At his “press conference” on Wednesday, Donald Trump trotted out the final solution to the massive, all-pervading conflict of interest issue created by not just the assets of the Trump Organization, but the impenetrable web of relationships, deals, and debts. That solution has already come under withering fire from all directions, including The Office of Government Ethics.
Walter Shaub, director of the Office of Government Ethics, took the stage at a Wednesday event for the Brookings Institution think tank to say that Trump’s decision “doesn’t meet the standards . . . that every president of the past four decades has met.”
Though Trump talked about the agreement as a “blind trust,” Shaub stated the obvious, “It’s not even close.”
But Trump’s pretense about stepping away from his business wasn’t the biggest whopper he told on Wednesday.
President-elect Donald Trump tweeted Wednesday that he has “NOTHING TO DO WITH RUSSIA - NO DEALS, NO LOANS, NO NOTHING!”
Trump, however, has a long history with Russia, trying repeatedly to build luxury properties in Moscow, holding a beauty pageant there and benefiting from heavy investments from Russians in his properties around the world.
In fact, the lawyer Trump called on stage to explain his non-blind non-trust, works for a firm that also represents Bayrock … the organization Trump partnered with in laundering Russian funds through his real estate organization.
That Trump would call on Bayrock’s lawyers to explain this deal makes sense, as …
Some ethics experts also expressed alarm Wednesday that the changes leave plenty of room for foreign interests and others to enrich the president and affect U.S. policy.
Trump’s approach on Russia seems to match that of his mocking a reporter—deny what everyone already knows to be true.
The Trump company sold condos to Russian investors, and the senior Trump received $95 million for a Palm Beach mansion in 2008 from Russian oligarch Dmitry Rybolovlev, more than twice the $41 million of Trump’s original purchase price, according to property records.
Trump’s visits to Russia go back into the Soviet era, and include many attempts by Trump to build in Russia as well as sell real estate in the US as a means of allowing oligarchs to turn looted funds into property. However, when Trump first visited Russia, he seemed much less impressed by the government there than he does today. And he had a reason.
He said his “problem” with then-Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev was that he was “not a firm enough hand.”
Not only is Russia now in Putin’s much firmer hands, Trump has driven his business into the ground so badly that Russian oligarchs were pretty well the only source of funds he could count on.
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.