Mega Group

In September in 1987, following a trip to Moscow, while under the tutelage of Arthur J. Finkelstein’s protégée Roger Stone, Trump took out a full-page advertisement in three major newspapers criticizing the Reagan administration’s foreign policy, that was overtly pro-Russian in its call for the dismantling of the Western Alliance, under the headline, “There’s nothing wrong with America’s Foreign Defense Policy that a little backbone can’t cure.”[1] Asked why he had done so, his spokesperson said, “There is absolutely no plan to run for mayor, governor or United States senator. He will not comment about the presidency.”[2] A month later, though, he did: “I’m not running for anything,” he told The New York Times, while adding, “I believe that if I did run for president, I’d win.”[3]

“You know who really wants me to do this?” Trump asked rhetorically, when the Washington Post inquired about his sudden announcement to run for president, “Roy [Cohn].”[4] At the time, Trump had retained the law firm of Black, Manafort & Stone shortly after it was established in 1980, whose three partners—“Arthur’s Boys,” Charles Black, Paul Manafort, and Roger Stone—had just played vital roles in Ronald Reagan’s landslide victory in 1984.[5] Trump had met Stone, the notorious dirty tricks specialist, and his colleague Paul Manafort through Roy Cohn, who had became his mentor.[6]

Trump recounts in The Art of the Deal that he had been invited to Moscow by the Soviet ambassador Yuri Dubinin. Dubinin’s daughter Natalia Dubinina, who was part of the Soviet delegation to the UN, recounted that when her father visited her in New York, in March of 1986, she took him to see Trump Tower. Dubinin was apparently so impressed that he insisted on meeting its owner. In a breach of the usual protocol, Dubinin took the elevator and paid him a visit. Following some carefully worded flattery, Dubina said, “Dubinina said: “Trump melted at once. He is an emotional person, somewhat impulsive. He needs recognition. And, of course, when he gets it he likes it. My father’s visit worked on him [Trump] like honey to a bee.”[7] According to Natalia, it was all part of a determined effort by the Soviet government to recruit Trump.[8]

Six month later, Trump was invited to a luncheon held by Leonard Lauder, the businessman son of Estée Lauder, where he was seated next to Dubinin. Estée Lauder was a friend of Roy Cohn. [9] Lauder’s brother Ronald, also a close friend of Roy Cohn, has also been close to Donald Trump, who have been friends since they were teenagers, as both attended the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania together in the 1960s, and they shared the same social and political circles in New York City.[10] Lauder is the president of the World Jewish Congress (WJC), which was founded in 1936 through the support of the American Jewish Congress (AJC). Maintaining his position as President of the AJC, Rabbi Stephen Wise was also elected president of the WJC. It was Rabbi Antelman, in To Eliminate the Opiate, who pointed out that the Frankists introduced Sabbateanism on a large-scale in Judaism principally through the Reform and Conservative movements, as well as Zionist-leaning organizations like the American Jewish Congress, the World Jewish Congress and the B’nai B’rith. Lauder is also a close friend of Roy Cohn, whose influential father, Albert Cohn, was the long-time president of B’nai B’rith’s powerful New England-New York chapter and Roy himself was a member of B’nai B’rith’s Banking and Finance Lodge.

In 1991, Charles Bronfman and billionaire Les Wexner—who built Victoria’s Secret, Pink, Express and The Limited into one of America’s all-time great retail fortunes—formed the Mega Group, a secretive group of billionaires, to which belongs Ronald Lauder. Media profiles of the group describe it as “a loosely organized club of 20 of the nation’s wealthiest and most influential Jewish businessmen” focused on “philanthropy and Jewishness,” with membership dues upwards of $30,000 per year.[11] Mega Group members founded or have been closely associated with some of the most well-known pro-Israel organizations. For instance, members Charles Bronfman and Michael Steinhardt formed Birthright Taglit with the backing of Prime Minister Netanyahu.[12] Leslie Wexner himself has documented ties to both organized crime and U.S. and Israeli intelligence.[13]

Other well-known groups associated with the Mega Group include the World Jewish Congress—whose past president was Mega Group member Edgar Bronfman—and B’nai B’rith, particularly its spin-off known as the Anti-Defamation League (ADL). The Bronfman brothers were major donors to the ADL, with Edgar Bronfman serving as the ADL’s honorary national vice-chair for several years.[14] Mega Group member Max Fisher founded the National Jewish Coalition, now known as the Republican Jewish Coalition, the main pro-Israel neoconservative political lobbying group, known for its support of hawkish policies, and whose current chief patrons, Sheldon Adelson and Bernard Marcus, are among Donald Trump’s top donors.[15]

Lauder, who has long-standing ties to Benjamin Netanyahu, himself has been alleged to have ties to Mossad, as he is a long-time funder of IDC Herzliya, an Israeli university closely associated with Mossad and their recruiters as well as Israeli military intelligence.[16] Lauder co-founded the Eastern European broadcasting network CETV with Mark Palmer, a former U.S. diplomat, Kissinger aide and Reagan speechwriter. Palmer is better known for co-founding the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), an organization funded by Richard Mellon Scaife and often described as an accessory to U.S. intelligence, and one whose first president confessed to the Washington Post that “a lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA.”[17]

When Rudy Giuliani’s first ran for Mayor in 1989, he was challenged by Lauder, who was backed by Sen. Alfonse D’Amato and guided by the “Merchant of Venom,” Arthur J. Finkelstein.[18] According to The Jerusalem Post, “Finkelstein was largely responsible for the strategy that brought Netanyahu victory in the 1996 general elections.”[19] Finkelstein has strong ties with pro-Israel officials he helped elect, as well as Jewish Republican politicians. He also has some close relationships with leaders of the American Jewish community, where he keeps a low profile, in keeping with his usual style.[20] Larry Weitzner, CEO of political consulting firm Jamestown Associates, said of his mentor: “He prefers to work behind the scenes and let the candidate do the talking, unlike other [consultants] who prefer to be Fox TV stars.”[21] A CNN report on Finkelstein had this to say about him: “He is the stuff of Hollywood: A man who can topple even the most powerful foes, yet so secretive that few have ever seen him. Finkelstein has been compared to criminal mastermind Kaiser Sose in The Usual Suspects, who lay so low that some doubted he really existed.”[22]

Ron Lauder did business with Russian oligarch Lev Leviev, both buying large shares in two media companies, Channel-10 and Israel Plus.[23] Lauder is close to Petr Aven, co-founder of Alfa-Bank, with whom he worked on setting up an art gallery.[24] Both Lauder and Aven sit on the Board of Patrons together with fellow Alfa founder Michail Fridman.[25] Lauder’s Lauder Institute partnered with Alfa to present an award to Deutsche bank in 2006 for conducting successful business in Russia.[26] The jury for the Lauder-Institute/Alfa-Bank award includes Petr Aven, Ronald’s brother Leonard, and Richard Burt.[27] In November 2014, German Khan and Mikhal Fridman visited London to discuss business and charity-giving and spent Shabbat with Lauder and other representatives of the British Jewish community.[28] Lauder has been a member of the Leadership Circle of the global communication and education campaign, Auschwitz: The Past is Present, along with Len Blavatnik, Jared Kushner’s business partner Yuri Milner, and Steven Spielberg, founder of USC Shoah Foundation.[29] Lauder has also worked on Jewish causes alongside Roman Abramovich.[30]

As Trump recounted in Art of the Deal, in January 1987, Dubinin sent him a congratulatory letter, relating to him that Goscomintourist, the leading Soviet state agency for international tourism, had expressed interest in pursuing a joint project to construct and manage a hotel in Moscow. According to Viktor Suvorov, a former GRU military spy, and others, the KGB ran Intourist.[31] The all-expenses-paid trip had been arranged by Vitaly Churkin, who served as the UN ambassador for Russia. After the trip, The New York Times reported that Trump “met with the Soviet leader, Mikhail S. Gorbachev. The ostensible subject of their meeting was the possible development of luxury hotels in the Soviet Union by Mr. Trump. But Mr. Trump’s calls for nuclear disarmament were also well-known to the Russians.”[32]

Slumlords

Despite his ties to Chabad Lubavitch and his pro-Israel views, Trump would not only appeal to racists during his campaign, but also espouse racist views himself. In order to avoid anti-German sentiment and so as not to offend their Jewish customers, Trump’s father Fred Trump would typically lie about his ancestry, claiming his parents were Swedish, when in fact they were German; Donald Trump himself re-affirmed the myth in The Art of the Deal, claiming his grandfather came to America “from Sweden as a child.” In 1885, Trump’s paternal grandfather, Friedrich Trump, emigrated from Kallstadt to the United States at age 16. During the Alaska Gold Rush, he amassed a fortune by opening restaurants and brothels for gold seekers on their way to the region.[33] After his death, his fortune was passed on to his wife, Elizabeth Christ Trump, and his son Fred, who used it to start Elizabeth Trump & Son, now The Trump Organization.

Fred Trump, Donald’s father, was arrested at a KKK rally in Brooklyn in 1927.[34] In the 1950s, Woody Guthrie, at the time a resident of the Beach Haven housing complex built by Fred Trump near Coney Island, wrote a song about “Old Man Trump” and the “Racial hate/He stirred up/In the bloodpot of human hearts/When he drawed/That color line” in one of his housing developments. When Donald’s cousin John Walter visited Donald in his office, his ex-wife Ivana told a friend, he clicked his heels and said, “Heil Hitler.” Ivana Trump also told her lawyer Michael Kennedy that from time to time Donald would read a book of Hitler’s collected speeches, My New Order, which he kept in a cabinet by his bed.[35]

Fred Trump’s influence was particularly focused in the Brooklyn neighborhoods of Brighton Beach and Coney Island.[36] According to Coney Island historian Charles Denson, Fred Trump was so cunning in his exploitation of the weaker points of federal regulations that “federal laws had to be changed to prevent the kind of nefarious schemes that Trump excelled in.”[37] Fred’s projects often involved mob ties, with the help of Brad Zackson, a convicted felon who served as Fred’s consigliere, and later worked with Donald Trump’s campaign manager Paul Manafort as Manafort’s “real estate fixer.”[38] According to the New York State Organized Crime Task Force’s investigations in the 1950s, Fred’s partner Willie Tomasello was tied to both the Gambino and Genovese crime families, as well as to Lucky Luciano. As well, Fred also relied on Kenny Sutherland, an ally of the Lucchese family, for help in getting favors from city hall insiders.[39]

Nevertheless, both Trump and his father were strong supporters of Israel. Fred Trump supported Jewish and Israeli causes and institutions, including significant support for Israel Bonds—debt securities that trade at a risk-adjusted spread to U.S. Treasury bonds and are issued by the government of Israel—and his donation of the land for building the Chabad-Lubavitch Beach Haven Jewish Center in Flatbush, New York.[40] According to the center’s website, Fred Trump “continuously supported its activities throughout his lifetime.”[41] In the 1980s, Donald Trump donated to help build new infrastructure for the Israelis removed from the northern Sinai by the Begin government, which returned the peninsula to Egypt as part of the peace agreement. Then, in 2005, Trump gave again, to help resettle the Jews of Gush Katif in the Gaza Strip, exiled by the Ariel Sharon government.[42]

Angels in America

Cohn reportedly boasted: “I made Trump successful.”[43] Although Cohn left Washington in 1954 as McCarthy’s efforts lost momentum, he professed admiration for McCarthy to the end of his life, writing in his autobiography, “I never worked for a better man or a greater cause.”[44] After leaving McCarthy, Cohn had a thirty-year career as an attorney in New York City. His clients included Donald Trump, Mafia figures Tony Salerno, Carmine Galante, and John Gotti, Studio 54 owners Steve Rubell and Ian Schrager, the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York, Texas financier and philanthropist Shearn Moody, Jr., and the New York Yankees baseball club.

Cohn had come to maintain close ties in conservative political circles, serving as an informal advisor to Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan. In 1981, Victor A. Kovner, a Manhattan lawyer active in Democratic causes and a member of Mayor Koch’s Committee on the Judiciary, who has watched Cohn’s rise to prominence with concern, said: “‘For one person to have such influence in both major parties is remarkable. This kind of influence is, it would appear, unprecedented. That is ominous indeed.”[45] Cohn counted among his friends such people as President Reagan, Norman Mailer, Bianca Jagger, Barbara Walters, Rupert Murdoch, William Safire, George Steinbrenner, Estee Lauder, Warren Avis and dozens of politicians, Democrats and Republicans alike, at every level, from Cabinet members to county judges.[46]

Cohn is considered by some to be “among the most reviled Americans in the 20th century.”[47] “You knew when you were in Cohn’s presence you were in the presence of pure evil,” said lawyer Victor A. Kovner, who had known him for years.[48] Esquire magazine once dubbed Cohn “the legal executioner.”[49] Cohn often operated in the gray areas of the law. In the 1960s and early 1970s, he fought off four federal or state indictments for alleged extortion, bribery, conspiracy, perjury and banking violations. Cohn also fended off repeated allegations of ethical lapses as a lawyer and was a constant target of the IRS, which eventually determined he owed the government some $7 million.

One of Cohn’s clients was prominent celebrity lawyer, Israeli advocate and Harvard Law professor Alan Dershowitz, who also attended Cohn’s parties.[50] According to Dershowitz:

Roy Cohn was the quintessential fixer. It wasn’t what he knew; it was who he knew. He knew everybody. He knew every judge; he knew every justice. He knew everybody who had any influence on the judiciary, and you hired him to get access.[51]

Trump knew Cohn had a shady side, saying “he could be a nasty guy.”[52] Investigative reporter Wayne Barrett, who spent dozens of hours interviewing Cohn and Trump beginning in the 1970s, once wrote in Trump: The Deals and the Downfall says Cohn’s stamp on Trump is obvious. “I just look at him and see Roy. Both of them are attack dogs.”[53] When Trump came to public attention in 1973 when he was accused by the Justice Department of refusing to rent to Black tenants, he was represented by Roy Cohn. Cohn filed a countersuit against the government for $100 million, asserting that the charges were irresponsible and baseless. The countersuit was unsuccessful. Trump settled the charges out of court in 1975 without admitting guilt, saying he was satisfied that the agreement did not “compel the Trump organization to accept persons on welfare as tenants unless as qualified as any other tenant.”[54] Cohn soon represented Trump in legal battles, counseled him about his marriage and introduced Trump to New York power brokers and socialites and helped deliver some of Trump’s signature construction deals. Barrett wrote that Cohn began to “assume a role in Donald’s life far transcending that of a lawyer. He became Donald’s mentor, his constant adviser.”[55]

Cohn was also a mob consigliere and introduced Trump to clients including “Fat Tony” Salerno, boss of the Genovese crime family, the most powerful Mafia group in New York, and Paul Castellano, head of what was said to be the second largest family, the Gambinos. According to an article by Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter David Cay Johnston in Politico, Salerno and Castellano dominated the construction firms that Trump hired to build his Trump Tower and Trump Plaza buildings, buying concrete from them at an inflated price to keep the unions under control. An indictment on which Salerno was convicted in 1988 and sent to prison, where he died, listed the nearly $8 million contract for concrete at Trump Plaza as one of the acts establishing that S&A Concrete was part of a racketeering enterprise. Michael Chertoff, the chief prosecutor in the indictment, called the Genovese and Gambino crime families “the largest and most vicious criminal business in the history of the United States.”[56]

Over the years, the list of his friends and guests at Cohn’s lavish parties included Estee Lauder, Norman Mailer, Bianca Jagger, Barbara Walters, Andy Warhol, William F. Buckley Jr., George Steinbrenner, former New York mayor Abraham D. Beame and many others, some of them Cohn’s clients. CIA director Bill Casey was also a close friend of Cohn.[57] Although Cohn denied his homosexuality and often expressed anti-gay sentiments, Sidney Zion, a journalist who helped Cohn write his autobiography, described him as “the Babe Ruth of the Gay World.”[58] On June 23, 1986, Cohn was disbarred. “Simply stated the four charges involved alleged dishonesty, fraud, deceit and misrepresentation,” the court said.[59] Cohn died of AIDS six weeks later, on Aug. 2, 1986. Cohn inspired his fictionalized role in Tony Kushner’s Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes, in which Cohn is portrayed as a closeted, power-hungry hypocrite who is haunted by the ghost of Ethel Rosenberg as he lies dying of AIDS, which he insisted be called “liver cancer.” Peter Fraser, Cohn’s lover, inherited all of Cohn’s wealth but the IRS confiscated nearly everything.[60]

Like his father, Donald Trump has also had an exceptional number of ties to the mafia. According to Steve Villano, Wayne Barrett’s book Trump: The Deals & the Downfall, “reads like a Who’s Who of Mafioso in the New York/New Jersey/Philadelphia Metropolitan Areas over the past 45 years.” David Cay Johnston, author of Temples of Chance: How America Inc. Bought Out Murder Inc. to Win Control of the Casino Business, wrote in Politico, “No other candidate for the White House this year has anything close to Trump’s record of repeated social and business dealings with mobsters, swindlers, and other crooks.”[61]

In 1987, Donald Trump purchased his first casino interests when he acquired 93 percent of the shares in Resorts International, which evolved from a CIA money-laundering front company set up by CIA chief Allen Dulles in the 1950’s. Resorts International has a sordid history that began in the early 1950’s when it evolved from a CIA and Mossad front company which had been established for the purpose of money laundering the profits from drug trafficking, gambling, and other illegal activities. The appropriation by the mafia of casinos like those operated by Resorts International was the result of a decision by the Meyer Lansky Syndicate to expand operations outside Las Vegas.[62] On October 30, 1978, The Spotlight newspaper reported that the principle investors of Resorts International were, in addition to Lansky, Tibor Rosenbaum, William Mellon Hitchcock, David Rockefeller, and Baron Edmond de Rothschild.[63]

Trump found himself in financial trouble when his three casinos in Atlantic City were under foreclosure threat from lenders, but was bailed-out by senior managing director of N.M. Rothschild & Sons, Wilbur Ross, who Trump would later appoint as Secretary of Commerce. Ross, who is known as the “King of Bankruptcy,” specializes in leveraged buyouts of distressed businesses. In the late 1970s, Ross began 24 years at the New York City office of N.M. Rothschild & Sons, where he ran the bankruptcy-restructuring advisory practice. Along with Carl Icahn, Ross convinced bondholders to strike a deal with Trump that allowed Trump to keep control of the casinos.[64] By the mid-1990s, Ross was a prominent figure in New York Democratic Party politics and had caught the attention President Bill Clinton who appointed him to lead the U.S.-Russia Investment Fund. In 2014, Vekselberg’s Renova Group became a partner with Ross in the takeover of the Bank of Cyprus, which had held billions in deposits from wealthy Russians.[65]

Bayrock Group

“Taken together,” explained Craig Unger, “the flow of money from Russia provided Trump with a crucial infusion of financing that helped rescue his empire from ruin, burnish his image, and launch his career in television and politics.”[66] Kenneth McCallion, a former assistant U.S. attorney in the Reagan administration who investigated ties between organized crime and Trump’s developments in the 1980s, said “They saved his bacon.”[67] Over the past three decades, at least 13 people with known or alleged links to the Russian mob or oligarchs have owned, lived in, and even operated criminal enterprises out of Trump Tower and other Trump properties.

Over the years, Trump and his sons tried and failed five times to build a Trump Tower in Moscow. Nevertheless, those negotiations led to numerous connections with the Kremlin and Russia’s notorious oligarchs. As summarized by Unger, “In 1998, Russia defaulted on $40 billion in debt, causing the ruble to plummet and Russian banks to close. The ensuing financial panic sent the country’s oligarchs and mobsters scrambling to find a safe place to put their money. That October, just two months after the Russian economy went into a tailspin, Trump broke ground on his biggest project yet.”[68] That project was Trump World Tower, briefly the tallest all-residential tower in the world. As Bloomberg Businessweek reported recently, it wasn’t long before one-third of the units in Trump Tower’s most expensive floors were purchased, either by individual buyers from the former Soviet Union, or by limited liability companies connected to Russia.[69]

“As the Russians knew,” notes Unger, “real estate was a far more efficient way to launder billions in flight capital, and Trump’s newest projects were perfectly suited to their needs..”[70] Trump’s son Donald Trump Jr. made that very claim at a real estate conference in New York in 2008, saying “Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets.” Donald Trump Jr. added, “we see a lot of money pouring in from Russia.”[71] A Reuters review found that at least 63 individuals with Russian passports or addresses bought as much as $98.4 million worth of property in seven Trump-branded luxury towers in South Florida. The buyers include Alexander Yuzvik, a former executive in a Moscow-based state-run construction firm involved in the construction projects of the FSB and GRU; Andrey Truskov, co-owner of Absolute Group, the biggest wholesale electronics business in Russia; and Alexey Ustaev, the founder and president of St. Petersburg-based Viking Bank, one of the first private investment banks established in Russia after the fall of Communism.[72]

The Financial Times FT investigation showed that Trump joined forces with the Bayrock Group, whose managing director was Felix Sater. According to a certified US Supreme Court petition, Sater’s FBI handler stated that Sater’s father was a boss for the crime syndicate of Simeon Mogilevich. Although Trump has denied knowing him, Sater appeared in photos with Trump, and carried a Trump Organization business card with the title “Senior Advisor to Donald Trump.” Sater reportedly emigrated with his family to the United States in the mid-1970s and settled in Little Odessa. Sater had already served time in prison for stabbing a man in the face with the stem of a margarita glass. Sater pled guilty in 1998 to one count of racketeering for his role in a $40 million stock fraud scheme involving the Genovese and Bonanno crime families.[73] “They were there for disputes,” Sater said.[74]

All the while, Sater also served as a government informant on the mob and on mysterious matters of national security. Sater’s lawyer, Robert S. Wolf, while not addressing Sater’s relationship with Trump, stressed Sater’s work for the government, saying he saved lives, including by providing “significant intelligence with respect to nuclear weapons in a major country openly hostile to the United States.”[75] Sater worked for the CIA, DIA and the FBI, providing intel on everything from organized crime to North Korea’s drive for nuclear weapons.

As reported in Buzzfeed, while he worked in Russia in 1995, Sater was recruited to the DIA for the value of his ability to speak fluent Russian, his business connections, and his access to Russian military officials. One of Sater’s early operations involved the pursuit in 1998 of Stinger anti-aircraft missiles which the CIA had provided to the Mujahideen. In 1998, President Bill Clinton authorized Operation Infinite Reach, a bombing strike against al Qaeda in retaliation for the terror attacks on the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania; Sater supplemented US intelligence by providing the coordinates of al Qaeda camps that the US military ultimately bombed in Khost, Afghanistan. Sater developed a close bond with an intelligence officer working for the Northern Alliance, the Afghan militia led by Ahmad Shah Massoud. According to a former senior Justice Department official and a former FBI agent with knowledge of Sater’s work, Sater’s source had his own source: Mullah Omar’s personal secretary, who was living inside a cave with bin Laden. As a result, Sater obtained five of the personal satellite telephone numbers for Osama bin Laden before 9/11.

Sater also provided US intelligence with details about possible assassination threats against former president George W. Bush and secretary of state Colin Powell. He went undercover in Cyprus and Istanbul to catch Russian and Ukrainian cybercriminals around 2005. Sater still operates as a source for the bureau, according to two current FBI agents.[76]

Sater is close with Trump’s long-time lawyer and “fixer,” Michael Cohen, and both are connected to Chabad of Port Washington.[77] Cohen’s tactics earned him the nickname of “Tom,” a reference to Tom Hagen, the consigliore to Mafia Don Vito Corleone in The Godfather.[78] Jay Goldberg, the attorney who was working for Trump at the time, said Cohen stepped into the void left by the 1986 death of Roy Cohn.[79] Although Cohen described himself as an “agnostic Jew,” he kept a framed photo of Menachem Schneerson in his office.[80]

Many of his associates from the former Soviet Union had connections to Russian organized crime. Cohen was drawn to the Russian émigré community of Brighton Beach and eventually learned to speak Russian.[81] Cohen’s uncle, Morton Levine, was a wealthy Brooklyn doctor who owned the El Caribe Country Club in Brooklyn, a well-known hangout for Russian gangsters. Cohen and his siblings all had ownership shares in the club, which for years rented to the first Russia mob boss of Brighton Beach, Evsei Agron, along with his successors, Marat Balagula and Boris Nayfeld.[82] According to a report by ProPublica and WNYC, before he joined up with Trump in the mid-2000s, Cohen was involved in a series of scams, including insurance and IRS fraud, for which he always avoided indictment while others were jailed or fined.[83]

In 1994, Cohen married Laura Shusterman, who was born in the Soviet Union. The year before, her father, Fima Shusterman, also a taxi entrepreneur, pleaded guilty to a conspiracy to defraud the IRS.[84] “Fima may have been a (possibly silent) business partner with Trump, perhaps even used as a conduit for Russian investors in Trump properties and other ventures,” a former federal investigator told Seth Hettena, author of Trump/Russia: A Definitive History.[85] Shusterman, who owned at least four New York taxi companies, also set Cohen up in the business.[86] Cohen has made millions in the New York taxi business, which is reportedly one of the areas the FBI cited in its search warrant.[87] His business partner was fellow Lubavitcher Simon Garber, a Ukrainian immigrant who also operates a fleet of taxis in Moscow. Garber reports that he initially had difficulty with bullying in school, until he joined a group of Lubavitchers who paid for him to attend a Jewish day school and helped him get a summer job at a Jewish camp. “I learned about loyalty and roots,” said Garber, who remains a generous contributor to the Lubavitch community.[88] Garber’s companies are estimated to have the highest number of medallions, required to operate cabs, in both Long Island City and Chicago, earning Garber the nickname of “Taxi King.” Over the years, Garber has been convicted of assault in New York, arrested for battery in Miami, and pleaded guilty in New Jersey to charges of criminal mischief involving him breaking into three neighbors’ homes. In Chicago, Garber’s taxi fleet included wrecked vehicles with illegally laundered titles.[89]

Glenn Simpson of Fusion GPS testified before the House Intelligence Committee that Cohen “had a lot of connections to the former Soviet Union, and that he seemed to have associations with organized crime figures in New York and Florida – Russian organized crime figures,” including Garber.[90] Garber became friends with Vladimir Slutsker, a member of Russia’s upper chamber of parliament, the Federation Council, who introduced Garber to Russian government officials. Slutsker persuaded Garber to start Moscow Taxis, which he did with his brother-in-law Eduard Sheinen and Moscow-based businessman Igor Bakunenko in 1995.[91] Bakunenko and his partner Alexander Varshavsky owned multiple companies that shared the address with Moscow Taxi and were involved in a major corruption scandal involving the wholesale of Mercedes and Fords to the state-run organization. Varshavsky was a business associate of Vladimir Putin’s first cousin, Igor Putin, the former vice president of Master Bank. Varhshavsky and Igor Putin were on the Board of Directors of Termosteps-MTL, a part of VBM-Group holding.[92] A story by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project discussed how a number of banks associated with Putin were involved in a massive money laundering scheme dubbed the Russian Laundromat.[93]

While in Russia in 2001, Garber became friends with Patrick Daley, the son of long-time Chicago mayor Richard M. Daley. In 2003, Garber used these political connections to start the Chicago Carriage Cab Company and was granted permission to operate the taxi business in Chicago. Within six years, the company had amassed over 800 medallions, making it the largest taxi company in the city.[94]

Sater, who met Rebbe Schneerson several times as a child, is an active member of Chabad-Lubavitch, and in 2014 was named Man of the Year by Chabad of Port Washington, NY. The award was presented by Sater’s rabbi, Shalom Paltiel, Port Washington Chabad’s founder. Paltiel is also close to “Putin’s rabbi” Berel Lazar, calling Lazar “my dear friend and mentor.”[95] Paltiel explained the award was partly in response to a closed-door meeting he was invited to attend with Sater at the federal building in New York, where dozens of intelligence officers from many agencies praised Sater as a “national hero.” One officer, the rabbi explained, said Sater “probably saved tens of thousands of US lives, maybe even millions… through the brave work that he’s done.” In his own words, Sater explained that his effort aimed at achieving Tikkun Olam.[96]

Sater’s Bayrock Group was based in Trump Tower. Two former executives of Bayrock claimed in a lawsuit that the company’s real purpose was to develop hugely expensive properties bearing the Trump brand, and then use the projects to launder money and evade taxes.[97] Bayrock was founded by New York property developer Tevfik Arif, a Kazakh-born citizen of Turkey with a Muslim name, who is among Port Washington Chabad’s top 13 benefactors.[98]

Arif has been associated with Jewish philanthropist Alexander Mashkevich, whose “Eurasia Group” was a strategic partner for Bayrock. Mashkevich, who holds both Kazakh and Israeli citizenship, served as president of the Euro-Asian Jewish Congress (EAJC) until 2011. The EAJC is one of the five regional branches of World Jewish Congress (WJC). In 2002, Mashkevich had a private meeting with then Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres. In apparent consultation with Israeli Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, he asked his personal friend Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev to intervene with Iran concerning Israeli soldiers that had been captured by Hezbollah.[99] In 2011, Mashkevich announced his intention to found a Jewish version of Al-Jazeera, to “represent Israel on an international level, with real information.”[100]

Together with two other prominent Kazakh billionaires, Patokh Chodiev (aka “Shodiyev”) and Alijan Ibragimov, Mashkevich reportedly ran the “Eurasian Natural Resources Cooperation.” In Kazakhstan, these three are sometimes referred to as “the Trio.” The Trio recently attracted the attention of many investigators and news agencies, including the September 11 Commission Report, the Guardian, Forbes, and the Wall Street Journal. The litany of the Trio’s alleged activities include resource grabbing, money laundering, bribery, and racketeering. In 2010, Arif and other members of Bayrock’s Eurasian Trio were arrested together in Turkey during a police raid on a suspected prostitution ring, according to the Israeli daily Yediot Ahronot. At the time, Turkish investigators reportedly asserted that Arif might be the head of a criminal organization that was trafficking in Russian and Ukrainian escorts, allegedly including some as young as 13.[101]

Bayrock and Trump joined forces to pursue deals around the world, from New York, Florida, Arizona and Colorado in the US, to Turkey, Poland, Russia and Ukraine. Their best-known collaboration was Trump SoHo, which was featured in Trump’s television show The Apprentice. Jody Kriss, a former Bayrock finance director, has claimed in lawsuits against his former employer, that the company was “covertly mob-owned and operated,” “backed by oligarchs and money they stole from the Russian people,” and “engaged in the businesses of financial-institution fraud, tax fraud, partnership fraud, human trafficking, child prostitution, statutory rape, and, on occasion, real estate.”[102] Most of the Bayrock-Trump projects either never materialized or were complete failures. SoHo was foreclosed by creditors and resold in 2014, after more than $3 million of customer down payments had to be refunded. Bayrock’s Trump International Hotel & Tower in Fort Lauderdale was foreclosed and resold in 2012, while at least three other Trump-branded properties in the United States, in addition to many other concept projects pursued by Bayrock, from Istanbul and Kiev to Moscow and Warsaw, never happened.

Trump and Bayrock partnered with the Sapir Organization, led by the now-deceased Tamir Sapir and his son Alex, in the development of Trump SoHo. During the Cold War, Sapir, who was born to a Jewish family in Tbilisi, Georgia, emigrated to the US where he sold electronics to KGB agents from a storefront in Manhattan. Sapir was ranked on Forbes Magazine’s list of billionaires and was a donor to Chabad Lubavitch.[103] Sapir’s executive vice president and top aide, Fred Contini, pled guilty in 2004 to “participating in a racketeering conspiracy with the Gambino crime family for 13 years.”[104]

Trump has called Sapir “a great friend.”[105] In December 2007, Trump hosted the wedding of Sapir’s daughter, Zina, at Mar-a-Lago. The event featured performances by Lionel Ritchie and the Pussycat Dolls. The groom, Rotem Rosen, was Leviev’s “right-hand man” and the CEO of the American branch of Africa Israel, Leviev’s holding company.[106] Five months later, in early June of 2008, Zina and Rotem held a bris, a Jewish religious male circumcision ceremony, for their newborn son, which Leviev personally arranged to take place at Schneerson’s grave in Queens. Trump attended the bris. A month earlier, in May of 2008, Trump and Leviev had met to discuss possible real estate projects in Moscow, according to a Russian news report.[107] Leviev had become the single largest funder of Chabad worldwide. Sapir, an active Chabad donor as well, joined Leviev in Berlin to tour Chabad institutions in the city in 2008.[108]

Trump Towers

Michael Cohen was apparently given the job with the Trump Org as a favor to Shusterman.[109] Cohen was able to purchase a $1 million condo at Trump World Tower in 2001, persuading his parents, his Ukrainian in-laws and Garber to do so as well in other Trump buildings. Several sources have told Hettena that Cohen was one of several lawyers who helped money launderers purchase apartments in a development in Sunny Isles Beach, just north of Miami. A year after Trump World Tower opened in 2002, Trump had agreed to let Miami father-and-son developers Gil and Michael Dezer use his name on the condominium towers, which attracted Russians moneny. “Russians love the Trump brand,” Dezer told Bloomberg.[110]

Trump Tower in New York as well has received press attention for including among its many residents, tax-dodgers, bribers, arms dealers, convicted cocaine traffickers, and corrupt former FIFA officials. A typical example involves an illegal gambling operation that reportedly took up the entire 51st floor, run by the alleged Russian mobster Anatoly Golubchik, and Vadim Trincher, a dual citizen of the United States and Israel, as well as Trincher’s son Illya, and Hillel Nahmad, the son of a billionaire art dealer and heir of a descendant of a Jewish Lebanese art family, and another follower of Chabad-Lubavitch.[111]

“This is the top of the top of the top in organized crime in Russia,” according to the prosecutor.[112] The ring answered to Russian mob boss Alimzhan Tokhtakhounov, whose organization the Interpol believes to be tied to Semion Mogilevich.[113] Tokhtakhounov, who holds both Russian and Israeli citizenship, is one of the world’s most notorious Russian mafia bosses, known as “Little Taiwanese.” In 2008, Forbes named him the world’s third most wanted, after Osama bin Laden and el Chapo. He is accused of the bribing of judges in the 2002 Winter Olympics, in which a Canadian figure-skating team were denied their gold medal.[114] Seven months after he was busted in 2013, he appeared near Trump in the VIP section of the Miss Universe pageant in Moscow. Tokhtakhounov operated out of Trump Tower, just three floors down from Trump’s penthouse, what prosecutors called “an international gambling business that catered to oligarchs residing in the former Soviet Union and throughout the world.”[115]

The indictment against the gambling ring was filed by Preet Bharara, then the US attorney in Manhattan. Bharara earned a reputation of being a “crusader” prosecutor, who for seven years was one of “the nation’s most aggressive and outspoken prosecutors of public corruption and Wall Street crime.”[116] Following the 2016 election, Bharara claimed that Trump asked Bharara to remain as U.S. Attorney, and Bharara agreed to stay on. However, he was eventually fired after refusing to resign, as a result of Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ request for all remaining 46 U.S. Attorneys appointed during President Obama’s administration to resign.

Trump had reportedly personally sold five separate condos in Trump Tower to David Bogatin. David’s brother Jacob Bogatin was CEO of a fraudulent company, YBM Magnex International, supposedly a world-class manufacturer of industrial magnets, which was founded by the Mogilevich syndicate. Vyacheslav Ivankov, another key Mogilevich lieutenant in the United States during the 1990s, also lived for a time at Trump Tower, and reportedly had the private telephone and fax numbers for the Trump Organization in his personal phone book.[117]

 A local broker told The Washington Post that one-third of the 500 apartments he’d sold in the Beach Resort in Sunny Isles went to “Russian-speakers.”[118] So many bought the Trump-branded apartments, in fact, that the area became known as “Little Moscow.” According to a Reuters investigation in March 2017, at least 63 Russian buyers spent $98 million on Trump’s properties in South Florida.[119] An investigation by the Miami Herald found that at least 13 buyers have been the target of government investigations, either personally or through their companies, including “members of a Russian-American organized crime group.”[120]

Selling units in Sunny Isles was Baronoff Realty, headed by Elena Baronoff, who was the exclusive sales agent for three Trump-branded towers. Glenn Simpson, testified before the House Intelligence Committee that Baronoff was a “suspected organized crime figure.”[121] An Uzbek immigrant who arrived in the US as a cultural attaché in public diplomacy from the Soviet Union, Baronoff was named the international ambassador for the Sunny Isles Beach community. Baronoff accompanied Trump’s children on a trip to Russia in the winter of 2007–2008, posing for a photo in Moscow with Ivanka and Eric Trump and Michael Dezer. Also in the photo was Michael Babel, who worked for Shabtai Kalmanovich, a legendary KGB spy and friend of crime bosses Vyacheslav Ivankov and Simeon Mogilevich. Babel’s partnership with Kalmanovich ended abruptly in 2009, when the latter was gunned down in his Mercedes in broad daylight in the center of Moscow. Inside the car, the investigators discovered $1.5 million in cash that somehow remained untouched by the attackers. Babel went on to serve as senior executive of a property firm owned by Oleg Deripaska. Babel later fled Russia to evade fraud charges. Baronoff had connections to Sicily, where she reportedly met her friend, the Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov.[122]

In all but a handful of cases, Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach, FL, which describes itself as “one of the most highly regarded private clubs in the world,” sought to fill its positions with hundreds of foreign guest workers from Romania and other countries. Trump uses a recruiter based in upstate New York, Peter Petrina, to find foreign workers for his resorts, golf clubs and vineyard. Petrina is of Romanian descent and has an office in Romania. Trump pursued more than 500 visas for foreign workers at Mar-a-Lago since 2010, while hundreds of domestic applicants failed to get the same jobs.[123]

Javanka

Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner purchased the former New York Times Building in Manhattan from Leviev in 2015. Jared and his wife, Donald Trump’s daughter, Ivanka are close friends with Leviev’s daughter Chagit, through whom they purchased the property.[124] Ivanka converted to Judaism to marry Kushner, who has strong ties to Chabad-Lubavitch. Jared’s father, Charles Kushner, was a real-estate titan and one of the most important Democratic donors in the country. He was arrested on charges of tax evasion, illegal campaign donations, and witness tampering in 2004, and was eventually convicted on all charges and sentenced to two years in federal prison.[125] In 2004, Charles Kushner was investigated for hiding violations of federal limits on campaign contributions. He then hired a prostitute in order to blackmail one of the case’s key witnesses, whose wife then informed investigators of his attempts at obstructing justice.[126]

Trump’s foundation has donated thousands of dollars to Chabad institutions, and Haaretz also reported that the foundation of Jared’s parents gave $342,500 to Chabad institutions and projects over a 10-year period.[127] “Israel wasn’t a political discussion for him; it was his family, his life, his people,” said Hirschy Zarchi, rabbi at the Chabad House at Harvard, where Jared was a member.[128] The Kushner’s were friends with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, who stayed at their home in New Jersey, sleeping in Jared’s bedroom.[129]

Kushner was principal owner in his family’s real estate company Kushner Companies, and of Observer Media, publisher of the weekly, on-line New York Observer. Kushner purchased the New York Observer at age 25. With no substantial experience in journalism, soon after buying the Observer Media, Kushner sought out Rupert Murdoch for guidance, and the two became friends. Kushner could not establish a good relationship with the newspaper’s veteran editor-in-chief, Peter W. Kaplan. “This guy doesn’t know what he doesn’t know,” Kaplan remarked about Kushner, to colleagues at the time.[130] As a result of his differences with Kushner, Kaplan quit his position. Kaplan was followed by a series of short-lived successors, until Kushner hired Elizabeth Spiers in 2011.

Jared and Ivanka were known to double-date with Murdoch and his ex-wife Wendi Deng. Murdoch and Deng attended the Kushner-Trump wedding in 2009. Until December 2017, Ivanka was a trustee for a $300 million fortune set aside for Murdoch’s daughters with Deng. Even after Murdoch’s split with Deng, the two women and the two men remained close. Deng is also a friend of Karlie Kloss, the longtime girlfriend of Kushner’s brother, Josh.[131] The Wall Street Journal reported that US counterintelligence officials in early 2017 warned Jared that Deng could be using her close friendship with him and Ivanka to further the interests of the Chinese government.[132]

Jared and Ivanka are also close friends with Deng’s business partner, the wife of Roman Abramovich, Dasha Zhukova. Deng was rumored to be dating Putin, which she has since denied.[133] All of them were guests in August 2016 on Laurel Canyon media mogul David Geffen’s $200 million yacht off the coast of Croatia, and a few weeks later at the US Open.[134] Zhukova reportedly attended Trump’s inauguration as Ivanka’s guest.[135]

Jared and Abramnovich have met three to four times in social settings, and their wives have been friends for a decade.[136] Jared and Ivanka attended a charity event with Roman Abramovich in early 2014, just a few months after the Miss Universe Moscow pageant and the Sochi Olympics that included representatives from Russia’s Alfa Bank, and numerous Russian oligarchs. Both Viktor Vekselberg and Len Blavatnik were at the gala attended by Jared and Ivanka, as were Alexey Reznikovich, the head of LetterOne Technology, which is controlled by Alfa Group’s Mikhail Fridman. Also included were Ekaterina Vinokurova, the daughter of Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, with her husband Alexander Vinokurov, who sits on the board of Alfa Group.[137]

In October 2018, the US government froze Oleg Deripaska’s US-based assets, including massive mansions in Manhattan and Washington, DC. Part of the assets included a sprawling mansion on the Upper East Side, at 11 E. 64th St, which is inhabited by Dasha Zhukova, who is now Abramovich’s ex-wife, and their children. Zhukova is dating Greek shipping heir Stavros Niarchos, while Abramovich is reportedly dating Deripaska’s estranged wife, Polina Deripaska. The residence is just down the street from fellow oligarch, Ukrainian-born Len Blavatnik. The property was previously owned by the late international art dealer Alec Wildenstein and his then-wife, Jocelyn Wildenstein, and was where Alec was to have allegedly threatened Jocelyn at gunpoint. The mansion is also three doors down from the former Wildenstein gallery, which Blavatnik bought earlier in the year, making it the most expensive townhouse in the city.[138]

On January 27, 2017, the Kushners invited a number of Trump Administration officials, including former chief economic advisor to President Donald Trump, Gary Cohn, current United States Secretary of the Treasury Steve Mnuchin, current United States Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross and his wife Hilary Geary Ross, and Strategic Communications Director and former model Hope Hicks, for a Shabbat meal.[139]

Skull and Bonesman Steve Mnuchin, who grew up in Manhattan society, has known Trump for 15 years. His Dune Capital Management invested in at least two Donald Trump projects, the Trump International Hotel and Tower in Honolulu and its namesake in Chicago. Mnuchin told the New York Times in May 2016: “I was there at the beginning when [Trump] decided to run for president, and I’ve been a supporter and quiet adviser behind the scenes to him.”[140] At some point on the job, Mnuchin got a call from a Holocaust survivor he knows. It went to voicemail, where the man told him how upset he was that Mnuchin supports Trump. He called the survivor back to say he respectfully disagreed.[141]

Trump appointed Cohn as Director of the United States National Economic Council. Cohn was formerly the president and COO of Goldman Sachs. Mnuchin, a second-generation Goldman Sachs alumnus and Skull and Bonesman, has known Gary Cohn for fifteen years, having worked together on building deals years earlier. After he left Goldman Sachs in 2002, Mnuchin founded a hedge fund called Dune Capital Management, invested in Hollywood blockbusters and worked at hedge funds including that of George Soros. Cohn, a registered Democrat, and his top economic policy adviser Dina Powell, have been denounced by conservative media outlets as being antithetical to Trump’s populist message.[142] Powell is a former Bush administration official who also worked on Wall Street.

Wilbur Ross was purportedly worth $2.5 billion. However, Forbes later discovered “Ross lied” to the magazine, that the “fibs, exaggerations, omissions, fabrications and whoppers” have been ongoing for over a decade and reassessed him at just under $700 million.[143] Ross’s associate is fellow Trump adviser and corporate raider Carl Icahn (net worth $16.6 billion), who is said to have been a model for Michael Douglas’ Gordon Gekko character in the movie Wall Street who pronounced, “Greed is good.”

Also in attendance was Rabbi Levi Shemtov, from the local Chabad-Lubavitch house, which is only a few blocks away from their home. According to Sue Fishkoff, while the most powerful Chabad shliach (proselytizer) is Rabbi Berel Lazar—or “Putin’s Rabbi,” who heads the world’s third largest Jewish population—in terms of political influence it would be Levi Shemtov and his father Avraham.[144] As head of the Central Committee of Chabad-Lubavitch Rabbis, Shemtov serves the daily governmental and diplomatic needs of the international Chabad-Lubavitch movement, flying to Buenos Aires, Moscow and other capitals. Shemtov is often at the White House, Pentagon, United States Department of State and other official venues in Washington, and maintains close relationships with numerous members of the US Congress, senior administration officials and leaders in the international community, including a number of heads of state and government.[145]

[1] Craig Unger. “When a Young Trump Went to Russia.” The New Republic (August 15, 2018).

[2] Michael Oreskes. “Trump Gives a Vague Him of Candidacy.” New York Times (September 4, 1987).

[3] Fox Butterfield. “Trump Hints of Dreams Beyond Building.” New York Times (October 5, 1987).

[4] Lois Romano. “Donald Trump, Holding All The Cards The Tower! The Team! The Money! The Future!”

Washington Post (November 15, 1984). Retrieved from https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1984/11/15/donald-trump-holding-all-the-cards-the-tower-the-team-the-money-the-future/8be79254-7793-4812-a153-f2b88e81fa54/

[5] Unger. House of Trump, House of Putin, p. 44.

[6] Ibid., p. 51.

[7] Ibid., p. 47.

[8] Luke Harding. “The Hidden History of Trump’s First Trip to Moscow.”

[9] Albin Krebs. “Roy Cohn, Aide to McCarthy and Fiery Lawyer, Dies at 59.” New York Times (August 3, 1986).

[10] Josh Nathan-Kazis. “On Holocaust Statement, Trump Ally Ron Lauder Stands Alone.” Forward (January 30, 2017).

[11] Lisa Miller. “Titans of Industry Join Forces To Work for Jewish Philanthropy.” The Wall Street Journal (May 4, 1998).

[12] Whitney Webb. “Mega Group, Maxwells and Mossad: The Spy Story at the Heart of the Jeffrey Epstein Scandal.” Mint Press (August 7, 2019). Retrieved from https://www.mintpressnews.com/mega-group-maxwells-mossad-spy-story-jeffrey-epstein-scandal/261172/

[13] Whitney Webb. “‘From “Spook Air’ to the ‘Lolita Express’: The Genesis and Evolution of the Jeffrey Epstein-Bill Clinton Relationship.” MintPress (August 23rd, 2019). Retrieved from https://www.mintpressnews.com/genesis-jeffrey-epstein-bill-clinton-relationship/261455/

[14] Whitney Webb. “Mega Group, Maxwells and Mossad: The Spy Story at the Heart of the Jeffrey Epstein Scandal.” Mint Press (August 7, 2019). Retrieved from https://www.mintpressnews.com/mega-group-maxwells-mossad-spy-story-jeffrey-epstein-scandal/261172/

[15] Whitney Webb. “Mega Group, Maxwells and Mossad: The Spy Story at the Heart of the Jeffrey Epstein Scandal.” Mint Press (August 7, 2019). Retrieved from https://www.mintpressnews.com/mega-group-maxwells-mossad-spy-story-jeffrey-epstein-scandal/261172/

[16] Asa Winstanley. “How Israeli spies are flooding Facebook and Twitter.” Electronic Intifada (June 25, 2019). Retrieved from https://electronicintifada.net/content/how-israeli-spies-are-flooding-facebook-and-twitter/27596

[17] David Ignatius. “Innocence Abroad: The New World of Spyless Coups.” The Washington Post (September 22, 1991). Retrieved from https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/1991/09/22/innocence-abroad-the-new-world-of-spyless-coups/92bb989a-de6e-4bb8-99b9-462c76b59a16/

[18] Dennis Duggan. “‘Resources’ to Be Competitive.” Newsday (January 31, 1989).

[19] Kamoun Shimon. “It's Sad To Be the Mayor of Jerusalem.” The Jerusalem Post (November 10, 2008).

[20] Dina Kraft. “Understanding the Enigma of Arthur Finkelstein, Unseen Power Broker.” Haaretz (December 12, 2012).

[21] Ibid.

[22] Johnathan Karl. “Arthur Finkelstein: Out Of Sight But In Control.” CNN (October 10, 1996).

[23] Ronny Koren-Dinar. “Lev Leviev Commissions Due Diligence Study of Channel 10.” Haaretz (January 7, 2004).

[24] Roberta Smith. “Review: ‘Russian Modernism’ at Neue Galerie, Figurative Focus With Amorphous Results.” New York Times (May 28, 2015).

[25] “Board of Patrons.” Retrieved from http://www.cerprize.org/patrons/

[26] Retrieved from https://alfabank.com/media/news/2006/06/20/

[27] Ibid.

[28] Simon Rocker. “Russian philanthropists bound for London.” The Jewish Chronicle (November 13, 2014).

[29] “Auschwitz: The Past is Present Announces Committee Members.” USC Shoah Foundation (December 5, 2014). Retrieved from: https://sfi.usc.edu/pressroom/releases/auschwitz-past-present-announces-committee-members

[30] “English soccer team launches campaign to fight anti-Semitism.” Arutz Sheva (January 2, 2018).

[31] John Reed. “Following the Money: Russia, Cyprus, and the Trump Team’s Odd Business Dealings.” Just Security (March 30, 2017).

[32] Michael Oreskes. “Trump Gives a Vague Him of Candidacy.” New York Times (September 4, 1987).

[33] Alexander Pancetta, “Donald Trump’s grandfather ran Canadian brothel during gold rush, author says” CBC News (Sep 19, 2015).

[34] Ju Pearl. “All the Evidence We Could Find About Fred Trump’s Alleged Involvement with the KKK by Mike.” Vice (March 10, 2016).

[35] Amanda Macias. “Donald Trump’s ex-wife once said Trump kept a book of Hitler’s speeches by his bed.” Business Insider (September 1, 2015).

[36] Unger. House of Trump, House of Putin, pp. 20-21.

[37] Ibid., p. 21.

[38] Ibid. p. 21.

[39] Ibid., p. 22.

[40] Haaretz Staff. “The Swedish Whopper: Donald Trump’s Long-standing Struggle With the Truth.” Haaretz (March 25, 2016).

[41] “About Us.” Beach Haven Jewish Center website (accessed April 13, 2017).

[42] JNI Media. “Trump Family Has 50-Year History of Donating to Jewish, Israeli Causes.” Breaking News Israel (November 21, 2016).

[43] Emma Reynolds. “‘Always deny, always countersue’: What mob lawyer taught Trump.” News.com.au (January 27, 2017).

[44] Ibid.

[45] Paul L. Montgomery. “Roy Cohn Finds Politics Brings New Prominence.” New York Times (February 19, 1981).

[46] Krebs. “Roy Cohn, Aide to McCarthy and Fiery Lawyer, Dies at 59.”

[47] Robert O’Harrow Jr and Shawn Boburg. “The man who showed Donald Trump how to exploit power and instill fear.” The Washington Post (June 17, 2016).

[48] Marie Brenner. “How Donald Trump and Roy Cohn’s Ruthless Symbiosis Changed America.” Vanity Fair (June 28, 2017).

[49] Robert O’Harrow Jr and Shawn Boburg. “The man who showed Donald Trump how to exploit power and instill fear.” The Washington Post (June 17, 2016).

[50] Robert Sherrill. “King Cohn.” The Nation (August 12, 2009). Retrieved from https://www.thenation.com/article/king-cohn/

[51] Matt Naham. “Watch Out for Note-Takers: Trump Won’t Let Roy Cohn Episode Exposed by Don McGahn Slide.” Law & Crime (April 19, 2019).

[52] David W. Dunlap. “Meet Donald Trump.” Times Insider (July 30, 2015).

[53] Ibid.

[54] David W. Dunlap. “Meet Donald Trump.” Times Insider (July 30, 2015).

[55] Ibid.

[56] David Clay Johnston. “Just What Were Donald Trump’s Ties to the Mob?” Politico (May 22, 2016).

[57] Whitney Webb. “Hidden in Plain Sight: The Shocking Origins of the Jeffrey Epstein Case.” MintPress (July 18, 2019). Retrieved from https://www.mintpressnews.com/shocking-origins-jeffrey-epstein-blackmail-roy-cohn/260621/

[58] Robert O’Harrow Jr & Shawn Boburg. “The man who showed Donald Trump how to exploit power and instill fear.” The Washington Post (June 17, 2016).

[59] Dunlap. “Meet Donald Trump.”

[60] Jonathan Mahler & Matt Flegenhimer. “What Donald Trump Learned From Joseph McCarthy’s Right-Hand Man.” The New York Times (June 20, 2016).

[61] David Cay Johnston. “Just What Were Donald Trump’s Ties to the Mob?” Politico (May 22, 2016).

[62] F. William Engdahl. “A Mafia Don with a Pompadour.” New Eastern Outlook (March 20, 2016).

[63] J.C. Collins. “How Rothschild Inc. Saved Donald Trump (FREEPOM).” Philosophy of Metrics (June 21, 2016).

[64] “What You Need To Know About Commerce Secretary Pick Wilbur Ross, Trump’s Billionaire Pal.” Fortune Magazine (November 20, 2016).

[65] David Corn & Dan Friedman. “A Putin-Friendly Oligarch’s Top US Executive Donated $285,000 to Trump.” Mother Jones (August 17, 2017).

[66] Craig Unger. “Trump’s Russian Laundromat.” New Republic (July 13, 2017).

[67] Ibid.

[68] Craig Unger. “Trump’s Russian Laundromat.”

[69] Caleb Melby & Keri Geiger. “Behind Trump’s Russia Romance, There’s a Tower Full of Oligarchs.” Bloomberg Business (March 16, 2017).

[70] Unger. House of Trump, House of Putin, p. 122.

[71] Rosalind S. Helderman. “Here’s what we know about Donald Trump and his ties to Russia.” Washington Post (July 29, 2016).

[72] Nathan Layne, Ned Parker, Svetlana Reiter, Stephen Grey & Ryan McNeill. “Russian elite invested nearly $100 million in Trump buildings.” Reuters (March 17, 2017).

[73] “Russian Organized Crime.” Global Security (accessed March 20, 2017).

[74] Anthony Cormier & Jason Leopold. “How A Player In The Trump-Russia Scandal Led A Double Life As An American Spy.” BuzzFeed (March 12, 2018).

[75] Rosalind S. Helderman and Tom Hamburger. “Former Mafia-linked figure describes association with Trump.” Washington Post (May 17, 2016).

[76] Anthony Cormier & Jason Leopold. “How A Player In The Trump-Russia Scandal Led A Double Life As An American Spy.” BuzzFeed (March 12, 2018).

[77] John R. Schindler. “Mueller Finally Starts to Target Trump’s Israel Ties.” Observer (June 5, 2018).

[78] Seth Hettena. “A Brief History of Michael Cohen’s Criminal Ties.” Rolling Stone (April 10, 2018).

[79] Michael Kranish, Tom Hamburger & Rosalind S. Helderman. “Michael Cohen, once at pinnacle of Trump’s world, now poses threat to it.” New York Times (April 21, 2018).

[80] Heather Digby Parton. “Michael Cohen has many alleged links to organized crime: Does that mean he won’t flip on Trump?” Salon (April 19, 2018).

[81] Kranish, Hamburger and Helderman. “Michael Cohen, once at pinnacle of Trump’s world, now poses threat to it.”

[82] Seth Hettena. “A Brief History of Michael Cohen’s Criminal Ties.” Rolling Stone (April 10, 2018).

[83] “The Company Michael Cohen Kept.” WNYC Studios (April 18, 2018).

[84] Ibid.

[85] Seth Hettena. “A Brief History of Michael Cohen’s Criminal Ties.” Rolling Stone (April 10, 2018).

[86] Ibid.

[87] Heather Digby Parton. “Michael Cohen has many alleged links to organized crime: Does that mean he won’t flip on Trump?” Salon (April 19, 2018).

[88] Kathy Bergen. “Hard driver at the top of city's heated taxi market". Chicago Tribune (May 10, 2004).

[89] “The Company Michael Cohen Kept.”

[90] Hettena. “A Brief History of Michael Cohen’s Criminal Ties.”

[91] Kathy Bergen. “Hard driver at the top of city's heated taxi market.” Chicago Tribune (May 10, 2004).

[92] Zarina Zabrinsky. “Michael Cohen: Thirty Years Plus.” Medium (April 11, 2018).

[93] “The Russian Laundromat.” Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project. Retrieved Oct 14, 2014. https://www.reportingproject.net/therussianlaundromat/

[94] Tim Novak, Art Golab & Mary Wisniewski. “Russian emigre Garber now king of Chicago taxi empire.” Chicago Sun-Times (February 1, 2010).

[95] Ben Schreckinger. “The Happy-Go-Lucky Jewish Group That Connects Trump and Putin.” Politico (April 09, 2017).

[96] Felix Sater. “Felix Sater - Man Of The Year: Chabad of Port Washington” 12:28. YouTube (August 8, 2014).

[97] Unger. “Trump’s Russian Laundromat.”

[98] Ben Schreckinger. “The Happy-Go-Lucky Jewish Group That Connects Trump and Putin.”

[99] Lily Galili. “A Kazakh Oligarch Trying To Be a Jewish Tycoon.” Ha’aretz (October 29, 2002).

[100] “Russian billionaire to found ‘Jewish Al-Jazeera’.” Jerusalem Post (April 7, 2011).

[101] James S. Henry. “The Curious World of Donald Trump’s Private Russian Connections.” The American Interest. Volume 12, Number 4 (December 19, 2016).

[102] Craig Unger. “Why Robert Mueller has Trump Soho in his Sights.” Vanity Fair (August 13, 2017).

[103] “Tamir Sapir, 67, OBM.” ColLive (September 29, 2014).

[104] “Russian Organized Crime.” Global Security.

[105] Schreckinger. “The Happy-Go-Lucky Jewish Group That Connects Trump and Putin.”

[106] Ibid.

[107] Ibid.

[108] Ibid.

[109] Hettena. “A Brief History of Michael Cohen’s Criminal Ties.”

[110] Caleb Melby & Keri Geiger. “Behind Trump’s Russia Romance, There’s a Tower Full of Oligarchs.” Bloomberg Business (March 16, 2017).

[111] Hillel Nahmad has posted several comments at Chabad.org: Tzvi Freeman. “Going Over.” Chabad.org (March 5, 2013); Lazar Gurkow. “A People of Three-Thousand Years.” Chabad.org (July 16, 2012).

[112] Rebecca Rosenberg. “Art gallery was ‘mobbed’” New York Post (April 25, 2013).

[113] Andrew E. Kramer & James Glanz. “In Russia, Living the High Life; in America, a Wanted Man.” New York Times (June 1, 2013).

[114] Andrew Dampf. “Taivanchik Hearing Ordered to Stay Put.” The St Petersburg Times. The Associated Press (13 August 2002).

[115] David Corn & Hannah Levintova. “How Did an Alleged Russian Mobster End Up on Trump’s Red Carpet?” Mother Jones (September 14, 2016).

[116] Benjamin Weiser & William K. Rashbaum. “With Preet Bharara’s Dismissal, Storied Office Loses Its Top Fighter.” New York Times (March 10, 2017).

[117] James S. Henry. “The Curious World of Donald Trump’s Private Russian Connections.” The American Interest. Volume 12, Number 4 (December 19, 2016).

[118] Unger. “Trump’s Russian Laundromat.”

[119] Nathan Layne, Ned Parker, Svetlana Reiter, Stephen Grey & Ryan McNeill. “Russian elite invested nearly $100 million in Trump buildings.” Reuters (March 17, 2017).

[120] Nicholas Nehamas. “Before Donald Trump attacked foreigners, he helped sell them condos.” Miami Herald (October 14, 2016).

[121] Seth Hettena. “A Brief History of Michael Cohen’s Criminal Ties.”

[122] Ibid.

[123] “Russian Organized Crime.” Global Security (accessed March 20, 2017).

[124] “The dubious friends of Donald Trump.” Part 2, Zembla (May 10, 2017).

[125] Allison Kaplan Sommer. “Meet the Kushners: The Feuding Real Estate Dynasty That Links Donald Trump and Chris Christie.” Haaretz (March 1, 2016).

[126] Andrew Ross Sorkin. “Donald Trump’s Pick for Fund-Raiser Is Rife With Contradictions.” New York Times (May 9, 2016).

[127] “Report: Trump, Kushner foundations have donated thousands to Chabad.” Jewish Telegraph Agency (January 10, 2017).

[128] Jodi Kantor. “For Kushner, Israel Policy May Be Shaped by the Personal.” New York Times (February 11, 2017).

[129] Ibid.

[130] “The In-Law in the Trump Inner Circle: Jared Kushner's Steadying Hand.” The New York Times (November 21, 2016).

[131] Schreckinger. “The Happy-Go-Lucky Jewish Group That Connects Trump and Putin.”

[132] Kate O’Keeffe & Aruna Viswanatha. “U.S. Warned Jared Kushner About Wendi Deng Murdoch.” Wall Street Journal (January 15, 2018).

[133] Sierra Marquina. “Rupert Murdoch’s Ex-Wife Wendi Deng Is Dating Vladimir Putin.” US Weekly (March 31, 2016).

[134] Anneta Konstantinides. “Who cares about the tennis? Ivanka Trump sits with wife of Russian oligarch as she and husband Jared join Wendi Deng, Karlie Kloss, billionaire Clinton-backer David Geffen, Princess Beatrice and Democratic activist at the US Open.” The Daily Mail (September 12, 2016).

[135] Susanne Craig, Jo Becker & Jesse Drucker. “Jared Kushner, a Trump In-Law and Adviser, Chases a Chinese Deal.” New York Times (January 7, 2017).

[136] Stephanie Baker, Irina Reznik, & Katya Kazakina. “Billionaire Ally of Putin Socialized With Kushner, Ivanka Trump.” Bloomberg (August 17, 2017).

[137] Grant Stern. “Jared Kushner & Ivanka Trump Invested Money With A Russian Oligarch.” The Stern Facts (August 31, 2017).

[138] Jennifer Gould Keil. “Feds freeze Russian oligarch’s assets, Upper East Side mansion.” New York Post (October 8, 2018).

[139] Kaileen Gaul. “The Kushners break bread with Team Trump: Jared and Ivanka welcome several members of the President’s cabinet for the first big Shabbat meal at their new DC home.” Daily Mail (January 28, 2017).

[140] Andrew Ross Sorkin. “Donald Trump’s Pick for Fund-Raiser Is Rife With Contradictions.” New York Times (May 9, 2016).

[141] Allison Kaplan Sommer. “The Hollywood Connection Between Trump’s Treasury Pick and Billionaire at Center of Netanyahu Scandal.” Haaretz (November 30, 2016).

[142] Maggie Haberman, Michael D. Shear & Glenn Thrush. “Stephen Bannon Out at the White House After Turbulent Run.” New York Times (August 18, 2017).

[143] Fred Imbert. “Forbes says Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross lied about being a billionaire.” CNBC (November 7, 2017).

[144] Fishkoff Sue. The Rebbe’s Army (New York: Knopf Doubleday, 2003), p. 171.

[145] Ibid., p. 185.

Volume Six

1. Culture Wars

2. Red Mafia

3. From Russia With Love

4. #MeToo

5. Conservative Media

6. Atl-Reich

7. Multipolar World Order

8. Katehon

9. Collusion

10. Russia House

11. Techno-Libertarianism

12. Military-Digital Complex

13. Fake News

14. Memetic Warfare

15. Big Data

16. Make America White Again!

17. In Trump We Trust

18. Israel First