Have Mueller’s Questions About Trump’s Collusion(s) Already Been Answered? - Part 1

collusion (n.) col·lu·sion. secret cooperation: secret cooperation between people in order to do something illegal or underhanded.

-Encarta World English Dictionary

As President Donald Trump’s inaugural motorcade left the Capitol for the White House, it passed more military and police guards than civilians. It also passed protesters behind barricades, many booing and holding signs saying: “Release Tax Returns!”, “Mobster-In-Chief!”, “Drug Trafficker!”, and “Come Clean With Gambino Crime Family!” Not far from the White House, the presidential limousine suddenly stopped at a carefully chosen spot. The Trump’s appeared for a two-minute photo-op in front of Trump International Hotel Washington. Their message to the world was clear: The Trump Organization was open for business and no boundaries would be drawn between presidential duties and colluding with foreign officials for personal and financial gain.(1)

Kleptocracies In Hind Sight
Some think the questions from Robert Mueller’s Special Counsel whether President Donald Trump and his campaign colluded with Russia to interfere in the 2016 election has already been answered. So has questions if his family and the Trump Organization’s 500 businesses-which he never divested from-around the world did. This dynastic empire, with its branding deals and myriad properties in foreign countries, is yet another example of how those at the highest levels of government secretly accumulate more wealth and power from foreign entities despite the risk of massive conflicts of interest. It’s an ongoing crisis as well, how the establishment which controls great quantities of businesses continues to put the nation, the American people, and its democracy in peril.

They moreover warn that Americans must remember the presidency IS the Establishment. Trump’s refusal to release tax statements, his secretive foreign income sources, his forgotten financial disclosures, and his unwillingness to divest from the Trump Organization, are more of the same authoritarian-like privileges for elected officials.(2) And like most other presidents before him, his practice of secretly doing business through family members which include shady foreign officials that have reasons to curry favor with him and the U.S. government, will continue to influence-if not dictate-domestic and foreign affairs. Foreign affairs that often includes starting wars and selling lethal weapons to terrorist organizations regimes with horrible human rights records.

Born to Run, and Collude
Some of Mueller’s questions were answered when Trump threatened to fire Robert Mueller, and when he warned the Special Counsel to stay away from his tax returns and business deals. Not only did this show that Trump had something secretive and illegal to hide, but it proved how explosive a June 2016 email to Donald Trump Jr. was that suggested the Trumps knew the Kremlin was already working behind the scenes to elect him. But the email, which stated that as “part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump” the crown prosecutor (Russia’s attorney general) plans to deliver damaging documents about Hillary Clinton, is just one of many cases of how Trump colluded with foreign officials in return for certain favors.(3)

It’s also well known how impossible it is for a leopard to change its spots. Not only did Trump have a lengthy history of tax fraud, aggressive tax avoidance, money laundering, and manipulating financial figures for his own benefit, but the state and city of New York found that he cheated on his obligations to the government. Criminal investigations even exposed financial transactions with American and Russian crime figures. Hiring major international drug traffickers and supplying helicopters was just one offence. Another was bullying New Jersey’s courts to reduce at least one drug trafficker’s prison sentence and his fines: Joseph Wichselbaum’s. Wichselbaum, meanwhile, lives in a multi-million-dollar Trump Tower apartment and still won’t answer if he was financed by Trump.(4)

Collusion on My Mind, in Moscow
Questions surrounding if the president knew of the June 9, 2016 meeting at Trump Tower between Donald Trump Jr. and Natalia V. Veselnitskayal were obviously answered when Don Jr. hid the real purpose of the meeting, and when Veselnitskayal initially denied but then finally admitted being a Kremlin operative sent to meddle in the election. But the promise of “dirt” email on Hillary Clinton to which Don Jr. replied: “I love it.” started as early as 2007. In fact, Trump Sr. and Don Jr. had actually made several real estate deals in Moscow and with Moscow‘s oligarchs. They received loans as well from Russia’s central bank deputy, Aleksander Torshinseveral, and Israeli billionaire Lev Leviev.(5) To think that foreign loans don’t have strings attached or collusion in mind is naive.

Some say that it’s also naïve to think business deals and loans, such as Deutsche Bank of Germany, weren’t reciprocal-like or some kind of pay-for-play deals. Indeed, and after being inaugurated, Don Jr. secretly sold more real estate, made more business deals, and sought more investments and loans from foreign entities than ever before in the history of the Trump Organization. As for the photo-op in front of Trump International Hotel Washington, it too paid off as business moguls and mobsters from China, Bahrain, Azerbaijan, Kasakhastan, Indonesia, Georgia, Ukraine, the Bahamas, Uzbekistan, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and many other countries, first paid tribute and then colluded with the new administration over domestic and foreign policies.

Kleptocracies Hidden in Plain-and Present-Sight
Even now, more questions are being answered. For instance, Why did Thomas Barrack, a Middle East billionaire, receive millions of dollars in aid to the president’s inauguration committee from donors with links to Russia, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar? Was the largest inaugural fundraising effort in U.S. history-$107 million, more than double what President Barack Obama raised for his swearing-in ceremonies, to curry more favors? And what about business owners who gave individual donations of $1 million, while gifts to the president topped at $1 million? Were they too buying favors or was it a quid pro promise? Whatever Mueller’s investigation finds, it’s clear the photo op in front of Trump International Hotel Washington was a public relations coup. It was also collusion in broad daylight.

Was it collusion when Michael Cohen, Trump’s personal attorney, took large sums of money from corporations for advice, and to advise the president about possible mergers or the GOP’s tax plan? Ranging from Verizon, Sony, FedEx, drug maker Novartis, and AT&T-which plans to merge with Time Warner, some have apologized and admitted to wrongs. But not the president. His campaign message about “Crooked Hillary” may have in fact been projection. Given that he bragged about buying politicians and was involved in a pay-to-play scheme during the campaign, when he paid-off Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi to drop the state’s suit against Trump University, is Crooked Donald abusing his new position for private gain? And what about fraudulent power for personal gain?

Entitlement Instead of Privilege
There’s evidently no end to Trump and the Trump Organization’s dirty laundry list of collusive deals. Like other elected officials, some think he too has used his children and family members as useful channels for monetary and political influence. Not only will these foreign entities continue to curry favor with the president, but they’ll use the same corrupt dealings as a type of obligation or some form of embarrassment. They may even be leverage to start another war. Neither is there an end in sight to the collusive deals that most politicians make when they go to Washington. In effect, many treat public office as an entitlement instead of a privilege, making themselves rich through public service instead of making the public rich through their service.

Since transactions don’t fall under disclosure laws, this kind of corruption by proxy is moreover hard to detect. But make no mistake, stuffing multibillion-dollar equity deals in the dark corners of the world into theirs’ or their family members’ bank accounts is illegal and tantamount to bribery. So are the secret deals they make which affect everything from national security to the standard of living. Indeed, politicians are constitutionally bound to make decisions that are best for the people they serve. Loyalty elsewhere means they’ve corrupted the Constitution. Nor does compromised national security equate with world peace.

In Part 2, [see here] more of Trump’s loyalties will be answered, as will the loyalties of Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump in relation to Russia, China and many other nations.

(Note: More secrets even now are being exposed about Don Jr. and Michael Cohen. In Senate Transcripts on the Trump Tower meeting, Don Jr. couldn’t recall whether he had discussed the meeting with his father. He also told the Senate Judiciary Committee that he couldn’t remember who he talked to during a 11-minute phone call to a blocked number. Other revelations stemmed from saying that he had met with the Russians to obtain “potential information about an open” to admitting colluding with them in an email. Given a lawyer for the Trump Organization told the Russians involved not to speak to the press and to keep quiet about the details of the meeting, it appears that both Don Jr. and the president have a lot more explaining to do.(6)

The South China Morning Post exposed further how the president was violating the Emoluments Clause. His many hotels around the world have not only been patronized by foreign clients and diplomats, but a billion-dollar development project involving the Trump Organization financed by the Chinese government appears to be one of collusion. In other words, the resort project being developed in Indonesia by the president’s business empire received $500 million from the Chinese government. Right after the transaction, the president ordered a bailout for a Chinese-government owned cellphone maker, ZTE.) If this is be the case, the president is in clear violation of the U.S. Constitution which prohibits government officials from receiving gifts or payments from foreign states.)(7)

Dallas Darling is the author of Politics 501: An A-Z Reading on Conscientious Political Thought and Action, Some Nations Above God: 52 Weekly Reflections On Modern-Day Imperialism, Militarism, And Consumerism in the Context of John’s Apocalyptic Vision, and The Other Side Of Christianity: Reflections on Faith, Politics, Spirituality, History, and Peace. He is a correspondent for www.WN.com. You can read more of Dallas’ writings at www.beverlydarling.com and www.WN.com/dallasdarling.

(1) Johnston, David Cay. It’s Even Worse Than You Think: What the Trump Administration Is Doing To America. New York, New York: Simon & Schuster, 2018., p. 14.
(2) Ibid., p. 98-99.
(3) Ibid., p. 99-100.
(4) Schweizer, Peter. Secret Empires: How the American Political Class Hides Corruption and Enriches Family and Friends. New York, New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 2018., p. 185.
(5) Ibid., p. 216.
(6) www.alternet.org. “Here Are the 5 Biggest Bombshells from Senate Transcripts on the Trump Tower Meeting,” by Elizabeth Preza. May 16, 2018.
(7) See The Title of Nobility Clause in Article I, Section 9, Clause 8 of the United States Constitution.