An investigation of President Trump’s current and past business dealings has revealed that the real estate tycoon has effectively served as a syndicate “Godfather” for some three decades. In 2009, when Ivanka Trump married Jared Kushner, the scion of the Kushner real estate family, the marriage was more of a business merger between the Trump and Kushner business empires. The title of “Godfather” of the sprawling Trump-Kushner real estate empire fell to Donald Trump with Kushner Companies founder Charles Kushner, the father of Jared, racking up a federal criminal record for illegal campaign contributions, tax evasion, and witness tampering, and Jared taking over the reins of the firm.
A detailed investigation of Trump-Kushner business connections reveals a global web rife with convicted criminals, money launderers, international smugglers, felons operating under aliases, stock manipulators, bank embezzlers, and blood diamond merchants. Most of these grifters are Eurasian Jews, many of whom emigrated to the United States, Britain, and Israel before and after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Charles Kushner is not the only criminal in the Kushner family, and, by marriage, the extended Trump family. Jared’s uncle, Richard Stadtmauer, the brother of Jared’s mother, Seryl Kushner, was convicted in 2009 of federal tax evasion. In 2016, the feds launched an investigation of the defrauding of the New York prison guards union through a Stadtmauer/Kushner Companies-financed hedge fund called Platinum Partners. The hedge fund operated in the same manner as Bernard Madoff’s company, even using Cayman Islands-based “feeder accounts”—a fancy name for money laundering operations.
Platinum Partners was investigated by federal prosecutors in Brooklyn, some of whom are now on the staff of Justice Department Special Counsel Robert Mueller. Mueller is reportedly investigating Jared Kushner’s role in several questionable financial dealings, including the bilking of investors by Platinum Partners. In fact, there is a connection between Platinum Partners and Madoff Investment Securities. Both businesses were defrauding the Jay Cohen Revocable Trust. Although Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump claim to be devout Orthodox Jews, Platinum Partners was allegedly defrauding the National Society for Hebrew Day Schools. Charles Kushner, Richard Stadtmauer, and Stadtmauer friend Murray Huberfeld were investors in the Kushner-controlled NorCrown Bank. In 2005, Kushner was ordered to divest himself of all interests in the Livingston, New Jersey-based bank after he was cited for violating federal banking laws. Jared Kushner maintains a banking role as witnessed by his sizable interest in another closely-held Kushner-linked bank in Livingston, Regal Bank.
The federal investigation of Kushner Companies and Stadtmauer in 2009 discovered that Kushner officials and Stadtmauer formed several limited partnerships in order to illegally evade taxes. Court documents show that several, including those in Jared Kushner’s Office of Government Ethics financial disclosure form, were cited for tax evasion, including Westminster Management LLC, Oakwood Garden Associates LLC, and Elmwood Village Associates LP. Kushner, who filed several versions of his disclosure form because of errors, appears to still be hiding some assets. According to federal court documents from the 2009 prosecution of Kushner Companies and Stadtmauer, other limited partnerships involved in tax evasion were listed as part of Kushner assets but were not listed by Jared Kushner in his latest ethics form disclosure. The omitted partnerships are Pheasant Hollow LP, Mt. Arlington LP, QEM LP, and six partnerships with variations of the name Quail Ridge. Purposely failing to include required information on a federal form is a criminal offense and Kushner has had at least three opportunities to correct and amend his financial disclosure form.
Donald Trump’s international investments are no less troubling. They involve a number of Eurasian oligarchs wanted by Interpol, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and other law enforcement agencies for everything from bank embezzlement and money laundering to contracted murder and bribery of foreign government officials. Trump’s latest foray into Macau casinos puts the president into the murky world of Chinese Triad criminal syndicates.
Recent news from Argentina that President Mauricio Macri, an old business partner of Trump and a billionaire in his own right, is enmeshed in the Odebrecht scandal, is not good news for Trump. Odebrecht is a Brazilian construction giant. The firm’s foreign bribery operations have toppled a president of Brazil, resulted in an indictment of a past president of Brazil and an investigation of the current president of the nation, and have implicated another friend of Trump, former Panamanian president Ricardo Martinelli, now under arrest in Miami pending extradition to Panama.
Martinelli was a partner in the Trump Tower in Panama City, Panama. YY Development Group, a firm linked to Macri, was Trump’s partner in building a Trump Tower in Buenos Aires, a project that failed to materialize. With Macri now imperiled by the Odebrecht bribery scandal and Martinelli already mired in it, there may be a reason behind Mueller’s recent hiring of former federal prosecutor Greg Andres as his 16th lawyer on his team. Andres prosecuted Allen Stanford for running an $8 billion Ponzi scheme centered around Stanford International Bank of Antigua and Barbuda, which also operated in Panama. It has recently emerged that Macri’s Argentine construction operations were financed via the Meini Bank, an Austrian bank subsidiary based in Antigua and Barbuda. Andres is very familiar with the type of international fraud involving Odebrecht and Macri. If Trump’s Argentina gambit and Panama City building in any way involved Odebrecht, Trump could be in deeper legal trouble than anyone could have imagined.
Trump has been comfortable dealing with crime syndicates in New York, including the Trincher gambling network and the Colombo crime family. Trump would not be a very successful Godfather if he couldn’t deal successfully with other criminal syndicates. And that sums up the focus of Robert Mueller’s current investigation of Trump and his family and associates.
Previously published in the Wayne Madsen Report.
Copyright © 2017 WayneMadenReport.com
Wayne Madsen is a Washington, DC-based investigative journalist and nationally-distributed columnist. He is the editor and publisher of the Wayne Madsen Report (subscription required).
