Former Trump business adviser Felix Sater to testify before House panels

Lol, those are 3 fairly big questions.

While I am sure that Mueller is at least aware of the allegations and has easy access to all kinds of relevant information, I am not sure that his investigation has the scope or mandate to make it attainable by the general public or to bring charges. I am not even sure if he can indict a sitting president on the charges.

That is the rub. If it is not specifically 2016 election related is it within Mueller's jurisdiction? That being said, there is a preponderance of evidence showing that Trump's business organization was bailed out by Russian money after he had bankrupted so many times that no other banks would touch him. He literally could not borrow money at that time - then capital from the former Soviet Union and republics such as Kazakhstan began to flow in and all of a sudden Trump was able to remake himself and become the celebrity businessman he tried to portray in The Apprentice.

At this point I don't think there are any facts that will erode him with his base. An interesting phenomenon in that no matter how criminally corrupt, incompetent or clownish he is shown to be, a certain segment of the population just don't care and will defend him to the end no matter how disastrous his presidency turns out to be.

A sad picture of the celebrity culture turned political in the US and the triumph of spectacle over substance as Chris Hedges says.

Some interesting documentation on Sater, Bayrock and the Russian mobsters and oligarchs with deep ties to the Trump Organization;

Trump's Russian Laundromat, from The New Republic:

"But even without an investigation by Congress or a special prosecutor, there is much we already know about the president’s debt to Russia. 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.

Throughout the 1990s, untold millions from the former Soviet Union flowed into Trump’s luxury developments and Atlantic City casinos. But all the money wasn’t enough to save Trump from his own failings as a businessman. He owed $4 billion to more than 70 banks, with a mind-boggling $800 million of it personally guaranteed. He spent much of the decade mired in litigation, filing for multiple bankruptcies and scrambling to survive. For most developers, the situation would have spelled financial ruin. But fortunately for Trump, his own economic crisis coincided with one in Russia.

In 1998, Russia defaulted on $40 billion in debt, causing the ruble to plummet and Russian banks to close. The ensuing financial panic sent the country’s oligarchs and mobsters scrambling to find a safe place to put their money. That October, just two months after the Russian economy went into a tailspin, Trump broke ground on his biggest project yet. Rising to 72 stories in midtown Manhattan, Trump World Tower would be the tallest residential building on the planet. Construction got underway in 1999—just as Trump was preparing his first run for the presidency on the Reform Party ticket— and concluded in 2001. As Bloomberg Businessweek reported earlier this year, it wasn’t long before one-third of the units on the tower’s priciest floors had been snatched up—either by individual buyers from the former Soviet Union, or by limited liability companies connected to Russia. “We had big buyers from Russia and Ukraine and Kazakhstan,” sales agent Debra Stotts told Bloomberg."

https://newrepublic.com/article/143...ses-dirty-money-international-crime-syndicate


Sunny Isles, Florida, became known as “Little Moscow,” thanks to Trump’s high-rises.Rhona Wise/AFP/Getty
CBC article on a new documentary on Trump's Russian ties called Active Measures:

Active Measures shows how foreign investments made by Russian oligarchs bolster the Kremlin's ambitions to exert influence in the west. The key is money laundering — the export of Russian wealth with the knowledge and approval of Putin.


The Trump Taj Mahal, now known as Hard Rock Hotel & Casino Atlantic City, in Atlantic City, New Jersey. (CP Images)
Bryan says mobsters were Trump clients as early as 1985.

"He sells three condos to a man named David Bogatin, who's a Russian mobster," Bryan says. "This is in Trump Tower. And the reason they did Trump Tower is that it was the second building in New York where a shell company could purchase a condominium. And so it makes it much more easy to launder dirty money."

When Trump's fortunes fall, the Russians smell blood.

"Once he loses out in Atlantic City, once he can't get a loan from a bank, that's when the Russian mafia says: 'We have an opportunity here,'" says Bryan.

That's when Trump becomes less of a partner for Russian mobsters and more of a mark.

Bryan's film alleges that Trump needed Russian mob money to reinvent himself after his disastrous string of bankruptcies. Without it, the film alleges, he would never have won the presidency."

https://www.cbc.ca/radio/day6/episo...are-his-biggest-legal-vulnerability-1.4646401

Excellent 3 part documentary on 4 Corners. Trump/Russia; secrets, spies and useful idiots. Meet Felix Sater for yourself as he gives extensive if self-serving interviews in the film:




Sadly, even before Trump, the US corporate government has always been run more like a criminal syndicate.

Trump is just so blatantly obvious about out as he really has no gumption of his own criminal and legal jeopardy - probably because he has gotten away with so much for so long.

 

Well, it's an "open hearing", but I do not know if that means televised.. I assume it does, either on CSPAN or other networks

https://intelligence.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=619

Trump has never been labeled a target of the investigation, so that revelation is not important. He's always been a subject however.

Let's split the terminology difference and call him in the crosshairs..

Even if he personally didn't do 1 illegal thing, his current presidency should be enough to ensure any Democrat wins in 2020.

 

Have you seen these Democratic candidates? The only one I'll accept is Biden as our Paul Hindenburg while we fix this mess.

 

Quite the group, huh??

A 1-term Biden with a popular female VP (Amy or Harris) is clearly the best option.

All colors, all genders, all ages, all lines on the left-of-center scale, all levels of experience (all more than Trump), most sexual orientations (well, straight and gay anyway)..

Gonna be an interesting 20 months.. I'm probably going to mostly watch it the way I watch the Indy 500... I just come in for the last 25 laps..

 

Crap.... just found out Sater's testimony to House Intel was postponed due to a lawsuit against Sater...

SNIP
“In light of the cursory letter from the Attorney General, and our need to understand Special Counsel Mueller’s areas of inquiry and evidence his office uncovered, we are working in parallel with other committees to bring in senior officials from the DOJ, FBI and SCO to ensure that our committee is fully and currently informed about the SCO’s investigation, including all counterintelligence information,” the spokesman for the Committee said in a statement. “With the focus on those efforts this week, we are postponing Mr. Sater’s open interview.”
ENDSNIP

https://lawandcrime.com/high-profil...ges-trump-tower-moscow-money-laundering-plot/

#ReleaseTheReport