Why did Jack Smith release this image?

[bigtree]

Sandi Bachom @sandibachom 22h
WHY would Trump have an article about Val Broeksmit in his secret file folders and why would Jack Smith release it last night?

Sandi Bachom 📹 @sandibachom
I was in the Deutsche bank hearings May 19, 2019. I’m going to repost this thread of my notes in the hearings. At the time, the government was trying to get Trump’s Deutsche bank records. The government asked “ why would you give Trump a $2 billion loan when no other bank would touch him?”

This was the original Cy Vance case that nobody could understand why it didn’t go forward because Vance finally got his taxes AND DB records. Val knew everything.

Link to tweet

Mueller, She Wrote @MuellerSheWrote
WOW. So I was looking through the exhibits in the latest Jack Smith filing, and what do I see among the new photos? The article about Val Broeksmit, the whistleblower who wielded his dead stepfather’s passwords to reveal Deutschebank’s dealings with Russia & Trump. He himself mysteriously died two years ago. Why would Trump save this? @davidenrich


x.com/MuellerSheWrote/status/1805526423853236603

Oct. 1, 2019 - Me and My Whistle-Blower
Deutsche Bank. North Korea. The Intelligence Committee’s investigation of the president. Again and again, one man has taken his trove of secret documents — and uncanny nose for scandal — to the center of the news.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/01/business/val-broeksmit-deutsche-bank-trump-whistle-blower.html

May 13, 2022 - Val Broeksmit, 46, Who Blew the Whistle on Deutsche Bank, Dies
An itinerant musician, he leaked secret files to F.B.I. investigators looking at the bank’s ties to money laundering, the Trump Organization and Russia.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/13/us/val-broeksmit-dead.html?unlocked_article_code=1.2U0.fMZA.CGVCk73dF089&smid=url-share

[cilla4progress]

1. Yes! I just posted about this!

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/13/us/val-broeksmit-dead.html?pvid=XM0tmnDLLKa9dmRzjVmumzfn&smid=url-share

Full article loads.

[MagickMuffin]

9. Paywall

🤷🏼‍♀️

[cilla4progress]

11. Weird. Not a subscriber and

didn't hit paywall.

You tried "show full article"?

Sorry!

[BumRushDaShow]

20. Often the subbed sites will allow a couple article views before finally slamming the paywall into place

I'll gift to the above DUer!

[sheshe2]

41. You are awesome, thanks for the gift link.

[BumRushDaShow]

42. No problem!

WaPo and NYT allow 10 gift links per month with a sub.

[soldierant]

82. And if you run out,

there's alwaya archive.is

[BumRushDaShow]

21. Here's a gift link to the NYT article

No paywall (gift)

[BoRaGard]

86. thank you

[Maraya1969]

64. Here

https://archive.is/1dkrE

[Celerity]

95. GMTA

even delayed

lol

[Celerity]

94. here

https://archive.ph/1dkrE

you can use this going forward to get an archive for problem links:

https://archive.ph/

[PatSeg]

19. So he "died mysteriously"?

And his stepfather was among a number of Deutsche Bank-linked suicides. Hmm, I wonder.....

[onecaliberal]

25. More things DOJ can't get off its ass for. But Hunter Biden, that's important shit worth time.

[PatSeg]

68. If this was a movie,

the bad guys would have been held accountable by now.

The more obvious these jerks are, the more likely nothing will happen to them.

[ancianita]

77. Specifically, the Barr DOJ. As his personal lawyer, Barr obstructed all investigations into Trump.

Including teh Cy Vance investigation. Preet Bharara should know.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/21/opinion/trump-bill-barr-geoffrey-berman.html

[jmbar2]

31. Wow - some details from the article

Custodial employees reporting for work shortly before 7 a.m. on Monday, April 25, found his body in the courtyard of Woodrow Wilson Senior High School in northeast Los Angeles. The police said they found no sign of trauma or foul play. The medical examiner said the cause remained undetermined.

Mr. Broeksmit was said to have been evicted with his girlfriend from a Los Angeles loft in late March and since then was believed to have been itinerant.

A refugee from Ukraine, abandoned by his parents as a child and later adopted by his banker stepfather into a life of privilege, Mr. Broeksmit evolved into a routine abuser of cocaine and opioids, a credit card fraudster and a rock musician without a job.

---

But while he became a capable musician and songwriter, his bands, the Good Time Charlies and Bikini Robot Army, never had hits.

And that was a large part of the reason, Mr. Enrich wrote, that Mr. Broeksmit became an informer — a self-described “comically terrible spy,” according to his Twitter profile.

[PatSeg]

69. That's quite a story

"No signs of trauma or foul play." I wonder what he was doing in the tree. At least he didn't fall out of a window.

[malaise]

2. Let me make this pellucidly clear

The shit is getting real.

The CONvicted felon is up shit creek without a paddle.

[bucolic_frolic]

3. "why would you give Trump a $2 billion loan when no other bank would touch him?"

Wow. It's materiel for the finest political thriller writers of the last 100 years. But the first thing I would want to know is ... ahem ... were they lending their own funds, or were they a conduit for other entities, present-day or historic?

Then I'd want to read Ludlum's "The Holcroft Covenant" slowly and deliberately to parse any connotations.

How well connected to the Fatherland were the Drumpf's in the late 1800s or early 1900s? They seem to have magic at critical moments.

[wnylib]

30. Not very well connected to the fatherland, I think.

Donald's grandfather left Germany to escape mandatory military service. That was long before the First World War if I remember correctly. Years later, he tried to return and was denied admission because of skipping out earlier.

I wouldn't doubt that Donnie's father, Fred, probably had Nazi sympathies during the 1930s. Don't know if he would have had any direct connections to der Vaterland, but maybe indirectly through support for the German Bund in the US?

[Kid Berwyn]

32. Deutsche Bank Bid 'Auf Wiedersehen' To The Least Illustrious German-American In History

Deutsche Bank dumped Donnie immediately upon losing the Presidency in 2020. Gut context on the Unstable Moron and his loan officers.



Deutsche Bank Bids ‘Auf Wiedersehen’ To The Least Illustrious German-American In History

JON SHAZAR
DealBreaker, January 12, 2021

On Oct. 7, 1885, a 16-year-old boy from Kallstadt, a small wine-growing village in what was then Bavaria, boarded ship in Bremen, bound for New York. Like his future grandson, Friedrich Drumpf was doing what it took to avoid military service. Striking out for the West Coast, the man now calling himself Frederick Trump earned a small fortune in hooch, whoring and hotels before returning to his native land to take a wife. He resumed his innkeeping back in New York shortly thereafter, but his wife was not taken in by the charms of der Große Apfel, and they moved back to Germany. Unfortunately for the couple and the world, the erstwhile Drump’s draft-dodging had not gone unnoticed, and Fred and the pregnant Elizabeth were chased out of the country and back to this one.

That, however, was not the end of the relationship between the family Trump and the German nation. For the child carried by Elizabeth back across the Atlantic was the future Fred Trump, and when the heir to his empire of outer borough slums sought to expand the Manhattan holdings he’d so flamboyantly built up after taking the reins from dear old dad, he turned to the old country for financing, specifically to Deutsche Bank.

More than 20 years and more than $2 billion later, Deutsche Bank is calling a halt to the ties that bind the Trumps to their ancestral homeland. Apparently, having helped finance one coup is enough for any global bank.

Deutsche Bank, which has been Mr. Trump’s primary lender for two decades, has decided not to do business with Mr. Trump or his company in the future, according to a person familiar with the bank’s thinking. Mr. Trump currently owes Deutsche Bank more than $300 million, which is due in the next few years.

The bank has concluded that, short of forgiving the debt, it has no way to extricate itself from the Trump relationship before the loans come due.

Continues…

https://dealbreaker.com/2021/01/deutsche-signature-banks-fire-trump

Would Deutsche Bank have offered an extension if Trump had stolen the election or gotten the insurrection to “reinstate” him?

[wnylib]

40. I suspect that the loans that Donny got from Deutche Bank

came from Russia and were laundered through the bank. So, if the coup had succeeded, the money would have kept flowing for insurrectionist Trump. But since it failed, maybe Russia decided that Trump was not a good investment.

[Kid Berwyn]

74. He's no good damaged and out of office.

But damaged and in office?



Putin, oligarchs, and money laundering banksters would love it.

Estimates from the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, publishers of the Panama Papers, are to the tune of $1.3 trillion from Russia. One example, Oleg Deripaska put money into the pockets of Americans that include Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort and FBI counterespionage agent Charles McGonigle.

[Pinback]

70. Excellent writing. Thanks for the link.

“…his wife was not taken in by the charms of der Große Apfel.”

[Kid Berwyn]

75. Gern geschehen!

This guy was on to scumpf from day one:

Trump, Putin, and Real Fascism

Garry Kasparov
12.11.2015

When Donald Trump made his odious statements about banning Muslims from the United States my first thought was to wonder who would be first to turn them into a fundraising commercial, Hillary Clinton or ISIS. I didn’t have to pause to be surprised by Trump’s latest exercise in demagoguery because it was predictable. The media’s reaction showed why, as they rewarded Trump with endless hours of coverage of the professional celebrity’s latest bigotry, hours that weren’t going to his rivals Marco Rubio, Ben Carson, or even “Trump-lite” Ted Cruz.

Name-calling and outrage are important parts of the political horse-race coverage, so “is Donald Trump a fascist?” actually became something you saw on cable news screens for a few days. Like many I’ve tried to ignore the Trump show as much as possible (not very possible!) but this shift demanded my interest. I’ve watched in horror in recent years as Vladimir Putin has turned Russia in a genuinely fascist direction, well beyond the established petro-kleptocracy and posturing. And as a long-time enthusiast of George Orwell’s works, I do not take the word “fascist” casually, and nor should anyone else. (I recently revisited my favorite Orwell book, Homage to Catalonia, after picking it as one of the books that most influenced me for a National Review collection. It’s still an essential book.)

In 140 characters on Twitter, my quick response when someone put the question to me was that if Trump isn’t a fascist, he’s doing a very good job of sounding like one. I also shared, as I often do, the concise definition of fascism from Robert Paxton’s excellent 2004 book on the subject, The Anatomy of Fascism, since many people take fascism to mean “Nazi” or simply, “evil.”

“Fascism may be defined as a form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation, or victimhood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy, and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion.”

Since I have more space here, I’ll add a few relevant examples of what Paxton calls the “mobilizing passions” of fascism:

• The belief that one’s group is a victim, a sentiment that justifies any action, without legal or moral limits, against its enemies, both internal and external;
• Dread of the group’s decline under the corrosive effects of individualistic liberalism, class conflict, and alien influences;
• The need for closer integration of a purer community, by consent if possible, or by exclusionary violence if necessary;
• The superiority of the leader’s instincts over abstract and universal reason.

Continues...

https://www.kasparov.com/blog-post/trump-putin-and-real-fascism/

[Pinback]

79. Thank you -- Garry Kasparov is brilliant as always.

He’s seen his native country severely damaged by Putin and is trying to stave off the same outcome in his adopted one.

[global1]

33. Did Donald's Grandfather Have Bone Spurs?.....nt

[wnylib]

43. I think his grandfather just decided that serving in the military

was for suckers and losers, a family value that got passed on to Donny Bone Spurs.

[BoRaGard]

71. Yep - the Drumpfs dodge service to the nation

then sneer at everyone who does serve calling them "suckers and losers."

and the GOP wants this draft-dodging a-hole to be their "commander-in-chief"

Some sick GOP shit.

[maxsolomon]

76. I have an ancestor that fled to the US rather than be conscripted

into the Prussian Army. In the 19th century, Prussia was involved in 7 separate wars, including 3 between 1864 & 1871.

It wasn't particularly uncommon (or dishonorable) to not want to become literal cannon fodder.

[wnylib]

81. True enough. Prussia was very militaristic.

My great grandfather was a general in the Prussian Army. He fled the German Empire, but for political reasons at the time. There was a German Kaiser, Frederick, who ruled briefly for a few months in 1888 and then died of cancer. He was married to Queen Victoria's daughter and planned for political, social, and financial reforms for Germany. My great grandfather was among the handful of military people plus some landed gentry and politicians who supported Kaiser Fritz's reform plans.

When Fritz died, his son, Wilhelm II, halted all the reforms and charged people who had supported his father with treason. My great grandfather was warned by friends that he would be arrested. They helped him get out of the country with his very pregnant wife and 3 young children aged 5, 3, and 1. Two weeks after they arrived in Buffalo, my grandfather was born.

[no_hypocrisy]

58. Significant demographic of German-Americans in Queens.

No doubt Fred socialized with them.

[BoRaGard]

4. Something republicon stinks to high heaven

and its not just the diapers wrapped around the over-productive butt of
the republicon chosen mess-i-aah.

[AverageOldGuy]

7. May I make a small but important correction in your headline?

You write: "Something republicon stinks to high heaven"

Don't you mean: EVERYGODDAMTHING REPUBLICON STINKS TO HIGH HEAVEN!!!!!!!

[BoRaGard]

8. Sadly, for the sake of America, I must agree

Their corruption appears total.

[pwb]

5. Jack has lots of shit like this.. Charge the co conspirators now?

Search Mari logo again and start a new trial with a real experienced judge.

[gab13by13]

15. I have been asking for a year and a half

why Garland has indicted no one from TSF's inner circle? All I get is discovery BS. The crimes committed by TSF were committed for all to see.

The states are trying to convict them but Garland has convicted Navarro and Bannon for defying a subpoena, that is it, and I still am waiting to see if Bannon goes to prison pre-election.

[onecaliberal]

26. Same. Just bashed here for it. Lots of corporate lovers.

[Walleye]

35. Sorry but I don't understand "corporate lovers". Sounds like a slogan or something

[soldierant]

83. "corporate lovers."

which is interesting, in view ofthe fact that not one CEO of a Fortune 500 company is supporting Trump**

[wnylib]

34. A different tactic occurs to me, but not likely one that Smith would pursue.

It would not get the orange fascist convicted of anything, but it would make public many things that the American people should know.

Since MAGA Cannon will continue indefinitely to block prosecution of Trump, what if Smith gives up trying to prosecute him and just publicly releases/publishes all of the info and evidence that he has on Donnie?

Trump is so litigious and hyper defensive that he could not resist filing a libel suit against Smith. The suit would bring even more public attention to Trump's crimes and would require Smith to defend what he wrote. Trump's whole history of illegal dealings would be laid out before the world. A jury would have to determine if Smith was guilty of libel or if it was all true.

OK. That's my fantasy. In reality, I don't think that Smith could legally make all that evidence public outside of a trial. But I wish that there were some way that Smith could do it without breaking any laws.

[Karadeniz]

59. Sounds good to me !!!

[rampartc]

60. smith could publicly resign, maybe a week before the election,

citing cannon and the supreme court malfeasance, and going public with everything.

if biden wins, reappoint another spec council and refile in dc for all crimes.

[wnylib]

66. I don't know if the case could be refiled

st this point. Would it be past the statute of limitations to start over?

[brakester]

62. Search Bedminster too!

His henchmen were loading some of the boxes he stole on AF-1 heading to Bedminster.

Why wasn't it searched?!

Also, I never heard that they went back to Mara Lardo to search the locked closet they were denied entry into.

Kid Gloves for our treasonous felon!

[AllaN01Bear]

6. wasnt this bank mentioned in the panama papers ?

[yardwork]

10. Could somebody give a summary of what it means, even if speculative?

[sybylla]

49. Deutsche Bank is rumored to be laundering money for Ruzzia

Another rumor: Trump received insufficiently unsecured loans from Deutsche Bank when no one else would. Did Ruzzia secure those loans.

Val Broeksmit's stepfather died under suspicious "suicidal" circumstances. He was an executive at Deutsche Bank. Val found his father's stash of paperwork related to the above along with DB passwords. He wrote a book on all he had and learned. He went to the NYT and met with a reporter who stole his work and claimed it as their own, by Val's own statement. The author of that article is the same who wrote that NYT article which strangely shows up in a stack of secret papers at Maralago.

A couple of months later, after working with some people in Hollywood to do something big with his evidence, Val also died under mysterious "suicidal/accidental" circumstances.

The last happened about two months before the Maralago search warrant was executed.

Sandi Bachom and Alison Gill (MuellerSheWrote) knew Val and/or had worked with him.

Many people are saying (h/t TSF) that TSF kept the article for the same reason serial killers keep personal possessions of their victims.

Final edit: some suspect that including this previously unseen photo with the article re: Val is a shot across the bow to TSF and everyone else involved with the DB/ruzzia laundering BS.

Edited to add: a suspiciously high number of Deutsche Bank employees have died from suicide in the last decade.

[Attilatheblond]

50. Yeah, TSF has to keep 'trophies'

Thanks for the easy to follow synopsis.

(Am dealing with covid and my attention span is not up to usual level. You made if very easy to get the gist. )

[moonscape]

55. Although I have known who

TSF is, somehow along the way I missed what the TFS words are and finally am willing to push through embarrassed ignorance to ask.

[Attilatheblond]

57. The Sick Fuck

Not sure about TFS.

Assuming TCF we see sometimes here refers to The Convicted Felon.

[moonscape]

80. Thanks!

[soldierant]

84. TFG is the former guy - mayne TFS is the former - something.

[sybylla]

67. You're welcome. I had to do some catching up last night, too.

These are the key points I came across. I welcome clarifications or additions.

[yardwork]

90. I had no idea! Horrifying. Thank you for the summary.

[sybylla]

92. Happy to help. nt.

[Bev54]

12. Back in 2020 forensicnews.net had a series of articles on him, his Dad and the bank.

If I remember correctly, Val did an interview that I watched on youtube.

[Joinfortmill]

13. It seems under U.S. Law, Trump committed Economic Espionage, but really it was Treason.

[triron]

38. Trump is evil incarnate.

[wiggs]

14. Is the docs case going to lead to much more than docs? Russia was not a hoax. nt

[gab13by13]

16. Has the huge file on Russia been recovered yet?

[brakester]

63. Russian

INTERFERENCE was not a hoax!

(I wish Russia was a hoax! Or a figment of our imagination.)

[orleans]

17. bookmarking. thanks. nt

[niyad]

18. KNR and bookmarking.

[liberalla]

22. K & R! This looks VERY interesting and I need to spend time on this...

... when I'm not at work!

Thank you!

[drray23]

23. Probably Trump had him killed.

I do not doubt for a second that Trump would not hesitate having somebody eliminated if it helped him. He is completely devoid of morals so ordering a hit does not seem out of the realm of possibilities, however crazy it sounds.
He kept the article about this guy's demise as a trophy or to show other potential whistleblowers that unfortunate things could happen to them.

[gab13by13]

24. Any articles found about Epstein?

Bill Barr did visit his prison right before he hanged himself.

[drray23]

28. That is indeed an interesting question.

I don't recall saying anything reporting that. Of course it's well known Trump was friends with Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell.

[jmbar2]

29. Well, I wouldn't take a helicopter ride from tRump

https://pressofatlanticcity.com/3-trump-execs-2-pilots-die-as-helicopter-crashes-in-parkway-median/article_4071dbca-24e3-11e4-8835-0019bb2963f4.html

[Walleye]

37. I totally agree. And if we don't understand what he is capable of, we are playing chicken with a rattlesnake

[Attilatheblond]

51. Or, Putin did, on behalf of TSF

Just one more bit of Kompromat to hold over Trump's ugly head.

[BoRaGard]

72. "Avenge me. Avenge me. Avenge, avenge." - J. Epstein Shade (R)

[Kid Berwyn]

27. Because in 2019 & 2014, Trump's Deutsche Bank Bankers "committed suicide."

Money comes at a cost. Integrity, for instance.

Former Deutsche Bank Exec Connected to Trump Loans Dies by Suicide in Malibu

Thomas Bowers, who worked above Trump’s personal banker, was 55

By Ian Spiegelman
LA Magazine-November 27, 2019

A former Deutsche Bank executive who reportedly signed off on some of the institution’s unorthodox loans to Donald Trump killed himself in his Malibu home on November 19. Thomas Bowers, the onetime head of Deutsche Bank’s American wealth-management division, where he oversaw Trump’s private banker, committed suicide by hanging, according to Los Angeles County Medical Examiner-Coroner’s office. Bowers was 55.

Trump’s relationship with Deutsche Bank—which lent him around $2 billion after most other institutions had forsaken him for his history of defaults and bankruptcies—has come under investigation by two Congressional committees and the New York Attorney General, who are hoping the bank can shed light on Trump’s elusive finances, according to the New York Times. At one point, Bowers had a close connection to those finances.

Rosemary T. Vrablic, a managing director at Deutsche Bank who became Trump’s private banker in 2010 after being introduced by her client, Jared Kushner, reported directly to Bowers. Vrablic reportedly helped Trump secure loans from her bank, which Bowers approved—including more than $100 million to buy his Doral resort in Miami—even after Trump and Deutsche had to settle messy litigation over a Chicago loan that went bad.

Snip...

Bowers isn’t the first Trump-connected Deutsche exec to commit suicide. In 2014, Deutsche derivatives analyst William S. Broeksmit, who reportedly had links to Trump and Russia, hung himself from a dog leash at his home in London.

Source:

https://www.lamag.com/citythinkblog/deutsche-bank-death/



https://www.fedortax.com/blog/deutsche-bank-nabbed-for-money-laundering-in-russian-laundromat-investigation

https://ips-dc.org/trumps-dirty-money/

The article Jack Smith found and photographed is from a New York Times report on the deceased Broeksmit's son, who also would sadly turn up "a suicide" in 2022.

But before all that, in 2017, Trump got a bigtime Deutsche Bank banker's dear old dad Anthony KENNEDY to retire from the SCOTUS so he could send up the RWNJ Neil GORSUCH.

"Your boy is a special guy."

Book reveals Trump effort to persuade Justice Kennedy to step aside for Kavanaugh

New book Dark Towers tells of how family coordinated charm offensive to convince ageing supreme court justice to retire

by Julian Borger
The Guardian, Feb. 4, 2020

Excerpt...

Justin Kennedy was part of the US branch of Deutsche Bank from 1998 to 2009. Drawn to Trump’s risk-taking and glamour, he became a Trump confidant, sitting with the real estate impresario at the US Open tennis or in Manhattan nightclubs, and chaperoning huge loans to finance Trump’s real estate spending sprees.

Kennedy, who ran the bank’s commercial real-estate team, continued to lend to Trump even though Deutsche clients had suffered severe losses when Trump’s casino business collapsed and he declared bankruptcy.

After Kennedy set up his own finance and property firm in Florida, Enrich writes, he continued to help other members of the Trump family – Ivanka, Kushner and Donald Trump Jr – arrange financing for projects in New York. The New York Observer, which was owned by Kushner, put Kennedy on a list of the 100 most powerful people in New York real estate.

Once Trump was in office, he went out of his way to congratulate Justice Kennedy on his son, calling him a “special guy” and saying how much his own children loved him.

“Trump’s flattery,” Enrich writes, “was part of a coordinated White House charm offensive designed to persuade the ageing justice – for years, the court’s pivotal swing vote – that it was safe to retire, even with an unpredictable man in the Oval Office.”

Continues...

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/feb/04/trump-family-anthony-kennedy-brett-kavanaugh-dark-towers

The money was nice and plentiful. Mixing politics, money-making and treason, Trump’s people — Giuliani, Volker, Sondland, plus Pompeo and Perry — worked to tilt US policy in Ukraine toward the corrupt bastards who looted the Treasury, used the offices of government to destroy the reputations of private citizens Joseph Biden and Hunter Biden, privatized the riches from Russia's natural resources, and ran the fledgling Ukrainian democracy into the ground. All that most benefitted the Ukrainian and Russian oligarchs backed by Putin and served by Manafort.

Regarding the Deutsche Bank-Trump FraudCo money laundry: Craig Unger’s work lifted up the lid...

Trump’s Russian Laundromat

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.

By CRAIG UNGER
The New Republic, July , 2017

Excerpt...

Trump made his first trip to Russia in 1987, only a few years before the collapse of the Soviet Union. Invited by Soviet Ambassador Yuri Dubinin, Trump was flown to Moscow and Leningrad—all expenses paid—to talk business with high-ups in the Soviet command. In The Art of the Deal, Trump recounted the lunch meeting with Dubinin that led to the trip. “One thing led to another,” he wrote, “and now I’m talking about building a large luxury hotel, across the street from the Kremlin, in partnership with the Soviet government.”

Over the years, Trump and his sons would try and fail five times to build a new Trump Tower in Moscow. But for Trump, what mattered most were the lucrative connections he had begun to make with the Kremlin—and with the wealthy Russians who would buy so many of his properties in the years to come. “Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross section of a lot of our assets,” Donald Trump Jr. boasted at a real estate conference in 2008. “We see a lot of money pouring in from Russia.”

The money, illicit and otherwise, began to rain in earnest after the Soviet Union fell in 1991. President Boris Yeltsin’s shift to a market economy was so abrupt that cash-rich gangsters and corrupt government officials were able to privatize and loot state-held assets in oil, coal, minerals, and banking. Yeltsin himself, in fact, would later describe Russia as “the biggest mafia state in the world.” After Vladimir Putin succeeded Yeltsin as president, Russian intelligence effectively joined forces with the country’s mobsters and oligarchs, allowing them to operate freely as long as they strengthen Putin’s power and serve his personal financial interests. According to James Henry, a former chief economist at McKinsey & Company who consulted on the Panama Papers, some $1.3 trillion in illicit capital has poured out of Russia since the 1990s.

At the top of the sprawling criminal enterprise was Semion Mogilevich. Beginning in the early 1980s, according to the FBI, the short, squat Ukrainian was the key money-laundering contact for the Solntsevskaya Bratva, or Brotherhood, one of the richest criminal syndicates in the world. Before long, he was running a multibillion-dollar worldwide racket of his own. Mogilevich wasn’t feared because he was the most violent gangster, but because he was reputedly the smartest. The FBI has credited the “brainy don,” who holds a degree in economics from Lviv University, with a staggering range of crimes. He ran drug trafficking and prostitution rings on an international scale; in one characteristic deal, he bought a bankrupt airline to ship heroin from Southeast Asia into Europe. He used a jewelry business in Moscow and Budapest as a front for art that Russian gangsters stole from museums, churches, and synagogues all over Europe. He has also been accused of selling some $20 million in stolen weapons, including ground-to-air missiles and armored troop carriers, to Iran. “He uses this wealth and power to not only further his criminal enterprises,” the FBI says, “but to influence governments and their economies.”

In Russia, Mogilevich’s influence reportedly reaches all the way to the top. In 2005, Alexander Litvinenko, a Russian intelligence agent who defected to London, recorded an interview with investigators detailing his inside knowledge of the Kremlin’s ties to organized crime. “Mogilevich,” he said in broken English, “have good relationship with Putin since 1994 or 1993.” A year later Litvinenko was dead, apparently poisoned by agents of the Kremlin.

Continues...

https://newrepublic.com/article/143586/trumps-russian-laundromat-trump-tower-luxury-high-rises-dirty-money-international-crime-syndicate

Big money comes at a big cost. Democracy, for instance.

[global1]

36. Oh!!! -- The Webs We Weave.......

I'm intrigued by the posted drawing in the OP titled Dark Towers.

Not sure who drew it up - but someone went to a lot of work to draw it up.

It tells a story.

This whole thread - reads like a very real - spy novel.

It is so detailed. I'm sure by reading this thread we're only getting part of this story/plot.

Sure look treasonous to me!!!

[LudwigPastorius]

39. "Why would Trump have an article about Val Broeksmit..."

Trump keeps every article that mentions Trump by name. Positive…negative…it doesn’t matter…
He’s a narcissistic pack rat.

He also won’t read anything that doesn’t mention his name.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/donald-trump-intelligence-reports-white-house-read-them-mentioned-name-president-a7740726.html

[3825-87867]

44. Lot of "hanging" going around with tramp's friends...

even Epstein in his jail cell found a way to "hang" without ANYONE noticing. Damn coincident video problems!

Maybe someone is looking at a person, possibly a relative of tramp's who might have had "influence" in getting a questionable loan for donny...that may not be repayable in cash?

And Smith's previous extremely fine work in... Europe...means he more than likely has access to lots of partners and interesting happenstances there.
Probably a coincidence that a picture, seemingly innocent shows up.

[Hermit-The-Prog]

45. If only there were some parts of our gov't that could investigate, indict, litigate, and imprison.

[Kid Berwyn]

46. What about the FBI?

Oh, right.



Did the FBI’s Charles McGonigal Help Throw the 2016 Election to Trump?

The shocking indictments against the former head of counterintelligence for the FBI in New York raise many dark questions.

By Craig Unger
The National Review, February 1, 2023

In the course of writing two books on Donald Trump’s ties to Russia, the same question occurred to me again and again: How is it possible that I knew all sorts of stuff about Donald Trump, and the FBI didn’t seem to have a clue? Or if they did, why weren’t they doing anything with it?

Specifically, I knew that:

* Starting in 1980, an alleged “spotter agent” for the KGB began cultivating Trump as a new asset for Soviet intelligence.

* The Russian mafia laundered millions of dollars through Donald Trump’s real estate by purchasing condos in all-cash transactions through anonymous corporations that did not disclose real ownership.

* Trump Tower was a home away from home for Vyacheslav Ivankov, one of the most brutal leaders of the Russian mafia, and at least 13 people with known or alleged links to the mafia held the deeds to, lived in, or ran alleged criminal operations out of Trump Tower in New York or other Trump properties.

* Trump was some $4 billion in debt when the Russians came to bail him out via the Bayrock Group, a real estate firm that was largely staffed, owned, and financed by Soviet émigrés who had ties to Russian intelligence and/or organized crime.

Much of my material came from FBI documents. A lot came from open-source databases. It made no sense. There was an astounding amount of data on the public record. The FBI had launched enormous investigations of the Russian mafia in the 1980s. They had staked out a New York electronics store that was a haven for KGB officers. They knew that’s where the Trump Organization bought hundreds of TV sets. They had their eyes on Ivankov and other Russian mobsters who were denizens of Trump’s casinos and bought and sold his condos through shell companies. They had to know that Trump laundered money for and provided a base of operations for the Russian mafia, which was, after all, a de facto state actor tied to Russian intelligence. They had to know that the Russians repeatedly bailed Trump out when he was bankrupt. They had to know that Russia owned him.

Snip…

As FBI director, Freeh had warned that Russian organized crime posed a grave threat to the United States that far transcended mere criminality. It is not clear how much he was paid by Prevezon after he switched sides, but Freeh later bought a $9.38 million mansion in Palm Beach, Florida, just a 10-minute drive from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago.

Then there was the late James Kallstrom, who ran the FBI’s New York office in the mid-’90s and oversaw successful investigations into both the Italian Mafia and later the Russian mob. Kallstrom had developed close friendships with two key players in the Trump-Russia saga. He worked closely with then–U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York Rudy Giuliani in the investigation of the Cosa Nostra network that led to the famed Mafia Commission Trial of 1985–1986. Going even further back, Kallstrom had also been friends with Donald Trump since around 1973, when Kallstrom was putting together a Trump-funded parade in New York to honor Vietnam veterans.

Continues…

https://newrepublic.com/article/170328/charles-mcgonigal-throw-2016-election

Unger has been on to the Trump-Russia from before when the GRU was the KGB.

[Hermit-The-Prog]

47. The FBI had an infestation of MAGAts before that term became popular.

I really don't know the answer to the corruption and moles. The solution would be to root 'em out and prosecute, but no one seems willing to start.

[oasis]

53. "Root 'em out". Traitors for sure, nt

[TheKentuckian]

73. Maybe try not always putting a Republican in charge no matter who is elected too?

The whole security apparatus seems to require someone be a Republican or at least had been one.

There may be an exception or two but for the most it is Republicans all the way down.

Democrats are allowed to be AG and SoS but CIA, FBI, etc almost must be a Republican or a former one.

[bigtree]

54. anyone watching the courts work to undo each and every prosecution effort against Trump

...should give pause any thought that DOJ is some sort of omnipotent arm of justice which should and could automatically, immediately line up all of these crimes so they're ready to prosecute, save for their supposed reluctance.

In my view, this DOJ knows well what is prosecutable, and is not reluctant to move forward on anything which has the potential for success in court.

I think people ignore that DOJ uses a mostly secretive grand jury process, in every case as a matter of policy, to determine whether to bring charges.

That effort involves presenting evidence, not news reports and internet posts, so it's not unusual that folks are thinking a NYT article equals provable guilt, and that it's just a matter of DOJ moving forward on it all.

If only there was some part of government that could explain to folks how prosecutable cases are formed and brought forward.

[Hermit-The-Prog]

65. Note I said "parts". It takes more than the DoJ.

[Sogo]

48. And don't forget that there was a Supreme Court connection to Deutsche Bank:

Didn't/doesn't Kennedy's son work for DB?

[Attilatheblond]

52. Yep, and Kennedy resigned from the SCOTUS after a lunch date with Ivanka

[Blue Owl]

56. K&R

[moniss]

61. The Orange Ruski would sacrifice

any member of his own family if it profited him. Way too many people for way too long have thought saying that was just hysterical hyperbole. The same ones who were sure it was just crazy talk that he would sell out our nuclear secrets and national security.

[ecstatic]

78. wow

`I hope people with the power to do something are paying attention. Because they're next.

[msfiddlestix]

85. Speculating that Jack Smith knows TSF will never have to endure being tried in court, so he's laying out there

for the American Public to be the jury.. Just my instinct speaking here.

[bigtree]

87. before the election, maybe

...but that's only been resolved in the press, not by the SC or Cannon. I don't think Trump's going to be elected, so his ending this altogether isn't a thing for me.

Cannon might be waiting for that prospect, but she's going to eventually be compelled to set a trial date if her wishes don't come true..

The math still allows for at least the start of a pre-election trial sometime in September on the election interference charges, I think. That's what Jack Smith is looking at.

He's also looking at Bedminster or D.C., imo, for possible new charges, like if Cannon prevails in upending his docs case with a dismissal after the jury is sworn in or at some point thereafter, effecting double jeopardy against retrying Trump.

I think he's playing this out for the appeals court judges for some future motion, more than something for the voting public's edification. That's a little too cynical for me to think he's essentially leaking this out to influence a voting public, and denigrates the integrity of his effort.

Imo, he's going to trial on election interference charges, even with the delay, and even if he's granted some sort of immunity from charges for some actions (absolute immunity is a Trump pipe dream).

[msfiddlestix]

88. I feel like Smith just had his concerns confirmed by the Supreme Court when they refused to decide on immunity

The Supreme Court effectively shut down all prospects of TSF being tried in any criminal court for any of the crimes he's been charged with. The Delay was the Decision in other words.

Adding to say, this was predictable. We are not living in normal times legally speaking as well as politically.

[bigtree]

89. I'm not seeing a white flag

...and I don't expect one from the SC.

The delay was the magajustices' best shot, imo. They're not omnipotent, although I'd guess some of them imagine themselves so.

They're holding out immunity for Trump, but its a double-edged sword which their zealotry certainly must be telling them they're angling to put even more power into their nemesis' hands, rather than effectively enable their own megalomania.

There's no actual game for the Court in an autocracy, except to please the dictator, and I don't think these justices (or their benefactors) are anxious to sublimate their assumed influence to this power-mad magamaniac.

Better for the justices to keep the game alive and play their graft off of the democratic structure that's accommodated them so far. To go so far as to deliberately enable Trump into power would require some sort of tacit agreement with an unpredictable madman.

Jack Smith (and our justice system and democracy) is in a fight which can't countenance a surrender; has no need to. In fact, it's the exact opposite. SCOTUS conservatives aren't on the offense, they're playing defense to cover for their exposed graft.

These petty pretenders are up against the DOJ, the WH, and hopefully a Democratic Congress still fighting, with righteousness, to defend our democracy and law - and some voters out here. as well.

[msfiddlestix]

93. All fair points, actually I agree with each one except one thing, I didn't mean to suggest or imply Surrender

with regard to Smith's recent "plays" (my shorthand) I was just thinking he was upping his game by putting somethings out there, not revealing his entire hand. I think maybe he was aiming his arrows at both at the Magajustices and herr trump at the same time. And daring Magajustices to go all the way, because it is indeed a double edge sword, it's unbelievable they'd took it this far for that reason alone.imo.

But I do not expect trials to proceed before the election. I hope I'm guessing wrong.

[spanone]

91. K&R

[BoRaGard]

96. Remember, remember

The 5th of November.