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This broadcast was recorded in one, 60-minute segment.
Introduction: In the aftermath of the ascension of Donald Trump to the Presidency, we are doing something unprecedented in the long history of For The Record. Earlier in 2016, award-winning journalist David Cay Johnston published a very well-written and researched, yet relatively short and compact biography of Donald Trump–The Making of Donald Trump (Melville House [HC]; copyright 2016 by David Cay Johnston; ISBN 978–1‑61219–632‑9.)
For some weeks, we have been–and will be–reading most of the book into the record, to provide people with a measure against which to evaluate not just “The Donald,” as his first wife Ivana called him, but our society, its institutions and its citizens. We can’t recommend strongly enough that listeners buy this book, read it and use whatever means available to spread the word about it. (We note that neither Mr. Emory nor any of the stations that air this program get money from this book, its publisher or author.)
Although we originally planned to read the whole book into the record, the acceleration of events demands coverage and we will be turning to as much of those developments as we can highlight, under the circumstances.
The broadcast begins with another reading of the poem Be Angry at the Sun by Robinson Jeffers.
“Be Angry at the Sun” by Robinson Jeffers
That public men publish falsehoods
Is nothing new. That America must accept
Like the historical republics corruption and empire
Has been known for years.Be angry at the sun for setting
If these things anger you. Watch the wheel slope and turn,
They are all bound on the wheel, these people, those warriors.
This republic, Europe, Asia.Observe them gesticulating,
Observe them going down. The gang serves lies, the passionate
Man plays his part; the cold passion for truth
Hunts in no pack.You are not Catullus, you know,
To lampoon these crude sketches of Caesar. You are far
From Dante’s feet, but even farther from his dirty
Political hatreds.Let boys want pleasure, and men
Struggle for power, and women perhaps for fame,
And the servile to serve a Leader and the dupes to be duped.
Yours is not theirs.
This fifth and final installment of the series references the substance of an article that embodies the enormous and fundamental flaw in our political and civic process: a poll shortly before the election found that most of the prospective voters polled felt that Trump was more honest and trustworthy than Hillary Clinton. As our reading of Johnston’s excellent book unfolds, the grotesque, spectacularly fallacious character of this perception will become uncomfortably clear. “Donald Trump is currently tracking as the more honest of the two presidential candidates in a poll, although fact-checking of his statements during the campaign have shown he’s lied several times. The latest ABC News/Washington Post tracking poll reports that 46 percent of likely voters believe he is the more honest and trustworthy candidate, while 38 percent believed it was Hillary Clinton. This marks the biggest gap between the two candidates in five ABC News/Washington Post polls that asked the question, beginning in May.”
In the previous program, we opined that we all, in a sense, are enrolled in Trump University. By the same token, we could all be said to be playing the board game Trump: The Game. ” . . . . Then there’s his Monopoly-like board game. When Trump and executives from Milton-Bradley introduced Trump: The Game in 1989, the developer surprised everyone by declaring those royalties would go to charity, too. Milton-Bradley took Trump at his word. It also figured it might improve sales, which were weak, if people realized their purchases would not enrich a presumed billionaire but go to charity. Its television ads told potential buyers: ‘Mr. Trump’s proceeds from Trump: The Game will be donated to charity.’ . . . Trump has said he made $808,000 and that the money was donated to his Donald J. Trump Foundation. . . . At the time, I spent a day calling New York and New Jersey charities trying to find any disclosures of gifts made by Trump. . . . But call after call produced nothing. . . .” (The Making of Donald Trump; p. 17.)
Trump appeared to have won over a majority of voting military veterans and a poll of active-duty service members indicated that most preferred Trump. Trump himself avoided military service during the Vietnam War. ” . . . . Donald turned eighteen in 1964, when the death toll in Vietnam was rising fast. He got four student deferments and one medical deferment, after his doctor wrote that he had a bone spur in his foot. Which foot? a journalist asked years later. Trump said he could not recall. . . .” (The Making of Donald Trump; pp. 131–132.)
In the fall of 2015, Trump boycotted a GOP primary campaign debate because Megyn Kelly was to be the on-air host. Trump instead went to an event on the Battleship Iowa museum to what he misrepresented as a major veterans organization. ” . . . . Trump instead went to the Battleship Iowa, now a museum at anchor in Long Beach, California, to deliver what his campaign said would be a major address on national defense. Trump praised the sponsor of the event, Veterans for a Strong America, and told the audience that ‘hundreds of thousands’ of people belonged to the organization. There were evidently two related organizations, both nonprofits, though Trump and his host never made that clear to the audience on the ship or watching on television. One was a charity, the other one of those dark money political groups that have expanded since the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United decision, enabling money from undisclosed sources to influence elections. A quick internet check would revealed to the Trump campaign that the IRS had revoked the nonprofit status of Veterans for a Strong America due to their failure to file required disclosure reports. A charity disclosure organization, Guidestar, reported that it had no record of any board of directors, Every indication pointed to Veterans for a Strong America being a one-man enterprise run by a South Dakota lawyer named Joel Arends, whose operation was under investigation for suspected election improprieties in Arizona and Texas. Reporters later learned the organization had thirty dollars in the bank and debts ten times that size. None of this was in line with Trump’s promotion of the group’s immense size, influence, and good works. . . .” (The Making of Donald Trump; pp. 135–136.)
Next, the program highlights how Trump promotes himself and his projects using The American Academy of Hospitality Sciences. Trump, his daughter Ivanka, his son Donald, Jr., the chief operating officer of the Trump Organization (Donald Calamari) and Trump’s butler Anthony Senecal are major figures in this organization. The main figure in the organization is Joseph Cinque, aka “Joey No Socks” or “The Preppy Don.” ” . . . If those sound like names that might be associated with a figure involved in organized crime, it’s because they are. New York police with a search warrant knocked on the door of Cinque’s Park Avenue South apartment in 1989. Cinque declined to let them in. The police applied a battering ram. Inside the apartment they found a trove of stolen art, including two Marc Chagall prints valued at $40,000. they had been taken in an art gallery heist. Cinque made a deal to plead to a misdemeanor, but prosecutors scrapped the plea bargain after Cinque was seen talking to John Gotti, the ‘dapper don’ who became head of the Gambino crime family by arranging the murder of his predecessor Paul Castellano–one of the secret owners of the company that supplied concrete for many Trump buildings.
“Gotti told Cinque that he would ‘take care of the DA,’ an apparent reference to Anne Heyman, the prosecutor who had offered the plea bargain. . . . Heyman ordered a more thorough investigation of Cinque. She alleged that the investigation showed that Cinque ‘was dealing drugs out of his apartment and fencing stolen art-work.’ Heyman also said that Cinque’s apartment on Central Park South appeared to be a retail outlet for stolen clothing, including Armani suits and silk shirts. In 1990, Cinque pleaded guilty to a felony: receiving stolen property. . . .” (The Making of Donald Trump; p. 158.)
Another interesting, close associate of Donald Trump was Felix Sater, who changed the spelling of his name, adding an extra “T” to avoid being recognized on internet searches. ” . . . ‘Satter’s’ name appears with just one ‘T’ in a host of places. There’s the deed to his home for example. It is also spelled with only one ‘T’ on New York State court papers from his 1991 felony conviction for stabbing a man in the face with the stem of a margarita glass. The name Sater with one ‘T’ also appears on federal court papers in a $40 million organized crime stock swindle he confessed to in 1998, a scheme that benefited him as well as the Genovese and Gambino crime families. The stock swindle involved fake stock brokerage firms using high-pressure tactics to get naive people to buy worthless shares from Sater and his mob friends. . . .” (The Making of Donald Trump; p. 162.)
Trump’s close associate Felix Sater was able to escape serious legal retribution by going to work for the CIA. ” . . . . There is every indication that the extraordinarily lenient treatment resulted from Sater playing a get-out-of-jail free card. Shortly before his secret guilty plea, Sater became a freelance operative of the Central Intelligence Agency. One of his fellow stock swindlers, Salvatore Lauria, wrote a book about it. The Scorpion and the Frog is described on its cover as ‘the true story of one man’s fraudulent rise and fall n the Wall Street of the nineties.’ According to Lauria–and the court files that have been unsealed–Sater helped the CIA buy small missiles before they got to terrorists. He also provided other purported national security services for a reported fee of $300,000. Stories abound as to what else Sater may or may not have done in the arena of national security. . . .” (The Making of Donald Trump; p. 165.)
The last text reading concludes with discussion of Trump’s unsavory real estate deals. Luring unwary buyers in with the prestigious Trump brand name, ‘The Donald” left a great many of them high and dry when the truth emerged about what was really going on. In this sense, too, we are ALL investors in the Trump brand name, and likely to receive the same treatment as his unwary real estate customers.
A Baja California (Mexico) project is typical of Trump’s methodology and operations in this regard. ” . . . . A June 2007 newsletter notified buyers that construction was underway. The next month, the Trump Baja News reported, ‘our new and excited homeowners now are part of an elite group of vacation homeowners who own property developed by one of the most respected names in real estate, Donald J. Trump.’ Three months later, in October, when Wall Street crashed under the weight of the toxic mortgages and other Baja real estate projects faltered, the same newsletter carried a message ‘From the desk of Ivanka Trump.’ Ivanka assured the buyers that their investment was sound. ‘Though it may be rue that some of Baja’s developments could slow down, these market conditions simply do not apply to Trump Ocean Resort–or any other Trump development,’ she wrote.
“Two months later, in December 2007, the newsletter advised buyers of newly discovered geological problems afflicting the building site. A few months later, in March 2008, anxious buyers received calls or letters. Construction loans had been approved, would be funded shortly, and work would be underway. This was nine months after buyers had been told in writing that construction had already begun. Still, construction did not proceed.
“All of these promotions, sales pitches, and newsletter updates created the impression that Trump was the builder and the developer, words he used. The buyers later said they bought in because Trump was the developer or builder. That understanding then changed abruptly.
“The worst news arrived two before Christmas 2008. What had been described as a partnership between ‘the Trump Organization, Donald J. Trump,’ and the other people and companies involved was described in a new way. Neither Trump nor the Trump Organization were investment partners in the Trump Ocean Resort. They were not the developers, either. They had merely licensed the use of the Trump name. . . .” (The Making of Donald Trump; pp. 169–170.)
It is gruesomely ironic that the bulk of Trump’s scamming revolves around his real estate empire. It was, of course, the collapse of the real estate market that led to the financial collapse of 2008.
Uncle Sam and Il Duce
Since ‘conflicts of interest’ is already one of the main themes of the Trump administration, it’s probably worth noting that if any Trump properties end up getting an award from the American Academy of Hospitality Sciences (AAHS), there’s a conflict of interest involved. As far as Trumpian conflicts of interest go at this point it’s one of the least important conflicts of interest we can imagine. And yet, unlike most of Trump’s conflicts of interest that he doesn’t seem ashamed of at all, Donald Trump doesn’t appear to be very open about the conflicts of interest with the AAHS. In fact, whenever you mention the AAHS he suddenly goes all senile and forgets almost all of his ties to the organization. How odd. Maybe that has something to do with the mob ties:
““I don’t know him. I just find him to be a very nice man, and I don’t know his background. I really don’t,” Trump said of Cinque.”
LOL! Oh look, another individual with mob ties that Trump just sort of kind of knows, but doesn’t really know that well...despite celebrating New Years Eve with the guy. And despite once holding the number three position on the AAHS board of trustees. And despite his family and employees also serving on the board. This Joe Cinque must be some sort of recluse....just hanging out at home with stolen art all day or something.
Still, you would think Trump would know Cinque a little better than he claimed to know him. After all, it’s not like Cinque hasn’t been attending Trump’s New Years Eve parties since 1999:
““Joseph Cinque, President of The AAHS, has been attending Mr. Trump’s party for the past 16 years,” the article said. “It is somewhat of a new Years Eve tradition for him and of course, he has become dear friends with the Trump family.””
Huh. And note that this is from an article put out by the AAHS in reference to the 2014 party, implying that Cinque has been attending this annual event since 1999. But Trump apparently doesn’t know him very well:
Keep in mind that Trump was issuing these denials to Yahoo News back in May. And then, of course, he invited Cinque to the 2016 New Years party only to deny this relationship again in early 2017. So it looks like denying knowledge of Trump’s ties to Joey “No Socks” Cinque is going to be a fun new New Years tradition for the Trump family. And America.
Someone leaked two pages of Donald Trump’s 2005 tax returns to David Cay Johnston. While it demonstrated that Trump had to pay the Alternative Minimum Tax that year — the tax set up to ensure the wealthy can’t use tax loopholes to pay almost nothing in taxes — other than that we didn’t really learn much from the leak. And that immediately raised the same question in a number of different quarters: Did Donald Trump just leak his own tax return?:
““Donald has a long history of leaking things about himself and doing it indirectly and directly,” Johnston told Harlow and Chris Cuomo. “So it’s a possibility.” He published the returns on his website DCReport.org”
Did Trump really leak his own not-too-horrible tax returns to David Cay Johnston? If so, he must have been filled with extra levels of mischievous glee after doing that and then calling Johnston a reporter “who nobody ever heard of” and suggesting the whole thing was “Fake News!”:
So that’s all part of why there’s so much speculation that Trump leaked his own returns. But note the possible downside of doing so: the one big thing we learned from the returns is that without the Alternative Minimum Tax Trump would have paid almost nothing. And repealing the Alternative Minimum Tax is very much on the Trumpian agenda:
So will the Trump/GOP plans to repeal the Alternative Minimum Tax go more smoothly if Trump can say that he himself has paid the tax? Maybe, although is seems like it might not actually be super helpful for that upcoming Alternative Minimum Tax repeal debate for Trump to point out that without the AMT he would have paid almost nothing in taxes in 2005. Especially since, as the article below points out, another part of Trump’s tax reform package involves slashing taxes on “pass through” income and it was the heavy use of “pass through” income that would have made Trump’s tax bill for 2005 so very, very low if it wasn’t for the Alternative Minimum Tax Trump wants to eliminate:
“All of which is to say that the return unveiled on The Rachel Maddow Show suggests Republican tax reform efforts won’t just benefit Donald Trump the way they benefit all rich people. He would be helped an unusual amount, owing to the particulars of his tax situation, with his high AMT burden and large amount of pass-through income.”
So that all points towards one possible angle Trump could use to sell the public on his tax plan: Sure, he’s going to slash tax on the rich but the biggest tax cuts, at least in terms of cuts in the rates paid, aren’t going to “the rich”, in general. The biggest tax cuts are going to Donald Trump. So don’t worry your little prole noggin about those Trump tax cuts. That’s just more aw-shucks fun that comes with Trump being Trump!
While it would be understandable if one assumed that Kellyanne Conway is married to an alternative version of reality, it turns out she actually has a husband. And it sounds like he might be getting a new job and quite an important one too: #DrainTheSwamp:
“Installing Mr. Conway to lead the civil division means that defending the president from such challenges will become a family affair for the Conways. Ms. Conway, a staunch loyalist who ran the final months of Mr. Trump’s presidential campaign, has been a frequent presence on television news programs promoting the president’s agenda and dismissing criticism of his style and record.”
Oh goodie. The family that brought us “alternative facts” is going to be heading up the government’s campaigns to divorce us from reality in the defense of everything from the Muslim ban(s) to the Trump’s mountain of conflicts of interest:
So which alternative fact is going to be the alternative-fact-of-choice for George Conway when defending the inevitable Trump conflicts-of-interest lawsuits requires burying reality under a pile of alternative reality? That there’s no conflict of interest? That it’s complete legal even if there is a conflict of interest (sadly, that one isn’t as alternative as one might hope)?
How about “What’s good for
General MotorsTrump is good for America, so any Trumpian conflicts of interest are actually in American interests.” That’s the kind of alternative reality that could come in extremely handy. Handy for the lawsuits, but also justifying the Trump policy agenda in general.You know how Donald Trump was all excited about how he found that legal loophole that means the President can’t have a conflict of interest. Yeah, it looks like Ivanka found a loophole of her own...along with a new office in the West Wing. And a security clearance. And while the White House is admitting that this new arrangement does nothing to absolve her the many inherent conflicts of interest that come with this new arrange, she totally promises not to abuse it. So it’s totally ok. Yep:
“Trump’s role, according to her attorney Jamie Gorelick, will be to serve as the president’s “eyes and ears” while providing broad-ranging advice, not just limited to women’s empowerment issues. Last week, for instance, Trump raised eyebrows when she was seated next to Angela Merkel for the German chancellor’s first official visit to Trump’s White House”
Looking like a clan of sleazy kleptocrats is apparently worth it so Ivanka can be the “eyes and ears” from her dad. And now any government or private lobbyist who wants to influence Donald Trump officially knows that Ivanka can not only potentially relay the messages to her dad but also has the personal influence to potentially persuade her dad and can do so without violating ethics rules (apparently). And sure, it was obvious before this recent arrangement that Ivanka was a path to Trump. It just wasn’t obvious if going through Ivanka to lobby Trump would put Ivanka in some sort of conflict of interest situation. Well, that’s all cleared up now, isn’t it?
Check out the new Trumpian innovation on the classic “shakedown”. As one might expect, Donald Trump’s anti-immigrant campaign rhetoric had a lot of foreigners interested in immigrating to the US concerned that the doors would be shutting soon if he came to power. And this included wealthy foreigners who would be able to access the existing US policies that essentially allow someone to buy citizenship to the US in exchange for large investments in the US (it’s suppose to create jobs). Well, as the saying goes, when one door closes, another one opens. But in this case it’s the threat of that immigration door closing that’s opening up a whole new door of opportunity. Specifically, an opportunity for the Kushner clan to make rather shady sales pitch to potential investors: if you invest in the Kushner family projects, you’re totally going to be guaranteed the right to purchase US citizenship. And who knows when Trump is going to suddenly reverse that immigration loophole so you better act [invest in Kushner clan projects] soon!:
“Over several hours of slide shows and presentations, representatives from the Kushner family business urged Chinese citizens gathered at a Ritz-Carlton hotel to consider investing hundreds of thousands of dollars in a New Jersey luxury apartment complex that would help them secure what’s known as an investor visa.”
It looks like we can add “selling American citizenship for private profits” to the list of Donald Trump’s conflicts of interest. Of course, we can remove it from the list if Trump does actually reverse the “EB‑5” citizenship program that makes this possible. But given all the money the Trump/Kushner clans can make, why would Trump reverse the EB‑5 program? It’s part of what makes the shakedown technique so interesting with respect to Trump’s nativist base: As long as wealthy foreigners take the Kushners up on their “do this soon before the policy is reversed!” offer, there’s no incentive for Trump to reverse the policy and restrict immigration which make it one form of corruption Trump’s base might actually care about:
“The potential investors were advised to invest sooner rather than later in case visa rules change under the Trump administration. “Invest early, and you will invest under the old rules,” one speaker said.”
The clock is ticking! That’s the message from the Kushners to wealthy Chinese investors and it appears to be a message they’re taking seriously. And as long as they keep taking the threat seriously that clock is likely going to continue ticking. Money winds the clock.
And while we only have reports of solicitations like this to Chinese investors, as Josh Marshall notes below, perhaps the biggest angle if this entire story is that we can be pretty damn sure that the Trump/Kushner clans are well aware that the clock is ticking on their giant opportunity to make as much money from the Trump presidency as possible and therefore, while we only have reports about sales pitches like this going on in China, it’s undoubtedly the tip of the iceberg:
“The most important part of this story, however, is what’s not stated. The Post and the Times caught wind of this event and sent reporters. Do we think this is the only case of the Trump and Kushner families doing this? I think we can fairly assume that the effort to cash in is underway and in overdrive in numerous countries around the world and in every way possible. We see hints and shreds of evidence popping up – Ivanka Trump securing numerous trademarks for her company in China. Even more revealing, many of the hints emerge first in the foreign press or by chance in indiscreet bragging on social media. This tells us that the US press is hard pressed to monitor it – understandably, it’s a large world! With zero disclosure, private meetings and a whole world to rake money, inevitably most of it is taking place outside of our view.”
Yes, it seems like a safe bet that the Trump/Kushner clans’ efforts to cash in is underway and in overdrive in numerous countries around the world and in every way possible. A very safe bet. And that leads us to another interesting twist in this Trumpian ‘bust out’: As we saw one potential Chinese investor remark in the above article, investing in a Trump family project is clearly appealing as long as Trump has a successful presidency. But if it gets impeached or is otherwise a disaster? Well, those investments might be so tempting anymore:
“We heard that there are rumors that he is the most likely to be impeached president in American history. That’s why I doubt this project.”
So as we can see, when Donald Trump straight up asserted that presidents can’t have a conflict of interest and the “foreign emoluments clause” of the constitution doesn’t apply to him, he wasn’t simply protecting himself from potential impeachment while sending an “I’m open for business” signal to the world. He was also sending another important signal: “I’m open for business, and my openness for business isn’t going to be bad for your business when you invest in my business.” Impeachment closes a lot of doors of business opportunity when the primary product you’re selling is an open door to power.
The disastrous and cruel federal cleanup effort (or lack of effort) in Puerto Rico following Hurricane Maria appears to have experienced a new disaster. Or, at least, there are “significant concerns” about a possibly disastrous contract signed to restore electricity to the island after almost all power was knocked out and remains knocked out a month later.
What’s the new possible disaster? Well, unlike the disastrous response to Hurricane Katrina, which was largely blamed on a lack of action by FEMA under the George W. Bush administration, the significant concerns about the disaster response this time are actually being expressed by FEMA...and a whole lot of other people: So it turns out that the $300 million contract to restore Puerto Rico’s electrical grid was awarded an obscure Montana-based utility company, Whitefish Energy, that just so happens to be owned by a number of big Trump donors and just so happens to be based in Whitefish, Montana, the home town of the Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke.
Also, Whitefish energy is a two year old company that had two employees before getting the contract. So it’s basically a middle-man that appears to server no purpose other than to skim profits from this massive rebuilding operation and this egregious contract is for one of the most important elements of the rebuilding effort: electricity. Hence the concern from FEMA and basically anyone else who has heard about this contract and isn’t pro-corruption:
“Whitefish Energy is based in Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke’s hometown, and Zinke is friendly with the company’s CEO. A partner at Whitefish was also a major Republican donor. He gave a total of $74,000 to various Trump groups and another $30,700 to the Republican National Committee, the Daily Beast reported.”
Whitefish just happens to be the Interior Secretary Zinke’s home time, the CEO is friendly with Zinke, and is also a major GOP donor. And it had just two employees before getting the contract and had only existed for two years:
Oh what a coincidence.
It’s also worth noting that white nationalist White House advisor Stephen Miller also calls Whitefish his home town, which might actually be a coincidence although it probably didn’t hurt the deal’s chance.
Given all that, there’s bound to be some sort of audit of Whitefish Energy’s contract. So what might auditors find? Fortunately we already know because a copy of the deal was obtained by a reported. And, lo and behold, the contract prohibits the government from reviewing labor costs or profits related to the company’s relief efforts. Yep, a no-audit rule is what the auditors are going to find:
“Whitefish said Thursday that it welcomes the investigations.”
You have to love that: Whitefish said it welcomes investigations into the contract that systematically blocked audits. They clearly have nothing to hide.
And you also have to love this provision: the government can’t do anything if the work isn’t done on time:
Well, given the “no-audit” rule, a rule seemingly designed to make sure Whitefish can make as much profit as possible, it does seem pretty reasonable to assume that there’s going to be delays. So it makes sense to include a provision that prohibits the government from making “any claim against Contractor related to delayed completion of work.” At least, it makes sense if you’re a horribly corrupt person who is actively planning on keeping a devastated island in the dark for as long as possible to make as much money as possible.
So what has Interior Secretary Zinke said about this? Pretty much what you would expect: that he had nothing to do with the awarding of this contract and that “attempts by the dishonest media or political operatives to tie me to awarding or influencing any contract” are “completely baseless”. In other words, this is all a massive coincidence according to Zinke.
And while it is technically true that Puerto Rico’s public utility is the entity that made the actual decision to hire Whitefish — they say that Whitefish’s lack of a demand for a downpayment helped them get the deal because the utility is current bankrupt — it’s also basically a slap in the face of all the people who voted for “Draining the swamp” to act like the company’s ties to Zink and the GOP wouldn’t have influenced this decision. That’s how ‘The Swamp’ works. But that’s the story — that this is all a coincidence and Whitefish got the contract on the merits of its bid — and we’re all expected to believe it.
#DrainTheSwamp
Check out President Trump’s latest shiny object he’s decided to start playing with in public: threatening (once again) to change the libel laws to make it easier for him to sue news outlets over negative coverage:
““Our current libel laws are a sham and a disgrace, and do not represent American values or American fairness,” Trump said at a Cabinet meeting Wednesday, saying the issue was on his administration’s 2018 agenda. “You can’t say things that are false — knowingly false — and be able to smile as money pours into your bank account. We’re going to take a very, very strong look at that. And I think what the American people want to see is fairness.””
“We’re going to take a very, very strong look at that.” That was Trump’s very, very confused look at the topic of changing libel laws. And it was far from his first look at this topic so you would think that someone would have informed him at this ponteding that libel and defamation are largely governed by state law:
But that doesn’t mean the libels laws can’t be changed. It just means that Trump himself can’t do it. He either needs the Supreme Court to do it by reinterpreting the First Amendment of the Constitution, or he needs all the states to get together and do it with a Constitutional amendment:
“Libel is a matter of state law limited by the principles of the First Amendment. Presidents cannot directly change state laws, so Mr. Trump would effectively have to seek to change the First Amendment principles that constrain the country’s libel laws. There are two potential ways he could do this, according to legal experts. One route is through the Supreme Court. The other is through the Constitution itself.”
Changing either the interpretation of the Constitution or the actual wording of the Constitution. That’s what would be required to protect Trump’s ego from negative words.
Are such herculean changes possible? Yes, it’s possible, just not very likely. Because even if Trump managed to appoint a bunch of new conservative justices, there’s no guarantee that they’ll be on board with Trump’s view on libel law :
And note that the one far-right Supreme Court Justice Trump has already appointed, Neil Gorsuch, doesn’t appear to share Trump’s views on libel.
So Trump would need like some sort of Supreme Court mass exodus at this point to pull this off from the courts. But even if the Supreme Court did reverse its earlier Times v. Sullivan ruling, that would still leave it to the states to decide the issue. And it’s hard to imagine states like California and New York suddenly adopting a Trumpian view on these matters:
That just leaves changing the constitution itself. And it would have to be a change that prevents states from having a say in the matter:
Yeah, it is indeed pretty hard to imagine a request by Trump to change the constitution to amend the First Amendment to make it harder to criticize him is going to gain a lot of traction.
But let’s not forget something rather important about any conversation about amending the US Constitution: radically amending the Constitution has been a far-right goal for years and they are steadily getting closer and closer to getting the chance to do exactly that:
“On Tuesday, the Wisconsin Legislature voted to call for what’s known as an Article V constitutional convention, becoming the 28th state to do so in recent years. Thirty-four states are needed, according to the nation’s founding document, to launch a process that would open up the foundation of American’s rights and laws to revision.”
28 states down, 6 to go. That’s the status of the right-wing drive to open up the US Constitution to a “convention of the states”. A convention that could allow for ANY changes to the Constitution.
So would the people behind the convention of the states drive actually want a big change to the libel laws too? Well, ask yourself this: would the Koch brothers and other far-right oligarchs backing the American right-wing be interested in stronger libel laws? It seems like the answer is an obvious “YES!!!!! Of course they would!!!!” Well, those are the people backing this drive:
And note now active this drive is today. 12 GOP-run states have called for such a convention in the past three years alone:
And note how the backers for this are increasingly talking about “sweeping reforms”, which is EXACTLY the kind of situation where something like a libel law change could be snuck in without too much attention because it will just be one of many ‘sweeping reforms’ freaking everyone out. A massive Constitutional overhaul done by and for the billionaires running the GOP is a key element of the far-right’s long-term strategy for maintaining a grip on power, and it’s hard to imagine a few amendments that make it harder to say anything negative about the oligarchy isn’t part of the that strategy:
“The conservative movement has basically made this a long-term strategy...They had a lot of momentum between 2011 and maybe Monday night. They need six states… Four are firmly in Republican hands.”
28 down, 6 states to go, with 4 of those 6 states firmly in GOP hands. THAT’s the reality when it comes to assessing the feasibility of Trump’s libel law change, along with any other Constitutional change he might fancy.
So while Trump’s public rambling about changing the libel laws might be the latest shiny object he threw out there for us all to marvel at, it’s the kind of shiny object that could easily become one of the shiny bullets in a hail of bullets the right-wing is getting ready to fire at any of the Constitutional protections the American public has left. It’s a remind that Trump’s seemingly insane ramblings are sometimes relatively sane within the context of our utterly insane political context.
Following the surprise announcement by Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy that he would be retiring next month, one of the immediately questions is what exactly motivated Justice Kennedy to make a move that basically becomes his legacy. Especially after he said his reason was to “spend more time with his family,” which is pretty much the default reason given in these situations when you don’t want to give the real reason. And if you’re a member of Supreme Court who voluntarily steps down when someone like Trump is president who is guaranteed to replace you with a far right ideologue, that becomes your legacy.
So what was it that motivated Anthony Kennedy to choose to hitch his legacy to Trump? Well, as the following article describes, it turns out the Trump family has been cozying up to Kennedy from the beginning of Trump administration and the Trump and Kennedy families actually have a history with each other. Specifically, it turns out that Anthony Kennedy’s son, Justin, spent over a decade at Deutsche Bank and eventually became Deutsche Bank ’s global head of real estate capital markets. And it was during Justin’s time at Deutsch Bank that the bank became the key lender for Trump after US banks started shunning him. Justin also reportedly worked closely with Trump on his real estate projects during his time at Deutsche Bank. That’s right, Anthony Kennedy’s son was basically Trump’s banker at Deutsche Bank:
“Their goal was to assure Justice Anthony M. Kennedy that his judicial legacy would be in good hands should he step down at the end of the court’s term that ended this week, as he was rumored to be considering. Allies of the White House were more blunt, warning the 81-year-old justice that time was of the essence. There was no telling, they said, what would happen if Democrats gained control of the Senate after the November elections and had the power to block the president’s choice as his successor.”
Yep, convincing Justice Kennedy to step down has apparently been a Trump project from the very beginning of the Trump administration:
The lobbying even started before the Trump administration, with Ivanka Trump visiting the Supreme Court as a guest of Justice Kennedy a week before Trump’s inauguration:
The lobbying also included choosing people who had clerked for Justice Kennedy for federal court positions, as well as two of the people on Trump’s list of candidates to replace Kennedy on the Supreme Court:
But perhaps the most significant source of the Trump family’s influence with Justice Kennedy comes from the fact that Kennedy’s son, Justin Kennedy, was Trump’s banker at Deutsche Bank:
“Say hello to your boy...Special guy.”
Yeah, Justin Kennedy is indeed a “special guy”. He was apparently Trump’s banker, or at least “worked closely” with Trump. That’s ‘special’, in its own way.
But that’s not the only financial tie between Justin Kennedy and the Trump clan. After Kennedy left Deutsche Bank in 2009 he went on to become co-CEO LNR Property LLC. And it turns out that LNR Property saved Jared Kushner’s 666 Fifth Avenue property back in 2011:
“Justin Kennedy, a graduate of UCLA and Stanford(again like his father), has spent his career in the world of banking, investment, and, interestingly, real estate. In particular, from 2010–2013 Justin Kennedy was the co-CEO of LNR Property LLC with Tobin Cobb. In the world of high-stakes NYC real estate it would be fairly improbable that the Trump or Kushner groups, monoliths in their own right, would not have mingled or done business with the LNR at some point in time. We were not surprised, therefore, to discover that there is a likely connection. Here’s what we know:”
Yep, not only was Justin Kennedy Trump’s lead banker at Deutsche Bank, but he went on to basically save Jared Kushner in 2011 when LNR property came to the rescue of Kushner’s troubled 666 Fifth Avenue property. And Justin Kennedy just happened to be CEO of LNR at the time:
And that is going to be Justice Kennedy’s ultimate legacy: bailing out the Trump clan. Or at least that should be his legacy since whatever good he did on the court is about to get wiped out by his replacement.
This is one of those ‘birds of feather’ kinds of stories: It turns out Trump’s commerce secretary, Wilbur Ross, might actually have a more scandalous history of grifting employees and business partners than President Trump. Maybe. That’s a tough competition. Still, whether or not Ross is bigger grifter than Trump, the fact that we even have to wonder is an indication that the US commerce secretary is a world class grifter:
“It is difficult to imagine the possibility that a man like Ross, who Forbes estimates is worth some $700 million, might steal a few million from one of his business partners. Unless you have heard enough stories about Ross. Two former WL Ross colleagues remember the commerce secretary taking handfuls of Sweet’N Low packets from a nearby restaurant, so he didn’t have to go out and buy some for himself. One says workers at his house in the Hamptons used to call the office, claiming Ross had not paid them for their work. Another two people said Ross once pledged $1 million to a charity, then never paid. A commerce official called the tales “petty nonsense,” and added that Ross does not put sweetener in his coffee.”
Yes, it’s difficult to imagine the possibility that a man as wealthy as Wilbur Ross would be accused by so many people of scamming them. Unless you’ve heard enough stories about Ross. Or Donald Trump. Or any of the other wealthy grifters associated with with Trump administration who seem to lack the ability to not try to extract as much wealth was possible from everyone around them at every opportunity (Tom Price, Scott Pruitt, etc). After you’ve heard the many other stories about this administration’s grifters, the story of Wilbur Ross becomes not just believable but to be expected at this point.
Although, even by Trump team standards, the story of Ross is a doozy:
There’s the accusations by David Storper, a private equity manager who used to work for Ross, that Ross stole Storper’s interest in the private equity fund for himself. An accusation that was quietly settle with a confidentiality settlement a couple of weeks ago. and that was just one of the many accusations discovered by Forbes that puts the total grift at somewhere around $120 million:
Forbes also discovered that the many people they interviewed who have worked with Ross consider him to be a a man obsessed with money and with only a loose relationship to facts. This is both totally unsurprising given the array of accusations against him, and thematically appropriate given who Ross currently works for:
But in addition to scamming his co-workers, there’s also all the investors he apparently scammed. In fact, it was just two months before Trump’s election that Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) announced that Ross’s company, WL Ross, had to pay a fine and refund $11.9 million it allegedly skimmed from investors. And because some of this scamming happened before Ross sold his firm to Invesco and the scamming made WL Ross look more profitable than it actually was, this scam of the WL Ross investors doubled as a scam against Invesco. It’s productivity from the grifter perspective:
Beyond that, WL Ross was apparently charging its investors on money that it lost due to bad investments:
Then Ross neglected to refund the portion of his management fees that he was supposed to give back to investors from the money he earned while serving on the corporate boards of WL Ross’s portfolio companies:
And then there’s the rest of the allegations by his former colleagues: There’s former WL Ross vice chairman Peter Lusk who sued Ross after alleging Ross tried to cut him out of his interests in addition to the lawsuit by Storper who also alleges Ross stole his interests:
And those are just two of the many former colleagues waging legal battles against Ross:
Oh, and then there’s all the grifting he did after become commerce secretary. Like promising he was divest assets and not doing it:
And then there’s the fact that Ross remained a business partner of the Chinese government while he negotiated US-China trade relations:
“This is a public servant who can’t tell the truth.”
Yep, this is a public servant who can’t tell the truth and can’t stop grifting everyone around him acting as the commerce secretary for a boss who can’t tell the truth and can’t stop grifting everyone around him. It would be the perfect position for Ross if, like so many grifters assume, life is just a joke and a race to grab as much as you can and nothing actually matters.
Following the slew of terrible legal news for President Trump this week, Martin London, the attorney for for Vice President Spiro Agnew who knows a thing or two about the perils of presidents facing investigations and impeachment, just issued some rather ominous advice to President Trump: resign now to save your skin because it’s only going to get worse:
“We already have everybody, you know — the rats are leaving the ship. He’s lost [Rick] Gates, [George] Papadopoulos, [Michael] Cohen, [Michael] Flynn, now [David] Pecker...He’ll probably lose (Allen) Weisselberg and others from the Trump Organization. And we don’t know a quarter of what’s in the pocket of the prosecutor.”
The rats are leaving the ship. That was the warning from a guy who knows first hand how a presidency can unravel.
It was a particularly ominous warning when Martin warned that Trump Org CFO Allen Weisselberg would probably be one of those rats jumping ship soon along with others from the Trump Organization. Because if anyone is going to be familiar with Trump’s decades of shady and corrupt dealings, it’s going to be someone in Weisselberg’s position. And Weisselberg has worked for the Trump family for over four decades. And it was an ominously prescient prediction too, because we just got news today of Weisselberg cooperating with prosecutors and getting immunity:
“A cooperation deal between Weisselberg and prosecutors could be damaging to the president given the executive’s longtime role in Trump’s business affairs. Weisselberg has worked for the Trump family for more than four decades, including as treasurer for the Donald J. Trump Foundation.”
Knowledge of four decades of Trump family dealings. That’s what Weisselberg has to offer to prosecutors. It’s pretty remarkable. Although it’s important to keep in mind that Weisselberg appears to be specifically cooperating with the federal investigation of Michael Cohen. It’s not part of #TrumpRussia. At least not yet.
But this investigation of Cohen is still an indirect investigation of Trump because it’s an investigation of the role Cohen played in arranging the hush-money payments to former Playboy model Karen McDougal in September of 2016 in order to keep her story of an affair with Trump out of the news. And that situation — paying hundreds of thousands of dollars to silence someone who could damage a campaign — potentially qualifies as a campaign finance violation.
And this news of Weisselberg’s immunity deal comes just after we learn that Michael Cohen is cooperating with prosecutors along with David Pecker, the owner of American Media Inc., which publishes the National Enquirer. Both Pecker and Weisselberg are mentioned in the audio tape of Cohen talking to Trump about setting up the hush money payments. So pretty much everyone known to be involved with the payoff of Karen McDougal is cooperating with prosecutors at this point except Trump:
But here’s perhaps the most ominous part of this week’s legal news for Trump: According to people close to Cohen, one of the factors that made Cohen decide to become a cooperating witness is that he knew that David Pecker has already given information about those hush money payments to prosecutors. In other words, if Pecker already flipped, Cohen may not have seem much value in not flipping. And this kind of dynamic is undoubtedly going to be in play for all of the various people in Trump’s circle. The more they see the other people in the mess flip, the easier it is to rationalize their own flip:
“Cohen reportedly also knew that David Pecker, the head of American Media Inc., the company that publishes the National Enquirer, had given prosecutors information about the arrangements Cohen made with women who alleged affairs with Trump. Pecker reportedly gave prosecutors information about Trump’s knowledge of the payments as well.”
So it’s looking like Trump knew about that campaign finance violation and there’s going to be plenty of witnesses willing to testify about it. And then there’s the payoff to Stormy Daniels, for which there’s also probably plenty of evidence. Will that be the thing that ends up pushing Trump to resign? Payoffs to a Playmate and a porn star? While that might not seem likely given everything we’ve seen about Trump, there’s one thing to keep in mind regarding this particular case: Of all the possible criminal charges against Trump that could possibly cause him to leave office, resigning due to a hush payment to a former Playmate and porn star is easily the most honorable of the exit strategies available. It’s either that or prosecutors continue the #TrumpRussia investigation and see where that goes.
And it’s not like Trump or any of his base (actually cares that he cheated on his wife and slept with these women. If anything, he’s probably proud of this story and his base probably loves him all the more for it. So if Trump was, for whatever reason, looking for an exit strategy, this actually represents an excuse for Trump to leave office on a sort of high note. It may be a high note only for someone like Trump, but Trump is Trump. The image of a guy sleeping with porn stars and Playmates is the kind of brand he’s been cultivating for years.
It would certainly be surprising if Trump decided to resign. But it would be less surprising if he decided to resign over this particular issue compared any of the other legal threats facing the president. And he would still have a fawning base that his businesses could keep milking for years to come. Maybe. It kind of depends on how many other payoffs of this nature are lingering out there and whether or not any of them involve something more than simply paying off Playmates and porn stars.
Perhaps the biggest looming question heading into the 2018 US mid-terms was whether or not the Democrats would take control of the House. It seemed likely, but not a sure bet. With the Republican party demonstrating a mastery of voter suppression, gerrymandering, and other vote rigging techniques and dirty tricks, even when it seems like it’s a good bet that the Democrats will win it’s still a highly tenuous good bet. But, in the end, the Democrats managed to get 4 million more overall votes than the Republicans in the House races and took control of that chamber with a 25 seat advantage. It may not have been a full ‘Blue Wave’ given the losses in the Senate, but it was about as close as one could have reasonably hoped for given the circumstances.
So now the biggest looming questions going forward are all about investigations, with the most immediate questions centered around the Mueller investigation, which is frequently assumed to be close to coming to a conclusion. And not just the obvious investigations surrounding the Mueller probe but all the other potential investigations, like financial dealings with foreign governments, corrupt cabinet officials. And following the blockbuster NY Times report last month detailing the history of tax fraud at the heart of the Trump family business empire, simply taking a look at Trump’s tax returns is now an arguably urgent task for Congress.
Related to that, there’s the question of the fate of Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who Trump has been aggressively trolling and openly encouraging to step down ever since Sessions recused himself from overseeing Mueller’s probe. Well, we already got an answer on what’s going to happen to Jeff Sessions: He’s out. Sessions was fired today and is being replaced with his chief of staff, Matthew G. Whitaker, as acting Attorney General.
So Rod Rosenstein is no longer overseeing the Mueller probe, which makes it all the more likely that we’ll be seeing the results of that probe sooner rather than later. Especially since Whitaker has been openly advocating for limiting the Mueller investigation or even ending it.
Specifically, Whitaker argued last year in an op-ed on CNN that the Mueller investigation crossed a ‘red line’ when it began looking into Donald Trump’s finances.
Around the same time, Whitaker argued on twitter that the evidence heard by Mueller’s grand jury would probably never be made public, which many have pointed out looks to be a potential argument for sealing the findings of Mueller’s probe from the public forever. And these public proclamations by Whitaker appeared to be part of public relations campaign by Whitaker to get the job of White House counsel.
So it’s looking like we could see the rapid wrapping up of Mueller’s probe with no public disclosure of those findings (or lack of findings), turning it all into a giant political Rorschach test:
“In an August 2017 op-ed published on the CNN website, the former federal prosecutor argued that Mueller had come “dangerously close” to crossing a “red line” in the investigation by looking at Trump’s personal finances and those of his business.”
As has long been obvious, it’s not the investigation into potential Russian collusion that has Trump the most concerned. It’s investigations into Trump’s wildly corrupt business past and personal finances (like tax fraud) that has him freaked out. Those are the concerns Whitaker was echoing in the op-ed last year:
That same month, Whitaker tweeted about how the public will probably never be allowed to see the evidence Mueller’s probe bases its findings, which could be used as a means of keeping the entire report sealed from the public:
Keep in mind that if it turns out the Mueller investigation has basically no compelling evidence of ‘Russian collusion’, but still lots of evidence of other wrongdoings by the Trump team (or attempted collusion, like the Don Jr. and the infamous Trump Tower meeting), having the investigation results sealed from the public could be an outcome that both sides would find preferable.
Finally, Whitaker has called for going after “leakers” in the government who have been involved with leaking details of the Russia probe:
And this desire to take a hard line against leakers could end up playing a central role in Donald Trump’s attempts to defend himself against Democratic investigations. How so? Well, as the following article covering Donald Trump’s post-mid-terms reaction today makes clear, Trump’s planned defense is to go on offense with investigations of his own. Yep, he actually tweeted out this morning that if the House Democrats decide to investigate him, he’s going to investigate them in retaliation. Although it appeared to be a threat agains the Senate Democrats: “If the Democrats think they are going to waste Taxpayer Money investigating us at the House level, then we will likewise be forced to consider investigating them for all of the leaks of Classified Information, and much else, at the Senate level”:
“While touting Republican wins in the Senate, President Donald Trump spent the post-election Wednesday morning threatening to investigate Democrats who won control of the House and are now threatening to investigate him.”
Mutually Assured Investigations. That appears to be the strategy the Trump White House is going with at this point. Interestingly, he specifically talked about investigating the leaks of “Classified Information, and much else,” at the Senate level. And while Trump’s counter-investigations will presumably include leaks related to the Mueller probe, he’s also been accusing Democrats of improperly leaking information about then-Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh. So the whole Kavanaugh nomination could end up being publicly relitigated in some manner, which seems like an extreme political risk for the GOP but that’s the threat Trump is making:
Democrats in the House, however, are already pledging to reveal the public Trump’s tax returns, which, again, might be thing Trump fears most at this point:
We appear to be heading towards a remarkable period of bipartisan investigations for Washington: both parties are going to investigate each other.
Beyond that, the White House is indicating that it’s going to be putting up legal challenges against any House subpoenas, including subpoenas for his tax returns. So while it’s possible Trump’s tax returns will indeed be made public, we can’t rule out the possibility that there’s going to be an executive branch blockade on that information which will no-doubt trigger more calls for more investigations:
Like the Mueller report, Trump’s tax returns — which are currently a Rorschach test — could end up remaining Rorschach test. A known unknown with contents we can only speculate about.
In related news, Trump called CNN an “enemy of the people” again during his press conference today when he was asked by CNN’s Jim Acosta if Trump was concerned about indictments coming from Mueller’s investigation (starts at about 1:35 in clip). It’s a reminder that, while Trump appears poised to ramp up his attacks as part of his defense strategy, the targets of those ramped attacks aren’t going to be limited to the Democrats (or necessarily carried out by Trump).
So if you feel like the ‘Trump unchecked’ period of Trump’s time in office was doing incalculable damage of the US political system and society, just wait for the ‘cornered tax-cheating animal with its back against wall’ years.
There was a rather interesting recent poll out of Quinnipiac about US voter attitudes about impeaching President Trump vs criminally charging him: 61% of voters did not support impeachment compared to 33% who do. But when it comes to the issue of whether or not Presidents are immune from criminal charges in office, 69% of voters say there should be no immunity, 57% believe Trump committed crimes before his inauguration, 55% say the Mueller Report did not clear the President of wrongdoing, and voters are split 45% to 45% over whether or not Trump has committed crimes while in office. So while the American public doesn’t appear to be very keen on seeing Trump impeached at this moment, they appear to be ok with charging him for crimes that a majority think he has committed.
While this is the kind of poll that will obviously shape the Democrats’ decision over whether or not to pursue impeachment inquiries at this point, part of what makes the polls so interesting in the context of the 2020 election is that it appears to point towards an ongoing strong voter revulsion of general corruption and a desire to see that corruption addressed. In other words, it strongly points towards an ongoing ‘drain the swamp!’ sentiment, which was ironically one of Trump’s central 2016 slogans.
And that’s the kind of voter sentiment that makes the following pair of articles extremely interesting heading into the 2020 elections: it turns out Trump’s Transportation Secretary, Elaine Chao, is just blatantly corrupt. Corrupt in exactly the kinds of ways that are very easy for voters to understand. The kind of classic Washington DC backscratching corruption that many voters feel should be criminal. And the partner in Chao’s corruption is literally her husband, Mitch McConnell, who is currently the most unpopular Senator in the country and also happens to be the Senate Majority Leader.
So what’s the blatant corruption? Well, Chao did her husband a favor. The kind of favor that no other Senator received: Chao assigned one of her top aides, Todd Inman, to be the point man for advising McConnell and local Kentucky officials on how to submit grants to the Department of Transportation for infrastructure projects. No other Senator received this kind of special assistance and no other Senator is in as dire need of this kind of special assistance because, again, Mitch McConnell is wildly unpopular in his home state (36% approval, 50% disapproval according to current polls). And as the following article notes, McConnell is up for reelection in 2020 and his campaign appears to be heavily geared towards emphasizing exactly these kinds of federally funded infrastructure projects. So the Secretary of Transportation is giving her husband, the most power and unpopular Senator in the nation, special help to ensure that his state gets the federally funded infrastructure grants that will most help him win reelection. That’s about as classically corrupt as it gets and is thematically very in keeping with the nepotism that has been a signature part of the Trump administration
And as we’ll see in the second article below, Chao has another totally blatant corruption issue that all voters will recognize as being exactly the kind of ‘swamp’ corruption they wanted to see ended: Starting in 2016, Chao joined the board of Vulcan Materials, an Alabama-based supplier of rock aggregate used in road construction and building projects. Vulcan is frequently mentioned as one of the stocks that would benefit most from a big increase in federal infrastructure spending. The stock jumped 20 percent since February alone after Trump pledged to do a big infrastructure program during his State of the Union address. This arrangement was obviously a an ethical problem after Chao became Transportation Secretary in 2017. So Chao agreed to “a cash payout for all of my vested deferred stock units” that would happen by April of 2018 to address clear conflict of interest. Surprise! She didn’t. A financial disclosure report released this month by Mitch McConnell revealed that Chao had somewhere between $250,000 and $500,000 in Vulcan stock. Why did she have this stock in 2019 after pledging to cash out of her stock options a year ago? Because Vulcan decided to pay Chao for her stock options with stock instead of cash. That’s the explanation. No explanation is given for why she didn’t just go ahead and sell the stock instead of holding onto it and maintaining the conflict of interest. Presumably she had an interest in maintaining that conflict of interest.
So Trump’s Transportation Secretary is giving her husband, the most hated and powerful Senator in the country, special assistance to ensure his pet projects get the federal grants needed for him to campaign on his ability ‘bring home the bacon’ and win reelection in 2020. Snd she also kept stock in the company expected to be one of the biggest beneficiaries of federal infrastructure spending. That seems like the kind of story that would resonate with voters upset with ‘the swamp’:
“Chao’s aide Todd Inman, who stated in an email to McConnell’s Senate office that Chao had personally asked him to serve as an intermediary, helped advise the senator and local Kentucky officials on grants with special significance for McConnell — including a highway-improvement project in a McConnell political stronghold that had been twice rejected for previous grant applications.
”
Elaine Chao’s tasked her own aide, Todd Inman, to help her husband and local Kentucky officials get grants with special significance for McConnell. It’s that special significance that makes this extra corrupt. Because it was guaranteed that Kentucky would receive some sort of federal grant, but there are a lot of different projects competing for that money. Chao ensured the projects selected were the ones favored by her husband, the most hated and powerful Senator in the country. As Al Mattingly, the chief executive of Daviess County, described it, someone has to break the tie between competing projects. Inman helped ensure that it was the projects favored by her husband that won these tie-breaker decisions, thus helping him politically. Help he desperately needs if he’s going to be reelected in 2020. It’s all pretty swampy. Especially since no other state got this privilege:
And note how McConnell featured the Owensboro projects in his 2020 campaign launch. The city first tried to get these grants in 2016 and failed. They tried again in 2017 and still failed. But the third time was a charm and in December 2018 the grant was accepted. Four months later McConnell used this city as part of his initial campaign launch activities and is making his ability to bring federal dollars to Kentucky a central message of his campaign. He’s literally campaigning on being extra swampy:
Ok, so that was all pretty swampy, but not as swampy as the next story. Because it’s hard to imagine something more quintessentially swampy as the Transportation Secretary owning stock in a major supplier of road construction and other building projects. Which is exactly what happened, despite Chao’s pledges to eliminate this blatant conflict of interest:
““The Department of Transportation has a lot to do with the building of roads in America, and the secretary ought not to be on both sides of the deal,” Mr. Weissman said. “Why didn’t she just cash out?””
Why didn’t she just cash out? It’s a pretty big question. Because it’s not like Chao and McConnell aren’t already wealthy. Did they really need to keep the stock in Vulcan Materials to benefit from a price rise? It’s almost like it’s corruption on principle:
And note how the Transporation Department is trying to spin this by emphasizing that Chao had recused herself of all agency decisions directly related to company. This, of course, ignores the reality that a company in Vulcan’s position doesn’t need direct help (unlike Chao’s husband). As long as there’s a boost in federal spending on roads and other building projects it’s more or less guaranteed that Vulcan is going to benefit from that which is why the stock jumped 20 percent in February after Trump retouted his plans for a big federal infrastructure project. Plus, it’s not like the contractors competing for these projects don’t know that Chao is an investor in Vulcan so when they decide on which company to choose for supplying the materials new roads and concrete they’re going to know that going with Vulcan will be smiled upon at the Department of Transportation:
Again, why on earth would Chao hold onto this stock given what a horrible look it is? She couldn’t possibly have needed the money that bad. Well, let’s not forget that Trump famously declared that the Emoluments Clause doen’t apply to him because “Presidents can’t have a conflict of interest,” resulting in the situation where foreign governments and corporations now intentionally make expensive stays at Trump hotels in order to curry favor with the administration. So who knows, maybe Chao was just following Trump’s lead.
As we can see, the Secretary of Transportation was giving special assistance to her powerful, yet loathed, husband so his pet projects in his home state would receive federal grants and he could campaign on his mastery of ‘the swamp’ at the same time she violated her conflict of interest pledge and kept stock in of the companies best positioned to benefit from a major federal infrastructure spending. It seems like the kind of situation that should animate voters who foolishly took Trump seriously when he pledged to ‘drain the swamp.’
On the plus side, there doesn’t appear to actually a real infrastructure plan thanks to GOP opposition in Congress to any meaningful investments in public projects. So thanks to the GOP’s policy malfeasance it looks like Chao’s ability to benefit from this stock will be somewhat limited.
Oh look at that: Deutsche Bank magically lost all of Trump’s tax returns. What exactly happened to those tax returns is unclear, but according to filings with a federal court last week, Deutsche Bank doesn’t have Trump’s tax returns. This despite current and former Deutsche Bank executive having previously told the New York Times that the bank had portions of both Trump’s personal and corporate tax returns.
Deutsche Bank’s new claims about lacking Trump’s tax returns emerged after media outlets asked the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit of New York last month to unseal a letter from Deutsch Bank that identified two members of the Trump family whose tax returns were in Deutsch Bank’s possession. The court denied that request last week after asserting that Deutsche Bank already told the court that “the only tax returns it has for individuals and entities named in the subpoenas are not those of the president.”
The letter the media outlets were trying to get unsealed was related to one of many lawsuits currently underway that involve attempts to get access to Trump’s tax returns. Following the Democratic takeover of the House, a number of congressional committees issue lawsuits requesting Trump’s tax information. In this case it’s the House Intelligence and Finance committees that subpoenaed both Deutsche Bank and Capital One for Trump’s tax documents. Trump sued both banks to prevent them from turning complying with the subpoenas and that’s what’s getting hammered out in court.
It media requests for the Deutsche Bank letter happened after the appeals court judges requested a written answer to the question of whether Deutsche Bank had copies of Trump’s tax returns. Deutsche Bank released a partly redacted letter saying it did have at least draft versions of some of the tax returns covered by the congressional subpoena. That letter, combined with the previous reports from current and former Deutsche Bank executives made it sound like a sure bet that the bank would have those returns. But it appears that *poof* the documents are all gone:
“Current and former bank officials previously told The Times that Deutsche Bank had portions of Mr. Trump’s personal and corporate tax returns. The bank collected at least some of those tax records in 2011, when Deutsche Bank’s private-banking arm — which caters to the ultra-wealthy — took on Mr. Trump as a client. The returns and other financial documents were reviewed by a number of bank executives, according to the current and former officials.”
All indications, up until now, were that Deutsche Bank did indeed possess those tax returns. After all, the bank relied on that information to issue its loans to Trump. And according to former senior executives, the normal protocol is to keep those documents. So some sort of abnormal protocol is now in effect for Deutsche Bank’s Trump documents:
And note that this particular legal fight just involves subpoenas from the House Intelligence and Finance committees. There’s also the subpoenas by the House Ways and Means Committee for Trump’s tax returns from the IRS, which the Treasury Department is refusing to hand over. And then there’s the subpoenas by the Manhattan district attorney and the House Oversight Committee to Trump’s accounting firm, Mazars USA, for his tax returns. So if Trump manages to keep his tax returns out of the hands of investigators he’s going to have to win a lot of court cases going forward:
And all those ongoing other lawsuits are part of what makes it unlikely we’ve heard the last of Deutsche Bank’s sudden claims of no Trump tax returns. The House Intelligence and Finance committees presumably aren’t the only entities trying to get those documents from Deutsche Bank. Plus, it all looks so shady that there’s undoubtedly even more intense speculation about what’s revealed in those documents because at this point even Deutsche bank executives agree the only plausible explanation is that Deutsche Bank destroyed its copies of the tax returns
““Holy f**k,” the executive wrote, per the screenshot. “The circumstance could be that they returned any physical copies or destroyed any physical copies under an agreement with a client and cleansed their servers. Not normal though.””
Not normal. That’s the response from an unnamed Deutsche bank executive. We can add that to the list of “not normal” response to questions about Trump’s tax returns.
So that’s one of latest twists regarding the ongoing quests by multiple investigative teams to get Trump’s tax returns. But it’s not the latest twist and far from the only twist last week. Last Monday, a federal appeals court ruled that Mazars USA had to turn the tax documents over to the Manhattan district attorney’s office, although that ruling was given an emergency appeal. Then, last Friday, there was a ruling in the lawsuit by the House Oversight Committee to get Trump’s tax returns from Mazars USA. Trump’s lawyers were arguing that the subpoenas were invalid because they were investigating potential criminal conduct of the president and that can only be done under the auspices of a formal impeachment investigation. But the judges ruled that the subpoena by the House Oversight Committee wasn’t focused on determining presidential wrongdoing but instead was for the purpose of assessing the fitness of legislation intended to address potential problems within the Executive Branch and the electoral system.
So both of the subpoenas involving Mazars USA were ruled in favor of the investigators last week. And as the following article notes, this latest ruling leaves the Trump administration with an interesting dilemma: request a ruling by the full federal appeals court, or try to take it to the Supreme Court for an emergency ruling:
“Friday’s majority opinion called the House subpoena “a valid exercise of the legislative oversight authority because it seeks information important to determining the fitness of legislation to address potential problems within the Executive Branch and the electoral system.” The court said the document demand “does not seek to determine the President’s fitness for office.””
Trump’s defense basically came down to, “this subpoena is an attempt to impeach Trump without opening a formal impeachment inquiry.” That appears to be the legal question the Trump team is trying to get the case to hinge on. And while a majority of the judges disagreed with that argument, the Trump team is going to have the option of taking its case to the full appeals court or going straight to the Supreme Court. Note that the legal expert, John Eastman, who expressed his dismay at the ruling and predicted the Supreme Court will halt the subpoenas happens to be a member of the arch-conservative Federalist Society. Now, that doesn’t mean Eastman’s predictions aren’t valid. Federalist Society members probably have a pretty good idea of how the Supreme Court will rule on matters given the profound role the Federalist Society plays in choose Republican Supreme Court nominees. But it’s important to keep in mind that he’s far from an unbiased observer on these matters and closer to a political hack, albeit a hack with likely valid insights into how the Supreme Court might rule:
And that’s all part of why law professor William Howell sees this ruling as both bringing a measure of clarity but also bringing the US one step close to a full-blown constitutional crisis:
Will the Supreme Court rule that Congress can’t investigate possible wrongdoing by a president unless its part of a formal impeachment hearing? We’ll see but that’s one potential path to a full-blown constitutional crisis. Or maybe Trump will just refuse to comply with court approved subpoenas even after the Supreme Court approves it. That would be another pretty clear constitutional crisis. It’s presumably going up to the Supreme Court to decide which constitutional crisis its going to spark when it eventually rules on these matters.
So that looming Supreme Court decision will be something to watch...along with watching to see if Deutsche Bank continues to get away with the destruction of Trump’s tax documents.
American legal theory experienced a pair of attempted muggings over the past 24 hours that were notable for being egregious even by the debased standards of the modern Republican Party: First, on Tuesday evening on Fox News, President Trump’s former Acting Attorney General, Matt Whitaker, made a rather stunning assertion in relation to the ongoing impeachment investigation of Trump over the Ukrainian quid pro quo shakedown scheme. According to Whitaker, abuse of power is not something the president can be impeached over because it’s not a crime:
““I’m a former prosecutor and what I know is this is a perfect time for preliminary hearings where you would say show us your evidence,” he told Ingraham. “What evidence of a crime do you have? So the Constitution — abuse of power is not a crime.”
This is where we are. Presidents can abuse power with impunity. That’s the view of Trump’s former Acting Attorney General. And notice that this line of argument is coming out right now specifically because it appears that the Democrats are planning on focusing on an abuse of power narrative for the ongoing impeachment investigation:
So that was the first legal mugging coming from the Republicans in defense of Trump. The president can’t be impeached for abuse of power. End of story.
The second legal theory mugging didn’t involve the #UkraineGate investigation. Instead, it was a legal argument put forward by Trump’s legal team in the ongoing lawsuit by the Manhattan district attorney’s office to get Trump’s tax returns from his long-time accounting firm Mazars USA. As part of Trump’s legal argument against Mazars turning over those tax documents, Trump’s lawyers have been arguing that the Constitution prevents a sitting president from being indicted and also prevents criminal investigation or “process” from being applied to the president.
So Manhattan District Attorney General Counsel Carrey Dunne raised the point that this legal argument sounds a lot like Trump’s infamous claim about being so loved by his supporters that he could shoot someone on 5th Avenue and wouldn’t lose their support. So Dunne asked the court, “If he did pull out a handgun and shoot someone on Fifth Ave...would the local police be restrained? ... Would we have to wait for impeachment?” The judges later raised this exact same question to Trump’s lawyers and their answer was no, Trump could not be investigated and there was nothing local authorities could do about it if he pulled a gun out and shot someone on 5th Avenue:
“Trump attorney William Consovoy had argued that not only does the Constitution prevent a sitting president from indictment, but it also prevents criminal investigation or “process” from being applied to the head of state.”
The president can’t be indicted or even investigated. That’s the argument from Trump’s lawyers for why Trump’s tax returns shouldn’t have to be turned over to the Manahattan District Attorney’s office. The argument was so expansive that it includes open murder on the streets:
We’ve gone from Nixon’s “When the president does it, that means it is not illegal,” to Trump’s “When the president does it, it doesn’t matter if it’s illegal.”
So let’s review: according to former Acting Attorney General, the president can’t be impeached for abuse of power because abuse of power isn’t a crime and only serious crimes can be the basis for impeachment. And according to Trump’s lawyers, the president can’t be investigated for any crimes at all. Presumably impeachment is the only option when faced with presidential crimes under these legal theories. Which raises the question: so if Trump shoots someone on 5th Avenue, would that rise to the level of an impeachment-worthy high crime and misdemeanor in the eyes of Republican lawyers, or would Republicans come up with some new legal loophole for why shootings aren’t impeachable? At this point that’s a very open question.
Here’s a story about a court case that could end up shedding some light on the alleged suicide of former head of Deutsche Bank’s U.S. Private Wealth Management division, Thomas Bowers, who happened to be the person who oversaw a number of controversial loans given to Donald Trump by the bank: A federal appeals court, the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, just ruled that Deutsche Bank must turn over detailed documents about President Trump’s finances to two House congressional committees that subpoenaed the bank for those documents. The subpoenas also include any information the bank might have about suspicious activity in Trump’s account.
Recall how, back in June, multiple anonymous Deutsche Bank staff whistleblowers claimed both Trump and Jared Kushner had transactions that set off computer systems designed to detect illicit activity in 2016 and 2017, but the bank chose not to report this to government regulators. Then, in October, we learned that Deutsche Bank told the the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit that the bank does not possess Trump’s tax documents, prompting a former executive to suggest the bank may have intentionally destroyed the documents. So there’s presumably quite a bit of information on illicit activity that Deutsche Bank could end up handing over to House investigators, but the bank may have already destroyed that evidence.
This latest ruling by the appeals court is bound to be appealed and expected to eventually be heard by the Supreme Court. Don’t forget that former Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy’s son, Justin Kennedy, headed up Deutsche Bank’s commercial real estate group which made Trump a number of loans Trump’s account at the bank was moved over to the Private Wealth Management division. It would be interesting to know how that personal tie to Kennedy might impact Brett Kavanaugh’s rulings on the matter given that he’s Kennedy’s hand-picked successor on the court. But Kavanaugh seems like a sure bet to rule in Trump’s favor anyway so this probably won’t make a difference.
As the article notes, there are already two other similar cases involving Trump’s financial documents before the Supreme Court. So we’ll see if the Supreme Court comes to Trump’s rescue, which, at this point, is really a question of whether or not John Roberts comes to Trump’s rescue:
“The subpoenas, issued in April by the House Financial Services and Intelligence committees, sought nearly a decade’s worth of tax returns and other financial documents that the banks obtained from Mr. Trump, his family and his companies. The subpoenas also demanded information about any suspicious activities that Deutsche Bank detected in Mr. Trump’s accounts.”
Any information about suspicious activities detected in Trump’s accounts. That sure would be useful for investigators. Too bad the bank appears to have suspiciously lost that information. Perhaps a few court rulings will help the bank suddenly it again. But that likely won’t happen until the Supreme Court rules on the case. And if this case does make it to the Supreme Court, it’s going to join two other cases involving House subpoenas for Trump’s tax returns from Mazars USA:
Also recall that it was during the court hearing on the fight over the Mazars USA documents that Trump’s legal team literally argued that presidents cannot be investigated for anything while in office — which was the basis for the subpoena by the Manhattan district attorney’s office that’s seeking those documents in an investigation of potential criminal wrongdoing — and that Trump literally could shoot someone on 5th Avenue and not be arrested. So while these cases involving Trump’s financial documents might seem like they primarily deal with the question of whether or not presidents should be forced to reveal their tax returns, at least one of the cases involves the question of whether or not presidents can be investigated for anything at all, even shooting people on 5th Avenue. Which, again, is also part of the grim context of the recent ‘suicide’ of Thomas Bowers.
Here’s a story that dovetails nicely with the growing ‘Cheater in Chief’ theme of the stories about Trump in recent months. Stories like Trump cheating out a COVID vaccine approval or attempting to preemptively delegitimize the upcoming election by breaking the US Postal System and claiming mass voter fraud against him:
The issue of Trumps business practices and questions over his real net worth are back in the news following a New York Times report over the weekend that revealed Trump paid just $750 in federal income taxes in 2016 and 2017 and often paid $0 in other years. Yep, that’s all the guy paid. And as former Trump biographer, Tim O’Brien, describes in the following piece, it’s been something of an open secret that Trump has long paid almost nothing in tax, making this more of an ‘oldie but goodie’ story, but it’s never been confirmed before. O’Brien’s lawyers previously got to view some of Trump’s older tax returns as part of a defamation lawsuit Trump himself leveled against O’Brien over O’Brien 2006 book “Trump Nation”. Trump claimed in the suit that O’Brien misrepresented Trump’s business practices and lowballed the value of his fortune. That made the issue of Trump’s fortune part of the lawsuit and as a result O’Brien’s lawyers got to see some of those tax returns. And while O’Brien isn’t allowed to discuss the specifics of those returns, he has publicly stated in the past that he suspects the reason Trump has long refused to release his tax returns is because of it would basically validate O’Briend’s claims while also revealing the scope of foreign sources of income that Trump relies on. Those foreign sources include over $421 million in loans that Trump has personally guaranteed that are reportedly coming due over the next several years. And that includes a $300 million loan to Deutsche Bank.
So we’re now learning that Trump paid almost nothing in federal income taxes while he heavily indebted to foreign entities and this was the case while he has been president. As O’Brien points out, the average middle class family making $75,000 pay closer to $14,000 in federal income taxes. So Trump paid like 5 percent of what a middle class family paid. It’s not a great look. Trump also paid roughly $400 million less in combined federal income taxes over the last 20 years than than his billionaire peers (or alleged peers) who paid the average tax rate which raises obvious questions about tax sheltering and other financial crimes. But in what is perhaps the worst possible comparison, O’Brien points out that when Trump paid $750 in federal taxes in 2017 that was the same year he paid Stormy Daniels $130,000 in hush money:
“Due to his indebtedness, his reliance on income from overseas and his refusal to authentically distance himself from his hodgepodge of business, Trump represents a profound national security threat – a threat that will only escalate if he’s re-elected. The tax returns also show the extent to which Trump has repeatedly betrayed the interests of many of the average Americans who elected him and remain his most loyal supporters.”
It’s not just a tawdry story of criminal financial shenanigans. It’s a story about the US president having massive non-transparent financial obligations to foreign interests that are coming due soon which is a story with clear national security implications. And as O’Brien notes, one of the dynamics of this situation is that the more these problems with his finances are publicly revealed the more strained his assets become. It underscores how hyping the size of his fortune may not have just been feeding Trump’s ego but could be necessarily for keeping his lenders satisfied, which, in turn, raises questions about whether or not he’s been misrepresenting his assets to those lenders too. It also raises the question of what kind of national security risk Trump would pose after leaving office...all those national secrets in his head are probably worth a lot of money, especially to foreign interests:
But perhaps the best example of the amoral nature of Trump’s finances is the fact that the year he paid $750 in federal income taxes in 2017 was the same year he paid Stormy Daniels $130,000 in hush money. The average middle class family making $75,000 would have paid $14,000 in federal income taxes that year:
Paying $130,000 in hush money to a porn star he was secretly having an affair with the same year he paid $750 in federal income taxes...while serving as the president following a historically dirty electoral victory. That’s the guy
running for reelectionpreparing to invalidate the upcoming election so he can just stay in office as the unduly elected ‘Cheater in Chief’.One of the more remarkable and disturbing ‘talents’ that President Trump undeniably possesses is the ability to successfully spin just about any scandal — whether it’s scandalous comments or scandalous actions — as some sort of act of ‘owning the libs’. Whatever Trump does, no matter how scandalous, can be justified as long as left-wingers are publicly upset about it. In fairness, it’s not so much a talent of Trump’s along as it is a collective talent of the entire conservative movement at this point.
So it’s going to be very interesting to see whether or not the following wildly scandalous develop will end up getting the ‘owning the libs’ treatment...because there’s probably going to be a lot of left-wing outcry over this story if the Trump administration actually does what it looks like it’s about to do. Along with outcry from the Pentagon and anyone worried about how this is going impact the US military’s communications infrastructure:
It appears that the Trump administration has some last minute looting in mind that is so egregious there’s a bunch of anonymous senior Trump administration officials who are now talking to the press about it. Weeks before the election. That’s how bad this is. Specifically, the Trump White House is pushing to grant a no-bid contract to lease the Defense Department’s mid-band spectrum — frequencies in the 1 GHz – 6 GHz range seen as ideal for 5G telecommunication networks — to a company with politically connected owners. Egregiously politically connected owners. Karl Rove and Peter Thiel.
The hope behind the project is that the Defense Department’s mid-band spectrum can be shared with the commercial space for 5G purposes without disrupting the US military’s telecommunications needs. The Rivada bid would be for 350 megahertz of spectrum and is estimated to be worth $22.5 billion. The project is characterized by one anonymous senior administration official as, “the biggest handoff of economic power to a single entity in history.” The biggest handoff of economy power to a single entity in history in a no-bid contract to Karl Rove and Peter Thiel. That should probably ‘own the libs’ pretty effectively.
It sounds like the pressure campaign to fast track Rivada’s “Request for Proposal” (RFP) in a way that would preclude a competitive bidding process intensified in September and is being led by White House chief of staff Mark Meadows acting at Trump’s behest. Newt Gingrich is already reportedly involved in the lobbying process to make this happen.
It’s not exactly surprising the Peter Thiel would be the recipient of Trump’s largess, why Karl Rove? It’s not like Rove has been particularly close to the Trump White House this whole time. Well, while Rove may not have the kind of general cachet he used to with the Republican base, there’s one particular demographic where Rove continues to be very influential: Republican Mega-donors. As we’ve seen, Rove remains a key figure in the contemporary world of Republican mega-donors and that gives him very real clout with any Republican politician in need of that mega-donor money. And if there’s one Republican in desperate need of mega-donor money right now it’s Donald Trump...because his own campaign has apparently already blown through its $1 billion cash trove (largely through insider-self-enrichment) and the campaign is now desperately short on cash. That’s reportedly the motive for the Rivada deal...getting all that Rove mega-donor money for the Trump campaign. The libs are going to be livid when they hear about this.
Additionally, it sounds like the Pentagon is resisting the plan because its not actually convinced that Rivada has the technology that would allow the Pentagon to safely lease out this spectrum space without potentially disrupting US military readiness. Yep. So after looting its own campaign, the Trump White House is how trying to loot the US military’s communications spectrum so he can get more campaign money to loot. Those libs that care about military readiness are go to be sooooo pissed. Will any Republicans share in that outrage? We’ll see, but lib tears can be quite delicious:
“The pressure campaign to fast track Rivada’s “Request for Proposal” (RFP) by using authorities that would preclude a competitive bidding process intensified in September, and has been led by White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, who was acting at Trump’s behest, sources with knowledge tell CNN. To push his case, Meadows has sometimes used as his proxy an individual identified by sources in the telecommunications industry as a top financial management official in the US Army.”
This is a ‘Trump White House’ scandal. It’s very directly a Trump scandal. At least that’s the case if Trump is the one who ordered White House chief of staff Mark Meadows to pursue this. And who else could have possibly ordered Meadows to do so other than Trump?
And note how Trump was apparently previously on board with supporting the normal competitive bidding process. But something appears to have changed his mind...right around election time:
And based on an August auction of 70 megahertz of spectrum for $4.5 billion, and the estimate that the Rivada contract would be worth 5 times that much, we can put a rough valuation of $22.5 billion or so, making this, in the words of one anonymous senior administration official, “the biggest handoff of economic power to a single entity in history”. Even the FCC was reportedly stunned:
And that historic economic handoff just happens to present a potentially very serious military vulnerability. Because priorities:
Keep in mind that the military is only going to become increasingly reliant on telecommunication infrastructure over time as defense systems becoming increasingly connected and automated. Just imagine how ‘owned’ the libs would be if this stunt ends up creating vulnerabilities the various remote-controlled and automated military drone technologies of the future. That could be some extreme ‘owning’.
The recent should-be-mega-scandal (that no one seems to care about) over the Trump administration’s push to lease chunks of the Pentagon’s spectrum out for 5G commercial uses to a company affiliated with Karl Rove and Peter Thiel, seemingly in order to curry the favor of Rove’s GOP mega-donor network to raise money for Trump’s cash-strapped reelection campaign, raises a lot of questions. Urgent questions about what types of other swampy ‘favors’ might Trump be engaged in right now in order to raise those funds. Questions about not just the nature of those favors but the identity of those recipients.
And since the 2016 Trump campaign was so ready and willing to solicit a range of foreign assistance in the election (like the Saudi/UAE Psy Group offer), when we ask about who the Trump campaign might be courting for some campaign-cash-for-favors quid pro quo we have to extend that to foreign donors.
So it’s worth noting another should-be-mega-scandal (that no one seems to care about) that was recently revealed about the 2016 election that involved precisely this scenario: foreign donors backing a last-minute injection of campaign cash into the Trump campaign.
Specifically, it was revealed that the Mueller investigation included a previously unknown investigation into what appeared to be an Egyptian state-owned bank backing Trump’s personal injection of $10 million into his campaign 11 days before the 2016 election right when Trump injected $10 million into his own campaign. Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi happened to be the first foreign leader to call and congratulate Trump after he won.
The investigation into this transaction started in the FBI after Trump won the election and was later transferred to the Mueller team. No charges ultimately came out the investigation but, as we’re going to see, the investigators were also very successfully blocked by both the Egyptian bank and, later, by federal judges that blocked inquiries into Trump’s finances that would have helped clarify the nature of this transaction.
The particular member of the Trump campaign investors were reportedly most interested in was Trump’s foreign policy adviser Walid Phares. But it sounds like Steve Bannon and Steve Mnuchin could have played a role. In September of 2016, Trump met with president el-Sisi, where the two hit it off. Bannon apparently played a role in setting up that meeting. Bannon also told investigators that Trump was initially resistant to cutting his campaign a $10 million last minute check. But Trump was talked into it by future Mnuchin and Jared Kushner. Mnuchin described the money as a “cash advance,” according to Bannon, and Trump eventually agreed to wire the money. It doesn’t sound like Bannon connected that $10 million cash advance from Trump to the $10 million from the Egyptian bank, but since Bannon, Mnuchin, and Kushner were involved in these discussions over the $10 million they wanted Trump to inject into his campaign it seems very plausible they were involved with any arrangements involving Egypt.
So not only is there compelling evidence that a foreign government made a last-minute injection into the 2016 Trump campaign, there’s also evidence that Trump got away with it, which is all the more reason we have to ask if a cash-strapped Trump campaign is doing it again:
“Part of what drew investigators’ initial interest in the matter was intelligence, including from an informant, that suggested there could have been money from an Egyptian bank that ended up backing Trump’s last-minute injection of $10 million into his 2016 campaign, according to two of the sources.
An informant and intelligence. That’s the initial basis for the investigation. We aren’t told who the informant was or the nature of the intelligence, but it’s pretty clear such a transaction took place. The intense refusal of the Egyptian bank to cooperate with the investigation is a pretty big clue something transpired:
And while it remains unclear who set up this arrangement between Trump and the mystery donor (that might be the government of Egypt), it’s pretty clear that Steven Bannon, Steve Mnuchin, and Jared Kushner were somehow involved:
And then there’s the question of what role Walid Phares may have played in this. As the following article from back in May describes, Phares had high-level contacts in the Egyptian government and connections to a deputy minister for education. And when Trump met President el-Sisi in September of 2016 it was Phares who took credit for that meeting:
“Mr. Phares had high-level contacts in the Egyptian government and connections to a deputy minister for education, another Trump campaign official, Sam Clovis, told Mr. Mueller’s investigators. Mr. Phares told Mr. Clovis that he had friends who could broker meetings between the campaign and the Egyptian government, but Mr. Clovis rejected that idea, he said.”
Did the guy who bragged about his ability to broker meetings between the Trump campaign and Egyptian government play any role in the $10 million mystery transaction? Seems like a reasonable suspicion. Especially since Phares took credit but arranging Trump’s September 2016 meeting with el-Sisi:
Did Phares broker any last-minute high-level meetings between the Trump campaign and the Egyptian government, around 11 days before the election? That apparently remains a mystery.
What isn’t a mystery is that this investigation was clearly blocked and obstructed every step of the way and investigators really never got to answer these questions. The cover up worked. Which, again, is why we should really be asking these same kinds of questions right now. We already know the Trump campaign has been making desperate quid pro quo offers for campaign cash. That’s what the Rove/Rivada is all about. So how many foreign governments were contacted by the 2020 Trump campaign about backstopping some last-minute loans over the past month? It’s a sadly important question.
And after these recent reports of this lapparently very successful influence operation by Egypt in 2016 that was easily covered up, how many foreign governments are themselves reaching out to the Trump campaign with similar offers? Which further raises the question, if a foreign government approached Trump with offers of secret campaign cash, could he turn it down? Like, is he even psychologically capable of that? More sad questions we urgently have to ask.
Here’s the latest story that should be a mega-scandal and, in election years past, would arguably rise to the level of an “October Surprise” kind of explosive story that could reshape an election. But this is 2020 so it’s basically just been glossed over as just another Trump scandal in the long list of seemingly daily Trump scandals. It’s also a story that gives is insight into the firing of federal prosecutor Goeffrey Berman back in June, a scandalous move given Berman’s numerous ongoing investigations into President Trump himself:
The New York Times just put out a new report on what appears to be a case of blatant an egregious multi-year obstruction of justice effort orchestrated directly by President Trump on behalf Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan for reasons that have yet to be elucidated. All we know is that after conversations with Erdogan, Trump suddenly got directly involved in the case and reportedly ordered then-Attorney General Matt Whitaker to get involved with shutting down the investigation, a role Attorney General Bill Barr took up when he replaced Whitaker.
So what is this investigation that Trump obstructed on behalf of Erdogan? The investigation of Turkey’s state-owned Halkbank. The investigation involves a gold-and-cash-for-oil sanctions-busting scheme with Iran in 2012–2013 that apparently involved a number of people closely tied to Erdogan and his government. It’s the kind of scandal that points to ties between Erdogan’s AKP Party and Iran’s Revolutionary Guard (which is quite interesting in the context of Erdogan fomenting of Syria’s civil war ostensibly to check Iran’s influence in the region).
The investigation preceded the Trump administration and Erdogan himself had repeatedly pressed the Obama administration to end the investigation. Keep in mind that, at the time of these gold-for-oil transactions, Turkey’s Deputy Prime Minister Ali Babacan admitted that Turkey’s “gold exports [to Iran] end up like payments for our natural gas purchases.” So this is a case where Erdogan was trying to kill an investigation into something that no one can really dispute happened. Instead, the Erdogan goverment called it a fabrication created by US-based Fethullah Gulen and also assert that they were misled by the gold-trader involved, Turkish-Iranian gold trader, Reza Zarrab. Zarrab testified that the operation had Erdogan’s knowledge and approval, as well as that of Mr. Erdogan’s son-in-law, Berat Albayrak, who now serves as Turkey’s finance minister.
At one point, in August of 2016, when then-Vice President Joe Biden was on a trip to Turkey, Biden told reporters during his final press conference before leaving that, “If the president were to take this into his own hands, what would happen would be he would be impeached for violating the separation of powers.” Erdogan was standing at his side at that moment.
Then Trump got elected and things changed. Not right away, though. We’re told Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin initial viewed the charges against Halkbank as serious and was backing the investigation. And by early 2018, convictions had been secured, including the conviction of the gold-trader who asserted that the whole gold-for-oil scheme had Erdogan’s knowledge and approval. Prosecutors were also looking to expand the investigation into more figures involved with the scheme, a potential nightmare scenario for Erdogan.
But pressure was building against the case. Turkey hired the lobbying firm of Brian D. Ballard, a lobbyist and Trump fund-raiser. Ballard’s firm was paid $4.6 million over to years to lobby on behalf of Turkey, including the Halkbank matter where the firm arranged for meetings and phone calls with the vice president’s office, the State Department, members of Congress and Jay Sekulow, one of Trump’s personal lawyers. Yes, Turkey hired a Trump fund-raiser to lobby Trump’s personal lawyer. Rudy Giuliani and Michael Flynn — himself a Turkey lobbyist — were also somehow involved with this effort although it’s unclear at this point what role they played.
Ballard’s team argued that the Halkbank case was a foreign policy matter, and that the need to maintain close relations with Turkey, a NATO member, had to be taken into account. The argument that the Halkbank case was a matter of US foreign policy that endangered relations with Turkey appears to be one of the key arguments Trump himself, and eventually Bill Barr, latched onto when justifying ending the case. So the key argument by the lobbying firm hired by Turkey was the same argument underlying the Trump-led obstruction of justice scheme.
It sounds like the particular moment when the obstruction of justice first began was during a meeting between Erdogan and Trump at the G20 meeting in late 2018. Erdogan showed Trump a memo summarizing their arguments for why the case should be dropped. Trumped skimmed the memo and said “Well, it looks convincing to me,” according to John Bolton who was Trump’s National Security Advisor at the time. Bolton repeatedly describes what Trump did throughout this case as having the appearance of obstruction of justice.
In mid-December 2018, two weeks after G20 meeting, Trump and Erdogan spoke and Trump assured Erodgan the US government and Halkbank were close to a resolution, according to Bolton. Erdogan soon made a public announcement that he just spoke with Trump and was assured that the matter would be taken care of, so we don’t just have to rely on Bolton’s word. Erdogan told the world about that call. Trump then asked Bolton to speak with then-acting Attorney General Matt Whitaker about the case. Bolton never did so, although he doesn’t know if someone else did.
Bolton’s refusal to follow Trump’s orders isn’t the only instance where people simply ignored orders they deemed to be inappropriate. On the same day of the phone call between Trump and Erdogan, the Justice Department was in contact with the Southern District of New York team, then led by Geoffrey Berman, about getting their evidence against the bank and making a case for more prosecutions. The plan within the Justice Department at the time was apparently to make a strong case against the bank in order to extract a confession of wrongdoing and that’s it. No large fines. Whitaker then intervened and asked for the case to be dropped entirely. The Justice Department ignored him. That’s how inappropriate and obviously corrupt these orders were. Ignoring the orders of the senior Justice Department official was required for justice in this case.
A couple of months later, Bill Barr was given the Attorney General spot and the Justice Department tried to move the case forward again. We are told that the Turkish lobbying effort was at that point lobbying figures in Trump’s cabinet including Mnuchin and Barr. At that point the South District prosecutors and Halkbank were still in discussions, with the bank continuing to refuse any acknowledgment of wrongdoing. We’re going that prosecutors felt at times that Halkbank officials felt they had all of the leverage because of the relationship between Trump and Erdogan. In mid-June 2019, Bill Barr met with Berman and tried to get the investigation dropped without any admission of guilt, using the argument that settlement without such an admission would avoid a rift with an ally. Berman countered that it was unacceptable and unethical. Berman’s refusal created an impasse, because while Barr could block new criminal charges, only a judge could get the existing charges dropped. Barr couldn’t do it himself.
So the case remained open. And then, in October of 2019, the situation suddenly changed. Trump, facing a major political backlash of his own after he essentially gave Erdogan the green light to invade Syria and ethnically cleanse the US’s Kurdish allies, suddenly felt the need to publicly act tough toward Erdogan, with threats of destroying the Turkish economy. On October 15, 2019, the Justice Department signaled to the Southern District prosecutors that they could approve of charges against Halkbank. That’s what was required for the corrupted leadership of the Justice Department to allow this case to go forward: Trump feeling the need to look tough after he between a US ally and caved to Erdogan’s ethnic cleansing desires.
Oh, but we’re not done. But there’s one last footnote to the case. The kind of footnote that really summarizes just how wildly scandalous this whole situation is: Eight months later, in June of this year, Geoffrey Berman was fired. Why? Well, the key reason cited was his refusal to drop the case when Barr asked him. So that gives us at least part of the answer for why Berman was mysteriously fired this year: delayed retribution over Berman’s refusal to go along with Trump’s obstruction of justice scheme carrying out on behalf of a dictator he was eager to please:
“The president’s apparent eagerness to please Mr. Erdogan has drawn scrutiny for years. So has the scale and intensity of the lobbying effort by Turkey on issues like its demand for the extradition of one of Mr. Erdogan’s political rivals, a Turkish religious leader living in self-imposed exile in the United States.Mr. Erdogan had a big political stake in the outcome, because the case had become a major embarrassment for him in Turkey.”
While it may be a somewhat convoluted story, there are two simple facts at its core: President Trump has repeatedly demonstrated an apparent eagerness to please Erdogan and Erdogan REALLY wanted to see the case against Halkbank dropped. Not just dropped without a big fine but dropped without any admission of wrongdoing at all because that admission alone would be deeply embarrassing to Erdogan and his government. Don’t forget that a major part of Erdogan’s political appeal is waging a kind of Sunni-based religious war against the Shia government in Tehran. Admitting to secretly helping Tehran bust sanctions for the self-enrichment of people close to Erdogan, including his son-in-law, really is a giant embarrassment.
But this story isn’t just a giant embarrassment for Erdogan. It SHOULD be a giant embarrassment for Trump too. Not just from the obstruction of justice angle. There’s the fact that he was trying to protect a bank that played a major role in undercutting the policy — economically isolating Iran — that is the centerpiece of Trump’s own foreign policy. That’s quite a signal for the Trump to to the banks of the world that might have similar sanction-busting offers:
And then there’s the fact that Rudy Giuliani and Michael Flynn — himself a lobbyist for the Turkish government — were apparently involved in this lobbying campaign. Trump’s own fund-raiser was hired by Turkey to lobby Trump’s personal attorney Jay Sekulow. The gang’s all here. The scandal gang, that is:
Adding to the scandalous nature is the fact that Joe Biden himself publicly asserted in 2016 that if Barack Obama did exactly what President Trump eventually ended up doing — directly intervening in the case on Erdogan’s behalf — it was be an impeachable offense. The commercials write themselves. Except no one cares about by Trump’s standards that’s is just another daily scandal:
As a consequence of the Obama administration’s refusal to heed to Erdogan’s demands, the case proceeded forward under the Trump administration and end up securing convictions by early 2018. Convictions that including the gold trader in the scheme who testified that the scheme has Erdogan’s knowledge and approval:
But despite those convictions in early 2018, Halkbank refused to admit they did anything wrong even when the prosecutors were offering to drop the large fine in exchange for an admission. All the prosecutors wanted in the end was ultimately just an admission of wrongdoing — an admission of the obvious — and that was too much. Because, again, that admission was politically toxic for Erdogan:
But part of what makes this so scandalous is it’s not like the entire Trump administration was treating this case in a blatantly corrupt manner. Treasury secretary Steve Mnuchin was reportedly convinced the Halkbank violations were serious and an admission of wrongdoing, at a minimum, was appropriate. He was willing to drop the large fines...as long as there was that admission. But that admission couldn’t happen:
Even the Treasury Department was demanding a politically embarrassing admission of wrongdoing. And then, in late 2018, Trump and Erdogan meeting during the G20 meeting in Buenos Aires. Trump has a quick glance at a memo Erdogan handed to Trump about the case, Trump simply states “Well, it looks convincing to me”. Two weeks later, Trump and Erdogan speak and the phone, and shortly after that Trump asks John Bolton to speak with acting Attorney General Matt Whitaker to intervene in the case, and a new should-be impeachable offense is born:
And on the very same day of that phone call between Trump and Erdogan, the Justice Department notified the Southern District that Mr. Mnuchin, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and the attorney general’s office would become more involved in the Halkbank case. But it appears the Justice Department officials did still want to see the case move forward and wanted to see the South District’s case against the bank, largely for the purpose of gaining leverage against the bank for the purpose of getting an admission of guilt. Not a big fine. Just an admission of guilt. And then acting Attorney General Whitaker steps in and asks that the Justice Department shut the case down. The Justice Department officials just ignore him. That’s how over-the-top this obstruction of justice is...it was so egregious the Justice Department official just ignore the acting Attorney General who was obviously working on Trump’s behalf at that point:
A couple months later, Bill Barr replaces Whitaker, with the case still open and prosecutors hoping that Barr will be more amenable on the case. And then Turkey reportedly starts lobbying Barr, in addition to Mnuchin and other members of Trump’s cabinet. By mid-June 2019, Barr was trying to kill the investigation. Without an admission of wrongdoing. Southern District prosecutor Goeffrey Berman continues to resist and declares that his office won’t be participating in any attempts to drop the charges. Berman’s fate is sealed:
It was only after Trump himself faced a major political backlash after he gave Erdogan the green light to send troops into Syria that prosecutors were eventually allowed to bring charges against the bank. That’s what it took for Trump to allow the right thing to happen: his own political peril was required for the obstruction of justice to end. And then eight months later, Berman is fired and the reasons given were his refusal to drop the case. You can’t make this stuff up:
That’s our highly scandalous non-scandal. A should-be-mega-scandal scandal that, in the era of Trump, is just another story about egregious abuses of power competing for attention with all the scandalous stories that come out on a seemingly daily basis.
And in this case, it’s a scandal that could have had an explosive and really positive impact on the disgusting ongoing religious war within the global Muslim community between Sunni and Shia. After all, Erdogan is one of the leading fomenters of that reprehensible and utterly amoral deep and violenct religious divide and the theocracy in Tehran is his big Shia boogieman. A boogieman he and his inner circle sold gold to in violation of international sanctions for their own self-enrichment. This is way more than just a Trump scandal. The Muslim world could benefit immensely from seeing Erdogan’s direct and cynical role in this case exposed. But that isn’t happening. Because Trump is so scandalous we have scandal ADHD. No one story can get more than a moment of attention, even for mega-stories. Because there’s only so much time in the day, but seemingly endless scandals.
It’s all a reminder that when Steve Bannon made his now notorious statement in 2018 about how the “real opposition is the media. And the way to deal with them is to flood the zone with sh it,” that doesn’t just involve drowning the public with misinformation. A lot of the sh*t they are ‘flooding this zone with’ are real sh*tty scandals. And as long as they can drown the public’s mind in an endless flood of real sh*tty scandals someone like Trump can hopefully float his way to the top. Again.
It’s hard to come up with a story that adequately captures the significance of tomorrow’s election, when the US learns whether or not the Trump Administration National Nightmare Show gets renewed for a second season. How can one properly summarize an administration that uses the chaos of its own self-created daily scandals to distract from those same scandals? That’s like some sort of black magic stuff. Black magic that requires the sacrifice of pieces of America’s soul to power the spell.
And that points towards one of the lessons that can summarize at least part of the impact of the Trump experience on the United States: a loss of innocence. Yes, the US was far from an innocent country and born in the sin of slavery. But we never really knew for sure until now what would happen if a politician with the rhetorical skills of a carnival barker and ethics of mobster secured the nomination of a major party by turning politics into an up-is-down political circus. Someone who lies so openly and continuously and defends it by declare that everyone else is actually lying and they are is the only truth-teller. Someone like that can not only win the presidency but almost entirely maintain their psychological grip on one of the two major parties for an entire four years. A grip so tight he can draw tens of thousands of supporter to attend viral super-spreader rallies. Rallies were showing a willingness to die for their leader is part of the appeal. A genuine suicidal death cult. That happened. And is still happening. We didn’t know that could happen before. Now we do. Yes, the George W. Bush administration was certainly a test of just how successfully a non-stop criminal administration could be, but even then there was an attempt to obscure the criminality. With Trump we have the crimes all out in the open, proudly boasting of them as accomplishments, and it worked. President Trump successfully built and cultivated and genuine death cult of personality built on a bed of blatant lies. We now know this is a very real possibility because it’s our current reality. And there’s no take backs. This is now part of America’s permanent record, whether or not Trump loses or wins (more likely, ‘wins’ the election).
So with that permanent loss of innocence in mind, perhaps the following story does a good job of symbolically representing what America did to itself over the last four years and might do to itself for another four years: Last week the Trump administration just finalized the gutting of regulations protecting the world’s last remaining temperate rainforest. The Tongass national forest in Alaska, dubbed the ‘lungs of the country’, is now ‘open for business’ for loggers. In addition, a 2019 scientific analysis showed that the Tongass absorbs more carbon than any other national forest, making it one of our natural safeguards against runaway climate change. Yep, at the end of the ‘COVID’ election and a daily super-spreader Trump death cult rallies killing off his own base, the Trump administration managed to sneak in a ruling that will decimate America’s ‘lungs’ and help give the world a really nasty fever. You could do worse in terms of symbolism.
The lifting of the protections was announce on October 28, less than a week before Election Day. And while the timing of the move so close to Election Day might make would suspect it was done to curry votes in Alaska, it turns out it Alaskan public doesn’t actually support the move. In fact, back in February, the conservative polling firm Baselice & Associates, Inc. — which had previously polled for the Trump/Pence until Trump fired them in 2019 for issuing polls unflattering for Trump — found that a plurality of Alaskan voters, 49%, opposed lifting logging protections for the Tongass, with 43% supporting the move.
So if Trump didn’t lift these rules at the last minute to get more votes, why did he do it? Last minute campaign donations from the logging industry, perhaps? Who knows, but he did it. Just snuck it in right at the last minute in a move almost entirely obscured from the American public by virtue of the fact that almost all of the media coverage of Trump over the last week is understandably coverage of his super-spreader campaign rallies and regular threats to not respect the results of the election.
But as the following article notes, there’s another bit of poignant symbolism here: it turns out Tongass has the highest concentration of bald eagles. And as the article also notes, most of the lumber is going be exported to China and other Pacific Rim nations. Yes, the symbol of America, the bald eagle, is getting its home chopped down for export. And all indications were that this was done at the behest of special interests over public opposition. An apparent cash-for-favors quid pro quo that treats the country, and the future, like a fire sale. Again, you could do worse in terms of symbolism:
“Experts call the Tongass the “lungs of the country” and one of nation’s last remaining bulwarks against climate change. Located on the southern coast of Alaska, it is made up of centuries-old western cedar, hemlock and Sitka spruce trees, and is home to immense biodiversity, including the largest-known concentration of bald eagles.”
So long, That’s a nice nest you bald eagles have there. And a nice natural ‘lung’ your Americans have there. Sure would be a shame if something happened to it.
And now we get to find out if this move was just a warmup for what’s to come or one last round or looting before Trump wanders off to wherever his heart takes him. Either way, immense permanent damage is going to be done to the Tongass as a consequence of this ruling. And that’s why this story is such a tragically symbolic story for our times. Whether or not more going to see four more years of massive damage or if we’re seeing the end of the Trump era, much of the damage that’s already been done isn’t reversible. This is permanent. When you clear cut an ancient forest there’s no take backs. That’s irreversible permanent damage. Kind of like having half the nation collectively join a mad death cult. Some of that damage might be reversible, but you can’t join a death cult and expect to emerge fully intact. Or necessarily alive.
There’s an abundance of reasons to celebrate the end of the Trump administration, but one of the more interesting reasons for celebration is that it’s finally time for Trump’s Pardon-palooza! The Trump administration’s long-expected last minute pardon spree has arrived and we finally get to learn who got a delicious pardon and who a lump of coal.
And it looks like the big winners are Steve Bannon and Elliot Broidy! Recall how Broidy, the former finance chair for the RNC, worked closely with George Nader as foreign agents and was deeply enmeshed in many of the under-investigated aspects of the 2016 Trump campaign shenanigans involving the UAE and Saudi Arabia.
But what about figures like Rudy Giuliani, Jared Kushner, and the Trump kids? Surely, if Steve Bannon got a pardon, Ivanka and Don Jr got pardons too, right? Nope. Not pardons for the Trump kids. Or Rudy Giuliani. Or Trump himself. The great self-pardon didn’t happen. Beyond that, the various Republican lawmakers who were reportedly pleading with Trump for pardons over their potential roles in the January 6 insurrection didn’t get their pardons either. In the end, Pardon-palooza was a surprisingly mild affair. Not that pardons of Steve Bannon and Elliot Broidy weren’t outrageous. But there weren’t as many pardons as feared. Why is that? Well, according to the following article, Trump was planning on far more pardons, including for his kids, but was talked out of it by his attorneys at the last minute when they explained to him that overly aggressive pardons could actually make him more vulnerable to legal reprisals:
“White House counsel Pat Cipollone and another attorney who represented Trump in his first impeachment trial, Eric Herschmann, offered the grave warnings as Trump, his daughter Ivanka and her husband Jared Kushner listened. Other lawyers joined by telephone. They all told Trump he should not pardon himself, his family or any GOP lawmakers in a prospective manner unless he was prepared to list specific crimes.”
If he’s going to issue a pardon he better issue a list of specific crimes. That was the advice Trump’s attorneys gave him that suddenly made Pardon-palooza a lot less fun. What fund are preemptive protective pardons when you have to preemptively announce a crime too? It was a conversation that reportedly spooked Trump in a way few others have:
And yet Trump wasn’t quite as spooked as observers thought. The above article was written before Steve Bannon’s late-night pardon announcement, when people thought Trump had been talked out of the idea of pardoning Bannon, in part over concerns that Bannon helped instigate the Jan 6 insurrection and the complications a pardon could have with the insurrection investigations. But Trump went ahead with the Bannon pardon (and Broidy pardon) anyway. You definitely have to wonder how much is under those rocks. At least that we didn’t already know about:
Then there’s the twist that Donald Trump Jr might actually be legally exposed to the incitement of the Jan 6 insurrection. And yet Don Jr, along with Republican co-conspirators in congress, didn’t get their pardons. Why did Steve Bannon — who is also potentially legally exposed to the insurrection — get a pardon, but not Don Jr?
And if Trump was willing to issue a last minute pardon to Bannon and Broidy, despite legal concerns from his lawyers, what else was he willing to do at the last minute? Might we be dealing with secret pardons? We don’t know, by definition. But we do know it’s hypothetically possible for a president to issue a secret pardon. But with the catch that the secret pardon would have to be publicly revealed if it was ever used to avoid prosecution. And if that’s the case, we should probably assume there are a whole bunch of secret pardons:
“Legal consensus suggests Trump can issue a valid pardon without publicly announcing it but this could potentially complicate matters for recipients if they aren’t able to show that the pardon was properly issued and delivered.”
There’s nothing in the law saying Trump can’t issue non-public pardons. That appears to be the basis of the legal reasoning that, yes, presidents just might be able to issue secret pardons, with the catch that they can’t remain a secret if used. And the additional catch that they might be legally challenged as improperly issued pardons. So the secret pardon might help someone avoid prosecution. But it also might end up being challenged, in which case not only would it not help avoid prosecution but would also act as a kind of admission of guilt:
It’s like a secret legal high-stakes gamble: you don’t know if the secret pardon will eventually be needed. And if it is needed, you don’t know if it will actually be accepted. And even if it is legally accepted, you still need to reveal the secret pardon to the public. It’s a Get-Out-of-Jail-Free card with a whole bunch of conditions and loopholes.
So did Trump issue any secret last minute pardons given all these conditions? Again, we have no idea, by definition. But if these secret pardons do end up being publicly revealed after they are used to avoid prosecution, there’s at least one obvious way to find the secret pardons. Legal Easter eggs just sitting there waiting to be found. All we need to do is look in the places we should be already looking.
Here’ a pair of articles that point towards a potentially remarkable situation that could develop related to Donald Trump’s last-mintute flurry of pardons should Donald Trump’s second impeachment actually be convicted by the Senate:
It’s possible that the last-minute pardons Trump issued after his impeachment by the House will be legally invalidated if Trump is convicted by the Senate. That was the legal opinion of Dr. Todd Curry, associate professor of Political Science at the University of Texas El Paso (UTEP). As Curry put it, the last-minute pardons “may actually, because of the 14th Amendment, no longer be valid because acts that occur after the time of impeachment technically aren’t considered actionable,” although Curry notes that this is legally unresolved and would likely have to be decided by the Supreme Court. So all of those pardons in the final days of Trump’s term, including the pardon of Steve Bannon of charges related to scamming donors to the “We Build the Wall” project, could theoretically be tossed out:
“Curry added that the pardons may or may not be valid, telling KTSM 9 News there is no clear answer and this is something that will wind up in the Supreme Court.”
Can an president impeached by the House still issue pardons if they haven’t yet been convicted by the Senate but are eventually convicted? It’s another fun question for the Supreme Court. A question that probably won’t have to be asked. After all, the odds of Trump getting convicted by the Senate seem exceedingly low at the moment. But, with Trump being Trump, it’s hard to say what the sentiment will be inside the Republican causes when the Senate finally makes its impeachment vote. There’s still time for another insurrection attempt. That’s why we can’t really rule this legally remarkable possibility out. And neither can the lawyers defending Bannon’s We Build the Wall co-embezzlers who didn’t receive a pardon:
“Bannon, 67, and the other men said the prosecution was politically motivated and have denied wrongdoing. But some legal observers predicted the lesser-known defendants would eventually be persuaded to cooperate with the government and flip on Bannon. The pardon means the others are more likely cast Bannon as the architect of the scheme, experts said, knowing he can’t be harmed by their claims.”
Blame Steve. That’s the compelling new legal strategy tempting Bannon’s accused co-conspirators now that he got his presidential get-out-of-jail-free card.
Prosecutors might also be tempted to call Bannon in to testify now that he’s no longer facing the threat of self-incrimination, although that only applies to the federal charges Bannon faces over the case. State charges are still a possibility, so we probably shouldn’t expect Bannon to start spilling the beans. Will a pardoned Bannon still invoke the 5th? If so, it’s not an innocent look:
So Bannon already had an excuse of sorts for testifying in this case in the form of the risk of future state prosecution. And now that we’re learning that Trump’s last-minute pardons could be overturned if he gets convicted by the Senate, that raises the question: could the hypothetical risk that Trump’s pardons will be overturned be used by Bannon as an excuse to invoke the 5th even after being pardoned? In this case, Bannon already has the excuse of the risk of state prosecutions to invoke the 5th. But what about the other figures who received last-minute pardons, like Elliot Broidy? Calling Broidy to testify could be a prosecutors dream. And what about any possible secret pardons? Imagine having to publicly reveal your secret pardon, only to have it revoked. That could happen. It’s highly unlikely, but it could happen.
Of course, this will all be resolved in a month once the Senate finally votes to convict or not. So this is really just a small window of legal ambiguity. Ambiguity created by Donald Trump breaking so many laws, rules, and norms simultaneously that he effectively confounded the legal system. But at least now the US might be forced to finally answer the question of whether or not a president found to be operating above the law still has the power to nullify legal rulings.
Here’s a story that puts the ongoing GOP opposition to any investigation into the January 6 Capitol insurrection into a new, more contemptible context:
There’s breaking news out of the Manhattan district attorney’s office about a new grand jury that was convened in relation to the ongoing New York state investigations into Donald Trump and the Trump Org. The direct way to interpret the news is that District Attorney Cy Vance has already evidence of criminal wrongdoing. Who exactly may have committing those crimes is unclear. It could have been Trump himself or someone else at the Trump Org.
What is clear is that this is the kind of news that will be likely be widely interpreted in a hyper-polarized and partisan manner. Democrats will likely react to the news with a sense relief at the prospect of of long-overdue justice for serial criminal while a majority of Republican voters view almost certainly view it as the latest attack on Trump by the ‘Deep State’. A poll just put out by Ipsos-Reuters found a majority of Republican voters — 53% — still view Donald Trump as the legitimate president of the US. We can be pretty sure how that 53% of Republicans will respond to this news.
It’s also unclear to what extent this grand jury’s probe will end up overlapping with the separate investigations into the Trump Org opened up by New York Attorney General Letitia James. But as the following article describes, it appears that the Vance and James investigations may be converging on the same sets of crimes and coordinating with each other. So this announcement of a criminal grand jury by the Manhattan DA’s office was effectively an announcement of a larger joint Manhattan a New York State criminal grand jury:
“The panel was convened recently and will sit three days a week for six months. It is likely to hear several matters — not just the Trump case — during the duration of its term, which is longer than a traditional New York state grand-jury assignment, these people said. Like others, they spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation. Generally, special grand juries such as this one are convened to participate in long-term matters rather than to hear evidence of crimes charged routinely.”
It wasn’t just a surprise announcement of a grand jury. It was the announcement of a surprisingly long grand jury that’s going to be convened three days a week for six months. Lots of investigating to be done. It’s the kind of announcement that points towards a lot of evidence of a lot of crime:
But even more intriguing are the hints that we’re seeing a convergence of the separate Manhattan and New York State investigations. It suggests both teams found at least some of the same overlapping crimes. But their investigations probably didn’t end up finding exactly the same things. Are these two investigations going to pool together their findings into one giant state-level investigation? It’s looking possible:
It’s going to be a long six months for the Trump Org. We’ll see what they find. But it’s worth keeping in mind that it doesn’t sound like these investigations in any way touched up Trump’s actions in relation to the January 6 Capitol Insurrection. Those crimes, committed in broad daylight in public for months, will remain underinvestigated thanks to the GOP’s continued opposition in the Senate.
So, sure, Trump is possibly going to be prosecuted for the business-related crimes he committed decades ago, likely as a consequence of running for president and making his criminal history something prosecutors could no longer ignore. But he’s probably still going to get away with a blatant open attack on democracy that’s still ongoing. Six of one...
As the Mark Twin saying goes, “History never repeats itself, but it does often rhyme.” It’s rhyme time again, with ‘Speaker Trump’ once again part of the DC din following Tuesday’s historic ouster of Kevin McCarthy from the post thanks to just eight House Republicans turning on him. It wasn’t the first, or second, time we’ve hard this kind of chatter. Recall how Steve Bannon was pushing the ‘Speaker Trump’ idea back in February of 2021. In November of 2021, it was Trump’s former chief of staff Mark Meadows who pushed the idea again during an appearance on Bannon’s “War Rooms” podcast. A month later, House Republicans Matt Gaetz and Marjorie Taylor Greene were also publicly floating the idea should Republicans win back control of the House in 2022. Flash forward to the multiple rounds of voting required for Kevin McCarthy to actually earn his speakership in January of this year, and we find Gaetz symbolically voting for Trump during some of those votes.
It’s not a new idea. But the seriousness with which it is now being treated is new thanks to the institutional chaos unleashed by Gaetz’s move to force a vote on McCarthy’s speakership. Because at this point the only viable path to a new speaker is finding someone who can unite the GOP caucus, and it’s not at all clear who that could possibly be. With Trump being the one obvious exception. Maybe.
So could Trump actually unite the fractious House GOP caucus? It’s a difficult question to answer given the general state of crisis for the party at the moment. But if not Trump, who? Support for Trump is the closest thing to a unifying issue for the party at this point.
And sure, there’s a significant ‘never Trump’ contingent that Trump would have to win over. The same group of people he’ll need to win over in the 2024 general election. And what better way to win them over than by unite a seemingly broken House Republican caucus? It really is a powerful political opportunity. Not without risks, obviously. Trump could end up incurring all sorts of extra trouble for himself. Let’s not forget that the whole ‘shutdown showdown’ crisis was merely pushed off for a month and a half. It’s still there, waiting for the next Speaker. Would Trump want to take direct control of that whole negotiation? It’s going to be tricky. But the potential to upend the current political dynamics heading into the 2024 general election cycle presents itself too here. It’s not hard to see why so many Republicans appear to be taking the idea seriously. Installing Trump as chief chaos agent of the House, and uniting the GOP around that chaos, is the next logical step for America’s ongoing descent into political madness:
“Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, former Trump adviser Steve Bannon, and even the far-right cable network Newsmax all floated the idea of Trump taking over the role Tuesday evening, just minutes after McCarthy’s ejection from House leadership.”
If Alex Jones and Steve Bannon are excited about it, you can be sure the GOP is excited about the idea too. And then we Sean Hannity — a close associate of Trump — floating the idea that Trump is open to the idea. Wheels are in motion:
So with just eight members of the House GOP caucus succeeding in ousting the House Speaker, one immediate question is whether or not Trump will garner a greater level of party loyalty than McCarthy was able to muster. If not, it’s hard to see how such a fiasco might appeal to Trump. But if there is an expectation that Trump could actually unite the current House GOP caucus...well, at that point it’s not hard to see why such a position could end up being very tempting for the now-candidate Trump. After all, even if he has 90% support in his party, he really needs closer to 100% to win in today’s hyper-polarized politics. What better way to win over wayward Republicans than by united a chaotic House caucus, something seemingly no one else can do?
Now, whether or not Trump actually can unite that caucus is a tricky question to answer and maybe not something that really can be answered with confidence at this point unless there’s a bunch of behind-the-scenes loyalty-oaths going on right now. But if there was reason to believe the GOP House caucus could indeed unite behind the idea of backing Trump for the speakership, it’s not hard to imagine he really might take the offer. Sure, it would be a gamble that could backfire. But it’s not like Trump has a sure-fire lock on winning the White House in 2024. He needs to gamble, and any gamble that could help unite the party behind him is a potentially worthwhile risk. “Speaker Trump” is an opportunity to flip the script. And that’s all why we perhaps shouldn’t be too surprised to find Trump now openly toying with the idea:
““A lot of people have been calling me about speaker,” Trump said Wednesday morning outside a New York City courthouse for the third day of New York Attorney General Letitia James’ $250 million civil fraud trial against him. “All I can say is we will do whatever is best for the country and other Republican Party and people.””
You know Trump is interested in something when he starts talking about how many other people are talking about something. But in this case, he’s not wrong. A lot of Republicans are indeed talking about a ‘Speaker Trump’. And Trump is clearly listening.
Could this actually happen? Well, there’s the issue of the rules the Republican House majority created at the beginning of this term that prohibits someone charged with a felony from serving in leadership. But that’s presumably a rule that could be reversed should the House majority end up rallying around the heavily-indicted Trump:
And should Trump end up accepting the post, note just how much closer he’ll be to returning to the White House: the Speaker is second in the line of presidential succession:
It’s the kind of scenario that would add a whole new dimension to the Trump’s increasingly ‘stochastic terrorism’-fueled rhetoric. In other words, the stars appear to be aligning for things to get much worse before they get better for the US’s broken political dynamic. Or get worse and stay worse. Either way, the worst is yet to come. This is just another preview.