Russian political scientist says Trump's Moscow handler is Dimitri Simes

Russian political scientist and journalist Andrey Piontkovsky tells Ukraine’s Observer that it’s very clear Donald Trump is a Kremlin tool, and he thinks his handler is Dimitri Simes. At the very least, Simes is the person currently delivering Vladimir Putin’s propaganda to Trump.

His claims come on the heels of Trump telling a reporter that he intends to lift sanctions on Russia if the country works with him on nuclear weapons.

It seems to me that with this sensational interview, Trump has absolutely exposed himself as a Kremlin agent firmly on the Kremlin’s hook. For Trump, this is a completely frank self-exposure. All his foreign policy statements are a list of the Kremlin’s wishes. This is an unprecedented situation in US history…
I don’t know what they are keeping him on. Maybe on compromising evidence with prostitutes, or maybe on Rosneft shares that were prepared for him in a Singapore offshore and will be knocked out after he lifts the sanctions. But the fact that he is desperately trying to fulfill the Kremlin’s program is obvious. And he sits on this hook quite tightly…
He said that he would lift sanctions on Russia if such a deal was concluded. But Trump could not come up with this idea – in these matters he is a completely illiterate moron. For example, it is known that he asked nuclear weapons experts: why we do not use nuclear weapons, if we have them? Only two weeks ago, Trump shouted that his task would be to dramatically increase the potential of nuclear weapons, to which Putin replied on the same day: we will increase it even more.
Andrey Piontkovsky, translated to English

Piontkovsky goes on to say that Trump is following “instructions from Moscow” given to him by Russian agent Dimitri Simes. Simes was born in Soviet Russia and is now the CEO and President of the Center for the National Interest, a D.C. conservative think tank. He met with Putin in person as recently as 2015, and Putin has publicly called Simes his “American friend and colleague.” In the US, Simes has used his connections to arrange meetings between officials and undercover Russian agents on multiple occasions. He is allegedly Maria Butina’s handler.

Trump made his first speech on foreign policy in April 2016 at the organization headed by Simes. Then it seemed suspicious. Since then, everything he says about foreign policy is a repetition of the entire Kremlin program.
Andrey Piontkovsky, translated to English

Simes may have helped draft the speech, according to the House Intelligence Committee. Officially, the speech was co-written by Richard Burt, a member of the advisory boards for Simes’ think tank and Russia’s Alfa Bank. He was an adviser to the Trump campaign, a role he acquired with the help of Putin’s political chaos agent, Paul Manafort.

Former Soviet KGB agent Yuri Shvets tells Craig Unger in his book American Kompromat that he tried to recruit Simes but couldn’t; another agent already had.

Shvets discussed the matter with his superior, who wanted to check it out with headquarters. “And the next day, he calls me saying, ‘Stand down. He’s being taken care of,’” Shvets told me. Translation: There was no need to recruit Simes because he was already a contact of the KGB.
Craig Unger, American Kompromat

Simes was even contacted by the FBI when he applied for US citizenship in the 1970s, because they were warned that he’s a KGB agent.

The FBI official with whom he met pulled out a folder full of paper and said “This folder contains written statements of people alleging that you are a KGB agent. Here they are. But these are all just statements with no proof. Therefore, we do feel that we cannot oppose your citizenship application on the basis of these statements. However, I am telling you this so that you understand that these statements exist and that we will be watching you closely.”
Gordon

How do you prove someone is a Russian intelligence agent, especially before the invention of the modern internet?

At the time of this writing in 2021, Simes co-hosts a political show on Russia’s Channel One. His co-host is Vyacheslav Nikonov, a Russian government official who met with Republican lawmakers on July 4, 2018. Nikonov is also the head of Russkiy Mir Foundation, a Putin initiative dedicated to “forming the Russian World as a global project.”

Putin opposition leader Alexey Navalny has asked the Biden administration to sanction Channel One CEO Konstantin Ernst.