A billionaire named Barre Seid has given $1.6 billion to a new far-right group, to be used to fund extremist candidates.
ProPublica wrote about how the billionaire structured the deal to avoid taxes.
An elderly, ultra-secretive Chicago businessman has given the largest known donation to a political advocacy group in U.S. history — worth $1.6 billion — and the recipient is one of the prime architects of conservatives’ efforts to reshape the American judicial system, including the Supreme Court.
Through a series of opaque transactions over the past two years, Barre Seid, a 90-year-old manufacturing magnate, gave the massive sum to a nonprofit run by Leonard Leo, who co-chairs the conservative legal group the Federalist Society.
The donation was first reported by The New York Times on Monday. The Lever and ProPublica confirmed the information from documents received independently by the news organizations.
Our reporting sheds additional light on how the two men, one a judicial kingmaker and the other a mysterious but prolific donor to conservative causes, came together to create a political war chest that will likely supercharge efforts to further shift American politics to the right.
As President Donald Trump’s adviser on judicial nominations, Leo helped build the Supreme Court’s conservative supermajority, which recently eliminated Constitutional protections for abortion rights and has made a series of sweeping pro-business decisions. Leo, a conservative Catholic, has both helped select judges to nominate to the Supreme Court and directed multimillion dollar media campaigns to confirm them.
Leo derives immense political power through his ability to raise huge sums of money and distribute those funds throughout the conservative movement to influence elections, judicial appointments and policy battles. Yet the biggest funders of Leo’s operation have long been a mystery.
Seid, who led the surge protector and data-center equipment maker Tripp Lite for more than half a century, has been almost unknown outside a small circle of political and cultural recipients. The gift immediately vaults him into the ranks of major funders like the Koch brothers and George Soros.
In practical terms, there are few limitations on how Leo’s new group, the Marble Freedom Trust, can spend the enormous donation. The structure of the donation allowed Seid to avoid as much as $400 million in taxes. Thus, he maximized the amount of money at Leo’s disposal.
Sourcewatch says about him.
Barre Seid is a right-wing industrialist and donor to advocacy groups and thinktanks attacking climate science and promoting Islamaphobia. He is closely allied with the Koch network and funnels dark money through the same groups used by the Kochs, including Donors Trust and Donors Capital Fund.
Seid built a fortune as the Chairman and CEO of Trippe Manufacturing Company (now known as Trippe Lite), which produces electrical equipment such as surge protectors and power strips, and Fiber Bond, which produces HVAC equipment.[1][2] In 1985, he established the Barbara and Barre Seid Foundation. It donates primarily to education, cultural organizations and the arts, and other philanthropic associations.[3]
Attacks on Climate Science
Seid is a major donor to the Heartland Institute, a vocal denier of climate science. According to leaked internal Heartland Institute documents obtained by DeSmogBlog, between 2007 and 2011, Seid contributed over $13,342,267 in donations.[4][5] In September 2013, the Heritage Foundation hosted an event for Heartland Institute CEO Joseph Bast and two of Heartland’s contracted climate denial scientists Willie Soon and Bob Carter. During the event, the Heartland Institute representatives would present a report titled “Climate Change Reconsidered” which was funded by Barre Seid. The report denies the seriousness of global warming and directly challenges the findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change(IPCC). According to Greenpeace, the Heartland Institute falsely claims that the report is peer-reviewed.[6]
The Heartland Institute, in addition to denying climate change, is a big supporter of vouchers.
The Sourcewatch article describes his effort to take control of a small liberal arts college outside of Chicago and turn it into a reflection of his extreme ideology.
Alas, one doesn’t awaken to read in the news, “Donor gives 1.6 billion to create foundation to educate people of the United States on principles of Social Democracy.”
You would think that a Russian Jew would have more sense than throwing in with a bunch of right wing Christian extremists that would discriminate against him, if they had the chance. “Jews will not replace us.” This is the Nazi battle cry from some White Supremacist groups.
This disturbing post shows how billionaire puppet masters can use their weaponized wealth to control the levers of power in this country. Their lobbyists write the tax code, and they can put a tremendous amount of money behind appointments and elections. Their fingerprints are all over appointments and policies. Nothing will change as long as Citizens United is the law of the land, and billionaires can hide behind their dark money.
I pondered the same thing and concluded that caring about social justice, rule of law and/or democracy will never be on the radar for most or for any billionaires.
Reporting this summer from Israeli news and other sources describe a potential, “deal of the century between Israel and Saudi Arabia.” Jared may have been there at the beginning of the deal’s making. The rich look for ways to benefit each other. The story about GOP Gov. Ducey and Saudi Arabia in a comment below reminds me of the close ties between the Republican Bush family and Saudi Arabia (Michael Moore’s movie Fahrenheit 9/11).
The opposition party (Tom Daschle and John Podesta) is hindered in goals to help the rich by having to answer to non-wealthy constituents. Republican strategy locked up votes of some non-wealthy through platform planks like conservative religion and racist and sexist appeals. The GOP can then serve the rich like Barre Seid with wild abandon.
You are so right, retired teacher.
Sickening!
An article here shows the string of SCOTUS decisions, 1976-2014, that have been turning us into an oligarchy. In other words, Citizens United was just one [albeit the worst] in a 35-yr trend. How do we legislate around this sticky wicket? https://citizenstakeaction.org/supreme-court-decisions/
This is extraordinarily bad news. There is nothing comparable among progressives. Nothing even remotely comparable. Talk about an uneven playing field! Here is enough money to fund fully functioning Ministries of Peace, Love, and Plenty; buy a slew of new Fascist federal judicial and state legislative bobblehead dolls and action figures; and still have enough left over to supply citizens’ militias and even a few odd Chrisitan fundamentalist madrassas.
As if American politics, already teetering on the edge of an abrupt plunge into utter Fascism, needs some ancient, backward troglodyte to “supercharge efforts to further shift American politics to the right.”
The left is lucky if it gets a two or three million dollar donation from some Hollywood producer in comparison.
yup
In doing this, Seid rewarded success–Leo’s successful campaigns to put Thomas, Roberts, Alito, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett on the Supreme Court and so turn it into an Extreme Court to undo American liberties via eliminating unenumerated rights and empowering states’ rights nullification. Already, we’ve seen Leo’s Extreme Court–the most extreme court that money can buy, give the green light to fundamentalist madrassas and take away the rights of women to control their own reproduction and open the door to declaring most federal regulation, like the stuff that protects you from having to eat, drink and breathe poison, unconstitutional. But you ain’t seen nothin’ yet. Next term will be just as sweeping, perhaps more so.
This blog’s readers need to diversify their information sources. Democratic candidates have collectively outspent Republican candidates on a national basis by a wide margin for at least 15 years. Not to mention the massive in-kind contributions from a very partisan left-wing news media and the big tech firms that censor news that might hurt Democratic candidates (e.g. Hunter Biden’s raking in millions of dollars from shady foreign actors simply because he’s the son of Joe). I don’t like any one person or group using money to crush political opposition, but both major parties do it whenever it’s to their advantage.
The Democrat and Republican national committees receive donations in almost equal amounts. However, it is totally misleading, one might even say that it is intentionally obfuscating misdirection, to focus on these donations. Conservative and Libertarian lobbyists receive FAR more funding than do liberal ones, for the money for lobbying mostly comes from businesses with right-wing interests, such as less regulation and lower taxes. What, exactly, is the Progressive analogue of The Chamber of Commerce or The Business Roundtable? In addition, a large role is played in the U.S. by think tanks (consider the role of the Federalist Society in appointments of federal and Supreme Court justices), and there are twice as many Conservative and Libertarian think thanks as Liberal or Progressive ones, and they are FAR better endowed and receive FAR more in donations. One has only to make a list: The Marble Freedom Trust, The Federalist Society, The Heritage Foundation, the Hoover Institution, The American Enterprise Institute, the Fraser Institute, the Center for Immigration Studies, the Center for Security Policy, the Manhattan Institute, the Discovery Institute, the Institute of Public Affairs, CATO, The Heartland Institute, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, the Adam Smith Institute, the Institute of economic Affairs, Civitas, the Mercatus Center, the Atlas Society, not to mention hundreds and hundreds of smaller ones, such as the Family Research Council, some with outsized influence, such as the extraordinarily negative influence in education of the Fordham Institute for Securing Big Bucks from American Oligarchs to Pay Officers of the Fordham Institute. And let’s not even get started on SuperPACs. According to OpenSecrets.org, Conservative SuperPACs have received, so far in 2022, $329 million in donations, while Liberal ones have received less than a third of that, $106.1 million. Again, there are far more of of the Conservative SuperPACs, and they have a LOT more money. But the Seid donation dwarfs the rest of this.
Sorry, the fact is that Democrats – at least before this $1.6 billion donation – had considerably more campaign dollars at their disposal, as the links below show (there are dozens more easily found sources to corroborate this fact).
Conservatives may have more think tanks and foundations. But liberals have almost all of academia, the elite press, popular culture, and K-12 schools.There is no honest way to deny that left-of-center ideas have their fair share and then some of the public debate in the U.S.
https://spectrumlocalnews.com/tx/south-texas-el-paso/news/2020/11/05/democrats-outspend-republicans-in–14b-election–the-costliest-in-history
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2020-election/democrats-used-rail-against-dark-money-now-they-re-better-n1239830
If the now solidly Fascist Republican Party wins it all–both houses in November, the Presidency in 2024, in addition to the Extreme Court created by Leo and Trump, they will doubtless go full bore with their versions of the Enabling Act and the legislation and judicial framework that this enabled–state violence used to crush dissent, the wholesale elimination of unenumerated rights, the enabling of nullification by reactionary Christian nationalist fundamentalists in state legislatures, ignoring terrorism by Christian fundie citizens’ militias, and so on. But here’s the thing: no, these troglodytes who still cling to fundamentalist superstitions, including market fundamentalism and Christian fundamentalism, to homophobia and transphobia, to white supremacy, will run smack up against a popular youth culture that IS, in fact, TOTALLY AGAINST THEM. So, there will be action in the streets, which the troglodytes will respond to with state violence, having eliminated protections for assembly and speech as well as Posse Comitatus, which will lead to more action in the streets and more state violence, in a feedback loop, until it all breaks. That’s what Tsar Vladimir was counting on when he kicked of Trumpism here with massive election meddling. But the young people are overwhelmingly against the Pugs, and so are people of color, and after much ugliness, the Repugnican Party in its Fascist phase will go the way of the Know Nothings.
It’s hilarious to listen to Republicans (Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley and Rhonda Santis, for example) railing about the teaching of critical race theory or nefarious “groomers” among teachers. They just don’t get it. It’s not about what young people are being taught. It’s about cultural change that Republicans simply don’t understand. There’s something happening here, and you don’t know what it is, do you, Mr. Jones?” The culture has raced past the Pugs. It is fielding arcs in space while the Pugs are still looking for a place to tie up the horse. So, yeah, they may win in the next couple years, and they may follow up with dramatic vote suppression, but forget the “Mission Accomplished” sign. Hell, before long, they will simply DIE OUT, like the old b—–d who gave this sick donation to help buy out democracy.
Ah, I see now what the issue is. Rick Scott blew through millions of dollars that were supposed to go to Republican Senate campaigns. ROFL.
Nancy Dickster said: Quote, “But liberals have almost all of academia, the elite press, popular culture, and K-12 schools.” end quote
Liberals have the K-12 schools?! Huh???? Maybe in liberal or blue states but there are tons of very conservative school districts all across the country which most definitely don’t lean liberal. I taught in a rural part of NJ in Burlington County and I can tell you that there were plenty of very conservative teachers on the staff as well as moderates and liberals.
So, yeah, the backward Republicans don’t have the elite press (many of them can barely read, like their Glorious Leader, IQ45) or popular culture, or educated people, for the most part. “I love the uneducated.” –Donald Trump. And for this reason, despite the darkness ahead, the Fascist Pugs, the Greying Old Party (GOP), will in time lose. Because there have been dramatic cultural changes that the Pugs hate and simply don’t grok. They don’t even understand the difference between sex and gender, for crying out loud, something that almost any 14 year old understands. The GOP is the party of clueless reaction that would take us back, back, back, sometimes way back, hundreds of years, to the sources that Alito referenced in Dobbs, for example. They Pugs will eventually lose because people have grown so far, far beyond them, and those people have seen possibility that the Pugs simply don’t understand. And the young people, well, “How you gonna keep them down on the farm, after they’ve seen Par-ee.” There is no going back, Pugs. You can’t unsee and unhear and unexperience what you have seen and heard and experienced, even at the point of the guns of thugs in police uniforms.
Nancy Dickster– well, as a Democrat/ liberal, I hope your facts, as modified by Bob Shepherd’s, are correct that there is some kind of near-par in funding of candidates/ influencing legislation by both sides of the political spectrum. However, I don’t put much faith in that analysis.
Your list of liberal influencers is pretty weak tea. I’ll grant you most of academia pans out liberal. But the “elite press” has no supremacy over Fox [& now OAN et al] and rw am radio. “Popular culture” is hardly dominated by liberals; it’s split lib/cons. And K12 schools don’t belong in the discussion at all: whatever political bent makes its way into the classroom varies according to the political bent of the state admin running it.
What concerns me more is the oft-discussed point [at least in this forum] that there is still a significant neoliberal element in the Democratic party, and it’s well-represented among Dem party donors/ lobbyists, well-funded by corporatists. Neoliberals are not progressive, and barely liberal at all. They represent the corporate-friendly, anti-union, pro-privatization turn of the Democrat party in response to the increasing move to the right of the Republican party in ‘80s-‘90s.
I would say that popular culture, defined as the cultural products consumed by young people, is extremely progressive. It is lightyears ahead of people like Gov. Abutt of Texas or Gov. Sanctimonious of Flor-uh-duh. Ofc, many Repugnicans (Cruz, Hawley, Graham) only PRETEND to be shocked by pop culture. These are people who play the shocked Mrs. Grundy on TV for the benefit of fundie constituents. But it’s hilarious to imagine, say, Mike Pence or Mike Huckabee watching the concluding episode of last season’s Euphoria, on HBO, or listening to a song by Kodak Black.
This astounding amount of money is not from the RNC or DNC donors. It’s from one donor who doesn’t think the right wing is extreme enough. Even before this appalling donation, the Koch network spent more money on building out a network of lobbying, state level “news” (The State Policy Network), think tanks & elections than the Republican & Democratic parties combined.
This was the most devastating thing about reading Dark Money by Jane Mayer—where she detailed out how the big donors built out a communication juggernaut for right wingnuts to elect republicans. All this runs outside of the Repub. party. These people don’t believe in democracy.
The Democrats have nothing in place to compete with this structure. You have to admit, this not how a healthy government functions.
And, Katherine Stewart in the Power Worshippers showed us another well-funded network that delivers GOP votes-
GOP Jesus promoting sexism, racism and homophobia.
White over Black, men over women, conservative Christian over all others, straight over gay and the rich grinding the 90% into poverty. No conscience.
Dickster- you’re a hoot.
The fact that middle class voters have to spend their scarce dollars to get democracy is an indictment against men like Bill Gates and Charles Koch. Sure, if 100,000,000 people earning a median salary contribute $10 each, it adds up but, let anyone of them try to get a sit-down with his or her senator. It will never happen.
The 90% have no lucrative jobs to offer nor expensive perks like vacations to induce politicians.
Someone like Cleta Mitchell hosts a $2,500 a plate dinner and politicians show up to listen to the rich.
Bill Gates spent $200,000 to defeat Washington state judges who rendered verdicts favorable to public schools. Shame on him and his rich friends who spent similarly.
And, shame on you for selling snake oil.
Dickster chooses to ignore the politics that rip off consumers. The corporations that we buy products from, take profits and spend them to advance the GOP agenda and candidates. It’s anathema to Adam Smith’s capitalism. The SCOTUS majority proves Republicans are very comfortable with hypocrisy and lying.
Why would AZ. GOP Gov. Ducey be in the midst of controversy over a sweet deal that benefits a Saudi Arabian company farming land in the state and pumping scarce water, a deal that shortchanges schools? The answer- he’s a Republican.
Republicans get funding from people like Barre Seid.
As I said in another recent comment, “Crap,” these libertarian theofascists are sneaky, dangerous traitors waging a war against the US Constitution that they must hate a lot.
What do they have against the US Founding Fathers and the Constitution they wrote that was designed to protect the working class from the few that have been corrupted by the thirst for absolute power? I guess I answered that question in the question.
It must be magic!
What happened to the 43 classified documents that DISAPPEARED from Mar-a-Lago, leaving behind only their folders, with their markings for various levels of classification? Poof. And how compromised is the U.S. as a result?
What happened to the photos and videotapes from the extensive surveillance systems that Jeffrey Epstein employed in his various residences to gather dope on many of the most powerful of American politicians, businesspeople, scientists, and academics? Poof. And how compromised and corrupt are how many U.S. institutions that a) Epstein would conveniently die in jail (on the second attempt on his life in said jail); b) these photos and videotapes, along with the extensive surveillance equipment he used, would all disappear; and c) his partner would be tried and convicted without a single person who could name names of Epstein’s clients being called to testify?
Nobody knows for sure if that Rothschild imposter made off with documents. I saw a former CIA handler on MSNBC talking about the incident. This woman came to Mar-A-Lago in May, and field agents started to have lots of problems the following fall. She couldn’t talk about specifics. Connected? Who knows?
I think that Trump has been a Russian agent for a long, long, long time, going all the way back to the 1980s and his first trip to Moscow, on invitation from the Russian ambassador to the United States. If this is true, and I think it more likely than not, no one had to steal those documents. That the Russians were able to place their guy in the White House has to be the worst intelligence disaster in history.
Lord knows how compromised we are. Fortunately, people got wise to Trump pretty quickly. Here was a guy who was telling people that he wanted us out of NATO, who describe Putin and Kim as pals.
And I would love to know what the Russians have on Graham, though it’s easy enough to speculate about what that is.
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/11/19/trump-first-moscow-trip-215842/
https://thehill.com/homenews/news/332270-eric-trump-in-2014-we-dont-rely-on-american-banks-we-have-all-the-funding-we/
https://www.businessinsider.com/donald-trump-jr-said-money-pouring-in-from-russia-2018-2
I just posted, below, a timeline from Wikipedia of known Trump business activities with Russia. It’s in moderation but will doubtless appear sometime.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_projects_of_Donald_Trump_in_Russia#:~:text=At%20a%20February%2016%2C%202017,has%20no%20business%20in%20Russia.
You think they can make an invisible bomber but not an invisible document?
Come on, Bob.
Stealth documents are there, but invisible to the naked eye (and even the naked Donald). You just can’t see them without a special reader, which is kept in a special room at the Pentagon.
It may appear to be magic, but as Arthur C. Clark said
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic “
You had to bring the naked Donald into this.
Incidentally, it is interesting that they don’t* encrypt text in paper classified documents so that they can’t be read by anyone without some sort of special reader that decrypts them.
If the documents are only supposed to be viewed in a special room anyway, why wouldn’t they do this, since the special decryption reader could be kept in that room.
As far as I know, since I have never seen a classified document.
Better yet. Just do away with the hard copy documents entirely and only allow Presidents to reading of electronic version from a secure machine.
Seid was one of the major (at that time) of the original charter school initiatives in Washington State 20 years ago. The initiative failed, but with Gates’ persistence our legislature did pass a charter school bill. There is still little if any accountability or evidence that charters do better than our traditional schools. And our local newspaper of record fails to report on major problems at charters (Seattle Times receives monetary support from Gates).
Anne Dornfeld of KUOW recently did an investigative piece severe deficiencies of charters on special education and ELL, but still not a word in the Seattle Times.
Seid, according to a Republican friend in Illinois, also funded campaigns of ultra conservatives challenging moderate R’s. I hadn’t heard about Seid’s recent activities so thank you for the update.
Trump claimed many times that he had no ties to Russia. From Wikipedia:
Timeline of [known] Trump business activities related to Russia
1986: Soviet Ambassador Yuri Dubinin invites Trump on an all-expenses-paid trip to the Soviet Union.[25][6]
July 1987: Trump and his wife, Ivana, who speaks Russian,[26] make their first visit to the Soviet Union (which included the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic [RSFSR]).[25][27][28][29] They scout potential construction sites for a Trump Tower Moscow.[28][29]
1996: Trump returns to Russia, visits Moscow with Howard Lorber and Bennett S. LeBow[30] to scout potential properties for “skyscrapers and hotels”,[4] registers his trademark, and makes connections with the development company Bayrock Group (which would result in Trump Soho) and Felix Sater, who became crucial to later Trump Moscow talks.[31][29] Trump subsequently announces a plan to invest $250 million in Russia and brand two luxury residential buildings in Moscow, which doesn’t come to fruition.[32][32]: 14
2005: Trump gives Bayrock Group an exclusive deal to build a Trump-branded property in Moscow.[33]
2006: At Donald Trump’s request, Sater accompanies Ivanka Trump and Donald Trump Jr. on a Moscow trip, and arranges for Ivanka to sit in Putin’s office chair during a tour of the Kremlin.[2][32]: 17
November 2007: Trump attends the Millionaire’s Fair in Moscow, where he announces that Trump Vodka will expand its distribution into Russia, his first foray into the Russian market.[11][34][35]
Around 2008: Trump Jr. travels to Russia a half-dozen times in 18 months, looking for deals.[36]
July 2008: Trump sells the Palm Beach estate Maison de L’Amitie to Russian oligarch Dmitry Rybolovlev for a record $95 million. Trump bought the property for $41.35 million three years earlier and made only minor improvements.[37]
September 2008: Trump Jr., then an executive vice president of The Trump Organization, says, “Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets, say, in Dubai, and certainly with our project in SoHo and anywhere in New York. We see a lot of money pouring in from Russia.”[38][39][40]
2010: The Trump International Hotel and Tower in Toronto receives timely financing from Vnesheconombank (VEB), a Russian state-run investment bank.[41]
2013
August: Eric Trump tells author James Dodson, “We don’t rely on American banks […] We have all the funding we need out of Russia”, and says, “We go there all the time”. In May 2017, Eric Trump calls this quote “fabricated” and an example of why people distrust the media.[42][38][43][44][45]
November 9–11: The Trump-owned Miss Universe pageant is held in Moscow, sponsored by Sberbank.[42] According to various reports, the event’s $20 million licensing fee is paid by a Moscow real estate development firm called the Crocus Group, whose president is Aras Agalarov and vice president is his son, pop singer Emin Agalarov.[11][46] One VIP guest is Alimzhan Tokhtakhounov, an alleged Russian mobster and fugitive who was recently indicted for running a high-stakes illegal gambling ring out of a Trump Tower apartment in New York City.[47] While Putin does not attend, the event is attended by Vladimir Kozhin,[47] the head of the Kremlin’s property department,[48] which is responsible for development projects.[49] After the event, Trump tells Real Estate Weekly, “the Russian market is attracted to me. I have a great relationship with many Russians”.[38][50] During the trip, Trump meets Herman Gref, the CEO of state-controlled Sberbank, Russia’s largest bank, and other oligarchs close to Putin.[51] Agalarov and Gref co-host a dinner for Trump at the Moscow branch of Nobu, which is owned by Agalarov.[52] Afterwards, Trump tweets to Agalarov, “I had a great weekend with you and your family. You have done a FANTASTIC job. TRUMP TOWER-MOSCOW is next.”[52][53]
November 12: The Moscow Times reports that Trump is in talks with Russian companies to build a new Trump tower in Moscow.[54]
December 23: Trump, Trump Jr., Emin Agalarov, and Kaveladze reach an agreement for the Trump Tower Moscow project under which the Trump Organization would receive a 3.5% commission on all sales.[55][55]: 67–68
2014
Before January 24: The Crocus Group sends The Trump Organization a proposal to build a 194-meter tall building with 800 units at the Crocus City site in Moscow where the Miss Universe pageant was held.[55]: 68
February 1–4: Kushner and Ivanka Trump travel to Russia on a four-day trip at the invitation of Dasha Zhukova, a longtime friend of Ivanka and the wife of Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich.[56] They attend a gala fundraiser for the Jewish Museum and Tolerance Center in Moscow along with Vekselberg, other oligarchs, Russian government officials, and their families.[56] Ivanka and Emin Agalarov tour the proposed Trump Tower Moscow site at Crocus City.[55]: 68 In 2016–17, Kushner omits the trip from his security clearance applications.[56]
June 3–16: Kaveladze emails Trump Jr. and others about design elements and architectural details for Trump Tower Moscow.[55]: 68
July 7: The Trump Organization sends Crocus Group a set of questions about the “demographics of these prospective buyers” in the area around the proposed Trump Tower Moscow site, the development of neighboring parcels, and concepts for redesigning portions of the building.[55]: 68
August 4: The Trump Organization requests from Crocus Group the specifications for a Marriott-branded tower under construction near Crocus City.[55]: 68
2015
September: A New York architect completes plans for a bold glass obelisk 100 stories high in Moscow, with the Trump logo on multiple sides.[57]
Late September: Felix Sater meets with Michael Cohen on behalf of I.C. Expert Investment Company to discuss building a Trump Tower in Moscow. I.C. Expert is a Russian real estate development corporation controlled by Andrei Vladimirovich Rozov. Sater agrees to find a developer and arrange for financing. Sater later contacts Rozov to propose that I.C. Expert work with the Trump Organization on the project.[58][59][55]: 69
September 22: Cohen forwards a Trump Tower Moscow preliminary design study to Giorgi Rtskhiladze, who then emails it to his associate Simon Nizharadze, writing, “”[i]f we could organize the meeting in New York at the highest level of the Russian Government and Mr. Trump this project would definitely receive the worldwide attention.”[55]: 70
September 24: Rtskhiladze emails Cohen a draft letter for the Trump Organization to send to the mayor of Moscow, explaining, “”[w]e need to send this letter to the Mayor of Moscow (second guy in Russia) he is aware of the potential project and will pledge his support.” Later that day he sends Cohen a translation of the letter that describes Trump Tower Moscow as a “symbol of stronger economic, business and cultural relationships between New York and Moscow and therefore United States and the Russian Federation.”[55]: 70
September 27: Rtskhiladze emails Cohen a proposal for the Trump Organization to partner with Global Development Group LLC on the Trump Tower Moscow project. He describes Global Development as controlled by Nizharadze and the architect Michail Posikhin. In September 2018 Cohen tells Mueller’s team that he declined the proposal and decided to continue with Sater’s proposed partner, I.C. Expert Investment Company.[55]: 69–70
October 9: Sater emails Cohen about his plans to meet with and persuade Andrey Molchanov to provide the land for a Trump Tower in Moscow.[58][59]
October 12: Cohen has a series of email exchanges with Felix Sater about developing a Trump property in Moscow.[60]
July 24: Rob Goldstone emails Trump’s assistant Rhona Graff, suggesting that Emin Agalarov could arrange a meeting between Putin and Trump. Sater tells Cohen that VTB Bank will fund the project, and that his associates will be meeting with Putin and a deputy on October 14.[58][59]
October 13: Sater sends Cohen a letter of intent signed by Andrey Rozov for Trump to sign in order to move the Moscow project forward.[61][59]
October 28: Trump signs a letter of intent {LOI} to construct a Trump-branded building in Moscow hours before the third Republican presidential debate, a fact made public in August 2017.[62][63][58][59][64] The LOI proposes that the tower have “[a]pproximately 250 first class, luxury residential condominiums” and “[o]ne first class, luxury hotel consisting of approximately 15 floors and containing not fewer than 150 hotel rooms.” The Trump Organization would receive 1–5% of all condominium sales and 3% of all rental and other revenues, and 20% of the operating profit.[55]: 71
November: Trump associate Felix Sater emails Trump lawyer Michael Cohen: “Michael, I arranged for Ivanka to sit in Putin’s private chair at his desk and office in the Kremlin […] Our boy can become president of the USA and we can engineer it. I will get all of Putin’s team to buy in on this”.[65][11] Sater also tells Cohen that the Kremlin’s VTB Bank is ready to finance a Trump Tower project in Moscow.[42]
November 3: In an email to Cohen, Sater predicts that building a Trump Tower in Moscow will help Trump’s presidential campaign. “I will get Putin on this program and we will get Donald elected.”[60][59]
November 18: IC Expert, the developer for the Trump Tower Moscow project and a signatory to Trump’s letter of intent, receives a non-revolving line of credit from Sberbank for 10.6 billion rubles.[66] IC Expert provides 100% of its equity to secure the line of credit.[66] Sberbank agrees to finance 70% of the project, its largest commercial real estate loan to date.[67]
November 19: Kolokov writes in an email to Cohen that a properly publicized meeting between Trump and Putin could have a “phenomenal” impact “in a business dimension” and boost the “level” of projects if he receives Putin’s endorsement.[55]: 73–74 Cohen rejects Kolokov’s offers, writing, “”[c]urrently our LOI developer is in talks with VP’s Chief of Staff and arranging a formal invite for the two to meet.”[55]: 74 [68] In September 2018, Cohen tells Mueller’s team that he rejected the offers because he was already pursuing business with Sater and understood Sater had Russian government connections of his own.[55]: 74
December 2: Trump tells the Associated Press that he is “not that familiar with” Felix Sater and refers questions to his staff.[69][59]
December 10: ABC News reports that Trump denied knowing Sater under oath in a 2013 video deposition even though Sater was involved in several of his high-profile projects. Trump testified, “If he were sitting in the room right now, I really wouldn’t know what he looked like.” On December 30, Sater tells Cohen that he helped bury the story.[59][70][71]
December 19: In an email to Cohen, Sater talks about securing financing from VTB, a Russian bank under American sanctions.[60][55]: 76 Sater also asks for Cohen’s and Trump’s passport information so that VTB can facilitate obtaining visas.[55]: 76 VTB would be issuing the invitation, he writes, because “[p]olitically neither Putins office nor Ministry of Foreign Affairs cannot issue invite, so they are inviting commercially/ business.”[55]: 76 He writes that they will be invited to the Russian consulate that week to receive an invitation and visas for traveling to Russia.[55]: 76 Cohen sends images of his own passport but not Trump’s.[59][72][55]: 76
December 21: Sater texts Cohen asking again for a copy of Trump’s passport.[55]: 77 Cohen replies, “After I return from Moscow with you with a date for him.”[55]: 77 In September 2018 Cohen tells Mueller’s team that Rhona Graff provided Trump’s passport to Cohen’s office, but the Mueller Report says the team could not find any evidence of a copy being sent to Sater.[55]: 76–77
December 30: Cohen emails Sater complaining about the lack of progress on the Trump Tower Moscow project. Sater responds that he helped bury an ABC News story in which Trump denied knowing him.[59][70] Cohen tells Sater in a text message that he will set up a meeting with Russian government officials himself.”[55]: 74
December 31: Sater tells Cohen that Genbank (Генбанк [ru]), recently put under U.S. sanctions, will be the new funder for the Trump Tower Moscow project.[59]
Late 2015 – early 2016: Trump Jr. and Ivanka Trump are included on emails about the Trump Tower Moscow project. Ivanka Trump recommends an architect.[59][73]
2016
January 14: Cohen emails Peskov atinfo@prpress.gov.ru seeking help to jump-start the Trump Tower Moscow project because “the communication between our two sides has stalled”, but does not receive a response.[60][59][74][75][55]: 74 In August 2017 Peskov tells CNN that Cohen’s email “went unanswered [because it] was solely regarding a real estate deal and nothing more.”[74]
January 16: Cohen emails at Peskov at Pr_peskov@prpress.gov.ru, the correct address he mistyped on January 11, and repeats his request to speak with Ivanov.[59][55]: 74 Later Cohen tells Congress and Mueller’s team that he received no response to this email and abandoned the Trump Moscow Project. He later admits to federal prosecutors that he did receive a response and continued working on the project and keeping Trump updated on progress into June 2016.[76][55]: 74–75
January 20: Peskov’s personal assistant Elena Polikova sends an email to Cohen from her personal account asking him to call her on her personal phone number, which she provides.[55]: 75 Cohen calls her and explains the nature and status of the project, and asks for assistance with securing land and financing.[55]: 75 [59][77] The conversation includes a discussion of giving Putin a $50 million penthouse in the tower as a gift.[59][77] Later Cohen tells prosecutors that Polikova took notes, asked detailed questions, and said she needed to follow up with people in Russia.[55]: 75
January 21: Sater texts Cohen asking for a call. He writes, “It’s about Putin they called today.”[55]: 75 [59] Sater emails Cohen a draft invitation from Genbank for Cohen to visit Russia, which Sater says is being offered at the behest of VTB, and asks Cohen if any changes need to be made.[55]: 75 Sater and Cohen work on edits for the next few days.[55]: 75
January 25: Sater sends Cohen a signed invitation from Andrey Ryabinskiy of the company MHJ to travel to “Moscow for a working visit” about the “prospects of development and the construction business in Russia,” “the various land plots available suited for construction of this enormous Tower,” and “the opportunity to co-ordinate a follow up visit to Moscow by Mr. Donald Trump.”[55]: 75 [59] In September 2018 Cohen tells Mueller’s team that he didn’t use the invitation to travel to Moscow because he didn’t receive any concrete proposals for suitable land plots.[55]: 75-76
January 26: Sater asks Cohen to take a call from Evgeny Shmykov, who is coordinating their project in Moscow. Cohen agrees.[59]
February 2: Trump comes in second in the Iowa caucuses. In 2017 Cohen asserts that all efforts on the Trump Tower Moscow project ended before this date.[59]
April 20: Sater texts Cohen asking when he is going to travel to Moscow.[55]: 77
May 4: Sater texts Cohen asking when he will be traveling to Moscow. He writes that he set expectations in Russia that it would probably be after the convention. Cohen responds that he expects to travel before the convention, and that Trump will travel after he becomes the nominee.[55]: 77 [77][59]
May 5: Sater texts Cohen that Peskov would like to invite him to the St. Petersburg Forum June 16–19 and possibly meet Putin or Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev. He continues, “He said anything you want to discuss including dates and subjects are on the table to discuss.”[55]: 77 [77][59]
May 22: Politico reports on Trump’s past associations and dealings with the American Mafia and other criminal figures, including Sater.[78][59]
June: A former GRU officer arranges for Felix Sater and Michael Cohen to attend the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, which Putin regularly attends. Sater wants to use the trip to push forward the Moscow Trump Tower deal. Cohen cancels at the last minute. Sater does not attend the forum.[79]
June 14: Sater meets Cohen in the Trump Tower lobby. Cohen tells him he will not be traveling to Russia (two days before planned departure).[59][80]
July 19: Steele files a dossier memo alleging that during his Moscow trip, Page secretly met Rosneft chairman Igor Sechin, together with a “senior Kremlin Internal Affairs official, DIVYEKIN”, that Sechin offered Trump a 19% stake in Rosneft (worth about $11 billion) in exchange for lifting the sanctions against Russia after his election, and that Page confirmed, on Trump’s “full authority”, that he intended to lift the sanctions.[81][82][83][84][85][86]
July 26: Trump denies having any investments in Russia.[59][87]
July 27: Trump tells a CBS affiliate in Miami, “I have nothing to do with Russia. Nothing to do. I never met Putin. I have nothing to do with Russia whatsoever.” This contradicts his many claims since 2013 to have met Putin and done business in Russia.[88]
August 13: Russian-American Simon Kukes attends a $25,000-per-ticket Trump fundraising dinner at the home of Woody Johnson in New York. Kukes’s 2016 political donations become a subject of the Mueller investigation.[89][90]
October 8: Kushner’s company receives $370 million in new loans, including $285 million from Deutsche Bank, to refinance his portion of the former New York Times building. The size and timing of the Deutsche Bank loan draws scrutiny from the House Financial Services Committee, the Justice Department, and, later, the Mueller investigation. The concern is that the transaction may be related to Russian money laundering through Deutsche Bank.[91][92]
October 11: Trump Jr. travels to Paris to give a paid speech at the Ritz Hotel. The dinner event is sponsored by the Center of Political and Foreign Affairs, a group founded by Fabien Baussart and his business partner. Baussart is openly linked to Russian government officials. Randa Kassis, one of the hosts, travels to Moscow after the election and reports the details of the event to Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov.[93]
October 15: The National Security Division of the Justice Department acquires a FISA warrant to monitor the communications of two Russian banks as part of an investigation into whether they illegally transferred money to the Trump campaign.[94]
October 30: Cohen and Giorgi Rtskhiladze exchange text messages in which they discuss suppressing tapes of Trump’s 2013 trip to Moscow rumored to be in the possession of Aras Agalarov’s company, Crocus Group [ru]. In May 2018 Rtskhiladze tells Mueller’s team that he was told the tapes were fake but did not relay that information to Cohen.[95]: 27–28 [96]
October 31:
Mother Jones magazine’s David Corn reports that a veteran spy, later publicly identified as Steele, gave the FBI information alleging a Russian operation to cultivate Trump, later known as the “Steele dossier”.[97]
Slate publishes an article by Franklin Foer alleging that a Trump server was in suspicious contact with Alfa-Bank in Russia.[98]
2017
February 9: Representative Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) introduces a resolution of inquiry in relation to possible crimes relating to Trump’s financial dealings or collusion with Russia.[99]
March 10: Trump fires 46 U.S. Attorneys, including Preet Bharara, whom Trump had recently told could keep his job.[100] Bharara had been prosecuting a money-laundering case against the Russian company Prevezon. Prevezon’s attorney in the case is Natalia Veselnitskaya.[101] The company reaches a financial settlement with the government on May 15, 2017, two days before the trial was scheduled to start.[102]
May 23: Maxine Waters, ranking member of the House Committee on Financial Services, requests Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin to release to the House Financial Services Committee any Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) records involving Deutsche Bank, Russia and Donald Trump.[103][104]
May 30: CNN reports on leaked intercepts of conversations between Kremlin officials discussing their potential influence on some Trump campaign members, including financial matters.[105]
2018
January 19: German periodical Manager Magazin reports that Deutsche Bank has presented to Germany’s financial authority, BaFin, evidence of “suspicious money transfers” by Kushner; this information is due to be handed to Mueller.[106] Deutsche Bank denies the report on January 22 and announces that it is taking legal action.[107]
February 12: Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR), ranking member on the Senate Finance Committee, asks the Treasury Department for documentation related to Trump’s 2008 sale of an uninhabitable Palm Beach mansion to Russian oligarch Dmitry Rybolovlev.[108]
2019
April 15: The House Intelligence and Financial Services committees issue subpoenas to Deutsche Bank, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, and Citigroup demanding documents related to Trump and possible money laundering by people in Russia and Eastern Europe.[109]
April 17: Along with the four banks reported subpoenaed April 15, additionally Morgan Stanley, Wells Fargo & Co, Capital One Financial Corp., Royal Bank of Canada, and Toronto Dominion Bank are subpoenaed in Trump finance probe.[110][111]
May 19: Anti-money launders at Deutsche Bank AG recommended in 2016 and 2017 transactions involving Trump and Kushner-controlled entities be reported to a unit of the Treasury Department that polices financial crimes. The report is denied by the Bank that it prevented Trump transactions from being flagged.[112][113][114]
August 8: Per the request for House Financial Services and the House Intelligence Committees; Bank of America, Citigroup, Deutsche Bank AG, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, and Wells Fargo turn over documents relating to Russians who may have had dealings with the Trump Organization, and/or Trump and his family. Some of the banks also turned over documents to New York state investigators.[115][116][117]
Imagine the curricula once some of this $1.6 billion kicks into education. Actually, you don’t need to imagine:
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-election-lie-florida-schools_n_6312eaace4b0eac9f4cd1032
OMG. Perfect.