Comey: Trump asked me to investigate ‘pee tape’ to reassure Melania

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Comey: Trump asked me to investigate ‘pee tape’ to reassure Melania
New York Post

URL: https://nypost.com/2018/04/12/comey-tru ... e-melania/
Category: Politics
Published: April 12, 2018

Description: President Trump wanted then-FBI Director James Comey to investigate the infamous pee-tape allegations to reassure First Lady Melania Trump that he hadn’t actually paid Russian hookers to urinate on a hotel bed, the former top G-man claims in his new book. “He brought up what he called the ‘golden showers thing’ . . . adding that it bothered him if there was ‘even a 1 percent chance’ his wife, Melania, thought it was true,” Comey writes in “A Higher Loyalty.” “He just rolled on, unprompted, explaining why it couldn’t possibly be true, ending by saying he was thinking of asking me to investigate the allegation to prove it was a lie. I said it was up to him.” Comey says the conversation took place at a private dinner on Jan. 27, 2017, days after the publication of an intelligence dossier alleging the Kremlin had a tape of Trump in 2013 paying prostitutes to perform the dirty deed on a bed in a Moscow Ritz-Carlton suite once occupied by President Barack Obama. Comey recalls privately wondering why Melania might think there was even a 1 percent chance the allegation was true, noting there was “zero chance” his own wife would believe such a claim. “In what kind of marriage, to what kind of man, does a spouse conclude there is only a 99 percent chance her husband didn’t do that?” Comey writes. He says he warned Trump an investigation might “create a narrative that we were investigating him personally.” Trump replied that Comey “might be right” but kept asking him to consider the idea, according to the book. It wasn’t their only uncomfortable conversation about the “golden showers thing.” During a call on Jan. 11, 2017, Comey says, Trump launched into an explanation about how he hadn’t even stayed overnight in Moscow on the date in question. “Another reason you know this isn’t true: I’m a germaphobe. There’s no way I would let people pee on each other around me, no way,” he quotes Trump as saying. Comey notes “the activity” wouldn’t have required an overnight stay, and speculates that the presidential suite at the Moscow Ritz-Carlton was probably spacious enough for a germaphobe to have kept a “safe distance” from it. It came up a fourth time on March 30, 2017, when Comey says Trump called to ask him to “get out” that he wasn’t personally under investigation in the FBI’s probe into Russia’s election meddling. “Can you imagine me, hookers?” Comey says Trump told him before adding “he has a beautiful wife and the whole thing has been very painful to her.”

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Stephen Colbert Seizes Golden Opportunity To Poke Fun At Trump’s Pee Tape
Decider

URL: https://decider.com/2018/04/13/stephen- ... -pee-tape/
Category: Entertainment
Published: April 13, 2018

Description: As soon as news broke yesterday that former FBI director James Comey’s new memoir made reference to the infamous rumored Donald Trump pee tape, it was pretty much guaranteed that late-night hosts would fully take advantage of this flood of information. Perhaps no one delighted in it more than Stephen Colbert, who spent much of his opening monologue last night making light of the new claims.



“Just before I came out here, James Comey news broke,” said Colbert. “Apparently, in Comey’s new book, Comey reveals that while he was still in office, President Trump asked him to investigate the ‘pee tape’ to reassure Melania. According to Comey, he brought up what he called the ‘golden showers thing’, adding that it bothered him if there was ‘even a one percent chance’ his wife, Melania, thought it was true.” Colbert let that sink in for a moment. “Yes, it would bother him,” he said. “‘Cause she’d be off by about 99 percent.” The host went on to quote further passages from the New York Post‘s report on Comey, poking fun at Comey for not understanding Trump’s… unique marital situation.

“In the book, Comey wonders why Trump would need to give his wife that kind of reassurance, claiming there is ‘zero chance’ Comey’s own wife would believe such a claim. Oh, come on! Sanctimonious much, James Comey? Not everyone’s lucky enough to be in one of those rare, fairytale marriages with a 10 percent no-hooker-pee-pee guarantee. It’s in the vows! For better or worse. For richer or poorer. For… cleaning up the sheets. It’s all in there!”

After playing a quick clip of Comey saying, “Lordy, I hope there are tapes”, Colbert agreed. “Me too, James. Me too.” The host didn’t miss a chance to plug Comey’s upcoming Tuesday appearance on the show, either. Even if Comey doesn’t bring a tape or two with him, it’s bound to be a night to remember.

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Trump ‘Pee Tape’ Could Be Real, Says Ex FBI Director James Comey
Daily Beast

URL: https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-pee ... says-comey
Category: Politics
Published: April 13, 2018

Description: In a stunning interview on ‘Good Morning America’ the former director of the FBI said it was ‘possible’ that the Russians had video of Trump taking part in a degrading sexual act.
We regret to inform you that James Comey, the former director of the FBI, says it’s “possible” that a pee tape involving Donald Trump and Russian prostitutes actually exists. The most infamous section of the Steele dossier, which was full of salacious claims involving Trump and Russia, included a totally unverified claim that the now-president paid prostitutes in 2013 to pee on a Moscow hotel bed where Barack and Michelle Obama once slept. In his new book, Comey revealed Trump asked him to investigate the claim that any such video existed in order to prove that it wasn’t true. In an interview Friday on Good Morning America, Comey said for the first time that the near-mythical tape could really exist. “I honestly never thought these words would come out of my mouth, but I don’t know whether the current president of the United States was with prostitutes peeing on each other in Moscow in 2013,” said Comey, in one of the most extraordinary sentences ever broadcast on breakfast television. “It’s possible, but I don’t know.” Elsewhere in the interview, broadcast ahead of the April 17 release of his book, A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies and Leadership, Comey told ABC News host George Stephanopoulos that he discussed the allegations with Trump on more than one occasion—experiences which he justifiably described “really weird.” Comey said that during a private dinner with Trump on Jan. 27, 2017, the president brought up the dossier and said that “he may want me to investigate it to prove that it didn’t happen. And then he says something that distracted me because he said, you know, ‘If there’s even a 1 percent chance my wife thinks that’s true, that’s terrible.’” The former FBI director added: “And I remember thinking, ‘How could your wife think there’s a 1 percent chance you were with prostitutes peeing on each other in Moscow?’ I’m a flawed human being, but there is literally zero chance that my wife would think that was true. So, what kind of marriage to what kind of man does your wife think [that] there’s only a 99 percent chance you didn’t do that?” Comey advised Trump that it would be unhelpful to start an investigation into the prostitute allegations as it might lend weight to them and also because it would be nearly impossible to prove once and for all that it didn’t happen. The former FBI director recounted a separate private meeting with Trump on Jan. 6, 2017, at Trump Tower, where he first told Trump about the contents of the dossier in a surreal one-on-one conversation. The president appeared concerned about how the dossier may undermine his election victory and asked Comey to confirm it had no impact on the election. Comey recalled thinking ahead of the tricky conversation: “I’m about to meet with a person who doesn’t know me, who’s just been elected president of the United States, [and] by all accounts, and from my watching him during the campaign, could be volatile. And I’m about to talk to him about allegations that he was involved with prostitutes in Moscow and that the Russians taped it and have leverage over him.” He described the sensitive conversation as an “almost out-of-body experience, adding: “I was floating above myself, looking down, saying, ‘you’re sitting here, briefing the incoming president of the United States about prostitutes in Moscow.’” He went on: “I started to tell him about—the allegation was that he had been involved with prostitutes in a hotel in Moscow in 2013 during the visit for the Miss Universe pageant and that the Russians had filmed the episode, and he interrupted very defensively and started talking about it, you know, ‘Do I look like a guy who needs hookers?’” Comey recalled. “And I assumed he was asking that rhetorically, I didn’t answer that, and I just moved on and explained, ‘Sir, I’m not saying that we credit this, I’m not saying we believe it. We just thought it very important that you know.’” Comey said he told the president he had no idea if the allegations were true, saying: “I said … ‘I’m not saying that I believe the allegations, I’m not saying that I credit it… I never said, ‘I don’t believe it,’ because I couldn’t say one way or another.” Speaking after his interview aired on Good Morning America, ending with Comey saying it’s “possible” the Russian pee tape exists, ABC’s Stephanopoulos said: “I gotta say, that took my breath away.” If the supposed prostitute tape really was recorded by the Russians, it would give Russian President Vladimir Putin a powerful means of influence over Trump, potentially leaving open the ability to blackmail or attempt to bend the president of the United States to Russia’s will. The Steele dossier, put together by a former British intelligence officer, contains multiple allegations of misconduct and conspiracy between Trump’s presidential campaign and the Russian government. The section including the “pee tape” allegations included other examples of so-called kompromat—or compromising information—including alleged bribery and other sexual acts involving prostitutes. Some of the allegations in the document have been verified, but large parts have either been disproved or are yet to be proved. Elsewhere in the book, The Washington Post reported Thursday, Comey writes that Trump told him during a January 2017 White House meeting that the pee-tape allegation “couldn’t be true” because he didn’t stay at the Moscow Ritz-Carlton overnight and “only used the hotel room to change his clothes.” “I decided not to tell him that the activity alleged did not seem to require either an overnight stay or even being in proximity to the participants,” Comey writes, according to the Post. However, as The Atlantic’s Natasha Bertrand pointed out early Friday, NBC News reported in November that Trump bodyguard Keith Schiller told a congressional panel that a Russian wanted to send prostitutes to the room, but that Trump declined the offer and went to bed alone at the Moscow hotel. “One source noted that Schiller testified he eventually left Trump’s hotel room door and could not say for sure what happened during the remainder of the night,” the report stated. Trump hasn’t responded to the substance of the claims by Comey, but he questioned his integrity in a Twitter outburst against him shortly after the interview was aired Friday morning, saying: “James Comey is a proven LEAKER & LIAR. Virtually everyone in Washington thought he should be fired for the terrible job he did-until he was, in fact, fired. He leaked CLASSIFIED information, for which he should be prosecuted. He lied to Congress under OATH. He is a weak and untruthful slime ball who was, as time has proven, a terrible Director of the FBI. His handling of the Crooked Hillary Clinton case, and the events surrounding it, will go down as one of the worst ‘botch jobs’ of history. It was my great honor to fire James Comey!”

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Miss Universe 2013 Host Thomas Roberts Confirms: Trump Stayed Overnight in Moscow
Daily Beast

URL: https://www.thedailybeast.com/miss-univ ... -in-moscow
Category: Politics
Published: April 24, 2018

Description: The former NBC host won’t say if he has been interviewed by special counsel Robert Mueller.
In a fateful private White House dinner early last year, President Donald Trump raised with then-FBI Director James Comey the issue of “the golden showers thing”—a particularly salacious portion of an intelligence dossier claiming Trump hired Russian prostitutes to urinate on a Moscow hotel-room bed in 2013, while he was in town for the Miss Universe pageant. According to Comey’s memos about that conversation, Trump claimed it was impossible for him to have done any such thing, because “he had spoken to people who had been on... the trip with him and they had reminded him that he didn’t stay over night in Russia for that.” All available evidence proves otherwise—from flight records obtained by Politico to social media posts from the time to testimony from Trump’s own bodyguard. And now there’s more proof. Thomas Roberts, host of that year’s Miss Universe pageant, confirmed to The Daily Beast on Tuesday that Trump was in Moscow for one full night and at least part of another. “The first time I met Donald Trump it was in Moscow on November 8th, 2013,” the former NBC anchor said. “I taped a sit-down interview with Trump the next day on November 9th. That was also the date for the Miss Universe broadcast.” Roberts continued: “During the after-party for the Miss Universe event, Mr. Trump offered to fly me and my husband back to New York. He said he would be leaving directly from the party. We were unable to accept the invitation. That was the early morning hours of November 10th.” Roberts’ retelling of those days in Moscow represents one of the first public contradictions of the timeline Trump offered Comey. While it does not necessarily prove the existence of a so-called pee tape, it does raise further questions as to why the president misled his one-time FBI director in the first place. The findings of the dossier have already been of interest to special counsel Robert Mueller’s team, with news emerging a few weeks ago that it had corroborated portions of the explosive document. Asked whether he has been interviewed by Mueller’s team, Roberts told The Daily Beast: “No comment.”

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Trump: ‘Of Course’ I Stayed Overnight at Moscow Hotel
Daily Beast

URL: https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-of- ... scow-hotel
Category: Politics
Published: April 26, 2018

Description: Donald Trump said that he did in fact stay overnight in Moscow for the Miss Universe pageant in 2013—the evening when it’s claimed that the fabled “pee tape” was made. Speaking on Fox & Friends on Thursday morning, the president said: “I went to Russia for a day or so... of course I stayed there,” referring to the much-talked-about trip that became central to allegations made in the controversial Steele dossier. According to notes made public last week by former FBI Director James Comey, Trump told him on two occasions that he didn’t stay the night in Moscow, but that claim gradually unraveled this week after Politico obtained flight records and the host of the pageant told The Daily Beast Trump stayed at least one night. On Thursday, Trump denied that he ever told Comey he didn’t stay over in Moscow, saying: “I stayed there a very short period of time but of course I stayed. His memos said I left immediately, I never said that, I never said I left immediately.” Elsewhere in the interview, Trump admitted that his under-fire attorney Michael Cohen represented him on “this crazy Stormy Daniels deal.”

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President Trump told James Comey that ‘pee tape' can't be real because he’s a ‘germaphobe’
New York Daily News

URL: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politic ... -1.3930847
Category: Politics
Published: April 13, 2018

Description: He wanted to stop the leak. President Trump told James Comey he would not have hired Russian prostitutes to pee on each other because he's a "germaphobe," according to a tell-all book by the axed FBI director. Comey's upcoming memoir, "A Higher Loyalty," recounts a salacious conversation he had with Trump last January about the then-unreleased Steele dossier, a cache of documents alleging that the Russian government has compromising information on the President, including a "pee tape" featuring Trump and hookers in a Moscow hotel. During their conversation at Trump Tower, Comey said Trump offered a series of explanations for why he would never instruct Russian hookers to urinate on each other. He “strongly denied the allegations, asking — rhetorically, I assumed — whether he seemed like a guy who needed the service of prostitutes. He then began discussing cases where women had accused him of sexual assault, a subject I had not raised,” Comey said, according to an excerpt in the Washington Post. He then tried to pour more cold water on the tale in a phone call to Comey a week later, insisting he hadn’t stayed overnight in the hotel room. "I'm a germaphobe," Trump told Comey, according to his account. "There's no way I would let people pee on each other around me. No way." “I decided not to tell him that the activity alleged did not seem to require either an overnight stay or even being in proximity to the participants,” Comey wrote, according to the Post report.

The Steele dossier, which was made public weeks after the Trump Tower meet, claims that Trump had the hookers perform the lewd act in 2013 in the same Moscow hotel suite that President Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama once stayed in "as a way of soiling the bed." Trump asked Comey if the FBI could do anything to disprove the news reports he feared would leak from the unverified dossier, which was compiled by ex-British spy Christopher Steele. During a one-on-one dinner at the White House after the dossier’s release, Trump raised the “golden showers thing” again, telling Comey that the steady stream of news stories about the alleged act was very painful for First Lady Melania Trump to read. Trump told Comey he wanted the FBI to prove the claim wasn’t true because it bothered him that there might be even "a one percent chance" his wife might think it's true, according to the book. Comey writes that he was perplexed "why his wife would think there was any chance, even a small one, that he had been with prostitutes urinating on each other in a Moscow hotel room.” Comey's bombshell memoir, which is set to hit the shelves Tuesday, gives an eye-opening view of the tumultuous four months that he spent as Trump's FBI director. Trump unceremoniously fired Comey on May 9, 2017, setting into motion a series of events that led to the appointment of special counsel Robert Mueller. Mueller is probing whether Trump obstructed justice by firing Comey, who oversaw the U.S. counterintelligence investigation into Russian election meddling. Mueller is also looking into the possibility that Trump's campaign colluded with the Russian government. Comey's memoir drips with resentment and includes numerous personal jabs, including references to Trump as an "ego driven" narcissist who's "untethered to truth." In a striking shot at his physique, the 6-foot-8 Comey describes Trump as shorter than he expected with a "too long" tie and "bright white half-moons" under his eyes that appeared to be from tanning goggles. Comey also made sure to check out Trump's hands. "(They were) smaller than mine but did not seem unusually so," Comey writes. Comey casts the President as a mafia boss-like figure who sought to blur the line between law enforcement and politics and tried to pressure him regarding his investigation into Russian election interference. The ex-FBI director writes extensively about the first time he met Trump at his namesake Manhattan skyscraper. Beyond Trump's "pee tape" denials, Comey and Trump discussed the intelligence community's findings about Russia's interference in the 2016 election. Comey was joined by National Security Agency Director Mike Rogers, CIA Director John Brennan and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper. Also present in the room were a number of Trump's incoming White House officials, including Vice President Mike Pence, chief of staff Reince Priebus, national security adviser Michael Flynn and press secretary Sean Spicer — all of whom, except Pence, have since left the administration. Comey was stunned that the Trump officials in the room seemed unconcerned about the Kremlin's election meddling. "They were about to lead a country that had been attacked by a foreign adversary, yet they had no questions about what the future Russian threat might be,” Comey writes. Instead, they launched into a strategy session about how to “spin what we’d just told them” for the public. Comey’s account lands at a particularly sensitive moment for Trump and the White House. Administration officials say Trump has fumed over a recent FBI raid at his personal lawyer’s Manhattan hotel room and office, raising the prospect that he could fire Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who appointed Mueller, or try to shut down the probe on his own. The Republican National Committee is poised to lead the pushback effort against Comey, who is set to do a series of interviews to promote the book. Trump claims he was justified in firing Comey because of his handling of the FBI's investigation into Hillary Clinton's private email servers. Trump used the email investigation as a weapon during the campaign and repeatedly claimed Clinton should be jailed for using a personal email system while serving as secretary of state. Democrats, on the other hand, have accused Comey of politicizing the investigation, and Clinton herself has said his public reopening of the probe before the election hurt her prospects. According to ABC, Comey said he believes he acted appropriately with the email probe in the book, but it is “entirely possible” that “my concern about making her an illegitimate president by concealing the restarted investigation bore greater weight than it would have if the election appeared closer or if Donald Trump were ahead in all polls. But I don’t know.” As for Clinton, “I have read she has felt anger toward me personally, and I’m sorry for that.” Comey’s book will be heavily scrutinized by Trump’s legal team looking for any inconsistencies between it and his public testimony, under oath, before Congress. They will be looking to impeach Comey’s credibility as a key witness in Mueller’s obstruction probe, which the President has cast as a "witch hunt."

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Source Says Trump Knew He Could Just ‘Deny, Deny, Deny' Russian-Prostitute Allegations to Melania
People

URL: http://people.com/politics/trump-pee-ta ... s-melania/
Category: Politics
Published: April 13, 2018

Description: A source tells PEOPLE that President Donald Trump didn’t really have wife Melania‘s best interests at heart when he tried persuade then-FBI director James Comey to investigate the alleged existence of the infamous “pee tape,” which purportedly shows Trump watching Russian prostitutes urinate on a Moscow hotel bed in 2013. “President Trump was worried about his own reputation because he feels he can always deny, deny, deny to Melania and she will go away on the subject,” says the Palm Beach source close to the Trumps. “Obviously, with something like this on tape, it would be harder to deny and make his life a little more difficult.” The White House did not immediately respond to PEOPLE’s request for comment. In his upcoming book, A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership, out Tuesday, Comey claims that Trump “brought up what he called the ‘golden showers thing’ “ to him multiple times, including during a private dinner with Trump at the White House on Jan. 27, 2017. “It bothered him if there was ‘even a one-percent chance’ his wife, Melania, thought it was true,” Comey writes. The former FBI director said in his book that Trump wanted him to prove the allegations were untrue so that the president could reassure his wife, who he said was upset by the claims. Trump was president-elect when Comey first gave him a heads up about a widely circulated British intelligence dossier containing unconfirmed allegations that in 2013, Russians filmed Trump with prostitutes he had instructed to urinate on the same bed at the Moscow Ritz-Carlton where President Obama once slept. Trump denied the allegations in his conversations with Comey, the former FBI director writes. According to the New York Post, Comey writes that he wondered why Melania might think there was even a 1-percent chance the allegations were true, claiming there is “zero chance” his own wife would believe such a claim. “In what kind of marriage, to what kind of man, does a spouse conclude there is only a 99 percent chance her husband didn’t do that?” Comey writes.

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Watch Stephen Colbert Visit 'Trump Pee Pee Tape' Hotel Room in Moscow
Rolling Stone

URL: https://www.rollingstone.com/tv/news/wa ... om-w493446
Category: Entertainment
Published: July 21, 2017

Description: "When you're in this room, I don't know how to describe it. It's soaked in history," host says of Moscow Ritz-Carlton's Room 1101
Stephen Colbert visited the site of one of the most damning rumors surrounding Donald Trump on Thursday's The Late Show. "It's been an amazing week, the Russia Week here, and this might be my favorite night," Colbert said. "The piece we're showing tonight is really the whole damn reason why we went." The host praised his own foresight about staging a Russia Week, even when it seemed the whole scandal would eventually blow over. "A big part of that New York Times interview they did with Trump focused on what's called 'the Dossier,'" Colbert explained. "Back in January, 10 days before Donald Trump was inaugurated, a document was leaked containing allegations that Trump has deep financial ties to Russia, that his campaign was being supported by the Russian government and that the Russians had compromising videos of Donald Trump watching prostitutes urinate on a bed in the Moscow Ritz-Carlton presidential suite. It was a bombshell."



Colbert noted that the news networks are scared off by how "salacious" the rumors are, so none of them really investigated the "pee pee tape." So the host himself embarked on a journey to find the compromising footage. After dropping a Cribs-style tour of the suite earlier in the week, Colbert offered a more complete exploration of the room Thursday. During the investigation, Colbert badgered Moscow citizens about the "pee pee tape" before sitting down with Russian surveillance expert and Kremlin critic Andrei Soldatov, who admitted that he's aware of the "golden shower" rumors but couldn't confirm its existence. Colbert then revealed that he rented the suite where the alleged video occurred – Room 1101 of the Moscow Ritz-Carlton – and takes his production team on a tour of the suite. "The room we've heard so much about, yet no one has come to check it out. I don't know why," Colbert said. "When you're in this room, I don't know how to describe it; it's soaked in history. It just washes over you. It's not even like it's in the past; you're in history. You're in it." Colbert admired the view out the suite's windows, only to realize it is overlooking the Kremlin. "They don't need to install cameras in here; they could just give Putin some binoculars," Colbert said. Alas, no evidence of the "pee pee tape" was uncovered in Room 1101, but Colbert did find his frequent guest "Cartoon Trump" hiding under the covers.

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Flight Records Illuminate Mystery of Trump’s Moscow Nights
Bloomberg News

URL: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles ... cow-nights
Category: Politics
Published: April 23, 2018

Description: President Donald Trump twice gave James Comey an alibi for why a salacious report about the 2013 Miss Universe pageant in Moscow couldn’t be true: He never even spent the night in Russia during that trip, Trump told the former FBI director, according to Comey’s memos about the conversations. Yet the broad timeline of Trump’s stay, stretching from Friday, Nov. 8, 2013, through the following Sunday morning, has been widely reported. And it’s substantiated by social media posts that show he slept in Moscow the night before the Miss Universe contest. Now, flight records obtained by Bloomberg provide fresh details. Combined with existing accounts and Trump’s own social-media posts, they capture two days that, nearly five years later, loom large in the controversy engulfing the White House and at the heart of the Comey memos, which the Justice Department turned over last week to Congress. Neither the White House nor Trump Organization immediately responded to requests for comment. According to Comey’s accounts of his 2017 meetings with the president, Trump said the Moscow trip was so quick that his head never hit a pillow -- even for one night. Trump fired Comey on May 9, 2017. The first denial came over dinner at the White House in late January 2017. “He said he arrived in the morning, did events, then showered and dressed for the pageant at the hotel," and then left for the event, Comey wrote. “Afterwards, he returned only to get his things because they departed for New York by plane that same night." On the second occasion in February 2017, Trump “explained, as he did at our dinner, that he hadn’t stayed overnight in Russia during the Miss Universe trip," Comey wrote. A reconstruction of events shows the future U.S. president’s journey to Moscow began in North Carolina, where he attended a birthday tribute to evangelist Billy Graham on Thursday, Nov. 7, 2013. While flight records show Trump’s own Cessna jet headed back to New York that night from Asheville, North Carolina, Trump himself apparently wasn’t aboard. Instead, Trump flew to Moscow on a Bombardier Global 5000 private jet owned by Phil Ruffin, his partner in the Trump International Hotel and Tower in Las Vegas, the New York Times reported in January 2017. Trump’s use of Ruffin’s jet is also reported in the newly published book, “Russian Roulette: The Inside Story of Putin’s War on America and the Election of Donald Trump," by Michael Isikoff and David Corn. The jet -- tail number N443PR -- had flown from Las Vegas to Asheville on Nov. 6, according to the flight records that Bloomberg purchased from FlightAware, an aviation data company. The flight records don’t say who was aboard the jet, which took off from Asheville at 9:15 p.m. on Thursday, Nov. 7, bound for Moscow’s Vnukovo International Airport.
At the Ritz
The Bombardier jet landed in Moscow on Friday, Nov. 8, at a time unspecified in the records. From Vnukovo airport, it’s less than an hour’s drive to the Ritz-Carlton hotel, where Trump stayed, according to the pageant’s host, developer Aras Agalarov. Trump surfaced online later that day in a Facebook post by the restaurant Nobu Moscow. That night he attended a birthday party for Agalarov. The next day, Saturday, Nov. 9, Facebook posts showed Trump at the Ritz during the day, and in the afternoon he tweeted that he’d gotten a tour of Moscow. That evening, he attended the Miss Universe pageant, followed by an after-party whose scheduled start time was 1 a.m. -- by that time, Sunday, Nov. 10. American rock band Panic! at the Disco, which had performed at the pageant, put on a second set for the 1,200 after-party attendees. At this point, the flight records support a narrow slice of what Trump told Comey: On the night of the pageant itself, the plane Trump was said to be using didn’t fully overnight in Russia. Ruffin’s Bombardier took off from Vnukovo airport at 3:58 a.m. Moscow time, the records show. When the jet touched down at Newark Liberty International Airport, just outside New York City, it was still Sunday morning -- 4:11 a.m. local time. That evening, Trump tweeted about his return, “I just got back from Russia-learned lots & lots. Moscow is a very interesting and amazing place!"

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What Golden Shower Practitioners Think About a Certain Rumored Pee Tape
GQ Magazine

URL: https://www.gq.com/story/golden-shower-pee-tape
Category: Entertainment
Published: April 24, 2018

Description: Everyone has their kinks. Including, maybe, the sitting president of the United States.
It's estimated that roughly one third of the population experiments with some form of paraphilia at least once in their lives, with 17 percent regularly engaging in their preferred kinks. According to a study in the Journal of Sex Research, at last count there are about 549 documented variations, ranging from your standard BDSM to fantasies of being devoured by giant people and creatures. Fetishism is as American as apple pie. Among these countless turn-ons, there is one particular entry that nearly 10 percent of men exhibit interest in: urophilia, or sexual gratification derived from urination, either on yourself or on someone else. Of course, over the past few years one particularly powerful man has arguably sullied the good name of golden showers, and some water-sports fans aren't all that happy about it. 50 Shades of Grey may have convinced a few bored housewives to pick up some sturdy binding rope from their local Home Depot, but if picturing the sitting president of the United States in a piss scenario raises the hair on the back of your neck, you aren't alone. "I don’t think anyone wants to think about Trump in an erotic context, and he most definitely doesn’t turn people on to new kinks," Mistress Genevieve, a full-time, New Orleans–based dominatrix of 25 years, told me over e-mail. Along with her wide range of specialties—"medical play, humiliation, degradation, CBT (cock-and-ball torture, for the uninitiated), breath play, bondage and restraint"—golden showers are "pretty common." The president's alleged proclivities haven't influenced her repertoire. However, "I do imagine the thought of him in the context of someone’s fetish may have turned off a few people," she says. Taboos, by definition, aren't usually talked about in public circles, but as with every other societal norm, we pretty much kissed all of that goodbye back in November 2016. As Robert Mueller's investigation shifts into fourth gear while Michael Cohen tells us he's prettier than court renderings let on, water sports are now part of our daily water-cooler talk. Not since Bill Clinton's love of stogies came to light have we discussed a political sex scandal as widely, and luridly, as the rumored video of Donald Trump engaged in some form of piss play with a couple of Russian sex workers in the Moscow Ritz-Carlton's infamous presidential suite. Mistress Genevieve confesses that the occasional political headline can infiltrate her line of work, and those able to afford her standard rate of $275 an hour in a deeply red state like Louisiana aren't generally members of the #Resistance. Yet specific discussions about the rumored video haven't come up so far during dungeon sessions, which is a preference shared by even the more casual golden-shower enthusiasts. "I don't consider it a very important political point in comparison to all the other stuff Trump has done, such as the collusion, hate speech, his fascist agenda, terrible foreign policy etc.," a frequenter of Reddit's r/goldenshowers told me in an e-mail. Although fantasizing about pee scenarios since childhood, and now looking at water-play porn "several times per week," the anonymous Redditor said he or she hasn't felt comfortable enough to broach the subject in real life with current or past relationships. "I don't know if the Trump tape will make it more taboo or ridiculed. I guess for my own sake I'd like it if it weren't as taboo, but realistically I don't see that happening. Most people don't want to be pissed on." The Redditor added, "I guess one day perhaps I'll instead build the confidence to mention it to my partner." If there’s a translucent golden lining to all this, it's that fetishes are no longer uniformly relegated to online confessionals and kept behind closed doors. The rumored pee tape is arguably widening the scope of our national discussion on sexuality, so there's a fair question worth asking: Should a broadening acceptance of kink culture extend to our commander-in-chief the same way it does to other practitioners? Is it wrong to kink-shame the president's potential fondness for golden showers? "Being so abusive as he, no, I won’t defend a bully from ridicule," Miss Genevieve wrote. "Abusers thrive on secrecy and shame. I would imagine that someone as abusive as Trump is gets off on what he feels [non-consensually] demeans and humiliates others." She added, "Trump having a kink is pretty moot. Trump signing things into law that cause harm—these are the discussions." And say the pee tape is real? "If it is real, I'd love to see it leaked just to spite Trump," the same anonymous Redditor told me. And while Trump may make it temporarily more difficult for some golden-shower fetishists to enjoy their pastime, for others...not so much. "I do have a Trump mask I’ve used in other role play," mentioned the Mistress.