Sketchy Donald Trump Deal Eyed For Ties To Iran | Rachel Maddow | MSNBC

you know the airport that serves the Seattle area is called it's not Seattle Airport right it's called sea tack the tack in SeaTac is Tacoma Tacoma Washington is about an hour south and a little west from Seattle and Tacoma is a big city Seattle has about 650,000 people Tacoma has about 200,000 people I always loved that part of the country this is just a lovely part of that lovely state but on July 1st 1942 koma got a brand new bridge a really important part of the infrastructure for that part of the world July 1st 1942 Komagata bridge to connect it with the really the the tip-top northwest corner of Washington State it's a bridge that spans what they call the Tacoma Narrows but the Tacoma Narrows Bridge that they got on July 1st 1940 it was not a good bridge look at that you know when look at that when they had been building it they knew something was wrong 1938 1939 1940 the construction workers who were building that thing we're telling anyone who would listen that there was something wrong this thing just moved way too much whenever the wind picked up see the car there the construction workers who built this thing called it galloping gertie it would twist and undulate and just sort of get going it was like basically a breakdance move all right and it was it's amazing to see it was sort of funny it's an object of fascination for a time but then on November 7th 1940 that same year that it was opened it was actually two days after the presidential election that year on FDR was elected to a third term only about four months after that bridge opened November 7 1940 it collapsed it broke apart the winds got to be about 40 miles per hour that day and the twisting and the undulation that had been so weird it finally just blew the whole thing apart after the collapse of that bridge November 7th 1940 they actually just left the dead bridge in Puget Sound they just left it there in the water and if you think about the time in terms of look at that terms of what was going on in the country at that point right this is late 1914 November 1940 the country had other things on its mind I mean by 1941 we were into World War Two and there were other more pressing uses for American steel and American engineering firepower so even though it collapsed in the fall of 1940 it was not until a decade later that they replaced it and they put another bridge across the Tacoma Narrows 1950 they built a new one without the galloping gertie flaws of the old one this one worked but you know what by this century even that replacement bridge from 1950 even that well it didn't need replacing it was fine but Tacoma had outgrown it by the 2000 seas and so in 2007 they opened up a whole new Tacoma Narrows Bridge and the great thing is they put it up right next to the old one where once was the terrifying physics class roller coaster that bucked like a Bronco now you see how there's two sets of bridges there see the two towers next to each other and now they've got two bridges there the replacement bridge from 1950 carries cars out of Tacoma and the brand-spanking bigger new modern bridge right next to it that carries cars eastbound into Tacoma so the good people of Tacoma are now lousy and bridges over that particular part of Puget Sound they've got the 1951 they've got the 2007 one and both of those bridges that they've got are a good reminder now of the importance of good engineering just because you can build something doesn't mean you can build it right the company that built the latest bridge the modern bridge over the Tacoma Narrows that's company called Bechtel Bechtel is one of the biggest companies in the United States and the amount of stuff they have built or how to had a hand in building since Bechtel was founded over a hundred years ago it's basically a history of major infrastructure and building adventures in America and around the world for good and bad I mean Bechtel played a big part in building Hoover Dam they built the DC Metro they built tons of nuclear power plants they bought the Channel Tunnel the channel between England and France they built hundreds of US warships during World War two they built some of the earliest railroads in the American West starting with mule-drawn power they built oil pipelines all over the Middle East they built the metro system for the city of Athens Greece they built the Jubilee Line for the London Tube they're building the Saudi city of Riyadh a brand-new subway system right now one of the biggest projects they've ever been involved in they did the big dig in Boston which was almost unimaginably big if you're if your city just found out that you're gonna be hosting an Olympic sometime in the future these guys are probably who you will call to build all your Olympics facilities as well when they decided that the only thing to do with Chernobyl was to build a giant dome to cover it up forever because it's gonna be radioactive forever well these guys built the giant dome to back tiles built like everything and when you're a company as big as Bechtel you are bound to be a controversial company I mean when they got contracts from the George W Bush administration to rebuild Iraq in the Iraq war lots of Americans started having nightmares about PEC Dell all at once but whatever you think about this this ginormous company it's worth appreciating all the things they've done in their history as a company they are undoubtedly really experienced they have built bridges and roads and railroads and pipelines and power plants and you name it all over the world and they have been doing it for over a century and before WikiLeaks got all inextricably bound up in our new national nightmare about Russia hacking our presidential election before that's what we thought of when we thought of WikiLeaks back when WikiLeaks was instead just wholesale dumping US State Department cables into the public domain one of the things we learned via WikiLeaks in that era was actually about a funny thing I think on the surface that's inexplicable that happened to this giant company Bechdel and it happened in that country that you see there in yellow this little country that sandwiched right between giant Russia on the top and Jay Iran on the bottom it's a country called Azerbaijan it's a small country it's about the size of Ireland it's a former Soviet state run by a dictator now they've got oil money that's always a good combination the new oil money doesn't of course mean that the people of that country are any better off it never works that way under a dictator in in the case of Azerbaijan though their oil wealth has resulted in them doing a lot of building they've built a whole bunch of stuff particularly in their capital city of Baku big show-off II modern buildings big fancy buildings in particular for government agencies and in in 2007 the transportation minister in Azerbaijan he had what could have been a really really important meeting for the future of his country he met with Bechdel to talk about roads he met with this giant American company that has you know that built the Tacoma Narrows Bridge the latest one and that built the Hoover Dam in nuclear power plants and pipelines and roads all over the world transportation minister from this little country flush with oil money he met with the senior vice president of Bechtel to talk about the prospect of Bechtel coming to Azerbaijan and building roads all over that country big projects lots of roads they've got money to spend that's part of what they want to spend it on Bechdel totally could have done that like I said they've done it all over the world but that meeting happened in April 2007 and they made no deal and part of the reason we know about how that meeting went is because of WikiLeaks the American ambassador in that country cabled home to the State Department to explain what happened with that meeting of that executive from that big American company coming to talk about a big infrastructure deal with this transportation minister she explained that the Azerbaijanis quote pressed the Bechtel senior vice president on a typical price for any proposed Bechtel road project after extensive caveats the Bechtel executive said that a typical green field type road meaning starting from nothing could cost approximately five to six million dollars per kilometer that's the basic price and then continuing from the cable quote that amount struck Minister Mammadov as quite expensive Minister I thought that was way too much to spend so for each new kilometre of road Bechtel wanted to charge five or six million bucks Azerbaijan transportation minister said no way that's way too expensive and they sent back Dell packing sent them sent them home empty-handed and they hired somebody else to do the work instead and instead of costing five or six million dollars per kilometer they had the work done for 18 million dollars per kilometer huh Bechdel must have been like say what now we're too expensive so you send us away so you can have the work done instead at more than triple our price because we're too expensive what when stuff stops making any financial sense on the surface that's where it often starts to make sense when it comes to stories related to our new president reporter Adam Davidson has a new piece out in The New Yorker today about what may end up being the next major line of inquiry into our new president and it is starting to me to look like one of the best explanations we have had yet about why the White House is so dramatically freaked out about the prospect that there might be an independent investigation into this president and his foreign contacts and this story basically has just a few little steps we have to follow in order to see what a problem this is for the president basically three steps to understanding this first one is what explains that Bechdel thing what dynamic is at work there all right why would this country turn down Bechtel to do this work because of their six million dollar price tag saying that's too expensive and then instead give it to another country company who charged to triple that well the company that charged triple that the company that got that gig instead of Bechtel the company that did the work at triple the price thank you very much that is a company that is believed to be controlled by Iran's Revolutionary Guard the Iranian Revolutionary Guard is basically the second military in Iran it is charged with preserving internal order in that country na yes that's meant to be a scary thing to say but the Revolutionary Guard also way war on behalf of Iranian interests and the supreme leader around the globe the Iranian Revolutionary Guard is mode of the world's major supporters financially and otherwise of international terrorist movements and of course the Iranian Revolutionary Guard is deeply sanctioned by the US government Revolutionary Guard actually it's sort of counterintuitive in terms of the way we think about military stuff here but the Revolutionary Guard in Iran like I said they financially and otherwise support terrorist movements around the globe and they've got a ton of their own money they're a financial powerhouse Revolutionary Guard and Iran they've got front companies and everything from oil and gas to illegal alcohol importing to weapons manufacturing to construction lots of construction Revolutionary Guard has a lot of money and they need a lot of money for what they do around the world but with the sanctions on them it's awkward it's hard it's often illegal for them to move their money around so they need what appear to be legitimate business transactions the bigger the better to receive and to spend as much money as possible to move as much Revolutionary Guard money as is possible through seemingly legitimate means so that Revolutionary Guard money becomes apparently legitimate business money which then is much easier to access and much easier to move around the globe so you can you know finance terrorist groups or whatever else it is you need to do so if you're the Revolutionary Guard you need front companies that can do what appears to be legitimate business and if you're the Revolutionary Guard you've got a front company doing construction and if you can get a deal infrastructure deal doing some construction projects somewhere you know what the bigger the deal the better more money moves through that the better and if you're the transportation minister in a country like us or behind well the bigger the better for you too right I mean if you care about getting a good deal for the people of your country then of course it'd be a bad thing to have a lot of money moving through these contracts unnecessarily but if you want to support the Iranian Revolutionary Guard and if the Guard wants to help you out in return you know what big is beautiful then can we quadruple this transportation minister in Azerbaijan who did these deals his government salary is reportedly about $12,000 a year somehow on a salary of $12,000 a year he has become a billionaire we're sort of all learning now that this is one of the things to watch for in international corruption money laundering bribery schemes look for deals on the surface make no financial sense because they're going to make sense in some other way you know look for example at this you see this big building in the center of the picture here look at the roads around it if you wanted to drive to that building how would you drive to that building Adam Davidson writes in The New Yorker quote reaching the property is surprisingly difficult the tower stands amid a welter of on ramps off ramps and overpasses during the nine days I was in town I went to the site half a dozen times on each occasion I had a comical exchange with the taxi driver who had no idea which combination of turns would lead to the building's entrance so it's it's literally hard to get into this this is a picture from one angle I should also show you this is a picture that ran in the New Yorker today that I think it's supposed to be the front of the building point of personal privilege here Susan saw me reading this article and she laughed out loud when I got to this page she said she thought from across the room that I was looking at dirty pictures something come on paging Georgia O'Keeffe but this building I have to say whatever you think which looks it doesn't make sense for a bunch of reasons not just because there's no way to get there there's no food to get to it and it's kind of hilarious looking from the front look at this we've marked on this map with that red arrow that's that's where the fancy hotels are in the capital of Azerbaijan right on the Caspian Sea right the other building that we just showed you the one with the on ramps and off ramps to nowhere and everything that big new building it's not where all the other hotels are it's over there and what's described is not a particularly good neighborhood it's over by an extensive field of Raley it's about an hour's walk from where any other well-off Western tourists might be expected to stay in this town it's weird for a luxury building until December until December this past December where the upper right arrow is there that weird building that you can't get into in the middle of nowhere next to the rail yards that was supposed to be the site of the new Trump Tower in Azerbaijan and all its Georgia O'Keeffe glory it was supposed to be way over there away from everything else in that capital city in fact I know it's hard if you've never been there I've never been there you might find it hard to sort of picture what's weird about the location let me show you how weird that location was 2014 the president's daughter Ivanka was on a business trip to Azerbaijan they had a Trump building project there she posted this Facebook video showing how awesome the view was from her hotel room a very long flight but I'm here in Baku Azerbaijan check it out view from my balcony the flame towers [Music] and the Caspian Sea that is in fact a lovely view there right next to the Caspian Sea that's nowhere near the building she's there to work on that's not where the Trump Tower was going we think she's at the Four Seasons which is five kilometers away and an hour's walk away from where the trunk building was going up in the middle of town nowhere near the sea right and all it's hard to look at glory this building in this random neighborhood and Baku Azerbaijan it's a building it's a business project that really just doesn't make sense on the surface buildings a huge luxury development in a city that isn't sustaining its current luxury properties it's in the wrong part of town for a luxury property no way was ever designed to get into the property why was this built how could it ever make financial sense to pour this much in terms of resources into something that doesn't even seem like it was designed to work this was supposed to be truck tower Baku Azerbaijan one month after our presidential election the Trump Organization abandoned this project they pulled out and here's what you need to know the Trump family's business partner in that project was the family of the transportation minister of Azerbaijan the one who made all those lucrative partnerships the inexplicably lucrative deals with companies that really do appear to just be fronts for the Iranian Revolutionary Guard apparently helping the Iranian Revolutionary Guard launder money evade sanctions for their support of terrorism around the world and making himself in his own family wildly wealthy in the process that was their partner his family was their partner in that deal deals that make no financial sense on the surface are worth a second look to see if they make some other kind of sense some other way of looking at it if you are a government official who gets rich off the contracts you award and the projects you greenlight you might award anything as a contract right you might greenlight anything and American businesses are free to do business anywhere it is legal to do business in the world but American businesses are not allowed to accept any funds if the origin of those funds is a sanctioned organization like the Iranian Revolutionary Guard and you have to check it out you have to know American businesses are not allowed to participate in business deals with partners who are acting illegally and you have to know you have to check it out looking the other way is not a defense the handbag company Dooney & Bourke me neither I don't even know if I'm saying it right but they're very nice handbags and I'm learning about them now because Frederic Burke of Dooney & Bourke was convicted in 2009 of doing a business deal in Azerbaijan with a corrupt partner the handbag guy wasn't paying the bribes he was just in business with an abra zire Azerbaijani guy who did pay bribes who was corrupt and that's enough to have put the handbag guy in federal prison if you're an American business you are expected to do your due diligence to make sure the people you're doing business with are not paying bribes they're not corrupt in the case of this inexplicable Trump building project that was inexplicably abandoned right after the election Trump and his family were in the business were in business with the cartoon caricature of corruption in that country and I mean that almost literally in the fall of 2014 4 months before Ivanka Trump was on the balcony of the four seasons showing off the Caspian Sea from a normal hotel location you know the family she was there to do business with was featured in this article in foreign plastic magazine look at the headline the Corleone's of the caspian under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act which is US law not to put too fine a point on it but under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act you cannot go into business with the Corleone's of the guests begin you must as an American business do due diligence to make sure your financial partners in your international businesses are not paying bribes are not outrageously corrupt are not involved in huge repeated financial dealings with sanctioned international sponsors of terrorism like the Iranian Revolutionary Guard it is a violation of US law to do business with to make money from a business partnership like that the new President as I said he and his organization backed out of this deal a month after the election not before he received millions of dollars in the deal we know that from the limited financial filing he made as a candidate for president if there is going to be an independent investigation of this president and his campaign and his ties to Russia right it is inconceivable that an independent investigation would not include an exam nation of the president's financials right his tax returns as business records all the rest Adam Davidson at The New Yorker has just detailed enough about the president's dealings in this one former Soviet republic to raise several questions is the president or his family potentially at risk of having violated the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act which is a crime for which you go to jail is the President or is his family potentially at risk of being blackmailed by foreign business partners who have evidence of ties or behavior that might put the president and his family in legal jeopardy if those things were exposed the senior Democrat on the Banking Committee is senator sherrod Brown he says he's seen enough about this particular deal to justify starting a new inquiry into our new president we will have more on that ahead but if there is an independent truly independent inquiry into this president whether it starts in Russia and winds its way through Azerbaijan or whether it maybe even starts here starts with this in Azerbaijan there is a reason we should expect this White House this president to do everything in his power to keep secret his finances and his business dealings but you know what if you get paid an extra sixty million dollars for a house in Palm Beach that no one wants to live in and it gets torn down with a guy never living in it never setting foot in it you get paid an extra sixty million dollars over what you paid for it and you put nothing into it and the guy who paid it is a Russian guy that needs explaining if your company is getting paid millions of dollars for a project that makes no sense that is one degree of separation from the Iranian Revolutionary Guard that needs explaining we've got two of these stories now in one week how many more do you think there are and what lengths do you think they will go to to avoid this all being turned over and made public stay with us hey there are Chris Hayes from MSNBC thanks for watching MSNBC on YouTube if you want to keep up to date with the videos we're putting out you can click subscribe just below me or click over on this list to see lots of other great videos

Channel: MSNBC

Views: 3,782,607

Keywords: Rachel Maddow, The Rachel Maddow Show, Rachel Maddow Show, Maddow, TRMS, MSNBC, MSNBC news, MSNBC live, MSNBC TV, news, breaking news, current events, US news, politics, politics news, political news, elections, news channel, news station, newspaper, world news, top stories, pop culture, Donald Trump, Eyed For Ties To Iran, New Yorker, Iranian National Guard, Trump Deal, Trump, sponsor of terrorism, state sponsors of terrorism, azerbaijan, baku tower

Id: dy9Qtf3P6Nw

Length: 23min 11sec (1391 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 07 2017