What? Have you never listened to the man? I know it’s hard to bear sometimes, but what he says (and we know because it’s recorded) and does is more than enough to account for his negative feelings and press.
OP was poisoned by the example used. Moved from General Questions to IMHO.
samclem, moderator.
The idea that it would be “propaganda” to ask about this is an example of a “big lie.” I’m not going to live in or support a political “bubble.”
The laundering of information that is occurring has to do with the normalization of a disturbed personality for politics, regardless of any presence or absence of financial crimes.
When a person sales a property for what appears to be 150% profit. That does not make it a case of money laundering. I paid $42,000 for my house if I sell it for $785,000 (according to Zillow I could) does that mean I would be guilty of money laundering? And there are a lot of properties being sold to foreign investors for those kinds of prices. Does that make for a lot of money laundering? It looks like according to you it would.
The kind of questions and information in your OP show a biases.
Trump on his own can make himself look bad without trying to make him look bad for doing business.
How long did you hold your home? Did you sell it to a rich oligarch who is a putin friend?
Do you really think this sale is normal?
So at the end of this, if it is “funny,” are you going to be shocked?
Trump left nothing on the table. He bought the property in a distressed sale and flipped it for a big profit. People do this every day, though not at that scale. He sold it at market price, evidenced by the buyer’s ability to sell only the land at about the same price.
You have provided no facts to show that this was anything but a completely legitimate transaction. There was no prior relationship with the buyer. There was no motivation by the buyer to inflate the sale price to benefit Trump. The sale happened in 2008, before he was even a presidential candidate. There is no factual indication this was money laundering in any form. What’s your point?
Which is probably the first time in his life that one of Trump’s business deals made money. No wonder he cottons to Putin so much.
But it’s not money laundering, not in the slightest.
Hooray!! Bring on the political snarks!
Cooking with gas: Cite for these things?
It was a record price for a single family home in the US, in a downward market, to a russian oligarch and putin friend. Who he denies having met, although this mans plane has been known to follow trumps travel schedule.
You know donalds russian connections go back a long way, yes, before the election. So what? That’s the whole point here. It is not a sudden event.
I’m saying that I don’t know the motives involved but that any taxpayer needs to know more.
This is why they say “follow the money.” Not because they are defining “money laundering” as in or out of the picture so they can move on into obliviousness, but because corruption takes many forms and is as fungible as money is.
If this is not smoke, then you have to buy the alternate reality of one news network above the crowd sourced journalistic efforts of everyone else.
Your frustration is completely understandable and likely shared by a majority on this board. There’s very little that is normal about POTUS 45 and the current situation is extremely fluid. The main thing to consider is that there are two Congressional committees & a FBI Special Investigator that are focused on this matter and that it will take time for anything concrete to emerge. (Senate Judiciary and House Judiciary will be looking into the Comey firing for potential obstruction of justice findings, which would be separate from the Russia investigation.)
With that said, there’s quite a bit of unsourced stories on Trump, Russia, and money laundering. For example, one bit of theorycrafting involves Deutsche Bank (which was busted for laundering 10 billion in Russian money) funneling some of that cash to it’s favorite customer, Donald J Trump. We’ll have to wait and see if this theory has any basis in fact.
Somewhat tangentally related to all this was last year’s Panama Papers event. Here’s a decent writeup by the Guardian on how the Russians do money laundering.
OK and I regret my thread title. I meant a broader overview. I think I might make another thread. We’ll see. Every day is a new surprise in this new great america.
Is your claim that the price the oligarch paid was inflated over market value?
I say it wasn’t, and my cite is: the oligarch sold the property for that same price. That’s pretty much the definition of market value.
So be specific: what are you saying happened, and how is it illegal?
I think in an authoritarian state or other kleptocracies what is illegal gains can be fluid or redefined according to the whims of certain people. Also the motives for parking your money in different places in the world can vary.
I’m sure this environment is very attractive to “kings of debt” in the US.
Anyone doubt that donald will be a natural kleptocrat if we let him?
A terrific amount of expensive properties in London and the Home Counties — and I have no doubt in America and France — were sold to massively wealthy Russians from the 1990s to now. Were all these sellers being bribed or wanting contacts with Dread Vladimir ?
You would have done better to make a thread on Trump’s property deals and leave money laundering out of it.
I’m actually interested in what, if anything, the crime might be in a similar situation. Let’s take it away from Don The Con (as much fun as it is to talk about him) and put it as a hypothetical.
Suppose I come across evidence that three of my neighbors are involved in something they don’t want revealed. Just for argument’s sake, let’s say it’s not illegal. (Example – they are all men who get together every week or so for a few hours of gay sex with each other, and they’d get kicked off the board of the fundamentalist Christian church they all belong to, plus their wives would probably divorce them and get huge settlements).
I go to them and say that for a certain amount of money I’ll keep the info (and video) to myself. They don’t want record of any payment to me, because that might raise questions.
They do however have a fourth man that they trust absolutely. I go to a local art show and buy a set of three paintings of little kids with big eyes for $20. I then sell the art to the fourth man for $15,000. He turns around and sells a painting to each of the three for $6,000, pocketing $3,000 for his trouble.
OK – I am guilty of blackmail, but there’s a paper trail whereby it may be difficult to prove, especially since none of the victims is inclined to report it. Am I guilty of anything else?
The middleman who bought the worthless paintings from me and sold them to the other three, what if any crime is he guilty of?
Does this whole scheme come down to a method for laundering a blackmail payment?
(It’s a shame Law & Order is no longer on the air. Throw in a dead body somewhere, and it would make a bang-up episode.)
This is the thing about dictatorships. They define what’s illegal. So specific, and picayune arguments about the illegality of any act, or the definition of any act as “illegal” is moot. Sorry lawyers. And these ends are also served by muddying the idea of truth, and making false equivalencies out of any issue. Using “fake news,” crying 'fake news" at others, and lots of strategies are in play.
This is from quimpers first link (Thanks very much quimper) : “He takes what he wants. When you are president of Russia, you don’t need a written contract. You are the law.” So who wants to argue what’s illegal and what’s not? Not me. Yet. Give me some time.
Things that stink aren’t necessarily illegal. Impeachable offenses aren’t either. But govt needs to avoid this.
As a side benefit, this can also explain my-six-year-old-could-do-that modern art.
I can’t believe what a bunch of nerds we are. We’re looking up money laundering on the SDMB.
No shit. I just googled money laundering and I got this: “I can’t believe what a bunch of nerds we are. We’re looking up money laundering on the SDMB.”
The United States and each state also define what’s illegal, and they are not dictatorships. So while it’s true that dictatorships define what’s illegal,* so do other forms of government*.
The only one muddying anything here is you. You’ve gone from a vague assertion about one crime to mumbling about fake news and dictatorships without forming a single clear argument.
What, specifically, is your argument?
Points!