Unlike websites, books released by major publishers undergo extensive scrutiny from lawyers and fact-checkers. Here is a book every citizen of the U.S. needs to read released just days ago...

Donald Trump: Russian ‘Asset’ Since 1987 When KGB ‘Compromised’ Him On Moscow Trip, According To New Book (Putin was a KGB foreign intelligence officer for 16 years, rising to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel)

In July of 1987, 41-year-old New York real estate developer Donald Trump made a trip to Moscow, in the what was then the Soviet Union, supposedly to explore the possibility of building a new Trump-branded luxury hotel there directly across from the Kremlin itself. On that trip, the Soviet Union’s feared intelligence agency known as the KGB began developing Trump as an “asset.”

www.inquisitr.com/5022827/donald-trump-russian-asset-1987-kgb/

The Cold War did not end in 1991—that it merely evolved, with Trump’s apartments offering the perfect vehicle for billions of dollars to leave the collapsing Soviet Union. In House of Trump, House of Putin, Craig Unger methodically traces the deep-rooted alliance between the highest echelons of American political operatives and the biggest players in the frightening underworld of the Russian Mafia.

House Of Trump, House Of Putin - Craig Unger (Penguin/Random House)
(The Untold Story of Donald Trump and the Russian Mafia)

Trump’s burgeoning real estate empire was fueled in the 1980s by another privileged class, Russian gangsters who appear to have used Trump properties to launder their ill-gotten gains.

“An intelligence exchange,” former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele writes, “had been running between” Trump’s team and the Kremlin, with the direct knowledge of Russian President Vladimir Putin. “Within this context Putin’s priority requirement had been for intelligence on the activities, business and otherwise, in the US of leading Russian oligarchs and their families. Trump and his associates duly had obtained and supplied the Kremlin with this information.”

And yet the story Unger weaves with those earlier accounts and his original reporting is fresh, illuminating and more alarming than the intelligence channel described in the Steele dossier.

Unger believes that Trump was compromised by Russia as early as the 1980s, when the Russian money laundering through his properties probably began.

www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/is-there-a-case-for-trump-putin-collaboration-years-before-the-campaign/2018/08/16/00578f1e-9440-11e8-80e1-00e80e1fdf43_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.1f1d348442f7

It will show that during this period the Russian Mafia has likely been a de facto state actor serving the Russian Federation in much the same way that American intelligence services serve the United States, and that many of the people connected to Trump had strong ties to the Russian FSB, the state security service that is the successor to the feared KGB. Many describing

It will show that President Trump has been a person of interest to Soviet and Russian intelligence for more than forty years and was likely the subject of one or more operations that produced kompromat (com promising materials) on him regarding sexual activities.

It will show that for decades, Russian operatives, including key fig‐ ures in the Russian Mafia, studiously examined the weak spots in America’s pay‐for‐play political culture—from gasoline distribution to Wall Street, from campaign finance to how the K Street lobbyists of Washington ply their trade—and, having done so, hired powerful white‐shoe lawyers, lobbyists, accountants, and real estate developers by the score, in an effort to compromise America’s electoral system, legal process, and financial institutions.

www.nationalmemo.com/house-trump-house-putin-russian-mafia/

The men who used Trump for their illicit purposes ensnared him. “They had ensured that he was beholden to Russia’s money, and its power,” Unger writes. “All largely unseen. With deniability.”

There is abundant evidence in Unger’s book that Trump made his business infrastructure — his condos, his developments, his very name — available to criminals and oligarchs trying to hide their ill-gotten gains, whether from tax collectors, investigators or the president of Russia. And that’s a form of collusion, too.

Unger sees the Kremlin’s intervention in the 2016 presidential election, which U.S. intelligence officials have said was ordered by Putin himself, as the latest manipulation of Trump by Russia, and the most consequential.

www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/576474/house-of-trump-house-of-putin-by-craig-unger/9781524743505/

Manafort found guilty on 8 counts (Mistrial on the other 10).

Cohen pleads guilty to 8 counts, and implicates Trump on the Campaign Finance Violation

Flynn sentencing delayed again, because Mueller asked Judge to hold off (likely because his sentencing will reveal sensitive info)

where was Omarosa today?

"Only the best people"

The Party of Law and Order.

Wondering how long impeachment will take.

FWIW, sad to hear of the passing of John McCain. Didn't always agree with him, but I respected him. Figured he probably had a few weeks when I heard he quit taking his chemo Friday. Shocked when I heard Saturday he'd passed.

What I found encouraging with that op-ed is that it looks as if someone in the WH is really anticipating the end of Trump’s presidency and is preparing for the post-Trump era. That letter is establishing plausible deniability for the time when public opinion demands to know why X, Y and Z just let Trump drag the office of the president through the mud without lifting a finger. Now there’s at least one person who will be able to claim “oh, we didn’t collaborate that much; some of us were trying to contain the damage, as I wrote in the NYT months ago”.

^^^ Video not available outside North America.