COI 2 conflict
see cult of corruption
SEE DOGE COUP MUSK CONTRACTOR
crony capitalism
SEE CORRUPT 3
SEE ALITO 2
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- Lauren Windsor @ Zeteo: The Right’s ‘War on Woke’ Is a Cash Grab on State Treasuries
Derek Kreifels led a decade-long crusade against ‘woke’ corporations. Now, he’s getting state business for his Christian finance firm. Read Lauren Windsor’s year-long corruption investigation at Zeteo.
AN 8 26
President Donald Trump's political movement, Make America Great Again (MAGA), heavily relies on Christian nationalists who ignore the Founding Fathers' secularism to argue the United States was founded as an explicitly Christian country. Yet according to a groundbreaking new report, Christian nationalists are engaging in self-dealing on a massive scale — and through connections with American government entities.
"Ballrooms, slush funds, jumbo jets. Worship services in the Pentagon, electioneering in churches, the Ten Commandments in schools," reported Zeteo's Lauren Windsor on Wednesday based on over a year's worth of reporting. "Conflicts of interest and Christian nationalism have been hallmarks of Donald Trump’s second presidency. The epic flood of corruption swamping Washington isn’t just overwhelming American politics – it’s also obscuring the grift occurring in red states across the country, as officials work to put public investment funds under the control of their friends at Christian finance firms."
Windsor added, "A major conduit for that corruption is the State Financial Officers Foundation (SFOF), a small but powerful nonprofit that convenes Republican state treasurers and auditors, right-wing activists, and Christian finance executives to strategize over how to defeat liberals and weaponize state treasuries against allegedly woke corporations, while steering state treasury money to their ideological allies. Much of their “War on Woke” consists of boosting the fossil fuel industry and crushing efforts to mitigate climate change, under the notion that corporate safeguards are bad business."
Although Windsor's report briefly mentioned the state of affairs in Kentucky, she focused on Alaska, including a character named Derek Kreifels.
"Derek Kreifels was the CEO of the State Financial Officers Foundation for more than a decade," Windsor wrote. "He resigned from this role in the fall of 2024, but he remains an SFOF board member, and his wife serves as one of its top executives. Now, Kreifels is lobbying SFOF treasurers to put public retirees’ savings and other funds they oversee into faith-aligned financial products and services offered by his firm, Prospr Aligned, and its affiliates in the Christian finance industry."
Windsor added, "Kreifels’s firm has already won business from the Kentucky auditor’s office, which is led by a member of the State Financial Officers Foundation’s leadership team, as I can report for the first time. Another state Kreifels has targeted heavily is Alaska, where he has friends in former Revenue Commissioner and ex-SFOF Vice Chair Adam Crum and Alaska Permanent Fund Chair Jason Brune."
She also said that in an interview with her in Anchorage last year, "Brune defended Crum and his collaboration with Kreifels as efforts to promote resource extraction in the Arctic – arguing that he and Crum, as members of the governor’s cabinet, 'are pimping for the state.'"
Describing one event, Windsor reported that "in the weeks leading up to the event, SFOF honored Crum, naming him its vice chair for 2025, and Kreifels announced he was resigning as CEO to embark on a private business venture he would soon reveal.
She added, "'I have been called to a new mission,' Kreifels declared. The Anchorage summit presented great synergies for Kreifels. He could, using nonprofit money, convene right-wing finance officials and industry executives who lobby them – while lobbying those officials himself on the services offered by his new business venture and celebrating his tenure at SFOF with friends and family in an exotic locale. According to emails from Kreifels that I obtained, SFOF covered travel costs for public officials and their staff."
The State Financial Officers Foundation has also helped support Kreifels’s private business ventures. According to state travel disclosures, SFOF paid for at least one treasurer’s travel to the New York Stock Exchange launch party for Prospr’s Alaska investment fund, reports Windsor, adding that SFOF also arranged for a special speaker: longtime ally Paul Atkins, who as chairman of the Trump Securities and Exchange Commission regulates the Prospr fund."
IRS rules prohibit self-dealing and private benefit from nonprofit money, Windsor said.
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an 5 26
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy has been receiving criticism over his newly revealed reality television show, a road trip series that was filmed over the course of seven months when he was also presumably overseeing the entire U.S. transportation system. Critics have accused him not only of shirking his responsibilities while on the taxpayers’ dime, but of conflicts of interest with the corporations he’s supposed to be regulating. On Monday, his wife had an explosive response to one critic in particular: the husband of former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg.
“Stand down, Chas,” Duffy’s wife Rachel Campos Duffy, who also happens to be a co-host of Fox & Friends, posted over a retweet of criticism from Chasten Buttigieg. “You and I both know that my husband has done more in one year to transform the [Department of Transportation] and [Air Traffic Control] than your husband did in over 4 years on the job.”
In the same post, she also claimed that the show —The Great American Road Trip —was funded by a non-profit organization, even though, according to the Daily Beast, “the show’s sponsors, including Boeing, Shell, Toyota and United Airlines, are all companies whose business Duffy regulates as transport secretary.” This has ethics experts sounding the alarm.
For his part, Chasten Buttigieg has a personal element to his criticism of the Duffys, posting, “The same Duffys who threw endless fits on national television when Pete was working from our son's ICU bedside are now bragging about their multi-month, taxpayer-funded family road trip while gas and grocery prices soar for American families because of Trump's war of choice. How much more unfocused, unserious, and out of touch can you be?”
The Duffys are a longtime TV couple. Sean Duffy came into the public eye in 1997 during the show The Real World: Boston, then met his wife on Road Rules: All Stars. He’s been filming his new series, he says, between “moments where I might be able to do some work” as a member of Trump’s Cabinet.
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AN 12 25
On Sunday, President Donald Trump declared that he will “be involved” in the federal government’s decision on whether to allow the streaming service Netflix to buy mass media and entertainment conglomerate Warner Brothers Discovery. On Monday, Paramount Skydance, another mass media and entertainment conglomerate, announced a hostile takeover bid for WBD — with news soon following that Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner’s private equity firm is part of the Paramount offer.
“Paramount is telling WBD shareholders that it has a smoother path to regulatory approval than does Netflix, and Kushner’s involvement only strengthens that case,” Axios reported. “Paramount is led by David Ellison, whose billionaire father Larry is a major supporter of President Trump.”
Axios added that Kushner’s firm, Affinity Partners, “was not mentioned in Paramount’s press release on Monday morning about its $108 billion bid, nor were participating sovereign wealth funds from Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi and Qatar.”
Fortune reported that “Affinity and the other outside financing partners have agreed to forgo any governance rights, which Paramount said means the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States would have no jurisdiction over the transaction.”
But Axios’ Sarah Fischer wrote on social media: “Ask yourself, why would anyone want to put money into an investment of this caliber and have no governance rights or board seats?”
“Essentially,” she added, “people want to have control/access/political power behind the scenes.”
“Reality is,” Fischer explained, this hostile takeover is a good explanation “of how capitalism/democracy can be exploited for political gain,” with “Paramount essentially betting our open system incentivizes shareholders to take [the] best financial deal even if it means giving soft power” to three sovereign wealth funds, the President, and his son-in-law.
Critics are blasting Kushner’s and Trump’s involvement.
U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) remarked, “Donald Trump said he’ll ‘be involved in’ deciding if Netflix can buy Warner Bros. Is that an open invite for CEOs to curry favor with Trump in exchange for merger approvals? It should be an independent decision by the Department of Justice based on the law and facts.”
Award-winning journalist Sophia A. Nelson, responding to trump’s remarks, observed: “This is ridiculous. Corrupt. And NOT what a President gets involved in.”
Professor, investor, and marketing executive Adam Cochran wrote: “Trump is talking about him personally being involved in deciding the fate of the Netflix-Warner Brothers deal, and how it’s ‘bad.’ Meanwhile his son-in-law is financing the competing offer. There has truly never been a more corrupt administration in US history!”
Alexander Vindman, former Director of European Affairs for the United States National Security Council (NSC), wrote: “F– NO to another corrupt Trump deal. Nepobaby, Jared’s, involvement would deliver CNN to MAGA.”
NewsNation’s Kurt Bardella, a communications advisor and media relations consultant, asked: “Alexa, what is a ‘conflict-of-interest’?”
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September 15, 2025
Artificial IntelligenceCryptocurrencyMedia Accountability
CNN Allows Sinema Skate Through Recent Tapper Segment
CNN and Jake Tapper invited former Senator Kyrsten Sinema on to discuss crypto and AI. He failed to disclose her conflicts of interest
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AN 3 25
'Open corruption': Musk plots SpaceX takeover of FAA flight safety
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msnbc maddow musk has fired bunch of IG agy eg neuralink abuse chimps, IG showed up for work, made to leave by sec; 13.5B in 5 yrs
an 2 25
Musk will personally profit from dismantling consumer protection agency: Ex-CFPB Official
ALSO VULTURE ALITO
an badash 6 23 no lnx
another U.S. Supreme Court scandal is brewing in the wake of alleged corruption involving nearly every conservative member of the current Roberts Court, or their spouse.
The wife of Justice Samuel Alito leased a 160-acre Oklahoma property to an oil and gas firm while her husband wrote the recent majority opinion greatly restricting the work the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is allowed to do. Should that land produce oil and gas, Martha Ann Bomgardner Alito would earn just under a quarter of all revenue from that property, The Intercept reports.
“Last year, before the lease was activated, a line in Alito’s financial disclosures labeled ‘mineral interests’ was valued between $100,001 and $250,000. If extraction on the plot proves fruitful, the lease dictates that Citizen Energy will pay Alito’s wife 3/16ths of all the money it makes from oil and gas sales,” according to The Intercept. “Because Citizen Energy III isn’t implicated in any cases before the Supreme Court, Alito’s holding in Oklahoma doesn’t appear to pose any direct conflicts of interest. But it does add context to a political outlook that has alarmed environmentalists since Alito’s confirmation hearing in 2006 — and cast recent decisions that embolden the oil and gas industry in a damning light.”
It also poses ethics concerns.
READ MORE: Liberty University VP Cites Hitler and Stalin in Plea for Conservatives to ‘Control Education’
“’There need not be a specific case involving the drilling rights associated with a specific plot of land for Alito to understand what outcomes in environmental cases would buttress his family’s net wealth,’ Jeff Hauser, founder and director of the Revolving Door Project, told The Intercept,” the news outlet’s Daniel Boguslaw reports. The Revolving Door Project says it “scrutinizes executive branch appointees to ensure they use their office to serve the broad public interest, rather than to entrench corporate power or seek personal advancement.”
Hauser added, “Alito does not have to come across like a drunken Paul Thomas Anderson character gleefully confessing to drinking our collective milkshakes in order to be a real life, run-of-the-mill political villain.”
His remarks did not end there.
READ MORE: Justice Alito’s Secret Speech ‘Spiking the Ball’ on Revoking Abortion Seen as Worsening Court’s ‘Credibility Crisis’
On Twitter, Hauser wrote: “Sam Alito could choose to be invested solely in vanilla Vanguard or Fidelity investment funds. Instead, he and his wife cultivate conflicts of interest because he believes that he and his pals ARE the law. The latest? The Alitos are into natural gas production.”
This latest look at the financial dealings of the conservatives on the U.S. Supreme Court follows numerous reports, including decades of undisclosed luxury vacations gifted to Justice Clarence Thomas and his wife Ginni Thomas by a conservative billionaire megadonor, along with a generous real estate transaction for his mother’s home and an education for the couple’s grandnephew. Then there was Justice Samuel Alito taking an undisclosed Alaska vacation with a conservative billionaire who repeatedly had business before the court, and a free trip to Rome where he delivered a secret speech days after writing the majority opinion overturning Roe v. Wade. Justice Amy Coney Barrett having ties to the leader of the group that funded Alito’s Rome trip, including selling her personal home to “a recently hired Notre Dame professor who was assuming a leadership role” at that organization. Justice Neil Gorsuch selling land to the head of a law firm with cases before the Court, while not disclosing his name. And Chief Justice John Roberts’ wife making millions by placing attorneys into high-powered law firms that routinely have business before the Supreme Court.
Political and legislative strategist Murshed Zaheed, a senior advisor to Take Back The Court, responded to The Intercept’s report via Twitter, saying: “There appears to be no limit to the culture of corruption from the extreme right wing judges on the #SCOTUS. This is not sustainable if we want to have a functioning democracy. #expandSCOTUS.”
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an badash 2 23
The highly controversial and highly unpopular **U.S. Supreme Court** isn’t just facing a historic loss of confidence, it’s now facing yet another ethics scandal that is likely to lower even further public opinion of the far-right institution that in under two decades has seen its approval rating slashed.
Although it will not hear arguments, the issue before the Supreme Court and the American people’s view of it, is, should a justice’s spouse – in this case the spouse of Chief Justice John Roberts – be able to make millions of dollars recruiting attorneys who are placed into top law firms that argue cases before it?
That’s the latest allegation, and already a spokesperson for the Court has issued a statement denying any ethical violations.
The New York Times reports that “a former colleague of Mrs. Roberts has raised concerns that her recruiting work poses potential ethics issues for the chief justice. Seeking an inquiry, the ex-colleague has provided records to the Justice Department and Congress indicatingMrs. Roberts has been paid millions of dollars in commissions for placing lawyers at firms — some of which have business before the Supreme Court,according to a letter obtained by The New York Times.”
Jane Sullivan Roberts left a law firm where she was a partner after her spouse was confirmed as Chief Justice.
“Mrs. Roberts, according to a 2015 deposition,” The Times reports, “said that a significant portion of her practice was devoted to helping senior government lawyers land jobs at law firms and that the candidates’ names were almost never disclosed.”
Documents in that case “list six-figure fees credited to Mrs. Roberts for placing partners at law firms — including $690,000 in 2012 for one such match. The documents do not name clients, but Mr. Price recalled her recruitment of one prominent candidate, Ken Salazar, then interior secretary under President Barack Obama, to WilmerHale,a global firm that boasts of arguing more than 125 times before the Supreme Court.”
That case involves “a former colleague of Mrs. Roberts,” Kendal Price, a 66-year-old Boston lawyer, who “has raised concerns that her recruiting work poses potential ethics issues for the chief justice.”
“According to the letter,” sent by Price to DOJ and Congress, which the Times reports it obtained, “Mr. Price was fired in 2013 and sued the firm, as well as Mrs. Roberts and another executive, over his dismissal.”
Doug Lindner, Advocacy Director for Judiciary & Democracy for the League of Conservation Voters remarked: “Another day, another ethics concern about another life-tenured conservative justice on the most powerful court in the world, which has no binding ethics rules.”
Indeed, the lack of a Supreme Court code of ethics has been repeatedly condemned for years, including by some of the nation’s top critics.
On Sept. 1, 2022, The Washington Post’s Jennifer Rubin tweeted out her opinion piece: “Ginni Thomas pressed Wisconsin lawmakers to overturn Biden’s 2020 victory .. just another insurrectionist.”
Norman Ornstein, an emeritus scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and a contributing editor for the Atlantic, responded:
“Another reminder of how unethical is Justice Clarence Thomas, while Chief Justice Roberts turns a blind eye and continues to resist a code of ethics for a Supreme Court now distrusted by a majority of Americans. This defines the Roberts Court.”
The following month Ornstein slammed the Roberts Court once again.
“It is a stain on the Supreme Court that Chief Justice Roberts refuses to support a Judicial Code of Ethics, and stands by silently while Clarence Thomas flouts ethical standards over and over and over,” Ornstein charged.
Less than one month later he again unleashed on Roberts.
“Roberts is culpable,” he tweeted. “He has resisted over and over applying the Judicial Code of Ethics to the Supreme Court. This is Alito’s court, and it is partisan and corrupt.”
Ornstein is far from the Court’s only critic.
“If Chief Justice Roberts really wanted to address Supreme Court ethics, he would have immediately worked to implement a Code of Conduct after Clarence Thomas failed to recuse from cases involving January 6th despite having a clear conflict of interest,” the government watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington tweeted a year ago in May. The following month CREW published an analysis titled: “Chief Justice John Roberts is wrong: the American judicial system is facing a major ethics crisis.”
Meanwhile, in late November Politico reported that Democrats in Congress were outraged at the Roberts Court.
“Two senior Democrats in Congress are demanding that Chief Justice John Roberts detail what, if anything, the Supreme Court has done to respond to recent allegations of a leak of the outcome of a major case the high court considered several years ago,” PoliticoJosh Bernstein reported, referring to the leak of the Dobbs decision that overturned the Roe v. Wade decision – itself a massive ethics crisis for the Court.
“Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) and Rep. Hank Johnson (D-Ga.) are also interested in examining claims about a concerted effort by religious conservatives to woo the justices through meals and social engagements. They wrote to Roberts on Sunday, making clear that if the court won’t investigate the alleged ethical breaches, lawmakers are likely to launch their own probe.”
Whitehouse and Johnson “also criticized the high court’s response to a letter they sent Roberts in September, seeking information about the court’s reaction to reports in POLITICO and Rolling Stone about a yearslong campaign to encourage favorable decisions from the justices by bolstering their religiosity.”
Nothing has changed.
When the Roberts Court earlier this month announced its lengthy investigation did not find the draft Dobbs decision leaker but also did not include the Justices themselves, Stokes Prof. of Law at NYU Law School Melissa Murray, an MSNBC host, tweeted, “This is a Roberts Court leitmotif–The Chief loves to handle things–even big things–in-house. Ethics issues? No need to get involved, Congress. We’ll sort it out ourselves. Leak needs investigating? No need to call in an actual investigative body, the Marshal will handle it.”
Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times investigative reporter Jodi Kantor, pointing to how the Justices were not thoroughly investigated during the leak probe, in earlier this month said: “Last week the court released statements that confirmed the gap between how the justices and everyone else were treated.”
“The whole situation amplifies a major question about the court: are these nine people, making decisions that affect all of us, accountable to anyone?”
https://www.alternet.org/2022/06/house-republican-unique-financial-occurance/
https://www.alternet.org/2022/04/louis-dejoy/
COI
an comm dr 1 23
Both alarm and concern were expressed Saturday in response to new reporting about a charitable group with close ties to the U.S. Supreme Court that has been soliciting and accepting donations from corporate interests and far-right activists with cases before the Court.
The New York Times exposé focused on the activities and fundraising of the Supreme Court Historical Society, a nonprofit that claims its mission is "dedicated to the collection and preservation" of the Court's history.
While the group refused to disclose its donors to the Times, reporters from the newspaper determine that much of the funding came from powerful companies like Chevron, Goldman Sachs, Time Warner, and Facebook as well as anti-abortion activists like Rev. Rob Schenck.
According to the newspaper:
:{The society has raised more than $23 million over the last two decades. Because of its nonprofit status, it does not have to publicly disclose its donors—and declined when asked to do so. But The New York Times was able to identify the sources behind more than $10.7 million raised since 2003, the first year for which relevant records were available.
At least $6.4 million—or 60 percent—came from corporations, special interest groups, or lawyers and firms that argued cases before the court, according to an analysis of archived historical society newsletters and publicly available records that detail grants given to the society by foundations. Of that, at least $4.7 million came from individuals or entities in years when they had a pending interest in a federal court case on appeal or at the high court, records show.}:
In the case of Chevron, the oil giant actively gave to the society even as it had a pending climate litigation working its way through the court.
In response to the new revelations, public interest attorney Steven Donzinger, who was himself targeted by Chevron for his work aimed at holding the company to account for its polluting activities in Ecuador, said the implications were "horrifying."
"Why are these conflicts allowed?" asked Donzinger.
Others quoted by the Times said the effort by people like Rev. Schenck, who admits to using the charitable group as a way to get other anti-abortion activists closer to the justices, creates a clear conflict of interest.
Charles Fried, a Harvard Law professor who once served as solicitor general in the Reagan administration and counts himself a donor to the Historical Society, told the newspaper was so "horrified" by Schenck's behavior that he may no longer give.
"It's disgusting," Fried said. "Many of the people who contribute have the same reasons I do. You go to a cocktail party and support a good cause. But it turns out that for some people it's not that innocent."
While the Times notes that the Historical Society is "ostensibly independent of the judicial branch of government," the reality is that "the two are inextricably intertwined," with court justices serving as chair of the board and hosting gala events where exclusive access is reportedly part of the allure.
The left-leaning Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) said the reporting raises "significant questions" about the group which has "raked in millions—a significant chunk of it from groups with cases before the Court" over the last two decades.
Fix the Court, which acts as a watchdog organization for the U.S. Supreme Court, said the justification for the Historical Society's existence just doesn't hold water.
and Gabe Roth, the group's executive director, told the Times that if money was an issue for funding such a project it would be the best solution—one free of ethical concerns—for Congress to simply appropriate the money needed to maintain the history of the Court.
an 2/22
amid push for ban, Lawmakers traded $355 million of stock in 2021
As the coronavirus pandemic continued to roil the U.S. economy and take lives in 2021, congressional lawmakers and their family members went on a stock buying and selling...
trump has racked up 3,403 conflicts of interests since taking office
Lisa Newcomb / Common Dreams September 25, 2020
In its continuing research into President Donald Trump’s conflicts of interest, a government watchdog group released a new report Thursday that shows the commander-in-chief has engaged in 3,403 conflicts of…
https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/usps-has-paid-trumps-postmaster-general-286-million-since-2013-report/
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COI dejoy
https://www.alternet.org/2020/08/trumps-postmaster-general-caught-making-cash-off-of-post-office-contracts-report/
https://www.alternet.org/2020/08/lawmakers-demand-removal-of-postmaster-general-dejoy-over-nefarious-efforts-to-destroy-the-postal-service
https://www.alternet.org/2020/08/friday-night-massacre-at-us-postal-service-as-postmaster-general-a-major-trump-donor-ousts-top-officials
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https://www.alternet.org/2020/07/here-are-some-of-trumps-friends-and-family-who-were-cleared-for-millions-in-small-business-bailout-fund
Businesses tied to President Donald Trump’s family and associates stand to receive as much as $21 million in government loans designed to shore up payroll expenses for companies struggling amid the coronavirus pandemic, according to federal data released Monday.
A hydroponic lettuce farm backed by Trump’s eldest son, Donald Jr., applied for at least $150,000 in Small Business Administration funding. Albert Hazzouri, a dentist frequently spotted at Mar-a-Lago, asked for a similar amount. A hospital run by Maria Ryan, a close associate of Trump lawyer and former mayor Rudy Giuliani, requested more than $5 million. Several companies connected to the president’s son-in-law and White House adviser, Jared Kushner, could get upward of $6 million.
There’s no ban on businesses connected to Trump’s orbit receiving money. Democrats added a provision to the CARES Act excluding government officials and their family members from receiving some bailout funds, but not those from the PPP.
The firms sought funding under the Paycheck Protection Program, one of the Trump administration’s sweeping pandemic relief efforts. Created in late March by the CARES Act, it allowed small businesses — generally, those with fewer than 500 employees — to apply for loans of up to $10 million. The loans can be forgiven if used to cover payroll, rent, mortgage interest or utilities.
The program paid out $521 billion to almost 4.9 million companies in an effort to provide relief for small businesses and their workers amid the sudden economic shock brought on by the pandemic. As applications slowed after the initial rush, $132 billion remained unspent, and Congress voted to extend the program.
After resisting releasing the names, the government bowed to pressure from critics and watchdog groups. On Monday, the administration disclosed only those entities that were approved by banks for loans over $150,000. A consortium of news organizations, including ProPublica, has sued the administration under the Freedom of Information Act to release the full list of recipients and loan details.
The program has been criticized for including some loan recipients, particularly large, publicly traded companies, and for favoring wealthier businesses that had existing relationships with banks. In some cases customers could essentially skip the line. Overall, however, many economists praise the PPP for having gotten billions to companies relatively quickly.
The New York Observer, the news website that Kushner ran before entering the White House and is still owned by his brother-in-law’s investment firm, was approved for between $350,000 and $1 million, data shows. A company called Princeton Forrestal LLC that is at least 40 percent owned by Kushner family members, according to a 2018 securities filing, was approved for $1 million to $2 million. Esplanade Livingston LLC, whose address is the same as that of the Kushner Companies real estate development business, was approved for $350,000 to $1 million. The company didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. The loans to Kushner-related companies were first reported by The Daily Beast.
In addition, up to $2 million was approved for the Joseph Kushner Hebrew Academy, a nonprofit religious school in Livingston, N.J., that’s named for Jared Kushner’s grandfather and supported by the family.
....
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https://www.alternet.org/2020/04/kushner-companies-may-be-a-prime-beneficiary-of-mortgage-freeze-in-coronavirus-stimulus-report/
see also pharma coi or at least profiteering
https://www.alternet.org/2020/04/trump-organization-goes-to-deutsche-bank-for-loan-deferments-as-pandemic-throttles-its-business
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420 an
more questionable stock sales pop up in wealthy Republican senator’s latest financial disclosure
Laura Clawson / Daily KosApril 1, 2020
Georgia Sen. Kelly Loeffler’s financial disclosures from late February and early March are simply fascinating. We already knew that Loeffler sold off a lot of stock in early February, while buying stock…
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ew 120
The letter writers also raised concerns about Pendley's actions and opinions in and out of office.
- In November, he publicly expressed support for the views of the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association (CSPOA), an extremist public lands organization affiliated with armed militants Ammon and Cliven Bundy.
- He has variousconflicts of interests. He represented three Utah counties in their attempt to shrink Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monuments and still receives payments from former-employer the Mountain States Legal Foundation, which is still suing the BLM.
- He is overseeing a controversial move of the BLM headquarters from Washington, DC to Colorado that has not been approved by Congress.
- He holds controversial views. In addition to arguing in support of selling off public lands, he also thinks that wild horses are the biggest issue facing Western public lands, ignoring issues like fossil fuel extraction and the climate crisis, the fate of the endangered greater sage-grouse and Gunnison sage-grouse and overgrazing by livestock.
"Putting someone like William Perry Pendley in charge of what happens on these public lands is likely to just accelerate climate disruption," Shelley Silbert, letter signatory and executive director of conservation group Great Old Broads for Wilderness, told InsideClimate News.
The Interior Department dismissed the concerns of the letter writers.
"For this group of environmental extremists to call themselves sportsman and conservationists is as laughable as this letter. Mr. Pendley brings a wealth of knowledge and experience to the Department and is committed to carrying out the Administration's priorities for the betterment of the American people," an Interior spokesperson told The Hill Monday.
But environmental groups argue that Pendley's positions are the extreme ones.
"William Perry Pendley is an ideological zealot with values that are deeply out of touch with the mainstream," Wilderness Society conservation director Phil Hanceford
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https://www.alternet.org/2019/11/sen-inhofe-is-just-fine-with-flooding-his-neighbors-as-long-as-it-keeps-his-lake-view/
no lnx
Sen. Inhofe is just fine with flooding his neighbors as long as it keeps his lake view
Written by Sarah Okeson /DC Report November 27, 2019
Sen Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.), the powerful chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, tucked an amendment into the $750 billion defense spending bill that would benefit fellow wealthy homeowners at Grand Lake in northeast Oklahoma by keeping lake levels high but is expected to worsen flooding in nearby Miami, Okla.
The amendment, which starts on page 1,183 of the Senate version of the National Defense Authorization Act, would limit the ability of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to say how high the lake should be. The Grand River Dam Authority, which has board members who also own lake houses, is licensed by the commission to operate the dam.
“He’s helping his buddies to make sure the lake is full during summer so those very big boats do well,” said Rebecca Jim of Local Environmental Action Demanded which put up a billboard in Miami criticizing Inhofe.
Grand Lake O’ the Cherokees was created in 1940, when the federal government’s New Deal-era Public Works Administration built the Pensacola Dam on the Grand River. The 66-mile-long lake is so beloved by the wealthy and powerful of Oklahoma that one of its subdivisions is called Governors Retreat. Inhofe, a climate-change denier and vocal anti-environmentalist with an estimated net worth is $4.5 million, built a vacation house at Grand Lake in 1962. Former Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin and her husband bought a second home on Grand Lake in 2011. Dam authority board members Pete Churchwell, Jim Richie and Tom Kimball also have lake houses.
“For the better part of my career in the United States Senate I have been working to maintain higher lake levels on Grand,” Inhofe wrote the commission in 2016.
Law professor Richard Painter said the annual defense bill has been used before to try to get environmentally questionable projects through Congress. In 2018, the Senate defense bill included an amendment that would nullify lawsuits over a land exchange for PolyMet Mining Co. to build a copper-nickel mine in Minnesota. That provision was removed before the bill went to the president.
“That’s something that should not be dealt with in a defense appropriations bill,” said Painter, the former chief White House ethics lawyer in the George W. Bush administration.
The federal financial conflict of interest law exempts members of Congress, the president and the vice president. Miami officials learned about Inhofe’s amendment just before the July 4 holiday from the press.
“It’s just as unfair as it can be,” said Miami City Manager Dean Kruithof.
Since the early 1990s, Miami has flooded more than two dozen times, most recently in May. A 2015 study Miami paid for found that the dam worsened flooding.
“The economic and social fabric of the community is slowly being destroyed,” said Miami Mayor Rudy Schultz.
Natasha McKibben spent her oldest son’s eighth birthday packing up their house near Miami, shortly before it flooded in 2007, causing $30 million to $40 million in damage to Miami and the surrounding area. Some of her neighbors’ houses are still vacant.
“We had a FEMA trailer for probably two months before we could get back in the house,” McKibben said.
Miami officials had hoped to address flooding problems with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. The license for the dam runs through March 2022. The dam authority now wants to extend the license until Dec. 31, 2026.
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https://www.alternet.org/2019/06/former-white-house-counsel-im-not-aware-of-any-situation-like-transportation-secretary-chaos-conflicts-of-interest/
In recent weeks, the term “conflict of interest” has been used a lot in connection with Elaine Chao, secretary of the U.S. Department of Transportation under the Trump Administration. Chao is married to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, and a June 10 report in Politico found that she used her position to help create a pathway for transportation projects in her husband’s state, Kentucky. Discussing Chao’s activities with Yahoo Finance, ethics lawyer Virginia Canter asserted that the conflict of interest is enormous.
Previously, Canter served as a White House associate counsel under two previous presidents: Barack Obama and Bill Clinton. Presently, Canter is chief ethics counsel for Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington — and she said of Chao, “I am not aware of any situation like this.”
The Wall Street Journal, on May 28, reported that Chao still owns shares in a company that provides construction materials, Vulcan Materials Co., more than a year after promising to give them up. Further, Chao’s family owns an American shipping company with deep business and political ties in China.
Canter told Yahoo Finance, “Corruption is the use of public office for private gain. And corrupt activity takes place because it tends to promote, or make policies or decisions that benefit the private interests of … their family members, if not themselves directly.”
Chao’s activities, Canter asserted, fit “within the broad definition of what corruption is.”
Rep. Peter DeFazio, the Oregon Democrat who now heads the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, said in an official statement, “If the Committee gets information that President Trump’s transportation secretary, Elaine Chao, is abusing her position to dole out projects to benefit her husband’s reelection bid, then I would certainly have questions that would need to be answered — and I would use all tools at my disposal to get those answers."
New York Rep. Sean Maloney, another Democrat on the House Transportation Committee, recently told MSNBC that DeFazio “has given me the green light to proceed with an inquiry” on Chao.
Maloney went on to tell MSNBC, “We are going to be fair, but there are serious allegations that the secretary of transportation has used her position to benefit her family’s business… and to help her husband… That’s wrong. It’s not politics as usual, it’s nepotism. And the public deserves to know what the truth is.”
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mma
For years, Media Matters has documented how Fox News operates as the communications are of the Republican Party. Among other examples, party officials cycle in and out of the network like a revolving door and Fox employees fundraise and even stump for Republican candidates.
However, on many occasions Fox employees went even further, using their close relationships to party officials for personally benefit. This week, Media Matters compiled a comprehensive list of examples of Fox figures using their proximity to Republican officials for personal gain and celebrity to benefit the party.
Here are some of the most egregious examples:
- Fox hosts Tucker Carlson, Lou Dobbs, Greg Gutfeld, Sean Hannity, Pete Hegseth, Laura Ingraham, and Jeanine Pirro have received over $500,000 combined in speaking fees from Republican groups while working at the network.
- Members of Fox's purported "news" division, such as anchor Shannon Bream and Fox News Senior Vice President of business news Neil Cavuto, have also headlined conservative events, including alongside Republican officials. In one instance, Bream spoke at a conference that also featured then-Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke (whom she later interviewed on her program).
- Fox News employees have spoken at events that have financially benefited President Donald Trump. For instance, Chris Stirewalt -- a member of Fox’s “news” division -- spoke at an event for the petroleum industry at Trump International Hotel Washington, D.C. And Jeanine Pirro has done events in which the proceeds went to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club in Florida.
- Three Fox News hosts -- Brian Kilmeade, Pete Hegseth, and Shannon Bream -- have cancelled speeches at conservative events this year following Media Matters reporting.
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Interior Department’s watchdog has launched a major ethics investigation into six top officials, including former Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke and the agency’s current head, David Bernhardt.The probe by Interior’s inspector general follows an ethics complaint filed in February alleging the officials routinely disregarded rules requiring they recuse themselves from official meetings with former employers or lobbying clients. Secretary Bernhardt is a former oil lobbyist who’s been accused of making at least 15 policy decisions that directly benefited former clients since he joined the agency in 2017. His predecessor, Ryan Zinke, resigned in December as he faced at least 17 federal investigations into his suspected ethics violations and corruption, including a criminal probe into whether he lied to Interior Department investigators.
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mick m
As a Republican U.S. House member from South Carolina, Mulvaney took over $62,000 from payday lenders. This week he gave a speech to the American Bankers Association and told them how his office operated.
“We had a hierarchy in my office in Congress,” said Mulvaney. “If you’re a lobbyist who never gave us money, I didn’t talk to you. If you’re a lobbyist who gave us money, I might talk to you.”
Well, Mulvaney appears to have carried that policy, right into the nation’s most important consumer protection agency. In December 2017, Mulvaney abnegated his responsibility to protect consumers by deciding to indefinitely postpone the new payday lender rule.
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https://www.exposedbycmd.org/2019/03/18/cmd-continues-throw-spotlight-legislators-heralded-secret-group/
American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) seems to have stopped recognizing its rising stars with its “Legislator of the Week” award, switching instead to a monthly award.
ALEC meetings provide venues for global corporations and state politicians to vote behind closed doors to try to rewrite state laws that govern your rights. These so-called “model bills” reach into almost every area of American life and often directly benefit huge corporations.
Started a few years ago, the “Legislator of the Week” award recognized the group’s leaders on right-wing legislation written with corporate representatives, and affecting health care, environment, education and many other issues.
“Legislator of the Week” Recognition Did Not Go Well
CMD has frequently found ALEC’s award recipients notable for their extreme positions, questionable ethics, or poor judgment.
Consider the ALEC state legislator of the week the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) wrote about who likened homosexual behavior to psychopathic behavior. Or read about the ALEC female legislator who opposes gender pay equality in her state, despite that state having the largest gender earnings gap of all states.
Another honoree, and ALEC’s 2018 national chair, was shown to take the “pay” in a “pay-to-play” scheme to buy almost $20,000 of personal clothing.
In late 2017, CMD wrote about ALEC’s Legislator of the Year award going to a legislator who tried to carry a gun onto an airplane.
ALEC Tries “Legislator of the Month”
After a five-month hiatus in recognizing its leaders, ALEC’s first honoree of the month is Utah’s ALEC state chair: Representative Kim Coleman.
ALEC gave the award on March 8, 2019, just ten days after KUTV’s investigative report on February 26, 2019 exposed state legislators with ties to charter schools, who also regulate charter schools.
Kim Coleman is the founder of Monticello Academies, a charter in West Valley City, Utah. CMD found that her husband, Joel, is also a trustee of the school and serves as its board secretary. The latest IRS filings publicly available of the charter school do not show Joel Coleman drawing a salary from Monticello.
ALEC again has given its award to a legislator of some renown in their own state. Coleman has unsuccessfully brought lawsuits against the state board that regulates charters for removing her as executive director of the school.
“During Coleman’s tenure as the school’s director, parents complained she did not provide required special education services at the school … and had created an environment in which special education services were not provided as required by law.” Coleman lost in the lower court and the verdict was upheld by a Utah state appeals court. The charter school, meaning the Utah taxpayer, covered some of Coleman’s legal expenses.
Still Tied to Charter
Kim Coleman, though no longer on the board of the charter school along with her husband, is now executive director of Monticello Academy Properties, the non-profit entity that provides management services.
She was appointed to that board as executive director, presumably by, among others, her husband who is the principal officer, between July 1, 2016 and June 30, 2017, according to the group’s latest available tax filing. She is not on earlier tax filingsof this non-profit.
That same tax return shows her claiming she works 20 hours a week but does not receive a salary. CMD is not suggesting any wrongdoing but the Utah State Charter School Board, in removing her as executive director of the school, may not know that Coleman became the executive director of the property management company connected to the school.
CMD will make sure the Utah State Charter School Board is made aware that Representative Coleman is still involved in the school, even if she no longer determines the curriculum. Without ALEC naming Coleman as its “Legislator of the Month,” CMD would have never known of the controversy surrounding not only an ALEC legislator, but ALEC’s state chair for Utah.
CMD looks forward to next month’s award.
https://www.alternet.org/2019/02/emails-reveal-melania-friend-who-planned-trump-inauguration-ripped-officials-over-sketchy-money-practices/
friend of Melania Trump’s who planned the president’s inauguration flagged multiple financial and conflict of interest issues when working on the events — and was ignored.
Vanity Fair‘s Emily Jane Fox reported Thursday that Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, a former Vogue staffer and New York City event planner, was brought on to plan Donald Trump’s inauguration just days after he was elected president. She had no idea what was in store for her.
According to people familiar with recordings made by former Trump “fixer” Michael Cohen, Wolkoff can be heard telling the president’s longtime attorney during conversations last summer that she had many concerns with the process that unfolded.
Those recordings, Cohen told the event planner, were later seized by the FBI — and led in part to the SDNY’s investigation into the inauguration that Wolkoff is now involved in.
Wolkoff, the report noted, eventually raised concerns about potential conflicts of interest that could stem from the Trump family businesses’ involvement in the planning — as well as those surrounding deputy inauguration chairman Rick Gates and Tom Barrack, the longtime Trump friend who served as the inaugural chair.
Gates, Fox wrote, “approached a couple individuals working on the inauguration and asked if they would be willing to be paid directly for their work by a donor, rather than by the inaugural committee.”
“They had received more donations than they’d initially anticipated, Gates told these people,” the report noted. “Skirting the usual payment route could allow the inaugural committee to avoid reporting the full amount raised from donors.”
Wolkoff reportedly raised concerns about the deputy chair with the First Lady, expressing her view that “he exacerbated a situation already fraught with potential conflicts of interest.”
She also questioned Gates and Barrack directly about budget issues, people familiar with the conversations told Vanity Fair — and found she was being left out of meetings soon after.
“Because part of her responsibilities included reviewing all budgets from her vendors and presenting them to other members of the inaugural committee, she studied the line items in order to be able to explain them,” Fox wrote. “At points, she could not justify the numbers coming in. After circulation of a quote from one of their largest event-production vendors, Hargrove LLC, Wolkoff was shocked that no one in the organization appeared willing to question the figures.”
In an email to Barrack and her staff on December 31, 2016, Wolkoff made her displeasure known.
“I am DISGUSTED by [Hargrove’s] lack of transparency and entitlement to [the Presidential Inaugural Committee’s] funding,” she wrote. “I can not approve any budget line items because I do not have a clue what these numbers represent!!”
She was particularly concerned about Barrack’s “chairman’s dinner,” which took up ample attention and money, the report noted. Along with Cohen, former RNC finance chairman Elliott Broidy and disgraced Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn, invitees included seven “foreign ministers” for Saudi Arabia, one from Qatar and one from the United Arab Emirates.
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Combs, Trump’s nominee to be assistant secretary of the Interior, is just one of the grifters in the Trump administration.
Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross spent much of his first year in office as a business partner with the Chinese government even as he negotiated U.S.-China trade relations. Former Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke started a foundation that helped a developer backed by the chairman of Halliburton, the oil -services firm that could benefit from Interior decisions.
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