TPM: Donald Trump, Goodfellas Edition.

As usual, Josh Marshall nails this.

So there was an FBI wiretap in Trump Tower! Just not placed there by Barack Obama and not targeting Donald Trump. Between 2011 and 2013 the FBI had a court approved warrant to eavesdrop on a Russian organized crime and money laundering operation out of the 63rd floor of Trump Tower.

Here's one interesting little nugget.

For two years ending in 2013, the FBI had a court-approved warrant to eavesdrop on a sophisticated Russian organized crime money laundering network that operated out of unit 63A in Trump Tower.

The FBI investigation led to a federal grand jury indictment of more than 30 people, including one of the world’s most notorious Russian mafia bosses, Alimzhan Tokhtakhounov. Known as the “Little Taiwanese,” Tokhtakhounov was the only target to slip away, and he remains a fugitive from American justice.

Five months after the April 2013 indictment and after Interpol issued a “red notice” for Tokhtakhounov, the fugitive appeared near Donald Trump in the VIP section of the Moscow Miss Universe pageant. Trump had sold the Russian rights for Miss Universe to a billionaire Russian shopping mall developer.

On the one hand this may seem like guilt by association. Trump has a bunch of buildings. Some tenants must be crooks. But the context is important. When you start piecing together the Trump story, basically everywhere you look, whether it's residents in his Trump-branded buildings, or his business associates or investors in his projects, Trump is - there's simply no other way to put it - tied up with it not just Russians but in many cases Russians tied to the criminal underworld and money laundering.

People still remember when Trump joked that he could shoot a guy dead on 5th Avenue and still keep his supporters on Team Trump. Well, one of his tenants, Eduard Nektalov, a diamond dealer from Uzbekistan, actually was shot to death in broad daylight on 6th Avenue in a gangland assassination. He was reported cooperating at the time with the Feds.
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