With Trump and Russia, it's all about the money - By Paul Waldman

[DonViejo]

July 19 at 1:17 PM

That fateful meeting that Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner and Paul Manafort took with a bunch of Russians was obviously deeply problematic on its own terms, and perhaps a violation of campaign finance laws. But it also may wind up serving as a doorway that opens up to a whole array of questionable connections and actions related to Russia, on the part of President Trump, his family and his advisers.

The latest revelation — the identity of the eighth attendee at the meeting — was somehow both shocking and not surprising at all. In fact, it lets us peek into one of the main ways that Trump has been intertwined with Russian interests and actors for decades. While the possibility of campaign collusion is what started this scandal, the financial connections between Trump and Russia may wind up being just as important.

In case you missed it, that eighth attendee was one Ike Kaveladze, an associate of Emin and Aras Agalarov (the Russian pop singer and his oligarch father who were friendly with the Trumps). Some years ago, Kaveladze was the subject (but never charged) of an inquiry into an enormous money-laundering scheme that involved setting up hundreds of bank accounts and thousands of shell corporations in Delaware on behalf of shady Russians. As Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) put it: “I doubt if this individual who had a history of setting up thousands of fake accounts in Delaware was really there to talk about Russian adoptions.” Good guess.

So you had a lawyer with Kremlin connections, a former Russian intelligence official (though as they say, there’s no such thing as a “former” Russian intelligence official) and a man once suspected of being involved in money-laundering, all coming to peddle dirt on Hillary Clinton, a possibility so enticing that it led the candidate’s son, his son-in-law and closest adviser, and his campaign chairman to all come to a meeting with them. The latest version the Trump camp tells about the meeting is that the promised Clinton dirt was not forthcoming, and so the meeting didn’t last long. But given that they started out by lying about it — saying it just concerned Russian adoptions and hiding who was in attendance — there’s ample reason to be skeptical about whether we’ve yet gotten the whole truth.

What we do know, however, is that it makes perfect sense that the Russians would have had an in with the Trump family to begin with, because Trump’s financial connections to Russia are old and deep. As Craig Unger reported in a story last week that didn’t get the attention it should have:

A review of the public record reveals a clear and disturbing pattern: Trump owes much of his business success, and by extension his presidency, to a flow of highly suspicious money from Russia. Over the past three decades, at least 13 people with known or alleged links to Russian mobsters or oligarchs have owned, lived in, and even run criminal activities out of Trump Tower and other Trump properties. Many used his apartments and casinos to launder untold millions in dirty money. Some ran a worldwide high-stakes gambling ring out of Trump Tower — in a unit directly below one owned by Trump. Others provided Trump with lucrative branding deals that required no investment on his part. Taken together, the flow of money from Russia provided Trump with a crucial infusion of financing that helped rescue his empire from ruin, burnish his image, and launch his career in television and politics. “They saved his bacon,” says Kenneth McCallion, a former assistant U.S. attorney in the Reagan administration who investigated ties between organized crime and Trump’s developments in the 1980s.

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https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2017/07/19/with-trump-and-russia-its-all-about-the-money/?utm_term=.65bcc4332110&wpisrc=nl_popns&wpmm=1

[KT2000]

1. he just cannot see beyond himself

Between preserving and hiding his money connection to Russia and his hatred for President Obama, he is a very small person. Is tRump being blackmailed? Hope they get that far.