Part IV: Behind The Curtain
D. S. Mitchell
As we have already seen, Russians have floated in the Trump swamp for decades. The President’s first contacts with Russians came in the late 1980’s when Trump was wooed by the Russian government to look at the prospect of building hotels in Moscow and Kiev.
Trump has had many Russian tenants in the Trump Tower. One very memorable Russian tenant was alleged Russian mob boss Alimzhan Tokhtakhounov. An apartment at Trump Tower rented to Tokhtakhounov was the subject of a raid in April 2013 by federal agents as part of an investigation in to two separate gambling rings. Interestingly, Ali Tokhakhounov was, despite being under indictment in the United States for various gambling and corruption charges, made an appearance at Trump’s Miss Universe Pageant held in Moscow that same year.
In addition to Russian tenants, Trump has had several Russian partners, most notably the boys from Bayrock. The Trump Organization has sold an endless stream of condo’s and private residences to Russians. His children have traveled extensively throughout Russia. In fact, according to recent news stories the Trump Organization was actively negotiating with Russian officials to build a Trump Tower in Moscow during the 2016 Presidential election.
In January of 2017 Trump tweeted, “I have nothing to do with Russia–NO DEALS, NO LOANS, NO NOTHING.” We now know that was a blatant lie. In separate interviews about that same time Trump said in weird rambling denials that neither he or his campaign had any connection to Russians. Trump’s praise of Putin, and his refusal to ever criticize the Russian strong man has brought those assertions into serious question, causing many to speculate that Trump has been compromised.
Going back to that 2013 Miss Universe Pageant, prior to the event Trump issued a very strange tweet, “Do you think Putin will be going to The Miss Universe Pageant in November in Moscow–if so, will he be become my new best friend?”
The answer to that very strange Twitter inquiry is unknown. Putin did not go to the event, but he did send an expensive lacquered Russian box to Trump. The event venue was the Crocus City Mall. The Crocus City Mall is owned by Aras Agalarov a Russian oligarch with known ties to Vladimir Putin. It is common knowledge that Agalarov and Trump discussed the construction of twin adjacent Trump towers in downtown Moscow during that 2013 visit.
Trump bizarrely equating business deals with diplomacy; answered as follows when a FoxNews commentator confronted him on his lack of foreign policy experience. “I know Russia well. I had a major event in Russia two or three years ago, which was a big, big incredible event,” referring to the Miss Universe Pageant.
Really? Please explain to me, and the 70% of Americans who do not equate running a beauty pageant with running a country, how that answer and that experience would in any way qualify him as knowledgeable of foreign policy. Trump, I believe, is slowly beginning to realize what many of us already knew, that the two are in no way similar, or interchangeable. In fact, many of the tactics used in business are inappropriate as national political strategy or policy.
It is interesting that Trump’s love for all things Russian seems to know no bounds. The Daily Beast is reporting that while Trump has made a name for himself attacking the children of undocumented Latino immigrants born in the U.S., even going so far as to cast doubt on the legality of their citizenship, he has been quietly making his Florida properties a playground for wealthy Russians who want to give their children U.S. citizenship, the easy way, by being born here.
Multiple companies in the former Soviet Union are advertising rentals in Trump properties to expectant Russian parents. The United States offers a safe harbor for those same wealthy Russians to stash savings in U.S. dollars through real estate investment. If they don’t buy they rent luxury digs in a warm weather destination such as Florida to await the birth of their new baby, an American baby, with birth certificate to prove it.
Most wealthy Russians see Trump properties as a luxurious option, offering them a place to stay for the last several months of their pregnancies, in high-end comfort. According to the Daily Beast, birth tourism can easily cost these parents upwards of $75,000. The benefit for their children is dual citizenship, U.S. and Russian.
It is estimated that there are no less that 40-60 women from Russia or from former Soviet satellite countries giving birth in Miami, Florida each month. Sunny Medical even advertises “American citizenship” when birthing at the Sunny Medical Center. The birth statistics at other Florida hospitals is unknown.
Russians are not the only ‘birthing tourists.’ Wealthy Chinese parents are known to make use of such services, often preferring west coast properties to the Florida and Arizona properties most famously owned by Trump.
The Daily Beast was not insinuating that Trump was the only guy on the block making money from ‘birthing tourism.’ I think their point, and mine also, would be that with Trump rallying against illegal immigrants crossing the border to have a baby born in the United States, it seems quite hypocritical for the president to threaten arrest and deportation of the people when other foreign individuals are hold up at Trump properties enjoying expensive surrounding and superior comfort, to do the very same thing, have a baby born in America.
We don’t hear a hue and cry over the Russians, or the Chinese dropping out of the sky on a 747 and staying six months, or longer to have that baby with its precious US birth certificate. Some would say, the Russians and Chinese and others have come on a Visa, so it’s all legal. It is the intent of the individuals and their intent to manipulate US immigration policy that is absolutely outrageous in my view.
This new drop and pop method sure beats waiting many years for citizenship, if you do it the old-fashioned way. These ‘birthing holidays’ are advertised in many countries and people from all over the world are taking advantage of the offers to secure a U.S. birth certificate for their children.
It isn’t just Trump. It is dozens of companies that are manipulating our immigration system. It is common to think of Latinos manipulating ‘our born in the U.S. A.’ policy, but it is not just the Latinos that see a U.S. birth certificate as extremely valuable. It is the treatment of those moms that are the question and the intent of those who help secure American citizenship for children of foreign nationals. How can Trump in good conscience take money from Russians or other foreign nationals who are obviously subverting our immigration system. But, hypocrisy is nothing new to President Trump, but it seems especially galling in the light of Trump’s war on anyone of color.
Trump owns most of the golf courses, a few office buildings, Mar-a-Lago, and Trump Tower, but he does not own most of the polished steel and glass buildings around the globe that bear his name. His involvement most often comes thru licensing and management deals. He ‘rents out’ his name to developers, who develop the properties and then the Trump Organization manages those properties for fees of up to $5,000,000 for licensing and promotion, and another $1,000,000 annually for management of those properties.
In some cases, Trump will take an equity position in the property but such arrangements rarely carry any personal risk to the President. The risk in these multi-million dollar projects is taken by his partners, mostly foreign, mostly Russian. Remember Donald Trump Jr told us that “Russians make up a disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets. We see a lot of money pouring in from Russia.”
The concerns about Trump and his decades old associations with Russia and Russians have invigorated an angry electorate and aroused ethics experts. In September last year an envelope with a return address to the Trump Organization was delivered to The New York Times. The contents of the envelope included, the first page of Trump’s 1995 New York state return, and the first page of his non-resident returns for the same year for New Jersey and Connecticut.
Who sent the copies of the returns to the The New York Times? We can’t know, but many suspect it was Trump himself. Trump is well-known for pretending to be his own PR man, planting stories in the New York tabloids. David Cay Johnson who met Trump in 1988 suspects it was Trump who sent the copies of the first pages of Trump’s tax returns to the NY Times.
Johnston is an investigative journalist, best-selling author and expert on economics and tax issues. Johnston claims, “If you give me Donald Trump’s complete 1,200 page tax return I will tell you all about him.” And it is that very reason that Donald Trump will never release his taxes voluntarily, because then we would be able to determine his assets, his debts and to who he is indebted to, his partnerships, his income, including offshore income, and finally, his net worth.
Trump measures his success by the size of his bank account and while he loves telling us how rich he is, the tax returns would show the truth, assuming his taxes returns were truthful.
The mysterious 1995 first pages of Trump’s tax return is however, quite revealing. Trump claimed a near billion dollar loss, a loss that would, using real estate tax credits–allow him to avoid Federal income tax for an estimated two decades.
He lost a billion dollars in one year. That does not sound like a genius real estate tycoon. It sounds like a guy who was a complete and utter failure, despite what he and his cronies claim. Rudy Giuliani called Donald a “business genius” more than once.
Trump himself has claimed that “I understand the tax code better than anybody that’s ever run for president.”
Okay, so he and his CPA’s know the tax code, but that doesn’t explain how a ‘successful business genius’ could lose $916,000,000 in one year. To me such a loss would be definitive proof that this fellow should make a career change. Tim O’Brien author of TrumpNation, said on this subject, “It is emblematic of what an abysmal businessman he was.”
When Trump was questioned about releasing his taxes returns during the campaign he would claim to be “under audit.” I don’t believe that audit story for even a minute. And even if he was under audit he could still release his taxes. He seems to be afraid of something those returns will show. David Cay Johnston believes that Trump is afraid that the world will discover his big lie, “there is not now and never has been any verifiable evidence that Donald Trump is, or ever has been a billionaire.”
There is a lot more going on behind the curtain than Trump wants us to know about. Please come back for Part V:Behind The Curtain, as Calamity Politics continues our look into the sordid world of Donald J. Trump.
Calamity Politics is a progressive political blog intended to present relevant and engaging political conversation. We are aware of our bias and want readers to understand that we at Calamity Politics have a progressive agenda and our topics of discussion focus primarily on the U.S. political scene and the fight against the alt-right movement.
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**Special thanks to US Today, Vanity Fair, Bloomberg News, Daily Beast, Washington Post and The New York Times for information and dates used in this blog post.**
