Exclusive: Trump Media saved in 2022 by Russian-American under criminal investigation
www.theguardian.com
Trump’s social media company went public relying partly on loans from trust managed by person of interest to prosecutors

Trump’s social media company went public relying partly on loans from trust managed by person of interest to prosecutors

Donald Trump’s social media company Trump Media managed to go public last week only after it had been kept afloat in 2022 by emergency loans provided in part by a Russian-American businessman under scrutiny in a federal insider-trading and money-laundering investigation.

The former US president stands to gain billions of dollars – his stake is currently valued at about $4bn – from the merger between Trump Media and Technology Group and the blank-check company Digital World Acquisition Corporation, which took the parent company of Truth Social public.

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Through leaked documents, the Guardian has learned that ES Family Trust operated like a shell company for a Russian-American businessman named Anton Postolnikov, who co-owns Paxum Bank and has been a subject of a years-long joint federal criminal investigation by the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) into the Trump Media merger.

    • Optional@lemmy.world
      21·
      9 months ago

      Previously secret ‘alternative’ Mueller report goes public

      Compendium of evidence gathered by the special counsel’s ‘Team M’ is heavily redacted.

      The subtitle of the article you linked says it’s “heavily redacted”.

      In fact, Mueller also wrote that the “investigation established that the Russian government perceived it would benefit from a Trump presidency and worked to secure that outcome, and that the Campaign expected it would benefit electorally from information stolen and released through Russian efforts.”

      Mueller found other contacts with Russia, such as the sharing of polling data about Midwestern states where Trump later won upset victories, conversations with the Russian ambassador to influence Russia’s response to sanctions imposed by the U.S. government in response to election interference, and communications with Wikileaks after it had received emails stolen by Russia. While none of these acts amounted to the crime of conspiracy, all could be described as “collusion.”

      Myth: Mueller found no obstruction.

      Response: Mueller found at least four acts by Trump in which all elements of the obstruction statute were satisfied – attempting to fire Mueller, directing White House counsel Don McGahn to lie and create a false document about efforts to fire Mueller, attempting to limit the investigation to future elections and attempting to prevent Manafort from cooperating with the government. As Mueller stated, “while this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him.” Mueller declined to make a “traditional prosecution decision” about obstruction of justice. Because he was bound by the Department of Justice policy that a sitting president cannot be charged with a crime, he did not even attempt to reach a legal conclusion about the facts. Instead, he undertook to “preserve the evidence when memories were fresh and documentary materials were available,” because a president can be charged after he leaves office.

      https://time.com/5610317/mueller-report-myths-breakdown/

      • Ranvier
        1·
        9 months ago

        I didn’t claim the additional material released didn’t still have any redactions, read my comment before replying. And that was just one of many additional disclosures made, some were even forced by lawsuits. There’s many reasons why something may be redacted. I seriously doubt anything still redacted is being done to help Trump, I think that would be a pretty nonsensical conspiracy out of a department pursuing multiple criminal cases against Trump. What on earth would be the reasoning or motive? If they thought there was another case in there they could win, well they have the unredacted report, employees of the justice department wrote it after all, they could add in a third criminal case to the other two they’re pursuing. Some of the redactions relate to testimony presented to grand juries, which are secret (since there’s no defense present in a grand jury, a public proceeding could be used by prosecutors to unfairly slander people, etc) which suggests at least some of the evidence was presented to grand juries who chose not to indict over it.

        The initial report released under the Trump admin controlled justice department? Yeah that had a lot of redactions for Trump’s benefit, made by Barr himself. Not to mention the heavily slanted “summary” released by Barr. If you want to dig into the reasoning for the redactions still remaining, well get reading the freedom of information act lawsuits that already concluded over this, but none are “to help Trump.”

        https://epic.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/EPIC-v-DOJ-19-810-opinion-093020.pdf

        And launching multiple criminal cases against the guy seems an odd way of helping him, I just don’t follow you.