Political Memes

Article about it

Who is making the shoes?

That’s a bit of a mystery. The Trump Sneakers site says the shoes “are not designed, manufactured, distributed or sold by Donald J. Trump, The Trump Organization or any of their respective affiliates or principals.”

Instead, the Trump-owned CIC Ventures LLC (which was also behind Trump’s NFT digital trading-card venture) has licensed his name to another company called 45Footwear LLC.

The business registration for 45Footwear LLC was filed on January 31, less than three weeks before the sneaker line was launched. It was registered by an independent asset-protection consultant named Andrew Pierce, who works for a law firm called Cloud Peak Law Group in Sheridan, Wyoming. Pierce and the firm have apparently set up more than 5,000 LLCs for clients. The address listed in the filing for 45Footwear LLC is the same as the firm’s.

It costs only $100 for anyone to quickly and anonymously register an LLC in Wyoming using agents like Pierce, and the lack of oversight has made the state a haven for shady pop-up businesses. Reuters reported in December that it had uncovered a number of shell companies operated by cybercriminals that had been registered by LLC-registration businesses in Sheridan. Reporting on the Pandora Papers in 2022, the Washington Post explained, “In Wyoming, the number of LLCs has soared in the past decade from about 4,200 to more than 220,000, state data shows. Companies established in the state have been listed in lawsuits alleging medical fraud in Russia, tax dodging in Hungary, and bank theft in Zimbabwe, foreign court records show.”

TL;DR; there's never any conclusive proof of money laundering, otherwise it'd be a shitty scheme indeed. But this is what money laundering looks like. It's all over the art collection world (practically invented for money laundering). You won't ever see people wearing these sneakers, but they'll be "sold out" everywhere. Because of the layers of indirection, it's impossible to track/trace the money. Whatever inventory doesn't sell to legitimate people will be bought out by billionaire backers or governments who want to give money to trump, his campaign, or his personal fortune, without running afoul of gift giving and campaign finance violations/laws.

TL;DR;TL;DR; This is exactly what money laundering looks like.

1. Rich people and organizations want to give money to trump, but dont want it to be publically available that the money was given
2. Trump puts out garbage books, nfts, shoes, whatever merch
3. Interested parties buy them all as an easy way of him doing "legitimate business" that looks innocuous

Just buy some of those thinking shoes. It goes to charity.