Tag: Trump grift

House committee asks federal agency for Trump hotel records

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The House Transportation committee on Tuesday wrote to the Biden administration to request financial records for the D.C. Trump International Hotel.

Why it matters: The General Services Administration(GSA) had refused the panel’s first request in 2019 for details of the leased government-owned building’s revenue, profits, losses and expenses, and it continued to do so throughout former President Trump’s presidency.

  • “Those records, if made public, would reveal the inner workings of a hotel that became an icon of Trump’s era — a place where the sitting president’s company could be paid by foreign governments, Republican allies and companies with business before the Trump administration,” per the Washington Post, which first reported the news. Continue reading.

Manhattan DA Subpoenas Lender For Trump’s Chicago Skyscraper In Expanding Probe

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The Manhattan district attorney subpoenaed documents late last year from a big-money investor that loaned Donald Trump’s company money to build a skyscraper in Chicago — a sign that the DA is continuing to expand his financial fraud investigation into the ex-president, according to a report Monday.

Sources told CNN that District Attorney Cy Vance Jr. slapped Fortress Investment Group with a grand jury subpoena relating to the $130 million it provided to the Trump Organization for the construction of the Windy City’s Trump International Hotel and Tower, which was completed in 2009.

Vance and Fortress declined to comment on the specifics of the subpoena, but the sizable Chicago loan is one of many Trump transactions shrouded in mystery. Continue reading.

Claimed value of sleepy NY estate could come to haunt Trump

NEW YORK — It’s sleepy by Donald Trump’s standards, but the former president’s century-old estate in New York’s Westchester County could end up being one of his bigger legal nightmares.

Seven Springs, a 213-acre swath of nature surrounding a Georgian-style mansion, is a subject of two state investigations: a criminal probe by Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. and a civil inquiry by New York Attorney General Letitia James.

Both investigations focus on whether Trump manipulated the property’s value to reap greater tax benefits from an environmental conservation arrangement he made at the end of 2015, while running for president. Continue reading.

Trump lashes out after Supreme Court decision on his financial records

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Former President Trump on Monday lashed out after the Supreme Court declined to block the Manhattan district attorney from obtaining his financial records, blasting the probe as politically motivated and pledging to “fight on.”

“The Supreme Court never should have let this ‘fishing expedition’ happen, but they did,” Trump said in a statement. “This is something which has never happened to a President before, it is all Democrat-inspired in a totally Democrat location, New York City and State, completely controlled and dominated by a heavily reported enemy of mine, Governor Andrew Cuomo.”

Trump described the Manhattan investigation into his financial dealings as a continuation of “the greatest political Witch Hunt in the history of our Country,” referring broadly to repeated investigations into his alleged wrongdoing. Continue reading.

Now out of office, Trump may have to face tax questions

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However his impeachment trial ends, Trump faces an IRS decision on a massive refund and may no longer be able to conceal his tax returns

Once his impeachment trial concludes and former president Donald Trump returns to his business, he will face some obvious challenges, such as declining real estate income and investigations from New York authorities.

But he may also have to finally face two tax issues that have been simmering in the background, either of which experts say could carry significant consequences should they materialize now that he is out of office.

One is a massive income tax refund Trump received before entering office, according to the New York Times, one that has quietly been under a years-long review by the Internal Revenue Service and a little-known congressional panel, the Joint Committee on Taxation. Continue reading.

Parler Wanted Donald Trump On Its Site. Trump’s Company Wanted A Stake.

Documents seen by BuzzFeed News show that Parler offered Trump 40% of the company if he posted exclusively to the platform. The deal was never finalized.

The Trump Organization negotiated on behalf of then-president Donald Trump to make Parler his primary social network, but it had a condition: an ownership stake in return for joining, according to documents and four people familiar with the conversations. The deal was never finalized, but legal experts said the discussions alone, which occurred while Trump was still in office, raise legal concerns with regards to anti-bribery laws.

Talks between members of Trump’s campaign and Parler about Trump’s potential involvement began last summer, and were revisited in November by the Trump Organization after Trump lost the 2020 election to the Democratic nominee and current president, Joe Biden. Documents seen by BuzzFeed News show that Parler offered the Trump Organization a 40% stake in the company. It is unclear as to what extent the former president was involved with the discussions.

The never-before-reported talks between Trump’s business organization and Parler, a social media network that promises less moderation than mainstream sites and is embraced by the far right, provide more insight into the frantic last weeks of Trump’s presidency. Until the Jan. 6 insurrection, after which Facebook and Twitter suspended or banned him for continuing to sow discord about the election, Trump used those internet platforms to peddle baseless conspiracy theories. While doing so, his representatives actively negotiated to bring him to Parler, which sought to make the president a business partner who would help it compete with Twitter and Facebook by getting him to post his content on its platform first. Continue reading.

The cottage industry behind Trump’s pardons: How the rich and well-connected got ahead at the expense of others

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A federal judge in South Dakota was blunt last summer when she sentenced Paul Erickson, a seasoned Republican operative who had pleaded guilty to wire fraud and money laundering.

“What comes through is that you’re a thief, and you’ve betrayed your friends, your family, pretty much everyone you know,” District Judge Karen E. Schreier told Erickson in July, before sentencing him to seven years in prison for scamming dozens of people out of $5.3 million.

But Erickson, who had advised GOP presidential campaigns and a noted conservative organization, had a way out. Continue reading.

Supreme Court dismisses emoluments lawsuits against Trump as moot

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The Supreme Court on Monday declined to hear a pair of emoluments lawsuits against former President Trump, ruling that the cases are moot now that he has left office.

The two lawsuits, filed by the group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) and the attorneys general for Washington, D.C., and Maryland, were part of a novel legal effort that alleged Trump violated the Constitution’s emoluments clauses by continuing to own his business empire while in office.

Before Trump came into office, the courts had never considered the question of what the foreign and domestic emoluments clauses prohibited, as few presidents had sought to test their boundaries. But Trump held office while also retaining private business interests that were unprecedented in modern times. Continue reading.

Trump ends it all with one final scam — and it bodes badly for Trumpism’s future

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For a presidency that’s been awash in grift and deception from the start, you could not have scripted a more fitting end.

In his final moments as president, Donald Trump hailed his massive tax cut for the rich and corporations as one of his leading accomplishments — just after pardoning the chief architect of his “economic populism,” all to protect him from facing charges that he literally stole money from Trump supporters with a two-bit scam promising to help build his border wall.

As Trump prepared to depart from Joint Base Andrews on Wednesday morning, he hailed his presidency as “amazing, by any standard.” Continue reading.

Hours before leaving office, Trump undoes one of the only measures he took to ‘drain the swamp’

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President Trump rescinded an executive order early Wednesday morning that had limited federal administration officials from lobbying the government or working for foreign countries after they leave their posts, undoing one of the few measures he had instituted to fulfill his 2016 campaign promise to “drain the swamp.”

Trump had signed the executive order with much fanfare in an Oval Office ceremony in January 2017.

“Most of the people standing behind me will not be able to go to work” after they leave government, Trump said at the time, flanked by senior aides. Continue reading.