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Sunday, April 22, 2018

Fusion GPS founders write of Trump. While not expected to present a dry, neutral exegesis, this is better.

NY Times published it, Apr 21, 2018. Yet the Trump brand in use possibly to launder illegal money into the US remains fair game, always in season, no bag limit.

The most significant recent development involving the president may be that the special counsel, Robert Mueller, has subpoenaed Trump Organization business records as part of his inquiry into Russian interference in the presidential election.

Those documents — and records recently seized by the F.B.I. from the president’s personal lawyer Michael Cohen — might answer a question raised by the president’s critics: Have certain real estate investors used Trump-branded properties to launder the proceeds of criminal activity around the world?

Pop the popcorn, the show may have started. Even with Jarad and Ivanka branded junk aside and apart, it's theater. The hook, as written:

A string of bankruptcies in the 1990s and 2000s may have left Mr. Trump’s companies largely unable to tap traditional sources of financing. That could have forced him to look elsewhere for financing and partners at a time when money was pouring out of the former Soviet Union.

Indeed, from New York to Florida, Panama to Azerbaijan, we found that Trump projects have relied heavily on foreign cash — including from wealthy individuals from Russia and elsewhere with questionable, and even criminal, backgrounds. We saw money traveling through offshore shell companies, entities often used to obscure ownership. Many news organizations have since dug deeply into the Trump Organization’s projects and come away with similar findings.

This reporting has not uncovered conclusive evidence that the Trump Organization or its principals knowingly abetted criminal activity. And it’s not reasonable to expect the company to keep track of every condo buyer in a Trump-branded building. But Mr. Trump’s company routinely teamed up with individuals whose backgrounds should have raised red flags.

All circumstantial or will the records - the paper and email and cell phone trail - prove intent to prosper any way feasible, even promise a gig on the TV apprentice thing if it gets the man into his aims and wants; possibly even needs. Which would not have been unlawful, but perhaps in the big garbage mountain even Jarad might have a share.

But Pence. What's the story on Pence, the Russians, anybody where dealings might have crossed a line? Is there that nugget of stuff that could stick to Pence? Not much but something would be fine enough. Of course there are Pence supporters who would want the opposite.

Both of them.