Trumpublicons: Foreign Influence/Grifting in '16 US Election

[seemslikeadream]

Claude Taylor‏
@TrueFactsStated


A source with knowledge of the investigation tells me the FBI has targeted from 28 up to 42 individuals. Watch @KeithOlbermann tomorrow AM

FBI is targeting at least twenty-eight individuals in Donald Trump’s Russia scandal
By Bill Palmer
Updated: 6:14 pm EDT Thu May 4, 2017 | 0

Reports for the past few weeks have painted the federal investigation into Donald Trump’s Russia scandal as have a far wider reach than previously believed, with one RICO case involving a number of targets, and one FARA case involving a far larger number of targets (link). Now come the numbers: a total of at least twenty-eight individuals have been targeted by the FBI in these investigations.
That information comes by way of Democratic insider Claude Taylor, who was the first to report on the grand juries already in progress, which was later confirmed by Republican insider Rick Wilson. Taylor is now revealing that “A source with knowledge of the investigation tells me the FBI has targeted from 28 up to 42 individuals” (link). This represents an eye popping number which clearly goes well beyond the four or five Donald Trump campaign advisers who have been widely reported to be under FBI investigation. So how can there possibly be so many targets of the investigation?
RICO cases usually involve money laundering and/or organized crime, meaning that any number of Donald Trump’s political and business associates could be wrapped up in it. There have long been stories of Trump’s Russian business associates living in Trump Tower, for instance. The FARA case centers around the Foreign Agent Registration Act, and ostensibly targets U.S. citizens who knowingly took money from foreign government sources without reporting it.
The FARA case is supposed to be the larger of the two, perhaps suggesting that a far larger number of Trump’s campaign advisers took Russian government money, or that Republican politicians outside Trump’s campaign may have taken Russian government money. In any case Taylor says to watch Keith Olbermann’s online video broadcast on Friday morning for further details on the twenty-eight or more FBI targets in the Trump-Russia scandal.
http://www.palmerreport.com/opinion/28- ... ssia/2594/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gAChqYKslGs

[conniption]

Regarding Keith Olbermann...the following rant says it all, as far as I'm concerned...

willyloman

An Open Letter to Keith Olbermann from a Real Liberal: You Sir Are A Whore Who Speaks for No One

Posted on January 31, 2017
by willyloman

by Scott Creighton

I have to apologize to the people of the world, and Syria/Libya/Iraq in particular, for Keith Olbermann’s extremely insensitive and self-serving apology to the world.

THIS WANNABE MSM WHORE DOES NOT SPEAK FOR US

Dear Keith;

What a vain, desperate little man you are to try to pretend to speak for any American any more.

Your words serve the interests of the same neocons and war-mongers you once called out and exposed and I guess that is what 7 years in exile will do to the moral center of a self-centered moralist.

What’s wrong Keith? You don’t get as many groupies and back-stage perks covering Major League Baseball?

There was a time when I waited to watch your 10 minute rants at the end of your show back in the Bush/Cheney days when you spoke a little truth ABOUT power and gave voice to a reasoned rational majority who wanted no more wars for profit and lies and hoped we would eventually live too see the day when criminals like Bush and Cheney and all the other neocons who aided and abetted their treason would see the inside of a prison cell, if not the bleak side of a firing squad.

I noticed today, after being almost completely silent during the 8 long years of Obama/Clinton criminality, you are trying, once again, to strike that, very profitable, angry self-righteous tone as you rant on and on about President Trump.

Might I point out that Trump is not Cheney or Bush and at this point and he has not lied and bombed and killed and maimed like President Obama and Sec. Clinton did all those years when you seem to have lost that condescending, self-satisfied voice of yours.

Nor has he hired thousands of “moderate” terrorists to kill civilians and undermine nations like Sudan, Somalia, Syria, Libya, Iran, Iraq and Yemen like President Obama and Hillary Clinton did for eight long years… years you Mr. Olbermann, chose to say nothing.

Painfully and to my disgust, I have watched you Keith, over the last few months, turn yourself into a flaming establishment whore slinging outrageous accusations and condemnations whenever Trump did anything the masters of the universe deemed unfit for presidential behavior.

In fact, it seems you take your talking points memos this time around from the very neocons and war-mongers you used to eviscerate with ease back in the Cheney days.

Permit me to say, it would certainly appear you are trying to cash in on your dusty progressive street cred that you built with your special comments all those years ago and you are doing so in order to promote one lie about President Trump after another and to incite hatred and possibly even violence from Hillary Clinton’s disheveled Clintonistas.

But I have seen NOTHING like what I just saw you deliver on your GQ “Resistance” crap of a webzine channel.

It led me instantly to conclude that you are a slut of a turncoat who is clearly looking to feather your own nest (and get back on a major network?) by producing some of the most offensive and morally dishonest propaganda I have seen come from the mouths of ANY Mockingbird Asset in a long, long time.

I mean, you have to go back to Carl Rove or Bill O’Reilly in the 2002-2003 run-up to the Iraq invasion for anything you could possibly compare it to.

For those of you who don’t know, last night, Keith Olbermann issued an apology to the world for “traitor” Trump who has, according to Olbermann, “turned his back on everything good America has stood for”.

This is how he began his deeply offensive hate-mongering diatribe.

“To the people of Syria and Iraq and France and Germany and Mexico and Canada and the world permit me to apologize on behalf of the citizens of America for the unforgivable actions of the man who has assumed power here. I speak for those of us who, unlike Trump, unlike the sycophants who surround him unlike hate-filled souls and the conscience optional bigots who applaud him, unlike the Russian puppeteers who may be manipulating him, I speak for those of us who have not forgotten and who will not forget that we are the descendants of the immigrants, often the refugees, we are the modern equivalent of those who this pig Trump has just banished and degraded and in many cases has likely, literally sentenced to death.” Keith Olbermann

Keith, you have the gall to apologize for the American people to the world? From what elevated position do you assume the moral authority to speak for us in this manner? That of ESPN MLB announcer or that of a pompous, self-righteous little man trying his level best to reinsert himself into some kind of network line-up for a bigger payday?

And of all things, you apologize for this?

Trump has every right as president to withhold entry of any person or group into this country if said person or group poses a threat to the national interest. THAT’S THE LAW, YOU DIPSHIT. Look it up.

He also has the constitutional authority to do so and if you don’t believe me, ask a legal scholar like Jonathan Turley perhaps. Or you could ask some of your idiot frat-boy colleagues at ESPN but I doubt they know the first thing about law.

Also keep in mind, over the first 24-hours of the travel ban, 305,000 people came into this country and only something like 104 of them were detained for additional questioning and I think all but two of them were released, INTO THE COUNTRY, after a couple hours delay.

What’s more, and this is the biggest one… you dare apologize to the people of Syria… BECAUSE SOMEONE IS DELAYING ENTRY INTO THE UNITED STATES OF A FEW TRAVELERS OR REFUGEES AFTER WE LITERALLY DESTROYED THEIR COUNTRY UNDER PRESIDENT OBAMA’S WATCH, YOU SYCOPHANTIC PIECE OF TRASH?!?

Let me show you a simple visual aid which will make it easy for a sports broadcaster like yourself to try to understand big concepts such as the one I just laid out for you:



THOUSANDS dead… MILLIONS made into refugees, displaced from their homes, their lives, their careers, their children… all due… ALL DUE to President Obama’s regime change operation in Syria and his continued wars of occupation in Iraq and Afghanistan and his “humanitarian intervention” in Libya… you insipid piece of crap.

And you DARE apologize to the world because Obama’s terrorist contractors who took part in that are being vetted at the airports?

“At the Pentagon, Defense Secretary James Mattis is compiling a list of Iraqis who helped U.S. troops during the war, whom he wants to exempt from the ban…

Iraqis who were granted what’s known as special immigrant visas have been caught in the ban, with some detained at U.S. airports over the weekend. The special immigrant visa program allows Iraqis and Afghans who helped the United States as interpreters and in other roles during the wars in their countries to resettle in America.” The Hill

A few liberal journalists remained true to their souls during the dark ages of the Obama administration when we were expected to sit down and shut up because a Democrat was in office.

Rightly, we were offended and protested the invasion of Iraq and subsequently continued our dissent as President Obama planned on Terror Tuesdays his Death Squads from Above campaign that killed thousands of innocent civilians in countries far greater in number that Bush “W” ever dreamed of invading.

For that we take pride in our work and the continuity of our morality in spite of partisan or professional considerations.

You, Mr. Olbermann, can know nothing about that and therefore you have no moral authority to offer any apology for anyone who still has a conscience intact in this country.

And since when does winning an election equate to “assuming power” Mr. Olbermann?

I know the CIA and the trolls at the State Department have long since equated the two in other countries when the people dared “vote the wrong way”.

You should know that sir, as you used to rail about such things before you sold your soul.

Taking up the language of the regime change actors, Mr. Olbermann?

Slipping them into the consciences of the so-called “left” of your audience, are we?

Did you wonder why I made the Mockingbird reference earlier? Now you know.

But you knew then, didn’t you?

I am not one of what you call “the conscience optional bigots who applaud him”. No sir.

Not even you on your best self-satisfied rant could be as antagonistic and skeptical of President Trump’s first week in office (and his months after the election) as I have sir.

That is a fact committed to history and available right here on my website for all to view.

But to call so many people, tired, angry, discouraged people who simply want CHANGE, (the kind Obama promised eight years ago but never delivered) … to call them such horrible, bigoted things as you did sir… it is offensive for me…

…. and I reside to the left of Bernie Sanders.

You sir are playing into the same failed identity politics and fear mongering that lost Hillary Clinton the election to such a man. Such a man who could ONLY have beaten someone so corrupt, so criminal and so disconnected as Hillary Clinton in a general election.

And you think the answer today is more of the same hate-filled disrespectful rhetoric? Have you learned nothing or do you simply have nothing more to offer?

“Conscience optional”? Need I remind you Keith who’s efforts you now serve? Hypocrite.

“Russian puppeteers who MAY be manipulating him”? Really? REALLY!

You now peddle unsupported New McCarthyite Red-baiting slander straight from the Clinton-backing CIA Keith?

God how the mighty have fallen, huh?

Mr. Olbermann, Donald Trump has not sentenced anyone to death. Refugees will be vetted and either returned to their point of origin or permitted to enter the United States if they pose no risk, meaning, if they did not serve as “moderate terrorists” in places like Syria, Libya, Somalia, Iraq or Yemen.

But President Obama sentenced many to death on Terror Tuesday, Mr. Olbermann. Need I remind you:

What lies at the nexus of Obama’s targeted drone killings, his self-serving leaks, and his aggressive prosecution of whistleblowers is a president who believes himself above the law, and seems convinced that he alone has a preternatural ability to determine right from wrong.

— Peter Van Buren a 24-year veteran Foreign Service Officer at the State Department.

“The New York Times‘ recent revelation that President Obama, operating off a government “kill list,” has been personally directing who should be targeted for death by military drones (unmanned aerial assault vehicles) merely pushes us that much closer to that precipitous drop-off to authoritarianism. Should we fail to recognize and rectify the danger in allowing a single individual to declare himself the exception to the rule of law and assume the role of judge, jury, and executioner, we will have no one else to blame when we plunge once and for all into the abyss that is tyranny.” John Whitehead

No apologies or self-aggrandizing rants do you offer for the victims of President Peace Prize’s double-tap drone strikes on funerals or wedding ceremonies Mr. Olbermann. Where are their near-tear performances from you on GQ magazine I wonder.

Donald Trump has killed no one with this order sir and it seems he has only angered Hillary’s old terrorist buddies and their handlers and a couple thousand misled “progressives” who have been looking DESPERATELY to find something, ANYTHING, on which they can hang their “get him out! and install HILLARY” dreams.

Shame on you Keith for playing up to their fears, anger and dread… for your own profit.

Shame on you Keith for taking up the cause of those you once rightly opposed every weekday night for years.

Shame on you Keith for becoming the very thing you pitied in your heyday.

I do not stand with Trump but I am a conscientious enough journalist to report on the good with the bad regardless of my political affiliation or my personal ambition. That, Mr. Olbermann, means I have surpassed you as a journalist. Not what you were, not by a long shot… but what you have sadly and embarrassingly become.

When you offer yourself up to the world as a spokesperson for a people, you invite condemnation if your motives are untrue and your rhetoric unsound.

This is truth of the overly connected the world we live in.

Your pathetic, self-serving, sycophantic PR stunt of an apology is shameful and only serves to further expose the rot that is at the core of the politics and journalism in America today.

It’s sad to see you like this Keith. Like a former champion taking one to many punches, one to many fights, you have embarrassed not only yourself but the game in a way that is impossible to unsee once seen.

But true fans remember them for what they were, don’t they? And as their heroes slump around the bases or throw interception after interception, we all lose a bit of the memories of greatness they once possessed.

Brett Farve, Rodger Clemons, Willie Mays… do the names hold meaning for you Mr. Olbermann? They should. They are your only colleagues now sir.

You do not speak for us Mr. Olbermann and you will not be redeemed in the eyes of the corporate media to once again ascend the heights of their networks to that elevated position you once held.

You are, in short, an embarrassment Keith and though it is true it is better to be a has-been than it is to be a never-was, it is better to be the latter than it is to be an aging desperate whore without a shred of self-respect who will say and do anything for the pimps you used to condemn.

I pity you.

Never presume to speak for anyone again because honestly… you don’t even speak for yourself anymore.
_________

https://willyloman.wordpress.com/2017/0 ... or-no-one/

~~~


image link: https://off-guardian.org/2017/05/01/the ... er-of-war/

[seemslikeadream]

yes Keith is the problem here

Claude Taylor‏
@TrueFactsStated


A source with knowledge of the investigation tells me the FBI has targeted from 28 up to 42 individuals. Watch @KeithOlbermann tomorrow AM

ZEMBLA: 'The Dubious Friends of Donald Trump: The Russians' Wednesday 3 May 2017, 9:10pm,
https://zembla.vara.nl/dossier/uitzendi ... e-russians

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=geYigwFHhCc

What was Senator Whitehouse Driving at Today?
May 03, 2017 8:09pm CDT by jrooth

I haven’t seen anything about this in this evening’s news coverage, but to my mind the most fascinating exchange in this morning’s Judiciary Committee hearing was this one:

WHITEHOUSE: Yes. With respect to oversight questions, let's hypothesize that an investigation exists and the public knows about it, which could happen for a great number of legitimate reasons. What questions are appropriate for senators to ask about that investigation in their oversight capacity?

COMEY: They can ask anything they want...

WHITEHOUSE: But what -- what questions are appropriate for you to answer?

COMEY: Very few while a matter is pending and...

WHITEHOUSE: While we know it's pending, is it appropriate for you to tell us whether it's adequately resourced and to ask questions about for instance, are there actually agents assigned to this or has this been put in somebody's bottom drawer?

COMEY: Sure, potentially, right...

WHITEHOUSE: And...

COMEY: ... how's it being supervised, who's working on it, that sort of thing.

WHITEHOUSE: And are there benchmarks in certain types of cases where departmental approvals are required or the involvement of certain department officials is required to see whether those steps have actually been taken?

COMEY: I'm not sure I'm following the question, I'm sorry.

WHITEHOUSE: Let's say you've got a hypothetically, a RICO investigation and it has to go through procedures within the department necessary to allow a RICO investigation proceed if none of those have ever been invoked or implicated that would send a signal that maybe not much effort has been dedicated to it.

Would that be a legitimate question to ask? Have these -- again, you'd have to know that it was a RICO investigation. But assuming that we knew that that was the case with those staging elements as an investigation moves forward and the internal department approvals be appropriate for us to ask about and you to answer about?

COMEY: Yes, that's a harder question. I'm not sure it would be appropriate to answer it because it would give away what we were looking at potentially.

WHITEHOUSE: Would it be appropriate to ask if -- whether any -- any witnesses have been interviewed or whether any documents have been obtained pursuant to the investigation?

COMEY: That's -- that's also a harder one. I'd be reluctant to answer questions like that because it's a slippery slope to giving away information about exactly what you're doing.

WHITEHOUSE: But if we're concerned that investigation gets put on the shelf and not taken seriously, the fact that no witnesses have been called and no documents have been sought would be pretty relevant and wouldn't reveal anything other than a lack of attention by the bureau, correct?

COMEY: It could, but we're very careful about revealing how we might use a grand jury, for example. And so, if we start answering...

WHITEHOUSE: Well, you've got 6E (ph), I understand that.

COMEY: Yes.

WHITEHOUSE: This is a separate thing.

COMEY: Yes, so that's a harder call.

WHITEHOUSE: Well, we'll pursue it. What is the department's or the bureau's policy regarding witnesses who are cooperating in investigation who have some form of ongoing compliance problem?

Let's say they haven't paid their taxes for the last year. Is it the policy of the department or the bureau that they should get those cooperating witnesses to clean up their act so that their noncompliance does not become an issue later on in the case?

COMEY: Yes, I don't know whether it's a written -- I know I should know this. I can't remember sitting here whether there's a written policy. It's certainly a long standing...

WHITEHOUSE: Certainly practice isn't it?

COMEY: ... practice.

WHITEHOUSE: Long standing practice, exactly. When are tax returns useful in investigating a criminal offense?

COMEY: Well, they're useful in showing unreported income, motive -- If someone hides something that's -- should otherwise be a tax return indicates they might know it was criminal activity.

WHITEHOUSE: It's not uncommon to seek and use tax returns in a criminal investigation?

COMEY: Not uncommon, it's -- it's a very difficult process, as it should be. But especially in complex financial cases, it's a relatively common tool.

WHITEHOUSE: The hearing that Senator Graham and I held with respect to Russia's infiltration and influence in the last election raised the issue of Russia intervening with business leaders in a country, engaging them in bribery or other highly favorable business deals with a view to either recruiting them as somebody who has been bribed or being able to threaten them by disclosing the illicit relationship. They're perfectly happy to blow up their own cut out, but it also blows up the individual.

Have you seen any indication that those are Russian strategies in their election influence toolbox?

COMEY: In general?

WHITEHOUSE: In general.

COMEY: My -- my understanding is those are tools that the Russians have used over many decades.

WHITEHOUSE: And lastly, the European Union is moving towards requiring transparency of incorporations so that shell corporations are harder to create. That risks leaving the United States as the last big haven for shell corporations. Is it true that shell corporations are often used as a device for criminal money laundering?

COMEY: Yes.

WHITEHOUSE: Is it true that shell corporations are often used as a device for the concealment of criminally garnered funds?

COMEY: Yes.

WHITEHOUSE: And to avoid legitimate taxation?

COMEY: Yes.

WHITEHOUSE: What do you think the hazards are for the United States with respect to election interference of continuing to maintain a system in which shell corporations -- that you never know who's really behind them are common place?

COMEY: I suppose one risk is it makes it easier for illicit money to make its way into a political environment.

WHITEHOUSE: And that's not a good thing.

COMEY: I don't think it is.

WHITEHOUSE: Yeah, me neither. OK. Thank you very much.

(All emphasis mine — really I could have just bolded the whole thing, but those passages are the ones that really jumped out at me.)

Whitehouse seems to be dropping some pretty heavy hints here. About possible slow-walking of an investigation (maybe specifically a RICO investigation?) about the Russians having a practice of setting up businessmen (Trump?) with financial kompromat, about the usefulness of tax returns to criminal investigations, about the use of shell corporations to conceal criminal profits and avoid taxation.

All in the context of a hearing mostly about Trump/Russia.

Am I reading too much into this or was all of this a major set of signals?
http://m.dailykos.com/stories/1658675

[seemslikeadream]

Creighton doesn't like Hedges either ..correct?


Published on Mar 14, 2017
Truthdig columnist and Pulitzer-Prize-winning journalist Chris Hedges addresses fascism and the rise of the Trump war machine in the keynote speech at the "After Trump and Pussy Hats" event in Vancouver, British Columbia, on March 3, 2017.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xLaoJrg80JQ

[mentalgongfu2]

Re: Keith Olberman

Regardless of Trump being as bad as he definitely is, how can one take issue with the pointing out of Olberman's hypocrisy and complicity in Obama's own warmongering?

It's true, what passes for the mainstream left in Amurica gave him a free pass on all the horrible aspects of his foreign policy, in part because he was a Democrat and in part because so many of his detractors were motivated primarily by racism and partisanship.

And now that an R is predident, the faux anti-war left of the same mainstream has finally found its voice again. This cycle has been repeating for a while now, and dipshits like Keith deserve to be called out and roundly dismissed as the fakers and opportunists they are. Doing so would actually serves to strengthen the real anti-war left and will be sorely needed when Trump's term causes the pendulum to swing back to a new Democratic pretender in 2020.

[seemslikeadream]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1pS92ONVte8

US Punishes Russia for Election Hacking Ejecting Operatives
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=40266

[seemslikeadream]

The Dubious Friends of Donald Trump by Zembla and vara.nl


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kKLWloj2ohM


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fuYICjsQ7yg

Zembla – Trump business partner accused of involvement in Dutch-based money laundering scheme

Dutch letter box companies implicated in million-dollar fraud

The American real estate development company Bayrock, through which Donald Trump constructed hotels and apartment complexes, used Dutch letter box companies in a network suspected of being involved in money laundering. A ZEMBLA investigation suggests that Bayrock siphoned off $1.5 million dollars by setting up a corporate structure in the Netherlands in 2007. In New York, Bayrock also stands accused of large-scale tax fraud. This incriminating information could place Donald Trump in an extremely difficult position, claims attorney F. Oberlander, who is prosecuting Bayrock on behalf of the State of New York: “The maximum jail term would be 30 years. So you’re in really serious trouble.”

In 2005, Donald Trump became 18% owner of an hotel-condominium known as Trump SoHo. Bayrock, the other owner, is accused of perpetrating fraud on a grand scale through, among other things, Trump SoHo. According to US law, this means that Trump is jointly liable for Bayrock’s criminal activities. Oberlander concludes:
“Anybody running a business through a pattern of crime is guilty of racketeering. Anybody knowing what they’re doing and are helping is guilty of racketeering conspiracy. They go to jail.”

All Bayrock wants is to make clear to ZEMBLA that the Dutch corporate construction was established on the advice of an external legal counsel. ZEMBLA discovers that the firm in question is Bracewell & Giuliani. Rudy Giuliani, the former mayor of New York, and part owner of the law firm at the time, is also a Trump confidante. ZEMBLA has access to correspondence between the law firm and the Dutch director of a trust company in Amsterdam, which leaves no doubt as to the ultimate beneficiary owners of the Dutch business construction: the director of Bayrock and the Khrapunov family from Kazakhstan.

Viktor Khrapunov is a fugitive ex-mayor and governor from Kazakhstan. The Kazakhstan government accuses Khrapunov of embezzling hundreds of millions of state assets. In 2007, Bayrock and the Khrapunov family founded the Dutch joint venture KazBay B.V. ZEMBLA has copies of the act of incorporation, bank statements and internal communications showing how the suspected money laundering scheme was set up. “It was designed to get millions of dollars out of New York into Europe. Through KazBay. KazBay was just a conduit”, asserts attorney Oberlander.

The Dutch director of KazBay B.V. tells ZEMBLA that he has no knowledge of his clients’ dubious backgrounds. In 2007, the year that the Dutch letter box companies were established, Viktor Khrapunov’s alleged criminal dealings become public knowledge. Around the same time, it also becomes clear that Felix Sater, one of the Bayrock owners, has concealed his criminal past and mafia connections.
http://www.ukprogressive.co.uk/zembla-t ... 62356.html

What American Television Should Tell You About Donald Trump’s ties to Russia
05/04/2017 05:50 pm ET | Updated 8 hours ago


ZEMBLA-journalists have found that Trump had business and personal ties to oligarchs from the former Soviet Union. Among his contacts are powerful billionaires, suspected of money laundering and fraud.

A ZEMBLA investigation suggests that the American real estate company Bayrock, through which Donald Trump constructed hotels and apartment complexes, siphoned off $1.5 million by setting up a corporate structure in the Netherlands in 2007. ZEMBLA discovered that the corporate construction was established on the advice of an external legal counsel, namely Bracewell & Giuliani, also known for Rudi Giuliani, former mayor of New York and Trump confidante. The ultimate beneficiary owners of the Dutch business construction: the director of Bayrock and the Khrapunov family from Kazakhstan. Head of the family is Viktor Khrapunov, a former mayor and governor from Kazakhstan, who has been accused of embezzling hundreds of millions of state assets. In 2013 the Khrapunov family bought three apartments in Trump SoHo: Bayrock and Donald Trump are owners of that hotel-condominium.

One of the Bayrock owners is the Russian born Felix Sater, Trumps former business partner. Though Sater spent years trying to line up deals with Donald Trump’s real estate organization all over the world, Trump has denied knowing Sater. The two met in 2003 when Trump was looking to expand his business globally. Because Sater failed to divulge his criminal history to Trump, he became a liability, putting the president’s financial interest at substantial risk. Should civil or criminal misconduct be proven in the care of Bayrock, Trump could be found complicit, possibly costing him millions of dollars in fines and/ or penalties. The president has announced he will get to the bottom of the matter, but documents from the Bayrock corporation show otherwise: Trump actually tried to benefit from the situation, even risking leverage from anyone who knew of his jeopardy.

In the Netherlands, we have great public broadcasting. There are six different agencies - all with their own signature, be it political, religious or secular. Thanks to government funding all agencies can focus on their journalistic duties. Public broadcasting is necessary to make sure all Dutch citizens have access to well-made television- and radio programs. Without having to worry too much about advertisers, we can do our job. It is thanks to this funding my colleagues at VARA could do some serious investigative journalism and dig into Donald Trump’s ties with Russia. They translated their Trump-documentary in English for American audience.

Since before his presidency there have been numerous clues suggesting Donald Trump is linked to Russia and apparent Russian interests. Trumps security adviser Michael Flynn, had to flee from his role as adviser because of his ties to Russia. Trump wasn’t yet in office, but Flynn was already promising the Russians the U.S. would lift certain sanctions that were put on Russia after the Crimea-crisis.

During the presidential campaign Attorney General Jeff Sessions also had meetings with the Russian ambassador to the United States, Sergei Kislyak. During his confirmation hearing Sessions denied contact. The Attorney General lied under oath and said he had ‘no communications with the Russians’ during the election campaign. Also, his trip to Cleveland to meet with Kislyak was paid for with campaign money.

The FBI is now investigating potential links between the Trump campaign aides and the Russian government, to find out what’s true about Moscow’s alleged interference in the 2016 election.

In a response to media coverage on Trumps’ Golden Shower Gate, the president went full on denial by tweeting: “Russia has never tried to use leverage over me. I HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH RUSSIA - NO DEALS, NO LOANS, NO NOTHING!” Using all the capslock in the world, trying to hide the truth.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/wha ... aa2363d331

[seemslikeadream]

“When they’re picking a cabinet, unless he contacts me, I don’t bother him,” one former campaign official who worked closely with Manafort told The Daily Beast. “It’s a heady time for everyone.”
“I think he’s weighing in on everything,” the former official said, “I think he still talks to Trump every day. I mean, Pence? That was all Manafort. Pence is on the phone with Manafort regularly.”
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2 ... inet-picks

‘This Is Not the Story We Want’: Reporters Chased Out of Meeting with Kushner Family Pitching Chinese Investors
http://www.alternet.org/media/not-story ... -investors

In a Beijing ballroom, Kushner family pushes $500,000 ‘investor visa’ to wealthy Chinese
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/in ... db3f24e79d

Trump-Murdoch relationship raises conflict-of-interest questions
http://www.cnn.com/2017/05/06/opinions/ ... index.html

Donald Trump former aide Carter Page refuses to provide Russia contacts to Senate
https://www.yahoo.com/news/donald-trump ... rc=fauxdal

Claude Taylor‏
@TrueFactsStated
A 2d source is now confirming to me that there are at least two sealed indictments. Haven't heard who from sources but if I had to guess...
1:53 PM - 6 May 2017

Claude Taylor‏ @TrueFactsStated 19h19 hours ago
Replying to @TrueFactsStated
Manafort and Flynn.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZXNqic ... freload=10

[seemslikeadream]

“We Have All the Funding We Need Out of Russia.”

Jane Barlow/PA Wire
By JOSH MARSHALL Published MAY 7, 2017 11:46 AM
0Views
Now, this is quite interesting. In many respects, it simply confirms what Donald Trump Jr. told a group of real estate investors at a conference in 2008: that a ton of the money funding the Trump Organization came from Russia. Here it’s Eric Trump explaining back in 2014 that it didn’t matter that American banks wouldn’t loan Trump money. They had all the money they needed from Russia.

The article is by Bill Littlefield at the website of WBUR, the big public radio station in Boston. The article is an interview with James Dodson, a prolific and well-known writer about the game of golf and an invitation he got from Trump to come spend a day with him at a new golf resort and club he was renovating in North Carolina.

The article itself is interesting if you’re into golf, or Trump or Dodson. On the Trump front, it’s classic Trump. More color but very much the guy we know. Demanding, comical, needy and probably also kind of charming in a weird way in small doses. Give it a read; it’s fun.

In any case, for our purposes it’s the part where Dodson is taking the first 9 holes of the course with Eric Trump and Dodson asks how it is Trump is funding such a major renovation since banks have kept their distance from these kinds of projects since the Great Recession.

Here’s the exchange.

“Trump was strutting up and down, talking to his new members about how they were part of the greatest club in North Carolina,” Dodson says. “And when I first met him, I asked him how he was — you know, this is the journalist in me — I said, ‘What are you using to pay for these courses?’ And he just sort of tossed off that he had access to $100 million.”

$100 million.

“So when I got in the cart with Eric,” Dodson says, “as we were setting off, I said, ‘Eric, who’s funding? I know no banks — because of the recession, the Great Recession — have touched a golf course. You know, no one’s funding any kind of golf construction. It’s dead in the water the last four or five years.’ And this is what he said. He said, ‘Well, we don’t rely on American banks. We have all the funding we need out of Russia.’ I said, ‘Really?’ And he said, ‘Oh, yeah. We’ve got some guys that really, really love golf, and they’re really invested in our programs. We just go there all the time.’ Now that was three years ago, so it was pretty interesting.”

For context, we know from copious reporting that it wasn’t just the Great Recession. None of the big US banks have done business with Trump for going on two decades. DeutscheBank is the only big bank that will touch him. And, of course, they’re not even a US bank. The point is, none of it mattered. The Trump’s had the Russia money. That’s all they needed.

It’s worth noting that Russia had invaded and later annexed the Crimean Peninsula in February 2014. Sanctions would come in March. Those certainly put a crimp in the business plans of anyone trading heavily on Russian money, as Trump was. We don’t know when this was in 2014. But in any case it may not have been clear yet, at least not to Eric Trump what impact this would have on the Trump Organization. The lifting of those sanctions and finding a rapprochement with Russia was a major theme of Trump’s entire campaign.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/we- ... re-1057726

[seemslikeadream]

Surprise ....Surprise

There 's a Senate Intel Committee hearing on Trump/Flint today.....starting at 1:30pm NOT on Keith Olbermann as some would hope and we all know Keith is an extreme threat to this country ...I guess but maybe they'll get to him another day

Was Keith a security risk?

Was Keith the HEAD OF THE DIA?

Why try and change the subject?

A question for the ages

by Scott Creighton

I have to apologize to the people of the world, and Syria/Libya/Iraq in particular, for Keith Olbermann’s extremely insensitive and self-serving apology to the world.

THIS WANNABE MSM WHORE DOES NOT SPEAK FOR US

Scott Creighton
THIS WANNABE WHATEVER HE IS DOES NOT SPEAK FOR ME

NO ONE SPEAKS FOR ME

Why They’re So Scared About Mike Flynn
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/why ... mike-flynn

Donald Trump is already melting down over today’s Sally Yates testimony
By Bill Palmer
Updated: 11:12 am EDT Mon May 8, 2017 | 0

Former acting Attorney General Sally Yates has something to say today about Donald Trump’s Russia scandal, and it’s not likely to be pretty. She knows that Trump was aware Michael Flynn was dirty and did nothing about it. She knows why Trump fired her. And she’s been waiting months to finally get her chance to testify about it. Naturally, Trump is already having a meltdown that’s over the top even by his standards.
Yesterday, Donald Trump was asserting that it was somehow the Democrats who were conspiring with Russia, instead of himself and his administration. But early this morning he began aiming his sights squarely on Yates herself, tweeting “Ask Sally Yates, under oath, if she knows how classified information got into the newspapers soon after she explained it to W.H. Counsel.”
And then, as if to emphasize how desperate he is for everyone to hear him falsely accusing Sally Yates of having leaked classified information to the media, two hours later he deleted his tweet and then tweeted the exact same thing (link). Trump’s sudden accusation about Yates is equal parts coming out of nowhere and completely unfounded, and yet this appears to be the best card he has left up his sleeve. It won’t work.
Yates had been at the Department of Justice for nearly two decades, since long before President Obama came along, and she never had a public political profile of any kind. The assertion that she would act in an overtly partisan manner, let alone an illegal one, will fall on deaf ears. But when Yates steps up to testify this afternoon, Trump’s Twitter meltdown just ensured that a whole lot more people will be tuning in to hear what she has to say.
http://www.palmerreport.com/opinion/don ... mony/2663/

[Iamwhomiam]

I heard Trump's personal lawyer came strolling out of the Oval Office singing...



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4g8gC8OfqzE

[seemslikeadream]

Update

regarding Keith Olbermann....He hasn't been called to testify yet

White House Had No Intention of Firing Flynn

By JOSH MARSHALL Published MAY 8, 2017 3:43 PM

We are currently watching the Yates/Clapper Senate hearing. A key question in all these questions is why Flynn remained in office for some three weeks after these notifications from the Department of Justice. That’s a long time, given the centrality of Flynn’s role as National Security Advisor. But eventually it did happen.

Here’s what really isn’t being noted. Flynn was only fired because a series of press reports – most specifically one in the Post – revealed his deceptions. There’s every reason to think the White House had no intention of acting until the information became public because of leaks.

This is a critical part of the story. It wasn’t just that the White House didn’t act quickly. There is strong, strong reason to believe they never would have acted on it or dismissed Flynn at all.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/wor ... re-1058008

'The Russians also knew what Flynn had done...And the Russians had proof of what Flynn did meaning he could be blackmailed' -Yates

Yates says the more the "explanation" Flynn gave was increasing series of lies that would create "even more compromise."

‪Donald Trump may have just violated federal witness intimidation laws with tweet about Sally Yates‬
By Bill Palmer
Updated: 1:54 pm EDT Mon May 8, 2017 | 0

Former acting Attorney General Sally Yates is set to testify before Congress today in Donald Trump’s Russia scandal. Naturally, Trump isn’t too thrilled about Yates revealing how she warned him that National Security Adviser Michael Flynn was dirty on Russia, and how Trump fired her days later. That’s led Trump to let loose on Twitter with what sounds like a rather severe threat if she goes through with her testimony.
Here’s what Donald Trump tweeted today: “Ask Sally Yates, under oath, if she knows how classified information got into the newspapers soon after she explained it to W.H. Counsel.”
According to Cornell Law School, here’s what federal law says in part about federal witness intimidation laws:
“Whoever knowingly uses intimidation, threatens, or corruptly persuades another person, or attempts to do so, or engages in misleading conduct toward another person, with intent to— (1) influence, delay, or prevent the testimony of any person in an official proceeding; (2) cause or induce any person to— (A) withhold testimony, or withhold a record, document, or other object, from an official proceeding; (B) alter, destroy, mutilate, or conceal an object with intent to impair the object’s integrity or availability for use in an official proceeding; (C) evade legal process summoning that person to appear as a witness, or to produce a record, document, or other object, in an official proceeding; or (D) be absent from an official proceeding to which such person has been summoned by legal process; or
(3) hinder, delay, or prevent the communication to a law enforcement officer or judge of the United States of information relating to the commission or possible commission of a Federal offense or a violation of conditions of probation supervised release, parole, or release pending judicial proceedings;
shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both.” (link)
I’m not an attorney, but it sure sounds like some of the above applies to Donald Trump’s attempt at intimidating Sally Yates before her testimony by falsely accusing her of a crime, and thus tacitly implying he might try to use his office to punish her for it. Nonetheless, she’ll persist‪

Scott Dworkin‏Verified account
@funder

Hill Sources: White House contacted multiple GOP Senators TODAY asking them to cancel Yates hearing

Donald Trump privately asked GOP Senators at last minute to cancel today’s Sally Yates testimony
By Bill Palmer
Updated: 3:25 pm EDT Mon May 8, 2017 | 0

Former Acting Attorney General Sally Yates has just begun her testimony today in Senate hearings, which means that Donald Trump and his White House have ultimately failed in their long running attempts at preventing her from testifying in the Trump-Russia scandal. But as it turns out, Trump and his team were trying to prevent the testimony right up until just about literally the last minute.
According to Scott Dworkin of the Democratic Coalition Against Trump, his sources on Capitol Hill told him today that the Donald Trump White House “contacted multiple GOP Senators TODAY asking them to cancel Yates hearing” (link). This remarkable development points to just how eager Trump and his team were to prevent Yates from sharing her story with the Senate and the public.
That points to just how much damning information Yates has on how Trump handled the Michael Flynn situation after she warned him about Flynn. And it’s not the only steps Trump took today to try to sabotage Yates.
As Palmer Report reported earlier today, Donald Trump may have just violated federal witness intimidation laws when he sent a tweet aimed at intimidating Sally Yates with regard to her scheduled testimony (link). But despite Trump’s best efforts, Yates has nonetheless begun her testimony.
http://www.palmerreport.com/news/donald ... nute/2665/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RdIg1DfS9LE


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kLKj5p_C5ts

just as a personal point of irritation...why the fuck does Sen. Grassley keep pronouncing Russia as Reeessia?

[seemslikeadream]

Comey Needs to Explain This

FBI Director James Comey testifies on Capitol Hill in Washington, Wednesday, May 3, 2017, before the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing: "Oversight of the Federal Bureau of Investigation." (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)
Carolyn Kaster/AP
By JOSH MARSHALL Published MAY 9, 2017 7:09 AM
16484Views
This is highly disturbing.

In his recent testimony about his decision to send the notorious October 2016 letter to Clinton Congress, FBI Director James Comey painted a dramatic picture of the facts of the case and Huma Abedin’s actions. Altogether it was meant to demonstrate that Comey had little choice but to take action and ultimately send his public letter to Congress.

But it turns out what Comey said wasn’t true and the FBI knows it.

Here’s the key bit of a stunning report from ProPublica …

The problem: Much of what Comey said about this was inaccurate. Now the FBI is trying to figure out what to do about it.

FBI officials have privately acknowledged that Comey misstated what Abedin did and what the FBI investigators found. On Monday, the FBI was said to be preparing to correct the record by sending a letter to Congress later this week. But that plan now appears on hold, with the bureau undecided about what to do.

ProPublica is reporting a story on the FBI’s handling of the Clinton emails and raised questions with government officials last week about possible inaccuracies in Comey’s statements about Abedin.

I’m willing to believe that Comey – with a mix of defensiveness and perhaps animus – got carried away rather than being willfully deceiving. But whether or not to correct the record should not be a hard call. Moreover, those excuses – defensiveness and animus – cast a very dark light on Comey’s decision-making last fall. These claims amounted to his justifications for action. The episode tends to confirm what many suspected about Comey’s actions – animus/bias with regards to Clinton, followed by defensiveness and prevarication over a clearly (at best) botched decision.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/com ... re-1058117

Comey’s Testimony On Huma Abedin Forwarding Emails Was Inaccurate

By Peter Elkind ProPublica Published MAY 9, 2017 9:15 AM

FBI director James Comey generated national headlines last week with his dramatic testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee, explaining his “incredibly painful” decision to go public about the Hillary Clinton emails found on Anthony Weiner’s laptop.

Perhaps Comey’s most surprising revelation was that Huma Abedin — Weiner’s wife and a top Clinton deputy — had made “a regular practice” of forwarding “hundreds and thousands” of Clinton messages to her husband, “some of which contain classified information.” Comey testified that Abedin had done this so that the disgraced former congressman could print them out for her boss. (Weiner’s laptop was seized after he came under criminal investigation for sex crimes, following a media report about his online relationship with a teenager.)

The New York Post plastered its story on the front page with a photo of an underwear-clad Weiner and the headline: “HARD COPY: Huma sent Weiner classified Hillary emails to print out.” The Daily News went with a similar front-page screamer: “HUMA ERROR: Sent classified emails to sext maniac Weiner.”

The problem: Much of what Comey said about this was inaccurate. Now the FBI is trying to figure out what to do about it.

FBI officials have privately acknowledged that Comey misstated what Abedin did and what the FBI investigators found. On Monday, the FBI was said to be preparing to correct the record by sending a letter to Congress later this week. But that plan now appears on hold, with the bureau undecided about what to do.

ProPublica is reporting a story on the FBI’s handling of the Clinton emails and raised questions with government officials last week about possible inaccuracies in Comey’s statements about Abedin.

It could not be learned how the mistake occurred. The FBI and Abedin declined ProPublica’s requests for comment on the director’s misstatements.

According to two sources familiar with the matter — including one in law enforcement — Abedin forwarded only a handful of Clinton emails to her husband for printing — not the “hundreds and thousands” cited by Comey. It does not appear Abedin made “a regular practice” of doing so. Other officials said it was likely that most of the emails got onto the computer as a result of backups of her Blackberry.

It was not clear how many, if any, of the forwarded emails were among the 12 “classified” emails Comey said had been found on Weiner’s laptop. None of the messages carried classified markings at the time they were sent.

Comey’s Senate testimony about Abedin came as he offered his first public explanation for his decision to reveal the existence of the emails on Oct. 28, days ahead of the 2016 election and before FBI agents had examined them.

When agents obtained a search warrant that allowed them to read the messages, they turned out to be mostly duplicates of emails the bureau had obtained earlier in the investigation. Comey announced just before Election Day that nothing had changed in the Clinton case, which had been closed four months earlier without criminal charges.

During his testimony, Comey said that part of the reason for revealing the existence of the messages was that some appeared to fill an eight-week gap in records from early in Clinton’s tenure as Secretary of State. Comey said the FBI viewed them as “the golden missing emails that would change this case” because they might provide insights into Clinton’s intent when she set up her private server.

Comey testified that investigators searching Weiner’s laptop in the days before the election also found that “somehow, her emails are being forwarded to Anthony Weiner, including classified information, by [Clinton’s] assistant, Huma Abedin.” Abedin, he later testified, “appears to have had a regular practice of forwarding emails to him, for him I think to print out for her so she could then deliver them to the Secretary of State.”

After Comey painted this troubling picture, Republican Sen. Ted Cruz demanded to know why Abedin and Weiner hadn’t been charged with mishandling classified information, calling the failure to do so “puzzling.”

“You said Ms. Abedin forwarded hundreds or thousands of classified emails to her husband on a non-government, non-classified computer,” said Cruz. “How is — how does that conduct not directly violate the statute?”

Comey offered a partial clarification, telling the Texas senator: “…if I said that, I misspoke. She forwarded hundreds and thousands of emails, some of which contain classified information.” Comey agreed both Abedin and Weiner “potentially” might have committed a crime, but said the FBI found no basis for concluding either had acted with criminal intent. Comey said the FBI had been unable to discuss the matter with Weiner “because he has pending criminal problems of other sorts.”

Abedin’s lawyer issued a statement after Comey’s Oct. 28 letter, saying Abedin had no idea how her exchanges with Clinton got on Weiner’s laptop, and no idea that they were there.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/comey ... inaccurate

Democratic Coalition: Paper Trail Implicates Mike Pence in Flynn Cover-up
BypmorganPosted on May 8, 2017

Co-founder of the Democratic Coalition, Scott Dworkin was on MSNBC’s Morning Joy this past week and shared his thoughts on Mike Pence taking the fall for hiring ex-General Michael Flynn as National Security Advisor.

He said, “Pence is a hands on guy, he was leading the transition team himself.” Dworkin also said that he sees the chips falling into place for Pence to take the fall on this one, which makes perfect sense given the fact that the Trump administration is clearly always looking for someone to place to blame on, e.g. blaming Obama for not properly vetting Flynn.

After November 18th, when Flynn was reported to the Department of Justice for failing to register his paid representation of Turkey by the Democratic Coalition AND by the House Oversight Committee, Pence had to have known what was happening.

“Mike Pence would have to be a straight up idiot to not realize that Flynn was going to register as a foreign agent, or the staff would have to be totally incompetent for him not to be aware of the situation,” Dworkin said.

Transition team Chair Mike Pence went ahead and appointed an unregistered Turkish agent to America’s National Security team.

The Stern Facts points out:
Mike Pence has flown under the radar during the Trump Administration’s failed first 100 days in Washington, D.C. and maintained a public profile as the least insane voice in the Republican regime.

But new reports about Gen. Michael Flynn’s foreign lobbying this week, revealed this week that there’s a major Russian tie with the cash he accepted.

The Siberia Energy Group’s owner has major ties to the Dutch company owned by a Turkish government official, who paid Flynn and caused him to register under FARA a month after being fired due to the media firestorm after his contacts with Russian Ambassador Kislyak were revealed.

Flynn also took money from Russia’s RT propaganda outlet for travel, and had a long dinner with Putin in Moscow for the tv station’s 10th anniversary, as well as a Russian airline that violated sanctions, and a Russian cybersecurity company with Kremlin ties.

Pence has gotten away with looking the most sane out of all the Republicans lately which is saying a lot. With Gen. Michael Flynn out this week lobbying for foreign causes and his ties to Russia looking even deeper, people are going to realize what Pence did with this appointment.

Dworkin wasn’t having any of this and said, “Mr. Flynn should be stripped of his military title, he should also be in jail right now.” Dworkin continued, “anyone who helped cover it up, who helped push him through, they should be just as culpable as well. I guarantee you that there will be a paper trail — an electronic trail — leading back to at least Mike Pence.”
http://whowhatwhy.org/2017/05/09/exclus ... t-clinton/

[seemslikeadream]

Trump hasn't been in the hotel/casino business for last 15 years. He's been in the Russian Mob money laundering business.

Claude Taylor‏
@TrueFactsStated
Sealed indictments out of Eastern District of Virginia-under Dana Boente. Trump, Manafort and Flynn-among others under sealed indictment.

WHY FBI CAN’T TELL ALL ON TRUMP, RUSSIA

The Federal Bureau of Investigation cannot tell us what we need to know about Donald Trump’s contacts with Russia. Why? Because doing so would jeopardize a long-running, ultra-sensitive operation targeting mobsters tied to Russian President Vladimir Putin — and to Trump.http://whowhatwhy.org/2017/03/27/fbi-cant-tell-trump-russia/

WWW EXCLUSIVE: FELIX SATER LINKS TRUMP TO COMEY’S REPLACEMENT

Acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe testifying during US Senate hearing on Global Threats, May 11, 2017. Photo credit: Watch the video on C-SPAN
President Donald Trump’s own words link the firing of James Comey as FBI director to the Bureau’s Russia probe. That move, however, might not have been well thought out because Andrew McCabe, Comey’s deputy and temporary replacement, could have unique firsthand knowledge of potential ties between Trump and organized crime in the former Soviet Union.

This creates an intriguing if complex and nuanced situation that could influence Trump as he decides whether to replace McCabe as interim director.

How this important but overlooked factor — discussed in no other reporting of the drama around the Comey firing, the search for an interim FBI director, McCabe, and Trump — will play out is uncertain. But the importance of McCabe’s prior history is part of the hidden backstory between the FBI and Trump.

First, a quick review.

In an exclusive WhoWhatWhy investigation published in March, we told the story of Felix Sater, the Russian-born financial criminal whose real estate development firm Bayrock partnered with Trump on numerous troubled projects — while Sater was working as an FBI informant. Further, pending civil litigation alleges that Bayrock, whose offices were just a floor beneath Trump’s in Trump Tower, served as a massive money laundering operation for funds from the former Soviet Union.

In the mid-1990s, Sater had been one of the chiefs of State Street, a mobbed-up financial brokerage that racked up tens of millions of dollars in profits in a few short years and fleeced thousands. Sater and 21 others were swept up in the high-profile FBI operation that targeted the brokerage, which included associates of both Italian crime families and the Russian mob — which includes Sater. Sater then “flipped” and became an informant, after pleading guilty to a single count of racketeering. He was working at Bayrock a few short years later.

It turns out that the paths of Andrew McCabe and Felix Sater intersect.

McCabe worked for 20 years in the New York field office of the FBI. According to older FBI biographical information, he joined the New York office in 1996, when he worked on “organized crime matters.” In 2003, “he became the supervisory special agent of the Eurasian Organized Crime Task Force, a joint operation with the New York City Police Department.”

“Eurasian organized crime” is the FBI designation for crime that originates from the former Soviet Union, including Russia and Ukraine.

Curiously, McCabe’s most recent official biography does not include this aspect of his career, and recent press profiles also do not include this fact (although older press releases do so). (This reporter could find no discussion of this period of McCabe’s career in previous press reporting.)

Andrew McCabe, Loretta Lynch
FBI Deputy Director Andrew G. McCabe speaks at a press conference on July 20, 2016; with US Attorney General Loretta Lynch. Photo credit: FBI

It was the FBI’s organized crime unit in New York that investigated State Street, the mobbed-up brokerage where Felix Sater held sway in the mid-1990s. Sater has been named in numerous press reports in connection with the Russian mob. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), during hearings into Russian interference in the US election, last week noted that Sater’s family has links to organized crime and called Sater a “colorful character.” Sater’s father has been tied to the criminal organization of Semion Mogilevich, perhaps the most powerful of organized crime bosses in the former Soviet Union, and considered a national security threat by US law enforcement. (To WhoWhatWhy, Sater has denied knowledge of or connections to Eurasian mobsters.)

Whether McCabe worked specifically on the State Street case is unclear, but he certainly was in the organized crime section while that high-profile, multi-year investigation was ongoing.

State Street closed as the FBI got close in 1996, Sater signed his cooperation agreement in 1998, the State Street indictments were unsealed in 2000 — and Sater was working at Bayrock in Trump Tower by early 2002.

Sater and Bayrock went on to partner on multiple deals with Trump, including the Trump SoHo. Most of the Bayrock projects failed very badly, leaving a string of lawsuits across multiple states.

While at Bayrock, Sater regularly traveled to Europe, including Poland, Russia, and Ukraine, with numerous trips to Crimea, ostensibly in search of possible development projects that could bear the Trump name — projects that never seemed to reach the drawing board stage. To reiterate, Sater was working as an FBI informant throughout the years he was at Bayrock (until early 2008).

Thus McCabe, as supervisory special agent of the Eurasian organized crime unit in New York from 2003 to 2006, would seem likely to have known very well what Sater was up to and intelligence he had gathered. In addition, he would have been aware of Sater’s relationship with Trump and possibly Trump’s financial relationships in the former Soviet Union at a time when he was struggling to find funding in the US after his numerous bankruptcies.

McCabe also would likely be privy to information about goings-on at Trump Tower, which was a hive of wealthy Russians and others from the former Soviet Union, as well as people like Paul Manafort, who lived in Trump Tower and was actively engaged in supporting pro-Russian Ukrainian politicians and business interests tied to organized crime — including Mogilevich — from 2005. (Manafort is Trump’s long-time friend who served for a period as his campaign manager.)

As must be stressed, Trump’s risk regarding Sater is enormous in multiple ways. While at Bayrock — and serving as an FBI informant — Sater was entering contracts with lenders and clients, and because of his past as a financial criminal, this was a crime. Indeed, Sater was forced to pull out of Bayrock after a New York Times article in late 2007 outed him as a felon, making his position at Bayrock untenable.

If it could be proven that Trump knew that Sater was a financial criminal and did business with him anyway, it would expose Trump to massive financial liability. This is because parties to bank loans and investment contracts must confirm that no owner or manager has been convicted of fraud, and if that confirmation is false, anyone who knew of the fraud is potentially liable.

If Trump or anyone around him — such as other Trump Organization executives, accountants, and lawyers — had knowledge of Sater’s criminal past and yet entered into contracts with Sater and Bayrock, Trump and his company would then be liable for hundreds of millions of dollars and possible jail time. The same would be true even if someone learned about Sater’s criminal status after signing the contract but continued with it.

Yet what if that criminal was considered protected by his informant status with the FBI?

Revealing the criminality on the part of anyone who entered into contracts with Sater despite being aware of his criminal history would also reveal the role of the FBI and Department of Justice and what they knew about Sater’s alleged shady deals and activities while using him as an informant.

McCabe, as a former supervisory special agent of the Eurasian Organized Crime Task Force in New York, would be especially well informed of the players and issues regarding the former Soviet Union.

These insights, gained over a 20-year career in New York, would provide him with a unique understanding while overseeing an investigation into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia as well as Trump business connections to those in the former Soviet Union. New York is not only the unofficial headquarters of the Russian-speaking community in the US, it is also the center of much financial and other crime tied to the former Soviet Union.

McCabe would likely also have knowledge of potentially problematic issues, such as possible crimes committed by Sater at Bayrock while working as an informant (from which Trump could have profited), questions regarding Trump’s previous relationship with the Bureau, as well as the current and former FBI agents who either are or may have been connected to Trump or his campaign.

This is something the president could be aware of: members of his private security detail during the campaign and after included former FBI agents, one of which — Gary Uher — not only worked in the organized crime section at the same time as McCabe, but investigated and then worked with Sater on the State Street case, as reported exclusively by WhoWhatWhy.

This information, completely overlooked by the rest of the media, adds another layer of complexity and intrigue to the unfolding drama of the Russia investigation that will overshadow everything Trump does until it is resolved one way or another. It also underscores how much we do not know — or are not being told.
http://whowhatwhy.org/2017/05/15/www-ex ... placement/

Russian Mobster Felix Sater Advised The Trump Campaign

Donald Trump and the former Senior Advisor to the Trump Organization, Felix Sater Trump Campaign
A Russian mobster named Felix Sater told the Moscow media that he met with Trump’s campaign before the election, and revealed intimate details about his relationship with the man who Donald Trump swears he doesn’t know.
The newly unearthed Russian language interview with Felix Sater was published on November 15th, 2016 and was discovered by Democratic Coalition senior advisor Scott Dworkin’s #TrumpLeaks research operations.
This entire story is about a man — Felix Sater — whom Donald Trump claimed literally not to know during the Republican primary campaign
Felix Sater’s admitted contact with the Trump campaign during the election culminated in an incident where he carried an abortive secret “peace plan” between Russia and the United States over Ukraine that dovetailed with Donald Trump Jr.’s paid trip to speak a Putin-supported, Paris “peace conference” with a Syrian group.
After a lengthy IRS investigation beginning just after Sater meet Trump, the casino formerly named Trump’s Taj Mahal got slapped with a massive fine from the US Treasury’s criminal investigative division FinCEN.
The Senate wants to know about it, now.
New details from the Senate’s Trump Russia investigation in the last 48 hours since FBI Director James Comey was fired, confirm the importance of the time period when secretly convicted felon Felix Sater worked for Donald J. Trump, and the new Russian interview reveals that he openly moonlighted in the Trump Organization as US secret agent for the FBI and CIA, after he was convicted racketeering with the New York mafia in 1998 — which took a Supreme Court ruling to reveal.
Donald Trump hired the convicted felon, Russian emigre as his Senior Advisor during the decade-long period of time from 1998–2008 which saw him transform from bankrupt developer, to reality TV star with the aid of Producer Mark Burnett, who also did business with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The New York Times profiled Felix Sater in-depth 10-years ago solely because of his special relationship to the man who played a real estate developer on reality TV, who now resides in the White House.
A massive body of evidence points to a special relationship between Felix Sater, Donald Trump — and the federal government, who could have apparently allowed the pair to use Trump casinos to turn over “bad guys” to law enforcement, and which implies that he had the ability to shelter his associates from criminal charges for criminal acts; specifically for money laundering at the Trump casino empire.
It was a casino empire in New Jersey without any form of anti-money laundering controls, for two decades.
Not only does Sater tell the story of meeting Donald Trump in that interview on snob.ru, and talk about his ten years of regular contact with him — sometimes as much as twice a day — but he confirms two very important details about his relationship with our Russophile President.
First, Felix Sater claims that Trump knew about his “secret agent” activities with the FBI and CIA.
While there’s no direct way of proving the President’s knowledge of Felix Sater’s covert activities, the Trump Organization was a sponsor of the Association of Former Intelligence Officers in both 2002 and in 2003, which lends some credence to the idea that Donald Trump knew what was going on.
Former Trump campaign advisor James Woolsey is on the board of AFIO, which is a mainstream organization for America’s former intelligence officers.
Former President George Bush is also a member.
Secondly, Sater claimed to have regular contact with the Trump campaign last year.
We now know that Sater and Trump’s personal lawyer, Michael D. Cohen were caught by the New York Times with Sater, who was attempting to run a private diplomatic mission in Ukraine — an action discussed in the Christopher Steele intelligence dossier .

Via New York Times story “A Back-Channel Plan for Ukraine and Russia, Courtesy of Trump Associates”
The apparent plan to drop sanctions against Russia failed.
Shortly thereafter, Cohen’s Ukrainian relative was found dead under mysterious circumstances.
Trump’s connections to gangsters from Russian and former Soviet states mafiosos and oligarchs alike, all multiplied during Sater’s tenure.
To be clear, there is no question about Felix Sater’s service to the US government either.
It happened.
After Trump was sued for Sater scamming his Florida condominium buyers in the Trump Fort Lauderdale tower, his Senior Advisor fought all the way to the Supreme Court seeking to keep his 1998 felony conviction for racketeering sealed by a then-little known federal prosecutor in the Eastern District of New York.
The federal government lost in the Supreme Court, leading to what the Miami Herald’s Michael Sallah called dozens of explosive documents.
The court revealed that Felix Sater was nabbed by the feds for his involvement in a New York Cosa Nostra stock scheme in 1998 and had his arm twisted to begin working for both the FBI and CIA.
One person who certainly knew about these activities was former Obama Administration Attorney General Loretta Lynch, who described (p. 142) the convicted felon Sater’s government activities thusly in sworn testimony to the US Senate at the request of Republican Senator Orrin Hatch from Utah, over his concerns about sealed convictions that allowed criminals to roam the streets, without informing Americans that they might be dealing with a confidential informant that could rob them with immunity from criminal prosecution:
The defendant in question, Felix Sater, provided valuable and sensitive information to the government during the course of his cooperation, which began in or about December 1998. For more than 10 years, he worked with prosecutors from my Office, the United States Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York and law enforcement agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation and other law enforcement agencies, providing information crucial to national security and the conviction of over 20 individuals, including those responsible for committing massive financial fraud and members of La Cosa Nostra.
For that reason, his case was initially sealed.
Forbes Media recently filed an action in federal court seeking to unseal the remaining records from Felix Sater’s secret criminal conviction, which contains a treasure trove of compiled research on Trump’s former advisor, and included a report by freelance investigative journalist Bill Conroy about the implications of cooperation with the FBI and intelligence agencies. (This paragraph was added the day after publication of this report.)
If his spectacular claims are to be believed, Sater also hunted down the financing for 9/11, helped the Clinton Administration target Osama Bin Laden and all manner of covert activities in his life as a secret operative.
However, the dark side of America’s deal to fight terror included allowing a Mafia-linked felon to have a free hand to conduct a criminal enterprise.
Indeed, Felix Sater did defraud thousands of Americans around the country, and has never faced criminal charges for his activities.
Trump’s Real Business Was Casino Money Laundering, Real Estate Was Just A Side Gig
Yesterday, the Senate Intelligence Committee delivered a subpoena to obtain documents about Trump’s casino empire from the US Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) whose job is to protect America’s financial system from crimes and police money laundering activity.
Only three key facts related to the FinCEN action lead to a startling, but factually grounded conclusion that Russia’s “kompromat” against Donald Trump is likely detailed evidence of his material participation in international money laundering rackets, through his old Trump casino businesses in Atlantic City, and then later in the Trump Soho Condo-Hotel project in New York City.
Firstly, in 2015 the Department of Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) levied what was then the largest ever Patriot Act violation penalty assessed against a casino to that date, at the Trump Taj Mahal Casino in Atlantic City.
The Trump casino empire wound up investigated by the IRS who determined that he casually ignored the Banking Secrecy Act’s requirements altogether and FinCEN levied a $10 million dollar fine based on their findings.
Alleged anti-money laundering violations happened all the way back in 2003 when Donald Trump was still the head of the Taj Mahal’s public parent company, Trump Entertainment Resorts.
Casinos can function just like banks — without any account names or numbers — tailor made for money launderers.
Secondly, Trump’s public gaming company consistently lost money, even when the gaming industry as a whole took off, but over a 20-year period.
Trump Entertainment Resorts improbably violated the principal rule of running a casino, the house always wins; yet, against all business logic, these casinos stayed open.
Paper losses can be used to hide real gains, or launder cash.
Thirdly, Donald Trump and the Trump Organization has been named as a witness in a federal civil racketeering trial in New York involving the Trump Soho and the Mafia-linked company Bayrock who is the defendant in the case.
When FinCEN issued its findings in 2015, Trump’s Taj Mahal applied the same level of “extreme vetting” to prevent money laundering as his administration has applied to infamous figures like General Michael Flynn — which is to say literally none at all. This is beyond suspicious and could only continue for so long, while under IRS investigation, with official blessing from inside the federal government.
That is where the Sater relationship appears to have born fruit of a similar nature for Donald Trump — immunity from prosecution for committing illegal acts.
Trump’s Largest Casino Didn’t Even Have A Written Anti-Money Laundering Plan
This portion of the interview includes information on background from a Treasury department official who could not be named on the record, but explained the findings of FinCEN’s order against the Trump Taj Mahal in Atlantic City, New Jersey.
If losing casinos close, then why did the Trump Casinos remain a going concern for so long, aside from endlessly patient (or foolish or fooled) investors?
Because nothing in the world could provide an easier front for money laundering than a casino.
Especially a Trump casino.
At Trump’s Taj Mahal there wasn’t even a written plan for anti-money laundering enforcement when the feds landed in 2010 after seven long years of warnings.
Here’s a copy of the final order:
FinCEN Assessment of Civil Money Penalty Trump Taj Mahal (Post-Approval by Bankruptcy Court)

1 The Company, along with Trump Entertainment Resorts, Inc., Trump Entertainment Resorts Holdings, L.P., Trump Plaza…
http://www.scribd.com
The simplest form of laundering that Trump’s casinos were cited for failing to report is “suspicious activity” involving $5000 or more. FinCEN’s enforcement judgment calls this minimal gaming activity, which means that a player buys chips with dirty cash, lingers in the casino, or makes a few insignificant bets as cover and then brings cash to the teller window and just walks away with a cashier’s check to take to the bank.
The Trump casino was cited for failing to maintain files on “rated players” i.e. a casino’s file on each player, which can be used as the basis for reporting or detecting illegal behavior. Ditto for maintaining any controls on the paper tickets for cash into and out of its slot machines.
Even more appalling, Trump’s casinos failed to report “cage markers” — short-term credit extended by the house to a gambler, or “front money” transactions, where a gambler deposits money with a casino in advance, seeking to play later.
This means that a known money launderer at the Trump Taj Majal only had to arrive and sign a marker to obtain cash with which to gamble.
The money launderer could then walk out of the money wth clean cash, deposit it into their bank with a check and later bring dirty cash to pay off the loan. Since Trump wasn’t even bothering to keep player rating files, criminals had nothing to fear about their identity being discovered by law enforcement.
Since Trump wasn’t even bothering to keep player rating files, criminals had nothing to fear about their identity being discovered by law enforcement.
This is also unusual since it means that Trump was not tracking card sharks, high stakes players or really anyone, which all modern casinos have done for decades.
The only reason to do something like this is to make a completely anonymous casino aka the perfect bank to the mafia.
Trump’s casinos were so lax that a money launderer could easily drop off illicit cash as “front money” and then return days, weeks or months later to pick up a check and declare the cash “clean” with a bank deposit.
Another move available for high rollers at the Trump casino, a launderer might buy into the casino’s chips, gamble and then cash out ahead.
Once the funds are “won” then the money launderer simply declares those winnings, and the money is now “clean” without any further fuss, and he deposits it into his bank.
The casino would have to report the winnings on an IRS W2-G form, but without the anti-money laundering report, the gambler’s initial investment into chips gets washed without any records whatsoever.
The three reasons our government made money laundering illegal and enforces those laws vigorously are prevention of organized criminal behavior, terrorism prevention and tax avoidance.
The IRS has primer video (along with an easy to read transcript) on casino compliance with the Bank Secrecy Act.
If you’re not interested in the details of financial regulation, rest assured that their main advice calls to train all casino employees to prevent money laundering, and says that some casinos track anti-money laundering compliance all the way down to $500 bets.
America’s Bank Secrecy Act requires casinos to log all transactions of $10,000 and to be reported. The Patriot Act in 2001 vastly strengthened and expanded the money laundering regulations across financial businesses.
If a casino owner simply refuses to track all of their transactions, then money launderers can use the facilities with impunity to exchange dirty cash for declared, clean money.
Sadly, the $10 million dollar fine against Trump Taj Mahal after a 12 year investigation will do little to discourage that kind of illicit behavior by casinos.
More importantly, there was no legitimate reason for the IRS to investigate for 12 years, when they knew about Trump’s bad behavior going back to the late 1990s.
However, it would make sense that Trump was allowed to pick winners and losers, in conjunction with a confidential FBI informant — like Felix Sater — working with prosecutors in New York’s Eastern District.
In 2009, Trump lost managing control of his casino empire after yet another bankruptcy. Without a source of income — like money laundering — the Trump Organization with Sater at the helm, moved further into brand licensing, but began an ambitious program of developments, which also lost money, but created victims.
They also purchased numerous golf courses with Russian money during the financial crash.
Trump Casinos Lost and Lost and Lost, With Mobsters Nearby
The owner of Trump’s failed Taj Mahal was then and is now Trump Entertainment Resorts, though the name of the public company vehicle and persons who hold the shares have changed over the years.

Donald Trump’s public casino company shareholders lost a fortune.
According to the New York Times an investor who bought 1995 IPO shares, then held them lost over 93% of the stock’s value in a twelve year period.
An investor who bought the Russell 3000 casino index in 1995 would’ve gotten a 250% return on investment over that same 12 year period. Keep in mind that the above chart reflects that America’s economy was in the midst of the Bush-era, Wall Street credit-fueled bubble in 2007.
Even a rising tide failed to lift the Trump Entertainment Resorts’ boat, and it appears just from the chart that Trump executed a classic pump and dump scheme with the IPO, because the share price peaked within the first two years, before its inexorable slide towards multiple bankruptcies and the closing of the Trump Taj Mahal, which is only recently starting the process of being renamed.
Regardless, the years of losses suddenly become easily explainable if you imagine that Trump was carefully doling out shareholder value along with laundered cash to the many players at his casino, which included known mobsters and which he has consistently lied about, even under oath.
Trump’s extensive mob ties have been chronicled going all the way back to the construction of Trump Tower.
The IPO deal to create Trump Entertainment Resorts bailed Trump out of a looming personal bankruptcy in 1995 and simultaneously delivered to him a $916,000,000 paper loss on his income taxes by utilizing a loophole that Congress made illegal in 2006.
That tax loophole let Donald Trump sell his failed businesses to investors, but claim the losses incurred by his bondholders as a profitable (and legal, though dubious) tax shelter.
Reports indicate that Trump’s casino IPO yielded back to the destitute real estate developer up to a $50 million dollar annual tax break for 15 years (and possibly three prior years if he paid taxes).
Amazingly, Trump laid the groundwork for his multi-billion dollar ‘loss-making for profit scheme’ by testifying to Congress that America was no different than the Soviet Union for businesspeople.
Apparently, using communism as the bogeyman was a more effective strategy then than now (see outcry when President Trump caused an uproar making similar remarks comparing America and Russia on Fox News) because Congress passed enhanced passive loss deductions for real estate professionals in 1993 and Trump drove a Mack Truck through the moneymaking tax preference.
All told, Trump could have used those unlimited losses to easily launder dirty cash, in addition to their usefulness in the real estate development world in avoiding the IRS’ onerous 263A rules that require taxes to be paid by builders based on the cost of the property being built during construction.
The Trump casinos lost a fortune, and paid $39 million dollars in management fees to Trump for the privilege.

Trump with Bayrock’s Tevfik Arif and Felix Sater
Trump’s SoHo Project Is The Subject Of A Racketeering Lawsuit and Tax Fraud Action
The Trump SoHo project in Manhattan collapsed into a furious pile of lawsuits, though the building is just fine and operated by the President’s family for his benefit today.
Felix Sater and mysterious Kazakstani investor Tevfik Arif who owns the Bayrock Company were behind this failed Trump project.
It all began when the Trump Soho condo-hotel project was financed with an Icelandic bank linked to Putin, and a byzantine legal structure best described as a plate of spaghetti made out of shell companies.

The American Interest made this map of Trump SoHo’s shell companies.
Trump tried to extinguish the fires started by this most troubled of New York real estate deals by paying over a $3 million dollar settlement with disgruntled buyers in 2011.
It didn’t work.
Disgruntled former employees have filed a federal racketeering lawsuit and said in court that this was no ordinary business dispute:
Bayrock leaders had planned and structured businesses from conception as criminal enterprises intended to defraud investors. Kriss also accused lawyers for Bayrock co-owner Felix Satter of trying to “gravely mislead” the court into looking at the underlying issues as a typical business dispute inappropriate for a RICO action.
Kriss and Ejekam accused Satter, Arif and others connected to Bayrock and related entities of fraudulently inducing them into working for the company in exchange for ownership stakes and then engaging in a series of misdeeds and illegal payments.
As the presidential race heated up last year, the AP sued and won release of documents related to the SoHo case.
Trump SoHo is also in New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman’s sights. Last summer, relators put out a press release unsealing a major tax fraud action called a Qui Tam lawsuit — after the AG gave them clearance to proceed — that names Sater as Bayrock’s silent partner and majority owner, and others as parties to a massive tax fraud.
A Manhattan judge has unsealed a civil tax fraud case brought in behalf of New York State against associates of Donald Trump. The suit accuses convicted racketeer and Felix Sater, Bayrock Group, and prominent law firms of conspiring to launder as much as $250 million dollars of profit on Trump projects Bayrock was co-developing out of the country in a scheme to evade $100 million dollars of state and federal income tax. It alleges that Bayrock — aided by law firms Kramer Levin, Roberts & Holland, and Duval & Stachenfeld — brought a foreign partner into the projects but then hid it behind a Delaware shell company and further disguised the transaction so wholesale transfers of profits corruptly headed overseas to that partner would falsely appear to be debt repayments to a U.S. lender. Defendant Nixon Peabody is charged with facilitating a separate multimillion withholding tax fraud by disguising Sater as a salaried employee to help hide the fact that he owned much of Bayrock.
At this time Mr. Trump is a material witness. Initial investigation of the case uncovered no evidence that he was culpable, as the papers themselves, written some time ago, state. However, in the time since it was filed, especially as a result of media interest, new, relevant Trump and Bayrock information has surfaced, from sources including Mr. Trump himself, which may significantly change that calculus.
One of the plaintiffs lawyers in the tax case — which is being prosecuted with information from a separate whistleblower lawsuit — pointed out that Trump Soho was a lynchpin case in unraveling several realty scams perpetuated by Sater under the employ of the future president in the last decade:
“This is an important case because it not only exposes how Bayrock, while developing Trump SoHo in New York, Trump International in Fort Lauderdale, and Trump Camelback in Phoenix in association with Mr. Trump, took advantage of Delaware secrecy to arrange to siphon most of the profits out of the country untaxed, it also exposes how major law firms were willing to facilitate it.
It all seems improbable and highly unlikely, but the truth about Donald Trump is staring anyone in the face when all of the facts are put together. Trump wouldn’t be the first known FBI confidential informant to inhabit the Oval Office either, that “honor” belongs to Republican icon Ronald Reagan.
Donald Trump was a knowing asset of the federal government, working with a high-profile confidential informant for the better part of a decade, until all of the scams and dodges they were allowed to run got exposed for ripping off hundreds of investors and thousands of Americans when you include victims Trump University who recently settled.
After his money laundering scheme — getting paid by his untouchables, but turning over “bad guys” to the FBI — broke down, Trump’s foray into real estate development laid bare the rusty skills of a trust-fund baby who hadn’t had to earn a living the old fashioned way for years.
The results are scattered across America’s court system in the form of over 3,500 lawsuits against Trump through the years, dozens of which are ongoing today.
Now, President Trump has fired the FBI Director James Comey, and he isn’t afraid to tell the entire world it’s because his Russia investigation was getting uncomfortably close to hitting paydirt.
How else could a known multi-millionaire investor spend a third of his adult life participating in known rackets — including ten years with a known CIA and FBI confidential informant — and escape all forms of federal criminal action while running a casino with zero anti-money laundering controls for that long?
The arc of Trump’s business evolution from a casino manager to the global evolution of his business to the former Soviet states — announced by his synonymous son in Moscow in 2008 — and his entry into the golf market with Russian cash dovetails with what appears to be the end of his relationship with Felix Sater.
All of that coincided with the worldwide economic credit freeze and economic crisis.
Financing is the lifeblood of the real estate business, and at the time, things were so bad that Trump sued his own bankers, just to delay payments that he plainly couldn’t make.
It appears that after the financial crash, the end of Republican one-party rule and after his golden ticket with Sater and his relationship with the federal government terminated, it appears Trump did anything it took to survive, with anyone who would lend him a hand.
Those hands were Russian, Ukrainian, Chinese, Kazakhstani, Filipino and Turkish, and probably on Cyprus too.
One thing is for certain, none of Trump’s lies won’t help him disassociate himself from Felix Sater.
The most logical conclusion to this story is that New York’s FBI office enabled another “Black Mass” situation, where a confidential informant — or in this case pair of informants — were so highly placed, that they effectively ran federal police activity to support their own criminal enterprise’s operations.
And that Donald Trump would do literally anything to repeat his massively embarrassing downfall in the early 1990s that left him a beggar to his own family.
Perhaps this is why Russia’s top “Americanist” Professor told reporters last October that for Putin to help Donald Trump to win the election, he would have to be a “real Russian agent.”
Because he sure looks like one now.
Here’s Felix Sater’s business card:

Here’s select clips from the Felix Sater interview which have been machine translated by Google:

https://thesternfacts.com/russian-mobst ... 9f3a58d617

The Firing of James Comey

What is he allowed to talk about now?

By Virginia Heffernan and Jacob Weisberg
To listen to this episode of Trumpcast, use the player below:
http://www.slate.com/articles/podcasts/ ... lettertest

The Democratic plan to exploit Comey controversy

J. Scott Applewhite / AP
On CNN's "State of the Union," Jake Tapper asked Chuck Schumer whether he'd refuse to vote on the nomination of a new FBI director to replace James Comey until a special prosecutor is appointed. Schumer said yes; but that's only the beginning of the pressure Democrats plan to exert.

Here's what they'll do in the coming days, per a senior Senate aide:

Establish a litmus test for Republicans who care about the integrity of the Russia investigation: to appoint a special prosecutor.
Call for Attorney General Jeff Sessions to recuse himself from deciding Comey's replacement, given the new FBI director will be overseeing the investigation into whether the Trump campaign colluded with Russia during the election.
Extract a full explanation from Rod Rosenstein about his role in Trump's firing of Comey. The deputy attorney general will brief senators this week and they'll have a chance to grill him.
Urge Republicans to support Democrats' calls for Comey to testify before a congressional committee.
Around the corner: Watch for Dems to use their demands on the Russia probe as leverage to justify even more aggressive obstruction of the Republicans' legislative agenda. "If they [Republicans] don't cooperate on what we view as requests that should be bipartisan and reasonable," the senior Senate aide said, "I don't think any Democrat would be in the mood to conduct business as normal."

Bonus Comey thing: the most insightful thing I've heard or read about Comey in a week of nonstop coverage is a Slate podcast interview with the former FBI boss' longtime friend Benjamin Wittes. Stressing he had no inside knowledge of his friend's plans, Wittes predicted Comey — "maybe the only completely subtext-less person in Washington" — would publicly tell his full story and probably in a congressional hearing. Wittes had these ominous words for Trump: "One of the problems that Trump created for himself in removing Jim Comey is that he dramatically increased the list of things that Jim Comey is now allowed to talk about."
https://www.axios.com/the-democratic-pl ... 94714.html

The Kazakhstan Connection: Trump, Bayrock And Plenty Of Questions
‘There’s something happening here. What it is ain’t exactly clear.’

—Buffalo Springfield song, “For What It’s Worth,” 1967

By Richard Behar

Is a former Mob-connected hustler—a real estate developer who in 2010 worked on the same floor as Donald Trump as his “Senior Advisor”—threatening to spill some beans that could harm the President’s reputation?


Felix Sater
Sure looks that way, based on an intriguing Wall Street Journal story that exposed aspects of a bitter feud between two of Trump’s former key business associates. The newspaper revealed that the Russia-born Felix Sater—a twice-convicted one-time Mafia associate—is demanding hush money from a former boss, Kazakhstan-born Tevfik Arif, whose Bayrock Group worked in a close partnership for nearly a decade with the Trump Organization.

Sater warned Arif, in writing, that news headlines will read: “The Kazakh Gangster and President Trump,” unless Arif forks over $3.5 million to reimburse Sater for legal expenses he claims he’s owed, the Journal reported. Specifically, Sater is threatening to reveal negative information about Arif’s “past relationship with President Trump and the Republic of Kazakhstan”—as well as Arif’s alleged connections to “organized crime figures and his business activities in Kazakhstan,” which involve “dealings in the post-Soviet metals industry there.”

Spokespeople for Bayrock and Arif have called the allegations “unsubstantiated falsehoods.” The general counsel of Trump Organization didn’t respond to calls and emails.

Why this story matters

I discovered some missing bricks in the murky Bayrock-Trump edifice as reported by Forbes in October. As for Kazakhstan, sorting out the bewildering tangle (what Russians call a zaputannyj klubok) could take years. But why should anyone even care about it?


Trump, Tevik Arif and Felix Sater (NPO screen shot)
Here are just a few reasons:

It’s a good bet that the Trump-Bayrock relationship will receive scrutiny in Washington. It certainly should be front and center in any serious investigation. Two months ago, Sater burst onto the front-pages when it was revealed that he and one of Trump’s top lawyers delivered a Ukraine peace proposal to the White House. In late March, then-FBI director James Comey was asked about Sater’s relationship with the FBI when he appeared before the House Intelligence Committee. (He declined to comment on it, likely because the twice-convicted Sater spent a decade as a secret government cooperator for both the FBI and at times, the CIA).

Trump fired Comey on Tuesday, just as the Senate Intelligence Committee’s probe into Russia’s interference in the presidential election has been shifting into a higher gear. Apart from that probe, Republican Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Lindsey Graham said on Tuesday that he wants his committee to look into whether Trump has any business dealings in Russia. Near the start of a hearing that committee held on Monday, another Senator dropped the name “Sater.”

Trump and Sater have been doing an odd dance around each other during the past few years, regarding how much they’ve interacted. In 2010, Sater was made a “Senior Advisor to Donald Trump” and given an office on Trump’s floor in the Trump Tower, where he worked for roughly one year. Nevertheless, Trump consistently has testified in civil cases that he barely knew Sater, barely dealt with him and “wouldn’t recognize him if he was sitting in this [deposition] room.” However, Sater, in another civil case said he would often pop his head into Trump’s office to give him updates on a Moscow hotel deal he had in the works. (It doesn’t appear that the project came to fruition.) Last September, I half-joked to Sater that he must have a photo album filled with pictures of himself with Trump. “A photo album?” he responded. “How about six!”

While it seems unlikely that the Bayrock real estate enterprise will be Trump’s Waterloo, it is, without a doubt, a subject that reporters need to continue chipping away at. In part, because all the key players—from Sater and Arif to Trump and his aides, to tycoons in and from Kazakhstan and Russia—refuse to shed any real sunlight on it. And, as the late Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis once famously said: “Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants.”

—Richard Behar
Sater, however, may not even need the dough. I’ve discovered that he and a former Trump Organization colleague, Daniel Ridloff, received roughly $20 million—in a settlement of a case that is linked to an alleged multi-billion-dollar global money laundering scheme originating in Kazakhstan, and stretching to Russia and the U.S.


Tri-County Mall (Google satellite image)
Specifically, both men were accused in a 2013 complaint filed by a Swiss financier of absconding with nearly $43 million from the sale of an Ohio shopping mall (Tri-County Mall near Cincinnati) to—American Pacific International Capital (APIC). That company is based in San Francisco. One of the directors is businessman Neil Bush—the son of former President George H.W. Bush and brother of former President George W. Bush.

In the shopping center complaint, the financier included an exhibit—a 2007 New York Times article that revealed numerous details about Sater’s criminal past. The article said Sater had pled guilty and become a cooperating federal witness. Sater’s cooperation agreement was unsealed by a federal judge in 2013, but many other documents in related cases are under court seal.

Five days after the Tri-County mall complaint was filed, the case was settled.

Neither Sater or Ridloff, whose LinkedIn bio says he worked in “Acquisitions & Finance” in 2010 for the Trump Organization, will comment about the subject. In his own LinkedIn bio, Sater describes himself as a former “Senior Advisor to Board of Directors” of one of Neil Bush’s oil companies (TxOil) that once drilled in Turkmenistan, an oil-rich part of the former Soviet Union.

Bush tells me he’s never heard of Sater. Bush also says that the mall was purchased for $43 million by APIC at a public auction, and then transferred to a Singapore publicly-held real estate company that he chairs called SingHaiyi Group. “I helped the group [SingHaiyi] find the property through a friend,” he says. When told about the subsequent litigation against Sater and Ridloff, Bush says: “I don’t remember anything like that. We bought it at a sheriff’s auction. If the funds filtered through some undesignated [entity] or intermediary, I’m unaware of that.”

A second lawsuit filed in U.S. Federal Court (Southern District of New York) may shed additional light on Sater and Ridloff’s Kazakhstan-related business activity. In this case, the BTA Bank (once one of Kazakhstan’s largest banks) and the government of Almaty (the country’s largest city) are accusing three Kazakh men—a former Almaty mayor, his son, and a former chairman of BTA Bank—of absconding with billions of dollars and laundering the money.

The defendants—Viktor and Ilyas Khrapunov, and Mukhtar Ablyazov, respectively—deny the allegations and claim the charges are politically motivated.

That’s not the view of Matthew L. Schwartz, a former federal prosecutor, now in private practice at the prestigious law firm of Boies Schiller Flexner, who represents the city of Almaty and the bank. “The international financial fraud perpetrated by Ablyazov, Viktor and Ilyas Khrapunov, and their associates is as large and far-flung as they come,” Schwartz says. “It involves billions of dollars and has touched at least two dozen different countries—from Kazakhstan, Russia, and Ukraine to the United States, England, and France—and just about everyplace else.”

Schwartz adds: “We’ll follow the money stolen by these fugitives wherever they may try to hide it.” (A Switzerland-based spokesperson for the family welcomed questions, but declined to respond to any.)

Needless to say, the saga—a saga within a saga—is very complicated. A declaration in the Khrapunov case is by Nicolas Bourg, who happens to be the same Swiss financier who accused Sater and Ridloff of stealing the $43 million from the Ohio mall deal. In the declaration, he says that he was president of a real estate fund (named Swiss Development Group, or SDG) that was controlled by the Khrapunov family “and used to conceal the movement and investment of his family’s money.”


Trump SoHo Hotel (Google Streetview)
Time out. Where does Trump fit into all this? In October, the Financial Times revealed that three Trump Soho condos in Manhattan were bought in 2013 with $3.1 million that came from the alleged Khrapunov laundering caper. Trump Soho was 18% owned by Trump at the time. There is no evidence that Trump was involved or knowledgeable about the Khrapunovs. But he seems to have benefitted.

In addition, bank statements submitted by City of Almaty lawyers indicate that the ultimate beneficiary of the companies that bought the condos was Elvira Kudryashova—the California-based daughter of Viktor Khrapunov. The FT reported that correspondence and company documents seen by the newspaper showed that Sater and Ridloff worked closely with Kudryashova in 2012.

“They agreed to serve as directors of a company through which she would pour $3 million into a business venture as part of her efforts to secure a U.S. investor visa,” wrote the newspaper.

Sater and Ridloff, my reporting shows, ran the U.S. arm of the Khrapunov’s SDG entity at the time. Another connection is in the Linked-In bio of Ridloff’s, where he refers to himself as the former vice president of SDG-Investment Fund.

Bourg, the Swiss financier alleging fraud in the Ohio mall sale, maintains in his declaration that a shell entity he created in Luxembourg—Triadou—was an investment vehicle wholly-owned and controlled by SDG. Bourg states that Triadou was also the entity used to buy the Ohio shopping mall.

An exhibit with the declaration from Swiss financier Bourg includes emails to Felix Sater and others in 2014 with “swift code” details for an account at a now-defunct rogue bank that was headquartered in Dubai. Swift codes are used for international money transfers. In 2015, the bank FBME, formerly Federal Bank of the Middle East, was banned from operating in the U.S. due to money laundering and terror financing allegations. The email to Sater cites an entity called Telford International, which was allegedly used to move the money to FBME.

And—closing the circle—Telford was used to fund Triadou, the entity that bought and sold the Ohio mall, according to Bourg.

DCReport.org has obtained an audio recording in which three of Bayrock’s top four executives can be heard discussing coal and oil projects involving Bayrock and Sater, in which the name “Khrapunov” and “his son” are mentioned. The recording was made in Bayrock’s offices in the Trump Tower in 2008. In all likelihood, the references are to Viktor Khrapunov and his son Ilyas.

The recording was made just three months before Viktor reportedly fled Kazakhstan as a fugitive. Ilyas is also accused by Kazakh authorities of money laundering and is a fugitive. Excerpts from the audio are here, and emails penned by Sater in 2007 from Kazakhstan also talk about a coal deal he had just closed—three days after arriving in Kazakhstan without a visa. Whether the emails are referring specifically to a Khrapunov deal is unknown.

The Russian-born Sater spent a year in prison in 1993 after pleading guilty to assaulting a man with a broken glass during an argument with in a bar. (The victim required more than 100 facial stitches.) Next, he pled guilty in 1998 to racketeering. Specifically, he helped run a huge pump-and-dump stock fraud with members and associates from four of New York’s five Italian mafia families—including the brother-in-law of Salvatore “Sammy the Bull” Gravano, the Mafia hitman turned Gotti-informer.

In a press release two years later that cited Sater, New York’s then-police commissioner dubbed the case “Goodfellas meets Boiler Room”—a reference to both the classic film and to cold-calling operations where salespeople often peddle fraudulent securities. This time around, Sater avoided prison by becoming a government cooperator for more than a decade, ratting out mobsters.
https://www.dcreport.org/2017/05/12/the ... questions/

Uncovering More Trump Ties To Mobsters And Shadowy Oligarchs
A Trump Business Partner Threatens to Reveal a Vast Network of Murky Relationships

By David Cay Johnston, DCReport Founder and Editor

Threats by a longtime business partner and “senior adviser” to Donald Trump to spill the beans about the president’s connections to a Russian oligarch have opened the door into a vast network of murky relationships involving the president, our latest exclusive report shows.


Richard Behar
Richard Behar, a veteran investigative reporter and now Forbes magazine’s contributing editor of investigations, pursued facts in a little-noticed report last month in The Wall Street Journal. The Journal told of a threat by longtime Trump associate Felix Sater, a twice-convicted felon, to expose negative information about Kazakhstan-born oligarch Tevfik Arif and his “past relationship with President Trump and the Republic of Kazakhstan.”

Arif and others have called the Journal report nothing to our exclusive report except “unsubstantiated falsehoods

President Trump claims reports of Russian connections are “fake news.” But his firing Tuesday of FBI Director James Comey shows otherwise.


Trump, Tevik Arif and Felix Sater (NPO screen shot)
Behar dug through court filings, internal emails, and other documents from Cincinnati to Almaty, the largest city in Kazakhstan, for our report.

Behar found a vast and murky network of Russian oligarchs, massive money laundering allegations, a dispute over the sale of an Ohio shopping center and more.

This is not a simple story. But Behar’s narrative allows you to peel back a few of the layers of documentation in the public record of the threats, the connections, the contracts and understand the questions that must be answered.

As with our earlier report by Jim Henry, our investigative economics editor, exposing the many deep ties between Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross and Russian oligarchs, money laundering and corrupt banking, this is not a smoking gun.

However, Behar’s DCReport exclusive is a roadmap for Congressional and FBI investigators as well as other journalists. It advances what we expect time will show is the most important story in the history of the United States, the story of how Moscow and Russian money may have helped put Vladimir Putin’s favored candidate in the White House.
https://www.dcreport.org/2017/05/12/unc ... oligarchs/

Russian elites invested nearly $100 million in Trump buildings
Reuters
Nathan Layne, Ned Parker, Svetlana Reiter, Stephen Grey and Ryan McNeill, Reuters
Mar. 17, 2017, 10:35 PM 11,194

MIAMI/MOSCOW – During the 2016 presidential campaign, Donald J. Trump downplayed his business ties with Russia. And since taking office as president, he has been even more emphatic.

“I can tell you, speaking for myself, I own nothing in Russia,” President Trump said at a news conference last month. “I have no loans in Russia. I don’t have any deals in Russia.”

But in the United States, members of the Russian elite have invested in Trump buildings.

A Reuters review has found that at least 63 individuals with Russian passports or addresses have bought at least $98.4 million worth of property in seven Trump-branded luxury towers in southern Florida, according to public documents, interviews and corporate records.

The buyers include politically connected businessmen, such as a former executive in a Moscow-based state-run construction firm that works on military and intelligence facilities, the founder of a St. Petersburg investment bank and the co-founder of a conglomerate with interests in banking, property and electronics.

People from the second and third tiers of Russian power have invested in the Trump buildings as well. One recently posted a photo of himself with the leader of a Russian motorcycle gang that was sanctioned by the United States for its alleged role in Moscow’s seizure of Crimea.

The Reuters review of investors from Russia in Trump’s Florida condominium buildings found no suggestion of wrongdoing by President Trump or his real estate organization. And none of the buyers appear to be from Putin’s inner circle.

The White House referred questions from Reuters to the Trump Organization, whose chief legal officer said the scrutiny of President Trump’s business ties with Russia was misplaced.

“I can say definitively that this is an overblown story that is media-created,” Alan Garten said in an interview. “I’ve been around this company and know the company’s dealings.”

The tally of investors from Russia may be conservative. The analysis found that at least 703 – or about one-third – of the owners of the 2044 units in the seven Trump buildings are limited liability companies, or LLCs, which have the ability to hide the identity of a property’s true owner. And the nationality of many buyers could not be determined. Russian-Americans who did not use a Russian address or passport in their purchases were not included in the tally.

The review focused on Florida because the state has a large concentration of Trump-branded buildings, and determining the ownership of properties is easier there than in some other states. The resort town of Sunny Isles Beach, site of six of the seven Trump-branded Florida residential towers, stands out in another way: The zip code that includes the Sunny Isles buildings has an estimated 1,200 Russian-born residents, among the most in the country, U.S. Census data show.

The Trump organization advertises all seven Florida buildings on its website as it pursues similar branding deals around the world. Exactly how much income Trump has earned from the buildings is unclear.

Six of the seven properties were the product of an agreement the New York property magnate struck in 2001 with father-and-son American developers Michael and Gil Dezer. The six buildings operated by the Dezers in Sunny Isles would bear Trump’s name under a licensing agreement.

gil dezer
FLORIDA DEVELOPER: Gil Dezer teamed up with Donald Trump to develop six buildings in Sunny Isles Beach.REUTERS/Joe Skipper

In an interview, Gil Dezer said the project generated $2 billion in initial sales, from which Trump took a commission. Dezer declined to say how large a commission, citing confidentiality agreements. Garten, the Trump Organization’s chief legal officer, said Trump’s income was a mix of flat fees and percentages but declined to disclose them.

Edgardo Defortuna, a leading Miami developer, estimated that Trump likely made between one percent and four percent in initial sale commissions, based on the standard fees paid on similarly branded projects. If so, Trump stood to reap a total of $20 million to $80 million in Sunny Isles.

Trump receives no commission on subsequent sales in all seven of the Florida residential towers.

He continues to make money from one of the six Sunny Isles buildings, however, according to disclosure forms Trump filed in the 2016 U.S. presidential race. The disclosure form states that Trump received between $100,000 and $1 million from a business called Trump Marks Sunny Isles I LLC. Dezer said these funds came from the Trump International Beach Resort, a hotel and condominium complex.

Trump reported no income on his disclosure form from his seventh Florida property, the Trump Hollywood in the city of Hollywood. How much he has made over the years from that property’s 200 units is unclear. BH3, an investment fund which took over 180 units in a foreclosure sale, paid Trump a licensing fee of $25,000 for each unit, according to Daniel Lebensohn, a principal at the fund. If the remaining 20 units generated the same fee, Trump’s take would have been $5 million. Garten declined to confirm Trump’s commission.

Informed of the Reuters analysis of Trump’s Russian condo investors, two Democratic opponents of the president, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), renewed their calls for greater disclosure of his finances.

“While the president has denied having invested in Russia, he has said little or nothing about Russian investment in his businesses and properties in the United States or elsewhere,” said Rep. Adam Schiff, ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee. “This should concern all Americans and is yet another reason why his refusal to release his tax returns should be met with considerable skepticism and concern.”

Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC) and Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA), the Republican chairs of the Senate and House intelligence committees, declined to comment.

Schiff, as well as two U.S. intelligence officials and one former senior law enforcement official who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the Russian government sometimes directs funding at prominent individuals in the United States and Europe in hopes of improving their perception of Russia. Reuters found no evidence of such an effort with Trump. Garten, the Trump Organization’s chief legal officer, scoffed at the idea.

“This is politics at its worst,” he said.

FLORIDA Reuters
Russian elite
The glimpse inside the condominium dealings offers a look at how the wealthy in Putin’s Russia use foreign property to stow cash.

One wealthy Russian buyer was Alexander Yuzvik. In 2010, he and his wife bought unit 3901 of Trump Palace in Sunny Isles for $1.3 million, according to Florida property records. The three-bedroom apartment has 2,100 square feet and panoramic views, according to an online real estate listing.

From 2013 to 2016, Yuzvik was a senior executive at Spetstroi, a state-owned company that has carried out construction projects at military facilities.

The Spetstroi website says the firm was involved in construction projects at the Moscow training academy of the FSB, Russia’s primary civilian intelligence service and successor of the KGB. Spetstroi also did construction work in the administrative building of the general staff of the GRU, Russia’s military intelligence service.

In a statement sent to Reuters, Spetstroi said Yuzvik worked there until he stepped down in March 2016.

Employees of some state-owned Russian companies are typically required to disclose their assets and income. Yuzvik and his wife filed a declaration for 2013. In that declaration, which is publicly available, they list only assets inside Russia. The Florida condo isn’t included.

Yuzvik could not be reached for comment.

Andrey Truskov, another Trump condo owner, is a founder and co-owner of Absolute Group LLC, a holding company involved in wholesale electronics, banking and property development, with projects in Moscow, London and New York. The wholesale electronic business is the biggest in Russia, an Absolute representative told Reuters. The company does not disclose its financial results.

Truskov bought apartment 1102 in the Trump Hollywood building for $1.4 million in 2011. The three-bedroom, 3.5-bath unit is 3,100 square feet, according to online real estate listings.

In a telephone interview, Truskov confirmed that he purchased the Trump Hollywood unit. He said the Florida apartment was the same price as a three-room apartment outside Moscow at the time, and Florida was a nice place to have a property. He said the purchase was a personal decision that had no connection with his business.

Several wealthy buyers were from Moscow and St. Petersburg, the country’s two largest cities, according to interviews in Russia, Florida public records and the Bureau Van Dijk company database Orbis. Among them: Alexey Ustaev, the founder and president of St. Petersburg-based Viking Bank, one of the first private investment banks established in Russia after the fall of Communism.

trump royale
LUXURY APPEAL: From left, the Trump Royale, the Trump Palace and the Trump International Beach Resort in Sunny Isles Beach, Florida. REUTERS/Joe Skipper

A donor to orphanages and chess clubs in St. Petersburg, Ustaev has received awards from the Russian Sports Ministry and the St. Petersburg chamber of commerce for his banking and charitable work, according to his biography on the bank’s website.

In 2009, Ustaev bought unit 5006, a 3-bed, 3.5-bath apartment in the Trump Palace complex in Sunny Isles, for $1.2 million in cash, according to Florida public records. Two years later, Ustaev bought another apartment, a penthouse unit, this time in the nearby Trump Royale condominium development, for $5.2 million.

In an email reply to questions, Ustaev said he purchased the properties in the Trump buildings for private use, but declined to comment on his family’s U.S. business. “I am living in Russia, I am working in Russia, and going abroad only for business purposes or vacations,” he said.

Many of the Russian buyers were from the country’s provinces. One is Oleg Misevra, a wealthy coal magnate and former traffic police commander whose company’s main assets are in the Pacific island of Sakhalin in Russia’s Far East. He has caught Putin’s eye: At a 2010 regional meeting of Putin’s United Russia party, Putin praised Misevra’s work and held a lengthy question and answer session with him.

A corporation Misevra controls, Swiss Residence Aliance Inc, purchased Penthouse #1 in Trump Hollywood for $6.8 million in 2010. The six-bedroom duplex is 8,200 square feet and boasts 12-foot ceilings, according to real estate listings. Misevra did not respond to requests for comment.

Some of these Russian buyers appear to have done well in America. Another local politician, Vadim Valeryevich Gataullin, bought an apartment for $3.5 million in the Trump Hollywood. He did the deal through a company registered in Florida called VVG Real Estate Investments LLC. Five years later, Gataullin sold the apartment for $4.1 million to a Delaware-based limited liability company whose owner is not identified in state records.

In early 2012, Gataullin bought a second apartment in the same building, unit 2701, for $920,000, according to Florida records. Several months later, Gataullin sold the apartment for $1.1 million to a couple from Venezuela, property records show.

_S3A4732x
OVERSEAS INVESTMENT: The Neptune Hollywood Beach Hotel, run by Vadim Gataullin, a former Russian politician, in Hollywood, Florida. REUTERS/Joe Skipper

Gataullin is from the semi-autonomous Russian Republic of Bashkortostan, an oil-producing region in the foothills of the Ural Mountains. The son of a deputy regional prosecutor, he was a deputy in the regional parliament from 2013 until 2015.

As a member of the regional parliament, he was required to declare his income and assets under Russian federal law, according to a representative of the Bashkortostan regional parliament. A copy of the income declaration Gataullin filed for in 2013, when he was still owner of the second Trump unit, contains no mention of the apartment.

Gataullin did not respond to messages sent to his company in Bashkortostan.

More recently, Gataullin has been actively investing in the Miami area. His VVG Real Estate has spent at least $28 million on property in Broward County between 2012 and 2016. It also bought and sold six properties in Miami Dade County between 2015 and 2016 for a total profit of $238,400, property records show.

VVG is also the registered licensee on a small motel close to the beach in Hollywood. An employee there told Reuters that Gataullin “appears and disappears like a ghost” and was currently in Russia. A secretary at Gataullin’s holding company in Russia told Reuters on March 17 that he is not in Russia.

The American experience has been a mixed one for some of the Trump buyers. Among them is Pavel Uglanov, a businessman who served as a deputy minister for industry and energy in the regional government of Saratov, in central Russia, from 2010 to 2011.

Uglanov bought unit 3704 of Trump Hollywood in Hollywood, Florida, for $1.8 million in 2012. He sold the 3-bed, 3,395 square foot apartment for $2.9 million two years later.

Back in Russia, Uglanov made unsuccessful runs for the Saratov city assembly in 2006 and 2011, the second time as a member of Putin’s United Russia party. After leaving his deputy ministership in 2011, Uglanov told his then-wife, Anastasia, they were moving to Florida.

Anastasia said in an interview in her Miami apartment that her ex-husband never told her why. “I don’t know what goes on in a man’s head,” she said.

Uglanov Facebook
FRIENDS ON FACEBOOK: Pavel Uglanov, right, a Russian buyer in a Trump building, posted a picture of himself with Alexander Zaldostanov, the head of a Russian motorcycle gang sanctioned by the U.S. government for its role in Russia’s seizure of Crimea. Facebook
In Miami, Uglanov opened a gas station, called Niko Petroleum. When that business struggled, he sold it. He then started a charter boat business and a trucking firm. They struggled, too.

Uglanov did not have connections in the United States like he did in Russia and he didn’t understand how Americans do business, his ex-wife said.

Last August, Uglanov posted a photograph of himself on his Facebook page posing alongside Alexander Zaldostanov, leader of the “Night Wolves” biker gang. The Wolves, and Zaldostanov personally, were made subject to U.S. financial and travel restrictions. The U.S. government said gang members stormed a Ukrainian government naval base and a gas facility during Russia’s annexation of Crimea.

An aide to Zaldostanov did not respond to questions from Reuters. The group, in interviews in Russian media, has denied storming the base and the gas facility.

Zaldostanov has had multiple meetings with Putin, according to the Kremlin’s website. The Russian president awarded Zaldostanov the country’s “medal of honor” in 2013.

In a phone interview late last month, Uglanov confirmed the Trump apartment purchase. He said it was a personal matter and declined to answer questions. “Basically, my private life is not your business,” he said.

The rainmaker
For Dezer, Trump’s American partner in Sunny Isles, the six buildings have been a win for his family, the Trumps and Sunny Isles.

Trump visited the sites at least four times as the buildings – including a hotel – were constructed and promoted between 2001 and 2011, according to Dezer and former employees of Dezer’s company. Trump had approval over the look of the buildings and apartments, Dezer said.

“His people were very much involved in quality control and construction,” Dezer said. “They were down here once every quarter checking on us, the progress. They wanted to see we were making money.”

In 2008, when the housing market crashed, buyers defaulted on 900 Trump apartments, according to Dezer. Dezer said he worked hard over the coming years to pay back creditors. Until those 900 apartments were sold off, Trump did not earn any money for them, he added.

Foreign buyers bought into the Trump buildings as the developers dropped their prices after the crash, according to Dezer and local realtors. The majority of these buyers were from South America, with a smaller percentage of Russians and other former Soviet nationals.

Tanya Tsveyer, a realtor whose Russian clients have bought in the Trump buildings, described her customers as primarily business people, including several with investments across the United States and Russia.

“They bought in the Trump because they liked how the buildings fit their lifestyle,” she said, referring to the Russians.

_G0U6793x
BRAND BUILDING: From left, Trump Towers I, II and III in Sunny Isles Beach. REUTERS/Joe Skipper

By early 2011, the Trump buildings had started to turn a profit, according to Dezer. He invited Trump to a mortgage burning ceremony to celebrate Dezer’s paying off the project’s $475 million dollar mortgage. Dezer recalled Trump telling him that he planned to run for president.

At the party, Dezer, his father and Trump gleefully set flame to a stack of mortgage documents, applauded by a crowd of tenants from the Trump buildings and local business people. A video of the event shows Trump smiling, joking and working the crowd.

“I was with Michael Jackson when he had the hair burned with the Pepsi, and it was a disaster,” Trump told revelers, referring to the time the pop superstar’s hair caught fire during the 1984 filming of a Pepsi commercial. “I am sitting next to that friggin’ fire, and if my hair goes, I am out of business.”

Dezer and Trump got help selling the condos from Elena Baronoff, who immigrated from the Soviet Union in the 1980s. Baronoff, who grew up in Uzbekistan, had been active in Soviet cultural associations. In Miami, she soon began bringing Russian tour groups to Miami.

Gil Dezer’s father, Michael, recruited Baronoff to work alongside the Dezer corporation. She traveled to Moscow, St Petersburg, France and London to bring in Russian buyers, according to Dezer, selling apartments to them for between $1 million and $2 million. Baronoff was diagnosed with Leukemia in 2014 and died a year later.

“She was huge, she was big for them,” Dezer said, referring to Russian buyers. “No one has filled her shoes.
http://www.businessinsider.com/wealthy- ... ngs-2017-3

What You Need To Know About The Trump-Kremlin Connection
Dutch TV Expose Goes Where U.S. Networks Won’t; FBI Is Still on the Case

Axis of venal. Acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe told senators that the FBI is continuing the investigation into possible Russian meddling in the election “vigorously and completely.” Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) is stalling the nomination of Trump’s choice for Treasury undersecretary for terrorism and financial crimes, Sigal Mandelker, to try to get answers about financial ties between Russia and Trump associates.

Connecting the Dots from Trump Tower to Red Square


DCReport’s Jim Henry
A Dutch broadcaster has ventured where no American network will go—deep into the associations of Donald Trump with Russian government officials, oligarchs and gangsters.

The expose, “The Dubious Friends of Donald Trump: The Russians,” features DCReport’s Jim Henry, making the connections that Trump tries to deny. Henry is our senior editor for investigative economics and wrote our expose of connections between Russian oligarchs and Wilbur Ross, Trump’s Commerce Secretary.

Trump is so determined to halt federal investigations into his Russian ties that on May 9 he fired FBI Director James Comey. Earlier, Trump fired Sally Yates, the acting attorney general who warned the White House about retired General Michal Flynn’s conversations with Russians that made him vulnerable to blackmail, and Preet Bharara, the chief federal prosecutor in Manhattan, who was investigating Russian connections to Trump.

“The Dubious Friends of Donald Trump: The Russians,” is part one of the investigative television show ZEMBLA examination of Trump. To watch the episode, in English, featuring Henry click here.

You can find “The Dubious Friends of Donald Trump: King of Diamonds,” part two of the program, here.


Trumped tweeted on the Russian affair just this morning (May 12)
Kansas fraud. Trump has named Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach to co-chair a commission to investigate spurious claims of voter fraud. The ACLU, which has repeatedly sued over Kobach’s voter suppression policies, is asking what basis Trump has for making his voter fraud claims. “This commission is a fraud,” said former Missouri Secretary of State Jason Kander. “And Trump has chosen a fraud to be in charge of it.”

Paris delayed. Trump is going to hold off making a decision on the Paris agreement until June when he returns from a G7 meeting. One of Trump’s campaign pledges was to pull out of the Paris agreement on climate change. Trump also threatened to withdraw from the North American Free Trade Agreement. He now wants to renegotiate NAFTA. Flooding, such as that recently in the Midwest, is happening more often with rising global temperatures.

Offshore drilling. Trump’s Interior Department plans to start seismic testing in the Atlantic Ocean as it looks at permitting offshore drilling. Former President Barack Obama permanently banned new offshore gas and oil drilling in the Arctic and Atlantic oceans, but Trump signed an executive order that could expand offshore drilling. More than 120 cities and towns along the Atlantic coast oppose offshore drilling and/or seismic testing. The testing searches for oil and gas deposits below the ocean’s surface and uses loud airguns that can be heard up to 2,500 miles away and can harm whales, sea turtles and other marine life.
https://www.dcreport.org/2017/05/12/the ... onnection/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hdZ-RbL7pmw

[SonicG]

Just a few exceptions...

On Friday morning, the Associated Press reported on a March letter to Trump written by two of his attorneys, Sheri Dillon and William Nelson. In the letter, they declared that a review of the past 10 years of tax returns showed no income or business involvement with Russian sources, "with a few exceptions." The exceptions they delineated included a $95 million real estate deal, and they cited undefined real estate and product sales that could add up to substantial sums.
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/201 ... exceptions

Read a good take on the fact that Trump might be a bit clueless in all of this...As long as the cash flows in, he can put on his shit-eating grin and glad-handle for a few minutes...Of Republican obstructionism does seem to be a bit of a hurdle...