For decades, Donald Trump has cultivated Russian money and investment to keep his hotels and other business interests afloat. But as Trump was cultivating Russian money; Vladimir Putin’s Russia was cultivating him. With Putin consolidating power at home and trying to revive Russia as a great power abroad, he faced a challenge: democracy. “Color revolutions” – pro-democracy uprisings - threatened Russia’s rise and Putin’s rule. He blamed the United States and sought to hit back where we were most vulnerable: our politics. Donald Trump became the perfect vehicle; the ideal asset. As Trump’s campaign built up steam, Russia set up its own campaign to support him. These two campaigns shared the same goals, same tactics, and were in constant contact. In other words, these campaigns colluded. Since coming to office, Trump has continued to align himself with Putin, all while trying to obstruct the investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election and his own campaign’s complicity in that effort.

 Host Max Bergmann is a veteran of the State Department who worked on sensitive military and national security issues under Secretaries of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and John Kerry. He now runs an initiative for the Center for American Progress Action Fund called The Moscow Project. For the past two years, he and his team have been examining Russia’s interference in the 2016 election.

Beginning with this trailer of The Asset, you will hear everything they have learned over the past two years to help you make sense of the biggest political scandal in American history, including elements of our exclusive interviews with:

Tim O'Brien, Executive Editor of Bloomberg Opinion and author of Trump Nation

Angela Stent, Professor of Government and Foreign Service at Georgetown University and director of its Center for Eurasian, Russian, and East European Studies and author of Putin's World: Russia Against the West and with the Rest

Luke Harding, Foreign Correspondent for The Guardian and author of Collusion: Secret Meetings, Dirty Money, and How Russia Helped Donald Trump Win

Asha Rangappa, former Special Agent for the FBI, specializing in counterintelligence investigations in New York City

 John Sipher, former member of the CIA’s Senior Intelligence Service, Chief of Station and Deputy Chief of Station in Europe, Asia, and in high-threat environments, including Moscow

 David Corn Washington Bureau Chief for Mother Jones and co-author of Russian Roulette: The Inside Story of Putin's War on America and the Election of Donald Trump

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The scandal of Russian interference became Topic # 1 in the first six months of 2017. In a whirlwind of bombshell stories and breaking developments, Trump’s Russia ties went from a fringe topic, ignored by the national media, to a national media obsession.

During the 2016 election, candidate Trump’s laudatory comments about Russia were, frankly, weird. For 70 years, the Republican Party had defined itself by being hawkish on Russia. In the previous presidential election, Republican candidate Mitt Romney said Russia was “without question, our #1 geopolitical foe.”

During the campaign, Trump had flip-flopped on a whole series of positions to align with traditional GOP values. But on the subject of Russia and Vladimir Putin, Trump remained steadfast. He unabashedly praised and defended the Russian leader.

In this episode of The Asset, host Max Bergmann, the director of The Moscow Project, an initiative of the Center for American Progress Action Fund, rewinds the tape and takes us through the blurred timeline from the launch of Donald Trump’s campaign to the beginning of the Mueller investigation. Max brings into sharp focus the details of the greatest political scandal in American history: the Trump campaign’s collusion with Russia during the 2016 election.

The daily deluge of information makes Trump’s relationship with Russia seem even more confusing and complex. It is almost like reading a novel with the pages out of order.

The Asset puts the pages back in order, starting just as the FBI would if it were conducting a counter-intelligence investigation. We’ll follow the money. Each week, we will examine the colorful characters and dirty deals that populate the story of how the son of a shady real estate mogul became President of the United States with the help of a ruthless autocrat trying to undermine the United States and re-establish the glory of his fading superpower on the global stage.

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Donald Trump’s businesses failed; a lot. He bankrupted hotels, casinos, an airline and—even an entire football league. And when they failed Trump needed someone to bail him out. And up until the late 1990s that person was his dad.

Yet despite Trump’s businesses failures, he came to personify the image of American wealth and success in the 1980s. It was an era of a roaring stock market and Wall Street extravagance and no one seemed to embody the fabulously wealthy lifestyle more than Donald Trump. He cultivated that image and became a celebrity.

In this episode of The Asset, host Max Bergmann, the director of The Moscow Project, an initiative of the Center for American Progress Action Fund, shows that when Trump wrote The Art of the Deal, when he was on Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous, when he was being listed in Forbes as one of the wealthiest people in the world, it was all a fraud. It was an act. As everything was falling apart around him, Trump proved a master at keeping up appearances – at living a double life. He convinced the public, the media, and banks that he was a great businessman when in fact, he was bankrupt.

During this period Trump also rubbed shoulders with mobsters and even got on the radar of the KGB – even going to Moscow at the invitation of the Soviet Union’s Ambassador to the United States.

As the 1990s became the 2000s, Donald Trump’s dad was no longer around to bail him out. But traditional banks would not lend to him, coining the term “the Donald Risk.” Yet Trump was able to build project after project by turning to a new class of uber-wealthy buyers and investors from Russia and the former Soviet Union. The question would soon become: who was cultivating whom?

The Asset tells the full story of Trump and Russia. Each week, we will examine the colorful characters and dirty deals that populate the story of how Russia helped the son of a shady real estate mogul became President of the United States.

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