Tag: Trump corruption

As he attacks mail-in votes, Trump and the first lady requested absentee ballots in Florida

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On Thursday, President Trump repeated his attacks against mail balloting, saying it would lead to “the greatest rigged election in history” and “the greatest fraud ever perpetrated.”

At the same time, his own absentee ballot to vote in Florida’s primary election on Tuesday was en route to Mar-a-Lago. According to the Palm Beach County elections website, the president and first lady Melania Trump both requested absentee ballots on Wednesday.

Trump has voted absentee at least twice before. But his latest ballot request comes amid escalating attacks on mail-in voting by the president and his administration. On Thursday, Trump said that he opposes an emergency bailout for the U.S. Postal Service and election aid for states to restrict how many Americans can vote by mail. Continue reading.

‘I know where the skeletons are buried’: Michael Cohen releases blistering excerpt from his tell-all book about Trump

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Michael Cohen thinks he may know Donald Trump, who he worked with for more than ten years, even better than the president’s own family does. In the forward released Thursday to his forthcoming tell-all book, “Disloyal,”  Cohen explained that he saw a side of the president that his close relatives never saw.

“Apart from his wife and children, I knew Trump better than anyone else did,” he wrote. “In some ways, I knew him better than even his family did because I bore witness to the real man, in strip clubs, shady business meetings, and in the unguarded moments when he revealed who he really was: a cheat, a liar, a fraud, a bully, a racist, a predator, a con man.”

He went on:

There are reasons why there has never been an intimate portrait of Donald Trump, the man. In part, it’s because he has a million acquaintances, pals and hangers on, but no real friends. He has no one he trusts to keep his secrets. For ten years, he certainly had me, and I was always there for him, and look what happened to me. I urge you to really consider that fact: Trump has no true friends. He has lived his entire life avoiding and evading taking responsibility for his actions. He crushed or cheated all who stood in his way, but I know where the skeletons are buried because I was the one who buried them.

Continue reading.

Trump filed ‘fraudulent’ financial information about overseas golf clubs to US government: watchdog

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President Donald Trump filed “fraudulent” documents to the U.S. government inflating the value of his golf clubs in Ireland and Scotland, according to a left-leaning government watchdog group.

The American Democracy Legal Fund called on Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance and the FBI to investigate whether Trump broke the law by filing false financial disclosure documents, according to a letter obtained by Politico.

Trump reported to the U.S. government that his Trump International Golf Links Aberdeen and Trump Turnberry resorts in Scotland and the Trump Doonbeg in Ireland earned about $179 million in revenue between 2014 and 2018, according to research compiled by the group. Documents from the U.K. and Ireland show significantly less revenue — around $152 million — and the resorts actually lost $77 million over that time frame when expenses are included. Continue reading.

ICYMI – Trump admits he’s blocking postal cash to stop mail-in votes

ST. PAUL, MINNESOTA – Yesterday, President Donald Trump said the quiet part loud when he admitted to sabotaging the United States Postal Service in order to stop more Americans from safely and securely casting their ballots by mail, like Trump himself just signed up to do. 

In Case You Missed It

Associated Press: Trump admits he’s blocking postal cash to stop mail-in votes

By Deb Riechmann and Anthony Izaguirre. 8/13/20

President Donald Trump frankly acknowledged Thursday that he’s starving the U.S. Postal Service of money in order to make it harder to process an expected surge of mail-in ballots, which he worries could cost him the election.

In an interview on Fox Business Network, Trump explicitly noted two funding provisions that Democrats are seeking in a relief package that has stalled on Capitol Hill. Without the additional money, he said, the Postal Service won’t have the resources to handle a flood of ballots from voters who are seeking to avoid polling places during the coronavirus pandemic.

Continue reading “ICYMI – Trump admits he’s blocking postal cash to stop mail-in votes”

The true face of white evangelicalism has been exposed

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One has to imagine that for Jerry Falwell Jr., things feel very unfair right about now. For more than four years, the world of right-wing American Christianity has not only lined up behind Donald Trump — a thrice-married chronic adulterer who bragged on tape how he likes to “grab ’em by the pussy” — but has embraced him as if he were the second coming. White evangelicals’ devotion to Trump didn’t wane after he became president, even in the face of stories about Trump paying off a porn actress and a centerfold model to stay quiet about his compulsive cheating on his third wife. Nor was there any angst on the Christian right over Trump’s relentless grifting or his efforts to blackmail the Ukrainian president into bolstering lies about former Vice President Joe Biden.

On the contrary, the Christian right’s worshipful attitude toward Trump has only increased over the years, with pastors comparing Trump to Jesus himself and calling Trump “God’s chosen one.” The president’s approval with white evangelicals remains strong, at 72%, and 82% say they plan to vote for him.

With all this Christian love for a president who makes all ordinary sinners look like amateurs, it’s no wonder that Falwell — the president of Liberty University, which was founded by his dad, the legendary Southern Baptist pastor and televangelist — thought it was no big deal to unbutton his pants a little. But when Falwell posted a photo on social media of himself partying on a yacht with those literally unbuttoned pants, holding something that resembled an alcoholic beverage and with his arm around the waist of a pregnant female acquaintance with her shirt rolled up, he did not get the Trump treatment. Continue reading.

Interior Department Withheld Trump Nominee Docs Ahead Of Confirmation, Watchdog Finds

Democratic lawmakers are demanding a criminal investigation, saying political appointees “orchestrated a coverup to protect” Secretary David Bernhardt.

Ahead of Interior Secretary David Bernhardt’s Senate confirmation hearing in March 2019, political appointees blocked the public release of documents about the nominee, the agency’s internal watchdog concluded.

The finding, detailed in a seven-page report due out Tuesday, comes approximately a year after Interior’s Office of Inspector General began investigating the department’s controversial Freedom of Information Act policy, which gives political appointees the ability to review public information requests prior to their release, and in some cases withhold material altogether.

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Rep. Raúl M. Grijalva (D-Ariz.), who last year made separate requests for the inspector general to expand the probe into Interior’s so-called awareness review policy, slammed the department in a joint statement Tuesday. Continue reading.

In the middle of a pandemic, Trump gives Americans a glimpse of his criminal mind

AlterNet logoOn Saturday Donald Trump claimed he would impose (apparently by some hidden appropriations power that he does not Constitutionally possess) a “payroll tax holiday,” which would purportedly defer the payroll tax for certain employed Americans through December, as a means of financial assistance for individuals and families coping with the economic fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic. This action appears patently illegal, as the power to levy taxes or change the tax code resides in the Congress under Article 1 of the U.S. Constitution, but let’s for the moment pretend it is legal and Trump does have the authority to declare such a “holiday” through the end of the year.

All of this means is exactly what his “order” says–that the taxes are deferred through December. As Josh Marshall of TalkingPointsMemo points out here, those taxes are still due next year, and in fact many workers would find themselves socked with exorbitant and unexpected tax bills next year assuming their employers don’t choose to simply withhold the tax themselves, since they’re responsible for seeing that it gets paid.

As noted here by Rocky Mengle of Kiplinger: Continue reading.

House can sue to force former White House counsel Donald McGahn to comply with subpoena

Washington Post logoHouse Democrats can sue to force President Trump’s former White House counsel Donald McGahn to comply with a congressional subpoena, a federal appeals court ruled Friday.

In a 7-2 decision, the full U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit affirmed Congress’s oversight powers and said the House has a long-standing right to compel government officials to testify and produce documents. The ruling came in one of a set of historic clashes between the White House and Democratic lawmakers.

The “effective functioning of the Legislative Branch critically depends on the legislative prerogative to obtain information, and constitutional structure and historical practice support judicial enforcement of congressional subpoenas when necessary,” Judge Judith W. Rogers wrote for the majority. Continue reading.

Deutsche Bank Turned Over Trump’s Financial Records To Manhattan District Attorney

Deutsche Bank, the German financial powerhouse that loaned hundreds of millions of dollars to the Trump Organization when other banks shunned that company, has turned over records of its transactions subpoenaed by the Manhattan District Attorney’s office, according to the New York Times.

District Attorney Cyrus Vance, Jr., has sought the president’s personal and corporate tax records in court, without revealing much about the alleged crimes under investigation, although he is know to be looking into hush money payments to porn star Stormy Daniels and former Playboy model Karen McDougal.

Vance’s prosecutors justified the extensive demand for Trump’s records before a judge in New York state Supreme Court last Monday by citing reports of “extensive and protracted criminal conduct at the Truomp Organization.”. Continue reading.

The founders tried to guard against con artist tyrants — but our democratic republic may end anyway

AlterNet logoOur founding fathers were of an era when slavery and colonization were a direct extension of the “t’was ever thus” of history. To fault them for their failures to live by our current standards (by which they fail miserably) is to miss the point.

So too is praising them for their idealism and vision. Though many were Christians, they knew better than to bring that kind of blind-faith optimism to the crafting of our city on the hill.

Their true genius was in expecting of humankind what humankind inevitably delivers, corruption, backsliding and backlashes, the opposite of the dream of woke enlightenment in which everybody finally sees the light, realizing the truth of love, kindness, generosity, justice and liberty for all. Our founding fathers were cynics, not romanticizers of human nature. Continue reading.