Trump and swamp drainage

An interesting little chat I had with a Trump supporting friends, they were saying that how Paul Manafort is part of the corrupt Washington swamp and that Trump needs to drain it, I was confused, how did that logic work?

 

Congressman Chris Collins (R, NY) has been a rarity,
a lawmaker from NY who is an ardent Trump supporter

He is facing insider trading charges---involving an Australian biotech co---and was arrested early this morning.
He is also accused of lying to the FBI.

Collins, along with his son Cameron Collins and Stephen Zarsky, the father of Cameron Collin's fiancee,
are being processed by the FBI in Manhattan.

https://www.wgrz.com/article/news/c...ing-charges-and-lying-to-the-fbi/71-581613154​

 

more details have surfaced regarding Chris Collins.

he sits on the Board of Director for this Aussie Biotech co.
in that capacity as a member of the BOD, he learned that the co had failed a critical trial test.
he passed on this confidential info to his son, who sold his OTC stock

altho Chris Collins didnot sell his stocks, he violated his fiduciary responsibility by passing the insiders info to his son.

Chris Collins could also be in legal trouble in Aussie land​

 

more details have surfaced on Trump's most elusive swampy survivor, Wilbur Ross;
alas, it has been over-shadowed by the Chris Collin arrest for insider trading.






The commerce secretary’s list of ethical conflicts would make even Scott Pruitt blush.

By Timothy L. O'Brien August 9, 2018, 4:00 AM PDT


While serving as commerce secretary, Ross also had an interest in a company, Diamond S Shipping Group Inc., that is partially owned by the Chinese government and does business in China. Ross, of course, has been in the thick of trade negotiations with China. Ross also has held stakes in natural gas companies while he negotiated a trade deal meant to increase natural gas exports to China.

Fox News had enough.=A host there criticized Ross on-air in June, pointing out that the commerce secretary was
“negotiating over South Korean steel imports while making money from importing South Korean steel.”​

One of Ross’s more curious investments involves the Bank of Cyprus. Ross was once the vice-chairman of the bank, an institution that has attracted the interest of Special Counsel Robert Mueller because Trump’s former campaign manager, Paul Manafort, now on trial in Virginia for tax and bank fraud, had accounts there.

A former vice-chairman of the bank once worked alongside Putin at the KGB, and five other Russians sat on the bank's board before Ross got more deeply involved. (Ross reportedly forced out that group when he first took a stake in the bank three years ago.)

Another major investor in the Bank of Cyprus is Viktor Vekselberg.

Alexander also recently parsed a litany of Ross's financial conflicts of interest, noting that all of it added up to an “ethical nightmare.”

Just a few weeks ago, Ross said that he would divest all of his equity investments after the Office of Government Ethics warned him that a failure to do so “created the potential for a serious criminal violation.”

It certainly took a long time for Ross to divest. He has been commerce secretary since February of last year and the ethics agreement he signed when he took the job obligated him to divest some of his assets (like his holdings in Invesco Ltd.) within 90 to 180 days of his confirmation. It wasn't until last December, however, that Ross sold an Invesco stake worth as much as $50 million. Ross said his failure to sell his Invesco shares on time was due to “inadvertent errors.” He also failed to sell investments in Greenbrier Companies Inc., Sun Bancorp Inc., and Air Lease Corp. on time. Ross said that was because he didn't know he still owned those assets.

The OGE also took Ross to task last month for using short sales of five stocks to meet some of his divestment deadlines. Among those shorts, the OGE noted, was Navigator Holdings Ltd., a shipping company that did business with a firm linked to Russian President Vladimir Putin. That sale occurred shortly after Ross was questioned by the New York Times about an article reporters were preparing on the Navigator investment. (Matt Levine, my Bloomberg Opinion colleague who helped me polish the Latin in the top of this column, has argued that Ross's sale didn't amount to insider trading; others contend it might have.)

There's more.

While serving as commerce secretary, Ross also had an interest in a company, Diamond S Shipping Group Inc., that is partially owned by the Chinese government and does business in China. Ross, of course, has been in the thick of trade negotiations with China. Ross also has held stakes in natural gas companies while he negotiated a trade deal meant to increase natural gas exports to China.

Fox News had enough. A host there criticized Ross on-air in June, pointing out that the commerce secretary was “negotiating over South Korean steel imports while making money from importing South Korean steel.”

One of Ross’s more curious investments involves the Bank of Cyprus. Ross was once the vice-chairman of the bank, an institution that has attracted the interest of Special Counsel Robert Mueller because Trump’s former campaign manager, Paul Manafort, now on trial in Virginia for tax and bank fraud, had accounts there.

A former vice-chairman of the bank once worked alongside Putin at the KGB, and five other Russians sat on the bank's board before Ross got more deeply involved. (Ross reportedly forced out that group when he first took a stake in the bank three years ago.)

Another major investor in the Bank of Cyprus is Viktor Vekselberg. A Russian businessman, Vekselberg was in the news recently because a firm controlled by his cousin gave Trump’s former lawyer, Michael Cohen, a lucrative consulting contract after Trump was elected president.

Then there’s Dmitry Rybolovlev, a Russian billionaire who bought a Palm Beach mansion from Trump in 2008 for $54 million more than Trump paid for it just four years earlier. He once was the biggest shareholder in the Bank of Cyprus. (Rybolovlev's investment in the bank appears to have been wiped out before Ross became involved with the bank.)

It's hard to discern how many of Ross’s business intersections in Cyprus were tangential and how many might have been more fundamental.

But added to the mass of other potential or actual conflicts that have dogged Ross
during his entire tenure at the Commerce Department, it's a wonder that he has
managed to outlast Pruitt. Then again, he's just been following the president's lead
when it comes to ignoring financial conflicts.​

https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-08-09/wilbur-ross-trump-s-elusive-swamp-creature

 

Where are the usual suspects to defend their guy Trump.
Kudos for NewRox Fan for being on the case.