Tag: Trump corruption

Trump Had Deal With Scotland Airport That Sent Flight Crews to His Resort

New York Times logoWASHINGTON — Back in 2014, soon after acquiring a golf resort in Scotland, Donald J. Trump entered a partnership with a struggling local airport there to increase air traffic and boost tourism in the region.

The next year, as Mr. Trump began running for president, the Pentagon decided to ramp up its use of that same airport to refuel Air Force flights and gave the local airport authority the job of helping to find accommodations for flight crews who had to remain overnight.

Those two separate arrangements have now intersected in ways that provide the latest evidence of how Mr. Trump’s continued ownership of his business produces regular ethical questions.

View the complete September 9 article by Eric Lipton on The New York Times website here.

Air Force leaders order probe of Trump resort stays

Stopovers at Scotland airport have tripled since 2015 and overnight stays in the area are up five-fold.

The U.S. Air Force has ordered a world-wide review of how it chooses overnight accommodations on long flights following revelations that air crews had occasionally stayed at President Donald Trump’s Scotland resort while refueling at a small commercial airport nearby.

The review comes as additional instances of military personnel staying at Trump properties have been uncovered. The C-17 crew’s overnight stay at Trump’s Turnberry resort in Scotland earlier this year, first reported by POLITICO on Friday, was not an isolated incident.

In September 2018, on its way back to the U.S. from Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar, a unit of the Maine Air National Guard landed at Prestwick Airport, the airport closest to Trump’s luxury waterfront resort. The crew and their passengers then spent the night at his hotel, according to one person who was present, an Instagram post and a voucher detailing the crew’s itinerary reviewed by POLITICO.

View the complete September 8 article by Bryan Bender and Natasha Bertrand on the Politico website here.

Democrats seek records from White House on officials staying at Trump-owned properties

The Hill logoHouse Democrats are pressing the Trump administration for details about White House officials staying at properties owned by President Trump, stating that such visits come at a cost for taxpayers and could violate the Emoluments Clause of the Constitution.

The lawmakers are requesting records on Vice President Pence’s recent stay at Trump’s Doonbeg hotel in Ireland and the president’s proposal to have Trump National Doral Miami host the 2020 Group of Seven (G-7) summit, among other potential uses of Trump’s properties.

House Oversight and Reform Committee Chairman Elijah Cummings(D-Md.) issued a series of letters to the vice president, the White House, the U.S. Secret Service and the Trump organization asking about Pence’s trip to the Trump International Golf Links and Hotel in Doonbeg. 

View the complete September 6 article by Olivia Beavers on The Hill website here.

Irish journalist says Pence’s visit was so offensive it was as if he ‘s**t on the new carpet’

AlterNet logoVice President Mike Pence has completed a two-day visit to the Republican of Ireland, where he met with Prime Minister Leo Varadkar, President Michael D. Higgins and other officials. During his visit, Pence (who is Irish-American) spoke in glowing terms about his Irish ancestry. But Miriam Lord, a columnist for the Irish Times, was not impressed — and on Tuesday, she delivered a scathing critique of Pence’s visit to her country.

Ireland is two separate countries: Northern Ireland is part of the U.K., while the Republic of Ireland to the south is not. Residents of Ireland have been worried about how a hard Brexit could affect them, as the Republic of Ireland is on the euro and plans to remain in the European Union (EU).

Lord notes that Pence, like President Donald Trump, is a strong supporter of Brexit and was on his way to meet with U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson when he was in Ireland. And in her column, she takes Pence to task for the pro-Johnson comments he made during his meeting with Irish officials.

View the complete September 4 article by Alex Henderson on the AlterNet website here.

Donald Trump broke the law again and his staff happily told CNN all about it

AlterNet logoWelcome to another edition of What Fresh Hell?, Raw Story’s roundup of news items that might have become controversies under another regime, but got buried – or were at least under-appreciated – due to the daily firehose of political pratfalls, unhinged tweet storms and other sundry embarrassments coming out of the current White House.

Last week, when Trump was in France for the G7 meeting, he told reporters that Chinese officials had reached out to him to ask that trade negotiations be re-opened and that it would happen soon. “They have been hurt very badly but they understand this is the right thing to do and I have great respect for it,” he said. “This is a very positive development for the world. I think we are going to have a deal.”

Shortly after, Chinese officials said they had no idea what the president* was talking about and there had been no high-level calls. It seemed to be just another lie from a guy who would tell you it’s sunny outside during a hurricane.

View the complete September 1 article by Joshua Holland from Raw Story on the AlterNet website here.

Trump’s company could save millions if interest rates fall as he demands

Washington Post logoPresident Trump stands to save millions of dollars annually in interest on outstanding loans on his hotels and resorts if the Federal Reserve lowers rates as he has been demanding, according to public filings and financial experts.

In the five years before he became president, Trump borrowed more than $360 million via four loans from Deutsche Bank for his hotels in Washington, D.C., and Chicago, as well his 643-room Doral golf resort in South Florida.

The payments on all four properties vary with interest rate changes, according to Trump’s official financial disclosures. That means he has already benefited from falling interest rates that were spurred in part by a cut the Federal Reserve announced in July, the first in more than a decade — and his payments could drop by millions of dollars more annually if the central bank grants Trump’s wish and further lowers short-term rates, experts said.

View the complete August 24 article by Jonathan O’Connell, David A. Fahrenthold and Heather Long on The Washington Post website here.

I can no longer justify being a part of Trump’s ‘Complacent State.’ So I’m resigning.

Washington Post logoChuck Park’s resignation from the Foreign Service is effective Thursday.

I was 26, newly married and more than a little idealistic when I set off for my first diplomatic assignment almost a decade ago as a member of the 157th class of commissioned U.S. Foreign Service officers.

According to a certain type of right-leaning conspiracy theorist, that would make me part of “The Deep State” — a shadowy government within the government that puts its own interests above the expressed wishes of the electorate. Adherents to this theory believe that thousands of federal workers like me are plotting furiously to subvert the Trump administration at every turn. Many on the left, too, hope that such a resistance is secretly working to save the nation from the worst impulses of President Trump.

They have it all wrong. Your federal bureaucracy under this president? Call it “The Complacent State” instead.

View the complete August 8 commentary by Chuck Park on The Washington Post website here.

Here’s how Trump’s political appointees overruled tougher settlements with big banks

AlterNet logoProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up for ProPublica’s Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox as soon as they are published.

Since Donald Trump’s election, federal white-collar enforcement has taken a big hit. Fines and settlements against corporations have plummeted. Prosecutions of individuals are falling to record lows.

But just how these fines and settlements came to be slashed is less well understood. Two settlements with giant banks over financial crisis-era misdeeds provide a window into how the Trump administration has eased up on corporate wrongdoers.

View the complete August 2 article by Jesse Eisinger and Kevin Wack from ProPublica and American Banker on the AlterNet website here.

Predatory For-Profit Colleges Benefit From Washington’s Culture of Corruption

Center for American Progress logoPresident Donald Trump’s culture of corruption is pervasive: He has put lobbyists in charge of regulating the industries they previously worked for and perverted the legislative process to help wealthy donors at the expense of everyone else. One of the most concerning examples of this corruption is the Trump administration’s cozy relationship with predatory for-profit colleges. Their close relationship has negative consequences for millions of Americans, including low graduation rates, less valuable credentials, and higher tuition and student debt costs.

Trump and his administration are currently propping up for-profit institutions, where students are four times more likely to default on their loans compared with their counterparts in less expensive community colleges. Eighty-eight percent of borrowers who graduated from for-profit colleges did so with student loan debt—a higher rate than that of both public and private nonprofit colleges.

While not all for-profit institutions are bad actors, the sector has been rife with predatory and fraudulent practices that make it easier for unscrupulous education corporations to take advantage of students. Predatory for-profits tend to go after potential students who are disadvantaged or have less economic security such as people of color, single parents, and older students. The institutions continue to survive using campaign donations and high-placed political allies to game the education system at the expense of the average student.

View the complete July 29 article by William Roberts and Marissa Parker-Bair on the Center for American Progress website here.

Mueller: Trump could be charged with obstruction of justice after leaving office

The Hill logoFormer special counsel Robert Mueller on Wednesday said that he believes President Trump could be charged with obstruction of justice after he leaves office.

“Could you charge the president with a crime after he left office?” Rep. Ken Buck (R-Colo.) asked Mueller during the former special counsel’s testimony.

“Yes,” Mueller replied.

Buck appeared to be taken aback, and asked the question again, but adding whether Mueller believed a president could be charged with obstruction of justice after leaving office. The former special counsel again said he believed that was the case.

View the complete July 24 article by Jacqueline Thomsen on The Hill website here.