Day 550

Day 550 Monday July 23, 2018 1,028 Days to Go

The Fawning Obsequiousness of Donald J. Trump

There has been a lot of talk about what Putin may have on Trump.
Jennifer Palmieri, Hillary Clinton’s Director of Communications, put it best when she said, “Don’t look too deep when you are examining Trump.”
That is good advice, because you don’t have to look very deep. In fact, all you have to do is look at what is in front of your face.
To wit, ask yourself, “What do we know?”
In other words what are we absolutely sure of when it comes to Trump and his relationship with Putin and Russians, and then ask yourself, “What can we conclude from what we know?”

I recently received an email that reminded me of Trump’s business dealings with Russia, with Russians, and with Putin. If you look at his dealings with Russian and Russians there is a clear pattern and evidence that Trump , and Trump Jr., got money from Russians, a lot of money. The Russians bought houses at inflated prices. They invested heavily in his real estate projects. They bought into his condos. Many of these people are associated with the Russian mob, and or with Vladimir Putin. This is not a question for debate; this is known provable fact.
Who financed Trump? Trump Jr. has famously said that they got their money from Russia. It is also known and provable that they did so after the Trump family had many failed and bankrupted (or near bankrupted) businesses back in the 90s and no western bank would loan them money. Except, maybe, Deutschebank and that appears to be via the son of the retiring Supreme Court justice’s son and only after a large amount of money was invested in the bank via Russia.
We also know that nothing happens in Russia these days without Putin’s knowledge.
Now we get to Bill Browder and the Magnitsky Act. Browder is one of those characters that would never be allowed into a movie script because no one would believe such a person exists. His grandfather was a Communist, headed the American Communist Party for years and ran twice for President. The grandfather had deep ties to Russia. Bill’s dad and brothers are math whizzes and have nothing to do with Russia. Bill got into investing in Russia in 1996 with a stake of $25 million. He made a lot of money. This was at the same time Putin was rising rapidly through the political system. At one point they worked together on financial stuff. They then didn’t. It is well known that once Putin got into power he began to shakedown various rich people in Russia. One person he put in jail. Once that happened it is reported that the others asked Putin what he wanted and it is reported that he said 50%. I suspect that Browder was approached by Putin and he balked.
Browder was barred from entering Russia. His people were harassed both physically and any other way the Russians under Putin could dream up. One of them was his lawyer named Magnitsky, who was jailed and died while in police custody. Typically, that’s enough in Putin’s Russia for people to fall in line. By this time Browder had moved his operation to London, had renounced his U.S. citizenship and become a British citizen. (Why he switched citizenships has never really been explained.) We do know that in 2006 he wrote a book very complimentary of Putin.
After Magnitsky died, Browder got an act of Congress passed which allows the government to freeze the assets of people from Russis who violate human rights, and ban them from entering the country.
Consider this, recently Jeff Bezos was declared the richest man in the world at $150B. Vladimir Putin is thought to be worth $200B. All of it from ill gotten gains. Most of his money is invested in the west. The Magnitsky Act is a terrible impediment to his plans and his fortune. Most, or all of it, at least all that is in the west could be seized. Putin and his cronies have used all sorts of schemes to get their money out of Russia. This would include the money laundering of Wilbur Mills at Cyprus Bank, Paul Manafort, Donald Trump, Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner and his family to name a few that come immediately to mind. The Magnitsky Act threatens all of that. The meeting in Trump Tower was first and foremost about the Magnitsky Act, at least as far as what the Russians wanted to get out of the meeting. When the Magnitsky Act was passed Putin forbade disabled Russian children to be adopted by folks in the U.S. This was supposed to be a punishment to the west. Think about that. These children were disabled and Russia did not have the facilities or knowhow to care for them. There were folks in the U.S. willing to take on that burden and Putin said no. No to these disabled kids, Russian children. What a guy! So yes, the meeting was about adoptions, but what were the Russians offering for Trump to take the meeting? Dirt on Hillary. Emails they had stolen.
So, we know that Trump has done deals that look like and quack like – classic money laundering. We know that Russians loaned him money when no one else would. We know he went to Russia and held a beauty pageant there. Anyone who goes to Russia is followed, photographed and recorded. This is common knowledge.
The head of Fusion GPS, Glenn Simpson, testified to Congress. He had been hired by a Republican to do research on Trump. Trump at the time was a candidate, and not that much was known about him. Simpson’s specialty is gathering all the public information on the topic he is asked to look into. He wasn’t asked to get dirt on Trump; he was asked to do basic research to answer the question, “who is this guy?”
There is a lot of public information on Trump: books, court cases, newspaper accounts. etc. Simpson gathered it all up and read it. He kept wondering what Trump was doing in Russia? He discovered that Donald spent a lot of time there, but unlike other places he had no deals to speak of. There was no public record to speak of. That is when Simpson went to Steele and asked him to look into Trump in Russia. There was no “get dirt on Trump” or anything like that. It was just – find out whatever you can. When Steele started people in Russia were willing to talk about Trump. His business was an open secret, or rather his shenanigans. Steele wrote up what he discovered in 16 reports to Simpson. This became the Steele Dossier. What he heard was startling and he was concerned that he was witnessing “a crime in progress.” Eventually, he told contacts he had in the FBI what he had heard.
So why is Trump so fawning over Putin? Why is he so obsequious? It’s because he owes Putin a bundle of money and because Putin has damaging recordings of whatever Donald was doing when he was in Russia – that’s why. Okay, that’s just an opinion, but all the evidence, the facts, and Donald’s behavior point to that. There is no other explanation. Period. Full Stop. If anyone else has a better explanation I’d like to hear it.
But the evidence, right in front of our face, is very clear.

1,028 Days to Go

PS Me and the young whippersnapper