In the above report Rachel Maddow walks slowly through the various connections to shady Russian banks and Donald Trump as we know them to date.
We have VEB bank which is run by Sergei Gorkov — a graduate of the Russian FSB spy academy — who secretly met with Jared Kushner during the transition at the request of former Russian Ambassador Sergei Kislyak in order to help them set up “back channel communications” that were intended to bypass U.S. intel services. VEB also happens to be a bank that helped fund Trump Tower in Toronto and had soviet spies working in their offices who had been convicted recently by former U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara for attempting to turn Carter Page into an intelligence asset for Russia.
Is your head spinning yet? Buckle up, it gets worse.
We have Trump’s main outside attorney Marc Kasowitz who also was a representative of Russian Sperbank — which formerly had Gorkov on it’s board — and happens to have bragged not long ago that he “got Preet Bharara fired” because he says he told Trump “This guy is going to get you.”
We have Deutsche bank who’ve been fined $630 Million for laundering $10 Billion worth of Russian money — whom Trump owes approximately $350 Million and from whom Jared Kushner borrowed $285 Million to refinance his purchase of a portion of the New York Times building.
Now we have another new Russian Bank connection as revealed by Felix Sater’s emails, and that is VTB bank which still to this day remain under sanctions from the U.S. who were intended to handle the funding for Trump Tower Moscow. And then there’s the fact that Trump Lawyer Michael Cohen emailed the Russian government to try and push ahead the Trump/Moscow project and the fact that his doing that just might have been a violation of the Trading with the Enemy Act.
As Rachel points out VTB is 60.9% owned by the Russian government, that’s why when the New York Times reported about Sater and Cohen emails yesterday they mentioned this.
Mr. Sater, a Russian immigrant, said he had lined up financing for the Trump Tower deal with VTB Bank, a Russian bank that was under American sanctions for involvement in Moscow’s efforts to undermine democracy in Ukraine. In another email, Mr. Sater envisioned a ribbon-cutting ceremony in Moscow.
“I will get Putin on this program and we will get Donald elected,” Mr. Sater wrote.
So what does it mean, under the law, to attempt to do business with a sanction company? Well, it’s not good. Not good at all.
Most Americans are probably aware that they may not engage in business dealings with nations with which the United States has an antagonistic relationship, such as Cuba, Iraq and North Korea. But many people may not be aware that the United States aggressively enforces a broad range of economic sanctions against 12 countries or geographic areas and more than 3,500 organizations and individuals. These sanctions prohibit individuals and companies from conducting any type of business with the targeted entities and subject violators to heavy civil and criminal penalties.
…
Punishment for violations of the sanctions can be severe. Civil fines range from $11,000 to $1 million for each violation. Civil fines may be imposed even if the violation was committed unknowingly and with innocent intent. The majority of the fines imposed are most likely the result of corporations simply failing to recognize trade transactions involving a targeted country or SDN. Additionally, criminal penalties may be levied for willful violations and include fines from $50,000 to $10 million and imprisonment from 10 to 30 years.
To be fair, Rachel doesn’t connect this dot. I’m connecting this dot, because I bothered to look it up.
This is exceeding bad for Trump because this isn’t just a case of his subordinates doing something he didn’t have any knowledge about as he’s previously claimed when Donald Jr. decided to meet with a former Russian government lawyer and possible Russian spy to talk about what dirt they could provide them on Hillary Clinton.
In this case, Trump discussed this deal with Cohen at least three times according to Bloomberg and then he himself signed a letter of intent on the deal.
Four months into his campaign for President of the United States, Donald Trump signed a “letter of intent” to pursue a Trump Tower-style building development in Moscow, according to a statement from the then-Trump Organization chief counsel, Michael Cohen.
The proposal would have involved construction of the world’s tallest building in Moscow, according to developers of the project.
The involvement of then-candidate Trump in a proposed Russian skyscraper deal contradicts repeated statements Trump made during the campaign, including telling ABC’s George Stephanopoulos that his business had “no relationship to Russia whatsoever.”
So here we have Trump personally authorizing his intent to violate Russian sanctions and by extension the Trading with the Enemy Act in order to build this tower in Russia — let’s say this again — While. He. Was. Campaigning. For. President.
You don’t have to do this intentionally to be in violation of the act. You don’t have to be knowing and witting, but the fact is that there’s no way that Trump couldn’t know that sanctions wouldn’t be a problem because he previously had a $3 Billion deal for Trump Tower Moscow with Aras Agalarov who had licensed his Miss Universe pageant in Moscow back in 2013, a deal which apparently went south when Obama put sanctions on Russia for Crimea in 2014.
Maybe all this is why Trump said Mueller getting into his personal finances would be “crossing a red line” and why not that long ago Sater was quoted in the press as saying that both he and Trump are going to Prison.
For several weeks there have been rumours that Sater is ready to rat again, agreeing to help Mueller. ‘He has told family and friends he knows he and POTUS are going to prison,’ someone talking to Mueller’s investigators informed me.
Sater hinted in an interview earlier this month that he may be cooperating with both Mueller’s investigation and congressional probes of Trump.
“In about the next 30 to 35 days, I will be the most colourful character you have ever talked about,” Sater told New York Magazine. “Unfortunately, I can’t talk about it now, before it happens. And believe me, it ain’t anything as small as whether or not they’re gonna call me to the Senate committee.”
At this point, that point of view now makes a lot of sense.
And lastly there’s this bit from Rachel that according to former U.S. Atty Barbara McQuade about Trump’s attempt to have the Arpaio prosecution stopped, which if he was informed such efforts were “improper” before he asked Comey to drop the case against Flynn, his claim of “ignorance”, that there was “nothing wrong with the request” — a claim echoed by Don Jr. — and that it wasn’t obstruction of justice may have just blown up in his face.
According to McQuade, “This could be a separate count of obstruction of justice against the president if the president tried to interfere with the Arpaio prosecution.”
More importantly, she added, “If Sessions or anybody else explained to Trump that it is inappropriate to interfere with a criminal investigation before Trump attempted to do so with former FBI Director James Comey, that could help establish that Trump understood that what he was doing in firing James Comey was illegal.”
Maddow then broke it down, saying, “So, in other words, this might get rid of his ignorance defense. If the president was told explicitly that he’s really not allowed to interfere in a criminal investigation of Joe Arpaio, then he was in a position to know explicitly that he shouldn’t interfere in the FBI investigation of Michael Flynn by pressuring James Comey about that.”
Yeah, that would be bad. Real bad.
Tuesday, Aug 29, 2017 · 5:15:37 PM +00:00 · Frank Vyan Walton
[I posted this in a comment, figured it was relevant]
Normally the Treasury Dept. handles this type of offense so my only outstanding question is whether Mueller’s office would have the power to enforce this statute. Here are some examples provided of typical violations.
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A Georgia company sends some of its employees to a convention and trade show held at a luxury hotel on the Mediterranean resort island of Malta. During the trip, the company is informed that the hotel is owned by a group of companies with some connection to the Libyan government. The employees vacate the hotel the next day, but the company is forced to respond to formal inquires from the U.S. Treasury Department.
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A California company, using a broker, charters a boat to carry products from Chile to Japan. Unbeknownst to the company, the owner of the chartered boat has ties to the Cuban government. The company is hit with a $50,000 fine by the U.S. government for violating U.S. sanctions against Cuba.
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A Milwaukee company makes six shipments of television sets to a company in Panama. It turns out that the Panamanian company has ties to the Cuban government. The Milwaukee company is slapped with a $300,000 fine for violating the Trading with the Enemy Act.
Full text of the law.
Now since Cohen cancelled this deal, or he claims to have cancelled the deal that is since Russia would have known full well that it was illegal and wouldn’t have responded to his email in any way, they may escape the harsher penalties since they ultimately didn’t do any actual business, but the point is that they tried to do business with them even when they were under sanctions.
That’s Conspiracy.
If two or more persons conspire either to commit any offense against the United States, or to defraud the United States, or any agency thereof in any manner or for any purpose, and one or more of such persons do any act to effect the object of the conspiracy, each shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than five years, or both.
Which is definitely inside Mueller’s jurisdiction.