In Wednesday’s press conference, Donald Trump was, unsurprisingly, asked several questions about Russia. And while he acknowledged that Russia had been behind hacking in the 2016 elections, he at least initially dodged the question of whether anyone from his campaign had been in contact with Russia during the campaign. Asked “can you stand here today, once and for all and say that no one connected to you or your campaign had any contact with Russia leading up to or during the presidential campaign,” Trump did not stand there and once and for all say that. He reportedly claimed, after the press conference ended, that there had been no contact, but his failure to do so in his lengthy public answer was glaring. It was not a question he wanted to answer, at a minimum.
Trump did make one very interesting denial about a relationship with Russia during the press conference, though. Here’s his answer to the question “Does Russia have any leverage over you, financial or otherwise? And if not, will you release your tax returns to prove it?”
So I tweeted out that I have no dealings with Russia. I have no deals that could happen in Russia, because we’ve stayed away. And I have no loans with Russia.
As a real estate developer, I have very, very little debt. I have assets that are — and now people have found out how big the company is, I have very little debt — I have very low debt. But I have no loans with Russia at all.
It’s true that Trump has repeatedly tried and failed to do building deals in Russia. But while Trump’s efforts to get into Russia haven’t worked, there’s reason to believe Russians have done a good job getting into Trump. In 2008, Donald Jr. said that:
“Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets. We see a lot of money pouring in from Russia.”
And Russian financing has been important to several Trump projects. So while Trump may be technically correct that he doesn’t owe money to the Russian government, he is definitely financially entangled with some … interesting … Russian investors.
But we don’t know if Trump is telling even the technical truth there, because he won't release his tax returns. We have only the word of a known liar to go on, a known liar who at the same time he was saying he had no dealings with Russia was also saying he has very little debt. Which is false. In short, we know no more about Trump’s financial relationship with Russia and Russians now than we did before he started talking, because he refuses to offer proof and his word cannot be trusted.