Kushner's Albanian Land Grab Sparks Riots

 

Violent protests entered a sixth day in Albania, as protestors fought police and demanded an end to official corruption triggered by Jared Kushner's land grab approved by the government. Non-violent protests have been going on for months in the capital of Tirana. From France 24 News:

"Violent demonstrations have rocked Tirana since Tuesday with protesters calling for action over poor university conditions, high tuition fees and corruption.

Hundreds of protesters gathered again at noon in front of the education ministry chanting "Rama, resign" amid a tense standoff with police, who used water cannon and tear gas to hold back the crowds. [snip]

Tirana saw its harshest violence on Saturday when protesters threw rocks, Molotov cocktails, metal objects and pyrotechnic devices at police, and torched cars and litter bins to use as barricades against advancing police.

Buildings including a court, banks and a post office were set on fire or severely damaged. Police used rubber bullets on demonstrators for the first time since the protests began, AFP journalists saw. [snip]

Albania's close ally the United States reacted late Saturday. Its embassy in Tirana urged "restraint and calm on all sides".

The unrest follows months of anti-government protests in the Balkan nation, initially sparked by a controversial resort development linked to US President Donald Trump's family." (our emphasis)

Kushner's plan is to develop a pristine ecological area on Albania's Adriatic coast as a resort for elites. When he and his greedy wife Ivanka Trump saw the property from a yacht, they decided to buy it with no apparent concern for the site's ecological importance. The Albanian regime was a willing conspirator in the deal, which they justified by saying it would produce jobs and economic stimulus, and likely some payoffs to top officials. Stay tuned.

(photo: AFP via Getty)

The Trump Crime Family's Grift Bank

 

If you haven't read about this latest Trump Crime Family get-rich-quick grift, Christopher Bates at Electoral-vote.com has a brief summary of the "World Liberty Bank":

"The griftwatch is eternal with this president. We could easily write an item about grifty behavior from him and/or his kids every single day, and not run out of things to cover. The only reason we don't is that it quickly moves into beating-a-dead-horse territory. Everyone should know he's on the take, at this point, and that the powers that might hold him accountable (outside the court system, sometimes) are not currently doing so.

"This story is sleazy enough, however, that we just could not let it pass. World Liberty Financial (WLF) is, of course, the Trump family's crypto business. However, it cannot legally issue its own stablecoins (bitcoins tied to reserves of some commodity, commonly U.S. dollars) because it is not a bank. Instead, it has to rely on a middleman and, of course, the middleman ends up with some of the profits and a lot of the power.

"The owners of WLF (including the Trumps, who hold 38% of the company in their own names) do not want to give up their profits or power. So, they have come up with a solution: World Liberty Bank. WLF applied for a charter with the Treasury Department's Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, and yesterday federal officials who work for Donald Trump gave preliminary approval to Donald Trump to open his own bank.

"It is not a done deal yet. There are still hoops to be jumped through, and maybe the Trumps won't be able to jump through them all. Or maybe it will take long enough that by the time final approvals roll around, the Department of Treasury will no longer be under the control of Trump, and will say "no." These are possibilities, though we are not at all confident in them.

"If the Trumps do get to run their own bank, particularly if Trump is still president (and Todd Blanche is still AG), the possibilities for grift are endless. Trump was already bandying about ideas for a third Trump-branded cryptocurrency. Imagine how many different coins they might issue, and how much they might fleece the rubes the base for, especially if the wolf is guarding the henhouse. Trump also has a habit of ordering his businesses to transfer funds to his personal accounts, and then having the businesses declare bankruptcy. This is what happened with his casinos and it could happen here. Perhaps most obviously, a Trump-run bank would allow for money laundering on an industrial scale. The first 50 accountholders would all be Russian oligarchs.

"It is clear, at this point, that Trump does not give a damn about hiding his corruption. He was more subtle during Trump v1.0, but now all bets are off. Maybe this is a variant of his usual strategy of muddying the waters with so much crap, it's hard to focus on any one bad act. Or maybe he's just gotten more desperate, since his time as president (and maybe his time on Earth) will soon run out. The Democrats are going to try hard to make this stick to the President and his Party in 2026. We do not know if they will be successful, but we do know that Trump has given them an embarrassment of (purloined) riches to work with."

We see the primary business for this "bank" would be to launder money for oligarchs and criminal organizations around the world, with the Trump Crime Family getting their beak wet at every transaction.  The voiding of this charter needs to be among the first acts of a new Democratic administration (if we get there and elect a junkyard dog Democrat as President).  Hoping for prison for some or all of the participants in this outrageous, unprecedented scheme may be too much to hope for, but it's sure goddamn deserving.

(Image:  Alexandra Citrin-Safadi/WSJ)

 

BBC Tries Subpoenaing Trump Crime Family

 

The unhinged seditious Malignant Fascist's frivolous $10 billion lawsuit against the British Broadcasting Company over its documentary about the MF's role in instigating the January 6 violent insurrection is coming back to bite him.  As we've noted, the presiding judge has ruled that BBC is entitled to get the MF's financial records, since he claimed that he had been financially harmed by the documentary.  Now, BBC is attempting to get members of the MF's crime family in court as witnesses.  From Politico:

"The BBC is seeking to subpoena President Donald Trump’s son Donald Trump Jr., his daughter Ivanka Trump and son-in-law Jared Kushner in connection with a $10 billion defamation lawsuit the president is pressing against the U.K. broadcaster.

Lawyers for the BBC say the Trump family members 'without question have personal knowledge' about President Trump’s intentions in delivering the speech at the heart of the case: his Jan. 6, 2021, address to supporters at the Ellipse as the Capitol attack was getting underway.

The president’s lawsuit alleges that a BBC documentary aired in the U.K. in 2024 defamed him by splicing together distant parts of the speech to make it sound like he was endorsing violence. The BBC has apologized for the editing but denies that it is valid grounds for a suit. 

Drawing largely on testimony gathered by the House Jan. 6 Committee, the BBC’s attorneys say Donald Trump Jr. and Ivanka Trump were present as the president revised his speech and were on hand at the Ellipse as he spoke. The network’s lawyers also say Kushner drafted a proposed statement for the president condemning the violence."

As BBC's lawyers attempted to serve Donald Jr., Ivanka, and Jared Kushner with subpoenas, they were turned back by the Secret Service.  They're now asking the court to allow service by mail to the lawyers for the three:

"In a motion filed Friday in federal court in Miami, the BBC’s attorneys said the president’s lawyers also refused to accept the subpoenas. The network is asking the court to authorize service by mail or to order that service through President Trump’s attorneys is adequate."

They can't duck subpoenas indefinitely and eventually will be put under oath to answer questions about what they knew of the MF's sinister and violent intentions on and leading up to January 6.

(photos: AP/Alex Brandon/Richard Drew)

Capital One Dropped Trump Over Money Laundering Flags

 

A bogus lawsuit filed by the corrupt Malignant Fascist's legal team a few years ago against Capital One accused it of illegally de-banking the MF after his instigation of the January 6 seditious insurrection.  Now, Capital One has responded by asking the court to toss out the suit, claiming that the MF's companies' accounts were closed after reviews raised red flags about money laundering.  From Bloomberg:

"Capital One Financial Corp. said in a court filing late Friday that it closed accounts belonging to President Donald Trump's sprawling real estate company in 2021 for legitimate reasons after an internal review by the bank's anti-money laundering team.

The lender made the revelation in a filing asking a judge to toss out a Trump Organization lawsuit accusing it of illegally 'debanking' the president's company because of political discrimination following the assault on the Capitol by his supporters on Jan. 6, 2021.

Capital One, which denies discriminating against Trump's business, said the internal review was triggered by 'transaction patterns' that 'are among the types of activity flagged by federal banking guidance.' The bank said it's only making the anti-money laundering review public now as a result of the litigation.

The filing does not give details about the transactions at issue or accuse Trump or his company of wrongdoing. The decision to close the accounts was made as part of a process involving the lender's anti-money laundering professionals 'with decades of law enforcement experience,' the bank said." (our emphasis)

It wouldn't surprise us if it were disclosed that a number of those transactions were from the MF's friends in the criminal world and from his supporters in Russia. 

It's always amusing when the MF's lawsuits backfire on him, with Capital One noting that the MF's suit forced the disclosure about the money laundering review as the reason for closing his accounts.  In his zeal to extort money through lawsuits, his failures and criminality always surface.

 

Corrupt FIFA Boss' Scheme Falls Through

 

FIFA's unapologetic Trump sycophant and sketchy hustler Gianni Infantino thought through his close association with the corrupt Malignant Fascist and his family would bring him new riches by selling off pieces of the World Cup event.  The plan, hidden from member soccer conferences and internal FIFA officials, blew up after it was made public that the MF's son-in-law's brother Josh Kushner was involved in the plan.  The blow-up now threatens the corrupt Infantino with removal:

"Gianni Infantino's position as Fifa president is growing increasingly untenable as Uefa declared it has lost confidence in the Swiss-Italian after he scrapped his controversial plan to sell off stakes of the World Cup to private investors.

Uefa’s 55 member associations insisted they would not participate in any Fifa tournament until plans for the Fifa Forward Enterprise (FFE) were withdrawn and confirmed they would even have boycotted the next World Cup, forcing Infantino’s climbdown late on Friday evening.

Concacaf, the governing body for North America and the Caribbean, reiterated their own concerns over the lack of consultation and rejected the proposal, as did the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) who called for an “urgent review of its governance” at Fifa – piling more pressure on Infantino. [snip]

Calls are growing from Uefa member associations to back a candidate to run against Infantino, and the European governing body’s president Ceferin appears the most qualified.

A rival of Infantino, Ceferin most recently no-showed the World Cup 2026 final after the tournament was plagued by controversy, most notably the suspension of Folarin Balogun’s red card ban following a 'review' request from Trump, which Uefa said 'crossed a red line'”.  (our emphasis)

It's another chapter in "Everything Trump Touches Dies," something that the power-lusting Infantino was blind to as he wormed his way into the MF's good graces, giving him a nonsensical "FIFA Peace Prize" because the MF was butthurt over not receiving a Nobel Prize.  He intervened in the red card dispute on the U.S.'s Balogun after the MF's phone call, angerimg every other participating nation.  His arrogance in not consulting with FIFA member associations at last seems to be fatal.  His term is up next year, and what would have been a likely re-election as head of FIFA now looks dead. 

(photo: The MF awards himself the "Peace Prize" as Infantino watches. AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

 

How Trump Tried To Hijack America's Birthday Celebration

 

Democratic House staff have developed an interim report on the Malignant Fascist's hijacking of the Nation's 250th anniversary, and, well it fits the Trump Crime Family brand (our emphasis):

Donald Trump staged a hostile takeover of the US’s 250th anniversary celebration to enrich political allies, harvest voter data and promote Christian nationalist ideology, according to a congressional investigation released on Thursday.

The interim report, “From Vanity to Insanity: How the White House Cheated the American People Out of Their 250th Birthday”, outlines a web of alleged corruption, wire fraud and pay-to-play schemes orchestrated through a shadow corporation embedded within the National Park Foundation (NPF).

The document was produced by Democratic staff of the House of Representatives’ natural resources committee’s oversight and investigations subcommittee. It has not been officially adopted by the committee.

“Under President Donald Trump, this anniversary has been hijacked and perverted into a hotbed of corruption and self-enrichment,” it states, contending that the machinery built for a national commemoration was converted “into an apparatus for raising and spending money in service of the President’s ego, political ideology, and pet projects.”

In 2016 Congress established the US semiquincentennial commission, operating as the nonprofit America250 Foundation, to plan the nation’s 2026 celebrations on a nonpartisan basis. However, under Trump, the White House launched a sustained pressure campaign to subsume the commission.

When America250 leadership resisted its demands to shift focus toward partisan, campaign-style spectacles, the Trump administration created Freedom 250 as a wholly owned subsidiary of the congressionally chartered NPF. 

The interim report finds that, by taking control of the NPF board and installing key campaign operatives such as Meredith O’Rourke and Chris LaCivita, the White House secured an opaque vehicle that enjoyed the NPF’s nonpartisan credibility and tax-exempt status while operating outside standard government transparency laws.

The report goes on to flag funds surreptitiously diverted from the official America250 Foundation to the MF's "Freedom 250" wire fraud / grifting / pay-to-play / crony payoff operation:

Sources interviewed by Democrats on the committee said fundraisers including O’Rourke misled prospective America250 donors by providing them with Freedom 250’s banking and routing numbers instead. The report finds this could constitute wire fraud and charitable solicitation fraud under federal and District of Columbia law.

This deceit extended to the entertainment industry. Artists recruited for the kickoff of the Great American State Fair – including Martina McBride and Young MC – were assured the event was nonpartisan, only to face social media backlash when the event was revealed to be a Trump-backed rally. In the words of Young MC, the booking was a “bait and switch”.

The investigation also outlines how Freedom 250 effectively put a price tag on presidential access, circulating sponsorship packages starting at $500,000 and climbing above $10m for tiered recognition, culminating in a “historic photo opportunity” with Trump.  [snip]

Freedom 250 has also functioned as a conduit for steering federal funds to Trump campaign loyalists. Event Strategies – the same firm that planned the January 6 rally that preceded the US Capitol attack – was awarded 18 federal contracts totalling roughly $40m, along with an indefinite delivery master contract worth up to $100m.

Beyond lucrative contracts, the administration is accused of building a partisan political database disguised as a government domain. Freedom 250’s website, initially managed by ex-Department of Government Efficiency (Doge) employees known for past data leaks, extensively logs user data.

Event registration is powered by Campaign Nucleus, a firm founded by Brad Parscale, a veteran of Trump election campaigns. Campaign Nucleus openly boasts about using artificial intelligence to analyse personal data and target “persuadable” voters. Unsuspecting visitors, such as attendees of a free Fifa World Cup Fan Zone on the National Mall, unwittingly fed their personal information directly into this Republican campaign apparatus.

Of course, with the Christian nationalist fascists in charge, you also had to have the re-writing and whitewashing of American history:

The report also focuses on the ideological overhaul of the semiquincentennial. Freedom 250 replaced America250’s civic engagement focus with overt Christian nationalist programming, operating in tandem with the Religious Liberty Commission, which recently recommended repealing the Johnson amendment to allow churches to engage in partisan politics.

A central feature of this effort was “Freedom Trucks” – a federally funded fleet of mobile museums dispatched to schoolchildren across the nation. Supplied with content from the conservative PragerU [the Prager University Foundation] and Hillsdale College, these exhibits recast the founding of the US as an exclusively Christian project, embracing demonstrable falsehoods.

Exhibits include an AI-generated George Washington claiming that “our rights are a gift from God”, a statement the first president is not documented as having made, alongside antisemitic tropes suggesting that Jewish merchants financed the Revolutionary cause while omitting they also fought and died for it.

Concurrently, the administration aggressively moved to erase historical realities, removing national park signage detailing slavery, forced removal of Indigenous peoples and climate change. Huffman said it amounted to an attempt to reshape American identity to fit a narrow rightwing agenda.

“It’s a fantasy that airbrushes out the more complicated parts of our history – slavery, the Native American genocide, the actual secular ideals on which our government was founded. It wasn’t the opening of the clouds and some revealed covenant with God as they would have you believe.”

Fortunately, the MF's hijacked fail isn't the only celebration going on.  From the backyard barbecue, to local parades and fireworks, to local- and state- sponsored events, etc., Americans will largely ignore the MF's self-aggrandizing to celebrate in their own ways.

The country is utterly awash in a Trump crime spree that's overwhelming the senses and is unprecedented in the history of Western democracies.  But it's providing a long list of particulars if Democrats (who must have the stomach) go after the entire criminal operation when they get back in power (and damn the illegitimate Republican Supreme Court's bogus grant of criminal immunity to the MF!).

(Photo:  packing in the crowds! / (Andrew Leyden/Getty Images) 

The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly

 

The good:

President Donald Trump has had a hard time distancing himself from the Jeffrey Epstein saga, and a new development in the case might prove to be more of a headache than he wants, according to two legal experts.  

Earlier this month, convicted sex criminal Jeffrey Epstein's assistant, Lesley Groff, testified before Congress about her relationship with the disgraced financier and his crimes. The transcripts of that interview were released late last week, and some of the details Groff shared with investigators raised red flags for attorneys Brian Kabateck and Shant Karnikian, who co-host the "Civil Action" podcast on the Legal AF Network.

For instance, Kabateck pointed out in a new episode on Sunday that Groff testified she began working for Epstein in 2001 and that Epstein and Trump were in contact for at least a decade. That seems to contradict Trump's previous claim that he cut off communications with Epstein in 2004 or 2005, well before Trump became president, Kabateck noted. 

Another issue is that those dates extend beyond Epstein's 2008 felony conviction for soliciting a minor, which is another "problematic" aspect of the timeline, Kabateck said.

Karnickian said the transcript showed that Trump "has something to hide" in the case.

"Early on, we talked about Epstein, and we thought this is a sideshow, and maybe Trump's deliberately putting it out there," Karnikian said. "It's become a big problem for him, and it's clear that he has something to hide here."

Groff's testimony, such as it was, confirmed timelines that contradict what Epstein buddy and pathological lying pedo the Malignant Fascist has claimed.  Thursday is the court-ordered deadline for the "Justice" Department to release more of the Epstein files, which they'll drag out in appeals.  But what a difference it would make with a Democratic Congress investigating and doing everything it could to get ALL the unredacted Epstein files that are being illegally withheld by the MF's toadies at the "Justice" Department.

The bad:

Susie Madrak Has Pancreatic Cancer And Needs Our Help

You think you're going to live forever until something yanks you by the arm and reminds that we're all mere mortal humans. One of those moments for me was when Susie called and said they confirmed she had a cancerous growth in her pancreas.

Being the perennial optimist that I am, I asked the internet about treatments for early stage pancreatic cancer and was told there is a Whipple surgery that can be performed. Unfortunately, Susie's cancer is stage 3 and past the point where they can do that.

So it's chemo, and chemo might arrest the growth of the tumor. Might. It's a pretty scary situation.

Susie has a GoFundMe to help with the costs of fighting this pernicious cancer. It's likely that while she goes through chemo she'll have to take a leave of absence from writing here, which is a major source of income for her.

All of the staff at C&L are rooting for her. If you've enjoyed her writing, please consider supporting her GoFundMe so she can fight this cancer without worrying about having enough money for care, or medication, or even the stupid copays none of us should have.

If you can't donate, please share this post or the GoFundMe link with others who might be able to...

That's an appeal from Karoli Kuns at Crooks & Liars that we're more than happy to pass along.  Please consider giving to Susie Madrak's GoFundMe, and if you're of a mind, ask others to consider making a donation.  Anything and everything helps.  Let's give a great progressive writer a boost, shall we?!

The ugly: 

President Donald Trump’s sons are profiting off of their father’s connections, including in a previously-undisclosed deal over a lucrative metal.

“Their sons were soon doing business with partners in a deal that their fathers were negotiating, continuing a pattern of self-enrichment in the second Trump administration that has few precedents in American history,” wrote The New York Times’ Paul Sonne and Eric Lipton on Sunday. The report covered how Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump availed themselves of a meeting between Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and Kazakhstan President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev in September to grant a little-known American company called Kaz Resources access to their tungsten mines.

Prior to that meeting, the Trump administration approved preliminary applications for up to $1.6 billion in federal financing for Kaz Resources to break ground on the project in rural Kazakhstan. Dominari Securities, which is partly owned by the Trump sons, agreed to take a 20 percent stake in the tungsten projects.

“Around the same time, Cantor Fitzgerald, an investment company controlled by Mr. Lutnick’s family and overseen by his sons Brandon and Kyle Lutnick, helped one of the lead investors working with Dominari on the Kazakh deal raise $210 million in new capital for a related entity,” Sonne and Lipton wrote. “Such rounds of fund-raising typically net Cantor millions of dollars in fees.”

They added, “The Kazakh deal was ultimately signed on Nov. 6, six days after the investment involving the Trump sons and their partners, which was not publicly disclosed at the time. The arrangement is hardly an outlier. One or both families have financial ties to at least 14 companies that are actively working with the federal government on critical mining deals, including the Kazakhstan project, according to federal filings examined by The New York Times.”... (our emphasis)

The Trump Crime Family, grifting its way through another 4 years, lining their pockets in a money-grab unprecedented in American politics -- and all right out there in the open.  Of course, there's more grifting, influence-peddling, crony enrichment, etc., going on, which the article outlines.  A sickening, shocking spectacle of greed by The.  Most.  Corrupt.  Regime.  Ever. 

"The Price Of Corruption" For Working Families

 

This past Wednesday, the American Economic Liberties Project and Groundwork Collaborative released a 10-page report, “The Price of Corruption: How Trump’s Pay-to-Play Administration is Driving Up Costs for Working Families” (pdf), that outlines nine policy areas "that have been warped by Trump's corruption."  It's main purpose is to pinpoint areas for further investigation by Democrats when the new Congress forms in 2027.

The policy areas covered are Health Care, Tariffs, Gas Prices, Energy, Air Travel, Tax Filing, Corporate Misbehavior, Credit Bureaus and Loan Rates, and Digital Assets and Prediction Markets. For a flavor of the contents, here's an excerpt for the last area, Digital Assets and Prediction Markets:

... The Trump family has personally netted at least $1.4 billion from crypto schemes, as this administration pulls away from oversight and enforcement of crypto fraud and prediction market regulations.

● Trump has installed people with crypto conflicts of interest throughout his administration, including by nominating more than 200 appointees who owned crypto assets worth up to $340 million.

 

● Simultaneously, the Department of Justice shut down investigations into crypto companies. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, while serving as deputy and holding at least $485,000 in crypto assets, eliminated the National Cryptocurrency Enforcement Team.

 

● Additionally, the administration has accelerated the adoption of crypto into critical federal agencies, including when Trumpʼs Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Bill Pulte urged mortgage giant Fannie Mae to accept crypto-backed mortgages for the first time ever.

 

● Trumpʼs crypto company World Liberty Financial (WLF) relies on Binance, a crypto exchange that admitted to anti-money laundering failures, Iran sanctions violations, and failing to report suspicious transactions linked to terrorist groups like Hamas. Binance has reportedly donated software to help launch WLF, and its founder, Changpeng Zhao, who had been convicted for failure to maintain an effective anti-laundering program, was later pardoned by Trump.

 

● Over the past year, Donald Trump Jr. has served as a strategic advisor to Kalshi and a large investor in Polymarket, while the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) – the agency overseeing these firms – has acted as their ally, rather than their watchdog. Both firms had actively lobbied Trumpʼs CFTC to block states from regulating prediction markets in the same way they regulate gambling companies...

 

As noted, it's a short, outline-format report, so please give it a read.

The media can't or won't focus on this firehose of corruption, but a Democratic Congress can and must. The American public -- especially working families -- needs to have it made clear which party is fighting for their interests and which Epstein class party is feeding at the public trough.

BONUS:  Similar takes here.

(Image:  Khoa Tran, Vanity Fair/ Getty Images)