re: #191 Anymouse

The Fertilizer King is Dmitri Rybolovlev, whose private jet (flight number M-KATE) flits all over the world. You can track it on flightradar.com flightaware.com. It indeed has been in town at the same time as Trump several times, and Adam Khan has built up a convincing set of circumstantial evidence suggesting that Trump’s former home in Palm Springs, which Rybolovlev bought for $95M, and the money laundering charges leveled against Trump’s casinos all point to a complex money laundering system for oligarchs and organized crime syndicates.

I’m thinking Trump is not so much a tool of the FSB, but an important linchpin in the financial empire of the oligarchs and the Russian mob. Now that he’s president, his usefulness has multiplied manyfold. At the same time, the extra scrutiny he is under as president means his usefulness would have an expiry date. President Trump cannot operate with the same secrecy as Private Citizen Trump, because he cannot control federal staffers as tightly as he can employees of Trump Organization.

So, sooner or later, his Russian friends are going to cut their financial ties and perhaps demand quick repayment of his loans. If that happens, Trump probably would be better off pleading guilty to money laundering and spending the rest of his days in a nice, safe federal penitentiary.

I doubt he would, though. He’s too full of himself to realize he’s playing with forces much bigger than his ego.