Month: February 2020

The final chapter of the story of Friedrich Trump opens many questions that I can’t answer so far removed from the events. But they are questions again based around facts that do not support the ‘official’ story that the Trump family has told. I believe that cover story was told to camouflage the alliance between the Bureau and the Trump family.

History & Trump biographies tell us that Friedrich Trump, grandfather of the President of the United States, died on May 30^th 1918 one of New York’s first victims of the Spanish Flu. I believe that this is very unlikely to be true, that he died of another cause & the narrative crafted to make his death look fairly ordinary. Maybe it was not…

The depictions of his death state that Friedrich Trump was walking with his son on 5/29/1918 and felt suddenly & extremely sick. That is not the typical progression of the pneumonia he was diagnosed with at the time or the Spanish Flu the diagnosis is changed to over time. You do not feel suddenly & extremely sick while walking down the street with your 12-year old son. Friedrich died the next day at the age of 49, again a very rapid progression for either pneumonia or influenza. Had Donald Trump’s constant insistence that he has good genetics for longevity a hint to investigate why his grandfather died so young?

The 1918 Spanish Influenza outbreak was an extremely virulent form, it killed many healthy people in their prime. So there is the possibility that it could have been that flu, but the symptoms of rapid severe onset that appear to be pneumonia also applies to poisoning with potassium cyanide salts slipped into a drink…

So lets look at how the Spanish Flu was impacting New York City in late May 1918, was it a full scale epidemic or pandemic at that time? In a word? Hell No! In fact, on June 7 the City Health Department reported only 2 flu related deaths in the previous week & that was from the 1917 strain. A very weak strain of the flu in fact that was disappearing as summer conditions arrived.

In fact, the Spanish Influenza did not reach NYC until August, 10 weeks after Friedrich Trump had died. Even then it was contained by quarantining a ships passengers & crew and there were 0 fatalites from the incident.

The flu ravaged the city during the winter of 1918-19 & the summer of 1919, but in May 1918 when Friedrich Trump died, it had not yet reared it’s head. At the time some ‘experts’ blamed the flu on a German biowarfare programs, was blaming Friedrich’s death a way to point to ‘fake’ news that connected his supposed cause of death to his real cause of death?

Without the release of documents, I don’t think we can ever answer this question solidly, I hate speculating to this level. But would the death of Friedrich Trump at the hands of German agents explain why his sons enjoyed a good relationship with the FBI, NYPD & military?

His son Fred Trump continued the family real estate business, surviving the great depression because NYC federal courts awarded him control over bankruptcy assets. Allowing him to make a living selling off those properties. Then Fred was given contracts to build military barracks & facilities along the Eastern Shore, was this an effort to prevent German agents from once again infiltrating seaside facilities & disrupting shipping? Maybe so, but it seems unlikely that the military would not know Fred was of German descent pretending to be Swedish. They must have had a reason to trust him.

It also leads to a most curious incident. Freidrick Trump’s other son John G. Trump pursued an academic career becoming a scientist & professor at Massachusets Institute of Technology (MIT). He was involved in a lot of research for military programs, again believed to be a trustworthy person. In January of 1943, excentric scientist Nikola Tesla died in a hotel room in New York City. The Federal Bureau of Investigation under J. Edgar Hoover wanted to secure his research to prevent other nations from accessing any breakthroughs. For decades it was alleged that the federal Office of Alien Property seized the papers but it is unlikely they were ever controlled by anyone other than the FBI. https://www.history.com/news/nikola-tesla-files-declassified-fbi

Who did J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI contact to investigate Tesla’s papers & research? John G. Trump, it is a remarkable coincidence that a scientist of German descent would get tapped to conduct this research. But not as large a coincidence that his father died soon after Hoover’s reputation was sealed with an intelligence coup upstairs from Freidrich Trump’s barber shop. https://vault.fbi.gov/nikola-tesla

I don’t know where else this research leads, I’m looking for connections between the individual NYPD, Secret Service & Bureau of Investigation agents & the Trumps. But my work on this is very preliminary & I may never have time or luck finding the connections to establish this. If you find anything interesting send it my way, crowdsourcing research is much more effective!

Maybe this is confirmation bias & these are just coincidences. Maybe time or some century old classified documents will reveal all one day!

We will move forward to 1914, with Trump reportedly still operating his barber shop, working as a hotel manager & running a budding real estate empire. Germany has gone to war with Britain, France & other nations, while America is trying to remain neutral. But our policy wasn’t exactly neutral, we said we would sell supplies to either side in the war but Britania rules the waves. So ships full of arms for Britain stream out of NYC & other American ports, while German ships are tied up at the docks unable to leave harbor without being captured or sunk by the British.

In an effort to deter American from arming the Brits, Germany implements an effort to sabotage American industry & attack shipping to deny arms shipments to England. They also target American banking & finance to deny loans to the Brits to keep them in the war. These attacks cost hundreds of American lives as bombs & fired destroyed facilities. America was woefully unprepared, the military was responsible to stopping enemy saboteurs & spies in wartime, but the US was technically at peace & the federal government did not have the legal authority or resources to stop them. Once war was declared, the military inducted some of the NYPD team into the US Army counter intelligence units to continue the hunt for German spies.

There is a brief summary of the German efforts in an old Life Magazine article at https://time.com/3881226/the-first-terrorist-cell-in-america/ The campaign included placing bombs in ships, possibly using Irish American workers who were very anti-British. An attack on an explosives laden train depot in New Jersey that was heard as far away as Maryland, registered as a 5.5 on the Richter Scale & damaged the Statue of Liberty & blew out windows in Manhattan. The railroad had to hire private investigators to infiltrate the cell and only agency with resources to hunt them at the time was the newly formed NYPD Bomb Squad had no jurisdiction across state lines. https://www.historynet.com/world-war-i-intrigue-german-spies-in-new-york.htm

Soon individual agents were apprehended convincing the US Government that a larger plot run by German diplomats & military attaches was coordinating the activity. The primary leader of the group was Franz von Papen, former military aide to the Kaiser sent to Washington in 1914. He had diplomatic immunity but was expelled at the end of 1915 as the evidence against him grew.

With Von Papen’s expulsion, his assistants took over running the spy ring, while rubbing elbows in NYC. They operated in 3 main buildings (and lots of hotels) in Manhattan, running their terror campaign against America. Three buildings that were positioned to bracket the JP Morgan Bank headquarters as he was one of the prime architects of loans to Germany’s enemies. One German saboteur shot & wounded JP Morgan Jr. while he had breakfast in his home with the British Ambassador.

The Germans also established front companies & bought a finance company to arrange money laundering to hide the payments to their agents. They became more sophisticated even opening an advertising company on Wall Street to disguise their operations.

Also at this time a new group of feds joined the hunt for the Germans, with additional legal authorities, investigators from the DOJ’s Bureau of Investigation joined the hunt. Agents reporting to an up and coming DOJ lawyer who was running counterintelligence for the DOJ in 1916, a young man by the name of J. Edgar Hoover. How would they find loyal informants & assets capable of hunting German spies among a German community? Who would hate the Kaiser enough to risk spying upon their saboteurs & agents?  Who could blend in near the operations at the German front company located at 60 Wall Street & conduct surveillance upon the Germans coming & going?

Would agents reporting to J. Edgar Hoover’s (he was not yet with the Bureau) attempt to find an asset already positioned to help them? If you are expecting a huge coincidence you are right. Friedrich Trump’s barber shop, was located on the first floor of 60 Wall Street, the very building the Bureau of Investigation needed to place under surveillance. The Friedrich Trump deported from Germany, the Friedrich Trump who would not let his kids learn German, the Friedrich Trump whose children & grandchildren would pretend to be Swedish, that Friedrich Trump. https://nycwalks.com/2019/03/07/generation-i-grandfather-frederick-trump-the-founder-of-the-family-fortune/

If that was the only coincidence, I might dismiss it, but it lead me to something else.

The Bureau’s agents not only caught Igel but managed to time their arrest perfectly. The agents managed to burst into his office while he had 70 pounds of documents for the plots organized on his desk in an effort to ship them to Germany’s embassy as diplomatic pouches. Agents were able to tackle him to prevent him securing his safe, an intelligence coup that likely made J. Edgar Hoover’s career. We will never know how the Bureau got so ‘lucky’ in their timing. https://www.historynet.com/world-war-i-intrigue-german-spies-in-new-york.htm

There is also one other big issue that opens an even larger question and may explain the alliance between the Trump family & the Bureau, a relationship that may go back to 60 Wall Street in 1916. One-hundred years before Friedrich’s grandson would become President of the United States of America after decades of serving as an asset for the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Part 3 is available here: https://butnothingshappening.com/trump-friedrich-trump-part-3/