13 Comments

Seth, during Trump's 2016 campaign I stumbled upon stories of two instances of Trump being investigated and found guilty of being one of a group convicted of money-laundering. The first instance was 1998 or 1999, where Trump was fined just under a million dollars and the second was 2015, where Trump's fine was $20 million. The second fine is easily accessed at the U.S. Treasury website. Have you encountered this information before? In both cases the other people found guilty with Trump had Russian names.

Expand full comment
author

Between 2003—just after Sater came into his life and began advising Trump on how to get close to Russians—and 90 days before Trump announced his 2016 run, Trump Taj Mahal systematically violated anti-money laundering provisions. Link: https://www.fincen.gov/news/news-releases/fincen-fines-trump-taj-mahal-casino-resort-10-million-significant-and-long

That this conduct was connected to the Russia mafia is discussed by NPR here (click on Transcript tab): https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/trumpinc/episodes/money-laundering-trump-taj-mahal

Expand full comment

Kinda depressing that 'The Donald' could say this & no main stream media organizations thoroughly fact checked it. “I HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH RUSSIA—NO DEALS, NO LOANS, NO NOTHING” Especially considering juniors comment about Russia funding their new Golf course empire.

Expand full comment

Still Russia,Russia,Russia with you Seth!! What about The Biden’s China,China,China???

Expand full comment
author
May 26, 2023·edited May 26, 2023Author

Joe Biden has no connections with China. Donald Trump has massively, profoundly troubling—even compromising—ties to China that include illegal collusion. See the "Trump-China" chapter of Proof of Corruption (Macmillan, 2020). I am sorry this does not comport with what far-right blogs written by anonymous propagandists have told you. I sign my real name to everything and source everything and adhere to the ethoi of professional journalists in my journalistic writing (I was even a journalism professor). You are the one who needs to decide if you are willing to accept bad news in the news, or if your Big Feelings about what you think *must* be true (even though it is not) are what you always allow to control your information flow.

Expand full comment

I hate to say it, but this article is scary when you think about this being the same person who had/had complete access to all of our top-secret documents and is about to receive briefings again from US officials. This article should be recirculated so people can remember exactly who DJT is.

Expand full comment

Seth, I am a long-time fan of your work, but I am also an old English professor who wonders why you use the comma outside the quotation marks. You aren't British, so this construction, found only in England's style books, is baffling:

“[Putin] couldn’t have been nicer [to me]”, he said the next year; “got along with him great”, he said the year after that.

American style books:

"[Putin] couldn't have been nicer," he said the next year; "got along with him great," he said the year after that.

Expand full comment
author

Bob, very easy answer: because I bold quotes and I consider it improper to bold a comma that I (not the speaker) have inserted. Where/when I am not bolding a given quoted phrase, I put the comma in its usual place. Believe me, as a fellow former English professor I well know that (in the U.S.) the comma goes inside the quotation mark. For me the issue is one of journalism; nothing that is mine should be bolded.

Expand full comment

I see! Thank you, Seth. I knew there had to be a reasonable explanation. (Very good learning opportunity!)

Expand full comment

Yeah, HE stole the election.

Expand full comment
author
May 26, 2023·edited May 26, 2023Author

Calling the 2016 election "stolen" is a complicated affair.

The 2000 election was stolen from the Democrats, no doubt. The 2004 election was *arguably* stolen, based on what happened in Ohio—but despite the 2005 Boxer Rebellion, we never got the full numbers of how many votes in majority-minority Cuyahoga County precincts Kenneth Blackwell's misconduct cost Democrats (who only needed a 50,000 swing in the state to win the presidency).

2020 is without question an election the GOP *tried* to steal from the Democratic Party (a categorization that also fits 2000 and 2004 and establishes the GOP pattern of trying to steal elections).

But 2016? I would say that election was tampered with and that the Trump campaign aided and abetted those who tampered with it and in some cases worked directly with those who tampered with it. But the tampering was not through vote-hacking—it was through disinformation—so it becomes a more abstract question to say whether or not that qualifies as "stolen."

Expand full comment

Do we call what the NY FBI did disinformation? Because they kept Trump's investigations a secret, while announcing a reopening of the Clinton email scandal two weeks before the election. This should have never happened.

Expand full comment
author

I think it would be considered election interference. The question would again be whether one deems that, therefore, a "stolen" election. I tend to think of a stolen election as one in which votes were switched or simply never counted though they should have been. But that might just be me.

Expand full comment