Tag: real estate

Minnesota Senate candidate writes laws impacting her real estate business

The following article by Danielle McLean was posted on the ThinkProgress website May 16, 2018:

“We don’t know if she is acting in the interest of the State of Minnesota or something else.”

Credit: HousleyforSenate.com

Karin Housley, a Minnesota State Senator who is seeking to be the Republican nominee in Minnesota’s upcoming U.S. Senate special election, is a prominent realtor who does brisk trade selling million dollar homes in the suburbs outside Minneapolis. And since 2014, she has worked nearly as hard at creating numerous bills affecting her real estate business.

As a member of the Minnesota State Senate, Housley authored bills that literally crafted the definition of her very profession and established “designated agency” during real estate transactions. She authored an act that established a first-time home buyer savings account, which was touted by the state’s real estate political action committee as a major legislative success. And she wrote bills benefiting the real estate appraisers that set the prices of the homes she sells, including new protections against civil action lawsuits and shielding minor disciplinary action against them from the public record. Continue reading “Minnesota Senate candidate writes laws impacting her real estate business”

How money laundering works in real estate

The following article by Philip Bump was posted on the Washington Post website January 4, 2018:

Former FBI director Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel probing Russian interference in the 2016 election, on Capitol Hill on June 21, 2017. (Andrew Harnik/AP)

If Michael Wolff’s reporting is to be believed, Stephen K. Bannon’s assessment of the most dangerous threat posed by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation is not the one you might have assumed.

“You realize where this is going,” Bannon reportedly told Wolff. “This is all about money laundering. Mueller chose Weissmann first and he is a money-laundering guy. Their path to f—ing Trump goes right through Paul Manafort, Don Jr and Jared Kushner. … It goes through Deutsche Bank and all the Kushner s—-.”

Two quick explanations. Weissmann refers to Andrew Weissmann. He was one of Mueller’s early hires, although not the first, and does have a lot of experience prosecuting financial crimes. Deutsche Bank is a German financial institution that has been an apparent focus of federal prosecutors, although not necessarily by Mueller’s team, because of a loan of more than a quarter-billion dollars issued to Kushner’s firm a month before the 2016 election. Continue reading “How money laundering works in real estate”