DragonI

'Most of the GOP leadership has been compromised' by Russian money: Trump biographer

A biographer who detailed the relationship between Donald Trump and the Russian mob explained that Russia’s financial links to the United States extend far beyond the president. Craig Unger, author of House of Trump, House of Putin: The Untold Story of Donald Trump and the Russian Mafia, wrote in a Reddit AMA that one of the biggest surprise in his book is how Trump has been compromised “for decades.”

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Trump was first compromised by the Russians in the Eighties back in the days of the Soviet Union and the Cold War.

In 1984, my book shows, the Russian Mafia first began to use Trump real estate to launder money and it continued for decades and may have accounted for billions of dollars flowing to Trump.

In 1988, Trump, after his first trip to Russian, took out full page ads in the NYT and WaPO, etc, touting a foreign policy that was very anti-NATO.

The Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee run by Mitch McConnell got millions from [Soviet-born businessman] Leonard Blavatnik. Much, much more int he book. As for the endgame, I think it is already begning to unravel.

In the 90s, the Russians began sending $ to GOP Speaker of the House Tom Delay

Q:  How much of Congress do you think ends up in the final indictments?

Don't know who will be indicted, but a lot of Republicans are implicated. It is sometimes said that in Washington, the biggest scandal is what IS legal, and in this case you will find boatloads of Russian money going to the GOP--often in legal ways. 

The National Rifle Association got $70M from Russia, then funneled it to the GOP. The Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee got big bucks. I'm certain I've barely scratched the surface. 

The big white shoe law firms--Jones Day, for example-- represent powerful Russian oligarchs who have billions and billions of dollars. Much of this is legal even though I believe it has compromised huge parts of the GOP.

Early on, a source told me that all this was tied to Semion Mogilevich, the powerful Russian mobster. I had never even heard of him, but I immediately went to a database that listed the owners of all properties in NY state and looked up all the Trump properties. Everytime I found a Russian sounding name, I would Google, and add Mogilevich. When you do investigative reporting, you antiicpate drilling a number of dry holes, but almost everyone I googled turned out to be a Russian mobster. Again and again. If you known, New York, you don't expect Trump Tower to be a high crime neighborhood, but there were far too many Russian mobsters in Trump properties for it to be a coincidence.