Craig Unger

[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.

[H]e was a vulgar... vile... misogynistic, racist... buffoon who knew only his own pecuniary interests and prejudices... He was clownish and repellant... his... spectacles amplified by a sycophantic right-wing media.

[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.