Difference between revisions of "Donald Trump"

Revision as of 02:21, 29 May 2020

Biography

Controversies

Sexual assaults

Organized crime ties

Russia investigation

Jeffrey Epstein link

Main article: Jeffrey Epstein

Political connections

Social circle

• Roy Cohn
• Roger Stone
• Bill and Hillary Clinton
• ...

Presidential administration

• Roger Stone
• Steve Bannon
• American Legislative Exchange Council - his administration is filled with members and supporters of ALEC
• Council for National Policy
• James Woolsey
• Henry Kissinger
• ...

Corporate connections

Business dealings

• Roy Cohn
• American Mafia
• Russian Mafia
• Adnan Khashoggi
• Tevfik Arif
• Felix Sater
• George Soros
• ...

Social circle

• Robert Maxwell
• Ghislaine Maxwell
• Jeffrey Epstein
• Conrad Black
• ...

Presidential administration

• Robert Mercer
• Peter Thiel
• Wilbur Ross
• Steven Mnuchin
• ...

References

External links

• Ed Opperman interview of David Cay Johnston on Trump's history - mentions that: grandfather Frederick Trump ran a brothel; father Fred Trump was arrested for marching in support of the KKK; the announcement of his candidacy in 2015 was attended by paid actors; his 42nd Street Hyatt hotel cost $120 million but received $360 in government subsidies; he stood up for cocaine trafficker Joseph Weichselbaum and let him move into Trump Tower after his lenient 18-month sentence; he was friends with Adnan Khashoggi; and he called Roy Cohn a "second father"
• Huffington Post, "Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump: Frenemies Forever", 2016/09/06 - details history of Trump's association with the Clintons

Roy Cohn relationship

• Washington Post, "The man who showed Donald Trump how to exploit power and instill fear", 2016/06/16: "It was October 1973 and the start of one of the most influential relationships of Trump’s career. Cohn soon represented Trump in legal battles, counseled him about his marriage and introduced Trump to New York power brokers, money men and socialites."
• Vanity Fair, "How Donald Trump and Roy Cohn's Ruthless Symbiosis Changed America", 2017/06

Business dealings

• Mob involvement
  • Newsweek, "The Truth About Trump and the Mob", 2016/05/01
  • New Yorker, "Trump's Business of Corruption", 2017/08/21
  • New York Magazine, "Wall Street Journal Killed Editorial on Trump’s Mob Ties", 2017/12/20
  • Relationship between Russian oligarchs and Vladimir Putin
    • Dave McGowan, "Newsletter #2", 2002/05/26: "Moving on to other matters of interest, we all know by now of course that President Jorge has ‘negotiated’ a new nuclear arms agreement with Russia that will help us all to sleep just a little better tonight. Except that it’s basically a sham, as this article quite accurately points out: http://www.wsws.org/articles/2002/may2002/arms-m22.shtml. And then of course there is the fact that the Russian people, and the Russian military, are growing increasingly aware that the U.S.-puppet known as Vladimir Putin does not have the best interests of Russia in mind: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-304469,00.html"
    • Foreign Affairs, "Putin and the Oligarchs", 2004/11/01: "In mid-September, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced plans for a radical overhaul of his country's political system, with the goal of centralizing power in the Kremlin. [...] Putin's recent actions may be the most drastic of his tenure so far, but they were hardly the first signs of his willingness to deploy the power of the Russian state for his own purposes. A year earlier, he had Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the head of the oil group Yukos and one of the world's richest men, arrested and thrown in jail on charges of fraud and tax evasion-a move widely interpreted as a declaration of war against the so-called oligarchs, who have amassed phenomenal wealth and power since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. A key question now is whether Khodorkovsky's arrest is the forerunner of what will happen to many of his business colleagues."
    • Citizen Journalists Consortium, "THE UNFATHOMABLE RISE OF ORGANIZED CRIME PUPPET, VLADIMIR PUTIN": "At the same time the Tambovs took over St. Petersburg, another gang was operating in Moscow - the Solntsevskaya Bratva. It was the Solntsevskaya who saw the opportunity in St. Petersburg during the turf war between the Tambovs and Malyshevs. They combined forces with Kumarin to take-out Malyshev. With Moscow having the ultimate power of state at its center, the Tambovs and Solntsevskayas consolidated under the control of the Solntsevskaya leadership. At the top was “The Boss of Bosses” himself, Semion Mogilevich. [...] Don Semyon used his grip over territory and politicians to merge the Russian Mafiya and the Russian Intelligence Services into a single unit. [...] [FSB organized crime investigator Alexander] Litvinenko was still in his post when Vladimir Putin was appointed as Director of the FSB in July 1998. [...] Litvinenko was soon approached by one of his commanders to execute an assassination of a Russian banker and oligarch, Boris Berezovsky. Instead of following orders, Litvinenko went to Berezovsky and told him that the FSB had put a “hit” on his life. [...] These bankers were the first oligarchs. They are known as the “Magnificient Seven.” Berezovsky was one, as was Semion’s partner Mikhail Fridman – the founder of AlfaBank. We believe that the “hit” put out on Berezovsky was done by Mogilevich in an attempt to take out the competition and consolidate Russia’s wealth under his control. [...] Putin wasn't interested. He put an end to Litvinenko's investigations. [...] Litvinenko went on live television and told the world what he knew: Russia had been taken over by the mob. [...] It was Alexander Litvinenko who claimed Vladimir Putin had a “good relationship” with Semion Mogilevich going back to 1993 or 1994. [...] To consolidate his power base, Putin did the unthinkable. According to Alexander Litvinenko, and various other reporters and investigators, Putin oversaw apartment bombings in Russia with the help of the FSB (he was still operating as its director). [...] The upcoming election became a formality. Putin had already won. His power was secure. But the only reason Vladimir Putin was in this position was because of the man who had put him there: the man who had a vested interest above all others in seeing one of his lieutenants rise to the power of the Presidency. Semion Mogilevich. Here is Semion – on tape – at Putin’s campaign headquarters, watching his man win the Presidency."
• Bayrock Group LLC dealings - involves Tevfik Arif and Felix Sater; partnered with the organization of Tamir Sapir (business partner of Sam Kislin, whose nephew Arik Kislin owned a Gulfstream II used for CIA rendition flights and Mexican drug trafficking); another partner at least for certain ventures was Apollo Real Estate Advisors, an investment group primarily managed by the Apollo Global Management firm of Leon Black (former right-hand man of Michael Milken at Drexel Burnham Lambert and a noted Jeffrey Epstein associate)
  • US News & World Report, "Q&A on Trump real estate adviser accused of a $40M stock fraud scheme and ties to the mob", 2015/12/04: "Trump tapped Sater to scout real estate deals in 2010, after the broad outlines of his past became public. Trump said he, too, was in the dark about Sater's criminal history during the years the Trump Organization and Bayrock collaborated on projects, including the Trump SoHo in New York, a development in Fort Lauderdale and failed Trump-branded projects in Phoenix and Denver. [...] A 2007 lawsuit against Sater, Bayrock and others by a company owned by Ernest Mennes, an investor in a planned Trump development in Phoenix, alleged that Bayrock skimmed money from the project and that Sater threatened to amputate Mennes's legs and leave his body in a car trunk. [...] Another lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in New York against Bayrock, Sater and others in 2010 by Bayrock's former director of finance, Jody Kriss, and another Bayrock employee, alleged that Bayrock was "substantially and covertly mob-owned and operated" and went to great lengths to hide Sater's stake in the firm."
  • Irish Times, "Donald Trump, the Russian developer and the Mafia convict", 2016/08/15: "When he discussed the condo-hotel on The Apprentice, Mr Trump called it “my latest development”. But the actual developer – the entity that obtained financing and hired contractors – was a joint venture formed by Bayrock and another New York real estate firm with Soviet roots, the Sapir Organisation, founded by Tamir Sapir, a native of Georgia who died in 2014 aged 67. [...] In a 2007 testimony, Trump recounted repeated interactions with the company and said, “I dealt mostly with Tevfik.” By 2011, Trump said, “I don’t know him very well, Mr Arif. I’ve met him a couple of times.” [...] Testifying in 2013, Trump expressed sympathy for Sater and discussed his personal history in detail before pronouncing him a virtual stranger. “He got into trouble because he got into a bar-room fight, which a lot of people do. I don’t because I don’t drink,” Trump said. “But I don’t think he was connected to the Mafia and I don’t know him very well.”"
  • Washington Monthly, "Trump’s SoHo Project, the Mob, and Russian Intelligence", 2017/02/20: "If you know anything about the Yeltsin Era of the 1990s or the rise of Vladimir Putin, you know that that the Russian state was sold off to KGB-connected or approved businessmen and intelligence officers who quickly formed into a ruling oligarchy. Mr. Arif’s rise from a hotel management functionary in the Commerce and Trade Ministry into a rare metals trader is highly, highly suspicious and ought to be looked at very carefully. The second person I want to focus on is Tamir Sapir (nee Temur Sepiashvili), who died in 2014. [...] What happened next was either the work of Russian intelligence or one of the most surprising and unlikely success stories in history. According to the legend, Mr. Sapir and a fellow USSR emigrant named Sam Kislin pooled their savings and bought an electronics store on Broadway in Manhattan. They hoped to attract business from the Russian emigre community, but they had a different kind of luck. [...] supposedly this guy went from sleeping in his cab to being a billionaire because he quickly made enough money selling VCR’s and Walkmans to make major investments in Russian carbamide which he then used to buy a skyscraper for 17 million dollars. In the process, he was invited to join the Council for American-Soviet Trade and meet with then-Vice President George H.W. Bush. [...] The potential Russian intelligence connections of Arif and Sapir should be obvious considering their unlikely rises to great wealth. Sater is already known for his well-established connections to the Russian mafia, and he was also turned back against the Russian mob and probably Russian intelligence, too, by our FBI."
  • Bloomberg, "Trump, Russia and a Shadowy Business Partnership" by Timothy L. O'Brien, 2017/06/21: "In a series of interviews and a lawsuit, a former Bayrock insider, Jody Kriss, claims that he eventually departed from the firm because he became convinced that Bayrock was actually a front for money laundering. Kriss has sued Bayrock, alleging that in addition to laundering money, the Bayrock team also skimmed cash from the operation, dodged taxes and cheated him out of millions of dollars. [...] Trump has said over the years that he barely knows Sater. In fact, Sater — who former Bayrock employees say met frequently with Trump in the Trump Organization's New York headquarters, once shepherded the president's children around Moscow and carried a Trump Organization business card — apparently has remained firmly in the orbit of the president and his closest advisers. [...] In late 2002, Sater phoned Kriss and invited him to consult at Bayrock, bragging about a deep-pocketed investor, Tevfik Arif, who was partnering with him in search of bigger deals. [...] (Arif's representatives declined to respond to a list of questions about his business history, including how he met Sater and brought him to Bayrock, citing ongoing litigation.) [...] A marketing document Bayrock once circulated to prospective investors noted that Alexander Mashkevich, an oligarch born in the former Soviet Union, was one of Bayrock's primary sources of funding. [...] Kriss says that it was Arif and Sater who pitched the future president on the idea of launching an international chain of Trump-branded, mixed-use hotels and condominiums. [...] Trump, Sater and Arif were all photographed together at a splashy launch party for the Trump Soho in 2007. [...] Shortly after my lawyers asked Trump about Sater, Bayrock began discussing the best way for him to resign, according to company email and court records. By 2008, Sater had left the firm." - interesting that many of Trump's name-branded business ventures, like the Trump Ocean Club in Panama (see below), were used for money laundering by organized crime given that the idea originated with Arif and Sater
  • MarketWatch, "Decisive Leadership, Multi-National Experts by TevfikArif – BAYROCK GROUP, LLC", 2018/11/01: "Under Mr. Arif's guidance, Bayrock Group has become a leading partner in such prestigious mixed- use luxury developments as Waterpointe in New York, Trump International Hotel &Tower Fort Lauderdale, and Trump International& Tower Phoenix. [...] In October 2005, Bayrock group and partners Apollo Real Estate Advisors and GMUL Investment Company Ltd. announced the completion of acquisition and pre-development financing totaling $30 million for Waterpointe, located on 15 acres of premier waterfront property along the East River in Queens, New York."
  • MarketWatch (from Associated Press), "Felix Sater plotted to launder stolen cash through Trump projects, lawsuit claims", 2019/03/25: "BTA Bank and the City of Almaty, Kazakhstan, allege Felix Sater conspired with the son of the city’s former mayor to use some of the $440 million to develop a Trump Tower in Moscow. [...] The bank also alleges Sater helped the mayor’s son, Ilyas Khrapunov, mask $3 million as down payments on three condominiums in Trump SoHo, a New York City hotel that Sater helped develop as an executive at Bayrock Group LLC. [...] Khrapunov’s father-in-law, former BTA Bank chairman Mukhtar Ablyazov, is accused of embezzling billions of dollars from the bank and funneling the money into offshore entities. The lawsuit said that, once caught, he turned to Khrapunov to monetize and launder remaining assets. Khrapunov knew Sater through his family and asked him to join the scheme in 2011, the lawsuit said. Sater had been involved in coal extraction and oil drilling ventures with Khrapunov’s family and attended Khrapunov’s 2007 wedding to Ablyazov’s daughter, the lawsuit said. Sater and two other people are named as defendants, along with five companies, including Bayrock."
• Trump Ocean Club International Hotel & Tower Panama
  • Global Witness, "Narco-a-lago: Money Laundering at the Trump Ocean Club, Panama" by lead investigator Ken Silverstein, 2017/11

Corporate friendliness

• Politico, "Donald Trump's 'shadow president' in Silicon Valley", 2017/02/26
  • "But Gelernter has long been friendly with Peter Thiel. He regularly attends an annual conference of iconoclastic thinkers that the Silicon Valley billionaire hosts on the French Riviera. So it was on Thiel’s recommendation that Gelernter sat down at Trump Tower with the president-elect, his chief strategist Steve Bannon, and Thiel himself four days before the inauguration. The meeting followed a prior discussion between Gelernter and senior transition officials."
  • "Gelernter’s potential elevation is just one small sign of Thiel’s growing stature in Trump world. He was a near-constant presence throughout the transition: Working with a staff of four to six aides from an office in Trump Tower, Thiel dispatched associates from his investment firms to help staff agencies across the government. Their reach extended from the Department of Commerce to the Pentagon and eventually to the White House, where one of his closest aides, Kevin Harrington, was recently elevated to the National Security Council.
    
    “Once Election Day came and went, Peter Thiel was a major force in the transition,” said a senior Trump campaign aide. “When you have offices and you bring staff with you and you attend all the meetings, then you have a lot of power.” At the Presidio, the old Army fort in San Francisco where Thiel’s investment firms are housed, many of his employees have taken to calling him “the shadow president.”"
  • "That helps to explain why Jim O’Neill, a managing director at Thiel’s venture capital firm, Mithril Capital Management, is now being considered to run the Food and Drug Administration. O’Neill served at the Department of Health and Human Services in the George W. Bush administration but has no medical background. He has argued that drugs should not have to go through clinical trials to prove their efficacy before they are sold to consumers."
  • "Trae Stephens, a longtime Thiel colleague who oversaw the Defense Department transition, raised the eyebrows of officials as he traipsed through the bowels of the Pentagon asking questions about the government procurement process. Stephens spent several years at Palantir, the Thiel-founded data-mining company that brought a successful lawsuit against the government taking a sledgehammer to the Pentagon’s rigid procurement process. [...]"
  • "In addition to Thiel and his team in Trump Tower, a handful of Thiel associates also took on critical posts in the Trump transition, with Harrington, now at the NSC, working to fill positions at the Department of Commerce; and Mark Woolway, a Thiel colleague from his PayPal days, doing the same the Treasury Department. Others slated to take on important roles in the administration — such as Josh Wright, who is likely to run the Justice Department’s antitrust division — have come with Thiel’s imprimatur."
  • "Old-fashioned political connections, forged in Manhattan boardrooms and sleek Silicon Valley office spaces, also helped ease Thiel’s ascension in Trump’s orbit. His initial connection to Trump came through the president’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner. Thiel is a longtime investor in the health care startup founded by Kushner’s brother, Josh and Thiel and Jared Kushner had extensive conversations in the spring of 2016 about whether he would become a delegate for Trump in California’s Republican primary."
• Mother Jones, "Trump’s Pick to Run the Labor Department Promoted Sweatshops on Remote US Islands", 2017/08/22 (updated 2019/07/12): "There’s lobbying, and then there’s working with Jack Abramoff to promote the sweatshop economy on remote Pacific islands. If you want to know about that kind of lobbying, you can ask Patrick Pizzella, President Donald Trump’s pick to be deputy labor secretary."
• Wall Street on Parade, "Meet Don and Shannon McGahn: Trump’s Regulatory Chainsaw Couple", 2018/01/23
• Common Dreams, "Shocker! Tax Cuts in Hand, CEOs Admit They Won't Invest Record Profits in Worker Wage Hikes", 2018/05/28
• Raw Story, "Steve Mnuchin insists Americans can live on just $17/day during pandemic", 2020/03/29 (video clip): "Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin on Sunday said that he expects Americans to be able to survive for two and a half months on just $1,200, which is about $17 per day."

War agenda

• Syria regime change
  • ...
• Iran regime change
  • ...
  • Business Insider, "Pence incorrectly links Iran to 9/11 while trying to justify America's assassination of the country's top general", 2020/01/03
• Saudi war in Yemen
  • Wall Street Journal, "Top U.S. Diplomat Backed Continuing Support for Saudi War in Yemen Over Objections of Staff", 2018/09/20
• Venezuela regime change
  • ...
• Bolivia regime change
  • ...
• Relationship to Russia (varying opinions)
  • Al Jazeera, "Trump is not Putin's puppet and here's why" by Roman Dobrokhotov, 2018/07/18
  • Moon of Alabama, "Putin Asks And Trump Delivers - A List Of All The Good Things Trump Did For Russia", 2019/01/15

Supposed swamp draining

• Allegation of Trump being responsible for a massive increase in pedophile busts
  • Reason, "Trump's Mythical Crackdown on Sex Trafficking", 2017/02/27
  • US State Department, "TRAFFICKING IN PERSONS REPORT: JUNE 2018" - on p.443 it says "The federal government reports its law enforcement data by fiscal year. In FY 2017, DHS reported opening 833 investigations possibly involving human trafficking, a decrease from 1,029 in FY 2016. DOJ formally opened 782 human trafficking investigations, a decrease from 843 in FY 2016. (The FY 2016 number (843) represents a correction to the number cited last year (1,800), which in fact represented the number of pending cases rather than formally opened investigations.) DOS reported opening 169 human trafficking-related cases worldwide during FY 2017, a decrease from 288 in FY 2016. The Department of Defense (DoD) reported investigating 11 human trafficking-related cases involving U.S. military personnel compared to 13 in FY 2016."
  • Salon, "Prosecutions for child sex trafficking plummet under Trump: Maybe it's a coincidence", 2019/07/18
• AlterNet, "Republicans Are Killing a Bill to Protect U.S. Elections From Russia – at the Request of Trump’s White House", 2018/08/24
• Debunking in 2018/08 of the claims about 40000 sealed indictments
• Reddit thread suggesting that Q is a Palantir operation

Pedophilia evidence

• His mentor was Roy Cohn, a good friend of Craig J. Spence who ran a child sex ring in New York, and a close political associate of Trump has been Roger Stone, a protege of Cohn who assisted Cohn with his pedophilic blackmail operation
• Relationship with pedophile ringleader Jeffrey Epstein
  • John Brisson, "Is There Any Truth to Donald Trump's Numerous Connections to Jeffrey Epstein?", 2019/07/08
  • John Brisson, "Is There Any Truth to Donald Trump's Numerous Connections to Jeffrey Epstein Part Deux?", 2019/07/09
  • Friendship with Epstein (e.g. speaking highly of him, dining at his house multiple times) and current lies
    • Getty Images, "Epstein & Trump At Mar-A-Lago" by Davidoff Studios, 1997: "Portrait of American financier Jeffrey Epstein (left) and real estate developer Donald Trump as they pose together at the Mar-a-Lago estate, Palm Beach, Florida, 1997."
    • Marina Garnier photo of Trump and Epstein together at a New York party in 1997 (original link, now taken down): "Donald Trump and convicted child prostitute pimp Jeffrey Epstein at the Victoria’s Secret angels party at the Laura Belle club in New York City, April 1997—around the same time period when young girls are alleged to have been raped by both Trump and Epstein. (Photo by Marina Garnier)"
    • Getty Images, "Trump, Knauss, Epstein, & Maxwell At Mar-A-Lago" by Davidoff Studios, 2000/02/12: "From left, American real estate developer Donald Trump and his girlfriend (and future wife), former model Melania Knauss, financier (and future convicted sex offender) Jeffrey Epstein, and British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell pose together at the Mar-a-Lago club, Palm Beach, Florida, February 12, 2000."
    • Sun Sentinel, "Halcyon days for the Donald", 2000/02/16: "He opted to bow out of the presidential race, but The Donald didn't do that badly on other fronts. For one thing, the king of Mar-a-Lago got his galpal back. Model Melania Knauss, 26, re-appeared in Palm Beach over the weekend. Just last month, she threw in the towel after finding Trump canoodling with a rival model. But this time, it was the svelte Slovenian doing some serious snuggling with Trump, 53, after Saturday's Donald J. Trump Pro-Am Invitational tennis tourney. [...] Then Trump won his own tournament for the first time in four tries. For that, he recruited Aussie pro Andrew Hie, more famous for his shirt-ripping antics than his passing shots. Trump and Hie beat disgraced financier Michael Milken and the former Mr. Chris Evert, John Lloyd, to take the 5-foot-tall silver cup. [...] Trump also got to rub elbows with royalty. Britain's Prince Andrew put in a round of golf with The Donald at the latter's new WPB course Saturday before joining two blondes poolside at Mar-a-Lago. One of the blondes, Boca businesswoman and astrologer Christine Drangsholt, played coy about cozying up to the prince."
    • Palm Beach Post, "Thom Smith's Society Snapshots", 2000/02/20: "Quite a crowd in town last weekend, including a reunion of sorts at Mar-a-Lago, where Donald Trump had a familiar face -- and body -- by his side. That's right, girlfriend Melania Knauss, who took a temporary back seat to politics, was back for The Donald's pro-am tennis tournament. Financier Michael Milken, a prostate cancer survivor, played, as did actor Stephen Baldwin, singer Michael Bolton and pros Roscoe Tanner and John Lloyd, among others. [...] One celebrity, however, was not so obvious. Even when Trump announced England's Prince Andrew, many in the crowd doubted his presence" - has photos of "Donald Trump with Melania Knauss and England's Prince Andrew" and "Ghislaine and Jeffrey Epstein with Michael Bolton"
    • New York Magazine, "Jeffrey Epstein: International Moneyman of Mystery", 2002/10/28: "Epstein likes to tell people that he’s a loner, a man who’s never touched alcohol or drugs, and one whose nightlife is far from energetic. And yet if you talk to Donald Trump, a different Epstein emerges. “I’ve known Jeff for fifteen years. Terrific guy,” Trump booms from a speakerphone. “He’s a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side. No doubt about it – Jeffrey enjoys his social life.”"
    • Vanity Fair, "The Talented Mr. Epstein" by Vicky Ward, 2003/03: "Some of the businessmen who dine with him at his home—they include newspaper publisher Mort Zuckerman, banker Louis Ranieri, Revlon chairman Ronald Perelman, real-estate tycoon Leon Black, former Microsoft executive Nathan Myhrvold, Tom Pritzker (of Hyatt Hotels), and real-estate personality Donald Trump—sometimes seem not all that clear as to what he actually does to earn his millions."
    • New York Magazine, "The Dish On Dinner", 2003/05/05: "JEFFREY EPSTEIN, Money Manager Where: East Side townhouse Table seats: 30 Guest list: Mort Zuckerman, Google co-founder Sergey Brin, David Blaine, Donald Trump, Leslie Wexner of the Limited, disgraced British Cabinet minister Peter Mandelson, Bill Clinton aide Doug Band Menu: Private chef, though last month Rocco DiSpirito cooked dinner after Epstein bid $50,000 for his services at a Hamptons charity. Make it MY place: Epstein hates restaurants, so he often entertains at home. “The dialogues are so engaging that serving even the most extraordinary food sometimes seems inappropriate, like eating pizza at the ballet,” he says. “I had rich shock!” one stunned guest says about Epstein’s house, which the owner claims is the largest private dwelling in the city. At a recent dinner organized by Ghislaine Maxwell, Blaine amused a group of barely clad models with card tricks. Alas, Clinton—around whom the evening had been organized—never showed, though his Secret Service would have appreciated Epstein’s numerous security cameras."
    • The Guardian, "Happy Birthday Barbara", 2007/05/08: "Even by the exacting social standards of Conrad Black, it was a gathering of quite staggering opulence. [...] Court documents in America have shed new light on an infamous surprise 60th birthday party thrown by Lord Black for his wife, Barbara Amiel, in December 2000 at a cost of $62,869.57. [...] Elsewhere in the room was the flamboyant property developer Donald Trump ($2.9bn) and Donald Lauder ($3bn), the philanthropist son of the late cosmetics tycoon Estee Lauder. [...] Like Lord Black, some guests have since suffered a taste of scandal - Jeffrey Epstein, a mobile phones millionaire on table three, was charged last year with soliciting prostitutes for sex in Florida and, according to lurid newspaper reports from police investigation documents, has highly unusual tastes in massage."
    • Gawker, "Here Is Pedophile Billionaire Jeffrey Epstein's Little Black Book" by Nick Bryant, 2015/01/23 (black book)
      • "[...] About 50 of the entries, including those of many of Epstein's suspected victims and accomplices as well as Trump, Love, Barak, Dershowitz, and others, were circled by Rodriguez. [...]"
      • "Trump, through a spokesperson, said, "Mr. Trump only knew Mr. Epstein as Mr. Trump owns the hottest and most luxurious club in Palm Beach, [redacted], and Mr. Epstein would go there on occasion.""
    • Vice, "The Salacious Ammo Even Donald Trump Won't Use in a Fight Against Hillary Clinton", 2016/01/29
      • "Trump's attorney Alan Garten told VICE News last week that the presidential candidate had "no relationship" with Epstein, and only knew him because Epstein was a member of Mar-A-Lago, Trump's private club and residence in Palm Beach. "A lot of people hung out there, including Jeffrey Epstein," Garten said. "That is the only connection." But according to someone with intimate knowledge of the situation, Trump and Epstein appeared to have a somewhat stronger connection."
      • "When asked about a subpoena served to Trump in 2009, Garten said it "never happened." The subpoena called for Trump to give a deposition in a case against Epstein; Garten's denial baffled Brad Edwards, one of Virginia Roberts' attorneys."
      • "In 2000, both Trump and Epstein reportedly attended a small party hosted by media magnate Conrad Black, who in 2007 was convicted and served time in prison for fraud and obstruction of justice (the fraud charges were overturned on appeal). Black is currently an enthusiastic supporter of Trump's presidential bid. Mark Epstein, Jeffrey's brother, testified in 2009 that Trump flew on Jeffrey's private jet at least once. Meanwhile, message pads [see below] from Epstein's Palm Beach mansion that were seized by investigators and obtained by VICE News indicate that Trump called Epstein twice in November of 2004."
      • "Garten said Trump had never been to Epstein's home. But a 2002 story in Vanity Fair listed Trump as one of a small group of mega-rich businessmen, including newspaper publisher Mort Zuckerman and Revlon chairman Ronald Perelman, who periodically dined with Epstein at his Palm Beach estate."
      • "During this same period, Epstein and Maxwell were repeat guests at Mar-A-Lago. In 2000, they hung out there with Prince Andrew, who arrived for vacation on Trump's private plane. That same year, the Palm Beach Post reported that Trump, Epstein, Prince Andrew, and Maxwell were all at a tennis tournament/celebrity event at Mar-A-Lago.
        
        Garten told VICE News that Trump had no relationship with Maxwell aside from the fact that she periodically turned up at Mar-A-Lago. The 1997 photograph below, of Trump and Maxwell "out on the town," was taken in New York City."
    • Daily Beast, "The Billionaire Pedophile Who Could Bring Down Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton", 2016/06/30
      • "Trump has denied Jane Doe’s claims and his reps have said he barely knew Epstein—even though New York media in the ’90s regularly chronicled his comings-and-goings at Epstein’s Upper East Side palace, and even though Epstein had 14 private numbers for Trump and his family in his little black book. [...]"
      • "According to a 2003 profile in Vanity Fair and New York gossip rags that covered the goings-on of Epstein and his famous friends in the late ’90s, Trump would attend dinner parties at the 71st Street mansion. In April 1999, The Mail spotted Trump among the guests at a dinner Epstein threw in honor of Prince Andrew. In 2000, they reported he attended a “hookers and pimps” Halloween party. New York magazine reported Trump’s attendance at a 2003 dinner party thrown in honor of Bill Clinton. [...] “I often see Donald Trump and there are loads of models coming and going, mostly at night,” a neighbor told The Mail on Sunday in 2000."
    • New York Times, "Jeffrey Epstein Was a ‘Terrific Guy,’ Donald Trump Once Said. Now He’s ‘Not a Fan.’", 2019/07/09
      • "The year was 1992 and the event was a “calendar girl” competition, something that George Houraney, a Florida-based businessman who ran American Dream Enterprise, had organized at Mr. Trump’s request. “I arranged to have some contestants fly in,” Mr. Houraney recalled in an interview on Monday. “At the very first party, I said, ‘Who’s coming tonight? I have 28 girls coming.’ It was him and Epstein.” Mr. Houraney, who had just partnered with Mr. Trump to host events at his casinos, said he was surprised. “I said, ‘Donald, this is supposed to be a party with V.I.P.s. You’re telling me it’s you and Epstein?’” In fact, that was the case, an indication of a yearslong friendship between the president and Mr. Epstein that some say ended only after a failed business arrangement between them. The full nature of their eventual falling out is not clear."
      • "He also dismissed Mr. Houraney’s warning about his friend’s conduct. “I said, ‘Look, Donald, I know Jeff really well, I can’t have him going after younger girls,’” Mr. Houraney remembers. “He said, ‘Look I’m putting my name on this. I wouldn’t put my name on it and have a scandal.’” Mr. Houraney said he “pretty much had to ban Jeff from my events — Trump didn’t care about that.”"
      • "Roger J. Stone Jr., the former Trump adviser, wrote in his book “The Clintons’ War on Women,” which was published during the campaign, that Mr. Trump “turned down many invitations to Epstein’s hedonistic private island and his Palm Beach home.” Once when Mr. Trump visited Mr. Epstein at his Palm Beach home, Mr. Stone wrote about the scene of underage girls he witnessed there. “The swimming pool was filled with beautiful young girls,” Mr. Trump later told a Mar-a-Lago member, according to Mr. Stone. “‘How nice,’ I thought, ‘he let the neighborhood kids use his pool.’”"
    • San Jose Mercury News, "Jeffrey Epstein boasted that he played matchmaker for Donald and Melania Trump, report says", 2019/07/10: "Donald and Melania Trump often have told the story about how they met at a Manhattan nightclub during New York Fashion Week in 1998. Jeffrey Epstein has never figured into this origin story — but the financier and former Trump friend has tried to take credit for this historical encounter between the future president and first lady. The New York Times, reporting on Trump’s long and difficult friendship with the newly jailed accused sex trafficker, said that Epstein was very eager to play up his connections to Trump after the 2016 election. One way Epstein did this was by “claiming that he was the one who introduced Trump to his third wife,” the Times reported. [...] In Donald and Melania Trump’s version of how they met, they give credit to another person for their introduction: modeling agent Paolo Zampolli. The agent threw the party at the Kit Cat Club, where the then-celebrity real estate mogul spotted a beautiful 28-year-old model from Slovenia named Melania Knauss. [...] [Epstein] could argue that the timing made sense. From the 1980s through the early 2000s, Trump and Epstein were Palm Beach neighbors and Manhattan high-flyers who shared an an appreciation for wealth and for being seen together at fabulous parties, especially if beautiful women were present, according to the New York Times and other publications. [...] Epstein, Trump and Trump’s good friend Tom Barrack were “a set of nightlife Musketeers,” author Michael Wolff wrote in his book “Fire and Fury.”"
      • Hill Reporter, "Donald and Melania Trump Allegedly Lied About How They First Met" by Eddie Krassenstein, 2019/03/05: "There are articles in several major publications, including the New York Times, which state that the Trumps originally met in 1998, but according to Nina Burleigh, this is not the case. [...] This is the story that both Melania and Donald Trump have told others, but according to Burleigh the two actually appear to have met in 1996, while Trump was still very much married to Marla Maples (they didn’t divorce until 1999)."
    • MSNBC, "Newly-Found Footage Shows Donald Trump, Jeffrey Epstein At A '92 Party", 2019/07/17
    • Video of Playboy senior White House reporter Brian J. Karem asking Trump on 2019/07/17 if he had been to any event with Epstein and underage girls: "My question: Have you ever been to a social function with Jeff Epstein and underage girls. He pointed at the sky, said it was going to rain and walked off."
    • INSIDER, "Unsealed flight logs show that Trump was on Epstein's private jet in 1997", 2019/08/09
    • New York Times, "The Sisters Who First Tried to Take Down Jeffrey Epstein", 2019/08/26: "There, at the age of 25, she was introduced to Mr. Epstein’s odd life, with girls and young women coming through for what she recalled Ms. Maxwell describing as modeling auditions for the lingerie retailer Victoria’s Secret. The house at times bustled in anticipation of potential visits from Bill Clinton, although she never actually saw him there. She said she met Donald Trump one day in Mr. Epstein’s office, recalling Mr. Trump eyeing her before Mr. Epstein informed him that “she’s not for you.” Ms. Farmer’s mother, Janice Swain, recalled her daughter detailing the interaction with Mr. Trump around the time it occurred. Both Mr. Clinton and Mr. Trump have acknowledged knowing Mr. Epstein, with Mr. Clinton denying knowledge of anything improper and Mr. Trump saying he was “not a fan” of Mr. Epstein."
    • New York Daily News, "Jeffrey Epstein’s ‘first victim’ was introduced to Donald Trump when she was 14: suit", 2020/01/17: "A woman who says she was Jeffrey Epstein’s first known victim claims in a new lawsuit that the multimillionaire sex offender introduced her to Donald Trump when she was 14, saying “This is a good one, right?" Trump, according to the suit against Epstein’s estate, “smiled and nodded in agreement.” The woman filed the lawsuit Friday in Manhattan Federal Court under the pseudonym Jane Doe. Trump and Epstein “both chuckled and Doe felt uncomfortable, but, at the time, was too young to understand why,” the lawsuit reads. The encounter happened in the mid-90s at Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s Florida resort, court docs said. [...] The victim met Epstein and his alleged madam, Ghislaine Maxwell, when she was 13 years old and attending Interlochen Arts Camp in Michigan, where she was in the voice program. The perverted financier and British socialite groomed her for abuse by frequently making references to sex and insisting she indulge their every whim, according to the suit. Epstein first sexually abused the girl toward the end of 1994, according to the suit. She claims she traveled with Epstein and Maxwell on his private jet. Epstein abused her at his Upper East Side mansion, home in Palm Beach and ranch in New Mexico, according to the suit." - note that Interlochen is about 15 miles southwest of Traverse City MI, a port for the North Fox Island pedophile ring
  • Friendship with Epstein's procurer Ghislaine Maxwell
    • St. Louis Post-Dispatch, "On Their Toes", 1989/05/17: "One thing about the party aboard British media mogul Robert Maxwell's yacht: Everybody, but everybody, had to doff their shoes before boarding the plush-carpeted "Lady Ghislaine." Maxwell insisted and his guests cooperated, including Donald Trump (minus Ivana) who has a much bigger yacht and was happy to compare them with Maxwell. [...] There was John Tower, former senator and thumbed-down , defense secretary; ex-Navy secretary John Lehman, now with Paine, Webber; lawyer Tom Bolan; literary agent Mort Janklow; U.N. envoy Thomas Pickering; Peter Kalikow, owner of the New York Post; Maxwell's daughter, Ghislaine, and Max' niece, Helene Atkin of Macmillan, the publishing house Maxwell recently took over. Maxwell, who weighs about 300 pounds, went over the guest list personally."
    • New York Daily News, RICHARD JOHNSON columns, 1992/02/11: "Marla Hanson -- more radiant than ever now that Jay Mclnerney married Nashville socialite Helen Bransford -- was one of the hundreds who packed into the top floor at Rex to wish a bon voyage to Sam Campbell on Friday night. The media man, after 15 years in Gotham, is heading up to Boston to work for Massachusetts Gov. Bill Weld. Most of the guests, even the guest of honor, were unaware that Ghislaine Maxwell, daughter of the late Robert Maxwell, was in their midst, as well as Al Styron, the actress-daughter of William ("Sophie's Choice") Styron, and Walter Isaacson, the Time senior editor writing a book about Henry Kissinger. Plus, Hamilton Fish 3d, Avenue editor Susan Mulcahy, Jacqueline Schnabel and Chuck Bennett, the sports/TV agent who was just put in charge of IMG Models."
    • New York Daily News, "ROVING EYES AND DENTED FORDS", 1997/10/31: "Heiress Ghislaine Maxwell (above) tries to get Donald Trump to focus on the conversation as models saunter by"
  • Recruitment of Virginia Roberts from Mar-a-Lago
    • Mirror, "Prince Andrew accuser Virginia Roberts: Spa girl who ended up as gentleman's 'masseuse'", 2015/01/05: "Now aged 30, she is the daughter of a maintenance manager at a country club owned by Donald Trump in Florida, named Mar-A-Lago. She claims she was working there part-time as a changing room assistant when she met socialite Ghislaine shortly after her 15th birthday in 1999. She said: “I was wearing my sexy white Mar-A-Lago uniform – a white miniskirt and a skintight white polo top – when I was approached by this striking woman in her mid-40s with a very proper British accent – Ghislaine.” Miss Roberts says she eagerly took up an invitation from Ghislaine to work for Epstein and alleged she was offered the chance to work for a wealthy gentleman who needed a travelling masseuse. The teenager then visited banker Epstein’s nearby mansion on Palm Beach waterfront where she said she was told by another woman to strip and straddle his naked body. She claims he paid her £130 a time for what he called an “erotic massage”."
  • Modeling agency similarities
    • RealClearPolitics, "Julie K. Brown: "Quite A Few Powerful And Important" Names Will Come Up In Jeffrey Epstein Sex Trafficking Case", 2019/07/07: "She said Epstein's relationship with fellow Palm Beach resident Donald Trump was "friendly." "They went to dinner parties at each other's houses, Trump was also on his plane. Probably not as much as a lot of other people because, you know, Trump had his own plane. But they had a lot of social relationships. And the other interesting thing is Trump had a modeling agency, and Epstein also had a stake in a modeling agency, which they suspect he used to bring in underage girls from overseas." "There is a comment in one of the court files where Epstein is quoted as saying, 'I want to set up my modeling agency the same way Trump set up his modeling agency.' I don't know what that means, but it is curious he was trying to do something similar to Trump." Brown said."
    • Twitter repost of a 2015/08/25 post by Trump Model Management showing a strange-looking picture of their new "little doll"
    • Daily Kos blogger SwedishJewfish, ""We All Knew About the Trafficking"-The Untold Story of Trump Model Management (Part 1)", 2016/10/06
  • Supposed cutting of ties
    • Associated Press photo of Epstein after being arrested on 2006/07/27 in Palm Beach County FL
    • Page Six, "SEX CASE ‘VICTIMS’ LINING UP", 2007/10/15: "Meanwhile, the Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach last night confirmed a Web site report that Epstein has been banned there. “He would use the spa to try to procure girls. But one of them, a masseuse about 18 years old, he tried to get her to do things,” a source told us. “Her father found out about it and went absolutely ape-[bleep]. Epstein’s not allowed back.” Epstein denies he is banned from Mar-a-Lago and says, in fact, he was recently invited to an event there."
    • Derrick Broze, "Did Trump Ban Epstein from Mar-A-Lago?", 2018/12/14 - quotes Filthy Rich: A Powerful Billionaire, the Sex Scandal that Undid Him, and All the Justice that Money Can Buy: The Shocking True Story of Jeffrey Epstein by James Patterson (2016); unclear when the incident allegedly happened but seems to be 1999; worth noting that Patterson later went on a promotional tour with Bill Clinton despite highlighting Clinton's ties to Epstein in his book
    • Washington Post, "Trump called Epstein a ‘terrific guy’ who enjoyed ‘younger’ girls before denying relationship with him", 2019/07/08: "Alan Garten, an attorney for the Trump Organization, has said Trump had “no relationship” with Epstein. [...] The relationship, whatever it was, appears to have cooled by 2007. Garten said in an interview Monday that although Epstein was never a member of Mar-a-Lago, Trump prohibited him from visiting the club around that time, as a reaction to criminal charges that had been filed against Epstein. “He banned him from stepping foot on the property,” Garten said."
  • Katie Johnson lawsuit
    • The Memory Hole 2 compilation of court documents in Katie Johnson's lawsuits against Trump and Epstein
    • Court dockets from United States District Court for the Central District of California, Katie Johnson v. Donald J. Trump (COMPLAINT against defendants Jeffrey E. Epstein, Donald J. Trump)
    • Daily Beast, "Trump Rape Accusers Turn On Each Other", 2016/07/21 (updated 2017/04/13)
      • "The accuser—who used the name Katie Johnson to file a lawsuit in Manhattan Federal Court—alleges the Republican presidential nominee raped her in the summer of 1994, when she was 13, while attending a sex party at the New York City mansion of notorious pedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein. The claim was basically a repeat of her earlier lawsuit, filed in California in May without legal representation, which was dismissed on procedural grounds for failing to make a claim under an applicable statute."
      • "This time around, Johnson had a team of supporters behind her—a motley crew that included anti-abortion conservative donor Steve Baer and a man who calls himself “Al Taylor,” a mysterious foul-mouthed ex-producer of The Jerry Springer Show, the two unified by one common passion: a blinding hatred for Donald Trump."
      • "Taylor says he met Katie Johnson a few years ago at a party, where she allegedly told him that she had been raped as a teen by Trump. (The Guardian has convincingly reported that “Taylor” is actually a publicity-loving conspiracy peddler named Norm Lubow, a theory that Taylor has fervently denied: “AL TAYLOR, BORN AL TAYLOR, ALWAYS BEEN AL TAYLOR AND ALWAYS WILL BE AL TAYLOR,” he signed a recent email.)
        
        In February 2016, when it seemed possible that Trump could clinch the GOP nomination, Johnson, with Taylor’s help, decided to make what Taylor called a “murder insurance” video where she—disguised in a wig–would offer details of her alleged attack. They hired a videographer, Jonathann Launer, and agreed to pay him with a 20 percent stake in whatever money the tape might bring in from tabloids willing to purchase it."
      • "About a week after Johnson filed the California suit, Taylor says Steve Baer texted the burner phone used to file the complaint, offering his “no strings attached” help—assistance which came, both men said, in the form of cash."
      • "So on May 20, Baer says, he wired $19,000 to California.
        
        A portion of that money, $13,000, was sent to Taylor, ostensibly for Johnson, to cover a move to her own apartment, where only Taylor would know her whereabouts. “Well, that’s what I was told,” Baer said, “They could have gone and partied.”"
      • "Driven by an extreme distaste for Donald J. Trump–“He’s a liar, a letch, a pornographer, and possibly a child rapist,” Baer said—the Riverside, Illinois father of 10 has couriered unpixelated versions of the film (thereby exposing Katie Johnson’s face) to Ted Cruz, Charles Koch, Paul Ryan, John Kasich, and other conservatives and journalists, in the hope that the allegations would gain national attention."
      • "Money is a complicating factor behind the scenes of Johnson’s case. Johnson, who attempted to file her California lawsuit as an indigent plaintiff, seemingly has none. Meanwhile Baer seems to have plenty. Besides the $19,000 upfront, Baer said he was asked for $100,000 in exchange for Johnson agreeing to meet with detectives in New York, but instead counteroffered $30,000 “to aid with security, private investigators, and polygraph experts” if Johnson would just agree to go to New York before the Republican National convention in Cleveland.
        
        She didn’t go, Baer didn’t send any more money, and at that point, the tenuous bond holding Baer and Taylor together apparently broke.
        
        The two began trading insulting emails—copied to journalists, of course. Though many of the initial emails were labeled “off the record,” as the barbs began to fly, that proviso was left off."
      • "“It made me sick,” Baer said of Trump’s Tuesday nomination. “We all knew we lost, and I realized I never sent [Tom] Coburn the 48 minutes,” referring to the Johnson tape.
        
        Coburn, the former U.S. senator from Oklahoma, was Baer’s hope for president. An anti-abortion obstetrician, Coburn reportedly said he would go along with a Hail Mary play to wrest the nomination from Donald Trump on the convention floor. But that didn’t happen, and on Tuesday, Coburn told The Hill, “I have concerns for the country for both nominees. Given the choice, I’ll vote for Trump.”
        
        [...]
        
        “I’ve got the entire thing, the pixelated, non-, and watermarked. And everybody who helps run America right now, they've gotta know—and the press has to help—that there is a woman named Katie Johnson who says Donald Trump raped her.”
        
        Several of the clips from that video, with Katie’s face pixelated, are available online, posted by one “Bianca Manix.” A person using the same name has posted the videos along with a “Trump Victims Unite” Facebook page, to other anti-Trump Facebook pages. And a Twitter account belonging to Bianca Manix has six tweets, all bearing the hashtag, #DraftCoburn."
    • Politico, "Woman suing Trump over alleged teen rape drops suit, again", 2016/11/04: "A woman who accused Donald Trump of raping her two decades ago when she was a 13-year-old aspiring teen model has again dropped a federal lawsuit over the alleged assaults. The accuser, identified in the lawsuit by the pseudonym "Jane Doe," was expected to appear at a news conference in Los Angeles Wednesday, but that appearance was abruptly canceled. The lawyer who organized the event, Lisa Bloom, said Trump's accuser had received threats and was too frightened to show up."
    • "Maria" corroboration
      • Wayne Madsen and Andrew Kreig, "Welcome To Waterbury: The City That Holds Secrets That Could Bring Down Trump", 2018/01/09
      • Andrew Kreig, "New information emerges in "Maria" Trump story", 2018/02/15
      • Charley Project page on Marisela Pino from Waterbury CT missing 1993/03/20
      • Missing persons report on Marisela Pino a.k.a. Maria Pino
    • Newsweek, "Trump Teen Rape Allegation Resurfaces, Ronan Farrow Claims National Enquirer Tried to Protect Him in New Book", 2019/10/16: "Amid behind-the-scenes details of his explosive reporting on Harvey Weinstein's alleged sexual misconduct, Ronan Farrow's new book Catch and Kill: Lies, Spies and a Conspiracy to Protect Predators claims that American Media Inc. (AMI), the former publisher of the National Enquirer, tried to help Donald Trump bury allegations he raped a teenager in 1994. Farrow claims in the book that AMI CEO David Pecker was in close contact with Trump when the rape allegations were made public in a 2016 lawsuit, and that then-National Enquirer editor Dylan Howard assured Trump's personal lawyer at the time, Michael Cohen, "that they would track down the woman with the rape allegation and see what they could do about her." [...] Farrow alleges that after the suit was filed in September 2016, Enquirer editor Howard and Trump lawyer Cohen were in contact frequently. [...] Still, Farrow says, Howard, now chief content officer at AMI, tried to use his influence to convince Lisa Bloom, a power attorney who agreed to represent Jane Doe, to drop her client. In November 2016, just days before the presidential election, Bloom suddenly announced a press conference with Jane Doe had been canceled, saying Doe had become frightened after receiving death threats. Two days later, Doe's lead attorney, Thomas Meager, filed to dismiss the case. Jane Doe has not been heard from since. Speaking to Newsweek Tuesday, Bloom said that while the Enquirer editor "did tell me he thought Jane Doe lacked credibility ... that wasn't the reason she asked her other attorney to drop her case." "After we received numerous death threats and my law firm's website and emails were hacked, she did not want to go forward," Bloom added."
    • Mirror, "Ex-lapdancer says Prince Andrew blew raspberry on her breasts at Epstein party", 2019/11/23: "“It was a big night, really important for Jeffrey. The girls had been specially selected to try to please Andrew. [...] “Epstein made it clear he wanted to make Andrew happy. I was told to make sure he was looked after, that he had a drink, that he was OK. [...] The woman, now 47, claims cameras recorded guests so Epstein had leverage over them, if needed. [...] Revealing how she recruited teenagers for the parties, she goes on: “The girls were younger sisters of other strippers, homeless kids, runaways. "They were mostly older teens paid $200, $300. But the youngest girls would stay upstairs in the bedrooms because they couldn’t look 18 or 19.” The woman admits what she did was wrong. She has previously given evidence against Epstein under the name “Tiffany Doe” and is speaking out now to warn other young women not to fall under the influence of “rich, powerful men”."
  • Alex Acosta support
    • The Guardian, "Trump labor secretary who cut Epstein deal plans to slash funds for sex trafficking victims", 2019/07/10: "Acosta’s plan to slash funding of a critical federal agency in the fight against the sexual exploitation of children is contained in his financial plans for the Department of Labor for fiscal year 2020. In it, he proposes decimating the resources of a section of his own department known as the International Labor Affairs Bureau (ILAB). The bureau’s budget would fall from $68m last year to just $18.5m. The proposed reduction is so drastic that experts say it would effectively kill off many federal efforts to curb sex trafficking and put the lives of large numbers of children at risk. ILAB has the task of countering human trafficking, child labor and forced labor across the US and around the world. Its mission is “to promote a fair global playing field for workers” and it is seen as a crucial leader in efforts to crack down on the sex trafficking of minors. [...] Experts say any major cut to ILAB would be a direct threat to the US government’s ability to combat the sexual exploitation of children. “A huge cut of this sort is bound to expose children to more risk of sexual trafficking,” said Kathleen Kim, a professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles who co-authored California’s law on human trafficking."
  • Other curiosities
    • New York Times, "‘I Don’t Know Prince Andrew,’ Trump Says. Photos Say Otherwise", 2019/12/03
• Relationship with alleged pedophile ringleader Tevfik Arif
  • New York Daily News, "Donald Trump pal Tevfik Arif busted in Turkey for allegedly running hooker ring aboard yacht", 2010/10/01
    • "Ed. Note: In April 2012, Tevfik Arif was acquitted by a Turkish court of all charges in connection with the incident reported here. The court also found that none of the women on the yacht was under the age of 18. –Updated October 19, 2012."
    • "Tevfik Arif, 57, has been detained in Turkey on suspicion of setting up trysts between wealthy businessmen and Eastern European models - some underage - aboard a $60 million yacht once used by the nation's founder, Mustafa Ataturk."
    • "Arif, whose Bayrock Group co-developed the Trump SoHo and the Trump International Hotel and Tower in Fort Lauderdale, was among 10 people rounded up in Tuesday's raid on suspicion of running a prostitution ring."
    • "Ten models from Russia and Ukraine were detained, but one was released, Bloomberg News reported. Two of the women were underage."
    • "Russian, Kyrgyz and Kazakh businessmen and top government officials were also among those detained, Bloomberg News reported."
    • "In addition to the Trump properties in New York and Florida, Arif's firm developed the Trump International Hotel and Tower Phoenix, the Waterpointe, a residential development in Whitestone, Queens, and the Riverhead Resorts in Suffolk County, L.I. In an interview in 2007, Arif extolled the benefits of his relationship with The Donald. "He's been very helpful to us from the beginning and he's been very helpful in opening some doors," Arif told Real Estate Weekly. Photos from the 2007 launch party for the Trump SoHo Hotel show Trump and Arif palling around together. Arif was also photographed beside Trump and his three kids: Eric, Donald Jr., and Ivanka."
    • "Arif founded Bayrock in 2001, which he operates out of an office on Fifth Ave."
    • "In a separate lawsuit filed in August in Manhattan Federal Court, 15 buyers of the Trump SoHo Hotel sued Arif, Trump, his children, and Arif's partner, Alex Sapir, charging they had inflated sales in their marketing pitches to encourage them to buy into the condo."
  • Ynet, "A billionaire in stormy waters", 2011/03/29
    • "But the investigation sheds light not only on the crime organization but on the identity of the man who chartered the yacht to have a good time wit his friends and business partners: the police suspects that he is no other than Alexander Mashkevich - a well known billionaire and philanthropist holding an Israeli citizenship and heading the Euro-Asian Jewish Congress."
    • "The investigation began several months before the police raid on the yacht. The Turkish police received information about a crime organization that deals with human trafficking and solicitation. The organization was headed, according to the information, by Taufik Arif, a Turkish tycoon, Donald Trump's business partner and owner of a metal production factory in Kazakhstan and many other businesses in the US and Britain. Arif, dubbed "David" by his people, was born in Kazakhstan and lives in Turkey since 1994. The police followed his organization for two months, documented them with video cameras, tapped their phones and broke into their email and bank accounts.
      
      Investigation materials show that Arif's organization provided escort services to businessmen. The young women, some of whom were underage (according to the investigation, one of the businessmen was especially fond of 13-14 year old, and the organization head supplied those girls) were brought from Russian and the Ukraine, through modeling agencies."
    • "Mashkevitc’s character is mysterious, intriguing. He is a cold, calculated businessman who managed to take over Kazakhstan's natural resources with his partners, and accumulate approximately 3.3 billion dollars of wealth, which puts him in the 287 place in the Forbes list of the world's richest. But he is also a traditional Jewish person, who donates significantly for synagogue construction in Russia, for deliveries of Matzo to faraway communities, and for Jewish studies. "When Shimon Peres, the Israeli president, visited Kazakhstan, Mashkevich cried at the sound of the Tikva, the national hymn. He is an enthusiastic Jew and Zionist", say one of the people in his entourage."
    • "With his two Muslim partners, Alian Ibragimov and Phatuch Shudayev, Mashkevich got a franchise from the state and established Kazakhstan Aluminum. Their business expanded and they lay hands on other national resources such as the Chrome industry, iron and coal mines, electricity, trains, and more. Mashkevich took all these companies in under his corporation, ENRC. "I always wanted more. I believed in capitalism", he said in an interview."
    • "On September 25 at noon, nine carefully selected women arrived in the Bodrum airport. They were put on a bus and a private car and driven to the Riksos Hotel. On the same day, Mashkevich arrived in Turkey. He says he was never interrogated by the police, but one of the police documents includes an explanation provided by him, with his signature and a photocopy of his ID."
• CBS Los Angeles, "Former Beauty Queen: Contestants Were Forced To Greet Trump Even When Not Fully Dressed", 2016/10/11
• BuzzFeed News, "Teen Beauty Queens Say Trump Walked In On Them Changing", 2016/10/12
• Rolling Stone, "A Timeline of Donald Trump's Creepiness While He Owned Miss Universe", 2016/10/12
• New York Daily News, "Donald Trump once joked about wanting to date a 10-year-old girl, as five women claim the GOP candidate groped them", 2016/10/12
• The Guardian, "Trump makes inappropriate remarks about young girl – video", 2016/10/13
• Raw Story, "Trump acted like ‘total f*cking beast’ at coke-fueled parties with teen girls: report", 2016/10/25

Other curiosities

• Steve Bannon background (TODO: move to own page) - linked to alt-right activist and financial crook Andy Badolato
  • Daniel Hopsicker, "Trump campaign chief’s hidden ties to Sarasota grifter", 2016/09/21
  • Daniel Hopsicker, "Stock Fraud, Drug Trafficking, & the ‘Alt-Right’", 2016/09/28: "In addition to Mob links, we will see hints of U.S. intelligence involvement. Does Steve Bannon have national security ties? According to Bloomberg News, Bannon joined the Navy right after college, and then spent four years at sea, including working as a navigator in the north Arabian Sea during the Iranian hostage crisis. He left the Persian Gulf just as the ill-fated U.S. mission to rescue the hostages in Tehran, Desert One, died in the sands of the Iranian desert. Bannon became an assistant to the chief of Naval operations at the Pentagon, earned a master’s degree in national security studies at Georgetown University at night, then headed to Wall Street, where he went to work at Goldman Sachs. There he worked on a series of leveraged buyouts, including a deal involving Bain Capital and Mitt Romney."
  • Daniel Hopsicker, "Alt-right’ Trump operative running stock fraud ‘hyena pack’", 2016/11/04
• New York Times, "Centrists Are the Most Hostile to Democracy, Not Extremists", 2018/05/23
• ABC, "'Dossier' author Chris Steele met Ivanka Trump years before Russia scandal, source says", 2019/12/09: "Nearly a decade before the 2016 presidential campaign, Donald Trump’s daughter Ivanka met a British intelligence officer who ran the Russia desk -- and when the agent left his covert service and moved into private practice in 2010, she stayed in touch, ABC News has learned. The two exchanged emails but never worked together, and the man, Christopher Steele, would one day re-emerge in a most unexpected way, taking a central role in the Russia scandal that consumed the early years of her father’s presidency, according to a source familiar with their past contacts. The prior relationship came to light as investigators with the Department of Justice Inspector General’s office was looking into allegations of political bias at the origins of the Russia investigation since May 2018."