OF THE
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... if the notion of billions of barrels of proven oil reserves and billions of tons of gold fills your dreams with visions of red-hot cash flow and ice-cold vodka, then Boris Yeltsin just might find some work for you. - Paul Hofheinz, Fortune Magazine, 23 September 19911The foregoing article is an excerpt from Chapter 3 of my book Grand Deception: the Truth about Bill Browder, Magnitsky Act and Anti-Russian Sanctions. Part 1 is here. Part 2 is here.

REPORTER (Jeff Mason from Reuters): For President Putin if I could follow up as well. Why should Americans and why should President Trump believe your statement that Russia did not intervene in the 2016 election given the evidence that US Intelligence agencies have provided? Will you consider extraditing the 12 Russian officials that were indicted last week by a US Grand jury.
TRUMP: Well I'm going to let the president [meaning Putin] answer the second part of that question.
As you know, the concept of that came up perhaps a little before, but it came out as a reason why the Democrats lost an election, which frankly, they should have been able to win, because the electoral college is much more advantageous for Democrats, as you know, than it is to Republicans. [That allegation from Trump is unsupported, and could well be false.] We won the electoral college by a lot. 306 to 223, I believe. [It was actually 304 to 227.] That was a well-fought battle. We did a great job.
Frankly, I'm going to let the president speak to the second part of your question. But, just to say it one time again and I say it all the time, there was no collusion. I didn't know the president. There was nobody to collude with. There was no collusion with the campaign. Every time you hear all of these 12 and 14 - it's stuff that has nothing to do - and frankly, they admit, these are not people involved in the campaign. But to the average reader out there, they are saying, well maybe that does. It doesn't. Even the people involved, some perhaps told mis-stories. In one case the FBI said there was no lie. There was no lie. Somebody else said there was. We ran a brilliant campaign. And that's why I'm president. Thank you.
In posts on Twitter and an op-ed piece in Time magazine on July 17, Browder said Putin wanted access to him, and in exchange is willing to give U.S. law enforcement agencies access to the 12 Russian intelligence agents who were accused last week of hacking and leaking U.S. Democratic Party documents in an effort to bolster Trump's chances in the 2016 election campaign.Browder comes across as a drama queen. The Putin "regime" hasn't been trying to kill him. They've been trying to get the millions he owes them, or to put him in prison. Different things, Bill. But then again, to a criminal mind, that might be perceived as an existential threat.
"Putin wants to swap 12 Russian GRU agents who hacked the U.S. election for me in his meeting with Trump in Helsinki," Browder said on Twitter. He said Trump appeared to agree with the idea at the summit on July 16 by nodding "approvingly" and later saying he considered it "an incredible offer."
"This is no idle threat. For the last ten years, I've been trying to avoid getting killed by Putin's regime," said Browder, who has been called "Putin's nemesis" for successfully pushing for so-called Magnitsky laws in a number of Western countries that authorize sanctions against human rights abusers in Russia and other countries.
Browder confirmed reports by TASS and other Russian news agencies that Russian prosecutors want to interview U.S. special agents Todd Hyman, Alexander Schwarzman, and Svetlana Angert, all of whom Browder said were involved in investigating a client of Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya for alleged money laundering.
Browder said the requests were "part of the Putin-Trump quid pro quo agreed in Helsinki."

Comment: This is a much more fair and balanced account of the summit. As strange as it may sound to some, it is a good thing that the leaders of the world's nuclear superpowers are trying to engage in a reasonable dialogue. Yet if you only watch western news, you might be forgiven for thinking that the world was coming to an end at the hands of a dynamic duo of Hitlers. See:
The mounting hysteria over the Trump-Putin summit