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"shusterman"

For a sense of why we may care about Michael Cohen and father-in-law Fima Shusterman’s massive loans to a cratering business, look at this passage from a book to be published tomorrow, which I strongly recommend purchasing.

This passage is from Trump/Russia: A Definitive History.

This may seem a bit in the weeds. But if you’re trying to make sense of Michael Cohen’s role in all the money transactions being probed by the Feds, as well as the role of Fima Shusterman, his father-in-law, who appears to be his key connection into the Ukrainian immigrant money world, this is an important point.

There have been various reports that Cohen and Shusterman have loaned $26 million to the Shtayner family, another taxi baron family of Ukrainian immigrants who live in New York City but own a cab business based in Chicago. The story is that Cohen lent the Shtayner’s $6 million since 2012 and Fima Shusterman has lent them $20 million over the last eight months. This is the story according to the AP and also the weekend piece in the Times. Read More 

In the first of what will certainly be many attacks today, Rudy Giuliani is out with a round of attacks on Michael Cohen. A central one is that Cohen was “connected to Russian organized crime” and that – relatedly – he got his money from his Ukrainian immigrant father-in-law Fima Shusterman. You’ve seen me writing for months about Trump’s odd gambit and history with Shusterman. I’ve been writing for two years about Cohen’s ties to Russian/Ukrainian organized crime. Rudy is not making this up. But in the nature of things, with the current questions before the public, accusing Trump’s former fixer of being tied to Russian organized crime seems like a perilous line of attack.

With Michael Cohen’s decision to postpone his testimony before Congress, people are starting to focus on President Trump’s repeated attacks on Cohen’s unnamed “father-in-law”. It is outrageous that a sitting President would repeatedly threaten anyone with legal action, especially in a case when it is done with the intention of squelching testimony against him. But this isn’t just out of the blue character assassination. Cohen’s father-in-law, Fima Shusterman, does have a criminal record (he pleaded guilty to money laundering related charges in the early 90s) and has reputed Russian/Ukraine organized crime connections that, critically, Trump appears to be connected to. There’s good reason to believe that it was Trump and Shusterman’s business ties, money flow ties, that is actually what brought Cohen into Trump’s world in the first place. I go into some detail about it here. Shusterman seems to be one of the links that ties Trump to the Russian money channels that are central to this entire story.

So we shouldn’t run after Trump’s character assassination. But this has always been part of the story that requires a lot more attention and scrutiny. As I said, more here.