GOP: the party of grifters

So THAT's what Berman was so exercised about.  Kudos to Berman and Strauss.

Steve Bannon.  Who would have imagined?

2/ The crowdraising campaign raised more than $25 million, and pledged that the founder would "not take a penny in salary or compensation" and that "100% of the fund raised ... will be used in the execution of our mission and purpose." Lying to get someone's money is fraud.

3/ The indictment alleges that Bannon received over $1 million from the campaign, which he used to secretly pay the founder and to cover hundreds of thousands of dollars in his own expenses.

If this sounds like a very simple case to get your head around, that's because it is. 

4/ There are some twists and turns in this story. The crowdfunding website suspended the "We The People Build The Wall" campaign, which pledged to give all of the money to the federal government to build the wall, early on. 

5/ The website said they would return the funds unless the founder identified a non-profit to which the funds could be transferred. Bannon used a separate 501(c)(4) non-profit group that he already controlled to receive the funds, with the new purpose of funding a private wall. 

6/ The indictment alleges that Bannon and his associates continued to lie, claiming that the founder would "take no salary" and would receive not "a penny of compensation from these donations." These alleged lies were repeated many times, according to the indictment. 

7/ Yet Bannon paid the founder hundreds of thousands of dollars in "salary" and did so in a manner meant to conceal the payments, by making payments to the founder's spouse. Bannon falsely reported on the 1099 tax form that the payments were for "media." 

8/ In sum, the indictment alleges that Bannon, the founder, and their other co-conspirators each received hundreds of thousands in donor funds from the effort.

If this case didn't involve Steve Bannon, or an effort to ripoff Trump's base, it would be a garden variety fraud. 

9/ Federal prosecutors routinely investigate and prosecute cases like this one.

It can be complicated to prove that otherwise legitimate companies or individuals engaged in fraudulent activity. This isn't one of those cases. The whole organization looks like a scam. 

Everything connected to Donald Trump is a scam.

10/ If the prosecutors can prove what is alleged in the indictment, it's hard to imagine a jury hesitating to convict the defendants. This case raises questions about Barr's recent attempt to fire and replace the SDNY U.S. Attorney, or whether Trump will pardon Bannon. /end

What will his current one be busted for?  (Reminder that the current one is recently replacing one that was siphoning hundreds of thousands to buy luxury automobiles and boats and in general have a fabulous lifestyle.)

Countdown to Trump saying he hardly knew Steve Bannon and never met the others.*

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE:

UPDATE:

Also, Bill Barr's "right-hand man" appointed to the DC justice office is going to probably have some extra headaches now, because his name happens to the same as one of the indicted crooks: Timothy Shea.

UPDATE:

*UPDATE:  And there it is...

He didn't know "those three people."

I hope this is true

ICYM Clarke's tweets:  click here

It was gonna happen

UPDATE:

Clarification: 

 A whole 6-pack for 251 people!  Is he Jesus?

UPDATE:  I hope this is true...

GoFundMe border wall update

A decorated veteran who raised more than $20 million to finance construction of a wall along the southern U.S. border has announced that he will instead use the money to finance a new nonprofit group that will build the wall itself—or at least a couple miles of it.

[...]

Now Kolfage, a prolific operator of conspiracy theory Facebook pages, has recruited a team of prominent figures in President Donald Trump’s orbit to run a new 501(c)(4) nonprofit, named We Fund The Wall, to do some wall construction of its own. The new group’s board, Kolfage announced on Friday, includes Erik Prince, the founder of infamous military contract Blackwater; David Clarke, the former scandal-plagued sheriff of Milwaukee County; Fox News contributor Sara Carter; Tom Tancredo, an immigration hardliner and former Colorado congressman; and former Kansas Secretary of State and voter fraud crusader Kris Kobach

  Daily Beast

And their salaries will eat up how much of the money?

Kolfage’s fundraising campaign was initially designed to help finance that construction with private contributions. He insisted that he had been in contact with a number of federal officials and members of Congress devising ways to funnel the massive amounts of money raised on GoFundMe to the federal treasury.

It appears that that plan went awry.

It didn't go awry. It wasn't well researched in the first place, and it turns out you can't give money to the government for a specific project. If you give money to the government, it goes into the general fund and is spent according to Congressional budget appropriations.

“The federal government won’t be able to accept our donations anytime soon,” Kolfage said in an update on the GoFundMe page on Friday.

"Any time soon." Like, ever.

GoFundMe is emailing donors with an option to proactively agree to send their money to We Fund the Wall, but if donors decline or never respond to that option, they’ll receive a refund.

[...]

Dustin Stockton, a conservative activist and We Fund The Wall spokesman, said he expects that enough people will agree to redirect their GoFundMe contributions for the group to retain a sizable portion of the funds.

I, on the other hand, have a feeling that $20 million is going to drop dramatically.

“When the campaign was created, the campaign organizer specifically stated on the campaign page, ‘If we don’t reach our goal or come significantly close we will refund every single penny,’” GoFundMe’s statement reads. “He also stated on the campaign page, ‘100% of your donations will go to the Trump Wall. If for ANY reason we don't reach our goal we will refund your donation.’ However, that did not happen.”

[...]

Rather than financing federal efforts to build the wall, We Build The Wall plans to go the route that its name suggests and finance construction on its own, according Stockton. He said the group to secure enough funding from its initial GoFundMe supporters to build “at least two miles” along the southern border, which is nearly 2,000 miles long.

LOL.

The group has already been in touch with landowners in Texas about buying or leasing their land for wall construction, Stockton said. It’s also retained two law firms to deal with regulatory issues that are sure to dog the project, including Barnes & Thornburg and Foley & Lardner. Cleta Mitchell, an attorney with the latter, who Stockton said is working with the new nonprofit, is a prominent conservative lawyer representing a host of political and nonprofit groups aligned with President Trump’s agenda.

Oh, Hell, there won't be ANY money left for construction.

We Build The Wall is also staffing up administratively, a hiring spree that Stockton said is being financed by private donors, not GoFundMe contributions. He declined to name any of the donors.

Imagine that.

We Build The Wall is convinced that private funding for wall construction, to the extent it can be marshalled, is preferable, given Washington’s inability to agree on a funding package. “We expect we’re going to be able to construct the wall so much more efficiently than the government,” Stockton said.

Well, two miles of it, anyway. And, hey, come to think of it, that IS more than the government is going to get done.

Keep up the good work, gang.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Mueller drilling down in the tangled web

The FBI is investigating whether a top Russian banker with ties to the Kremlin illegally funneled money to the National Rifle Association to help Donald Trump win the presidency, two sources familiar with the matter have told McClatchy.

FBI counterintelligence investigators have focused on the activities of Alexander Torshin, the deputy governor of Russia’s central bank who is known for his close relationships with both Russian President Vladimir Putin and the NRA, the sources said.

It is illegal to use foreign money to influence federal elections.

  McClatchy

For now.

[T]he NRA reported spending a record $55 million on the 2016 elections, including $30 million to support Trump – triple what the group devoted to backing Republican Mitt Romney in the 2012 presidential race. Most of that was money was spent by an arm of the NRA that is not required to disclose its donors.

Two people with close connections to the powerful gun lobby said its total election spending actually approached or exceeded $70 million.

[...]

Torshin, a leading figure in Putin’s party, has been implicated in money laundering by judicial authorities in Spain, as Bloomberg News first revealed in 2016.

[...]

A summary obtained by McClatchy of the still-secret report links Torshin to Russian money laundering and describes him as a godfather in a major Russian criminal organization called Taganskaya.

[...]

Torshin is among a phalanx of Putin proxies to draw the close attention of U.S. investigators, who also have tracked the activities of several Russian billionaires and pro-Russian Ukrainian oligarchs that have come in contact with Trump or his surrogates.

[...]

Torshin was a senior member of the Russian Senate and in recent years helped set up a Moscow gun rights group called Right to Bear Arms. He not only spoke with Trump Jr. at the NRA convention, but he also tried unsuccessfully to broker a meeting between Putin and the presidential candidate in 2016, according to the Times.

[...]

Mueller’s investigation has been edging closer to Trump’s inner circle. This week, The New York Times reported that Mueller had negotiated an agreement under which Steve Bannon, who was recently ousted from his post as a senior White House adviser, would fully respond to questions about the Trump campaign. Bannon headed the campaign over its final weeks.

[...]

In their internal report, Spanish prosecutors revealed a web of covert financial and money-laundering dealings between Torshin and Alexander Romanov, a Russian who pleaded guilty to money-laundering charges in 2016 and was sentenced to nearly four years in prison.

[...]

In their internal report, Spanish prosecutors revealed a web of covert financial and money-laundering dealings between Torshin and Alexander Romanov, a Russian who pleaded guilty to money-laundering charges in 2016 and was sentenced to nearly four years in prison.

Always surrounding Trump is the specter of money laundering. I'm still waiting for Mueller to hand that charge over to some prosecutor.

And, the collusion...always the collusion:

[Veteran conservative operative Paul] Erickson has raised funds for the NRA and is a friend of Butina’s. Shortly before the NRA’s May 2016 convention, he emailed Trump campaign aide Rick Dearborn about the possibility of setting up a meeting between Putin and Trump during the campaign, according to the Times.

Erickson’s email to Dearborn bore the subject line “Kremlin Connection.” In it, Erickson solicited advice from Dearborn and his boss, Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama, a top foreign policy adviser to Trump’s campaign, about the best way to connect Putin and Trump.

[...]

Bridges LLC, a company that Erickson and Butina established in February 2016 in Erickson’s home state of South Dakota, also is expected to draw scrutiny. Public records don’t reveal any financial transactions involving Bridges. In a phone interview last year, Erickson said the firm was established in case Butina needed any monetary assistance for her graduate studies — an unusual way to use an LLC.

Unusual - maybe unheard of?

On top of Torshin’s efforts to cozy up to the Trump campaign, the Moscow banker has forged ties with powerful conservatives, including Republican Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, the Californian whom some have deemed Putin’s best friend in Washington.

[...]

Last February when Torshin visited Washington, Rockefeller heir and conservative patron George O’Neill Jr. hosted a fancy four-hour dinner for the banker on Capitol Hill, an event that drew Rohrabacher, Erickson and other big names on the right. Rohrabacher has labeled Torshin as “conservatives’ favorite Russian,” Torshin was in Washington at the time to lead his country’s delegation to the National Prayer Breakfast, where Trump spoke. The banker also was slated to see the president at a meet-and-greet event prior to a White House breakfast, but Torshin’s invitation was canceled after the White House learned of his alleged mob connections, Yahoo News reported.

[...]

[David Keene, a former NRA president] helped lead a high-level NRA delegation to Moscow in December 2015 for a week of lavish meals and meetings with Russian business and political leaders. The week’s festivities included a visit to a Russian gun company and a meeting with a senior Kremlin official and wealthy Russians, according to a member of the delegation, Arnold Goldschlager, a California doctor who has been active in NRA programs to raise large donations.

Others on the trip included Joe Gregory, who runs the NRA’s Ring of Freedom program for elite donors who chip in checks of $1 million and upwards, Milwaukee Sheriff David Clarke and Pete Brownell, a chief executive of a gun company and longtime NRA board member.

In a phone interview, Goldschlager described the trip as a “people-to-people mission,” and said he was impressed with Torshin — who, he noted, hosted both a “welcoming” dinner for the NRA contingent and another one.

“They were killing us with vodka and the best Russian food,” Goldschlager said. “The trip exceeded my expectations by logarithmic levels.”

Or, perhaps more accurately, whichever White Houes staff member scheduled him to meet Trump didn't know about the connections.

I have a feeling we're going to see a fair number of Republicans caught in this net. Sooner than later, I hope.


...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

What's Coming Down the Pike?

Milwaukee County Sheriff David A. Clarke Jr. — the controversial, Stetson-wearing official who rose to national prominence with his no-holds-barred conservative rhetoric — resigned his office Thursday.

[...]

The sheriff was attending the convention of the National Fraternal Order of Police in Nashville and could not be reached for comment.

  Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Is he expecting to be appointed to head DHS in John Kelly's place, or is something about to bite him in his fascist ass?

The Daily Beast has previously reported how Clarke—who was, at one point, under consideration for a Trump DHS gig—oversees a jail where at least four people, including a baby, have died. Seven jail staffers were indicted this year for an incident in which one inmate [with bipolar disorder] died after they allegedly shut off his access to water [for six days].

  Daily Beast

Saturday 17 June 2017 21.51 EDT Last modified on Friday 14 July 2017 12.58 EDT

David Clarke, the controversial sheriff and self-described “Trumpster”, has removed himself from consideration for a senior position at the department of homeland security.

Clarke, who is the Milwaukee, Wisconsin county sheriff, was expected to become assistant secretary at homeland security by the end of June.

[...]

At Trump’s inauguration celebrations in January, Clarke told a crowd the only time he would reach across the aisle to work with liberals would be to “grab one of them by the throat”.

[...]

Clarke strongly backed Donald Trump during the US presidential election and compared Black Lives Matter to the Ku Klux Klan. He said black Americans sell drugs “because they’re uneducated, they’re lazy, and they’re morally bankrupt”.

  Guardian

From what we've seen of General Kelly, I have a feeling Clarke "turned down" the job at DHS due to a suggestion from his would-be boss.  But now that Kelly is gone...

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE:

Sheriff David Clarke referred to the Black Lives Matter movement as “black slime,” who were bound to “join forces with ISIS” — and “needed to be crushed.” He argued that when police confront anti-Trump protesters, they have a right “to hit first.” When it looked like Trump was going to lose the general election, Clarke tweeted, “our institutions of gov, WH, Congress, DOJ, and big media are corrupt & all we do is bitch. Pitchforks and torches time.” After Trump won, Clarke called on the commander-in-chief to round up the “hundreds of thousands” of Americans “that are suspected” of sympathizing with ISIS, and “hold them indefinitely under a suspension of habeas corpus [i.e. without trial].”

[...]

Four people have died of mistreatment and torture in his custody. One newborn baby died while its mother was shackled during childbirth; another prisoner died of dehydration, after the water in his cell was shut off for seven days. In 2013, one of his deputies ran a traffic light and T-boned the car of a civilian driver, who was badly injured. Clarke’s department charged the driver, who was actually sober, with drunk driving in order to cover up its own culpability.

Clarke also got embroiled in an ethics investigation, after siccing sheriff’s deputies on a man who looked at him funny, while the two men were on a plane.

[...]

Clarke initially accepted the appointment, but then backed out, ostensibly because he had trouble securing the approval of the Office of Personnel Management, and/or submitting his financial disclosure forms in a timely fashion.

Politico reported late on Thursday that Clarke is expected to take a job in the Trump administration, though he “likely won’t be offered a Senate-confirmed role because his nomination would face opposition from lawmakers on both sides of the aisle.”

[...]

Clarke said in a text message to Politico, “Will talk about my future plans next week.”

  NYMag

Ah, the Trump method of political cliff-hanging.

He Likes Books

Remember this interview?

It’s common knowledge that Barack Obama loved a good read, but what are the chances we’ll see Donald Trump inspiring book clubs across the country with similar president-approved paperbacks?

If a new report by the New York Times is any indication, the chances are slim to none.

President Trump “does not read books,” according to the Maggie Haberman’s recent report, which details Trump’s first few days in the White House.

[...]

In July, Tony Schwartz, the ghostwriter behind Trump’s 1987 book The Art of the Deal told The New Yorker that in the 18 months he spent with Trump, he “never saw a book on Trump’s desk, or elsewhere in his office, or in his apartment.”

[...]

Additionally, a July Washington Post article [...] reported Trump as saying that he does not read extensively because he is able to come to correct decisions “with very little knowledge other than the knowledge I [already] had, plus the words ‘common sense,’ because I have a lot of common sense and I have a lot of business ability.”

  Entertainment Weekly

Fast forward to today.  Somebody must have been talking about the fact that he doesn't read.  Or else he's still thinking about right-wing sheriffs he knows and loves.

Go ahead. Do a little Googling on David A. Clarke, Jr.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Torture & Murder in Milwaukee Jail

A mentally ill man who last year died of severe dehydration in a jail run by Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke was kept in his cell for seven days straight after jail employees cut off his water supply, a prosecutor in Wisconsin said Monday.

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports that prosecutors told a six-person jury on Monday that cutting off water to Terrill Thomas’ cell was “highly irregular and contrary to standard operating procedure in the jail.” The comments came as part of an inquest into Thomas’ death, in which the jury decides whether there’s probable cause to charge anyone with a crime in Thomas’ death.

  HuffPo

There's a question?!

Assistant District Attorney Kurt Benkley told jurors that it “became apparent” that Thomas “was unable to tell people about his basic needs,” according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

A jailer needs to be TOLD that a person has a basic need for water?!

Clarke, a high-profile supporter of President Donald Trump who makes frequent appearances on conservative news outlets, appears to take a hands-off approach to managing the jail he’s charged with running and has deflected blame for the deaths that occurred on his watch.

You're allowed to "run" a jail with a "hands-off approach"?!

Jesus F Christ.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.