The New Journalism
I first heard of David Zaikin on June 12, 2017, when an acquaintance of mine, a consultant with a suite of exotic international clients, told me he knew someone who had been smeared in Politico, the respected clearinghouse for insider political news. The article, published on April 25, 2017, was headlined, “Flynn’s Turkish Lobbying Linked to Russia,” followed by the subhead: “The former national security adviser’s client had business dealings in Russia and worked with an executive in Russian oil companies on Turkish lobbying projects.” Zaikin, a then-49-year-old Ukrainian-born Canadian citizen living in London, was the “executive” who helped form this supposed link between Russia and the suspicious pro-Turkey activities of former Trump appointee Michael Flynn.
The article was written by a reporter named Isaac Arnsdorf, then a Politico staffer and now with ProPublica. It claimed that Zaikin had secretly partnered with Ekim Alptekin, a Turkish-born entrepreneur with an intriguing portfolio in international business, political lobbying, and enterprises that seemed to combine aspects of both. Alptekin ran a consulting company out of the Netherlands called Inovo BV Alptekin. He also headed the Turkey-U.S. Business Council from 2015-2017, an Istanbul-based trade organization operated under the auspices of the Turkish government.