Corruption, Crime, and a Mysterious Agency Shutdown

Does This All Connect Through Trump? If Not, There's An Awful Lot of Coincidences.

Yesterday’s Politico Playbook PM included two odd news stories that happened to come back-to-back in a way that could be coincidence or kismet:

HEADS UP: The Justice Department is doing away with the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Forces, stunning its dozens of employees and leaving the future of its network’s thousands of ongoing investigations uncertain, Bloomberg’s Jason Leopold scooped. The Reagan-era unit takes down transnational crime, drug and human trafficking networks, bringing in much more revenue than it costs in recent years thanks to seized criminal money. The rationale for its dissolution by Sept. 30 wasn’t immediately clear…

“Trump Sons’ Deals on Three Continents Directly Benefit the President,” by NYT’s Eric Lipton and David Yaffe-Bellany: “A contest of sorts has played out across Europe, the United States and the Middle East in recent days as President Trump’s two older sons have pursued a blitz of family moneymaking ventures capitalizing on their father’s name and power, each seemingly trying to outdo the other. It is a rush to cash in that involves billions of dollars with few precedents in American history. … The White House has said there are no ethics issues because Mr. Trump’s sons run the businesses. … [But the president] still personally benefits financially from most of these ventures.”

Let’s “plain English” this. The Trump boys are in the midst of an unprecedented international money grab from dodgy foreign sources, and at the exact same time, the Trump administration mysteriously shut down the law enforcement agency that goes after transnational crime. Huh.

A few other noteworthy points.

• One of the companies that Don Jr. is cozying up to is a Cayman Islands-based crypto company that was “fined $45 million by the S.E.C. in 2023 and agreed to leave the U.S. marketplace” for violating federal securities law.

• A major part of the Trump scion push is to expand business for Trump memecoins and cryptocurrency, which have become a really convenient way for foreign business interests to openly richify the Trumps.

• According to the Government Accountability Office, “Drug and human traffickers are increasingly using online marketplaces and virtual [i.e., crypto] currencies to connect with buyers and obscure the source of payments Online marketplaces facilitate trafficking by providing anonymity, connecting buyers and sellers, and allowing a range of payment methods, including virtual currencies.”

The Trump boys are in the midst of an unprecedented international money grab from dodgy foreign sources, and at the exact same time, the Trump administration mysteriously shuts down the law enforcement agency that goes after transnational crime

So again, you’ve got the Trumps and their shady partners earning millions from cryptocurrency—which is the major platform for enabling transnational organized crime—and killing the branch of the government that would have a major role in investigating these kinds of crimes.

Now, let’s bring in just one more piece.

A few years ago, I interviewed business professor Dr. Ruth May, who had written an incredible investigatory article for the Dallas Morning News in 2018 called "How Putin's Oligarchs Funneled Millions into GOP campaigns." She created the diagram below (which is a total eye test because the connections go so deep):

I’ll include a video version and the whole audio interview in embedded players below—and Ruth was one of the more fascinating interviews I’ve ever done, so I think it’s worth your time—but here’s the key point. As

Greg Olear

has also written about extensively, there is a long history of the Russian mafia and Russian oligarchs (which Ruth May says are often interchangeable) using the Trump organization to launder money: through real estate, through Trump Tower, and by allowing shell companies to purchase properties. Trump even appointed Wilbur Ross to a cabinet position in his first term, and Ross was at the epicenter of another Russian laundromat for dirty money in the Bank of Cyprus.

Did I mention that as part of his international tour, Don Jr. met with and promoted right wing leaders in Romania, Hungary, Serbia and Bulgaria, including disgraced former prime minister Victor Ponta who resigned over corruption allegations?

Did I mention that his visit to Romania came on the eve of their election, which had to be re-run because, as international affairs expert

Dan Perry

wrote yesterday:

Romania’s first attempt at a presidential election, in November, was abruptly annulled after investigators uncovered massive interference by Kremlin-linked networks operating through TikTok, which had artificially inflated support for a far-right, Trump-style candidate. That candidate, Calin Georgescu, was subsequently banned from running due to ties with Russian disinformation efforts — a move that triggered an international uproar from the global Trumpist right, who accused Romania’s “elites” of quashing the popular will. The Musk zone of X raged about “censorship” because Romania demanded TikTok transparency.

Russian oligarchs and mafia have spent decades running their money through Donald Trump; and just by chance he sends his sons on a blitz to meet with their allies in Eastern Europe who also happen to be investing millions in Trump enterprises including their crypto products; and just by chance Trump shuts down the one law enforcement arm that’s supposed to fight the kind of organized crime that crosses borders.

Just another day in the most corrupt Presidency ever.