Last March the New Yorker had an extensive article on Donald and Ivanka Trump’s involvement in the Baku Hotel in Iran:
Donald Trump’s Worst Deal The President helped build a hotel in Azerbaijan that appears to be a corrupt operation engineered by oligarchs tied to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard.
A former top official in Azerbaijan’s Ministry of Tourism says that, when he learned of the Trump hotel project, he asked himself, “Why would someone put a luxury hotel there? Nobody who can afford to stay there would want to be in that neighborhood.”
The Azerbaijanis behind the project were close relatives of Ziya Mammadov, the Transportation Minister and one of the country’s wealthiest and most powerful oligarchs.
Ivanka Trump was the most senior Trump Organization official on the Baku project. In October, 2014, she visited the city to tour the site and offer advice. An executive at Mace, the London-based construction firm that oversaw the tower’s conversion to a hotel, met with Ivanka in Baku and New York. He told me, “She had very strong feelings, not just about the design but about the back of the hotel—landscaping, everything.” The Azerbaijani lawyer said, “Ivanka personally approved everything.”
The sustained back-and-forth between the Trump Organization and the Mammadovs has legal significance. If parties involved in the Trump Tower Baku project participated in any illegal financial conduct, and if the Trump Organization exerted a degree of control over the project, the company could be vulnerable to criminal prosecution.
Today, Rosenstein’s press conference focused on Iran, in particular indicting nine hackers who are members of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard:
Rosenstein Has Smoking Gun, Points At Iran
I believe this is the first step in going after Ivanka and going after the Trump Organization for money laundering. I know many here are very anti-Louise Mensch and the Scooby Gang, so I assume there is no love for Eric Garland either here at dkos, and am expecting some criticism for including this Twitter thread. But it’s cheerful and encouraging and what I needed to hear on this spring day.