Tag: Trump corruption

Spin, deride, attack: How Trump’s handling of Trump University presaged his presidency

Washington Post logoThe judge was out to get him, he said. So was that prosecutor in New York, whom he called a dopey loser on a witch hunt. So were his critics, who he said were all liars. Even some of his own underlings had failed him — bad people, it turned out. He said he didn’t know them.

Donald Trump was in trouble.

Now, he was trying to attack his way out, breaking all the unwritten rules about the way a man of his position should behave. The secret to his tactic: “I don’t care” about breaking the rules, Trump said at a news conference. “Why antagonize? Because I don’t care.”

That was 2016. He was talking about a real estate school called Trump University. Continue reading.

Woody Johnson Was a Loyal Trump Supporter in 2016. As an Ambassador, He May Be Too Loyal.

New York Times logoIn the view of some American diplomats, Mr. Johnson’s willingness to carry out President Trump’s request to seek the British government’s help in moving the British Open to his golf resort in Scotland was only the latest example of the envoy’s poor judgment.

LONDON — Playing host at a small dinner on Tuesday night in honor of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, the American ambassador to Britain, Robert Wood Johnson IV, told his guests that the wine was from President Trump’s vineyard in Virginia. He was serving it, he joked, even though it might be ethically improper.

The next day, Mr. Johnson was not making any more jokes about ethics. On Twitter, he insisted he had “followed the ethical rules and requirements of my office at all times” after The New York Times reported that at the president’s request, he had raised with a British official the idea of steering the British Open golf tournament to Mr. Trump’s Turnberry golf resort in Scotland.

In the ranks of the American diplomatic corps, Mr. Johnson’s enthusiasm for pleasing Mr. Trump has raised questions about whether Mr. Johnson — a 73-year-old pharmaceutical heir, N.F.L. team owner and longtime friend of the president’s — has put promoting his boss over his diplomatic duties. Continue reading.

The twists and turns in Trump’s executive order on immigrants and the census

Washington Post logo“Although the Constitution requires the ‘persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed,’ to be enumerated in the census, that requirement has never been understood to include in the apportionment base every individual physically present within a State’s boundaries at the time of the census. Instead, the term ‘persons in each State’ has been interpreted to mean that only the ‘inhabitants’ of each State should be included.”

— President Trump, in a memorandum for Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross on congressional apportionment, July 21, 2020

This artfully crafted statement serves as the basis for Trump’s executive order to remove millions of undocumented immigrants from the population data Congress uses to apportion House seats among the states.

But it gives a warped view of history to justify an enormous shift in political power. If carried out, the president’s order is likely to reduce seats in Congress for mostly Democratic states.

The Facts

The Constitution requires a nationwide population count every 10 years. Originally, that meant counting “the whole Number of free Persons,” adding “three fifths” of a person for each slave and “excluding Indians not taxed.”

Judge Orders Cohen Released, Citing ‘Retaliation’ Over Tell-All Book

New York Times logoA judge agreed that federal officials had returned Michael D. Cohen to prison because he wanted to publish a book this fall about President Trump.

When Michael D. Cohen, President Trump’s one-time lawyer and fixer, met with probation officers this month to complete paperwork that would have let him serve the balance of his prison term at home, he found a catch.

Mr. Cohen was already out on furlough because of the coronavirus. But to remain at home, he was asked to sign a document that would have barred him from publishing a book during the rest of his sentence. Mr. Cohen balked because he was, in fact, writing a book — a tell-all memoir about his former boss, the president.

The officers sent him back to prison. Continue reading

Trump has made it very, very easy to believe he tried to leverage his position to benefit his golf club

Washington Post logoEvery three months, the White House makes an ostentatious presentation of President Trump donating his salary to a government agency or department. In early March, he donated his $100,000 quarterly salary to the Department of Health and Human Services “to support the efforts being undertaken to confront, contain and combat coronavirus.” The amount was equivalent to 0.000008 percent of the agency’s annual budget.

There is income that Trump does accept, of course: income from his stake in the Trump Organization. He earned nearly half a billion dollars in both 2018 and 2019, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, most of it from his private company. While the presidency occupies Trump’s time, the Trump Organization continues to line his pockets.

This unprecedented situation is so well established by now that it barely attracts attention when Trump’s two employers are in conflict or overlap. He spends so much time at Trump properties that, when he leaves the White House early on a Saturday morning, there’s generally no question where he’s headed: to his golf club in Sterling, Va. He has gone there on average about once every two weeks since he took office. It’s just background noise. Continue reading.

Netflix Exposes Trump’s Shady Mob Ties in ‘Fear City: New York vs. The Mafia’

Premiering July 22, this three-part docuseries examines how lawmen took down the New York City mob—and features an eye-opening cameo from one Donald J. Trump.

n the 1970s and 1980s, New York City was controlled by five major mob outfits—the Bonanno, Colombo, Gambino, Genovese and Lucchese families—that not only ran the region’s various illegal rackets, but also effectively operated the billion-dollar construction industry that was transforming the metropolitan landscape. Fear City: New York vs. The Mafia is the true story of the law enforcement and prosecutorial efforts to take down those kingpins, which played out in a manner eerily reminiscent of The Wire. And unsurprisingly, at least for those who lived in or around the five boroughs during that era, it’s a tale of crime and vice that invariably involves Donald Trump.

The current commander-in-chief factors into the final episode of director Sam Hobkinson’s three-part Netflix miniseries (debuting July 22), since his Fifth Avenue Trump Tower was one of countless projects the mafia had a hand in completing. “So I told him that there’s jobs in here that did count, like Trump. Nineteen million,” says a gangster on a federal wiretap recording, thereby directly linking the future president to the shady mobsters who governed New York’s concrete and cement unions (and businesses). These crooks regulated which of eight chosen firms would get contracts and, in the process, kickback points from the gigs to their criminal superiors. As Fear Citymakes clear in just a few short minutes, anyone like Trump, who was knee-deep in the real estate scene, was invariably a bedfellow (either directly or indirectly) with the mafia.

Considering Trump’s apparent underworld ties, the biggest question that arises during Hobkinson’s series (from the producers of Don’t F**K With Cats) is why Rudy Giuliani chose, in 2018, to become his lawyer. Fear City lays out how Giuliani initially made his national name by bringing down NYC’s godfathers while working as the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York. On camera, Giuliani confesses that, as an Italian-American, he loathed the mob. Along with his press-friendly ambitions for higher office, which he’d subsequently attain when he became the city’s mayor, it was this hatred for organized crime that drove him to pursue his legendary case. The hypocritical disconnect between Giuliani’s still-palpable disgust for the mafia, and his more recent closeness with the mob-connected Trump, is so readily apparent in the last episode that one wishes director Hobkinson had taken at least a slight narrative detour to more fully investigate (or least have Giuliani directly address) it. Continue reading.

Pompeo panel’s human rights report pushes ‘radical, isolationist, anti-rights, anti-scientific, religious agenda’

AlterNet logoHuman rights advocates denounced as “dangerous” a draft report released Thursday by the U.S. State Department’s controversial Commission on Unalienable Rights that paints property rights and religious liberty as “foremost among the unalienable rights that government is established to secure” while casting doubt on other liberties, including reproductive freedom.

“Make no mistake: this report was not designed with principles of equality, justice, and rights in mind. Instead, it serves as another stepping stone in the White House’s radical, isolationist, anti-rights, anti-scientific, religious agenda,” Serra Sippel, president of the Center for Health and Gender Equity (CHANGE), said in a statement.

“The Commission on Unalienable Rights is a thinly veiled religious fundamentalist panel, and the people on it should have absolutely no say about the human rights of people all over the world,” Sippel declared, calling the panel “a dangerous distraction from the fact that this administration does not believe that all people are equal and entitled to human rights.” Continue reading.

Mnuchin suggests Treasury, SBA should forgo verifying how small business loans were spent

Washington Post logoLawmakers question Trump administration officials over handling of $600 billion Cares Act lending program

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin suggested Friday that the government should consider forgiving all taxpayer-backed small loans under the federal Paycheck Protection Program without verifying how the funds were used, a decision that could wipe away debt for millions of small businesses but would also substantially increase the risk of fraud.

The Treasury Department and Small Business Administration are grappling with how to handle millions of applications for loan forgiveness, a process that includes verifying that most of the funds were actually used to pay employees as required under the Cares Act. But Mnuchin seemed to suggest during a congressional hearing Friday that a case-by-case approval process should be waived entirely for loans below a certain threshold.

“One of the things we’ll talk about is should we just have forgiveness for all the small loans … I think that’s something we should consider,” Mnuchin said when asked by Rep. Steve Chabot (R-Ohio) how the process might be simplified. Continue reading.

Trump turns White House into backdrop for political events

The Hill logoPresident Trump walked onto the South Lawn of the White House on Thursday to applause from supporters as he prepared to tout his efforts to roll back regulations.

He was flanked on one side by a blue truck weighed down by “years of regulatory burden” and on the other by a red truck that had an empty bed to illustrate “regulatory freedom.” Overhead, an industrial sized crane had the words “Trump administration” printed in clear view.

The president proceeded to give a speech that offered no new policy announcements but was heavy on attacks on presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden and his platform. Continue reading.

The Trump campaign is the grift that keeps on grifting

Washington Post logoThere has long been an element of grift to political campaigns.

The guys who make the ads and the media buyers get rich by paying themselves a percentage of the amount that is spent on advertising. The same is true for those who put together the direct-mail operation. As one political consultant explained it to me: “It’s sort of like getting to grade your own homework.”

Hired fundraisers can make six-figure commissions by exaggerating their worth. Others get paid similar amounts for providing “strategic advice.” Continue reading.