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Mob Mob Mob, and Trump is a mobster. It looks like we are making a lot of progress here. Trumps ties to organized crime are called out and his boss, Semion Mogilevich, gets a mention in this article as well.
Source: The Atlantic
Some of President Trumps favorite targets in the Russia probe have spent their careers in the Justice Department and FBI investigating organized crime and money laundering, particularly as they pertain to Russia.
Natasha Bertrand
6:14 PM ET
... snip
Trumps fixation with seeing Ohr ousted from the Justice Department could be perceived as yet another attempt to undermine the credibility of the people who have investigated him. It could also be interpreted as an attack on someone with deep knowledge of the shady characters Trump and his cohort have been linked to, including Semion Mogilevich, the Russian mob boss, and Oleg Deripaska, a Russian aluminum magnate close to Putin who did business with Trumps campaign chairman Paul Manafort. (Incidentally, another Manafort associate, the Ukrainian billionaire Dmitry Firtash, admitted he only managed to be in business because Mogilevich allowed him to be, according to a leaked 2008 State Department cable.) Ohr was involved in banning Deripaska from the U.S. in 2006, due to his alleged ties to organized crime and fear that he would try to launder money into American real estate. Nearly a decade later, Ohr and the FBI sought Deripaskas help in taking down overseas criminal syndicates.
And then theres Andy McCabe, the former deputy director of the FBI who spent over a decade investigating Russian organized crime and served as a supervisory special agent of a task force that scrutinized Eurasian crime syndicates. McCabe is a 21-year FBI veteran who handled aspects of the Russia investigation until Mueller was appointed last May, an appointment McCabe says he pushed for. He was fired in March, just two days short of being eligible to receive his pension and other benefits from the bureau. The official reason was that he had lacked candor when describing his interactions with the press to the Inspector Generals office. But Trump and his allies relentless attacks on McCabe on Twitter and cable news made it difficult for many to believe that Attorney General Jeff Sessions decision to fire him was completely devoid of political considerations.
One member of Muellers team, meanwhile, has provoked more ire from the presidents allies than others: Andrew Weissmann, a seasoned prosecutor who oversaw cases against high-ranking organized criminals on Wall Street in the early 1990s and, later, against 30 people implicated in the Enron fraud scandal. Trump has also villainized former Mueller team member Lisa Page, a trial attorney in the Justice Department's organized-crime section whose cases centered on international organized crime and money laundering. She has been targeted by the president and his allies for mocking Trump in text messages she exchanged with Peter Strzok, a Russian counterintelligence expert in the FBI, during a period in which both briefly worked on the Mueller investigation. Strzok was fired earlier this month for writing similarly caustic messages. Trump says the texts showed outrageous bias and has cited them as evidence that Muller is out to get him.
Muellers probe is first and foremost a counterintelligence investigation, and Trump famously declared last year that any examination of his personal finances would cross a red line. But Russias criminal syndicates have become increasingly intertwined with its intelligence services, blurring the line between mafia dons and spies. (As Russia expert Mark Galeotti wrote in his book The Vory: Russias Super Mafia, Putins Kremlin has consolidated power by not simply taming, but absorbing, the underworld.)
Read more: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/08/trumps-top-targets-in-the-russia-probe-are-experts-in-organized-crime/569056/
MelissaB
(16,420 posts)By the early 2000s, a third of the buyers of Trump Towers most expensive condos were Russia-linked shell companies or individuals from the former Soviet Unionincluding Eduard Nektalov, a mob-connected diamond dealer from Uzbekistan, and David Bogatin, a Russian emigre mobster who specialized in bootlegging gasoline. Bogatins brother was involved in an elaborate stock fraud with top Russian mob boss Mogilevich, who himself is allied with Alimzhan Tokhtakhounovanother Russian mob leader who ran an entire gambling and money-laundering network out of unit 63A in Trump Tower, just three floors below Trumps own residence. (Tokhtakhounov was a VIP attendee at Trump's Miss Universe pageant in Moscow just seven months after the gambling ring was busted by the FBI.) Trumps own sons have boasted of the Trump Organizations dependence on Russian money. "Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets," Donald Trump Jr. said in 2008. We don't rely on American banks, Eric Trump reportedly told a golfing buddy in 2014. We have all the funding we need out of Russia.
MelissaB
(16,420 posts)Excuse me while a celebrate. I've been waiting for this.
dewsgirl
(14,961 posts)dalton99a
(81,426 posts)From Unger's book -
etc. etc.
MelissaB
(16,420 posts)dewsgirl
(14,961 posts)peggysue2
(10,826 posts)LOL. Finally, the press catches up to what's been out there all along: MOBSTERS. And everything associated with mafia types: money laundering, human trafficking, gun running, drugs, etc., etc,. etc. Every human misery capitalized, exploited by the darkest of criminal elements.
Blood money, all of it. On a global scale.
And this Administration is connected to that darkness. If that doesn't scare the living hell out of people, I don't know what will. The Trumpster and his acolytes will deny everything, I'm sure. Because there's no way to defend these connections and associations.
Wanna know what the Trumpster is getting rattled and paranoid over?
This!
gratuitous
(82,849 posts)He doesn't target Barney Benchwarmer, he sends the goon in to hit the star quarterback, running back, or receiver.
struggle4progress
(118,269 posts)By Jen Kirby
Aug 1, 2018, 4:00pm EDT
~snip~
Donald J. Trump
@realDonaldTrump
Looking back on history, who was treated worse, Alfonse Capone, legendary mob boss, killer and Public Enemy Number One, or Paul Manafort, political operative & Reagan/Dole darling, now serving solitary confinement - although convicted of nothing? Where is the Russian Collusion?
11:35 AM - Aug 1, 2018
71.9K
49.8K people are talking about this
~snip~
https://www.vox.com/2018/8/1/17639860/trump-al-capone-manfort-tweet-mueller
LSFL
(1,109 posts)The temptation to be petty is very tempting but I will withhold my vindicated sneers as we all seem to be on the same page now. It is good to agree again.