What’s with the Cohns and Cohens in Trump’s life? Beginning in the 1970s, and through the mid- 1980s, Roy Cohn, a shadowy but powerful figure with connections to FBI, CIA, and organized crime, as well as with anybody having any power in New York city, served as Trump’s mentor. He was like an uncle to Trump and taught him many things about business. A decade or so later, we find Trump with a new confidant, Michael Cohen, who Trump eventually hired as lawyer and spokesperson for the Trump Organization.

And what’s with that Russian mob money that backed the Trump real estate empire?

After reading what follows, you will answer by saying, this must be the Cohen crime family, founded (in Los Angeles) by Meyer Harris (“Mickey”) Cohen, but which must also extend into or from the Ukraine and Russia.

Mickey Cohen, Ukraine, NYC, and Los Angeles

Mickey Cohen was born in Brooklyn to an Orthodox Jewish mother in 1913. He had family ties to the Ukraine, since his mother had emigrated from there. He entered the crime scene by the age of nine, and by 1930 became a crime boss in his own right, having broken out from under “Bugsy” Siegel to take over the Cohen crime family in Los Angeles.

Since then it would seem the Cohen family has been massively successful, not only in America, but in the Ukraine, Russia, and the Middle East as well. To get at that story, we should visit some other connections first.

Mogilevich, Ivankov, Trump, NYC and Ukraine

Today, Mickey Cohen is deceased, and Semion Mogilevich is wanted by the FBI as the “boss of bosses” of Russian organized crime. He is considered “the most powerful mobster in the world (Spotlight on Michael Cohen — Trump’s Mysterious Lawyer with Deep Ukraine Ties, 9/18/2017, Russ Baker),” but unfortunately for the FBI he does not live in the United States.

In 1992 he sent his sub-boss, Vyacheslav Ivankov, to run things in America. When Ivankov was discovered by the FBI he was living in a luxury condo – in the Trump Tower. But he escaped. Where did he go? He snuck off to a Trump casino in Atlantic City. The second most powerful mob boss in the world is using Trump properties as a hideout? Are Trump’s properties being used as a haven and extension of Russian mob territory in the United States?

Surely that’s just a coincidence, right? No. Actually, since at least 1984 Trump residential properties have been popular with the Russian mob – both as investments in which to launder money and as places to live and headquarter. In fact by the early 90s, Trump was losing access to traditional sources of funding, and had to turn to alternative sources some of which were traced back to the Ukraine and Russia. By this time parties holding assets extracted from the former Soviet Union (FSU) as it collapsed were beginning to move serious money into New York real estate and saw financing Trump as an excellent foothold.

This flow from the FSU has continued, to the tune of over $1.3 trillion (Why Robert Mueller has Trump Soho in his Sights, by Craig Unger, 8/13/17). In 2008, Donald Trump, Jr. allowed that, “Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets. We see a lot of money pouring in from Russia. (quoted in Spotlight on Michael Cohen).” Baker notes that since then, “Russians and others from the former Soviet Union seeking to move funds West are among the biggest buyers of New York real estate.”

Playing their roles in this story, both Michael Cohen and Felix Sater have been “two key figures in Trump’s businesses,” and both are connected to the FSU.

Michael Cohen became a lawyer in 1992 in New York, but engaged in other business activities as well. All of his non-lawyering businesses involved Ukrainian Americans. According to Baker:

He soon began assembling a portfolio of businesses outside the legal profession, virtually all involving Ukrainian immigrants — many of whom were, or became, immensely wealthy. … Shortly after the turn of the century, Cohen took a new direction. He began buying — as did his relatives — properties in buildings with the Trump name. … Some years later, the Trump-friendly New York Post profiled Cohen and his passion for Trump developments in a real-estate-porn article headlined “Upping the Ante.” Once some buyers go Trump, they never go back. Take Michael Cohen … . He purchased his first Trump apartment … in 2001. He was so impressed he convinced his parents, his in-laws [the Alex Oronov family, from Ukraine] and a business partner to buy there, too. Cohen’s in-laws went on [to] purchase two more units there and one at Trump Grande in Sunny Isles, Fla. … “Trump properties are solid investments,” says Cohen, who’s also looking at the new Trump SoHo project. By the time he entered Trump’s employ, Cohen, his relatives and his business partner had already purchased a combined 11 Trump properties. (Spotlight on Michael Cohen)

When Cohen was young, he ran in the same circles as Felix Sater. In the 1970s Sater’s family immigrated to Brooklyn, picking an area “heavily populated by Soviet emigres — and an area where the Trump family owned lots of buildings.”

Sater became a felon in 1998 when he pleaded guilty to his participation in a mob-related pump-and-dump stock fraud (Why Robert Mueller has Trump Soho in his Sights) and became an FBI and CIA informant. By this time the FBI had been surveilling the occupants of Trump tower (not Trump, necessarily) for maybe a decade. Uncovering and curbing FSU influence on Wall Street had become one of its top priorities (Why FBI can’t Tell All on Trump, by Baker, Collins, and Larsen, 3/27/17). Since this time the FBI has become deeply corrupted, perhaps partly through this effort, although the process of FBI corruption probably began much earlier. This, however, is not our present subject.

Baker says that beginning around 2000 Sater and Cohen began to play, “interconnected roles in the saga linking Donald Trump to vast supplies of dubiously sourced money from the FSU.” In 2001, while hiding his criminal background from potential investors (thus once again committing fraud), Sater joined the real estate company, Bayrock, run by FSU emigres from office space leased in Trump Tower. “Sater and Bayrock were supplying Trump with income during a period when his other investments had been suffering.” The Trump Soho condominium and hotel was a Bayrock project, and Trump lent his name to numerous other Bayrock real estate development projects as well. “Sater was soon working directly for Trump himself, with an office, business cards, phone number and email address all provided by the Trump Organization.”

Trump, Arif, and Sater at Trump Soho unveiling – Credit Mark Von Holden/WireImage

In late 2007 Trump gave a sealed deposition in which he said that he was not pleased to discover that Sater may have been defrauding investors and that he was therefore “looking into it (as quoted in Why Robert Mueller has Trump Soho in his Sights).” What Trump did next is telling.

As attorney Frederick Oberlander explains, “Inducing a bank to lend money based on fraudulent loan application—i.e., concealing Sater’s criminal past—is bank fraud,” said Oberlander. “If you know that the loans were procured by fraud yet stay involved, it’s a conspiracy to violate money laundering and racketeering statutes (quoted in Why Robert Mueller has Trump Soho in his Sights).” Unfortunately, that is exactly what Trump did.

Unger continues:

[I]f someone in Trump’s situation failed to investigate such allegations that person would be “open to charges of ‘willful blindness’ in terms of the knowledge he had.” “The responsible course of action would have been to have Sater resign and to disclose Sater’s past to interested parties,” said Lerner. But, according to Sater’s e-mails, … “Donald . . . saw an opportunity to try and get development fees for himself.” In the end, Sater remained managing director of Bayrock through 2008. Trump also continued to participate in the venture and enjoy its profits. (Why Robert Mueller has Trump Soho in his Sights)

But by 2013, Trump could not remember Sater. During another legal deposition (for a different case), Trump said that if Sater, “were sitting in a room right now, I really wouldn’t know what he looked like (Why FBI can’t Tell All on Trump, citing Mother Jones).” Trump must have a very selective memory for such a smart guy.

Michael Cohen, Oronov, and Ukrainian Independence

Returning to Michael Cohen, Baker says that to understand Cohen’s access to seemingly limitless funding requires some knowledge of the recent history of the fall of the Soviet Union and rise of an independent Ukraine. That is because these are the events that Cohen leveraged to amass fabulous wealth; and because he did this through his Ukrainian family’s deep connections with the Ukrainian/Russian underworld – a significant part of the Oligarchy which attained world-class wealth through the disintegration and privatization of the Soviet Union.

Baker describes Cohen’s success:

That [Michael] Cohen buys luxury Trump apartments like others buy shoes — and that he has a seemingly inexhaustible budget — could conceivably be explained, at least in part, by his ties to people who, as noted earlier, became extremely wealthy after the collapse of the Soviet Union. … The trail begins with [his brother] Bryan Cohen’s father-in-law, Alex Oronov … . [Micheal’s] wife, Laura, is from the Ukraine. So is Bryan Cohen’s wife, Oxana. Following Ukrainian independence in 1994, Oronov … founded an agribusiness firm, Harvest Moon (later rebranded as Grain Alliance); Bryan Cohen notes in his own online biography that he served as General Counsel and Executive Vice President for Grain Alliance, Americas. … In this and similar ventures Oronov, from a modest start, became wildly wealthy, working with a network of well-connected Ukrainian politicians and businessmen with alleged mob ties. One of his partners was Viktor Topolov, a wealthy [one of the wealthiest, and who was eventually elected to parliament] Ukrainian closely associated with figures the FBI has identified as “well known” members of the Russian and Ukrainian underworld. (Spotlight on Michael Cohen)

The Grain Alliance grew rapidly from 2005 – 2010, during a time when Ukraine was still emerging from a rather total lawlessness (Michael Cohen Pitched Investors For A Powerful Ukrainian Oligarch’s Company, by Cormier, McDaniel, Templon, and Kozyreva, 6/8/2017) and, “had no control from any government officials (Spotlight on Michael Cohen).” At one point the Grain Alliance had 100,000 acres under cultivation. One wonders how many farmers were given a “deal they could not refuse.”

Separately from this, Oronov was partners with Topolov in an ethanol company, and they wanted to build an ethanol plant in Ukraine. In 2006 they hired Oronov’s son-in-law, Bryan Cohen, and his brother Michael to pitch the deal to American investors from Morgan Stanley (Michael Cohen Pitched Investors). The deal fell through and plant construction, though begun, remains unfinished.

Also in 2006, Sater, by then an FBI informant, traveled to Ukraine and Russia — ostensibly searching for properties to develop with the Trump Organization. (Spotlight on Michael Cohen).

By 2015 the westernization had led to the opening of an office by Monsanto in the Ukraine, which, “coincided with land grabs with loans from the IMF and World Bank to one of the world’s most hated corporations … . The IMF gave the Ukraine a $17 billion loan – but only if they would open up to biotech farming and the selling of Monsanto’s poison crops and chemicals … ,” says Christina Sarich, of the Natural Society website (They’re not Telling Monsanto’s role in Ukraine, January 11, 2015).

Currently it remains illegal in Ukraine to produce and sell genetically engineered crops. However, a propaganda campaign is underway to change that, and already, “industry rumors in Ukraine suggest that 60-70 percent of soybeans and 3-5 percent of corn produced for export is genetically engineered (The US Spoke about the “Benefits” of GMO Production in Ukraine 12/20/17).”

Baker adds that, since the crime boss, Mogilevich, and Putin were close (according to Ivankov, who seems to have gotten himself gunned down for saying so), the emerging independence and therefore westernization of Ukraine led in large part to the current tensions between the Russian State and the U.S. government. This is not only due to the above described agribusiness, but also to natural gas. Russia supplies 1/3 of Europe’s natural gas needs.

The natural gas deal was also Russian mob related. “Mogilevich was identified as the secret majority owner of the Ukrainian stake in a mysterious intermediary company, half-owned by Russian energy giant Gazprom,” that handles much of this gas.

Baker comments:

Ukraine was once one of the most valuable parts of the USSR. Since gaining independence in 1991, it has been drawn closer to the West … . Russia is not happy that its lucrative gas exports, the source of much of its foreign exchange, must be transported across the territory of its now-adversary. (Spotlight on Michael Cohen — Trump’s Mysterious Lawyer with Deep Ukraine Ties)

He says that these deals and the relationships being built around them between Ukraine and the West,

played a major role in Russia’s decision to enter Ukraine militarily in the summer of 2014 [which] led the West to impose sanctions that have severely harmed Russia’s economy. Putin has made no secret of his desire to get the sanctions lifted. … (Spotlight on Michael Cohen — Trump’s Mysterious Lawyer with Deep Ukraine Ties)

The military action followed the 2014 pro-Western coup in Ukraine widely regarded to have been supported by the CIA. This was a bit much in the view of the Russian State, which seems to have responded by attempting to influence U.S. politics, and Trump was an obvious choice for them.

Lobbying for Ukrainian and Russian Interests

By the year 2000, Trump had run for president on the Reform Party ticket and the Russians understood that he had mass appeal. Carrying this forward, Baker writes:

In 2010 and 2012, while working for Trump, Cohen traveled to the former Soviet Republics of Kazakhstan and Georgia. It’s worth noting that Bayrock had earlier received large infusions of cash from the ultra-corrupt Kazakhstan, and other funds from Georgia, also awash in ill-gotten fortunes. In 2013, leading up to the Russian-hosted winter Olympics in Sochi, a close Putin ally reached out to Trump. Aras Agalarov, an Azerbaijani billionaire real estate developer with Russian citizenship who is known as the “Donald Trump of Russia,” paid Trump millions of dollars to bring Trump’s Miss Universe Pageant to Moscow. … An Instagram post by Agalarov’s son shows Cohen with Trump and Agalarov at the Trump Vegas around the time the deal was inked. … As Trump’s relationship to the former Soviet Union intensified, so, seemingly, did Russian interest in the American political system and the presidency. In 2014, we now know, US intelligence secretly identified what it determined was a Russian effort to sow doubt and chaos in the US elections system [pathetically feeble, though it was]. … Trump officially announced his candidacy for president on June 16, 2015. … Matters seem to have come to a head in June 2016, when, at the request of Russians, Donald Trump Jr. convened a meeting in his office. … in response to Russian offers to help Trump’s candidacy by providing intelligence on Clinton that could be used against her. Among those attending were Manafort, Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, and publicist Rob Goldstone — who works for the son of the previously mentioned Russian real estate mogul Aras Agalarov and who brokered the meeting. Also present was Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya, a fervent opponent of the Magnitsky Act, which imposed sanctions on certain Russian officials following the imprisonment, and subsequent death, of a Russian tax accountant investigating fraud. … (Spotlight on Michael Cohen — Trump’s Mysterious Lawyer with Deep Ukraine Ties)

Unger adds:

Mueller’s mandate, of course, is investigating possible collusion relating to the 2016 presidential election. The fact that Bayrock, which began working with Trump nearly 15 years ago, is now in his sights suggests that he understands that Russian-intelligence tradecraft is often indistinguishable from business, with its operatives navigating international flows of capital. In Vladimir Putin’s regime, business and organized crime and intelligence are often intertwined, and can all be used as weapons of the state. Mueller’s investigators are looking to unravel this web by following the money. And one company that potentially questionable Russian money flowed through was Bayrock. (Why Robert Mueller has Trump Soho in his Sights)

The sanctions on Russia bring another Trump Tower resident, Paul Manafort, into view (probably Roger Stone as well). The Washington insider, political fixer, lobbyist, and future Trump campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, was also a beneficiary of the Ukrainian pipeline situation, being paid millions of dollars by prominent players in the natural gas scramble. But Manafort was paid yet larger sums for influence he claimed to have with the United States government. Baker says that in 2006,

[T]he Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska, long a close Putin associate, signed a whopping $10 million a year contract with Manafort based on what Manafort had presented as efforts inside the United States that would “greatly benefit the Putin government.” … That same year, Manafort himself bought an apartment…. In Trump Tower. (Spotlight on Michael Cohen — Trump’s Mysterious Lawyer with Deep Ukraine Ties)

On March 29, 2016, Manafort joined the Trump campaign, eventually becoming its manager, until he was forced to resign due to discovery of his prior activities consulting for the erstwhile Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych and ties to other powerful forces sympathetic to Russia (Why FBI can’t Tell All on Trump). Manafort had worked in Ukraine consulting for a successful campaign to re-elect the Russia-friendly candidate Yanukovych for president of Ukraine. After the inauguration of Yanukovych in 2010, Manafort continued on as an advisor while also becoming, “involved in other business projects in Eastern Europe. (Mystery man: Ukraine’s U.S. Fixer, by Burns and Haberman, 2/5/2014).”

With all his connections and influence, one would be tempted to think that Manafort is CIA, except that there were other more western friendly candidates in Ukraine that he could have supported but didn’t. The CIA-supported government of Ukraine only began to emerge after several years of the Yanukovych presidency had passed, in protests against his corrupt regime. So unless the CIA was installing Yanukovych as part of a dialectical process to bring about this uprising, it seems unlikely that Manafort was an agent of the CIA. And if he was, Putin was also fooled, since Putin himself visited Ukraine during the campaign in support of Yanukovych.

The Euromaidan protests started in November 2013 when Ukrainian citizens demanded stronger integration with the European Union. The origins of Euromaidan began as a smaller protest that had started in Independence Square in the center of Kyiv on 21 November, the day Yanukovych abruptly changed his mind on an Association Agreement with the European Union, deciding to strengthen economic ties with Russia instead. … Yanukovych has been widely criticized for “massive” corruption and cronyism. … Anders Åslund, a Swedish economist and Ukraine analyst, described the consolidation of Ukrainian economic power in the hands of a few “elite industrial tycoons”, one of the richest and most influential of whom has become President Yanukovych’s own son Oleksandr Yanukovych … but most of the country’s richest men were afraid to cross the Yanukovich family … . Young “robber capitalist[s] have been buying up both public and private businesses at “rock bottom” prices … . On 12 January 2015, Interpol issued a Red Notice for him, making him a wanted person, on charges of ‘Misappropriation, embezzlement [and so forth]’. (Wikipedia)

Yanukovych left Ukraine in early 2014 and the purportedly CIA supported pro-western government of Petro Poroshenko took over.

Trump’s Pro-Russia Cabinet

We return now to the United States, to see that in 2016 the fruit of Manafort and Trump’s presidential campaign was a very Russia-friendly cabinet.

Rex Tillerson, CEO of ExxonMobile, became Secretary of State. Through ExxonMobile he had a potential $500 billion conflict of interest in Russia. According to Brad Plumer, in Rex Tillerson’s potentially huge conflict of interest over Russia and oil, explained, 12/14/2016:

Between 2011 and 2013, Exxon signed a series of deals with the Russian state-owned oil giant Rosneft to explore the Black Sea, develop shale resources in western Siberia, and — most importantly — drill for oil in the Arctic, one of the biggest untapped fossil fuel resources left in the world. … “Arctic oil in particular would’ve been a game changer for Exxon,” says Fadel Gheit, an oil analyst at Oppenheimer & Co. … But Exxon’s Arctic dreams fell apart in 2014, after the Obama administration slapped sanctions on Russia’s oil industry over Russian incursions into Ukraine. Despite having just made a tantalizing oil discovery in the Kara Sea, Exxon was forced to stop work … .

The Secretary of State could have had a serious interest in lifting the sanctions on Russia.

The Secretary of Commerce, Wilbur Ross, was brought on board. Wikipedia says, “He is often called the ‘King of Bankruptcy’ because of his record of buying bankrupt companies … and later selling them for a large profit … .” Just good business perhaps.

But why did he lie about his assets? At the time of his appointment he was thought to have been worth $2.5 billion. But after having divesting himself of “90%” of his holdings it was discovered he had only been worth $700 million. Which is it? Did he lie before, or after? The Secretary of Commerce thinks its an okay practice to lie about money? Not good.

He had been on the board of the Bank of Cyprus, PCL, alongside a Russian billionaire who paid Trump $50 million more for a Palm Beach home than it was worth. This is the same billionaire who paid the soon-to-be head of Trump’s presidential campaign, Paul Manafort, millions more for U.S. influence, and who laundered Manafort’s Russian millions through the same Cyprus bank (from the comments under Why FBI can’t Tell All on Trump).

The bank, which was known for laundering Russian money, failed, and the EU established a “bail-in” wherein the (mostly Russian mob) deposits were frozen and then partially confiscated. Manafort and Ross were rubbing shoulders with some nasty people before joining the Trump team.

Trump’s initial National Security Adviser, Michael Flynn, did not last long. He had to go because he had failed to disclose his work as a lobbyist for the Turkish government and because he had spoken, before Trump took office, with the Russian ambassador about American sanctions against Russia. By itself, this could be completely above board, but in the context we have seen, it may not be so innocent.

Trump and Power Politics

So is Trump influenced by the Russians? You betcha, but not by the government of Russia particularly: more a Russian mob. To the extent that Trump represents interests of the Russian State, it should be remembered that Putin is ex-KGB and works closely with the Russian Oligarchy (mob members), many of which are ex-KGB themselves. It should also be noted that other FSU States are also more or less run by these mobs.

These facts of power do not justify the situation. It is unfortunate that to be a political leader in the world today means doing business with entities like this. Ostensibly this is done for the greater good. But the race between good and evil is on, and who is wearing which hats, and which element is going to win, is being heatedly contested. Hopefully you, dear reader, since you have gotten this far, now have a clearer view of the playing field.

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