The claim spread on TikTok, Facebook and X, where one account published a thread in response to the rumor, purporting to tie together evidence to support it. (...)
That user wrote: "Now that it's been reveals that Trump has been a Russian asset for 40 years named Krasnov by the FSB, I will write a simple thread of various pieces of information that solidifies the truth of everything I've written." At the time of publishing this article, the thread had been viewed more than 10 million times.
- In February 2025, Alnur Mussayev, a former Soviet and Kazakh security official, claimed in a Facebook post that U.S. President Donald Trump was recruited in 1987 by the KGB, the intelligence agency of the Soviet Union, and assigned the code name "Krasnov."
- Mussayev's post didn't state whether he personally recruited Trump or simply knew about the recruitment, nor did it state whether Trump actively participated in espionage or was just a potential asset.
- Trump did visit Moscow in 1987, but there is no clear evidence suggesting he was actively recruited by the KGB during that trip or at any other time.
- Mussayev's allegations that Trump was recruited by the KGB at that time don't line up with Mussayev's documented career path. Several biographies of him on Russian-language websites suggest that at the time Trump was supposedly recruited, Mussayev was working in the Soviet Union's Ministry of Internal Affairs, not the KGB.
- Trump's pro-Russia stance (compared with other U.S. presidents) has fed into past allegations that he is a Russian asset — for instance, the 2021 book "American Kompromat" featured an interview with a former KGB spy who also claimed the agency recruited Trump as an asset. Again, however, there is no clear evidence supporting this claim.
We also reached out to Mussayev for comment on the story and will update if he responds.
Meanwhile, Snopes readers wrote in and asked us whether the rumor that Trump was recruited to be a Russian asset was true. Here's what to know:
The allegations don't line up with official records
The allegations originated from a Facebook post that Mussayev published on Feb. 20, 2025 (archived). The post alleged that in 1987, the KGB recruited a "40-year-old businessman from the USA, Donald Trump, nicknamed 'Krasnov.'" Mussayev claimed he was serving in the KGB's Moscow-based Sixth Directorate at the time, and it was "the most important direction" of the department's work to recruit businessmen from "capitalist countries."
Mussayev's post didn't specify whether Trump participated in any spying, only that he was recruited. In an earlier post (archived) from July 18, 2018, he described Trump's relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin as follows:
Based on my experience of operational work at the KGB-KNB, I can say for sure that Trump belongs to the category of perfectly recruited people. I have no doubt that Russia has a compromise on the President of the United States, that for many years the Kremlin promoted Trump to the position of President of the main world power.Trump did visit Moscow in 1987, reportedly to look at possible locations for luxury hotels. However, several Russian-language websites (of unknown trustworthiness) with short biographies of Mussayev revealed a discrepancy: While Mussayev claimed he worked in the Sixth Directorate of the KGB in 1987, those online biographies, including one from the Moscow State Institute of International Relations, placed him in Kazakh KGB counterintelligence from 1979 until 1986, when he moved to the Soviet Union's Ministry of Internal Affairs.
It is absolutely possible that the public timeline of Mussayev's work history was established by the KGB as a cover for more covert activities. At face value, however, information on Mussayev's background does not completely align with what he claims.
Other sources corroborated that the Sixth Directorate's main focus was not foreign intelligence. The journalist and author W. Thomas Smith Jr.'s book "Encyclopedia of the Central Intelligence Agency" states that the directorate was responsible for "enforcing financial and trade laws, as well as guarding against economic espionage," in line with the counterintelligence descriptions present in the online biographies. Meanwhile, the First Chief Directorate was the KGB's main espionage arm.
by Amelia Clarke and Jack Izzo, Snopes | Read more:
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[ed. True? Does it matter? Results are the same.]
