The federal arrest and indictment for insider stock trading of Representative Chris Collins (R-NY), the first member of Congress to endorse Donald Trump for president, had a familiar air about it. Indicted along with Collins were his son, Cameron Collins, and Stephen Zarsky, the father of Cameron Collins’s fiancee.
As the Sly and the Family Stone song goes, “It’s a family affair . . . One child grows up to be somebody that just loves to learn. And another child grows up to be somebody you’d just love to burn.”
Former Trump campaign manager, Paul Manafort, is currently on trial for tax evasion and other federal criminal charges. Manafort, like Collins, involved his family in his criminal enterprise. His now former son-in-law, Jeffrey Yohai, was involved in real estate fraud in southern California that involved properties jointly owned with Manafort. One of several Manafort shell companies, Jesand Investment Corporation LLC, was named after Manafort’s two daughters, Jessica and Andrea. The firm was used by Manafort to buy a condominium in Manhattan’s Chinatown for $2.54 million. Manafort bought other properties in the name of his wife, Kathleen Manafort, a graduate of Georgetown Law School and a member of the bar in Virginia. The property bought by Mrs. Manafort includes a $5.6 million estate in the Hamptons, Long Island. The mortgage for the estate was financed by Charles Kushner, the ex-con father of Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and Thomas Barrack, Trump’s longtime friend and adviser.
Jared’s sister, Nicole Kushner Mayer, who now runs Kushner Companies, has been involved in possible illegal deals with Chinese firms, such as Qiaowai, to fast track U.S. green card approval for Chinese nationals willing to buy condo units at Trump/Kushner-owned properties in Jersey City, New Jersey. The uncle of Jared and Nicole, Richard Stadtmauer, was indicted, and convicted of one federal count of conspiracy to defraud the United States and nine counts of willfully aiding in the filing of materially false or fraudulent tax returns. Stadtmauer and Manafort must have attended the same Trump University class on tax evasion.
Involving family members in one’s criminal exploits is commonplace with the Trump administration and Republican supporters like Collins.
Collins, a member of the board of Innate Immunotherapeutics, an Australian pharmaceutical company, used privileged information to dump 1.3 million shares of the company’s stock before it plummeted in value. The devaluation of the stock price came after it was reported to the firm that one of Innate’s drugs had failed test trials. Collins saved $570,000 by selling the stock before the news of the drug’s test failure became public.
Collins was charged with one count of conspiracy to commit securities fraud, seven counts of securities fraud, one count of wire fraud and one count of making false statements to federal investigators.
Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, through their stewardship of the Trump Organization, are involved in business activities with some of the world’s most unsavory criminal elements, many linked to Russian organized crime, including the “Odessa Mafia,” which plies the seas of illicit activity from home bases in Israel, Ukraine, Switzerland, Cyprus, Britain, and Russia.
Eric Trump’s wife, Lara Trump, is involved in business with Brad Parscale, the head of Trump’s 2020 re-election campaign. Parscale is also heavily involved with the election manipulation firm Data Propria, which absorbed much of the personnel and information assets of the now-defunct firm Cambridge Analytica, which stood charged with social media manipulation of scores of elections around the world, including the 2016 U.S. presidential race.
When it comes to Trump associates, such as his former personal attorney, Michael Cohen, and foreign investors in Trump properties around the world, the network of grifters and mobsters includes wives, sons, daughters, sons-in-law, daughters-in-law, fathers, brothers, nephews, uncles, and cousins.
In the mid 2000s, Donald Trump Jr. and Dallas businessman Gentry Beach formed the firm Future Venture LLC, a Delaware-incorporated hedge fund. In February 2018, Gary Beach, the father of Gentry Beach, was convicted on federal bankruptcy criminal charges. Gentry Beach is also linked to the scandal-plagued Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke.
Zinke is reportedly involved in a real estate development project to build a microbrewery, hotel and shopping complex in his hometown of Whitefish, Montana. The project developer, 95 Karrow LLC, has interesting owners. They are John and Katie Lesar, who just happen to be the son and daughter-in-law of David Lesar, the chairman of Halliburton, who maintains a home in Whitefish. Part of the property allotted for the 95 Karrow project is owned by a non-profit entity called the “Great Northern Veterans Peace Park Foundation, Inc., which is run by Zinke and his wife, Lolita Zinke.
In Trump World, everything is a “family affair.” There is also a massive degree of high crimes and misdemeanors.
Previously published in the Wayne Madsen Report.
Copyright © 2018 WayneMadenReport.com
Wayne Madsen is a Washington, DC-based investigative journalist and nationally-distributed columnist. He is the editor and publisher of the Wayne Madsen Report (subscription required).
