General Discussion

In a statement to The Real Deal in 2013, a spokesperson for Witkoff said the executive regretted providing a reference for the mobster. “Mr. Steven Witkoff met Golubchik in 2009 and submitted a recommendation to complete a board package as a favor to a mutual acquaintance,” the statement said. “He knew him tangentially. He regrets providing a reference on his behalf and acknowledges that it was a mistake.”...

...Now that Trump is back in power and Witkoff is his point man, their ties to the Russian Mafia are of particular interest because, as I showed in House of Trump, House of Putin, the Russian Mafia is very different from the Mafia we have seen in films like The Godfather, where it is always at war with the FBI.

In Russia, the Mafia has long been a de facto state actor serving the Russian Federation in much the same way that American intelligence services serve the United States, and many of the people connected to Trump had strong ties to the Russian FSB, the state security service that is the successor to the feared KGB.

Moreover, as I wrote in The New Republic, over the past three decades, at least 13 people with known or alleged links to Russian mobsters or oligarchs have owned, lived in, and even run criminal activities out of Trump Tower and other Trump properties. Many used his apartments and casinos to launder untold millions in dirty money. Others provided Trump with lucrative branding deals that required no investment on his part.