RUSSIA/РОССИЯ THREAD—ASSANGE CHRGD W/ SPYING—DJT IMPEACHED TWICE-US TREASURY SANCTS KILIMNIK AS RUSSIAN AGNT

☑︎#VoteDemocrat

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FOLLOW THE MONEY ALERT!!!!

RUSSIAN STATE BANK FINANCED TRUMP'S HOTEL DEALS IN TORONTO!!!!!!

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Russian State-Run Bank Financed Deal Involving Trump Hotel Partner
Russian-Canadian developer put money into Toronto project after receiving hundreds of millions from deal involving VEB
Christopher S. Stewart and
May 17, 2017 10:35 a.m. ET
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The Moscow headquarters of Russian state-run bank Vnesheconombank, known as VEB. Photo: Andrey Rudakov/Bloomberg News

By
Rob Barry,
Brett Forrest
VEB, a Russian state-run bank under scrutiny by U.S. investigators, financed a deal involving Donald Trump’s onetime partner in a Toronto hotel tower at a key moment for the project, according to people familiar with the transaction.

Alexander Shnaider, a Russian-Canadian developer who built the 65-story Trump International Hotel and Tower, put money into the project after receiving hundreds of millions of dollars from a separate asset sale that involved the Russian bank, whose full name is Vnesheconombank.

Mr. Shnaider sold his company’s share in a Ukrainian steelmaker for about $850 million in 2010, according to S&P Global Market Intelligence. According to two people with knowledge of the deal, the buyer, which hasn’t been identified publicly, was an entity acting for the Russian government. VEB initiated the purchase and provided the money, these people say.

U.S. investigators are looking into any ties between Russian financial institutions, Mr. Trump and anyone in his orbit, according to a person familiar with the probe. As part of the investigation, they’re examining interactions between Mr. Trump, his associates and VEB, which is now subject to U.S. sanctions, said another person familiar with the matter. The Toronto deal adds a new element to the list of known connections between Mr. Trump’s associates and Russia.

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Developer Alexander Shnaider, left, with Donald Trump and Ivanka Trump at the ribbon cutting for the Trump International Hotel and Tower in Toronto in April 2012. Photo: George Pimentel/WireImage/Getty Images

After Mr. Shnaider and his partner sold their stake in the steelmaker, Mr. Shnaider injected more money into the Trump Toronto project, which was financially troubled. Mr. Shnaider’s lawyer, Symon Zucker, said in an April interview that about $15 million from the asset sale went into the Trump Toronto project. A day later, he wrote in an email: “I am not able to confirm that any funds” from the deal “went into the Toronto project.”

A spokesman for the Trump Organization, the family’s real-estate firm, said Mr. Trump had no involvement in any financial dealings with VEB and that the Trump company “merely licensed its brand and manages the hotel and residences.” VEB didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Mr. Trump has said he has no dealings with Russia. “To the best of my knowledge, no person that I deal with does,” he said in February. On Friday, Mr. Trump’s lawyers released a two-month-old letter stating that 10 years of his tax returns show little income, investments or debt from Russian sources beyond items already known to the public.

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VEB has long been viewed by Russian analysts as a vehicle for the Russian government to fund politically important projects, including the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi. A VEB executive in New York was sentenced to prison last year after pleading guilty to conspiring to act in the U.S. as a Russian agent without notifying U.S. authorities.

In the wake of U.S. intelligence agency findings that Russian government-directed hackers interfered in the 2016 election, several agencies, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation, are conducting a counterintelligence probe into whether Mr. Trump’s campaign staff had any contact with Russian officials. Committees in the House of Representatives and the Senate also are investigating the matter. Russian authorities have denied any interference.

At the time of Mr. Shnaider’s steelmaker deal, Russian President Vladimir Putin was chairman of VEB’s supervisory board, and major deals would have been approved by him, according to a former Russian government official and several Russian government and economic experts. The bank later was placed on the U.S. sanctions list after Russia’s intrusion into Ukraine and its annexation of Crimea in 2014. American entities are barred from financial involvement with the bank.

VEB made headlines when it emerged that its chairman met with Mr. Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner in December. A bank spokesperson has said VEB’s leaders met Mr. Kushner and numerous global financial executives as it developed a new strategy for the bank. Mr. Spicer has said Mr. Kushner’s meeting was part of his role during the Trump transition as the “primary point of contact with foreign government officials.”

The Toronto project was billed in 2007 as a joint venture between Mr. Trump and Mr. Shnaider and was projected to cost about 500 million Canadian dollars. Mr. Trump said at the time he would manage the hotel’s operations and Mr. Shnaider planned to develop the tower, which also would include condominiums, through his company, Talon International Development Inc.

The project has been dogged by financial problems. In November, it entered insolvency proceedings, and a judge in March approved its sale.

Alan Garten, the Trump Organization’s general counsel, said the company “was not the owner, developer or seller” of the project. While The Wall Street Journal and others reported in 2011 and 2012 that Mr. Trump had a minor ownership stake in it, Mr. Garten now says Mr. Trump “did not hold” equity and had no involvement with the financing.

The Trump Toronto Hotel Management Corp. has received at least $611,000 in fees from the project since 2015, federal financial-disclosure forms filed last May show. The forms don’t disclose the company’s total income from the deal.

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The Trump International Hotel and Tower in Toronto was dogged by financial problems. Photo: George Pimentel/WireImage/Getty Images

Shortly after the project broke ground in 2007, about 85% of the units were presold. During the financial crisis, some buyers pulled out and others were unable to get financing, receivership documents show. Midland Resources Holding Ltd., then owned by Mr. Shnaider and a partner, was on the hook for cost overruns, the documents show.

Midland Resources had acquired its stake in the Ukrainian steelmaker, called Zaporizhstal, for about $70 million after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The 2010 transaction to sell it was opaque. Midland transferred ownership of its portion of the steelmaker to the unnamed buyer through five offshore companies, according to Mr. Shnaider’s lawyer and court documents.

The idea for the deal was brought to a top VEB executive by a former Ukrainian government official, according to an investment banker familiar with what happened. Although the buyer wasn’t named, a steel trader with knowledge of the deal said VEB itself ended up with control of Midland’s share of the steelmaker. At the time, Russian entities saw gaining control of large industrial assets in Ukraine as having strategic value to Russian political interests in the future, said another investment banker with knowledge of the deal.

Mr. Zucker, Mr. Shnaider’s lawyer, said Midland Resources “has never had any relationship with VEB” and “does not dictate where their purchasers borrow funds.” He declined to identify the buyer, citing confidentiality provisions, other than to say it was a “Ukrainian industrial group.”

Mr. Shnaider’s companies continued to pump money into the Toronto tower as it struggled to stay afloat, according to his lawyer and later court documents. Later, Mr. Shnaider became embroiled in a legal battle with Mr. Trump’s companies over management issues. The Trump Organization declined to comment.

In November, a Canadian judge placed the tower into receivership. Mr. Trump’s company was owed C$116,165.72, and Mr. Shnaider’s company as much as C$105 million, court documents show.

Recently, a judge approved the sale of the building to a California-based investment firm for about $220 million.

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GnauzBookOfRhymes

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Amash is an annoying libertarian---precisely the type of person Trump's voter base refers to a as a "cuckservative." Probably one of the few Repubs who doesn't have much to lose by attacking the president.

Trump won his district by 10 points and has gone to the GOP candidate in every presidential election going back at least until 1992. Whether he's personally Libertarian or not - he is going hard against the president and by extension the party his constituents have always supported.
 

Joe Sixpack

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The thing that infuriates me is that this dumb fukk Trump is a fukkin racist who saw a black man occupy that office and he said to himself "fukk this if that black sonuvabytch can be President so can I!"
fukkin piece a shyt has the attention span of a fukkin grapefruit:scust:

He can't hold Barack's nut sack

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☑︎#VoteDemocrat

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Former CIA Director: Trump proves he’s Russia’s "useful fool"


Former CIA director: Trump proves he’s Russia’s ‘useful fool’
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Michael V. Hayden, a principal at the Chertoff Group and visiting professor at George Mason University’s Schar School of Policy and Government, was director of the National Security Agency from 1999 to 2005 and the Central Intelligence Agency from 2006 to 2009.

In November, a few days before the election, I tried to parse Donald Trump’s strange affection for Vladimir Putin and the various contacts that members of his campaign had had with folks in Russia.

The best explanation I could come up with was something the Russians call polezni durak, the “useful fool.” That’s a term from the Soviet era describing the naive individual whom the Kremlin usually held in contempt but who could be induced to do things on its behalf.

Six months later, it is disappointing to report, the term “useful fool” still seems a pretty apt description.

Read These Comments

The best conversations on The Washington Post

President Trump continues to resist the conclusion that Russia meddled in the American electoral process. As recently as last week, the best he could muster was a conditional, “If Russia” interfered.

Understandably, that attitude led to a strained relationship with the intelligence community, a state of affairs not helped by the president’s unfounded, yet continuing, accusations that the community spied on his campaign.

Now the Russians are front and center in another controversy, this one fully of the president’s making. Last week, according to The Post, the president disclosed highly sensitive intelligence on the Islamic State to Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov during an Oval Office meeting.

The information reportedly derived from another country’s intelligence service, so its revelation would have violated the near-sacred third-party rule of intelligence: Information from one country cannot be shared with another without the agreement of the originator. Break that rule often enough and your intelligence begins to dry up.

The administration contends that neither sources nor methods were discussed. That may be true enough, but I have had many arguments with journalists trying to explain that revealing the “fact of” something often points the way to the “fact how” — to the very sources and methods they claim they are not threatening.

Of course, the president has absolute declassification authority and, in practice, should have great leeway in what he wants to share with other nations. The issue here is not the power of a president but the performance of this president.

Governing is new turf for Trump. He is one of the least experienced presidents in the nation’s history. There is no evidence of scholarship or even deep interest in the processes of U.S. government. He has little international knowledge beyond real estate and business.

But even with such a thin portfolio, he seems incapable of humility in the face of such inexperience. By all accounts, the president is impatient with process and study, preternaturally confident in his own knowledge and instincts, and indifferent to, and perhaps contemptuous of, the institutions of government designed to help him succeed.

We saw this coming in the transition when a self-confident president-elect contacted foreign leaders without benefit of briefings from, or even the knowledge of, the State Department.

So, little wonder that an impulsive president appears to have gone off script to warn his Russian visitors in dramatic fashion. Or was it to impress them with the prowess of his intelligence services?

Once again, the White House circled the wagons. National security adviser H.R. McMaster and deputy adviser Dina Powell, both of whom I know and regard highly, stated that the president had not specifically revealed sources and methods and asserted that The Post article was “false.”

Debates over what exactly the president said or did not say were made moot, though, when the president tweeted that he could damn well do what he pleased in these circumstances.

McMaster and Powell could not have been comfortable being thrust into this position. One hopes that they are not put there very often.

Indeed, there is a creeping corruption near the president as his spokespeople are frequently forced to defend that which should not be defended. The national-security team can’t allow itself to be touched by that.

Then there is the question of the leak itself. Who told The Post — and, very quickly, other news organizations — about the meeting? The president’s defenders are already pointing to dark elements of the deep state or to holdovers from the Obama administration.

Maybe, but there are alternative explanations. There may have been more here than just malice or obstructionism.

Reportedly, National Security Council staffers were concerned enough about the revelations that they felt compelled to warn the CIA and the National Security Agency. Clearly, someone in government was concerned about potential damage. Once that word was out, it’s not hard to imagine the alarm among government professionals increasingly uneasy about managing the consequences of what they see as presidential missteps.

The administration will probably try to hunt down some of those folks, at least those who talked to The Post. Leaks are leaks, after all. But one hopes they also turn considerable attention to making our president more knowledgeable and prepared — and more open to the processes and protocols that have governed the behavior of others who have held that high office.

Read more here:

The Post’s View: Trump can’t be trusted with sensitive information — and now the world knows

Michael V. Hayden: Trump is Russia’s useful fool

Anne Applebaum: The experts were right: Trump isn’t fit to be president

The Post’s View: The most suspicious part of Trump’s presidency
 
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