Senate investigators have asked at least two witnesses – and received written testimony from a third – about David Geovanis, a Moscow-based businessman whose employer owned land set aside for a proposed Trump Tower project in the 90s and accompanied Donald Trump around town during his trip to Russia in 1996.
CNN:
The Senate Intelligence Committee, which is probing allegations of Russian interference in the 2016 elections, has been keen to speak with David Geovanis for several months, the sources say.
Geovanis helped organize a 1996 trip to Moscow by Trump, who was in the early stages of pursuing what would become a long-held goal of building a Trump Tower in the Russian capital, according to multiple media reports at the time.
Years later, Geovanis worked for the Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska, whose ties to Trump's 2016 campaign chairman Paul Manafort have also been of interest to investigators.
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The Senate Intelligence Committee's interest in Geovanis indicates its investigation is delving further back into Trump's past in Russia than previously thought.
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One of the two witnesses says the committee has a photograph of a younger Geovanis apparently posing in a portrait with three partially clothed women. The portrait, once displayed in a Russian gallery under the title "The Capitalist," depicts the subjects in front of a picture of the former Soviet leader Joseph Stalin. It's not clear whether the portrait is a single photograph or a composite.
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A third witness has alleged in written testimony, seen by CNN, that Geovanis may be valuable in the mystery of whether Russia has material on Trump that could be personally embarrassing to him.
Known by the nickname "Geo" to his friends, Geovanis was born in Brockton, Massachusetts, and is a graduate of Trump's alma mater, the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. After starting his career in finance, Geovanis went to Moscow to work for a Russian venture of a company called Brooke Group, which owned land earmarked for the site of a proposed Trump Tower. When Trump came to town to promote the project, sources say, it was Geovanis' job to show him around.
Also on the trip were Brooke Group's owners, the real estate moguls Bennett LeBow and Howard Lorber, who went on to become substantial donors to Trump's 2016 presidential campaign. Trump personally acknowledged the pair from the podium after he won the 2016 New York Republican primary.
An archive video report of Trump's 1996 Moscow trip emerged online in late January. The news report -- misidentified on YouTube as dating from 1995 -- shows Lorber, Lebow and Trump in discussion with Moscow's then deputy mayor, Vladimir Resin, and his staff, with Geovanis looking on from the background.
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When contacted by CNN via telephone, Geovanis declined to comment on his relationship with the President or talk about the photograph said to be in the possession of the Senate Intelligence Committee. He would not disclose his location, although CNN was able to confirm he was in the Moscow area as recently as this month.
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t's not known whether Geovanis is also of interest to the investigation into alleged Russian election meddling by special counsel Robert Mueller.
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Geovanis was quoted by the Moscow Times in 1996 as saying officials were "very receptive" to the original Trump Tower project, but Trump's early designs on the Moscow skyline never got off the ground.
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Geovanis, who married a Russian woman, obtained a Russian passport in 2014. He was last seen by family members in the US in early 2017 after the death of his mother.
He is not believed to have returned to the US since then, and his decision to remain in Moscow means US congressional investigators can't easily find out what he knows.
In 2017 Geovanis was reemployed by Lebow to set up the Russian arm of another venture, Somerset Coal International, an energy technology company which claims to "clean" coal by washing it at high pressure.
Among those approached by Geovanis for investment was Deripaska, the billionaire metals and mining magnate, for whom Geovanis worked in the mid-2000s, according to a person familiar with Somerset Coal's business plan, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Deripaska is so closely aligned with Russian President Vladimir Putin that the US sanctioned him and his companies in order to punish the Russian government for its activities around the 2016 election. The Trump administration lifted sanctions on three of those companies last month.
Senate investigators pursue Moscow-based former Trump associate (CNN)