Trump graft

 

Peace negotiations.

Oh, gee, corruption in Trump business

 

Sleepy Joe?

 He manages to look imperious even when he's sleeping. 

And traitorous when awake.

And we're paying for it.

UPDATE 09:22 am:  And he brought his fellow grifters along so they could make deals, too.  And we're paying for it.

And this is why they'll always pour money into his campaigns and money into defeating Democrats and Progressives.

Those two Saudis don't look terribly impressed, either.

Trump-Musk: B movie villains

 I don't think I've ever encountered a more despicable sight.  After Israeli war crimes have decimated Gaza, Trump puts this trash out.

Like something out of a Batman movie where the villain takes over.  Or Back to the Future, Part II, with Biff Tannen.

The video also comes at a time that a ceasefire between Hamas and Israel remains on shaky ground, with both sides accusing the other of violating the protocols over an agreement that is designed to swap Israeli hostages in Gaza who were seized in the 2023 attack for jailed Palestinian prisoners.

  Newsweek

Ooops.

Also...

America for sale.

Let's see....who would be able to buy a $5M Gold Card to get citizenship?  Oh yeah, Russian oligarchs.

No birthright citizenship.  You buy your way into Trump clubs.

UPDATE 02/28/2025:

Trump told the media that the US could bring in $50 trillion dollars on his Trump Gold Cards if they can sign up 10 million people to put up the $5 million price for US citizenship.

  Meidas Touch

Well, he got the math right.

What? No Trump hotels?

 

UPDATE 02/15/2025:  There is an emergency Arab League summit scheduled for February 27 to address the "new and dangerous developments" from Trump's deranged announcement of a Gaza takeover.

NOLA terror attack addendum

UPDATE 07:21 pm:  Curiouser and curiouser...

A Tesla Cybertruck burst into flames outside the front doors of the Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas on the morning of Jan. 1, killing the car’s driver and injuring seven more.

Emergency personnel said that two people were hospitalized as a result of the apparent attack.

Authorities described the explosives in the vehicle as a combination of fireworks, camping fuel and gas tanks, according to CNN.

[...]

The electric vehicle was obtained via private rental app Turo, according to a law enforcement source who spoke with the Associated Press—the same app allegedly used by a man who plowed into a crowd of New Years’ revelers in a truck on New Orleans’ Bourbon Street early Wednesday morning, killing 15 people and injuring more than 30 others. Authorities are also investigating that mass killing as an act of terrorism, and whether the two acts were connected.

  Daily Beast

UPDATE 1/2/25:

While officials have not confirmed a link between the Las Vegas explosion and the New Orleans pickup truck attack, both suspects served in the Army.

President Biden said Wednesday that authorities are still working to determine if the two incidents were connected. Both suspects used vehicles from the peer-to-peer rental app Turo.

Matthew Alan Livelsberger was a member of the U.S. Army Special Operations Command (USASOC) and was "on approved leave at the time of his death," an Army spokesperson told Axios in a statement Thursday.

  Axios

The Trump team completely expected response:

Rep. Michael Waltz (R-FL), who President-elect Donald Trump has tapped as his national security adviser, said Thursday that the incoming administration should respond to the attack in New Orleans—which was carried out by a U.S. citizen from Texas—by closing the border.

“First and foremost, close our border,” Waltz, a former Green Beret, said on Fox & Friends when asked what should be done to protect the nation from further attacks.

  Daily Beast

He'll get by with a little help from his friends

House Republicans have quietly halted a congressional investigation into whether Donald J. Trump profited improperly from the presidency, declining to enforce a court-supervised settlement agreement that demanded that Mazars USA, his former accounting firm, produce his financial records to Congress.

  NYT

That shouldn't be permissible.

Democrats fought in court for years to get financial documents from Mr. Trump’s former accounting firm, and only last year — after entering into a court-ordered settlement — began receiving the documents and gaining new insights into how foreign governments sought influence using the Trump International Hotel.

[...]

Representative James R. Comer, Republican of Kentucky and the chairman of the Oversight and Accountability Committee, made clear he had abandoned any investigation into the former president’s financial dealings — professing ignorance about the inquiry Democrats opened when they controlled the House — and was instead focusing on whether President Biden and members of his family were involved in an influence-peddling scheme.

Congress sucks. It's all bullshit, all the time. Team sports.

He confirmed the end to the inquiry into Mr. Trump after Democrats wrote to Mr. Comer raising concerns about the fact that Mazars, the former president’s longtime accounting firm that cut ties with him last year, had stopped turning over documents related to his financial dealings. The top Democrat on the panel suggested that Mr. Comer had worked with Mr. Trump’s lawyers to effectively kill the investigation, an accusation the chairman denied.

[...]

“I honestly didn’t even know who or what Mazars was,” said Mr. Comer, who was the senior Republican on the oversight panel during the last Congress, while Democrats waged a lengthy legal fight over obtaining documents from the firm.

A lie, of course. And if it weren't, then he should be drummed out of Congress for being an idiot.

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

Downgraded

The luxury travel agency Virtuoso will no longer list Trump Organization properties on its website, a spokesperson for the company said.

A Virtuoso spokeswoman confirmed in a statement reported by multiple outlets that Trump hotels were no longer a preferred partner of the company, and as of last week the properties were no longer listed on its website.

  The Hill

Can I presume they've been waiting four years to do this?

“It’s a big deal because Virtuoso is very well-respected in the industry,” analyst Henry Harteveldt, of the Atmosphere Research Group, told the newspaper. “It serves a very elite base of customers and its actions are often studied by others. With Virtuoso doing this, some travel agencies that may have been debating whether or not to do it could decide well, if Virtuoso has done this, we too will end our professional relationship with the Trump hotels.”

There's no bottom

QAnon's most dedicated followers still believe that former President Donald Trump, who lost the 2020 presidential election, is yet to be sworn in.

March 4, 2021 is a day they have marked in their diaries, insisting that is the date when Trump will be inaugurated in Washington, DC, and, ultimately, return to power.

Coincidentally, Trump International Hotel in Washington, DC is hiking up the prices of suites around that period. The hotel, just blocks away from the White House, has almost tripled the rates for some rooms on the nights of March 3 and 4, according to Forbes.

  Business Insider

When you've got easy marks, you keep hitting them.

What did you expect from the Trump Organization?

An Illinois judge ruled that the Trump International Hotel in Chicago violated state environmental laws for using river water without a valid permit, according to multiple reports.

Cook County Circuit Court Judge Sophia Hall ruled that the hotel is responsible for violations of the Illinois Environmental Protection Act and Illinois Pollution Control Board Regulations, according to court documents obtained by WGN9.

[...]

The ruling stems from a lawsuit filed in 2018 alleging that the hotel takes in more than 19 million gallons of Chicago River water per day and returns water at a higher temperature to the waterway, according to The Washington Post.

The hotel had obtained a permit to suck in the water for its air conditioning systems in 2017 but did not renew it, according to the newspaper.

The attorney general's office is seeking a penalty for the hotel of $50,000 for the violations plus $10,000 every day until the issue is fixed.

  The Hill

That seems pretty lenient.

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

Whiny guy logs on

This, of course, means there's a story out.  I'll see if I can find it.

Ah, here it is:

When his skyscraper proved a disappointment, Donald Trump defaulted on his loans, sued his bank, got much of the debt forgiven — and largely avoided paying taxes on it.

[...]

The financial crisis was in full swing when Donald J. Trump traveled to Chicago in late September 2008 to mark the near-completion of his 92-floor skyscraper.

The fortunes of big companies, small businesses and millions of Americans — including the Trumps — were in peril.

[...]

He and his family hoped the Trump International Hotel & Tower would cement their company’s reputation as one of the world’s marquee developers of luxury real estate.

[...]

It was the biggest thing Mr. Trump ever built. It was also the last.

[...]

[T]he skyscraper became another disappointment in a portfolio filled with them. Construction lagged. Condos proved hard to sell. Retail space sat vacant.

Yet for Mr. Trump and his company, the Chicago experience also turned out to be something else: the latest example of his ability to strong-arm major financial institutions and exploit the tax code to cushion the blow of his repeated business failures.

  NYT

That last line set him off, I'm sure.

The president’s federal income tax records, obtained by The New York Times, show for the first time that, since 2010, his lenders have forgiven about $287 million in debt that he failed to repay. The vast majority was related to the Chicago project.

The New York Times has been getting a lot of mileage out of those tax records. No doubt this isn't the last story they'll dig up.

When the project encountered problems, he tried to walk away from his huge debts. [...] [R]ather than warring with a notoriously litigious and headline-seeking client, lenders cut Mr. Trump slack — exactly what he seemed to have been counting on.

Big banks and hedge funds gave him years of extra time to repay his debts. Even after Mr. Trump sued his largest lender, accusing it of preying on him, the bank agreed to lend him another $99 million — more than twice as much as was previously known — so that he could pay back what he still owed the bank on the defaulted Chicago loan, records show.

Here's another idea: he may have been privy to some bank's money laundering deals, as he himself was intimately involved with Russian mobsters. They may not have been as worried about being sued by Trump as being exposed. Just a thought.

Those forgiven debts are now part of a broader investigation of Mr. Trump’s business by the New York attorney general. They normally would have generated a big tax bill, since the Internal Revenue Service treats canceled debts as income. Yet as has often happened in his long career, Mr. Trump appears to have paid almost no federal income tax on that money, in part because of large losses in his other businesses.

[...]

To pay for the construction [of the Chicago tower], Mr. Trump arranged for two of his L.L.C.s, 401 North Wabash Venture — named for the project’s address — and its parent company, 401 Mezz Venture, to borrow more than $700 million.

Mr. Trump went to his longtime lender, Deutsche Bank, for the bulk of the money. Since 1998, he had borrowed hundreds of millions of dollars from the German bank. It had been so eager to establish a foothold in the United States that it had overlooked his history of defaults.

Again, I might mention the money laundering. But, go on...

Mr. Trump assured Deutsche Bank officials, including Justin Kennedy, the son of the now-retired Supreme Court justice Anthony Kennedy, [...]

Sorry to interrupt again...ever wonder why Anthony Kennedy stepped down?

[...] that the Chicago development was a guaranteed moneymaker. In a sign of the Trump family’s commitment to the project, Mr. Trump told his bankers that his daughter Ivanka would be in charge.

[...]

Mr. Trump agreed to personally guarantee $40 million of the [$640 million] loan. If his L.L.C. were to default, Deutsche Bank could collect that money directly from Mr. Trump.

Mr. Trump also went to Fortress Investment Group, a hedge fund and private equity company, for $130 million. This was a so-called mezzanine loan, which meant that it would be repaid only after the Deutsche Bank debt had been satisfied. Because of the greater risk, the Fortress loan came with a double-digit interest rate. The agreement with Fortress also required Mr. Trump’s 401 Mezz Venture to pay a $49 million “exit fee” when it repaid the loan.

If Mr. Trump defaulted, his lenders could seize the building.

Deutsche Bank and Fortress both planned to chop up the loans and sell at least some of the pieces. Deutsche Bank sold them mostly to American, European and Asian banks, Fortress mostly to private equity and hedge funds, including Dune Capital Management, which had recently been co-founded by Steven Mnuchin, the future Treasury secretary.

Hmmmm, you don't suppose Steve Mnuchin has some shady financial issues, do you?

The loans were due in May 2008.

[...]

Work on the project went more slowly than planned, and the residential portion was still under construction as the loans came due.

With the financial crisis enveloping the world, finding buyers for multimillion-dollar apartments suddenly became much harder. In the spring of 2008, Mr. Trump asked Deutsche Bank to delay the loan’s due date. The bank gave him an extra six months.

In mid-September, the crisis crescendoed with the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers. Financial markets went haywire.

How well we remember those days.

At that point, at least 159 units in the building were still unsold, and many more were under contract but hadn’t closed, according to New York court records. That meant hundreds of millions of dollars that Mr. Trump and his family had counted on to repay Deutsche Bank and Fortress hadn’t yet materialized. And the loans were due in barely six weeks.

Mr. Trump sought another extension. This time, Deutsche Bank said no.

Mr. Trump’s company still owed Deutsche Bank about $334 million in principal and interest, and Fortress $130 million, not including interest and fees.

Mr. Trump went on the offensive. In a letter to Deutsche Bank on Nov. 4, he accused it of helping ignite the financial crisis. This was important, because Mr. Trump went on to claim that the crisis constituted a “force majeure” — an act of God, like a natural disaster — that entitled him to extra time to repay the loans.

A few days later, Mr. Trump and his companies sued Deutsche Bank and Fortress, along with the other banks and hedge funds that had purchased pieces of the loans.

Which crooked lawyer did he have then?

Deutsche Bank soon filed its own lawsuit, accusing its longtime client of being a habitual deadbeat and demanding immediate repayment of the now-defaulted loans.

Inside Deutsche Bank, angry executives and lawyers vowed to never again do business with Mr. Trump, according to senior executives.

Did Kennedy's son suffer any blowback?

Why didn’t the lenders seize the building?

Going to court to take over the unfinished skyscraper promised to be a costly, yearslong process, especially given Mr. Trump’s reputation for using the legal system to drag out fights and grind down opponents. It seemed simpler to resolve the dispute.

On July 28, 2010, lawyers for Mr. Trump, Deutsche Bank and Fortress notified the court that they had reached a private settlement. The terms weren’t disclosed.

[...]

Mr. Trump was let off the hook for about $270 million. It was the type of generous financial break that few American companies or individuals could ever expect to receive, especially without filing for bankruptcy protection.

[...]

Fortress and its partners — including Mr. Mnuchin’s Dune Capital, as well as Cerberus Capital Management, whose co-chief executive, Stephen A. Feinberg, would become a major Trump fund-raiser and go on to lead a White House advisory panel — quickly realized they wouldn’t ever collect [the] full amount.

Ultimately, Fortress settled for $48 million, which Mr. Trump wired to the firm in March 2012.

[...]

Fortress had expected to receive more than $300 million.

[...]

In many ways, it repeated a pattern that had played out more than a decade earlier at Mr. Trump’s Atlantic City casinos: a cycle of defaulting on debts and then persuading already-burned lenders to cut him a break.

Don't try this at home.

Trump’s companies got a pass on the money they owed on the Deutsche Bank loan, too.

[...]

By 2012, the Trump Organization had drummed up about $235 million to repay the financial institutions to whom Deutsche Bank had sold pieces of the original loan. They included banks and asset managers in the United States, Germany, Ireland and China, according to court records.

But Mr. Trump still owed $99 million, according to people familiar with the debt. Where would he come up with that money?

Though Deutsche Bank had vowed to do no more business with Mr. Trump, his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, introduced him to his personal wealth manager at the bank, Rosemary Vrablic. Ms. Vrablic, with the support of her superiors, soon agreed to restart the relationship with Mr. Trump.

Rosemary should be lawyering up and preparing for testimony. Oh wait, she already is. 

 "Ms. Vrablic was thrust into the spotlight when Mr. Trump boasted to The Times in 2016 about his strong relationship with Deutsche Bank — and inflated Ms. Vrablic’s role at the bank. “Why don’t you call the head of Deutsche Bank? Her name is Rosemary Vrablic,” he said in the interview. “She is the boss.”"

[O]ne wing of Deutsche Bank was providing Mr. Trump the money to repay another division of the same bank.

[...]

Ms. Vrablic’s team also lent Mr. Trump’s company $125 million for work on his Doral golf resort in Florida and up to $170 million to transform the Old Post Office building in Washington into a luxury hotel. Mr. Trump personally guaranteed those loans, too.

[...]

The following spring, the Trump Organization repaid $54 million, according to a person briefed on the matter and Cook County records. That left $45 million outstanding. But in 2014, Deutsche Bank agreed to lend another $24 million on the property and to extend the due date until 2024, records show. Mr. Trump now owed the bank $69 million. By May 2016, he had repaid the $24 million.

[...]

Because they counted as investments in his business for tax purposes, the guarantees increased the amount of losses he could use to avoid income taxes in the future. Mr. Trump’s federal tax returns show that he has personally guaranteed the repayment of $421 million in debts.

Don't try that at home either.

At the end of 2018, Mr. Trump and his companies owed the bank $330 million.

The I.R.S. requires taxpayers to treat forgiven debts as income when calculating what they owe in federal taxes. The New York attorney general, Letitia James, is investigating whether Mr. Trump followed the law.

The tax records reviewed by The Times show that while Mr. Trump accounted for $287 million of income from his canceled debts, he managed to avoid paying income taxes on nearly all of it.

Mr. Trump reported $40 million of forgiven debt as income in 2010. But losses from his businesses — including $30.8 million in red ink on the Chicago project — meant he had no taxable income that year.

[...]

He would generally have been entitled to write off the total amount he spent on a building over a number of years, a process known as depreciation. Instead, he agreed to reduce those eventual write-offs by $104.8 million, an alternative allowed in tax law.

For the other $141 million, Mr. Trump took advantage of a law, passed after the 2008 financial crisis, that allowed income from canceled debts to be deferred for five years and then spread out over the next five. Each year from 2014 through 2018, Mr. Trump declared $28.2 million of canceled-debt income.

As it turned out, though, losses in other parts of his business wiped out most of his federal tax bill on that income. He paid nothing for 2014; $641,931 for 2015; and, after credits, only $750 a year for 2016 and 2017. It isn’t clear how much he paid for 2018.

[...]

[The Chicago] skyscraper’s fortunes have withered. Most of its retail space has never been occupied, The Real Deal reported last year. Its revenue declined from $67 million in 2014 to $50 million in 2018, while profits plunged from $16.3 million to $1.8 million over the same period.

The problems intensified in 2020, as the coronavirus forced restaurants, including Mr. Trump’s in Chicago, to close. The Trump family sought financial relief from Deutsche Bank among others.

The bank offered to let Mr. Trump’s companies pause interest payments on their loans. The Trump Organization decided the bank’s proposal was insufficiently generous and turned it down.

The loans come due in 2023 and 2024.

At which time, if he's not behind bars (and probably even if he is), he'll arrange some other dubious deal.

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

Trump's personal interests in China

President Trump has spent months insisting Joe Biden is in hoc to China. “China is on a massive disinformation campaign because they are desperate to have Sleepy Joe Biden win the presidential race,” Trump tweeted last spring. “Beijing Biden is so weak on China that the intelligence community recently assessed that the Chinese Communist Party favors Biden,” claimed his son, falsely, this summer. More recently, he has seized upon hacked emails purporting to show financial links between Biden and China.

But Biden does not have financial ties to China. We know this because he released his tax returns. Trump has not released his tax returns. But the New York Times has obtained at least some of them. And they found that Trump has a Chinese bank account, and suggest he has collected earnings from that country while serving as president.

  NYMagazine

Senate Republicans produced a report asserting, among other things, that Mr. Biden’s son Hunter “opened a bank account” with a Chinese businessman, part of what it said were his numerous connections to “foreign nationals and foreign governments across the globe.”

  NYT

You know what's coming.

But Mr. Trump’s own business history is filled with overseas financial deals, and some have involved the Chinese state. He spent a decade unsuccessfully pursuing projects in China, operating an office there during his first run for president and forging a partnership with a major government-controlled company.

And it turns out that China is one of only three foreign nations — the others are Britain and Ireland — where Mr. Trump maintains a bank account, according to an analysis of the president’s tax records, which were obtained by The New York Times.

Well, well, well.

The foreign accounts do not show up on Mr. Trump’s public financial disclosures, where he must list personal assets, because they are held under corporate names. The identities of the financial institutions are not clear.

Hmmm.

The Chinese account is controlled by Trump International Hotels Management L.L.C., which the tax records show paid $188,561 in taxes in China while pursuing licensing deals there from 2013 to 2015.

Meanwhile, he's paying essentially zero taxes in the United States. nice.

The British and Irish accounts are held by companies that operate Mr. Trump’s golf courses in Scotland and Ireland, which regularly report millions of dollars in revenue from those countries. Trump International Hotels Management reported just a few thousand dollars from China.

In response to questions from The Times, Alan Garten, a lawyer for the Trump Organization, said the company had “opened an account with a Chinese bank having offices in the United States in order to pay the local taxes” associated with efforts to do business there. He said the company had opened the account after establishing an office in China “to explore the potential for hotel deals in Asia.”

[...]

Mr. Garten would not identify the bank in China where the account is held. Until last year, China’s biggest state-controlled bank rented three floors in Trump Tower, a lucrative lease that drew accusations of a conflict of interest for the president.

One among many.

His campaign has tried to portray Mr. Biden as a “puppet” of China who, as vice president, misread the dangers posed by its growing power. Mr. Trump has also sought to tar his opponent with overblown or unsubstantiated assertions about Hunter Biden’s business dealings there while his father was in office.

“He’s like a vacuum cleaner — he follows his father around collecting,” Mr. Trump said recently, referring to Mr. Biden’s son. “What a disgrace. It’s a crime family.”

Typical Trump projection.

In a misleading claim amplified by surrogates like his son Donald Trump Jr. and his lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani, the president has said the younger Mr. Biden “walked out of China” with $1.5 billion after accompanying his father on an official trip in 2013. Numerous news articles and fact-checking sites have explained that the huge figure was actually a fund-raising goal set by an investment firm in which Hunter Biden obtained a 10 percent stake after his father left office. The firm did receive financial backing from a large state-controlled bank, but it is not clear the fund-raising target was ever met, and there is no evidence Hunter Biden received a large personal payout.

The Trumps don't need evidence.

As for the former vice president, his public financial disclosures, along with the income tax returns he voluntarily released, show no income or business dealings of his own in China. However, there is ample evidence of Mr. Trump’s efforts to join the myriad American firms that have long done business there — and the tax records for him and his companies that were obtained by The Times offer new details about them.

[...]

Trump has long sought a licensing deal in China. His efforts go at least as far back as 2006, when he filed trademark applications in Hong Kong and the mainland. Many Chinese government approvals came after he became president. (The president’s daughter Ivanka Trump also won Chinese trademark approvals for her personal business after she joined the White House staff.)

And don't forget, one of Ivanka's many Chinese trademarks was for voting machines. Jewelry, clothing, shoes, handbags, sausage casing, nursing homes, and voting machines. In 2016.

Trump found a partner in the State Grid Corporation, one of the nation’s largest government-controlled enterprises. Agence France-Presse reported in 2016 that the partnership would have involved licensing and managing a development in Beijing. Mr. Trump was reportedly still pursuing the deal months into his first presidential campaign, but it was abandoned after State Grid became ensnared in a corruption investigation by Chinese authorities.

Imagine that. Trump dealing with a corrupt business.

But Mr. Trump’s plans in China have been largely driven by a different company, Trump International Hotels Management — the one with a Chinese bank account.

The company has direct ownership of THC China Development, but is also involved in management of other Trump-branded properties around the world, and it is not possible to discern from its tax records how much of its financial activity is China-related. It normally reports a few million dollars in annual income and deductible expenses.

In 2017, the company reported an unusually large spike in revenue — some $17.5 million, more than the previous five years’ combined. It was accompanied by a $15.1 million withdrawal by Mr. Trump from the company’s capital account.

Sounds like a "business" to line Trump's pockets.

On the president’s public financial disclosures for that year, he reported the large revenue figure, and described it only as “management fees and other contract payments.”

[...]

During the 2016 campaign, a shell company controlled by a Chinese couple from Vancouver bought 11 units [in a Trump hotel], for $3.1 million, in the Las Vegas tower Mr. Trump co-owns with the casino magnate Phil Ruffin. The owner of a Las Vegas-based financial services firm told The Times he was later visited by two F.B.I. agents asking about the company behind the purchases, which he said had used his office address in incorporation papers without his knowledge. It is not known what became of the inquiry.

I'm going to guess there are a number of threads in a Trump file at the FBI.

[A Trump representative] said the Trump Organization had “never been contacted by the F.B.I. and has no knowledge of any investigation.”

They wouldn't necessarily contact you while investigating you, would they? 

Is there a secret deal with China to let Trump sling mud at them in trade wars and the coronavirus pandemic to hide these damaging payments?

Perhaps they were gambling it wouldn't be published before the election?  Or, perhaps, they didn't know about it.

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

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.”

You gotta use what you've got

Also...

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

Where the money goes

THE FEDERAL EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT AGENCY has provided less than 10 percent of the N95 masks requested by officials in five states and the District of Columbia, according to documents released Thursday by the House Oversight Committee. FEMA also told the committee that the Strategic National Stockpile had only 9,500 remaining ventilators — far short of what will likely be needed to treat a growing number of coronavirus patients.

Although federal officials have known of the shortages for months, they have not been remedied. Yet every year since 2017, Congress has directed FEMA to set aside $41 million of its budget to offset the extraordinary costs of providing security for President Donald Trump’s properties. The “Presidential Residence Assistant Protection Grants” were most recently funded by Congress in an appropriations package in December.

According to memos posted on its website, FEMA has previously identified Trump properties in New York, New Jersey, and Florida as “qualifying residences” and paid out millions of dollars to the New York Police Department and Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office, among others.

[...]

The grant program does not make up a huge part of FEMA’s annual budget or its disaster relief fund, which just received a $45 billion infusion from last month’s stimulus bill. But at a time when every federal dollar counts, some question whether the payout to secure Trump properties is a good use of government resources.

  The Intercept

It's not a good use of governnment resources at ANY time.

“It’s been well established that President Trump spends an inordinate amount of time at his properties, that he routinely advertises his properties as part of his official duties, and that having this sort of special fund to help offset local security costs is an indirect benefit to the president,” Slocum said. “Allowing reimbursements to those local law enforcement costs could be relieving the Trump businesses of having to provide extra security.”

Grifters gonna grift.

A former FEMA official who declined to be named for fear of professional reprisal, told The Intercept that the $41 million grant program was created in 2017 to help cover the huge costs of security at Trump’s residences, though it is unclear who in Congress shepherded the language to passage then and in each year since.

Yeah, who? And isn't it the House that appropriates funds? And isn't the House controlled by Democrats since 2018?

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

Meanwhile in New York

I doubt if the idea ever occurred to anyone at that organization, Renato.

Trump's pocket-lining goes on despite stock drops and pandemics

On the night of 12 February, a group backing Donald Trump’s re-election hosted a glitzy gala for large donors at the Trump International hotel that featured the president.

[...]

The Super Pac, which has raised almost $48m since 2017, has spent over $540,000 to host events at Trump’s hotel, making it a top source of campaign revenues for the hotel and the Trump family business.

[...]

Meanwhile, in mid-December, some mega-donors rented pricey rooms at the hotel for a two-day event hosted by Trump Victory, a fundraising committee for the president’s 2020 campaign, which also drew Trump and the vice-president, Mike Pence. The hotel also seems to have capitalized with high rates: the cheapest rooms on Saturday 14 December during the two-day meeting went for a whopping $6,719 compared with the usual rate of $500, according to the watchdog group Crew.

  Guardian

Grifters gonna grift.

Trump’s aggressive fundraising gives a nice boost to his real estate empire – which he never divested from – according to campaign watchdogs and public records. Trump’s businesses are literally making money off the 2020 campaign.

[...]

According to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics (CRP), Trump-allied political committees and the Republican party have spent a whopping $18.1m at Trump properties since he launched his 2016 campaign. Republican candidates, elected officials and Pacs have ponied up another $1.2m in the same period.

[...]

Other Trump properties have witnessed more big donor traffic – with potential upticks in their revenues – as Trump seeks a second term. On 17 January, dozens of top Trump backers who had kicked in between $100,000 and $250,000 to help Trump win in 2020 showed up at Trump’s palatial Mar-a-Lago resort, where his 2020 campaign hosted a dinner with the president that also included policy roundtable talks and photo ops.

[...]

Trump properties have also seen a nice boomlet as committees linked to key congressional allies, such as the Republican House minority leader, Kevin McCarthy, have also spent big bucks to haul in campaign loot.

McCarthy, for instance, teamed up with Pence to host a big fundraiser for their Protect the House Pac at the Trump hotel last October, which drew Trump as a guest speaker and pulled in about $13m, according to public records.

Other McCarthy committees to benefit House members organized two bashes at the hotel in 2018. Altogether these events have generated over $200,000 in revenues for Trump’s hotel, campaign reports show.

Likewise, the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, hosted a big-money bash at Trump’s hotel last fall for his Senate Leadership Fund, an event Trump attended too.

There ought to be a law. Oh, wait. There is: emoluments clause. But, as we've seen time and again, Trump is above the law.

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

The Trump Family Grifters

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.

  ProPublica

Let it or directed it?

Will Bill Barr snuff out the suit?

“[Event planner Stephanie] Winston Wolkoff met with President-elect Trump and Ivanka Trump and discussed these concerns with both individuals,” the suit says. “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.

[...]

As WNYC and ProPublica’s “Trump, Inc.” revealed, the Trump inaugural committee paid the 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.”

Not true?

Ivanka Trump was made aware of concerns about overpayment in a Dec. 12, 2016, email from Rick Gates, the deputy to the inaugural chairman, which she responded to two days later. On Dec. 16, Wolkoff raised her concerns in person with Donald and Ivanka Trump. The next day, Wolkoff again objected to the Trump hotel’s proposed rates.

[...]

“Please take into consideration that when this is audited it will become public knowledge.”

They don't care. They seem to delight in letting the public know just how beyond the reach of law and norms they are. Remember Trump's comment about avoiding paying taxes? "That makes me smart."

Other venues hosting inauguration events provided space for free.

On Jan. 10, 2017, the inaugural committee finalized its contract with the hotel at $175,000 per day, over Wolkoff’s objections. The committee was also charged for days when it wasn’t even using the space, the suit says.

One event, costing more than $300,000, was a private reception at the Trump hotel “benefiting only the children of the President,” the complaint says.

A spokesperson for the Trump Organization dismissed the D.C. suit in an emailed statement:

“The AG’s claims are false, intentionally misleading and riddled with inaccuracies. The rates charged by the hotel were completely in line with what anyone else would have been charged for an unprecedented event of this enormous magnitude and were reflective of the fact that [sic] hotel had just recently opened, possessed superior facilities and was centrally located on Pennsylvania Avenue."

Disgusting.

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.”

[...]

The committee raised nearly $107 million, close to double the haul of President Barack Obama’s record-setting 2009 bash, despite being a much smaller event.

And the Trumps pocketed it.

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

Emoluments

You can read the article Griffin is tweeting about here.

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

Ooops

A day after Donald Trump designated Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) a terrorist organisation, reports are reemerging of the Trump Organization's alleged participation in a scheme that likely helped the IRGC launder money to fund its interests abroad.

  UK Independent

Do tell.

The US government made the unprecedented move to blacklist another country’s military because, Mr Trump said, the IRGC “actively participates in, finances, and promotes terrorism as a tool of statecraft”.

The designation imposes sanctions including freezing assets the IRGC may have in US jurisdictions and a ban on Americans doing business with the organisation.

But according to a 2017 report by the New Yorker, the Trump Organization signed contracts in 2012 with developers to build a skyscraper in Azerbaijan that appeared “to be a corrupt operation engineered by oligarchs tied to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard”.

Oh, yes. Money laundering in Azerbaijan. We've heard of that.

There is no evidence Mr Trump or any Trump Organization officials acted illegally in the deal. Mr Trump, in fact, was reportedly only lightly involved in the project, which was spearheaded by his oldest daughter, Ivanka.

Right.

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