Adam Davidson covers a great story in the New Yorker this week examining so-called President Trump’s questionable ties to mega-corrupt officials in Azerbaijan linked to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, one of the world’s foremost state sponsors of terrorism.

Davidson tells the tale of the Trump family’s insatiable desire for money and their willingness to travel to the edges of the earth to get it. In this case they ended up in a deal to build a luxury hotel on the edge of nowhere in Baku, Azerbaijan with Ziya Mammadov, the famously corrupt Transportation Minister of the famously corrupt central Asian republic.

In constructing a giant luxury tower in the unpopulated outskirts of Baku, Davidson claims the Trump Organization played fast and loose with the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA), the US Law that governs the conduct of US companies in foreign lands.

Moreover, Trump was almost certainly partnered with somebody that was also helping Iran’s Revolutionary Guard launder money so that they could funnel it more efficiently to America’s enemies:

“Throughout the Presidential campaign, Trump was in business with someone that his company knew was likely a partner with the Iranian Revolutionary Guard.“

Davidson notes that Trump has previously been disdainful of the FCPA, saying that “It’s a horrible law and it should be changed,” and American companies need to be able to bribe their way into business. Nor is it the first time Trump has been linked to Iran.

The story that Davidson tells is about an organization and a man who go anywhere, work with anyone, do any deal, sacrifice any principles, and flaunt any law so long as they get paid.

It’s a timely illustration of what could become the “Trump Doctrine”

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