use of this phrase, as well as a small map icon showing an outline of the whole of historic Palestine plus Syria’s Golan Heights on the Jerusalem Program web page, makes it clear that Newmark’s group implicitly endorses Israeli settlements in the West Bank.

All Israeli settlements in the West Bank and the Golan Heights are illegal under international law.

These institutional commitments undermine public claims by Newmark to oppose “the occupation” in line with Labour Party policy.

Earlier this year, Newmark was also reportedly responsible for the watering down of Labour’s general election manifesto on the issue of Israeli settlements in the West Bank.

Last September, Newmark claimed to The Electronic Intifada that his group participates in the World Zionist Organization to “oppose settlements and to speak out against the occupation.”

The World Zionist Organization receives tens of millions of dollars from the Israeli government to found and develop Israeli settlements, including in the occupied West Bank and Golan Heights

https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/asa-winstanley/new-jewish-group-labour-party-backs-right-bds

Times Higher Education

Tribunal slams academic for bringing anti-Semitism case

A Jewish academic who claimed the UCU’s policy on Palestine constituted harassment has been rebuked by an employment tribunal for misusing the legal process

March 27, 2013

• By Jack Grove
  Twitter: @jgro_the

Ronnie Fraser, a further education lecturer and founding director of Academic Friends of Israel, argued that the UCU was institutionally anti-Semitic owing to motions passed in favour of a boycott of Israel.

Despite enlisting the services of Anthony Julius, best known as Diana, Princess of Wales’ divorce lawyer and a partner at Mishcon de Reya, all of his 10 claims of harassment have been “dismissed in their totality”.

During the 20-day hearing in December, Mr Fraser called several witnesses to give evidence, including Howard Jacobson, the Booker Prize winning novelist, John Mann MP, the former MP Denis MacShane and numerous leading Jewish academics.

However, in its judgment, which was published on 25 March, Mr Fraser’s claim is strongly criticised by the tribunal members.

The action is branded by tribunal panel members as “an impermissible attempt to achieve a political end by litigious means” and a case which showed a “worrying disregard for pluralism, tolerance and freedom of expression”.

Mr Fraser, the child of refugees who fled Nazi Germany, is viewed as a “sincere witness”, but the tribunal notes his “political experience” and are not impressed by his claim that the tone of several debates at the UCU’s annual congress “violated his dignity”, thereby constituting harassment.

“No doubt some of the things said in the course of debates were upsetting, but to say they violated his dignity…is to overstate his case hugely,” the judgment says.

“The claimant [Mr Fraser] is a campaigner,” it adds.

“He chooses to engage in the politics of the union in support of Israel and in opposition to activists to the Palestinian cause.

“When a rugby player takes the field he must accept his fair share of minor injuries. Similarly, a political activist accepts the risk of being offended or hurt on occasions by things said or done by his opponents (who themselves take on a corresponding risk).”

Scorn is also invoked for Mr Julius’s decision to pursue certain points, with complaints variously dismissed as “palpably groundless”, “obviously hopeless” and “devoid of any merit”.

The “sorry saga” had also acquired a “gargantuan scale” that required a 20-day hearing and a 23 volumes of evidence which was “manifestly excessive and disproportionate”, the tribunal adds.

“Our analysis to date has despatched almost the entire case as manifestly unmeritorious,” it concludes.

Several complaints were also made with reference to the wrong act of Parliament, while some were also “out of time” as the incident has occurred too long ago to bring to the tribunal.

The judgment also says public resources had been “squandered” conducting such a long case, while “nor should the [UCU] have been put to the trouble and expense of defending proceedings of this order”.

Sally Hunt, UCU general secretary, said: “This has been an extremely difficult period for the UCU staff and members involved in defending the union’s position and I am especially pleased therefore that the tribunal found our witnesses to be careful and accurate.

“The claimant, while unsuccessful, of course had the right to challenge the union in the courts and will be treated with respect within the union as will his views on this question.

“Now that a decision has been made I hope in turn that he, and others who share his views, will play an active part in the union and its debates rather than seek recourse to the law.”

jack.grove@tsleducation.com

https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/tribunal-slams-academic-for-bringing-anti-semitism-case/2002841.article

The appointments of John Bolton and Mike Pompeo in the US bring us closer to war in the Middle East

If we are on the edge of a fresh crisis, centring on Iran, then the US is in a much weaker position than it was pre-Trump

Patrick Cockburn 

March 31-2018


John Bolton has been appointed as national security adviser to Donald Trump Getty

Armed conflict between the US and Iran is becoming more probable by the day as super-hawks replace hawks in the Trump administration. The new National Security Adviser, John Bolton, has called for the US to withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal of 2015 and advocated immediate regime change in Tehran. The new Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, has said the agreement, which Trump may withdraw from on 12 May, is “a disaster”. Trump has told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that he will not accept a deal with “cosmetic changes” as advocated by European states, according to Israeli reporters. If this is so, then the deal is effectively dead.

The escalating US-Iran confrontation is causing menacing ripples that could soon become waves across the Middle East. The price of crude oil is up because of fears of disruption of supply from the Gulf. In Iran, the value of the rial is at its lowest ever, having fallen by a quarter in the last six months. In Iraq, Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi admits his greatest fear is a confrontation between the US and Iran fought out in Iraq.

A dangerous aspect of the super-hawk approach to Iran is similar to that of the Bush administration in the run up to the invasion of Iraq in 2003. In both cases, those calling for use of armed force had, or have, lethally little knowledge of what they were/are getting into. Pompeo had a simple solution to the Iranian problem when he was still a congressman, telling reporters it would take “under 2,000 sorties to destroy the Iranian nuclear capacity”. 

Optimists, though these have become fewer on the ground in Washington in the last few weeks, are dismissive of such bellicose rhetoric. But whatever Trump and his lieutenants think they are doing, their words have consequences. Governments have to take threats seriously and devise counter-measures to meet them in case the worst comes to the worst. In the wake of the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003, American neo-conservatives boastfully proclaimed it would be “Baghdad today, Tehran and Damascus tomorrow”. These slogans were enough to ensure the Syrian and Iranian governments did everything in their power to make sure that the US could not stay in Iraq.

Looking back, the invasion of Iraq marked the turning point for the hegemony of the Anglo-Saxon powers – the US and the UK – on the world stage. The fraudulent justification for the war and the failure of those who launched it to get their way against relatively puny opponents turned a conflict which was meant to be a show of strength into a demonstration of weakness. Foreign intervention in Libya and Syria in 2011 produced similar calamities.

If we are on the edge of a fresh crisis in the Middle East, centring on Iran, then the US is in a much weaker position than it was pre-Trump. Domestically divided and short of allies, it can no longer control the rules of the game as it once did. Over the last year there are two examples of this: in May, Trump visited Saudi Arabia giving unequivocal backing to its rulers and blaming the troubles of the region on Iran. But it turned out that the prime target of Saudi Arabia and UAE was not Iran but tiny Qatar. All Trump had achieved was to break the previously united front of Gulf monarchies against Iran.

In another major misjudgement by the US in January, the supposedly moderate Secretary of State Rex Tillerson announced that the US would be keeping its forces in Syria after the defeat of Isis, and intended to get rid of President Bashar al-Assad and roll back Iranian influence. This ambition was largely fantasy, but the Russian and Turkish reaction was real. Four days after Tillerson’s arrogant declaration, the Turkish army poured into northern Syria with Russian permission and within two months had eliminated the enclave of Afrin, inhabited by Kurds who are the only US ally in Syria. The Kurds are now rather desperately hoping they will not be left in the lurch by the US in the event of a Turkish military assault on the main Kurdish-held territory in north-east Syria. 

I was in the Kurdish-held zone in Syria earlier this month and wondered what the US will do if the Turks did decide to advance further. The north Syrian plain east of the Euphrates is dead flat with little cover, while the main Kurdish cities are right on the Turkish border and highly vulnerable. The US only has 2,000 troops there, and their effectiveness depends on their ability to call in devastating airstrikes by the US air force. This is a powerful option, but would the US really use it in defence of the Kurds against Nato ally Turkey?

What Trump claims was President Obama’s weakness of will and poor negotiating skills was in reality an astute ability to match US means to US interests and avoid being sucked into unwinnable wars. This was never really understood by the Washington foreign policy establishment, which is stuck in the pre-2003 era when US strength was at its height in the years after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Still less is it grasped by super-hawks like Bolton and Pompeo, with no idea of the political and military minefields into which they are about to stumble.

The US establishment and its allies may be aghast at Trump withdrawing from the nuclear deal, but it looks more than likely he is going to do it. Sanctions on Iran may be reimposed, but these are never quite the winning card that those imposing them imagine, whatever the suffering inflicted on the general population. Sanctions unilaterally imposed by Trump may damage Iran, but they will also isolate the US.

Whatever the outcome of a confrontation between the US and Iran, it is not going to “Make America Great Again”. The northern corridor of the Middle East, south of Turkey and north of Saudi Arabia, has always been the graveyard of US interventionism: this was true of Lebanon in the 1980s when the US embassy was blown up, and when 241 US services personnel (including 220 marines) were killed by a truck bomb in Beirut. This was true in Iraq between 2003 and 2011, and Syria from 2011 to the present day. The US has commonly blamed Iran for these frustrations, an explanation that has some validity, but the real reason is that the US has been fighting a sect rather than a single state. All these countries where the US has failed either have a Shia majority, as in the case of Iran and Iraq, a plurality, as in Lebanon, or are a ruling minority, as in Syria. As the most powerful Shia state, Iran has an immense advantage when it comes to fighting its enemies in such a sympathetic religious terrain.

The new line-up in Washington is being described as “a war cabinet” and it may turn out to be just that. But looking at ignorant, arrogant men like Bolton and Pompeo, it is difficult to avoid the feeling that it will all end in disaster.

https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/john-bolton-donald-trump-mike-pompeo-middle-east-iran-a8281436.html

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My Comments :

1. This ominous political development, that has been rightly described by Cockburn, is - as I stated several times before during the last year - the exact reason why Trump (and his (zionist) special ME interest representative son-in-law Kushner) has been catapulted into the WH by his neo-conservative super-PAC financial backers (Sheldon Adelson and Robert Mercer et al.) in the first place.

2. Namely to accommodate the USA neo-conservative neo-colonial agenda for the ME, that - among other things - includes the ambition for the absolute hegemony in the region by its closest ally over there.

3. In order to realise this notoriously belligerent geo-political agenda of blunt regime change and the systematic calving up of the most strategic countries in the ME region along ethnic and religious lines (*) one has to be certain, that Russia is not able to decisively assist countries like Iran against the western neo-colonialist machinations (as Russia successfully tried to do in Syria). 

4. In this light one can also consider the recent hysteric anti-Russia campaign,- one in a long row of provocative actions from the West - that has been dominating the western media lately. 

5. After the declaration of (a trade) war against China by the Trump administration, one might expect that China might as well consider Iran as a strategic ally, and might act accordingly both in the introductory stage of the war against Iran, as during the actual fighting (by offering for instance intelligence and logistics).

6. Fighting that, by the way, might be taken care of initially by USA ME proxy Saudi Arabia and some other Sunni states in the region, and possibly taken over by the USA when they might be "asked" / "invited" to do so by their proxy warriors (read : when the tide is high enough to offer perspective on a clear victory.

7. But first - as a kind of tactical warming up party - the USA and the Tel Aviv regime will soon start another military conflict in the Lebanon, where Iran supported Hezbollah has a strong power platform that is continuing to frustrate the imperial objectives of the ultra-reactionary jew-supremacist Tel Aviv regime.

8. For "imperial objectives" do read : 

The final creation of Eretz-Israel, which is aimed for - from the very publication of Der Judenstaat by Herzl in 1896 until this day and age - to become an exclusive Jewish State, that has to be achieved by ultimately transferring all the indigenous Palestinians to "other places" in the ME. 

9. Also the so-called antisemitism row within Labour - that has been dominating the headlines in the UK news-media for the better part of this week - is part of the strategy of the western neo-conservatives to prevent a moderate, nuanced and more balanced policy towards the ME to be realised by an eventual future Corbyn government.

10. An artificially instigated antisemitic row within the UK Labour Part that can not be explained otherwise then as the cynical weaponizing of the container notion "antisemitism", because all the usually to be suspected zionist pressure groups involved, do only selectively attack Labour, and ignore the real blatant antisemitism from the right (which after all, are their longtime partners in crime).

(*) Please do remember in this respect the 2001 "seven countries in five years" Pentagon memo that (then) four star general Wesley Clark revealed to the public in 2007...

Disclaimer : I do detest the abhorrently authoritarian, white supremacist and oligarchic Putin as much as I do detest the abhorrently authoritarian, white supremacist and oligarchic Trump.

 

We have six months to foil Brexit. And here’s how we can do it

Timothy Garton Ash

There’s a crucial vote this autumn. With our politics so unpredictable there’s a real chance to influence undecided MPs

Thu 29 Mar 2018 19.28 BST

Anti-Brexiters protest at Westminster. ‘If we don’t get our act together we will be defeated, amid a fog of confusion and deceit.’ Photograph: Xinhua / Barcroft Images

If all goes according to the Brexiters’ plan, we will wake up exactly one year from today to find that Britain is no longer a member of the European Union. In practice, we anti-Brexiters have just six months to avert that outcome. For if, in its “meaningful vote” this autumn, the British parliament decides to accept whatever interim deal has been cobbled together by British and EU negotiators, that will be the effective point of no return.

Brexiters see this and now have a strategy of Leninist clarity: do whatever it takes to get Britain to that point. Even Nigel Farage is now on this Brexito-Bolshevik line. The end justifies the means. Never mind what compromises you make over the transition period, never mind which of your own previous red lines you cross, just get the country through the door marked Out. Everything else can be sorted out later.

Anti-Brexiters, by contrast, have 10 different plans and therefore none. If we don’t get our act together we will be defeated, amid a fog of confusion and deceit.

Defeat would probably look something like this: by hook or by crook, by nudge and by fudge, the British and EU negotiators reach a form of words this autumn. Seemingly unbridgeable differences like those over the Irish frontier are somehow finessed, by a combination of genuine compromise, complex solutions and verbal ambiguity. The “framework for the future” is vaguer than an Anglican prayer, with lashings of Brussels fudge and the deafening clang of cans being kicked down the road.

Our EU partners finally agree to this, in the wee hours of a European council meeting scheduled for 18-19 October, because that is the EU’s characteristic culture of compromise, because they just want to get the whole damned thing out of the way so they can concentrate on all the other pressing issues facing the EU, and – let’s be clear – because they know that once Britain is legally out, its negotiating position will be even weaker than it is today.

Theresa May’s internally divided government goes with this messy deal, because its task is to “deliver Brexit”, and because it knows the Conservative party could fall apart otherwise. Most Tory MPs then vote for it, many of them with a heavy heart and a bad conscience, because the whips have gripped them by the most sensitive parts of their anatomies, because they fear deselection in their constituencies and character assassination in the Daily Mail, because “the people have spoken” and because they’re told the alternative is Jeremy Brezhnev. A few brave Tory rebels, the true Churchills of our time facing off against pseudo-Churchills like Boris Johnson, are just not enough. And thus Britain scrapes and crawls its way to the exit.

 

A growing majority say Brexit will probably be bad for the economy and even for them personally

This, or something like it, remains the most likely outcome, and it would be disastrous. As a former Conservative minister in the Department for Exiting the EU memorably put it, we would be walking off a gangplank into thin air. Britain would then spend years actually negotiating what Brexit means, from an even weaker position, with the negative consequences gradually becoming apparent through the 2020s. National decline by a thousand small steps.

To avoid this, anti-Brexiters need to unite around a clear strategy for these decisive six months. At its core must be working on the minds, hearts and consciences of all MPs (although the Sinn Féin seven don’t take their seats). The Lords are hanging an onion string of amendments around the EU withdrawal bill, including one to keep alive the option of Britain staying in a customs union. These amendments, and possibly a separate customs bill from the government, should come to the Commons in May. That will be a first big moment. A huge majority of MPs want Britain to stay in a customs union. If enough Tory MPs put country before party, the government will be defeated on that.

At this point, there is a tactical concern. I have heard a leading Brexiter cabinet minister say off the record that if parliament voted to stay in a customs union. Chancellor Philip Hammond would like nothing better, and May knows it is in the national interest – also because it reduces, though does not solve, the problem of the Irish border. What if the government went for some version of remaining in a customs union? Wouldn’t that peel off sufficient wavering Tories, and a few more Labour Eurosceptics, so the government could push through this only slightly softer Brexit?

That is a risk we have to take. This would be a big defeat for the government, straining the Brexito-Bolshevik tactic of “just get to the exit” possibly to breaking point. The appetite for parliamentary rebellion usually grows with eating. The next step might be to push for staying in the single market.

Beyond this point, the politics are essentially wide open. Almost anything could happen on the road to autumn’s meaningful vote. There is a slim chance that we could finally get to a parliamentary vote on whether, after all, there should be a people’s vote (aka second referendum) on stepping away from the shambles of Brexit. Either of the main parties could split. There could be another election. Who knows? As Napoleon liked to say: On s’engage et puis on voit (You engage, and then you see).

At the same time, we have to keep working on public opinion, which pollsters find to be in a weird state of cognitive dissonance. Only a few of those who voted Brexit say they’ve changed their minds, and even some remain voters say we should now go through with it. But a growing majority of respondents say the negotiations are going badly, Brexit will probably be bad for the economy and even for them personally. Many people seem almost to be saying “we’re in a hole but keep digging!”. This is fertile ground for opening up a conversation. But let’s be realistic: this amorphous thing called public opinion is very unlikely to swing so decisively over the next six months that it transforms the politics of Brexit. What it can do is to influence the undecided MPs with whom the buck now stops.

So if you’re one of those who wants to avoid Brexit, you need to get hold of your MP, indeed any MPs you can lay your hands on. Corner them in the street, accost them on the beaches, hail them in the hills, energise them by email, finger them on Facebook, tackle them on Twitter. Tell them their grandchildren ask, “What did you do in the great Brexit vote, Grandad (or Grandma)?” Tell them to vote with their conscience, on their honest judgment of the national interest. Tell them to refuse the populist lie that democracy means one people, one vote, once. This, in our sovereign parliament, through our elected representatives, is true British democracy.

• Timothy Garton Ash is a Guardian columnist

https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timothy_Garton_Ash

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/mar/29/six-months-foil-brexit-vote-parliament-influence-mps

 

FBI looked into Trump plans to build hotel in Latvia with Putin supporter

Exclusive: US authorities made inquiries even before 2016 election campaign into Trump property dealings in former Soviet Union

Riga, the capital of Latvia. Photograph: Nicole Kucera/Getty Images/Flickr RF

Jon Swaine

Thu 29 Mar 2018 06.00 BST

They wanted to build the Las Vegas of the Baltics.

In 2010, a small group of businessmen including a wealthy Russian supporter of Vladimir Putin began working on plans to build a glitzy hotel and entertainment complex with Donald Trump in Riga, the capital of Latvia.

A senior Trump executive visited the city to scout for locations. Trump and his daughter Ivanka spent hours at Trump Tower with the Russian, Igor Krutoy, who also knows attendees of a fateful meeting at the same building during the 2016 US election campaign.

Then the Latvian government’s anti-corruption bureau began asking questions.

The Guardian has learned that talks with Trump’s company were abandoned after Krutoy and another of the businessmen were questioned by Latvian authorities as part of a major criminal inquiry there – and that the FBI later looked into Trump’s interactions with them at Latvia’s request.

Those involved deny that the inquiry was to blame for the deal’s collapse.

Latvia asked the US for assistance in 2014 and received a response from the FBI the following year, according to a source familiar with the process. Latvian investigators also examined secret recordings in which Trump was mentioned by a suspect.

This means the FBI looked into Trump’s efforts to do business deals in the former Soviet Union earlier than was widely known. Robert Mueller, the special counsel, is now investigating other Trump dealings with Russians as part of his wide-ranging criminal inquiry into alleged collusion between Moscow and members of Trump’s 2016 campaign team.

The Riga developers saw their potential partner in New York as a ticket to lucrative western revenues.

“They were very proud to be talking with Trump,” said Andrejs Judins, a Latvian Unity party MP, who has been a vocal critic of the prosecutor general’s decision to close the corruption inquiry in 2016 without pursuing charges.

Krutoy, a well-known composer in Russia, has written music for Emin Agalarov, the Russian singer whose father hosted Trump’s 2013 Miss Universe contest in Moscow. Krutoy attended the contest, where he was photographed with Trump.

Emin once named Krutoy as one of his closest friends in music. Public records show the Krutoys and the Agalarovs owned neighbouring houses in New Jersey in the 1990s, and now own condominiums in the same luxury complex in Florida. Krutoy said he considered the Agalarovs as acquaintances rather than friends.

 Igor Krutoy, Donald Trump and Aleksander Serov in Moscow during the festivities around Miss Universe 2013. Photograph: web


In June 2016, the Agalarovs attended a meeting at Trump Tower with senior campaign officials that is now a flashpoint for Mueller’s investigation. Emin’s manager emailed Donald Trump Jr beforehand to say the Agalarovs would bring dirt on Hillary Clinton from the Russian government. Trump Jr responded enthusiastically.

Krutoy, 63, was a celebrity representative for Putin’s 2018 election campaign and has received major state honours from the Russian government for his music.

He was born in Ukraine and is also a close friend of Rinat Akhmetov – a Ukrainian steel tycoon who in 2005 hired Paul Manafort, Trump’s future campaign chairman, as an adviser. Krutoy said he did not know Manafort, who has been charged by Mueller with financial crimes and failing to register as a foreign agent.

Yet Trump’s brush with Krutoy has gone largely unnoticed amid intense scrutiny of the president’s financial links to Russia, which is accused by US intelligence agencies of attacking the US election system in 2016 in an effort to help elect Trump.

The Latvian talks began without fanfare. David Orowitz, Trump’s senior vice-president for acquisitions and development, discreetly visited Latvia in September 2010 to explore locations, according to one source. The island of Zakusala, in Riga’s Daugava river, emerged as the likeliest site.

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 Viesturs Koziols shakes hands with Donald Trump. Photograph: Vip Invest

In June 2011, Krutoy and two associates met Trump’s elder daughter, Ivanka, at Trump Tower in Manhattan to discuss the possible development, according to Krutoy and Viesturs Koziols, a well-connected Latvian businessman who was one of the other attendees. Ivanka Trump is now a senior White House adviser.

The businessmen were also ushered in to see Ivanka’s father in his office, they said. Koziols said the meetings were scheduled for 40 minutes but lasted four hours.

“We had an extraordinarily good meeting with Ivanka,” said Koziols, who added that he and Donald Trump “shook hands as possible partners”. 

The discussions centred around developing a permanent venue for New Wave, an annual musical talent contest that Krutoy co-founded. A comparison with Las Vegas was made in an attempt to catch Trump’s eye, according to one person familiar with the discussions.

“The idea was that we could use the hotel during the festival for the singers and musicians, and we could use the concert hall for performances,” Krutoy told the Guardian.

Krutoy flew to Riga and in July gave a press conference about the Trump talks alongside Ainārs Šlesers, a flamboyant Latvian businessman and former deputy prime minister, who was assisting the efforts to secure Trump’s involvement.

“By attracting the attention of such a serious investor like Trump, we can think about directing New Wave towards a western European audience,” Krutoy said at the time.

Šlesers said in August 2011 that he, too, met Trump in New York and discussed the Riga collaboration “several times” with Ivanka Trump. Detailed plans went back and forth with the Trump Organization, which signaled a willingness to press ahead, according to one person involved.

During the following weeks, however, difficulties arose. Krutoy was called in for questioning by Latvia’s Corruption Prevention and Combating Bureau (KNAB), which had recently embarked on an investigation that became known locally as the “Oligarchs Case”. No allegations were made against Krutoy, he was never charged, and he denied any wrongdoing.

But Šlesers was a central figure in the inquiry, suspected of using public office to influence decisions on property developments benefiting companies he secretly owned. He and Koziols were also questioned in 2011. They denied any wrongdoing and were not charged. Šlesers did not respond to emails seeking comment.

Discussions with the Trumps about developing the complex in Riga ground to a halt. People who were involved deny that the KNAB investigation was to blame. Koziols said he and his associates simply could not secure enough external financing.

During a visit to Riga in May 2012, Donald Trump Jr acknowledged that his family had explored the potential Latvian development. “We were talking,” he told reporters, after being asked about Krutoy’s group. “We went back and forth for a little while. Nothing went forward, but it’s an area that we are interested in.”

At the heart of the Latvian inquiry were secret recordings of meetings involving suspects at a hotel in Riga. According to leaked transcripts published by the magazine IR, Šlesers was heard telling a potential investor in February 2011 that he had “an agreement with Trump” after meeting him in New York, and that they were “ready to make the Trump Plaza Riga”. Šlesers did not respond to a request for comment by IR.

Apparently keen to chase down this line of inquiry, Latvia made an official request for judicial assistance from the US in February 2014. The interest from Latvian authorities in Trump was first reported last year by Neatkarīgā Rīta Avīze of Riga.

Latvia’s request was described to the Guardian by two sources who have reviewed it but were not permitted to discuss it publicly.

The Latvian authorities asked for Trump himself to be interviewed for their inquiry, according to the sources. At least one Trump Organization executive did speak with FBI officials, and the company provided written answers to additional questions.

The US did not formally respond until September 2015, the sources said. By then, Latvian investigators were close to concluding their case, and appear not to have pursued the link with Trump any further.

Alan Garten, chief legal officer of the Trump Organization, said he could not recall whether the company had received a request for information relating to Latvia. “But if we were contacted by the authorities, we would have certainly cooperated,” Garten said in an email.

The FBI, justice department and Latvian authorities declined to comment.

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 Igor Krutoy with Emin and Aras Agalarov, at a birthday party for Aras Agalarov in November 2015. Photograph: web

The Agalarovs denied any wrongdoing. Their attorney, Scott Balber, said: “The Agalarovs did not introduce Mr Krutoy to the Trumps and had no involvement in any discussions between Mr Krutoy and the Trumps. The Agalarovs did not know the Trumps in 2011.”

Peter Mirijanian, a spokesman for Ivanka Trump’s attorney, said: “Work and meetings Ms Trump had five years before the election, which had nothing to do with the election, are not relevant topics to which we will respond.”

The blunted conclusion to the Oligarchs Case remains a source of intense frustration to anti-corruption campaigners in Latvia. Judins, the MP, examined the case on a special commission and said it exposed “state capture” in his country.

“I think there was enough evidence for the prosecutor to continue this case,” said Judins. “But he said no.”

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/mar/29/trump-fbi-hotel-latvia-investigation-russia-links