Tag Archives: Russian oligarchs

Does Deutsch Bank Have The Goods On Trump?

A journalist friend tells me that some early “newspapers”– more accurately described as pamphlets compiled from recently circulated broadsides–used to have a tag line beneath their mastheads. It read “Interesting, if true.”

Lawrence O’Donnell recently supplied us with a humdinger of “interesting if true” news.

According to Raw Story–and subsequently, several other news outlets, including Salon–Deutsche Bank may have the evidence the Mueller investigation was unable to find.

Fast-tracked impeachment hearings will occur this fall if the bombshell report is true that President Donald Trump had loans with Deutsche Bank co-signed by Russian oligarchs close to Vladimir Putin.

 “The source close to Deutsche Bank says that the co-signers of Donald Trump’s Deutsche Bank loans are Russian billionaires close to Vladimir Putin,” MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell reported Tuesday.

If true, this would explain why Trump was so agitated (I know, he’s always agitated, but this was notable even for him) when Congress issued a subpoena to the bank for records of their loans to Trump and the Trump organization. It would explain the lawsuit he filed in an effort to quash that subpoena.

It would also explain his slavish attention to Putin’s interests, most recently highlighted by his behavior at the recent G7 meeting. According to several reports, Trump cornered the other heads of state and aggressively lobbied for Russia’s re-admittance to the group.

Finally, it would explain why Deutsche Bank continued to make loans to Trump after American banks would no longer do so. After several of Trump’s business disasters and bankruptcies left lenders with enormous unpaid obligations, American bankers cut Trump off. That cutoff is not speculation, and Don Junior has been widely quoted for a speech in which he bragged that the Trump Organization no longer needed homegrown lenders, because Russia was supplying all the cash they needed.

Salon quoted journalist and tax expert David Cay Johnston, who has covered Trump for years.

“Deutsche Bank, in making these loans, had to have someone in the background that was guaranteeing these loans. It would be surprising if they’re actually co-signers,” Cay Johnston said in response to the news.  “That would be absolutely astonishing, and I would think mandate his removal from office.”

The only thing Deutsche Bank has confirmed (to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals) is that the bank has possession of the tax returns of at least one member of President Donald Trump’s family.

A lawyer for Trump has now threatened to sue O’Donnell for “false and defamatory” statements. It would be extremely difficult to win such a suit, since O’Donnell himself cautioned that his bombshell report was based upon information provided by a single source–a person who works with Deutsche Bank–and that he had been unable to verify it. (He may have breached journalistic ethics by reporting an unverified accusation–spreading gossip, essentially– but proving intentional defamation would be extremely difficult given his transparency about the source and his inability to confirm that source’s account.)

That said, the information seems so accurate, because it’s so incredibly plausible. Russian oligarch guarantors or co-signers would explain a number of otherwise inexplicable things…

It’s VERY interesting…if true.

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He Probably Shouldn’t Have Run For President…

If there is one thing we have learned about Donald Trump during and since the election, it is that his ego is massively bigger than his IQ. A smarter man would have realized that a spotlight comes with the Presidential territory–and that past criminal activity would eventually be uncovered.

About that spotlight:

The Washington Post, especially, has done significant work uncovering misuse of the Trump Foundation and various other Trump scams. Now, McClatchy’s Washington Bureau has weighed in with itemized evidence of the way Russian oligarchs bailed Trump out of financial difficulties with (many anonymous) cash purchases of real estate, often for dramatically inflated prices.

Aleksandr Burman, a Ukrainian who engaged in a health care scheme that cost the federal government $26 million and was sentenced to a decade in prison, paid $725,000 cash for a condo at a Trump Tower I in Sunny Isles Beach, Fla. in 2009.

Leonid Zeldovich, who has reportedly done extensive business in the Russian-annexed area of Crimea,bought four Trump units outright at a cost of more than $4.35 million, three of them in New York City between 2007 and 2010.

And Igor Romashov, who served as chairman of the board of Transoil, a Russian oil transport company subject to U.S. sanctions, paid $620,000 upfront for a unit at a building adorned with the future U.S. president’s name in Sunny Isles Beach in 2010.

Buyers connected to Russia or former Soviet republics made 86 all-cash sales — totaling nearly $109 million — at 10 Trump-branded properties in South Florida and New York City, according to a new analysis shared with McClatchy. Many of them made purchases using shell companies designed to obscure their identities.

Rep. Adam Schiff of California, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee and a former federal prosecutor, has called evidence of these transactions “deeply troubling.” He also noted that there have been credible allegations of money laundering by the Trump Organization for many years. If these allegations are true, it could pose a real threat to the United States, because Russia would be able to “leverage” evidence of illicit financial transactions against the President.
“Leverage” is a polite word for blackmail.

The all-cash buyers include Alexey Ustaev, founder of a private bank based in St. Petersburg, Russia; Igor Zorin, a government official who runs a state-owned broadcasting company; the wife of hockey player Viacheslav Fetisov; pop star Igor Nikolaev; Roman Sinyavsky, a luxury real estate broker who was one of the first to sell units at a Trump’s South Florida building and Evgeny Bachurin, who Russian President Vladimir Putin fired as head of Russia’s Federal Air Transport Agency before becoming a donor to a political action committee supporting Trump, according to American Bridge….

“We’ve long suspected that Donald Trump’s businesses were a front for money laundering and our research suggests it could be true,” said Harrell Kirstein, communicators director for the Trump War Room at American Bridge. “The millions of dollars in previously unreported, all-cash real estate deals we discovered raise troubling questions about who is funding his businesses, why, and what they’re getting in return.”

The linked article has much more detail, including descriptions of several more unsavory buyers, and the extent to which those buyers paid considerably more than market value for the properties.

Anyone who has worked for government at any level–a cohort that excludes Trump, whose ignorance of the most basic premises of governance and law never fails to astonish–knows that public office brings a level of scrutiny with it. Even in our current media environment, where investigative journalism sometimes seems to be on life support, Presidential candidates understand that they will be targets for searching investigation, because citizens have a right to know what sorts of people govern them. (Actually, that curiosity tends to extend well beyond what we’re entitled to know–but it legitimately includes information about dishonest personal behaviors and illegal business practices.)

Trump’s refusal to make his tax returns public whetted that public appetite.

Subsequent revelations, the indictments of multiple campaign functionaries, and more recently, news of the long, cozy relationship between Justice Kennedy’s banker son and the Trump organization, have raised further concerns. (When Justin Kennedy  headed the real estate capital markets division of Deutsch Bank, he apparently authorized huge loans to Trump at a time American banks would no longer touch him).

I don’t know whether proof of Trump’s probable criminal conduct will be emerge before the midterm elections, or whether members of the cult that is today’s GOP will believe even ironclad evidence if it does. Voters can’t depend on that, or on Mueller. But there’s one thing we can depend upon: thanks to that spotlight he constantly craves, reporters will continue to investigate the multiple, credible  accusations against him.

If Trump and his family end up in prison, he’ll have only his ego and ignorance to blame.

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