The Kremlin’s Man: A Unified Theory on Donald Trump’s Russian Connections (Part 5 of 5)
Photo by Sean Gallup/Getty
Donald Trump is a chump, know how we feel, punk
Tell ‘em that God comin’
And Russia need a replay button, y’all up to somethin’
Electorial votes look like memorial votes
But America’s truth ain’t ignorin’ the votes
— “The Heart Part 4” by Kendrick Lamar
I want to begin this conclusion by highlighting the word “theory” in the title. I don’t believe that I have proven anything beyond a doubt in this series, but I have highlighted a pattern of behavior that all points in one direction. I could be wrong, but I just spent 22,000 words going over this so I clearly don’t think I am. I fully acknowledge that I am working with an incomplete set of information, and some of the more unexplainable items in this saga could be dismissed with additional insight.
That said, there is one thing that is clear: Trump has been in business with Russian oligarchs for at minimum, nearly two decades, and has demonstrated a desire to expand into Moscow as far back as the 1980s. The fact that the Treasury fined him $10 million for “significant, long standing anti-money laundering violations” at Trump Taj Mahal only heightens the suspicion surrounding his dealings. Ask any Russian (and I did in order to help me understand many of the Russian sources used in this column), and they will tell you that it is a well-known fact that the Taj Mahal was a prime vacation spot for wealthy Russians.
Given Trump’s five bankruptcies running companies whose business model literally is rigging the game against their customers, it’s highly unlikely that he could domestically obtain the large credit lines that his voracious business appetite required. It’s undeniable that he was able to acquire some form of credit given that his businesses endured past his bankruptcies and still exist to this very day. If he couldn’t get a million dollar-plus line of credit from Wall Street, where did he get it from? Well, people he has done business with in the past would be a good target—especially whomever he was laundering money for in the Taj Mahal, since they clearly would be able to find avenues to deliver it to him tax-free (or at least tax-lite).
The fact that he has refused to settle cases, but settled one around Trump SoHo with the explicit provision that the people bringing the lawsuit against him must stop cooperating with the federal government in a parallel criminal inquiry raises an endless line of red flags. Those red flags are further elevated when you dig into the fact that the financiers of that project leave Trump two degrees of separation away from an Icelandic fund which is very clearly propped up by Kremlin cash. Even more so when you can connect that fund to other projects of his like the failed Trump Tower in Toronto.
President Trump has been all over the map with whatever policies he supports at any given moment. He has proposed covering all Americans with health care, but says he is “100%” behind this GOP bill that does not hide the fact that it will throw tens of millions of Americans off health insurance. He said he wanted to get rid of the entire national debt in eight years, yet his first budget proposal adds to it. I could go on and on and on with a multitude of positions of which he has taken every side on, save for one: Vladimir Putin. When Bill O’Reilly set him up for a layup to confirm the very obvious thuggery of Putin’s regime, Trump’s response was “we have bad guys too.” For some reason, Trump will not speak ill of an adversarial government that our entire intelligence community says clearly intervened in the 2016 election to hurt Hillary Clinton (and therefore, help Trump), and that is why the rest of his connections raise suspicion. If he won’t say a bad guy is bad, why?
I believe the answer to this question is that Trump has been laundering money for wealthy Russians for years (and by proxy, the Kremlin, since no one gets rich in Vladimir Putin’s Russia without his consent), and not only are many of his businesses largely propped up by Kremlin-connected cash, but they have so much evidence of his illegal activity aiding and abetting a regime opposed to the United States that it effectively holds a gun to his head 24/7. He knows that if he tightens the screws on Putin, that they can be ratcheted up on him tenfold, and that is why he refuses to speak negatively about the Kremlin. Trump is a self-interested actor to the very end, and so all his actions must be viewed through that lens.
Russia’s interest in meddling is much more certain. America has been utterly shameless in its attempt to influence supposed democratic processes across the globe, and this brazen Time cover bragging about installing Boris Yeltsin in the Russian government is all the motivation Russia should need. Many are concerned that all this saber rattling will set off another budding military conflict like what we went through in the Cold War, but that is old-world thinking. Russia is not a super power, as their economy is entirely dependent on oil. The value of their currency moves in tandem with the price of this commodity underwriting it.
source: Tradingeconomics.com