Listen my children and ye shall hear of a sordid and filthy tale of America’s First Beauty and the Beastly Trumps.
Sitting on Daddy’s lap through most of her childhood, Ivanka Trump obviously lapped up all the Trumpster’s filthy money-laundering techniques and lifestyle. Have we all become so inured to the outright corruption of this White House that we simply accept the fact that all the Trumps and Kushners have merged their business interests with their jobs working for the president?
It’s not just the first family either. The NRCC is just coming right out and dumping money directly into the Trump family pockets. One million here from the Saudis, two million there from the Russians, three million from the inauguration, four million from Mar-a-Lago and the Trump golf courses and hotels. Soon it adds up to real money.
CORRUPTION IS RELATIVE
In case you were wondering, the Trump Hotel is doing very, very well, what with them luring their lemming lobbyists and foreign dignitaries relentlessly to have them spend huge wads of cash there over the past two years.
Sons of the pitch master-baitor, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, known hunter gathers of Russian money launderers, are handling the business, with Trump himself looking over some quarterly reports .
It’s survival of the shitmeister (deliberate pun) amongst us even as it turns out that Ivanka’s brand, like her father’s brand, stinks to high heaven. Obviously, even their China made MAGA slogan pertains to all others, because nothing can stop the Dirty Trumpsters from pulling in money wherever money is to be pulled in. Since shame is not in the Trump vocabulary, nor any semblance of moral consciousness, Ivanka’s business history is nothing to be proud of. Recent investigations into the Trump real estate empire show that she had been involved in the company’s most suspicious dealings with shady oligarchs and mobbed-up money launderers.
If Donald Trump is in the crosshairs of federal investigators for nefarious financial transactions with disreputable characters, his daughter will just as likely be caught in that same net. When the Japanese Prime Minister visited the Oval Office, Ivanka walked away with a dung-heap of new trademarks. Emoluments be dammed.
Reuters and NBC reported on a particularly nasty deal in Panama called the Trump Ocean Club, which big Daddy Trump dubbed Ivanka’s “baby.” It was the Trump Organization’s first international hotel venture in 2007, and Ivanka was the lead family member on the project, working closely with a shady Brazilian development broker named Alexandre Ventura Nogueira,
Because the Trumpster’s like Other People’s Money, they never seem to want to keep their hands clean because Other People’s Money is soooo attractive…
Involved in Ivanka’s “baby” was a money launderer from Colombia who is currently incarcerated in the U.S., a Ukrainian human trafficker, and a Russian investor who was jailed a few years earlier for kidnapping and threatening murder in Israel. Nogueira himself was arrested in Panama on unrelated fraud charges and fled the country; there are still four criminal cases pending over the Trump project. Ivanka apparently claims not to remember the man, although funnily enough, she knew him well enough to make a promotional video with him.
The daughter also sinks with another notorious Ivanka project, the 2014 Trump Tower Baku in Azerbaijan, which she personally oversaw. This was the project that, according to a New Yorker report, was partially funded by the infamous Iranian Revolutionary Guard and served as a cash laundromat for the country’s government. All Trump hands were on deck with this compromised cash cow, from the gold-heavy furniture to the landscaping.
The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act requires that American companies not make profits from illegal activities overseas, and simply claiming ignorance (a Trump trademark excuse), that you didn’t know where the money was coming from, isn’t good enough. Federal authorities have put people in prison for doing business with money launderers in Azerbaijan in recent years. Courts have held that a company needn’t be aware of specific criminal behavior but only that corruption was pervasive. The Trump ostrich defense doesn’t hold up because the family they were in business with was widely known as “the Corleones of the Caspian.”
Donald Trump’s who has the business ethics of a nursery-school dropout famously expressed his oliguric attitude: “Every other country goes into these places and they do what they have to do,” he said. “It’s a horrible law and it should be changed.” If American companies refused to give bribes, he said, “you’ll do business nowhere.”
Ivanka white washed all information about the Azerbaijan project from her website.
You don’t have to be a graduate of Trump University to believe that the Trump’s didn’t know that they were involved in these massive corruption schemes. The evidence was right in front of their eyes. Now that evidence is right in front of an investigative team that has a mandate to go wherever the evidence takes them. Ivanka Trump is as legally vulnerable as her husband and the rest of her family
Ivanka, before you’re reputation goes down in flames, turn evidence so that you don’t relegate your young children to orphan-hood. Eventually the nation will trump the Trumps, who will burn in our collective memory as the worst chapter in the American presidency.
Oedipus wrecks.
Ilene Proctor
The Great Mind Series aims to share the best ideas from the greatest minds. It was founded in 2010 by publicist and activist Ilene Proctor. The first event took place at Teddi Winograd’s home in Beverly Hills, CA. Since then, a grand total of 91 Great Mind Series salons have entertained and stimulated audiences of open-minded progressives.
Past even have featured Reza Aslan, Gore Vidal, Gabe Sherman, Mikey Weinstein, Gloria Allred with Lisa Bloom, Robert Baer, Ralph Nader, Larry Beinert, Max Blumenthal, Sidney Blumenthal, Jane Goodall, John Dean, Robert Dreyfuss, Robert Scheer, Oliver Stone, Amy Goodman, Professor Peter Drier, Reese Elrich, Elliot Gould, Former Rep. Alan Grayson, Libee HaLevy, Earl Ofari Hutchinson, Dahr Jamail, David Cay Johnston, Dennis Kucinich, Esai Morales, Harold Myerson, Ralph Nader, John Nichols, Greg Palast, Michael Parenti, Nomi Prins, Danny Schechter, Gabe Sherman, Robert Sheer, Lance Simmens, David Swanson, Harvey Wasserman, Marianne Williamson, Ambassador Joe Wilson, and Vincent Bugliosi, among others.