Investigative journalist Dave Troy is detonating the official Jeffrey Epstein narrative, arguing that the disgraced financier was not an isolated sex predator or lone “genius” investor, but a KGB cutout who inherited a $50 billion Soviet slush fund built to corrupt Western politics, culture and finance.
Troy’s investigations draw a connection between Jeffrey Epstein, Ghislaine Maxwell, and a chaotic financial transfer following the unsuccessful Soviet coup in August 1991. During this tumultuous period, key financial figures of the Communist Party met mysterious ends just as Vladimir Kryuchkov, the KGB head, was hastily moving party funds to the West.
In a striking assertion, Troy’s online thread claims, “Jeffrey Epstein was a replacement for Nikolai Kruchina, Robert Maxwell, and Leonid Veselovsky in Kryuchkov’s over $50 billion money laundering scheme.” Kruchina, a top Communist Party official charged with managing its funds, died after falling from a Moscow apartment window on August 26, 1991, following the coup’s collapse. Shortly thereafter, on November 5, 1991, Robert Maxwell, Ghislaine’s father and a KGB financial associate, fell overboard from his yacht near the Canary Islands, an incident the media described as an “unexplained plunge.”
Troy suggests this timing is crucial. He argues that the failed coup was the catalyst for Kruchina and Maxwell’s deaths, leaving a void in Kryuchkov’s secretive financial operations. During this period, reports indicate that Epstein and Ghislaine first met in the summer of 1991, with Ghislaine later revealing she grew closer to Epstein after her father’s passing in November. Troy sees this as more than coincidence, suggesting it marked a transition, with Epstein stepping into roles left vacant by the deceased financiers.
Troy also highlights Soviet agent Leonid Veselovsky, who he claims was involved in supporting Trump-related real estate ventures as part of the same network. He later clarifies that Veselovsky collaborated with Boris Birshtein, who had business dealings with Trump, particularly on the Trump Tower Toronto project, rather than directly working with Trump himself.
Kryuchkov’s $50 Billion War Chest and the Grooming of Western Politicians
The heart of Troy’s argument is that KGB director Vladimir Kryuchkov orchestrated the transfer of approximately $50 billion in Communist Party assets to Western channels during the late 1980s and early 1990s. This financial maneuver was intended to create a “war chest” to influence and undermine adversaries long after the Soviet Union’s dissolution. He references a 1985 directive in which Kryuchkov urged his operatives to be “more aggressive and creative” in targeting Western assets, particularly in business and politics, and asserts that Donald Trump was an ideal target due to his “personality and weaknesses.”
Troy indicates that Kryuchkov and diplomat Vitaly Churkin—who would later serve as Russia’s U.N. ambassador and associate with Epstein and Peter Thiel—invited Trump to Moscow in 1987 as part of their strategic cultivation. Concurrently, Kryuchkov’s brother-in-law Genrikh Borovik took charge of the Soviet Peace Council, overseeing all U.S.–USSR “citizen diplomacy” exchanges, including the Burlington–Yaroslavl sister-city initiative that facilitated Bernie Sanders’s 1988 honeymoon visit to Russia through the KGB’s Intourist travel agency.
Borovik, Troy notes, was close to Churkin and operated with him in the United States under Kryuchkov’s direction while the $50 billion exfiltration ran through figures like Maxwell—with Epstein “on deck.” Borovik still receives public birthday greetings from Vladimir Putin “in gratitude for his decades of service,” underlining that the Kremlin sees him as part of a continuing project.
The network also overlapped with American religious and conservative power. Troy cites photos placing Borovik alongside Fellowship Foundation leader Doug Coe and businessman Paul Temple at a 1988 U.S.–USSR “Citizens Summit,” noting that Temple helped fund Coe’s “Family” and was involved with the Institute of Noetic Sciences and, according to Troy’s earlier notes, may have intersected with the Council for National Policy. He flags that point as an area he is still verifying.
Disinfo, Cults and ‘Demoralization’: From JFK to Jonestown to TM
Troy emphasizes that the KGB campaign went far beyond crude bribery. He recounts how Borovik was implicated in Kennedy‑assassination disinformation, with KGB archivist Vasili Mitrokhin alleging that Borovik funded lawyer Mark Lane’s book “Rush to Judgment” and fed him leads that later shaped Oliver Stone’s “JFK.” Lane would go on to represent cult leader Jim Jones and was present at Jonestown during the 1978 mass murder.
The NotebookLM explainer video Troy released expands on this theme, citing KGB defector Yuri Bezmenov’s warnings that Moscow exploited spiritual movements like Transcendental Meditation to “demoralize” the West. Bezmenov said such groups taught people to seek “non‑existent harmony” instead of confronting real political problems, making them passive and easy to manage.
1/By popular demand and in the interest of speed, I’ve used Google’s NotebookLM to assemble this short explainer video about the thread I posted this morning regarding Epstein’s apparent ties to a large KGB money-laundering operation. pic.twitter.com/tJ0nFcMVDq
— Dave Troy (@davetroy) November 22, 2025
Troy ties this to Epstein’s 1988 visit to Fairfield, Iowa—home of Maharishi International University and the TM movement—and lays out how the same milieu produced figures like a billionaire hedge funder and major TM donor he says now pushes pro‑BRICS narratives that align with Russian objectives.
The Network Evolves Under Putin
Troy stresses that the operation did not end with Epstein’s 2019 death or with the Soviet Union’s collapse. “When Putin was a KGB shlub in Dresden in November 1989, Kryuchkov was his boss,” he writes, adding that it was Kryuchkov who led the 1991 hardliner coup. “Putin is following through on Kryuchkov’s designs, in an effort to save face and restore the dignity of the KGB.”
In his explainer, Troy maps a “next generation” of players: a former Putin youth leader turned venture capitalist who did PR for Epstein; the son of an Epstein associate from the Iowa TM trip who now runs his own influence campaign; and other intellectuals and financiers whose projects and funding sources, he argues, line up with Russian strategic goals. SEC filings for one venture firm, he notes, show 94 percent of its capital coming from undisclosed non‑U.S. persons, raising obvious questions about the money’s origin.
He also flags deals like a $100 million commission paid to a fixer in Moscow for a steel mill transaction backed by a Russian state bank that allegedly funneled money into Trump Tower Toronto, a project tied to Boris Birshtein, whom Troy identifies as close to both Coe and Borovik. When Trump opened that tower, Troy notes, the ceremony used Aaron Copland’s “Fanfare for the Common Man,” which Copland wrote after a Henry Wallace speech—Wallace being the “Stalin‑loving predecessor” Troy has dissected in prior work on pro‑Soviet American elites.
‘Follow the Money’: Subpoenas, Not Sex Scandals
For Troy, the sex‑crime horror of Epstein’s story, while real, also functions as a diversion. He argues that “sex, Democrats, Israel yada yada yada” is “noise and counterspin” meant to hide the financial core: a black‑hole war chest that has warped Western politics for decades. “Stop,” he writes. “This is the KGB manipulating the West.”
The path forward, he insists, is not more lurid speculation but aggressive financial transparency. Troy points to a Senate investigation led by Sen. Ron Wyden that has already flagged more than $1 billion in 4,725 suspicious transactions and calls that “just the tip of the iceberg.” He urges lawmakers and prosecutors to “subpoena everything you possibly can for the last ~40 years” and to dig into offshore structures in places like Jersey and vehicles such as FIMACO.
Troy acknowledges that almost no one in corporate media has the patience or freedom to assemble such a sprawling story. He says he devoted roughly 10 years to it, using data‑analysis tools and archival research to connect pieces that have “not been entirely hidden” but never pulled into a single narrative. He credits “dozens of collaborators” whose tens of thousands of research hours underpin his thread and promises several “deeply sourced original articles” to expand on specific nodes in the network.
“This is the story Putin and Trump don’t want you to know,” Troy writes, urging readers to “pester people about it until it’s on the front page of every paper.” In his view, only a majority consensus about this $50 billion heist—and the cutouts like Epstein who helped weaponize it—offers any hope of finally purging the KGB’s long shadow from the American system.
