Welcome to the latest installment of Washington Secrets, your user guide to the capital’s politics. Today, Secrets takes an exclusive look at one of the likely big winners of Donald Trump’s Russian oil sanctions
President Donald Trump’s sanctions on Russian oil will claim their biggest scalp when Lukoil, one of the world’s biggest energy companies, sells its overseas assets.
Just one problem: Does the president know that the $22 billion deal will be something of a coup for David Rubenstein, champion of the liberal elite? His Carlyle Group is now on course to secure billions of dollars in Lukoil assets, turning it into a major player in the energy sector.
Trump and Rubenstein once regarded each other as friends, but the private equity billionaire has emerged in recent years as a key backer of the sort of “woke” initiatives that infuriate MAGAworld.
Last year, Trump unceremoniously dumped Rubenstein as chairman of the Kennedy Center, along with the rest of the board who “do not share our vision for a golden age in arts and culture.”
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“He hates Rubenstein,” a former White House official said. “That guy led the anti-Trump faction of the D.C. elite. The president has spent the past year undoing the mess he left at the Kennedy Center. I wouldn’t want to be the one telling him about this deal.”
The Trump administration imposed sanctions on two of Russia’s biggest oil companies in October to choke the flow of cash to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s Ukrainian war effort. Lukoil quickly announced it would sell its foreign assets.
Secrets understands that Lukoil and Carlyle Group executives are due to meet today, after announcing a preliminary deal last month.
It puts Rubenstein on a collision course with the Trump administration. The U.S. Treasury will have to sign off on any final agreement, which means he may have awkward questions to answer about his past political comments.
For example, Rubenstein dedicated his 2020 book, How to Lead: Wisdom from the World’s Greatest CEOs, Founders, and Game Changers, to people who resisted Trump’s first presidency.
“In the end, I dedicate the book to the public servants who made it possible for us to preserve our democracy [under attack from Trump],” he told the Guardian. “I do think that, for example, had all the judges gone the wrong way, we’d be in a different situation today.”
Allies of the president accuse Rubenstein’s companies of promoting DEI initiatives. They also point to his work on historic monuments.
For example, Rubenstein bankrolled work at Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello estate designed to “finish the restoration of the landscape of slavery.” Signage added the word “enslaved” to job descriptions for valets and cooks, among others.
And he was particularly close to former President Joe Biden, who stays on his Nantucket estate each Thanksgiving. Biden repaid the favor by awarding Rubenstein the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor, for his support of cultural institutions and monuments.
The Carlyle Group and the White House did not respond to requests for comment.
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