'Brings new meaning to Pravda': Revelations about Trump Media's alleged Russia money laundering raises many questions

The Guardian reported Wednesday morning that Donald Trump accepted $8 million in capital from an obscure Russian source.

Federal prosecutors investigating Truth Social in New York probed whether money laundering was happening through the company.

The parent company, Trump Media, which owns Trump’s personal platform Truth Social, is being investigated as part of a proposed merger with Digital World (DWAC), which was already under investigation for a different issue involving the Security and Exchange Commission (SEC).

Then two loans, it is reported, were sent to Trump Media for $ 8 million through Caribbean accounts that appear to be controlled, in part, by Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Commenting on the story, former FBI agent Peter Strzok, who became a target of the former president, said, "Trump’s Truth Social reportedly kept afloat by $8 million of illicitly laundered Russian money with connections to Putin. Brings new meaning to Pravda."

But it was University Professor Emeritus at Harvard Laurence Tribe, that pointed out that this might be something that special counsel Jack Smith might be interested in investigating, particularly as it pertains to the top secret documents that Trump was hiding at Mar-a-Lago.

"This laundering of Russian money could represent an entirely new criminal law front in the upcoming battle in United States of America vs. Donald J. Trump," wrote Tribe. "The first involving lawbreaking after Trump’s alleged Mar-a-Lago theft of top secret government documents."

It begs the question of who made the decision to give the money to Trump and what the expectations were.

The first payment came in the form of $2 million in Dec. 2021, which was before the National Archives went to Mar-a-Lago to retrieve the 15 boxes that they took from Mar-a-Lago after an ongoing effort to get the information back.