#FREE Penthouse, Part VI, Birds of a Feather
https://www.linkedin.com/in/benmiedema/
Trump -Russia, The Betrayal of America
Where DID all Mr. Trumps American-Russian contacts come from. This is like a rogues gallery of Americans working for and with Russians in Russia and the Ukraine. Did they volunteer to work on the Trump campaign? Were they recommended to Mr. Trump by one or more Russian oligarchs buddies? How did all this Russia Business get started?
The Donald J. Trump 2013 Miss Universe pageant.
Here is an article written by Lucian K. Truscott IV
Do you remember where you were and what you were doing on June 15, 2013? Neither do I. But you can bet your last dollar that Donald Trump does, because he was in Las Vegas at his Miss USA pageant meeting with Aras Agalarov and his Russian pop-star son Emin about bringing Trump’s Miss Universe Pageant to Moscow later that year. Aras Agalarov, sometimes called the “Trump of Russia,” is a billionaire oligarch close to Vladimir Putin who runs a vast real estate empire, including the Crocus City development in Moscow.
Agalarov agreed to pay Trump more than $10 million for the right to put on the pageant in Crocus City later that year, but his is a name we wouldn’t learn of for another four years, until July of 2017, when it would be revealed that the Agalarov family was part of the connective tissue behind the infamous meeting in Trump Tower in June of 2016 which put together the top managers of Trump’s presidential campaign — Donald Trump Jr., Paul Manafort, and Jared Kushner — with six Russians connected to the Russian government who had told Trump’s son that they had “dirt” on Hillary Clinton they wanted to share with the Trump campaign.
Donald Trump didn’t want us to know in June of 2016, and later in July of 2017 that his son, son-in-law, and campaign chairman were meeting with Russian nationals, which is why Trump and officials of the Trump campaign lied all the way through the campaign in 2016 that they had any contacts at all with Russians, and it’s why Trump himself lied after the Trump Tower meeting was revealed in 2017 when he personally dictated a statement released to the press describing the meeting as an inconsequential discussion about “adoption” rather than the discussion about Russian involvement in the Trump campaign that it was. (Also note that this meeting occurred in the Trump Organization conference room just below Trump’s personal corporate office.)
So let’s go back to that day in 2013 when Donald Trump first met with the man who would provide a conduit between the Russian government and Trump’s campaign. Let’s have a look at what Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin were up to before the 2016 presidential campaign was underway, long before Trump himself showed up on anyone’s radar as one of the Republicans who were beginning to think of running for president.
Trump quickly got busy stroking Agalarov’s friend, the president of Russia. A few days later, Trump tweeted, “Do you think Putin will be going to the Miss Universe Pageant in November in Moscow — if so, will he become my new best friend?”
The very next month, while Trump was making his plans to visit Moscow, something called the Internet Research Agency was incorporated in Russia with the Russian government. We had no way of knowing that this took place, of course. Nor did we know that in 2018, the Internet Research Agency and 12 of its employees would be indicted for infiltrating agents into the United States and setting up the internet infrastructure necessary to carry out what the indictment called “information warfare” in an attempt to interfere with the election of 2016 and defraud the United States government.
So while the Internet Research Agency was staffing up in its offices in St. Petersburg, Donald Trump was talking about the president of Russia. Twice during the month of October, Trump flattered Putin. He told CNN host Larry King, that Putin “has done a really good job of outsmarting our country,” and during an appearance on the David Letterman show, Trump called Putin “a tough guy . . . I met him once.”
The next month, Trump was in Moscow with the Miss Universe pageant. Trump had invited the Russian president to be his guest at the pageant, but the fact Putin passed didn’t slow down Trump, however. He gave an interview to MSNBC, and when asked if Putin would be attending, Trump said, “I do have a relationship (with Putin) and I can tell you that he’s very interested in what we’re doing here today . . . I do have a relationship with him . . . He’s done a very brilliant job in terms of what he represents and who he’s represented.”
Trump also received a phone call from Dmitry Peskov, Putin’s top aide and press spokesman. Mr. Peskov would next be heard from in December of 2018, when he responded to a question about Michael Cohen’s conviction for lying about Trump’s Moscow Tower project by admitting that there had been emails and phone calls between the Russian government and Trump’s representatives about Trump’s Moscow tower project, but denied that they had gone anywhere.
The project was still alive in 2013, however. Trump had multiple meetings about his plans for a Trump Tower while in Moscow. He met with Vladimir Kozhin, an intimate of Vladimir Putin and the head of “property management” for the Kremlin, responsible for all major development projects in Russia. He had dinner with Agalarov and Herman Gref, the chief executive of Sberbank PJSC, Russia’s biggest state-controlled bank. Trump met with one Alex Sapir, who was involved in the company that helped to develop the Trump Soho Hotel, along with Felix Sater, a convicted felon and FBI informant who will be testifying before the House Intelligence Committee next week. Before leaving Moscow, Trump tweeted his thanks to Aras Agalarov, telling him excitedly, “TRUMP-TOWER MOSCOW is next.”
@AgalarovAras I had a great weekend with you and your family. You have done a FANTASTIC job. TRUMP TOWER-MOSCOW is next. EMIN was WOW!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 11, 2013
(It is also believed that Aras Agalarov arranged and paid for three gorgeous Russian prostitutes to entertain Donald Trump in the Moscow Ritz-Carlton Hotel. —All western Russian Hotels, constructed by Russian contractors, are allegedly under surveillance by the FSB, Russia’s main state security agency, and successor to the KGB, which had microphones and hidden cameras in many, if not all of the rooms, including, it seems, the soiled presidential suite. The same suite used earlier by President Obama, when he and Michelle visited Moscow. Besides several hours of sex play with the toys the prostitutes brought with them, Donald Trump had two of the prostitutes pee on the bed where Barak and Michelle Obama slept. Hence the so-called “Pee Tapes.” —That means, if it indeed exists, Russian president Vladimir Putin is likely in possession of the tape. The Helsinki summit, In my opinion, was Donald Trump’s quivering acknowledgement that Putin had “compromat” a KGB technique in which Lt. Colonel Putin became an expert while recruiting foreign agents in East Germany. Simply, it means that an individual is compromised and can be influenced to providing information, or actions favorable to the Russian government.)
That same month, as part of a delegation in Moscow for the National Rifle Association, Republican political operative Paul Erickson made the acquaintance of Maria Butina, a young Russian woman who had been trying to get a visa to attend NRA conventions in the United States for two years. After meeting Erickson and spending time with the NRA’s delegation, Butina would be granted a visa to attend the next NRA meeting in April of 2014. Butina is currently cooling her heels in a Washington D.C. jail, having plead guilty to illegally acting as a Russian agent. She is said to be cooperating with Robert Mueller’s investigation of the connections between the Trump campaign and the Russian government.
Trump wasn’t finished bragging about his fabulous relationship with Putin and flattering the Russian president. Three months later, on February 10 during an interview on Fox and Friends, Trump said, “When I went to Russia with the Miss Universe pageant, he [Putin] contacted me and was so nice. And, you know, I mean the Russian people were so fantastic to us. I can say this. They are doing — they’re outsmarting us at many turns.”
They certainly were “outsmarting us.” As Trump made the rounds of talk shows flattering Putin, the Russian president was moving troops into position along the border with Ukraine and its Crimean peninsula. A few days after Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych was ousted from power and fled to Moscow under Russian protection, Putin sent Russian soldiers wearing unmarked uniforms across the Ukrainian border and into Crimea. Within a few days, they had taken control of Ukrainian territory along the border with Russia and the entirety of Crimea. It was the first incursion into another country and seizure of territory within Europe since World War II.
About two weeks later, on March 6, Trump was in Maryland for the annual CPAC convention. Trump told the crowd that he had recently returned from holding his Miss Universe pageant in Moscow. “They treated me so great,” Trump bragged to the gathering of conservative activists, which only a couple of decades previously would have reacted in horror to any Republican speaking that way about Russia. “Putin even sent me a present, a beautiful present,” Trump crowed. The crowd was impressed.
That same day, President Barack Obama signed an executive order imposing sanctions on Russia for its invasion of the Ukraine and seizure of Crimea. Among the top-level Russian officials specifically sanctioned was one Vladimir Kozhin, Putin’s head of “property management” for the Russian government. Three months previously, Kozhin had been meeting with Donald Trump in Moscow about his plans to build a Trump Tower in the Russian capital.
One month later, on April 12, in an interview on Fox News, Trump told Eric Boling that Putin “has done an amazing job of taking the mantle, and he’s taken it away from the president [Obama] and you look at what he’s doing — so smart. When you see the riots in a country [Crimea] because they’re hurting the Russians, okay, we’ll go and take it over . . . You have to give him a lot of credit.” When he was asked who was the better leader, Putin or Obama, Trump replied, “It’s not any contest.” Putin has “played Obama like a fiddle,” Trump told Boling.
So right after Putin invades a sovereign country and seizes a big piece of it by force, and right after President Obama takes a stand on behalf of the American people against Putin’s aggression, Trump is running around blabbing to anyone who will listen what a great leader Putin is, how he’s showing up the United States of America and making us look like fools. What in hell do you think was on Trump’s mind?
If I were to take a big, wild guess, I’d say it was running for president. Back in Moscow, Trump’s BFF was staying busy. Apparently on Putin’s orders, the Internet Research Agency had formed what it called the “Translator Project,” which was tasked with interfering and disrupting the U.S. political system. By July, more than 80 employees would be assigned to the project and two Russians would be on their way to the United States traveling with visas obtained under false pretenses. They would steal American identities, establish fake Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram accounts, and begin spending tens of thousands of dollars on behalf of Republican candidates in the 2014 midterm elections and eventually Donald Trump when he began running for president a year later.
Twelve Russians working for the Internet Research Agency and Yevgeny Prigozhin would be indicted for interfering with the presidential election of 2016 and defrauding the U.S. government. Prigozhin was charged with financing the Internet Research Agency. In Moscow, he is known as “Putin’s chef,” a reference to restaurants he owns and dinners he has given for the Russian president. Prigozhin is among those under sanctions imposed by President Obama in retaliation for the annexation of Crimea, ordered by Trump’s good friend, Vladimir Putin.
In 2013 and 2014, we didn’t know any of this. But one man did: Putin. And he had his eye on the man who was running around the United States singing his praises: Donald Trump.
Lucian K. Truscott IV, He can be followed on Facebook at The Rabbit Hole and on Twitter @LucianKTruscott.
More Trump-Russian contacts.
In 2016, Michael Caputo had offices of his company Michael Caputo Public Relations located in East Aurora, New York. He additionally had workers in his employ located both in Miami Beach, Florida and Moscow, Russia. During the 2016 New York Republican primary, Caputo became a political adviser to Trump in order to help him win the primary in New York state. Caputo resigned from the Trump campaign shortly after Corey Lewandowski was replaced as campaign manager by Paul Manafort. He had tweeted his support of Lewandowski leaving, and in his resignation letter to Manafort said he regretted the statement on Twitter. He was a senior adviser to Trump's political efforts November 2015 to June 2016. After leaving, Caputo later maintained contacts with associates in the Trump Administration.
Due to his time working on the Trump campaign and the fact that he previously worked for politicians in Russia, Caputo was contacted by the United States House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence on May 9, 2017, as part of their investigation into the Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. The House Intelligence Committee requested Caputo come in and be interviewed voluntarily and submit to the Committee relevant documents associated with their investigation. During a March 20, 2017 hearing, Representative Jackie Speier questioned FBI Director James Comey about Caputo, and cited employment with Gazprom and history in the Ukaine. Caputo worked with the House Intelligence Committee in order to acquiesce to their queries. Posting to social media, Caputo denied ties to Russia while on the Trump campaign. Caputo told the House Intelligence Committee: "The only time the President and I talked about Russia was in 2013, when he simply asked me in passing what it was like to live there in the context of a dinner conversation.”
Caputo and Roger Stone met with Henry Greenberg, a Russian national who claimed to have damaging information about Hillary Clinton. Caputo later denied contact with Russian officials or having discussed Russia with Trump or with other campaign aides. Caputo stated it was not until prosecutors informed him that Greenberg was Russian that he learned the man he had spoken with in 2016 was not a US citizen. Caputo did not detect Greenberg’s Russian accent or did he speak with Greenberg in Russian?
Michael Flynn, a former Army lieutenant general, was uniquely attracted to the Trump campaign. A political conservative, with reformed integrity, he pled guilty to lying and supported the efforts of the FBI investigators.
In 2013, Flynn was permitted to fly to Moscow to speak to military officers from the G.R.U., Russia’s intelligence agency, the topic was about leadership development. Flynn believed that there were possibilities for common ground with Russia. However, Steven Hall, the C.I.A.’s chief of Russia operations at the time, was skeptical. “He wanted to build a relationship with his counterparts in the G.R.U.," Hall stated. This was quite naive since the Russians are just looking for better angles, advantages to get back at the US. Talking has never worked with the Russians, it’s almost always been manipulated and turned back against the USA.
A while later, upon returning to the US his Moscow trip, he hoped to invite several senior G.R.U. officers to the United States. Mr. Clapper, then the director of national intelligence, told him it was not a good idea. Russia had just annexed Crimea, and Russian special-forces were clashing with Ukrainian troops in and some rebel groups in the eastern Ukraine. (Remember, they also shot down a passenger plane.)
More to the point of his indictment. NBC reported that Mueller was to bring charges against Flynn and his son, Michael Flynn Jr., this was related to Flynn's political consulting work throughout the last months of 2016 — He also had ties to the Turkish government that led to illegal, non-registered lobbying.
In addition, it had not been reported previously, however, that Flynn had lied to federal agents about his conversations with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak. When Flynn admitted to lying to federal investigators about his contact with the Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak, he also admitted to lying to the Department of Justice about the work Flynn did with Bjjan Kian, a Turkish national in their consulting company.
Flynn was caught up with Bijan Kian, also known as Bijan Rafiekian, who was charged with working illegally for the Turkish government in the US. Flynn, Kian and another lobbying associate, the Istanbul-based businessman Kamil Ekim Alptekin, allegedly lobbied American politicians for the extradition of the Turkish cleric Fethullah Gulen, who lives in Pennsylvania.
When Flynn admitted to lying to federal investigators about his contact with the Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak as part of the special counsel probe into 2016 election interference, he also admitted to lying to the Department of Justice about the work he did with Kian in their consulting company. Flynn agreed to cooperate with Mueller's team and other prosecutors in December 2017.
Rick Gates, has been described by Mueller as Manafort’s partner and confidant, who helped him launder millions of dollars he collected while lobbying for a pro-Russia Ukrainian political party. Manafort met Gates when he was an intern for Manafort’s consulting firm, Black, Manafort, Stone and Kelly. Gates followed Manafort when he started a new firm, and the two men traveled the world together aiding foreign politicians, including Viktor Yanukovych, a pro Russian, pro Putin and Kremlin-backed former president of Ukraine.
Despite the bruising that Gates took from Manafort’s lawyer during Manfort’s first trial, he stuck to his story of how he helped Manafort by lying to his accountants and bookkeepers, used offshore accounts in Cyprus to move millions of dollars for him and fabricated several documents to deceive banks when Manafort was drowning in debt.
Yet curiously, Gates became the liaison between the campaign and the Republican National Committee. A firm that he and Manafort started was paid $70,000 by the RNC.
Paul Manafort is a fascinating figure. “Rascals are always sociable, more is the pity.” (Schopenhauer). He did campaign work for Ronald Reagan, Gerald Ford, Bob Dole and George H W Bush, but then he went abroad as a hired gun. In the 1980’s he championed the campaign of Ferdinand Marcos the Philippine dictator who stole a reported $10 billion dollars from his people. Manafort was paid only $1,000,000. Then he worked for Mobutu Sese Seko, the dictator in Somalia, who killed hundreds of dissenters.
He and Rick Gates, his partner, became a cog in the Russian intelligence wheel when his firm was hired as a political consultant by Viktor Yankovich. Incumbent President Yankovich, was a very pro Russian, anti-NATO, anti-US/West leaning political candidate for the office of Ukrainian President. At the same time that Manafort was teaching Yankovich how to give a speech, what to say, and how to stay on message, Manafort’s, self centered avarice came to be observed by Russian political interests.
Yankovich lost, and later fled to Russia. He was later found guilty of treason in the Ukraine, because he attempted to poison his main rival for the presidency.
Manafort’s other businesses with Rick Gates and Sam Patten were also about $25 million dollars in debt. He borrowed an estimated $10 million from Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska, a close ally of President Vladimir Putin and a key lieutenant in Putin’s oligarch loyalty system.
This was leverage that the Russians could use to induce Manafort to become a Russian asset, if not also Russian agent. Manafort was requested to return to the USA and encourage Donald Trump to hire him as a campaign manager. Then report in on occasion and perhaps advise the Russians where to concentrate their advertising: Michigan, Minnesota, Pennsylvania and Florida. All in the effort to defeat Hillary Clinton and make Donald Trump President. Trump could then perhaps lift the Magnitsky sanctions, weaken NATO and open the road to Kiev, the capital of the Ukraine and ancient capital of mother Russia. Oh, and then there is that Moscow Trump Tower.
Per The Guardian, Deripaska’s personal aide Konstantin Kilimnik (ex GRU and with intelligence connections) met with Manafort with Kilimnik in Madrid, Spain in January or February of 2017. They discussed Donald Trump’s poll numbers and most likely advise on campaign advertising strategies in Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Florida.
Under whose authority WAS Manafort SENT to Spain? WHOSE DIRECTION?
Mueller believes that not only did they discuss Donald Trump’s polling numbers, but also a strategy to relieve Deripaska and other Russian oligarchs of the Magnitsky sanctions. Later, Deripaska, who lives in London, was the only Russian oligarch to receive a sanctions reprieve by the Republican congress.
Deripaska and other oligarchs also control 12 companies the were indicted by Mueller for malicious cyber activities during the 2016 US elections. This sounds like a vast Russian effort to influence the US 2016 elections. What would be their ultimate payoff?
By even supporting Paul Manafort, is Donald Trump condoning treason? Why was Manafort, Carter Page and the others not vetted like every other political campaign advisor? His lack of ethics and integrity did not seem to bother Donald Trump, especially when he agreed to become his campaign manager pro bono. ONLY when Manafort drew negative media attention for his work in the Ukraine was he “fired”.
Where do the FREE Penthouse Papers lead us to at this point? We will talk about why Mr Trump is so friendly and cooperative with the Russians. —Money. The Laundromat is next.
#FREE Penthouse, Part VII, The Laundromat
https://www.linkedin.com/in/benmiedema/
Trump -Russia, The Betrayal of America
In 2016, Donald Trump Jr. famously told reporters that the Trump Organization did not have to worry about money. It could get all it needed from the Russians.
Russian oligarchs have legitimate business. But in a poor Russian economy, they needed support to get their businesses rolling. Enter the Russian mafia. Russian oligarchs, many with Russian mafia ties use their legitimate businesses to launder Russian mafia money. The leading example was Alexander Torshin, (see the Russians) who could use his position as Deputy Governor of the Bank of Russia to distribute millions Russian mafia rubles to western banks: Spanish banks, Deutsche Banks, New York banks etc. Those “dirty” rubles could be laundered into “cleaned” Euros and Dollars in a European or American bank and then use that money as to invest.
Yuri Milner worked at the Menatep Bank from 1995 to 1999 as both a General Director and the Deputy Chairman and Head of Investment Management there. While he certainly wasn’t the boss, Milner was, at least, upper management. The Menatep Bank was involved in a scheme by which the Russian mob’s boss of bosses, Semion Mogilevich laundered tens of billions of dollars through the Bank of New York.
Donald Trump sought to discredit a New York Times report that Deutsche Bank employees flagged concerns over transactions involving legal entities controlled by the president and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner.
The Times said the nature of the transactions was not clear and that the bank ultimately took no action. Some of the transactions involved money flowing back and forth with overseas entities or individuals, some in Russia.
Trump claimed he did not “need or want banks” and does not receive money from Russia.
Congress and New York state are investigating the relationship between Trump, his family and Deutsche Bank, and demanding documents related to any suspicious activity.
Trump has sued in court in an attempt to block House subpoenas for his financial records that were sent to Deutsche Bank, Capital One and the accounting firm Mazars.
The Times report said anti-money-laundering specialists at Deutsche Bank recommended in 2016 and 2017 that multiple transactions be reported to a federal financial-crimes watchdog.
Citing five current and former Deutsche Bank employees, the report said executives at the German-based bank, which has lent billions to Trump and Kushner companies, rejected the advice and the reports were never filed.
Deutsche Bank staff saw suspicious Trump and Kushner activity – report
Read on.
Deutsche Bank Bank was used to launder the money via its corresponding banking network – effectively allowing illegal Russian payments to be funnelled to the US, the European Union and Asia.
The bank (apparently) was entirely unaware of the scam until the Guardian and Organized Crime and Corruption Projest (OCCRP) broke the story in March 2017, the report says. The first it knew was an email from the Guardian and Germany’s Sueddeutsche Zeitung newspaper asking for comment.
“Only with this intelligence received is it now possible for Deutsche Bank to start global investigations,” it notes.
In the embarrassing aftermath, the bank asked two in-house financial crime investigators – Philippe Vollot and Hinrich Völcker – to find out what had gone wrong. Their nine-page presentation was shared last year with the audit committee of the bank’s supervisory board and is marked “strictly confidential”.
The pair identified numerous “high-risk entities”. They included 1,244 in the US, 329 in the UK and 950 in Germany. These entities were responsible for nearly 700,000 transactions, the report says, involving at least £62,000,000. in the UK, $47,000,000 in the US, and €55,000,000. in Germany.
As part of its investigation, Deutsche Bank sent 149 “suspicious activity reports” to the National Crime Agency in London. Similar disclosures of potential money-laundering transactions were made to authorities in the US and elsewhere – with 30 private and corporate Deutsche Bank clients reported. Some may have been “unknowingly used”, the report says.
Deutsche is also under scrutiny in Washington over its financial dealings with Donald Trump. On 15 April, Democrats from the House intelligence and financial services committees issued a subpoena , demanding the bank provide documents about its lending to the president.
Over two decades, Trump borrowed more than $2,000,000,000. from Deutsche. In 2008, he defaulted on a $45,000,000. loan repayment and sued the bank. Its private wealth division in New York subsequently loaned Trump a further $300,000,000. – a move that bemused insiders and which has yet to be fully explained. What did Donald Trump know about the origins of this money? Who does he owe?
In recent years, Deutsche Bank has had a series of bruising encounters with international regulators. Between 2011 and 2018, it paid $14.500,000,000. in fines, with exposure to dubious Russian money a regular theme.
In 2017, the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority imposed its largest fine – £163,000,000.— – after Deutsche carried out a $10,000,000,000 “mirror trade” scheme run out of its branch in Moscow. The New York Department of Financial Services (DFS) fined the bank $425,000,000. over the same case, in which roubles were converted into dollars via fake trades on behalf of VIP Russian clients.
Deutsche carried out an internal investigation into the “mirror trades” affair, “Project Square”. The leaked Global Laundromat report says there is “no systematic link” between the two Russian money-laundering schemes. However, it suggests some overlap. Two unnamed entities feature in both and 46 “mirror trade” entities “directly transacted” with 233 laundromat ones.
The leaked report says Deutsche Bank has cleaned up its act. It says it has stopped doing business with the two banks at the center of the Laundromat scandal – Moldova’s Moldindconbank and Latvia’s Trasta Komercbanka. Regulators in Latvia closed down Trasta in 2016 because of serial money-laundering violations.
Earlier, the New York Times obtained Trump Organization tax information which showed that Donald Trump's businesses LOST more than a BILLION DOLLARS during 1994 and 1995. Trump has refused to release more recent tax returns or to comply with House subpoenas for them. Six (6) bankruptcies and the Atlantic Casinos disaster left The Trump Organization without a single western lender.
Donald Trump, of course rejected and ridiculed the factual information in that story. In his Monday tweets, he claimed not to need banks as he “made a lot of money and buys everything for cash”.
Trump also stated the “fake media … always uses unnamed sources (because thier sources don’t even exist)”.
But one former Deutsche Bank employee, Tammy McFadden, who reviewed some of the transactions, spoke to the New York Times on the record. She said she was fired last year after raising concerns about the bank’s practices, the Times said.
McFadden said concerns she raised included contacts between Kushner Companies and Russian individuals in summer 2016. Deutsche Bank has been fined for laundering billions of dollars for Russians. Did Donald Trump know that he was borrowing Russian mafia money through Deutsche Bank?
In his report on Russian election interference released in redacted form last month, special counsel Robert Mueller did not find that Trump conspired with Moscow. But he did lay out extensive contacts between Trump aides and Russia.
On Monday, Trump tweeted: “The new big story is that Trump made a lot of money and buys everything for cash, he doesn’t need banks. But where did he get all of that cash? Could it be Russia? No, I built a great business and don’t need banks, but if I did they would be there.”
Trump also called the Times reporting “phony” and called Deutsche Bank “very good and highly professional”. Deutsche Bank denied the report but it contributed to shares falling to a record low. Shares in the German lender were down by 2.8%. The bank was recently forced to abandon merger plans with Commerzbank. It has also struggled to turn around its corporate and investment arms.
The Times said the transactions in question, some of which involved Trump’s now-defunct foundation, set off alerts in a computer system designed to detect illicit activity, according to the former bank employees.
Compliance staff members who reviewed the transactions prepared suspicious activity reports they believed should be sent to a unit of the US treasury that polices financial crimes, according to the newspaper.
A spokeswoman for the Trump Organization told Reuters “the story is absolute nonsense”.“We have no knowledge of any ‘flagged’ transactions with Deutsche Bank. In fact, we have no operating accounts with Deutsche Bank,” she said.
The newspaper said a Kushner Companies spokeswoman called any allegations of relationships involving money laundering “made up and "fake news."
Deutsche Bank says it has “reduced its footprint” across the post-Soviet region. It no longer has relationships with any banks in Moldova, Latvia, Estonia and Cyprus, the report says. All are favorite destinations for illicit Moscow money. The bank has scaled down its business activities in Russia and the Ukraine, it says.
The bank is under investigation for its role in Europe’s biggest banking scandal, involving Denmark’s Danske Bank. Danske laundered €200bn (£178bn) of Russian money via its branch in Estonia. Deutsche provided correspondent banking services via its US subsidiary.
Perhaps Donald J Trump and the Trump Organization feel they are now off the hook to the Russian mafia. This is why he has become bolder in his remarks about Russia. He still needs to repay the Deutsche Bank. However, the Deutche Bank has seemingly severed its ties with the Russians —-or have they? However, remember that most of The Trump Organization’s real estate holdings was bought with Russian money. There was the purchase of the $12.6 million Scottish estate and the $79.7 million for golf courses in the United Kingdom, not to mention the $16.2 million for the Northern Virginia Winery. All in cash. Some assets surely refinanced ---all by a bankrupt organization. Also, Donald J. Trump jr. is stating that they still have strong financial ties to the Russians.
Additional FREE Penthouse background.
Felix Sater had sensed a big opportunity. Sater spent nearly a decade working with the Trump Organization in search of deals in Russia and other former Soviet republics. He and his childhood friend, Michael Cohen—then a lawyer and dealmaker for the Trump Organization—had been working for more than a decade, on and off, to build a Trump Tower in Moscow. The New York real estate mogul had long wanted to see his name on a glitzy building in the Russian capital, but the Trump Tower in Moscow had not materialized.
Now, with Trump running for office, the timing seemed right to Sater, who felt he had the proper connections for the project. A Moscow native whose family had fled to Brooklyn in the 1970s, he had returned to Russia in the 1990s, where he had done business with a number of high-ranking former Soviet intelligence officers. “Our boy can become president of the USA and we can engineer it,” Sater had written in a November 2015 email. “I will get all of [Russian President Vladimir] Putin’s team to buy in on this.”
It didn’t turn out as planned. Yet almost immediately, allegations of collusion with Moscow has echoed ti the halls of Trump’s presidency. Russia had interfered in the election, with an intricate campaign of hacking, “fake news” and other forms of information warfare.
Sater later wrote that the Russian leader “only wants to deal with a pragmatic leader, and a successful business man is a good candidate for someone who knows how to deal.”
And, though Trump has denied that he has any business interests in Russia during his first months in his presidency, even as he was gearing up for the Republican presidential primary race, Cohen and Sater were still deep into previously undisclosed talks with Russian partners about constructing a Trump-branded hotel.
For Michael Cohen, it was the lucrative day in 2014 when he sold four Manhattan buildings for $32 million—three times what he’d paid for them less than three years before.
Layer on layer of corporate structure makes it hard for investigators, tax officials, or prying lawyers to figure out who owns what, the underlying source of money for specific transactions, whether taxes are being appropriately paid in a given jurisdiction, or who might be partners in what enterprises.
That’s where “Section 311” comes in.
In 2001, as part of the USA Patriot Act, the Treasury Department was given a new tool against money laundering, known as “Section 311,” after the relevant section of the law, to designate foreign financial institutions, jurisdictions, or entities as “of primary money laundering concern.”
A Section 311 designation was meant to help authorities highlight suspicious patterns of activity without having to prove any single transaction was illegal—it’s the rough equivalent for money laundering of the criminal RICO statute, the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, that allows prosecutors to take down entire mafia families, drug cartels, and street gangs without having to prove everyone involved knew about or participated in all the various individual crimes.
Globally, the International Monetary Fund believes that between 2 and 5 percent of the world’s gross domestic product is laundered money from illicit activity. “The number I normally use is the total is in the range of $4 trillion to $5 trillion, about the amount of the entire federal reserve.
That shockingly low level of enforcement helps explain how Manafort’s scheme—which Mueller’s team says involved more than $18 million, funneled through entities that included oriental rug shops just a few miles from the Treasury Department itself—ran undetected and not prosecuted for so long. Now Manafort is in maximum security at Ryker’s Island Prison.
Much if to all of Trump’s investment capital has come from Russia. The Russian oligarchs (mafia) deposited money in several banks including Deutche Bank for which they have been prosecuted and fined. For a Russian oligarch a real estate investments in the west is ideal for their surplus money. Donald Trump loves real estate, loves money, no matter how it is gotten.
One of the things that was made clear in Michael Cohen’s testimony to Congress was that Donald Trump has committed bank fraud. Just like his campaign manager, Paul Manafort, Trump provided banks with purposely incorrect information about his assets, debts, and total net worth. And yet, one of those banks—Deutsche Bank—gave Trump loans even after he had defaulted on previous loans to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars. It gave Trump loans even after Trump sued it. The question of why Deutsche Bank would give Trump a loan long after every other bank had turned its back is one of the factors that’s resulted in a subpoena for Trump’s loan applications—a subpoena Trump is now suing to block, by suing Deutsche Bank.
One of the things that Deutsche Bank got a peek at before cutting one of those giant checks to Trump was his tax returns. Two sources inform Bloomberg that for a 2012 application, Deutsche Bank asked for, and got, a look at the tax forms before agreeing to a loan for the Trump Organization.
How much of Trump’s tax returns are featured in the documents that Deutsche Bank retained from that application isn’t clear, but it seems likely that, no matter how hard Steven Mnuchin guards the door at the IRS, Deutsche Bank may still hand over critical portions of Trump’s taxes that will give Congress the insight into Trump’s finances it’s been seeking.
That helps to explain why Trump has filed suit to keep the bank from providing any financial information, just as he has also moved to block his accountants from turning over any information. Not only could the Deutsche Bank application show that Trump committed a crime for which Manafort has already been convicted and sentenced, it could reveal … whatever it is that Trump has been hiding in his taxes from day one.And for extra fun, there’s the issue of how Deutsche Bank got a chance to review Trump’s tax records: blame it on Ivanka.
How does money laundering work?
As of September 2018, Paul Manafort, who served at one time as President Trump's campaign chairman, has been found guilty on eight counts of tax and bank fraud. In a separate trial, he will be prosecuted for money laundering. The money laundering charges have to do with a scheme that follows a tried and true method for rinsing the dirt off your treasure. Manafort is alleged to have garnered millions from the former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych. Rather than declare these earnings to the IRS and turn over the taxes due, Manafort is said to have placed them in offshore accounts and then used them to buy expensive real estate in the U.S.
Once he owned the properties, prosecutors say he then used them as collateral to take out millions of dollars in loans from U.S. banks. Since the money was in the form of loans rather than income, he wasn't obliged to pay taxes on it. The old real estate bait-and-switch is a classic mode of cleaning up cash. Money laundering is an ancient felonious practice and Manafort is hardly the first.
Money laundering, at its simplest, is the act of making money that comes from Source A look like it comes from Source B. In practice, criminals are trying to disguise the origins of money obtained through illegal activities so it looks like it was obtained from legal sources. Otherwise, they can't use the money because it would connect them to the criminal activity, and law-enforcement officials would seize it.
Money laundering happens in almost every country in the world, and a single scheme typically involves transferring money through several countries in order to obscure its origins. In this article, we'll learn exactly what money laundering is and why it's necessary, who launders money and how they do it and what steps the authorities are taking to try to foil money-laundering operations.
The other thing sometimes called money laundering is when you have some big lump of cash that you'd rather not have people find out about. Sometimes it's an effort to keep the money from the tax man (literally the opposite of classic money laundering), other times the goal is to keep it from coming to the attention of someone else who might feel like they have some claim to the money — an ex-spouse, a creditor, the guy who owns the land where you found the bag of gold coins in the culvert.
In this kind of money laundering, the point is to make the money disappear. This is the sort of money laundering where you might make use of foreign banks, shell companies, and so on.
There are two parts to these strategies. First, you need to make the money disappear invested or at least deposited into a foreign asset or bank. Second, you need to make it reappear in some gradual fashion that doesn't bring it to the attention of whoever you're trying to hide it from. This could be in the form of loan payments or investment interest.
If you really want to be able to invest the money, get it overseas. If it's an amount that you can just carry with you, buy a vacation package to the Cayman Islands or visit your family roots in Europe and take a little side trip to Switzerland or Austria or Liechtenstein.
There are plenty of fancy, complex ways to get the money overseas, that mostly require an accomplice. The most basic is an invoice scam. Establish a business that imports or exports something. Meet with your customer or supplier and arrange with him to either over-pay or under-bill, and then to have your counterpart deposit (most of) the excess into your foreign bank account. An ongoing scheme is good, because the guy knows that the lucrative cash flow will stop if you find out the money isn't getting deposited as it should, but you can also work this as a one-shot deal if your counterpart can't be trusted.
Banks used to help their good customers get money discretely overseas, but nowadays there are a bunch of laws against such things, and bankers are particularly averse to going to jail for their customers. Expect them to refuse to get involved and to rat you out.
Capitalizing on laundered money.
If you've got a little the money overseas somewhere, bring it back in some way that makes it legit. The easiest would be to create an overseas company that then hires you to do something. You do whatever it is and send an invoice whenever you want some cash.
Another way to launder LARGE amounts of illegal cash is to establish several foreign bank accounts (perhaps even in Germany, Spain or the Cayman Islands) and deposit smaller portions in each account. Every country has different banking laws and tax law to abide by. However, if you reinvest this money in legitimate corporations, real estate, and owned charitable foundations, one can avoid paying much of these taxes and only pay on one’s profits.
Laws Involved.
There are lots of laws against money laundering as a general category and against specific techniques used in money laundering.
If your income is already illegal, breaking one more law may not expose you to much additional risk, but it might, and it might give the government a case that they can prove, rather than one they can't.
You're required to report cash or other bearer instruments (travelers checks, for example, but not gold coins or checks payable to a specific individual) that you carry into or out of the US. Similarly, banks are required to report large transactions (in the US, cash deposits over $10,000, and to keep records of smaller ones).
If you have a foreign bank account, you're required to report it on your taxes each year. Also, if your foreign investments make any income, you're required to pay taxes on it each year (not just when you bring the money back).
Every time you don't declare the income, don't pay the tax due, lie on a form, or fail to file a required form, you're committing a crime.
All these money laundering crimes have large fines and long prison sentences. I recommend against them. I also recommend against expecting anyone else to be willing to commit these crimes for you — expect that any accomplices are really either Federal agents, or else will call Federal agents at the first opportunity.
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#FREE Penthouse, Part VIII, The Trumpeter
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Trump -Russia, The Betrayal of America
The US Constitution was drafted by several men, but primarily by Thomas Jefferson. He was the most educated of the Framers and had studied the English Magna Carta, the English system of government with two houses, Plato’s Republic, Roman Government and other forms of popular rule. In doing so he realized that there needed to coexist three equal branches of government: The Executive (replacing an authoritarian ruler), Congress with two houses, The House of Representatives to represent the people and generate laws, and the Senate to represent the colonies or states (and its people) and the Judicial to carry out the laws enacted by Congress with the approval of the Executive branch. Congress has the power to override any vetos if necessary and question the integrity of the President. The Judiciary has the authority to question any enacted laws that are contrary to the best interest of the people.
This was a System of Checks and Balances. The Framers of the US Constitution considered these checks and balances absolutely necessary to protect the lives and freedoms of all the people of the United States of America. The US Congress was give the powers of impeachment. A legislative hammer to remove a sitting rogue president convicted of high crimes and misdemeanors contrary to the respect of the law and the governed. The House of Representatives would research and try the executive upon the facts and the Senate would Judge the facts as presented. This System of Checks and Balances was created to prevent actions that were not in line with the will of the people or the rule of law (represented primarily by the House of Representatives) or common sense governance of the country (represented by the Senate).
Even now there is a call, not for Impeachment, but for invocation of the 25 Amendment to declare the President mentally, emotionally or physically incompetent to carry out his duties as president by his cabinet. This won’t happen, but approximately 70% of the voting public are unhappy or disgusted with President Trump. The US budget deficit has quickly risen to over a trillion dollars, for the first time in history. Many farmers, including my wife’s family have lost their farm (640 acres in Iowa) because of Trump’s China Trade obsession. Trump is right in his assertions, but this is the wrong way to go about solving the China problems. We need to negotiate and work with China. Trump’s trade war only increases global tensions, weakens our economy and hastens a recession. Going it alone as the “Chosen One” is idiotic. One needs to build a global consensus, before China can realize that their behaviors are not part of the global norm.
We have a rogue President that prefers to be Chairman of the World, rather than a chief executive responsible to to constituents of the USA and global democracy.
Here’s something that shouldn’t have to be said: talking is not the same as openness. If someone is talking, but what they’re saying is not true, that’s not openness. It’s misdirection. It’s obstruction. It’s lying. It’s the exact opposite of openness. When the Times says that the reason Trump provides so many verifiable lies is that he “talks with reporters almost constantly,” that’s just another way of phrasing the old truism: How do you know Trump is lying? His lips are moving.
That is not an excuse.
Lying to the public, the press, and allies isn’t a strategy. It’s not a good thing. It’s a verifiable evil. It does harm to the nation in a thousand ways, not least of all in the damage it does to the ability of the news media to deliver the news. Because Trump is not just lying to the press; he’s also lying about the press. And any news organization that defends that action is assisting Trump in his efforts to disassemble the First Amendment.
Trump being “all over the map” is Trump being all over the map. Trump “lacking credibility” is Trump lacking credibility. Trump “contradicting himself” is Trump contradicting himself. And Trump lying is simply Trump lying. Doing any form of so-called analysis that looks for something deeper is a disservice to what the Times is supposed to be delivering: the truth.
At the end of the G-7, Trump tweeted that his “fellow world leaders” think that “the USA is doing so well and stronger than ever before,” but wonder why the American media is “rooting for it to fail.” That did not happen. No one said that. No world leader thinks that Trump has improved conditions for the United States. No world leader thinks that the American media is actively rooting for America to fail.
Her are the facts as they currently exist: According to the Mueller Report, Trump is facing ten (10) counts of possible obstruction. We have multiple felonies being investigated by the AG’s office in the Southern state of New York. Other lawsuits are pending, however, USAG Barr is trying to slow them down. However it is illegal to destroy evidence. Us Constitutional emoluments clause violations in the US and abroad are being investigated.
Impeachment has to be proven, therefore a thorough investigation by the House is warranted. Would it pass this senate? Not while Moscow Mitch McConnell, is in control and USAG Barr is currently practicing his own from of obstruction. And if there is a successful impeachment, would President Pence simply pardon the Trumpeter like President Ford did for Nixon?
There is one big difference. The Trumpeter came into power knowing with the goal of dismantling The ACA, the Iranian Nuclear weapons agreement and building a wall across our southern border with Mexico. He has been attempting to relate and deliver on his promises to his minority base. An increasingly small voting base that, like him is prejudiced and supports disinformation and interference with our elections from foreign adversaries. Trump has openly supported Vladimir Putin as the Russian army occupies Crimea, threatens the Eastern Ukraine and is massing in the border of Eastern Georgia (the country not the state).
Trump is looking for “dirt” on Hunter Biden, so he blackmails the Ukraine, denying them over $250 million in military aide unless he has that information. He has threatened to withdraw support from NATO. All of which supports Putin.
In 2006 Trump was flat broke. Trump’s credit worthiness was in the proverbial toilet for any possible US lending institution. Yet, the Deutsch Bank lent money to Trump (despite his six bankruptcies and total mismanagement of his Atlantic City casinos). And did a Russian oligarch cosign a Deutche Bank loans (millions, perhaps billions of Euros originally deposited by several Russian oligarchs as part of a money laundering scheme) totaling for $360 million so that Trump could acquire his hotels in Chicago, Washington DC and his Doral Golf Resort in Florida. (The most likely cosigner would be Trump's good buddy Aras Agalarov, CEO of the Crocus Development Group, the largest real estate developer in Russia and favorite of President Putin. If so, these loans were probably also approved by President Putin. This is how "Compromat works and how the Russian autocracy through its oligarchs works).
Other loans are on the books of Deutsche Bank for the financing of his Scotland and European properties. And cutting our Federal Government interest rates would personally benefit Trump and the Trump Organization in repaying these loans. The more Trump slams Chairman Powell wanting to decrease inflation and not lowering the US Fed interest rates the more he could save.
Is his cow-towing to Putin allowing Russia to militarily expand in Eastern Europe? Has our ego-centric president been compromised by Russian interests? Is Trump a willing asset to Putin? Aras Agalorov also produced the infamous “pee-tapes” do exist, which Putin has viewed.
Has Trump exceeded the Peter principle? Is his governing becoming more erratic? Can the US public support a president that is not only totally dishonest (now 12,000 lies), but also does not operate with domestic and international policies that do not benefit the USA or United States interests?
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#FREE Penthouse, Part IX, The Obstructionist.
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Trump -Russia, The Betrayal of AmericaWhy is it that President Trump throws up a Wall of Obstruction when ever a Russian connection is mentioned. President Trump, relying on his gut and President Putin’s denial in contrast to the expert researched and verified opinions of seventeen (17) different US government intelligence services stating the t Russian agencies interfered with the 2016 election? And to follow up he is welcoming the intelligence of any friendly or adversarial foreign agency, that will help his re-election in 2020?
Let us dive deeper and take a look at what Robert Mueller wrote in his report:
“Our investigation found multiple acts by the President that were capable of exerting undue influence over law enforcement investigations, including the Russian-interference and obstruction investigations,” Mueller wrote. “The incidents were often carried out through one-on-one meetings in which the President sought to use his official power outside of usual channels. These actions ranged from efforts to remove the Special Counsel and to reverse the effect of the Attorney General’s recusal; to the attempted use of official power to limit the scope of the investigation; to direct and indirect contacts with witnesses with the potential to influence their testimony.”
“the evidence does point to a range of other possible personal motives animating the President’s conduct. These include concerns that continued investigation would call into question the legitimacy of his election and potential uncertainty about whether certain events-such as advance notice of WikiLeaks’s release of hacked information or the June 9, 2016 meeting between senior campaign officials and Russians could be seen as criminal activity by the President, his campaign, or his family.”
Nor does the fact that many of the president’s acts occurred in public view — “including discouragement of cooperation with the government and suggestions of possible future pardons” — necessarily clear him, the report states.
During his press conference, AG Barr claimed that “the White House fully cooperated with the Special Counsel’s investigation, providing unfettered access to campaign and White House documents, directing senior aides to testify freely, and asserting no privilege claims.”
That’s contradicted in the report. Mueller notes that after Trump learned that his own conduct regarding obstruction was being investigated after appointment of the special counsel, “the President engaged in a second phase of conduct, involving public attacks on the investigation, non-public efforts to control it, and efforts in both public and private to encourage witnesses not to cooperate with the investigation.”
The president was also less than fully cooperative regarding Mueller’s interview requests, the report states. The special counsel’s office sought an interview with the president for “more than a year,” getting written responses in late November 2018. “[O]n more than 30 occasions” Trump said he “does not ‘recall’ or ‘remember’ or have an ‘independent recollection’” in response to questions, while other answers were “incomplete or imprecise,” the Mueller report says.
There are ten (10) areas of obstruction that needed further (House of Representatives) investigation according to the Mueller Report:
1. “Conduct involving FBI Director [James B.] Comey and Michael Flynn”
Flynn, the White House’s national security adviser, had lied about his interactions with the Russian ambassador during the transition period between Trump’s election and his inauguration. When Trump fired him, he said, “Now that we fired Flynn, the Russia thing is over.”
The report also confirms reporting about a request Trump made to Comey shortly thereafter: “I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go. He is a good guy. I hope you can let this go.”
Trump also directed deputy national security adviser K.T. McFarland to send an email denying that Trump had instructed Flynn to have such conversations. McFarland declined to do so, because she didn’t know whether it was true.
2. “The President’s reaction to the continuing Russia investigation”
Trump attempted to prevent Attorney General Jeff Sessions from recusing himself from the investigation before the special counsel was appointed. The president said he needed an attorney general who would protect him.
Trump also tried to get top intelligence officials and Comey to publicly distance Trump from the investigation. His outreach to Comey came despite guidance from then-White House counsel Donald McGahn not to get involved in internal Justice Department matters.
3. “The President’s termination of Comey”
The report indicates that the breaking point for Trump was when Comey testified to Congress that there was a Russia investigation but declined to elaborate or say whether anyone on the Trump campaign was a target — including whether he had ruled out Trump personally.
Trump quickly declared to Sessions: “This is terrible, Jeff. It’s all because you recused.” Then the next weekend, the report says that “the President stated that he wanted to remove Comey and had ideas for a letter that would be used to make the announcement.”
A memo was drafted explaining Comey’s firing, but one aide wrote at the time that the White House Counsel’s Office had decided that it should “[n]ot [see the] light of day” and that they should instead rely on justifications offered by Sessions and Rosenstein.
4. “The appointment of a Special Counsel and efforts to remove him”
Trump responded to the May 2017 appointment of Mueller as special counsel by saying he was “fucked" and that it was “the end of his presidency.” Trump insisted that Mueller had conflicts of interest but was told they were meritless and that they had already been a part of his consideration.
Three days after the media reported that Mueller was looking into potential obstruction, Trump called McGahn and told him to have Rosenstein publicly attack Mueller’s alleged conflicts and call for his removal. McGahn declined.
5. “Efforts to curtail the Special Counsel’s investigation”
The report says Trump, two days after the above event, also tried to get Sessions to attack the investigation:
On June 19, 2017, the President met one-on-one in the Oval Office with his former campaign manager Corey Lewandowski, a trusted advisor outside the government, and dictated a message for Lewandowski to deliver to Sessions. The message said that Sessions should publicly announce that, notwithstanding his recusal from the Russia investigation, the investigation was “very unfair” to the President, the President had done nothing wrong, and Sessions planned to meet with the Special Counsel and “let [him] move forward with investigating election meddling for future elections.” Lewandowski said he understood what the President wanted Sessions to do.
But Lewandowski dragged his feet. Eventually, when Trump followed up a month later, Lewandowski asked senior White House official Rick Dearborn to do it. “Dearborn was uncomfortable with the task and did not follow through,” the report says.
6. “Efforts to prevent public disclosure of evidence”
Mueller fills in the details of previous Washington Post reporting that Trump sought to mislead about the 2016 Trump Tower meeting involving Donald Trump Jr. and a Russian lawyer:
On several occasions, the President directed aides not to publicly disclose the emails setting up the June 9 meeting, suggesting that the emails would not leak and that the number of lawyers with access to them should be limited. Before the emails became public, the President edited a press statement for Trump Jr. by deleting a line that acknowledged that the meeting was with "an individual who [Trump Jr.] was told might have information helpful to the campaign and instead said only that the meeting was about adoptions of Russian children.
7. “Further efforts to have the Attorney General take control of the investigation”
Trump called Sessions at home in summer 2017 to ask him to un-recuse himself and take control of the Russia probe. Sessions declined. Trump asked Sessions in October 2017 to take another look at investigating Hillary Clinton. He also told him in December 2017 that if he un-recused, he would be a “hero.”
Trump told Sessions, “I’m not going to do anything or direct you to do anything, I just want to be treated fairly.”
8. “Efforts to have [White House counsel Don] McGahn deny that the President had ordered him to have the Special Counsel removed”
This episode was originally reported by the New York Times in March 2018, but Mueller fills in the details:
On January 26, 2018, the President’s personal counsel called McGahn’s attorney and said that the President wanted McGahn to put out a statement denying that he had been asked to fire the Special Counsel and that he had threatened to quit in protest. McGahn’s attorney spoke with McGahn about that request and then called the President’s personal counsel to relay that McGahn would not make a statement. McGahn’s attorney informed the President’s personal counsel that the Times story was accurate in reporting that the President wanted the Special Counsel removed. Accordingly, McGahn’s attorney said, although the article was inaccurate in some other respects, McGahn could not comply with the President’s request to dispute the story. [White House spokeswoman Hope] Hicks recalled relaying to the President that one of his attorneys had spoken to McGahn’s attorney about the issue.
9. “Conduct toward [Michael] Flynn, [Paul] Manafort, (Redacted)"
Flynn pleaded guilty to lying and cut a deal with Mueller to cooperate — and accordingly had to withdraw from his joint defense agreement with Trump’s legal team. But Trump’s personal lawyer reached out to Flynn’s team and assured them that Trump still had warm feelings for Flynn. The lawyer also asked for a heads-up in case Flynn had any “information that implicates that President.” When Flynn’s lawyer said such information couldn’t be shared, Trump’s lawyer said he would relay the message of “hostility” to Trump.
The report also noted Trump’s continued praise for former campaign chairman Manafort during his trials and his leaving open of the possibility of a pardon. Manafort also agreed to cooperate before he voided his deal by lying to investigators.
10. “Conduct involving Michael Cohen”
While Michael Cohen has said Trump didn’t directly tell him to lie to Congress about the Trump Tower Moscow effort lingering into the 2016 campaign, Cohen accuses Trump’s lawyers of guiding his testimony. And one key figure declined to dispute that.
“While preparing for his congressional testimony, Cohen had extensive discussions with the President’s personal counsel, who, according to Cohen, said that Cohen should ‘stay on message’ and not contradict the President.” When Cohen didn’t contradict Trump (by lying), he earned praise:
Cohen recalled that the President’s personal counsel said 'his client’ appreciated Cohen, that Cohen should stay on message and not contradict the President, that there was no need to muddy the water, and that it was time to move on. Cohen said he agreed because it was what he was expected to do. After Cohen later pleaded guilty to making false statements to Congress about the Trump Tower Moscow project, this Office sought to speak with the President’s personal counsel about these conversations with Cohen, but counsel declined, citing potential privilege concerns.
There is an obvious huge cover-up. This cover up involves all branches of the US government President Trump, The GOP Senate, and AG Barr. Also involved is the Trump family, President Putin, Russian oligarchs and a number of Trump campaign advisors.
WE CAN NOT IMPEACH AS LONG AS THE US SENATE IS REPUBLICAN CONTROLLED, BUT THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES MUST INVESTIGATE ALL IMPEACHABLE OFFENSES OF THIS SITTING PRESIDENT. THEN AFTER THE 2020 ELECTION WE MUST EITHER FOLLOW THROUGH ON THE IMPEACHMENT FOR ENDANGERING THE PEOPLE OF THE UNITED STATES OR PROSECUTE HIM FOR HIS MANY CRIMES.
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#FREE Penthouse, Part X, To Impeach or Imprison
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Trump -Russia, The Betrayal of AmericaTaking a broad look at the entire scope of Trump behavior and crimes against American democracy, I agree with Nancy Pelosi. The Republicans still control the American Senate, a conviction there would have to demonstrate an irrefutable act of treason.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with the House Rules, Justice and Oversight committee investigations. There needs to be a check on the Executive Branch. Without the checks and balances provided for the American people, this country could fall to a dictatorship.
Nancy Pelosi has her eye on the prize to send a Democrat to the White House in 2020. Following Clinton’s impeachment hearings, American voters were discouraged, disillusioned, disgusted, but the majority were not angry. The result was a backlash against the Republican accusers. The same kind of backlash could happen now against the Democrats with the proper spin, “fake news,” and a Senate Republican majority.
Why would we want to impeach Donald Trump? Perhaps to protect the American Republic and the symbol of democracy for which it stands? The Mueller report lays out a thoroughly disgusting pageant of misadventures by the Russians on Trump’s behalf. This includes sponsoring a Florida Trump rally which depicted an actress hired to portray Hillary Clinton on a parade float in prison garb and behind bars. Perhaps there was no direct coordination with the RNC or the Trump campaign, but it does appear that all were sleeping I’m the same bed. Was there a Russian conspiracy —-Yes. Was Donald Trump an unwilling victim of this conspiracy —-NO.
I believe that this is what Donald Trump really wants. To be unfettered as a the most powerful man on earth. However, it is better to wait until after the election. I believe that he will lose the election, despite his unconscious, id-driven base. The American people will elect a Democratic majority in the House and several Republicans (including Mitch McDonnell) will lose seats in the Senate, sending a powerful message to the RNC.
The road is then clear, not for impeachment, but for indictments of several state and federal crimes for Donald Trump. Financial crimes such as money laundering, possible tax fraud, false income statements for the Trump Organization and his personal income, embezzlement for the Trump Foundation, Trump University and emoluments violations. I believe that he will be convicted (and although Donald Trump could be pardoned for federal crimes by the new president, he could not be pardoned for crimes committed and convicted of in the State of New York.
So, if elected in 2020 he should be impeached, if not elected he should be joining his, campaign manager, Bird of a Feather, Paul Manafort in solitary confinement on Ryker’s Island prison. Could Donald Trump skip the country? Yes, but all his properties and family are vulnerable. I am not sure which country would want to take Donald Trump as a disgraced global leader. —Perhaps Russia or Saudi Arabia.
In the spirit of all cognizant beings, democracy and law abiding citizens, once you don’t speak up against lawlessness, lawlessness is permitted. So if you don’t say anything about the president taking a $500 million loan from the Chinese government – now you’re allowed to take $500 million from a foreign government. That’s something that’s specifically prohibited by the Constitution.
Trump’s favorite son-in-law [Jared Kushner] has been lent over $300 million from a Chinese government bank for a condo project near Miami and is getting another $500 million loan from the government of Qatar. And what is he cooking up with Saudi Arabia, and the Crown Prince MSB? (Read: Crises in the Middle East).
The same Crown Prince, who recently had ordered the murder and dismemberment of journalist Jamal Khasoggi for speaking out against the Saudi monarchy? Yet coincidentally, on the same day Mike Pompeo, our Secretary of State, visited Crown Prince MSB in Riyadh, to question him about the death of Mr. Khasoggi, the government of Saudi Arabia transferred $100,000,000.00 to some fund in support the stabilization of Syria. Really!
We’ve moved past that. According to the Washington Post, Trump’s lied approximately 12,000 times since being becoming a “The leader of the free world.” So we’ve moved past lying. I would have thought 500 million bucks from a foreign government, but you’re telling me you don’t see that as a smoking gun. Donald Trump has a one-dimensional comprehension of reality. He and his administration has demonstrated about as much integrity as a loose stool. He is also corrupts many of those supporters in his sphere of influence to also obfuscate the truth.
Lying is what Donald Trump does. He can’t make it through a sentence without a genuine whopper. And in his ABC interview with George Stephanopoulis, Thursday, Trump admitted straight up that that’s why he didn’t want to answer questions for Robert Mueller.
"If you answer these questions to me now," asked host George Stephanopoulos, "why not answer them to Robert Mueller under oath?"
"Because they were looking to get us for lies or slight misstatements," replied Trump. "I looked at what happened to people, and it was very unfair. Very, very unfair. Very unfair."
Trump could not have laid it out more neatly: It’s just permissable to lie to the public and the press because … what are they going to do about it? But lying under oath has consequences. So he won’t speak under oath. After all, what’s his other option? Tell the truth? Please. This is now also the modern Machiavellian attitude of the Republican party.
It’s okay to lie to people, because there are no consequences. It’s okay to take information from foreign governments, because there are no consequences. It’s all okay, so long as there are no morals to worry about.
Throughout the last two years—and throughout his life—Trump has called parts of the law “unfair” and treated them with disdain. That’s especially true of laws like those against discrimination in housing, or those that mandate safety regulations for buildings or fair labor practices, or those that require that people pay taxes. Basically, anything that affects Trump’s bottom line or takes a minute of his time is suspect. In just the past week, Trump hasn’t just declared that he has no problem accepting a thing of value from a foreign government if it helps him remain in power; he’s also made it clear that has no intention of enforcing the Hatch Act or cooperating with congressional oversight.
Laws are for other people. Little people. Robert Mueller’s investigators may have declared that they didn’t have sufficient evidence to “charge a broad conspiracy” with Russia in 2016. Trump is making it clear that it doesn’t take a broad conspiracy, because his door is always open to direct influence. What will Christopher Wray do now?
Welcoming and encouraging Russian stolen DNC and Hillary Clinton emails through Wikileaks is not not illegal in itself, but quite abhorrent to the American political system. Allowing a foreign adversarial agent to interfere with a US election is quite illegal. Willingness to accept this information as a favor for his re-election is abominable and impeachable.
Robert Mueller in the Special Council report on Russian election interference, compared and called Russian actions as a massive assault on US democracy, weaponizing the internet to influence the 2016 presidential elections against Hillary Clinton, for the benefit of Donald Trump. Yet Donald Trump denied the findings of seventeen (17) intelligence agencies of that fact.
I believe that Donald Trump is a highly manipulative narcissist focused on his own aggrandizement with no moral or ethical compass. He is focused on looking good for his base (one-dimensional intellect) supporters and building his own financial empire. Trump. Will do what ever it takes to win for himself. All else is periphery, The war in Yemen supported by over $62 Billion in US arms sales to Saudi Arabia, the imprisonment of asylum seekers at our southern border, trade war with China bankrupting our soybean farmers, coal emissions killing our populations in West Virginia and Kentucky, to the harvesting of minerals and oil in our national parks. Would NATO be still be supported by the USA?
Trump is open to illegally receiving oppositional intelligence from adversarial foreign governments for his 2020 presidential campaign, but he is too naive to realize that he may be jeopardizing American or West European security. What compromises is he going to make with world freedom to the Communist Russian, Chinese or North Korean regimes? Would this be TREASON? Absolutely.
This is an opinion piece. In my opinion Donald Trump has not only corrupted the executive branch of the government, but most of the Republican Party and now also the Department of Justice. To save the USA, out democratic republic, we must have an impeachment inquiry brought to the House of Representatives. We need to investigate Donald Trump’s political, financial, and international entanglements and compromises.
Then after the 2020 election we must impeach if he is reelected or if defeated as I hope he should be, he should be indicted, tried and imprisoned (if found guilty, and I believe he is as guilty as he is the most corrupt president to ever set foot in the oval office).
Donald J. Trump has groped the American voter, and is tearing down the future well being for all of America for which it stands and all Americans.
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