Delusional States of Opposite-land: President-Reject Malware
Election Fraud 2016: Media Manipulation, Hacking & Voter Suppression
"You've Been Trumped" the Reality Show, coming soon to a Concentration Camp Near You
1) Republican secretaries of state across the USA, backed by GOP campaign strategists, acted to "purge" voter rolls, enforce ID laws, shorten voting hours, eliminate poll locations, etc, in the years leading up to the 2016 election, resulting in uncalcuable voter suppression. In addition, Republican legislators & operatives, for political advantage, "gerrymandered" the entire country so that GOP candidates would win even when garnering a minority of the (popular) vote.
2) Fake news generated by Trump's buddies at the National Enquirer, on newstands at every WalMart across the country, displaying photoshopped images of Hillary Clinton, claiming she was dying of various terminal illnesses... this went on for nearly a year. All the folks who "don't do the internet" were subjected to this one-sided political attack.
"Fake news" & attacks perpetuated by Trump's White House advisor Bannon at Breitbart, NewsMax, Alex Jones, RT, FOX commentators, Trump himself, starting with claims of POTUS 44's false birth certificate, "crooked" allegations of charity abuse, pizza trafficking, email gone wild, culminating with current claims of "illegal" minority voters by the millions. All this malicious disinformation stewed in misogyny & white ignorance.
3) After Trump's embarrasing failure at the debates, claiming he "won" despite his obvious creepy bone-headed bullying & derangement on display to the entire world, and Hillary Clinton's bounce back on her way to assumed victory, somehow a group of GOP congressional leaders were able to coerce the Director of the FBI, only days before the most significant presidential election in 200 years, to make false claims about trumped-up "loose emails" on the laptop of a campaign aide, which apparently had not yet been "processed".
Not only was this a criminal violation of the Hatch Act, as "crooked" as Trump's tax returns, it was out-&-out cheating on an epic scale. Corruption of the democratic process by a Justice Dept. director colluding with GOP activists & the Trump campaign. Far more malignant & hurtful is that the FBI (and media) should have been telling Americans the truth about Trump's criminal history (& FBI informant relations), rather than hacking the presidential election. This one unprecedented event, a staged press conference & political attack on behalf of Trump, likely caused more "voter suppression" than any other, given that 23% of registered voters decided not to vote.
Another ridiculous element of the FBI Director Comey-GOP-Trump accusations about SecState Hillary Clinton's "suspicious email" is every SecState has had the same communications issues & most of these email storage spaces were being handled by State Dept. computer techs. Hillary actually didn't use email much, unlike POTUS 44. And the FBI & Kremlin know to "process" the emails on a laptop takes little more than 5 minutes. Which implies that Director Comey's testimony was false fabrication, on behalf of Trump.
☣ FBI GOP collusion is criminal https://youtu.be/f_bc12MVvSg
4) "Wikileaks, if you're listening, try to find Donald Trumps missing tax returns". "Russia, if you're listening... try to find Hillary's missing emails" was a reality-cracker. This was more than simple election-cheating & aggressive campaigning, this was treason, and it turned out to be real.
Yet the machinery goes on, the military "might makes right" goes along, the media gives in, after obvious hacking of the entire democratic process of elections in the USA, with the most unprobable, malignant & dangerous outcome one could've imagined. Seriously, folks let's be real-- even HBO wouldn't have gone along with this "billionaire uber alles" storyline. "Creepy misogynist mobster aligns with white supremacists & Russian spies to hack the election & become President of the USA"...
5) Russia played an even greater role in Trump's hostile attack campaign than simply leaking private email of hacked accounts. They also employed an army of trolls, bots, fake news generators, fake twitter accounts. At one time Donald Trump had about 200 versions of the @real-D-Trump account. Anyone who was there, on YouTube, news comment sections, twitter, Facebook... can testify it was traumatic, misogynist, hateful & ugly beyond belief. All exaggerated & enhanced with the Breitbart-FOX News-Alex Jones brand of "Trumpism"...
This is business as usual for Putin's KGB-petro-oligarchs in Russia. "Best defense is a reality-scrambling offense". Always accuse your opponent of your own crimes in order to obfuscate. But that's not how American elections & democracy are suppose to operate.
Pop Quiz: Real or Fake News: In Russia they are selling commemorative Trump coins that say "In Trump We Trust".... Also real: "In God We Trust" was put on US money primarily to separate ourselves from the former Soviet Union, during the "Cold War."
In summary, DO investigate these unprecedented violations of campaign ethics & election laws. And while you're at it, explain why the most 1% of all #flimflam men, with giant gold letters of his name all over the world, can't show his tax returns? Of all the controversial tax returns that ever mattered in the history of US tax returns, Trump's trump them all like a mother-trumper. In addendum, hello there world media!--- We'd also like his criminal history, his birth certificate, and his medical records.
Cue: "Everybody Knows " by Leonard Cohen (The Deal is Rotten) #ICantKeepQuiet
☣ http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/09/donald-trump-scandals/474726/
Blasting back vs "Trump lie factory" ☠ https://youtu.be/Jxd61lQJyPU
"All the lessons of history in four sentences: Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad with power. The mills of God grind slowly, but they grind exceedingly small. The bee fertilizes the flower it robs. When it is dark enough, you can see the stars." ~ Charles A. Beard
Donald J. Trump Foundation, checked “yes” to answer a question about whether its resources had been directed or used to benefit a “disqualified person” — meaning one of the organization’s central people.
The 2015 form reported that Mr. Trump had used $258,000 from the charity to settle legal disputes involving his businesses, possibly violating self-dealing provisions.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/11/22/us/politics/document-Trump-Foundation-Tax-Returns.html?_r=0
Trump Organization Expo$ed: Like the Sopranos, but with Nukes
Delusional States of Opposite-land: President-Reject Malware
Enclosed a file regarding Trump's "surface-level" organized crime associations. These are only his crimes of fraud & racketeering... there are also the many other crimes involving sexual assault, property & mortgage fraud, bankruptcy fraud & tax evasion, not even to mention his own brand of hostile slander, abuse & bullying, which we've all experienced first-hand. We're all now being forced to bow down to the archetypical abuser.
"Just go along" with the pomp, say the talking heads on TV. "Give him a chance" say the TV addicts. OK, fair play pendulum swing... let's give him the same chance Trump & the GOP gave President Obama, which is to say: constant claims of illegitimacy, harassment, refusal to negotiate, blockading. And given the fraudulent, hostile election, by whatever means necessary. And as we do, hold the Republicans responsible for this Orwellian smash-and-grab disaster of historical shame.
#CodePink, SOS, stop this criminal regime. Refuse to accept "Opposite-land" pronouncements. The entire planet & billions of lives are now in the balance. Were in the middle of the largest mass-extinction since the asteroid & dinosaurs. Trump is basically our flaming ridiculous planet-damaging asteroid. Right as we need to radically evolve innovations for survival, we are being forced upon by a greedy old, bullying, malignant demagogue, a villain right out of central casting. Time to call out the superheroes. What would Wonder Woman do? #WWWWD
Much about the USA political process is mystifying to the rest of the world, like how a Presidential candidate with the most extensive diplomatic experience can receive 2.8 million more (popular) votes & still lose to a TV character with an extensive criminal past & zero political or diplomatic experience. One explanation is "Teflon Don" Trump's devilish ability to herd & manipulate the broadcast media. More than a mere "Manchurian Candidate", with his uncanny ability to publicly lie about nearly everything & get away with it, Trump himself is the ultimate Malware, already disrupting, weakening & unraveling our entire 250 years of American constitutional government.
At any point in the past year, the US media could have focused on the Trump Organization's connections & economic entanglements with international organized crime, from Trump Tower to the Kremlin. Instead, the FBI director was compelled to appear before TV cameras to reveal that (gasp) some of Hillary Clinton's emails were found on a campaign aides's laptop. #WTFUSA? Now we have discovered much of the media's email obsession was a coordinated attack involving GOP operatives, Kremlin-directed hackers, Wikileaks & the Trump Organization.
The billion-swindling fraudsters all appear to be invincible, jet-setting, bankable, gold-plated & boastful, all the way up to where the Ponzi scheme comes crashing down. Whoops, apparently this whole huge empire required alot of book-cooking, embezzlement, grand theft & of course deception to keep it going. Cra$h bang boom, down the tower of fraud topples. Future "American Greed" episode: Tower of Trump Lies, Fraud, Money-Laundering, Racketeering, Drug-dealing, International Sex Trafficking & Extortion (America Held Hostage $pecial)
http://www.cnbc.com/2015/11/06/the-greed-report-american-ego--the-common-thread-in-the-biggest-scams.html
Kompromat OperationTrump: Putin & Russian Oligarchs v$ US Intelligence
Countless mafia operations have operated out of Trump facilities and properties, including Trump Tower itself, not limited to the many casino-related schemes and "backdoor deals" dating to Trump's daddy's days.
Donald Trump’s glittering empire of New York skyscrapers and Atlantic City casinos have long had a darker side, allegations that the mob helped build them. Trump’s alleged ties to New York and Philadelphia crime families go back decades and have been recounted in a book, newspapers and government records.
The 1992 unauthorized biography “Trump: The Deals and the Downfall,” wrote that Trump’s life “intertwines with the underworld.” To be sure, organized crime had ties to the New York and New Jersey construction industry in the 1980’s and early 1990’s, making contact between developers and mafia-controlled companies almost unavoidable at times.
In Manhattan, Trump used the mob-controlled concrete company S&A to build Trump Plaza condos. Anthony “Fat Tony” Salerno, head of the Genovese crime family, and Paul Castellano, the don of New York’s Gambino family, controlled S&A, according to federal court records Barrett cited in his book. Barrett noted that he built the Trump Tower out of concrete, instead of steel, at a time when the mafia controlled much the concrete industry.
Trump claimed during this questioning by gaming authorities that he didn’t know that his lawyer, mentor, and close friend, Roy Cohn, represented Genovese godfather Fat Tony Salerno—though their two names appeared in the same paragraph about former clients in Cohn’s 1986 Times obituary. Trump’s answer was an effort to disassociate himself from Cohn because "The Deals and the Downfall" alleged that Cohn had brokered a Trump meeting with Salerno—which Trump denied—and he was aware that Barron Hilton had been denied a casino license for a lesser relationship with a lesser mob lawyer.
These kinds of associations once caused Trump worry about retaining his gaming licenses. Perhaps he finally realized that in a presidential campaign, which requires filing detailed financial disclosures, the vetting of all sorts would be much tougher. Then a gang of questionable associations like this would’ve converted a candidacy into a scandal, damaging his star status, business prospects, and even his family.
"Trump advised that he wanted to build a casino in Atlantic City, but he did not wish to tarnish his family's name inadvertently."
according to official FBI report. There were a few reasons why the FBI agents may have found this claim slightly disingenuous.
For starters, at the time Trump's mentor on issues of politics and business was Roy Cohn, a lawyer whose other clients included a passel of mobsters, among them the bosses of the Genovese and Gambino crime families. Cohn, who served as Senator Joseph McCarthy's chief witch hunter before going into private practice, operated out of a townhouse on East 68th Street where clients Anthony "Fat Tony" Salerno and Paul "Big Paul" Castellano were regular visitors. Besides getting advice on their legal problems, as a former secretary later recalled to Wayne Barrett in his 1992 book, Trump: The Deals and the Downfall, the visits by the mob titans to their lawyer's office allowed them to talk shop without having to worry about FBI bugs. Cohn told a reporter that Trump called him "fifteen to twenty times a day, asking what's the status of this, what's the status of that," according to Barrett's book.
Another reason the FBI might not have taken Trump's professed ignorance at face value was that Trump had already brushed up against his share of wise guys in New York's gritty construction business, without apparent concern. To help build his first big Manhattan project, the Grand Hyatt New York on East 42nd Street, Trump had chosen a notorious demolition company secretly owned in part, according to the FBI, by a top Philadelphia mobster who doubled as crime lord of Atlantic City. To pour concrete for the new hotel, Trump picked a firm run by a man named Biff Halloran, who was convicted a few years later for his role in what prosecutors dubbed a mob-run cartel that jacked up construction prices throughout the city. For the carpentry contract, Trump settled on a Genovese family–controlled enterprise that was central to another mob price-fixing racket, as found by a subsequent federal probe.
And then there was the person who had introduced Trump to the FBI agents in the first place. This was a six-foot-five bear of a man named Daniel Sullivan, a former Teamsters leader who was serving as what Trump called his "labor consultant" at the time. Sullivan wore other hats as well: He was partners with a reputed Atlantic City mobster named Kenneth Shapiro, who controlled the local scrap market and who was in the process of selling Trump a large plot of land at top dollar on which to build his casino.
Sullivan, who had once been close to Jimmy Hoffa, was also secretly operating as an FBI informant, filling in the FBI on the various mobsters who crossed his path.
However, more important to this story are Trump’s connections to the international prostitution ring allegedly financed from questionable sources from Russia; sources close to Putin himself.
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/a-brief-history-of-donald-trump-and-the-mafia
http://www.the-american-interest.com/2016/12/19/the-curious-world-of-donald-trumps-private-russian-connections/
Trump & The Russian Mafia: A Closer Look At Donald Trump’s Links To The Russian Mob
In 2008, Donald Trump Jr. said at a conference, of the "Trump Organization":
“Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets… we see a lot of money pouring in from Russia.”
"Donald Trump's Many, Many, Many, Many Ties to Russia" - Time http://time.com/4433880/donald-trump-ties-to-russia/
Respected international policy journal Global Security has officially named Donald Trump the “Manchurian Candidate”, a shocking label for certain, but one they apply with a great deal of evidence to back it up. The stunning article reveals that Trump’s connections inside Russia go far deeper than what has been discussed in the mainstream media to date, and along a much darker path.
Let’s start with Felix Sater, whose father is a Russian Organized Crime boss, and who is one of the direct links between the Republican party Nominee for the Presidency of the United States of America, and Russian Organized Crime. Sater, the Russian émigré and a felon convicted twice over ties to the Mafia, has appeared in many photos with Trump, and reportedly carried a Trump Organization business card with the title of ‘Senior Advisor to Donald Trump’. Sater also served time in prison for a 1991 assault at El Rio Grande restaurant in New York. He is also an executive of Bayrock Group LLC, a real estate development firm that has partnered with Trump in different projects; the founding chairman of Bayrock, Tevfik Arif, is known for its ties with Russian organized crime.
In addition to being a television personality, Trump makes a lot of his money these days licensing his name for various hotel and condo projects, not to mention mattress and vodka brands. His most frequent partner in the condo/hotel deals—some of which have become actual projects and some of which haven’t—has been a small development firm called the Bayrock Group, which was headquartered in Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue in 2005 when the partnership began. Trump and Bayrock joined forces on Trump Soho in New York and Trump International Hotel and Tower in Fort Lauderdale, announced and then canceled another Florida project called Trump Las Olas, and together pushed unsuccessful ventures in Colorado and Arizona.
It is Trump’s financing from Russian satellite business interests that would seem to explain his pro-Putin sympathies.
The most obvious example is Trump Soho, a complicated web of financial intrigue that has played out in court. A lawsuit claimed that the business group, Bayrock, underpinning Trump Soho was supported by criminal Russian financial interests. While its initial claim absolved Trump of knowledge of those activities, Trump himself later took on the group’s principal partner as a senior advisor in the Trump organization.
“Tax evasion and money-laundering are the core of Bayrock’s business model,” the lawsuit said of the financiers behind Trump Soho. The financing came from Russian-affiliated business interests that engaged in criminal activities, it said. “(But) there is no evidence Trump took any part in, or knew of, their racketeering.”
Journalists who’ve looked at the Bayrock lawsuit, and Trump Soho, wonder why Trump was involved at all. “What was Trump thinking entering into business with partners like these?” Franklin Foer wrote in Slate. “It’s a question he has tried to banish by downplaying his ties to Bayrock.”
But Bayrock wasn’t just involved with Trump Soho. It financed multiple Trump projects around the world, Foer wrote. “(Trump) didn’t just partner with Bayrock; the company embedded with him. Bayrock put together deals for mammoth Trump-named, Trump-managed projects—two in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, a resort in Phoenix, the Trump SoHo in New York.”
But, as The New York Times has reported, that was only the beginning of the Trump organization’s entanglement with Russian financiers. Trump was quite taken with Bayrock’s founder, Tevfik Arif, a former Soviet-era commerce official originally from Kazakhstan.
“Bayrock, which was developing commercial properties in Brooklyn, proposed that Mr. Trump license his name to hotel projects in Florida, Arizona and New York, including Trump SoHo,” the Times reported. “The other development partner for Trump SoHo was the Sapir Organization, whose founder, Tamir Sapir, was from the former Soviet republic of Georgia.”
Trump was eager to work with both financial groups on Trump projects all over the world. “Mr. Trump was particularly taken with Mr. Arif’s overseas connections,” the Times wrote. “In a deposition, Mr. Trump said that the two had discussed ‘numerous deals all over the world’ and that Mr. Arif had brought potential Russian investors to Mr. Trump’s office to meet him. ‘Bayrock knew the people, knew the investors, and in some cases I believe they were friends of Mr. Arif,’ Mr. Trump said. ‘And this was going to be Trump International Hotel and Tower Moscow, Kiev, Istanbul, etc., Poland, Warsaw.’”
The Times also reported that federal court records recently released showed yet another link to Russian financial interests in Trump businesses. A Bayrock official “brokered a $50 million investment in Trump SoHo and three other Bayrock projects by an Icelandic firm preferred by wealthy Russians ‘in favor with’ President Vladimir V. Putin,’” the Times reported. “The Icelandic company, FL Group, was identified in a Bayrock investor presentation as a ‘strategic partner,’ along with Alexander Mashkevich, a billionaire once charged in a corruption case involving fees paid by a Belgian company seeking business in Kazakhstan; that case was settled with no admission of guilt.”
Trump Soho was so complicated that Bayrock’s finance chief, Jody Kriss, sued it for fraud. In the lawsuit, Kriss alleged that a primary source of funding for Trump’s big projects with Bayrock arrived “magically” from sources in Russia and Kazakhstan whenever the business interest needed funding.
There are other Russian business ties to the Trump organization as well. Trump’s first real estate venture in Toronto, Canada, was a partnership with two Russian-Canadian entrepreneurs, Toronto Life reported in 2013.
“The hotel’s developer, Talon International, is run by Val Levitan and Alex Shnaider, two Russian-Canadian entrepreneurs. Levitan made his fortune manufacturing slot machines and creating bank note validation technology, and Shnaider earned his in the post-glasnost steel trade,” it reported.
Finally, for all of his denials of Russian ties lately, Trump has boasted in the past of his many meetings with Russian oligarchs. During one trip to Moscow, Trump bragged that they all showed up to meet him to discuss projects around the globe. “Almost all of the oligarchs were in the room” just to meet with him, Trump said at the time.
And when Trump built a tower in Panama, his clients were wealthy Russians, the Washington Post reported. “Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets. We see a lot of money pouring in from Russia,” Trump’s son, Donald Jr., said at a real estate conference in 2008, according to a trade publication, eTurboNews.
The only instance that Trump acknowledges any sort of Russian financial connection is a Florida mansion he sold to a wealthy Russian. “What do I have to do with Russia?” Trump said in the wake of the DNC hack. “You know the closest I came to Russia, I bought a house a number of years ago in Palm Beach, Florida… for $40 million and I sold it to a Russian for $100 million including brokerage commissions.”
The relationship between Donald Trump and Felix Sater, whose father is a reputed Russian Organized Crime boss, represents a rather direct link between the presidential candidate and Russian Organized Crime. The Russian émigré — a twice-convicted felon with ties to the Mafia — appeared in photos with Trump, and carried a Trump Organization business card with the title “Senior Advisor to Donald Trump.” Trump was confused when asked under oath in a 2013 about his relationship to the Russian émigré.
Mr. Sater was convicted and sent to prison in 1993 after a New York bar fight in which he stabbed a man in the face with a broken margarita glass. That was a matter of public record. However, what few people beyond insiders at Bayrock knew was that five years later, Mr. Sater was implicated in a huge stock manipulation scheme involving Mafia figures and Russian criminals — and that he became a confidential F.B.I. informant.
Recently unsealed federal court records show that Mr. Sater helped the government disrupt an organized crime ring on Wall Street and deal with an unexplained national security matter involving his foreign connections. He was not the only F.B.I. informant in Bayrock’s offices. Another was Salvatore Lauria, an associate of Mr. Sater, who sometimes showed up to work wearing a court-ordered ankle monitor.
Mr. Lauria brokered a $50 million investment in Trump SoHo and three other Bayrock projects by an Icelandic firm preferred by wealthy Russians “in favor with” President Vladimir V. Putin himself, according to a lawsuit against Bayrock by one of its former executives.
In 2010 the founding chairman of Bayrock, Tevfik Arif, who has reputed Russian organized crime ties was charged in Turkey for smuggling underage girls into the country for prostitution. Another principal in the deal is Russian émigré Tamir Sapir, who also lives in Trump Tower.
As reported by Turkish News, A New York real estate mogul with ties to Donald Trump is at the center of an international sex scandal – suspected of running a high-priced prostitution ring. Tevfik Arif, 57, has been detained in Turkey on suspicion of setting up trysts between wealthy businessmen and Eastern European models – some underage – aboard a $60 million yacht once used by the nation’s founder, Mustafa Ataturk.
Arif, whose Bayrock Group co-developed the Trump SoHo and the Trump International Hotel and Tower in Fort Lauderdale, was among 10 people rounded up on suspicion of running an (underage) prostitution ring.
In his deposition, Trump praised Arif’s “international connections,” and detailed half a dozen “phenomenal” prospective tower deals with Arif, including ones in Moscow, Yalta, Warsaw, Istanbul, and Kiev. He boasted that Arif was prepared to give Trump a 20 to 25 percent interest in his overseas projects, plus management fees and a possible percentage of gross, without Trump investing a nickel—just for the use of his name. “It was almost like mass production of a car,” Trump testified.
Another partner in Trump Soho is the Russian émigré developer Tamir Sapir, who lives in a $5 million Trump Tower condo. Though his net worth was first pegged at $2 billion by Forbes in 2006, Sapir’s company claimed to have “ only $4,000 in cash and cash equivalents” in 2009. Fred Contini, Sapir’s onetime executive vice president and top aide, pled guilty to participating in a racketeering conspiracy with the Gambino crime family for 13 years—both prior to and after his hiring by Sapir in 1996.
Sapir, whom Trump calls a “ great friend,” introduced Donald to Bayrock and is best known for his $500,000 payment to lobbyist and former U.S. Senator Al D’Amato for a single call to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority to help him retain a lucrative lease with the agency. He was also fined $150,000 for decorating his yacht with 29 animal carcasses in violation of endangered species laws, including a stuffed lion and python-covered bar stools.
Nineteen Trump Soho unit buyers are now suing, accusing Bayrock, Sapir, Donald Trump, Ivanka Trump, and Donald Jr., among others, of “an ongoing pattern of fraudulent misrepresentations and deceptive sales practices.”
Trump’s advisers also have financial ties in Russia. Paul Manafort, Trump’s campaign manager, got an investment fund for a Russian aluminium magnate who is now suing him saying Manafort disappeared with $19 million. He also tried to establish a multimillion-dollar real estate project with funds from a Ukranian energy tycoon, although this was unsuccessful, and worked as an adviser to Ukraine’s Putin-backed president. And Manafort may still be on the payroll of a pro-Putin Ukranian politician.
Indeed, there is evidence that the Trump campaign even flexed it’s muscles as the nominee’s campaign to alter the Republican Party platform in favor of Russia’s annexation of Crimea – something Trump has even said he would consider. And while the Trump campaign denies strong-arming the platform committee, high ranking Republicans insist it’s true.
Then there’s the matter of Trump directly asking Russia, America’s greatest adversary, to hack the computer systems of his rival politician and political party – and doing so right in front of the press! Which would have been the equivalent of Richard Nixon giving the order for the Watergate break-in from the podium of the White House – but not to the “White House Plumbers” – the covert crew Nixon used for his dirty work – but to the KGB.
KIEV, Ukraine — On a leafy side street off Independence Square in Kiev is an office used for years by Donald J. Trump’s campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, when he consulted for Ukraine’s ruling political party. His furniture and personal items were still there as recently as May.
And Mr. Manafort’s presence remains elsewhere here in the capital, where government investigators examining secret records have found his name, as well as companies he sought business with, as they try to untangle a corrupt network they say was used to loot Ukrainian assets and influence elections during the administration of Mr. Manafort’s main client, former President Viktor F. Yanukovych.
Handwritten ledgers show $12.7 million in undisclosed cash payments designated for Mr. Manafort from Mr. Yanukovych’s pro-Russian political party from 2007 to 2012, according to Ukraine’s newly formed National Anti-Corruption Bureau. Investigators assert that the disbursements were part of an illegal off-the-books system whose recipients also included election officials.
In addition, criminal prosecutors are investigating a group of offshore shell companies that helped members of Mr. Yanukovych’s inner circle finance their lavish lifestyles, including a palatial presidential residence with a private zoo, golf course and tennis court. Among the hundreds of murky transactions these companies engaged in was an $18 million deal to sell Ukrainian cable television assets to a partnership put together by Mr. Manafort and a Russian oligarch, Oleg Deripaska, a close ally of President Vladimir V. Putin.
In a recent interview, Serhiy V. Gorbatyuk, Ukraine’s special prosecutor for high-level corruption cases, pointed to an open file on his desk containing paperwork for one of the shell companies, Milltown Corporate Services Ltd., which played a central role in the state’s purchase of two oil derricks for $785 million, or about double what they were said to be worth.
“This,” he said, “was an offshore used often by Mr. Yanukovych’s entourage.”
The role of the offshore companies in business dealings involving Mr. Manafort came to light because of court filings in the Cayman Islands and in a federal court in Virginia related to an investment fund, Pericles Emerging Markets. Mr. Manafort and several partners started the fund in 2007, and its major backer was Mr. Deripaska, the Russian mogul, to whom the State Department has refused to issue a visa, apparently because of allegations linking him to Russian organized crime, a charge he has denied.
The network comprised shell companies whose ultimate owners were shielded by the secrecy laws of the offshore jurisdictions where they were registered, including the British Virgin Islands, Belize and the Seychelles.
Fineroad Business LLP also lists Ireland & Overseas Acquisitions and Milltown as its partners, although the duo have moved home from the BVI to Belize. Fineroad owns the Kiev office building known as “Yanukovych’s helipad”. A high rise with a helicopter landing pad on the roof, this was made available by Kiev City Hall for the President’s use to allow him to arrive in the city by helicopter.
Mr. Manafort continued working in Ukraine after the demise of Mr. Yanukovych’s government, helping allies of the ousted president and others form a political bloc that opposed the new pro-Western administration. Some of his aides were in Ukraine as recently as this year, and Ukrainian company records give no indication that Mr. Manafort has formally dissolved the local branch of his company, Davis Manafort International, directed by a longtime assistant, Konstantin V. Kilimnik.
Mr. Yanukovych and his Party of Regions relied heavily on the advice of Mr. Manafort and his firm, who helped them win several elections. During that period, Mr. Manafort never registered as a foreign agent with the United States Justice Department — as required of those seeking to influence American policy on behalf of foreign clients — although one of his subcontractors did.
The developments in Ukraine underscore the risky nature of the international consulting that has been a staple of Mr. Manafort’s business since the 1980s, when he went to work for the Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos. Before joining Mr. Trump’s campaign this spring, Mr. Manafort’s most prominent recent client was Mr. Yanukovych, who — like Mr. Marcos — was deposed in a popular uprising.
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/15/us/politics/paul-manafort-ukraine-donald-trump.html
Follow the money: Putin + Yanukovych + Deripaska <-> + Vanagels + Gorin + Manafort + Trump
An Even Wider Net: Money Launderers & Offshores
Latvia, a country on the coast of the Baltic Sea and a former part of the Soviet Union, has been at the heart of a number of informal networks of companies fronted by proxies that laundered money for criminal groups. Last year, the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project looked at some of these companies in its series called the Proxy Platform. The tiny country supplied both the proxies and the banks through which hundreds of millions of dollars travelled through.
And at the heart of many of these deals were two Latvian proxies: Erik Vanagels and Stan Gorin. Some of the hundreds of companies they represent, stretching from Panama to Eastern Europe, were involved in a series questionable or fraudulent businesses ranging from weapon shipments to Africa to Ponzi schemes. It is not clear whether Gorin or Vanagels play any role beyond their proxy status but the likelihood is they do not. However, their names are the calling cards of a deeper network.
Gorin, Vanagels, and Vitman are linked as directors and shareholders for hundreds of companies in the UK, New Zealand, US, Ireland, Cyprus as well as companies in classic offshore jurisdictions such as the British Virgin Islands and Panama. The companies they control in turn serve as the directors or shareholders of hundreds or perhaps even thousands of more companies. Their primary companies are Milltown Corporate Services and Ireland & Overseas Acquisitions, (incorporated in Ireland, British Virgin Islands and Belize), Fynel Ltd, incorporated in Cyprus, Jargon Management, also in Cyprus, and the three Panamanian companies: Systemo AG, Cascado AG and Integri SA.
And their activity is not restricted to corrupt Ukrainian state procurement or export deals. The omnipresent companies are involved in dozens of lower level import-export invoice fraud and sub-invoicing cases in Russia and other CIS countries. Typically these are tax evasion cases that sap state budgets of revenues and leaves public employees – teachers and doctors – impoverished, and infrastructure crumbling.
Loginex Projects, a company established by Gorin and Vanagel’s Ireland and Overseas Acquisitions and Milltown Corporate Services, was named in a British High Court decision October 2011 as one of a number of companies used by Mukhtar Ablyazov, former head of Kazakhstan Bank BTA, to illegally move slightly more than $1 billion to an account in the Latvian based Trasta Kommercbanka.
They are also present in cyberspace – in particular in pyramid investment scams such as High Yield Investment Plans (HYIP). In December 2009, the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) cracked down on a Latvian Ponzi scheme called Rockford Funding, run by Latvian-born 32 year old Genadi Yagodayev, The SEC alleged it had defrauded investors of over US$11 million in nine months.
The companies listed by the SEC as processing the funds included British companies set up by Vanagels’ Milltown Corporate Services and Gorin's Ireland & Overseas Acquisitions, and a Panamanian company set up by Cascado, Integri and Systemo. Another HYIP pyramid scheme that collapsed in December 2010 – “Cherry Shares” – was traced back to New Zealand companies listing Lativan Inta Bilder and Vanagels as directors. Money from the Ponzi scam was wired to accounts at Latvian banks Rietumu Bank, Regional Investment Bank, Trasta Komercbanka and JSC Multibanka, according to the investigation.
Milltown Corporate Services: https://offshoreleaks.icij.org/nodes/200591
High-Stakes Russian Mafia & Turkish Prostitution Run Out of Trump Tower
How did an alleged and notorious Russian mobster connected to an illegal international gambling ring run out of Trump Tower end up as a special guest at a Donald Trump event in Moscow in 2013? This may be one of the odder questions of the already-odd 2016 presidential campaign.
On April 16, 2013, federal agents burst into a swanky apartment at Trump Tower in New York City as part of a larger raid that rounded up 29 suspected members of two global gambling rings with operations allegedly overseen by a supposed Russian mob boss named Alimzhan Tokhtakhounov. The Russian was not nabbed by US law enforcement. Since being indicted in the United States a decade earlier for allegedly rigging an ice skating competition at the 2002 Olympics, he had been living in Russia, beyond the reach of Western authorities. And this new gambling indictment did not appear to inconvenience Tokhtakhounov. Seven months after the bust, he was a VIP attendee at Donald Trump's Miss Universe 2013 contest held in Moscow. In fact, Tokhtakhounov hit the red carpet within minutes of Trump. An alleged crime lord who was a fugitive from American justice was apparently a celebrity guest at Trump's event.
During the 2016 race, Trump's associations with Russia have sparked assorted controversies. He has praised Russian leader Vladimir Putin and made a series of contradictory remarks regarding his relationship with the autocrat. (In July, Trump said he had never spoken to Putin, but in a 2014 video, he claimed he had.) Trump has insisted on the campaign trail, "I have nothing to do with Russia." Yet he has a long history of attempting—and generally failing—to forge deals in that country. And Trump has been surrounded by campaign aides—including onetime campaign chairman Paul Manafort—with close and lucrative business ties to Russia and Putin allies.
Contrary to his claim of having nothing to do with Russia, Trump did pull off one major deal there: staging the 2013 Miss Universe pageant in the nation's capital. At the time, Trump co-owned the contest with NBC. The event landed him in the company of Tokhtakhounov and other high-profile Russians. And Trump hoped it would also bring him close to Putin. Months before the contest, he tweeted, "Do you think Putin will be going to The Miss Universe Pageant in November in Moscow - if so, will he become my new best friend?"
Putin didn't show up, but, according to Russian media accounts and photos of the event, Tokhtakhounov did. He was part of a crew of wealthy and powerful Russians who, according to a press report, were treated as VIPs. Also present were Vladimir Kozhin, a top government official and member of Putin's inner circle (who the following year would be hit with US sanctions in response to Russia's invasion of Ukraine) and Aras Agalarov, a Russian billionaire oligarch close to Putin with whom Trump wanted to develop a high-rise in Moscow. (Agalarov played a role in drawing the beauty contest to Moscow; it was held in a concert hall owned by his family business empire, and his son, a middling pop star, performed at the pageant.) After the event, Trump boasted to the New York Post, "Almost all of the oligarchs were in the room."
Alimzhan Tokhtakhounov's tale is an intriguing story of sports, Hollywood stars, poker, and alleged crime. The indictment filed by Preet Bharara, the US attorney in Manhattan, which triggered the 2013 raid, identified Tokhtakhounov as a vory v zakone—or a vor—a Russian term for a select group of the highest-level Russian crime bosses. A vor receives tributes from other criminals, offers protection, and adjudicates conflicts among other crooks. The indictment charged that Tokhtakhounov used his "substantial influence in the criminal underworld" to protect a high-stakes illegal gambling ring operating out of Trump Tower. He sometimes deployed "explicit threats of violence and economic harm" to handle disputes arising from this gambling operation. The indictment noted that in one two-month period he was paid $10 million by this outfit for his services.
The operations of the gambling scheme were handled by two other men: Vadim Trincher and Anatoly Golubchik. The indictment alleged that they and others ran "an international gambling business that catered to oligarchs residing in the former Soviet Union and throughout the world," used "threats of violence to obtain unpaid gambling debts," and "employed a sophisticated money laundering scheme to move tens of millions of dollars…from the former Soviet Union through shell companies in Cyprus into various investments and other shell companies in the United States." According to the US attorney, their enterprise "booked sports bets that reached into the millions of dollars" and laundered approximately $100 million.
Trincher, a dual citizen of the United States and Israel, was a championship professional poker player who had purchased a Trump Tower apartment located directly below an apartment owned by Donald Trump. In 2009, Trincher had paid $5 million for the posh pad. Two years later, he and his wife had reportedly hoped to hold a fundraiser in the apartment for Newt Gingrich's presidential campaign, but they had to cancel the event because of the presence of mold caused by a water leak. During one court hearing, the US attorney's office said that Trincher, then 52 years old, directed much of the racketeering enterprise from this Trump Tower apartment. "From his apartment, he oversaw what must have been the world's largest sports book," Assistant US Attorney Harris Fischman remarked. "He catered to millionaires and billionaires."
The indictment also targeted an associated gambling ring operated by Trincher's son Illya, Hillel Nahmad, the son of a billionaire art dealer, and others. (Nahmad also reportedly owned the entire 51st floor of Trump Tower.) This crew managed a high-stakes betting operation and money-laundering shop. The indictment charged another Trincher son named Eugene and several others with running illegal high-stakes poker rooms in and around New York City. This group included Molly Bloom, who had previously earned a reputation as an organizer of private poker games for celebrities, including Leonardo DiCaprio and Tobey Maguire. Following the raid, the New York Daily News reported that a witness told the paper that "games held by the crew in a Trump Tower apartment…[were] poker 'on steroids,' with cameos by movie and sports stars, including A-Rod."
Shortly after the indictment was issued, Tokhtakhounov told a Russian television channel that the case against him was "yet another fairy tale from the Americans." He claimed the prosecutors had included him in the indictment "to give the situation significance." He acknowledged that he knew two of the defendants and had placed bets with them. "Of course, in conversation," he added, "I might have given them advice on how to do things better."
Tokhtakhounov was trying to depict himself as a victim unfairly targeted by the United States. In 2002, he was indicted for allegedly fixing skating matches at the Salt Lake City Olympics. (The feds believed he had rigged events so that Russians would take home a gold and a French pair would win another gold—and he would pocket a French visa.) He was arrested in Italy, but soon Tokhtakhounov, who denied the charges, was let go and made his way back to Russia.
Something of a celebrity in Russia, Tokhtakhounov has engaged in various enterprises. He once owned casinos in Moscow. He claimed to be an organizer of pop concerts and fashion shows. He represented a modeling association, and he wrote novels. He lived in a high-end apartment building in Moscow and kept a palatial country house outside the city. He is currently wanted by Interpol for conspiracy to commit wire fraud, bribery conspiracy, wire fraud, and "bribery in sport contests."
A year following the Trump Tower raid, Trincher and Golubchik, after pleading guilty, were each sentenced to five years in prison. Each man was ordered to forfeit more than $20 million in cash, investments, and property. (Trincher's sons, Nahmad, and Bloom also pled guilty.) Tokhtakhounov, the US attorney's office noted, remained a fugitive.
Trump has cited the 2013 Miss Universe contest as proof he possesses serious foreign policy experience. In May, he told Fox News, "I know Russia well. I had a major event in Russia two or three years ago, which was a big, big incredible event." And it provided the reality television mogul the opportunity to hobnob with a Putin crony who is now under US sanctions, various oligarchs who are chums with the Russian leader, and an alleged Russian mafioso accused by the US government of protecting a global criminal enterprise that operated directly below one of Trump's own apartments in Trump Tower. What a small world.
Ivanka Trump, Donald Trump’s daughter, took time off from the frenetic presidential campaign to go traveling with her close friend, Wendi Deng Murdoch, ex-wife of billionaire media mogul Rupert Murdoch and current girlfriend of guess who? Ivanka Trump met with Putin’s girlfriend in Dubrovnik, Croatia, on a yacht provided by oligarch Roman Abramovich. The Daily Mail wrote in 2014 that the two women were friends long before Donald Trump announced his candidacy for president, as Wendi made her way through one power player after another, now Putin's girlfriend.
Gold-plated Empire of Fraud & Mob-Boss "Teflon Don" Trump
In the 1980s, Trump paid $8 million to buy out two mob-tied business associates when he feared his gaming license wouldn’t be approved. He wrote a letter to a federal judge on behalf of a mob-connected cocaine dealer whose helicopter company serviced his casinos and whose girlfriend had two Trump Tower apartments. He structured the purchase of a plot of land from a top leader of the murderous Scarfo crime family in Atlantic City so that his name would not appear in the transaction. He put a winsome but ostensibly penniless woman closely associated with the Gambino-connected head of the concrete drivers union in a triplex with Trump Tower’s only swimming pool right beneath his own apartment.
The Trump family has also gone into business with two convicted cocaine traffickers, one in Turkey and another in Philadelphia. Engin Yesil, whose development company was said to “ own the Turkey rights” for a $500 million project called Trump Towers Istanbul, was sentenced to a six-year prison term on cocaine charges in the U.S. 20 years ago.
When asked in the O’Brien deposition about the Istanbul project, Donald deferred to his son, who he said was handling the deal. In 2009, Ivanka did a huge press event in Istanbul, announcing that 45 percent of the units were already committed.
Trump Tower Philadelphia also involves a former cocaine dealer, Raoul Goldberg, aka Goldberger. Sentenced to 46 months in prison in 2000 on the coke conviction, he was technically on probation when he brought the site for the 45-story tower to Trump in 2005. And even though it’s only a license and management deal for Trump, Ivanka and Donald Jr. were so involved that they worked on spa and restaurant deals for the complex. Goldberg, who has suddenly “disappeared” from the project just as Felix Sater did, told Philadelphia Magazine in 2006 that he talked to Ivanka or Donald Jr. “every day.”
The daughter of a reputed New Jersey mob figure says her late father had a longtime relationship with Donald Trump that included gambling millions of dollars at one of his casinos, flying on his helicopter and partying aboard his private yacht.
In 1991, Trump first faced questions about his dealings with Robert LiButti, a plump, balding and nationally famous horse breeder with an explosive temper who would later be banned from New Jersey casinos for his ties to Mafia boss John Gotti. At the time, New Jersey state regulators had launched an investigation into allegations by nine employees of one of Trump’s Atlantic City casinos, the Trump Plaza, that the hotel had repeatedly removed African-Americans and women from craps tables after LiButti, one of the highest-rolling gamblers in the city’s history, loudly complained about their presence when he was playing.
But Edith Creamer, LiButti’s daughter, told Yahoo News in two recent telephone interviews that Trump’s account was false and that Trump and her father knew each other quite well. “He’s a liar,” said Creamer. “Of course he knew him. I flew in the [Trump] helicopter with [Trump’s then wife] Ivana and the kids. My dad flew it up and down [to Atlantic City]. My 35th birthday party was at the Plaza and Donald was there. After the party, we went on his boat, his big yacht. I like Trump, but it pisses me off that he denies knowing my father. That hurts me.”
In any case, returning to Trump’s relationships through Trump Tower, another odd one involves the 1990s-vintage fraudulent company YBM Magnex International. YBM, ostensibly a world-class manufacturer of industrial magnets, was founded indirectly in Newtown, Bucks County, Pennsylvania in 1995 by the “boss of bosses,” Semion Mogilevich, Moscow’s “brainy Don.”
This is a fellow with an incredible history, even if only half of what has been written about him is true.73 Unfortunately, we have to focus here only on the bits that are most relevant. Born in Kiev, and now a citizen of Israel as well as Ukraine and Russia, Semion, now seventy, is a lifelong criminal. But he boasts an undergraduate economics degree from Lviv University, and is reported to take special pride in designing sophisticated, virtually undetectable financial frauds that take years to put in place. To pull them off, he often relies on the human frailties of top bankers, stock brokers, accountants, business magnates, and key politicians.
In YBM’s case, for a mere $2.4 million in bribes, Semion and his henchmen spent years in the 1990s launching a product-free, fictitious company on the still-badly under-regulated Toronto Stock Exchange. Along the way they succeeded in securing the support of several leading Toronto business people and a former Ontario Province Premier to win a seat on YBM’s board. They also paid the “Big Four” accounting firm Deloitte Touche very handsomely in exchange for glowing audits. By mid-1998, YBM’s stock price had gone from less than $0.10 to $20, and Semion cashed out at least $18 million—a relatively big fraud for its day—before the FBI raid its YBM’s corporate headquarters. When it did so, it found piles of bogus invoices for magnets, but no magnets.
In 2003, Mogilevich was indicted in Philadelphia on 45 felony counts for this $150 million stock fraud. But there is no extradition treaty between the United States and Russia, and no chance that Russia will ever extradite Semion voluntarily; he is arguably a national treasure, especially now. Acknowledging these realities, or perhaps for other reasons, the FBI quietly removed Mogilevich from its Top Ten Most Wanted list in 2015, where he had resided for the previous six years.
For our purposes, one of the most interesting things to note about this YBM Magnex case is that its CEO was a Russian-American named Jacob Bogatin, who was also indicted in the Philadelphia case. His brother David had served in the Soviet Army in a North Vietnamese anti-aircraft unit, helping to shoot down American pilots like Senator John McCain. Since the early 1990s, David Bogatin was considered by the FBI to be one of the key members of Semion Mogilevich’s Russian organized crime family in the United States, with a long string of convictions for big-ticket Mogilevich-type offenses like financial fraud and tax dodging.
At one point, David Bogatin owned five separate condos in Trump Tower that Donald Trump had reportedly sold to him personally. And Vyacheslav Ivankov, another key Mogilevich lieutenant in the United States during the 1990s, also resided for a time at Trump Tower, and reportedly had in his personal phone book the private telephone and fax numbers for the Trump Organization’s office in that building.
http://www.the-american-interest.com/2016/12/19/the-curious-world-of-donald-trumps-private-russian-connections/
Russian President Vladimir Putin directed a massive propaganda and cyber operation aimed at discrediting Hillary Clinton and getting Donald Trump elected, the top U.S. intelligence agencies said in a remarkable yet unshocking report released on Friday.
The 25-page dossier from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence stopped short of saying the Russians succeeded at influencing the outcome of the election, noting that the report did not attempt to make an assessment on that front. But it makes the case that “Russia’s intelligence services conducted cyber operations against targets associated with the 2016 US presidential election, including targets associated with both major US political parties.”
“We assess with high confidence that Russian military intelligence (General Staff Main Intelligence Directorate or GRU) used the Guccifer 2.0 persona and DCLeaks.com to release US victim data obtained in cyber operations publicly and in exclusives to media outlets and relayed material to WikiLeaks,” the DNI report reads.
The report is a quick and fascinating read. One example: It includes a fairly detailed appendix which concludes that the U.S.-based but Kremlin-financed media outlet RT (formerly Russia Today) is little more than a propaganda machine controlled by Russian intelligence agencies.
“Moscow’s influence campaign followed a Russian messaging strategy that blends covert intelligence operations—such as cyber activity—with overt efforts by Russian Government agencies, state-funded media, third-party intermediaries, and paid social media users or ‘trolls,'” reads the report.
The DNI report is remarkable for several reasons. First, it publicly accuses Russia’s President of trying to meddle with the U.S. election and to hack both political parties. Also, as The New York Times observed, it offers “a virtually unheard-of, real-time revelation by the American intelligence agencies that undermined the legitimacy of the president who is about to direct them.”
However, those who’ve been clamoring for more technical evidence to support a conclusion that Russian intelligence agencies were behind the phishing, malware attacks and email leaks at The Democratic National Committee (DNC) and Clinton campaign likely will be unmoved by this report. Those details will remain safely hidden from public view in the classified version of the report.
Last week, the FBI and Department of Homeland Security issued a joint report (PDF) on some of the malware and Internet resources used in the DNC intrusion. But many experts criticized it as a poorly-written, jumbled collection of threat indicators and digital clues that didn’t all quite lead where they should.
Others were perplexed by the high confidence level the agencies assigned to the findings in their unclassified report, noting that neither the FBI nor DHS examined the DNC hard drives that were compromised in the break-in (that work was done by private security firm Crowdstrike).
https://www.dni.gov/files/documents/ICA_2017_01.pdf
https://krebsonsecurity.com/2017/01/dni-putin-led-cyberattack-propaganda-effort-to-elect-trump-denigrate-clinton/
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/11/war-goes-viral/501125/
"All the lessons of history in four sentences: Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad with power. The mills of God grind slowly, but they grind exceedingly small. The bee fertilizes the flower it robs. When it is dark enough, you can see the stars." ~ Charles A. Beard
Donald J. Trump Foundation, checked “yes” to answer a question about whether its resources had been directed or used to benefit a “disqualified person” — meaning one of the organization’s central people.
The 2015 form reported that Mr. Trump had used $258,000 from the charity to settle legal disputes involving his businesses, possibly violating self-dealing provisions.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/11/22/us/politics/document-Trump-Foundation-Tax-Returns.html?_r=0
Trump-ocalyp$e Now Playlist ☠
https://youtu.be/WrfxnAV6Pzk?list=PLfRHLmFaPjT0lB_X5cF4ij5icpywb6qvg
☣ Tony Schwartz: The Truth About Trump | Oxford Union Q&A https://youtu.be/qxF_CDDJ0YI
☠ Boycott Trump ☣ SOS USA ☣ https://youtu.be/8okdzcz7PTM
☣ Trump Hostage Syndrome http://briarholler.blogspot.com/
☣ http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/09/donald-trump-scandals/474726/
☣ FBI GOP collusion is criminal https://youtu.be/f_bc12MVvSg
http://www.cnbc.com/2015/11/06/the-greed-report-american-ego--the-common-thread-in-the-biggest-scams.html
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/para/russian-organized-crime.htm
http://www.the-american-interest.com/2016/12/19/the-curious-world-of-donald-trumps-private-russian-connections/
posted by Irregular Unit 2023 at 26.1.17
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