Article Image

IPFS News Link • Trump Administration

Mueller Expands Probe to Trump Business Transactions

• https://www.bloomberg.com

The U.S. special counsel investigating possible ties between the Donald Trump campaign and Russia in last year's election is examining a broad range of transactions involving Trump's businesses as well as those of his associates, according to a person familiar with the probe.

FBI investigators and others are looking at Russian purchases of apartments in Trump buildings, Trump's involvement in a controversial SoHo development in New York with Russian associates, the 2013 Miss Universe pageant in Moscow and Trump's sale of a Florida mansion to a Russian oligarch in 2008, the person said.

The investigation also has absorbed a money-laundering probe begun by federal prosecutors in New York into Trump's former campaign chairman Paul Manafort.

President Donald Trump, Commerce Secretary nominee Wilbur Ross and senior advisor Jared Kushner attend a meeting at the White House on Feb. 2, 2017.

Trump, Ross and Kushner attend a meeting at the White House on Feb. 2, 2017.

Photographer: Drew Angerer/Getty Images

John Dowd, one of Trump's lawyers, said on Thursday that he was unaware of the inquiry into Trump's businesses by the two-months-old investigation and considered it beyond the scope of what Special Counsel Robert Mueller should be examining.

"Those transactions are in my view well beyond the mandate of the Special counsel; are unrelated to the election of 2016 or any alleged collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia and most importantly, are well beyond any Statute of Limitation imposed by the United States Code," he wrote in an email.

Markets Fall

Major U.S. stock indices, which had been trading higher in the morning, fell as traders worried that the probe could derail Trump's growth agenda. The dollar fell against the euro and U.S. government bonds rose.


PurePatriot