Trump’s Business of Corruption

I'm not a legal reporter.

I'm not a crime reporter.

I'm a business reporter.

And when a business is doing things

for years that just don't make sense,

it just makes me keep wondering.

What's going on?

What am I missing?

Okay.

(speaking foreign language)

Well thank you very much Mr. President.

I think the theory of the case is pretty simple.

This is right after the financial crisis.

There's not a lot of real estate deals to be had.

It was this paradoxical period

in Trump's life.

♫ Money, money, money, money

Because of the Apprentice,

because of his TV stardom,

he had never been more famous,

he had never been more thought of as

the model of a successful businessman,

of a successful developer.

And his business was in a lot of trouble.

You know, there were multiple bankruptcies,

he was loosing control of his casinos.

There was a real need for cash.

The Trump organization really is no longer

a developer in the traditional sense.

It's not building buildings.

It's not buying land and then constructing a tower.

It's really becoming a marketing company.

It has this brand, Trump,

and it goes around the world

and around the country

and sells that brand.

There's a few reasons why

these Georgians were interested

in the Trump brand.

So part of it I think,

is people have told me is

it really clicks with what

wealthy Russian men,

or former Soviet Union men

think of as manliness.

He may be the most eligible bachelor in America.

Please welcome Donald Trump.

They love the gold.

They love the marble.

The flash, you know, the old guys with flashy clothes

and the young, beautiful wife.

And there's a real brand synergy there

that maybe there isn't in other parts of the world.

Remember, the Trump organization

is switching to an international posture

with like four or five people

doing these international deals

with very little experience overseas.

And they're going into very complicated countries

with deeply corrupt economies,

and really problematic interactions

between business and politics.

And eventually what happens though is

you are in bed with some really bad people.

Yeah, so, the reason that

I started getting passionate about this story

is when Donald Trump,

in an interview with the New York Times,

basically hinted that if

Robert Mueller, the special counsel begins

investigating his business deals,

he would consider that crossing a red line,

and hinted that he might fire him.

Now, I already knew a fair bit about

how the Trump organization worked,

and i had the strong suspicion

that if there was any kind of collusion,

we don't know if there was,

it probably had it's roots

in a business deal.

So I thought to look more carefully

at deals in the former Soviet Union.

And what I saw here is

that the connection to Putin is

just a few hops, you know,

the shin bone's connected to the ankle bone.

I could not have done it without

these two Columbia University,

they were journalism students,

and now they're investigative fellows.

They spent unbelievable amount of time

on the Georgian government's business registry.

But then they find out

that most of the companies involved

are actually registered in these offshore jurisdictions.

Malta or the Netherlands,

or the British Virgin Islands.

And so that's a process of trying to find those companies.

Ultimately, billions and billions and billions of dollars,

countries all over the world.

We really needed to choose,

no, okay, what really matters

is that people are doing business with Trump,

who were they?

Where did they get their money?

How did they get their money?

And how are they connected to Putin?

That's what matters.

99 out of a 100 people won't talk to you but,

once in a while,

and it only takes a few,

you find people who will tell you some real information.

Probably the weirdest moment

was I was meeting a source

who asked to meet

on the waterfront.

Insisted that I

leave my phone in the car.

This person turned off both of their phones.

It had that kind of cloak and dagger feeling

throughout.

I'd say the toughest thing about reporting on Trump now is

everybody is terrified of

being mentioned in a tweet,

being attacked in some way.

Now, nobody's threatened me.

Nobody has said they want to hurt me.

But, it is a scary time

to be somebody who's reporting

negative stories about the president.

And I do live

in some degree of fear.

I mean I was a reporter in Iraq and I,

I had other fears in Iraq,

but I've never had that kind of

personal,

someone could just decide that I'm somehow

the personification of the enemy,

and ruin,

you know, cause real damage.

And that's scary.

There's almost no question

that some of their business,

some of the money they made came

from money launderers.

Trump's not alone.

I think he's probably an outlier.

I think he takes on riskier deals

with more troubling people than most would.

But he's not alone.

But now he's president.

And when you have this kind of promiscuous approach,

this broad approach to being available financially

to some of the most problematic people in the world,

people who are from a part of the world

where there is no separation

between politics, intelligence,

and military and business.

They're all one intertwined elite.

You have a disaster.

You have a president

who could, it's reasonable to fear,

be seriously compromised.

Doing a story like this,

I'm like boy, we have barely scratched the surface.

Alright, thanks guys.

(groups chatter)