Trump and the Russian Mafia, Splain’n to do

Posted on December 4, 2015December 4, 2015 by Denise Simon

Trump cant claim ignorance on this one.

Trump SoHo

At 45 stories, the Trump SoHo stands as the tallest building in SoHo, and one of the tallest in Manhattan. A five-star luxury condominium and hotel project between The Trump Organization and The Bayrock Group, the Trump SoHo exudes luxury at every turn.

Trump picked stock fraud felon as senior adviser

WASHINGTON (AP)— Donald Trump tapped a man to be a senior business adviser to his real-estate empire even after the man’s past involvement in a major Mafia-linked stock fraud scheme had become publicly known, according to Associated Press interviews and a review of court records.

Portions of Trump’s relationship with Felix Sater, a convicted felon and government informant, have been previously known. Trump worked with the company where Sater was an executive, Bayrock Group LLC, after it rented office space from the Trump Organization as early as 2003. Sater’s criminal history was effectively unknown to the public at the time, because a judge kept the relevant court records secret and Sater altered his name. When Sater’s criminal past and Mafia links came to light in 2007, Trump distanced himself from Sater.

But less than three years later, Trump renewed his ties with Sater. Sater presented business cards describing himself as a senior adviser to Donald Trump, and he had an office on the same floor as Trump’s own office in New York’s Trump Tower, The Associated Press learned through interviews and court records.

Deeper dive from the Courthouse News:

MANHATTAN (CN) – The Bayrock Group and Nixon Peabody are among 35 defendants sued for $1 billion, whom 13 plaintiffs, including estates of Holocaust survivors, accuse of “the illegal concealment of Felix Sater’s 1998 $40 million federal racketeering conviction, and subsequent 2009 sentencing.”
The summons and notice in New York County Supreme Court contains few details. Three of the six pages of the document are taken up with names of the parties, their attorneys, and the charges.
The Miami Herald reported last year that the CIA helped Sater conceal his conviction for securities fraud while using him to track down Stinger missiles for sale in his native Russia. This was “a decade before he launched the celebrated Fort Lauderdale Trump Tower,” the Herald reported in a Sept. 8, 2012 article.
But the Trump Tower failed, and “a legal battle has ensued between burned investors trying to reveal Sater’s background and federal agents who say national security is at stake,” the Herald reported.
Prosecutors in that case asked to keep Sater’s record sealed, in the national interest.
Sater was fined $25,000 for his original $40 million stock swindle, did no jail time and was not ordered to pay anything in restitution, according to the Herald.
In the new summons and notice in New York, a string of investors want to hold Sater and his attorneys and businesses responsible. The document does not mention the alleged CIA connection.
It states: “Plaintiffs seek relief against those directly and vicariously responsible for the perpetration of perhaps a billion dollars or more of fraud based on the illegal concealment of Felix Sater’s 1998 $40 million federal racketeering conviction, and subsequent 2009 sentencing, as well as related and other unrelated relief, and declaratory relief against those persons, primarily financial institution, insofar as to affix by liquidating judgment thereof such liability is owed to them.
“‘Bayrock,’ as used herein, refers to that certain association of juridical entities including, for example and without limitation, Bayrock Group LLC, Bayrock Camelback LLC, Bayrock Whitestone LLC, Bayrock Spring Street LLC, and Bayrock Merrimac LLC, in the last ten years variously engaged in the businesses of financial institution fraud, tax fraud, partnership fraud, insurance fraud, litigation fraud, bankruptcy fraud, mail fraud, wire fraud, money laundering, human trafficking, child prostitution, statutory rape, and, on occasion, real estate.
“One of the overarching, dominant themes of those Bayrock lines of business has been the fraudulent concealment of the substantial degree to which it was owned directly or equitably by Felix Sater, who was represented at various times at least during the period 2002 to 2008 to be its Chief Operating Officer and at times as its Managing Director.
“Another overarching, dominant theme of Bayrock’s lines has been the fraudulent concealment of Felix Sater’s conviction for racketeering, to which he secretly pled guilty in 1998, admitting to participating in the operation of a pump-and-dump stock fraud, along with members of Russian and Mafia organized crime, which defrauded investors, many of them senior citizens, including Holocaust survivors, of at a minimum $40,000,000, now in today’s dollars some $150,000,000 of stolen wealth as measured by the ‘well managed account’ theory.
“The Estates of Ernest and Judit Gottdiener; Ervin Tausky, a natural person, and Suan Investments, a Gottdiener family holding company, are some of those victims, survivors of the Nazi extermination of the Jews of Hungary and federally protected crime victims of Mr. Sater’s racketeering, as such his creditors. They were defrauded of their rights to restitution and, because the government illegally concealed Sater’s entire case, their rights to sue him. The Gottdieners claim damages for the fraud on them against everyone responsible for the 15-year delay and deprivation of their civil rights.
“Insofar as Sater used Bayrock as a personal piggybank to skim millions upon millions of its assets and hide them out of the reach (for now) of these and all the other hundreds if not thousands of victims to whom he now is liable over $500,000,000 in RICO damages, and would not have been able to do so without the facilitation of his concealment frauds by others, the Gottdieners sue all those for the damage they caused.
“Among those are corrupt attorneys who used fraudulent and sham court processes to hide Sater and his frauds for their own gain, as many of them did so with the specific intent, inter alia, of raking in fees from him, essentially taking the Gottdiener’s and all the others’ money for themselves by keeping it out of the hands of the victims, where it should have gone; they are sued, inter alia, for vicarious liability of all damages caused and for forfeiture of all such fees. …
“Finally, as Sater admitted at his sentencing he knew no banks would lend to Bayrock if they knew about his concealed conviction, a judicial estoppel and admission against penal interest, lenders and investors who were fraudulently induced to provide $1,000,000,000 or so to Bayrock by this concealment ought to get their money back, so they are sued in declaratory judgment to fix the liability of Bayrock and all those liable to them through Bayrock to them.
“All defendants except as noted are sued for all liability, that is, for example only, Kelly Moore, who stood in Sater’s sentencing as his attorney knowing it was illegally hidden, hearing him admit that he had been using that illegal concealment to perpetrate bank fraud, and without privilege to do so committed fraud and other actionable wrongs in maintaining sham litigation to stop those who learned of this from revealing it for years, thus knowingly facilitating the cover-ups, shall expect to have plenary liability asserted against her by every Plaintiff in every theory for every cause in the scope of the overarching conspiracy. It is the express intent of Plaintiffs to assert all liability to the fullest scope of the state law vicarious liability equivalent of civil federal Pinkerton liability against everyone participating in any identifiable and well-pled conspiracy. Those who thought nothing of helping Sater and his co-conspirators defraud, the littlest senior citizens and Holocaust survivors or the biggest banks and lenders, who thought nothing of helping him and others steal those victims’ money, must be made to pay with their own.”
Here are the defendants: Bayrock Group LLC; Tevrik Arif; Julius Schwarz; Felix Satter; Brian Halberg; Salvatore Lauria; Alex Salomon; Jerry Weinrich; Salomon & Co. PC; Akerman Senterfitt LLP; Martin Domb; Craig Brown; Duval & Stachenfeld LLP; Bruce Stachenfeld; David Granin; Nixon Peabody LLP; Adam Gilbert; Roberts & Holland LLP; Elliot Pisem; Michael Samuel; Mel Dogan; Bayrock Spring Street LLC; Does; Bayrock Whitestone LLC; Bayrock Camelback LLC; Bayrock Merrimac LLC; Bayrock Group Inc.; Tamir Sapir; Alex Sapir; Does; Walter Saurack; Satterlee Stephens Burke & Burke LLP; Kelly Moore; Morgan Lewis & Bockius LLP; Nader Mobargha; Michael Beys; Beys Stein & Mobargha LLP; and Todd Kaminsky.Here are the plaintiffs: J Kriss; Michael Ejekam; Bayrock Merrimac LLC; Bayrock Group LLC; Bayrock Spring Street LLC; Bayrock Whitestone LLC; Bayrock Spring Street LLC; Bayrock Whitestone LLC; Bayrock Camelback LLC; E/O Ernest; E/Ojudit Gottdiener; Ervin Tausky; Suan Investments.

Under Obama, Inspector Generals are Stonewalled

Posted on December 3, 2015December 3, 2015 by Denise Simon

Congress holds hearing for testimony from Inspector Generals. In early 2015, 46 IGs signed their name to a letter expressing concerns that agency officials systematically compromise IG independence by denying them full access.

In 2014:

AmericanThinker: AT News Director Ed Lasky has chronicled the shameful problems with Obama administration inspector generals for years, including the political pressures put on IG’s in almost every department of the administration.

A perfect illustration of this is former DHS IG Charles Edwards, who deliberately slowed investigations into wrongdoing at DHS, including the shredding of dozens of emails – an act that might send him to jail for obstruction of justice.

IGs: At Least 20 Investigations Slowed or Closed Due To Obama Admin

FreeBeacon: Numerous inspectors general say that at least 20 investigations have been slowed or closed due to government watchdogs not having access to needed documents or records under the Obama administration.

Dozens of interviews of people with firsthand knowledge of the years-long problem spoke of the tensions between the watchdogs and the administration.

The New York Times reports:

The Drug Enforcement Administration balked at turning over emails from senior officials tied to the raids, according to the department’s inspector general. It took nearly a year of wrangling before the D.E.A. was willing to turn over all its records in a case that the inspector general said raised “serious questions” about agents’ use of deadly force.

The continuing Honduran inquiry is one of at least 20 investigations across the government that have been slowed, stymied or sometimes closed because of a long-simmering dispute between the Obama administration and its own watchdogs over the shrinking access of inspectors general to confidential records, according to records and interviews.

The impasse has hampered investigations into an array of programs and abuse reports — from allegations of sexual assaults in the Peace Corps to the FBI’s terrorism powers, officials said. And it has threatened to roll back more than three decades of policy giving the watchdogs unfettered access to “all records” in their investigations.

“The bottom line is that we’re no longer independent,” Michael E. Horowitz, the Justice Department inspector general, said in an interview.

The restrictions reflect a broader effort by the Obama administration to prevent unauthorized disclosures of sensitive information — at the expense, some watchdogs insist, of government oversight.

In recent years, inspector generals have increasingly said the Obama administration is making it more difficult to acquire information as 47 of the 73 government IGs sent a letter to Obama last year for stonewalling their investigations.

The press additionally has chastised the Obama administration for lack of access to records as well. In March 2015, the Obama administration set a record for withholding government information despite promising to lead the most transparent administration in history.

Iran Lies Proven, Obama Lifts Sanctions

Posted on December 3, 2015December 3, 2015 by Denise Simon

From Chairman Royce:

Washington, D.C. – House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Ed Royce (R-CA) released the following statement today regarding the IAEA’s report on the “Possible Military Dimensions” of Iran’s past nuclear work:

“The IAEA report proves Iran lied. For years, the Iranian regime worked secretly to develop a nuclear weapon. And there are still important questions that remain unanswered. For example, how far did Iran get toward building a bomb? And what happened to all of the materials, research, and expertise Iran acquired?

“Iran’s long track record of obstructing investigators means the IAEA will face significant challenges moving forward – especially since the president’s nuclear agreement allows Iran to carry out self-inspections at key sites. Iran won’t even have to cheat to achieve advanced enrichment capacity, which puts them just a small step away from a bomb.”

In 2007, GW Bush was mislead by a flawed NIE, National Intelligence Estimate on the Iranian nuclear production program.

TWS: The authors of the 2007 NIE famously argued that the Iranians halted their nuclear weapons program in 2003 and had not restarted it since. The U.S. intelligence community defined “nuclear weapons program” as “Iran’s nuclear weapon design and weaponization work and covert uranium conversion-related and uranium enrichment-related work.” For no good reason, the NIE’s definition excluded “Iran’s declared civil work related to uranium conversion and enrichment.” More here.

Iran tried to build nuke weapons: UN report

TheHill: Iran carried out work to build a nuclear weapon in previous years, but that effort never passed initial stages, a United Nations agency said in a confidential report revealed on Wednesday.

The conclusion follows this year’s finalization of the international nuclear deal with Iran and is sure to prompt concerns about Tehran’s willingness to implement that pact

Yet the report from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which was widely shared Wednesday, claimed that Iran carried out only preliminary steps to building a nuclear bomb and ceased those activities at least five years ago.

“[A] range of relevant activities to the development of a nuclear explosive device were conducted in Iran prior to the end of 2003 as a coordinated effort, and some activities took place after 2003,” IAEA said.

*** Now this month, December:

Next month, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is scheduled to address one of the most important elements of the July 2015 Iran nuclear deal: Iran’s possible past nuclear weapons work, which the IAEA refers to as the “possible military dimensions” or the PMD of Iran’s nuclear program.

Although Obama officials had said Iran’s full cooperation with the PMD investigation was a prerequisite for the lifting of sanctions, this is no longer the case.

Resolving the PMD issue is important because this information is necessary to set a baseline for verifying the nuclear agreement. Secretary of State John Kerry made this clear in a July 24, 2015 speech when he said: “PMD has to be resolved before they get one ounce of sanctions relief. Now that could take six months, it could take a year. I don’t know how long. But the IAEA has to certify that all of that has been done and we have received our one- year breakout before they get a dime.”

There go the sanction….

WSJ: The Obama administration said it expects to start lifting sanctions on Iran as early as January after the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog found no credible evidence that Tehran has recently engaged in atomic-weapons activity. But the agency reported that the country had pursued a program in secret until 2009, longer than previously believed.

The mixed findings in the report, which also indicated that Iran showed limited cooperation with investigators, fueled critics who said the July nuclear deal between Iran and six world powers, as well as the White House’s move on Wednesday, were too easy on Tehran.

Iran has reached a historic agreement with major world powers over its nuclear program. What is Iran giving up, and how does it benefit in the long run? And what are supporters and critics of the deal saying? WSJ’s Niki Blasina explains.

Nonetheless, senior U.S. officials said they expected the International Atomic Energy Agency’s 35-nation board of governors to vote this month to formally close its decadelong probe of Iran’s suspected past weapons work. International sanctions on Iran could then be lifted as early as January, U.S. officials said, once Tehran completes additional steps required to constrain its broader nuclear program.

“Iran has provided what [the IAEA] says was sufficient,” said a senior U.S. official working on the implementation of the Iran deal. “We had not expected a full confession [by Iran], nor did we need one.”

Wrapping up a five-month probe of Iran’s past activities, the IAEA said it believed Iran had a coordinated nuclear-weapons program until 2003 and that some of these activities continued as late as 2009.

The agency said the most-recent work Iran conducted on a weapon appeared to be through the use of computer modeling to develop components used in an implosion device. The agency said the work was done between 2005 and 2009.

“The modeling…has a number of possible applications, some of which are exclusively for a nuclear explosive device,” the report said.

The agency said there were no credible indications of nuclear-weapons-related activities in Iran after 2009. But it added that Iran provided little information on some points and offered some misleading responses.

Opponents of the nuclear deal in the U.S. Congress criticized the White House’s willingness to move forward with the pact, arguing Iran needed to provide significantly more answers to the U.N. agency. Some Republicans also demanded the U.S. refuse to lift the sanctions until Tehran complies.

“The IAEA’s report is dangerously incomplete and should be rejected by the IAEA Board of Governors,” said Rep. Mike Pompeo (R., Kan.), while Sen. Mark Kirk (R., Ill.), said, “The only clear point is that Iran stonewalled inspectors.”

San Bernardino Jihad

Posted on December 3, 2015December 3, 2015 by Denise Simon

Syed Farook was the son of Pakistani divorced parents. Syed’s wife, Tashfeen Malik was also Pakistani. Syed was born in Chicago, raised in Southern California and they met online via a Middle Eastern dating service. Tashfeen arrived in the United States with a Pakistani passport via a (K1)fiancé visa. Syed is a Sunni Muslim according to yet another dating site.

The marriage took place 2 years ago when Syed traveled to Saudi for two weeks to attend the Hajji. Tashfeen was living in Saudi Arabia at the time.

Syed traveled to Saudi Arabia and Pakistan in 2014 and returned in July of 2014. Upon the recent return from Saudi Arabia, Syed grew a beard which is an early gesture of subscribing to jihad. It is uncertain when and if he traveled again to Saudi in 2015, as it has been said he recently returned and subsequently participated in a workplace baby shower and a 2 month long paternity leave. The baby is apparently 6 months old and during the massacre was left with a grandmother.

Syed has a brother with the same first name but a different middle name.

LATimes: Years before he was associated with the deadly mass shooting in San Bernardino, Syed Rizwan Farook endured a turbulent home life, according to court records.

In 2006 divorce filings, his mother detailed a violent marital history in which her children often had to intervene.

Rafia Farook said her husband of 24 years was physically and verbally abusive and was “negligent and an alcoholic,” according to documents filed in Riverside County Superior Court. Her husband, she said, forced her and three of her children to move out. They moved into an Irvine residence.

Later, in multiple requests for domestic-violence protection, Rafia Farook detailed the maltreatment she said she encountered and that her children witnessed: Her husband had once drunkenly dropped a TV on her. Another time, he pushed her toward a car. After a drunken slumber, he shouted expletives and threw dishes in the kitchen.

“Inside the house he tried to hit me. My daughter came in between to save me,” she said about one incident. Police were not called to the home, she said.

“He is always mad,” she said. “Screaming on me, shouting at my kids for no reason. … My son came in between to save me.

When her husband was served with legal separation papers, he was reached at an address in Karachi, Pakistan.

At this time, she said her sons, Syed Raheel Farook, then 23, and Syed Rizwan Farook, then 20, lived with her, along with her younger daughter. Another daughter, Saira, apparently lived elsewhere.

The killer couple were in possession of 4 weapons, all purchased legally, the dates of purchase are unknown. (2) 9mm handguns were purchased by Syed but the long guns were not. The name(s) of the person who purchased the long guns is at this time also unknown. The long guns used .223 rounds.

San Bernardino Police Chief Jarrod Burguan said that Syed Rizwan Farook and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, fired between 65 and 75 rifle rounds during the shooting at a county health department holiday party, then unloaded about that number in a later confrontation with police.

Syed Farook’s brother-in-law, Farhan Khan appeared almost immediately after the shooting event standing with The Council of American Islamic Relations (CAIR) for a press conference stating this was a shocking event.

There were clustered pipe bombs at the public building where the shooting took place, there were failed pipe bombs in the rented SUV that had Utah tags and there were even more pipe bombs located at the residence.

Syed became radicalized online using social media and phone calls to known terrorists which has been determined after the shooting. Neither were ever on a no-fly list or terror list.

Rahm Takes Family to Cuba for Vacation, Huh?

Posted on December 2, 2015December 2, 2015 by Denise Simon

Emanuel Snaps at Politico Reporter for Revealing His Plans to Vacation in Cuba

In part WSJ: Should he call it a vacation? Lawyers said it was ok, so long as Mr. Emanuel and his family fall under one of the 12 categories.

“There are people who go on an archaeological dig on vacation, or harvest wine or go take classes,” said Augosto Maxwell, head of the Cuba practice at Miami-based law firm Akerman. “I don’t think it’s inappropriate at all to call it a vacation.”

A likely way for the Emanuels to travel to Cuba would be through a people-to-people exchange. They could travel with a group, or a travel company could arrange a private schedule for their family with activities that would fall under the “people-to-people” category.

People who travel to Cuba under the people-to-people category currently can’t go on their own and must go on organized trips with full schedules that usually include meetings, lectures, visits to small businesses, community projects, etc.

Before the regulations were loosened, Beyonce and Jay-Z took a much criticized trip to the island, but ultimately the Treasury Department determined their travel was legal as it was organized by a nonprofit with a license to organize “people-to-people” trips. Since the policy shift, organizations no longer need special licenses to organize such trips.

Other celebrities who have traveled to Cuba since the loosening of rules include Rihanna, Usher, Mick Jagger, Katy Perry, Paris Hilton and Naomi Campbell. The island has also received visits this year from three cabinet secretaries, three governors and scores of lawmakers. President Barack Obama hopes to travel to Cuba before leaving office.

Cuba needs cows and sugar, perhaps that is why Rahm Emanuel is really going there to represent some crony business opportunities. The black market thrives in Cuba, so Rahm should be quite familiar with that.

Meanwhile, we have normalized relations with Cuba, well kinda sorta. So who is part of that team to continue nurturing the relationship?

A lingering chapter of the Cold War closed in December 2014, when the United States announced it would re-establish full relations with Cuba. Leading the reconciliation were two White House aides, Ben Rhodes and Ricardo Zuniga, who spearheaded more than 70 hours of secret talks with Havana on previously intractable issues such as prisoner swaps and easing economic sanctions.

In 2015, the State Department’s Roberta Jacobson and the Cuban Foreign Ministry’s Josefina Vidal seized the diplomacy baton, meeting to hash out the détente’s nuts and bolts. They sometimes clashed (on both countries’ harboring of fugitives, for instance) and faced complex politics (for example, Fidel Castro’s public call for the relinquishing of U.S. control of Guantánamo Bay, which the United States isn’t prepared to accept). Yet they still laid the groundwork for a new era of cooperation: In July, the United States and Cuba reopened their respective embassies in Havana and Washington for the first time in a half-century.