There are those who believe that Trump’s primary business has always been money laundering. Back in the early 80s, one could buy an apartment in Trump Tower with cash and remain anonymous, money laundered. Trump sold apartments to Russian nationals for cash and visited Russia in 1987 a newly minted Russophile, publishing anti-Western ads in the midst of the Cold War and was “cultivated” as a KGB asset for 40 years, an unwitting one – probably. This is from 2017 Business Insider:

The KGB cultivated Donald Trump as an asset for 40 years, and he proved a highly valuable asset in repeating anti-Western Russian propaganda in the United States, a former KGB operative told The Guardian.

Today The Guardian has an explosive new story on Trump using Truth Social to launder money for… yes, Vladimir Putin:

Federal prosecutors in New York involved in the criminal investigation into Donald Trump’s social media company last year started examining whether it violated money laundering statutes in connection with the acceptance of $8m with suspected Russian ties, according to sources familiar with the matter.

The company – Trump Media, which owns Trump’s Truth Social platform – initially came under criminal investigation over its preparations for a potential merger with a blank check company called Digital World (DWAC) that was also the subject of an earlier investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission.

And anytime one starts digging deeply enough into Trump’s finances or – seemingly, even his social life, one hits Russia, and you don’t have to dig your way under the globe to even hit it. Just a few feet under Trump’s surface:

Towards the end of last year, federal prosecutors started examining two loans totaling $8m wired to Trump Media, through the Caribbean, from two obscure entities that both appear to be controlled in part by the relation of an ally of Russian president Vladimir Putin, the sources said.

IF it is somehow proven that Trump has any connection to any money from Putin, he must be made ineligible to run for president, and if he isn’t, then we deserve to live under President Putin. Given that Trump is under Putin’s thumb, we would effectively be led by President Putin. It would become self-evident the moment we pull out of NATO and end all aid to Ukraine.

The need to launder money sticks out like “Exhibit A.” Trump required a social media platform (this was before Elon Musk) if he was going to run for president and probably didn’t have the cash himself. Thus…

Trump Media needed a bridge loan to keep the company afloat. But it struggled to get financing until DWAC’s chief executive Patrick Orlando sourced a $2m loan wired from Paxum Bank registered in Dominica, according to the wire transfer receipt reviewed by the Guardian.

There you have it. Of course, Trump would look to Russia. Trump uses Deutsche Bank, the international bank that has been fined billions of dollars for laundering Russian mob money, and no one’s ever really proven who co-signed the absolute sweetheart loans that Trump received. But there have been suspicions the entire time that those loans weren’t “loans” to Trump so much as pass-throughs for Russian money. Trump may have possessed the cash but it wasn’t his. If he started using it as “his,” he could stumble out of a 66-story window.

Twitter was a little angry:

So, situation normal. The most likely Republican nominee for president, the one that never crossed Russia once, the man that Russia put in the White House in 2016, gave Trump a loan to get Truth Social going. It says everything one needs to know about whether Trump is actually rich, or whether he just holds money for other people… in Russia.
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[email protected], @JasonMiciak, Substack: Much Left Ado

 

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13 COMMENTS

  1. A few years back the government of Panama raided one of his properties thought to be laundering money. They found documents being shredded. His little corrupt daughter was in charge of the property. No charges. Who’s surprised? Not me. Time to LOCK HIM UP! LOCK HIM UP!! LOCK HIM UP!!!

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  2. I keep wondering if a lack of understanding of the international links to Trump are making people so myopic on why it’s taking so long. Russia, China, North Korea, the Phillipines for all I know…Mango Mussolini did business with some of the worst people on the planet. That all but guarantees this was going to be more complicated than the domestic affair everyone who screams “Hurry up” assumes it is.

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    • So we wait long enough to risk a second presidency? If you read my next Substack coming out tomorrow, you won’t want him having the shot at a second one with what he has planned.

      You charge him with a crime you know he’s guilty of, “Destruction of documents” and then you begin a longer probe of less obvious ones and add charges. Happens every day in U.S. Courts.

      We are not almost literally out of time to charge him and have a trial complete before the election.

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  3. Decades of financial crimes. 798 days since jan6th. 6years since named individual one in a crime that sent his attorney to prison for three years. Couple years after stealing, & certifying he didnt have 11,000 documents, some at the top of secrecy. Yeah, everyone has been in a hurry. The idea you don’t charge for a crime committed with evidence in hand because there are international crimes is fallacious. Under that logic I guess any charges for Santos should wait until his crimes are adjudicated in Brazil. Funny how many folks sitting in prison get charged for additional crimes when discovered years after the original crime. So I guess there are a different set of rules if your financial crimes cross borders. So much for ‘equal justice’. Guess you advocate waiting waiting waiting. Give us impatient folks your time-line. Next year? Five years from now? Wait until putin confesses? Never? It’s clear you’ve no experience with the actual justice system, locally, state, military, or federal. Note to all criminals…go international.

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    • You have far LESS of a clue on what an actual national security case that reaches the highest levels of international governments looks like and it shows every time you open your digital mouth. John Le Carre and Bill Granger did, which is how I know you’ve been full of it from the beginning.

      “If this one was anyone else…” It’s not, so shut up already.

      “What about all the…” Nothing to do with any of this, so spare me.

      Your ongoing problem is confusing legality with morality…well, that and yelling how horrible everything is without doing a damn thing to change any of it. I refuse to take seriously ANYONE who thought just moaning online constituted meaningful action that shifted the scales. The people you say you care about deserve far better from EITHER OF US than this pointless BS.

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      • Thing is there is a whole different aspect to this particular situation, and that is the POLITICS of it all – I am totally convinced trump is a Russian pawn, but the Republican party has a big problem now & that is it is THEIR guy who is the Russian puppet – but he is adored by a substantial number of their voters, and they have been trying desperately to make all the problems go away because of that. A bunch of their own party are tied up now with trump’s illegalities & so the party is trying to not get completely killed. Hence we have been watching the ridiculous business of them trying to save their party & keep their voters – and they are now all in the dumpster too thrashing around looking for a way out ! I think it’s the sheer DEPTH of who is involved that is the reason for the long wait for resolutions.

  4. This is not the first example of money laundering associated with the shit gibbon. Hell, his real estate holding, such as he has left, have been doing this shit for years.

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  5. Then I guess you know more than federal prosecutors or Mueller or congressman Raskins and the committee. Sure you do. They somehow are convinced he has committed crimes and they’ve SEEN the evidence. I’ll go with them rather than someone who thinks they have secret insights into things they know nothing about. Dissent is essential to democracy. It IS what we little people can do. But you know better. Right.

  6. Another WHICH HUNT.

    Is this about money laundering, ties to Russia, illegal election campaign donations, etm? WHICH HUNT?

  7. Gee, I guess it’s no wonder that some Repukes are hedging on support for Ukraine—they want to keep the Putin money spigot open for the next election!

  8. Though I have heard nothing of it since, Trump received favors from at least three countries before he even entered the White House. One was a building permit from Brazil I think. I suppose if you are looking at the biggest and most dangerous crook in the world it is hard to keep track of the criming.

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