“Why do I have more of a risk of telling her state secrets than anyone else? Either i’m qualified to handle state secrets or i’m not qualified to handle state secrets. I think I understand my responsibilities.” – Jared Kushner dismissing FBI warnings on his close relationship to suspected Chinese spy Wendi Deng

mother of mercy! This one is vying for preeminence. As a holistic pan-optical overhead into the rectal-abyss of Trump carcinogen (we will get to the counterpart Kushner twin-tumour shortly), American Oligarchs is a frontrunner. The Trump/Kushner offending is so vast, so multifaceted & so spiralling – with further criminality & corruption discharges erupting or being unearthed with such frequency – that omissions or inadequacy of details/extent in coverage is almost inevitable in any one book. As a singular volume, Bernstein’s epic provides perhaps the greatest overall dragnet on this dumbfounding criminal colossus.

“According to a study by researchers at Syracuse University, the number of white-collar crime prosecutions in 2018 hit a twenty-year low, with fewer than six thousand expected that year, compared to over nine thousand in 1998. In 2019, it dropped again, to the lowest level in thirty-three years.”

Which area or angle of Trump’s landfill of criminal offending do you want to concentrate on as a researcher? – rape, sexual assault, incestuous relations, sexual abuse of minors, sex trafficking – file 1, abnormally intimate close relationship & specialized apprenticeship with the reviled Roy Cohn – file 2, vouching for personal pilot, tenant & associate – the bizarre shadow-criminal & convicted cocaine-trafficker Joseph Weichselbaum Baum, slew of Italian mob/casino gangster/organized crime family connections, glut of Russian mob connections – file 3, decades & decades of fraud, deception, abject corruption, bribes, legal rigging, graft, falsification, concealment, apex dishonesty, forgery & illusion, bankruptcy, money laundering, settlements & pay-offs, court cases & criminal investigations, trial rigging, trickery, stiffing (refusing to pay for work rendered), cooking the books, false accounting etc etc – file 4, selling of the presidency/unrivalled abuse of office, cash for access – file 5, the wholesale whoring of the political apparatus to corporate/moneyed interests – file 6, treason, subjugation to foreign interests & entities, aiding & abetting overseas enemies, acting explicitly against the nations interests based on personal transactions or benefits from international actors (many criminal) – file 7, foreign state interference in national elections, assisted overseas criminal interference & covert political manipulations of voters (election rigging) & illegal financial donations -file 8 … on & on, & we are only just warming-up.

“Some of the land Donald Trump coveted belonged partly to Kenneth Shapiro and Daniel Sullivan, who journalist Timothy O’Brien described in his book TrumpNation as, respectively, “a street-level gangster with close-ties to the Philadelphia mob” and a “Mafia associate, FBI informant, and labour negotiator.” Sullivan was a six-foot-five former truck driver who had been arrested on weapons and assault charges and been incarcerated for larceny. Trump drew him close: according to Sullivan, Trump asked him to handle the problem with the underpaid, undocumented Polish immigrants working on Trump Tower, and to serve as “labour consultant” for the newly renamed Grand Hyatt hotel on Forty-Second Street in Manhattan.” -”The contractor eventually faced repercussions [“$4 an hour, off the books, undocumented, twelve-hour shifts, seven days a week, no asbestos protection or overpay, exploitation of immigrant workers] and Trump paid a $1.375-million settlement.”

Wayne Barrett’s Trump-The Greatest Show on Earth is widely regarded as the definitive historical Trump account. I consider this book a superior replacement or successor, more up-to-date, less punctilious & obsessive over minutiae, & much more readable (I find Wayne’s conversation infinitely better than his writing which can be extremely laborious).
For solid, non-specialized Trump corruption, both business & politics, this is a spectacular codex almost rupturing under the weight of its own crime load.

Ivanka also gets the most detailed & sharply-researched mauling to date. Berstein really has the goods on her, it is a bonfire.

“Trump showed-up to every regulatory hearing, even if it was only a staff hearing, in person. He took local council members to dinner.”

“I gave to many people. Before this, before two months ago, I was a businessman. I give to everybody. When they call, I give. And do you know what? When I need something from them two years later, three years later, they are there for me.”

Running parallel is the equally despicable, insanely corrupt, monstrously noxious Kushner family, specifically Jared Kushner & his convicted felon father Charlie.
Despite the truly epic rot & threat, coverage of the Kusners is rare.
Jared’s strategy of corrupting publications, “kill the story” tactics, intensely manicured PR & spin & a habit of running punitive “hit pieces” in his toy-rag – The New York Observer – on adversaries or critics seems to work well. He also has an extremely close relationship with Rupert Murdoch, Henry Kissinger & Benjamin Netanyahu, who, along with Trump, afford him an exceptional sphere of protection. Further more, his deep fervency for international Zionism places him in the favour of other powerful turpitude.

“All my financial contributors were vying for payback…. You can’t take large sums of money from people without making them specific and personal promises in return. People weren’t shy about saying what they expected for their ‘investments’ ”. – disgraced former New Jersey Governor Jim McGreevey (a Charlie Kushner vassal)

“Robert Hopkins was later convicted of running a mob-backed gambling ring out of Trump Tower [he was also investigated for ordering a murder]. Trump wasn’t charged.”

The Guardian Newspaper has an ‘undeclared’ practice of almost never covering Jared Kushner. He rarely ever features, only if the hand is absolutely forced, & then with as minimal exposure as possible. The publication has “graced” Benjamin Netanyahu with the same favourable treatment.

“Jared was not in the schools highest academic track in all courses, and his test scores were below Ivy League standards.” – “There was no way anybody in the administrative office of the school thought he would on the merits get into Harvard. His GPA did not warrant it, his SAT scores did not warrant it. – former Frisch official
“In 1998, the year before Jared applied, Charlie pledged $2.5 million to Harvard, which named Charlie and Seryl to it’s Committee on University Resources.”

Vicky Ward’s brilliant 2019 Kushner Inc. Greed. Ambition. Corruption is the only other book I am aware of that has made a concerted effort in addressing the malign menace of Kushner.

Man! This is heavy going. Unimaginable.
It is the Dershowitz house of corruption, where everybody knows, the evidence is conclusive, the criteria is consummate, the prosecution is assured -& yet – extracurricular corruption is employed. The bribe, the blackmail, the favour bank, the infiltration, the exemption, the technicality, the intimidation/sabotage of crucial elements. Settlements, dropped charges, disappearances, gagging orders, hush money, non disclosure agreements, counter suing, sweet heart deals, catch and kill, suppression, abscission, presidential pardons, cronyism, conspiracy, collusion, absorption.

“Jared’s father had sent the videotape of is uncle Billy with the prostitute to his aunt Esther on the eve of his cousin Jacob’s engagement party. Charlie had wanted to send it to Jacob too.”

“Jared took more and more cues from Rupert Murdoch. He increasingly followed Murdoch’s model of using his publication to achieve a set of political and business aims.”

In the greater scope of frothing faeces without end or abatement – you can almost suspend the evil & perversion of the Kushner & Trump disease & point directly at America itself.
Despite the oceans of churning crime & all-enshrouding corruption, the trillion opportunities to interdict this fucking sickness & stop it metastasising into some world-threatening new dark age of venal apocalypse was never delivered or seized upon.
America failed to contain or prevent this disgusting, nightmarish, virulent obscenity.

“Less than a year later, Ivanka Trump was under criminal investigation for felony fraud for lying to buyers of the Trump SoHo.”

“Four months later, the Trumps were sued for ‘an ongoing pattern of fraudulent misrepresentations and deceptive sales practices.”

All that “law & order”, all those cops & lawyers, all those legislators, special agents, intelligence & agency staff in law enforcement & homeland security …. they let these sick degenerate fucks just keep on getting away with it, spraying their criminality over the country, infecting & corrupting, soiling, ruining, raping, ravaging, rotting, weakening, humiliating, hollowing, desecrating, retarding, impairing, degrading & vitiating.
A Trump presidency? Presidency? PRESIDENCY?
The ultimate American failure.
Impotence.

“By the time Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr.’s office launched a criminal enquiry into the Trump’s work on the Trump SoHo project, Donald Trump had been sued, repeastedly, for cheating buyers, shareholders, customers, and vendors. One of his cassinos had been cited by the US Treasury for failing to enforce money-laundering controls. He had been given the biggest fine for violating lobbying laws in New York sState history. He had been interviewed by FBI agents on multiple occasions about multiple criminal schemes. And yet neither he nor his family have ever been charged with a crime.”

& now that devilish, demonic, hellish, reprobate, rapist madman is “out of office” – after taking the country to the brink, they are still struggling to enforce the law & finally swat those deranged titans of turbo-corruption.
Inconceivable.
They better be laying the perfect clean-sweep & definitive wipe-out purge, just delaying for the maximum convictions, maximum rates, maximum numbers ….. anything else would be both unfathomable & intolerable.
Death spiral.
Meltdown.
Expiry.

“ – [Marc] Kosowitz was heard boasting that he had gotten a criminal case against Don Jr. and Ivanka killed, a case that would have been “very dangerous” to the Trump family and the business.”

“Nor can you escape liability by looking the other way. The entire Baku deal is a giant red flag – the direct involvement of foreign government officials and their relatives in Iran with ties to the Revolutionary Guard. Corruption warning signs are rarely more obvious.” – legal scholar Jessica Tillipman on Trump International Hotel & Tower Baku

“The Russian market is attracted to me.” I have a great relationship with many Russians.” “almost all of the oligarchs were in the room” – Donald Trump on his infamous 1013 trip to Moscow

Bernstein has really, really laid it out. Away from the specific offending families & the criminal entourage or “crime force” that they employ, empower & assist, you can read American Oligarchs objectively as a major study of modern corruption & it’s appendage phenomena.
Again, America’s failure, from every angle, in eliminating/stemming this extremism has resulted in the extremism interfering, contaminating, & indeed usurping the countries political administration & connecting infrastructure.

& even further, external & international corruption & organized criminal elements, the world over, now have VIP access, favour, & commonality with this new Chthuluh & it’s totalitarian transactionism.
Corruptocracy.
“Let’s make a deal”.

“Kushner’s application for top-secret clearance had been rejected by career security officials because of his business entanglements, but that their supervisor, a Trump appointee, had overuled them. Kushner was one of at least twenty-five cases in which career security experts were overruled in the Trump administration, something that had happened only once in the three years prior.”

Andrea Bernstein, 2020, Norton & Company, 413 pages