Editors From The United States

"According to the FBI... Mogilevich paid a Russian judge to spring... Vyachelsav Kirillovich Ivankov, from a... . ...Ivankov was the enforcer ...torturing ...victims and boasting about ...murders ..."

"The FBI concluded... one of Ivankov's partners... was Felix Komarov..."

"In Red Mafiya... Friedman documented how Ivankov organized... a multibillion-dollar criminal enterprise. According to the FBI, he recruited... "combat brigades" of Special Forces veterans from the Soviet war in Afghanistan to run the... and kill... enemies."

"[A]ttorneys Frederick Oberlander and Richard Lerner... qui tam suit against Bayrock... charged ...laundering $250 million in profits from Trump SoHo and other projects, and... evading] $100 million in... taxes."

"Trump would not... put up a ... penny, but... get 18 percent of... profits... for licensing... as Bayrock financed and developed... Trump... SoHo."

"The Oberlander and Lerner lawsuit... alleged... $250 million of Bayrock’s projected profits as... co-developer of Trump SoHo and three other projects were "to be laundered, untaxed, through a sham Delaware entity to Iceland (and reportedly then Russia), intending to evade up to $100,000,000 of U.S. taxation.""

"Without the 's move into New York, Donald Trump would not have become president of the United States."

"Russians had begun collaborating with Italian mobsters as early as 1980..."

"Within... intelligence, assets... include those who... prefer... [a foreign country's] ideology, those who betray... for monetary gain, those... ed, and... useful idiots who... provide... information through... lapses or blind pursuit of their own agendas."

"Trump, the Soviets... discovered... was... intoxicated... with boatloads of cash... in dubious transactions..."

"[A]s long as they had money... Trump was listening."

"Vladimir Putin... waged a shadow... "virtual" war... of s, disinformation, and cyber warfare."

"James Clapper asserted... Trump was... an intelligence "asset" serving... Putin."

"Deceit was the new norm. ...Trump’s lies from the Washington Posts "Fact Checker" ...passed twenty thousand. ...[N]ow ...anti-science ... Lies that killed..."

"John Brennan declared Trump... "...in the pocket of Putin" and... on '... he... called Trump’s behavior "treasonous, which is to betray... trust and aid and abet the enemy...""

"[[Donald Trump|[H]e]] was a vulgar... vile... misogynistic, racist... buffoon who knew only his own pecuniary interests and prejudices... He was clownish and repellant... his... spectacles amplified by a sycophantic right-wing media."

"[O]ne Trump-branded project after another was beset by corruption, lawsuits... [etc]. Trump licensed Trump Tower Baku to close relatives of ... described in a diplomatic cable as "notoriously corrupt even for Azerbaijan.""

"[H]e... implemented anti-science... policies that... led to... deaths of hundreds of thousands..."

"[[w:Intelligence assessment|[I]ntelligence]] operations are designed to operate within the law... [L]ax regulations... enforcement, and the... nature of counterintelligence, has given the Russians... latitude."

"With the help of Sater’s father, the firm got protection from the Genovese family, and Sater used an alias.. to launder... proceeds... [A] mob operation... cheating unsuspecting investors out of $40 million."

"Bayrock planned to build the Trump SoHo in New York,.. [and various Trump Projects and properties]. ...[I]ts ...list of strategic partners was topped with... "The Trump Organization"..."

"Bayrock’s leadership... billionaire oligarchs from the former Soviet Union."

"Trump struck a deal... to attach his name to three high-rises in Sunny Isles Beach ... known as "Little Moscow." ...[A]t least sixty-three buyers with Russian addresses or passports spent $98 million on Trump's properties in South Florida."

""Trump specifically marketed his Sunny Isles, Florida, apartment units in... [Russia] to attract... organized crime money"..."

"Bayrock... brought into Donald Trump’s orbit a host of oligarchs and alleged mobsters involved in laundering money, the trafficking of underage women, feeding intelligence to the Russians... [etc.]."

"Given... control over.. oligarchs was crucial to... power, Putin needed to... keep tabs on... their money... If... the or other forms of flight capital were funding a Trumpbranded project... If oligarchs were buying scores of Trump condos... Putin wanted to know."

"[T]his is a country... in which it's possible to take money... [and] establish communications with Russian intelligence, and... to be a Russian asset without breaking the law. Russians can hire... attorneys as lobbyists, who... have access to... secrets... to get what they want."

"Ivankov recruited two brigades... of 250 athletes and... veterans of the Afghan war... to kill his enemies and establish ties..."

"[T]he Russians knew, real estate was... [an] efficient way to launder billions in flight capital, and Trump’s newest projects were perfectly suited... [e.g.,] Trump World Tower..."

"During the '80s and '90s, we... repeatedly saw... criminals... use condos and high-rises to launder money," says Jonathan Winer... "it was a way of turning dirty money into clean money... and it explained why there are so many high-rises... sold but no one... living in them."

"...Eduard Nektalov ...bought a condo ... directly below ...Kellyanne Conway. ...Nektalov ...related to Lev Leviev ...was being investigated by a Treasury Department ...for mob-connected money laundering. He and his father, Roman Nektalov, had been targeted in Operation Meltdown... that uncovered a scheme through which diamond merchants laundered $8 million in Colombian drug proceeds. ...May 2004 ...a ...man ...fired once in ...Nektalov’s head ...two more ...into his back ..."

"Russians had billions of dollars from illicit sources... Trump ...in dire need of financing, had ...ideal vehicles for laundering ...real estate ...casinos ...and a history of not asking too many questions ..."

"In the wake of his massive debts and multiple bankruptcies, Wall Street... said no... The banks... said no to Trump. ...But Bayrock ...said yes..."

"[T]o turn a blind eye to practices that allowed the Russian mob to launder money through his real estate on a massive scale... required a third party... largely staffed, owned, and financed by émigrés from... the former Soviet Union... [on] the twenty-fourth floor of ."

"... was Bayrock's... man... Sater’s FBI handler described Felix’s father, Michael Sheferovsky... "a... Mogilevich crime syndicate boss." Felix... as a teenager, counted among his friends Michael D. Cohen..."

"[T]hough Sater had lost his license to trade stocks, in 1993, he... had... a penthouse office suite at ... owned by Donald Trump. ...Sater and ...friends sold the stocks ...in an illegal pump-and-dump scheme..."

"In 1984... David Bogatin... former pilot in the ... specialty... shooting down Americans over ... plunked... $6 million to buy... five [Trump Tower] luxury condos. ...According to ... Trump personally attended the closing... Russian mobsters were beginning to invest in high-end real estate... an ideal vehicle to launder money..."

"Vnesheconombank, or VEB... bought $850 million of stock... from Shnaider... $15 million... went into the Trump Toronto project. ...[T]he chairman of VEB’s ...board ...Vladimir Putin."

"With 's Rabbi leading the way, the Federation... was... providing Putin... a Jewish "umbrella"... to battle ... who... back[ed] candidates opposed to Putin. ...Lazar and Leviev ...promised Putin that they would... "open doors to the corridors of power in Washington.""

"[T]he biggest contributor to ... was Leviev... who had a direct line to Rabbi ... Donald Trump, and... Putin... Leviev would make major real estate transactions with Jared Kushner..."

"Fascism was in the air."

"[A] malevolent narcissist... at the helm... deliberately infected the nation with a murderous stupidity... of supporters who lived in a cultlike world of paranoid fantasies and magical thinking, blithely spreading... Trumpian hate and lethal disease... weaponized by Russian intelligence via social media, and incorporated into paranoid conspiracies by... extremist cults."

"... "In the intelligence business, we would say that Mr. Putin had recruited Mr. Trump as an unwitting agent of the Russian Federation.""

"Michael Hayden... called... Trump "a clear and present danger" to America's... security and "a ," a term... attributed to Vladimir Lenin..."

"[T]he public record makes clear that Trump built his business empire in no small part with a lot of dirty money from a lot of dirty Russians—including the dirtiest and most feared of them all."

"[A]ccording to the FBI... [] was the key money-laundering contact for the Solntsevskaya Bratva... one of the richest criminal syndicates in the world. ...[R]unning a multibillion-dollar worldwide racket ...drug trafficking and prostitution rings ...accused of selling ...stolen ...ground-to-air missiles and armored troop carriers, to Iran. ..."He uses ...wealth and power ..." the FBI says, "...to influence governments and their economies.""

"[F]low of money from Russia provided Trump with a crucial infusion of financing that helped rescue his empire... "They saved his bacon," says Kenneth McCallion..."

"[U]ntold millions from the former Soviet Union... wasn’t enough to save Trump from his... failings as a businessman. He owed $4 billion to... 70 banks... [F]ortunately... his... economic crisis coincided... In 1998, Russia defaulted on $40 billion... causing the ruble to plummet and... banks to close... oligarchs and mobsters scrambling to find a safe place... [for] their money. ... ...[c]onstruction got underway in 1999 ...one-third of the units on the ... priciest floors... [were] snatched up ...by individual buyers the former Soviet Union ...or ...companies connected to Russia."

"Boris Yeltsin's shift to a market economy was so abrupt that... s and corrupt government officials were able to privatize and loot state-held assets in oil, , s, and banking."

"Ivankov’s mandate from Mogilevich... consolidate the Russian Mafia in the US... form alliances with... other Mafias... bribe politicians....infiltrate governments... [T]he Russians began scrutinizing... vulnerabilities of America’s campaign finance system, the K Street lobbying system, Wall Street... [etc.]"