Between 1998 and 2000, the CIA produced over 100 reports on crime and corruption in Russia. Those reports concluded that the Russian mob and its cronies in government and big business looted the country into a condition resembling medieval beggar. The Russian economy declined every year for a decade. More than 40 percent of the working class lived in abject poverty. News stories of men killing each other for food became normal. While workers suffered, luxury cars on the streets of Moscow increased. If business disputes occurred between members of the elite, they were solved with guns. Perpetrators knew they could get away with it, because the government was on their side. If a politician threatened this way of life by calling for reform, they, too, were killed.

While this transpired, the Russian mob had men in the U.S. working to expand their empire, through the stock market, then real estate, then politicians. They knew how to inject themselves into society. They knew because they’d already done it in Israel. According to Israeli law enforcement, around 50,000 Russian criminals lived in Israel in 1996 – nearly 1% of the country’s population. They needed to be recognized as businessmen, so they bought newspapers, insurance companies, buildings, and any other resource they could.

All of this is documented in Robert I. Friedman’s book Red Mafiya. Published over two decades ago – long before Russiagate – it connects both Rudy Giuliani and Donald Trump to the Russian mob’s efforts to infiltrate our government. Today, Donald Trump is reshaping our government to leave us in the same poverty and elite rule as seen in 1990s Russia. He’s selling our resources (and even citizenship) to the highest bidder, embedding big banks and Wall Street into our government, dismantling public services so private companies can make a profit on them, gutting health and safety programs while insurance companies bleed us dry, and using the government to back cryptocurrency – the top method for today’s transnational money laundering operations. While he does that, the public servants who might try to stand in the way of his plans or demand accountability are being put through lie detectors or getting fired by the thousands.

Until 9/11, transnational organized crime was considered the #1 threat to U.S. national security and democracy. But we redirected all of our resources to fight foreign terrorists, and the criminals at home snuck by.