New York Times alleges Trump instructed his chief of staff John Kelly to have the IRS investigate his political enemies
Conservatives rightly loathe the targeting of political enemies of the Democrats by the Internal Revenue Service, and now greatly fear the vastly expanded (and well-armed) IRS that the Biden Administration has authorized. But just as Republicans are beginning to talk about defunding the IRS expansion that was funded in the laughably mislabeled “Inflation Reduction Act,” the New York Times has published this counterpropaganda:
While in office, President Donald J. Trump repeatedly told John F. Kelly, his second White House chief of staff, that he wanted a number of his perceived political enemies to be investigated by the Internal Revenue Service, Mr. Kelly said.
Mr. Kelly, who was chief of staff from July 2017 through the end of 2018, said in response to questions from The New York Times that Mr. Trump’s demands were part of a broader pattern of him trying to use the Justice Department and his authority as president against people who had been critical of him, including seeking to revoke the security clearances of former top intelligence officials.
Mr. Kelly said that among those Mr. Trump said “we ought to investigate” and “get the I.R.S. on” were the former F.B.I. director James B. Comey and his deputy, Andrew G. McCabe. His account of Mr. Trump’s desires to use the I.R.S. against his foes comes after the revelation by The Times this summer that Mr. Comey and Mr. McCabe had both been selected for a rare and highly intrusive audit by the tax agency in the years after Mr. Kelly left the White House.
Yes, it would be wrong for President Trump to have used the IRS as a political tool in this way if Kelly’s charges are accurate. But, with a highly politicized federal bureaucracy acting as a weapon for the Democrat party, we can expect more actions like those of Lois Lerner, who blocked tax exempt status for nonprofits regarded as a threat to Democrats and who suffered no penalty for her actions beyond voluntary retirement and a reportedly six figure retirement pay package.
Speaking to the Restoration Weekend, Victor Davis Hanson made the point that Republicans are expected to follow the Marquess of Queensberry rules while Democrats are able to fight dirty all they want with no media or political pushback. It is an asymmetric system of political combat, and one that yields defeat for our side more often than not.
There is no shortage of examples of IRS abuse of political targeting, mostly by Democrat presidents, but oddly enough, it is the Republicans who receive political flak for this tactic. Trump is only the latest example.
President Franklin Roosevelt used the IRS to harass newspaper publishers who were opposed to the New Deal (snip)
Perhaps Roosevelt's most pernicious tax skulduggery occurred in 1944. He spiked an IRS audit of illegal campaign contributions made by a government contractor to Congressman Lyndon Johnson, whose career might have been derailed if Texans had learned of the scandal.
President John F. Kennedy raised the political exploitation of the IRS to an art form. (snip)
After Richard Nixon took office, his administration quickly created a Special Services Staff to mastermind what a memo called "all IRS activities involving ideological, militant, subversive, radical, and similar type organizations." (snip)
The exposure of Nixon's IRS abuses during congressional hearings in 1973 and 1974 profoundly weakened him during the uproar after the Watergate hotel break-in. (snip)
In 1995, the White House and the Democratic National Committee produced a 331-page report entitled "Communication Stream of Conspiracy Commerce" that attacked magazines, think tanks and other entities and individuals who had criticized President Clinton. In the subsequent years, many organizations mentioned in the White House report were hit by IRS audits. More than 20 conservative organizations—including the Heritage Foundation and the American Spectator magazine—and almost a dozen individual high-profile Clinton accusers, such as Paula Jones and Gennifer Flowers, were audited.
Alas, the only solution that I can see is a huge and perhaps unrealistic level of reform: radical tax simplification such as a flat tax on gross income or (better yet in my view) replacement of the income tax with a national value added tax, eliminating the many judgment calls inherent in income tax accounting.
It is a dream to expect that Trump’s alleged interference will be treated the same way that Democrats’ abuses have been.
Hat tip: Ed Lasky
“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
The Rise of the Global Super-Rich and the Fall of Everyone Else | ENDEVR Documentary
Will we all be poorer? | Income inequality | Noam Chomsky | Documentary | English
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.”
Tony Schwartz: The Truth About Trump | Oxford Union Q&A
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qxF_CDDJ0YI
Andrea Bernstein: The Trumps, The Kushners and American
Greed
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFd7-AbwwBA
Trump's son-in-law problem
I don't know what others would define as a Red Wave, but whatever we got Tuesday night, I'll take it. As of this writing, the GOP is set to pick up the House of Representatives, giving chairman gavels to both Reps. James Comer and Jim Jordan, along with subpoena power. It is going to be some kind of fun in the Capitol. And if the remaining votes left to count in Arizona come from whom we think they come from, the GOP may not even need the likely win coming in the Georgia run-off to take the Senate.
Individually, though, there were oddities. Early voting carried the brain-damaged John Fetterman across the finish line. And Joe Biden has been able to spin the outcome of the election to where his 2024 campaign is still viable. But a Biden nomination in 2024 might be the event that finally wrecks the Democrat party. We should all be so lucky.
Donald Trump, on the other hand, is taking a lot of heat. For not spending his $100 million in PAC money to help candidates. And for costing Senate seats by backing inferior candidates for nomination. Trump's response has been churlish at best, striking out at Ron DeSantis and even Glenn Youngkin.
Meanwhile, Gov. DeSantis played 2022 like a fiddle, redirecting the focus back onto the millions of illegal aliens pouring across the border. That, along with crime and inflation, became a dominant issue for the Republicans. DeSantis and his Florida Republicans then pulled off a tsunami of a Red Wave on Tuesday night.
Team Trump noticed, and Jared Kushner, of all people, was out early to complain. If you recall, it was Kushner who worked against the Border Wall and other Trumpian policies, to the fury of conservatives like Ann Coulter. It was Kushner who pushed out Steve Bannon and his allies in the White House and brought in so many D.C. lifers, like the generals — Kelly, McMaster, and Mattis — who hated Trump.
And it was Kushner who took over COVID policy (Mike Pence was just a figurehead) and empowered Fauci and Birx to run the response to the pandemic. Scott Atlas was finally brought in to do some real science; then he was also terminated by Jared.
Apparently, things were so bad in late 2020 that Peter Navarro led a "coup" to get Kushner fired, but Jared and Ivanka simply ignored Trump's request to leave.
So who is this all-powerful son-in-law, anyway? It's important to understand that Kushner's influence is not just from the fact that Trump adores Ivanka and will give her just about anything she asks. He is deeply indebted to Jared himself. After Trump's near-business-death experiences, it was Jared, the scion of the billionaire Kushner family, who came to his rescue.
Having burned his old lenders with Atlantic City casinos and the Plaza Hotel deal, Trump was able to get a lifeline at the Deutsche Bank to build his Chicago hotel project, but he soon defaulted there also and wound up in litigation in 2011.
But coming to the rescue were the new son-in-law and Jared's buddy in another division of Deutsche Bank, Rosemary Vrablic. Trump then got all the refinancing he needed to stay afloat and keep going.
It turned out that Vrablic was a bit too close to the Kushners, and she was later herself fired by the bank when it came out she was doing real estate deals with them on the side. No matter.
And again, it was Kushner and his friends — Steve Roth of Vornado Realty and a tiny bank in San Diego — who just recently arranged sales and refinancing of the lion's share of troubled Trump properties, leaving The Donald sitting pretty, with a mountain of cash. So, in any contest for influence inside Team Trump, there can only be one winner: Jared. He has the keys to the mint — the trust of powerful lenders Trump can't live without.
Kushner and his family have had their own financial problems, namely 666 5th Ave., the massive NYC office tower that threatened to ruin them. After Trump was elected president, Jared took over the Middle East desk for Trump, and suddenly the Kushner family entreaties to Qatar's sovereign wealth fund to buy 666 off their hands were no longer ignored. A lot of suspicious people think Jared got his friends in Saudi Arabia to lighten up their sanctions on Qatar, and as a reward, Qatar's Brookfield Properties bailed them out. Democrats have long been investigating the deal, but I doubt they even know where to begin.
After Jared returned to the private sector, he also formed a venture firm, like Hunter Biden, with no previous experience. But he did manage to get $2 billion from the Saudis — the same Saudi fund, in fact, investing in LIV Golf, which is working with Trump golf courses and now has a pay-for-play deal with Fox Sports. Democrats were also investigating all this.
The latest Kushner mess may even be the juiciest of all. Jared's droopy little brother, Joshua (married to supermodel Karlie Kloss) is at the center of what Kanye West says was the ripping off his share in ex-wife Kim Kardashian's underwear line. With West's money and career going down like MC Hammer, he will have a lot of time on his hands the next few years to complain about the Kushner family.
While the Democrats have until now never been able to land a punch on Trump's son-in-law, someone with more savvy and political know-how might — say, the Governor of Florida. DeSantis wouldn't even have to say anything bad about Trump himself. Just pummel Jared for the rotten job he did on the campaign, running the White House, the pandemic response, border security, and the continuing crime wave.
Rather than be angry, a lot of die-hard MAGA folks might even cheer him on as their bête noire got his just deserts. Mr. Trump has always had a lot of untalented courtiers, from Michael Cohen to Omarosa Manigault, whom he had no trouble dismissing. But the problem with a son-in-law is, it's not so easy to just say, "You're fired!"
Frank Friday is an attorney in Louisville, Ky.
Image: Gage Skidmore via Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0.
“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 AMERICAN THINKER.com
Peter Schweizer, author of “Secret Empires: How the American Political Class Hides Corruption and Enriches Family and Friends,”
#1 New York Times Bestseller!
Peter Schweizer has been fighting corruption―and winning―for years. In Throw Them All Out, he exposed insider trading by members of Congress, leading to the passage of the STOCK Act. In Extortion, he uncovered how politicians use mafia-like tactics to enrich themselves. And in Clinton Cash, he revealed the Clintons’ massive money machine and sparked an FBI investigation.
Now he explains how a new corruption has taken hold, involving larger sums of money than ever before. Stuffing tens of thousands of dollars into a freezer has morphed into multibillion-dollar equity deals done in the dark corners of the world.
An American bank opening in China would be prohibited by US law from hiring a slew of family members of top Chinese politicians. However, a Chinese bank opening in America can hire anyone it wants. It can even invite the friends and families of American politicians to invest in can’t-lose deals.
President Donald Trump’s children have made front pages across the world for their dicey transactions. However, the media has barely looked into questionable deals made by those close to Barack Obama, Joe Biden, John Kerry, Mitch McConnell, and lesser-known politicians who have been in the game longer.
In many parts of the world, the children of powerful political figures go into business and profit handsomely, not necessarily because they are good at it, but because people want to curry favor with their influential parents. This is a relatively new phenomenon in the United States. But for relatives of some prominent political families, we may already be talking about hundreds of millions of dollars.
Deeply researched and packed with shocking revelations, Secret Empires identifies public servants who cannot be trusted and provides a path toward a more accountable government.
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.
ANN COULTER - SWAMP KEEPER DONALD TRUMP AND HIS PARASITIC FAMILY
One cautionary example is President Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, whose ticket into Harvard, according to the 2006 book The Price of Admission: How America’s Ruling Class Buys Its Way into Elite Colleges, was his father’s $2.5 million dollar gift to the university. Jared got his Harvard degree, but he has been the butt of social-media taunts precisely because his daddy had to pay a fortune to get the school to admit him. The cost of a brag-worthy degree? Millions. The cost of the right- and left-brain stuff? Priceless.
THE TRUMP FAMILY FOUNDATION SLUSH FUND…. Will they see jail?
https://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2018/12/the-phony-trump-slush-fund-will-it-put.html
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.”
Coulter: All Hail President Javanka!
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2019/04/10/coulter-all-hail-president-javanka/
ANN COULTER
10 Apr 2019111
2:52
While other reporters waste their time examining Donald Trump’s public statements, interviewing his high school classmates and poring over legal filings, investigative reporter Vicky Ward has produced the definitive book on our current president.
For example, did you know our president got breast implants in high school (Ivanka claimed she was just “curvy”), bought his way into Harvard (Jared is even dumber than you thought), and together have no books in their New York apartment? (Some dispute that there are no books, citing “a few art books” or “decorator-curated books.”)
Ward’s recently released blockbuster, Kushner, Inc.: Greed. Ambition. Corruption. The Extraordinary Story of Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump, tells you all this and more about our actual commander in chief: President Javanka.
On the bright side, Jared has stopped rolling his eyes so much about his father-in-law now that Trump is president, er, “president.” Until Trump’s nomination was a virtual lock, Jared was back in New York pretending not to be related to him.
Only after Trump had racked up a slew of primary wins did a lightbulb go on in Jared’s head: Hey! This presidential campaign could be great for business! According to a close associate, Jared viewed the campaign as a terrific “networking opportunity.”
In short order, Jared moved himself in, and moved campaign manager Corey Lewandowski out.
Trump’s loyal campaign manager had been with him through the “Mexican rapists” speech, Macy’s dumping Trump’s ties, the “McCain isn’t a war hero” controversy, the Muslim ban, the “hand size” embarrassment, and on and on and on. But when all was said and done and Trump was still cruising to victory, Jared and Ivanka walked in and delivered an ultimatum to Trump: “It’s Corey or us.”
Jared would later shyly cop to being “[The Man Who] Won Trump the White House,” as a Forbes magazine cover story put it.
And who understood the beating heart of the Trump voter like Jared and Ivanka? With Javanka in charge, the campaign schedule was soon bristling with such items as “women’s empowerment week,” “education week” and “entrepreneur week.”
In no time, Trump was 16 points down and sinking fast. Steve Bannon was brought in, whereupon he promptly threw out all the Working Women’s Intersectional Global Warming weeks and got back to Trump’s issues.
Jared assured Bannon that the campaign had $25 million on hand. That’s when Bannon had to explain “debits” to Kushner. The campaign had $25 million — provided you didn’t count all the unpaid expenses. When those were included, it turned out the campaign was in debt.
As the SAT board had discovered, math wasn’t Jared’s strong suit.
Although it has been well reported that Jared’s Harvard admission was purchased for him by his father, Ward produces a shocking new detail. Of the five tracks at Jared’s high school, he wasn’t at the bottom of track one, perhaps suitable for a lesser Ivy League with solid SAT scores. He wasn’t even in track two. Jared was in track three. But now he has co-opted the Make America Great Again movement for his own personal advancement. I guess that makes him smarter than Trump.
Apart from staging photo-ops, including her “princess moment” at the inaugural ball (her words), Ivanka’s first order of business upon winning the presidency was assigning White House office space. Her map showed a big office for her, a big office for Jared — and also a nice corner office, which was designated “Trump family office.”
Transition officials, Ward reports, “were surprised that the first lady did not appear to have an office. So, too, was Melania Trump, who quickly put an end to Ivanka’s scheming.”
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.”
MBS and MBZ derided Jared’s Middle East peace plan as infantile, while using him to achieve their objective: war with Qatar. According to an American businessman’s leaked emails, their attitude was, “Nobody would even waste a cup of coffee on him if it wasn’t for who he is married to.”
As one former top White House official explained: “Jared never understands the details of anything. He’s just impressed by names.”
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.”
After Ivanka’s speech introducing her father at the Republican National Convention — rivaled only by Billy Carter’s introduction of his brother, Jimmy! — she tweeted from her personal account: “Shop Ivanka’s look from her #RNC speech.”
After the Trump family was interviewed on CBS’s “60 Minutes,” Ivanka’s company emailed out a “style alert” advertising the $10,800 diamond bracelet she’d worn on the show — “available from Ivanka Trump Fine Jewelry.”
Ivanka has managed to win a slew of trademarks in China since her father became the Figurehead President, with several approvals being fast-tracked at about the same time Trump was hosting Chinese President Xi Jinping at Mar-a-Lago.
Instead of “Make America Great Again,” the motto of the Trump presidency is, as one of Trump’s legal spokesmen put it: “The advance team for Jared and Ivanka.”
This is not what anyone voted for.
One cautionary example is President Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, whose ticket into Harvard, according to the 2006 book The Price of Admission: How America’s Ruling Class Buys Its Way into Elite Colleges, was his father’s $2.5 million dollar gift to the university. Jared got his Harvard degree, but he has been the butt of social-media taunts precisely because his daddy had to pay a fortune to get the school to admit him. The cost of a brag-worthy degree? Millions. The cost of the right- and left-brain stuff? Priceless.
A VERY STABLE GENIUS
“This taut and terrifying book is among the most closely observed accounts of Donald J. Trump’s shambolic tenure in office to date.” - Dwight Garner, The New York Times
Read an excerpt:
‘You’re a bunch of dopes and babies’: Inside Trump’s stunning tirade against generals
THE BOOK
Washington Post national investigative reporter Carol Leonnig and White House bureau chief Philip Rucker, both Pulitzer Prize winners, provide the definitive insider narrative of Donald Trump’s unique presidency with shocking new reporting and insight into its implications.
“I alone can fix it.” So went Donald J. Trump’s march to the presidency on July 21, 2016, when he accepted the Republican presidential nomination in Cleveland, promising to restore what he described as a fallen nation. Yet over the subsequent years, as he has undertaken the actual work of the commander in chief, it has been hard to see beyond the daily chaos of scandal, investigation, and constant bluster. It would be all too easy to mistake Trump’s first term for one of pure and uninhibited chaos, but there were patterns to his behavior and that of his associates. The universal value of the Trump administration is loyalty - not to the country, but to the president himself - and Trump’s North Star has been the perpetuation of his own power, even when it meant imperiling our shaky and mistrustful democracy.
Leonnig and Rucker, with deep and unmatched sources throughout Washington, D.C., tell of rages and frenzies but also moments of courage and perseverance. Relying on scores of exclusive new interviews with some of the most senior members of the Trump administration and other firsthand witnesses, the authors reveal the forty-fifth president up close, taking readers inside Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation as well as the president’s own haphazard but ultimately successful legal defense. Here for the first time certain officials who have felt honor-bound not to publicly criticize a sitting president or to divulge what they witnessed in a position of trust tell the truth for the benefit of history.
This peerless and gripping narrative reveals President Trump at his most unvarnished and exposes how decision making in his administration has been driven by a reflexive logic of self-preservation and self-aggrandizement - but a logic nonetheless. This is the story of how an unparalleled president has scrambled to survive and tested the strength of America’s democracy and its common heart as a nation.
Kushner, Inc: Vicky Ward on How Jared and Ivanka’s Greed & Ambition Compromise U.S. Foreign Policy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BHzp3MPPGEE
No, It Wasn’t a Coup Attempt. It Was Another Trump Money Scam.
The president knew he couldn’t prevail in the courts but he understands how to make money by failing. He did it with casinos and he’s doing it again.
President Trump’s post-election machinations are not a bungled coup attempt; they add up to a scam to enrich himself. A coup would require broad collaboration from the courts and, failing that, from the military. The evidence suggests that Trump may not even be serious about election fraud. If he were, he would have recruited serious election law experts in the states he has contested. Instead, Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell blanketed the country with a blizzard of lawsuits, offering fever dreams from the dark web as their legal justification and evidence.
The president’s post-election campaign demonstrates his singular talent for taking care of himself even when he loses. It is a momentous historic attack on the democratic process, on the order of Reconstruction. But for Trump, as Michael Corleone put it, “it’s just business.” Ultimately, Trump’s goals are to remain a star, make money, and solidify his clout. The corrosive effects on democracy are collateral damage.
Donald Trump has always craved fame, a drive common to national politicians. But he alone honed his approach to politics through his stint as a reality TV star. That’s where he learned how he could weave a narrative around his personality that tapped into the fantasies of a national audience. His quixotic claim to have won an election that he knows he lost rests entirely on his curated public persona. And as long as he pursues his claims, he is the center of attention instead of an ignored, sad, lame duck.
Trump’s intrigues embody his drive to come out ahead whether he succeeds or fails. His campaign hardly touched on the pandemic, the economy, or even his signature complaints about immigrants. Instead, he offered a narrative about systemic voter fraud and a stolen election. The strategy was smarter than Trump’s consultants and most media understood. It strengthened his connection to Americans who feel vulnerable to powerful shadowy forces beyond their reach, sufficient to drive nearly enough of them to reelect him.
This approach also laid a foundation for Trump to come out on top again, albeit not as president, and monetize the loss. Soon after the polls closed, his campaign announced an “Official Election Defense Fund” to help pay for his election challenges – with much of the proceeds diverted to his personal PAC, Save America. And by mobilizing his millions of true believers around a false narrative that his enemies have cost them their leader, Trump secured an enormous fan base for whatever he does as an ex-president. Millions will pay to attend more rallies or perhaps subscribe to a new Trump streaming service or cable network.
The strategy will give Trump a global stage to spotlight his inevitable grievances with President Joe Biden. It could become a means to mobilize public pressure against ongoing criminal investigations and possible indictments. Even from Mar-a-Lago, he could keep officeholders aligned with his interests, even as an ex-president.
Ensuring that Trump benefits even when he loses—and so never appears to fail – is an approach he has honed over his career. It nearly always involves making himself richer. He forged the strategy in Atlantic City. When he issued $100 million in junk bonds to bail out the failing Trump Plaza casino in 1993 temporarily, he used half of those proceeds to cover his personal debts. When his three casino hotels went bankrupt, he collected $160 million in management fees from the time the hotels declared Chapter 11 to the inevitable moment, years later, when he had to surrender them to his creditors.
Trump had figured out how to win while losing other people’s money. The final collapse of his Atlantic City properties also became personal paydays: He walked away with $916 million in tax losses based on $3.4 billion in defaulted debts owed to the banks and junk bondholders that actually put up the capital. To make it legal, Trump had assumed personal liability for the loans. But that was at the heart of the scam: Since he had not put up his own money, he couldn’t claim the losses without putting himself technically “at-risk” for the loans.
As president, Trump continues to profit from losing other people’s money. He owns 16 golf courses, all financed by accommodating lenders who put up the money to buy and operate them. As any real estate operator knows, golf courses are notorious money losers. Here too, Trump is personally “at-risk” for those loans – because otherwise, he couldn’t write off their annual losses. Based on the tax returns described in the New York Times, he claimed $15.3 million in those tax losses in 2017, his first year in the White House. For that year, he also reported personal income of nearly $14.8 million from branding deals, income tied to his old reality TV show, and revenues from favor seekers joining Mar-A-Lago and taking suites at his hotels. The losses Trump claimed for ventures paid for with other people’s money enabled him, even as president, to avoid paying personal income tax on all of his $14.8 million income.
Winning by failing has been Donald Trump’s signature business strategy, and now it is his political strategy. Since he couldn’t force the Justice Department to arrest Biden or coerce the courts to overturn the election results, he is left to enrich himself and maintain his influence with his fans and GOP elected officials. Thankfully for democracy, Americans now face not a coup d’état but yet another scam from Donald Trump – and probably not his last.
Robert J. Shapiro
Robert J. Shapiro, a Washington Monthly contributing writer, is the chairman of Sonecon and a Senior Fellow at the McDonough School of Business at Georgetown University. He previously served as Under Secretary of Commerce for Economic Affairs under Bill Clinton and advised senior members of the Obama administration on economic policy.
Peter Schweizer, author of “Secret Empires: How the American Political Class Hides Corruption and Enriches Family and Friends,”
#1 New York Times Bestseller!
Peter Schweizer has been fighting corruption―and winning―for years. In Throw Them All Out, he exposed insider trading by members of Congress, leading to the passage of the STOCK Act. In Extortion, he uncovered how politicians use mafia-like tactics to enrich themselves. And in Clinton Cash, he revealed the Clintons’ massive money machine and sparked an FBI investigation.
Now he explains how a new corruption has taken hold, involving larger sums of money than ever before. Stuffing tens of thousands of dollars into a freezer has morphed into multibillion-dollar equity deals done in the dark corners of the world.
An American bank opening in China would be prohibited by US law from hiring a slew of family members of top Chinese politicians. However, a Chinese bank opening in America can hire anyone it wants. It can even invite the friends and families of American politicians to invest in can’t-lose deals.
President Donald Trump’s children have made front pages across the world for their dicey transactions. However, the media has barely looked into questionable deals made by those close to Barack Obama, Joe Biden, John Kerry, Mitch McConnell, and lesser-known politicians who have been in the game longer.
In many parts of the world, the children of powerful political figures go into business and profit handsomely, not necessarily because they are good at it, but because people want to curry favor with their influential parents. This is a relatively new phenomenon in the United States. But for relatives of some prominent political families, we may already be talking about hundreds of millions of dollars.
Deeply researched and packed with shocking revelations, Secret Empires identifies public servants who cannot be trusted and provides a path toward a more accountable government.
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.
ANN COULTER - SWAMP KEEPER DONALD TRUMP AND HIS PARASITIC FAMILY
One cautionary example is President Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, whose ticket into Harvard, according to the 2006 book The Price of Admission: How America’s Ruling Class Buys Its Way into Elite Colleges, was his father’s $2.5 million dollar gift to the university. Jared got his Harvard degree, but he has been the butt of social-media taunts precisely because his daddy had to pay a fortune to get the school to admit him. The cost of a brag-worthy degree? Millions. The cost of the right- and left-brain stuff? Priceless.
THE TRUMP FAMILY FOUNDATION SLUSH FUND…. Will they see jail?
https://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2018/12/the-phony-trump-slush-fund-will-it-put.html
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.”
Coulter: All Hail President Javanka!
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2019/04/10/coulter-all-hail-president-javanka/
ANN COULTER
While other reporters waste their time examining Donald Trump’s public statements, interviewing his high school classmates and poring over legal filings, investigative reporter Vicky Ward has produced the definitive book on our current president.
For example, did you know our president got breast implants in high school (Ivanka claimed she was just “curvy”), bought his way into Harvard (Jared is even dumber than you thought), and together have no books in their New York apartment? (Some dispute that there are no books, citing “a few art books” or “decorator-curated books.”)
Ward’s recently released blockbuster, Kushner, Inc.: Greed. Ambition. Corruption. The Extraordinary Story of Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump, tells you all this and more about our actual commander in chief: President Javanka.
On the bright side, Jared has stopped rolling his eyes so much about his father-in-law now that Trump is president, er, “president.” Until Trump’s nomination was a virtual lock, Jared was back in New York pretending not to be related to him.
Only after Trump had racked up a slew of primary wins did a lightbulb go on in Jared’s head: Hey! This presidential campaign could be great for business! According to a close associate, Jared viewed the campaign as a terrific “networking opportunity.”
In short order, Jared moved himself in, and moved campaign manager Corey Lewandowski out.
Trump’s loyal campaign manager had been with him through the “Mexican rapists” speech, Macy’s dumping Trump’s ties, the “McCain isn’t a war hero” controversy, the Muslim ban, the “hand size” embarrassment, and on and on and on. But when all was said and done and Trump was still cruising to victory, Jared and Ivanka walked in and delivered an ultimatum to Trump: “It’s Corey or us.”
Jared would later shyly cop to being “[The Man Who] Won Trump the White House,” as a Forbes magazine cover story put it.
And who understood the beating heart of the Trump voter like Jared and Ivanka? With Javanka in charge, the campaign schedule was soon bristling with such items as “women’s empowerment week,” “education week” and “entrepreneur week.”
In no time, Trump was 16 points down and sinking fast. Steve Bannon was brought in, whereupon he promptly threw out all the Working Women’s Intersectional Global Warming weeks and got back to Trump’s issues.
Jared assured Bannon that the campaign had $25 million on hand. That’s when Bannon had to explain “debits” to Kushner. The campaign had $25 million — provided you didn’t count all the unpaid expenses. When those were included, it turned out the campaign was in debt.
As the SAT board had discovered, math wasn’t Jared’s strong suit.
Although it has been well reported that Jared’s Harvard admission was purchased for him by his father, Ward produces a shocking new detail. Of the five tracks at Jared’s high school, he wasn’t at the bottom of track one, perhaps suitable for a lesser Ivy League with solid SAT scores. He wasn’t even in track two. Jared was in track three. But now he has co-opted the Make America Great Again movement for his own personal advancement. I guess that makes him smarter than Trump.
Apart from staging photo-ops, including her “princess moment” at the inaugural ball (her words), Ivanka’s first order of business upon winning the presidency was assigning White House office space. Her map showed a big office for her, a big office for Jared — and also a nice corner office, which was designated “Trump family office.”
Transition officials, Ward reports, “were surprised that the first lady did not appear to have an office. So, too, was Melania Trump, who quickly put an end to Ivanka’s scheming.”
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.”
MBS and MBZ derided Jared’s Middle East peace plan as infantile, while using him to achieve their objective: war with Qatar. According to an American businessman’s leaked emails, their attitude was, “Nobody would even waste a cup of coffee on him if it wasn’t for who he is married to.”
As one former top White House official explained: “Jared never understands the details of anything. He’s just impressed by names.”
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.”
After Ivanka’s speech introducing her father at the Republican National Convention — rivaled only by Billy Carter’s introduction of his brother, Jimmy! — she tweeted from her personal account: “Shop Ivanka’s look from her #RNC speech.”
After the Trump family was interviewed on CBS’s “60 Minutes,” Ivanka’s company emailed out a “style alert” advertising the $10,800 diamond bracelet she’d worn on the show — “available from Ivanka Trump Fine Jewelry.”
Ivanka has managed to win a slew of trademarks in China since her father became the Figurehead President, with several approvals being fast-tracked at about the same time Trump was hosting Chinese President Xi Jinping at Mar-a-Lago.
Instead of “Make America Great Again,” the motto of the Trump presidency is, as one of Trump’s legal spokesmen put it: “The advance team for Jared and Ivanka.”
This is not what anyone voted for.
One cautionary example is President Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, whose ticket into Harvard, according to the 2006 book The Price of Admission: How America’s Ruling Class Buys Its Way into Elite Colleges, was his father’s $2.5 million dollar gift to the university. Jared got his Harvard degree, but he has been the butt of social-media taunts precisely because his daddy had to pay a fortune to get the school to admit him. The cost of a brag-worthy degree? Millions. The cost of the right- and left-brain stuff? Priceless.
A VERY STABLE GENIUS
“This taut and terrifying book is among the most closely observed accounts of Donald J. Trump’s shambolic tenure in office to date.” - Dwight Garner, The New York Times
Read an excerpt:
‘You’re a bunch of dopes and babies’: Inside Trump’s stunning tirade against generals
THE BOOK
Washington Post national investigative reporter Carol Leonnig and White House bureau chief Philip Rucker, both Pulitzer Prize winners, provide the definitive insider narrative of Donald Trump’s unique presidency with shocking new reporting and insight into its implications.
“I alone can fix it.” So went Donald J. Trump’s march to the presidency on July 21, 2016, when he accepted the Republican presidential nomination in Cleveland, promising to restore what he described as a fallen nation. Yet over the subsequent years, as he has undertaken the actual work of the commander in chief, it has been hard to see beyond the daily chaos of scandal, investigation, and constant bluster. It would be all too easy to mistake Trump’s first term for one of pure and uninhibited chaos, but there were patterns to his behavior and that of his associates. The universal value of the Trump administration is loyalty - not to the country, but to the president himself - and Trump’s North Star has been the perpetuation of his own power, even when it meant imperiling our shaky and mistrustful democracy.
Leonnig and Rucker, with deep and unmatched sources throughout Washington, D.C., tell of rages and frenzies but also moments of courage and perseverance. Relying on scores of exclusive new interviews with some of the most senior members of the Trump administration and other firsthand witnesses, the authors reveal the forty-fifth president up close, taking readers inside Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation as well as the president’s own haphazard but ultimately successful legal defense. Here for the first time certain officials who have felt honor-bound not to publicly criticize a sitting president or to divulge what they witnessed in a position of trust tell the truth for the benefit of history.
This peerless and gripping narrative reveals President Trump at his most unvarnished and exposes how decision making in his administration has been driven by a reflexive logic of self-preservation and self-aggrandizement - but a logic nonetheless. This is the story of how an unparalleled president has scrambled to survive and tested the strength of America’s democracy and its common heart as a nation.
Trump coup lawyers saw Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas as “key” to overturning 2020 election
Last week, emails written by Trump coup lawyers John Eastman and Kenneth Chesebro were inadvertently made public after a federal judge ruled that the emails had to be turned over to the January 6 House Select Committee because they showed evidence of a crime.
The emails, first reported by Politico,were uploaded to a publicly accessible server by associates of the lawyers. While they were quickly taken down, the contents of the emails were reported by major news networks and the World Socialist Web Site.
The emails showed that Eastman, Chesebro and other lawyers discussed crafting legal arguments based on factual assertions they knew to be false. The lawyers made clear, moreover, that they were counting on far-right Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas to back their brief and facilitate the blocking of Congressional certification of Joe Biden’s election victory. The lawyers deemed it paramount that they file their legal brief in Georgia so that it would be adjudicated in the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, which is overseen by Justice Thomas.
Several of the emails ordered turned over to the January 6 Committee were written on December 31, 2020. In the emails, Chesebro, Eastman and other Trump lawyers discussed legal strategies to give Republican members of Congress the pretext they needed to vote against certifying the election on January 6, 2021.
The emails showed that Eastman, a former clerk of Justice Thomas, and Chesebro agreed that Thomas was the “key” to overturning the 2020 election.
“Realistically, our only chance to get a favorable judicial opinion by Jan. 6, which might hold up the Georgia count in Congress, is from Thomas—do you agree, Prof. Eastman?” Chesebro wrote to Eastman on December 31.
Chesebro followed up several hours later with another email saying that the “best shot at holding up the count of a state in Congress” would be to get a case “pending before the Supreme Court by Jan. 5, ideally with something positive written by a judge or justice, hopefully Thomas.”
Chesebro argued that they needed to “frame things so that Thomas could be the one to issue some sort of stay or other circuit justice opinion saying Georgia is in legitimate doubt.”
Eastman, who spoke at the Ellipse with fellow coup lawyer Rudy Giuliani in support of Trump’s coup on January 6, 2021, replied the same day: “I think I agree … that may be enough to kick the Georgia legislature into gear.”
Eastman’s comment about the Georgia legislature is significant because it shows that the coup plot was not a “one man show,” but a coordinated effort involving Trump’s lawyers, elected Republican officials, the Trump White House and a section of the Supreme Court. The wide-ranging plot involved putting pressure on all levels of government, including state legislatures and election officials.
Notably, the emails written by Eastman and Chesebro were sent at the same time Eastman was in communication with the lifelong Republican operative and wife of Justice Thomas, Virginia “Ginni” Thomas.
At least one email turned over to the January 6 Committee shows that Virginia Thomas invited Eastman to provide an “update” on pending election litigation before a gathering of Republican operatives on December 8, 2020.
Virginia Thomas was in regular communication not only with Eastman, but also with Trump’s White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows throughout the coup planning. She was interviewed by the January 6 Committee at the end of September. The contents of her four-hour-plus closed-door meeting with the Committee have yet to be revealed more than a month after the fact.
One leak that did emerge from the meeting, which Thomas confirmed to be true, was her affirmation of the conspiracy theory that the 2020 election was fraudulent and the Biden administration was illegitimate. Trump’s “big lie” animated the attack on Congress that ended with at least five deaths and continues to be peddled by Trump and at least 308 Republicans on the ballot this Tuesday.
In his closed-door interview with the January 6 Committee earlier this year, Eastman pleaded the Fifth Amendment against self-incrimination over 100 times.
Since the initial reporting on the damning emails last week, no major Democratic politicians have spoken of their content or noted their release in their campaign speeches. Nor were the explosive emails mentioned on the Sunday morning talk shows over the weekend.
One reason for the silence is the fact that the emails refute Biden’s claim that Trump’s MAGA Republicans constitute only a “small minority” of the Republican Party. This falsehood has been promoted as well by the January 6 Committee, in keeping with the efforts of Biden and the Democratic Party to work with a least a section of the GOP in prosecuting the war against Russia in Ukraine, as well as diplomatic, economic and military preparations for conflict with China, in both cases increasing the danger of nuclear war.
Another reason is concern that exposing the role of Justice Thomas in the coup conspiracy will further erode the legitimacy of the top court, already damaged by the overturn of the constitutional right to abortion, in the eyes of most Americans.
In their December emails, Eastman, Chesebro and other lawyers discussed issues arising from Trump attesting to factual claims that he knew to be untrue. These statements, which they brought before a federal court hoping Thomas would intervene, dealt with the alleged number of felons, unregistered voters and dead people who voted for Biden in 2020.
The emails were first turned over to the January 6 Committee following an opinion issued on October 19 by US District Court Judge David Carter. In his October ruling, Carter wrote that some of the emails were subject to the “crime fraud” exception and included evidence that Trump knowingly lied to the courts.
“President Trump knew that the specific numbers on voter fraud were wrong but continued to tout those numbers, both in court and to the public,” wrote Carter.
This is the second time judge Carter has ruled that emails Eastman tried to shield from the January 6 Committee showed evidence of a crime.
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