The Trump Gold Card: the biggest Russian money laundering operation of all time.
Barely a ripple among the rest of his chaos, it could well be the main reason the Russians wanted Trump elected.
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It’s no secret that Russian money is what made Donald Trump wealthy (link | link | link | link). Until he got on that train, things weren’t so good. Throughout the 1980s, his real estate business was in such dire straits that his father Fred Trump bought $3,000,000 in casino chips at the Trump Taj Mahal so that Trump could make an overdue interest payment. It was shortly after that when most of his businesses went bankrupt. No US banks would touch him with a ten foot pole — and so he found another source: Russian oligarchs who needed to swap rubles for dollars. (A ruble today is worth 1.2 cents.)
A few weeks ago I posted here about the dubious “Krasnov” story. Regardless of whether he was ever actually “recruited” by the KGB in 1987, they had had their eye on him for decades as a “useful idiot” (as The Conversation put it). He was someone they knew would do favors for them — all for the price of flattery. Two excellent books on this subject are American Kompromat by Craig Unger and Collusion: Secret Meetings, Dirty Money, and How Russia Helped Donald Trump Win by Luke Harding. Russia was smart not to ever make a formal deal with Trump, as that’s risky for both. They have something far more valuable: A US President whose entire career has been in the service of Russian oligarchs who would stroke his ego.
And now, Trump has announced the greatest windfall in history for Russian oligarchs: his new “Trump Gold Card”. For a one-time payment of $5 million, anyone in the world can become a US citizen just like that. This will replace the EB-5 visa, which allowed foreigners who invested at least $500,000 that would either create or preserve American jobs to receive permanent resident status. The program has created hundreds of thousands of US jobs.
And now, the US Secretary of Commerce is a Trump lackey, Howard Lutnick. In a press conference, he said:
“The EB-5 program was full of nonsense, make believe and fraud, and it was a way to get a green card that was low price (which is all total bullshit). So the president said, rather than having this sort of ridiculous EB-5 program, we're going to end the EB-5 program. We're going to replace it with the Trump gold card.”
Well OK, it wasn’t total bullshit… there was some fraud. It was conducted by the Kushner family (yes, those Kushners) — and drew the scrutiny of the SEC. They had been illegally using the program to promise US residency to wealthy Chinese in exchange for investing in Kushner-owned companies. Jared Kushner took over Kushner Companies in 2005 when his father was convicted of 18 felonies, and who today is Trump’s nominee for US Ambassador to France.
Replacing the EB-5 program with the Trump Gold Card will be helpful to Russian oligarchs, and will be harmful to the United States. Russians will get to become US citizens (they need not reside here) and would provide benefits such as:
They could directly engage in the US economy without the restrictions placed on foreign nationals.
They would be able to invest globally via their citizenship, rather than being restricted just to Russia and the few countries that engage with Russia.
They would have a safe haven for all their assets.
Should they wish to engage in money laundering, being a US citizen would make that a million times easier and cheaper.
They would be relieved from the sanctions often placed against Russians, effectively voiding all the rightful sanctions the EU has imposed.
And… they would openly and legally have direct political influence, and could engage in lobbying and political activities in the US — a benefit which I’m sure is not lost on Trump.
See this article from The Moscow Times: Trump Is Rolling Out the Red Carpet for Russian Oligarchs.
And how would this be harmful to the United States?
Wholesale money laundering of Russian billions would take place.
Granting citizenship to an unlimited number of Putin associates would be an enormous national security risk. Hell; Putin himself would probably buy one.
It would send a strong message to the rest of the world that the US no longer takes a stance against corruption.
Increased wealth inequality.
Other countries that have tried similar programs were quickly swamped with Russian and Belarusian applicants. The programs were riddled with corruption. See this article, All that glitters: So-called ‘golden’ visa schemes are a glorified racket that do more harm than good.
While the EB-5 program was aimed at creating American jobs, the Trump Gold Card would offer no benefits whatsoever to American citizens.
We could probably go on all day like this. But there is one more rather important harmful effect that I believe deserves special attention. Recall my Skeptoid podcast #790, which examined whether the existence of billionaires is inherently harmful. My primary source for this episode was an important piece of research published in 2015 in the Journal of Comparative Economics.
Its most significant finding was that only politically-connected wealth inequality has a negative relationship with economic growth. What they did was to look at each country’s billionaires and determine whether their wealth was politically connected or not. And the two perfect examples are Russia and the United States:
Russian billionaires were almost all created during the privatization of industries following the collapse of the Soviet Unions. These were largely politically connected individuals who were essentially granted ownership of the former USSR’s most valuable companies. They became billionaires due to government corruption.
Billionaires through such government corruption are essentially nonexistent in the US (or at least they were until the Trump administration). Most are the Mark Cubans and Bill Gates and Warren Buffets and Jeff Bezos, and people who inherited their wealth. Even Elon Musk was, for a long time, a job creator.
What they found is that economic growth happens in countries where the people at the top of the wealth distribution period did not acquire their wealth through corruption. In 2024, Forbes found some 125 billionaires in Russia. How many of those would buy a Trump Gold Card? Considering the benefits, probably the vast majority of them.
What impact would it have on the US economy to dump in 125 billionaires, all of whom acquired their wealth through corruption?
It wouldn’t be good.
This is worse than a nightmare because I can’t just shake myself awake
The term 'useful idiot' is actually a Russian information warfare term of art. It has been in use since long before Trump was born. It describes credulous or otherwise easily influenced individuals who can be prompted, often without payment, to advance Russia's interests. It fits Donald Trump perfectly but make no mistake, thousands have trod that path before him.
Professor Thomas Rid's book, 'Active Measures: A History of Disinformation', is a scholarly study that examines the Russian art of disinformation reaching back beyond the Soviet era. It is an excellent and eye-opening read.