Foreign Policy

Follow the (Russian) money into the Trump business empire

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Nancy Le Turneau at the Political Animal blog ties together several threads to new reporting over the weekend about Donald Trump’s son Eric Trump. Did Vladimir Putin Buy Himself a U.S. President?

During the 2016 presidential election, we often heard that Donald Trump filed for bankruptcy several times. As the Washington Post reported, he did so a total of six times.

Trump’s Taj Mahal opened in April 1990 in Atlantic City, but six months later, “defaulted on interest payments to bondholders as his finances went into a tailspin,” The Washington Post’s Robert O’Harrow found. In July 1991, Trump’s Taj Mahal filed for bankruptcy. He could not keep up with debts on two other Atlantic City casinos, and those two properties declared bankruptcy in 1992. A fourth property, the Plaza Hotel in New York, declared bankruptcy in 1992 after amassing debt.

PolitiFact uncovered two more bankruptcies filed after 1992, totaling six. Trump Hotels and Casinos Resorts filed for bankruptcy again in 2004, after accruing about $1.8 billion in debt. Trump Entertainment Resorts also declared bankruptcy in 2009, after being hit hard during the 2008 recession.

Following that string of bankruptcies in the 1990’s, U.S. banks pretty much blackballed the Trump organization, but he rebuilt his financial empire with a heavy reliance on capital from Russia. That is pretty much what Donald Trump, Jr. affirmed in 2008.

“Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets,” Trump’s son, Donald Jr., told a real estate conference in 2008, according to an account posted on the website of eTurboNews, a trade publication. “We see a lot of money pouring in from Russia.”

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Latest on the Trump-Putin Campaign investigation

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Earlier this week, NBC News reported that President Donald Trump in an interview last Friday tried to turn some of the controversy around his former national security adviser, Michael Flynn, on the administration of President Barack Obama, saying the retired general was previously vetted. Trump Tries to Deflect Flynn Vetting Questions on Obama Administration:

“When they say we didn’t vet, well, Obama I guess didn’t vet, because he was approved at the highest level of security by the Obama administration,” Trump said in an interview with Fox News’ Martha MacCallum.

“So when he came into our administration for a short period of time, he came in, he was already approved by the Obama administration and he had years left on that approval,” Trump said.

The implication is that the Trump transition team did not have to vet Flynn. But they did:

While Flynn served in the Obama administration — Flynn was fired by President Obama from his postion at DIA for clashing with other high-ranking officials and “Flynn facts” — the Trump transition team and White House had an additional responsibility to do a separate background check, which is always done for people at that level.

The Trump team did do a background check and learned about Flynn’s business ties with Turkey, but Flynn was appointed anyway, people close to the investigation have told NBC News.

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Russia’s cyber war to destabilize western democracies

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The U.S. election last year was just a test run for the Russian’s attempt to destabilize western democracies through cyber warfare and dezinformatsiya. The Russian attack succeeded beyond their wildest dreams. Now the Russians are turning their cyber warfare tactics on France.

Russia’s preferred candidate is Marine Le Pen, the daughter of fascist Jean-Marie Le Pen, nicknamed the “Devil of the Republic,” the founder of France’s  far-right French Nationalist “National Front” political party that his daughter now leads.

No surprise, Putin pal Donald Trump is now supporting far-right French candidate Marine Le Pen, for all intents and purposes.

The New York Times reports, Macron Campaign Says It Was Target of ‘Massive’ Hacking Attack:

On the eve of the most consequential French presidential election in decades, the staff of the centrist candidate Emmanuel Macron said late Friday that the campaign had been targeted by a “massive and coordinated” hacking operation, one with the potential to destabilize the nation’s democracy before voters go to the polls on Sunday.

The digital attack, which involved a dump of campaign documents including emails and accounting records, emerged hours before a legal prohibition on campaign communications went into effect. While the leak may be of little consequence, the timing makes it extremely difficult for Mr. Macron to mitigate any damaging fallout before the runoff election, in which he faces the far-right candidate Marine Le Pen, who has pledged to pull France out of the euro and hold a referendum to leave the European Union.

The hacking immediately evoked comparisons to last year’s presidential election in the United States, during which American intelligence agencies have concluded that Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin, ordered an “influence campaign” to benefit the Republican nominee, Donald J. Trump.

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Follow the Money: The Trump swamp overflows

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I posted the other day, House Oversight and Government Reform Committee: Michael Flynn violated the law. The committee held another press conference today regarding new information provided by the Department of Defense, and it’s not looking good for ol’ Mikey. “Lock him up!”

The Huffington Post reports Pentagon Warned Michael Flynn Against Accepting Foreign Money In 2014; He Didn’t Listen:

President Donald Trump’s former national security adviser, Michael Flynn, failed to heed warnings from the Pentagon about accepting foreign funds for a trip to Russia in 2015, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee announced Thursday.

The Department of Defense has sent classified documents to committee chairman Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah), said ranking member Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) at a news conference on Thursday. One of them, which is being prepared for public release, is a letter from the Defense Intelligence Agency to Flynn.

“This letter explicitly warned General Flynn, as he entered retirement, that the Constitution prohibited him from accepting any foreign government payments without advance permission,” Cummings said. “DIA did not locate any records of Lieutenant General Flynn seeking permission or approval for the receipt of money from a foreign source.”

But Flynn did accept the funds from Kremlin-backed news agency RT and failed to disclose them when he applied for a security clearance last year, Cummings and Chaffetz said Tuesday. He may have broken federal law.

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House Oversight and Government Reform Committee: Michael Flynn violated the law

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Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah),  chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee and head inquisitor of the Hillary Clinton witch hunts, who is suddenly blind to the numerous conflicts of interest of the Trump administration, unexpectedly announced last week that he would not seek reelection and that he would also not likely serve out his current term. The Washington Post editorialized last week, in summary, “good riddance, don’t let the door hit you in the ass on your way out.”

Now that he is leaving Washington, Chaffetz has suddenly found his balls in the jar by his bedside. Jason Chaffetz: White House can’t prove Michael Flynn “complied with the law”:

After the White House denied the House Oversight Committee’s request for documents related to former national security adviser Michael Flynn’s disclosure of foreign payments on Tuesday, the committee’s leadership delivered a remarkable, bipartisan rebuke of President Donald Trump’s vetting of his top advisers.

Flynn “was supposed to seek permission and receive permission from the both the secretary of state and the secretary from the Army prior to traveling to Russia to not only accept that payment but to engage in that activity,” the Republican committee chairman, Jason Chaffetz, said in a joint news conference with the ranking Democrat on the committee, Maryland Rep. Elijah Cummings. “I see no evidence that he actually did that.”

Added Chaffetz: “This is something General Flynn was supposed to do as a former officer. . . . No former military officer is allowed to accept payments from a foreign government.”

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