In case you were lacking a little bit of plain old vanilla corruption in your daily news diet on Tuesday, the folks at McClatchy were happy to oblige. It seems that the spin cycle being run under the president*’s name has gone into overdrive.

Buyers connected to Russia or former Soviet republics made 86 all-cash sales — totaling nearly $109 million — at 10 Trump-branded properties in South Florida and New York City, according to a new analysis shared with McClatchy. Many of them made purchases using shell companies designed to obscure their identities.“The size and scope of these cash purchases are deeply troubling as they can often signal money laundering activity," said Rep. Adam Schiff of California, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee and a former federal prosecutor. "There have long been credible allegations of money laundering by the Trump Organization which, if true, would pose a real threat to the United States in the event that Russia were able to leverage evidence of illicit financial transactions against the president."
The all-cash buyers include Alexey Ustaev, founder of a private bank based in St. Petersburg, Russia; Igor Zorin, a government official who runs a state-owned broadcasting company; the wife of hockey player Viacheslav Fetisov; pop star Igor Nikolaev; Roman Sinyavsky, a luxury real estate broker who was one of the first to sell units at a Trump's South Florida building and Evgeny Bachurin, who Russian President Vladimir Putin fired as head of Russia’s Federal Air Transport Agency before becoming a donor to a political action committee supporting Trump, according to American Bridge.

They were quite a fun bunch, too.

Eduard Nektalov, a Uzbeki diamond dealer was arrested on charges he laundered drug money before he was killed in New York, according to multiple news reports. He purchased a unit at Trump World Tower for $1.6 million in 2003, according to the New York City Department of Finance.

The data comes from a liberal activist group, so take it with however much salt suits you, but there isn’t a syllable in the story that isn’t completely plausible. It’s a glimpse, perhaps, into what Robert Mueller has been about all these months. The hounds are still baying behind all the white noise of this administration*’s daily insanity.

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Headshot of Charles P. Pierce
Charles P. Pierce

Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976. He lives near Boston and has three children.