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For The Record  

FTR #936 The Making of Donald Trump (Top Banana Republic), Part 5

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This broad­cast was record­ed in one, 60-minute seg­ment.

making-of-trumpIntro­duc­tion: 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.

 

Discussion

31 comments for “FTR #936 The Making of Donald Trump (Top Banana Republic), Part 5”

  1. 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:

    Yahoo News

    A con­vict­ed felon hand­ed Don­ald Trump a ‘one-of-a-kind bronze eagle award’ on New Year’s Eve

    Hunter Walk­er, Nation­al Cor­re­spon­dent
    Jan­u­ary 3, 2017

    When Don­ald Trump addressed rev­el­ers at the annu­al New Year’s Eve bar at his Mar-a-Lago club in Flori­da on Sat­ur­day, he was stand­ing next to Joe Cinque, a con­vict­ed felon with rumored Mafia ties. Video pub­lished by the Palm Beach Dai­ly News showed Cinque beam­ing as the pres­i­dent-elect gave brief remarks about his agen­da.

    “Your tax­es are com­ing down, reg­u­la­tions are com­ing off, we’re going to get rid of Oba­macare,” Trump said as Cinque pumped his fists in the air.

    Cinque is the pres­i­dent and CEO of the Amer­i­can Acad­e­my of Hos­pi­tal­i­ty Sci­ences, an orga­ni­za­tion that hands out Star Dia­mond awards to restau­rants, hotels and busi­ness­es. The orga­ni­za­tion has exten­sive links to Trump.

    Accord­ing to the AAHS Face­book page, Cinque was at Mar-a-Lago to present Trump with “a One-of-a-Kind bronze Eagle award.” Pic­tures on the group’s page showed Trump being giv­en a large stat­ue of a fly­ing eagle as Cinque stood by his side.

    Pri­or to his work in the hos­pi­tal­i­ty indus­try, Cinque had col­or­ful past. In 1995, he was pro­filed by New York mag­a­zine. That arti­cle, which was writ­ten by John Con­nol­ly, said that Cinque had been “shot three times and left for dead” in 1980, in an inci­dent Cinque described as a “rob­bery.” In the sto­ry, Con­nol­ly wrote that unnamed offi­cials said it was “more like­ly a hit.” Con­nol­ly also not­ed that Cinque “used to be friends with John Got­ti” and was known by the nick­names “Joey No Socks” and “the Prep­py Don.” The New York arti­cle also chron­i­cled how, in 1989, “Cinque was arrest­ed on felony charges; police had retrieved a gallery’s worth of stolen art from his apart­ment.” Cinque lat­er plead­ed guilty to felony charges in that case. Cinque was also accused of crim­i­nal behav­ior in excerpts of a ram­bling, nov­el­is­tic mem­oir pub­lished on a per­son­al web­site by Richard Lawrence Dom­broff, a for­mer high pro­file plas­tic sur­geon who was con­vict­ed of defraud­ing patients in 1987 and was con­vict­ed on fraud charges again in 2003 for alleged­ly oper­at­ing a finan­cial scam.

    Yahoo News reached out to Cinque, the AAHS and Trump’s pres­i­den­tial tran­si­tion team for this sto­ry. None of them respond­ed to our requests for com­ment.

    The AAHS has described Cinque as a fix­ture at Trump’s annu­al Mar-a-Lago New Year’s Eve fetes.

    Yahoo News report­ed on Cinque’s rela­tion­ship with Trump in May of last year. The arti­cle high­light­ed a 2015 blog post on the Star Dia­mond web­site that said Cinque “has been attend­ing Mr. Trump’s par­ty for the past 16 years” and “has become dear friends with the Trump fam­i­ly.” That blog post has since been delet­ed. The Star Dia­mond site also fea­tured pic­tures of Cinque stand­ing next to Trump in Mar-a-Lago’s ball­room and on stage at the Flori­da club pre­sent­ing the future pres­i­dent-elect with anoth­er tro­phy in 2014.

    Despite their clear con­nec­tions, Trump denied being famil­iar with Cinque when speak­ing in May to Yahoo News.

    “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.

    He repeat­ed­ly stressed that he didn’t know Cinque “well.”

    Trump pre­vi­ous­ly held one of the top three posi­tions on the AAHS’ board of trustees. Archived ver­sions of the organization’s Web page show that Trump was list­ed as its “ambas­sador extra­or­di­naire” from at least 2013 until June 2015, when he launched his pres­i­den­tial cam­paign. But Trump told Yahoo News he “wasn’t involved” with AAHS and implied his title was large­ly cer­e­mo­ni­al.

    “I think I might have been on some­thing, ambas­sador extra­or­di­naire, you know. I nev­er went to a meet­ing or any­thing,” Trump said.

    How­ev­er, Trump’s ties to Cinque’s group didn’t end with his title. Mem­bers of Trump’s fam­i­ly and mul­ti­ple exec­u­tives at his real estate com­pa­ny, the Trump Orga­ni­za­tion, have also been list­ed on the academy’s board of trustees, which selects award win­ners. AAHS gave Star Dia­mond awards to many Trump prop­er­ties.

    Hand­ing out these Star Dia­mond awards, which the acad­e­my has called the “most pres­ti­gious emblem of achieve­ment and true qual­i­ty in the world today,” is the organization’s cen­tral activ­i­ty. As “ambas­sador extra­or­di­naire,” Trump’s sig­na­ture adorned the Star Dia­mond plaques along with two oth­er board mem­bers, Cinque and trav­el agent Bill Fis­ch­er.

    ...

    ““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:

    Yahoo News

    How a con­vict­ed felon nick­named ‘Joey No Socks’ cov­ered Don­ald Trump in stars

    Hunter Walk­er, Nation­al Cor­re­spon­dent
    May 20, 2016

    It’s about as Trump as a moment gets. There was the Don­ald at his new golf club in the rolling Scot­tish dunes. He was hold­ing a mas­sive, gleam­ing, gold-col­ored plaque the venue “The Best Golf Course World­wide.” Trump, the real estate mogul and now the pre­sump­tive Repub­li­can pres­i­den­tial nom­i­nee, wore a hat with his name on it and a mas­sive grin.

    The gaudy plaque Trump car­ried that day in 2013 was a Star Dia­mond award dis­trib­uted by the Amer­i­can Acad­e­my of Hos­pi­tal­i­ty Sci­ences — a group that turns out to have exten­sive ties with Trump.

    Joseph Cinque, the academy’s pres­i­dent and CEO, per­son­al­ly pre­sent­ed the award to Trump in Scot­land. It was one of many sim­i­lar hon­ors Cinque has bestowed upon him in the past decade. Cinque, who has been described by the acad­e­my as one of Trump’s “dear friends,” is also a con­vict­ed felon who report­ed­ly sur­vived a mur­der attempt, was asso­ci­at­ed with the infa­mous mob boss John Got­ti and went on to earn the nick­names “Joey No Socks” and “the Prep­py Don.”

    Trump recent­ly held one of the top three slots on the organization’s board of trustees, with the osten­ta­tious title of “Ambas­sador Extra­or­di­naire.” Mem­bers of Trump’s fam­i­ly and mul­ti­ple exec­u­tives at his com­pa­ny, the Trump Orga­ni­za­tion, have also sat on the academy’s board of trustees, which selects award win­ners. Cinque runs the acad­e­my out of his apart­ment on Cen­tral Park South in Man­hat­tan, just blocks from Trump Tow­er.

    In a con­ver­sa­tion with Yahoo News on Thurs­day morn­ing, Trump denied he had any involve­ment with the rat­ings group, which has bestowed numer­ous five- and six-star rat­ings on his prop­er­ties.

    “I mean, I receive awards from dif­fer­ent places some­times, but I’m not involved in it. How am I involved in it?” said Trump.

    Trump indi­cat­ed he didn’t know much about the academy’s board of trustees — on which he, two of his sons and mul­ti­ple mem­bers of his orga­ni­za­tions have served. He also claimed he doesn’t know Cinque well.

    “He may have set up a board of trustees. I don’t know. I don’t know that my sons are involved with that, actu­al­ly,” Trump said, adding, “But he’s a very nice man. I don’t know him well. I don’t know him well, but I have found him over the years to be a very nice man.”

    The academy’s cen­tral activ­i­ty is hand­ing out Star Dia­mond awards, which it has called the “most pres­ti­gious emblem of achieve­ment and true qual­i­ty in the world today.” Tro­phies are giv­en out to a wide vari­ety of busi­ness­es and indi­vid­u­als, with a focus on lux­u­ry trav­el and restau­rants. Pre­sent­ing plaques and hold­ing awards cer­e­monies are the only activ­i­ties described on the organization’s web site, which boasts that its awards give “a visu­al seal of approval by accred­it­ed insti­tu­tion.” The acad­e­my site brags that the Star Dia­mond is a “hand­craft­ed plaque” that “denotes qual­i­ty and lux­u­ry” and that patrons to a busi­ness will “notice” when one is “promi­nent­ly dis­played.”

    The acad­e­my is one of many play­ers in what indus­try experts describe as a crowd­ed land­scape of trav­el rat­ings agen­cies with ques­tion­able stan­dards and meth­ods.

    In addi­tion to the plaques, the acad­e­my also offers Star Dia­mond “desk plates,” “lapel pins” and “cuf­flinks.” And it boasts of oth­er “ben­e­fits” promised by the foun­da­tion, such as send­ing out a press release announc­ing the award, to gen­er­ate media cov­er­age. The acad­e­my also pub­lish­es a mag­a­zine and a direc­to­ry that pro­motes the win­ners.

    Even though a major func­tion of the acad­e­my is to gen­er­ate press for award recip­i­ents, the orga­ni­za­tion is cur­rent­ly in media black­out mode. Yahoo News called the academy’s head­quar­ters at Cinque’s apart­ment. A woman who answered said, after real­iz­ing she was on the phone with a reporter, that Cinque would “not com­ment” on any sto­ry. She said she didn’t want to know any more about the rea­son for the call and sug­gest­ed con­tact­ing the academy’s lawyer.

    ...

    In an angry email response, acad­e­my attor­ney Andrew Langsam threat­ened Yahoo News with legal action if it were to dis­cuss decades-old news reports detail­ing accu­sa­tions about the academy’s rat­ings prac­tices, Cinque’s crim­i­nal record and his alleged ties to the mob.

    “We are not amused by this clear attempt to sul­ly the Acad­e­my, Mr. Cinque and any of his friends or con­tacts. You will be held ful­ly liable for any con­se­quences,” Langsam wrote.

    ...

    For his part, Trump said he would “under­stand” if the acad­e­my, a non­po­lit­i­cal group, had to cut ties with him. At the same time, he repeat­ed­ly stressed that he “wasn’t involved” with the group and sug­gest­ed that his title was large­ly cer­e­mo­ni­al.

    “I think I might have been on some­thing, Ambas­sador Extra­or­di­naire, you know. I nev­er went to a meet­ing or any­thing,” Trump said.

    Langsam, the academy’s attor­ney, wrote:“I do not believe that Mr. Trump has any cur­rent rela­tion­ship to The Acad­e­my.”

    In addi­tion to his past role at the acad­e­my, Trump has had a long per­son­al rela­tion­ship with Cinque. One post on the Star Dia­mond web­site fea­tures an arti­cle on a par­ty Trump held at his Mar-A-Lago club on the last night of 2014.

    “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.”

    Cinque pre­sent­ed Trump with a Star Dia­mond “life­time achieve­ment award” at that bash. The arti­cle fea­tures mul­ti­ple pho­tos of Cinque beam­ing along­side Trump and his fam­i­ly. Trump reg­u­lar­ly has Cinque present him with awards at his events. Mul­ti­ple pho­tos on the acad­e­my site show Trump proud­ly award­ing and receiv­ing Star Dia­mond plaques. An acad­e­my pro­mo­tion­al video fea­tures a clip of Trump, one of his build­ings and a shot of Cinque stand­ing in front of one of Trump’s pri­vate planes.

    “It’s a great hon­or for me to wel­come you to the Star Dia­mond award,” Trump declares in the clip.

    Anoth­er Trump event with a Cinque cer­e­mo­ny was a birth­day par­ty the real estate mogul held for him­self at one of his fad­ing Atlantic City casi­nos in 2006. Trump and Cinque flashed smiles as they stood between guests, press and a bank of new Play­boy slot machines. They were accom­pa­nied by actress Pamela Ander­son.

    ...

    While the acad­e­my gen­er­al­ly hands out five-star awards, at least two of Trump’s prop­er­ties, the Scot­tish golf course and Mar-a-Lago, have been award­ed six-star hon­ors by the acad­e­my.

    In his email to Yahoo News, Langsam, the academy’s attor­ney, declined to reveal the cri­te­ria the orga­ni­za­tion uses to deter­mine an insti­tu­tion has earned six rather than five stars. How­ev­er, he stressed that the dis­tinc­tion is mean­ing­ful and employed all-caps let­ter­ing to empha­size this point.

    “There is a def­i­nite dif­fer­ence between FIVE STAR DIAMOND AWARD and SIX STAR DIAMOND AWARD, not the least of which is a star,” Langsam wrote. “The inter­nal con­sid­er­a­tions and delib­er­a­tions of the Acad­e­my are high­ly con­fi­den­tial and not ‘news.’ This is not the public’s nor your busi­ness.”

    The acad­e­my clear­ly keeps a tight lid on its inner work­ings.

    ...

    ““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:

    ...
    In a con­ver­sa­tion with Yahoo News on Thurs­day morn­ing, Trump denied he had any involve­ment with the rat­ings group, which has bestowed numer­ous five- and six-star rat­ings on his prop­er­ties.

    “I mean, I receive awards from dif­fer­ent places some­times, but I’m not involved in it. How am I involved in it?” said Trump.

    Trump indi­cat­ed he didn’t know much about the academy’s board of trustees — on which he, two of his sons and mul­ti­ple mem­bers of his orga­ni­za­tions have served. He also claimed he doesn’t know Cinque well.

    “He may have set up a board of trustees. I don’t know. I don’t know that my sons are involved with that, actu­al­ly,” Trump said, adding, “But he’s a very nice man. I don’t know him well. I don’t know him well, but I have found him over the years to be a very nice man.”
    ...

    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.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | January 9, 2017, 7:55 pm
  2. 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?:

    CNN

    Did Don­ald Trump leak his own tax return?

    By Z. Byron Wolf and Josi­ah Ryan
    Updat­ed 12:12 PM ET, Wed March 15, 2017

    (CNN)Who knows who leaked two pages of Don­ald Trump’s tax return.
    But the leak, such as it is, does no harm to the Pres­i­dent. It shows he actu­al­ly paid income tax­es — at least in 2005. Whether the Pres­i­dent had paid income tax­es recent­ly had actu­al­ly been some­thing of an open ques­tion.

    The jour­nal­ist that pub­lished two pages from Don­ald Trump’s 2005 tax return says he does­n’t know who pro­vid­ed the doc­u­ments; he got them in the mail.

    “Yes,” Pulitzer Prize-win­ner David Cay John­ston replied when CNN anchor Pop­py Har­low asked him if he thought the two pages, which show Trump paid $38 mil­lion in tax­es on more than $150 mil­lion in income that year, could have been sent by the Pres­i­dent him­self.

    “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

    The White House has hit back hard against the pub­li­ca­tion, call­ing it ille­gal in a pre-emp­tive state­ment Tues­day night. Then Pres­i­dent Trump him­self weighed in Wednes­day morn­ing on Twit­ter, sug­gest­ing John­ston was­n’t being forth­right.

    “Does any­body real­ly believe that a reporter, who nobody ever heard of, ‘went to his mail­box’ and found my tax returns? @NBCNews FAKE NEWS!” tweet­ed the Pres­i­dent.

    ...

    Leak leaves many ques­tions about Trump’s income sources

    Trump did­n’t men­tion that The New York Times, when it report­ed Trump claimed $916 mil­lion in loss­es in 1995, which could have shel­tered him from tax bills for many years, sim­i­lar­ly received those more polit­i­cal­ly dam­ag­ing doc­u­ments in the mail.

    The tax shel­ter cre­at­ed by those loss­es could cre­ate for some inter­est­ing return if Trump offi­cial­ly or the mys­te­ri­ous leak­er were to pro­vide return for oth­er years. Addi­tion­al­ly, the details of Trump’s return would be instruc­tive, too, answer­ing ques­tions about his char­i­ta­ble giv­ing, if any, specifics about the loss­es he claimed — $105 mil­lion in 2005 despite his tax bill, and more.

    It is clear from evi­dence in law­suits that there are years in which Trump paid no fed­er­al income tax­es — some­thing he bragged about dur­ing a debate with Hillary Clin­ton.

    “That makes me smart,” he said on the debate stage, although he lat­er clar­i­fied to CNN’s Jim Acos­ta that he had paid income tax­es.

    Trump had long said he would­n’t release his income tax­es because he is under some kind of long-stand­ing fed­er­al audit. More recent­ly, aides have said he might not release them at all. After all, he won the elec­tion.

    But as Jef­frey Toobin point­ed out on CNN Tues­day night, the ques­tions about Trump’s tax return have only grown more fas­ci­nat­ing as ques­tions have arisen about his cam­paign and busi­ness ties to Rus­sia. Trump has denied cur­rent busi­ness con­nec­tions to Rus­sia, but he also denied the cam­paign aides had any con­tact with Rus­sians in the lead-up to the cam­paign.

    ...

    Con­ve­nient tim­ing

    News of the tax return and the fact that he did pay mil­lions in tax­es also pro­vid­ed a detour from ques­tions about ties to Rus­sia, the frag­ile health reform leg­is­la­tion he has pushed with House Speak­er Paul Ryan, but which is in deep per­il on Capi­tol Hill and scruti­ny of his stun­ning claims that for­mer Pres­i­dent Oba­ma wire­tapped him dur­ing the cam­paign.

    Anoth­er inter­est­ing ele­ment of the sto­ry is that Trump has list­ed large-scale tax reform as one of his major leg­isla­tive pri­or­i­ties. Repub­li­cans are sup­posed to take up that issue after pass­ing the first leg of their Oba­macare repeal plan — assum­ing they can pass it.

    Repeal­ing or fix­ing the Alter­na­tive Min­i­mum Tax is sure to be on the table as Repub­li­cans go about their goal of low­er­ing tax rates for most Amer­i­cans. That’ll be a more com­fort­able con­ver­sa­tion for Trump to have with every­day Amer­i­cans now that he can say he’s paid the tax, too.

    And it’s a big rea­son whey Democ­rats, who have called repeat­ed­ly in the past for the release of Trump’s rax returns, have warned the release of these two pages is a dis­trac­tion from more impor­tant mat­ters.

    “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!”:

    ...
    The White House has hit back hard against the pub­li­ca­tion, call­ing it ille­gal in a pre-emp­tive state­ment Tues­day night. Then Pres­i­dent Trump him­self weighed in Wednes­day morn­ing on Twit­ter, sug­gest­ing John­ston was­n’t being forth­right.

    “Does any­body real­ly believe that a reporter, who nobody ever heard of, ‘went to his mail­box’ and found my tax returns? @NBCNews FAKE NEWS!” tweet­ed the Pres­i­dent
    ...

    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:

    ...
    Anoth­er inter­est­ing ele­ment of the sto­ry is that Trump has list­ed large-scale tax reform as one of his major leg­isla­tive pri­or­i­ties. Repub­li­cans are sup­posed to take up that issue after pass­ing the first leg of their Oba­macare repeal plan — assum­ing they can pass it.

    Repeal­ing or fix­ing the Alter­na­tive Min­i­mum Tax is sure to be on the table as Repub­li­cans go about their goal of low­er­ing tax rates for most Amer­i­cans. That’ll be a more com­fort­able con­ver­sa­tion for Trump to have with every­day Amer­i­cans now that he can say he’s paid the tax, too.
    ...

    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:

    Vox

    Don­ald Trump’s tax plan would’ve near­ly wiped out his 2005 tax bur­den

    Updat­ed by Dylan Matthews
    Mar 14, 2017, 11:20pm EDT

    The two pages of Don­ald Trump’s 2005 tax return released by vet­er­an tax jour­nal­ist David Cay John­ston and MSNBC’s Rachel Mad­dow leave a lot of ques­tions unan­swered. But there are two things the doc­u­ment makes clear:

    1. Trump was able to claim huge amounts of “neg­a­tive income,” which sub­stan­tial­ly reduced his ordi­nary income tax bur­den.
    2. He paid $38 mil­lion in total fed­er­al income tax­es on an income of $153 mil­lion only because of the alter­na­tive min­i­mum tax, a tax pro­vi­sion Trump now wants to repeal as pres­i­dent.

    Trump lists about $152.7 mil­lion in income for the year, most of it real estate income, busi­ness income, and cap­i­tal gains, on the 1040 tax form. Less than $1 mil­lion of his income came in the form of ordi­nary wages. But under “oth­er income” he lists $103.2 mil­lion in neg­a­tive income — that is, mon­ey he lost in that year or past years on busi­ness ven­tures.

    ...

    Trump’s com­pa­nies are “pass-throughs” that don’t pay cor­po­rate income tax and whose income is instead dis­persed to share­hold­ers, who are in turn taxed on it. So car­ry­ing for­ward busi­ness loss­es or depre­ci­at­ing assets would affect Trump’s per­son­al returns.

    If Trump were allowed to use all this neg­a­tive income to off­set his $152.7 mil­lion in income, his tax bill would’ve been a mere $5.3 mil­lion, for an effec­tive tax rate of less than 3.5 per­cent. That’s a real­ly shock­ing­ly small tax bill, and a symp­tom of how investors with lots of pass-through income can face much low­er tax bills than peo­ple with ordi­nary wage income.

    How­ev­er, Trump wasn’t allowed to claim all that neg­a­tive income. That’s because of the alter­na­tive min­i­mum tax, a pro­vi­sion that has exist­ed in some form since 1969 and is meant to lim­it the use of deduc­tions, exclu­sions, cred­its, and oth­er pro­vi­sions by wealthy tax­pay­ers to reduce their tax bur­den. The AMT added $31.3 mil­lion to his total tax bill, bring­ing his over­all effec­tive tax rate to about 25 per­cent.

    We don’t exact­ly know why the AMT hit him so hard. The White House said in a state­ment that the neg­a­tive income was due to “large scale depre­ci­a­tion for con­struc­tion.” The AMT has dif­fer­ent depre­ci­a­tion rules than the reg­u­lar income tax code, which in some cas­es can reduce the amount you can deduct.

    Putting all that togeth­er, there’s still a lot we don’t know. But one thing is clear: TTrump has pro­posed a tax plan that would have made his tax bill much, much low­er.

    Trump has a lot to gain from his own tax plan

    Trump, like most Repub­li­cans, wants to elim­i­nate the AMT alto­geth­er. The tax tends to hit rich, but not uber-rich, peo­ple hard (think fam­i­lies mak­ing around $400,000 a year), and that’s a con­stituen­cy the GOP cul­ti­vates assid­u­ous­ly. But Trump is an unusu­al uber-rich per­son, with a huge AMT lia­bil­i­ty. This pro­pos­al would have giv­en him, per­son­al­ly, $31.3 mil­lion in 2005 alone.

    Just as cru­cial­ly, Trump has pro­posed dra­mat­i­cal­ly slash­ing tax­es on pass-through income, even more than he wants to cut income tax­es in gen­er­al. Rather than sub­ject­ing this income to cur­rent income tax rates, or even the low­er indi­vid­ual tax rates that Trump pro­posed, his first tax plan pro­posed to set the same rate that he’d have cor­po­ra­tions pay: a mere 15 per­cent.

    Giv­en that the top per­son­al tax brack­et in 2005 was 35 per­cent, Trump’s plan would’ve halved his mar­gin­al tax rate that year and then some. Peo­ple with income from wages, or cap­i­tal gains, wouldn’t have got­ten a break this large. It was reserved for peo­ple with com­pa­nies struc­tured like the Trump Cor­po­ra­tion.

    In mid-Sep­tem­ber, sources at the cam­paign sug­gest­ed they were aban­don­ing this plan. That made sense; the cut cost $1 tril­lion over 10 years, and served no obvi­ous pol­i­cy pur­pose oth­er than per­son­al­ly enrich­ing Don­ald Trump. But at the same time, the cam­paign was also telling a small-busi­ness group, the Nation­al Fed­er­a­tion of Inde­pen­dent Busi­ness, that the pass-through cut was still a go, earn­ing NFIB’s endorse­ment in the process. When the New York Times’s Binyamin Appel­baum reached out to the Trump cam­paign, they were vague but sug­gest­ed that the pass-through cut was there to stay.

    Trump isn’t alone on this plan, either. House Speak­er Paul Ryan and House Ways and Means Chair Kevin Brady haven’t pro­posed a rate as low as 15 per­cent, but they have said they want a top rate of 25 per­cent on pass-through income, which also would’ve been a sub­stan­tial tax cut for Trump in 2005. Their tax plan would also elim­i­nate the AMT.

    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.

    “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!

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | March 15, 2017, 2:18 pm
  3. 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:

    The New York Times

    Kellyanne Conway’s Hus­band Is Trump’s Choice for Key Jus­tice Post

    By JULIE HIRSCHFELD DAVIS
    MARCH 18, 2017

    WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — Pres­i­dent Trump has select­ed George T. Con­way III, the hus­band of his coun­selor Kellyanne Con­way, to head the civ­il divi­sion of the Jus­tice Depart­ment, peo­ple famil­iar with the deci­sion said on Sat­ur­day, plac­ing him in charge of a cru­cial office charged with defend­ing Mr. Trump’s con­tentious trav­el ban and law­suits alleg­ing that his busi­ness activ­i­ties vio­late the Con­sti­tu­tion.

    Mr. Con­way, 53, would lead a depart­ment of about 1,000 lawyers that has vast reach across the gov­ern­ment, han­dling issues like nation­al secu­ri­ty and con­sumer pro­tec­tion and enforc­ing fed­er­al pro­grams and the actions of the pres­i­dent him­self.

    A White House spokes­woman declined to com­ment on a per­son­nel mat­ter, and the Jus­tice Depart­ment did not imme­di­ate­ly respond to requests. The peo­ple famil­iar with Mr. Trump’s deci­sion con­firmed it on the con­di­tion of anonymi­ty because they were not autho­rized to pre-empt an impend­ing announce­ment. The choice was first report­ed by The Wall Street Jour­nal.

    If con­firmed, Mr. Con­way would imme­di­ate­ly be in charge of rep­re­sent­ing Mr. Trump in the legal chal­lenges — which are wide­ly expect­ed to reach the Supreme Court — over his exec­u­tive order bar­ring peo­ple from six pre­dom­i­nant­ly Mus­lim coun­tries from enter­ing the Unit­ed States.

    ...

    It would also fall to Mr. Con­way to over­see Mr. Trump’s defense in a pend­ing law­suit charg­ing him with vio­la­tions of the Constitution’s Emol­u­ments Clause, which bans fed­er­al office­hold­ers from accept­ing gifts or pay­ments from for­eign gov­ern­ments, because of the prof­its his hotels and resorts receive from for­eign offi­cials who are cus­tomers.

    Before he was inau­gu­rat­ed, Mr. Trump’s per­son­al lawyers argued that the clause did not bar “fair-mar­ket-val­ue trans­ac­tions,” like pay­ing for hotel rooms. But the law­suit, filed by Cit­i­zens for Respon­si­bil­i­ty and Ethics in Wash­ing­ton, a lib­er­al watch­dog group on gov­ern­ment cor­rup­tion, con­tends that the clause does bar such trans­ac­tions.

    It is like­ly that Mr. Trump will face addi­tion­al legal chal­lenges regard­ing pos­si­ble con­flicts of inter­est stem­ming from his vast real estate and busi­ness empire, from which he has refused to divest.

    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.

    Her zeal on Mr. Trump’s behalf has some­times land­ed her at the cen­ter of con­tro­ver­sy, such as when she claimed that the White House was enti­tled to put for­ward “alter­na­tive facts” about the crowd size at his inau­gu­ra­tion, and in a sep­a­rate inter­view a few weeks lat­er, referred to a ter­ror­ist attack in Bowl­ing Green that nev­er occurred. Last week, she appeared to sug­gest that Pres­i­dent Barack Oba­ma might have spied on Mr. Trump through a microwave. Ms. Con­way lat­er clar­i­fied that she was speak­ing in gen­er­al about pos­si­ble means of sur­veil­lance, not about Mr. Oba­ma, and Sean Spicer, the White House press sec­re­tary, said she had been jok­ing.

    Mr. Con­way had been a con­tender for the job of solic­i­tor gen­er­al for the Trump admin­is­tra­tion, but Mr. Trump announced this month that the job would go to Noel J. Fran­cis­co.

    ...

    While there is a law against nepo­tism in gov­ern­ment, it would not affect the Con­ways. It says that no pub­lic offi­cial can hire a fam­i­ly mem­ber — includ­ing one relat­ed by mar­riage — to serve in an agency or office over which he or she has author­i­ty. Ms. Con­way would have no direct author­i­ty over her hus­band were he to be con­firmed, nor would the reverse be true.

    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:

    ...
    If con­firmed, Mr. Con­way would imme­di­ate­ly be in charge of rep­re­sent­ing Mr. Trump in the legal chal­lenges — which are wide­ly expect­ed to reach the Supreme Court — over his exec­u­tive order bar­ring peo­ple from six pre­dom­i­nant­ly Mus­lim coun­tries from enter­ing the Unit­ed States.

    ...

    It would also fall to Mr. Con­way to over­see Mr. Trump’s defense in a pend­ing law­suit charg­ing him with vio­la­tions of the Constitution’s Emol­u­ments Clause, which bans fed­er­al office­hold­ers from accept­ing gifts or pay­ments from for­eign gov­ern­ments, because of the prof­its his hotels and resorts receive from for­eign offi­cials who are cus­tomers.

    Before he was inau­gu­rat­ed, Mr. Trump’s per­son­al lawyers argued that the clause did not bar “fair-mar­ket-val­ue trans­ac­tions,” like pay­ing for hotel rooms. But the law­suit, filed by Cit­i­zens for Respon­si­bil­i­ty and Ethics in Wash­ing­ton, a lib­er­al watch­dog group on gov­ern­ment cor­rup­tion, con­tends that the clause does bar such trans­ac­tions.

    It is like­ly that Mr. Trump will face addi­tion­al legal chal­lenges regard­ing pos­si­ble con­flicts of inter­est stem­ming from his vast real estate and busi­ness empire, from which he has refused to divest.
    ...

    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 Motors Trump 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.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | March 19, 2017, 2:01 pm
  4. 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:

    Politi­co

    Ivan­ka Trump set to get West Wing office as role expands

    The first daugh­ter will not, how­ev­er, become a gov­ern­ment employ­ee, rais­ing ethics ques­tions.

    By Annie Karni

    03/20/17 05:56 PM EDT

    Ivan­ka Trump, who moved to Wash­ing­ton say­ing she would play no for­mal role in her father’s admin­is­tra­tion, is now offi­cial­ly set­ting up shop in the White House.

    The pow­er­ful first daugh­ter has secured her own office on the West Wing’s sec­ond floor — a space next to senior advis­er Dina Pow­ell, who was recent­ly pro­mot­ed to a posi­tion on the Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil. She is also in the process of obtain­ing a secu­ri­ty clear­ance and is set to receive gov­ern­ment-issued com­mu­ni­ca­tions devices this week.

    In every­thing but name, Trump is set­tling in as what appears to be a full-time staffer in her father’s admin­is­tra­tion, with a broad and grow­ing port­fo­lio — except she is not being sworn in, will hold no offi­cial posi­tion and is not pock­et­ing a salary, her attor­ney said.

    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.

    As her role in the White House grows — a role that comes with no play­book — Trump plans to adhere to the same ethics and records reten­tion rules that apply to gov­ern­ment employ­ees, Gore­lick said, even though she is not tech­ni­cal­ly an employ­ee. But ethics watch­dogs imme­di­ate­ly ques­tioned whether she is going far enough to elim­i­nate con­flicts of inter­est, espe­cial­ly because she will not be auto­mat­i­cal­ly sub­ject­ed to cer­tain ethics rules while serv­ing as a de fac­to White House advis­er.

    “Hav­ing an adult child of the pres­i­dent who is active­ly engaged in the work of the admin­is­tra­tion is new ground,” Gore­lick con­ced­ed in an inter­view on Mon­day. “Our view is that the con­ser­v­a­tive approach is for Ivan­ka to vol­un­tar­i­ly com­ply with the rules that would apply if she were a gov­ern­ment employ­ee, even though she is not.” A spokes­woman for Ivan­ka Trump said her role was signed off on by the White House counsel’s office, and the con­flict issues were “worked through” with the office of gov­ern­ment ethics. A White House spokes­woman did not respond to a request for com­ment about the unique arrange­ment.

    Peo­ple close to Ivan­ka Trump said that she sees noth­ing unusu­al about the arrange­ment — it’s sim­ply how she has worked with her father for years, as a senior offi­cial at the Trump Orga­ni­za­tion and as Don­ald Trump’s part­ner on “The Appren­tice.”

    But in the White House, the unprece­dent­ed arrange­ment for a child of the pres­i­dent has raised new ques­tions about poten­tial con­flicts of inter­est — and about why Ivan­ka Trump can’t sim­ply join the admin­is­tra­tion as a gov­ern­ment employ­ee. Her hus­band, Jared Kush­n­er, serves as an offi­cial senior advis­er in the White House and was sworn in, but his hir­ing also raised ques­tions of whether it vio­lat­ed anti-nepo­tism laws. The Jus­tice Depart­ment ruled that those laws applied only to agency appoint­ments.

    Ivan­ka Trump still owns her epony­mous fash­ion and jew­el­ry brand, even though she stepped down from her posi­tion at the com­pa­ny ahead of her father’s inau­gu­ra­tion. She is also pub­lish­ing a book, “Women Who Work,” which is due out in May.

    “I will con­tin­ue to offer my father my can­did advice and coun­sel, as I have for my entire life,” Trump said in a state­ment. “While there is no mod­ern prece­dent for an adult child of the pres­i­dent, I will vol­un­tar­i­ly fol­low all of the ethics rules placed on gov­ern­ment employ­ees.”

    The arrange­ment, how­ev­er, was greet­ed with more ques­tions about what free­doms Trump was try­ing to pre­serve for her­self — and why.

    “They’re not say­ing she’s going to vol­un­tar­i­ly sub­ject her­self to ethics rules to be nice,” said Norm Eisen, the for­mer ethics czar in the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion. “There’s recog­ni­tion that they’re in very uncer­tain ter­ri­to­ry here. The bet­ter thing to do would be to con­cede she is sub­ject to the rules. It would cre­ate some out­side account­abil­i­ty, because if she can vol­un­tar­i­ly sub­ject her­self to the rules, she can vol­un­tar­i­ly un-sub­ject her­self to the rules.”

    Under the new rules, Trump has divest­ed her com­mon stock, tech invest­ments, invest­ment funds — and they will all appear on Kushner’s 278 finan­cial dis­clo­sure form, required by all Cab­i­net nom­i­nees. Bloomberg News report­ed on Mon­day after­noon that Trump and Kush­n­er sold as much as $36.7 mil­lion in assets to com­ply with fed­er­al ethics rules, accord­ing to the Office of Gov­ern­ment Ethics.

    But when it comes to divest­ing from her busi­ness, how­ev­er, Gore­lick admit­ted there is no way to make it a con­flict-free zone.

    “The one thing I would like to be clear on: we don’t believe it elim­i­nates con­flicts in every way,” Gore­lick said. “She has the con­flicts that derive from the own­er­ship of this brand. We’re try­ing to min­i­mize those to the extent pos­si­ble.”

    Gore­lick argued that the area is murky because out­stand­ing con­tracts with third par­ty ven­dors mean that Ivan­ka Trump can­not sim­ply close her busi­ness — those ven­dors could con­tin­ue using her brand. She also can’t sell the busi­ness, her attor­ney argued, because the buy­er would have the right to license her name and poten­tial­ly cre­ate oth­er eth­i­cal issues.

    Instead, Trump will be dis­tanc­ing her­self, as much as pos­si­ble, from the day-to-day oper­a­tions of the Ivan­ka Trump brand and con­vey her inter­ests to a trust.

    The trust, Gore­lick said, will be con­trolled by her broth­er-in-law, Josh Kush­n­er, and her sis­ter-in-law, Nicole Mey­er, who will be pro­hib­it­ed from enter­ing the brand into any agree­ments with for­eign coun­tries or agen­cies. Ivan­ka Trump has appoint­ed Abi­gail Klem to serve as pres­i­dent of her com­pa­ny, over­see­ing the day-to-day oper­a­tions, and pro­hib­it­ed the com­pa­ny from using her image to sell the brand. The first daugh­ter, how­ev­er, will retain veto pow­er to kill any deals that would be “unac­cept­able from an ethics per­spec­tive.”

    Gore­lick, a for­mer deputy attor­ney gen­er­al in the Clin­ton admin­is­tra­tion, will also serve as the out­side ethics advis­er to the trustees. The busi­ness will also be pro­hib­it­ed from using her image to mar­ket the brand.

    Under the trust, her attor­neys said, Ivan­ka Trump will receive only the infor­ma­tion she needs for dis­clo­sure require­ments and to facil­i­tate com­pli­ance with con­flict of inter­est and impar­tial­i­ty rules.

    As for the mon­ey she will make from her book, Trump is plan­ning to donate the roy­al­ties and net pro­ceeds to char­i­ties that focus on women in the work­force, with the help of a donor-advised fund.

    ...

    “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?

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | March 21, 2017, 2:33 pm
  5. 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!:

    The Wash­ing­ton Post

    In a Bei­jing ball­room, Kush­n­er fam­i­ly push­es $500,000 ‘investor visa’ to wealthy Chi­nese

    By Emi­ly Rauha­la and William Wan
    May 6, 2017

    BEIJING — The Kush­n­er fam­i­ly came to the Unit­ed States as refugees, worked hard and made it big — and if you invest in Kush­n­er prop­er­ties, so can you.

    That was the mes­sage deliv­ered Sat­ur­day by White House senior advis­er Jared Kushner’s sis­ter Nicole Kush­n­er Mey­er to a ball­room full of wealthy Chi­nese investors in Bei­jing.

    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.

    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 tagline on a brochure for the event: “Invest $500,000 and immi­grate to the Unit­ed States.”

    And the high­light of the after­noon was Mey­er, a prin­ci­pal for the com­pa­ny, who was intro­duced in pro­mo­tion­al mate­ri­als as Jared’s sis­ter.

    The event under­scores the extent to which Kushner’s pri­vate busi­ness inter­ests have the poten­tial to col­lide with his pow­er­ful role as a top offi­cial in his father-in-law’s White House, par­tic­u­lar­ly when it comes to Chi­na, where Kush­n­er has become a cru­cial diplo­mat­ic chan­nel between Bei­jing and the new admin­is­tra­tion.

    While Kush­n­er has report­ed divest­ing from ele­ments of the fam­i­ly busi­ness, includ­ing the spe­cif­ic project that his sis­ter pitched in Bei­jing, the ses­sion Sat­ur­day demon­strat­ed that the com­pa­ny is per­ceived as enjoy­ing close ties to the Trump admin­is­tra­tion. Ethics laws pro­hib­it gov­ern­ment offi­cials from prof­it­ing per­son­al­ly from their pub­lic-sec­tor work.

    Watch­dogs and ethics experts on Sat­ur­day crit­i­cized the Bei­jing event as an attempt to cash in on Kushner’s new­found prox­im­i­ty to pow­er.

    “It’s incred­i­bly stu­pid and high­ly inap­pro­pri­ate,” said Richard Painter, the for­mer chief White House ethics lawyer in Pres­i­dent George W. Bush’s admin­is­tra­tion, who has become a vocal crit­ic of the Trump admin­is­tra­tion. “They clear­ly imply that the Kush­n­ers are going to make sure you get your visa. ... They’re [Chi­nese appli­cants] not going to take a chance. Of course they’re going to want to invest.”

    Among the wealthy elites in Chi­na, fam­i­ly, busi­ness and pol­i­tics are all deeply inter­twined. Every branch of the Com­mu­nist Par­ty, every province and city often oper­ate as a fief­dom for those in pow­er, allow­ing lead­ers spe­cial, lucra­tive access to pol­i­cy, land and gov­ern­ment con­tracts. There is even a name for sec­ond-gen­er­a­tion sons and daugh­ters of wealthy busi­ness exec­u­tives and gov­ern­ment offi­cials — such as Ivan­ka Trump and Jared Kush­n­er — who have access to pow­er through fam­i­ly ties. They are called “fuer­dai.

    The EB‑5 immi­grant investor visa pro­gram that Mey­er dis­cussed Sat­ur­day allows rich for­eign investors who are will­ing to plunk down large invest­ments in U.S. projects that cre­ate jobs to apply to immi­grate to the Unit­ed States.

    Bloomberg News report­ed in March 2016 that the pro­gram has been used to the ben­e­fit both the Trump and Kush­n­er fam­i­ly busi­ness­es. Before join­ing the White House, as chief exec­u­tive of his family’s real estate com­pa­ny, Jared Kush­n­er raised $50 mil­lion from Chi­nese EB‑5 appli­cants for a Trump-brand­ed apart­ment build­ing in Jer­sey City, accord­ing to the report.

    Blake Roberts, an attor­ney at the Wilmer­Hale law firm who serves as Kushner’s per­son­al coun­sel, said: “Mr. Kush­n­er divest­ed his inter­ests in the One Jour­nal Square project by sell­ing them to a fam­i­ly trust that he is not a ben­e­fi­cia­ry of, a mech­a­nism sug­gest­ed by the Office of Gov­ern­ment Ethics. As pre­vi­ous­ly stat­ed, he will recuse from par­tic­u­lar mat­ters con­cern­ing the EB‑5 visa pro­gram.”

    The EB‑5 pro­gram has been crit­i­cized by mem­bers of Con­gress from both par­ties who have said the pro­gram in essence sells visas to the wealth­i­est for­eign­ers.

    The pro­gram has been extreme­ly pop­u­lar among rich Chi­nese, who call it the “gold­en visa” and are eager to get their fam­i­lies — and their wealth — out of the coun­try. The fact that some use it to move their mon­ey out ille­gal­ly, how­ev­er, has made the pro­gram unpop­u­lar with the Chi­nese author­i­ties.

    The pro­gram was launched with the goal of secur­ing invest­ment and cre­at­ing jobs. But instead, in recent years, many real estate devel­op­ers have used the pro­gram as a source of cheap financ­ing by using for­eign investors, espe­cial­ly from Chi­na, for flashy projects in Man­hat­tan and oth­er city cen­ters.

    A Gov­ern­ment Account­abil­i­ty Office repor in 2015 found the EB‑5 pro­gram car­ried a high risk of fraud, was rife with coun­ter­feit doc­u­men­ta­tion and had “no reli­able method to ver­i­fy the source of the funds of peti­tion­ers.”

    Since Don­ald Trump became pres­i­dent, rumors have cir­cu­lat­ed among the wealthy of the world about the future of the EB‑5 pro­gram, giv­en Trump’s repeat­ed vows to crack down on immi­gra­tion and the increased con­gres­sion­al scruti­ny of EB-5s. That has sent many high-rolling for­eign­ers flock­ing to apply.

    The pro­gram, how­ev­er, is espe­cial­ly pop­u­lar in Chi­na, with esti­mates in recent years show­ing that more than 80 per­cent of EB‑5 visas were issued to Chi­nese investors.

    Saturday’s event in Bei­jing was host­ed by the Chi­nese com­pa­ny Qiaowai, which con­nects U.S. com­pa­nies with Chi­nese investors. Qiaowai is work­ing with the Kush­n­er com­pa­ny to secure fund­ing for Kush­n­er 1, the New Jer­sey project pre­sent­ed to investors, also known as One Jour­nal Square. Pro­mo­tion­al mate­ri­als tout the build­ings’ prox­im­i­ty to Man­hat­tan and note that the project will cre­ate more than 6,000 jobs.

    “This project has sta­ble fund­ing, cre­ates suf­fi­cient jobs and guar­an­tees the safe­ty of investors’ mon­ey,” one descrip­tion reads.

    Although there was no vis­i­ble ref­er­ence to Trump, the mate­ri­als not­ed the Kush­n­er family’s “celebri­ty” sta­tus.

    ...

    Kushner’s per­son­al finan­cial dis­clo­sure form reflects that he divest­ed his inter­est in K One Jour­nal Square LLC. The form described the asset as unde­vel­oped real estate in Jer­sey City. Because the asset was already divest­ed, Kushner’s fil­ing does not reflect its esti­mat­ed val­ue. But he did report between $1 mil­lion and $5 mil­lion in income con­nect­ed to the project.

    At Saturday’s event, attendee Wang Yun, a Chi­nese investor, said the Kush­n­er family’s ties to Trump were an obvi­ous part of the project’s appeal.

    “Even though this is the project of the son-in-law’s fam­i­ly, of course it is still affil­i­at­ed,” Wang said.

    Wang rea­soned that the link to Trump would be a boon if the pres­i­den­cy goes well but could be dis­as­trous if it does not: “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.”

    Many of the peo­ple who attend­ed the event declined to be inter­viewed, cit­ing pri­va­cy con­cerns, or were blocked by orga­niz­ers from speak­ing to the news media.

    Although the event was pub­licly adver­tised in Bei­jing, the hosts were excep­tion­al­ly anx­ious about the pres­ence of reporters.

    Jour­nal­ists were ini­tial­ly seat­ed at the back of the ball­room, but as the pre­sen­ta­tions got under­way, a pub­lic-rela­tions rep­re­sen­ta­tive asked The Wash­ing­ton Post to leave, say­ing the pres­ence of for­eign reporters threat­ened the “sta­bil­i­ty” of the event.

    At one point, orga­niz­ers grabbed a reporter’s phone and back­pack to try to force that per­son to leave. Lat­er, as investors start­ed leav­ing the ball­room, orga­niz­ers phys­i­cal­ly sur­round­ed atten­dees to pre­vent them from giv­ing inter­views.

    Asked why reporters were asked to leave, a PR per­son who declined to iden­ti­fy her­self said sim­ply, “This is not the sto­ry we want.”

    “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 tagline on a brochure for the event: “Invest $500,000 and immi­grate to the Unit­ed States.”

    And the high­light of the after­noon was Mey­er, a prin­ci­pal for the com­pa­ny, who was intro­duced in pro­mo­tion­al mate­ri­als as Jared’s sis­ter.

    ...

    Since Don­ald Trump became pres­i­dent, rumors have cir­cu­lat­ed among the wealthy of the world about the future of the EB‑5 pro­gram, giv­en Trump’s repeat­ed vows to crack down on immi­gra­tion and the increased con­gres­sion­al scruti­ny of EB-5s. That has sent many high-rolling for­eign­ers flock­ing to apply.
    ...

    “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:

    Talk­ing Points Memo
    Edi­tor’s Blog

    A Few Thoughts on the Trump/Kushner Fam­i­lies’ Pres­i­den­cy Cash Bust Out

    By Josh Mar­shall
    Pub­lished May 8, 2017 10:26 am

    You’ve prob­a­bly heard that the Kush­n­er fam­i­ly was caught over the week­end lit­er­al­ly sell­ing visas to immi­grate to the Unit­ed States in exchange for fund­ing a $150 mil­lion dol­lar New Jer­sey real estate project. The sale itself is actu­al­ly legal. It’s part of a high­ly con­tro­ver­sial and wide­ly abused pro­gram which pro­vides visas to for­eign nation­als in exchange for $500,000 invest­ments in US projects which by cer­tain stan­dards are judged to cre­ate jobs in impov­er­ished or eco­nom­i­cal­ly dis­tressed parts of the Unit­ed States. It’s become a wide­ly abused vehi­cle for real estate devel­op­ers look­ing to fund lux­u­ry devel­op­ment projects.

    Set­ting that con­tro­ver­sy aside, what sets this apart of course is that Jared Kush­n­er is the most senior advi­sor to the Pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States, as well as being the President’s son-in-law. While nom­i­nal­ly step­ping aside from his fam­i­ly busi­ness, his fam­i­ly is in Chi­na open­ly trad­ing on the Kush­n­er family’s ties to Pres­i­dent Trump to rake up mon­ey. As much and as quick­ly as pos­si­ble. Kushner’s sis­ter Nicole actu­al­ly led the pre­sen­ta­tion. Reporters from the Times and the Post were on hand at the pre­sen­ta­tion in Bei­jing (where they were able to get in) and at a sec­ond in Shang­hai (where they weren’t.)

    Trump – as well as the Kush­n­er family’s con­nec­tion to him – was explic­it­ly invoked as the “key deci­sion mak­er” in get­ting the visas. A Times reporter post­ed this pic­ture of  the pre­sen­ta­tion to Twit­ter, which I’ve marked up to iden­ti­fy the peo­ple in the slide …

    [see amus­ing­ly anno­tat­ed pic]

    This is need­less to say, the most open and fla­grant kind of mon­e­tiz­ing of the Pres­i­den­cy – as bad as any­one could have imag­ined from the con­joined Trump/Kushner fam­i­lies. The fact that this ‘nation­al­ist’, ‘crack down on ille­gal immi­gra­tion’ White House is con­nect­ed to cash for visas activ­i­ties like this just adds a lay­er of oily crust to the cor­rup­tion.

    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.

    ...

    “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:

    ...
    At Saturday’s event, attendee Wang Yun, a Chi­nese investor, said the Kush­n­er family’s ties to Trump were an obvi­ous part of the project’s appeal.

    “Even though this is the project of the son-in-law’s fam­i­ly, of course it is still affil­i­at­ed,” Wang said.

    Wang rea­soned that the link to Trump would be a boon if the pres­i­den­cy goes well but could be dis­as­trous if it does not: “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.”
    ...

    “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.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | May 8, 2017, 7:28 pm
  6. 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:

    Talk­ing Points Memo
    Livewire

    FEMA Has ‘Sig­nif­i­cant Con­cerns’ About $300 Mil­lion Deal With Util­i­ty Com­pa­ny

    By Nicole Lafond
    Pub­lished Octo­ber 27, 2017 10:40 am

    The Fed­er­al Emer­gency Man­age­ment Agency (FEMA) is look­ing into how a con­tract between Puer­to Rico and a tiny pow­er com­pa­ny — whose CEO and part­ner are friend­ly with the Trump admin­is­tra­tion — was pro­cured, accord­ing to a state­ment.

    A small util­i­ty com­pa­ny in Mon­tana signed a $300 mil­lion con­tract with the Puer­to Rico Elec­tric Pow­er Author­i­ty (PREPA) to restore elec­tric­i­ty to the U.S. ter­ri­to­ry. The deal raised eye­brows after the Weath­er Chan­nel report­ed that the com­pa­ny, White­fish Ener­gy Hold­ings, is report­ed­ly financed by major donors to Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump and has ties to the Trump admin­is­tra­tion.

    In its state­ment Fri­day, FEMA clar­i­fied that it was not involved in hir­ing the com­pa­ny to restore pow­er to the island and hasn’t pro­vid­ed any reim­burse­ment to the PREPA yet for its con­tract with White­fish.

    “Based on ini­tial review and infor­ma­tion from PREPA, FEMA has sig­nif­i­cant con­cerns about how PREPA pro­cured this con­tract and has not con­firmed whether the con­tract prices are rea­son­able,” the state­ment said. “FEMA is present­ly engaged with PREPA and its legal coun­sel to obtain infor­ma­tion about the con­tract and con­tract­ing process, includ­ing how the con­tract was pro­cured and how PREPA deter­mined the con­tract prices were rea­son­able.”

    ...

    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.

    Both the gov­er­nor of Puer­to Rico and the may­or of the U.S. territory’s capi­tol city have spo­ken out about the con­tract, with San Juan May­or Car­men Yulin Cruz call­ing for an inves­ti­ga­tion into the con­tract, spark­ing a Twit­ter war with the com­pa­ny, which lat­er apol­o­gized for its com­ments.

    Puer­to Rico Gov. Ricar­do Rossel­lo on Wednes­day asked the Depart­ment of Home­land Security’s inspec­tor gen­er­al to con­duct a review of the con­tract pro­cure­ment and told ABC News there would be “hell to pay” if any cor­rup­tion is uncov­ered in the audit.

    Just two years old, White­fish only had two full-time employ­ees before being award­ed the con­tract, ABC News report­ed.

    FEMA state­ment on White­fish Ener­gy: “FEMA has sig­nif­i­cant con­cerns with how PREPA pro­cured this con­tract” pic.twitter.com/rMHkzDxqKS— NBC News (@NBCNews) Octo­ber 27, 2017

    ———-

    “FEMA Has ‘Sig­nif­i­cant Con­cerns’ About $300 Mil­lion Deal With Util­i­ty Com­pa­ny” by Nicole Lafond; Talk­ing Points Memo; 10/27/2017

    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:

    ...
    Just two years old, White­fish only had two full-time employ­ees before being award­ed the con­tract, ABC News report­ed.
    ...

    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:

    The Hill

    White­fish Ener­gy con­tract bars gov­ern­ment from audit­ing deal

    By John Bow­den — 10/27/17 08:48 AM EDT

    A deal reached between the gov­ern­ment and a small Mon­tana ener­gy com­pa­ny locat­ed in Inte­ri­or Sec­re­tary Ryan Zinke’s home­town pro­hibits the gov­ern­ment from review­ing labor costs or prof­its relat­ed to the com­pa­ny’s relief efforts in Puer­to Rico, accord­ing to a leaked copy of the con­tract.

    A copy of the deal obtained by reporter Ken Klip­pen­stein reveals that the gov­ern­ment isn’t allowed to “audit or review the cost and prof­it ele­ments” under the agree­ment, allow­ing the com­pa­ny greater dis­cre­tion and secre­cy for how it spends the $300 mil­lion to restore pow­er to the island. Puer­to Rico is rebuild­ing after two major hur­ri­canes wiped out most of the island’s elec­tri­cal grid.

    White­fish con­tract states, “In no event shall [gov­ern­ment bod­ies] have the right to audit or review the cost and prof­it ele­ments.” Wow. pic.twitter.com/dIyQXb6AK0— Ken Klip­pen­stein (@kenklippenstein) Octo­ber 27, 2017

    White­fish signed the deal with the Puer­to Rico Elec­tric Pow­er Author­i­ty (PREPA), which also pro­hibits the gov­ern­ment from mak­ing “any claim against Con­trac­tor relat­ed to delayed com­ple­tion of work.”

    Incred­i­ble: White­fish con­tract states Puer­to Rican govt “waives any claim against Con­trac­tor relat­ed to delayed com­ple­tion of work.” pic.twitter.com/k4wWxrLFq2— Ken Klip­pen­stein (@kenklippenstein) Octo­ber 27, 2017

    White­fish has been the tar­get of heavy crit­i­cism over ques­tions as to why the small com­pa­ny, which only had two full-time employ­ees when the storm struck, was select­ed for such a lucra­tive gov­ern­ment con­tract to help clean up the island.

    Two House com­mit­tees and a fed­er­al watch­dog have all opened inves­ti­ga­tions into the deal. San Juan May­or Car­men Yulín Cruz has called for the deal to be void­ed and inves­ti­gat­ed after rep­re­sen­ta­tives for the com­pa­ny feud­ed with her on Twit­ter and asked her if she want­ed them to stop work­ing.

    “We’ve got 44 line­men rebuild­ing pow­er lines in your city & 40 more men just arrived. Do you want us to send them back or keep work­ing?” White­fish Ener­gy tweet­ed to the may­or Wednes­day.

    “They are threat­en­ing not to do their job which frankly is quite irreg­u­lar for a com­pa­ny hired to the work for the pub­lic sec­tor,” she tweet­ed in response.

    “The con­tract should be void­ed right away and a prop­er process which is clear, trans­par­ent, legal, moral and eth­i­cal should take place,” Cruz added in com­ments to Yahoo News.

    Repub­li­cans on the House Nat­ur­al Resources Com­mit­tee have also raised ques­tions about the scope of the deal.

    “The size and terms of the con­tract, as well as the cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing the contract’s for­ma­tion, raise ques­tions regard­ing PREPA’s stan­dard con­tract award­ing pro­ce­dures,” Reps. Rob Bish­op (R‑Utah) and Bruce West­er­man (R‑Ark.) wrote Thurs­day.

    White­fish said Thurs­day that it wel­comes the inves­ti­ga­tions.

    ...
    ———-

    “White­fish Ener­gy con­tract bars gov­ern­ment from audit­ing deal” by John Bow­den; The Hill; 10/27/2017

    “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:

    ...
    White­fish signed the deal with the Puer­to Rico Elec­tric Pow­er Author­i­ty (PREPA), which also pro­hibits the gov­ern­ment from mak­ing “any claim against Con­trac­tor relat­ed to delayed com­ple­tion of work.”
    ...

    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

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | October 27, 2017, 3:08 pm
  7. 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:

    USA Today

    Trump puts fed­er­al libel law on 2018 agen­da, esca­lat­ing com­plaints against media

    Gre­go­ry Korte and David Jack­son,
    Pub­lished 1:04 p.m. ET Jan. 10, 2018 | Updat­ed 5:06 p.m. ET Jan. 10, 2018

    WASHINGTON — Pres­i­dent Trump renewed his call for a fed­er­al libel law on Wednes­day, say­ing peo­ple who are sub­ject to false and defam­a­to­ry accu­sa­tions should have “mean­ing­ful recourse” in fed­er­al courts.

    “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.”

    It’s not a new pro­pos­al for the pres­i­dent, who threat­ened to “open up our libel laws’’ dur­ing his cam­paign for pres­i­dent as he pushed back against unfa­vor­able sto­ries. This time, the pro­pos­al comes a week after the pub­li­ca­tion of a tell-all book about the White House that por­trayed Trump in unflat­ter­ing terms.

    Trump’s pri­vate lawyers have threat­ened law­suits, send­ing cease-and-desist let­ters to the book’s author and pub­lish­er — and to for­mer White House strate­gist Steve Ban­non, who coop­er­at­ed with author Michael Wolff, who was pre­vi­ous­ly a colum­nist for USA TODAY.

    In the Unit­ed States, libel and defama­tion are large­ly gov­erned by state law, but with­in the restric­tions of the First Amend­ment. The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that pub­lic fig­ures — like the pres­i­dent — must clear a high hur­dle in order to prove defama­tion.

    At the cab­i­net meet­ing Wednes­day, Trump also com­plained about tele­vi­sion news cov­er­age of his nego­ti­a­tions with mem­bers of Con­gress on Wednes­day. He claimed that net­work news anchors were com­pli­men­ta­ry of his han­dling of the meet­ing — even send­ing Trump let­ters telling him so — before net­work boss­es weighed in.

    ...

    ———-

    “Trump puts fed­er­al libel law on 2018 agen­da, esca­lat­ing com­plaints against media” by Gre­go­ry Korte and David Jack­son; USA Today; 01/10/2018

    ““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:

    ...
    In the Unit­ed States, libel and defama­tion are large­ly gov­erned by state law, but with­in the restric­tions of the First Amend­ment. The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that pub­lic fig­ures — like the pres­i­dent — must clear a high hur­dle in order to prove defama­tion.
    ...

    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:

    The New York Times

    Can Libel Laws Be Changed Under Trump?

    By SYDNEY EMBER
    NOV. 13, 2016

    When Don­ald J. Trump said in Feb­ru­ary that he would “open up our libel laws” if he became pres­i­dent to make it eas­i­er to sue news orga­ni­za­tions for unfa­vor­able cov­er­age, the dec­la­ra­tion sent shock waves through the media world.

    But could he actu­al­ly do it?

    The sim­ple answer is yes, but it would be com­pli­cat­ed. And assum­ing the estab­lished pro­ce­dures to change laws hold, it would also be extreme­ly dif­fi­cult.

    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.

    The Supreme Court estab­lished the First Amend­ment prin­ci­ples that gov­ern the country’s libel laws in 1964, with its unan­i­mous deci­sion in New York Times v. Sul­li­van. In that rul­ing, the court said that pub­lic offi­cials had to prove that false state­ments were made with “actu­al mal­ice,” mean­ing news orga­ni­za­tions had to have know­ing­ly pub­lished a false­hood or pub­lished it with “reck­less dis­re­gard of whether it was false or not.”

    The stan­dard, lat­er extend­ed to include pub­lic fig­ures, set a high bar for libel and meant that peo­ple like Mr. Trump — both a pub­lic fig­ure and soon-to-be pub­lic offi­cial — would have a very, very dif­fi­cult time win­ning a libel law­suit.

    If Mr. Trump were to seek to change the libel laws, he would have to get the Supreme Court to over­turn the rul­ing in Times v. Sul­li­van and sub­se­quent cas­es built on it, or at least chip away at either the def­i­n­i­tion of “actu­al mal­ice” or the char­ac­ter­i­za­tion of a pub­lic offi­cial or pub­lic fig­ure, said San­dra S. Baron, a senior fel­low at Yale Law School’s Infor­ma­tion Soci­ety Project and for­mer exec­u­tive direc­tor of the Media Law Resource Cen­ter.

    “A change in those laws would require the Supreme Court of the Unit­ed States tak­ing a new look at what it pre­vi­ous­ly decid­ed and mak­ing changes,” Ms. Baron said. “I think there’s very lit­tle, quite can­did­ly, he could do short of get­ting the Supreme Court to over­rule New York Times v. Sul­li­van.”

    The Supreme Court could over­turn the rul­ing, but it would not be easy. For one thing, libel and the pro­tec­tion of free speech are not, by nature, lib­er­al ver­sus con­ser­v­a­tive issues. Even if Mr. Trump appoints a con­ser­v­a­tive jus­tice (or two) who sup­port mod­i­fy­ing First Amend­ment prin­ci­ples, these jus­tices would not nec­es­sar­i­ly find them­selves in the major­i­ty.

    ...

    The con­ser­v­a­tive chief jus­tice William H. Rehn­quist, for instance, wrote the deci­sion in a case in 1988 that extend­ed rules pro­tect­ing crit­i­cism of pub­lic fig­ures as free speech. In the case, the Supreme Court over­turned an award in favor of the Rev. Jer­ry Fal­well, a well-known preach­er, who had sued Hus­tler mag­a­zine over a par­o­dy ad that por­trayed him as hav­ing tak­en part in a drunk­en tryst with his moth­er.

    Short of over­turn­ing Times v. Sul­li­van com­plete­ly, the Supreme Court could roll back relat­ed deci­sions. The court, how­ev­er, has not shown much inter­est in libel law in a long time, legal experts say.

    “There has been no active effort by the con­ser­v­a­tive wing of the Supreme Court to over­turn the prin­ci­ples of New York Times v. Sul­li­van,” Ms. Baron said. “The court has not tak­en a libel case in a very long time, and there did not appear to be a major­i­ty of the court, and that includes the con­ser­v­a­tives, who were active­ly seek­ing to over­turn the prin­ci­ples of New York Times v. Sul­li­van.”

    Mr. Trump could also try to change libel laws by seek­ing to amend the Con­sti­tu­tion itself. Alter­ing the Con­sti­tu­tion, which is rarely attempt­ed, would be ardu­ous, cer­tain­ly, but not impos­si­ble.

    “It’s hard to imag­ine that gain­ing a lot of trac­tion,” Ms. Baron said. “But you know, we live in unpre­dictable times.”

    Of course, Mr. Trump has been under­es­ti­mat­ed before, so it is pos­si­ble that he could muster the sup­port to change libel laws. But even if Mr. Trump were able to have Times v. Sul­li­van over­turned, states, par­tic­u­lar­ly those with a major media pres­ence like New York and Cal­i­for­nia, could effec­tive­ly make the pro­tec­tion avail­able as a mat­ter of state law.

    The ques­tion is whether Mr. Trump would ben­e­fit from chang­ing libel laws. Fil­ing a law­suit would open him up to dis­cov­ery, which could lay bare details he might rather keep pri­vate. It should be not­ed, how­ev­er, that Mr. Trump has a his­to­ry of fil­ing libel law­suits, though he has nev­er won in pub­lic court, accord­ing to a recent report. (Even if the libel laws do not change, Mr. Trump could con­tin­ue to threat­en news orga­ni­za­tions with law­suits.)

    There is also the pos­si­bil­i­ty that loos­en­ing libel laws could affect him in unex­pect­ed ways.

    “Chang­ing the laws to make it eas­i­er to sue would essen­tial­ly be used to harm him,” said George Free­man, the exec­u­tive direc­tor of the Media Law Resource Cen­ter and a for­mer assis­tant gen­er­al coun­sel of The New York Times. “He’s more like­ly to be a libel defen­dant than a libel plain­tiff.”

    ———-

    “Can Libel Laws Be Changed Under Trump?” by SYDNEY EMBER; The New York Times; 11/13/2016

    “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 :

    ...
    If Mr. Trump were to seek to change the libel laws, he would have to get the Supreme Court to over­turn the rul­ing in Times v. Sul­li­van and sub­se­quent cas­es built on it, or at least chip away at either the def­i­n­i­tion of “actu­al mal­ice” or the char­ac­ter­i­za­tion of a pub­lic offi­cial or pub­lic fig­ure, said San­dra S. Baron, a senior fel­low at Yale Law School’s Infor­ma­tion Soci­ety Project and for­mer exec­u­tive direc­tor of the Media Law Resource Cen­ter.

    “A change in those laws would require the Supreme Court of the Unit­ed States tak­ing a new look at what it pre­vi­ous­ly decid­ed and mak­ing changes,” Ms. Baron said. “I think there’s very lit­tle, quite can­did­ly, he could do short of get­ting the Supreme Court to over­rule New York Times v. Sul­li­van.”

    The Supreme Court could over­turn the rul­ing, but it would not be easy. For one thing, libel and the pro­tec­tion of free speech are not, by nature, lib­er­al ver­sus con­ser­v­a­tive issues. Even if Mr. Trump appoints a con­ser­v­a­tive jus­tice (or two) who sup­port mod­i­fy­ing First Amend­ment prin­ci­ples, these jus­tices would not nec­es­sar­i­ly find them­selves in the major­i­ty.
    ...

    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:

    ...
    Of course, Mr. Trump has been under­es­ti­mat­ed before, so it is pos­si­ble that he could muster the sup­port to change libel laws. But even if Mr. Trump were able to have Times v. Sul­li­van over­turned, states, par­tic­u­lar­ly those with a major media pres­ence like New York and Cal­i­for­nia, could effec­tive­ly make the pro­tec­tion avail­able as a mat­ter of state law.
    ...

    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:

    ...
    Mr. Trump could also try to change libel laws by seek­ing to amend the Con­sti­tu­tion itself. Alter­ing the Con­sti­tu­tion, which is rarely attempt­ed, would be ardu­ous, cer­tain­ly, but not impos­si­ble.

    “It’s hard to imag­ine that gain­ing a lot of trac­tion,” Ms. Baron said. “But you know, we live in unpre­dictable times.”
    ...

    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:

    Alter­Net

    We Are Now One State Clos­er to Hav­ing a Cor­po­rate-Dom­i­nat­ed Con­sti­tu­tion­al Con­ven­tion

    With the addi­tion of Wis­con­sin, right-wingers pro­mot­ing a Con­sti­tu­tion­al Con­ven­tion have 28 states; they only need six more.

    By Steven Rosen­feld / Alter­Net
    Novem­ber 9, 2017, 11:28 AM GMT

    While Democ­rats on Wednes­day were feel­ing encour­aged and empow­ered by Tuesday’s coast-to-coast rejec­tion of Trump­ism, Repub­li­can leg­is­la­tors who con­trol Wis­con­sin did what the GOP does best in elec­tions: vot­ed to rig the sys­tem to favor their agen­da. Only this time the tar­get wasn’t vot­er sup­pres­sion; it was the U.S. Con­sti­tu­tion.

    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.

    “Sad­ly, this is not fake news,” said Com­mon Cause pres­i­dent Karen Hobert Fly­nn. “The specter of an Arti­cle V con­ven­tion to rewrite the Con­sti­tu­tion remains one of the most alarm­ing threats to our democ­ra­cy that nobody has ever heard of before.”

    “The deep-pock­et­ed spe­cial inter­est groups behind this effort to call a con­ven­tion are not like­ly to stop with a sin­gle amend­ment when there are no rules to pre­vent open­ing up the Con­sti­tu­tion to a full rewrite in a run­away con­ven­tion,” Fly­nn explained. “The effort to call the con­ven­tion is fund­ed by wealthy spe­cial inter­est groups like the Amer­i­can Leg­isla­tive Exchange Coun­cil that have long pushed for a broad leg­isla­tive agen­da in the states, and it is hard to imag­ine then not foist­ing that agen­da on the Con­sti­tu­tion itself through unelect­ed and unac­count­able del­e­gates to the con­ven­tion.”

    Revis­ing the U.S. Con­sti­tu­tion is not the only big idea that has sur­faced fol­low­ing 2017’s Elec­tion Day. On Wednes­day morn­ing, the New York Times endorsed the nation­al pop­u­lar vote com­pact, where states agree to award all of their Elec­toral Col­lege votes for the next pres­i­dent to who­ev­er wins the nation­al pop­u­lar vote. (In 2016, that was Hillary Clin­ton, by near­ly 3 mil­lion votes. So far, 10 states and the Dis­trict of Colum­bia have signed on, pledg­ing 165 of the 270 Elec­toral Col­lege votes need­ed.)

    Har­vard Law pro­fes­sor Lar­ry Lessig, who dubi­ous­ly called for an Arti­cle V con­ven­tion a half-dozen years ago to reform the nation’s cam­paign finance sys­tem, has anoth­er big idea that would shake up the elec­toral process in unpre­dictable ways. His non-prof­it, EqualCitizens.US, has sued to real­lo­cate Elec­toral Col­lege votes by con­gres­sion­al dis­trict instead of the cur­rent win­ner-take-all sys­tem that exists in 48 states. (Maine and Nebras­ka split up their Elec­toral Col­lege votes.)

    But an Arti­cle V con­ven­tion is clos­er to real­i­ty than either the nation­al pop­u­lar vote or Lessig’s Elec­toral Col­lege reshuf­fling (even though two states, Min­neso­ta and Vir­ginia, saw law­mak­ers intro­duce 2017 leg­is­la­tion to reap­por­tion these votes; both stalled). In the past three years, 12 red-run states have called for an Arti­cle V con­ven­tion (Geor­gia, Alas­ka, Flori­da, Alaba­ma, Ten­nessee, Indi­ana, Okla­homa, Louisiana, Ari­zona, North Dako­ta, Texas and Mis­souri). Mean­while, four blue states (Delaware, New Mex­i­co, Mary­land and Neva­da) that pre­vi­ous­ly vot­ed for a con­ven­tion, under the assump­tion it would only be con­cerned with bal­anc­ing the fed­er­al bud­get, rescind­ed that ear­li­er vote because of fears a con­ven­tion would become a run­away train.

    These offen­sive moves by the right and defen­sive moves by the left show the prospect of an Arti­cle V con­ven­tion is not just anoth­er fan­ci­ful idea, but is mov­ing clos­er to some­thing the nation may even­tu­al­ly face. Before 2017’s Elec­tion Day, the next six states tar­get­ed by pro­po­nents were Ken­tucky, Ida­ho, Min­neso­ta, Mon­tana, South Car­oli­na and Vir­ginia, accord­ing to Com­mon Cause’s back­ground memo. Virginia’s elec­tion of a Demo­c­ra­t­ic gov­er­nor, and the par­ti­san major­i­ty of its low­er House of Del­e­gates still unknown (due to bal­lots that are still being count­ed), damp­ens the near­er-term pos­si­bil­i­ty of reach­ing 34 states.

    But no one should under­es­ti­mate the Repub­li­cans. The GOP, more so than Democ­rats, have kept their eyes on longer-term polit­i­cal prizes. They did that with par­ti­san ger­ry­man­ders in 2011 to lock down red super­ma­jor­i­ty leg­is­la­tures and U.S. House del­e­ga­tions. The Supreme Court is now review­ing a chal­lenge to Wisconsin’s extreme ger­ry­man­der. It’s no coin­ci­dence that it vot­ed Tues­day to call for a fed­er­al con­sti­tu­tion­al con­ven­tion. (In New York State on Tues­day, vot­ers reject­ed a call for a state con­ven­tion to revise the state con­sti­tu­tion, but approved a pro­pos­al to seize pen­sions from cor­rupt politi­cians.)

    The rhetoric from those call­ing for a fed­er­al con­ven­tion is sim­plis­tic, giv­en the stakes, com­plex­i­ty and chaos of the con­se­quences. From the mid-1970s until three or four years ago, the call for a con­ven­tion was to rein in fed­er­al spend­ing via a bal­anced bud­get amend­ment, said Jay Rieken­berg, a cam­paign strate­gist at Com­mon Cause. But today, pro­po­nents are talk­ing about more sweep­ing reforms, which becomes an open-end­ed invi­ta­tion to revise the Con­sti­tu­tion to accom­mo­date vir­tu­al­ly every right-wing goal that can­not be adopt­ed through state leg­is­la­tures or Con­gress.

    “The mes­sag­ing change we are see­ing com­ing out of the con­ven­tion of states [the main advo­ca­cy group] is forc­ing the con­ser­v­a­tives to talk dif­fer­ent­ly about this,” Rieken­berg said. “The con­ven­tion of states folks talk about how sim­ple this is; this is all about tak­ing back pow­er from Wash­ing­ton.”

    “The con­ser­v­a­tive move­ment has basi­cal­ly made this a long-term strat­e­gy,” he con­tin­ued. “They had a lot of momen­tum between 2011 and maybe Mon­day night. They need six states… Four are firm­ly in Repub­li­can hands.”

    Vir­ginia and in Min­neso­ta are the like­ly near-term excep­tions, where Democ­rats either gained pow­er on Tues­day or may do so in 2018. But as far-fetched as an Arti­cle 5 con­ven­tion sounds, the unknowns asso­ci­at­ed with it should prompt notice. It could be a run­away con­ven­tion. It could be a bonan­za for spe­cial inter­ests. There are no cer­tain con­ven­tion rules laid out in the Con­sti­tu­tion or a rat­i­fi­ca­tion process. There’s no guar­an­tee par­tic­i­pants would be rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the elec­torate.

    ...

    Repub­li­cans have done many things to rig the rules of elec­tions this decade, from ger­ry­man­der­ing to a deep cat­a­log of vot­er sup­pres­sion tac­tics. While Democ­rats and Inde­pen­dents were vot­ing Tues­day to reject Trump­ism, the GOP in Wis­con­sin inten­tion­al­ly ignored the pub­lic and moved to rewrite the Con­sti­tu­tion. Take heed.

    ———-

    “We Are Now One State Clos­er to Hav­ing a Cor­po­rate-Dom­i­nat­ed Con­sti­tu­tion­al Con­ven­tion” by Steven Rosen­feld; Alter­Net; 11/09/2017

    “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:

    ...
    The deep-pock­et­ed spe­cial inter­est groups behind this effort to call a con­ven­tion are not like­ly to stop with a sin­gle amend­ment when there are no rules to pre­vent open­ing up the Con­sti­tu­tion to a full rewrite in a run­away con­ven­tion,” Fly­nn explained. “The effort to call the con­ven­tion is fund­ed by wealthy spe­cial inter­est groups like the Amer­i­can Leg­isla­tive Exchange Coun­cil that have long pushed for a broad leg­isla­tive agen­da in the states, and it is hard to imag­ine then not foist­ing that agen­da on the Con­sti­tu­tion itself through unelect­ed and unac­count­able del­e­gates to the con­ven­tion.”
    ...

    And note now active this dri­ve is today. 12 GOP-run states have called for such a con­ven­tion in the past three years alone:

    ...
    But an Arti­cle V con­ven­tion is clos­er to real­i­ty than either the nation­al pop­u­lar vote or Lessig’s Elec­toral Col­lege reshuf­fling (even though two states, Min­neso­ta and Vir­ginia, saw law­mak­ers intro­duce 2017 leg­is­la­tion to reap­por­tion these votes; both stalled). In the past three years, 12 red-run states have called for an Arti­cle V con­ven­tion (Geor­gia, Alas­ka, Flori­da, Alaba­ma, Ten­nessee, Indi­ana, Okla­homa, Louisiana, Ari­zona, North Dako­ta, Texas and Mis­souri). Mean­while, four blue states (Delaware, New Mex­i­co, Mary­land and Neva­da) that pre­vi­ous­ly vot­ed for a con­ven­tion, under the assump­tion it would only be con­cerned with bal­anc­ing the fed­er­al bud­get, rescind­ed that ear­li­er vote because of fears a con­ven­tion would become a run­away train.

    These offen­sive moves by the right and defen­sive moves by the left show the prospect of an Arti­cle V con­ven­tion is not just anoth­er fan­ci­ful idea, but is mov­ing clos­er to some­thing the nation may even­tu­al­ly face. Before 2017’s Elec­tion Day, the next six states tar­get­ed by pro­po­nents were Ken­tucky, Ida­ho, Min­neso­ta, Mon­tana, South Car­oli­na and Vir­ginia, accord­ing to Com­mon Cause’s back­ground memo. Virginia’s elec­tion of a Demo­c­ra­t­ic gov­er­nor, and the par­ti­san major­i­ty of its low­er House of Del­e­gates still unknown (due to bal­lots that are still being count­ed), damp­ens the near­er-term pos­si­bil­i­ty of reach­ing 34 states.
    ...

    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 rhetoric from those call­ing for a fed­er­al con­ven­tion is sim­plis­tic, giv­en the stakes, com­plex­i­ty and chaos of the con­se­quences. From the mid-1970s until three or four years ago, the call for a con­ven­tion was to rein in fed­er­al spend­ing via a bal­anced bud­get amend­ment, said Jay Rieken­berg, a cam­paign strate­gist at Com­mon Cause. But today, pro­po­nents are talk­ing about more sweep­ing reforms, which becomes an open-end­ed invi­ta­tion to revise the Con­sti­tu­tion to accom­mo­date vir­tu­al­ly every right-wing goal that can­not be adopt­ed through state leg­is­la­tures or Con­gress.

    “The mes­sag­ing change we are see­ing com­ing out of the con­ven­tion of states [the main advo­ca­cy group] is forc­ing the con­ser­v­a­tives to talk dif­fer­ent­ly about this,” Rieken­berg said. “The con­ven­tion of states folks talk about how sim­ple this is; this is all about tak­ing back pow­er from Wash­ing­ton.”

    “The con­ser­v­a­tive move­ment has basi­cal­ly made this a long-term strat­e­gy,” he con­tin­ued. “They had a lot of momen­tum between 2011 and maybe Mon­day night. They need six states… Four are firm­ly in Repub­li­can hands.”

    Vir­ginia and in Min­neso­ta are the like­ly near-term excep­tions, where Democ­rats either gained pow­er on Tues­day or may do so in 2018. But as far-fetched as an Arti­cle 5 con­ven­tion sounds, the unknowns asso­ci­at­ed with it should prompt notice. It could be a run­away con­ven­tion. It could be a bonan­za for spe­cial inter­ests. There are no cer­tain con­ven­tion rules laid out in the Con­sti­tu­tion or a rat­i­fi­ca­tion process. There’s no guar­an­tee par­tic­i­pants would be rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the elec­torate.
    ...

    “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.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | January 10, 2018, 4:20 pm
  8. 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:

    The New York Times

    Inside the White House’s Qui­et Cam­paign to Cre­ate a Supreme Court Open­ing

    By Adam Lip­tak and Mag­gie Haber­man
    June 28, 2018

    WASHINGTON — Pres­i­dent Trump sin­gled him out for praise even while attack­ing oth­er mem­bers of the Supreme Court. The White House nom­i­nat­ed peo­ple close to him to impor­tant judi­cial posts. And mem­bers of the Trump fam­i­ly forged per­son­al con­nec­tions.

    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.

    There were no direct efforts to pres­sure or lob­by Jus­tice Kennedy to announce his res­ig­na­tion on Wednes­day, and it was hard­ly the first time a pres­i­dent had done his best to cre­ate a court open­ing. “In the past half-cen­tu­ry, pres­i­dents have repeat­ed­ly been dying to take advan­tage of time­ly vacan­cies,” said Lau­ra Kalman, a his­to­ri­an at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia, San­ta Bar­bara.

    But in sub­tle and not so sub­tle ways, the White House waged a qui­et cam­paign to ensure that Mr. Trump had a sec­ond oppor­tu­ni­ty in his administration’s first 18 months to ful­fill one of his most impor­tant cam­paign promis­es to his con­ser­v­a­tive fol­low­ers — that he would change the com­plex­ion and direc­tion of the Supreme Court.

    When Mr. Trump took office last year, he already had a Supreme Court vacan­cy to fill, the one cre­at­ed by the 2016 death of Jus­tice Antonin Scalia. But Mr. Trump dear­ly want­ed a sec­ond vacan­cy, one that could trans­form the court for a gen­er­a­tion or more. So he used the first open­ing to help cre­ate the sec­ond one. He picked Jus­tice Neil M. Gor­such, who had served as a law clerk to Jus­tice Kennedy, to fill Jus­tice Scalia’s seat.

    And when Jus­tice Gor­such took the judi­cial oath in April 2017 at a Rose Gar­den cer­e­mo­ny, Jus­tice Kennedy admin­is­tered it — after Mr. Trump first praised the old­er jus­tice as “a great man of out­stand­ing accom­plish­ment.”

    “Through­out his near­ly 30 years on the Supreme Court,” Mr. Trump said, “Jus­tice Kennedy has been praised by all for his ded­i­cat­ed and dig­ni­fied ser­vice.”

    That was an over­state­ment. Jus­tice Kennedy is reviled by many of Mr. Trump’s sup­port­ers for vot­ing to uphold access to abor­tion, lim­it the death penal­ty and expand gay rights. Con­ser­v­a­tives have called for his impeach­ment. James C. Dob­son, the founder of Focus on the Fam­i­ly, once called Jus­tice Kennedy “the most dan­ger­ous man in Amer­i­ca.”

    Mr. Trump him­self said he want­ed to appoint jus­tices who would over­rule Roe v. Wade, the 1973 deci­sion estab­lish­ing a con­sti­tu­tion­al right to abor­tion. Jus­tice Kennedy has vot­ed to reaf­firm Roe’s core hold­ing. And Mr. Trump has not hes­i­tat­ed to crit­i­cize far more con­ser­v­a­tive mem­bers of the Supreme Court, notably Chief Jus­tice John G. Roberts Jr.

    “Jus­tice Roberts turned out to be an absolute dis­as­ter, he turned out to be an absolute dis­as­ter because he gave us Oba­macare,” Mr. Trump said in 2016, pre­sum­ably refer­ring to Chief Jus­tice Roberts’s votes to sus­tain Pres­i­dent Barack Obama’s health care law.

    ...

    Then, after Jus­tice Gorsuch’s nom­i­na­tion was announced, a White House offi­cial sin­gled out two can­di­dates for the next Supreme Court vacan­cy: Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh of the Unit­ed States Court of Appeals for the Dis­trict of Colum­bia Cir­cuit and Judge Ray­mond M. Keth­ledge of the Unit­ed States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Cir­cuit, in Cincin­nati.

    The two judges had some­thing in com­mon: They had both clerked for Jus­tice Kennedy.

    In the mean­time, as the White House turned to stock­ing the low­er courts, it did not over­look Jus­tice Kennedy’s clerks. Mr. Trump nom­i­nat­ed three of them to fed­er­al appeals courts: Judges Stephanos Bibas and Michael Scud­der, both of whom have been con­firmed, and Eric Mur­phy, the Ohio solic­i­tor gen­er­al, whom Mr. Trump nom­i­nat­ed to the Sixth Cir­cuit this month.

    One per­son who knows both men remarked on the affin­i­ty between Mr. Trump and Jus­tice Kennedy, which is not obvi­ous at first glance. Jus­tice Kennedy is book­ish and abstract, while Mr. Trump is earthy and direct.

    But they had a con­nec­tion, one Mr. Trump was quick to note in the moments after his first address to Con­gress in Feb­ru­ary 2017. As he made his way out of the cham­ber, Mr. Trump paused to chat with the jus­tice.

    “Say hel­lo to your boy,” Mr. Trump said. “Spe­cial guy.”

    Mr. Trump was appar­ent­ly refer­ring to Jus­tice Kennedy’s son, Justin. The younger Mr. Kennedy spent more than a decade at Deutsche Bank, even­tu­al­ly ris­ing to become the bank’s glob­al head of real estate cap­i­tal mar­kets, and he worked close­ly with Mr. Trump when he was a real estate devel­op­er, accord­ing to two peo­ple with knowl­edge of his role.

    Dur­ing Mr. Kennedy’s tenure, Deutsche Bank became Mr. Trump’s most impor­tant lender, dis­pens­ing well over $1 bil­lion in loans to him for the ren­o­va­tion and con­struc­tion of sky­scrap­ers in New York and Chica­go at a time oth­er main­stream banks were wary of doing busi­ness with him because of his trou­bled busi­ness his­to­ry.

    About a week before the pres­i­den­tial address, Ivan­ka Trump had paid a vis­it to the Supreme Court as a guest of Jus­tice Kennedy. The two had met at a lunch after the inau­gu­ra­tion, and Ms. Trump brought along her daugh­ter, Ara­bel­la Kush­n­er. Occu­py­ing seats reserved for spe­cial guests, they saw the jus­tices announce sev­er­al deci­sions and hear an oral argu­ment.

    Ms. Trump tweet­ed about the vis­it and post­ed a pho­to. “Ara­bel­la & me at the Supreme Court today,” she wrote. “I’m grate­ful for the oppor­tu­ni­ty to teach her about the judi­cial sys­tem in our coun­try first­hand.”

    If the over­tures to Jus­tice Kennedy from the White House were sub­tle, the warn­ings from its allies were blunt. Last month, Sen­a­tor Charles E. Grass­ley of Iowa, the Repub­li­can chair­man of the Sen­ate Judi­cia­ry Com­mit­tee, went on Hugh Hewitt’s radio pro­gram to issue an urgent plea..

    “My mes­sage to any one of the nine Supreme Court jus­tices,” he said, was, “‘If you’re think­ing about quit­ting this year, do it yes­ter­day.’”

    Mr. Grass­ley said speed was of the essence in light of the midterm elec­tions in Novem­ber. “If we have a Demo­c­rat Sen­ate,” he said, “you’re nev­er going to get the kind of peo­ple that are strict con­struc­tion­ists.”

    Inter­me­di­aries pressed the point with Jus­tice Kennedy pri­vate­ly, telling him that Don­ald F. McGahn II, Mr. Trump’s White House coun­sel, would in all prob­a­bil­i­ty leave after the midterms. Mr. McGahn has been a key archi­tect Mr. Trump’s suc­cess­ful efforts to appoint wave after wave of con­ser­v­a­tive judges, they said, and his absence would com­pli­cate a Supreme Court con­fir­ma­tion.

    There is noth­ing par­tic­u­lar­ly unusu­al in urg­ing old­er jus­tices to retire for par­ti­san rea­sons. Dur­ing the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion, promi­nent lib­er­als called for Jus­tice Ruth Bad­er Gins­burg to retire so that Mr. Oba­ma could name her suc­ces­sor.

    Jus­tice Kennedy wait­ed until the last day of the term to announce his retire­ment. The move dis­ap­point­ed lib­er­als who had hoped that he would not want Mr. Trump to name his suc­ces­sor. But the jus­tice, say­ing he want­ed to spend more time with his fam­i­ly, betrayed no hes­i­ta­tion.

    His depar­ture is a tri­umph for Mr. Trump, who has tak­en par­tic­u­lar sat­is­fac­tion in his judi­cial appoint­ments. Nam­ing jus­tices and judges is eas­i­er than forg­ing leg­isla­tive com­pro­mis­es, and Mr. Trump under­stands that his judi­cial appoint­ments rep­re­sent a lega­cy that will long out­last his pres­i­den­cy.

    Replac­ing Jus­tice Scalia with anoth­er con­ser­v­a­tive did not alter the basic ide­o­log­i­cal bal­ance of the court. But replac­ing Jus­tice Kennedy, who for decades held the deci­sive vote in many of the court’s close­ly divid­ed cas­es, would give Mr. Trump the oppor­tu­ni­ty to move the court sharply to the right.

    Jus­tice Kennedy vis­it­ed the White House on Wednes­day to tell Mr. Trump of his retire­ment and to deliv­er a let­ter set­ting out the details. Its warm open­ing words — “My dear Mr. Pres­i­dent” — acknowl­edged a cor­dial rela­tion­ship between the two men, as well as the suc­cess of the White House’s strat­e­gy.

    ———-

    “Inside the White House’s Qui­et Cam­paign to Cre­ate a Supreme Court Open­ing” by Adam Lip­tak and Mag­gie Haber­man; The New York Times; 06/28/2018

    “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:

    ...
    There were no direct efforts to pres­sure or lob­by Jus­tice Kennedy to announce his res­ig­na­tion on Wednes­day, and it was hard­ly the first time a pres­i­dent had done his best to cre­ate a court open­ing. “In the past half-cen­tu­ry, pres­i­dents have repeat­ed­ly been dying to take advan­tage of time­ly vacan­cies,” said Lau­ra Kalman, a his­to­ri­an at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia, San­ta Bar­bara.

    But in sub­tle and not so sub­tle ways, the White House waged a qui­et cam­paign to ensure that Mr. Trump had a sec­ond oppor­tu­ni­ty in his administration’s first 18 months to ful­fill one of his most impor­tant cam­paign promis­es to his con­ser­v­a­tive fol­low­ers — that he would change the com­plex­ion and direc­tion of the Supreme Court.

    When Mr. Trump took office last year, he already had a Supreme Court vacan­cy to fill, the one cre­at­ed by the 2016 death of Jus­tice Antonin Scalia. But Mr. Trump dear­ly want­ed a sec­ond vacan­cy, one that could trans­form the court for a gen­er­a­tion or more. So he used the first open­ing to help cre­ate the sec­ond one. He picked Jus­tice Neil M. Gor­such, who had served as a law clerk to Jus­tice Kennedy, to fill Jus­tice Scalia’s seat.

    And when Jus­tice Gor­such took the judi­cial oath in April 2017 at a Rose Gar­den cer­e­mo­ny, Jus­tice Kennedy admin­is­tered it — after Mr. Trump first praised the old­er jus­tice as “a great man of out­stand­ing accom­plish­ment.”

    “Through­out his near­ly 30 years on the Supreme Court,” Mr. Trump said, “Jus­tice Kennedy has been praised by all for his ded­i­cat­ed and dig­ni­fied ser­vice.”
    ...

    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:

    ...
    About a week before the pres­i­den­tial address, Ivan­ka Trump had paid a vis­it to the Supreme Court as a guest of Jus­tice Kennedy. The two had met at a lunch after the inau­gu­ra­tion, and Ms. Trump brought along her daugh­ter, Ara­bel­la Kush­n­er. Occu­py­ing seats reserved for spe­cial guests, they saw the jus­tices announce sev­er­al deci­sions and hear an oral argu­ment.

    Ms. Trump tweet­ed about the vis­it and post­ed a pho­to. “Ara­bel­la & me at the Supreme Court today,” she wrote. “I’m grate­ful for the oppor­tu­ni­ty to teach her about the judi­cial sys­tem in our coun­try first­hand.”
    ...

    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:

    ...
    Then, after Jus­tice Gorsuch’s nom­i­na­tion was announced, a White House offi­cial sin­gled out two can­di­dates for the next Supreme Court vacan­cy: Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh of the Unit­ed States Court of Appeals for the Dis­trict of Colum­bia Cir­cuit and Judge Ray­mond M. Keth­ledge of the Unit­ed States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Cir­cuit, in Cincin­nati.

    The two judges had some­thing in com­mon: They had both clerked for Jus­tice Kennedy.

    In the mean­time, as the White House turned to stock­ing the low­er courts, it did not over­look Jus­tice Kennedy’s clerks. Mr. Trump nom­i­nat­ed three of them to fed­er­al appeals courts: Judges Stephanos Bibas and Michael Scud­der, both of whom have been con­firmed, and Eric Mur­phy, the Ohio solic­i­tor gen­er­al, whom Mr. Trump nom­i­nat­ed to the Sixth Cir­cuit this month.
    ...

    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:

    ...
    One per­son who knows both men remarked on the affin­i­ty between Mr. Trump and Jus­tice Kennedy, which is not obvi­ous at first glance. Jus­tice Kennedy is book­ish and abstract, while Mr. Trump is earthy and direct.

    But they had a con­nec­tion, one Mr. Trump was quick to note in the moments after his first address to Con­gress in Feb­ru­ary 2017. As he made his way out of the cham­ber, Mr. Trump paused to chat with the jus­tice.

    “Say hel­lo to your boy,” Mr. Trump said. “Spe­cial guy.”

    Mr. Trump was appar­ent­ly refer­ring to Jus­tice Kennedy’s son, Justin. The younger Mr. Kennedy spent more than a decade at Deutsche Bank, even­tu­al­ly ris­ing to become the bank’s glob­al head of real estate cap­i­tal mar­kets, and he worked close­ly with Mr. Trump when he was a real estate devel­op­er, accord­ing to two peo­ple with knowl­edge of his role.

    Dur­ing Mr. Kennedy’s tenure, Deutsche Bank became Mr. Trump’s most impor­tant lender, dis­pens­ing well over $1 bil­lion in loans to him for the ren­o­va­tion and con­struc­tion of sky­scrap­ers in New York and Chica­go at a time oth­er main­stream banks were wary of doing busi­ness with him because of his trou­bled busi­ness his­to­ry.
    ...

    “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:

    Medi­um

    The Kennedy, Kush­n­er, and Trump Con­nec­tion: A Curi­ous Con­ver­sa­tion and A Busi­ness Deal

    by C’Zar Bern­stein & Gabe Rusk
    Oxford Uni­ver­si­ty
    March 1st, 2017

    A few moments after his first address to Con­gress on Feb­ru­ary 28th, Pres­i­dent Don­ald J. Trump left the podi­um and began to work the crowd as he left the House Cham­ber. The Pres­i­dent made his way to the five mem­bers of the Unit­ed States Supreme Court in atten­dance. Seat­ed by senior­i­ty, Trump began with Jus­tice Kagan on the right and even­tu­al­ly made his way to Jus­tice Antho­ny Kennedy. A curi­ous and con­cise con­ver­sa­tion took place between the two. To the best of our abil­i­ties, here is a tran­script of the con­ver­sa­tion picked up on cam­era:

    Kennedy: [Inaudi­ble]

    Trump: Very nice, thank you, and com­ing from you. And say hel­lo to your boy. Spe­cial guy.

    Kennedy: Your kids have been very nice to him.

    Trump: Well, they love him and they love him in New York. He’s a great guy. (Point­ing to Chief Jus­tice Roberts) Good swear­ing-in. You’ve got a good guy.

    [Link to video.. Read­ers can lis­ten for them­selves at 5:15 remain­ing]

    ...

    Quick­ly after the twen­ty-sec­ond exchange was caught via CSPAN a few #appel­latetwit­ter detec­tives began to spec­u­late what rela­tion­ships Kennedy’s chil­dren and Trump’s might have. Was this a “col­lo­qui­al” back and forth or was there more of a his­to­ry between the two fam­i­lies? This was not the first time that Jus­tice Kennedy and the Trumps had inter­act­ed. Just last week at the invi­ta­tion of Jus­tice Kennedy, Don­ald Trump’s daugh­ter and for­mer busi­ness­woman Ivan­ka Trump vis­it­ed the High Court with her daugh­ter to attend a Supreme Court argu­ment. Accord­ing to reports, Kennedy and Ivan­ka had met at the con­gres­sion­al lunch after the inau­gu­ra­tion. Once again many in the com­mu­ni­ty were intrigued at the ges­ture and spec­u­lat­ed that the move might have an under­ly­ing mean­ing beyond mere kind­ness. Vir­tu­al­ly every­one agreed that the lat­ter was sure to be true. A sim­ple answer to a sim­ple ques­tion. Last night’s brief exchange between Kennedy and POTUS reignit­ed those con­ver­sa­tions. This time we dis­cov­ered that there is more to the sto­ry: There may be a Kennedy, Kush­n­er, and Trump busi­ness con­nec­tion.

    Jus­tice Kennedy has two very suc­cess­ful sons in their own right, Gre­go­ry and Justin Kennedy. Gre­go­ry Kennedy, a Stan­ford Law grad­u­ate (a Stan­ford man like his father), was named CEO of Dis­rup­tive Tech­nol­o­gy Advis­ers in Octo­ber of 2016. Accord­ing to his LinkedIn page: Dis­rup­tive Tech­nol­o­gy Advi­sors is a “Los Ange­les based mer­chant bank with an exclu­sive focus on mid to late stage growth com­pa­nies.” While Gre­go­ry Kennedy is like­ly based out of New York City, at first glance, there is no pub­lic, pro­fes­sion­al, or per­son­al con­nec­tion between him or his com­pa­ny and any of the Trumps or their hold­ings. The same might not be said of his broth­er Justin.

    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:

    Accord­ing the New York Times, in 2007 Kush­n­er Com­pa­nies pur­chased “an alu­minum-clad office tow­er in Mid­town Man­hat­tan, for a record price of $1.8 bil­lion.” At the time the NYT wrote that this deal was “con­sid­ered a clas­sic exam­ple of reck­less under­writ­ing. The trans­ac­tion was so high­ly lever­aged that the cash flow from rents amount­ed to only 65 per­cent of the debt ser­vice.” The Times con­tin­ues:

    “As many real estate spe­cial­ists pre­dict­ed, the deal ran into trou­ble. Instead of ris­ing, rents declined as the reces­sion took hold, and new leas­es were scarce. In 2010, the loan was trans­ferred to a spe­cial ser­vicer on the assump­tion that a default would occur once reserve funds being used to sub­si­dize the short­fall were bled dry. But the sto­ry may yet have a hap­py end­ing for Kush­n­er, a fam­i­ly-owned busi­ness that moved its head­quar­ters from Florham Park, N.J., to 666 Fifth, its first major acqui­si­tion in Man­hat­tan.”

    Who came to the res­cue? None oth­er than LNR Prop­er­ty, the com­pa­ny whose CEO at the time was Justin Kennedy. Accord­ing to the NYT and the Real Deal, Mr. Kush­n­er and LNR “reached a pos­si­ble agree­ment with LNR Prop­er­ty, a firm spe­cial­iz­ing in restruc­tur­ing trou­bled debt and which over­sees the mort­gage, that would allow him to retain con­trol of the tow­er by mod­i­fy­ing the terms of the $1.2 bil­lion mort­gage tied to the office por­tion of the build­ing.” A spokesman for Mr. Kush­n­er told the Wall Street Jour­nal in March of 2011 that “[t]he Kushner’s are ready and will­ing to invest more mon­ey into the prop­er­ty as soon as they can come to mutu­al­ly sat­is­fac­to­ry terms with the ser­vic­ing agent.” In that same arti­cle Kushner’s father-in-law and the future Pres­i­dent com­ment­ed on the nego­ti­a­tions with Justin Kennedy’s com­pa­ny. Speak­ing about the deal, Trump told the WSJ that Kush­n­er is “a very smart young man…I think it (loan rene­go­ti­a­tions) will come out well for him and every­body.” At this point there is no doubt that there was a direct busi­ness rela­tion­ship between LNR and Kush­n­er Com­pa­nies at the time Justin Kennedy and Jared Kush­n­er were both CEO. Even the future Pres­i­dent was aware of the deal and com­ment­ed on its respec­tive mer­its. (That being said, it is not impos­si­ble that Jared Kush­n­er and Justin Kennedy did not meet in con­nec­tion with the spe­cif­ic deal in ques­tion; how­ev­er, giv­en the stakes involved it does seem more than like­ly that the two CEO’s would have inter­act­ed as nego­ti­a­tions were being con­duct­ed.)

    The con­nec­tions between Kush­n­er, Kennedy, and Trump do not end there. Coin­ci­den­tal­ly, in 2011, the year in which some of these nego­ti­a­tions took place, Justin Kennedy for the first time was ranked on the New York Observer’s 100 Most Pow­er­ful Peo­ple in New York Real Estate at #36. Don­ald Trump clocked in at #12. The New York Observ­er was owned at the time by none oth­er than Jared Kush­n­er him­self.

    All of this is to say there is a pos­si­ble web of per­son­al and pro­fes­sion­al rela­tion­ships between the Trump fam­i­ly and the Kennedy fam­i­ly. To our knowl­edge, Justin Kennedy has nev­er donat­ed to the Trump cam­paign, but we know that he is often a loy­al Repub­li­can donor like his broth­er Gre­go­ry. Accord­ing to FEC dis­clo­sures, Justin Kennedy has donat­ed gen­er­ous­ly to the pres­i­den­tial cam­paigns of John McCain, Mitt Rom­ney, Jeb Bush, and Mar­co Rubio. Trump, to our knowl­edge, is notice­ably absent. Despite the fact that we found no obvi­ous pub­lic polit­i­cal sup­port by Justin Kennedy for the Pres­i­dent, there are ques­tions left for us to answer. The Jus­tices and their fam­i­lies are now often under strict pub­lic scruti­ny in terms of how they might influ­ence pol­i­tics out­side of the High Court. Just this month Jus­tice Thomas’s wife Gin­ni Thomas faced back­lash for appar­ent polit­i­cal orga­niz­ing on behalf of the Pres­i­dent. Dur­ing the cam­paign, Jus­tice Ginsburg’s fer­vent neg­a­tive com­ments about then-can­di­date Trump were per­ceived as par­ti­san and unac­cept­able by jour­nal­ist, jurist, and politi­cian alike. The actions of the Jus­tices and their respec­tive fam­i­lies remain impor­tant bal­anc­ing tests for the pub­lic in terms of the rela­tion­ship between the Court and the rest of gov­ern­ment. What does this poten­tial and curi­ous con­nec­tion mean for that con­ver­sa­tion?

    The osten­si­ble rela­tion­ship between Mr. Kush­n­er and Mr. Kennedy would explain the exchange between Pres­i­dent Trump and Jus­tice Kennedy. It would, for exam­ple, explain why, in the words of the Pres­i­dent, ‘they love him.’ It would also fur­ther explain why Jus­tice Kennedy invit­ed Ivan­ka Trump to the Supreme Court. After all, Jus­tice Kennedy him­self acknowl­edged that the President’s ‘kids have been very nice’ to his son. Obvi­ous­ly, there­fore, there is some kind of friend­ly rela­tion­ship. Ques­tions abound. We know what the Justice’s son may have done for Mr. Kush­n­er, but what did the President’s chil­dren do for Justin Kennedy? How have they been nice to him? Evi­dent­ly Jus­tice Kennedy knows, and this may have had an impact on his opin­ion of the Trumps in gen­er­al and the Pres­i­dent in par­tic­u­lar. This is per­haps a sig­nif­i­cant cause of con­cern for those who hope that Jus­tice Kennedy will try and hold out until after Trump is replaced by a Demo­c­rat. Time will tell.

    ———-

    “The Kennedy, Kush­n­er, and Trump Con­nec­tion: A Curi­ous Con­ver­sa­tion and A Busi­ness Deal” by C’Zar Bern­stein & Gabe Rusk; Medi­um; 03/01/2017

    “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:

    ...
    Accord­ing the New York Times, in 2007 Kush­n­er Com­pa­nies pur­chased “an alu­minum-clad office tow­er in Mid­town Man­hat­tan, for a record price of $1.8 bil­lion.” At the time the NYT wrote that this deal was “con­sid­ered a clas­sic exam­ple of reck­less under­writ­ing. The trans­ac­tion was so high­ly lever­aged that the cash flow from rents amount­ed to only 65 per­cent of the debt ser­vice.” The Times con­tin­ues:

    “As many real estate spe­cial­ists pre­dict­ed, the deal ran into trou­ble. Instead of ris­ing, rents declined as the reces­sion took hold, and new leas­es were scarce. In 2010, the loan was trans­ferred to a spe­cial ser­vicer on the assump­tion that a default would occur once reserve funds being used to sub­si­dize the short­fall were bled dry. But the sto­ry may yet have a hap­py end­ing for Kush­n­er, a fam­i­ly-owned busi­ness that moved its head­quar­ters from Florham Park, N.J., to 666 Fifth, its first major acqui­si­tion in Man­hat­tan.”

    Who came to the res­cue? None oth­er than LNR Prop­er­ty, the com­pa­ny whose CEO at the time was Justin Kennedy. Accord­ing to the NYT and the Real Deal, Mr. Kush­n­er and LNR “reached a pos­si­ble agree­ment with LNR Prop­er­ty, a firm spe­cial­iz­ing in restruc­tur­ing trou­bled debt and which over­sees the mort­gage, that would allow him to retain con­trol of the tow­er by mod­i­fy­ing the terms of the $1.2 bil­lion mort­gage tied to the office por­tion of the build­ing.” A spokesman for Mr. Kush­n­er told the Wall Street Jour­nal in March of 2011 that “[t]he Kushner’s are ready and will­ing to invest more mon­ey into the prop­er­ty as soon as they can come to mutu­al­ly sat­is­fac­to­ry terms with the ser­vic­ing agent.” In that same arti­cle Kushner’s father-in-law and the future Pres­i­dent com­ment­ed on the nego­ti­a­tions with Justin Kennedy’s com­pa­ny. Speak­ing about the deal, Trump told the WSJ that Kush­n­er is “a very smart young man…I think it (loan rene­go­ti­a­tions) will come out well for him and every­body.” At this point there is no doubt that there was a direct busi­ness rela­tion­ship between LNR and Kush­n­er Com­pa­nies at the time Justin Kennedy and Jared Kush­n­er were both CEO. Even the future Pres­i­dent was aware of the deal and com­ment­ed on its respec­tive mer­its. (That being said, it is not impos­si­ble that Jared Kush­n­er and Justin Kennedy did not meet in con­nec­tion with the spe­cif­ic deal in ques­tion; how­ev­er, giv­en the stakes involved it does seem more than like­ly that the two CEO’s would have inter­act­ed as nego­ti­a­tions were being con­duct­ed.)
    ...

    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.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | June 29, 2018, 2:41 pm
  9. 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:

    Forbes

    New Details About Wilbur Ross’ Busi­ness Point To Pat­tern Of Grift­ing

    Dan Alexan­der
    Forbes Staff
    Aug 7, 2018, 06:00am

    A mul­ti­mil­lion-dol­lar law­suit has been qui­et­ly mak­ing its way through the New York State court sys­tem over the last three years, pit­ting a pri­vate equi­ty man­ag­er named David Stor­p­er against his for­mer boss: Sec­re­tary of Com­merce Wilbur Ross. The pair worked side by side for more than a decade, even­tu­al­ly at the firm, WL Ross & Co.—where, Stor­p­er lat­er alleged, Ross stole his inter­ests in a pri­vate equi­ty fund, trans­ferred them to him­self, then tried to cov­er it up with bogus paper­work. Two weeks ago, just before the start of a tri­al with $4 mil­lion on the line, Ross and Stor­p­er agreed to a con­fi­den­tial set­tle­ment, whose exis­tence has nev­er been report­ed and whose terms remain secret.

    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.

    There are big­ger alle­ga­tions. Over sev­er­al months, in speak­ing with 21 peo­ple who know Ross, Forbes uncov­ered a pat­tern: Many of those who worked direct­ly with him claim that Ross wrong­ly siphoned or out­right stole a few mil­lion here and a few mil­lion there, huge amounts for most but not nec­es­sar­i­ly for the com­merce sec­re­tary. At least if you con­sid­er them indi­vid­u­al­ly. But all told, these allegations—which sparked law­suits, reim­burse­ments and an SEC fine—come to more than $120 mil­lion. If even half of the accu­sa­tions are legit­i­mate, the cur­rent Unit­ed States sec­re­tary of com­merce could rank among the biggest grifters in Amer­i­can his­to­ry.

    Not that he sees him­self that way. “The SEC has nev­er ini­ti­at­ed any enforce­ment action against me,” Ross said in a state­ment, fail­ing to men­tion the $2.3 mil­lion fine it levied against his firm in 2016. The com­merce sec­re­tary also not­ed that one law­suit against him got dis­missed, with­out say­ing it is cur­rent­ly going through the appeals process. Ross con­firmed set­tling two oth­er cas­es, includ­ing the recent one against Stor­p­er, but declined to offer addi­tion­al details.

    Those who’ve done busi­ness with Ross gen­er­al­ly tell a con­sis­tent sto­ry, of a man obsessed with mon­ey and unteth­ered to facts. “He’ll push the edge of truth­ful­ness and use what­ev­er pow­er he has to grab assets,” says New York financier Ash­er Edel­man. One of Ross’ for­mer col­leagues is more direct: “He’s a patho­log­i­cal liar.”

    Wilbur Ross fig­ured out at some point that mon­ey, or the aura of it, trans­lates into pow­er. Forbes has pre­vi­ous­ly doc­u­ment­ed how Ross seem­ing­ly lied to us, over many years, launch­ing him­self onto, and then high­er on, our bil­lion­aire rank­ings, at one point even lying about an appar­ent multi­bil­lion-dol­lar trans­fer to fam­i­ly mem­bers to explain why his finan­cial dis­clo­sure report showed few­er assets than he claimed. “What I don’t want,” Ross said, “is for peo­ple to sud­den­ly think that I’ve lost a lot of mon­ey when it’s not true.”

    ...

    From Ross’ van­tage point, Trump offered the per­fect exit. The future cab­i­net secretary’s pri­vate equi­ty funds were underperforming—one on track to lose 26% of its ini­tial val­ue and anoth­er two drib­bling out mediocre returns—and the accu­sa­tions were start­ing to pile up. Rough­ly two months before the 2016 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion, the SEC announced WL Ross was pay­ing a fine and refund­ing $11.9 mil­lion it alleged­ly skimmed from its investors, includ­ing inter­est. The scheme was com­plex. Like oth­er pri­vate equi­ty firms—including sev­er­al that coughed up mon­ey to the SEC around the same time—WL Ross derived much of its rev­enue from man­age­ment fees charged to its investors. With funds as large as $4.1 bil­lion, man­age­ment fees of 1.5% could alone bring in more than $60 mil­lion a year for Ross’ firm—serious mon­ey.

    But WL Ross promised that it would give its investors some­thing like a rebate. For exam­ple, when Ross and his col­leagues got cer­tain fees for work­ing on deals, they were sup­posed to give at least 50% of that mon­ey back to investors. But, accord­ing to SEC inves­ti­ga­tors, the firm gave back less than it sug­gest­ed it would and pock­et­ed the dif­fer­ence, lead­ing the feds to con­clude Ross’ firm broke laws that pro­hib­it defraud­ing and mis­lead­ing clients. WL Ross paid the big set­tle­ment but nev­er admit­ted guilt.

    Accord­ing to the feds, WL Ross charged some of those inap­pro­pri­ate fees in the years before the com­merce sec­re­tary sold his firm to Invesco for $100 mil­lion up front and the pos­si­bil­i­ty of anoth­er $275 mil­lion down the road. That meant that when Ross cashed out, he pre­sum­ably did so at big­ger val­u­a­tion than he deserved. In a state­ment, Ross sug­gest­ed that Invesco nev­er clawed any of that mon­ey back. “The terms of the sale of my busi­ness in 2006 remain unchanged,” he said. Invesco declined to com­ment.

    There is more to the sto­ry. Accord­ing to five for­mer WL Ross employ­ees and investors, the firm was also charg­ing its investors on mon­ey that it had lost. Here’s how it worked: If WL Ross made an invest­ment of, say, $100 mil­lion that declined dra­mat­i­cal­ly, in the final years of the fund the firm was sup­posed to charge man­age­ment fees on the actu­al val­ue of the invest­ment, not the $100 mil­lion start­ing point. How­ev­er, WL Ross alleged­ly con­tin­ued col­lect­ing fees on the amount invest­ed, tak­ing more than it deserved. WL Ross was alleged­ly even charg­ing fees on one invest­ment that was essen­tial­ly worth­less. When approached about the dis­crep­an­cy, Wilbur Ross ini­tial­ly insist­ed his firm was cal­cu­lat­ing the fees cor­rect­ly, accord­ing to some­one famil­iar with those dis­cus­sions. “There are all sorts of fee issues,” says an investor, “but it was just the most egre­gious that I’ve seen.”

    Ross also alleged­ly skimmed mon­ey by serv­ing on cor­po­rate boards of his firm’s port­fo­lio com­pa­nies. Again, the rule was that a por­tion of the fees that WL Ross employ­ees got for serv­ing on such boards was essen­tial­ly sup­posed to be hand­ed back to investors as rebates. Instead, Ross’ firm did not give back enough, accord­ing to ex-col­leagues. Ross “was like a kid in a can­dy store,” says one of his for­mer employ­ees. “He pil­fered it.”

    Ross is now attempt­ing to dis­tance him­self from the man­age­ment fee issues. “No reg­u­la­to­ry agency has ever assert­ed such charges or any oth­er charges against me and there is no basis for any such alle­ga­tions,” he said in a state­ment.

    Eight for­mer employ­ees and investors, how­ev­er, said Ross pre­sum­ably knew about the issues. And for­mer WL Ross employ­ees add that the costs were far greater than the $14.2 mil­lion announced by the Secu­ri­ties & Exchange Com­mis­sion. A 2015 annu­al report for Invesco, WL Ross’ par­ent com­pa­ny, dis­closed that the com­pa­ny had paid anoth­er $43 mil­lion over the last two years in reim­burse­ments and reg­u­la­to­ry expens­es con­nect­ed to its pri­vate equi­ty busi­ness. Sec­re­tary Ross has large­ly avoid­ed scruti­ny around those pay­ments because the report does not explic­it­ly tie them to his for­mer firm. Four for­mer employ­ees who worked there, how­ev­er, told Forbes the $43 mil­lion was con­nect­ed to WL Ross.

    With the investors’ claims appar­ent­ly behind him, Ross now faces a line­up of alle­ga­tions from his for­mer col­leagues, who say he robbed them of mon­ey as well. Such accu­sa­tions are noth­ing new for Ross. In 2005, for­mer WL Ross vice chair­man Peter Lusk sued the future com­merce sec­re­tary for $20 mil­lion, ulti­mate­ly alleg­ing that he had tried to cut him out of his inter­ests. The exec­u­tives reached a set­tle­ment in 2007, which for­mer WL Ross employ­ees say cost rough­ly $10 mil­lion. Asked to com­ment on the suit, Ross respond­ed, “The Lusk case end­ed with mutu­al con­fi­den­tial­i­ty require­ments.”

    Three years ago, Stor­p­er launched what became a $4 mil­lion law­suit against both his for­mer employ­er, WL Ross, and for­mer boss, the com­merce sec­re­tary, alleg­ing that Ross stole his inter­ests. Attor­neys for Ross admit­ted in court fil­ings that one of his com­pa­nies took Storper’s inter­est and real­lo­cat­ed part of it to the com­merce sec­re­tary. But Ross’ lawyers also insist­ed all of that was allowed under inter­nal agree­ments. “Sim­ply put,” they wrote, “this law­suit is a per­son­al vendet­ta against Mr. Ross.” After a judge reject­ed attempts to pre­vent the case from going to tri­al, just days before the jury selec­tions the two sides agreed to set­tle.

    What makes it all more than a typ­i­cal “he-said, she-said” dis­pute is the num­ber of sim­i­lar com­plaints against Ross. A third for­mer WL Ross employ­ee, Joseph Mullin, filed a $3.6 mil­lion law­suit in Decem­ber 2016, say­ing WL Ross funds “loot­ed” his inter­ests “for the per­son­al ben­e­fit of Wilbur L. Ross, Jr.—and attempt­ed to con­ceal their mis­con­duct through opaque and mis­lead­ing tax state­ments and dis­clo­sures.” A New York State court dis­missed that case in Feb­ru­ary on tech­ni­cal grounds, say­ing Mullin, who left WL Ross in 2007, wait­ed too long to file it. He is now appeal­ing.

    Stor­p­er and two oth­er for­mer high-rank­ing exec­u­tives at WL Ross filed yet anoth­er law­suit against the com­merce sec­re­tary in Novem­ber, alleg­ing that he and his firm charged at least $48 mil­lion of improp­er fees, then pock­et­ed the mon­ey. It was a slow siphon­ing rather than a one-time heist, accord­ing to the law­suit. Pri­vate equi­ty firms typ­i­cal­ly col­lect man­age­ment fees—those 1.5% charges—only from their out­side clients. But the law­suit alleges that Ross and his firm seem­ing­ly charged cur­rent and for­mer com­pa­ny exec­u­tives as well. It would be like a restau­rant own­er telling his employ­ees that they can eat for free—while tak­ing the meal mon­ey out of their pay­checks. In a state­ment to Forbes, Ross called the case “with­out mer­it.” He moved to dis­miss it in Feb­ru­ary, but the suit remains active.

    A look at old ver­sions of WL Ross’ web­site reveal the mag­ni­tude of the tur­moil. Of the top sev­en firm lead­ers list­ed on the 2006 web­site, none of them have the same roles today. Ross is now lead­ing the com­merce depart­ment, Wendy Ter­amo­to serves as his chief of staff and Stephen Toy is the new co-head of WL Ross. Mean­while, the majority—consisting of Stor­p­er, Mullin, David Wax and Pamela Wilson—are all active­ly wag­ing legal bat­tles against their for­mer boss, Wilbur Ross.

    In a pres­i­den­tial cab­i­net plagued by eth­i­cal prob­lems, it can be easy to for­get about Wilbur Ross. Most of the atten­tion tends to cen­ter around obvi­ous abus­es, like Scott Pruitt get­ting a $43,000 sound-proof booth in his office or Tom Price wast­ing $341,000 on jet trav­el. But while Ross’ antics are more com­pli­cat­ed, they involve far more mon­ey.

    On Novem­ber 1, 2017, Ross signed a sworn doc­u­ment, attest­ing that he had divest­ed all the assets he promised he would. That was not true. The com­merce sec­re­tary in fact still owned some­where between $10 and $50 mil­lion worth of stock in WL Ross’ par­ent com­pa­ny, Invesco. Ross sold his shares a month lat­er, bank­ing at least $1.2 mil­lion more than he would have if he sold in May, when he ini­tial­ly promised to divest. By false­ly claim­ing he got­ten rid of the shares ear­li­er, Ross also put him­self in legal jeop­ardy, since it is a crime to lie to fed­er­al offi­cials. Rep­re­sen­ta­tives for Ross, a sophis­ti­cat­ed investor, claimed the com­merce sec­re­tary did not lie but instead failed to real­ize he owned the shares.

    Ross also said he did not know he had a $73,000 stake in a com­pa­ny named Air Lease, which he final­ly sold in June—more than a year after he promised he would. And he admit­ted to short­ing stock of Sun Ban­corp, say­ing he hoped to can­cel out an inter­est he mis­tak­en­ly thought he owned but in fact did not. “For any head of any pri­vate equi­ty firm that I know of, includ­ing like [Carlyle’s David] Ruben­stein or [Blackstone’s Stephen] Schwarzman—these guys know what they own. It’s their whole busi­ness. It’s their whole life,” says an investor in WL Ross’ funds, terming the com­merce secretary’s expla­na­tion “ridicu­lous.”

    A top offi­cial in the fed­er­al Office of Gov­ern­ment Ethics scold­ed Ross in a let­ter last month, say­ing that his fail­ure to divest cor­rod­ed pub­lic trust. Accord­ing to the let­ter, anoth­er ethics offi­cial searched Ross’ cal­en­dars to see if the com­merce sec­re­tary broke the law by tak­ing actions to ben­e­fit his per­son­al hold­ings, find­ing no evi­dence that he had. One day lat­er, how­ev­er, Forbes revealed that Ross had pre­vi­ous­ly dined, in the White House, with the CEO of a busi­ness in which the com­merce sec­re­tary secret­ly held an inter­est. After the report, Sen­a­tor John Thune, a Repub­li­can from South Dako­ta, asked the inspec­tor gen­er­al of the Com­merce Depart­ment to take a sec­ond look.

    Thune is not the only sen­a­tor mak­ing noise about Ross’ finances. In June, two sen­a­tors and a con­gress­man asked the Secu­ri­ties & Exchange Com­mis­sion to launch an insid­er trad­ing inves­ti­ga­tion of Ross, based on rev­e­la­tions that Ross short­ed at least $100,000 in Putin-linked Nav­i­ga­tor Hold­ings, soon after being told about a forth­com­ing exposé on his con­nec­tion to the com­pa­ny. The minus­cule scale—the trade seem­ing­ly bol­stered Ross’ wal­let by $3,000 to $10,000—makes the blun­der that much more vex­ing.

    Four­teen Demo­c­ra­t­ic Con­gress­men have also called on the inspec­tor gen­er­al to inves­ti­gate Ross’ poten­tial con­flicts of inter­est. After assur­ing sen­a­tors dur­ing his con­fir­ma­tion hear­ing that he would be over­ly cau­tious on eth­i­cal mat­ters, Ross spent the major­i­ty of his first year in office as a busi­ness part­ner to the Chi­nese gov­ern­ment, while he nego­ti­at­ed U.S.-China trade rela­tions. He also wait­ed to get rid of a stake in a Cypri­ot bank report­ed­ly tied up in the Robert Mueller inves­ti­ga­tion. And he took months to divest an inter­est in a for­eign car parts man­u­fac­tur­er whose indus­try he is now inves­ti­gat­ing.

    The cen­tral mat­ter in all of Ross’ legal issues is his own cred­i­bil­i­ty. “Lying on an ethics dis­clo­sure form, to Con­gres­sion­al and Sen­ate com­mit­tees, and false­ly report­ing com­pli­ance with an ethics plan, is nei­ther ‘com­mon­place’ nor part of the accept­ed rough-and-tum­ble world of pol­i­tics,” David Stor­p­er, Ross’ for­mer right-hand man, argued in a court fil­ing. “They are just lies.” Adds anoth­er one­time col­league: “This is a pub­lic ser­vant who can’t tell the truth.”

    ———-

    “New Details About Wilbur Ross’ Busi­ness Point To Pat­tern Of Grift­ing” by Dan Alexan­der; Forbes; 08/07/2018

    “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:

    ...
    A mul­ti­mil­lion-dol­lar law­suit has been qui­et­ly mak­ing its way through the New York State court sys­tem over the last three years, pit­ting a pri­vate equi­ty man­ag­er named David Stor­p­er against his for­mer boss: Sec­re­tary of Com­merce Wilbur Ross. The pair worked side by side for more than a decade, even­tu­al­ly at the firm, WL Ross & Co.—where, Stor­p­er lat­er alleged, Ross stole his inter­ests in a pri­vate equi­ty fund, trans­ferred them to him­self, then tried to cov­er it up with bogus paper­work. Two weeks ago, just before the start of a tri­al with $4 mil­lion on the line, Ross and Stor­p­er agreed to a con­fi­den­tial set­tle­ment, whose exis­tence has nev­er been report­ed and whose terms remain secret.

    ...

    There are big­ger alle­ga­tions. Over sev­er­al months, in speak­ing with 21 peo­ple who know Ross, Forbes uncov­ered a pat­tern: Many of those who worked direct­ly with him claim that Ross wrong­ly siphoned or out­right stole a few mil­lion here and a few mil­lion there, huge amounts for most but not nec­es­sar­i­ly for the com­merce sec­re­tary. At least if you con­sid­er them indi­vid­u­al­ly. But all told, these allegations—which sparked law­suits, reim­burse­ments and an SEC fine—come to more than $120 mil­lion. If even half of the accu­sa­tions are legit­i­mate, the cur­rent Unit­ed States sec­re­tary of com­merce could rank among the biggest grifters in Amer­i­can his­to­ry.

    Not that he sees him­self that way. “The SEC has nev­er ini­ti­at­ed any enforce­ment action against me,” Ross said in a state­ment, fail­ing to men­tion the $2.3 mil­lion fine it levied against his firm in 2016. The com­merce sec­re­tary also not­ed that one law­suit against him got dis­missed, with­out say­ing it is cur­rent­ly going through the appeals process. Ross con­firmed set­tling two oth­er cas­es, includ­ing the recent one against Stor­p­er, but declined to offer addi­tion­al details.
    ...

    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:

    ...
    Those who’ve done busi­ness with Ross gen­er­al­ly tell a con­sis­tent sto­ry, of a man obsessed with mon­ey and unteth­ered to facts. “He’ll push the edge of truth­ful­ness and use what­ev­er pow­er he has to grab assets,” says New York financier Ash­er Edel­man. One of Ross’ for­mer col­leagues is more direct: “He’s a patho­log­i­cal liar.”

    Wilbur Ross fig­ured out at some point that mon­ey, or the aura of it, trans­lates into pow­er. Forbes has pre­vi­ous­ly doc­u­ment­ed how Ross seem­ing­ly lied to us, over many years, launch­ing him­self onto, and then high­er on, our bil­lion­aire rank­ings, at one point even lying about an appar­ent multi­bil­lion-dol­lar trans­fer to fam­i­ly mem­bers to explain why his finan­cial dis­clo­sure report showed few­er assets than he claimed. “What I don’t want,” Ross said, “is for peo­ple to sud­den­ly think that I’ve lost a lot of mon­ey when it’s not true.”
    ...

    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:

    ...
    From Ross’ van­tage point, Trump offered the per­fect exit. The future cab­i­net secretary’s pri­vate equi­ty funds were underperforming—one on track to lose 26% of its ini­tial val­ue and anoth­er two drib­bling out mediocre returns—and the accu­sa­tions were start­ing to pile up. Rough­ly two months before the 2016 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion, the SEC announced WL Ross was pay­ing a fine and refund­ing $11.9 mil­lion it alleged­ly skimmed from its investors, includ­ing inter­est. The scheme was com­plex. Like oth­er pri­vate equi­ty firms—including sev­er­al that coughed up mon­ey to the SEC around the same time—WL Ross derived much of its rev­enue from man­age­ment fees charged to its investors. With funds as large as $4.1 bil­lion, man­age­ment fees of 1.5% could alone bring in more than $60 mil­lion a year for Ross’ firm—serious mon­ey.

    But WL Ross promised that it would give its investors some­thing like a rebate. For exam­ple, when Ross and his col­leagues got cer­tain fees for work­ing on deals, they were sup­posed to give at least 50% of that mon­ey back to investors. But, accord­ing to SEC inves­ti­ga­tors, the firm gave back less than it sug­gest­ed it would and pock­et­ed the dif­fer­ence, lead­ing the feds to con­clude Ross’ firm broke laws that pro­hib­it defraud­ing and mis­lead­ing clients. WL Ross paid the big set­tle­ment but nev­er admit­ted guilt.

    Accord­ing to the feds, WL Ross charged some of those inap­pro­pri­ate fees in the years before the com­merce sec­re­tary sold his firm to Invesco for $100 mil­lion up front and the pos­si­bil­i­ty of anoth­er $275 mil­lion down the road. That meant that when Ross cashed out, he pre­sum­ably did so at big­ger val­u­a­tion than he deserved. In a state­ment, Ross sug­gest­ed that Invesco nev­er clawed any of that mon­ey back. “The terms of the sale of my busi­ness in 2006 remain unchanged,” he said. Invesco declined to com­ment.
    ...

    Beyond that, WL Ross was appar­ent­ly charg­ing its investors on mon­ey that it lost due to bad invest­ments:

    ...
    There is more to the sto­ry. Accord­ing to five for­mer WL Ross employ­ees and investors, the firm was also charg­ing its investors on mon­ey that it had lost. Here’s how it worked: If WL Ross made an invest­ment of, say, $100 mil­lion that declined dra­mat­i­cal­ly, in the final years of the fund the firm was sup­posed to charge man­age­ment fees on the actu­al val­ue of the invest­ment, not the $100 mil­lion start­ing point. How­ev­er, WL Ross alleged­ly con­tin­ued col­lect­ing fees on the amount invest­ed, tak­ing more than it deserved. WL Ross was alleged­ly even charg­ing fees on one invest­ment that was essen­tial­ly worth­less. When approached about the dis­crep­an­cy, Wilbur Ross ini­tial­ly insist­ed his firm was cal­cu­lat­ing the fees cor­rect­ly, accord­ing to some­one famil­iar with those dis­cus­sions. “There are all sorts of fee issues,” says an investor, “but it was just the most egre­gious that I’ve seen.”
    ...

    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:

    ...
    Ross also alleged­ly skimmed mon­ey by serv­ing on cor­po­rate boards of his firm’s port­fo­lio com­pa­nies. Again, the rule was that a por­tion of the fees that WL Ross employ­ees got for serv­ing on such boards was essen­tial­ly sup­posed to be hand­ed back to investors as rebates. Instead, Ross’ firm did not give back enough, accord­ing to ex-col­leagues. Ross “was like a kid in a can­dy store,” says one of his for­mer employ­ees. “He pil­fered it.”

    Ross is now attempt­ing to dis­tance him­self from the man­age­ment fee issues. “No reg­u­la­to­ry agency has ever assert­ed such charges or any oth­er charges against me and there is no basis for any such alle­ga­tions,” he said in a state­ment.

    Eight for­mer employ­ees and investors, how­ev­er, said Ross pre­sum­ably knew about the issues. And for­mer WL Ross employ­ees add that the costs were far greater than the $14.2 mil­lion announced by the Secu­ri­ties & Exchange Com­mis­sion. A 2015 annu­al report for Invesco, WL Ross’ par­ent com­pa­ny, dis­closed that the com­pa­ny had paid anoth­er $43 mil­lion over the last two years in reim­burse­ments and reg­u­la­to­ry expens­es con­nect­ed to its pri­vate equi­ty busi­ness. Sec­re­tary Ross has large­ly avoid­ed scruti­ny around those pay­ments because the report does not explic­it­ly tie them to his for­mer firm. Four for­mer employ­ees who worked there, how­ev­er, told Forbes the $43 mil­lion was con­nect­ed to WL Ross.
    ...

    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:

    ...
    With the investors’ claims appar­ent­ly behind him, Ross now faces a line­up of alle­ga­tions from his for­mer col­leagues, who say he robbed them of mon­ey as well. Such accu­sa­tions are noth­ing new for Ross. In 2005, for­mer WL Ross vice chair­man Peter Lusk sued the future com­merce sec­re­tary for $20 mil­lion, ulti­mate­ly alleg­ing that he had tried to cut him out of his inter­ests. The exec­u­tives reached a set­tle­ment in 2007, which for­mer WL Ross employ­ees say cost rough­ly $10 mil­lion. Asked to com­ment on the suit, Ross respond­ed, “The Lusk case end­ed with mutu­al con­fi­den­tial­i­ty require­ments.”

    Three years ago, Stor­p­er launched what became a $4 mil­lion law­suit against both his for­mer employ­er, WL Ross, and for­mer boss, the com­merce sec­re­tary, alleg­ing that Ross stole his inter­ests. Attor­neys for Ross admit­ted in court fil­ings that one of his com­pa­nies took Storper’s inter­est and real­lo­cat­ed part of it to the com­merce sec­re­tary. But Ross’ lawyers also insist­ed all of that was allowed under inter­nal agree­ments. “Sim­ply put,” they wrote, “this law­suit is a per­son­al vendet­ta against Mr. Ross.” After a judge reject­ed attempts to pre­vent the case from going to tri­al, just days before the jury selec­tions the two sides agreed to set­tle.

    What makes it all more than a typ­i­cal “he-said, she-said” dis­pute is the num­ber of sim­i­lar com­plaints against Ross. A third for­mer WL Ross employ­ee, Joseph Mullin, filed a $3.6 mil­lion law­suit in Decem­ber 2016, say­ing WL Ross funds “loot­ed” his inter­ests “for the per­son­al ben­e­fit of Wilbur L. Ross, Jr.—and attempt­ed to con­ceal their mis­con­duct through opaque and mis­lead­ing tax state­ments and dis­clo­sures.” A New York State court dis­missed that case in Feb­ru­ary on tech­ni­cal grounds, say­ing Mullin, who left WL Ross in 2007, wait­ed too long to file it. He is now appeal­ing.
    ...

    And those are just two of the many for­mer col­leagues wag­ing legal bat­tles against Ross:

    ...
    Stor­p­er and two oth­er for­mer high-rank­ing exec­u­tives at WL Ross filed yet anoth­er law­suit against the com­merce sec­re­tary in Novem­ber, alleg­ing that he and his firm charged at least $48 mil­lion of improp­er fees, then pock­et­ed the mon­ey. It was a slow siphon­ing rather than a one-time heist, accord­ing to the law­suit. Pri­vate equi­ty firms typ­i­cal­ly col­lect man­age­ment fees—those 1.5% charges—only from their out­side clients. But the law­suit alleges that Ross and his firm seem­ing­ly charged cur­rent and for­mer com­pa­ny exec­u­tives as well. It would be like a restau­rant own­er telling his employ­ees that they can eat for free—while tak­ing the meal mon­ey out of their pay­checks. In a state­ment to Forbes, Ross called the case “with­out mer­it.” He moved to dis­miss it in Feb­ru­ary, but the suit remains active.

    A look at old ver­sions of WL Ross’ web­site reveal the mag­ni­tude of the tur­moil. Of the top sev­en firm lead­ers list­ed on the 2006 web­site, none of them have the same roles today. Ross is now lead­ing the com­merce depart­ment, Wendy Ter­amo­to serves as his chief of staff and Stephen Toy is the new co-head of WL Ross. Mean­while, the majority—consisting of Stor­p­er, Mullin, David Wax and Pamela Wilson—are all active­ly wag­ing legal bat­tles against their for­mer boss, Wilbur 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:

    ...
    In a pres­i­den­tial cab­i­net plagued by eth­i­cal prob­lems, it can be easy to for­get about Wilbur Ross. Most of the atten­tion tends to cen­ter around obvi­ous abus­es, like Scott Pruitt get­ting a $43,000 sound-proof booth in his office or Tom Price wast­ing $341,000 on jet trav­el. But while Ross’ antics are more com­pli­cat­ed, they involve far more mon­ey.

    On Novem­ber 1, 2017, Ross signed a sworn doc­u­ment, attest­ing that he had divest­ed all the assets he promised he would. That was not true. The com­merce sec­re­tary in fact still owned some­where between $10 and $50 mil­lion worth of stock in WL Ross’ par­ent com­pa­ny, Invesco. Ross sold his shares a month lat­er, bank­ing at least $1.2 mil­lion more than he would have if he sold in May, when he ini­tial­ly promised to divest. By false­ly claim­ing he got­ten rid of the shares ear­li­er, Ross also put him­self in legal jeop­ardy, since it is a crime to lie to fed­er­al offi­cials. Rep­re­sen­ta­tives for Ross, a sophis­ti­cat­ed investor, claimed the com­merce sec­re­tary did not lie but instead failed to real­ize he owned the shares.

    Ross also said he did not know he had a $73,000 stake in a com­pa­ny named Air Lease, which he final­ly sold in June—more than a year after he promised he would. And he admit­ted to short­ing stock of Sun Ban­corp, say­ing he hoped to can­cel out an inter­est he mis­tak­en­ly thought he owned but in fact did not. “For any head of any pri­vate equi­ty firm that I know of, includ­ing like [Carlyle’s David] Ruben­stein or [Blackstone’s Stephen] Schwarzman—these guys know what they own. It’s their whole busi­ness. It’s their whole life,” says an investor in WL Ross’ funds, terming the com­merce secretary’s expla­na­tion “ridicu­lous.”

    A top offi­cial in the fed­er­al Office of Gov­ern­ment Ethics scold­ed Ross in a let­ter last month, say­ing that his fail­ure to divest cor­rod­ed pub­lic trust. Accord­ing to the let­ter, anoth­er ethics offi­cial searched Ross’ cal­en­dars to see if the com­merce sec­re­tary broke the law by tak­ing actions to ben­e­fit his per­son­al hold­ings, find­ing no evi­dence that he had. One day lat­er, how­ev­er, Forbes revealed that Ross had pre­vi­ous­ly dined, in the White House, with the CEO of a busi­ness in which the com­merce sec­re­tary secret­ly held an inter­est. After the report, Sen­a­tor John Thune, a Repub­li­can from South Dako­ta, asked the inspec­tor gen­er­al of the Com­merce Depart­ment to take a sec­ond look.

    Thune is not the only sen­a­tor mak­ing noise about Ross’ finances. In June, two sen­a­tors and a con­gress­man asked the Secu­ri­ties & Exchange Com­mis­sion to launch an insid­er trad­ing inves­ti­ga­tion of Ross, based on rev­e­la­tions that Ross short­ed at least $100,000 in Putin-linked Nav­i­ga­tor Hold­ings, soon after being told about a forth­com­ing exposé on his con­nec­tion to the com­pa­ny. The minus­cule scale—the trade seem­ing­ly bol­stered Ross’ wal­let by $3,000 to $10,000—makes the blun­der that much more vex­ing.
    ...

    And then there’s the fact that Ross remained a busi­ness part­ner of the Chi­nese gov­ern­ment while he nego­ti­at­ed US-Chi­na trade rela­tions:

    ...
    Four­teen Demo­c­ra­t­ic Con­gress­men have also called on the inspec­tor gen­er­al to inves­ti­gate Ross’ poten­tial con­flicts of inter­est. After assur­ing sen­a­tors dur­ing his con­fir­ma­tion hear­ing that he would be over­ly cau­tious on eth­i­cal mat­ters, Ross spent the major­i­ty of his first year in office as a busi­ness part­ner to the Chi­nese gov­ern­ment, while he nego­ti­at­ed U.S.-China trade rela­tions. He also wait­ed to get rid of a stake in a Cypri­ot bank report­ed­ly tied up in the Robert Mueller inves­ti­ga­tion. And he took months to divest an inter­est in a for­eign car parts man­u­fac­tur­er whose indus­try he is now inves­ti­gat­ing.

    The cen­tral mat­ter in all of Ross’ legal issues is his own cred­i­bil­i­ty. “Lying on an ethics dis­clo­sure form, to Con­gres­sion­al and Sen­ate com­mit­tees, and false­ly report­ing com­pli­ance with an ethics plan, is nei­ther ‘com­mon­place’ nor part of the accept­ed rough-and-tum­ble world of pol­i­tics,” David Stor­p­er, Ross’ for­mer right-hand man, argued in a court fil­ing. “They are just lies.” Adds anoth­er one­time col­league: “This is a pub­lic ser­vant who can’t tell the truth.”
    ...

    “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.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | August 8, 2018, 2:56 pm
  10. 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:

    Talk­ing Points Memo
    News

    Spiro Agnew Lawyer: Trump Should Resign To Save ‘Skin’ Of Him­self, Fam­i­ly

    By Nicole Lafond
    August 24, 2018 11:26 am

    The lawyer for for­mer Vice Pres­i­dent Spiro Agnew is advis­ing Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump to “con­sid­er resign­ing” to save his “skin” and pro­tect his fam­i­ly.

    Mar­tin Lon­don wrote the advice in a Time Mag­a­zine op-ed Thurs­day and fol­lowed up with an appear­ance on “Morn­ing Joe” Fri­day, sug­gest­ing a pres­i­den­tial res­ig­na­tion might be the best move for Trump to make 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 said on “Morn­ing Joe” Fri­day, list­ing the slew of for­mer Trump advis­ers who have flipped on the Pres­i­dent. “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.”

    Lat­er on Fri­day morn­ing, The Wall Street Jour­nal report­ed that Weis­sel­berg, Trump Orga­ni­za­tion CFO, had been grant­ed immu­ni­ty by fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tors in their inves­ti­ga­tion into Trump’s for­mer lawyer Michael Cohen.

    Agnew resigned less than a year before Pres­i­dent Richard Nixon left office and plead­ed no con­test to fed­er­al tax eva­sion charges to avoid charges of cor­rup­tion. Lon­don, who rep­re­sent­ed Agnew dur­ing the scan­dal, said it would be best for Trump to get out while he has the chance.

    “If he has any inter­est at all in not only sav­ing his skin, but the skin of his child, his chil­dren, his son-in-law, his grand­chil­dren, his daugh­ter — this is a time when he’s got to seri­ous­ly think about that. Now, is he capa­ble of that, of seri­ous think­ing? Frankly, I doubt it,” he said.

    “If he’s going to be advised by peo­ple like clown (Rudy) Giu­liani and peo­ple who don’t know that the truth is truth, then he’s not going to get any­where,” he con­tin­ued. “The nation­al inter­est is what drove the Agnew res­ig­na­tion.”

    ———-

    “Spiro Agnew Lawyer: Trump Should Resign To Save ‘Skin’ Of Him­self, Fam­i­ly” by Nicole Lafond; Talk­ing Points Memo; 08/24/2018

    “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:

    Reuters

    Pros­e­cu­tors grant Trump Orga­ni­za­tion CFO immu­ni­ty in Cohen probe: WSJ

    Karen Freifeld
    August 24, 2018 / 10:10 AM / Updat­ed

    WASHINGTON (Reuters) — Fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tors have grant­ed immu­ni­ty to the Trump Organization’s chief finan­cial offi­cer in an inves­ti­ga­tion involv­ing U.S. Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s for­mer per­son­al lawyer, Michael Cohen, the Wall Street Jour­nal report­ed on Fri­day.

    The CFO, Allen Weis­sel­berg, was called to tes­ti­fy before a fed­er­al grand jury ear­li­er this year, the news­pa­per report­ed.

    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.

    A spokes­woman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Man­hat­tan, which has been lead­ing the Cohen probe, declined to com­ment, as did the White House. The Trump Orga­ni­za­tion did not imme­di­ate­ly respond to a request for com­ment. Alan Futer­fas, an out­side lawyer for the orga­ni­za­tion, also did not imme­di­ate­ly respond to a request for com­ment.

    Cohen — who arranged hush-mon­ey pay­ments short­ly before the Novem­ber 2016 U.S. pres­i­den­tial elec­tion to at least two women who said they had had sex with Trump — on Tues­day plead­ed guilty to cam­paign finance vio­la­tions and oth­er charges. He said in court that Trump direct­ed him to arrange the pay­ments.

    Such pay­ments could be con­sid­ered ille­gal cam­paign con­tri­bu­tions under fed­er­al elec­tion law, accord­ing to experts.

    Two exec­u­tives at Amer­i­can Media Inc, which pub­lish­es the Nation­al Enquir­er, a super­mar­ket tabloid report­ed­ly involved in mak­ing the pay­ments, have also been grant­ed immu­ni­ty in the inves­ti­ga­tion, Van­i­ty Fair mag­a­zine report­ed. The exec­u­tives are com­pa­ny Chief Exec­u­tive David Peck­er, a long­time Trump friend, and Dylan Howard.

    Cohen men­tioned Weis­sel­berg on a secret record­ing that Cohen made in Sep­tem­ber 2016 and which was aired on CNN last month. On the record­ing, Cohen and Trump appeared to dis­cuss reim­burs­ing Amer­i­can Media for a pay­ment to for­mer Play­boy mod­el Karen McDou­gal, who has said she had a year­long affair with Trump. Trump has denied there was an affair.

    On the record­ing, Cohen is heard say­ing, “I’ve spo­ken to Allen Weis­sel­berg about how to set the whole thing up.”

    McDou­gal sold her sto­ry to Amer­i­can Media for $150,000 in August 2016 but it was nev­er pub­lished by the Nation­al Enquir­er, a prac­tice known as “catch and kill” aimed at sup­press­ing poten­tial­ly dam­ag­ing sto­ries.

    Trump has also denied hav­ing sex with adult-film actress Stormy Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clif­ford.

    Rudy Giu­liani, a lawyer for the pres­i­dent, has said the pay­ment to McDou­gal and a $130,000 pay­ment to Daniels were a per­son­al mat­ter and were not sub­ject to cam­paign finance law.

    The Trump Orga­ni­za­tion is the umbrel­la group for dozens of Trump busi­ness­es, includ­ing real estate devel­op­ment, man­age­ment of hotels and golf cours­es, and pro­duc­tion of the real­i­ty tele­vi­sion shows “The Appren­tice” and “Celebri­ty Appren­tice.”

    ...

    The Cohen inves­ti­ga­tion was referred to fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tors in New York by U.S. Spe­cial Coun­sel Robert Mueller, who is look­ing into Russ­ian inter­fer­ence in the 2016 elec­tion and pos­si­ble coor­di­na­tion between Trump’s Repub­li­can cam­paign and Russ­ian offi­cials.

    Trump has repeat­ed­ly denied there was coor­di­na­tion between Moscow and his cam­paign, and has labeled the Mueller probe a “witch hunt.” Moscow has denied it med­dled in the elec­tion. U.S. intel­li­gence agen­cies con­clud­ed that Rus­sia did inter­fere.

    ———-

    “Pros­e­cu­tors grant Trump Orga­ni­za­tion CFO immu­ni­ty in Cohen probe: WSJ” by Karen Freifeld; Reuters; 08/24/2018

    “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:

    ...
    Cohen — who arranged hush-mon­ey pay­ments short­ly before the Novem­ber 2016 U.S. pres­i­den­tial elec­tion to at least two women who said they had had sex with Trump — on Tues­day plead­ed guilty to cam­paign finance vio­la­tions and oth­er charges. He said in court that Trump direct­ed him to arrange the pay­ments.

    Such pay­ments could be con­sid­ered ille­gal cam­paign con­tri­bu­tions under fed­er­al elec­tion law, accord­ing to experts.

    Two exec­u­tives at Amer­i­can Media Inc, which pub­lish­es the Nation­al Enquir­er, a super­mar­ket tabloid report­ed­ly involved in mak­ing the pay­ments, have also been grant­ed immu­ni­ty in the inves­ti­ga­tion, Van­i­ty Fair mag­a­zine report­ed. The exec­u­tives are com­pa­ny Chief Exec­u­tive David Peck­er, a long­time Trump friend, and Dylan Howard.

    Cohen men­tioned Weis­sel­berg on a secret record­ing that Cohen made in Sep­tem­ber 2016 and which was aired on CNN last month. On the record­ing, Cohen and Trump appeared to dis­cuss reim­burs­ing Amer­i­can Media for a pay­ment to for­mer Play­boy mod­el Karen McDou­gal, who has said she had a year­long affair with Trump. Trump has denied there was an affair.

    On the record­ing, Cohen is heard say­ing, “I’ve spo­ken to Allen Weis­sel­berg about how to set the whole thing up.”
    ...

    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:

    Talk­ing Points Memo
    News

    Cohen Fueled To Flip By AMI Tes­ti­mo­ny And To Pro­tect Wife, Please His Father

    By Nicole Lafond
    August 23, 2018 9:54 am

    While Michael Cohen’s attor­ney main­tains that he agreed to work with Cohen over his inter­est in telling the truth about Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump, Cohen was appar­ent­ly fueled to flip by more per­son­al inter­ests, The Wall Street Jour­nal report­ed Wednes­day night.

    Accord­ing to peo­ple close to Cohen and peo­ple famil­iar with pros­e­cu­tors’ work who spoke to WSJ, fam­i­ly played a big role in Cohen’s deci­sion. Cohen was report­ed­ly con­cerned that his wife could be impli­cat­ed along­side him in charges asso­ci­at­ed with his finan­cial wrong­do­ings because she filed tax­es joint­ly with him. He also was moti­vat­ed by his father’s inter­ests, accord­ing to WSJ. Cohen’s father, Mau­rice Cohen, is a Holo­caust sur­vivor.

    “Mr. Cohen’s father urged him not to pro­tect the Pres­i­dent, say­ing he didn’t sur­vive the Holo­caust to have his name sul­lied by Mr. Trump,” in the WSJ’s words.

    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.

    On top of all that, Cohen was angered by Trump’s efforts to dis­tance him­self from his for­mer “pit bull” and the fact that the Pres­i­dent had stopped help­ing him pay his legal fees after the FBI raid­ed his home, hotel and office this spring.

    ———-

    “Cohen Fueled To Flip By AMI Tes­ti­mo­ny And To Pro­tect Wife, Please His Father” by Nicole Lafond; Talk­ing Points Memo; 08/23/2018

    “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.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | August 24, 2018, 2:41 pm
  11. 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:

    Talk­ing Points Memo
    Muck­rak­er

    A His­to­ry Of New Act­ing AG Whitaker’s War On The Mueller Probe

    By Josh Koven­sky
    Novem­ber 7, 2018 3:39 pm

    Matthew Whitak­er, Jeff Ses­sions’ chief of staff who will take over as act­ing Attor­ney Gen­er­al with his boss’ ouster, has been an out­spo­ken advo­cate of lim­it­ing — or even end­ing — the Mueller inves­ti­ga­tion.

    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.

    “It does not take a lawyer or even a for­mer fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tor like myself to con­clude that inves­ti­gat­ing Don­ald Trump’s finances or his family’s finances falls com­plete­ly out­side of the realm of his 2016 cam­paign and alle­ga­tions that the cam­paign coor­di­nat­ed with the Russ­ian gov­ern­ment or any­one else,” Whitak­er wrote. “That goes beyond the scope of the appoint­ment of the spe­cial coun­sel.”

    Whitak­er added in the piece that “it is time for [Rod] Rosenstein…to order Mueller to lim­it the scope of his inves­ti­ga­tion.”

    It appeared to be part of a sum­mer 2017 cam­paign by Whitak­er — then report­ed­ly on the short­list to replace Don McGahn as White House coun­sel — to por­tray him­self as a hard­lin­er on the Mueller probe.

    In June 2017, Whitak­er appeared on a CNN pan­el on the Mueller probe.

    “What will get Repub­li­cans worked up is if we have a Depart­ment of Jus­tice in chaos,” Whitak­er said on the pan­el. “We’ve already heard rumors on the wind about Ses­sions’ tenure, so sud­den­ly we could have a Pres­i­dent that under­stands that if I con­trol the Depart­ment of Jus­tice, I con­trol this inves­ti­ga­tion.”

    Whitak­er also had an active Twit­ter pres­ence, at times indi­cat­ing sym­pa­thy with those call­ing for an end to the inves­ti­ga­tion.

    Worth a read–“Could Trump Fire Mueller? It’s Com­pli­cat­ed”. https://t.co/sG2igd5qkJ via @politicomag— Matt Whitak­er ???? (@MattWhitaker46) August 4, 2017

    ...

    In anoth­er tweet, Whitak­er appears to sug­gest a way of keep­ing Mueller’s find­ings under wraps indef­i­nite­ly. The fol­low­ing tweet could open up a path to seal­ing any report that Mueller pre­pares rely­ing on grand jury evi­dence from the pub­lic.

    Arti­cle is cor­rect, it will be very dif­fi­cult to ever see evi­dence dis­cov­ered by #Mueller grand jury inves­ti­ga­tion https://t.co/aNKBmi5xI2— Matt Whitak­er ???? (@MattWhitaker46) August 17, 2017

    Whitak­er also took a hard line against sup­posed “leak­ers” inform­ing the press about details in the Rus­sia probe.

    ———-

    “A His­to­ry Of New Act­ing AG Whitaker’s War On The Mueller Probe” by Josh Koven­sky; Talk­ing Points Memo; 11/07/2018

    “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:

    ...
    “It does not take a lawyer or even a for­mer fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tor like myself to con­clude that inves­ti­gat­ing Don­ald Trump’s finances or his family’s finances falls com­plete­ly out­side of the realm of his 2016 cam­paign and alle­ga­tions that the cam­paign coor­di­nat­ed with the Russ­ian gov­ern­ment or any­one else,” Whitak­er wrote. “That goes beyond the scope of the appoint­ment of the spe­cial coun­sel.”

    Whitak­er added in the piece that “it is time for [Rod] Rosenstein…to order Mueller to lim­it the scope of his inves­ti­ga­tion.”
    ...

    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:

    ...
    In anoth­er tweet, Whitak­er appears to sug­gest a way of keep­ing Mueller’s find­ings under wraps indef­i­nite­ly. The fol­low­ing tweet could open up a path to seal­ing any report that Mueller pre­pares rely­ing on grand jury evi­dence from the pub­lic.

    Arti­cle is cor­rect, it will be very dif­fi­cult to ever see evi­dence dis­cov­ered by #Mueller grand jury inves­ti­ga­tion https://t.co/aNKBmi5xI2— Matt Whitak­er ???? (@MattWhitaker46) August 17, 2017

    ...

    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:

    ...
    Whitak­er also took a hard line against sup­posed “leak­ers” inform­ing the press about details in 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”:

    USA Today

    Pres­i­dent Trump touts ‘mag­ic’ Sen­ate wins, threat­ens House Democ­rats
    David Jack­son and John Fritze, USA TODAY Pub­lished 6:55 a.m. ET Nov. 7, 2018 | Updat­ed 11:02 a.m. ET Nov. 7, 2018

    WASHINGTON – 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.

    “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,” Trump said dur­ing an ear­ly morn­ing tweet storm.

    “Two can play that game!” he added.

    The pres­i­dent also sched­uled a news con­fer­ence Wednes­day to dis­cuss what he called “our suc­cess in the Midterms!”

    Democ­rats, mean­while, began plan­ning their takeover of the House in Jan­u­ary, includ­ing increased over­sight of Trump and his admin­is­tra­tion.

    “We’ll fill in the gaps on the Rus­sia inves­ti­ga­tions,” said Rep. Eric Swal­well, D‑California, a mem­ber of the House Intel­li­gence Com­mit­tee, speak­ing on NBC’s “Today” show. “The Amer­i­can peo­ple will see his (Trump’s) tax returns, not because of any voyeuris­tic inter­est, but because they should know if he is cor­rupt.”

    In a series of oth­er ear­ly-morn­ing tweets, Trump took cred­it for GOP vic­to­ries in close races on Elec­tion Day while blam­ing loss­es on Repub­li­cans who shunned his sup­port.

    “Those that worked with me in this incred­i­ble Midterm Elec­tion, embrac­ing cer­tain poli­cies and prin­ci­ples, did very well,” Trump said in one tweet. “Those that did not, say good­bye!”

    Trump raised ques­tions about the Rus­sia inves­ti­ga­tion by Spe­cial Coun­sel Robert Mueller, cit­ing an NBC News exit poll that found slight­ly more vot­ers opposed the probe than sup­port it. The tweet marked the first time Trump has tweet­ed about the inves­ti­ga­tion in weeks.

    “You mean they are final­ly begin­ning to under­stand what a dis­gust­ing Witch Hunt, led by 17 Angry Democ­rats, is all about!” Trump wrote.

    He also attacked the news media, say­ing in one post that any “pun­dits or talk­ing heads” who do not give the Trump team “prop­er cred­it for this great Midterm Elec­tion” are just “FAKE NEWS!”

    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. Two can play that game!— Don­ald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) Novem­ber 7, 2018

    Those that worked with me in this incred­i­ble Midterm Elec­tion, embrac­ing cer­tain poli­cies and prin­ci­ples, did very well. Those that did not, say good­bye! Yes­ter­day was such a very Big Win, and all under the pres­sure of a Nasty and Hos­tile Media!— Don­ald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) Novem­ber 7, 2018

    The pres­i­den­t’s news con­fer­ence is set for 11:30 a.m. EST at the White House.

    New­ly empow­ered House Democ­rats said they would pur­sue new health and jobs leg­is­la­tion along with increased over­sight of the Trump admin­is­tra­tion.

    “We will get to work on Day One cre­at­ing jobs rebuild­ing our infra­struc­ture, bring­ing down the cost of pre­scrip­tion drugs and crack­ing down on any politi­cian who abus­es their pub­lic office,” said Rep. David Cicilline, D‑Rhode Island, co-chair of the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Pol­i­cy and Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Com­mit­tee.

    Democ­rats said their tar­gets range from accused eth­i­cal laps­es by mem­bers of the Cab­i­net to alle­ga­tions that Trump’s cam­paign worked with Russ­ian hack­ers to influ­ence the 2016 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion.

    In his NBC inter­view, Swal­well said, “We will look at the cash­ing in of access to the Oval Office and that has been con­cern­ing and his finan­cial entan­gle­ments over­seas.”

    Trumpo was not spe­cif­ic about his threat to counter-inves­ti­gate the Democ­rats. In recent weeks, he has accused them of improp­er­ly leak­ing infor­ma­tion about then-Supreme Court nom­i­nee Brett Kavanaugh.

    Some crit­ics said Trump’s threat does­n’t bode well for work­ing togeth­er on leg­is­la­tion.

    Matthew Miller, a spokesman for the Jus­tice Depart­ment under Pres­i­dent Barack Oba­ma, not­ed that Trump is think­ing of dis­miss­ing Attor­ney Gen­er­al Jeff Ses­sions. Amid those reports, Miller tweet­ed: “Trump threat­ens crim­i­nal inves­ti­ga­tions of his polit­i­cal crit­ics. Things are going just as expect­ed.”

    The pres­i­dent did­n’t direct­ly address the out­come that rep­re­sents a seis­mic shift in nation­al pol­i­tics: the Demo­c­ra­t­ic takeover of the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives. Democ­rats picked up dozens of seats on Tues­day, includ­ing many in dis­tricts Trump won in 2016.

    Instead, on Twit­ter, he played up Repub­li­can vic­to­ries.

    Trump post­ed a quote from sup­port­er and writer Ben Stein sug­gest­ing the results showed the pres­i­dent has “mag­ic com­ing out of his ears” because the GOP expand­ed its Sen­ate major­i­ty by win­ning races in Indi­ana, North Dako­ta and Mis­souri.

    Min­utes lat­er, Trump tweet­ed a quote he evi­dent­ly heard from a Fox Busi­ness Net­work anchor indi­cat­ing his stand­ing with Repub­li­cans in Con­gress should increase because of the blitz of cam­paign­ing he con­duct­ed in the run-up to Tues­day’s elec­tion. The anchor wrote that suc­cess­ful Repub­li­cans owed Trump their careers.

    “There’s only been 5 times in the last 105 years that an incum­bent Pres­i­dent has won seats in the Sen­ate in the off year elec­tion. Mr. Trump has mag­ic about him. This guy has mag­ic com­ing out of his ears. He is an aston­ish­ing vote get­ter & cam­paign­er. The Repub­li­cans are.........— Don­ald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) Novem­ber 7, 2018

    “Thanks,” Trump added in a tweet. “I agree!”

    Trump was engag­ing in a well-worn tra­di­tion for pres­i­dents to reflect on and spin the out­come of midterms – an effort all but cer­tain to con­tin­ue lat­er Wednes­day. Past pres­i­dents have acknowl­edged their loss­es in par­tic­u­lar­ly col­or­ful lan­guage.

    .@DavidAsmanfox “How do the Democ­rats respond to this? Think of how his posi­tion with Repub­li­cans improves-all the can­di­dates who won tonight. They real­ize how impor­tant he is because of what he did in cam­paign­ing for them. They owe him their polit­i­cal career.” Thanks, I agree!— Don­ald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) Novem­ber 7, 2018

    ...

    Trump offi­cials said they have pre­pared for the prospect of a Demo­c­ra­t­ic House. One strat­e­gy, they said, would be to focus on items han­dled by the Repub­li­can-run Sen­ate, a list that includes trade agree­ments and judi­cial nom­i­na­tions.

    Pres­i­den­tial coun­selor Kellyanne Con­way said Trump man­aged to avoid an Oba­ma-like “shel­lack­ing,” and now he will try to work with Democ­rats on issues of com­mon inter­est like immi­gra­tion and infra­struc­ture.

    As for House inves­ti­ga­tions of Trump and his admin­is­tra­tion, Con­way said they will deal with them as they come up.

    She also hint­ed at legal chal­lenges to House sub­poe­nas.

    Asked what would hap­pen, for exam­ple, if the House Democ­rats seek Trump’s tax returns, Con­way said: “We’ll talk to the lawyers about that – we’ll see what hap­pens.”

    ————-

    “Pres­i­dent Trump touts ‘mag­ic’ Sen­ate wins, threat­ens House Democ­rats” by David Jack­son and John Fritze; USA TODAY; 11/07/2018

    “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:

    ...
    “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,” Trump said dur­ing an ear­ly morn­ing tweet storm.

    “Two can play that game!” he added.

    ...

    Trumpo was not spe­cif­ic about his threat to counter-inves­ti­gate the Democ­rats. In recent weeks, he has accused them of improp­er­ly leak­ing infor­ma­tion about then-Supreme Court nom­i­nee Brett Kavanaugh.
    ...

    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:

    ...
    Democ­rats, mean­while, began plan­ning their takeover of the House in Jan­u­ary, includ­ing increased over­sight of Trump and his admin­is­tra­tion.

    “We’ll fill in the gaps on the Rus­sia inves­ti­ga­tions,” said Rep. Eric Swal­well, D‑California, a mem­ber of the House Intel­li­gence Com­mit­tee, speak­ing on NBC’s “Today” show. The Amer­i­can peo­ple will see his (Trump’s) tax returns, not because of any voyeuris­tic inter­est, but because they should know if he is cor­rupt.”
    ...

    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:

    ...
    As for House inves­ti­ga­tions of Trump and his admin­is­tra­tion, Con­way said they will deal with them as they come up.

    She also hint­ed at legal chal­lenges to House sub­poe­nas.

    Asked what would hap­pen, for exam­ple, if the House Democ­rats seek Trump’s tax returns, Con­way said: “We’ll talk to the lawyers about that – we’ll see what hap­pens.”
    ...

    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.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | November 7, 2018, 4:41 pm
  12. 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’:

    Politi­co

    Chao cre­at­ed spe­cial path for McConnell’s favored projects

    A top Trans­porta­tion offi­cial helped coor­di­nate grant appli­ca­tions by McConnell’s polit­i­cal allies.

    By TUCKER DOHERTY and TANYA SNYDER

    06/10/2019 05:02 AM EDT

    The Trans­porta­tion Depart­ment under Sec­re­tary Elaine Chao des­ig­nat­ed a spe­cial liai­son to help with grant appli­ca­tions and oth­er pri­or­i­ties from her hus­band Mitch McConnell’s state of Ken­tucky, paving the way for grants total­ing at least $78 mil­lion for favored projects as McConnell pre­pared to cam­paign for reelec­tion.

    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.

    Begin­ning in April 2017, Inman and Chao met annu­al­ly with a del­e­ga­tion from Owens­boro, Ky., a riv­er port with long con­nec­tions to McConnell, includ­ing a plaza named in his hon­or. At the meet­ings, accord­ing to par­tic­i­pants, the sec­re­tary and the local offi­cials dis­cussed two projects of spe­cial impor­tance to the riv­er city of 59,809 peo­ple — a plan to upgrade road con­nec­tions to a com­mer­cial river­port and a pro­pos­al to expe­dite reclas­si­fy­ing a local park­way as an Inter­state spur, a move that could per­suade pri­vate busi­ness­es to locate in Owens­boro.

    Inman, him­self a long­time Owens­boro res­i­dent and one­time may­oral can­di­date who is now Chao’s chief of staff, fol­lowed up the 2017 meet­ing by email­ing the river­port author­i­ty on how to improve its appli­ca­tion. He also dis­cussed the project by phone with Al Mat­ting­ly, the chief exec­u­tive of Daviess Coun­ty, which includes Owens­boro, who sug­gest­ed Inman was instru­men­tal in the process.

    “Todd prob­a­bly smoothed the way, I mean, you know, used his influ­ence,” Mat­ting­ly said in a POLITICO inter­view. “Every­body says that projects stand on their own mer­it, right? So if I’ve got 10 projects, and they’re all equal, where do you go to break the tie?”

    “Well, let’s put it this way: I only have her ear an hour when I go to vis­it her once a year,” he added of Chao and Inman, a long­time Blue­grass State oper­a­tive who had worked as McConnell’s advance man. “With a local guy, he has her ear 24 hours a day, sev­en days a week. You tell me.”

    The cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing the Owens­boro grant and anoth­er, more lucra­tive grant to Boone Coun­ty, high­light the eth­i­cal con­flicts in hav­ing a pow­er­ful Cab­i­net sec­re­tary mar­ried to the Senate’s leader and in a posi­tion to help him polit­i­cal­ly. McConnell has long tout­ed his abil­i­ty to bring fed­er­al resources to his state, which his wife is now in a posi­tion to assist.

    Chao’s des­ig­na­tion of Inman as a spe­cial inter­me­di­ary for Ken­tucky — a priv­i­lege oth­er states did not enjoy — gave a spe­cial advan­tage to projects favored by her hus­band, which could in turn ben­e­fit his polit­i­cal inter­ests. In such sit­u­a­tions, ethi­cists say, each mem­ber of a cou­ple ben­e­fits per­son­al­ly from the suc­cess of the oth­er.

    “Where a Cab­i­net sec­re­tary is doing things that are going to help her hus­band get reelect­ed, that starts to rise to the lev­el of feel­ing more like cor­rup­tion to the aver­age Amer­i­can. … I do think there are peo­ple who will see that as sort of ‘swamp behav­ior,’” said John Hudak, a Brook­ings Insti­tu­tion schol­ar who has stud­ied polit­i­cal influ­ence in fed­er­al grant-mak­ing.

    In fact, days after launch­ing his 2020 reelec­tion cam­paign McConnell asked Owensboro’s may­or to set up a lun­cheon with busi­ness and polit­i­cal lead­ers at which the sen­a­tor claimed cred­it for deliv­er­ing the grant.

    “How about that $11 mil­lion BUILD grant?” McConnell asked the crowd rhetor­i­cal­ly, accord­ing to the Owens­boro Times. He then recalled his role in secur­ing ear­li­er grants to the city, adding, “It’s done a lot to trans­form Owens­boro, and I was real­ly hap­py to have played a role in that.”

    McConnell’s role — along with Chao’s and Inman’s — was also cel­e­brat­ed by local offi­cials when the $11.5 mil­lion grant was approved — to much local fan­fare in Decem­ber 2018.

    “First­ly, we are thank­ful that we had such good asso­ci­a­tions built with Sen. McConnell and the U.S. Depart­ment of Trans­porta­tion because with­out them it wouldn’t have hap­pened,” declared Owens­boro May­or Tom Wat­son, stand­ing along­side three oth­er local offi­cials at a news con­fer­ence cel­e­brat­ing the grant award.

    “We’re just real­ly grate­ful and thank­ful to Sen. McConnell and Sec­re­tary Chao and our own Todd Inman,” added Mat­ting­ly.

    Owens­boro wasn’t the only ben­e­fi­cia­ry of Inman’s assis­tance. He also com­mu­ni­cat­ed with McConnell’s office about mul­ti­ple requests from coun­ty exec­u­tives to meet with Chao to speak about poten­tial projects in Ken­tucky, accord­ing to emails which, like the oth­ers, were obtained under the Free­dom of Infor­ma­tion Act by the watch­dog group Amer­i­can Over­sight.

    One of those exec­u­tives, Boone Coun­ty Judge/Executive Gary Moore, met with Chao in Decem­ber 2017. Moore’s request, a $67 mil­lion dis­cre­tionary grant to upgrade roads in rur­al Boone Coun­ty, anoth­er McConnell strong­hold north­east of Louisville, was ulti­mate­ly approved in June 2018.

    ...

    Inman said in a state­ment, “I’m proud to work for the Sec­re­tary and it’s an hon­or to work at the Depart­ment of Trans­porta­tion, espe­cial­ly as this Admin­is­tra­tion is pri­or­i­tiz­ing infra­struc­ture invest­ments and meet­ing with peo­ple from all 50 states to dis­cuss their needs. Our team of ded­i­cat­ed career staff does an out­stand­ing job eval­u­at­ing hun­dreds of appli­ca­tions for these high­ly com­pet­i­tive grant pro­grams, a thor­ough process devel­oped well before this Admin­is­tra­tion.”

    The Trans­porta­tion Depart­ment, through a spokesper­son, said that “No state receives spe­cial treat­ment from DOT,” not­ing that Ken­tucky is 26th in pop­u­la­tion and 25th in DOT mon­ey in the Trump years. Of 169 grants award­ed dur­ing Chao’s tenure, the spokesper­son said, Ken­tucky received five.

    “The eval­u­a­tion process, which is well known, orig­i­nates with ded­i­cat­ed career staff thor­ough­ly review­ing appli­ca­tions before senior review teams are involved,” the spokesper­son said. “This eval­u­a­tion takes thou­sands of hours across our dis­cre­tionary grant pro­grams. Sim­i­lar­ly, a team of career staff han­dles cost-ben­e­fit and project readi­ness review. Dis­cre­tionary grant pro­grams are com­pet­i­tive and based on mer­it and how well the projects align with selec­tion cri­te­ria.”

    Nonethe­less, one for­mer career offi­cial who was involved in the grant review process under mul­ti­ple admin­is­tra­tions, said that once the find­ings of the pro­fes­sion­al staff are pre­sent­ed to the secretary’s office, pol­i­tics often plays a role in who gets the mon­ey.

    Putting a thumb on the scale for a favored project, the offi­cial said, “is real­ly, very com­mon, I would say across par­ties.”

    “It’s always going to be polit­i­cal,” the for­mer offi­cial, who spoke with­out attri­bu­tion for fear of reprisals, added. “We have a mer­it-based process that we essen­tial­ly ignore, [and] it’s real­ly detri­men­tal to meet­ing nation­al trans­porta­tion needs and hav­ing peo­ple feel like the process is worth engag­ing in.”

    Vir­ginia Can­ter, a for­mer White House asso­ciate coun­sel under Pres­i­dents Barack Oba­ma and Bill Clin­ton and cur­rent ethics coun­sel for the Cit­i­zens for Respon­si­bil­i­ty and Ethics in Wash­ing­ton, said show­ing polit­i­cal favoritism in award­ing grants vio­lates eth­i­cal stan­dards. And when a poten­tial ben­e­fi­cia­ry is a spouse, there’s an extra lev­el of con­cern.

    “There’s a stan­dard for gov­ern­ment employ­ees; they’re expect­ed to be impar­tial,” said Can­ter. “When you have a spouse who’s the head of an agency and the oth­er spouse is a lead­ing mem­ber of Con­gress — and their office is refer­ring mat­ters to the depart­ment, and they’re flag­ging things from donors, from peo­ple with par­tic­u­lar polit­i­cal affil­i­a­tions, who are quote-unquote ‘friends’ — it rais­es the ques­tion of whether the office, instead of being used pure­ly for offi­cial pur­pos­es, is being used for polit­i­cal pur­pos­es.

    “The fact that they’re both in these very impor­tant posi­tions gives them the oppor­tu­ni­ty to be watch­ing out for each other’s polit­i­cal and pro­fes­sion­al inter­ests,” Can­ter said. “Any­time a mem­ber of Con­gress can bring home fund­ing to his or her com­mu­ni­ty it could make a dif­fer­ence. It shows the mem­ber is being respon­sive.”

    McConnell, for his part, did not address ques­tions about poten­tial con­flicts of inter­est in deal­ing with his wife’s depart­ment, instead tout­ing his own clout.

    “Every sin­gle day, Ken­tuck­ians from across the Com­mon­wealth con­tact me with their con­cerns,” he told POLITICO in an emailed state­ment. “As Sen­ate Major­i­ty Leader and a senior mem­ber of the Appro­pri­a­tions Com­mit­tee, I am able to ensure that these issues — both large and small — are part of the nation­al dis­cus­sion. Ken­tucky con­tin­ues to punch above its weight in Wash­ing­ton, and I am proud to be a strong voice for my con­stituents in the Sen­ate.”

    * * *

    In his polit­i­cal career, McConnell has often tout­ed spe­cif­ic grants as proof of his under­stand­ing of com­mu­ni­ty needs.

    McConnell has long had a spe­cial rela­tion­ship with Owens­boro, whose loca­tion on a bend of the Ohio Riv­er had once made it an ide­al hub for man­u­fac­tur­ing and agri­cul­ture. At the begin­ning of McConnell’s Sen­ate career in the late 1980s, the decline of the tobac­co indus­try and the rise of shop­ping malls far from the city cen­ter left Owensboro’s down­town dot­ted with board­ed-up store­fronts and emp­ty streets that had once bus­tled decades ear­li­er.

    As McConnell rose to pow­er in the nation­al Repub­li­can Par­ty in the 1990s and 2000s, he secured funds for Owens­boro, earn­ing him good­will that helped him sur­vive a close elec­tion in the 2008 Demo­c­ra­t­ic wave. But after con­gres­sion­al Repub­li­cans banned ear­marks in 2011, McConnell was forced to find oth­er ways to bring fed­er­al resources back home.

    Today, Owensboro’s grow­ing down­town stands as a sym­bol of his suc­cess. City land­marks, street signs and plaques tout the senator’s role in help­ing revi­tal­ize down­town, espe­cial­ly along the city’s impres­sive new river­front esplanade.

    McConnell’s involve­ment with Owens­boro began in earnest after 2003, when then-Owens­boro May­or Way­mond Mor­ris and future may­or, Ron Payne, vis­it­ed McConnell at his Wash­ing­ton office and showed him a pho­to­graph of the erod­ing river­bank. The next year, the city reded­i­cat­ed a por­tion of the river­front as “McConnell Plaza” and used more than $1 mil­lion in city funds to build a river­side park with ample green space, wind­ing brick paths and out­door seat­ing for events like the town’s annu­al bar­be­cue fes­ti­val.

    The city’s court­ing paid off in July 2005, when McConnell phoned new may­or, Tom Wat­son, and explained that he had secured $40 mil­lion in fed­er­al funds to over­haul the river­bank.

    “Final­ly, at the end I said, ‘Can I ask you one ques­tion? Did you say $40 mil­lion?’” Wat­son told POLITICO. “And he laughed and hung up. I was stunned.”

    Owens­boro used the fed­er­al wind­fall as seed mon­ey for an ambi­tious over­haul of the entire river­front, bor­row­ing tens of mil­lions of addi­tion­al dol­lars to bring it to fruition over the next sev­er­al years.

    A river­walk with pavil­ions and cas­cad­ing foun­tains was installed, anchored on one end by a mas­sive and elab­o­rate­ly designed play­ground named the best in the world by Land­scape Archi­tects Net­work — com­plete with over­sized arti­fi­cial tree sculp­tures, climb­ing walls, a con­ces­sion stand, free Wi-Fi and rub­ber turf. A near­by plaque mark­ing the playground’s reded­i­ca­tion gives “spe­cial thanks to Sen­a­tor Mitch McConnell.”

    At the oth­er end, a sparkling 184,000-square-foot con­ven­tion cen­ter was erect­ed at a cost of more than $50 mil­lion dol­lars — rough­ly twice the town’s ini­tial bud­get for the project — in a bid to bring large con­ven­tions and oth­er busi­ness to the down­town area. In stark con­trast, a rust­ing one-sto­ry auto repair shop sits across the street, a reminder of the ear­li­er decay.

    McConnell’s sup­port for Owens­boro did not end at the river­front. May­or Wat­son recalled tak­ing McConnell on a tour of the town’s aging H.L. Neblett Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­ter, when sud­den­ly water leaked through the roof, hit­ting McConnell’s ear and trick­ling down his shirt. Wat­son turned to the sen­a­tor and sug­gest­ed that the cen­ter need­ed a new roof. McConnell replied that it need­ed a new build­ing — and then secured $3 mil­lion for ren­o­va­tions when he returned to Wash­ing­ton.

    City offi­cials also cred­it McConnell for serv­ing Owensboro’s inter­ests on nation­al issues, includ­ing fed­er­al sub­si­dies that kept air­lines fly­ing to Owensboro’s region­al air­port, as well as more recent efforts to legal­ize hemp as an agri­cul­tur­al com­mod­i­ty — a poten­tial replace­ment for the city’s dying tobac­co trade.

    After step­ping down for sev­er­al years to focus on his pros­thet­ics busi­ness, Wat­son was reelect­ed as may­or in 2016. By then, the city’s river­front invest­ments were begin­ning to pay off. The down­town revi­tal­iza­tion project mit­i­gat­ed the effects of the Great Reces­sion in Owens­boro and helped the city out­pace Ken­tucky and Unit­ed States over­all in employ­ment growth.

    The city was still eye­ing more projects to build on the ear­li­er invest­ments, but Owensboro’s remain­ing debt and scarce state resources lim­it­ed the avail­able fund­ing options. Once again, the town turned to the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment for sup­port.

    “The only mon­ey that’s still being cir­cu­lat­ed comes from Wash­ing­ton,” Wat­son explained.

    In par­tic­u­lar, the city want­ed to widen and improve a sec­tion of Ken­tucky High­way 331 that con­nect­ed the port’s riv­er and rail ship­ping facil­i­ties to the fed­er­al high­way sys­tem. Local home­own­ers and dri­vers com­plained that the highway’s two nar­row lanes and lim­it­ed sight­lines throt­tled capac­i­ty and put local res­i­dents at risk.

    In the post-ear­mark era, offi­cials saw the fed­er­al Depart­ment of Transportation’s grant pro­grams as their best bet to secure more funds, and believed their project had the mer­it to win in a com­pet­i­tive eval­u­a­tion process. But suc­cess elud­ed them.

    The city sub­mit­ted its first grant appli­ca­tion dur­ing the final months of the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion, under a freight and high­way improve­ment pro­gram called FASTLANE. But after a tech­ni­cal review by career DOT staff, the city’s appli­ca­tion was passed over in favor of oth­er projects.

    Accord­ing to Mat­ting­ly, local offi­cials were unde­terred and saw Chao’s appoint­ment as Trans­porta­tion sec­re­tary — and Owens­boro local Todd Inman’s new role as direc­tor of oper­a­tions in her office — as a valu­able con­nec­tion mov­ing for­ward.

    Back in Wash­ing­ton, Inman encour­aged that per­cep­tion. In a Feb­ru­ary 2017 email to McConnell’s chief of staff, he wrote, “The Sec­re­tary has indi­cat­ed if you have a Ky-spe­cif­ic issue that we should flag for her atten­tion to please con­tin­ue to go through your nor­mal chan­nels but feel free to con­tact me direct­ly as well so we can mon­i­tor or fol­low up as nec­es­sary.”

    Owens­boro sub­mit­ted a sec­ond grant appli­ca­tion in the first year of the Trump admin­is­tra­tion under the department’s INFRA grant pro­gram — the new administration’s suc­ces­sor to FASTLANE — which was like­wise unsuc­cess­ful. Weeks before that appli­ca­tion was due, McConnell’s office emailed mem­bers of Chao’s staff with the Owens­boro River­port Author­i­ty CEO’s con­tact infor­ma­tion, request­ing tech­ni­cal assis­tance for the riverport’s grant appli­ca­tion. Derek Kan, Chao’s under­sec­re­tary for pol­i­cy, for­ward­ed the request to his deputy, who con­firmed that they were fol­low­ing up.

    Final­ly, in 2018, the river­port resub­mit­ted a third time under the department’s BUILD pro­gram, a com­pet­i­tive infra­struc­ture grant pro­gram that began under the Oba­ma administration’s eco­nom­ic stim­u­lus law. This time, the appli­ca­tion was suc­cess­ful. City offi­cials held a Decem­ber news con­fer­ence in front of a Christ­mas tree in City Hall announc­ing the $11.5 mil­lion fed­er­al award.

    Four months lat­er, as McConnell pre­pared to launch his reelec­tion cam­paign, he called May­or Wat­son and asked him to pull togeth­er a group of polit­i­cal and busi­ness lead­ers at the river­port to tout his role in get­ting Owens­boro the grant award, Wat­son said. On April 22, with­in days of offi­cial­ly launch­ing his 2020 cam­paign, the Sen­ate major­i­ty leader stood inside a river­port build­ing and cel­e­brat­ed his achieve­ments.

    “I can’t tell you how excit­ing it is for me to see what the river­front has spawned,” McConnell told the assem­bled crowd. “Not only the project itself, but all around it.”

    * * *

    Inman, who is 48, grew up in Mar­shall Coun­ty, Ky., about a two-hour dri­ve from Owens­boro. Soon after grad­u­at­ing from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Mis­sis­sip­pi in 1993, he moved to Owens­boro, where he ran a small insur­ance busi­ness from 1994 to 2017, accord­ing to his LinkedIn page.

    He also became involved in Repub­li­can pol­i­tics, run­ning unsuc­cess­ful­ly for may­or of Owens­boro in 2004 and doing advance work and event plan­ning for statewide GOP can­di­dates. He worked on McConnell’s cam­paigns in 2008 and 2014 and then became the deputy state direc­tor for Don­ald Trump’s 2016 cam­paign in Ken­tucky.

    Two days after Trump’s inau­gu­ra­tion, Inman excit­ed­ly announced his new job in the admin­is­tra­tion in a Face­book post picked up by local media.

    “It’s with great hon­or but also sad­ness that on Fri­day I accept­ed a Pres­i­den­tial appoint­ment to work for the Hon­or­able Elaine L. Chao as a Direc­tor in the cab­i­net of the Unit­ed States Depart­ment of Trans­porta­tion,” Inman wrote, accord­ing to the local radio sta­tion WBKR. “While this means I must leave my fam­i­ly friends and busi­ness in Owens­boro it is hum­bling to know I can be of ser­vice to our coun­try ... I look for­ward to the com­ing years of help­ing to sup­port the sec­re­tary in her lead­er­ship of the Depart­ment of Trans­porta­tion … ”

    His first post­ing was as direc­tor of oper­a­tions, from which he helped steer requests for grant assis­tance from McConnell’s office — at Chao’s direc­tion, accord­ing to the emails.

    “Cab­i­net mem­bers are known to be pref­er­en­tial to their own home state,” said Hudak, the Brook­ings schol­ar who has stud­ied polit­i­cal influ­ence in fed­er­al grant-mak­ing, adding that they tend to pri­or­i­tize the home states of con­gres­sion­al lead­ers as well, “so you can have a sort of dou­bling effect.”

    “There’s noth­ing ille­gal about her steer­ing those funds to her husband’s home state, and her home state, as long as things are above­board,” Hudak said. “The ques­tion though is, how do you deal with con­flicts of inter­ests? And this is a clear con­flict. ... Even if it’s not legal­ly so, these are polit­i­cal offices, so the optics of this are impor­tant. In a busi­ness set­ting, you would put fire­walls up to pre­vent those types of bad optics.”

    McConnell, how­ev­er, is mak­ing no effort to hide his influ­ence as he ramps up his reelec­tion effort. Though the Blue­grass State is heav­i­ly Repub­li­can, he, like sen­a­tors of both par­ties who take on nation­al lead­er­ship posi­tions, knows he is both a prime tar­get for out-of-state donors and vul­ner­a­ble to charges that he has lost touch with his con­stituents.

    New York Sen. Chuck Schumer, the Demo­c­ra­t­ic leader in the Sen­ate, has per­son­al­ly urged Marine vet­er­an and for­mer fight­er pilot Amy McGrath to run against McConnell, say­ing the GOP leader “is more vul­ner­a­ble now than ever before.”

    At the grass­roots lev­el, Ken­tucky radio host Matt Jones has indi­cat­ed he might be pre­pared to run as a pop­ulist Demo­c­rat against McConnell, a tar­get of fre­quent barbs on his huge­ly pop­u­lar sports show.

    “What has Mitch McConnell done to help Ken­tucky?” Jones asked in a POLITICO inter­view. “Mitch McConnell has been a mas­ter — a mas­ter at help­ing wealthy busi­ness inter­ests get wealth­i­er. If there is a rich guy Hall of Fame, he should be in it.”

    McConnell’s answer to these crit­i­cisms is clear: He’s used his influ­ence to deliv­er on Kentucky’s pri­or­i­ties.

    “All 100 sen­a­tors may have one vote,” McConnell told the Lex­ing­ton Her­ald-Leader last year, “but they’re not all equal. Ken­tucky ben­e­fits from hav­ing one of its own set­ting the agen­da for the coun­try.”

    ———-

    “Chao cre­at­ed spe­cial path for McConnell’s favored projects” by TUCKER DOHERTY and TANYA SNYDER; Politi­co; 06/10/2019

    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:

    ...
    “Todd prob­a­bly smoothed the way, I mean, you know, used his influ­ence,” Mat­ting­ly said in a POLITICO inter­view. “Every­body says that projects stand on their own mer­it, right? So if I’ve got 10 projects, and they’re all equal, where do you go to break the tie?”

    “Well, let’s put it this way: I only have her ear an hour when I go to vis­it her once a year,” he added of Chao and Inman, a long­time Blue­grass State oper­a­tive who had worked as McConnell’s advance man. “With a local guy, he has her ear 24 hours a day, sev­en days a week. You tell me.”

    The cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing the Owens­boro grant and anoth­er, more lucra­tive grant to Boone Coun­ty, high­light the eth­i­cal con­flicts in hav­ing a pow­er­ful Cab­i­net sec­re­tary mar­ried to the Senate’s leader and in a posi­tion to help him polit­i­cal­ly. McConnell has long tout­ed his abil­i­ty to bring fed­er­al resources to his state, which his wife is now in a posi­tion to assist.

    Chao’s des­ig­na­tion of Inman as a spe­cial inter­me­di­ary for Ken­tucky — a priv­i­lege oth­er states did not enjoygave a spe­cial advan­tage to projects favored by her hus­band, which could in turn ben­e­fit his polit­i­cal inter­ests. In such sit­u­a­tions, ethi­cists say, each mem­ber of a cou­ple ben­e­fits per­son­al­ly from the suc­cess of the oth­er.

    “Where a Cab­i­net sec­re­tary is doing things that are going to help her hus­band get reelect­ed, that starts to rise to the lev­el of feel­ing more like cor­rup­tion to the aver­age Amer­i­can. … I do think there are peo­ple who will see that as sort of ‘swamp behav­ior,’” said John Hudak, a Brook­ings Insti­tu­tion schol­ar who has stud­ied polit­i­cal influ­ence in fed­er­al grant-mak­ing.
    ...

    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:

    ...
    The city sub­mit­ted its first grant appli­ca­tion dur­ing the final months of the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion, under a freight and high­way improve­ment pro­gram called FASTLANE. But after a tech­ni­cal review by career DOT staff, the city’s appli­ca­tion was passed over in favor of oth­er projects.

    Accord­ing to Mat­ting­ly, local offi­cials were unde­terred and saw Chao’s appoint­ment as Trans­porta­tion sec­re­tary — and Owens­boro local Todd Inman’s new role as direc­tor of oper­a­tions in her office — as a valu­able con­nec­tion mov­ing for­ward.

    Back in Wash­ing­ton, Inman encour­aged that per­cep­tion. In a Feb­ru­ary 2017 email to McConnell’s chief of staff, he wrote, “The Sec­re­tary has indi­cat­ed if you have a Ky-spe­cif­ic issue that we should flag for her atten­tion to please con­tin­ue to go through your nor­mal chan­nels but feel free to con­tact me direct­ly as well so we can mon­i­tor or fol­low up as nec­es­sary.”

    Owens­boro sub­mit­ted a sec­ond grant appli­ca­tion in the first year of the Trump admin­is­tra­tion under the department’s INFRA grant pro­gram — the new administration’s suc­ces­sor to FASTLANE — which was like­wise unsuc­cess­ful. Weeks before that appli­ca­tion was due, McConnell’s office emailed mem­bers of Chao’s staff with the Owens­boro River­port Author­i­ty CEO’s con­tact infor­ma­tion, request­ing tech­ni­cal assis­tance for the riverport’s grant appli­ca­tion. Derek Kan, Chao’s under­sec­re­tary for pol­i­cy, for­ward­ed the request to his deputy, who con­firmed that they were fol­low­ing up.

    Final­ly, in 2018, the river­port resub­mit­ted a third time under the department’s BUILD pro­gram, a com­pet­i­tive infra­struc­ture grant pro­gram that began under the Oba­ma administration’s eco­nom­ic stim­u­lus law. This time, the appli­ca­tion was suc­cess­ful. City offi­cials held a Decem­ber news con­fer­ence in front of a Christ­mas tree in City Hall announc­ing the $11.5 mil­lion fed­er­al award.

    Four months lat­er, as McConnell pre­pared to launch his reelec­tion cam­paign, he called May­or Wat­son and asked him to pull togeth­er a group of polit­i­cal and busi­ness lead­ers at the river­port to tout his role in get­ting Owens­boro the grant award, Wat­son said. On April 22, with­in days of offi­cial­ly launch­ing his 2020 cam­paign, the Sen­ate major­i­ty leader stood inside a river­port build­ing and cel­e­brat­ed his achieve­ments.

    “I can’t tell you how excit­ing it is for me to see what the river­front has spawned,” McConnell told the assem­bled crowd. “Not only the project itself, but all around it.”

    ...

    “Cab­i­net mem­bers are known to be pref­er­en­tial to their own home state,” said Hudak, the Brook­ings schol­ar who has stud­ied polit­i­cal influ­ence in fed­er­al grant-mak­ing, adding that they tend to pri­or­i­tize the home states of con­gres­sion­al lead­ers as well, “so you can have a sort of dou­bling effect.”

    “There’s noth­ing ille­gal about her steer­ing those funds to her husband’s home state, and her home state, as long as things are above­board,” Hudak said. “The ques­tion though is, how do you deal with con­flicts of inter­ests? And this is a clear con­flict. ... Even if it’s not legal­ly so, these are polit­i­cal offices, so the optics of this are impor­tant. In a busi­ness set­ting, you would put fire­walls up to pre­vent those types of bad optics.”

    McConnell, how­ev­er, is mak­ing no effort to hide his influ­ence as he ramps up his reelec­tion effort. Though the Blue­grass State is heav­i­ly Repub­li­can, he, like sen­a­tors of both par­ties who take on nation­al lead­er­ship posi­tions, knows he is both a prime tar­get for out-of-state donors and vul­ner­a­ble to charges that he has lost touch with his con­stituents.

    New York Sen. Chuck Schumer, the Demo­c­ra­t­ic leader in the Sen­ate, has per­son­al­ly urged Marine vet­er­an and for­mer fight­er pilot Amy McGrath to run against McConnell, say­ing the GOP leader “is more vul­ner­a­ble now than ever before.”

    At the grass­roots lev­el, Ken­tucky radio host Matt Jones has indi­cat­ed he might be pre­pared to run as a pop­ulist Demo­c­rat against McConnell, a tar­get of fre­quent barbs on his huge­ly pop­u­lar sports show.

    “What has Mitch McConnell done to help Ken­tucky?” Jones asked in a POLITICO inter­view. “Mitch McConnell has been a mas­ter — a mas­ter at help­ing wealthy busi­ness inter­ests get wealth­i­er. If there is a rich guy Hall of Fame, he should be in it.”

    McConnell’s answer to these crit­i­cisms is clear: He’s used his influ­ence to deliv­er on Kentucky’s pri­or­i­ties.

    “All 100 sen­a­tors may have one vote,” McConnell told the Lex­ing­ton Her­ald-Leader last year, “but they’re not all equal. Ken­tucky ben­e­fits from hav­ing one of its own set­ting the agen­da for the coun­try.”
    ...

    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 New York Times

    Trans­porta­tion Sec­re­tary Failed to Sev­er Finan­cial Ties to Con­struc­tion Com­pa­ny

    By Eric Lip­ton
    May 28, 2019

    WASHINGTON — Trans­porta­tion Sec­re­tary Elaine Chao failed last year to cash out her stock options in one of the nation’s largest sup­pli­ers of high­way con­struc­tion mate­ri­als, despite a promise she had made to do so in a signed ethics agree­ment when she joined the Trump admin­is­tra­tion.

    Ms. Chao had served for about two years on the board of direc­tors of the com­pa­ny, Vul­can Mate­ri­als, an Alaba­ma-based sup­pli­er of rock aggre­gate, which is used in road con­struc­tion and many oth­er build­ing projects. The board posi­tion paid Ms. Chao $110,000 plus $151,000 in stock options in 2016, accord­ing to a fil­ing by the com­pa­ny.

    As part of her ethics agree­ment, Ms Chao said that by April 2018 she would take “a cash pay­out for all of my vest­ed deferred stock units” from Vul­can, effec­tive­ly end­ing her finan­cial rela­tion­ship with the com­pa­ny.

    But a finan­cial dis­clo­sure report released this month by her hus­band, Mitch McConnell, the Ken­tucky Repub­li­can who is the Sen­ate major­i­ty leader, showed that Ms. Chao had some­where between $250,000 and $500,000 worth of Vul­can stock. She owned this stock because in April 2018 Vul­can paid her for her stock options in the company’s stock instead of cash, the com­pa­ny said in a state­ment. Details of her con­tin­ued own­er­ship of Vul­can stock were report­ed on Tues­day by The Wall Street Jour­nal.

    A Trans­porta­tion Depart­ment offi­cial said in a state­ment that the only change was that Ms. Chao was paid in stock rather than cash and that there was no ethics vio­la­tion because Ms. Chao con­tin­ued to recuse her­self from any agency deci­sions direct­ly relat­ed to the com­pa­ny.

    Vul­can is fre­quent­ly men­tioned as one of the stocks that would ben­e­fit from any big increase in fed­er­al infra­struc­ture spend­ing, and the company’s stock price has risen about 20 per­cent since Feb­ru­ary after Pres­i­dent Trump, in his State of the Union address, pledged to push for a “great rebuild­ing of America’s crum­bling infra­struc­ture.” Mr. Trump’s nego­ti­a­tions with Democ­rats on an infra­struc­ture pack­age broke down last week, in part because of objec­tions from Repub­li­cans about the poten­tial costs.

    Vul­can gen­er­al­ly con­tracts direct­ly with high­way builders in indi­vid­ual states, not the Trans­porta­tion Depart­ment, which often helps finance road con­struc­tion projects.

    “It is unfor­tu­nate that mem­bers of the news media have attempt­ed to sub­sti­tute their opin­ions for the deci­sions of senior career ethics offi­cials of the depart­ment, who have deter­mined there is no con­flict of inter­est as the sec­re­tary remains dis­qual­i­fied from mat­ters direct­ly involv­ing the com­pa­ny men­tioned,” the Trans­porta­tion Depart­ment said in a state­ment. “In her ethics agree­ment, the sec­re­tary agreed to resign from her board posi­tion and not par­tic­i­pate in mat­ters with a direct and pre­dictable impact on Vul­can Mate­ri­als, which she has fol­lowed.”

    Robert Weiss­man, the pres­i­dent of Pub­lic Cit­i­zen, a non­prof­it ethics group, said pol­i­cy deci­sions Ms. Chao makes — even if they do not direct­ly affect any con­tracts the com­pa­ny might hold with the agency — could still ben­e­fit the com­pa­ny in a sig­nif­i­cant way, espe­cial­ly any infra­struc­ture pro­gram that increased road and high­way con­struc­tion. Vul­can makes crushed stone, sand and grav­el as well as con­struc­tion mate­ri­als, includ­ing asphalt and ready-mixed con­crete.

    “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?”

    Ms. Chao is not the first Trump admin­is­tra­tion offi­cial to face ques­tions about assets still being held after join­ing the gov­ern­ment. Com­merce Sec­re­tary Wilbur Ross and Trea­sury Sec­re­tary Steven Mnuchin have both faced their own ques­tions about still-owned stakes in com­pa­nies that might have some finan­cial ties to the agen­cies they over­see.

    ...

    ———

    “Trans­porta­tion Sec­re­tary Failed to Sev­er Finan­cial Ties to Con­struc­tion Com­pa­ny” by Eric Lip­ton; The New York Times; 05/28/2019

    ““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:

    ...
    Ms. Chao had served for about two years on the board of direc­tors of the com­pa­ny, Vul­can Mate­ri­als, an Alaba­ma-based sup­pli­er of rock aggre­gate, which is used in road con­struc­tion and many oth­er build­ing projects. The board posi­tion paid Ms. Chao $110,000 plus $151,000 in stock options in 2016, accord­ing to a fil­ing by the com­pa­ny.

    As part of her ethics agree­ment, Ms Chao said that by April 2018 she would take “a cash pay­out for all of my vest­ed deferred stock units” from Vul­can, effec­tive­ly end­ing her finan­cial rela­tion­ship with the com­pa­ny.

    But a finan­cial dis­clo­sure report released this month by her hus­band, Mitch McConnell, the Ken­tucky Repub­li­can who is the Sen­ate major­i­ty leader, showed that Ms. Chao had some­where between $250,000 and $500,000 worth of Vul­can stock. She owned this stock because in April 2018 Vul­can paid her for her stock options in the company’s stock instead of cash, the com­pa­ny said in a state­ment. Details of her con­tin­ued own­er­ship of Vul­can stock were report­ed on Tues­day by The Wall Street Jour­nal.

    ...

    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:

    ...
    A Trans­porta­tion Depart­ment offi­cial said in a state­ment that the only change was that Ms. Chao was paid in stock rather than cash and that there was no ethics vio­la­tion because Ms. Chao con­tin­ued to recuse her­self from any agency deci­sions direct­ly relat­ed to the com­pa­ny.

    Vul­can is fre­quent­ly men­tioned as one of the stocks that would ben­e­fit from any big increase in fed­er­al infra­struc­ture spend­ing, and the company’s stock price has risen about 20 per­cent since Feb­ru­ary after Pres­i­dent Trump, in his State of the Union address, pledged to push for a “great rebuild­ing of America’s crum­bling infra­struc­ture.” Mr. Trump’s nego­ti­a­tions with Democ­rats on an infra­struc­ture pack­age broke down last week, in part because of objec­tions from Repub­li­cans about the poten­tial costs.

    Vul­can gen­er­al­ly con­tracts direct­ly with high­way builders in indi­vid­ual states, not the Trans­porta­tion Depart­ment, which often helps finance road con­struc­tion projects.

    “It is unfor­tu­nate that mem­bers of the news media have attempt­ed to sub­sti­tute their opin­ions for the deci­sions of senior career ethics offi­cials of the depart­ment, who have deter­mined there is no con­flict of inter­est as the sec­re­tary remains dis­qual­i­fied from mat­ters direct­ly involv­ing the com­pa­ny men­tioned,” the Trans­porta­tion Depart­ment said in a state­ment. “In her ethics agree­ment, the sec­re­tary agreed to resign from her board posi­tion and not par­tic­i­pate in mat­ters with a direct and pre­dictable impact on Vul­can Mate­ri­als, which she has fol­lowed.”

    Robert Weiss­man, the pres­i­dent of Pub­lic Cit­i­zen, a non­prof­it ethics group, said pol­i­cy deci­sions Ms. Chao makes — even if they do not direct­ly affect any con­tracts the com­pa­ny might hold with the agency — could still ben­e­fit the com­pa­ny in a sig­nif­i­cant way, espe­cial­ly any infra­struc­ture pro­gram that increased road and high­way con­struc­tion. Vul­can makes crushed stone, sand and grav­el as well as con­struc­tion mate­ri­als, includ­ing asphalt and ready-mixed con­crete.
    ...

    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.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | June 12, 2019, 2:51 pm
  13. 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:

    The New York Times

    Deutsche Bank Does Not Have Trump’s Tax Returns, Court Says

    By David Enrich
    Oct. 10, 2019

    If inves­ti­ga­tors are going to get their hands on Pres­i­dent Trump’s tax returns, they will have to find them some­where oth­er than Deutsche Bank.

    The Ger­man bank — which for near­ly two decades was the only main­stream finan­cial insti­tu­tion con­sis­tent­ly will­ing to lend mon­ey to Mr. Trump — has told a fed­er­al appeals court that it does not have the president’s per­son­al tax returns, the court said on Thurs­day.

    Demo­c­ra­t­ic-con­trolled con­gres­sion­al com­mit­tees issued sub­poe­nas to Deutsche Bank this year for finan­cial records relat­ed to the pres­i­dent, his com­pa­nies and his fam­i­ly. Mr. Trump sued the bank, which became his main lender after a string of bank­rupt­cies cost oth­er banks hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars, to block it from com­ply­ing.

    That lit­i­ga­tion is work­ing its way through the fed­er­al courts. Last month, The New York Times and oth­er media out­lets asked the Unit­ed States Court of Appeals for the Sec­ond Cir­cuit in New York to unseal a let­ter from Deutsche Bank that iden­ti­fied two mem­bers of the Trump fam­i­ly whose tax returns the bank pos­sess­es.

    On Thurs­day, the court reject­ed the request. Part of the rea­son, it said, was that Deutsche Bank had informed the court that “the only tax returns it has for indi­vid­u­als and enti­ties named in the sub­poe­nas are not those of the pres­i­dent.”

    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.

    Deutsche Bank relied on the infor­ma­tion pro­vid­ed in the tax returns and oth­er finan­cial doc­u­ments to approve a series of loans to Mr. Trump in ear­ly 2012 in con­nec­tion with his Doral golf resort in Flori­da and his Chica­go sky­scraper.

    Over the ensu­ing years, Deutsche Bank’s pri­vate-bank­ing arm con­tin­ued lend­ing to Mr. Trump, includ­ing $170 mil­lion in 2014 to con­vert the Old Post Office build­ing, a few blocks from the White House, into a hotel. By the time Mr. Trump was sworn in as pres­i­dent, he owed the bank more than $300 mil­lion, mak­ing it his largest cred­i­tor.

    It is unclear when Deutsche Bank stopped retain­ing Mr. Trump’s tax returns. A for­mer senior bank exec­u­tive, who said he had seen the returns, said the nor­mal prac­tice was for Deutsche Bank to keep such mate­ri­als on file.

    Troy Gravitt, a Deutsche Bank spokesman, said the bank was “com­mit­ted to coop­er­at­ing with autho­rized inves­ti­ga­tions.”

    Break­ing with decades of pres­i­den­tial prece­dent, Mr. Trump has refused to pub­licly dis­close his fed­er­al tax returns, and Democ­rats are keen to obtain the doc­u­ments, believ­ing they are cru­cial to unlock­ing his close­ly guard­ed finan­cial secrets. Mr. Trump is fight­ing those efforts.

    Mr. Trump’s lawyers sued Deutsche Bank and anoth­er lender, Cap­i­tal One, to block them from com­ply­ing with sub­poe­nas that were issued in April by the House Intel­li­gence and Finan­cial Ser­vices Com­mit­tees.

    The Finan­cial Ser­vices Com­mit­tee has said it wants to know whether Mr. Trump helped Rus­sians and oth­er for­eign real estate buy­ers laun­der mon­ey through his prop­er­ties, and the Intel­li­gence Com­mit­tee is try­ing to deter­mine whether Mr. Trump’s finan­cial deal­ings made him sub­ject to for­eign influ­ence. Mr. Trump’s lawyers have argued the sub­poe­nas have no legit­i­mate leg­isla­tive pur­pose.

    Dur­ing one hear­ing, judges from the appeals court asked the banks’ lawyers whether they had copies of Mr. Trump’s returns, and request­ed a writ­ten answer. Deutsche Bank released a part­ly redact­ed let­ter say­ing it did have at least draft ver­sions of some returns cov­ered by the sub­poe­nas, prompt­ing the news media requests for the infor­ma­tion to be unsealed.

    ...

    Anoth­er con­gres­sion­al com­mit­tee and the Man­hat­tan dis­trict attor­ney have sub­poe­naed Mr. Trump’s account­ing firm, Mazars USA, for his tax returns. Mr. Trump has sued to block those sub­poe­nas as well; on Mon­day, a fed­er­al judge sided with the Man­hat­tan dis­trict attorney’s office, but Mr. Trump’s lawyers quick­ly appealed.

    The House Ways and Means Com­mit­tee asked the I.R.S. this year to hand over six years of Mr. Trump’s returns. The Trea­sury Depart­ment has refused that request.

    ———-

    “Deutsche Bank Does Not Have Trump’s Tax Returns, Court Says” by David Enrich; The New York Times; 10/10/2019

    “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:

    ...
    Deutsche Bank relied on the infor­ma­tion pro­vid­ed in the tax returns and oth­er finan­cial doc­u­ments to approve a series of loans to Mr. Trump in ear­ly 2012 in con­nec­tion with his Doral golf resort in Flori­da and his Chica­go sky­scraper.

    Over the ensu­ing years, Deutsche Bank’s pri­vate-bank­ing arm con­tin­ued lend­ing to Mr. Trump, includ­ing $170 mil­lion in 2014 to con­vert the Old Post Office build­ing, a few blocks from the White House, into a hotel. By the time Mr. Trump was sworn in as pres­i­dent, he owed the bank more than $300 mil­lion, mak­ing it his largest cred­i­tor.

    It is unclear when Deutsche Bank stopped retain­ing Mr. Trump’s tax returns. A for­mer senior bank exec­u­tive, who said he had seen the returns, said the nor­mal prac­tice was for Deutsche Bank to keep such mate­ri­als on file.
    ...

    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:

    ...
    Anoth­er con­gres­sion­al com­mit­tee and the Man­hat­tan dis­trict attor­ney have sub­poe­naed Mr. Trump’s account­ing firm, Mazars USA, for his tax returns. Mr. Trump has sued to block those sub­poe­nas as well; on Mon­day, a fed­er­al judge sided with the Man­hat­tan dis­trict attorney’s office, but Mr. Trump’s lawyers quick­ly appealed.

    The House Ways and Means Com­mit­tee asked the I.R.S. this year to hand over six years of Mr. Trump’s returns. The Trea­sury Depart­ment has refused that request.
    ...

    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

    Newsweek

    DEUTSCHE BANK MIGHT HAVE DESTROYED PHYSICAL COPIES OF TRUMP’S TAX RETURNS, CLEANSED SERVERS, CLAIMS FORMER EXECUTIVE: REPORT

    BY SHANE CROUCHER ON 10/11/19 AT 5:00 AM EDT

    A for­mer Deutsche Bank exec­u­tive who reviewed Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s tax returns report­ed­ly said it is “not nor­mal” that the insti­tu­tion no longer holds copies of those records.

    Trump for many years relied on Deutsche Bank for loans to sus­tain his real estate busi­ness when many oth­er insti­tu­tions would not lend to him because of his rocky finan­cial his­to­ry.

    The pres­i­dent is accused by some, includ­ing his for­mer attor­ney Michael Cohen, of manip­u­lat­ing the val­ue of his assets to either secure finance or reduce his tax bill.

    He has bro­ken with recent prece­dent for pres­i­dents and refused to release pub­licly all of his recent tax returns, despite pres­sure to do so.

    Con­gress is inves­ti­gat­ing Trump’s finances and attempt­ing to get hold of his tax returns from Deutsche. But the bank told the 2nd US Cir­cuit Court of Appeals that it did not hold them.

    David Enrich, finance edi­tor at The New York Times, post­ed to Twit­ter a screen­shot of his con­ver­sa­tion with the unnamed exec­u­tive in which they expressed sur­prise that Deutsche told a fed­er­al appeals court it did not have the pres­i­den­t’s tax returns any­more.

    “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.”

    ...

    At a con­gres­sion­al hear­ing in Feb­ru­ary, Trump’s for­mer fix­er Cohen—who went to prison for tax fraud, cam­paign finance vio­la­tions, and lying to Con­gress in past testimony—said the pres­i­dent reduced his real estate bills by arti­fi­cial­ly devalu­ing his assets, com­mit­ting tax fraud.

    More­over, Cohen said Trump inflat­ed his assets to insur­ance com­pa­nies. He said the evi­dence could be found on Trump’s tax returns.

    On Mon­day, a fed­er­al judge ruled that Trump’s accoun­tant Mazars USA should hand his tax returns and oth­er finan­cial records over to inves­ti­ga­tors at the Man­hat­tan Dis­trict Attor­ney’s office.

    They are prob­ing the hush pay­ments to porn stars alleg­ing affairs with the pres­i­dent. Trump’s lawyers attempt­ed to block the Man­hat­tan DA’s sub­poe­na of Mazars for eight years of the pres­i­den­t’s finan­cial records.

    Judge Vic­tor Mar­rero wrote in his 75-page rul­ing that the case pre­sent­ed by Trump’s attor­neys was “repug­nant to the nation’s gov­ern­men­tal struc­ture and con­sti­tu­tion­al val­ues” for sug­gest­ing that the pres­i­dent, his fam­i­ly, busi­ness­es, and asso­ciates are “above the law.”

    ———-

    “DEUTSCHE BANK MIGHT HAVE DESTROYED PHYSICAL COPIES OF TRUMP’S TAX RETURNS, CLEANSED SERVERS, CLAIMS FORMER EXECUTIVE: REPORT” bY SHANE CROUCHER;

    ; 10/11/2019

    ““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:

    Bloomberg

    Trump Records Must Be Giv­en to the House, Appeals Court Says

    By Andrew M Har­ris and Bob Van Voris
    Octo­ber 11, 2019, 9:07 AM CDT
    Updat­ed on Octo­ber 11, 2019, 5:30 PM CDT

    * Rul­ing comes days after blow to Trump in sep­a­rate N.Y. case
    * Appeals court rejects claim sub­poe­nas lacked leg­isla­tive point

    Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump, under siege from House Democ­rats weigh­ing impeach­ment, suf­fered a sting­ing blow as a fed­er­al appeals court upheld a sub­poe­na order­ing his accoun­tants to pro­vide Con­gress with his finan­cial records.

    The rul­ing, by a divid­ed three-judge pan­el of the U.S. Court of Appeals in Wash­ing­ton, means Trump will lose con­trol of his long-secret finan­cial records at Mazars USA LLP unless the full court recon­sid­ers the deci­sion or the U.S. Supreme Court blocks it.

    In their 2–1 deci­sion, the judges reject­ed argu­ments made by lawyers for the pres­i­dent that the House Over­sight and Reform Com­mit­tee had no legit­i­mate leg­isla­tive rea­son to seek the infor­ma­tion.

    “Dis­putes between Con­gress and the pres­i­dent are a recur­ring plot in our nation­al sto­ry,” U.S. Cir­cuit Judge David Tatel wrote in the majority’s 66-page opin­ion. “And that is pre­cise­ly what the Framers intend­ed.” He quot­ed the late Supreme Court Jus­tice Louis Bran­deis, who said that the pur­pose of the sep­a­ra­tion of pow­ers was “to save the peo­ple from autoc­ra­cy.”

    The rul­ing, which doesn’t take effect for at least sev­en days, comes short­ly after a fed­er­al judge in New York reject­ed Trump’s chal­lenge to a sep­a­rate, state sub­poe­na requir­ing Mazars to turn over Trump’s tax fil­ings and oth­er finan­cial records to New York pros­e­cu­tors — though the pres­i­dent won a last-minute delay pend­ing an emer­gency appeal.

    Read the judges’ opin­ions here

    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, the Trump Orga­ni­za­tion and the president’s three old­est chil­dren have stead­fast­ly refused to sur­ren­der their records to Con­gress. Armed with the papers, Demo­c­ra­t­ic law­mak­ers say, they could bet­ter explore any con­flicts of inter­est in the exec­u­tive branch and whether the pres­i­dent has vio­lat­ed the Constitution’s emol­u­ments claus­es.

    “There’s a lot of spec­u­la­tion, but it seems that the account­ing firm has tax returns and oth­er doc­u­ments that will show Pres­i­dent Trump and his fam­i­ly and asso­ciates involved in all sorts of deals,” Wash­ing­ton lawyer David Dors­en, who served as assis­tant chief coun­sel to the U.S. Senate’s Water­gate Com­mit­tee in the 1970s, said in an inter­view. Law­mak­ers will want to know whether doc­u­ments show “pay­offs to peo­ple in Rus­sia, Ukraine and else­where,” he said.

    “That would be an enor­mous, enor­mous fac­tor in what’s going on now,” Dors­en said.

    Trump’s lawyers could ask the full appeals court to con­sid­er the rul­ing, which might drag out the process, or go straight to the Supreme Court for an emer­gency review of the deci­sion.

    “We are eval­u­at­ing the opin­ion and review­ing all options, includ­ing appeals,” said Jay Seku­low, a lawyer for Trump.

    U.S. Cir­cuit Court Judge Neo­mi Rao, who was named to the bench by Trump, dis­sent­ed from the opin­ion by Tatel and Patri­cia Mil­lett, both appointees of Demo­c­ra­t­ic pres­i­dents. She said Con­gress can inves­ti­gate alle­ga­tions of ille­gal con­duct against the pres­i­dent only as part of an impeach­ment process and not through its leg­isla­tive pow­er.

    “Allow­ing the Com­mit­tee to issue this sub­poe­na for leg­isla­tive pur­pos­es would turn Con­gress into a rov­ing inqui­si­tion over a co-equal branch of gov­ern­ment,” she wrote.

    The court’s deci­sion is “a trav­es­ty,” said John East­man, a pro­fes­sor at Chap­man University’s Fowler School of Law. He said he sees a com­mit­tee chair­man act­ing on a par­ti­san mis­sion and not a for­mal impeach­ment process, and said the rul­ing would have “long-term reper­cus­sions on our con­sti­tu­tion­al sep­a­ra­tion of pow­ers and basic notions of due process.”

    East­man said an impeach­ment pro­ce­dure requires a vote of the whole House and pre­dict­ed that the Supreme Court would “put the brakes on this, absent a for­mal ini­ti­a­tion of an impeach­ment pro­ceed­ing.”

    “Con­gress has broad sub­poe­na author­i­ty when act­ing pur­suant to its leg­isla­tive pow­ers,” he said, “but this is Con­gress act­ing as pros­e­cu­tor in an impeach­ment pro­ceed­ing that has not been for­mal­ly launched.”

    Congress’s demand for the busi­ness records came before it began its impeach­ment inquiry. That lat­er probe was trig­gered by a whistle-blower’s claim that Trump had asked Ukraine’s pres­i­dent to inves­ti­gate Demo­c­ra­t­ic pres­i­den­tial can­di­date Joe Biden and, in a quid pro quo, held back mil­i­tary aid Con­gress had appro­pri­at­ed to resist Russ­ian influ­ence in the region.

    But the dis­clo­sures made pos­si­ble by Friday’s rul­ing pose fur­ther risks for the pres­i­dent if they raise new ques­tions about him, his finances or his com­pa­nies.

    The court said the evi­dence sought by the sub­poe­na was suf­fi­cient­ly tied to the sub­ject of the House committee’s inves­ti­ga­tion, and reject­ed Trump’s argu­ment that the real pur­pose of the sub­poe­na was to deter­mine whether he has vio­lat­ed the law — a law enforce­ment func­tion that belongs to the exec­u­tive branch, not to Con­gress.

    The major­i­ty also not­ed that Con­gress wasn’t seek­ing pres­i­den­tial records and ques­tioned whether Trump, who sued in his indi­vid­ual capac­i­ty to block the sub­poe­na, “car­ries the man­tle of the Office of the Pres­i­dent” in the case.

    “Indeed, for six of the eight years cov­ered by the sub­poe­na, Pres­i­dent Trump was mere­ly Mr. Trump or Can­di­date Trump,” the two judges wrote.

    They reject­ed argu­ments that the House vio­lat­ed its own rules by allow­ing the com­mit­tee to issue the sub­poe­na with­out the author­i­ty of the full body.

    “Con­gres­sion­al com­mit­tees have broad pow­er to inves­ti­gate and sub­poe­na,” said Dors­en, the Wash­ing­ton lawyer. “Courts don’t like to sec­ond-guess that when there’s no clear vio­la­tion of indi­vid­ual rights.”

    In her dis­sent, Rao wrote that “the most impor­tant ques­tion is not whether Con­gress has put forth some legit­i­mate leg­isla­tive pur­pose, but rather whether Con­gress is inves­ti­gat­ing sus­pi­cions of crim­i­nal­i­ty or alle­ga­tions that the Pres­i­dent vio­lat­ed a law.” She said the House “may not use the leg­isla­tive pow­er to cir­cum­vent the pro­tec­tions and account­abil­i­ty that accom­pa­ny the impeach­ment pow­er.”

    The major­i­ty warned that the log­ic of Rao’s dis­sent “would reorder the very struc­ture of the Con­sti­tu­tion” and “impose upon the courts the job of order­ing the ces­sa­tion of the leg­isla­tive func­tion and putting Con­gress to the Hobson’s Choice of impeach­ment or noth­ing.”

    Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Eli­jah Cum­mings, chair­man of the House Over­sight Com­mit­tee, said in a state­ment the rul­ing was “a fun­da­men­tal and resound­ing vic­to­ry for Con­gres­sion­al over­sight, our Con­sti­tu­tion­al sys­tem of checks and bal­ances, and the rule of law.”

    Break­ing with four decades of pres­i­den­tial tra­di­tion, Trump has declined to make his detailed finan­cial records pub­lic. Act­ing in his per­son­al capac­i­ty, he sued in April to stop Mazars from hand­ing over his records after they had been sub­poe­naed by the House com­mit­tee. He lost in fed­er­al dis­trict court in May and appealed.

    The Mazars case is one of sev­er­al test­ing Congress’s pow­er to obtain a sit­ting president’s finan­cial records in the name of over­sight. Among them, a fed­er­al appeals court in New York is weigh­ing a sim­i­lar request for records from Trump’s bankers at Cap­i­tal One Finan­cial Corp. and Deutsche Bank AG. The pres­i­dent is also embroiled in law­suits with the House Ways and Means Com­mit­tee, which is try­ing to get six years of Trump tax records from the U.S. Inter­nal Rev­enue Ser­vice.

    Friday’s rul­ing in favor of the House Over­sight Com­mit­tee could mark the start of a nation­al reck­on­ing if the pres­i­dent were to defy the sub­poe­na after los­ing all his appeals, said William How­ell, a pro­fes­sor of Amer­i­can pol­i­tics at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Chica­go.

    The rul­ing brings a mea­sure of clar­i­ty, How­ell said, but “in a strange way it also puts us one step clos­er to a full-blown con­sti­tu­tion­al cri­sis.”

    ...

    ———-

    “Trump Records Must Be Giv­en to the House, Appeals Court Says” by Andrew M Har­ris and Bob Van Voris; Bloomberg; 10/11/2019

    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:

    ...
    The rul­ing, by a divid­ed three-judge pan­el of the U.S. Court of Appeals in Wash­ing­ton, means Trump will lose con­trol of his long-secret finan­cial records at Mazars USA LLP unless the full court recon­sid­ers the deci­sion or the U.S. Supreme Court blocks it.

    In their 2–1 deci­sion, the judges reject­ed argu­ments made by lawyers for the pres­i­dent that the House Over­sight and Reform Com­mit­tee had no legit­i­mate leg­isla­tive rea­son to seek the infor­ma­tion.

    ...

    Trump’s lawyers could ask the full appeals court to con­sid­er the rul­ing, which might drag out the process, or go straight to the Supreme Court for an emer­gency review of the deci­sion.

    “We are eval­u­at­ing the opin­ion and review­ing all options, includ­ing appeals,” said Jay Seku­low, a lawyer for Trump.

    U.S. Cir­cuit Court Judge Neo­mi Rao, who was named to the bench by Trump, dis­sent­ed from the opin­ion by Tatel and Patri­cia Mil­lett, both appointees of Demo­c­ra­t­ic pres­i­dents. She said Con­gress can inves­ti­gate alle­ga­tions of ille­gal con­duct against the pres­i­dent only as part of an impeach­ment process and not through its leg­isla­tive pow­er.

    “Allow­ing the Com­mit­tee to issue this sub­poe­na for leg­isla­tive pur­pos­es would turn Con­gress into a rov­ing inqui­si­tion over a co-equal branch of gov­ern­ment,” she wrote.

    The court’s deci­sion is “a trav­es­ty,” said John East­man, a pro­fes­sor at Chap­man University’s Fowler School of Law. He said he sees a com­mit­tee chair­man act­ing on a par­ti­san mis­sion and not a for­mal impeach­ment process, and said the rul­ing would have “long-term reper­cus­sions on our con­sti­tu­tion­al sep­a­ra­tion of pow­ers and basic notions of due process.”

    East­man said an impeach­ment pro­ce­dure requires a vote of the whole House and pre­dict­ed that the Supreme Court would “put the brakes on this, absent a for­mal ini­ti­a­tion of an impeach­ment pro­ceed­ing.”

    “Con­gress has broad sub­poe­na author­i­ty when act­ing pur­suant to its leg­isla­tive pow­ers,” he said, “but this is Con­gress act­ing as pros­e­cu­tor in an impeach­ment pro­ceed­ing that has not been for­mal­ly launched.”
    ...

    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:

    ...
    Friday’s rul­ing in favor of the House Over­sight Com­mit­tee could mark the start of a nation­al reck­on­ing if the pres­i­dent were to defy the sub­poe­na after los­ing all his appeals, said William How­ell, a pro­fes­sor of Amer­i­can pol­i­tics at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Chica­go.

    The rul­ing brings a mea­sure of clar­i­ty, How­ell said, but “in a strange way it also puts us one step clos­er 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.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | October 14, 2019, 2:17 pm
  14. 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:

    Salon

    “Abuse of pow­er is not a crime,” Trump’s for­mer act­ing Attor­ney Gen­er­al Matthew Whitak­er claims
    Fact check: Impeach­ment arti­cles against both Bill Clin­ton and Richard Nixon cov­ered “abuse of pow­er”

    Igor Derysh
    Octo­ber 23, 2019 3:18PM (UTC)

    Invok­ing the Con­sti­tu­tion, for­mer act­ing Attor­ney Gen­er­al Matthew Whitak­er claimed that “abuse of pow­er is not a crime” as he rushed to Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s defense after the nation’s top envoy to Ukraine tes­ti­fied to Con­gress that Trump had with­held mil­i­tary aid in order to pres­sure Ukraine to inves­ti­gat­ing his polit­i­cal oppo­nents.

    “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.

    Act­ing Ambas­sador Bill Tay­lor tes­ti­fied Tues­day to Con­gress that mil­i­tary aid to Ukraine was con­tin­gent on a pub­lic announce­ment of a Ukrain­ian inves­ti­ga­tion into the Bidens and the 2016 elec­tion. Rep. Deb­bie Wasser­man Schultz told NBC News after the tes­ti­mo­ny that the only con­clu­sion from Taylor’s rev­e­la­tions is that “the pres­i­dent abused his pow­er.”

    Whitak­er appeared on Lau­ra Ingraham’s Fox News show to defend the pres­i­dent.

    “Let’s fun­da­men­tal­ly boil it down,” he said on the right-lean­ing net­work. “The Con­sti­tu­tion is very clear that there has to be some pret­ty egre­gious behav­ior, and they can­not tell the Amer­i­can peo­ple what this case is even about.”

    How­ev­er, as The New York Times point­ed out in their explain­er of the impeach­ment process, the Con­sti­tu­tion allows Con­gress to remove pres­i­dents who com­mit “trea­son, bribery or oth­er high crimes and mis­de­meanors.” The term “high crimes and mis­de­meanors” refers specif­i­cal­ly to “an abuse of pow­er by a high-lev­el pub­lic offi­cial” and “does not nec­es­sar­i­ly have to be a vio­la­tion of an ordi­nary crim­i­nal statute.”

    In fact, one of the arti­cles of impeach­ment against for­mer Pres­i­dent Bill Clin­ton was for abuse of pow­er. The House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives also vot­ed to approve an arti­cle of impeach­ment for abuse of pow­er against for­mer Pres­i­dent Richard Nixon.

    The issue has already come up in Demo­c­ra­t­ic delib­er­a­tions on how to pro­ceed with their impeach­ment inquiry. A source famil­iar with the party’s strat­e­gy told NBC News that Speak­er of the House Nan­cy Pelosi, D‑Calif., has pushed for an arti­cle of impeach­ment for “abuse of pow­er,” because it is the umbrel­la under which “this all fits to con­nect it and help the pub­lic under­stand.”

    ...

    Pelosi is also con­sid­er­ing a sep­a­rate arti­cle of impeach­ment for obstruc­tion or con­tempt of Con­gress in response to the administration’s refusal to coop­er­ate with the probe and Con­gress’ sub­poe­nas.

    House lead­ers are cau­tious, because the release of the Mueller report showed that the Russ­ian effort in the 2016 elec­tion was “excep­tion­al­ly com­pelling but too hard to digest,” for­mer DOJ offi­cial Chuck Rosen­berg told NBC News. “The abuse of pow­er nar­ra­tive is much sim­pler.”

    Neal Katyal, a for­mer act­ing solic­i­tor gen­er­al, told the net­work that an arti­cle of impeach­ment for “abuse of pow­er” in rela­tion to Ukraine was “exact­ly cor­rect.”

    “The phrase cap­tures the cen­tral evils of what Trump did in Ukraine,” he said, “and keeps the sto­ry focused there — and not on dis­tract­ing sideshows.”

    ———-

    ““Abuse of pow­er is not a crime,” Trump’s for­mer act­ing Attor­ney Gen­er­al Matthew Whitak­er claims” by Igor Derysh; Salon; 10/23/2019

    ““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:

    ...
    Act­ing Ambas­sador Bill Tay­lor tes­ti­fied Tues­day to Con­gress that mil­i­tary aid to Ukraine was con­tin­gent on a pub­lic announce­ment of a Ukrain­ian inves­ti­ga­tion into the Bidens and the 2016 elec­tion. Rep. Deb­bie Wasser­man Schultz told NBC News after the tes­ti­mo­ny that the only con­clu­sion from Taylor’s rev­e­la­tions is that “the pres­i­dent abused his pow­er.”

    Whitak­er appeared on Lau­ra Ingraham’s Fox News show to defend the pres­i­dent.

    ...

    The issue has already come up in Demo­c­ra­t­ic delib­er­a­tions on how to pro­ceed with their impeach­ment inquiry. A source famil­iar with the party’s strat­e­gy told NBC News that Speak­er of the House Nan­cy Pelosi, D‑Calif., has pushed for an arti­cle of impeach­ment for “abuse of pow­er,” because it is the umbrel­la under which “this all fits to con­nect it and help the pub­lic under­stand.”

    ...

    House lead­ers are cau­tious, because the release of the Mueller report showed that the Russ­ian effort in the 2016 elec­tion was “excep­tion­al­ly com­pelling but too hard to digest,” for­mer DOJ offi­cial Chuck Rosen­berg told NBC News. “The abuse of pow­er nar­ra­tive is much sim­pler.”

    Neal Katyal, a for­mer act­ing solic­i­tor gen­er­al, told the net­work that an arti­cle of impeach­ment for “abuse of pow­er” in rela­tion to Ukraine was “exact­ly cor­rect.”

    “The phrase cap­tures the cen­tral evils of what Trump did in Ukraine,” he said, “and keeps the sto­ry focused there — and not on dis­tract­ing sideshows.”
    ...

    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:

    Talk­ing Points Memo

    We Have Now Arrived At The Log­i­cal End­point Of Trump’s Immu­ni­ty Argu­ment

    By Josh Koven­sky
    Octo­ber 23, 2019 2:02 pm

    NEW YORK — I wasn’t expect­ing laugh­ter in court today.

    But at the Sec­ond Cir­cuit Court of Appeals in Man­hat­tan, there were sti­fled chor­tles as per­son­al attor­neys for Pres­i­dent Trump final­ly arrived at the log­i­cal des­ti­na­tion of their argu­ment that he is immune not only from pros­e­cu­tion – but from inves­ti­ga­tion.

    It came in Trump’s appeal chal­leng­ing a state grand jury sub­poe­na for finan­cial records from his long­time account­ing firm, Mazars USA.

    Man­hat­tan Dis­trict Attor­ney Gen­er­al Coun­sel Car­rey Dunne told the appeals court that Trump was act­ing as if the law did not apply to him, and was try­ing to have it both ways by assert­ing exec­u­tive pro­tec­tions over an inves­ti­ga­tion that con­cerned his pri­vate busi­ness.

    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.

    Dunne brought up Trump’s famous state­ment when he caught fire dur­ing the 2016 Repub­li­can pri­ma­ry, say­ing, “I could stand in the mid­dle of 5th Avenue and shoot some­body and I wouldn’t lose any vot­ers.”

    “If he did pull out a hand­gun and shoot some­one on Fifth Ave,” Dunne asked, “would the local police be restrained?”

    “Would we have to wait for impeach­ment?” he added.

    If the judges were moved by Dunne’s argu­ment, it wasn’t imme­di­ate­ly obvi­ous. The trio – com­posed of Demo­c­rat-appoint­ed Chief Judge Robert Katz­mann, Judge Den­ny Chin, and Judge Christo­pher Droney – stayed typ­i­cal­ly stone-faced.

    But when Consovoy retook the podi­um with his boom­ing voice and some­what bil­ious affect, field­ing more ques­tions from the court, he dou­bled down on his argu­ment that con­gres­sion­al, fed­er­al, and state bod­ies are for­bid­den from inves­ti­gat­ing a sit­ting Pres­i­dent.

    Judge Chin raised Dunne’s point. He asked Consovoy for his “view on the Fifth Avenue exam­ple.”

    “Local author­i­ties couldn’t inves­ti­gate, they couldn’t do any­thing about it?” he asked.

    “No,” replied a vis­i­bly annoyed Consovoy amid sti­fled chor­tles.

    “Noth­ing could be done? That’s your posi­tion?” Chin repeat­ed.

    “That is cor­rect, that is cor­rect,” Consovoy respond­ed, before qual­i­fy­ing it by say­ing that a pres­i­dent could be pros­e­cut­ed after leav­ing office. He also con­ced­ed that doc­u­ments could be gath­ered in the course of such an inves­ti­ga­tion.

    Ear­li­er in the hear­ing, Judge Droney had asked Consovoy whether the argu­ments he made about Trump’s immu­ni­ty from state-lev­el inves­ti­ga­tion would also apply to a sim­i­lar fed­er­al probe. To be clear, Vance did not sub­poe­na Trump direct­ly – rather, he issued a sub­poe­na to a third-par­ty hold­er of Trump’s finan­cial records as part of an inves­ti­ga­tion into the Trump Orga­ni­za­tion.

    But Consovoy said that the fed­er­al exam­ple was only slight­ly dif­fer­ent, in part because “the attor­ney gen­er­al exer­cis­es con­trol over all” of the sep­a­rate U.S. attor­neys offices, as opposed to each indi­vid­ual state gov­ern­ing itself.

    “That may not always be true,” Droney replied, appar­ent­ly refer­ring to the South­ern Dis­trict of New York’s recent activ­i­ties.

    Consovoy did not address that direct­ly, but lat­er laud­ed Man­hat­tan fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tors for their past treat­ment of Trump. He told the appeals court that pre­vi­ous probes had been “han­dled with sen­si­tiv­i­ty” appro­pri­ate to the office.

    ...

    ———–

    “We Have Now Arrived At The Log­i­cal End­point Of Trump’s Immu­ni­ty Argu­ment” by Josh Koven­sky; Talk­ing Points Memo; 10/23/2019

    “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:

    ...
    Dunne brought up Trump’s famous state­ment when he caught fire dur­ing the 2016 Repub­li­can pri­ma­ry, say­ing, “I could stand in the mid­dle of 5th Avenue and shoot some­body and I wouldn’t lose any vot­ers.”

    “If he did pull out a hand­gun and shoot some­one on Fifth Ave,” Dunne asked, “would the local police be restrained?”

    “Would we have to wait for impeach­ment?” he added.

    If the judges were moved by Dunne’s argu­ment, it wasn’t imme­di­ate­ly obvi­ous. The trio – com­posed of Demo­c­rat-appoint­ed Chief Judge Robert Katz­mann, Judge Den­ny Chin, and Judge Christo­pher Droney – stayed typ­i­cal­ly stone-faced.

    But when Consovoy retook the podi­um with his boom­ing voice and some­what bil­ious affect, field­ing more ques­tions from the court, he dou­bled down on his argu­ment that con­gres­sion­al, fed­er­al, and state bod­ies are for­bid­den from inves­ti­gat­ing a sit­ting Pres­i­dent.

    Judge Chin raised Dunne’s point. He asked Consovoy for his “view on the Fifth Avenue exam­ple.”

    “Local author­i­ties couldn’t inves­ti­gate, they couldn’t do any­thing about it?” he asked.

    “No,” replied a vis­i­bly annoyed Consovoy amid sti­fled chor­tles.

    “Noth­ing could be done? That’s your posi­tion?” Chin repeat­ed.

    “That is cor­rect, that is cor­rect,” Consovoy respond­ed, before qual­i­fy­ing it by say­ing that a pres­i­dent could be pros­e­cut­ed after leav­ing office. He also con­ced­ed that doc­u­ments could be gath­ered in the course of such an inves­ti­ga­tion.
    ...

    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.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | October 23, 2019, 2:41 pm
  15. 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 New York Times

    Trump Los­es Appeal on Deutsche Bank Sub­poe­nas

    A fed­er­al court rul­ing is a vic­to­ry for House Democ­rats who are inves­ti­gat­ing Pres­i­dent Trump’s rela­tion­ship with the Ger­man bank

    By David Enrich

    Dec. 3, 2019
    Updat­ed 1:14 p.m. ET

    A fed­er­al appeals court said Tues­day that Deutsche Bank must turn over detailed doc­u­ments about Pres­i­dent Trump’s finances to two con­gres­sion­al com­mit­tees, a rul­ing that will most like­ly be appealed to the Supreme Court.

    ...

    Demo­c­ra­t­ic-con­trolled con­gres­sion­al com­mit­tees issued sub­poe­nas to two banks — Deutsche Bank, long Mr. Trump’s biggest lender, and Cap­i­tal One — this year for finan­cial records relat­ed to the pres­i­dent, his com­pa­nies and his fam­i­ly. Mr. Trump sued the banks to block them from com­ply­ing.

    ...

    Mr. Trump’s lawyer, Jay Seku­low, said in a state­ment that “we are eval­u­at­ing our next options includ­ing seek­ing review at the Supreme Court of the Unit­ed States.” He called the con­gres­sion­al sub­poe­nas “invalid as issued.”

    Mr. Trump has sev­en days to seek a fur­ther delay from the high court before the banks must com­ply.

    Mr. Trump, who broke with decades of tra­di­tion by refus­ing to release his tax returns dur­ing the 2016 cam­paign, has already turned to the Supreme Court in an effort to fend off oth­er gov­ern­ment inves­ti­ga­tions into his per­son­al finances. Two oth­er cas­es, involv­ing the dis­clo­sure of his tax returns to the Man­hat­tan dis­trict attor­ney and to a con­gres­sion­al com­mit­tee, are await­ing action by the court.

    But the requests for doc­u­ments from Deutsche Bank are notable because of the breadth of finan­cial infor­ma­tion they could pro­vide about Mr. Trump and his busi­ness deal­ings.

    Deutsche Bank became Mr. Trump’s main lender after a string of bank­rupt­cies and loan defaults cost oth­er banks hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars; over the past two decades, the Ger­man bank lent him and his com­pa­nies a total of well over $2 bil­lion. The bank’s files would most like­ly con­tain a rich trove of doc­u­ments includ­ing details about how he made his mon­ey, who his part­ners have been, the terms of his exten­sive bor­row­ings and oth­er trans­ac­tions.

    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.

    Inves­ti­ga­tors for the two com­mit­tees are hop­ing the mate­ri­als will shed light on any links Mr. Trump has had to for­eign gov­ern­ments and whether he or his com­pa­nies were involved in any ille­gal activ­i­ty, such as mon­ey laun­der­ing for peo­ple over­seas.

    The com­mit­tees have also said the infor­ma­tion is impor­tant to their attempts to craft leg­is­la­tion. Mr. Trump’s lawyers have argued that the sub­poe­nas served no legit­i­mate leg­isla­tive pur­pose and were over­ly broad. Spokes­men for the com­mit­tees had no imme­di­ate com­ment on Tues­day.

    The rul­ing by the Unit­ed States Court of Appeals for the Sec­ond Cir­cuit con­tained one caveat: The low­er court must con­sid­er whether and how the banks dis­close a lim­it­ed set of sen­si­tive per­son­al infor­ma­tion that would have no bear­ing on the gov­ern­ment inves­ti­ga­tions. Such infor­ma­tion could include checks that were writ­ten by Mr. Trump or his com­pa­nies to cov­er employ­ees’ med­ical expens­es.

    But, the court ruled, the pre­sump­tion should be in favor of hand­ing over more doc­u­ments, not few­er. “Many doc­u­ments facial­ly appear­ing to reflect nor­mal busi­ness deal­ings will there­fore war­rant dis­clo­sure for exam­i­na­tion and analy­sis by skilled inves­ti­ga­tors assist­ing the com­mit­tees to deter­mine the effec­tive­ness of cur­rent reg­u­la­tion and the pos­si­ble need for improved leg­is­la­tion,” the court wrote.

    The rul­ing con­clud­ed: “The com­mit­tees’ inter­ests in pur­su­ing their con­sti­tu­tion­al leg­isla­tive func­tion is a far more sig­nif­i­cant pub­lic inter­est than what­ev­er pub­lic inter­est inheres in avoid­ing the risk of a chief executive’s dis­trac­tion aris­ing from dis­clo­sure of doc­u­ments reflect­ing his pri­vate finan­cial trans­ac­tions.”

    The deci­sion is the lat­est this year by a fed­er­al court to uphold the broad pow­ers of Con­gress to inves­ti­gate the pres­i­dent.

    In two sim­i­lar cas­es, the pres­i­dent has asked the Supreme Court to over­rule low­er courts and to block attempts to review his finances. Last month, the Supreme Court issued a tem­po­rary stay relat­ed to a sub­poe­na that the House Over­sight and Reform Com­mit­tee issued in April. Mr. Trump has also filed a peti­tion seek­ing review of a request from pros­e­cu­tors in Man­hat­tan who are seek­ing infor­ma­tion from his account­ing firm, Mazars USA.

    ———-

    “Trump Los­es Appeal on Deutsche Bank Sub­poe­nas” by David Enrich; The New York Times; 12/03/2019

    “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:

    ...
    Mr. Trump, who broke with decades of tra­di­tion by refus­ing to release his tax returns dur­ing the 2016 cam­paign, has already turned to the Supreme Court in an effort to fend off oth­er gov­ern­ment inves­ti­ga­tions into his per­son­al finances. Two oth­er cas­es, involv­ing the dis­clo­sure of his tax returns to the Man­hat­tan dis­trict attor­ney and to a con­gres­sion­al com­mit­tee, are await­ing action by the court.

    ...

    The deci­sion is the lat­est this year by a fed­er­al court to uphold the broad pow­ers of Con­gress to inves­ti­gate the pres­i­dent.

    In two sim­i­lar cas­es, the pres­i­dent has asked the Supreme Court to over­rule low­er courts and to block attempts to review his finances. Last month, the Supreme Court issued a tem­po­rary stay relat­ed to a sub­poe­na that the House Over­sight and Reform Com­mit­tee issued in April. Mr. Trump has also filed a peti­tion seek­ing review of a request from pros­e­cu­tors in Man­hat­tan who are seek­ing infor­ma­tion from his account­ing firm, 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.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | December 3, 2019, 3:53 pm
  16. 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:

    Bloomberg Opin­ion

    Trump’s Tax­es Show He’s a Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Threat
    What trade-offs would a pres­i­dent with this lev­el of indebt­ed­ness be will­ing to make to save face?

    By Tim­o­thy L. O’Brien
    Sep­tem­ber 28, 2020, 4:00 AM CDT
    Cor­rect­ed Sep­tem­ber 28, 2020, 4:37 AM CDT

    In a tour de force of hard won report­ing, the New York Times has put numer­i­cal cloth­ing on what we’ve known about Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump for decades — that, at best, he’s a hap­haz­ard busi­ness­man, human bill­board and ser­i­al bank­rupt­cy artist who gorges on debt he may have a hard time repay­ing.

    The Times, in a news sto­ry pub­lished Sun­day evening that dis­closed years of the president’s tax returns, also put a lot of cloth­ing on things we didn’t know. Trump paid just $750 in fed­er­al income tax­es in 2016, the year he was elect­ed pres­i­dent, and the same amount the fol­low­ing year, when he entered the White House. In many years recent­ly he hasn’t paid any­thing at all. He has played so fast and loose with the tax­man that he’s entan­gled in an audit. He paid his daugh­ter Ivan­ka lush con­sult­ing fees that he deduct­ed as a busi­ness expense even though she helped him man­age the Trump Orga­ni­za­tion. And he’s tak­en ques­tion­able tax write-offs on every­thing from get­ting his hair coifed to man­ag­ing his per­son­al res­i­dences.

    Step away from the tragi­com­ic taw­dri­ness and grift that the tax returns define, how­ev­er, and focus on what they reveal about Trump as the most pow­er­ful man in the world and occu­pant of the Oval Office.

    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.

    I have some his­to­ry with Trump and his tax­es. Trump sued me for libel in 2006 for a biog­ra­phy I wrote, “Trump­Na­tion,” claim­ing the book mis­rep­re­sent­ed his track record as a busi­ness­man and low­balled the size of his for­tune. He lost the suit in 2011. Dur­ing the lit­i­ga­tion, Trump resist­ed releas­ing his tax returns and oth­er finan­cial records. My lawyers got the returns, and while I can’t dis­close specifics of what I saw, I imag­ine that Trump has always refused to release them because they would reveal how robust his busi­ness­es and finances actu­al­ly are and shine a light on some of his for­eign sources of income. The Times has now solved that prob­lem for us.

    Accord­ing to the Times, Trump has about $421 mil­lion in debts which he has per­son­al­ly guar­an­teed and which are com­ing due over the next sev­er­al years. This is con­sis­tent with ear­li­er report­ing about how much debt he car­ries, a chunk of which could be gleaned from the per­son­al finan­cial dis­clo­sures he is required to file with the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment. But Trump’s over­all indebt­ed­ness is greater than the Times tal­ly, I believe.

    Russ Choma report­ed in Moth­er Jones last sum­mer that Trump’s debts were near­ly $500 mil­lion and would come due in rel­a­tive­ly short order, pres­sur­ing the president’s finances. But Trump’s debts are even big­ger than that, and he’s worked hard to keep them hid­den for decades. Dan Alexan­der, a senior edi­tor at Forbes, has been cov­er­ing Trump’s busi­ness inter­ests since 2016 and has a new book out about the president’s finan­cial con­flicts of inter­est, “White House Inc.” Alexan­der, in a help­ful tal­ly he shared Sun­day evening, esti­mates Trump’s total indebt­ed­ness to be about $1.1 bil­lion. Now that’s more like it.

    Trump has been blovi­at­ing about being worth $10 bil­lion ever since he entered the 2016 pres­i­den­tial race, a fig­ure that sim­ply isn’t true. He’s worth a frac­tion of that amount, and the larg­er his indebt­ed­ness becomes, the more strain it puts on his assets. The Covid-19 pan­dem­ic has tak­en a par­tic­u­lar­ly bru­tal toll on the sec­tors in which the Trump Orga­ni­za­tion oper­ates — real estate, trav­el and leisure. If Trump is unable to meet his debt pay­ments, he’s either going to have to sell assets or get bailed out by a friend with funds. Trump has nev­er liked to sell any­thing, even when it’s hem­or­rhag­ing mon­ey. So if he’s tempt­ed to save him­self by get­ting a hand­out, that makes him a mark.

    ...

    Trump’s own his­to­ry of avoid­ing tax pay­ments – and often pay­ing noth­ing — is the oth­er issue that should alarm the president’s sup­port­ers. Trump and the Repub­li­can Par­ty engi­neered a mas­sive tax cut in 2017 that large­ly ben­e­fit­ted the most afflu­ent Amer­i­cans and the largest cor­po­ra­tions in the U.S. Now we learn that the pres­i­dent who pushed a tax cut that didn’t deliv­er the eco­nom­ic stim­u­lus he claimed it would, but feath­ered the nests of the most priv­i­leged, has rarely paid tax­es in recent years.

    Trump paid $750 in tax­es the year he was elect­ed! That’s way less than the $130,000 in hush mon­ey he paid Stormy Daniels. In 2012, Trump crit­i­cized Barack Oba­ma for “only” pay­ing $161,950 in tax­es. That’s a lot more than $750 too! And it’s a lot more than the $0 in tax­es Trump fre­quent­ly paid.

    Trump even paid far less than his real­ly wealthy bud­dies. As Times reporter David Leon­hardt not­ed, “Over the past two decades, Mr. Trump has paid about $400 mil­lion less in com­bined fed­er­al income tax­es than a very wealthy per­son who paid the aver­age for that group each year.” It’s even more trou­bling when you com­pare Trump’s tax pay­ments to an Amer­i­can house­hold earn­ing about $75,000 in 2016. Those folks paid about $14,000 in fed­er­al income tax­es — which is also a lot more than $750.

    Any­one buy­ing Trump’s tripe about look­ing out for the lit­tle guy while he occu­pies the White House, or who takes their lives in their hands attend­ing one of his Covid-19-defy­ing cam­paign ral­lies, should bear in mind one of the many things the Times’s report­ing sub­stan­ti­ates: The pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States is in it only for him­self, and he’s laugh­ing all the way to the bank. And he’s laugh­ing at you, too.

    ———–

    “Trump’s Tax­es Show He’s a Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Threat” by Tim­o­thy L. O’Brien; Bloomberg Opin­ion; 09/28/2020

    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:

    ...
    Accord­ing to the Times, Trump has about $421 mil­lion in debts which he has per­son­al­ly guar­an­teed and which are com­ing due over the next sev­er­al years. This is con­sis­tent with ear­li­er report­ing about how much debt he car­ries, a chunk of which could be gleaned from the per­son­al finan­cial dis­clo­sures he is required to file with the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment. But Trump’s over­all indebt­ed­ness is greater than the Times tal­ly, I believe.

    ...

    Trump has been blovi­at­ing about being worth $10 bil­lion ever since he entered the 2016 pres­i­den­tial race, a fig­ure that sim­ply isn’t true. He’s worth a frac­tion of that amount, and the larg­er his indebt­ed­ness becomes, the more strain it puts on his assets. The Covid-19 pan­dem­ic has tak­en a par­tic­u­lar­ly bru­tal toll on the sec­tors in which the Trump Orga­ni­za­tion oper­ates — real estate, trav­el and leisure. If Trump is unable to meet his debt pay­ments, he’s either going to have to sell assets or get bailed out by a friend with funds. Trump has nev­er liked to sell any­thing, even when it’s hem­or­rhag­ing mon­ey. So if he’s tempt­ed to save him­self by get­ting a hand­out, that makes him a mark.
    ...

    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:

    ...
    Trump paid $750 in tax­es the year he was elect­ed! That’s way less than the $130,000 in hush mon­ey he paid Stormy Daniels. In 2012, Trump crit­i­cized Barack Oba­ma for “only” pay­ing $161,950 in tax­es. That’s a lot more than $750 too! And it’s a lot more than the $0 in tax­es Trump fre­quent­ly paid.

    Trump even paid far less than his real­ly wealthy bud­dies. As Times reporter David Leon­hardt not­ed, “Over the past two decades, Mr. Trump has paid about $400 mil­lion less in com­bined fed­er­al income tax­es than a very wealthy per­son who paid the aver­age for that group each year.” It’s even more trou­bling when you com­pare Trump’s tax pay­ments to an Amer­i­can house­hold earn­ing about $75,000 in 2016. Those folks paid about $14,000 in fed­er­al income tax­es — which is also a lot more than $750.
    ...

    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 reelec­tion prepar­ing to inval­i­date the upcom­ing elec­tion so he can just stay in office as the undu­ly elect­ed ‘Cheater in Chief’.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | September 28, 2020, 2:17 pm
  17. 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:

    CNN

    Admin­is­tra­tion offi­cials alarmed by White House push to fast track lucra­tive 5G spec­trum con­tract, sources say

    By Jake Tap­per, Anchor and Chief Wash­ing­ton Cor­re­spon­dent

    Updat­ed 7:33 PM ET, Tue Octo­ber 20, 2020

    Wash­ing­ton (CNN) Senior offi­cials through­out var­i­ous depart­ments and agen­cies of the Trump admin­is­tra­tion tell CNN they are alarmed at White House pres­sure to grant what would essen­tial­ly be a no-bid con­tract to lease the Depart­ment of Defense’s mid-band spec­trum — pre­mi­um real estate for the boom­ing and lucra­tive 5G mar­ket — to Riva­da Net­works, a com­pa­ny in which promi­nent Repub­li­cans and sup­port­ers of Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump have invest­ments.

    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.

    Sources tell CNN that Trump was encour­aged to help Riva­da by Fox News com­men­ta­tor and vet­er­an GOP strate­gist Karl Rove, a lob­by­ist for, and investor in, Riva­da.

    Untold bil­lions are at stake. A gov­ern­ment auc­tion of 70 mega­hertz of spec­trum in August went for more than $4.5 bil­lion. The Riva­da bid would be for 350 mega­hertz of spec­trum — five times that amount.

    Rove denied to CNN that Riva­da is seek­ing an RFP or any non-com­pet­i­tive process. “If we were offered a no-bid con­tract we would turn it down,” he told CNN. “The tech­nol­o­gy should stand on its own.”

    Denials notwith­stand­ing, informed sources tell CNN that the White House is unques­tion­ably pres­sur­ing the Pen­ta­gon to approve what would like­ly be, in the words of one senior admin­is­tra­tion offi­cial, “the biggest hand­off of eco­nom­ic pow­er to a sin­gle enti­ty in his­to­ry,” and to do so with­out full exam­i­na­tion of the impact on nation­al secu­ri­ty and with­out a com­pet­i­tive bid­ding process.

    Craig Mof­fett, a high­ly regard­ed Wall Street ana­lyst of the telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions sec­tor, con­clud­ed in a Octo­ber 7 research paper: “The whole sto­ry smacks of crony­ism at best and reeks of ‘the swamp’ at worst.”

    “Spec­trum is intense­ly valu­able,” Rove told CNN. “God is not invent­ing any more. There is a finite amount of spec­trum avail­able to car­ry wire­less com­mu­ni­ca­tions.”

    Newt Gin­grich, the for­mer Repub­li­can speak­er of the House and not­ed Trump sup­port­er, has also been advo­cat­ing for the Pen­ta­gon to share its 5G net­work with com­mer­cial users, and doing so in a way that has left insid­ers under the impres­sion that he lob­bied for Riva­da. Gin­grich tells CNN he “nev­er advo­cat­ed for Riva­da” specif­i­cal­ly and “did all of it pro bono as a cit­i­zen.”

    When asked direct­ly for a com­ment about alarm that the White House was pres­sur­ing offi­cials to offer Riva­da the RFP, a White House offi­cial told CNN that “the White House has not tak­en a posi­tion in favor of any com­pa­ny over anoth­er with regard to 5G spec­trum” and insist­ed that “con­ver­sa­tions are ongo­ing but it is still pre-deci­sion­al. Regard­less, what­ev­er deci­sion is ulti­mate­ly made will be a result of best cost/benefit for the tax­pay­er, not any polit­i­cal rea­sons.”

    ...

    A spokesman for Riva­da denies that the com­pa­ny is pur­su­ing a non-com­pet­i­tive RFP. “Absolute­ly not,” Riva­da spokesman Bri­an Car­ney told CNN. “We have always advo­cat­ed for a com­pet­i­tive process.”

    Trump’s top eco­nom­ic advis­er, Lar­ry Kud­low, has been argu­ing against any­thing but free mar­ket com­pe­ti­tion for the mid-band spec­trum, which is seen as ide­al for 5G because it can car­ry loads of data while also trav­el­ing sig­nif­i­cant dis­tances. For years, Trump seem­ing­ly agreed with Kud­low. Yet some­thing changed come elec­tion time, sources tell CNN, and the Pres­i­dent began push­ing Mead­ows to help Riva­da.

    Informed sources spec­u­late that Trump may have been try­ing to cur­ry favor with Rove, who has nev­er been a reli­able mem­ber of the MAGA team but remains a pow­er­ful fundrais­ing force and strate­gist in GOP pol­i­tics.

    A more benign inter­pre­ta­tion might be that the Pres­i­dent and Mead­ows are focused on hav­ing 5G net­works spread as quick­ly and safe­ly across the US and have been frus­trat­ed with Pen­ta­gon and Fed­er­al Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Com­mis­sion time­lines and bureau­cra­cy.

    Pen­ta­gon resis­tance

    Pen­ta­gon lead­ers are resist­ing the move, sources tell CNN, since they are con­cerned that this is being rushed with­out thor­ough­ly vet­ting the impact it could have on mil­i­tary readi­ness. Pen­ta­gon lawyers have told the White House that their depart­ment has no author­i­ty to issue RFPs for the pur­pose of leas­ing or sell­ing off its spec­trum, and they think that to do so in the man­ner the White House is push­ing would be a com­plete devi­a­tion from nor­mal rules and reg­u­la­tions.

    Even if the Pen­ta­gon had the author­i­ty to do this, and did­n’t have qualms about doing it in a non-com­pet­i­tive way, sources say that Pen­ta­gon offi­cials are unsure that Riva­da has the abil­i­ty to lease the spec­trum for com­mer­cial use while also pre­serv­ing the US mil­i­tary’s abil­i­ty to use the spec­trum for mil­i­tary exer­cis­es and the defense of the coun­try

    Riva­da offi­cials are pub­licly con­fi­dent about their abil­i­ty to do both. But that con­fi­dence is not shared by many key play­ers in this process. One Pen­ta­gon offi­cial told CNN that while Riva­da believes it has the best solu­tion for shar­ing the spec­trum, the Pen­ta­gon has­n’t vet­ted that asser­tion, so it would be pre­ma­ture to ask the com­pa­ny for an RFP, which would be “an absolute gold mine” if award­ed, the offi­cial said.

    FCC offi­cials have also been stunned at the White House­’s push, both at its attempt to do this using oth­er agen­cies instead of their inde­pen­dent com­mis­sion, and the attempt to do so with­out respect­ing the nor­mal inde­pen­dent bid­ding process.

    Con­cern on Capi­tol Hill

    Both Democ­rats and Repub­li­cans on Capi­tol Hill are con­cerned. House Ener­gy and Com­merce Com­mit­tee Chair­man Rep. Frank Pal­lone Jr., Demo­c­rat of New Jer­sey, and the chair of the rel­e­vant sub­com­mit­tee, Rep. Mike Doyle, Demo­c­rat of Penn­syl­va­nia, recent­ly request­ed more infor­ma­tion about whether “the White House has instruct­ed DoD to pro­ceed imme­di­ate­ly to a Request for Pro­pos­al (‘RFP’) in order to move for­ward toward a nation­al 5G net­work.”

    “Accord­ing to press accounts, sev­er­al polit­i­cal oper­a­tives or lob­by­ists with close ties to Pres­i­dent Trump or his staff...are push­ing for the seis­mic shift in spec­trum pol­i­cy con­tem­plat­ed by the RFI. These reports also sug­gest these Repub­li­can oper­a­tives are work­ing for the ben­e­fit of a spe­cif­ic com­pa­ny, Riva­da, Inc., which has long cham­pi­oned a nation­al net­work that Riva­da would con­struct and oper­ate using its shar­ing tech­nol­o­gy,” Pal­lone and Doyle wrote.

    It’s not just Democ­rats who have raised red flags. At the end of Sep­tem­ber, Sen. John Thune, Repub­li­can of South Dako­ta, along with 18 oth­er GOP sen­a­tors, protest­ed any poten­tial move which would not “rely on pri­vate indus­try and mar­ket forces to fos­ter mul­ti­ple, facil­i­ties-based 5G net­works” but rather push “nation­al­iz­ing 5G and exper­i­ment­ing with untest­ed mod­els for 5G deploy­ment.” The GOP law­mak­ers did not men­tion Riva­da by name.

    Failed effort to win first respon­der con­tract

    Riva­da Net­works is a pri­vate­ly-held com­mu­ni­ca­tions com­pa­ny that has won gov­ern­ment con­tracts in the past. Among its investors is Peter Thiel, the not­ed tech ven­ture cap­i­tal­ist bil­lion­aire and Trump sup­port­er. Spokes­peo­ple for Thiel did not respond to a request for com­ment.

    Beyond the enthu­si­asm of Rivada’s investors and lob­by­ists, many admin­is­tra­tion offi­cials are con­fused as to why Riva­da is even being con­sid­ered for the lucra­tive con­tract.

    In 2016 and 2017, the com­pa­ny pur­sued a nation­wide pub­lic safe­ty con­tract, First Respon­der Net­work Author­i­ty, los­ing out to AT&T. (AT&T is the par­ent com­pa­ny of CNN, but no one affil­i­at­ed with this sto­ry has com­mu­ni­cat­ed with any­one at AT&T in any way about this sto­ry.) Riva­da appealed that deci­sion, which a fed­er­al court reject­ed.

    “The grounds on which we were turned down was that we did not charge first respon­ders enough,” Rove said.

    That’s not how the court would put it. In her 2017 rul­ing, Judge Elaine Kaplan said that due to “Rivada’s finan­cial sit­u­a­tion and the restric­tions in the solic­i­ta­tion, there was an unac­cept­ably high like­li­hood that the banks might invoke those con­di­tions, leav­ing Riva­da with­out the finan­cial capac­i­ty to even begin per­for­mance on the con­tract.”

    The court also not­ed that First­Net had assessed that Riva­da “possesse(d) few capa­bil­i­ties, staff, or finan­cial resources”; did “not itself have mate­r­i­al expe­ri­ence in...building and oper­at­ing a nation­wide wire­less net­work”; and lacked any expe­ri­ence in “super­vis­ing a project of the size and scope” of the nation­wide pub­lic safe­ty broad­band net­work.

    “We think that the eval­u­a­tion com­mit­tee in First­Net erred because it judged Riva­da Net­works as a stand­alone enti­ty bid­ding for First­Net,” Car­ney told CNN, not­ing that Riva­da was work­ing with a con­sor­tium of sev­er­al large com­mu­ni­ca­tions com­pa­nies. But Riva­da Net­works did­n’t bid on First­Net. Riva­da Mer­cury, a con­sor­tium joint­ly owned by Riva­da, Har­ris, Fujit­su and Black & Veatch (IIRC) bid on First­Net.”

    Speed­ing the process

    Ear­li­er this year, Mead­ows asked Pen­ta­gon lead­er­ship to exam­ine what could be done to free up some of this 5G spec­trum for auc­tion by the FCC, and chief infor­ma­tion offi­cer Dana Deasy was assigned to the task, accord­ing to sources.

    This task, which would nor­mal­ly take around 15 months, was fast-tracked to take only 15 weeks. In August, the White House and Pen­ta­gon announced plans to free up for auc­tion 100 mega­hertz band of spec­trum. In Sep­tem­ber the FCC pro­posed a plan for doing so, with a sched­uled auc­tion end-date of Decem­ber 2021.

    This process is being done by the book, observers note, albeit extreme­ly quick­ly. Sep­a­rate­ly, in Sep­tem­ber the Pen­ta­gon issued a Request for Infor­ma­tion about what should be done with a band of spec­trum that Riva­da has its eyes on. The due date for the RFI respons­es was Mon­day.

    Beyond that, and less trans­par­ent­ly, is the push by the White House to force the Pen­ta­gon to hand over con­trol of this mid-band spec­trum to Riva­da, sources tell CNN.

    “Some­thing is real­ly fishy about this,” a senior admin­is­tra­tion offi­cial told CNN.

    ...

    ———–

    “Admin­is­tra­tion offi­cials alarmed by White House push to fast track lucra­tive 5G spec­trum con­tract, sources say” by Jake Tap­per; CNN; 10/20/2020

    “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:

    ...
    Sources tell CNN that Trump was encour­aged to help Riva­da by Fox News com­men­ta­tor and vet­er­an GOP strate­gist Karl Rove, a lob­by­ist for, and investor in, Riva­da.

    ...

    Trump’s top eco­nom­ic advis­er, Lar­ry Kud­low, has been argu­ing against any­thing but free mar­ket com­pe­ti­tion for the mid-band spec­trum, which is seen as ide­al for 5G because it can car­ry loads of data while also trav­el­ing sig­nif­i­cant dis­tances. For years, Trump seem­ing­ly agreed with Kud­low. Yet some­thing changed come elec­tion time, sources tell CNN, and the Pres­i­dent began push­ing Mead­ows to help Riva­da.

    Informed sources spec­u­late that Trump may have been try­ing to cur­ry favor with Rove, who has nev­er been a reli­able mem­ber of the MAGA team but remains a pow­er­ful fundrais­ing force and strate­gist in GOP pol­i­tics.
    ...

    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:

    ...
    Untold bil­lions are at stake. A gov­ern­ment auc­tion of 70 mega­hertz of spec­trum in August went for more than $4.5 bil­lion. The Riva­da bid would be for 350 mega­hertz of spec­trum — five times that amount.

    Rove denied to CNN that Riva­da is seek­ing an RFP or any non-com­pet­i­tive process. “If we were offered a no-bid con­tract we would turn it down,” he told CNN. “The tech­nol­o­gy should stand on its own.”

    Denials notwith­stand­ing, informed sources tell CNN that the White House is unques­tion­ably pres­sur­ing the Pen­ta­gon to approve what would like­ly be, in the words of one senior admin­is­tra­tion offi­cial, “the biggest hand­off of eco­nom­ic pow­er to a sin­gle enti­ty in his­to­ry,” and to do so with­out full exam­i­na­tion of the impact on nation­al secu­ri­ty and with­out a com­pet­i­tive bid­ding process.

    ...

    FCC offi­cials have also been stunned at the White House­’s push, both at its attempt to do this using oth­er agen­cies instead of their inde­pen­dent com­mis­sion, and the attempt to do so with­out respect­ing the nor­mal inde­pen­dent bid­ding process.
    ...

    And that his­toric eco­nom­ic hand­off just hap­pens to present a poten­tial­ly very seri­ous mil­i­tary vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty. Because pri­or­i­ties:

    ...
    Pen­ta­gon lead­ers are resist­ing the move, sources tell CNN, since they are con­cerned that this is being rushed with­out thor­ough­ly vet­ting the impact it could have on mil­i­tary readi­ness. Pen­ta­gon lawyers have told the White House that their depart­ment has no author­i­ty to issue RFPs for the pur­pose of leas­ing or sell­ing off its spec­trum, and they think that to do so in the man­ner the White House is push­ing would be a com­plete devi­a­tion from nor­mal rules and reg­u­la­tions.

    Even if the Pen­ta­gon had the author­i­ty to do this, and did­n’t have qualms about doing it in a non-com­pet­i­tive way, sources say that Pen­ta­gon offi­cials are unsure that Riva­da has the abil­i­ty to lease the spec­trum for com­mer­cial use while also pre­serv­ing the US mil­i­tary’s abil­i­ty to use the spec­trum for mil­i­tary exer­cis­es and the defense of the coun­try

    Riva­da offi­cials are pub­licly con­fi­dent about their abil­i­ty to do both. But that con­fi­dence is not shared by many key play­ers in this process. One Pen­ta­gon offi­cial told CNN that while Riva­da believes it has the best solu­tion for shar­ing the spec­trum, the Pen­ta­gon has­n’t vet­ted that asser­tion, so it would be pre­ma­ture to ask the com­pa­ny for an RFP, which would be “an absolute gold mine” if award­ed, the offi­cial said.
    ...

    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’.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | October 24, 2020, 4:00 pm
  18. 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:

    CNN

    Exclu­sive: Feds chased sus­pect­ed for­eign link to Trump’s 2016 cam­paign cash for three years

    By Kate­lyn Polantz, Evan Perez and Jere­my Herb
    Updat­ed 8:59 PM ET, Wed Octo­ber 14, 2020

    Wash­ing­ton (CNN) For more than three years, fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tors inves­ti­gat­ed whether mon­ey flow­ing through an Egypt­ian state-owned bank could have backed mil­lions of dol­lars Don­ald Trump donat­ed to his own cam­paign days before he won the 2016 elec­tion, mul­ti­ple sources famil­iar with the inves­ti­ga­tion told CNN.

    The inves­ti­ga­tion, which both pre­dat­ed and out­last­ed spe­cial coun­sel Robert Mueller’s probe, exam­ined whether there was an ille­gal for­eign cam­paign con­tri­bu­tion. It rep­re­sents one of the most pro­longed efforts by fed­er­al inves­ti­ga­tors to under­stand the Pres­i­den­t’s for­eign finan­cial ties, and became a sig­nif­i­cant but hid­den part of the spe­cial coun­sel’s pur­suits.

    The inves­ti­ga­tion was kept so secret that at one point inves­ti­ga­tors locked down an entire floor of a fed­er­al cour­t­house in Wash­ing­ton, DC, so Mueller’s team could fight for the Egypt­ian bank’s records in closed-door court pro­ceed­ings fol­low­ing a grand jury sub­poe­na. The probe, which closed this sum­mer with no charges filed, has nev­er before been described pub­licly.

    Pros­e­cu­tors sus­pect­ed there could be a link between the Egypt­ian bank and Trump’s cam­paign con­tri­bu­tion, accord­ing to sev­er­al of the sources, but they could nev­er prove a con­nec­tion.

    It’s not clear that inves­ti­ga­tors ever had con­crete evi­dence of a rel­e­vant bank trans­fer from the Egypt­ian bank. But mul­ti­ple sources said there was suf­fi­cient infor­ma­tion to jus­ti­fy the sub­poe­na and keep the crim­i­nal cam­paign finance inves­ti­ga­tion open after the Mueller probe end­ed.

    CNN learned of the Egypt inves­ti­ga­tion from more than a dozen sources famil­iar with the effort, as well as through hints in pub­lic records, includ­ing new­ly released court doc­u­ments and Mueller wit­ness inter­view sum­maries, called 302s, that CNN and Buz­zfeed obtained through law­suits.

    In a court fil­ing last month, the Jus­tice Depart­ment con­firmed that when the spe­cial coun­sel’s office shut down in 2019, Mueller trans­ferred an ongo­ing for­eign cam­paign con­tri­bu­tion inves­ti­ga­tion to pros­e­cu­tors in Wash­ing­ton. Some of CNN’s sources have con­firmed that the case, which Mueller cryp­ti­cal­ly called a “for­eign cam­paign con­tri­bu­tion” probe, was in fact the Egypt inves­ti­ga­tion.

    The probe was con­firmed this week by a Jus­tice Depart­ment senior offi­cial who respond­ed to CNN’s queries: “The case was first looked at by the Spe­cial Coun­sel inves­ti­ga­tors who failed to bring a case, and then it was looked at by the US attor­ney’s office, and career pros­e­cu­tors in the nation­al secu­ri­ty sec­tion, who also were unable to bring a case. Based upon the rec­om­men­da­tions of both the FBI and those career pros­e­cu­tors, Michael Sher­win, the act­ing US attor­ney, for­mal­ly closed the case in July.”

    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.

    Among the chief ques­tions pros­e­cu­tors sought to answer and appar­ent­ly nev­er did was whether Trump was sup­port­ed by or was indebt­ed to a for­eign pow­er.

    The inves­ti­ga­tion even went as far as the US Supreme Court, the only time dur­ing the two-year Mueller inves­ti­ga­tion a dis­pute went to the high court. The jus­tices ulti­mate­ly declined to hear the case.

    Yet nei­ther the spe­cial coun­sel’s office, nor pros­e­cu­tors who car­ried on the case after Mueller, got a com­plete pic­ture of the Pres­i­den­t’s finan­cial entan­gle­ments. Pros­e­cu­tors in Wash­ing­ton even pro­posed sub­poe­naing finan­cial records tied to Trump, before top offi­cials final­ly con­clud­ed this sum­mer they had reached a dead end, the sources said.

    As aggres­sive as Mueller’s office was — charg­ing mul­ti­ple Trump advis­ers for obstruc­tion, gain­ing coop­er­a­tors, indict­ing Rus­sians for elec­tion-relat­ed malfea­sance and doc­u­ment­ing attempts by the Pres­i­dent to obstruct jus­tice — the spe­cial coun­sel has faced crit­i­cism, includ­ing from one of its own pros­e­cu­tors, for not tak­ing bold enough inves­tiga­tive steps to gain access to the Pres­i­den­t’s finances.

    Jason Miller, a senior advis­er to the Trump 2020 cam­paign, said in response to CNN’s ques­tions, “Pres­i­dent Trump has nev­er received a pen­ny from Egypt.”

    A spokesman for the Egypt­ian Pres­i­dent declined to com­ment.

    Egypt sus­pi­cions

    After Trump’s elec­tion win, the FBI began work­ing with pros­e­cu­tors in the DC US attor­ney’s office to inves­ti­gate the Egypt mat­ter, accord­ing to a per­son famil­iar with the office.

    “It was some­thing that looked inter­est­ing,” that per­son said. “We real­ly did­n’t do much work on it before turn­ing it loose.”

    In May 2017, after Trump fired FBI Direc­tor James Comey, Robert Mueller was appoint­ed spe­cial coun­sel, and he took on the case.

    Mueller’s pri­ma­ry task was to inves­ti­gate Russ­ian gov­ern­ment attempts to inter­fere in the 2016 elec­tion, which had con­sumed the polit­i­cal and inves­tiga­tive con­ver­sa­tions in the ear­ly days of Trump’s pres­i­den­cy. But Mueller’s man­date also allowed him to take on relat­ed crim­i­nal inves­ti­ga­tions, which in this case includ­ed anoth­er probe of poten­tial for­eign influ­ence con­nect­ed to the cam­paign.

    Accord­ing to a recent book by Andrew Weiss­mann, one of Mueller’s senior pros­e­cu­tors, the spe­cial coun­sel’s office con­sist­ed of three prin­ci­pal teams: one focused on for­mer Trump cam­paign chair­man Paul Man­afort, anoth­er on Rus­si­a’s elec­tion inter­fer­ence, and a third on the Pres­i­den­t’s attempts to obstruct jus­tice.

    But there was a fourth team, CNN has learned: one part­ly ded­i­cat­ed to inves­ti­gat­ing the Egypt mat­ter.

    Zainab Ahmad, a for­mer inter­na­tion­al ter­ror­ism pros­e­cu­tor, and Bran­don Van Grack, a nation­al secu­ri­ty and coun­ter­in­tel­li­gence spe­cial­ist, co-led it, accord­ing to sources. Pub­lic records also show they focused on cas­es sep­a­rate from oth­er tri­al attor­neys in the spe­cial coun­sel’s office and had senior titles equiv­a­lent to oth­er Mueller team lead­ers.

    Van Grack large­ly focused on the case against for­mer nation­al secu­ri­ty advis­er Michael Fly­nn. Ahmad assist­ed Van Grack on Fly­nn then devot­ed her­self to the Egypt inves­ti­ga­tion. Ahmad, when reached by CNN, would­n’t speak about her work in the spe­cial coun­sel’s inves­ti­ga­tion. She is now a lawyer in pri­vate prac­tice. Van Grack is now a Jus­tice Depart­ment pros­e­cu­tor over­see­ing for­eign lob­by­ing inves­ti­ga­tions, and did­n’t respond to a request for com­ment.

    Mueller’s team tried to under­stand both the $10 mil­lion con­tri­bu­tion Trump gave to his cam­paign 11 days before the 2016 elec­tion and the Trump cam­paign’s ties to Egypt­ian Pres­i­dent Abdel Fat­tah el-Sisi, accord­ing to sources and redact­ed inter­view records released from the Mueller inves­ti­ga­tion.

    In the clos­ing weeks of the 2016 cam­paign, Trump and Sisi met in New York dur­ing the Unit­ed Nations Gen­er­al Assem­bly. The Repub­li­can pres­i­den­tial can­di­date hit it off with the dic­ta­tor. Sisi said after­ward that Trump would “no doubt” be a strong pres­i­dent while Trump called the Egypt­ian leader “a fan­tas­tic guy” with whom he had “good chem­istry” — a notable dif­fer­ence from Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion pol­i­cy, which was reflect­ed in Hillary Clin­ton’s focus on Egyp­t’s human rights record dur­ing her own meet­ing with Sisi at the Gen­er­al Assem­bly.

    Sisi became the first for­eign leader to call and con­grat­u­late Trump after he won the elec­tion. At a 2019 G7 sum­mit, Trump called out, “Where’s my favorite dic­ta­tor?” as he await­ed the Egypt­ian Pres­i­dent, accord­ing to press reports.

    The last-minute ‘loan’

    By sum­mer 2017, Mueller’s office was han­dling the Egypt inves­ti­ga­tion gin­ger­ly, with the team of pros­e­cu­tors and FBI per­son­nel often work­ing with­out shar­ing full details with the oth­er teams in the office, accord­ing to mul­ti­ple accounts of the office’s dynam­ics.

    CNN sent Mueller detailed ques­tions about the Egypt inves­ti­ga­tion for this sto­ry. He declined to com­ment.

    One offi­cial famil­iar with the work said some inves­ti­ga­tors believed the Egypt inquiry pre­sent­ed a more direct avenue for Mueller’s team to exam­ine Trump’s finances, in part because it did not have an obvi­ous tie to Rus­sia.

    Div­ing into Trump’s finances, how­ev­er, was high­ly sen­si­tive — so much so that Mueller sus­pect­ed the Pres­i­dent would fire him if the White House learned his finances were being probed, cross­ing a so-called “red line” Trump set ear­ly in the Mueller inves­ti­ga­tion.

    Yet under­stand­ing Trump’s finances was cru­cial to the Egypt inves­ti­ga­tion — espe­cial­ly regard­ing the $10 mil­lion he gave to his cam­paign.

    Need­ing a final push before Elec­tion Day as the polls tight­ened in 2016, the Trump cam­paign was run­ning low on cash. Trump’s top cam­paign offi­cials scram­bled to con­vince Trump to inject mon­ey, accord­ing to mem­os of wit­ness inter­views from the inves­ti­ga­tion and con­tem­po­ra­ne­ous news reports.

    Trump lagged well behind a pledge he made to spend $100 mil­lion of his own mon­ey on his cam­paign. Less than two weeks before Elec­tion Day, Trump wrote his cam­paign a $10 mil­lion check, pub­licly call­ing it a loan. Cam­paign finance records showed it as his sin­gle largest polit­i­cal con­tri­bu­tion, by far, and not one the cam­paign would reim­burse him for.

    Fed­er­al law enforce­ment offi­cials sus­pect­ed, in part because of intel­li­gence infor­ma­tion, that there was mon­ey mov­ing through the Egypt­ian bank that could con­nect to Trump’s cam­paign dona­tion, accord­ing to the sources. Yet untan­gling the web of Trump’s com­plex busi­ness inter­ests ulti­mate­ly remained out of reach.

    Cam­paign finance law pro­hibits for­eign polit­i­cal con­tri­bu­tions to cam­paigns for pub­lic office. A finan­cial tie between a sit­ting pres­i­dent and a for­eign coun­try could also have explo­sive nation­al secu­ri­ty con­se­quences.

    Mueller’s office pressed wit­ness­es to explain how the Trump-Sisi meet­ing in late 2016 came about. Ahmad, whose aims on the inves­ti­ga­tion were cloaked in secre­cy, was repeat­ed­ly present in inter­views touch­ing on both Trump’s $10 mil­lion con­tri­bu­tion to his cam­paign and the cam­paign’s ties to Egypt.

    For instance, in one wit­ness inter­view in Novem­ber 2017, Ahmad and the FBI pressed an unnamed for­mer staffer on the Trump cam­paign, tran­si­tion and Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil about Trump’s meet­ing with Sisi and her inter­ac­tions with Egypt­ian nation­als. Anoth­er wit­ness, accord­ing to the inter­view mem­os, spoke to inves­ti­ga­tors in August 2018 about the Trump-Sisi meet­ing and Egyp­t’s stance on US pres­i­den­tial elec­tions.

    Mueller’s team repeat­ed­ly asked wit­ness­es ques­tions about Trump for­eign pol­i­cy cam­paign advis­er Walid Phares and his ties to Egypt, after intel­li­gence point­ed them toward him. The New York Times first report­ed in June about the spe­cial coun­sel’s inves­ti­ga­tion into Phares’ sus­pect­ed role in an Egypt­ian influ­ence effort. It led to no charges. The FBI has not made pub­lic records that show Mueller’s team inter­view­ing Phares, though the for­mer Trump advis­er has said he spoke to inves­ti­ga­tors. Phares’ assis­tant declined to com­ment.

    In an ini­tial inter­view with the spe­cial coun­sel’s office, senior cam­paign offi­cial and White House advis­er Stephen Ban­non also dis­cussed his role in set­ting up the meet­ing between Trump and Sisi.

    In a ses­sion months lat­er, Ban­non was asked about Trump’s $10 mil­lion con­tri­bu­tion to his cam­paign, accord­ing to anoth­er recent release of Mueller’s inter­view mem­os.

    Ban­non explained to Mueller’s inves­ti­ga­tors how Trump ini­tial­ly resist­ed cut­ting his cam­paign such a large check, and that Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kush­n­er doubt­ed that Trump would do so, say­ing, “that was not going to hap­pen,” accord­ing to Ban­non. But Trump was talked into pro­vid­ing the last-minute mon­ey by future Trea­sury Sec­re­tary Steven Mnuchin and Kush­n­er, Ban­non said. Mnuchin described the mon­ey as a “cash advance,” Ban­non said, and Trump even­tu­al­ly agreed to wire the mon­ey. “Trump was con­vinced the cash would be there,” Ban­non said, accord­ing to the inter­view sum­ma­ry.

    A spokesper­son for Mnuchin at the Trea­sury Depart­ment con­firmed Ban­non’s descrip­tion of con­vinc­ing Trump to make the loan, and said that Mnuchin had no knowl­edge of how Trump had $10 mil­lion avail­able to him.

    Records of the spe­cial coun­sel’s office inter­views, which remain heav­i­ly redact­ed, do not make clear whether wit­ness­es were asked direct­ly about mon­ey con­nect­ed to Egypt. At the same time, inves­ti­ga­tors may have sought not to tip their sus­pi­cions to wit­ness­es — espe­cial­ly those like Ban­non who were close to the Pres­i­dent.

    ...

    Trump him­self nev­er had to answer ques­tions direct­ly about his $10 mil­lion cam­paign con­tri­bu­tion, in part because of the broad­ness of ques­tions sub­mit­ted to his lawyers to answer in writ­ing.

    Mueller asked the Pres­i­dent, “Did any per­son or enti­ty inform you dur­ing the cam­paign that any for­eign gov­ern­ment or for­eign leader, oth­er than Rus­sia or Vladimir Putin, had pro­vid­ed, wished to pro­vide, or offered to pro­vide tan­gi­ble sup­port to your cam­paign?” Trump wrote back in his writ­ten answers that he had “no rec­ol­lec­tion of being told dur­ing the cam­paign” of sup­port from a for­eign gov­ern­ment.

    Mys­tery court fight

    The Egypt inves­ti­ga­tion also led to one of the most secre­tive court pro­ceed­ings in Wash­ing­ton in years.

    Until now, the case was only known to be a fight over a grand jury sub­poe­na between the Mueller team and a for­eign gov­ern­ment-owned com­pa­ny.

    But CNN has learned the case was a fight over records from an Egypt­ian nation­al bank.

    In July 2018, the Mueller team issued a secret grand jury sub­poe­na for records to the Egypt­ian bank — spark­ing a months-long court fight fight that only grad­u­al­ly became pub­lic as it pro­gressed through the court sys­tem.

    Soon enough, the bank was argu­ing it should­n’t have to give Mueller records because it was inter­change­able with the for­eign gov­ern­ment that owned it. The US courts dis­agreed repeat­ed­ly, say­ing the com­pa­ny could­n’t be immune from the Mueller team sub­poe­na.

    At the time, the courts and Mueller’s team took extreme cau­tion to keep the mat­ter con­fi­den­tial. One judge, Beryl How­ell of the DC Dis­trict Court, wrote that the case dealt with “for­eign inter­fer­ence in the 2016 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion and poten­tial col­lu­sion in those efforts by Amer­i­can cit­i­zens.”

    The fight was so close­ly guard­ed that it took months for the names of lawyers involved to emerge, only becom­ing pub­lic first through CNN report­ing then con­firmed by court records.

    Attor­neys who rep­re­sent­ed the bank in the sub­poe­na fight and a rep­re­sen­ta­tive from their law firm, Alston & Bird, did not respond to CNN’s inquiries for this sto­ry.

    When the fed­er­al appeals court in Wash­ing­ton, DC, heard argu­ments in the case in Decem­ber 2018, secu­ri­ty cleared jour­nal­ists from an entire floor of the fed­er­al cour­t­house, allow­ing attor­neys involved in the case to enter and exit the build­ing and the court­room with­out being seen.

    CNN, how­ev­er, spot­ted Mueller team pros­e­cu­tors, includ­ing Ahmad, return­ing to the spe­cial coun­sel’s office min­utes after the hear­ing end­ed.

    The case even land­ed before the Supreme Court in ear­ly 2019. The high court ulti­mate­ly declined the com­pa­ny’s bid to block Mueller’s sub­poe­na in March 2019.

    Even then, how­ev­er, the stand­off between US pros­e­cu­tors and the Egypt­ian bank end­ed in a stale­mate.

    The bank had hand­ed over almost 1,000 pages of doc­u­ments to pros­e­cu­tors, trans­lat­ed into Eng­lish, accord­ing to redact­ed court records that were even­tu­al­ly released after the Mueller inves­ti­ga­tion con­clud­ed. But that did­n’t sat­is­fy pros­e­cu­tors, either in the Mueller inves­ti­ga­tion or the DC US attor­ney’s office.

    The bank’s lawyers pro­fessed it had “gone to great lengths to find and vol­un­tar­i­ly pro­duce doc­u­ments respon­sive to the sub­poe­na.”

    “What more could the Spe­cial Coun­sel want?” they asked, accord­ing to court tran­scripts.

    The fed­er­al inves­ti­ga­tors told the court they believed there must be more, and even the judge acknowl­edged gaps in the bank’s records.

    In the end, it was the bank’s word against the inves­ti­ga­tors. The court pro­ceed­ings end­ed with pros­e­cu­tors get­ting noth­ing more than what the bank was will­ing to turn over, and the bank was excused from hun­dreds of thou­sands of dol­lars in fines that had accrued for defy­ing the sub­poe­na.

    It appeared to be a dead end — and not jus­ti­fi­ca­tion enough for Mueller to keep his office open to fin­ish this case alone.

    ‘Con­tin­u­ing robust­ly’ after Mueller

    Inves­ti­ga­tors faced a cross­roads in ear­ly 2019 as Mueller final­ized his report. Deputy Attor­ney Gen­er­al Rod Rosen­stein and then-new Attor­ney Gen­er­al William Barr over­saw the end of Mueller’s probe and were briefed on inves­ti­ga­tions still ongo­ing, but they left it up to Mueller’s team and the FBI to deter­mine which unre­solved mat­ters should be sent to US attor­neys’ offices so Mueller’s office could close, accord­ing to sources briefed on the events.

    In late March 2019, short­ly after Mueller’s inves­ti­ga­tion con­clud­ed, How­ell, over­see­ing final court pro­ceed­ings in the Egypt­ian bank’s sub­poe­na case, asked a pros­e­cu­tor point-blank if the inves­ti­ga­tion was over. “No, it’s con­tin­u­ing. I can say it’s con­tin­u­ing robust­ly,” David Good­hand of the DC US attor­ney’s office told the court.

    Anoth­er pros­e­cu­tor in the office told the judge the inves­ti­ga­tion, even after Mueller, was “very much a live issue” requir­ing “a great deal of resources, time and atten­tion by the gov­ern­ment,” accord­ing to a tran­script of a late March 2019 court hear­ing.

    For the past year and a half, the mat­ter was kept even qui­eter under Barr and three dif­fer­ent US attor­neys in Wash­ing­ton than it had been under Mueller.

    Behind the scenes the inves­ti­ga­tion hinged on whether pros­e­cu­tors, hav­ing been thwart­ed by the Egypt­ian gov­ern­ment, had enough evi­dence to seek more infor­ma­tion relat­ed to Trump’s finances.

    At one point, pros­e­cu­tors want­ed to sub­poe­na Trump’s bank records, accord­ing to sources briefed on the inves­ti­ga­tion. The deci­sion to approve the sub­poe­na fell to US Attor­ney Jessie Liu in Wash­ing­ton, DC.

    Liu spent weeks por­ing over the inves­tiga­tive records before reject­ing the request, accord­ing to the sources. Liu told pros­e­cu­tors she did­n’t believe they had met the stan­dard need­ed to seek the records. The inves­ti­ga­tion stag­nat­ed, but Liu did­n’t close the case. She declined to com­ment for this sto­ry.

    It’s unclear how much activ­i­ty occurred after Liu reject­ed the sub­poe­na request. Pros­e­cu­tors who dis­agreed with her deci­sion believed it was now impos­si­ble to resolve ques­tions about Trump’s 2016 cam­paign con­tri­bu­tion. Liu told peo­ple in her office that if the inves­ti­ga­tion had pro­duced enough evi­dence, Mueller would have made the deci­sion to take addi­tion­al steps, accord­ing to sources.

    Liu’s tenure as US attor­ney came to an abrupt end in Feb­ru­ary, when she was pushed out after Repub­li­can law­mak­ers took aim at her over the han­dling of oth­er cas­es. Michael Sher­win, the cur­rent act­ing US attor­ney in DC, stepped into the job in May and reviewed the Egypt inves­ti­ga­tion.

    Sher­win met with FBI inves­ti­ga­tors and coun­ter­in­tel­li­gence pros­e­cu­tors before decid­ing to close the case this sum­mer, sources briefed on the mat­ter said.

    Mueller’s for­eign cam­paign con­tri­bu­tion case

    Mueller and the Jus­tice Depart­ment have tak­en pains to keep qui­et that the inves­ti­ga­tion even exist­ed.

    The Mueller report does not men­tion the Egypt inves­ti­ga­tion. Though some parts of the report are still redact­ed, the large­ly pub­lic table of con­tents out­lines noth­ing that close­ly resem­bles descrip­tions of the case.

    Mueller dropped only one hint, list­ing it among 11 cas­es he inves­ti­gat­ed then trans­ferred to oth­er offices when his shop closed. For more than a year, the entry was redact­ed.

    Just last month, the Jus­tice Depart­ment lift­ed the redac­tion on this 11th case and said the case was closed.

    On paper, Mueller described the inves­ti­ga­tion with only three vague words: “For­eign cam­paign con­tri­bu­tion.”

    ————-

    “Exclu­sive: Feds chased sus­pect­ed for­eign link to Trump’s 2016 cam­paign cash for three years” by Kate­lyn Polantz, Evan Perez and Jere­my Herb; CNN; 10/14/2020

    “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:

    ...
    In July 2018, the Mueller team issued a secret grand jury sub­poe­na for records to the Egypt­ian bank — spark­ing a months-long court fight fight that only grad­u­al­ly became pub­lic as it pro­gressed through the court sys­tem.

    Soon enough, the bank was argu­ing it should­n’t have to give Mueller records because it was inter­change­able with the for­eign gov­ern­ment that owned it. The US courts dis­agreed repeat­ed­ly, say­ing the com­pa­ny could­n’t be immune from the Mueller team sub­poe­na.

    ...

    The case even land­ed before the Supreme Court in ear­ly 2019. The high court ulti­mate­ly declined the com­pa­ny’s bid to block Mueller’s sub­poe­na in March 2019.

    Even then, how­ev­er, the stand­off between US pros­e­cu­tors and the Egypt­ian bank end­ed in a stale­mate.

    The bank had hand­ed over almost 1,000 pages of doc­u­ments to pros­e­cu­tors, trans­lat­ed into Eng­lish, accord­ing to redact­ed court records that were even­tu­al­ly released after the Mueller inves­ti­ga­tion con­clud­ed. But that did­n’t sat­is­fy pros­e­cu­tors, either in the Mueller inves­ti­ga­tion or the DC US attor­ney’s office.

    The bank’s lawyers pro­fessed it had “gone to great lengths to find and vol­un­tar­i­ly pro­duce doc­u­ments respon­sive to the sub­poe­na.”

    “What more could the Spe­cial Coun­sel want?” they asked, accord­ing to court tran­scripts.

    The fed­er­al inves­ti­ga­tors told the court they believed there must be more, and even the judge acknowl­edged gaps in the bank’s records.

    In the end, it was the bank’s word against the inves­ti­ga­tors. The court pro­ceed­ings end­ed with pros­e­cu­tors get­ting noth­ing more than what the bank was will­ing to turn over, and the bank was excused from hun­dreds of thou­sands of dol­lars in fines that had accrued for defy­ing the sub­poe­na.

    It appeared to be a dead end — and not jus­ti­fi­ca­tion enough for Mueller to keep his office open to fin­ish this case alone.
    ...

    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:

    ...
    In an ini­tial inter­view with the spe­cial coun­sel’s office, senior cam­paign offi­cial and White House advis­er Stephen Ban­non also dis­cussed his role in set­ting up the meet­ing between Trump and Sisi.

    In a ses­sion months lat­er, Ban­non was asked about Trump’s $10 mil­lion con­tri­bu­tion to his cam­paign, accord­ing to anoth­er recent release of Mueller’s inter­view mem­os.

    Ban­non explained to Mueller’s inves­ti­ga­tors how Trump ini­tial­ly resist­ed cut­ting his cam­paign such a large check, and that Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kush­n­er doubt­ed that Trump would do so, say­ing, “that was not going to hap­pen,” accord­ing to Ban­non. But Trump was talked into pro­vid­ing the last-minute mon­ey by future Trea­sury Sec­re­tary Steven Mnuchin and Kush­n­er, Ban­non said. Mnuchin described the mon­ey as a “cash advance,” Ban­non said, and Trump even­tu­al­ly agreed to wire the mon­ey. “Trump was con­vinced the cash would be there,” Ban­non said, accord­ing to the inter­view sum­ma­ry.

    A spokesper­son for Mnuchin at the Trea­sury Depart­ment con­firmed Ban­non’s descrip­tion of con­vinc­ing Trump to make the loan, and said that Mnuchin had no knowl­edge of how Trump had $10 mil­lion avail­able to him.

    Records of the spe­cial coun­sel’s office inter­views, which remain heav­i­ly redact­ed, do not make clear whether wit­ness­es were asked direct­ly about mon­ey con­nect­ed to Egypt. At the same time, inves­ti­ga­tors may have sought not to tip their sus­pi­cions to wit­ness­es — espe­cial­ly those like Ban­non who were close to the Pres­i­dent.
    ...

    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:

    The New York Times

    F.B.I. Once Inves­ti­gat­ed Trump Cam­paign Adviser’s Ties to Egypt
    Inves­ti­ga­tors scru­ti­nized ties between Walid Phares and the Egypt­ian gov­ern­ment. He was nev­er charged with a crime.

    By Adam Gold­man and Michael S. Schmidt
    Pub­lished May 28, 2020
    Updat­ed June 20, 2020

    WASHINGTON — The F.B.I. and the spe­cial counsel’s office inves­ti­gat­ed whether a for­mer Trump cam­paign advis­er secret­ly worked for the Egypt­ian gov­ern­ment to influ­ence the incom­ing admin­is­tra­tion in the months before Pres­i­dent Trump took office, accord­ing to sev­er­al peo­ple famil­iar with the inquiry.

    The for­mer advis­er, Walid Phares, was one of five Trump cam­paign aides inves­ti­gat­ed over their ties to for­eign coun­tries. Robert S. Mueller III took over the inves­ti­ga­tions after he was appoint­ed spe­cial coun­sel in May 2017.

    The deci­sion to inves­ti­gate Mr. Phares was based on high­ly clas­si­fied infor­ma­tion, the peo­ple said. Inves­ti­ga­tors exam­ined the mat­ter for months but ulti­mate­ly brought no charges.

    Though Mr. Mueller’s pri­ma­ry man­date was to exam­ine Russia’s covert oper­a­tion to sab­o­tage the elec­tion and whether any Trump asso­ciates con­spired, sev­er­al Trump cam­paign advis­ers and tran­si­tion team mem­bers elicit­ed con­cerns at the F.B.I. because of their over­seas con­tacts and the pos­si­bil­i­ty that a vari­ety of for­eign gov­ern­ments might have been try­ing to secret­ly use the advis­ers to advance their agen­das.

    Mr. Phares declined to com­ment, as did a Jus­tice Depart­ment spokes­woman.

    The C.IA. direc­tor at the time, Mike Pom­peo, was briefed on the inves­ti­ga­tion, sug­gest­ing that the agency might have obtained a tip from an Egypt­ian source that prompt­ed the F.B.I. inquiry, peo­ple famil­iar with it said.

    Mr. Phares joined the for­eign pol­i­cy team that Mr. Trump assem­bled in the spring of 2016 as his sur­prise ascen­dance to the Repub­li­can nom­i­na­tion for pres­i­dent prompt­ed the par­ty estab­lish­ment to open­ly ques­tion his lack of for­eign pol­i­cy expe­ri­ence. But the team was almost imme­di­ate­ly derid­ed as a col­lec­tion of fringe thinkers and unknowns.

    ...

    Per­haps the most promi­nent of the ear­ly Trump for­eign advis­ers, Mr. Phares fre­quent­ly appeared on Fox News to dis­cuss the dan­gers of Islam­ic ter­ror­ism and Shari­ah law. A Lebanese-born Maronite Chris­t­ian, he pre­vi­ous­ly served as an advis­er to Sen­a­tor Mitt Rom­ney, Repub­li­can of Utah, when he ran for pres­i­dent in 2012.

    J.D. Gor­don, a for­mer Pen­ta­gon offi­cial who worked for the Trump cam­paign as a nation­al secu­ri­ty advis­er, told inves­ti­ga­tors that he hired Mr. Phares for the for­eign pol­i­cy team. He said that Mr. Phares quit the cam­paign in May and then went to work as a Trump sur­ro­gate, adding that Jared Kush­n­er, the president’s son-in-law and senior advis­er, would not let Mr. Phares have a job in the admin­is­tra­tion. It was not clear why.

    The Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion had been crit­i­cal of the Egypt­ian gov­ern­ment, accus­ing Pres­i­dent Abdel Fat­tah el-Sisi’s admin­is­tra­tion of arbi­trary killings and polit­i­cal­ly moti­vat­ed arrests in a crack­down on free­dom of expres­sion after he seized pow­er in a mil­i­tary takeover.

    Forg­ing new ties with Mr. Trump, who seemed less con­cerned with the country’s human right’s record, would have ben­e­fit­ed Mr. el-Sisi both polit­i­cal­ly and mil­i­tar­i­ly.

    Hints of the inves­ti­ga­tion into Mr. Phares have emerged in redact­ed spe­cial coun­sel doc­u­ments and in F.B.I. inter­view notes obtained by Buz­zFeed News in an open records law­suit. CNN also sued for the records.

    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.

    Mr. Clo­vis and Mr. Phares had met with an Egypt­ian offi­cial at a hotel in George­town, accord­ing to Mr. Clo­vis, who could not recall the man’s name for inves­ti­ga­tors. Mr. Phares tried to set up anoth­er meet­ing with the offi­cial, but Mr. Clo­vis demurred.

    Anoth­er cam­paign offi­cial, Rick Dear­born, told inves­ti­ga­tors that Mr. Phares was involved in reach­ing out to Egypt on behalf of the cam­paign and had an “exist­ing rela­tion­ship” with the Egyp­tians.

    Then the Repub­li­can nom­i­nee for pres­i­dent, Mr. Trump met in Sep­tem­ber 2016 with Mr. el-Sisi. Mr. Phares took cred­it for that meet­ing, telling Mr. Trump’s daugh­ter Ivan­ka in an email short­ly before­hand that he had trav­eled to “Egypt last week, worked with them on the meet­ing between Pres­i­dent Sisi and your father.”

    “Great that the meet­ing will take place tomor­row,” Mr. Phares added in the email, accord­ing to con­gres­sion­al inves­ti­ga­tors. “This is a major vic­to­ry in for­eign pol­i­cy. It will gen­er­ate more votes.”

    Mr. el-Sisi vis­it­ed the White House a few months after Mr. Trump was elect­ed, the first vis­it by an Egypt­ian pres­i­dent to Wash­ing­ton since 2009. The pres­i­dent has embraced Mr. el-Sisi, bestow­ing val­i­da­tion on a strong­man who took pow­er in a mil­i­tary coup and has cracked down on dis­sent as he con­sol­i­dates pow­er.

    The spe­cial counsel’s report men­tioned Mr. Phares by name more than a dozen times. And this month, the Jus­tice Depart­ment released a copy of the memo signed by the for­mer deputy attor­ney gen­er­al Rod J. Rosen­stein that laid out the scope of Mr. Mueller’s author­i­ties. The memo cit­ed inves­ti­ga­tions into Mr. Fly­nn, Mr. Page, Mr. Man­afort and Mr. Papadopou­los. A fifth sec­tion was redact­ed.

    Mr. Rosen­stein was set to tes­ti­fy before Con­gress next week about the Rus­sia inves­ti­ga­tion.

    ————-

    “F.B.I. Once Inves­ti­gat­ed Trump Cam­paign Adviser’s Ties to Egypt” by Adam Gold­man and Michael S. Schmidt; The New York Times; 05/28/2020

    “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:

    ...
    Mr. Clo­vis and Mr. Phares had met with an Egypt­ian offi­cial at a hotel in George­town, accord­ing to Mr. Clo­vis, who could not recall the man’s name for inves­ti­ga­tors. Mr. Phares tried to set up anoth­er meet­ing with the offi­cial, but Mr. Clo­vis demurred.

    Anoth­er cam­paign offi­cial, Rick Dear­born, told inves­ti­ga­tors that Mr. Phares was involved in reach­ing out to Egypt on behalf of the cam­paign and had an “exist­ing rela­tion­ship” with the Egyp­tians.

    Then the Repub­li­can nom­i­nee for pres­i­dent, Mr. Trump met in Sep­tem­ber 2016 with Mr. el-Sisi. Mr. Phares took cred­it for that meet­ing, telling Mr. Trump’s daugh­ter Ivan­ka in an email short­ly before­hand that he had trav­eled to “Egypt last week, worked with them on the meet­ing between Pres­i­dent Sisi and your father.”

    “Great that the meet­ing will take place tomor­row,” Mr. Phares added in the email, accord­ing to con­gres­sion­al inves­ti­ga­tors. “This is a major vic­to­ry in for­eign pol­i­cy. It will gen­er­ate more votes.”

    Mr. el-Sisi vis­it­ed the White House a few months after Mr. Trump was elect­ed, the first vis­it by an Egypt­ian pres­i­dent to Wash­ing­ton since 2009. The pres­i­dent has embraced Mr. el-Sisi, bestow­ing val­i­da­tion on a strong­man who took pow­er in a mil­i­tary coup and has cracked down on dis­sent as he con­sol­i­dates pow­er.
    ...

    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.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | October 26, 2020, 4:42 pm
  19. 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 New York Times

    Turk­ish Bank Case Showed Erdogan’s Influ­ence With Trump

    New details of the Jus­tice Department’s han­dling of the accu­sa­tions against Halk­bank reveal how Turkey’s leader pres­sured the pres­i­dent, prompt­ing con­cern from top White House aides.

    By Eric Lip­ton and Ben­jamin Weis­er
    Oct. 29, 2020

    WASHINGTON — Geof­frey S. Berman was out­raged.

    The top fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tor in Man­hat­tan, Mr. Berman had trav­eled to Wash­ing­ton in June 2019 to dis­cuss a par­tic­u­lar­ly del­i­cate case with Attor­ney Gen­er­al William P. Barr and some of his top aides: a crim­i­nal inves­ti­ga­tion into Halk­bank, a state-owned Turk­ish bank sus­pect­ed of vio­lat­ing U.S. sanc­tions law by fun­nel­ing bil­lions of dol­lars of gold and cash to Iran.

    For months, Pres­i­dent Recep Tayyip Erdo­gan of Turkey had been press­ing Pres­i­dent Trump to quash the inves­ti­ga­tion, which threat­ened not only the bank but poten­tial­ly mem­bers of Mr. Erdogan’s fam­i­ly and polit­i­cal par­ty. When Mr. Berman sat down with Mr. Barr, he was stunned to be pre­sent­ed with a set­tle­ment pro­pos­al that would give Mr. Erdo­gan a key con­ces­sion.

    Mr. Barr pressed Mr. Berman to allow the bank to avoid an indict­ment by pay­ing a fine and acknowl­edg­ing some wrong­do­ing. In addi­tion, the Jus­tice Depart­ment would agree to end inves­ti­ga­tions and crim­i­nal cas­es involv­ing Turk­ish and bank offi­cials who were allied with Mr. Erdo­gan and sus­pect­ed of par­tic­i­pat­ing in the sanc­tions-bust­ing scheme.

    Mr. Berman didn’t buy it.

    The bank had the right to try to nego­ti­ate a set­tle­ment. But his pros­e­cu­tors were still inves­ti­gat­ing key indi­vid­u­als, includ­ing some with ties to Mr. Erdo­gan, and believed the scheme had helped finance Iran’s nuclear weapons pro­gram.

    “This is com­plete­ly wrong,” Mr. Berman lat­er told lawyers in the Jus­tice Depart­ment, accord­ing to peo­ple who were briefed on the pro­pos­al and his response. “You don’t grant immu­ni­ty to indi­vid­u­als unless you are get­ting some­thing from them — and we wouldn’t be here.”

    It was not the first time Mr. Berman, the Unit­ed States attor­ney for the South­ern Dis­trict of New York, had fend­ed off attempts by top Jus­tice Depart­ment polit­i­cal appointees to dis­rupt the Halk­bank inves­ti­ga­tion.

    Six months ear­li­er, Matthew G. Whitak­er, the act­ing attor­ney gen­er­al who ran the depart­ment from Novem­ber 2018 until Mr. Barr arrived in Feb­ru­ary 2019, reject­ed a request from Mr. Berman for per­mis­sion to file crim­i­nal charges against the bank, two lawyers involved in the inves­ti­ga­tion said. Mr. Whitak­er blocked the move short­ly after Mr. Erdo­gan repeat­ed­ly pressed Mr. Trump in a series of con­ver­sa­tions in Novem­ber and Decem­ber 2018 to resolve the Halk­bank mat­ter.

    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.

    At the White House, Mr. Trump’s han­dling of the mat­ter became trou­bling even to some senior offi­cials at the time.

    The pres­i­dent was dis­cussing an active crim­i­nal case with the author­i­tar­i­an leader of a nation in which Mr. Trump does busi­ness; he report­ed receiv­ing at least $2.6 mil­lion in net income from oper­a­tions in Turkey from 2015 through 2018, accord­ing to tax records obtained by The New York Times.

    And Mr. Trump’s sym­pa­thet­ic response to Mr. Erdo­gan was espe­cial­ly jar­ring because it involved accu­sa­tions that the bank had under­cut Mr. Trump’s pol­i­cy of eco­nom­i­cal­ly iso­lat­ing Iran, a cen­ter­piece of his Mid­dle East plan.

    For­mer White House offi­cials said they came to fear that the pres­i­dent was open to sway­ing the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem to advance a trans­ac­tion­al and ill-defined agen­da of his own.

    “He would inter­fere in the reg­u­lar gov­ern­ment process to do some­thing for a for­eign leader,” John R. Bolton, Mr. Trump’s for­mer nation­al secu­ri­ty advis­er, said in a recent inter­view. “In antic­i­pa­tion of what? In antic­i­pa­tion of anoth­er favor from that per­son down the road.”

    In the case of Halk­bank, it was only after an intense for­eign pol­i­cy clash between Mr. Trump and Mr. Erdo­gan over Syr­ia last fall that the Unit­ed States would pro­ceed to lodge charges against the bank, though not against any addi­tion­al indi­vid­u­als. Yet the administration’s bit­ter­ness over Mr. Berman’s unwill­ing­ness to go along with Mr. Barr’s pro­pos­al would linger, and ulti­mate­ly con­tribute to Mr. Berman’s dis­missal.

    ...

    This account is based on inter­views with more than two dozen cur­rent and for­mer Turk­ish and U.S. gov­ern­ment offi­cials, lob­by­ists and lawyers with direct knowl­edge of the inter­ac­tions. Rep­re­sen­ta­tives for the Turk­ish gov­ern­ment, Halk­bank and the White House declined to com­ment.

    Turkey had mount­ed an elab­o­rate influ­ence cam­paign in Wash­ing­ton to deal with Halk­bank. It pre­dat­ed Mr. Trump’s elec­tion but came to encom­pass a broad cast of play­ers, includ­ing Rudolph W. Giu­liani, the for­mer New York may­or; Michael T. Fly­nn, Mr. Trump’s first nation­al secu­ri­ty advis­er; and Bri­an D. Bal­lard, a lob­by­ist and fund-rais­er for the pres­i­dent.

    After senior Turk­ish gov­ern­ment offi­cials lob­bied Trea­sury Sec­re­tary Steven Mnuchin and Mr. Trump, Mr. Mnuchin pressed the Jus­tice Depart­ment not to impose too large a fine on Halk­bank because Turkey could not afford it, two fed­er­al offi­cials said. Mr. Mnuchin’s office declined to com­ment on Halk­bank but added that the Trea­sury and Jus­tice Depart­ments “rou­tine­ly con­sult and coor­di­nate” on sanc­tions cas­es and fines.

    Mr. Bolton and oth­ers said they could not ful­ly explain why Mr. Trump seemed so deter­mined to please Mr. Erdo­gan.

    “This was a rela­tion­ship that was real­ly impor­tant for the Unit­ed States to han­dle,” said Fiona Hill, who over­saw pol­i­cy on Turkey and Europe for the Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil under Mr. Trump. “And at every turn, the pres­i­dent kept leap­ing in, and he wasn’t fol­low­ing the strate­gic threads of the rela­tion­ship.”

    The Halk­bank Cam­paign

    Turkey’s lob­by­ing cam­paign had start­ed before Mr. Trump took office.

    Dur­ing a one-day vis­it to the coun­try in August 2016 by Vice Pres­i­dent Joseph R. Biden Jr., the Turk­ish pres­i­dent pulled Mr. Biden aside under a tree for a pri­vate con­ver­sa­tion, accord­ing to an aide to the vice pres­i­dent on the trip.

    The inves­ti­ga­tion of Halk­bank, Mr. Erdo­gan claimed, was a “big con­spir­a­cy” insti­gat­ed by his rival Fethul­lah Gulen, a charis­mat­ic Mus­lim cler­ic. Mr. Gulen left Turkey in the late 1990s and moved to Penn­syl­va­nia, where, in Mr. Erdogan’s telling, he plot­ted an unsuc­cess­ful coup attempt just a month ear­li­er, accord­ing to a sum­ma­ry of the con­ver­sa­tion pro­vid­ed to The Times by the Biden aide.

    Mr. Erdo­gan asked Mr. Biden to remove Preet Bharara, then the U.S. attor­ney for the South­ern Dis­trict of New York. That office was in the ear­ly stages of an inves­ti­ga­tion into Halk­bank and had already indict­ed a Turk­ish-Iran­ian gold trad­er, Reza Zarrab, for help­ing to orches­trate the sanc­tions-eva­sion scheme.

    Mr. Erdo­gan also want­ed the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion to remove the judge over­see­ing Mr. Zarrab’s case in Man­hat­tan, the Biden aide said. And he want­ed Mr. Zarrab released and allowed to return to Turkey.

    Accord­ing to the Biden aide’s account, Mr. Erdo­gan said that if the Unit­ed States real­ly meant what it said about repair­ing rela­tions, the case need­ed to go away.

    Speak­ing to reporters before he left Turkey, Mr. Biden made clear that there were lim­its to what the Unit­ed States could or should do to address Mr. Erdogan’s requests, includ­ing any effort to extra­dite Mr. Gulen.

    “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,” Mr. Biden said, with Mr. Erdo­gan at his side.

    The Turk­ish pres­i­dent did not give up. He again raised Halk­bank with Mr. Biden dur­ing a vis­it to New York for the Unit­ed Nations Gen­er­al Assem­bly, and then twice in calls with Pres­i­dent Barack Oba­ma in the weeks before he left office in Jan­u­ary 2017, aides to Mr. Oba­ma and Mr. Biden said.

    In an inter­view, Mr. Bharara said he nev­er heard ques­tions about the Halk­bank inves­ti­ga­tion from any­one at the Oba­ma White House or the attor­ney general’s office.

    Mr. Trump’s elec­tion brought an imme­di­ate shift in Turkey’s out­reach effort.

    The Trump fam­i­ly had helped build Trump Tow­ers Istan­bul, a suc­cess­ful res­i­den­tial and retail com­plex that attract­ed Mr. Erdo­gan to its rib­bon-cut­ting in 2012.

    “I’ve got­ten to know Turkey very well,” Mr. Trump said in 2015. “They’re amaz­ing peo­ple, they’re incred­i­ble peo­ple. They have a strong leader.”

    In Turkey, there was con­fi­dence that Mr. Erdogan’s agen­da would now win atten­tion and sup­port at the high­est lev­els of the U.S. admin­is­tra­tion.

    ...

    Indict­ments and Tes­ti­mo­ny About Erdo­gan

    Once Mr. Trump took office, there were ear­ly hints that Mr. Erdogan’s mes­sage was get­ting through to the White House.

    The Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil asked the Edu­ca­tion Depart­ment about a net­work of char­ter schools, part­ly fund­ed with fed­er­al mon­ey, that were said to be linked to Mr. Gulen, the Erdo­gan rival who was liv­ing in Penn­syl­va­nia. The agency was then asked if the mon­ey could be blocked, one offi­cial involved in the con­ver­sa­tions said. But Edu­ca­tion Depart­ment offi­cials resist­ed, say­ing they did not have the legal author­i­ty to stop the fund­ing.

    The White House encoun­tered a sim­i­lar lack of enthu­si­asm at the Depart­ment of Home­land Secu­ri­ty and the F.B.I., which received requests to inves­ti­gate Mr. Gulen and look for ways to per­haps force him out of the Unit­ed States, offi­cials involved in the efforts said. The F.B.I. declined to com­ment.

    In the mean­time, the effort by Turkey to resolve the Halk­bank case inten­si­fied.

    Records show that the bank and the Turk­ish gov­ern­ment paid Mr. Ballard’s lob­by­ing firm $4.6 mil­lion over two years for work on Halk­bank and oth­er mat­ters, includ­ing meet­ings and phone calls with the vice president’s office, the State Depart­ment, mem­bers of Con­gress and Jay Seku­low, one of Mr. Trump’s per­son­al lawyers.

    Mr. 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.

    But the inves­ti­ga­tion by the fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tors in Man­hat­tan ground ahead. By ear­ly 2018, it had led to the indict­ments of nine defen­dants, includ­ing Turkey’s for­mer econ­o­my min­is­ter and three Halk­bank offi­cials, on charges such as bank fraud and mon­ey laun­der­ing relat­ed to the sanc­tions-eva­sion scheme.

    One defen­dant, Mehmet Hakan Atil­la, the bank’s deputy gen­er­al man­ag­er for inter­na­tion­al bank­ing, was tried and, in Jan­u­ary 2018, con­vict­ed.

    Mr. Zarrab, the gold trad­er, had plead­ed guilty and tes­ti­fied about how the scheme had relied on false doc­u­ments and front com­pa­nies, and how he had paid mil­lions of dol­lars in bribes to the econ­o­my min­is­ter and Halkbank’s gen­er­al man­ag­er.

    He also tes­ti­fied that the oper­a­tion had Mr. 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.

    When Mr. Berman was appoint­ed U.S. attor­ney in Jan­u­ary 2018, pros­e­cu­tors were turn­ing their focus to the bank itself and the pos­si­bil­i­ty of charg­ing oth­ers involved in the scheme.

    Halkbank’s lawyers held repeat­ed talks in 2018 with Mr. Berman’s office over whether a “glob­al set­tle­ment” could be reached. But the two sides were far apart, accord­ing to peo­ple briefed on the meet­ings.

    The pros­e­cu­tors said they were pre­pared to allow the bank to avoid indict­ment if it agreed to pay a heavy fine, reform its oper­a­tions and make a series of admis­sions about its con­duct, the peo­ple who were briefed said.

    But the bank’s lawyers argued that Halk­bank and its exec­u­tives had done noth­ing wrong, that they had been deceived by Mr. Zarrab, and that his tes­ti­mo­ny was untrue. They said the bank would not make the required admis­sions.

    There were indi­ca­tions by then that Turkey’s argu­ments were being heard in Wash­ing­ton.

    At the Trea­sury Depart­ment, Mr. Mnuchin con­sid­ered the vio­la­tions Halk­bank had been accused of to be seri­ous — and he believed the U.S. gov­ern­ment was right to demand that the bank admit wrong­do­ing, accord­ing to one White House offi­cial involved in the nego­ti­a­tions.

    But Mr. Mnuchin raised con­cerns about how large a fine might be imposed on Halk­bank. The French bank­ing giant Société Générale agreed that same year to pay U.S. author­i­ties more than $2 bil­lion to resolve charges that it had vio­lat­ed U.Ssanc­tions against Cuba and bribed offi­cials in Libya, among oth­er accu­sa­tions.

    A fine on that scale would threat­en the future of Halk­bank, lob­by­ists and lawyers for the bank argued, as did top Turk­ish offi­cials in con­ver­sa­tions with mem­bers of the Trump admin­is­tra­tion. One direct appeal to Mr. Mnuchin came from Mr. Albayrak, Mr. Erdogan’s son-in-law.

    In 2018, Mr. Mnuchin reached out about the scale of a poten­tial fine to Jeff Ses­sions, the attor­ney gen­er­al at the time. Jus­tice Depart­ment offi­cials then asked South­ern Dis­trict pros­e­cu­tors whether the size of the fine they were demand­ing was nego­tiable, one lawyer involved in the effort said. The response was affir­ma­tive: The amount was less impor­tant than secur­ing an admis­sion of wrong­do­ing.

    “We need an admis­sion of lia­bil­i­ty” was the mes­sage the Man­hat­tan pros­e­cu­tors sent back to Wash­ing­ton, accord­ing to two lawyers involved in the mat­ter.

    ‘Well, It Looks Con­vinc­ing to Me’

    On the sec­ond day of a trip to Buenos Aires in late 2018 for the annu­al Group of 20 gath­er­ing of world lead­ers, Mr. Trump met with Mr. Erdo­gan for talks intend­ed to be focused on issues like con­tin­ued ten­sions over Islam­ic State oper­a­tions in Syr­ia.

    But the con­ver­sa­tion quick­ly went off course.

    Mr. Erdo­gan made clear that he was frus­trat­ed with the con­tin­ued pes­ter­ing by South­ern Dis­trict pros­e­cu­tors con­cern­ing Halk­bank, and he want­ed Mr. Trump to inter­vene to help wrap up the inves­ti­ga­tion, Mr. Bolton said in the inter­view.

    Mr. Erdo­gan hand­ed Mr. Trump a copy of a memo writ­ten by Halkbank’s lawyers explain­ing why Turkey believed the Jus­tice Depart­ment had mis­con­strued U.S. sanc­tions law. It argued that Halkbank’s trad­ing with Iran was not ille­gal, because it was large­ly based on trades of gold and food that were not in dol­lars and did not involve U.S. banks.

    Mr. Trump flipped through the memo quick­ly, Mr. Bolton said.

    “Well, it looks con­vinc­ing to me,” Mr. Trump said, accord­ing to Mr. Bolton, who also recount­ed the meet­ing in his recent book.

    By Mr. Bolton’s account, Mr. Trump also told Mr. Erdo­gan that he want­ed to replace the pros­e­cu­tors in Mr. Berman’s office in Man­hat­tan, whom Mr. Trump con­sid­ered to be holdovers from the Oba­ma era.

    Two weeks lat­er, in mid-Decem­ber 2018, Mr. Trump and Mr. Erdo­gan spoke by phone. The pres­i­dent began by assur­ing Mr. Erdo­gan that the gov­ern­ment and Halk­bank were close to a res­o­lu­tion, and Mr. Erdo­gan expressed his appre­ci­a­tion, accord­ing to Mr. Bolton.

    In Turkey around this time, Mr. Erdo­gan told reporters that Mr. Trump, in an ear­li­er con­ver­sa­tion about Halk­bank, had assured him that Mr. Trump “would instruct the rel­e­vant min­is­ters imme­di­ate­ly” to take care of the mat­ter.

    Mr. Bolton said in the inter­view that his con­cern, as he lis­tened to these con­ver­sa­tions, was that Turkey and Halk­bank now “had a direct chan­nel in the Oval Office — they weren’t going to nego­ti­ate in good faith” with the pros­e­cu­tors. “Why should they?”

    Mr. Trump asked Mr. Bolton to speak with Mr. Whitak­er, the act­ing attor­ney gen­er­al at the time, about the case — a move Mr. Bolton said he did not make, although he added that he did not know if some­one else from the White House did.

    On Dec. 14, the day of the tele­phone call between Mr. Erdo­gan and Mr. Trump, 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, one Jus­tice Depart­ment offi­cial said.

    The pros­e­cu­tors in Man­hat­tan had just draft­ed a memo for Mr. Whitak­er and Rod J. Rosen­stein, the deputy attor­ney gen­er­al, detail­ing why the Jus­tice Depart­ment should give them the author­i­ty to file crim­i­nal charges against the bank, two lawyers said.

    Mr. Rosen­stein was con­vinced that the evi­dence was com­pelling, per­haps even more so than in oth­er sanc­tions-eva­sion cas­es in which the Unit­ed States had charged banks, lawyers famil­iar with the inves­ti­ga­tion said. The memo from the pros­e­cu­tors also not­ed that the actions Halk­bank was accused of tak­ing were help­ing to sup­port Iran’s econ­o­my, which was anti­thet­i­cal to Mr. Trump’s for­eign pol­i­cy goal of tight­en­ing eco­nom­ic pres­sure on the coun­try.

    Mr. Rosen­stein urged Mr. Berman to come to Wash­ing­ton to present the South­ern District’s argu­ment to Mr. Whitak­er. The goal was not to file charges imme­di­ate­ly against the bank. Instead, the plan was to give the South­ern Dis­trict more lever­age to squeeze Halk­bank to accept a deferred pros­e­cu­tion agree­ment that includ­ed an admis­sion of wrong­do­ing.

    But Mr. Whitak­er, who declined requests for com­ment, had a long­stand­ing dis­dain for the South­ern Dis­trict, which has been called the Sov­er­eign Dis­trict for the way it guards its inde­pen­dence from Wash­ing­ton. In a book pub­lished this year, Mr. Whitak­er wrote that the South­ern Dis­trict always “dreamed up new ways to tor­ment Pres­i­dent Trump through­out my tenure at the Depart­ment of Jus­tice.”

    Mr. Berman arrived at the Jus­tice Depart­ment head­quar­ters and report­ed to Mr. Rosenstein’s office. But short­ly before the meet­ing was to begin, Mr. Rosen­stein was sum­moned to Mr. Whitaker’s office with­out Mr. Berman.

    Mr. Whitak­er told Mr. Rosen­stein that he did not want the case to move for­ward, and that he want­ed the mat­ter shut down, accord­ing to lawyers involved in the inves­ti­ga­tion. Mr. Whitak­er cit­ed con­cern that charges against the bank might result in a threat to U.S. forces in Syr­ia, a sug­ges­tion that oth­ers in the depart­ment said they found hard to under­stand.

    Jus­tice Depart­ment offi­cials decid­ed to ignore Mr. Whitaker’s edict, con­clud­ing that they most like­ly would out­last Mr. Whitak­er in the depart­ment, since he was serv­ing on an act­ing basis. They did not see appeas­ing Mr. Erdo­gan as suf­fi­cient jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for clos­ing the inves­ti­ga­tion.

    ‘This Is Not How We Do Things at the South­ern Dis­trict’

    Mr. Barr was con­firmed as the new attor­ney gen­er­al in mid-Feb­ru­ary 2019, a few months after Mr. Whitak­er had pushed to end the case. The pros­e­cu­tors in Man­hat­tan were encour­aged that they might now get the charg­ing author­i­ty they want­ed.

    But Mr. Erdo­gan and his top advis­ers con­tin­ued to lob­by Mr. Trump and mem­bers of his cab­i­net, includ­ing Mr. Mnuchin and now Mr. Barr.

    One of the appeals came from Mehmet Ali Yal­cindag, a Trump fam­i­ly friend who had been close­ly involved in devel­op­ing the Trump tow­ers in Turkey and who now leads a Turkey‑U.S. busi­ness trade group. On a trip to Wash­ing­ton that April, he pressed admin­is­tra­tion offi­cials about the bank.

    Dis­cus­sions between Halk­bank and the South­ern Dis­trict con­tin­ued, accord­ing to lawyers involved in the case. But the bank main­tained its refusal to admit to wrong­do­ing and insist­ed on a deal that would end inves­ti­ga­tions and drop exist­ing charges.

    At times, the pros­e­cu­tors were left with the impres­sion that bank offi­cials felt they had all the lever­age because of the rela­tion­ship between Mr. Trump and Mr. Erdo­gan.

    In mid-June 2019, when Mr. Berman met with Mr. Barr in Wash­ing­ton, the attor­ney gen­er­al pushed Mr. Berman to agree to allow the Jus­tice Depart­ment to drop charges against the defen­dants and ter­mi­nate inves­ti­ga­tions of oth­er sus­pect­ed con­spir­a­tors, accord­ing to a for­mer depart­ment lawyer famil­iar with the ses­sion.

    Among the defen­dants with charges pend­ing were Halkbank’s for­mer gen­er­al man­ag­er, Suley­man Aslan, and Turkey’s for­mer econ­o­my min­is­ter, Mehmet Zafer Caglayan.

    The sug­ges­tion that the Jus­tice Depart­ment would offer Turk­ish offi­cials pro­tec­tion from crim­i­nal charges, even with­out their agree­ment to assist in the inves­ti­ga­tion, was unac­cept­able and uneth­i­cal, Mr. Berman argued, accord­ing to lawyers close to the inves­ti­ga­tion. Jus­tice Depart­ment pol­i­cy specif­i­cal­ly says that crim­i­nal con­duct by indi­vid­u­als is not resolved when a com­pa­ny admits wrong­do­ing.

    “This is not how we do things at the South­ern Dis­trict,” Mr. Berman told Mr. Barr, adding that he would not agree to such a move and that his office would not be part of it.

    Mr. Barr sought to per­suade Mr. Berman that the so-called glob­al set­tle­ment would enforce U.S. sanc­tions law and avert a rift with an ally in a volatile part of the world.

    Aykan Erdemir, a for­mer mem­ber of Turkey’s Par­lia­ment and a crit­ic of Mr. Erdo­gan, who was not part of the nego­ti­a­tions, said such a pro­pos­al by Mr. Barr would be a gift to Mr. Erdo­gan and crit­i­cal to his polit­i­cal stand­ing in Turkey by elim­i­nat­ing poten­tial crim­i­nal charges against mem­bers of his inner cir­cle.

    “That is the biggest prize that Erdo­gan could ever receive,” Mr. Erdemir said. “Erdo­gan was not try­ing to save the bank. He was try­ing to save his min­is­ters and save him­self.”

    The nego­ti­a­tions had reached an impasse. Mr. Barr had the pow­er to stop any new crim­i­nal charges. But to dis­miss any exist­ing cas­es, the fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tors in Man­hat­tan would need to seek judi­cial approval.

    Lawyers in the Jus­tice Department’s nation­al secu­ri­ty divi­sion took over the nego­ti­a­tions, but they also end­ed up frus­trat­ed, peo­ple briefed on the mat­ter said.

    In his recent book, Mr. Bolton said he had warned Mr. Barr in April 2019 about Mr. Trump’s pen­chant to “give per­son­al favors to dic­ta­tors.”

    In the inter­view with The Times, Mr. Bolton said he did not know the details of Mr. Barr’s inter­ven­tion in the Halk­bank nego­ti­a­tions. But he said he was dis­turbed by the tenor of the inter­ac­tion between Mr. Trump and Mr. Erdo­gan relat­ed to Halk­bank.

    “It was so idio­syn­crat­ic, so per­son­al to Trump in the pur­suit of per­son­al rela­tion­ships, that it was very dan­ger­ous,” Mr. Bolton said. “And it does look like obstruc­tion of jus­tice.”

    Just how idio­syn­crat­ic became more appar­ent last Octo­ber, when Mr. Erdo­gan sent troops into Syr­ia. Mr. Trump, who had ini­tial­ly giv­en Mr. Erdo­gan the green light to do so, then faced an intense bipar­ti­san back­lash, lead­ing him with­in days to take a tougher line with Turkey, threat­en­ing eco­nom­ic reprisals.

    “You don’t want to be respon­si­ble for slaugh­ter­ing thou­sands of peo­ple, and I don’t want to be respon­si­ble for destroy­ing the Turk­ish econ­o­my — and I will,” Mr. Trump wrote to the Turk­ish leader on Oct. 9, 2019, with­out elab­o­rat­ing.

    On Oct. 15, the Jus­tice Depart­ment gave the pros­e­cu­tors in Man­hat­tan approval to file charges against Halk­bank, a direct slap at Mr. Erdo­gan.

    The pros­e­cu­tors rushed to present evi­dence before a grand jury and secured a six-count indict­ment that same day charg­ing Halk­bank with mon­ey laun­der­ing, bank fraud and con­spir­a­cy to vio­late the Iran sanc­tions. So far, no addi­tion­al indi­vid­u­als have been charged.

    When the charges against the bank were announced, Mr. Berman said in a state­ment that the “bank’s auda­cious con­duct was sup­port­ed and pro­tect­ed by high-rank­ing Turk­ish gov­ern­ment offi­cials, some of whom received mil­lions of dol­lars in bribes to pro­mote and pro­tect the scheme.”

    In June, eight months after the indict­ment was returned, Mr. Trump fired Mr. Berman. Jus­tice Depart­ment offi­cials cit­ed his han­dling of the Halk­bank mat­ter, includ­ing his block­ing of the pro­posed glob­al set­tle­ment, as a key rea­son for his removal.

    ————

    “Turk­ish Bank Case Showed Erdogan’s Influ­ence With Trump” by Eric Lip­ton and Ben­jamin Weis­er; The New York Times; 10/29/2020

    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:

    ...
    The pres­i­dent was dis­cussing an active crim­i­nal case with the author­i­tar­i­an leader of a nation in which Mr. Trump does busi­ness; he report­ed receiv­ing at least $2.6 mil­lion in net income from oper­a­tions in Turkey from 2015 through 2018, accord­ing to tax records obtained by The New York Times.

    And Mr. Trump’s sym­pa­thet­ic response to Mr. Erdo­gan was espe­cial­ly jar­ring because it involved accu­sa­tions that the bank had under­cut Mr. Trump’s pol­i­cy of eco­nom­i­cal­ly iso­lat­ing Iran, a cen­ter­piece of his Mid­dle East plan.

    For­mer White House offi­cials said they came to fear that the pres­i­dent was open to sway­ing the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem to advance a trans­ac­tion­al and ill-defined agen­da of his own.

    “He would inter­fere in the reg­u­lar gov­ern­ment process to do some­thing for a for­eign leader,” John R. Bolton, Mr. Trump’s for­mer nation­al secu­ri­ty advis­er, said in a recent inter­view. “In antic­i­pa­tion of what? In antic­i­pa­tion of anoth­er favor from that per­son down the road.”
    ...

    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:

    ...
    Turkey had mount­ed an elab­o­rate influ­ence cam­paign in Wash­ing­ton to deal with Halk­bank. It pre­dat­ed Mr. Trump’s elec­tion but came to encom­pass a broad cast of play­ers, includ­ing Rudolph W. Giu­liani, the for­mer New York may­or; Michael T. Fly­nn, Mr. Trump’s first nation­al secu­ri­ty advis­er; and Bri­an D. Bal­lard, a lob­by­ist and fund-rais­er for the pres­i­dent.

    ...

    “This was a rela­tion­ship that was real­ly impor­tant for the Unit­ed States to han­dle,” said Fiona Hill, who over­saw pol­i­cy on Turkey and Europe for the Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil under Mr. Trump. “And at every turn, the pres­i­dent kept leap­ing in, and he wasn’t fol­low­ing the strate­gic threads of the rela­tion­ship.”

    ...

    Records show that the bank and the Turk­ish gov­ern­ment paid Mr. Ballard’s lob­by­ing firm $4.6 mil­lion over two years for work on Halk­bank and oth­er mat­ters, includ­ing meet­ings and phone calls with the vice president’s office, the State Depart­ment, mem­bers of Con­gress and Jay Seku­low, one of Mr. Trump’s per­son­al lawyers.

    Mr. 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.
    ...

    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:

    ...
    Turkey’s lob­by­ing cam­paign had start­ed before Mr. Trump took office.

    Dur­ing a one-day vis­it to the coun­try in August 2016 by Vice Pres­i­dent Joseph R. Biden Jr., the Turk­ish pres­i­dent pulled Mr. Biden aside under a tree for a pri­vate con­ver­sa­tion, accord­ing to an aide to the vice pres­i­dent on the trip.

    ...

    Accord­ing to the Biden aide’s account, Mr. Erdo­gan said that if the Unit­ed States real­ly meant what it said about repair­ing rela­tions, the case need­ed to go away.

    Speak­ing to reporters before he left Turkey, Mr. Biden made clear that there were lim­its to what the Unit­ed States could or should do to address Mr. Erdogan’s requests, includ­ing any effort to extra­dite Mr. Gulen.

    “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,” Mr. Biden said, with Mr. Erdo­gan at his side.
    ...

    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 the inves­ti­ga­tion by the fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tors in Man­hat­tan ground ahead. By ear­ly 2018, it had led to the indict­ments of nine defen­dants, includ­ing Turkey’s for­mer econ­o­my min­is­ter and three Halk­bank offi­cials, on charges such as bank fraud and mon­ey laun­der­ing relat­ed to the sanc­tions-eva­sion scheme.

    One defen­dant, Mehmet Hakan Atil­la, the bank’s deputy gen­er­al man­ag­er for inter­na­tion­al bank­ing, was tried and, in Jan­u­ary 2018, con­vict­ed.

    Mr. Zarrab, the gold trad­er, had plead­ed guilty and tes­ti­fied about how the scheme had relied on false doc­u­ments and front com­pa­nies, and how he had paid mil­lions of dol­lars in bribes to the econ­o­my min­is­ter and Halkbank’s gen­er­al man­ag­er.

    He also tes­ti­fied that the oper­a­tion had Mr. 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.
    ...

    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:

    ...
    When Mr. Berman was appoint­ed U.S. attor­ney in Jan­u­ary 2018, pros­e­cu­tors were turn­ing their focus to the bank itself and the pos­si­bil­i­ty of charg­ing oth­ers involved in the scheme.

    Halkbank’s lawyers held repeat­ed talks in 2018 with Mr. Berman’s office over whether a “glob­al set­tle­ment” could be reached. But the two sides were far apart, accord­ing to peo­ple briefed on the meet­ings.

    The pros­e­cu­tors said they were pre­pared to allow the bank to avoid indict­ment if it agreed to pay a heavy fine, reform its oper­a­tions and make a series of admis­sions about its con­duct, the peo­ple who were briefed said.

    But the bank’s lawyers argued that Halk­bank and its exec­u­tives had done noth­ing wrong, that they had been deceived by Mr. Zarrab, and that his tes­ti­mo­ny was untrue. They said the bank would not make the required admis­sions.

    There were indi­ca­tions by then that Turkey’s argu­ments were being heard in Wash­ing­ton.
    ...

    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:

    ...
    At the Trea­sury Depart­ment, Mr. Mnuchin con­sid­ered the vio­la­tions Halk­bank had been accused of to be seri­ous — and he believed the U.S. gov­ern­ment was right to demand that the bank admit wrong­do­ing, accord­ing to one White House offi­cial involved in the nego­ti­a­tions.

    But Mr. Mnuchin raised con­cerns about how large a fine might be imposed on Halk­bank. The French bank­ing giant Société Générale agreed that same year to pay U.S. author­i­ties more than $2 bil­lion to resolve charges that it had vio­lat­ed U.Ssanc­tions against Cuba and bribed offi­cials in Libya, among oth­er accu­sa­tions.

    A fine on that scale would threat­en the future of Halk­bank, lob­by­ists and lawyers for the bank argued, as did top Turk­ish offi­cials in con­ver­sa­tions with mem­bers of the Trump admin­is­tra­tion. One direct appeal to Mr. Mnuchin came from Mr. Albayrak, Mr. Erdogan’s son-in-law.

    In 2018, Mr. Mnuchin reached out about the scale of a poten­tial fine to Jeff Ses­sions, the attor­ney gen­er­al at the time. Jus­tice Depart­ment offi­cials then asked South­ern Dis­trict pros­e­cu­tors whether the size of the fine they were demand­ing was nego­tiable, one lawyer involved in the effort said. The response was affir­ma­tive: The amount was less impor­tant than secur­ing an admis­sion of wrong­do­ing.

    “We need an admis­sion of lia­bil­i­ty” was the mes­sage the Man­hat­tan pros­e­cu­tors sent back to Wash­ing­ton, accord­ing to two lawyers involved in the mat­ter.
    ...

    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:

    ...
    On the sec­ond day of a trip to Buenos Aires in late 2018 for the annu­al Group of 20 gath­er­ing of world lead­ers, Mr. Trump met with Mr. Erdo­gan for talks intend­ed to be focused on issues like con­tin­ued ten­sions over Islam­ic State oper­a­tions in Syr­ia.

    But the con­ver­sa­tion quick­ly went off course.

    Mr. Erdo­gan made clear that he was frus­trat­ed with the con­tin­ued pes­ter­ing by South­ern Dis­trict pros­e­cu­tors con­cern­ing Halk­bank, and he want­ed Mr. Trump to inter­vene to help wrap up the inves­ti­ga­tion, Mr. Bolton said in the inter­view.

    Mr. Erdo­gan hand­ed Mr. Trump a copy of a memo writ­ten by Halkbank’s lawyers explain­ing why Turkey believed the Jus­tice Depart­ment had mis­con­strued U.S. sanc­tions law. It argued that Halkbank’s trad­ing with Iran was not ille­gal, because it was large­ly based on trades of gold and food that were not in dol­lars and did not involve U.S. banks.

    Mr. Trump flipped through the memo quick­ly, Mr. Bolton said.

    “Well, it looks con­vinc­ing to me,” Mr. Trump said, accord­ing to Mr. Bolton, who also recount­ed the meet­ing in his recent book.

    By Mr. Bolton’s account, Mr. Trump also told Mr. Erdo­gan that he want­ed to replace the pros­e­cu­tors in Mr. Berman’s office in Man­hat­tan, whom Mr. Trump con­sid­ered to be holdovers from the Oba­ma era.

    Two weeks lat­er, in mid-Decem­ber 2018, Mr. Trump and Mr. Erdo­gan spoke by phone. The pres­i­dent began by assur­ing Mr. Erdo­gan that the gov­ern­ment and Halk­bank were close to a res­o­lu­tion, and Mr. Erdo­gan expressed his appre­ci­a­tion, accord­ing to Mr. Bolton.

    In Turkey around this time, Mr. Erdo­gan told reporters that Mr. Trump, in an ear­li­er con­ver­sa­tion about Halk­bank, had assured him that Mr. Trump “would instruct the rel­e­vant min­is­ters imme­di­ate­ly” to take care of the mat­ter.

    Mr. Bolton said in the inter­view that his con­cern, as he lis­tened to these con­ver­sa­tions, was that Turkey and Halk­bank now “had a direct chan­nel in the Oval Office — they weren’t going to nego­ti­ate in good faith” with the pros­e­cu­tors. “Why should they?”

    Mr. Trump asked Mr. Bolton to speak with Mr. Whitak­er, the act­ing attor­ney gen­er­al at the time, about the case — a move Mr. Bolton said he did not make, although he added that he did not know if some­one else from the White House did.
    ...

    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:

    ...
    On Dec. 14, the day of the tele­phone call between Mr. Erdo­gan and Mr. Trump, 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, one Jus­tice Depart­ment offi­cial said.

    The pros­e­cu­tors in Man­hat­tan had just draft­ed a memo for Mr. Whitak­er and Rod J. Rosen­stein, the deputy attor­ney gen­er­al, detail­ing why the Jus­tice Depart­ment should give them the author­i­ty to file crim­i­nal charges against the bank, two lawyers said.

    Mr. Rosen­stein was con­vinced that the evi­dence was com­pelling, per­haps even more so than in oth­er sanc­tions-eva­sion cas­es in which the Unit­ed States had charged banks, lawyers famil­iar with the inves­ti­ga­tion said. The memo from the pros­e­cu­tors also not­ed that the actions Halk­bank was accused of tak­ing were help­ing to sup­port Iran’s econ­o­my, which was anti­thet­i­cal to Mr. Trump’s for­eign pol­i­cy goal of tight­en­ing eco­nom­ic pres­sure on the coun­try.

    Mr. Rosen­stein urged Mr. Berman to come to Wash­ing­ton to present the South­ern District’s argu­ment to Mr. Whitak­er. The goal was not to file charges imme­di­ate­ly against the bank. Instead, the plan was to give the South­ern Dis­trict more lever­age to squeeze Halk­bank to accept a deferred pros­e­cu­tion agree­ment that includ­ed an admis­sion of wrong­do­ing.

    ...

    Mr. Berman arrived at the Jus­tice Depart­ment head­quar­ters and report­ed to Mr. Rosenstein’s office. But short­ly before the meet­ing was to begin, Mr. Rosen­stein was sum­moned to Mr. Whitaker’s office with­out Mr. Berman.

    Mr. Whitak­er told Mr. Rosen­stein that he did not want the case to move for­ward, and that he want­ed the mat­ter shut down, accord­ing to lawyers involved in the inves­ti­ga­tion. Mr. Whitak­er cit­ed con­cern that charges against the bank might result in a threat to U.S. forces in Syr­ia, a sug­ges­tion that oth­ers in the depart­ment said they found hard to under­stand.

    Jus­tice Depart­ment offi­cials decid­ed to ignore Mr. Whitaker’s edict, con­clud­ing that they most like­ly would out­last Mr. Whitak­er in the depart­ment, since he was serv­ing on an act­ing basis. They did not see appeas­ing Mr. Erdo­gan as suf­fi­cient jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for clos­ing the inves­ti­ga­tion.
    ....

    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:

    ...
    Mr. Barr was con­firmed as the new attor­ney gen­er­al in mid-Feb­ru­ary 2019, a few months after Mr. Whitak­er had pushed to end the case. The pros­e­cu­tors in Man­hat­tan were encour­aged that they might now get the charg­ing author­i­ty they want­ed.

    But Mr. Erdo­gan and his top advis­ers con­tin­ued to lob­by Mr. Trump and mem­bers of his cab­i­net, includ­ing Mr. Mnuchin and now Mr. Barr.

    One of the appeals came from Mehmet Ali Yal­cindag, a Trump fam­i­ly friend who had been close­ly involved in devel­op­ing the Trump tow­ers in Turkey and who now leads a Turkey‑U.S. busi­ness trade group. On a trip to Wash­ing­ton that April, he pressed admin­is­tra­tion offi­cials about the bank.

    Dis­cus­sions between Halk­bank and the South­ern Dis­trict con­tin­ued, accord­ing to lawyers involved in the case. But the bank main­tained its refusal to admit to wrong­do­ing and insist­ed on a deal that would end inves­ti­ga­tions and drop exist­ing charges.

    At times, the pros­e­cu­tors were left with the impres­sion that bank offi­cials felt they had all the lever­age because of the rela­tion­ship between Mr. Trump and Mr. Erdo­gan.

    In mid-June 2019, when Mr. Berman met with Mr. Barr in Wash­ing­ton, the attor­ney gen­er­al pushed Mr. Berman to agree to allow the Jus­tice Depart­ment to drop charges against the defen­dants and ter­mi­nate inves­ti­ga­tions of oth­er sus­pect­ed con­spir­a­tors, accord­ing to a for­mer depart­ment lawyer famil­iar with the ses­sion.

    Among the defen­dants with charges pend­ing were Halkbank’s for­mer gen­er­al man­ag­er, Suley­man Aslan, and Turkey’s for­mer econ­o­my min­is­ter, Mehmet Zafer Caglayan.

    The sug­ges­tion that the Jus­tice Depart­ment would offer Turk­ish offi­cials pro­tec­tion from crim­i­nal charges, even with­out their agree­ment to assist in the inves­ti­ga­tion, was unac­cept­able and uneth­i­cal, Mr. Berman argued, accord­ing to lawyers close to the inves­ti­ga­tion. Jus­tice Depart­ment pol­i­cy specif­i­cal­ly says that crim­i­nal con­duct by indi­vid­u­als is not resolved when a com­pa­ny admits wrong­do­ing.

    “This is not how we do things at the South­ern Dis­trict,” Mr. Berman told Mr. Barr, adding that he would not agree to such a move and that his office would not be part of it.

    Mr. Barr sought to per­suade Mr. Berman that the so-called glob­al set­tle­ment would enforce U.S. sanc­tions law and avert a rift with an ally in a volatile part of the world.
    ...

    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:

    ...
    Just how idio­syn­crat­ic became more appar­ent last Octo­ber, when Mr. Erdo­gan sent troops into Syr­ia. Mr. Trump, who had ini­tial­ly giv­en Mr. Erdo­gan the green light to do so, then faced an intense bipar­ti­san back­lash, lead­ing him with­in days to take a tougher line with Turkey, threat­en­ing eco­nom­ic reprisals.

    “You don’t want to be respon­si­ble for slaugh­ter­ing thou­sands of peo­ple, and I don’t want to be respon­si­ble for destroy­ing the Turk­ish econ­o­my — and I will,” Mr. Trump wrote to the Turk­ish leader on Oct. 9, 2019, with­out elab­o­rat­ing.

    On Oct. 15, the Jus­tice Depart­ment gave the pros­e­cu­tors in Man­hat­tan approval to file charges against Halk­bank, a direct slap at Mr. Erdo­gan.

    The pros­e­cu­tors rushed to present evi­dence before a grand jury and secured a six-count indict­ment that same day charg­ing Halk­bank with mon­ey laun­der­ing, bank fraud and con­spir­a­cy to vio­late the Iran sanc­tions. So far, no addi­tion­al indi­vid­u­als have been charged.

    When the charges against the bank were announced, Mr. Berman said in a state­ment that the “bank’s auda­cious con­duct was sup­port­ed and pro­tect­ed by high-rank­ing Turk­ish gov­ern­ment offi­cials, some of whom received mil­lions of dol­lars in bribes to pro­mote and pro­tect the scheme.”

    In June, eight months after the indict­ment was returned, Mr. Trump fired Mr. Berman. Jus­tice Depart­ment offi­cials cit­ed his han­dling of the Halk­bank mat­ter, includ­ing his block­ing of the pro­posed glob­al set­tle­ment, as a key rea­son for his removal.
    ...

    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.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | October 31, 2020, 4:33 pm
  20. 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:

    The Guardian

    Trump to gut pro­tec­tions in Alaska’s Ton­gass for­est, the ‘lungs of the coun­try’

    Admin­is­tra­tion to per­mit log­ging in the world’s largest intact tem­per­ate rain­for­est

    Cas­sidy Ran­dall
    Wed 28 Oct 2020 14.43 EDT
    Last mod­i­fied on Wed 28 Oct 2020 19.24 EDT

    The Trump admin­is­tra­tion has announced it will lift pro­tec­tions in Alaska’s Ton­gass nation­al for­est, per­mit­ting log­ging in the world’s largest intact tem­per­ate rain­for­est.

    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.

    “It’s iron­ic that this admin­is­tra­tion is try­ing to tout this president’s envi­ron­men­tal record when [Trump is] unwind­ing envi­ron­men­tal safe­guards all over the place,” said Ken Rait, project direc­tor of the Pew Char­i­ta­ble Trust, who two decades ago helped win the pro­tec­tions that Don­ald Trump is now undo­ing. “And lift­ing pro­tec­tions on the Ton­gass, the nation’s flag­ship for­est, is about the most egre­gious of all of them.”

    The administration’s deci­sion ignores over­whelm­ing pub­lic sup­port for keep­ing pro­tec­tions in place on the Ton­gass, includ­ing res­o­lu­tions from six south-east Alas­ka tribes and six south-east Alas­ka city coun­cils against lift­ing pro­tec­tions. Of the pub­lic com­ments solicit­ed on the plan, 96% were in favor of keep­ing pro­tec­tions in places.

    ...

    The Ton­gass has been safe­guard­ed since 2001 by a “road­less rule”, which pro­hibits road con­struc­tion, road recon­struc­tion and tim­ber har­vest­ing in des­ig­nat­ed areas of nation­al forests. It barred the con­struc­tion of roads on some 58.5m acres, and in addi­tion to the envi­ron­men­tal ben­e­fits, the rule was moti­vat­ed to pro­tect US tax­pay­ers from the costs of main­tain­ing a web of US For­est Ser­vice roads “long enough to go to the moon and most of the way back with no way to main­tain them”, said Rait.

    Tourism has soared, and the for­est sup­port some of the last pro­duc­tive wild salmon runs in the world, and a bil­lion-dol­lar com­mer­cial fish­ing indus­try. A 2019 sci­en­tif­ic analy­sis showed that the Ton­gass absorbs more car­bon than any oth­er nation­al for­est, on a lev­el with the world’s most dense ter­res­tri­al car­bon sinks in South Amer­i­ca.

    After a brief pri­vate meet­ing between the pres­i­dent and the Alas­ka gov­er­nor, Mike Dun­leavy, aboard Air Force One in June 2019, Trump ordered his admin­is­tra­tion to lift all pro­tec­tions from the for­est.

    Accord­ing to Rait, “between tax­pay­er expens­es and the fact that the major­i­ty of logs cut on the Ton­gass will be export­ed to Chi­na and oth­er Pacif­ic Rim nations, today’s deci­sion isn’t going to have robust eco­nom­ic ben­e­fits to any­one in this coun­try.”

    A recent report from the Cen­ter for Sus­tain­able Econ­o­my doc­u­ment­ed tax­pay­er loss­es of near­ly $2bn a year from fed­er­al log­ging pro­grams, large­ly due to the fact that demand for tim­ber has been flag­ging nation­al­ly.

    “The Ton­gass is America’s Ama­zon,” Adam Kolton, exec­u­tive direc­tor of Alas­ka Wilder­ness League, said in a state­ment. “This pres­i­den­tial­ly direct­ed move to gut road­less pro­tec­tions for our nation’s largest and most bio­log­i­cal­ly rich nation­al for­est is a calami­ty for our cli­mate, for wildlife and for the out­door recre­ation econ­o­my of south-east Alas­ka.”

    ———–

    “Trump to gut pro­tec­tions in Alaska’s Ton­gass for­est, the ‘lungs of the coun­try’” by Cas­sidy Ran­dall; The Guardian; 10/28/2020

    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.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | November 2, 2020, 5:19 pm
  21. 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:

    CNN

    Trump talked out of par­don­ing kids and Repub­li­can law­mak­ers

    By Kait­lan Collins, Kevin Lip­tak and Pamela Brown

    Updat­ed 7:12 PM ET, Tue Jan­u­ary 19, 2021

    (CNN) Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump received an unset­tling warn­ing on his final Sat­ur­day night in the White House.

    Hud­dled for a lengthy meet­ing with his legal advis­ers, Trump was warned the par­dons he once hoped to bestow upon his fam­i­ly and even him­self would place him in a legal­ly per­ilous posi­tion, con­vey the appear­ance of guilt and poten­tial­ly make him more vul­ner­a­ble to reprisals.

    So, too, was Trump warned that par­dons for Repub­li­can law­mak­ers who had sought them for their role in the Capi­tol insur­rec­tion would anger the very Sen­ate Repub­li­cans who will deter­mine his fate in an upcom­ing impeach­ment tri­al.

    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.

    Cipol­lone and for­mer Attor­ney Gen­er­al William Barr both warned Trump ear­li­er this month they did not believe he should par­don him­self, mul­ti­ple sources famil­iar with the mat­ter told CNN last week. Barr con­veyed this posi­tion to Trump before resign­ing last month, sources say.

    Trump con­tin­ued to bring the mat­ter up in the ensu­ing days, even after offi­cials believed the issue was resolved. But the sober­ing meet­ing on Sat­ur­day evening at the White House seemed to put the idea to rest.

    While Trump often dis­cards advice he does­n’t agree with — par­tic­u­lar­ly com­ing from Cipol­lone, with whom he has a frac­tured rela­tion­ship — the mes­sage Sat­ur­day res­onat­ed. The con­ver­sa­tion spooked Trump in a way few oth­ers have, a per­son famil­iar with his reac­tion told CNN.

    ...

    Trump could still change his mind, and retains his sweep­ing clemen­cy pow­ers until noon on Wednes­day. The Pres­i­dent con­tin­ues to bring up par­dons that aides once thought were off the table, includ­ing for for­mer strate­gist Steve Ban­non, lead­ing to gen­er­al uncer­tain­ty about whether Trump will con­tin­ue adher­ing to his lawyers’ advice.

    There is a fran­tic scram­ble hap­pen­ing behind the scenes on whether to grant Ban­non a par­don. One con­cern is Ban­non’s pos­si­ble con­nec­tion to the Jan­u­ary 6 riot of Trump sup­port­ers at the US Capi­tol, accord­ing to a source famil­iar with the dis­cus­sions.

    Trump has con­tin­ued to go back and forth on Ban­non’s par­don into Tues­day night, sources told CNN.

    Ear­li­er Tues­day, White House offi­cials and oth­ers famil­iar with the mat­ter describe a mut­ed Pres­i­dent, con­cerned about his pend­ing impeach­ment tri­al and swirling legal prob­lems, who was talked out of his long-dis­cussed notions fol­low­ing the Capi­tol insur­rec­tion.

    Sev­er­al Repub­li­can law­mak­ers who are alleged to have been involved in the ral­ly that pre­ced­ed the dead­ly riot on the US Capi­tol have sought clemen­cy from Trump before he leaves office, but after meet­ing with his legal advis­ers for sev­er­al hours on Sat­ur­day, the Pres­i­dent decid­ed he would not grant them, accord­ing to two peo­ple famil­iar with his plans.

    The fear of legal expo­sure is not lim­it­ed to Repub­li­cans who pro­mot­ed or spoke at the ral­ly, includ­ing Reps. Andy Big­gs, Mo Brooks and Paul Gosar. Those who par­tic­i­pat­ed, orga­nized and fundraised for it are also con­cerned, sources told CNN, includ­ing his eldest son Don­ald Trump Jr. and his girl­friend Kim­ber­ly Guil­foyle, who both spoke at the ral­ly.

    Top fig­ures asso­ci­at­ed with the groups that helped orga­nize it — includ­ing Women for Amer­i­ca First and Turn­ing Point Action, the polit­i­cal action com­mit­tee arm of Turn­ing Point USA — have also voiced pri­vate con­cern about legal reper­cus­sions, a per­son famil­iar tells CNN.

    Sev­er­al of Trump’s clos­est advis­ers have also urged him not to grant clemen­cy to any­one who breached the US Capi­tol, despite Trump’s ini­tial stance that those involved had done noth­ing wrong.

    As CNN has pre­vi­ous­ly report­ed, one of the top orga­niz­ers of the move­ment that aimed to over­turn the elec­tion results claimed he worked close­ly with Repub­li­can con­gress­men. Ali Alexan­der, a leader of the “Stop the Steal” group, said in sev­er­al livestream videos he planned the ral­ly with Gosar of Ari­zona, Brooks of Alaba­ma and Big­gs of Ari­zona.

    The idea of par­don­ing him­self has cap­ti­vat­ed Trump near­ly the entire span of his pres­i­den­cy. He viewed the prospect as a uni­lat­er­al mag­ic wand he believed could ease his legal trou­bles, if not make them dis­ap­pear entire­ly.

    Almost as allur­ing: pre­emp­tive clemen­cy for mem­bers of his fam­i­ly, who Trump has long bemoaned were being unfair­ly tar­get­ed by his ene­mies. Ren­der­ing them immune from ret­ri­bu­tion seemed like a raised mid­dle fin­ger to his detrac­tors.

    The legal stand­ing of either move was ques­tion­able, and Cipol­lone had been “direct and strong” that a self-par­don was unlike­ly to hold up in court, a per­son famil­iar with the mat­ter said. Inter­nal­ly, one of Cipol­lone’s lega­cy items is believed to be whether he dis­suades Trump from par­don­ing him­self.

    Oth­ers appealed to Trump by warn­ing he should be more con­cerned about the effect it would have his lega­cy, not the legal stand­ing of the par­dons.

    The deci­sion to not par­don any Repub­li­can law­mak­ers or his fam­i­ly mem­bers was a last minute one. After ini­tial­ly defend­ing the idea that he may par­don him­self or his fam­i­ly mem­bers out of con­cern they would be tar­get­ed once he’s out of office, Trump decid­ed Sat­ur­day night that he would not par­don any­one in his fam­i­ly or him­self.

    Trump agreed with the attor­neys and oth­er advis­ers that doing so would increase the appear­ance of guilt and could make them more vul­ner­a­ble, but was dis­ap­point­ed at the out­come, accord­ing to peo­ple famil­iar with the mat­ter.

    Trump, accord­ing to peo­ple he’d spo­ken to, appeared more tak­en with the mes­sage of unchecked pow­er it might send to his naysay­ers than actu­al pro­tec­tion from lia­bil­i­ty. His par­don pow­er was among his favorite perks of the job.

    Trump will depart office fac­ing sig­nif­i­cant legal ques­tions that only esca­lat­ed dur­ing his final days in office. His phone call to Geor­gia’s sec­re­tary of state urg­ing him to “find” votes and his speech encour­ag­ing his crowd to “show strength” in their march to the Capi­tol have both put him under a legal micro­scope.

    The new pos­si­ble crim­i­nal expo­sure comes on top of ongo­ing New York state inves­ti­ga­tions into the Pres­i­den­t’s finances and mul­ti­ple defama­tion law­suits relat­ed to Trump deny­ing sex­u­al assault accu­sa­tions by women. The Man­hat­tan dis­trict attor­ney’s office has a broad crim­i­nal inves­ti­ga­tion look­ing into alle­ga­tions of insur­ance fraud and tax fraud. The New York attor­ney gen­er­al has a civ­il inves­ti­ga­tion into whether the Trump Orga­ni­za­tion improp­er­ly inflat­ed the val­ue of its assets.

    The siz­able legal store the Pres­i­dent now enters pro­vid­ed the loom­ing back­drop to his ongo­ing dis­cus­sion of par­dons, which began in earnest last year.

    Over the past weeks, Trump has dis­cussed par­dons inces­sant­ly with asso­ciates, often ask­ing if peo­ple who had not been accused of any crime want­ed one before he left office. The dis­cus­sions unnerved some aides, who did not believe they were in line for pros­e­cu­tion.

    Even as recent­ly as Mon­day, with hours remain­ing in his pres­i­den­cy, Trump appeared fix­at­ed on par­dons.

    While he was con­sid­er­ing pre­emp­tive par­dons for his chil­dren and his per­son­al attor­ney Rudy Giu­liani, a source close to the process said those are no longer expect­ed. Ban­non, who has been indict­ed on fraud charges, is also not expect­ed to receive a par­don on Tues­day, the source said.

    Trump is also not expect­ed to par­don Edward Snow­den or Julian Assange, whose roles in reveal­ing US secrets infu­ri­at­ed offi­cial Wash­ing­ton.

    While he had once enter­tained the idea, Trump decid­ed against it because he did not want to anger Sen­ate Repub­li­cans who will soon deter­mine whether he’s con­vict­ed dur­ing his Sen­ate tri­al. Mul­ti­ple GOP law­mak­ers had sent mes­sages through aides that they felt strong­ly about not grant­i­ng clemen­cy to Assange or Snow­den.

    As he departs office, Trump has expressed real con­cern that Repub­li­cans could turn on him. A con­vic­tion in the Sen­ate impeach­ment tri­al would lim­it his future polit­i­cal activ­i­ties and strip him of some of the gov­ern­ment perks of being an ex-pres­i­dent.

    Trump is less wor­ried about being barred from run­ning from office again, and more con­cerned with the optics of being con­vict­ed by the Sen­ate, peo­ple famil­iar with the mat­ter said.

    ————

    “Trump talked out of par­don­ing kids and Repub­li­can law­mak­ers” by Kait­lan Collins, Kevin Lip­tak and Pamela Brown; CNN; 01/19/2021

    “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:

    ...
    Trump con­tin­ued to bring the mat­ter up in the ensu­ing days, even after offi­cials believed the issue was resolved. But the sober­ing meet­ing on Sat­ur­day evening at the White House seemed to put the idea to rest.

    While Trump often dis­cards advice he does­n’t agree with — par­tic­u­lar­ly com­ing from Cipol­lone, with whom he has a frac­tured rela­tion­ship — the mes­sage Sat­ur­day res­onat­ed. The con­ver­sa­tion spooked Trump in a way few oth­ers have, a per­son famil­iar with his reac­tion told CNN.
    ...

    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:

    ...
    Trump could still change his mind, and retains his sweep­ing clemen­cy pow­ers until noon on Wednes­day. The Pres­i­dent con­tin­ues to bring up par­dons that aides once thought were off the table, includ­ing for for­mer strate­gist Steve Ban­non, lead­ing to gen­er­al uncer­tain­ty about whether Trump will con­tin­ue adher­ing to his lawyers’ advice.

    There is a fran­tic scram­ble hap­pen­ing behind the scenes on whether to grant Ban­non a par­don. One con­cern is Ban­non’s pos­si­ble con­nec­tion to the Jan­u­ary 6 riot of Trump sup­port­ers at the US Capi­tol, accord­ing to a source famil­iar with the dis­cus­sions.

    Trump has con­tin­ued to go back and forth on Ban­non’s par­don into Tues­day night, sources told CNN.

    ...

    While he was con­sid­er­ing pre­emp­tive par­dons for his chil­dren and his per­son­al attor­ney Rudy Giu­liani, a source close to the process said those are no longer expect­ed. Ban­non, who has been indict­ed on fraud charges, is also not expect­ed to receive a par­don on Tues­day, the source said.
    ...

    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?

    ...
    The fear of legal expo­sure is not lim­it­ed to Repub­li­cans who pro­mot­ed or spoke at the ral­ly, includ­ing Reps. Andy Big­gs, Mo Brooks and Paul Gosar. Those who par­tic­i­pat­ed, orga­nized and fundraised for it are also con­cerned, sources told CNN, includ­ing his eldest son Don­ald Trump Jr. and his girl­friend Kim­ber­ly Guil­foyle, who both spoke at the ral­ly.

    Top fig­ures asso­ci­at­ed with the groups that helped orga­nize it — includ­ing Women for Amer­i­ca First and Turn­ing Point Action, the polit­i­cal action com­mit­tee arm of Turn­ing Point USA — have also voiced pri­vate con­cern about legal reper­cus­sions, a per­son famil­iar tells CNN.

    Sev­er­al of Trump’s clos­est advis­ers have also urged him not to grant clemen­cy to any­one who breached the US Capi­tol, despite Trump’s ini­tial stance that those involved had done noth­ing wrong.

    As CNN has pre­vi­ous­ly report­ed, one of the top orga­niz­ers of the move­ment that aimed to over­turn the elec­tion results claimed he worked close­ly with Repub­li­can con­gress­men. Ali Alexan­der, a leader of the “Stop the Steal” group, said in sev­er­al livestream videos he planned the ral­ly with Gosar of Ari­zona, Brooks of Alaba­ma and Big­gs of Ari­zona.

    ...

    The deci­sion to not par­don any Repub­li­can law­mak­ers or his fam­i­ly mem­bers was a last minute one. After ini­tial­ly defend­ing the idea that he may par­don him­self or his fam­i­ly mem­bers out of con­cern they would be tar­get­ed once he’s out of office, Trump decid­ed Sat­ur­day night that he would not par­don any­one in his fam­i­ly or him­self.

    Trump agreed with the attor­neys and oth­er advis­ers that doing so would increase the appear­ance of guilt and could make them more vul­ner­a­ble, but was dis­ap­point­ed at the out­come, accord­ing to peo­ple famil­iar with the mat­ter.
    ...

    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:

    Newsweek

    Don­ald Trump Can Issue Secret Par­dons, but They’re Risky

    By Dar­ragh Roche
    On 1/20/21 at 5:06 AM EST

    Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump issued 70 par­dons and 73 com­mu­ta­tions on his last full day in office on Tues­day. He did not issue par­dons for him­self, any of his adult chil­dren or for­mer New York May­or Rudy Giu­liani.

    ...

    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.

    Bri­an C. Kalt is pro­fes­sor of law at Michi­gan State Uni­ver­si­ty. He told Newsweek that issu­ing secret par­dons could be a risky strat­e­gy.

    “My view is that a par­don need not be pub­li­cized at the time it is issued to be effec­tive, so secret par­dons are the­o­ret­i­cal­ly pos­si­ble,” Kalt said on Tues­day.

    “But to be effec­tive the recip­i­ent would need to be able to prove the par­don was issued prop­er­ly and that could be a lot hard­er to do if it is not pub­li­cized at the time it is issued.”

    Pres­i­dent Ulysses S. Grant famous­ly rescind­ed two par­dons issued by his pre­de­ces­sor Andrew John­son in 1869 because the par­dons had not been prop­er­ly deliv­ered to their intend­ed recip­i­ents. This was a high­ly unusu­al case, how­ev­er. A court lat­er sided with Grant.

    Jef­frey Crouch is assis­tant pro­fes­sor of Amer­i­can pol­i­tics at Amer­i­can Uni­ver­si­ty and author of The Pres­i­den­tial Par­don Pow­er. He told Newsweek that par­don recip­i­ents would have to make the par­don pub­lic in order to ben­e­fit from it.

    “Assum­ing the pres­i­dent is able to issue secret par­dons, he would like­ly keep them locked away some­where as a type of insur­ance pol­i­cy,” Crouch said.

    “This could be a way for Pres­i­dent Trump to par­don his fam­i­ly mem­bers and pos­si­bly him­self while avoid­ing pub­lic con­tro­ver­sy. But if the intend­ed recip­i­ent ever want­ed to claim the ben­e­fit of the par­don, they would need to pro­duce it. And then the secret would end.”

    Crouch point­ed to a June, 1974 Wash­ing­ton Post arti­cle dis­cussing Pres­i­dent Richard Nixon’s poten­tial abil­i­ty to issue a secret par­don for him­self. Jour­nal­ist Tim­o­thy Ingram cit­ed then Par­don Attor­ney Lawrence M. Tray­lor in explain­ing the sit­u­a­tion as he saw it. Nixon resigned in August of that year, becom­ing the first pres­i­dent to do so.

    “Accord­ing to Par­don Attor­ney Tray­lor, there is noth­ing in fed­er­al reg­u­la­tions which requires pub­lic noti­fi­ca­tion,” Ingram wrote. “It is his opin­ion that the Pres­i­dent could present him­self with a writ­ten par­don dur­ing the next months, date it and qui­et­ly deposit it in a trust vault—ready to be pulled as a defense or waiv­er in any sub­se­quent tri­al.”

    How­ev­er, there is dis­pute about whether the pres­i­dent has the pow­er to self-par­don and if the move could be chal­lenged. Secret par­dons could also be sub­ject to chal­lenges on the basis that they weren’t cor­rect­ly issued.

    ————-

    “Don­ald Trump Can Issue Secret Par­dons, but They’re Risky” by Dar­ragh Roche; Newsweek; 01/20/2021

    “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:

    ...
    Bri­an C. Kalt is pro­fes­sor of law at Michi­gan State Uni­ver­si­ty. He told Newsweek that issu­ing secret par­dons could be a risky strat­e­gy.

    “My view is that a par­don need not be pub­li­cized at the time it is issued to be effec­tive, so secret par­dons are the­o­ret­i­cal­ly pos­si­ble,” Kalt said on Tues­day.

    “But to be effec­tive the recip­i­ent would need to be able to prove the par­don was issued prop­er­ly and that could be a lot hard­er to do if it is not pub­li­cized at the time it is issued.”

    ...

    Jef­frey Crouch is assis­tant pro­fes­sor of Amer­i­can pol­i­tics at Amer­i­can Uni­ver­si­ty and author of The Pres­i­den­tial Par­don Pow­er. He told Newsweek that par­don recip­i­ents would have to make the par­don pub­lic in order to ben­e­fit from it.

    “Assum­ing the pres­i­dent is able to issue secret par­dons, he would like­ly keep them locked away some­where as a type of insur­ance pol­i­cy,” Crouch said.

    “This could be a way for Pres­i­dent Trump to par­don his fam­i­ly mem­bers and pos­si­bly him­self while avoid­ing pub­lic con­tro­ver­sy. But if the intend­ed recip­i­ent ever want­ed to claim the ben­e­fit of the par­don, they would need to pro­duce it. And then the secret would end.”
    ...

    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.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | January 20, 2021, 5:22 pm
  22. 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:

    KTSM.com
    El Paso News

    Will Trump’s par­don of Steve Ban­non be valid after impeach­ment?

    by: Shel­by Kapp
    Post­ed: Jan 20, 2021 / 01:14 PM MST / Updat­ed: Jan 20, 2021 / 06:32 PM MST

    SUNLAND PARK, N.M. (KTSM) — Every­day Bor­der­land res­i­dents dri­ve past the pri­vate­ly fund­ed bor­der wall in Sun­land Park, N.M., vis­i­ble from Inter­state 10.

    Dur­ing for­mer Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s last moments in office, he par­doned the man behind the fund­ing and build­ing of the pri­vate bor­der wall, and his for­mer chief strate­gist, Steve Ban­non.

    Ban­non was arrest­ed back in August 2020, for alleged­ly tak­ing more than $1 mil­lion of the “We Build The Wall” mon­ey from donors for both him­self and “We Build The Wall” group mem­bers.

    “We Build the Wall” raised $25 mil­lion from donors pledg­ing that all the mon­ey would go toward the bor­der wall bar­ri­er.

    ...

    How­ev­er, if for­mer Pres­i­dent Trump is con­vict­ed in the Sen­ate of impeach­ment, the ques­tion is then if his par­dons are valid.

    “They 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,” said Dr. Todd Cur­ry, asso­ciate pro­fes­sor of Polit­i­cal Sci­ence at UTEP.

    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.

    “May or may not actu­al­ly par­don the indi­vid­u­als who get actu­al and phys­i­cal par­dons, so they would still be liable for fed­er­al crimes,” said Cur­ry.

    ————

    “Will Trump’s par­don of Steve Ban­non be valid after impeach­ment?” by Shel­by Kapp; KTSM.com; 01/20/2021

    “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:

    Bloomberg

    Steve Bannon’s Par­don Com­pli­cates Case Against Co-Defen­dants

    * Three oth­ers are also accused of defraud­ing bor­der-wall donors
    * Experts say they could try to cast Ban­non as the chief cul­prit

    By Chris­t­ian Berthelsen

    Jan­u­ary 20, 2021, 2:43 PM CST
    Updat­ed on Jan­u­ary 20, 2021, 5:04 PM CST

    Don­ald Trump’s mid­night par­don of Steve Ban­non com­pli­cates the case against the three oth­er men charged with using bor­der-wall dona­tions for per­son­al expens­es.

    The for­mer chief White House strate­gist was the high­est-pro­file per­son accused by Man­hat­tan fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tors in August of defraud­ing peo­ple who gave $25 mil­lion to the non­prof­it We Build the Wall Inc. Though donors thought they were help­ing to fund pri­vate por­tions of Trump’s promised wall along the U.S. bor­der with Mex­i­co, the gov­ern­ment says around $1 mil­lion of the mon­ey was used for trav­el and per­son­al lux­u­ries, includ­ing a Range Rover for Ban­non.

    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.

    “If I were rep­re­sent­ing some­one in that case, I would try to frame it as, ‘This is all Bannon’s doing,’ and blame Ban­non,” said Har­ry Sandick, a crim­i­nal defense lawyer and for­mer Man­hat­tan fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tor. “My key argu­ment would be, ‘The real bad guy here was Steve Ban­non.’ The case is bet­ter for the oth­er defen­dants with­out Ban­non than with him.”

    ‘98% Con­vic­tion Rate’

    John Meringo­lo, a lawyer for one of Bannon’s co-defen­dants, Tim­o­thy Shea, declined to say whether there would be a change in strat­e­gy.

    “I am hap­py for Mr. Ban­non,” said Meringo­lo. “Unfor­tu­nate­ly the insti­tu­tion of the fed­er­al crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem has a 98% con­vic­tion rate and a lot of inno­cent peo­ple go to jail. I hope that Mr. Shea can be exon­er­at­ed.”

    Lawyers for the oth­er two defen­dants, Bri­an Kolfage and Andrew Badola­to, did not respond to requests for com­ment on Wednes­day. A lawyer for Ban­non also didn’t respond to a request for com­ment.

    The case may still prove tough for Bannon’s for­mer co-defen­dants. Jed Shuger­man, a law pro­fes­sor at Ford­ham Uni­ver­si­ty in New York, not­ed that the gov­ern­ment had a large amount of evi­dence against the men, includ­ing emails and texts. Pros­e­cu­tors could also sum­mon Ban­non to tes­ti­fy against them, though he could still invoke his Fifth Amend­ment right against self-incrim­i­na­tion based on a hypo­thet­i­cal state pros­e­cu­tion. If he lies under oath, he can still be pros­e­cut­ed for per­jury.

    Wild Card

    But legal experts said any attempt to get Ban­non to tes­ti­fy could be fraught for the gov­ern­ment. While he could strength­en the case against the oth­ers, he might also prove a wild card for pros­e­cu­tors, both in terms of what he says and how the jury reacts to him. Shuger­man said it may not be worth the risk.

    “This is the kind of case that pros­e­cu­tors call a paper case, in that the doc­u­ments are so clear,” said Shuger­man. “The wit­ness adds col­or and detail to the paper” but isn’t strict­ly nec­es­sary.

    Accord­ing to the gov­ern­ment, the four men told donors “100% of the funds raised” for We Build the Wall would be used for con­struc­tion but began devis­ing ways to laun­der funds for their own use soon after launch­ing the char­i­ty. They made out­sized pay­ments to con­trac­tors who kicked a por­tion of the funds back to them and round-tripped some of the funds through a shell com­pa­ny. The effort has result­ed in about five miles of bor­der fenc­ing in two dif­fer­ent loca­tions in Texas and New Mex­i­co.

    Trump went back and forth on whether to include Ban­non in the raft of par­dons and com­mu­ta­tions he issued in his final hours in office. Though Ban­non was one of the archi­tects of Trump’s 2016 elec­tion vic­to­ry, the two men clashed in the White House and had a falling-out after caus­tic com­ments by Ban­non appeared in author Michael Wolff’s 2018 tell-all book “Fire and Fury.”

    ...

    Ban­non sought to mend the fence with Trump in the last few months, play­ing a role in push­ing a sup­posed scan­dal involv­ing the busi­ness deal­ings of Pres­i­dent Joe Biden’s son Hunter. In Novem­ber, Ban­non called for vio­lence against Dr. Antho­ny Fau­ci and Fed­er­al Bureau of Inves­ti­ga­tion Direc­tor Christo­pher Wray over their per­ceived dis­loy­al­ty to Trump. Bannon’s long­time lawyer with­drew from the case after the remarks.

    Though he may out of the woods in one case, Ban­non may soon be embroiled in anoth­er. Accord­ing to an Aug. 20 Wall Street Jour­nal report, a media ven­ture he is pur­su­ing with dis­si­dent Chi­nese bil­lion­aire Guo Wen­gui, is fac­ing a fed­er­al inves­ti­ga­tion over its $300 mil­lion pri­vate offer­ing. Lawyers for Guo and the ven­ture didn’t respond to requests for com­ment, but he and Ban­non have told the Wash­ing­ton Post that the com­plaints that gave rise to the probe result­ed from Guo’s crit­i­cisms of the Chi­nese gov­ern­ment.

    ————

    “Steve Bannon’s Par­don Com­pli­cates Case Against Co-Defen­dants” by Chris­t­ian Berthelsen; Bloomberg; 01/20/2021

    “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:

    ...
    The case may still prove tough for Bannon’s for­mer co-defen­dants. Jed Shuger­man, a law pro­fes­sor at Ford­ham Uni­ver­si­ty in New York, not­ed that the gov­ern­ment had a large amount of evi­dence against the men, includ­ing emails and texts. Pros­e­cu­tors could also sum­mon Ban­non to tes­ti­fy against them, though he could still invoke his Fifth Amend­ment right against self-incrim­i­na­tion based on a hypo­thet­i­cal state pros­e­cu­tion. If he lies under oath, he can still be pros­e­cut­ed for per­jury.
    ...

    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.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | January 22, 2021, 2:08 pm
  23. 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 Wash­ing­ton Post

    Pros­e­cu­tor in Trump crim­i­nal probe con­venes grand jury to hear evi­dence, weigh poten­tial charges

    By Shay­na Jacobs and David A. Fahren­thold
    May 25, 2021 at 8:57 p.m. UTC

    NEW YORK — Man­hat­tan’s dis­trict attor­ney has con­vened the grand jury that is expect­ed to decide whether to indict for­mer pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump, oth­er exec­u­tives at his com­pa­ny or the busi­ness itself should pros­e­cu­tors present the pan­el with crim­i­nal charges, accord­ing to two peo­ple famil­iar with the devel­op­ment.

    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.

    The move indi­cates that Dis­trict Attor­ney Cyrus R. Vance Jr.’s inves­ti­ga­tion of the for­mer pres­i­dent and his busi­ness has reached an advanced stage after more than two years. It sug­gests, too, that Vance believes he has found evi­dence of a crime — if not by Trump then by some­one poten­tial­ly close to him or by his com­pa­ny.

    Vance’s inves­ti­ga­tion is expan­sive, accord­ing to peo­ple famil­iar the probe and pub­lic dis­clo­sures made dur­ing relat­ed lit­i­ga­tion. His inves­ti­ga­tors are scru­ti­niz­ing Trump’s busi­ness prac­tices before he was pres­i­dent, includ­ing whether the val­ue of spe­cif­ic prop­er­ties in the Trump Organization’s real estate port­fo­lio were manip­u­lat­ed in a way that defraud­ed banks and insur­ance com­pa­nies, and if any tax ben­e­fits were obtained ille­gal­ly through unscrupu­lous asset val­u­a­tion.

    The dis­trict attor­ney also is exam­in­ing the com­pen­sa­tion pro­vid­ed to top Trump Orga­ni­za­tion exec­u­tives, peo­ple famil­iar with the mat­ter have said.

    A spokesman for Trump and an attor­ney for the Trump Orga­ni­za­tion did not respond to requests for com­ment. The for­mer pres­i­dent has adamant­ly and repeat­ed­ly denied wrong­do­ing, derid­ing the inves­ti­ga­tion as polit­i­cal­ly moti­vat­ed.

    ...

    While extend­ed-length grand juries like the one select­ed to hear evi­dence in the dis­trict attorney’s inves­ti­ga­tion can hear cas­es out of order and to vary­ing lev­els of com­ple­tion, it is like­ly that Trump-relat­ed tes­ti­mo­ny in the secret pro­ceed­ing has already begun, said one of the peo­ple famil­iar with the mat­ter.

    Adam S. Miller, who served as deputy bureau chief of the Major Eco­nom­ic Crimes Bureau in the Man­hat­tan Dis­trict Attorney’s Office before enter­ing pri­vate prac­tice in 2011, said such a “spe­cial grand jury” is “cer­tain­ly not an uncom­mon thing to do with a large, tech­ni­cal and com­pli­cat­ed inves­ti­ga­tion.”

    “It’s real­ly for very com­pli­cat­ed cas­es that have a lot of infor­ma­tion for a grand jury to digest,” Miller said, not­ing that spe­cial grand juries can be extend­ed beyond their ini­tial term with a judge’s approval.

    It is unclear if pros­e­cu­tors work­ing under Vance intend to go through the entire­ty of their grand-jury pre­sen­ta­tion at once or if the pro­ceed­ing may be inter­rupt­ed for the pan­el to review oth­er cas­es in between hear­ing from wit­ness­es about the Trump Orga­ni­za­tion and its busi­ness deal­ings.

    It is also unclear when or even if the grand jury will be asked to con­sid­er return­ing any indict­ments. Pros­e­cu­tors han­dling cas­es such as this one can choose to present charges for the grand jury to con­sid­er — or not. A prosecutor’s grand-jury strat­e­gy is often a close­ly kept secret and can be sub­ject to change.

    Rebec­ca Roiphe, a for­mer assis­tant dis­trict attor­ney in Man­hat­tan who is now a pro­fes­sor at New York Law School, said that such inves­ti­ga­tions are always for­mal­ly over­seen by grand juries. In the ear­ly stages, pros­e­cu­tors may just use a grand jury’s pow­er just to sub­poe­na doc­u­ments with­out offer­ing charges for con­sid­er­a­tion.

    Roiphe said the recent step of seat­ing a long-term pan­el shows that Vance’s inves­ti­ga­tion has pro­gressed to the point that pros­e­cu­tors will vis­it the grand jury, bring them evi­dence and wit­ness­es, and poten­tial­ly ask them to con­tem­plate charges. They were unlike­ly to take that step with­out believ­ing they had evi­dence to show there was prob­a­ble cause to believe some­one com­mit­ted a crime, she said.

    “The pros­e­cu­tors are con­vinced they have a case. That’s at least how I read it,” Roiphe added.

    Trump is fac­ing two state-lev­el inves­ti­ga­tions of his busi­ness prac­tices in New York. Both appear to have begun with the same man: Michael Cohen, Trump’s long­time lawyer and attack dog, who turned on Trump after plead­ing guilty to mak­ing hush-mon­ey pay­offs on Trump’s behalf and lying to Con­gress.

    Vance’s crim­i­nal inves­ti­ga­tion began in 2018, after Cohen plead­ed guilty to charges stem­ming from the hush-mon­ey pay­offs, made in the last days of the 2016 cam­paign to women who said they had affairs with Trump years ear­li­er — claims the for­mer pres­i­dent denies. Vance’s inves­ti­ga­tion soon expand­ed, as the dis­trict attor­ney sought to exam­ine mil­lions of pages of Trump’s tax records.

    Sep­a­rate­ly, New York Attor­ney Gen­er­al Leti­tia James (D) began a civ­il inves­ti­ga­tion of the Trump Orga­ni­za­tion in 2019 prompt­ed by Cohen’s tes­ti­mo­ny to Con­gress, where he said Trump had mis­lead lenders and tax­ing author­i­ties with manip­u­lat­ed val­u­a­tions of his assets. Asset val­ues were inflat­ed at times when the com­pa­ny was seek­ing favor­able loan inter­est rates and were deflat­ed to reduce tax lia­bil­i­ty, Cohen has alleged. He has been inter­viewed exten­sive­ly by Vance’s team, which has added a dec­o­rat­ed for­mer fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tor, Mark F. Pomer­antz, to help with the Trump case.

    In recent months, the two state-lev­el inves­ti­ga­tions have appeared to con­verge. Both sets of inves­ti­ga­tors have sought doc­u­ments relat­ed to a Trump estate in sub­ur­ban New York, accord­ing to court records and peo­ple famil­iar with the efforts, where the then-future pres­i­dent obtained a $21 mil­lion tax break by agree­ing to give up devel­op­ment rights, and a tow­er in Chica­go where Trump’s lenders for­gave $100 mil­lion in debt.

    Anoth­er sign of con­ver­gence: James’s office said last week that its long-run­ning civ­il probe had also spawned a crim­i­nal inves­ti­ga­tion, now being run in coor­di­na­tion with Vance. The state attor­ney general’s office did not explain what inspired the crim­i­nal inquiry, but vet­er­ans of the office said such shifts are often trig­gered by evi­dence that indi­cates a defen­dant intend­ed to break the law.

    Trump has attacked both inves­ti­ga­tions, point­ing to com­ments by James dur­ing her 2018 elec­tion cam­paign in which she called him an “ille­git­i­mate pres­i­dent” and promised to inves­ti­gate his fam­i­ly busi­ness.

    Trump has nev­er been crim­i­nal­ly charged. No for­mer U.S. pres­i­dent has ever been charged with a crime.

    The Wash­ing­ton Post pre­vi­ous­ly report­ed that Vance’s office has been try­ing to pres­sure the Trump Organization’s chief finan­cial offi­cer, Allen Weis­sel­berg, into coop­er­at­ing against his boss, a per­son famil­iar with the strat­e­gy con­firmed. Weis­sel­berg is said to know the ins and outs of every busi­ness trans­ac­tion at the com­pa­ny over the course of his decades in employ­ment there.

    ...

    ———-

    “Pros­e­cu­tor in Trump crim­i­nal probe con­venes grand jury to hear evi­dence, weigh poten­tial charges” by Shay­na Jacobs and David A. Fahren­thold; The Wash­ing­ton Post; 05/25/2021

    “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:

    ...
    The move indi­cates that Dis­trict Attor­ney Cyrus R. Vance Jr.’s inves­ti­ga­tion of the for­mer pres­i­dent and his busi­ness has reached an advanced stage after more than two years. It sug­gests, too, that Vance believes he has found evi­dence of a crime — if not by Trump then by some­one poten­tial­ly close to him or by his com­pa­ny.

    Vance’s inves­ti­ga­tion is expan­sive, accord­ing to peo­ple famil­iar the probe and pub­lic dis­clo­sures made dur­ing relat­ed lit­i­ga­tion. His inves­ti­ga­tors are scru­ti­niz­ing Trump’s busi­ness prac­tices before he was pres­i­dent, includ­ing whether the val­ue of spe­cif­ic prop­er­ties in the Trump Organization’s real estate port­fo­lio were manip­u­lat­ed in a way that defraud­ed banks and insur­ance com­pa­nies, and if any tax ben­e­fits were obtained ille­gal­ly through unscrupu­lous asset val­u­a­tion.

    The dis­trict attor­ney also is exam­in­ing the com­pen­sa­tion pro­vid­ed to top Trump Orga­ni­za­tion exec­u­tives, peo­ple famil­iar with the mat­ter have said.
    ...

    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:

    ...
    Trump is fac­ing two state-lev­el inves­ti­ga­tions of his busi­ness prac­tices in New York. Both appear to have begun with the same man: Michael Cohen, Trump’s long­time lawyer and attack dog, who turned on Trump after plead­ing guilty to mak­ing hush-mon­ey pay­offs on Trump’s behalf and lying to Con­gress.

    Vance’s crim­i­nal inves­ti­ga­tion began in 2018, after Cohen plead­ed guilty to charges stem­ming from the hush-mon­ey pay­offs, made in the last days of the 2016 cam­paign to women who said they had affairs with Trump years ear­li­er — claims the for­mer pres­i­dent denies. Vance’s inves­ti­ga­tion soon expand­ed, as the dis­trict attor­ney sought to exam­ine mil­lions of pages of Trump’s tax records.

    Sep­a­rate­ly, New York Attor­ney Gen­er­al Leti­tia James (D) began a civ­il inves­ti­ga­tion of the Trump Orga­ni­za­tion in 2019 prompt­ed by Cohen’s tes­ti­mo­ny to Con­gress, where he said Trump had mis­lead lenders and tax­ing author­i­ties with manip­u­lat­ed val­u­a­tions of his assets. Asset val­ues were inflat­ed at times when the com­pa­ny was seek­ing favor­able loan inter­est rates and were deflat­ed to reduce tax lia­bil­i­ty, Cohen has alleged. He has been inter­viewed exten­sive­ly by Vance’s team, which has added a dec­o­rat­ed for­mer fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tor, Mark F. Pomer­antz, to help with the Trump case.

    In recent months, the two state-lev­el inves­ti­ga­tions have appeared to con­verge. Both sets of inves­ti­ga­tors have sought doc­u­ments relat­ed to a Trump estate in sub­ur­ban New York, accord­ing to court records and peo­ple famil­iar with the efforts, where the then-future pres­i­dent obtained a $21 mil­lion tax break by agree­ing to give up devel­op­ment rights, and a tow­er in Chica­go where Trump’s lenders for­gave $100 mil­lion in debt.

    Anoth­er sign of con­ver­gence: James’s office said last week that its long-run­ning civ­il probe had also spawned a crim­i­nal inves­ti­ga­tion, now being run in coor­di­na­tion with Vance. The state attor­ney general’s office did not explain what inspired the crim­i­nal inquiry, but vet­er­ans of the office said such shifts are often trig­gered by evi­dence that indi­cates a defen­dant intend­ed to break the law.
    ...

    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...

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | May 25, 2021, 3:42 pm
  24. 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:

    The Dai­ly Beast

    Trump Being Nom­i­nat­ed for House Speak­er Is Becom­ing a Real Pos­si­bil­i­ty

    Sean Han­ni­ty, who remains close with Trump, claimed he’s “been told” the for­mer pres­i­dent is open to the idea.

    by Chaya Tong and Brett Bach­man
    Updat­ed Oct. 03, 2023 10:44PM EDT / Pub­lished Oct. 03, 2023 7:40PM EDT

    Right-wing pun­dits and law­mak­ers are already ral­ly­ing around the idea of for­mer Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump as the next Speak­er of the House fol­low­ing Rep. Kevin McCarthy’s shock ouster Tues­day.

    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.

    “Don­ald Trump should be nom­i­nat­ed as a lit­mus test to all these Repub­li­cans,” Jones said emphat­i­cal­ly on InfoWars. “With all the fake charges and all the fake tri­als, how awe­some would it be to make Don­ald Trump Speak­er of the House?”

    The phrase “Nom­i­nate Trump” was also trend­ing Tues­day on Elon Musk’s social media site X, for­mer­ly known as Twitter—inspired at least in part by Rep. Troy Nehls (R‑TX) unof­fi­cial­ly nom­i­nat­ing the for­mer pres­i­dent via a viral tweet. Rep. Greg Steube quick­ly fol­lowed with his own sug­gest­ing that Trump could fill the role.

    Short­ly after, Fox News host Sean Hannity—who remains incred­i­bly close with the for­mer pres­i­dent and was likened to a “shad­ow chief of staff” by White House staffers dur­ing Trump’s tenure—said he had been in touch with sev­er­al Repub­li­can mem­bers of Con­gress who planned to for­mal­ly pur­sue the idea. Han­ni­ty even went so far as to sug­gest that Trump may be open to the idea.

    “I have been told that Trump might be open to help­ing the Repub­li­can par­ty, at least in the short term, if nec­es­sary,” Han­ni­ty said.

    ...

    The poten­tial for a wild-card out­sider cam­paign for the speak­er­ship wasn’t lost on Rep. Matt Gaetz (R‑FL), who sub­mit­ted the orig­i­nal “motion to vacate” that led to McCarthy being boot­ed from his posi­tion. The MAGA fire­brand told reporters Mon­day night that though he would sup­port sev­er­al cur­rent mem­bers of Con­gress for the role, he wasn’t rul­ing out “oth­er Amer­i­cans who wouldn’t nec­es­sar­i­ly need to be a mem­ber of the body to be con­sid­ered for the speak­er­ship.”

    Oth­er poten­tial can­di­dates include Reps. Tom Emmer (R‑MN), who Gaetz sug­gest­ed would be a good can­di­date as recent­ly as last month, and Steve Scalise (R‑LA), who is report­ed­ly favored by Emmer, the House Major­i­ty Whip.

    The entire saga began over the week­end when Gaetz took issue with McCarthy’s deci­sion to move on a stop­gap spend­ing bill to avert an immi­nent gov­ern­ment shutdown—one that ulti­mate­ly passed with the sup­port of both Demo­c­ra­t­ic law­mak­ers and the White House.

    Just eight oth­er Republicans—as well as all House Democrats—voted to boot McCarthy, giv­ing him the rare dis­tinc­tion of being the only House Speak­er to be removed by their col­leagues.

    The Repub­li­cans who vot­ed against McCarthy were Reps. Andy Big­gs (R‑AZ), Ken Buck (R‑CO), Tim Burchett (R‑TN), Eli Crane (R‑AZ), Bob Good (R‑VA), Nan­cy Mace (R‑SC), Matt Rosendale (R‑MT), and Gaetz.

    The final tal­ly stood at 216 mem­bers in favor of oust­ing the Cal­i­for­nia Repub­li­can, with 210 opposed.

    ———

    “Trump Being Nom­i­nat­ed for House Speak­er Is Becom­ing a Real Pos­si­bil­i­ty” by Chaya Tong and Brett Bach­man; The Dai­ly Beast; 10/03/2023

    “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:

    ...
    The phrase “Nom­i­nate Trump” was also trend­ing Tues­day on Elon Musk’s social media site X, for­mer­ly known as Twitter—inspired at least in part by Rep. Troy Nehls (R‑TX) unof­fi­cial­ly nom­i­nat­ing the for­mer pres­i­dent via a viral tweet. Rep. Greg Steube quick­ly fol­lowed with his own sug­gest­ing that Trump could fill the role.

    Short­ly after, Fox News host Sean Hannity—who remains incred­i­bly close with the for­mer pres­i­dent and was likened to a “shad­ow chief of staff” by White House staffers dur­ing Trump’s tenure—said he had been in touch with sev­er­al Repub­li­can mem­bers of Con­gress who planned to for­mal­ly pur­sue the idea. Han­ni­ty even went so far as to sug­gest that Trump may be open to the idea.

    “I have been told that Trump might be open to help­ing the Repub­li­can par­ty, at least in the short term, if nec­es­sary,” Han­ni­ty said.

    ...

    Just eight oth­er Republicans—as well as all House Democrats—voted to boot McCarthy, giv­ing him the rare dis­tinc­tion of being the only House Speak­er to be removed by their col­leagues.
    ...

    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:

    NBC News

    Trump is not rul­ing out being the new House speak­er

    Believe it or not, the House speak­er does­n’t actu­al­ly have to be serv­ing in the House.

    By Matt Dixon
    Oct. 4, 2023, 10:45 AM CDT

    Does Don­ald Trump want to be speak­er of the House?

    It’s a ques­tion that has emerged in the chaot­ic after­glow of a col­lec­tion of House con­ser­v­a­tives suc­ceed­ing in oust­ing House Speak­er Kevin McCarthy. So far, the for­mer pres­i­dent has done lit­tle to down­play the polit­i­cal intrigue.

    “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.”

    He added, how­ev­er, that he is focused on win­ning back the pres­i­den­cy.

    Trump’s name was imme­di­ate­ly float­ed by sup­port­ers after the suc­cess­ful vote to depose McCarthy, and a Trump advis­er Tues­day night told NBC News that Repub­li­can mem­bers of the House had already been ask­ing Trump to serve as an inter­im speak­er.

    “Mem­bers are try­ing to talk to the Pres­i­dent about lead­ing as the House works it out long term,” the advis­er said in an email.

    The role of House speak­er has impor­tance out­side of Con­gress; that per­son is sec­ond in the pres­i­den­tial line of suc­ces­sion just behind the vice pres­i­dent.

    And Trump, of course, is not a mem­ber of Con­gress. But the Con­sti­tu­tion does­n’t explic­it­ly say that the speak­er needs to be serv­ing in the House, although so far, every one has been. That omis­sion has occa­sion­al­ly led to spec­u­la­tion that there could be a non­mem­ber leader of the House.

    In the past, peo­ple includ­ing Sen. Ted Cruz, R‑Texas, for­mer House Speak­er Newt Gin­grich, R‑Ga., and the late for­mer Sec­re­tary of State Col­in Pow­ell have all been float­ed as pos­si­bil­i­ties. (While there have been votes for non­mem­bers, that push has nev­er gone very far.)

    Trump’s name being in the mix has already led to some of his biggest con­gres­sion­al sup­port­ers being put on the spot. Last night on Fox News’ Sean Han­ni­ty show, Ohio Rep. Jim Jor­dan tried to avoid ques­tions about Trump becom­ing an “inter­im” speak­er by repeat­ed­ly say­ing he want­ed him to again become pres­i­dent. Han­ni­ty kept press­ing the point, and Jor­dan even­tu­al­ly said he wants Trump “at 1600 Penn­syl­va­nia Avenue but if he wants to be speak­er, that’s fine too.”

    Jor­dan on Wednes­day became the first House Repub­li­can to offi­cial­ly announce that he is he is run­ning for speak­er.

    Trump’s legal woes, which include two fed­er­al indict­ments, could also play a role in his thought process. Trump has fre­quent­ly point­ed to his posi­tion as a pres­i­den­tial can­di­date as a rea­son the Jus­tice Depart­ment should not be pros­e­cut­ing him, includ­ing that he lacks the time to attend a tri­al or par­tic­i­pate in his own defense. Should he be named speak­er of the House, Trump could again try to invoke his posi­tion to argue that his tri­al should be delayed.r

    There are some Repub­li­cans who also think the idea is a bit of a polit­i­cal fever dream because Trump would be unable to cob­ble togeth­er the 218 votes need­ed to win a speaker’s race.

    “Trump ain’t going to do it because all he cares about is win­ning, and his path to 218 votes is unlike­ly if not impos­si­ble,” said a Repub­li­can oper­a­tive direct­ly involved in the speak­er’s race.

    ...

    The cur­rent rules of the Repub­li­can House con­fer­ence actu­al­ly pro­hib­it some­one charged with a felony from serv­ing in lead­er­ship. Trump is fac­ing dozens of felony charges.

    ————

    “Trump is not rul­ing out being the new House speak­er” by Matt Dixon; NBC News; 10/04/2023

    ““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:

    ...
    Trump’s legal woes, which include two fed­er­al indict­ments, could also play a role in his thought process. Trump has fre­quent­ly point­ed to his posi­tion as a pres­i­den­tial can­di­date as a rea­son the Jus­tice Depart­ment should not be pros­e­cut­ing him, includ­ing that he lacks the time to attend a tri­al or par­tic­i­pate in his own defense. Should he be named speak­er of the House, Trump could again try to invoke his posi­tion to argue that his tri­al should be delayed.r

    ...

    The cur­rent rules of the Repub­li­can House con­fer­ence actu­al­ly pro­hib­it some­one charged with a felony from serv­ing in lead­er­ship. Trump is fac­ing dozens of felony charges.
    ...

    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:

    ...
    The role of House speak­er has impor­tance out­side of Con­gress; that per­son is sec­ond in the pres­i­den­tial line of suc­ces­sion just behind the vice pres­i­dent.
    ...

    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.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | October 4, 2023, 4:25 pm
  25. It begins. Again. And hope­ful­ly for the last time: Anoth­er Don­ald Trump Pres­i­den­tial term is upon us, shock and awe and all the rest. An orgy of exec­u­tive branch trolling and gross cor­rup­tion, as expect­ed.

    And yet, in the spir­it of sil­ver lin­ings, it’s worth not­ing a tru­ly remark­able pledge Don­ald Trump made just a day before his inau­gu­ra­tion. A pledge that, like most of his pledges, will almost cer­tain­ly not be real­ized. But he did make the pledge, just one day before inau­gu­ra­tion, and he was­n’t real­ly ambigu­ous about it. It was promise to vot­ers. The promise to final­ly release all of the gov­ern­men­t’s archives on the assas­si­na­tions of JFK, RFK, and MLK. Yep, that’s the promise he made on Jan­u­ary 19th. It’s some­thing that’s clear­ly on his mind.

    Of course, it’s a promise he’s made in the past. And bro­ken in the past. Recall how, back in 2017, there was all sorts of spec­u­la­tion about ‘would he or would­n’t he’?. He did­n’t. And nei­ther did Joe Biden. and here we are with Trump once again in a posi­tion to blow the doors open on this wild­ly scan­dalous chap­ter of US his­to­ry. The real ‘Deep State’s’ mega-scan­dal crown jew­els. The real­i­ty is that Trump real­ly would be engag­ing in an act of nation­al hero­ics if he real­ly did release all of these archives. And he real­ly would deliv­er a crush­ing blow to the real ‘Deep State’. It would be his­toric.

    And yet, despite Trump return­ing as an even more author­i­tar­i­an fig­ure this time with even few­er checks on his pow­ers, it still feels like a vir­tu­al impos­si­bil­i­ty that Trump would dare release these archives. Not just because the assas­si­na­tion plots were all orches­trat­ed by the far right — his own allies — but also because of the expect­ed reprisals. He real­ly would be kick­ing the hor­nets nest in a way he’s nev­er done before with an act like that. Trump may not be oper­at­ing under a nor­mal sys­tem of checks and bal­ances in his sec­ond term in office, but that does­n’t mean he’s immune to the kind of ‘hard’ checks and bal­ances the real ‘Deep State’ is capa­ble of, which the ongo­ing polit­i­cal assas­si­na­tion ‘mys­ter­ies’ make painful­ly clear.

    Not that Trump needs to nec­es­sar­i­ly wor­ry about get­ting bumped off as a reprisal. Although, giv­en the incred­i­bly shady nature of the three assas­si­na­tion attempts against him in 2024 — all car­ried out by gun­men with right-wing ide­olo­gies — he can’t exact­ly dis­miss the pos­si­bil­i­ty either. But when it comes to some­one like Trump, who is so gross­ly cor­rupt going back decades, there are poten­tial­ly plen­ty of non-lethal ways for the Deep State to exact revenge.

    Then again, Trump does pos­sess an almost tran­scen­den­tal polit­i­cal teflon sta­tus that Bill Clin­ton prob­a­bly envies. It’s not actu­al­ly clear the Deep State could ‘shame’ Trump out of office even if it tried. Trump real­ly can do no wrong in the eyes of his sup­port­ers. He’s God’s cho­sen change­mak­er, in the eyes of tens of mil­lions of his most fer­vent back­ers, after all.

    At the same time, it’s hard to imag­ine a move that would pro­tect Trump from a Deep State assas­si­na­tion that would be more effec­tive than the release of all these assas­si­na­tion archives and the expo­sure of these decades-old mega-scan­dals. Bump­ing Trump off after that would be a very bold move. Char­ac­ter assas­si­na­tion would be the default play left. And yet how do you kill that which is already dead? It’s not like char­ac­ter assas­si­na­tion real­ly works on a cult leader. At least not at chang­ing the minds of the cultists.

    Part of what makes the sec­ond Trump admin­is­tra­tion so intrigu­ing is that the veil of secre­cy around so many mega-scan­dals has long been pred­i­cat­ed on the abil­i­ty to threat­en the rep­u­ta­tion of vir­tu­al­ly any­one who assumes the Oval Office. But what if that per­son does­n’t care about the expo­sure?

    That’s all part of the dement­ed Deep State expo­sure game the­o­ry now in effect for the sec­ond Trump admin­is­tra­tion. On the one hand, expos­ing the CIA’s dirt­i­est polit­i­cal assas­si­na­tion secrets seems like a great way to invite a whole series of reprisals. On the oth­er hand, some sort of assas­si­na­tion arranged by the far right — pos­si­bly when he’s get­ting too senile to main­tain the fas­cist the­ater — does seem like one the like­li­est ways Trump ends his sec­ond term in office. And mak­ing his­to­ry by expos­ing the Deep State’s role in the assas­si­na­tions of JFK, RFK, and MLK real­ly would be an effec­tive means of pre­emp­tive­ly ward­ing off such an event. On the oth­er, oth­er hand, the mindf*ck poten­tial of some sort of shady look­ing assas­si­na­tion of Trump that just screams ‘cov­er up’ real­ly would be an enor­mous temp­ta­tion for same glob­al far right that is on the ascen­dance. The assas­si­na­tion-expo­sure game the­o­ry Trump faces is more than per­plex­ing.

    And yet, despite the far right nature of the net­works that would ulti­mate­ly get exposed if these assas­si­na­tion archives were even ful­ly released, it should be not­ed that the assas­si­na­tions of JFK, RFK, and MLK don’t appear to be Trump-relat­ed at all. Sure, they were far right gov­ern­ment plots. But Trump is total­ly inno­cent when it comes to these mega-scan­dals. And when it comes to some­one a dis­rep­utable as Trump, drag­ging oth­ers down to his lev­el real­ly is the best way to ele­vate him­self, rel­a­tive­ly speak­ing. It’s kind of the only way. Expos­ing decades old Deep State mega-scan­dals would only make Trump look great in com­par­i­son. Espe­cial­ly if he’s the guy doing the expos­ing.

    It’s quite a deci­sion he has before him. His­toric, poten­tial­ly. No one is all bad or all good and the gen­uine good Trump accom­plish­es should­n’t be dis­missed. He is in a posi­tion to utter­ly dev­as­tate the real Deep State and do some­thing gen­uine­ly great for the nation in the process. It’s the same posi­tion he was in eight years ago. With the same pledges. But he did reis­sue that pledge just a day before inau­gu­ra­tion? If so that could be amaz­ing.

    And that pos­si­bil­i­ty brings us to anoth­er trio of sto­ries released just days before the 2024 elec­tion day. Sto­ries that have large­ly flown under the radar but are exact­ly the kind of sto­ries that could serve as a com­pli­ca­tion should Trump be seri­ous about these assas­si­na­tion archive releas­es. Specif­i­cal­ly, sto­ries about Don­ald Trump and Jef­frey Epstein. And how they were close friends. Like real­ly close. So close that they would oper­ate as team­mates in exe­cut­ing twist­ed psy­cho­log­i­cal sex­u­al games on their vic­tims. Three sep­a­rate sto­ries about this came out less than two weeks before Elec­tion Day. Total­ly under the radar.

    The first sto­ry was an account by for­mer ten­nis star Stacey Williams, who briefly dat­ed Epstein in ear­ly 90s. Accord­ing to Williams, she was first intro­duced to Trump by Epstein in Decem­ber of 1992. It was clear to hear Epstein and Trump were close friends and spent a lot of time togeth­er. It was dur­ing a meet­ing the next year when Trump alleged­ly sex­u­al­ly assault­ed Williams right in Epstein’s pres­ence, with Trump and Epstein exchang­ing smiles at one point. Williams then describes how Epstein got real­ly mad at her lat­er and accused her of allow­ing Trump to do it. Williams said she felt like it was just a twist­ed game Epstein and Trump were play­ing on her. She shared the account with two friends over the years who con­firmed to reporters her shar­ing of the sto­ry.

    Then we got a sec­ond account, also from the ear­ly 1990s. This time, it was for­mer Miss Switzer­land, Beat­rice Keul, who has her own Trump sex­u­al assault sto­ry along with a rec­ol­lec­tion of how close Trump and Epstein seemed to be. In fact, Epstein repeat­ed tried to invit­ed her to a par­ty at Mar-a-Lago at one point. Keul also has friends who have con­firmed to reporters that she shared this sto­ry with them years ago.

    And that brings us to the third Trump/Epstein report. This one pub­lished on Novem­ber 2, three days before Elec­tion Day. The report is about an inter­view that was from almost sev­en years ear­li­er. An inter­view of Jef­frey Epstein record­ed in August 2017 by author Michael Wolff. The Dai­ly Beast was giv­en access to the inter­view tapes. Accord­ing to Wolff, his deci­sion to release the tapes to the pub­lic at that point was based on Keul’s deci­sion to go pub­lic with her account days ear­li­er.

    And as we learn, Epstein made claims like how he was Trump’s best friend for 10 years and basi­cal­ly served as co-wing­men in their per­vert­ed escapades. Which includes escapes like a dis­turb­ing entrap­ment game Trump alleged­ly played on his best friends designed to set Trump up to sleep with their wives. The sce­nario worked as fol­lows: Trump invites the men to his office in Trump Tow­er he would ques­tion them about their sex lives and offer to allow them to sleep with beau­ty pageant con­tes­tants. With their wives were secret­ly lis­ten­ing in on the con­ver­sa­tion. Trump would then seduce the wives by exploit­ing their sense of betray­al. Epstein alleged that Trump emerged from an encounter with a woman in “the Egypt­ian Room” at an Atlantic City casi­no, where Trump “came out after­ward and said, ‘It was great, it was great. The only thing I real­ly like to do is f— the wives of my best friends. That is just the best.’”

    Trump appar­ent­ly fell out with Epstein in 2004 when they both tried to buy a Palm Beach estate. It was 2005 when the FBI began inves­ti­gat­ing Epstein for child sex traf­fick­ing.

    So in August of 2017, Epstein was giv­ing some pret­ty incred­i­ble inter­views about Trump, rough­ly two years before his arrest. Was then-Pres­i­dent Trump aware of Epstein’s August 2017 inter­view at the time of his 2019 arrest? We don’t know, but it’s all an exam­ple of the incred­i­ble sleaze and cor­rup­tion that swirling around this pres­i­dent. Sleaze and cor­rup­tion that can be deployed when need to keep him ‘under con­trol’, at least when it comes to the real­ly impor­tant stuff. But can it real­ly con­trol him? That’s the open ques­tion loom­ing over this sto­ry. The Deep State has an abun­dance of threats, short of assas­si­na­tion, it can deploy against some­one as gross­ly cor­rupt as amoral as Don­ald Trump. But, at this point, it’s not actu­al­ly clear those are cred­i­ble threats. Not any­more:

    Reuters

    Trump says he will quick­ly release JFK, Robert Kennedy, MLK assas­si­na­tion files

    By Gram Slat­tery
    Jan­u­ary 19, 2025 5:42 PM CST
    Updat­ed

    WASHINGTON, Jan 19 (Reuters) — Pres­i­dent-elect Don­ald Trump said on Sun­day he would release clas­si­fied doc­u­ments in the com­ing days relat­ed to the assas­si­na­tions of U.S. Pres­i­dent John F. Kennedy, Sen­a­tor Robert Kennedy and civ­il rights leader Mar­tin Luther King Jr.

    Trump, who returns to the White House on Mon­day, promised on the cam­paign trail to release clas­si­fied intel­li­gence and law enforce­ment files on the 1963 assas­si­na­tion of JFK, as Amer­i­ca’s 35th pres­i­dent is wide­ly known.

    He had made a sim­i­lar promise dur­ing his 2017 to 2021 term, and he did in fact release some doc­u­ments relat­ed to JFK’s 1963 slay­ing. But he ulti­mate­ly bowed to pres­sure from the Cen­tral Intel­li­gence Agency and Fed­er­al Bureau of Inves­ti­ga­tion, and kept a sig­nif­i­cant chunk of doc­u­ments under wraps, cit­ing nation­al secu­ri­ty con­cerns.

    “In the com­ing days, we are going to make pub­lic remain­ing records relat­ed to the assas­si­na­tions of Pres­i­dent John F. Kennedy, his broth­er Robert Kennedy, as well as Dr. Mar­tin Luther King Jr. and oth­er top­ics of great pub­lic inter­est,” Trump said at a ral­ly in down­town Wash­ing­ton, the day before he takes office for a sec­ond, non-con­sec­u­tive term.

    Trump did not spec­i­fy which doc­u­ments would be released, and he did not promise a blan­ket declas­si­fi­ca­tion. King and Robert Kennedy were both assas­si­nat­ed in 1968.

    ...

    Trump’s health and human ser­vices sec­re­tary-des­ig­nate, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the son of Robert Kennedy and nephew of JFK, has said he believes the CIA was involved in his uncle’s death, an alle­ga­tion the agency has described as base­less.

    Kennedy Jr. has also said he believes his father was killed by mul­ti­ple gun­men, an asser­tion that con­tra­dicts offi­cial accounts.

    ———-

    “Trump says he will quick­ly release JFK, Robert Kennedy, MLK assas­si­na­tion files” By Gram Slat­tery; Reuters; 01/19/2025

    ““In the com­ing days, we are going to make pub­lic remain­ing records relat­ed to the assas­si­na­tions of Pres­i­dent John F. Kennedy, his broth­er Robert Kennedy, as well as Dr. Mar­tin Luther King Jr. and oth­er top­ics of great pub­lic inter­est,” Trump said at a ral­ly in down­town Wash­ing­ton, the day before he takes office for a sec­ond, non-con­sec­u­tive term.”

    That’s quite a promise. One of the few Trump promis­es made that, if kept, will actu­al­ly be quite won­der­ful. Of course, it’s also the same promise he made for his first term. Made and bro­ken. So when we see that lack of clar­i­ty on which doc­u­ments he’ll end up releas­ing, keep in mind those bro­ken promis­es:

    ...
    He had made a sim­i­lar promise dur­ing his 2017 to 2021 term, and he did in fact release some doc­u­ments relat­ed to JFK’s 1963 slay­ing. But he ulti­mate­ly bowed to pres­sure from the Cen­tral Intel­li­gence Agency and Fed­er­al Bureau of Inves­ti­ga­tion, and kept a sig­nif­i­cant chunk of doc­u­ments under wraps, cit­ing nation­al secu­ri­ty con­cerns.

    ...

    Trump did not spec­i­fy which doc­u­ments would be released, and he did not promise a blan­ket declas­si­fi­ca­tion. King and Robert Kennedy were both assas­si­nat­ed in 1968.
    ...

    And also keep in mind that there’s essen­tial­ly no way Don­ald Trump could ever release all these doc­u­ments with­out impli­cat­ing the glob­al far right net­works that actu­al­ly exe­cut­ed those assas­si­na­tions. Yes, mem­bers of agen­cies like the CIA and FBI that Trump has long pub­licly quar­reled with played crit­i­cal roles in the plots. But they were work­ing with what were ulti­mate­ly far right net­works. Is Trump real­ly going to risk expos­ing the far right’s role in the biggest US assas­si­na­tions of the last 70 years? That seems like an effec­tive impos­si­bil­i­ty.

    Then again, with Elon Musk and the AfD aggres­sive­ly push­ing the ‘Hitler was a com­mu­nist’ meme, who knows how Trump might be plan­ning on reimag­in­ing this chap­ter of his­to­ry. Maybe we’ll all learn how Alan Dulles was a secret com­mu­nist too.

    But while the far right’s hand in the polit­i­cal assas­si­na­tions Trump just pledged to expose is one rea­son we should­n’t expect this pledge to be kept, there’s the oth­er extreme­ly obvi­ous rea­son: Trump is one of the most cor­rupt, and there­fore black­mail­able, peo­ple on the plan­et. There’s no way he can expose the US intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty’s most dev­as­tat­ing and treach­er­ous secrets with­out some sort of reprisal. Being pres­i­dent does­n’t pro­tect you from every­thing, as the polit­i­cal assas­si­na­tions Trump is pledg­ing to expose makes clear.

    But the poten­tial reprisals Trump faces don’t just include assas­si­na­tion. Expos­ing Trump’s decades of cor­rup­tion is poten­tial­ly more than enough. There’s just so much. And that brings us to a set of sto­ries that broke in the weeks before the 2024 elec­tion day and serve as shin­ing exam­ples of Pres­i­dent Trump’s his­toric black­mail­able­ness. We’ll prob­a­bly nev­er know. Unless the ‘Deep State’ reveals it some­how. Along with a bunch of oth­er hor­ri­bly embar­rass­ing stuff that Trump will be remind­ed of should he decide to start get­ting fan­ci­ful ideas like releas­ing all the assas­si­na­tion archives:

    The Dai­ly Beast

    Lis­ten To The Jef­frey Epstein Tapes: ‘I Was Don­ald Trump’s Clos­est Friend’

    Hugh Dougher­ty
    Exec­u­tive Edi­tor
    Updat­ed Nov. 3 2024 2:21PM EST /
    Pub­lished Nov. 2 2024 7:10PM EDT
    Exclu­sive

    Jef­frey Epstein described him­self as Don­ald Trump’s “clos­est friend” and claimed inti­mate knowl­edge of his pro­cliv­i­ty for sex, includ­ing cuck­old­ing his best friends, accord­ing to record­ings obtained exclu­sive­ly by the Dai­ly Beast.

    The con­vict­ed pedophile even boast­ed of his close­ness to Trump and his now-wife Mela­nia by claim­ing, “the first time he slept with her was on my plane,” which was dubbed the Loli­ta Express.

    Epstein spoke at length about Trump with the author Michael Wolff in August 2017, two years before being found dead in his jail cell. Wolff was research­ing his bomb­shell best­seller Fire and Fury at the time.

    ...

    Trump’s camp referred to the tapes’ release as “false smears” and “elec­tion inter­fer­ence.”

    The tapes also offer unusu­al insight into the friend­ship of two wealthy, pow­er­ful men who fre­quent­ly went out on the town togeth­er, prowl­ing for women in New York and Atlantic City.

    Epstein paint­ed a com­pli­cat­ed por­trait of Trump. He called him “charm­ing,” and “always fun,” capa­ble of extra­or­di­nary sales­man­ship, and sug­gest­ed he was per­son­al­ly in favor of Trump’s poli­cies on “the trans­gen­der stuff.” But he alleged Trump was a ser­i­al cheat in his mar­riages and loved to “f— the wives of his best friends.”

    He also claimed that while Trump has friends, he was at heart a friend­less man inca­pable of kind­ness. And he alleged that Trump had under­gone scalp reduc­tion surgery for bald­ness and called him­self “The Trump­ster.”

    Asked by Wolff, “How do you know all this?” Epstein replied, “I was Donald’s clos­est friend for 10 years.”

    Wolff shared the tape with the Dai­ly Beast ahead of dis­cussing it on his Fire and Fury pod­cast on Mon­day. Last Thurs­day he caused shock­waves by reveal­ing a few sec­onds of a sep­a­rate record­ing in which Epstein spoke in detail about the inner work­ings of the Trump admin­is­tra­tion. Wolff also said Thurs­day that the pedophile showed off pho­tos of Trump with top­less young women sit­ting in his lap.

    Wolff, a vet­er­an jour­nal­ist and author who was also the biog­ra­ph­er of Rupert Mur­doch, has long attract­ed praise and bro­mides. When Fire & Fury was pub­lished in Jan­u­ary 2018, Trump tried to stop it with a failed cease and desist order, then threat­ened to sue. No case ever mate­ri­al­ized, and it sold 5 mil­lion copies world­wide. Wolff, who appears reg­u­lar­ly on his Fire and Fury pod­cast, wrote two more books on Trump after Fire and Fury, and about Epstein in 2021’s Too Famous.

    Wolff says he has up to 100 hours of record­ings of inter­views with Epstein, includ­ing from using him as a source for Fire and Fury, and from years of meet­ings when the dis­graced financier appeared to want Wolff to write a biog­ra­phy of him. Wolff said he decid­ed to release parts of the archive after a new accuser, a for­mer Miss Switzer­land, alleged last week that Trump had groped her her in 1992.

    The new record­ing offers extra­or­di­nary insights into Epstein, who in 2017 was shut­tling freely on his two pri­vate jets between his Man­hat­tan town­house, his Palm Beach, Flori­da, estate and Lit­tle St. James, a pri­vate island in the Vir­gin Islands.

    ...

    Wolff told the Beast he inter­viewed Epstein, then 64, in a “gar­gan­tu­an” study in his town­house on East 71st Street in Man­hat­tan two years before his death. The Beast has reviewed the entire record­ing, which is one hour, 44 min­utes long. The voice on the tape clear­ly match­es record­ings of Epstein’s voice from depo­si­tions in 2012 and 2016.

    The Trump cam­paign has already attacked Wolff for releas­ing audio of Epstein, call­ing the author “a dis­graced writer who rou­tine­ly fab­ri­cates lies in order to sell fic­tion books because he clear­ly has no morals or ethics.”

    A spokesper­son renewed that attack Sat­ur­day, and said, “He wait­ed until days before the elec­tion to make out­landish false smears all in an effort to engage in bla­tant elec­tion inter­fer­ence on behalf of Kamala Har­ris. He’s a failed jour­nal­ist that is resort­ing to lying for atten­tion.” Sources in the Trump camp also sug­gest­ed it was “wide­ly known” that Trump had “kicked Jef­frey Epstein out of Mar-a-Lago” when he learned about the sex-traf­fick­ing alle­ga­tions.

    Trump’s long friend­ship with Epstein, which spanned the late 1980s, 1990s and ear­ly 2000s has been well doc­u­ment­ed. In the 1990s, the two pub­licly par­tied at Mar-a-Lago and went to a Victoria’s Secret Angels show togeth­er. In 2002, Trump told New York Mag­a­zine of Epstein, “I’ve known Jeff for 15 years. Ter­rif­ic guy. He’s a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beau­ti­ful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side.”

    Epstein’s infa­mous leaked address books had Trump’s own phone num­ber as well as Melania’s, while Trump’s name appeared sev­en times in the pas­sen­ger logs of Epstein’s planes. (The books and logs also includ­ed princes, politi­cians and poten­tates such as Bill Clin­ton, for­mer British prime min­is­ter Tony Blair, for­mer Israeli PM Ehud Barak, Prince Andrew and celebri­ties and bil­lion­aires includ­ing Mick Jag­ger and Les Wexn­er.)

    In 2022 Ghis­laine Maxwell, Epstein’s for­mer girl­friend who pro­cured him under­age girls, would be sen­tenced to 20 years in fed­er­al prison for the sex traf­fick­ing of minors. Upon hear­ing of her arrest in 2020, Trump, then pres­i­dent, said he wished her well. “Her friend or boyfriend was either killed or com­mit­ted sui­cide in jail. Yeah, I wish her well… Good luck.”

    In 2004, Epstein and Trump fell out when they both tried to buy a Palm Beach estate, Mai­son de L’Amitié, out of bank­rupt­cy. The next year, the FBI began inves­ti­gat­ing Epstein for child sex traf­fick­ing.

    In 2019, on the day after Epstein’s arrest, Trump said in the Oval Office, “I was not a fan of his, that I can tell you,” and that they had not been friends for 15 years. He said it “did not much mat­ter” what the fall-out had been over. This Sep­tem­ber, asked about Epstein by the tech pod­cast­er Lex Frid­man, Trump said: “He was a good sales­man. He was a hail­ing, hearty type of guy. He had some nice assets that he’d throw around like islands, but a lot of big peo­ple went to that island. But for­tu­nate­ly, I was not one of them.”

    How­ev­er, the financier’s ver­sion of their rela­tion­ship has nev­er been heard until now.

    He offers a por­trait of Trump wom­an­iz­ing, yelling at staff and liv­ing a basi­cal­ly friend­less life with only his daugh­ter Ivan­ka, his sec­re­tary and his body­guard tru­ly loy­al to him.

    Trump, he said, was almost “func­tion­al­ly illit­er­ate” but did read the Page Six gos­sip col­umn in the New York Post. He was “inca­pable” of read­ing a bal­ance sheet, and any “act of kind­ness” would have been an acci­dent, Epstein said

    But it is Epstein’s descrip­tion of Trump’s con­duct toward women which is like­ly to attract most atten­tion, giv­en the pair’s long friend­ship, and the 28 women who have made accu­sa­tions against the for­mer pres­i­dent of sex­u­al mis­con­duct (all of which he denies). Many of the attacks are alleged to have occurred when he and Epstein were friends.

    On the tape Epstein can be heard say­ing, “He’s a hor­ri­ble human being. He does nasty things to his best friends, best friends’ wives, any­one who he first tries to gain their trust and uses it to do bad things to them.”

    On one occa­sion, Epstein alleged, Trump took a woman to what he called “the Egypt­ian Room” in an Atlantic City casi­no. Epstein alleged, “He came out after­ward and said, ‘It was great, it was great. The only thing I real­ly like to do is f— the wives of my best friends. That is just the best.’”

    He alleged that he and Trump would pick up women by com­bin­ing to split them from their male com­pan­ions. “We always used to go to Atlantic City to try to find girls in the casi­no,” he said. “And if there was a guy, I would say, ‘I’m here to invite the guy to go out to din­ner.’ And he’d say, [to the woman], ‘Let me show you the casi­no.’ And as he walked out, he put his arm around the girl’s shoul­der, and the body­guard would walk up and Don­ald, whoosh, take the girl away.”

    Epstein also alleged that Trump had an elab­o­rate scheme to pro­cure sex with his friends’ wives. He would call the men into his Trump Tow­er office to ask them about their sex lives and offer them sex with beau­ty pageant con­tes­tants, the pedophile said. He would do this while the wives were—unknown to their husbands—listening on speak­er­phone, so that he could then seduce the wives on the basis their hus­bands had betrayed them, Epstein claimed.

    Epstein can be heard act­ing out what he alleged was Trump’s elab­o­rate seduc­tion tech­nique to Wolff, using Wolff’s name and that of his wife, Vic­to­ria, to demon­strate it. Epstein said, “And he’d say, ‘What’s it like to do that?… Do you like hav­ing sex with your wife? How often do you have sex with her?’” Epstein claimed Trump would also say, “You must have had a bet­ter f— than your wife, tell me about it.”

    Then, the pedophile alleged, Trump would say, “We can, you and I can go upstairs or tomor­row, come over, there’s this girl’s com­ing in from Los Ange­les, part of the, what­ev­er Hawai­ian Trop­ic con­test, so come over, we can have a great time. I promise you, Michael, you know, it’s just me and you, we can have a great time.” Epstein added, “The whole time, your Victoria’s with us on the phone.” Then he would use the wives’ anger to seduce them, he claimed.

    The Epstein tape includes an allegation—which is impos­si­ble to verify—that Trump had an affair with a politi­cian while in the White House. Epstein offered no proof or sourc­ing for the claim. He also alleged that Trump cheat­ed on both his first wife Ivana and sec­ond wife Mar­la Maples with “a Black girl.” At one sec­tion, Epstein used a Yid­dish racial slur to refer to Black women and alleged Trump boast­ed to him, “I’m f—ing all these Black women.”

    ...

    And Epstein offers his eye­wit­ness account of Trump Tow­er and Trump’s office where, he said, Trump had “fake hon­ors” on the wall. Trump, he claimed, would yell at his per­son­al assis­tant Rhona Graff, “who’s a loy­al, per­fect, sec­re­tary,” as well as Matthew Cala­mari Snr., his body­guard, and Michael Cohen, his attor­ney who is now an ene­my. Epstein com­pared Trump to “an emo­tion­al­ly chal­lenged 9‑year-old,” and said, “He screams and yells at Rhona more than any­body else. His scream­ing is how he treats peo­ple. He has a tantrum, not a tem­per. If you don’t under­stand him, it’s fright­en­ing. Once you under­stand him, it’s sort of sil­ly.”

    Epstein also told Wolff he had pos­i­tive things to say about Trump. “He’s charm­ing. In a devi­ous way, he’s charm­ing,” he said. “To some extent it’s a typ­i­cal tragedy where he believes his own bulls—. He has delu­sions of grandios­i­ty, then he takes it on board.” He added that he had a “self-dep­re­cat­ing nature” and was “not vul­gar.”

    “He’s fun­ny,” Epstein said. “Self-aware­ness means you’re self-aware. He’s aware of that per­son, Don­ald Trump. He talks about The Trump, The Trump­ster. ‘Trump’s get­ting laid.’”

    Despite Epstein speak­ing of his “Demo­c­ra­t­ic friends,” he offered praise for some aspects of Trump’s time in office, and said, “I think he’s doing a pret­ty good job at cer­tain things and he’s not get­ting cred­it for it. All the trans­gen­der stuff, the bath­room stuff, giv­ing police back their weapons.

    ...

    Star­tling­ly for a man who became one of the world’s most noto­ri­ous sex offend­ers, Epstein on the tapes offers a damn­ing judg­ment of Trump, telling Wolff, “The moral com­pass just does not exist.”

    ———-

    “Lis­ten To The Jef­frey Epstein Tapes: ‘I Was Don­ald Trump’s Clos­est Friend’” by Hugh Dougher­ty; The Dai­ly Beast; 11/02/2024

    Epstein spoke at length about Trump with the author Michael Wolff in August 2017, two years before being found dead in his jail cell. Wolff was research­ing his bomb­shell best­seller Fire and Fury at the time.”

    It’s a pret­ty incred­i­ble inter­view when you think about it: Don­ald Trump was the still new Pres­i­dent with more than three years ahead of him when Jef­frey Epstein decid­ed to do this inter­view for Wolf­f’s book. And Epstein was back to liv­ing a life of lux­u­ry. For what­ev­er rea­son, Epstein decid­ed to do this inter­view and make claims like “I was Donald’s clos­est friend for 10 years.” It’s as if Epstein was either feel­ing very secure or very vul­ner­a­ble when he did this inter­view:

    ...
    Epstein paint­ed a com­pli­cat­ed por­trait of Trump. He called him “charm­ing,” and “always fun,” capa­ble of extra­or­di­nary sales­man­ship, and sug­gest­ed he was per­son­al­ly in favor of Trump’s poli­cies on “the trans­gen­der stuff.” But he alleged Trump was a ser­i­al cheat in his mar­riages and loved to “f— the wives of his best friends.”

    He also claimed that while Trump has friends, he was at heart a friend­less man inca­pable of kind­ness. And he alleged that Trump had under­gone scalp reduc­tion surgery for bald­ness and called him­self “The Trump­ster.”

    Asked by Wolff, “How do you know all this?” Epstein replied, “I was Donald’s clos­est friend for 10 years.”

    Wolff shared the tape with the Dai­ly Beast ahead of dis­cussing it on his Fire and Fury pod­cast on Mon­day. Last Thurs­day he caused shock­waves by reveal­ing a few sec­onds of a sep­a­rate record­ing in which Epstein spoke in detail about the inner work­ings of the Trump admin­is­tra­tion. Wolff also said Thurs­day that the pedophile showed off pho­tos of Trump with top­less young women sit­ting in his lap.

    ...

    The new record­ing offers extra­or­di­nary insights into Epstein, who in 2017 was shut­tling freely on his two pri­vate jets between his Man­hat­tan town­house, his Palm Beach, Flori­da, estate and Lit­tle St. James, a pri­vate island in the Vir­gin Islands.

    ...

    In 2004, Epstein and Trump fell out when they both tried to buy a Palm Beach estate, Mai­son de L’Amitié, out of bank­rupt­cy. The next year, the FBI began inves­ti­gat­ing Epstein for child sex traf­fick­ing.

    ...

    Trump’s long friend­ship with Epstein, which spanned the late 1980s, 1990s and ear­ly 2000s has been well doc­u­ment­ed. In the 1990s, the two pub­licly par­tied at Mar-a-Lago and went to a Victoria’s Secret Angels show togeth­er. In 2002, Trump told New York Mag­a­zine of Epstein, “I’ve known Jeff for 15 years. Ter­rif­ic guy. He’s a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beau­ti­ful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side.”
    ...

    Epstein even claimed in this inter­view that the first time Trump slept with Mela­nia it was on his plane. Which, again, is just a wild­ly con­fi­dent thing for some­one in Epstein’s posi­tion to say giv­en Trump’s vin­dic­tive­ness. Wolf­f’s book Fire & Fury, came out in Jan­u­ary of 2018 so it’s not like the inter­view he was giv­ing was going to be used for some­thing pub­lished after Trump was out of office. It’s an incred­i­ble inter­view on many lev­els, and we only learned about it three days before the 2024 elec­tion that Trump won. Amaz­ing on many lev­els:

    ...
    The con­vict­ed pedophile even boast­ed of his close­ness to Trump and his now-wife Mela­nia by claim­ing, “the first time he slept with her was on my plane,” which was dubbed the Loli­ta Express.

    ...

    Epstein’s infa­mous leaked address books had Trump’s own phone num­ber as well as Melania’s, while Trump’s name appeared sev­en times in the pas­sen­ger logs of Epstein’s planes. (The books and logs also includ­ed princes, politi­cians and poten­tates such as Bill Clin­ton, for­mer British prime min­is­ter Tony Blair, for­mer Israeli PM Ehud Barak, Prince Andrew and celebri­ties and bil­lion­aires includ­ing Mick Jag­ger and Les Wexn­er.)

    In 2022 Ghis­laine Maxwell, Epstein’s for­mer girl­friend who pro­cured him under­age girls, would be sen­tenced to 20 years in fed­er­al prison for the sex traf­fick­ing of minors. Upon hear­ing of her arrest in 2020, Trump, then pres­i­dent, said he wished her well. “Her friend or boyfriend was either killed or com­mit­ted sui­cide in jail. Yeah, I wish her well… Good luck.”
    ...

    But the most dam­ag­ing alle­ga­tions are arguably the trap he would set for his friends in order to seduce their wives. Dam­ag­ing because it just seems so in keep­ing with Trump’s char­ac­ter. It just feels real the first time you hear it. Of course that’s some­thing Trump would do, if that works as a seduc­tion trick. It’s an on brand alle­ga­tion:

    ...

    He offers a por­trait of Trump wom­an­iz­ing, yelling at staff and liv­ing a basi­cal­ly friend­less life with only his daugh­ter Ivan­ka, his sec­re­tary and his body­guard tru­ly loy­al to him.

    Trump, he said, was almost “func­tion­al­ly illit­er­ate” but did read the Page Six gos­sip col­umn in the New York Post. He was “inca­pable” of read­ing a bal­ance sheet, and any “act of kind­ness” would have been an acci­dent, Epstein said

    But it is Epstein’s descrip­tion of Trump’s con­duct toward women which is like­ly to attract most atten­tion, giv­en the pair’s long friend­ship, and the 28 women who have made accu­sa­tions against the for­mer pres­i­dent of sex­u­al mis­con­duct (all of which he denies). Many of the attacks are alleged to have occurred when he and Epstein were friends.

    On the tape Epstein can be heard say­ing, “He’s a hor­ri­ble human being. He does nasty things to his best friends, best friends’ wives, any­one who he first tries to gain their trust and uses it to do bad things to them.”

    On one occa­sion, Epstein alleged, Trump took a woman to what he called “the Egypt­ian Room” in an Atlantic City casi­no. Epstein alleged, “He came out after­ward and said, ‘It was great, it was great. The only thing I real­ly like to do is f— the wives of my best friends. That is just the best.’”

    He alleged that he and Trump would pick up women by com­bin­ing to split them from their male com­pan­ions. “We always used to go to Atlantic City to try to find girls in the casi­no,” he said. “And if there was a guy, I would say, ‘I’m here to invite the guy to go out to din­ner.’ And he’d say, [to the woman], ‘Let me show you the casi­no.’ And as he walked out, he put his arm around the girl’s shoul­der, and the body­guard would walk up and Don­ald, whoosh, take the girl away.”

    Epstein also alleged that Trump had an elab­o­rate scheme to pro­cure sex with his friends’ wives. He would call the men into his Trump Tow­er office to ask them about their sex lives and offer them sex with beau­ty pageant con­tes­tants, the pedophile said. He would do this while the wives were—unknown to their husbands—listening on speak­er­phone, so that he could then seduce the wives on the basis their hus­bands had betrayed them, Epstein claimed.
    ...

    And note where Epstein was way ahead of the curve when it comes to pol­i­tics: his praise specif­i­cal­ly for Trump’s poli­cies on “all the trans­gen­der stuff, the bath­room stuff”. Recall how the GOP’s fix­a­tion on the ‘trans threat’ real­ly start­ed in 2015 with the con­ser­v­a­tive oppo­si­tion to the Hous­ton “Bath­room Bill” that would have grant­ed trans peo­ple access to bath­rooms. Polit­i­cal fear­mon­ger­ing over the trans com­mu­ni­ty was a rel­a­tive­ly niche issue in August of 2017 when Epstein gave this inter­view:

    ...
    Despite Epstein speak­ing of his “Demo­c­ra­t­ic friends,” he offered praise for some aspects of Trump’s time in office, and said, “I think he’s doing a pret­ty good job at cer­tain things and he’s not get­ting cred­it for it. All the trans­gen­der stuff, the bath­room stuff, giv­ing police back their weapons.

    ...

    Star­tling­ly for a man who became one of the world’s most noto­ri­ous sex offend­ers, Epstein on the tapes offers a damn­ing judg­ment of Trump, telling Wolff, “The moral com­pass just does not exist.”
    ...

    Last­ly, note the expla­na­tion Wolff gave for the tim­ing of his pub­li­ca­tion of this inter­view just days before the 2024 elec­tion: the accu­sa­tions of a for­mer Miss Switzer­land that Trump sex­u­al­ly assault­ed her in 1992 that were pub­lished a week before this Dai­ly Beast report:

    ...
    Wolff says he has up to 100 hours of record­ings of inter­views with Epstein, includ­ing from using him as a source for Fire and Fury, and from years of meet­ings when the dis­graced financier appeared to want Wolff to write a biog­ra­phy of him. Wolff said he decid­ed to release parts of the archive after a new accuser, a for­mer Miss Switzer­land, alleged last week that Trump had groped her her in 1992.
    ...

    So why did the accu­sa­tions of Beat­rice Keul, a for­mer Miss Switzer­land, serve as a rea­son for Wolff to release the Epstein inter­view? Well, as we’re going to see, Keul also claimed that Epstein was close Trump and attend pageants. Epstein also repeat­ed­ly tried to con­vince her to join a par­ty at Mar-a-Lago. She described Epstein as a kind of hench­man for Trump in arrang­ing this Mar-a-Lago par­ty. In oth­er words, Keul just made a bunch of accu­sa­tions that were very much aligned with the claims made in that Epstein inter­view:

    The Dai­ly Mail

    EXCLUSIVE Beau­ty queen claims Don­ald Trump groped her after lur­ing her back to suite at New York’s Plaza Hotel

    * Beat­rice Keul, 53, was invit­ed to US by Trump after Miss Switzer­land pageant
    * ‘He tried to lift my dress. He was grab­bing and touch­ing my body every­where’

    By JOSH BOSWELL FOR DAILYMAIL.COM

    Pub­lished: 07:57 EST, 30 Octo­ber 2024 | Updat­ed: 12:14 EST, 30 Octo­ber 2024

    Don­ald Trump ‘jumped’ on a blonde 6′ 1’ pageant queen, ‘grab­bing her body every­where’ after invit­ing her up to a suite at his New York hotel for ‘a pri­vate talk’, the woman has claimed exclu­sive­ly to DailyMail.com.

    And it was only because of her height and strength that Beat­rice Keul could fight off the for­mer pres­i­dent, who is now hop­ing for a sec­ond term in the White House.

    ‘I think my size saved me,’ Keul said of the 1993 inci­dent in the Plaza Hotel, which Trump owned at the time.

    Keul, 53, is com­ing for­ward now because she dis­cov­ered all the doc­u­men­ta­tion for her trip from her home in Zurich, Switzer­land sit­ting in a box when she pre­pared to move.

    Her descrip­tion of the events close­ly mir­rors accu­sa­tions made by sev­er­al oth­er women over the years – includ­ing writer E. Jean Car­roll who has been award­ed more than $88 mil­lion in dam­ages after Trump accused her of lying over an alleged assault in a Bergdorf Good­man chang­ing room.

    A long­time friend, Swiss writer Pas­cal Claivaz, also told DailyMail.com that Keul first told him her sto­ry of Trump’s unwant­ed sex­u­al advances 20 years ago, and that her telling of the inci­dent has not changed in the inter­ven­ing years.

    ...

    Keul, who was a high-end staffer in a Swiss bank and a part-time mod­el, grabbed Trump’s atten­tion when she won sec­ond place in the Miss Switzer­land 1992 pageant in Zurich and reached the final round of the Miss Europe com­pe­ti­tion in Istan­bul that year.

    She said she then received an invi­ta­tion from the Don­ald J. Trump Amer­i­can Dream Pageant, offer­ing an all-expense-paid trip to New York and Atlantic City to par­tic­i­pate in that con­test.

    ‘When you are from Switzer­land, the US is a big wow,’ Keul told DailyMail.com speak­ing almost per­fect Eng­lish with a slight Ger­man accent.

    ‘Then you think about New York, that’s a sec­ond wow. And then comes the name Trump. Wow again.’

    ‘Trump, as a brand, was quite some­thing at that time. You could be blind­ed by all that. I did­n’t know it’s a jun­gle there.’

    Keul, now a divor­cée with a teenage son, flew from Zurich to Atlantic City, New Jer­sey, via John F. Kennedy Air­port on Novem­ber 14, 1993.

    After a cou­ple of days of pageant events at Trump’s Cas­tle Casi­no, she said the 50-or-so con­tes­tants were bused to the Plaza Hotel in Man­hat­tan.

    And she said it was clear that Trump, then 47, had an eye for her as he went round talk­ing to the con­tes­tants.

    ‘He said, ‘Ah we final­ly meet, Miss Keul. How nice to meet you final­ly.’ He was def­i­nite­ly excit­ed,’ she said, adding that Trump mis­pro­nounced her name as ‘Cool’.

    ‘He stayed a long time. We talked for so long that every­body was star­ing at us. A good 10 min­utes if not 15. I could­n’t believe he was so fond of me,’ she said.

    ‘I gave some­one my Kodak, I told them to ‘click-click’.’

    Keul, who now lives in the Swiss cap­i­tal Bern, told DailyMail.com that after a press lun­cheon a Trump staffer approached her to say the celebri­ty hote­lier want­ed a pri­vate meet­ing.

    ‘He took me to the upper floors. It was one of the big suites,’ she said.

    ‘I thought Trump want­ed to talk, as the oth­er guy told me. I was con­fi­dent, but I went with closed eyes.

    ‘When I entered, he jumped on me. I just had time to turn. I was not pre­pared. I tried to do what I could to get rid of him.’

    She said Trump groped her as she told him to stop and tried to shove him off.

    ‘He kissed me on the lips and on the neck. He tried to lift my dress. He was grab­bing and touch­ing my body every­where he could.’

    ‘I’m very tall, that’s what helped me a lot. I’m 185cm [6’1′] with a good 5–7cm shoes [2–3’]. I think my size saved me,’ she said.

    ‘I tried every­thing I could. Final­ly, I said ‘let’s talk first’ or some­thing like that, then he slowed down.

    ‘Then he held my hand, he kissed me, he asked me if I want­ed to drink some­thing, he asked me to sit down.

    ‘It was a bit Jekyll and Hyde,’ she said. ‘I did­n’t know how to react.

    ‘I had to breathe. I was think­ing, how do I get out of here? Let’s be nice, I thought.’

    Keul said they talked for about half an hour, with Trump ask­ing if she want­ed to stay in the US and offer­ing to help her get a place­ment on a New York Uni­ver­si­ty course.

    ‘He asked me to agree to see him again. I said yes, because I did­n’t want trou­ble. He asked me if I’m mad, I said no. I had to find some­thing diplo­mat­ic,’ she said.

    ‘I remem­ber he was hold­ing me, kiss­ing me, he said ‘I’ll see you lat­er’.

    ‘When you are with sick peo­ple you have to stay calm, because if you are not calm some­thing very bad can hap­pen. I tried to be as nor­mal as pos­si­ble and lie in my replies.

    ‘It was the begin­ning of the pageant and I had an entire week to stay there. I knew if I left, I had to tell peo­ple why. So I could­n’t do that.

    ‘I was in a for­eign coun­try. I was scared that I could not go home, or I could­n’t come back. I was scared of every­thing, and when you’re scared, you say what­ev­er it takes to save your­self.’

    Keul told DailyMail.com that because pageants were mere­ly a hob­by for her, and she had her own income, she felt more able to rebuff Trump’s unwant­ed advances.

    ‘It’s sad for those who don’t know to say no, or don’t have the courage or oppor­tu­ni­ty to say no,’ she said.

    ‘Not every­one had the priv­i­lege that I come from. Not every­body was lucky enough. If I did­n’t have the back­ground I have, I guess it could have end­ed very bad­ly.’

    Keul’s rev­e­la­tions come less than a week after for­mer Sports Illus­trat­ed mod­el Stacey Williams claimed her then-boyfriend Jef­frey Epstein took her to meet Trump at Trump Tow­er in Man­hat­tan in 1993.

    Williams, now 56, said that as soon as she was intro­duced to Trump, he pulled her towards him, put his hands ‘all over my breasts’, waist and but­tocks.

    ...

    Keul told her sto­ry to DailyMail.com before Williams came for­ward, and she said she had nev­er heard of Williams until her sto­ry was pub­lished on Wednes­day of last week.

    Keul also claimed that pedophile financier Epstein was close to Trump, attend­ed pageant events and repeat­ed­ly tried to con­vince her to join a par­ty at Mar-a-Lago.

    ‘Epstein was insist­ing to pay for every­thing, the flight, the accom­mo­da­tion, so that I would come and join them at the par­ty. Noth­ing else inter­est­ed him,’ she said.

    ‘He was very explic­it. He said, ‘You know I can take care of you. We orga­nize many par­ties with Don. I take care of every­thing.’ He was real­ly insist­ing.

    ‘He said he’s orga­niz­ing the par­ty at Mar-a-Lago with Don. It was clear he was some kind of hench­man.

    ‘I thought, if he wants me that bad­ly to come, he wants me to do some­thing for that.’

    ...

    Keul’s friend, Swiss mag­a­zine staffer Pas­cal Claivaz, said she told him the same sto­ry around 2004, a few months after they met through her role in pub­lic rela­tions for a Swiss bank.

    ‘I’ve known her for 20 years. We were good col­leagues,’ he said. ‘She comes from a good fam­i­ly, with an impres­sive back­ground.

    ‘One day, dur­ing a con­ver­sa­tion about the USA, she showed me pic­tures of her with Mr. Don­ald J. Trump and told me about her invi­ta­tion at the Miss Amer­i­can Dream Pageant.

    ‘In tears, she explained to me that Trump jumped on her,’ Claivaz said. ‘It was very emo­tion­al for her, very dif­fi­cult.

    ‘She is not a liar. I know her enough to believe her,’ Claivaz added.

    Keul said she returned to Switzer­land and tried to put the ordeal out of her mind – despite Trump alleged­ly call­ing her moth­er ask­ing when she would return to the US.

    She threw all the doc­u­ments about the New York vis­it – includ­ing her plane tick­ets and Trump’s orig­i­nal invi­ta­tion – into a box, and there they stayed for three decades.

    ‘When I came back, I was very upset. I just opened a box and threw every­thing in there,’ she said. ‘I was too mad, too dis­ap­point­ed. I was destroyed when I came back. I just want­ed to for­get.

    ‘A short time ago, I moved and I went through my box­es, I opened this box and every­thing was in there.

    Keul’s account of her encounter with Trump bears many sim­i­lar­i­ties to those of oth­er women who have accused him of sex­u­al impro­pri­ety, includ­ing Car­roll who says Trump attacked her in a chang­ing room after they had met by chance while both were shop­ping in New York.

    At least 27 women have accused him of rape, unwant­ed kiss­ing, grop­ing or oth­er mis­con­duct.

    Among the most noto­ri­ous accu­sa­tions are those from Jill Harth, who helped run the Amer­i­can Dream pageant. She claimed in a 1997 law­suit that Trump sex­u­al­ly assault­ed her with his fin­ger under a table as her hus­band took a pho­to of them at a night­club in 1992.

    She also claimed he forced him­self on her in his daugh­ter Ivanka’s bed­room at Mar-a-Lago, his Flori­da man­sion.

    Appren­tice con­tes­tant Sum­mer Zer­vos claimed he assault­ed her after she had accept­ed his invi­ta­tion to talk busi­ness at The Bev­er­ly Hills Hotel in 2007.

    And Trump cam­paign work­er Alva John­son said he had forcibly kissed her at a ral­ly in Flori­da in 2016.

    ————-

    “EXCLUSIVE Beau­ty queen claims Don­ald Trump groped her after lur­ing her back to suite at New York’s Plaza Hotel” By JOSH BOSWELL FOR DAILYMAIL.COM; The Dai­ly Mail; 10/30/2024

    “Keul’s account of her encounter with Trump bears many sim­i­lar­i­ties to those of oth­er women who have accused him of sex­u­al impro­pri­ety, includ­ing Car­roll who says Trump attacked her in a chang­ing room after they had met by chance while both were shop­ping in New York.”

    Yeah, it would be one thing if Keul’s account was the first ever alle­ga­tion of sex­u­al assault by Don­ald Trump Trump. Instead, it’s the lat­est in a series of at least 27 women. Sex­u­al assault by Don­ald Trump is a sad­ly very on brand sto­ry for Trump too. No one is shocked any­more.

    And note how one of the women, Jill Harth, made an accu­sa­tion with some dis­turb­ing par­al­lels to Epstein’s sto­ry about the scheme to seduce the wives of his best friends: she claimed in a 1997 law­suit that Trump sex­u­al­ly assault­ed her with his fin­ger under a table as her hus­band took a pho­to of them at a night­club in 1992. The con­sis­ten­cy of all these dif­fer­ent accu­sa­tions is remark­able. It’s the dark hint that, had Keul accept­ed Trump’s advances, she could have eas­i­ly end­ed up being one of the beau­ty queens Trump used to tempt his best friends with an affair while their lives we’re secret­ly lis­ten­ing:

    ...
    At least 27 women have accused him of rape, unwant­ed kiss­ing, grop­ing or oth­er mis­con­duct.

    Among the most noto­ri­ous accu­sa­tions are those from Jill Harth, who helped run the Amer­i­can Dream pageant. She claimed in a 1997 law­suit that Trump sex­u­al­ly assault­ed her with his fin­ger under a table as her hus­band took a pho­to of them at a night­club in 1992.

    She also claimed he forced him­self on her in his daugh­ter Ivanka’s bed­room at Mar-a-Lago, his Flori­da man­sion.
    ...

    And note how this isn’t just Keul mak­ing these claims. A long­time friend attests that Keul for told him her sto­ry 20 years ago:

    ...
    A long­time friend, Swiss writer Pas­cal Claivaz, also told DailyMail.com that Keul first told him her sto­ry of Trump’s unwant­ed sex­u­al advances 20 years ago, and that her telling of the inci­dent has not changed in the inter­ven­ing years.

    ...

    Keul’s friend, Swiss mag­a­zine staffer Pas­cal Claivaz, said she told him the same sto­ry around 2004, a few months after they met through her role in pub­lic rela­tions for a Swiss bank.

    ...

    ‘One day, dur­ing a con­ver­sa­tion about the USA, she showed me pic­tures of her with Mr. Don­ald J. Trump and told me about her invi­ta­tion at the Miss Amer­i­can Dream Pageant.

    ‘In tears, she explained to me that Trump jumped on her,’ Claivaz said. ‘It was very emo­tion­al for her, very dif­fi­cult.

    ‘She is not a liar. I know her enough to believe her,’ Claivaz added.
    ...

    And look at that: Keul’s accu­sa­tions came less than a week after for­mer Sports Illus­trat­ed mod­el Stacey Williams claimed Jef­frey Epstein, then her boyfriend, took her to meet Trump at Trump Tow­er in Man­hat­tan in 1993, where she was groped by Trump basi­cal­ly upon meet­ing him. Keul goes on to also assert that Epstein was not just close to Trump but repeat­ed­ly tried to con­vince her to join a par­ty at Mar-a-Lago. That’s quite a few Trump/Epstein sto­ries just days before the elec­tion. Sto­ries that large­ly flew under the radar:

    ...
    Keul’s rev­e­la­tions come less than a week after for­mer Sports Illus­trat­ed mod­el Stacey Williams claimed her then-boyfriend Jef­frey Epstein took her to meet Trump at Trump Tow­er in Man­hat­tan in 1993.

    Williams, now 56, said that as soon as she was intro­duced to Trump, he pulled her towards him, put his hands ‘all over my breasts’, waist and but­tocks.

    ...

    Keul told her sto­ry to DailyMail.com before Williams came for­ward, and she said she had nev­er heard of Williams until her sto­ry was pub­lished on Wednes­day of last week.

    Keul also claimed that pedophile financier Epstein was close to Trump, attend­ed pageant events and repeat­ed­ly tried to con­vince her to join a par­ty at Mar-a-Lago.

    ‘Epstein was insist­ing to pay for every­thing, the flight, the accom­mo­da­tion, so that I would come and join them at the par­ty. Noth­ing else inter­est­ed him,’ she said.

    ‘He was very explic­it. He said, ‘You know I can take care of you. We orga­nize many par­ties with Don. I take care of every­thing.’ He was real­ly insist­ing.

    ‘He said he’s orga­niz­ing the par­ty at Mar-a-Lago with Don. It was clear he was some kind of hench­man.

    ‘I thought, if he wants me that bad­ly to come, he wants me to do some­thing for that.’
    ...

    It’s pret­ty amaz­ing: Michael Wolff releas­es those 2017 inter­views appar­ent­ly in response to Keul’s own sto­ry that was very aligned with the Epstein inter­view. And Keul only came out with her sto­ry days after Stacey Williams, who briefly dat­ed Epstein, claimed Epstein intro­duced her to Trump in 1992 who pro­ceed­ed to sex­u­al­ly assault her. And as we can see in the report on Williams’s sto­ry, “It became very clear then that he and Don­ald were real­ly, real­ly good friends and spent a lot of time togeth­er”:

    The Guardian

    Don­ald Trump groped me in what felt like a ‘twist­ed game’ with Jef­frey Epstein, for­mer mod­el alleges

    Stacey Williams says the ex-pres­i­dent, whose spokesper­son denied the alle­ga­tions, touched her in an unwant­ed sex­u­al way in 1993, after Epstein intro­duced them

    Stephanie Kirch­gaess­ner and Lucy Osborne
    Wed 23 Oct 2024 18.53 EDT

    A for­mer mod­el who says she met Don­ald Trump through the late sex­u­al abuser Jef­frey Epstein has accused the for­mer pres­i­dent of grop­ing and sex­u­al­ly touch­ing her in an inci­dent in Trump Tow­er in 1993, in what she believed was a “twist­ed game” between the two men.

    Stacey Williams, who worked as a pro­fes­sion­al mod­el in the 1990s, said she first met Trump in 1992 at a Christ­mas par­ty after being intro­duced to him by Epstein, who she believed was a good friend of the then New York real estate devel­op­er. Williams said Epstein was inter­est­ed in her and the two casu­al­ly dat­ed for a peri­od of a few months.

    “It became very clear then that he and Don­ald were real­ly, real­ly good friends and spent a lot of time togeth­er,” Williams said.

    The alleged grop­ing occurred some months lat­er, in the late win­ter or ear­ly spring of 1993, when Epstein sug­gest­ed dur­ing a walk they were on that he and Williams stop by to vis­it Trump at Trump Tow­er. Epstein was lat­er con­vict­ed on sex offens­es and killed him­self in prison in 2019.

    Moments after they arrived, she alleges, Trump greet­ed Williams, pulled her toward him and start­ed grop­ing her. She said he put his hands “all over my breasts” as well as her waist and her but­tocks. She said she froze because she was “deeply con­fused” about what was hap­pen­ing. At the same time, she said she believed she saw the two men smil­ing at each oth­er.

    ...

    Williams says that Trump sent her agent a post­card via couri­er lat­er in 1993, an aer­i­al view of Mar-a-Lago, his Palm Beach res­i­dence and resort. She shared it with the Guardian. In his hand­writ­ing – using what appears to be his usu­al black Sharpie – he wrote: “Stacey – Your home away from home. Love Don­ald”.

    Williams, who is 56 and a native of Penn­syl­va­nia, has shared parts of her alle­ga­tion on social media posts in the past, but revealed details about the alleged encounter on a call on Mon­day orga­nized by a group called Sur­vivors for Kamala, which sup­ports Demo­c­ra­t­ic pres­i­den­tial nom­i­nee Kamala Har­ris. The Zoom call fea­tured actor Ash­ley Judd and law pro­fes­sor and aca­d­e­m­ic Ani­ta Hill, among oth­ers. Sur­vivors for Kamala also took out an ad in the New York Times this week, signed by 200 sur­vivors of sex­u­al and gen­der vio­lence, which was meant to serve as a reminder that Trump has been found liable for sex­u­al abuse in a court.

    After the alleged inci­dent, Williams said that she and Epstein left Trump Tow­er, and that she began to feel Epstein grow­ing angry at her.

    “Jef­frey and I left and he didn’t look at me or speak to me and I felt this seething rage around me, and when we got down to the side­walk, he looked at me and just berat­ed me, and said: ‘Why did you let him do that?’” she said on the Zoom call.

    “He made me feel so dis­gust­ing and I remem­ber being so utter­ly con­fused,” she said.

    She described how the alleged inci­dent seemed to her to be part of a “twist­ed game”.

    “I felt shame and dis­gust and as we went our sep­a­rate ways, I felt this sen­sa­tion of revis­it­ing it, while the hands were all over me. And I had this hor­ri­ble pit in my stom­ach that it was some­how orches­trat­ed. I felt like a piece of meat,” she said in an inter­view with the Guardian.

    She and Epstein part­ed ways soon after. Williams said she nev­er had any knowl­edge of his pat­tern of sex­u­al abuse, which would lat­er become known. Epstein is now con­sid­ered one of the worst and most pro­lif­ic pedophiles in mod­ern his­to­ry.

    ...

    Williams spoke about the alle­ga­tions to at least two friends who spoke to the Guardian. One friend, who asked not to be named, said Williams told her about the alleged inci­dent in 2005 or 2006 dur­ing a con­ver­sa­tion in which Williams men­tioned know­ing Epstein, and how he had intro­duced her to Trump. The friend specif­i­cal­ly remem­bers Williams telling her that she had been groped by Trump. Epstein was not a house­hold name at the time, but the friend would lat­er recall the anec­dote when the Epstein scan­dal erupt­ed.

    “What I recall is that it was grop­ing … what we would call feel­ing some­one up,” the friend said.

    Ally Gutwill­inger, anoth­er long­time friend, said Williams told her about the alleged inci­dent in 2015. Gutwill­inger remem­bers the tim­ing because Trump had announced that he was run­ning for pres­i­dent.

    ...

    ———-

    ““It became very clear then that he and Don­ald were real­ly, real­ly good friends and spent a lot of time togeth­er,” Williams said.”

    Don­ald and Jef­frey. Best buds. The accounts keep accu­mu­lat­ing. Along with accounts of what appear to be twist­ed psy­cho­log­i­cal games on top of the sex­u­al assault. First Epstein takes Williams to meet Trump who pro­ceeds to grope her with Epstein’s approval. And then Epstein gets enraged at her for ‘allow­ing’ it to hap­pen. It’s like a team effort designed to iden­ti­fy extreme­ly psy­cho­log­i­cal vul­ner­a­ble women:

    ...
    After the alleged inci­dent, Williams said that she and Epstein left Trump Tow­er, and that she began to feel Epstein grow­ing angry at her.

    “Jef­frey and I left and he didn’t look at me or speak to me and I felt this seething rage around me, and when we got down to the side­walk, he looked at me and just berat­ed me, and said: ‘Why did you let him do that?’” she said on the Zoom call.

    “He made me feel so dis­gust­ing and I remem­ber being so utter­ly con­fused,” she said.

    She described how the alleged inci­dent seemed to her to be part of a “twist­ed game”.

    “I felt shame and dis­gust and as we went our sep­a­rate ways, I felt this sen­sa­tion of revis­it­ing it, while the hands were all over me. And I had this hor­ri­ble pit in my stom­ach that it was some­how orches­trat­ed. I felt like a piece of meat,” she said in an inter­view with the Guardian.

    She and Epstein part­ed ways soon after. Williams said she nev­er had any knowl­edge of his pat­tern of sex­u­al abuse, which would lat­er become known. Epstein is now con­sid­ered one of the worst and most pro­lif­ic pedophiles in mod­ern his­to­ry.
    ...

    And, again, this isn’t just the alle­ga­tions of one per­son. Williams shared this account with at least two friends who con­firmed her shar­ing of this sto­ry years ago:

    ...
    Williams spoke about the alle­ga­tions to at least two friends who spoke to the Guardian. One friend, who asked not to be named, said Williams told her about the alleged inci­dent in 2005 or 2006 dur­ing a con­ver­sa­tion in which Williams men­tioned know­ing Epstein, and how he had intro­duced her to Trump. The friend specif­i­cal­ly remem­bers Williams telling her that she had been groped by Trump. Epstein was not a house­hold name at the time, but the friend would lat­er recall the anec­dote when the Epstein scan­dal erupt­ed.

    ...

    Ally Gutwill­inger, anoth­er long­time friend, said Williams told her about the alleged inci­dent in 2015. Gutwill­inger remem­bers the tim­ing because Trump had announced that he was run­ning for pres­i­dent.
    ...

    Three inde­pen­dent reports describ­ing Trump and Epstein and best bud­dies. All released days before Elec­tion Day. All broad­ly ignored. Trump/Epstein sto­ries are just old news appar­ent­ly.

    But are they real­ly old news? How much worse do the sto­ries get? They haven’t all been told. We’re going to find out. But if Trump real­ly does make good on his renewed pledge to release all the assas­si­na­tion archives, we should prob­a­bly expect to learn a lot more about Trump’s rela­tion­ship with Jef­frey Epstein. Except, as we keep learn­ing, no one cares about this stuff. At least not enough peo­ple. And not his base at all. Trump can’t be shamed out of office. This is demon­stra­bly the case at this point. Which makes him par­tic­u­lar­ly dif­fi­cult to con­trol. Some oth­er form of ‘arranged’ ear­ly exit from office seems like a much more plau­si­ble sce­nario at this point...unless Trump releas­es all those assas­si­na­tion archives first. Tick Tock...

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | January 21, 2025, 5:54 pm
  26. @Pterrafractyl–

    I sus­pect that Trump’s remarks re JFK, RFK and MLK are a form of “rhetorical/verbal” ter­ror­ism or threat.

    He might do that, but I sus­pect that he is actu­al­ly rat­tling sabers to pre­vent the kind of Epstein-relat­ed Deep State rev­e­la­tions that might upset his apple­cart.

    I also have a hunch that Vance is the guy they real­ly want, so I would­n’t be too sur­prised to see Trump ride over the hori­zon, one way or anoth­er.

    Can­cer, scan­dal or what­ev­er.

    Keep up the great work!

    Best,

    Dave

    Posted by Dave Emory | January 21, 2025, 7:42 pm
  27. @Dave: Yeah seems like a vir­tu­al impos­si­bil­i­ty that Trump is tru­ly going to make good on his pledge. Stuff like that just is not allowed to hap­pen. That’s part of what made his pledge to not just release these doc­u­ments but release them soon so intrigu­ing. What kind of game is he play­ing here?

    But it’s made all the more intrigu­ing giv­en the real­i­ty now that Trump has indeed made good on some oth­er cam­paign promis­es that are a lot less pop­u­lar than releas­ing these archives would be. Unpop­u­lar promis­es like par­don­ing almost all of the Jan­u­ary 6 insur­rec­tion­ists. Or par­don­ing Ross Ulbricht. Yes, the guy behind the Silk Road online ‘any­thing goes’ mar­ket­place who was serv­ing a life sen­tence for a range of charges that includ­ed drug traf­fick­ing and con­spir­a­cies to com­mit mon­ey laun­der­ing and com­put­er hack­ing just got a full par­don, ful­fill­ing one of the cam­paign promis­es Trump made to the cryp­to com­mu­ni­ty. Trump did­n’t just com­mute Ulbricht’s life sen­tence to time served, a move that could have been seen as jus­ti­fi­able mer­cy for some­one with a life sen­tence. No, Ulbricht got the full par­don.

    This is a good time to recall how Ulbricht insist­ed to inves­ti­ga­tors, back in Decem­ber of 2013, that he was­n’t the Dread Pirate Roberts, but he still want­ed the 173,000 Bit­coins the FBI seized back, which was worth $33.6 mil­lion at the time and over $17 bil­lion in today’s prices of $102k per Bit­coin. Rough­ly 30k Bit­coins seized from Silk Road and 144k Bit­coins seized from Ulbricht per­son­al­ly. In Jan­u­ary of 2014, for­fei­ture of the Bit­coins took place while Ulbricht appealed the for­fei­ture of his 144k bit­coins, which was at that point an appeal for the pro­ceeds from the sale. He dropped that appeal in Octo­ber 2017.

    It’s also worth recall the sheer scale of the bit­coin stash seized by the FBI. The FBI’s sale of 26,000 bit­coins at one point notice­ably rat­tled the bit­coin mar­kets. In fact, When the FBI held those 173,000 bit­coins, it had the sec­ond largest bit­coin stash in the world, which means Ulbricht had the sec­ond largest bit­coin stash on the plan­et at the time of his arrest. Sec­ond only to Satoshi Nakamo­to’s pre­sumed comined wealth of over 1 mil­lion bit­coins that remains untouched. Although there was a surge of spec­u­la­tion in Decem­ber 2024, just last month, after wal­lets long spec­u­lat­ed to be Satoshi’s sprung to life.

    By Jan­u­ary of 2015, Ulbricht’s new sto­ry was that he was indeed the cre­ator of Silk Road. But he still was­n’t the Dread Pirate Roberts and was instead being framed by the real Dread Pirate Roberts. The next month, he was con­vict­ed for charges that includ­ed drug traf­fick­ing and con­spir­a­cies to com­mit mon­ey laun­der­ing and com­put­er hack­ing, fac­ing poten­tial life in prison for the charges.

    And then there was the out­right crim­i­nal­i­ty by two FBI inves­ti­ga­tors that many of Ulbricht’s fans refer to when try­ing to make the case that the entire fed­er­al case against him was some­how a breach of jus­tice. In March of 2015, just a month after his con­vic­tion, two for­mer fed­er­al agents at the cen­ter of the Silk Road inves­ti­ga­tion were charged with crimes com­mit­ted dur­ing the inves­ti­ga­tion. Carl M. Force — the lead under­cov­er agent tasked with com­mu­ni­cat­ing with the Dread Pirate Roberts — was charged with demand­ing Ulbricht pay him $250,000 in bit­coin to not offer cer­tain infor­ma­tion to the gov­ern­ment. Force was also accused of cre­at­ing an online alias that offered Ulbricht infor­ma­tion on the fed­er­al probe into Silk Road in exchange for $100,000 in bit­coin. Shaun W. Bridges, a for­mer Secret Ser­vice agent, is accused of steal­ing bit­coins from Silk Road worth hun­dreds of thou­sands of dol­lars at the time. It’s a remark­able exam­ple of the cor­rupt­ing pow­er of some­thing like bit­coin. Not one, but two, under­cov­er FBI agents on the case end­ed up try­ing to steal bit­coins for them­selves. It’s not a great look for the FBI. And yet, it’s like like those crimes some­how exon­er­at­ed Ulbricht.

    Along those lines, while the charges against him nev­er involved the 6 alleged mur­der-for-hire hits Ulbricht is sus­pect­ed of order­ing, a judge did deny him bail based on the evi­dence for those hits seized by the FBI from his com­put­er after his arrest. One of the ‘hits’ turned out to be faked by the FBI in order to con­vince Ulbricht the mur­der took place. The out­come of the five oth­er hits was nev­er deter­mined. The guy just loved mur­der-for-hire ser­vices. Who will he have mur­dered next?

    And that mur­der-for-hire angle to sto­ry brings us to what is per­haps the most salient detail in this case when it comes to try­ing to under­stand the full set of motives for see­ing Ulbricht go free: Recall how, back in Novem­ber of 2013, two Israeli com­put­er sci­en­tists issued a warn­ing that their research indi­cat­ed the Silk Road had gen­er­at­ed rough­ly $1.2 bil­lion in rev­enues — far greater than the US gov­ern­ment alleged — and that FBI only seized about 22 per­cent of the mon­ey Silk Road gen­er­at­ed and that the researchers them­selves have only been able to trace about a third of the total. In oth­er words, Ulbricht just might have what is now bil­lions of dol­lars in bit­coin just sit­ting there, wait­ing for his release. A new bit­coin supervil­lain has been released from jail. The mur­der for hire mar­ket is about to have a sup­ply and demand issue.

    And, dis­turbing­ly enough, that par­don­ing of Ulbricht is now part of the con­text of Trump’s assas­si­na­tion archive pledge. With Trump mak­ing good on cam­paign pledges like par­don­ing almost all of the Jan­u­ary 6 insur­rec­tion­ist AND par­don­ing one of the biggest drug deal­ers in his­to­ry, what expla­na­tion is he going to even­tu­al­ly give for fail­ing to release those archives?

    And that brings us to anoth­er very inter­est­ing angle to this sto­ry: Recall how it was just last month that we were get­ting reports that RFK Jr was telling peo­ple that he was hop­ing to see his ‘ex-CIA’ daugh­ter-in-law, Amaryl­lis Fox Kennedy installed as deputy direc­tor of the CIA, where she could get to the bot­tom of the JFK assas­si­na­tion. Now, as we’re going to see below, those reports were dashed just days let­ter when we were told that Sen­a­tor Tom Cot­ton had some­how tanked Fox Kennedy’s deputy CIA prospects. It’s not actu­al­ly clear how Cot­ton did this because it’s also the case that deputy direc­tor of the CIA isn’t a posi­tion that requires Sen­ate con­fir­ma­tion. But that’s the nar­ra­tive we were get­ting. Sen­a­tor Cot­ton mys­te­ri­ous­ly killed the plan.

    Now, as we’re also going to see, Trump also declared back in August, days after secur­ing RFK Jr’s endorse­ment, that “I will estab­lish a new inde­pen­dent pres­i­den­tial com­mis­sion on assas­si­na­tion attempts, and they will be tasked with releas­ing all of the remain­ing doc­u­ments per­tain­ing to the assas­si­na­tion of Pres­i­dent John F. Kennedy.” So it’s pos­si­ble we’re going to see this cam­paign promise ‘ful­filled’ with some sort of vague pres­i­den­tial com­mis­sion that’s allowed to some­how die with­out ever releas­ing its find­ings. It also sounds like he’s still con­sid­er­ing Fox Kennedy for roles like a spot in the White House Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil or with­in the Office of the Direc­tor of Nation­al Intel­li­gence.

    That’s all part of the bizarre con­text of Trump’s deci­sion to reit­er­ate his assas­si­na­tion archives pledge, just a day before the inau­gu­ra­tion. And not just pledge to set up a com­mis­sion that will slow­ly work to some incon­clu­sive find­ings years from now. He pledged to release all these files quick­ly. With­in days. Why did he make such an aggres­sive­ly ambi­tious pledge? Was it real­ly a pre­emp­tive move to give the Deep State pause when it comes to the range of Trump mega-scan­dals they could pre­sum­ably unleash at any giv­en point? We’ll see if he real­ly does release a bunch of archives soon. But if not, it’s going to be hard to not sus­pect that it real­ly is the case he was just mak­ing threats in order to keep is own scan­dals from com­ing to light. Because, again, what pos­si­ble excuse could he have to not mak­ing good on his assas­si­na­tion archives cam­paign pledge after mak­ing good on a cam­paign promise like this:

    The New York Times

    Trump Par­dons Cre­ator of Silk Road Drug Mar­ket­place

    Ross Ulbricht was serv­ing a life sen­tence for cre­at­ing a site in a shady cor­ner of the inter­net to sell hero­in, cocaine and oth­er illic­it sub­stances.

    By David Yaffe-Bel­lany and Ryan Mac
    Jan. 21, 2025

    Pres­i­dent Trump on Tues­day grant­ed a par­don to Ross Ulbricht, the cre­ator of the Silk Road drug mar­ket­place and a cult hero in the cryp­tocur­ren­cy and lib­er­tar­i­an worlds.

    In doing so, Mr. Trump ful­filled a promise that he made repeat­ed­ly on the cam­paign trail as he court­ed polit­i­cal con­tri­bu­tions from the cryp­to indus­try, which spent more than $100 mil­lion to influ­ence the out­come of the elec­tion. A Bit­coin pio­neer, Mr. Ulbricht, 40, was sen­tenced to life in prison with­out the pos­si­bil­i­ty of parole in 2015, after he was con­vict­ed on charges that includ­ed dis­trib­ut­ing nar­cotics on the inter­net.

    “I just called the moth­er of Ross William Ulbright to let her know,” Mr. Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social, mis­spelling Mr. Ulbricht’s name and mak­ing a ref­er­ence to fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tors in the South­ern Dis­trict of New York. “The scum that worked to con­vict him were some of the same lunatics who were involved in the mod­ern day weaponiza­tion of gov­ern­ment against me.”

    In its near­ly three years of exis­tence, Silk Road, which oper­at­ed in a shady cor­ner of the inter­net known as the dark web, became an inter­na­tion­al drug mar­ket­place, facil­i­tat­ing more than 1.5 mil­lion trans­ac­tions, includ­ing sales of hero­in, cocaine and oth­er illic­it sub­stances. (The site gen­er­at­ed over $200 mil­lion in rev­enue, accord­ing to author­i­ties.) In court, pros­e­cu­tors claimed that Mr. Ulbricht had also solicit­ed the mur­ders of peo­ple whom he con­sid­ered threats — but acknowl­edged there was no evi­dence that the killings took place.

    Despite his crimes, Mr. Ulbricht has remained pop­u­lar with cryp­to enthu­si­asts because Silk Road was one of the first venues where peo­ple used Bit­coin to buy and sell goods. For years, his sup­port­ers have argued that his sen­tence was over­ly puni­tive and adopt­ed the slo­gan “Free Ross” online and at indus­try gath­er­ings.

    “It’s hard to argue that Ross Ulbricht wasn’t the most suc­cess­ful and influ­en­tial entre­pre­neur of the ear­ly Bit­coin era,” said Pete Riz­zo, an edi­tor at the news pub­li­ca­tion Bit­coin Mag­a­zine. “This is the indus­try band­ing togeth­er and say­ing, ‘We’re going to reclaim our own.’”

    Mr. Ulbricht’s par­don was eager­ly antic­i­pat­ed by cryp­to enthu­si­asts. On Mon­day, after Mr. Trump grant­ed clemen­cy to near­ly 1,600 peo­ple charged in con­nec­tion with the Jan. 6 riot at the Capi­tol, Elon Musk, one of the president’s biggest sup­port­ers, respond­ed to a con­cerned post on X, writ­ing that “Ross will be freed too.”

    ...

    But the life sen­tence struck many observers as harsh. In 2017, the fed­er­al appeals court for the Sec­ond Cir­cuit, in affirm­ing Mr. Ulbricht’s con­vic­tion, acknowl­edged the severe nature of the pun­ish­ment.

    “Although we might not have imposed the same sen­tence our­selves in the first instance,” the court said, “on the facts of this case a life sen­tence was with­in the range of per­mis­si­ble deci­sions that the dis­trict court could have reached.”

    Mr. Ulbricht has been serv­ing his sen­tence at a fed­er­al prison in Tuc­son, Ariz. Sup­port­ers in the cryp­to indus­try, in call­ing for his release, have not­ed that he was con­vict­ed of a non­vi­o­lent crime and was nev­er tried on pros­e­cu­tors’ most explo­sive alle­ga­tion that he paid to have peo­ple killed. At a Bit­coin con­fer­ence in Mia­mi in 2021, Mr. Ulbricht’s sup­port­ers played a record­ing of him speak­ing from prison.

    ...

    Last year, Mr. Trump embraced Mr. Ulbricht’s cause on the cam­paign trail, first in a speech at a lib­er­tar­i­an event and lat­er at an annu­al Bit­coin con­fer­ence in Nashville. He dou­bled down on social media, post­ing the hash­tag #FreeRoss­Day­One on Truth Social, the site he owns.

    After the elec­tion, a mes­sage from Mr. Ulbricht post­ed on X said he had “immense grat­i­tude to every­one who vot­ed for Pres­i­dent Trump on my behalf.”

    “I can final­ly see the light of free­dom at the end of the tun­nel,” the post said.

    ———–

    “Trump Par­dons Cre­ator of Silk Road Drug Mar­ket­place” By David Yaffe-Bel­lany and Ryan Mac; The New York Times; 01/21/2025

    In doing so, Mr. Trump ful­filled a promise that he made repeat­ed­ly on the cam­paign trail as he court­ed polit­i­cal con­tri­bu­tions from the cryp­to indus­try, which spent more than $100 mil­lion to influ­ence the out­come of the elec­tion. A Bit­coin pio­neer, Mr. Ulbricht, 40, was sen­tenced to life in prison with­out the pos­si­bil­i­ty of parole in 2015, after he was con­vict­ed on charges that includ­ed dis­trib­ut­ing nar­cotics on the inter­net.”

    Promis­es made, promis­es kept. Don­ald Trump made the free­ing of Ross Ulbricht a cam­paign promise to the cryp­to indus­try and just kept it. Ulbricht got a FULL par­don. Not just a com­mut­ed sen­tence.

    But note how the ratio­nale Trump gave when sign­ing the par­don was­n’t sim­ply that Ulbricht deserved some sort of mer­cy in the face of a life sen­tence. No, Trump went on to describe the pros­e­cu­tion of Ulbricht as an exam­ple of the weaponiza­tion of gov­ern­ment, declar­ing: “The scum that worked to con­vict him were some of the same lunatics who were involved in the mod­ern day weaponiza­tion of gov­ern­ment against me”:

    ...
    “I just called the moth­er of Ross William Ulbright to let her know,” Mr. Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social, mis­spelling Mr. Ulbricht’s name and mak­ing a ref­er­ence to fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tors in the South­ern Dis­trict of New York. “The scum that worked to con­vict him were some of the same lunatics who were involved in the mod­ern day weaponiza­tion of gov­ern­ment against me.”

    ...

    Despite his crimes, Mr. Ulbricht has remained pop­u­lar with cryp­to enthu­si­asts because Silk Road was one of the first venues where peo­ple used Bit­coin to buy and sell goods. For years, his sup­port­ers have argued that his sen­tence was over­ly puni­tive and adopt­ed the slo­gan “Free Ross” online and at indus­try gath­er­ings.

    “It’s hard to argue that Ross Ulbricht wasn’t the most suc­cess­ful and influ­en­tial entre­pre­neur of the ear­ly Bit­coin era,” said Pete Riz­zo, an edi­tor at the news pub­li­ca­tion Bit­coin Mag­a­zine. “This is the indus­try band­ing togeth­er and say­ing, ‘We’re going to reclaim our own.’”

    Mr. Ulbricht’s par­don was eager­ly antic­i­pat­ed by cryp­to enthu­si­asts. On Mon­day, after Mr. Trump grant­ed clemen­cy to near­ly 1,600 peo­ple charged in con­nec­tion with the Jan. 6 riot at the Capi­tol, Elon Musk, one of the president’s biggest sup­port­ers, respond­ed to a con­cerned post on X, writ­ing that “Ross will be freed too.”
    ...

    And when we see ref­er­ences to how Silk Road gen­er­ate over $200 mil­lion in rev­enue, don’t for­get that stun­ning analy­sis by those two Israeli com­put­er sci­en­tists who con­clud­ed that Silk Road made well over $1 bil­lion in rev­enues and that the FBI had only ever retrieved a small frac­tion of Ulbricht’s total bit­coin spoils. Bil­lions of dol­lars in hid­den bit­coin wal­lets that Ulbricht poten­tial­ly has access to today:

    ...
    In its near­ly three years of exis­tence, Silk Road, which oper­at­ed in a shady cor­ner of the inter­net known as the dark web, became an inter­na­tion­al drug mar­ket­place, facil­i­tat­ing more than 1.5 mil­lion trans­ac­tions, includ­ing sales of hero­in, cocaine and oth­er illic­it sub­stances. (The site gen­er­at­ed over $200 mil­lion in rev­enue, accord­ing to author­i­ties.) In court, pros­e­cu­tors claimed that Mr. Ulbricht had also solicit­ed the mur­ders of peo­ple whom he con­sid­ered threats — but acknowl­edged there was no evi­dence that the killings took place.
    ...

    Keep in mind that it’s pos­si­ble Ulbricht has access to hid­den bit­coin accounts that he lied about know­ing about to the FBI. Which rais­es the ques­tion of whether not the full par­don he was grant­ed has lift­ed any pro­hi­bi­tions that may have been in place on access­ing those bit­coins. Either way, it’s extreme­ly pos­si­ble Ulbricht retains access to what could be bil­lions of dol­lars with a bit­coins today. How is he going to use that vast secret for­tune? It’s not hard to imag­ine far right polit­i­cal caus­es get­ting a surge in anony­mous dona­tions. For years to come.

    But when it comes to the secret orga­niz­ing of the far right, of course, few events mat­ter as much as the rise of an unac­count­able nation­al secu­ri­ty state capa­ble of exe­cut­ing and then cov­er­ing up mul­ti­ple polit­i­cal assas­si­na­tions against key pro­gres­sive lead­ers. Which, of course, is exact­ly why the prospects of Don­ald Trump releas­ing the assas­si­na­tion archives as promised still feels so absurd. There’s no way that hap­pens. And yet he made the pledge. Again. Just a day before the inau­gu­ra­tion. He did­n’t have to make that pledge again. But he did it. Why?

    And that brings us to a pair of sto­ries from last month about plans for address­ing the assas­si­na­tion archives that were appar­ent­ly still evolv­ing inside the Trump camp. Plans cen­tered around installing RFK Jr.‘s daugh­ter-in-law, Amaryl­lis Fox Kennedy, as deputy direc­tor of the CIA. From there, the ex-CIA employ­ee would help get to the bot­tom of the assas­si­na­tion mys­ter­ies. At least that was the idea that RFK Jr was report­ed­ly shar­ing with oth­ers in the Trump camp.

    Inter­est­ing­ly, back in August, short­ly after Trump received RFK Jr’s endorse­ment, Trump declared, “I will estab­lish a new inde­pen­dent pres­i­den­tial com­mis­sion on assas­si­na­tion attempts, and they will be tasked with releas­ing all of the remain­ing doc­u­ments per­tain­ing to the assas­si­na­tion of Pres­i­dent John F. Kennedy.” It’s clear RFK Jr. wants to see these chap­ters in his fam­i­ly his­to­ry brought to light. And here we are, with RFK Jr. set to like­ly head of the Depart­ment of Health and Human Ser­vices. Will that be deemed enough of a reward for RFK Jr’s sup­port in Trump’s mind? If so, what will RFK Jr do when Trump breaks a cam­paign promise that was, in part, a promise to him per­son­al­ly?:

    Axios

    Exclu­sive: RFK Jr.‘s secret push to prove CIA killed uncle

    Stef W. Kight, Mike Allen
    Dec 11, 2024 -
    Pol­i­tics & Pol­i­cy

    Robert F. Kennedy Jr. believes the CIA had a role in assas­si­nat­ing his uncle, Pres­i­dent John F. Kennedy — part of RFK Jr.‘s moti­va­tion for push­ing his daugh­ter-in-law, Amaryl­lis Fox Kennedy, for deputy CIA direc­tor, Axios has learned.

    Why it mat­ters: Pres­i­dent-elect Trump feels indebt­ed to RFK Jr., his pick for sec­re­tary of Health and Human Ser­vices, for his help in the elec­tion, and is eager to please him. But there’s real dra­ma behind the scenes about whether Fox Kennedy is the right choice for the CIA’s No. 2 job.

    * RFK Jr. has been telling peo­ple that Fox Kennedy — his pres­i­den­tial cam­paign man­ag­er, who is mar­ried to his son Bob­by Kennedy III — would help get to the bot­tom of the JFK assas­si­na­tion, two Repub­li­can sources told Axios.

    * “RFK believes that and wants to get to the bot­tom of it,” one of the sources said, refer­ring to well-worn but unproven the­o­ries that the CIA was behind the 1963 assas­si­na­tion of Pres­i­dent Kennedy.

    Between the lines: If Fox Kennedy were named deputy to John Rat­cliffe, Trump’s pick for CIA direc­tor, she’d be in a posi­tion to dig into what the CIA knows about the assas­si­na­tion — and poten­tial­ly could urge the release of doc­u­ments. Pod­cast­er Joe Rogan and oth­ers have been agi­tat­ing for that.

    ...

    The back­sto­ry: Kennedy has pub­licly embraced the­o­ries about the CIA being involved in the death of both his uncle and his father, Robert F. Kennedy.

    * “The evi­dence is over­whelm­ing that the CIA was involved in the mur­der and in the cov­er-up,” Kennedy said about his uncle’s death in a pod­cast in May of last year.

    * He also said that there is “con­vinc­ing” but “cir­cum­stan­tial” evi­dence that the CIA was involved in his father’s death, as well.

    Trump has promised to release the last of the JFK assas­si­na­tion files.

    * In August, just after he was endorsed by RFK Jr., Trump said: “I will estab­lish a new inde­pen­dent pres­i­den­tial com­mis­sion on assas­si­na­tion attempts, and they will be tasked with releas­ing all of the remain­ing doc­u­ments per­tain­ing to the assas­si­na­tion of Pres­i­dent John F. Kennedy.”

    The big pic­ture: Fox Kennedy worked as an under­cov­er agent for the CIA for near­ly a decade, and wrote a detailed mem­oir about her expe­ri­ence.

    * She report­ed­ly sub­mit­ted the mem­oir to the book pub­lish­er with­out get­ting sign-off from the CIA’s Pub­li­ca­tion Review Board, stir­ring con­tro­ver­sy with­in the agency.

    ...

    ———–

    “Exclu­sive: RFK Jr.‘s secret push to prove CIA killed uncle” by Stef W. Kight and Mike Allen; Axios; 12/11/2024

    “RFK Jr. has been telling peo­ple that Fox Kennedy — his pres­i­den­tial cam­paign man­ag­er, who is mar­ried to his son Bob­by Kennedy III — would help get to the bot­tom of the JFK assas­si­na­tion, two Repub­li­can sources told Axios.”

    Fox Kennedy will get to the bot­tom of the JFK assas­si­na­tion, if allowed to do so. That’s the mes­sage RFK Jr. was appar­ent­ly shar­ing with peo­ple last month, with hope pre­sum­ably being that Fox Kennedy would be appoint­ed as deputy CIA direc­tor. Although, back in August short­ly after receiv­ing RFK Jr.‘s endorse­ment, Trump sug­gest­ed he would estab­lish “a new inde­pen­dent pres­i­den­tial com­mis­sion on assas­si­na­tion attempts, and they will be tasked with releas­ing all of the remain­ing doc­u­ments per­tain­ing to the assas­si­na­tion of Pres­i­dent John F. Kennedy”:

    ...
    Trump has promised to release the last of the JFK assas­si­na­tion files.

    * In August, just after he was endorsed by RFK Jr., Trump said: “I will estab­lish a new inde­pen­dent pres­i­den­tial com­mis­sion on assas­si­na­tion attempts, and they will be tasked with releas­ing all of the remain­ing doc­u­ments per­tain­ing to the assas­si­na­tion of Pres­i­dent John F. Kennedy.”
    ...

    Is such a com­mis­sion still on the table? As we saw, Trump made no men­tion of a com­mis­sion in his remarks just one day before the inau­gu­ra­tion. Instead, he promised, “In the com­ing days, we are going to make pub­lic remain­ing records relat­ed to the assas­si­na­tions of Pres­i­dent John F. Kennedy, his broth­er Robert Kennedy, as well as Dr. Mar­tin Luther King Jr. and oth­er top­ics of great pub­lic inter­est.” But who knows, maybe a com­mis­sion will even­tu­al­ly emerge. And maybe Kennedy Fox will even be appoint­ed to it. She’ll poten­tial­ly be avail­able. Because she’s not get­ting appoint­ed as deputy direc­tor of the CIA:

    The Wash­ing­ton Post

    Trump pass­es over RFK Jr.’s daugh­ter-in-law for CIA’s No. 2 job

    Amaryl­lis Fox Kennedy, a for­mer under­cov­er CIA oper­a­tive, faced stren­u­ous oppo­si­tion from some Repub­li­cans, includ­ing Sen. Tom Cot­ton.

    Decem­ber 16, 2024
    By John Hud­son and Michael Scher­er

    Pres­i­dent-elect Don­ald Trump has told close aides he is no longer con­sid­er­ing Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s daugh­ter-in-law to serve as deputy direc­tor of the CIA, after a cam­paign by Repub­li­can law­mak­ers who feared she would seek to impose major changes at America’s top spy agency, accord­ing to peo­ple famil­iar with the mat­ter.

    Trump’s deci­sion to pass over Amaryl­lis Fox Kennedy, a for­mer under­cov­er CIA oper­a­tive who is mar­ried to Kennedy’s son, fol­lows a con­cert­ed push by Sen. Tom Cot­ton of Arkansas, who lob­bied Trump chief of staff Susie Wiles and oth­ers close to the pres­i­dent-elect to nix the selec­tion, these peo­ple said. Like oth­ers, they spoke on the con­di­tion of anonymi­ty to dis­cuss a sen­si­tive per­son­nel mat­ter.

    ...

    Cot­ton was not alone in oppos­ing Fox Kennedy’s can­di­da­cy but was her “most stri­dent” crit­ic in the Sen­ate, said a per­son famil­iar with the mat­ter.

    The CIA’s No. 2 job is one of the most pow­er­ful nation­al secu­ri­ty posi­tions that remains unfilled with­in the incom­ing admin­is­tra­tion. It wields sig­nif­i­cant influ­ence in the U.S. intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty but does not require Sen­ate con­fir­ma­tion, allow­ing, in the­o­ry, for a can­di­date who may defy the ortho­dox­ies of the upper cham­ber.

    The bat­tle over her selec­tion rep­re­sents the lat­est push and pull between com­pet­ing camps in Trump’s coali­tion, which includes hard-line hawks such as Cot­ton and sec­re­tary of state pick Mar­co Rubio and skep­tics of mil­i­tary inter­ven­tion abroad such as Kennedy, Vice Pres­i­dent-elect JD Vance and Tul­si Gab­bard, the nom­i­nee for direc­tor of nation­al intel­li­gence.

    ...

    The can­di­da­cy of Fox Kennedy, who secured sep­a­rate inter­views with both Trump and his pick for CIA direc­tor, John Rat­cliffe, reflect­ed Kennedy’s abil­i­ty to ele­vate can­di­dates for gov­ern­ment posi­tions out­side of his port­fo­lio as Trump’s choice to lead the Depart­ment of Health and Human Ser­vices.

    In that role, Trump has told sup­port­ers he would let Kennedy “go wild on health,” “go wild on the food” and “go wild on med­i­cines.” The selec­tion has invit­ed scruti­ny of Kennedy’s vac­cine skep­ti­cism. Less talked about, though, are his years of anti­war activism and oppo­si­tion to what he calls the stran­gle­hold of the “mil­i­tary indus­tri­al com­plex.”

    Kennedy ran to the left of Pres­i­dent Joe Biden in a cam­paign that focused on the envi­ron­ment, health issues, income inequal­i­ty and over­spend­ing on the mil­i­tary. In August, he dropped his third-par­ty bid for pres­i­dent and endorsed Trump.

    On the cam­paign trail, Kennedy often said he would like to con­tin­ue the work of his late uncle, Pres­i­dent John F. Kennedy, who famous­ly said he want­ed to “splin­ter” the CIA “into a thou­sand pieces and scat­ter it to the winds,” fol­low­ing the agency’s failed Bay of Pigs oper­a­tion in 1961 aimed at over­throw­ing Fidel Castro’s com­mu­nist gov­ern­ment in Cuba.

    Fox Kennedy has not pro­posed that type of over­haul of the agency, but Cot­ton and oth­ers were “con­cerned about get­ting Bob­by Kennedy’s proxy in the build­ing,” said a per­son famil­iar with the mat­ter.

    A per­son close to Cot­ton said the senator’s con­cerns per­tained to com­ments Fox Kennedy made years ago to Al Jazeera not­ing the impor­tance of under­stand­ing America’s adver­saries. “The only real way to dis­arm your ene­my is to lis­ten to them,” Fox Kennedy told the news net­work. Cot­ton likened such remarks as sym­pa­thiz­ing with ter­ror­ists, this per­son said.

    Fox Kennedy has told oth­ers that the process of estab­lish­ing com­mon­al­i­ties with adver­saries is a foun­da­tion of CIA’s field trade­craft train­ing, and that those efforts to recruit ene­mies as infor­ma­tion sources are not sym­pa­thiz­ing but at the core of basic spy craft, accord­ing to a per­son famil­iar with her pri­vate con­ver­sa­tions.

    She also has been crit­i­cal of past CIA efforts to sup­port rad­i­cal groups in proxy bat­tles, includ­ing in Syr­ia. In a social media post ear­li­er this month, she praised Trump for hav­ing “rid him­self of the swamp crea­tures who tried to over­ride his instincts and bog us down.”

    In a sep­a­rate post last week, Fox Kennedy blast­ed her crit­ics, say­ing that “the world has erupt­ed into vio­lence” on their watch. She also said they had “over­seen the great­est degra­da­tion of our humint capa­bil­i­ties in CIA’s his­to­ry,” refer­ring to the col­lec­tion of intel­li­gence by human sources as opposed to elec­tron­ic sur­veil­lance or oth­er meth­ods.

    In her mem­oir, “Life Under­cov­er: Com­ing of Age in the C.I.A.,” Fox Kennedy says she worked in the Clan­des­tine Ser­vice, pos­ing as an art deal­er and recruit­ing arms deal­ers as assets. She also says she was tasked with talk­ing extrem­ists out of set­ting off dirty bombs.

    Trump has told oth­ers that he want­ed a nation­al secu­ri­ty posi­tion for Fox Kennedy and that the CIA post was not the only option, said peo­ple famil­iar with the mat­ter who sus­pect she is like­ly to be tapped for a posi­tion at the White House Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil or with­in the Office of the Direc­tor of Nation­al Intel­li­gence.

    Trump has also promised to declas­si­fy all of the remain­ing gov­ern­ment records sur­round­ing JFK’s assas­si­na­tion, a long­time goal of RFK Jr.

    Fox Kennedy mar­ried Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s son Bob­by Kennedy III in 2018. She start­ed work­ing on her father-in-law’s pres­i­den­tial cam­paign as an advis­er in 2023. She took over as cam­paign man­ag­er lat­er in the year and played a role in ear­ly dis­cus­sions this sum­mer about merg­ing the Kennedy cam­paign with Trump’s oper­a­tion.

    ...

    ————

    “Trump pass­es over RFK Jr.’s daugh­ter-in-law for CIA’s No. 2 job” By John Hud­son and Michael Scher­er; The Wash­ing­ton Post; 12/16/2024

    “Trump’s deci­sion to pass over Amaryl­lis Fox Kennedy, a for­mer under­cov­er CIA oper­a­tive who is mar­ried to Kennedy’s son, fol­lows a con­cert­ed push by Sen. Tom Cot­ton of Arkansas, who lob­bied Trump chief of staff Susie Wiles and oth­ers close to the pres­i­dent-elect to nix the selec­tion, these peo­ple said. Like oth­ers, they spoke on the con­di­tion of anonymi­ty to dis­cuss a sen­si­tive per­son­nel mat­ter.”

    Sen­a­tor Cot­ton, some­how, nixed the plan to install Fox Kennedy as deputy direc­tor of the CIA. It’s not clear how exact­ly Cot­ton tanked the idea, how­ev­er. The deputy direc­tor spot does­n’t require a Sen­ate con­fir­ma­tion, after all. But that’s the sto­ry we got just days after the sto­ry of Fox Kennedy as CIA deputy direc­tor first sur­faced. Some­how, mys­te­ri­ous­ly, a lone sen­a­tor killed the whole thing despite not hav­ing any author­i­ty to do so:

    ...
    Cot­ton was not alone in oppos­ing Fox Kennedy’s can­di­da­cy but was her “most stri­dent” crit­ic in the Sen­ate, said a per­son famil­iar with the mat­ter.

    The CIA’s No. 2 job is one of the most pow­er­ful nation­al secu­ri­ty posi­tions that remains unfilled with­in the incom­ing admin­is­tra­tion. It wields sig­nif­i­cant influ­ence in the U.S. intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty but does not require Sen­ate con­fir­ma­tion, allow­ing, in the­o­ry, for a can­di­date who may defy the ortho­dox­ies of the upper cham­ber.

    ...

    Fox Kennedy mar­ried Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s son Bob­by Kennedy III in 2018. She start­ed work­ing on her father-in-law’s pres­i­den­tial cam­paign as an advis­er in 2023. She took over as cam­paign man­ag­er lat­er in the year and played a role in ear­ly dis­cus­sions this sum­mer about merg­ing the Kennedy cam­paign with Trump’s oper­a­tion.
    ...

    And note the sil­ly expla­na­tion we got for why Cot­ton was so opposed to Fox Kennedy in the first place: some­one close to Cot­ton told reporters that his con­cerns were pri­mar­i­ly focused on com­ments Kennedy once made about how the “only real way to dis­arm your ene­my is to lis­ten to them.” LOL, yeah, that’s the rea­son Cot­ton was so con­cerned. Noth­ing to do with the assas­si­na­tion dis­clo­sures:

    ...
    On the cam­paign trail, Kennedy often said he would like to con­tin­ue the work of his late uncle, Pres­i­dent John F. Kennedy, who famous­ly said he want­ed to “splin­ter” the CIA “into a thou­sand pieces and scat­ter it to the winds,” fol­low­ing the agency’s failed Bay of Pigs oper­a­tion in 1961 aimed at over­throw­ing Fidel Castro’s com­mu­nist gov­ern­ment in Cuba.

    Fox Kennedy has not pro­posed that type of over­haul of the agency, but Cot­ton and oth­ers were “con­cerned about get­ting Bob­by Kennedy’s proxy in the build­ing,” said a per­son famil­iar with the mat­ter.

    A per­son close to Cot­ton said the senator’s con­cerns per­tained to com­ments Fox Kennedy made years ago to Al Jazeera not­ing the impor­tance of under­stand­ing America’s adver­saries. “The only real way to dis­arm your ene­my is to lis­ten to them,” Fox Kennedy told the news net­work. Cot­ton likened such remarks as sym­pa­thiz­ing with ter­ror­ists, this per­son said.

    ...

    And then we get hint at anoth­er role for Fox Kennedy: maybe she could be tapped for a posi­tion at the White House Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil or with­in the Office of the Direc­tor of Nation­al Intel­li­gence. Posi­tions that don’t appear to involve assas­si­na­tion archive dis­clo­sure pow­ers:

    ...
    Trump has told oth­ers that he want­ed a nation­al secu­ri­ty posi­tion for Fox Kennedy and that the CIA post was not the only option, said peo­ple famil­iar with the mat­ter who sus­pect she is like­ly to be tapped for a posi­tion at the White House Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil or with­in the Office of the Direc­tor of Nation­al Intel­li­gence.
    ...

    Will we see Fox Kennedy join­ing the Trump White House in some form or anoth­er? That sounds plau­si­ble. But it also sounds very plau­si­ble that she’s going to end up in a posi­tion that does­n’t actu­al­ly give her any real influ­ence of the assas­si­na­tion archives top­ic. Time will tell how this all pans out. But it’s worth keep­ing in mind that depend­ing on an ‘ex’-CIA agent to lead the process of expos­ing the CIA’s deep­est, dark­est secrets was prob­a­bly nev­er a super great plan to begin with, even if they hap­pen to be RFK Jr.‘s daugh­ter-in-law. It would be great to be pleas­ant­ly sur­prised on this front, but we’re more like­ly to final­ly get answers on all those Ulbricht mur­der-for-hire orders at this point.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | January 22, 2025, 10:56 pm
  28. Trump signs exec­u­tive order to release more JFK, RFK, MLK assas­si­na­tion files
    https://www.cnn.com/2025/01/23/politics/jfk-assassination-files-trump/index.html

    Despite pre­vi­ous pledges from pres­i­dents, includ­ing Trump, to release those records, the CIA, Pen­ta­gon and State Depart­ment still have doc­u­ments they’ve refused to release. The jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for those doc­u­ments remain­ing clas­si­fied large­ly stems from efforts to pro­tect the iden­ti­ties of con­fi­den­tial sources who are still alive, or might be alive, and pro­tect­ing meth­ods.

    When Trump was pres­i­dent, he agreed at the time not to release the full tranche of records relat­ed to Kennedy’s assas­si­na­tion at the request of nation­al secu­ri­ty agen­cies. But Trump on the 2024 cam­paign trail said he would release the remain­ing doc­u­ments.

    Posted by Robert Maldonado | January 23, 2025, 6:22 pm
  29. @Robert Mal­don­a­do and Pter­rafractyl–

    Just HOW are we sup­posed to know if doc­u­ments are released that there are oth­ers that are being with­held?

    At any rate, so much is known about these killings and, yet, not even the research com­mu­ni­ty itself will touch the Nazi con­nec­tions.

    Best,

    Dave

    Posted by Dave Emory | January 23, 2025, 9:36 pm
  30. @Dave: The fact that we have no rea­son to believe the full archives will tru­ly be dis­closed is itself a reflec­tion of one of the most dev­as­tat­ing forms of sociopo­lit­i­cal fall­out from the suc­cess of the 1960s assas­si­na­tion spree: the Amer­i­can pub­lic does­n’t believe pub­lic insti­tu­tions any­more. Paving the way for fig­ures like Don­ald Trump, and now Elon Musk, to enter that trust-void and gaslight the hell out of the mass­es.

    Sure, more than just the assas­si­na­tion played a role in that ero­sion of pub­lic trust. But it’s also the case that a major­i­ty of the US pub­lic has NEVER believed the War­ren Report or the idea that Lee Har­vey Oswald act­ed alone. And that points to the one aspect of this sto­ry that we can at least hold out some hope for: it the ‘final release’ of these doc­u­ments just ends up being a ‘big noth­ing­burg­er’, with maybe a few new rev­e­la­tions but noth­ing that con­tra­dicts the ‘Oswald act­ed alone’ nar­ra­tive, it’s not only going to look like an ongo­ing cov­er up but it’s also going to make Don­ald Trump look like a com­plete stooge for the same ‘Deep State’ he appar­ent­ly has declared war on. That’s going to be part of Trump’s lega­cy if this is allowed to end with a final cov­er up.

    Then again, whether or not this ends with an insti­tu­tion­al cov­er up is prob­a­bly large­ly out of Trump’s hands. Espe­cial­ly if the most incrim­i­nat­ing doc­u­ments have already been destroyed, per­haps decades ago. It’s hard to imag­ine the worst evi­dence was­n’t some­how dealt with a long time ago.

    And that all rais­es a very inter­est­ing pos­si­bil­i­ty when it comes to the Nazi angle to the assas­si­na­tion: if Don­ald Trump allows this to end with a gross cov­er up blah dis­clo­sure sto­ry that main­tains the ‘Oswald act­ed alone’ nar­ra­tive, it’s not just that Trump will have com­plete­ly capit­u­lat­ed to the real Deep State. It’s also the case that the most overt­ly pro-Nazi admin­is­tra­tion in US his­to­ry will be the admin­is­tra­tion that for­mal­ly closed the case on this cru­cial chap­ter of Amer­i­can his­to­ry. It’s prob­a­bly too much to hope for, but giv­en the hyper-reac­tionary way that mod­ern soci­ety behaves, it will at least be the case that the reac­tionary response to a Trump-led JFK final cov­er up real­ly would be a clos­er exam­i­na­tion of the inter­na­tion­al fas­cist com­po­nent of the JFK assas­si­na­tion con­spir­a­cy.

    And that brings us to the con­tem­po­rary Nazi sto­ry that keeps devel­op­ing. That would, of course, be the sto­ry of Elon Musk’s con­tin­u­ous pub­lic Nazi ‘com­ing out’ par­ty. A par­ty in the form of one pub­lic act of Nazi-themed trolling after anoth­er. And as we’re going to see, while the inau­gur­al Seig Heil has got­ten all the atten­tion of late, there’s been a lot more Nazi trolling from Musk than just that, before and after.

    For starters, it was just last month when Musk gave his com­plete endorse­ment of the far right AfD in Ger­many’s upcom­ing elec­tions and just a cou­ple of weeks ago when Musk gave that dis­turb­ing X.com inter­view of AfD leader Alice Wei­del where the two agreed that Hitler was actu­al­ly a com­mu­nist. And that’s just the recent stuff. There’s Musk’s long­stand­ing fix­a­tion on eugen­ics and the Great Replace­ment The­o­ry. But there’s noth­ing quite like mul­ti­ple Seig Heils at an inau­gur­al ral­ly to real­ly ham­mer home the point that the guy tru­ly is a Nazi. He wants us to know, even if he does­n’t want to come out and say it.

    But it’s also the incred­i­ble stuff he’s said and done since the Seig Heil. Like respond­ing to the ADL’s gross defense of the Seig Heil — brush­ing it off as an awk­ward ges­ture and noth­ing more — with a series of Nazi puns pub­lished on Twit­ter mak­ing fun of the whole sit­u­a­tion. Yes, he actu­al­ly did that, lead­ing to the ADL final­ly denounc­ing his gross glee at the con­tro­ver­sy. Puns like “Don’t say Hess to Nazi accu­sa­tions!” and “Some peo­ple will Goebbels any­thing down!”. X.com CEO Lin­da Yac­cari­no respond­ed to the puns with a laugh-cry­ing emo­ji. This is the nor­mal­iza­tion of Naism, in real-time.

    It’s also impor­tant to note that this isn’t the first time Musk has made a “my heart goes out to you ges­ture” dur­ing a pre­sen­ta­tion. Except, in the past, it was­n’t an actu­al­ly heart ges­ture that did­n’t look like a Nazi salute. He knew what he was doing.

    And it’s not like he just made a Seig Heil ges­ture while say­ing “my heart goes out to you”. He actu­al­ly said, “My heart goes out to you. It is thanks to you that the future of civil­i­sa­tion is assured,” which is the kind of state­ment that sure has a ’14 words’ echo to it.

    Amaz­ing­ly, Musk’s father, Errol, decid­ed to chime in on the con­tro­ver­sy by declar­ing that he sees absolute­ly noth­ing wrong with ges­ture and that it was just a nor­mal salute like any oth­er. This is, of course, the same per­son Musk has declared to be incred­i­bly evil in a 2017 inter­view, say­ing of his father: “He was such a ter­ri­ble human being...You have no idea… My dad will have a care­ful­ly thought-out plan of evil. He will plan evil...You have no idea about how bad. Almost every crime you can pos­si­bly think of, he has done. Almost every evil thing you could pos­si­bly think of, he has done...It’s so ter­ri­ble, you can’t believe it.” And the same per­son who has recent­ly begun cel­e­brat­ing how his son has final­ly embraced his des­tiny. That’s part of the con­text of Errol Musk’s casu­al dis­missal of the Seig Heil as just anoth­er com­mon salute that peo­ple use all the time.

    But as we’re going to see, there’s anoth­er key piece of con­text to this deci­sion by Errol to defend Seig Heil: it was just back in Novem­ber when Errol gave an inter­view where he acknowl­edged by Elon’s mater­nal grand­par­ents were Hitler-sup­port­ing mem­bers of the Cana­di­an Nazi Par­ty. It was­n’t a sur­pris­ing admis­sion. As we saw, Musk’s grand­fa­ther was the mem­ber of two anti-demo­c­ra­t­ic par­ties in Cana­da — the Tech­noc­ra­cy Par­ty and the Social Cred­it Par­ty — and lit­er­al­ly moved the fam­i­ly to apartheid South Africa in 1950 because he was con­vinced the apartheid gov­ern­ment waas going to lead the white race in the glob­al strug­gle against the Jew­ish anti-white glob­al con­spir­a­cy. It would have been shock­ing if Musk’s mater­nal grand­par­ents weren’t Hitler-sup­port­ers giv­en what we already knew. But it’s some­thing to have Errol con­firm they were mem­bers of the Cana­di­an Nazi par­ty too.

    And that fam­i­ly his­to­ry of Nazi par­ty mem­ber­ship ties into the lat­est Nazi trolling by Musk in a high­ly dis­turb­ing way. Yes, he did­n’t end with the Nazi puns. Instead, Musk just spoke at an AfD ral­ly where he made the case that Ger­many need­ed to get past its his­toric guilty. He did­n’t explic­it­ly refer to Nazi guilt, but it was­n’t exact­ly a mys­tery. Again, He wants us to know he’s a Nazi, even if he does­n’t want to come out and say it. The only mys­tery is to what extent was he refer­ring to his own fam­i­ly.

    And that gross speech to the AfD brings us to one last cru­cial detail in this dis­gust­ing mess that direct­ly relates to the JFK assas­si­na­tion in the refusal of even the JFK research com­mu­ni­ty to take seri­ous­ly the inter­na­tion­al fas­cist role in the plot: it’s a lot hard­er to ignore the inter­na­tion­al fas­cist role in the JFK assas­si­na­tion when there’s an inter­na­tion­al fas­cist cabal active­ly and pret­ty open­ly sub­vert­ing what’s left of the US’s democ­ra­cy. And it’s a lot hard­er to ignore all that when you real­ize that Musk was­n’t just Seig Heil­ing to an audi­ence of ador­ing MAGA acolytes. It was also filled with inter­na­tion­al far right lead­ers, includ­ing AfD lead­ers like Beat­rix Storch, one of the most open­ly fascis­tic lead­ers in the AfD. Recall how Storch helped to draft the AfD man­i­festo back in 2016 call­ing hand­i­capped chil­dren, sin­gle moth­ers, the men­tal­ly ill, and drug addicts as exam­ples of unde­sir­ables who should see state assis­tance reduced or out­right pun­ish­ment. Musk was Seig Heil­ing her too.

    That’s all going to be part of the near-apoc­a­lyp­tic con­text of com­ing JFK ‘dis­clo­sures’ and the like­ly final dis­cov­ery that the truth will nev­er be offi­cial­ly revealed. The inter­na­tion­al fas­cist angle of the JFK assas­si­na­tion has proven depress­ing­ly easy to ignore so far. Decades on. We’ll see if that con­tin­ues a the same time an inter­na­tion­al fas­cist cabal open­ly destroys what’s left of the US, ‘joke’ Seig Heil­ing the whole way there:

    German-Foreign-Policy.com

    The transat­lantic far right

    The new US admin­is­tra­tion invites far-right par­ties, includ­ing the AfD, to Trump’s inau­gu­ra­tion – an ini­tia­tive for nor­mal­i­sa­tion and transat­lantic net­work­ing.

    21 Jan 2025

    WASHINGTON/BERLIN (own report) — The new US admin­is­tra­tion has offered the AfD and oth­er extreme right-wing par­ties from around Europe a stage for their fur­ther nor­mal­i­sa­tion and for transat­lantic net­work­ing. This is the sig­nif­i­cance of their invi­ta­tion to Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s inau­gu­ra­tion. Of the many heads of state and gov­ern­ment in the Euro­pean Union, only the most right-wing, Gior­gia Mel­oni, was invit­ed to the major event, which attract­ed world­wide atten­tion. Trump’s team also wel­comed rep­re­sen­ta­tives from the Bel­gian Vlaams Belang, the Span­ish Vox par­ty, the French Recon­quête! par­ty and, from out­side the EU, the British Reform UK par­ty. The AfD was also rep­re­sent­ed in the US cap­i­tal with two of its senior func­tionar­ies. Their pres­ence at Trump’s inau­gu­ra­tion will effec­tive­ly coun­ter­act attempts by the polit­i­cal estab­lish­ment to ostracise them. Indeed, they will also be inte­grat­ed to some extent into the net­work of transat­lantic rela­tions. We can see the emer­gence of the vague out­lines of a transat­lantic hard right. The Trump admin­is­tra­tion, now the dri­ving force behind this trend, is backed by tech oli­garchs such as Elon Musk. These sup­port­ers are among the rich­est peo­ple in the world and some of them open­ly espouse anti-demo­c­ra­t­ic ide­olo­gies.

    Mel­oni plays a key role

    Italy’s Prime Min­is­ter Gior­gia Mel­oni was the only one of the heads of state and gov­ern­ment of the 27 EU mem­ber states to receive an offi­cial invi­ta­tion to Don­ald Trump’s inau­gu­ra­tion on Mon­day. Inter­est­ing­ly, Hungary’s Prime Min­is­ter Vik­tor Orbán, who is quite close to Trump polit­i­cal­ly, was not invit­ed. Mel­oni had pre­vi­ous­ly vis­it­ed Trump in Mar-a-Lago on 4 Jan­u­ary for an exchange of views. She is now con­sid­ered pre­des­tined for the role of medi­a­tor between the new US pres­i­dent and the EU in the con­text of like­ly con­flicts going for­ward. Trump’s inau­gu­ra­tion was attend­ed by top offi­cials from var­i­ous par­ties that form a right-wing fac­tion in the Euro­pean Par­lia­ment togeth­er with Meloni’s own par­ty, Fratel­li d’Italia. The Euro­pean Con­ser­v­a­tives and Reformists group (ECR) embraces fig­ures such as the for­mer Prime Min­is­ter of Poland, Mateusz Moraw­iec­ki from the PiS (Pra­wo i Spraw­iedli­wosc) par­ty, and George Simion, the leader of the Roman­ian AUR par­ty (Alian?a pen­tru Unirea Românilor). Politi­cians from par­ties that form anoth­er par­lia­men­tary fac­tion in the Euro­pean Par­lia­ment in alliance with Orbán’s Fidesz par­ty were also present. This group, called the Patri­ots for Europe (PfE), includes the lead­ers of the Bel­gian Vlaams Belang, Tom Van Grieken, the Span­ish Vox par­ty, San­ti­a­go Abas­cal, and the Por­tuguese Chega! par­ty, André Ventura.[1]

    Nigel Farage and Éric Zem­mour

    The cel­e­bra­tions in Wash­ing­ton were also attend­ed by far-right politi­cians from the three largest coun­tries in West­ern Europe, i.e. France, the UK and Ger­many. Nigel Farage, now head­ing the Reform UK par­ty, has been par­tic­u­lar close to Trump for years. He also enjoyed overt sup­port from Elon Musk, until recent­ly when Farage came under attack from the tech oli­garch for not ally­ing with a vio­lent hard-right fig­ure in Eng­land. But Farage is like­ly to repair his rela­tion­ship with Musk. Also trav­el­ling to the event were two politi­cians from the right wing of the Con­ser­v­a­tive Par­ty, for­mer Prime Min­is­ter Liz Truss and for­mer Home Sec­re­tary Suel­la Braver­man. In France, Éric Zem­mour and Sarah Knafo from the Recon­quête! par­ty had received invi­ta­tions, but not the lead­er­ship of the Rassem­ble­ment Nation­al (RN) around Marine Le Pen and Jor­dan Bardella.[2] A few years ago, Zem­mour was seen as the future hope of the extreme right in France. But despite the back­ing of bil­lion­aire Vin­cent Bol­loré, he only received sev­en per cent in the pres­i­den­tial race in April 2022. Zem­mour did do well in well-healed con­stituen­cies such as the posh Parisian dis­trict of the 16th arrondisse­ment or on the Côte d’Azur. How­ev­er, anti-immi­grant Zem­mour and his par­ty Recon­quête! were ulti­mate­ly unable to pre­vail against the rapid­ly grow­ing RN.

    The AfD

    Final­ly, sev­er­al offi­cials from the Alter­na­tive for Ger­many (AfD) were invit­ed from Ger­many. Although the AfD has tra­di­tion­al­ly had a dif­fi­cult rela­tion­ship with the Unit­ed States, Trump enjoys con­sid­er­able sym­pa­thy among their sup­port­ers. A sur­vey con­duct­ed at the begin­ning of Decem­ber revealed that 54% of AfD sup­port­ers were in favour of the Ger­man gov­ern­ment putting aside its scep­ti­cisms and approach­ing the Trump admin­is­tra­tion with open arms. The pro­por­tion of par­ty sup­port­ers who called for this stance was sig­nif­i­cant­ly high­er in the AfD than in any oth­er par­ty (FDP: 37 per cent; CDU/CSU: 34 per cent; SPD: 24 per cent; Greens: 23 per cent).[3] In par­tic­u­lar, AfD fed­er­al spokesper­son Alice Wei­del was invit­ed to Trump’s inau­gu­ra­tion show. She had been strong­ly praised by Elon Musk, who held a live online chat with her on 9 Jan­u­ary. How­ev­er, Wei­del did not turn up in per­son, explain­ing that she was unavail­able due to the elec­tion cam­paign com­mit­ments in Ger­many. The party’s co-spokesper­son, Tino Chru­pal­la, went instead. Chru­pal­la actu­al­ly belongs to the wing of the par­ty that has major reser­va­tions about Germany’s rela­tions with the Unit­ed States. He has explic­it­ly crit­i­cised Trump’s “Amer­i­ca first” poli­cies, but agreed to attend, accom­pa­nied by Beat­rix von Storch, the deputy chair of the AfD par­lia­men­tary group.

    Engag­ing and net­work­ing

    Their high-pro­file par­tic­i­pa­tion in Trump’s inau­gu­ra­tion is help­ing the par­ties of the far right in Europe to move ahead strong­ly on their agen­da of nor­mal­i­sa­tion. At EU lev­el, the process is already well advanced. Through Mel­oni in par­tic­u­lar, with her Fratel­li d’I­talia par­ty and oth­er par­ties of the ECR group, these polit­i­cal forces are now large­ly inte­grat­ed into the polit­i­cal estab­lish­ment of the Union.[4] This has not yet hap­pened in the case of par­ties in the PfE group or the AfD but they, too, can now hope for some progress on nor­mal­i­sa­tion. Atten­dance in Wash­ing­ton gave them the oppor­tu­ni­ties for net­work­ing both inter­na­tion­al­ly and, above all, transat­lanti­cal­ly. This is by no means a giv­en. After all, the far right in Europe is tra­di­tion­al­ly more pro-Russ­ian than transat­lantic. Trump’s inau­gu­ra­tion also drew politi­cians from the far right in Latin Amer­i­ca, includ­ing Eduar­do Bol­sonaro, son of for­mer Brazil­ian Pres­i­dent Jair Bol­sonaro. The lat­ter is not allowed to leave Brazil due to ongo­ing crim­i­nal pro­ceed­ings against him. Also in Wash­ing­ton was Argentina’s Pres­i­dent Javier Milei, who has been seek­ing to estab­lish a transat­lantic net­work with Europe’s far right with vis­its to Spain and Ger­many (german-foreign-policy.com report­ed [5]).

    ...

    [1] Nicholas Vinocur, Nahal Toosi: Who’s been invit­ed? World’s far right pop­ulists pack guest list for Trump’s inau­gu­ra­tion. politico.eu 16.01.2025.

    [2] Lucas Min­isi­ni: Investi­ture de Don­ald Trump : les grandes manœu­vres de Sarah Knafo pour se faire inviter avec Eric Zem­mour. lemonde.fr 18.01.2025.

    [3] Sollte die Bun­desregierung aktiv auf Trump zuge­hen oder eher abwarten? In: Inter­na­tionale Poli­tik Januar/Februar 2025. p. 5.

    [4] See also: The fire­wall is crum­bling, Die Brand­mauer rutscht (II) and Die Brand­mauer bricht.

    [5] See also: Milei auf Euro­pareise (I) and Milei auf Euro­pareise (III).

    [6] Peter Thiel: The Edu­ca­tion of a Lib­er­tar­i­an. cato-unbound.org 13.04.2009.

    ———-

    “The transat­lantic far right”; German-Foreign-Policy.com; 01/21/2025

    Final­ly, sev­er­al offi­cials from the Alter­na­tive for Ger­many (AfD) were invit­ed from Ger­many. Although the AfD has tra­di­tion­al­ly had a dif­fi­cult rela­tion­ship with the Unit­ed States, Trump enjoys con­sid­er­able sym­pa­thy among their sup­port­ers. A sur­vey con­duct­ed at the begin­ning of Decem­ber revealed that 54% of AfD sup­port­ers were in favour of the Ger­man gov­ern­ment putting aside its scep­ti­cisms and approach­ing the Trump admin­is­tra­tion with open arms. The pro­por­tion of par­ty sup­port­ers who called for this stance was sig­nif­i­cant­ly high­er in the AfD than in any oth­er par­ty (FDP: 37 per cent; CDU/CSU: 34 per cent; SPD: 24 per cent; Greens: 23 per cent).[3] In par­tic­u­lar, AfD fed­er­al spokesper­son Alice Wei­del was invit­ed to Trump’s inau­gu­ra­tion show. She had been strong­ly praised by Elon Musk, who held a live online chat with her on 9 Jan­u­ary. How­ev­er, Wei­del did not turn up in per­son, explain­ing that she was unavail­able due to the elec­tion cam­paign com­mit­ments in Ger­many. The party’s co-spokesper­son, Tino Chru­pal­la, went instead. Chru­pal­la actu­al­ly belongs to the wing of the par­ty that has major reser­va­tions about Germany’s rela­tions with the Unit­ed States. He has explic­it­ly crit­i­cised Trump’s “Amer­i­ca first” poli­cies, but agreed to attend, accom­pa­nied by Beat­rix von Storch, the deputy chair of the AfD par­lia­men­tary group.”

    As we can see, when Elon Musk made his “my heart goes out to you” Seig Heil to the inau­gu­ra­tion crowd, he was­n’t just Seig Heil­ing the MAGA audi­ence. There was a num­ber of rep­re­sen­ta­tives of Euro­pean extrem­ist par­ties there. Includ­ing the AfD, a par­ty near and dear to Elon’s heat, as we now know. As we saw, just weeks after Musk gave his com­plete endorse­ment of the AfD in Ger­many’s upcom­ing elec­tions and just days after Musk’s bizarre X.com inter­view of AfD leader Alice Wei­del where the two agreed that Hitler was actu­al­ly a com­mu­nist.

    And then there was key AfD leader Beat­rix von Storch, grand­daugh­ter of the per­son who took over Nazi Ger­many fol­low­ing Adolf Hitler’s sui­cide. Recall how Storch is is mar­ried to Sven von Storch, the fig­ure who is arguably the most open­ly fascis­tic mem­ber of the AfD. And as we saw, Sven also hap­pened to be a mem­ber of a What­sApp group set up by Erik Prince short­ly after the Octo­ber 7 attacks filled with fascis­tic fig­ures and focused on dis­cus­sions of con­quest in the Mid­dle East and Africa. Also recall the August 2021 sto­ry about the declared for­ma­tion of an inter­na­tion­al coali­tion of con­ser­v­a­tive move­ments that was coor­di­nat­ed by Jair Bolsonaro’s gov­ern­ment in Brazil. As we saw, AfD Par­lia­men­tar­i­an Beat­rix von Storch was part of that announced Con­ser­v­a­tive Inter­na­tion­al. In addi­tion to beng roy­al­ty, with the title Her High­ness Duchess Beat­rix Amelie Ehren­gard Eili­ka von Old­en­burg, she is also a dis­tant rel­a­tive of both Prince Charles and Bertrand de Orléans e Bra­gança, the head of the Brazil­ian roy­al fam­i­ly, who she met with the pri­or month. And then there’s the fact that Beat­rix helped to draft the AfD man­i­festo back in 2016 call­ing hand­i­capped chil­dren, sin­gle moth­ers, the men­tal­ly ill, and drug addicts as exam­ples of unde­sir­ables who should see state assis­tance reduced or out­right pun­ish­ment. When Musk was Seig Heil­ing that audi­ence, he was Seig Heil­ing fig­ures like von Storch too.

    And while Musk and MAGA world are bend­ing over back­wards to make some sort of excuse for why that was­n’t a bla­tant series of Seig Heils, there’s one par­tic­u­lar audi­ence that isn’t afraid to acknowl­edge what they saw. Or afraid express their glee. That audi­ence would, of course, be neo-Nazis and their fel­low trav­el­ers:

    Wired

    Neo-Nazis Love the Nazi-Like Salutes Elon Musk Made at Trump’s Inau­gu­ra­tion

    The far right is cel­e­brat­ing what it views as a clear sig­nal from the X own­er and Don­ald Trump asso­ciate, who made the ges­tures on stage Mon­day.

    David Gilbert
    Jan 20, 2025 5:26 PM

    Neo-Nazis are cel­e­brat­ing Elon Musk mak­ing two Nazi-like salutes dur­ing a speech to tens of thou­sands of Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump sup­port­ers on Mon­day.

    “Elec­tions come and go, some elec­tions are impor­tant, some are not, but this one real­ly mat­tered,” Musk said dur­ing his address inside the Cap­i­tal One Are­na in Wash­ing­ton DC, hours after Trump was sworn in as the 47th pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States. “And I just want to say thank you for mak­ing it hap­pen. Thank you.”

    At this point, Musk put his right hand on his chest before extend­ing it straight out with his palm fac­ing down and his fin­gers touch­ing, a ges­ture wide­ly rec­og­nized as the “Roman salute.” Adopt­ed by the fas­cist move­ment a cen­tu­ry ago, it was most famous­ly used by Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Par­ty in Ger­many, and is to this day asso­ci­at­ed with the fas­cist right, espe­cial­ly in Italy.

    After he first made the ges­ture, Musk then turned around to mem­bers of the crowd who were seat­ed behind him and, with his back to the cam­era, repeat­ed the ges­ture.

    “My heart goes out to you,” Musk added.

    Musk sub­se­quent­ly shared a clip of his speech on X but at the point where he makes the first salute, the clip post­ed by Musk cuts away to a shot of the audi­ence before return­ing to show him mak­ing the sec­ond salute.

    ...

    The response from the neo-Nazi com­mu­ni­ty across the globe was instant and unan­i­mous.

    “Incred­i­ble things are hap­pen­ing already,” Andrew Tor­ba, the founder of Gab, a social media plat­form pop­u­lar with anti­semites and white suprema­cists, wrote over a pic­ture of Musk giv­ing the salute.

    “The entire neo-Nazi move­ment seems to be eat­ing it up,” says Nick Mar­tin, an inves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ist who close­ly tracks extrem­ist groups and runs the online pub­li­ca­tion The Infor­mant. “He gave two unmis­tak­able Nazi salutes and they got the mes­sage loud and clear.”

    “WE ARE FU CKING BACK” the admin­is­tra­tor of a Nazi meme chan­nel on Telegram wrote under a clip of Musk giv­ing the salute. Mem­bers of the group respond­ed with the light­ning bolt emo­ji, a well-known neo-Nazi ref­er­ence to the SS.

    “I don’t care if this was a mis­take, I’m going to enjoy the tears over it,” Christo­pher Pohlhaus, the leader of the Amer­i­can neo-Nazi group Blood Tribe, wrote on his Telegram chan­nel under a gif of the Musk salute.

    Kei­th Woods, a promi­nent far-right influ­encer from Ire­land who has repeat­ed­ly praised Musk, respond­ed to the actions by writ­ing on X: “OK maybe woke real­ly is dead.”

    Evan Kil­go­re, a right-wing polit­i­cal com­men­ta­tor, wrote on X: “Holy crap … did Elon Musk just Heil Hitler at the Trump Inau­gu­ra­tion Ral­ly in Wash­ing­ton DC… This is incred­i­ble.” Kil­go­re lat­er wrote: “We are so back.”

    Kil­go­re, who is a Holo­caust denier, has worked as an ambas­sador for Char­lie Kirk’s Turn­ing Point USA. The con­ser­v­a­tive activist group host­ed a pre-inau­gu­ra­tion ball on Sun­day evening that fea­tured JD Vance, who was inau­gu­rat­ed as vice-pres­i­dent today, and the president’s son, Don­ald Trump Jr.

    Musk has embraced far-right ide­ol­o­gy and fig­ures across the globe, includ­ing jailed Islam­pho­bic activist Tom­my Robin­son in the UK, over the last two years. Most recent­ly, he has pro­mot­ed the Ger­man far-right polit­i­cal par­ty Alter­na­tive for Ger­many. In an hour-long inter­view with the party’s leader Alice Wei­del ear­li­er this month, Musk agreed with the wild con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry that Hitler was a com­mu­nist.

    ————

    “Neo-Nazis Love the Nazi-Like Salutes Elon Musk Made at Trump’s Inau­gu­ra­tion” by David Gilbert; Wired; 01/20/2025

    “The response from the neo-Nazi com­mu­ni­ty across the globe was instant and unan­i­mous.”

    Musk and his sico­phants can deny it all they want, but Nazis know who they saw. And they know it was a shoutout from a fel­low trav­el­er. One of many promi­nent fel­low trav­el­ers these days. Don’t for­get, it was the Trump cam­paign itself that took up the man­tle of the ‘Hait­ian immi­grants eat­ing cats and dogs’ meme last sum­mery. A meme that orig­i­nat­ed with Blood Tribe leader Christo­pher Pohlaus. The sec­ond Trump admin­is­tra­tion is already turn­ing into a Nazi com­ing out par­ty:

    ...
    “Incred­i­ble things are hap­pen­ing already,” Andrew Tor­ba, the founder of Gab, a social media plat­form pop­u­lar with anti­semites and white suprema­cists, wrote over a pic­ture of Musk giv­ing the salute.

    “The entire neo-Nazi move­ment seems to be eat­ing it up,” says Nick Mar­tin, an inves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ist who close­ly tracks extrem­ist groups and runs the online pub­li­ca­tion The Infor­mant. “He gave two unmis­tak­able Nazi salutes and they got the mes­sage loud and clear.”

    “WE ARE FU CKING BACK” the admin­is­tra­tor of a Nazi meme chan­nel on Telegram wrote under a clip of Musk giv­ing the salute. Mem­bers of the group respond­ed with the light­ning bolt emo­ji, a well-known neo-Nazi ref­er­ence to the SS.

    “I don’t care if this was a mis­take, I’m going to enjoy the tears over it,” Christo­pher Pohlhaus, the leader of the Amer­i­can neo-Nazi group Blood Tribe, wrote on his Telegram chan­nel under a gif of the Musk salute.

    Kei­th Woods, a promi­nent far-right influ­encer from Ire­land who has repeat­ed­ly praised Musk, respond­ed to the actions by writ­ing on X: “OK maybe woke real­ly is dead.”
    ...

    And when we see how those cel­e­brat­ing Musk’s Seig Heil include Holo­caust denier Evan Kil­go­re, who has worked as an ambas­sador for Char­lie Kirk’s Turn­ing Points US, recall how Kil­go­re was cel­e­brat­ing online fol­low­ing Trump’s 2024 elec­tion vic­to­ry with state­ments like “Women, back to the kitchen; Abor­tions, ille­gal; Gays, back in the clos­et; Inter­ra­cial mar­riage, banned; Ille­gals, pack your bags; Tran­nies, back to the asy­lums; Jesus, back in our schools...We are so back.” Also recall how Char­lie Kirk hap­pens to be a mem­ber of the Coun­cil for Nation­al Pol­i­cy. Yes, Turn­ing Points USA, a fair­ly main­stream con­ser­v­a­tive orga­ni­za­tion at this point that host­ed a pre-inau­gu­ra­tion ball fea­tur­ing JD Vance, had a Holo­caust deny­ing ‘ambas­sador’ who was open­ly cel­e­brat­ing Elon Musk’s Seig Heil:

    ...
    Evan Kil­go­re, a right-wing polit­i­cal com­men­ta­tor, wrote on X: “Holy crap … did Elon Musk just Heil Hitler at the Trump Inau­gu­ra­tion Ral­ly in Wash­ing­ton DC… This is incred­i­ble.” Kil­go­re lat­er wrote: “We are so back.”

    Kil­go­re, who is a Holo­caust denier, has worked as an ambas­sador for Char­lie Kirk’s Turn­ing Point USA. The con­ser­v­a­tive activist group host­ed a pre-inau­gu­ra­tion ball on Sun­day evening that fea­tured JD Vance, who was inau­gu­rat­ed as vice-pres­i­dent today, and the president’s son, Don­ald Trump Jr.
    ...

    It’s also impor­tant to note that it was­n’t just a Seig Heil ges­ture. Musk includ­ed a rather inter­est­ing phrase along with his “my heart goes out to you” dec­la­ra­tion: “My heart goes out to you. It is thanks to you that the future of civil­i­sa­tion is assured.” That may not be the exact ’14 words’ neo-Nazi slo­gan, but it’s very much in the same spir­it:

    BBC News

    Musk responds to back­lash over ges­ture at Trump ral­ly

    George Wright
    01/21/2025

    Elon Musk draws scruti­ny over arm ges­ture at post-inau­gu­ra­tion ral­ly

    Elon Musk has brushed aside the furore over a one-armed ges­ture he gave dur­ing a speech cel­e­brat­ing the inau­gu­ra­tion of Don­ald Trump.

    At Mon­day’s event, Musk thanked the crowd for “mak­ing it hap­pen”, before plac­ing his right hand over his heart and then thrust­ing the same arm out into air straight ahead of him. He then turned and repeat­ed the action for those sit­ting behind him.

    Some on X, the social medi­al plat­form he owns, likened the ges­ture to a Nazi salute, though oth­ers dis­agreed.

    In response, the SpaceX and Tes­la chief post­ed on X: “Frankly, they need bet­ter dirty tricks. The ‘every­one is Hitler’ attack is sooo tired.”

    Musk, the world’s rich­est man and a close ally of Pres­i­dent Trump, was speak­ing at the Cap­i­tal One Are­na in Wash­ing­ton DC when he made the ges­ture.

    “My heart goes out to you. It is thanks to you that the future of civil­i­sa­tion is assured,” the 53-year-old said, after giv­ing the sec­ond one-armed salute.

    There was imme­di­ate back­lash on social media and dis­agree­ment about Musk’s intent.

    Ruth Ben-Ghi­at, a his­to­ry pro­fes­sor at New York Uni­ver­si­ty, said: “His­to­ri­an of fas­cism here. It was a Nazi salute and a very bel­liger­ent one too.”

    But the Anti-Defama­tion League, an organ­i­sa­tion found­ed to com­bat anti­semitism, did not agree.

    “It seems that Elon Musk made an awk­ward ges­ture in a moment of enthu­si­asm, not a Nazi salute,” it post­ed on X.

    Andrea Strop­pa, a con­fi­dant of Musk who has con­nect­ed him with far-right Ital­ian PM Gior­gia Mel­oni, was report­ed by Ital­ian media to have post­ed the clip of Musk with the cap­tion: “Roman Empire is back start­ing from Roman salute”.

    The Roman salute was wide­ly used in Italy by Ben­i­to Mus­solin­i’s Fas­cist Par­ty, before lat­er being adopt­ed by Adolf Hitler in Ger­many.

    Strop­pa lat­er delet­ed his post, Ital­ian media said. He lat­er post­ed that “that ges­ture, which some mis­took for a Nazi salute, is sim­ply Elon, who has autism, express­ing his feel­ings by say­ing, ‘I want to give my heart to you’ ”.

    “That is exact­ly what he com­mu­ni­cat­ed into the micro­phone. ELON DISLIKES EXTREMISTS!”

    ...

    ————-

    “Musk responds to back­lash over ges­ture at Trump ral­ly” by George Wright; BBC News; 01/21/2025

    “My heart goes out to you. It is thanks to you that the future of civil­i­sa­tion is assured,” the 53-year-old said, after giv­ing the sec­ond one-armed salute.”

    It was­n’t a Seig Heil. It was a “my heart goes out to you” ges­ture. Sure. It’s just coin­ci­den­tal that this “my heart goes out to you” ges­ture looks entire­ly dif­fer­ent from Musk’s “my heart goes out to you” ges­tures made in the past. But he did­n’t just declare “My heart goes out to you.” He includ­ed, “It is thanks to you that future of civ­i­liza­tion is assured,” which, tak­en with the Seig Heil, sure seems like some sort of ’14 words’ shout-out. And yet, amaz­ing­ly, the ADL decid­ed to declare that it was all just an inno­cent mis­take by Musk. Which is reminder that this sto­ry isn’t just about the aggres­sive main­stream­ing of Nazi ide­olo­gies on the part of the new Trump admin­is­tra­tion and its allies. It’s also about the shame­ful col­lab­o­ra­tive roles in that main­stream played by orga­ni­za­tions like the ADL:

    ...
    There was imme­di­ate back­lash on social media and dis­agree­ment about Musk’s intent.

    Ruth Ben-Ghi­at, a his­to­ry pro­fes­sor at New York Uni­ver­si­ty, said: “His­to­ri­an of fas­cism here. It was a Nazi salute and a very bel­liger­ent one too.”

    But the Anti-Defama­tion League, an organ­i­sa­tion found­ed to com­bat anti­semitism, did not agree.

    “It seems that Elon Musk made an awk­ward ges­ture in a moment of enthu­si­asm, not a Nazi salute,” it post­ed on X.
    ...

    Although the ADL’s will­ing­ness to debase itself on Musk’s behalf reached its lim­it a cou­ple days lat­er after Musk appar­ent­ly decid­ed to troll the hell out of every­one with a series of Nazi-themed puns post­ed in defense of him­self:

    The Rolling Stone

    The Anti-Defama­tion League Is Final­ly Sick of Elon Musk’s Nazi Jokes

    The Jew­ish advo­ca­cy group had just defend­ed the bil­lion­aire’s ‘awk­ward’ salute at Pres­i­dent Trump’s inau­gu­ra­tion

    By Miles Klee
    Jan­u­ary 23, 2025

    WASHINGTON, DC —

    After a year-long truce between Elon Musk, own­er of the extrem­ism-sat­u­rat­ed X (for­mer­ly Twit­ter), and the Anti-Defama­tion League, an orga­ni­za­tion meant to com­bat anti­semitism and oth­er kinds of big­otry, it seems the bil­lion­aire and the advo­ca­cy group are on the outs once again.

    Musk and the ADL had first tak­en shots at each oth­er dur­ing a spat in 2023, with the non­prof­it say­ing X had allowed an explo­sion of hate speech under Musk’s watch, and the bil­lion­aire coun­ter­ing that they were try­ing to smear him while sti­fling free speech. He even ampli­fied a hash­tag, #BanT­heADL, that white suprema­cists used to call for the removal of the orga­ni­za­tion from the web­site, and blamed the ADL for a pre­cip­i­tous drop in ad rev­enue as brands ditched the app because of the rise in harm­ful con­tent that it and oth­er watch­dogs had warned about.

    But fol­low­ing Hamas‘ Oct. 7 attack on Israel that year, Musk and ADL chief exec­u­tive Jonathan Green­blatt came to an agree­ment about the need to restrict lan­guage on the plat­form asso­ci­at­ed with the Pales­tin­ian lib­er­a­tion move­ment. Musk also made sym­bol­ic vis­its to Israel and Auschwitz that seemed to fur­ther smooth things over.

    A detente last­ed until just after Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump‘s sec­ond inau­gu­ra­tion this month. Even when Musk faced out­rage for mak­ing a ges­ture at the event that white nation­al­ists rec­og­nized (and cel­e­brat­ed) as a Nazi salute, the ADL urged peo­ple to give the bil­lion­aire — who has allowed pro-Nazi accounts to flour­ish on his plat­form — a pass. “This is a del­i­cate moment,” read a post on Mon­day from the group’s offi­cial X account. “It seems that [Musk] made an awk­ward ges­ture in a moment of enthu­si­asm, not a Nazi salute, but again, we appre­ci­ate that peo­ple are on edge. In this moment, all sides should give one anoth­er a bit of grace, per­haps even the ben­e­fit of the doubt, and take a breath.”

    But Musk made lit­tle attempt to allay con­cerns that he had thrown a “Sieg Heil” at a lectern bear­ing the Unit­ed States pres­i­den­tial seal. Indeed, he seemed to enjoy the con­tro­ver­sy, and con­tin­ued to stoke it on Thurs­day with a series of Nazi-relat­ed puns. “Don’t say Hess to Nazi accu­sa­tions!” he wrote in a post on X that also includ­ed the line “Some peo­ple will Goebbels any­thing down!” as well as the baf­fling non-sequitur “His pro­nouns would’ve been He/Himmler!” (X CEO Lin­da Yac­cari­no respond­ed to all this with a laugh-cry­ing emo­ji.)

    The World War II word­play was evi­dent­ly a bridge too far for Green­blatt after the ADL had gone to bat for Musk in a state­ment on the inau­gu­ra­tion salute that was wide­ly seen as an abdi­ca­tion of the nonprofit’s exact pur­pose. “We’ve said it hun­dreds of times before and we will say it again: the Holo­caust was a sin­gu­lar­ly evil event, and it is inap­pro­pri­ate and offen­sive to make light of it,” he wrote in a post on X that quot­ed Musk’s, telling the world’s rich­est man that “the Holo­caust is not a joke.” The ADL itself quote Greenblatt’s post and added, “Mak­ing inap­pro­pri­ate and high­ly offen­sive jokes that triv­i­al­ize the Holo­caust only serve to min­i­mize the evil and inhu­man­i­ty of Nazi crimes, den­i­grate the suf­fer­ing of both vic­tims and sur­vivors and insult the mem­o­ry of the six mil­lion Jews mur­dered in the Shoah.” (The ADL declined to com­ment beyond this state­ment.)

    ...

    Musk has yet to acknowl­edge the chid­ing from Green­blatt or the ADL, so it’s too ear­ly to say whether they will resume the sort of pub­lic bick­er­ing we saw in 2023. Still, he appeared to believe he had accom­plished some­thing with his trolling. When right-wing polit­i­cal com­men­ta­tor Dave Rubin replied to his Nazi puns with the com­ment “Humor is the fas­cist way to defeat these peo­ple,” Musk agreed, “They can’t stand being mocked,” using a laugh-cry­ing emo­ji. It was not imme­di­ate­ly clear who the pair meant by “they” or “these peo­ple.”

    ————

    “The Anti-Defama­tion League Is Final­ly Sick of Elon Musk’s Nazi Jokes” By Miles Klee; Rolling Stone; 01/23/2025

    “But Musk made lit­tle attempt to allay con­cerns that he had thrown a “Sieg Heil” at a lectern bear­ing the Unit­ed States pres­i­den­tial seal. Indeed, he seemed to enjoy the con­tro­ver­sy, and con­tin­ued to stoke it on Thurs­day with a series of Nazi-relat­ed puns. “Don’t say Hess to Nazi accu­sa­tions!” he wrote in a post on X that also includ­ed the line “Some peo­ple will Goebbels any­thing down!” as well as the baf­fling non-sequitur “His pro­nouns would’ve been He/Himmler!” (X CEO Lin­da Yac­cari­no respond­ed to all this with a laugh-cry­ing emo­ji.)

    It’s all just a big amus­ing joke. Harm­less puns. A true trol­l’s response.

    But what’s Musk’s troll­ish response going to be to crit­i­cism of his lat­est pub­lic Nazi embrace. Because call­ing for Ger­many to aban­don its guilt over its past at an AfD ral­ly days before Ger­many’s elec­tions is going to be a lot hard­er to brush off as just a joke:

    The Dai­ly Beast

    Musk Fol­lows That Salute by Telling Ger­mans: Don’t Feel ‘Guilt’ Over Country’s Past

    The remark came dur­ing Musk’s on-screen appear­ance at a ral­ly for a far-right Ger­man polit­i­cal par­ty.

    Liam Archac­ki
    Break­ing News Intern
    Updat­ed Jan. 26 2025 3:40AM EST
    Pub­lished Jan. 25 2025 6:23PM EST

    Elon Musk urged an audi­ence at a Ger­man far-right polit­i­cal ral­ly not to feel “guilty” about their country’s his­to­ry.

    ...

    Pro­ject­ed onto a mas­sive screen at a cam­paign event for right-wing polit­i­cal par­ty Alter­na­tive für Deutsch­land (AfD), Musk told sup­port­ers on Sat­ur­day, “It’s OK to be proud to be Ger­man. This is a very impor­tant prin­ci­ple.”

    Elon Musk tells an AfD ral­ly in Ger­many: “I think there is too much focus on past guilt (in Ger­many), and we need to move beyond that. Chil­dren should not feel guilty for the sins of their par­ents — their great grand­par­ents even” pic.twitter.com/xtFMfAYrIp— Barak Ravid (@BarakRavid) Jan­u­ary 25, 2025

    “I think there’s frankly too much of a focus on past guilt (in Ger­many), and we need to move beyond that,” Musk con­tin­ued. “Chil­dren should not feel guilty for the sins of their parents—let alone their great grand­par­ents.”

    Although Musk didn’t men­tion Nazism explic­it­ly, his speech was heard by many as address­ing the col­lec­tive guilt felt by many Ger­man peo­ple fol­low­ing Nazi atroc­i­ties per­pe­trat­ed dur­ing World War II, includ­ing the Holo­caust.

    ...

    Musk drew fire last month when he pub­licly announced sup­port for AfD, Germany’s third-largest par­ty, which crit­ics accuse of racism, xeno­pho­bia, and Islam­o­pho­bia.

    “Only the AfD can save Ger­many,” wrote Musk, who has emerged as key advis­er and backer of Trump.

    Short­ly before deliv­er­ing a vic­to­ry speech on stage at Trump’s inau­gu­ra­tion fes­tiv­i­ties on Mon­day, Musk threw a straight-arm pose that many com­men­ta­tors—and many crit­ics—said bore a resem­blance to the Roman salute, sym­bol­ism wide­ly asso­ci­at­ed with fas­cist move­ments, and Nazism specif­i­cal­ly.

    Musk dis­missed the com­par­i­son as “pure pro­pa­gan­da,” but still took the oppor­tu­ni­ty to crack a series of Nazi jokes on X.

    It isn’t the first time Musk has faced alle­ga­tions of anti­semitism.

    In response to a post on X that accused Jews of “hatred against whites,” Musk in 2023 wrote, “You have said the actu­al truth.”

    After crit­i­cism that the remark plat­formed anti­se­mit­ic con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries, Musk apol­o­gized and called the post “fool­ish.”

    ———-

    “Musk Fol­lows That Salute by Telling Ger­mans: Don’t Feel ‘Guilt’ Over Country’s Past” by Liam Archac­ki; The Dai­ly Beast; 01/25/2025

    ““I think there’s frankly too much of a focus on past guilt (in Ger­many), and we need to move beyond that,” Musk con­tin­ued. “Chil­dren should not feel guilty for the sins of their parents—let alone their great grand­par­ents.””

    It was about as explic­it a ‘don’t feel guilt of Nazism’ speech he could have giv­en with­out explic­it­ly say­ing those words. As we can see, Musk is get­ting increas­ing­ly fond of fas­cist word games and trolling. It’s like a near dai­ly thing at this point.

    But, of course, it’s not just Elon doing the trolling here. The grow­ing army of defend­ers, like the ADL briefly, are trolling the hell out of every­one too. And that brings us to the epic lev­els of trolling just issued by Elon’s dad, Errol Musk, who decid­ed to force­ful­ly come out and declare all the con­tro­ver­sy over the Seig Heil “absolute non­sense, absolute rub­bish.” Errol went on to argue, that “It’s a uni­ver­sal, er, salute, or as you said, you know, throw­ing his heart out, I sup­pose,” adding, “The behav­ior was fine. I can’t see any­thing wrong with that behav­ior.” This was rough­ly two months after Errol gave anoth­er inter­view where he acknowl­edge that Elon’s mater­nal grand­par­ents were Hitler-sup­port­ing mem­bers of the Cana­di­an Nazi-par­ty who moved the fam­i­ly to apartheid South Africa because they strong­ly agreed with the gov­ern­men­t’s racist poli­cies. It was an inter­view that con­firmed what’s been report­ed about the incred­i­bly racist and vir­u­lent­ly anti-Semit­ic past on the mater­nal side of Musk’s fam­i­ly. But as we can see from Errol’s casu­al dis­missal of the Seig Heil, Elon’s prob­lem­at­ic influ­ences appear to come from both sides of the fam­i­ly:

    The Dai­ly Beast

    Elon’s Dad Has His Own Expla­na­tion for His Son’s Very Evoca­tive Salute

    The billionaire’s father also said his Hitler-sup­port­ing mater­nal grand­par­ents had no bear­ing on his son’s polit­i­cal beliefs.

    Con­rad Quilty-Harp­er
    Reporter
    Pub­lished Jan. 23 2025 12:26PM EST

    Errol Musk can’t “see any­thing wrong” with the con­tro­ver­sial hand ges­ture that his bil­lion­aire son Elon Musk made at a post-inau­gu­ra­tion ral­ly, claim­ing it was a “uni­ver­sal salute.”

    In an inter­view Tues­day night with Chris Cuo­mo on New­Na­tion, the elder Musk burst out laugh­ing when asked what he made of the sug­ges­tion that his son’s ges­ture, which he made twice, was a “Nazi salute.”

    “It’s absolute non­sense, absolute rub­bish,” Musk replied. “It’s a uni­ver­sal, er, salute, or as you said, you know, throw­ing his heart out, I sup­pose.”

    Cuo­mo asked Errol how peo­ple should judge such behav­ior from his son.

    “What behav­ior?” Errol Musk said. “The behav­ior was fine. I can’t see any­thing wrong with that behav­ior.”

    Musk also addressed whether Elon’s mater­nal grand­par­ents influ­enced his son’s polit­i­cal thoughts.

    In a sep­a­rate inter­view in Novem­ber, Errol revealed that his son Elon’s mater­nal grand­par­ents were Hitler-sup­port­ing mem­bers of the Cana­di­an Nazi Par­ty who moved to South Africa because they strong­ly approved of the racist apartheid regime.

    Here’s Elon’s father casu­al­ly say­ing Elon’s mater­nal grand­par­ents were in the Nazi par­ty in Cana­da, sup­port­ed Hitler, and moved to South Africa because they strong­ly admired the Apartheid regime. ????? pic.twitter.com/LjI57S7gne
    — Anony­mous (@YourAnonNews) Jan­u­ary 21, 2025

    Errol said this did not have a bear­ing on his son’s polit­i­cal beliefs, and that his son grew up help­ing with his elec­tion cam­paigns as a can­di­date for an anti-apartheid par­ty.

    “Do you assign any of the lin­eage on the mater­nal side, to your son. That he’s like his mater­nal grand­fa­ther?” Cuo­mo asked.

    “No, not at all,” Errol Musk replied. “The mater­nal grand­fa­ther passed away when Elon was one-year-old. So that’s crazy.”

    The Anti-Defama­tion League faced some back­lash after it defend­ed Musk over his salute, which it said appeared to be just “an awk­ward ges­ture.”

    ...

    Elon Musk has increas­ing­ly voiced far-right polit­i­cal thoughts and boost­ed par­ties that sup­port those views in recent months.

    In Decem­ber, he endorsed the far-right Ger­man par­ty AfD and host­ed a cosy video chat with its leader Alice Wei­del.

    After his pur­chase of Twit­ter, he rein­stat­ed banned accounts from far-right indi­vid­u­als includ­ing the con­spir­a­cy the­o­rist Alex Jones, Patrick Casey, the for­mer head of white nation­al­ist group Iden­ti­ty Evropa, and Andrew Anglin, the neo-Nazi pub­lish­er of white suprema­cist web­site The Dai­ly Stormer, under the guise of sup­port­ing “free speech.”

    Musk has also pre­vi­ous­ly post­ed on X accus­ing a South African polit­i­cal par­ty of “open­ly push­ing for geno­cide of white peo­ple.”

    ———-

    “Elon’s Dad Has His Own Expla­na­tion for His Son’s Very Evoca­tive Salute” by Con­rad Quilty-Harp­er; The Dai­ly Beast; 01/23/2025

    ““What behav­ior?” Errol Musk said. “The behav­ior was fine. I can’t see any­thing wrong with that behav­ior.””

    What’s the big deal? It was just a stan­dard salute. That was was Errol Musk’s rather incred­i­ble defense of his son’s inau­gur­al pub­lic embrace of Nazism. To be fol­lowed by the asser­tion that Elon was­n’t influ­ence at all by the fact that his mater­nal grand­par­ents were Hitler-sup­port­ing mem­bers of the Cana­di­an Nazi Par­ty who moved the fam­i­ly to South Africa in sup­port of the apartheid regime. No influ­ence at all. It’s crazy to sug­gest so:

    ...
    Musk also addressed whether Elon’s mater­nal grand­par­ents influ­enced his son’s polit­i­cal thoughts.

    In a sep­a­rate inter­view in Novem­ber, Errol revealed that his son Elon’s mater­nal grand­par­ents were Hitler-sup­port­ing mem­bers of the Cana­di­an Nazi Par­ty who moved to South Africa because they strong­ly approved of the racist apartheid regime.

    Here’s Elon’s father casu­al­ly say­ing Elon’s mater­nal grand­par­ents were in the Nazi par­ty in Cana­da, sup­port­ed Hitler, and moved to South Africa because they strong­ly admired the Apartheid regime. ????? pic.twitter.com/LjI57S7gne
    — Anony­mous (@YourAnonNews) Jan­u­ary 21, 2025

    Errol said this did not have a bear­ing on his son’s polit­i­cal beliefs, and that his son grew up help­ing with his elec­tion cam­paigns as a can­di­date for an anti-apartheid par­ty.

    “Do you assign any of the lin­eage on the mater­nal side, to your son. That he’s like his mater­nal grand­fa­ther?” Cuo­mo asked.

    “No, not at all,” Errol Musk replied. “The mater­nal grand­fa­ther passed away when Elon was one-year-old. So that’s crazy.”
    ...

    How could any­one imag­ine Musk’s Nazi grand­par­ents had an influ­ence on him. That’s so crazy. So says the father who just dis­missed the Seig Heil as just anoth­er salute.

    Yes, things are crazy. Troll­ish­ly crazy. But also very very seri­ous­ly crazy. Nazi seri­ous­ly crazy. The kind of seri­ous­ly crazy its increas­ing­ly been for over six decades now. It’s just get­ting hard­er to ignore now that the Nazis have all the pow­er and keep troll­ish­ly rub­bing are faces in it. Hard to ignore, but not nec­es­sar­i­ly too hard!

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | January 26, 2025, 8:28 pm
  31. We all saw it. They weren’t secret sieg heils. And yet, amaz­ing­ly, the fight over whether or not Elon Musk deliv­ered mul­ti­ple sieg heils at Don­ald Trump’s sec­ond inau­gu­ra­tion not just con­tin­ues but is esca­lat­ing. With Elon’s mom, Maye, now get­ting into the fight and urg­ing her son to take the fight to the next lev­el: law suits. Yes, Elon Musk of as begun threat­en­ing law­suits against fig­ures who pub­licly assert he sieg heiled at the inau­gu­ra­tion. Specif­i­cal­ly, he’s tweet­ing about suing Min­neso­ta Gov­ern­ment Tim Walz over an appear­ance on the Rachel Mad­dow Show where Walz stat­ed “Of course he did” in response to ques­tions about whether or not those were sieg heils. Maye Musk fol­lowed up her son’s tweet with the sug­ges­tion that Elon also sue oth­er media out­lets that sim­i­lar­ly likened the salute to a sieg heil, like CNN and PBS News. She went on explain how she has been the recip­i­ent of “so much hatred” over a CNN seg­ment where in which Wash­ing­ton Post colum­nist Cather­ine Ram­pell chal­lenged Repub­li­can pun­dit Scott Jen­nings, who had been defend­ing Musk’s fas­cist salute, to imi­tate the ges­ture if it was so innocu­ous. Jen­nings notably did NOT imi­tate the salute. That episode appar­ent­ly result­ed in Maye Musk receiv­ing “so much hatred”, and now she wants her son to sue his crit­ics into silence.

    Now, on one lev­el, this is a remark­ably bold means of defend­ing the fam­i­ly’s rep­u­ta­tion. Not only does suing every­one into silence over some­thing we all saw come off as the kind of action that self-appoint­ed kings and queens might demand, but it also only serves to bring focus to the pret­ty rep­re­hen­si­ble fam­i­ly his­to­ry on Maye’s side of the fam­i­ly. It was Maye’s father, who relo­cat­ed the fam­i­ly from Cana­da to apartheid South Africa due to a fer­vent belief in the right­eous­ness of the apartheid project, after all. And Elon’s father, Errol Musk, recent­ly con­firmed that Maye’s par­ents were both mem­bers of the Cana­di­an Nazi Par­ty. It’s hard to imag­ine a more effec­tive means of ensur­ing this fam­i­ly his­to­ry gets a lot more cov­er­age than threat­en­ing to sue any­one who men­tions it. Which rais­es the ques­tion: are these law­suits intend­ed to pre­emp­tive­ly pre­vent fur­ther media cov­er­age of that fam­i­ly his­to­ry? Because we can be pret­ty con­fi­dent there’s a lot more hid­ing under that rock.

    But there’s anoth­er key bit of con­text in this law­suit threat: Pres­i­dent Trump has been win­ning one law­suit against media com­pa­nies after anoth­er ever since win­ning the elec­tion. And not not nor­mal law­suits. Friv­o­lous law­suits. ABC News agreed to pay $15 mil­lion towards the Don­ald Trump Pres­i­dent Library back in Decem­ber in order to set­tle a defama­tion law­suit over the char­ac­ter­i­za­tion of Trump’s rape of E. Jean Car­roll and Meta just agreed to pay $25 mil­lion to set­tle a law­suit over the sus­pen­sion of Trump’s social media accounts fol­low­ing the Jan­u­ary 6 Capi­tol insur­rec­tion. And now CBS News just agreed to pre­emp­tive­ly set­tled a $10 bil­lion law­suit.

    Yep, Trump sued CBS for $10 bil­lion in dam­ages. What caused this dam­age? Well, back in Octo­ber, CBS News aired an inter­view of Kamala Har­ris. As part of that inter­view, she was asked a ques­tion about why the gov­ern­ment of Israel was­n’t lis­ten­ing to US demands. As part of the pro­mo­tion of the inter­view, CBS showed a brief clip that includ­ed part of Kamala’s answer to the ques­tion. But dur­ing the aired inter­view, they showed a dif­fer­ent clip of her answer. The Trump cam­paigned com­plained CBS had edit­ed the inter­view to make her look bet­ter. CBS asserts it was just using stan­dard jour­nal­is­tic edi­to­r­i­al dis­cre­tion that is rou­tine­ly deployed when air­ing inter­views and made their deci­sion of which parts of the answer to air based on the amount of avail­able time. Experts not only laugh off the Trump cam­paign’s com­plaints as a com­plete joke but, as Bernie Sanders warned, the law­suit is actu­al­ly a very direct attack on the First Amend­ment. After all, if Trump is allowed to win the suit, the mes­sage that media out­lets must edit their cov­er­age in a way that ben­e­fits Don­ald Trump is a hard mes­sage to miss.

    But as oth­er also point out, this law­suit — which is now being set­tled — isn’t just an attack on the First Amend­ment. Set­tling a law­suit this friv­o­lous is effec­tive­ly a bla­tant bribe. And a bribe that CBS News’s par­ent com­pa­ny, Para­mount Glob­al, very much wants to pay at this point. That’s because Para­mount is hop­ing to get fed­er­al approval for a merg­er. A merg­er that will require fed­er­al approval from the FCC.

    And that brings us to the one more author­i­tar­i­an twist to the sto­ry: the new­ly appoint­ed head of the FCC, Bren­dan Carr, has already sent CBS News a let­ter of inquiry ask­ing for the com­plete unedit­ed tapes of the Octo­ber Har­ris inter­view. CBS News has indi­cat­ed it plan­ning on com­ply­ing with the let­ter and hand­ing over the tapes.

    That’s all part of the con­text of Maye Musk’s liti­gious sug­ges­tions to her son. She isn’t just demand­ing we all stop believ­ing our lying eyes when it comes to her son’s sieg heil, but she’s mak­ing this sug­ges­tion at the same time Pres­i­dent Trump is wag­ing an open legal assault on the First Amend­ment when it comes to cov­er­age of him­self and his admin­is­tra­tion.

    When is a sieg heil not a sieg heil? When the wealth­i­est and most pow­er­ful man on the plan­et does the sieg heil and threat­ens to sue you into obliv­ion if you men­tion it. That’s the strat­e­gy for social con­trol cur­rent­ly being deployed and, so far, it seems to be work­ing. It’s not quite yet 1984, but we’re get­ting there:

    The Dai­ly Beast

    Elon Musk’s Mom Urges Him to Sue Media Over Salute Cov­er­age

    Maye Musk claimed she has been the recip­i­ent of “so much hatred” fol­low­ing a CNN seg­ment in which a pan­elist dared a GOP pun­dit who defend­ed the salute to imi­tate the ges­ture on air.

    Sean Craig
    Pub­lished Jan. 29 2025 7:12AM EST

    Elon Musk is con­sid­er­ing suing media out­lets that called his ges­ture onstage at a post-inau­gu­ra­tion ral­ly a “Nazi” salute.

    His moth­er is egging him on.

    Dur­ing the ral­ly at Capi­tol One Are­na in Wash­ing­ton last week, the MAGA bil­lion­aire and advis­er to Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump twice raised his right arm at an upward angle.

    Musk has dis­missed any com­par­isons of his move to a fas­cist salute, call­ing it “tired.”

    On Tues­day, the Tes­la CEO rad­i­cal­ly esca­lat­ed his push­back against the crit­i­cism, mus­ing in a tweet that it would be a “good idea” to sue Min­neso­ta Gov. Tim Walz and MSNBC host Rachel Mad­dow, after Walz gave his ver­dict on whether Musk gave a Nazi salute on her show Tues­day: “Of course he did.”

    Maye Musk, the billionaire’s moth­er, sug­gest­ed he up the ante and sue oth­er media out­lets that have likened the ges­ture to a fas­cist salute, includ­ing CNN and PBS News.

    You are right! Sue @guardian and @NewsHour too. https://t.co/3U75AoBpL6— Maye Musk (@mayemusk) Jan­u­ary 29, 2025

    She said she has been the recip­i­ent of “so much hatred” because of a CNN seg­ment in which Wash­ing­ton Post colum­nist Cather­ine Ram­pell chal­lenged Repub­li­can pun­dit Scott Jen­nings, who defend­ed Musk, to imi­tate the ges­ture.

    ...

    Jen­nings evad­ed her request.

    PBS’ New­sHour report­ed last week that Musk “gave what appeared to be a fas­cist salute.”

    Some observers have said that, Musk’s intent aside, there is no argu­ment about what the ges­ture he made rep­re­sents.

    Ruth Ben-Ghi­at, a New York Uni­ver­si­ty his­to­ry pro­fes­sor who stud­ies fas­cism, tweet­ed that he made “a Nazi salute-and a very bel­liger­ent one too.“

    Amy Spi­tal­nick, the head of the non­prof­it Jew­ish Coun­cil for Pub­lic Affairs, said “the salute itself should be enough to war­rant con­dem­na­tion and atten­tion.”

    Jour­nal­ist Michel Fried­man, a for­mer pres­i­dent of the Euro­pean Jew­ish Con­gress, told Tagesspiegel that, of Musk’s ges­ture, that “taboos are being bro­ken to a point that is dan­ger­ous for the entire free world” and slammed Musk for what he called the “mass­es of anti-semit­ic tweets” that are tol­er­at­ed on his social media plat­form X.

    Musk has endorsed the far-right Alter­na­tive für Deutsch­land in next month’s Ger­man fed­er­al elec­tion, and addressed a ral­ly of the party’s sup­port­ers on Sat­ur­day, where he encour­aged Ger­mans to move beyond their “past guilt” over the Holo­caust.

    ...

    Israeli Prime Min­is­ter Ben­jamin Netanyahu said the bil­lion­aire is being “false­ly smeared.” The Anti-Defama­tion League excused his “awk­ward ges­ture,” though it con­demned him for sub­se­quent­ly tweet­ing jokes about Nazis.

    —————-

    “Elon Musk’s Mom Urges Him to Sue Media Over Salute Cov­er­age” by Sean Craig; The Dai­ly Beast; 01/29/2025

    “Maye Musk, the billionaire’s moth­er, sug­gest­ed he up the ante and sue oth­er media out­lets that have likened the ges­ture to a fas­cist salute, includ­ing CNN and PBS News.”

    That’s right, Maye Musk — whose own father relo­cat­ed the fam­i­ly from Cana­da to apartheid South Africa due to a fer­vent belief in the right­eous­ness of the apartheid project — is now encour­ag­ing her son to sue the media out­lets that accu­rate­ly point out how he per­formed a sieg heil. This is a good time to recall how Elon’s father, Errol Musk, has recount­ed how Maye’s par­ents were both mem­bers of the Cana­di­an Nazi Par­ty. It’s a remark­able fam­i­ly his­to­ry for some­how who is now encour­ag­ing her son to sue media out­let of 100% accu­rate sieg heil obser­va­tions. But that’s where we are. And with Elon already threat­en­ing to sue Min­neso­ta Gov. Tim Walz and MSNBC host Rachel Mad­dow, it’s a law­suit we just might see hap­pen:

    ...
    On Tues­day, the Tes­la CEO rad­i­cal­ly esca­lat­ed his push­back against the crit­i­cism, mus­ing in a tweet that it would be a “good idea” to sue Min­neso­ta Gov. Tim Walz and MSNBC host Rachel Mad­dow, after Walz gave his ver­dict on whether Musk gave a Nazi salute on her show Tues­day: “Of course he did.”

    ...

    You are right! Sue @guardian and @NewsHour too. https://t.co/3U75AoBpL6— Maye Musk (@mayemusk) Jan­u­ary 29, 2025

    She said she has been the recip­i­ent of “so much hatred” because of a CNN seg­ment in which Wash­ing­ton Post colum­nist Cather­ine Ram­pell chal­lenged Repub­li­can pun­dit Scott Jen­nings, who defend­ed Musk, to imi­tate the ges­ture.

    ...

    Jen­nings evad­ed her request.

    PBS’ New­sHour report­ed last week that Musk “gave what appeared to be a fas­cist salute.”
    ...

    But as we can see in the fol­low­ing pair of arti­cles, the con­text of Musk’s mom-backed threats to sue media out­lets over their com­plete­ly accu­rate char­ac­ter­i­za­tions of his sieg heil includes the real­i­ty that Pres­i­dent Trump has been not just threat­en­ing one media out­let after anoth­er with friv­o­lous law­suits. And win­ning those friv­o­lous law­suits. Pre­emp­tive, with one media out­let capit­u­lat­ing and set­tling after anoth­er. ABC News, Meta, and now CBS News, which is now in set­tle­ment talks over a friv­o­lous law­suit from Trump for $10 bil­lion:

    CNN

    CBS staff alarmed by reports of set­tle­ment talks with Trump over ‘60 Min­utes’ Har­ris inter­view

    By Bri­an Stel­ter, CNN
    Updat­ed 5:56 PM EST, Fri Jan­u­ary 31, 2025

    CNN — Jour­nal­ists, includ­ing some at CBS News, are express­ing alarm at reports that CBS par­ent com­pa­ny Para­mount Glob­al is try­ing to set­tle a legal­ly dubi­ous law­suit lodged by Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump last fall.

    Trump sued CBS after an Octo­ber “60 Min­utes” inter­view with for­mer Vice Pres­i­dent Kamala Har­ris – Trump’s oppo­nent in the pres­i­den­tial cam­paign – includ­ed an edit that Trump said was unfair­ly favor­able to Har­ris. Despite legal experts’ wide­spread asser­tion that CBS’ edi­to­r­i­al judg­ment was pro­tect­ed by the First Amend­ment, The New York Times Thurs­day night report­ed that a set­tle­ment was in the works.

    ...

    “Trump’s law­suit was a joke, but if we set­tle, we become the laugh­ing­stock,” a CBS cor­re­spon­dent said on con­di­tion of anonymi­ty.

    CBS in Octo­ber called the suit mer­it­less and said at the time “we will vig­or­ous­ly defend against it.” A Para­mount spokesper­son on Fri­day declined to com­ment. A lawyer for Trump, Edward Paltzik, did not imme­di­ate­ly respond to a request for com­ment, but he told The Times that “real account­abil­i­ty for CBS and Para­mount will ensure that the pres­i­dent is com­pen­sat­ed for the harm done to him.”

    The Times not­ed that “a set­tle­ment would be an extra­or­di­nary con­ces­sion by a major U.S. media com­pa­ny to a sit­ting pres­i­dent, espe­cial­ly in a case in which there is no evi­dence that the net­work got facts wrong or dam­aged the plaintiff’s rep­u­ta­tion.”

    Indeed, a set­tle­ment by Para­mount could look like a pay­off. Specif­i­cal­ly, it would look like a big check to Trump (or his pres­i­den­tial library, fol­low­ing in ABC and Meta’s foot­steps) in exchange for reg­u­la­to­ry approval of Paramount’s pend­ing deal with Sky­dance Media.

    “That’s called a bribe,” Richard Painter, a for­mer White House ethics lawyer for Pres­i­dent George W. Bush, com­ment­ed on X.

    ...

    The inter­view that got CBS sued

    The suit stemmed from “60 Min­utes” cor­re­spon­dent Bill Whitaker’s sit-down last Octo­ber with Har­ris.

    Observers noticed that CBS aired two dif­fer­ent answers from Har­ris to a sin­gle ques­tion about why Israeli Prime Min­is­ter Ben­jamin Netanyahu was “not lis­ten­ing” to the Unit­ed States. The answer Har­ris gave in a pre­view clip dif­fered from the answer she gave on the actu­al “60 Min­utes” broad­cast.

    Trump and his allies claimed that CBS had manip­u­lat­ed the inter­view to make the vice pres­i­dent look bet­ter. As crit­i­cism mount­ed and Trump threat­ened to sue, CBS said there was noth­ing nefar­i­ous about the edit­ing; “the inter­view was not doc­tored,” and the news­magazine “did not hide any part of the Vice President’s answer to the ques­tion at issue,” CBS News senior VP for legal affairs Gayle C. Sproul said.

    Sproul also cit­ed case law that defends edit­ing and news judg­ments, not­ing that “edit­ing is a neces­si­ty for all broad­cast­ers to enable them to present the news in the time avail­able, and that is what ’60 Min­utes’ did here, as it does with its oth­er reports.”

    Trump sued any­way. His lawyers filed a com­plaint in US Dis­trict Court in the North­ern Dis­trict of Texas, alleg­ing CBS vio­lat­ed the Texas Decep­tive Trade Prac­tices Act, a con­sumer pro­tec­tion law.

    Legal experts con­tact­ed by CNN at the time called the suit “friv­o­lous;” “ridicu­lous junk;” and laugh­able on its face. From the alleged dam­ages ($10 bil­lion!) to the deci­sion to give Fox News the scoop about the suit, it had all the hall­marks of a polit­i­cal PR stunt.

    Seek­ing Trump’s approval

    But a few days after the suit was filed, Trump won the elec­tion. All of a sud­den, the suit posed a seri­ous threat to the news division’s par­ent com­pa­ny, Para­mount Glob­al, accord­ing to a per­son involved in the mat­ter.

    That’s because the merg­er requires the bless­ing of the Trump admin­is­tra­tion, in part because CBS owns local sta­tions that are licensed by the Fed­er­al Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Com­mis­sion, known as the FCC.

    Out­side ana­lysts, cit­ing Trump’s trans­ac­tion­al nature, pre­dict­ed that Para­mount may have a hard time get­ting the nec­es­sary fed­er­al approvals. Bren­dan Carr, who Trump pro­mot­ed to chair the FCC, recent­ly revived a pro-Trump group’s com­plaint about the “60 Min­utes” inter­view. Back in Novem­ber, he said the com­plaint would prob­a­bly fac­tor into the agency’s review of the Para­mount-Sky­dance deal.

    On Fri­day, CBS con­firmed that the FCC sent the com­pa­ny a “let­ter of inquiry” ask­ing the net­work to hand over the unedit­ed tran­script and tapes of the Har­ris inter­view.

    ...

    As an FCC license-hold­er, CBS is oblig­ed to respond to rea­son­able requests from the gov­ern­ment agency. But those requests are typ­i­cal­ly about tech­ni­cal­i­ties like broad­cast trans­mis­sion sig­nals, not the raw mate­ri­als of a news pro­gram like “60 Min­utes.”

    The notion of Para­mount cav­ing to Trump has sparked con­dem­na­tion. After the Wall Street Jour­nal two weeks ago report­ed that set­tle­ment talks were a pos­si­bil­i­ty, Sen. Bernie Sanders urged CBS to “stand tall.”

    Sanders wrote on X, “CBS may be reach­ing a legal set­tle­ment with Trump because he didn’t like how a cam­paign inter­view with Kamala was edit­ed. Real­ly? If CBS caves, the belief that we have an inde­pen­dent media pro­tect­ed by the First Amend­ment is under­mined.

    Trump’s his­to­ry of bul­ly­ing media com­pa­nies sug­gests that a pay­out by Para­mount won’t stop his pres­sure cam­paigns.

    In the weeks before his inau­gu­ra­tion, ABC agreed to donate $15 mil­lion to Trump’s future pres­i­den­tial library to set­tle a defama­tion law­suit against the net­work. Ear­li­er this week Meta agreed to a $22 mil­lion pay­out over anoth­er Trump law­suit.

    ————

    “CBS staff alarmed by reports of set­tle­ment talks with Trump over ‘60 Min­utes’ Har­ris inter­view” By Bri­an Stel­ter; CNN; 01/31/2025

    “Trump sued CBS after an Octo­ber “60 Min­utes” inter­view with for­mer Vice Pres­i­dent Kamala Har­ris – Trump’s oppo­nent in the pres­i­den­tial cam­paign – includ­ed an edit that Trump said was unfair­ly favor­able to Har­ris. Despite legal experts’ wide­spread asser­tion that CBS’ edi­to­r­i­al judg­ment was pro­tect­ed by the First Amend­ment, The New York Times Thurs­day night report­ed that a set­tle­ment was in the works.

    It was an obvi­ous joke law­suit. $10 bil­lion in alleged dam­ages. And as observers warn, this isn’t just CBS News capit­u­lat­ing in the hopes of avoid­ing anger­ing a mer­cu­r­ial pres­i­dent. It has all the fea­tures of a bribe. That’s how friv­o­lous the law­suit is: set­tling is tan­ta­mount to pay­ing a bribe.:

    ...
    “Trump’s law­suit was a joke, but if we set­tle, we become the laugh­ing­stock,” a CBS cor­re­spon­dent said on con­di­tion of anonymi­ty.

    CBS in Octo­ber called the suit mer­it­less and said at the time “we will vig­or­ous­ly defend against it.” A Para­mount spokesper­son on Fri­day declined to com­ment. A lawyer for Trump, Edward Paltzik, did not imme­di­ate­ly respond to a request for com­ment, but he told The Times that “real account­abil­i­ty for CBS and Para­mount will ensure that the pres­i­dent is com­pen­sat­ed for the harm done to him.”

    The Times not­ed that “a set­tle­ment would be an extra­or­di­nary con­ces­sion by a major U.S. media com­pa­ny to a sit­ting pres­i­dent, espe­cial­ly in a case in which there is no evi­dence that the net­work got facts wrong or dam­aged the plaintiff’s rep­u­ta­tion.”

    Indeed, a set­tle­ment by Para­mount could look like a pay­off. Specif­i­cal­ly, it would look like a big check to Trump (or his pres­i­den­tial library, fol­low­ing in ABC and Meta’s foot­steps) in exchange for reg­u­la­to­ry approval of Paramount’s pend­ing deal with Sky­dance Media.

    “That’s called a bribe,” Richard Painter, a for­mer White House ethics lawyer for Pres­i­dent George W. Bush, com­ment­ed on X.

    ...

    Legal experts con­tact­ed by CNN at the time called the suit “friv­o­lous;” “ridicu­lous junk;” and laugh­able on its face. From the alleged dam­ages ($10 bil­lion!) to the deci­sion to give Fox News the scoop about the suit, it had all the hall­marks of a polit­i­cal PR stunt.
    ...

    So what alleged­ly inflict­ed all these dam­ages on Trump? Well, CBS News aired parts of a Kamala Har­ris inter­view twice, and includ­ed two dif­fer­ent parts of a long answer about why Ben­jamin Netanyahu was “not lis­ten­ing” to the Unit­ed States, which the Trump admin­is­tra­tion insists was manip­u­la­tion designed to make Har­ris look bet­ter. Which is such an absurd­ly sil­ly accu­sa­tion it real­ly is hard to take seri­ous­ly. After all, if CBS News inten­tion­al­ly only aired one part of the answer and nev­er aired anoth­er part, well, maybe in that case you could make the case that CBS was decep­tive­ly edit­ing out part of her answer. Although even then it’s hard to see what the edi­to­r­i­al lee­way giv­en media out­lets would­n’t cov­er that deci­sion. But that’s not what hap­pened. Instead, the world got to see part of the answer in the pre­view and the rest of the answer in the full inter­view. If any­thing, CBS News was being more trans­par­ent than it real­ly need­ed to be. But Trump sued any­way:

    ...
    The suit stemmed from “60 Min­utes” cor­re­spon­dent Bill Whitaker’s sit-down last Octo­ber with Har­ris.

    Observers noticed that CBS aired two dif­fer­ent answers from Har­ris to a sin­gle ques­tion about why Israeli Prime Min­is­ter Ben­jamin Netanyahu was “not lis­ten­ing” to the Unit­ed States. The answer Har­ris gave in a pre­view clip dif­fered from the answer she gave on the actu­al “60 Min­utes” broad­cast.

    Trump and his allies claimed that CBS had manip­u­lat­ed the inter­view to make the vice pres­i­dent look bet­ter. As crit­i­cism mount­ed and Trump threat­ened to sue, CBS said there was noth­ing nefar­i­ous about the edit­ing; “the inter­view was not doc­tored,” and the news­magazine “did not hide any part of the Vice President’s answer to the ques­tion at issue,” CBS News senior VP for legal affairs Gayle C. Sproul said.

    Sproul also cit­ed case law that defends edit­ing and news judg­ments, not­ing that “edit­ing is a neces­si­ty for all broad­cast­ers to enable them to present the news in the time avail­able, and that is what ’60 Min­utes’ did here, as it does with its oth­er reports.”

    Trump sued any­way. His lawyers filed a com­plaint in US Dis­trict Court in the North­ern Dis­trict of Texas, alleg­ing CBS vio­lat­ed the Texas Decep­tive Trade Prac­tices Act, a con­sumer pro­tec­tion law.
    ...

    And as Bernie Sanders point­ed out, this isn’t just a sto­ry about the pres­i­den­tial abuse of pow­er and cor­po­rate bribes. This is a very real First Amend­ment issue. The idea that the gov­ern­ment can’t con­trol free speech is now very much in ques­tion across the US media land­scape:

    ...
    The notion of Para­mount cav­ing to Trump has sparked con­dem­na­tion. After the Wall Street Jour­nal two weeks ago report­ed that set­tle­ment talks were a pos­si­bil­i­ty, Sen. Bernie Sanders urged CBS to “stand tall.”

    Sanders wrote on X, “CBS may be reach­ing a legal set­tle­ment with Trump because he didn’t like how a cam­paign inter­view with Kamala was edit­ed. Real­ly? If CBS caves, the belief that we have an inde­pen­dent media pro­tect­ed by the First Amend­ment is under­mined.

    Trump’s his­to­ry of bul­ly­ing media com­pa­nies sug­gests that a pay­out by Para­mount won’t stop his pres­sure cam­paigns.

    In the weeks before his inau­gu­ra­tion, ABC agreed to donate $15 mil­lion to Trump’s future pres­i­den­tial library to set­tle a defama­tion law­suit against the net­work. Ear­li­er this week Meta agreed to a $22 mil­lion pay­out over anoth­er Trump law­suit.
    ...

    And then we get to the crux of CBS News’s busi­ness dilem­ma: its par­ent com­pa­ny, Para­mount Glob­al, is try­ing to gain approval for a merg­er. Mak­ing the FCC an agency with immense pow­er over the fate of the com­pa­ny. So when we see the FCC send­ing a “let­ter of inquiry” to CBS over this law­suit, it’s clear that Trump isn’t just con­tent on allow­ing the implied threat against CBS to do the intim­i­dat­ing for him in this law­suit. The FCC is already play­ing the role of bul­ly-in-chief. And already get­ting results:

    ...
    But a few days after the suit was filed, Trump won the elec­tion. All of a sud­den, the suit posed a seri­ous threat to the news division’s par­ent com­pa­ny, Para­mount Glob­al, accord­ing to a per­son involved in the mat­ter.

    That’s because the merg­er requires the bless­ing of the Trump admin­is­tra­tion, in part because CBS owns local sta­tions that are licensed by the Fed­er­al Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Com­mis­sion, known as the FCC.

    Out­side ana­lysts, cit­ing Trump’s trans­ac­tion­al nature, pre­dict­ed that Para­mount may have a hard time get­ting the nec­es­sary fed­er­al approvals. Bren­dan Carr, who Trump pro­mot­ed to chair the FCC, recent­ly revived a pro-Trump group’s com­plaint about the “60 Min­utes” inter­view. Back in Novem­ber, he said the com­plaint would prob­a­bly fac­tor into the agency’s review of the Para­mount-Sky­dance deal.

    On Fri­day, CBS con­firmed that the FCC sent the com­pa­ny a “let­ter of inquiry” ask­ing the net­work to hand over the unedit­ed tran­script and tapes of the Har­ris inter­view.

    ...

    As an FCC license-hold­er, CBS is oblig­ed to respond to rea­son­able requests from the gov­ern­ment agency. But those requests are typ­i­cal­ly about tech­ni­cal­i­ties like broad­cast trans­mis­sion sig­nals, not the raw mate­ri­als of a news pro­gram like “60 Min­utes.”
    ...

    And as we’re now learn­ing, CBS has already agreed to hand over those 60 min­utes tran­scripts. Yes, the FCC’s ‘inves­ti­ga­tion’ real­ly is pro­ceed­ing. It might be a friv­o­lous inves­ti­ga­tion when it comes to demon­strat­ing wrong­do­ing on CBS News’s behalf. It’s as very nec­es­sary inves­ti­ga­tion when it comes to send­ing the mes­sage to every oth­er US media out­let that they are on notice. Any excuse by the Trump admin­is­tra­tion to inflict harm over cov­er­age Trump does­n’t like will be pur­sued. It won’t just be a bunch of threats. The full force of the gov­ern­ment is avail­able for this shake down:

    Asso­ci­at­ed Press

    CBS agrees to hand over ’60 Min­utes’ Har­ris inter­view tran­scripts to FCC

    By DAVID BAUDER
    Updat­ed 4:50 PM CST, Feb­ru­ary 1, 2025

    CBS says it will turn over an unedit­ed tran­script of its Octo­ber inter­view with Kamala Har­ris to the Fed­er­al Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Com­mis­sion, part of Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s ongo­ing fight with the net­work over how it han­dled a sto­ry about his oppo­nent.

    Trump sued CBS for $10 bil­lion over the “60 Min­utes” inter­view, claim­ing it was decep­tive­ly edit­ed to make Har­ris look good. Pub­lished reports said CBS’ par­ent com­pa­ny, Para­mount, has been talk­ing to Trump’s lawyers about a set­tle­ment.

    The net­work said Fri­day that it was com­pelled by Bren­dan Carr, Trump’s appointee as FCC chair­man, to turn over the tran­scripts and cam­era feeds of the inter­view for a par­al­lel inves­ti­ga­tion by the com­mis­sion. “60 Min­utes” has resist­ed releas­ing tran­scripts for this and all of its inter­views, to avoid sec­ond-guess­ing of its edit­ing process.

    The case, par­tic­u­lar­ly a poten­tial set­tle­ment, is being close­ly watched by advo­cates for press free­dom and by jour­nal­ists with­in CBS, whose lawyers called Trump’s law­suit “com­plete­ly with­out mer­it” and promised to vig­or­ous­ly fight it after it was filed.

    The Har­ris inter­view ini­tial­ly drew atten­tion because CBS News showed Har­ris giv­ing com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent respons­es to a ques­tion posed by cor­re­spon­dent Bill Whitak­er in clips that were aired on “Face the Nation” on Oct. 6 and the next night on “60 Min­utes.” The net­work said each clip came from a lengthy response by Har­ris to Whitaker’s ques­tion, but they were edit­ed to fit time con­straints on both broad­casts.

    In his law­suit, filed in Texas on Nov. 1, Trump charged it was decep­tive edit­ing designed to ben­e­fit Har­ris and con­sti­tut­ed “par­ti­san and unlaw­ful acts of vot­er inter­fer­ence.”

    Trump, who turned down a request to be inter­viewed by “60 Min­utes” dur­ing the cam­paign, has con­tin­ued his fight despite win­ning the elec­tion less than a week after the law­suit was filed.

    ...

    ————

    “CBS agrees to hand over ’60 Min­utes’ Har­ris inter­view tran­scripts to FCC” By DAVID BAUDER; Asso­ci­at­ed Press; 02/01/2025

    “The net­work said Fri­day that it was com­pelled by Bren­dan Carr, Trump’s appointee as FCC chair­man, to turn over the tran­scripts and cam­era feeds of the inter­view for a par­al­lel inves­ti­ga­tion by the com­mis­sion. “60 Min­utes” has resist­ed releas­ing tran­scripts for this and all of its inter­views, to avoid sec­ond-guess­ing of its edit­ing process.”

    Yeah, the FCC just hap­pened to open up a “par­al­lel inves­ti­ga­tion” into the 60 Min­utes inter­view. Imag­ine that. What a coin­ci­dence.

    And this is still hap­pen­ing despite the open will­ing­ness on CBS’s behalf to set­tle. Keep in mind that, with $10 bil­lion in claimed dam­ages, the poten­tial set­tle­ment could get awful­ly high. But as high as that set­tle­ment might get under Trump’s threat of a law­suit alone, it’s only going to get high­er once the FCC gets involved.

    It’s going to be awful­ly inter­est­ing to see how big this ‘set­tle­ment’ gets. Which is also a reminder that pub­lic humil­i­a­tion and self-debase­ment towards ‘dear leader’ on the part of the wealthy and pow­er­ful isn’t the only ‘fea­ture’ of liv­ing under a cult of per­son­al­i­ty. Large bribes...err...‘fines’ are part of the social con­tract too. ‘Fines’ that are pre­sum­ably only going to be get­ting a lot larg­er after the upcom­ing ‘set­tle­ment’ of a $10 bil­lion friv­o­lous law­suit.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | February 2, 2025, 7:44 pm

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