Spitfire List Web site and blog of anti-fascist researcher and radio personality Dave Emory.
The tag 'Felix Sater' is associated with 3 posts.

FTR #966 Dramatis Personae of the Russia-Gate Psy-Op

Devel­op­ing infor­ma­tion about the cast of char­ac­ters in the “Rus­sia-Gate” psy-op, we high­light the polit­i­cal alle­giance of “Team Trump”–the oper­a­tives involved with Trump’s cam­paign and busi­ness deal­ings with Rus­sia, as well as Robert Mueller, for­mer FBI chief and a very spe­cial pros­e­cu­tor indeed.

Although Trump cer­tain­ly had links to Russ­ian mob fig­ures, they are by no means the prime movers in this dra­ma.

Most impor­tant­ly, we detail the polit­i­cal resumes and deep pol­i­tics under­ly­ing the cast of char­ac­ters in this dra­ma, track­ing the oper­a­tional links back to Joe McCarthy and the red-bait­ing spe­cial­ists from the first Cold War.

Joe McCarthy legal point man Roy Cohn is, to a con­sid­er­able extent, the spi­der at the cen­ter of this web. Cohn:

1.-Was Trump’s attor­ney for much of “The Don­ald’s” pro­fes­sion­al life.
2.-Introduced Trump cam­paign man­ag­er and dirty tricks spe­cial­ist Roger Stone to the seat­ed Pres­i­dent.
3.-Was instru­men­tal in arrang­ing for a bribe which made “inde­pen­dent” Repub­li­can John Ander­son the Pres­i­den­tial can­di­date for the Lib­er­al Par­ty in New York. This gam­bit gave Rea­gan a key vic­to­ry in New York. Cohn and Stone’s asso­ciate in this oper­a­tion was Antho­ny “Fat Tony” Salerno–one of Cohn’s mob clients and among Don­ald Trump’s orga­nized crime asso­ciates as well.
4.-Was the point man for intro­duc­ing Rupert Mur­doch to Ronald Rea­gan and forg­ing the right-wing media attack machine that dom­i­nates today, the most promi­nent ele­ment of which is Fox News.

Roger Stone is anoth­er fig­ure who weaves through­out this con­cate­na­tion. Stone:

1.-Was Don­ald Trump’s cam­paign man­ag­er and lat­er dirty tricks oper­a­tive, who net­worked with Wik­iLeaks go-between for the Trump/Alt-right crew.
2.-Was tout­ing Lib­er­tar­i­an Par­ty can­di­date Gary John­son. John­son and Jill Stein were advo­cat­ed for by Stone as par­tic­i­pants in the debates between Hillary Clin­ton and Trump. (John­son and Stein’s com­bined vote total helped Trump win in sev­er­al key states.)
3.-Worked with Roy Cohn to put “inde­pen­dent” Repub­li­can John Ander­son the Pres­i­den­tial can­di­date for the Lib­er­al Par­ty in New York. This gam­bit gave Rea­gan a key vic­to­ry in New York, as not­ed above.

The point man for the Trump busi­ness inter­ests in their deal­ings with Rus­sia is Felix Sater. A Russ­ian-born immi­grant, Sater is a pro­fes­sion­al crim­i­nal and a con­vict­ed felon with his­tor­i­cal links to the Mafia. Beyond that, and more impor­tant­ly, Sater is an FBI infor­mant and a CIA con­tract agent. As the media firestorm around “Rus­sia-gate” builds, it is impor­tant not to lose sight of Sater. ” . . . . He [Sater] also pro­vid­ed oth­er pur­port­ed nation­al secu­ri­ty ser­vices for a report­ed fee of $300,000. Sto­ries abound as to what else Sater may or may not have done in the are­na of nation­al secu­ri­ty. . . .” We won­der if help­ing the “Rus­sia-Gate” op may have been one of those.

Beyond Sater, oth­er key play­ers in this con­cate­na­tion do not track back to “Kremlin/Putin/FSB/KGB.” Rob Goldstone–the pub­li­cist whose over­ture to Don­ald Trump, Jr. ini­ti­at­ed the lat­est “Rus­sia-gate jour­nal­is­tic feed­ing fren­zy in the media, began his career a jour­nal­is­tic foot sol­dier for Rupert Mur­doch, the very same Rupert Mur­doch whose chris­ten­ing as a GOP/right-wing pro­pa­gan­dist was ini­ti­at­ed by Roy Cohn.

Gold­stone con­tact­ed Don­ald Trump Jr., dan­gling the bait that there might be dirt on Hillary avail­able if he met with some asso­ciates. Fore­most among those is a Russ­ian attor­ney, Natal­ie Vesel­nit­skaya. Her appar­ent pur­pose in this meet­ing was not to offer up dirt on Hillary Clin­ton but to work toward eas­ing a media lock­down on a doc­u­men­tary about the Mag­nit­sky affair.

Spun in the West, the U.S. in par­tic­u­lar, as a clas­sic exam­ple of ham-fist­ed Russ­ian cor­rup­tion and vio­lence, the Mag­nit­sky affair was revealed in the film doc­u­men­tary to be an exam­ple of U.S. cor­rup­tion, not Russ­ian.

Craft­ed by Putin polit­i­cal oppo­nent Andrei Nekrasov, the film revealed an unex­pect­ed dynam­ic: ” . . . . Nekrasov dis­cov­ered that a woman work­ing in Browder’s com­pa­ny was the actu­al whistle­blow­er and that Mag­nit­sky – rather than a cru­sad­ing lawyer – was an accoun­tant who was impli­cat­ed in the scheme. . . .”

Attempt­ing to lift the media black­out on Nekrasov’s film was Vesel­nit­skaya’s goal, not dis­sem­i­nat­ing dirt on Hillary Clin­ton.

Pro­gram High­lights Include: the financ­ing of Joe McCarthy’s career by Nazi sym­pa­thiz­er Wal­ter Har­nischfeger, part of the Ger­man-Amer­i­can Fifth Col­umn in this coun­try which was at the fore­front of the dis­cus­sion in FTR #‘s 918, 919; McCarthy’s use of a post­war Nazi net­work head­ed by Gen­er­al Karl Wolff, SS chief Hein­rich Himm­ler’s per­son­al adju­tant; Spe­cial Pros­e­cu­tor Robert Mueller’s role in cov­er­ing up the BCCI scan­dal and the over­lap­ping Oper­a­tion Green Quest inves­ti­ga­tion pur­suant to 9/11.


FTR #945 Miscellaneous Articles and Updates

This pro­gram updates and/or intro­duces var­i­ous points of inquiry:

For­mer Oba­ma U.N. Ambas­sador Susan Rice was one of just a hand­ful of main­stream politi­cians who (VERY belat­ed­ly) got things right. Speak­ing of Steve Ban­non’s ele­va­tion to a posi­tion of pri­ma­cy on the NSC, she observed: ” . . . . ‘Trump loves and trusts the mil­i­tary so much he just kicked them out of the Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil and put a Nazi in their place,’ she said. . . .”

Ban­non’s ascen­sion is note­wor­thy: “ . . . . But the defin­ing moment for Mr. Ban­non came Sat­ur­day night in the form of an exec­u­tive order giv­ing the rum­pled right-wing agi­ta­tor a full seat on the ‘prin­ci­pals com­mit­tee’ of the Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil — while down­grad­ing the roles of the chair­man of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the direc­tor of nation­al intel­li­gence, who will now attend only when the coun­cil is con­sid­er­ing issues in their direct areas of respon­si­bil­i­ties. It is a star­tling ele­va­tion of a polit­i­cal advis­er, to a sta­tus along­side the sec­re­taries of state and defense, and over the president’s top mil­i­tary and intel­li­gence advis­ers. . . .”

Ban­non’s ascen­sion to the NSC should be ana­lyzed against the back­ground of the mar­tial law con­tin­gency plans drawn up by Oliv­er North and still on the books. This is dis­cussed at length in AFA #32.

One of the key fea­tures of the mar­tial law con­tin­gency plans involved the fed­er­al dep­u­ti­za­tion of para­mil­i­tary right-wingers to main­tain order. The mil­i­tary, even with the assis­tance of the Nation­al Guard, does not have the man­pow­er to main­tain civil­ian order. It is our sus­pi­cion that Ban­non may be involved with the imple­men­ta­tion of such activ­i­ties.

Noto­ri­ous troll, blog­ger and Naz­i/white-suprema­cist fel­low trav­el­er Charles “Chuck” John­son has sub­stan­tive input in Trump’s cab­i­net selec­tions. Worth not­ing is the fact that John­son may be oper­at­ing in tan­dem with Peter Thiel, whose data­base named the “Plum List” bears a strik­ing sim­i­lar­i­ty to a web­site “ThePlumlist.com,” appar­ent­ly being used by John­son to help staff Trump’s admin­is­tra­tion.

“ . . . . Despite his dis­re­gard for facts and reck­less approach to pub­lish­ing, John­son, who was recent­ly pho­tographed at a din­ner attend­ed by white suprema­cists in Wash­ing­ton, D.C., built a sig­nif­i­cant fol­low­ing among many who self-iden­ti­fied as being a part of the ‘alt-right.’ Trump drew sig­nif­i­cant sup­port from those same fol­low­ers dur­ing the elec­tion. . . . .

” . . . . John­son also helped cre­ate a data­base where poten­tial polit­i­cal appointees could send in their resumes to be con­sid­ered for gov­ern­ment posi­tions. He has access to the web­site ThePlumlist.com, and though the recent­ly cre­at­ed web­site remains dor­mant, can­di­dates have been told to send their infor­ma­tion to an email account asso­ci­at­ed with that domain. In Novem­ber, The Dai­ly Mail report­ed that Thiel main­tains a data­base called the “Plum List” to track poten­tial hires and qual­i­fied appli­cants. Sources famil­iar with the sit­u­a­tion described the list as an intake sys­tem for the team, and said it was sep­a­rate from the ver­sion that Thiel and his clos­est asso­ciates use to track final selec­tions that are for­ward­ed to Trump. . . .”

John­son had a very telling obser­va­tion near the end of the fol­low­ing arti­cle: ” . . . John­son attrib­uted much of the work that he and oth­ers have done in sup­port of Trump to being able to tap into vot­ers’ emo­tions through memes, such as the Pepe the Frog car­toon that became an infor­mal mas­cot for Trump sup­port­ers. . . .”

A sign of the times man­i­fest­ed in Ken­tucky, where a group of tan, mil­i­tary style vehi­cles fly­ing a Trump ban­ner was spot­ted. “ . . . . Davis said it would also vio­late reg­u­la­tions to run a mil­i­tary con­voy with no unit mark­ings on the vehi­cles, and said he did not think the vehi­cles belonged to any ser­vice branch. Per the report, he sug­gest­ed that they were mil­i­tary sur­plus. . . . ”

The vehi­cles belonged to an elite SEAL unit. “. . . . ‘The con­voy were ser­vice mem­bers assigned to an East Coast-based Naval Spe­cial War­fare unit dri­ving vehi­cles while tran­sit­ing between two train­ing loca­tions,’ Lieu­tenant Jacqui Maxwell, a spokesper­son for Naval Spe­cial War­fare Group 2, told ABC News. Naval Spe­cial War­fare Units is the offi­cial Navy term for its elite SEAL spe­cial oper­a­tions teams.. . . . ”

The founder of “the artists for­mer­ly known as Black­wa­ter” Erik Prince has been serv­ing as a back chan­nel advis­er on intel­li­gence and secu­ri­ty mat­ters to Trump. “. . . . he may be mak­ing a come­back, this time as a backchan­nel advi­sor on intel­li­gence and secu­ri­ty mat­ters to US Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump, The Inter­cept report­ed on Tues­day. It’s unclear when Prince made his way into Trump’s inner cir­cle, but he has made siz­able con­tri­bu­tions to the pro-Trump Polit­i­cal Action Com­mit­tee (PAC). The Fed­er­al Elec­tion Com­mis­sion (FEC) fil­ings for the PAC shows he made a con­tri­bu­tion of $100,000 in Sep­tem­ber 2016 to their efforts. His moth­er Elisa Prince also gave $50,000 to the com­mit­tee. Prince’s sis­ter Bet­sy DeVos is Trump’s Sec­re­tary of Edu­ca­tion choice. . . .”

In FTR #‘s 941 and 942, we exam­ined Tul­si Gab­bard (D–HI), usu­al­ly described as a “ris­ing star” in the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty. Of sub­stan­tive­ly greater inter­est for our pur­pos­es is the fact that she was one of the dri­ving forces behind the Bernie Sanders phe­nom­e­non.

This pro­gram updates that analy­sis, set­ting forth more about Gab­bard’s behav­ior, asso­ciates and fascist/Underground Reich asso­ci­a­tions:

a)Gabbard received kid glove treat­ment from Pierre Omid­yar’s Hon­olu­lu Civ­il Beat.

b)She recent­ly took an unan­nounced, and pos­si­bly ille­gal, trip to Syr­ia, dur­ing which she met with Bashar Assad. This fur­ther dis­rupts an already bad­ly weak­ened Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty.

c) Her trip was shep­herd­ed by: “. . . . Gabbard’s office claims her trip was fund­ed by the Arab Amer­i­can Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­ter for Eco­nom­ic and Social Ser­vices (Aac­cess) – Ohio; how­ev­er, the group has not report­ed any finan­cial rev­enue to the US gov­ern­ment since 2006. Bas­sam Khawam, the exec­u­tive direc­tor of Aac­cess who trav­eled with Gab­bard, report­ed­ly belongs to a pro-Assad Lebanese polit­i­cal par­ty, the Syr­i­an Social Nation­al­ist par­ty (SSNP). The par­ty has dis­patched its mem­bers to fight on behalf of the Assad regime dur­ing the near­ly six-year war. . . .”

d) Bas­sam Khawam’s polit­i­cal affil­i­a­tion with the Syr­i­an Social Nation­al­ist Par­ty is “inter­est­ing”: ” . . . . They greet their lead­ers with a Hit­ler­ian salute; sing their Ara­bic anthem, “Greet­ings to You, Syr­ia,” to the strains of “Deutsch­land, Deutsch­land über alles”; and throng to the sym­bol of the red hur­ri­cane, a swasti­ka in cir­cu­lar motion. These are the hall­marks of the Syr­i­an Social Nation­al­ist Par­ty (SSNP), the old­est ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tion in exis­tence today and one of the most secret and dead­ly. . . .”

e)More about Khawam’s polit­i­cal ally, the SSNP: “. . . . [founder Antun] Saadeh emi­grat­ed again to Brazil in 1938 and after­wards to Argenti­na, only to return to Lebanon in 1947 fol­low­ing the coun­try’s inde­pen­dence from the French in 1943. On his way to Argenti­na, he vis­it­ed Italy and Berlin, which increased the sus­pi­cions of the French that the SSNP might have been enter­tain­ing rela­tions with the Axis. . . . Ree­va Simon writes: “the par­ty’s ‘leader for life’, was an admir­er of Adolf Hitler influ­enced by Nazi and fas­cist ideology”.[55][59] The par­ty adopt­ed a reversed swasti­ka as the par­ty’s sym­bol, sang the par­ty’s anthem to Deutsch­land über alles, and includ­ed devel­op­ing the cult of a leader, advo­cat­ing total­i­tar­i­an gov­ern­ment, and glo­ri­fy­ing an ancient pre-Chris­t­ian past and the organ­ic whole of the Syr­i­an Volk or nation.[52][55] . . . .”
Gab­bard co-spon­sored a bill that would clas­si­fy any­one oppos­ing Ukraine’s entry into the EU as a “ter­ror­ist.”

The pro­gram con­cludes with exam­i­na­tion of anoth­er alleged Russ­ian “hack,” which smells sus­pi­cious­ly like a “cyber-false flag” oper­a­tion: ” . . . . Two new users showed up as reg­is­tered admin­is­tra­tors of the web­site: larisa@steamreal.ru and ewartumba@mail.ru. The ‘.ru’ suf­fix indi­cates a Russ­ian ori­gin, Ben­son said. The pro­file pages of the users had char­ac­ters in the Russ­ian alpha­bet in ‘Address’ and ‘About Me’ fields, she said. . . .She said she can’t say whether Rus­sians were real­ly involved or whether the address­es could have been faked by some­one mim­ic­k­ing a con­nec­tion based on what had been in the news. But it was impor­tant that police and the FBI become involved, to ‘make this infor­ma­tion part of the body of infor­ma­tion police and the FBI are com­pil­ing from the nation­al inves­ti­ga­tion,’ she said. . . .”

Pro­gram High­lights Include: The inclu­sion of Gab­bard’s asso­ciates in the Hin­du nationalist/fascist RSS in a pres­ti­gious Indi­an lit­er­ary fes­ti­val, symp­to­matic of a phe­nom­e­non sim­i­lar to the rise of Trump: “. . . . ‘We are acknowl­edg­ing that the intel­lec­tu­al nerve cen­ter has shift­ed, and the seat of cul­tur­al pow­er has shift­ed, because no one was inter­est­ed in invit­ing these guys before 2014,’ said Supriya Nair, a writer and edi­tor who has attend­ed the fes­ti­val for the last six years. In any case, she said, the shift right­ward had already tak­en place in the larg­er soci­ety. ‘This is a last bas­tion,’ she said. . . .”; Naren­dra Mod­i’s rise in India, what Supriya Nair described as a shift of “the intel­lec­tu­al nerve cen­ter” has been fueled by “dark mon­ey;” Trump PR man Felix Sater’s role in shep­herd­ing Trump’s trips to Rus­sia; review of Sater’s work for the CIA;
review of Pierre Omid­yar’s role in financ­ing the rise of Naren­dra Modi and the OUN/B fas­cist in Ukraine.


FTR #936 The Making of Donald Trump (Top Banana Republic), Part 5

This fifth and final install­ment of the series ref­er­ences the sub­stance of an arti­cle that embod­ies the enor­mous and fun­da­men­tal flaw in our polit­i­cal and civic process: a poll short­ly before the elec­tion found that most of the prospec­tive vot­ers polled felt that Trump was more hon­est and trust­wor­thy than Hillary Clin­ton. As our read­ing of John­ston’s excel­lent book unfolds, the grotesque, spec­tac­u­lar­ly fal­la­cious char­ac­ter of this per­cep­tion will become uncom­fort­ably clear. “Don­ald Trump is cur­rent­ly track­ing as the more hon­est of the two pres­i­den­tial can­di­dates in a poll, although fact-check­ing of his state­ments dur­ing the cam­paign have shown he’s lied sev­er­al times. The lat­est ABC News/Washington Post track­ing poll reports that 46 per­cent of like­ly vot­ers believe he is the more hon­est and trust­wor­thy can­di­date, while 38 per­cent believed it was Hillary Clin­ton. This marks the biggest gap between the two can­di­dates in five ABC News/Washington Post polls that asked the ques­tion, begin­ning in May.”

In the pre­vi­ous pro­gram, we opined that we all, in a sense, are enrolled in Trump Uni­ver­si­ty. By the same token, we could all be said to be play­ing the board game Trump: The Game. ” . . . . Then there’s his Monop­oly-like board game. When Trump and exec­u­tives from Mil­ton-Bradley intro­duced Trump: The Game in 1989, the devel­op­er sur­prised every­one by declar­ing those roy­al­ties would go to char­i­ty, too. Mil­ton-Bradley took Trump at his word. It also fig­ured it might improve sales, which were weak, if peo­ple real­ized their pur­chas­es would not enrich a pre­sumed bil­lion­aire but go to char­i­ty. Its tele­vi­sion ads told poten­tial buy­ers: ‘Mr. Trump’s pro­ceeds from Trump: The Game will be donat­ed to char­i­ty.’ . . . Trump has said he made $808,000 and that the mon­ey was donat­ed to his Don­ald J. Trump Foun­da­tion. . . . At the time, I spent a day call­ing New York and New Jer­sey char­i­ties try­ing to find any dis­clo­sures of gifts made by Trump. . . . But call after call pro­duced noth­ing. . . .” (The Mak­ing of Don­ald Trump; p. 17.)

Trump appeared to have won over a major­i­ty of vot­ing mil­i­tary vet­er­ans and a poll of active-duty ser­vice mem­bers indi­cat­ed that most pre­ferred Trump. Trump him­self avoid­ed mil­i­tary ser­vice dur­ing the Viet­nam War. “. . . . Don­ald turned eigh­teen in 1964, when the death toll in Viet­nam was ris­ing fast. He got four stu­dent defer­ments and one med­ical defer­ment, after his doc­tor wrote that he had a bone spur in his foot. Which foot? a jour­nal­ist asked years lat­er. Trump said he could not recall. . . .” (The Mak­ing of Don­ald Trump; pp. 131–132.)

In the fall of 2015, Trump boy­cotted a GOP pri­ma­ry cam­paign debate because Meg­yn Kel­ly was to be the on-air host. Trump instead went to an event on the Bat­tle­ship Iowa muse­um to what he mis­rep­re­sent­ed as a major vet­er­ans orga­ni­za­tion. ” . . . . Trump instead went to the Bat­tle­ship Iowa, now a muse­um at anchor in Long Beach, Cal­i­for­nia, to deliv­er what his cam­paign said would be a major address on nation­al defense. Trump praised the spon­sor of the event, Vet­er­ans for a Strong Amer­i­ca, and told the audi­ence that ‘hun­dreds of thou­sands’ of peo­ple belonged to the orga­ni­za­tion. There were evi­dent­ly two relat­ed orga­ni­za­tions, both non­prof­its, though Trump and his host nev­er made that clear to the audi­ence on the ship or watch­ing on tele­vi­sion. One was a char­i­ty, the oth­er one of those dark mon­ey polit­i­cal groups that have expand­ed since the Supreme Court’s 2010 Cit­i­zens Unit­ed deci­sion, enabling mon­ey from undis­closed sources to influ­ence elec­tions. A quick inter­net check would revealed to the Trump cam­paign that the IRS had revoked the non­prof­it sta­tus of Vet­er­ans for a Strong Amer­i­ca due to their fail­ure to file required dis­clo­sure reports. A char­i­ty dis­clo­sure orga­ni­za­tion, Guidestar, report­ed that it had no record of any board of direc­tors, Every indi­ca­tion point­ed to Vet­er­ans for a Strong Amer­i­ca being a one-man enter­prise run by a South Dako­ta lawyer named Joel Arends, whose oper­a­tion was under inves­ti­ga­tion for sus­pect­ed elec­tion impro­pri­eties in Ari­zona and Texas. Reporters lat­er learned the orga­ni­za­tion had thir­ty dol­lars in the bank and debts ten times that size. None of this was in line with Trump’s pro­mo­tion of the group’s immense size, influ­ence, and good works. . . .” (The Mak­ing of Don­ald Trump; pp. 135–136.)

Next, the pro­gram high­lights how Trump pro­motes him­self and his projects using The Amer­i­can Acad­e­my of Hos­pi­tal­i­ty Sci­ences. Trump, his daugh­ter Ivan­ka, his son Don­ald, Jr., the chief oper­at­ing offi­cer of the Trump Orga­ni­za­tion (Don­ald Cala­mari) and Trump’s but­ler Antho­ny Senecal are major fig­ures in this orga­ni­za­tion. The main fig­ure in the orga­ni­za­tion is Joseph Cinque, aka “Joey No Socks” or “The Prep­py Don.” ” . . . If those sound like names that might be asso­ci­at­ed with a fig­ure involved in orga­nized crime, it’s because they are. New York police with a search war­rant knocked on the door of Cinque’s Park Avenue South apart­ment in 1989. Cinque declined to let them in. The police applied a bat­ter­ing ram. Inside the apart­ment they found a trove of stolen art, includ­ing two Marc Cha­gall prints val­ued at $40,000. they had been tak­en in an art gallery heist. Cinque made a deal to plead to a mis­de­meanor, but pros­e­cu­tors scrapped the plea bar­gain after Cinque was seen talk­ing to John Got­ti, the ‘dap­per don’ who became head of the Gam­bi­no crime fam­i­ly by arrang­ing the mur­der of his pre­de­ces­sor Paul Castellano–one of the secret own­ers of the com­pa­ny that sup­plied con­crete for many Trump build­ings.

“Got­ti told Cinque that he would ‘take care of the DA,’ an appar­ent ref­er­ence to Anne Hey­man, the pros­e­cu­tor who had offered the plea bar­gain. . . . Hey­man ordered a more thor­ough inves­ti­ga­tion of Cinque. She alleged that the inves­ti­ga­tion showed that Cinque ‘was deal­ing drugs out of his apart­ment and fenc­ing stolen art-work.’ Hey­man also said that Cinque’s apart­ment on Cen­tral Park South appeared to be a retail out­let for stolen cloth­ing, includ­ing Armani suits and silk shirts. In 1990, Cinque plead­ed guilty to a felony: receiv­ing stolen prop­er­ty. . . .” (The Mak­ing of Don­ald Trump; p. 158.)

Anoth­er inter­est­ing, close asso­ciate of Don­ald Trump was Felix Sat­ter, who changed the spelling of his name, adding an extra “T” to avoid being rec­og­nized on inter­net search­es. ” . . . ‘Sat­ter’s’ name appears with just one ‘T’ in a host of places. There’s the deed to his home for exam­ple. It is also spelled with only one ‘T’ on New York State court papers from his 1991 felony con­vic­tion for stab­bing a man in the face with the stem of a mar­gari­ta glass. The name Sater with one ‘T’ also appears on fed­er­al court papers in a $40 mil­lion orga­nized crime stock swin­dle he con­fessed to in 1998, a scheme that ben­e­fit­ed him as well as the Gen­ovese and Gam­bi­no crime fam­i­lies. The stock swin­dle involved fake stock bro­ker­age firms using high-pres­sure tac­tics to get naive peo­ple to buy worth­less shares from Sater and his mob friends. . . .” (The Mak­ing of Don­ald Trump; p. 162.)

Trump’s close asso­ciate Felix was able to escape seri­ous legal ret­ri­bu­tion by going to work for the CIA. ” . . . . There is every indi­ca­tion that the extra­or­di­nar­i­ly lenient treat­ment result­ed from Sater play­ing a get-out-of-jail free card. Short­ly before his secret guilty plea, Sater became a free­lance oper­a­tive of the Cen­tral Intel­li­gence Agency. One of his fel­low stock swindlers, Sal­va­tore Lau­ria, wrote a book about it. The Scor­pi­on and the Frog is described on its cov­er as ‘the true sto­ry of one man’s fraud­u­lent rise and fall n the Wall Street of the nineties.’ Accord­ing to Lauria–and the court files that have been unsealed–Sater helped the CIA buy small mis­siles before they got to ter­ror­ists. He also pro­vid­ed oth­er pur­port­ed nation­al secu­ri­ty ser­vices for a report­ed fee of $300,000. Sto­ries abound as to what else Sater may or may not have done in the are­na of nation­al secu­ri­ty. . . .” (The Mak­ing of Don­ald Trump; p. 165.)

The last text read­ing con­cludes with dis­cus­sion of Trump’s unsa­vory real estate deals. Lur­ing unwary buy­ers in with the pres­ti­gious Trump brand name, ‘The Don­ald” left a great many of them high and dry when the truth emerged about what was real­ly going on. In this sense, too, we are ALL investors in the Trump brand name, and like­ly to receive the same treat­ment as his unwary real estate cus­tomers.

A Baja Cal­i­for­nia (Mex­i­co) project is typ­i­cal of Trump’s method­ol­o­gy and oper­a­tions in this regard. ” . . . . A June 2007 newslet­ter noti­fied buy­ers that con­struc­tion was under­way. The next month, the Trump Baja News report­ed, ‘our new and excit­ed home­own­ers now are part of an elite group of vaca­tion home­own­ers who own prop­er­ty devel­oped by one of the most respect­ed names in real estate, Don­ald J. Trump.’ Three months lat­er, in Octo­ber, when Wall Street crashed under the weight of the tox­ic mort­gages and oth­er Baja real estate projects fal­tered, the same newslet­ter car­ried a mes­sage ‘From the desk of Ivan­ka Trump.’ Ivan­ka assured the buy­ers that their invest­ment was sound. ‘Though it may be rue that some of Baja’s devel­op­ments could slow down, these mar­ket con­di­tions sim­ply do not apply to Trump Ocean Resort–or any oth­er Trump devel­op­ment,’ she wrote.

“Two months lat­er, in Decem­ber 2007, the newslet­ter advised buy­ers of new­ly dis­cov­ered geo­log­i­cal prob­lems afflict­ing the build­ing site. A few months lat­er, in March 2008, anx­ious buy­ers received calls or let­ters. Con­struc­tion loans had been approved, would be fund­ed short­ly, and work would be under­way. This was nine months after buy­ers had been told in writ­ing that con­struc­tion had already begun. Still, con­struc­tion did not pro­ceed.

“All of these pro­mo­tions, sales pitch­es, and newslet­ter updates cre­at­ed the impres­sion that Trump was the builder and the devel­op­er, words he used. The buy­ers lat­er said they bought in because Trump was the devel­op­er or builder. That under­stand­ing then changed abrupt­ly.

“The worst news arrived two before Christ­mas 2008. What had been described as a part­ner­ship between ‘the Trump Orga­ni­za­tion, Don­ald J. Trump,’ and the oth­er peo­ple and com­pa­nies involved was described in a new way. Nei­ther Trump nor the Trump Orga­ni­za­tion were invest­ment part­ners in the Trump Ocean Resort. They were not the devel­op­ers, either. They had mere­ly licensed the use of the Trump name. . . .” (The Mak­ing of Don­ald Trump; pp. 169–170.)

It is grue­some­ly iron­ic that the bulk of Trump’s scam­ming revolves around his real estate empire. It was, of course, the col­lapse of the real estate mar­ket that led to the finan­cial col­lapse of 2008.