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Due to the ongoing Trump “smear campaign” against DOJ and FBI employees — we just found out something “new” about the 2016 Campaign. Namely that allegedly Russia had Trump “over a barrel”.
This usually means putting someone in a “helpless position” — that their only option is to ‘get with the program’ — that the Barrel-roller is proposing.
The author of the infamous Trump-Russia dossier told a top Justice Department official during the 2016 campaign that Russia had Donald Trump, then a Republican presidential candidate, “over a barrel” with regard to potentially damning information about him, according to the Associated Press on Friday.
— www.newsweek.com, Aug 31, 2018
So Russia not only had “Dirt on Clinton,” but apparently they had Dirt on Donald too.
Now what could that Barrel be? Most would jump to some incriminating photographic proof of Trump Sexcapades in Moscow. While this is possible, even likely, given Trump’s track record — it does not seem like it’s something he would lose a lot of sleep over. It goes with the Trump territory.
No, I think the incriminating evidence that Putin has on Trump, is a bit more mercurial in nature. As a reporter (Jeff Horwitz) on the Maddow Show
noted tonight, Trump’s condos sales were one of only 2 corporations in New York that made a practice of selling their wares to “Shell Companies”.
As it turns out this is a hallmark of Money Launderers. Conducting business using all cash transactions by opaque Shell Companies (LLCs), makes it very difficult for the authorities and regulators to track what’s going on, legally. And it makes it very easy for the criminally-minded to get away with their scams.
SHELL GAME
Trump sold $1.5 billion of condos to potential money launderers thanks to this gaping loophole
Donald Trump’s love of secretive shell companies has been well documented. He makes extensive use of them for his own businesses and since his election 70% of his company’s property sales have been made to limited-liability corporations (LLCs), according to USA Today.
In an extensive roundup of all the real-estate sales Trump has made since the 1980s, BuzzFeed found that more than 1,300 condos worth around $1.5 billion either owned or licensed by Trump were bought by shell companies in all-cash transactions. That’s 21% of the Trump Organization’s condo sales in the US, BuzzFeed reports.
Why this is a problem
The Treasury Department’s financial crimes unit says (pdf) shell companies and cash purchases are two of the most common ways of laundering money through real estate. Buying with cash lets criminals bypass anti-money laundering reviews that banks have to make when approving mortgages. Meanwhile, shell companies can provide an extraordinary level of secrecy, making it impossible for even the seller to know who they’re making a deal with.
[...]
Follow the Money, people.
Secret Money: How Trump Made Millions Selling Condos To Unknown Buyers
by Thomas Frank, BuzzFeed News Reporter — Jan 12, 2108
[...]
Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) broadcast that concern in an August 2017 advisory to the real-estate industry warning that all-cash real-estate purchases by shell companies are “an attractive avenue for criminals to launder illegal proceeds while masking their identities.”
[...]
Hundreds of the secretive Trump condo sales contain additional characteristics that FinCEN and experts warn may be indicative of money laundering.
- More than $205 million in sales were to corporations based in foreign jurisdictions known for keeping corporate records and banking information secret. The corporations were based mostly in the British Virgin Islands and Panama, two places the Treasury Department has linked to money laundering. Other jurisdictions include Bermuda, Cayman Islands, Cyprus, Gibraltar, Guernsey, Hong Kong, Isle of Man, Jersey, Luxembourg, Monaco, Netherlands Antilles, Switzerland, and St. Vincent and Grenadines.
- [...]
- At least 28 shell companies resold their Trump properties within six months of buying them in cash. The National Association of Realtors says that immediate resales can indicate money laundering, “especially if the resale price is significantly higher or lower than the original purchase price.”
What if THIS is the Dirt that Putin has on Trump — that he knows how many of those Trump Bankruptcies, that Russian Oligarchs had a heavy hand in “repairing” — through their recurring Money Laundering arrangement?
That is probably something Trump would not want “advertise” as he was pursuing his presidential ambitions. Now is it?
On that “GOP List” of Trump Corruption, this is Target 1.
Dirt like this, could be a bit “compromising”.
by Michelle Lee, Washington Post — Sept 26, 2016
THE FACT CHECKER | Clinton is correct.
Trump’s companies have filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection [6 times.]
[...] In July 1991, Trump’s Taj Mahal filed for bankruptcy. He could not keep up with debts on two other Atlantic City casinos, and those two properties declared bankruptcy in 1992. A fourth property, the Plaza Hotel in New York, declared bankruptcy in 1992 after amassing debt.
PolitiFact uncovered two more bankruptcies filed after 1992, totaling six. Trump Hotels and Casinos Resorts filed for bankruptcy again in 2004, after accruing about $1.8 billion in debt. Trump Entertainment Resorts also declared bankruptcy in 2009, after being hit hard during the 2008 recession.
Now if true, THAT is a “secret” that Dishonest Donald really wouldn’t want to become common knowledge: that he is a petty crook, with mobbed-up friends in low-places, who keep bailing him out, each time he runs his empire into the ground. ALL just in exchange for a few favors … “someday”.
Perhaps Donald Sr should have told Donald Jr (and Eric) that this “deep pockets” financial arrangement they have with Russia, was meant to be kept on the down-low.
“We have all the funding we need out of Russia.”
Perhaps.
But then again,
who listens to them anyways?
