Trump's Russian Owners

Donald Trump likes to claim that he doesn't own any property in Russia. At the carnage he called a press conference last week he said: “I can tell you, speaking for myself, I own nothing in Russia. I have no loans in Russia. I don't have any deals in Russia.”

This isn't through a lack of trying: Trump has tried numerous times, but has failed to close any deals in Russia.

While Trump doesn't own anything in Russia, a lot of Russians own pieces of Trump:

Dolly Lenz, a real estate broker in New York, said she sold about 65 units in Trump World Tower, a condominium tower at 845 U.N. Plaza in Manhattan, to Russian buyers looking for real estate investments in the late 1990s. “I had contacts in Moscow looking to invest in the United States,” Lenz said. “’What do you have to recommend?’ They all wanted to meet Donald. They became very friendly.”

And this:

In 2008, Trump sold a mansion in Palm Beach, Florida, to Russian billionaire Dmitry Rybolovlev for $95 million. On the campaign trail, Trump at one point claimed it was his only dealing with Russia, but that’s not accurate.

The Russian paid far more than market value, for some strange reason...

The same year he sold the mansion, his son, Donald Trump Jr., told the global trade publication eTurboNews that Russians were key investors in the Trump Organization’s assets. "And in terms of high-end product influx into the US, Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets; say in Dubai, and certainly with our project in SoHo and anywhere in New York,” Trump Jr. said in the interview. “We see a lot of money pouring in from Russia. There's indeed a lot of money coming for new-builds and resale reflecting a trend in the Russian economy and, of course, the weak dollar versus the ruble." 

Just before the election the Trump Toronto hotel went bankrupt. It's managed by Trump's company and was financed by Russians.

When American banks stopped lending money to Trump after his numerous bankruptcies, he turned to Russians for financial backing for his new projects 

The most notable — and most notorious — of Trump’s Russian investors came through the Bayrock Group, which according to CNN, was “a company run by Soviet immigrants, and according to a lawsuit filed, financed by Russian and Kazakhstan money.” Bayrock, whose operations were headed by a man accused in a lawsuit of using “mob-like tactics to achieve his goals,” helped develop huge Trump projects in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, Phoenix, Arizona, and New York.

Yes, Trump doesn't any property in Russia. But the situation is actually far worse: he is in bed with a lot of questionable Russians and he owes a lot of Russians a lot of money.

We don't really know the extent of Trump's indebtedness to the Russians, but it's a huge conflict of interest. It's only one of the many reasons why Congress should release his tax returns so that the people of the United States can see just how much Trump owes his foreign masters.