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According to Trump's Twitter:

I don't know Putin, have no deals in Russia, and the haters are going crazy - yet Obama can make a deal with Iran, #1 in terror, no problem!

Is this statement about Trump's "deals in Russia" true?

Sklivvz
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JonathanReez
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    Ah good, another episode of "let's fact check Trump's tweets". It's not automatically a bad question, but have a look at http://meta.skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/3784/should-off-the-cuff-claims-by-donald-trump-be-considered-notable-without-evidenc and http://meta.skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/3757/donald-trump-youre-fired – IMSoP Feb 07 '17 at 14:17
  • @IMSoP the claim is specifically about Trump and the question is widespread enough, so I think it's fine – JonathanReez Feb 07 '17 at 14:22
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    In my opinion this is only answerable if the answer is false. If the claim is true, there's no way to verify with certainty that it's true. – Cruncher Feb 07 '17 at 14:27
  • Fair enough, assuming you mean the question to address the bolded claim. It might be worth explicitly stating that, by the way, rather than saying "this statement" - there are several other claims in the tweet, including that Obama made "a deal with Iran". – IMSoP Feb 07 '17 at 14:32
  • Is it not possible for a person to make deals with Russian entities as head of some US businesses, then hand over control of those businesses to others - after which that person would currently "have no deals in Russia" in their personal or professional capacity? – RedGrittyBrick Feb 07 '17 at 15:04
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    This is a claim he has repeated a lot, so regardless of whether he has current "deals" in Russia, he has made the claim while he controlled his own businesses. But without tax returns, I don't see how it can be answered. For example, would you take his sons bragging about their immense Russian investments as evidence? – rougon Feb 07 '17 at 16:50
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    One can also look at whether he's parsing his language. If Russians have fronted him huge amounts of credit, for example, but brokered the agreements through US holdings, institutions or holdings in other nations, then if he gets caught with the fact that he has deals WITH Russians then the fallback is "yeah, I said IN Russia." – PoloHoleSet Feb 07 '17 at 18:01
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    There was a claim made, attributed to the "mole" in Russia who supposedly provided several other pieces of info on the inner workings of the Kremlin, that Trump had been offered 12% of a Russian oil company if he won the election. (This claim was made about July of last year, IIRC.) And then there was news around the time Trump took office that 12% of that oil company had been sold and transferred out through a maze of sham companies, with no indication who the final owner would be. Certainly fodder for conspiracy theorists. – Daniel R Hicks Feb 10 '17 at 00:09

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