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In reply to the discussion: Manafort is the key to the whole Putin/Trump/Ukraine plot. [View all]Kid Berwyn
(14,642 posts)39. Explains why Dimdonnie purged FBI of Russia counterintelligence experts.
Conspiracy to commit treason.
Trumps Top Targets in the Russia Probe Are Experts in Organized Crime
Some of President Trumps favorite targets in the Russia probe have spent their careers in the Justice Department and the FBI investigating organized crime and money laundering, particularly as they pertain to Russia.
NATASHA BERTRAND
The Atlantic, AUG 30, 2018
Bruce Ohr. Lisa Page. Andrew Weissmann. Andrew McCabe. President Donald Trump has relentlessly attacked these FBI and Justice Department officials as dishonest Democrats engaged in a partisan witch hunt led by the special counsel determined to tie his campaign to Russia. But Trumps attacks have also served to highlight another thread among these officials and others who have investigated his campaign: their extensive experience in probing money laundering and organized crime, particularly as they pertain to Russia.
snip...
Trumps latest obsession is with Bruce Ohr, a career Justice Department official who spent years investigating Russian organized crime and corruptionan expertise he shared with another Trump target named Christopher Steele, the former British intelligence operative who provided valuable intelligence on Russia to the State Department and the FBIs Eurasian Organized Crime Task Force prior to authoring the Trump-Russia dossier in 2016. Ohr and Steele met in 2007, according to The New York Times, and stayed in touch as a result of their shared interests and mutual respect. Trump has tweeted about Ohr nearly a dozen times this month alone, complaining about his relationship with Steele and Ohrs wifes past work for Fusion GPSthe opposition-research firm that hired Steele in 2016 to research Trumps Russia ties.
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 former campaign chairman Paul Manafort. (Incidentally, another Manafort associate, the Ukrainian billionaire Dmitry Firtash, admitted that 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.
Snip...
The president has denied having any business ties to Russia, and his dream of building a Trump Tower Moscow never materialized. But his links to Russian oligarchs and mobsters from the former Soviet Union have been documented: Millions of dollars from the former Soviet Union flowed into Trumps developments and casinos throughout the 1990s, as the journalist Craig Unger has chronicled, as oligarchs looked for a place to hide their money in the West. The Trump Taj Mahal casino in Atlantic City, New Jersey, was once known as a hot spot for Brooklyn mobsters associated with the Russian Mafia, and quickly became the favorite East Coast destination of the top Russian mob boss Vyacheslav Ivankov, according to the 2000 book Red Mafiya: How the Russian Mob Has Invaded America. It was also repeatedly cited by the Treasury Departments Financial Crimes Enforcement Network for having inadequate money-laundering controls.
Continues...
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/08/trumps-top-targets-in-the-russia-probe-are-experts-in-organized-crime/569056/
As PRESIDENT Trump targeted the FBI Witch Hunters who were tracking Putin and his Mafiya. And then, after they all got caught, he pardoned Manafort.
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K&R "2016: Manafort and Trump secretly hack the RNC Platform to remove support for Ukraine."
AnotherMother4Peace
Mar 2022
#5
don't forget palin. when manafort was mccain campaign cochair, limbaugh would not support mccain
certainot
Mar 2022
#57
Hmm...what happened to the wheelchair he needed for his court appearances? nt
allegorical oracle
Mar 2022
#52
RW attack is to say Obama engineered a coup against Yanukovych in 2014. Manafort omitted. nt
Bernardo de La Paz
Mar 2022
#16
Indeed! I knew that and then forgot it. Been a busy five years...welcome!
Evolve Dammit
Mar 2022
#64
Does this tell you anything? Because whatever he made on the campaign was nothing compared
ancianita
Mar 2022
#41
Any notes on others traveling to Dubai of late??? Who else was involved in Manafort's meetup???
ultralite001
Mar 2022
#49
Unfortunately there are lots of ways of leaving the country without going through
erronis
Mar 2022
#51
Can "We the People" get the damn un-redacted Mueller report???? Losing faith rapidly
Evolve Dammit
Mar 2022
#65
Free should be in quotes; Not sure if the plaform change was in secret, but yeah, for sure he's at
themaguffin
Mar 2022
#66