The Putin Point Man: What's Behind Steve Witkoff’s Ties to the Russian Mafia?

And who is the mysterious "mutual friend" who got Witkoff to do a favor for a Russian mobster?

Credit: Anna Moneymaker, Getty

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-Mass., said it was "insane that you have a U.S. 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 President 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 J.D. Vance, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, National Security Adviser 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.

So who is Steve Witkoff, anyway?

A billionaire real estate mogul, Witkoff’ counts the Woolworth Building, the Daily News Building, and the Park Lane Hotel among his most notable acquistions in his real estate empire. He has known Trump for decades. In 2018, Trump described Witkoff as “my pal” and a “special guy.” But that doesn’t explain how a rich golfing buddy of Trump’s with no diplomatic experience whatsoever became Trump’s chief trouble shooter at the two hottest spots in the world—Russia and Israel, where, as Special Envoy to the Middle East, he participated in negotiations that led to the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas. On a more personal level, he has played an important role in one of President Trump’s boldest financial ventures by helping set up World Liberty Financial, the cryptocurrency company owned by the Trump family.

But at least one chapter of Witkoff’s life has not been explored—namely his ties to the Russian Mafia. In 2013, The Real Deal, a media company that covers real estate, reported that Witkoff submitted a recommendation for indicted Russian mobster Anatoly Golubchik several years earlier when Golubchik applied to live in a condominium building at 971 Madison Avenue.

The recommendation is of special interest because, according to indictments in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, Golubchik played a key role in a high-stakes gambling ring based out of Trump Tower. According to Poker News, a trade publication for the gaming industry, the poker game was often attended by a glitzy clientele that included Hollywood actors Leonardo De Caprio, Ben Affleck, and Matt Damon. The story behind it was later made into a movie called Molly’s Game, starring Jessica Chastain and Idris Elba.

As I wrote in House of Trump, House of Putin, the gambling ring was busted in April 2013, when “police burst into an apartment on the sixty-third floor of Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue, just three floors below Donald Trump’s penthouse.”

With its twenty-four-karat-gold faucets, alabaster walls crafted by Portuguese artisans, and $350,000 bathroom floor made of amethyst imported from Tanzania, the apartment was one of the most ostentatious apartments in what was already one of the most ostentatious buildings in America.

Credit: Michael Gibson/STX Films

Molly’s Game: The film version of the $100 million gambling and money laundering ring based in Trump Tower.

More importantly, it was also populated by a number of colleagues of mobster Semion Mogilevich. A multibillionaire mafioso known as the Brainy Don, Mogilevich was one of the most powerful figures in the Russian Mafia and a one-time denizen of the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted List. He ran drug trafficking and prostitution rings on an international scale; in one characteristic deal, he bought a bankrupt airline to ship heroin from Southeast Asia into Europe. He used a jewelry business in Moscow and Budapest as a front for art that Russian gangsters stole from museums, churches, and synagogues all over Europe. He has also been accused of selling some $20 million in stolen weapons, including ground-to-air missiles and armored troop carriers, to Iran. “He uses this wealth and power to not only further his criminal enterprises,” the FBI says, “but to influence governments and their economies.”

As James Henry reported in American Interest, Golubchik was connected to Mogilevich through a shell company called Lytton Ventures he owned with a director named Galina Telesh, who happened to have been Mogilevich’s wife.

According to the indictment filed by United States Attorney Preet Bharara, the gambling ring had been in operation since 2006, if not earlier, and had laundered at least $100 million. In the end, twenty-eight defendants, Golubchik among them, pleaded guilty and went to jail, with Golubchik receiving a five year sentence. Before he went to jail, however, Golubchik decided he want to purchase real estate in Manhattan. That meant he needed a personal reference—and that’s where Witkoff came in.

In a statement to The Real Deal in 2013, a spokesperson for Witkoff said the executive regretted providing a reference for the mobster. “Mr. Steven Witkoff met Golubchik in 2009 and submitted a recommendation to complete a board package as a favor to a mutual acquaintance,” the statement said. “He knew him tangentially. He regrets providing a reference on his behalf and acknowledges that it was a mistake.”

The statement did not clarify whether or not Donald Trump was the mutual acquaintance in question

Similarly, at this writing, I asked the White House about Witkoff’s relationship with Golubchik and whether President Trump was “the mutual friend” in question. I also asked whether or not Witkoff is currently making money from his role in setting up World Liberty Financial, but the White House declined to answer my questions.

Now that Trump is back in power and Witkoff is his point man, their ties to the Russian Mafia are of particular interest because, as I showed in House of Trump, House of Putin, the Russian Mafia is very different from the Mafia we have seen in films like The Godfather, where it is always at war with the FBI. In Russia, the Mafia has long been a de facto state actor serving the Russian Federation in much the same way that American intelligence services serve the United States, and that many of the people connected to Trump had strong ties to the Russian FSB, the state security service that is the successor to the feared KGB.

Moreover, as I wrote in The New Republic, over the past three decades, at least 13 people with known or alleged links to Russian mobsters or oligarchs have owned, lived in, and even run criminal activities out of Trump Tower and other Trump properties. Many used his apartments and casinos to launder untold millions in dirty money. Others provided Trump with lucrative branding deals that required no investment on his part. Taken together, the flow of money from Russia provided Trump with a crucial infusion of financing that helped rescue his empire from ruin, burnish his image, and launch his career in television and politics. “They saved his bacon,” said Kenneth McCallion, a former assistant U.S. attorney in the Reagan administration who investigated ties between organized crime and Trump’s developments in the 1980s.

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