bribe kickback

disambigFROM CAMP FINANCE; PRIMARY 2 26 EZ HOMAN CAVA BAG

see gift trip perk

see TRUMP PARDON CORRUPT 3

GOP EXCEPT MENENDEZ

SEE CRYPTO-CURRENCY

DOJ 3 SCOTUS BOOST

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context?

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AN 5 26

Trump is angling to obtain this money as a settlement with the Justice Department he controls in a$10 billion lawsuithe filed by claiming that the agency is responsible for his tax returns being leaked. Now Trump says he will redirect $1.7 billion to a compensation fund for supporters like the nearly 1,600 individuals charged with the Jan. 6 insurrection and agencies connected to Trump himself.

He has promised not to self-deal from funds given to the agencies he controls, and instead says all of the money will go to supporters he claims were persecuted by his predecessor, President Joe Biden.

Trump sued the federal government for $10 billion when his tax returns were leaked in 2019, which revealed that he had paid very little in federal income taxes and suffered a string of undisclosed financial failures. He has also sued the government for $230 million for the 2022 search of his Mar-a-Lago estate over allegedly stealing classified documents and the investigation into his ties to the Russian government.

Experts pointed out that it is impossible for a president to nothave a conflict of interest when suing the government he controls, and that the Justice Department, which is assigned the role of defending agencies like the IRS, cannot be expected to do so when the president will presumably fire or otherwise punish employees there who do not follow his wishes.

“While the settlement is expected to be agreed upon in the coming days, sources caution that the final terms will not be set until they are officially announced,” CNN reported Thursday night. It later noted that “the settlement terms are expected to prohibit Trump from directly receiving payments related to those three legal claims; however, entities associated with Trump are not explicitly barred from filing additional claims, sources said.”

As the libertarian commentator James Bovard recently pointed out in USA Today, if Trump’s original lawsuit had prevailed and he received $10 billion, that would require every American taxpayer to pay him roughly $100 directly. Mathematically this would instead mean every American would have to pay people like the Jan. 6th insurrections an average of $17.

“Roughly 100 million Americans pay federal income taxes annually (not counting people who receive more in earned income tax credits than they pay in income taxes),” Bovard wrote. “A $10 billion settlement divided by 100 million taxpayers works out to about $100 per taxpayer, or $200 per couple.”

He added, “If congressional Democrats are savvy, they would mandate that the payout to Trump be financed by IRS penalty letters sent directly to 100 million taxpayers. To add salt to the wound, citizens could be compelled to send their payments directly to his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida.”

There are also doubts as to whether Trump will not self-deal if he gets a settlement. As conservative commentator Andrew Egger pointed out, “Trump had been using his personal charity ... to pay his business debts, make political contributions, and buy things for himself.”

U.S. Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) called the fund a "$1.7B fraud on the American taxpayer to line the pockets of his MAGA political allies ... and turn the federal government into a personal cash machine for his unpopular extremist movement."

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AN 2 26

A government watchdog group filed a lawsuit against the FBI, trying to get access to the tapes of the sting operation to catch a top official in Donald Trump's administration in a bribery scheme.

Tom Homan, the executive associate director for Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO), was caught by special agents in Texas soliciting bribes for a government contract contingent on whether Trump won the 2024 election.

The undercover operation had agents posing as business executives trying to influence government contracts. Homan accepted $50,000 in cash and indicated he would help them get the contract, according to the report.

The Democracy Defenders Fund is suing the FBI for the tapes and any other files around the investigation, The Hill reported.

Homan, who Trump likes to refer to as his "border czar," was recorded accepting the cash from undercover FBI agents, though they had promised Homan $1 million. The recorded meeting involved Homan appearing to agree to help the undercover agents secure lucrative immigration-related contracts. The cash was delivered in a bag from the restaurant chain Cava.

“These documents contain vital information that the American public needs to have in order to assess both Mr. Homan’s potentially corrupt actions as well as the Department of Justice and FBI’s potentially politically motivated decision to drop the investigation into Mr. Homan, one of the Trump Administration’s appointees,” the group said in the lawsuit.

“Despite the officials’ belief in the strength of their case, after President Trump took office, the FBI absurdly decided to drop the investigation,” the suit continued.

It goes on to argue that “the strong public interest outweighs any privacy interest in the documents,” as it involves an existing official and potential government corruption.

Homan's former ICE colleague, Julian “Jace” Calderas, reportedly accepted $10,000 from the undercover FBI agents.

It led to a full Justice Department investigation, which was quashed once Trump took office and.

The Trump White House, the FBI, and the DOJ all claimed that the sting was politically motivated. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt went further, calling it outright entrapment. They also denied that he accepted the bribe in a press statement.

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AN 11 25

When Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) had his home raided over an alleged bribery scheme, investigators found gold bars. Now, a gold bar has been handed to President Donald Trump by Swiss billionaires visiting the White House. Not long after, tariffs on Switzerland were cut.

The engraved gold bar, coupled with a $130,000 Rolex desk clock, may not be the reason Trump “decided to slash 39 percent tariffs on Swiss imports to 15 percent,” but it is raising questions.

The Guardian reported Friday that Pasquale Tridico, an Italian MEP, was “disgusted” by the move.

“This is really awful,” he said. It seems to be a case of “making foreign policy the policy of individuals."

Swiss Green Party president, Lisa Mazzone, called out "the Swiss elite" for being "poisoned" by Trump's "corrupt logic."

“It is unacceptable that the federal council is relying on the help of an economic elite that represents private interests and lacks democratic legitimacy in its negotiations with the US president,” she added.

None of the items were reported until “internet sleuths” began tracing the origins of the new clock on Trump’s Oval Office desk, the report said. They pored over photos and ultimately found the one showing seven Swiss billionaires.

The billionaires called it “a modest, refined expression of traditional Swiss watchmaking," said The Guardian.

“Trump loves being fawned over by billionaires. It’s terrible that one has to shower the US president with gold to get Switzerland back on his agenda," deputy editor-in-chief of CH Media, Doris Kleck, told radio station "bz Basel."

The White House claimed that the gold bar and Rolex had nothing to do with the tariff cuts. Instead, Trump's staff said that the deal came about after the Swiss pledged “$200 billion to make and hire in America."

Under U.S. rules, such gifts become the property of the government and are placed in the National Archives unless the president buys them or has them displayed in a museum or presidential library.

Read the full report here.

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an 3 25

I remain optimistic about the longer term, but I still awaken each morning with a sense of dread. I’m sure some of you do, too.

Start with Elon Musk’s bonkers comment that Social Security is “the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time.”

In a Ponzi scheme, a con artist lures investors into a fake investment project, pockets the cash, and then gets new “investors” to funnel their cash to the earlier investors — until there are no new recruits and the whole thing collapses. The last ones in are suckers left holding worthless bags.

Social Security is not a Ponzi scheme. It’s a high-functioning, universal, and exceptionally efficient part of the American social safety net — the opposite of a Ponzi scheme. Which is why the overwhelming majority of Americans oppose cutting it.

Social Security is a simple “pay as you go” program. Current workers, via the payroll tax, fund payouts for retirees and disabled people. In 2024, about 1 in 5 U.S. residents received Social Security.

I used to be a trustee of the Social Security trust fund. I know what I’m talking about.

As the Social Security Administration explains, “In 2025, when you work, about 85 cents of every Social Security tax dollar you pay goes to a trust fund. This fund pays monthly benefits to current retirees and their families and to surviving spouses and children of workers who have died. About 15 cents goes to a trust fund that pays benefits to people with disabilities and their families.”

The only reason that the Social Security trust fund is slowly running out of money is the trustees never anticipated that so much of the nation’s total income would be in the hands of so few people (such as Elon Musk).

The simple way to fix this is to lift the cap on income subject to Social Security payroll taxes, which is now $176,100.

Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Mark Zuckerberg fulfilled their 2025 Social Security payroll tax obligations a few minutes past midnight on January 1. Most Americans continue paying payroll taxes all year.

If you want to see a real Ponzi scheme, look no further than the crypto investments Musk and Trump have hyped.

Trump’s new cryptocurrency, “$Trump,” soared and then crashed, just like every other Ponzi scheme. It generated enormous profits for insiders like Trump, but a cumulative $2 billion in losses for more than 800,000 other investors.

Trump claims ignorance. “I don’t know if it benefited” me, he said. “I don’t know much about it.” (The Trump family and its business partners earned nearly $100 million in trading fees alone on the coin.)

Musk has been promoting “dogecoin” since 2019. In the days following Trump’s announcement of the launch of Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), the value of dogecoin soared over 70 percent. Since then, it’s dropped like a rock. Another classic Ponzi scheme.

With Trump now in office, crypto is back to its Ponzi ways. It’s emerging from a four-year federal crackdown on crypto fraud, market manipulation, and other scams following the collapse of Sam Bankman-Fried’s crypto exchange FTX in 2022 — one of the biggest Ponzi schemes in recent memory.

Tomorrow, Trump is even holding a “crypto summit” at which he’ll promote the idea of a federal crypto reserve that will give crypto schemes a temporary boost by increasing demand for them.

But why should American taxpayers foot the bill for a crypto reserve? The most obvious winner will be Trump, whose own crypto venture carries millions of dollars in tokens that are to be included in the reserve.

Other winners will be crypto executives, many of whom donated extensively to Trump’s reelection effort. One example: Ripple, whose XRP token is one of the five that Trump said would be included in the reserve — and which donated $45 million to an industrywide PAC that sought to help elect Trump and other Republicans.

Trump’s crypto efforts are ways to curry his favor by paying him off.

Consider Justin Sun, a Chinese cryptocurrency entrepreneur whom the Securities and Exchange Commission charged with securities fraud in March 2023.

After Trump was elected in 2024, Sun bought $30 million worth of Trump’s World Liberty Financial crypto tokens, putting $18 million directly into Trump’s pockets. Since then, Sun has invested another $45 million in WLF. Altogether, Sun’s investments have netted Trump more than $50 million.

Trump’s Securities and Exchange Commission just dropped its prosecution of Sun.

The SEC also dropped its case against the crypto trading platform Coinbase after the platform donated $75 million to a political action committee associated with Trump and $1 million to Trump’s inauguration.

To top it off, the SEC just ruled that “memecoins” aren’t securities, meaning that Trump’s novelty crypto tokens won’t be subject to any regulatory oversight. An open invitation to more Trump Ponzi schemes.

My real dread has to do with the much bigger Ponzi scheme that Trump and Musk are peddling.

They’re promising huge “savings” from destroying the federal government — including programs like Social Security and Medicaid — savings that will go to America’s wealthy and big corporations in the form of tax cuts.

At Musk’s urging, the Social Security Administration recently announced it will consolidate the current 10 regional offices it maintains into four and cut at least 7,000 jobs from an agency already at a 50-year staffing low.

The Republican budget recently pushed through the House cuts over $880 billion out of Medicaid.

Who will get left holding the bag? Most Americans.

Zoom out and you’ll see the biggest Ponzi scheme of them all — the entire Trump 2 regime.

Trump is promising to “make America great again” by raising tariffs, deporting more than 11 million people, taking a wrecking ball to the federal government, pulverizing democracy, and joining Putin and other global dictators.

Trump is the con artist behind this giant Ponzi scheme. He lured voters into this fake MAGA project, pocketed some of the cash and rewarded his billionaire backers and friends (including Musk) with more, and will leave most Americans with a corrupt and decimated society.

I’m still optimistic about our power to overcome this and our resilience in bouncing back from it. But the dread I feel when I open my eyes in the morning concerns the sheer magnitude of the largest and most cynical Ponzi scheme in history.

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alternet

It's not just social media that's giving violent white supremacists a pass

Thom Hartmann January 11, 2025

— The fossil fuel industry is apparently paying off Republicans — in a practice legalized by Republicans on the Supreme Court — to make sure Congress never passes legislation to hold them accountable for all the death and destruction they’ve caused by lying about climate change for the past 50 years. }:

Here, for example, are the biggest recipients of their largesse, according to OpenSecrets:

Romney, Mitt (R-UT) $8,291,262; Cornyn, John (R-TX) $4,678,062; Cruz, Ted (R-TX) $4,138,421; McConnell, Mitch (R-KY) $2,852,107; McCarthy, Kevin (R-CA) $2,581,832; Hutchison, Kay Bailey (R-TX) $2,332,021; Inhofe, James M (R-OK) $2,320,139; Pearce, Steve (R-NM) $2,236,714; Barton, Joe (R-TX) $2,211,987; Brady, Kevin (R-TX) $2,087,396; Scalise, Steve (R-LA) $1,847,013; Murkowski, Lisa (R-AK) $1,792,602.

If you haven’t yet noticed the trend, just check out the party affiliation of each…}:

— Convicted Felon Trump now has the “Scarlet F”: Our first felon President. There was a time that many of us remember when America — for all our faults, history, and stupid international meddling — was seen around the world as a beacon of morality and the staunchest defender of democratic values. Now, we’re the laughingstock — or the terror — of the developed world, since a grifting adjudicated sexual abuser, Putin lackey, and chronic liar is about to become president again. Alexander Hamilton warned us, but our media was far too busy fluffing Trump’s ego and sanewashing his BS to remind us that our first Secretary of the Treasury and the main author of the Federalist Papers wrote, in 1792:

“Those then, who resist a confirmation of public order, are the true Artificers of monarchy... When a man unprincipled in private life, desperate in his fortune, bold in his temper, possessed of considerable talents, having the advantage of military habits—despotic in his ordinary demeanour—known to have scoffed in private at the principles of liberty—when such a man is seen to mount the hobby horse of popularity—to join in the cry of danger to liberty—to take every opportunity of embarrassing the General Government & bringing it under suspicion—to flatter and fall in with all the non sense of the zealots of the day

It may justly be suspected that his object is to throw things into confusion that he may ‘ride the storm and direct the whirlwind.’” (Emphasis added)}:

And “directing the whirlwind” of racial hate, fear, and bigotry — as I regularly point out here on Hartmann Report— is exactly what Trump thinks he can do to reverse the Civil Rights movement and the New Deal (I’m skeptical he can pull it off). The Founders — and FDR and LBJ — must be rolling in their graves…

— It's not just social media that's giving violent white supremacists a pass... Without telling us, so far as I can tell, Bloomberg is reporting that the FBI (and the DHS more generally) stopped seriously monitoring and infiltrating violent white supremacist groups two years ago, around the time they were being trashed for such investigations by sedition-, Putin-, and Trump-loving Republicans in the House. The pressure seems to have worked.

“In 2022, DHS closed its Disinformation Governance Board, designed to offer best practices in countering viral conspiracies,” reports Bloomberg, adding that, “DHS also recently shuttered a unit that swept the internet for threatening materials in public posts, social media messages and online forums…”

Putin’s internet trolls, operating with huge budgets and the resources of the Russian state behind them, have since become a major force on the top social media sites, and both X and Meta are no longer suppressing their lies and attacks on democracy. Is it fossil fuel billionaires or social media billionaires who are the greatest threat to the future of world peace and democracy? Hard to choose…

— Greedy insurer interrupts cancer surgery in shocking mid-procedure call... Dr. Elisabeth Potter was in the middle of surgery on a breast cancer patient when a nurse ran into the operating theater to say that UnitedHealthcare was on the phone demanding to speak with her. She interrupted the surgery, leaving the unconscious patient whose chest was cut open on the table, to take the call. Here’s her story in her own words, as she told it on Instagram and later confirmed with Newsweek:

“So, I scrubbed out of my case and I called UnitedHealthcare, and the gentleman said he needed some information about her. Wanted to know her diagnosis and whether her inpatient stay should be justified. And I was like, ‘Do you understand this? She's asleep right now and she has breast cancer?’ And the gentleman said, ‘Actually, I don’t — that’s a different department that would know that information.’ And I was like, ‘Well, she does need to stay overnight tonight, and you have all the information with you because I got approval for this surgery, and I need to go back and be with my patient now.’ But, yeah, it’s out of control. Insurance is out of control. I have no other words.”

I can think of a few words: Parasitic, thief, malefic, heinous, flagitious, depraved, monstrous, mephistophelean, godless, loathsome, psychopathic, cruel, sadistic, maleficient, and vile for a start… Feel free to add your nouns or adjectives in the comments below.

— Indiana Republicans want to threaten rape victims with felonies if they try to get an abortion. Over at her brilliant “Abortion Every Day” substack newsletter, Jessica Valenti tells us that Indiana State Senator Mike Young has proposed legislation that would subject a woman in that state to 2.5 years in prison if she were to claim rape to get an abortion (about the only way to get an abortion in Indiana, unless your life is in danger) and then can’t subsequently prove to the satisfaction of the state’s GOP that she was actually raped.}:

The bill also makes it a crime to possess the abortion drug mifepristone, evoking the possibility of midnight raids with Indiana police kicking in the doors of women who Indiana Republicans think may have purchased the drug from an online telehealth physician. Freedumb!!}:

— Wondering why Trump is on a jeremiad against Panama? Some suggest his rant was timed to coincide with Jimmy Carter’s funeral to give rightwing media an excuse to trash Carter’s signing the Panama Canal Treaty that Nixon first started negotiating. But consider this story from Newsweek titled “Trump Organization Accused of Tax Evasion in Panama.” Just like the way he scammed New York State out of tax dollars (for which he was adjudicated and sentenced last year) his failed hotel in Panama hadn’t been paying its taxes either. Trump’s involved in a huge lawsuit down their right now, and some speculate that toppling the Panamanian government might work out well for his personal interests. Keep an eye on this one!

— James Carville suggests Jeff Bezos is trying to buy Trump via Melania. Amazon has just announced that they’re going to spend $40 million on a documentary about Melania Trump, who got her legal status in the US with a “genius visa” that’s typically reserved for the world’s top scientists and Nobel Prize winners (there are only around 3,000 issued every year). Carville, who was himself the subject of a recent Netflix documentary, implies that this number stinks of a payoff:

“This is something I’m going to claim some expertise in, the subject of documentaries because I’ve been the subject of two and I’ve been the subject of a recent one… You can produce a world class documentary for $2 million. I know it. You couldn’t spend $40 million on a documentary if you tried 10 times harder to do it, so where’s the money going? Well, we know where the money is going.”

Why? Well, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and 17 state attorneys general are suing Amazon for allegedly maintaining a monopoly through anticompetitive practices, and Bezos apparently hates unions and might want help stopping them in his warehouses…

— Crazy Alert! Greenlanders really hate Trump, so Don Jr. had to hire homeless people to make it look like somebody was welcoming him. Danish Radio (which once loaned me a studio for two weeks to do my show: great people!) is reporting that after having Greenlanders give him the finger in the airport and post “Yankee go home” on Facebook, Don Jr. had to hire a few local “homeless and socially disadvantaged” people to pretend to be Trump supporters for his recent stunt visiting that country. As one local, Tom Amtof of the town of Nuuk, told DR News: “All they have to do is put on a cap and be in the Trump staff’s videos. They are being bribed, and it is deeply distasteful.” Yeah, distasteful. Again, there are other words…

NOW READ: Trump and his minions attempt to make America small, stupid and mean

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https://www.alternet.org/larry-householder-2659570092/

an 3 23

no lnx

in Ohio, two well-known Republicans — Larry Householder, former speaker for the Ohio House of Representatives, and ex-Ohio Republican Party Chairman Matt Borges — have been facing federal corruption charges in connection with a $60 million bribery scheme. And on Thursday, March 9, a jury in Cincinnati found both of them guilty.

According to CBS News, the jury found Householder and Borges "guilty of conspiracy to participate in a racketeering enterprise involving bribery and money laundering, after about 9.5 half hours of deliberations over two days."

After the verdict was handed down, Kenneth Parker — a federal prosecutor in the case — told reporters, "(Larry) Householder sold the Statehouse, and thus, he ultimately betrayed the people of the great state of Ohio he was elected to serve…. Through its verdict today, the jury reaffirmed that the illegal acts committed by both men will not be tolerated and that they should be held accountable."

READ MORE: Fascism in a nutshell: Is America ready to trade democracy for cheap gas?

CBS News explains, "Prosecutors alleged that Householder orchestrated a scheme secretly funded by Akron-based FirstEnergyCorp. to secure his power in the (Ohio State) Legislature, elect his allies — and then, to pass and defend a $1 billion nuclear power plant bailout benefiting the electric utility. They alleged that Borges, then a lobbyist, sought to bribe an operative for inside information on the referendum to overturn the bailout."

CBS News points out that FirstEnergy "admitted" to "using a network of dark money groups to fund the scheme and even bribing the state's top utility regulator, Sam Randazzo."

Randazzo, according to CBS News, "resigned as chair of the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio after an FBI search of his home, but he has not been charged and denies wrongdoing."

The New York Times' April Rubin notes, "Previously, Jeffrey Longstreth, Mr. Householder's campaign and political strategist, and Juan Cespedes, a lobbyist, pleaded guilty to their roles in the racketeering."

READ MORE: 'Racketeering, bribery and money laundering': Ohio House votes to expel Republican ex-speaker facing federal charges

Read CBS News' full report at this link.

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