House of Trump, House of Putin

[H]einous bombings that killed... three hundred... were likely the product of a "" operation that enabled Putin to consolidate power, much as Adolf Hitler did after the .

Vnesheconombank, or VEB... bought $850 million of stock... from Shnaider... $15 million... went into the Trump Toronto project. ...[T]he chairman of VEB’s ...board ...Vladimir Putin.

Bayrock’s leadership... billionaire oligarchs from the former Soviet Union.

As early as 1990... Trump had negative . ...[I]n 1991, the Trump Taj Mahal ...became the first of six ...bankruptcies. ...Later two other Trump casinos ...agreed to pay fines for "willfully failing to report" currency transactions ...and failing to comply with laws ...to prevent .

Ivankov’s mandate from Mogilevich... consolidate the Russian Mafia in the US... form alliances with... other Mafias... bribe politicians....infiltrate governments... [T]he Russians began scrutinizing... vulnerabilities of America’s campaign finance system, the K Street lobbying system, Wall Street... [etc.]

[T]he biggest contributor to ... was Leviev... who had a direct line to Rabbi ... Donald Trump, and... Putin... Leviev would make major real estate transactions with Jared Kushner...

Mogilevich’s plans for globalization continued.... Having set up... YBM Magnex, he... dispatched Dr. Jacob (Yakov) Bogatin... David Bogatin’s brother, to its... Pennsylvania branch to become CEO. ...1998, the FBI raided... In 2003, Mogilevich... Bogatin, and Igor Fisherman... were indicted on... counts for... $150 million stock fraud.

With 's Rabbi leading the way, the Federation... was... providing Putin... a Jewish "umbrella"... to battle ... who... back[ed] candidates opposed to Putin. ...Lazar and Leviev ...promised Putin that they would... "open doors to the corridors of power in Washington."

Bayrock... brought into Donald Trump’s orbit a host of oligarchs and alleged mobsters involved in laundering money, the trafficking of underage women, feeding intelligence to the Russians... [etc.].

"...Trump came to the conclusion that it is better to do business with crooks than with honest people," said ...

With the help of Sater’s father, the firm got protection from the Genovese family, and Sater used an alias.. to launder... proceeds... [A] mob operation... cheating unsuspecting investors out of $40 million.

...Eduard Nektalov ...bought a condo ... directly below ...Kellyanne Conway. ...Nektalov ...related to Lev Leviev ...was being investigated by a Treasury Department ...for mob-connected money laundering. He and his father, Roman Nektalov, had been targeted in Operation Meltdown... that uncovered a scheme through which diamond merchants laundered $8 million in Colombian drug proceeds. ...May 2004 ...a ...man ...fired once in ...Nektalov’s head ...two more ...into his back ...

Given... control over.. oligarchs was crucial to... power, Putin needed to... keep tabs on... their money... If... the or other forms of flight capital were funding a Trumpbranded project... If oligarchs were buying scores of Trump condos... Putin wanted to know.

As Putin’s ascent began, the Mafia moved into a... strategic position... to compromise... political figures and businessmen in the United States... and exploit... weaknesses... as campaign finance, Washington lobbying... [etc.]

Firtash’s “success was built on remarkable sweetheart deals brokered by associates of... Vladimir Putin, at immense cost to Russian taxpayers."

[O]ne Trump-branded project after another was beset by corruption, lawsuits... [etc]. Trump licensed Trump Tower Baku to close relatives of ... described in a diplomatic cable as "notoriously corrupt even for Azerbaijan."

landed at JFK... 1992, just after the fall of the Soviet Union... the most powerful Russian mobster in the United States... oversaw the mob’s growth from a local racket in Brooklyn’s to a multibilliondollar-a-year criminal organization.

Trump struck a deal... to attach his name to three high-rises in Sunny Isles Beach ... known as "Little Moscow." ...[A]t least sixty-three buyers with Russian addresses or passports spent $98 million on Trump's properties in South Florida.

[A]fter Putin’s appointment... 's newspaper... headlined "Vladimir Putin Became Head of the FSB Unlawfully." ...[T]wo men assaulted him ...shattering his skull ...He died ...[S]ix men... held a... press conference in Moscow. All... had investigated organized crime for the FSB... [T]hey told... journalists... the... unit... had been transformed into a brutal and corrupt criminal enterprise...

Even after he was locked up... in 1996, Ivankov continued to order... s... Witnesses... were forced to take new identities... FBI agents who investigated him ended up on his hit list. The same was true for journalists.

[T]hough Sater had lost his license to trade stocks, in 1993, he... had... a penthouse office suite at ... owned by Donald Trump. ...Sater and ...friends sold the stocks ...in an illegal pump-and-dump scheme...

[T]he Russians knew, real estate was... [an] efficient way to launder billions in flight capital, and Trump’s newest projects were perfectly suited... [e.g.,] Trump World Tower...

Americans cracked down on organized crime, Putin co-opted...[and] weaponized it.

In 1998... FinCEN... assessed a $477,700 civil penalty against the Trump Taj Mahal... [T]he casino admitted to "willful and repeated" violations, including... ... and record-keeping requirements... 106 violations...

[A]n American businessman... [was] talking to a rich Uzbek cotton trader about the pay-for-play K Street lobbyists in Washington. The Uzbek... "You mean you have firms with highly paid professionals who are paid to bribe congressmen?" He couldn’t get over it. Americans had sanitized corruption, institutionalized it, and made it into part of the white-collar, professional world! Not only was it legal, it was a highly paid profession.

Russian gangsters became... Putin’s enforcers. ... told me, in effect, "the Mafia is one of the branches of the Russian government..." ...Putin’s greatest triumph is his... state... of, by, and for organized crime.

As... Karen Dawisha explains in Putin’s Kleptocracy... [this] made Vladimir Putin the richest man in the world...

Ivankov recruited two brigades... of 250 athletes and... veterans of the Afghan war... to kill his enemies and establish ties...

Bayrock planned to build the Trump SoHo in New York,.. [and various Trump Projects and properties]. ...[I]ts ...list of strategic partners was topped with... "The Trump Organization"...

Strategic relationships... were vital to Mogilevich... to insinuate himself into the... Ukraine energy trade... to siphon... huge sums of money. A key figure... helping... was Dmitry Firtash. ...His most important link... Igor Fisherman... a high-level aide to ... Department of Justice ...identified Firtash ...an "upper-echelon [associate] of Russian organized crime."

... was Bayrock's... man... Sater’s FBI handler described Felix’s father, Michael Sheferovsky... "a... Mogilevich crime syndicate boss." Felix... as a teenager, counted among his friends Michael D. Cohen...

Vladimir Putin... had leapfrogged... to take charge of the Russian secret service... bringing in confederates from ...the , and purging... enemies...[including two counterintelligence Directorates]... charged with investigating high-level economic crimes, which... involved Putin and his allies. ...Putin made sure ...both ...were ...eliminated. Having control over agencies that had the power to investigate you was... indispensible...

In the wake of his massive debts and multiple bankruptcies, Wall Street... said no... The banks... said no to Trump. ...But Bayrock ...said yes...

[T]o turn a blind eye to practices that allowed the Russian mob to launder money through his real estate on a massive scale... required a third party... largely staffed, owned, and financed by émigrés from... the former Soviet Union... [on] the twenty-fourth floor of .

Trump had a unique résumé for... a presidential track. ...[T]ies to Russian money stretched... two decades... laundering money, s and real estate were the vehicles of choice...

Cohn, as for the two biggest crime families in New York, the Genoveses and the Gambinos, was invaluable in helping Trump traverse... contractors... and the like, controlled by the mob.

"Trump specifically marketed his Sunny Isles, Florida, apartment units in... [Russia] to attract... organized crime money"...

Russians had billions of dollars from illicit sources... Trump ...in dire need of financing, had ...ideal vehicles for laundering ...real estate ...casinos ...and a history of not asking too many questions ...

Russians had begun collaborating with Italian mobsters as early as 1980...

Trump appears to have taken advantage of... weak regulations to sell en masse to the Russians. ...1,300 condos, one-fifth of all Trumpbranded condos sold in the US since the eighties, were... "in secretive, all-cash transactions that enable buyers to avoid legal scrutiny by shielding their finances and identities." ...[T]he total value of these... sales... that match the US Treasury’s criteria for possible ... $1.5 billion... may understate the... dirty money...

Doing business with Trump allowed the ... to assault America’s most essential democratic institutions...

Vladimir Putin... waged a shadow... "virtual" war... of s, disinformation, and cyber warfare.

Russian intelligence; hijacked social media and exploited algorithms to make... provocative "fake news" go viral; transformed Facebook into one of the biggest purveyors of Russian propaganda... used... "" and... bogus s that pretended to correct fake news, and... upended the... notion of truth, of reality...

[D]isintegration of the Soviet Union... opened... hundreds of billions of dollars in flight capital... from oligarchs, wealthy s, and mobsters... Trump’s zeal to sell condos, no questions asked, to shell companies meant... Russians could launder vast amounts of money while hiding... personal identities.

[A]s long as they had money... Trump was listening.

[I]n Russia... scores of people... died mysteriously after investigating the alleged crimes of Putin and his oligarchs.

Trump, the Soviets... discovered... was... intoxicated... with boatloads of cash... in dubious transactions...

Without the 's move into New York, Donald Trump would not have become president of the United States.

Within... intelligence, assets... include those who... prefer... [a foreign country's] ideology, those who betray... for monetary gain, those... ed, and... useful idiots who... provide... information through... lapses or blind pursuit of their own agendas.