**THE INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER**

*Updated with a new afterword from the author*

Kompromat n.-Russian for compromising information

This is a story about the dirty secrets of the most powerful people in the

world-including Donald Trump.

It is based on exclusive interviews with dozens of high-level

sources-intelligence officers in the CIA, FBI, and the KGB; thousands of

pages of FBI investigations, police investigations; and news articles in

English, Russian, and Ukrainian. American Kompromat shows

that from Trump to Jeffrey Epstein, kompromat was used in operations far

more sinister than the public could ever imagine.

Among them, the book addresses what may be the single most

important unanswered question of the entire Trump era: Is Donald Trump

a Russian asset?

The answer, American Kompromat says, is yes, and it supports that

conclusion with the first richly detailed narrative on how the KGB

allegedly first spotted Trump as a potential asset, how they cultivated

him as an asset, arranged his first trip to Moscow, and pumped him full of

KGB talking points that were published in three of America’s most

prestigious newspapers.

Among its many revelations, American Kompromat reports for the first

time that:

* According to Yuri Shvets, a

former major in the KGB, Trump first did business

over forty years ago with a Manhattan electronics store co-owned by a

Soviet emigre who Shvets believes was working with the KGB. Trump’s

decision to do business there triggered protocols through which the

Soviet spy agency began efforts to cultivate Trump as an asset, thus

launching a decades-long relationship of mutual benefit to Russia

and Trump, from real estate to real power.

* Trump’s invitation to

Moscow in 1987 was billed as a preliminary scouting trip for a hotel,

but according to Shvets, was actually initiated by a high-level KGB

official, General Ivan Gromakov. These sorts of trips were usually

arranged for deep development, recruitment, or for a meeting with

the KGB handlers, even if the potential asset was unaware of it.

* Before Trump’s first trip

to Moscow, he met with Natalia Dubinina, who worked at the United

Nations library in a vital position usually reserved as a cover for KGB

operatives.

* In 1987, according to

Shvets, the KGB circulated an internal cable hailing the successful

execution of an active measure by a newly cultivated American asset

who took out full page ads in The New York Times, The

Washington Post, and The Boston Globe promoting

policies promoted by the KGB. The ads had been taken out by

Donald Trump, who, Shvets said, would become a special unofficial

contact for the KGB, that is, an intelligence asset whose role has

been compared to that of the late industrialist, Armand Hammer.

A number of America’s

highest national security officials have said they believe Trump is a

Russian asset, but neither the Mueller Report nor the numerous

congressional investigations throughout Trump’s presidency pursued that

vital question. American Kompromat does.

In addition to exploring Trump’s ties to the KGB, American Kompromat also

shows that from Donald Trump to Jeffrey Epstein, Russian kompromat

operations documented the darkest secrets of the most powerful people in

the world and transformed those secrets into potent weapons. It also

reveals:

* How Jeffrey Epstein and

Trump jostled for influence and financial supremacy for years. A college dropout let go from his prep school

teaching job, Epstein became a millionaire in part with the help of

Ghislaine Maxwell’s father-media tycoon Robert Maxwell, who allegedly

served as a Soviet and Israeli spy and likely gave Epstein a sum

estimated between $10 and $20 million before his death in 1991.

* How the Jeffrey

Epstein-Ghislaine Maxwell sex-trafficking operation provided a source

and marketplace for sexual kompromat–dirty secrets of the richest and most powerful men in the world. While

Epstein had a rule when it came to selecting women, namely, the

younger, the better, he also knew that a multimillionaire–or future

leader–caught committing adultery is nothing compared to getting

caught on video in the act with a minor.

* How the Epstein-Maxwell

ring helped enable young women with possible ties to Russian

intelligence to gain access to the highest levels of Silicon Valley and the worlds of artificial intelligence,

supercomputers, and the internet. This, at a time when Vladimir Putin

has asserted, Whoever becomes the leader in this sphere [artificial

intelligence] will become the ruler of the world.

* How Epstein had ties to

Russia through sex-trafficking. Epstein

partnered with Jean-Luc Brunel, head of MC2 modeling agency and a

major sex trafficker, who, in turn, had worked with Peter Listerman,

the celebrated procurer, or matchmaker as he prefers, for Russian oligarchs.

* How John Mark Dougan, a former deputy sheriff in Mar-a-Lago’s Palm

Beach County, says he acquired 478 videos confiscated from the

Jeffrey Epstein investigation, fled to Moscow, became only the

fourth American to win asylum in Russia, and immediately gained access

to Putin’s inner circle, showing the ongoing power that comes from

kompromat and how its value is highest before it is used.