THREAD: The Trump Corruption Story Is Also a Russia Story (1/8) themoscowproject.org/dispatch/the-t…
Yesterday’s huge New York Times report does more than just expose Trump’s decades of fraudulent business practices; it also offers a key insight into the Russia story. (2/8) nytimes.com/interactive/20…
Trump always had his father around to (likely illegally) bail him out of his terrible business decisions. But in 1997, that help evaporated—and Trump, having burned all his bridges in the U.S., had to find new sources of financing. (3/8) nytimes.com/interactive/20…
That’s when he turned to Russia. (4/8) themoscowproject.org/collusion-chap…
It’s when he met Felix Sater and Michael Cohen, and when he started pursuing licensing deals in notoriously corrupt locales like Georgia, Azerbaijan, and Panama. (5/8) newyorker.com/magazine/2017/…
It’s when he suddenly went from being the “King of Debt” to dealing in massive amounts of cash, and when his sons started bragging about how much financing they got out of Russia. (6/8) washingtonpost.com/politics/as-th…
That corruption is precisely why Trump is so vulnerable to kompromat—not just the kind infamously described in the Steele dossier, but also the weaponization of corruption Putin exploits to achieve his foreign policy goals. (7/8) newyorker.com/news/swamp-chr…
The Trump-Russia story has always been about money. The New York Times report is a reminder that it’s about more than that: It’s about Trump’s seemingly boundless corruption, which helped the groundwork for Russia’s assault on American democracy. (8/8)
themoscowproject.org/dispatch/the-t…
themoscowproject.org/dispatch/the-t…
