Will the orange urine sample hole, at some moment, outlive his usefulness to the Russians, and can that event coincide with the term of the US’s worst.presidency.ever.
The more interesting question is in how many US politicians have Russians invested, beyond the ones GOP leadership has joked about on tape (Trump and Rohrabacher) and how they’ve laundered that support through PACs and other financial entities.
It’s still about following the money and remembering that the attacks on the FBI have many motivations.
Then again Kompromat is a long game, considering how long Trump was groomed. The 2018 campaign should ask these questions of the GOP and every one of their candidates.
President Vladimir Putin is using the threat of additional U.S. sanctions to encourage wealthy Russians to repatriate some of their overseas assets, which exceed $1 trillion by one estimate.
Putin told lawmakers late Monday that a new capital amnesty program was needed “given the foreign restrictions, which instead of lessening are now worsening,” according to a transcript posted on the Kremlin’s website. This “should stimulate the return of capital to Russia,” the president said, without specifying how long the measure will last.
[...]
A U.S. law that took effect in August calls for the Treasury Department to compile a list of “oligarchs” and their companies as potential targets for additional penalties.
The law also calls for a study of the possible impact of banning U.S. investors from purchasing sovereign Russian bonds, a move that could complicate the government’s borrowing plans.
The government hasn’t given an estimate of the amount of wealth Russians hold abroad, but a study published in August by the Cambridge, Massachusetts-based National Bureau of Economic Research put the figure at 75 percent of national income, or about 60 trillion rubles ($1.04 trillion).
“There is as much financial wealth held by rich Russians abroad -- in the United Kingdom, Switzerland, Cyprus, and similar offshore centers -- than held by the entire Russian population in Russia itself,” said the authors of the study, including Thomas Piketty, who wrote the 2013 best-seller “Capital in the Twenty-First Century.”
Trump’s lawyers (may) have now convinced him that Mueller may need through the end of January.