Trump is a businessman. And businessmen can do no wrong. They are smarter, more virtuous, more capable than the 47%: the looters, the takers, the moochers.

Businessmen are the Master Race, they are the Entrepreneurial Elite, they are Those Who Deserve to Rule. Everybody else is just an employee, a worthless drone who is too lazy or unambitious or too stupid or crooked to take charge and make things happen.

And those who aren’t businessmen, but feel they should be, or are convinced they would be if it weren’t for the greedy poor and the Liberals who are always stealing from them what is rightfully theirs, will always vote for and support those who they feel are their natural brothers and allies: folks “just like them”.

And subconsciously, they really believe that when the entrepreneurial and executive elite finally takes charge they will somehow be rewarded for their loyalty and admiration and support.

And when the businessman finally does achieve political power and turns out to be just another incompetent gangster and none of the wealth or prestige ever trickles down to the Archie Bunkers and Joe the Plumbers of this world, when they plunge the economy into another recession, they have a ready-made, all-purpose excuse that will help them save face.

“Well, he wasn’t a Real Conservative.”

Prior to the Trump sale, which at the time was the highest price paid for any single-family home in the country, the most expensive home sold on Palm Beach had been an estate at 1236 S. Ocean Blvd. That property traded hands for $81.5 million earlier in 2008.

Throughout the divorce litigation, Rybovlovlev gave his wife’s attorneys differing reasons for the mansion purchase, said David Newman, a partner with Sills, Cummis & Gross in New York.

At various times in court records, Rybolovlev said the house was for investment purposes, then said it would be for his children, or maybe an inheritance, or it might be used in connection with his daughter because she was an equestrian, according to Newman.

There’s also the issue of Rybolovlev’s marital status, “and whether he was trying to protect his assets in connection with a divorce-mode situation,” said Newman, who represented Elena.

Newman said he found the whole deal curious: “It was out of the ordinary because of the uniqueness of the property, the speed of the transaction,” and the fact that Newman’s team never was able to uncover any evidence that Rybolovlev had performed any professional reviews of the property.

“If someone is paying $90-something million, more than anyone else has ever paid for a private residence, one would think they might look around and do a little due diligence, or even have an inspection,” Newman said.

But Newman said his team never found any evidence Rybolovlev hired experts to weigh in on the property’s condition as a residence — or its value as a teardown — before he bought the place.

….
In addition to the mansion intrigue, Rybolovlev and Trump recently have drawn attention in another peculiar way.

Federal Aviation Administration records reviewed by the Palm Beach Post and other news outlets have tracked Rybolovlev’s private plane to cities where Trump has traveled, during his campaign and into his presidency.

In October, for example, Trump appeared at a campaign rally in Las Vegas. Rybolovlev’s plane arrived in that city an hour after the campaign event started.

A month later, FAA records show Rybolovlev’s plane, an Airbus 319, also landed in Charlotte, N.C., 90 minutes before Trump’s plane arrived. Trump was scheduled to host a campaign event there that day — Nov. 3 — five days before the presidential election.

The latest juxtaposition of Trump’s and Rybolovlev’s aircrafts occurred last month, the weekend of Feb. 10-12, when the oligarch’s plane landed at Miami International Airport while Trump was at Mar-a-Lago entertaining Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

To expand his real estate developments over the years, Donald Trump, his company and partners repeatedly turned to wealthy Russians and oligarchs from former Soviet republics — several allegedly connected to organized crime, according to a USA TODAY review of court cases, government and legal documents and an interview with a former federal prosecutor.

The president and his companies have been linked to at least 10 wealthy former Soviet businessmen with alleged ties to criminal organizations or money laundering.

Among them:

• A member of the firm that developed the Trump SoHo Hotel in New York is a twice-convicted felon who spent a year in prison for stabbing a man and later scouted for Trump investments in Russia.

• An investor in the SoHo project was accused by Belgian authorities in 2011 in a $55 million money-laundering scheme.

• Three owners of Trump condos in Florida and Manhattan were accused in federal indictments of belonging to a Russian-American organized crime group and working for a major international crime boss based in Russia.

• A former mayor from Kazakhstan was accused in a federal lawsuit filed in Los Angeles in 2014 of hiding millions of dollars looted from his city, some of which was spent on three Trump SoHo units.

• A Ukrainian owner of two Trump condos in Florida was indicted in a money-laundering scheme involving a former prime minister of Ukraine.

Trump’s Russian connections are of heightened interest because of an FBI investigation into possible collusion between Trump’s presidential campaign and Russian operatives to interfere in last fall’s election. What’s more, Trump and his companies have had business dealings with Russians that go back decades, raising questions about whether his policies would be influenced by business considerations.

Trump told reporters in February: “I have no dealings with Russia. I have no deals that could happen in Russia, because we’ve stayed away. And I have no loans with Russia. I have no loans with Russia at all.”

Yet in 2013, after Trump addressed potential investors in Moscow, he bragged to Real Estate Weekly about his access to Russia’s rich and powerful. “I have a great relationship with many Russians, and almost all of the oligarchs were in the room,” Trump said, referring to Russians who made fortunes when former Soviet state enterprises were sold to private investors.

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Among Trump’s partners in the SoHo project was Felix Sater, a Russian immigrant who spent a year in prison for the 1991 stabbing. He later cooperated with the FBI and the CIA for a reduced sentence after he was convicted in a $40 million stock manipulation and money-laundering scheme in New York state.

Sater was a major player in the Bayrock Group, which developed the Trump SoHo. A former Bayrock finance director and partner, Jody Kriss, referred to him as a controlling partner, but Bayrock says he was an executive, not a partner.

Sater’s criminal past was not well-known until publicly divulged in 2007. As he sought investment opportunities in Russia, he carried business cards identifying him as a senior adviser to the Trump Organization that included the company’s email and phone number.

In February, Sater introduced a Ukrainian politician pushing a pro-Russian peace proposal to Michael Cohen, Trump’s personal lawyer and former chief counsel at the Trump Organization, Cohen told NBC News.
…
The Trump SoHo project “was largely financed by illegally obtained cash from Russia and Eastern European sources, including money provided by known international financial criminals and organized crime racketeers,” former prosecutor McCallion wrote on his blog in October. McCallion was an assistant U.S. attorney in New York from the mid-1970s to the mid-1980s under presidents Carter and Reagan.

His Campaign manager helped install a Pro-Putin dictator in the Ukraine, Carter Page had extensive Russian ties, Trump’s own words said he was involved with Russians and had a delusional, and disturbing admiration of Putin. He went from saying he knew Putin to saying he never met him… then asking Putin on TV to hack his opponent. Roger Stone indicated publicly that he was in contact with Wikileaks and indeed he was also in contact with Guccifer 2.0, the hacker suspected of doing some of this…

Russian trolls were being paid to spread fake news about Clinton… This was pointed out prior to the election.

The only change Trump’s people insisted on in the GOP platform was a softening of language in support of Ukraine independence… something Putin no doubt appreciated.
His National Security Adviser had promulgated fake news and conspiracy theories, and colluded with the Russians, while at the same time being a SECRET agent in the pay of Turkey… none of this got him fired- even after Sally Yates TOLD the administration that Flynn had been compromised by the Russians… He was only fired after it became public knowledge that he had lied to the Vice President.

Tillerson- the new Secretary of State- has deep Russian connections. In fact, it is getting hard to find a Trump confidant that doesn’t…

So below, where you say ‘Absolutely’ you will admit Trump is colluding with the Russians if the evidence says so- just isn’t believable. Here you are, after all this DEFENDING the Russian intervention on Trump’s behalf… If Clinton or Obama had hired agents of a foreign nation as advisers, you would be calling for revolution, but now you defend it…

YOU OWN THIS, ROB… The warning signs were there and MOST of American voters heeded them, and voted against Trump…You deserve what will happen, but the majority of Americans do not.

You MUST realize that history will remember you as a villain-or at best -a dimwitted, willing patsy for evil…

That is your contribution to humanity, now- and you should never be allowed to forget it.

Did they give Wikileaks the proof Hillary killed those guys in Benghazi? Do they know the real secret of Obama’s birth certificate? Did they hack even one of her missing emails? Do they know what’s really going on in Area 51?

When are you guys going to finally face up to the fact it wasn’t the Democrats that shipped your cushy union factory jobs overseas, or brought in the Mexicans to do their dirty work, or the Indians and Chinese to do all the coding? And it wasn’t Obama or Hillary that foreclosed on your mortgage or broke your kids with ripoff tuition loans. It was the business community, those entrepreneurs you guys are always raving about. You know, those same bastards that promised you if you worked hard and didn’t cause any trouble (and cut their taxes) you would get handed the American Dream on a silver platter, and a silver spoon up your ass.

Take an Oxycontin and call me in the morning. I hear the free market has succeeded in bringing really cheap opiates into small-town white America.

Sorry, pal. You OWN this guy, and we don’t plan to let you ever forget it.

There is no “corrupt DNC” in the UK, France, Holland, Ukraine, or any of those other places were Putin has been working to discredit Liberal Democracy. The only thing those countries have in common with us is the neofascist populist and racist right wingers he’s been helping put in power.

I hope you enjoy your tax cut, and your high-paying industrial job, and your clean burning coal, your freedom from Sharia Law and Mexican Rapists and your wonderful health insurance. Because you have paid a mighty price for them.

Rob, everytime I think maybe you’re prepared to be reasonable, you prove me wrong.

We in the US also share the blame in not being able to disseminate fact from fiction.