Comments by "" (@DavidJ222) on "What we know about Ukrainian president's coup plan allegations" video.
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Russian intelligence gains influence in foreign countries by operating subtly and patiently. It exerts different gradations of leverage over different kinds of people, and uses a basic tool kit of blackmail that involves the exploitation of greed, stupidity, ego, and 5exual appetite. All of which are traits Trump has in abundance.
Throughout his career, Trump has always felt comfortable operating at or beyond the ethical boundaries that constrain typical businesses. In the 1980s, he worked with La Cosa Nostra, which controlled the NY cement trade, and later employed Michael Cohen and Felix Sater, both of whom have links to the RussianMafia. Trump habitually refused to pay his counterparties, and if the people he burned got in his way, he bullied them with threats.
He maintains a fanatical secrecy about his finances and has paid out numerous settlements to silence women. The combination of a penchant for compromising behavior, a willingness to work closely with criminals, and a desire to protect aspects of his privacy makes him the ideal blackmail target.
It is not difficult to imagine that Russia quickly had something on Trump, from either exploits during his 1987 visit or any subsequent embarrassing behavior KGB assets might have uncovered. But the other leverage Russia enjoyed over Trump for at least 15 years is indisputable — in fact, his family has admitted to it multiple times.
After a series of financial reversals and his brazen abuse of bankruptcy laws, Trump found it impossible to borrow from American banks and grew heavily reliant on unconventional sources of capital. Russian cash proved his salvation. From 2003 to 2017, people from the former USSR made 86 all-cash purchases — a red flag of potential money laundering — of Trump properties, totaling $109 million. In 2010, the private-wealth division of Deutsche Bank also loaned him hundreds of millions of dollars during the same period it was laundering billions in Russian money. “Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets,” said Donald Jr. in 2008. “We don’t rely on American banks. We have all the funding we need out of Russia,” boasted Eric Trump in 2014.
Since Putin, a former KGB agent, rose to power in 1999, money has become a key source of Russian political leverage.
Shady business transactions offer the perfect cover for covert payments, since just about the entire Russian economy is shady. Trump’s adamant refusal to disclose his tax returns has many possible explanations, but none is more obvious than the prospect that he is hiding what are effectively bribes.
In July 2013, Trump visited Moscow again. If the Russians did not have a back-channel relationship or compromising file on Trump 30 years ago, they very likely obtained one then.
The first intimations that Trump might harbor a dark secret involving Russia originated among America’s European allies, which, being situated closer to Russia, have had more experience fending off its nefarious encroachments.
In July 2016, a loose-knit community of computer scientists and cybersecurity experts discovered a strange pattern of online traffic between two computer servers. One of those servers belonged to Alfa Bank in Moscow and the other to the Trump Organization. Alfa Bank’s owners had assumed an unforeseen level of prominence and influence in the economic and political affairs of their nation.
The analysts noted that the traffic between the two servers occurred during office hours in New York and Moscow and spiked in correspondence with major campaign events, suggesting it entailed human communication rather than bots. More suspiciously, after NYTimes reporter Eric Lichtblau asked Alfa Bank about it, but BEFORE he brought it up with the Trump campaign, the server in Trump Tower shut down. The timing strongly implied Alfa Bank was communicating with Trump.
In the summer of 2016, one of the Baltic states shared with then CIA director, John Brennan an audio recording of Russians discussing funneling money to the Trump campaign. In the summer of 2016, Robert Hannigan, head of the UK Intelligency agency GCHQ, flew to Washington to brief Brennan personally on intercepted communications between the Trump campaign and Russia.
What Brennan learned obviously unsettled him profoundly. In congressional testimony on Russian election interference, Brennan hinted that some Americans might have betrayed their country. "Individuals who go along a treasonous path," he warned, do not even realize they're along that path until it gets to be a bit too late."
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