Craig Unger

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.