Trump and Putin in fantasyland | The Hill
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
by Alexander J. Motyl, opinion contributor - 08/08/23 12:00 PM ET
The Trump campaign's comparison of the "lawlessness" of the former president's legal troubles with that practiced by "Nazi Germany in the 1930s, the former Soviet Union, and other authoritarian, dictatorial regimes" isn't just preposterous and arguably obscene. It's also highly revelatory, suggesting another unflattering comparison to Trump.
Jonathan Greenblatt, National Director of the Anti-Defamation League, rightly said that "Comparing this indictment to Nazi Germany in the 1930s is factually incorrect, completely inappropriate and flat out offensive."
Even if one assumes the worst and concludes that Trump is in fact the target of a politically motivated conspiracy, the comparison with Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union is, frankly, ignorant — which may be worse than incorrect, inappropriate, and offensive. Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union were totalitarian states that had no need to engage in elaborate court cases against their political opponents. The former would simply have arrested Trump and sent him to a concentration camp. The latter, especially under Joseph Stalin, would have shot him in the back of his head.
Far more interesting than this ignorance is the Trump campaign's implied suggestion that Trump's critics and opponents are Nazis. The parallel with Vladimir Putin should be self-evident by now. Although both Trump and Putin behave like Benito Mussolini, they have the gall to claim their opponents are Nazis. All that's missing is for Trump to place all the blame for America's ills on Putin's favorite neo-Nazi — Ukraine's Jewish president, Volodymyr Zelensky.
These bizarre beliefs wouldn't be worth mentioning if it weren't for the fact that they reveal something important about the two men: their absolute belief that they determine reality.
Andrew Sullivan recently wrote:
My own view has long been that Trump is beyond truth and lies: his ego is everything; there is nothing outside it; it is the only reality he knows. If he were to acknowledge any facet of a reality that does not flatter his ego, he would have a psychic break. So he doesn't. He is beyond accountability because he only lives in the moment, and reinvents the past at will. He is a truly postmodern man: no truth exists apart from his; and any alternative reality has to be attacked mercilessly.
Russia's illegitimate president doesn't sputter, but other than that Sullivan could have been writing about Putin. He doesn't just lie; he truly believes that he is Russia, that he defines reality, that he is always right, and that criticism of him is a repudiation of Russia and reality. Unsurprisingly, Trump and Putin claim to admire each other.
Whatever the future holds for Trump, one can state with great confidence that Putin's future is bleak, precisely because his ultra-solipsism has lost touch with the real reality, and not the one in his head. The war is going badly, even as the murder of innocent Ukrainians proceeds apace. The Russian economy is at best sluggish. The popular mood is glum. And, as the Prigozhin Affair demonstrated, Russian elites are not unanimous in their love of the great leader. Sooner or later, the real reality will punish Putin for his political narcissism by having him be ousted by his comrades in arms.
Even all-powerful dictators can only define reality in today's world up to a point. Eventually, people resist — by wearing chadors publicly and jeans at home, by marching in official parades while conducting critical conversations in their kitchens, by staying silent about war crimes while praying that their loved ones will not be drafted.
Total totalitarianism doesn't just not work. It ultimately collapses, as the weight of hyper-centralization and hyper-control proves too heavy for its underdeveloped institutions.
Putin's political system falls short of totalitarianism, but it meets the definitional criteria of fascism and, like other fascist regimes, it too will break down — and arguably already is. After all, the central feature of fascism is the all-powerful, invincible, infallible, charismatic leader. Putin arguably fit the bill some 15 to 20 years ago. Now he's weak, prone to error, and all too mundane. Small wonder that he's lost his magic and will soon lose his head.
Alexander J. Motyl is a professor of political science at Rutgers University-Newark. A specialist on Ukraine, Russia and the USSR, and on nationalism, revolutions, empires and theory, he is the author of 10 books of nonfiction, as well as "Imperial Ends: The Decay, Collapse, and Revival of Empires" and "Why Empires Reemerge: Imperial Collapse and Imperial Revival in Comparative Perspective."
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The CIA and FBI investigations (plural) of Trump's secretive relationships with agents of Russian State Intelligence Services were legally predicated and pedated the 2016 US Presidential elections by years...
.............and as Paul Harvey used to say, "Here's the rest of the story"........................said investigations resulted in ZERO charges against Trump.
Can you say ZERO??
You know, you should post the WHOLE truth once in a while just for a change of pace.
You spout this nonsense weekly or more often but never once do you bother to tell the TRUTH.
[Deleted]
No, Trump got himself investigated by not only the CiA and the FBI but MI6, the Israeli Mossad and Interpol also because he sought out and he met with and he developed relationships with a multitude of foreign agents and actual Russian spies. He had a personal relationship with Putin which would get anyone investigated but right up to election day in 2016 Trump was in constant negotiations with Vlad Putin himself to build a Trump Tower in Moscow right across the street from the Kremlin. He even offered Putin a luxury penthouse apartment as a bribe. Rudy Giuliani, Don Jr and Michael Cohen have all confirmed this true. If that isn't collision, what is?
It's no wonder you support Biden so devotedly. The same dedication to the truth.
Please name one charge that came from all these investigations you claim preceded 2016 and were legally predicated.
Just one.
As you have been asked dozens of times to do and have never even honestly attempted because even you recognize the pure bullshit flowing from your post.
I dare say you won't even attempt to answer but might deflect.
John Durham was supposed to prove that the CIA and FBI investigations plural of Trump's secretive relationships with Russian agents were not legally predicated. But, he failed!
Because they were legally predicted and justified by Trump's actions when he had over 50 meeting with Russian spies!
For all your bluster, why can't you for ONCE answer the simplest of questions?
What did the investigations prove?
Mueller advised that he would have charged anybody else but that he didn't have the power to charge a sitting president.
Trump is guilty of everything he's ever been accused of in his whole life.
Well, here in America, we go by proof and court convictions.
We leave that fantasy crap to people who just don't know any better.
No he didn't.
Also, no Americans conspired with Russia. If they had, there was nothing to stop Mueller from charging them. The idea that Trump, and only Trump, was actually conspiring with Russians to interfere in the election is idiotic.
Incorrect.
So now I should believe YOU instead of the VERY WORDS out of Mueller's OWN MOUTH???
NO THANK YOU!
Please link Mueller's quote to that effect.
I gave you a quote directly contradicting what you claimed he stated.
Another fact missed by myopic thinking.
If you had to choose between voting for Putin or Voting for Trump who would you vote for?
Mueller convicted the following people of lying to the FBI, mostly about their contact with Russians. He couldn't convict them of conspiring with Russia because they were able to lie with impunity - they worked for a corrupt president who would and did pardon them. The legal system does not work when corruption removes consequences.
George Papadopolous- Lying about contacts with Russians
Michael Flynn - Lying to FBI about contact with Russians
Paul Manafort - Convicted for bank & tax fraud, also shown by judge to be lying about contact with Russians
Roger Stone - Lying to Congress, obstruction of justice
The sheer irony in that statement is astounding.
Lie with impunity----convicted of lying.
Do you see it now????????????
LOL !
I've walked you through this before. No one was charged with conspiring with Russians to interfere in the election. Period.
The fact that you have to resort to dishonest claims to deflect from that drives homes how absurd this is:
Papadopoulos was not convicted for lying about contacts with Russians.
Flynn was convicted for lying about a discussion that occurred AFTER the election about Israel.
Manafort was not convicted of lying about contact with Russians..
et.c..
So Don Jr. NEVER met with Russian spies in Trump tower, (With his dad just 90 feet away)? Kinda weird you would say that since not only did they, (the Trump's), admit they did it, but even Fox News reported on it. So you want to retract that comment or are you going to just stay in your echo chamber?
No Americans conspired with Russians. Even the Great Mueller couldn't find evidence of it, and he was looking HARD for it!
(32) Special counsel did not find Trump campaign or associates conspired with Russia (cnn.com)
Special counsel did not find Trump campaign or associates conspired with Russia
A letter about special counsel Robert Mueller's report was sent to Congress today and concluded that Mueller did not find the Trump campaign or his associates conspired with Russia.
Here's what the letter said:
I said we don’t know if these convicted people conspired with Russians because they could and did lie with impunity. As far as the three you listed go —
On October 5, 2017, Papadopoulos pleaded guilty to a felony charge of making false statements to FBI agents about the timing and the possible significance of his contacts in 2016 relating to U.S.–Russia relations and the Donald Trump presidential campaign.
Flynn pleaded guilty in 2017 to lying to the FBI about his contacts with the Russian ambassador and then cooperated extensively with prosecutors. But he ultimately reversed course and accused the government of trying to frame him.
OSC[Office of the Special Counsel] has established by a preponderance of the evidence that the defendant [Manafort] intentionally made multiple false statements to the FBI, the OSC, and the grand jury concerning matters that were material to the investigation: his interactions and communications with Kilimnik [The April 2019 Mueller Report concluded Kilimnik was connected to Russian intelligence agencies, while the August 2020 final report on 2016 election interference from the Senate Intelligence Committee characterized him as a "Russian intelligence officer"].
Makes little sense that they could get away with impunity but convicted and sentenced.
Maybe impunity means something other than:
exemption from punishment or freedom from the injurious consequences of an action
But we do know for certain that the very people in charge of proving it were not able to do so.
In my book, that's a pretty big tell.
Just as much as proof of it would be to me.
In absence of evidence for collusion, one should logically conclude there isn't a case to be made.
Seems like beating a dead horse, especially in light of the new charges Trump has gathered.
They worked for a corrupt president who would and did pardon them, their convictions and sentences were Kabuki Theatre.
If you work for a corrupt president who would pardon you, lying to obscure crimes is without consequences. What could a legal system possibly accomplish if there were no consequences for being convicted?
I respect your right to hold such disdain for our legal system. Seems odd to want to hold it in such high regard when it comes to the upcoming Trump trials while questioning its very workings here.
You just keep dodging that it was investigated. Charges were made. Trials were held. Sentences were handed down. Now you are claiming nothing mattered because they were pardoned after the fact?
That isn't even logical.
If Trump is found innocent on any charges, will that mean he is guilty and justice failed?
If he is found guilty on all charges, how will you be able to trust the verdicts?
This isn't even a debate worth having.
No distain at all. The problem is that Trump would and did vacate their convictions. This meant that conviction and sentencing were neutered as punishments.
Not dodging at all. The charges and convictions were for lying. If you know your conviction will be vacated by your boss if you protect your boss, then a sensible [but corrupt] course of action is to protect your boss by lying. If they had implicated Trump, no pardon would have been forthcoming.
This is why Mueller said his investigation does not exonerate Trump. Mueller knew that Trump's people were lying, but had no way to threaten them to get the truth.
A truly fascinating view of the facts.
Mueller's job was never to exonerate the President or anyone else for that matter.
Kind of weird how loads of bad stuff--much of it true--have come out about Trump and you still cling to some notion of collusion when what we have been assured are exemplary federal employees, honorable people doing honorable work, without a trace of bias, searched high and low for proof of collusion and didn't find enough evidence to prove it.
Man, that is going to be a hard sell.
I ain't buying it.
Couldn't find Trump on the list of 600 Paul Harvey Rest of the Story episodes. LINK ->
Did you come up with Paul Harvey because you saw me post about him, because I've done so many times?
I always liked Harvey.
My real point was the seeder only tells 1/2 the story and thinks that's the end of it.
It is a fact that Mueller said his investigation does not exonerate Trump. It is a fact that Mueller knew that Trump's people were lying, he convicted people of lying. It is a fact that Mueller had no way to threaten them to get the truth because Trump would and did vacate any punishment. Less fascinating than mundane.
This is false. Mueller's job was to determine whether there was collusion. This determination would either exonerate or charge Trump. Mueller was not able to do this job which is why he said his investigation does not exonerate Trump.
This is also false. I am simply pointing out that the people who knew what happened lied. I don't know what truth they were obscuring, it could be a lot worse than collusion. My point is that both Trump and his people are corrupt. His people knew that Trump's ability to pardon protected them from the justice system.
It is a fact that Mueller wasn't supposed to exonerate anyone for anything.
That is contradictory. Mueller had the tools to do his job. He looked for collusion and was unable to find it.
Ridiculous, he looked for proof of collusion, could not find it. End of story.
I can't argue your fantasy.
More disinformation. I'd ask you to prove it, but after you posting the same misinformation a thousand times, what are the odds you'll actually provide any evidence?
One would have better odds of hitting the current lottery jackpot than getting proof.
Read this, learn something and then do get back with us...
Well that one is only 4 years old. You're getting better.
Keep digging in that "But Trump" treasure chest...........SMH
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[Deleted]
ead this, learn something and then do get back with us...
Let's go through an exercise in reading.
Where does it say, specifically, that there were multiple investigations of Trump by the FBI and CIA?
Where does it say Trump had secretive relationships with agents of the Russian State Intelligence Services?
Where does it say the investigations of Trump predated the 2016 Presidential election by years?
So what you are saying is, as normal, you don't have shit. Just a 4 year old article. No links to indictments, court transcripts or even a link to the "investigations". you blather on about.
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Using the current Jim Jordan and James Comer standards, I think this is enough to declare Trump guilty .
talkingpointsmemo.com /edblog/what-the-cia-and-fbi-knew-about-trump-before-2016
What The CIA and FBI Knew About Trump Before 2016
Josh Marshall 14-18 minutes 3/2/2017
As you’ve likely inferred from my recent posts I’ve spent a lot of time in recent days and weeks piecing together different elements of the Trump/Russia story. I’ve brought other colleagues into the work and plan to expand that once we have people hired for the three new investigative positions I discussed last month. Today everyone is talking about the inexplicable news about Jeff Sessions . But there’s another dimension of the Trump/Russia story which has only become clear to me recently but which provides a critical backstory for understanding the background of this scandal and news story.
Let’s go back to the story of Felix Sater , the Russian-American immigrant, convicted felon and longtime Trump business associate we discussed last week .
Let me review two separate streams of information which are critical to understanding the story. First, here are some basic and well-attested facts about Felix Sater.
Sater began his professional life as a New York City stock broker; spent 15 months in prison for stabbing a man in the face with a broken wine glass in a bar fight; and then became involved in a pump and dump penny stock scheme in association with the Gambino and Genovese crime families. When he and his associates were arrested in the securities fraud scheme in 1998, Sater tried to make a deal to save himself.
According to reliable accounts , what Sater offered to do was work with the CIA to facilitate the purchase of Stinger missiles on the weapons black market in post-Soviet Central Asia. According to his accomplice and business partner, Salvatore Lauria, who wrote a book detailing the story , the CIA was more keen on working with Sater than was the FBI, which had recently been burned by its longstanding and close working relationship with Whitey Bulger. The plan eventually fell apart. It seemed like Sater and Lauria might end up doing hard time. They had defrauded investors over more than $40 million. Then 9/11 happened and everything changed. Suddenly the federal government was much more interested in Sater’s help.
Lauria later disowned the book which he had cowritten with an AP reporter, David Barry, claiming it was fiction. But Barry insists that he reported out everything contained in the book.
Sater’s attorney Robert Wolf made various seemingly hyperbolic claims about Sater’s cooperation for federal law enforcement and intelligence. He told The Washington Times in early 2015 that Sater worked on “the most serious matters of national security, battling our greatest enemies at tremendous risk to his own life and for the benefits of all citizens of our country … [saving] potentially tens of thousands, if not millions, of our citizens’ lives.”
Needless to say this all sounds wild and improbably novelistic. And you would expect Sater’s attorney to make extravagant claims about the value of his clients cooperation. Despite being well-attested, we don’t know directly from the US government that any of these wild claims are true. But the statements and actions of federal law enforcement strongly suggest that even if some of the details are off, Sater’s assistance was of an exceptional character.
The US government went and continues to go to extreme lengths to keep Sater’s cooperation and work for the government a secret. Until quite recently, it went to great lengths to keep Sater’s conviction itself, and all documents related to it, a secret. It took the extraordinarily rare step of managing the entire adjudication of Sater’s crimes in secret, with all documents kept secret. Federal judges even pursued what might reasonably be called a vendetta against two lawyers who used leaked information about Sater’s case in lawsuits growing out of a failed Trump building venture, Trump Fort Lauderdale, as well as lawsuits on behalf of victims in the original pump and dump scheme.
The federal government also kept Sater on as a cooperating witness for fully 11 years before finally sentencing him in 2009 for the plea deal in 1998. In a $42 million securities fraud case, Sater received no jail time, was not forced to pay restitution and was fined a mere $25,000. In other words, he walked away from the crime with close to no punishment. The controversy over the government’s secrecy in the Sater case, as well as his minimal punishment, got enough attention that it eventually bubbled up from the criminal courts to the governmental and political realm. During her 2015 confirmation hearings, Attorney General Loretta Lynch was asked about the propriety of the government’s cooperation with Sater, in part because she had been the US Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, where Sater’s case was adjudicated.
In response to questions from Sen. Orin Hatch, Lynch wrote (emphasis added):
Lynch’s references to “national security” has been echoed by other judges involved in Sater’s case, ones who have gone to great length to prevent the release of documents tied to Sater’s case.
It is impossible to know precisely what Sater was doing during this decade. But statements from government officials, news reports and Lauria’s book make clear that it required him to have extensive associations with and knowledge of the mafia and touched not just on organized crime but specifically on critical matters of national security. Based on published reports and Lauria’s book, it seems extremely likely that it also required him to have extensive knowledge of and contacts in the criminal underworld in the former Soviet Union. Clearly the US government saw Sater’s cooperation as highly important. Otherwise it would not have gone to such lengths to get it, to keep it secret and to protect Sater after the fact. Lynch’s words to Hatch speak volumes.
Then there’s Mikhail Sater, aka Michael Sheferofsky, Felix Sater’s father.
In 2000, two years after Felix was arrested in the securities fraud scheme, Mikhail Sater was charged along with Ernest “Butch” Montevecchi, a soldier in the Genovese crime family , for running an extortion ring in Brighton Beach between 1990 and 1999. In a separate legal filing by the plaintiffs in the suit seeking restitution for Felix Sater’s stock fraud , petitioners claimed that Mikhail Sater was a boss in the Semion Mogilevich crime organization. Mogilevich is considered one of Russia’s most notorious organized crime figures and was until 2015 on the FBI’s most wanted list. Mikhail Sater also became a cooperating witness in the Eastern District and received three years probation.
There has been great deal of controversy over whether the federal government should have provided such protection for Felix Sater. For our present purposes, that’s beside the point. What is relevant is that he was highly connected in the criminal underworld and the federal government found his cooperation extremely valuable.
Now, I’ve covered a lot of ground here, albeit compressing as much as I’ve been able a highly complex and florid story. You will no doubt see that Donald Trump’s name does not come up in any of these crimes. My aim here is simply to demonstrate who Felix Sater is, his connections with a transnational criminal underworld stretching from New York’s Outer Boroughs to Central Asia and (quite likely but not totally proven) meeting up with the weapons market where organized crime touches on international terrorist networks.
We don’t just know this information about Sater. Just as importantly we know that the FBI, attorneys in the Eastern District of New York and almost certainly the CIA also knew about Sater’s connections with these worlds since they were enlisting his apparently extremely valuable cooperation to help conduct investigations and national security operations in those realms.
Here’s where I think this becomes significant to the present moment. If you line up Sater’s story and his time as a cooperating witness with his time as a top business associate and finally employee of Donald Trump, they overlap almost exactly.
Trump first met Sater and got into business with Bayrock Capital, where Sater was a cofounder, in 2003. In Bayrock, Sater partnered with Tevfik Arif, a former Soviet trade and commerce official from Kazakstan. Trump and Bayrock partnered together on numerous building projects and Sater was the point man on most of them. The most notable is Trump Soho, which was financed with money from Russia and Kazakstan. There was also Trump Fort Lauderdale , the Sater-managed project whose collapse first triggered the revelation of Sater’s 1998 securities fraud conviction. Trump’s work with Bayrock continued until 2010 when Sater went to work for the Trump Organization full time – again, putting together deals and financing for Trump-branded building projects.
Let’s put this together.
The federal government knew who Sater was, his ties to the criminal underworld, business ties into that world in the former Soviet Union, etc. They also had to know of his deep and longstanding association with Donald Trump, his key role in numerous Trump projects during the first decade of this century and his role arranging financing for these projects. We don’t know if the federal government had specific knowledge of the details of these business transactions or whether or how deeply Donald Trump was reliant on capital from Russia and more generally the murky world of oligarchs and underworlds that Sater is clearly immersed in and from which he appeared to draw investment capital. But they likely would have suspected as much, at least that Trump had uncomfortably close ties to someone like Sater.
They wouldn’t have had to look far to confirm these assumptions. Take the Trump Soho project. In April 2016, The New York Times published a story on Trump Soho based on lawsuits which grew out of the project in 2011 and 2012. Consider this passage. And yes, Lauria is the same Lauria who was at the ’90s bar fight where Sater stabbed the man in the face. He was Sater’s accomplice in the 1998 pump and dump scheme and the author of the book that detailed Sater’s work for the FBI and the CIA …
Here’s another passage …
Whatever US law enforcement and intelligence knew about the specifics of Trump’s relationship with and his dependence on investment capital out of Russia and the former Soviet Union, material like this in public court filings surely would have raised red flags about Trump’s businesses.
As long as Donald Trump was just a high-profile and frequently clownish real estate tycoon from New York and the star of The Apprentice , this probably didn’t matter very much. After all, as I’ve noted, there’s no specific evidence that Trump was involved in any of Sater’s criminal activity.
But at some point in 2014 or 2015, Donald Trump started moving toward having a credible shot at becoming the President of the United States. By early 2016 that became a real possibility.
(One notable, though perhaps distinct, detail is that we can be sure that the attorney general of the United States at the time, Loretta Lynch, knew a level of detail about Felix Sater and his father Mikhail that only would have been possible as the former US Attorney for the district in which Sater’s trial was adjudicated.)
It seems quite probable that as Trump moved closer to the presidency in the early months of 2016, alarm bells started to go off in the FBI and the CIA, as the relevance of business partnerships with Sater and reliance on capital out of the former Soviet Union suddenly became dramatically more relevant. Again, as I said, as long as Donald Trump was just Donald Trump this didn’t matter that much. There’s plenty of dirty money sloshing around the New York real estate world. But when it started to seem plausible that he might become the next President, this would start to be a matter of great concern.
This certainly also added to the concern when popped up in a meeting with Michael Cohen and a pro-Russian Ukrainian parliamentarian with a dossier he asked Cohen to hand deliver to Michael Flynn.
All of what I’ve said here would be an issue even if the Russian government had never inserted itself into the US election. It almost certainly predates any awareness within the US national security and law enforcement worlds that that was happening. But I suspect it is a critical backdrop for how this evidence was interpreted once it began to come to light. It quite possibly also informed and drove some of the scrutiny that was applied to Trump and his associates once it did.
Of what exactly? Conducting business? If there was any wrongdoing, he should have been in jail and never been elected.
So nothing to support the claims about imaginary investigations etc...
Um....
Geez, where to start...
Lol. Palmer Report. That's about the level of argument I'd expect.
But go ahead. Provide actual proof. Cite specifically what you believe is evidence of each of those allegations.
That shit was hilarious, man! The Palmer Report reads as if written by some vast conspiracy theorist.
If that is what passes as proof of anything other than the author's lunacy it lends credence to the saying "There's a sucker born every minute".
I just had no idea they spawned and multiplied, for God's sake!
Link? While you are at it, link the trial and conviction that makes this all so ever important.
Can't be done.
I think we stand a better chance of Biden having a single accomplishment before we see any thing he's claimed.
[Deleted]
A link hidden behind a pay wall to the Boston globe about a meeting to construct a building? Seriously? And here I thought you'd provide something worth while. WTF was I thinking.
We'd stand a better chance at seeing $2.75 a gallon for gas.
You'd think that after all that's been done, he would be able to provide a link to something other than what the (m)ass media is telling him what to think.
You have been provided proof. Yet you provided nothing but your wild ass denials and childish temper tantrums in retort.
No. What I saw was what the mass media want you to think.
Now you are just being childishly silly, again...
Can you even imagine being so desperate to hang something on Trump [deleted]
That is hilarious coming from the person spamming his own articles with memes.
When you have something we'll talk. Until then...
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russian.rt.com /article/18050
Миллиардер Дональд Трамп объявил о желании построить небоскрёб в Москве
RT на Русском 2-2 minutes
Billionaire Donald Trump announced his desire to build a skyscraper in Moscow
The American tycoon confirmed these plans during his visit to Russia for the finals of the Miss Universe 2013 contest. He also announced his intention to start a business in Russia. According to the 67-year-old billionaire, he is already in talks with several Russian companies regarding the construction of a skyscraper.
However, Trump did not specify the names of these companies, as well as the size of the investments. Russian businessman Araz Agalarov, owner of Crocus City Hall, where the beauty pageant took place, said he was in talks with the American.
“We started negotiations on cooperation in real estate a few days ago,” Agalarov told ITAR-TASS.
The tallest buildings in Russia are located in the Moscow International Business Center Moscow City. Construction at the business center is still ongoing. "Moscow-City" is a whole area in which, in addition to business buildings, there are residential buildings, hotels and entertainment centers.
According to Donald Trump, the building in Moscow will be similar to the famous "Trump Tower", a 58-story building with a height of 202 meters, located in New York. In 2006, Forbes magazine valued Trump Tower at $318 million.
OMG!
Trump wanted to build something in Russia.
HANG HIM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
trumpfile.org /donald-trump-brags-about-meeting-almost-all-of-the-russian-oligarchs/
Donald Trump brags about meeting 'almost all of the Russian oligarchs'
Trump File 2-2 minutes 11/12/2013
In an interview with Real Estate Weekly after the Miss Universe pageant, Donald Trump brags about meeting with Russian oligarchs for Trump Tower Moscow.
The article is removed from the website sometime after Trump becomes president, but it’s still available on the Wayback Machine.
Pictured, Trump with Emin and Aras Agalarov who are connected to the Trump Tower meeting and other events.
Gee, why wasn't Trump imprisoned for this dastardly deed of wanting to engage in business?
www.nydailynews.com /news/national/fbi-wiretapped-russian-gambling-ring-headquarted-trump-tower-article-1.3004226
FBI wiretapped Russian gambling ring headquartered at Trump Tower for two years
Terence Cullen 4-5 minutes 3/21/2017
The Feds were monitoring Russian activity at Trump Tower — but it was years before President Trump ever ran for office.
The FBI had a court-sanctioned warrant from 2011 to 2013 to monitor a Russian crime organization working out of a unit three floors below President Trump's penthouse, according to an ABC News report.
Listening in on the Russians' happenings resulted in more than 30 people being indicted in April 2013, with federal agents raiding the Trump Tower apartment . But the mastermind, Alimzhan Tokhtakhunov, got away and has since fled the United States justice system.
Emergence of the Russian gambling wiretap comes as President Trump claims his own residence at Trump Tower was bugged at the direction of President Obama, but the intelligence community says there's no evidence to back that up .
Federal agents monitored a unit at Trump Tower for two years, resulting in an April 2013 raid. (Jefferson Siegel/New York Daily News)
Months after the 2013 raid, ABC News notes, Tokhtakhunov was in the VIP section of Miss Universe Moscow not far from President Trump. The President had previously sold the rights to the Russian incarnation of the show to a billionaire developer based in the country.
"He is a major player," Mike Gaeta, lead agent on the FBI investigation, said of Tokhtakhunov in 2014 . "He is prominent, he has extremely good connections in the business world as well as the criminal world, overseas, in Russia, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, other countries."
Tokhtakhunov is accused of having run a major gambling ring — headquartered out of unit 63A of Trump Tower — that saw $50 million of illegal money come into the U.S., according to ABC News.
President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump greet trick-or-treaters on the South Lawn during a Halloween celebration at the White House on Sunday, Oct. 25, 2020, in Washington, DC. (Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP)
He's no stranger to the law's radar, either. Tokhtakhunov was previously indicted for trying to fix figure-skating competitions at the 2002 Winter Olympics.
The President wasn't named in the investigation, but his flagship skyscraper was under heavy surveillance.
Just a few floors below Trump's home, ABC reported, prosecutors said there was an "international money laundering, sports gambling and extortion ring."
Alimzhan Tokhtakhounov, seen here in 2000 picture, evaded the raid on Trump Tower. (STR/ASSOCIATED PRESS)
Vadim Trincher, a Russian businessman and power player, lived in the 63rd-floor unit, and was sentenced to five years in jail for his illegal happenings at the tower.
"He would have people come in and meet with them," said ABC News consultant and ex-FBI agent Rich Frankel. "He would use the phones ... His base of operations was in the Trump Tower."
Trump's claim earlier this month that President Obama tapped his own residence in the months before the 2016 elections has proved to not be as successful.
National Security Agency Director Mike Rogers and FBI Director James Comey both testified before the House Intelligence Committee that there was no evidence the President's home was secretly monitored in the lead up to last year's election.
Last week, White House press secretary Sean Spicer cited a Fox News commentator's claim that British intelligence agency Government Communications Headquarters carried out the surveillance of Trump's home before the election, causing Great Britain to take offense. Despite reports in British media that the White House apologized for the statment, officials dismissed that notion , saying they merely spoke to British authorities about it.
Originally Published: Mar 21, 2017 at 11:22 am
trumpfile.org /executives-at-trump-development-company-expose-russia-ties-money-laundering/
Executives at Trump development company expose Russia ties, money laundering
Trump File 2-2 minutes 5/10/2010
On May 10, two former executives at Bayrock Group file a lawsuit alleging that the company is owned by mafia members (Felix Sater and Tevfik Arif) with the sole purpose of money laundering and tax evasion.
The list of claims include lying to investors, buyers, and lenders; using the organization for money laundering and tax evasion including paying millions to partners Felix Sater and Tevfik Arif under the table; operating on behalf of the mob or mafia; and creating multiple other businesses to expand operations beyond the Bayrock name.
The other businesses are Ocean Club, Merrimac, Camelback, Spring Street, and Whitestone. If the last name sounds familiar, that’s because it’s similar to White Rock , the illegal brokerage Felix Sater established to commit stock fraud.
OMG some nefarious people rented space in Trump Tower and did some bad shit. And it looks as though they paid the price. Do you honestly think that Trump himself vetted every tennant in his buildings?
Let me get this straight. Trump was in the same building as a Russian? This is groundbreaking. Alert the special counsel.
Imagine if we found out Joe Biden met with actual Chinese Businessmen with CCP ties. You'd have to arrest him, right?
I'll get back to this subject later.
You can feel the desperation.
You can smell the desperation from mile away.
Why else would people drag 4-5-6-7-or more-year old articles here? To what purpose?
Actual Russian state propaganda! Nice touch.
Do you think this has anything to do with anything? That Trump's company had talks with various Russian companies to license the name "Trump Tower" to isn't disputed by anyone. Trump wanted to make royalties from letting others use the brand name. That's what businesses do.
PRIOR to 2013 when Trump announced a desire to build a hotel in Moscow, during his visit there with the Miss Universe contest, there was evidence of Trump and Trump world contact with unsavory elements from the Russian oligarchy. He was suspected of money laundering for Russians.
It is not at all far fetched that Trump was on the radar of the FBI and the CIA concerning this, although exactly how that could have been evidenced is not known at this point.
There is quite a bit more of this stuff and I may post more of it later.
He has been a crook his whole life and that certainly applies to his dealings with Russians prior to 2016.
Will people learn that suspicion doesn't equate to guilt?
Can you list any charges against Trump from the result of these 'investigations'?
Can you even imagine the MAGA meltdown that would have ensued had Hillary been negotiating a billion dollar private business deal with Putin in the leadup to the 2016 election?
The criminal convictions of Manafort, Stone and Flynn...
Wow--you got it right---a PRIVATE BUSINESS DEAL, ALL LEGAL!
Does it just stick in your craw that it was all perfectly legal despite all those investigations?
You all have been giving JBB a hard time for months over his claim that US intelligence services had their eye on Trump prior to 2016.
While I dont see proof they were monitoring him, it seems pretty likely, due to the issues I have posted here, and others.
On the whole, I'd say JBB has been more right than wrong about this.
You understand Trump never was going to build a hotel in Moscow, right? The plan was to allow Russians to build it, own it and operate it while paying him royalties for using the Trump name. At no point, ever, is there any evidence that Trump's company would actually own or operate the hotel. It was always a licensing deal where Trump would have no involvement and his company would receive royalties for the use of the name Trump Tower.
No, that was much, much later. Show me convictions or even charges resulting from all these old investigations you dragged here.
Bet you can't!
Good thing Trump wasn't!
You should read the Mueller report. Then you could make posts based on facts.
Yes, because those resulted in NOTHING, so it is tiresome and pointless to belabor the point.
Then you have made the conscious decision to be wrong.
[deleted]
Anything short of the FBI and CIA opening their files revealing their secret sources and methods won't convince the MAGA, but it is inconceivable the CIA and FBI did not investigate all of Trump's secretive relationships with Russian spies and Putin's operatives.
John Durham could never prove anything against anyone exactly because the underlying facts were "need to know only". Therefore, the judges knew and the prosecutors knew and in the end the juries understood that of course our nation's intelligence agencies were investigating Trump for all good legal reasons in the years leading up to our 2016 election. They would have been negligent not to!
What is absolutely inconceivable is that the FBI and CIA and the Justice Department never charged Trump with a damn thing in spite of what you claim they investigated.
Oh, wait, it IS conceivable once one wraps their head around the fact they didn't find anything to charge Trump with!
Nope. Find a single mention in the Mueller report, or the exhaustive DOJ IG report detailing the beginnings of the investigation of Trump. Any evidence other than your imagination would be a step forward.
not investigate all of Trump's secretive relationships with Russian spies
Do you see how silly your claims are? In one sentence, you claim of course there's no evidence of these investigations because they are secret (despite the thousands and thousands of pages written about the specific details of the investigation into Trump) , then you turn around and claim to have personal knowledge of what was being investigated in these top secret investigation whose details aren't disclosed anywhere.
Conjecture, supposition, moot.
www.foxnews.com /media/donald-trump-russian-asset-msnbc
Trump is 'owned by Putin' and has been 'laundering money' for Russians, claims MSNBC's Donny Deutsch
1-2 minutes 10/24/2019
President Trump is a Russian asset who has laundered money for Vladimir Putin for decades in order to save his struggling casinos, MSNBC's Donny Deutsch claimed Thursday.
"This is all about failed casinos," the New York City advertising executive said on "Morning Joe." "[Trump] is owned by Putin because he’s been laundering money, Russian money, for the last 20, 30 years. He’s owned by them.”
“You talk to any banker in New York, any business person in New York, any real estate person … we have a president that’s selling out our military, that’s costing lives, because he is owned by our geopolitical enemy," he continued. "Because he’s been laundering money for him as a criminal organization for the last 30 years."
Host Joe Scarborough wasn't prepared to fully support Deutsch's uncorroborated theories and said the wild claims rest on speculation of New York bankers and finance industry insiders.
“That is speculation and only speculation right now,” he said. “I will say that it is speculation among New York bankers who have loaned Donald Trump money in the past, and who have been following his business career."
Scarborough claimed Putin likely has compromising financial evidence against the president, which is causing Trump to cede power in the Middle East and help Russia strategically.
“We all will be absolutely fascinated when we finally figure out what Vladimir Putin has on Donald Trump and why Donald Trump has surrendered the Middle East, helped ISIS, helped Iran, helped Russia, helped Turkey, helped all of our enemies and betrayed all of our allies,” he said.
“A lot of people think... [Putin] has compromising pictures or something happened in a hotel in Russia years ago," Scarborough added. "No. It goes back to money. It’s always about money.”
Donny Deutsch?
Hilarious!
Jim Jordan - hilarious. James Comer - hilarious Matt gaetz - hilarious. Marjorie - pathetic.
Oh, were they mentioned?
I must have missed some post while reading what I responded to.
I'm mentioning them.
Yes you are!
BTW, isn't that what you call out as deflections when others post stuff like that?
Then you are off topic.
Lets see, we hear that in the case of Joe Biden where there is smoke there is fire. This smoke about Trump has been around for decades. Must be a fire in there.
“You talk to any banker in New York, any business person in New York, any real estate person … we have a president that’s selling out our military, that’s costing lives, because he is owned by our geopolitical enemy," he continued. "Because he’s been laundering money for him as a criminal organization for the last 30 years."
And his entire 'presidency' was a criminal enterprise
And folks like you have been fanning those flames for at least the last 7 years now--to no avail.
You just can't retroactively make investigations find facts years later.
So, you do not believe the American people had a right to know that Trump was negotiating with Putin to build a new Trump Tower right across the street from the Kremlin right up to election day in 2016 and lying to them about it? Because, I do...
Don't tell me what I think.
I think Trump had every right to conduct business, and I don't give a damn if someone got their panties all twisted up over something completely legal.
Just tell us all what Trump did regarding that transaction that was illegal and then explain why he wasn't charged.
Go!
Everyone knows the answer to that. The average American had no idea that Trump had extensive business ties to Russia going back 30 years, and the release of that information during the campaign would likely have been a net negative for his chances. So he lied about it to the American people. What else is new?
That was a LIE. Why do you think he was lying?
Then why in the hell wouldn't someone have exposed it if it would have killed his chances? I think that's bullshit and if EVERYONE knew the answer to that, politics is a dirty business and it would have been................just to kill his chances. And if he lied, it would have been provable and they sure as shit wouldn't have stopped short. I think you are grasping.................
What the fuck does that have to do with Trump being investigated (extensively, according to some, and for YEARS) and then never getting charged with any crime?
Grasping is one hell of an understatement.
How else can you characterize seeds based on years-old stories?
Sensible people can only wish you were joking. Years old stories are the best way to see what was going on, you know, YEARS AGO. JBB has claimed the US intelligence agencies had Trump on their radar prior to 2016, which I think there is a very good chance it is true. That was 8 years ago. Stories from 8 or more years ago seem very appropriate to this situation.
But he is resting his laurels on a nothing burger. On the radar, possibly. Illegal? Nope or he would have been prosecuted. Please think FFS
Donald Trump was the most unqualified presidential candidate in American history, and that is without even mentioning Russia.
The mainstream media treated him like just another guy in 2016, and you'd have to ask them why they did that.
He wasn't.
Look, I'll tell you like I tell JBB--if you have evidence that any of those old investigations resulted in anything, present it.
Who really gives a fuck about an investigation producing nothing? That's stupidity personified!
Have you ever heard any prosecutor anywhere start talking about an investigation that doesn't prove what he wanted it to?
You know why?
BECAUSE IT WOULD BE MONUMENTALLY STUPID!
No they didn't.
There is a massive amount of white collar crime that goes unprosecuted every year. The idea that every crook is prosecuted is a fantasy.
Now watch you argue the opposite when the name Biden is discussed.
Probably because they wanted HRC to win and they figured there was no way an outsider would/could. Doesn't matter. Other "outlets" were on his case from day 1 in 2015 coming down the escalator. Especially MSNBC.
Sure makes one wonder why the vaunted Steele Dossier didn't include any information about these investigations and alliances with "known members of the Russian clandestine services", huh?
When something isn't logical, it usually isn't true.
You are better than this.
I'm better than just about everything you guys talk about on this site.
You forgot the sarcasm tag.
I think Donny Deutsch has as much credibility as any Republican big shot on the oversight or judicial committees.
Of course you do.
www.washingtonpost.com /outlook/trumps-businesses-are-full-of-dirty-russian-money-the-scandal-is-thats-legal/2019/03/29/11b812da-5171-11e9-88a1-ed346f0ec94f_story.html
Trump’s businesses are full of dirty Russian money. The scandal is that it’s legal.
Craig Unger 11-14 minutes 3/29/2019
Collusion or not, President Trump and the Russians are thick as thieves.
What I mean is that for more than three decades, at least 13 people with known or alleged links to the Russian Mafia held the deeds to, lived in or ran criminal operations out of Trump Tower in New York or other Trump properties. I mean that many of them used Trump-branded real estate to launder vast amounts of money by buying multimillion-dollar condos through anonymous shell companies. I mean that the Bayrock Group , a real estate development company that was based in Trump Tower and had ties to the Kremlin, came up with a new business model to franchise Trump condos after he lost billions of dollars in his Atlantic City casino developments, and helped make him rich again .
Yet Trump’s relationship with the Russian underworld, a de facto state actor, has barely surfaced in the uproar surrounding Russia’s interference in the 2016 campaign. That oversight may be explained in part by journalist Michael Kinsley’s long-held maxim: The real scandal isn’t what’s illegal; it’s what is legal.
Robert S. Mueller III, of course, is a prosecutor. His job as special counsel, now complete, was to decide whether to indict. But what if some of the most egregious and corrupt offenses are not illegal? Russian President Vladimir Putin has long insisted that American democracy itself is corrupt. Under his aegis, the Russians have methodically studied various components of the American body politic — campaign finance, our legal system, social media and perhaps especially the real estate industry — and exploited every loophole they could find.
As Oleg Kalugin, a former head of counterintelligence for the KGB, told me in an interview for my book “ House of Trump, House of Putin : The Untold Story of Donald Trump and the Russian Mafia,” the Mafia amounts to “one of the branches of the Russian government today.” Where Americans cracked down on the Italian American Mafia, Putin dealt with the Russian mob very differently. He co-opted it. He made it an integral part of his Mafia state. Russian gangsters became, in effect, Putin’s enforcers. They had long and deep relationships. According to a tape recording made by former Russian agent Alexander Litvinenko a year before he was fatally poisoned in London, Putin had close ties to Semion Mogilevich, a top mobster, that dated to the early 1990s.
That criminals with ties to Russia bought Trump condos, partnered with Trump and were based at Trump Tower — his home, his place of work, the crown jewel of his empire — should be deeply concerning. It’s not hard to conclude that, as a result, the president, wittingly or not, has long been compromised by a hostile foreign power, even if Mueller did not conclude that Trump colluded or conspired with the Russians.
Let’s go back to 1984, when David Bogatin , an alleged Russian gangster who arrived in the United States a few years earlier with $3 in his pocket, sat down with Trump and bought not one but five condos, for a total of $6 million — about $15 million in today’s dollars. What was most striking about the transaction was that at the time, according to David Cay Johnston’s “The Making of Donald Trump,” Trump Tower was one of only two major buildings in New York City that sold condos to buyers who used shell companies that allowed them to purchase real estate while concealing their identities. Thus, according to the New York state attorney general’s office, when Trump closed the deal with Bogatin, whether he knew it or not, he had just helped launder money for the Russian Mafia.
And so began a 35-year relationship between Trump and Russian organized crime. Mind you, this was a period during which the disintegration of the Soviet Union had opened a fire-hose-like torrent of hundreds of billions of dollars in flight capital from oligarchs, wealthy apparatchiks and mobsters in Russia and its satellites. And who better to launder so much money for the Russians than Trump — selling them multimillion-dollar condos at top dollar, with little or no apparent scrutiny of who was buying them.
Over the next three decades, dozens of lawyers, accountants, real estate agents, mortgage brokers and other white-collar professionals came together to facilitate such transactions on a massive scale. According to a BuzzFeed investigation , more than 1,300 condos, one-fifth of all Trump-branded condos sold in the United States since the 1980s, were shifted “in secretive, all-cash transactions that enable buyers to avoid legal scrutiny by shielding their finances and identities.”
The Trump Organization has dismissed money laundering charges as unsubstantiated, and because it is so difficult to penetrate the shell companies that purchased these condos, it is almost impossible for reporters — or, for that matter, anyone without subpoena power — to determine how much money laundering by Russians went through Trump-branded properties. But Anders Aslund, a Swedish economist, put it this way to me: “Early on, Trump came to the conclusion that it is better to do business with crooks than with honest people. Crooks have two big advantages. First, they’re prepared to pay more money than honest people. And second, they will always lose if you sue them because they are known to be crooks.”
After Trump World Tower opened in 2001, Trump began looking for buyers in Russia through Sotheby’s International Realty, which teamed up with a Russian real estate outfit. “I had contacts in Moscow looking to invest in the United States,” real estate broker Dolly Lenz told USA Today . “They all wanted to meet Donald.” In the end, she said, she sold 65 units to Russians in Trump World Tower alone.
The condo sales were just a part of it. In 2002, after Trump had racked up $4 billion in debt from his disastrous ventures in Atlantic City, the Russians again came to his rescue, by way of the Bayrock Group. At a time when Trump found it almost impossible to get loans from Western banks , Bayrock offered him enormous fees — 18 to 25 percent of the profits — simply to use his name on its developments.
So how did all this go unchallenged? According to Jonathan Winer, who served as deputy assistant secretary of state for international law enforcement in the Clinton administration, one answer may be lax regulations. “If you are doing a transaction with no mortgage, there is no financial institution that needs to know where the money came from, particularly if it’s a wire transfer from overseas,” Winer told me in an interview for my book . “The customer obligations that are imposed on all kinds of financial institutions are not imposed on people selling real estate. They should have been, but they weren’t.”
And without such regulations, prosecutors’ hands are tied.
All of which made it easier for the Russian Mafia to expand throughout the United States. As it did so, it grew closer to Trump. Even though Mogilevich had no known direct contacts with Trump, several of his associates did. Among them was Bogatin, who took part in a massive gasoline tax scam , and whose brother, Jacob (Yacov) Bogatin, was indicted with Mogilevich in 2003 on 45 felony counts of stock fraud. (Because there is no extradition treaty between the United States and Russia, they were never brought to trial in the United States.)
Another Mogilevich associate in Trump’s orbit was the late Vyacheslav Ivankov, a ruthless extortionist who became renowned as one of the most brutal killers in the annals of Russian crime. Mogilevich had sent him to New York in 1992 with a mandate to consolidate the Russian Mafia in the United States and to form alliances with the Cosa Nostra and other Mafias. Once he arrived, Ivankov became a regular at the Trump Taj Mahal in Atlantic City, and was widely thought to be based in the Brighton Beach area of Brooklyn, where many Russian mobsters lived. But when the FBI came looking for him, it discovered that the head of the Russian Mafia in New York owned a luxury condo in the glitziest part of Manhattan — at 721 Fifth Avenue, in fact — Trump Tower. There is no evidence of personal interaction between Trump and Ivankov.
Yet another Mogilevich associate with ties to Trump was Alimzhan Tokhtakhounov, better known as Taiwanchik, whose relationship with Mogilevich dates back more than three decades. Indicted in 2002 for bribing Olympic figure skating judges, Tokhtakhounov was awarded the No. 5 position on the FBI’s Most Wanted List , two slots behind Mogilevich. In April 2013, two gambling rings that he allegedly ran were busted by the FBI on the 63rd floor of Trump Tower, resulting in the indictments of 34 members and associates of Russian organized crime. Among them was Tokhtakhounov, who fled the country to avoid prosecution, and appeared later that year at Trump’s 2013 Miss Universe pageant in Moscow.
These were just some of the Russian mobsters who gravitated toward Trump as they laundered money and cultivated politicians. Over time, they learned how to work the system. They paid large sums for the most powerful legal talent in the land — enough, at times, to woo the very men who had once been charged with pursuing them. In 1997, former FBI director William Sessions traveled to Moscow and alerted the world to the horrifying dangers of the brutal Russian Mafia. But 10 years later, he took on as a client the Ukrainian-born Mogilevich. At the time, the U.S. Department of Justice was investigating racketeering charges against Mogilevich over questionable energy deals between Russia and Ukraine. Sessions’s successor as FBI director, Louis Freeh, also later represented Russian clients. All perfectly legal. In Freeh’s case, the client was Denis Katsyv’s Cyprus-based Prevezon Holdings. Freeh helped Prevezon settle a money laundering probe by the U.S. government after the company was accused of laundering more than $200 million in a Russian tax fraud scheme in which an American hedge fund manager and his firm, Hermitage Capital, were said to have been framed by the Russians. The ensuing scandal culminated in the death of Sergei Magnitsky, Hermitage’s accountant, and led to the passage of the Magnitsky Act , which sanctioned high-level Russian officials. Natalia Veselnitskaya , Prevezon’s defense lawyer, attended the much-discussed June 2016 meeting at Trump Tower with Trump’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr.; Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner; and Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort.
Manafort has been convicted of bank fraud, tax fraud and failure to comply with the Foreign Agents Registration Act by not reporting foreign income.
The special counsel’s report has not yet been released, only Attorney General William P. Barr’s summary with its finding of no collusion. But it’s clear that it was profoundly naive to think that a prosecutor would save the day and cure our diseased democracy of all that ails it. That’s because the problem behind this assault on the nation’s sovereignty far transcends the criminal arena. I’m no fan of Putin’s, but he was right about one thing: Swaths of American society are corrupt. If we want to protect our most precious institutions, we should examine new regulations in a wide range of sectors. The House Intelligence Committee, the House Oversight Committee and the House Judiciary Committee have geared up for hearings and investigations. They had better move fast. We have a president who has a long, tangled history with figures connected to Russian organized crime — all of it, apparently, perfectly legal.
I think you all owe JBB an apology.
I won't apologize to anyone for merely telling them the truth.
You've done nothing but spam the site with years old articles with the words Russia and Trump in them, sprinkled in with "people are saying" b.s. Do you think anyone doubts that moonbats on the left have made all sorts of crazed allegations? We all lived through the dossier, remember?
You've provided nothing to support his claims that:
that there were multiple investigations of Trump by the FBI and CIA.
Trump had secretive relationships with agents of the Russian State Intelligence Services
the investigations of Trump predated the 2016 Presidential election by years
amongst others.
Why can't you provide anything on point?
lol.
I'm willing to let readers decide the worth of what I posted.
Sounds pretty risky.
Craig Unger (b. March 25, 1949) is an American journalist and writer. He has served as deputy editor of The New York Observer and was editor-in-chief of Boston Magazine . He has written about George H. W. Bush and George W. Bush for The New Yorker , Esquire Magazine , and Vanity Fair . He has written about the Romney family and Hart InterCivic . [1]
www.washingtonpost.com /outlook/is-there-a-case-for-trump-putin-collaboration-years-before-the-campaign/2018/08/16/00578f1e-9440-11e8-80e1-00e80e1fdf43_story.html
Signs of Trump-Putin collaboration, starting years before the campaign?
Shane Harris 7-9 minutes 8/16/2018
Shane Harris is a staff writer at The Washington Post. He covers intelligence and national security and the Russia investigation.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-apps/imrs.php?src=https://arc-anglerfish-washpost-prod-washpost.s3.amazonaws.com/public/PJ5QHKUWIAI6RAML5G3TJDGYPU.jpg&w=540 540w, 691w, 767w, 916w, 1200w" sizes="(max-width: 440px) 440px,(max-width: 600px) 691px,(max-width: 768px) 691px,(min-width: 769px) and (max-width: 1023px) 960px,(min-width: 1024px) and (max-width: 1299px) 530px,(min-width: 1300px) and (max-width: 1439px) 691px,(min-width: 1440px) 916px,440px" >
Protesters outside the White House last month give their assessment of President Trump’s relationship with Vladimir Putin. (Photo by Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post)Of all the allegations contained in the “Steele dossier,” the urtext of President Trump’s possible ties to Russia, one has long stood out as the most compromising, because it would be evidence of a political and business relationship between Trump and Russia that predated his campaign for the White House.
“An intelligence exchange,” former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele writes , “had been running between” Trump’s team and the Kremlin, with the direct knowledge of Russian President Vladimir Putin. “Within this context Putin’s priority requirement had been for intelligence on the activities, business and otherwise, in the US of leading Russian oligarchs and their families. Trump and his associates duly had obtained and supplied the Kremlin with this information.”
The precise nature and location of that “intelligence exchange” have never been fully explained. But journalist Craig Unger thinks he may have found it, running out of the offices of Bayrock Group, a real estate development company that operated in Trump Tower in Manhattan in the early 2000s and partnered with the Trump Organization.
Based on his own reporting and the investigative work of a former federal prosecutor, Unger posits that through Bayrock, Trump was “indirectly providing Putin with a regular flow of intelligence on what the oligarchs were doing with their money in the U.S.”
As the theory goes, Putin wanted to keep tabs on the billionaires — some of them former mobsters — who had made their post-Cold War fortunes on the backs of industries once owned by the state. The oligarchs, as well as other new-moneyed elites, were stashing their money in foreign real estate, including Trump properties, presumably beyond Putin’s reach.
Trump, knowingly or otherwise, may have struck a side deal with the Kremlin, Unger argues: He would secretly rat out his customers to Putin, who would allow them to keep buying Trump properties. Trump got rich. Putin got eyes on where the oligarchs had hidden their wealth. Everybody won.
Thus Trump succeeded in business with Russia by what could most charitably be described as willful ignorance. Take the money. Don’t ask too many questions.
And he’d had a lot of practice at that, Unger writes. Trump’s burgeoning real estate empire was fueled in the 1980s by another privileged class, Russian gangsters who appear to have used Trump properties to launder their ill-gotten gains, Unger alleges.
It is this nexus between Trump, Putin, and wealthy mobsters and oligarchs — often the same people — that is Unger’s fixation in his latest book, “House of Trump, House of Putin: The Untold Story of Donald Trump and the Russian Mafia.”
That subtitle is a bit misleading. There is much in Unger’s thoroughly researched narrative that has been told, including in the pages of The Washington Post. Close followers of the byzantine Trump-Russia saga will recognize many of the names and events that fill the pages of Unger’s book.
And yet the story Unger weaves with those earlier accounts and his original reporting is fresh, illuminating and more alarming than the intelligence channel described in the Steele dossier.
Unger believes that Trump was compromised by Russia as early as the 1980s, when the Russian money laundering through his properties probably began. “It’s hard to imagine Donald Trump had no knowledge whatsoever about what was going on,” Unger writes, as hundreds of millions in Russian investment flowed into Trump’s coffers. Trump evinced an “eagerness to turn a blind eye to practices that allowed the Russian mob to launder money,” Unger continues.
There’s never been a proven allegation that Trump was involved in or knew of money laundering through his businesses. But remember, Unger implores, Trump worked at the upper end of Manhattan real estate development. That’s not to say he engaged in organized crime, but he certainly knew what it looked like.
The richer Trump got, the deeper he sank into the Russian criminal underworld, which after the fall of the Soviet Union rose up to form the ruling class, now under Putin’s control.
Unger spends much of his story connecting the dots between Trump and individual alleged Russian mobsters, such as David Bogatin, the pioneer of a gas tax scam, who bought five apartments in Trump Tower in 1984 for $6 million.
Not all the connections run so directly. One famous gangster, Semion Mogilevich, who was renowned for his talent of making dirty money look clean, looms over the entire narrative like an orchestra conductor. Mogilevich, whom FBI agents have called the “boss of bosses,” directed the expansion of the Russian mob into the United States in the early 1990s. And although there is no definitive evidence connecting him directly to Trump, according to Unger, a mountain of facts places him in Trump’s corner of the real estate business.
As Unger tells it, Trump can’t be totally unaware of the criminality surrounding him, and even if he were, that ignorance is no defense. Trump allowed himself to become compromised by Russia, years before he seriously entertained running for public office.
The men who used Trump for their illicit purposes ensnared him. “They had ensured that he was beholden to Russia’s money, and its power,” Unger writes. “All largely unseen. With deniability.”
There is abundant evidence in Unger’s book that Trump made his business infrastructure — his condos, his developments, his very name — available to criminals and oligarchs trying to hide their ill-gotten gains, whether from tax collectors, investigators or the president of Russia. And that’s a form of collusion, too.
Unger sees the Kremlin’s intervention in the 2016 presidential election, which U.S. intelligence officials have said was ordered by Putin himself, as the latest manipulation of Trump by Russia, and the most consequential. Again, readers will find no evidence that Trump knew of or participated in the Russian campaign, which every U.S. intelligence agency has concluded aimed to help Trump win.
But Unger is convinced that the Russians succeeded in their goal because they had a willing target, who seized on false news stories, propaganda and unflattering Democratic emails that Russia disseminated. Trump weaponized Russian disinformation without ever questioning its provenance. He even asked for more when he publicly told Russia to “find” Hillary Clinton’s personal emails.
“Given Trump’s narrow victory in states such as Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Michigan — states that were predicted to vote Democratic but were won by Trump with a margin of less than 1 percent, and which put him over the top in the electoral college, it is more than likely that the Russian interference made the difference,” Unger writes.
If that’s true, then Trump the politician has replicated his business model with profound results: Both he and Putin have come out winners.
House of Trump, House of Putin
By Craig Unger
Dutton. 354 pp. $30
Waste of time AND money.
OK, I'm a reader.
I think the worth of what you have posted is, well, worthless.
Lol. Could you disqualify your post any quicker?
Trump this, Trump that.
Investigation here, an investigation there.
Why is it IMPOSSIBLE for those touting these investigations to merely link any indictments, trials, or convictions to anything turned up in these investigations?
And since no one has been able to, why are you all still pushing this utter bullshit?
James Comey, Andrew McCabe and thousands of good honest decent agents of the FBI and CIA had their lives unfairly upended, careers ended and reputations ruined in Trump's bogus "War on the Deep State" for merely doing their jobs. Yet, you say, you do not care at all. Typical!
At long last have Trump's MAGA no decency?
If their reputations were ruined, they need only look at themselves to blame.
But spectacular job at avoiding what you are always avoiding--showing that your oh-so-special investigations resulted in anything at all. I guess when there is nothing there it is harder to prove crackpot theories.
I am only left to take that as a, "BIG NO"...
McCabe lied to the FBI and admitted it. How can that be Trump's fault?
It's really amazing how people say easily disprovable things.
That is what I said--you could NOT provide any proof for your claims.
Good to see you admit it, though, so thumbs up!
McCabe was fired for telling the truth. What McCabe got was his full pension back...
Trump fire people for telling the truth!
And based on the idiot we have in the White House today, Trump will get his presidency back.
What's your point?
spectacular job at avoiding what you are always avoiding--showing that your oh-so-special investigations resulted in anything at all. I guess when there is nothing there it is harder to prove crackpot theories.
Lol. He literally admitted he lied. why do you continue to make such easily disprovable false statements?
Trump didn't fire McCabe.
What do you have against posting facts?
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Point? Ruining people's lives just because they knew about and told the truth about Donald Trump's shady dealings with Vlad Putin and Russian spies was deplorable!
Trump and the MAGA ruined lots of lives.
All to protect Trump and help Vlad Putin!
Boo!
Hilarious!
What dealings?
Can you name some shady dealings?
Or is this like the investigations--nothing?
Yes, Trump fired Andrew McCabe and to be extra extra vindictive he did it days before he qualified for his retirement...
Which McCabe won back because of it!
You appear to be playing loosely with the facts.
Here: (Unless Time is too right wing for your tastes--let me know, there are plenty of other sources, tell me which ones you like)
Former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe Fired by Sessions | Time
I will inform you that Jeff Sessions is not the same person as Donald Trump, thus proving your claim to be totally bogus and flat-out wrong.
And Merrick Garland stands by his firing and reiterated to Congress that McCabe lied to FBI investigators.
Hell, he can't even get the facts of who fired him straight.
Take everything with a grain of salt and verify, verify, verify.
Because it is what they have been directed to do.
What is so funny is that he included Comey.
Remember back in the day when liberals were apoplectic about Comey stealing the election right away from Hillary? Remember how Comey took a lot of blame form Hillary sycophants for 'ruining' her chances?
Now they want to pretend Comey was just another public servant doing his job. The tune sure changed!