PIMPING THE BRAND:

Earlier this week, the Washington Post reported that Paul Manafort, when he was running Donald Trump's campaign last year, sought to use his position to curry favor with Oleg Deripaska, a Russian oligarch close to the Kremlin. Manafort also, it appears, considered the campaign an opportune time to try to convince unnamed people who owed him money to finally pay him back. In response to this news, Ty Cobb, the White House lawyer in charge of representing President Trump in matters related to the Russia investigation, told Bloomberg's Margaret Talev, "It would be truly shocking" if Manafort "tried to monetize his relationship with the President."

Cobb's shock is, surely, of the "Casablanca" variety. Manafort's personal profit-seeking is, if anything, a rather tepid example of the kind of activity that the special counsel, Robert Mueller, might find as he continues to investigate those in Trump's orbit. I have been reporting on the Trump Organization for the past year, and, the more work I've done, the more it has become clear that allowing hangers-on to monetize their relationship with him was, essentially, Trump's business model.

The Trump Organization, as it has been described to me by more than a dozen people who have worked for it, was nothing like a typical, hierarchical corporation. The company's central office was tiny and comprised a few dozen people, including Trump, his children, and some close associates, whose collective experience was largely limited to New York, Miami, and a few other American cities. When the company began aggressively pursuing international deals, over the past decade, it relied on a loose grouping of people who were authorized--formally or not--to travel around the world seeking deals in Trump's name. Pocketing a little for themselves on the side was part of the arrangement.

According to the sources I've spoken with, the Trump Organization was shockingly lax in its due-diligence procedures. It seemed willing to do business with pretty much anybody, no matter his background. (Several Trump officials told me the key criterion was insuring that the potential partner could pay.) 

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