Michael Cohen and the End Stage of the Trump Presidency
"I am unaware of anybody who has taken a serious look at Trump’s business who doesn’t believe that there is a high likelihood of rampant criminality. In Azerbaijan, he did business with a likely money launderer for Iran’s Revolutionary Guard. In the Republic of Georgia, he partnered with a group that was being investigated for a possible role in the largest known bank-fraud and money-laundering case in history. In Indonesia, his development partner is “knee-deep in dirty politics”; there are criminal investigations of his deals in Brazil; the F.B.I. is reportedly looking into his daughter Ivanka’s role in the Trump hotel in Vancouver, for which she worked with a Malaysian family that has admitted to financial fraud. Back home, Donald, Jr., and Ivanka were investigated for financial crimes associated with the Trump hotel in SoHo—an investigation that was halted suspiciously. His Taj Mahal casino received what was then the largest fine in history for money-laundering violations.
Listing
all the financial misconduct can be overwhelming and tedious. I have
limited myself to some of the deals over the past decade, thus ignoring
Trump’s long history of links to New York Mafia figures and other
financial irregularities.
The
narrative that will become widely understood is that Donald Trump did
not sit atop a global empire. He was not an intuitive genius and tough
guy who created billions of dollars of wealth through fearlessness. He
had a small, sad global operation, mostly run by his two oldest children
and Michael Cohen, a lousy lawyer who barely keeps up the pretenses of lawyering and who now faces an avalanche of charges, from taxicab-backed bank fraud to money laundering and campaign-finance violations."
posted by Ricky at 15:31
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