claim that the Trump Organization has used neither outside investment, borrowing, nor the selling off of assets to raise hundreds of millions of dollars not otherwise evident on its balance sheet is belied by a statement Eric subsequently makes to Golf magazine.135 Trump’s second son, “who runs the golf side of the Trump business” according to the Atlantic, is asked by Golf reporter James Dodson in 2013 how it is that, after the 2008 recession—when, per Dodson, no banks were “touch[ing] a golf course”—the Trumps managed to move hundreds of millions of dollars into a series of new golf course properties.136 “Well, we don’t rely on American banks,” Eric tells Dodson. “We have all the funding we need out of Russia.… We’ve got some [Russian] guys that really, really love golf, and they’re really invested in our programs. We just go there [for money] all the time.”137
ANNOTATIONS
Internal IRA documents will not reflect the agency’s pro-Trump position until February 2016, however, with the operation purchasing its first anti-Clinton ads on social media in March 2016 and its first pro-Trump ads in April 2016.
According to the Mueller Report, the IRA’s activities will ultimately reach between 29 million and 126 million Americans via Facebook, across 80,000 posts and hundreds of thousands of followers of bogus IRA-run Facebook groups.138 On Twitter, the IRA runs 3,814 accounts, which, all told, tweet 175,993 times in just the ten weeks before the 2016 election.139 Approximately 1.4 million Americans are “in contact with” an IRA account on Twitter before the election, per the Mueller Report.140 IRA tweets are retweeted or otherwise engaged with by many associates of and advisers to the Trump campaign, including Michael Flynn, Michael Flynn Jr., Donald Trump Jr., Kellyanne Conway, Roger Stone, Brad Parscale (now Trump’s 2020 campaign manager), and a Fox News personality who advises Trump regularly on domestic policy issues behind the scenes, Sean Hannity.141 “In total,” the report states, “Trump campaign affiliates promoted dozens of tweets, posts, and other political content created by the IRA.”142
The Mueller Report identifies an additional 50,258 Twitter accounts linked to the Kremlin—which combined send out more than a million tweets in the ten weeks before Election Day in 2016.143
Meanwhile, Saudi officials, opining that the deal does not permanently end the Iranian nuclear threat, call it “extremely dangerous” and “unacceptable” and worry that the removal of sanctions on Iran will “allow Iran to fund proxy wars [in the Middle East] and extend its regional influence.”
The three proxy wars the Saudis and Emiratis are particularly concerned about include Iranian support for the regime of President Bashar al-Assad, who stands accused of war crimes in the Syrian civil war; alleged Iranian support for the Houthi rebels in Yemen fighting against a Saudi-Emirati coalition backed by the United States; and alleged passive Iranian support for Islamic State, as Iran “has extended its influence politically and militarily as the [Iraqi] government battles Islamic State extremists,” according to the Washington Post in 2015.144
The Wall Street Journal found that from January 2014 through June 2015, the pretax income for the entire Trump Organization was $160 million—an approximately $106 million annual income before taxes.
As the New Yorker notes, “With that money, Trump had to pay for his business, his taxes (if he paid any), his personal life style, and that of his family. His Boeing 757 alone cost more than ten thousand dollars per hour of use, not to mention the dozens of staffers at his various properties, the clothes and food and jewelry of a status-conscious family, and countless other expenses that could easily eat up all of that income. There simply isn’t enough money coming into Trump’s known business to cover the massive outlay he spent on Turnberry.”145
In 2014 Trump did more than buy Turnberry for $48.5 million, however. He also spent $29.2 million to buy yet another golf course, this one in Doonbeg, Ireland (ultimately named Trump International Golf Links & Hotel Ireland).146 Between 2014 and 2018, the Washington Post reports, material improvements to the two properties notwithstanding, Trump had to drop another $164 million in cash just to keep Turnberry and Doonbeg open.147 Doonbeg was priced at $16 million when it initially went on the market, according to the Guardian, suggesting that Trump may have overpaid for it by as much as $13.2 million.148
CHAPTER 3
THE YOUNG PRINCE, ISRAELI SPIES, THE NRA JUNKET, AND THE FLYNN INTEL GROUP
2015
As MBS ascends to power in Riyadh with the support and approval of MBZ, MBZ adviser Erik Prince insinuates himself into the Trump campaign.