Crime And Lies In DC

 

As has often been noted, if Republicans are interested in fighting crime in Washington, DC, they need look no further than 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.:

The Trump family notched as much as $5 billion in paper wealth on Monday after its flagship crypto venture opened trading of a new digital currency.

The launch is akin to an initial public offering, in which the cryptocurrency, called WLFI, can now be bought and sold on the open market like a listed company’s shares. Beforehand, people who had privately bought WLFI from the Trump venture, World Liberty Financial, hadn’t been able to exchange their tokens.

The trading debut was most likely the biggest financial success for the president’s family since the inauguration. The Trump family, including President Trump himself, holds just under a quarter of all WLFI tokens in existence. Trump’s three sons are co-founders of World Liberty, while it names the president a “Co-Founder Emeritus.”

World Liberty says founders and team members’ tokens remain “locked,” meaning they still can’t sell them. But the trading launch now puts a real-world valuation on their holdings, which previously were valued based on private sales.

WLFI is likely now the Trumps’ most valuable asset, exceeding their decades-old property portfolio. While the president’s family has continued to pursue property deals around the world since taking office, the fast-moving crypto business has had the biggest early impact.

President Trump helped launch World Liberty a year ago, while campaigning, saying it would help make “America Great Again, this time with crypto.”

World Liberty’s rise this year came as the president drove the growth of the crypto industry from the White House, reining in regulation and touting the potential of private, digital currencies to invigorate the U.S. economy.

In advance of the WLFI trading debut, World Liberty this summer took over a publicly listed firm and raised $750 million in cash from investors to buy the cryptocurrency.

That deal, an unusually circular transaction with the same party as buyer and seller, stands to earn the Trumps around $500 million since they keep up to three-quarters of the revenues from the sale of the tokens, The Wall Street Journal previously reported...

You may recall back in 2021 when the convicted felon Malignant Fascist referred to cryptocurrency as a "scam."  Hearing that word pass his lips must've brought him to his senses ("Wait.  A scam?  That's my business model!  I want in!").   After breezing by concerns about emoluments and divestiture in his first go- round (remember the Trump International Hotel where lobbyists and foreign agents paid to curry favor with the regime?), the convicted felon believes if he's going to cash in on his office, now's the time to go big (thanks to the protections offered by the Republican Supreme Court).  If you took all the illegal deals, scandals, unethical practices, and money- grubbing of Presidents from Washington to Biden, no one would come anywhere close in brazenness or magnitude to the Malignant Fascist's malfeasance.

But, that same career criminal is "Mission Accomplished"-style declaring that Washington, DC, is now "crime free": 

In a spree of Truth Social posts on Labor Day, President Donald Trump declared Washington, D.C., a “crime free zone” following his National Guard takeover of the capital.

Trump also specifically praised Mayor Muriel Bowser, claiming she had “become very popular because she worked with me and my great people in bringing CRIME down to virtually NOTHING.”

However, available crime statistics from D.C.’s Metropolitan Police Department show 442 crimes reported in the district over the past seven days.

These include 50 reports of violent crime: one homicide, 23 instances of assault with a dangerous weapon, 24 robberies, and two cases of sex abuse. Nearly 250 thefts were also reported over the past week.

Trump began his so-called crime crackdown in D.C. on 11 August. As part of the effort, his administration took over the city’s police department and sent in National Guard troops, FBI, and ICE agents into the streets...

Once again, this was a dry run for 2026 mid- term elections interference and voter suppression that will be played out in every major Democratic- run city in America over the next year, Chicago being the next target, apparently.  Maybe he thinks this "crime free" declaration gives him an exit from the charade of the likely illegal deployment of National Guard troops in our cities, which is the majority of the public opposes. Maybe he's getting blowback from the states who provided National Guard troops that are in danger of running out of money for operations and training.

In any event, DC won't be crime free as long as the Malignant Fascist and his gang of fascist cronies is gone.

(Image:  composite by The Guardian, Getty Images)