President Donald Trump’s companies have been connected to “at least 10 former Soviet businessmen with alleged ties to criminal organizations or money laundering,” according to a report published Tuesday by USA Today.
Those connections came to light during a review of legal and government documents, court cases and an interview with a former federal prosecutor, per USA Today.
The White House referred USA Today’s request for comment to the Trump Organization, whose spokesperson Amanda Miller called the allegations “entirely without merit” and said that the organization “never entered into a single transaction” with the individuals listed.
According to the report, the Trump Organization’s business connections and the allegations against them include:
• A partner in the firm that developed the Trump SoHo Hotel in New York is a twice-convicted felon who spent a year in prison for stabbing a man and later scouted for Trump investments in Russia.
• An investor in the SoHo project was accused by Belgian authorities in 2011 in a $55 million money-laundering scheme.
• Three owners of Trump condos in Florida and Manhattan were accused in federal indictments of belonging to a Russian-American organized crime group and working for a major international crime boss based in Russia.
• A former mayor from Kazakhstan was accused in a federal lawsuit filed in Los Angeles in 2014 of hiding millions of dollars looted from his city, some of which was spent on three Trump SoHo units.
• A Ukrainian owner of two Trump condos in Florida was indicted in a money-laundering scheme involving a former prime minister of Ukraine.
Duh.
When the levee breaks…
USA Today joins the “fake news” club?
Reader’s Digest can’t be far behind …
You could knock me over with a rock.
So the United States just elected the Mafia, the Russian Mafia?