It was always about the money. The reason we never saw the tax returns was because of what they would show about the money. The reason we can't get a straight answer about the family's dealings with the Russians is the money. Preet Bharara got fired because of the money and how the money had been allegedly laundered. James Comey got fired because of the money. Without the money, specifically the money from Russia, the Trump empire likely would have collapsed under a hail of writs and the paterfamilias would have been rendered invisible, even in the mirrors of Mar-a-Lago.

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It always was about the money. The meeting on June 6, 2016 ultimately was about the money, as we learned today from CNN. The network reported that it had identified the eighth participant in that now-famous Trump Tower confab. Contrary to the previous load of hooey dispensed by Junior and the first family, this dude was not a translator.

Ike Kaveladze's identity was confirmed by his attorney, Scott Balber. Kaveladze is a senior vice president at Crocus Group, the real estate development company run by Azerbaijani-Russian oligarch Aras Agalarov, according to Kaveladze's LinkedIn. His personal website says he "holds responsibility for multiple elements of the company's Russian development project."

I am sure that, like most wealthy Russians in the Putin era, old Ike there is on the up and up. Let's go to the phones. Here's Ray from The New York Times:

In a nine-month inquiry that subpoenaed bank records, the investigators found that an unknown number of Russians and other East Europeans moved more than $1.4 billion through accounts at Citibank of New York and the Commercial Bank of San Francisco. The accounts had been opened by Irakly Kaveladze, who immigrated to the United States from Russia in 1991, according to Citibank and Mr. Kaveladze. He set up more than 2,000 corporations in Delaware for Russian brokers and then opened the bank accounts for them, without knowing who owned the corporations, according to the report by the General Accounting Office, which has not been made public. The report said the banks had failed to conduct any ''due diligence'' into identifying the owners of the accounts…The G.A.O. report said nothing about the sources of the money. In view of past investigations into laundering, this wave was highly likely to have arisen from Russian executives who were seeking to avoid taxes, although some money could be from organized crime. More than $800 million was wired from abroad to 136 accounts that Mr. Kaveladze opened at Citibank for Russian clients, and most of that was then sent to overseas accounts, said the report, which was provided to The New York Times by government officials who want to see its findings receive maximum exposure. The report is to be released on Thursday. About $600 million moved through the Commercial Bank, the investigation found.

It's hard to believe that Junior wanted this guy's name kept out of the stories, especially now that, as the guy's attorney says, Robert Mueller has come knock, knock, knocking at the door.

(Sarah Kendizor, whose electric Twitter machine account is an essential follow on this stuff, has even more about Ike, including Ike's complaint that the money-laundering probe was a "witch hunt." These guys need new material.)

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The fact is that the president* was never as rich as he said he was, a circumstance that was of outsized importance to nobody except his own narcissistic self. (I don't think it would have changed a single vote if it had been revealed that he wasn't as rich as he was saying he was.) He did, however, always have an outsized sense of himself in the world. He had to keep acquiring to stay true to his self-image. I believe the collision between these two factors left him with no options to obtain loans except overseas, and the Russian money was easy money. Then he got elected president and it all unraveled.

Future historians are going to read this stuff and get out of the business.

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