My cousin Rudy is of the opinion that Russian oligarchs are laundering their ill-gotten gains by buying Trump properties and investing in his businesses. I don’t think there’s any doubt there’s some of this going on, the only question is whether they are only taking advantage of an existing financial mechanism/loophole of which he is an unwitting participant, or whether they and Trump are in active collusion and he is perfectly aware of what is happening and systematically enabling it–and getting a piece of the action.

The major theme of Applebaum’s “Autocracy, Inc.” is that there is a global network of autocrats and kleptocracies that are cooperating in squirreling away the assets they have stolen from their countries and hiding them in Western financial instruments and properties–with the active assistance of Western Capitalist Institutions. The love affair and mutual admiration society we have seen going on between the American Right and people like Orban, Putin and the Saudi Royals only reinforces this suspicion. This is not a question of ideology. Its strictly business. Its all about rich gangsters who don’t want to pay taxes.

News from Russia in response to the recent incursion by Ukrainian forces into the Kursk region certainly corroborates this:

https://www.thedailybeast.com/putins-face-betrays-russian-panic-over-ukrainian-invasion-shock

Predictably, the State Duma member painted Ukraine’s military action as an attempt to taint Moscow’s beloved candidate, Donald Trump. Zatulin said, “Of course, this attack was meant to influence an opinion of impressionable people in the West… The main point of the war in Ukraine is not to allow Donald Trump to win.”

Former politician Spiridon Kilinkarov took this argument even further, describing Ukraine’s offensive as its “special operation” and baselessly alleging that it was covertly planned and fully funded by Americans, to undermine Republicans and to help the Democrats.