{"id":649,"date":"2017-11-18T23:28:38","date_gmt":"2017-11-18T23:28:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nortonspeaks.com\/?p=649"},"modified":"2017-11-18T23:28:38","modified_gmt":"2017-11-18T23:28:38","slug":"trump-russia-real-story","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/nortonspeaks.com\/index.php\/2017\/11\/18\/trump-russia-real-story\/","title":{"rendered":"TRUMP and RUSSIA REAL STORY"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Trump\u2013Russia story is a\u00a0story about money laundering in real estate. Full stop.<\/a><\/h3>\n

 <\/p>\n

By Mark Sumner<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Friday Nov 17, 2017<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

When the investigation into the Trump campaign brings up charges of money laundering and shady property deals, it may seem like a sideline. But it shouldn\u2019t.\u00a0No one expects Donald Trump to secretly have a shrine to Lenin in the basement of Trump Tower. Michael Flynn didn\u2019t\u00a0offer to kidnap a cleric<\/a>\u00a0because the man offended his religious views. Paul Manafort wasn\u2019t\u00a0sending Putin plans<\/a>\u00a0to \u201cgreatly benefit his government\u201d\u00a0because he really, really wants to see democracy crushed\u2014though given Manafort\u2019s track record, he might.<\/h4>\n

 <\/p>\n

The truth is simple: They\u2019re in it for the money. So when you see a story\u00a0<\/a>like this<\/a>,\u00a0<\/a>it\u2019s not a side show. It\u2019s the show.<\/h4>\n

 <\/p>\n

A new report from watchdog group Global Witness says that a Colombian money launderer currently in U.S. custody participated in the advance sale of units in a Panama development bearing the president\u2019s name: The Trump Ocean Club. Trump has made $13.9 million from the Ocean Club in the last three years alone, according to NBC\u2019s own reporting on the matter.<\/h4>\n

<\/h4>\n

This time it\u00a0was a front for murderous, drug-runners in Colombia\u00a0feeding dollars to Trump. But that\u2019s the point: Trump\u2019s connection to Russia isn\u2019t philosophical. It\u2019s financial. He\u2019ll take money from\u00a0anyone<\/em>. And\u00a0he\u2019s not alone.<\/a><\/h4>\n

 <\/p>\n

The federal indictment of Paul Manafort, President Donald Trump\u2019s former campaign chairman, accuses him of laundering millions in foreign payments to pursue a \u201clavish lifestyle\u201d in the U.S., especially in the Hamptons, where he has a house.<\/h4>\n

 <\/p>\n

The reason that both Trump and Manafort have money flowing into their coffers is simple. After rules were changed making other means of money laundering more difficult, there was still one huge loophole that was left wide open.<\/h4>\n

 <\/p>\n

It is well known that real estate can be an effective way to launder money because many transactions involve opaque entities and clean large sums of money in a single transaction.<\/h4>\n

 <\/p>\n

The pipeline that\u00a0people in Trump\u2019s circle have connected\u00a0to oligarchs and autocrats flows with\u00a0billions<\/em>\u00a0of dollars coming into the United States on a raft of real estate deals.<\/h4>\n

 <\/p>\n

So word that Trump didn\u2019t just clear\u00a0hundreds of millions<\/a>\u00a0from Russian mobsters …<\/h4>\n

 <\/p>\n

The money to build these projects flowed almost entirely from Russian sources. In other words, after his business crashed, Trump was floated and made to appear to operate a successful business enterprise through the infusion of hundreds in millions of cash from dark Russian sources.<\/h4>\n

But also raked in cash from\u00a0the cocaine and kidnapping kings of FARC<\/a>\u00a0\u2026<\/h4>\n

 <\/p>\n

David Murcia Guzm\u00e1n is the Colombian fraudster who just completed a nine-year sentence in the US for money laundering that defrauded more than 200,000 people of $2 billion, according to the report. A Brazilian real estate salesman named Alexandre Ventura Noriega confirmed to Global Witness and NBC that Guzman participated in the pre-sale of Ocean Club units, purchasing as many as 10 of them in the period when the developers were trying to raise money to complete the project.<\/h4>\n

 <\/p>\n

This should not be a surprise to anyone. Because the truth is\u00a0that\u2019s what his\u00a0business is about<\/em>. Trump\u2019s real estate \u201cfortune\u201d isn\u2019t about creating landmarks, running hotels, or building homes. It\u2019s about laundering money on an industrial scale.<\/h4>\n

 <\/p>\n

Trump may not have deliberately set out to facilitate criminal activity in his business dealings. But, as this Global Witness investigation shows, licensing his brand to the luxurious Trump Ocean Club International Hotel and Tower in Panama aligned Trump\u2019s financial interests with those of crooks looking to launder ill-gotten gains. Trump seems to have done little to nothing to prevent this. What is clear is that proceeds from Colombian cartels\u2019 narcotics trafficking were laundered through the Trump Ocean Club and that Donald Trump was one of the beneficiaries.<\/h4>\n

 <\/p>\n

That business of \u201cmay not deliberately\u201d is both Trump\u2019s standard method of running his business, and what he hopes will be his Get Out of Jail Free card when Robert Mueller inevitably comes calling. Trump doesn\u2019t so much actively make deals that are clearly money laundering \u2026\u00a0he makes it possible for money laundering to occur, so long as a substantial cut flows into his pockets.<\/h4>\n

 <\/p>\n

He has great hopes that when Mueller drops off a stack of indictments detailing the hundreds of millions of money laundering that Trump has conducted both inside and outside the US, Trump\u00a0can hide behind his passivity, and behind the blanket forgiveness uniquely provided\u00a0under\u00a0real estate laws.<\/a><\/h4>\n

 <\/p>\n

The laws regulating US real estate deals are scant, experts say. Provisions against terrorism financing in the Patriot Act, passed in the aftermath of the September 11 2001 attacks, obliged mortgage lenders to conduct \u201cknow your customer\u201d research. But money launderers pay in cash. Sales such as those of the Trump Soho apartments have passed through this loophole, which was partially closed only this year.<\/h4>\n

 <\/p>\n

That Trump\u2019s campaign team\u00a0agreed to look into the Magnitsky Act<\/a>\u00a0isn\u2019t something they\u2019re doing for Russia. It\u2019s something that they\u2019re doing for themselves. They need to keep that pipeline open. To make sure that the oligarchs banned from US transactions under sanctions are free to insert their dollars \u2026\u00a0right into Trump\u2019s bank account.<\/h4>\n

 <\/p>\n

Sure, the Russians helped Donald Trump get elected. Sure, Trump\u2019s campaign contacted Russia over and over to coordinate on ways to attack Hillary Clinton and the best use of Russian trolls and ad dollars. Sure, Russia made it clear that the payoff for their help would come in the form of reduced sanctions.<\/h4>\n

 <\/p>\n

That\u2019s\u00a0<\/em>the sideshow. The real show? It\u2019s billions of dollars moving from oligarchs in Russia, to banks in Cyprus, to real estate in New York. Putin wants that flow open. Trump wants his cut. The White House is a tool to make that happen.<\/h4>\n

 <\/p>\n

Meanwhile<\/a>, Paul Manafort paid $5 million for repairs and upgrades that were ticketed at about $1 million. That includes a $100,000 audio system,\u00a0$650,000 worth of landscaping, and on and on with much of the money going to a single mysterious contractor whose actual work seems to be \u2026 minimal.<\/h4>\n

<\/h4>\n

What it doesn\u2019t explain\u2014or highlight\u2014are the stratospheric payments he made to home improvement companies when his renovation work was estimated at far less.<\/h4>\n

 <\/p>\n

Because even now, with everyone looking, the pipeline has to keep flowing, flowing, flowing.<\/h4>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Trump\u2013Russia story is a\u00a0story about money laundering in real estate. Full stop.   By Mark Sumner\u00a0 Friday Nov 17, 2017   When the investigation into the Trump campaign brings up charges of money laundering and shady property deals, it may seem like a sideline. But it shouldn\u2019t.\u00a0No one expects Donald Trump to secretly have… (1 comment)<\/a><\/span>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":291,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[44],"tags":[54,33,120,30,58,59,42],"class_list":["entry","author-larrynorton","post-649","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-democracy","tag-corrupt-trump","tag-politics","tag-real-estate","tag-republicans","tag-russian-mobsters","tag-russian-oligarchs","tag-vladimir-putin"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/nortonspeaks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/02\/Donald_Trump-by-Gage-Skidmore-CC-BY-SA-3.0-.jpg?fit=4272%2C2848","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8bppg-at","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/nortonspeaks.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/649","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/nortonspeaks.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/nortonspeaks.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nortonspeaks.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nortonspeaks.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=649"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/nortonspeaks.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/649\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":650,"href":"http:\/\/nortonspeaks.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/649\/revisions\/650"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nortonspeaks.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/291"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/nortonspeaks.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=649"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nortonspeaks.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=649"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nortonspeaks.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=649"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}