done at the behest of a foreign power, would it then be illegal? yes. simon was born in russia, to jewish parents in 1946. he worked hard in school and earned a ph.d. in chemistry from this prestigious university in moscow. once he graduated in the 70s, he didn t want to stay put in the soviet union. he wanted something bigger and better. so he did something few highly trained russian scientists were allowed to do in the 1970s. he moved here to houston, texas. and joined the booming local oil industry. he became a naturalized citizen in 1982 and rose through the corporate ranks all the way to the executive suite. then in 1996 kuk is traded in the american dream and went back to russia. he was hired as the president of a struggling russian oil company
congratulations on a great spot you just did. i m happy to hear you say that, i m curious to hear your thoughts. what do you think about what we uncovered about simon kukis. you know, that s just another piece in a mosaic that continues to grow. and it fits in with a pattern of big money rolling into trump s coffers during the campaign and after the campaign into the inaugural fund. you talked about the amount of money that kukis gave in january of 2017, a few months later, now we re talking about the inauguration, trump s inaugural fund, trump is getting $250,000 from a guy named andrew entrader who is the cousin of victor veksanberg, a tremendously significant russian oligarch. the same time the inaugust ural fund is getting money from american russians who have
thousands of dollars to donald trump s 2016 run. that got him and his russian girlfriend right up close to the future president. in political circles, no one had ever heard of simon kukis before. he s been an american citizen for decades and he s never given a political con contribute use. robert mcguire worked at the center for responsive politics. suddenly he starts giving to trump allied joint fund-raising committees. and to the trump campaign itself. mcguire and his team tracked donations to both parties. 99.9% of americans give $2700 or less, that s the maximum you re allowed to donate directly to a candidate. but he s donated $2700 to the trump campaign, plus another $273,000 to the trump victory committee which distributed the
you try to find other e-mails, if these e-mails exist, there might be other e-mails out there in the same chain or that go later or earlier, and these are things you can bear down on, depending how far robert mueller wants to go in chasing the russian money trail into the trump campaign, and there s a whole other russian money trail over the years into trump s businesses. we just don t yet have a strong indication whether mueller is including both those money trails in his ongoing investigation. we thought we knew everything about what mueller was looking at, and now there s this story, these names that you mention, simon kukis about more money going in. do you think there s going to be even more names that are still going to come out? listen, robert mueller continues to surprise us. it s one of my least favorite cliches, but the whole tip of the iceberg, you only see one tenth of the iceberg, i think his investigation could be going
plan in action, and it s going to work. this guy is going to win. our guy is going to win. why send the boat toe? the photo is basically what we might call proof that i really can produce what i m saying i can produce. here i am with giuliani. we talked to giuliani, he doesn t remember meeting simon kukis. we looked at the photo s metadata, it was taken on august 13th, 2016. when giuliani attended a fund-raiser hosted by woody johnson at his mansion in the hamptons. guests paid up to $25,000 to meet and greet candidate trump. two days earlier, kukis donated exactly in a amount. a few weeks later, he and his girlfriend attended another fund-raiser. she posed for this photo. which kukis e-mailed to his dear slav. maybe he s just bragging about a