welcome to trumpland
the face of the failed american state
Aug 23, 2019
Trump
American traitor
Economy raider
Vote suppressor
Minority oppressor
Truth-ambivalent
Nazi-equivalent
Democracy hating
Media berating
Mafia don
Two-bit con
Egomaniacal turd
Don’t believe a single word
itmfa
Maureen Dowd: He is a faux tough guy who lets other people do the fighting for him, a needy brat who never accepts responsibility for his actions, an oaf with no trace of courage, class or chivalry.
Alexander Hamilton
*DAILY BULLSHIT*
Washington Post tally : 12,000 lies and counting!!!
the draft dodging rapist, racist in the white house!!
"when he opens his mouth he lies but he thinks you are too stupid to know that!!"
8/23/2019
*Trump presses U.S. companies on China ties
President Trump said he was ordering U.S. companies to look at ways to close their operations in China, as Wall Street dropped on the ratcheted-up rhetoric.
*Trump heading to G-7 summit after insulting allied world leaders
As President Trump departs for France to represent the U.S. at the G-7 summit of world leaders, the memories of the insults he has leveled against key U.S. allies will still be fresh, and he'll be interacting with some of those same leaders over the ... (CBS News)
*Trump Asks Who's the Bigger U.S. 'Enemy': Fed's Powell or China's Xi
President Donald trump blasted the Federal Reserve, suggesting its Chairman could be a greater "enemy" of the U.S. than Chinese President Xi Jinping, and saying he would soon announce some related action from the White House. "As usua ... (Bloomberg)
*Why Trump thinks he's the "chosen one" AMANDA MARCOTTE
Religious right leaders say God anointed Trump as a "king." This week he actually declared himself the "chosen one"
*Trump has 62 percent disapproval rating in new AP poll
The majority of Americans in a new poll disapproves of President Trump’s overall performance, despite greater support for the president’s handling of the economy than other issues in the survey. Sixty-two percent of Americans said they disapprove of the job Trump is doing, while just 36 percent approve, according to the Associated Press–NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll released Thursday. (The Hill)
*Trump struggles to pronounce various words during rambling speech to veterans
Donald Trump struggled to pronounce a series of words in front of military veterans during a rambling speech that ranged from attacks on media outlets he disagrees with to threats to release Isis militants into Europe Wednesday’s official event in L ... (The Independent)
*Trump golf club members who quit over his presidency say they're still waiting to get deposits back
Golfers who ended their memberships at Trump National Doral after President Trump's election have yet to get their deposits back, the Miami Herald reported Thursday. Two former members told the outle ... (The Hill)---
*HERE'S CREW'S MASSIVE CONFLICTS-OF-INTEREST REPORT ON TRUMP
(HTTPS://WWW.CITIZENSFORETHICS.ORG/PROFITINGFROMTHEPRESIDENCY/ )
(HTTPS://WWW.CITIZENSFORETHICS.ORG/TRUMP-TIMELINE/ )
*COLLUSION IN PLAIN SIGHT ANALYZING RUSSIAN ATTACKS ON OUR DEMOCRACY – AND TRUMP'S INVOLVEMENT(HTTPS://THEMOSCOWPROJECT.ORG/)
*TRUMP-RUSSIA SCANDAL(ARCHIVES)Yes, Trump Tweeted Something Racist This MorningThe president again retweeted an anti-Muslim commentator who suggested Jews provoked the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting.Trump tweets out bonkers conspiracy theory that Google ‘manipulated’ up to 16 million votes for Hillary Clinton
A Clear And Present Danger To The Republic
Joe Conason - The National Memo
August 21, 2019
Whenever Donald Trump makes a remark that embarrasses our country before the world, conventional analysis suggests that this is yet another instance of his infantile narcissism. So we were told again when the president of the United States insulted Denmark, one of the founding nations of NATO and a dedicated American ally, by canceling his scheduled trip to meet with the Danish prime minister — supposedly because she had deemed his scheme to buy Greenland “absurd,” which of course it is.
His visit to Denmark was originally requested by Trump, which made its abrupt, petulant cancellation all the more insulting to the Danes. The usual anonymous sources explained that he had other reasons to break the date, such as his aversion to flying overseas and his aversion to Barack Obama, who is also scheduled to visit Denmark next month.
When Trump appears to lose control — and follows up by suggesting that he is “the chosen one” or “the King of Israel” — it seems natural to worry that he is mentally ill. And that is one way to interpret his behavior.
But it isn’t the only explanation.
We consider Trump’s behavior bizarre because it is so incongruous with what we expect from an American president — whose sworn duty, after all, is to act in the national interest. But what if he is consciously acting against the national interest? That disturbing question arises again and again, as it did during the Russia investigation, because almost everything Trump does can be viewed as inimical to the nation. The Danish incident is only the latest example in the long list that shows a certain method to his supposed “madness.”
In one way or another, Trump has denigrated or undermined American relationships with nearly all of our traditional allies, sometimes repeatedly. He has complained publicly about the French, the Germans, the British, the Australians, to name a few of the most important, and slammed the European Union as a trading and military partner. Indeed, he has strenuously sought to destroy the EU while befriending the so-called populist far right — the heirs of our fascist enemy. That approach to European affairs just happens to coincide perfectly with the political aims of the Russian Federation.
Meanwhile Trump has abandoned long-standing US policy on human rights, not only committing violations on our border but encouraging dictators around the world. Within the space of a few days this year he berated the Canadian prime minister, our friend and ally, while praising the murderous dictator of North Korea. Maybe that was just crazy, or maybe it was something else.
At home, Trump never stops promoting the same divisive themes that pollute our political system, courtesy of the Russian bots sent by his friend Vladimir Putin. For some reason, Trump won’t allow anyone to record his meetings with Putin as would normally be the case. Perhaps he doesn’t want anyone to hear the Russian dictator expressing appreciation for Trump’s long campaign to undermine the FBI counter-intelligence division, which exists to thwart Kremlin espionage.
But then Trump has sought to discredit and disorganize the entire intelligence apparatus of the United States, most recently with his attempted appointment of a lunatic Congressman from Texas as the director of national intelligence. Putin must also be quite grateful for Trump’s systematic effort to destroy American diplomatic capacity, by appointing non-entities to run the State Department while leaving half of its posts unfilled.
Like the trade war that is decimating our agricultural heartland — among the US economy’s most vital sectors — these recurring acts of sabotage are cited by his supporters as evidence of his “nationalism.” They are nothing of the kind. They are inflicting damage that our most determined enemies could never have dreamed possible before he entered the Oval Office.
You can tell yourself it’s all merely proof of his mental instability, his narcissistic compulsions, his ignorance and stupidity. Or you can wonder, as I sometimes do, whether something rational and sinister lies behind this troubling pattern.
Either way, Trump is a clear and present danger to our republic.
His visit to Denmark was originally requested by Trump, which made its abrupt, petulant cancellation all the more insulting to the Danes. The usual anonymous sources explained that he had other reasons to break the date, such as his aversion to flying overseas and his aversion to Barack Obama, who is also scheduled to visit Denmark next month.
When Trump appears to lose control — and follows up by suggesting that he is “the chosen one” or “the King of Israel” — it seems natural to worry that he is mentally ill. And that is one way to interpret his behavior.
But it isn’t the only explanation.
We consider Trump’s behavior bizarre because it is so incongruous with what we expect from an American president — whose sworn duty, after all, is to act in the national interest. But what if he is consciously acting against the national interest? That disturbing question arises again and again, as it did during the Russia investigation, because almost everything Trump does can be viewed as inimical to the nation. The Danish incident is only the latest example in the long list that shows a certain method to his supposed “madness.”
In one way or another, Trump has denigrated or undermined American relationships with nearly all of our traditional allies, sometimes repeatedly. He has complained publicly about the French, the Germans, the British, the Australians, to name a few of the most important, and slammed the European Union as a trading and military partner. Indeed, he has strenuously sought to destroy the EU while befriending the so-called populist far right — the heirs of our fascist enemy. That approach to European affairs just happens to coincide perfectly with the political aims of the Russian Federation.
Meanwhile Trump has abandoned long-standing US policy on human rights, not only committing violations on our border but encouraging dictators around the world. Within the space of a few days this year he berated the Canadian prime minister, our friend and ally, while praising the murderous dictator of North Korea. Maybe that was just crazy, or maybe it was something else.
At home, Trump never stops promoting the same divisive themes that pollute our political system, courtesy of the Russian bots sent by his friend Vladimir Putin. For some reason, Trump won’t allow anyone to record his meetings with Putin as would normally be the case. Perhaps he doesn’t want anyone to hear the Russian dictator expressing appreciation for Trump’s long campaign to undermine the FBI counter-intelligence division, which exists to thwart Kremlin espionage.
But then Trump has sought to discredit and disorganize the entire intelligence apparatus of the United States, most recently with his attempted appointment of a lunatic Congressman from Texas as the director of national intelligence. Putin must also be quite grateful for Trump’s systematic effort to destroy American diplomatic capacity, by appointing non-entities to run the State Department while leaving half of its posts unfilled.
Like the trade war that is decimating our agricultural heartland — among the US economy’s most vital sectors — these recurring acts of sabotage are cited by his supporters as evidence of his “nationalism.” They are nothing of the kind. They are inflicting damage that our most determined enemies could never have dreamed possible before he entered the Oval Office.
You can tell yourself it’s all merely proof of his mental instability, his narcissistic compulsions, his ignorance and stupidity. Or you can wonder, as I sometimes do, whether something rational and sinister lies behind this troubling pattern.
Either way, Trump is a clear and present danger to our republic.
Trump Accuses Most American Jews of “Disloyalty” to Israel, Deploying Anti-Semitic Trope
Robert Mackey - The Intercept
August 20 2019, 3:46 p.m.
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP revealed again on Tuesday that he subscribes to the anti-Semitic belief that American Jews harbor a secret dual loyalty to Israel.
Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office, the president first accused Democratic lawmakers of insufficient support for the state of Israel before adding, “I think any Jewish people that vote for a Democrat, I think it shows either a total lack of knowledge or great disloyalty.”
That Trump was accusing the vast majority of American Jews who vote for Democrats in election after election of being disloyal to Israel was clear in the context of his full answer to the question he was asked: Should U.S. aid to Israel be suspended following the Israeli government’s decision to prevent two Democratic congresswomen, Reps. Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar, from visiting the Palestinian territories it occupies?
Trump, who pressed Israel to block the visit by the two Muslim Democrats, responded by falsely smearing Tlaib and Omar as “two people that hate Israel and hate Jewish people.” In recent months, he has repeatedly mischaracterized as anti-Semitic the two lawmakers’ criticism of Israel’s far-right government, and their support for the Palestinian-led campaign of boycotts, divestment, and sanctions against companies that enable the occupation to continue.
Trump also took time out of his meeting with Romania’s president, Klaus Iohannis, to mock Tlaib for crying on Monday as she described her disappointment at not being allowed to visit her Palestinian grandmother in the Israeli-occupied West Bank without surrendering her right to free speech during the trip.
The Romanian president made no comment on Trump’s remark, but his presence was a silent reminder of the horrific violence that has resulted from the idea of Jewish dual loyalty. At least 380,000 Romanian Jews were slaughtered between 1940 and 1944 by a fascist government that was allied with Nazi Germany.
Romania has also struggled to respond to a recent surge in anti-Semitic incidents, targeting the small Jewish population that survived the war. Last year, anti-Semitic vandals defaced the childhood home of Elie Wiesel, a Romanian Jew who was deported to Auschwitz and documented the Holocaust. “Nazi Jew lying in hell with Hitler,” was painted on the outside of the house, which is now a museum in Sighetu Marmatiei, Romania.
This was at least the second time this year that Trump invoked the anti-Semitic trope of dual loyalty. Speaking to a group of Jewish Republicans in April, the president referred to Israel’s leader, Benjamin Netanyahu, as “your prime minister.”
That group, the Republican Jewish Coalition, defended Trump on Tuesday, accusing the 79 percent of American Jews who voted for Democratic candidates in the 2018 midterms of defending “a party that protects/emboldens people that hate you for your religion.”
Many other Jewish Americans were appalled by what they saw as the clear anti-Semitic undertone of Trump’s logic.
“This is an explicit dual loyalty charge wielded by the President of the United States against 80% of American Jews who voted against him,” Emily Mayer, a spokesperson for the young American Jewish group IfNotNow said in a statement. “It is not merely an antisemitic dog whistle — it’s a bullhorn to his white nationalist base. American Jews and Democratic voters know full well the impact of the racist policies of Netanyahu and the Israeli government on the Palestinian people. This is why an overwhelming majority to oppose those policies, like unchecked settlement expansion.”
“This is outrageous,” Kenneth Roth, the executive director of Human Rights Watch, wrote on Twitter. “So US Jews’ ‘loyalty’ is mainly to Israel? Or it is supposedly in Israel’s interest to back Netanyahu’s right-wing agenda of creating a discriminatory, repressive one-state reality?”
Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg explained last year how Trump sometimes uses anti-Semitic terms and phrasing, including using the phrase “globalist” to describe people with supposed insufficient American nationalism. “Globalist — one of Trump’s favorite dogwhistles — implies that someone is not of-this-nation, they’re not tied here, their loyalty is not to *us* of this country but to *each other* internationally,” Ruttenberg wrote. “The idea the Jews’ loyalty is not to France or Germany or Poland or etc. because they are infiltrators, outsiders–that’s one of the oldest tropes in the book. They’re out to get us, to undermine us, not one of us. It’s being used to great effect these days.”
Trump’s remarks on Tuesday reinforced that even some conservative American Jews have had enough. “Enough, Mr. President,” the American Jewish Committee said in a statement. “American Jews — like all Americans — have a range of political views. Your assessment of their knowledge or loyalty, based on their party preference, is divisive, disrespectful, and unwelcome. Please stop.”
As Bobby Lewis of Media Matters for America noted, Trump’s remark came just hours after one of the hosts of his favorite morning news show, Brian Kilmeade of “Fox and Friends,” complained on-air that “President Trump only got 24 percent” of the Jewish vote in 2016 even though “Barack Obama was in single digits for approval rating inside Israel by Israelis.”
Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office, the president first accused Democratic lawmakers of insufficient support for the state of Israel before adding, “I think any Jewish people that vote for a Democrat, I think it shows either a total lack of knowledge or great disloyalty.”
That Trump was accusing the vast majority of American Jews who vote for Democrats in election after election of being disloyal to Israel was clear in the context of his full answer to the question he was asked: Should U.S. aid to Israel be suspended following the Israeli government’s decision to prevent two Democratic congresswomen, Reps. Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar, from visiting the Palestinian territories it occupies?
Trump, who pressed Israel to block the visit by the two Muslim Democrats, responded by falsely smearing Tlaib and Omar as “two people that hate Israel and hate Jewish people.” In recent months, he has repeatedly mischaracterized as anti-Semitic the two lawmakers’ criticism of Israel’s far-right government, and their support for the Palestinian-led campaign of boycotts, divestment, and sanctions against companies that enable the occupation to continue.
Trump also took time out of his meeting with Romania’s president, Klaus Iohannis, to mock Tlaib for crying on Monday as she described her disappointment at not being allowed to visit her Palestinian grandmother in the Israeli-occupied West Bank without surrendering her right to free speech during the trip.
The Romanian president made no comment on Trump’s remark, but his presence was a silent reminder of the horrific violence that has resulted from the idea of Jewish dual loyalty. At least 380,000 Romanian Jews were slaughtered between 1940 and 1944 by a fascist government that was allied with Nazi Germany.
Romania has also struggled to respond to a recent surge in anti-Semitic incidents, targeting the small Jewish population that survived the war. Last year, anti-Semitic vandals defaced the childhood home of Elie Wiesel, a Romanian Jew who was deported to Auschwitz and documented the Holocaust. “Nazi Jew lying in hell with Hitler,” was painted on the outside of the house, which is now a museum in Sighetu Marmatiei, Romania.
This was at least the second time this year that Trump invoked the anti-Semitic trope of dual loyalty. Speaking to a group of Jewish Republicans in April, the president referred to Israel’s leader, Benjamin Netanyahu, as “your prime minister.”
That group, the Republican Jewish Coalition, defended Trump on Tuesday, accusing the 79 percent of American Jews who voted for Democratic candidates in the 2018 midterms of defending “a party that protects/emboldens people that hate you for your religion.”
Many other Jewish Americans were appalled by what they saw as the clear anti-Semitic undertone of Trump’s logic.
“This is an explicit dual loyalty charge wielded by the President of the United States against 80% of American Jews who voted against him,” Emily Mayer, a spokesperson for the young American Jewish group IfNotNow said in a statement. “It is not merely an antisemitic dog whistle — it’s a bullhorn to his white nationalist base. American Jews and Democratic voters know full well the impact of the racist policies of Netanyahu and the Israeli government on the Palestinian people. This is why an overwhelming majority to oppose those policies, like unchecked settlement expansion.”
“This is outrageous,” Kenneth Roth, the executive director of Human Rights Watch, wrote on Twitter. “So US Jews’ ‘loyalty’ is mainly to Israel? Or it is supposedly in Israel’s interest to back Netanyahu’s right-wing agenda of creating a discriminatory, repressive one-state reality?”
Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg explained last year how Trump sometimes uses anti-Semitic terms and phrasing, including using the phrase “globalist” to describe people with supposed insufficient American nationalism. “Globalist — one of Trump’s favorite dogwhistles — implies that someone is not of-this-nation, they’re not tied here, their loyalty is not to *us* of this country but to *each other* internationally,” Ruttenberg wrote. “The idea the Jews’ loyalty is not to France or Germany or Poland or etc. because they are infiltrators, outsiders–that’s one of the oldest tropes in the book. They’re out to get us, to undermine us, not one of us. It’s being used to great effect these days.”
Trump’s remarks on Tuesday reinforced that even some conservative American Jews have had enough. “Enough, Mr. President,” the American Jewish Committee said in a statement. “American Jews — like all Americans — have a range of political views. Your assessment of their knowledge or loyalty, based on their party preference, is divisive, disrespectful, and unwelcome. Please stop.”
As Bobby Lewis of Media Matters for America noted, Trump’s remark came just hours after one of the hosts of his favorite morning news show, Brian Kilmeade of “Fox and Friends,” complained on-air that “President Trump only got 24 percent” of the Jewish vote in 2016 even though “Barack Obama was in single digits for approval rating inside Israel by Israelis.”
Dayton Mayor Nan Whaley Sought Extra Security After Trump Called Her ‘Dishonest’
Whaley said she was just doing her job when the president insulted her.
By Mary Papenfuss - Huff POst
08/19/2019 02:52 am ET
The mayor of Dayton, Ohio, needed extra security after President Donald Trump publicly insulted her, The Dayton Daily News reported.
Mayor Nan Whaley, grappling with the aftermath of a mass shooting this month in which nine people were killed, received a torrent of threats and abusive comments after the president traveled to the city to visit with victims and meet with local leaders.
In a press conference following Trump’s visit, Whaley and Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) discussed the need for more gun control. Brown also called Trump’s visit “comforting,” and Whaley said that first responders and victims were “grateful the president of the United States came to Dayton.”
Trump, however, lashed Whaley and Brown, calling them “very dishonest people” for “misrepresenting” his visit. He also tweeted that their press conference was a “fraud.” Some speculated that Trump may have been parroting a perspective he heard on Fox News.
“I turn on the television and there they are saying, ‘Well, I don’t know if it was appropriate for the president to be here. You know, etc., etc. You know, the same old line,’” Trump told reporters after his visit. “They’re very dishonest people and that’s probably why [Brown] got, I think, about zero percent, that he failed as a presidential candidate.”
Following Trump’s comments, Whaley received numerous threatening emails, phone calls and social media messages. According to The Dayton Daily News, one of the many abusive messages sent to Whaley warned: “Get the hell out of this country you disrespectful trash. Treason is death.”
An extra team of two detectives was assigned to her around the clock for six days after Trump’s comments, the newspaper reported Friday....
Mayor Nan Whaley, grappling with the aftermath of a mass shooting this month in which nine people were killed, received a torrent of threats and abusive comments after the president traveled to the city to visit with victims and meet with local leaders.
In a press conference following Trump’s visit, Whaley and Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) discussed the need for more gun control. Brown also called Trump’s visit “comforting,” and Whaley said that first responders and victims were “grateful the president of the United States came to Dayton.”
Trump, however, lashed Whaley and Brown, calling them “very dishonest people” for “misrepresenting” his visit. He also tweeted that their press conference was a “fraud.” Some speculated that Trump may have been parroting a perspective he heard on Fox News.
“I turn on the television and there they are saying, ‘Well, I don’t know if it was appropriate for the president to be here. You know, etc., etc. You know, the same old line,’” Trump told reporters after his visit. “They’re very dishonest people and that’s probably why [Brown] got, I think, about zero percent, that he failed as a presidential candidate.”
Following Trump’s comments, Whaley received numerous threatening emails, phone calls and social media messages. According to The Dayton Daily News, one of the many abusive messages sent to Whaley warned: “Get the hell out of this country you disrespectful trash. Treason is death.”
An extra team of two detectives was assigned to her around the clock for six days after Trump’s comments, the newspaper reported Friday....
Virginia winemaker Eric Trump has a big grin on his face — and one of daddy’s signature issues may be the reason why
August 7, 2019
By Dana Kennedy, DCReport @ RawStory - Commentary
Is Trump hoping that his threatened new tax on French wine might benefit his son’s poorly-reviewed Trump Winery in the vineyards of Virginia?
No one inside the lush halls of the Miraval winery, co-owned by Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt with a French partner and located in Provence, wanted to answer that question this week. But the French receptionist who picked up the phone kept laughing. “C’est amusant,” she said.
What was so funny? The international catfight—call it the wine wars—between President Donald Trump and French President Emmanuel Macron that’s erupted over a new 3% tax to be levied on the revenues earned by big U.S. digital companies in France.
Trump was furious—or at least he pretended to be—by the so-called GAFA (stands for Google, Amazon, Facebook and Apple) tax and retaliated by threatening to impose tariffs on French wine which he called inferior to the American brand.
The U.S. has also launched a Section 301 investigation into France’s new digital tax, marking a new low in Franco-American relations.
‘Always Liked American Wines’
“They shouldn’t have done this,” Trump said. “I told them, I said, ‘Don’t do it because if you do it, I’m going to tax your wine.'”
He added, “I’ve always liked American wines better than French wines—even though I don’t drink wine.”
Trump called Macron out for his “foolishness” in enacting the tax and the French Agricultural Minister Didier Guillaume fired back on local TV a few days later.
“It’s absurd, in terms of having a political and economic debate, to say that if you tax the ‘GAFAs’, I’ll tax wine. It’s completely moronic,” Guillaume told BFM TV. “American wine is not better than French wine,” he added.
‘Grape Jelly’
Some suggested that Eric Trump’s vineyards in Charlottesville could benefit if the president slaps a tax on French wine. However, Trump Winery was savaged in a Vanity Fair review that described the wine taste as “Welch’s grape jelly with alcohol.”
It’s unlikely, then, that Trump wine will get a boost over French wines like the Jolie-Pitt Miraval rosé, a shock bestseller in the U.S. since it was rolled out in 2012 and now consistently ranked one of the best wines in the world.
“French wine is sold as a premium,” said Rémi Bourgeot, an economist at IRIS, the French Institute for International and Strategic Affairs. “Even if Trump targets it, he won’t have that much of an impact. People aren’t going to stop buying French wine.”
A Smokescreen
Bourgeot said that the wine kerfuffle may actually be a smokescreen for Trump’s more overarching ambitions in his trade wars with Europe.
For one thing, Trump has no right to be angry at Macron. America’s Big Tech gets away with information highway robbery in countries like France. They avoid paying the same taxes as local companies via complicated, shady-sounding schemes that European economists like to call “financial engineering” but which are all legal, thanks to the European Union’s lack of a unified tax code.
Certain countries, notably Luxembourg and Ireland, offer bargain corporate taxes of between 10% and 14% to woo big US digital and multinational companies.
Facebook, Google, Apple and Airbnb, among others, have their European headquarters in Dublin or Cork. Since 2003, Amazon Europe has been based in Luxembourg, once called the “financial secrecy death star” by the Tax Justice Network. So Amazon gets to sell products in France, but it avoids the roughly 32% French corporate income tax by going through Luxembourg.
Trump knows this, said Bourgeot, who believes his real goal is to force the EU to reduce the German trade surplus and lower trade barriers between the U.S. and Europe.
“The real issue is the German trade surplus, especially German cars,” Bourgeot said. “It’s caused a big imbalance in Europe but every time Trump criticizes the Germans, Macron defends them. So now he’s leaning on Macron by threatening a wine tax over GAFA. This is all very tit for tat trade bargaining. Trump’s base may applaud him for taxing French wine but he’s got ulterior motives. He’s been focusing on China but those of us in Europe knew we were next in line.”
No one inside the lush halls of the Miraval winery, co-owned by Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt with a French partner and located in Provence, wanted to answer that question this week. But the French receptionist who picked up the phone kept laughing. “C’est amusant,” she said.
What was so funny? The international catfight—call it the wine wars—between President Donald Trump and French President Emmanuel Macron that’s erupted over a new 3% tax to be levied on the revenues earned by big U.S. digital companies in France.
Trump was furious—or at least he pretended to be—by the so-called GAFA (stands for Google, Amazon, Facebook and Apple) tax and retaliated by threatening to impose tariffs on French wine which he called inferior to the American brand.
The U.S. has also launched a Section 301 investigation into France’s new digital tax, marking a new low in Franco-American relations.
‘Always Liked American Wines’
“They shouldn’t have done this,” Trump said. “I told them, I said, ‘Don’t do it because if you do it, I’m going to tax your wine.'”
He added, “I’ve always liked American wines better than French wines—even though I don’t drink wine.”
Trump called Macron out for his “foolishness” in enacting the tax and the French Agricultural Minister Didier Guillaume fired back on local TV a few days later.
“It’s absurd, in terms of having a political and economic debate, to say that if you tax the ‘GAFAs’, I’ll tax wine. It’s completely moronic,” Guillaume told BFM TV. “American wine is not better than French wine,” he added.
‘Grape Jelly’
Some suggested that Eric Trump’s vineyards in Charlottesville could benefit if the president slaps a tax on French wine. However, Trump Winery was savaged in a Vanity Fair review that described the wine taste as “Welch’s grape jelly with alcohol.”
It’s unlikely, then, that Trump wine will get a boost over French wines like the Jolie-Pitt Miraval rosé, a shock bestseller in the U.S. since it was rolled out in 2012 and now consistently ranked one of the best wines in the world.
“French wine is sold as a premium,” said Rémi Bourgeot, an economist at IRIS, the French Institute for International and Strategic Affairs. “Even if Trump targets it, he won’t have that much of an impact. People aren’t going to stop buying French wine.”
A Smokescreen
Bourgeot said that the wine kerfuffle may actually be a smokescreen for Trump’s more overarching ambitions in his trade wars with Europe.
For one thing, Trump has no right to be angry at Macron. America’s Big Tech gets away with information highway robbery in countries like France. They avoid paying the same taxes as local companies via complicated, shady-sounding schemes that European economists like to call “financial engineering” but which are all legal, thanks to the European Union’s lack of a unified tax code.
Certain countries, notably Luxembourg and Ireland, offer bargain corporate taxes of between 10% and 14% to woo big US digital and multinational companies.
Facebook, Google, Apple and Airbnb, among others, have their European headquarters in Dublin or Cork. Since 2003, Amazon Europe has been based in Luxembourg, once called the “financial secrecy death star” by the Tax Justice Network. So Amazon gets to sell products in France, but it avoids the roughly 32% French corporate income tax by going through Luxembourg.
Trump knows this, said Bourgeot, who believes his real goal is to force the EU to reduce the German trade surplus and lower trade barriers between the U.S. and Europe.
“The real issue is the German trade surplus, especially German cars,” Bourgeot said. “It’s caused a big imbalance in Europe but every time Trump criticizes the Germans, Macron defends them. So now he’s leaning on Macron by threatening a wine tax over GAFA. This is all very tit for tat trade bargaining. Trump’s base may applaud him for taxing French wine but he’s got ulterior motives. He’s been focusing on China but those of us in Europe knew we were next in line.”
Trump encouraged his own daughter to release a sex tape: New York Magazine
August 5, 2019
By Sarah K. Burris - Raw Story
A recent profile on Ivanka Trump has revealed a lot about her self-obsession and lack of self-awareness, as well as her obsession with an Ayn Rand character who used her beauty to outwit her opponents. But it also divulged the president’s fascination with Paris Hilton’s sex tape, reported New York Magazine.
The piece talked about Ivanka’s perfected roll as the “dutiful daughter,” who “never talked back or even rolled her eyes,” even when he does cringe-worthy things.
“Among the members of New York society in the ’90s and early aughts, [Donald Trump] was seen as a credit clown, a joke, but never to Ivanka,” the profile outlined. “His chauvinism frustrated her, however, and she was repelled by the way he talked about women’s bodies — who was fat, who was not.”
But after Paris Hilton’s sex tape was posted to the internet in 2003, the president couldn’t stop talking about it.
“Paris is laughing all the way to the bank, she’s got the last laugh, she’s marvelous,” Trump allegedly said.
“Ivanka could not believe her father was not only idolizing an airhead heiress caught blowing a guy on a night-vision video but encouraging her to follow Paris’s lead.”
When asked about the recollection, White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham denied the account, calling it “untrue and disgusting.”
“The thing with Paris hurt Ivanka a lot,” a friend told New York Magazine. “He was heartbreaking to her at times.”
The piece said that she “buried her feelings and moved on,” thinking her father’s feelings about women were “complicated.”
“Donald hired many women at the Trump Organization, she knew, and these women weren’t universally pretty; he wanted to employ women with traditionally masculine attitudes and almost enjoyed feeling discomfited by them, having them boss him around,” the piece continued. “Her father may have had issues with women, she felt, but he did not meet the textbook definition of a misogynist — a belief she seems to hold to the present day.”
Read the full piece in New York Magazine.
The piece talked about Ivanka’s perfected roll as the “dutiful daughter,” who “never talked back or even rolled her eyes,” even when he does cringe-worthy things.
“Among the members of New York society in the ’90s and early aughts, [Donald Trump] was seen as a credit clown, a joke, but never to Ivanka,” the profile outlined. “His chauvinism frustrated her, however, and she was repelled by the way he talked about women’s bodies — who was fat, who was not.”
But after Paris Hilton’s sex tape was posted to the internet in 2003, the president couldn’t stop talking about it.
“Paris is laughing all the way to the bank, she’s got the last laugh, she’s marvelous,” Trump allegedly said.
“Ivanka could not believe her father was not only idolizing an airhead heiress caught blowing a guy on a night-vision video but encouraging her to follow Paris’s lead.”
When asked about the recollection, White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham denied the account, calling it “untrue and disgusting.”
“The thing with Paris hurt Ivanka a lot,” a friend told New York Magazine. “He was heartbreaking to her at times.”
The piece said that she “buried her feelings and moved on,” thinking her father’s feelings about women were “complicated.”
“Donald hired many women at the Trump Organization, she knew, and these women weren’t universally pretty; he wanted to employ women with traditionally masculine attitudes and almost enjoyed feeling discomfited by them, having them boss him around,” the piece continued. “Her father may have had issues with women, she felt, but he did not meet the textbook definition of a misogynist — a belief she seems to hold to the present day.”
Read the full piece in New York Magazine.
stupidity has no limits!!!
Trump Praises Kim Jong Un’s “Beautiful Vision for His Country”
The North Korean regime is responsible for murders, disappearances, and nightmarish prison camps.
Dan Spinelli - Mother Jones
8/2/19
North Korea—a country best known for its systemic human rights violations and unpredictable, authoritarian leaders—fired two short-range missiles on Friday, the South Korean media reported. This latest weapons test, the hermit kingdom’s third in eight days, would typically inspire some element of concern or retaliatory action from the United States, which North Korea considers its most prominent enemy.
Instead, President Donald Trump took to Twitter to praise North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un’s “great and beautiful vision for his country” and to suggest that Trump could help “make that vision come true.”
Here’s a reminder, from the State Department annual human rights report, of what Kim’s vision has meant for North Koreans—including murders and disappearances perpetrated by the government, nightmarish political prison camps, and coerced abortions:
Unlawful or arbitrary killings by the government; forced disappearances by the government; torture by authorities; arbitrary detentions by security forces; detention centers, including political prison camps in which conditions were often harsh and life threatening; political prisoners; rigid controls over many aspects of citizen’s lives, including arbitrary interference with privacy; censorship, and site blocking; substantial interference with the rights of peaceful assembly and freedom of association; severe restrictions of religious freedom; significant restrictions on freedom of movement; restrictions on political participation; coerced abortion; trafficking in persons; severe restrictions on worker rights, including denial of the right to organize independent unions, and domestic forced labor through mass mobilizations and as a part of the re-education system.
In his pursuit of a nuclear deal with North Korea, Trump seems to no longer care about human rights. After he denounced Kim’s “cruel dictatorship” as recently as last year, Trump now lathers on praise for a man who ordered the killings of his own brother and uncle. At a September rally in West Virginia, Trump told attendees that he and Kim “fell in love” after Kim sent him “beautiful letters.” Their burgeoning bromance dates back to last June, when at a summit in Singapore, Trump and Kim signed a document committing themselves to the “complete denuclearization of the Korean peninsula.”
The summit energized a diplomatic relationship that had long gone sour, but little about North Korea’s behavior, before or since, has suggested it will give up its nuclear weapons. In January, the US intelligence community assessed that North Korea is “unlikely to give up all of its WMD stockpiles, delivery systems, and production capabilities.” A month later, Trump’s second summit with Kim in Hanoi fell apart after the United States rejected North Korea’s request for partial sanctions relief in exchange for incremental steps toward shuttering its nuclear program.
In May, North Korea launched a set of short-range missiles in violation of a United Nations ban on testing ballistic missiles. The move did not violate Kim’s pledge last year not to test nukes or intercontinental ballistic missiles, but it was still a diplomatic slap in the face given Trump’s boasts about halting the country’s missile tests. It was also a direct threat to South Korea. “It’s no accident that following the July 25 test, the North Korean official statement clearly emphasized that these launches should be understood as a warning to South Korea, not to the United States,” North Korea expert Andrei Lankov wrote for NK News, a Seoul-based news outlet.
Trump nevertheless defended Kim at the time. “Anything in this very interesting world is possible, but I believe that Kim Jong Un fully realizes the great economic potential of North Korea,” the US president wrote, on Twitter. “He also knows that I am with him & does not want to break his promise to me.”
North Korea’s latest missile test and Trump’s rush to praise Kim show how that paradigm hasn’t changed. Acknowledging North Korean misbehavior would contradict Trump’s efforts to portray himself as an unparalleled deal-maker who has successfully negotiated with a dangerous threat to US security. So North Korea can violate UN protocols, repress its own citizens, and lie flagrantly—and Kim can still count on vocal support from the White House. Kim, Trump assured the world on Friday, “will do the right thing because he is far too smart not to, and he does not want to disappoint his friend, President Trump!”
Instead, President Donald Trump took to Twitter to praise North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un’s “great and beautiful vision for his country” and to suggest that Trump could help “make that vision come true.”
Here’s a reminder, from the State Department annual human rights report, of what Kim’s vision has meant for North Koreans—including murders and disappearances perpetrated by the government, nightmarish political prison camps, and coerced abortions:
Unlawful or arbitrary killings by the government; forced disappearances by the government; torture by authorities; arbitrary detentions by security forces; detention centers, including political prison camps in which conditions were often harsh and life threatening; political prisoners; rigid controls over many aspects of citizen’s lives, including arbitrary interference with privacy; censorship, and site blocking; substantial interference with the rights of peaceful assembly and freedom of association; severe restrictions of religious freedom; significant restrictions on freedom of movement; restrictions on political participation; coerced abortion; trafficking in persons; severe restrictions on worker rights, including denial of the right to organize independent unions, and domestic forced labor through mass mobilizations and as a part of the re-education system.
In his pursuit of a nuclear deal with North Korea, Trump seems to no longer care about human rights. After he denounced Kim’s “cruel dictatorship” as recently as last year, Trump now lathers on praise for a man who ordered the killings of his own brother and uncle. At a September rally in West Virginia, Trump told attendees that he and Kim “fell in love” after Kim sent him “beautiful letters.” Their burgeoning bromance dates back to last June, when at a summit in Singapore, Trump and Kim signed a document committing themselves to the “complete denuclearization of the Korean peninsula.”
The summit energized a diplomatic relationship that had long gone sour, but little about North Korea’s behavior, before or since, has suggested it will give up its nuclear weapons. In January, the US intelligence community assessed that North Korea is “unlikely to give up all of its WMD stockpiles, delivery systems, and production capabilities.” A month later, Trump’s second summit with Kim in Hanoi fell apart after the United States rejected North Korea’s request for partial sanctions relief in exchange for incremental steps toward shuttering its nuclear program.
In May, North Korea launched a set of short-range missiles in violation of a United Nations ban on testing ballistic missiles. The move did not violate Kim’s pledge last year not to test nukes or intercontinental ballistic missiles, but it was still a diplomatic slap in the face given Trump’s boasts about halting the country’s missile tests. It was also a direct threat to South Korea. “It’s no accident that following the July 25 test, the North Korean official statement clearly emphasized that these launches should be understood as a warning to South Korea, not to the United States,” North Korea expert Andrei Lankov wrote for NK News, a Seoul-based news outlet.
Trump nevertheless defended Kim at the time. “Anything in this very interesting world is possible, but I believe that Kim Jong Un fully realizes the great economic potential of North Korea,” the US president wrote, on Twitter. “He also knows that I am with him & does not want to break his promise to me.”
North Korea’s latest missile test and Trump’s rush to praise Kim show how that paradigm hasn’t changed. Acknowledging North Korean misbehavior would contradict Trump’s efforts to portray himself as an unparalleled deal-maker who has successfully negotiated with a dangerous threat to US security. So North Korea can violate UN protocols, repress its own citizens, and lie flagrantly—and Kim can still count on vocal support from the White House. Kim, Trump assured the world on Friday, “will do the right thing because he is far too smart not to, and he does not want to disappoint his friend, President Trump!”
Trump busted for kissing up to Al Sharpton in hopes of landing Mike Tyson fight at his casino
July 29, 2019
By Travis Gettys - Raw Story
A New York Times reporter busted President Donald Trump for sucking up to the Rev. Al Sharpton in hopes of persuading black boxers to fight at his casino.
The president hurled racist abuse Monday morning at Sharpton, the civil rights activist and MSNBC broadcaster, as he continued his attacks on public figures who are black, Latino and Muslim.
Sharpton called in to MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” where he revealed that Trump had begged him to meet with him at Mar-A-Lago shortly after the November 2016 election, and Times reporter Glenn Thrush dug up an old interview with the activist from that same year.
“When Donald Trump began opening hotels in Atlantic City, he wanted to get — first, he had to deal with the fact that much of the city council there was black,” Sharpton told Thrush, who then worked for Politico. “And that he had to deal with — he wanted to get boxing in. Mike Tyson was a hot sensation.”
Sharpton said during that Feb. 22, 2016, interview that boxing promoter Don King brokered a meeting with Trump in hopes of developing a business relationship with Tyson.
“Don King and Tyson was working with me on when I was painting crack houses, closing crack houses,” Sharpton recalled. “Don King said, ‘You need to make peace with Al Sharpton,’ because I had marched on Trump about the ads he had ran against the Central Park Five, which I ended up being right about, that they were not the guys that raped the Central Park rape victim.”
Thrush suggested the meeting took place in 1986, three years before that notorious case, and two years before Tyson did fight in Atlantic City’s Boardwalk Hall after Trump paid a then-record $11 million site fee to bring the fight to town, so the actual timing of the Sharpton-Trump meeting isn’t clear.
Sharpton said at the time that Trump had always expressed “right-wing beliefs,” but said he found it hard to personally dislike him — and expressed his belief that Trump would move to the center if he won the election.
“The best way I can describe Donald Trump to friends is to say if Don King had been born white he’d be Donald Trump,” Sharpton said. “Both of them are great self-promoters and great at just continuing to talk even if you’re not talking back at them.”
The president hurled racist abuse Monday morning at Sharpton, the civil rights activist and MSNBC broadcaster, as he continued his attacks on public figures who are black, Latino and Muslim.
Sharpton called in to MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” where he revealed that Trump had begged him to meet with him at Mar-A-Lago shortly after the November 2016 election, and Times reporter Glenn Thrush dug up an old interview with the activist from that same year.
“When Donald Trump began opening hotels in Atlantic City, he wanted to get — first, he had to deal with the fact that much of the city council there was black,” Sharpton told Thrush, who then worked for Politico. “And that he had to deal with — he wanted to get boxing in. Mike Tyson was a hot sensation.”
Sharpton said during that Feb. 22, 2016, interview that boxing promoter Don King brokered a meeting with Trump in hopes of developing a business relationship with Tyson.
“Don King and Tyson was working with me on when I was painting crack houses, closing crack houses,” Sharpton recalled. “Don King said, ‘You need to make peace with Al Sharpton,’ because I had marched on Trump about the ads he had ran against the Central Park Five, which I ended up being right about, that they were not the guys that raped the Central Park rape victim.”
Thrush suggested the meeting took place in 1986, three years before that notorious case, and two years before Tyson did fight in Atlantic City’s Boardwalk Hall after Trump paid a then-record $11 million site fee to bring the fight to town, so the actual timing of the Sharpton-Trump meeting isn’t clear.
Sharpton said at the time that Trump had always expressed “right-wing beliefs,” but said he found it hard to personally dislike him — and expressed his belief that Trump would move to the center if he won the election.
“The best way I can describe Donald Trump to friends is to say if Don King had been born white he’d be Donald Trump,” Sharpton said. “Both of them are great self-promoters and great at just continuing to talk even if you’re not talking back at them.”
One of Trump’s biggest and best campaign promises has been exposed as a worthless sham
July 26, 2019
By Tom Conway, Independent Media Institute - Commentary - Raw Story
Bad news about infrastructure is as ubiquitous as potholes. Failures in a 108-year-old railroad bridge and tunnel cost New York commuters thousands of hours in delays. Illinois doesn’t regularly inspect, let alone fix, decaying bridges. Flooding in Nebraska caused nearly half a billion dollars in road and bridge damage—just this year.
No problem, though. President Donald Trump promised to fix all this. The great dealmaker, the builder of eponymous buildings, the star of “The Apprentice,” Donald Trump, during his campaign, urged Americans to bet on him because he’d double what his opponent would spend on infrastructure. Double, he pledged!
So far, that wager has netted Americans nothing. No money. No deal. No bridges, roads or leadless water pipes. And there’s nothing on the horizon since Trump stormed out of the most recent meeting. That was a three-minute session in May with Democratic leaders at which Trump was supposed to discuss the $2 trillion he had proposed earlier to spend on infrastructure. In a press conference immediately afterward, Trump said if the Democrats continued to investigate him, he would refuse to keep his promises to the American people to repair the nation’s infrastructure.
The comedian Stephen Colbert described the situation best, saying Trump told the Democrats: “It’s my way or no highways.”
The situation, however, is no joke. Just ask the New York rail commuters held up for more than 2,000 hours over the past four years by bridge and tunnel breakdowns. Just ask the American Society of Civil Engineers, which gave the nation a D+ grade for infrastructure and estimated that if more than $1 trillion is not added to currently anticipated spending on infrastructure, “the economy is expected to lose almost $4 trillion in GDP, resulting in a loss of 2.5 million jobs in 2025.”
Candidate Donald Trump knew it was no joke. On the campaign trail, he said U.S. infrastructure was “a mess” and no better than that of a “third-world country.” When an Amtrak train derailed in Philadelphia in 2015, killing eight and injuring about 200, he tweeted, “Our roads, airports, tunnels, bridges, electric grid—all falling apart.” Later, he tweeted, “The only one to fix the infrastructure of our country is me.”
Donald Trump promised to make America great again. And that wouldn’t be possible if America’s rail system, locks, dams and pipelines—that is, its vital organs—were “a mess.” Trump signed what he described as a contract with American voters to deliver an infrastructure plan within the first 100 days of his administration.
He mocked his Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton’s proposal to spend $275 billion. “Her number is a fraction of what we’re talking about. We need much more money to rebuild our infrastructure,” he told Fox News in 2016. “I would say at least double her numbers, and you’re going to really need a lot more than that.”
In August of 2016, he promised, “We will build the next generation of roads, bridges, railways, tunnels, seaports and airports that our country deserves. American cars will travel the roads, American planes will connect our cities, and American ships will patrol the seas. American steel will send new skyscrapers soaring. We will put new American metal into the spine of this nation.”
In his victory speech and both of his State of the Union addresses, he pledged again to be the master of infrastructure. “We are going to fix our inner cities and rebuild our highways, bridges, tunnels, airports, school, hospitals. … And we will put millions of our people to work,” he said the night he won.
That sounds excellent. That’s exactly what 75 percent of respondents to a Gallup poll said they wanted. That would create millions of family-supporting jobs making the steel, aluminum, concrete, pipes and construction vehicles necessary to accomplish infrastructure repair. That would stimulate the economy in ways that benefit the middle class and those who are struggling.
That contract Trump signed with American voters to produce an infrastructure plan in the first 100 days: worthless. It never happened. He gave Americans an Infrastructure Week in June of 2017, though, and at just about the 100-day mark, predicted infrastructure spending would “take off like a rocket ship.” Two more Infrastructure Weeks followed in the next two years, but no money.
Trump finally announced a plan in February of 2018, at a little over the 365-day mark, to spend $1.5 trillion on infrastructure. It went nowhere because it managed to annoy both Democrats and Republicans.
It was to be funded by only $200 billion in federal dollars—less than what Hillary Clinton proposed. The rest was to come from state and local governments and from foreign money interests and the private sector. Basically, the idea was to hand over to hedge fund managers the roads and bridges and pipelines originally built, owned and maintained by Americans. The fat cats at the hedge funds would pay for repairs but then toll the assets in perpetuity. Nobody liked it.
That was last year. This year, by which time the words Infrastructure Week had become a synonym for promises not kept, Trump met on April 30 with top Democratic leadersand recommended a $2 trillion infrastructure investment. Democrats praised Trump afterward for taking the challenge seriously and for agreeing to find the money.
“It couldn’t have gone any better,” Ways and Means Committee Chairman Richard E. Neal, D-Mass., told the Washington Post, even though Neal was investigating Trump for possible tax fraud.
Almost immediately, Trump began complaining that Democrats were trying to hoodwink him into raising taxes to pay for the $2 trillion he had offered to spend.
Trump and the Republicans relinquished one way to pay for infrastructure when they passed a tax cut for the rich and corporations in December of 2017. As a result, the rich and corporations pocketed hundreds of billions--$1 trillion over 10 years—and Trump doesn’t have that money to invest in infrastructure. Corporations spent their tax break money on stock buybacks, further enriching the already rich. They didn’t invest in American manufacturing or worker training or wage increases.
Three weeks after the April 30 meeting, Trump snubbed Democrats who returned to the White House hoping the president had found a way to keep his promise to raise $2 trillion for infrastructure. Trump dismissed them like naughty schoolchildren. He told them he wouldn’t countenance Democrats simultaneously investigating him and bargaining with him—even though Democrats were investigating him at the time of the April meeting and one of the investigators—Neal—had attended.
Promise not kept again.
Trump’s reelection motto, Keep America Great, doesn’t work for infrastructure. It’s still a mess. It’s the third year of his presidency, and he has done nothing about it. Apparently, he’s saving this pledge for his next term.
In May, he promised Louisianans a new bridge over Interstate 10—only if he is reelected. He said the administration would have it ready to go on “day one, right after the election.” Just like he said he’d produce an infrastructure plan within the first 100 days of his first term.
He’s doubling down on the infrastructure promises. His win would mean Americans get nothing again.
No problem, though. President Donald Trump promised to fix all this. The great dealmaker, the builder of eponymous buildings, the star of “The Apprentice,” Donald Trump, during his campaign, urged Americans to bet on him because he’d double what his opponent would spend on infrastructure. Double, he pledged!
So far, that wager has netted Americans nothing. No money. No deal. No bridges, roads or leadless water pipes. And there’s nothing on the horizon since Trump stormed out of the most recent meeting. That was a three-minute session in May with Democratic leaders at which Trump was supposed to discuss the $2 trillion he had proposed earlier to spend on infrastructure. In a press conference immediately afterward, Trump said if the Democrats continued to investigate him, he would refuse to keep his promises to the American people to repair the nation’s infrastructure.
The comedian Stephen Colbert described the situation best, saying Trump told the Democrats: “It’s my way or no highways.”
The situation, however, is no joke. Just ask the New York rail commuters held up for more than 2,000 hours over the past four years by bridge and tunnel breakdowns. Just ask the American Society of Civil Engineers, which gave the nation a D+ grade for infrastructure and estimated that if more than $1 trillion is not added to currently anticipated spending on infrastructure, “the economy is expected to lose almost $4 trillion in GDP, resulting in a loss of 2.5 million jobs in 2025.”
Candidate Donald Trump knew it was no joke. On the campaign trail, he said U.S. infrastructure was “a mess” and no better than that of a “third-world country.” When an Amtrak train derailed in Philadelphia in 2015, killing eight and injuring about 200, he tweeted, “Our roads, airports, tunnels, bridges, electric grid—all falling apart.” Later, he tweeted, “The only one to fix the infrastructure of our country is me.”
Donald Trump promised to make America great again. And that wouldn’t be possible if America’s rail system, locks, dams and pipelines—that is, its vital organs—were “a mess.” Trump signed what he described as a contract with American voters to deliver an infrastructure plan within the first 100 days of his administration.
He mocked his Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton’s proposal to spend $275 billion. “Her number is a fraction of what we’re talking about. We need much more money to rebuild our infrastructure,” he told Fox News in 2016. “I would say at least double her numbers, and you’re going to really need a lot more than that.”
In August of 2016, he promised, “We will build the next generation of roads, bridges, railways, tunnels, seaports and airports that our country deserves. American cars will travel the roads, American planes will connect our cities, and American ships will patrol the seas. American steel will send new skyscrapers soaring. We will put new American metal into the spine of this nation.”
In his victory speech and both of his State of the Union addresses, he pledged again to be the master of infrastructure. “We are going to fix our inner cities and rebuild our highways, bridges, tunnels, airports, school, hospitals. … And we will put millions of our people to work,” he said the night he won.
That sounds excellent. That’s exactly what 75 percent of respondents to a Gallup poll said they wanted. That would create millions of family-supporting jobs making the steel, aluminum, concrete, pipes and construction vehicles necessary to accomplish infrastructure repair. That would stimulate the economy in ways that benefit the middle class and those who are struggling.
That contract Trump signed with American voters to produce an infrastructure plan in the first 100 days: worthless. It never happened. He gave Americans an Infrastructure Week in June of 2017, though, and at just about the 100-day mark, predicted infrastructure spending would “take off like a rocket ship.” Two more Infrastructure Weeks followed in the next two years, but no money.
Trump finally announced a plan in February of 2018, at a little over the 365-day mark, to spend $1.5 trillion on infrastructure. It went nowhere because it managed to annoy both Democrats and Republicans.
It was to be funded by only $200 billion in federal dollars—less than what Hillary Clinton proposed. The rest was to come from state and local governments and from foreign money interests and the private sector. Basically, the idea was to hand over to hedge fund managers the roads and bridges and pipelines originally built, owned and maintained by Americans. The fat cats at the hedge funds would pay for repairs but then toll the assets in perpetuity. Nobody liked it.
That was last year. This year, by which time the words Infrastructure Week had become a synonym for promises not kept, Trump met on April 30 with top Democratic leadersand recommended a $2 trillion infrastructure investment. Democrats praised Trump afterward for taking the challenge seriously and for agreeing to find the money.
“It couldn’t have gone any better,” Ways and Means Committee Chairman Richard E. Neal, D-Mass., told the Washington Post, even though Neal was investigating Trump for possible tax fraud.
Almost immediately, Trump began complaining that Democrats were trying to hoodwink him into raising taxes to pay for the $2 trillion he had offered to spend.
Trump and the Republicans relinquished one way to pay for infrastructure when they passed a tax cut for the rich and corporations in December of 2017. As a result, the rich and corporations pocketed hundreds of billions--$1 trillion over 10 years—and Trump doesn’t have that money to invest in infrastructure. Corporations spent their tax break money on stock buybacks, further enriching the already rich. They didn’t invest in American manufacturing or worker training or wage increases.
Three weeks after the April 30 meeting, Trump snubbed Democrats who returned to the White House hoping the president had found a way to keep his promise to raise $2 trillion for infrastructure. Trump dismissed them like naughty schoolchildren. He told them he wouldn’t countenance Democrats simultaneously investigating him and bargaining with him—even though Democrats were investigating him at the time of the April meeting and one of the investigators—Neal—had attended.
Promise not kept again.
Trump’s reelection motto, Keep America Great, doesn’t work for infrastructure. It’s still a mess. It’s the third year of his presidency, and he has done nothing about it. Apparently, he’s saving this pledge for his next term.
In May, he promised Louisianans a new bridge over Interstate 10—only if he is reelected. He said the administration would have it ready to go on “day one, right after the election.” Just like he said he’d produce an infrastructure plan within the first 100 days of his first term.
He’s doubling down on the infrastructure promises. His win would mean Americans get nothing again.
Trump calls for probe of Obama book deal
BY BRETT SAMUELS - The Hill
07/26/19 04:53 PM EDT
President Trump on Friday lashed out at Democrats over their ongoing investigations into his administration, suggesting there should instead be probes into former President Obama's book deal and other activities under his predecessor.
"They want to investigate, they want to go fishing and I watched Bob Mueller and they have nothing," Trump said of Democrats during an Oval Office gathering to announce an agreement with Guatemala.
"It’s a disgrace," he continued. "We want to find out what happened the last Democrat president. Let’s look into Obama the way they’ve looked into me. From day one they’ve looked into everything we’ve done."
"They could look into the book deal that President Obama made. Let’s subpoena all of his records," Trump continued. "Let’s subpoena all of the records having to do with Hillary Clinton and all of the nonsense that went on with Clinton and her foundation and everything else."
Obama and former first lady Michelle Obama signed lucrative book deals with Penguin Random House in 2017 after they left office. The terms of the agreement were not disclosed.
It is not uncommon for presidents to sign book deals to write a memoir upon leaving office. Former President George W. Bush signed a deal with Crown Publishing in 2009.
In a bizarre criticism later in the media availability, Trump complained about a new air conditioning system he said was installed in the West Wing during the Obama administration.
"It was so good before they did the system," said Trump, who would not have worked in the West Wing with the old system. "Now that they did the system, it’s freezing or hot in here."
But Trump frequently targets Obama for criticism and has spent much of his administration undoing policies implemented by his predecessor.[...]
"They want to investigate, they want to go fishing and I watched Bob Mueller and they have nothing," Trump said of Democrats during an Oval Office gathering to announce an agreement with Guatemala.
"It’s a disgrace," he continued. "We want to find out what happened the last Democrat president. Let’s look into Obama the way they’ve looked into me. From day one they’ve looked into everything we’ve done."
"They could look into the book deal that President Obama made. Let’s subpoena all of his records," Trump continued. "Let’s subpoena all of the records having to do with Hillary Clinton and all of the nonsense that went on with Clinton and her foundation and everything else."
Obama and former first lady Michelle Obama signed lucrative book deals with Penguin Random House in 2017 after they left office. The terms of the agreement were not disclosed.
It is not uncommon for presidents to sign book deals to write a memoir upon leaving office. Former President George W. Bush signed a deal with Crown Publishing in 2009.
In a bizarre criticism later in the media availability, Trump complained about a new air conditioning system he said was installed in the West Wing during the Obama administration.
"It was so good before they did the system," said Trump, who would not have worked in the West Wing with the old system. "Now that they did the system, it’s freezing or hot in here."
But Trump frequently targets Obama for criticism and has spent much of his administration undoing policies implemented by his predecessor.[...]
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Bandy Lee to Robert Mueller: Time to stop "enabling Trump's disease"
Yale psychiatrist hopes Mueller can tell us more about a damaged president driven by "insecurity and emptiness"
CHAUNCEY DEVEGA - Salon
JULY 24, 2019 11:00AM (UTC)
...On Tuesday, Lee and other leading mental health professionals, working in conjunction with the World Mental Health Organization, convened an online town hall meeting in anticipation of Mueller's congressional testimony. During that meeting they shared five questions they believe that Mueller should be asked regarding Trump's mental health and, by implication, his ability to properly serve as president.
This meeting is one of many efforts during the three years of Trump's presidency by Lee and other mental health professionals to alert the American people and the world to the extreme threat to public health and safety posed by Donald Trump.
---
In Donald Trump's concentration camps, children are being abused, people are forced to drink out of toilets, there are sexual assaults, violence and general cruelty. The American people seem numb. Where are the mass protests? Moreover, a significant percentage of Americans seem to enjoy Trump's cruelty.
That is exactly what has been happening. The spread of pathology in a society is very dangerous. Malignancy seeps in and manifests by creating a condition of exhaustion. This creates a new way of conceptualizing and experiencing reality — and in a very unhealthy way.
And you're absolutely right: What we already know about the sadism and cruelty in Trump's concentration camps will only be a small fraction of what the world will eventually discover about what is really going on there. The entire picture will be terrible. There is a psychological disposition among some people to inflict as much cruelty as possible because there's pleasure to be derived from it.
It is no accident that Donald Trump is enacting dangerous policies. This is exactly what is to be expected. This is all like an infectious disease in America's body politic. Unless it is controlled it will spread.
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There are internal diplomatic communications from the British government which do not paint a flattering picture of Donald Trump and his administration. Trump is described there as being a liar, insecure, incompetent and easily manipulated by others. How does this information fit with your ongoing analysis of Trump's mental health and behavior?
The world is coming to a consensus that Donald Trump's presidency is uniquely dysfunctional and is likely to end in disgrace. British ambassador Kim Darroch said that the United States is actually very dysfunctional because of the ineptitude of Trump's presidency. There are likely many such conversations happening at the highest levels of other governments all over the world. Other countries most certainly have a dossier evaluating Donald Trump's behavior and mental as well as emotional health.
As the world witnessed at the recent G20 meeting in Japan, Donald Trump praises almost every dictator and by doing so undermines democracies and intelligent, capable leaders. That is not a coincidence. Trump has a deep emotional hunger to be an authoritarian, a strongman type of leader. This is actually a disability more than a strength. Trump's admiration of dictators comes from the narcissistic wounds he suffers from.
Donald Trump's ability to praise any leader, no matter what their record of atrocities or human rights abuses, shows that Trump does not despise authoritarians and tyrants for such behavior. In fact he admires such leaders for that behavior. This is one of the reasons among many that my colleagues and I — a group of some of the country's and world's most accomplished mental health experts — evaluated Donald Trump based on his public behavior and found that he is incapable of fulfilling the duties of the office of the president. Donald Trump's emotional needs are so overwhelming that he cannot properly weigh his choices and responsibilities relative to America's national interests.
You and other mental health professionals have diagnosed Donald Trump as being a malignant narcissist. Given Trump's mental condition and apparent personality disorders, how should we assess and understand his Fourth of July political stunt several weeks ago?
The American people were actually glad that tanks didn't roll down the streets of Washington the way that they do in North Korea or did in Nazi Germany. These are very disturbing images for most Americans. Trump's July 4 celebration is another sign that his mental health is worsening. Trump looks absurd. He keeps demanding to get his way no matter what. This includes his parade, the census question, whatever it may be — regardless of the consequences. Donald Trump wants to get his way no matter what the rule of law is or the country's norms are.
One of the features of Trump's mental health deficiencies is that he cannot understand abstract concepts. He is very childish in that regard. Trump cannot think of concepts such as justice or equality apart from how he gains or benefits. Trump cannot understand the idea of a social contract or abiding by rules of fairness. These are foreign concepts to someone like him. He is stuck in a very immature, early stage of emotional development.
When children say that something is "unfair" or "mean," it really means that they are not getting what they want. Children do not have an evolved sense of justice. When an adult behaves in such a way, it is not normal. It is a sign of a mental disorder because it means that an adult has either regressed or they are arrested in development. This is what we are seeing with Donald Trump.
And with all the increasing pressures of Trump's job — even as he expands his authoritarian powers against democracy — these symptoms grow worse. Granting Trump what he demands is not going to do him any good or stop the bad behavior because it is all coming from a disease process. Trump's disease wants increasingly destructive and dysfunctional conditions, even for himself. That is why enabling Trump's disease is very dangerous. History shows us the horrible things that have happened when a leader who is mentally unwell like Donald Trump remains in power and his influence spreads.
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What do you think Donald Trump's inner dreams and desires are?
Donald Trump has shown through his behavior that he does not have a core self and sense of being. That might seem like a drastic thing to say, but I have actually treated and encountered over a thousand individuals who have exactly this kind of predisposition. Such people often state that they feel dead inside, that they are living tombs.
This is one of the reasons why Donald Trump needs an adoring crowd — he needs to see thousands of people cheering him on. Trump constantly needs that. Trump must have these political rallies because they are his source of self. To live in such a way is a very terrifying existence. This helps to explain Trump's constant paranoia. He believes that the world is a threatening place where everyone is against him. This explains why Trump feels like he must always fight for his own survival. This is a very dangerous disposition to have in a position of power.
Loneliness only exposes Trump to his utter emptiness. Donald Trump suffers from feelings of worthlessness and powerlessness far greater than what others would attribute to him. This is why Donald Trump cannot even contemplate the possibility that he is anything less than an expert in everything, and insists that he is the greatest president in history, the least racist person, and the most "stable genius" ever in human existence. This all shows the levels of insecurity and emptiness that Donald Trump is suffering from.
This meeting is one of many efforts during the three years of Trump's presidency by Lee and other mental health professionals to alert the American people and the world to the extreme threat to public health and safety posed by Donald Trump.
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In Donald Trump's concentration camps, children are being abused, people are forced to drink out of toilets, there are sexual assaults, violence and general cruelty. The American people seem numb. Where are the mass protests? Moreover, a significant percentage of Americans seem to enjoy Trump's cruelty.
That is exactly what has been happening. The spread of pathology in a society is very dangerous. Malignancy seeps in and manifests by creating a condition of exhaustion. This creates a new way of conceptualizing and experiencing reality — and in a very unhealthy way.
And you're absolutely right: What we already know about the sadism and cruelty in Trump's concentration camps will only be a small fraction of what the world will eventually discover about what is really going on there. The entire picture will be terrible. There is a psychological disposition among some people to inflict as much cruelty as possible because there's pleasure to be derived from it.
It is no accident that Donald Trump is enacting dangerous policies. This is exactly what is to be expected. This is all like an infectious disease in America's body politic. Unless it is controlled it will spread.
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There are internal diplomatic communications from the British government which do not paint a flattering picture of Donald Trump and his administration. Trump is described there as being a liar, insecure, incompetent and easily manipulated by others. How does this information fit with your ongoing analysis of Trump's mental health and behavior?
The world is coming to a consensus that Donald Trump's presidency is uniquely dysfunctional and is likely to end in disgrace. British ambassador Kim Darroch said that the United States is actually very dysfunctional because of the ineptitude of Trump's presidency. There are likely many such conversations happening at the highest levels of other governments all over the world. Other countries most certainly have a dossier evaluating Donald Trump's behavior and mental as well as emotional health.
As the world witnessed at the recent G20 meeting in Japan, Donald Trump praises almost every dictator and by doing so undermines democracies and intelligent, capable leaders. That is not a coincidence. Trump has a deep emotional hunger to be an authoritarian, a strongman type of leader. This is actually a disability more than a strength. Trump's admiration of dictators comes from the narcissistic wounds he suffers from.
Donald Trump's ability to praise any leader, no matter what their record of atrocities or human rights abuses, shows that Trump does not despise authoritarians and tyrants for such behavior. In fact he admires such leaders for that behavior. This is one of the reasons among many that my colleagues and I — a group of some of the country's and world's most accomplished mental health experts — evaluated Donald Trump based on his public behavior and found that he is incapable of fulfilling the duties of the office of the president. Donald Trump's emotional needs are so overwhelming that he cannot properly weigh his choices and responsibilities relative to America's national interests.
You and other mental health professionals have diagnosed Donald Trump as being a malignant narcissist. Given Trump's mental condition and apparent personality disorders, how should we assess and understand his Fourth of July political stunt several weeks ago?
The American people were actually glad that tanks didn't roll down the streets of Washington the way that they do in North Korea or did in Nazi Germany. These are very disturbing images for most Americans. Trump's July 4 celebration is another sign that his mental health is worsening. Trump looks absurd. He keeps demanding to get his way no matter what. This includes his parade, the census question, whatever it may be — regardless of the consequences. Donald Trump wants to get his way no matter what the rule of law is or the country's norms are.
One of the features of Trump's mental health deficiencies is that he cannot understand abstract concepts. He is very childish in that regard. Trump cannot think of concepts such as justice or equality apart from how he gains or benefits. Trump cannot understand the idea of a social contract or abiding by rules of fairness. These are foreign concepts to someone like him. He is stuck in a very immature, early stage of emotional development.
When children say that something is "unfair" or "mean," it really means that they are not getting what they want. Children do not have an evolved sense of justice. When an adult behaves in such a way, it is not normal. It is a sign of a mental disorder because it means that an adult has either regressed or they are arrested in development. This is what we are seeing with Donald Trump.
And with all the increasing pressures of Trump's job — even as he expands his authoritarian powers against democracy — these symptoms grow worse. Granting Trump what he demands is not going to do him any good or stop the bad behavior because it is all coming from a disease process. Trump's disease wants increasingly destructive and dysfunctional conditions, even for himself. That is why enabling Trump's disease is very dangerous. History shows us the horrible things that have happened when a leader who is mentally unwell like Donald Trump remains in power and his influence spreads.
---
What do you think Donald Trump's inner dreams and desires are?
Donald Trump has shown through his behavior that he does not have a core self and sense of being. That might seem like a drastic thing to say, but I have actually treated and encountered over a thousand individuals who have exactly this kind of predisposition. Such people often state that they feel dead inside, that they are living tombs.
This is one of the reasons why Donald Trump needs an adoring crowd — he needs to see thousands of people cheering him on. Trump constantly needs that. Trump must have these political rallies because they are his source of self. To live in such a way is a very terrifying existence. This helps to explain Trump's constant paranoia. He believes that the world is a threatening place where everyone is against him. This explains why Trump feels like he must always fight for his own survival. This is a very dangerous disposition to have in a position of power.
Loneliness only exposes Trump to his utter emptiness. Donald Trump suffers from feelings of worthlessness and powerlessness far greater than what others would attribute to him. This is why Donald Trump cannot even contemplate the possibility that he is anything less than an expert in everything, and insists that he is the greatest president in history, the least racist person, and the most "stable genius" ever in human existence. This all shows the levels of insecurity and emptiness that Donald Trump is suffering from.
Racism, Inc.: How Donald Trump profits from xenophobia
Until we understand how Trump profits from his racism, we won’t be able to effectively counter it
SOPHIA A. MCCLENNEN - Salon
JULY 21, 2019 10:00AM (UTC)
...The more racist Trump is; the more successful he is. As disturbing as this may be to process, it is simply true. This means that calling out Trump for his racism, as important and ethically necessary and self-satisfying as it may be, is not going to make any sort of difference. But what might be of interest — and what might work as a counter-strategy — is calling attention to the various ways that he has profited from these tactics.
Trump benefits from his racism in four key ways. If we want to take his fascist tendencies seriously, we first need to understand how they work.
Trump’s racism bolsters his media coverage and his control of the media narrative
Every time Trump goes on a racist rant he dominates the media coverage. Each racist meltdown allows him to turn the news media focus entirely to him. From there, Trump and his supporters come to occupy a tremendous amount — if not all — of the news cycle. In fact, well before Trump was a political candidate his birther attacks on President Barack Obama gave him a significant stream of media coverage — one that may well have helped position him to win the Republican primary.[...]
Trump’s racism builds up strength with his supporters
The blatant racism of a number of Trump supporters has been an uncomfortable truth, but, again, these facts have been open and present for years now. Each time Trump has the gall to voice his racism publicly it only stokes and energizes the racist segments of society that support him.
---
But perhaps the most perplexing part of the story is the way this behavior plays with those Trump supporters who are not racist, or at least not openly and unashamedly racist. Recall when Samantha Bee interviewed a series of college-educated Trump supporters in March 2016, well before the general election. Her goal was to try to understand how this group of people could make a case for supporting Trump.
In case we need reminding, at the time, Trump was openly calling for his Muslim ban and he was also already associated with KKK leader David Duke. When Bee asked about those connections, the college-educated Trump supporters immediately came up with excuses for him. Then, when she asked the one African American member of the group about Trump’s openly racist comments, the interviewee simply answered that Trump “speaks in an old way.”
What she found, and what has since been confirmed in various studies, is that those Trump voters who don’t agree with his racism just brush it off, make excuses for it, blame negative media coverage, or say that they don’t think he really means it. What happens with this group is a classic case of confirmation bias. Thinking of Trump as racist is incongruent for these supporters, so they just won’t do it.
This means that when he goes off on a xenophobic rant he is able to energize his racist base while being ignored by his other supporters. He literally has nothing to lose.
Trump’s racism allows him to sow division and build loyalty
The one silver lining to Trump’s mainstreaming of racism may be the way that it can mobilize unity among the left. Days before his recent racist rant, the Democratic Party was in conflict with Nancy Pelosi expressing disdain for the very same congresswomen Trump would later attack. Trump’s attack on them, though, pulled the party back behind them in an effort to offer a united front.
---
Trump makes money off of his racism
Much of the critical focus on Trump’s racism centers on identity politics, political values, and notions of democracy. But possibly the strongest case against Trump’s racism is the way he makes money from it. While many Democratic politicians have called out Trump for his outrageous comments, few have underscored the way that Trump’s racism has had tangible economic benefits for him.
The Trump administration’s immigration policies have created a multi-billion dollar industry. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) uses a slew of private contractors, many of which have contributed to Trump’s campaign. As Truthout reports, ICE contracts with private security corporations to run some of the 250 immigrant detention facilities across the United States. And In These Times reports that ICE spent $1.7 billion on close to 5,000 contractors in 2017.
The top two private companies contracted to manage detained immigrants include The GEO Group and CoreCivic. Both have contributed to the Trump campaign.
Whether or not Trump is a direct recipient of campaign funds from these companies is less the point, though, because the overall move to privatize public operations is in keeping with Trump’s pro-corporate political agenda. While the privatization of prisons and detention facilities pre-dates the Trump era, there is little doubt that his administration has accelerated and expanded its reach. According to Bianca Tylek, director of the Corrections Accountability Project, “The immigration system is used as a vehicle to extract wealth from communities, or at the very least as a vehicle to launder taxpayer money into the private sector.”
Democratic presidential contender Elizabeth Warren has been one of the few candidates to emphasize that the core problem here is that of profit. As long as private contractors can generate revenue from this system, they will spend money on lobbyists and politicians to protect their business and they, too, can potentially stoke the racist flames that keep their business thriving.
One way to counter this trend is to call it out and to protest the companies connected to the detention industry. A growing group of protesters and activists has turned their focus to highlighting how various companies are profiting economically from institutionalized racism. A recent protest held in New York City, for example, centered on drawing attention to the ties between JPMorgan and the detention industry. In These Times reports that since Trump took office, JPMorgan has increased its stockholdings in Geo Group and CoreCivic 15,600 percent. They also reveal that JPMorgan has provided at least $167.5 million in debt financing to the two companies. Protests like the one held in New York help educate the public about these practices. Any effort to counteract Trump’s racist agenda will depend on making racist revenue more visible.
Trump profits from his racism, then, in four key ways. It helps him control the media, build loyalty, sow division, and make money while advancing his pro-corporate agenda. Until we grasp the various ways he benefits from racism, we aren’t going to make any progress in stopping it. That means that calling Trump racist isn't enough. It wasn't enough in 2016 and it will be even less so in 2020.
Trump benefits from his racism in four key ways. If we want to take his fascist tendencies seriously, we first need to understand how they work.
Trump’s racism bolsters his media coverage and his control of the media narrative
Every time Trump goes on a racist rant he dominates the media coverage. Each racist meltdown allows him to turn the news media focus entirely to him. From there, Trump and his supporters come to occupy a tremendous amount — if not all — of the news cycle. In fact, well before Trump was a political candidate his birther attacks on President Barack Obama gave him a significant stream of media coverage — one that may well have helped position him to win the Republican primary.[...]
Trump’s racism builds up strength with his supporters
The blatant racism of a number of Trump supporters has been an uncomfortable truth, but, again, these facts have been open and present for years now. Each time Trump has the gall to voice his racism publicly it only stokes and energizes the racist segments of society that support him.
---
But perhaps the most perplexing part of the story is the way this behavior plays with those Trump supporters who are not racist, or at least not openly and unashamedly racist. Recall when Samantha Bee interviewed a series of college-educated Trump supporters in March 2016, well before the general election. Her goal was to try to understand how this group of people could make a case for supporting Trump.
In case we need reminding, at the time, Trump was openly calling for his Muslim ban and he was also already associated with KKK leader David Duke. When Bee asked about those connections, the college-educated Trump supporters immediately came up with excuses for him. Then, when she asked the one African American member of the group about Trump’s openly racist comments, the interviewee simply answered that Trump “speaks in an old way.”
What she found, and what has since been confirmed in various studies, is that those Trump voters who don’t agree with his racism just brush it off, make excuses for it, blame negative media coverage, or say that they don’t think he really means it. What happens with this group is a classic case of confirmation bias. Thinking of Trump as racist is incongruent for these supporters, so they just won’t do it.
This means that when he goes off on a xenophobic rant he is able to energize his racist base while being ignored by his other supporters. He literally has nothing to lose.
Trump’s racism allows him to sow division and build loyalty
The one silver lining to Trump’s mainstreaming of racism may be the way that it can mobilize unity among the left. Days before his recent racist rant, the Democratic Party was in conflict with Nancy Pelosi expressing disdain for the very same congresswomen Trump would later attack. Trump’s attack on them, though, pulled the party back behind them in an effort to offer a united front.
---
Trump makes money off of his racism
Much of the critical focus on Trump’s racism centers on identity politics, political values, and notions of democracy. But possibly the strongest case against Trump’s racism is the way he makes money from it. While many Democratic politicians have called out Trump for his outrageous comments, few have underscored the way that Trump’s racism has had tangible economic benefits for him.
The Trump administration’s immigration policies have created a multi-billion dollar industry. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) uses a slew of private contractors, many of which have contributed to Trump’s campaign. As Truthout reports, ICE contracts with private security corporations to run some of the 250 immigrant detention facilities across the United States. And In These Times reports that ICE spent $1.7 billion on close to 5,000 contractors in 2017.
The top two private companies contracted to manage detained immigrants include The GEO Group and CoreCivic. Both have contributed to the Trump campaign.
Whether or not Trump is a direct recipient of campaign funds from these companies is less the point, though, because the overall move to privatize public operations is in keeping with Trump’s pro-corporate political agenda. While the privatization of prisons and detention facilities pre-dates the Trump era, there is little doubt that his administration has accelerated and expanded its reach. According to Bianca Tylek, director of the Corrections Accountability Project, “The immigration system is used as a vehicle to extract wealth from communities, or at the very least as a vehicle to launder taxpayer money into the private sector.”
Democratic presidential contender Elizabeth Warren has been one of the few candidates to emphasize that the core problem here is that of profit. As long as private contractors can generate revenue from this system, they will spend money on lobbyists and politicians to protect their business and they, too, can potentially stoke the racist flames that keep their business thriving.
One way to counter this trend is to call it out and to protest the companies connected to the detention industry. A growing group of protesters and activists has turned their focus to highlighting how various companies are profiting economically from institutionalized racism. A recent protest held in New York City, for example, centered on drawing attention to the ties between JPMorgan and the detention industry. In These Times reports that since Trump took office, JPMorgan has increased its stockholdings in Geo Group and CoreCivic 15,600 percent. They also reveal that JPMorgan has provided at least $167.5 million in debt financing to the two companies. Protests like the one held in New York help educate the public about these practices. Any effort to counteract Trump’s racist agenda will depend on making racist revenue more visible.
Trump profits from his racism, then, in four key ways. It helps him control the media, build loyalty, sow division, and make money while advancing his pro-corporate agenda. Until we grasp the various ways he benefits from racism, we aren’t going to make any progress in stopping it. That means that calling Trump racist isn't enough. It wasn't enough in 2016 and it will be even less so in 2020.
Trump’s racist screed against Omar was scripted and came off the teleprompter: CNN’s Camerota
July 18, 2019
By Tom Boggioni - Raw Story
Appearing on CNN’s “New Day,” New York Times White House correspondent Maggie Haberman said that Americans can expect more bashing of non-white lawmakers like Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) from now to election day in 2020 because Donald Trump’s campaign is going to be all about race.
Responding to the president’s rally in North Carolina that even CNN’s chyron referred to as “ugly,” the journalist said Trump’s campaign has flipped from touting the economy to one that is race-based — and it is all because of Trump’s racist tweets from last Sunday.
With host Alisyn Camerota noting that Trump’s Wednesday night comments on Omar — that led to a “send her back” chant from the crowd — were read straight from the teleprompter, and not off-the-cuff, Haberman said this is the first wave of Trump’s revved-up campaign for re-election.
“What happened last night at the rally was so instructive, I think,” host Camerota began. “He was going after these congresswomen in incendiary ways, and it was on teleprompter — he wasn’t just riffing. That means the incendiary stuff was written down, and that means they thought about it because it is a campaign strategy.”
“It’s not as if stoking racial tension has never been done before and it’s never worked before,” Haberman conceded. “Politicians do it because it works. Very few people run for re-election as incumbent presidents with an economy like this without talking about it, which is what this president does.”
“Yes, it is now a strategy,” she continued. “This was not a strategy when he tweeted this out on Sunday about they should go back to where they came from. He tweeted something as a visceral reaction to something he was reading and they had to reverse-engineer this as a plot of genius.”
“Look, he ran a campaign of division and stoking tensions and inflaming tensions in 2016. He’s going to make that look like a quiet stroll through the park based on yesterday,” she added.
Responding to the president’s rally in North Carolina that even CNN’s chyron referred to as “ugly,” the journalist said Trump’s campaign has flipped from touting the economy to one that is race-based — and it is all because of Trump’s racist tweets from last Sunday.
With host Alisyn Camerota noting that Trump’s Wednesday night comments on Omar — that led to a “send her back” chant from the crowd — were read straight from the teleprompter, and not off-the-cuff, Haberman said this is the first wave of Trump’s revved-up campaign for re-election.
“What happened last night at the rally was so instructive, I think,” host Camerota began. “He was going after these congresswomen in incendiary ways, and it was on teleprompter — he wasn’t just riffing. That means the incendiary stuff was written down, and that means they thought about it because it is a campaign strategy.”
“It’s not as if stoking racial tension has never been done before and it’s never worked before,” Haberman conceded. “Politicians do it because it works. Very few people run for re-election as incumbent presidents with an economy like this without talking about it, which is what this president does.”
“Yes, it is now a strategy,” she continued. “This was not a strategy when he tweeted this out on Sunday about they should go back to where they came from. He tweeted something as a visceral reaction to something he was reading and they had to reverse-engineer this as a plot of genius.”
“Look, he ran a campaign of division and stoking tensions and inflaming tensions in 2016. He’s going to make that look like a quiet stroll through the park based on yesterday,” she added.
A Canadian cartoonist was fired for this cartoon. Demovictory9 - Demo Undergound
Still waiting for the breaking point. Convinced it will NEVER come.
maxrandb - Demo Underground
7/15/19
I kept hearing that eventually, Donnie Shit for Brains would do something so craven and crass that there would be a massive backlash against him.
I keep hearing that Donnie Shit for Brains "is not representative of what America is, or what it stands for.
I keep hearing that Donnie Shit for Brains would eventually collapse under the weight of his own corruption. That eventually he would go so far that even Retrumplicans could not be able to support him.
I'm coming to the realization that all I've heard is complete bullshit... especially that "Donnie Shit for Brains doesn't represent what America really is, or what America stands for".
If what I've heard was true, there's no way Donnie Shit for Brains would be packing our judiciary branch with flaming racist and hateful Federalists Society nutbags.
If what I've heard was true, thousands of Hate Radio stations would NOT be broadcasting without a thousand people outside the studios protesting.
If what I've heard was true, Retrumplicans would be joining with Democrats to demand Donnie Shit for Brains impeachment.
See, the problem is that no matter how many times we say that this shitshow is "NOT representative of what America stands for", we're telling ourselves a lie.
I traveled all over this country and all over this world during my 30 years in the Navy.
Despite little pockets here and there, Donnie Shit for Brains IS America.
I wish I were wrong, but we need to stop kidding ourselves... this shitshow IS America. And what's sad is that this is how it's always been.
Founded on freedom, with millions enslaved.
Touted for values we have never demonstrated or adhered to.
Claiming moral superiority, but so far from a moral ethos that it's a fucking joke.
There are things that we could do to change that, but nibbling at the margins won't do it.
Like that great rock anthem says; "Meet the new boss... same as the old boss".
I keep hearing that Donnie Shit for Brains "is not representative of what America is, or what it stands for.
I keep hearing that Donnie Shit for Brains would eventually collapse under the weight of his own corruption. That eventually he would go so far that even Retrumplicans could not be able to support him.
I'm coming to the realization that all I've heard is complete bullshit... especially that "Donnie Shit for Brains doesn't represent what America really is, or what America stands for".
If what I've heard was true, there's no way Donnie Shit for Brains would be packing our judiciary branch with flaming racist and hateful Federalists Society nutbags.
If what I've heard was true, thousands of Hate Radio stations would NOT be broadcasting without a thousand people outside the studios protesting.
If what I've heard was true, Retrumplicans would be joining with Democrats to demand Donnie Shit for Brains impeachment.
See, the problem is that no matter how many times we say that this shitshow is "NOT representative of what America stands for", we're telling ourselves a lie.
I traveled all over this country and all over this world during my 30 years in the Navy.
Despite little pockets here and there, Donnie Shit for Brains IS America.
I wish I were wrong, but we need to stop kidding ourselves... this shitshow IS America. And what's sad is that this is how it's always been.
Founded on freedom, with millions enslaved.
Touted for values we have never demonstrated or adhered to.
Claiming moral superiority, but so far from a moral ethos that it's a fucking joke.
There are things that we could do to change that, but nibbling at the margins won't do it.
Like that great rock anthem says; "Meet the new boss... same as the old boss".
"On some great and glorious day..."
"On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron."
HL Mencken July 1920
Trump has brought ‘naked racism to the White House’ — and ‘Republicans absolutely love him for it’: Charles Blow
July 15, 2019
By Travis Gettys - Raw Story
President Donald Trump has long ago removed any doubt that he’s a “raging racist,” said columnist Charles Blow, but he continues to offer new reminders to appeal to the racists who support him.
The president launched racist attacks Sunday morning at the four Democratic lawmakers feuding with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and Blow wrote in his New York Times column argued that Trump’s tweets betrayed his white nationalist ideology.
“The central framing of this kind of thinking is that this is a white country, founded and built by white men, and destined to be maintained as a white country,” Blow wrote. “For anyone to be accepted as truly American they must assimilate and acquiesce to that narrative, to bow to that heritage and bend to those customs.”
White supremacy is based on a lie, Blow wrote, because the United States expanded through bloodshed and broken treaties with Native Americans, and built its wealth through enslaving blacks, and he argued that anti-Muslim bigotry and xenophobia were being folded into the anti-black racism that had always existed.
“White people and whiteness are the center of the Trump presidency,” Blow wrote. “His primary concern is to defend, protect and promote it. All that threatens it must be attacked and assaulted. Trump is bringing the force of the American presidency to the rescue of white supremacy. And, self-identified Republicans absolutely love him for it.”
“We are watching a very dark chapter in this nation’s history unfold in real time,” he added. “We are watching as a president returns naked racism to the White House. And we are watching as fellow citizens — possibly a third of them — reveal to us their open animus for us through their continued support of him.”
The president launched racist attacks Sunday morning at the four Democratic lawmakers feuding with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and Blow wrote in his New York Times column argued that Trump’s tweets betrayed his white nationalist ideology.
“The central framing of this kind of thinking is that this is a white country, founded and built by white men, and destined to be maintained as a white country,” Blow wrote. “For anyone to be accepted as truly American they must assimilate and acquiesce to that narrative, to bow to that heritage and bend to those customs.”
White supremacy is based on a lie, Blow wrote, because the United States expanded through bloodshed and broken treaties with Native Americans, and built its wealth through enslaving blacks, and he argued that anti-Muslim bigotry and xenophobia were being folded into the anti-black racism that had always existed.
“White people and whiteness are the center of the Trump presidency,” Blow wrote. “His primary concern is to defend, protect and promote it. All that threatens it must be attacked and assaulted. Trump is bringing the force of the American presidency to the rescue of white supremacy. And, self-identified Republicans absolutely love him for it.”
“We are watching a very dark chapter in this nation’s history unfold in real time,” he added. “We are watching as a president returns naked racism to the White House. And we are watching as fellow citizens — possibly a third of them — reveal to us their open animus for us through their continued support of him.”
At His Nutzoid Summit, Trump Admits He Stares at Twitter Instead of Working
The Rude Pundit
7/12/19
Yesterday, Donald Trump, who I occasionally feel nauseated remembering is still the president of the United States, hosted what was billed as a Social Media Summit at the White House. What really happened is that Trump invited a range of conservative idiots, inveterate assholes, festering fucknuts, conspiracy crazies, and Charlie Kirk to sit around and tell Trump how awesome he is while he reciprocated and then whined about them being censored. It was like when you go visit your grandpa and he's invited all his old racist friends over. Actually, it wasn't "like that." It pretty much was that, with the added bonus of villainous walrus Sebastian Gorka going apeshit on reporters.
Honestly, if intelligence could create energy, the vortex from the absence of it would have swallowed the Rose Garden.
In his completely insane remarks after the summit, where, one presumes, Trump walked around with his dick out and asked each of them to yank, telling them, "One of you is getting a special surprise" as circus music played and a shirtless Mick Mulvaney cackled in the corner as he pinched his nipples bloody, Trump completely missed the point of the "free" part of "free speech," saying, "Free speech is not when you see something good, and then you purposely write bad. To me, that’s very dangerous speech, and you become angry at it. But that’s not free speech." Freedom, to Trump, means free to agree with him.
But the main focus of his wayward ire was what he believes is censorship on Twitter and other social media platforms. See, sometimes he doesn't get as many likes and retweets as he thinks he should get. Trump said, no, really, "We got a lot of people. Way, way over 100 million, but I used to pick them up… And when I say 'used to,' I’m talking about a few months ago. I was picking them up, a hundred thousand people every, very short period of time. Now, it’s, I would say, ten times as long. And I notice things happening when I put out something—a good one, that people like, right? Good tweet. It goes up. It used to go up, it would say 7,000, 7,008, 7,000, 7,017, 7,024, 7,032, 7,044. Right? Now it goes, 7,000, 7,008, 6,998. Then they go, 7,009, 6,074." The audience of lepers and whores and leper whores booed the injustice of people undoing their "like."
Because we live in an odd version of Hell, he continued, "I never had that before. I used to watch it. It’d be like a rocket ship when I put out a beauty. Like when I said, remember I said somebody was spying on me? That thing was like a rocket. "
You got that, right? This is what the goddamn president is telling us he does. He tweets something and then watches the numbers on them. It's like the Nielsens of the damned for him. Trump needs those RTs and Likes to keep rolling up. He craves that validation, and he fears not having it, like an oxy freak getting to the bottom of the scrip bottle.
Then he revealed that he tweets just because he likes to see his shit on TV. Trump slurred, "I said watch, I’m going to do this. And I said, 'We recognize the Golan Heights as being part of Israel.' It was a big thing. I go, watch this: boom! I press it, and within two seconds: 'We have breaking news.' John Roberts of Fox was over. He said, 'We have breaking news. Please, break it up.' Doesn’t matter what they’re talking about, John does it. He breaks it up." Beyond obviously not understanding what the word "breaking" means in "breaking news," that's some scary shit right there. It's some fin de siecle megalomaniacal fuckery, like a cruel, inbred king executing a servant because he can.
So Trump, again, ostensibly the leader of the free world, says that he wastes his days thinking of tweets to fuck with the flow of the news cycle and watches to see how much people love him. Add to that his daily viewing of Fox and Friends and whatever fucking nonsense One America has on, and, really, except when he's in front of the cameras telling us shit like "You know, there’s a word called 'communism,'" except when he's glad-handing dictators and right-wing crazies and congressional fellaters, he's not doing a goddamn thing at his job.
It's pathetic. It's pathetic that he cares so much about his shitty tweets. And it's pathetic that I'm fucking relieved that he's so lazy and incompetent.
Honestly, if intelligence could create energy, the vortex from the absence of it would have swallowed the Rose Garden.
In his completely insane remarks after the summit, where, one presumes, Trump walked around with his dick out and asked each of them to yank, telling them, "One of you is getting a special surprise" as circus music played and a shirtless Mick Mulvaney cackled in the corner as he pinched his nipples bloody, Trump completely missed the point of the "free" part of "free speech," saying, "Free speech is not when you see something good, and then you purposely write bad. To me, that’s very dangerous speech, and you become angry at it. But that’s not free speech." Freedom, to Trump, means free to agree with him.
But the main focus of his wayward ire was what he believes is censorship on Twitter and other social media platforms. See, sometimes he doesn't get as many likes and retweets as he thinks he should get. Trump said, no, really, "We got a lot of people. Way, way over 100 million, but I used to pick them up… And when I say 'used to,' I’m talking about a few months ago. I was picking them up, a hundred thousand people every, very short period of time. Now, it’s, I would say, ten times as long. And I notice things happening when I put out something—a good one, that people like, right? Good tweet. It goes up. It used to go up, it would say 7,000, 7,008, 7,000, 7,017, 7,024, 7,032, 7,044. Right? Now it goes, 7,000, 7,008, 6,998. Then they go, 7,009, 6,074." The audience of lepers and whores and leper whores booed the injustice of people undoing their "like."
Because we live in an odd version of Hell, he continued, "I never had that before. I used to watch it. It’d be like a rocket ship when I put out a beauty. Like when I said, remember I said somebody was spying on me? That thing was like a rocket. "
You got that, right? This is what the goddamn president is telling us he does. He tweets something and then watches the numbers on them. It's like the Nielsens of the damned for him. Trump needs those RTs and Likes to keep rolling up. He craves that validation, and he fears not having it, like an oxy freak getting to the bottom of the scrip bottle.
Then he revealed that he tweets just because he likes to see his shit on TV. Trump slurred, "I said watch, I’m going to do this. And I said, 'We recognize the Golan Heights as being part of Israel.' It was a big thing. I go, watch this: boom! I press it, and within two seconds: 'We have breaking news.' John Roberts of Fox was over. He said, 'We have breaking news. Please, break it up.' Doesn’t matter what they’re talking about, John does it. He breaks it up." Beyond obviously not understanding what the word "breaking" means in "breaking news," that's some scary shit right there. It's some fin de siecle megalomaniacal fuckery, like a cruel, inbred king executing a servant because he can.
So Trump, again, ostensibly the leader of the free world, says that he wastes his days thinking of tweets to fuck with the flow of the news cycle and watches to see how much people love him. Add to that his daily viewing of Fox and Friends and whatever fucking nonsense One America has on, and, really, except when he's in front of the cameras telling us shit like "You know, there’s a word called 'communism,'" except when he's glad-handing dictators and right-wing crazies and congressional fellaters, he's not doing a goddamn thing at his job.
It's pathetic. It's pathetic that he cares so much about his shitty tweets. And it's pathetic that I'm fucking relieved that he's so lazy and incompetent.
‘The president is a sexual predator’: Conservative says GOP ‘wrote their fate’ by trading family values for Trump
July 9, 2019
By Bob Brigham - Raw Story
President Donald Trump is “a sexual predator” a veteran Republican declared on MSNBC on Tuesday.
“Deadline: White House” anchor Nicolle Wallace interviewed Peter Wehner, who served in the administrations of Republicans George W. Bush, George H.W. Bush and Ronald Reagan. He currently works as a senior fellow at the conservative think tank Ethics and Public Policy Center (EPPC).
Wallace asked Wehner why Republicans aren’t standing up to Donald Trump and Labor Secretary Alex Acosta in the wake of the shocking revelations about Jeffrey Epstein.
“Well, they’re nowhere to be found. But they haven’t been anywhere to be found with Donald Trump,” Wehner replied.
“Remember the context of this, Secretary Accosta is accused of not prosecuting a sexual predator — the president is a sexual predator,” he reminded.
“There are two dozen women who have accused him of sexual assault, so we have a president who is a sexual predator. The idea that he would be offended, morally or ethically troubled by anything that Acosta did is not going to happen,” he said.
“And it is extraordinary — both the silence of the Republican Party, I mean, this happened a while ago when they decided to hitch their wagon to Donald Trump and said that there was nothing that he was going to do say that they were going to object to, they wrote their fate,” he explained. “And there’s no bottom with him and so there’s no bottom with them.
“And once upon a time this was a party that appointed itself as a party of family values,” Wehner reminded.
“What a joke,” interjected Wallace, who served alongside Wehner in the W. Bush administration.
“Yeah,” Wehner said. “A joke and hypocrisy and just an extraordinary offense. I mean, these are young girls who are being sexually assaulted and they don’t care. And they’re siding with rich, powerful men against these kids — and the fact that they’re not blinking twice is such an indictment.”
“Deadline: White House” anchor Nicolle Wallace interviewed Peter Wehner, who served in the administrations of Republicans George W. Bush, George H.W. Bush and Ronald Reagan. He currently works as a senior fellow at the conservative think tank Ethics and Public Policy Center (EPPC).
Wallace asked Wehner why Republicans aren’t standing up to Donald Trump and Labor Secretary Alex Acosta in the wake of the shocking revelations about Jeffrey Epstein.
“Well, they’re nowhere to be found. But they haven’t been anywhere to be found with Donald Trump,” Wehner replied.
“Remember the context of this, Secretary Accosta is accused of not prosecuting a sexual predator — the president is a sexual predator,” he reminded.
“There are two dozen women who have accused him of sexual assault, so we have a president who is a sexual predator. The idea that he would be offended, morally or ethically troubled by anything that Acosta did is not going to happen,” he said.
“And it is extraordinary — both the silence of the Republican Party, I mean, this happened a while ago when they decided to hitch their wagon to Donald Trump and said that there was nothing that he was going to do say that they were going to object to, they wrote their fate,” he explained. “And there’s no bottom with him and so there’s no bottom with them.
“And once upon a time this was a party that appointed itself as a party of family values,” Wehner reminded.
“What a joke,” interjected Wallace, who served alongside Wehner in the W. Bush administration.
“Yeah,” Wehner said. “A joke and hypocrisy and just an extraordinary offense. I mean, these are young girls who are being sexually assaulted and they don’t care. And they’re siding with rich, powerful men against these kids — and the fact that they’re not blinking twice is such an indictment.”
money laundering, tax fraud/evasion in Panama!!!
Lawsuit over Trump tax evasion in Panama takes a strange turn
Disputes about confidentiality rankle both sides as the lawsuit moves forward.
CASEY MICHEL - Thinkprogress
JUL 2, 2019, 2:27 PM
From suspicions of money laundering, to watching his name vanish from the building’s facade, President Donald Trump’s former property in Panama has long served as one of the main headaches for the president’s ongoing business struggles since his ascension to the presidency.
Now, an ongoing lawsuit threatens to open a new chapter in the saga of the former Trump Ocean Club property — and fresh questions about the building’s finances.
The building, over which Ivanka Trump helped oversee construction and development, transferred to new owners last year, with Trump’s name being removed wholesale from the building. Led by majority owner Orestes Fintiklis, the new owners recently filed a lawsuit in the Southern District of New York alleging that they’d uncovered financial records showing that the Trump Organization had spent years dodging Panamanian taxes.
As The Washington Post summarized:
In the filing, Fintiklis does not give a dollar figure for the amount of taxes Trump allegedly evaded. But he says his company could now face “millions of dollars in liability” if Panama demands that it pay the taxes Trump did not. Fintiklis also asserts that the Panamanian authorities have audited the hotel’s books and “identified the failure to withhold and pay income taxes relating to Trump’s management fees.”
The filing claims that the Trump Organization lied about salary expenses, amid other financial shenanigans, in order to limit its tax burden. Fintiklis added that the Trump Organization misled his company prior to the purchase, claiming that the building stood at the fore of Panama’s luxury hotel market — even though, the Post added, Fitinklis said it was in reality “falling to the bottom of the market.” (The Trump Organization has denied the allegations.)
Just last week, the case took a strange turn, this time hinging on what documents can or should remain confidential.
In a letter first flagged by Courthouse News’ Adam Klasfeld, the defendants’ lawyers alleged that the Trump Organization’s legal team had proposed that certain documents — or potentially all of them — remain confidential. “Based on our conversations with counsel, we suspect that Defendants’ aim is to designate every document produced as ‘confidential’ or ‘highly confidential,’ which would preclude Plaintiffs’ representatives from being able to look at key documents,” the letter read.
According to the plaintiffs’ attorneys, the Trump Organization is apparently “worried about Mr. Fintiklis disclosing some sort of secret marketing information” to other hotels. But the letter states that there’s no real reason for such a drastic step, and that the Trump Organization’s legal team hasn’t explained why the proposed “restriction is required or even standard practice for this case.”
The Trump Organization’s legal team didn’t take long to respond. In a short, two-page letter on Monday, the defendants’ lawyers wrote that the initial letter from the plaintiffs was an “improperly-filed letter brief.” They acknowledged that the two sides had reached “an impasse regarding” potential confidentiality, and suggested an “informal conference” to hash things out, which the judge scheduled for July 17.
The debate over keeping all documents in the ongoing dispute about potential tax evasion confidential is just the latest in a line of bizarre developments surrounding the former Trump Ocean Club property. Not only has the building been credibly accused as the site of massive money laundering operations, but last year a management scuffle broke out at the building, with the new management kicking out the Trump Organization wholesale. Shortly thereafter, a Panamanian law firm representing the Trump Organization issued a letter to then-Panamanian President Juan Carlos Varela threatening potential “repercussions” to Panama if the government didn’t intervene on behalf of the Trump Organization.
All of these developments culminated last October in the public removal of Trump’s name from the front of the building, the latest blow to both the president’s brand and his standing abroad.
Now, an ongoing lawsuit threatens to open a new chapter in the saga of the former Trump Ocean Club property — and fresh questions about the building’s finances.
The building, over which Ivanka Trump helped oversee construction and development, transferred to new owners last year, with Trump’s name being removed wholesale from the building. Led by majority owner Orestes Fintiklis, the new owners recently filed a lawsuit in the Southern District of New York alleging that they’d uncovered financial records showing that the Trump Organization had spent years dodging Panamanian taxes.
As The Washington Post summarized:
In the filing, Fintiklis does not give a dollar figure for the amount of taxes Trump allegedly evaded. But he says his company could now face “millions of dollars in liability” if Panama demands that it pay the taxes Trump did not. Fintiklis also asserts that the Panamanian authorities have audited the hotel’s books and “identified the failure to withhold and pay income taxes relating to Trump’s management fees.”
The filing claims that the Trump Organization lied about salary expenses, amid other financial shenanigans, in order to limit its tax burden. Fintiklis added that the Trump Organization misled his company prior to the purchase, claiming that the building stood at the fore of Panama’s luxury hotel market — even though, the Post added, Fitinklis said it was in reality “falling to the bottom of the market.” (The Trump Organization has denied the allegations.)
Just last week, the case took a strange turn, this time hinging on what documents can or should remain confidential.
In a letter first flagged by Courthouse News’ Adam Klasfeld, the defendants’ lawyers alleged that the Trump Organization’s legal team had proposed that certain documents — or potentially all of them — remain confidential. “Based on our conversations with counsel, we suspect that Defendants’ aim is to designate every document produced as ‘confidential’ or ‘highly confidential,’ which would preclude Plaintiffs’ representatives from being able to look at key documents,” the letter read.
According to the plaintiffs’ attorneys, the Trump Organization is apparently “worried about Mr. Fintiklis disclosing some sort of secret marketing information” to other hotels. But the letter states that there’s no real reason for such a drastic step, and that the Trump Organization’s legal team hasn’t explained why the proposed “restriction is required or even standard practice for this case.”
The Trump Organization’s legal team didn’t take long to respond. In a short, two-page letter on Monday, the defendants’ lawyers wrote that the initial letter from the plaintiffs was an “improperly-filed letter brief.” They acknowledged that the two sides had reached “an impasse regarding” potential confidentiality, and suggested an “informal conference” to hash things out, which the judge scheduled for July 17.
The debate over keeping all documents in the ongoing dispute about potential tax evasion confidential is just the latest in a line of bizarre developments surrounding the former Trump Ocean Club property. Not only has the building been credibly accused as the site of massive money laundering operations, but last year a management scuffle broke out at the building, with the new management kicking out the Trump Organization wholesale. Shortly thereafter, a Panamanian law firm representing the Trump Organization issued a letter to then-Panamanian President Juan Carlos Varela threatening potential “repercussions” to Panama if the government didn’t intervene on behalf of the Trump Organization.
All of these developments culminated last October in the public removal of Trump’s name from the front of the building, the latest blow to both the president’s brand and his standing abroad.
Trump cruising to big Electoral College loss — according to model that predicted the 2018 blue wave
on July 1, 2019
By Travis Gettys - Raw Story
An election model that accurately predicted Democratic congressional gains last year is forecasting a big loss for President Donald Trump next year.
The election forecast model designed by Rachel Bitecofer, assistant director of the Wason Center for Public Policy at Christopher Newport University, predicts Trump will fall well short of the 270 electoral votes necessary to win re-election, reported the Washington Examiner.
Bitecofer’s model sees Trump losing the Electoral College by a 297-197 total after three key states — Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — flip back to the Democrats.
“Trump’s 2016 path to the White House was the political equivalent of getting dealt a Royal Flush in poker,” Bitecofer said. “It’s probably not replicable in 2020 with an agitated Democratic electorate.”
An energized Democratic base would most likely drown out a predicted increase in Republican voters in 2020, according to Bitecofer.
“The country’s hyperpartisan and polarized environment has largely set the conditions of the 2020 election in stone,” Bitecofer said. “The complacent electorate of 2016, who were convinced Trump would never be president, has been replaced with the terrified electorate of 2020. Under my model, that distinction is not only important, it is everything,” she added.
Bitecofer’s model accurately predicted a 42-seat pickup for Democrats in the House, where they actually gained 40 seats.
The election forecast model designed by Rachel Bitecofer, assistant director of the Wason Center for Public Policy at Christopher Newport University, predicts Trump will fall well short of the 270 electoral votes necessary to win re-election, reported the Washington Examiner.
Bitecofer’s model sees Trump losing the Electoral College by a 297-197 total after three key states — Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — flip back to the Democrats.
“Trump’s 2016 path to the White House was the political equivalent of getting dealt a Royal Flush in poker,” Bitecofer said. “It’s probably not replicable in 2020 with an agitated Democratic electorate.”
An energized Democratic base would most likely drown out a predicted increase in Republican voters in 2020, according to Bitecofer.
“The country’s hyperpartisan and polarized environment has largely set the conditions of the 2020 election in stone,” Bitecofer said. “The complacent electorate of 2016, who were convinced Trump would never be president, has been replaced with the terrified electorate of 2020. Under my model, that distinction is not only important, it is everything,” she added.
Bitecofer’s model accurately predicted a 42-seat pickup for Democrats in the House, where they actually gained 40 seats.
just a classless, stupid, motherfucker!!!
Trump just publicly proved he couldn’t pass a middle-school civics test
He thinks "Western liberalism" literally means liberals on the west coast.
REBEKAH ENTRALGO - Thinkprogress
JUN 29, 2019, 12:50 PM
President Donald Trump embarrassed the country yet again on the international stage this past week during the G20 summit. Speaking to reporters in Osaka, Japan where the summit was held, Trump displayed a complete lack of understanding when it comes to basic history and political terminology.
When asked by The New York Times about Russian president Vladimir Putin’s comments about Western liberalism being “obsolete,” Trump took that to mean literally liberals living on the west coast of the United States.
“He’s sees what’s going on, I guess, if you look at what’s happening in Los Angeles, where it’s so sad to look, and what’s happening in San Francisco and a couple of other cities, which are run by an extraordinary group of liberal people,” Trump told the Times.
“I don’t know what they’re thinking,” he added. “But when you look at Los Angeles, when you look at San Francisco, when you look at some of the other cities — and not a lot, not a lot — but you don’t want it to spread.”
What Putin was referring to, of course, is liberalism in the Western world, which consists most of Europe and the United States. In this usage, “liberalism” refers not to progressive or leftist policies, but to individual rights, equality before the law, and democracy and consent to be governed, in contrast to a dictatorship or populism or minority rule. In recent European Union elections, however, nationalist, populist parties have been gaining influence in countries like Italy and Poland. That is what Putin meant by those comments, not what liberal politicians in California or Washington state are doing.
This was hardlyTrump’s only flub during the Saturday’s news conference. He was asked by ABC News about an exchange between former Vice President Joe Biden and Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) in Thursday’s Democratic presidential debate over busing. “Busing” refers to the practice of transporting children outside of their geographic school districts in order to help integrate schools. After the Supreme Court struck down school segregation in 1954, some black children were sent to white schools and vice-versa, in order to integrate school systems.
Trump’s made clear he thought the term “busing” meant using a bus to commute to school.
“You know, there aren’t that many ways you’re going to get people to schools. So this is something that’s been done. In some cases, it’s been done with a hammer instead of a velvet glove. And, you know, that’s part of it [….] But it is certainly a primary method of getting people to schools.”
When asked by The New York Times about Russian president Vladimir Putin’s comments about Western liberalism being “obsolete,” Trump took that to mean literally liberals living on the west coast of the United States.
“He’s sees what’s going on, I guess, if you look at what’s happening in Los Angeles, where it’s so sad to look, and what’s happening in San Francisco and a couple of other cities, which are run by an extraordinary group of liberal people,” Trump told the Times.
“I don’t know what they’re thinking,” he added. “But when you look at Los Angeles, when you look at San Francisco, when you look at some of the other cities — and not a lot, not a lot — but you don’t want it to spread.”
What Putin was referring to, of course, is liberalism in the Western world, which consists most of Europe and the United States. In this usage, “liberalism” refers not to progressive or leftist policies, but to individual rights, equality before the law, and democracy and consent to be governed, in contrast to a dictatorship or populism or minority rule. In recent European Union elections, however, nationalist, populist parties have been gaining influence in countries like Italy and Poland. That is what Putin meant by those comments, not what liberal politicians in California or Washington state are doing.
This was hardlyTrump’s only flub during the Saturday’s news conference. He was asked by ABC News about an exchange between former Vice President Joe Biden and Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) in Thursday’s Democratic presidential debate over busing. “Busing” refers to the practice of transporting children outside of their geographic school districts in order to help integrate schools. After the Supreme Court struck down school segregation in 1954, some black children were sent to white schools and vice-versa, in order to integrate school systems.
Trump’s made clear he thought the term “busing” meant using a bus to commute to school.
“You know, there aren’t that many ways you’re going to get people to schools. So this is something that’s been done. In some cases, it’s been done with a hammer instead of a velvet glove. And, you know, that’s part of it [….] But it is certainly a primary method of getting people to schools.”
Russia is more credible than trump administration!!!
Russia contradicts Trump administration by saying downed US drone was in Iranian air space
Moscow also claims evidence Tehran attacked oil tankers in Gulf of Oman was of poor quality
Tom Embury-Dennis - Independent.(UK)
6/25/19
Russia has military intelligence that shows a US drone was in Iranian air space when it was shot down, the secretary of the country’s Security Council has said.
Speaking at a briefing for journalists in Jerusalem, Nikolai Patrushev also said evidence presented by the US alleging Tehran was behind attacks on oil tankers in the Gulf of Oman was of poor quality and unprofessional.
Mr Patrushev spoke to reporters after a three-way meeting with his Russian and Israeli counterparts in Jerusalem. He said Iran - an ally of Russia - had not briefed Moscow about the incident, but that the Russian Defense Ministry had concluded the drone entered Iranian airspace.
He said: "We have not seen any proof otherwise."
Mr Patrushev’s comments came after the US imposed new sanctionstargeting Iran’s supreme leader and other senior officials, which US president Donald Trump said was a “proportionate response to Iran’s increasingly provocative actions”.
The US government claims one of those actions was the “unprovoked” shooting down of a US navy RQ-4A Global Hawk in international airspace over the Strait of Hormuz.
Iran said the drone, with a wingspan larger than a Boeing 737 and costing more than over $100m (£79m), had violated its territorial airspace – a claim now supported by Moscow.
Either way, it marked the first time Iran had struck the US military, which released a set of coordinates it claimed the drone was shot down at.
The US has also blamed Iran for attacks on two oil tankers earlier this month near the Strait of Hormuz, though US officials have so far provided publicly only shaky evidence for the claim, which Iran denies.
US disarmament ambassador Robert Wood said Mr Trump was leaving a path open to diplomacy, but that Iran would be making a mistake if it interprets restraint for weakness.
Mr Trump had last week ordered reprisal air strikes over the downed drone, but called them off at the last minute when he was told of the likely resulting loss of life.
On Tuesday, Iran’s foreign ministry said the sanctions on figures including the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei would mean the permanent closure of diplomatic channels between Tehran and Washington.
Iranian president Hassan Rouhani later called the penalties “idiotic” and said the White House was “afflicted by mental retardation”.
Tensions have been mounting in the Gulf since Mr Trump withdrew the US from a 2015 multilateral deal in which Iran agreed to limit its nuclear programme in return for the lifting of crippling economic sanctions.
On Tuesday, the UK, Germany and France issued a joint statement calling for “de-escalation and dialogue” amid “grave concern” about increased tensions in the region.
They also reiterated their commitment to the 2015 nuclear deal, and urged “all sides to do the same”.
“It is in everyone’s interest to show restraint and avoid any actions that would undermine this vital pillar of the non-proliferation regime and of our collective security,” the statement said.
RELATED: Iran says Trump's White House 'afflicted by mental retardation' in protest at sanctions
Iranian president Hassan Rouhani has said the White House is “afflicted by mental retardation” after the Trump administration imposed sanctions on the country’s supreme leader. In a live televised address, Mr Rouhani branded the sanctions against A ... (The Independent)
Speaking at a briefing for journalists in Jerusalem, Nikolai Patrushev also said evidence presented by the US alleging Tehran was behind attacks on oil tankers in the Gulf of Oman was of poor quality and unprofessional.
Mr Patrushev spoke to reporters after a three-way meeting with his Russian and Israeli counterparts in Jerusalem. He said Iran - an ally of Russia - had not briefed Moscow about the incident, but that the Russian Defense Ministry had concluded the drone entered Iranian airspace.
He said: "We have not seen any proof otherwise."
Mr Patrushev’s comments came after the US imposed new sanctionstargeting Iran’s supreme leader and other senior officials, which US president Donald Trump said was a “proportionate response to Iran’s increasingly provocative actions”.
The US government claims one of those actions was the “unprovoked” shooting down of a US navy RQ-4A Global Hawk in international airspace over the Strait of Hormuz.
Iran said the drone, with a wingspan larger than a Boeing 737 and costing more than over $100m (£79m), had violated its territorial airspace – a claim now supported by Moscow.
Either way, it marked the first time Iran had struck the US military, which released a set of coordinates it claimed the drone was shot down at.
The US has also blamed Iran for attacks on two oil tankers earlier this month near the Strait of Hormuz, though US officials have so far provided publicly only shaky evidence for the claim, which Iran denies.
US disarmament ambassador Robert Wood said Mr Trump was leaving a path open to diplomacy, but that Iran would be making a mistake if it interprets restraint for weakness.
Mr Trump had last week ordered reprisal air strikes over the downed drone, but called them off at the last minute when he was told of the likely resulting loss of life.
On Tuesday, Iran’s foreign ministry said the sanctions on figures including the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei would mean the permanent closure of diplomatic channels between Tehran and Washington.
Iranian president Hassan Rouhani later called the penalties “idiotic” and said the White House was “afflicted by mental retardation”.
Tensions have been mounting in the Gulf since Mr Trump withdrew the US from a 2015 multilateral deal in which Iran agreed to limit its nuclear programme in return for the lifting of crippling economic sanctions.
On Tuesday, the UK, Germany and France issued a joint statement calling for “de-escalation and dialogue” amid “grave concern” about increased tensions in the region.
They also reiterated their commitment to the 2015 nuclear deal, and urged “all sides to do the same”.
“It is in everyone’s interest to show restraint and avoid any actions that would undermine this vital pillar of the non-proliferation regime and of our collective security,” the statement said.
RELATED: Iran says Trump's White House 'afflicted by mental retardation' in protest at sanctions
Iranian president Hassan Rouhani has said the White House is “afflicted by mental retardation” after the Trump administration imposed sanctions on the country’s supreme leader. In a live televised address, Mr Rouhani branded the sanctions against A ... (The Independent)
Trump flips out and threatens ‘obliteration’ after Iran calls him retarded
June 25, 2019
By Brad Reed - Raw Story
President Donald Trump on Tuesday angrily hit back at Iran after the nation accused him of being “retarded.”
Writing on Twitter, the president accused Iran of making a “very ignorant and insulting statement” against him, which he said “only shows that they do not understand reality.”
The president then threatened the nation with “obliteration” if it didn’t wise up.
“Any attack by Iran on anything American will be met with great and overwhelming force,” he wrote. “In some areas, overwhelming will mean obliteration. No more John Kerry & Obama!”
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said this week that Trump’s latest sanctions against Iran would not change his government’s behavior and he said it showed a total lack of strategy on the part of the American government.
“The White House actions mean it is mentally retarded,” Rouhani said, according to a translation from Al Jazeera English.
Donald J. Trump✔
@realDonaldTrump
· 34m
Replying to @realDonaldTrump
....The wonderful Iranian people are suffering, and for no reason at all. Their leadership spends all of its money on Terror, and little on anything else. The U.S. has not forgotten Iran’s use of IED’s & EFP’s (bombs), which killed 2000 Americans, and wounded many more...
Donald J. Trump✔
@realDonaldTrump
....Iran’s very ignorant and insulting statement, put out today, only shows that they do not understand reality. Any attack by Iran on anything American will be met with great and overwhelming force. In some areas, overwhelming will mean obliteration. No more John Kerry & Obama!
7:42 AM - Jun 25, 2019
Writing on Twitter, the president accused Iran of making a “very ignorant and insulting statement” against him, which he said “only shows that they do not understand reality.”
The president then threatened the nation with “obliteration” if it didn’t wise up.
“Any attack by Iran on anything American will be met with great and overwhelming force,” he wrote. “In some areas, overwhelming will mean obliteration. No more John Kerry & Obama!”
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said this week that Trump’s latest sanctions against Iran would not change his government’s behavior and he said it showed a total lack of strategy on the part of the American government.
“The White House actions mean it is mentally retarded,” Rouhani said, according to a translation from Al Jazeera English.
Donald J. Trump✔
@realDonaldTrump
· 34m
Replying to @realDonaldTrump
....The wonderful Iranian people are suffering, and for no reason at all. Their leadership spends all of its money on Terror, and little on anything else. The U.S. has not forgotten Iran’s use of IED’s & EFP’s (bombs), which killed 2000 Americans, and wounded many more...
Donald J. Trump✔
@realDonaldTrump
....Iran’s very ignorant and insulting statement, put out today, only shows that they do not understand reality. Any attack by Iran on anything American will be met with great and overwhelming force. In some areas, overwhelming will mean obliteration. No more John Kerry & Obama!
7:42 AM - Jun 25, 2019
Soph0571 - demo underground. ....a Picasso of pettiness; a Shakespeare of shit.
MSNBC Pundit’s Truth Bomb: Trump Appeal All About Racism
On Deadline White House, Donny Deutsch identifies what Trump 2016 was really about, and it's no different now. In fact, it's worse.
By Aliza Worthington - Crooks & Liars
6/19/19 5:36am
Nicolle Wallace and her panel discussed Trump's ridiculousness regarding the new polling numbers showing him doing pretty poorly in comparison to several of the 491 Democratic candidates running for president in 2020. To be sure, there's lots of material there, since adding Trump to any topic of conversation increases the ridiculousness ratio exponentially.
But enough with the math talk. The Deadline White House crew was discussing why the latest polls show Trump doing badly against the Dems in match-ups, and Donny Deutsch tried to throw cold water on the whole thing.
I want to caution everybody about these polls. When I see polls that says Elizabeth Warren beating or even with Donald Trump in Texas, I say, "No." I love Elizabeth Warren, that's just not true. You know it, I know it. To me, more than ever, the first time around in the polls we missed by a few points because people were guilty about admitting they were voting for trump. They're MORE guilty now. If you really think about this, think about the way polls are conducted. And, particularly because I believe it's all about racism, Make America Great Again was Make America White Again, and he keeps going down and down. Think about it. A stranger called you up and now you're basically endorsing this behavior. I think these polls are probably less accurate than any polls in the history of polling. Doesn't mean he's in trouble but not to this extent.
You don't say! All Trump was ever about was racism? And people were too embarrassed to say so over the phone to pollsters? Well, that's an interesting take, and I agree with some of it...namely that Trump is all racism all the time, and I so appreciate any and all of my fellow white people who shout that from the rooftops as often as possible. So, sincerely, it's great to hear Deutsch that point so clearly. And he's absolutely correct that polls are ever inaccurate and not to be relied upon — especially this early.
I'm not sure I buy that people are embarrassed to say they support him, though. Especially given the uptick in hate crime since his 2015 campaign and 2016 election. Especially given the number of Proud Boys who showed up at his rally in Orlando. Especially given the fact that the only thing WORKING for him is his racism.
Listen, maybe there are certain segments of society that support Trump and also recognize that it's unsavory or impolitic to express that affinity publicly. And to those people, we say, "Fuck your mealy-mouth hypocritical racist psycho greedy @sses." But in the privacy of their own home, with the anonymity of a phone poll provides? I doubt these cowards would bother to hold back their opinions just to be polite.
But enough with the math talk. The Deadline White House crew was discussing why the latest polls show Trump doing badly against the Dems in match-ups, and Donny Deutsch tried to throw cold water on the whole thing.
I want to caution everybody about these polls. When I see polls that says Elizabeth Warren beating or even with Donald Trump in Texas, I say, "No." I love Elizabeth Warren, that's just not true. You know it, I know it. To me, more than ever, the first time around in the polls we missed by a few points because people were guilty about admitting they were voting for trump. They're MORE guilty now. If you really think about this, think about the way polls are conducted. And, particularly because I believe it's all about racism, Make America Great Again was Make America White Again, and he keeps going down and down. Think about it. A stranger called you up and now you're basically endorsing this behavior. I think these polls are probably less accurate than any polls in the history of polling. Doesn't mean he's in trouble but not to this extent.
You don't say! All Trump was ever about was racism? And people were too embarrassed to say so over the phone to pollsters? Well, that's an interesting take, and I agree with some of it...namely that Trump is all racism all the time, and I so appreciate any and all of my fellow white people who shout that from the rooftops as often as possible. So, sincerely, it's great to hear Deutsch that point so clearly. And he's absolutely correct that polls are ever inaccurate and not to be relied upon — especially this early.
I'm not sure I buy that people are embarrassed to say they support him, though. Especially given the uptick in hate crime since his 2015 campaign and 2016 election. Especially given the number of Proud Boys who showed up at his rally in Orlando. Especially given the fact that the only thing WORKING for him is his racism.
Listen, maybe there are certain segments of society that support Trump and also recognize that it's unsavory or impolitic to express that affinity publicly. And to those people, we say, "Fuck your mealy-mouth hypocritical racist psycho greedy @sses." But in the privacy of their own home, with the anonymity of a phone poll provides? I doubt these cowards would bother to hold back their opinions just to be polite.
Trump being a ‘compulsive liar and erratic ignoramus’ is why he failed on Iran: Conservative columnist
June 17, 2019
By Bob Brigham - Raw Story
President Donald Trump’s highly-criticized decision to withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal has resulted as was warned, with the country reviving its nuclear program, a conservative columnist explained in The Washington Post on Monday.
Conservative Max Boot took a victory lap in the hard-hitting column, reminding that he had signed a March 2016 letter by 121 Republican foreign policy analysts warning about Trump’s approach.
“I wish we had been wrong, but we were all too right,” Boot wrote.
“Trump has shown no ability to grow in office; but then it’s hard to learn if you all you read is Fox News chyrons. He is today the same compulsive liar and erratic ignoramus he was at the start of the 2016 campaign,” Boot said. “Only now, the stakes are much higher.”
“Trump is commander in chief as the United States is locked on a collision course with the Islamic Republic of Iran. The crisis in the Persian Gulf shows the danger of having a president who is so unfit for office,” he explained. “Indeed, this crisis is largely of Trump’s own making.”
“The administration has implemented punishing sanctions that have cut Iran’s oil exports by more than half. The Iranian government considers this an act of ‘economic war,’ and it has responded like most nations under attack — not by surrendering but by hitting back,” he noted.
“What did Trump think would happen when he pulled out of the nuclear deal? Or did he think at all?” he wondered. “Most analysts warned that the move would increase the risk of Iran’s restarting its nuclear program and of war breaking out — and it has.”
“The United States cannot successfully deal with a menace such as Iran when it is led by a president with no credibility or moral standing either at home or abroad. U.S. allies distrust Trump’s claims of Iranian responsibility for the tanker attacks and bristle at Trump’s unilateralism,” he said.
“According to the New York Times, even Trump’s own intelligence and military chiefs don’t trust him enough to share details of U.S. cyberoperations against Russia. If Trump’s own subordinates don’t trust him, how can the rest of the country or the world?” Boot asked.
Read the full column.
Conservative Max Boot took a victory lap in the hard-hitting column, reminding that he had signed a March 2016 letter by 121 Republican foreign policy analysts warning about Trump’s approach.
“I wish we had been wrong, but we were all too right,” Boot wrote.
“Trump has shown no ability to grow in office; but then it’s hard to learn if you all you read is Fox News chyrons. He is today the same compulsive liar and erratic ignoramus he was at the start of the 2016 campaign,” Boot said. “Only now, the stakes are much higher.”
“Trump is commander in chief as the United States is locked on a collision course with the Islamic Republic of Iran. The crisis in the Persian Gulf shows the danger of having a president who is so unfit for office,” he explained. “Indeed, this crisis is largely of Trump’s own making.”
“The administration has implemented punishing sanctions that have cut Iran’s oil exports by more than half. The Iranian government considers this an act of ‘economic war,’ and it has responded like most nations under attack — not by surrendering but by hitting back,” he noted.
“What did Trump think would happen when he pulled out of the nuclear deal? Or did he think at all?” he wondered. “Most analysts warned that the move would increase the risk of Iran’s restarting its nuclear program and of war breaking out — and it has.”
“The United States cannot successfully deal with a menace such as Iran when it is led by a president with no credibility or moral standing either at home or abroad. U.S. allies distrust Trump’s claims of Iranian responsibility for the tanker attacks and bristle at Trump’s unilateralism,” he said.
“According to the New York Times, even Trump’s own intelligence and military chiefs don’t trust him enough to share details of U.S. cyberoperations against Russia. If Trump’s own subordinates don’t trust him, how can the rest of the country or the world?” Boot asked.
Read the full column.
The Best People review: how Trump flooded the swamp
Lloyd Green
The Guardian
Sun 16 Jun 2019 01.00 EDT
The swamp remains fetid. Just blocks away from the White House, the Trump International Hotel hoovers greenbacks from foreign governments. On the west coast, word seeps out that the president sold his Beverly Hills mansion at an inflated price to a Virgin Islands-registered company linked to an Indonesian businessman-cum-Trump business partner. From New York, reports that a Kushner family investment vehicle recycles offshore cash and petrodollars.
So much for America First and the emoluments clause.
At the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue, Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader, together with Elaine Chao, his wife and Trump’s secretary of transportation, have transformed their day jobs into a taxpayer-fundedfamily business. Chao reportedly acts as a human “bridge” to the Chinese government on behalf of her kin’s China-centric maritime ventures. The Department of Transportation plays adjunct to her husband’s re-election bid.
This is what American kakistocracy looks like.
Alexander Nazaryan’s The Best People is another story for our turbulent times. Subtitled Trump’s Cabinet and the Siege on Washington, the Yahoo News correspondent’s portrait of Trump and his world receives direct assists from an on-the-record interview with the president, from Steve Bannon and from sundry government officials and spectators.
Few look good. Delusion and disappointment abound. Trump admits that some of his appointees were “clinkers”. Yet the president boasts that “there are those that say we have one of the finest cabinets”.
Trump is also captured blaming Kellyanne Conway for Bob Woodward’s less than flattering picture of him in Fear, the Washington Post man’s latest tale of a dysfunctional administration and a wrath-filled president. With Conway in the room, Trump tells Nazaryan she failed to advise him that Woodward had “asked 10 times for a meeting”. Had Conway conveyed the message, Trump asserts, Fear “would have been a little bit of a different book”.
Perhaps. The same way the Mueller report would have been a different kind of report if Trump had faced off against the special counsel.
These days, Conway also runs the gauntlet of her husband’s anti-Trump tweets and pro-impeachment op-eds and an official recommendation that she be bounced from the West Wing for violating the Hatch Act. Apparently, Conway went way too far in blurring the line between her day job and electoral politics.
But in Trumpworld, so what? Bet on her staying where she is. The law is meant for suckers and others.
Bannon, the brains behind Trump’s election upset, once a senior adviser, casts a wide and generally damning net: “Here’s the brutal reality … There was not a deep bench of talent that could step in to the government and run things.” As to be expected he unloads on Chris Christie, the former New Jersey governor and first head of the Trump transition. But he also dumps on Steve Mnuchin, the treasury secretary, calling him an “errand boy” for Stephen Schwarzman, the billionaire behind the Blackstone Group who is also a Trump buddy.
In his takedown of Mnuchin, Bannon adds: “I thought Wall Street would go through fucking conniptions because he’s not a heavy hitter.” He may have spoken too soon. Mnuchin is now tasked with negotiating the debt ceiling and budget in the shadow of the 2020 campaign. A hunch: Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer will eat him alive.
Bannon has kind words for Don McGahn, the former White House counsel, who was ultimately shoved out the door and shared a lawyer with Bannon. Ladling out praise, Bannon refers to McGahn packing the bench with conservatives, undoing the legacy of the New Deal and gutting the so-called administrative state, making him the “most significant White House counsel in the history of the republic” with the exception FDR and Harry Truman’s guy, Samuel Rosenman.
The Best People also lays out the fates of the “formers”, cabinet officials who were not long for the world of government. There is Tom Price, the former health secretary; there is Ryan Zinke, the former secretary of the interior; and there is Scott Pruitt, the former director of the Environmental Protection Agency. None had any business being in the cabinet. Ever.
At best they were clueless, at worst self-aggrandizing and brazenly venal. As Elijah Cummings, now chair of House committee on oversight and reform, exclaimed: “I’ve never seen anything like this.”
If all this sounds chaotic, it was and remains so. The Best People also describes how during the transition, Trump’s “beachhead” teams took a lackadaisical approach to scoping out their agencies and departments, emitting little more than mere impressions of ineptitude and a dearth of seriousness. One official at the Department of Housing and Urban Development complained that Trump’s team possessed only an “‘elementary understanding’ of federal housing policy”. The nuts and bolts of government were not their thing. Then again, Trump is not much of a reader.
Members of the transition left to become lobbyists, notwithstanding a supposed lobbying ban. As Politico reported in May 2017: “Three months after Trump moved into the White House, at least nine people who worked on his transition have registered as lobbyists.” Trump promised to drain the swamp. Instead, it has grown murkier than ever.
Although unemployment sits under 4% and the economy grows, the electorate is dissatisfied. Early polls show Trump down by double digits to Joe Biden. As for other Democrats, the numbers project a foot race. In other words, Trump’s unpopularity has placed a ceiling on his upside. The tumult that characterizes his tenure has eclipsed the economy, arguably his signature achievement.
And yet, as The Best People impresses upon its readers, Trump was repeatedly warned that governing is not the same as campaigning. Routinized order, ethics and structure all matter. The seeds of the president’s possible electoral downfall were sown with his election in 2016. If not earlier.
So much for America First and the emoluments clause.
At the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue, Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader, together with Elaine Chao, his wife and Trump’s secretary of transportation, have transformed their day jobs into a taxpayer-fundedfamily business. Chao reportedly acts as a human “bridge” to the Chinese government on behalf of her kin’s China-centric maritime ventures. The Department of Transportation plays adjunct to her husband’s re-election bid.
This is what American kakistocracy looks like.
Alexander Nazaryan’s The Best People is another story for our turbulent times. Subtitled Trump’s Cabinet and the Siege on Washington, the Yahoo News correspondent’s portrait of Trump and his world receives direct assists from an on-the-record interview with the president, from Steve Bannon and from sundry government officials and spectators.
Few look good. Delusion and disappointment abound. Trump admits that some of his appointees were “clinkers”. Yet the president boasts that “there are those that say we have one of the finest cabinets”.
Trump is also captured blaming Kellyanne Conway for Bob Woodward’s less than flattering picture of him in Fear, the Washington Post man’s latest tale of a dysfunctional administration and a wrath-filled president. With Conway in the room, Trump tells Nazaryan she failed to advise him that Woodward had “asked 10 times for a meeting”. Had Conway conveyed the message, Trump asserts, Fear “would have been a little bit of a different book”.
Perhaps. The same way the Mueller report would have been a different kind of report if Trump had faced off against the special counsel.
These days, Conway also runs the gauntlet of her husband’s anti-Trump tweets and pro-impeachment op-eds and an official recommendation that she be bounced from the West Wing for violating the Hatch Act. Apparently, Conway went way too far in blurring the line between her day job and electoral politics.
But in Trumpworld, so what? Bet on her staying where she is. The law is meant for suckers and others.
Bannon, the brains behind Trump’s election upset, once a senior adviser, casts a wide and generally damning net: “Here’s the brutal reality … There was not a deep bench of talent that could step in to the government and run things.” As to be expected he unloads on Chris Christie, the former New Jersey governor and first head of the Trump transition. But he also dumps on Steve Mnuchin, the treasury secretary, calling him an “errand boy” for Stephen Schwarzman, the billionaire behind the Blackstone Group who is also a Trump buddy.
In his takedown of Mnuchin, Bannon adds: “I thought Wall Street would go through fucking conniptions because he’s not a heavy hitter.” He may have spoken too soon. Mnuchin is now tasked with negotiating the debt ceiling and budget in the shadow of the 2020 campaign. A hunch: Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer will eat him alive.
Bannon has kind words for Don McGahn, the former White House counsel, who was ultimately shoved out the door and shared a lawyer with Bannon. Ladling out praise, Bannon refers to McGahn packing the bench with conservatives, undoing the legacy of the New Deal and gutting the so-called administrative state, making him the “most significant White House counsel in the history of the republic” with the exception FDR and Harry Truman’s guy, Samuel Rosenman.
The Best People also lays out the fates of the “formers”, cabinet officials who were not long for the world of government. There is Tom Price, the former health secretary; there is Ryan Zinke, the former secretary of the interior; and there is Scott Pruitt, the former director of the Environmental Protection Agency. None had any business being in the cabinet. Ever.
At best they were clueless, at worst self-aggrandizing and brazenly venal. As Elijah Cummings, now chair of House committee on oversight and reform, exclaimed: “I’ve never seen anything like this.”
If all this sounds chaotic, it was and remains so. The Best People also describes how during the transition, Trump’s “beachhead” teams took a lackadaisical approach to scoping out their agencies and departments, emitting little more than mere impressions of ineptitude and a dearth of seriousness. One official at the Department of Housing and Urban Development complained that Trump’s team possessed only an “‘elementary understanding’ of federal housing policy”. The nuts and bolts of government were not their thing. Then again, Trump is not much of a reader.
Members of the transition left to become lobbyists, notwithstanding a supposed lobbying ban. As Politico reported in May 2017: “Three months after Trump moved into the White House, at least nine people who worked on his transition have registered as lobbyists.” Trump promised to drain the swamp. Instead, it has grown murkier than ever.
Although unemployment sits under 4% and the economy grows, the electorate is dissatisfied. Early polls show Trump down by double digits to Joe Biden. As for other Democrats, the numbers project a foot race. In other words, Trump’s unpopularity has placed a ceiling on his upside. The tumult that characterizes his tenure has eclipsed the economy, arguably his signature achievement.
And yet, as The Best People impresses upon its readers, Trump was repeatedly warned that governing is not the same as campaigning. Routinized order, ethics and structure all matter. The seeds of the president’s possible electoral downfall were sown with his election in 2016. If not earlier.
New documents reveal how a young Trump bullied the press for years as he hid his actual wealth
June 15, 2019
By Matthew Chapman - Raw Story
On Friday, journalist Jonathan Greenberg published a stunning exposé of how Donald Trump, in his younger years, managed to maintain his brand of success and fortune — and keep attracting investors to his projects — even in the face of devastating business losses and incompetence.
The short answer: he threatened, intimidated, and bullied reporters out of telling the truth about his business empire.
“I turned up three never-before-published letters from Trump to Forbes from 1989, in which he claimed to be worth $3.7 billion,” wrote Greenberg. “We now know that he reported losses of about $100 million that year and that he was treading near insolvency. Then I started to contact other people who had collided with Trump in those years. Journalists told me how he’d tried to block their reporting on his empire — by making up ethical scandals about them, furnishing fake documents and, in one case, threatening to expose the private life of a closeted media executive. Wall Street analysts witnessed a campaign of intimidation that began when Trump got one of them fired for (correctly) doubting his casinos’ ability to pay off their debts.”
In the late 1980s, Trump reportedly put out inflated estimates of his business assets and profitability that were perfectly timed to get him onto the coveted “Forbes 400” list of richest people in America — even though, behind the scenes, his real estate empire was bleeding money and floating junk bonds. But in 1990, when Forbes Senior Editor Richard Stern and writer John Connolly prepared a story on this, Trump bullied them into gutting the story.
“On the Monday of the week the story was to be published, Stern met with Trump to seek a comment he could include in the article,” wrote Greenberg. “The mogul exploded, threatening to sue Forbes. On Tuesday, ‘orders came from on high’ to change the story’s estimate of Trump’s net worth to $500 million, Stern recalls. ‘I got into a shouting match with [Jim] Michaels,’ Forbes’s powerful top editor, Stern says. ‘Forbes bent. We had to jigger the numbers to give Trump a positive net worth.’ (Michaels died in 2007.) Connolly says the cover line was also changed, from ‘Is Trump Broke?’ to ‘How Much Is Donald Really Worth Now?,’ which is how it appeared on May 14, 1990.”
On at least one occasion, Trump outright ruined the career of someone who was on the verge of exposing him.
“In March 1990, Marvin Roffman, one of the nation’s leading casino industry stock analysts, told Wall Street Journal reporter Neil Barsky that Trump might not be able to gross the $1.3 million per day he needed to keep the Taj Mahal going,” wrote Greenberg. “Trump retaliated. He called Roffman’s boss at Janney Montgomery Scott and threatened to sue unless the firm fired Roffman or printed a letter from him saying, in Roffman’s telling, ‘that sonofabitch reporter Barsky misquoted’ him and that ‘the Taj Mahal was going to be the greatest success ever.’ Roffman, a 17-year veteran analyst, resisted and was fired the next day. The following year, not long before the Taj went belly up, Roffman won a $750,0000 arbitration decision against his former firm. Soon after that, he settled a defamation suit, for an undisclosed sum, against Trump.”
It turned out that Roffman was right, and the Trump Taj Mahal was eventually sold off for pennies on the dollar amid one of Trump’s many bankruptcies.
“Trump had waged a relentless, vindictive campaign to build his own myth by suppressing the facts: Between the collapse of his empire in 1991 and the issuance of more than $1 billion in Trump Hotels and Casino Resorts stock and junk bonds by 1996, he’d compromised the truth-telling capacity of Forbes magazine, the Wall Street Journal, TV broadcasters, Arthur Andersen and casino analysts on Wall Street,” wrote Greenberg. “By the time Trump resigned in 2009 as chairman of the public company he founded, he had paid himself an estimated $82 million in personal compensation, while the company’s stocks and bonds had become nearly worthless.”
“His brand survived all that, and even thrived, because he wasn’t just concocting tales of his greatness; he was also forcing others to repeat them, or at least not to contradict them,” concluded Greenberg. “It was a strategy that more recently has paid off handsomely against onetime opponents like Sen. Lindsey Graham. Nobody can succeed on this scale simply by lying. Trump’s greatest and most cynical skill, honed during the 1980s and 1990s, was learning how to win by silencing truth-tellers and suppressing the truth when it matters most.”
The short answer: he threatened, intimidated, and bullied reporters out of telling the truth about his business empire.
“I turned up three never-before-published letters from Trump to Forbes from 1989, in which he claimed to be worth $3.7 billion,” wrote Greenberg. “We now know that he reported losses of about $100 million that year and that he was treading near insolvency. Then I started to contact other people who had collided with Trump in those years. Journalists told me how he’d tried to block their reporting on his empire — by making up ethical scandals about them, furnishing fake documents and, in one case, threatening to expose the private life of a closeted media executive. Wall Street analysts witnessed a campaign of intimidation that began when Trump got one of them fired for (correctly) doubting his casinos’ ability to pay off their debts.”
In the late 1980s, Trump reportedly put out inflated estimates of his business assets and profitability that were perfectly timed to get him onto the coveted “Forbes 400” list of richest people in America — even though, behind the scenes, his real estate empire was bleeding money and floating junk bonds. But in 1990, when Forbes Senior Editor Richard Stern and writer John Connolly prepared a story on this, Trump bullied them into gutting the story.
“On the Monday of the week the story was to be published, Stern met with Trump to seek a comment he could include in the article,” wrote Greenberg. “The mogul exploded, threatening to sue Forbes. On Tuesday, ‘orders came from on high’ to change the story’s estimate of Trump’s net worth to $500 million, Stern recalls. ‘I got into a shouting match with [Jim] Michaels,’ Forbes’s powerful top editor, Stern says. ‘Forbes bent. We had to jigger the numbers to give Trump a positive net worth.’ (Michaels died in 2007.) Connolly says the cover line was also changed, from ‘Is Trump Broke?’ to ‘How Much Is Donald Really Worth Now?,’ which is how it appeared on May 14, 1990.”
On at least one occasion, Trump outright ruined the career of someone who was on the verge of exposing him.
“In March 1990, Marvin Roffman, one of the nation’s leading casino industry stock analysts, told Wall Street Journal reporter Neil Barsky that Trump might not be able to gross the $1.3 million per day he needed to keep the Taj Mahal going,” wrote Greenberg. “Trump retaliated. He called Roffman’s boss at Janney Montgomery Scott and threatened to sue unless the firm fired Roffman or printed a letter from him saying, in Roffman’s telling, ‘that sonofabitch reporter Barsky misquoted’ him and that ‘the Taj Mahal was going to be the greatest success ever.’ Roffman, a 17-year veteran analyst, resisted and was fired the next day. The following year, not long before the Taj went belly up, Roffman won a $750,0000 arbitration decision against his former firm. Soon after that, he settled a defamation suit, for an undisclosed sum, against Trump.”
It turned out that Roffman was right, and the Trump Taj Mahal was eventually sold off for pennies on the dollar amid one of Trump’s many bankruptcies.
“Trump had waged a relentless, vindictive campaign to build his own myth by suppressing the facts: Between the collapse of his empire in 1991 and the issuance of more than $1 billion in Trump Hotels and Casino Resorts stock and junk bonds by 1996, he’d compromised the truth-telling capacity of Forbes magazine, the Wall Street Journal, TV broadcasters, Arthur Andersen and casino analysts on Wall Street,” wrote Greenberg. “By the time Trump resigned in 2009 as chairman of the public company he founded, he had paid himself an estimated $82 million in personal compensation, while the company’s stocks and bonds had become nearly worthless.”
“His brand survived all that, and even thrived, because he wasn’t just concocting tales of his greatness; he was also forcing others to repeat them, or at least not to contradict them,” concluded Greenberg. “It was a strategy that more recently has paid off handsomely against onetime opponents like Sen. Lindsey Graham. Nobody can succeed on this scale simply by lying. Trump’s greatest and most cynical skill, honed during the 1980s and 1990s, was learning how to win by silencing truth-tellers and suppressing the truth when it matters most.”
"maga" by not paying your bills!!!
Actually, 10 Cities Are Reportedly Waiting For Trump Campaign To Pay $841,000 In Rally Bills
Five of them have been stuck with unpaid bills dating back to 2016, according to an investigation by The Center for Public Integrity and NBC.
By Mary Papenfuss - Huff Post
06/13/2019 11:29 pm ET
Officials in El Paso complained last week that they were still waiting for President Donald Trump’s reelection campaign to pay up for expenses related to providing extra police, fire department and other services for a rally months ago. Now it turns out there are nine more cities across the country that haven’t received a dime from the campaign for similar charges, according to The Center for Public Integrity.
Five of the 10 invoices date back to 2016, when Donald Trump was campaigning to become president.
Ironically, Trump often gushes at rallies about police officers and other brave first responders, but his campaign is apparently stiffing police and firefighters across the nation.
“Do we love law enforcement or what?” he asked at a rally in Lebanon, Pennsylvania, in October. Apparently, his campaign didn’t love them enough to even bother to respond to a $16,191 bill for city police and other safety costs, according to the report by the nonprofit CPI in conjunction with NBC and CNBC.
The expenses can be significant, especially for smaller towns like Lebanon, population 21,000. The Trump campaign bill would cover two days of police force operations there, according to CPI.
The Trump campaign owes a total of $841,219 to cities from Burlington, Vermont, to Green Bay and Eau Claire in Wisconsin, Mesa, Arizona, and Spokane, Washington, according to invoices. The largest bill — $470,000 — was for El Paso for a February rally, including $381,000 for extra police and $61,000 for fire department services. Erie, Pennsylvania; Billings, Montana; and Tucson, Arizona, are also still waiting for payment.
“When one considers how much money campaigns raise and spend, it does not seem unreasonable to expect some degree of reimbursement for such demands for service,” Richard Myers, executive director of the Major Cities Chiefs Association, told CPI.
El Paso’s mayor, Dee Margo, called it a “character integrity issue” when people “don’t pay their bills.”
Spokane City Council member Kate was even less diplomatic: “Let’s be honest, when does Trump ever pay his bills?” she asked CPI, referring to his multiple bankruptcies and lawsuits filed against him for nonpayment of bills.
Trump rally officials don’t typically sign a contract with cities, according to CPI, but the events incur significant extra safety costs involving police and fire personnel, and the Secret Service demands stepped-up support. Many cities simply absorb the extra costs for any political rally and don’t charge politicians or campaigns. Some have opted specifically not to charge the Trump campaign, according to CPI.
Trump’s campaign did not respond to a HuffPost request for comment, nor did it respond to CPI.
When asked earlier this month about the El Paso bill by ABC News, a Trump campaign spokesman indicated that the city may have overcharged the campaign. Michael Glassner, Trump Campaign CEO, told ABC: “We are reviewing” the bill.
Democratic presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke’s campaign, Beto for America, paid up his total $29,000 El Paso rally tab for a March event by May O’Rourke is a former congressman from El Paso.
RELATED: Trump still owes D.C. $7 million in inauguration costs as he plans July Fourth gala
President Trump’s speech at the Lincoln Memorial on the Fourth of July is expected to drive up security costs for an annual event that draws hundreds of thousands of visitors to the nation’s capital. But the president has still not fully paid the bi ... (WaPo)
Five of the 10 invoices date back to 2016, when Donald Trump was campaigning to become president.
Ironically, Trump often gushes at rallies about police officers and other brave first responders, but his campaign is apparently stiffing police and firefighters across the nation.
“Do we love law enforcement or what?” he asked at a rally in Lebanon, Pennsylvania, in October. Apparently, his campaign didn’t love them enough to even bother to respond to a $16,191 bill for city police and other safety costs, according to the report by the nonprofit CPI in conjunction with NBC and CNBC.
The expenses can be significant, especially for smaller towns like Lebanon, population 21,000. The Trump campaign bill would cover two days of police force operations there, according to CPI.
The Trump campaign owes a total of $841,219 to cities from Burlington, Vermont, to Green Bay and Eau Claire in Wisconsin, Mesa, Arizona, and Spokane, Washington, according to invoices. The largest bill — $470,000 — was for El Paso for a February rally, including $381,000 for extra police and $61,000 for fire department services. Erie, Pennsylvania; Billings, Montana; and Tucson, Arizona, are also still waiting for payment.
“When one considers how much money campaigns raise and spend, it does not seem unreasonable to expect some degree of reimbursement for such demands for service,” Richard Myers, executive director of the Major Cities Chiefs Association, told CPI.
El Paso’s mayor, Dee Margo, called it a “character integrity issue” when people “don’t pay their bills.”
Spokane City Council member Kate was even less diplomatic: “Let’s be honest, when does Trump ever pay his bills?” she asked CPI, referring to his multiple bankruptcies and lawsuits filed against him for nonpayment of bills.
Trump rally officials don’t typically sign a contract with cities, according to CPI, but the events incur significant extra safety costs involving police and fire personnel, and the Secret Service demands stepped-up support. Many cities simply absorb the extra costs for any political rally and don’t charge politicians or campaigns. Some have opted specifically not to charge the Trump campaign, according to CPI.
Trump’s campaign did not respond to a HuffPost request for comment, nor did it respond to CPI.
When asked earlier this month about the El Paso bill by ABC News, a Trump campaign spokesman indicated that the city may have overcharged the campaign. Michael Glassner, Trump Campaign CEO, told ABC: “We are reviewing” the bill.
Democratic presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke’s campaign, Beto for America, paid up his total $29,000 El Paso rally tab for a March event by May O’Rourke is a former congressman from El Paso.
RELATED: Trump still owes D.C. $7 million in inauguration costs as he plans July Fourth gala
President Trump’s speech at the Lincoln Memorial on the Fourth of July is expected to drive up security costs for an annual event that draws hundreds of thousands of visitors to the nation’s capital. But the president has still not fully paid the bi ... (WaPo)
i am not a traitor, i am just stupid!!!
Trump defends remarks about accepting information from foreign government
BY BRETT SAMUELS - The Hill
06/13/19 09:20 AM EDT
President Trump on Thursday defended his comment that he would listen if a foreign entity offered damaging information on a political opponent, equating it to his contacts with foreign governments as part of his role as president.
In a series of tweets, the president sought to downplay the significance of his comment a day earlier to ABC News, which critics argued invited a foreign power to interfere in the 2020 election and some Democrats highlighted as reason to begin impeachment proceedings.
Trump first suggested listening to damaging information from a foreign actor was equivalent to holding diplomatic meetings with foreign heads of state, while later arguing Democrats were guilty of improper contacts.
"I meet and talk to 'foreign governments' every day. I just met with the Queen of England (U.K.), the Prince of Whales, the P.M. of the United Kingdom, the P.M. of Ireland, the President of France and the President of Poland. We talked about 'Everything!'" Trump tweeted.
"Should I immediately call the FBI about these calls and meetings?" he continued. "How ridiculous! I would never be trusted again."
Trump then blamed the press for not playing the entirety of his answer, which was broadcast on Wednesday night in an interview with ABC News.
I meet and talk to “foreign governments” every day. I just met with the Queen of England (U.K.), the Prince of Whales, the P.M. of the United Kingdom, the P.M. of Ireland, the President of France and the President of Poland. We talked about “Everything!” Should I immediately.....
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 13, 2019
.....call the FBI about these calls and meetings? How ridiculous! I would never be trusted again. With that being said, my full answer is rarely played by the Fake News Media. They purposely leave out the part that matters.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 13, 2019Trump wasn't discussing conversations during state visits with allied governments in the interview with ABC's George Stephanopoulos, but instead was talking about a situation in which a potential rival foreign government offered more clandestine information on a political opponent.
Trump told the ABC host that he would not call the FBI in such a situation, even though Trump's own FBI director has said that is the right protocol for such a situation.
Told that by Stephanopoulos, Trump said the FBI director was wrong.
"I think you might want to listen. There’s nothing wrong with listening," Trump said in the interview. "It’s not an interference. They have information. I think I’d take it. If I thought there was something wrong, I’d go maybe to the FBI."
Trump on Thursday morning attempted to deflect attention to Democrats by alleging his campaign was spied on and that Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) and House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) had improper contacts with Russian nationals.
A spokeswoman for Warner responded that she had "NO idea" what Trump was referring to.
In a series of tweets, the president sought to downplay the significance of his comment a day earlier to ABC News, which critics argued invited a foreign power to interfere in the 2020 election and some Democrats highlighted as reason to begin impeachment proceedings.
Trump first suggested listening to damaging information from a foreign actor was equivalent to holding diplomatic meetings with foreign heads of state, while later arguing Democrats were guilty of improper contacts.
"I meet and talk to 'foreign governments' every day. I just met with the Queen of England (U.K.), the Prince of Whales, the P.M. of the United Kingdom, the P.M. of Ireland, the President of France and the President of Poland. We talked about 'Everything!'" Trump tweeted.
"Should I immediately call the FBI about these calls and meetings?" he continued. "How ridiculous! I would never be trusted again."
Trump then blamed the press for not playing the entirety of his answer, which was broadcast on Wednesday night in an interview with ABC News.
I meet and talk to “foreign governments” every day. I just met with the Queen of England (U.K.), the Prince of Whales, the P.M. of the United Kingdom, the P.M. of Ireland, the President of France and the President of Poland. We talked about “Everything!” Should I immediately.....
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 13, 2019
.....call the FBI about these calls and meetings? How ridiculous! I would never be trusted again. With that being said, my full answer is rarely played by the Fake News Media. They purposely leave out the part that matters.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 13, 2019Trump wasn't discussing conversations during state visits with allied governments in the interview with ABC's George Stephanopoulos, but instead was talking about a situation in which a potential rival foreign government offered more clandestine information on a political opponent.
Trump told the ABC host that he would not call the FBI in such a situation, even though Trump's own FBI director has said that is the right protocol for such a situation.
Told that by Stephanopoulos, Trump said the FBI director was wrong.
"I think you might want to listen. There’s nothing wrong with listening," Trump said in the interview. "It’s not an interference. They have information. I think I’d take it. If I thought there was something wrong, I’d go maybe to the FBI."
Trump on Thursday morning attempted to deflect attention to Democrats by alleging his campaign was spied on and that Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) and House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) had improper contacts with Russian nationals.
A spokeswoman for Warner responded that she had "NO idea" what Trump was referring to.
Trump is telling aides he will ‘sue’ Democrats if they pursue impeachment: report
June 12, 2019
By Alex Henderson, AlterNet - Raw Story
Democrats in the House of Representatives continue to be sharply divided on whether or not they should pursue impeachment of President Donald Trump. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi remains adamantly opposed to impeachment, while lawmakers ranging from Rep. Maxine Waters to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are very much in favor of it. And President Trump, according the Washington Post, is claiming that he will “sue” Democrats if they pursue impeachment.
In the Post, Ashley Parker reports that Trump says he will turn to the U.S. Supreme Court if Democrats try to impeach him — and in addition to that, he has privately told aides and advisers he will “sue” them. Parker’s report is based on conversations with around 15 Trump associates, who range from White House aides to outside advisers. Trump has also publicly threatened a lawsuit against Democrats, and according to Parker, he makes that threat often in private conversations.
Some legal scholars, Parker notes, are asserting that the idea of a U.S. president suing Congress for trying to impeach him is ludicrous. Laurence Tribe, a constitutional law professor at Harvard University, denounced Trump’s threat as “idiocy” on Twitter and posted, “Not even a SCOTUS filled with Trump appointees would get in the way of the House or Senate.”
However, attorney and Trump supporter Alan Dershowitz (who is also a Harvard Law School professor) has asserted that should Democrats pursue impeachment, the U.S. Supreme Court could intervene if the justices believed that Congress hadn’t acted constitutionally.
Whether Democrats in the House will or won’t pursue impeachment remains to be seen. Pelosi hasn’t budged on impeachment, maintaining that impeaching Trump in the House would only benefit him politically — and that even if Trump were impeached in the House, he would never be convicted by the Senate’s Republican majority.
In the Post, Ashley Parker reports that Trump says he will turn to the U.S. Supreme Court if Democrats try to impeach him — and in addition to that, he has privately told aides and advisers he will “sue” them. Parker’s report is based on conversations with around 15 Trump associates, who range from White House aides to outside advisers. Trump has also publicly threatened a lawsuit against Democrats, and according to Parker, he makes that threat often in private conversations.
Some legal scholars, Parker notes, are asserting that the idea of a U.S. president suing Congress for trying to impeach him is ludicrous. Laurence Tribe, a constitutional law professor at Harvard University, denounced Trump’s threat as “idiocy” on Twitter and posted, “Not even a SCOTUS filled with Trump appointees would get in the way of the House or Senate.”
However, attorney and Trump supporter Alan Dershowitz (who is also a Harvard Law School professor) has asserted that should Democrats pursue impeachment, the U.S. Supreme Court could intervene if the justices believed that Congress hadn’t acted constitutionally.
Whether Democrats in the House will or won’t pursue impeachment remains to be seen. Pelosi hasn’t budged on impeachment, maintaining that impeaching Trump in the House would only benefit him politically — and that even if Trump were impeached in the House, he would never be convicted by the Senate’s Republican majority.
Wall St pretending Trump is ‘crazy but harmless’ will come back to bite them on the butt: Paul Krugman
June 11, 2019
By Tom Boggioni - Raw Story
In a column for the New York Times, Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman warned Wall Street investors that they are whistling past the graveyard if they continue to treat President Donald Trump like a “toothless” fool as he continues to disrupt the markets with his tweets and threats.
Beginning, “The events of the past few weeks destroyed whatever credibility Donald Trump may still have had on economic policy. And investors are celebrating. At this point, evidence that Trump tweets are sound and fury signifying nothing is, in effect, good news,” Krugman ridiculed Trump for one of his all-cap tweets that turned out to be false.
“MEXICO HAS AGREED TO IMMEDIATELY BEGIN BUYING LARGE QUANTITIES OF AGRICULTURAL PRODUCT FROM OUR GREAT PATRIOT FARMERS!” Trump tweeted, to which Krugman responded, “Like many Trump tweets, it reads like a clumsy translation from the original Russian (‘great patriot farmers’?). More to the point, there was nothing at all about agriculture in the official agreement. And at the most basic level, that’s just not something the Mexican government could deliver, even if it wanted to. ”
More importantly, he pointed out that Wall Street investors and traders continue to go blithely about their business not realizing the longterm damage Trump is doing to international trade with his promises of more tariffs and threats to pull out of international trade agreements.
“What’s clear, however, is that on trade policy — his signature issue — the president of the United States is seriously out to lunch. And you might think that this would worry investors,” he wrote. “Financial markets are basically discounting Trump’s rants; they’ve stopped treating evidence of his unfitness for office as news. Yes, he’s deeply ignorant about policy. Yes, his rage-tweets constantly remind us of his egomania and insecurity. But we’ve known all that for a while; Trump’s personality is, in effect, already priced in.”
“But as of right now, markets appear to be betting that he tweets loudly but carries a small stick. Is this a good bet? I have my doubts,” he continued. “The trade war with China still seems to be on, and Europe may be next. More generally, when you have an attention-seeking president, ignoring his antics could well provoke him into even more extreme behavior.”
“But for now, investors are effectively treating Trump as crazy but harmless. Is America great, or what?” he sarcastically concluded.
You can read more here.
Beginning, “The events of the past few weeks destroyed whatever credibility Donald Trump may still have had on economic policy. And investors are celebrating. At this point, evidence that Trump tweets are sound and fury signifying nothing is, in effect, good news,” Krugman ridiculed Trump for one of his all-cap tweets that turned out to be false.
“MEXICO HAS AGREED TO IMMEDIATELY BEGIN BUYING LARGE QUANTITIES OF AGRICULTURAL PRODUCT FROM OUR GREAT PATRIOT FARMERS!” Trump tweeted, to which Krugman responded, “Like many Trump tweets, it reads like a clumsy translation from the original Russian (‘great patriot farmers’?). More to the point, there was nothing at all about agriculture in the official agreement. And at the most basic level, that’s just not something the Mexican government could deliver, even if it wanted to. ”
More importantly, he pointed out that Wall Street investors and traders continue to go blithely about their business not realizing the longterm damage Trump is doing to international trade with his promises of more tariffs and threats to pull out of international trade agreements.
“What’s clear, however, is that on trade policy — his signature issue — the president of the United States is seriously out to lunch. And you might think that this would worry investors,” he wrote. “Financial markets are basically discounting Trump’s rants; they’ve stopped treating evidence of his unfitness for office as news. Yes, he’s deeply ignorant about policy. Yes, his rage-tweets constantly remind us of his egomania and insecurity. But we’ve known all that for a while; Trump’s personality is, in effect, already priced in.”
“But as of right now, markets appear to be betting that he tweets loudly but carries a small stick. Is this a good bet? I have my doubts,” he continued. “The trade war with China still seems to be on, and Europe may be next. More generally, when you have an attention-seeking president, ignoring his antics could well provoke him into even more extreme behavior.”
“But for now, investors are effectively treating Trump as crazy but harmless. Is America great, or what?” he sarcastically concluded.
You can read more here.
These are the 7 biggest failures of Trumponomics
June 11, 2019
By Robert Reich - Commentary - Raw Story
Donald Trump and Republicans in Congress keep crowing about the economy, when in reality Trumponomics has been a disaster. Here are its 7 biggest failures:
1. Trump promised to bring down America’s trade deficit “as fast as possible.” Instead, the trade deficit has hit an all-time high. The United States is now purchasing more goods and services from the rest of the world than we sell abroad than at any time in history.
2. As a presidential candidate in 2016, he said he could completely eliminate the federal debt in 8 years. Instead, the federal debt has exploded thanksto Trump and the GOP’s $1.9 trillion tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations. They’re already using the growing debt to threaten cuts to Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.
3. He promised to boost the wages of American workers, including a $4,000 pay raise for the average American family. Instead, wages for most Americans have been flat, adjusted for inflation. Meanwhile, over the same period, corporate profits have soared and the rich have become far richer, but the gains haven’t trickled down.
4. His administration said that corporations would invest their savings from tax cuts. Instead, corporations spent more money buying back shares of their own stock in 2018 than they invested in new equipment or facilities. These stock buybacks provide no real benefit for the economy, but boost executive bonuses and payouts for wealthy investors.
5. He promised a tax cut for middle-class families. Instead most Americans will end up paying more by 2027.
6. He promised to keep jobs in America and crack down on companies that ship jobs overseas. Instead, his tax law has created financial incentives for corporations to expand their operations abroad. Trump’s trade wars have also encouraged companies like Harley Davidson to move production overseas.
7. He promised to “drain the swamp” of Washington lobbyists. Instead, he’s put them in charge of health, safety, and environmental protections–which has endangered most Americans while increasing corporate profits even further.
The real recipe for economic growth is to invest in Americans–in their health, education, job training, and infrastructure.
But Trumponomics has exploded the deficit, hurt ordinary Americans, and lined the pockets of the wealthy and corporations.
Don’t let Trump and Republicans claim otherwise.
1. Trump promised to bring down America’s trade deficit “as fast as possible.” Instead, the trade deficit has hit an all-time high. The United States is now purchasing more goods and services from the rest of the world than we sell abroad than at any time in history.
2. As a presidential candidate in 2016, he said he could completely eliminate the federal debt in 8 years. Instead, the federal debt has exploded thanksto Trump and the GOP’s $1.9 trillion tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations. They’re already using the growing debt to threaten cuts to Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.
3. He promised to boost the wages of American workers, including a $4,000 pay raise for the average American family. Instead, wages for most Americans have been flat, adjusted for inflation. Meanwhile, over the same period, corporate profits have soared and the rich have become far richer, but the gains haven’t trickled down.
4. His administration said that corporations would invest their savings from tax cuts. Instead, corporations spent more money buying back shares of their own stock in 2018 than they invested in new equipment or facilities. These stock buybacks provide no real benefit for the economy, but boost executive bonuses and payouts for wealthy investors.
5. He promised a tax cut for middle-class families. Instead most Americans will end up paying more by 2027.
6. He promised to keep jobs in America and crack down on companies that ship jobs overseas. Instead, his tax law has created financial incentives for corporations to expand their operations abroad. Trump’s trade wars have also encouraged companies like Harley Davidson to move production overseas.
7. He promised to “drain the swamp” of Washington lobbyists. Instead, he’s put them in charge of health, safety, and environmental protections–which has endangered most Americans while increasing corporate profits even further.
The real recipe for economic growth is to invest in Americans–in their health, education, job training, and infrastructure.
But Trumponomics has exploded the deficit, hurt ordinary Americans, and lined the pockets of the wealthy and corporations.
Don’t let Trump and Republicans claim otherwise.
The cost of a criminal in the White House!!!
Trump Using Marine One As A Prop To Promote His Irish Golf Course
Minutes after Trump left his course at Doonbeg, it posted video of his arrival there aboard a government helicopter and him getting ready to tee off in promotional material.
By S.V. Date - Huff Post
06/07/2019 11:47 am ET
President Donald Trump’s for-profit golf course in Ireland on Friday started using video of his arrival aboard Marine One and of him getting ready to tee off in its promotional material.
Videos were posted on the Trump International Golf Links, Doonbeg, Twitter feed within minutes of his departure back to Washington. Trump played golf there at least Friday morning and possibly on Wednesday and Thursday, as well. The video of him on the first tee, with the Atlantic Ocean in the background, was also posted on the resort’s Facebook page.
The addition of Ireland to this week’s itinerary taking him to London and Normandy cost U.S. taxpayers at least $3.6 million beyond what the trip would have cost otherwise, according to a preliminary HuffPost analysis of the extra travel and security costs.
That would bring the total for Trump’s golf vacations during his first two and a half years in office to $105.8 million.
“At this point, it appears that Donald Trump views his presidency as just another way to support his business,” said Jordan Libowitz of the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Government. “On an international trip at taxpayer expense, he stopped by to film a commercial for his Irish golf course, which is advertising the stop explicitly as one by the president of the United States. His own lawyers, in their ‘Conflict of Interest’ white paper, said this would not happen. But at this point, it’s clear all that matters to President Trump is what makes him money.”
The White House declined to comment for this story.
(After HuffPost began making inquiries about the posts, Trump’s golf resort appeared to delete them. HuffPost, however, captured screenshots of all three videos and was able to download the two that were posted to Twitter.)
Trump had already spent 178 days of his first 2½ years in office on a golf course, all but two of which have been on his own properties. (He has played twice in Japan at the invitation of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.) Trump has been at his Florida courses near his Palm Beach resort, Mar-a-Lago, on 61 days; at his Bedminster, New Jersey, resort 58 days; his course in Los Angeles one day; and on his course in Turnberry, Scotland, for two days last summer.
That count is more than twice the number of days former President Barack Obama had golfed at the same point in his presidency. And because Trump insists on playing on courses he owns, his dollar total is more than three times the $30 million Obama had spent by this point.
Each trip to Mar-a-Lago costs taxpayers $3.4 million and each Bedminster trip at least $1.2 million. Obama, except for two vacations per year, played almost all of his golf at military bases within a short drive of the White House. Those trips, like Trump’s to his course in Northern Virginia, cost taxpayers very little beyond gas for the motorcade vehicles and some overtime expenses.
Trump’s golfing trips outside the United States cost taxpayers a great deal more than his domestic golf vacations because of the enormous footprint generated by presidential foreign travel, with more agencies becoming involved. Dozens of White House staff members may travel with Trump during a weekend to Mar-a-Lago or Bedminster, but that number swells to several hundred on an overseas trip. The White House avoids lengthy motorcades on foreign soil, so Marine helicopters and V-22 tilt-rotor aircraft must be pre-positioned using C-17 transports that cost $200,000 an hour to fly, according to a recent Government Accountability Office report. A backup Air Force One is sent along as the support plane.
Videos were posted on the Trump International Golf Links, Doonbeg, Twitter feed within minutes of his departure back to Washington. Trump played golf there at least Friday morning and possibly on Wednesday and Thursday, as well. The video of him on the first tee, with the Atlantic Ocean in the background, was also posted on the resort’s Facebook page.
The addition of Ireland to this week’s itinerary taking him to London and Normandy cost U.S. taxpayers at least $3.6 million beyond what the trip would have cost otherwise, according to a preliminary HuffPost analysis of the extra travel and security costs.
That would bring the total for Trump’s golf vacations during his first two and a half years in office to $105.8 million.
“At this point, it appears that Donald Trump views his presidency as just another way to support his business,” said Jordan Libowitz of the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Government. “On an international trip at taxpayer expense, he stopped by to film a commercial for his Irish golf course, which is advertising the stop explicitly as one by the president of the United States. His own lawyers, in their ‘Conflict of Interest’ white paper, said this would not happen. But at this point, it’s clear all that matters to President Trump is what makes him money.”
The White House declined to comment for this story.
(After HuffPost began making inquiries about the posts, Trump’s golf resort appeared to delete them. HuffPost, however, captured screenshots of all three videos and was able to download the two that were posted to Twitter.)
Trump had already spent 178 days of his first 2½ years in office on a golf course, all but two of which have been on his own properties. (He has played twice in Japan at the invitation of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.) Trump has been at his Florida courses near his Palm Beach resort, Mar-a-Lago, on 61 days; at his Bedminster, New Jersey, resort 58 days; his course in Los Angeles one day; and on his course in Turnberry, Scotland, for two days last summer.
That count is more than twice the number of days former President Barack Obama had golfed at the same point in his presidency. And because Trump insists on playing on courses he owns, his dollar total is more than three times the $30 million Obama had spent by this point.
Each trip to Mar-a-Lago costs taxpayers $3.4 million and each Bedminster trip at least $1.2 million. Obama, except for two vacations per year, played almost all of his golf at military bases within a short drive of the White House. Those trips, like Trump’s to his course in Northern Virginia, cost taxpayers very little beyond gas for the motorcade vehicles and some overtime expenses.
Trump’s golfing trips outside the United States cost taxpayers a great deal more than his domestic golf vacations because of the enormous footprint generated by presidential foreign travel, with more agencies becoming involved. Dozens of White House staff members may travel with Trump during a weekend to Mar-a-Lago or Bedminster, but that number swells to several hundred on an overseas trip. The White House avoids lengthy motorcades on foreign soil, so Marine helicopters and V-22 tilt-rotor aircraft must be pre-positioned using C-17 transports that cost $200,000 an hour to fly, according to a recent Government Accountability Office report. A backup Air Force One is sent along as the support plane.
trailer trash on parade!!!
Trumps brutally mocked for pretending to be America’s royal family on state visit with Queen
June 7, 2019
By Matthew Chapman - Raw Story
On Friday, liberal author Molly Jong-Fast excoriated the attempt by President Donald Trump’s children to behave like a family dynasty in an article for The Bulwark, a Trump-skeptic conservative publication.
“We should have known that the president who made up a fake coat of arms would be all too happy to bring along his four adult children to hobnob with what he considers to be their British counterparts,” wrote Jong-Fast. “But as royal families go, the Trumps aren’t the Windsors. Or the Bushes. Or the Kennedys. Or the Kardashians, even. The Trumps are more like the Habsburgs” — the old Austrian imperial family infamous for centuries of inbreeding.
Jong-Fast noted that Trump’s decision to bring along Ivanka, Donald Jr., Eric, and Tiffany reflects his obsession with “brands” — and his desire that he become something like royalty in America.
The irony, she noted, is that some defining characteristics of this generation of British royals is that they are reclusive, stay out of politics, and are making an effort to modernize traditions — none of which describes Trump’s children in any way.
“And now, the president wants to set his kids up to take over: In an interview with the Sun, he said he hoped that his kids could hold a ‘next generation’ meeting with Princes William and Harry,” said Jong-Fast. “The real question, then, isn’t whether or not Trump wants one of his children to be the 46th president, but which one he’ll end up tapping for the job.”
“We should have known that the president who made up a fake coat of arms would be all too happy to bring along his four adult children to hobnob with what he considers to be their British counterparts,” wrote Jong-Fast. “But as royal families go, the Trumps aren’t the Windsors. Or the Bushes. Or the Kennedys. Or the Kardashians, even. The Trumps are more like the Habsburgs” — the old Austrian imperial family infamous for centuries of inbreeding.
Jong-Fast noted that Trump’s decision to bring along Ivanka, Donald Jr., Eric, and Tiffany reflects his obsession with “brands” — and his desire that he become something like royalty in America.
The irony, she noted, is that some defining characteristics of this generation of British royals is that they are reclusive, stay out of politics, and are making an effort to modernize traditions — none of which describes Trump’s children in any way.
“And now, the president wants to set his kids up to take over: In an interview with the Sun, he said he hoped that his kids could hold a ‘next generation’ meeting with Princes William and Harry,” said Jong-Fast. “The real question, then, isn’t whether or not Trump wants one of his children to be the 46th president, but which one he’ll end up tapping for the job.”
Trump takes credit for Puerto Rico emergency aid he fought for weeks
"Puerto Rico should love President Trump. Without me, they would have been shut out!"
JOSH ISRAEL - Thinkprogress
JUN 6, 2019, 3:46 PM
President Donald Trump falsely claimed credit for rescuing Puerto Rico on Thursday, after signing a bipartisan disaster relief bill passed by Congress earlier in the week, a version of which he tried to reject previously.
After weeks of working to stop aid to the U.S. territory, which was devastated by multiple hurricanes two years ago, Trump finally agreed to sign the deal after bipartisan congressional leaders reached an agreement to move the legislation with or without his support.
“Just signed Disaster Aid Bill to help Americans who have been hit by recent catastrophic storms,” he tweeted. “So important for our GREAT American farmers and ranchers. Help for GA, FL, IA, NE, NC, and CA. Puerto Rico should love President Trump. Without me, they would have been shut out!”
Trump has attempted to credit himself for singlehandedly saving Puerto Rico in the past, even tweeting in April that he was “the best thing that ever happened” to the island. However, the Trump administration faced heavy criticism for its botched emergency response efforts after a series of storms ravaged Puerto Rico in 2017, leaving thousands dead and many more without water and electricity for months.
After the mayor of San Juan called his visit insulting — the president was infamously caught on camera tossing rolls of paper towels to survivors as if he was shooting a basketball into a hoop — Trump declared war.
Since then, the president has repeatedly attacked Puerto Rico for having had pre-existing debt and infrastructure problems, accused the mayor of incompetence, announced that emergency crews could “not stay in Puerto Rico forever” to help it rebuild, falsely claimed that the territory had received $91 billion in aid, and repeatedlytried to cut the flow of relief funds to the still-struggling population. At one point, the president reportedly considered re-purposing existing Puerto Rican aid dollars to pay for his massive southern border wall.
More recently, Trump attempted to stall the disaster relief bill because it did not contain funding for his border wall, and because Democrats had sought to include more aid for Puerto Rico. And late last month, he said would not do anything to improve the nation’s infrastructure unless the Democratic majority in the House of Representatives halted its oversight responsibilities, saying Congress could not go down more than “one track at a time.”
Hours after that carefully scripted “tantrum,” as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called it, congressional leaders of both parties agreed on a disaster relief bill that included Puerto Rico funds but no border money, and Republican leaders informed the president that they planned to move on it, whether he liked it or not. Trump grudgingly agreed to support the compromise.
Despite Trump’s claim this week false claim that, but for him, Puerto Ricans “would have been shut out,” it was in fact congressional Democrats who successfully fought to keep those funds in the bill.
According to a September 2018 Washington Post-Kaiser Family Foundation poll, 52% of Puerto Ricans rated the Trump administration’s hurricane response as “poor.” Just 15% said the president’s response to the tragedy was “excellent,” “very good,” or “good.”
“I believe he should have never come,” Angel Molina, a retired Army colonel from Bayamon, Puerto Rico, told the Post that month. “… When he started throwing paper towels to the audience, that was very inappropriate for the president. It don’t bring any help. I considered that an insult to us.”
After weeks of working to stop aid to the U.S. territory, which was devastated by multiple hurricanes two years ago, Trump finally agreed to sign the deal after bipartisan congressional leaders reached an agreement to move the legislation with or without his support.
“Just signed Disaster Aid Bill to help Americans who have been hit by recent catastrophic storms,” he tweeted. “So important for our GREAT American farmers and ranchers. Help for GA, FL, IA, NE, NC, and CA. Puerto Rico should love President Trump. Without me, they would have been shut out!”
Trump has attempted to credit himself for singlehandedly saving Puerto Rico in the past, even tweeting in April that he was “the best thing that ever happened” to the island. However, the Trump administration faced heavy criticism for its botched emergency response efforts after a series of storms ravaged Puerto Rico in 2017, leaving thousands dead and many more without water and electricity for months.
After the mayor of San Juan called his visit insulting — the president was infamously caught on camera tossing rolls of paper towels to survivors as if he was shooting a basketball into a hoop — Trump declared war.
Since then, the president has repeatedly attacked Puerto Rico for having had pre-existing debt and infrastructure problems, accused the mayor of incompetence, announced that emergency crews could “not stay in Puerto Rico forever” to help it rebuild, falsely claimed that the territory had received $91 billion in aid, and repeatedlytried to cut the flow of relief funds to the still-struggling population. At one point, the president reportedly considered re-purposing existing Puerto Rican aid dollars to pay for his massive southern border wall.
More recently, Trump attempted to stall the disaster relief bill because it did not contain funding for his border wall, and because Democrats had sought to include more aid for Puerto Rico. And late last month, he said would not do anything to improve the nation’s infrastructure unless the Democratic majority in the House of Representatives halted its oversight responsibilities, saying Congress could not go down more than “one track at a time.”
Hours after that carefully scripted “tantrum,” as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called it, congressional leaders of both parties agreed on a disaster relief bill that included Puerto Rico funds but no border money, and Republican leaders informed the president that they planned to move on it, whether he liked it or not. Trump grudgingly agreed to support the compromise.
Despite Trump’s claim this week false claim that, but for him, Puerto Ricans “would have been shut out,” it was in fact congressional Democrats who successfully fought to keep those funds in the bill.
According to a September 2018 Washington Post-Kaiser Family Foundation poll, 52% of Puerto Ricans rated the Trump administration’s hurricane response as “poor.” Just 15% said the president’s response to the tragedy was “excellent,” “very good,” or “good.”
“I believe he should have never come,” Angel Molina, a retired Army colonel from Bayamon, Puerto Rico, told the Post that month. “… When he started throwing paper towels to the audience, that was very inappropriate for the president. It don’t bring any help. I considered that an insult to us.”
Trump Claims He Got ‘Glowing Reviews’ From U.K. Media That Roundly Ridiculed Him
Jamie Ross daily beast cheat sheet
06.06.19 4:54AM ET
Donald Trump has claimed that the British media gave him “glowing reviews” during this week’s state visit, despite the coverage treating him at best as a ludicrous figure and at worst as a threat to the country’s relationship with America. Tweeting from France, where he’s due to mark the 75th anniversary of the D-Day landings, Trump attacked U.S. media for its negative coverage and praised British counterparts for a more positive outlook. However, Trump was widely condemned and later forced to retract comments that the U.K. National Health Service would be “on the table” in post-Brexit trade talks between the countries. He was also criticized for starting a “petulant and deeply unedifying” spat with London Mayor Sadiq Khan, whom Trump called a “stone cold loser.” Guardian columnist Marina Hyde summed up the mood in the U.K.: “It is finally over, then, the state visit during which U.S. President Donald Trump treated Britain like a Moscow hotel mattress. God, we deserved it.”
Trump made 2nd wife Marla Maples sign prenup that cut off daughter Tiffany if she joined the
military: report
June 4, 2019
By Bob Brigham - Raw Story
Donald Trump’s prenuptial agreement with his second wife, Marla Maples, contains shocking revelations about his finances and values, Vanity Fair reported Tuesday.
“A source recently passed me a revealing document from this era: Trump’s prenuptial agreement with Maples. Its draconian terms suggest a penuriousness at odds with his public image as a free-spending billionaire in his gilded triplex penthouse. And its confidential financial statements included in the agreement is a sketch of Trump’s immense privilege and the wealth he squandered, telling in both what it illuminates and what is obfuscates,” reporter Gabriel Sherman wrote.
“More than anything, the prenup shows how fiercely Trump wanted to protect the money he did have. Maples reportedly wanted $25 million, but Trump agreed to pay her only $1 million if they separated within five years, plus another $1 million to buy a house,” Vanity Fair reported.
“Trump also would stop making $100,000 child support payments for Tiffany when she turned 21. The agreement states that Trump’s payments would cease earlier if Tiffany got a full-time job, enlisted in the military, or joined the Peace Corps,” the magazine added.
“The way it was drawn up is ironclad and shows how wary he was,” legendary divorce lawyer Raoul Felder told Vanity Fair. “He was leaving nothing to chance.”
“A source recently passed me a revealing document from this era: Trump’s prenuptial agreement with Maples. Its draconian terms suggest a penuriousness at odds with his public image as a free-spending billionaire in his gilded triplex penthouse. And its confidential financial statements included in the agreement is a sketch of Trump’s immense privilege and the wealth he squandered, telling in both what it illuminates and what is obfuscates,” reporter Gabriel Sherman wrote.
“More than anything, the prenup shows how fiercely Trump wanted to protect the money he did have. Maples reportedly wanted $25 million, but Trump agreed to pay her only $1 million if they separated within five years, plus another $1 million to buy a house,” Vanity Fair reported.
“Trump also would stop making $100,000 child support payments for Tiffany when she turned 21. The agreement states that Trump’s payments would cease earlier if Tiffany got a full-time job, enlisted in the military, or joined the Peace Corps,” the magazine added.
“The way it was drawn up is ironclad and shows how wary he was,” legendary divorce lawyer Raoul Felder told Vanity Fair. “He was leaving nothing to chance.”
New report suggests Trump is using campaign funds to line his own pockets
June 3, 2019
By Cody Fenwick, AlterNet - Raw Story
President Donald Trump’s re-election campaign is spending a hefty sum of money to rent space in his own Manhattan building, the HuffPost reported Monday, but it’s not clear if there’s any real reason for the expenditure — other than to line the president’s own pockets.
The Trump Tower space where the campaign is reportedly spending $37,500 a month, is currently in dire financial straits as it struggles to find tenants, the report said. Under such conditions, it certainly doesn’t hurt if the owner has a donor-funded campaign that he can order to direct funds to the property.
But is the expense actually justified? The report explained:
No more than “four or five” campaign staffers work at Trump’s Manhattan base, according to an informal adviser close to the White House, where the campaign rents a few thousand square feet as its “headquarters.” The per-square-foot cost is likely at least triple what the Republican National Committee pays for the much larger space it shares with the campaign in Arlington, according to a HuffPost analysis.
It added that, according to an anonymous source, the biggest obvious benefit to keeping the space when staffers could be working out of Arlington is that it helps Trump financially,
So is it legal? Maybe not, but like so many things Trump does, it may be the kind of legal violation that is easy to get away with:
Erin Chlopak, once an FEC attorney and now with the Campaign Legal Center advocacy group, said Trump’s use of campaign money for his personal benefit might be illegal ― if it can be proven that the Trump Tower office is not serving any legitimate campaign purpose.
Absent such proof, though, even such “shady” behavior may be permissible, she said. “Campaigns do have a fair amount of leeway to determine how much space they need and how much to spend for it.”
The Trump Tower space where the campaign is reportedly spending $37,500 a month, is currently in dire financial straits as it struggles to find tenants, the report said. Under such conditions, it certainly doesn’t hurt if the owner has a donor-funded campaign that he can order to direct funds to the property.
But is the expense actually justified? The report explained:
No more than “four or five” campaign staffers work at Trump’s Manhattan base, according to an informal adviser close to the White House, where the campaign rents a few thousand square feet as its “headquarters.” The per-square-foot cost is likely at least triple what the Republican National Committee pays for the much larger space it shares with the campaign in Arlington, according to a HuffPost analysis.
It added that, according to an anonymous source, the biggest obvious benefit to keeping the space when staffers could be working out of Arlington is that it helps Trump financially,
So is it legal? Maybe not, but like so many things Trump does, it may be the kind of legal violation that is easy to get away with:
Erin Chlopak, once an FEC attorney and now with the Campaign Legal Center advocacy group, said Trump’s use of campaign money for his personal benefit might be illegal ― if it can be proven that the Trump Tower office is not serving any legitimate campaign purpose.
Absent such proof, though, even such “shady” behavior may be permissible, she said. “Campaigns do have a fair amount of leeway to determine how much space they need and how much to spend for it.”
Trump campaign hasn’t paid $470,000 bill for president’s anti-immigrant rally in El Paso: report
June 3, 2019
By Cody Fenwick, AlterNet - Raw Story
Although O’Rourke’s campaign owed the city $28,630.50, the former Texas congressman and Senate candidate paid a deposit of $7,609.14 before paying the rest of the bill right before its May 24 deadline, according to ABC News. By contrast, Trump’s campaign owes the city of El Paso a total of $470,417.05 for his “Make America Great Again” rally. Due on April 26, that amount has yet to be paid, and accounts for roughly 63 percent of the city’s contingency budget for the year.
ABC News reported the following breakdown of expenses:
In a letter sent to Trump’s campaign, El Paso’s office of the comptroller said, “failure to pay your past due balance or to make acceptable payment arrangement within 30 days from the date of this notice (May 23) may result in your account being charged a one-time collection fee of 21 percent on your gross account receivable balance.”
In response to the accusation that they are stiffing the city of El Paso, Michael Glassner, the Trump campaign’s chief operating officer, wrote that “since 2015, the Trump Campaign has held nearly 550 rallies all over the country, and this invoice is roughly 10 times the amount that a locality generally asks to be reimbursed. We are reviewing it.”
This is not the first time that Trump has had difficulties in his relationship with the El Paso region of Texas. Earlier this year, El Paso County sued President Donald Trump in federal court along with the Border Network for Human Rights over the administration’s move to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border. Their complaint argued that “the issuance of the proclamation imposed concrete and immediate harms on plaintiffs El Paso County and the Border Network for Human Rights. El Paso County is a flourishing border community that has already been harmed by the president’s declaration of an emergency and faces additional imminent harm from the actions authorized by the proclamation.”
ABC News reported the following breakdown of expenses:
- Police Department: $380,942.12
- Fire Department: $60,630.84
- Sun Metro: $15,577.52
- Department of Aviation: $6,286.57
- Streets & Maintenance: $6,452
- Health Department: $528
In a letter sent to Trump’s campaign, El Paso’s office of the comptroller said, “failure to pay your past due balance or to make acceptable payment arrangement within 30 days from the date of this notice (May 23) may result in your account being charged a one-time collection fee of 21 percent on your gross account receivable balance.”
In response to the accusation that they are stiffing the city of El Paso, Michael Glassner, the Trump campaign’s chief operating officer, wrote that “since 2015, the Trump Campaign has held nearly 550 rallies all over the country, and this invoice is roughly 10 times the amount that a locality generally asks to be reimbursed. We are reviewing it.”
This is not the first time that Trump has had difficulties in his relationship with the El Paso region of Texas. Earlier this year, El Paso County sued President Donald Trump in federal court along with the Border Network for Human Rights over the administration’s move to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border. Their complaint argued that “the issuance of the proclamation imposed concrete and immediate harms on plaintiffs El Paso County and the Border Network for Human Rights. El Paso County is a flourishing border community that has already been harmed by the president’s declaration of an emergency and faces additional imminent harm from the actions authorized by the proclamation.”
Trump signs memo requiring immigrants’ sponsors to pay back the government for welfare
Trump is using the 1996 welfare reform bill to go after immigrants who use public benefits like SNAP and Medicaid.
REBEKAH ENTRALGO - thinkprogress
MAY 24, 2019, 11:10 AM
President Trump is getting serious about going after immigrants who use public benefits.
In a presidential memorandum issued Thursday, Trump announced he will direct federal agencies to enforce a longstanding rule requiring the sponsors — usually U.S. citizen family members — of immigrants to reimburse the government for any public benefits they use, including Medicaid, SNAP, TANF, and the federal Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP).
“Financial sponsors who pledge to financially support the sponsored alien in the event the alien applies for or receives public benefits will be expected to fulfill their commitment under law,” Trump said in the memo.
The memo hinges upon a 1996 welfare reform law enacted by former President Bill Clinton, which the White House claims has not been enforced consistently. The provision requires sponsors to sign a document reaffirming they are responsible for an immigrant’s financial needs and that if they apply for any public assistance programs, the sponsor must reimburse the government. If the sponsor is unable to pay the bill, that debt would be referred to a collections agency.
Trump has directed his administration to, over the next 90 days, develop rules by which the government can determine which sponsors are required to pay back the federal government for each dollar of means-tested federal aid provided to a non-citizen. If a sponsor is found to be delinquent, they could lose their ability to sponsor, meaning thousands of families could be separated.
The directive is still lacking on key details, including how it will be implemented. It will likely be extremely complicated, considering it spans multiple agencies, like the Department of Agriculture, the Department of Homeland Security, the Social Security Administration, and more. Additionally, local jurisdictions that distribute these resources would also have to be looped in.
Because sponsors are typically relatives of immigrants arriving to the United States to reunite with family, this latest announcement from Trump affirms the administration’s shift away from family-based migration and towards a merit-based immigration system. Last week Trump unveiled an immigration plan crafted by his son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner, that would prioritize “high-skill immigrants” and reduce the number of family-based visas and green cards.
The administration is moving fast on implementing a series of rules that target immigrants for using various public benefits.
In early May, the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) formally submitted a proposed rule to evict all undocumented immigrants from public housing. The plan would displace more than 55,000 children — all of whom are U.S. citizens or legal residents. Now that the rule has been formally introduced in the federal register, the public will have 60 days to submit comments for the record.
Last year, the administration proposed a rule that would label many low-income immigrants who use public benefits a “public charge” on society and prevent them from obtaining permanent residency. The rule was pushed by White House senior adviser Stephen Miller, who has been at the forefront of influencing Trump’s hardline position on immigration ahead of the 2020 election.
Like the public charge proposal, the memo announced Thursday is not going to be immediately implemented. It also does not apply to non-citizen immigrants already in the United States. That hasn’t prevented many immigrants, however, from dropping out of or not applying for public assistance programs for fear of being denied permanent residency.
A study from the Urban Institute published this week found that in 2018, 17.4% of adults in immigrant families with kids reported they or someone in their family avoided programs like SNAP or subsidized housing because of green card concerns.
In a presidential memorandum issued Thursday, Trump announced he will direct federal agencies to enforce a longstanding rule requiring the sponsors — usually U.S. citizen family members — of immigrants to reimburse the government for any public benefits they use, including Medicaid, SNAP, TANF, and the federal Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP).
“Financial sponsors who pledge to financially support the sponsored alien in the event the alien applies for or receives public benefits will be expected to fulfill their commitment under law,” Trump said in the memo.
The memo hinges upon a 1996 welfare reform law enacted by former President Bill Clinton, which the White House claims has not been enforced consistently. The provision requires sponsors to sign a document reaffirming they are responsible for an immigrant’s financial needs and that if they apply for any public assistance programs, the sponsor must reimburse the government. If the sponsor is unable to pay the bill, that debt would be referred to a collections agency.
Trump has directed his administration to, over the next 90 days, develop rules by which the government can determine which sponsors are required to pay back the federal government for each dollar of means-tested federal aid provided to a non-citizen. If a sponsor is found to be delinquent, they could lose their ability to sponsor, meaning thousands of families could be separated.
The directive is still lacking on key details, including how it will be implemented. It will likely be extremely complicated, considering it spans multiple agencies, like the Department of Agriculture, the Department of Homeland Security, the Social Security Administration, and more. Additionally, local jurisdictions that distribute these resources would also have to be looped in.
Because sponsors are typically relatives of immigrants arriving to the United States to reunite with family, this latest announcement from Trump affirms the administration’s shift away from family-based migration and towards a merit-based immigration system. Last week Trump unveiled an immigration plan crafted by his son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner, that would prioritize “high-skill immigrants” and reduce the number of family-based visas and green cards.
The administration is moving fast on implementing a series of rules that target immigrants for using various public benefits.
In early May, the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) formally submitted a proposed rule to evict all undocumented immigrants from public housing. The plan would displace more than 55,000 children — all of whom are U.S. citizens or legal residents. Now that the rule has been formally introduced in the federal register, the public will have 60 days to submit comments for the record.
Last year, the administration proposed a rule that would label many low-income immigrants who use public benefits a “public charge” on society and prevent them from obtaining permanent residency. The rule was pushed by White House senior adviser Stephen Miller, who has been at the forefront of influencing Trump’s hardline position on immigration ahead of the 2020 election.
Like the public charge proposal, the memo announced Thursday is not going to be immediately implemented. It also does not apply to non-citizen immigrants already in the United States. That hasn’t prevented many immigrants, however, from dropping out of or not applying for public assistance programs for fear of being denied permanent residency.
A study from the Urban Institute published this week found that in 2018, 17.4% of adults in immigrant families with kids reported they or someone in their family avoided programs like SNAP or subsidized housing because of green card concerns.
Why did Deutsche Bank keep lending money to Donald Trump — even after he defaulted on loans worth hundreds of millions and sued it?
By Pro Publica - raw story
May 23, 2019
Whispers of money laundering have swirled around Donald Trump’s businesses for years. One of his casinos, for example, was fined $10 million for not trying hard enough to prevent such machinations. Investors with shady financial histories sometimes popped up in his foreign ventures. And on Sunday, The New York Times reported that anti-money-laundering specialists at Deutsche Bank internally flagged multiple transactions by Trump companies as suspicious. (A spokesperson for the Trump Organization called the article “absolute nonsense.”)
The remarkably troubled recent history of Deutsche Bank, its past money-laundering woes — and the bank’s striking relationship with Trump — are the subjects of this week’s episode of the “Trump, Inc.” podcast. The German bank loaned a cumulative total of around $2.5 billion to Trump projects over the past two decades, and the bank continued writing him nine-figure checks even after he defaulted on a $640 million obligation and sued the bank, blaming it for his failure to pay back the debt.
“Trump, Inc.” isn’t the only one examining the president’s relationship with the bank. Congressional investigators have gone to court seeking the kind of detailed — and usually secret — banking records that could reveal potential misdeeds related to the president’s businesses, according to recent filings by two congressional committees. The filings were made in response to a highly unusual move by lawyers for Trump, his family and his company seeking to quash congressional subpoenas issued to Deutsche Bank and Capital One, a second institution he banked with. Trump’s lawyers have contended that the congressional subpoenas “were issued to harass” Trump and damage him politically.
Earlier today, a federal judge in New York declined to issue a preliminary injunction to block the subpoenas. During the hearing in which he delivered that ruling, U.S. District Judge Edgardo Ramos said Congress is within its rights to require the banks to turn over Trump’s financial information, even if the disclosure is harmful to him.
For their part, the filings for the House Financial Services and Intelligence committees say they are “investigating serious and urgent questions concerning the safety of banking practices, money laundering in the financial sector, foreign influence in the U.S. political process, and the threat of foreign financial leverage, including over the President.” The inquiry includes investigating whether Trump’s accounts were involved in two large schemes involving Deutsche Bank and Russian clients.
The committees want to determine “the volume of illicit funds that may have flowed through the bank, and whether any touched the accounts held there by Mr. Trump, his family, or business.” Links to Russia will get a particularly close look. “The Committee is examining whether Mr. Trump’s foreign business deals and financial ties were part of the Russian government’s efforts to entangle business and political leaders in corrupt activity or otherwise obtain leverage over them,” the filing stated.
The podcast explores some eyebrow-raising Trump-related moves by the bank:
Like Trump, Deutsche Bank has been scrutinized for its dealings in Russia. The bank paid more than $600 million to regulators in 2017 and agreed to a consent order that cited “serious compliance deficiencies” that “spanned Deutsche Bank’s global empire.” The case focused on “mirror trades,” which Deutsche Bank facilitated between 2011 and 2015. The trades were sham transactions whose sole purpose appeared to be to illicitly convert rubles into pounds and dollars — some $10 billion worth.
A spokesperson said Deutsche Bank has increased its anti-financial-crime staff in recent years and is “committed to cooperating with authorized investigations.” The bank said it has policies in place to address the potential for conflicts of interest, including “special measures with respect to clients that hold public office or perform public functions in the U.S.”
The bank was “laundering money for wealthy Russians and people connected to Putin and the Kremlin in a variety of ways for almost the exact time period that they were doing business with Donald Trump,” Enrich said. “And all of that money through Deutsche Bank was being channeled through the same exact legal entity in the U.S. that was handling the Donald Trump relationship in the U.S. And so there are a lot of coincidences here.”
Listen to the episode.
The remarkably troubled recent history of Deutsche Bank, its past money-laundering woes — and the bank’s striking relationship with Trump — are the subjects of this week’s episode of the “Trump, Inc.” podcast. The German bank loaned a cumulative total of around $2.5 billion to Trump projects over the past two decades, and the bank continued writing him nine-figure checks even after he defaulted on a $640 million obligation and sued the bank, blaming it for his failure to pay back the debt.
“Trump, Inc.” isn’t the only one examining the president’s relationship with the bank. Congressional investigators have gone to court seeking the kind of detailed — and usually secret — banking records that could reveal potential misdeeds related to the president’s businesses, according to recent filings by two congressional committees. The filings were made in response to a highly unusual move by lawyers for Trump, his family and his company seeking to quash congressional subpoenas issued to Deutsche Bank and Capital One, a second institution he banked with. Trump’s lawyers have contended that the congressional subpoenas “were issued to harass” Trump and damage him politically.
Earlier today, a federal judge in New York declined to issue a preliminary injunction to block the subpoenas. During the hearing in which he delivered that ruling, U.S. District Judge Edgardo Ramos said Congress is within its rights to require the banks to turn over Trump’s financial information, even if the disclosure is harmful to him.
For their part, the filings for the House Financial Services and Intelligence committees say they are “investigating serious and urgent questions concerning the safety of banking practices, money laundering in the financial sector, foreign influence in the U.S. political process, and the threat of foreign financial leverage, including over the President.” The inquiry includes investigating whether Trump’s accounts were involved in two large schemes involving Deutsche Bank and Russian clients.
The committees want to determine “the volume of illicit funds that may have flowed through the bank, and whether any touched the accounts held there by Mr. Trump, his family, or business.” Links to Russia will get a particularly close look. “The Committee is examining whether Mr. Trump’s foreign business deals and financial ties were part of the Russian government’s efforts to entangle business and political leaders in corrupt activity or otherwise obtain leverage over them,” the filing stated.
The podcast explores some eyebrow-raising Trump-related moves by the bank:
- Deutsche Bank’s private wealth unit loaned Trump $48 million — after he had defaulted on his $640 million loan and the bank’s commercial unit didn’t want to lend him any further funds — so that Trump could pay back another unit of Deutsche Bank. “No one has ever seen anything like it,” said David Enrich, finance editor of The New York Times, who is writing a book about the bank and spoke to “Trump, Inc.”
- Deutsche Bank loaned Trump’s company $125 million as part of the overall $150 million purchase of the ailing Doral golf resort in Miami in 2012. The loans’ primary collateral was land and buildings that he paid only $105 million for, county land records show. The apparent favorable terms raise questions about whether the bank’s loan was unusually risky.
- To widespread alarm, and at least one protest that Trump would not be able to pay his lease obligations, Deutsche Bank’s private wealth group loaned the Trump Organization an additional $175 million to renovate the Old Post Office Building in Washington and turn it into a luxury hotel.
Like Trump, Deutsche Bank has been scrutinized for its dealings in Russia. The bank paid more than $600 million to regulators in 2017 and agreed to a consent order that cited “serious compliance deficiencies” that “spanned Deutsche Bank’s global empire.” The case focused on “mirror trades,” which Deutsche Bank facilitated between 2011 and 2015. The trades were sham transactions whose sole purpose appeared to be to illicitly convert rubles into pounds and dollars — some $10 billion worth.
A spokesperson said Deutsche Bank has increased its anti-financial-crime staff in recent years and is “committed to cooperating with authorized investigations.” The bank said it has policies in place to address the potential for conflicts of interest, including “special measures with respect to clients that hold public office or perform public functions in the U.S.”
The bank was “laundering money for wealthy Russians and people connected to Putin and the Kremlin in a variety of ways for almost the exact time period that they were doing business with Donald Trump,” Enrich said. “And all of that money through Deutsche Bank was being channeled through the same exact legal entity in the U.S. that was handling the Donald Trump relationship in the U.S. And so there are a lot of coincidences here.”
Listen to the episode.
The Unchecked Corruption of Trump’s Cabinet
The lavish spending of top officials rarely makes headlines anymore, but that doesn’t mean the problem has gone away.
3:04 PM ET
David A. Graham
Staff writer at The Atlantic
It would have been easy to miss the stories late last week, what with a trade war in progress, a hot war with Iran threatened, and the president accusing his critics of treason.
But on Thursday, a report from the Government Accountability Office concluded that Ben Carson, the secretary of housing and urban development, broke the law in lavishly refurnishing his office. The same day, the inspector general of the Environmental Protection Agency said that former Administrator Scott Pruitt wasted nearly $124,000 of taxpayer money on excessive travel, including first-class airline tickets.
For the first year and a half of the Trump administration, the petty corruption of Donald Trump’s aides was a leading story. During the spring and summer of 2018, there seemed to be nearly daily revelations about abuses at one department or another, from tony travel to soundproof booths. Then the issue sank from the headlines, for a variety of reasons. There were bigger stories, especially as Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s probe began producing more indictments. Pruitt was finally forced to resign, which seemed to tie a bow on the corruption thread. Besides, a certain numbness sets in after so many cases of wasted money.
But it would be a mistake to believe the problem has gone away, or that it’s safe to ignore. Pruitt is gone from the government and on to an inevitable career in lobbying, it’s true. So is Ryan Zinke, the former secretary of the interior, who was embroiled in several scandals. They were preceded out the door by Tom Price, the secretary of health and human services. Price’s relatively quick and contrite resignation from office in his own excessive-expenses scandal now seems like a quaint throwback to an earlier era when shame applied to Cabinet members. If he’d only understood how much the ground had shifted, he might have resolved to just stay in the job and weather the storm.
That’s what Carson did. In spring 2018, it emerged that Carson had spent around $45,000 refitting his office at HUD, including four grand for new blinds, more than $8,000 for a dishwasher, and nearly $32,000 for a dining-room table. In March 2018, Congress asked the GAO to investigate the spending. The good news for Carson: The blinds were all clear. The bad news: The table and dishwasher broke the law.
Such behavior might be forgivable in the case of a hard-working public servant who begged pardon. But Carson is a multimillionaire in his own right, who infamously (if with laudable self-awarenesss) declared himself unqualified for his post, and blamed his wife when the spending was revealed. Carson remains in the Cabinet. Now that the federal government’s internal watchdog has concluded he broke the law, will that change? It’s unlikely. HUD seldom captures the attention of the public overall, and Trump has made clear he has little interest in it except as a forum to enact his unrelated policy priorities.
Moreover, Trump has little interest in policing this sort of bad behavior among his aides. Historically, scandalous spending of taxpayer dollars was a one-way ticket out of government. Price, a veteran elected official, was acting on this understanding when he resigned. But Pruitt’s demise came only after the drumbeat apparently became such a distraction and nuisance that Trump became unwilling to deal with it any longer. It took nearly a year.
Still in the Cabinet along with Carson is Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross. In February, the Office of Government Ethics refused to certify Ross’s financial disclosure—a highly unusual step—because he hadn’t sold a stock that he claimed he had. Ross insisted the error was inadvertent. This would be more plausible if OGE hadn’t already had to warn Ross about inaccuracies in his disclosures, and if he hadn’t been caught lying to the press about his finances as well.
These are the most egregious cases. There’s also Interior Secretary David Bernhardt, who became the subject of an inspector general’s investigation into multiple allegations of ethics violations less than a week after being confirmed. Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta remains under scrutiny for signing off on what appears to have been a sweetheart deal with child-sex offender Jeffrey Epstein while Acosta was a U.S. attorney. Veterans Affairs Secretary Robert Wilkie omitted to disclose appearances to pro-Confederate groups during his confirmation process. There are reportedly Justice Department and inspector general investigations into Zinke, who left the administration in January.
These scandals are peculiar because they mostly don’t directly involve personal enrichment—it’s not theft or embezzlement. Carson, Pruitt, and Zinke engaged in what I have labeled “conspicuous corruption,” a decision to travel and live lavishly on the public dime, in one’s own official capacity. It’s a style informed by President Trump’s ostentatious mien, and by the disregard with which the administration’s top officials seem to hold the idea of public service.
Any other president would likely have fired Cabinet officials facing the same scandals at Carson and Ross—out of simple political expediency, if not out of any moral conviction. But Trump sets the tone for his administration. He stands accused of personally profiting from his public work, especially through the Trump International Hotel in D.C., though other parts of his empire have struggled during his presidency. The shared problem is that because he has not truly separated himself from his companies, his work as president is inextricable from their ups and downs.
Ongoing violations like this remain one of the most important, and overlooked, scandals of this administration. The continued, unapologetic presence of Carson and his ilk in the Cabinet can seem like a sideshow to other, bigger issues—not least the ramifications of the Mueller report. In fact, they are connected. It’s not the sums of cash spent by these officials that matter most, though the money was not theirs to spend. If leading officials are willing to break the law and mislead the public about things as minor as interior decorating, and meet with few consequences, why would they hesitate to break the law and mislead on bigger issues?
If Ross is any example, they wouldn’t. The Commerce Department is currently embroiled in a court fight over whether the 2020 Census will ask respondents whether they are U.S. citizens. Ross told Congress that he’d sought to add the question at the behest of the Justice Department, but documents revealed during the litigation contradict him.
Late in the 2016 campaign, Donald Trump began using the slogan “drain the swamp” to represent his supposed intention to root out corruption and self-dealing in Washington. He confessed to crowds that when his advisers brought it to him, he didn’t like the slogan—it seemed “hokey”—but he decided it wasn’t hokey. He never decided he meant it, though, and the result is a Cabinet that exemplifies just what he promised to eliminate.
But on Thursday, a report from the Government Accountability Office concluded that Ben Carson, the secretary of housing and urban development, broke the law in lavishly refurnishing his office. The same day, the inspector general of the Environmental Protection Agency said that former Administrator Scott Pruitt wasted nearly $124,000 of taxpayer money on excessive travel, including first-class airline tickets.
For the first year and a half of the Trump administration, the petty corruption of Donald Trump’s aides was a leading story. During the spring and summer of 2018, there seemed to be nearly daily revelations about abuses at one department or another, from tony travel to soundproof booths. Then the issue sank from the headlines, for a variety of reasons. There were bigger stories, especially as Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s probe began producing more indictments. Pruitt was finally forced to resign, which seemed to tie a bow on the corruption thread. Besides, a certain numbness sets in after so many cases of wasted money.
But it would be a mistake to believe the problem has gone away, or that it’s safe to ignore. Pruitt is gone from the government and on to an inevitable career in lobbying, it’s true. So is Ryan Zinke, the former secretary of the interior, who was embroiled in several scandals. They were preceded out the door by Tom Price, the secretary of health and human services. Price’s relatively quick and contrite resignation from office in his own excessive-expenses scandal now seems like a quaint throwback to an earlier era when shame applied to Cabinet members. If he’d only understood how much the ground had shifted, he might have resolved to just stay in the job and weather the storm.
That’s what Carson did. In spring 2018, it emerged that Carson had spent around $45,000 refitting his office at HUD, including four grand for new blinds, more than $8,000 for a dishwasher, and nearly $32,000 for a dining-room table. In March 2018, Congress asked the GAO to investigate the spending. The good news for Carson: The blinds were all clear. The bad news: The table and dishwasher broke the law.
Such behavior might be forgivable in the case of a hard-working public servant who begged pardon. But Carson is a multimillionaire in his own right, who infamously (if with laudable self-awarenesss) declared himself unqualified for his post, and blamed his wife when the spending was revealed. Carson remains in the Cabinet. Now that the federal government’s internal watchdog has concluded he broke the law, will that change? It’s unlikely. HUD seldom captures the attention of the public overall, and Trump has made clear he has little interest in it except as a forum to enact his unrelated policy priorities.
Moreover, Trump has little interest in policing this sort of bad behavior among his aides. Historically, scandalous spending of taxpayer dollars was a one-way ticket out of government. Price, a veteran elected official, was acting on this understanding when he resigned. But Pruitt’s demise came only after the drumbeat apparently became such a distraction and nuisance that Trump became unwilling to deal with it any longer. It took nearly a year.
Still in the Cabinet along with Carson is Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross. In February, the Office of Government Ethics refused to certify Ross’s financial disclosure—a highly unusual step—because he hadn’t sold a stock that he claimed he had. Ross insisted the error was inadvertent. This would be more plausible if OGE hadn’t already had to warn Ross about inaccuracies in his disclosures, and if he hadn’t been caught lying to the press about his finances as well.
These are the most egregious cases. There’s also Interior Secretary David Bernhardt, who became the subject of an inspector general’s investigation into multiple allegations of ethics violations less than a week after being confirmed. Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta remains under scrutiny for signing off on what appears to have been a sweetheart deal with child-sex offender Jeffrey Epstein while Acosta was a U.S. attorney. Veterans Affairs Secretary Robert Wilkie omitted to disclose appearances to pro-Confederate groups during his confirmation process. There are reportedly Justice Department and inspector general investigations into Zinke, who left the administration in January.
These scandals are peculiar because they mostly don’t directly involve personal enrichment—it’s not theft or embezzlement. Carson, Pruitt, and Zinke engaged in what I have labeled “conspicuous corruption,” a decision to travel and live lavishly on the public dime, in one’s own official capacity. It’s a style informed by President Trump’s ostentatious mien, and by the disregard with which the administration’s top officials seem to hold the idea of public service.
Any other president would likely have fired Cabinet officials facing the same scandals at Carson and Ross—out of simple political expediency, if not out of any moral conviction. But Trump sets the tone for his administration. He stands accused of personally profiting from his public work, especially through the Trump International Hotel in D.C., though other parts of his empire have struggled during his presidency. The shared problem is that because he has not truly separated himself from his companies, his work as president is inextricable from their ups and downs.
Ongoing violations like this remain one of the most important, and overlooked, scandals of this administration. The continued, unapologetic presence of Carson and his ilk in the Cabinet can seem like a sideshow to other, bigger issues—not least the ramifications of the Mueller report. In fact, they are connected. It’s not the sums of cash spent by these officials that matter most, though the money was not theirs to spend. If leading officials are willing to break the law and mislead the public about things as minor as interior decorating, and meet with few consequences, why would they hesitate to break the law and mislead on bigger issues?
If Ross is any example, they wouldn’t. The Commerce Department is currently embroiled in a court fight over whether the 2020 Census will ask respondents whether they are U.S. citizens. Ross told Congress that he’d sought to add the question at the behest of the Justice Department, but documents revealed during the litigation contradict him.
Late in the 2016 campaign, Donald Trump began using the slogan “drain the swamp” to represent his supposed intention to root out corruption and self-dealing in Washington. He confessed to crowds that when his advisers brought it to him, he didn’t like the slogan—it seemed “hokey”—but he decided it wasn’t hokey. He never decided he meant it, though, and the result is a Cabinet that exemplifies just what he promised to eliminate.
COHEN: TRUMP IS A RACIST, A CON MAN, AND A CHEAT!!!
standard operating procedure for trump: don't pay bills!!!
California agencies fought fires on federal land. Now Trump won’t pay in full
The US Forest Service audited the reimbursement sent by the state and is withholding $9m, saying they needed more documentation
Vivian Ho in San Francisco
the guardian
Thu 23 May 2019 06.00 EDT
As California prepares to enter wildfire season, the Trump administration is holding back millions of dollars in requested reimbursement to local fire agencies for battling wildfires on federal lands last year.
After the most destructive and expensive season on record, California issued a $72m reimbursement request for local firefighting efforts on federal lands. Rather than reimburse the local agencies in full, the US forest service audited the agreement that made this exchange possible and is now withholding $9m.
“A local fire department doesn’t budget to go help the US forest service,” said Brian Marshall, fire chief for the state office of emergency services. “You pay it up front, expecting reimbursement. If you don’t get the money, a fire chief’s job could be in jeopardy because then they’re operating in the red and the elected officials start asking the tough questions. And that’s unacceptable.”
According to the forest service, the audit was prompted by a 2017 letter from the director of the state office of emergency services that criticized the forest service’s reimbursement practices.
In a statement, the forest service claimed the money was being withheld because the agency did not receive “documentation that substantiate[s] actual expenses”. “Our intentions are to fully reimburse the state of California for all of their actual expenses,” the forest service said.
But California and the forest service had been operating under agreements like this since 1961, Marshall said, and this was the first time the forest service had required extra documentation for bills that had already been submitted.
Marshall raised concern over the timing of the spat: “We’re going back to last summer when we’re ready to burn right now.”
Meanwhile, the state and the forest service are in the midst of renegotiating their agreement. Senator Dianne Feinstein wrote both the Forest Service and the Department of Agriculture earlier this month, asking them to work with the governor’s office and to “delay implementation of any recommended actions from the recently completed internal audit”.
“As you know, around 60% of forested land in California is owned by the federal government,” Feinstein wrote. “Wildfires don’t stop at jurisdictional boundaries, so a unified federal-state approach is the only way to properly protect lives and property.”
The forest service’s audit comes after Donald Trump repeatedly blamed California’s forest management for the wildfires that killed dozens last year. “Billions of dollars are given each year, with so many lives lost, all because of gross mismanagement of the forests,” he tweeted. “Remedy now, or no more Fed payments!”
Marshall believes the reimbursement feud is “going to have a chilling effect on the way we fight fires in California”.
“If we continue to have fire seasons like we’ve seen in the past couple of years, with whole communities wiped out, we can’t afford to have these kinds of issues impact the California wildland firefighting program,” Marshall said.
After the most destructive and expensive season on record, California issued a $72m reimbursement request for local firefighting efforts on federal lands. Rather than reimburse the local agencies in full, the US forest service audited the agreement that made this exchange possible and is now withholding $9m.
“A local fire department doesn’t budget to go help the US forest service,” said Brian Marshall, fire chief for the state office of emergency services. “You pay it up front, expecting reimbursement. If you don’t get the money, a fire chief’s job could be in jeopardy because then they’re operating in the red and the elected officials start asking the tough questions. And that’s unacceptable.”
According to the forest service, the audit was prompted by a 2017 letter from the director of the state office of emergency services that criticized the forest service’s reimbursement practices.
In a statement, the forest service claimed the money was being withheld because the agency did not receive “documentation that substantiate[s] actual expenses”. “Our intentions are to fully reimburse the state of California for all of their actual expenses,” the forest service said.
But California and the forest service had been operating under agreements like this since 1961, Marshall said, and this was the first time the forest service had required extra documentation for bills that had already been submitted.
Marshall raised concern over the timing of the spat: “We’re going back to last summer when we’re ready to burn right now.”
Meanwhile, the state and the forest service are in the midst of renegotiating their agreement. Senator Dianne Feinstein wrote both the Forest Service and the Department of Agriculture earlier this month, asking them to work with the governor’s office and to “delay implementation of any recommended actions from the recently completed internal audit”.
“As you know, around 60% of forested land in California is owned by the federal government,” Feinstein wrote. “Wildfires don’t stop at jurisdictional boundaries, so a unified federal-state approach is the only way to properly protect lives and property.”
The forest service’s audit comes after Donald Trump repeatedly blamed California’s forest management for the wildfires that killed dozens last year. “Billions of dollars are given each year, with so many lives lost, all because of gross mismanagement of the forests,” he tweeted. “Remedy now, or no more Fed payments!”
Marshall believes the reimbursement feud is “going to have a chilling effect on the way we fight fires in California”.
“If we continue to have fire seasons like we’ve seen in the past couple of years, with whole communities wiped out, we can’t afford to have these kinds of issues impact the California wildland firefighting program,” Marshall said.
One of Trump’s broken promises has cost US taxpayers 255 times the presidential salary he volunteered not to take
By Elizabeth Preza, AlterNet - raw story
May 22, 2019
Donald Trump’s golf outings have cost U.S. taxpayers $102 million in expenses — which, according to HuffPost, is “255 times the annual presidential salary he volunteered not to take.”
The figure represents millions in “extra travel and security expenses,” according to HuffPost, and will increase again next month when he visits his resort in Doonbeg, Ireland in June.
HuffPost conducted the analysis, which it described as “a conservative approach to determining costs” based off a 2019 Government Accountability Office report on Trump’s presidential travel and secret service expenditures.
Per HuffPost:
U.S. taxpayers have spent $81 million for the president’s two dozen trips to Florida, according to a HuffPost analysis. They spent $17 million for his 15 trips to New Jersey, another $1 million so he could visit his resort in Los Angeles and at least $3 million for his two days in Scotland last summer ― $1.3 million of which went just for rental cars for the massive entourage that accompanies a president abroad.
“It’s obviously an incredible waste of money,” Robert Weissman, president of Public Citizen, told HuffPost, adding, “of course, the more time he spends golfing, the less time he spends governing, the better.”
During the 2016 presidential campaign, Trump famously promised he’s “not going to have time to golf” as president while bashing Barack Obama every time he teed up.
“If I were in the White House, I don’t think I’d ever see Turnberry again,” Trump said in a February 2016 news conference. “I don’t think I’d ever see Doral again … I don’t even think I’d see anything, I just want to stay in the White House and work my ass off.”
Further, according to SBNation, between 2011 and 2016, Trump complained on Twitter 27 times about Obama’s golf habit.
Yet, as of May 19, 2019, Trump has reportedly played golf at one of his 17 golf courses or elsewhere at least 188 times, according to Golf News Net.
If Trump is to believed, golf “if he primary form of exercise,” and he hits the links between high-stakes meetings with foreign leaders.
But, Jordan Libowitz of the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) sees it differently.
“His top priority with these trips is not the business of the American people, it’s the business of the Trump Organization,” Libowitz told HuffPo. “The American presidency has become another tool to advertise his golf properties.”
You can read more about the HuffPost methodology here.
The figure represents millions in “extra travel and security expenses,” according to HuffPost, and will increase again next month when he visits his resort in Doonbeg, Ireland in June.
HuffPost conducted the analysis, which it described as “a conservative approach to determining costs” based off a 2019 Government Accountability Office report on Trump’s presidential travel and secret service expenditures.
Per HuffPost:
U.S. taxpayers have spent $81 million for the president’s two dozen trips to Florida, according to a HuffPost analysis. They spent $17 million for his 15 trips to New Jersey, another $1 million so he could visit his resort in Los Angeles and at least $3 million for his two days in Scotland last summer ― $1.3 million of which went just for rental cars for the massive entourage that accompanies a president abroad.
“It’s obviously an incredible waste of money,” Robert Weissman, president of Public Citizen, told HuffPost, adding, “of course, the more time he spends golfing, the less time he spends governing, the better.”
During the 2016 presidential campaign, Trump famously promised he’s “not going to have time to golf” as president while bashing Barack Obama every time he teed up.
“If I were in the White House, I don’t think I’d ever see Turnberry again,” Trump said in a February 2016 news conference. “I don’t think I’d ever see Doral again … I don’t even think I’d see anything, I just want to stay in the White House and work my ass off.”
Further, according to SBNation, between 2011 and 2016, Trump complained on Twitter 27 times about Obama’s golf habit.
Yet, as of May 19, 2019, Trump has reportedly played golf at one of his 17 golf courses or elsewhere at least 188 times, according to Golf News Net.
If Trump is to believed, golf “if he primary form of exercise,” and he hits the links between high-stakes meetings with foreign leaders.
But, Jordan Libowitz of the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) sees it differently.
“His top priority with these trips is not the business of the American people, it’s the business of the Trump Organization,” Libowitz told HuffPo. “The American presidency has become another tool to advertise his golf properties.”
You can read more about the HuffPost methodology here.
CNN blows the lid off a Trump scam that got family to pay $400,000 for a literal hole in the ground
Brad Reed - raw story
17 MAY 2019 AT 10:48 ET
CNN’s Erin Burnett this week has blown the lid off a scam involving President Donald Trump that saw a California family fork over $400,000 for what they thought would be a luxury condo at a Trump resort — but that turned out to be a literal hole in the ground.
In her report, Burnett talked with a woman named Sandra Sapol, who in 2006 bought a condo at what was supposed to be a new Trump-branded property called the Trump Ocean Resort Baja Mexico.
Sapol said that a woman selling condos at the resort met with her and showed her brochures of what the resort would look like — and they came complete with an endorsement from Trump himself that guaranteed people would have “the time of their lives” at his new resort.
“Whatever Donald Trump touches turns fantastically gold,” Sapol said in explaining her reason for buying the condo.
But the resort was never built and Sapol lost all the money she invested. On the site of where the hotel was supposed to be constructed is a giant hole in the ground — and nothing more.
“There’s my hole!” Sapol said while choking back tears. “That’s what I bought, my hole!”
Burnett went on to explain how the people selling the condos were using Trump’s brand under a licensing deal under which they misled buyers into believing they were buying property directly from Trump himself.
“In the brochure, it says, ‘Developed by one of the most respected names in real estate, Donald J. Trump,'” Burnett explained. “In fact, here’s a letter from the developer and Donald Trump’s name is at the bottom!”
“This looks deliberately misleading because the president’s signature… is right on the bottom of the letter!” commented CNN host Jim Sciutto.
In her report, Burnett talked with a woman named Sandra Sapol, who in 2006 bought a condo at what was supposed to be a new Trump-branded property called the Trump Ocean Resort Baja Mexico.
Sapol said that a woman selling condos at the resort met with her and showed her brochures of what the resort would look like — and they came complete with an endorsement from Trump himself that guaranteed people would have “the time of their lives” at his new resort.
“Whatever Donald Trump touches turns fantastically gold,” Sapol said in explaining her reason for buying the condo.
But the resort was never built and Sapol lost all the money she invested. On the site of where the hotel was supposed to be constructed is a giant hole in the ground — and nothing more.
“There’s my hole!” Sapol said while choking back tears. “That’s what I bought, my hole!”
Burnett went on to explain how the people selling the condos were using Trump’s brand under a licensing deal under which they misled buyers into believing they were buying property directly from Trump himself.
“In the brochure, it says, ‘Developed by one of the most respected names in real estate, Donald J. Trump,'” Burnett explained. “In fact, here’s a letter from the developer and Donald Trump’s name is at the bottom!”
“This looks deliberately misleading because the president’s signature… is right on the bottom of the letter!” commented CNN host Jim Sciutto.
There’s something crucial missing from Trump’s overhaul of NAFTA — revealing the president as a shameful political fraud
by Cody Fenwick - alternet
May 15, 2019
“MAGA,” blusters Donald Trump. “Make America Great Again!” America’s ranching families, however, would like Trump to come off his high horse and get serious about a more modest goal, namely Make America COOL Again.
COOL stands for Country of Origin Labeling, a straightforward law simply requiring that the labels on packages of steak, pork chops, etc. tell us if the meat came from the USA, China, Brazil or Whereintheworldistan. That’s useful information, empowering consumers to decide where their families’ food dollars go. But multinational meatpacking giants like Tyson Foods, JBS, and Cargill don’t want you and me having this basic knowledge and power to decide for ourselves.
So, in 2012, the meat monopolists got the World Trade Organization to decree that our nation’s COOL law violated global trade rules — and our corporate-submissive congress critters meekly surrendered, repealing the law.
Then came Donald Trump, blustering furiously against world trade scams and launching his Made in America campaign, which included promising struggling ranchers that he’d make restoring the COOL label a centerpiece of his new NAFTA deal. Ranching families cheered Donald the Dealmaker because getting that “American Made” brand on their products would mean more sales and better prices.
Now, however, cheers have turned to jeers, for Trump has issued his new U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, ballyhooing it as a “historic transaction.” But wait a minute … Where’s the beef? In his grandiose 1,809-page document, there is not one scrap about restoring COOL, not one word.
Worse than being left out, America’s hard-hit ranching families are actually slapped in the face by Trump’s U.S.-Mexico-Canada deal, for it allows multinational meatpackers to keep shipping into the U.S. market foreign beef that does not meet our food safety standards! Aside from the “yuck” factor and health issues, this gives Tyson and other giants an incentive to abandon U.S. ranchers entirely.
What’s the matter with Donald and The Trumpateers? Why won’t they stand up for the American workers and business owners who make their products right here in the good ol’ US of A?
Oh, yeah, I know they talk a good game. Trump himself even issued a bold, star-spangled executive order in 2017 promoting the purchase of “American-made goods” produced by American labor. We consumers respond positively to that pitch, generally preferring to buy everything from mattresses to hockey pucks that are manufactured here at home. For example, take Patriot Puck. What’s not to like about this corporation, which literally wraps its hockey pucks in American flag packaging and proudly advertises that they are “the only American Made Hockey Puck”?
Well, sadly, one thing not to like is that the puck-seller’s pitch was a lie. Its product actually turned out to be made in China. It’s not just wrong to engage in such an unfair and deceptive sales scam. It’s a federal crime.
Saddest of all, though, is that when honest competitors and defrauded consumers protested the blatant firm’s deceit, Trump’s Federal Trade Commission appointees proved to be Made in America wimps. Far from standing up for U.S. workers, they coddled the job-stealing culprit. Trump’s Commission assessed no fines, required no admission of the obvious corporate crime, didn’t even make “Patriot” Puck notify customers of its false marketing scam and let it keep all the profits it pocketed from the fraud. Instead, Trump’s regulatory “toughies” insisted that the threat of future fines would keep such outlaws in check.
Seriously? The real crime here is not just that corporation after corporation is being given a pass for mocking our Made in America laws but that our nation’s president is mocking the plight of America’s manufacturing workers by making a spectacle of standing up for them. It’s a shameful political fraud.
One thing we can do to address the injustice of Trump & Company not enforcing Made in America laws and backing down from COOL is to stand with America’s farm and ranch families against their betrayal by Trump and the Big Food monopolists by contacting the National Farmers Union: NFU.org.
COOL stands for Country of Origin Labeling, a straightforward law simply requiring that the labels on packages of steak, pork chops, etc. tell us if the meat came from the USA, China, Brazil or Whereintheworldistan. That’s useful information, empowering consumers to decide where their families’ food dollars go. But multinational meatpacking giants like Tyson Foods, JBS, and Cargill don’t want you and me having this basic knowledge and power to decide for ourselves.
So, in 2012, the meat monopolists got the World Trade Organization to decree that our nation’s COOL law violated global trade rules — and our corporate-submissive congress critters meekly surrendered, repealing the law.
Then came Donald Trump, blustering furiously against world trade scams and launching his Made in America campaign, which included promising struggling ranchers that he’d make restoring the COOL label a centerpiece of his new NAFTA deal. Ranching families cheered Donald the Dealmaker because getting that “American Made” brand on their products would mean more sales and better prices.
Now, however, cheers have turned to jeers, for Trump has issued his new U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, ballyhooing it as a “historic transaction.” But wait a minute … Where’s the beef? In his grandiose 1,809-page document, there is not one scrap about restoring COOL, not one word.
Worse than being left out, America’s hard-hit ranching families are actually slapped in the face by Trump’s U.S.-Mexico-Canada deal, for it allows multinational meatpackers to keep shipping into the U.S. market foreign beef that does not meet our food safety standards! Aside from the “yuck” factor and health issues, this gives Tyson and other giants an incentive to abandon U.S. ranchers entirely.
What’s the matter with Donald and The Trumpateers? Why won’t they stand up for the American workers and business owners who make their products right here in the good ol’ US of A?
Oh, yeah, I know they talk a good game. Trump himself even issued a bold, star-spangled executive order in 2017 promoting the purchase of “American-made goods” produced by American labor. We consumers respond positively to that pitch, generally preferring to buy everything from mattresses to hockey pucks that are manufactured here at home. For example, take Patriot Puck. What’s not to like about this corporation, which literally wraps its hockey pucks in American flag packaging and proudly advertises that they are “the only American Made Hockey Puck”?
Well, sadly, one thing not to like is that the puck-seller’s pitch was a lie. Its product actually turned out to be made in China. It’s not just wrong to engage in such an unfair and deceptive sales scam. It’s a federal crime.
Saddest of all, though, is that when honest competitors and defrauded consumers protested the blatant firm’s deceit, Trump’s Federal Trade Commission appointees proved to be Made in America wimps. Far from standing up for U.S. workers, they coddled the job-stealing culprit. Trump’s Commission assessed no fines, required no admission of the obvious corporate crime, didn’t even make “Patriot” Puck notify customers of its false marketing scam and let it keep all the profits it pocketed from the fraud. Instead, Trump’s regulatory “toughies” insisted that the threat of future fines would keep such outlaws in check.
Seriously? The real crime here is not just that corporation after corporation is being given a pass for mocking our Made in America laws but that our nation’s president is mocking the plight of America’s manufacturing workers by making a spectacle of standing up for them. It’s a shameful political fraud.
One thing we can do to address the injustice of Trump & Company not enforcing Made in America laws and backing down from COOL is to stand with America’s farm and ranch families against their betrayal by Trump and the Big Food monopolists by contacting the National Farmers Union: NFU.org.
Even golfers are now rejecting doing business at Trump properties: Business reporter
Matthew Chapman - raw story
15 MAY 2019 AT 20:09 ET
Pissident Donald Trump has, at many opportunities, sought to use the power of his office to promote his own businesses, the most notable example being how foreign diplomats have stayed at the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C. for exorbitant prices.
But as a whole, the Trump Organization has been floundering since he took office, business reporter Jonathan O’Connell told CNN’s Erin Burnett. And that even extends to a branch of his business that he has a strong personal investment in: his golf clubs. One that is particularly hard-hit is Trump National Doral Miami, his prized luxury golf resort.
“I definitely think there’s just a smaller pool of people who are willing to do business with or go to properties that have Trump on the front of them,” said O’Connell. “Whether you’re talking about luxury travelers, golfers, people looking for a getaway, or corporations who are doing sort of like a board meeting or a corporate retreat, or else people renting office space for their company — all those companies and travelers are now thinking about whether they want to affiliate themselves with the Trump name. And the portion of those who are deciding they don’t want to do that, that’s where the pain is coming for the president’s business.”
“Having said that, even with the rally — I was surprised at the magnitude of the drop in business they have had there [at the Doral], because Trump is still very popular among a lot of golfers,” added O’Connell. “Obviously Tiger Woods, Jack Nicklaus, et cetera. A lot of the big names in golf are fine affiliating themselves with Trump. But clearly, from the numbers, more golfers are sort of unwilling to spend their money with Trump than they were before.”
“Yeah, I mean, 69 percent, you know, over the past few years,” said Burnett. “It does seem like an incredibly stunning drop.”
But as a whole, the Trump Organization has been floundering since he took office, business reporter Jonathan O’Connell told CNN’s Erin Burnett. And that even extends to a branch of his business that he has a strong personal investment in: his golf clubs. One that is particularly hard-hit is Trump National Doral Miami, his prized luxury golf resort.
“I definitely think there’s just a smaller pool of people who are willing to do business with or go to properties that have Trump on the front of them,” said O’Connell. “Whether you’re talking about luxury travelers, golfers, people looking for a getaway, or corporations who are doing sort of like a board meeting or a corporate retreat, or else people renting office space for their company — all those companies and travelers are now thinking about whether they want to affiliate themselves with the Trump name. And the portion of those who are deciding they don’t want to do that, that’s where the pain is coming for the president’s business.”
“Having said that, even with the rally — I was surprised at the magnitude of the drop in business they have had there [at the Doral], because Trump is still very popular among a lot of golfers,” added O’Connell. “Obviously Tiger Woods, Jack Nicklaus, et cetera. A lot of the big names in golf are fine affiliating themselves with Trump. But clearly, from the numbers, more golfers are sort of unwilling to spend their money with Trump than they were before.”
“Yeah, I mean, 69 percent, you know, over the past few years,” said Burnett. “It does seem like an incredibly stunning drop.”
Trump associates reveal decades worth of stunningly racist behavior by the president: ‘He’s got a very Aryan view of people’
Travis Gettys - raw story
13 MAY 2019 AT 14:36 ET
President Donald Trump has antiquated views on race and nationalities that are unquestionably bigoted, according to dozens of people who shared their experience with him.
The Atlantic interviewed numerous individuals who’ve interacted with Trump, and they all agree he’s essentially racist.
“America’s always trying to find this gotcha moment that shows Donald Trump is racist — you know, let’s find this one big thing,” said Kwame Jackson, the runner-up in the first season of NBC’s “The Apprentice.” “Let’s look for that one time when he burned a cross in someone’s yard so we can now finally say it. People refuse to see the bread crumbs that are already in front of you, leading you to grandma’s house.”
Timothy O’Brien, author of the biography Trump Nation, said the president’s racism is obvious, but journalistic norms resist such labels.
“This is the same debate we have about whether or not he’s a liar,” O’Brien said. “And I get the journalistic need to be really clear about how we use terms. You know, lying implies volition and knowledge. But I’m very comfortable saying I think he’s got a pathology around lying. And when it comes to race, I don’t think it’s merely using racial animosities or race-baiting as tools to promote his business. I think it’s a deep-seated reflection of what he thinks about how the world works.”
O’Brien explained that Trump believes that genetics determine personal value, and he firmly believes in racially bigoted stereotypes.
“He trusts his gut on issues surrounding race, because he’s got a simplistic, deterministic, and racist perspective on who people are,” O’Brien said. “I think at his core he has a genetic understanding of what makes people good and bad or successful. And you see it all the time — he talks about people having good genes. He looks at the world that way. He’s got a very Aryan view of people and race.”
Barbara Res, who worked as a senior executive in the Trump Organization for years, agrees the president sorts people into bigoted categories based on their race, religion or nationality.
“Trump talked about how he didn’t want black people handling his money, he wanted the guys with the yarmulkes,” Res said. “He was very much the kind of person who would take people of a religion, like Jews, or a race, like blacks, or a nationality, like Italians, and ascribe to them certain qualities. Blacks were lazy, and Jews were good with money, and Italians were good with their hands — and Germans were clean.”
The Atlantic interviewed numerous individuals who’ve interacted with Trump, and they all agree he’s essentially racist.
“America’s always trying to find this gotcha moment that shows Donald Trump is racist — you know, let’s find this one big thing,” said Kwame Jackson, the runner-up in the first season of NBC’s “The Apprentice.” “Let’s look for that one time when he burned a cross in someone’s yard so we can now finally say it. People refuse to see the bread crumbs that are already in front of you, leading you to grandma’s house.”
Timothy O’Brien, author of the biography Trump Nation, said the president’s racism is obvious, but journalistic norms resist such labels.
“This is the same debate we have about whether or not he’s a liar,” O’Brien said. “And I get the journalistic need to be really clear about how we use terms. You know, lying implies volition and knowledge. But I’m very comfortable saying I think he’s got a pathology around lying. And when it comes to race, I don’t think it’s merely using racial animosities or race-baiting as tools to promote his business. I think it’s a deep-seated reflection of what he thinks about how the world works.”
O’Brien explained that Trump believes that genetics determine personal value, and he firmly believes in racially bigoted stereotypes.
“He trusts his gut on issues surrounding race, because he’s got a simplistic, deterministic, and racist perspective on who people are,” O’Brien said. “I think at his core he has a genetic understanding of what makes people good and bad or successful. And you see it all the time — he talks about people having good genes. He looks at the world that way. He’s got a very Aryan view of people and race.”
Barbara Res, who worked as a senior executive in the Trump Organization for years, agrees the president sorts people into bigoted categories based on their race, religion or nationality.
“Trump talked about how he didn’t want black people handling his money, he wanted the guys with the yarmulkes,” Res said. “He was very much the kind of person who would take people of a religion, like Jews, or a race, like blacks, or a nationality, like Italians, and ascribe to them certain qualities. Blacks were lazy, and Jews were good with money, and Italians were good with their hands — and Germans were clean.”
Trump now opposes LGBT Equality Act
David Badash, The New Civil Rights Movement - raw story
13 MAY 2019 AT 21:53 ET
Real estate mogul Donald J. Trump, in an interview with The Advocate, said “it’s only fair” that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 be amended to include gay people.
“I like the idea of amending the 1964 Civil Rights Act to include a ban of discrimination based on sexual orientation,” Trump told the publication. “It would be simple. It would be straightforward. We don’t need to rewrite the laws currently on the books, although I do think we need to address hate-crimes legislation. But amending the Civil Rights Act would grant the same protection to gay people that we give to other Americans — it’s only fair.”
Fast forward to 2019.
Real estate mogul Donald J. Trump is President Donald Trump.
The House of Representatives is set to vote on the Equality Act on Friday, which would amend the 1964 Civil Rights Act to include a ban of discrimination based on sexual orientation.
And President Donald Trump opposes the Equality Act.
As Chris Johnson at The Washington Blade exclusively reports, the President Trump indeed has come out against the Equality Act – legislation that would amend the 1964 Civil Rights Act to include a ban of discrimination based on sexual orientation. The Equality Act would go further, also amending the 1968 Fair Housing Act to protect LGBTQ people is areas such as housing, credit, employment, education, jury service, and public accommodations.
A senior Trump administration official has told Johnson that the Trump administration “absolutely opposes discrimination of any kind and supports the equal treatment of all.”
That senior Trump official, adds, “however, this bill in its current form is filled with poison pills that threaten to undermine parental and conscience rights.”
Parental and conscience rights likely refer to harmful “ex-gay,” “reparative,” or “conversion” therapy, which Trump’s evangelical base supports.
Those parental and conscience rights also likely refer to special rights for Christians to be able to legally refuse service to LGBT people and same-sex couples, as America has seen in cases involving Christian bakers, florists, photographers, and county clerks, among others.
All of which means that as long as Donald Trump is President there will be no legal equality for LGBTQ people.
“I like the idea of amending the 1964 Civil Rights Act to include a ban of discrimination based on sexual orientation,” Trump told the publication. “It would be simple. It would be straightforward. We don’t need to rewrite the laws currently on the books, although I do think we need to address hate-crimes legislation. But amending the Civil Rights Act would grant the same protection to gay people that we give to other Americans — it’s only fair.”
Fast forward to 2019.
Real estate mogul Donald J. Trump is President Donald Trump.
The House of Representatives is set to vote on the Equality Act on Friday, which would amend the 1964 Civil Rights Act to include a ban of discrimination based on sexual orientation.
And President Donald Trump opposes the Equality Act.
As Chris Johnson at The Washington Blade exclusively reports, the President Trump indeed has come out against the Equality Act – legislation that would amend the 1964 Civil Rights Act to include a ban of discrimination based on sexual orientation. The Equality Act would go further, also amending the 1968 Fair Housing Act to protect LGBTQ people is areas such as housing, credit, employment, education, jury service, and public accommodations.
A senior Trump administration official has told Johnson that the Trump administration “absolutely opposes discrimination of any kind and supports the equal treatment of all.”
That senior Trump official, adds, “however, this bill in its current form is filled with poison pills that threaten to undermine parental and conscience rights.”
Parental and conscience rights likely refer to harmful “ex-gay,” “reparative,” or “conversion” therapy, which Trump’s evangelical base supports.
Those parental and conscience rights also likely refer to special rights for Christians to be able to legally refuse service to LGBT people and same-sex couples, as America has seen in cases involving Christian bakers, florists, photographers, and county clerks, among others.
All of which means that as long as Donald Trump is President there will be no legal equality for LGBTQ people.
Donald Trump Reportedly Cheated to Beat an 11-Year-Old in Golf
By Connor Mannion - media ite
May 10th, 2019, 1:14 pm
A veteran sportswriter who has written a book exploring President Donald Trump’s relationship to the game of golf reports that Trump once cheated to beat an 11-year-old child.
Rick Reilly spoke with Vox about his book Commander in Cheat, and related the most outrageous alleged cheating story he knew about Trump.
Reilly noted Trump currently advertises he won a 2018 club championship at his Mar-a-Lago Club in Florida, but wasn’t there for the actual tournament due to peace talks with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un in Singapore.
When Trump returned to the club, he spotted the winner, film financier Ted Virtue, playing a round of golf with his son “who I think is 10 or 11 years old,” Reilly said.
Reilly then alleges Trump challenged Virtue and his son to play six holes for the club championship.
“They get to a hole with a big pond on it. Both Ted and his son hit the ball on the green, and Trump hits his in the water. By the time they get to the hole, Trump is lining up the kid’s ball. Only now it’s his ball and the caddie has switched it,” Reilly said.
Reilly said Virtue’s son tried to protest, but the president’s caddie said “No, this is the president’s ball; your ball went in the water.”
Trump then made the putt and declared himself the club champion, according to Reilly.
Reilly noted he wasn’t able to speak with Virtue himself, but says the story was first reported by Golf.com and he got confirmation from two other club members.
Rick Reilly spoke with Vox about his book Commander in Cheat, and related the most outrageous alleged cheating story he knew about Trump.
Reilly noted Trump currently advertises he won a 2018 club championship at his Mar-a-Lago Club in Florida, but wasn’t there for the actual tournament due to peace talks with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un in Singapore.
When Trump returned to the club, he spotted the winner, film financier Ted Virtue, playing a round of golf with his son “who I think is 10 or 11 years old,” Reilly said.
Reilly then alleges Trump challenged Virtue and his son to play six holes for the club championship.
“They get to a hole with a big pond on it. Both Ted and his son hit the ball on the green, and Trump hits his in the water. By the time they get to the hole, Trump is lining up the kid’s ball. Only now it’s his ball and the caddie has switched it,” Reilly said.
Reilly said Virtue’s son tried to protest, but the president’s caddie said “No, this is the president’s ball; your ball went in the water.”
Trump then made the putt and declared himself the club champion, according to Reilly.
Reilly noted he wasn’t able to speak with Virtue himself, but says the story was first reported by Golf.com and he got confirmation from two other club members.
Trump hired undocumented workers for winery he falsely plugged as ‘largest’ after neo-Nazi rally
David Badash, The New Civil Rights Movement - raw story
03 MAY 2019 AT 14:02 ET
At least seven undocumented immigrants say they worked for the Trump Winery in Charlottesville, Virginia – the one President Donald Trump plugged, falsely claiming during his infamous 2017 “both sides” defense of neo-Nazis was “one of the largest wineries in the United States.”
“I’ve been here for six or five years,” one of the workers, who claims he was hired after presenting false documents that were not verified, told Univision News. “They’ve never asked me for anything, otherwise I wouldn’t be here.”
President Trump made illegal immigration the centerpiece of his campaign in 2015, and has worked tirelessly to attack undocumented immigrants and asylum-seeking migrants while in office. And while insisting some of the neo-Nazis were “very fine people,” he called Mexicans coming into America “rapists.” And more recently, he’s resorted to calling undocumented immigrants “animals.”
Univision, in an exclusive published Friday, reports the undocumented workers put “in long hours from sunrise to sunset, without overtime pay.”
Another employee at the Trump Winery told Univision that “they know you are undocumented, because if you look (closely) at the Social Security papers that are handed to them, they’re false.”
The Winery is not he only Trump property that has hired undocumented workers, as The Washington Post’s David Farenthold notes:
David Fahrenthold✔
@Fahrenthold
If true, would mean undocumented workers were employed at 6 @realdonaldTrump's properties as of 2019:
--Westchester golf club
--Bedminster golf club
--Colts Neck golf club
--Philly Golf golf club
--Hudson valley golf club
--Winery in Va.
David Fahrenthold✔
@Fahrenthold
ANOTHER @realDonaldTrump property -- his winery in Virginia -- is using undocumented workers, according to this report by @UnivisionNews. They found 7 workers, got footage inside the winery.
(Their video is in Spanish, but the story here is in English). https://twitter.com/UnivisionNews/status/1124144578389528578 …
9:28 AM - May 3, 2019
At the Trump Winery’s luxury hotel workers say they are paid low wages – one said she makes just $10 an hour. Some get benefits, some get none.
“There was no overtime, at least when I worked, no benefits either,” said one worker who left, adding, “if you got sick they didn’t pay you.”
But as a “consolation prize,” some workers are given vouchers that say, “We appreciate you..”
It’s good for a free lunch, and features the President’s photo – not President Donald Trump, but Trump Winery president Eric Trump.
President Trump said he owns the winery but he may or may not. The Trump Winery website says Eric Trump, the president’s son, owns it, while investigations suggest otherwise. Donald Trump purchased it in 2011.
But either way, contrary to what President Trump claimed in 2017, it’s not “one of the largest wineries in the United States.”
“I’ve been here for six or five years,” one of the workers, who claims he was hired after presenting false documents that were not verified, told Univision News. “They’ve never asked me for anything, otherwise I wouldn’t be here.”
President Trump made illegal immigration the centerpiece of his campaign in 2015, and has worked tirelessly to attack undocumented immigrants and asylum-seeking migrants while in office. And while insisting some of the neo-Nazis were “very fine people,” he called Mexicans coming into America “rapists.” And more recently, he’s resorted to calling undocumented immigrants “animals.”
Univision, in an exclusive published Friday, reports the undocumented workers put “in long hours from sunrise to sunset, without overtime pay.”
Another employee at the Trump Winery told Univision that “they know you are undocumented, because if you look (closely) at the Social Security papers that are handed to them, they’re false.”
The Winery is not he only Trump property that has hired undocumented workers, as The Washington Post’s David Farenthold notes:
David Fahrenthold✔
@Fahrenthold
If true, would mean undocumented workers were employed at 6 @realdonaldTrump's properties as of 2019:
--Westchester golf club
--Bedminster golf club
--Colts Neck golf club
--Philly Golf golf club
--Hudson valley golf club
--Winery in Va.
David Fahrenthold✔
@Fahrenthold
ANOTHER @realDonaldTrump property -- his winery in Virginia -- is using undocumented workers, according to this report by @UnivisionNews. They found 7 workers, got footage inside the winery.
(Their video is in Spanish, but the story here is in English). https://twitter.com/UnivisionNews/status/1124144578389528578 …
9:28 AM - May 3, 2019
At the Trump Winery’s luxury hotel workers say they are paid low wages – one said she makes just $10 an hour. Some get benefits, some get none.
“There was no overtime, at least when I worked, no benefits either,” said one worker who left, adding, “if you got sick they didn’t pay you.”
But as a “consolation prize,” some workers are given vouchers that say, “We appreciate you..”
It’s good for a free lunch, and features the President’s photo – not President Donald Trump, but Trump Winery president Eric Trump.
President Trump said he owns the winery but he may or may not. The Trump Winery website says Eric Trump, the president’s son, owns it, while investigations suggest otherwise. Donald Trump purchased it in 2011.
But either way, contrary to what President Trump claimed in 2017, it’s not “one of the largest wineries in the United States.”
trump runs a plantation of workers subjected to wage thief!!
Trump's golf club reportedly made undocumented employees work overtime for no pay
Undocumented workers at Trump's New York golf club were often told to work off the clock, Washington Post reports
IGOR DERYSH - sal.on
MAY 2, 2019 10:00AM (UTC)
New York State's attorney general is investigating new allegations that at least one of President Donald Trump’s golf clubs hired undocumented immigrants and made some of them work overtime without pay, the Washington Post reports.
New York Attorney General Letitia James’ office has interviewed more than two dozen former employees amid allegations that workers were routinely underpaid at the Trump National Golf Club Westchester in Briarcliff Manor, New York,
Jose Gabriel Juarez, the former head waiter at a club restaurant, told the Post that managers regularly told workers to do “side work” after their shifts were done. Juarez said he was often forced to stay until past midnight even though he wasn’t paid for the extra hours.
“It was that way with all the managers: Many of them told us, ‘Just clock out and then stay and do the side work,’ ” Juarez told the Post. “There was a lot of side work.”
Six other former Trump workers told the outlet they felt “systematically cheated” because they were undocumented immigrants. Some of the workers said they were denied promotions, time off and health insurance even though those benefits were offered to employees with legal status. A former manager described a similar situation.
Two of the workers said they were required to do side work for which they received no pay. Two other workers said they were forced to work 60-hour weeks without receiving any overtime pay.
The Trump Organization denied the allegations but the New York attorney general’s office confirmed its staff are investigating the reports.
Juarez was among roughly 30 former Trump workers in New York who met with the attorney general’s office in February.
Gabriel Sedano, a former longtime maintenance worker at the Westchester club, said that prosecutors were “focused on the payments” in interviews with the workers. “The days they paid us. The extra hours they didn’t pay us. The tips,” he said.
Many of the undocumented workers who met with prosecutors were fired in a series of purges earlier this year.
The Trump Organization insisted that the allegations were “nonsense.”
“This story is total nonsense and nothing more than unsubstantiated allegations from illegal immigrants who unlawfully submitted fake identification in an effort to obtain employment,” company spokeswoman Kimberly Benza told the Post.
A former manager at the Westchester club refuted that claim. He told the Post that undocumented workers were exploited by the club and that “it was clear that supervisors not only knew these workers lacked authentic documents but used that information to meet the company’s cost-cutting goals.”
The former manager said that higher-ups at Trump Tower regularly demanded cuts in overtime costs so the managers pressured undocumented immigrants to work for free.
“You want to be here? Don’t clock in for overtime,” the former manager recalled workers being told. “Clock out, and work off the clock.”
“There was a conscious effort to pay less wages, because they knew about the lack of documents,” he said. “You know, where are they going to go?”
The former manager said that Trump’s social media director, Dan Scavino, was the club’s general manager during a period of time when this was happening. Scavino denied to the Post that he knew of any violations.
“To my knowledge, Trump National is in compliance with the relevant state and federal labor laws, and during my employment, which was SIX YEARS ago, I was personally unaware of any violations of those laws,” he said. “If such violations occurred and I had been aware, I would have immediately addressed it, and stopped them.”
Juarez said that the exploitation of undocumented workers was well known around the club when he and Scavino both worked there six years ago. Over 10 years at the club, Juarez was paid an average of $31,600 before taxes, despite being head waiter and regularly working overtime.
He ultimately quit last spring over concerns that he would be fired because he had false documents.
“They treated us that way” because the workers were undocumented, Juarez told the Post. “They thought, ‘Oh, they’re not going to do anything about it.’ ”
RELATED: Trump’s Wage Theft Vulnerability
Donald Trump may have Bill Barr’s Justice Department in his pocket, but the president is on much shakier ground in his home state. And that’s not only because New York Attorney General Letitia James is seeking his tax returns and investigating his business deals.
New York Attorney General Letitia James’ office has interviewed more than two dozen former employees amid allegations that workers were routinely underpaid at the Trump National Golf Club Westchester in Briarcliff Manor, New York,
Jose Gabriel Juarez, the former head waiter at a club restaurant, told the Post that managers regularly told workers to do “side work” after their shifts were done. Juarez said he was often forced to stay until past midnight even though he wasn’t paid for the extra hours.
“It was that way with all the managers: Many of them told us, ‘Just clock out and then stay and do the side work,’ ” Juarez told the Post. “There was a lot of side work.”
Six other former Trump workers told the outlet they felt “systematically cheated” because they were undocumented immigrants. Some of the workers said they were denied promotions, time off and health insurance even though those benefits were offered to employees with legal status. A former manager described a similar situation.
Two of the workers said they were required to do side work for which they received no pay. Two other workers said they were forced to work 60-hour weeks without receiving any overtime pay.
The Trump Organization denied the allegations but the New York attorney general’s office confirmed its staff are investigating the reports.
Juarez was among roughly 30 former Trump workers in New York who met with the attorney general’s office in February.
Gabriel Sedano, a former longtime maintenance worker at the Westchester club, said that prosecutors were “focused on the payments” in interviews with the workers. “The days they paid us. The extra hours they didn’t pay us. The tips,” he said.
Many of the undocumented workers who met with prosecutors were fired in a series of purges earlier this year.
The Trump Organization insisted that the allegations were “nonsense.”
“This story is total nonsense and nothing more than unsubstantiated allegations from illegal immigrants who unlawfully submitted fake identification in an effort to obtain employment,” company spokeswoman Kimberly Benza told the Post.
A former manager at the Westchester club refuted that claim. He told the Post that undocumented workers were exploited by the club and that “it was clear that supervisors not only knew these workers lacked authentic documents but used that information to meet the company’s cost-cutting goals.”
The former manager said that higher-ups at Trump Tower regularly demanded cuts in overtime costs so the managers pressured undocumented immigrants to work for free.
“You want to be here? Don’t clock in for overtime,” the former manager recalled workers being told. “Clock out, and work off the clock.”
“There was a conscious effort to pay less wages, because they knew about the lack of documents,” he said. “You know, where are they going to go?”
The former manager said that Trump’s social media director, Dan Scavino, was the club’s general manager during a period of time when this was happening. Scavino denied to the Post that he knew of any violations.
“To my knowledge, Trump National is in compliance with the relevant state and federal labor laws, and during my employment, which was SIX YEARS ago, I was personally unaware of any violations of those laws,” he said. “If such violations occurred and I had been aware, I would have immediately addressed it, and stopped them.”
Juarez said that the exploitation of undocumented workers was well known around the club when he and Scavino both worked there six years ago. Over 10 years at the club, Juarez was paid an average of $31,600 before taxes, despite being head waiter and regularly working overtime.
He ultimately quit last spring over concerns that he would be fired because he had false documents.
“They treated us that way” because the workers were undocumented, Juarez told the Post. “They thought, ‘Oh, they’re not going to do anything about it.’ ”
RELATED: Trump’s Wage Theft Vulnerability
Donald Trump may have Bill Barr’s Justice Department in his pocket, but the president is on much shakier ground in his home state. And that’s not only because New York Attorney General Letitia James is seeking his tax returns and investigating his business deals.
How bad does Trump have to get before he’s forced from office?
COMMON DREAMS - COMMENTARY - raw story
28 APR 2019 AT 13:25 ET
We could go on. And on. And on. And on. But as bad as all of this is, the real question is, “When does it get so bad that we will no longer tolerate this scum running the country, dividing us against each other, desecrating our values, degrading our civic spaces, and destroying our institutions?” When does it get bad enough that WE will actually do something to stop being so mocked, so humiliated, and so defiled? When will we have Republican Congressmen who will get up off their knees before him and represent us, the people who actually elected them, and defend our country against the greatest domestic threat it has faced in over a century?
- It’s bad enough that he lost the election by 3,000,000 popular votes.
- It’s bad enough that the Russians helped him get elected by manipulating social media in critical electoral college states.
- It’s bad enough that he helped the Russians do that by providing them confidential polling data to guide their Facebook ad targeting.
- It’s bad enough that those ads were seen by more than 100,000,000 people when the total electoral college difference over three states was 70,000 votes.
- It’s bad enough that those involved with his campaign who were also engaged with the Russians lied repeatedly, both publicly and under oath, about that engagement.
- It’s bad enough that many tens of millions of dollars mysteriously disappeared from his inauguration committee, and he feels no compunction to explain where it went.
- It’s bad enough that he brags about groping women and grabbing them by the pussy. Is there an honest woman in the country who admires that? Wants that?
- It’s bad enough that he’s been credibly accused of sexual assault by more than 20 women.
- It’s bad enough that he is an unindicted co-conspirator in the felony to commit election finance fraud by paying hush money to a Playboy bunny and a porn star.
- It’s bad enough that he filed for bankruptcy six times, stiffing workers, contractors, and lenders for tens of millions of dollars.
- It’s bad enough that his resorts and other properties for years hired undocumented aliens, even as he railed against a “tidal wave” of illegal immigrants.
- It’s bad enough that he inherited $413,000,000 from his father, much of it through illegal tax dodges, but pretends to be a self-made man.
- It’s bad enough that his “charitable” foundation was ordered shut down after having been revealed to be a sham, used to help promote his business and political interests.
- It’s bad enough he claims he was a good student, but threatens to sue any schools that release his grades.
- It’s bad enough he claims to be a brilliant businessman but refuses to release his taxes which would prove it. Or, disprove it.
- It’s bad enough that he says the Mueller report “totally exonerates” him, yet refuses to allow it to be released, or, for critical witnesses to be able to testify about it.
- It’s bad enough that he grossly understated the value of his assets to dodge taxes, while grossly overstating their value to secure bank loans.
- It’s bad enough that the Mueller report detailed 10 instances of obstruction of justice that would be criminal, were he not the president and, so, immune from indictment.
- It’s bad enough that he’s a pathological liar, telling almost 10,000 lies since assuming office, literally not being able to deal with reality.
- It’s bad enough, his boot-licking of Putin at Helsinki, where he said he believed Putin about Russian interference in the 2016 election, but not his own intelligence chiefs.
- It’s bad enough that he has separated thousands of immigrant children from their parents, put them in cages, and then lost track of them.
- It’s bad enough that he praised neo-Nazi marchers in Charlottesville two years ago, then re-defended them just a few days ago.
- It’s bad enough that, though sworn to ensure that the laws are faithfully executed, he told immigration officials to break the law, promising to pardon them if they were convicted.
- It’s bad enough that he told senior White House aides to lie to the Mueller commission about his efforts to obstruct the same commission’s investigation.
- It’s bad enough that he smeared a Gold Star Family whose son was killed in Iraq.
- It’s bad enough that he repeatedly smeared bona-fide Vietnam war hero, John McCain, while he, himself, wrangled five draft deferments to dodge service in the same war.
- It’s bad enough he promised to help the working man, but immediately passed a $1.5 trillion tax cut that went almost exclusively to corporations and the wealthy.
- It’s bad enough he continues to claim he’s building The Wall when not a single inch of new wall has been built since he took office.
- It’s bad enough he promised to protect Social Security but just two weeks ago submitted a budget that cuts benefits to millions, including seniors in poverty.
- It’s bad enough that he refuses to cooperate with Congressional hearings, trashing the Constitution and the checks and balances at the very heart of our form of government.
We could go on. And on. And on. And on. But as bad as all of this is, the real question is, “When does it get so bad that we will no longer tolerate this scum running the country, dividing us against each other, desecrating our values, degrading our civic spaces, and destroying our institutions?” When does it get bad enough that WE will actually do something to stop being so mocked, so humiliated, and so defiled? When will we have Republican Congressmen who will get up off their knees before him and represent us, the people who actually elected them, and defend our country against the greatest domestic threat it has faced in over a century?
#BROKEAHONTAS
The Tyranny Of Donald J. Trump
Two Generations of Tax Cheating, and Now He Holds Himself and His Family Above the Law
By David Cay Johnston, DCReport Editor-in-Chief
4/11/19
Donald J. Trump and his team have now openly declared that he is above the law rather than, as our Constitution provides, a public servant whose duty is to faithfully execute the law.
His administration is taking numerous steps that move us in the direction of a Trumpian dictatorship by defeating the rule of law, something I’ve warned about since 2016. We’ll look at one aspect of this today: Trump family taxes.
Trump and his team insist that no one is ever going to see his tax returns, which he promised voters he would make public as every president has done back to Richard Nixon.
Now his sister, Maryanne Trump Barry, has scurried away from the investigative spotlight of her fellow federal judges, who were looking into whether she was a tax cheat in black robes. By resigning from the federal bench, Trump’s older sister ends that inquiry, the kind of legal favor our system affords those in positions of power to escape scrutiny.
As for defiance of the law, Trump, his personal lawyers and the White House acting chief of staff all declared in recent days that they will defy a 1924 anti-corruption statute that gives certain members of Congress, and one Congressional employee, the unqualified authority to examine any tax return.
Trump claims that “the law is 100% on my side” in refusing the turn over the documents. In fact, the law is 100% against Trump. When I asked a half dozen former top Congressional tax-writing staffers about Trump’s claim some of them laughed out loud, while others said in sober turns that there is no legal argument on Trump’s side – none.
The most direct Trump declaration that he is above the law is his directing the Treasury Department and the Internal Revenue Service to keep his federal income tax returns locked up. No previous president has defied this statute and no document request has ever been refused, a host of people who worked for the tax-writing committees on Capitol Hill told me.
Trump’s arguments are mere political rhetoric. But it gets worse than that.
Trump lawyer William S. Consovoy in an April 5 letter asked Treasury to hold back the documents. Consovoy asserted mind-reading powers in his letter: “His request is a transparent effort by one political party to harass an official from the other party because they dislike his politics and speech.”
Mick Mulvaney, the acting White House chief of staff, declared on Fox News Sunday that the Trump administration will “never” comply with the law.
‘Party of the Lawless’
Mulvaney’s words show how the political party that once sold itself as the party of law and order has, under Trump, become the party of lawlessness, at least for those in power.
“They knew they are not going to get these taxes,” Mulvaney said, referring not to the Democratic chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee who alone would receive the documents, but Democrats as a whole.
These declarations require diligence by Congress and the federal courts, as well as by New York state and Manhattan authorities if we are to preserve the rule of law. The duty of these officials, under law and the oaths they swore, is to thoroughly investigate Trump’s business dealings, taxes and other matters to see how they affect his fitness for office, whether he committed tax and other crimes and whether the IRS is properly auditing the tax returns of the president.
Think of judge Trump Barry’s resignation as one of the many ways American government is infected by institutionalized corruption, an issue explored deeply by Zephyr Teachout in her revealing and concise book Corruption in America: From Benjamin Franklin’s Snuff Box to Citizens United.
While the federal judiciary is letting Judge Trump slither away, the prosecutorial authorities still have the power to investigate whether she and her siblings engaged in years of calculated tax cheating, as The New York Times persuasively demonstrated last October.
The Cheating Goes On
There is no statute of limitations on criminal tax fraud and there is reason aplenty to believe Trump family tax cheating has continued up to this day.
At issue are Trump’s last six years of tax returns and related “tax information.” Representative Richard Neal (D-Mass), who is chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee requested the returns and related information in an April 3 letter.
Steve Mnuchin, the Treasury secretary, called the request “unprecedented” – it’s not – and said he needed time to consult the law. Treasury posted the letter on Twitter.
The law is crystal clear that the Treasury secretary or his designee, the IRS commissioner, “shall” produce the returns “on written request.” Every request has been honored until now.
Mnuchin is a former Goldman Sachs-er, hedge fund operator, mortgage foreclosure mogul and Hollywood movie producer (The Lego Movie; Suicide Squad), exactly the kind of swamp dweller who Trump told voters he would rid Washington of by “draining the swamp.”
Presidents take an oath to faithfully execute their office, which includes complying with all federal laws, while dictators are by definition above the law.
Trump’s declaration should alarm all American, but especially those Republicans who claim to support strict interpretations of the clear meaning of both statutes and Constitutional principles.
Even Richard Nixon complied with this law during Watergate more than four decades ago, resulting in a second IRS audit of his returns as well as scrutiny by Congressional tax experts.
Nixon Complied with the Law
That second audit turned up a fraudulent tax deduction which saved Nixon $500,000 in taxes, about $3.4 million in today’s money. Chairman Neal’s request specifically cites the quality of IRS audits of presidential tax returns as a justification for examination of them by his committee, which oversees the IRS.
“In all of my years of public life. I have never profited. Never profited from public service I’ve earned every cent,” Nixon said in 1973. “And — all of my years of public life. I have never obstructed justice. And I think to that I could say that in my years of public life. That I welcome this kind of examination because people have got to know whether or not their president is a crook. Well, I’m not a crook, I’ve earned everything I’ve got.”
Actually, he was a crook, but his handpicked successor Gerald Ford pardoned him.
Trump takes a different approach, asserting that voters have no interest in his tax returns.
Mulvaney takes a similar tack, ignoring the law in favor of presumed political passions.
“That’s an issue that was already litigated during the election,” Mulvaney said. “Voters knew the president could have given his tax returns. They knew that he didn’t, and they elected him anyway.”
Of course, the voters chose Trump’s opponent by three million votes. It was the Electoral College that chose Trump. But only the enablers of a tyrant would argue that popular passions, not law, govern official conduct.
His administration is taking numerous steps that move us in the direction of a Trumpian dictatorship by defeating the rule of law, something I’ve warned about since 2016. We’ll look at one aspect of this today: Trump family taxes.
Trump and his team insist that no one is ever going to see his tax returns, which he promised voters he would make public as every president has done back to Richard Nixon.
Now his sister, Maryanne Trump Barry, has scurried away from the investigative spotlight of her fellow federal judges, who were looking into whether she was a tax cheat in black robes. By resigning from the federal bench, Trump’s older sister ends that inquiry, the kind of legal favor our system affords those in positions of power to escape scrutiny.
As for defiance of the law, Trump, his personal lawyers and the White House acting chief of staff all declared in recent days that they will defy a 1924 anti-corruption statute that gives certain members of Congress, and one Congressional employee, the unqualified authority to examine any tax return.
Trump claims that “the law is 100% on my side” in refusing the turn over the documents. In fact, the law is 100% against Trump. When I asked a half dozen former top Congressional tax-writing staffers about Trump’s claim some of them laughed out loud, while others said in sober turns that there is no legal argument on Trump’s side – none.
The most direct Trump declaration that he is above the law is his directing the Treasury Department and the Internal Revenue Service to keep his federal income tax returns locked up. No previous president has defied this statute and no document request has ever been refused, a host of people who worked for the tax-writing committees on Capitol Hill told me.
Trump’s arguments are mere political rhetoric. But it gets worse than that.
Trump lawyer William S. Consovoy in an April 5 letter asked Treasury to hold back the documents. Consovoy asserted mind-reading powers in his letter: “His request is a transparent effort by one political party to harass an official from the other party because they dislike his politics and speech.”
Mick Mulvaney, the acting White House chief of staff, declared on Fox News Sunday that the Trump administration will “never” comply with the law.
‘Party of the Lawless’
Mulvaney’s words show how the political party that once sold itself as the party of law and order has, under Trump, become the party of lawlessness, at least for those in power.
“They knew they are not going to get these taxes,” Mulvaney said, referring not to the Democratic chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee who alone would receive the documents, but Democrats as a whole.
These declarations require diligence by Congress and the federal courts, as well as by New York state and Manhattan authorities if we are to preserve the rule of law. The duty of these officials, under law and the oaths they swore, is to thoroughly investigate Trump’s business dealings, taxes and other matters to see how they affect his fitness for office, whether he committed tax and other crimes and whether the IRS is properly auditing the tax returns of the president.
Think of judge Trump Barry’s resignation as one of the many ways American government is infected by institutionalized corruption, an issue explored deeply by Zephyr Teachout in her revealing and concise book Corruption in America: From Benjamin Franklin’s Snuff Box to Citizens United.
While the federal judiciary is letting Judge Trump slither away, the prosecutorial authorities still have the power to investigate whether she and her siblings engaged in years of calculated tax cheating, as The New York Times persuasively demonstrated last October.
The Cheating Goes On
There is no statute of limitations on criminal tax fraud and there is reason aplenty to believe Trump family tax cheating has continued up to this day.
At issue are Trump’s last six years of tax returns and related “tax information.” Representative Richard Neal (D-Mass), who is chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee requested the returns and related information in an April 3 letter.
Steve Mnuchin, the Treasury secretary, called the request “unprecedented” – it’s not – and said he needed time to consult the law. Treasury posted the letter on Twitter.
The law is crystal clear that the Treasury secretary or his designee, the IRS commissioner, “shall” produce the returns “on written request.” Every request has been honored until now.
Mnuchin is a former Goldman Sachs-er, hedge fund operator, mortgage foreclosure mogul and Hollywood movie producer (The Lego Movie; Suicide Squad), exactly the kind of swamp dweller who Trump told voters he would rid Washington of by “draining the swamp.”
Presidents take an oath to faithfully execute their office, which includes complying with all federal laws, while dictators are by definition above the law.
Trump’s declaration should alarm all American, but especially those Republicans who claim to support strict interpretations of the clear meaning of both statutes and Constitutional principles.
Even Richard Nixon complied with this law during Watergate more than four decades ago, resulting in a second IRS audit of his returns as well as scrutiny by Congressional tax experts.
Nixon Complied with the Law
That second audit turned up a fraudulent tax deduction which saved Nixon $500,000 in taxes, about $3.4 million in today’s money. Chairman Neal’s request specifically cites the quality of IRS audits of presidential tax returns as a justification for examination of them by his committee, which oversees the IRS.
“In all of my years of public life. I have never profited. Never profited from public service I’ve earned every cent,” Nixon said in 1973. “And — all of my years of public life. I have never obstructed justice. And I think to that I could say that in my years of public life. That I welcome this kind of examination because people have got to know whether or not their president is a crook. Well, I’m not a crook, I’ve earned everything I’ve got.”
Actually, he was a crook, but his handpicked successor Gerald Ford pardoned him.
Trump takes a different approach, asserting that voters have no interest in his tax returns.
Mulvaney takes a similar tack, ignoring the law in favor of presumed political passions.
“That’s an issue that was already litigated during the election,” Mulvaney said. “Voters knew the president could have given his tax returns. They knew that he didn’t, and they elected him anyway.”
Of course, the voters chose Trump’s opponent by three million votes. It was the Electoral College that chose Trump. But only the enablers of a tyrant would argue that popular passions, not law, govern official conduct.
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Bombshell report links Trump’s Azerbaijan hotel to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard
Travis Gettys - raw story
08 APR 2019 AT 11:07 ET
The Trump administration on Monday officially designated Iran’s Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist organization. But reporting from The New Yorker indicates that President Donald Trump could have business entanglements with the foreign military group.
Trump and his eldest daughter developed a hotel in Azerbaijan that appears to be a corrupt operation run by a family known as “the Corleones of the Caspian” with links to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard.
The Trump International Hotel & Tower Baku — conceived in 2008 as a luxury apartment building but converted in 2014 into a hotel — has never opened, and both local observers and international experts are baffled by the building’s existence, reported The New Yorker in 2017.
The project was intended as an “ultra-luxury property” with both hotel and residential space, but both its location and timing are odd, according to the report.
Trump Tower Baku is located in an underdeveloped part of the city’s downtown, across the street from a discount shopping center and miles away from the main business district.
“Why would someone put a luxury hotel there?” said former top official in Azerbaijan’s Ministry of Tourism. “Nobody who can afford to stay there would want to be in that neighborhood.”
The Trump Organization announced the project would be converted into just a hotel in 2014, after a construction boom had ended in Baku and luxury hotel occupancy rate hovered around 35 percent, the magazine reported.
A Cornell University expert told The New Yorker that developers of five-star hotels typically must demonstrate an average occupancy rate of at least 60 percent over 10 years.
Newsweek‘s Kurt Eichenwald reported in September 2017 that Trump’s financial filings show he’s partners in the Baku deal with the son of Azerbaijan’s transportation minister.
U.S. officials believe that official, Ziya Mammadov, laundered money for the Iranian military, although no formal charges were brought against him or his son, Anar Mammadov — who is Trump’s partner in the Baku hotel venture.
The New Yorker examined Trump’s ties to Ziya Mammadov — one of the wealthiest and most powerful oligarchs in one of the world’s most corrupt nations — and his brother, Elton Mammadov, an influential member of the Azerbaijani parliament, who signed contracts for the project and founded Baku XXI Century, which owns the tower.
The Mammadov family, described by Foreign Policy magazine as “The Corleones of the Caspian,” has a reputation for using their government positions to enrich themselves and their partners — which includes construction firms tied to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard.
The Trump administration has now condemned that group — which has been accused of drug trafficking, sponsoring terrorism abroad and money laundering — as a terrorist organization.
“This unprecedented step, led by the Department of State, recognizes the reality that Iran is not only a State Sponsor of Terrorism, but that the IRGC actively participates in, finances, and promotes terrorism as a tool of statecraft,” Trump said in a statement.
The Baku development was the subject of numerous reports after Trump announced his presidential campaign in 2015, and the Trump Organization’s chief legal officer, Alan Garten, dismissed any concerns by saying the company never engaged directly with Mammadov.
Garten claimed Trump played only a passive role in the Baku development by licensing his name for use by Mammadov’s son, for which he was paid at least $2.8 million, according to limited public filings.
Other documents suggest Trump was paid an additional $2.5 million for the use of his name in 2012, and the future U.S. president also signed a contract to manage the hotel after it opened for an undisclosed fee tied to the venture’s performance.
Garten announced a month after Trump’s election that the Trump Organization had severed ties with the hotel, but The New Yorker reported those claims were incomplete and inaccurate.
Jan deRoos, the Cornell professor, said the Trump Organization’s interest in the Baku project — which was overseen by Ivanka Trump — was atypical and “very, very intense.”
That close involvement may open up the Trump Organization to criminal prosecution under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which was passed in 1977 to forbid American companies from rewarding corrupt foreign officials — even if they did so unwittingly.
Garten all but admitted corruption was involved with the project — “I’m not going to sit here and defend the Mammadovs,” he said — but he insisted the Trump Organization should be exempt from prosecution because the company didn’t control the project and didn’t pay money to anyone.
However, a legal expert who specializes in the foreign corruption law dismissed those claims as nonsense.
“You can’t go into business deals in Azerbaijan assuming that you are immune from the FCPA, nor can you escape liability by looking the other way,” said Jessica Tillipman, an assistant dean at George Washington University Law School. “The entire Baku deal is a giant red flag — the direct involvement of foreign government officials and their relatives in Azerbaijan with ties to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. Corruption warning signs are rarely more obvious.”
Trump complained about the law during a phone-in appearance on CNBC in May 2012, the month before the Baku deal was completed.
“Every other country goes into these places and they do what they have to do,” Trump said. “It’s a horrible law and it should be changed.”
He complained that American companies that refused to give bribes — and The New Yorker reports on duffel bags of cash changing hands during construction — would “do business nowhere.”
“There is one answer — go to your room, close the door, go to sleep and don’t do any deals, because that’s the only way,” Trump whined to CNBC. “The only way you’re going to do it is the other way.”
Trump and his eldest daughter developed a hotel in Azerbaijan that appears to be a corrupt operation run by a family known as “the Corleones of the Caspian” with links to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard.
The Trump International Hotel & Tower Baku — conceived in 2008 as a luxury apartment building but converted in 2014 into a hotel — has never opened, and both local observers and international experts are baffled by the building’s existence, reported The New Yorker in 2017.
The project was intended as an “ultra-luxury property” with both hotel and residential space, but both its location and timing are odd, according to the report.
Trump Tower Baku is located in an underdeveloped part of the city’s downtown, across the street from a discount shopping center and miles away from the main business district.
“Why would someone put a luxury hotel there?” said former top official in Azerbaijan’s Ministry of Tourism. “Nobody who can afford to stay there would want to be in that neighborhood.”
The Trump Organization announced the project would be converted into just a hotel in 2014, after a construction boom had ended in Baku and luxury hotel occupancy rate hovered around 35 percent, the magazine reported.
A Cornell University expert told The New Yorker that developers of five-star hotels typically must demonstrate an average occupancy rate of at least 60 percent over 10 years.
Newsweek‘s Kurt Eichenwald reported in September 2017 that Trump’s financial filings show he’s partners in the Baku deal with the son of Azerbaijan’s transportation minister.
U.S. officials believe that official, Ziya Mammadov, laundered money for the Iranian military, although no formal charges were brought against him or his son, Anar Mammadov — who is Trump’s partner in the Baku hotel venture.
The New Yorker examined Trump’s ties to Ziya Mammadov — one of the wealthiest and most powerful oligarchs in one of the world’s most corrupt nations — and his brother, Elton Mammadov, an influential member of the Azerbaijani parliament, who signed contracts for the project and founded Baku XXI Century, which owns the tower.
The Mammadov family, described by Foreign Policy magazine as “The Corleones of the Caspian,” has a reputation for using their government positions to enrich themselves and their partners — which includes construction firms tied to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard.
The Trump administration has now condemned that group — which has been accused of drug trafficking, sponsoring terrorism abroad and money laundering — as a terrorist organization.
“This unprecedented step, led by the Department of State, recognizes the reality that Iran is not only a State Sponsor of Terrorism, but that the IRGC actively participates in, finances, and promotes terrorism as a tool of statecraft,” Trump said in a statement.
The Baku development was the subject of numerous reports after Trump announced his presidential campaign in 2015, and the Trump Organization’s chief legal officer, Alan Garten, dismissed any concerns by saying the company never engaged directly with Mammadov.
Garten claimed Trump played only a passive role in the Baku development by licensing his name for use by Mammadov’s son, for which he was paid at least $2.8 million, according to limited public filings.
Other documents suggest Trump was paid an additional $2.5 million for the use of his name in 2012, and the future U.S. president also signed a contract to manage the hotel after it opened for an undisclosed fee tied to the venture’s performance.
Garten announced a month after Trump’s election that the Trump Organization had severed ties with the hotel, but The New Yorker reported those claims were incomplete and inaccurate.
Jan deRoos, the Cornell professor, said the Trump Organization’s interest in the Baku project — which was overseen by Ivanka Trump — was atypical and “very, very intense.”
That close involvement may open up the Trump Organization to criminal prosecution under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which was passed in 1977 to forbid American companies from rewarding corrupt foreign officials — even if they did so unwittingly.
Garten all but admitted corruption was involved with the project — “I’m not going to sit here and defend the Mammadovs,” he said — but he insisted the Trump Organization should be exempt from prosecution because the company didn’t control the project and didn’t pay money to anyone.
However, a legal expert who specializes in the foreign corruption law dismissed those claims as nonsense.
“You can’t go into business deals in Azerbaijan assuming that you are immune from the FCPA, nor can you escape liability by looking the other way,” said Jessica Tillipman, an assistant dean at George Washington University Law School. “The entire Baku deal is a giant red flag — the direct involvement of foreign government officials and their relatives in Azerbaijan with ties to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. Corruption warning signs are rarely more obvious.”
Trump complained about the law during a phone-in appearance on CNBC in May 2012, the month before the Baku deal was completed.
“Every other country goes into these places and they do what they have to do,” Trump said. “It’s a horrible law and it should be changed.”
He complained that American companies that refused to give bribes — and The New Yorker reports on duffel bags of cash changing hands during construction — would “do business nowhere.”
“There is one answer — go to your room, close the door, go to sleep and don’t do any deals, because that’s the only way,” Trump whined to CNBC. “The only way you’re going to do it is the other way.”
I am I, Don Trumpote, The Lord of la 'Murica, My destiny calls and I go
Here are the investigations that will haunt Trump and his family long after Mueller’s final report is delivered
Alex Henderson, AlterNet - raw story
03 MAR 2019 AT 10:26 ET
Some critics of President Donald Trump are hoping that when the final report for Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation is released, it will be so damning that impeachment will be inevitable. But if there is a major lesson to be learned from attorney Michael Cohen’s testimony before the House Oversight Committee on February 27, 2019, it is that Trump’s legal woes don’t begin or end with Russiagate. Cohen, who spent more than a decade in Trump’s employ, wasn’t allowed to discuss Mueller’s probe at the Wednesday hearing—and yet, he spoke for hours about things he believed could imperil Trump legally, from banking and tax matters to campaign finance violations.
The federal prosecutors Cohen has been cooperating with include not only Mueller’s office, but also, U.S. attorneys for the Southern District of New York. And investigations of Trump will not end after Mueller’s final report is delivered.
Here are some legal or political entities apart from Mueller’s team that will no doubt be paying close attention to President Trump, members of his family and his business associates in the months ahead.
1. The Southern District of New York
After Cohen’s February 27 testimony, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie told CNN’s Chris Cuomo, “I’ve always said, Chris, that Bob Mueller is not what should concern the president or the White House. That’s the Southern District of New York.” Christie added that Southern District prosecutors “have no limit on their scope. Bob Mueller has a limit on his scope; it’s Russia and Russia-related activities.”
Christie went on to say that he is confident that the Southern District is building a case against Trump’s associates as well as Trump himself after he leaves office. Cohen, he stressed, spent more than a decade working for Trump and has extensive knowledge of the president’s business activities—and he predicted that Cohen will be having a lot more conservations with Southern District prosecutors.
2. The New York State Attorney General’s Office
In 2018, former New York State Attorney General Barbara Underwood proved to be a major thorn in Trump’s side—and it was under her watch that Trump agreed to dissolve his charity, the Donald J. Trump Foundation. Underwood declared that she saw a “shocking pattern of illegality involving the Trump Foundation, including unlawful coordination with the Trump presidential campaign, repeated and willful self-dealing and much more. This amounted to the Trump Foundation functioning as little more than a checkbook to serve Mr. Trump’s business and political interests.”
But the New York State Attorney General’s Office won’t be easing up on Trump now that Underwood is gone. Underwood’s successor, fellow Democrat Letitia James, has made it clear that she has an abundance of Trump-related investigations in mind and plans to examine everything from his real estate holdings to whether or not he has violated the U.S. Constitution’s emoluments clause, which restricts presidents and other federal officials from receiving payments or gifts from foreign powers.
A spokesperson for James told Philly.com that she is “reviewing Michael Cohen’s testimony carefully to determine if it will impact” any “investigation that the office is undertaking.”
3. The District of Columbia Attorney General’s Office
On February 26, the District of Columbia Attorney General’s Office subpoenaed Trump’s inaugural committee for documents pertaining to its finances. DC Attorney General Karl A. Racine, in the subpoena, said his office is investigating Trump’s inaugural committee to see if “expenditures of its nonprofit funds were wasteful, mismanaged, and/or improperly provided private benefit, causing the committee to exceed or abuse its authority or act contrary to its nonprofit purpose.” Previously, the DA’s offices of the District of Columbia and Maryland filed a lawsuit against Trump, alleging he had received illegal payments from foreign governments through his Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C.
4. The House Financial Services Committee and House Ways and Means Committee
Democratic Rep. Gerald Connolly of Virginia said of Cohen’s February 27 testimony, “He set a very rich table. We’re now looking at a 10-course meal.” And there are many Trump-related matters that Democrats in the House of Representatives can investigate. For example, the House Finance Committee has said it will be taking a look at the Donald J. Trump Foundation. The House Ways and Means Committee has been expressing interest in Trump’s tax returns, and Rep. Maxine Waters (who now heads the House Financial Services Committee) has indicated she plans to investigate whether or not Trump “directed payments into” the Donald J. Trump Foundation “to keep from paying taxes.”
On top of all that, California Rep. Brad Sherman (also on the House Financial Services Committee) has said that House Democrats will be looking into Cohen’s allegation that Trump exaggerated his net worth in order to lower his insurance premiums and receive bank loans.
The federal prosecutors Cohen has been cooperating with include not only Mueller’s office, but also, U.S. attorneys for the Southern District of New York. And investigations of Trump will not end after Mueller’s final report is delivered.
Here are some legal or political entities apart from Mueller’s team that will no doubt be paying close attention to President Trump, members of his family and his business associates in the months ahead.
1. The Southern District of New York
After Cohen’s February 27 testimony, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie told CNN’s Chris Cuomo, “I’ve always said, Chris, that Bob Mueller is not what should concern the president or the White House. That’s the Southern District of New York.” Christie added that Southern District prosecutors “have no limit on their scope. Bob Mueller has a limit on his scope; it’s Russia and Russia-related activities.”
Christie went on to say that he is confident that the Southern District is building a case against Trump’s associates as well as Trump himself after he leaves office. Cohen, he stressed, spent more than a decade working for Trump and has extensive knowledge of the president’s business activities—and he predicted that Cohen will be having a lot more conservations with Southern District prosecutors.
2. The New York State Attorney General’s Office
In 2018, former New York State Attorney General Barbara Underwood proved to be a major thorn in Trump’s side—and it was under her watch that Trump agreed to dissolve his charity, the Donald J. Trump Foundation. Underwood declared that she saw a “shocking pattern of illegality involving the Trump Foundation, including unlawful coordination with the Trump presidential campaign, repeated and willful self-dealing and much more. This amounted to the Trump Foundation functioning as little more than a checkbook to serve Mr. Trump’s business and political interests.”
But the New York State Attorney General’s Office won’t be easing up on Trump now that Underwood is gone. Underwood’s successor, fellow Democrat Letitia James, has made it clear that she has an abundance of Trump-related investigations in mind and plans to examine everything from his real estate holdings to whether or not he has violated the U.S. Constitution’s emoluments clause, which restricts presidents and other federal officials from receiving payments or gifts from foreign powers.
A spokesperson for James told Philly.com that she is “reviewing Michael Cohen’s testimony carefully to determine if it will impact” any “investigation that the office is undertaking.”
3. The District of Columbia Attorney General’s Office
On February 26, the District of Columbia Attorney General’s Office subpoenaed Trump’s inaugural committee for documents pertaining to its finances. DC Attorney General Karl A. Racine, in the subpoena, said his office is investigating Trump’s inaugural committee to see if “expenditures of its nonprofit funds were wasteful, mismanaged, and/or improperly provided private benefit, causing the committee to exceed or abuse its authority or act contrary to its nonprofit purpose.” Previously, the DA’s offices of the District of Columbia and Maryland filed a lawsuit against Trump, alleging he had received illegal payments from foreign governments through his Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C.
4. The House Financial Services Committee and House Ways and Means Committee
Democratic Rep. Gerald Connolly of Virginia said of Cohen’s February 27 testimony, “He set a very rich table. We’re now looking at a 10-course meal.” And there are many Trump-related matters that Democrats in the House of Representatives can investigate. For example, the House Finance Committee has said it will be taking a look at the Donald J. Trump Foundation. The House Ways and Means Committee has been expressing interest in Trump’s tax returns, and Rep. Maxine Waters (who now heads the House Financial Services Committee) has indicated she plans to investigate whether or not Trump “directed payments into” the Donald J. Trump Foundation “to keep from paying taxes.”
On top of all that, California Rep. Brad Sherman (also on the House Financial Services Committee) has said that House Democrats will be looking into Cohen’s allegation that Trump exaggerated his net worth in order to lower his insurance premiums and receive bank loans.
Even as speculation mounts that special counsel Robert Mueller might be winding down his investigation, a parallel threat to President Donald Trump only seems to be growing within his own Justice Department: the Southern District of New York.
Manhattan-based federal prosecutors can challenge Trump in ways Mueller can’t. They have jurisdiction over the president’s political operation and businesses — subjects that aren’t protected by executive privilege, a tool Trump is considering invoking to block portions of Mueller’s report. From a PR perspective, Trump has been unable to run the same playbook on SDNY that he’s used to erode conservatives’ faith in Mueller, the former George W. Bush-appointed FBI director. Legal circles are also buzzing over whether SDNY might buck DOJ guidance and seek to indict a sitting president.
The threat was highlighted when SDNY prosecutors ordered officials from Trump’s inaugural committee to hand over donor and financial records. It was the latest aggressive move from an office that has launched investigations into the president’s company, former lawyer and campaign finance practices. New York prosecutors have even implicated Trump in a crime.
Add it all up and the result is a spate of hard-to-stymie, legally perilous probes that appears on track to drag on well into Trump’s 2020 reelection campaign. SDNY stands poised to carry on Mueller’s efforts whenever the special counsel’s office closes shop, and it’s likely to draw even more attention if freshly confirmed Attorney General William Barr — who now oversees the Russia probe as DOJ head — clamps down on the public release of Mueller’s findings.
“When you combine their experience with the traditional independence of the southern district and the reputation it has, this is like another Mueller investigation going on,” said Nick Akerman, a former SDNY assistant attorney who also worked on the Watergate prosecution team.
Mueller can take credit for spawning significant parts of SDNY’s work. The two DOJ units have shared staff, witnesses and leads, and SDNY has been well-positioned to pick up anything that is outside Mueller’s primary lane of investigating collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.
A Mueller referral to SDNY, for example, triggered an FBI raid on Michael Cohen's office and hotel room, according to Cohen’s former lawyer. And the fruits of that raid culminated late last year in Cohen’s guilty plea, in which the longtime Trump fixer and former personal attorney admitted in federal court that Trump directed him to make hush money payments to sway the 2016 presidential election.
The New York federal prosecutors are far from finished. They’re still seeking interviews with Trump Organization executives, according to a source with knowledge of the probe. And Trump’s inaugural committee confirmed earlier this month that it had received a wide-ranging subpoena from SDNY for documents as part of a probe into how the group raised and doled out a record $107 million. Investigators are looking at everything from potential mail and wire fraud to illegal foreign contributions and money laundering.
“This is why I’ve been saying for months that the Southern District of New York investigation presents a much more serious threat to the administration, potentially, than what Bob Mueller is doing,” Chris Christie, a former New Jersey governor and former federal prosecutor, told ABC News earlier this month.
Elaborating on MSNBC, Christie said that SDNY, unlike Mueller, has “no restrictions on their purview.”
“Bob Mueller has a task: It’s Russian interference and potential collision in the 2016 election,” he said. “Southern District of New York is whatever the heck you want.”
SDNY poses an potent threat because the office has accumulated a perfect storm of witnesses who have guided Trump throughout his career, from his businesses to his meteoric rise in presidential politics up through his inauguration to the White House.
The list of cooperators includes Allen Weisselberg, the Trump Organization’s longtime chief financial officer; David Pecker, the CEO of the National Enquirer’s parent company who has admitted to working with Trump for years to kill incriminating media stories; and Rick Gates, who served as Trump campaign deputy and then de facto leader of the inaugural committee. Gates pleaded guilty in the Mueller probe to lying to the FBI last February but his sentencing has been delayed while he cooperates in “several ongoing investigations,” according to a filing last month from the special counsel’s office.
Then there’s Cohen, Trump’s longtime fixer who is scheduled to begin serving a three-year prison sentence next month. Christie called Cohen a “tour guide” for SDNY investigators into the president’s orbit.
Another concern for Trump: SDNY’s independence. Its nickname is the “Sovereign District of New York," and former prosecutors who have worked there describe its authorities and experience as unique among the nation's 93 U.S. attorney offices.
Trump-appointed officials are also not directly overseeing SDNY’s Trump-related investigations. The president’s hand-selected SDNY head, U.S. Attorney Geoffrey Berman, has recused himself from the probes, deferring to a pair of longtime federal prosecutors: Robert Khuzami and Audrey Strauss.
An SDNY spokesman declined to comment for this story.
Alumni from the office have said SDNY's investigative powers and independent streak are so robust that — depending on what it finds on Trump — the office could skirt DOJ legal protocol dating to Watergate that holds a sitting president can’t be indicted.
“I’m thoroughly convinced the SDNY will make its own evaluation. They will not say that’s a department policy,” said Jon Sale, a former SDNY and Watergate prosecutor who is close with Trump personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani. “They’re obviously looking at the president and I wouldn’t rule out that they could decide you can indict a sitting president.”
Trump's attack-Mueller playbook can’t be replicated in New York. For starters, the bounds of what SDNY is looking at don’t deal with Trump’s tenure in the White House, meaning any push back on executive privilege grounds won’t fly. Trump’s lawyers have said they’ve resisted Mueller’s attempts to get the president to answer questions about potential obstruction of justice matters dealing with his time in the Oval Office. And they continue to signal the president’s team should be allowed to review the special counsel’s finished report to ensure it doesn’t violate the president’s rights.
Trump is limited in his abilities to use his bully pulpit against SDNY — which has nowhere near the name recognition of the special counsel — in the way he has used Twitter, rallies and even the State of the Union to lambaste Mueller.
That’s not to say the president isn’t concerned about SDNY. Trump reportedly complained about SDNY’s pursuit of Cohen to Matthew Whitaker, his former acting attorney general, though Whitaker last week denied to Congress that the president had chided him.
Giuliani has confirmed Trump’s frustrations with SDNY’s handling of the Cohen probe.
“The president and his lawyers are upset about the professional prosecutors in the Southern District of New York going after a noncrime and the innuendo the president was involved,” Giuliani, who served as the U.S. attorney leading SDNY for more than five years during the Reagan administration, told CNN in December.
But in an interview with POLITICO on Friday, Giuliani downplayed any broader concerns that his former office posed a wider threat to the president.
“The same thing will happen as has happened over the last two years with all of these things. They’ll run them down and they’ll find out the president didn’t do anything wrong. Not a darn thing,” Giuliani said.
Trump’s complaints about the Mueller probe — railing against his team of “angry Democrats” and even going after the special counsel himself in more than 70 mentions on Twitter since last March — have helped the president turn his political base against the Russia investigation. A voters, a record low 13 percent of registered Republican voters reported having a favorable view of Mueller in a recent POLITICO/Morning Consult poll. While that can help the president maintain GOP support in an impeachment battle, legal experts and Trump’s allies have said similar attacks on SDNY won’t matter much should the battleground become a court of law and not the halls of Congress.
“That’s one you can’t win,” said Andrew McCarthy, a former SDNY prosecutor and National Review columnist whom the president has cited on Twitter while blasting the Mueller probe. “There’s no upside for Trump in attacking the southern district, whereas there might be in attacking Mueller.”
What’s more, SDNY’s efforts have found a allies in Democratic lawmakers who have made the U.S. attorney’s office a key feature of their hearings, floor speeches and in written demands of Trump’s Justice Department.
Ahead of Whitaker’s recent appearance before Congress, House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler told the acting DOJ head that SDNY’s work would be one of his primary lines of questioning. And in a follow-up letter after the hearing, the New York Democrat pressed Whitaker over his denials that Trump lashed out at him about SDNY. Whitaker’s rebuttals, Nadler said, were “directly contradicted by several media reports” and other people with “direct knowledge” of the calls he got from the White House.
In a floor speech last week announcing his opposition to Barr’s confirmation, Virginia Sen. Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, warned that any Trump pardons for people tied up in either the Mueller or SDNY investigation “would represent an abuse of power that would require a response by Congress.”
Barr said SDNY’s work stands on the other side of a red line that he wouldn’t let Trump cross. Pressed by Democratic senators during his confirmation hearing last month, the soon-to-be attorney general said he’d protest the removal of SDNY’s head if he thought the president had nefarious intentions.
“I would not stand by and allow a U.S. attorney to be fired for the purpose of stopping an investigation,” Barr said.
Manhattan-based federal prosecutors can challenge Trump in ways Mueller can’t. They have jurisdiction over the president’s political operation and businesses — subjects that aren’t protected by executive privilege, a tool Trump is considering invoking to block portions of Mueller’s report. From a PR perspective, Trump has been unable to run the same playbook on SDNY that he’s used to erode conservatives’ faith in Mueller, the former George W. Bush-appointed FBI director. Legal circles are also buzzing over whether SDNY might buck DOJ guidance and seek to indict a sitting president.
The threat was highlighted when SDNY prosecutors ordered officials from Trump’s inaugural committee to hand over donor and financial records. It was the latest aggressive move from an office that has launched investigations into the president’s company, former lawyer and campaign finance practices. New York prosecutors have even implicated Trump in a crime.
Add it all up and the result is a spate of hard-to-stymie, legally perilous probes that appears on track to drag on well into Trump’s 2020 reelection campaign. SDNY stands poised to carry on Mueller’s efforts whenever the special counsel’s office closes shop, and it’s likely to draw even more attention if freshly confirmed Attorney General William Barr — who now oversees the Russia probe as DOJ head — clamps down on the public release of Mueller’s findings.
“When you combine their experience with the traditional independence of the southern district and the reputation it has, this is like another Mueller investigation going on,” said Nick Akerman, a former SDNY assistant attorney who also worked on the Watergate prosecution team.
Mueller can take credit for spawning significant parts of SDNY’s work. The two DOJ units have shared staff, witnesses and leads, and SDNY has been well-positioned to pick up anything that is outside Mueller’s primary lane of investigating collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.
A Mueller referral to SDNY, for example, triggered an FBI raid on Michael Cohen's office and hotel room, according to Cohen’s former lawyer. And the fruits of that raid culminated late last year in Cohen’s guilty plea, in which the longtime Trump fixer and former personal attorney admitted in federal court that Trump directed him to make hush money payments to sway the 2016 presidential election.
The New York federal prosecutors are far from finished. They’re still seeking interviews with Trump Organization executives, according to a source with knowledge of the probe. And Trump’s inaugural committee confirmed earlier this month that it had received a wide-ranging subpoena from SDNY for documents as part of a probe into how the group raised and doled out a record $107 million. Investigators are looking at everything from potential mail and wire fraud to illegal foreign contributions and money laundering.
“This is why I’ve been saying for months that the Southern District of New York investigation presents a much more serious threat to the administration, potentially, than what Bob Mueller is doing,” Chris Christie, a former New Jersey governor and former federal prosecutor, told ABC News earlier this month.
Elaborating on MSNBC, Christie said that SDNY, unlike Mueller, has “no restrictions on their purview.”
“Bob Mueller has a task: It’s Russian interference and potential collision in the 2016 election,” he said. “Southern District of New York is whatever the heck you want.”
SDNY poses an potent threat because the office has accumulated a perfect storm of witnesses who have guided Trump throughout his career, from his businesses to his meteoric rise in presidential politics up through his inauguration to the White House.
The list of cooperators includes Allen Weisselberg, the Trump Organization’s longtime chief financial officer; David Pecker, the CEO of the National Enquirer’s parent company who has admitted to working with Trump for years to kill incriminating media stories; and Rick Gates, who served as Trump campaign deputy and then de facto leader of the inaugural committee. Gates pleaded guilty in the Mueller probe to lying to the FBI last February but his sentencing has been delayed while he cooperates in “several ongoing investigations,” according to a filing last month from the special counsel’s office.
Then there’s Cohen, Trump’s longtime fixer who is scheduled to begin serving a three-year prison sentence next month. Christie called Cohen a “tour guide” for SDNY investigators into the president’s orbit.
Another concern for Trump: SDNY’s independence. Its nickname is the “Sovereign District of New York," and former prosecutors who have worked there describe its authorities and experience as unique among the nation's 93 U.S. attorney offices.
Trump-appointed officials are also not directly overseeing SDNY’s Trump-related investigations. The president’s hand-selected SDNY head, U.S. Attorney Geoffrey Berman, has recused himself from the probes, deferring to a pair of longtime federal prosecutors: Robert Khuzami and Audrey Strauss.
An SDNY spokesman declined to comment for this story.
Alumni from the office have said SDNY's investigative powers and independent streak are so robust that — depending on what it finds on Trump — the office could skirt DOJ legal protocol dating to Watergate that holds a sitting president can’t be indicted.
“I’m thoroughly convinced the SDNY will make its own evaluation. They will not say that’s a department policy,” said Jon Sale, a former SDNY and Watergate prosecutor who is close with Trump personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani. “They’re obviously looking at the president and I wouldn’t rule out that they could decide you can indict a sitting president.”
Trump's attack-Mueller playbook can’t be replicated in New York. For starters, the bounds of what SDNY is looking at don’t deal with Trump’s tenure in the White House, meaning any push back on executive privilege grounds won’t fly. Trump’s lawyers have said they’ve resisted Mueller’s attempts to get the president to answer questions about potential obstruction of justice matters dealing with his time in the Oval Office. And they continue to signal the president’s team should be allowed to review the special counsel’s finished report to ensure it doesn’t violate the president’s rights.
Trump is limited in his abilities to use his bully pulpit against SDNY — which has nowhere near the name recognition of the special counsel — in the way he has used Twitter, rallies and even the State of the Union to lambaste Mueller.
That’s not to say the president isn’t concerned about SDNY. Trump reportedly complained about SDNY’s pursuit of Cohen to Matthew Whitaker, his former acting attorney general, though Whitaker last week denied to Congress that the president had chided him.
Giuliani has confirmed Trump’s frustrations with SDNY’s handling of the Cohen probe.
“The president and his lawyers are upset about the professional prosecutors in the Southern District of New York going after a noncrime and the innuendo the president was involved,” Giuliani, who served as the U.S. attorney leading SDNY for more than five years during the Reagan administration, told CNN in December.
But in an interview with POLITICO on Friday, Giuliani downplayed any broader concerns that his former office posed a wider threat to the president.
“The same thing will happen as has happened over the last two years with all of these things. They’ll run them down and they’ll find out the president didn’t do anything wrong. Not a darn thing,” Giuliani said.
Trump’s complaints about the Mueller probe — railing against his team of “angry Democrats” and even going after the special counsel himself in more than 70 mentions on Twitter since last March — have helped the president turn his political base against the Russia investigation. A voters, a record low 13 percent of registered Republican voters reported having a favorable view of Mueller in a recent POLITICO/Morning Consult poll. While that can help the president maintain GOP support in an impeachment battle, legal experts and Trump’s allies have said similar attacks on SDNY won’t matter much should the battleground become a court of law and not the halls of Congress.
“That’s one you can’t win,” said Andrew McCarthy, a former SDNY prosecutor and National Review columnist whom the president has cited on Twitter while blasting the Mueller probe. “There’s no upside for Trump in attacking the southern district, whereas there might be in attacking Mueller.”
What’s more, SDNY’s efforts have found a allies in Democratic lawmakers who have made the U.S. attorney’s office a key feature of their hearings, floor speeches and in written demands of Trump’s Justice Department.
Ahead of Whitaker’s recent appearance before Congress, House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler told the acting DOJ head that SDNY’s work would be one of his primary lines of questioning. And in a follow-up letter after the hearing, the New York Democrat pressed Whitaker over his denials that Trump lashed out at him about SDNY. Whitaker’s rebuttals, Nadler said, were “directly contradicted by several media reports” and other people with “direct knowledge” of the calls he got from the White House.
In a floor speech last week announcing his opposition to Barr’s confirmation, Virginia Sen. Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, warned that any Trump pardons for people tied up in either the Mueller or SDNY investigation “would represent an abuse of power that would require a response by Congress.”
Barr said SDNY’s work stands on the other side of a red line that he wouldn’t let Trump cross. Pressed by Democratic senators during his confirmation hearing last month, the soon-to-be attorney general said he’d protest the removal of SDNY’s head if he thought the president had nefarious intentions.
“I would not stand by and allow a U.S. attorney to be fired for the purpose of stopping an investigation,” Barr said.
Trump’s profound hatred for Democratic Senator dates back to a petty feud over the Empire State Building
Noor Al-Sibai - raw story
29 JAN 2019 AT 20:49 ET
Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) gets under Donald Trump’s skin — and the reason why spans back decades.
Politico reported Tuesday that Trump’s attacks on Blumenthal, a former Connecticut attorney general, have more to do with a family feud than his record in Vietnam.
On Monday night, Trump went after the Connecticut Senator on Twitter.
“How does Da Nang Dick (Blumenthal) serve on the Senate Judiciary Committee when he defrauded the American people about his so called War Hero status in Vietnam, only to later admit, with tears pouring down his face, that he was never in Vietnam,” the president tweeted. “An embarrassment to our Country!”
Blumenthal has admitted that he “misstated” his service during the Vietnam war (he was a Marine reservist during that period) — and according to one former senior White House official, that disambiguation angered Trump.
“Trump gets a bad rap for not serving in the military and when he saw someone else who claimed to have served but technically didn’t,” the official told Politico, “he seized on that opportunity.”
But it was a feud between Blumenthal’s in-laws and Trump over the Empire State Building that may be at the core of the president’s animosity towards the Connecticut Democrat.
“Trump and Blumenthal’s father-in-law, Peter Malkin, were competitors in the Manhattan real estate market,” the report noted, “and eventually clashed over a deal involving control of the iconic Empire State Building.”
According to Blumenthal’s seatmate, Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT), the former Connecticut attorney general “is picking a scab regularly that Trump’s particularly sensitive about.”
Politico reported Tuesday that Trump’s attacks on Blumenthal, a former Connecticut attorney general, have more to do with a family feud than his record in Vietnam.
On Monday night, Trump went after the Connecticut Senator on Twitter.
“How does Da Nang Dick (Blumenthal) serve on the Senate Judiciary Committee when he defrauded the American people about his so called War Hero status in Vietnam, only to later admit, with tears pouring down his face, that he was never in Vietnam,” the president tweeted. “An embarrassment to our Country!”
Blumenthal has admitted that he “misstated” his service during the Vietnam war (he was a Marine reservist during that period) — and according to one former senior White House official, that disambiguation angered Trump.
“Trump gets a bad rap for not serving in the military and when he saw someone else who claimed to have served but technically didn’t,” the official told Politico, “he seized on that opportunity.”
But it was a feud between Blumenthal’s in-laws and Trump over the Empire State Building that may be at the core of the president’s animosity towards the Connecticut Democrat.
“Trump and Blumenthal’s father-in-law, Peter Malkin, were competitors in the Manhattan real estate market,” the report noted, “and eventually clashed over a deal involving control of the iconic Empire State Building.”
According to Blumenthal’s seatmate, Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT), the former Connecticut attorney general “is picking a scab regularly that Trump’s particularly sensitive about.”
fox news in charge!!!
Trump touts proposed Bible literacy classes in state schools
BY BRETT SAMUELS - the hill
01/28/19 08:58 AM EST
Pissident Trump on Monday embraced proposals from lawmakers in six states that would allow public schools to offer Bible literacy classes.
The president's tweet came shortly after the subject was discussed on "Fox & Friends."
"Numerous states introducing Bible Literacy classes, giving students the option of studying the Bible. Starting to make a turn back? Great!" Trump wrote on Twitter.
Trump's tweet came roughly a half hour after North Dakota state Rep. Aaron McWilliams (R) appeared on "Fox & Friends." McWilliams is co-sponsoring a measure in North Dakota to support Bible literacy classes.
Similar measures have been introduced in Missouri, Indiana, West Virginia, Virginia and Florida.
USA Today reported that the proposals would require or encourage public schools to offer elective classes on the Bible, with a focus on its historical significance.
Critics of the measures have argued that they could violate the constitutional separation between church and state, USA Today reported.
Trump has often courted the support of evangelical leaders, with many defending him despite criticism over his rhetoric toward immigrants and on the campaign trail.
The president's tweet came shortly after the subject was discussed on "Fox & Friends."
"Numerous states introducing Bible Literacy classes, giving students the option of studying the Bible. Starting to make a turn back? Great!" Trump wrote on Twitter.
Trump's tweet came roughly a half hour after North Dakota state Rep. Aaron McWilliams (R) appeared on "Fox & Friends." McWilliams is co-sponsoring a measure in North Dakota to support Bible literacy classes.
Similar measures have been introduced in Missouri, Indiana, West Virginia, Virginia and Florida.
USA Today reported that the proposals would require or encourage public schools to offer elective classes on the Bible, with a focus on its historical significance.
Critics of the measures have argued that they could violate the constitutional separation between church and state, USA Today reported.
Trump has often courted the support of evangelical leaders, with many defending him despite criticism over his rhetoric toward immigrants and on the campaign trail.
The Atlantic: IMPEACH DONALD TRUMP
Starting the process will rein in a president who is undermining American ideals—and bring the debate about his fitness for office into Congress, where it belongs.
kpete - demo underground
1/17/19
On january 20, 2017, Donald Trump stood on the steps of the Capitol, raised his right hand, and solemnly swore to faithfully execute the office of president of the United States and, to the best of his ability, to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States. He has not kept that promise.
Instead, he has mounted a concerted challenge to the separation of powers, to the rule of law, and to the civil liberties enshrined in our founding documents. He has purposefully inflamed America’s divisions. He has set himself against the American idea, the principle that all of us—of every race, gender, and creed—are created equal.
...................
The oath of office is a president’s promise to subordinate his private desires to the public interest, to serve the nation as a whole rather than any faction within it. Trump displays no evidence that he understands these obligations. To the contrary, he has routinely privileged his self-interest above the responsibilities of the presidency. He has failed to disclose or divest himself from his extensive financial interests, instead using the platform of the presidency to promote them. This has encouraged a wide array of actors, domestic and foreign, to seek to influence his decisions by funneling cash to properties such as Mar-a-Lago (the “Winter White House,” as Trump has branded it) and his hotel on Pennsylvania Avenue. Courts are now considering whether some of those payments violate the Constitution.
..........
Trump’s bipartisan critics are not merely arguing that he has dishonored the presidency. The most serious charge is that he is attacking the bedrock of American democracy.
........... By delaying the start of the process, in the hope that even clearer evidence will be produced by Mueller or some other source, lawmakers are delaying its eventual conclusion. Better to forge ahead, weighing what is already known and incorporating additional material as it becomes available.
...........
........The process of impeachment itself is likely to shift public opinion, both by highlighting what’s already known and by bringing new evidence to light. If Trump’s support among Republican voters erodes, his support in the Senate may do the same. One lesson of Richard Nixon’s impeachment is that when legislators conclude a presidency is doomed, they can switch allegiances in the blink of an eye.
.........
With a newly seated Democratic majority, the House of Representatives can no longer dodge its constitutional duty. It must immediately open a formal impeachment inquiry into President Trump, and bring the debate out of the court of public opinion and into Congress, where it belongs.
MORE:
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/03/impeachment-trump/580468/
Instead, he has mounted a concerted challenge to the separation of powers, to the rule of law, and to the civil liberties enshrined in our founding documents. He has purposefully inflamed America’s divisions. He has set himself against the American idea, the principle that all of us—of every race, gender, and creed—are created equal.
...................
The oath of office is a president’s promise to subordinate his private desires to the public interest, to serve the nation as a whole rather than any faction within it. Trump displays no evidence that he understands these obligations. To the contrary, he has routinely privileged his self-interest above the responsibilities of the presidency. He has failed to disclose or divest himself from his extensive financial interests, instead using the platform of the presidency to promote them. This has encouraged a wide array of actors, domestic and foreign, to seek to influence his decisions by funneling cash to properties such as Mar-a-Lago (the “Winter White House,” as Trump has branded it) and his hotel on Pennsylvania Avenue. Courts are now considering whether some of those payments violate the Constitution.
..........
Trump’s bipartisan critics are not merely arguing that he has dishonored the presidency. The most serious charge is that he is attacking the bedrock of American democracy.
........... By delaying the start of the process, in the hope that even clearer evidence will be produced by Mueller or some other source, lawmakers are delaying its eventual conclusion. Better to forge ahead, weighing what is already known and incorporating additional material as it becomes available.
...........
........The process of impeachment itself is likely to shift public opinion, both by highlighting what’s already known and by bringing new evidence to light. If Trump’s support among Republican voters erodes, his support in the Senate may do the same. One lesson of Richard Nixon’s impeachment is that when legislators conclude a presidency is doomed, they can switch allegiances in the blink of an eye.
.........
With a newly seated Democratic majority, the House of Representatives can no longer dodge its constitutional duty. It must immediately open a formal impeachment inquiry into President Trump, and bring the debate out of the court of public opinion and into Congress, where it belongs.
MORE:
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/03/impeachment-trump/580468/
Here’s the bizarre story behind Trump’s bungled attempt to build a high-rise in Moscow
Travis Gettys - raw story
29 NOV 2018 AT 10:43 ET
Pissident Donald Trump may have endangered his presidency and American democracy with his business dealings in Russia — but he has nothing to show for it.
His longtime attorney revealed Thursday in federal court that he had lied to Congress by saying the Trump Tower Moscow deal fell apart in January 2016, and admitted the project remained under negotiation until June 2016.
Trump signed a letter of intent in October 2015, after launching his improbably successful presidential campaign, but the back story for the project shows how the president aligned himself with sketchy characters to pursue the ill-fated project.
The former real estate developer and reality TV star spent decades cultivating relationships in Russia, but he never actually built anything there, and The Atlantic‘s Julia Ioffe tried to find out why in a September 2017 investigative report.
What she found, in short, is that Trump isn’t nearly as good a businessman as he likes to brag.
“Trump wants everything and he’s dealing with the Russians, who aren’t stupid,” said one Western real estate investor in Moscow. “If you want everything from the Russians, they’re not going to give it to you. Trump’s way of negotiating is to ask for every f*cking thing. The Russians have a different philosophy of negotiation: He who asks is the weak party.”
Other big-name hotel brands have built in Moscow, but they actually run those businesses in addition to licensing their names — which was all Trump offered.
“Trump wants a fee for branding and doesn’t put money in, so most developers’ in Moscow responses are, ‘So what the f*ck do we need him for?’” said a person familiar with the licensing negotiations.
Donald Trump Jr. summed up the complex back story by admitting Russia “really is a scary place.”
The younger Trump told a trade publication in 2008, when he revealed “Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets,” that Trump Organization was concerned about the payoffs necessary to do business in Russia, where corruption is rampant and bribes are necessary.
“Moscow is like New York in many ways, just way more corrupt,” said one Western real estate developer in Russia, who asked for anonymity to avoid upsetting his foreign partners. “To pull a building out of the ground, you need so many permits, so many authorizations — the mind reels. And all of it is so corrupt, it’s insane.”
Ioffe, who was born in Moscow and came to the U.S. with her parents at 7, said the Trump Organization would have needed a capable and connected local partner to obtain all the necessary permits.
Trump worked with Aras Agalarov — whose son was involved in arranging the campaign meeting between Trump Jr. and a Russian lawyer — in 2013, but that deal fell apart over a scandal in Kyrgyzstan and amid Russian economic woes.
The future president instead relied on Felix Sater, a Russian-American convicted felon with mob ties who also worked as an FBI informant.
Sater started traveling to Moscow on Trump’s behalf in 2004, and three years later also started advising the self-described Donald Trump of Russia, Sergei Polonsky, over the objections of the developer’s lieutenants.
“I would never hire somebody like that,” said Alexey Kunitsin, who was then chairman of the board at Polonsky’s company. “You can’t trust him in any way, not in a professional setting, not in a personal setting — you could see it very clearly. He was telling constant crazy stories, wild fantasies about all the people he knew. He was not a balanced dude. He’s very emotional and gets into conflicts very easily.”
Sater gained a reputation as a “bullsh*tter” and raised suspicions with his colorful tales of profligate spending, and Moscow developers didn’t trust him or take him seriously.
Those developers also didn’t trust Trump, who was an outsider without the necessary political protection to do business in Moscow.
Sater seems to have hoped that might change after Trump announced his presidential campaign, according to emails recently obtained by the New York Times that show him bragging to Trump lawyer Michael Cohen that he had lined up financing for Trump Tower from VTB — a bank under U.S. sanctions.
“I will get Putin on this program and we will get Donald elected,” Sater said in one email, and Trump signed a non-binding letter of attempt in fall 2015 to pursue the project.
However, that deal too went nowhere because Sater lacked the right connections and because Russia’s economy was still staggering under U.S. sanctions imposed the year before.
Cohen tried to revive the project in 2016 by trying to contact the players Sater had bragged about but instead sent an email to a top Putin lieutenant using his general email listed on the Kremlin website, and the official declined to respond.
Moscow developers described Cohen’s action as more of a rookie mistake than evidence of high-level contacts — and they told The Atlantic it shows why Trump never got anything built in Russia.
“That is like the stupidest, most absurd thing ever,” said one Western real estate developer. “The Russians that (Trump) associates with, I would never do business with. I’ve been involved with Russia for 25 years.”
The developer offered a withering criticism of Trump’s business acumen, given his famous name that’s become synonymous with a certain type of luxury.
“A genuine developer could’ve done a lot with that brand,” the developer said.
His longtime attorney revealed Thursday in federal court that he had lied to Congress by saying the Trump Tower Moscow deal fell apart in January 2016, and admitted the project remained under negotiation until June 2016.
Trump signed a letter of intent in October 2015, after launching his improbably successful presidential campaign, but the back story for the project shows how the president aligned himself with sketchy characters to pursue the ill-fated project.
The former real estate developer and reality TV star spent decades cultivating relationships in Russia, but he never actually built anything there, and The Atlantic‘s Julia Ioffe tried to find out why in a September 2017 investigative report.
What she found, in short, is that Trump isn’t nearly as good a businessman as he likes to brag.
“Trump wants everything and he’s dealing with the Russians, who aren’t stupid,” said one Western real estate investor in Moscow. “If you want everything from the Russians, they’re not going to give it to you. Trump’s way of negotiating is to ask for every f*cking thing. The Russians have a different philosophy of negotiation: He who asks is the weak party.”
Other big-name hotel brands have built in Moscow, but they actually run those businesses in addition to licensing their names — which was all Trump offered.
“Trump wants a fee for branding and doesn’t put money in, so most developers’ in Moscow responses are, ‘So what the f*ck do we need him for?’” said a person familiar with the licensing negotiations.
Donald Trump Jr. summed up the complex back story by admitting Russia “really is a scary place.”
The younger Trump told a trade publication in 2008, when he revealed “Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets,” that Trump Organization was concerned about the payoffs necessary to do business in Russia, where corruption is rampant and bribes are necessary.
“Moscow is like New York in many ways, just way more corrupt,” said one Western real estate developer in Russia, who asked for anonymity to avoid upsetting his foreign partners. “To pull a building out of the ground, you need so many permits, so many authorizations — the mind reels. And all of it is so corrupt, it’s insane.”
Ioffe, who was born in Moscow and came to the U.S. with her parents at 7, said the Trump Organization would have needed a capable and connected local partner to obtain all the necessary permits.
Trump worked with Aras Agalarov — whose son was involved in arranging the campaign meeting between Trump Jr. and a Russian lawyer — in 2013, but that deal fell apart over a scandal in Kyrgyzstan and amid Russian economic woes.
The future president instead relied on Felix Sater, a Russian-American convicted felon with mob ties who also worked as an FBI informant.
Sater started traveling to Moscow on Trump’s behalf in 2004, and three years later also started advising the self-described Donald Trump of Russia, Sergei Polonsky, over the objections of the developer’s lieutenants.
“I would never hire somebody like that,” said Alexey Kunitsin, who was then chairman of the board at Polonsky’s company. “You can’t trust him in any way, not in a professional setting, not in a personal setting — you could see it very clearly. He was telling constant crazy stories, wild fantasies about all the people he knew. He was not a balanced dude. He’s very emotional and gets into conflicts very easily.”
Sater gained a reputation as a “bullsh*tter” and raised suspicions with his colorful tales of profligate spending, and Moscow developers didn’t trust him or take him seriously.
Those developers also didn’t trust Trump, who was an outsider without the necessary political protection to do business in Moscow.
Sater seems to have hoped that might change after Trump announced his presidential campaign, according to emails recently obtained by the New York Times that show him bragging to Trump lawyer Michael Cohen that he had lined up financing for Trump Tower from VTB — a bank under U.S. sanctions.
“I will get Putin on this program and we will get Donald elected,” Sater said in one email, and Trump signed a non-binding letter of attempt in fall 2015 to pursue the project.
However, that deal too went nowhere because Sater lacked the right connections and because Russia’s economy was still staggering under U.S. sanctions imposed the year before.
Cohen tried to revive the project in 2016 by trying to contact the players Sater had bragged about but instead sent an email to a top Putin lieutenant using his general email listed on the Kremlin website, and the official declined to respond.
Moscow developers described Cohen’s action as more of a rookie mistake than evidence of high-level contacts — and they told The Atlantic it shows why Trump never got anything built in Russia.
“That is like the stupidest, most absurd thing ever,” said one Western real estate developer. “The Russians that (Trump) associates with, I would never do business with. I’ve been involved with Russia for 25 years.”
The developer offered a withering criticism of Trump’s business acumen, given his famous name that’s become synonymous with a certain type of luxury.
“A genuine developer could’ve done a lot with that brand,” the developer said.
Cowardice is the real source of Donald Trump’s perpetual lying and narcissistic insensitivity to others
By Michael Winship, Common Dreams - COMMENTARY - raw story
27 NOV 2018 AT 15:38 ET
Our president is a coward.
This may not come as news to you.
But as we cascade toward the latter half of his first and, God hope it, only term, Donald Trump’s craven fearfulness is worth a reminder simply because of its vast continuing implications for our country and the world.
Of course, there’s the surface narcissistic indifference and insensitivity to others, in particular his disregard for members of the military and veterans, despite his many tweeted proclamations of support and gratitude.
This disrespect was made manifest in early November during the 100th anniversary celebrations of the armistice that ended World War I. His well-known fear of wet head kept him indoors, a no show both on one of the days he was in France and later at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington National Cemetery. Panic at the prospect of a bad hair day apparently took precedence over Veterans’ Day.
Not since the first month of his administration has Trump made a visit to pay his respects at Dover Air Force Base, where the bodies of America’s war dead are returned home. According to Bob Woodward in his book, Fear, the commander-in-chief was “clearly rattled” by that one experience and won’t go back. Duty and sacrifice just aren’t his thing.
And although he loudly has supported more defense spending, unlike his predecessors, it’s no surprise that Trump has yet to visit any of our troops deployed abroad in combat zones. “In modern times, we expect presidents to do that much more than in the old days when travel was more difficult,”historian Michael Beschloss told The Washington Post. “When Trump doesn’t come anywhere close to meeting the expectation, it makes people wonder why.”
Despite his self-professed “unbelievably busy schedule,” (including 154 visits to golf resorts, mostly his own, since Inauguration Day), the president now says that a visit will happen, although no date has been set. Yet Josh Dawsey and Paul Sonne at The Post quote a former White House official: “He’s never been interested in going. He’s afraid of those situations. He’s afraid people want to kill him.”
Acting out his timorous bully tendencies, Trump has lashed out at those possessing the courage he lacks, insulting Gold Star families, the late senator and former POW John McCain and recently, retired Navy SEAL and Special Operations commander Bill McRaven.
So, as opposed as you and I may be to the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and wherever else our armed forces are placed in harm’s way—including the Mexican border, where their presence is political, gratuitous and unlawful—there’s no denying that the commander-in-chief’s graceless apathy, even antipathy, have done nothing but create ill will.
Worse and scarier, according to The New York Times, “[T]op Defense Department officials say that Mr. Trump has not fully grasped the role of the troops he commands, nor the responsibility that he has to lead them and protect them from politics.”
Beyond his personal cowardice (including his seeming, non-Apprentice-like inability to fire anyone face-to-face), an overall paranoia about the world beyond his bubble leaves him ignorant and unwilling to face inconvenient truths. That’s why conspiracy theories are so reassuring to Trump and his followers – there’s always some larger force at work that makes it easy to shirk responsibility and blame someone –anyone – else.
It’s part of what keeps him from confronting the awful and incontrovertible reality of climate change, his administration trying to bury on the day after Thanksgiving that stunning, 1656-page assessment from thirteen federal agencies. As per The Times, “The report puts the most precise price tags to date on the cost to the United States economy of projected climate impacts: $141 billion from heat-related deaths, $118 billion from sea level rise and $32 billion from infrastructure damage by the end of the century, among others.”
Trump’s response? “I don’t believe it.”
Look, too, at his refusal to listen to the tape of journalist Jamal Khashoggi’s murder at the Saudi Arabian consulate in Turkey. “It’s a suffering tape, it’s a terrible tape,” Trump told Fox’s Chris Wallace. “I’ve been fully briefed on it. There’s no reason for me to hear it.”
That denial is a singular metaphor for the president’s gutless inability to confront Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman or his father Saudi King Salman over the killing – or any of Saudi Arabia’s grotesque and cruel violations of human rights. Despite overwhelming evidence presented to him by the intelligence community, “Maybe he did and maybe he didn’t,” was Trump’s response when asked if the crown prince was complicit in Khashoggi’s death. It was an answer eerily reminiscent of his “very fine people on both sides” comments in the wake of the fatal neo-Nazi riot in Charlottesville, Virginia.
Much of his cowardice is egged on by avarice and amoral political calculation, as our chief executive evaluates everything by price and values nothing by standards of common sense, common decency or the greater common good. Living in a constant greed-fueled state of fear and suspicion, Trump sidles up to dictators abroad. He only attacks our democratic allies, who sensibly, so far, have valued the length and durability of our friendships over the short-term ravings of an uninformed and intolerant autocrat.
Like his fellow totalitarian Putin and others, he brooks no dissent or opposition and views the facts as daggers pointed straight at his heart. Trump is so afraid to face the truth that he makes up lies to comfort himself, fabrications that give him an excuse to take no action—or to take actions so heinous we’ll be trying to recover from them for decades to come.
This may not come as news to you.
But as we cascade toward the latter half of his first and, God hope it, only term, Donald Trump’s craven fearfulness is worth a reminder simply because of its vast continuing implications for our country and the world.
Of course, there’s the surface narcissistic indifference and insensitivity to others, in particular his disregard for members of the military and veterans, despite his many tweeted proclamations of support and gratitude.
This disrespect was made manifest in early November during the 100th anniversary celebrations of the armistice that ended World War I. His well-known fear of wet head kept him indoors, a no show both on one of the days he was in France and later at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington National Cemetery. Panic at the prospect of a bad hair day apparently took precedence over Veterans’ Day.
Not since the first month of his administration has Trump made a visit to pay his respects at Dover Air Force Base, where the bodies of America’s war dead are returned home. According to Bob Woodward in his book, Fear, the commander-in-chief was “clearly rattled” by that one experience and won’t go back. Duty and sacrifice just aren’t his thing.
And although he loudly has supported more defense spending, unlike his predecessors, it’s no surprise that Trump has yet to visit any of our troops deployed abroad in combat zones. “In modern times, we expect presidents to do that much more than in the old days when travel was more difficult,”historian Michael Beschloss told The Washington Post. “When Trump doesn’t come anywhere close to meeting the expectation, it makes people wonder why.”
Despite his self-professed “unbelievably busy schedule,” (including 154 visits to golf resorts, mostly his own, since Inauguration Day), the president now says that a visit will happen, although no date has been set. Yet Josh Dawsey and Paul Sonne at The Post quote a former White House official: “He’s never been interested in going. He’s afraid of those situations. He’s afraid people want to kill him.”
Acting out his timorous bully tendencies, Trump has lashed out at those possessing the courage he lacks, insulting Gold Star families, the late senator and former POW John McCain and recently, retired Navy SEAL and Special Operations commander Bill McRaven.
So, as opposed as you and I may be to the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and wherever else our armed forces are placed in harm’s way—including the Mexican border, where their presence is political, gratuitous and unlawful—there’s no denying that the commander-in-chief’s graceless apathy, even antipathy, have done nothing but create ill will.
Worse and scarier, according to The New York Times, “[T]op Defense Department officials say that Mr. Trump has not fully grasped the role of the troops he commands, nor the responsibility that he has to lead them and protect them from politics.”
Beyond his personal cowardice (including his seeming, non-Apprentice-like inability to fire anyone face-to-face), an overall paranoia about the world beyond his bubble leaves him ignorant and unwilling to face inconvenient truths. That’s why conspiracy theories are so reassuring to Trump and his followers – there’s always some larger force at work that makes it easy to shirk responsibility and blame someone –anyone – else.
It’s part of what keeps him from confronting the awful and incontrovertible reality of climate change, his administration trying to bury on the day after Thanksgiving that stunning, 1656-page assessment from thirteen federal agencies. As per The Times, “The report puts the most precise price tags to date on the cost to the United States economy of projected climate impacts: $141 billion from heat-related deaths, $118 billion from sea level rise and $32 billion from infrastructure damage by the end of the century, among others.”
Trump’s response? “I don’t believe it.”
Look, too, at his refusal to listen to the tape of journalist Jamal Khashoggi’s murder at the Saudi Arabian consulate in Turkey. “It’s a suffering tape, it’s a terrible tape,” Trump told Fox’s Chris Wallace. “I’ve been fully briefed on it. There’s no reason for me to hear it.”
That denial is a singular metaphor for the president’s gutless inability to confront Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman or his father Saudi King Salman over the killing – or any of Saudi Arabia’s grotesque and cruel violations of human rights. Despite overwhelming evidence presented to him by the intelligence community, “Maybe he did and maybe he didn’t,” was Trump’s response when asked if the crown prince was complicit in Khashoggi’s death. It was an answer eerily reminiscent of his “very fine people on both sides” comments in the wake of the fatal neo-Nazi riot in Charlottesville, Virginia.
Much of his cowardice is egged on by avarice and amoral political calculation, as our chief executive evaluates everything by price and values nothing by standards of common sense, common decency or the greater common good. Living in a constant greed-fueled state of fear and suspicion, Trump sidles up to dictators abroad. He only attacks our democratic allies, who sensibly, so far, have valued the length and durability of our friendships over the short-term ravings of an uninformed and intolerant autocrat.
Like his fellow totalitarian Putin and others, he brooks no dissent or opposition and views the facts as daggers pointed straight at his heart. Trump is so afraid to face the truth that he makes up lies to comfort himself, fabrications that give him an excuse to take no action—or to take actions so heinous we’ll be trying to recover from them for decades to come.
Here are all the Trump projects where Ivanka and her dad misled real estate buyers
Pro Publica - raw story
18 OCT 2018 AT 06:39 ET
A pattern of deception ran through the Trumps’ real estate deals since the mid-2000s. Not only were the Trumps more than the mere licensors they claimed to be, extracting millions in fees from nearly every facet of these projects, but they often misled buyers and investors on key information — such as the level of sales and the Trumps’ role and investment in the deals. (Read our full investigation.) The Trump Organization did not respond to our questions, and the White House didn’t have a comment.
Projects Where a Trump Family Member Overstated Sales Numbers
DOMINICAN REPUBLIC
Claim: Donald Trump claimed $365 million in sales in a 2007 letter to The Wall Street Journal.
Reality: Trump reported $290 million in a 2009 project audit.
Result: Never built.
FORT LAUDERDALE
Claim: Trump announced the hotel/condo was “pretty much sold out” in April 2006, according to a broker who attended the presentation.
Reality: 62 percent of units were sold as of July 2006, according to bank records that emerged in a court case.
Result: Entered foreclosure. Trump’s name removed before construction completed.
LAS VEGAS
Claim: Condos “sold out,” Trump told The Associated Press in 2005
Reality: About 25 percent of units were sold by 2011, according to press accounts.
Result: Built.
PANAMA
Claim: “It’s a 1,000-unit building, we’ve sold over 90 percent of it,” Ivanka told Portfolioin 2008.
Reality: As of three months later, 79 percent of the units were pre-sold, according to Moody’s.
Result: Built, but went bankrupt; Trump name removed.
SOHO
Claim: In 2008, Ivanka told reporters that 60 percent of units had sold.
Reality:A Trump partner’s affidavit revealed that 15 percent had been sold at the time.
Result: Built, but went bankrupt; Trump name removed.
TAMPA
Claim: The building “sold out,” Trump told The Wall Street Journal in 2007.
Reality: The developers failed to sell a minimum of 70 percent of units, according to a Trump company letter that year, which deemed that a violation of its contract.
Result: Never built.
TORONTO
Claim: In a 2009 interview, Ivanka referred to the property as “virtually sold out.”
Reality: 24.8 percent of units had sold, according to a 2016 bankruptcy filing by the developers.
Result: Built, but went bankrupt; Trump name removed.
Projects Where the Trumps Suggested They Were Developers, Partners or Equity Owners (They Weren’t)BAJAMore than 50 buyers claimed Ivanka said the Trump Organization was a developer on the project at a 2007 sales event, according to a lawsuit quoted by Univision.
DOMINICAN REPUBLIC
“I am excited to be building Trump at Cap Cana,” Trump was quoted saying in a 2007 press release, according to Univision.
FORT LAUDERDALE
Trump called the hotel and tower “my latest development” in a letter announcing the project.
REPUBLIC OF GEORGIA
“TRUMP INVESTS IN GEORGIA” read banners for the project, according to The New Yorker. Asked by a Fox anchor what he was “investing in,” Trump responded, “I’m doing a big development” in Georgia.
PANAMA
“I am honored to develop this extraordinary high rise with my partner Roger Khafif of the K Group,” Trump said in a 2009 marketing statement.
TAMPA
Trump claimed an ownership stake in a news article at the time, stating it was less than 50 percent, then adding: “But it’s a substantial stake. I recently said I’d like to increase my stake but when they’re selling that well they don’t let you do that.”
WAIKIKI
In the final episode of season five of “The Apprentice,” Trump announced the project on national TV, saying “that’s why I’m building the magnificent Trump Hotel and Tower Waikiki.” In 2007, he told The Wall Street Journal: “This building is largely owned by me and being developed by me.”
Projects Where a Trump Family Member Overstated Sales Numbers
DOMINICAN REPUBLIC
Claim: Donald Trump claimed $365 million in sales in a 2007 letter to The Wall Street Journal.
Reality: Trump reported $290 million in a 2009 project audit.
Result: Never built.
FORT LAUDERDALE
Claim: Trump announced the hotel/condo was “pretty much sold out” in April 2006, according to a broker who attended the presentation.
Reality: 62 percent of units were sold as of July 2006, according to bank records that emerged in a court case.
Result: Entered foreclosure. Trump’s name removed before construction completed.
LAS VEGAS
Claim: Condos “sold out,” Trump told The Associated Press in 2005
Reality: About 25 percent of units were sold by 2011, according to press accounts.
Result: Built.
PANAMA
Claim: “It’s a 1,000-unit building, we’ve sold over 90 percent of it,” Ivanka told Portfolioin 2008.
Reality: As of three months later, 79 percent of the units were pre-sold, according to Moody’s.
Result: Built, but went bankrupt; Trump name removed.
SOHO
Claim: In 2008, Ivanka told reporters that 60 percent of units had sold.
Reality:A Trump partner’s affidavit revealed that 15 percent had been sold at the time.
Result: Built, but went bankrupt; Trump name removed.
TAMPA
Claim: The building “sold out,” Trump told The Wall Street Journal in 2007.
Reality: The developers failed to sell a minimum of 70 percent of units, according to a Trump company letter that year, which deemed that a violation of its contract.
Result: Never built.
TORONTO
Claim: In a 2009 interview, Ivanka referred to the property as “virtually sold out.”
Reality: 24.8 percent of units had sold, according to a 2016 bankruptcy filing by the developers.
Result: Built, but went bankrupt; Trump name removed.
Projects Where the Trumps Suggested They Were Developers, Partners or Equity Owners (They Weren’t)BAJAMore than 50 buyers claimed Ivanka said the Trump Organization was a developer on the project at a 2007 sales event, according to a lawsuit quoted by Univision.
DOMINICAN REPUBLIC
“I am excited to be building Trump at Cap Cana,” Trump was quoted saying in a 2007 press release, according to Univision.
FORT LAUDERDALE
Trump called the hotel and tower “my latest development” in a letter announcing the project.
REPUBLIC OF GEORGIA
“TRUMP INVESTS IN GEORGIA” read banners for the project, according to The New Yorker. Asked by a Fox anchor what he was “investing in,” Trump responded, “I’m doing a big development” in Georgia.
PANAMA
“I am honored to develop this extraordinary high rise with my partner Roger Khafif of the K Group,” Trump said in a 2009 marketing statement.
TAMPA
Trump claimed an ownership stake in a news article at the time, stating it was less than 50 percent, then adding: “But it’s a substantial stake. I recently said I’d like to increase my stake but when they’re selling that well they don’t let you do that.”
WAIKIKI
In the final episode of season five of “The Apprentice,” Trump announced the project on national TV, saying “that’s why I’m building the magnificent Trump Hotel and Tower Waikiki.” In 2007, he told The Wall Street Journal: “This building is largely owned by me and being developed by me.”
Making us proud to be Americans!!!
Trump Statuettes Spotted On Brooklyn Sidewalks.
A treat for our canine friends
The Planners Of The Trump Tower Meeting Moved Millions, And Mueller Is Now Investigating
Documents show suspicious transfers began six days before the controversial meeting.
Anthony Cormier
BuzzFeed News Reporter
Jason Leopold
BuzzFeed News Reporter
Posted on September 21, 2018, at 10:45 a.m. ET
On June 3, 2016, Donald Trump Jr. received one of the most striking emails of the presidential campaign, offering dirt on Hillary Clinton as part of the Russian government’s “support for Mr. Trump.”
Trump Jr. responded 17 minutes later: “if it’s what you say I love it.”
That email led to a meeting at Trump Tower that has become a central focus of the investigation into possible collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign.
But the very day that email was sent, another exchange was taking place behind the scenes.
Documents reviewed by BuzzFeed News show that $3.3 million began moving on June 3 between two of the men who orchestrated the meeting: Aras Agalarov, a billionaire real estate developer close to both Vladimir Putin and President Donald Trump, and Irakly “Ike” Kaveladze, a longtime Agalarov employee once investigated for money laundering.
That money is on top of the more than $20 million that was flagged as suspicious, BuzzFeed News revealed earlier this month, after the money ricocheted among the planners and participants of the Trump Tower meeting. Special counsel Robert Mueller’s team, which has been investigating whether any individuals colluded with Russia to influence the 2016 presidential election, is examining the suspicious transactions, four federal law enforcement officials said. A spokesperson for Mueller’s office declined to comment.
Although the documents do not directly link the $3.3 million to the meeting, they show that officials at three separate banks raised red flags about the funds. Many of the transfers seemed to have no legitimate purpose, bankers noted. Kaveladze quickly moved money to other accounts he controlled, and appeared to use some of it to make payments on Agalarov’s behalf — including more than $700,000 to pay off American Express charges.
Scott Balber, an attorney for Agalarov and Kaveladze, said each of these transactions was legitimate and there is nothing improper with their financial activity. Balber explained that Agalarov sent funds to Kaveladze, an employee, to pay various business or personal expenses in the US.
“What is suspicious, or insidious, about a billionaire who pays his employee in the US to pay his business or domestic bills?” Balber said. “This looks like complete nonsense.”
“It’s obvious the events of June 2016 have been a focal point of the special counsel’s investigation, various congressional inquiries, tremendous media attention and the like,” Balber said. “We are in the lens of that reality, so it doesn’t surprise me that there’s been some flyspecking, some gross overreporting by a number of financial institutions. They won’t be criticized for overreporting suspicious activity.”
None of these transactions was discovered until 2017, after the New York Times revealed the Trump Tower meeting. Shortly after those reports, investigators asked financial institutions to look back at their accounts to learn how money flowed among the people who planned and attended the meeting: Agalarov; Kaveladze; Agalarov’s pop star son, Emin; their employee, Rob Goldstone, who sent the original email to Trump Jr.; and others.
To unearth connections between some of their accounts, banks took an extraordinary step: They invoked a provision of the Patriot Act — a post-9/11 law that included new tools to track money laundering and terrorist financing. That provision, rarely used in the Trump-Russia investigation, allowed the banks to share information about customers with one another.
Three financial institutions — Citibank, JP Morgan Chase, and Morgan Stanley — discovered the $3.3 million that flowed from Agalarov to Kaveladze.
They also learned that Kaveladze had given different banks radically different descriptions of one of his main companies, Corsy International. To JP Morgan Chase, Kaveladze said Corsy was a “transportation equipment and supplies merchant wholesaler.” He told Citibank it was a “music promotion company.” Agalarov gave yet another description to Morgan Stanley, calling the firm a “service provider” for his vast real estate company, Crocus Group.
Balber, the attorney, said that there are two separate businesses, both named “Corsy International,” that Kaveladze controlled. One is based in California and is involved in “procurement” issues related to Agalarov’s business empire. The other is based in New York and is largely involved with the music career of Emin Agalarov.
That lack of transparency made it difficult for bankers to know the true purpose of the funds into the company’s accounts. Examiners also became concerned with how Kaveladze handled the money.
On June 3, the day of the email exchange with Donald Trump Jr., Kaveladze began depositing checks into his JP Morgan Chase Platinum business checking account in California. He used three different branches in Huntington Beach, California, and the five checks totaled about $397,000. Each originated with Agalarov and referred to “compensation Amex expenses.”
Then on June 6, Agalarov started sending checks through an account at Morgan Stanley Wealth Management to Kaveladze’s company.
Those funds totaled about $971,000.
When they reviewed these accounts, bank examiners became suspicious because it was unclear exactly how the money was supposed to be used.
For instance, at JP Morgan Chase, Kaveladze transferred money from one of his companies’ accounts to another and ultimately sent 24 payments over 15 months to American Express for a total of $725,000 — a red flag to bankers because they said it appeared Kaveladze was making the payments for Agalarov. The documents do not say what expenses were charged to American Express, and three federal law enforcement agents said investigators are still trying to figure it out. Balber said these transactions were legitimate personal and business expenses for Agalarov.
The details unearthed by bankers were compiled in “suspicious activity reports” sent to the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, which shared them with other law enforcement agencies investigating Russian interference.
Suspicious activity reports are not evidence of wrongdoing, but they can provide valuable information to investigators looking into possible money laundering, fraud, tax evasion, or other financial misconduct.
During their reviews in 2017, some banks noticed behavior that they had not previously flagged. Bank of America, for example, noted about $7.8 million that was sent from Corsy International to another of Kaveladze’s businesses, Promomed, between 2012 and 2014. Bankers said they were concerned that by transferring funds from one company to another, Kaveladze was trying to obscure the original source of the money.
Citibank went far back into its accounts to search for suspicious activity by Kaveladze and the Agalarov family. Examiners “elevated” about $11.9 million in transactions that began in 2015, largely because the transactions originated in “high-risk jurisdictions,” or locations that are known as havens for money laundering, and because the funds were sent for “unknown purposes.”
Kaveladze had popped up on Citibank’s radar in September 2015, when he applied for a $100,000 line of credit for Corsy International. At that time, he told bankers that the company had $8 million in sales the previous year and that it had about $240,000 in available funds — but when Citibank investigated further, examiners learned that Corsy International’s account was actually overdrawn.
Citibank denied the loan.
Balber, Kaveladze’s attorney, said that his client did nothing improper, and that he doesn’t recall telling the bank about Corsy International’s available funds.
All three banks cited a 2000 report by the Government Accountability Office, in which Kaveladze was investigated as part of a Russian money laundering scheme. Kaveladze, that report found, established more than 2,000 corporations in Delaware for Russian real estate brokers, then set up US bank accounts for them. The brokers used these accounts to transfer about $1.4 billion, the report found.
Kaveladze was never charged with a crime and called the GAO’s inquiry a “witch hunt.”
Trump Jr. responded 17 minutes later: “if it’s what you say I love it.”
That email led to a meeting at Trump Tower that has become a central focus of the investigation into possible collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign.
But the very day that email was sent, another exchange was taking place behind the scenes.
Documents reviewed by BuzzFeed News show that $3.3 million began moving on June 3 between two of the men who orchestrated the meeting: Aras Agalarov, a billionaire real estate developer close to both Vladimir Putin and President Donald Trump, and Irakly “Ike” Kaveladze, a longtime Agalarov employee once investigated for money laundering.
That money is on top of the more than $20 million that was flagged as suspicious, BuzzFeed News revealed earlier this month, after the money ricocheted among the planners and participants of the Trump Tower meeting. Special counsel Robert Mueller’s team, which has been investigating whether any individuals colluded with Russia to influence the 2016 presidential election, is examining the suspicious transactions, four federal law enforcement officials said. A spokesperson for Mueller’s office declined to comment.
Although the documents do not directly link the $3.3 million to the meeting, they show that officials at three separate banks raised red flags about the funds. Many of the transfers seemed to have no legitimate purpose, bankers noted. Kaveladze quickly moved money to other accounts he controlled, and appeared to use some of it to make payments on Agalarov’s behalf — including more than $700,000 to pay off American Express charges.
Scott Balber, an attorney for Agalarov and Kaveladze, said each of these transactions was legitimate and there is nothing improper with their financial activity. Balber explained that Agalarov sent funds to Kaveladze, an employee, to pay various business or personal expenses in the US.
“What is suspicious, or insidious, about a billionaire who pays his employee in the US to pay his business or domestic bills?” Balber said. “This looks like complete nonsense.”
“It’s obvious the events of June 2016 have been a focal point of the special counsel’s investigation, various congressional inquiries, tremendous media attention and the like,” Balber said. “We are in the lens of that reality, so it doesn’t surprise me that there’s been some flyspecking, some gross overreporting by a number of financial institutions. They won’t be criticized for overreporting suspicious activity.”
None of these transactions was discovered until 2017, after the New York Times revealed the Trump Tower meeting. Shortly after those reports, investigators asked financial institutions to look back at their accounts to learn how money flowed among the people who planned and attended the meeting: Agalarov; Kaveladze; Agalarov’s pop star son, Emin; their employee, Rob Goldstone, who sent the original email to Trump Jr.; and others.
To unearth connections between some of their accounts, banks took an extraordinary step: They invoked a provision of the Patriot Act — a post-9/11 law that included new tools to track money laundering and terrorist financing. That provision, rarely used in the Trump-Russia investigation, allowed the banks to share information about customers with one another.
Three financial institutions — Citibank, JP Morgan Chase, and Morgan Stanley — discovered the $3.3 million that flowed from Agalarov to Kaveladze.
They also learned that Kaveladze had given different banks radically different descriptions of one of his main companies, Corsy International. To JP Morgan Chase, Kaveladze said Corsy was a “transportation equipment and supplies merchant wholesaler.” He told Citibank it was a “music promotion company.” Agalarov gave yet another description to Morgan Stanley, calling the firm a “service provider” for his vast real estate company, Crocus Group.
Balber, the attorney, said that there are two separate businesses, both named “Corsy International,” that Kaveladze controlled. One is based in California and is involved in “procurement” issues related to Agalarov’s business empire. The other is based in New York and is largely involved with the music career of Emin Agalarov.
That lack of transparency made it difficult for bankers to know the true purpose of the funds into the company’s accounts. Examiners also became concerned with how Kaveladze handled the money.
On June 3, the day of the email exchange with Donald Trump Jr., Kaveladze began depositing checks into his JP Morgan Chase Platinum business checking account in California. He used three different branches in Huntington Beach, California, and the five checks totaled about $397,000. Each originated with Agalarov and referred to “compensation Amex expenses.”
Then on June 6, Agalarov started sending checks through an account at Morgan Stanley Wealth Management to Kaveladze’s company.
Those funds totaled about $971,000.
When they reviewed these accounts, bank examiners became suspicious because it was unclear exactly how the money was supposed to be used.
For instance, at JP Morgan Chase, Kaveladze transferred money from one of his companies’ accounts to another and ultimately sent 24 payments over 15 months to American Express for a total of $725,000 — a red flag to bankers because they said it appeared Kaveladze was making the payments for Agalarov. The documents do not say what expenses were charged to American Express, and three federal law enforcement agents said investigators are still trying to figure it out. Balber said these transactions were legitimate personal and business expenses for Agalarov.
The details unearthed by bankers were compiled in “suspicious activity reports” sent to the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, which shared them with other law enforcement agencies investigating Russian interference.
Suspicious activity reports are not evidence of wrongdoing, but they can provide valuable information to investigators looking into possible money laundering, fraud, tax evasion, or other financial misconduct.
During their reviews in 2017, some banks noticed behavior that they had not previously flagged. Bank of America, for example, noted about $7.8 million that was sent from Corsy International to another of Kaveladze’s businesses, Promomed, between 2012 and 2014. Bankers said they were concerned that by transferring funds from one company to another, Kaveladze was trying to obscure the original source of the money.
Citibank went far back into its accounts to search for suspicious activity by Kaveladze and the Agalarov family. Examiners “elevated” about $11.9 million in transactions that began in 2015, largely because the transactions originated in “high-risk jurisdictions,” or locations that are known as havens for money laundering, and because the funds were sent for “unknown purposes.”
Kaveladze had popped up on Citibank’s radar in September 2015, when he applied for a $100,000 line of credit for Corsy International. At that time, he told bankers that the company had $8 million in sales the previous year and that it had about $240,000 in available funds — but when Citibank investigated further, examiners learned that Corsy International’s account was actually overdrawn.
Citibank denied the loan.
Balber, Kaveladze’s attorney, said that his client did nothing improper, and that he doesn’t recall telling the bank about Corsy International’s available funds.
All three banks cited a 2000 report by the Government Accountability Office, in which Kaveladze was investigated as part of a Russian money laundering scheme. Kaveladze, that report found, established more than 2,000 corporations in Delaware for Russian real estate brokers, then set up US bank accounts for them. The brokers used these accounts to transfer about $1.4 billion, the report found.
Kaveladze was never charged with a crime and called the GAO’s inquiry a “witch hunt.”
Trump admits Fox News hosts influenced his decision to declassify key Russia documents
"The great Lou Dobbs, the great Sean Hannity, the wonderful great Jeanie Pirro."
FRANK DALE - thinkprogress
SEP 19, 2018, 6:25 PM
Any doubt about the feedback loop between President Donald Trump and FoxNews can be put to rest, as the president credited Fox’s Sean Hannity, Lou Dobbs, and Jeanine Pirro for his decision to declassify key Russia documents in an interview with The Hill released on Wednesday.
As ThinkProgress reported on Tuesday, Trump’s declassification of materials relating to the FBI’s investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election was made “at the request of” top congressional Republicans, including Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA), who was a member of the Executive Committee for Trump’s White House transition.
Despite concerns about potential national security issues resulting from Trump’s actions, especially since neither the Department of Justice nor FBI were reportedly involved in the decision, the president praised Fox News and Fox Business hosts for making the recommendation to him during a conversation with Hill.tv’s John Solomon and Buck Sexton.
“I have been asked by so many people that I respect, please — the great Lou Dobbs, the great Sean Hannity, the wonderful great Jeanie Pirro. (laughs)
No, she takes it so personally. And that’s not, let’s say they like me. But this is beyond liking me. They know that this is one of the great scandals in the history of our country.”
Trump also mentioned Fox News’ Gregg Jarrett when he was asked about the declassification of Russia documents earlier in the interview.
“You know Gregg Jarrett wrote a book called the Russian Hoax. It actually is a hoax. I call it a witch hunt, but it’s a hoax. Beyond a witch hunt.”
Hannity first referenced Trump’s ability to declassify Russia documents on the July 23 episode of his Fox News show, according to Media Matters’ Nick Fernandez. Hannity and Dobbs have discussed the subject at least a dozen separate times on their shows since then.
Trump’s mention of how Fox News influenced his decision to declassify documents was not included in The Hill’s article about the interview, which contained a note that “brief segments where the president went off the record or made personal observations unrelated to the interview” were removed. However, the names of Hannity, Dobbs, Pirro, and Jarrett appear in the transcript released later on Wednesday.
Solomon, who conducted the interview for Hill.tv, has a long history of twisting the truth to defend Trump.
As ThinkProgress reported on Tuesday, Trump’s declassification of materials relating to the FBI’s investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election was made “at the request of” top congressional Republicans, including Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA), who was a member of the Executive Committee for Trump’s White House transition.
Despite concerns about potential national security issues resulting from Trump’s actions, especially since neither the Department of Justice nor FBI were reportedly involved in the decision, the president praised Fox News and Fox Business hosts for making the recommendation to him during a conversation with Hill.tv’s John Solomon and Buck Sexton.
“I have been asked by so many people that I respect, please — the great Lou Dobbs, the great Sean Hannity, the wonderful great Jeanie Pirro. (laughs)
No, she takes it so personally. And that’s not, let’s say they like me. But this is beyond liking me. They know that this is one of the great scandals in the history of our country.”
Trump also mentioned Fox News’ Gregg Jarrett when he was asked about the declassification of Russia documents earlier in the interview.
“You know Gregg Jarrett wrote a book called the Russian Hoax. It actually is a hoax. I call it a witch hunt, but it’s a hoax. Beyond a witch hunt.”
Hannity first referenced Trump’s ability to declassify Russia documents on the July 23 episode of his Fox News show, according to Media Matters’ Nick Fernandez. Hannity and Dobbs have discussed the subject at least a dozen separate times on their shows since then.
Trump’s mention of how Fox News influenced his decision to declassify documents was not included in The Hill’s article about the interview, which contained a note that “brief segments where the president went off the record or made personal observations unrelated to the interview” were removed. However, the names of Hannity, Dobbs, Pirro, and Jarrett appear in the transcript released later on Wednesday.
Solomon, who conducted the interview for Hill.tv, has a long history of twisting the truth to defend Trump.
Trump said that condemning Charlottesville neo-Nazis was ‘the biggest fUcking mistake I’ve made’: Bob Woodward
Brad Reed - RAW STORY
04 SEP 2018 AT 11:50 ET
Bob Woodward’s new book on President Donald Trump — titled “Fear: Inside the Trump White House” — is filled with explosive revelations about Trump’s presidency.
One of the most explosive has to do with the president’s handling of the white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia in the summer of 2017, in which the president said that there were “very fine people” on “both sides” of the demonstration.
According to a leaked excerpt obtained by the Washington Post, Trump deeply resented being forced to come out and specifically condemn white nationalists after being advised by aides that he needed to do so to make clear that he was opposed to racism.
“That was the biggest f*cking mistake I’ve made,” Trump told advisers shortly after giving a speech that condemned Nazis, according to Woodward’s sources, who also say Trump called the speech “the worst” he’d ever given.
Woodward also reports that former Trump economic adviser Gary Cohn, who is Jewish, threatened to resign after Trump’s Charlottesville performance, but was convinced to stay aboard by the president, who accused him of “treason” for thinking of stepping down.
Chief of staff John Kelly, whom Woodward also reports believes Trump is an “idiot,”told Cohn that he was similarly horrified by Trump’s performance and also considered resigning from his post.
RELATED: Trump’s staff staged a ‘coup’ to stop him from destroying nation: Woodward
Pr*sdent’s own staff staged a quiet “coup” to prevent “a nervous breakdown of the executive power of the most powerful country in the world,” according to a new book by Pulitzer-winning Watergate reporter Bob Woodward.
One of the most explosive has to do with the president’s handling of the white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia in the summer of 2017, in which the president said that there were “very fine people” on “both sides” of the demonstration.
According to a leaked excerpt obtained by the Washington Post, Trump deeply resented being forced to come out and specifically condemn white nationalists after being advised by aides that he needed to do so to make clear that he was opposed to racism.
“That was the biggest f*cking mistake I’ve made,” Trump told advisers shortly after giving a speech that condemned Nazis, according to Woodward’s sources, who also say Trump called the speech “the worst” he’d ever given.
Woodward also reports that former Trump economic adviser Gary Cohn, who is Jewish, threatened to resign after Trump’s Charlottesville performance, but was convinced to stay aboard by the president, who accused him of “treason” for thinking of stepping down.
Chief of staff John Kelly, whom Woodward also reports believes Trump is an “idiot,”told Cohn that he was similarly horrified by Trump’s performance and also considered resigning from his post.
RELATED: Trump’s staff staged a ‘coup’ to stop him from destroying nation: Woodward
Pr*sdent’s own staff staged a quiet “coup” to prevent “a nervous breakdown of the executive power of the most powerful country in the world,” according to a new book by Pulitzer-winning Watergate reporter Bob Woodward.
Trump was involved in scuttling FBI building across from Trump’s DC Hotel: Inspector General report
Bob Brigham - raw story
27 AUG 2018 AT 16:19 ET
The Inspector General of the General Services Administration on Monday released an in-depth report showing President Donald Trump was involved in scuttling plans by the Federal Bureau of Investigation to build a new headquarters.
The president was mentioned over three dozen times in the report.
The Inspector General report found that GSA Administrator Emily Murphy’s testimony before Congress on the scandal, “was incomplete and may have left the misleading impression that she had no discussions with the President or senior White House officials in the decision-making process about the project.”
The Trump administration invoked executive privilege to prevent the inspector general from learning exactly what was said when President Trump allegedly intervened in the rebuilding process.
The FBI plan would have created a large construction zone across the street from Trump’s luxury DC hotel.
The investigation was initiated by Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-VA), the Vice Ranking Member of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.
“This IG report demonstrates that Administration officials obscured the White House’s involvement in the FBI headquarters project,” Connolly concluded.
“When we began this investigation, the prospect that President Trump was personally involved in the government-led redevelopment of a property in close proximity to the Trump Hotel was dismissed as a conspiracy theory,” he added. “Now, the president’s involvement in this multi-billion-dollar government procurement which will directly impact his bottom line has been confirmed by the White House Press Secretary and government photographs.”
Connolly also urged further investigation.
“This IG report is only the beginning. We must develop a comprehensive understanding of the President’s involvement in this procurement and what it has cost the United States in terms of both national security and taxpayer dollars. I am calling on the Oversight and Government Reform Committee to convene immediate hearings on this matter and to subpoena any GSA officials who are suspected of misleading Congress,” he demanded.
Read the full report (PDF).
The president was mentioned over three dozen times in the report.
The Inspector General report found that GSA Administrator Emily Murphy’s testimony before Congress on the scandal, “was incomplete and may have left the misleading impression that she had no discussions with the President or senior White House officials in the decision-making process about the project.”
The Trump administration invoked executive privilege to prevent the inspector general from learning exactly what was said when President Trump allegedly intervened in the rebuilding process.
The FBI plan would have created a large construction zone across the street from Trump’s luxury DC hotel.
The investigation was initiated by Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-VA), the Vice Ranking Member of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.
“This IG report demonstrates that Administration officials obscured the White House’s involvement in the FBI headquarters project,” Connolly concluded.
“When we began this investigation, the prospect that President Trump was personally involved in the government-led redevelopment of a property in close proximity to the Trump Hotel was dismissed as a conspiracy theory,” he added. “Now, the president’s involvement in this multi-billion-dollar government procurement which will directly impact his bottom line has been confirmed by the White House Press Secretary and government photographs.”
Connolly also urged further investigation.
“This IG report is only the beginning. We must develop a comprehensive understanding of the President’s involvement in this procurement and what it has cost the United States in terms of both national security and taxpayer dollars. I am calling on the Oversight and Government Reform Committee to convene immediate hearings on this matter and to subpoena any GSA officials who are suspected of misleading Congress,” he demanded.
Read the full report (PDF).
Trump's future
Here’s how the Russian mob used cash from a multi-billion dollar gas scam to get their hooks into Trump
Travis Gettys - raw story
16 AUG 2018 AT 08:55 ET
President Donald Trump got his start laundering money for the Russian mob more than 30 years ago as part of one of the biggest scams in U.S. history, according to a new book.
Investigative reporter Craig Unger has described Trump Tower as a “cathedral to money laundering,” and his new book — “House of Trump, House of Putin” — examines the depth of the president’s relationship with the Russian mafia, which he says has no meaningful distinction from the country’s intelligence agencies.
Unger traces the links between Trump and the Russian mob back to at least 1984, when a Soviet refugee David Bogatin was looking for a place to stash the millions he was raking in from a gasoline tax scam he was running with the Colombo crime family.
That scam, the largest of its kind in American history, was busted up by federal investigators as part of Operation Red Daisy, which resulted in the indictment of 15 Russian nationals and 10 others for evading more than $140 million in fuel excise taxes.
Bogatin and two associates, Michael Markowitz and Lev Persits, approached Michael Franzese, the son of a notorious underboss in the Colombo organization, in 1980 asking for protection for their own network of sketchy gas stations.
“These Russians were having trouble collecting money owed them,” Franzese later recalled. “They were also having problems obtaining and holding on to the licenses they needed to keep the gas tax scam going.”
Franzese, the son of mob enforcer John “Sonny” Franzese, was not initially impressed by the Russians — he mocked Markowitz’s disco-styled attire and thought Bogatin looked more like an accountant than a mafioso — but agreed to work for them in exchange for 75 percent of their take in the scheme, Unger wrote.
The lopsided deal proved spectacularly successful for both sides, as profits soared to $100 million a month and more than $1 billion a year — but the conspirators needed a place to launder their ill-gotten cash.
“After seven years in New York, Bogatin had stashed away enough money to buy real estate anywhere he wanted,” Unger wrote. “For roughly a decade, thousands of Russian Jews like him had been pouring into Brighton Beach, Brooklyn. But Bogatin had his eyes on something more prestigious.”
Bogatin became fixated on a “garish” 58-story building that had opened a year before — Trump Tower — and he paid $6 million in cash from his fuel tax scheme for five apartments there.
Unger tracked more than 1,300 similar cash transactions at Trump Tower over the next three decades involving mobsters that ensnared the future president in the closely tied web of Russian spies and mobsters.
“Russian Mafia and Russian intelligence operatives successfully targeted, compromised, and implanted either a willfully ignorant or an inexplicably unaware Russian asset in the White House as the most powerful man on earth,” Unger concludes.
“In doing so, without firing a shot, the Russians helped put in power a man who would immediately begin to undermine the Western Alliance,” he added, “which has been the foundation of American national security for more than 70 years; who would start massive trade wars with America’s longtime allies; fuel right‐wing anti‐immigrant populism; and assault the rule of law in the United States.”
Investigative reporter Craig Unger has described Trump Tower as a “cathedral to money laundering,” and his new book — “House of Trump, House of Putin” — examines the depth of the president’s relationship with the Russian mafia, which he says has no meaningful distinction from the country’s intelligence agencies.
Unger traces the links between Trump and the Russian mob back to at least 1984, when a Soviet refugee David Bogatin was looking for a place to stash the millions he was raking in from a gasoline tax scam he was running with the Colombo crime family.
That scam, the largest of its kind in American history, was busted up by federal investigators as part of Operation Red Daisy, which resulted in the indictment of 15 Russian nationals and 10 others for evading more than $140 million in fuel excise taxes.
Bogatin and two associates, Michael Markowitz and Lev Persits, approached Michael Franzese, the son of a notorious underboss in the Colombo organization, in 1980 asking for protection for their own network of sketchy gas stations.
“These Russians were having trouble collecting money owed them,” Franzese later recalled. “They were also having problems obtaining and holding on to the licenses they needed to keep the gas tax scam going.”
Franzese, the son of mob enforcer John “Sonny” Franzese, was not initially impressed by the Russians — he mocked Markowitz’s disco-styled attire and thought Bogatin looked more like an accountant than a mafioso — but agreed to work for them in exchange for 75 percent of their take in the scheme, Unger wrote.
The lopsided deal proved spectacularly successful for both sides, as profits soared to $100 million a month and more than $1 billion a year — but the conspirators needed a place to launder their ill-gotten cash.
“After seven years in New York, Bogatin had stashed away enough money to buy real estate anywhere he wanted,” Unger wrote. “For roughly a decade, thousands of Russian Jews like him had been pouring into Brighton Beach, Brooklyn. But Bogatin had his eyes on something more prestigious.”
Bogatin became fixated on a “garish” 58-story building that had opened a year before — Trump Tower — and he paid $6 million in cash from his fuel tax scheme for five apartments there.
Unger tracked more than 1,300 similar cash transactions at Trump Tower over the next three decades involving mobsters that ensnared the future president in the closely tied web of Russian spies and mobsters.
“Russian Mafia and Russian intelligence operatives successfully targeted, compromised, and implanted either a willfully ignorant or an inexplicably unaware Russian asset in the White House as the most powerful man on earth,” Unger concludes.
“In doing so, without firing a shot, the Russians helped put in power a man who would immediately begin to undermine the Western Alliance,” he added, “which has been the foundation of American national security for more than 70 years; who would start massive trade wars with America’s longtime allies; fuel right‐wing anti‐immigrant populism; and assault the rule of law in the United States.”
Trump- Putin Summit
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trump funnies
When an Idiot is in charge!!!
trump family values
Donald Trump’s grandfather Friedrich Trump ran a restaurant, bar, and brothel in British Columbia.
America's Criminal-in-Chief
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But her emails
trade fool!!!
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Trump Confirms His “Shithole” Racism By Saying He Wants Immigrants From Non-White Countries Out
By Jason Easley on Tue, Jan 16th, 2018 at 3:20 pm
politicus usa
Trump responded that he wanted immigrants from other non-white parts of the world out of the United States when he was asked about his immigration views in the White House.
Here is the transcript via the White House as provided to PoliticusUSA:
Q Mr. President, did you say that you want more people to come in from Norway? Did you say that you wanted more people coming in from Norway?
PRESIDENT TRUMP: Thank you very much. Thank you very much.
Q Is that true, Mr. President?
PRESIDENT TRUMP: I want them to come in from everywhere — everywhere. Thank you very much, everybody.
Q Just the Caucasian or white countries, sir? Or do you want people to come in from other parts of the world?
PRESIDENT TRUMP: Out.
Why would Trump answer out if that isn’t what he wants to see happen to immigrant who come to the United States from non-white majority countries? Trump’s entire immigration policy has been focused on deporting black and brown skinned people, so his one word answer was not a surprise.
Republicans and the administration have never denied that Trump wants non-white immigrants out of the country. They claim that he didn’t use the word “shithole,” but there has never been a firm denial that Trump holds a racist view of African countries.
Trump’s own answer confirmed that it doesn’t matter what Republicans pretend like they didn’t hear, this president is bigoted and intends to deport non-white immigrants.
Here is the transcript via the White House as provided to PoliticusUSA:
Q Mr. President, did you say that you want more people to come in from Norway? Did you say that you wanted more people coming in from Norway?
PRESIDENT TRUMP: Thank you very much. Thank you very much.
Q Is that true, Mr. President?
PRESIDENT TRUMP: I want them to come in from everywhere — everywhere. Thank you very much, everybody.
Q Just the Caucasian or white countries, sir? Or do you want people to come in from other parts of the world?
PRESIDENT TRUMP: Out.
Why would Trump answer out if that isn’t what he wants to see happen to immigrant who come to the United States from non-white majority countries? Trump’s entire immigration policy has been focused on deporting black and brown skinned people, so his one word answer was not a surprise.
Republicans and the administration have never denied that Trump wants non-white immigrants out of the country. They claim that he didn’t use the word “shithole,” but there has never been a firm denial that Trump holds a racist view of African countries.
Trump’s own answer confirmed that it doesn’t matter what Republicans pretend like they didn’t hear, this president is bigoted and intends to deport non-white immigrants.
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Trump getting up at the crack of 11 ... after spending the morning in bed watching TV
By Mark Sumner - daily kos
Monday Jan 08, 2018 · 7:30 AM PST
Over the past week, multiple stories have appeared about Trump’s mental decline. His evaporating vocabulary. His dwindling attention span. His shriveling comprehension.
But while those losses are hard to prove without Trump actually going through with his offer to take an IQ test—which seems extremely unlikely—Axois reports that there’s one other thing that Trump is doing … littlely.
President Trump is starting his official day much later than he did in the early days of his presidency, often around 11am, and holding far fewer meetings, according to copies of his private schedule shown to Axios. This is largely to meet Trump’s demands for more “Executive Time,” which almost always means TV and Twitter time alone in the residence, officials tell us.
This news of Trump’s extremely abbreviated morning session comes a week after we learned about Trump’s senior discount evening plans.
"If (Trump) was not having his 6:30 dinner with Steve Bannon, then, more to his liking, he was in bed by that time with a cheeseburger, watching his three screens and making phone calls -- the phone was his true contact point with the world -- to a small group of friends, who charted his rising and falling levels of agitation through the evening and then compared notes with one another."
So, Donald Trump spends at least 17 hours of each day in his PJs. His presidenting schedule has apparently been reduced to a 11-4 interval between parking himself back in front of the bedroom TV.
The schedule says Trump has "Executive Time" in the Oval Office every day from 8am to 11am, but the reality is he spends that time in his residence, watching TV, making phone calls and tweeting. Trump comes down for his first meeting of the day, which is often an intelligence briefing, at 11am.
Which means Trump has plenty of time for the Gorilla Channel (which is a joke) and Fox & Friends (which is a different kind of joke). Read More
But while those losses are hard to prove without Trump actually going through with his offer to take an IQ test—which seems extremely unlikely—Axois reports that there’s one other thing that Trump is doing … littlely.
President Trump is starting his official day much later than he did in the early days of his presidency, often around 11am, and holding far fewer meetings, according to copies of his private schedule shown to Axios. This is largely to meet Trump’s demands for more “Executive Time,” which almost always means TV and Twitter time alone in the residence, officials tell us.
This news of Trump’s extremely abbreviated morning session comes a week after we learned about Trump’s senior discount evening plans.
"If (Trump) was not having his 6:30 dinner with Steve Bannon, then, more to his liking, he was in bed by that time with a cheeseburger, watching his three screens and making phone calls -- the phone was his true contact point with the world -- to a small group of friends, who charted his rising and falling levels of agitation through the evening and then compared notes with one another."
So, Donald Trump spends at least 17 hours of each day in his PJs. His presidenting schedule has apparently been reduced to a 11-4 interval between parking himself back in front of the bedroom TV.
The schedule says Trump has "Executive Time" in the Oval Office every day from 8am to 11am, but the reality is he spends that time in his residence, watching TV, making phone calls and tweeting. Trump comes down for his first meeting of the day, which is often an intelligence briefing, at 11am.
Which means Trump has plenty of time for the Gorilla Channel (which is a joke) and Fox & Friends (which is a different kind of joke). Read More
NARCO-A-LAGO: MONEY LAUNDERING AT THE TRUMP OCEAN CLUB PANAMA
You can download the PDF version of this report here.
From Global Witness: EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
“Every other country goes into these places and they do what they have to do… It’s a horrible law and [the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act] should be changed.”
In the early 2000s, a series of bankruptcies meant Donald J. Trump was shunned by most lenders. Struggling for credit, he started selling his name to high-end real estate projects. This report examines in detail the criminal connections that propelled one such project – the Trump Ocean Club International Hotel and Tower in Panama – and how this case bears some of the same disturbing hallmarks as other Trump developments.
Since he became President of the United States, numerous investigations and articles have probed Trump’s business dealings and his alleged links to criminals and other shadowy characters. It is understood that Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation under the Department of Justice will also examine his real estate business. This is important because it seems likely that, following his various bankruptcies, at least a part of Trump’s business empire has been built on untraceable funds, some apparently linked to Russian criminal networks.
Trump may not have deliberately set out to facilitate criminal activity in his business dealings. But, as this Global Witness investigation shows, licensing his brand to the luxurious Trump Ocean Club International Hotel and Tower in Panama aligned Trump’s financial interests with those of crooks looking to launder ill-gotten gains. Trump seems to have done little to nothing to prevent this. What is clear is that proceeds from Colombian cartels’ narcotics trafficking were laundered through the Trump Ocean Club and that Donald Trump was one of the beneficiaries.
One key player in the laundering of drug money at the Trump Ocean Club was notorious fraudster David Eduardo Helmut Murcia Guzmán, whom a U.S. court subsequently sentenced to nine years for laundering millions of dollars' worth of illicit funds, including narcotics proceeds, through companies and real estate.
Another was Murcia Guzmán’s business associate, Alexandre Henrique Ventura Nogueira, who brokered nearly a third of the 666 pre-construction unit sales at the Trump Ocean Club and claims to have sold 350-400 units overall. Ventura Nogueira’s sales brokerage was critical to ensuring the project’s lift-off and Trump’s ability to earn tens of millions of dollars.
The warning signs were there from the outset. The Trump Ocean Club, one of Trump’s most lucrative licensing deals to date, was announced in 2006 and launched in 2011, a period when Panama was known as one of the best places in the world to launder money. Whole neighborhoods in Panama City were taken over by organized crime groups, and luxury developments were built with the purpose of serving as money laundering vehicles.
Moreover, investing in luxury properties is a tried and trusted way for criminals to move tainted cash into the legitimate financial system, where they can spend it freely. Once scrubbed clean in this way, vast profits from criminal activities like trafficking people and drugs, organized crime, and terrorism can find their way into the U.S. and elsewhere. In most countries, regulation is notoriously lax in the real estate sector. Cash payments are subject to hardly any scrutiny, giving opportunistic and unprincipled developers free rein to accept dirty money.
In the case of the Trump Ocean Club, accepting easy – and possibly dirty – money early on would have been in Trump’s interest; a certain volume of pre-construction sales was necessary to secure financing for the project, which stood to net him $75.4 million by the end of 2010. Trump received a percentage of the financing he helped secure, and a cut on the sale of every unit at the development.
He and his family have made millions of dollars more from management fees and likely continue to profit from the Trump Ocean Club. Eager for the project’s success, Trump and his children have participated directly in marketing, management, and even project design. According to broker Ventura Nogueira, Trump’s daughter Ivanka attended at least 10 meetings with him and project developer Roger Khafif.
A large number of those involved with the Trump Ocean Club in its early phase were Russian and Eastern European citizens or diaspora members. In an interview with NBC and Reuters, Ventura Nogueira said that 50 percent of his buyers were Russian, and that some had “questionable backgrounds.” He added that he found out later that some were part of the Russian Mafia.
Since the Russian government’s alleged interference in the 2016 election, a lot has been made of Trump’s heavy reliance on funds from Russia for his licensing deals. Trump relying on funds from Russia is not in itself a problem – some of these funds are no doubt from legitimate sources. What is deeply problematic, however, is the fact that some of this money appears to have come from criminal networks.
Donald Trump has incessantly promoted himself as a successful and viable businessman, and this was critical to his success in the 2016 presidential election. But this report presents evidence that this façade was built, at least in part, on ventures used to launder cash generated by criminal activities. Trump’s unscrupulous business dealings and blindness to potential illegality raise serious questions about his suitability to govern the most powerful country in the world.
The dubious dealings of Trump the businessman also raise questions about the commitment of Trump the President to tackling crime and corruption. Trump got elected by repeatedly pledging to “drain the swamp”, but in the nine months since his inauguration he has actually taken steps that could worsen corruption in the U.S. and internationally. Indeed, one of his administration’s few legislative successes to date has been to overturn the implementing regulation of a ground-breaking anti-corruption law.[...]
“Every other country goes into these places and they do what they have to do… It’s a horrible law and [the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act] should be changed.”
In the early 2000s, a series of bankruptcies meant Donald J. Trump was shunned by most lenders. Struggling for credit, he started selling his name to high-end real estate projects. This report examines in detail the criminal connections that propelled one such project – the Trump Ocean Club International Hotel and Tower in Panama – and how this case bears some of the same disturbing hallmarks as other Trump developments.
Since he became President of the United States, numerous investigations and articles have probed Trump’s business dealings and his alleged links to criminals and other shadowy characters. It is understood that Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation under the Department of Justice will also examine his real estate business. This is important because it seems likely that, following his various bankruptcies, at least a part of Trump’s business empire has been built on untraceable funds, some apparently linked to Russian criminal networks.
Trump may not have deliberately set out to facilitate criminal activity in his business dealings. But, as this Global Witness investigation shows, licensing his brand to the luxurious Trump Ocean Club International Hotel and Tower in Panama aligned Trump’s financial interests with those of crooks looking to launder ill-gotten gains. Trump seems to have done little to nothing to prevent this. What is clear is that proceeds from Colombian cartels’ narcotics trafficking were laundered through the Trump Ocean Club and that Donald Trump was one of the beneficiaries.
One key player in the laundering of drug money at the Trump Ocean Club was notorious fraudster David Eduardo Helmut Murcia Guzmán, whom a U.S. court subsequently sentenced to nine years for laundering millions of dollars' worth of illicit funds, including narcotics proceeds, through companies and real estate.
Another was Murcia Guzmán’s business associate, Alexandre Henrique Ventura Nogueira, who brokered nearly a third of the 666 pre-construction unit sales at the Trump Ocean Club and claims to have sold 350-400 units overall. Ventura Nogueira’s sales brokerage was critical to ensuring the project’s lift-off and Trump’s ability to earn tens of millions of dollars.
The warning signs were there from the outset. The Trump Ocean Club, one of Trump’s most lucrative licensing deals to date, was announced in 2006 and launched in 2011, a period when Panama was known as one of the best places in the world to launder money. Whole neighborhoods in Panama City were taken over by organized crime groups, and luxury developments were built with the purpose of serving as money laundering vehicles.
Moreover, investing in luxury properties is a tried and trusted way for criminals to move tainted cash into the legitimate financial system, where they can spend it freely. Once scrubbed clean in this way, vast profits from criminal activities like trafficking people and drugs, organized crime, and terrorism can find their way into the U.S. and elsewhere. In most countries, regulation is notoriously lax in the real estate sector. Cash payments are subject to hardly any scrutiny, giving opportunistic and unprincipled developers free rein to accept dirty money.
In the case of the Trump Ocean Club, accepting easy – and possibly dirty – money early on would have been in Trump’s interest; a certain volume of pre-construction sales was necessary to secure financing for the project, which stood to net him $75.4 million by the end of 2010. Trump received a percentage of the financing he helped secure, and a cut on the sale of every unit at the development.
He and his family have made millions of dollars more from management fees and likely continue to profit from the Trump Ocean Club. Eager for the project’s success, Trump and his children have participated directly in marketing, management, and even project design. According to broker Ventura Nogueira, Trump’s daughter Ivanka attended at least 10 meetings with him and project developer Roger Khafif.
A large number of those involved with the Trump Ocean Club in its early phase were Russian and Eastern European citizens or diaspora members. In an interview with NBC and Reuters, Ventura Nogueira said that 50 percent of his buyers were Russian, and that some had “questionable backgrounds.” He added that he found out later that some were part of the Russian Mafia.
Since the Russian government’s alleged interference in the 2016 election, a lot has been made of Trump’s heavy reliance on funds from Russia for his licensing deals. Trump relying on funds from Russia is not in itself a problem – some of these funds are no doubt from legitimate sources. What is deeply problematic, however, is the fact that some of this money appears to have come from criminal networks.
Donald Trump has incessantly promoted himself as a successful and viable businessman, and this was critical to his success in the 2016 presidential election. But this report presents evidence that this façade was built, at least in part, on ventures used to launder cash generated by criminal activities. Trump’s unscrupulous business dealings and blindness to potential illegality raise serious questions about his suitability to govern the most powerful country in the world.
The dubious dealings of Trump the businessman also raise questions about the commitment of Trump the President to tackling crime and corruption. Trump got elected by repeatedly pledging to “drain the swamp”, but in the nine months since his inauguration he has actually taken steps that could worsen corruption in the U.S. and internationally. Indeed, one of his administration’s few legislative successes to date has been to overturn the implementing regulation of a ground-breaking anti-corruption law.[...]
Trump’s appearance in Panama Papers revealed
International Business Times
25 NOV 2017 AT 08:12 ET
From Raw Story: The instance of President Donald Trump’s appearance in the Panama Papers – the massive trove of leaked documents, reveals in detail how the world’s richest people hide their business dealings from scrutiny and taxation.
A real estate deal from the early 1990s is the first instance of President Trump’s name being mentioned in the Panama Papers.
An investigative reporter, Jake Bernstein, Friday afternoon flagged the discovery that involves the purchase and subsequent sale of a unit at the newly constructed Trump Palace on the Upper East Side in the 1990s. This deal involved a Panamanian company named Process Consultants, Inc., that purchased a 16th floor condo at the Trump skyscraper in 1991.
Process Consultants was owned through bearer shares. These share certificates indicate that whoever physically possessed the papers owned the company. The bearer shares could be used to transfer assets completely anonymously and were favorite tools among money launderers.
Three year after the purchase in 1994, the Process Consultants decided to sell this condo at the Trump Palace. Trump Corporation was the exclusive broker for this. According to a contract document, which provided the details of an agreement, the apartment was sold for apartment for $395,000. However, later, the price appeared to have been cut down to $355,000. It is believed a woman from Hong Kong, whose name has appeared in other leaked documents had purchased the apartment, reported the New York daily News.
However, the New York City Department of Finance online database Automated City Registered Information System has information on the apartment only after 2005, which pointed out during this time, the condo was owned by a Brazilian from Sao Paolo. He sold the unit for $795,400, that year.
But with most Panama Papers revelations, there has been no indication of who is actually behind Process Consultants or from where that person’s money came. According to the New York Daily News, using bearer shares doesn’t prove that Process Consultants was involved in something dubious, the quick turnover seems to be a characteristic of money laundering.
The publication reported that if Trump’s company knowingly facilitated the condo sale for the purpose of laundering money then the president himself could land in difficulty.
As part of his investigation into Russian election meddling, special prosecutor Robert Mueller had been looking into Trump’s sprawling real estate empire. It's unclear if the Process Consultants deal is of interest in the probe.
The Trump condo contract is one among the thousands of documents that were leaked in 2015 from Mossack Fonseca, a Panamanian law firm that sold anonymous shell companies around the globe and had created more than 160,000 offshore entities by the year 2008. Some of the world’s richest people were able to conduct dubious business deals by hiding behind the law firm’s offshore companies.
The founders behind Mossack Fonseca were arrested after the massive leak. The firm is under investigation across the world.
Last month, the Paradise Papers leak revealed Trump’s Commerce Secretary Wibur Ross had been involved in doing million dollar business deals with Russian President Vladimir Putin’s son-in-law, Kirill Shamalov.
A real estate deal from the early 1990s is the first instance of President Trump’s name being mentioned in the Panama Papers.
An investigative reporter, Jake Bernstein, Friday afternoon flagged the discovery that involves the purchase and subsequent sale of a unit at the newly constructed Trump Palace on the Upper East Side in the 1990s. This deal involved a Panamanian company named Process Consultants, Inc., that purchased a 16th floor condo at the Trump skyscraper in 1991.
Process Consultants was owned through bearer shares. These share certificates indicate that whoever physically possessed the papers owned the company. The bearer shares could be used to transfer assets completely anonymously and were favorite tools among money launderers.
Three year after the purchase in 1994, the Process Consultants decided to sell this condo at the Trump Palace. Trump Corporation was the exclusive broker for this. According to a contract document, which provided the details of an agreement, the apartment was sold for apartment for $395,000. However, later, the price appeared to have been cut down to $355,000. It is believed a woman from Hong Kong, whose name has appeared in other leaked documents had purchased the apartment, reported the New York daily News.
However, the New York City Department of Finance online database Automated City Registered Information System has information on the apartment only after 2005, which pointed out during this time, the condo was owned by a Brazilian from Sao Paolo. He sold the unit for $795,400, that year.
But with most Panama Papers revelations, there has been no indication of who is actually behind Process Consultants or from where that person’s money came. According to the New York Daily News, using bearer shares doesn’t prove that Process Consultants was involved in something dubious, the quick turnover seems to be a characteristic of money laundering.
The publication reported that if Trump’s company knowingly facilitated the condo sale for the purpose of laundering money then the president himself could land in difficulty.
As part of his investigation into Russian election meddling, special prosecutor Robert Mueller had been looking into Trump’s sprawling real estate empire. It's unclear if the Process Consultants deal is of interest in the probe.
The Trump condo contract is one among the thousands of documents that were leaked in 2015 from Mossack Fonseca, a Panamanian law firm that sold anonymous shell companies around the globe and had created more than 160,000 offshore entities by the year 2008. Some of the world’s richest people were able to conduct dubious business deals by hiding behind the law firm’s offshore companies.
The founders behind Mossack Fonseca were arrested after the massive leak. The firm is under investigation across the world.
Last month, the Paradise Papers leak revealed Trump’s Commerce Secretary Wibur Ross had been involved in doing million dollar business deals with Russian President Vladimir Putin’s son-in-law, Kirill Shamalov.
The Trump Family Made Millions from Drug Cartels and the Russian Mafia in Panama City: Report
Maybe we should start calling the president's Florida estate "Mar-a-Narco."
By Liz Posner / AlterNet November 17, 2017, 9:04 AM GMT
Robert Mueller has some new material to work with as he continues his investigation of the Trump administration's ties to Russia. A new report shows that for 10 years, a Trump property in Panama City collected millions of dollars from the Russian mafia and Colombian drug cartels. An investigation from Global Witness, an international NGO that probes corruption and money laundering, reveals how the Trump Ocean Club International Hotel and Tower turned a blind eye to crime lords looking for a safe haven to stash their blood money.
The property, which the lead broker Alexandre Ventura Nogueira describes as “Ivanka Trump’s baby,” listed units for three times the going rate in Panama City, thanks to the Trump name. Nogueira worked closely with the Trump family; he claims he attended at least 10 meetings with Ivanka Trump, who challenged him to sell 100 units in the building.
“The agreement was, I had a week to sell 100 units,” Nogueira told Reuters. “I said, ‘I’m going to do better, I’m going to sell without telling (the buyers) the price.'”
Nogueira later fled Panama after he was arrested for unrelated charges of real estate fraud. From his European asylum, he told NBC that at least half of his Trump Ocean Club customers were Russians, including some with “questionable backgrounds." Only later did he learn of their ties to Russian organized crime circles.
NBC reports that Mauricio Ceballos, a former prosecutor in Panama who investigated Trump’s business associates for financial crimes, called the Trump Ocean Club “a vehicle for money laundering.”
Among the shady buyers are:
By 2010, Donald Trump had made approximately $74.2 million through his association with the hotel. From 2014-2017, he was paid as much as $13.9 million.
As Global Witness explains:
“The warning signs were there from the outset. The Trump Ocean Club, one of Trump’s most lucrative licensing deals to date, was announced in 2006 and launched in 2011, a period when Panama was known as one of the best places in the world to launder money. Whole neighborhoods in Panama City were taken over by organized crime groups, and luxury developments were built with the purpose of serving as money laundering vehicles.
“Moreover, investing in luxury properties is a tried and trusted way for criminals to move tainted cash into the legitimate financial system, where they can spend it freely. Once scrubbed clean in this way, vast profits from criminal activities like trafficking people and drugs, organized crime, and terrorism can find their way into the U.S. and elsewhere.”
The Trump Organization has shrugged off responsibility in a statement following the news, but legal experts say it should have done its due diligence into the backgrounds of buyers. Arthur Middlemiss, a former Manhattan assistant district attorney and a former head of the global anti-corruption program at JPMorgan, blames the Trumps directly:
“Those who do business there should perform due diligence on others involved in their ventures. If they fail to do so, they risk being liable under U.S. law of turning a blind eye to wrongdoing.”
The property, which the lead broker Alexandre Ventura Nogueira describes as “Ivanka Trump’s baby,” listed units for three times the going rate in Panama City, thanks to the Trump name. Nogueira worked closely with the Trump family; he claims he attended at least 10 meetings with Ivanka Trump, who challenged him to sell 100 units in the building.
“The agreement was, I had a week to sell 100 units,” Nogueira told Reuters. “I said, ‘I’m going to do better, I’m going to sell without telling (the buyers) the price.'”
Nogueira later fled Panama after he was arrested for unrelated charges of real estate fraud. From his European asylum, he told NBC that at least half of his Trump Ocean Club customers were Russians, including some with “questionable backgrounds." Only later did he learn of their ties to Russian organized crime circles.
NBC reports that Mauricio Ceballos, a former prosecutor in Panama who investigated Trump’s business associates for financial crimes, called the Trump Ocean Club “a vehicle for money laundering.”
Among the shady buyers are:
- David Murcia Guzmán, founder of a large Colombian marketing company, who purchased 10 units in the Trump Ocean Club. Guzmán is now in U.S. custody, convicted of laundering money on behalf of drug cartels, and will be extradited to Colombia. Guzmán also has financial ties to the terrorist organization FARC.
- Louis Pargiolas, who pleaded guilty in 2009 in Miami to conspiracy to import cocaine.
- Stanislav Kavalenka, a Russian national charged in Canada for compelling women into prostitution.
- Arkady Vodovozov, convicted in Israel of kidnapping, according to Reuters.
By 2010, Donald Trump had made approximately $74.2 million through his association with the hotel. From 2014-2017, he was paid as much as $13.9 million.
As Global Witness explains:
“The warning signs were there from the outset. The Trump Ocean Club, one of Trump’s most lucrative licensing deals to date, was announced in 2006 and launched in 2011, a period when Panama was known as one of the best places in the world to launder money. Whole neighborhoods in Panama City were taken over by organized crime groups, and luxury developments were built with the purpose of serving as money laundering vehicles.
“Moreover, investing in luxury properties is a tried and trusted way for criminals to move tainted cash into the legitimate financial system, where they can spend it freely. Once scrubbed clean in this way, vast profits from criminal activities like trafficking people and drugs, organized crime, and terrorism can find their way into the U.S. and elsewhere.”
The Trump Organization has shrugged off responsibility in a statement following the news, but legal experts say it should have done its due diligence into the backgrounds of buyers. Arthur Middlemiss, a former Manhattan assistant district attorney and a former head of the global anti-corruption program at JPMorgan, blames the Trumps directly:
“Those who do business there should perform due diligence on others involved in their ventures. If they fail to do so, they risk being liable under U.S. law of turning a blind eye to wrongdoing.”
the criminal administration!!!
The wealthy men in Trump's inner circle with links to tax havens
The president promised to bring trillions of dollars back to the US, but many around him are no strangers to the offshore world
Jon Swaine and Ed Pilkington in New York
Sunday 5 November 2017 13.00 EST
From The Guardian: On the election trail in 2016, Donald Trump promised tax reforms to tempt major US companies back onshore and “bring back trillions of dollars from American businesses that is now parked overseas”.
As the first anniversary of his election victory looms this week, Trump and fellow Republicans are trying to drive those tax reforms through Congress.
On 1 November, Trump reiterated his commitment.
“Finally, our plan will bring back trillions of dollars from offshore … that will come pouring back into our country that will be put to work and will be spent by our companies that could never get the money back for many years. Bring the money back. We’re rebuilding America.”
But Trump is surrounded by wealthy individuals who have legally either sheltered their own investments or presided over policies to keep company profits or clients’ funds out of reach in tax havens.
Gary Cohn
Trump’s chief economic adviser, who is the driving force behind the White House tax reform effort, is no stranger to offshore finance. The leaked documents reveal that for various periods between 2002 and 2006, Cohn was president or vice-president of 22 separate entities in Bermuda for Goldman Sachs....
Rex Tillerson
The US secretary of state is named in the leaked files as a director of an offshore firm used in a multibillion-dollar oil and gas venture in the Middle East that became embroiled in controversy.
Tillerson was a director of Marib Upstream Services Company, incorporated in Bermuda in 1997. The company was tied to ExxonMobil, the American oil and gas corporation that Tillerson later led as chief executive. At the time, Tillerson was president of ExxonMobil’s Yemen division....
Steven Mnuchin
The US Treasury secretary’s former bank financed offshore private jets for wealthy clients, including a billionaire Yemeni businessman whose son is wanted for rape and murder in the UK.
CIT Bank, where Mnuchin was deputy chairman, provided customers with financing structures for personal aircraft priced at tens of millions of dollars, which customers used to legally avoid sales taxes and other charges....
Randal Quarles
The Trump administration’s most senior banking watchdog appears in the Paradise Papers in connection with an offshore bank that is under investigation by US authorities for possible tax evasion.
Quarles, Trump’s vice-chairman for supervision at the Federal Reserve, is named in the files as an officer of two firms incorporated in the Cayman Islands by the Carlyle Group, the private equity giant where Quarles was a partner until 2013.
The files detail transactions between one of Quarles’s offshore vehicles and Butterfield, a Bermuda-based bank in which Carlyle had led a $550m investment in 2010. That stake was one of several in distressed banks bought up by a new specialist team at Carlyle, including Quarles, following the 2008 financial crisis...
Jon Huntsman
Trump’s new US ambassador to Russia helped lead a previously undisclosed offshore company, according to the leaked files.
Huntsman, the former Utah governor, was listed as a director of HICI International Sales Corporation in a confidential filing to authorities in Barbados, where the company was formed in 1999. The offshore vehicle was set up to carry out overseas sales for Huntsman ICI, an industrial chemicals branch of Huntsman Corporation.
The filing said HICI was owned by Huntsman ICI Holdings LLC in the US, where Huntsman was vice-chairman and manager. In 2000, Huntsman ICI reported making a $151m profit on revenues of $4.4bn....
Kenneth Juster
Trump’s ambassador to India benefited from the offshore business of his former investment company and its billion-dollar purchase of a shipping corporation.
Juster is named in the Paradise Papers as a beneficial owner of a Bermuda-based branch of Warburg Pincus, a private equity firm where he was a partner before joining the Trump administration...
Carl Icahn
Icahn, a friend and former adviser to Trump, owns a $250m mining company spread across three tax havens and structured in a way that limits the information it must disclose to US authorities.
The leaks detail how Icahn holds a controlling stake in Ferrous Resources, a Brazilian mining company officially based on the Isle of Man. It in turn owns a pair of holding companies in Luxembourg and Malta, which operate iron mines in Brazil.
All three jurisdictions offer low- or zero-tax regimes for corporations, making them destinations of choice for foreign businesses seeking to legally lower their tax bills. A report in 2015 by Citizens for Tax Justice said Icahn operated 20 subsidiaries in offshore tax havens....
Tom Barrack
The chairman of Trump’s inaugural committee leads a $58bn real estate investment trust that channels some of its profits to the low- or no-tax jurisdictions of Luxembourg, the Cayman Islands and Lebanon.
Barrack, who has described himself as one of the president’s “closest friends for 40 years”, appears in the Paradise Papers through offshore subsidiaries of Colony NorthStar, of which he is CEO...
Jay Clayton
Trump’s SEC chairman received income from a hedge fund based in the Cayman Islands.
Clayton disclosed to the government ethics office before taking up the SEC job that he received income from Mount Kellett Capital Partners (Cayman) LP, the offshore subsidiary of a US hedge fund. A proposed structure chart in the leaked Appleby files shows a complex web of ties that were created between the Cayman Islands offshoot, its head company, and other offshore subsidiaries....
Ben Carson
A biotechnology company headed by Carson, Trump’s housing and urban development (HUD) secretary, set up offshore firms that could have reduced its tax bill.
The Paradise Papers contain files on two subsidiaries of Vaccinogen in Bermuda that date from Carson’s time as chairman of the Baltimore-based biotechnology company. The offshore vehicles were established as holding companies for “intellectual property related to the treatment of cancer and other diseases”, according to the files...
(complete article)
As the first anniversary of his election victory looms this week, Trump and fellow Republicans are trying to drive those tax reforms through Congress.
On 1 November, Trump reiterated his commitment.
“Finally, our plan will bring back trillions of dollars from offshore … that will come pouring back into our country that will be put to work and will be spent by our companies that could never get the money back for many years. Bring the money back. We’re rebuilding America.”
But Trump is surrounded by wealthy individuals who have legally either sheltered their own investments or presided over policies to keep company profits or clients’ funds out of reach in tax havens.
Gary Cohn
Trump’s chief economic adviser, who is the driving force behind the White House tax reform effort, is no stranger to offshore finance. The leaked documents reveal that for various periods between 2002 and 2006, Cohn was president or vice-president of 22 separate entities in Bermuda for Goldman Sachs....
Rex Tillerson
The US secretary of state is named in the leaked files as a director of an offshore firm used in a multibillion-dollar oil and gas venture in the Middle East that became embroiled in controversy.
Tillerson was a director of Marib Upstream Services Company, incorporated in Bermuda in 1997. The company was tied to ExxonMobil, the American oil and gas corporation that Tillerson later led as chief executive. At the time, Tillerson was president of ExxonMobil’s Yemen division....
Steven Mnuchin
The US Treasury secretary’s former bank financed offshore private jets for wealthy clients, including a billionaire Yemeni businessman whose son is wanted for rape and murder in the UK.
CIT Bank, where Mnuchin was deputy chairman, provided customers with financing structures for personal aircraft priced at tens of millions of dollars, which customers used to legally avoid sales taxes and other charges....
Randal Quarles
The Trump administration’s most senior banking watchdog appears in the Paradise Papers in connection with an offshore bank that is under investigation by US authorities for possible tax evasion.
Quarles, Trump’s vice-chairman for supervision at the Federal Reserve, is named in the files as an officer of two firms incorporated in the Cayman Islands by the Carlyle Group, the private equity giant where Quarles was a partner until 2013.
The files detail transactions between one of Quarles’s offshore vehicles and Butterfield, a Bermuda-based bank in which Carlyle had led a $550m investment in 2010. That stake was one of several in distressed banks bought up by a new specialist team at Carlyle, including Quarles, following the 2008 financial crisis...
Jon Huntsman
Trump’s new US ambassador to Russia helped lead a previously undisclosed offshore company, according to the leaked files.
Huntsman, the former Utah governor, was listed as a director of HICI International Sales Corporation in a confidential filing to authorities in Barbados, where the company was formed in 1999. The offshore vehicle was set up to carry out overseas sales for Huntsman ICI, an industrial chemicals branch of Huntsman Corporation.
The filing said HICI was owned by Huntsman ICI Holdings LLC in the US, where Huntsman was vice-chairman and manager. In 2000, Huntsman ICI reported making a $151m profit on revenues of $4.4bn....
Kenneth Juster
Trump’s ambassador to India benefited from the offshore business of his former investment company and its billion-dollar purchase of a shipping corporation.
Juster is named in the Paradise Papers as a beneficial owner of a Bermuda-based branch of Warburg Pincus, a private equity firm where he was a partner before joining the Trump administration...
Carl Icahn
Icahn, a friend and former adviser to Trump, owns a $250m mining company spread across three tax havens and structured in a way that limits the information it must disclose to US authorities.
The leaks detail how Icahn holds a controlling stake in Ferrous Resources, a Brazilian mining company officially based on the Isle of Man. It in turn owns a pair of holding companies in Luxembourg and Malta, which operate iron mines in Brazil.
All three jurisdictions offer low- or zero-tax regimes for corporations, making them destinations of choice for foreign businesses seeking to legally lower their tax bills. A report in 2015 by Citizens for Tax Justice said Icahn operated 20 subsidiaries in offshore tax havens....
Tom Barrack
The chairman of Trump’s inaugural committee leads a $58bn real estate investment trust that channels some of its profits to the low- or no-tax jurisdictions of Luxembourg, the Cayman Islands and Lebanon.
Barrack, who has described himself as one of the president’s “closest friends for 40 years”, appears in the Paradise Papers through offshore subsidiaries of Colony NorthStar, of which he is CEO...
Jay Clayton
Trump’s SEC chairman received income from a hedge fund based in the Cayman Islands.
Clayton disclosed to the government ethics office before taking up the SEC job that he received income from Mount Kellett Capital Partners (Cayman) LP, the offshore subsidiary of a US hedge fund. A proposed structure chart in the leaked Appleby files shows a complex web of ties that were created between the Cayman Islands offshoot, its head company, and other offshore subsidiaries....
Ben Carson
A biotechnology company headed by Carson, Trump’s housing and urban development (HUD) secretary, set up offshore firms that could have reduced its tax bill.
The Paradise Papers contain files on two subsidiaries of Vaccinogen in Bermuda that date from Carson’s time as chairman of the Baltimore-based biotechnology company. The offshore vehicles were established as holding companies for “intellectual property related to the treatment of cancer and other diseases”, according to the files...
(complete article)
Here are the 5 biggest links connecting Trump to Manafort and Russian money laundering
Brad Reed
30 OCT 2017 AT 11:51 ET
From Raw Story: The Trump White House is claiming victory in the wake of former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort’s indictment on money laundering charges on the grounds that the indictment did not specifically mention Manafort’s work in the Trump campaign in 2016.
However, the nature of the charges against Manafort serves as a basis for establishing links between President Donald Trump and the Russian mob.
Here are the five biggest links that connect Trump, Manafort and Russian organized crime operations.
However, the nature of the charges against Manafort serves as a basis for establishing links between President Donald Trump and the Russian mob.
Here are the five biggest links that connect Trump, Manafort and Russian organized crime operations.
- The indictment against Manafort alleges he was laundering money he earned from his work for a pro-Russian political party in Ukraine. Specifically, the indictment states that, “in order to hide Ukraine payments from United States authorities, from approximately 2006 through at least 2016, Manafort and Gates laundered money through scores of United States and foreign corporations, partnerships and bank accounts.”
- Long before he ran Trump’s campaign, Manafort lived in an apartment in Trump Tower. Manafort first purchased an apartment in Trump Tower in 2006, which WNYC notes was right around the time that his lobbying firm signed a $10 million contract with a Kremlin-linked Russian oligarch named Oleg Deripaska — the same man whom Manafort agreed to give personal briefings about the state of Trump’s presidential campaign to in 2016.
- In 2013, the FBI obtained a search warrant to eavesdrop on what it believed to be a massive Russian money laundering operation — and which also happened to be running out of Trump Tower. As ABC News reported earlier this year, the investigation into the operation led “to a federal grand jury indictment of more than 30 people, including one of the world’s most notorious Russian mafia bosses, Alimzhan Tokhtakhounov.”
- Another figure allegedly involved in the Russian money laundering business is Felix Sater — a longtime Trump associate. Sater’s financial relationship with Trump dates back to at least 2003, when the Trump Organization rented out office space to Sater’s former company. Even though Trump initially tried to distance himself from Sater after news of his criminal past came to light in 2007, he subsequently tapped Sater in 2010 to scout out real estate. This is notable because Sater is reportedly cooperating with an investigation into money laundering that used American properties to help hide money.
- Sater’s company, Bayrock Capital, also operated out of Trump Tower — and may have used Trump properties to launder Russian money. A Bloomberg report from earlier this year reveals that a former Bayrock insider, Jody Kriss, now claims that Sater’s firm was all an elaborate money laundering operation. In 2007, Trump teamed with Bayrock to secure funding for the Trump Soho hotel via FL Group, an Icelandic bank that was regularly used by Russians to launder money.
*IN 1927, 1,000 WHITE-ROBED KLANSMEN RIOTED IN QUEENS. TRUMP'S FATHER WAS ARRESTED IN THAT INCIDENT.
bigtree
From Demo. Underground: Joy Reid @JoyAnnReid 3h3 hours ago
...this story creeps out of the memory hole, and gains new and chilling resonance.
Donald Trump's father was arrested at Ku Klux Klan riot in New York in 1927, records reveal
_____The predication for the Klan to march, according to a flier passed around Jamaica beforehand, was that “Native-born Protestant Americans” were being “assaulted by Roman Catholic police of New York City.” “Liberty and Democracy have been trampled upon,” it continued, “when native-born Protestant Americans dare to organise to protect one flag, the American flag; one school, the public school; and one language, the English language.”
It's not clear from the context what role Fred Trump played in the brawl. The news article simply notes that seven men were arrested in the “near-riot of the parade,” all of whom were represented by the same lawyers. Update: A contemporaneous article from the Daily Star notes that Trump was detained “on a charge of refusing to disperse from a parade when ordered to do so.”
When news of the old report surfaced last year, Donald Trump vehemently denied his father's arrest. “He was never arrested. He has nothing to do with this. This never happened. This is nonsense and it never happened,” he said to the Daily Mail. “This never happened. Never took place. He was never arrested, never convicted, never even charged. It's a completely false, ridiculous story. He was never there! It never happened. Never took place.”
...It's worth noting that Trump's comments came one day after another Klan brawl, this time in Anaheim, Calif. Thirteen people were arrested and three were stabbed after a Klan rally turned violent. And it's worth noting, too, as did Jonathan Chait at New York magazine, that Trump's claim to “know nothing” about white supremacists echoes the language of the 19th-century “Know Nothing” party — a nativist group that supported only Protestants for public office...
read: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/charlottesville-latest-donald-trump-father-fred-arrested-ku-klux-klan-kkk-rally-riot-queens-new-york-a7891701.html
...this story creeps out of the memory hole, and gains new and chilling resonance.
Donald Trump's father was arrested at Ku Klux Klan riot in New York in 1927, records reveal
_____The predication for the Klan to march, according to a flier passed around Jamaica beforehand, was that “Native-born Protestant Americans” were being “assaulted by Roman Catholic police of New York City.” “Liberty and Democracy have been trampled upon,” it continued, “when native-born Protestant Americans dare to organise to protect one flag, the American flag; one school, the public school; and one language, the English language.”
It's not clear from the context what role Fred Trump played in the brawl. The news article simply notes that seven men were arrested in the “near-riot of the parade,” all of whom were represented by the same lawyers. Update: A contemporaneous article from the Daily Star notes that Trump was detained “on a charge of refusing to disperse from a parade when ordered to do so.”
When news of the old report surfaced last year, Donald Trump vehemently denied his father's arrest. “He was never arrested. He has nothing to do with this. This never happened. This is nonsense and it never happened,” he said to the Daily Mail. “This never happened. Never took place. He was never arrested, never convicted, never even charged. It's a completely false, ridiculous story. He was never there! It never happened. Never took place.”
...It's worth noting that Trump's comments came one day after another Klan brawl, this time in Anaheim, Calif. Thirteen people were arrested and three were stabbed after a Klan rally turned violent. And it's worth noting, too, as did Jonathan Chait at New York magazine, that Trump's claim to “know nothing” about white supremacists echoes the language of the 19th-century “Know Nothing” party — a nativist group that supported only Protestants for public office...
read: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/charlottesville-latest-donald-trump-father-fred-arrested-ku-klux-klan-kkk-rally-riot-queens-new-york-a7891701.html
no shit
pbmus -demo. underground
Donald Trump admitted in 2007 that he had invested in Russia
In a deposition in 2007, Trump said something he and his family would later deny repeatedly
MATTHEW ROZSA
From Salon: Pr*sident Donald Trump may want the headaches associated with the Russia scandal to go away, but a new report has drawn attention to yet another controversial aspect of Trump’s relationship with that country’s financial elite.
Although Trump told NBC in May, “I am not involved in Russia,” he admitted in a 2007 deposition that a real estate development firm known as the Bayrock Group had brought Russian investors to Trump Tower to discuss investing in Moscow, according to a report by Bloomberg.
“It’s ridiculous that I wouldn’t be investing in Russia,” Trump said. “Russia is one of the hottest places in the world for investment.”
Bloomberg also reported that one of the principals at Bayrock is businessman Felix Sater, who reportedly has ties to organized crime in both the United States and Russia. Although Trump has repeatedly insisted that he is only passingly acquainted with Sater, former Bayrock employees insist that Sater often met with Trump at his business empire’s New York City headquarters and guided Trump’s children around Moscow.
They also report that Sater is still in contact with the president and some of his advisers. It is worth noting that the Bayrock Group itself also had an office located in Trump Tower.
While the president likes to downplay his business ties to Russia, his son Donald Trump Jr. once admitted to a real estate conference in 2008 that Trump built a tower in Panama for wealthy Russian clients, according to a report by Time.
“Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets. We see a lot of money pouring in from Russia,” Trump told the crowd.
Although Trump told NBC in May, “I am not involved in Russia,” he admitted in a 2007 deposition that a real estate development firm known as the Bayrock Group had brought Russian investors to Trump Tower to discuss investing in Moscow, according to a report by Bloomberg.
“It’s ridiculous that I wouldn’t be investing in Russia,” Trump said. “Russia is one of the hottest places in the world for investment.”
Bloomberg also reported that one of the principals at Bayrock is businessman Felix Sater, who reportedly has ties to organized crime in both the United States and Russia. Although Trump has repeatedly insisted that he is only passingly acquainted with Sater, former Bayrock employees insist that Sater often met with Trump at his business empire’s New York City headquarters and guided Trump’s children around Moscow.
They also report that Sater is still in contact with the president and some of his advisers. It is worth noting that the Bayrock Group itself also had an office located in Trump Tower.
While the president likes to downplay his business ties to Russia, his son Donald Trump Jr. once admitted to a real estate conference in 2008 that Trump built a tower in Panama for wealthy Russian clients, according to a report by Time.
“Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets. We see a lot of money pouring in from Russia,” Trump told the crowd.
taking the former leader of the free world for a stroll!!
charlyvi - from Demo Underground
On this President's Day, congratulations to James Buchanan on finally moving out of the bottom spot in the presidential rankings.
Thanks to Ignorant Americans, this Loser is now "President"
America's Next GOP Presidential Traitor joining Nixon, Reagan, Bush 1 & 2
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Trump's Cabinet, etc
the trailer trash adminstration
(archives - for description & news of swamp members)
Puerto Rico salutes Trump...
DonViejo
From Demo Underground: Pendejo =
adjective
stupid
estúpido, pendejo, bruto, atontado, estulto, bozal
noun
motherfucker
hijo de puta, pendejo, coño
coward
cobarde, gallina, temeroso, pendejo, asqueroso, rajado
berk
imbécil, idiota, pendejo
Word Origin and History for berk. n. "fool," 1936, abbreviation of Berkshire Hunt (or Berkeley Hunt), rhyming slang for cunt but typically applied only to contemptible persons, not to the body part. This is not an objective, anatomical term, neither does it imply coitus.
adjective
stupid
estúpido, pendejo, bruto, atontado, estulto, bozal
noun
motherfucker
hijo de puta, pendejo, coño
coward
cobarde, gallina, temeroso, pendejo, asqueroso, rajado
berk
imbécil, idiota, pendejo
Word Origin and History for berk. n. "fool," 1936, abbreviation of Berkshire Hunt (or Berkeley Hunt), rhyming slang for cunt but typically applied only to contemptible persons, not to the body part. This is not an objective, anatomical term, neither does it imply coitus.
white house concerns
trump: the "escape from la" pr*sident
PRESIDENT TRUMP:
CHILD MOLESTER, RACIST, SEXIST, CRIMINAL, KLAN SYMPATHIZER, MAFIA ASSOCIATE, TAX FRAUD, FASCIST, RUSSIAN MOLE
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Trump exhibits the same level of gravitas as, say, a spoiled child wearing a cardboard crown from Burger King. His tacky, garish displays of wealth, his clownish stab at a normal head of hair, and his ridiculously ill-fitting suits utterly fail to convey a basic sense of taste, much less gravitas. The other day, for example, Trump referred to third-party candidate Evan McMullin as “Evan McMuffin.” Petty insults like this one (along with “Crooked Hillary,” “Crazy Bernie,” “Lyin’ Ted,” etc.) convey a level of gravitas equal to purple-nurples during recess. And while Trump insists that he’ll be a very, very terrific president and, literally, the greatest jobs president God ever created, no one with a sense of history who believes he’s going to be any of those things.
tough guy!!!
Hillary Weighs In
Demo Underground
John Adams: “Obsta principiis, nip the shoots of arbitrary power in the bud, is the only maxim which can ever preserve the liberties of any people. When the people give way, their deceivers, betrayers, and destroyers press upon them so fast, that there is no resisting afterwards. The nature of the encroachment upon the American constitution is such, as to grow every day more and more encroaching. Like a cancer, it eats faster and faster every hour. The revenue creates pensioners, and the pensioners urge for more revenue. The people grow less steady, spirited, and virtuous, the seekers more numerous and more corrupt, and every day increases the circles of their dependents and expectants, until virtue, integrity, public spirit, simplicity, and frugality, become the objects of ridicule and scorn, and vanity, luxury, foppery, selfishness, meanness, and downright venality swallow up the whole society.”
trump - i never did it
