How to use Trump Tower and other luxury high-rises to clean dirty money, run an international crime syndicate, and propel a failed real estate developer into the White House.
In 1984, a Russian émigré named David Bogatin went shopping for apartments in New York City. The 38-year-old had arrived in America seven years before, with just $3 in his pocket. But for a former pilot in the Soviet Army—his specialty had been shooting down Americans over North Vietnam—he had clearly done quite well for himself. Bogatin wasn’t hunting for a place in Brighton Beach, the Brooklyn enclave known as “Little Odessa” for its large population of immigrants from the Soviet Union. Instead, he was fixated on the glitziest apartment building on Fifth Avenue, a gaudy, 58-story edifice with gold-plated fixtures and a pink-marble atrium: Trump Tower.
A monument to celebrity and conspicuous consumption, the tower was home to the likes of Johnny Carson, Steven Spielberg, and Sophia Loren. Its brash, 38-year-old developer was something of a tabloid celebrity himself. Donald Trump was just coming into his own as a serious player in Manhattan real estate, and Trump Tower was the crown jewel of his growing empire. From the day it opened, the building was a hit—all but a few dozen of its 263 units had sold in the first few months. But Bogatin wasn’t deterred by the limited availability or the sky-high prices. The Russian plunked down $6 million to buy not one or two, but five luxury condos. The big check apparently caught the attention of the owner. According to Wayne Barrett, who investigated the deal for the Village Voice, Trump personally attended the closing, along with Bogatin.
If the transaction seemed suspicious—multiple apartments for a single buyer who appeared to have no legitimate way to put his hands on that much money—there may have been a reason. At the time, Russian mobsters were beginning to invest in high-end real estate, which offered an ideal vehicle to launder money from their criminal enterprises. “During the ’80s and ’90s, we in the U.S. government repeatedly saw a pattern by which criminals would use condos and high-rises to launder money,” says Jonathan Winer, a deputy assistant secretary of state for international law enforcement in the Clinton administration. “It didn’t matter that you paid too much, because the real estate values would rise, and it was a way of turning dirty money into clean money. It was done very systematically, and it explained why there are so many high-rises where the units were sold but no one is living in them.” When Trump Tower was built, as David Cay Johnston reports in The Making of Donald Trump, it was only the second high-rise in New York that accepted anonymous buyers.
Semion Mogilevich.
In 1987, just three years after he attended the closing with Trump, Bogatin pleaded guilty to taking part in a massive gasoline-bootlegging scheme with Russian mobsters. After he fled the country, the government seized his five condos at Trump Tower, saying that he had purchased them to “launder money, to shelter and hide assets.” A Senate investigation into organized crime later revealed that Bogatin was a leading figure in the Russian mob in New York. His family ties, in fact, led straight to the top: His brother ran a $150 million stock scam with none other than Semion Mogilevich, whom the FBI considers the “boss of bosses” of the Russian mafia. At the time, Mogilevich—feared even by his fellow gangsters as “the most powerful mobster in the world”—was expanding his multibillion-dollar international criminal syndicate into America.
In 1987, on his first trip to Russia, Trump visited the Winter Palace with Ivana. The Soviets flew him to Moscow—all expenses paid—to discuss building a luxury hotel across from the Kremlin. Maxim Blokhin/TASS
- Trump made his first trip to Russia in 1987, only a few years before the collapse of the Soviet Union.
- Throughout the 1990s, untold millions from the former Soviet Union flowed into Trump’s luxury developments and Atlantic City casinos.
- Trump Taj Mahal paid the largest fine ever levied against a casino for having “willfully violated” anti-money-laundering rules.
- The influx of Russian money did more than save Trump’s business from ruin—it set the stage for the next phase of his career. By 2004, to the outside world, it appeared that Trump was back on top after his failures in Atlantic City. That January, flush with the appearance of success, Trump launched his newly burnished brand…
- Russians spent at least $98 million on Trump’s properties in Florida—and another third of the units were bought by shadowy shell companies.
- In 2013, police burst into Unit 63A of Trump Tower and rounded up 29 suspects in a $100 million money-laundering scheme.
- In April 2013, a little more than two years before Trump rode the escalator to the ground floor of Trump Tower to kick off his presidential campaign, police burst into Unit 63A of the high-rise and rounded up 29 suspects in two gambling rings.
Concluding paragraphs:
Semion Mogilevich, the Russian mob’s “boss of bosses,” also declined to respond to questions from the New Republic. “My ideas are not important to anybody,” Mogilevich said in a statement provided by his attorney. “Whatever I know, I am a private person.” Mogilevich, the attorney added, “has nothing to do with President Trump. He doesn’t believe that anybody associated with him lives in Trump Tower. He has no ties to America or American citizens.”
Back in 1999, the year before Trump staged his first run for president, Mogilevich gave a rare interview to the BBC. Living up to his reputation for cleverness, the mafia boss mostly joked and double-spoke his way around his criminal activities. (Q: “Why did you set up companies in the Channel Islands?” A: “The problem was that I didn’t know any other islands. When they taught us geography at school, I was sick that day.”) But when the exasperated interviewer asked, “Do you believe there is any Russian organized crime?” the “brainy don” turned half-serious.
“How can you say that there is a Russian mafia in America?” he demanded. “The word mafia, as far as I understand the word, means a criminal group that is connected with the political organs, the police and the administration. I don’t know of a single Russian in the U.S. Senate, a single Russian in the U.S. Congress, a single Russian in the U.S. government. Where are the connections with the Russians? How can there be a Russian mafia in America? Where are their connections?”
Two decades later, we finally have an answer to Mogilevich’s question.
Donald Trump’s Financial Ties to Russian Oligarchs Exposed Documentary 2017
“The Young Turks Raises $20 Million From Jeffrey Katzenberg’s WndrCo, Greycroft, 3L Capital, More”, 8 Aug 2017:
The parent company of progressive digital news network The Young Turks — co-founded by online host and political activist Cenk Uygur — has closed a $20 million funding round.
While TYT Network currently counts 70 staffers and 30 freelancers, Uygur told The Wall Street Journal that new funds will serve to double the size of the company’s newsroom and business operations to roughly 200 total staffers. In addition to hiring more journalists, TYT is seeking to build out its ad sales team and to bolster paid subscription options. New funds will also be allocated to expanding marketing initiatives and strengthening community engagement.
The round was led by investment firm 3L Capital with participation from Greycroft Partners, e.ventures, and Jeffrey Katzenberg’s recently-launched WndrCo holding company, which is seeking to develop television-like content for mobile consumption. As part of the deal, 3L’s co-founder and managing partner, Shawn Colo, will join TYT’s board.
TYT’s new valuation was not disclosed.
The $20 million round represents TYT’s first mainstream raise. In 2014, the millennial-leaning network signed a $4 million convertible note, and raised another $4.25 from non-institutional investors the following year, reports the Journal. Last year, TYT announced a $2 million in a crowdfunding campaign to hire four investigative teams, which it successfully surpassed.
“The past few years have been wildly successful for TYT, but we started to realize we’re just at the tip of the iceberg,” Uygur, who also serves as the company’s CEO, said in a statement. “We’ve perfected news and commentary that appeals to the highly-desirable young, cord-cutting audience” — to the tune of 200 million monthly views. In addition to its flagship The Young Turks political brand, TYT operates various news, sports, lifestyle, and entertainment channels that, all told, have surpassed 7 billion lifetime views.
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Posted by Putin and the Alt-Right on Sun, 03 Sep 2017 00:09 | #
‘A model for civilization’: Putin’s Russia has emerged as ‘a beacon for nationalists’ and the American alt-right”
Russian President Vladimir Putin has emerged as a hero of several prominent alt-right figures, raising new questions about the Kremlin’s influence on the far-right, white nationalist movement that has asserted itself as a new force in American politics.
Whether Russia has played a direct role in awakening the American alt-right, whose resurgence as a crusade against establishment politics coincided with the rise of President-elect Donald Trump, is debatable.
But the extent to which the alt-right has found a natural ally in Russia’s current zeitgeist - which perceives the US as a globalist, imperialist power working on behalf of liberal elites - is hard to overstate.
Self-described white nationalist Matthew Heimbach, who said he identifies as a member of the alt-right, has praised Putin’s Russia as “the axis for nationalists.”
“I really believe that Russia is the leader of the free world right now,” Heimbach told Business Insider in a recent interview. “Putin is supporting nationalists around the world and building an anti-globalist alliance, while promoting traditional values and self-determination.”
Heimbach described the US’ current foreign policy as aggressive and imperialistic, and he criticized NATO’s military buildup in eastern Europe as an example of how the US is trying to promote a “global conflict” with Russia.
And while he views Russia as a “model for civilization” and “a beacon for nationalists,” Heimbach emphasized that the movement goes beyond Russia and traditional left-right politics.
“This isn’t just a European or a right-wing movement,” he said. “We’re trying to position ourselves to be a part of this worldwide movement of globalism versus nationalism. It’s a new age.”
Like Heimbach, alt-right leaderRichard Spencer - the head of the white nationalistthink tank theNational Policy Institute - has argued that the US should dispense with its globalist policies by pulling out of NATO, resetting its relationship with Russia, and courting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, whom he has described as “a civilized person” and “source of stability in this chaotic world.”
Spencer’s ties to Russia, which he has called the"sole white power in the world,” go deeper. He was married until October to Russian writer and self-proclaimed “Kremlin troll leader” Nina Kouprianova, whose writing under the pen name Nina Byzantina regularly aligns with Kremlin talking points.
For example: Byzantina recently described reports that thousands of civilians in rebel-held east Aleppo, Syria, are under siege by the Russia-backed Syrian government as “fake news.”
The webzine Spencer founded in 2010 - called Alternative Right - accepted contributor pieces from Aleksandr Dugin, the far-right, ultra-nationalist politician who encouraged Putin’s incursion into Ukraine and whose work has been translated into English by Byzantina on her blog. (It does have a caveat: “The views of the original author do not necessarily reflect those of the translator.”)
Dugin also recorded a speech titled “To My American Friends in Our Common Struggle” for a nationalist conference organized by Heimbach last year in California.
The greatest enemy of tradition everywhere
A right-wing conference in St. Petersburg, Russia, organized last year by Russia’s nationalist Rodina, or Motherland, party offered a safe space for fringe thinkers - including white supremacists and anti-Semites - to gather and rail against the US-led status quo.
There, American “race realist"Jared Taylor called the US “the greatest enemy of tradition everywhere.“Klu Klux Klan attorney Sam Dickson also attended, and he joined Taylor in calling for the preservation of “[the white] race and civilization.”
Heimbach agreed that the US has “poisoned” traditional values, but he insisted that his brand of white nationalism is distinct from white supremacy.
“We work actively with other ethnic groups to support their right to self-determination,” Heimbach said, listing black nationalism and the full autonomy of Native Americans as two causes that his party actively supports.
Still, white supremacy - manifested frequently as anti-Semitism - is inextricably linked to the worldview of many alt-right admirers of Putin’s Russia.
David Duke, the former grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, has traveled to Russia several times to promote his book “The Ultimate Supremacism: My Awakening on the Jewish Question.” The book has been sold openly in the main lobby of the State Duma (Congress) for the equivalent of about $2, according to the Anti-Defamation League.
Preston Wiginton, a white supremacist from Texas who sublets Duke’s Moscow apartment when he travels to Russia, has written that his “best friends” in Russia - “the only nation that understands RAHOWA [Racial Holy War]” - are “leading skinheads.”
Last year, he invited the ultranationalist Dugin to speak at his alma mater, Texas A&M University. This year he invited Spencer, who spoke there on Tuesday.
Kevin MacDonald - who gave a speech at Spencer’s NPI in late November about how “Jews remade America in their interests ... to make white America comfortable with massive non-white immigration and its own dispossession” - has written that the “demonization of Russia in Western media and political circles” is a Jewish campaign to undermine Putin.
“Russia under Vladimir Putin,” he wrote, “has proved to be far more nationalistic than is good for the Jews or for Israel.”
Heimbach, whose Traditionalist Workers Party was deemed an extremist group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, pushed back against claims that he is anti-Semitic. But he said he believes “the organized Jewish community” is heavily involved in “supporting movements that want to destroy nationalism.”
“We call out those who are doing things that are hurting our people and are hurting the planet,” he said, including “Jewish conglomerates” who are “ruthless cosmopolitans” and “don’t have a home anywhere.”
Putin as the savior of Christian civilization
The perception of Putin as a “lion of Christianity” is another prominent feature of the alt-right’s affection for the Russian leader.
Christopher Stroop, a scholar whose work centers around modern Russian history, has characterized many of today’s alt-right figures as ‘Traditionalist International” - a movement centered around the supremacy and “shared blood” of white Christians inspired largely by Russia’s religious, nationalist turn spearheaded by Putin at the start of his third term.
Putin has stirred up Russian nationalism by cultivating a closer relationship with the Russian Orthodox Church, which in turn has helped “project Russia as the natural ally of all those who pine for a more secure, illiberal world free from the tradition-crushing rush of globalization, multiculturalism and women’s and gay rights,” The New York Times’ Andrew Higgins wrote in September.
In July, Putin outlawed religious proselytizing in a crackdown on non-government-aligned churches. The Russian Orthodox Church was exempted from the ban.
“As the Russian Federation has drifted back to its Soviet roots more and more over the past 25 years, it has increasingly sought to harass, persecute, and destroy any religious organization that it might consider competition to its own ‘state church,’” said Archbishop Andrew Maklakov, the administrator of the Russian Orthodox Autonomous Church of America.
Heimbach, who said he was baptized into the Russian Orthodox Church with his wife two years ago, views Putin as fighting for the same values - “faith, family, and folk” - that guide his own party.
“To rebuild a nation, you have to be able to build up the people,” Heimbach said.“And that requires having a strong moral foundation. Putin is fighting for faith, family, and folk. The fact that he’s rebuilt tens of thousands of churches, allowed religious services to be broadcast on national television - all of that has been crucial to rebuilding Russia.”
It has also been crucial to exporting Russia’s “Slavophile version of moral superiority to the world,” Stroop said, through figures like Alexsandr Dugin and institutions like the World Congress of Families (WCF).
The WCF, a US coalition that promotes right-wing Christian values, played a leading role in advocating for Russia’s 2013 anti-LGBT law that makes it illegal to expose minors to LGBT “propaganda.”
Larry Jacobs, WCF’s managing director who first traveled to Russia in 2010 to attend a conference hosted by the Russian Sancity of Motherhood organization, has said that “the Russians might be the Christian saviors of the world.”
Former Fox News producer Jack Hanick, who serves on the WCF planning committee and spoke at the third Sanctity of Motherhood conference in Moscow in November 2013, was baptized into the Russian Orthodox Church earlier this year along with his wife and son.
“Modern Russia has returned to its Christian roots,” Hanick wrote in an article for the New York Observer last year.
“There is a revival in Russian Orthodoxy with over 25,000 new churches built in Russia after the fall of Communism,” he said. “On any Sunday, the churches are packed. Over 70% of the population identifies themselves as Orthodox Christians. Combine this religious revival with renewed Nationalism and Russia is growing in self-confidence.”
Stroop noted that Americans involved with the World Congress of Families “have been looking to Russia as having the potential to ‘save’ Western civilization for a long time.”
“Based on quotations from white nationalists and racists like Matthew Heimbach and Pat Buchanan,” Stroop added, “I’d say they’ve certainly looked to Putin as the savior of Christian civilization.”
For Heimbach, Putin’s brand of orthodoxy, which opposes same-sex marriage, abortion, and globalism, “is the last institution standing for traditional values.”
Foto: Reuters (zdjęcia) Russia’s President Vladimir Putin (L) and Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia Kirill arrive for the meeting with Russian Orthodox church bishops in Moscow February 1, 2013.
And he’s happy to see Putin working hard to export those values, even if that may be perceived as meddlesome and globalist in its own right.
“Putin is supporting traditionalism and self-determination, so meddle away,” Heimbach said, laughing. “He is giving nationalists an opportunity to fight for the best interests of their nations, which in my view is a positive thing for everyone.”
Stroop said that while Putin’s embrace of traditional values in his third term “may have been initially about turning to Russian populism, it’s really hard to separate foreign from domestic policy in this context” - something the Kremlin hasn’t tried to do.
“Putinism is heavily influenced by the ideas of Dugin and that old Slavophlie/Pan-Slav Russian nationalist tradition at this point,” Stroop said, pointing to the soft-power Russkiy Mir Foundation established by Putin in 2007. It was started, in cooperation with the Russian Orthodox Church, to promote the idea of a “Russian World” of compatriots.
As of today, the foundation has a presence in 29 countries.
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Posted by Charlottesville AltRight Leaders passion for Putin on Sun, 03 Sep 2017 06:26 | #
Newsweek, “Charlottesville’s Alt-right Leaders Have a Passion for Vladimir Putin”, 16 Aug 2017:
The alleged ties between the administration of President Donald Trump and Russia are currently the subject of intensive media scrutiny. But perhaps less well known are the connections between a Kremlin ideologue described as “Putin’s brain” and key members of the U.S. alt-right and white supremacist movement, including those behind the Charlottesville protest.
Alexander Dugin is a Russian ultranationalist and former adviser to Sergei Naryshkin, a key member of Vladimir Putin’s United Russia party who was appointed Russian foreign intelligence chief in 2016. Dugin supports Orthodox Russia’s role as a bulwark against what he has portrayed as the decadent forces of the liberal West.
Amongst Saturday’s headline speakers was Richard Spencer, who claims to have invented the term “alt-right,” and has disseminated its white nationalist ideology via his National Policy Institute think-tank, as well as a network of websites and publishing ventures.
Spencer has not disguised his fondness for Vladimir Putin’s Russia, describing the country as the “sole white power in the world.” In May, he led a smaller protest in Charlottesville, in which torch wielding white nationalists chanted “Russia is our friend.”
Neo-Eurasianist ideologue Alexander Dugin sits in his TV studio in central Moscow on August 11, 2016. Francesca Ebel/AP
In 2014, Spencer invited Dugin to an international far-right conference he planned to hold in Hungary, however international sanctions prevented Dugin attending and Hungarian police raided the meeting. Dugin has since become a frequent contributor to Spencer’s AltRight.com website, and has also contributed to his online journal Radix. Spencer has returned the favor, penning an article for Dugin’s Katehon website.
Spencer’s ex-wife is Nina Kouprianova, a tireless promoter of Russian nationalism and self-described “Kremlin troll leaders” who writes under the penname Nina Byzantina. She is also Dugin’s English translator.
Matthew Heimbach, co-founder of the white supremacist Traditional Workers Party, also attended Saturday’s rally and is a big fan of Putin.
“I really believe that Russia is the leader of the free world right now,” he recently told Business Insider. “Putin is supporting nationalists around the world and building an anti-globalist alliance, while promoting traditional values and self-determination.”
In 2015, he led a rally at which Russian and Confederate flags were flown alongside each other.
And, for good measure, here’s Heimbach with the Novorossiya flag, and leading a rally with both Confederate and Russian imperial flags: pic.twitter.com/5mHjHisfr7
12:26 AM - Jan 5, 2017
Heimbach, described by the Southern Poverty Law Center as the “face of a new generation of white nationalists”, has made several trips to Europe to meet the leaders of far-right parties, and at the official launch of the Traditional Workers Party in 2015 Heimbach hosted a Skyped-in congratulatory speech from Dugin.
And one more shot: Heimbach holding both a Dugin book and a neo-Confederate “League of the South” flag. ht @JvanDijkS pic.twitter.com/aY0KfVEhyS
6:41 PM - Jan 5, 2017
The following year he planned his first trip to Russia for the far-right World National Conservative Movement conference, which was ultimately postponed.
Infamous former KKK leader David Duke also made an appearance at the rally, which he called a “turning point” and pledged that white nationalists would “fulfill the promises of Donald Trump.”
Like his allies Spencer and Heimbach, Duke has made no secret of his admiration for Russia, describing the country as the “key to white survival,” and has been pictured alongside Dugin.
Just Rich @JustMeRich
Replying to @splcenter
Trump is in the side of David Duke and the Klan. Further speculation isn’t needed.
Follow
Trevor Smith @MrTSmith81
And david Duke and the klan are on the side of Russia, where’s that list of people trump won’t attack again? White supremacists and putin.. pic.twitter.com/4Nricps1N7
11:16 PM - Aug 15, 2017
Duke once lived in Moscow and owns an apartment in the Russian capital, which he reportedly sub-let to U.S. Neo-Nazi Preston Wigginton, who has in turn hosted web chats by Dugin at the University of Texas A&M college.
On Monday, the college announced it was cancelling a planned white nationalist rally on its campus to be led by Spencer.
Russian state media has also given a platform to Spencer and Duke, where their extremist beliefs were not flagged, and they expounded their racist views unchallenged. Spencer has frequently commented on the Syrian civil war on RT, where he has expressed support for Russian ally and alt-right icon President Bashar al-Assad.
Dugin himself has frequently appeared on Infowars, Alex Jones’ pro-Trump conspiracy theory site.
Anton Shekhovtsov, author of Russia and the Western Far Right: Tango Noir, tells Newsweek that ties between U.S. and Russian fascists were longstanding.
“There is no evidence that the Kremlin - as an official body - has ever tried to build ties with the US neo-Nazis such as Spencer or Duke. However, both have long-standing relations with their Russian fascist counterparts,” he says in an email.
In Europe, the story is different, with Neo-Nazis in Germany reportedly recruited by Russian intelligence via martial arts clubs, and Hungarian neo-Nazi István Győrkös, who shot dead a police officer last October, running paramilitary training camps for right-wing extremists alongside Kremlin officials.
In a blog posting Tuesday, former NSA analyst John Schindler explained the appeal of Russia to the U.S. far-right.
“Although our country has always had white supremacists, Russia has given them renewed focus and energy, as well as a ready-made worldview. This take on the world includes overt white nationalism which despises the United States as a decadent and multiracial society,” he wrote.
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Posted by Fred Trump on Fri, 19 Oct 2018 05:13 | #
“Self made” Donald’s ties to his dad -
NPR, “Times’ Journalists Puncture Myth Of Trump As Self-Made Billionaire”, 18 Oct 2018:
Investigative reporters Susanne Craig and David Barstow say the president received today’s equivalent of $413 million from his father’s real estate empire, through what appears to be tax fraud.
Donald Trump’s book “The Art Of The Deal,” his TV show “The Apprentice” and his successful presidential campaign were based on his image as a brilliant deal-maker and self-made billionaire. But recent New York Times reporting reveals a different narrative. It’s based on a trove of more than a hundred thousand pages of documents, including confidential tax returns and financial records given to the Times by a secret source.
The documents reveal that by age 3, Trump was earning $200,000 a year as measured in today’s dollars from his father Fred Trump’s real estate empire. Fred Trump made Donald Trump a millionaire by the time Donald was 8. Over the years, Donald received today’s equivalent of $413 million from his father’s businesses.
Much of this money was transferred from father to son with the help of schemes designed to avoid paying taxes, some of which, according to my guests, were outright fraud.
[...]
GROSS: So one of the paradoxes here is that Fred Trump built his fortune in part on taking advantage of cheap federal loans, especially after World War II, when GIs returning from the war really needed housing. And yet, he didn’t pay the taxes that he owed, or he didn’t pay nearly the amount of taxes that he owed. So he took in a lot of federal dollars and didn’t give the federal government what he was supposed to give it at tax time.
BARSTOW: That’s exactly right. He felt he was vehemently opposed to the idea that as he passed this fortune onto his family, that he should pay any kind of tax whatsoever on the transfer of that wealth to his children. And he took all kinds of measures that we described in the story to avoid paying either gift taxes or, later on, estate taxes because of this belief that he just felt that what he had made, he - you know, the government just didn’t have a right to a single penny of it.
GROSS: Your investigation really, like, deconstructs the Donald Trump myth of the self-made man who got, like, a $1 million loan from his father and used that to build this enormous fortune and this real estate empire. The actual story, which you report, starts when he’s, like, 3 years old and starts getting, like, $200,000 a year in today’s dollars. So what was the process by which by age 3, he was getting hundreds of thousands of dollars from his father?
CRAIG: That started in 1949. And it was one of the projects that had got - that Fred Trump had received government funding to build. It was a complex called Beach Haven. And what Fred Trump did - it was quite ingenious - is he bought the land underneath Beach Haven, the complex that he would go on to build, and he placed the land in a trust for the benefit of his five children. And then he started paying them rent. He makes them his landlord. And every year, they’d continue to get payments. So instead of paying some…
[...]
GROSS: So what are some of the ways that by the time Donald Trump was a teenager, he was already wealthy? What are some of the other ways his father gave him money?
BARSTOW: He began doing a number of things.
[...]
We actually documented in our reporting 295 different revenue streams that Fred Trump ultimately created for Donald Trump over a 50-year period. I mean, Fred Trump was so ingenious at finding different ways of putting money into Donald Trump’s pockets. So he didn’t just put him on his payroll as a salary employee. He also paid him separately to be a consultant to him. He paid him separately to be a property manager for him. He paid him separately to be a purchasing agent for him. On and on it would go.
In 1987, on his first trip to Russia, Trump visited the Winter Palace with Ivana. The Soviets flew him to Moscow—all expenses paid—to discuss building a luxury hotel across from the Kremlin. Maxim Blokhin/TASS
Semion Mogilevich.
Posted by Young Turks get $20 Million from Katzenberg on Thu, 10 Aug 2017 10:52 | #