Yeah, they’re mostly Interior Decorators.
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To fill in after the “…” above: Gregory B. Craig, a former White House counsel under President Obama.
I don’t know if I am more dismayed with the participation of former Obama appointees and officials or more amazed that Obama keep these crooks and opportunists in line for 8 years.
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The best expatiation I read for the inexplicable is that this is how Russian launderettes worked. Here is a primer. As you read this, much of it will sound very familiar. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/mar/20/the-global-laundromat-how-did-it-work-and-who-benefited
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These guys are indistinguishable from the villains in every story and movie I saw as a kid.
It is an absolute travesty that we haven’t literally pilloried Paul Manafort.
It seems likely that the Trump crime family is actually just the US branch of a Russian one, and that they are eager to pursue Yanukovych’s successful strategy of seizing power so they can live like literal kings. They are already doing as much in their home countries, and they’ve stolen enough strength to try for bigger game.
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If that judge in Virginia can read a book instead of watching Fox he should say never mind.
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So, it turns out that at the intersection between public relations and social media lies the potential to take a self-promoting money launderer for Russian mobsters and con half the voters into thinking he is a self-made entrepreneur who is so patriotic that he wants to use his business acumen on their behalf.
There are a lot of bad actors here, but if the American public is so gullible, then it simply wouldn’t have been sporting not to at least try to trick them.
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“…That’s what I don’t get—how in God’s name did Manafort and Gates think they could get away with cheating these thugs? …”
The answer: We don’t know. We can speculate, however, that greed overrode any caution he might have had. Add some hubris to that and a belief he would be safe in the US, but Russians kill in England and they may have been planning the assassination of ex-pats in the US until we threw them out. As I said before, SMERSH may be dead de jure, but lives de facto.
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“…It seems likely that the Trump crime family is actually just the US branch of a Russian one…”
If you said this just a little over a year ago I’d think you were smoking funny cigarettes.
It will all come out eventually and we’ll ask how in the hell could we have ever allowed this to happen.
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Crooks always seem to believe that they can cheat and outsmart the bosses. Cartel bosses have a huge human resource problem, that same tolerance for risk that enables smugglers to perform their duties, also compels them into keeping all the money for themselves with the subsequent disciplinary actions taken by the bosses.
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Certainly seems like they’re trying. And against their enormous, but inchoate, efforts we have a couple of company’s (military sense) worth of lawyers, accountants, and computer types. It’ll never happen, but when Meuller and his crew are successful in decapitating this mob, they should get a ticker tape parade down Fifth Avenue.
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Beaten to death in a hotel room, tossed out a window, shot in a stairwell etc. They certainly like to mix things up. I could see them contracting with a prison gang to reach out and touch someone.
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like Al Quiada has an image problem
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There’s also always going to be a certain amount of skimming going on, but it’s not a big deal until the boss thinks it is. And if not for the crash of 2008, it probably wouldn’t have been a big deal. But then every ruble counted.
(Also, in a sense they have gotten away with it. It’s almost 10 years later and they and their families are still alive.)
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I don’t believe Manafort has anything to lose, because I believe he has already been told that his cooperation will garner life in prison. He won’t be getting any sweetheart short term prison sentences, based on his crimes - even if he cooperates 100%. This is why he has no choice but to fight - well the charges and the fact that he robbed a bunch of dirty russians. I don’t feel any sympathy for his position either way.
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Even Tony Soprano knew you didn’t screw with the Russians.
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We’re doing our best to become a failed post-Soviet state.
Bearing in ind Drumpf’s obsession with ‘fairness,’ might we not say he’s just trying to level the playing field?
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To Axelrod’s credit, he was working for Yanukovych’s soon to be framed opponent, Timoshenko. Skadden, Arps, however, played a role in covering up the framing.
I suspect that there was the smell of easy money and, ultimately, access to power in the air. Kinda a chance for everyone to cash in on the dues they’d paid in an environment where the local competition wasn’t out of the minor leagues yet.
Manafort parleyed that opportunity into a very bad move: defrauding Oleg Deripaska. It says all we gotta know about his judgment.
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Why is it that these Russian mobsters all look like Russian mobsters?
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Manafort will be only sightly safer in a medium security penitentiary than a luxury penthouse. Polonium 210 is not his friend.
Just occurred to me…maybe he is.