Josh Marshall at TPM is doing excellent work in revealing the connections between Putin loyalist and thug Donald "Rump" Trump's fixer, Michael "Clown Roy Cohn" Cohen, and New York City's Russian crime syndicate. It's a complicated story, but the essence is that Cohen, who grew up with Russian-born felon and Rump associate Felix Sater, has long had associations with the Russian mob in New York City, many through Brooklyn's El Caribe social club, which his uncle owned. El Caribe was the meeting place for members of the Russian "mafia":
"From the 70s through the 90s at least, the bosses of the Russian mafia in the U.S. literally ran their crime organization out of the El Caribe. So Michael Cohen’s uncle Morton Levine’s social club was the headquarters of Russian organized crime in the U.S."According to the article, Cohen (along with other relatives) owned shares in the El Caribe club until recently. Marshall's summary is instructive:
"One of the abiding questions about Cohen is how he became so deeply enmeshed in the Ukrainian and Russian emigre communities from such an early age and moved so early into businesses heavily infiltrated by organized crime. He married a Ukrainian immigrant whose father got him into the taxi business and himself had at least one conviction for money laundering. Cohen was raised in the Five Towns area of Long Island, not far from Brighton Beach as the crow flies – just across Jamaica Bay – but worlds away culturally. The El Caribe seems like the logical locus which brought Cohen into this world." (emphasis added)He's apparently still comfortable in a dubious group of Russian emigres; last week Cohen was photographed having a chat with some cigar-smoking characters, one of which was Rotem Rosen, who is the CEO of a company owned by Putin insider and sanctioned businessman Lev Leviev. Small world.
UPDATE: Josh Marshall has an update worth reading. Extensive reporting is credited to journalist Seth Hettana, who has a book coming out on Trump/Russia. Important point:
"As I’ve explained many times here at TPM, Trump brought Cohen into the organization not because he was a lawyer but because he was a conduit for money from Russia and Ukraine. He’d been on a buying spree in the year or so before he was hired, buying up apartment units for him and members of his Ukrainian immigrant family. Trump wanted access to that spigot and more. So what Seth describes here – along with how Cohen got into the taxi business – is basically in line with my understanding. But I’d never realized [Cohen father-in-law Fima] Shusterman was such a critical player – perhaps even already a source of cash for Trump and, if Seth’s source is right, the reason Cohen got his job." (emphasis added)Follow the money.
