Thursday, November 14, 2019

TRUMP ORDERS SUPREME COURT TO BLOCK SUBPOENA FOR HIS TAXES - BUT WHY? HE DOESN'T PAY ANY!

Trump Is Surrounded by Criminals

https://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2019/11/the-fall-of-donald-trump-final-days.html 


“The legal ring surrounding him is collectively producing a historic indictment of his endemic corruption and criminality.” JONATHAN CHAIT


Donald Trump Asks Supreme Court to Block Subpoena for His Taxes

US President Donald Trump speaks during a meeting with Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, DC, on July 22, 2019. (Photo by Nicholas Kamm / AFP) (Photo credit should read NICHOLAS KAMM/AFP/Getty Images)
NICHOLAS KAMM/AFP/Getty Images
0:55

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump is asking the Supreme Court to block a subpoena for his tax returns, in a test of the president’s ability to defy investigations.
The filing Thursday sets the stage for a high court showdown over the tax returns Trump has refused to release, unlike every other modern president. The justices also could weigh in more broadly on Trump’s claim that sitting presidents can’t be prosecuted or investigated for crimes.
He wants the court to decide the case by late June, under a deal to keep the Manhattan district attorney from enforcing the subpoena in the meantime. The returns are held by Trump’s accountants.
A second, similar case is headed to the court over a House committee subpoena demanding Trump’s financial records from the same accounting firm.



Kushner, Inc.: Greed. Ambition. Corruption. The Extraordinary Story of Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump Hardcover – March 19, 2019
·         Hardcover: 304 pages
·         Publisher: St. Martin's Press (March 19, 2019)
·         Language: English
·         ISBN-10: 1250185947
·         ISBN-13: 978-1250185945

 

Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump are the self-styled Prince and Princess of America. Their swift, gilded rise to extraordinary power in Donald Trump’s White House is unprecedented and dangerous. In Kushner, Inc., investigative journalist Vicky Ward digs beneath the myth the couple has created, depicting themselves as the voices of reason in an otherwise crazy presidency, and reveals that Jared and Ivanka are not just the President’s chief enablers: they, like him, appear disdainful of rules, of laws, and of ethics. They are entitled inheritors of the worst kind; their combination of ignorance, arrogance, and an insatiable lust for power has caused havoc all over the world, and may threaten the democracy of the United States.
Ward follows their trajectory from New Jersey and New York City to the White House, where the couple’s many forays into policy-making and national security have mocked long-standing U.S. policy and protocol. They have pursued an agenda that could increase their wealth while their actions have mostly gone unchecked. In Kushner, Inc., Ward holds Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump accountable: she unveils the couple’s self-serving transactional motivations and how those have propelled them into the highest levels of the US government where no one, the President included, has been able to stop them.


“Our entire crony capitalist system, Democrat  and Republican alike, has become a kleptocracy approaching par with third-world hell-holes. This is the way a great country is raided by its elite.” --- Karen McQuillan  

President Donald Trump speaks to the press before departing the White House in Washington on Nov. 8, 2019. (Nicholas Kamm/AFP via Getty Images)



Trump: New York AG ‘Deliberately Mischaracterizing’ $2 Million Settlement ‘For Political Purposes’

1 CommentsNovember 8, 2019 Updated: November 8, 2019
Share
President Donald Trump accused New York Attorney General Letitia James of “deliberately mischaracterizing” the details of a $2 million settlement reached on Thursday.
New York Judge Saliann Scarpulla ruled that Trump must pay $2 million as part of a settlement he, the Trump Foundation, and James’s office reached in a lawsuit alleging Trump misused his charitable foundation during the 2016 campaign.
Scarpulla said Trump let his campaign hold a foundation fundraiser in January 2016 and used it “to further Mr. Trump’s political campaign.”
The foundation received $2.8 million from the fundraiser and the money “did ultimately reach their intended destinations, i.e., charitable organizations supporting veterans,” Scarpulla ruled.
Instead of the entire $2.8 million that James’s office pushed for, Scarpulla ordered Trump to pay $2 million. She also declined a statutory penalty of $5.2 million that James’s office wanted the president to pay.
James celebrated the ruling on Wednesday.
“We’ve secured a court order forcing President Trump to pay $2M in damages after admitting to illegally using the Trump Foundation to help him intervene in the 2016 presidential election and further his own political interests. No one is above the law,” she said in a statement.
In another statement, she wrote, “The court’s decision, together with the settlements we negotiated, are a major victory in our efforts to protect charitable assets and hold accountable those who would abuse charities for personal gain. My office will continue to fight for accountability because no one is above the law—not a businessman, not a candidate for office, and not even the President of the United States.” 

Scarborough then launched into his own conspiracy theory:
But I think we all will be absolutely fascinated when we finally figure out what Vladimir Putin has on Donald Trump and why Donald Trump has surrendered the Middle East, helped ISIS, helped Iran, helped Russia, helped Turkey, helped all of our enemies and betrayed all of our allies. You know, a lot of people think that it’s – he has compromising pictures or something happened in a hotel in Russia years ago. No. It goes back to money. It’s always about money.

GET THIS BOOK!



BULLSHIT! TRUMP AND HIS PARASITE CHILDREN 

HAVE SCREWED EVERY CONTRACTOR AND PERSON 

THEY’VE DONE BUSINESS WITH FROM DAY ONE!



Eric Trump on paying contractors: We pay ‘people when they do great jobs’


The Trump Organization has been criticized for stiffing contractors. Contractors have filed hundreds of complaints, which date back to the 1980s, alleging that the real estate company did not pay them.
“We believe in paying people when they do great jobs. And we get people paid incredibly quickly. And we pay contractors,” said Eric Trump, executive vice president of The Trump Organization at Yahoo Finance’s All Market Summit, adding that the organization only refuses to pay contractors who fail to complete a job.
“Yeah, well, they [the unpaid contractors] didn't finish a job. And they didn't do a good job. And they flaked out. And they were two months behind schedule. And so you had to let go of them. And you had to bring somebody else in to do the job that they otherwise would have. And it's called the real world,” he said, referring to the allegations. “People like to take cheap shots at us.”

Opinion: Trump’s emoluments transgressions don’t stop with the Doral fiasco

By NORMAN J. ORNSTEIN

When the White House announced that Donald Trump would host the 2020 Group of Seven meeting at his Doral golf resort in Florida — an in-your-face bit of self-dealing and a blatant violation of the Constitution’s foreign emoluments clause — Republicans and Democrats howled. Reporters had only just begun to tally the ways awarding himself a government contract could enrich Trump and the Trump Organization when the president backed down, but not before he publicly decried the “phony” emoluments clause.
The Doral reversal dimmed the spotlight on emoluments, but that should not lead us to drop the focus on the rest of Trump’s self-dealing and conflicts of interest. For strategic reasons, the House of Representatives may not include emoluments transgressions among potential impeachment charges. Nonetheless, the number of Trump’s violations are staggering, and growing by the day.
There are two separate emoluments sections in the Constitution; neither are phony, and both reflect the deep concern the Framers had about possible corruption in the highest offices in the land.
“Emoluments” are anything of value. The first constitutional clause, forbidding any officer of the United States from taking “any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever” from a foreign government, is in Article I. It has no loopholes; the Framers feared that a rich foreign government could influence or sway American policy by giving something of value to a policy-maker. It is not limited to the president or vice president, but to all holding an office of trust in the U.S. government.
The second emoluments clause is in Article II and is limited to the president. It reads, “The President shall, at stated Times, receive for his Services, a Compensation, which shall neither be increased nor diminished during the Period for which he shall have been elected, and he shall not receive within that Period any other Emolument from the United States, or any of them.” Here, the fear was that Congress could shake down the president by withholding his salary or bribe him by increasing it, and that a president could use the leverage of his office with states or the federal government to enrich himself.
We have never had occasion in our history to be deeply concerned about violations of these constitutional clauses. Most previous presidents have scrupulously adhered to them in spirit and letter. Jimmy Carter, to pick one example, put his peanut farm in a blind trust to avoid any appearance of conflict or attempt to profit via his office.
Trump, whose chief of staff on Sunday said the president still thought of himself as an innkeeper, has kept ownership of all his properties and has lied about not participating in their operations. He pushed officials at the General Services Administration to allow him to keep his federal lease for his Washington hotel while pressuring the District of Columbia to lower his property taxes. Trump’s daughter, Ivanka, holding an office in his administration, has taken valuable trademarks, including, staggeringly, one on voting machines, from China. Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, holding an office of trust in the administration, has promoted Trump and Kushner properties and solicited loans from foreign governments.
In other words, the president is unique in his corruption in American history. The watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington has regularly compiled a tally of Trump’s conflicts of interest and violations of the emoluments clauses. The latest numbers are stark: 1,493 trips to Trump properties by government officials, usually spending taxpayer money that will enrich the president; 292 promotions of Trump properties by White House officials; 63 foreign trademarks awarded to Trump brands, mostly from China and Brazil, while he has been president.
The president himself had made 387 trips to his properties, 240 of them to play golf. He regularly does semi-official infomercials for his properties, and he’s told couples considering staging a wedding reception at Mar-a-Lago in Florida or the Trump country club in Bedminster, N.H., that, if they do, he might be available for a photo op. He famously doubled the initiation fee at Mar-a-Lago, to $200,000, when he became president, enabling foreign figures (and others) to gain entrĂ©e to the president for a price his businesses collect.
The message has been received: Foreign governments, including Romania, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, moved events from other venues to Trump properties, and foreign countries or other foreign-connected entities have held 13 events at his properties, surely enriching him along the way. (He claims profits from foreigners are repaid to the Treasury; without his tax records, this can’t be checked). One hundred and twenty-one foreign officials from 71 foreign governments have visited his properties; lobbyists of all stripes have scheduled events there. Trump has openly talked about his ventures in places like Saudi Arabia and Turkey even as he has bent American foreign policy in ways that benefit those countries’ autocrats.
The president likes to pretend that there is no such thing as a conflict of interest, that his actions are ”perfect” and “innocent.” But we should not let his lies obscure what are ongoing, direct and outrageous abuses of the Constitution for financial gain by the president and his cronies. The House impeachment hearings are concentrating on other abuses of power, but there is no doubt our Framers would see the emoluments violations as a long series of impeachable and unconscionable offenses.
Norman J. Ornstein is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. His latest book, with Thomas E. Mann and E.J. Dionne Jr., is “One Nation After Trump: A Guide for the Perplexed, the Disillusioned, the Desperate and the Not-Yet-Deported.”

Eric Trump’s defense echoes his father’s status quo response.
During the 2016 presidential debate, President Donald Trump said something very similar. “Maybe he didn’t do a good job and I was unsatisfied with his work,” he said in response to nonpayment accusations.
Eric Trump also noted to Yahoo Finance that The Trump Organization has developed institutional knowledge about getting the best deals with contractors. “In New York, we know what contractors are going to be incredible, what contractors are going to — I won't use a word, but — take advantage of you,” he said. “And, you know, you have that institutional knowledge. You know your way around. You know the language. You know the laws. You know how things are built. You know what kind of foundations work in the ground.”

 ANN COULTER



TRUMP’S PARASITIC FAMILY
 Jared’s BFF, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS), and the crown prince of Abu Dhabi, Muhammad bin Zayed (MBZ), refer to Jared as “the clown prince.” Bone-cutter MBS assured those around him that he had Jared “in my pocket.” 

Following meetings at the White House and also with the Kushners over their 666 Fifth Avenue property, former Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim reported back to the emir that “the people atop the new administration were heavily motivated by personal financial interest.” 

“Truthfully, It Is Tough To Ignore Some Of The Gross Immoral Behavior By The President” WASHINGTON POST

 

Trump's sister quits as a federal judge 10 days into formal probe of her possible role in massive family tax scam that could have ended in her impeachment


·          Trump's older sister resigned as an appellate court judge shortly after a probe opened into her involvement in a family tax scheme
·         
·         10 days ago an investigation into whether Maryanne Trump Barry violated judicial conduct rules launched
·         
·         The case was closed after Barry resigned because retired judges are not subject to the rules
·         
·         Barry had not heard a case in two years after transitioning to inactive shortly after Trump's inauguration 
·         
·         The Trump siblings were probed after an investigation found they were involved in a tax scheme related to the transfer of their father's real estate empire 





President Donald Trump’s older sister Maryanne Trump Barry, 82, retired as a federal judge just days after an investigation opened into her possible role in family tax fraud scheme.

Barry was a federal appellate judge in the third district, which includes Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware, and the investigation could have led to her impeachment.

She had not presided over a case in more than two years, but was still listed as an inactive senior judge in the third district – usually the step taken before full retirement.

Barry did not give any reasons for her retirement. 

The probe into the Trumps was first opened last fall, after a New York Times investigation found the Trump siblings engaged in tax schemes in the 1990s, including fraud, that increased their inherited wealth.
+4
Maryanne Trump Barry resigned as a federal appellate judge 10 days into an investigation into whether she violated judicial conduct rules

An investigation into the Trump siblings opened after the New York Times reported that they transferred their father's real estate assets improperly in the 1990s 
PRESIDENT of the UNITED STATES DONALD TRUMP: Pathological liar, swindler, con man, huckster, golfing cheat, charity foundation fraudster, tax evader, adulterer, porn whore chaser and servant of the Saudis dictators
THE TRUMP FAMILY FOUNDATION SLUSH FUND…. Will they see jail?
VISUALIZE REVOLUTION!.... We know where they live!
“Underwood is a Democrat and is seeking millions of dollars in penalties. She wants Trump and his eldest children barred from running other charities.”

WHO IS FINANCING ALL THE TRUMP AND SON-IN-LAW’S REFINANCING SCAMS???
FOLLOW THE MONEY!
"I doubt that Trump understands -- or cares about -- what message he's sending. Wealthy Saudis, including members of the extended royal family, have been his patrons for years, buying his distressed properties when he needed money. In the early 1990s, a Saudi prince purchased Trump's flashy yacht so that the then-struggling businessman could come up with cash to stave off personal bankruptcy, and later, the prince bought a share of the Plaza Hotel, one of Trump's many business deals gone bad. Trump also sold an entire floor of his landmark Trump Tower condominium to the Saudi government in 2001."

“The Wahhabis finance thousands of madrassahs 

throughout the world where young boys are 

brainwashed into becoming fanatical foot-soldiers 

for the petrodollar-flush Saudis and other emirs of 

the Persian Gulf.” AMIL IMANI

  I recommend that Ignatius read Raymond Ibrahim's outstanding book Sword and Scimitar, which contains accounts of dynastic succession in the Muslim monarchies of the Middle East, where standard operating procedure for a new monarch on the death of his father was to strangle all his brothers.  Yes, it's awful.  But it has been happening for a very long time.  And it's not going to change quickly, no matter how outraged we pretend to be. MONICA SHOWALTER

WHAT WILL TRUMP AND HIS PARASITIC FAMILY DO FOR MONEY???

JUST ASK THE SAUDIS!

JOHN DEAN: Not so far. This has been right by the letter of the special counsel’s charter. He’s released the document. What I’m looking for is relief and understanding that there’s no witting or unwitting likelihood that the President is an agent of Russia. That’s when I’ll feel comfortable, and no evidence even hints at that. We don’t have that yet. We’re still in the process of unfolding the report to look at it. And its, as I say, if [Attornery General William Barr] honors his word, we’ll know more soon.

Morning Joe: Trump Is ‘Owned by Putin,’ Head of ‘Criminal Organization’

Listen to the Article!


By Kyle Drennen |
Following a discussion of President Trump’s decision to withdraw U.S. troops from Syria, on Thursday, MSNBC’s Morning Joe went far beyond standard criticism of the controversial foreign policy move and wildly claimed it was proof that Trump was “owned by Putin” and heading up a “criminal organization” that had been “laundering money” for the Russian autocrat for decades.
As the 6:00 a.m. ET hour segment about Syria was wrapping up and co-host Mika Brzezinski was starting to go to a commercial break, left-wing pundit Donny Deutsch interrupted to squeeze in an unfounded conspiratorial rant in which he accused the President of multiple crimes: “Let’s not forget it. This is all about failed casinos. He is owned by Putin because he’s been laundering money, Russian money for the last 20, 30 years. He’s owned by him. That’s what this is.”
Brzezinski voiced her agreement with irresponsible and unsubstantiated attack: “Oh, my lord....Yeah.”


Deutsch continued his tirade unchallenged:
You talk to any banker in New York, any business person in New York, any real estate person in New York, we have a president that’s selling out our military, that’s costing lives because he is owned by our geopolitical enemy because he’s been laundering money for him as a criminal organization for the last 30 years. That will come out in time.
Co-host Joe Scarborough seemed to offer a small dose of sanity in response: “That is – that is speculation and only speculation right now.” However, he quickly added: “I will say that it is speculation among New York bankers who have loaned Donald Trump money in the past and who have been following his business career for 30, 40 years.” Brzezinski chimed in: “Who know a lot.”
Scarborough then launched into his own conspiracy theory:
But I think we all will be absolutely fascinated when we finally figure out what Vladimir Putin has on Donald Trump and why Donald Trump has surrendered the Middle East, helped ISIS, helped Iran, helped Russia, helped Turkey, helped all of our enemies and betrayed all of our allies. You know, a lot of people think that it’s – he has compromising pictures or something happened in a hotel in Russia years ago. No. It goes back to money. It’s always about money.
He concluded the unhinged discussion by asserting: “And this president is selling not only America, but its most important allies, down the river for money he wants to make either while in office or when he leaves office, period, end of story.”
It’s never enough for the liberal media to simply express a policy disagreement with Trump and say that the U.S. abandoning its Kurdish allies in northern Syria would have a negative outcome. Instead, journalists and pundits must always try to outdo each other to make the most outrageous declarations imaginable to prove their bona fides as members of the resistance.
Here is a full transcript of the October 24 exchange:
6:48 AM ET
DONNY DEUTSCH: Make no mistake, because it’s easy to forget. Let’s not forget it. This is all about failed casinos. He is owned by Putin...


FORMER ATTORNEY GENERAL JEFF SESSIONS WARNS PELOSI'S IMPEACHMENT BAD FOR REPUBLIC - BUT IS IT WORSE THAN WHAT TRUMP AND HIS FAMILY OF PARASITES ARE DOING TO US? - “Our entire crony capitalist system, Democrat and Republican alike, has become a kleptocracy approaching par with third-world hell-holes. This is the way a great country is raided by its elite.” --- Karen McQuillan

Exclusive – Jeff Sessions: Democrats’ Impeachment Efforts Against Donald Trump ‘Dangerous for the Republic’
WASHINGTON, DC - OCTOBER 26: Attorney General Jeff Sessions speaks at a press conference about the apprehension of a suspect in the recent spate of mail bombings at the Department of Justice on October 26, 2018 in Washington, DC. Authorities arrested Cesar Sayoc in the attacks which targeted prominent Democrats …
Aaron P. Bernstein/Getty Images
5:10

Former U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who is running for his old U.S. Senate seat in Alabama in next year’s Senate election, is sounding the alarm that the Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives pursuing impeachment of President Donald Trump are “dangerous” for the United States of America.

In an exclusive in-person interview during a trip to Washington, DC, Sessions told Breitbart News that the Democrats do not have—and have not presented—evidence of an impeachable offense against Trump at this stage. He said they are abusing their power by pursuing impeachment, and that the American people should be concerned with the Democrats’ behavior in this matter.
“We’re going to see as it goes forward, but it looks to me that it’s not close to an impeachable offense,” Sessions said. “It’s an abuse of impeachment. It’s dangerous for the republic. The Constitution says that impeachment requires a conviction for treason, bribery, high crimes, and misdemeanors. They’ve not even been able to articulate a crime. The Department of Justice has, I believe, rejected the idea that this could amount to bribery, which some of them are trying to say because they have nothing else to say.”
Sessions pointed to both George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley and former special prosecutor Ken Starr, who both criticized the Democrats’ impeachment inquiry.



Former independent counsel Ken Starr, who led the impeachment of Bill Clinton, on today's impeachment hearing: “no hope for impeachment” and “no crime was proven today”



“Professor Jonathan Turley, a law professor, said this is the narrowest basis for impeachment in the history of the country,” said Sessions. “Ken Starr said last night, he was a former federal judge and did the Clinton impeachment, Ken Starr says the telephone call is a subject for oversight not impeachment. If Congress is not happy, they can conduct oversight and highlight what they disagree with. But you don’t impeach a president because you disagree with him on something.”
Sessions also called on the American public to pressure Democrat members of the House of Representatives on this front, adding that he does not think it is impossible that Democrats may abandon their impeachment plans altogether.
“I don’t think it’s impossible, and I think we should demand—the American people should demand that the Democrats in the House consider the importance of this issue and not vote for impeachment unless they have a clear, strong basis for it,” Sessions said. “They should be criticized and held to account if they do it for political reasons.”
Sessions also pointed to the vote Democrats called two weeks ago formalizing their impeachment inquiry demonstrates this is “totally partisan” as only Democrats voted for the impeachment inquiry pushed by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), but all Republicans were unified and joined by two Democrats for the bipartisan opposition to the impeachment effort. In so doing as they pursue their partisan impeachment inquiry, Sessions told Breitbart News, Democrats have abandoned attempting to solve problems that Americans care about on major issues, including trade and immigration, but also all other issues.
“It’s totally partisan at this point,” Sessions said. “But I think the American people need to start talking to their Democratic representatives and say, ‘Don’t you vote for this for political reasons, don’t vote for this because you don’t like President Trump.’ If you do this without a firm legal basis, if you vote to impeach the president making the Senate now—the whole Senate—spend weeks dealing with this issue instead of the great issues facing America, they are not going to return a conviction it seems to me. I think they need to be held to account for that. Every member of Congress swears to uphold the Constitution. And the Constitution sets limits on what you can impeach somebody on. I always liked Gerald Ford but how does he get to amend the Constitution and say you can impeach a president for anything Congress chooses? That’s not so. The Constitution sets out serious offenses have to be proven before you can impeach somebody. So I think good and decent people in the country ought to be troubled by how this is going.”
Sessions concluded by noting that this is a “show trial” against Trump, and the Democrats seem to have already made up their minds.
“I’ve called it a ‘show trial,’” Sessions said. “A show trial is when you decide you want to destroy somebody and then you have a spectacle of a trial to destroy them. But the decision is made before you start the trial, and I’m afraid that’s where we are.”
This part of the interview, where Sessions addressed impeachment, is but a small part of a much larger exclusive interview he gave to Breitbart News on Thursday morning. More, particularly his views on how he plans to again work with Trump on immigration and trade policy for the United States, is forthcoming.
Sessions just over a week ago launched a bid to run for his old U.S. Senate seat in Alabama, the seat he gave up to serve as Trump’s first attorney general. Upon his entry into the race, Sessions vaulted to the top of the polling in the GOP primary field, taking a double-digit lead over the next-closest competitor.

2020 Alabama Senate - Republican Primary:
Jeff Sessions 36%
Tommy Tuberville 23%
Bradley Byrne 11%
Roy Moore 11%
John Merrill 6%
Arnold Mooney 2%
Undecided 12%@WPAIntel/@club4growth 10/29-31https://www.aldailynews.com/sessions-announces-run-for-his-former-senate-seat/ 



Sessions has launched a pair of ads at the outset of his campaign, including a new one late this week, showing his allegiance to Trump and the president’s agenda. He has also appeared on Fox News programs Tucker Carlson Tonight with Tucker Carlson and Ingraham Angle with Laura Ingraham.
The latest one shows Sessions in a red Make America Great Again hat and includes footage from the rally at which Sessions was the first U.S. senator to endorse Trump in 2016:
The other one, included in the Carlson interview, includes Sessions speaking directly into the camera noting that he has been loyal to Trump even after he left government and has not done what some other former officials have in trying to hurt the president upon leaving office with books:
Trump has said he intends to remain neutral in the race, and will not campaign against Sessions. Assuming Sessions prevails in the primary in the spring, he would face off against Democrat incumbent Sen. Doug Jones (D-AL) in the general election in November.



Kushner, Inc.: Greed. Ambition. Corruption. The Extraordinary Story of Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump Hardcover – March 19, 2019
·         Hardcover: 304 pages
·         Publisher: St. Martin's Press (March 19, 2019)
·         Language: English
·         ISBN-10: 1250185947
·         ISBN-13: 978-1250185945

 

Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump are the self-styled Prince and Princess of America. Their swift, gilded rise to extraordinary power in Donald Trump’s White House is unprecedented and dangerous. In Kushner, Inc., investigative journalist Vicky Ward digs beneath the myth the couple has created, depicting themselves as the voices of reason in an otherwise crazy presidency, and reveals that Jared and Ivanka are not just the President’s chief enablers: they, like him, appear disdainful of rules, of laws, and of ethics. They are entitled inheritors of the worst kind; their combination of ignorance, arrogance, and an insatiable lust for power has caused havoc all over the world, and may threaten the democracy of the United States.
Ward follows their trajectory from New Jersey and New York City to the White House, where the couple’s many forays into policy-making and national security have mocked long-standing U.S. policy and protocol. They have pursued an agenda that could increase their wealth while their actions have mostly gone unchecked. In Kushner, Inc., Ward holds Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump accountable: she unveils the couple’s self-serving transactional motivations and how those have propelled them into the highest levels of the US government where no one, the President included, has been able to stop them.


“Our entire crony capitalist system, Democrat  and Republican alike, has become a kleptocracy approaching par with third-world hell-holes. This is the way a great country is raided by its elite.” --- Karen McQuillan  

President Donald Trump speaks to the press before departing the White House in Washington on Nov. 8, 2019. (Nicholas Kamm/AFP via Getty Images)



Trump: New York AG ‘Deliberately Mischaracterizing’ $2 Million Settlement ‘For Political Purposes’

1 CommentsNovember 8, 2019 Updated: November 8, 2019
Share
President Donald Trump accused New York Attorney General Letitia James of “deliberately mischaracterizing” the details of a $2 million settlement reached on Thursday.
New York Judge Saliann Scarpulla ruled that Trump must pay $2 million as part of a settlement he, the Trump Foundation, and James’s office reached in a lawsuit alleging Trump misused his charitable foundation during the 2016 campaign.
Scarpulla said Trump let his campaign hold a foundation fundraiser in January 2016 and used it “to further Mr. Trump’s political campaign.”
The foundation received $2.8 million from the fundraiser and the money “did ultimately reach their intended destinations, i.e., charitable organizations supporting veterans,” Scarpulla ruled.
Instead of the entire $2.8 million that James’s office pushed for, Scarpulla ordered Trump to pay $2 million. She also declined a statutory penalty of $5.2 million that James’s office wanted the president to pay.
James celebrated the ruling on Wednesday.
“We’ve secured a court order forcing President Trump to pay $2M in damages after admitting to illegally using the Trump Foundation to help him intervene in the 2016 presidential election and further his own political interests. No one is above the law,” she said in a statement.
In another statement, she wrote, “The court’s decision, together with the settlements we negotiated, are a major victory in our efforts to protect charitable assets and hold accountable those who would abuse charities for personal gain. My office will continue to fight for accountability because no one is above the law—not a businessman, not a candidate for office, and not even the President of the United States.” 

Scarborough then launched into his own conspiracy theory:
But I think we all will be absolutely fascinated when we finally figure out what Vladimir Putin has on Donald Trump and why Donald Trump has surrendered the Middle East, helped ISIS, helped Iran, helped Russia, helped Turkey, helped all of our enemies and betrayed all of our allies. You know, a lot of people think that it’s – he has compromising pictures or something happened in a hotel in Russia years ago. No. It goes back to money. It’s always about money.

GET THIS BOOK!



BULLSHIT! TRUMP AND HIS PARASITE CHILDREN 

HAVE SCREWED EVERY CONTRACTOR AND PERSON 

THEY’VE DONE BUSINESS WITH FROM DAY ONE!



Eric Trump on paying contractors: We pay ‘people when they do great jobs’


The Trump Organization has been criticized for stiffing contractors. Contractors have filed hundreds of complaints, which date back to the 1980s, alleging that the real estate company did not pay them.
“We believe in paying people when they do great jobs. And we get people paid incredibly quickly. And we pay contractors,” said Eric Trump, executive vice president of The Trump Organization at Yahoo Finance’s All Market Summit, adding that the organization only refuses to pay contractors who fail to complete a job.
“Yeah, well, they [the unpaid contractors] didn't finish a job. And they didn't do a good job. And they flaked out. And they were two months behind schedule. And so you had to let go of them. And you had to bring somebody else in to do the job that they otherwise would have. And it's called the real world,” he said, referring to the allegations. “People like to take cheap shots at us.”

Opinion: Trump’s emoluments transgressions don’t stop with the Doral fiasco

By NORMAN J. ORNSTEIN

When the White House announced that Donald Trump would host the 2020 Group of Seven meeting at his Doral golf resort in Florida — an in-your-face bit of self-dealing and a blatant violation of the Constitution’s foreign emoluments clause — Republicans and Democrats howled. Reporters had only just begun to tally the ways awarding himself a government contract could enrich Trump and the Trump Organization when the president backed down, but not before he publicly decried the “phony” emoluments clause.
The Doral reversal dimmed the spotlight on emoluments, but that should not lead us to drop the focus on the rest of Trump’s self-dealing and conflicts of interest. For strategic reasons, the House of Representatives may not include emoluments transgressions among potential impeachment charges. Nonetheless, the number of Trump’s violations are staggering, and growing by the day.
There are two separate emoluments sections in the Constitution; neither are phony, and both reflect the deep concern the Framers had about possible corruption in the highest offices in the land.
“Emoluments” are anything of value. The first constitutional clause, forbidding any officer of the United States from taking “any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever” from a foreign government, is in Article I. It has no loopholes; the Framers feared that a rich foreign government could influence or sway American policy by giving something of value to a policy-maker. It is not limited to the president or vice president, but to all holding an office of trust in the U.S. government.
The second emoluments clause is in Article II and is limited to the president. It reads, “The President shall, at stated Times, receive for his Services, a Compensation, which shall neither be increased nor diminished during the Period for which he shall have been elected, and he shall not receive within that Period any other Emolument from the United States, or any of them.” Here, the fear was that Congress could shake down the president by withholding his salary or bribe him by increasing it, and that a president could use the leverage of his office with states or the federal government to enrich himself.
We have never had occasion in our history to be deeply concerned about violations of these constitutional clauses. Most previous presidents have scrupulously adhered to them in spirit and letter. Jimmy Carter, to pick one example, put his peanut farm in a blind trust to avoid any appearance of conflict or attempt to profit via his office.
Trump, whose chief of staff on Sunday said the president still thought of himself as an innkeeper, has kept ownership of all his properties and has lied about not participating in their operations. He pushed officials at the General Services Administration to allow him to keep his federal lease for his Washington hotel while pressuring the District of Columbia to lower his property taxes. Trump’s daughter, Ivanka, holding an office in his administration, has taken valuable trademarks, including, staggeringly, one on voting machines, from China. Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, holding an office of trust in the administration, has promoted Trump and Kushner properties and solicited loans from foreign governments.
In other words, the president is unique in his corruption in American history. The watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington has regularly compiled a tally of Trump’s conflicts of interest and violations of the emoluments clauses. The latest numbers are stark: 1,493 trips to Trump properties by government officials, usually spending taxpayer money that will enrich the president; 292 promotions of Trump properties by White House officials; 63 foreign trademarks awarded to Trump brands, mostly from China and Brazil, while he has been president.
The president himself had made 387 trips to his properties, 240 of them to play golf. He regularly does semi-official infomercials for his properties, and he’s told couples considering staging a wedding reception at Mar-a-Lago in Florida or the Trump country club in Bedminster, N.H., that, if they do, he might be available for a photo op. He famously doubled the initiation fee at Mar-a-Lago, to $200,000, when he became president, enabling foreign figures (and others) to gain entrĂ©e to the president for a price his businesses collect.
The message has been received: Foreign governments, including Romania, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, moved events from other venues to Trump properties, and foreign countries or other foreign-connected entities have held 13 events at his properties, surely enriching him along the way. (He claims profits from foreigners are repaid to the Treasury; without his tax records, this can’t be checked). One hundred and twenty-one foreign officials from 71 foreign governments have visited his properties; lobbyists of all stripes have scheduled events there. Trump has openly talked about his ventures in places like Saudi Arabia and Turkey even as he has bent American foreign policy in ways that benefit those countries’ autocrats.
The president likes to pretend that there is no such thing as a conflict of interest, that his actions are ”perfect” and “innocent.” But we should not let his lies obscure what are ongoing, direct and outrageous abuses of the Constitution for financial gain by the president and his cronies. The House impeachment hearings are concentrating on other abuses of power, but there is no doubt our Framers would see the emoluments violations as a long series of impeachable and unconscionable offenses.
Norman J. Ornstein is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. His latest book, with Thomas E. Mann and E.J. Dionne Jr., is “One Nation After Trump: A Guide for the Perplexed, the Disillusioned, the Desperate and the Not-Yet-Deported.”

Eric Trump’s defense echoes his father’s status quo response.
During the 2016 presidential debate, President Donald Trump said something very similar. “Maybe he didn’t do a good job and I was unsatisfied with his work,” he said in response to nonpayment accusations.
Eric Trump also noted to Yahoo Finance that The Trump Organization has developed institutional knowledge about getting the best deals with contractors. “In New York, we know what contractors are going to be incredible, what contractors are going to — I won't use a word, but — take advantage of you,” he said. “And, you know, you have that institutional knowledge. You know your way around. You know the language. You know the laws. You know how things are built. You know what kind of foundations work in the ground.”

 ANN COULTER



TRUMP’S PARASITIC FAMILY
 Jared’s BFF, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS), and the crown prince of Abu Dhabi, Muhammad bin Zayed (MBZ), refer to Jared as “the clown prince.” Bone-cutter MBS assured those around him that he had Jared “in my pocket.” 

Following meetings at the White House and also with the Kushners over their 666 Fifth Avenue property, former Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim reported back to the emir that “the people atop the new administration were heavily motivated by personal financial interest.” 

“Truthfully, It Is Tough To Ignore Some Of The Gross Immoral Behavior By The President” WASHINGTON POST

 

Trump's sister quits as a federal judge 10 days into formal probe of her possible role in massive family tax scam that could have ended in her impeachment


·          Trump's older sister resigned as an appellate court judge shortly after a probe opened into her involvement in a family tax scheme
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·         10 days ago an investigation into whether Maryanne Trump Barry violated judicial conduct rules launched
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·         The case was closed after Barry resigned because retired judges are not subject to the rules
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·         Barry had not heard a case in two years after transitioning to inactive shortly after Trump's inauguration 
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·         The Trump siblings were probed after an investigation found they were involved in a tax scheme related to the transfer of their father's real estate empire 





President Donald Trump’s older sister Maryanne Trump Barry, 82, retired as a federal judge just days after an investigation opened into her possible role in family tax fraud scheme.

Barry was a federal appellate judge in the third district, which includes Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware, and the investigation could have led to her impeachment.

She had not presided over a case in more than two years, but was still listed as an inactive senior judge in the third district – usually the step taken before full retirement.

Barry did not give any reasons for her retirement. 

The probe into the Trumps was first opened last fall, after a New York Times investigation found the Trump siblings engaged in tax schemes in the 1990s, including fraud, that increased their inherited wealth.
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Maryanne Trump Barry resigned as a federal appellate judge 10 days into an investigation into whether she violated judicial conduct rules

An investigation into the Trump siblings opened after the New York Times reported that they transferred their father's real estate assets improperly in the 1990s 
PRESIDENT of the UNITED STATES DONALD TRUMP: Pathological liar, swindler, con man, huckster, golfing cheat, charity foundation fraudster, tax evader, adulterer, porn whore chaser and servant of the Saudis dictators
THE TRUMP FAMILY FOUNDATION SLUSH FUND…. Will they see jail?
VISUALIZE REVOLUTION!.... We know where they live!
“Underwood is a Democrat and is seeking millions of dollars in penalties. She wants Trump and his eldest children barred from running other charities.”

WHO IS FINANCING ALL THE TRUMP AND SON-IN-LAW’S REFINANCING SCAMS???
FOLLOW THE MONEY!
"I doubt that Trump understands -- or cares about -- what message he's sending. Wealthy Saudis, including members of the extended royal family, have been his patrons for years, buying his distressed properties when he needed money. In the early 1990s, a Saudi prince purchased Trump's flashy yacht so that the then-struggling businessman could come up with cash to stave off personal bankruptcy, and later, the prince bought a share of the Plaza Hotel, one of Trump's many business deals gone bad. Trump also sold an entire floor of his landmark Trump Tower condominium to the Saudi government in 2001."

“The Wahhabis finance thousands of madrassahs 

throughout the world where young boys are 

brainwashed into becoming fanatical foot-soldiers 

for the petrodollar-flush Saudis and other emirs of 

the Persian Gulf.” AMIL IMANI

  I recommend that Ignatius read Raymond Ibrahim's outstanding book Sword and Scimitar, which contains accounts of dynastic succession in the Muslim monarchies of the Middle East, where standard operating procedure for a new monarch on the death of his father was to strangle all his brothers.  Yes, it's awful.  But it has been happening for a very long time.  And it's not going to change quickly, no matter how outraged we pretend to be. MONICA SHOWALTER

WHAT WILL TRUMP AND HIS PARASITIC FAMILY DO FOR MONEY???

JUST ASK THE SAUDIS!

JOHN DEAN: Not so far. This has been right by the letter of the special counsel’s charter. He’s released the document. What I’m looking for is relief and understanding that there’s no witting or unwitting likelihood that the President is an agent of Russia. That’s when I’ll feel comfortable, and no evidence even hints at that. We don’t have that yet. We’re still in the process of unfolding the report to look at it. And its, as I say, if [Attornery General William Barr] honors his word, we’ll know more soon.

Morning Joe: Trump Is ‘Owned by Putin,’ Head of ‘Criminal Organization’

Listen to the Article!


By Kyle Drennen |
Following a discussion of President Trump’s decision to withdraw U.S. troops from Syria, on Thursday, MSNBC’s Morning Joe went far beyond standard criticism of the controversial foreign policy move and wildly claimed it was proof that Trump was “owned by Putin” and heading up a “criminal organization” that had been “laundering money” for the Russian autocrat for decades.
As the 6:00 a.m. ET hour segment about Syria was wrapping up and co-host Mika Brzezinski was starting to go to a commercial break, left-wing pundit Donny Deutsch interrupted to squeeze in an unfounded conspiratorial rant in which he accused the President of multiple crimes: “Let’s not forget it. This is all about failed casinos. He is owned by Putin because he’s been laundering money, Russian money for the last 20, 30 years. He’s owned by him. That’s what this is.”
Brzezinski voiced her agreement with irresponsible and unsubstantiated attack: “Oh, my lord....Yeah.”


Deutsch continued his tirade unchallenged:
You talk to any banker in New York, any business person in New York, any real estate person in New York, we have a president that’s selling out our military, that’s costing lives because he is owned by our geopolitical enemy because he’s been laundering money for him as a criminal organization for the last 30 years. That will come out in time.
Co-host Joe Scarborough seemed to offer a small dose of sanity in response: “That is – that is speculation and only speculation right now.” However, he quickly added: “I will say that it is speculation among New York bankers who have loaned Donald Trump money in the past and who have been following his business career for 30, 40 years.” Brzezinski chimed in: “Who know a lot.”
Scarborough then launched into his own conspiracy theory:
But I think we all will be absolutely fascinated when we finally figure out what Vladimir Putin has on Donald Trump and why Donald Trump has surrendered the Middle East, helped ISIS, helped Iran, helped Russia, helped Turkey, helped all of our enemies and betrayed all of our allies. You know, a lot of people think that it’s – he has compromising pictures or something happened in a hotel in Russia years ago. No. It goes back to money. It’s always about money.
He concluded the unhinged discussion by asserting: “And this president is selling not only America, but its most important allies, down the river for money he wants to make either while in office or when he leaves office, period, end of story.”
It’s never enough for the liberal media to simply express a policy disagreement with Trump and say that the U.S. abandoning its Kurdish allies in northern Syria would have a negative outcome. Instead, journalists and pundits must always try to outdo each other to make the most outrageous declarations imaginable to prove their bona fides as members of the resistance.
Here is a full transcript of the October 24 exchange:
6:48 AM ET
DONNY DEUTSCH: Make no mistake, because it’s easy to forget. Let’s not forget it. This is all about failed casinos. He is owned by Putin...