The ‘Sex Expert’ Who Could Be the Missing Link

Michelle Goldberg writes about “the strange saga of Anastasia Vashukevich. She is a Belarusian woman, a self-described ‘sex expert,’ who is now in a Thai jail and who claims, in a desperate Instagram video, to be the ‘the missing link in the connection between Russia and the U.S. elections.'”

“It sounds, of course, like an outrageous scam, and perhaps it is. But Vashukevich, who goes by the alias Nastya Rybka, has a documented link to Oleg Deripaska, an oligarch who figures prominently in one of the scandals surrounding the Trump campaign. Indeed, that link may be why she’s locked up in the first place. Whether you believe her or not, her bizarre, sordid story offers real clues to the chain connecting Trump’s circle to the highest level of the Russian government.”

“Could a social-media-obsessed escort help explain the degrading nightmare of the Trump presidency? It seems like the preposterously lazy plot of a sub-B movie. But these days, so does everything else in our politics.”