David Geovanis is an American businessman who was born in Massachussets and is a graduate of Donald Trump's alma mater, the Wharton School, but he’s also been in Russia since the 1990s, has since become a Russian citizen, and is one of Trump’s most familiar contacts in Moscow. It’s that connection that has put Geovanis’ name on the list of people whom Congress would very much like to speak with, but who have so far avoided making an appearance. Among other things, they’d like to know if there really is material that the Russians could use as leverage over Trump.
The events involving Geovanis go back to 17 years before the 2013 Miss Universe weekend usually associated with the “pee pee tape.” According to CNN, Geovanis arranged Trump’s 1996 trip to Moscow as part of an earlier plan to build a Trump Tower in the Russian capital. That trip included a meeting with the mayor of Moscow, one in which Trump was assisted by Geovanis along with his associates Howard Lorber and Bennet LeBow.
And it’s here that this story starts to run in every direction. If the name Howard Lorber sounds familiar, it’s because Lorber was one of the two men whom Donald Trump Jr. called after arranging the Trump Tower meeting with Russian operatives. Though the media has been quick to jump on the idea that the calls were somehow innocent, the truth is that, moments after arranging a meeting with Russian operatives identified to him as as being in the service of the Russian government, Donald Trump Jr. called on a man whom he knew as one of his father’s connections to Moscow.
Not only that, but Geovanis, Lorber, and LeBow were all in Moscow trying to get Trump’s tower built on land they had purchased under the name the Brooke Group. Since then, they’ve changed the name to Vector Group, and a major investor in the company is conservative billionaire, Trump supporter, and Steve Bannon partner Robert Mercer. But, while Lorber and LeBow stayed with Vector, Geovanis moved on to working for someone with other connections to Trump—Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska, also known as Paul Manafort’s boss.
It’s … complicated. And it’s made more complicated because Geovanis has so far ignored requests to talk to the Senate Intelligence Committee. But there seems to be no one involved in the story of Trump 2016 who doesn’t have some tie to that trip in 1996.
Though Geovanis now travels on a Russian passport and is married to a Russian wife, he long maintained a reputation in Moscow as a kind of traditional “Western playboy.” A picture of him along with three partially nude women was featured in a Moscow gallery under the title “The Capitalist.” And, according to the Independent, Geovanis’ connections with Trump didn’t end in the 20th century. He also seems to have been involved in negotiations in 2015 and 2016 as part of Trump’s “Moscow Project,” which was being coordinated by Felix Sater and Michael Cohen.
Geovanis even manages to be connected with a scheme to sell the Russians on “clean coal” in connection with some nonsense claims of a “high-pressure” coal washer from Trump’s old friend, LeBow.
The Senate is still trying to bring in Geovanis, but his appearance before the Intelligence Committee seems unlikely. He was last seen in the United States in 2017, after the death of his mother.