Then, after he leaves the White House he and his family can profit to their hearts' content, unfettered by the real conflicts of interest that come and should be prosecuted when merchants in misery like the Clintons (and others) milk public charities. illegally. CHARLES ORTEL
The People v. Donald J. Trump
The criminal case against
him is already in the works — and it could go to trial sooner than you think.
The defendant looked uncomfortable as he stood to testify in the shabby courtroom. Dressed in a dark suit and somber tie, he seemed aged, dimmed, his posture noticeably stooped. The past year had been a massive comedown for the 76-year-old former world leader. For decades, the bombastic onetime showman had danced his way past scores of lawsuits and blustered through a sprawl of scandals. Then he left office and was indicted for tax fraud. As a packed courtroom looked on, he read from a curled sheaf of papers. It seemed as though the once inconceivable was on the verge of coming to pass: The country’s former leader would be convicted and sent to a concrete cell.
The date was October
19, 2012. The man was Silvio Berlusconi, the longtime prime minister of Italy.
Here in the United
States, we have never yet witnessed such an event. No commander-in-chief has
been charged with a criminal offense, let alone faced prison time. But if
Donald Trump loses the election in November, he will forfeit not only a sitting
president’s presumptive immunity from prosecution but also the levers of power
he has aggressively co-opted for his own protection. Considering the number of
crimes he has committed, the time span over which he has committed them, and
the range of jurisdictions in which his crimes have taken place, his potential
legal exposure is breathtaking. More than a dozen investigations are already
under way against him and his associates. Even if only one or two of them
result in criminal charges, the proceedings that follow will make the O. J. Simpson trial look like an afternoon in traffic
court.
It may seem unlikely
that Trump will ever wind up in a criminal court. His entire life, after all,
is one long testament to the power of getting away with things, a master class
in criminality without consequences, even before he added presidentiality and all
its privileges to his arsenal of defenses. As he himself once said, “When
you’re a star, they let you do it.” But for all his advantages and all his
enablers, including loyalists in the Justice Department and the federal
judiciary, Trump now faces a level of legal risk unlike anything in his
notoriously checkered past — and well beyond anything faced by any previous
president leaving office. To assess the odds that he will end up on trial, and
how the proceedings would unfold, I spoke with some of the country’s top
prosecutors, defense attorneys, and legal scholars. For the past four years,
they have been weighing the case against Trump: the evidence already gathered,
the witnesses prepared to testify, the political and constitutional issues
involved in prosecuting an ex-president. Once he leaves office, they agree,
there is good reason to think Trump will face criminal charges. “It’s going to
head toward prosecution, and the litigation is going to be fierce,” says
Bennett Gershman, a professor of constitutional law at Pace Law School who
served for a decade as a New York State prosecutor.
Here, according to the legal experts,
is how Trump could become the first
former president in American history
to find himself on trial — and perhaps
even behind bars.
You might think,
given all the crimes Trump has bragged about committing during his time in
office, that the primary path to prosecuting him would involve the U.S. Justice
Department. If Joe Biden is sworn in as president in January, his attorney
general will inherit a mountain of criminal evidence against Trump accumulated
by Robert Mueller and a host of inspectors general and congressional oversight
committees. After the DOJ’s incoming leadership is briefed on any sensitive
matters contained in the evidence, federal prosecutors will move forward with
their investigations of Trump “at the fastest pace they can,” says Mary McCord,
the former acting assistant attorney general for national security.
They’ll have plenty
of potential charges to choose from. Both Mueller and the Senate Intelligence
Committee — a Republican-led panel — have extensively documented how Trump
committed obstruction of justice (18 U.S. Code § 73), lied to
investigators (18 U.S. Code § 1001), and conspired with
Russian intelligence to commit an offense against the United States (18 U.S. Code §
371). All three crimes carry a maximum sentence of five years in
prison — per charge. According to legal experts, federal prosecutors could be
ready to indict Trump on one or more of these felonies as early as the first
quarter of 2021.
But prosecuting Trump
for any crimes he committed as president would face two significant and perhaps
fatal hurdles. First, on his way out of office, Trump could decide to
preemptively pardon himself. “I wouldn’t be surprised if he issues a broad,
sweeping pardon for any U.S. citizen who was a subject, a target, or a person
of interest of the Mueller investigation,” says Norm Eisen,
who served as counsel to House Democrats during Trump’s impeachment. Since
scholars are divided on whether a self-pardon would be constitutional, what
happens next would depend almost entirely on which judge ruled on the issue.
“One judge might say, ‘Sorry, presidential pardons is something the
Constitution grants exclusively to the president, so I’m going to dismiss
this,’ ” says Gershman. “Another judge might say, ‘No, the president can’t pardon himself.’ ” Either way, the case
would almost certainly wind up getting litigated all the way to the Supreme
Court, perhaps more than once, causing a long delay.
Even if the courts
ultimately ruled a self-pardon unconstitutional, another big hurdle would
remain: Trump’s claims that “executive privilege” bars prosecutors from
obtaining evidence of presidential misconduct. The provision has traditionally
been limited to shielding discussions between presidents and their advisers
from external scrutiny. But Trump has attempted to expand the protection to
include pretty much anything that he or anyone in the executive branch has ever
done. William Consovoy, one of Trump’s lawyers, famously argued in federal
court that even if Trump gunned someone down in the street while he was
president, he could not be prosecuted for it while in office. Although the
courts have repeatedly ruled against such sweeping arguments, Trump will
continue to claim immunity from the judicial process after he leaves office — a
surefire delaying tactic. “If federal charges were ever brought, it is unlikely
that a trial would be scheduled or start anytime in the foreseeable future,”
says Timothy W. Hoover, president of the New York State Association of Criminal
Defense Lawyers. By the time any federal charges come to trial, Trump is likely
to be either senile or dead. Even if he broke the law as president, the experts
agree, he may well get away with it.
But federal charges aren’t the likeliest way that The
People v. Donald
J. Trump will play out. State laws aren’t subject to
presidential pardons, and they cover a host of crimes beyond those committed in
the White House. When it comes to charging a former president, state attorneys
general and county prosecutors can go places a U.S. Attorney can’t.
According to legal
experts, the man most likely to drag Trump into court is the district attorney
for Manhattan, Cyrus Vance Jr. It’s a surprising scenario, given Vance’s well-deserved reputation as someone who has gone
easy on the rich and famous. After taking office in 2010, he sought to reduce
Jeffrey Epstein’s status as a sex offender, dropped an investigation into whether
Ivanka Trump and Donald Trump Jr. had committed fraud in the marketing of the Trump Soho, and
initially decided not to prosecute Harvey Weinstein despite solid evidence of
his sex crimes. “He has a reputation for being particularly cautious when it comes
to going after rich people, because he knows that those are the ones who can
afford the really formidable law firms,” says Victoria Bassetti, a fellow at
the Brennan Center for Justice who served on the team of lawyers that oversaw
the Senate impeachment trial of Bill Clinton. “And like most prosecutors, Vance
is exceptionally protective of his win-loss rate.”
But it was Vance who
stepped up when the federal case against Trump faltered. “He’s a politician,”
observes Martin Sheil, a former IRS criminal investigator. “He’s got his finger
up. He knows which way the wind’s blowing, and he knows the wind in New York is
blowing against Trump. It’s in his political interest to join that bandwagon.”
Last year, after U.S.
Attorneys in the Southern District dropped their investigation into the hush
money that Trump had paid Stormy Daniels, Vance took up the case. Suspecting
that l’affaire Stormy might
prove to be part of a larger pattern of shady dealings, his office started
digging into Trump’s finances. What Vance is investigating, according to court
filings, is evidence of “extensive and protracted criminal conduct at the Trump
Organization,” potentially involving bank fraud, tax fraud, and insurance
fraud. The New York Times has detailed how Trump and his family have long falsified
records to avoid taxes, and during testimony before Congress in 2019, Trump’s
longtime fixer Michael Cohen stated that Trump had inflated the value of his
assets to obtain a bank loan.
Crucially, all of
these alleged crimes occurred before Trump
took office. That means no claims of executive privilege would apply to any
charges Vance might bring, and no presidential pardon could make them go away.
A whole slew of potential objections and delays would be ruled out right off
the bat. What’s more, the alleged offenses took place less than six years ago,
within the statute of limitation for fraud in New York. Vance, in other words,
is free to go after Trump not as a crooked president but as a common crook who
happened to get elected president. And the fact that he has been pursuing these
cases while Trump is president is a sign that he won’t be intimidated by the
stature of the office after Trump leaves it.
In writing up an
indictment against Trump, Vance’s team could try to string together a laundry
list of offenses in hopes of presenting an overwhelming wall of guilt. But that
approach, experts warn, can become confusing. “A two- or three-count indictment
is easier to explain to a jury,” says Ilene Jaroslaw, a former assistant U.S.
Attorney. “If they think the person had criminal intent, it doesn’t matter if it’s
two counts or 20 counts, in most cases, because the sentence will be the same.”
There are two main
charges that Vance is likely to pursue. The first is falsifying business
records (N.Y. Penal Law § 175.10). During Cohen’s
trial, federal prosecutors filed a sentencing memorandum that explained how the
Trump Organization had mischaracterized hush-money payments as “legal expenses”
in its bookkeeping. Under New York law, falsifying records by itself is only a
misdemeanor, but if it results in the commission of another crime, it becomes a
felony. And false business records frequently lead to another offense: tax
fraud (N.Y. Tax Law § 1806).
If Trump cooked his
books, observes Sheil, that false information would essentially “flow into the
tax returns.” The first crime begets the second, making both the bookkeeper and
the tax accountant liable. “Since you have several folks involved,” Sheil says,
“you could either bring a conspiracy charge, maximum sentence five years, or
you could charge each individual with aiding and abetting the preparation of a
false tax return, with a max sentence of three years.”
To build a fraud case
against Trump, Vance subpoenaed his financial records. But those records alone
won’t be enough: To secure a conviction, Vance will need to convince a jury not
only that Trump cheated on his taxes but that he intended to do so. “If you
just have the documents, the defense will say that defendant didn’t have
criminal intent,” Jaroslaw explains. “I call it the ‘I’m an idiot’ defense: ‘I
made a mistake. I didn’t mean to do anything.’ ” Unfortunately for
Trump, both Cohen and his longtime accountant, Allen Weisselberg, have already
signaled their willingness to cooperate with prosecutors. “What’s great about
having an accountant in the witness stand is that they can tell you about the
conversation they had with the client,” Jaroslaw says.
Through appeals, Trump has managed to drag out the battle over his tax returns. The case has
gone all the way to the Supreme Court, back down to the district court, and
back up to the appeals court. But Trump has lost at every stage, and it appears
that his appeals could be exhausted this fall. Once Vance gets the tax returns,
Eisen estimates, he could be ready to indict Trump as early as the second
quarter of 2021.
Sheil, for one,
believes Vance may already have Trump’s financial records. It’s routine
procedure, he notes, for criminal tax investigators working with the Manhattan
DA to obtain personal and business tax returns that are material to their
inquiry. But issuing a subpoena to Trump’s accountants may have been a way to
signal to them that they could face criminal charges themselves unless they
cooperate in the investigation.
Once indicted, Trump
would be arraigned at New York Criminal Court, a towering Art Deco building at
100 Centre Street. Since a former president with a Secret Service detail can
hardly slip away unnoticed, he would likely not be required to post bail or
forfeit his passport while awaiting trial. His legal team, of course, would do
everything it could to draw out the proceedings. Filing appeals has always been
just another day at the office for Trump, who, by some estimates, has faced
more than 4,000 lawsuits during the course of his career. But this time, his
legal liability would extend to numerous other state and local jurisdictions,
which will also be building cases against him. “There’s like 1,037 other things
where, if anybody put what he did under a microscope, they would probably find
an enormous amount of financial improprieties,” says Scott Shapiro, director of
the Center for Law and Philosophy at Yale University.
Even accounting for
legal delays, many experts predict that Trump would go to trial in Manhattan by
2023. The proceedings would take place at the New York State Supreme Court
Building. Assuming that the judge was prepared for an endless barrage of
motions and objections from Trump’s defense team, the trial might move quite
quickly — no longer than a few months, according to some legal observers. And
given the convictions that have been handed down against many of Trump’s top
advisers, there’s reason to believe that even pro-Trump jurors can be persuaded
to convict him. “The evidence was overwhelming,” concluded one MAGA supporter
who served on the jury that convicted Paul Manafort, Trump’s former campaign
chairman. “I did not want [him] to be guilty. But he was, and no one is above
the law.”
Trump’s conviction
would seal the greatest downfall in American politics since Richard Nixon.
Unlike his associates who were sentenced to prison on federal charges, Trump
would not be eligible for a presidential pardon or commutation, even from
himself. And while his lawyers would file every appeal they can think of, none
of it would spare Trump the indignity of imprisonment. Unlike the federal court
system, which often allows prisoners to remain free during the appeals process,
state courts tend to waste no time in carrying out punishment. After someone is
sentenced in New York City, their next stop is Rikers Island. Once there, as
Trump awaited transfer to a state prison, the man who’d treated the presidency
like a piggy bank would receive yet another handout at the public expense: a
toothbrush and toothpaste, bedding, a towel, and a green plastic cup.
*This article appears
in the September 14, 2020, issue of New York Magazine. Subscribe Now!
Mueller Investigator
Andrew Weissmann Calls for Biden DOJ to Prosecute Trump
24 Nov 20208,185
1:47
Andrew Weissmann,
an MSNBC contributor and top deputy to former special counsel Robert Mueller,
is calling on former Vice President Joe Biden to prosecute President Donald
Trump, assuming he will be inaugurated in January.
Weissmann, in an op-ed for
the New York Times that
the next Department of Justice “should investigate Mr. Trump and, if warranted,
prosecute him for potential federal crimes.”
“Mr. Trump’s criminal exposure is clear,” he said, adding that
there is “ample evidence to support a charge that Mr. Trump obstructed
justice,” in the Mueller probe, which cleared the president of any criminal
wrongdoing between himself and the Russian government during his White House
transition.
Weissmann then floated the possibility that President Trump
could “pardon not just his family and friends before leaving office but also
himself in order to avoid federal criminal liability.”
“In short, being president should mean you are more accountable,
not less, to the rule of law,” he concluded.
Weissmann’s op-ed comes after
the former Mueller prosecutor compared President Trump to Nazi
Germany Dictator Adolf Hitler.
“For those people who say we should appease Trump, how did that
approach go for Neville Chamberlain,” he wrote on Twitter.
In September, Weissmann seemingly threw Mueller under the
bus by lamenting that they “could have done more” in their investigation into
President Trump.
“Had we given it our all —
had we used all available tools to uncover the truth, undeterred by the
onslaught of the president’s unique powers to undermine our efforts?” he wrote
in The Atlantic. “I know the hard answer to that simple
question: We could have done more.”
Then, after he leaves the White House he and his family can profit to their hearts' content, unfettered by the real conflicts of interest that come and should be prosecuted when merchants in misery like the Clintons (and others) milk public charities. illegally.
Charles Ortel
Wait...Now
Democrats Want Biden to Pardon Donald Trump?
Source: AP Photo/Evan
Vucci
Okay, I really don’t get this piece in NBC News. Also, when
Democrats start saying, ‘hey, maybe Biden should pardon Trump’ we should all
get nervous. What’s the angle here? Seriously, it makes zero sense and Joe
Biden has even said he’s not going to issue a pardon for Donald Trump should he
win the election, so this is more of a thought exercise from Michael Conway,
who was a counsel for the House Judiciary Committee’s impeachment inquiry into
Richard Nixon in 1974. He’s also the man who wrote,
“What Will It Take for Democrats to Unite Behind Impeaching Trump?” in The New York Times in
2019.
Conway offers his reasons and highlights one area I forgot to
mention about a pardon. It doesn’t cover state crimes, so the politically
motivated legal war against Donald Trump could continue in New York. Yet, the
main reason why Biden should issue a pardon is that a) it could get Trump to at
least admit he committed crimes as president, and b) like Ford, provide an
avenue for all of us to move on and heal (via NBC
News):
First and foremost, Trump’s acceptance of a pardon — under the
1915 Supreme Court opinion in Burdick v United States — is an admission that he
was guilty of the crimes for which he has been pardoned. Pardoning him may be
the only way that Trump even implicitly concedes he did anything wrong.
And a federal pardon wouldn’t eliminate all of Trump’s potential
criminal exposure. The Supreme Court last year declined to overrule
long-standing precedent which allows parallel state and federal prosecutions
based upon the same facts.
So, a presidential pardon would not bar Manhattan District
Attorney Cyrus Vance from investigating and potentially prosecuting Trump and
his company for crimes under state law. And his investigation already led to a
Supreme Court ruling this summer rejecting Trump’s claim of immunity from
criminal investigation while president.
Accepting a federal pardon — especially a pardon for crimes
violating both federal and state laws — would be a double-edged sword for the
president. And whatever the result of any state investigation or prosecution,
it could not be laid at Biden’s doorstep. It would not be his appointees
investigating the former president, his recent political adversary; it would
not be his employees prosecuting him. In fact, a pardon from Biden would mean
that they could not.
Democrats already know what the mirror image of that looks like.
When Trump called for the jailing of his political opponents, he was justly
condemned as promoting a vendetta characteristic of a banana republic.
[…]
A Biden pardon of Trump, like the pardoning of former President
Richard Nixon 46 years ago, would be intended to heal the nation and foreclose
the possibility of an ongoing cycle of retribution after political parties
change control of the government.
We’ve done this before.
Yeah, he also noted that Gerald Ford lost his 1976 re-election
because of the backlash from the pardon. Yes, it’s been shown to be the move
that helped the nation move on from Nixon and Watergate, but it killed his
presidency. Are Democrats willing to do that with Biden? Maybe. No Democrat is
really enthused by him and most Democrats only voted for him because he wasn’t
Donald Trump. Hey, the “anti” candidacy prevailed this time whereas characters
in the past who had tried to use that mold to win a race, John Kerry
(anti-Bush) and Mitt Romney (anti-Obama), had failed. For now, Biden appears on
top, but we still have ballots to count and legal challenges to settle.
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Frankly, if Biden changes course, this will render his
administration politically dead. No Democrat wants this; it will be fodder for
the liberal media to talk about, but the progressive base would be in an
uproar. As for Trump, well, again, I do see upsides of him pardoning himself
because no matter what a Biden DOJ is going to be gunning for him. The state
crimes aspect is also troubling, and Trump didn’t do anything wrong, but that
didn’t stop the remnants of the Obama DOJ from destroying the lives of Michael
Flynn and Carter Page. Flynn is still in legal purgatory. Even if we hold the
Senate and Biden nominates a moderate-ish candidate for attorney general. Okay,
not moderate, but someone who isn’t loud, controversial, and most of all
boring—you think that’s going to stop the legal crusade against Trump?
Democrats don’t play by the rules. They lie, cheat, and steal. And they will
certainly find some way to indict Trump if he doesn’t take the necessary
actions should all else fail concerning the legal front of this election cycle.
What that is…I’m not so sure now.
It sucks, either way, you think about it.
President-elect Biden wary of Trump-focused investigations, sources say
Carol E. Lee and Kristen Welker and
Mike
WASHINGTON —
President-elect Joe Biden has privately told advisers that he doesn't
want his presidency to be consumed by investigations of his predecessor, according to five people familiar with the discussions, despite
pressure from some Democrats who want inquiries into President Donald Trump,
his policies and members of his administration.
Biden has
raised concerns that investigations would further divide a country he is trying
to unite and risk making every day of his presidency about Trump, said the
sources, who spoke on background to offer details of private conversations.
They said he has specifically told advisers that he is wary of federal tax
investigations of Trump or of challenging any orders Trump may issue granting
immunity to members of his staff before he leaves office. One adviser said
Biden has made it clear that he "just wants to move on."
Another Biden
adviser said, "He's going to be more oriented toward fixing the problems
and moving forward than prosecuting them."
Any approach
by Biden's Justice Department to Trump, his staff, his associates, his business
or his policies wouldn't affect investigations by state officials, including
Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr., who has fought to obtain Trump's
tax returns.
As Biden
tries to balance his own inclinations and pressures from within his party, his
advisers stressed that he is seeking to reset the dynamic between the White
House and the Justice Department from what it has been under Trump.
Biden wants
his Justice Department to function independently from the White House, aides
said, and Biden isn't going to tell federal law enforcement officials whom or
what to investigate or not to investigate.
"His
overarching view is that we need to move the country forward," an adviser
said. "But the most important thing on this is that he will not interfere
with his Justice Department and not politicize his Justice Department."
A third Biden
adviser said that when it comes to any Trump-related investigations, the
expectation is "it's going to be very situational" and
"depending on the merits." Broadly, Biden's priorities would be the
economy, the coronavirus, climate change and race relations, not looking back
at the Trump administration, an adviser said.
Presidents
generally set the tone for what issues they believe should be priorities for
the Justice Department, and questions about Trump-related investigations or
retrospective reviews are expected to intensify as Biden gets closer to taking
office.
"He can
set a tone about what he thinks should be done," a Biden adviser said.
But, the adviser said, "he's not going to be a president who directs the
Justice Department one way or the other."
Biden's team
is also reluctant to send any signal to Trump administration officials that the
Justice Department wouldn't look into their actions, given that there are still
nine weeks until the inauguration, another person briefed about the discussions
said. "While they're not looking for broad criminal indictments, they do
want to make sure that people don't think there are no ramifications for any of
their actions between now and the new presidency," this person said.
Emphasizing
an arm's-length approach to the Justice Department could give Biden cover from
criticism from his supporters about any lack of investigations into Trump, his
policies or his staff. Democrats have sharply criticized Trump's direct
influence on Justice Department investigations, including his calls for Biden
and former President Barack Obama to be prosecuted over allegations of
unspecified crimes. Pledging, as Biden has, not to interfere with federal
investigations would be welcomed by many of his supporters.
But it will
be difficult for Biden to avoid the issue altogether, given the expected calls
for investigations into an array of issues involving Trump — from his
administration's child separation policy to his taxes, possible conflicts of
interest and potential campaign finance law violations. The issue could set
Biden on a collision course with some of his own supporters, who are eager for
a wholesale examination of the Trump presidency.
"There's
also a strong school of thought that believes the law's the law," a Biden
adviser said, describing the internal debate.
Biden said
many times during the campaign that he would leave any decision whether to
prosecute Trump up to his attorney general. "If that was the judgment that
he violated the law and he should be, in fact, criminally prosecuted, then so
be it," he said during a debate in Atlanta. "But I would not direct
it." Biden has said he wouldn't pardon Trump should that become a
realistic question.
Still,
multiple aides said, Biden is generally not inclined to see his Justice
Department investigate Trump.
One of the
reasons he has given aides is that he believes investigations would alienate
the more than 73 million Americans who voted for Trump, the people familiar
with the discussions said. Some Democrats have said Biden should be
prioritizing the concerns of his supporters, not those of his detractors.
The delicate
balance of answering to his own supporters and uniting the country is in part
why Biden recognizes that his nominee for attorney general is "going to be
one of the most consequential decisions he's going to make," an adviser
said.
Biden has
vowed to sign an executive order declaring that any member of his
administration would be fired if found to "initiate, encourage, obstruct
or otherwise improperly influence specific DOJ investigations or prosecutions
for any reason."
The dilemma facing
Biden is similar to the one Obama faced when he took office in 2009. Democrats
were demanding the prosecution of Bush administration officials who were
involved in policies that allowed enhanced interrogations, or torture, of
terrorism suspects.
To appease
those Democrats, Obama released memos about the controversial program and then
publicly said he didn't support prosecuting Bush administration officials who
devised or carried out the policies. He also rejected calls for a 9/11-style
commission or a truth and reconciliation commission, like the one that examined
apartheid in South Africa, to review the policies.
What Are the Chances Trump Could Actually Go to Jail?
New York state legal experts—and one of the president’s biographers—weigh
in.
by James Bruno
August 11, 2020
The White House/Flickr
Will America soon have its first Shawshank President? Will
Donald Trump find himself fending off riots in the Attica mess hall? Tweetless
and at the mercy of 2,000 “angry Democrat” inmates?
A number of
recent developments show that one cannot rule it out. Things took a decidedly serious turn
last week when New York prosecutors told a federal judge that there were
“public reports of possibly extensive and protracted criminal conduct at the
Trump Organization.” They
added that they that they may also be investigating possible crimes involving
bank and insurance fraud, according to the New York Times,
which also reported that Deutsche Bank has been complying with a Manhattan
District Attorney’s Office subpoena for months, turning over detailed financial
records in connection with some $2 billion the bank has lent Trump.
The news comes
on the heels of a Supreme Court ruling last month that declared the president
was not immune from state criminal investigations, therefore clearing the way
for a New York grand jury to subpoena Trump’s financial records, an effort
spearheaded by Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance Jr.
For Trump, the
stakes couldn’t be higher once he leaves office: He could go from the White
House to the Big House.
So, I asked
some experts the likelihood that the president could really wind up in a New
York prison. “Absolutely yes, if we are a nation of equal justice and Trump is
convicted of serious felonies,” Trump biographer David Cay Johnston told me.
But he quickly added, “Whether it happens is entirely unpredictable.”
Still, New
York has a real chance at putting Trump behind bars. The state has jurisdiction
over most of his properties and operations relating to his 2016 presidential
campaign. Crucially, states also are not subject the U.S. Department of
Justice’s rule that a sitting president may not be prosecuted for federal
crimes. Trump,
therefore, is stripped of his four-year kryptonite shield if he is re-elected.
A state indictment of a sitting president, though historically unprecedented,
is entirely possible. His DOJ-Roy Cohn, Bill Barr, is constitutionally
powerless to intervene.
That should
make Trump uneasy, especially as New York Attorney General Letitia James ramps
up her own investigations. “We will use every area of the law to investigate
President Trump and his business transactions and that of his family,”
she declared after taking office two years ago.
At the same
time, Vance’s subpoena appears to go beyond obtaining financial records
relating to alleged pre-election hush money payments to silence two women,
Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal. Both of the women claim to have had affairs
with Trump. Information
gleaned from the DA’s inquiry could expose tax cheating and money laundering as
well as bank and insurance fraud, which are felonies.
Johnston told
me he’s confident that Vance already has Trump’s New York tax filings. Even
though the IRS and state tax authorities share tax information on citizens and
business entities, it’s unclear whether he also has the president’s federal
returns. The DA is seeking Trump’s financial records from his accounting firm
Mazars USA in addition to Deutsche Bank—to compare that data with what he
already possesses, looking for corroborating information, according to
Johnston.
“Trump
has a well-documented history as a tax
cheat
and for hiding business records,” Johnston
said.
“This is garden variety tax fraud, a straight-up
tax
scam that could easily be a felony.”
That doesn’t
necessarily mean he will go to jail. More often than not, tax cheats get away
with heavy fines in lieu of prison sentences, Johnston said. Moreover, Trump,
like many very wealthy people, will continue to throw monkey wrenches into the
judicial system with appeal after appeal and other rope-a-dope tactics until
revenue agencies finally become open to a low-punitive settlement.
This is echoed
by Duncan Levin, formerly a senior staff member under District Attorney Vance
and an ex-assistant U.S. attorney. Whether the president would actually be
sentenced to prison is a political call, Levin said. “Can you imagine an
ex-U.S. president actually being sent to prison?” he told me. “It’s
inconceivable that Trump didn’t know about the hush money payments. But it’s
highly unlikely that he’d be arrested on misdemeanor charges. They would have
to be very serious felonies.” False statements to financial institutions would
count.
More likely,
he added, the DA may be zeroing in at this point on Trump’s inner circle.
“Michael Cohen didn’t act alone. He collaborated with people within the Trump
organization to cover up the hush payments just before the election,” Levin
said. Look, at least initially, for indictments of Trump underlings.
The good news,
though, is that Vance will not put off his investigation and possible
indictments until after the November election. DA’s proceed on cases
irrespective of extraneous events, including a general election, Levin said.
But the hope
of many that Trump could finally be held accountable for his crimes may be
remote. At most, one can imagine him behind bars at a white-collar
correctional facility like that of his former lawyer Michael Cohen, as opposed
to hard time at a penitentiary like Attica. For now, though, time will
tell. The Americans who want to see justice carried out are more likely to
watch this shamed crook-in-chief spending his remaining years out of office
consumed in exhausting and financially draining legal battles, fully exposed
for the criminal he’s always been.
James Bruno
James
Bruno is a Washington Monthly contributing writer and former U.S.
diplomat. Read his blog, DIPLO DENIZEN, and follow him on
Twitter @JamesLBruno. The opinions and characterizations in this article
are those of the author, and do not necessarily represent official positions of
the U.S. government
.
"The Bill, Hillary
& Chelsea Clinton Foundation" that began hustling in New York in 1998,
while the Clinton's and their lawyers needed vast sums to fend off impeachment,
and pay overdue legal bills.
Ignoring Clinton Charity Frauds to Attack Trump for Paying Taxes
Yesterday, the New
York Times published 10,000 empty words on Donald Trump’s
taxes, a barrage of self-inflicted wounds gutting the integrity of the editorial
staff and management of this publicly traded, yet family influenced company.
Yet it was not an effective indictment of any Trump family member.
It is not a crime to
offset losses against income, a fact that has been true for decades. And, it is
profit-seeking businesses, and their owners and employees that produce the bulk
of taxable income, yielding revenue needed to defray expenses of government.
Over decades, generations
of Trumps employed thousands of New Yorkers directly and indirectly producing incomes
and spending that filled tax coffers at federal, state, city and county
level. But instead of cultivating the Trump family and other
profit-seekers, city and state government officials decided to persecute them,
something Mayor DeBlasio and Governor Cuomo II, seemingly delight in doing.
A Welcome Mat for
Grifters
While the Trump family
hails from the Empire State, Bill and Hillary Clinton formally arrived there
officially as a pair of carpetbaggers from Washington, DC in 2001, having
plucked their previous domiciles clean.
Like her predecessor Eric
Schneiderman, New York Attorney General Tish James relentlessly pounds the
Trump family for charity offenses but so far has turned a blind eye to the
biggest illegal enrichment scheme using "charities" since Tammany
Hall.
Meanwhile, editors at
The New York Times refuse to look through publicly available
filings concerning a supposed charity now called "The Bill, Hillary
& Chelsea Clinton Foundation" that began hustling in New York in 1998,
while the Clinton's and their lawyers needed vast sums to fend off impeachment,
and pay overdue legal bills.
When it comes to the
Trumps, authorities enforce strict laws regulating charities and their
money-raising appeals, but not so for the Clintons. This is especially true of
Robert Mueller and James Comey, who "missed" the early period of
Clinton charity fraud, when they "investigated" the Clinton
Foundation with grand juries from 2001 to 2005, according to documents
available online at the FBI Vault website.
By 2005, Bill Clinton
boasted in the paperback edition of his book on page 958 that he spent time
since January 2001: "building my library in Arkansas and my foundation in
Harlem."
But hard facts suggest
otherwise.
Documents available in
Arkansas and on the Clinton Foundation website prove that the original entity
-- The William J. Clinton Presidential Foundation -- operated from 23 October
1997 through 22 December 1997 without adopting Bylaws, in violation of Arkansas
state law. This is not a minor, technical matter.
The crucial organizing
document makes clear that the original nonprofit corporation was intended to be
a public charity. Public charities must formally exist and cannot be
governed by one family or used to raise sums from corrupt donors looking to
purchase influence.
So how, for example, did
Bill and Hillary Clinton select a specific site for "their"
foundation in Arkansas on Nov. 7, 1997 as a C-SPAN interview of Skip Rutherford
(first president of Clinton Foundation) claims? Bill did not become a
trustee or director of any Clinton charity until 2009, while Hillary waited
until 2013.
A Long Trail of Dubious
Missteps
A fair analysis of public
documents by the IRS, if it were politically neutral, would have denied federal
tax exemption for the Clinton Foundation. Of course, that did not happen when
Bill Clinton was in the White House. Instead, the IRS "ignored"
obvious defects in the application and granted conditional exemption on Jan.
29, 1998 as the Clintons together fended off Bill's Paula Jones and Monica
Lewinsky problems.
Then, by mid 1998, the
Clinton Foundation filed a materially false registration statement in New York,
failing to explain why the entity did not file an IRS return on Form 990
covering its partial year operation in 1997. Importantly, this registration did
explain, before Hillary announced her ambition to represent New York in the
U.S. Senate, that the Clinton Foundation would operate only in a Little Rock
city park and not all over the world.
Ever since 1998, the
Clintons have violated legions of laws that might protect New Yorkers from
charity and tax frauds. For example, a public charity must further
specific, tax-exempt purposes. If it wishes to alter its geographic focus, it
ordinarily must secure IRS approval, in advance, before making such a change.
And, states including New York legally require charities to make prompt,
publicly available notification of such changes.
The Clinton
"charities" never have complied with crucial charity laws and did not
even bother to file independent certified audits of their financial results for
1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, or 2003 in New York, as is specifically
required. Thereafter, purported audits for 2004 forward are each materially
false and incomplete. Without effective audits, no outsider can know what
actually happened to donations sent towards a charity.
Does "The Clinton
Foundation" Exist?
Forgetting grievous
accounting "errors," no Clinton "charity" bothered to
register with the New York Secretary of State until 2009. Before then numerous
appeals went out supposedly using names associated with the Clinton family.
These "fictitious names" have not been properly registered in each
New York county where they have been used to solicit funds or to operate. The
possibility that bank accounts may have been opened many places in these names
is one that must be considered.
Real New Yorkers will
remember when so many street corners in Manhattan had folding tables with
gigantic glass jars on them supposedly seeking cash donations for the homeless.
There was no actual charity in that case. Grifters pulled on heartstrings, and
then harvested donations for themselves using glass jars instead of fake bank
accounts.
Correcting the Record
What Bill, Hillary &
Chelsea Clinton have done in New York and internationally with their many fake
"charities" is far worse.
Ask people in India, Asia
or Haiti, what happened to billions of dollars raised and, in theory, sent for
natural disaster relief efforts overseen by the Clintons. To this day there has
never been an honest accounting of these activities.
By what authority and in
what guise was all this money solicited, raised and spent?
New York has pushed out a
family of billionaires who fell afoul of charity offenses resulting in
penalties of less than $30 million.
Meanwhile, they welcomed
technically bankrupt Arkansans to foist a set of charity frauds on taxpayers
that is at least $3 billion in size.
And what do the many
preening "investigative journalists" at The New York Times do?
They stubbornly ignore
the largest, as yet unprosecuted fraud and corruption scandal in American
history.
When you say you are
giving money away, no one checks carefully enough to see how much money you
truly raised and where it actually went.
And when celebrities or
politicians are involved, donors let down their guard.
The Trump Administration
should not only make sure that all charity frauds are prosecuted aggressively,
it should make harsh examples particularly of U.S. charities, real or fake,
that solicit donations trading on the actus or imagined plight of others.
As for The New
York Times, rest in blind partisanship but don't forget to register as an
agent of the imaginary Biden for President campaign.
Donald Trump Should Not Bother with A Presidential Library
Win or lose on Nov. 3, 2020, Donald Trump can set an excellent
example by letting the National Archives retain and later provide access to all
records created or received during his tenure as president of the United
States. Thereafter, citizens and scholars can study these presidential
records. After all, they are our property, and not that of any single
president.
Unlike all presidents in office from 1955 onwards (when the
Presidential Libraries Act was signed into law), Donald Trump entered the White
House with a vast fortune, and a track record promoting and developing business
ventures inside and outside the United States. Given his accomplishments as
president, he and his family will only have more substantial profit-making
opportunities when he leaves the White House.
The Trump family will later only be hurt, possibly grievously from
a financial point of view, if they simultaneously get involved with a
presidential library. Loved by many, but hated by denizens of the still
lubricated deep state swamp, he will be relentlessly pursued by the very people
who have let the Clinton family exploit their purported charity for personal
and political gain since Oct. 23,1997.
Why?
Though the Clintons and other dynastic political families
including the Bush and Obama clans profess otherwise, presidential libraries
are public charities -- these are supposed to be governed by directors or
trustees who are broadly representative of the public at large, and certainly
not blind supporters of a president. These entities may not push or oppose a
political candidate, nor may they promote or block legislation. Moreover,
public charities may not, during their entire life create more than an insubstantial
amount of "private gain" in total through their operation.
The Bill Clinton Presidential Library
in Little Rock, Arkansas
Photo credit: Thomas R
Machnitzki, under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2
In financial terms, insubstantial has been held to be amounts of
$1,000 or less. Here, private gain does not merely mean financial gain
(unfairly and generously priced speech, book and film deals, or sweetheart
investment terms) but any kind of advantage or edge created for insiders at the
supposed charity. Most of all, public charities must actually exist. If they
are nonprofit corporations, they must incorporate, then organize by adopting
articles of incorporation and bylaws, and scrupulously follow all applicable
laws, everywhere they operate or solicit donations.
In recent years, attorneys general in New York State have
persecuted the Trump family for operating charities outside local law, even
though no Clinton charities, and there are too many of these, have ever
registered truthfully to operate and to solicit inside the Empire State.
Meanwhile many different lawyers and law firms have
"studied" public filings of "The Clinton Foundation,"
identified glaring defects, but chosen to either look the other way, or in the
name of DLA Piper in November 2015, to make manifestly false claims suggesting
that the filings complied with applicable laws and regulations. Since Mar. 16,
2015, a number of concerned persons have documented massive, ongoing, illegal
activities carried out in the name of "The Clinton Foundation" and
others involving a supposed organization using Federal Employer Identification
Number 31-1580204. Google searches, www.charlesortel.com, and @CharlesOrtel are good places to find perspectives on these
apparent charity frauds.
After trying to stimulate interest in investigating and bringing
to justice those responsible for directing the largest criminal fraud and
corruption exercise ever attempted using charities in traditional media, I
started cohosting podcasts with Hollywood veteran Jason Goodman in various
formats under the www.crowdsourcethetruth.com umbrella. Our latest podcast is linked here. These
cumulative efforts have triggered interest in many places inside and
outside the United States. And now we wait to see whether authorities will do
the right thing and demonstrate, via prosecutions and plea agreements that
even, and especially, dynastic political families are subject to our laws.
Since November 1992, publicly available evidence shows that the
Clintons have schemed with their supporters to monetize their "public
service" using leaky charities that fail, lawfully, to account for their
activities as is required. This abominable record is emulated by others in both
parties and in many foreign nations.
America's founders did not throw off the yoke of monarchy to
replace it with a new form of intolerant rule by unregulated, self-selected
cultists in thrall to gauzy themes like "globalism," and unvetted
schemes to address "inequality" and "climate change"
chiefly by seizing wealth and income of the meek.
Intended to serve as archives and research facilities into the
histories of presidents, presidential libraries in modern times have become
vanity exercises through which corrupt interests can pay tribute to families
seeking to rule, we the people using monuments to themselves. Given existing
technology alone, libraries are becoming expensive anachronisms, that need to
be heated, cooled, and maintained.
The 45th president should set another cutting-edge marker letting
his records remain at the main National Archives complex. Then, after
he leaves the White House he and his family can profit to their hearts'
content, unfettered by the real conflicts of interest that come and should be
prosecuted when merchants in misery like the Clintons (and others) milk public
charities. illegally.
Charles Ortel is host of the YouTube series, Sunday with Charles.
An archive of 263 episodes since June 2017 is found here.
THE CRIME DUAL OF HILLARY & BILLARY, THE “HOPE & CHANGE” HUCKSTER OBAMA AND CIRCUS FREAK TRUMP….. Their march to the guillotine.
Let us hope
they take the Bush Crime Family with them!
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2016/10/americas-drift-to-revolution-will-pass.html
"But
the Clintons personify this corruption just as much as Trump, even if they made
use of a different mechanism and on a somewhat smaller scale. They amassed a
fortune exceeding $150 million in the decade after Bill Clinton left the White
House, mainly through six-figure fees for addressing corporate and Wall Street
audiences. Barack Obama will shortly take a similar path, reaping his reward
from the financial aristocracy whose interests he safeguarded so assiduously
over the past eight years."
Throughout, Joe claims he knew nothing of any family pay-to-play hustles in Oman, Luxembourg, Romania, Kazakhstan, Ukraine, Russia, Guatemala, and China. The ignorance defense is an instant replay of Clinton family tactics; deny, deny, deny, and when denials are no longer plausible, depend on Deep State Democrat Party Beltway hacks to cover or come to the rescue.
LAWLESS! THE
PARASITE LAWYER CLASS
THE CASE
AGAINST LAWYER HUNTER BIDEN
https://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2020/10/the-lawless-lawyer-class-case-against.html
Together
James and Hunter Biden had built a business around Joe Biden. But what happened
in Pennsylvania, in St. Louis, and Arkansas ended with more than greed.
Americans don’t want the corrupt in power.
It’s that simple. If Hillary Clinton’s foundation peddled access to her when
she was secretary of state; this is much worse. How could a compromised
Biden ever stand up to countries like China and Russia, which have already paid
his family millions?
THE SHADY POLITICS OF HILLARY CLINTON and her
PAY-TO-PLAY MAFIA
The
left cared nothing about that bit of collusion.
Hillary
and her campaign aides have long been involved with Russia for reasons of
personal gain. Clinton herself got $145 million in donations to the Clinton Foundation for allowing
Russia to take over twenty percent of all uranium production in the U.S. Her campaign chairman, John Podesta, is
reaping the financial benefits of being on the board of a Russian company,
Joule, which he did not disclose. PATRICIA McCARTHY
Had
Hillary been elected, the Clinton Foundation would be raking in even more
millions than it did before. She would be happily selling access, favors
and our remaining freedoms out from under us. PATRICIA McCARTHY...THAT'S WHY HILLS WANTS A JOB IN THE
BIDE-KAMALA HARRIS BANKSTER REGIME!
The Bidens: A Delaware mafia
Delaware
is not famous for much of anything except Dupont/Dow, on-shore tax havens, and
a lucrative toll gate on the I-95 Interstate.
Delaware's
minor and opaque reputation may change as the Biden family corruption saga
unfolds.
If
you have any questions about the standing of the Biden family in Delaware, all
you need to know is that the one interstate rest stop on the Delaware stretch of
the thruway is named after Joe Biden. Delaware is the second
smallest state in the union, yet it has three toll roads exploiting north/south
traffic through the busy east coast corridor.
The
biggest employers in the state are government, education, banking, and
chemicals/pharmaceuticals.
"More
than half of all U.S. publicly traded companies, and 63% of the Fortune
500, are incorporated in
Delaware. The state's attractiveness as a corporate
haven is largely because of its business-friendly corporation law. Franchise
taxes on Delaware corporations supply about a fifth of the state's
revenue. Delaware ranks as the world's most opaque jurisdiction on
the Tax
Justice Network's 2009 Financial Secrecy Index[.] ... [T]here are more than a
million registered corporations, meaning there are more corporations than
people."
Joe
Biden has represented Delaware for nearly 50 years in the U.S. Congress, but
you would never know that by listening to a campaign speech. At the
drop of a hat, Joe trots out his birth in Scranton, Pennsylvania, a place his
family left when Joe was 10.
Delaware
has three Electoral College votes. Pennsylvania has 20.
From
the start, Biden's career was cratered by personal misfortune; a wife and
child died in an auto accident, and an eldest son died of
cancer. All the while, Biden's wayward second son, Hunter Biden,
dragged the family name through the muck for decades. The tragedy of
Biden's life is real, but then again, so are the pity parties.
A
recent 60 Minutes election-year
side-by-side comparison of Biden and Trump is an example. A stuttering
narrator was recruited by PBS to narrate the saga of Biden's childhood trauma
as a stutterer. You are led to believe that stuttering might be the
explanation behind Joe's history of gaffes, lies about schools/class rank, and
other character flaws like plagiarism.
Like
the Scranton yarns, Joe is not above retailing or using childhood stuttering
and a sad family history to excuse missteps and bad judgment. Alas,
we often hear about the trials and saints in Joe's life, yet we seldom hear
about the demons and grifters.
Second
son Hunter is a junkie cum drunk, a seven-time loser in rehab who bedded his
brother Beau's wife before the man's body was cold. Hunter
was thrown out of the U.S. Navy Reserve for cocaine use, and he had to be
forced to take a DNA test to acknowledge a child born of a relationship with a
Washington, D.C. stripper who moved back to Arkansas.
Nevertheless,
the drug-addled Lothario was a frequent flyer on Air Force Two, the golden
chariot that led to recent Biden family riches.
Hunter
was a principal in pay-to-play on a global scale. Recent electronic
and documented evidence confirms years of scuttlebutt that suggested that
Hunter Biden, and Uncle Jim, were trading and profiting on the name and office
of the "big guy."
Throughout,
Joe claims he knew nothing of any family pay-to-play hustles in Oman,
Luxembourg, Romania, Kazakhstan, Ukraine, Russia, Guatemala,
and China. The ignorance defense is an instant replay of
Clinton family tactics; deny, deny, deny, and when denials are no longer
plausible, depend on Deep State Democrat Party Beltway hacks to cover or come
to the rescue.
Rep.
Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) obliged on cue the other day, calling the most recent
corruption charges against the Bidens "Russian disinformation."
Adding
insult to our intelligence, Joe Biden, like a cathouse piano player, claims he
will bring "honor and integrity" back to the Oval
Office. Say what you will about pay-to-play on the left these days;
the American Democrat party may have cornered the global market on chutzpah.
Withal,
the Biden exposé is, by any metric, a day late and a billion dollars short — at
best a pyrrhic victory for critics. The Justice Department and the
FBI have had the goods on Biden for some time, yet official Washington is still
mute and inert.
Inertia
at justice is a symptom of a much larger problem: institutionalized federal
double standards.
A
Republican might be indicted by an ambiguous phone call while Democrats, like
the Clintons and Bidens, get a pass on obvious felonies. Rest
assured that nine of ten apparatchiks entrenched inside the Beltway are
Democrat voters. Left-wing fixtures in the Beltway swamp — at the
Intelligence Community, Department of Defense, Justice department, and FBI —
may be systemic and permanent at this point.
Alas,
there may be some satisfaction to be had from truth if not justice.
We
now know, through electronic and testimonial evidence, that Biden and
family have been trading on public office for years. More important is the
realization that the attempted coup and impeachment of Donald Trump was an
elaborate and persistent scheme to distract from Obama/Biden era regime change
chicanery and corruption in eastern Europe.
Winning
in 2020 and beating an attempted coup, however, are not Donald Trump's serious
sins. Trump's mortal offense was his refusal to become a useful idiot like
James Clapper or Barack Obama.
Consequently,
tactics and operations usually reserved for black operations abroad were
imported by deep state Democrats (James Comey and John Brennan) for domestic
use in 2016 and continue to this day.
American
print and broadcast media, erstwhile guardians of free speech, press, and
truth, were also lost or compromised in the Obama years.
Press
and broadcast bias is now compounded by what Caroline Glick calls "The New
Commissars," those universally leftist dot.com mandarins who flourish,
profit, and spin in an unregulated internet cesspool.
Big
Brother is now a very wealthy and influential cabal of left coast Twitter, Facebook,
and Google Democrats.
The
real tragedy of Donald Trump's first term is that so many Americans still seem
to believe that barkers and hustlers like Joe Biden are actually an improvement
over grifters like Bill and Hillary Clinton.
Suicidal
stupidity on the American left now seems to be generational — and systemic.
G.
Murphy Donovan is a former Moynihan progressive and erstwhile Director of
Research and Russian Studies under James Clapper at USAF Intelligence (AFIN) at
the Pentagon.
THE LOOTING OF AMERICA
KAMALA HARRIS AND HER GOLDMAN SACHS BANKSTER STEVEN MNUCHIN
A tidy corrupt partnership
https://kamala-harris-sociopath.blogspot.com/2020/10/the-looting-of-america-kamala-harris.html
She also declined
to prosecute OneWest, run by now-Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin from 2009-2015,
after her own prosecutors said they discovered over a thousand violations of foreclosure
law committed by the bank. (OneWest donated $6,500
to Harris' attorney general campaign in 2011, and Mnuchin himself donated
$2,000 to her Senate campaign in 2016.)
THE RAPID RISE AND EVEN QUICKER FALL OF A
SOCIOPATH BRIBES SUCKING
LAWYER - WE'RE
TALKING ABOUT KAMALA HARRIS
https://kamala-harris-sociopath.blogspot.com/2020/10/the-rapid-rise-and-even-quicker-fall-of.html
“The effrontery to all of us to put an obviously ailing and
incoherent
Joe Biden for the top spot and for the V.P., Kamala Harris,
who
couldn't even carry her own state in the primaries, indicates
their lack of
judgment.” ALAN BERGSTEIN
“However, I would like to encourage my fellow Democrats to
approach Senator Harris with a healthy dose of skepticism. As a prosecutor and
California State Attorney General, Harris has engaged in blatantly unethical
behavior for her profession and embraced positions that actively hurt her
constituents.”
JESSER
HOROWITZ
Joe Biden, the corrupt,
unaccomplished 47-year career politician, with a reputation of having been a
proud segregationist,
an unabashed plagiarist and liar, a resolute tale-teller,
and a serial flip-flopper, is
pretending to head up a radical social-democratic ticket for President of the
United States that includes as his running mate the ambitious, disagreeable
junior senator from California: Kamala Harris.
SHE’S CORRUPT, AMORAL, BRIBES SUCKING BUT ISN’T THAT WHY BIDEN WANTED HER TO BE V.P?
SHE’S A SOCIOPATH LAWYER!
https://kamala-harris-sociopath.blogspot.com/2020/09/kamala-harris-amoral-corrupt-bribes.html
Tucker Carlson of Fox News calls Harris a corrupt and dangerous
fraud who sees laws and powers only as means to punish her enemies,
pursue her agenda, and get elected.
KAMALA HARRIS - I CAN CON THEM!
I'M A LAWYER, IT'S WHAT I HAVE DONE MY ENTIRE BRIBES SUCKING LEGAL CAREER!
https://kamala-harris-sociopath.blogspot.com/2020/09/kamala-harrs-i-can-con-them-im-lawyer.html
All of this is, if we can be permitted to use Biden’s catchphrase, “malarkey.” Harris has already proven herself as a trusted servant of the interests of the rich and powerful at the expense of the working class. The Wall Street Journal wrote last week that Wall Street financers had breathed a “sigh of relief” at Biden’s pick of Harris. Industry publication American Banker noted that her steadiest stream of campaign funding has come from financial industry professionals and their most trusted law firms.
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.
irraa is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0President 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.
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