Something Corrupted This Way Comes
Trump’s personal and business contacts with Russians in the U.S. and abroad, including in Russia, are extensive and go back decades. Linked to below, they raise the specter of his association in international money laundering and fraud schemes, and provide the backdrop for his consistent praise of Putin, the escalating questions about his and his campaign’s role in Russia’s interference in the presidential election, and his attitudes toward Russia, the Ukraine, and NATO. They demonstrate that his repeated denials of any contacts with Russia are lies. Because those denials are demonstrably false, his denials about his and his campaign’s contacts with Russia during the election (denials whose contents have shifted over time) cannot be credited, period.
It is and should be astounding and a source of significant alarm that news organizations, pundits, Congressmen, and former and current intelligence officers and foreign policy experts are actively entertaining the possibility that the President of the United States is a Russian asset/puppet and/or colluder with Putin to undermine the integrity of the United States election and reshape U.S. foreign policy for the benefit of Russia. The nature and content of Trump’s increasingly histrionic denials only add fuel to the growing fire.
But behind all of this potential misconduct, one thing is certain regardless of what the investigations eventually reveal: Trump is not capable of evaluating U.S. interests or making decisions about the United States other than through the lens of how those decisions benefit him personally. He is hopelessly conflicted based on his business interests. Those business interests are guiding and will guide and continue to guide his actions throughout his presidency unless those conflicts are removed — with regard to Russia and everything else. Those business interests also reveal a pattern of either participating in or closing his eyes to fraud and corruption. He need not be a traitor in the Benedict Arnold sense to betray and violate his oath of office. His inability and/or refusal to draw a distinction between his own interests and those of the United States means that he is a threat to our national security, as well as to democratic values and Constitutional principles. And all of this is true with or without the incendiary possibility of kompromat or election collusion.
Below are links to news coverage on Trump’s extensive business ties to Russia that give a sense of his conflicts and contacts with respect to that country alone. The news coverage demonstrates that his repeated denials of involvement with Russian interests are lies. I can’t personally parse every one of the articles I link to below — each represents deep investigative reporting and attempts to make sense of the dizzying array of connections and intersections between Trump and a sordid cast of intersecting and overlapping characters. What I am doing, instead, is putting many of these pieces of reporting in one place. Read for yourself; see for yourself.
In my view, each article is, on its own, disturbing. Taken together they paint a picture of a man either (at worst) deeply involved with shady characters who should be nowhere near the center of government or (at best) troublingly oblivious to the web of fraud and criminality that he has helped enable and/or benefitted from, and that he consistently praises.
Even the best-case scenario further illustrates a point I cannot let go and that no one should let go: this man, the U.S. president, is indifferent to both the appearance of impropriety and the actual impropriety of doing business with Russian criminals, oligarchs, and fraudsters. Prior to his election, he welcomed and courted those connections. He has done nothing to shed any business conflicts since assuming office, and has doubled down on his Russia-worship even in the face of the increasing concern and scandal that is growing across both major U.S. political parties, U.S. intelligence agencies, and the world. Yesterday’s New York Times article about secret back channels between Trump’s personal lawyer and pro-Putin Ukranian opposition figures underscores the multiple ways in which the shady dealings between Trump, his business associates, his campaign operatives, and their business interests in Russia and the Ukraine are coloring foreign policy and endangering our national security and global stability. His adult sons continue to travel the world (on taxpayer money) making deals that benefit themselves and the president financially, and every person and government they get access to knows that when they talk to the Trump sons, they are talking in effect to Trump himself, and that a deal with the sons and the Trump organization will be known to the president and to his benefit.
Trump will not, has not, and cannot put the United States’ interests ahead of his own business interests. His weekly conduct traveling to his country club (on taxpayer money), on which he is making money selling access to the presidency — in the form of sightings, participation in determination of who will work in the government, watching emergency policy decisions get made, and even just the chance of meeting at which they might get to offer their advice — further underscores his corruption. His continued ownership interest in the Trump International hotel in D.C. does as well. Minor quid pro quos with American citizens (and potentially foreign hotel visitors) may not raise as obvious a flag for national security purposes as the China trademark and one-China policy issue, but they are scandalous in their own right, and the fact that Trump is pimping himself for every bit of cash he can get, at every conceivable opportunity, shows that corruption and self-interest are the absolute guiding lights of his conduct. Almost every action, from the petty to the major, that this man undertakes is tainted with the fact that he and his adult children and their spouses are the financial beneficiaries of the decisions he makes. He has commingled the presidency with the family business interests and he is actively using the presidency to promote and grow the brand.
In this regard, Trump is well on his way to achieving his goal of being like Vladlmir Putin and the other dictators and authoritarians he so vocally admires. One of the hallmarks of banana republics, dictatorships, and other forms of tyranny is the corruption of public office and the use of government positions to amass personal wealth for the dictator and his family and friends. Historically the United States has avoided this problem in the main, because Congress is subject to ethics and conflict of interest rules, and presidents have disclosed their tax returns so that their conflicts can be evaluated and they have taken the necessary steps to remove the conflicts of interest that might otherwise raise the specter of corruption and improper influence, i.e., raise the concern that the President, rather than acting in the interest of the United States, is acting in his own self-interest. Trump is the first president to refuse to do this. He was also arguably the most conflicted electoral college victor in U.S. history, given the nature of his celebrity, business, and brand, making the means of conflict avoidance significantly more challenging than it was for his predecessors. But Trump did not even try, although he lied on the campaign and during the transition saying he would address it. He did not and we still don’t have his tax returns. His conflicts and lack of transparency are antithetical to our values.
They are also antithetical to our safety. And the corruption and danger to this nation will remain so long as Trump is permitted to maintain his un-Constitutional and unethical conflicts of interest. The damage that he is doing to the conception of a democratic nation is already incalculable.
It Doesn’t Have to Be This Way; There is a Simple Fix
As the Russia scandal grows, and Trump’s and his administration’s denials about his prior contacts are further exposed as false, it is critical that the demands for investigations do not obscure this fundamental truth: we do not need an investigation to address and put a stop to his corruption immediately. With or without a role in the Russian interference in the election, Trump’s business conflicts violate the Constitution and endanger this country. And while the GOP may not be willing to impeach or invoke the Emoluments Clause at this stage, they have a readily available means to solve this problem without going to such drastic lengths. All Congress needs to do is pass proposed legislation (the Presidential Conflict of Interest Act of 2017; S. 65, H.R. 371), which would require the President and Vice President to do what every member of Congress has to do: disclose and remove their business conflicts.
Holding a man who has already demonstrated such astonishing willingness to defile the White House with corruption, opportunism, and nepotism to the same ethical standards as others in government should not be a controversial proposition. What should be controversial is that the sitting president of the United States has in fact acted in such a way that, for the first time in U.S. history, such legislation is necessary to stop the president from corrupting his office and violating the Constitution. And if he is unwilling to remove those conflicts, he unquestionably is unfit to serve as the president of the nation he has inexplicably been given the honor of leading. If he is unwilling to put this country first, he must resign or be removed. Ensuring that the president upholds his oath of office ought to be a bi-partisan issue.
And the demand on everyone’s lips ought to be this: Republican Congressmen must uphold their own oaths of office by passing the Presidential Conflict of Interest Act of 2017. This is an easy means of ensuring that our democratic and Constitutional principles are maintained and protected, without resorting to impeachment. If the GOP will not pass this legislation, they are equally guilty. For until they do, they are collaborators, not merely complicit in Trump’s corruption, but active participants in Trump’s project of turning himself into Putin and selling this country out to benefit himself and his family financially.
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Links to reporting, not in particularly organized form, are below:
- Financial Times article about Trump’s Russia ties going back 30 years, titled “Trump’s Russian Connections” and dated December 13, 2016, by Michael Stott and Catherine Belton. I cannot get the link to work, but it’ll come up instantly in a Google search. An excerpt:
TRUMP’S RUSSIA INTEREST SPARKED IN THE SOVIET YEARS
The Republican candidate’s links to Russia are a mix of bling, business and bluster spanning 30 years. This account in five sections traces Trump’s fascination for Russia from its beginnings in Soviet times through deals done in the Putin era to Trump’s appointment of a slew of Russia-connected advisers during the US presidential campaign. It concludes with outside views on Trump’s long-standing Russia ties and the president-elect’s own explanations.
2. Then there is this (a federal RICO lawsuit by the City of Almaty was recently dismissed for lack of standing):
3. Several overviews of his Trump’s extensive business ties with Russia and Russians, here and abroad:
4. Adam Khan has raised the question of whether Trump’s casino’s helped launder Russian money; see below for his discussion as well as a WSJ article reporting that Trump’s casino settled anti-money laundering claims.
And another tweetstorm from Khan is here.
5. Then there is the political bombshell from the NYT about the roles of Trump lawyer Michael Cohen and fraudster/felon Felix Sater slipping secret alternative “peace” ideas for Russia’s role in the Ukraine via an envelope and bypassing the elected government of Ukraine:
6. Josh Marshall summarizes some of the very ugly background on Felix Sater and the Bayrock/Trump connections (with links to the original reporting):
7. Trump’s under-oath denials that he barely knew/remembered Sater also appear to have been false:
8. Trump’s development of Trump Soho led to a fraud lawsuit, settled last year, as well as a separate lawsuit claiming “that Trump SoHo was developed with the undisclosed involvement of convicted felons and financing from questionable sources in Russia and Kazakhstan,” according to this article below:
Those development groups were Bayrock (with Felix Sater’s involvement, as discussed in the articles above) and the Sapir Organization.
9. Background on Tamir Sapir of the Sapir Organization shows him to traffic in illegal animal parts, in addition to shady real estate deals:
10. The Chris Christie administration’s treatment of Trump casinos’ tax obligations also raise questions; note the reference to Trump Taj Mahal in this article:
11. Fraud and defaults swirl around Trump Tower Toronto:
Here’s more on Trump and Schnaider, the Russian-Canadian billionaire involved with Trump Tower Toronto:
12. Here is more on some of the unsavory people involved in Trump Tower Toronto:
13. An illegal gambling ring was run out of Trump Tower in New York:
14. Trump properties in Miami are “magnets” for Russian oligarchs and potential money laundering:
15. Of course, deaths associated with the Russian spy linked to the Trump dossier are starting to happen, too:
The dead man was an assistant to Igor Sechin (see number 18, below).
16. Then there are the Manafort and Ukraine connections, themselves too lengthy to go into here, but check out the Wall Street Journal’s latest and some critical reporting from this past summer, which likely led to his ouster/resignation. Also check out The Daily Beast’s deep dive into the connections of Manafort, Michael Flynn, Cater Page and others; below is the last in a multi-articles series:
Manafort’s connections include Dmitry Firtash, with whom he sought to develop a real estate project involving buying the Drake Hotel in Manhattan in 2008, which led to a lawsuit (it was dismissed). Firtash co-owns a Ukranian gas company with Russia’s Gazprom in the Ukraine. The U.S. is currently seeking to extradict Firtash for allegedly engaging in bribery to close a titanium mining deal in India, and Spain is also seeking to extradict him in connection with money laundering allegations:
For a more nuanced view of Firtash, and the ways in which the extradition issue raise questions for the new Trump administration, Bob Kolker’s excellent piece is fascinating:
17. Trump’s relationship with billionaire friend-of-Putin Agalarov led to the Miss Universe pageant being held in Moscow in 2013:
18. Former Trump campaign foreign policy advisor Carter Page is also under investigation, including in connection with allegations in the infamous dossier that he was offered a stake in Rosneft, Russia’s state oil company, by its CEO and Putin-buddy (who is also a friend of U.S. Secretary of State Tex Tillerson from the latter’s years at Exxon), Igor Sechin, in exchange for helping lift U.S. sanctions on Russia:
