Sara Danner Dukic has assembled a meticulously documented timeline on Donald Trump starting in 1984, when a Russian mobster bought apartments in Trump Tower. Yes, Trump – Russia ties go back at least that far. In my view, Trump has always lived way beyond his means, and thus was and is easily corrupted. Not that he needed any encouragement or had any qualms about being so. Nor is he a crime boss. Rather, he’s a conduit for making dirty money sparkly fresh.
Some observations. Trump expressed interest in running for president in 1988. He (and presumably others) have been planning this for decades. This Trump timeline shows that a curious number of folks around Trump and the Russian mob died in tragic accidents, were found dead, or murdered. Imagine that.
Kusher is up to his eyeballs in Russia collusion and corruption. Because, as with Trump, it’s all about money and power. They have no ideology or ethics.
(Semion Mogilevich is the head of Russia organized crime. He is above the oligarchs.)
Trump timeline excerpts follow. Read the whole thing.
1980’s
1984: Russian émigré David Bogatin pays cash for five apartments in Trump Tower. Bogatin’s brother ran a $150 million stock scam with Russian mafia boss Semion Mogilevich.
Autumn, 1986: Trump meets Soviet ambassador Yuri Dubinin. And per Trump’s own account in Art of the Deal, “One thing led to another, and now I’m talking about building a large luxury hotel, across the street from the Kremlin, in partnership with the Soviet government.”
March 16, 1987: Bogatin (who had purchased multiple apartments in Trump Tower for cash) pleads guilty to taking part in a massive gasoline-bootlegging scheme with Russian mobsters. The government seized his five condos at Trump Tower, because he’d used them to “launder money, to shelter and hide assets.” A Senate investigation into organized crime later revealed that Bogatin was a leading figure in the Russian mob in New York.
July 4, 1987: Trump flies to the USSR for the first time after being personally invited – the trip is arranged by the Soviet government.
1988: Trump starts talking about running for president on Oprah
1990’s
1991: Trump declares bankruptcy, sells his yacht to Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal, Trump declares bankruptcy an additional 3 times stemming from various properties he’s over-leveraged.
1994: Trump allegedly rapes and beats a 13-year-old girl at a party with Jeffrey Epstein, multiple times. In the filed complaint, the 13-year-old was threatened to be “disappeared” like another young girl had been if she told anyone.
1998: Trump Taj Mahal fined for currency transaction reporting violations.
1999: Trump’s first run for president.
2000-present
2002 – 2011: The Bayrock Group partners with the Trump Organization on developments including the Trump SoHo hotel. Principals in the group include Felix Sater – believed to be connected with Semion Mogilevich – and Tevfik Arif.
2005: at the same time Trump is unable to get a 25 million pound loan from Bank of Scotland due to being a credit risk, Deutsche Bank (who later is hit with massive fines for money laundering) loans Trump nearly one billion dollars. Trump’s banker at Deutsche Bank is Justice Kennedy’s son.
2007 – 2016: Buyers tied to Russia make 86 cash purchases at Trump properties.
2008: Junior brags that they’re getting a lot of money from Russia. Russian oligarch buys a Palm Beach mansion from Trump, paying twice the value
2011 – 2015: Deutsche Bank, who 5 years previous had given Donald Trump nearly 1 billion dollars when Bank of Scotland wouldn’t loan him 25 million pounds, is laundering billions of dollars with the help of Russians. 2011: Eric Trump brags that they have access to millions of dollars from Russians.
April 16, 2013: Preet Bharara, then US attorney for SDNY, announces charges against massive Russian organized crime ring operating out of Trump Tower.
March 6, 2015: Trump Taj Mahal fined for money laundering.
November 3, 2015: Felix Sater, who is believed to work for Semion Mogilevich writes Michael Cohen stating that he’ll get buy-in from Putin and that they’ll engineer Trump’s presidency.
April – May 2016: George Papadopoulos in communication with “high ranking Russian official” in an attempt to set up meetings between Trump team and Russian reps, w/the promise “that the Kremlin had ‘dirt’ on Hillary Clinton in the form of “thousands of emails…
June 9, 2016: Trump Tower meeting with Russians, Manafort, Kushner, Don Jr. Present at the meeting was Nataliya Veselnitskaya, who at the time was representing Prevezon, a company implicated in a money-laundering case at SDNY
October 31, 2016: Mother Jones reports “A Veteran Spy Has Given the FBI Information Alleging a Russian Operation to Cultivate Donald Trump.
November 7, 2016 (one day before election day): Connie Watton, maid of Stephen Schwarzman – a Trump AND Kremlin friend – is pushed in front of a subway. The woman who pushed her is assigned defense attorney Mathew Mari, known for his legal work for the Bonanno crime family. More on Schwarzman’s relationship with Trump, and Saudi Arabia here. More on Schwarzman’s links to Russia and Rosneft here. Schwarzman had also financed Kushner projects and gave Jared Kushner a loan.
December 2016: Jared Kushner instructs Michael Flynn to sabotage US foreign policy. Kushner tries to set up secret back channel with Russians using Russians’ secure facilities. Jared Kushner and Michael Flynn meet with Sergei Kislyak at Trump Tower. Jared Kushner meets with Sergey Gorkov, “a graduate of the academy of the Federal Security Service, or FSB, the domestic intelligence arm of the former Soviet KGB, who was appointed by Putin to the post less than a year before his encounter with Kushner.” KT McFarland sends email stating that “If there is a tit-for-tat escalation Trump will have difficulty improving relations with Russia, which has just thrown U.S.A. election to him.”
March 11, 2017: Trump fires Preet Bharara, who as US Attorney of SDNY had led the breakup of a massive Russian organized crime ring operating out of Trump Tower.
January 10, 2017: Buzzfeed publishes Steele Dossier.
March 21, 2017: A lawyer for a Putin-foe, Nikolai Gorokhov, reportedly thrown from a window in Moscow. Gorokhov was set to testify as a U.S. government witness in a money laundering case initiated by SDNY (led by Preet Bahrara). (source) “The alleged vehicle by which these dirty assets were washed clean was a Cyprus-registered company called Prevezon Holdings Ltd.” (source) Prevezon is represented by Nataliya Veselnitskaya at the time that she attends the Trump Tower meeting in June of 2016.
December 16, 2017: Trump learns that Mueller has in his possession all of their transition emails on the .gov domain, obtained via the GSA.
June 27, 2018: Justice Kennedy, whose son was Donald Trump’s banker, unexpectedly announces retirement. Trump and Kennedy reportedly had a special relationship.
October 3, 2018: The Russian deputy attorney general (Saak Karapetyan) who reportedly directed Natalya Veselnitskaya (the lawyer who met with the Trump campaign in Trump Tower) dies in a helicopter crash. It was later reported that the pilot of the helicopter had been shot.