To be fair, I’ve heard some pundits make reference to the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA), connecting it to that offer of a 50 million dollar penthouse condo at the would be Trump Tower Moscow. There has also at times been discussion of Sanctioned Russian banks for a long time now. Overall there’s been plenty of stuff written and said about the Trump Tower Moscow project, including here on Kos. Over a year ago jamess published this excellent diary providing a ton of detail on the Letter of Intent people have mentioned with some eye popping numbers of fees Trump would collect outlined in “Schedule 2.” Now, I’ll be covering some of the same ground. Why? What’s driving me nuts is that with the Cohen plea last week the details about the financial crimes and the fact there are actual financial crimes aren’t if not front & center being an area of major focus
I get that the death of a former President will dominate much of the news. I also get that there was plenty of important news to report about the G-20 meeting down in Argentina. However it seems to me that there is now a solid case to be made (a case that includes not only witness testimony and phone records but actual documents) that Trump committed federal crimes not just while he was a candidate for President but had become his Party’s presumptive nominee.
Not only should it be one of the stories covered on news shows and in print, it should damn well be noted in every story (both electronic and print) that Trump committed crimes in the way he ran his business. Not long ago, years before he formally became a Presidential candidate but well into his time as a candidate.
It seems to me in the days since Cohen’s latest plea if the crimes involved in the Trump Tower Moscow deal are mentioned there is still equivocation if not downright false information being reported. For example, what prompted me to start this diary was a story put out by The Hill (yes, it’s conservative leaning but still puts out some decent stuff) which addressed Trump’s growing legal problems and delved into the revelations last week in the Cohen plea that negotiations for Trump Tower Moscow went on well into June 2016 — six months after all of Team Trump had insisted the project had been abandoned. The Hill’s story includes this appalling section:
“The Cohen deal is the most troubling development for Trump, given that his former fixer is now acknowledging that talks about building a Trump Tower in Moscow went on for months longer than he had originally stated.
Cohen says the proposed project was only formally abandoned in June 2016, when Trump was virtually assured of the GOP presidential nomination. Cohen had earlier said that the idea had been shelved in January 2016, before the first GOP caucuses were held in Iowa.
Separately, BuzzFeed News reported that one element of the proposed tower deal would have installed Russian President Vladimir Putin in a $50 million penthouse.
There is nothing criminal about such a plan, but it is the kind of personal, striking detail that adds to Trump's political difficulties on Russia.” (emphasis added)
Nothing criminal? With that offer of a fifty million dollar penthouse (to the leader of a foreign govt. and worse, hostile to the U.S.) we have an FCPA violation, but there’s also the matter of yet another crime — trying to do business with a sanctioned bank governed through the Office of Foreign Assets Control at the Dept. of Treasury. OFCA derives it’s authority via Executive Orders authorized under different federal statutes. Complicated to be sure but the OFCA has teeth and many a bank and they’ve bitten some pretty big chunk out of the hides a numerous countries, banks and even individuals & for a very long time. This will take some explaining, but before diving in I want to (hopefully) preempt a line of defense that’s already been used (even Trump kinda sorta has already started using it) which in effect says “Hey — the project got dropped. Maybe later than we said so but it got dropped. Btw, nothing was illegal. It was only normal business goings on but the main thing is that nothing came of the project. We abandoned it so case closed.”
Let me counter with a question. If I only tried to break a law, say bribing some public official but failed to actually bribe them (it doesn’t matter why they didn’t take it btw) have I committed a crime? The answer of course is yes, just as it’s still a crime to try to rob a bank and failing to steal any money, or trying to hire a hit man to kill someone and being unable to get someone willing to do the job. Just because a person(s) doesn’t get caught or fails to succeed in their crime doesn’t mean they still haven’t committed a crime. In the case I’m talking about in this diary more than one crime was attempted and more importantly some of the major players have openly admitted it — and privately to Mueller’s team it seems they’ve also admitted it & as I said there is actual documentation beyond press statements.
We have yet to see the actual supporting documentation but it’s surely there because Cohen’s plea deal on lying to Congress states he had multiple interactions with Trump (and his kids) about the ill-fated project. It’s hard to imagine Robert Mueller himself signing the court filing (the plea agreement) if it was only Cohen’s word that Trump was in the loop during all this. Remember, over a million pieces of evidence were seized during the raid on Cohen’s office and home. Sure, it covered more than Trump but as I’ve said elsewhere surely tens of thousands, if not upwards of a hundred thousand of those records seized are Trump/Trump Organization related. So while we can’t say so with the mathematically sure precision of 1 plus one equals 2 I think fairly simple algebraic deduction as in “Plea = Cohen testimony + Y” where “Y” is Cohen records that have been vetted by Mueller’s and/or SDNY prosecutors is pretty solid. I’m willing to bet that while he’s not yet been seen in actual court Felix Sater (Cohen’s longtime buddy and sometimes business partner of Trump’s) has his own testimony and documentation sealed up with Mueller.
I bring up that last paragraph because from the beginning when that LOI (again, there’s an excellent write up by one of our own on Kos linked in the first paragraph) was signed by Trump (after it had been signed on the Russian end) Cohen’s co-wheeler dealer Sater handling the grunt work on the Russian side was planning on using VTB bank in Russia to finance the development and the Trump Tower part as part of the overall project. And when at some point VTB wasn’t committing to completing their part of the deal Sater moved on to a different bank (GenBank) which less than two weeks after Sater mentioned them was also Sanctioned. There are already emails/texts in the public domain documenting the back & forth on these points between Cohen & Sater. This project is something Trump had been trying to get done since the 1980s so you know damn well at least Cohen was keeping Trump himself in the loop. Buzzfeed has an excellent writeup with a timeline for all this but I’d like to highlight this part:
“Sater used a network of contacts from his days in both business and intelligence to line up potential suitors. On Oct. 9, he emailed Cohen to say he planned to meet with Molchanov, the billionaire developer, to try to persuade him to provide the land on which to build Trump Moscow. Molchanov did not return a message seeking comment.
On Oct. 12, he again emailed Cohen. Their surrogates in Moscow would be meeting with Putin and a “top deputy” just two days later, and they had financing: VTB Bank President and Chairman Andrey Kostin was on board to fund the project, Sater said in an email.
The bank was a dicey choice. VTB was under US sanctions at the time, with American citizens and companies forbidden to do business with it. Asked by congressional investigators if he knew the bank was blacklisted, Sater responded: “Of course. I wasn’t seeking funding, the local development partner would have. Trump Organization never gets financing from local partners.” (emphasis added)
Here’s the thing though — in the end had the deal gone through Trump would have been taking money from a source that was under OFCA Sanction!
Btw I’m pissed at myself for losing track of a certain article while cleaning up the myriad of tabs I had open. I read an interesting tidbit I hope you’ll trust I’m not making up — it prompts a provocative question. The story mentioned an upfront licensing fee to formalize things between the Licensor (Trump) and the developer. Specifically the initial amount was 100k and Trump had it changed to 900k. That suggests more than a passing interest by Trump in grabbing some extra quick cash which is (I think) significant in and of itself. It does however beg the question of whether, since negotiations on this deal went on far longer than we thought (of course Mueller knew otherwise) that fee was actually paid! Keep in mind Trump’s insistence that no money ever changed hands, and how often he’s flat out lied in the past about things that were later proven to be true. I’m pretty sure an amount like 900k is something even the pile of feces in between his ears would remember.
So here we are. Cohen has entered a plea of lying to Congress about this deal and provided some details that say Trump and his kids were informed multiple times as 2016 (and the primary campaign) progressed. From the beginning laws were being broken because the deal knowingly involved a business agreement to make money by using a sanctioned bank. Later, what can only be called a bribe of a foreign head of state was tossed into the mix and if there’s anyone who doesn’t think Trump personally approved giving Putin a fifty million dollar penthouse please let me know what drugs you are taking. If the effects are only temporary I (and probably others) could use them at times to help maintain sanity. Laws were broken over a period of time in attempting to strike a business deal with (first one, then another) Sanctioned bank. Then another law was broken in providing a bribe (the FPCA doesn’t require it to be cash/money — “it can be any thing of value”) and only a relative handful are flat out stating that Trump has committed actual financial crimes & as I noted earlier not way back years before he became a candidate but while he WAS a candidate!
I think (and wish) this would be being widely shouted from the rooftops. From so many places it would overwhelm Faux Nooz and the rest of the GOP media apparatus. Alas, too many main stream outlets and journalists are still too cowed by years of “Liberal Media!” bullshit attacks to be blunt. Instead their default is to retreat into either equivocation/denial (which is why I cited the story in The Hill) or “both siderism.”
One final thought. I realize that many a business person or corporation bends and even breaks the law when doing business overseas. It seems like most of it gets uncaught, or at least unpunished. Prosecutors usually have finite resources and have to prioritize so it typically takes either a huge amount of money involved or a high profile business & case at the right time. Like many others Trump has gotten away with this kind of thing before. Had he not run for President, or at least had he not wound up in the Oval Office he might have avoided prosecutors poking around too much in his decades long dream of a Trump Tower Moscow.
But he CHOSE to shine the spotlight on himself. He thought it would be the type of spotlight he’s shown on himself so many times in the past. However he had no idea, not a freaking clue as to just how bright and fixed the glare of the Presidential Spotlight truly is. Part of what makes him and his Presidency so erratic is that part of him, in fact his very core being craves the attention, but has never fully grasped that even with a browbeaten GOP that spotlight illuminates stuff he doesn’t want people to see.
And more and more illumination is coming.
Mueller’s response to the sentencing filing by Cohen’s lawyers is, according to Mueller’s team going to be filed in court by the end of the week. Perhaps as early as Wednesday. Trump is I think about to get lit up not by a mere Presidential spotlight, but by a freaking supervova.