Tag: Politics

Daily Check-In 10/05/2018

Friday, October 5, 2018

 

THE RUSSIAN INVESTIGATION

 

COHEN, NEW YORK, EMOLUMENTS, AND OTHER LAWSUITS

 

SCOTUS & #METOO

 

 

TRUMP THE RUSSIAN ASSET

 

TRAITOR TOTS

 

FIGHTING BACK

 

IMMIGRATION

 

COLD WAR 2.0

 

#NEVERAGAIN

 

THE PROPAGANDA MACHINE

 

TRADE WAR AND ECONOMY

 

RACE TALK

Americans are at an impasse in their understanding of racism today. The activist slogan “Black Lives Matter” is met by the rejoinder “All Lives Matter” or “Blue Lives Matter.” Colin Kaepernick’s NFL protest about racial injustice is perceived only as an anti-American blast. President Trump tells reporters he is “the least racist person” they will ever interview. In each of these cases, conservatives feel deeply that they are not the bigots they are made out to be, declaring wide-eyed innocence in the face of any charge of racial animus.

This claim to racial innocence is not a new feature of the conservative movement, but rather one woven into the development of modern conservatism, part of an effort on the right to cleanse itself of its support for segregation and other racist policies, while heaping the blame for any racist outcomes in American society on their opponents on the left.

 

GOP: THE PARTY OF LINCOLN IS DEAD

 

CRIME AND PUNISHMENT

 

ELECTION 2018

 

PROGRESS IS PROGRESS

 

 

RUMOR MILL

 

That’s it for Friday.  It’s a light entry because Saturday sucked.  I’ll cover it on the Monday and Weekend post, but Kavanaugh was confirmed in a very narrow vote.  It’s been rough.  I’m writing this on Sunday night, and just opened Twitter for the first time since Saturday Morning.  It’s a hard battle to lose, but it’s just that: a battle.

We are at war to save the Republic from corruption and criminals that would abuse, pervert, and destroy the very system that they claim to love, all to further their own personal gains.  In war, there are casualties.  Battles are won and lost.  Some battles are harder than others.  However, victory can sometimes secured for the war by losing a battle.

I honestly feel that long term the Kavanaugh confirmation will become a Pyrrhic victory for the Republicans.  We’re not stopping the effort to expose his corruption with him taking the bench.  Oh, fuck no.  We’ll continue the fight to make sure that his finances and statements are investigated.  We’ll continue the fight until he, like the rest of the corrupt and traitorous, are removed from power and receive the punishment their crimes demand.

The first part of this plan is vote, and vote Democrat in November.  None of this split ticket bullshit.  Vote every Republican out of office for the foreseeable future.  The Republican Party no longer stands for law and order, but abuse and corruption.  It no longer stands for the protection of this country, but for selling it out to the highest bidder.  It no longer protects the weakest in our society, but tries to exploit them them make a buck.

I’ll be back likely Monday night or Tuesday with the update for this past weekend.  See you then.

 

Thank you, and have a good one.

 

“Without Journalists, it’s just propaganda.”

– Katy Tur

Daily Check-In 10/04/2018

Thursday, October 4, 2018

 

THE RUSSIAN INVESTIGATION

A Russian official accused of directing the foreign operations of Natalia Veselnitskaya, the lawyer who met senior Trump campaign officials in 2016, has plummeted to his death in a helicopter crash.

Russian Deputy Attorney General Saak Albertovich Karapetyan was exposed in a Swiss court this year for a plot to enlist another nation’s law-enforcement official as a double-agent for the Kremlin

Media reports in Russia say he died Wednesday night when his helicopter crashed into a forest during an unauthorized flight in the Kostroma region, northeast of Moscow.

Karapetyan, 58, was intimately familiar with some of the most notorious operations carried out under the orders of Vladimir Putin. He worked closely with Veselnitskaya as well as running some of Moscow’s most high-profile efforts to thwart international investigations into Russia’s alleged crimes.

It was Karapetyan who signed a letter from the Russian government refusing to help the U.S. in a civil case it was pursuing linked to the death of Sergei Magnitsky, a Russian lawyer who was trying to expose a $230 million fraud in Russia. Leaked emails have since shown that Veselnitskaya helped to draft the document sent with that letter. 

Hey look, someone with vital knowledge of the Russian’s effort to attack the United States who wasn’t a widely known named suffered a Russian Heart Attack.  What a coinkidink.

An unauthorized helicopter crash in the woods?  Was this before or after being shot and thrown from the plane?

There are two ways to survive having knowledge of Putin’s ploys.  Either be so anonymous that no one knows who you are, or become so famous that he can’t make a move against you.

Well this is interesting.  I’m including this in the Russian Investigation and not in Cold War or Crime and Punishment because it involves at least 3 GRU members that were already indicted by Mueller, and it shows how far Russia is willing to go.

These 7 GRU officers were caught by Dutch Intelligence and were escorted out of the country.  Why weren’t they arrested on the spot?  Because Russia issued them diplomatic passports, granting them diplomatic immunity.

This brings us to today, where the U.S. charged these 7 officers with hacking into The Hague, the World Anti-Doping Agency, Westinghouse Nuclear, and a few other organizations as well.

 

COHEN, NEW YORK, AND THE OTHER LAWSUITS

This whole clusterfuck has given me a new appreciation for states rights and New York.

The NYAG’s office has said that the Trump Foundation has engaged in “persistent illegality.” The foundation is the charity, not the business.  This doesn’t include the crimes that the business or family members did.

 

SCOTUS & #METOO

Here’s a list of the people who we know have not been interviewed:

  • A suitemate of Kavanaugh’s has now told the New Yorker he remembers hearing at the time about the incident Deborah Ramirez has recounted. Ramirez, who has been interviewed, had claimed that Kavanaugh exposed himself to her during a dorm party at Yale. The suitemate, Kenneth G. Appold, now says he is “one-hundred-per-cent certain” that he was told the culprit was Kavanaugh. He does say he never discussed this with Ramirez, but he claims an eyewitness described the episode to him at the time. Appold has tried to share this story with the FBI, but there’s no indication the FBI is willing to hear from him.
  • A classmate of Kavanaugh’s at Georgetown Prep now strongly challenges one of Kavanaugh’s assertions under oath. The person told the New Yorker that he heard Kavanaugh talk repeatedly about Renate Dolphin as someone “that everyone passed around for sex” (the witness’ words), and even heard Kavanaugh singing a rhyme that included the words “you wanna get laid, you can make it with REE-NATE.” Kavanaugh (and many others) described themselves in their yearbook as a “Renate Alumnius,” but Kavanaugh has denied under oath that this was a sexual reference, claiming, ludicrously, that it was intended to show “affection.”
  • This classmate is not named by the New Yorker. But he put his name on a statement to the FBI and Judiciary Committee that makes this claim, and he is prepared to talk to the FBI. There is no indication this happened.
  • James Roche, one of Kavanaugh’s roommates at Yale, has written a piece for Slate that claims Kavanaugh lied under oath about his use of slang and his drinking. Roche claims that Kavanaugh “regularly” blacked out. Roche has offered to talk to the FBI, but there’s no indication this happened.
  • Roche also pointedly added of Kavanaugh: “He said that ‘boofing’ was farting and the ‘Devil’s Triangle’ was a drinking game. ‘Boofing’ and ‘Devil’s Triangle’ are sexual references. I know this because I heard Brett and his friends using these terms on multiple occasions.” Roche concluded that Kavanaugh “has demonstrated a willingness to be untruthful under oath about easily verified information.”
  • NBC News reports that the FBI has not contacted dozens of people who could potentially corroborate the allegations against Kavanaugh or testify to his behavior at the time. This includes many people who knew either Ford or Ramirez at the time, and people who actually approached the FBI offering information.
  • The Post reports that Ramirez’s lawyers provided the FBI with a list of more than 20 people who might have relevant information, but “as of Wednesday, Ramirez’s team had no indication that the bureau had interviewed any of them.”
  • Blasey Ford’s legal team today put out a list of additional people who have not been contacted by the FBI, some of whom were prepared to corroborate that she had in the past discussed being the victim of a sexual assault by a federal judge.
  • Neither Ford nor Kavanaugh have been interviewed by the FBI. As the Brookings Institution’s Susan Hennessey points out: “It is inconceivable they could close a real investigation without re-interviewing Kavanaugh.”

This investigation is the kind of shit one would expect to see in a Banana Republic.  This is not an honest, full investigation.  This was a bullshit confirmation of a handful of sources.  There is one copy of the final 1000 page report being held in a SCIF, and most Senators are only being given a briefing of it, assuming they don’t just send their staffers.

 

TRUMP THE RUSSIAN ASSET

 

TRAITOR TOTS

 

FIGHTING BACK

 

Kavanaugh cover up is the dumbest every. Next yr. Jud Chair Jerry Nadler calls all the witnesses, calls FBI officials who were restricted in investig. In no time they have impeachment articles. In the meantime any Dem group that will have a case heard by Kavanaugh should now make a motion to recuse. It’s malpractice not to. If nothing else his 5-4 votes will come as the product of bias and fraud.

Here’s the part that rational me doesn’t understand, but conspiratorial me gets.

Why in the Crystal Pepsi Flavored Fuck would they push Kavanaugh forward when most signs point to the Democrats taking the House next year?  And even if they don’t get it next year, the minute they do regain control, he’s getting investigated and impeached for perjury, lying under oath, accepting bribes, and probably a few other crimes as well.

The rational part of me sees that this will end badly soon, within. the next 6-9 months, so why go this route?  They could cut him loose, make another non-controversial pick, and be done with it.  Instead, they’re going this route.

The conspiratorial part of me thinks that this is part of some master plan to further polarize and separate Americans from each other.  What’s more divisive then a confirmation hearing? An Impeachment Trial.

 

COLD WAR 2.0

 

#NEVERAGAIN

 

THE PROPAGANDA MACHINE

 

TRADE WAR AND ECONOMY

 

GOP: THE PARTY OF LINCOLN IS DEAD

 

CRIME AND PUNISHMENT

 

ENVIRONMENT & SCIENCE

 

ELECTION 2018

 

RUMOR MILL

 

That’s it for Thursday.  I’m not sure how Friday’s going to turn out.  Honestly, I’m not very optimistic at this point.

I’m tired.  I know this is a marathon, not a sprint, but I’m tired of the constant fighting.  I need to take a break and relax for a night.  Maybe watch a movie, have a few glasses of a sweet red wine, and decompress.  Over the weekend, I think I’m going to do that.  I’ll take a few hours off from everything, disappear, then come back to take another big bite of the shitburger.

 

Thank you, and have a good one.

 

“Without Journalists, it’s just propaganda.”

– Katy Tur

Daily Check-In 10/03/2018

Wednesday, October 3, 2018

 

THE RUSSIAN INVESTIGATION

 

COHEN, NEW YORK, AND THE OTHER LAWSUITS

I would just like to remind everyone that Donald Trump is a cheat, a fraud, and a con man.  Along with being a traitor, rapist, racist, alleged pedophile, and a bad dresser.

Also, I’d like to remind everyone that both his longtime lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen is a convicted felon who is cooperating with EVERY law enforcement agency, as well as his bookkeeper Allen Weisselberg.

 

SCOTUS & #METOO

Five days after the FBI began its investigation into Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh and the sexual assault allegations made against him by Dr. Christine Blasey Ford, the probe is over. Though the White House is already exonerating him, it remains to be seen what kind of information senators can glean from the investigation. One thing that is clear though is that many Senate Democrats won’t be satisfied with the narrow scope of the probe.

According to the Washington Post, FBI agents only spoke to six people as a part of the investigation. Five of them were connected to Dr. Ford and her story of a 1982 sexual assault at the hands of Kavanaugh. Somehow, neither Kavanaugh, nor Ford, were among those interviewed:

Instead, the bureau interviewed three people who Ford said attended the party: Mark Judge, Patrick Smyth and Leland Keyser. The FBI also talked to two other friends of Kavanaugh’s who were listed as attending a gathering during the same summer that Ford alleged she was assaulted: Chris Garrett, who went out with Ford for a time, and Tim Gaudette.

The FBI has only briefly looked into the other allegations against Kavanaugh. While an interview was conducted with Deborah Ramirez, who said Kavanaugh exposed himself to her at Yale, investigators did not, as far as Ramirez’s legal team knew, speak to any of the 20 people she said may be able to corroborate her story. Julie Swetnick, who implicated Kavanaugh in a pattern of sexual assaults, was also not interviewed.

I’m trying to stay positive, but it is hard AF right now.  This investigation is a complete and total shitshow if they only interviewed a few witnesses, and only those that were pre-approved by a group with an obvious bias to get a favorable result.

This is how corruption works.

Republican Sen. Ben Sasse of Nebraska gave an impassioned speech on sexual assault and the #MeToo movement on the Senate floor Wednesday night.

Sasse also dropped a bombshell about where he stands on Brett Kavanaugh, President Donald Trump’s second nominee to the Supreme Court.

“I urged the president to nominate a different individual. I urged the president to nominate a woman,” Sasse said.

He recounted the experiences of two personal friends he said were raped, adding that the #MeToo movement has been “complicated,” but also a “very good thing.”

And then Sasse turned back to Trump: “We all know that the president cannot lead us through this time.”

Kavanaugh, once seen as having a clear path to the nation’s high court, has become the subject of multiple sexual misconduct allegations, leveled against him by former high school and college classmates.

I’m more amazed that we aren’t getting more GOP Senators speaking out.  Not out of shock or patriotism, but just basic self-preservation.  Out of 51 of them, the only one that did anything was Jeff Flake, and he’s eyeing a 2020 presidential run.  I’ve always gambled on self-preservation being a politician’s best friend, but supporting Kavanaugh is a dangerous move.  The optics are terrible for anyone who even remotely backs him.  Every ad will be a version of “XXXXX voted to put a liar and a rapist on the Supreme Court.”

 

 

TRUMP THE RUSSIAN ASSET

 

TRAITOR TOTS

 

FIGHTING BACK

 

FIXING THE INTERNET

 

IMMIGRATION

 

COLD WAR 2.0

 

#NEVERAGAIN

 

THE PROPAGANDA MACHINE

 

PRESIDENTIAL ALERT

 

TRADE WAR AND ECONOMY

 

GOP: THE PARTY OF LINCOLN IS DEAD

David Corn: In the book, you write, “Only if the GOP as currently constituted is burned to the ground will there be any chance to build a reasonable center-right political party out of the ashes.” So your position now, Max, is burn, baby, burn. It sounds like the old Marxists.

Max Boot: I respect some of my friends trying to work on reforming the Republican Party, but at least for the time being, I think it’s a lost cause. So my hope is that the Republican Party will suffer massive and repeated drubbings at the ballot box. That’s why I urge everybody to vote straight-ticket Democratic even though I have a lot of disagreements with Democrats. I’m not a Democrat; I’m an independent. But for the health of our republic, I think we need to destroy the Republican Party. We need congressional oversight of Donald Trump, which you’re never going to get out of Republicans. I think you need to punish the Republicans for taking these appalling positions, abusing minorities, championing white nationalism, isolationism, protectionism. The only way to wean them from that is to punish them electorally.

 

CRIME AND PUNISHMENT

 

ENVIRONMENT & SCIENCE

 

ELECTION 2018

 

PROGRESS IS PROGRESS

 

RUMOR MILL

 

That’s it for Wednesday.  It’s kind of a fucked up day, and I’m not sure what else is around the corner.

Part of me keeps thinking about writing more singular topic posts, like one about BK, the Party Scene, and how #MeToo works into all of this.  Or what are the implications of a Blue Wave in the long run.  Or wargame out an actual war.

That being said, I’ll probably have time for that in about… 10 years.  Give or take 9.99 of them.

 

Thank you, and have a good one.

 

“Without Journalists, it’s just propaganda.”

– Katy Tur

Daily Check-In 10/02/2018

Tuesday, October 2, 2018

 

THE RUSSIAN INVESTIGATION

When Sen. Mitch McConnell was told by then–CIA Director John Brennan before the 2016 election that Vladimir Putin and Russia were attempting to interfere with the goal of assisting Donald Trump, McConnell’s response took him aback, according to Greg Miller, a Washington Post reporter who has just released a book about Putin, Trump, and the election. The majority leader said he wouldn’t sign on to any condemnation of Russia’s actions and that if the administration went public with the intelligence, McConnell would in turn call out Brennan as a partisan intervening on behalf of Hillary Clinton, Miller colorfully revealed in a CNN interview Tuesday.

Mitch calling the Russian Interference a partisan attack isn’t much of a surprise, but that he pulled this shit against the CIA  Director is a new level of WTFness.  Turtle got into a screaming match with the head of the CIA, saying that if Obama or them went forward with any claims that the Russians were interfering, he’d attack those claims as a partisan witch hunt.

Sound familiar?

Mitch McConnell is one of the most evil mother fuckers in history.  There’s a part of me that wants to say that this was just him seeing the world through his hyperpartisan viewpoint, but this meeting with Obama and Brennan took place after the RNC Convention, after the DNC Convention, after the email leaks from Wikileaks, and after the GOP leadership met with Sergei Kislyak in Cleveland.  By this point, Mitch either had to know something was up, was being blackmailed or was complicit.  Possibly both of the last two.

Remember, the Republicans had their emails hacked, too.  Those just weren’t released for the world to see.

Staff Changes

Kyle Freeny and Brandon Van Grack are leaving the team.  I’ll speculate on that in the Rumor Mill section.  I’ll also update The Justice League after posting this.

 

Gamble v United States

I had a couple conversations on Tuesday about the upcoming Gamble v United States case headed to the SCOTUS. I talked about the case HERE and HERE, but there’s a lot that got left off of the Reddit and Twitter arguments last week.  I’m going to put all of these thoughts in one post eventually, but I want to try to dispel some of the myths around that case.

The basic question before the court is whether or not the Feds can charge a person with the exact same crime that they were already tried for in a different sovereign jurisdiction. It’s not questioning whether the state can do the same, or if a person pardoned for a crime in one jurisdiction can or can’t be charged with similar crimes in other jurisdictions.

The hypothesis running around last week was that a partisan SCOTUS would overturn 150 years of precedent and rule that a crime can only be charged in one jurisdiction. Then, Trump would pardon everyone involved with every crime he’s taken part in, and those blanket pardons would prevent the states from ever charging any of his co-conspirators with crimes.

There are several holes with that hypothesis.

First, the hypothesis doesn’t match the question before the court.  The question facing the court is whether the United States can charge a person with the exact same crime that the person was charged with in state court.

Second, the ruling would have to be so vague and wide ranging that it would fall apart on even the slightest review. The only way that the ruling could work that way would be if it were written to include any and all state statutes that could be similar.  I call this the Worst Case Scenario Ruling, or WCSR.

Third, this assumes the states would interpret “similar” the same way.  One state may decide that state tax evasion is similar to federal tax evasion, but another would not because they use distinct forms.  Others might argue that since the wording between drug possession statues have a comma in the wrong place, the meaning changes altogether and are therefore different statutes.

Fourth, pardons only work on criminal penalties, not civil. Sure, they might not go to prison, but that doesn’t mean the states and the feds can’t use that pardon as proof of guilt and take everything they’ve ever owned.  I recommend checking out Civil RICO.

Finally, this argument assumes blanket pardons like Nixon received from Gerald Ford, not pardons for specific crimes. A blanket pardon covers a wide range of potential crimes, but if done preemptively before any crimes are charged, then we get to the next great legal questions;

Is it Double Jeopardy if a person was never charged with a crime but accepted a pardon in a different jurisdiction before they were charged? How could it be Double Jeopardy if they were never in Single Jeopardy to begin with? If the person was never charged with a crime at the federal level before accepting a pardon, how could the state ever know if they would have been charged with the exact same crime to invoke DJ protections?

The states could make a good argument that since they didn’t know what the defendant could have been charged with, they have to assume that only some charges would have been brought forward, not all of them.

Also, even in the WCSR, the states would almost certainly challenge this ruling on 9th and 10th Amendment grounds.  Per the U.S. Constitution:

Article [IX] (Amendment 9 – Unenumerated Rights)

The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

Article [X] (Amendment 10 – Reserved Powers)

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

These two amendments are trotted out every time some right-winger wants to cry foul about “government overreach” on liberal policies, like the ACA or the Interstate system.  These two are usually used in combination with each other to make an argument that unless it was specifically laid out in the Constitution, then the Federal government can’t do it.  The WCSR would be a violation of both of these in that it would take the power of the states to prosecute their own crimes away from them.  The WCSR would be challenged faster than a kid running to his PS4 to play Fortnite.

I don’t think there’s too much to worry about with Gamble at this time. Several states including New York already have Double Jeopardy protections on their books preventing them from charging a person for the same crime the feds charged them for, but they have their own crimes on the books that they can go after.

Still, keep an eye on that case when it comes up.

 

COHEN, NEW YORK, AND THE OTHER LAWSUITS

Stormy Daniels

President Trump personally directed an effort in February to stop Stormy Daniels from publicly describing an alleged sexual encounter with Mr. Trump, people familiar with the events say.

In a phone call, Mr. Trump instructed his then-lawyer Michael Cohen to seek a restraining order against the former adult-film actress, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, through a confidential arbitration proceeding, one of the people said. Messrs. Trump and Cohen had learned shortly before that Ms. Clifford was considering giving a media interview about her alleged relationship with Mr. Trump, despite having signed an October 2016 nondisclosure agreement.

Mr. Trump told Mr. Cohen to coordinate the legal response with Eric Trump, one of the president’s sons, and another outside lawyer who had represented Mr. Trump and the Trump Organization in other matters, the people said. Eric Trump, who is running the company with his brother in Mr. Trump’s absence, then tasked a Trump Organization staff attorney in California with signing off on the arbitration paperwork, these people said.

Direct involvement of the president and his son in the effort to silence Ms. Clifford hasn’t previously been reported. The accounts of that effort recently provided to The Wall Street Journal suggest that the president’s ties to his company continued into this year and contradict public statements made at the time by the Trump Organization, the White House and Mr. Cohen.

The White House referred a request for comment to the president’s outside counsel. Jay Sekulow, a lawyer for Mr. Trump, declined to comment. A person close to the situation said Eric Trump had acted as the president’s son and not in his role as a company executive. The Trump Organization declined to comment. Lanny Davis, a lawyer for Mr. Cohen, declined to comment.

Holy shit, this is big.  We know that Cohen tried to get a restraining order against Stormy Daniels earlier this year to keep her from speaking to the media, but now we know that he was ordered to do so by then-President Trump.  While he was in the White House.  And that Eric Trump, who’s supposed to be running an independent Trump Organization, helped.

Cohen pleaded guilty on Daily Check-In 08/21/2018, and has been cooperating with EVERYONE since then.  Mueller, SDNY, State of New York, New York City.  Hell, I’m expecting to hear that Cohen is working with the March of Dimes to seize one of the Trump properties in lieu of payment owed.

Donald Trump is already an unindicted co-conspirator on election fraud charges.  Cohen said in court that he was ordered to pay off Stormy Daniels using campaign funds.  Now, here is the President of the United States ordering his personal attorney to work with the head of a private company to silence a critic and opponent in a lawsuit.  Sounds like several crimes there.

Being implicated in trying to silence a porn star that he paid off with campaign funds.  There’s no way his day can get any worse, right?

Right?

<Cue Something Big>

From /u/The-Autarkh, summing up the points.

  1. The Trumps’ tax maneuvers show a pattern of deception, tax experts say
  2. Donald Trump began reaping wealth from his father’s real estate empire as a toddler
  3. That ‘small loan’ of $1 million was actually at least $60.7 million — much of it never repaid
  4. Fred Trump wove a safety net that rescued his son from one bad bet after another
  5. The Trumps turned an $11 million loan debt into a legally questionable tax write-off
  6. Father and son set out to create the myth of a self-made billionaire
  7. Donald Trump tried to change his ailing father’s will, setting off a family reckoning
  8. The Trumps created a company that siphoned cash from the empire
  9. The Trump parents dodged hundreds of millions in gift taxes by grossly undervaluing the assets they would pass on
  10. After Fred Trump’s death, his empire’s most valuable asset was an I.O.U. from Donald Trump
  11. Donald Trump got a windfall when the empire was sold. But he may have left money on the table.

Yep.  This is big.  A couple years too late, but it is certainly big.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!

Holy shit.  The Self-Made Billionaire myth is just that: a myth.

Fred Trump made a lot of money, and had deep ties to organized crime.  He set up trusts for all of his kids and made sure they were well off from the beginning.  He came up with tax tricks and cheats to move and hide his wealth from the government, and eventually give it to his kids through illegal means.  And Fred realized that Donald sucked at business.

Donald Trump is a con-man fraud hack, but we know that already.  Now, the New York Times has the receipts.  Literally.  They have the fucking receipts from the fake purchasing company.

Ever since the 80’s when Donald Trump tried to create his own empire, with money laundering a main source of income, self-promotion was a big part of it. He’s the poor man’s idea of the rich man, and plays it up by slapping his name on everything he can while his properties are a laundromat for criminals of all sizes.

Part of the way he gets away with it is that he’s up front with it. Most people ignore the obnoxious jerk, as long he stays to himself or plays in his own yard. Cops are looking for guy sneaking in the shadows, not the one screaming “I’m doing illegal shit.” There’s a scene from High Anxiety where they’re trying to get past airport security without being noticed. Instead of skulking around, they’re loud, obnoxious, screaming at each other. Eventually, the cops let them go because they don’t want to deal with them. That’s been Trump since the 80’s. He’s so loud and obnoxious, most people didn’t look into how much of a crook he is, because how stupid would someone have to be to draw unnecessary attention to themselves?

Donald Trump stupid, that’s how stupid.

Here’s a guy who ran for President because he’s been bullshitted into believing he could do it and/or was blackmailed into it.  He won with the help of every corrupt organization around (including the Russians), and put himself, his family, his businesses, his relationships, and everyone who’s ever known him under a microscope.

That microscope is here.

The most egregious violations came after Donny tried getting his daddy to change the will, giving him access to more money up front.  Fred and his daughter Maryanne Trump-Barry, a sitting Federal Judge at the time, said it “didn’t pass the smell test.”  But, they realized that Fred was getting old and sick, and if he died right away, his billion dollar empire would mostly go to taxes.  They created All County Building Supply & Maintenance to funnel money to the children.  Fred Trump’s company would buy equipment for his properties through All County, like a boiler or stoves or construction supplies, but at a significant markup.  $10,000 in washing machines become $20,000.  A $2,000 furnace repair becomes $5,000.  All County would make the purchase, then bill Fred Trump’s company the inflated amount.  Fred would pay the inflated amount, then the owners of the company would split the profits.

The owners of All County Building Supply & Maintenance were Donald Trump, his siblings, and cousins.

These purchase would show up on taxes as legitimate purchases.  Fred Trump would claim them as business expenses, All County would write off even more expenses, and the adult children made millions off of this scheme.

What makes this even worse is that the Trump’s would then petition the city to increase the rents on their rent controlled properties because their expenses increased.  So, they fraudulently increased their expenses to increase the rent their tenants paid, which created more money to launder, which created more expenses, which increased the rents, and so on.

Donald Trump received $413 million from his father, and paid taxes on a sliver of that.  Him and his siblings, including Maryanne Trump-Barry, benefited to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars from fraudulent purchases, wire fraud, mail fraud, and money laundering.

Unfortunately, it’s highly likely that these crimes are all far beyond the criminal statute of limitations.  But, not civil statutes, and the State of New York has already said they’re investigating these claims.

Also, just a reminder, Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg  is a Cooperating Witnesses.  He’s been around since Fred’s days, and likely played a part in all of this.

 

SCOTUS & #METOO

In an unprecedented move, Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday released an explicit statement that purports to describe the sexual preferences of a woman who has accused Supreme Court nominee Brett M. Kavanaugh of misconduct.

The statement, which was circulated to the hundreds of journalists on the Judiciary Committee’s press list, was from Dennis Ketterer, a former Democratic congressional candidate and television meteorologist who said he was involved in a brief relationship with Kavanaugh accuser Julie Swetnick in 1993.

Swetnick said last week in an affidavit that Kavanaugh was present at a house party in 1982 where she alleges she was the victim of a gang rape, a claim he vehemently denies.

In his statement, Ketterer said Swetnick once told him that she sometimes enjoyed group sex with multiple men and had first engaged in it during high school. Ketterer said the remark “derailed” their relationship, which he described as involving “physical contact” but no intercourse.

Ketterer said Swetnick “never said anything about being sexually assaulted, raped, gang-raped or having sex against her will” and “never mentioned Brett Kavanaugh in any capacity.” He described their relationship as lasting for a “couple of weeks.”

It was highly unusual for a congressional committee to release a statement that included such explicit and unconfirmed details about a member of the public. The Republican side of the panel, which said the statement was provided by Ketterer “under penalty of felony,” emailed excerpts to journalists and posted the full statement on its website.

Ketterer said that his “lasting impression” of Swetnick was that she was “smart, fun and funny.” He also described her as “an opportunist” who sought him out at the bar where he said they first met.

“I felt she only had interest . . . because I was on television and well-known,” he said.

…

Reached by phone Tuesday night, Ketterer said he provided the statement to the committee Monday night after hearing Swetnick’s allegations last week and discussing his memories of her with local leaders in his church. Ketterer described himself as a longtime member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) and lives in the Salt Lake City area.

“We talked about doing the right thing, and the right thing was not to hold it back,” Ketterer said in an hour-long interview.

Eventually, he said, one church leader reached out to a former LDS bishop who had a connection to the office of Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah), who sits on the Senate Judiciary Committee and is also a member of the church.

Ketterer said he spoke with Hatch’s staff last Friday and was then handed off to staff for Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa), who he said pressed him in a long phone interview about his knowledge of Swetnick’s background and her family relationships.

…

Ketterer lost his bid to represent Maryland’s 8th Congressional District as a Democrat in 1996. Now a registered Republican, he says he identifies more strongly as a political independent and does not support President Trump.

Ketterer said he has never met Kavanaugh and did not know who he was until Trump nominated him to the Supreme Court. Ketterer said he provided his statement because he wanted to “do the right thing” and because he sympathized with Kavanaugh’s wife, Ashley.

When the sexual assault defense gets to the slut shaming phase, the defense is desperate.

The standard operating procedure of fighting a sexual assault case is to first deny any involvement.  If that’s not possible, attack the character of the victim or witnesses, claiming that they can’t be trusted because of their background.  When that fails, dig up any dirt whatsoever on the victim and play the “it can’t be rape because she likes sex” routine.  Of course, this hurts the defense even more, because they can no longer claim that there was no encounter between them.

Slut shaming a rape victim is the last ditch effort of the rape defense.

 

 

TRUMP THE RUSSIAN ASSET

 

TRAITOR TOTS

 

FIGHTING BACK

 

IMMIGRATION

 

COLD WAR 2.0

 

#NEVERAGAIN

Shooting the coach?  Really?  They should have done what every other parent of a low-talent player does and join the booster club.

 

FIXING THE INTERNET

 

THE PROPAGANDA MACHINE

 

WHITE HOUSE CHAOS

 

TRADE WAR AND ECONOMY

 

GOP: THE PARTY OF LINCOLN IS DEAD

 

CRIME AND PUNISHMENT

 

ENVIRONMENT & SCIENCE

 

ELECTION 2018

 

PROGRESS IS PROGRESS

 

RUMOR MILL

 

That’s it for Tuesday.   Like I said earlier, two of the lawyers are leaving Mueller’s team, and there’s speculation on both sides as to what that means.

The Right Wing claims that this is an obvious sign that there is nothing more to investigate, and that Mueller is wrapping things up.  Obviously, because there wasn’t anything there.

The Right Wing claims that this is an obvious sign that there is nothing more to investigate, and that Mueller is wrapping things up.  Obviously, because they found everything and are finished with their job.

There’s another hypothesis that I want to float around, and that’s that this is perfectly normal.  The people that have left have returned to their previous assignments because the part of the case they were working on being taken over by other departments or people.

The Mueller Team is a black box.  We don’t know what’s going on inside of it, and only learn about events well after the fact.  For all we know, they’ve likely coordinated with every law enforcement agency in the country, handed off what they’ve discovered, and tasked those groups to unleash hell on the command word “Alfalfa.”

I’ve got a story in the pipeline about Mueller’s Gameplan, and I think this fits with it.  There’s so many avenues to pursue, one team couldn’t do it on their own.  Outsourcing the work to every field office is just one part of it.

 

Thank you, and have a good one.

 

“Without Journalists, it’s just propaganda.”

– Katy Tur