Was Trump blackmailing himself with Miss Moscow?

Donald Trump’s trips to Russia before he became president continue to generate speculation. Now it’s about a model who once even sat on Thomas Gottschalk’s sofa.

Things get crazy in Moscow in the 1990s. Business people smell a lot of money, party life is legendary. Yet at the same time, violence and crime dominate the headlines and dominate much of the economy. Anyone who wants to do large-scale business in Moscow after the fall of Soviet communism, all over Russia, needs a so-called “roof”, in Russian: “Krysha.” These are gangs asserting their own interests with the armed force if necessary.

The “roofs” are made up of remnants of the army, the secret services and the mafias. White-collar thieves at the power switch points and tattooed thieves on the street are interdependent. Extortion, protection money and contract killings are the order of the day. It is not uncommon for businessmen themselves to become victims of their so-called protectors.

The travels of businessman Trump

During these years, a businessman from New York travels to Moscow to search for attractive real estate offers. He made contacts there as early as the 1980s and believes in doing great business with the market economy, which is new to Russia.

Sein Name: Donald Trump.

An American journalist even claims who got involved with the Russian mafia during this timeto pay off your huge debts. This has not been proven under criminal law. But there are signs that Trump immersed himself in the colorful life of Moscow’s nouveau riche in 1996, where shady businessmen, criminals and secret services were mixed.

Strip club, rumors and cameras

A newly released report The US Senate Committee responsible for the secret services is fueling more speculation about Trump’s trips to Moscow at the time, about his contacts there and about his possible affairs. It is expressly stated that the committee had not found that the Russian secret service had information about Trump that exposed him to blackmail, an alleged “compromise.” However, the report lists some opportunities to collect such material.

Rumors of an alleged short-term relationship of the current president of the United States, which former business partners brought to the committee, are of particular interest, for example, in addition to a possible visit to the strip club. Consequently, the men got the impression at the time that the married Trump was bonding with the then “Miss Moscow.” His name is blackened on the report.

Actress and model

There is some probability that the woman is Maria Kalinina, a model who became known as “Miss Moscow 1988” at age 16 and in Germany through a visit “Wetten, dass …?” In the same year. In the United States, she later had fairly moderate success as an actress. Among other things, she played the bloodthirsty Countess Bathory in the horror movie “Stay Alive.”

“Miss Moscow 1988” in “Wetten, dass …?”: It is said that the woman had an intimate contact with the future president of the United States, Donald Trump. A Senate report fuels speculation about possible blackmail material. (Source: imago images)

Maria Kalinina in the low-budget production “Stay Alive”: it was one of her biggest roles in Hollywood. (Source: EntertainmentPictures / imago images)

Kalinina was found by investigative journalist Michael Weiss, who works for the American news portal “The Daily Beast”. He followed publicly accessible leads and came across sources that should identify Kalinina. For example, two years later, in 1998, Kalinina and Trump gave a joint interview to the Russian newspaper “Kommersant”.

Trump recounts his trip to Moscow in 1996, where Kalinina kept him company. At that time she was the “most beautiful hostess of [Moskau] Trump was quoted as saying that neither Claudia Schiffer nor Tina Turner had overshadowed them. Therefore, they had both lived in the same hotel. In the same report, he claims to be in negotiations for a “Trump Tower” in Moscow.

Kalinina herself has also admitted knowing Trump: in a Komsomolskaya Pravda report in June this year, she describes that Trump probably had feelings for her, but that there was no affair. “I immediately said, ‘I have a boyfriend.’ Then they remained friends.

Kalinina in 2008: Today she left acting and is a yoga teacher. (Source: Chernykh / imago images)

It is not the first time that it is said that he had a scandal with a president: in 1991 he had to defend himself against rumors that he had a special relationship with Michael Gorbachev. “I can’t even imagine it,” Kalinina told the LA Times at the time. “She’s the age of my father.” You didn’t know him either.

But the Senate report doesn’t just generate new speculation about the alleged US President affair. Furthermore, there appear to be concerns about what information might have been leaked to the Russian secret service on a subsequent trip to Moscow. Consequently, several witnesses repeated to the committee that they had heard of videotapes that Donald Trump was supposed to show during his 2013 stay with prostitutes at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Moscow.

While the senators were unable to find any evidence of the actual existence of such tapes, the report at least concludes that the hotel is being monitored by Russian intelligence. Consequently, the luxury hotel is likely to be assigned a permanent officer who has access to the surveillance camera system, which is also used to spy on guest rooms. Therefore, the hotel represents a high security risk, also due to the high number of prostitutes found there. It is not yet clear whether Trump’s stay there made him vulnerable to blackmail.