And who is the mysterious “mutual friend” who got Witkoff to do a favor for a Russian mobster
Last week, anyone who still questioned whether President Trump was joined at the hip to Vladimir Putin may have had his last remaining doubts put to rest. The reason: Steve Witkoff, Trump’s special envoy on Russia and Ukraine, returned from meetings with Putin in Moscow last week, schlepping with him a ”beautiful” Putin-commissioned portrait of Trump. Then, when he arrived home, he gave interviews that made clear — crystal clear — which side he and the president were on:
The Wall Street Journal: “Steve Witkoff Takes the Kremlin’s Side, Trump’s favorite negotiator falls for Russian talking points.”
ABC News: “Trump envoy Witkoff sparks outcry after backing Kremlin talking points on Ukraine.”
After Witkoff celebrated Putin as a “super smart guy” who he takes “at his word,” Rep. Seth Moulton (D-MA) said it was “insane that you have a US negotiator taking the side of our enemy. … He’s literally negotiating for the other side, negotiating for the aggressor, negotiating for the violator of international law.”
But advancing the cause of the enemy was not Witkoff’s sole accomplishment in Moscow. As my colleague Olga Lautman reported in “Signalgate: Witkoff in Moscow,” when Witkoff was in Moscow to talk with Putin — a savvy intelligence operative who knows a thing or two about security — he also happened to be dialed into the spectacular clown show known as Signalgate, the massive security breach that took place when Trump officials inadvertently included The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg on their war plans to bomb Houthi targets in Yemen.
From Friday, March 14, into Saturday, as Witkoff traveled from Moscow to Baku, the chat went on with the highest national security officials in the land — Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, National Security Advisor Mike Waltz, DNI chief Tulsi Gabbard, CIA Director John Ratcliffe — sharing, on a commercially available communications app, sensitive classified military plans on weapon payloads, targets, strike timing, and more at the very least with Witcoff, Jeffrey Goldberg, and God-knows-who-else who happened to be listening in.
