I am not from New York but am sending the following information to Senator Schumer. Feel free to copy and paste any of this and do likewise. Send a message to your representatives that a wishy-washy, spineless or half-hearted investigation will not fly with us. There is a long document included at the end, that is a must read for anyone already unaware of all of the connections. We are living in dangerous times and need to be aware of all of the facts. I’m afraid this is probably just the tip of the iceburg. It is difficult to see this all in one place and still believe this is all coincidence or has logical or lawful explanations.
Dear Senator ______________
I am heartened to hear talk of a full investigation about PE Trump, and his entire teams’ conflicts of interest. Throughout the election and days following, I have been in disbelief that such a person could be elected, and I am alarmed at how quickly the GOP rallied behind him. It seems they have no problem with his conflicts and past business dealings, and that is a huge concern for all of us.
There is so much information readily available. The problem with all of it is it is fragmented. It is easily to dismiss some of Trump’s connections as coincidence, or explainable. But when you look at the connections in one place, it is terrifying.
I’m sure you have this information already. But I put together what any one of us can find just by Googling for a few days. I’m sure there is a lot more that is not on the internet or readily available. But if we average citizens can see all of this, surely our members of congress can. What I find more alarming than this list of verifiable facts, is the attitude of the GOP that this is a normal, business-as-usual situation. It is becoming apparent that Mr. Trump’s ties to Russia go way back, that he does business with Russian mobsters, that his 67 shell companies are involved in the laundering of Russian money, that he is a con artist selling out our country to make a buck and maybe worse. They are certainly aware of all of this and still they carry on so they can quickly rip away our health care, social security and Medicare before Fearless Leader is investigated or impeached. In my opinion, anyone who stands in the way of a full accounting, and I mean FULL with no stone left unturned, is complicit.
We stood by and watched while Congress crucified Hillary Clinton over Benghazi. How many hearings were there? Six? We watched in dismay when Trey Gowdy was found to have used doctored emails in his case against her and never answered for it. We are tired of hearing about her private email server, especially now that we know that our new National Security Adviser to the president elect, Michael Flynn, was fired for installing his own secret, private server in his office at the freaking PENTAGON when he was head of the DIA. He was the loudest, most vocal of all in condemning Secretary Clinton, and spreading his “Flynn Facts” of outrageous and false conspiracy theories. Now he will advise on our nation’s security when it is him and those like him, that we need protection from.
No more. No hearings for people who will not provide the documents required by the ethics committee. Do not let them take away our health care while they collude with Trump and Putin. I want to see those tax returns. I want to know if Donald Trump has the cash required to divest his interests and remove those conflicts. If he cannot do so, he cannot be president. The man was in business with a known Russian criminal, who sold electronics to KGB agents out of a storefront in Manhattan for God’s sake! A man who carries the Trump logo on his business card that shows him to be a top Trump adviser. A man Trump denies knowing, yet there are plenty of sources that prove otherwise. This is wrong and we will not tolerate this.
The American people are watching.
Sincerely,
Your name
The following information is from reputable sources that are referenced at the end of this list. Sorry to keep you awake at night but the truth is out there.
Senior officials in the Russian government celebrated Donald Trump’s victory over Hillary Clinton as a geopolitical win for Moscow, according to U.S. officials who said that American intelligence agencies intercepted communications in the aftermath of the election in which Russian officials congratulated themselves on the outcome.
… there is evidence that the Trump campaign even flexed its muscles as the nominee’s campaign to alter the Republican Party platform in favor of Russia’s annexation of Crimea – something Trump has even said he would consider. And while the Trump campaign denies strong-arming the platform committee, high ranking Republicans insist it’s true.[i]
BAYROCK
- Bayrock is a New York property development company founded by Soviet born Tefik Arif.
- By 2008, corporate bankruptcies limited Trump’s abilities to get access to capital markets. He then collaborated with Bayrock on projects, most notably Trump SoHo a 46-story hotel/condominium completed in 2010
- His Bayrock partner on these projects was Tamir Sapir, an émigré from the Soviet Union who formerly sold electronics to KGB agents from a storefront in Manhattan.
- Bayrock funneled unexplained cash infusions from Russia and Kazakhstan into US properties, including Trump projects, that received financing from a source used by Putin associates.
- In February 2008, after the US real-estate bubble had burst, FL Group announced it was divesting itself of its real-estate projects in the US. The Trump Tower project, along with other US based real estate projects, were moved to a subsidiary of FL Group called FL Bayrock Holdco. This company posted more than 140 million USD in losses in 2008. The company was declared bankrupt in January 2014, costing investors and creditors nearly 130 million USD in losses.
TEFIK ARIF
- Founder of Bayrock
- Tevfik Arif, 57, has been detained in Turkey on suspicion of setting up trysts between wealthy businessmen and Eastern European models - some underage - aboard a $60 million yacht once used by the nation's founder, Mustafa Ataturk. Arif, whose Bayrock Group co-developed the Trump SoHo and the Trump International Hotel and Tower in Fort Lauderdale, was among 10 people rounded up in Tuesday's raid on suspicion of running a prostitution ring. Prosecutor Yusuf Hakki Dogan said the Savarona yacht was used twice for sexcapades, the Turkish newspaper Hurriyet reported.[ii]
FELIX SATER
- Russian-born Felix Sater served a year in prison for stabbing a man in the face with a margarita glass during a bar fight, pleaded guilty to racketeering as part of a mafia-driven "pump-and-dump" stock fraud and then escaped jail time by becoming a highly-valued government informant. He was also an important figure at Bayrock, a development company and key Trump real estate partner during the 2000s, notably with the Trump SoHo hotel-condominium in New York City, and has said under oath that he represented Trump in Russia and subsequently billed himself as a senior Trump advisor, with an office in Trump Tower.
- Trump has stated under oath that he barely knows Sater. Looking into Trump's deals, FORBES uncovered numerous e-mails and sworn statements that indicate Sater was closer to Trump, his organization and his children than previously revealed. Additionally, FORBES has connected three billionaire oligarchs from Kazakhstan to potential deals involving Trump and Sater.
- 2007 In a lawsuit, the manager of a proposed Trump hotel-condo tower in Phoenix alleges that Sater threatened to have a cousin shock his testicles, cut off his legs and leave him "dead in the trunk of his car" if the manager "disclosed to any party any of [Sater's] suspected improprieties and past criminal conduct." Sater strongly denies the allegation; the case was settled.
- July 2016 A year-old private lawsuit against Bayrock, Sater and others, filed on behalf of the state of New York, is unsealed by a New York court. It alleges that the group sought to launder as much as $250 million of profits on Trump projects out of the country to evade taxation and hide its true foreign owners. The attorneys behind the suit, Frederick Oberlander and Richard Lerner, now tell FORBES that new information leads them to believe that Trump misrepresented his knowledge and involvement, and was a participant in the schemes.
- Sater has also plead guilty to defrauding investors of 40 million USD with members of the Gambino crime family.[iii]
DIMITRY RYBOLOVLEV
- In 2008, Russians were buying millions of dollars of Trump-branded real estate in Florida
- Russian fertilizer billionaire Dimitry Rybolovlev, purchased a Trump Palm Beach mansion in 2008 for $95 million, but has never set foot in it. Trump had purchased the property 4 years before for $41,000 million and property values were in steep decline at the time of the sale. Rybolovlev went through a divorce in the years following the sale. The mansion was just approved for demolition and the property will most likely be subdivided. The profit in a such a short period of time, and during the market crash, is astonishing. [iv]
- In 2008, Eric Trump stated that “Russians makes up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets. We see a lot of money pouring in from Russia.” In 2016 Donald Trump repeatedly denied any financial dealings with Russia.
VIKTOR KHRAPUNOV
- Viktor Khrapunov, a former Kazakh energy minister and ex-mayor of the city of Almaty, show it was connected to an alleged laundering scheme at the same time as it was collaborating with Mr Trump.
- Lawyers for Almaty told a US court in March that Mr Khrapunov and his family “conspired to systematically loot hundreds of millions of dollars of public assets . . . and to launder their ill-gotten gains through a complex web of bank accounts and shell companies . . . particularly in the United States”.
- A Financial Times investigation has found evidence that the Trump SoHo project has multiple ties to the Krahprunov money-laundering network out of Kazakhstan. Three LLC’s called SoHo 3210, 3211 and 3203 correspond with condo purchases for those numbered units in Trump SoHo. One week after the shell companies were created, the 3 corresponding units were purchased. The beneficiary is Elvira Kurdyoshova, the California-based daughter of Mr. Krahprunov. According to the Kazakh government, Elvira and her brother Ilya are key links in the money-laundering network. Just prior to the sale, 3.1 million dollars flowed from Kuryoshova’s Wells Fargo bank account into the account of a New York Lawyer Martin Jajan, who signed the purchase documents as the buyer’s agent.[v]
SERGIE MILLIAN
- According to the Financial Times, Sergie Millian is the head of the Russian-American Chamber of Commerce, and has repeatedly stated that he has brought money into Trump projects. In 2009 formal agreements were signed between his and Trump organizations. Trump has denied having any dealings with Millian. A photo of Millian with Trump and Jorge Perez was posted on Millian’s Facebook Page in 2014, and reprinted by the Financial Times. Millian appeared on US television and openly criticized the US sanctions on Russia and the FBI suspects that Millian has formed a shadow secret service, and is recruiting Americans as spies and agents.[vi]
- From ABC News: “The level of business amounts to hundreds of millions of dollars -- what he received as a result of interaction with Russian businessmen,” said Sergei Millian, who heads a U.S.-Russia business group and who says he once helped market Trump’s U.S. condos in Russia and the former Soviet states. “They were happy to invest with him, and they were happy to work with Donald Trump. And they were happy to associate—[and] be associated with Donald Trump.”
- Daniel Pansky, a Florida broker who specializes in Russian buyers, said the Trump brand was uniquely suited to Russian buyers, who equated his name with luxury. As sales piled up, “Sunny Isles developed into a Little Moscow,” he said. “A lot of local dry cleaners, restaurants, stores having menus and signs in Russian.”But Pansky and Shtainer told ABC News that purchases from Russian buyers in New York and Miami began to drop precipitously in 2014, when the U.S. imposed economic sanctions on Russia in response to the Russian military incursion into Crimea.To Russian buyers looking to move money out of their home country, Shtainer explained, the sanctions “basically cut off their oxygen.”
- “We’ll be looking at that, yeah we’ll be looking,” Trump responded in July when asked if he would roll sanctions back.
ALIMZHAN TOKHTAKHOUNOV
- On April 16, 2013, federal agents burst into a swanky apartment at Trump Tower in New York City as part of a larger raid that rounded up 29 suspected members of two global gambling rings with operations allegedly overseen by a supposed Russian mob boss named Alimzhan Tokhtakhounov.
- Seven months after the bust, he was a VIP attendee at Donald Trump's Miss Universe 2013 contest held in Moscow. In fact, Tokhtakhounov hit the red carpet within minutes of Trump. An alleged crime lord who was a fugitive from American justice was apparently a celebrity guest at Trump's event.
- Also present were Vladimir Kozhin, a top government official and member of Putin's inner circle (who the following year would be hit with US sanctions in response to Russia's invasion of Ukraine) and Aras Agalarov, a Russian billionaire oligarch close to Putin with whom Trump wanted to develop a high-rise in Moscow.
- The indictment alleged that they and others ran "an international gambling business that catered to oligarchs residing in the former Soviet Union and throughout the world," used "threats of violence to obtain unpaid gambling debts," and "employed a sophisticated money laundering scheme to move tens of millions of dollars…from the former Soviet Union through shell companies in Cyprus into various investments and other shell companies in the United States."
- The US Democratic Coalition has revealed the President-elect Donald Trump had two offshore companies registered in Cyprus, along with several other countries, reports said on Tuesday.The coalition has revealed that aside from companies in Argentina, Japan, Kuwait, and the Philippines, two companies were registered in Cyprus, “the tax haven and money laundering island serving Vladimir Putin and Russian oligarchs,” the report said.[vii]
- Earlier this year, Israel’s Haaretz reported that Trump worked with a notoriously corrupt Cypriot company to bid for a casino license. The Trump company made a joint venture with a Nevada firm and paid large sums of money to employ former-high Cypriot government officials as lobbyists in the bid, the coalition reported.[viii]
- Wilbur Ross joined with a Russian oligarch and a former KGB official to run a troubled bank in Cyprus. Ross has been named Trump’s pick for Commerce Secretary.
WILBUR ROSS
- For the past two years, billionaire Ross, Trump’s pick for Commerce Secretary, has been a business partner with the richest man in Russia, Viktor Vekselberg, in a major financial project involving the Bank of Cyprus, the country's largest and most significant financial institution.
- The bank had held billions in deposits from wealthy Russians—some of it presumably dirty money or funds deposited there to escape Russian taxation—and during its restructuring, a large amount of these deposits were converted into shares, giving Russian plutocrats a majority ownership (on paper) of the bank.
- The bank announced that Vekselbergs' conglomerate, the Renova Group, had become the bank's second-largest shareholder. Vekselberg and Renova have a history of close ties to the Kremlin, and Vekselberg has been publicly regarded as a Putin-endorsed oligarch, however their relationship Has become complicated. In September, Russia's FSB security service raided the offices of companies the oligarch owns and arrested two top executives on corruption charges.
- Ross, whose group owns 17 percent of the bank, plans to share the vice-chairman post with Vladimir Strzhalkovskiy, who served with Putin in the KGB in the 1980s.
- Asked about Ross' dealings with Vekselberg, the Trump transition office did not respond to a request for comment.[ix]
PAUL MANAFORT
- Nov 1, 2016, NBC News reported in August that Paul Manafort, Trump’s former campaign manager, was a key player in multi-million-dollar business propositions with Russian and Ukrainian oligarchs — one of them a close Putin ally with alleged ties to organized crime — which foreign policy experts said raised questions about the pro-Russian bent of the Trump candidacy.
- The New York Times published the first of the stories that had Manafort worried — revealing that Ukrainian investigators were looking into a “secret ledger” that listed $12.7 million in cash payments earmarked for Manafort by the party of the deposed former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych
- The Associated Press reported that Manafort and his longtime deputy Rick Gates (who had followed Manafort onto the Trump campaign) had in 2012 secretly steered $2.2 million to a pair of Washington lobbying firms to boost Yanukovych’s pro-Kremlin government in a manner intended to circumvent disclosure requirements.
- According to the Times, the ledger has 22 entries for Manafort, totaling $12.7 million in payments from 2007 to 2012. Since the transparency of cash payments from corrupt, Kremlin-backed political parties doesn’t quite meet the strictures established by the International Accounting Standards Board, there is no proof that Manafort received the money.[x]
REX TILLERSON
- Recently retired EXXON exec and Trump’s pick for Secretary of State
- As the Wall Street Journal puts it, “Among those considered for the post, Mr. Tillerson has perhaps the closest ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin,” adding that, in 2012, Putin personally bestowed Russia’s Order of Friendship on Tillerson.[xi]
- In 2011, he negotiated a multibillion-dollar deal between Exxon Mobil and Rosneft, the Russian state oil giant cobbled out of Khodorkovsky’s seized empire and run by Putin's former KGB buddy, Igor Sechin. The deal would have allowed Exxon access to the Russian Arctic shelf—which, per U.S. government estimates, is thought to contain some 22 percent of the world’s undiscovered oil and gas deposits—in exchange for helping Rosneft, which didn’t have the technological capabilities, drill for the stuff.
- In 2014, Russia invaded Ukraine, seized the Crimean Peninsula, and started an insurgency in Eastern Ukraine, triggering a wave of American and European sanctions.
- Tillerson told reporters in Texas that he was lobbying Washington against sanctions.[xii]
- “I have concerns,” McCain told Reuters shortly after Trump announced Tillerson as his pick. “It’s very well known that [Tillerson] he has a very close relationship with (Russian President) Vladimir Putin.”
- McCain has also spoken out against reported Russian cyberattacks against the United States, describing them as “an act of war” and calling for a Senate committee to investigate the hacks. He has described Putin as a “butcher, a murderer and a thug.”[xiii]
WENDY DENG
- Rumored girlfriend of Vladimir Putin, was married to and subsequently divorced from conservative media billionaire Rupert Murdoch[xiv]
- Deng was spotted earlier this week boarding the St. Barths–docked yacht of Russian businessman Roman Abramovich. After Putin’s election, the billionaire reportedly gifted him a $35 million yacht to add to his collection of playthings, according to the Daily Mail
- Long-time friend of Ivanka Trump, Deng is reportedly responsible for re-uniting Ivanka and her husband, Jared Kushner, who broke up in 2008 when their religious differences caused them to split.[xv]
JARED KUSHNER
- Husband of Ivanka Trump and owner of The Observer, Newspaper
- Guccifer 2.0 is known to be the Russians program used to hack the DNC. They leaked materials obtained from their hacking directly to Trump adviser Jared Kushner's newspaper.[xvi]
- (Side note: It’s reported that New Jersey real estate developer Charles Kushner had pledged $2.5m to Harvard University not long before his son Jared was admitted to the prestigious Ivy League school, which at the time accepted about one of every nine applicants. Kushner in high school, was described as a “less than stellar student”.[xvii])
MICHAEL FLYNN
- Donald Trump’s National Security Advisor
- Former head of the DIA, Defense Intelligence Agency, who was fired during the Obama administration by James Clapper the Director of National Intelligence. Flynn was described as “livid”,
- While at the DIA, installed a secret server at the Pentagon, although this was strictly prohibited
- Secretly snuck out of a CIA station in Iraq without authorization
- Started spouting outrageous falsehoods in public — including Islamophobic conspiracy theories— which his subordinates called “Flynn facts.”
- Created irrational and impractical changes and behaved erratically on the job.
- Had serious anger management problems
- Promoted false news stories accusing Hillary Clinton of everything from laundering money to sex-crimes against children, including the “Pizza Gate” story. Was also a vocal critic of heruse of a private email server while he installed one in the pentagon in secret. Decorated war hero and retired Gen. Barry McCaffrey questioned Flynn’s fitness to serve as National Security Adviser. He changed his opinion after reviewing what he called “borderline demented” fake news that Flynn circulated on social media during the election. None of his outrageous claims turned out to be true.
- Was twice caught leaking classified information, once to Pakistani officials, and again to Afghanistan officials, without authorization[xviii]
- The retired general has been courted and groomed by Margarita Simonyan the Editor-in-Chief of RT (formally known as Russia Today), the Russian government propaganda network.
- In 2015, RT served as one of the Kremlin’s primary tools to deny its invasion of eastern Ukraine and its role in the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17. Flynn took part in a paid speaking event in Russia at about the same time and became a semi-regular guest on RT.
- He attended RT’s 10 anniversary gala and sat at the same table Putin, attesting to his importance as an intelligence asset to the Russian propaganda effort.[xix]
- From leaked emails of Former Secretary of State Colin Powell: "I spoke at [Defense Intelligence Agency] last month," Powell wrote after Flynn spoke at the Republican National Convention. "Flynn got fired as head of DIA. His replacement is a black Marine 3-star. I asked why Flynn got fired. Abusive with staff, didn't listen, worked against policy, bad management, etc. He has been and was right-wing nutty every [sic] since.”[xx]
PAM BONDI
- Pam Bondi, the Florida Attorney General, came under fire earlier this year when it was revealed that she had received an illegal donation from the Trump Foundation. No actual Russia connection but just more information.
- As the Associated Press reported in July, Bondi “personally solicited” the donation of $25,000 from Trump, who then disbursed the funds from the Trump Foundation. The president-elect ultimately paid the $2,500 fine for violating a federal rule that prevents foundations from donating to political campaigns. He also reached a $25 million settlement in November to resolve the class-action lawsuit against Trump University, the now defunct real-estate seminar program that Bondi previously declined to investigate.
- In March 2014, Donald Trump opened his 126-room Palm Beach mansion, Mar-a-Lago, for a $3,000-per-person fundraiser for Bondi
- According to a Bloomberg report Thursday, the president-elect plans to offer an unspecified White House job to the Florida attorney general.[xxi]
AKTOR/HELECTOR
- Globes Sources says, quoting unnamed Cypriot officials, that one of Trump's partners in the bid is Aktor, a Greek company it says is under investigation for involvement in a bribe and money laundering scheme in Macedonia.
- A subsidiary of Aktor called Helector was also said to be involved in a waste management bribery scandal in the Cypriot city of Paphos, according to documents from an ongoing court case there.[xxii]
- Websites with names like WorldPoliticus.com, TrumpVision365.com, USConservativeToday.com, DonaldTrumpNews.co, and USADailyPolitics.com make money through sharing in Facebook ad revenue. Business is booming, and the centre of the fake news clickbait industry is the small town of Veles in Macedonia, apparently known for its porcelain. Here, young Macedonians reportedly earn thousands of dollars creating articles that are eagerly consumed by Trump supporters in America.[xxiii]