Herman Göring Would Have Loved Mar-a-Lago
Herman Göring is having a moment. With Hollywood superstar, Russell Crowe, playing him in the new film “Nuremberg”, the infamous Nazi Reich Marshal is back in the spotlight.
Like the rest of the Nazi inner circle, Göring was a genocidal murderer, but what set him apart was his narcissistic decadence and endless capacity for stolen riches. He may have been an incompetent military leader, but he was a supreme criminal boss.
We tend to remember the Nazi era as a two-dimensional world of grey uniforms and lockstep uniformity. The reality was that Nazi Germany was a massive criminal organization. Hitler funded the war by the smash-and-grab looting of other national economies.
Even at the regional and personal level, Nazism was based on shakedowns, extortion and outright theft.
Historian Richard Evans points out that in the 1938 Anschluss, the Nazis broke into homes of Jewish families to steal whatever they could find. People were stopped on the streets and robbed of their fur coats and wallets. By the 1940s, this shakedown was so thorough that it included stealing gold teeth from the corpses of murdered civilians.
“It would have been bad enough had Trump merely emerged as a bigoted demagogue, but add longstanding ties to a transnational syndicate affiliated with the Kremlin and one ends up with a human road map to an American kleptocracy.” - Sarah Kendzior, Hiding in Plain Sight
Since Trump’s rise to power, I have consistently used the term “gangster fascism” to define the MAGA movement. Trump’s authoritarianism is more than attacking minorities; it is about destroying the rule of law. All so that the economy can be looted by grifters who have latched on to America’s number one crime family - the Trumps.
If you’re a crook, kissing the ring of America’s top crime boss pays off. Just ask Rudy Giuliani, pardoned this week by Trump for attempting to overthrow the 2020 election.
Trump has been on a roll issuing pardons to political cronies, people found guilty of undermining democracy and those who have either paid money to the Trumps or have business connections. Trump’s entire run for the presidency was a criminal operation.
His 2016 campaign manager, Paul Manafort, was one of nine key campaign directors who were later convicted of crimes and sent to jail.
Manafort’s background is as dark as it gets.
He made his initial money running a company nicknamed the “torture lobby” with Trump ally (and fellow jailbird) Roger Stone. They worked for some of the worst dictators on the planet. Manafort then went to work for pro-Russian interests in Ukraine. He returned just in time to take charge of Trump’s campaign.
When he was finally arrested, Manafort faced so many charges, including mortgage fraud, conspiracy, and falsifying business records, that he faced 300 years in prison. The judge and jury in the trial had to receive protection because of threats they were facing. Despite the threats against a sitting judge, the FBI cut a plea deal with Manafort. Then Trump gave him a get out of jail free card.
That’s how justice works in Trump’s America.
Like his decision to give a freedom pass to a Chinese Crypto fraudster who had financial links to the Trump family.
Trump has no loyalties. He isn’t running a pardon scheme to help friends. There is a larger objective – the corrosion of America’s legal system.
For years, Trump has flaunted his illegal schemes and dared the FBI, the Department of Justice, or the courts to take him down. This is the story of him and Jeffrey Epstein. He has made the legal system and the political complicit in the boldest racketeering scheme in U.S. legal history.
Trump’s connections to the mob go back to his earliest days. His father, Fred Trump, knew how to work with the New York mafia, particularly the Genovese and Gambino crime families. Donald’s earliest political mentor was lawyer Roy Cohn, a fixer for the New York crime families.
Wayne Barrett, who conducted major investigations into Trump’s connections to the criminal underworld, described Cohn as “incandescent evil.” Cohn’s influence on the development of Donald Trump cannot be underestimated.
But in the 1980s, Trump was on the rise as the old-style Mafia families were in severe decline. The incoming Russians were replacing the Italian crime families. The Russians weren’t interested in small-time shakedowns over the price of cement on building sites like Trump Tower. They had looted the national economy of the former Soviet Union and were looking to launder massive amounts of stolen loot into American businesses.
Trump’s real estate deals and sketchy morals made him an obvious choice for the incoming mobsters.
David Bogatin, who was connected to the Simion Mogilevich transnational crime syndicate, was the first to move into Trump Tower. In 1984, he spent the then-staggering fee of $6 million to buy into Trump Tower. Such a huge investment should have set off alarm bells in U.S. intelligence.
Russian mobster Vyachelav Ivankov also set himself up at Trump Tower. Ivankov was tied to gambling, prostitution and arms smuggling. Then there was Felix Sater, another convicted felon with ties to the Mogalevich crime family. He moved into Trump’s building and began working with Trump on new real estate deals.
A former FBI official stated, “Everything was moving in and out of there.” (1)
Felix later bragged that he would work with Vladimir Putin’s crew to get Trump elected president.
In the early 1990s, Trump was bankrupt and facing multiple lawsuits. He owed four billion dollars, and no bank would touch him. No banks except the Russian banks, who were more than willing to float him loans.
Anne Appelbaum writes:
“[Russian] Banks looked like banks, but they were not banks; there were just as often money-laundering operations. Companies looked like companies, but they too could be facades, vehicles for the wealthy to siphon assets away from the states.” (2)
Donald Jr. bragged about the Trump dependence on Russian money:
“Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of our assets. We are seeing a lot of money pouring in from Russia.”
A huge percentage of Trump’s real estate deals were tied to numbered companies with links to Russia.
In 2013, the FBI broke up a major gambling scheme in Trump Tower. They arrested 29 men. The leader of the operation was Russian mobster Alimzhan Tokhakhounov. He ran a money laundering operation in the condo directly under Trump. While the FBI were searching for him, Tokhakhounov was in Moscow attending Donald Trump’s Miss Universe Pageant. He sat just a few seats from Trump.
Preet Bharara was the U.S. Attorney who led the investigation into this scheme in Trump Tower. He was fired as soon as Trump became president.
Also fired was Acting Attorney General Sally Yates, who warned incoming President Trump against appointing Michael Flynn to his cabinet. She pointed out that Flynn was badly compromised by the Russians. Flynn was later convicted of lying to the FBI. Yates was thrown under the bus, and Flynn was pardoned.
Since the November 2024 election, the Trump crime family have been using the power of presidential pardons to free all manner of traitors, con artists and criminal friends. The Trump crime family has turned global politics into a form of shakedown, with Jared Kushner and Ivanka playing key roles.
Kushner’s dubious side hustles with foreign powers began when he purchased a massive real estate development at 666 Fifth Avenue. Kushner couldn’t cover the costs and tried cutting deals with Middle East backers. It has raised serious questions about whether he has been using his role in the White House to run a separate foreign policy based on his financial interests.
Kushner’s father, Charles, was the recipient of one of Trump’s many pardons for a shakedown crime that former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie says was “one of the most loathsome, disgusting crimes” he ever prosecuted as U.S. attorney. Trump pardoned Kushner’s father and made him the ambassador to France.
What is striking about the Trump crime family is that they seem to revel in being “caught” by the media. Caught, that is by getting attention for the crimes, but knowing that no one will touch them.
That is where they differ from traditional mob families, which adhered to the “omerta” code of silence and conducted their deals in the shadows. The Trump crime family have done everything in the open. And those who have tried to take him on have paid a price.
Former acting FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe was a legal expert on the Russian mob. Before being fired, he met with Trump and described it as the same as meeting a “mob boss.”
“In that moment, I felt the way I’d felt in 1998 in a case involving the Russian mafia, when I sent a man I’ll call Big Felix to meet with a Mafia boss named Dimitri Gufiel. The same kind of thing was happening here in the Oval Office.”
McCabe wrote about his meeting with Trump in an article for The Atlantic, titled “Everyday Is a New Low in Trump’s White House.” That was six years ago. And the open criminality has only worsened since then.
And this is where Canada and the Western Allies need to undertake a major rethinking of American dealings.
The Trump crime family are using the international stage to further their policy of shakedown, grift and threat. More and more, we are seeing the flagrant abuse of international law. It is as if they are challenging their former allies to see whether we will speak up or silently kiss the ring.
Earlier this week, French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot was in Canada when he was asked about U.S. strikes on boats off Venezuela. Barrot was firm in stating his concern that these attacks represented a breach of international law.
But when Foreign Minister Anita Anand was asked if she agreed with the French position, she stated that it was up to the United States to determine whether it had breached international law.
Canada has had a longstanding commitment to the international rule of law. To state that those with the guns get to decide what is legal or illegal would mean the mob have won. It is another concerning concession from Canada on the issue of the international rule of law.
I get that some Canadians don’t want me to raise such issues. They tell me I am undermining the government. But anyone who has ever watched a mob movie will tell you that those who agree to come under the protection of the mob will pay forever.
It still distresses me that so many Canadians are willing to support Trump's fascist regime by visiting the USA and buying American products.
Anita’s comment is very concerning.