Back on April 17th, Josh Marshall unearthed the news that Michael Cohen’s uncle, Morton Levine, owned a Brooklyn social club called El Caribe, that long served as the headquarters for Russian mob bosses. Furthermore, Marshall learned that Mr. Levine is still alive and had revealed that “all his nieces and nephews owned shares of the El Caribe and still do” and that Michael Cohen only gave up his share after Donald Trump was elected president.
I had some ideas about what this must mean, but I wanted to get a better sense of it so I went looking for more information. In the process, I read plenty of old articles that had been published in New York City newspapers and magazines in the 1980s and 1990s, but the most comprehensive source I found was a book written by Robert I. Friedman called Red Mafiya: How the Russian Mob Has Invaded America. The book, which was originally published in 2000, is available at Amazon but you can also read it in installments at a website Friedman set up back in 2007. If you don’t want to read an entire book, I suggest you browse the third and fourth installments.
It’s in those sections that you’ll get the full bloody history of the gang wars involving El Caribe mafiya bosses Evsei Agron, Marat Balagula, Boris Nayfeld (also profiled recently by the Associated Press), and Monya Elson. You’ll also learn about the arrival of the “Great White Shark” Vyascheslav Kirillovich Ivankov who took the violence to another level and consolidated power over Russian organized crime in America.
When Michael Cohen’s boyhood friend Felix Sater set up a pump and dump stock scam in the early 1990’s, he was really working for Ivankov. I’ll have more to say about this later, but I have a school function for my son to attend at the moment. You won’t regret perusing some of the links I’ve provided above because it will give you a hint to what kinds of activities the Feds are investigating and some insight into what kind of information The Taxi King might be able to provide.
I do find the shift interesting to where just yesterday I watched a tv pundit refer to Cohen, Manafort & Trump as a ‘criminal enterprise’. It’s actually much more productive to look at this whole mess through that lens and surely more productive than fighting conspiracies like a whack a mole project.
History already points to the Russian Maffia and GRU joining forces in late 90’s.
We need to broaden our understanding of the role of the Russian mafia.
Broadening?
I think it almost certain that it is a main pillar of the Russian state and the whole Russian oligarchical system as it stands now.
How much broader need it be?
AG
You ask a good question.
This investigation is starting to look like going fishing in a rowboat and reeling in the tentacle of the biggest squid imaginable.
You could run an entire justice department by itself if you get involved in taking down the Russian worldwide criminal enterprise system.
How do we separate the problem we have to solve immediately from this gigantic enterprise?
I wonder if Mueller is using investigating Trump as a front to actually go after the Russian mob/foreign state interests in America.
Mueller likely already has enough to put President Stupid and his family in a federal pen indefinitely for months now. BUT he has chance to go after an apparatus that is a much bigger threat to our nation.
It would seem a shrewd plan.
You should keep in mind that the Russian mob, for obvious reasons, has it’s tentacles much further up the Democrats asses than the Republicans. This presidency comes out of New York, so it’s bipartisan, but if this opens up everyone gets burned.
Not following you on that comment.
Are there Democratic relationships with the Russians that we should be aware of? If so, I would really like to know.
Or are you using “tentacles” in a different way than we see with the GOP swamp creatures?
That’s my point about there being a much more dangerous threat than one compromised two-bit failed conman and his hustler kids who only exist because in our nation, white people with connections, media savvy, and at least an appearance of wealth are above the law.
So burn away. We’ll only come out for the better in the long run. Apologies if presented myself as someone who’d be cool with all of this if the President was Democrat.
You write:
Great!!!
Let’s start the damned fire!!!
AG
P.S. That series of chapters by Robert I. Friedman that you linked?
Thank you!!!
They should be read by everyone in the nation. The depth and breadth of this criminal enterprise is astounding.
“This investigation is starting to look like going fishing in a rowboat and reeling in the tentacle of the biggest squid imaginable.”
That deserves a meme.
That’s a good one and what I’ve been saying for months, only to realize ‘Mueller’s gonna need more lawyers’.
Broader in the sense that most people aren’t Booman and so they haven’t delved into the tentacles of the Russian mafia/GRU into this Country. The oligarchs are the pinnnacle of the power in Russia and the face of the mafia/GRU but our problem is that we’re chasing our tails trying to sort through every story they create, when it’s the totality and singular mentality that is driving their game plan. Look at all of them as a whole not as independent actors.
9/11 Rudy knows all these people as he was a US Atty and mayor of NYC. The Taxi King may have dirt on Rudy too.
Giuliani was dirty too. One of his capos…Bernie Kerik, a dirty cop who Giuliani appointed as Police Commissioner…took a four year sentence and kept his mouth shut. There is no doubt in my mind that there are literally hundreds of people in positions of power who know about Giuliani’s real history. He’s a useful tool, so he’s never been busted.
His time will come eventually…hopefully as part of the coming Trump catastrophe.
Let us pray.
AG
I don’t know what to make of Sater. From the beginning of the Mueller investigation, it’s been considered likely that he’s one of Trump’s partners in crime — at least by the sources I read.
Then a month or so ago Buzzfeed posted a detailed and seemingly well-sourced article that claims Sater has been an FBI ASSET for decades. Yup, a source, an agent, an asset — and they claim a particularly valuable one. Partly, he did it to pay for his stock market fraud; partly, he gets a thrill out of being James Bond.
Check it out. I swear the article makes him sound like a GREAT AMERICAN HERO. Al Qaeda, North Korea, undercover work with Ukrainian money launderers. No idea what to make of it. If it’s true, you’d think he could make himself useful to Mueller and wonder why he’d blow his cover now.
https://www.buzzfeed.com/anthonycormier/felix-sater-trump-russia-undercover-us-spy?utm_term=.uaYKVX6
lAD#.mszLpo75QP
It was a good piece, but Booman has done several pieces that are much better.
I’ve seen a number of Booman’s comments on Cohen. If there’s a dedicated piece, I haven’t seen it.
But I doubt it matters. My point is there’s a disconnect. Booman and everyone else presents Sater as a man with a criminal background and long-time connections to oligarchs, Trump, and Cohen. We know he recently worked on a Trump/Russia deal. We know he badly wanted Trump to be president. The implication is he’s shady character who was involved in criminal activities with Trump and various oligarchs and may have been involved in election meddling.
In contrast, Buzzfeed presents Sater as a REFORMED criminal, a good guy who’s been working for the FBI for decades and was entrusted with sensitive assignments. if that’s true, his relationship with Trump is irrelevant. He’s a certified good guy/intelligence agent who wouldn’t have helped Trump launder money or facilitated election meddling.
Weirdest of all, if Sater is a good guy AND a longtime Trump associate with insider knowledge of Trump and Cohen’s activities AND an enthusiastic supporter of Trump’s campaign… he obviously thinks Trump has cleaner hands than we do.
I find that perplexing.
BuzzFeed and more
○ All American, Spy Felix Sater Working All Sides
Booman has been writing about Sater for over a year. He’s not a reformed bad guy, just one who knows how to play any side that will show up at his doorstep. This piece talks about how the FBI has mishandled him
You find that Sater problem perplexing because…bless your heart…you still believe that the U.S. government is a legitimately honest production. It is not, as are not most of its agencies.
One thing that has been lacking in most of the various upsets regarding “RUSSIAN CRIMINALITY!!!” is that it is a simpler, easier to see criminality than is the U.S. version. It’s crudely effective, but certainly not very subtle.
The U.S., on the other hand, has a media and educational system that is so multi-layered…and those layers are so well aimed at the various groups that comprise its population…that each group is told a different story, but it all adds up to “We’re the good guys!!!”
We are not.
On the contrary, we have…since the end of WW II at least…been the best, most subtle, most powerful and most effective bad guys in the world.
The Russians…and whatever other forces have been busily disrupting our system for their own profit…found a hole in our societal dream machine. A digital hole. And they used it most effectively. Our job now is to at the very least patch up that hole, and in the process maybe to some degree clean up our own act. I’m not holding my breath regarding the “clean up” part, myself…maybe some things will get better, but the sheer monetary might of the global corporate empire that supports the U.S. will oppose any “cleaning up” of its own criminality.
So it goes.
I’d be happy just to see the Trumpist part go down, myself.
The rest?
If it did go down, what would happen to the population of the United States and most of Western Europe? Some various sorts of revolution?
Could be…we certainly can’t support the level of life that the majority of the NATO population lives without that corporate criminality.
Whatever does happen…fasten your seatbelts. It’s going to continue to be a rough ride.
Bet on it.
Later…
AG