On May 10, 2010, former employees at Donald Trump’s real estate development company blew the whistle on the entire operation. The company, they said, was owned and operated by the Russian mafia and bankrolled by Russian oligarchs – billionaires with influence in the Kremlin (the Russian government).
The employees alleged that the company’s primary service was international money laundering and tax evasion, not property development. To be clear, this company developed Trump properties, but this was NOT Donald Trump’s company.
In 2002, Donald Trump stopped building his own properties – if he ever had before. (Some of Trump’s earliest developments were actually the work of his father, Fred.)
For many years after, every new Trump property was the work of investment firm Bayrock Group, the alleged Russian money laundering operation. That year, Trump sold the use of his name to Bayrock in exchange for around 20% of the new “Trump” properties’ profits.
The deal couldn’t have come at a more opportune time. Trump was $4 billion in debt from the financial disasters surrounding his Atlantic City casinos, which had been charged with hundreds of violations of anti-money laundering laws. The banks had turned against him, but Bayrock came to his rescue. According to the company whistleblowers, that was the whole point.
They alleged that Bayrock was in operation *for* the deal with Trump.
Bayrock co-owners Felix Sater and Tevfik Arif would develop expensive properties under the Trump brand, lie to investors, buyers, and lenders to steal their money, and use the profits to form more companies to further conceal the flow of Russian money into the United States. If you don’t remember Sater from the attack on another with a broken wine glass that netted him 15 months in prison, check out his Wikipedia.org entry. He’s a real prize and close to Trump for years.
So, how likely is it that these allegations were true? VERY.
Felix Sater was born in Russia in 1966 but moved to Israel with his family in 1973, where they acquired dual citizenship and visas before quickly relocating to New York – a common practice for the era’s Russian mob.
Sater’s father was an underboss in the Semion Mogilevich criminal enterprise, which spread through many countries in western Asia and Europe but held the most influence in Russia, Hungary, and likely Israel.
Mogilevich’s transnational crime syndicate was once considered the top threat to U.S. national security – until former FBI heads and political families went to work for him.
In the late ‘90s, Sater was charged with running a fraudulent stock brokerage for the purpose of MONEY LAUNDERING and defrauding investors. He evaded charges by fleeing to Russia and only returned after agreeing to work as a secret informant for the FBI.
In 2006, Sater took Ivanka and Don Jr. on a trip to Moscow, where they received a special tour of the Kremlin. Ivanka even sat in Vladimir Putin’s chair.
BEE GONE cover with DJT as bumblebee
In 2020, the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee reported that Sater was working with a large network of contacts in Russian military, intelligence, and government positions in the years that he would see Trump on an almost-daily basis.
Knowing all that we know, it’s hard to believe that Donald Trump will ever be stopped by the justice system or any government institution.
When Trump ran for president in 2015, the FBI had known for 13 years that Trump was working with Russian organized crime, funded by Russian elites. After all, his closest connection to Putin was THEIR informant.
But they knew about his Russia ties even before this.
They knew about the Russian mafia members they caught doing business in Trump Tower in the 90s.
They knew about Trump’s Fourth of July trip to Moscow in the 80s. (Reports have surfaced for years that Russia has been grooming DJT since at least 1987l
They knew about most if not all of Trump’s other transnational crime connections documented on Trump File.
They knew about this, and they didn’t stop him. They didn’t warn us. They didn’t open THEIR file on Donald Trump in 2016 and send it to the Justice Dept. to hold him accountable or protect us.
In fact, they helped him. But that’s another set of stories.
There’s a public file on Trump now. It’s our website – countless hours of research organized by when these events took place. You can help us keep it going by donating at TrumpFile.org/donate
Thank you for reading and sharing!
In the ongoing effort to provide some “lighter side” thoughts, here are a few, courtesy of the Borowitz Report: