Bribery!! Seth Abramson is on another roll!! 2nd letter of intent for Moscow tRump tower (w/pics)
Last edited Sun Dec 2, 2018, 10:36 PM - Edit history (1)
Thread by @SethAbramson: "
THREAD) It's time for America to discuss the SECOND Letter of Intent that Trump signed to build a Trump Tower Moscow—a Letter that was acti […]"
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1069389861537423360.html
**Full Thread in Post 29**
1/ The picture atop this thread is of the "Trump-Agalarov" Trump Tower Moscow—the Trump Tower Moscow that Trump signed a Letter of Intent to build in November 2013 with the direct intervention and assistance of the Kremlin. This Letter was ACTIVE through mid-2017 at the earliest.
2/ Nobody who researches the Trump-Russia case extensively would say that the "Trump-Rozov" Trump Tower Moscow deal—the one we learned of this week—is any *less* nefarious than the "Trump-Agalarov" deal. The problem is *no one seems to fully understand the issue with either one*.
3/ Trump has thus far had success—inexplicably—in convincing media that there was no criminality in him secretly negotiating a multi-billion dollar real estate deal directly with the Kremlin while he was running for president on the most pro-Russia foreign policy in U.S. history.
4/ In fact, both the "Trump-Agalarov" Trump Tower Moscow Letter of Intent (active: November 2013, at the latest, through mid-2017 or later) and the "Trump-Rozov" Trump Tower Moscow Letter of Intent (active: October 2015, at the latest, through June 2016 or later) were *criminal*.
5/ To understand why BOTH these Letters of Intent became criminal at some point in their lifespan—whether or not they were illegal at the outset (which the Trump-Rozov Letter might well have been)—requires looking at their histories and shared features and some relevant statutes.
6/ First, we'll look at the history of the "Trump-Agalarov" Letter of Intent that Trump signed in November 2013 (at the latest), which was ACTIVE until its termination sometime in mid-2017 (at the earliest). We know far *more* of the Trump-Agalarov deal than the Trump-Rozov deal.
7/ Agalarov is FAR CLOSER to Vladimir Putin than Trump's partner in the Trump-Rozov deal, Andrey Rozov. Agalarov is Putin's top real estate developer, and was awarded Russia's highest civilian award directly from Putin's hand—two weeks before Trump and Agalarov signed their deal.
8/ A Russian oligarch, Agalarov routinely performs no-bid government contracts for the Kremlin, and is considered a top Putin ally. Moreover, Agalarov and his family members have acted as messengers for Putin, and have discussed their proclivity to do as the Kremlin directs them.
9/ Trump and Agalarov signed their Trump Tower deal in early November 2013, at an EVENT Putin personally permitted to occur (the 2013 Miss Universe pageant), with money from a STATE BANK whose loans Putin can direct, and with the permission of a KREMLIN OFFICIAL Putin controlled.
10/ On the *very day* in November 2013 that Trump and Agalarov signed their multi-billion dollar Trump Tower Moscow deal, Trump received a CALL FROM THE KREMLIN—either directly from Putin or from his lieutenant, Dmitry Peskov—and a WRITTEN MESSAGE FROM PUTIN. But that's not all.
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That was awesome.
Thread by @SethAbramson: " THREAD) It's time for America to discuss the SECOND Letter of Intent that Trump signed to build a Trump Tower Moscow—a Letter that was acti […]"
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1069389861537423360.html
(THREAD) It's time for America to discuss the SECOND Letter of Intent that Trump signed to build a Trump Tower Moscow—a Letter that was active two years earlier than the one we learned of this week and that remained active through 2017. I hope you'll read on for more and RETWEET.
1/ The picture atop this thread is of the "Trump-Agalarov" Trump Tower Moscow—the Trump Tower Moscow that Trump signed a Letter of Intent to build in November 2013 with the direct intervention and assistance of the Kremlin. This Letter was ACTIVE through mid-2017 at the earliest.
2/ Nobody who researches the Trump-Russia case extensively would say that the "Trump-Rozov" Trump Tower Moscow deal—the one we learned of this week—is any *less* nefarious than the "Trump-Agalarov" deal. The problem is *no one seems to fully understand the issue with either one*.
3/ Trump has thus far had success—inexplicably—in convincing media that there was no criminality in him secretly negotiating a multi-billion dollar real estate deal directly with the Kremlin while he was running for president on the most pro-Russia foreign policy in U.S. history.
4/ In fact, both the "Trump-Agalarov" Trump Tower Moscow Letter of Intent (active: November 2013, at the latest, through mid-2017 or later) and the "Trump-Rozov" Trump Tower Moscow Letter of Intent (active: October 2015, at the latest, through June 2016 or later) were *criminal*.
5/ To understand why BOTH these Letters of Intent became criminal at some point in their lifespan—whether or not they were illegal at the outset (which the Trump-Rozov Letter might well have been)—requires looking at their histories and shared features and some relevant statutes.
6/ First, we'll look at the history of the "Trump-Agalarov" Letter of Intent that Trump signed in November 2013 (at the latest), which was ACTIVE until its termination sometime in mid-2017 (at the earliest). We know far *more* of the Trump-Agalarov deal than the Trump-Rozov deal.
7/ Agalarov is FAR CLOSER to Vladimir Putin than Trump's partner in the Trump-Rozov deal, Andrey Rozov. Agalarov is Putin's top real estate developer, and was awarded Russia's highest civilian award directly from Putin's hand—two weeks before Trump and Agalarov signed their deal.
8/ A Russian oligarch, Agalarov routinely performs no-bid government contracts for the Kremlin, and is considered a top Putin ally. Moreover, Agalarov and his family members have acted as messengers for Putin, and have discussed their proclivity to do as the Kremlin directs them.
9/ Trump and Agalarov signed their Trump Tower deal in early November 2013, at an EVENT Putin personally permitted to occur (the 2013 Miss Universe pageant), with money from a STATE BANK whose loans Putin can direct, and with the permission of a KREMLIN OFFICIAL Putin controlled.
10/ On the *very day* in November 2013 that Trump and Agalarov signed their multi-billion dollar Trump Tower Moscow deal, Trump received a CALL FROM THE KREMLIN—either directly from Putin or from his lieutenant, Dmitry Peskov—and a WRITTEN MESSAGE FROM PUTIN. But that's not all.
11/ During the 24-hour span the deal was signed, Trump told NBC that PUTIN WAS AWARE of everything happening in and around the '13 Miss Universe pageant—as if that hadn't already been evident from him permitting the pageant and supplying Trump and Agalarov with money and permits.
12/ As you can see from the pic atop this thread, not only did Trump and Putin's real estate developer have a site picked out (the Crocus City Complex in Moscow), not only did they have money and permits, they also had a design for the building—and the blessing of Vladimir Putin.
13/ There is only *one* reason the US media doesn't treat the Trump-Agalarov Trump Tower Moscow Letter of Intent as being a far *bigger* scandal (because of Putin's involvement, and Agalarov being a Putin agent, and the level to which the deal advanced) than the Trump-Rozov deal.
14/ The *one* reason for the media's indifference to the Trump-Agalarov deal—i.e., the reason the nation was *rocked* this week by news of the Trump-Rozov deal but has hardly registered the Trump-Agalarov deal at all—is because (get this) Trump's team says the deal ended in 2014.
15/ You might well be surprised to hear that *the Trump team making a claim about when a deal ended* is being treated as *gospel* by the very same media that reported this week...
...that Trump's team lied repeatedly about when the *Trump-Rozov* deal was active. Very odd, right?
16/ Some of us who research the Trump-Russia case *never* take the Trump team's word for *anything*. We look for *evidence* of whether (and when) something actually happened, not when (or whether) members of Trump's consistently dishonest team conveniently say something happened.
17/ Question: when does AGALAROV say the Trump-Agalarov Letter of Intent for a Putin-blessed Trump Tower Moscow expired?
Answer: February 2017.
He said so in an interview with a Russian construction website. This feed—which translates foreign news articles—was first to note it.
18/ Question: when does AGALAROV'S SON say the Trump-Agalarov Letter of Intent for a Putin-blessed Trump Tower Moscow expired?
Answer: July '17—*maybe*.
Emin Agalarov told Forbes then that the Agalarovs are STILL WORKING with Don and Eric on the Trump-Agalarov Trump Tower deal
19/ But wait! you say. Can't there only be *one* Trump Tower Moscow deal at a time? Isn't the signing of a Letter of Intent on the Trump-Rozov tower proof that the Trump-Agalarov tower deal was dead by October 2015, as Don Jr.—who's repeatedly lied to Congress—has been claiming?
20/ No—as Trump has repeatedly said he wants to build a *ton* of buildings in Moscow. There's no mutually exclusive relationship between the Trump-Agalarov and Trump-Rozov deals. We don't even know what the two towers would've been called—we say Trump Tower Moscow as a shorthand.
21/ So now let's look at what the Trump-Agalarov and Trump-Rozov deals have in common:
Every person involved in both projects *lied* about every single aspect of the project to the public, the media and politicians.
The Kremlin was involved in the negotiations for *both*.
22/ But it's for *legal* reasons that the Trump-Agalarov deal is far *more* dangerous to Trump than the Trump-Rozov deal, which is why it's wildly to the benefit of the administration that so far—for no evident reason—the media has ignored the Trump-Agalarov deal almost entirely.
23/ Federal BRIBERY statutes are triggered—at the earliest—when a person has been *selected or nominated* to be a federal public official. Trump clinched the GOP nomination for president May 26, 2016; was nominated on July 19; was elected November 8; took office January 20, 2017.
24/ Here's more information on this and other relevant federal corruption statutes:
https://www.law.columbia.edu/sites/default/files/microsites/public-integrity/a_guide_to_commonly_used_federal_statutes_in_public_corruption_cases.pdf
25/ This timeline— see Tweet 23—suggests it's vital for Trump to claim that the Trump-Rozov deal was dead by July 2016, not because we know SCOTUS would consider the GOP nomination an eligible "selection" by statute, but because if you're going to lie anyway, why not be cautious?
26/ So we'd expect Trump to claim, to be safe, that the Trump-Rozov deal was entirely dead by June '16—which is *exactly* the information we have now. But we can't know if Michael Cohen has given Mueller more information on the timeline that we haven't yet seen in a court filing.
27/ Now let's look at the Trump-Agalarov deal, which was signed 11 MONTHS AFTER Roger Stone says Trump told him he was running for president, and 1 MONTH BEFORE Trump indicated as much to New York GOP officials. That deal lasted... well into 2017, triggering the bribery statute.
28/ So what was the quid pro quo? Trump gets a multi-billion dollar investment in Moscow; what does Moscow get for its bribe? First, let's note that Steele dossier intelligence—compiled by the former Russia desk head for MI6—says the Kremlin used real estate deals to bribe Trump.
29/ The answer is the same answer for nearly *all* bribery cases: a nominated federal public official promises a policy intended to benefit the person who bribed him. Here, the policy Trump offered was the *unilateral dropping of all sanctions on Russia*—worth TRILLIONS to Putin.
30/ So here's another thing the Trump-Agalarov and Trump-Rozov deals have in common:
We know that during the conception of *both* deals, Trump was *openly discussing* his historically pro-Russia foreign policy with his Russian partners—a policy offering NO BENEFIT TO AMERICA.
31/ So now here's *another* vital thing the two deals have in common:
In both the Trump-Agalarov and Trump-Rozov deals, there is evidence that Trump's business partners had chosen to do business with him (a) with Kremlin guidance, and (b) *because of* Trump's foreign policy.
32/ Okay, you say, but what if Trump's historically pro-Russia foreign policy, which offered no benefit to America whatsoever, was simply Trump's *sincerely held belief*? Do we know, for instance, who WROTE his foreign policy?
As it so happens we do. It was THREE KREMLIN AGENTS.
33/ Here, again, we come to a part of the story that the media is refusing to widely report not because it isn't provably true but because it's *so insane* that it sounds impossible. And I'm saying it directly here: it sounds impossible. I didn't believe it when I first heard it.
34/ Manafort says *he* didn't write Trump's Russia policy, which was delivered to voters at Trump's so-called Mayflower Speech on April 27, 2016. So who did? Well, it was written and reviewed by Richard Burt, a Gazprom lobbyist; Dimitri Simes, a friend of Putin; and Papadopoulos.
35/ Trump put Papadopoulos on his speech-writing team the DAY AFTER Papadopoulos told him that he—Papadopoulos—was acting as a Kremlin intermediary for an agent of Putin. And what did that agent tell Papadopoulos the day BEFORE the Mayflower Speech? That Putin had Clinton emails.
36/ But BRIBERY is the hardest way to charge all this. CONSPIRACY TO DEFRAUD THE UNITED STATES includes "any conspiracy for the purpose of defeating the lawful function of any department of government...to impair its efficiency and destroy the value of its operation as fair..."
37/ Trump entered office with a plan to force the State Department to drop sanctions on Russia for no reason. The plan was defeated only when State Department officials REVOLTED against Trump's policy—which would have destroyed the fair operation of the DoS/DoT sanctions program.
38/ As with the BRIBERY statute—which doesn't require that a federal official actually be capable of delivering on an induced promise—CONSPIRACY doesn't require that one be in a position of being able to commit a crime at the time the conspiracy is hatched. That fits these facts.
39/ *Both* the Trump-Agalarov *and* the Trump-Rozov deals present as part of a CONSPIRACY TO DEFRAUD THE UNITED STATES, with both documentary and testimonial evidence establishing the quid pro quo, the agreement and its purpose, and steps in furtherance of the illegal conspiracy.
40/ Because the Trump-Agalarov deal extended beyond Election Day and into the Trump presidency, it presents *also* as a BRIBERY case. But there's another critical way in which the—already lied about—timeline of the Trump-Agalarov deal suggests that it was in fact a criminal act.
41/ If you know someone is committing a criminal act, you can't do anything to INDUCE THEM to keep committing that act, and inducement often involves payment as well as encouragement. The AIDING AND ABETTING statute means Trump couldn't induce Russian crimes once he knew of them.
42/ So now we see a *second* reason it's so suspiciously convenient that the Trump-Rozov deal "ended" in June 2016. It's not just because it preceded Trump's nomination for president, but because it preceded—or was contemporaneous with—Russian hacking activities becoming public.
43/ For nearly two years, this feed has not only meticulously detailed how Trump's foreign policy was developed, and when/where he signed deals with the Russians, but *also* how *long* his team's sanctions negotiations with the Russians went on *after* it knew of Russian hacking.
44/ *After* we knew of Russian hacking, Trump's NatSec negotiated sanctions *at a minimum* at the RNC, in Sessions' office, in *pre-election* Flynn-Kislyak talks, and through "public collusion" like a Papadopoulos-Interfax interview, Jr.'s emails to WikiLeaks, and Trump speeches.
45/ Throughout all of this, Russia was holding out an ACTIVE Trump Tower Moscow deal for Trump via Aras Agalarov, who NOT ONLY stayed in contact with Trump throughout the election but tried to get oppo research to Trump on Clinton and offered to secretly introduce Trump to Putin.
46/ Given the foregoing—and despite having written a book on Trump-Russia collusion entitled PROOF OF COLLUSION that answers many of the mysteries surrounding Trump's collusion with Russia—I cannot *fathom* why media speaks of the Trump-Rozov deal but not the Trump-Agalarov deal.
47/ And given all the foregoing—given the BRIBERY, CONSPIRACY TO DEFRAUD THE UNITED STATES and AIDING AND ABETTING COMPUTER CRIMES federal statutory violations that are clearly in play here—I've *no idea* why *anyone* in media refers to these two deals as *legal*. They *weren't*.
48/ What happened this week was *not* that we got proof of collusion. We already *had* proof of collusion, and it's catalogued in detail in my book PROOF OF COLLUSION. What we got was *more* proof of collusion. And if people wonder why it doesn't feel that way, look at the media.
49/ The mistake the media makes is giving Trump hours of airtime denying his crimes—though his denials are *less* credible than a murderer saying he didn't murder someone, as Trump *lies more frequently* than any murderer I've ever represented in court or even *seen* represented.
50/ Likewise, media credits and indulges those who've lied on Trump's behalf before—while ignoring hard evidence of criminality because it seems implausible. Newsflash: sometimes crimes present, at first, as implausible. Media needs to move past that and report what we know. /end
PS/ Other points: Ivanka, Don, and Eric have *all* been actively involved in the Agalarov deal; Emin lied about the deal's timeline to Forbes; the involvement of Sberbank and an architectural firm suggest the tower was beyond LoI stage *and* conceived *before* early November '13.
