Trump Is Surrounded by Criminals
https://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2019/11/the-fall-of-donald-trump-final-days.html
“The legal ring surrounding Trump is collectively producing a historic indictment of his endemic corruption and criminality.” JONATHAN CHAIT
Trump leaves office facing mounting debt, devalued assets and scarcity of willing lenders
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NTNQUOOznG
Noam Chomsky: Where the Left Goes After Trump (2021 Interview)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Huy82PVaCzs
Starting with Trump, It’s Time for a White Collar Crime Crackdown
This week, a federal judge slammed Bill Barr over the Mueller investigation. Hopefully, Merrick Garland’s Justice Department will stay on Barr and give financial crimes the attention they deserve.
May 6, 2021
Attorney General Merrick Garland speaks about a jury's verdict in the case against former Minneapolis Police Officer Derek Chauvin in the death of George Floyd, at the Department of Justice, Wednesday, April 21, 2021, in Washington. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik, Pool)
This week, Judge Amy Berman Jackson delivered a significant victory to anticorruption advocates. The federal judge ordered the Department of Justice to hand over the March 24, 2019 memo that former Attorney General William Barr claimed to have relied on when he decided not to criminally charge then-President Donald Trump with obstructing the Mueller Investigation. In a fair, but brutal dressing down of Bill Barr, Judge Jackson confirmed our worst suspicions, that the fix had been in to clear Trump. “The fact that he would not be prosecuted was a given,” she wrote.
Now, Attorney General Merrick Garland is at an inflection point. He will either deliver this internal memo from the Barr Justice Department to the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), the watchdog group who brought the original Freedom of Information Act Request, or he can appeal Judge Jackson’s decision. The direction Garland takes here has huge implications, not just for this case, or for public corruption, but more broadly for addressing our current white collar crime epidemic. Here’s why.
No one is supposed to be above the law. But during Donald Trump’s presidency, we were more likely to witness a White, wealthy, and well-connected felon pardoned than perp-walked. This was, perhaps, a piece of Trump’s kinship if not admiration for these elite grifters.
By the end of just the first two years of the Trump administration, federal white collar criminal enforcement was at an all-time low. We saw at least a 26 percent decline in the number of these defendants prosecuted since the Obama era, according to the Department of Justice. Also, criminal investigations by the I.R.S. for tax evasion, money laundering, and identity theft fell by 36 percent. How big is our white collar crime problem? While the F.B.I. pegs street-level “property” crimes including burglary, larceny, and theft nationwide at around $16 billion annually, there is no equivalent F.B.I. figures published on white collar crime. Scholars have tallied the cost to be at least $800 billion.
There is no official count of the number of suspects, convicts, victims, or total dollars involved, and there is not even a uniform definition of what qualifies as “white collar crime.” Though, Edwin Sutherland, the sociologist who coined the expression in 1939 to mean “a crime committed by a person of high social status and respectability in the course of his occupation,” today we typically define it by the nature of the offense, not the status of the offender.
What makes determining the white collar crime numbers additionally challenging is that the numbers change depending on who is adding them up. When reporting data to the F.B.I., state and local law enforcement can include behavior that would not seem to fit the bill, such as the arrest of a low-income suspect for writing a bad check or committing welfare fraud as white collar crime. Tracking at the federal level is equally tough. The 93 U.S. Attorneys’ offices annually report prosecutions organized by category. What is included has changed, creating an apples-to-oranges problem for those making comparisons over time. As an illustration, back in 1992, the annual report listed within its section on white collar crime: money laundering, official corruption, procurement fraud, and environmental, health and safety offenses. Today, those are tallied under different headings.
Despite this numerical opacity, we are in the midst of a prosecution crisis or rather a nonprosecution one, according to many experts. So, what can be done? Quite a lot, actually.
First, the Justice Department must pursue the obstruction case against Donald Trump. Volume II of the Mueller Report provided detailed, persuasive arguments that Trump committed criminal obstruction on several occasions. To ignore this evidence simply due to his status as a former president would further the public’s suspicion that the most powerful are above the law. If the DOJ wins a conviction, they can deal with the problems of incarcerating a former president later. What they should not do, is simply fail to prosecute because the this is unprecedented territory.
A Trump prosecution should be thought of as under the white collar crime umbrella using both Sutherland’s 1939 status-based definition and the more modern offense-based understanding. As for status, Trump occupied the highest office in the nation, if not the world. And, as for the nature of the offense, the obstruction-of-justice statutes are often used by federal prosecutors against defendants in complex fraud investigations. It’s the lying not the underlying crime that often is prosecuted. As one example, Martha Stewart was never charged with securities fraud. Instead, she was indicted for and found guilty of obstructing an agency proceeding and making false statements to investigators looking into her suspicious stock trading.
Second, President Biden should provide clear direction that cracking down on white collar crime is a priority. Tone from the top matters. After the Savings and Loan Crisis of the 1980s, President George H.W. Bush said, “We will not rest until the cheats, the chiselers and the charlatans spend a large chunk of their lives behind bars in prison.” He backed this rhetoric with resources. An interagency group was set up to target the biggest offenders. Plus, he sought new legislation from Congress to increase funding and laws to sharpen tools to investigate bank fraud, including the use of wiretaps. By his third year in office, federal prosecutors had charged more than 1,000 and secured convictions of more than 900 individuals involved in significant S&L fraud.
Similarly, during the George W. Bush administration, between mid-2002 and early 2006, the Justice Department, secured convictions of more than 1,000 individuals involved in corporate fraud cases, including eighty-two CEOs, eighty-five corporate presidents, thirty-six chief financial officers, and fourteen chief operating officers. The posterchild of these prosecutions was Enron, the once high-flying, energy innovator with a $70 billion market capitalization that came crashing down when accounting fraud surfaced. Big talk matched with big resources, delivered big results.
There are promising signs that President Biden is similarly setting the right tone. In his joint address to Congress on the eve of his 100th day in office, he promised, “The I.R.S will crack down on millionaires and billionaires who cheat on their taxes. That’s estimated to be billions of dollars.” This month the I.R.S. commissioner testified that the annual tax gap (the difference between what the I.R.S. is owed and what it’s actually collecting) is now nearly $1 trillion a year, most of which he said is due to tax evasion by the high-earners and large corporations. Importantly, President Biden is asking Congress to put our money where his mouth is, seeking additional I.R.S. funding of $80 billion over ten years toward this priority.
Third, Attorney General Merrick Garland should make individual accountability a reality, not just words on paper. When a large business enterprise is caught up in federal criminal activity, the trend has been to allow the enterprise to enter what’s called a deferred prosecution agreement or nonprosecution agreement to avoid the expense, embarrassment, and uncertainty of indictment or trial. The company pays some amount in penalties and fines, sometimes submits to an independent monitor, and within a few years is cleared. The vast majority of the time, no real people inside the organization face any criminal consequences.
Duke University Law School professor Brandon Garrett has calculated, individuals were charged alongside just 27 percent of the 497 of these agreements with organizations between 2001 and 2018. And high-level executives even more rarely. This must change. Similar to my recommendation in Big Dirty Money for an elite crime division, Garrett recommends an independent corporate prosecution function with Main Justice and key regional offices. This new unit should also get a handle on data reporting problem.
Garland has the right team in place to make this happen. His number two in command is Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco. While on the Enron Task Force, she helped convict several former executives on an assortment of wire fraud and conspiracy charges.
Of course, President Biden must stay independent of any investigation touching on the former president. However, that recusal should not make either pursuing Trump or cracking down on white collar crime any less of a priority. The ongoing criminal investigations of Trump in New York County for insurance and bank fraud, and in Fulton County, Georgia for election interference should not absolve the U.S. Department of Justice from following the facts where they lead, even if they lead them to the former occupant of the Oval Office.
House GOP Elects Trump Defender Elise Stefanik to No. 3 Post
WASHINGTON (AP) — Republicans vaulted Rep. Elise Stefanik into the ranks of House leadership Friday, electing an ardent Donald Trump defender in hopes of calming their searing civil war over the deposed Rep. Liz Cheney’s unremitting combat with the former president.
Stefanik, R-N.Y., a moderate turned Trump loyalist who’s given voice to many of his false claims about election fraud, was elected as expected to the No. 3 post that Cheney, R-Wyo., held for over two years.
Backed by Trump and the House’s top two Republicans, Stefanik defeated challenger Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, by 134-46 in a secret ballot vote conducted behind closed doors. A member of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, Roy was a prohibitive long shot whose candidacy seemed a signal to GOP leaders that hard-right Republicans expect a robust voice moving forward.
Stefanik, 36, gives Republicans a chance to try changing the subject from the acrimonious fight over the defiant Cheney by installing a Trump loyalist — and one of the party’s relative handful of women in Congress — in a visible role.
But GOP schisms are unlikely to vanish quickly. Many hard-right conservatives have misgivings about Stefanik’s centrist voting record, and tensions remain raw over Trump’s taut hold on the party and Cheney’s rancorous ouster.
THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. AP’s earlier story follows below.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Republicans are ready to vault Rep. Elise Stefanik into the ranks of House leadership, with the party hoping to turn the page from its searing civil war over the deposed Rep. Liz Cheney and refocus on winning control of the chamber in next year’s elections.
Stefanik, R-N.Y., a moderate turned avid defender of former President Donald Trump and his unfounded claims of 2020 election fraud, was widely expected to be elected Friday as the No. 3 House GOP leader.
She’d replace Cheney, R-Wyo., who was ousted this week for repeatedly rebuking Trump for encouraging supporters who attacked the Capitol on Jan. 6 and for his lie that his 2020 reelection was stolen from him by fraudulent voting.
Stefanik, 36, gives Republicans a chance to try changing the subject from the acrimonious fight over the defiant Cheney by installing a Trump loyalist — and one of the party’s relative handful of women in Congress — in a visible role.
But GOP schisms are unlikely to vanish quickly. Many hard-right conservatives have misgivings about Stefanik’s centrist voting record, and tensions remain raw over Trump’s taut hold on the party and Cheney’s rancorous ouster.
“We are unified at making sure that we win the majority, and that we focus on the damage that the Biden-Pelosi agenda is doing across America,” Stefanik told reporters Thursday, amplifying her argument that she’d be an aggressive messenger for her party. She called Trump “the most important leader in our party for voters” and said she was strongly positioned to win.
Stefanik got an early start lining up votes to succeed Cheney, a decisive factor in leadership races. Crucially, she’s also backed by Trump and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., plus two of the House’s most influential conservatives: No. 2 House GOP leader Steve Scalise of Louisiana and Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio.
One of the House’s most conservative members, Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, told reporters he would run against Stefanik. He’s a prohibitive long shot, but his candidacy signals to leaders that hard-right Republicans expect a robust voice moving forward.
“Always healthy to have debate,” McCarthy said when asked about a potential Stefanik challenger. He spoke a day after he successfully helped dump Cheney from party leadership for refusing to stifle her differences with Trump.
Cheney, a daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney and an ambitious GOP force in her own right, was among 10 House Republicans who voted this year to impeach Trump for inciting the Capitol riot. Since then, she’s battled Trump often and many Republicans ultimately turned against her, arguing that the dispute was a damaging distraction.
Even so, Cheney is not going away. She’s said she’ll remain in Congress, run for reelection and actively work to derail Trump if he seeks a White House return in 2024.
Stefanik has told colleagues she’d serve in the leadership job only through next year, according to a GOP lawmaker and an aide who spoke on condition of anonymity last week to discuss internal conversations. After that, she’d take the top GOP spot on the House Education and Labor Committee, which some consider a more powerful position because it can produce legislation on important issues.
Stefanik is a four-term lawmaker from an upstate New York district that in the past four presidential elections backed both Trump and Barack Obama twice. She was a Trump critic during his 2016 campaign, calling his videotaped comments on sexually assaulting women “just wrong” and at times avoiding stating his name, local news reports said.
Her voting record is among the most moderate of all House Republicans’, according to conservative groups’ ratings. She opposed Trump’s marquee 2017 tax cuts and his efforts to divert budget funds to build a wall along the Mexican border.
She hurtled to GOP prominence — and Trump’s attention — by defending him in 2019 during his first impeachment over his efforts to pressure Ukraine to produce political dirt on Joe Biden, a Democratic presidential contender at the time.
She has remained a Trump booster and joined him in casting doubt on the validity of the 2020 election, despite findings by judges and local officials that there was no evidence of widespread fraud. Hours after the Capitol attack, she voted against formally approving Pennsylvania’s state-certified electoral votes.
Roy said Thursday on “The Mark Davis Show,” a Dallas-based conservative talk show, that Stefanik was too moderate and should be challenged from the right. He also conceded there was a “big likelihood” Stefanik would win.
Trump reiterated his support for Stefanik on Thursday and said in a statement that Roy “has not done a great job” and would likely lose the GOP primary for his seat next year.
Roy ran afoul of Trump in January when he voted to formally certify Trump’s Electoral College defeat, saying the Constitution left “no authority for Congress” to overrule states’ handling of the election.
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