Sep 11, 2026 · 17 min · 11 segments
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Phil ThompsonHost
He had been a KGB officer earlier on in his career, and after the collapse of the Soviet Union, he served twice as chairman of Kazakhstan's National Security Committee.
He fell from grace in 2007 and after being stripped of his positions was accused of treason.
He fled to Austria with his deputy, Rakat Aliyev, and both were also accused of orchestrating the kidnapping of two bank executives from Nurbank, a Kazakh retail and corporate bank.
Extradition attempts by the Kazakh government were denied by Austria as a result of which Moseyev was tried and convicted in absentia.
Then, after the remains of the bank executives were found in 2011, Moseyev and Aliyev also faced torture and murder charges before the Austrian courts.
The plot thickened even further when Aliyev was found dead in his Austrian jail cell in 2015, shortly before the trial was due to start.
Officially, he hanged himself, but the circumstances suggest there may have been foul play.
Musaev and one other accused went on to stand trial, but were ultimately acquitted of all charges by the Austrian courts.
Now, it was Musaev's KGB career that gave his social media post its credibility, and it wasn't the first time he had made such claims.
Since mid-2018, he had been claiming that Trump had been perfectly recruited and that Russia held material to use against him.
He said his unit recruited Trump in 1987 and assigned him the pseudonym Krasnov, from the Russian word for red.
On the 21st of February, the Daily Beast published a story under the headline, Former Intelligence Officer Claims KGB Recruited Trump.
Another outlet, called Byline Times, then published its own version the same day.
The Daily Beast story was removed within a day, but the Byline Times article is still up as at the date of filming of this episode.
Sergei Zhirnov, another former KGB officer living in France, told a Ukrainian outlet on the 23rd of February last year that the claim was plausible.
He described how thoroughly the KGB would have monitored a visiting American businessman in 1987 Moscow, especially one as in the public eye as Donald Trump.
That makes total sense, although the Soviet Union was very much teetering on the precipice of non-existence by that time, the Cold War was still raging and tensions between East and West remained high.
A few news outlets such as Snopes have run a fact check against Mosayev's claim, poking many holes in his story.
He had been a KGB officer earlier on in his career, and after the collapse of the Soviet Union, he served twice as chairman of Kazakhstan's National Security Committee.
He fell from grace in 2007 and after being stripped of his positions was accused of treason.
He fled to Austria with his deputy, Rakat Aliyev, and both were also accused of orchestrating the kidnapping of two bank executives from Nurbank, a Kazakh retail and corporate bank.
Extradition attempts by the Kazakh government were denied by Austria as a result of which Moseyev was tried and convicted in absentia.
Then, after the remains of the bank executives were found in 2011, Moseyev and Aliyev also faced torture and murder charges before the Austrian courts.
The plot thickened even further when Aliyev was found dead in his Austrian jail cell in 2015, shortly before the trial was due to start.
Officially, he hanged himself, but the circumstances suggest there may have been foul play.
Musaev and one other accused went on to stand trial, but were ultimately acquitted of all charges by the Austrian courts.
Now, it was Musaev's KGB career that gave his social media post its credibility, and it wasn't the first time he had made such claims.
Since mid-2018, he had been claiming that Trump had been perfectly recruited and that Russia held material to use against him.
He said his unit recruited Trump in 1987 and assigned him the pseudonym Krasnov, from the Russian word for red.
On the 21st of February, the Daily Beast published a story under the headline, Former Intelligence Officer Claims KGB Recruited Trump.
Another outlet, called Byline Times, then published its own version the same day.
The Daily Beast story was removed within a day, but the Byline Times article is still up as at the date of filming of this episode.
Sergei Zhirnov, another former KGB officer living in France, told a Ukrainian outlet on the 23rd of February last year that the claim was plausible.
He described how thoroughly the KGB would have monitored a visiting American businessman in 1987 Moscow, especially one as in the public eye as Donald Trump.
That makes total sense, although the Soviet Union was very much teetering on the precipice of non-existence by that time, the Cold War was still raging and tensions between East and West remained high.
A few news outlets such as Snopes have run a fact check against Mosayev's claim, poking many holes in his story.
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