Makes more money

 

UPDATE 04/01/2026:

It's all so Biff Tanner (Back to the Future II).

It's not even close.

He'll leave the country if he leaves the office

 Yes, and he's working his way toward robbing the US Treasury.

3rd world despot graft

 

Kingly riches

 

Graft

 

I'm guessing they didn't post this...

Times have changed

Well, maybe not so much.  Maybe it's just that the hypocritical GOP is now in full control.

When Hillary Clinton was first lady, a furor erupted over reports that she had once made $100,000 from a $1,000 investment in cattle futures. Even though it had happened a dozen years before her husband became president, it became a scandal that lasted weeks and forced the White House to initiate a review.

Thirty-one years later, after dinner at Mar-a-Lago, Jeff Bezos agreed to finance a promotional film about Melania Trump that will reportedly put $28 million directly in her pocket — 280 times the Clinton lucre and in this case from a person with a vested interest in policies set by her husband’s government. Scandal? Furor? Washington moved on while barely taking notice.

[...]

The scale and the scope of the presidential mercantilism has been breathtaking. The Trump family and its business partners have collected $320 million in fees from a new cryptocurrency, brokered overseas real estate deals worth billions of dollars and are opening an exclusive club in Washington called the Executive Branch charging $500,000 apiece to join, all in the past few months alone.

Just last week, Qatar handed over a luxury jet meant for Mr. Trump’s use not just in his official capacity but also for his presidential library after he leaves office. Experts have valued the plane, formally donated to the Air Force, at $200 million, more than all of the foreign gifts bestowed on all previous American presidents combined.

And Mr. Trump hosted an exclusive dinner at his Virginia club for 220 investors in the $TRUMP cryptocurrency that he started days before taking office in January. Access was openly sold based on how much money they chipped in — not to a campaign account but to a business that benefits Mr. Trump personally

  NYT

Whatever happened to the emoluments clause? Too bad the Democracts didn't enforce it in Trump 1.0.

Jesus Joseph and Mary

 

What are the chances it won't be bugged?

Also, pretty sure there's a law that says big gifts to the president stay with the White House/government.

Oh, yeah, he's above the law.

UPDATE 08:58 am:

Actually, technically, they're wrong, but in the case of Trump, anything he does "in the course of his duties as president" cannot be prosecuted, according to the very corrupt Supreme Court.

Most of that is shitcoin, so take it with the grain of shifting sand it deserves.

Both the White House and DOJ concluded that because the gift is not conditioned on any official act, it does not constitute bribery, the sources said. Bondi's legal analysis also says it does not run afoul of the Constitution's prohibition on foreign gifts because the plane is not being given to an individual, but rather to the United States Air Force and, eventually, to the presidential library foundation, the sources said.

[...]

The plane will then be transferred to the Trump Presidential Library Foundation no later than Jan. 1, 2029, and any costs relating to its transfer will be paid for by the U.S. Air Force, the sources told ABC News.

  ABC

Sure. Why not?

That presidential library is going to be getting a lot of gifts.

UPDATE 02:46 pm:

Did you catch that part:  We used to have an ethics czar.

UPDATE 05:23 pm:

Even Laura Loomer: “I love President Trump. I would take a bullet for him. But, I have to call a spade a spade. We cannot accept a $400 million “gift” from jihadists in suits. The Qataris fund the same Iranian proxies in Hamas and Hezbollah who have murdered US Service Members. The same proxies that have worked with the Mexican cartels to get jihadists across our border. This is really going to be such a stain on the admin if this is true. And I say that as someone who would take a bullet for Trump. I’m so disappointed.”

  Meidas Touch

And I thought she knew him. Well, she won't be getting a ride on THAT plane.

Also from Meidas Touch:

CREW: “During the 4 years that Trump serves his 2nd term, real estate developers will be working on, planning, building and opening a total of 20 Trump-branded projects around the globe. In 9 foreign countries, these developers will seek subcontractors, buyers and permits from the govt. The developments that are underway—being planned, constructed, sold and delivered to buyers—will nearly triple the number of Trump properties operating abroad.”

UPDATE 05/13/2025:

I have a suggestion for Senator Paul: hope for something that might actually happen.

And he's going to get away with it.  I wonder how many Republican Congressfolk he lets in on the market scheme.

When you hear that Pam Bondi says this isn't quid pro quo or a bribe, remember this:  it really is, but it doesn't matter if it isn't.

First step in collecting is the demand letter

I think we can assume he won't be getting it.

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

Jamie on a roll

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.

How much did they keep?

The Trump Organization has transferred $151,470 in profits earned from foreign governments to the U.S. Treasury, a company executive said on Friday.

George Sorial, the Trump Organization’s executive vice president and chief compliance counsel, said the donation made good on the company’s promise to return any profits earned from foreign governments during President Donald Trump’s administration.

“Although not a legal requirement, this voluntary donation fulfills our pledge to donate profits from foreign government patronage at our hotels and similar business during President Trump’s term in office,” Sorial said in a written statement.

  Politico

No, it's not a legal requirement. However, having the Trump organization profits from any source going to Trump while he's president, is a conflict. There are myriad benefits accruing to the president through all of his real estate holdings that he wouldn't be getting if he weren't president, and non-monetary influence factors heavily into the problem.

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

Unabashed use of the presidential office for personal gain

We all know that Jared Kushner has been busy using his position to enrich the Kushner business, and we know everything Trump does is for the same personal gain. Here's a new one:

President Donald Trump loves putting his name on everything from ties to steaks to water — and, of course, his buildings. But now the Trump Organization appears to be borrowing a brand even more powerful than the gilded Trump moniker: the presidential seal.

In recent weeks, the Trump Organization has ordered the manufacture of new tee markers for golf courses that are emblazoned with the seal of the President of the United States.

[...]

“We made the design, and the client confirmed the design,” said Joseph E. Bates, who owns Eagle Sign, declining to say who the client was.

An order form for the tee markers reviewed by ProPublica and WNYC says the customer was “Trump International.”

  TPM

There ought to be a law. Wait, I think there is.

A law governs the manufacture or use of the seal, its likeness, “or any facsimile thereof” for anything other than official U.S. government business. It can be a criminal offense punishable by up to six months in prison.

[...]

In 2005 the Bush administration ordered the satirical news website The Onion to remove a replica of the seal. Grant M. Dixton, associate White House counsel, wrote in a letter to The Onion that the seal “is not to be used in connection with commercial ventures or products in any way that suggests presidential support or endorsement.”

It's just in keeping with the Trump brand: self-service, and typical disregard for ethics. Some of his tee markers were already, if not illegal, ethically challenged.

At some of Trump’s golf courses, tee markers have sported the Trump family crest, which he took from the family that originally owned Mar-a-Lago without permission and then altered by adding his own name.

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

Kushner's hand in the cookie jar

You might just want to read this whole interesting article.

I'll get you started:

Jared Kushner had a very bad week. So bad in fact, it was hard to keep track of how many bad stories there were. The most publicized event, the White House senior adviser and presidential son-in-law losing his security clearance, was the least surprising. The more shocking—and potentially important—revelations are two stories about massive loans he’s sought and their links to Qatar and a third story about how special counsel Robert Mueller is now investigating those links.

  Slate

Perhaps Jared and his father can compare notes on prison one day.  Daddy already has some experience.

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

UPDATE 3/21:

KUSHNER’S SUPPORT FOR Saudi Arabia and the UAE over Qatar in the Gulf crisis has raised questions about a possible conflict of interest. Kushner backed the blockade a month after Qatar’s ministry of finance rebuffed an attempt by Kushner’s real estate firm, Kushner Companies, to extract financing for the firm’s troubled flagship property at 666 Fifth Avenue.

In 2007, Kushner bought the landmark Manhattan building for $1.8 billion, putting down $500 million in cash raised largely by selling thousands of rental units the family had owned in New Jersey. It was widely regarded as overpriced at the time, and when the financial crisis hit, the value plummeted, wiping out much of the initial investment. The clock is now ticking toward a February 2019 deadline when a major mortgage payment will come due.

Since 2011, Kushner and his relatives have been searching the globe for a new investor. As recently as the spring of 2017, Charles Kushner, Jared’s father, asked former Qatari prime minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim al-Thani to invest in the building. Then in April 2017, Charles Kushner made a direct pitch to the Qatari government through the country’s minister of finance.

Qatar rejected the deal as not financially viable. In May, Trump traveled to Riyadh with Kushner, where the famous glowing orb photo was taken. In the wake of the meeting, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and a handful of allied countries announced the blockade of Qatar, which is aligned with Iran, a key Saudi adversary. The crisis continues today.

“We could not understand why the Trump administration was so firmly taking the Saudis’ side in this dispute between the Saudis, the Emiratis, and Qatar, because the United States has very important interests in Qatar,” Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., told George Stephanopoulos, host of ABC’s “This Week,” after The Intercept reported on Kushner Companies’ efforts to obtain financing from Qatar. Murphy was referring to Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar, home of U.S. Central Command, where thousands of U.S. troops are stationed.

“If the reason this administration put U.S. troops at risk in Qatar was to protect the Kushners’ financial interests, then that’s all the evidence you need to make some big changes in the White House,” Murphy said.

  The Intercept

I thought he turned his businesses over to his sons

In another indication that the world’s most powerful politician has few qualms about battling local public officials, President Donald Trump again has sued the Palm Beach County Property Appraiser over the valuation of his Trump National Golf Club.

[...]

Based on the property appraiser’s valuation, the Palm Beach County Tax Collector sent Trump a bill for $398,315. Trump responded with a lawsuit — and a wire transfer for $296,595.01, which his Tampa-based attorney described as “a good faith estimate” of the sum Trump really owes.

[...]

While Trump’s three-page suit doesn’t say how much he thinks the course should be worth, Jupiter Golf Club pays property taxes at a rate of 2 percent. So by claiming he was overcharged by $101,720, Trump asserts that the property is worth $15 million, and that the appraiser overvalued the course by more than $5 million.

[...]

The [lawsuit] marks the fifth year in a row that Trump has disputed the property tax bill for the 131-acre course along Donald Ross Road. Even as he fights the county’s $19.7 million estimate, Trump’s financial disclosures in 2016 and 2017 list the value of Trump National Golf Club in Jupiter as “over $50 million.”

  Palm Beach Daily News

How VERY Trumpy.

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

Fat chance

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

Trump sales haven't even slowed down

They're getting in all the money laundering dollars they can before Mueller puts a stop to it.

President Trump’s companies sold more than $35 million in real estate in 2017, mostly to secretive shell companies that obscure buyers’ identities

[...]

In Las Vegas alone, Trump sold 41 luxury condo units in 2017, a majority of which used limited liability companies – corporate entities that allow people to purchase property without revealing all of the owners’ names.

The trend toward Trump's real estate buyers obscuring their identities began around the time he won the Republican nomination, midway through 2016, according to USA TODAY's analysis of every domestic real estate sale by one of his companies.

  USA Today

Seriously? What about Trump Soho and other properties he sold to Russian mobsters decades ago?

In the two years before the nomination, 4% of Trump buyers utilized the tactic. In the year after, the rate skyrocketed to about 70%. USA TODAY's tracking of sales shows the trend held firm through Trump's first year in office.

Okay, we're only talking about three years.

Profits from sales of those properties flow through a trust run by Trump’s sons. The president is the sole beneficiary of the trust and he can withdraw cash at any time.

[...]

At least one of the 2017 sales was to a German couple. His company determined that transaction does not qualify as a “foreign deal,” which the president and his lawyers vowed to avoid while he is in office.

I think it's great how these asshats just decide what things mean to suit whatever they do. What's my property worth? Oh, whatever I feel it's worth. Who's a foreigner? Oh, whoever I think is one.

A single condo in Trump’s Vegas development sold in October for $1.6 million. That stretched the price per square foot to around $1,000, pushing the limits of the market, said Nicole Tomlinson, a high-rise sales specialist at Shapiro & Sher Group in Las Vegas.

Nothing to suggest money laundering there. Move along.

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

Why Jared Kushner is Trump's envoy to Israel

Last May, Jared Kushner accompanied President Trump, his father-in-law, on the pair’s first diplomatic trip to Israel, part of Mr. Kushner’s White House assignment to achieve peace in the Middle East.

Shortly before, his family real estate company received a roughly $30 million investment from Menora Mivtachim, an insurer that is one of Israel’s largest financial institutions, according to a Menora executive.

The deal, which was not made public, pumped significant new equity into 10 Maryland apartment complexes controlled by Kushner’s firm. While Mr. Kushner has sold parts of his business since taking a White House job last year, he still has stakes in most of the family empire — including the apartment buildings in and around Baltimore.

The Menora transaction is the latest financial arrangement that has surfaced between Mr. Kushner’s family business and Israeli partners, including one of the country’s wealthiest families and a large Israeli bank that is the subject of a United States criminal investigation.

[...]

The arrangement could undermine the ability of the United States to be seen as an independent broker in the region.

  NYT

Is there anyone left who sees the US as an independent broker in that region?

Raj Shah, a deputy White House press secretary, said the Trump administration has “tremendous confidence in the job Jared is doing leading our peace efforts, and he takes the ethics rules very seriously and would never compromise himself or the administration.”

How much time will you need to stop laughing and continue reading?

Mr. Kushner resigned as chief executive of Kushner Companies when he joined the White House last January. But he remains the beneficiary of a series of trusts that own stakes in Kushner properties and other investments. Those are worth as much as $761 million, according to government ethics filings, and most likely much more.

[...]

The Baltimore-area buildings in which Menora invested were the subject of an article by a ProPublica reporter in the The New York Times Magazine last year that documented the poor living conditions and aggressive tactics used by Kushner Companies, including garnishing the bank accounts of low-income tenants and turning off heat and hot water.

The White House has said Mr. Kushner would work with his ethics advisers to ensure he recused himself from “any particular matter involving specific parties in which he has a business relationship with a party to the matter.”

Maybe he needs to work with his ethics advisers to change his "aggressive tactics" and "poor living conditions" as a landlord.

Abbe D. Lowell, a lawyer for Mr. Kushner, said in a statement: “Jared Kushner has not been involved in, nor spoken about any Kushner Companies’ activities or project, since shortly before the Inauguration. [...] Connecting any of his well-publicized trips to the Middle East to anything to do with Kushner Companies or its businesses is nonsensical and is a stretch to write a story where none actually exists.”

Take another laugh break.

Mr. Sanderson, the lawyer who specializes in government ethics, said, “Their standard seems like some version of ‘It’s a conflict when I think it’s a conflict, and I’ll make that judgment myself.’”

The Trump way. It's how they judge everything, including how Trump values his assets for tax purposes: they're worth whatever he thinks they're worth, depending upon how he feels at the time.

The deal with Menora is one of many financial relationships that Kushner Companies has in Israel.

In April, The Times reported that the Kushners had teamed up with at least one member of Israel’s wealthy Steinmetz family to buy nearly $200 million of Manhattan apartment buildings, as well as to build a luxury rental tower in New Jersey. The family’s best-known member, Beny Steinmetz, is the subject of a United States Justice Department bribery investigation.

These are not just Israeli deals, they're Israeli deals with crooks. That is also the Trump way: real estate deals with mobsters and crooks.

Mr. Kushner’s company has also taken out at least four loans from Israel’s largest bank, Bank Hapoalim, which is the subject of a Justice Department investigation over allegations that it helped wealthy Americans evade taxes.

Again, the Trump way: loans from dirty banks.

And the Kushner family’s foundation continues to donate money to a settlement group in the West Bank.

I know. You've stopped laughing and are now sadly shaking your head.  I understand.

Why he ran for office

Taxpayers are footing the legal bill for at least 10 Justice Department lawyers and paralegals to work on lawsuits related to President Trump's private businesses.

Neither the White House nor the Justice Department will say how much it is costing taxpayers, but federal payroll records show the salaries of the government lawyers assigned to the cases range from about $133,000 to $185,000.

[...]

The government lawyers and Trump's private attorneys are making the same arguments — that the Constitution's ban on a president taking gifts from foreign interests in exchange for official actions does not apply to foreign government customers buying things from Trump's companies.

  USA Today

He's making oodles of money from his businesses AND getting his dirty dealings lawsuits paid for. Whatever comes next for The Most Notable Loser, he's currently making out very well.

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

Profiteer in Chief

In his case, it's also called enriching himself by virtue of his office.  I think that may be impeachable.  How much money have his golf clubs soaked out of the treasury? 

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

Sad!

Jared Kushner, Donald Trump’s son-in-law and top adviser, wakes up each morning to a growing problem that will not go away. His family’s real estate business, Kushner Cos., owes hundreds of millions of dollars on a 41-story office building on Fifth Avenue. It has failed to secure foreign investors, despite an extensive search, and its resources are more limited than generally understood.

  Bloomberg

Honestly, periodically I think the reason Trump ran for the presidency (and won't release his tax returns) is because he's seriously in debt and figured he could fix that problem by deregulations, tax cuts, emoluments and generally chicanery if he were president. This is one of those times.

Over the past two years, executives and family members have sought substantial overseas investment from previously undisclosed places: South Korea’s sovereign-wealth fund, France’s richest man, Israeli banks and insurance companies, and exploratory talks with a Saudi developer, according to former and current executives. These were in addition to previously reported attempts to raise money in China and Qatar.

[...]

[The family] are walking away from a Brooklyn hotel once considered central to their plans for an office hub. From other properties, they are extracting cash, including tens of millions in borrowed funds from the recently acquired former New York Times building.

[...]

The mortgage on their tower is due in 18 months. This has led to concerns that Kushner could use—or has perhaps already used—his official position to prop up the family business despite having divested to close relatives his ownership in many projects to conform with government ethics requirements. Federal investigators are examining Kushner’s finances and business dealings, along with those of other Trump associates.

[...]

It was 2006—the height of the real-estate market boom—when Kushner Cos. agreed to buy 666 Fifth Avenue for $1.8 billion, then a record for a Manhattan building. All of it was borrowed except for $50 million. The company still holds half of a $1.2 billion mortgage, on which it hasn’t paid a cent. The full amount is due in February 2019.

[...]

The mortgage will become even more of a burden after a scheduled jump in interest rates in December. Under some dire circumstances, guarantees in the refinancing agreement could even give lenders the ability to go after the family’s other assets—many of which are also underpinned by debt.

[...]

Federal investigators know that Kushner met with then-Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak in Trump Tower last December and later met with Sergey Gorkov, head of the Kremlin-controlled VEB bank in two meetings that he didn’t, at first, disclose publicly or on his application for his national-security clearance. After those meetings became public, Kushner and the White House said the contacts were made in his role as a Trump adviser and didn’t involve discussion of his family business. But VEB and a spokesman for Russian President Vladimir Putin described the meetings quite differently, noted Adam Schiff of California, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee. They said that Kushner was there in his capacity as head of his family’s real estate business.

Which may be some explanation of why Kushner reportedly left the meeting after only ten minutes.

Investigators say they are studying those accounts with keen interest. “I think it is part of a pattern of outreach to Russian financial interests, which are essentially Vladimir Putin and his oligarch circle, by Trump family members,” said Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, a Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee. “The financial dealings are important because we know that the Russian playbook is to engage and compromise foreign leaders.”

A tangled web.

History of the Kushner troubles is in the rest of the article.