Tornado Alley (PROG)

[fuagf]

Absolutely. Raw data the Steele dossier always was. Of so many this of PegVA's is one of the best to link to yours. In full again

I'm all in for a full and complete investigation of all politicians that are proven to have taken Russian money...

GOP CAMPAIGNS TOOK $7.35 MILLION FROM OLIGARCH LINKED TO RUSSIA
AUG 2017
by Ruth May, Contributor
Ruth May is a business professor at the University of Dallas and an expert on the economies of Russia and Ukraine. She wrote this column for The Dallas Morning News

Party loyalty is often cited as the reason that GOP leaders have not been more outspoken in their criticism of President Donald Trump and his refusal to condemn Russia's interference in the 2016 presidential election. Yet there may be another reason that top Republicans have not been more vocal in their condemnation. Perhaps it's because they have their own links to the Russian oligarchy that they would prefer go unnoticed.

Donald Trump and the political action committees for Mitch McConnell, Marco Rubio, Scott Walker, Lindsey Graham, John Kasich and John McCain accepted $7.35 million in contributions from a Ukrainian-born oligarch who is the business partner of two of Russian president Vladimir Putin's favorite oligarchs and a Russian government bank.

During the 2015-2016 election season, Ukrainian-born billionaire Leonard "Len" Blavatnik contributed $6.35 million to leading Republican candidates and incumbent senators. Mitch McConnell was the top recipient of Blavatnik's donations, collecting $2.5 million for his GOP Senate Leadership Fund under the names of two of Blavatnik's holding companies, Access Industries and AI Altep Holdings, according to Federal Election Commission documents and OpenSecrets.org.

Marco Rubio's Conservative Solutions PAC and his Florida First Project received $1.5 million through Blavatnik's two holding companies. Other high dollar recipients of funding from Blavatnik were PACS representing Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker at $1.1 million, South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham at $800,000, Ohio Governor John Kasich at $250,000 and Arizona Senator John McCain at $200,000.

In January, Quartz reported that Blavatnik donated another $1 million to Trump's Inaugural Committee. Ironically, the shared address of Blavatnik's companies is directly across the street from Trump Tower on 5th Avenue in New York.

Len Blavatnik, considered to be one of the richest men in Great Britain, holds dual citizenship in the U.S. and the U.K. He is known for his business savvy and generous philanthropy, but not without controversy.

In 2010, Oxford University drew intense criticism for accepting a donation of 75 million pounds from Blavatnik for a new school of government bearing his name. Faculty, alumni and international human rights activists claimed the university was selling its reputation and prestige to Putin's associates.

Blavatnik's relationships with Russian oligarchs close to Putin, particularly Oleg Deripaska, should be worrisome for Trump and the six GOP leaders who took Blavatnik's money during the 2016 presidential campaign. Lucky for them no one has noticed. Yet.

Oleg Deripaska is the founder and majority owner of RUSAL, the world's second largest aluminum company, based in Russia. Len Blavatnik owns a significant stake in RUSAL and served on its Board until November 10, 2016, two days after Donald Trump was elected.

Deripaska controls RUSAL with a 48 percent majority stake through his holding company, EN+ Group, and the Russian government owns 4.35 percent stake of EN+ Group through its second-largest state owned bank, VTB. VTB was exposed in the Panama papers in 2016 for facilitating the flow of billions of dollars to offshore companies linked to Vladimir Putin and is under sanctions by the U.S. government.

Deripaska has been closely connected to the Kremlin since he married into Boris Yeltsin's family in 2001, which literally includes him in the Russian clan known as "The Family."According to the Associated Press, starting in 2006, Deripaska made annual payments of $10 million to Paul Manafort through the Bank of Cyprus to advance Putin's global agenda.

Len Blavatnik's co-owner in RUSAL is his long-time business partner, Viktor Vekselberg, another Russian oligarch with close ties to Putin. Blavatnik and Vekselberg hold their 15.8 percent joint stake in RUSAL in the name of Sual Partners, their offshore company in the Bahamas. Vekselberg also happens to be the largest shareholder in the Bank of Cyprus.

Another oligarch with close ties to Putin, Dmitry Rybolovlev, owns a 3.3 percent stake in the Bank of Cyprus. Rybolovlev is known as "Russia's Fertilizer King" and has been in the spotlight for several months as the purchaser of Trump's 60,000 square-foot mansion in Palm Beach. Rybolovlev bought the estate for $54 million more than Trump paid for the property at the bottom of the crash in the U.S. real estate market.

The convoluted web that links Putin's oligarchs to Trump's political associates and top Republicans is difficult to take in.

Trump and Putin have a common approach to governance. They rely heavily on long-term relationships and family ties. While there have been tensions between Putin and Deripaska over the years, the Kremlin came to Deripaska's rescue in 2009 when he was on the verge of bankruptcy by providing a $4.5 billion emergency loan through state-owned Vnesheconombank (VEB), where Putin is chair of the advisory board.

VEB, known as President Putin's "pet bank," is now in crisis after sanctions applied by Europe and U.S. in 2014 have isolated it from the international banks that were the sources of its nearly $4 billion in hard currency loans that, according to Bloomberg, mature this year and in 2018.

Russia's international currency reserves are near a 10-year low, which has put further pressure on the president of VEB, Sergey Gorkov, to find sources of international rescue capital. Notably, it was Gorkov who met secretly with Jared Kushner in December at Trump Tower. Kushner's failure to report the meeting with Gorkov has drawn the attention of the Senate intelligence committee that now wants to question Kushner about the meeting.
-dallasnews.com

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Few more of, again, so many

BOREALIS - 9 Things We Could Learn From Trump’s Tax Returns
[...]
Ties to Russia
In the wake of the US intelligence community’s belief that Russia worked to influence the Presidential election in favor of Trump, many people are concerned that Mr. Trump may have ties to Russia. Each day we seem to hear something new about someone close to him with some Russia connection. His tax returns could show financial transactions involving Russian Banks, the Russian government, or wealthy Russian individuals. If Trump has any such connections to Russia, it could help further connect some of the dots in the current Russia scandal.
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Trump/Russia: Follow the Money
Posted Wed 6 Jun 2018, 1:44pm
Updated Thu 7 Jun 2018, 3:58pm
[...]
Almost everything about Donald Trump is eventually about money, so is the answer to his bizarre attitude towards Putin lying in his business dealings?
SARAH FERGUSON, REPORTER: For decades Trump and his family had made numerous attempts to launch the Trump brand in Russia.
DONALD TRUMP JUNIOR: I've spent quite a bit of time in Moscow looking at deals.
I've looked at everything from resort, to a hotel.
DONALD TRUMP: Russia wanted it, Moscow wanted it.
TIM O'BRIEN, BLOOMBERG: He had always bragged about getting things done in Russia.
JOURNALIST: Do you have a relationship with Vladimir Putin?
DONALD TRUMP: I do have a relationship and I can tell you that he's very interested in what we're doing here today.
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Five times law enforcers could have arrested Donald Trump but didn’t
[...]
1. The obstruction of justice, 1981.
[...]
Why did the feds not move on Trump all those years ago for blowing their informant's cover? Why did they never put a case on him subsequently, even as he partnered with at least a half-dozen other mafia-connected men in various business arrangements? No one knows. Or if anyone does know, they aren't telling.
2. The Empty Box, 1986. In the 1980s it was a common practice to avoid state sales tax: You walk into the store and buy something expensive, like jewelry. To avoid the tax, in collusion with the merchant, you direct that an empty box be shipped to an out-of-state address. Many, many merchants engaged in this shabby scam, which gave them a competitive advantage over honest retailers; many were caught. Trump was a regular at Bulgari, a jewelry store on Fifth Avenue. Like other rich, famous people (Henry Kissinger, Mary Tyler Moore, Frank Sinatra), Trump .. http://articles.latimes.com/1986-11-20/news/mn-12088_1_sales-tax-evasion-case .. partook of the empty box discount, skipping the state sales tax on some $65,000 worth of purchases. Once pinched, in 1986, he testified against the retailer, avoiding a prosecution that would have jeopardized his New Jersey casino license.
[...]
Why was Trump not charged? Again, know one knows, but it's fair to say that the customers of Bulgari and like-cheating retailers were customarily left alone, even when they were obvious sleaze-balls like Khashoggi, Trump, and Kissinger. That the late Mary Tyler Moore, America's Sweetheart, was also implicated explains this one well enough. Damn you, Mary Richards!
3. The briefcase full of cash, 1988. Donald Trump personally sold two units in Trump Tower to Robert Hopkins, the mob-connected head of New York's largest gambling ring.
[...]
4. The consistent money laundering, 1998-2014, inclusive. In March of 2015 FINCen, the Treasury Department's The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, fined Trump Taj Mahal $10 million for money laundering violations .. https://www.fincen.gov/news/news-releases/fincen-fines-trump-taj-mahal-casino-resort-10-million-significant-and-long . It was the largest ever FINCen fine against a casino.
Trump Taj Mahal has a long history of prior, repeated BSA violations cited by examiners dating back to 1998, when FinCEN assessed a $477,700 civil money penalty against Trump Taj Mahal for currency transaction reporting violations.
That Trump's casinos have routinely laundered money, both while directly managed by Trump and afterward, is settled fact. The typical prosecutorial concerns about criminal penalties putting a company out of business would seem to be moot: The Taj filed bankruptcy in 1991, shortly after it opened, filed two more times in the 2000s and went bankrupt again in 2014, shortly before this fine was levied. So why just a fine?
[...]
5. The Trump University fraud, 2005-2010.
[...]
For at least 10 years, Trump's business empire has been substantially fueled by Russian money .. http://www.the-american-interest.com/2016/12/19/the-curious-world-of-donald-trumps-private-russian-connections/ , much of it tied to so-called "oligarchs" with close or cordial relationships to Russian dictator Vladimir Putin. And much of this money was channeled through banks and shell companies that bear the hallmarks of money laundering.
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SoxFan - Why are you lying as the Clinton campaign did not collude with the Russians and declassified information did not say they did.
No, the Clinton Campaign Did Not Collude with Russia
[...]
Opposition Research is not Collusion
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