friend. i could go into conflict after conflict. but sadly mr. mueller is conflicted. but let him write his report. we did nothing, there s no collusion. donald trump has claimed he has no ties to russia. but there is reporting in a brand new book rebutting all of that. it s called house of trump house of putin claiming the trump tower effectively was a, quote, cathedral for russian maffia linked money laundering going back to the 1980s. from the book, it s hard to imagine trump had no knowledge about what was going on. president trump back in may of last year denied this type of thing in that now famous nbc lester holt interview about any links to russia. i have no investments in russia. none whatsoever. i don t have property in russia. i had the miss universe pageant which i owned for quite a while. i had it in moscow a long time ago. but other than that, i have
nothing to do with russia. i m joined by new york times best-selling author craig unger. what is the basis for this reporting and does it mean that donald trump as a president may, quote, owe russia something? absolutely. i believe this was the greatest intelligence operation of our times and it ended up putting a russian asset in the white house. i wanted to go back to the beginning and see how and when it began. i kept going back and back. i started looking at all the people who lived in trump tower. all the russians. and i googled them again and again. and i found that as early as 1984, donald trump s properties were being used to launder money for the russian maffia, a man who is associated with russian mafia, met with them in 1984 at trump tower, put down $16 paid for it and put it in an anonymous shell company.
as i traced things, this happened at least 1,300 times in 1,300 condos over the next 20 or 30 years. how do you get let me ask you the big question. i know you re going there. how do you get from that thing happening to the trump organization being in on it? well, you can t prove what donald trump knows, and the trump organization says, oh, we don t know who s buying these things, brokers sell them, and they re just not doing any due diligence. the real estate laws are incredibly lax so you don t have to reveal who the owner is. and as a reporter i can t penetrate that. i don t have subpoena power. what i did find was that this was the pattern through which trump became rich again when he after atlantic city he was $4 billion in debt, six bankruptcies and the russian maffia came to his aid and helped build him back again.
you re referring to this issue, this alleged laundering, which is something that s been rumored about, discussed as an allegation, steve bannon, who i happen to be talking to later has discussed the money laundering allegations for the trump organization, interesting coming from someone tied to trump. how did you feel you were advancing this story and you are willing to commit to it journalistically in this book? you have to see how the russians owned him. they bailed him out. i don t think anyone would be elected if they were $4 billion in debt. and they came into trump tower in 2002. there was a firm named bayrock. it had ties to russian mafia. and it just happened suddenly you saw hundreds of millions of dollars going in to fund trump projects like the trump sew hoh. there were other projects as well in toronto.
one more question, sir, i m just pushing to get it all in. does this finding in your theory of the case mean that collusion in 2016 was more likely because of a history of relationship, or irrelevant because there s a financial debt irrespective of whether there was campaign conspiracy? no, i think it absolutely means it s more likely there was collusion. what s important to understand about the russian mafia is it s a state actor. americans may think of the mafia in terms of the god father, the italian-american mafia. the russian mafia is different. i interviewed the head of counterintelligence in russia, actually vladimir putin s boss. when i asked him about the mafia, he said that s another branch of the kgb. so you have all these people tied to the russian mafia in trump tower, in the home of the president of the united states. and i would suggest, we ve had all this talk about national security clearances, trump would never get a national security clearance in a zillion years.