Trump’s efforts to establish a hotel in Moscow go back at least to 1987, when, according to his book The Art of the Deal, he discussed the possibility with the Soviet ambassador Yuri Dubinin. politico.com/magazine/story…
💰Trump Soho - Bayrock Group
Trump SoHo broke ground in 2007, typifies how the Trump Organization benefited from financing coming out of Russia and the former Soviet Union. Much of the project’s financing came from the Bayrock Group. npr.org/2017/11/07/560…
📌Investigators are looking at whether Trump associates laundered financial payoffs from Russian officials by channeling them through offshore accounts. bloomberg.com/opinion/articl…
No suprise, Trump Soho was announced during an episode of “The Apprentice” in 2006 with a planned completion date of 2008.
📌Several reported funders of the project, including Arif, Tamir Sapir, and Alexander Mashkevich, hail from the former Soviet Union and have reported ties to the current Kremlin.
📌For example, in 2009, Sapir pleaded guilty to illegally importing animal parts. sun-sentinel.com/news/sfl-anima…
📌Mashkevich has been repeatedly accused of bribery & money laundering on projects in Kazakhstan, & settled a case in 1996 without admitting guilt. bloomberg.com/news/features/…
📌Trump attracts an ‘interesting’
clientele.
📌For example, Viktor Khrapunov, who formerly served as mayor of Almaty, Kazakhstan, went on trial in July 2018 for allegedly purchasing condominiums in the building using money stolen from state coffers rferl.org/a/corruption-t…
📌And laundered through a network of offshore shell companies while serving as the country’s energy minister.
📌Perhaps the most notable connection emerging out of Trump SoHo involves the Russian American real estate developer Felix Sater, who formerly served as the managing director of the Bayrock Group. themoscowproject.org/collusion-chap…
📌Sater became an FBI informant in Moscow after pleading guilty to involvement in a $40 million stock fraud scheme orchestrated by the Russian mafia; #PumpAndDump vanityfair.com/news/2017/08/w…
📌The records for the conviction have since been sealed. Sater joined the Bayrock Group in 2001 and helped secure financing for Trump SoHo, leaning heavily on sources linked to Russia. vanityfair.com/news/2017/08/w…
After leaving Bayrock in 2009, Sater retained an office in Trump Tower and received Trump-branded business cards identifying him as a “senior adviser to Donald Trump.” washingtonpost.com/politics/forme…
📌Sater has been involved in at least two attempts to develop a Trump Tower Moscow.
📌The Trump Organization contracted with Bayrock to develop a high-rise in the Russian capital in 2005; washingtonpost.com/politics/forme…
📌it was reportedly far enough along in the process that a site was chosen before the deal ultimately fell through.
🔑Sater was involved in an effort to establish a Trump Tower Moscow during the early stages of the 2016 presidential campaign, cnn.com/2017/09/08/pol…
📌Sater elicited a signed letter of intent from the Trump Organization in October 2015.
📌In November 2015, Sater emailed Michael Cohen—his longtime friend and the Trump Organization’s lawyer—about the project. nytimes.com/2017/08/28/us/…
🔑”I will get Putin on this program and we will get Donald elected. . . . our boy can become president of the USA and we can engineer it.” The deal ultimately fell through in July 2016, nytimes.com/2017/08/28/us/…
📌But not before Cohen reportedly offered Putin the proposed building’s $50 million penthouse as enticement as part of the negotiations. buzzfeednews.com/article/anthon…
📌Along with the email to Cohen, which seems to suggest that Sater saw developing Trump Tower Moscow as part of a broader strategy to ensure Trump’s election, buzzfeednews.com/article/anthon…
🔑Sater was involved in an attempt during the transition to influence the administration’s policy on Russia.
🔑In January 2017, Sater and Cohen reportedly worked with the Ukrainian politician Andriy (sometimes transliterated Andrey or Andrii) Artemenko nytimes.com/2017/02/19/us/…
🔑A week before Michael T. Flynn resigned as national security adviser, a sealed proposal was hand-delivered to his office, outlining a way for President Trump to lift sanctions against Russia. #SanctionRelief nytimes.com/2017/02/19/us/…
🔑Under the plan, RU would withdraw its troops from E Ukraine, while Ukraine would hold a referendum on whether to “lease” Crimea to Russia; in return, the US would lift the sanctions it had placed on Russia after the 2014 invasion of Crimea. nytimes.com/2017/02/19/us/…
📌Trump SoHo is far from the only Trump Organization project to derive funding from questionable Russia-linked sources.
The project, which broke ground in 2007, was so financially embattled that, as the Toronto Star described in October 2017, “every investor lost money on Trump Tower Toronto” except Trump himself.
🤣In 2010, facing mounting costs & little interest in investment, the building’s developer Alexander Shnaider received a sudden windfall when a then-unknown investor purchased an $850 million stake in Shnaider’s steel company Zaporizhstal. wsj.com/articles/russi…
🔑In May 2017, The Wall Street Journal revealed the source of those funds: the Russian state-owned development bank Vnesheconombank (VEB). wsj.com/articles/russi…
🔑Alexander Shnaider, the Russian-Canadian developer of Trump Tower Toronto, put money into the project after receiving hundreds of millions of dollars from a separate asset sale that involved the RU bank Vnesheconombank. #VEB wsj.com/articles/russi…
The Trump Org claimed that, despite reports in 2012 that Trump had a minor ownership stake, the company “was not the owner, developer or seller” of the property, was not involved in the financing, and “did not hold” equity. wsj.com/articles/russi…
Shnaider offered conflicting accts as to how much of the money from VEB ended up in the project: His lawyer at first said $15M from the sale went into the property, but since said he is “not able to confirm that any funds went into the Toronto project.”
US counterintel officials are scrutinizing one of Ivanka Trump's international business deals,
The FBI has been looking into the negotiations and financing surrounding Trump International Hotel and Tower in Vancouver. cnn.com/2018/03/01/pol…
📌The FBI has been looking closely at the international business entanglements of both Ivanka Trump &Jared Kushner, to determine whether any of those deals could leave them vulnerable to pressure from foreign agents, including China cnn.com/2018/03/01/pol…
📌FBI is also investigating Ivanka Trump's financing of Trump International Hotel and Tower in Vancouver vancouversun.com/business/local…
FBI is interested in the deal, which dates back to 2013, and in which Ivanka played a key role.
FBI is looking at foreign buyers involved, as well as the timing of the $360M project’s opening in February 2017. vanityfair.com/news/2018/03/i…
💰Trump Tower Batumi & Baku
The Trump Organization has also pursued multiple projects in former Soviet states—Baku, Azerbaijan, and Batumi, Georgia, newyorker.com/magazine/2017/…
🔑Georgia & Azerbaijan are where the Trump Organization has dealt with companies and oligarchs with extensive histories of corruption and ties not only to Russian entities but also, in Azerbaijan, to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. newyorker.com/magazine/2017/…
📌Silk Road Group has troubling business ties and relationships.
📌Over the years it had oil trading and transport deals with companies in both Russia and Iran, countries currently facing varying degrees of U.S. and European financial sanctions. pics.mcclatchyinteractive.com/news/politics-…
The Batumi project is a licensing deal between Trump & the Silk Road Group, which was at least partially funded by Kazakhstan’s BTA Bank, whose former chair Mukhtar Ablyazov was under inv’n for “allegedly siphoning” billions of dollars out of Kazakhstan. newyorker.com/magazine/2017/…
🔑All of these projects are worrisome not only because of the specific actors involved but also because they leave Trump open to accusations of abetting corruption abroad & demonstrate the Trump Organization’s tendency to skimp on due diligence. newyorker.com/magazine/2017/…
🔑🔑And which could expose Trump to prosecution under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. justice.gov/criminal-fraud…
5/22/19: U.S. District Court said that the two banks can comply with the subpoenas issued by the House Intelligence and Financial Services committees for a broad range of financial information. Trump and three of his children — sued to block the subpoenas. cnbc.com/2019/05/24/tru…
On Feb. 3, long-time Trump associate Felix Sater filed a cross-complaint in a NY federal court. The complaint alleges that Russian and Kazakhstan-connected individuals and entities conducted “a shadow intelligence operation of Sater and Trump. 🙄😂🙄 thefederalist.com/2022/02/04/law…
Please join me on a photo tour of beautiful & tranquil Père-Lachaise cemetery?
A visit to the Père-Lachaise cemetery is always on my itinerary — it is always so relaxing exploring the paths, lanes & trails as you always see something new & different & leave feeling relaxed.
This 1995 infrared photo is my favorite and standard I seek to duplicate each time I visit Père-Lachaise cemetery. 🤷♀️
Infrared photography is #oldskoll, but today I played in PhotoShop to see if I could render my newer color images w/ similar effects achieved as infrared film.
Here is a color image & its twin “infrared” rendered version.
Woodward book: Worried Trump could 'go rogue,' Milley took top-secret action to protect nuclear weapons cnn.com/2021/09/14/pol…
Gen. Milley 'was certain that Trump had gone into a serious mental decline in the aftermath of the election, with Trump now all but manic, screaming at officials and constructing his own alternate reality about endless election conspiracies.'
Milley's fear was based on his own observations of Trump's erratic behavior. His concern was magnified by the events of January 6 and the 'extraordinary risk' the situation posed to US national security, the authors write.
High-profile supporters of Trump descended on Brazil to throw their weight behind president Jair Bolsonaro, as the populist gears up for a re-election campaign next year viewed as a key battle for the global anti-establishment [anti-democratic] right. ft.com/content/6e81d7…
Jason Miller: Former Trump spokesman questioned for three hours by police in Brazil
“This afternoon my travelling party was questioned for three hours at the airport in Brasilia, after having attended this weekend’s CPAC Brasil Conference.”
One of the star speakers [CPAC Brazil] was the former US president’s eldest son Don Jr, who gave a live video address because of cancelled flights due to hurricane disruption in New York. He said Brazil had “a big decision to make next year”.
Former top Republican congressman registers as lobbyist for Saudi Arabia
Ed Royce registers to work with Saudi foreign ministry to 'facilitate meetings with federal government officials,' Politico reports middleeasteye.net/news/saudi-ara…
Ed Royce was involved in Elliott Broidy’s Romanian Arms deal.
Ed Royce was also involved in Broidy & Nader’s disinfo op, for which they were both indicted by the Qataris, to smear Qatar as a terrorist-supporting state.
Ed Royce introduced legislation that would brand Qatar as a terrorist-supporting state. cbsnews.com/news/witness-i…