Yesterday I wrote: "One reason Trump has nixed Obama's TPP attempt to box in Xi's trade dealings in Asia is that it does not help his bottom line. It's estimated that he has around $2 billion in foreign debt. Thinking like a businessman, not a President, his plan is to drive a wedge between Russia and China through oil and gas deals, making his business solvent by the time he leaves the presidency."
This is a strong explanation for Trump's strange relationship with Russia, an explanation that many are looking at but are unwilling to nail down because Trump refuses to release income tax documents for the Trump-Russia business years. Obviously, Trump has something to hide, and the simplest explanation is that he wants to enhance the Moscow to Trump money pipeline as president. This pipeline has existed for many years.
--Jerry Politex
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Since Donald Trump's surprise election one month ago, there's been a bubbling conversation about the mammoth conflicts of interest he will have if he is running or even owning his far flung business enterprises while serving as the head of state. I've suggested that the whole notion of 'conflicts of interest' doesn't really capture what we're dealing with here, which is really a pretty open effort to leverage the presidency to expand his family business. But a couple things came together for me today which make me think we've all missed the real issue.
Maybe he can't divest because he's too underwater to do so or more likely he's too dependent on current and expanding cash flow to divest or even turn the reins over to someone else.
Late this afternoon we got news that Trump will remain as executive producer of The Apprentice, now starring Arnold Schwarzenegger. That is, quite simply, weird. The presidency is time consuming and complicated, even for the lazier presidents. Does Trump really need to do this? Can he do it, just in terms of hours in the day? Of course, it may simply be a title that entitles him to draw a check. But does he need the check that bad?
The idea that Trump is heavily leveraged and reliant on on-going cash flow to keep his business empire from coming apart and collapsing into bankruptcy was frequently discussed during the campaign. But it's gotten pretty little attention since he was elected.
--Trump Can't Sell Out? Maybe the Answer Is That He Can't Divest, He Would Go Bankrupt. https://t.co/DmroQYXPOM
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All of Trump's top properties-including Trump Tower, the Trump National Doral golf course, and his brand new luxury hotel in Washington, DC-are heavily mortgaged. That means Trump maintains critical financial relationships with his creditors. These interactions pose a significant set of potential conflicts because his creditors are large financial institutions (domestic and foreign) with their own interests and policy needs. Each one could be greatly affected by presidential decisions, and Trump certainly has a financial interest in their well-being.
Below is a list of all the financial players that Trump owes money to and how much Trump directly has borrowed from each one. This roster is based on publicly available loan documents. According to his own public disclosure, Trump, as of May, was on the hook for 16 loans worth at least $713 million. This list does not include an estimated $2 billion in debt amassed by real estate partnerships that include Trump. One of those loans is a $950 million deal that was cobbled together by Goldman Sachs and the state-owned Bank of China-an arrangement that ethics experts believe violates the Constitution's emolument clause, which prohibits foreign governments from providing financial benefits to federal officials.
--A Guide to Some of Donald Trump's Huge Debts (minus $2 billion) and the Conflicts They Present | Mother Jones https://t.co/1fC1OqXKnkc
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"And in terms of high-end product influx into the US, Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets..."In Russia, I really prefer Moscow over all cities in the world."
For Trump Jr., Russia is the emerging market worth investing in currently, however in caveat into the high-end sector he counts on his international experience in the market. Trump said: "The emerging world in general attributes such brand premium to real estate that we are looking all over the place, primarily Russia. There are countries that have not been fully tapped by us such as Thailand, Vietnam and Argentina. We are currently looking at potential deals. Our interest is really everywhere because there is a lot of new money in the emerging markets which appeal to certain brands whether ego-driven or having the life-jacket effect that we feel gives added-value to our investment." According to him, he has been to basically all the emerging markets in the last six months or this summer searching for good deals.
--Trump Jr. bullish on Russia: "Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets." https://t.co/aWgcG4iD7W
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"Donald Trump is dependent on Russian investments from Russian oligarchs associated with Vladimir Putin for his real estate development projects."
The potential for exposure by Putin puts the strong-arm Russian president in a position to coerce Trump into appointing Russia-favoring advisors and, should he win, implementing Russia-favoring policies as president.
--Trump Blackmailed by Putin, Says Ex-CIA Agent: Evan McMullin says Trump's Business Depends on Russian Oligarchs. https://t.co/OSTiNl7O3t
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Put his campaign rhetoric, tweets and appointments all together, and we're getting a sense of U.S. foreign policy under Donald Trump. The president-elect has consistently signaled that he wants to be accommodating toward Russia and get tough on China. But that sees the world almost backward. China is, for the most part, comfortable with the U.S.-led international system. Russia is trying to upend it.
--Vladimir Putin wants a new world order. Why would Donald Trump help him? Zakaria, WP https://t.co/fgpfM5NM1v
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And what about the money? Although Trump has said, "I have zero investments in Russia," his son Donald Jr. conceded in 2008 that "Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets . . . we see a lot of money pouring in from Russia." Absent more detailed data (such as tax returns), who knows?
--Former CIA chief Hayden: Trump is Russia's useful fool, but Trump money may have something to do with it. WP https://t.co/r3b3GDfJv4
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"You're making an assumption that Trump will respond to kompromat (personal material) and not to something else, such as his business interests in Russia. He clearly has a blind spot on the country. You can be manipulated by the Chekists in many ways," the source said, using the catch-all term for Russia spies, "not just through blackmail. We also don't know what is in the RNC emails."
--The RNC Hack: How Russian Hackers Can Blackmail Donald Trump-and the GOP https://t.co/1CVyba6WCS
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Rex Tillerson's Company, Exxon, Has Billions at Stake Over Sanctions on Russia - The New York Times https://t.co/UyNeuwUKAQ
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Is it true that Trump has no investments in Russia?
A. We don't really know. Trump has not released the financial documents that would shed light on the issue, particularly his tax returns. Breaking a tradition dating to Richard Nixon, he says he won't make those documents public because he is being audited by the IRS.
Q: What about investments from Russia in Trump's businesses?
A. There is strong evidence that Trump's businesses have received significant funding from Russian investors. Most notably, Trump's son Donald Trump Jr. made that very claim at a real estate conference in New York in 2008, saying "Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets." Donald Trump Jr. added, "we see a lot of money pouring in from Russia."
Trump also made millions when he agreed to bring the Miss Universe pageant to Moscow in 2013, a deal financed in part by the development company of a Russian billionaire Aras Agalarov. Agalarov is a Putin ally who is sometimes called the "Trump of Russia" because of his tendency to put his own name on his buildings. At the time, Trump mingled with the Russian business elite at a swanky after-party. "Almost all of the oligarchs were in the room," Trump bragged on returning home.
As a sign of the importance of Russian investors, partners of one of Trump's projects then under construction in Panama visited Moscow to sell condos at the building in 2006.
Trump also made significant money from one Russian oligarch in 2008, when he sold a mansion in Palm Beach for $95 million to Russian billionaire Dmitry Rybolovlev. Trump had bought the home at a bankruptcy auction less than four years earlier for $41.4 million.
Q: Has Trump ever built a property in Moscow?
A: No, but not for lack of trying. Trump has been promising to build a Trump Tower or hotel in Moscow for 30 years. He wrote in the "Art of the Deal" in 1987 that he visited Moscow for the first time that year to explore building a hotel in partnership with the then-Soviet government. He visited again with U.S. tobacco executives in 1996; that deal got far enough that an architect drew conceptual drawings but did not come to fruition.
Trump signed a one-year deal in 2005 with a New York real estate company called the Bayrock Group to try, again, to build a Trump Tower in Moscow. In a 2007 deposition, Bayrock executive Felix Sater (a Russian immigrant with an interesting mafia-related back story) testified that he had located Russian investors for the project, as well as a site, a shuttered pencil factory named for U.S. communists Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti.
Sater testified that after trips to Russia, he would "pop my head into Mr. Trump's office and tell him, you know, 'Moving forward on the Moscow deal.' And he would say, 'All right.' "
That effort fizzled too. But Trump promised in a 2007 court deposition that he had not given up on Moscow. "Russia is one of the hottest places in the world for investment. . . . We will be in Moscow at some point," he said.
Indeed, in 2013, he inked another preliminary deal to build in Moscow, this time in partnership with Agalarov, who had hosted the pageant. Agalarov told The Washington Post that the project is on hold while Trump runs for president.
Q: What about Trump's advisers?
A: They too have financial ties in Russia. His campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, managed an investment fund for a Russian aluminum magnate with close ties to Putin. (The oligarch is suing Manafort, claiming, according to litigation in the Cayman Islands, that Manafort disappeared with $19 million.)
Manafort also unsuccessfully attempted a multimillion-dollar real estate project in New York City with funds from a Ukranian energy tycoon. And he worked as an adviser to the Putin-backed Ukranian president whose 2014 ouster sparked Russian intervention in that country, which has been opposed by U.S. officials in both parties.
Trump also considered retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn as his vice-presidential running mate. Flynn has argued that the United States needs stronger ties to Russia to fight Islamist terrorism. In 2015 , Flynn attended a dinner honoring the Kremlin-aligned English language media company RT, where he sat near Putin.
Another Trump foreign policy adviser, Carter Page, once ran the Moscow office of Merrill Lynch and advised the state-run conglomerate Gazprom. He has spoken publicly about the possibility that a Trump presidency could result in the lifting of Ukraine-related sanctions on Russia that would help the business interests of some of his Russian contacts...
...And he declined to call for Russia to stay out of the U.S. election. "I'm not going to tell Putin what to do. Why should I tell Putin what to do?"
--July: Following the Money: Here's what we know about Donald Trump and his ties to Russia. WP https://t.co/ojIFyzY6ce
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Even if Mr. Trump and his family seek no special advantages from foreign governments, officials overseas may feel compelled to help the Trump family by, say, accelerating building permits or pushing more business to one of the new president's hotels or golf courses, according to several former State Department officials.
"The working assumption on behalf of all these foreign government officials will be that there is an advantage to doing business with the Trump organization," said Michael H. Fuchs, who was until recently deputy assistant secretary at the bureau of East Asian and Pacific affairs. "They will think it will ingratiate themselves with the Trump administration. And this will significantly complicate United States foreign policy and our relationships around the world."
At the same time, Mr. Fuchs said, American diplomats in countries where Mr. Trump's companies operate, fearful of a rebuke from Washington, may be reluctant to take steps that could frustrate business partners or political allies.
--Potential Conflicts Around the Globe for Trump, the Businessman President. (What about Russia?) NYT https://t.co/DfbAPsqUjs
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