By ann summers
Trump-Soho financial documents will now become available to the Senate Intelligence committee, as a Tim O’Brien article in Bloomberg News describes the increased attention of the Special Counsel…following the money.
Robert Mueller is examining whether President Donald Trump obstructed justice when he fired James Comey as director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Washington Post recently reported. As we’ve heard for months now, there is also a probe of possible collusion between Trump’s campaign team and the Kremlin to tilt the 2016 election in the president’s favor.
But the Justice Department inquiry led by Mueller now has added flavors. The Post noted that the investigation also includes “suspicious financial activity” involving “Russian operatives.” The New York Times was more specific in its account, saying that Mueller is looking at whether Trump associates laundered financial payoffs from Russian officials by channeling them through offshore accounts.
The release of a Ron Wyden Senate hold on nominee Sigal Mandelker, compelled Treasury to give up financial documents related to Russian involvement by Trump via NYC investments.
In other news from MSNBC and Bloomberg News, the RICO case related to Trump Soho and Felix ‘Pump and Dump’ Sater also moves forward.
In both cases a more direct line between Trump and Putin can be drawn via following the money.
Apparently, this all is related to a former business associate of Trump’s, Felix Sater, and Sater’s role in a Mafia-linked scheme. Lawyers are looking to unseal documents from a federal case involving Sater as they feel it will show the president committed fraud at the time.
Pointing to the combination of Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) taking a hold off of one of Trump’s Treasury Department nominees and a RICO lawsuit proceeding against one of Sater’s companies, Maddow said that O’Brien has now been told that this could show a connection between Trump and Russia. (Wyden said he would only drop the hold if Trump-Russia docs were released.)
“If Tim O’Brien’s reporting proves out,” Maddow said. “We’re left with the question — Why’d that happen? Why was money connected to Putin pouring into Trump projects? Why did they do that?”
Russian money trail to Trump
Remember the President is heading into this storm defended by the lawyer who handled his divorces and his bankruptcies.
@joshtpm Sydney Schanberg
on Kasowitz’s attempt to spook Tim O’Brien. Kasowitz also handled Trump’s Wile-Coyotesque lawsuit against Vincent Lo. pic.twitter.com/Hzy0hoH7gm
My Lawyers Got Trump to Admit 30 Lies Under Oath
Trump sued me, then had to acknowledge 30 times during a deposition that he had lied over the years about a wide range of issues.
bloomberg.com
POTUS told me he was tape-recording our conversations, too. Under oath, he had to admit that wasn’t true: https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-06-12/trump-s-history-of-lies-according-to-biographer-timothy-o-brien …
Meanwhile, Trump is mired in a probe that now pivots off sensitive topics for him and his family: their money, their deals and Russia – all of which will test his promise to testify under oath to Mueller and his investigators.
Nicole Plyler Fisk
Gene Howington
FFS Guest Blogger
Joy of Fishes
Chuck Stanley
shortfinals
Terry Welshans
ann li-summers
wordcloud9
Flowers For Socrates 
Follow the money. I am more sure the RICO and money laundering will be the downfall (see the movie of that name for more on that) of the occupant and his accomplices.
Our friend Louie Ludwig made a new self-produced thirty-second ad. It seems appropriate for the occasion.
Excellent video Chuck! 😀
You need to meet him sometime. He lives in New Orleans, and is one of the most creative people I ever met. He posts on Daily Kos as ‘Crashing Vor.’ His girlfriend, Naomi, is a gifted sculptor.
Louie is a truthteller, which makes his calendar of photos of abandoned furniture truly funny. I have his CD, I Got Nothin’ To Say. He has been compared to Bob Dylan by critics and musicologists.
This link is to his YouTube channel.
I know nothing about tracing laundered money but if I were writing a novel about a president like Trump taking over a country like the US with the help of a foreign oligarch like Putin, I would have a money-laundering outfit set up at some tropical location like Mar-a-Lago and it would serve many purposes, including laundry services for Mexican drug lords. Then I would also have the president using a hellish, overactive armed federal gestapo-like organization “capturing and deporting” various “bad hombres” as a regular activity so that when the president’s particular favored Mexican drug lords were getting flack or competition from other, less favored Mexican drug lords, the contracts on the “marked men” could be carried out efficiently and attributed to law and order.
Mind you, I have never written such a novel but just sayin …
Hey there. Glad to see you found your way over here from the toxic swamp.
Your comment got caught in the spam filter, but I freed you from its clutches.
My Hero!
Welcome home!
Everyone needs to keep in mind that at least four large DC law firms turned him down. That includes Williams & Connolly. He has a reputation for not paying his bills and won’t listen. Any lawyer will tell you, people like that are the clients from hell.
His lead counsel is supposed to be a real bulldog who represented him in his divorces and civil lawsuits.
He has either won or minimized payouts by outspending the plaintiffs against him. This is different. He is not going to outspend the US Treasury or the NY state government. Furthermore, the bulldog lawyering approach is not going to impress or intimidate a state attorney general or a United States Special Prosecutor.
It has always been a matter of scale for him. He has, in the past, had more resources and time and has often settled without a trial. Now, the shoe is on the other foot and his resources and time are minuscule when compared to who is now on his case. They will run him to ground and I hope they resist settling for anything less than sending him and his clan to the poor house first and the gray bar hotel second.