The Impeachment of President Donald J Trump

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Re: The Impeachment of President Donald J Trump

Postby seemslikeadream » Thu Mar 16, 2017 4:30 pm

Follow The Money, Donald Trump Edition
Gerald Herbert
ByJOSH MARSHALLPublishedMARCH 16, 2017, 3:00 PM EDT
5166Views
There's a very good story out today from Bloomberg chronicling the flow of money from the former Soviet Union into real estate ventures built by or licensed with the name of Donald Trump. In this case most of what we are talking about is not investment in projects or loans to fund them but the purchase of individual apartments units - though sometimes in bulk - in Trump branded or owned buildings. This is a story we and others have told you. But this new article firms the story up considerably with a new level of detail.

If you think about the luxury apartment business it works something like this. You need to get together a substantial sum of money to fund the construction of your building. Then you sell the individual units which are probably part of a condo or coop. If you're lucky, you make a tidy profit on the difference between the cost of the building and the proceeds from the sales. (You might also choose to retain ownership of the building and rent the units.) For Trump, in many cases he also has the contract to manage the building indefinitely. For our purposes the key point is that both the investment side of the equation and the purchase of the units are critical parts of the business equation. If you can't sell the units quickly enough or for enough money, the whole business enterprise can fall apart.

As we've discussed before, at some point in the earliest years of the new century Trump properties became a go-to place for people from the former Soviet Union to buy real estate. Some were citizens of those countries, others were American immigrants. We've already noted how Trump lawyer Michael Cohen first came to Trump's attention because he and his extended family from Ukraine was buying up a lot of units in Trump properties in New York and Florida. What this article makes clear is that there were a lot of Michael Cohen type families buying Trump properties in bulk. At least for this part of the tale, Cohen's is a microcosm of this larger story.

A few nuggets.
“We had big buyers from Russia and Ukraine and Kazakhstan,” says Debra Stotts, a sales agent who filled up the tower. The very top floors went unsold for years, but a third of units sold on floors 76 through 83 by 2004 involved people or limited liability companies connected to Russia and neighboring states, a Bloomberg investigation shows.
Then there's this ...
Sam Kislin, a Ukrainian immigrant, issued mortgages to buyers of multimillion-dollar apartments in World Tower. It’s highly unusual for individuals to issue formal mortgages for U.S. luxury real estate, and the tower loans are the only ones Kislin ever made in New York, public records show.
Almost two decades earlier, Kislin had sold Trump about 200 televisions on credit. “I gave him 30 days, and in exactly 30 days he paid me back,” says Kislin, now 82. “He never gave me any trouble.” He says the televisions were for the Commodore Hotel, which Trump had bought in 1976 with Hyatt Corp.

Later we learn that Kislin opened his electronics store with Tamir Sapir, an immigrant from Georgia who in a matter of years went from hardscrabble cabbie to oil baron and real estate magnate. He later went into business with Trump as, among other deals, a partner on the Trump Soho development project. Later we read this: "Investigated by the FBI in the 1990s for allegations including mob ties and laundering money from Russia, Kislin was never charged, and he maintains his innocence."

If you read the piece, the anecdotes follow a standard pattern. Fabulously wealthy immigrant or national from the former Soviet Union either sets up shop in a Trump property, purchases one or helps finance one. Eduard Nektalov, a diamond dealer from Uzbekistan, who bought on the 79th floor, is one example. They almost all seem to be under some kind of investigation for money laundering or mob ties. Usually they're never charged. Sometimes they're gunned down in mafia assassinations. As Trump himself might say, there's something going on.

Nektalov was, ironically, shot to death on 6th Avenue, less than a year after his purchase. He was reportedly cooperating with authorities at the time of his death.

There is only so much we can piece together without access to Trump's internal business records. As I've noted before, the great bulk of what we do know about these ventures comes from lawsuits when things went south. (Much of what we know about Trump Soho comes to us that way.) What does seem clear though is that what began as Trump being a go to place for Russian and former Soviet Union money wanting to buy up individual apartment units and luxury homes was shifting in the middle of the last decade to much larger investments to fund the building projects themselves.

Trump Soho is the emblematic example. As we've discussed, it's funded mainly with capital from the former Soviet Union, the origins of which were in some cases hard to figure out even to the people organizing the construction. We also see some of the same people who earlier show up around the unit purchases suddenly reappearing as major investors in the building projects themselves. In the case of Trump Soho, the project was a collaboration of Trump, Felix Sater's Bayrock and Tamir Sapir.

This is clearly what Donald Trump Jr was referring to in 2008 when he told a real estate conference that “Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets. We see a lot of money pouring in from Russia.” The jagged progression of Russian political economy over the last quarter century combined with Trump's own near-death financial experiences in the 1990s came together to build an enduring partnership by the first years of the 21st century.

Many people look at this arc of growing dependency on money from the former Soviet Union and look for that moment when Trump becomes so dependent on money from Russia that he's forced to cut a deal with Vladimir Putin; or perhaps his business partners catch him in a compromising situation and then he's owned by nefarious forces in Russia. I do not rule out the possibility that some less lurid version of one of these scenarios did happen. But what many of us see as the smoke, which must somewhere lead to fire, is actually the story itself. The smoke is the story! Or to put it differently, the deep business ties provide a compelling explanation and I think likely sufficient explanation of Trump's persistent coziness and affection with top figures in Russia and Russian geopolitical interests.

It's abundantly clear that from the early aughts through recent years, Trump became highly dependent on money from the former Soviet Union - mainly Russia and Ukraine but also Kazakhstan, Georgia, Uzbekistan and other states. Many of the figures in his orbit were at least in the business of shepherding money out of those countries into New York real estate. In many or most cases the FBI and the DOJ suspected them of money laundering and ties to organized crime.

We tend to think like the people we surround ourselves with. Our priorities and sense of right and wrong and much else are shaped by our own self-interest, how we make our living, how we survive. This isn't conspiracy, it's human nature. This is especially so for someone like Donald Trump whose ideas, philosophies, sense of right and wrong, likes and dislikes are so immediately and unreflectively tied to self-interest. Trump's increasing association with and dependence on this milieu is a strong explanation of his persistent and difficult to explain embrace of Putin, Russia and Russia's geopolitical interests in Europe. This is what I described in my "innocent explanation" post from earlier this month.

We can also see the impact of the Crimea crisis of 2014 - which is the fulcrum of so much of the Trump/Russia story. If Trump had been getting a substantial amount of his buyers and investors from Russia, the imposition of sanctions in 2014 created a major obstacle to his way of doing business. (The big dip in the global oil market likely had a similar impact.) Remember, what's bad for Trump is wrong. That's the rule of thumb. Not just bad for Trump but wrong, stupid, terrible. And it wasn't just bad for Trump, it was clearly a very bad development for many people in his business orbit. Bad for Trump, Bad! Bad for Trump's friends, Bad! Bad for Trump's friends who keep the money flowing, Especially Bad!

I don't deny that we may eventually find a needle in this haystack. There are parts of the story which remain difficult to piece together based on what I've called this "innocent explanation." There are so many sleazy characters, so many connections to figures in the Russian criminal underworld that I'm sure there are at least a few sub-needles there. But haystack itself is a very, very big story.http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/follow-the-money--4




Behind Trump’s Russia Romance, There’s a Tower Full of Oligarchs
Down on his luck, the mogul found help from émigrés from the old Soviet empire.
by Caleb Melby and Keri Geiger
March 16, 2017, 3:00 AM CDT

On the 78th floor: a Russian who once was accused of mob ties and extortion by an oligarch. On the 79th, an Uzbek jeweler investigated for money laundering who was eventually executed on the street in Manhattan. And four floors higher, a pro-Moscow Ukrainian politician whose party hired a Donald Trump adviser.

When Trump World Tower at 845 United Nations Plaza began construction two decades ago as the tallest residential building in the country (90 stories), its most expensive floors attracted wealthy people getting their money out of what had been the Soviet Union. Trump needed the big spenders. He was renegotiating $1.8 billion in junk bonds for his Atlantic City resorts, and the tower was built on a mountain of debt owed to German banks. As Trump wrote in The Art of the Comeback, “It crushed my ego, my pride, to go hat in hand to the bankers.”

Trump World Tower
Trump World TowerPhotographer: Ludovic/REA/Redux
Trump’s soft spot for Russia is an ongoing mystery, and the large number of condominium sales he made to people with ties to former Soviet republics may offer clues. “We had big buyers from Russia and Ukraine and Kazakhstan,” says Debra Stotts, a sales agent who filled up the tower. The very top floors went unsold for years, but a third of units sold on floors 76 through 83 by 2004 involved people or limited liability companies connected to Russia and neighboring states, a Bloomberg investigation shows. The reporting involved more than two dozen interviews and a review of hundreds of public records filed in New York.

The 1990s were a sobering period for Trump, and it’s noteworthy that among those who helped him exit the decade are people to whom he’s shown deep loyalty. Presidential counselor Kellyanne Conway and Michael Cohen, his personal lawyer, bought units. Cohen got his Ukrainian in-laws to buy, too. Most of the units were bought before the tower was built, and prices weren’t disclosed. Trump World Tower ended up as a model for future developments—with money drawn from sales in Moscow.

Michael Cohen
CohenPhotographer: Richard Drew/AP Photo
Two months before Trump broke ground in October 1998, Russia defaulted on $40 billion in domestic debt, the ruble plummeted, and some of the biggest banks started to collapse. Millionaires scrambled to get their money out and into New York. Real estate provides a safe haven for overseas investors. It has few reporting requirements and is a preferred way to move cash of questionable provenance. Amid the turmoil, buyers found a dearth of available projects. Trump World Tower, opened in 2001, became a prominent depository of Russian money.

Sam Kislin, a Ukrainian immigrant, issued mortgages to buyers of multimillion-dollar apartments in World Tower. It’s highly unusual for individuals to issue formal mortgages for U.S. luxury real estate, and the tower loans are the only ones Kislin ever made in New York, public records show.

Almost two decades earlier, Kislin had sold Trump about 200 televisions on credit. “I gave him 30 days, and in exactly 30 days he paid me back,” says Kislin, now 82. “He never gave me any trouble.” He says the televisions were for the Commodore Hotel, which Trump had bought in 1976 with Hyatt Corp.

Trump purchased the sets from an electronics store that Kislin had opened in New York with Tamir Sapir, an immigrant from Georgia. It was famous among Soviets who would buy VHS players and tape recorders to take back home. Sapir later grew rich trading Russian oil. He invested the proceeds in New York real estate, eventually becoming one of Trump’s development partners in Trump SoHo, a frequent focal point in inquiries about Trump’s financial ties to Russia and questionable Russian money. Sapir died in 2014.

Kislin became a fundraiser for Rudolph Giuliani’s mayoral campaign, bringing in millions for the future Trump surrogate. Investigated by the FBI in the 1990s for allegations including mob ties and laundering money from Russia, Kislin was never charged, and he maintains his innocence.

At Trump World Tower, Kislin provided a mortgage to Vasily Salygin, a future official of the Ukrainian Party of Regions linked to Russian President Vladimir Putin, to buy an 83rd-floor apartment. Salygin’s time in office overlapped with Paul Manafort’s tenure as an adviser to the party. Manafort later served as Trump’s campaign manager before his Russian links led to growing criticism and his resignation.

The push to sell units in Trump World Tower to Russians expanded in 2002, when Sotheby’s International Realty teamed up with Kirsanova Realty, a Russian company. One reception at Moscow’s swank Hotel Baltschug Kempinski pitched the tower alongside Trump’s West Side condos and his building on Columbus Circle.

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Eduard Nektalov, an Uzbekistan-born diamond dealer, purchased a 79th-floor unit directly below Conway’s for $1.6 million in July 2003. He was being investigated by federal agents for a money-laundering scheme, which involved smelting gold to make it appear like everyday objects that were then hauled to drug cartels in Colombia. Nektalov sold his unit a month after he bought it for a $500,000 profit. Less than a year later, Nektalov, rumored to have been cooperating with authorities, was gunned down on Manhattan’s Sixth Avenue.

Gil Dezer
Gil DezerPhotographer: Rolando Diaz/Bloomberg
Simultaneous with when the tower was going up, developer Gil Dezer and his father, Michael, were building a Trump-backed condo project in Sunny Isles Beach, Fla. “Russians love the Trump brand,” he says, adding that Russians and Russian Americans bought some 200 of 2,000 units in Trump buildings he built. They flooded into Trump projects from 2001 to 2007, helping Trump weather the real estate collapse, he says.

“The Trump Organization is a global brand and much like every other real estate company has likely had purchasers from people of different backgrounds buy units within their properties,” Amanda Miller, vice president for marketing at the organization, said in an email. “The press’ continued fascination with creating a narrative that is simply not there is both misleading and fabricated.”

Trump buildings in Sunny Isles
Trump buildings in Sunny IslesPhotographer: Angel Valentin/The Washington Post via Getty Images
Sales agent Stotts helped rent out apartments owned by those who invested in World Tower. Her very first job was filling Cohen’s apartment after he moved to 502 Park Ave., another Trump building. Three months after the New York Post reported that Cohen and his Ukrainian in-laws had bought units in World Tower, Trump hired him.

In 2008, his oldest son, Donald Jr., said, “We see a lot of money pouring in from Russia.” What he was referring to has never been clarified, nor has its significance in explaining Trump’s friendly attitude toward Moscow. But part of the answer may lie in the hundreds of millions of dollars that salvaged Trump’s apartment buildings at a time of financial vulnerability.

—With Michael Smith, Alexander Sazonov, and Polly Mosendz

The bottom line: Trump was heavily leveraged when he built World Tower in Manhattan, which Russians flocked to.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles ... -oligarchs
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: The Impeachment of President Donald J Trump

Postby tapitsbo » Thu Mar 16, 2017 6:20 pm

Key Democratic Officials Now Warning Base Not to Expect Evidence of Trump/Russia Collusion

The Intercept

Glenn Greenwald

March 16, 2017


From MSNBC politics shows to town hall meetings across the country, the overarching issue for the Democratic Party’s base since Trump’s victory has been Russia, often suffocating attention for other issues. This fixation has persisted even though it has no chance to sink the Trump presidency unless it is proven that high levels of the Trump campaign actively colluded with the Kremlin to manipulate the outcome of the U.S. election — a claim for which absolutely no evidence has thus far been presented.

The principal problem for Democrats is that so many media figures and online charlatans are personally benefiting from feeding the base increasingly unhinged, fact-free conspiracies — just as right-wing media polemicists did after both Bill Clinton and Obama were elected — that there are now millions of partisan soldiers absolutely convinced of a Trump/Russia conspiracy for which, at least as of now, there is no evidence. And they are all waiting for the day, which they regard as inevitable and imminent, when this theory will be proven and Trump will be removed.

[​IMG]
Key Democratic officials are clearly worried about the expectations that have been purposely stoked and are now trying to tamp them down. Many of them have tried to signal that the beliefs the base has been led to adopt have no basis in reason or evidence.

The latest official to throw cold water on the MSNBC-led circus is President Obama’s former acting CIA chief Michael Morell. What makes him particularly notable in this context is that Morell was one of Clinton’s most vocal CIA surrogates. In August, he not only endorsed Clinton in the pages of the New York Times but also became the first high official to explicitly accuse Trump of disloyalty, claiming, “In the intelligence business, we would say that Mr. Putin had recruited Mr. Trump as an unwitting agent of the Russian Federation.”

But on Wednesday night, Morell appeared at an intelligence community forum to “cast doubt” on “allegations that members of the Trump campaign colluded with Russia.” “On the question of the Trump campaign conspiring with the Russians here, there is smoke, but there is no fire at all,” he said, adding, “There’s no little campfire, there’s no little candle, there’s no spark. And there’s a lot of people looking for it.”

Obama’s former CIA chief also cast serious doubt on the credibility of the infamous, explosive “dossier” originally published by BuzzFeed, saying that its author, Christopher Steele, paid intermediaries to talk to the sources for it. The dossier, he said, “doesn’t take you anywhere, I don’t think.”

Morell’s comments echo the categorical remarks by Obama’s top national security official, James Clapper, who told Meet the Press last week that during the time he was Obama’s DNI, he saw no evidence to support claims of a Trump/Russia conspiracy. “We had no evidence of such collusion,” Clapper stated unequivocally. Unlike Morell, who left his official CIA position in 2013 but remains very integrated into the intelligence community, Clapper was Obama’s DNI until just seven weeks ago, leaving on January 20.

Perhaps most revealing of all are the Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee — charged with investigating these matters — who recently told BuzzFeed how petrified they are of what the Democratic base will do if they do not find evidence of collusion, as they now suspect will likely be the case. “There’s a tangible frustration over what one official called ‘wildly inflated’ expectations surrounding the panel’s fledgling investigation,” BuzzFeed’s Ali Watkins wrote.

Moreover, “several committee sources grudgingly say, it feels as though the investigation will be seen as a sham if the Senate doesn’t find a silver bullet connecting Trump and Russian intelligence operatives.” One member told Watkins: “I don’t think the conclusions are going to meet people’s expectations.”

What makes all of this most significant is that officials like Clapper and Morell are trained disinformation agents; Clapper in particular has proven he will lie to advance his interests. Yet even with all the incentive to do so, they are refusing to claim there is evidence of such collusion; in fact, they are expressly urging people to stop thinking it exists. As even the law recognizes, statements that otherwise lack credibility become more believable when they are ones made “against interest.”

Media figures have similarly begun trying to tamp down expectations. Ben Smith, the editor-in-chief of BuzzFeed, which published the Steele dossier, published an article yesterday warning that the Democratic base’s expectation of a smoking gun “is so strong that Twitter and cable news are full of the theories of what my colleague Charlie Warzel calls the Blue Detectives — the left’s new version of Glenn Beck, digital blackboards full of lines and arrows.” Smith added: “It is also a simple fact that while news of Russian actions on Trump’s behalf is clear, hard details of coordination between his aides and Putin’s haven’t emerged.” And Smith’s core warning is this:

Trump’s critics last year were horrified at the rise of “fake news” and the specter of a politics shaped by alternative facts, predominantly on the right. They need to be careful now not to succumb to the same delusional temptations as their political adversaries, and not to sink into a filter bubble which, after all, draws its strength not from conservative or progressive politics but from human nature.

And those of us covering the story and the stew of real information, fantasy, and — now — forgery around it need to continue to report and think clearly about what we know and what we don’t, and to resist the sugar high that comes with telling people exactly what they want to hear.

For so long, Democrats demonized and smeared anyone trying to inject basic reason, rationality, and skepticism into this Trump/Russia discourse by labeling them all Kremlin agents and Putin lovers. Just this week, the Center for American Progress released a report using the language of treason to announce the existence of a “Fifth Column” in the U.S. that serves Russia (similar to Andrew Sullivan’s notorious 2001 decree that anyone opposing the war on terror composed an anti-American “Fifth Column”), while John McCain listened to Rand Paul express doubts about the wisdom of NATO further expanding to include Montenegro and then promptly announced: “Paul is working for Vladimir Putin.”

But with serious doubts — and fears — now emerging about what the Democratic base has been led to believe by self-interested carnival barkers and partisan hacks, there is a sudden, concerted effort to rein in the excesses of this story. With so many people now doing this, it will be increasingly difficult to smear them all as traitors and Russian loyalists, but it may be far too little, too late, given the pitched hysteria that has been deliberately cultivated around these issues for months. Many Democrats have reached the classic stage of deranged conspiracists where evidence that disproves the theory is viewed as further proof of its existence, and those pointing to it are instantly deemed suspect.

[​IMG]
A formal, credible investigation into all these questions, where the evidence is publicly disclosed, is still urgently needed. That’s true primarily so that conspiracies no longer linger and these questions are resolved by facts rather than agenda-driven anonymous leaks from the CIA and cable news hosts required to feed a partisan mob.

It’s certainly possible to envision an indictment of a low-level operative like Carter Page, or the prosecution of someone like Paul Manafort on matters unrelated to hacking, but the silver bullet that Democrats have been led to expect will sink Trump appears further away than ever.

But given the way these Russia conspiracies have drowned out other critical issues being virtually ignored under the Trump presidency, it’s vital that everything be done now to make clear what is based in evidence and what is based in partisan delusions. And most of what the Democratic base has been fed for the last six months by their unhinged stable of media, online, and party leaders has decisively fallen into the latter category, as even their own officials are now desperately trying to warn.
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Re: The Impeachment of President Donald J Trump

Postby 82_28 » Thu Mar 16, 2017 9:49 pm

Even in the age of the Internet, I cannot keep up with all these names. I wanna see some interesting shit. Shit about astronomy, science, some good news. Ah well.
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Re: The Impeachment of President Donald J Trump

Postby seemslikeadream » Thu Mar 16, 2017 10:00 pm

the Neanderthals sex thread and the science thread got bumped today :)
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
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Re: The Impeachment of President Donald J Trump

Postby PufPuf93 » Thu Mar 16, 2017 10:08 pm

82_28 » Thu Mar 16, 2017 6:49 pm wrote:Even in the age of the Internet, I cannot keep up with all these names. I wanna see some interesting shit. Shit about astronomy, science, some good news. Ah well.


I like the thread about the statue found in Cairo. I wish more investigation occurred to find what is perhaps beneath the deserts of the world.

Trump is likely to resign before the situation gets to impeachment and who wants Pence or Ryan? Messed up situation. FUBAR.
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Re: The Impeachment of President Donald J Trump

Postby Heaven Swan » Fri Mar 17, 2017 6:33 am




Ha ha, Sunsara Taylor really gets underneath Carlson's skin. She keeps saying that he loves to carry water for the fascists. The look on his face is precious. :thumbsup

Go Sunsara!
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Re: The Impeachment of President Donald J Trump

Postby Luther Blissett » Fri Mar 17, 2017 2:12 pm

Wow, nice.

There's a MAGA rally here next weekend at Independence Hall that keeps getting spread around on fascist, white supremacist, and neo-nazi sites, but the antifascists are planning to disrupt it and have far bigger numbers in a city like this.
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Re: The Impeachment of President Donald J Trump

Postby 82_28 » Fri Mar 17, 2017 7:47 pm

Heaven Swan » Fri Mar 17, 2017 2:33 am wrote:


Ha ha, Sunsara Taylor really gets underneath Carlson's skin. She keeps saying that he loves to carry water for the fascists. The look on his face is precious. :thumbsup

Go Sunsara!


Goddamn. She schooled poor old Tucker. She made herself the host of his own show.
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Re: The Impeachment of President Donald J Trump

Postby seemslikeadream » Sun Mar 19, 2017 11:08 am

News from the South: Ivanka Trump is in Dubrovnik With her Husband Jared

Posted August 12, 2016 by Just Zagreb in News
Ivanka Marie Trump, American businesswoman, writer, and former model, better known as a daughter of American president candidate, Donald Trump, is in Dubrovnik!

Ivanka, the daughter of former model Ivana Trump and Donald Trump, is welcomed with amazing flowers and smiles all around Dubrovnik. Just Dubrovnik team had a little conversation with her, and she simply stated: ‘It is spectacular!’ while talking about Dubrovnik.

Ivanka is involved with all aspects of the company’s real estate and hotel management initiatives. She launched her namesake brand, Ivanka Trump.

Trump has been married to real estate developer Jared Kushner since 2009, and both of them are wandering all around Old Town at this moment! They came with the yacht ‘Rising Sun’.
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Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner were with Dmitry Rybolovlev at key moment in Trump-Russia dossier
By Bill Palmer | March 18, 2017 | 0


Two weeks ago, Palmer Report exclusively pieced together that the flight patterns of Russian jetsetter Dmitry Rybolovlev lined up closely with key dates, locations, and players alleged in the infamous Trump-Russia blackmail dossier. That included Rybolovlev’s plane flying to Dubrovnik, Croatia for the same dates in which Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner were vacationing there. And now another piece of the puzzle helps confirm it wasn’t a coincidence.

Dmitry Rybolovlev’s private jet with call sign M-KATE has repeatedly shown up in the same place and time as Donald Trump’s arrival in locations ranging from Concord, North Carolina to South Florida. Rybolovlev also massively overpaid Trump for a house in West Palm Beach that he then bulldozed. Rybolovlev is also part-owner of the Bank of Cyprus, which was recently caught up in a scheme which saw Russian banks laundering money through Deutsche Bank to clients in New York City; Deutsche just happens to have loaned Trump more than a billion dollars in recent years. So the connections between Rybolovlev and Trump are unmistakable. But did Rybolovlev really play a key role in the Trump-Russia dossier?

Palmer Report was previously able to piece together that Rybolovlev was in the Hamptons at the same time as Donald Trump’s longtime attorney Michael Cohen. Rybolovlev’s next stop was Dubrovnik, Croatia at the same time Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner were vacationing there. And his next stop was Budapest, at the same time the Trump-Russia dossier alleges that Cohen was meeting with Kremlin representatives in nearby Prague.

It’s not difficult to theorize that Rybolovlev met with Cohen in the Hamptons, then flew him to Dubrovnik where they met with Ivanka and Kushner to discuss how to handle the Russian blackmail threat, and then flew him within striking distance of Prague for the actual blackmail negotiation meeting. Of course none of this has been proven, and Cohen denies he’s ever even been in Prague. But here’s the new piece of the puzzle that helps solidify the theory.



So what if Dmitry Rybolovlev’s private plane was in Dubrovnik at the same exact time Ivanka and Kushner were vacationing there? He could claim he loaned the plane out to a friend. But now Daily Kos has dug up confirmation that Rybolovlev’s private yacht was also in Dubrovnik at the exact same time. It would strain credulity for him to claim that his plane and yacht both arrived in town without him.



In other words, Dmitry Rybolovlev was definitely in Dubrovnik at the same time as Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, and almost certainly went there to met with them. And this took place just before the alleged Prague blackmail meeting with Kremlin reps. So as we continue to try to prove the Trump-Russia dossier and establish Rybolovlev’s role in it, this is big piece of confirmation.http://www.palmerreport.com/politics/iv ... sier/1968/


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Confirmed: Rybolovlev's Jet & Yacht were in Dubrovnik the same time as Ivanka and Jarred Kushner
Remember when Ivanka Trump and Jarred Kushner went to Dubrovnik, Croatia this past summer? Remember how they met up with Wendy Deng and David Geffen for relaxation and sightseeing? Was that some kind a distraction (aka maskirovka) for something more nefarious, knowing the media would cover them along side Deng and Geffen? Did Russian oligarch, Demitry Rybolovlev, meet up with Kushner at some point? Another diarist wrote a diary about Rybolovlev being Putin’s courier. I think they were on to something. Several others have also written similar diaries about Trump’s connection to Rybolovlev. What was he doing in Croatia the same time that Ivanka and Kushner were there? Sightseeing? Show me the pics. He’s well known.

I know Croatia very well. I’ve been to Croatia about 18-20 times over the past 21 years, including Dubrovnik and Hvar about 5 times. If I wanted to meet someone in secret without anybody knowing, (or just swim in the nude), I’d go to a hidden cove on one of the 1,000+ islands off the Croatian coast in a small boat, perhaps the southwest side of Hvar, which is pretty desolate.

From Dubrovnik, Ivanka and Kushner went to Hvar, which is an island about 3-4 hours by boat. Ivanka herself documented being in both Dubrovnik and Hvar on Instagram. What’s interesting is that she and American media sources waited until August 14th to post pics and stories, while Croatian media reported her in Dubrovnik on August 12th and arriving August 11th. Why wait and post both pics days later? Was she trying to hide something?

Let’s look at the Evidence
It’s a well known fact that Russian billionaire, Dmitry Rybolovlev, purchased Donald Trump’s Palm Beach, Florida mansion for $95 million in 2008.

It’s also a well known that Rybolovlev’s private jet was in the same cities or near several of his campaign events last year.

Rybolovlev claims he doesn’t know Trump and has never met him. What about Kushner?

Reports have surfaced in recent days that Rybolovlev's jet was parked near Trump's in North Carolina a few days before the election. A few days earlier, the two were both in Las Vegas for separate events.

A representative for Rybolovlev told McClatchy last week that it was "pure coincidence" that the two planes were parked next to each other. Rybolovlev, 50, has also never met the President personally, either, the representative told McClatchy, and "has no connection whatsoever to Mr. Trump or his team of advisers."
After reading several news reports about the Trump rally connections, I noticed Rybolovlev’s private jet was also in Dubrovnik, Croatia around the same time that Jarred Kushner and Ivanka Trump were there in August. So I started digging.

It turns out that not only was Dmitry Rybolovlev’s private jet in Dubrovnik from August 10-13, so was his private yacht. I’ve confirmed it to be in the Adriatic, moving towards Dubrovnik the night before with Dubrovnik being the destination on August 10th. I have the proof below.


A few days ago I requested information about Rybolovlev’s private yacht, “Anna” or “My Anna”, IMO: 1008994, from vesselfinder.com, which is one of several maritime tracking services, for the dates of August 10th-14th, 2016. I received a reply this morning. While I have not purchased the whole set of data, the first position and info of the ship was on the attached Excel file. See below.

Dear xxxxxx,
I have checked the AIS data availability for the requested vessel ANNA within the specified time range from 10 Aug, 2016 to 14 Aug, 2016.
We have 925 position records in 5-minute time resolution. You can check the time stamp of each position record in the attached movements report. The cost of the full data set in the report is 105 EUR.
If you however, might be interested into data at lower resolution, I can offer you the movements report in 1-hour time resolution for 55 EUR.
Data included in the vessel movements report is:
DATE / TIME - time stamp of last received position report (in UTC)
MMSI number
LATITUDE - coordinates (WGS84)
LONGITUDE - coordinates (WGS84)
COURSE - course over ground (in degrees)
SPEED - speed over ground (in knots)
HEADING - heading of the vessel's hull (in degrees). 511 means that there is no heading data.
IMO number
NAME - vessel's name
CALLSIGN - vessel's call sign
AIS TYPE - vessel's type according to AIS specification (look at Ship Type codes at http://www.bosunsmate.org/ais/message5.php ).
A - distance between AIS receiver and bow
B - distance between AIS receiver and stern (i.e. Ship Lenght = A + B)
C - distance to port
D - distance to starboard (i.e. Ship Width = C + D)
DRAUGHT - vessel's draught at the time of the position report
DESTINATION - destination port (as entered by the Master)
ETA - estimated time of arrival (as entered by the Master)
Execution time: 2 business days
Payment method: online payment with credit/debit card or PayPal
I look forward to hearing from you.
---
Best regards,
Dan McQuin
Email: info@vesselfinder.com
Web: http://www.vesselfinder.com
VesselFinder Ltd.
The pic below is from the Excel document from vesselfinder.com that I converted to jpg . It’s a little hard to see, but it’s the first line of the document and gives some important information. I’ll transcribe it into a table to make it easier to see. I’ve also placed the ship’s GPS coordinates onto a map for visual representation.

Anna3.jpg
DATE TIME(UTC) MMSI LATITUDE LONGITUDE COURSE SPEED HEADING IMO NAME CALL SIGN AIS TYPE A B C D DROUGHT DESTINATION ETA
2016-08-09 23:58:22 319271000 40.23985 18.85122 345.9 16 345 1008994 My Anna ZCPW7 37 46 21 3 10 0 Dubrovnik 8-10 14:00
Adriatic-Map3.jpg
Next stop Dubrovnik
Want to add another wrinkle to the twist? Rybolovlev’s yacht was recently photographed and tracked next to the yacht of Trump backer Robert Mercer in the British Virgin Islands. Rybolovlev claims to not know him either.

But speculation again was stoked when his state-of-the-art yacht Anna sat anchored in the British Virgin Islands on Friday night and another equally resplendent luxury liner, the Sea Owl, sidled up, according to a website that tracks the movement of yachts.

The owner of the dark-hulled yacht? President Donald Trump’s biggest financial supporter and Breitbart News moneyman, Robert Mercer.
A source provided The Palm Beach Post photos of Mercer’s Sea Owl and Rybolovlev’s Anna anchored off the North Sound near Virgin Gorda in the British Virgin Islands. One photo shows the two yachts separated only by a few sailing vessels between them.

The two vessels were a couple hundred feet away from each other on Friday and about 1,000 feet apart as late as Monday, according to data from http://www.marinetraffic.com obtained by the Palm Beach Post.
http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2017/3/ ... ed-Kushner


EXCLUSIVE: Dmitry Rybolovlev’s flight patterns point to role in Trump-Russia blackmail negotiations
By Bill Palmer | March 6, 2017 | 2

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Palmer Report has been reporting on the curious flight patterns of the private jet belonging to Russian oligarch Dmitry Rybolovlev, who tends to pop up in whatever U.S. city Donald Trump happens to be visiting at any given time. Rybolovlev also has ownership in a bank recently caught laundering Russian money. But research into his earlier flight patterns has him showing up at places and times corresponding with key events the Trump-Russia dossier.

Dmitry Rybolovlev’s private plane, which uses the call sign M-KATE and can be followed on any flight plan tracking website, has flown halfway around the world to arrive in cities ranging from Concord, North Carolina to West Palm Beach, Florida just as Donald Trump was also arriving in those cities. But his flight patterns from last summer paint an even more eye popping pattern.

According to his flight plans, Rybolovlev started off in the Hamptons in early August. It’s not a surprise to find a wealthy socialite in the Hamptons. According to the geotags on the tweets from Donald Trump’s longtime personal lawyer Michael Cohen, he was also in the Hamptons during that same time. From there, Rybolovlev traveled to Dubrovnik, Croatia at a time when Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner just happened to be vacationing in that same city (source). But it’s Rybolovlev’s next flight that sets off all the bells and whistles.

Days after surfacing in Dubrovnik at the same time as Ivanka and Kushner, the next destination for Dmitry Rybolovlev was Budapest, Hungary. That’s very close to Prague, Czech Republic (85 minutes via air). This was at the same precise timeframe in which former MI6 agent Christopher Steele’s infamous Trump-Russia dossier claims Michael Cohen was meeting with a Russian envoy in Prague to discuss the terms of the blackmail which Russia is holding over Trump (Cohen denies he’s ever been in Prague, and apart from the dossier, there is no proof that any Prague meeting between Trump’s people and Russia took place).



The flight tracking website FlightRadar24.com requires a subscription to access more than the past week’s worth of data, meaning you can’t view it on their website without paying. However we subscribed and took this screen capture of Rybolovlev’s flights:




This could all be one massive coincidence. But it also paints a picture of a two-week span in which 1) Dmitry Rybolovlev meets with Michael Cohen in the Hamptons to arrange or prepare for the Russia blackmail meeting, then 2) Rybolovlev travels to discuss the matter with Donald Trump’s daughter and son-in-law, then 3) Rybolovlev travels to Prague to reunite with Cohen and meet with the Russian envoy.
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: The Impeachment of President Donald J Trump

Postby seemslikeadream » Sun Mar 19, 2017 11:52 am

Trump sued over disclosure of personal debts
By JOSH GERSTEIN 03/18/17 10:48 PM EDT
A Washington lawyer is suing President Donald Trump for allegedly obscuring the extent of his personal debts on his federal financial disclosure form.

Attorney Jeffrey Lovitky filed the case in federal court in Washington this week, claiming that Trump's May 2016 disclosure intermingles his personal indebtedness and loans made to businesses or development projects Trump is affiliated with.

While Trump or his businesses are facing at least four lawsuits alleging unfair competition or violations of the Constitution's foreign emoluments clause, Lovity's suit makes no claims of impropriety — it simply alleges that the public is being deprived of accurate information about Trump's debts.

All Trump's debts are covered on a single page of his 104-page disclosure. The listed loans exceed $300 million in total, according to the report. The total amount of the loans is known to be much larger based on other data, but the disclosure form does not require details above $50 million for each loan that exceeds that amount.

"Really the question is concerning the liabilities held by the LLCs [limited liability corporations] and we just need more information to be able to know whether or not those are personal or business liabilities," Lovitky told POLITICO. "If you just look at the statement on its face, all those liabilities are assumed to be personal liabilities, but I just do not think that’s the case. I have information that says otherwise."

Lovitky said that most of the debt information Trump provided on the form was already public record because the loans are typically mortgages that are recorded publicly. However, there is no way from land records or corporate records to determine who is ultimately liable for loans if the debtor is a limited liability corporation, the attorney said.

Lovitky said he wrote to White House Counsel Don McGahn in January to ask Trump to file a corrected disclosure form, but received no reply. Under federal law, Trump's next financial disclosure form is not required to be filed until May 2018. Unlike other major presidential candidates for the past several decades, Trump has declined to make his tax returns public, although portions of a couple returns have turned up in the press.

White House spokespeople did not respond to a request for comment on the suit. A private Trump attorney, Sheri Dillon, referred a request for comment to the Trump Organization, which declined to comment.

Lovitky primarily litigates health care financing disputes, but also pursues civil rights cases from time to time. Asked why he is pressing the issue about Trump's financial disclosures, the attorney said: "It's mostly the fact that with this president there are very serious concerns about conflicts of interest in this particular administration and I think it’s important that those concerns be addressed thoroughly."

Several of Trump's largest reported loans are from a division of Deutsche Bank, a large German bank.

Lovitky's suit seeks no damages, but asks the court to declare that Trump's disclosure filed last year was illegal and to order him to file one detailing his personal debts. Lovitky said he hopes Trump will simply re-file the form rather than fight the suit.

The case was assigned to U.S. District Court Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, an appointee of President Bill Clinton.
http://www.politico.com/blogs/under-the ... ure-236222
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: The Impeachment of President Donald J Trump

Postby RocketMan » Tue Mar 21, 2017 4:15 pm

Congresswoman Maxine Waters apparently recently tweeted: "Get ready for impeachment".
-I don't like hoodlums.
-That's just a word, Marlowe. We have that kind of world. Two wars gave it to us and we are going to keep it.
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Re: The Impeachment of President Donald J Trump

Postby 82_28 » Tue Mar 21, 2017 4:31 pm

RocketMan » Tue Mar 21, 2017 12:15 pm wrote:Congresswoman Maxine Waters apparently recently tweeted: "Get ready for impeachment".


Yeah, it's over. I have been saying increasingly over the past week that he ain't gonna last a few more months. I did just see this this morning as well:

I link to rawstory, but it comes from Newsweek.

Trump would be wise to negotiate a resignation before his presidency is fatally wounded

http://www.rawstory.com/2017/03/trump-w ... y-wounded/
There is no me. There is no you. There is all. There is no you. There is no me. And that is all. A profound acceptance of an enormous pageantry. A haunting certainty that the unifying principle of this universe is love. -- Propagandhi
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Re: The Impeachment of President Donald J Trump

Postby seemslikeadream » Tue Mar 21, 2017 4:37 pm

yes I read this yesterday and I am darn ready for some reality catching up with trump

yesterday was a very big deal ..it was the beginning of the end...can't wait for those grifters to be forced out of the White House


There’s a smell of treason in the air, Imagine if J. Edgar Hoover or any other FBI director would have testified against a sitting president? It would have been a mind-boggling event.

- presidential historian Douglas Brinkley 3/20/2017
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: The Impeachment of President Donald J Trump

Postby Luther Blissett » Tue Mar 21, 2017 4:52 pm

It would be prudent to start prepping for a Pence presidency, someone I frankly know far less about.

What are your predictions for state repression under Pence, given someone that tightly-wound and self-repressed?
The Rich and the Corporate remain in their hundred-year fever visions of Bolsheviks taking their stuff - JackRiddler
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Re: The Impeachment of President Donald J Trump

Postby seemslikeadream » Tue Mar 21, 2017 5:03 pm

what I am thinking presently is that trump has mortally wounded the republican party, Pence won't be able to do much while all the trials are going on :)

and who knows he maybe headed for the gray bar hotel also :D

depending how long trump hangs on and I hope he hangs on close to the elections in 2018 when people can at least start clawing their way back from this insanity.

oh and the Intel Hearings will get trump's tax returns....absolutely :P


maybe trump's next TV show will be I Was Married to the Russian Mob


oops one more thing I just read after I posted that :evilgrin

The president might be wise to negotiate a resignation before he’s fatally wounded. Comey and Rogers slashed him so badly on Monday, with their emphatic eviscerations of his infamous tweets claiming President Barack Obama had wiretapped Trump Tower, that his credibility on any issue, outside his adoring legions of cult-like fans, has been nearly destroyed. At some point, the Republicans may see their own salvation lies in deserting him for Vice President Mike Pence

http://www.newsweek.com/trump-comey-rus ... ngs-571349
Last edited by seemslikeadream on Tue Mar 21, 2017 5:46 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
User avatar
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Posts: 32090
Joined: Wed Apr 27, 2005 11:28 pm
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