No, it did not turn out to be a hoax. Russia did and has interfered with our elections. It was found they interfered in 2016 to favor trump. The part that wasn't proven was collusion between Russia and trump. Russia did interfere in 2016 and U.S. intelligence found they interfered in 2020 as well.
US intelligence report says Russia used Trump allies to influence 2020 election with goal of ‘denigrating’ Biden
What also has not been proven is that "China released Covid to see how the American public reacted....and it wasn't good." Thus far that's nothing more than another one of those on a long list of conspiracy theories.
Intoducing for The Cleveland Browns, Quarterback Deshawn "The Predator" Watson. He will also be the one to choose your next head coach.
The question is..will republicans continue to allow themselves to be used as "Useful Idiots", blindly supporting Russia/Putin and Trump..?
Now that the GOP's star witness against the Bidens (Alexander Smirnov) has been exposed as a tool used by Putin and the KGB...will the GOP's Useful Idiots finally realize that no one is forcing them to play the role of followers for Putin...
No one is forcing GOPers to check their brain at the door and become followers of Putin and his anti-America agenda. Republicans will be forced to make a decision with their vote in Nov 2024. You either support America and democracy with your Nov vote or you support Putin, Russia and their "ANTI-AMERICAN AGENDA"..!
Biden Plans To Spend Billions Replacing China-Made Cranes at US Ports Published Feb 22, 2024 at 6:23 AM EST Updated Feb 22, 2024 at 6:24 AM EST
The United States will invest tens of billions of dollars to boost maritime cybersecurity around its strategic seaports, including by replacing China-made container cranes that officials believe could leave American infrastructure vulnerable to sabotage.
Foreign-manufactured ship-to-shore cranes, in particular those built by China's state-owned ZPMC, have been a national security concern for several years. The heavy industries company is the world's largest crane maker, whose machines account for nearly 80 percent of the lifting equipment used at U.S. ports, according to official estimates.
"By design, these cranes may be controlled, serviced, and programmed from remote locations. These features potentially leave PRC-manufactured cranes vulnerable to exploitation," said Rear Adm. Jay Vann, head of the U.S. Coast Guard's cyber command, referring to the People's Republic of China.
Cranes are part of the Marine Transportation System (MTS) that enable "critical national security sealift capabilities that enable the U.S. Armed Forces to project and maintain power around the globe," Vann said. "Any disruption to the MTS, whether man-made or natural, physical or in cyberspace, has the potential to cause cascading impacts to our domestic or global supply chains."
Vann's comments were made at a press call on Tuesday, a day before the White House announced President Joe Biden's plan to put $20 billion toward strengthening cybersecurity in maritime infrastructure, using funds from the $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure deal passed in 2021.
Port operators with ZPMC cranes will be asked to address specific software and hardware vulnerabilities, according to the White House. Officials declined to disclose further details on the cybersecurity requirements.
Vann said the directive was based on the prevalence of China-manufactured cranes "and threat intelligence related to PRC's interests in disrupting U.S. critical infrastructure."
A Chinese government spokesperson previously described the U.S. concerns as misleading and "complete paranoia." Its Foreign Ministry did not immediately respond to a written request for comment.
ZPMC, or Shanghai Zhenhua Heavy Industries Co., delivers its cranes fully assembled and supports their operations with Chinese engineers on site. Port operators say the equipment is of good quality and relatively inexpensive compared with that built by rival firms in the West.
icans, contribute $5.4 trillion to our economy, and are the main domestic point of entry for cargo entering the United States," Anne Neuberger, deputy national security adviser for cyber and emerging technologies, said at the press call.
Biden's plan to phase out China-made port equipment will see crane production return to American shores for the first time in 30 years, she said, with part of the investment going toward a U.S. subsidiary of Japanese gantry crane maker Mitsui.
Neuberger told reporters the Biden administration was not exploring a "rip and replace" approach to the China-made cranes at U.S. ports. She and other officials did not elaborate on the existence of any timeline.
ADVERTISEMENTSCROLL TO CONTINUE READING Classified and unclassified government studies suggest sophisticated crane sensors and the data they process could expose information linked to U.S. troop deployment, sustainment and logistics.
Vann said there are more than 200 China-made cranes at U.S. ports and other facilities.
"Our Coast Guard cyber protection teams have assessed cybersecurity or hunted for threats, as of today, on 92 of those cranes," he said.
ADVERTISEMENTSCROLL TO CONTINUE READING Vann did not say whether the U.S. saw any evidence pointing to the cranes having been accessed by an adversary in the past, and did not specify how the machines might be exploited in the future.
In a post on X, formerly Twitter, Rahm Emanuel, the U.S. ambassador to Tokyo, said the new cybersecurity measures would "protect ourselves from Chinese malware."
"Chinese cyber forces are attacking water, electricity, and other critical infrastructure in the USA, Europe, and countries in the Indo-Pacific," Emanuel said on Thursday. "The new measures are a recognition that secure infrastructure requires trusted partners, like Japan."
damn man, Biden really trying to get me to buy American and drop 6 figures on that Hummer EV *eagle cry*
“To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.”
I agree with you 100%. I grew up in a northern suburb of Dayton. At that time we had a Frigidaire plant, GM plants and a Chrysler air conditioning plant and a Delco plant which made GM parts. In those days the saying was "Buy What Dayton Builds".
And they did. They supported American jobs and products built in their own communities. Somehow America lost their way in that regard.
Intoducing for The Cleveland Browns, Quarterback Deshawn "The Predator" Watson. He will also be the one to choose your next head coach.
And there is more to this -Biden helped getting the Intel plant started outside Columbus-There is supposed to be more about additional grants for this at the State of the Union address in a couple weeks. We cannot have all of our chips manufactured in Taiwan and S. Korea. The intel plant is supposed to be a total investment of 20 billion to 100 billion-They are going to have a hard time finding enough trades in those locals around Columbus. I hear they are going to pull from as far away as Cleveland for trades for this.
Also, there is another project I have been quite busy with in northern WV. It is a factory that will build multi day long energy storage. That is also being built with some state and federal funds. The fed money is coming from Biden/DOE long duration energy storage and grid resiliency grants. It is supposed to be about 750-800 million total investment when we are all done and the average starting wage is around 63k and they are already having job fairs for the plant.
Sen. Thom Tillis lashed out in a series of social media posts against “Russian sympathizers,” first taking aim Thursday at former Fox News reporter Tucker Carlson — and perhaps former President Donald Trump.
Carlson last week recently published a two-hour interview with Russian President Vladimir Putin that even the foreign dictator criticized for being too soft, The New York Times reported. The former Fox News host Carlson, then caught Tillis’ ire, after he toured Russia and favorably compared the country to the U.S. That included a stop at a Russian grocery store where Carlson said he could get his normal groceries for $300 cheaper.
“Ah yes, Russia is so much better than the U.S. with all those cheap groceries and lavish subway stations,” Tillis chided on social media. “The Soviets had a term for people like Tucker: useful idiots.”
“Useful idiots,” is a pejorative political term, used by more than just the former Soviet Union. In Tillis’ context, it refers to Russia sympathizers who helped spread Soviet propaganda.
Tillis criticizing Trump? But Tillis didn’t stop there.
The news of the death of Alexei Navalny, Putin’s fiercest critic, drew Tillis to fire off another lengthy social media post. Many, including President Joe Biden, believe Putin had Navalny killed. This time in Tillis’ latest post he called out American leaders.
“Navalny laid down his life fighting for the freedom of the country he loved,” Tillis posted. “Putin is a murderous, paranoid dictator. History will not be kind to those in America who make apologies for Putin and praise Russian autocracy. Nor will history be kind to America’s leaders who stay silent because they fear backlash from online pundits.”
Tillis’ second statement may appear to be directed toward former President Donald Trump, who over the weekend in Conway, South Carolina, announced he told the leaders of NATO allies that if they did not meet their defense spending targets he would encourage Putin to “do whatever the hell” he wants to those countries.
But a Tillis spokesman said Friday, that wasn’t the case. It wasn’t directed at a single national leader. And part of the tweet was directed again at Carlson.
Trump doubled down on that messaging in a Truth Social post after receiving backlash from national leaders, including his 2024 rival, Biden, who called his words “un-American” and “dangerous.”
Tillis on Ukraine, Russia Tillis has faced his own Russia-related criticism after an early morning vote Tuesday that approved $95 billion in military aid for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan. That vote pitted him against North Carolina’s other Republican senator, Ted Budd, who voted against the package.
Many Republicans argue that money shouldn’t be sent to aid other countries until the U.S. secures its southern border.
Tillis, meanwhile, has fought for support of Ukraine since Russia first invaded the country two years ago.
“Why am I so focused on this vote?” Tillis asked from the Senate floor Tuesday morning. “Because I don’t want to be on the pages of history that we will regret if we walk away. You will see the alliance that is supporting Ukraine crumble. You will ultimately see China become emboldened. And I am not going to be on that page of history.”
His floor speech also included his own criticism of Putin.
The bill passed the Senate 70-29, but House Speaker Mike Johnson called it dead on arrival in his chamber. And before taking any action on the bill he dismissed the House for a nearly two week President’s Day recess.
Russians are weak, and Putin is so scared of critics he needs to have them killed by hit men. While GOPers kiss his feet and point at China. Pffft GOPers.
A life is not important except in the impact it has on other lives. – Jackie Robinson
I think using sound bites from the likes of Madison Cawthorn and George Santos pretty much instantly tanks the credibility of whatever you're trying to say.
I do think you're kidding yourself if you think Russia doesn't have at least some politicians under its thumb. If you're safe making that assumption, then it's just a matter of which politicians ,consistently take the side that benefits Russia.
There is no level of sucking we haven't seen; in fact, I'm pretty sure we hold the patents on a few levels of sucking NOBODY had seen until the past few years.
MAGA Is a ‘Russian Intel Op’: Experts Respond to Allegation GOP Using Kremlin Propaganda
Published on February 21, 2024 at 01:00 PM ET By David Badash link
Legal and political experts are responding to Special Counsel David Weiss’ allegations that a former top FBI informant, now under federal indictment, had, as one reporter explained, “high-level contact with Russian intelligence operatives,” and fed Republicans falsehoods from the Kremlin which they used to attack the Biden family and to try to build a case to impeach President Joe Biden.
“How many intel and legal findings and counter-espionage cases before people are willing to accept that the entire MAGA movement is a Russian intel op?” asks David Rothkopf, the noted foreign policy, national security, and political affairs analyst and author.
The bombshell allegations from the Special Counsel, a U.S. Attorney nominated by then-President Donald Trump, were published in his legal memo asking a judge to detain Alexander Smirnov, the defendant and former FBI confidential human source.
“Russia has fully infiltrated the Republican party. Nice going traitors,” alleged Richard Signorelli, a former Asst. U.S. Attorney at the Southern District of New York office. He added: “Trump & @SpeakerJohnson et al are Putin’s ‘useful idiots.'”
U.S. Rep. Dan Goldman (D-NY), an attorney who served as the lead counsel for the first Trump impeachment, wrote: “The Comer/Jordan impeachment sham appears to have been a Russian intelligence operation from the start. The only remaining question is whether Rs were witting or unwitting agents of Putin in their desperate quest to get Trump reelected. Will the GOP continue to work for Putin?”
The Comer/Jordan impeachment sham appears to have been a Russian intelligence operation from the start.
The only remaining question is whether Rs were witting or unwitting agents of Putin in their desperate quest to get Trump reelected.
Will the GOP continue to work for Putin?
Former U.S. Attorney and Deputy Assistant Attorney General Harry Litman, a frequent MSNBC commentator, points to a passage from the DOJ’s memo: “More from DOJ motion re Smirnov: ‘the misinformation he is spreading is not confined to 2020 …He is actively peddling new lies that could impact U.S. elections after meeting with Russian intelligence officials in Nov.'”
“This guy made be the sole reason for R’s Burisma obsessions,” Litman says.
Litman continues: “DOJ to court: ‘Smirnov transformed his routine & unextraordinary business contacts with Burisma in 2017 and later into bribery allegations against [Joe Biden] and [Hunter Biden], after expressing bias against Joe Biden.’ Was the entire R Burisma obsession based on phony intel?”
He adds: “And the big plot point to the Smirnov revelations from [Special Counsel David Weiss] is that the misinformation that Republicans have gone running — in fact galloping with –originates with, you guessed it, Russian intelligence. i.e part of overall Putin misinformation campaign that so distorted 2016.”
Attorney Blake Rutherford, in a social media post “retweeted” by attorney George Conway, wrote: “At what point will the broader American press, and I mean producers, editors, and publishers, wake up to very real fact that Russian propaganda is being normalized in today’s @GOP. They are all useful idiots. Putin knows it.” Republican turned independent Tim Miller, a political strategist and author at The Bulwark, takes a look at recent events:
“To sum up: RUS/Putin have invaded their neighbor, assassinated the biggest domestic political threat, coopted one of the right’s biggest media stars, and seeded a fabricated story about the US President that was echoed by GOP congressional leadership & rightwing media en masse.”
But even before the Special Counsel’s allegations against the indicted former FBI informant, some were growning increasingly aware of Russia’s alleged penetration into the GOP.
Former Trump White House Director of Strategic Communications Alyssa Farah Griffin, now a co-host on “The View,” last week wrote: “It’s becoming increasingly clear that Russia is winning the information war within the US. GOP politicians – who know better – are amplifying Kremlin garbage. We are in deep, deep trouble.”
"This is the floor with the thread for Russian Collusion, right?"
Hillary Clinton and Democrats settle Steele dossier electoral case for $113,000 Federal Election Commission had investigated alleged misreporting of expenditure by campaign during 2016 election
Associated Press Thu 31 Mar 2022 09.38 EDT Share
Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign and the Democratic National Committee have agreed to pay $113,000 to settle a Federal Election Commission investigation into whether they violated campaign finance law by misreporting spending on research that eventually became the infamous Steele dossier.
That is according to documents sent on Tuesday to the Coolidge Reagan Foundation, which had filed an administrative complaint in 2018 accusing the Democrats of misreporting payments made to a law firm during the 2016 campaign to obscure the spending.
Trump, nearly six years after beating Clinton, alleges his 2016 opponent is guilty of ‘racketeering’ and a ‘conspiracy to commit injurious falsehood’.
The Clinton campaign hired Perkins Coie, which then hired Fusion GPS, a research and intelligence firm, to conduct opposition research on Republican candidate Donald Trump’s ties to Russia. But on FEC forms, the Clinton campaign classified the spending as legal services.
“By intentionally obscuring their payments through Perkins Coie and failing to publicly disclose the true purpose of those payments” the campaign and DNC “were able to avoid publicly reporting on their statutorily required FEC disclosure forms the fact that they were paying Fusion GPS to perform opposition research on Trump with the intent of influencing the outcome of the 2016 presidential election,” the initial complaint had read.
The Clinton campaign and DNC had argued that the payments had been described accurately, but agreed, according to the documents, to settle without conceding to avoid further legal costs.
The Clinton campaign agreed to a civil penalty of $8,000 and the DNC $105,000, according to a pair of conciliatory agreements that were attached to the letter sent to the Coolidge Reagan Foundation.
The documents have not yet been made public and an FEC spokeswoman, Judith Ingram, said the FEC had 30 days after parties are notified about enforcement matters to release them.
The Steele dossier was a report compiled by the former British spy Christopher Steele and financed by Democrats that included salacious allegations about Trump’s conduct in Russia and allegations about ties between the Trump campaign and Russia.
Documents have shown the FBI invested significant resources attempting to corroborate the dossier and relied substantially on it to obtain surveillance warrants targeting the former Trump campaign aide Carter Page.
But since its publication, core aspects of the dossier have been exposed as unsupported and unproven rumors. A special counsel assigned to investigate the origins of the Trump-Russia investigation charged one of Steele’s sources with lying to the FBI and charged a cybersecurity lawyer who worked for Clinton’s campaign with lying to the FBI during a 2016 meeting in which he relayed concerns about the Russia-based Alfa Bank.
Trump, who has railed against the dossier for years, released a statement celebrating the agreement and once again denouncing the dossier as “a Hoax funded by the DNC and the Clinton Campaign”.
Graham Wilson, the lawyer representing the campaign and the DNC, did not immediately respond to requests for comment. The letter was first reported by the Washington Examiner.
With such a small judgement they must not consider it very important. Must not have been much of a there, there. Let's see, 113k verses 355 million and 5 million dollar judgements. Things that make you go hmmmm for $500 Alex. Maybe this is why......
The Steele Report, Revisited
How much of the infamous document ended up being corroborated elsewhere? A whole lot.
Pit exposes hypocrisy and corruption, uses it as evidence.
You can actually just use those two posts for how absolutely whack this entire conversation is. Good stuff!
"Russia, Russia, Russia!! They're coming to get us again. And only YOU can stop it. How, you ask? By voting for a corpse, whose family has more shady dealings with foreign nationals than any first family in American history!! But don't be concerned about that, it's Russia Season"
The main difference is now they are clearly supporting Russian's takeover of Ukraine. And you don't need a dossier to see how obvious it is. And you can't deny how accurate much of the Steele dossier actually was. Well I guess you can since you refuse to take those facts straight on. Instead you muddy the waters with your typical mindless rhetoric with zero substance. The Repugnantcan way.
Intoducing for The Cleveland Browns, Quarterback Deshawn "The Predator" Watson. He will also be the one to choose your next head coach.
The Trump crime family is in a partnership with Putin and the Russian oligarchs...and the GOP is an active wing of the Trump/Putin criminal enterprise.
A bit of a refresher for those who would like to forget about the history of the Trump criminal enterprise and the family's links to Dark Money.
A Panama tower carries Trump's name and ties to organized crime
The Trump Organization licensed its name to a luxury condo tower in Panama riddled with ties to drug money and international organized crime.
Nov. 17, 2017 By Aggelos Petropoulos and Richard Engel link
PANAMA CITY — When Ivanka Trump flew here in 2006 to push her family’s latest business project — an oceanfront steel and glass tower called the Trump Ocean Club International Hotel and Tower, shaped like a sail and designed to be one of the tallest buildings in Latin America — a Brazilian real estate salesman named Alexandre Ventura Nogueira says he was ready with a sales pitch.
Ventura, who said he only had a small real estate company at the time, said he told Ivanka Trump that he could sell condos in the proposed skyscraper for three times the price of similar units in Panama City. The reason: the Trump name, which would go on the building in a licensing deal even though the Trump Organization was not the building’s real developer.
Ventura says he and Ivanka agreed to a kind of challenge. If Ventura could sell apartments as easily as he claimed, and for those high prices, he’d become the main sales representative for the project. "The agreement was, I had a week to sell 100 units," Ventura said in a recent interview with NBC News. "I said, 'I'm going to do better, I’m going to sell without telling (the buyers) the price."
Ventura did sell the initial units, and later hundreds more. He is now a fugitive. In May 2009, Ventura was arrested in Panama for real estate fraud, unrelated to the Trump project. Mauricio Ceballos, a former financial crimes prosecutor in Panama who investigated Ventura, said that dozens of complaints against Ventura crossed his desk accusing him of double- and triple-selling apartments, both at the Trump Ocean Club and other developments.
Ventura eventually fled Panama while out on bail. He denied having defrauded his clients but admitted to NBC News that he has participated in money laundering on behalf of corrupt Panamanian politicians, unrelated to the building project.
Ventura isn’t the only person associated with the building who has had run-ins with the law. An NBC News investigation into the Trump Ocean Club, in conjunction with Reuters, shows that the project was riddled with brokers, customers and investors who have been linked to drug trafficking and international crime. Ceballos, who investigated the project, went as far as to call the skyscraper “a vehicle for money laundering.”
The investigation revealed no indication that the Trump Organization or members of the Trump family engaged in any illegal activity, or knew of the criminal backgrounds of some of the project’s associates. But Ventura said that the Trumps never asked any questions about the buyers or where the money was coming from.
Legal experts contacted by Reuters said the Trumps should have asked those questions. Because Panama is “perceived to be highly corrupt,” said Arthur Middlemiss, a former assistant district attorney in Manhattan and a former head of JPMorgan’s global anti-corruption program, those who do business there should perform due diligence on others involved in their ventures. If they fail to do so, he told Reuters, they risk being liable under U.S. law of turning a blind eye to wrongdoing.
No one asked about the money In the interview, Ventura admitted that some of his brokers and clients who bought and sold units in the Trump Ocean Club were connected to the Russian mafia and other organized-crime groups, including a convicted money launderer who moved cash for drug cartels.
“I had some customers with questionable backgrounds,” he said. “Nobody ever asked me. Banks never asked. Developer didn’t ask and (the) Trump Organization didn’t ask. Nobody ask, ‘Who are the customers, where did the money come from?’ No, nobody ask.”
The Trump Organization was not the actual developer of the Panama tower. Thanks in large part to the hit NBC television show “The Apprentice,” the Trump name was recognized all over the world and the Panama deal was structured to capitalize on that brand. For this deal, the Trump Organization would license its brand, operate the hotel and sell its expertise in managing the building, receiving a cut of every condo sale. The actual development, along with all of the risks involved, would be left to a local businessman with almost no real estate experience, Roger Khafif and other partners. Ventura said he was invited to the meeting as Khafif’s sales representative.
The interview with Ventura took place in a European city; Ventura agreed to meet NBC News along with Reuters, but asked that the specific location remain undisclosed and that he wear a disguise when appearing on camera.
According to the Trump Ocean Club’s bondholder prospectus, Donald Trump was projected to make $74.2 million from the project by the end of 2010. The disclosure forms Trump filed with the Office of Government Ethics show that he continues to earn management fees and royalties from the Trump Ocean Club. In the last three years, the documents show, he was paid as much as $13.9 million.
Global Witness, a nonprofit anti-corruption watchdog that is often critical of businesses and their connections to government officials, said Panama offered Donald Trump a new way to make money at a time when his businesses were struggling. (The Trump casino empire filed for bankruptcy in 2004.) The group is publishing the findings of its investigation into the Trump Ocean Club on Friday.
“In the mid-2000s Panama was known as a money laundering hotspot,” said Patrick Alley, co-founder of Global Witness. “At that time the Trump companies were in dire trouble. He changed his business model to license his name and his brand to other people’s developments, and very often they would be inexperienced developers, low-profile people who needed a name to sell their developments. So Trump would go into a licensing deal, which meant he invested nothing, but could make a profit from it.”
Ventura estimates his company, Homes Real Estate Investment & Services, sold 350 to 400 units, about $100 million worth of property. Ventura says he was such an effective salesman that he was invited to a 2008 celebration at Trump’s Florida estate, Mar-a-Lago. Ventura provided photographs of himself with Donald Trump at the event, and other photographs of him with Ivanka, Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr.
Links to drug trafficking Ventura said the Trumps never asked about his clients, the people who were buying the condo units, and he never told them. To cite one example, he said that he sold seven to 10 units in the Trump Ocean Club to a man named David Murcia Guzmán, founder of a large Colombian marketing company.
Guzmán is now in U.S. custody, awaiting extradition to Colombia after being convicted by a U.S. federal court of laundering money for drug cartels, including through real estate. According to a Colombian news report, citing the police, Guzmán also had financial ties to the FARC, a paramilitary organization listed by the State Department as a terrorist group.
Guzmán isn’t the only link connecting drug trafficking to the Trump Ocean Club. One of the early investors in the project was a man named Louis Pargiolas. In 2009, he pleaded guilty in a federal court in Miami to conspiracy to import cocaine.
Ventura says about half of the units he sold at the Trump Ocean Club were to Russians. To help handle them, Ventura went into business with several Russian-speaking real estate brokers, who he admits have had checkered pasts, including one named Stanislav Kavalenka. According to Ontario court documents, Kavalenka was charged in Canada with a number of offenses, including “compelling” and “procuring” women to engage in prostitution. The case was withdrawn when the two women failed to appear in court to give evidence against him.
Another investor in Ventura’s firm was Arkady Vodovozov. According to court files cited by Reuters, he was convicted of kidnapping in Israel. A third representative of the brokerage firm, described by Ventura as an occasional buyer at the Trump Ocean Club, was Igor Anapolskiy, according to Ukrainian court documents. He was convicted in September 2014 by a court in Ukraine of forging travel documents, according to Global Witness.
The identities of all of the buyers and sellers of the building’s units is difficult to discover, however, because many of the units were bought and sold through anonymous shell companies, according to documents from the Panamanian office of public records. Ventura says he set up hundreds of those corporations, charging roughly $1,000 each.
Ceballos, who says he investigated transactions related to the Trump Ocean Club during his stint as an anti-corruption prosecutor in Panama, describes the building as a magnet for international organized crime, particularly from Russia.
“The majority of sales of this building were not to local residents, but rather to foreigners,” he said. “They bought initially as an investment, knowing that once the building was constructed you could legalize your money.”
He added: “We were able to find out that people with some kind of criminal history acquired apartments there.”
Ceballos said lax law enforcement in Panama made money laundering easy. To launder money, he said, buyers using anonymous corporations would bring dirty money to Panama, often in cash, use it to buy real estate with no questions asked, sell it, and deposit the proceeds into local banks, which would accept the funds, also without asking questions. The real estate purchases, Ceballos says, were solely a way to get the money into banks and into the global financial system; few buyers intended to live in the condos.
Lights off and hallways empty During a recent visit by NBC News, the Trump Ocean Club appeared to be largely empty, with virtually no one in the restaurants at night. The hallways were consistently empty. The lights were off in many of the units after dark. Ventura said most of his clients never intended to live in the Trump Ocean Club.
Miguel Antonio Bernal, a professor of constitutional law at the University of Panama and a campaigner against corruption, said many buildings in Panama City were built specifically to be vehicles for money laundering; the Trump Ocean Club fits the mold.
“There are more than 500 buildings like this,” he said. “But this – the difference of this – is that this has the name of the actual president of the United States. And he keeps the name here.”
Ventura now lives under a new name, as do two other brokers who used to sell the building’s condos. He said he admires President Trump and doesn’t consider himself to be a detractor or accuser. Ventura said his job was simply to sell and not ask questions. As for Trump, he said: “It could be that he didn’t want to know… I believe that he didn’t know.”
Sarah Chayes, a corruption expert working with a group of lawyers trying to bring an unrelated case against the president for violating the Emoluments clause of the Constitution, said it was troubling that the Trump Organization seemed to pay no attention to the shady backgrounds of its partners and clients.
“Anyone who thinks that members of FARC, that drug dealers, Russian oligarchs who have been looting their own country, represent normal business partners,” she said, “doesn’t quite understand the free enterprise system that I think is central to a healthy America.”
I'm just supporting #RussiaSeason with more Russia articles. We gotta get things things out there until people are saying "Russia" so much that they believe every sentence with the word in it. It's called media mind control the democratic process!
And oh yeah, "Everything's a threat to our democracy!", just ask Hunter lol.
Can you explain how a private citizen has anything to do with the actions of elected politicians who control national policy and set our laws? No, you can't. You're grasping at straws.
Intoducing for The Cleveland Browns, Quarterback Deshawn "The Predator" Watson. He will also be the one to choose your next head coach.
Hunter gives the same answer as Donald Jr.,Eric, or Ivanka. I am a business person. There is nothing illegal with my activity. Go pound sand.
There will be no playoffs. Can’t play with who we have out there and compounding it with garbage playcalling and worse execution. We don’t have good skill players on offense period. Browns 20 - Bears 17.
I'm just supporting #RussiaSeason with more Russia articles. We gotta get things things out there until people are saying "Russia" so much that they believe every sentence with the word in it. It's called media mind control the democratic process!
And oh yeah, "Everything's a threat to our democracy!", just ask Hunter lol.
I'll always reiterate that if there is something Hunter did, lock him up and throw away the key. The guy is a scumbag. I don't think that's debatable.
But as far as Russia season goes, I'll fall back to what I said prior regarding the concerning behavior a lot of far right Republicans have when it comes to Russia, Ukraine and opposing Putin. It's unlike any phenomenon I have seen and there is really no logical segue as to why they have suddenly taken this diversion, unless it's nefarious. Just because Democrats - and actually a fair amount of Republicans - keep bringing up that notion repeatedly, doesn't make it any less concerning.
As an analogy, if I were to constantly hang out with a girl named Svetlana, who is historically my wife's enemy, and sometimes I side with Svetlana over my wife, I don't think I could get away with telling my wife "Svetlana, Svetlana, Svetlana! That’s all you ever talk about!” Meanwhile, my best friend is always bragging on about Svetlana and her baked bread, telling everyone if they just knew Svetlana, they would hate my wife. 😉
There are a lot of concerning data points that add up into an overall very concerning picture when it comes to Putin and Russia tied into the far right wing.
Blue ostriches on crack float on milkshakes between the sidewalk titans of gurglefitz. --YTown
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