Consider: The financially rickety Trump Organization, shunned by most mainstream banks, long relied on less scrupulous Russian investors. “Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets,” Donald Trump Jr. said a decade ago. “We have all the funding we need out of Russia,” Eric Trump reportedly said in 2013. And what was the rare major bank to work with Trump? Deutsche Bank, which has a history of illegal Russian money laundering.
Trump also had a habit of selling real estate to Russians in all-cash deals. Money launderers like such deals, because they can turn illegally earned cash into a legitimate asset, usually at an inflated price that rewards the seller for the risk. One especially dubious deal was Trump’s $95 million sale of a Palm Beach house to a Russian magnate in 2008 — during the housing bust, only four years after Trump had bought the house for $41 million.
Then there is Trump’s paranoia about scrutiny of his businesses. He has refused to release his tax returns. He said that Mueller’s investigation would cross a red line by looking into his finances. When word leaked (incorrectly) that Mueller had subpoenaed Deutsche Bank’s records on Trump, he moved to fire Mueller (only to be dissuaded by aides). Trump is certainly acting as if his business history contains damaging information.
For months, Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, has been trying to get Congress to pay attention to the possibility of money laundering. He points out that Mueller’s mandate does not necessarily include a full investigation of Trump’s businesses. But those businesses could still have behaved in ways that give Putin, a hostile foreign leader, leverage over the president of the United States.
“We need to find out whether that is the case and say so. Or we need to find out that is not the case and say so,” Schiff told me. “But to leave it as an unanswered question, I just think would be negligent to our national security.” So far, congressional Republicans have chosen negligence.
Which means that the November elections may determine whether we ever get answers. If Democrats win House control, Schiff will gain subpoena power. If Republicans keep control, just imagine how emboldened Trump will feel. He could mount a full-on assault on the rule of law by shutting down Mueller’s investigation and any other official scrutiny of the Trump Organization.
At this point, who can doubt that Trump wants to do so? Presumably, he has a good reason.
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Futureman999 on September 10th, 2018 at 14:35 UTC »
The whole point of running for president was to lose, then become a folk hero to southern working class conservatives. They planned a chain of downmarket Trump-branded hotels across the flyover states. Remember he announced the election was rigged and he was going to lose to Hillary, right before the Electoral College handed him the White House. He was already setting himself up as a martyr to the guns n' Jesus demographic.
They had a great little family money laundering business going on, but he couldn't just leave it alone and enjoy his money. Remember Melania was furious when he actually won with his sham campaign. Because it was not supposed to happen.
Melchiah_III on September 10th, 2018 at 14:01 UTC »
It’s terrifying that the Russians have been trying to elect Trump as President since 1988, that there is a long paper trail of him harboring Russian mobsters and helping them launder money for the better part of three decades, that Trump is heavily indebted to them after his Casino failure fiasco...and yet, the Republicans support him..
BBTB2 on September 10th, 2018 at 12:44 UTC »
This is nothing new and it frustrates me. Why the fuck did the Democratic Party not make a bigger deal about this DURING THE REPUBLICAN PRIMARIES? Trump could have been discredited a long time ago and we would be dealing with a ‘normal’ Republican at least. All this financial bullshit with Trump and Russian money was there the whole time yet no one decided to investigate and bring it to light. It’s absurd this topic is just now growing in popularity.