Maybe this is the new normal. Maybe we’ll have to go to the press outside of this country to find valid news stories about what is in fact happening within this country. This is another instance of “Why isn’t this the lead story on every newscast?” The Guardian broke a story today showing that, “An American company that paid the now indicted FBI informant Alexander Smirnov in 2020 is connected to a UK company owned by Trump business associates in Dubai, according to business filings and court documents.”
As well you know, James Comer and Jim Jordan are both embarrassed about their flawed and failed Biden impeachment farce and they’re trying to walk it back. Small chance with a story like this breaking.
Smirnov is now accused of lying to the FBI about Hunter Biden and his father, President Joe Biden, alleging that they engaged in a bribery scheme with executives at the Ukrainian energy company Burisma. Smirnov’s accounts to the FBI, beginning in 2020, that federal prosecutors now say are fabrications, served as a major justification of the House impeachment investigation into the Bidens.
Republican lawmakers have repeatedly touted Smirnov as a reliable informant, and the chairman of the House oversight committee, James Comer, even threatened to hold the FBI director, Christopher Wray, in contempt unless he “handed over” a June 2020 FBI form with Smirnov’s claims to the committee.
Back in 2020, Smirnov was paid $600,000 by a company called Economic Transformation Technologies (ETT), prosecutors said. That same year, Smirnov began lying to the FBI about the Bidens, according to the indictment.
That’s a lot of scratch. A great many people would be willing to lie about a great many things for that kind of money. And here’s a nifty little chart.
Last month, Smirnov was charged with lying to the FBI, and is being held without bail. Prosecutors argued he posed a flight risk because of his contacts with Russian officials in the Middle East and access to millions of dollars.
Smirnov’s indictment alleged that the assertions in a document, known as a 1023, and other statements made to his FBI handler beginning in 2020 and continuing until December 2023, were factually impossible.
They were “factually impossible” but did that stop Comer and Jordan? Oh, puh-leeze. See, what all this boils down to is that Trump is far and away not the only corrupt one. The entire GOP is made up of the worst corrupt grifters ever seen in government. And to make things worse, legitimate Republicans are quitting the party right and left, thereby leaving room open for even crazier and more corrupt types to come in.
Condon, Arjomand and Khan registered ETT Investment Holding Limited in the UK on 6 March 2020. Khan, an investor who purchased the Plaza hotel in 2018, and Arjomand have ties to Donald Trump through Trump associates and Damac, a major Middle East developer that has partnered with Trump for a decade. Arjomand, Khan and Condon owned 34%, 33% and 33% of ETT Investment Holding Limited respectively, according to UK business filings. No other information on the UK company is readily available.
The former Damac chairman Hussain Sajwani is also close to Trump and has been described as his friend in multiple news reports. Trump has called the billionaire a “friend” and a “great man”, and his family “the most beautiful people”. […]
In 2017, Khan reportedly approached Brad Zackson, dubbed Paul Manafort’s “real-estate fixer”, to help him broker a deal to buy the Roosevelt hotel in Manhattan, owned by the Pakistani government via its national airline, for $500m, according to the Real Deal. When the real-estate publication asked Khan about the reports, he denied that Zackson and Manafort, a former Trump campaign chairman, were involved. Khan purchased the Pakistani embassy building in DC in 2022 for $6.8m.
Khan is also CEO of BurTech Acquisition Group, a “blank check company”, or public shell company. Patrick Orlando, listed as a “special adviser” and shareholder of BurTech in 2021, was the CEO and chair of Digital World, another blank check company, from September 2021 to March 2023. When it began a merger with Trump Media & Technology Group in 2021, it was held up by an SEC investigation until given the green light last month.
Oh, my God: of course it swings around and winds up relating at the end to Truth Social, Trump’s latest Ponzie scheme. How could it not? This is a lengthy and detailed article. I suggest you read it in full. Everything that Trump is connected with is financed by foreign, shady money — yet he has the gall to have one of his paid shills accuse Joe Biden of that exact same thing with respect to Burisma and Ukraine.
Trump is literally paying somebody to bear false witness against his political opponent and yet he’s the one that cries “witch hunt.” And so many people believe this bullshit.
Again, I blame the mainstream media. They simply do not have a paradigm of covering political candidates and elections that includes Trump and all his corruption. So, like jamming a square peg into a round hole, they normalize him, they gloss over that which doesn’t fit into their model of coverage, and the crucial facts of who Trump is and the facts proving the nature and extent of corruption with which he is involved go simply unreported.
I hope America survives this next election. I truly do. There is no doubt in my mind that she would if only the facts of who Trump is and what he’s involved in could come to light, preferably through holding the trials he’s involved in before the election. But as the days go by it looks like that’s more hopeless than ever. We’ll be lucky if the Stormy Daniels trial ever takes place.
I wonder what fluffy, softball b.s. Kristen Welker will come up with this Sunday on Meet The Press? Because I’m sure she’s not going to be reporting on this. None of them will.
(a hat tip to our fellow Zoomer, Concinnity, who found this article and directed me to it)
Thanks.
Yet again, if you want to find out what skullduggerry they’ve been up to, just look at what they accuse our side of.
All those foreign oligarchs know they can always buy American- as long as it’s MAGA American, they’re the ones for sale.
Markets require buyers and sellers.
Aren’t the Magats lucky that China, Russia and Saudi Arabia have such bulging wallets- and aren’t China, Russia and the Saudis so lucky that undermining the largest power on earth is so cheap?
As Russia has found out, it’s waaaaayy cheaper than fighting actual wars. For less than the price of a Beriev Be 50, they bought the US Republican party, and still own it.
It’s a safe bet every time GOPers from Trump on down accuse us of corruption and/or illegality it’s because THEY have done exactly what they are accusing a Democrat(s) of. Maybe it’s just a part of their DNA to assume if they do it then so must everyone else.
I noticed a long time ago that conservatives automatically assume everyone else believes and thinks exactly as they do. they can’t conceive of anything else.