The NYT amazing report on Trump's post-election insanity helps explain why he has so many almost-certainly-illegal projects around the world.

Over the past 25 years, there has been an astonishing amount of illegal money flowing out of former Soviet Union and...

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other highly corrupt economies. Trillions of dollars. Broadly called money-laundering.

The sophisticated oligarchs used top law- and accounting-firms, banks, and big hotels to clean their money.

But there were many hack oligarchs.

2/
Who were too blatantly corrupt, too tied to terror or other bad actors, to use the "legitimate" forms of money-laundering.

Consider Azerbaijan's Anar Mammadov. He spent years and millions of dollars trying to get someone, anyone, in the US to work with him.

3/
Or Indonesia's Hary Tanoe, a man shockingly corrupt and crude even in a shockingly corrupt country.

Or the Tiah family in Malaysia. Or his partner's in Toronto, Panama, etc, etc.

These were very rich losers. They had too much risk to cross over to the legit economy.

4/
Until they met Trump.

The Trump Org, like the White House, did have some good lawyers. They wouldn't touch these deals.

So, Trump brought in Michael Cohen--who is less of a lawyer than Rudy, Lin, Sidney, and Ellis--from a taxi dispatch office in Brooklyn.

5/
And the Trump Org did have experienced real estate execs, but these deals were handled by Don, Jr., and Ivanka.

Trump refused to pay for the barest due diligence but did pay for fig-leaf assurances from pay-to-play "due diligence" firms.

6/
Much like with the election, he made a series of hugely risky and self-destructive decisions, was counseled against them, and then got a bunch of losers to back him up.

He got away with it because America barely prosecutes international white collar crime.

7/
The only reason he didn't get away with this coup (yet) is that people with power and resources had a strong incentive to investigate and stop him.

That has not, yet, happened with his business. (God damn you, Robert S. Mueller).

8/
Investigating the business will be harder.

But it's necessary.

In the end, it will find scenes much like the ones in the NYT story: Trump being told something is illegal, unethical, and risky, and then finding some bottom feeder who will tell him the opposite.

9/end

More from Trump

Today's Twitter threads (a Twitter thread).

Inside: Stop saying "it's not censorship if it's not the government"; Trump's swamp gators find corporate refuge; and more!

Archived at: https://t.co/7JMcAbaULj

#Pluralistic

1/


Monday night, I'll be helping William Gibson launch the paperback edition of his novel AGENCY at a Strand Bookstore videoconference. Come say hi!

https://t.co/k3fvBdqOK0

2/


Stop saying "it's not censorship if it's not the government": I didn't expect the Spanish Inquisition.

https://t.co/7I0MpCTez5

3/


Trump's swamp gators find corporate refuge: The Swamped project.

https://t.co/MUJyIOr2iw

4/


#15yrsago A-Hole bill would make a secret technology into the law of the land https://t.co/57bJaM1Byr

#15yrsago Hollywood’s MP loses the election — hit the road, Sam! https://t.co/12ssYpV46B

#15yrsago How William Gibson discovered science fiction https://t.co/MYR0go37nW

5/
To those who want to actually help Claudia Conway after her mom (Kellyanne Conway, Trump’s former aide) posted her underage daughter’s nudes to Fleets, fill out a report on the NCMEC CyberTipline.
CPS refused to help her.
#HelpClaudia


Kellyanne Conway has a well-documented history of verbally abusing, gaslighting, and threatening her daughter. It gets worse when highly public things go viral (such as exposing the truth about Trump and Conway catching COVID-19 last October). Kellyanne coerces false statements.

Insider did a thorough chronological background of the history of exposing her parents abuse and control of her here:
https://t.co/ncjaEyLOSC

We all know that “statement” last year was coerced. She talks constantly about being abused by them.


Personally? I suspect Kellyanne is a narcissist. From my own experience being sexually and emotionally abused by a narcissist, they are obsessed with controlling the narrative (coerced typed statement), discrediting their victim (posting her nudes) & gaslighting

If you haven’t experienced gaslighting or aren’t familiar with it, it’s when someone causing you harm (physical, emotional, sexual, financial, etc) twists the facts and asserts that reality is just you being delusional and you don’t actually understand what happened.

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Ivor Cummins has been wrong (or lying) almost entirely throughout this pandemic and got paid handsomly for it.

He has been wrong (or lying) so often that it will be nearly impossible for me to track every grift, lie, deceit, manipulation he has pulled. I will use...


... other sources who have been trying to shine on light on this grifter (as I have tried to do, time and again:


Example #1: "Still not seeing Sweden signal versus Denmark really"... There it was (Images attached).
19 to 80 is an over 300% difference.

Tweet: https://t.co/36FnYnsRT9


Example #2 - "Yes, I'm comparing the Noridcs / No, you cannot compare the Nordics."

I wonder why...

Tweets: https://t.co/XLfoX4rpck / https://t.co/vjE1ctLU5x


Example #3 - "I'm only looking at what makes the data fit in my favour" a.k.a moving the goalposts.

Tweets: https://t.co/vcDpTu3qyj / https://t.co/CA3N6hC2Lq