Another interesting look under the rock of Truth Social by The Guardian:
Trump Media saved in 2022 by Russian-American under criminal investigation
Donald Trump’s social media company Trump Media managed to go public last week only after it had been kept afloat in 2022 by emergency loans provided in part by a Russian-American businessman under scrutiny in a federal insider-trading and money-laundering investigation.
… Trump Media almost did not make it to the merger after regulators opened a securities investigation into the merger in 2021 and caused the company to burn through cash at an extraordinary rate as it waited to get the green light for its stock market debut.
The situation led Trump Media to take emergency loans, including from an entity called ES Family Trust, which opened an account with Paxum Bank, a small bank registered on the Caribbean island of Dominica that is best known for providing financial services to the porn industry.
Well, this certainly has all the elements of sleaze usually associated with Trump.
And how did that “lifeline” get set up? Well, when Trump needs quick cash, getting it somehow usually seems to involve shady Russians.
Through leaked documents, the Guardian has learned that ES Family Trust operated like a shell company for a Russian-American businessman named Anton Postolnikov, who co-owns Paxum Bank and has been a subject of a years-long joint federal criminal investigation by the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) into the Trump Media merger.
Get this: Postolnikov turns out to be the
nephew of one “Alexander Smirnov”. (Is it the same
Alexander Smirnov that fed the FBI lies about Biden? The story doesn’t say, and I don’t know.)
Anyway, back to Postolnikov:
Last month, federal prosecutors charged Michael Shvartsman, a close associate of Postolnikov, with money laundering in a superseding indictment after previously charging him and two others in July with insider-trading Digital World shares. Shvartsman and his co-defendants pleaded not guilty.
That was then.
Shvartsman pled guilty yesterday.
At least part of the evidence against Shvartsman came from a confidential informant for the DHS…
“[Shvartsman] stated that a friend of his owns a bank in the island of Dominica and would be able to provide banking services to Russian and Ukraine Nationals if the [confidential informant] had other clients in need of that service,” the DHS report said.
…[Shvartsman’s associate] …mentioned that [Shvartsman] essentially provided ‘bridge financing’ for the firm behind the Truth Social media platform,” it said.
This all sounds like something Comer would have concocted about the Bidens, but in contrast to Comer’s imaginary BS, this is
actually real, and deeply involves Trump and Truth Social.
But you know, at some point with Trump and enforcing the law, I suppose you have to narrow your focus to just
a few of his shady/illegal dealings.
Maybe the Feds should file this away for future use if needed.