[Godstud]

"Active Measures": Documentary Says Russian Mob "Made Its Move" On Donald Trump In 2002
"The first incident we show is him personally meeting with a Russian mobster David Bogdan in 1984, and selling him five Trump Tower condos," the director said. "At that period before 2004 there is a loose association, and then around 2002-2004, members of the Russian mob start entering the Trump organization and getting seed capital."

[The 1991 Trump Taj Mahal bankruptcy] "is the first of a series of bankruptcies going from 1991 to 2004, where he starts losing his ability to borrow from banks. The Russian mob is seeing this, and makes their move," he says.



Rather than "sex tapes," he says "financial improprieties" are the major source of crime.

"Starting in 2002, whereas before you see incidents of money laundering, you're seeing particularly in buildings like Trump SoHo, Toronto Tower, Panama Tower, there is what appears to be Russian or post-Soviet money going into it, particularly from the Ukraine-Russian gas trade."

"The allegation is that Donald Trump borrowed money from Russians when he couldn't get it in America?" host Willie Geist clarified.

"They borrowed," the director said. "But they also moved in [to Trump properties]. They were also making investments."

It is well known that many Russians rent property in Trump buildings and that any Russian money is often difficult to trace and verify.

[colliric]

Lol...

Yeah because it's not like the Mafia(all types) and Yakuza
and all types of underworld groups and business hasn't been involved businesswise to the Democratic Party... The Mafia practically made JFK....

The Clinton Foundation's corruption is legendary now. Wash my back, I'll wash yours.

George Bush(both of 'em) had strong business connections, debts and dealings with the Bin Laden family himself and the Saudi Arabia government. Is 9/11 revenge for a bad business deal? Or just the usual "Truth is stranger than fiction" stuff.

[jimjam]

Rather than "sex tapes," he says "financial improprieties" are the major source of crime.

Of course …… follow the money to the truth. Works every time. Donald has been a crook for so long that it is only a matter of time before he is outed. There is a lot of shit out there.

Oh wait!! Warren G. Harding was pluking his girlfriend in the White House and Attila The Hun ……. he was even worse.

[blackjack21]

Fox is the worst of the big MSM outlets.

That is a matter of opinion. In the United States, FoxNews, BBC America and KQED have the highest trust among viewers.

RT is the Russia propaganda machine. That's nothing to be proud of.

It's nothing to be ashamed of either. The US government pays money to our news outlets and runs its own propaganda outlets too, such as NPR and Voice of America.

By the early 2000s, a third of the buyers of Trump Tower’s most expensive condos were Russia-linked shell companies or individuals from the former Soviet Union—including Eduard Nektalov, a mob-connected diamond dealer from Uzbekistan, and David Bogatin, a Russian-émigré mobster who specialized in bootlegging gasoline. Bogatin’s brother was involved in an elaborate stock fraud with the top Russian mob boss Mogilevich, who himself is allied with Alimzhan Tokhtakhounov—another Russian mob leader who ran an entire gambling and money-laundering network out of Unit 63A in Trump Tower, just three floors below Trump’s 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.) Trump’s own sons have boasted of the Trump Organization’s 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.”

Russian mobsters violating Russian laws is a matter for the Russian government. Why should Trump be bothered about it? If Russian mobsters violated Russian law, are you saying that the government of Russia is going to try to extradite Donald Trump? Help me understand...

It is well known that many Russians rent property in Trump buildings and that any Russian money is often difficult to trace and verify.

Queue scary music... Are we supposed to be suspicious of all Russians now too? Are they illegal aliens? Are they in the US illegally? Should we deport them? Why would the IRS need to trace the funds of non-resident aliens?

Of course …… follow the money to the truth. Works every time.

That's probably why Hillary lost. Clinton Cash: The Untold Story of How and Why Foreign Governments and Businesses Helped Make Bill and Hillary Rich.

Donald has been a crook for so long that it is only a matter of time before he is outed. There is a lot of shit out there.

Why do you think this will make any difference? In the last decade, he made most of his money on television with NBC. That's not some state secret. I'm sure Donald Trump stole a candy bar from a store when he was a kid too. What are we supposed to make of that?

[colliric]

Donald has been a crook for so long that it is only a matter of time before he is outed. There is a lot of shit out there.

Why do you think this will hurt him when Bill Clinton is a Former President, who lied under oath yet remained in office and a rapist that screwed over Haitians for billions?

And Bush was in the pocket of the Saudis and directly linked to Bin Laden as a "friend of the family"? Both Bush presidents....

[Sivad]

Your graph is retarded, it assumes a linear political spectrum that doesn't exist and classifies third way radical centrist propaganda outlets as "neutral".

[Godstud]

It's not my graph, and just because you aren't smart enough to understand it, does not mean it's wrong.

Every Trumpanzee thinks that reporting that the POTUS says, is either fake news or left wing propaganda, despite it being true. Just because the stupidest POTUS ever, says that news is fake, does not make it so. If you think news is fake, just because an orange orangutan says so, then you're a fucking moron!

[colliric]

I don't understand how you think any of this is relevant anymore in a post-Clinton-Bush Presidency world?

The Lying Rapist that screwed Haiti out of billions and the President who's "worst enemy" was also "the son and brother of one of our best buddy overseas families, even if he was Prodigal".

The bar on US Presidents not having odd business and personal interests was lowered decades ago....

[Zagadka]

I don't understand how you think any of this is relevant anymore

Which is the concluding paragraph of Yeabutism.

[Ter]

Your graph is retarded, it assumes a linear political spectrum that doesn't exist and classifies third way radical centrist propaganda outlets as "neutral".

I have already pointed that out on one of the previous pages but the honourable poster @Godstud most vehemently defended his misleading graph.

As per his usual, you get his uncivilised and insulting answers thrown at you:

Trumpanzee

If you think news is fake, just because an orange orangutan says so, then you're a fucking moron!

A lot of wind and no substance...
It seems that the American President somehow reduced this poster's inhibitions. The poster is not even American, I have no idea why it affects him so much.

Executive summary : CNN is fake news.

[colliric]

Which is the concluding paragraph of Yeabutism.

That's my point. Why single out this one for something almost every president since at least Kennedy (=Direct Mafia business and friendship connections) has been guilty of?

Shit I think the cleanest two from both parties during this time were Carter and maybe Gerald Ford.... Lasted the least amount of time in the job for either party post-JFK.

Just vote on it damn you. No need for this ongoing shit.

[Zagadka]

That's my point. Why single out this one for something almost every president since at least Kennedy

Your entire premise is based on people not caring about Trump or Bush and "singling out" Trump. I condemn all of them, and I always have.

I can't go back in time and make posts on forums about them, but I can not stand for Trump's brand of bullshit (which he would obviously label Trump Bullshit).

Just vote on it damn you.

You can't even vote on it, so thanks.

No need for this ongoing shit.

That is stupid. Why should I forgive Trump doing horrible things because other presidents have done horrible things?

[Godstud]

Executive summary : CNN is fake news.

My ad hominem applies perfectly when you make statements like this.

[Sivad]

Your entire premise is based on people not caring about Trump or Bush and "singling out" Trump. I condemn all of them, and I always have.

The liberal premise is that Trump is significantly worse than Obama, he's not.

But now comes Peter Schweizer's new book, "Secret Empires: How Our Politicians Hide Corruption and Enrich Their Families and Friends," which shows that the Obama administration and its cronies were up to their necks in questionable business deals and may even have intentionally distorted public policy to accommodate their own profit-making.

The book claims "Obama and his administration would deem industries either destructive to the environment or exploitative for the financial and professional gain of his friends, including industries such as coal mining, offshore drilling, cash advance companies, and for-profit colleges," wrote Katelyn Caralle of the Washington Examiner.

Schweizer's book, based on extensive research, says that Obama acted to regulate certain industries in such a way that the regulations lowered the value of some of the companies, wrote Katelyn Caralle of the Washington Examiner. These actions let two family friends to profit handsomely on deals through their own investment firm.

Here's how it worked: Obama buddies Marty Nesbitt and Harreld Kirkpatrick III formed a private equity investment firm called Vistria, right around the time Obama was re-elected in 2012.

Nothing wrong with that, except, as Schweizer notes in his book, "A curious pattern began to emerge. Obama and his administration would attack industries with government power, which led to substantially lower valuations for these companies. Nesbitt and Vistria, or others close to Obama, could then acquire those assets for pennies on the dollar."

As an example, Schweizer cites the case of for-profit higher education schools like University of Phoenix, ITT Technical Institute, and DeVry University. In 2013, Obama blamed the schools for taking advantage of students by saddling them with massive amounts of student debt, ruining their credit and making a profit on it. He ordered the Federal Trade Commission to go after them.

In the case of the University of Phoenix, its parent Apollo Education Group was suspended after a Federal Trade Commission investigation in 2015. The following year, three companies, including Vistria, swooped in to buy what remained of Apollo at a price 90% below its share price before the investigation.

As Vistria's education investment portfolio bulged, a number of Obama Education Department officials, including Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, ended up taking high-level jobs with Vistria.

That's just one example. There are others.

Schweizer noted in his book, for instance, that both Vice President Joe Biden and Secretary of State John Kerry were deeply involved in trade and security talks with China even as that country began its aggressive campaign to expand its military and physical presence in the South China Sea. Contrary to standard diplomatic practice, however, both played "good cop," not seriously confronting China on its misbehavior.

Remember, Biden and Kerry were close friends from their years spent together in the Senate. So there was little surprise when Biden's son, Hunter, and Kerry's stepson, Christopher Heinz, one of the heirs to the Heinz ketchup fortune, went into business together in 2009.

They created a number of equity and real estate investment firms allied to Rosemont Capital, "the alternative investment fund of the Heinz Family Office."

So far so good. Except, "Over the next seven years, as both Joe Biden and John Kerry negotiated sensitive and high-stakes deals with foreign governments, Rosemont entities secured a series of exclusive deals with those same foreign governments."

In December of 2013, for instance, Biden traveled to China for talks. He brought Hunter Biden along. While there, the senior Biden soft-pedaled China's clear aggression, and played up the bilateral trade partnership. Ten days after the trip concluded, China's central bank, the Bank of China, set up a $1 billion investment joint venture called Bohai Harvest RST. For the record, the "RS" referred to Biden's son's firm, Rosemont Seneca.

That's questionable enough.

But months later, in July 2014, Secretary of State John Kerry traveled to China, also for talks. Kerry talked little of China's clear aggression, but did conspicuously note that "China and the United States represent the greatest economic alliance trading partnership in the history of humankind."

He should know. In the ensuing months, Chinese government-linked firms took major stakes in several of the firms owned or controlled by Hunter Biden and Chris Heinz, and provided them with massive funding totaling billions of dollars. Nor is this the only scandal involving John Kerry.

And this just scratches the surface. The book is a catalog, a virtual roadmap, to the way corrupt business gets done in Washington — and why Americans are smart to question why their representative go to Washington as paupers, and return as millionaires.

We can only hope that as Biden or Kerry gears up for a challenge to Trump in the 2020 presidential contest, they will receive the same relentless scrutiny that a Republican with the same record of venality would get. But we won't hold our breath.
https://www.investors.com/politics/edit ... ink-again/

Corruption: What is it about Democrats and the State Department? Despite their repeated claims of transparency, it turns out that both Hillary Clinton and current Secretary of State John Kerry used their positions to enrich members of their own families -- at taxpayer expense.

As the murky ties between the Clinton Foundation and Hillary's State Department become clearer, a new report from the Daily Caller notes that current Secretary of State Kerry's daughter received money for her nonprofit group from State.

Indeed, the Daily Caller investigation shows that more than $9 million of State Department money made its way through the Peace Corps to the nonprofit started by Dr. Vanessa Kerry, John Kerry's daughter. And the money was handed out without competition.

Kerry's nonprofit, Seed Global Health, got its first contract in 2012. Yes, that was when Hillary was still in office. But John Kerry then was a senator who headed the Committee on Foreign Relations, which is charged with overseeing both the State Department and the Peace Corps.

There is a clear conflict of interest there.

That's bad enough. But last year, in September, the Seed group got a four-year extension on its deal while John Kerry was secretary of state.

Another conflict of interest. Crony capitalism, anyone? Whether you think that what Seed does in Africa -- it helps train doctors and nurses -- is valuable or not, this no-competition grant to a nonprofit founded by a top official's daughter reeks of rank favoritism at best, corruption at worst.

"Kerry and government officials colluded to launch the program and ensure that Seed would get the contract," the Daily Caller concluded, after reviewing the relevant memos and papers related to the deal.

But it doesn't end there. Because, even as the Kerry deal was being revealed, further strands of the heretofore hidden ties between then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the Clinton Foundation and a mysterious Russian billionaire with close ties to Vladimir Putin are coming to light.

The Washington Examiner got its hands on emails showing that the Clinton Foundation sought ties with Russian billionaire Viktor Vekselberg at a time when he was in charge of an important element of then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's "Russian reset."

Hillary helped create "a major technology transfer initiative" that "may have substantially undermined U.S. national security," according to Peter Schweizer, president of the Government Accountability Institute and the author of " Clinton Cash."

Part of the "reset" was the creation of "Skolkovo," an industrial enclave near Moscow that was to become a kind of Russian Silicon Valley. The idea was to encourage U.S. firms to help out with both technology and investment, in exchange for market access.

Despite warnings from both the FBI and her own State Department about the possibility of Russia getting access to militarily sensitive technologies, Hillary went ahead with the program. Why?

At the time, Vekselberg -- head of the Skolkovo Foundation and a pal of Vladimir Putin -- was also a contributor to the Clinton Foundation. These ties later proved quite lucrative, with 17 of the 28 American companies that participated in the Skolkovo project also being donors to the Clinton Foundation.

All the way back in 2010, as Skolkovo was getting underway, former President Bill Clinton traveled to Russia to deliver a speech for which he was paid $500,000 by a mysterious Russian investment bank named "Renaissance Capital." While there he met with a variety of movers and shakers, including Vekselberg.

With the Clintons, one hand always washes the other.

https://www.investors.com/politics/edit ... -families/

[Ter]

My ad hominem applies perfectly when you make statements like this.

I take note that you seem to think that CNN is a neutral and credible news source
Nevertheless, your use of insulting gutter language does not belong in a polite debate environment.

Trumpanzee

If you think news is fake, just because an orange orangutan says so, then you're a fucking moron!

[Godstud]

The liberal premise is that Trump is significantly worse than Obama, he's not.

Obama has nothing to do with this. Stop using 'whataboutisms'. What Obama did has no bearing on what Trump is doing. End of story. Not one person here is saying what Trump is doing is significantly worse than Obama. That's simply not a factual statement, on any level.


I'm sorry you're such a princess, @Ter. When you actually aren't debating based on your feelings, get back to me.

I never said CNN was a neutral and credible source. Quote me where I said that. I said Fox News wasn't. You made the baseless claim that CNN was "fake news", and that's false, as long as we look at facts, that is. You aren't interested in facts, however, just feelings.

[Zagadka]

The liberal premise is that Trump is significantly worse than Obama, he's not.

Which is irrelevant, whether if it is just your opinion.

Some people are hypocrites does not mean that they can't be right. You don't invalidate horrible behavior like that.

If you had two children and both were being brats, why would you single out one? It is the point *you* are making. But if one was older and had been an asshole in his youth, why would you just let the second one be an asshole, too?

Your entire argument is contingent on comparing one horrible person to another and saying that people who didn't handle the first have no right to an opinion on the second one. It doesn't work in theory and it doesn't work on anyone who isn't also a fanatic for a person. The Obama fans are also bad. The Trump fans are, IMO, far worse, but my opinion is mine. It is as dumb as excusing Hitler or Stalin because the other existed (whichever way you want to order them). THEY ARE BOTH HORRIBLE.

You are so quick to accept some book about Obama, but refuse to accept the recent books about Trump. How does that make sense? How many times did Obama's staff get convicted of felonies within two years of his office? I'm not saying there was no crime, I am admitting that I don't know, because there has been no open evidence or trial. I go on the evidence we have. Obama was a liar on many points. Trump is a serial, compulsive liar. The fact that supporters of either excuse themselves is stupid.

But we aren't talking about Obama (well, you lot are). Go ahead and make a thread about Obama, I don't care if you want to beat a dead and irrelevant horse. I care about things we can change now.

[Sivad]

You are so quick to accept some book about Obama,

I've taken an in depth look at the evidence in Schweizer's book and it hold's up to scrutiny.

but refuse to accept the recent books about Trump. How does that make sense?

I don't refuse to accept that Trump's as crooked as they come, he was almost certainly involved in money laundering and other illegal activities but the stupid Russiagate shit doesn't make sense to begin with and isn't supported by the evidence.

[Ter]

I never said CNN was a neutral and credible source. Quote me where I said that. I said Fox News wasn't. You made the baseless claim that CNN was "fake news", and that's false, as long as we look at facts, that is. You aren't interested in facts, however, just feelings.

You just said that CNN is not fake news (my claim is baseless). So what is it ? Genuine News ? Neutral news ?
CNN is among the worst of the worst news sources, abusing its position to relentlessly attack the sitting President with innuendo, made up stuff, and biased comments.

Any way, your reference to "feelings" is a lame attempt to neutralise my observation that you are a rude and impolite poster.

[Godstud]

@Ter Seeing as your comments are childish, I can easily dismiss your idiotic shit-talk. You're as bad, or worse than me, so stuff it. I never insulted you. I insulted your comments, so you can stop with the bullshit. I'm rude because you like to post false statements?

Your claim that Fox news, the worst of the MSM outlets(they have the worst record out there) is less fake than CNN, is laughably infantile. It's also not true, and not factual.

The facts speak for themselves, regardless of your feelings.
https://www.politifact.com/punditfact/tv/fox/