trump kids
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primary 12 25 on grift corrupt 3
MERRI OK
possibly neglected, so
see crypto-currency meme shit coin libtard macho arab
see donald jr and ivanka and jared kushner
SEE ERIC BARRON
see trump real estate/ fdn
SEE CORRUPT 3
see arab SAUDI MBZ MBS UAE QATER
why eric singled out as nepo trust fund?
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MMA
November 5, 2026, edition of Fox News' The Five
JESSE WATTERS (CO-HOST): Yeah, let them run around like hamsters. Who cares? It’s fair game, I mean, both sides do it. Eric and Don, they had lawyers on retainer when they were in diapers. They’re used to it okay, both sides do it. But there’s a difference between the Trump boys and the Biden boy.
The Trump boys were established, well-respected, married, sober businessmen. The Biden boy was like an intoxicated mascot surrounded by hookers. Ok? I know people who did deals with them, they said he was embarrassing when they brought him to meetings, like he was all over the place. And so what value did Hunter Biden create for anybody? I mean at least the Trump boys are doing things with minerals and drones and real estate. I mean, they actually create value. Hunter Biden is in debt and broke and out of business. Dana he never even had a business, he just had a series of shell companies to sell access to his dad. And I’m with you. Collaboration with corporate America: They had law firms basically trying to put Trump in prison. Corporate America in bed with the Democrats, trying to impeach him. And half of that stuff was just a hoax. So screw those guys. Yeah, right, Trump sanctioned him — good. They should never do that again.
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an 9 26
President Donald Trump and his high-ranking officials are engaged in a simultaneous project of spreading far right ideologies worldwide — and raking in billions while doing so.
In an article by The Atlantic's Anne Applebaum on Monday, Americans learned the full extent of Trump's mixing of exporting paranoid politics and turning a profit from Brazil and the United Arab Emirates to threatening longtime democratic allies like Canada and Denmark. She added that the major industries helping Trump do this include oil and gas, rare earth minerals and cryptocurrency.
"American power is no longer deployed solely by trained diplomats and reliable officials, working through state channels. Informal envoys, private companies, online grifters, and hardened ideologues both inside and outside the government matter more," Applebaum wrote. "Unlike their predecessors, these people do not talk about spreading democracy, and don’t want to build long-term relationships. They don’t care about America’s reputation. They are deploying the tools of American diplomacy and government for their own purposes, to promote their own business interests or their own ideological goals, because, suddenly, they can."
She also added that "the clan of predators currently in charge of the U.S. federal government is no different. Wrongly described as 'isolationists,' many of its true believers don’t think of themselves as ordinary Republicans who won an election and will temporarily hold power until the next election. Nor are they mere appendages of Trump. They believe they represent something much greater: the vanguard of a movement that will alter not just America, but the world."
Applebaum contrasted the attitude of Trump supporters with that of Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), who famously said during the 2008 election that his opponent, Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL), was a decent man with whom he happened to disagree.
"Their enemies are existential, and they are international: super-spreaders of a 'wokeness' plague, or proponents of a fictitious 'censorship-industrial complex,' or advocates of 'regulation' that will hamper American business, or self-hating promoters of “mass migration” who want to drown Western civilization in a sea of brown-faced aliens," Applebaum explained. "To maintain their power and defeat these enemies, the predators, like their Bolshevik counterparts, cannot rely on traditional diplomacy, because they don’t trust its practitioners."
She concluded, "Nor do they trust many of the leaders of the democratic states that have long shared the same political and economic values as America. Although the U.S. military and intelligence services continue to cooperate closely with allied governments, the ideologues in and out of the administration are actively seeking to replace them with people and parties who share their disdain for liberal democracy and for what were once considered, at least aspirationally, to be American values. To do so, they need to expand their global influence, manipulate elections in former partner nations, and alter the flows of money and power, especially inside other democracies. Much of the world has always believed America’s defense of democracy to be hypocritical, and that American-led economic integration was self-serving. But now even the people who sincerely believed in the postwar American project are discovering that it no longer exists."
Trump himself has raked in billions since assuming office in his second term, while his sons have netted millions using their foreign policy connections to get involved in matters like investing in tungsten mines. Earlier this month, a Gallup poll found a historically high number of Americans are upset with government corruption, writing that "Americans’ perceptions of government corruption in the U.S. are at their highest level in 20 years, with 89 [percent] of U.S. adults saying it is widespread. That figure is up 10 percentage points from last year and well above readings in the 72 [percent] to 79 [percent] range between 2010 and 2025."
The poll added, "Democrats’ perceptions of government corruption have risen the most sharply since 2024 compared with other party groups. In former President Joe Biden’s final year in office, 57 [percent] of Democrats said corruption was widespread in government; that rose to 76 [percent] in 2025, the first year of President Donald Trump’s second term, and reached 91 [percent] this year. The figure among political independents (90 [percent]) aligns more closely with Democrats’ than with Republicans’ (83 [percent]) and is up 12 points since 2024."
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KUDLOW LEANED ON DOD TO APPROVE TRUMP KID DRONE DEAL 5 26
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AN 4 26
President Donald Trump's profits from the presidency continue to grow, and so do the funds flowing to his friends and family.
NBC News Miami walked through some of the recent updates on Trump World's profits, which are scoring billions.
“I don’t think there’s any line right now between policy decisions and political calculations and the interest of the Trump family,” said presidential historian Julian Zelizer, from Princeton University.
Trump's conflicts of interest aren't new; they were a concern even before he entered the White House in 2017, when he said he would put his businesses into a "blind trust." It never happened, and he claimed that he knew nothing about the Trump Organization, as his sons were running the business. Indeed, they managed to negotiate
The White House and the Trump Organization claim there are no ethical issues. When Donald Trump Jr. was asked about profits from failed cryptocurrency during a conference, he complained, "Frankly, it’s gotten old."
However, during the first term, the Trump Org. wasn't doing deals in foreign countries. There were minor deals like trademarks in China and shortly after the first term, two Trump advisors were given billions by the Saudi Public Investment Fund (PIF): Jared Kushner, Trump's son-in-law, and Trump's former Treasury secretary, Steve Mnuchin.
In the first year of the second term, the Trump Org. has made deals all over the Middle East, including eight agreements, but not directly with foreign governments.
"But governments in authoritarian and one-party states rarely take a hands-off approach — especially when the business belongs to a sitting president," the report said.
That's particularly the case for the Saudis. Currently, a real estate tycoon with close ties to the royal family is developing a project. It will be a “Trump Plaza” resort on the Red Sea.
In Qatar, for example, Trump not only scored a multi-million-dollar plane that taxpayers retrofitted for him, but a Trump golf club and villa project is currently under development. The company that is part of the operation is owned by the Qatari government. The same thing is happening in Vietnam, where the *New York Times*reported the government took land from farmers to build a Trump resort. The report said that the government violated its own laws to do it. The country’s deputy prime minister signed off on the Trump Org. deal in a ceremony, the AP reported.
Meanwhile, what the countries got in return came from the United States. Qatar got U.S. technology, Vietnam got tariff relief and Saudi Arabia scored fighter jets.
The Trump Organization reinforced that none of its deals are done with foreign governments. The claim is that it is a coincidence that after deals were done in those countries, the government got something it needed.
A year after a deal was struck, it was exposed by the *Wall Street Journal* in January. Before the inauguration, a company linked to the UAE government, run by a member of the royal family, bought $500 million in crypto from Trump's "World Liberty Financial."
Then, another UAE company invested in Binance, an offshore cryptocurrency exchange, with $2 billion in digital currency called stablecoin, which came from the Trumps' World Liberty Financial.
"That allowed the Trump company that received the dollars to put it in safe investments such as bonds or money market funds and keep the tens of millions of dollars in interest for itself," the report said.
Suddenly, the new Trump government reversed restrictions on the UAE's access to U.S. chips. Binance founder Changpeng Zhao got a pardon from Trump, even though he'd pleaded guilty. He maintains that there was no connection between the Trump deals and his pardon.
World Liberty also denies any conflicts of interest.
It's only a portion of the cryptocurrency deals, the report said.
The White House alleged that any suggestion that the moves weren't "ethically sound" is either "ill-informed or malicious." It also falsely claimed that Trump's assets are in a trust managed by his children. While Trump pledged to have a blind trust in 2017, it never happened, a Common Cause investigation showed. In the new administration, Trump put about $4 billion in shares of his media company into a trust. There is no "blind trust" in the new administration either. There is, however, a revocable trust, that covers all of Trump's assets and is run by Donald Trump Jr.
The arguments from the White House "are belied by Trump’s failure to limit the appearance or reality that he is using his power to reward people who help enrich him," said *Mother Jones* in a March report. "Trump continues to benefit from the family companies now run by his sons, and ethics experts note that because Trump has not set up a blind trust, the president can keep track of who is paying or investing in those firms in hopes of influencing him."
NBC said that the Trump Organization claims it is “fully compliant with all applicable ethics and conflicts of interest laws” and added, “the implication that politics has enriched the Trump family is unfounded."
Trump, in January, told *The New York Times* that when it comes to potential conflicts of interest, “I prohibited them from doing business in my first term, and I got absolutely no credit for it. I didn’t have to do that. And it’s really unfair to them."
He added, "I found out that nobody cared, and I’m allowed to."
In January 2026, the Pew Research Center found that 42 percent of Trump voters were confident in his ethics. That said, in January 2025, that number was 55 percent. So, he's fallen 13 percent in a year, NBC cited.
In that same year, Forbes estimates Trump has increased his net worth by 60 percent, to $6.3 billion. Before he entered the White House, the Trump Organization was struggling, the report said.
Meanwhile, Donald Trump Jr. started a private club in the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, D.C. There is a $500,000 "initiation fee." NBC compared it to the Yellowstone Club in Montana. In that case, members get access to multiple resorts, 50 ski trails and more than a dozen restaurants across an area the size of Manhattan. Don Jr.'s club is in a basement and is called the "Executive Branch."
"Meanwhile, as the two oldest brothers’ new drone company" is asking for Pentagon contracts and other government deals that would ensure the Trump's score taxpayer dollars for their companies. There are already companies with government contracts that one or both of the Trump sons have an ownership stake in. It includes a rocket motor maker, an AI chip supplyer and data analytics company, government records show, according to NBC.
When asked about the potential conflicts of interest, a spokesperson for Don Jr. said he doesn't "interface" with the government on companies in his portfolio. He complained that he shouldn't have to stop "living his life and making a living to provide for his five kids just because his dad is president." He said it "is, quite frankly, a laughable and ridiculous standard."
The report closed by saying, "A new investment firm that the brothers joined as advisers last year has raised $345 million in an initial public offering to buy stakes in U.S. companies designed to help their father revive America’s manufacturing base. After the AP asked Trump’s chief business lawyer about language in a regulatory filing stating the firm would target companies seeking federal grants, tax credits and government contracts, he filed a new document with that language removed."
Commenting on it, the Princeton historian, Zelizer, said that he thinks future presidents will be more restrained or be forced to be more restrained.
“[Trump] has shown politically there is no price to be paid to making money,” he said. “You know you can go there.”
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no lnx
Trump's new hustles demand a day of reckoning
Thom Hartmann March 01, 2026
On Tuesday night in the State of the Union, we watched the most corrupt president (and presidency) in the history of America lie his way through a fascist-friendly speech. He didn’t mention how rich he’s made himself and his kids off the presidency, as he tried to paint in a good light what is, frankly, the most dishonorable, unprincipled, and criminal regime in the history of the free world.
On Tuesday night in the State of the Union, we watched the most corrupt president (and presidency) in the history of America lie his way through a fascist-friendly speech. He didn’t mention how rich he’s made himself and his kids off the presidency, as he tried to paint in a good light what is, frankly, the most dishonorable, unprincipled, and criminal regime in the history of the free world.
Rumors have been flying for years — ever since Rudy Giuliani apparently confessed during Trump’s first term he and Trump were selling pardons for $2 million each and splitting the money — that Trump is at it again, taking what look like bribes for everything from pardons to business deals to regulatory and tariff relief. And the evidence is piling up in ways that are unmistakable.
For example, Judd Legum’s Popular Info news site is reporting that the parent company of crypto.com has made a series of “donations” to Trump’s main SuperPAC, MAGA Inc., amounting to $35 million.
That SuperPAC has already paid tens of millions for Trump’s legal fees, apparently including personal defense lawyers and business deal lawyers, and can hang onto that money to support Trump’s lavish lifestyle once he leaves office.
Shortly after the last donation, as Legum reports:
“25 days later, on February 17, the Trump administration’s Commodities Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), intervened on Crypto.com’s behalf in high-stakes lawsuit in federal court.”
But that’s just the tip of this particular iceberg. Crypto.com also runs prediction markets, the slick new way to get around laws regulating gambling, and recently cut a deal with Trump’s media company (which owns and runs his Truth Social site that’s so badly Nazi-infested and whose majority stockholder is Trump himself) to offer prediction market products through Truth Social or the company that owns it.
Then there’s the report from The New York Times that lays out how the United Arab Emirates (UAE) desperately wanted to buy super-high-tech chips from the US to kick-start their move from being a petrostate into becoming the Silicon Valley of the Middle East. The only problem was that they have a military cooperation agreement with China, and the US was concerned that they’d funnel some of the chips to that country.
So, the UAE “invested” $500 million in Trump’s new crypto scheme. As the Times laid out:
“An investment firm tied to the United Arab Emirates purchased nearly half of the Trump family’s cryptocurrency company last year, making the family business partners with the U.A.E. even as President Trump negotiated foreign policy matters with the Middle Eastern nation …“At the same time that the crypto deal came together, the Emirati government secured an agreement with the Trump administration for the export of hundreds of thousands of advanced chips to power A.I. technology.”
Similarly, after Trump and his son-in-law Jared Kushner backed the Saudi‑UAE blockade of Qatar and defended the crown prince after the Khashoggi killing, the Saudi’s gave Kushner $2 billion to fund his investment firm. No droids in that car!
Not to mention the millions that the Saudi’s gave Trump’s tacky golf motels to put on their LIV Golf Tournaments. Or the millions he makes by forcing the Secret Service to pay to follow him to his golf courses and Mar-a-Lago, along with a regular army of foreign governments and corporations seeking favors, as CREW just exposed.
Or when Ivanka Trump was the “senior White House advisor” as she and her father were managing a trade and tech confrontation with China and that government “gave” her at least 34 Chinese trademarks worth millions.
Immediately thereafter, Trump suddenly reversed course to “save” Chinese telecom giant ZTE and later moved to ease pressure on Huawei via temporary licenses, despite U.S. national‑security warnings. She and her husband reportedly made as much as $640 million during their time exploiting the White House in Trump’s first term.
Trump’s boys are opening Trump-branded hotel/golf deals all over the world in countries that have had contentious relationships with the United States, mostly because of authoritarianism and corruption, with hundreds of millions to billions of dollars flowing into the Trump family’s money bin.
They include: India, Indonesia, Oman, Vietnam, Romania, Bali (Indonesia), Maldives, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia. Or all other the corrupt “deals” making Trump’s two oldest sons mindbogglingly rich that Liz Dye documents.
And, of course, it works both ways. When Pam Bondi was Florida Attorney General, her office opened an investigation on behalf of Floridians who’d been ripped off by Trump’s scam Trump University. Trump had his fake charity — which was later closed down for fraud — write her campaign an illegal $25,000 check and suddenly the investigation vanished.
And then there’s Trump’s pardon pipeline.
Consider Changpeng Zhao, the billionaire founder of Binance. Zhao pleaded guilty to violating U.S. anti-money-laundering laws, agreed to massive financial penalties, but was thrown into prison nonetheless. Not long after, Trump granted him clemency as Binance worked out a $2 billion stablecoin deal anchored in a Trump entity.
Or take Ross Ulbricht, the Silk Road operator serving a life sentence. Ulbricht ran what was allegedly the world’s largest hub for trading in illegal guns, narcotics, and human trafficking. Nonetheless, Trump gave him a pardon, stunning the legal world.
Other recipients have included well-connected political allies and donors, such as former Las Vegas council member Michele Fiore — convicted of wire fraud — whose sentence was vacated despite a jury verdict, and extremist figures like Enrique Tarrio, the leader of the Proud Boys pardoned after participating in the January 6 insurrection.
Even British billionaire Joe Lewis was pardoned for insider-trading convictions, again showing how Trump’s clemency has disproportionately flowed to the wealthy and well-connected.
None of this should surprise Americans; a jury of his peers found Trump’s little personal corporation guilty of felony tax fraud and fined it over a half-billion dollars (which apparently has yet to be paid). And he was personally convicted of 34 felonies involving falsification of business documents in a successful effort to rig the 2016 election by preventing the public from learning of his relationship with Stormy Daniels.
Since his inauguration just 14 months ago, Trump’s personal wealth has increased by an estimated $4 billion. Not bad for a guy who could have been headed to prison if he hadn’t gotten elected president. After all, both Brazil and South Korea just gave their former presidents long prison terms for trying to pull off what Trump tried to do on Jan. 6, 2021.
This is the most corrupt administration in the history of America, with Trump following Vladimir Putin’s formula for becoming wildly rich step-by-step. And somehow Fox “News” and the rightwing echo chamber never seem to report on any of it…
Thom Hartmann is a New York Times best-selling author and SiriusXM talk show host. His Substack can be found here.
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an 12 25
Estimates on President Donald Trump's net worth vary, but according to Forbes, it went from $3.9 billion in 2024 to $7.3 billion in September 2025. In the past — before he became a prominent figure in U.S. politics — Trump's profits came primarily from his real estate assets. But Trump expanded his business activities with the tech-oriented Trump Media & Technology Group (which is separate from the Trump Organization and announced a merger with TAE Technologies in December) and Trump Mobile.
The family-owned Trump Mobile (which is run by President Trump's sons Eric and Don Jr.) planned to release a gold-colored smartphone by the end of 2025 and sell it for $499. But according to The Guardian's Joanna Partridge, the phone's release is facing a likely delay.
"The Trump Organization licensed its name to launch a mobile service and the device in June, in the latest monetization of his presidency by a family business empire now run by Trump's sons," Partridge reports in an article published on December 31. "In the latest setback for the project, Trump Mobile said there was a 'strong possibility' the handset would not be delivered this month, the Financial Times reported. The company's customer service team told the FT that the recent government shutdown had disrupted shipments."
Trump Mobile is using overtly political messaging to market the T1 smartphone, describing it as "proudly American."
"Etched with an American flag," Partridge observes, "the T1 was initially promised in August — and the website still states it will be released 'later this year.' Customers are required to pay a $100 payment to pre-order the device. The T1 launch came shortly after Trump criticized Apple over its plans to move the production of iPhones destined for the U.S. market from China to India."
Partridge notes, however, that considering the "low levels of domestic smartphone production in the U.S.," it "remains unclear who could manufacture the T1 handset."
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"GRIFTING NEPO-BABIES": The next generation of Trump ...
YouTube · MS NOW
30.2K+ views · 17 hours ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rChcwSozre8)
boulos sp husb tiffany
BARRON 150 MILLION CRYPTO? ERIC $ 10X THIS YEAR?!
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DON AND ERIC DO TRIPS SAME TIME BEFORE uae TRIP FOR DEALS, CRYPTO?
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AN 5 25
'Soft underbelly': Investigative reporterS detail 'biggest area of corruption for the Trump family'
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AN 9 25
Both President Donald Trump and his adult sons – Donald Jr. and Eric – have been widely criticized for using their positions to enrich themselves (primarily off of cryptocurrency). But now, even Donald Jr.'s daughter, Kai Trump, is also making money off of the White House.
On Thursday, Kai Trump — who turned 18 in May — announced the launch of her own clothing line. The first granddaughter is seen posing in front of the White House wearing a sweatshirt emblazoned with her initials, and her signature on the sleeve.
"This collection is something I’ve dreamed about for a long time, and I’m so grateful it’s finally here. Launching this line has been such an exciting project. From the quality of the fabric to the details in the designs, I wanted to create a piece that isn’t just merch but a staple you can wear anywhere," she wrote on X of the sweatshirts that are priced at $130 apiece. "There are Clean pieces you can mix, match, and make your own. I can’t wait to see how you style them!"
Kai Trump's new business venture was widely condemned on social media by various journalists, experts and commentators. University of Texas at Austin professor Josh Busby called the first granddaughter's clothing line "cute corruption." University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill history professor Joe Stieb called for "hundreds of articles of impeachment" against Trump "for emoluments violations alone." LGBTQ+ activist Mara Keisling wrote: "This is absolutely criminal." And Nilay Patel, who is editor-in-chief of tech outlet The Verge, pointed out that Kai Trump's clothing website is registered in Ukraine.
"This is the predictable & unprecedented new level of open corruption that happens when the president openly monetizes his hotel in plain sight for four years & we don't do anything about it," University of Wisconsin political science professor Mark Copelovitch wrote on Bluesky.
"Airhead grifters with zero respect for our nation," former New York Daily News reporter Helen Kennedy wrote.
Other critics demanded a portion of Kai Trump's profits. Retired military intelligence officer Alex Timmons wrote on Bluesky: "She's using our house for this s--- so those profits should be all ours." Willamette University history professor Seth Cotlar also asked: "Does every American citizen get a cut of the profits?"
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an 5 25
Donald Trump insists that he is maintaining a strict distance between his presidency and his business interests, and he maintains that he is avoiding conflicts of interest by letting his son, Eric Trump, handle the Trump Organization.
But in an article published by the New York Times on May 5, journalists Eric Lipton and David Yaffe-Bellany report that during Trump's presidency, his business is making more foreign deals than ever.
The deals, according to Lipton and Yaffe-Bellany, are being orchestrated by Eric Trump and his older brother, Donald Trump Jr.
READ MORE:George Washington would have thrown up
"It is a rush to cash in that involves billions of dollars with few precedents in American history," the Times reporters explain. "A luxury hotel in Dubai. A second high-end residential tower in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Two cryptocurrency ventures based in the United States. A new golf course and villa complex in Qatar. And a new private club in Washington. In many cases, these new deals promoted over the last week will personally benefit not only Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr., but also, President Trump himself."
This "marathon of deal making," according to Lipton and Yaffe-Bellany, "has been so rapid that many elements have drawn limited public attention in the United States, despite most of it being out in the open."
Trump White House spokesperson Anna Kelly told the Times, "The president's assets are in a trust managed by his children. There are no conflicts of interest."
But author Douglas Brinkley, a history professor at Rice University in Houston, said of the Trump family's foreign deals, "There’s nothing like it."
READ MORE:'Fundamentally dishonest': Liz Cheney reemerges to blast Trump and 'personality cult' GOP
*Read the full New York Times article at this link (subscription required).
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trump-family-anthony-kennedy-brett-kavanaugh-dark-towers
Trump family carried out a “coordinated White House charm offensive” to persuade Anthony Kennedy, a swing vote on the supreme court, to retire and clear the way for Brett Kavanaugh, according to a forthcoming book.
In Dark Towers: Deutsche Bank, Donald Trump and an Epic Trail of Destruction, David Enrich, the finance editor of the New York Times, describes how the German bank became the last major financial institution willing to lend to Donald Trump’s repeatedly defaulting business empire.
Long before Trump ran for the White House, Justice Kennedy’s son, Justin, worked as an investment banker at Deutsche. Enrich describes how he developed a relationship with Trump, his daughter Ivanka and son-in-law Jared Kushner, helping to finance real-estate deals no other bank would touch because of Trump’s record of failing to pay his debts to lenders, contractors and business partners.
“Even Trump’s friends would go to considerable lengths to avoid lending him money,” Enrich writes, adding that virtually the only person who would loan money to Trump was his father, Fred, who is widely known to have repeatedly bailed out his son.
Dark Towers will be published on 18 February. The Guardian obtained a copy.
Justin Kennedy was part of the US branch of Deutsche Bank from 1998 to 2009. Drawn to Trump’s risk-taking and glamour, he became a Trump confidant, sitting with the real estate impresario at the US Open tennis or in Manhattan nightclubs, and chaperoning huge loans to finance Trump’s real estate spending sprees.
Kennedy, who ran the bank’s commercial real-estate team, continued to lend to Trump even though Deutsche clients had suffered severe losses when Trump’s casino business collapsed and he declared bankruptcy.
After Kennedy set up his own finance and property firm in Florida, Enrich writes, he continued to help other members of the Trump family – Ivanka, Kushner and Donald Trump Jr – arrange financing for projects in New York. The New York Observer, which was owned by Kushner, put Kennedy on a list of the 100 most powerful people in New York real estate.
Once Trump was in office, he went out of his way to congratulate Justice Kennedy on his son, calling him a “special guy” and saying how much his own children loved him.
“Trump’s flattery,” Enrich writes, “was part of a coordinated White House charm offensive designed to persuade the ageing justice – for years, the court’s pivotal swing vote – that it was safe to retire, even with an unpredictable man in the Oval Office.”
Dark Towers describes how Ivanka Trump befriended the judge, sitting next to him at an inaugural lunch, regaling him with accounts of her close friendship with his son, then visiting the elder Kennedy at the supreme court, bringing her five year-old daughter to hear a case about arbitration agreements.
When Anthony Kennedy announced his retirement in June 2018, it gave Trump an opportunity to tip the court right with his nomination of Kavanaugh, in turn solidifying support among conservatives otherwise sceptical about Trump’s character.
Enrich writes that having helped to stabilise Trump’s business, Deutsche Bank now “indirectly” helped to stabilise his “floundering presidency”.
Trump’s relationship with Deutsche Bank was much discussed during special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of Russian election interference and links between Trump and Moscow.
Enrich points to the separate relationships Deutsche Bank and Trump had with a Kremlin-linked Russian bank, VTB, suggesting: “Perhaps this was more than a coincidence.”
But he provides no direct evidence to support suspicions that funds supplied by Deutsche Bank to Trump over two decades came from Russian sources, and also notes that Deutsche executives deny any such direct financial relationship.
Rather, Enrich portrays the bank’s investments in Russia and in Trump as both being symptoms of a reckless investment culture and a pursuit of prestige, with insufficient checks from senior management and an outdated and fragmented computer data system.
Trump’s supporters inside the bank have also argued he had a relatively low overall debt burden, and that his real estate purchases were fundamentally sound investments.
Justin Kennedy did not immediately reply to a request for comment.
In a statement, Deutsche Bank said: “While elements of the narrative seem to be exaggerated to fit into a storyline, we have long acknowledged and sought to learn from our historical shortcomings.”
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RS 2022
...Sean Moon’s gun-promoting church, in Newfoundland, Pennsylvania, is closely tied to his brother’s gun business, the Kahr Firearms Group, headquartered in nearby Greeley. (Both towns are exurban to Scranton.)
Kahr Arms Groups owns several gun brands including Thompson, and the company makes street-legal Tommy Guns as well as AR-15s. While the NRA touts Kahr as “a Premier NRA Industry Ally,” the company actively partners with the even-more-hardcore Gun Owners of America, and fights gun-control legislation in Congress as part of GOA’s “No Compromise Alliance.”
Sean Moon describes his brother as “a member of our church,” adding that “like any other member, he contributes what he feels in his heart … to the organization.” I asked Moon whether adopting the Rod of Iron branding for his church had anything to do with boosting his brother’s business. “No,” the pastor retorted. “Of course not.”
To honor the leader of the MAGA movement, Justin Moon’s firearms company has launched several lines of weapons emblazoned with Trump’s likeness and slogans.
Like their father, the Moon brothers have sought to cultivate ties with powerful figures of the American right, and the modern GOP is proving a fertile ground.
When Justin Moon’s company opened a firearms emporium called the Tommy Gun Warehouse in 2016, Sean gave the blessing, and Eric Trump gave the keynote speech. The brothers have also both sought photo ops with Don Trump Jr., who features prominently on Sean Moon’s Instagram account, as well as Justin’s.
To honor the dear leader of the MAGA movement, Justin Moon’s firearms company has launched several lines of weapons emblazoned with Trump’s likeness and slogans, including the POTUS 1911 pistol, the Commander in Chief AR-15, and the Trump Thompson Tommy Gun, chambered in .45 for the 45th president....
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an 12 24
Trump has picked Lebanon-born businessman Massad Boulos — whose son Michael Boulos is married to his daughter Tiffany Trump — as a senior adviser on Middle Eastern affairs.
The older Boulos has been described as a "billionaire attorney" in articles. But according to Business Insider's Jack Newsham, "public records and interviews" indicate that he "appears to be neither a billionaire nor a licensed attorney."
President-elect Trump, Newsham reports in an article published on December 12, "apparently inflated Boulos' réesumé."
READ MORE:'The next recession starts here': Trump team weighs abolishing bank regulators
"Business Insider found no proof of Boulos' supposed billions," according to Newsham. "And while he may have attended law school, he hasn't passed a bar exam and can't practice law."
Newsham adds that Massad Boulos "doesn't run" the company Boulos Enterprises, according to "several former employees and its actual boss, Boulos Boulos."
"A due-diligence report for Boulos Enterprises Ltd. created by Moody's Orbis database doesn't mention Massad Boulos," Newsham reports. "Archived copies of the Boulos Group website from 2016 and 2018 didn't mention him, either. And Elephant Africa Holding, a Mauritius company created by the Boulos Group to hold its paper businesses, also doesn't mention Massad in its corporate filings."
Newsham notes that Massad Boulos, whose son met Tiffany Trump in Greece in 2018, has been "credited in news stories with playing a key role in Donald Trump's 2024 electoral victory, helping peel Arab-American voters away from Democrats in battlegrounds like Michigan."
READ MORE:'Unqualified': Former CIA director slams Trump Cabinet nominee
Read Business Insider's full article at this link (subscription required).
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an 11 24
'Given less oversight': Trump’s children capitalize on election win with new businesses
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an 11 24
Trump's children aren't wasting any time launching new money-making opportunities after their father was elected to a second term in the White House.
According to the Daily Beast, Lara Trump – the Republican National Committee co-chair who is married to the president-elect's son, Eric — is now launching a new clothing line. Her company, LT Brand by Lara Trump Collection, is labeled "a celebration of strength, resilience and patriotism." She wrote on Instagram that it would help "American workers and factories" and that her products will be "handcrafted in the USA because I believe in bringing jobs back home and making a difference where it matters most."
The Wall Street Journal recently reported that Trump's eldest son, Donald Jr., is now going into business with a former supporter of Florida Republican Governor Ron DeSantis to specifically fund companies eschewing ESG (environmental, social and governance) philosophy. His new business partner, Omeed Malik, is a former Bank of America executive who was fired in 2018 over allegations of making unwanted advances toward female employees and was in relationships with female subordinates.
READ MORE:Inside Donald Trump Jr.'s plan for 'building the new Republican Party': report
Their new firm, 1789, is now seeking $100 million in startup capital with a promise to exclusively fund American companies in "response to the weaponization of capital by foreign entities." Some of the more notable board members of the company include failed Arizona U.S. Senate Republican nominee Blake Masters and Jamie McCourt, who was the U.S. Ambassador to France during Trump's first term in office.
Virginia Canter, who is the chief ethics counsel for the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, told the Journal that the Trump children's businesses raise numerous questions about how their private sector work will benefit from their familial connections.
"If it is a regulated entity, will it be given less oversight? Will they be treated differently than other regulated industries?" She said.
According to the Journal, Trump Jr. and Malik first got acquainted while doing business with the company PublicSquare, which was expressly focused on marketing to conservatives who felt alienated by more mainstream brands. Trump Jr. said on a 2023 episode of his podcast that he wanted to help PublicSquare "really get that dual economy going until the other side is willing to not be political, to not hate your guts, to not hate your freedoms, your religion, your values, until they’re willing to not jam their woke bulls— down your throats."
READ MORE:['If he was on The Apprentice right now he'd be fired': Analyst explains why Trump Jr.'s deposition matters
However, PublicSquare has yet to show any definitive proof of success. Despite having a valuation of roughly $200 million in February of 2023, the Journal reports that it has since seen its value plunge by approximately 90%, trading from around $29.80 per share down to around $2 per share in late 2024. In the first three quarters of 2024, PublicSquare posted revenue of $16 million, but losses of nearly $37 million. And the company recently laid off more than a third of its workforce.
Trump Jr. is no stranger to launching failed businesses. He's coming off of a failed cryptocurrency venture called World Liberty Financial, whose signature "gold paper" currency has an image of the president-elect's face on the front. After being unable to tap into a mass market of buyers for its tokens that can't be resold, it reduced its sales targets by 90% after just launching in September.
Lara Trump and Donald Jr. aren't the only Trump relatives to try their hand in business. Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner (who is married to his eldest daughter, Ivanka) runs the firm Affinity Partners out of Miami, Florida. That company has attracted billions of dollars in investments from foreign governments including Saudi Arabia and Qatar, along with money from Taiwanese billionaire Terry Gou, who founded the manufacturing giant Foxconn.
Ivanka also had her own clothing line during Trump's first term. However, she eventually shuttered it, with the Beast reporting that the Trump heiress opted to instead focus on supporting her father's administration. The Journal noted that Ivanka's decision to shut down her business was also "tired of the extra restrictions and scrutiny."
READ MORE:Kushner firm may be 'front to funnel foreign government money' to Trump family: Senate Dem
Click here to read the Beast's article about Lara Trump, and click here to read the Journal's full report about Trump Jr. (subscription required)
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10 23
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4 23
https://www.alternet.org/Bank/ivanka-trump-splits-from-don-jr-and-eric-as-250-million-fraud-trial-looms-2659915220/
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https://www.alternet.org/2022/09/trump-fraud/
The New York Attorney General has filed a civil fraud lawsuit against Donald Trump and three of his adult children, and his business, the Trump Organization, and others, according to CNN, citing court records.
“The case docket indicates the defendants are Donald J. Trump, Donald Trump Jr., Eric Trump, Ivanka Trump, Allen Weisselberg, Jeffrey Mcconney, The Donald J. Trump Revocable Trust, The Trump Organization,Inc., and other businesses associated with Trump.”
Donald Trump, James says in her news conference, inflated his net worth by “billions of dollars,” and did so with the assistance of others named in her lawsuit.
NY AG Letitia James is holding a news conference slated to start at 11:30 AM ET, which you can watch live here.
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an 1020 kids have to do train on how not fraud charities
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vs break up tech? banks?
Trump Jr. says dad’s ‘next move’ is to ‘break up’ the FBI: ‘He has to get rid of these things’
Donald Trump Jr. on Sunday called on his father to "break up" the FBI if he wins a second term.
During an interview on Fox News, host Maria Bartiromo asked the president's son what his father would do if the FBI does not
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ref 2
no lnx
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/21/us/politics/andrew-weissmann-mueller.html
Mueller’s Team Should Have Done More to Investigate Trump-Russia Links, Top Aide Says
A new book by one of the special counsel’s top deputies, Andrew Weissmann, is the first inside account of the investigation.
“We could have done more,” Andrew Weissmann, who was one of the top aides in the special counsel’s office, writes in a new book.
By Charlie Savage
Sept. 21, 2020
WASHINGTON — The team led by Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel, failed to do everything it could to determine what happened in the 2016 election, shying away from steps like subpoenaing President Trump and scrutinizing his finances out of fear he would fire them, one of Mr. Mueller’s top lieutenants argued in the first insider account of the inquiry.
“Had we used all available tools to uncover the truth, undeterred by the onslaught of the president’s unique powers to undermine our efforts?” wrote the former prosecutor, Andrew Weissmann, in a new book, adding, “I know the hard answer to that simple question: We could have done more.”
The team took elaborate steps to protect its files of evidence from the risk that the Justice Department might destroy them if Mr. Trump fired them and worked to keep reporters and the public from learning what they were up to, Mr. Weissmann wrote in “Where Law Ends: Inside the Mueller Investigation,” which Random House will publish next week.
While he speaks reverently of Mr. Mueller, he also says his boss’s diffidence made him ill-suited for aspects of shepherding the politically charged investigation. He saw Mr. Mueller and his deputy, Aaron M. Zebley, as overly cautious.
Mr. Weissmann also defended against accusations by the president and his allies that he and other investigators were politically biased “angry Democrats”; Mr. Weissmann said his personal views had no bearing on the crimes that Russian operatives and Trump aides committed.
And he elevates particular details — for example, emphasizing that the same business account that sent hush payments to an adult film star who alleged an extramarital affair with Mr. Trump had also received “payments linked to a Russian oligarch.” The president has denied the affair; his former lawyer Michael D. Cohen controlled the account. Mr. Mueller transferred the Cohen matter to prosecutors in New York.
Previously a mafia and Enron prosecutor and then a lawyer at the F.B.I. for Mr. Mueller, who was the bureau’s director for 12 years, Mr. Weissmann ran one of three major units for the special counsel’s office. His “Team M” prosecuted Mr. Trump’s former campaign chairman Paul Manafort for numerous financial crimes. The goal was to flip him and learn whatever he knew about any Trump campaign links to Russia.
Mr. Manafort had worked for pro-Russian interests in Ukraine, and the investigation uncovered ties by his business partner, Konstantin V. Kilimnik, to Russian intelligence. The book builds toward investigators’ discovery that Mr. Manafort had shared internal campaign polling data with Mr. Kilimnik, who flew to the United States to meet with Mr. Manafort during the campaign, asking whether Mr. Trump would permit a peace plan for Russia to essentially take over all of eastern Ukraine.
But while admitting this much, Mr. Manafort — seeing the dangle of a potential pardon from Mr. Trump — refused to cooperate further. Investigators did not obtain any final puzzle pieces and lacked the evidence to charge anyone in the campaign with a criminal conspiracy involving Russia’s covert electoral assistance.
“It would seem to require significant audacity — or else, leverage — for another nation to even put such a request before a presidential candidate,” Mr. Weissmann wrote of Mr. Kilimnik’s request. “This made what we didn’t know, and still don’t know to this day, monumentally disconcerting: Namely, why would Trump ever agree to this? Why would Trump ever agree to this Russian proposal if the candidate were not getting something from Russia in return?”
Mr. Weissmann explained the significance of Mr. Manafort’s interactions with Mr. Kilimnik — also a major focus of a recent bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee report, which explicitly labeled Mr. Kilimnik a Russian intelligence agent — more clearly than the Mueller report did.
Mr. Mueller had strictly forbidden leaks, and the special counsel team took extraordinary care to protect the high-profile, high-stakes investigation, Mr. Weissmann wrote. They kept window blind slats tilted at an angle to keep out prying eyes, shutting out natural light. They concocted an “almost comically elaborate and surreal” plan to sneak in “through the many hidden arteries of the courthouse” to obtain a grand jury indictment without tipping off reporters.
And worried about the possibility that Mr. Trump would fire them and the Justice Department would then seal off or destroy their evidence, the Mueller team members packed their numerous applications to judges for search warrants with extensive, up-to-date details about their investigation — ensuring they backed up their work beyond the reach of the executive branch.
Ty Cobb, a lawyer for Mr. Trump, also privately promised to be a “canary in the coal mine” and provide a heads up if Mr. Trump was going to fire the special counsel team, according to Mr. Weissmann. In an email, Mr. Cobb wrote that he “never made the commitment” described by Mr. Weissmann.
The investigation played out against the backdrop of regular vilification of the Mueller team by Mr. Trump and his allies like Fox News’s Sean Hannity — who turned out to be in regular contact with Mr. Manafort cooking up a “smear campaign” over text messages. Mr. Weissmann, a major target, wrote that such “ad hominem” insinuations of bias appealed to emotion rather than reason.
“I am a registered Democrat,” he wrote. “Does this make Paul Manafort or any of the other 32 people our office charged any less guilty? Did Russia not attack our democracy and disrupt our election with its self-described online information warfare operation? Which facts that we alleged in our various indictments — and to which many of those we indicted, including Manafort, would plead guilty — did our attackers believe were invented as a result of our alleged bias as ‘angry Democrats?’”
Mr. Trump’s allies have recently pointed with alarm to documents showing that cellphones issued to Mr. Mueller’s team were erased during the investigation; Mr. Weissmann twice entered an incorrect passcode too often, triggering a security measure that erased his phone. In an interview, he portrayed the concerns as a “tempest in a teapot” and said his understanding was that all emails and other such data from phones were backed up. He called on the Justice Department to release information about the special counsel’s data backup system.
Mr. Weissmann also wrote that he is not “anti-Trump” but rather “pro the rule of law.” Still, the distinction is less than clear in a book that also portrays Mr. Trump as a liar and a dangerous demagogue trying “to peel the world around him away from the rule of law — away from reason itself — and mold it to accommodate his desire for unchecked power.”
Mr. Weissmann was equally scathing about Attorney General William P. Barr, calling him an enabler and likening his misleading letter last spring about the then-still-secret Mueller report as a betrayal and “gut punch.”
Mr. Weissmann also criticized colleagues, portraying the special counsel team as divided between aggressive investigators like him, the F.B.I. special agent Omer Meisel and the prosecutor Jeannie Rhee — who headed “Team R,” which investigated Russian issues other than those centered on Manafort — and far more risk-averse law enforcement officials like Mr. Zebley who pulled punches.
In one episode in 2017, the Mueller team issued subpoenas to Deutsche Bank for information about Mr. Manafort’s income in Ukraine. Deutsche Bank had also lent large sums to the Trump Organization, and the White House somehow found out about the still-secret subpoenas — though not their focus. The White House demanded to know what investigators were doing, andMr. Mueller authorized Mr. Zebley to tell the White House that they had not been seeking Mr. Trump’s financial information.
“At that point, any financial investigation of Trump was put on hold,” Mr. Weissmann writes. “That is, we backed down — the issue was simply too incendiary; the risk, too severe.”
The book provides many other examples of concessions large and small. Investigators did not try to questionMr. Trump’s daughter Ivanka— who had spoken in the lobby to a delegation of Russians who came to Trump Tower in June 2016 to meet with campaign leaders who had been promised that they were offering dirt on Hillary Clinton from the Russian government.
They “feared that hauling her in for an interview would play badly to the already antagonistic right-wing press — look how they’re roughing up the president’s daughter — and risk enraging Trump, provoking him to shut down the special counsel’s office once and for all,” he wrote.
Similarly, they did not subpoena the Trump Organization for emails about its efforts to develop a Trump-branded building in Moscow, which were active deep into the 2016 campaign.
And they did not immunize Mr. Trump’s son Donald Trump Jr., a step that would have prevented him from being able to invoke the Fifth Amendment to avoid testifying about matters like the Trump Tower meeting. Bound by grand-jury secrecy rules, Mr. Weissmann did not come out and say whether Donald Trump Jr. was threatened with or actually issued a subpoena and used his right against self-incrimination to repel it.
Mr. Weissmann laid much of the blame for what he saw as a pattern of timidity on Mr. Zebley, portraying him as a primary decision maker. “Repeatedly during our 22 months in operation, we would reach some critical juncture in our investigation only to have Aaron say that we could not take a particular action because it risked aggravating the president beyond some undefined breaking point.”
Mr. Weissmann acknowledged, but did not clearly address, concerns that the aging Mr. Mueller had lost a step, both declaring that he was capable of making the tough decisions despite “speculative concerns” about his health but also describing him in one scene as looking drained and worn down by his years of grueling public service.
While Mr. Zebley obtained Mr. Mueller’s sanction for many of his cautious directives, in one striking episode, Mr. Zebley appeared in Mr. Weissmann’s telling to have unilaterally agreed — without Mr. Mueller’s knowledge — to a request by the office of the deputy attorney general overseeing them, Rod J. Rosenstein, not to coordinate with state prosecutors “as it would undermine the president’s pardon power.”
Two other former officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, disputed the account. Mr. Rosenstein did not decline any request to share information with state prosecutors, a person familiar with his thinking wrote in an email.
Another person familiar with how the special counsel’s office interacted with Mr. Rosenstein’s office denied that there had been any agreement about sharing evidence with or withholding it from state prosecutors, and said Mr. Zebley had consulted with Mr. Mueller on every material decision.
On the failure to subpoena Mr. Trump, Mr. Mueller was determined to avoid “any public disagreements” with Mr. Rosenstein, Mr. Weissmann wrote. Because the special counsel regulations required telling Congress about any instance in which Mr. Rosenstein overruled him, Mr. Mueller never actually proposed subpoenaing Mr. Trump, instead coyly asking what Mr. Rosenstein’s reaction would be. Mr. Rosenstein just kept demurring.
In the end, Mr. Weissmann said in an interview, the caution was more justified early on to avoid provoking Mr. Trump into firing them before they could get going. But he and Ms. Rhee, among others, believed the office should have been willing to be more aggressive later on, after they had learned much of what Russia had done and had already used indictments to drag it into public view.
“We would have subpoenaed the president after he refused our accommodations, even if that risked us being fired,” he wrote. “It just didn’t sit right. We were left feeling like we had let down the American public, who were counting on us to give it our all.”
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an 920
https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/ex-top-prosecutor-mueller-didnt-investigate-trump-finances-or-interview-ivanka-over-fears-of-a-blowback/
Igor Derysh / Salon September 23, 2020
A former prosecutor on Robert Mueller’s team said in a new book that the special counsel decided not to pursue President Donald Trump’s finances or interviews with his children over…
a former prosecutor on Robert Mueller’s team said in a new book that the special counsel decided not to pursue President Donald Trump’s finances or interviews with his children over fears that the president would shut down the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.
Andrew Weissmann, who led the prosecution of former Trump campaign chief Paul Manafort, blamed Aaron Zebley, Mueller’s top deputy in the investigation, for stopping investigators from looking into the president’s finances in his new book “Where the Law Ends,” according to excerpts published by The Washington Post.
Weissmann wrote that Zebley also pushed another prosecutor to “stand down” from pursuing Trump Organization documents because it risked affecting the negotiations with the president’s legal team to set up an interview with Trump. Trump ultimately did not appear for an interview and submitted written answers largely claiming not to recall key details.
“Aaron had a way of gaslighting you, of making you question your own reality, that you were being too aggressive in your drive to pursue leads and push harder — like you were not enough of an adult,” he wrote. "Repeatedly during our 22 months in operation, we would reach some critical juncture in our investigation only to have Aaron say that we could not take a particular action because it risked aggravating the president beyond some undefined breaking point,” he added, according to a New York Times report on the book.
Weissmann also argued that Mueller was wrong not to issue a subpoena to compel Trump’s testimony.
“What are we saying to future presidents, and to future investigators, who will have our decision thrown in their face?” Weissmann said he told Mueller. “If we do not subpoena the president in this investigation, how can others justify the need to do so?”
Weissmann said he wonders whether the team had “given it our all” in light of the questions left unanswered by the probe.
“As proud as I am of the work our team did — the unprecedented number of people we indicted and convicted and in record speed for any similar investigation — I know the hard answer to that simple question: We could have done more,” Weissmann wrote.
The former prosecutor listed a number of unanswered questions left open by the decision not to pursue Trump’s financial records.”We still do not know if there are other financial ties between the president and either the Russian government or Russian oligarchs,” he wrote. “We do not know whether he paid bribes to foreign officials to secure favorable treatment for his business interests, a potential violation of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act that would provide leverage against the president. We do not know if he had other Russian business deals in the works at the time he was running for president, how they might have aided or constrained his campaign, or even if they are continuing to influence his presidency.”
Weissman noted elsewhere in the book that the same business account used to send hush money payments to Stormy Daniels after her alleged affair with Trump was also used to receive “payments linked to a Russian oligarch,” according to excerpts published by The New York Times.
Weissmann also criticized his team for failing to interview the president’s daughter, White House adviser Ivanka Trump, or subpoena his son, Trump Organization executive Donald Trump Jr., over fears that Trump would respond by shutting down the investigation.
The team “feared that hauling her in for an interview would play badly to the already antagonistic right-wing press — look how they’re roughing up the president’s daughter — and risk enraging Trump, provoking him to shut down the special counsel’s office once and for all,” he wrote.
Fear of retribution from Trump led Mueller to avoid other key aspects of the investigation, Weissman claims.
“This sword of Damocles affected our investigative decisions, leading us at certain times to act less forcefully and more defensively than we might have,” he wrote. “It led us to delay or ultimately forgo entire lines of inquiry, particularly regarding the president’s financial ties to Russia.”
Mueller concluded in his report that the investigation could not prove a criminal conspiracy between members of the Trump campaign and Russian operatives but left open the question of whether Trump obstructed justice, noting that Justice Department guidelines prevent him from prosecuting a sitting president.
Weissmann argued in the book that Mueller should have explicitly stated that Trump obstructed justice.
Elsewhere in the book, Weissmann criticizes Attorney General William Barr over the four-page summary he released mischaracterizing the Mueller report’s conclusion. Barr “had betrayed both friend and country,” Weissmann wrote.
Weissmann wrote that Mueller had “left it to Congress to make its own assessment of our evidence, or to another prosecutor in the future, who would be free to indict the president once he’d left office,” only to have Barr intervene to argue that the evidence did not amount to obstruction of justice.
Weissmann concluded that the bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee report, which was more detailed than the Mueller report, was “better” than the conclusions reached by the special counsel’s team.
“It made judgments and calls, instead of saying, ‘You could say this and you could say that,'” he wrote, according to The Atlantic, which was first to report Weissmann’s comments.
Weissmann also criticized the federal government for doing little in response to Russia’s aggression in the U.S. election, noting that the Russian operation had “gotten what it had worked so hard for, a servile, but popular, American leader” who was willing to dismiss a threat “as pernicious as anything we faced in World War II or on 9/11.”
“There is no other way to put it,” he wrote. “Our country is now faced with the problem of a lawless White House, which addresses itself to every new dilemma or check on its power with a belief that following the rules is optional and that breaking them comes at minimal, if not zero, cost.”
Asked if Mueller had let the American people down, Weissmann told The Atlantic’s George Packer, “absolutely.”
“I wouldn’t phrase it as just Mueller. I would say ‘the office,'” he said. “There are a lot of things we did well, and a lot of things we could have done better, to be diplomatic about it.”
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an 82o
house Intelligence panel narrows subpoena focus to Trump and his immediate family
Kerry Eleveld / Daily Kos August 27, 2020
Following a Supreme Court ruling on the matter, the House Intelligence Committee has narrowed a subpoena request to focus more specifically on Donald Trump and the immediate members of his family: Eric Trump,…
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kim g and __ kid 15K$ from campaign
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https://www.alternet.org/2020/08/senate-panel-referred-trump-family-members-to-doj-over-suspicions-of-misleading-russia-testimony-report/
wapo
Bipartisan leaders of the Senate Intelligence Committee last year notified the Department of Justice that members of President Donald Trump’s family and close circle “might have presented misleading testimony” to the panel during its investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, the Washington Post reports.
According to the Post, then-Chairman Richard Burr (R-NC) and Vice Chairman Mark R. Warner (D-VA) referred a list of individuals,including Donald Trump Jr. and Jared Kushner to federal prosecutors after their accounts of a pre-election meeting with Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya “were contradicted by the president’s former deputy campaign chairman Rick Gates” during former special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation.
In a separate section, the congressional panel said it had reason to believe Steve Bannon, Erik Prince and former campaign co-chair Sam Clovis “had lied to congressional investigators — a potential felony,” the Post reports.
According to the Los Angeles Times, which first reported on the referrals and viewed a copy of the panel’s letter, the committee believes Bannon may have lied about his knowledge of a meeting Prince held in the Seychelles with a Russian official tied to the Kremlin. Per the Post, “Prince had told Mueller’s team that he briefed Bannon on the meeting, which occurred before Trump’s inauguration in early 2017; Bannon denied the conversation took place.”
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https://www.alternet.org/2020/07/here-are-3-ways-trumps-nepotistic-family-criminal-enterprise-is-burrowing-his-campaign-into-the-ground/
no lnx graf
here are 3 ways Trump’s ‘nepotistic family criminal enterprise’ is burrowing his campaign into the ground
Written by Daily Kos July 26, 2020
Impeached President Donald Trump is all about money. It’s what motivates him, validates him, makes him happy, if that’s at all possible. And once upon a time, he had a lot more of it than presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden. But those days are now over.
Because not only do Biden and his allies have more money, but they aren’t beset by all the problems that come with an association with any Trump organization—fraud, waste, grift, and abuse.
It wasn’t too long ago that Trump had a massive fundraising advantage over a hapless Biden, then stumbling through the Democratic primary on name recognition and latent affection from his eight years as President Barack Obama’s vice president. In March of this year, Trump had raised $212 million and had $240 million in the bank. For his part, Biden was $187 million behind that point. As a NY Times writer put it, “Joseph R. Biden Jr. and the Democratic Party could raise almost $1 million every single day between now and November, and he would still barely catch up to what President Trump and the Republican Party had in the bank at the start of April—let alone what Mr. Trump will have by Election Day.”
What a difference the four months since have made.
Today, Biden has raised $273.7 million, while allied super PACs have raised another $136.5 million, or a combined $410.2 million. Trump and his outside group allies have raised a combined $415.6 million, meaning that the Democratic effort has reached near-parity. Furthermore, Trump and his allies have $134.2 million in the bank, less than Biden and his allies at $146.9 million.
Given that Biden has outraised Trump the last two months, you don’t have to go out on a limb to predict that Democrats will have a healthy cash advantage in the stretch run of the race. But that’s just on the fundraising side. The expense side … well, Trump is going to Trump, which means, he’s grossly mismanaging his cash.
If you exclude outside groups, both campaigns have about the same cash on hand—$113 million for Trump, and $109 million for Biden. Yet the Trump campaign has spent $80 million more—$247.3 million versus $164.8 million. How does a campaign spend that much more to fall deeply behind his opponent?
- He’s spending money on the wrong things.
I’ve discussed it before. His campaign has spent tens of million in TV ads in Iowa and Ohio, two states that won’t have any definitive say in who wins the election. Look at the Nate Silver tweet above—flipping just Florida, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin gives Biden a 307-231 Electoral College victory. Add Arizona and North Carolina, two more states that Biden leads in, and we’re talking 333-205. Iowa and Ohio don’t even factor in that calculation. By the time Biden flips those two states, he will have also flipped Georgia, the Maine rural electoral college vote, and the Omaha Nebraska electoral college vote, for a total of 351-187.
Yet not only had Trump spent heavily on those states when I wrote that original post two weeks ago, but Trump has doubled down on Ohio.
That’s nearly $20 million spending, second only to Florida, in a state that isn’t even a core battleground.
Meanwhile, as of two weeks ago he had spent $16.4 million on legal fees, for such failed efforts as suing CNN for running a poll, suing newspapers for reporting on Trump’s quid pro quo with Russia, suing tiny Wisconsin TV stations for airing Democratic ads, and so on. All those efforts fail, designed to make Trump happy, not to actually accomplish what campaigns are supposed to accomplish—win. Trump has gotten through life by suing his way out of his failures. The strategy is finally failing.
2. He’s running a grifting and nepotistic family criminal enterprise.
The Trump campaign has made a systemic effort to funnel as much campaign donor money into his pockets as possible. It’s almost as if they see their gravy train ending after this year, and need to suck up as much of that cash as possible to prop up their failing enterprises.
You don’t have to be a stable genius to see the pattern.
As for nepotism, we have new headlines like “Kimberly Guilfoyle under fire for Trump fundraising disarray.” Giving something as important as your campaign’s big-dollar fundraising to your son’s girlfriend, with no prior fundraising experience, might seem as stupid a move as, say, putting Jared Kushner in charge of Middle East peace, or putting Jared Kushner in charge of the coronavirus pandemic response, or putting Jared Kushner in (de facto) charge of the Trump campaign, or putting Jared Kushner in charge of solving America’s opioid epidemic, or putting Jared Kushner in charge of reforming veterans care. …
Here’s the thing to note about Guilfoyle—she’s credited in that piece above with raising $73 million, which sounds like a lot without context. But here’s the bottom line—despite working for the president of the party that represents America’s wealthiest elite, it is Joe Biden’s campaign that has raised more big-dollar checks.
And it is under her watch that GOP stalwarts like the Mercers and the Kochs have abandoned Trump, focusing instead down ballot trying to salvage what they can of the Trump-induced GOP wreckage.
- And more grift.
This news is delicious:
[Former Trump campaign manager Brad] Parscale, reportedly called the $10 million man by Trump, has made no secret of the fact he got rich by working for Trump. He reported a monthly salary of $15,000 from the campaign but recently splashed out on a Ferrari and multiple homes. Trump’s anger apparently culminated after a report that Parscale had been running the campaign poolside from Florida. “They’re doing the full autopsy because the president is pissed,” one Republican close to the campaign and White House told Business Insider.
It was also funny hearing how the campaign spent $325,000 to promote Parscale’s Facebook page. Hilarious, right?
There’s a lot more of that where that came from, like the campaign paying an allowance to the romantic partners of both Trump sons, to the tune of $180,000 each. Don Jr’s girlfriend Guilfoyle, as we saw above, at least seems to have a job. But Eric’s wife Lara is doing … what? Who knows.
But even if Guilfoyle is working for her $15,000/month, should Trump donors really be paying for her $50,000 birthday party? Also, she apparently flies private jets everywhere she goes, and that’s not exactly economical. We don’t know how much that is costing the campaign, but consider this story from Politico’s story on chaos in her fundraising department: “In March, two staffers chose not to fly commercial and instead took the private jet of a major Trump donor to the president’s Mar-a-Lago resort for a finance event. The campaign had to reimburse the roughly $25,000 cost.”
So if one short flight from Virginia to Florida cost the campaign $25,000, how much is her regular private flights costing the campaign? “Guilfoyle herself has used private planes to travel to and from fundraisers. But people close to her argued that it amounted to a small sum given that the events often net millions of dollars,” Politico reported.
So will any of this nepotism, graft, and stupid spending end anytime soon? How could it? It’s baked into Trump’s very personality!
When we get to October, the cash race won’t even be close. Democrats will have far more money up and down the ballot to do what needs to be done to the GOP—utter and complete annihilation. Lucky for us, Trump himself is an ally in making sure they spend their money as poorly as possible.
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an 720
Maskless Kimberly Guilfoyle gives speech to Trump supporters the day before her positive COVID test was announced
Donald Trump Jr.’s girlfriend, Trump campaign fundraiser Kimberly Guilfoyle, made headlines with the announcement she tested positive for COVID-19 with hours to go before President Donald Trump’s speech at Mount…
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https://www.alternet.org/2020/05/aiming-to-take-down-fox-donald-trump-jr-reportedly-investing-in-far-right-oann/
Investors aligned with Donald Trump Jr. and Republican National Committee (RNC) co-chair Tommy Hicks Jr. have acquired a major stake in One America News Network (OANN), sources familiar with the deal told Vanity Fair.
“Tommy Hicks and Don Jr. have been looking to buy a station for Trump TV,” a person briefed on the negotiations told Vanity Fair.
“This is all about building a Fox competitor. Trump is really aiming to take down Fox,” the person said.
The report is the first to connect the Trump family to the acquisition, discussions of which were first reported in January by the Wall Street Journal.
The Journal reported that Hicks Equity Partners, a firm belonging to the family of Tommy Hicks Jr., the RNC co-chair, was negotiating a $250 million deal with Herring Networks, the parent company of OANN, a low-impact far-right network that offers a home to the likes of Pizzagate conspiracy theorist Jack Posobiec and has defended Roy Moore and endorsed Russian propaganda.
Sources told Vanity Fair the deal has stumbled along for months and still hasn’t closed, but that the Trump-affiliated group had reportedly talked Herring down to $200 million. VF said it was also unclear whether Donald Trump Jr. invested Trump money in the deal, or was given equity.
As the buyout talks progressed, President Trump has repeatedly expressed his growing distaste with Fox News — long perceived as the only network he likes, and certainly the only network that consciously slants coverage and analysis in his favor.
Last month Trump accused Fox News of “being on a bad path,” and has asked twice now “what the hell is happening” at the network. He attacked Fox reporters twice last month during White House coronavirus briefings, and has taken several potshots at several of the channel’s shows and personalities, tweeting in January that Fox News was “really pathetic” and “so politically correct,” singling out Chris Wallace’s impeachment coverage.
After it was reported that Fox had fired MAGA-world luminaries Diamond and Silk for hawking ludicrous coronavirus conspiracy theories, Trump tweeted his support for the duo: “But I love Diamond and Silk, and so do millions of people!”
In late April, Trump took to Twitter once again to call for an alt-Fox, pro-himself network:
“The people who are watching @FoxNews, in record numbers (thank you President Trump), are angry,” he wrote. “They want an alternative now. So do I!”
During this same period, Trump often promoted OANN, providing the nascent network — which is viewed with disdain by many reputable journalists — with cover against the White House Correspondents’ Association. Trump even plugged OANN by name in a tweet last month as the alternative he has been asking for.
But this isn’t the first time Trump has appeared to be switching media mistresses. When Fox soothes him, he reciprocates. When they rankle him, he pumps OANN.
OANN, which has roughly one-third of Fox’s reach, with ratings reportedly lower than the Tennis Channel, appears to have no problem serving as the president’s megaphone.
For instance, OANN hired former Trump campaign aide Michael Caputo— the newly-hired spokesman for the Department of Health and Human Services who recently disgraced himself with a barrage of racist, pandemic-related tweets — who hosted a special program dedicated to “the Ukraine Hoax.” Late last year a network crew accompanied Rudy Giuliani and personal assistant Christianné Allen on a trip to Ukraine, which resulted in a three-part series that mainlined viewers with apparentRussian disinformation.
Spokespeople for Trump Jr. and Hicks denied involvement in the deal to Vanity Fair.
President Trump, who is in no financial position to acquire Fox News, views OANN as a fallback business opportunity should former Vice President Joe Biden defeat him in November, according to Vanity Fair, which reported the president might look to OANN as a “post-presidential television platform.”
The cash from the buyout will reportedly help OANN increase its production values and campaign to expand its viewership, two elements Trump would demand of any home for a post-White House TV home.
Trump Jr. and Hicks have been wrapped in scandal before. The president’s eldest son and his younger brother Eric were — along with Hicks and Dallas-based investment manager Gentry Beach — co-registrants for a nonprofit called Opening Day, which insinuated itself in Trump’s inauguration. Trump’s sons had to abandon the organization weeks after its inauguration event was announced, amid allegations that they were selling access to their father.
An associate ofGentry Beachdeclined to comment when Salon inquired about his possible involvement in the OANN deal.
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https://www.alternet.org/2020/03/how-the-kushner-family-is-cashing-in-on-covid-19
no lnx
How the Kushner family is cashing in on COVID-19
Written by Sarah Okeson / DC Report March 16, 2020
The Kushner family is trying to cash in on the pandemic that could kill millions of us.
Oscar Health, the health insurance company co-founded by Jared Kushner’s younger brother, announced Friday it has launched a testing center locator for COVID-19. It shows where more than 100 centers are in the United States. The company is also offering a risk assessment survey and means to talk to a doctor online.
The coronavirus is predicted to kill anywhere from almost 500,000 Americans in the next year to more than 5 million. At least 62 people in the United States had died by Sunday; 3,130 have tested positive.
Team Trump announced Saturday that Trump tested negative for the virus despite presiding over a coronavirus hot zone at Mar-a-Lago. Testing efforts have been marked by delays [...]
This Raw Story article ...
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(nepotism implied?)
Bloomberg adviser previews ‘scorched-earth’ campaign to be aimed at Trump’s ‘grifter’ familyMatthew Chapman / Raw Stor
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220 ew
https://www.ecowatch.com/trump-trophy-hunting-council-2645107921.html
https://ecowatch.us7.list-manage.com/track/click?u=214ab5fbb3f6015d74ffab4ec&id=5dd71bd1de&e=c2e8fdabfa
the Department of the Interior (DOI) has disbanded a controversial council that promoted big game hunting after a judge ruled that environmental groups could challenge the legitimacy of the council in court, as The Associated Press reported.
The DOI told a federal judge on Friday that the International Wildlife Conservation Council (IWCC) had ended its charter in October and would not be renewed. The IWCC was created to boost trophy hunting and to relax federal regulations around importing heads and hides of exotic animals like African elephants, rhinos, lions, and other threatened wildlife, according to The Associated Press.
"The Council will not meet or conduct any business again, it can no longer be renewed, and there [is] no plan to establish another committee with a similar mission or scope in the future," the DOI explained in a court filing Friday, according to NPR.
The lawyers for the DOI argued that since the council had been disbanded, the judge should dismiss a lawsuit from environmental groups looking into the "formation, composition, ethics provision, or meetings" by the IWCC, as NPR reported.
"The IWCC's disbandment is a huge victory in the fight against the Trump administration's illegal advisory bodies," said Democracy Forward senior counsel Travis Annatoyn, in a statement. "But the fight isn't over."
Democracy Forward is representing the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Center for Biological Diversity, the Humane Society of the United States and Humane Society International in a lawsuit challenging the legality of the IWCC under the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA). The disbandment announcement came on the heels of a slew of FACA lawsuits against the administration.
Former Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke, who had to resign under a corruption scandal, put the 16-member advisory board together. It was formed as a response to an Obama-era ban on elephant and lion trophy imports from Africa. In 2018, The Associated Press revealed that the board members were big-game hunters, many with direct ties to President Trump and his family, according to The Associated Press.
Animal rights groups and environmental activists cheered that the committee would not continue its work.
"I have little doubt our litigation spurred the administration's decision to abandon the IWCC and walk away from its biased and un-transparent practices," said Zak Smith, international wildlife conservation director for the Natural Resources Defense Councilin a statement. "We're glad the Trump administration is closing shop on this ridiculously misguided council and we await a full accounting of its tainted work product."
The taxpayer-funded committee met five times over its two-year span and formed four sub-committees. The government said, "Ultimately, the IWCC did not vote on or make any recommendations or otherwise provide any advice or work product," NPR reported.
"The end of Trump's thrill-kill council is a huge victory for elephants, lions and other imperiled animals targeted by trophy hunters," said Tanya Sanerib, international legal director at theCenter for Biological Diversity, in a statement. "It's still critical to address this biased committee's past legal violations and prevent self-serving advice from trophy hunters from poisoning federal wildlife policies."
IWCC members claimed that recreational hunting is necessary because fees paid by big-game hunters help fund conservation programs. They also argued that it boosts local economies and creates hundreds of jobs.
An Interior spokesperson told The Hill in a statement that the department "takes illegal wildlife trafficking seriously and will continue working to grow our partnerships, while continuing to move toward shared conservation stewardship."
- Trophy 'Dream Hunt' With Donald Trump Jr. Starts Bidding at $10000 ›
- Trump Admin Grants First Lion Trophy Import Permit Since Listed as ... ›
- Donald Trump Jr. Killed an Endangered Mongolian Sheep - EcoWatch ›
- Trump Administration caters to wealthy trophy hunters and ignores ... ›
- Donald Trump's Sons in Game-Hunting Photos? ›
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c ded v an 120
...Is Mar-a-Lago a nexus for Trump’s apparent influence peddling and corruption?
Anywhere Trump shows up is a nexus for his influence peddling and corruption. It could be his golf courses or Mar-a-Lago or somewhere else. Gift-giving is a form of currency, influence-buying. Certainly Trump knows that he can buy loyalty from people. And what’s a better way to buy loyalty than if you’re president of United States and you know you’re going to assassinate the No. 2 guy in Iran and that it’s going to move markets.
On Jan. 2, the markets were up big. Soleimani was assassinated at one in the morning, Baghdad time, after the markets here had closed. There was some night trading, which was obviously going to make the markets go down the next day. Killing Gen. Soleimani was going to make the Middle East much more unstable. And what better way to reward your buddies — who were already your buddies, because they’re at Mar-a-Lago, to begin with, on New Year’s Eve — than with this little gift? It’s not hard to figure out what’s going on.
How would one send those signals? How does insider trading work?
Who are the people who know what is going to happen? Who knows about the trade docs? Steve Mnuchin, Robert Lighthizer, Wilbur Ross. Larry Kudlow, Donald Trump, Trump’s kids, Trump’s son-in-law. These people who do have knowledge of certain events are either giving gifts to friends or trying to continue to buy loyalty. What I think is more likely is that there are surrogate traders who are making these trades with inside information. They make the money and then stash it in some sort of account to be gotten back to after they leave office. But again, I don’t know. The people who would know are not cooperating. The head of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange said that my article in October should have been written in crayon because it was so childlike.
To reiterate: The people who were supposed to be watching and regulating are somehow complicit, looking away, indifferent, etc.?..
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https://www.alternet.org/2020/01/ivanka-trump-and-trump-jr-rank-in-the-top-four-of-a-poll-on-possible-2024-gop-presidential-candidates/
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hmn 9191 AN
Ivanka and Don Jr. are fighting a bitter ‘cold war’ for prominence in the Trump dynasty and suspect each other of planting damaging stories: report
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https://www.alternet.org/2019/11/trump-has-surrounded-himself-with-failsons-starting-with-dimwitted-don-trump-jr-and-kushner-columnist
in a biting piece for the Daily Beast, acerbic columnist Molly Jong-Fast accusesDonald Trump of stocking his administrations with “failsons” — which she described as “a son of wealth and privilege who is equal parts incompetence, stupidity, and arrogance” — because in many ways they are a reflection of his own career.
Using reports of conservative groups making bulk purchase of Don Trump’s Jr’s book “Triggered” to boost it on the best sellers list, Jong-Fast pounced on the president’s namesake to make her case.
“One is not born a failson. Nor does one simply inherit the status of failson. No—failson status is earned through a display of equal parts incompetence, stupidity, and arrogance. And until his book, no person in America—or maybe even the world, so bursting at the seams with louche heirs and dissolute royals with no throne to sit their pampered arses on—illustrated all the facets of a failson better than Junior,” she wrote.
“The New York Times denotes such bulk sales with an asterisk to let readers know that the sales were not organic. Junior, never one to be deterred by facts, immediately declared that this was part of a larger Times conspiracy against him. ‘I guess that’s their way of exerting a little bit of revenge by putting an asterisk without getting into the details,’ he sniffed,” she wrote before adding a sarcastic,” Yes Junior, The New York Times bulk purchasing policy is actually a conspiracy against you, the president’s large adult failson.”
Don Jr was not the only one to get the “failson” treatment with Nong-Fast casting a jaundiced eye at Jared Kushner, a “failson” who married into the family.
“Jared Kushner is the failson in chief, arguably worse than Junior.After crushing a newspaper and overpaying for the aptly named 666 Fifth Avenue, the failson-in-law decided to take a crack at governmenting. He was tasked with peace in the Middle East and also renegotiating NAFTA, handling the opioid crisis, modernizing the Veterans Administration, spearheading criminal justice reform, and WhatsApp messaging with Saudi Arabian failson Mohammed bin Salman,” she explained. “But when those things proved too complicated for the young polymath, his father-in-law decided to refocus him on the important things, like why Matt Drudge was mad at him, tasking Ivanka’s husband to “look into it” and find out why Drudge has forsaken him. More recently, Jared was asked by his father-in-law to take another crack at building the wall.”
Not to be forgotten, Jong-Fast also focused on Eric Trump.
“Not as notorious as his dimwitted siblings, Eric is the one of the Trump litter who seems the most interested in running the family’s mediocre hotel business. Though Eric always enjoys doing a segment on Fox News, where he dishes out really hot takes like his assessment that “Democrats weren’t even people.” Eric is also extremely bad at Twitter. On Thanksgiving Day, he tweeted a picture of a red hat emblazoned with the acronym LOPA for “Leave Our President Alone,” which caused the internet to erupt in mockery of the young Hapsburg,” she wrote.
As to why Trump doesn’t surround himself with competent aides and defenders, Jong_Fast points out that Trump himself is a “failson.”
“The failson administration is headed by the most failsonish president ever. Donald Trump is the definition of a failson, an incompetent continually saved from himself by his wealthy father. He inherited nearly $500 million from his pop, all the while claiming he was completely self-made. After his father died, Trump found other patrons, and he now enjoys the largesse of the lobbyists, and various foreign rogues like Vladimir Putin and Julian Assange, who helped put him in the White House<‘s he explained.
You can read more here (subscription required).
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Kirk, a former contributor to Breitbart News, the online platform of the racist alt-right, is an ally of the Trump administration. He worked for the Trump campaign in 2016 and spoke at the Republican National Convention that year. Kirk has appeared on Fox News alongside members of the Trump family.
Two members of the TPUSA advisory council, investor Gentry Beach and Thomas Hicks, Jr., the son of a Dallas billionaire, worked with Trump’s sons Donald Jr. and Eric to establish a Texas nonprofit to sell access to the president to big donors during inauguration festivities in January. Beach and Hicks, who were both national vice chairmen of the Trump campaign, raised millions of dollars for the campaign. Beach has visited the White House multiple times in 2017.
Beach’s father, Gary, was indicted on five charges of bankruptcy fraud in 2016. Charlie Kirk's father is allegedly Robert W. Kirk, the project architect manager for Trump Tower in New York City.
“We stay totally removed from restricted political activity,” said Kirk. “Instead, we focus on starting chapters, hosting debates on campus, planning training seminars, and hosting national training conferences such as our upcoming one in Palm Beach in December.”
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Trump’s re-election campaign has been producing news-style videos featuring numerous media figures, including commentators for CNN and Fox News.
The president’s daughter-in-law Lara Trump has been hosting the video series “Real News,” which includes guest interviews and campaign propaganda. The videos, which are posted on the president's Facebook page and carry “paid for by Donald J. Trump for president” disclaimers, ask viewers to sign up for mobile alerts from the campaign, a list-building activity that the 2020 campaign can use to raise money and organize get-out-the vote activities.
The Hollywood Reporter’s Jeremy Barr reported on March 19 that conservative commentators and sisters Diamond and Silk appeared in a recent video with Lara Trump. Fox News attempted to distance itself from the campaign video by stating that Diamond and Silk “license short weekly videos to Fox Nation – they are not Fox News contributors or employees. When they appear on FNC and FBN, they do so as guests." That explanation contradictsFox News’ own identifications of the two as “Fox News Channel contributors,” “Fox Nation contributors,” and “Fox Nation hosts.”
Regardless of Diamond and Silk’s employment classification, several Fox News contributors have appeared in Trump campaign videos with Lara Trump. They include Deneen Borelli, Alveda King, David Bossie, and Mike Huckabee.
CNN analysts have also appeared in Trump campaign videos despite the president’s frequent trashing of the network as “fake news.”
[pix]CNN's David Urban and Stephen Moore with Lara Trump.
David Urban is a CNN commentator who previously worked as a paid consultant for Trump’s 2016 campaign. During a March Trump video appearance, the campaign identified him as the president of American Continental Group, a major lobbying firm that lobbies the Trump administration and Congress on a variety of issues. (Urban has used his CNN gig to specifically push a lobbying client and its interests without disclosing the connection to viewers.)
In that video, which did not mention his CNN role, Urban spoke like a Trump surrogate. The Republicancommentator, who directed Trump's 2016 operation in Pennyslvania, said that “Pennsylvania is always a tough state to win. I predict, I'll say it here again, I think we’re going to win in 2020. It’s going to be close, but we’re going to win, the president’s going to put the time in; you know, we’re going to work hard and we’re going to win. I have no doubt that he will win in 2020 in Pennsylvania." He also lied about the Green New Deal, claiming that “you’re not going to have a car; forget, you know, no cows ever again.” (Urban’s firm does lobbying work on behalf of oil and gas interests.)
At the conclusion of the video, Lara Trump thanked Urban for “the job you do every single day out there fighting for the president. You really do an incredible job, and we are so lucky to have you.” Urban responded by saying that he loves President Trump and relayed that people tell him, “You may not hear it on the mainstream media, but we really like” the president. Urban also appeared in a June 2018 video and touted Trump ahead of the then-upcoming midterm elections.
Stephen Moore is a senior economics analyst for CNN who advises Trump (during a recent appearance, CNN described Moore as “an informal White House adviser”). He has made several appearances on Trump’s video program and promoted Trump’s economic message.
Other media commentators who have appeared in the Trump campaign’s videos include Fox 5 DC host, Daily Caller video columnist, and Pizzagate conspiracy theorist Stephanie Hamill; Talking Point USA’s Candace Owens; conservative troll Dinesh D’Souza; and Trump sycophant Bill Mitchell.
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Don Jr. and Eric Trump Racked Up Nearly $250,000 in Secret Service Costs in One Month
By Clarrie Feinstein, Salon
According to a watchdog group, President Trump’s adult sons are costing American taxpayers a lot of money READ MORE»
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Trump Jr. Pushed ‘Blatantly Illegal’ Project In India, Former Official Says — ‘Trump, Inc.’ Podcast
by Eric Umansky, ProPublica , and Andrea Bernstein , WNYC
A Trump project in Mumbai had its permits revoked after investigators found “significant irregularities.” Then Trump Jr. travelled to India to get the decision overruled.
propublica
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Washington, the anti-Trump resistance talks about a "constitutional crisis" while the president and his allies decry a "rigged system." They’re using different vocabulary to describe the same thing: the coming death match fight for control of the U.S. legal system.
Former Attorney General Eric Holder and others are waking up to the reality expressed by Josh Marshall: "The Plot Is Afoot" to dump special prosecutor Robert Mueller and there is no longer any institutional force or political will sufficient to prevent Trump from carrying it out. It’s just a matter of time.
The Republicans who once praised Mueller or warned against his firing have announced retirement, fallen silent or turned into Trump toadies. Of the six phases in the campaign to get rid of Mueller, I wrote last week, four have already been completed.
As Holder tweeted on Sunday:
ABSOLUTE RED LINE: the firing of Bob Mueller or crippling the special counsel’s office. If removed or meaningfully tampered with, there must be mass, popular, peaceful support of both. The American people must be seen and heard - they will ultimately be determinative.
— Eric Holder (@EricHolder) December 17, 2017
Holder’s intervention, while welcome, has dismal implications. According to the man who was once the nation’s top law enforcement officer, the weakness and impending failure of Washington institutions is practically certain. That protest in support of Mueller, an uncharismatic former FBI man, will be massive, popular and peaceful is far from certain.
The truth is that the “red line” of Washington consensus that protects the special prosecutor process has been eroded by the anti-Mueller campaign, which cultivates fear and anger to depict the mechanism of accountability as a threat, not just to Trump, but to America itself.
The demonization campaign is multipronged. Justice Department officials leakedthe private texts of FBI agent Peter Strzok, since removed from the investigation, who opposed Trump’s election. Breitbart and Fox News supply the analysis.
Congressmen are deployed as conspiracy theorists disguised as whistleblowers. Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) says, “Everything points to the fact that there was an orchestrated plan to try to prevent Donald Trump from becoming the president of the United States.”
The rhetoric of rage, disgust and control add emotional force to the pro-Trump narrative. “Will you rein in the FBI,” cries a conservative reporter. People are "very, very angry about the FBI," Trump responded, adding, “we have a lot of sickness in some of our institutions.”
And the president’s son has provided the marketing slogan: “My father talked about a rigged system throughout the campaign, and people went, ‘Oh, what are you talking about?’ But it is,” Donald Trump Jr. said. “There are people at the highest levels of government that don’t want to let America be America."
“Let America be America” is the full flowering of the anti-Mueller narrative. This isn't about Russia, the argument goes, this is about America. Since Steve Bannon returned to Breitbart News, the right-wing media have layered on other Washington storylines, which have little or no substantive connection to the Russia investigation....
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omg
https://www.alternet.org/animal-rights/after-targeting-elephants-trump-administration-puts-african-lions-crosshairs
Wednesday, I reacted in real time on my blog to the Safari Club International’s announcement that the U.S. Department of the Interior plans to lift a ban on the import of sport-hunted trophies of rare and beleaguered African elephants. In short, our government is essentially turning loose American trophy hunters in Zimbabwe, at a time when declines in elephant populations have been documented because of the ruthless killing of the animals for their ivory. The United States has led the fight against the ivory trade worldwide, and now it’s undermining that morally urgent fight by allowing one class of ivory hunters to have their way with elephants. The upper class, that is.
And it’s just as shocking that the agency is also turning trophy hunters loose to kill African lions. The lion hunters are typically the elephant hunters too, because of the contest killing framework that the Safari Club has devised. You see, SCI has an awards program that promotes the trophy killing of the world’s rarest animals, as a way to drive business to the guides and outfitters who contribute to the organization. One award is the Africa Big Five, which involves killing an elephant, lion, rhino, leopard, and Cape buffalo.
With yesterday’s news, which has prompted trophy hunting companies to advertise Zimbabwean elephant hunts on their websites, the Interior Department and the government of Zimbabwe (whoever is in charge) are rolling out the red carpet for the next Walter Palmer, the Minnesota dentist who lured a famous and beloved lion, Cecil,out of a national park and shot and wounded him with an arrow.
Palmer left Cecil to bleed through the night, and then went out the next morning to finish him off. Walter Palmer never ended up facing any charges. Adding insult to injury, as an example of Zimbabwe’s inability to properly manage trophy hunting, its government dropped all charges against the hunting guide who accompanied him on this infamous and illegal hunt.
In July, I wrote about an eerily familiar slaying in Zimbabwe: a trophy hunter shot and killed Xanda the lion, whose primary range consisted of a portion of Hwange National Park. Xanda was the son of Cecil, and about four years old when Palmer killed his father.
No one knew what would become of Cecil’s progeny, since trophy hunting disrupts social relationships among family members. Lions live in communities where males sometimes work together to protect their mates and cubs; when a dominant male is lost, new male coalitions may seize the moment and try to take over their prides. When they succeed, they are known to kill the cubs to ensure the females continue only their lineage. Xanda survived the loss of his father and grew into a mature male who mated and had cubs of his own.
In 2016, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, acting on a petition from The HSUS and Humane Society International, classified all African lions as endangered or threatened. In response to that plea, the agency, based on the best available science, forbid the imports of sport-hunted trophies effective January 22, 2016. Each year prior to that, trophy hunters had been killing as many as 600 lions in Africa and bringing their parts home, with the continent-wide population at only 20,000 and rapidly declining. Their numbers have been cut in half in just the last two decades. Trophy hunting is, without question, one of the greatest threats to lions.
Yesterday’s announcement from the Interior Department will not only allow sport-hunting trophies for 2017 to come into the United States, but it will also permit entry of those from 2016. The administration is doing a reachback and accommodating all of those American hunters who killed lions in 2016 but couldn’t legally bring them back. Call it an amnesty program for the lion hunters.
The outrage factor is almost beyond compare for us at The HSUS.
Remember, this same administration took aim at two Obama-era rules to protect grizzly bears, wolves, and other native carnivores on 100 million acres of national wildlife refuges and national preserves. In April, President Trump signed a repeal of the refuge rule protecting predators. And just last week, the agency announced that it was revisiting the rule—which means starting the process to nix it—for National Park Service lands in Alaska.
So first there was an assault on Alaskan wildlife. And now an assault on African wildlife. The American public should not stand for these human attacks on these remarkable animals—all drivers of rural economies at home and abroad because of the wildlife-watching they attract.
The laughable part of this latest regulatory maneuvering dance is that the Interior Department is essentially saying that Zimbabwe has strict controls and has a sound wildlife management program. Remember, this is a nation run by a ruthless dictator who has targeted political opponents and average citizens. It is a country where poaching by shooting and poisoning of wildlife has been rampant. And it is a country that has a notorious pay-to-play approach—offering up animals to the highest bidder. In the middle of a political crisis of the worst order there, the U.S. government is working not to improve governance and promote the democratic process in Zimbabwe, but to open the door for Americans to join in the pillaging of that nation’s extraordinary wildlife.
What also defies understanding is, why would the U.S. government allow American trophy hunters to import lion trophies when they are unlikely to find an airline that will carry them into the country. After the killing of Cecil, 43 airlines, including all major U.S. carriers, said they would no longer ship lion trophies in the cargo holds of their planes.
The folly that the killing helps lions and elephants is just that—pure folly. We’ll see the agency in court.African elephants and African lions drive billions of dollars of economic activity in Africa. But they drive that activity only when they are alive. Killing them deducts from their populations, diminishes wildlife-watching experiences for others, and robs the countries of Africa of its greatest resources.
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https://www.alternet.org/election-2016/don-jr-giving-speeches-100000-pop
kali h
Trump Jr. reportedly raked in $100,000 for a speech he gave at Faulkner University in Alabamaon Thursday, according to Newsweek. The outlet also reports that the president’s son will receive a six-digit honorarium, along with $5,000 in food and travel, for an upcoming appearance at the University of North Texas. Trump Jr. made money on at least one other speech, delivered in the UAE, since his father entered the White House.
While none of those speaking gigs qualify as illegal, Newsweek notes that Don Jr.'s appearances are just the "latest in a string of questionable ethics decisions by the Trump family.”
“The paid speeches do not break any laws, but create a risk of Trump’s children getting unethical benefits from their father’s role as president,” Noah Bookbinder, who heads Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, told NBC News. “They also open the possibility of foreign governments using access to Trump’s children as a way to influence U.S. policy.”
POTUS has three sons, of which Don Jr. is the eldest. In case you are confused, Eric Trump is the son whose foundation allegedly rerouted money that was intended to go to children with cancer back into the family business. Don Jr. is the son who, along with his sister Ivanka, was reportedly almost charged with felony fraud for duping prospective buyers of units in the Trump SoHo condominium hotel, until their lawyer made a hefty donation to the district attorney’s reelection campaign. Junior is also the son who tweeted a fake Top Gun clip of his dad shooting the CNN logo out of the sky, and retweeted a white supremacist meme.
But Don Jr.—who currently serves as executive vice president of the Trump Organization—is most famous for meeting with a lawyer from a hostile foreign government to get dirt that could help his father win the presidential election.
NBC News writes that the website for All American Speakers Bureau, the talent agency that books Don Jr.’s speaking spots, has advertised his speaking fees as starting at $50,001. That page was removed after NBC began asking questions a few weeks ago.
In his speech at Faulkner University, Don. Jr. reportedly pulled out the old conservative trope about universities being liberal indoctrination centers. Per the Hill, “general admission for the event was $150, and top-level sponsors were able to take a picture with Trump Jr. after the event."
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mojo
Donald Trump Jr.
“I have nothing to do with Russia,” President Trump has declared. “No deals. No loans.” That’s not quite true. Just ask his oldest son, who serves as the executive vice president of the Trump Organization. “Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross section of a lot of our assets,” Don Jr. told investors in 2008. “We see a lot of money pouring in from Russia.” Weeks before the election, Trump’s son was reportedly paid $50,000 to address a pro-Russian group in Paris whose leader nominated Putin for the Nobel Peace Prize in December.
Eric Trump
In a May interview with Boston radio station WBUR, golf journalist James Dodson recalled asking Trump’s second-oldest son a few years ago about who was funding his father’s courses. “We don’t rely on American banks,” he replied, according to Dodson. “We have all the funding we need out of Russia.” Eric, who manages the Trump Organization with his older brother, called Dodson’s account “completely fabricated.”
Jared Kushner
The president’s son-in-law reportedly failed to disclose “dozens of contacts with foreign leaders or officials in recent months” on his application for security clearance, including meetings with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak and Sergey Gorkov, the head of Vnesheconombank, a Russian state-owned bank. According to the Washington Post, Kislyak reported back to Moscow following their sit-down that Kushner had proposed “setting up a secret and secure communications channel between Trump’s transition team and the Kremlin, using Russian diplomatic facilities.” Kushner reportedly strongly advocated Trump’s firing of FBI Director James Comey in May—further raising questions about his role. In late May, the Post and other news outlets reported that Kushner had become a focus of the FBI’s Russia probe, with investigators digging into his contacts with Kislyak, Gorkov, and other Russians. The 36-year-old real estate scion has volunteered to be interviewed by the Senate Intelligence Committee and his lawyer has said Kushner “will do the same if he is contacted in connection with any other inquiry.”
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http://www.alternet.org/environment/trump-administration-puts-yellowstone-grizzlies-crosshairs
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During the 2016 United States presidential election, the meme was connected to Donald Trump's campaign. In October 2015, Donald Trump retweeted a Pepe representation of himself, associated with a video called "You Can't Stump the Trump (Volume 4)".[3][14] Later in the election, Roger Stone and Donald Trump Jr. posted a parody movie poster of The Expendables on Twitter and Instagram titled "The Deplorables", a play of Hillary Clinton's controversial phrase, basket of deplorables, which included Pepe's face among those of members of the Trump family and other figures popular among the alt-right.[15]^
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AN
After sustained outcry about his foundation providing big-money donors access to the incoming presidential family, Eric Trump finally announced Thursday that he will suspend all operations of his charitable foundation.
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Donald Trump, on a brief respite from using Twitter to promote a nuclear arms race or whine about celebrities hating him, used the opportunity to complain about his family being treated like every other clan that has occupied the White House writing, “My wonderful son, Eric, will no longer be allowed to raise money for children with cancer because of a possible conflict of interest with my presidency. Isn't this a ridiculous shame? He loves these kids, has raised millions of dollars for them, and now must stop. Wrong answer!”
This seems like a good time to revisit the findings of a recent Daily Beast investigation into the dealings of the Eric Trump Foundation. The outlet concluded that “the Eric Trump Foundation [paid] hundreds of thousands over the last 10 years to host lavish fundraising events at Donald Trump’s golf courses:
In promotional videos and press releases, ETF touts a 95 to 100 percent donation ratio and implies that by benefit of being a Trump, namesake properties are handed over for charity events at little or no cost. But according to a Daily Beast analysis of annual IRS reports and New York state financial disclosures from the charity’s inception in 2007 to 2014, the most recent year for which data is available, ETF spent $881,779 on its annual Golf Invitational at Trump-owned clubs, a portion of which—$100,000 in 2013 and $88,000 in 2014—was reported as paid directly “to a company of a family member of the Board of Directors.” In other words, Donald Trump himself.
Philip Hackney, who teaches law at Louisiana State University and previously worked in the IRS’ Exempt Organizations unit, told the Daily Beast there is “nothing necessarily wrong with contracting with businesses you own.” However, there are issues around Eric Trump’s previous claims that the charity sent nearly 100 percent of donations to its intended recipient, St. Jude’s hospital, while not publicly acknowledging that a portion of funds ended up going to the Trump Organization.
“There’s a question, maybe not of the legality, but of the ethics of it,” Hackney said.
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Source: Daily Beast
Eric Trump’s announcement of the suspension of activity by his foundation came after numerous outlets raised critical questions about the ethical implications of the organization’s recent fundraisers. Auctions since the election have offered donors the chance to meet with the president-elect, as well as other members of the Trump family, in exchange for massive donations to the Eric Trump Foundation. In recent weeks, the charity has advertised fundraisers selling everything from a coffee date with Ivanka Trump to a meeting with Donald Trump for $500,000. After a presidential campaign in which Trump repeatedly accused opponent Hillary Clinton of using pay-to-play tactics with her own family foundation, the auctions seemed not just hypocritical, but a huge conflict of interest.
The Daily Beast does note that according to tax records, the Eric Trump Foundation has raised a hefty amount—$13 million—for St. Jude’s hospital, which treats children with cancer.
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http://www.alternet.org/election-2016/how-trumped-fundraiser-first-family-imploded
pay-to-play soiree offering the ultra-wealthy access to newly inaugurated President Donald Trump is unraveling — after the Center for Public Integrity on Monday revealed that Trump’s adult sons are registered directors of the new, Texas-based nonprofit organizing the event.
Since then, Eric Trump told the *New York Times* that he and his brother will not attend the Jan. 21 event in Washington, D.C., despite promotional material originally promising their participation as honorary co-chairmen — and a bonus hunting and fishing trip with one or both of the brothers.
Event organizers, meanwhile, distributed revised descriptions of the event that removed references to Donald Trump’s attendance. It also removed mention of the multi-day hunting and fishing trip for sponsors who ponied up $500,000 or more.
And while all three Trump names are still prominently featured on the event’s promotional materials, the nonprofit behind the event, known as the Opening Day Foundation, on Tuesday amended its incorporation documents. Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr. are no longer named as directors.
The hunting-themed “Opening Day 2017” affair (dress code: “camouflage and cufflinks”) is the latest in a series of potential conflicts to surface for the incoming administration, prompting additional questions about the rules Trump will put in place to avoid any appearance of influence-peddling, something he frequently decried on the campaign trail.
Here's how the Opening Day 2017 event sprung into existence — and fell apart almost as quickly:
The brochure for Opening Day 2017, listing sponsorship packages ranging from $25,000 to $1 million, first surfaced on website TMZ.com.
It offered big-dollar donors the chance to attend a “private reception and photo opportunity” with the freshly inaugurated Trump, as well as a “multi-day hunting and/or fishing excursion” with Donald Trump Jr. and/or Eric Trump “and team,” plus other event tickets and benefits.
The brochure didn’t spell out who was organizing it or who would benefit, saying only that net proceeds would be donated to unspecified “conservation charities.” Rather, interviews and documents reviewed by the Center for Public Integrity revealed the organizer was a new foundation called the Opening Day Foundation, incorporated in Texas on Dec. 14.
The paperwork for the Opening Day Foundation listed four directors: Donald Trump Jr., Eric Trump, Dallas investor Gentry Beach and Tom Hicks Jr., the son of a Dallas billionaire. Beach and Hicks are reportedly close friends with Donald Trump Jr., and both men helped raise millions of dollars for Trump’s campaign. Beach is also the godfather to one of Donald Trump Jr.’s children, according to the Dallas Morning News.
Trump officials — as well as Beach and Hicks — initially stayed silent, ignoring repeated requests for comment.
But on Tuesday, the Trump transition team issued a statement. It read: "The Opening Day event and details that have been reported are merely initial concepts that have not been approved or pursued by the Trump family. Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump are avid outdoorsmen and supporters of conservation efforts, which align with the goals of this event, however they are not involved in any capacity."
The nonprofit filings, Trump officials said, would be amended and the brothers’ names deleted. Anonymous transition officials told the *Washington Post* that the names of Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump had been included on the documents “without their permission.”
Mark Brinkerhoff, a spokesman for the Opening Day 2017 event, said Tuesday night in an interview with the Center for Public Integrity that Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump are invited to the event, but their participation isn’t confirmed.
The inauguration weekend event would be the first for the Opening Day Foundation, which Brinkerhoff said is currently seeking official recognition from the Internal Revenue Service to operate as a 501(c)(3) charity. This status would allow donors to deduct contributions on their taxes.
Such nonprofits also aren’t required by law to disclose their donors, meaning pro-Trump contributors to the Opening Day Foundation could ostensibly do so anonymously. Political committees such as candidates’ campaigns and super PACs, in contrast, must reveal their donors in periodic reports to the Federal Election Commission.
Brinkerhoff said the goal is for the Opening Day Foundation is to distribute proceeds to conservation charities — similar to what the United Way does for other charitable organizations.
The new documents outlining sponsorship opportunities said that until the IRS grants the Opening Day Foundation tax-exempt status, the Opening Day Foundation will operate as a “project of the Boone and Crockett Club Foundation Inc.,” a wildlife conservation group based in Montana.
A spokesman for the Boone and Crockett Club Foundation, however, told the Washington Post that the group has not decided whether to participate in the Opening Day 2017 fundraiser.
Asked Tuesday night about the Trump brothers’ involvement with the creation of the foundation, Brinkerhoff said he “didn’t know” whether they had agreed to have their names on the original nonprofit documents.
Ultimately, he said, “The foundation creators determined among themselves that the founders of the foundation will not include Eric or Donald Jr.”
In interviews with the *Dallas Morning News* and Washington Postthis week, Hicks Jr. and Beach disagreed over who first had the idea to create the Opening Day Foundation.
Hicks attributed the idea to Donald Trump Jr. and Beach.
“One of the most important things for Don Jr. and Eric is conservation, and we wanted to help them organize a party to celebrate conservation,” Hicks told the Washington Post. “After the president-elect won, we got focused on this. Don Jr. and Gentry have been spearheading it.”
But Beach told the Dallas Morning News that he and Hicks thought of the idea for the foundation in early December.
Beach also said that after the nonprofit was registered, lawyers advised the foundation’s committee to remove the Trumps’ names.
“It became clear that we needed to go in a different direction. So we took Don Jr. and Eric out of the foundation completely,” Beach said.
In response to requests for comment from Beach and Hicks, Brinkerhoff issued a statement to the Center for Public Integrity: “The group is committed to and supportive of conservation causes, and excited to create positive change.”
Ethics experts say the incident — and others, including a canceled plan to raise money for charity by auctioning off coffee with Trump’s daughter, Ivanka, and Trump’s inauguration itself — highlights the need for Trump and his administration to set clear guidelines and rules governing conflicts of interest and pay-to-play issues.
“The whole thing adds up to an unprecedented assault on the constitution on ethics and on frankly on taste,” said Norman Eisen, who was a top ethics lawyer in the Obama White House, referring to the series of questions about potential conflicts of interest and ethics issues. “It’s like the appetizer at the corruption banquet. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
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http://www.alternet.org/election-2016/just-half-million-bucks-you-can-kill-beautiful-wild-animals-trump-sons-or-get-photo-op
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http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/10/ivanka-trump-donald-trump-2016-213248
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https://www.propublica.org/article/the-story-behind-jared-kushners-curious-acceptance-into-harvard
I would like to express my gratitude to Jared Kushner for reviving interest in my 2006 book, “The Price of Admission.” I have never met or spoken with him, and it’s rare in this life to find such a selfless benefactor. Of course, I doubt he became Donald Trump’s son-in-law and consigliere merely to boost my lagging sales, but still, I’m thankful.
My book exposed a grubby secret of American higher education: that the rich buy their under-achieving children’s way into elite universities with massive, tax-deductible donations. It reported that New Jersey real estate developer Charles Kushner had pledged $2.5 million to Harvard University in 1998, not long before his son Jared was admitted to the prestigious Ivy League school.At the time, Harvard accepted about one of every nine applicants. (Nowadays, it only takes one out of twenty.) I also quoted administrators at Jared’s high school, who described him as a less than stellar student and expressed dismay at Harvard’s decision.
“There was no way anybody in the administrative office of the school thought he would on the merits get into Harvard,” a former official at The Frisch School in Paramus, New Jersey, told me. “His GPA did not warrant it, his SAT scores did not warrant it. We thought for sure, there was no way this was going to happen. Then, lo and behold, Jared was accepted. It was a little bit disappointing because there were at the time other kids we thought should really get in on the merits, and they did not.”
Risa Heller, a spokeswoman for Kushner Companies, said in an email Thursday that “the allegation” that Charles Kushner’s gift to Harvard was related to Jared’s admission “is and always has been false.” His parents, Charles and Seryl Kushner, “are enormously generous and have donated over 100 million dollars to universities, hospitals and other charitable causes. Jared Kushner was an excellent student in high school and graduated from Harvard with honors.” (About 90 percent of Jared’s 2003 class at Harvard also graduated with honors.)
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request top secret clearance for kids
http://www.alternet.org/election-2016/7-revelations-real-inside-scoop-jared-kushner-husband-ivanka-trump
Trump Wants Ivanka's Hubby, Jared Kushner, to Have Super Top Secret Clearance—Here's What You Should Know About Him
The Trump family's conflicts of interest are mind-boggling.
By Janet Allon / AlterNet November 16, 2016
Now that Donald Trump has won the White House, his son-in-law Jared Kushner—Ivanka's husband—is reportedly playing a major role on his transition team. It has been widely reported that Kushner was behind the firing of New Jersey Governor Chris Christie and others associated with him, a "bloodletting" that was said to create a certain amount of disarray. Kushner's enmity for Christie stems from the fact that Christie once prosecuted Kushner's father for tax evasion and witness tampering, among other charges.
The wealthy son of New Jersey real state mogul (and convicted felon) Charles Kushner, Jared was an exceedingly loyal soldier during his father-in-law's campaign, most notably defending Trump against charges of trafficking in hatred of Jews when he retweeted a blatantly anti-Semitic image. Notably there is no indication that Kushner has any particular problem with the appointment of Steve Bannon, a leader of the racist and anti-Semitic Alt-Right movement to the post of Trump's chief White House strategist. The soft-spoken Kushner has generally managed to fly under the media radar. But the New Yorker and Esquire magazine published not terribly flattering profiles of the golden boy and member Trump inner circle, a few months ago which contained some damning history.
Here are some revelations about Kushner that you might want to keep in mind going forward:
- Jared is a really good compartmentalizer. It runs in the family.
In August 2004, Jared’s father, Charles Kushner, head of a multi-hundred-million-dollar real estate empire in New Jersey, pleaded guilty to 18 felony counts of tax fraud, election violations and witness tampering. Interestingly, future Trump toadie Chris Christie was the prosecutor who indicted him as New Jersey’s U.S. attorney, but we’ll get back to that.
Charles Kushner set his sister’s husband up with a sex worker and filmed their interactions in an effort to blackmail her out of cooperating with a federal investigation. Such a nice family man.
But it didn’t work. Kushner ended up being sentenced to two years in prison.
Similarly, Jared Kushner, an observant Jew, seems to be able to convince himself that the fact that his father-in-law courts and hires white supremacists, who are by definition antisemitic, is A-OK. Nor does he seem troubled by Trump's desired persecution of a group of people for their religion, Muslims. Kushner angered members of his own family by defending Trump’s tweet of Hillary Clinton against a backdrop of the Star of David and money by invoking his own relatives’ Holocaust experiences.
- Jared has long been a Trump admirer.
And imitation is the best form of flattery. In an echo of Trump’s real estate career, at the tender age of 24 (right after dad was sent to prison), Kushner used his father's real estate empire and money to break into the high-profile Manhattan real estate scene. As Vicky Ward writes in her Esquire profile of Kushner:
“Much as Trump's renovation of the Grand Hyatt hotel three decades earlier had carried his family's real estate empire across the East River from Queens, Jared's purchase of 666 Fifth Avenue, just three blocks from Trump's own trophy skyscraper, was an unmissable sign of the Kushners' arrival in Manhattan.”
Some say Kushner’s admiration of Trump has morphed into a kind of hero worship. He has a stash of red “Make America Great Again” baseball caps in his office and is said to be in awe of the Trump campaign slogan, telling people, “It came right out of Trump’s head.”
- Much like the Donald, Jared isn’t as good a businessman as he claims to be.
In fact, he does not even run his family’s business, according to Vicky Ward’s Esquire profile; his ex-con father does. Jared is more like a semi-attractive figurehead, at this point.
- Jared shows some of his father-in-law’s tendency to be vindictive about people he feels have crossed him.
The Esquire profile opens with a lengthy anecdote about a vendetta Kushner pursued using the power of the newspaper he owns (the New York Observer), which his daddy bought for him. Some seven years after Kushner had a dispute with one of his real estate investors, he ordered a hit piece in the paper’s real estate section to settle the score. "There's a guy named Richard Mack, and we've got to get this guy," Kushner reportedly told Dan Geiger, the Observer's real estate reporter.
In fairness, Kushner may have inherited his score-settling streak from his dad, rather than modeling it on his then-future father-in-law.
But some of Kushner’s resentments and animosities do overlap Trump’s; he blames the media for his father’s conviction, for instance. And, of course, he hates Chris Christie, reportedly fighting hard to deny him Trump’s veep nod. Still, while Jared prevailed in that fight, Trump and Christie are still pretty good pals, maybe thanks to the fact that Christie colluded with Trump to hugely reduce Trump’s tax bill as soon as Christie became governor, to the great detriment of New Jerseyans.
- As a media mogul, Jared wants to be just like Rupert, as in Murdoch.
Kushner and Rupert Murdoch are really good pals, and Kushner has consulted Murdoch on how to run his little media property, the New York Observer. (Also, Ivanka and Murdoch’s ex-wife, Wendi Deng, are close enough to travel together.) Actually, Rupert and Wendi might have saved Jared and Ivanka’s relationship before they were married—it was on the rocks because the Orthodox Jewish Kushner family was against their son marrying a blonde shiksa. Jared and Ivanka broke up, but were invited to a party on Murdoch’s yacht and reunited.
Murdoch had expressed admiration for Hillary Clinton when she was New York's senator, but Kushner brought his pal over to the Trump side. Then again, it might have been Murdoch who awakened Kushner’s conservative side by sharing books by right-wingers like racist pseudo-social scientist Charles Murray and conservative economist Niall Ferguson.
- While in college at Harvard, Jared was developing properties in nearby Somerville on the side.
Seriously, who does that in college? Kushner reportedly made $20 million in profit buying old buildings and converting them to condos.
Then again, academia was likely not Kushner’s thing. He was a mediocre student in high school and yet somehow miraculously gained entrance to Harvard after his dad pledged $2.5 million to the school and called in a favor from New Jersey Senator Frank Lautenberg, who asked his friend Ted Kennedy to get Kushner in.
- Jared fancies himself a JFK type.
Both he and his younger brother Josh have photographs of John F. Kennedy on prominent display in their offices. That might change. The family previously leaned Democratic; most of his father’s campaign contributions went to Democrats (like Lautenberg, and Clinton in her Senate run in 2000). But Charles recently threw a fundraiser for Trump at his Jersey Shore mansion, so he’s on board. Only Josh, reportedly a Democrat, is not planning on voting for Trump.
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http://www.dw.com/en/trump-names-family-members-to-white-house-transition-team/a-36366468
Donald Trump on Friday named three of his children -
Ivanka,
Donald Jr. Kasich: http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2016/07/20/trump_reportedly_wanted_kasich_as_vp_to_be_in_charge_of_domestic_and_foreign.html
and Eric -
as well as his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, as part of a team that will pick members of his future cabinet.
Kushner and the siblings will help as part of the transition team to identify individuals for top posts in the White House administration and cabinet ahead of his inauguration on 1.12
Ivanka (center), Donald Jr. and Eric (left) will also head the Trump Organization
"The mission of our team will be clear: put together the most highly qualified group of successful leaders who will be able to implement our change agenda in Washington," Trump said in a statement.
On Friday, Ivanka and her brothers were also named in a statement by the Trump Organization, which said the company would transfer control of the business to them as heads of the trust.
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