Margus Tsahkna, Estonia's foreign minister since April 2023 and one of Europe's most consistent advocates of arming Ukraine, ate dinner in Tallinn on the evening of Sunday 6 September 2026 with Donald Trump Jr. and 11 other people. Bloomberg reported the meeting on 8 September. Tsahkna told the Estonian public broadcaster ERR that he went at the invitation of what he called the US side, that no other member of the Estonian government was asked and that "Ukraine was discussed quite actively at the table." He declined to say what was discussed and declined to say who organised the evening. "That must be asked of him and of the people who organised his visit here," he said.
Michael Franzese, 75, pleaded guilty in March 1986 to racketeering conspiracy and tax conspiracy and was sentenced to 10 years in federal prison with $14.7 million in restitution, after a 177-count federal indictment charged him and 25 others with stealing $40 million in petrol taxes through nine dummy corporations. Brad Parscale, Donald Trump's 2020 campaign manager, registered his company Clock Tower X LLC with the US Justice Department on 18 September 2025 as a foreign agent of the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, on a contract that has since paid him more than $15 million.
Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, the two envoys the Trump administration has assigned to end the war, met Vladimir Putin for more than three hours on 5 September and held talks with Volodymyr Zelenskyy the following day. Russian forces resumed strikes on Kyiv while they travelled. Tsahkna spoke by telephone to Ukraine's foreign minister on the day of the dinner and was told the talks had produced nothing.
Two events, one weekend
Trump Jr. flew into Tallinn on the morning of Sunday 6 September aboard a Qatari-registered aircraft and left on the Monday morning. Estonian photographers who tried to record his movements were warned off by security staff. The Estonian outlet Delfi reported that a second and larger gathering ran that weekend, a high-priced party at the European Union House on Rävala puiestee hosted by the Tallinn live-dealer casino studio company Studioworks OÜ, attended by gambling operators, local celebrities and beauty pageant contestants.
Tsahkna said on ERR that the two were separate. "You are conflating two different events here," he told the interviewer who put the guest list to him. "One was a dinner with 13 people and the other was some other event." Asked directly whether Trump Jr. had come to Estonia to do casino business, he said: "That must be asked of him and of the people who organised his visit here. I took part in a dinner at which casino business and business activity were not discussed." He also said: "My understanding was that he had business meetings here."
Ossi Ketola, a 28-year-old Finnish gambling entrepreneur who plays poker under the alias Monarch, confirmed on 9 September that he had met Trump Jr. in Tallinn. "We had been arranging for the meeting for some months, I'm glad it took place finally," he said. On what they discussed, he said: "The political situations in our respective countries have become increasingly similar, with a rising tide of violence and radical leftism in both America and Finland. As a firm 1st Amendment absolutist and an individual with many values that coincide with Republicans and Donald Trump himself, this was a great chance to align on many things important to both."
Ketola founded the Counter-Strike skin gambling site CSGOEmpire in 2016 and the crypto casino and sportsbook Duel.com in July 2025. Duel.com is owned by Immortal Snail LLC, registered in Nevis, and runs on gaming licence ALSI-202411026-FI1 issued by the government of Anjouan in the Union of the Comoros. Ketola's other companies are registered in Curaçao. His X accounts were suspended in October 2025. In November 2025 Duel.com announced a promotional partnership with Andrew Tate, who was arrested by US Marshals in Miami on 19 July 2026 on sealed warrants covering a United Kingdom extradition request for rape and trafficking for rape. Tate denies the charges. No transaction between Trump Jr. and any Estonian or Finnish gambling business has been disclosed by any party.
Donald Trump Jr.
Umar Kremlev, president of the International Boxing Association and the holder of Putin's Order of Friendship since 22 April 2026, secretly paid hundreds of thousands of dollars towards Trump Jr.'s three-day Bahamas wedding on 24 May 2026, ProPublica reported on 14 September. Kremlev rented one of the two private islands, covered the fireworks and put his staff to work on the planning, with the money moving through IB Challenger, a Dubai entity. Ukraine's National Security and Defence Council sanctioned Kremlev on 9 December 2024. He was convicted of extortion in 2004 and battery in 2007 under the surname Lutfulloev, changed his surname at a Serpukhov registry office in March 2010, rose to a leadership role in the Night Wolves biker club that the US Treasury designated in December 2014 over the seizure of Crimea and controls bookmakers taking 51.48 per cent of Russia's legal betting market. A spokesperson for Trump Jr. said the two met through a mutual friend in hunting circles and that "Umar is a personal friend of Don."
Trump Jr. told a property conference in Manhattan in September 2008: "Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets, say in Dubai, and certainly with our project in SoHo and anywhere in New York." He said: "We see a lot of money pouring in from Russia."
Bayrock Group, the developer of the SoHo tower, was run by Tevfik Arif and Felix Sater, who had a 1993 assault conviction and pleaded guilty in 1998 to racketeering over a $40 million securities fraud. Manhattan district attorney investigators examined Trump Jr. and Ivanka Trump in 2010 over inflated Trump SoHo sales figures; people who reviewed the emails told ProPublica the siblings "approved, knew of, agreed to, and intentionally inflated the numbers to make more sales." Trump lawyer Marc Kasowitz donated $25,000 to district attorney Cyrus Vance's campaign on 11 January 2012, met Vance on 16 May 2012. The case was dropped on 3 August 2012. Vance said: "I did not at the time believe beyond a reasonable doubt that a crime had been committed."
1789 Capital, the venture firm Trump Jr. joined as a partner in November 2024, grew from about $200 million under management before the election to $3.5 billion by May 2026. CNN reported on 20 July 2026 that 10 of its defence, space and software holdings took more than $1.6 billion in federal funding during the administration's first 500 days, 79 per cent more than the equivalent period under Joe Biden. Vulcan Elements, a magnet maker with about 30 staff, received a $620 million Defense Department loan roughly three months after the firm invested. Jamie Raskin, ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, wrote to Trump Jr. and the founders Omeed Malik and Christopher Buskirk on 26 August 2026 alleging "thoroughgoing corruption." Lawyers for the firm replied on 9 September, calling the letter a "spaghetti-against-the-wall approach" built on "unsubstantiated and emotional aspersions."
Polymarket, a prediction market, took Trump Jr. onto its advisory board in August 2025, and he is an adviser to and stakeholder in its competitor Kalshi. On 1 September 2026, a week before the Tallinn dinner, 1789 Capital committed $300 million to a $1 billion Polymarket funding round, making the firm one of its largest equity holders. The previous administration had forced Polymarket out of the United States and investigated it over money laundering.
What Trump Jr. says about Ukraine
"Zelensky is basically an ungrateful international welfare queen," Trump Jr. posted on X on 21 December 2022, the day Zelenskyy addressed the US Congress.
Belgrade business leaders heard him say on 23 September 2024: "There was a boundary zone. It was called Ukraine. We're not gonna move NATO there." He said "we have American politicians that will fund this thing indefinitely," and urged the room to mobilise Serbian communities in the United States.
At the Doha Forum on 7 December 2025, asked whether his father might walk away from Ukraine, he said: "I think he may." He said of Ukraine's leadership: "The leaders, the decision makers, there was no reason for them ever to come to peace. No different than Putin." He said Zelenskyy "became a borderline deity, especially to the left, where he could do no wrong," called him "one of the greatest marketers of all times," said Ukraine "was a far more corrupt country than Russia" before the invasion and said sanctions on Russia "did nothing to actually help." On the alternative to walking away, he said: "If we default to the old ways of America, it's just going to be the big idiot with the checkbook."
Sarah Palin's video of Zelenskyy frowning beside Trump, captioned "POV: You're 38 Days from losing you're allowance," was reshared to Trump Jr.'s Instagram stories on 10 November 2024.
The European circuit
Călin Georgescu's annulled first-round win in Romania drew a post from Trump Jr. on 6 December 2024: "Wow, look at what's happening in Romania! The Constitutional Court just canceled the first round of their presidential election. Another Soros/Marxist attempt at rigging the outcome & denying the will of the people." The US State Department said that same week that it had confidence in Romania's democratic institutions.
Bucharest's Athénée Palace Hilton hosted him on 28 April 2025, a week before the Romanian presidential re-run, at an event called Trump Business Vision 2025 with tickets from €12,500. The organiser was România TV, controlled by Sebastian Ghiță, a former member of parliament who sat on the committee overseeing Romania's intelligence service, fled the country in 2016 ahead of arrest, was granted asylum in Serbia and faces charges including corruption, money laundering, influence peddling and organised crime. The Sunday Times reported that Ghiță was present in Bucharest for the event. Aktual24 reported that România TV paid Trump Jr. to appear.
Mathias Corvinus Collegium in Budapest heard him say on 13 June 2024 that without his father's election the war in Ukraine "could last forever because peace is not profitable," that Viktor Orbán is "a great leader who puts Hungary first," and that Hungary is "one of the last beacons of hope in Europe."
Banja Luka, the seat of Republika Srpska, was his stop on 7 April 2026. The US Embassy said he was there in a private capacity. "Europe is a disaster," he said, and one that "needs to be fixed." He said eastern European countries "have a work ethic that has withstood some of the woke nonsense" of western Europe, and that he saw this "creating major fractures in the European Union."
Nuuk received him on 7 January 2025 for a day trip he described as touristic. Danish public broadcaster DR reported on 12 January that his team had recruited homeless and socially disadvantaged people off the streets with the offer of a free meal at an expensive hotel restaurant, in exchange for wearing MAGA hats on camera. A resident told DR: "These are homeless and old people who could suddenly eat in a restaurant they have never been to before."
James Edwards, host of a radio programme the Southern Poverty Law Center describes as overtly racist and antisemitic, put questions to Trump Jr. on air on 4 March 2016. Trump Jr. told Bloomberg Politics: "I certainly had no idea of James' background, and if I had I would have refused." On 31 August 2016 he retweeted Kevin MacDonald, the retired professor the same organisation calls the neo-Nazi movement's favourite academic. On 19 September 2016 he posted a meme comparing Syrian refugees to poisoned Skittles, writing: "This image says it all. Let's end the politically correct agenda that doesn't put America first." The photograph had been taken by David Kittos, himself a former refugee from Cyprus, and was used without his permission.
"It's not the great replacement theory, that's the great replacement reality of what the Democrats are trying to do," Trump Jr. said on his podcast on 1 January 2024.
Tucker Carlson's interview with the white nationalist Nick Fuentes was put to Trump Jr. on Jillian Michaels' show on 1 December 2025. He said: "I see a lot of sort of the neocon handles trying to create these conflicts to break it up because they want to go back to the old ways, not the America First ways."
Michael Franzese
Lawrence Iorizzo, a Long Island fuel wholesaler who created around 100 Panamanian bearer-share shell companies, met Franzese in October 1981 and brought him into the petrol tax business. Three Soviet-bloc emigres joined in 1980 and after: Michael Markowitz, David Bogatin and Lev Persits. The split was 75 per cent to Franzese's group and 25 per cent to the Russian group, with the Russians keeping Brooklyn and Queens stations and the Colombo group taking Long Island.
Franzese testified to the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations on 15 May 1996, at a hearing titled Russian Organized Crime in the United States, that "it was not unusual for me to receive $9 million in cash per week in paper bags from the Russians and Iorizzo." He said of his partners: "As a result of their experiences living in Communist Russia, they have little respect for United States law and little fear of American prisons." He said they "would not hesitate to resort to violence when they felt it necessary." He told the subcommittee he had put $10 million of his share into an Austrian bank, and that with the Russians' money the bank held $80 million to $100 million in assets.
David Bogatin bought five luxury condominiums in Trump Tower for $6 million in 1984. He pleaded guilty in 1987 to taking part in the petrol bootlegging scheme. The US government seized the five apartments, saying he had bought them to launder money and hide assets.
Michael Markowitz was shot dead at about 1am on 2 May 1989 at the wheel of his Rolls-Royce in Brooklyn, aged 42, a single bullet through the chest. He had been a witness in the corruption trial of a former New York City taxi commissioner.
Marat Balagula, who became Brighton Beach's leading Russian organised crime figure after Evsei Agron was murdered on 4 May 1985, was extorted by a Franzese enforcer over his own petrol operation and responded by seeking the protection of the Lucchese family, Philip Carlo wrote. Balagula was convicted of credit card fraud in 1986 and of petrol bootlegging in November 1992, pleaded guilty to five further counts on 13 October 1994 and was released in 2004.
Federal prosecutors in the Eastern District of New York set out the structure in a press release of 23 December 1994: a daisy chain of fraudulent paper transactions between wholesale distributors, with the Colombo, Gambino, Lucchese and Genovese families collecting at least 1.5 cents on every gallon.
Franzese served about 43 months at the federal prison camp at Boron, California, and was paroled in 1989. US marshals arrested him at a rented house in Bel Air on 13 November 1991 for breaching parole by failing to pay restitution at $2,500 a month and failing to assist investigations. Los Angeles district attorney Ira Reiner called him "one of the most prolific money-makers for the mob" and said the petrol operation had generated about $1 million a week. He was sentenced to four more years on 27 December 1991 and released on 7 November 1994.
Sonny Franzese, the Colombo underboss he calls his father, was sentenced to 50 years in March 1967 for masterminding four bank robberies, returned to prison repeatedly on parole violations and was convicted again on 14 January 2011, aged 93, of extorting two Manhattan strip clubs and running a loansharking operation. He was released in June 2017 as the oldest inmate in the federal system and died on 24 February 2020, aged 103.
Franzese now has 2.03 million subscribers on YouTube and 343 million views across about 1,287 videos, charges $30,000 to $50,000 for a live speech and has appeared repeatedly with Andrew Tate, including an interview Tate posted on X on 10 February 2025 and episodes recorded with both Tate brothers. He appeared on ERR's magazine programme Ringvaade on 8 September 2026, where the broadcaster said Trump Jr. had brought him to Estonia as a guest. "We sold about two billion litres of fuel a month," he told the programme.
On a post on X on 13 February 2018 he wrote that mob figures "weren't racist." Franzese set out his support for Trump in an interview on Steven Bartlett's podcast, and has recorded episodes questioning Trump's conduct, including one titled "Has Trump Finally Lost It?"
Brad Parscale
Cambridge Analytica staff were hired by Parscale for the 2016 Trump campaign, four at first and around a dozen by the end. Testifying to the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence on 24 October 2017, he said: "I hired Cambridge Analytica for staff. I hired them because I needed people who had ever worked on a campaign before." He said the campaign shared data with the Republican National Committee and said that Cambridge Analytica "would have had access also to Trump data."
Asked at the same hearing whether he had ever had any interaction with the Russian government, Parscale said: "No." Asked whether they had tried to contact him: "Not that I know of." Asked whether he had ever been to Russia: "No." Asked whether he had done work for Russia or any Russia-linked entity: "Not that I know of." No documented link between Parscale and any Russian or Russian-linked actor has emerged since.
Giles-Parscale was paid $94 million by the 2016 campaign. American Made Media Consultants, set up in April 2018 with the approval of Jared Kushner and a board of Lara Trump, John Pence and campaign finance director Sean Dollman, handled $617 million, roughly half the 2020 campaign's $1.26 billion in spending. The Campaign Legal Center complained to the Federal Election Commission in July 2020 that $170 million had been disguised, and sued the commission on 8 July 2022 over the dismissal of that complaint. ProPublica reported $18 million in Republican National Committee billings to Parscale's firms after he became campaign manager, against public claims that he took $300,000 a year and refused commissions.
Fort Lauderdale police were called to Parscale's home on 27 September 2020 by his wife, who reported that he had firearms and had threatened self-harm. Officers seized 10 weapons and recorded bruising on her arms and face, which she later disputed. Parscale was committed involuntarily under Florida's Baker Act. No charges were brought. He said on 30 September that he was stepping away from his company and the campaign.
Katrina Pierson received texts from Parscale on 6 January 2021 that the House select committee released in July 2022. "This week I feel guilty for helping him win," he wrote. "A woman is dead," he wrote, of Ashli Babbitt. He wrote that Trump's rhetoric had fomented civil war.
Tim Dunn, the Midland oil billionaire who finances much of the Texas Republican right and is widely described as a Christian nationalist, bought 40.6 per cent of AiAdvertising for $5 million in April 2023 and put Parscale on a consulting deal of $10,000 a month plus $120,000 a year in stock. Parscale moved to Midland. He told a church event in Pasadena that "we need to have our own AI, our own distribution, our own email systems, our own texting systems," and has described his goal as a non-woke, Christian-based agency. Salem Media Group appointed him chief strategy officer on 6 January 2025, citing his "connections within conservative media."
Clock Tower X LLC registered under the Foreign Agents Registration Act on 18 September 2025 to work for the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs through the German arm of Havas Media, on an initial $6 million contract at $1.5 million a month. Filings required at least 100 root creative assets a month, 5,000 monthly variants, at least 50 million paid impressions a month and at least 80 per cent of content aimed at people under 30 on TikTok, Instagram, YouTube and podcasts, distributed partly through Salem Radio Network properties. A filing of 26 December 2025 raised the contract to $9 million. By May 2026 the rate had reached $4.5 million a month, and The Intercept reported on 28 May that Parscale had received more than $15 million from Havas on Israel's behalf.
Clock Tower X built 10 websites that Common Crawl indexed 912 times between January and June 2026, up from twice in January, in an effort to shape the answers given by artificial intelligence chatbots, Drop Site News reported on 28 July 2026. Perplexity and Microsoft Copilot cited the sites without disclosing the government funding behind them.
Fernando Cerimedo, the Argentine operative whose Buenos Aires firm Numen advised Jair Bolsonaro in 2022, Javier Milei in 2023 and Rodrigo Paz in Bolivia, said of Parscale: "Brad set up all the infrastructure that I work with." Cerimedo was detained in Santa Cruz on 18 August 2026 on charges of attempted femicide and illicit enrichment and ordered held for 180 days pending investigation. He has not been tried.
Estonian coverage
Estonian reporting has not named a single guest at the 13-person table besides Tsahkna and Trump Jr. ERR's interviewer put the Delfi account of a New York mafia figure to Tsahkna and was told he was conflating two events. ERR separately confirmed that Franzese was in Estonia as Trump Jr.'s guest, and its magazine programme interviewed him on 8 September. No Estonian outlet has placed Parscale in the country.
Tsahkna told ERR that the value of the evening lay in the company. "It was very interesting to meet someone who is not an active politician but nevertheless has considerable influence," he said. "Perhaps such contacts with unconventional figures close to the US presidential administration may prove useful someday."
Tsahkna delivered his annual foreign policy address on 17 February 2026. Estonia's aim, he said, is a just and lasting peace in Ukraine, "not à la Munich or Yalta." He called for a full ban on maritime services for vessels carrying Russian oil and for adding participants in the war to the Schengen blacklist: "We do not wish to see today's perpetrators of crimes become tomorrow's tourists." Estonia hosts the Ukraine Recovery Conference in Tallinn in 2027.
