Haunted Cities, Dark Shadows, and Sunbeams

Dark money is harming democracy, but Biden is creating sunbeams

The first time I interviewed Martin Sheil - retired IRS criminal supervisor - I finally found someone who spoke my language. I had written thread after thread about Trump-Russia ties, money laundering, Deutsche Bank’s bad acting, the world of offshoring, and how all roads eventually lead to Cypress.

But Marty was like an oligarch encyclopedia - he’d been tracking these gangsters for years. His depth of knowledge was unparalleled and his willingness to go public with what he knew unprecedented. It’s the blue collar Irish in him. He doesn’t like these ‘schmucks.’

Our first thread, Corrosive Power, dated December 29, 2019, Marty methodically walks the reader through Trump’s ties to dark Russian money, speculating that the reason ‘The Donald’ was working so hard to hide his taxes was because he was a fake rich guy - “he might find something embarrassing in his tax returns” - which proved to be accurate.

As we learned two months ago, Trump came into the ‘presidency’ broke - creating major security vulnerabilities for America - on top of the fact that he was a mob money sieve - allowing more than 1,300 anonymous property purchases, a concierge service for oligarchs wishing to launder money in the West.

In Tweet No. 17 of that first thread, I asked Marty why Deutsche Bank would continue to loan Trump money, despite the fact he defaulted on a $40 million dollar loan and then sued the bank.

Heidi Cuda @Heidi_Cuda

17/ DEUTSCHE BANK: Q2 HSC: Why would Deutsche Bank loan money to Trump after he sued them for defaulting on a $40M loan guarantee? And how did he pay it when he lost the case? MARTIN SHEIL: “Deutsche Bank embarked on an aggressive global expansion strategy in the late ‘90s.”

Marty explained Deutsche Bank’s aggressive global expansion in the ‘90s, but he also brought up a very interesting coincidence…