You Will Anyway: Oh my

Sunday, July 12, 2020

Oh my

Then-President-elect Donald Trump and his daughter Ivanka were warned in 2016 that the family business was overcharging the nonprofit presidential inaugural committee — and let it happen anyway, according to a suit filed Wednesday by the Washington, D.C., attorney general.

In the civil complaint, Attorney General Karl Racine charged the Trump inaugural committee and the Trump Organization with using around $1 million of charitable funds to improperly enrich the Trump family.

An experienced event planner who was working for the inaugural, Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, raised concerns directly with Donald and Ivanka Trump that the Trump International Hotel in Washington was trying to overcharge the inaugural committee.

[...]

“The President-elect acknowledged these concerns and directed that Ivanka Trump would handle this issue.”

The complaint accuses three entities — the Trump Organization, the inaugural committee and the Trump hotel — of subverting the public purpose of a charity for the Trump family’s private benefit.

[...]

The hotel, and by extension the Trump family, was paid far above market rate, according to internal documents the attorney general obtained by subpoena.

As WNYC and ProPublica’s “Trump, Inc.” revealed, the Trump inaugural committee paidthe Trump Organization over Wolkoff’s objections, which Ivanka had been aware of.

Documents uncovered by the D.C. attorney general contradict earlier statements by spokespeople for the Trumps that they had little or no involvement in the negotiations.

[...]

Peter Mirijanian, a spokesman for Ivanka Trump’s ethics lawyer, told WNYC and ProPublica in 2018 that Ivanka had only been contacted once about inauguration spending at Trump’s hotel: “Ms. Trump was not involved in any additional discussions.”

The attorney general’s documents show deeper involvement.

Raw Story

I believe we heard about it at the time. Raise your hand if this surprises you.

Kind of surprised a lawsuit got filed, though.

D.C. is asking the court to compel the Trump Organization to place at least $1,033,757 in a trust, so the money can be allocated “to another nonprofit entity dedicated to promoting civic engagement of the citizens of the United States of America.”

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"What we have is a foreign policy which is essentially a marketing strategy for selling weapons." -- Jill Stein

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"America: just a nation of two hundred million used car salesmen with all the money we need to buy guns and no qualms about killing anybody else in the world who tries to make us uncomfortable." ~ Hunter S. Thompson

"Let me issue and control a nation's money and I care not who writes the laws." ~ Mayer Rothschild

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"What matters in journalism isn't politics, which are as universal and inescapable as breathing. What matters -- along with a fundamentally adversarial attitude toward government, without which "journalism" is simply public relations -- is integrity, transparency, evidence, coherence, and principle. These are the principles on which we should evaluate the quality of journalism, and their absence is why some journalists are so desperate to get you to focus on something else." ~ Barry Eisler

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Life, as Explained in "Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead"

GUILDENSTERN: What a fine persecution---to be kept intrigued without ever quite being enlightened.

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ROSENCRANTZ : The only thing that makes it bearable is the irrational belief that somebody interesting will come on in a minute.

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GUILDENSTERN: But for God's sake what are we supposed to do?!

PLAYER: Relax. Respond. That's what people do. You can't go through life questioning your situation at every turn.

GUILDENSTERN: But we don't know what's going on, or what to do with ourselves. We don't know how to act.

PLAYER: Act natural. You know why you're here at least.

GUILDENSTERN: We only know what we're told, and that's little enough. And for all we know it isn't even true.

PLAYER: For all anyone knows, nothing is. Everything has to be taken on trust; truth is only that which is taken to be true. It's the currency of living. There may be nothing behind it, but it doesn't make any difference so long as it is honoured. One acts on assumptions.

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GUILDENSTERN : We act on scraps of information... sifting half-remembered directions that we can hardly separate from instinct.

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PLAYER: Life is a gamble, at terrible odds-if it was a bet you wouldn't take it.