My Pledge to Europe
Plus: A #YachtWatch Update
Thank you to everyone who joined us for Vespers! We had a fascinating chat with Ben Taub about Russian espionage in the Arctic and former Wirecard CEO Jan Marsalek and his connections to Russian intelligence. We’ll do another one soon!
A friendly reminder that Rant! is a reader-supported publication. Thank you for making this newsletter possible!
ALEX’S WEEKLY RANT!
I begin this week by making a pledge to Europe.
Trump has threatened 200 percent tariffs on European wine. If this happens, I pledge to do my best to make up the difference for Europe. Whatever you would have sold to the US, I will drink it myself.
That’s how much I am enjoying this chaos.
Read Me in The Bulwark
I published a piece at
this week. The TL;DR is: Russia keeps targeting Americans, so why is the president making deals with Putin? Read it here.
A #YachtWatch Update
A court this week found that the yacht Amadea is not owned by Eduard Khudainatov.
In case that sentence means nothing to you, here’s a quick backgrounder: Way back at the beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the US seized the megayacht Amadea after it sailed across the Pacific and stopped to refuel in Fiji, likely on its way to Russia. The US believes the 350-foot yacht is owned by Suleyman Kerimov, a fertilizer magnate worth an estimated $16 billion. But Khudainatov claims it is his boat. After all kinds of legal wrangling, the US finally took control of the yacht and sailed it to San Diego.
Then everyone kind of freaked out because holy hell this thing is expensive to maintain, some $740,000 a month. Meantime, Khudainatov kept insisting it was his boat. US prosecutors said, hey, let’s sell the boat and then we can fight over who owns the money, because we are losing a fuckton of money maintaining it. Khudainatov said nope, it’s my boat so just let me have the boat. The court then weighed in and said, yeah, you can’t sell the boat. But the court also said Khudainatov had to prove he did own the boat and prosecutors had to prove he did not. For more details, see this post.
Prosecutors said no problem, here are all these documents we think prove Kerimov is the actual owner and Khudainatov is just a straw owner. Among other things, Khudainatov claims to also own Crescent and Scheherazade, which means he owns more than a billion dollars worth of yachts and yet no one has ever heard of this guy so it seems weird he is actually a Russian oligarch. And Khudainatov was all: nuh uh, I am rich motherfuckers! And prosecutors and the court said: Ok, prove it.
That’s where things got a little shaky for Khudainatov.
As part of the process, prosecutors asked to depose Khudainatov. He said sure, no problem. But not in the US. Prosecutors said what about country X. Nope. Country Y? Nope, not there either. And so on.
This went on for several months.
They then settled on a location and just as prosecutors were getting on a plane, guess who said he had covid and couldn’t be deposed? Prosecutors were like: we call bullshit! The court, too, was unconvinced and asked for medical documents. Khudainatov’s lawyer presented a doctor’s note from a Moscow clinic, which DOJ experts quickly said looked like a fabrication. Indeed, their expert noted, buying a covid diagnosis in Moscow is easier than finding a fresh vegetable there.
Khudainatov kept prevaricating and delaying. This week, he finally wore out the patience of the judge, who declared that these were all likely stalling tactics so decided to end this misery and declare that Eduard Khuadainatov is not the owner of Amadea.
So, what now?
That’s a really good question! The KleptoCapture group that originally seized the yacht not longer exists. And the damn yacht is still costing us hundreds of thousands of dollars a month. It is hard to believe that will last long under Elon’s chainsaw (although as far as I know, Elon does not currently own a yacht, so maybe he just takes it? Although I kind of feel like he’d be anxious in open spaces.).
For now, these two things remain true: the yacht remains in the custody of DOJ, and no one has invited me on it for a sail.
THE WEEK’S LINKS
A roundup of things you should be reading
THE DOGE DIGITAL COUP
Inside Elon Musk’s ‘Digital Coup’ (Wired)
DOGE Makes Its Latest Errors Harder to Find (NYT)
UKRAINE WILL WIN
Ukraine will win—with or without our permission (Politico)
EXCELLENT RESOURCES!
Just Security has launched WHAT JUST HAPPENED? as well as a litigation tracker to help readers keep up with the chaos
Alex Finley is a former officer of the CIA’s Directorate of Operations, where she served in West Africa and Europe. She writes and teaches about terrorism, disinformation / covert influence, and oligarch yachts. Her writing has appeared in Slate, Reductress, Funny or Die, POLITICO, The Center for Public Integrity, and other publications. She has spoken to the BBC, MSNBC, CNN, C-SPAN’s Washington Journal, France24, and numerous other media outlets. She was also invited once to speak at Harvard, which she now tells everyone within the first ten seconds of meeting them. She is the author of the Victor Caro series, satirical novels about the CIA. Before joining the CIA, Alex was a journalist, covering Capitol Hill, the Pentagon, and the Department of Energy. She reported on issues related to national security, intelligence, and homeland security. Did she mention she was invited to speak at Harvard?
