The Trump Organization May Have Engaged in Money Laundering with Russian Nationals, Researcher Alleges

(WASHINGTON) – Testimony to the U.S. Congress by the head of a political research firm indicates that the Trump Organization’s sales of properties to Russian nationals may have involved money-laundering, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee said on Thursday.

The panel released the transcript of a Nov. 14 closed-door interview with Fusion GPS founder Glenn Simpson, whose firm hired a former British spy to research then-presidential candidate Donald Trump’s campaign ties to Russians and produced a dossier.

“Those transcripts reveal serious allegations that the Trump Organization may have engaged in money laundering with Russian nationals,” Representative Adam Schiff said.

The Trump Organization dismissed the allegations as unsubstantiated.

Another Democrat on the Republican-controlled committee, Representative Jim Hines, sought to temper Schiff’s comment, telling CNN that Simpson “did not provide evidence and I think that’s an important point. He made allegations.”

The House of Representatives panel is conducting one of the three congressional investigations into possible collusion between Trump’s 2016 campaign and Russia. Special Counsel Robert Mueller is leading a separate probe by the U.S. Justice Department. Moscow denies the conclusions of U.S. intelligence agencies that it interfered in the 2016 election to help Trump and Trump denies any collusion.

In his testimony, Simpson said that his firm closely examined sales of condominiums in Trump properties in New York, Miami, Panama City and Toronto.

“There were a lot of real estate deals where you couldn’t really tell who was buying the property,” Simpson said. “And sometimes properties would be bought and sold, and they would be bought for one price and sold for a loss shortly thereafter, and it really didn’t make sense to us.”

“We saw patterns of buying and selling that we thought were suggestive of money-laundering,” he continued.

Alan Garten, the Trump Organization’s chief counsel, said that the deals Simpson referenced primarily involve properties to which Trump licensed his name, rather than owning, developing or selling them.

“These accusations are completely reckless and unsubstantiated for a multitude of reasons,” Garten said.

“These issues have nothing to do with the scope of the investigation” by the House intelligence committee, Garten said in a phone interview. “But it’s not surprising the minority (Democrats) would focus on this given they’ve found absolutely no evidence of collusion.”

Simpson, under questioning by Rep. Jackie Speier, California Democrat, also said that Russia’s operation to influence U.S. politics included attempts to infiltrate the National Rifle Association (NRA) and other conservative organizations, such as groups promoting independence for the states of Texas and California.

“They seem to have made a very concerted effort to get in with the NRA,” Simpson said, according to the transcript.

The NRA did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Earlier this month, Democratic U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein released Simpson’s testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, where she is the ranking Democrat. The panel’s Republican chairman, Chuck Grassley, had not agreed to the release.

Fusion GPS, based in Washington, hired former British spy Christopher Steele to investigate Trump’s business dealings with Russia. It first investigated Trump on behalf of the conservative Washington Free Beacon online news site and then for the Democratic National Committee.

Trump has repeatedly criticized the dossier, which was based on Steele’s investigation, calling it “bogus” and “discredited and phony.”

Some Republicans critical of Mueller’s investigation have said that Steele’s dossier triggered the initial probe by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

They have raised questions about whether the FBI may have relied on the Steele document to improperly obtain surveillance warrants to spy on Trump’s campaign associates.

The testimony by Fusion GPS’s Simpson before the Senate Judiciary Committee last August contradicted those claims.

Ever since Feinstein released the testimony on Jan. 9, House Intelligence Committee Democrats have been asking that Simpson’s testimony to their committee be made public.

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Rex Tillerson Says There Is Evidence That Sanctions Are ‘Really Starting to Hurt’ North Korea

U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said on Wednesday the United States is getting evidence that international sanctions are “really starting to hurt” North Korea, even as he accused Russia of not implementing all of the measures.

U.S. President Donald Trump told Reuters in an interview earlier on Wednesday that Russia was helping North Korea evade international sanctions and that Pyongyang was getting closer every day to being able to deliver a long-range missile to the United States.

Tillerson told reporters the Russian failure to comply with the U.N. measures “primarily” concerned fuel “but some other areas potentially as well.” He did not provide details.

Nevertheless, Tillerson said he was confident the pressure would eventually bring North Korea to the negotiating table over its nuclear and missile programs. Pyongyang has carried out nuclear and missiles tests in defiance of U.N. and other sanctions.

“We are getting a lot of evidence that these sanctions are really starting to hurt,” Tillerson said, citing intelligence and anecdotal evidence from defectors.

He said Japan told a conference on North Korea in Vancouver on Tuesday that more than 100 North Korean fishing boats had drifted into its waters and two-thirds of those aboard them had died.

“What they learned is that they are being sent out in the winter time because there’s food shortages and they are being sent out to fish with inadequate fuel to get back,” he said.

South Korean President Moon Jae-in had attributed North Korea’s recent willingness to talk to South Korea to the pain of sanctions, Tillerson told an event at Stanford University in California.

But he later said he suspected Russia may not only be failing to implement some sanctions but “frustrating” some of the effort to press the North.

“It’s apparent to us that they’re not implementing all the sanctions and there’s some evidence they may be frustrating some of the sanctions,” Tillerson said aboard his aircraft while returning from Vancouver.

Chinese Pressure

China did not attend the Vancouver meeting, where 20 nations agreed to step up sanctions pressure on the North, but Tillerson highlighted Beijing’s role.

“We have never had Chinese support for sanctions like we’re getting now,” he said. “Russia’s a slightly different issue, but the Chinese have leaned in hard on the North Koreans.”

Asked whether there was a humanitarian concern that sanctions were hurting ordinary North Koreans, he said: “That’s a choice the regime’s making. The regime gets to decide how they allocate their available resources.”

“We are not going to take any responsibility for the fact that he (North Korean leader Kim Jong Un) is choosing to make his own people suffer,” Tillerson said.

Asked if he was concerned that South Korea might resume some humanitarian aid to North Korea as part of the resumption of North-South talks this month, thereby weakening sanctions, Tillerson said: “Countries will have to make their own choice, but we would be very skeptical that aid that goes into the country will necessarily relieve the suffering of the people.”

Tillerson said that, while North Korea had a record of seeking to drive a wedge between the United States and its allies through “charm offensives,” Washington was supportive of the North-South dialogue.

Tillerson said of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un: “He knows how to reach me, if he wants to talk. But he’s got to tell me he wants to talk. We’re not going to chase him.”

He said he was confident the sides would eventually get to the negotiating table and he wanted North Korea to know that, when that happened, the United States had “very, very strong military options standing behind me.”

The Trump administration has said repeatedly that all options are available, including military ones, in forcing North Korea to give up its development of nuclear missiles capable of reaching the United States, although it prefers a diplomatic solution.

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