Trump's ties to Russian Mobsters, with "a lot of money pouring in from Russia"

Donald Trump first visited Russia in 1987 as a guest of Intourist, as he related in The Art of the Deal.¹ It was a KGB front.² Trump later visited Russia again in 1996, 2007, and 2013.³

The Russian KGB and its successor spy agency, the FSB, routinely used Russian prostitutes (called "swallows" or "red sparrows") to entice US residents and other foreigners of influence, often accompanied by secret video tapings of the resulting encounters, to amass blackmail for potential future leverage.⁴ There is every indication that these spy agencies successfully deployed this technique against Trump during his repeated visits to Russia.⁵

Trump's holdings have been awash in Russian money for decades.⁶ Russian Mob figures purchased the entire 51st floor and many other units in Trump Tower.⁷ In April 2013, a federal grand jury indicted 30 people for crimes run from Trump Tower by a Russian Mafia boss.⁸ A bank that was caught and heavily fined for Russian money laundering bailed Trump out from bankruptcy in 2010.⁹

Felix Sater was a business partner of Trump for a decade through 2011,¹⁰ with his office in Trump Tower.¹¹ Sater met with Trump "on a constant basis," as he and other sources reported.¹² The son of a Russian mobster,¹³ he went to prison for slashing apart a man's face with a broken glass.¹⁴ He later pled guilty to money laundering for US and Russian Mafia figures.¹⁵

Sater gave Don Jr. and Ivanka a tour of Russia in 2006.¹⁶ Seen in Trump Tower in July 2016, Sater said his visit was "confidential."¹⁷

Although Trump traveled with Mafia-linked multiple felon Felix Sater and met with him multiple times weekly, Trump testified in 2013, with a straight face, that if Sater was "in the room right now I really wouldn't know what he looked like."¹⁸

Donald Trump, Jr. acknowledged in 2008, "Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets." He saw "a lot of money pouring in from Russia."¹⁹

In 2014, during a golfing excursion, Eric Trump told a prominent golf reporter and author: "Well, we don't rely on American banks. We have all the funding we need out of Russia."²⁰

In summary, Donald Trump has longstanding ties to Russian Mobsters and has been heavily financed with Russian money. He has also offered obsequious praise for Putin, saying that Putin was "so nice," that he [Trump] was "the apple of his eye." These connections by Trump to Putin and his Russian Mafia state are of grave concern, given that Russia is an enemy of the US and the NATO alliance.

Alarmingly, on February 10, 2024, Trump said at a rally in Conway, South Carolina: Russia, do "whatever the hell" you want to a NATO country with low defense spending.

1. Donald Trump and Tony Schwartz, Trump: The Art of the Deal, NY: Ballantine Books, 1987 ("Moscow Hotel," p. 412); Politico, "The Hidden History of Trump's First Trip to Moscow," November 19, 2017, https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/11/19/trump-first-moscow-trip-215842/.
2. Luke Harding, Collusion: Secret Meetings, Dirty Money, and How Russia Helped Donald Trump Win, Kindle Ed. (New York: Vintage, 2017), Loc. Loc. 2936-52, 4425-58, see Loc. 2954-71.
3. Voice of America News, "Timeline: Trump's Involvements With Russia," February 28, 2017, https://www.voanews.com/a/trump-involvement-russia/3695927.html.
4. Harding, Collusion, Loc. 1014-20, 1024-30, 1043-47, 2941-52; Craig Unger, House of Trump, House of Putin: The Untold Story of Donald Trump and the Russian Mafia, First Edition (New York, New York: Dutton, 2018), pp. 19, 20, 196.
5. Unger, House of Trump, House of Putin, pp. 3, 19, 50, 54, 128, 196, 213, 214, 262, 265.
6. The New Republic, "Trump's Russian Laundromat: How Trump Tower's Luxury High-Rises Became a Hub for Dirty Money and International Crime Syndicates," July 13, 2017, https://newrepublic.com/article/143586/trumps-russian-laundromat-trump-tower-luxury-high-rises-dirty-money-international-crime-syndicate; USA TODAY, "Trump's business network reached alleged Russian mobsters," March 28, 2017, https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2017/03/28/trump-business-past-ties-russian-mobsters-organized-crime/98321252/.; Harding, Collusion, Loc. 3950-59.
7. The New Republic, July 13, 2017, op. cit; Harding, Collusion, Loc. 3778-3807, 3860-75.
8. The New Republic, July 13, 2017, op. cit; ABC News, "Russian mafia boss still at large after FBI wiretap at Trump Tower," March 21, 2017, https://abcnews.go.com/US/story-fbi-wiretap-russians-trump-tower/story?id=46266198; See Harding, Collusion, Loc. 3872-75.
9. The bank was Deutsche Bank, which was caught having engaged in massive Russian money laundering transactions (Harding, Collusion, Loc. 3965-4183). The fines were $475 million US dollars from the New York State Department of Financial Services plus 163 million pounds from London's Financial Conduct Authority (Harding, Collusion, Loc. 4132-42). See also Harding, Collusion, Loc. 4189-93, concerning Jared Kushner's loan of $285 million and $25 million line of credit with Deutsche Bank.
10. Harding, Collusion, Loc. 3816-56; Forbes, "Donald Trump And The Felon: Inside His Business Dealings With A Mob-Connected Hustler," October 3, 2016, https://www.forbes.com/sites/richardbehar/2016/10/03/donald-trump-and-the-felon-inside-his-business-dealings-with-a-mob-connected-hustler/#196649ae1e02.; Bloomberg, "Trump, Russia, and Those Shadowy Sater Deals at Bayrock," June 21, 2017, https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2017-06-21/trump-russia-and-those-shadowy-sater-deals-at-bayrock. See also photo of Trump with Felix Sater and Tevfik Arik at the launch party for the Trump SoHo project in September 2007, a project that Sater helped develop (The New York Times, "Donald Trump Settled a Real Estate Lawsuit, and a Criminal Case Was Closed," April 6, 2016, https://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/06/us/politics/donald-trump-soho-settlement.html.; The Washington Post, "Former Mafia-linked figure describes association with Trump," May 17, 2016, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/former-mafia-linked-figure-describes-association-with-trump/2016/05/17/cec6c2c6-16d3-11e6-aa55-670cabef46e0_story.html.; The Wall Street Journal, "Donald Trump and the Mob," September 1, 2016, https://www.wsj.com/articles/donald-trump-dealt-with-a-series-of-people-who-had-mob-ties-147273692).
11. Sater was given the office by the Trump organization, and the phone number on his business card previously belonged to an attorney in Trump's general counsel's office (Forbes, October 3, 2016, op. cit.). See also Bloomberg, June 21, 2017, op. cit.
12. Sater testified that he saw Trump "on a constant basis" (Forbes, Oct. 3, 2016, op. cit.; Bloomberg, June 21, 2017,op. cit.; see also The New Republic, July 13, 2017, op. cit.). Jody Kriss, an insider in Sater's firm, Bayrock, which partnered with Trump, testified that at one point Sater was meeting with Trump multiple times weekly and saw the Trumps "frequently" (Bloomberg, June 21, 2017, op. cit.). A third source reported that Sater and Trump had standing meetings each week (Business Insider, "The Trump Organization is set to distance itself from one of its biggest headaches in the Russia probe," November 23, 2017, https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-org-to-cut-ties-with-trump-soho-developed-with-sater-bayrock-2017-11).
13. Harding, Collusion, Loc. 3808-14. Harding reported: "According to court documents, Sater's father�originally called Mikhail Sheferofsky�was a Mogilevich crime syndicate boss who headed the Russian mafia in Brooklyn. He served prison time in Britain for counterfeiting and fraud. In the United States Sater Sr. ran an extortion scheme in Brighton Beach. The charge sheet accused him of terrorizing restaurants, food stores, and a local medical clinic. This took place during the 1990s and involved the 'wrongful use of actual or threatened force, violence and fear.'"
14. The Washington Post, May 17, 2016, op. cit.; The Wall Street Journal, Sept. 1, 2016, op. cit.; Forbes, Oct. 3, 2016, op. cit.; Harding, Collusion, Loc. 3814-22.
15. As cited in the note above, also Forbes, Oct. 3, 2016, op. cit.; The New York Times, April 5, 2016, op. cit. Bloomberg, June 21, 2017, op. cit.; Politico, "Just What Were Donald Trump's Ties to the Mob?," May 22, 2016, https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/05/donald-trump-2016-mob-organized-crime-213910/; David Cay Johnston, The Making of Donald Trump (New York: Melville House, 2016), p. 163.
16. The New York Times, "Trump Associate Boasted That Moscow Business Deal 'Will Get Donald Elected,'" August 28, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/28/us/politics/trump-tower-putin-felix-sater.html; Forbes, Oct. 3, 2016, op. cit.; Bloomberg, "Trump Can't Seem to Shake Those Russia Problems," February 21, 2017, https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-02-21/trump-can-t-seem-to-shake-those-russia-problems.; Harding, Collusion, Loc. 3827-33; Johnston, The Making of Donald Trump, p. 163.
17. Politico, "Trump's mob-linked ex-associate gives $5,400 to campaign," August 26, 2016, https://www.politico.com/story/2016/08/donald-trump-russia-felix-sater-227434.
18. Forbes, October 3, 2016, op. cit.; also quoted in The Washington Post, May 17, 2016, op. cit.; Bloomberg, February 21, 2017, op. cit.; The New Republic, July 13, 2017, op. cit.
19. The Washington Post, "Inside Trump's financial ties to Russia and his unusual flattery of Vladimir Putin," June 17, 2016, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/inside-trumps-financial-ties-to-russia-and-his-unusual-flattery-of-vladimir-putin/2016/06/17/dbdcaac8-31a6-11e6-8ff7-7b6c1998b7a0_story.html.
20. WBUR, "A Day (And A Cheeseburger) With President Trump," May 11, 2017, https://www.wbur.org/onlyagame/2017/05/05/james-dodson-donald-trump-golf