If you’re beginning to wonder if there’s a crooked transaction anywhere on the planet that somehow doesn’t lead back to Donald Trump and a crippled Republican party, you’re starting to get the picture. The Guardian has published an exclusive connecting the dots between Anton Postolnikov, who is the nephew of Alexander Smirnov, who is a Putin ally and former first deputy justice minister of Russia — and who was James Comer’s star witness in the star crossed Biden impeachment, which went unfortunately south.
Postolnikov also is a co-owner of Paxum Bank. Now Paxum Bank would have been happy to loan a floundering Truth Social $8M last year but alas, it doesn’t have a license to do business here in the states, so instead Postolnikov put the $8M in a trust and the trust loaned the money to Trump’s digital baby, so that it could survive. That might have been for naught since mid-day on the stock exchange today, the stock has plunged yet again and we’ll get to that in a moment.
Here’s the lead up on how this story came to be, which came in a fundraising email from the Guardian and sets the scene very well.
Very rarely, reporting happens like it does in the movies – with an out-of-the-blue email offering important, secret information.
That is how Guardian reporter Hugo Lowell was able to reveal on Wednesday that Donald Trump’s social media company was kept afloat by $8m in loans from a trust managed by a Russian-American businessman under criminal investigation.
Trump Media, which includes the Truth Social platform, went public last week, with the former president’s stake boosting his net worth by approximately $3.7bn.
Hugo began chasing this story last year, revealing the existence of the emergency $8m loans that helped Trump Media stave off insolvency in 2022. And while Hugo was able to establish the source of the loans as an entity called ES Family Trust, the identity of those behind the trust was a mystery – until now.
Hugo tells me: “Fast forward almost a year from my initial reporting, and one evening I get an email with documents connected to a small Caribbean-registered bank called Paxum, best-known for financing the porn industry. The documents cast a light on how ES Family Trust operated.”
Those documents turned out to be a huge cache of files revealing a man behind the trust to be Anton Postolnikov, a co-owner of Paxum bank and nephew of Aleksandr Smirnov, a Putin ally and former first deputy justice minister of Russia.
“For the longest time, we had no idea about the origin of this money and how it was all connected,” says Hugo. “And suddenly we had the trust’s creation papers. It was an aha moment for us.”
Postolnikov appears to have used the trust to loan money to Trump Media because Paxum lacks a US banking license, barring it from furnishing the loan directly. At the time, in late 2021, the former president’s media company was desperate for cash while it waited for US regulators to approve the merger that would facilitate its stock market debut.
Trump Media finally went public last week – but though it received regulatory clearance, the deal has been mired in a criminal investigation for allegations of insider trading and money laundering. “This is now a joint FBI-Department of Homeland Security investigation that encompasses multiple FBI field officers, the El Dorado task force that looks at money laundering in Miami, and multiple US attorneys’ offices,” says Hugo. “It’s just turned into this colossal behemoth of an investigation.”
There is also no indication that Trump or Trump Media had any idea about the nature of the loans beyond that they were opaque, nor has the company or its executives been accused of wrongdoing. A spokesperson for Trump Media did not respond to a request for comment.
One person of interest in the investigation? Postolnikov. He has been listed on search warrant affidavits, but has not been charged with a crime.
“What happens next to Postolnikov is always going to be of interest to us,” says Hugo, “but it’s very difficult to predict. I think what is eye-opening to us is just how large the investigation has become. And the money that Donald Trump stands to gain from this is just so significant.”
Trump *might* have stood to get a significant amount of money, nay, a bloody windfall of massive proportions, but for the fact that Truth Social has always been insanely overvalued and that reality is beginning to dawn on investors who got in, thinking to make a killing on a meme stock, and are now dumping their shares.
His Stock is heading for the Dark Side of the Moon 🌖 pic.twitter.com/p0shrDrpuy
— Dr. B (@Ablationist) April 8, 2024
The end of Truth Social is drawing near and no, it doesn’t look like Trump is going to be able to stay on the Forbes 400 list. That was a flash in the pan. Now back to one episode of how Truth Social got here and Hugo Lowell’s investigation of the man who loaned Trump Media money while being under scrutiny in a federal insider-trading and money-laundering investigation.
The situation led Trump Media to take emergency loans, including from an entity called ES Family Trust, which opened an account with Paxum Bank, a small bank registered on the Caribbean island of Dominica that is best known for providing financial services to the porn industry.
Through leaked documents, the Guardian has learned that ES Family Trust operated like a shell company for a Russian-American businessman named Anton Postolnikov, who co-owns Paxum Bank and has been a subject of a years-long joint federal criminal investigation by the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) into the Trump Media merger.
The existence of the trust has previously been reported by the Guardian and the Washington Post. However, who controlled the account, how the trust was connected to Paxum Bank, and how the money had been funneled through the trust to Trump Media was unknown.
The new details about the trust are drawn from documents including: Paxum Bank records showing Postolnikov having access to the trust’s account, the papers that created the trust showing as its settlor a lawyer in St Petersburg, Russia, and three years of the trust’s financial transactions.
Wow, financing for Trump’s digital baby traces all the way back to a lawyer in St. Petersburg. Now isn’t that the darnedest thing? And here’s another mind boggler. Trump is now threatening to sue the Guardian for defamation.
After this story was published, a lawyer representing Trump Media said in a statement: “The Guardian continues to propagate its false narrative that TMTG has these fake connections to Russia. It is a hoax. Litigation will continue on this point and we are confident that The Guardian will ultimately be held responsible for its defamation and this story should be retracted.”
But Postolnikov has been under increasing scrutiny in the criminal investigation into the Trump Media merger. Most recently, he has been listed on search warrant affidavits alongside several associates – one of whom was indicted last month for money laundering on top of earlier insider-trading charges. […]
It is unclear whether federal prosecutors are aware that Trump Media was propped up by Postolnikov via ES Family Trust. At the same time, the money-laundering investigation surrounding the Trump Media merger and the scrutiny on Postolnikov appears to have ballooned in recent months.
The investigation into potential money laundering appears to have started after Wilkerson’s lawyers Phil Brewster, Stephen Bell and Patrick Mincey alerted the US attorney’s office in the southern district of New York to the ES Family Trust loans in October 2022.
Months later, in June 2023, the FBI expanded its investigation to work jointly with the Department of Homeland Security’s El Dorado taskforce, which specializes in money laundering, and its Illicit Proceeds and Foreign Corruption group, which targets corrupt foreign officials who use US entities to launder illicit funds.
And so another day, another story of Trump corruption and yet he’s the nominee on the GOP ticket for president of these United States.
First of all, PLEASE Trump, go ahead and file a lawsuit against the Guardian. I for one would LOVE to see all the goodies that come out during Discovery. That of course is why, as so often happens Trump will make the threat about suing but not follow through. Especially now with independent financial monitors that have access to ALL the Trump Org records.
Second, I think the reporting is being quite careful in what they say. Trump knew goddam well where that money was coming from. There’s no way in hell that the Russian slimeball didn’t make sure Trump knew that one day he might get asked to “return the favor” and Trump, being desperate never thought beyond the moment. Hell, it’s not like he wasn’t already owned by Putin and his (Putin’s) pals. It will take another year or two (if not more) for all the sordid details to be learned and come out but there are plenty more dots to connect here. In the meantime TS is as you say continuing to slide down into the shit-pit and this news is just another shove to push it down the slope.
I just wonder if these “loans” aren’t in fact donations, since I wouldn’t count on TFG to pay them back.
Even if they are genuine loans, do you really think Trump’s going to pay them back?
I am just … I am SHOCKED … Trump? I’m sure there must be some rational explanation …
Or perhaps they are just trying to smear the good name of one of the greatest benefactors humanity has ever seen. Wait … did I say “one of” ? When you think of all this man’s done …