Village Green co-owner Dave Goodrow (left) is among the latest targets of special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation. |
By Ariel Mutha-Tafoya
FSN Sports
Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller issued subpoenas yesterday to Village Green minority owner Dave Goodrow and two others connected to the team as part of an ongoing investigation into the business dealings of President Donald Trump.
Also summoned to speak to Mueller’s investigators are Green coach Stuart Smalley and QB Aaron Rodgers.
Trump purchased a majority stake in the Green from Goodrow in 2015. Sources close to the investigation told FSN that Mueller is acting on evidence that the Trump organization may have used the Village Green to hide funds that came from banks in Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan with close ties to Russian oligarchs believed to be engaged in international money laundering. Because these oligarchs are connected to Russian president Vladimir Putin, investigators are concerned that the Russian government may have sought to gain leverage over Trump.
Sources said that Smalley and Rodgers, who are not privy to the Green’s business affairs, were subpoenaed to shed light on unconfirmed intelligence from the so-called Steele dossier that the team’s coaches and players were offered double their contracted salaries in 2017 if they would accept payment in Russian rubles. The dossier also included a report that Smalley may have been present in a Moscow hotel room with Trump when a prostitute allegedly urinated on a bed that Hillary Clinton had slept in.
Village Green team officials said that Goodrow and Smalley would not be able to comment on pending testimony, and that Rodgers was white-water rafting in Patagonia and could not be reached.
“This marks a new and potentially explosive chapter in the Mueller investigation,” said former U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez, who is now dean of the School of Law at Belmont University near the Green’s home turf in Hillsboro Village. “Sooner or later, it was bound to involve the NFFA.”
League commissioner Jim McMahon had no official comment but was seen Tuesday at the McMahonistan Bar in Club Gitmo sporting a white headband with a hand-lettered inscription that said “Mueller.”
In response to the news, the White House fired back with a statement claiming that widening the investigation to include the Green was “a politically motivated stunt” orchestrated by Trump’s opponents. “Follow the enemies,” said a scowling Sarah Huckabee Sanders at Tuesday’s White House press briefing. “No one is more opposed to the president’s policy of improving relations with Russia than Petro Poroshenko, the Chocolate King of Ukraine, who happens to be the sugar daddy of QCurl Sharif. And is it just coincidence that Christopher Steele is a former British agent and Sharif’s team moved to Britain?”
Reached for comment after the traditional "February 20th Party" at his One-Eyed Pig Club in London, Sharif dismissed Sanders’ claim as “more ludicrous than the prospect of Donald Trump winning an Olympic medal in figure skating.”
However, when asked about rumors that Trump had groped Megging Barry, the dancer at the Goodrow-a-Go-Go widely believed to be Bakers QB Tom Brady in drag, Sharif quickly said, “No comment.”
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