Russian mafia boss still at large after FBI wiretap at Trump Tower ...
But it was not placed at the behest of Barack Obama, and the target was not the Trump campaign of 2016.
The FBI did wiretap Trump Tower to monitor Russian activity, but it had nothing to do with the 2016 Presidential election, it has been reported.
Mar 28, 2017 - FBI arrests ten people in New York City with criminal ties to Donald Trump and Russian mafia.
The Russian Mafia now owned Donald Trump, they made him their '
Trump’s Ties to Russian Organized Crime
April 18, 2017 by 40 Comments
Jeff Morley, a terrific investigative reporter who used to be my boss at the American Independent News Network, has an article at Alternet looking at the close ties between Donald Trump and Russian organized crime figures, relationships that go back long before he ever ran for president.
Yet even “the mother of all bombs” cannot obliterate the accumulating body of evidence about his relationship with Russian organized crime figures and the not unrelated question about whether he and his entourage colluded with Russian officials in the 2016 presidential election. The story, notes Talking Points Memo’s Josh Marshall, is “Hiding in plain sight.”The evidence of pre-election collusion between Trump and the Russians, while growing, is far from definitive. The evidence on Trump’s organized crime ties is stronger…Chronologically speaking, Trump’s ties to organized crime figures came first. Mutually beneficial transactions dating back to the 1990s led to closer relations in the 2000s and culminated in the contacts during the 2016 campaign. It all began with Russians who wanted to get their money out of the country…A lot of this Russian organized crime money flowed through Cyprus, and one of its largest banks, the Bank of Cyprus. The bank’s chairman, Wilbur Ross, is now secretary of commerce. When senators considering Ross’ nomination asked about Cyprus, Ross said Trump had forbidden him from answering questions on the subject.Not coincidentally, Illinois congressman Mike Quigley, a member of the House Intelligence Committee, recently traveled to Cyprus to investigate, according to the Daily Beast.“The fact that Turkey, the U.S. and Russia and other countries are really interested in Cyprus, because of its strategic location… the fact that Russians launder their money there to avoid sanctions, and the fact that key U.S. and Russia players were there—all make it really important for the Russia investigation,” Quigley explained in an interview.
This may be the key to the entire collusion investigation. Trump is hardly the only one with ties to organized crime; Putin is up to his eyeballs in it. Indeed, the distinction between organized crime and legitimate corporate interests in Russia is pretty much non-existent. The whole system runs on bribes, blackmail and collusion. This could all blow up in Trump’s face in a huge way if the investigations in Cyprus can prove anything substantive. The fact that he felt comfortable bringing Wilbur Ross into the cabinet given his status as a director of a Cyprus bank legendary for laundering Russian mob money is astonishing, and perhaps speaks to his hubris.
