“These findings should not come as a surprise. Indeed, many committee members have consistently told media throughout the whole investigation that they have seen no evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.”
The congressional committee charged with investigating charges of Russian collusion with the Trump campaign during the 2016 presidential election recently released its long-awaited findings. The House Intelligence Committee was primarily looking into the so-called Steele Dossier, the document compiled by former British intelligence agent Christopher Steele at the behest of the private American intelligence firm Fusion GPS.
The 150-page report released by the committee lays out the alleged business ties between Trump and dubious Russian actors, which were supposed to in turn link the president to conspiratorial activities that allowed him to win the election.
The conclusion of this massive text was a bit anticlimactic. All the House Committee was able to ascertain was that Trump has, in the past, engaged in “patterns of buying and selling” that were “suggestive of money laundering.” According to one of the key witnesses in the investigation who testified before Congress in November, there was no definitive proof of such dealings, let alone of Russian assistance in the election, telling investigators that “evidence, I think, is a strong word.”
These findings should not come as a surprise. Indeed, many committee members have consistently told media throughout the whole investigation that they have seen no evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.
According to one of the key witnesses in the investigation who testified before Congress in November, there was no definitive proof of such dealings, let alone of Russian assistance in the election, telling investigators that “evidence, I think, is a strong word.”
While the broader government investigations into Trump’s Russian ties are complex and ongoing—with the Special Counsel investigation soon to enter its tenth month, despite a government shutdown—findings of the committee thus far strengthen the claim of many Republicans that the Steele Dossier is a document with no substance in proving Russian conspiring. However, the assertions of the committee lend support to Trump’s detractors that the president’s long financial history is riddled with illegal transactions.
A series of revelations has recently bolstered these claims as well.
Consider the recent case of the Trump SoHo Hotel rebranding as “The Domonick” after the Trump Organization severed its connections to the business. Representatives of the Trump Organization cited diminishing profits as the reason for selling its management rights to the property. Over the past month, however, a series of scandalous investment and purchase activities from the hotel’s past have come to light that likely influenced the Trump Organization to step away from the property.
This included several dubious investments by a group of well-known Kazakh oligarchs. An investigative piece published in Bloomberg earlier this month showed that these men may have used the Trump SoHo project to launder money earned in their highly lucrative chemical plants business back in Kazakhstan.
These reports were produced at the same time as an investigation by BuzzFeed was released, presenting claims of suspicious activity in Trump’s New York real estate dealings over the past several decades. The report boldly claims that over “one-fifth of Donald Trump’s US condominiums have been purchased since the 1980s in secretive, all-cash transactions” meant to “enable buyers to avoid legal scrutiny by shielding their finances and identities.”
It is clear to any impartial observer that many of these claims are politically agenda-motivated. BuzzFeed, for instance, cannot exactly claim to be balanced when it comes to presenting information on Trump. This is the outlet that controversially released the unsubstantiated Steele Dossier in the first place over a year ago.
Like the Steele Dossier, these reports are far from definitive proof of wrongdoing. However, as the evidence against the president mounts in quantity, while perhaps not in quality, it will certainly add fuel to the persistent demands of Democrats to further probe the president’s finances.
It may be incumbent on the administration to begin considering what it can do to nip this in the bud. Silence or simply resorting to the “fake news” claim will not be enough to prevent more probes into the president’s past.
