[Vision2020] Trump's Russian Money

[Nicholas Gier]

A Dutch TV documentary goes into great depth about the Bayrock connection.
See
http://www.alternet.org/video/donald-trumps-financial-ties-russian-oligarchs-and-mobsters-detailed-new-documentary
.

AP BREAKING: Trump lawyer: Tax returns from past 10 years show no "income
of any type from Russian sources," with few exceptions.

Daily Kos, May 13, 2007

So Trump released ten years worth of tax returns? No. No, he didn’t. What
he released was a letter from his lawyers
<https://twitter.com/BraddJaffy/status/863047395810172928>. That letter
claims that Trump’s company, the Trump Organization, hasn’t had any Russian
income since 2005. So, no Russian income. Except, you know, for the $13
million everyone already knew about and the $95 million home he sold to a
Russian oligarch at more than twice its market price. So, only over a
hundred million in Russian income. Oh, and other things that were “not
identified as ‘Russian’ in your books and records and therefore not
separately reflected on your tax returns.” So, somewhere between the
hundred million everyone already knows about and *infinity*.

There’s also the little problem that the statement doesn’t even begin to
address other issues. Issues like companies that are incorporated
elsewhere, but whose funding originates in Russia. Like say, the company
that’s headquartered in Trump Tower
<http://www.businessinsider.com/putins-plan-to-destroy-the-west-looks-a-lot-like-donald-trump-2016-7>
.

Hunting for partners with cash, he turned to a small upstart called the
Bayrock Group ...

And you can bet that the numbers from Bayrock? They’re not on that list of
Russia funding. But they should be.

Bayrock is just one of several such arrangements that Trump has used to
pull in funding. Why did Donald Trump Jr
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2016/07/27/trumps-claim-that-i-have-nothing-to-do-with-russia/?utm_term=.81c06a3bb53e>
.
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2016/07/27/trumps-claim-that-i-have-nothing-to-do-with-russia/?utm_term=.81c06a3bb53e>
say
this to a real estate conference?

“Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross section of a lot of our
assets...”

What made Eric Trump s
<http://www.wbur.org/onlyagame/2017/05/05/james-dodson-donald-trump-golf>ay
this about Trump’s golf course funding?

“Well, we don’t rely on American banks. We have all the funding we need out
of Russia.”

It wasn’t nice fat checks stamped “Russian government payment to Donald
Trump.” It was companies like this:

Hunting for partners with cash, he turned to a small upstart called the
Bayrock Group, which would pull together massive real estate deals using
the Trump name. Its chairman was a former Soviet official named Tevfik Arif
<https://kazakhbusinessbulletin.wordpress.com/kazakh-businessman/tevfik-arif/>,
who made a small fortune running luxe hotels in Turkey. To run Bayrock’s
operation, Arif hired
<http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/17/nyregion/17trump.html> Felix Satter, a
Soviet-born, Brighton Beach–bred college dropout. Satter changed his name
to Sater, likely to distance himself from the criminal activity that a
name-check would easily turn up. …

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. Several of those projects broke ground, but they were a
mere prelude. “Mr. Trump was particularly taken with Mr. Arif’s overseas
connections,” the *Times* reported
<http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/06/us/politics/donald-trump-soho-settlement.html?_r=0>
(after
buyers of units in the Trump SoHo sued him for fraud).

The location Trump used for filming *The Apprentice*? Paid for by Bayrock.

So, the breaking news that Trump’s taxes show he hasn’t received Russian
money?

1. It’s not his taxes.

2. It’s not news.

3. It shows that $100 million is just the start of Trump’s connection to
Russian sources.
-- 

A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they
shall never sit in.

-Greek proverb

“Enlightenment is man’s emergence from his self-imposed immaturity.
Immaturity is the inability to use one’s understanding without guidance
from another. This immaturity is self- imposed when its cause lies not in
lack of understanding, but in lack of resolve and courage to use it without
guidance from another. Sapere Aude! ‘Have courage to use your own
understand-ing!—that is the motto of enlightenment.

--Immanuel Kant
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