Andras Gollner exposes Trump in “The Budapest Bridge”

The following article in The Hungarian Free Press by Andras Gollner in two parts,  “The Budapest Bridge: Hungary’s Role in the Collusion Between the Trump Campaign and the Russian Secret Service” and “The Budapest Bridge Part 2″, provides missing links on the Trump-Russia collusion conspiracy.   Gollner’s information fits the Trump modus operandi; he cites early Trump New Yorker friend, Arthur J. Finkelstein, a fellow Roy Cohn associate, as instrumental in the behind the scenes shenanigans of electoral manipulation.  Finkelstein, with Roger Stone and Paul Manafort, constitute a key Trump base of loyalists with links back to Cohn.   Gollner even provides a possible role for Trump’s office Nazi Sebastian Gorka.   Gollner introduces his articles as follows:

“Our investigation has uncovered ‘the smoking gun’ about the relationship between the Trump campaign and the Russian secret services. It shows that the connection between the Russian secret services and the Trump campaign is not a direct one. It did not run through the Russian embassy in the US or through the spies that have been expelled by Obama. It did not run through New York City or Moscow, or in conversations between campaign staff and the Russian ambassador to the US. It ran through Budapest, which is the European Headquarters of Putin’s FSB. Budapest was the ‘bridge’ between the Trump campaign and the Russian secret service.

Some of our evidence is well known. It is known, for example, that the Russians and the Trump campaign had identical strategic interests. They both wanted to position Hillary Clinton as a ‘crooked and untrustworthy’ candidate. What has not been known, up to now is, that the unacknowledged architect of this grand strategy was the notoriously secretive Arthur J. Finkelstein, a long time New York associate of Donald Trump, going back to the Roy Cohen days.

Finkelstein is perhaps the most bitter opponent of Hillary Clinton amongst a small circle of pro-Republican campaign gurus, and a frequent flyer to many of the capitals where Putin is seen as a hero. Finkelstein introduced Paul Manafort years ago to Putin’s pro-Russian Ukrainian oligarchs, who use their corporate hats, to advance Putin’s fortunes abroad.  Finkelstein also had a big hand in Manafort’s addition to the Trump team. Finkelstein has also served as chief political strategist for the past 10 years, to Putin’s most loyal follower in the Western alliance – the Hungarian PM, Viktor Orbán. Finkie, as Orbán is fond to call him, also works for some of the most notorious autocrats of the former Soviet Republics, and always indirectly, so his pay-masters can’t be easily identified – a skill that he passed on to Trump’s ex-campaign chairman, Manafort.

As Steven Bannon confessed to the Hollywood Reporter, after the elections, polling and visceral messaging, a Finkelstein specialty, played a critical part in the Trump campaign.  It is not a coincidence, that the campaign’s senior pollster was Tony Fabrizio, who learned his craft on Finkelstein’s knees. Virtually the entire top tier of the Trump campaign, including Roger Ailes and Roger Stone, have close personal ties to the man, who is known worldwide, as ‘The Merchant of Venom’.”

Gollner names names and suggests further avenues of investigation.   All of this fits well with other information developed on Trump, such as that on the Azerbaijan Trump hotel detailed in Adam Davidson’s New Yorker article “Trump’s Worst Deal.”  We need an independent prosecutor to follow up this line of evidence along with the other indicia of collusion.

The article sets out a brief bio of Gollner as follows:   “András B. Göllner split his time between Budapest and Montreal from 1990 until 2010, as a senior political-economic advisor, on governmental transparency. He organized the current Prime Minister, Viktor Orbán’s first visit to Canada, and learned, through close personal contact, about many of his corrupt practices. He conducted the first and only study (financed by USAID) that looked inside the operations of the Hungarian Ministry of the Interior, which today, works arm in arm with Russia’s secret services. He is an internationally recognized expert on Central European politics, has a PhD in Economics from the London School of Economics, published 3 books, and dozens of articles, in such well known English language media as The LA Times, The Huffington Post, The National Post, or the Montreal Gazette, to name just a few. He is a regular contributor to the Hungarian Free Press. His current status is Professor Emeritus, at Montreal’s Concordia University.”

Concordia is a prominent Canadian university with an international reputation, particularly in business.  A brief google of Gollner shows that he has been active in efforts against a slide of the Hungarian state toward despotism.