The walls are starting to shut in on Donald Trump with this discovery of his illegal business dealings in Cuba. Will his followers begin to realize that Trump tricked them into believing in him?
Rachel Maddow: Newsweek story Trump’s Cuba dealings has political implications
The story exposes the type of businessman that defines Donald Trump. Journalists expose his illegal business dealings in Cuba. – Tip of the iceberg? It turns out Trump used shadow companies to hide the transactions to do business in the embargoed country.
Worse, while he was doing business in Cuba, he was in a presidential campaign with a strong stance of maintaining the embargo. It was the same embargo he was breaking.
The Newsweek story by Kurt Eichenwald starts says the following.
A company controlled by Donald Trump, the Republican nominee for president, secretly conducted business in communist Cuba during Fidel Castro’s presidency despite strict American trade bans that made such undertakings illegal, according to interviews with former Trump executives, internal company records and court filings.
Documents show that the Trump company spent a minimum of $68,000 for its 1998 foray into Cuba at a time when the corporate expenditure of even a penny in the Caribbean country was prohibited without U.S. government approval. But the company did not spend the money directly. Instead, with Trump’s knowledge, executives funneled the cash for the Cuba trip through an American consulting firm called Seven Arrows Investment and Development Corporation. Once the business consultants traveled to the island and incurred the expenses for the venture, Seven Arrows instructed senior officers with Trump’s company—then called Trump Hotels & Casino Resorts—how to make it appear legal by linking it after-the-fact to a charitable effort.
The payment by Trump Hotels came just before the New York business mogul launched his first bid for the White House, seeking the nomination of the Reform Party. On his first day of the campaign, he traveled to Miami where he spoke to a group of Cuban-Americans, a critical voting bloc in the swing state. Trump vowed to maintain the embargo and never spend his or his companies’ money in Cuba until Fidel Castro was removed from power.
The hypocrisy that Donald Trump displays and the disregard for the law foretells what a Trump presidency would look like. An informed population will make the right choice.
(h/t MSNBC)
