Hillary Clinton’s campaign hit Donald Trump again Thursday for his financial ties to Russia, and demanded the GOP nominee disclose all of his business dealings.
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“Despite his effort to hide his business dealings, we now know that Donald Trump has profited from hundreds of millions of dollars from Russian interests,” Hillary for America Deputy Communications Director Christina Reynolds said in a statement.
“These alarming financial ties present a possible motive for his otherwise puzzling pro-Putin policies such as his openness to lifting sanctions against Russia that currently inhibit money making opportunities for corporations like the Trump Organization,” she said. “This is precisely what more than fifty national security experts warned against when they called on Trump to disclose and divest his conflict-laden foreign assets that could endanger America’s national security.”
The Clinton campaign’s renewed attacks on Trump’s financial ties to foreign countries come after ABC News reported Thursday morning that the GOP nominee’s business interests could pose a direct conflict of interest to U.S. sanctions on Russia.
The ABC report said its investigation of Trump’s businesses found, “he has numerous connections to Russian interests both in the U.S. and abroad.”
In fact, the report continued, “Long before he ran for president, Trump displayed an ongoing interest in Russia and the former Soviet states,” adding that, “ABC News conducted a review of hundreds of pages of property records and found that Trump-branded developments catered to large numbers of Russian buyers.”
The investigation continued, and claimed it found numerous examples of Trump being courted by Russian billionaires.
ABC wrote:
There is ample evidence in Russian media from that period in the 2000s that brokers mounted a significant effort to attract buyers to Trump properties in Florida, Toronto and New York. And Trump and his children participated in those campaigns.
During the marketing of the Trump SoHo project, in which Trump licensed his name to a group that included Russian investors, the Trump family met with a group of Russian journalists at their New York offices to help boost interest in the project, according to Russian media reports. During the meeting, Trump was quoted telling the gathering of Russian journalists: “I really like Vladimir Putin. I respect him. He does his work well. Much better than our Bush.”
On Thursday, Clinton’s campaign team said it’s imperative that Trump discloses all his business dealings so voters can see whether he has any conflicts of interest.
“Unless Donald Trump immediately details all his business connections with Russia and every other foreign nation, we will never know what is driving his decision making: the interests of the American people or his own bottom line,” Reynolds said.
