Trump's Motive Behind Doc Theft Indicated

 

When the mentally ill and seditious Malignant Fascist left the White House after his humiliating loss to former President Biden in 2020, he took with him boxes of material including highly classified documents that he stored at Mar-a-Lardo in such places as a bathroom and his private office.  After refusing to return them, he was indicted.  Unfortunately, due to the foot dragging timidity of then Attorney General Merrick Garland, the case was brought midway through Biden's term and was assigned to biased Judge Aileen Cannon, the MF's faithful appointee to the bench, who eventually dragged out and killed the case. 

Now, it's been disclosed that the stolen documents contained information that the MF considered important for his business.  From MS Now reporters Carol Leonnig and Jacqueline Alemany:

"Special counsel Jack Smith gathered evidence that then-candidate Donald Trump took many top-secret documents that related to his worldwide business interests, and investigators considered this a likely motive for Trump concealing them at his Florida club after he left the White House, according to newly released case records. [snip]

Trump’s reason for taking hundreds of pages of classified documents when he left office in January 2021 — and then concealing them when the Justice Department subpoenaed him for their return in May 2022 — has been one of the larger mysteries of the case. FBI agents conducting an unannounced search of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence in August 2022 discovered hundreds more pages of top-secret records that Trump and his lawyers had failed to return to the government after claiming they had fully returned all classified materials.

In a January 2023 progress memo reviewed by MS NOW, Smith’s office discussed the possible motive after the FBI discovered that Trump held onto many documents related to his businesses.

'Trump possessed classified documents pertinent to his business interests — establishing a motive for retaining them,' according to a January 2023 memo from Smith’s office tracking progress in their documents and election interference investigations.  'We must have those documents.'”

In a Tuesday letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi, Raskin insisted that Trump’s Justice Department has sought to cover up both the details of Trump’s 'hoarding' of classified government secrets and storage of them in his Mar-a-Lago club’s showers and closets that put national security at risk, and also the clues as to Trump’s motives for doing so."(our emphasis)

It should come as no surprise that the MF would use classified information to further his business interests, perhaps to the point of selling the information for a commercial advantage or just plain cash / bitcoin. It's a pattern that's remained unchanged in his second corrupt term.

Should Dems retake the House (and hopefully the Senate) in November, this development needs to be pursued with the Department of Justice (for Trump) by Rep. Raskin's committee under threat of subpoena and obstruction of justice.

(photo: Trump's idea of a secure location. Justice Department via AP)

 

More Grifting By The Trump Crime Family

 

Since the corrupt and demented Malignant Fascist returned to the Oval Office, his family has raked in money from businesses and foreign governments that want to do business with their daddy's regime. The latest crooked enterprise involves his sons Don Jr. and Eric interest in a drone manufacturing business.n The Guardian has the report:

"A golf club company backed by the sons of Donald Trump is merging with drone manufacturer Powerus in a deal designed to take the drone technology company public.

The merger with Aureus Greenway Holdings is the latest in Eric and Donald Trump Jr’s growing investments in the drone sector, following last month’s $1.5bn tie-up between Israeli drone maker Xtend and Florida-based JFB Construction Holdings. Drones have become a major procurement priority for the Pentagon and are widely used in Ukraine, where dense air defense systems near the frontlines limit the deployment of conventional aircraft."

War drones are certainly a growing industry, thanks in large part to their daddy's war of choice on Iran and threats of war elsewhere. nIt's as if they will get richer if he starts more wars (Cuba? Greenland? etc.).  The report continues:

"Powerus, which was formed in 2025 by Andrew Fox, makes heavy-lift drones that can carry industrial payloads up to 675kg. The company also offers services to transform existing staffed boats into remotely operated or fully autonomous vessels.

Fox is expected to serve as chief executive officer and chair of the combined company, Aureus said in an SEC filing.

In connection with the planned merger, Aureus has engaged Dominari Securities to help raise about $9m in financing.

Dominari counts both Trump brothers among its shareholders, with roughly 6% stake each."

The company is expected to bid on large, lucrative drone contracts from the Pentagon.  You can be certain that their proposals will lean on the fact that the skeevy Trump brothers are backing the company.  From bitcoins to drones, there's nothing that this greedy, nepotistic and corrupt family won't try in profiting from while the Malignant Fascist is in the Oval Office. 

(image: Brian Snyder / Reuters)

 

Trump's Cryptocurrency Windfall

 

Setting a record for profiting off of Government, the Malignant Fascist and his family have raked in hundreds of millions in their sketchy cryptocurrency hustle, much seemingly from shadowy Middle Eastern entities and China. The MF's elder sons are traveling the world looking to hawk their World Liberty Financial crypto tokens to those looking for a quick profit and to show that they're on the MF's "team". From a detailed report from Reuters:

"Eric Trump was in Dubai on family business. Meeting with a Chinese businessman and his associates on the sidelines of a cryptocurrency conference in May this year, the son of U.S. President Donald J. Trump ran through his usual talking points about the inefficiency of traditional banks and his own famous father’s run-ins with financiers.

Then came the pitch. Buy at least $20 million of “governance tokens” in the Trump family’s crypto business, World Liberty Financial, and become part of a venture that Eric Trump predicted would soon embody the future of finance in America, according to a person familiar with the meeting.

To some in that small gathering, the technology Eric Trump’s team described for World Liberty seemed “rudimentary,” the person said. At the time, World Liberty was a fledgling business. It hadn’t yet created the cryptocurrency-based finance platform it promised after its September 2024 launch. It still hasn’t." (our emphasis)

The message seemed to be clear: buy into our crypto tokens and become a part of the MF's "venture" of pay-to-play. After all, who appoints the Federal regulators of business and the cryptocurrency industry but the MF himself? More:

"Even so, the pitch apparently worked. On June 26, an obscure entity called Aqua1 Foundation, which said it was based in the United Arab Emirates, announced it was buying $100 million of cryptocurrency tokens from World Liberty. It was the single largest known purchase of the so-called WLFI tokens at the time.

The Chinese businessman who met with Eric Trump in Dubai was Guren “Bobby” Zhou, who has executive roles in multiple businesses and who is under investigation in Britain for money laundering, according to that nation’s National Crime Agency and a document filed in an immigration case at London's Royal Courts of Justice."  (our emphasis)

An alleged money launderer associated with the Trump hustle?  We're shocked, shocked! There's much more in the Reuters investigation, including this observation:

" ....the Trump Organization’s income soared 17-fold to $864 million from $51 million a year earlier, according to Reuters calculations based on the president’s official disclosures, property records, financial records released in court cases, crypto trade information and other sources. Of the first-half total, $802 million – more than 90% – came from Trump crypto ventures, including sales of World Liberty tokens." (our emphasis)

Crypto "investors" clearly know they're buying the favor of the vindictive MF in dealings with the Federal government, whether it's regulatory relief, contracts and more. It's the most corrupt use of an elected position one could foresee, if one were in a coma the last 20 years and missed the Trump family's widespread grifting and fraud.

(Photo illustration: Sarah Grillo/Axios. Photo: Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

 

In Another Pay-To-Play Scandal, Trump Pardons Corrupt Crypto Billionaire

 

It's another day ending in "y," so the cascade of Trump Crime Family corruption continues:

The Trump administration excels at sowing uncertainty. But it is sending an unambiguous message to crypto entrepreneurs who may be operating on the fringes of the law, or outside of it: Don’t worry about a thing.  

Changpeng Zhao, the founder and former CEO of crypto exchange Binance, served a four-month prison sentence after pleading guilty in 2023 to charges related to anti-money-laundering violations. Zhao, widely known as “CZ,” was released in September 2024. After months of lobbying the Trump administration, he received a pardon, with the White House saying Thursday it believes his case was “overly prosecuted” by the Biden administration.

The pardon is expected to help Binance return to the United States after a yearslong investigation found that the company had allowed criminals to freely transact on its platform, enabling actions including child sex abuse, narcotics trafficking and terrorist financing. (The company and Zhao pleaded guilty in one of the largest corporate settlements with federal authorities in US history.)  

Zhao’s case was a major victory for the Biden administration, coming just weeks after a jury found Sam Bankman-Fried guilty of multiple counts of fraud and conspiracy in connection with the collapse of his company, FTX, a onetime rival to Binance. (Bankman-Fried, who was sentenced to 25 years in a federal prison, is also angling for a pardon, according to the New York Times.)

At that time, prosecutors and financial regulators had an icy stance toward crypto that the industry has long painted as hostile — a fact that helped galvanize crypto advocates to support Trump, who embraced them (and their very wealthy donors) during his re-election campaign. 

Trump, once a skeptic of digital assets, is now a full-fledged crypto mogul. Having amassed more than $5 billion in paper gains through his own and his family’s various crypto projects, Trump’s digital asset portfolio now eclipses his real estate holdings.

But Trump’s success in crypto is thanks in no small part to connections he and his eldest sons have forged with industry bigwigs, including Zhao, whose own net worth is estimated at more than $85 billion.

The Trump family’s crypto platform, World Liberty Financial, is hosted by Binance, and the exchange has been a key driver in the growth of World Liberty’s dollar-pegged token, USD1. Earlier this year, as Zhao was actively seeking a pardon, Binance accepted a $2 billion investment from an Emirati-backed investment firm using USD1 — a boon for World Liberty Financial, which effectively received a $2 billion bank deposit.

Zhao's isn't the only case of a corrupt crypto billionaire getting a "get out of jail" card from the sticky fingered Malignant Fascist:

Justin Sun, the Chinese crypto billionaire who poured tens of millions of dollars into World Liberty Financial soon after it launched, had been facing civil fraud charges in the United States under the Biden administration. The Securities and Exchange Commission dropped the case against Sun in February. 

Sun, who’d reportedly avoided setting foot on US soil for fear of being arrested, was a VIP guest at Trump’s private crypto dinner in May — an event for which guests competed for invitations by buying the president’s memecoin.

Other white-collar defendants Trump has blessed with pardons include Ross Ulbricht, a cause célèbre of the Libertarian crypto world, who had been serving a life sentence for creating the Silk Road marketplace, which the Justice Department once described as “the most sophisticated and extensive criminal marketplace on the Internet.”

The sundowning Malignant Fascist had his usual word salad response when questioned about Zhao's pay- to- play pardon:

“Let me just tell you that he was somebody that, as I was told, I don’t know him, I don’t believe I’ve ever met him … he had a lot of support, and they said that what he did is not even a crime,” Trump told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins during a roundtable in the White House State Dining Room on Thursday. “It wasn’t a crime, that he was persecuted by the Biden administration, and so, I gave him a pardon at the request of a lot of very good people.” 

In the MF's fraudster- friendly dictionary, "prosecuted" means "persecuted" if done by a political foe, but doesn't apply if you're pursing revenge prosecutions yourself.  

Of course, this latest story about the utter corruption of the Malignant Fascist and his crime family will get supplanted by another MF outrage within the hour (more Epstein files coverup, White House demolition, trade wars, extra-judicial murders of foreign nationals, shake downs, government shutdown stonewalling, etc.?).  The dystopian nightmare we're living in courtesy of the MF and his legions of malevolent dimwits is only going to get darker and more desperate.  After all, he still has elections to sabotage or simply ignore.

Update On That "Bad And Impossible" Trump Mobile Phone

 

When it comes to the Trump Crime Family, why would anyone have suspected a scam?  Oh, right --

President Trump’s company on Monday announced the launch of a new 5G wireless service, along with a $499 Android phone — which it said is “proudly designed and built in the United States.”

But the “sleek,” gold-colored T1 Phone, which is supposed to be available starting in September, is almost surely being manufactured in China, given its price point and specifications, according to tech experts. The Trump Mobile T1 Phone is listed as having a 6.8-inch AMOLED (active matrix organic light emitting diode) screen with a 120-Hz refresh rate. 

“Despite being advertised as an American-made phone, it is likely that this device will be initially produced by a Chinese [original design manufacturer],” Counterpoint Research analyst Blake Przesmicki wrote in a June 16 note.

In an interview with CNBC, Nilay Patel, editor in chief of tech news site The Verge, said, “I don’t think [Trump Mobile is] going to sell a phone that has anything to do with the United States on any kind of timeline that makes sense.” He said that the only phone that could be available for $499 by September would be “undoubtedly a rebranded Chinese Android phone.”

Max Weinbach, an analyst at research firm Creative Strategies, in a post on X, said the T1 Phone is likely being made by Wingtech, which is owned by Chinese company Luxshare. “Same device as the T-Mobile REVVL 7 Pro 5G, custom body,” Weinbach wrote in the post. “Wingtech, now owned by Luxshare, makes it in Jiaxing, Wuxi, or Kunming China.”...

They'll pocket $100 from MAGA rubes reserving the Chinese knockoff right off the bat.  Don't expect anyone to get refunds if things go bad. Sad!

(Image:  Trump Mobile)

The Trump Mobile Wireless Phone "Looks Both Bad And Impossible"

 

David Pierce, editor-at-large of The Verge, has some thoughts on the latest scam coming out of the Trump Crime Family (h/t Mock Paper Scissors):

Here is a roughly complete list of all the things we know for sure about the first phone made for the new Trump Mobile wireless provider: it’s called the T1 Phone 8002 (gold version). It costs $499, and you can reserve one now with a $100 down payment. It is, according to the website, coming in September.

That’s about all I feel confident saying. Beyond that, all we have is a website that was clearly put together quickly and somewhat sloppily, a promise that the phone is “designed and built in the USA” that I absolutely do not believe, a picture that appears to be nearly 100 percent Photoshopped, and a list of specs that don’t make a lot of sense together. The existence of a “gold version” of the phone implies a not-gold version, but the Trump Mobile website doesn’t say anything more about that.  (our emphasis)

Pierce then discusses the incongruous (if not impossible) features of the phone, concluding:

All that aside, though, there are still a thousand things we don’t know about the T1. Starting with, what does it actually look like? Will it be waterproof or durable in any way? Why are the corners of the case so off-color? Why are the three rear cameras so weirdly spaced apart? Why does the top of the phone in the render look more like an iPhone than an Android device? Is it actually going to come with a Trump Mobile background, and will people be able to change it? What kind of heinous bloatware / spyware / crypto scams are going to come built into this thing? If this is the T1 model 8002, what happened to the first 8,001 tries? If it’s coming in September, does that mean Trump is going to try and upstage this year’s iPhone announcement in some way? Why would anyone pay for this thing, just for the privilege of spending too much money on repackaged T-Mobile service?

It seems utterly unfathomable that you could build a phone with this set of specs, at this price, to be delivered in September. Either Trump Mobile has done something truly remarkable here (and I’d bet you a T1 Phone 8002 that it hasn’t), or the phone it ends up shipping will not be the one buyers are expecting. Like we always say here at The Verge, it’s vaporware until it ships. And the Trump Mobile T1 Phone 8002 is as vapor-y as it gets.  (our emphasis)

This is probably one of the more run-of-the-mill scams put together by the Trump Crime Family.  Certainly, the tens of millions of dollars (that we know of) coming in from the utterly corrupt Malignant Fascist's various crypto deals, foreign government pay-to-play bribes, various corporate shakedowns, etc., dwarf the latest scam, at least in monetary value, for now.   But the fact that this has now become the norm, as has incendiary political speech and violence, is what happens when you lose the guardrails, checks and balances, and institutions that are the last bulwarks of democracy. 

(Image:  Bad and Impossible / Trump Mobile)

Trump Crime Family's "Rush To Cash In"

 

The New York Times continues its valuable investigative reporting on the corruption that is endemic to the Trump Crime Family (gift link):

A contest of sorts has played out across Europe, the United States and the Middle East in recent days as President Trump’s two older sons have pursued a blitz of family moneymaking ventures capitalizing on their father’s name and power, each seemingly trying to outdo the other.

It is a rush to cash in that involves billions of dollars with few precedents in American history.

A luxury hotel in Dubai. A second high-end residential tower in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Two cryptocurrency ventures based in the United States. A new golf course and villa complex in Qatar. And a new private club in Washington. In many cases these new deals promoted over the last week will personally benefit not only Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr., but also President Trump himself.  [snip]

The marathon of deal making has been so rapid that many elements have drawn limited public attention in the United States, despite most of it being out in the open. That is in part because the sons appeared before mostly fawning crowds but also because President Trump, his appointees and his billionaire adviser Elon Musk were making headlines with their own steady stream of norm-breaking controversies.

“There’s nothing like it,” said Douglas Brinkley, a Rice University historian who has written books on Presidents Ronald Reagan and Gerald R. Ford, addressing the financial conflicts of interest that have emerged in Mr. Trump’s second term.

Both Trump sons are involved in a wide range of family business ventures. Eric Trump, the president’s middle son, runs the Trump Organization, the main family business, which specializes in real estate. He also serves on the board of a holding company that oversees World Liberty Financial, the family’s crypto firm, and recently joined forces with his older brother, Donald Trump Jr., to start a Bitcoin mining operation, American Bitcoin.

The White House has said there are no ethics issues because Mr. Trump’s sons run the businesses. “The president’s assets are in a trust managed by his children,” Anna Kelly, a White House spokeswoman, said. “There are no conflicts of interest.”

But Mr. Trump’s financial disclosure report, which he is legally required to file, shows that he still personally benefits financially from most of these ventures... (our emphasis)

We'll stop there so you can go read the rest of the article, which details how profits from the "deal making" benefit the convicted fraudster Malignant Fascist himself.  That many of these deals involve the ultimate scam that is cryptocurrency fits nicely into the MF's modus operandi.  Other deals reek of thinly disguised "pay to play" schemes (i.e., bribes).  None of this includes the on- going scams and schemes and influence-buying associated with the MF (Open Secrets has the details as of 2024).

We saw in the first Malignant Fascist regime that the Emoluments Clause meant nothing to this crime family.  In 2024, Democrats on the House Oversight Committee identified $7,886,072 that the MF accepted from foreign governments in violation of the Emoluments Clause, adding "...this is a fraction of your unconstitutional collections from foreign governments and that we do not yet know the complete sum of foreign money you accepted while in office..."  Surprisingly, their strongly- worded letter got no response from then- candidate MF.

If anyone is under the illusion that something will be done to stop this blatantly corrupt "rush to cash in," we'd like to know where you've been for the last 4 years.

BONUS:

 

Yes, Trump’s crypto grifts, well reported in NYT, reveal unprecedented corruption. But they also reveal that the people who can ruin the economy are in effect shorting the US dollar.

— Timothy Snyder (@timothysnyder.bsky.social) May 5, 2025 at 10:35 AM

BONUS II:

 

The Qatar Economic Forum is hosting a public session on how to profit off of Trump’s bribery and corruption schemes.

[image or embed]

— Khashoggi's Ghost (@urocklive1.bsky.social) May 4, 2025 at 6:25 PM

BONUS III:

(Brendan Loper, The New Yorker)

 

(Photo illustration:  Oliver Munday; photograph by Skynesher / Getty (hands)

The Good, The Bad, The Ugly

 

The good:

Kamala Harris and Donald Trump have both framed the 2024 election as a race to maximize voter turnout. For much of the campaign, that effort to energize voters has favored Republicans, but new research from polling and data firm TargetSmart shows that Harris and newly energized Democrats have finally flipped the script on the MAGA movement.

In a thread posted on X (formerly Twitter), TargetSmart Senior Advisor Tom Bonier shared the group’s stunning findings: In the more than a dozen states that have updated their voter files since late last month, Democrats have made record gains among every major voter group, blowing Republicans out of the water in the process.

Black women ages 18 to 29 led the way, with a 175.8% increase in voter registrations compared with the same time period in 2020. Hispanic voters have also rushed to register since Harris became the Democratic nominee, with young Hispanic women posting a stunning 149.7% increase in registrations, and Hispanic voter registrations overall jumping over 60%.

Women weren’t the only ones flocking to register. Registrations among Black voters leapt 85.8% over their 2020 numbers, while Asian Americans saw a 31.7% gain. Democrats as a whole saw a 51.2% increase in total registrations, compared with just 7% for Republicans. Those are game-changing numbers not just for Harris but also for Democrats up and down the ballot, and according to Bonier, those voters are also displaying higher enthusiasm than they did when Biden beat Trump four years ago.

“You just don’t see that sort of thing happen in elections normally,” Bonier told CBS News on Wednesday, adding that the data indicated voters are “fired up and want to participate in this election.” ...

Offered without further comment.

The bad :

A far-right party won a state election for the first time in post-World War II Germany in the country’s east on Sunday, and looked set to finish a very close second to mainstream conservatives in a second vote.

A new party founded by a prominent leftist also made a strong impact, while the parties in Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s unpopular national government obtained extremely weak results.

The far-right Alternative for Germany, or AfD, won 32.8% of the vote in Thuringia — well ahead of the center-right Christian Democratic Union, the main national opposition party, with 23.6%.

In neighboring Saxony, projections for ARD and ZDF public television with the count well advanced put support for the CDU, which has led the state since German reunification in 1990, at 31.9% and AfD on 30.6-30.7%. AfD made substantial gains in Thuringia and smaller ones in Saxony compared with the last state elections in 2019.

“An openly right-wing extremist party has become the strongest force in a state parliament for the first time since 1949, and that causes many people very deep concern and fear,” said Omid Nouripour, a leader of the Greens, one of the national governing parties.

Other parties say they won’t put AfD in power by joining it in a coalition. Even so, its strength is likely to make it extremely difficult to form new state governments, forcing other parties into exotic new coalitions. The new Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance, or BSW, took 15.8% of the vote in Thuringia and nearly 12% in Saxony, adding another level of complication...

It's a sickness based in fear and scapegoating of "others," encouraged by charlatans like AfD (and some leftist) politicians -- and mirrored in movements across Europe and, of course, by our own orange charlatan.  Of course, there are other factors involved, especially Germany's poor economic recovery from the Covid epidemic, and that the eastern part of Germany has been fertile ground for far- right politics for years.  And it's no surprise it follows that these AfD neo-Nazis also are admirers of Russia and oppose aid to Ukraine (Putin's rubles at work).  That it's happening again in the cradle of Nazism is especially repugnant and dangerous.

The ugly:

When Donald Trump launched his first presidential campaign nearly a decade ago, there was a deluge of concerns about his foreign financial entanglements. And rightfully so. Given the financial overlap between Trump, his family, his company, and a constellation of kleptocratic regimes, especially Russia, Trump presented an unprecedented opportunity for foreign regimes to directly access the White House and tilt American policy in the process.

Now, with Trump running for the presidency once more, those concerns have hardly disappeared. If anything, foreign governments — including brand-new regimes that weren’t involved in Trump’s first whirlwind in the White House — have only spied new opportunities to burrow into his pockets and into a second administration.

Many of these networks are already known, if forgotten. Trump’s financial links with regimes in places like China, Kazakhstan, or Indonesia were already reported in detail during his presidency. Even after Trump left the Oval Office, the revelations about his subterranean financial links as president with foreign regimes continued spilling out; it was only this year, for instance, that congressional investigators revealed that the first two years of Trump’s presidency included countries as far afield as Qatar, Kuwait, Turkey, and many more patronizing Trump businesses. Any of these details on their own would be exceptional — can you imagine how much any other presidential candidate’s secret Chinese bank account would dominate a news cycle? — but they’ve been subsumed in the broader morass of Trump’s scandals. They’ve become, to an almost shocking degree, normalized...

Russia, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, China, etc., etc.  The Malignant Loser is an easy target for foreign influence because he's a narcissist with no principles or motivation except his own self- enrichment and aggrandizement. He's a mortal threat to our national security, part infinity.

The Bottomless Corruption Of The Trump Crime Family

 

Convicted felon Malignant Loser's amoral son- in- law Jared "Mr. Ivanka Trump" Kushner has been a busy deal- maker ever since leaving the White House, where his incompetence was only surpassed by his greed.  It has come as no surprise that this has involved the same access- peddling and self-dealing that has characterized the slumlord's entire "career" thus far. 

His corrupt dealings with the regime of murderous Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed "Bone Saw" bin Salman resulted in a $2 billion windfall for Kushner's Affinity Partners, apparently the going pay- to- play price for an insider in a future Malignant Loser regime.  (Bone Saw once bragged that he had Kushner "in his pocket.") Well, now Kushner's firm is also involved with another unsavory regime, this time in Serbia, a Russian client state:

After weathering criticism over its reliance on a gusher of Saudi cash, Jared Kushner’s investment fund made its first big splash last month when it announced it had signed a $500 million deal with the Serbian government to develop a high end real estate project in downtown Belgrade on the site of a bombed down army building destroyed during the 1999 Kosovo war.

But the fine print of the deal includes a commitment that seems destined to stir up even more international controversy: a pledge by Kushner’s firm, Affinity Partners, to construct a “memorial dedicated to all the victims of NATO aggression”— an allusion to the U.S.-backed bombing campaign that brought the Serbian government of Slobodan Milosevic to its knees a quarter century ago in response to its relentless campaign of repression and savage massacres of ethnic Albanians in Kosovo. 

Among those exercised over the Kushner deal is retired Gen. Wesley Clark, who served as NATO Supreme Allied Commander during the war.

While he has no objection to a U.S. firm investing in Serbia, the planned revisionist memorial—officially proclaiming America’s adversary in the war to have been a victim of  “aggression”— “is worse than a reversal” of U.S. policies in the region, said Clark in an interview with SpyTalk. “It’s a betrayal of the United States, its policies and the brave diplomats and airmen who did what they could to stop Serb ethnic cleansing.” 

Just as concerning as the whitewashing of Serbian war crimes, Clark said, is the just announced deal between Kushner’s firm and the Serbian government of Aleksander Vučić, a pro-Russian hardliner who once served as minister of information in Milosevic’s government. The memorial project needs to be viewed in a wider geopolitical context: It serves the Kremlin’s core interests in undermining NATO at a time the alliance is engaged in resisting Russian aggression in Ukraine.  (our emphasis) [snip]

Kushner's not the only member of the extended Trump Crime Family involved in the Serbia deal. If there's money to be made selling off access to the White House to our adversaries, you can find this p.o.s.:

Those questions have intensified in recent weeks in light of the reported role in the Belgrade deal of Richard Grenell, Trump’s former U.S. ambassador to Germany and acting director of national intelligence, who has forged close ties to Serbian officials and made no secret of his hopes of becoming secretary of state in a second Trump administration.

The New York Times recently reported that Grenell is a partner of Kushner’s in the proposed $500 million project, which includes plans to build a luxury hotel, retail space and 1,500 residential units on the bombed out site of the former Serbian Army headquarters pulverized by NATO forces under Clark’s command in 1999. 

He was quoted by the Times as saying he saw the project—an earlier version of which he pushed during a period he also served as Trump’s special envoy to the region—as promoting “healing” between the U.S. and Serbia. (Efforts to reach Grenell for comment for this story were unsuccessful.)...  (our emphasis)

Just the thought of Grenell as a potential Secretary of State should curl your toes almost as much as a second term for the Malignant Loser.  He was and is an utter toady and courter of authoritarians worldwide (the Malignant Loser has called him "my envoy").  If the convicted felon Malignant Loser is the "chaos candidate," Grenell would be his "chaos Secretary of State," ready and willing to undercut America's alliances and interests.

The White House and State Department would be open for business in a second Malignant Loser regime, and deals like those made with the Saudis and Serbs would be the template for wholesale corruption, putting America up for grabs to the highest bidder.

(h/t MockPaperScissors)

(Image:  Kushner and Grenell / Getty)

January 6 And Trump Indictments

 

Noah Bookbinder, president of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) and a former Federal corruption prosecutor, writes in a new article for Salon.com that the indictment of the Malignant Loser is inevitable, in connection with his manifold and open fraudulent attempts to overthrow the duly elected President in 2020. After he rips the argument that indictment(s) will "exacerbate political divisions" and cites the Ford pardoning of Nixon as a false equivalent, Bookbinder gives three reasons why indictments should proceed, summarized below:

"First, Trump has yet to face any consequences for his criminal efforts to retain power against the will of the American people. After the Watergate investigations exposed Nixon's crimes, he resigned the presidency in disgrace and never sought public office again. Trump by contrast, is not in exile — he is emboldened. [snip]

Second, Trump is going to continue breaking the law until he is held accountable. Since he first ran for president in 2016, Trump has been credibly accused of at least 55 crimes. [snip]

Finally, prosecuting Trump represents a critical opportunity to reaffirm that it is unacceptable to interfere with the peaceful transfer of power–a defining feature of American constitutional democracy."

Meanwhile there are reports that the Justice Department is moving aggressively to penetrate the false legal barrier that the Malignant Loser is counting on to keep his White House lawyers from sharing information about his actions and words leading up to and during the January 6 Trumpist insurrection. Specifically, Pat Cippolone and Patrick Philbin, the White House counsel and deputy counsel respectively, may offer vital testimony that nails down serious charges of fraud against the U.S., obstruction of justice, and (hopefully) seditious conspiracy against the Malignant Loser:

"The litigation around Cipollone and Philbin’s testimony may be important for investigators in the long run, given how close the pair was to the Trump leading up to and during the Capitol riot. Prosecutors are likely to aim for the grand jury to hear about their direct conversations with the then-President.

The disputes – conducted under seal in court because they involve grand jury activity – may also spawn several more court fights that will be crucial for prosecutors as they work to bring criminal charges related to Trump’s post-election efforts."

The Justice Department has a lot to work with on the January 6 conspiracy, from fake electors to the organization and direction of the riotous coup itself, but the testimony of "people in the room" with the Malignant Loser would help seal his fate. 

 

The Manhattan District Attorney's Inexcusable Act

The bombshell dropped in the New York Times in the form of former Manhattan ADA Mark Pomerantz's letter saying that Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg is wrong not to take evidence of the Malignant Loser's multiple felonies to a grand jury is causing many to question not only Bragg's judgement but his competence and courage.  Bragg was elected to his office as a nominal Democrat last November following the retirement of Cyrus Vance, Jr., who wanted the case against Trump to go to the grand jury. Now, legal experts are saying Bragg's inertia and lack of interest in pursuing justice for Trump's felonies place him and the case in peril, as Newsweek reports:

"Speaking to Newsweek, former Los Angeles County prosecutor and criminal defense attorney Josh Ritter said that Bragg is now in a no-win situation regarding how he continues the investigation into Trump, and that Pomerantz's letter presents 'huge problems' for him and the former president.

"'What Mr. Pomerantz is describing cannot be characterized as a simple difference in opinion between prosecutors. The letter is nothing short of a scathing rebuke on Mr. Bragg's refusal to bring charges against Trump for what Mr. Pomerantz describes as clear-cut criminal behavior,' Ritter said.

"'This letter places Mr. Bragg in a completely untenable position. If Mr. Bragg were to now reverse course and pursue an indictment against Trump, he will no doubt be excoriated for bowing to political pressure. Conversely, if Mr. Bragg maintains his current position the letter raises questions about Mr. Trump's potential crimes that cannot remain unanswered.'"  (our emphasis)

The "untenable position" is one that Bragg put himself into, ignoring the solid evidence gathered over the past two years by a team of experienced prosecutors of major financial fraud cases and ignoring the advice of his long-serving predecessor.  Neama Rahmani, a former Federal prosecutor quoted in the Newsweek article put the problem this way:

"'Criminal prosecutions get worse over time, and delay benefits the defense,' Rahmani said. 'Witness memories fade, evidence disappears, and statute of limitations run. Bragg's apparent decision to delay the investigation and his reluctance to bring charges now is a clear win for Trump.'"

There will be a time when Bragg's motivation will be clearer, given the headwinds against his decision in his own office, and that time can't come too soon. One question that should give pause: if he ran knowing that he would inherit this case, why didn't he tell the voters that he'd drop it? In the meantime, reassign the case to the State of New York's estimable Attorney General Letitia James, who will get the job done and is fearless and up to speed with the evidence. Then Bragg needs to be challenged in the next election by a Dem with integrity and courage who believes that no one is above the law.

(photos: Trump and his enabler Bragg.  Getty)

 

New York AG Motion: More Evidence Of Trump Organization Fraud Uncovered

Shoes dropping all over the place:

The New York attorney general's office said late Tuesday it had told a court that its investigators had uncovered evidence that President Donald Trump's company used "fraudulent or misleading" asset valuations to get loans and tax benefits.

Attorney General Letitia James' office detailed its findings in a court motion seeking to force Trump, his daughter Ivanka Trump and his son Donald Trump Jr. to comply with subpoenas seeking their testimony.

The court filing said state authorities haven't yet decided whether to bring a civil lawsuit in connection with the allegations, but that investigators need to question Trump and his two eldest children as part of the probe. [snip]

"As the papers filed today make clear, each of the individuals was directly involved in one or more transactions under review. Earlier this month, the Trumps filed a motion to quash these interviews, and the papers filed today by the Attorney General oppose that motion," her office said.

In the court documents, James' office gave its most detailed accounting yet of its investigation into allegations that Trump's company repeatedly misstated the value of assets to get favorable loan terms or slash its tax burden.

The Trump Organization, it said, had overstated the value of land donations made in New York and California on paperwork submitted to the IRS to justify several million dollars in tax deductions.

The company misreported the size of Trump's Manhattan penthouse, saying it was nearly three times its actual size - a difference in value of about $200 million, James' office said, citing deposition testimony from Trump's longtime financial chief Allen Weisselberg, who was charged last year with tax fraud in a parallel criminal investigation.

Investigators, the court papers said, had "developed significant additional evidence indicating that the Trump Organization used fraudulent or misleading asset valuations to obtain a host of economic benefits, including loans, insurance coverage, and tax deductions."  (our emphasis)

Of course, other than the effort to compel testimony from the Trump Crime Family, most of the facts of the filing are fairly public (the New York Times has published reams about the fraudsters' business dealings, including a Pulitzer Prize winning 5-part series detailing the fraud and evasions).  But it takes on a whole different meaning when a powerful State Attorney General brings those facts up in a detailed legal motion that implicates the Malignant Loser, his unloved oldest son and his daughter/wife.  It's unclear how much, if any, evidence has come from Weisselberg (who has otherwise set himself up as the Trump Crime Family's fall guy), but "additional evidence" beyond what Weisselberg may or may not have provided is in the hands of the investigators (can you say "Michael Cohen"?).

With the January 6 committee closing in on his culpability in the insurrection, the New York AG's investigation heating up, and the Manhattan DA's parallel criminal investigation, the Trump Crime Family's time in the barrel is upon us.  (Lock them up!)

BONUS:  The good news just keeps on coming --

 

If true, this is an encouraging sign of what may be going on behind the scenes at DOJhttps://t.co/xHlPejm2fM

— Laurence Tribe (@tribelaw) January 19, 2022

 

(Photo:  principals in the Trump Crime Family/ Evan Vucci, AP)

Trump Spawn Subpoenaed In Civil Fraud Case, Refuse To Comply

Subpoenas were just issued by the New York State Attorney General's office in the civil fraud investigation into the Trump (crime family) Organization.  Not surprisingly, they're not cooperating:

Former President Trump’s eldest son and daughter have refused to comply with subpoenas issued by the New York State attorney general’s office as it conducts a civil investigation into the way the family real estate business valued its holdings.

“A dispute has arisen between the OAG and the Individual Trump Parties regarding the Subpoenas,” a document filed Monday said.

The document, filed jointly by New York Attorney General Letitia James and an attorney for the Trump Organization, said Donald Trump Jr. and Ivanka Trump will now be named as respondents in James’ ongoing inquiry, which parallels a criminal investigation by the Manhattan District Attorney’s office.

Donald Trump Jr. and Ivanka Trump will file motions to quash the subpoenas as soon as Monday, the filing indicated.

The former president and his company have denied wrongdoing and have attacked the investigation as political.

The ongoing criminal investigation has so far resulted in indictments against the Trump Organization and its longtime chief financial officer Allen Weisselberg on tax charges.

Demented Daddy was subpoenaed late last year and is also refusing to comply.

Tick tock...

(Photo:  the rotten apples didn't plop far from the tree)

The Trump Crime Family

Meidas Touch helps us remember which is the real crime family, as Republicans attempt to gaslight America with their laughable Biden smears:

 

Sharing is caring.

 

Trump Organization Investigation: Failson Eric Refuses Interview

Failson Eric "Qusay" Trump's in a heap o' trouble: 

The New York attorney general is investigating President Trump’s private business for allegedly misleading lenders by inflating the value of its assets, the attorney general’s office said Monday in a legal filing.

In the filing, signed by a deputy to Attorney General Letitia James, the attorney general’s office said it is investigating Trump’s use of “Statements of Financial Condition” — documents Trump sent to lenders, summarizing his assets and debts.

The filing asks a New York state judge to compel the Trump Organization to provide information it has been withholding from investigators — including a subpoena seeking an interview with the president’s son Eric. [snip]

The filing said that Eric Trump had been scheduled to be interviewed in the investigation in late July, but abruptly canceled that interview. The filing says that Eric Trump is now refusing to be interviewed, with Eric Trump’s lawyers saying, “We cannot allow the requested interview to go forward … pursuant to those rights afforded to every individual under the Constitution.” [Ed.: that's a reference to the 5th Amendment right against self- incrimination.]

Of course, the head of the crime family, the Dumb Don, is the real target;  the failson is just a rung on the ladder.  And the sad part:  Dumb Don would sell him out in a New York minute if the positions were reversed ("Eric Trump?  I don't really know him, haven't spoken to him in years.")

(Photo:  It's getting hot in here.)

Judge: Trump Family Fraud Trial Can Proceed

Yesterday, Federal District Judge Lorna Schofield ruled that a class action lawsuit alleging fraud, false advertising and unfair competition against the Trump crime family may proceed, brushing aside a request for a stay by Trump's lawyers. The suit specifically names pathological liar and con artist Donald "Don The Con" Trump, and his offspring Greasy Don, Jr., dopey Eric, and daddy's little fantasy Ivanka as co-defendents, alleging that through their profitable promotion of "multi-level" marketing scammer ACN, they engaged in fraud:

"Trump's relationship with ACN is said to have begun in the mid-2000s, continuing until just before he began campaigning for president. The lawsuit was originally filed in October 2018, alleging that the Trumps never disclosed their relationship with ACN as they made millions by falsely claiming that vulnerable investors would have a 'reasonable probability of success' if they spent hundreds of dollars or more to join the scheme.

'The Trumps conned each of these victims into giving up hundreds or thousands of dollars—losses that many experienced as a devastating and life-altering,' the lawsuit claims. 'Surely the Trumps dismissed these amounts (and the lives they wrecked) as trivial. But by defrauding so many for so long, the Trumps made millions.'"  (our emphasis)

We'll see how the case proceeds, keeping in mind that Trump will spend whatever it takes in lawyers fees to escape justice. But he's fighting on so many battlefields -- the release of his tax and financial records, his bribery / emoluments case,  rape victim E. Jean Carroll's push for Trump's DNA sample, etc. -- his lawyers can only cover so much ground for a career con man and his crime family.

QOTD -- Greasy Heir

"On a steamy June evening, Trump officially launched his bid for reelection with a raucous rally in Orlando. This time, Ivanka and Jared sat in the audience, while Don—the president’s most skilled warm-up act—strutted across the stage to fervid applause. Bellowing into the microphone until his voice went ragged, he crowed about “crushing the bastards of ISIS” and made fun of Joe Biden for “groping” women. As he neared the end of his speech, Don lifted his arms in the air as if conducting an orchestra, and the arena erupted in chants of “Four more years!”

"In that moment, there was little question what the future of the Trump family would look like. After a century and a half of striving, they had money, and fame, and unparalleled power. But respectability would remain as distant a mirage as it was when Friedrich was chasing it across the Yukon. While no one knew when Donald Trump would exit the White House, it was clear what he would leave behind when he did: an angry, paranoid scrap of the country eager to buy what he was hawking—and an heir who knew how to keep the con alive."  McCay Coppins writing about "The Heir" -- that would be greasy Don, Jr. -- and the sniping between his "team" and that of rival and object of daddy's lust, Ivanka, and her hubby Jared "Mr. Ivanka Trump" Kushner.  Lots of paranoia and backstabbing going on in the Trump crime family!  Coppins takes the story back to the first Trump business, a whorehouse established by grandfather and draft dodger Friedrich in British Columbia in the late 19th century.  Strong family genes!

More Complicity From Princess Ivanka

In a laughable attempt to draw attention away from her racist daddy's role in inspiring the El Paso shooter, who took 22 lives last weekend, Trump crime family princess Ivanka "Complicit" Trump thought a tweet would work:

With 7 dead and 52 wounded near a playground in the Windy City- and little national outrage or media coverage- we mustn’t become numb to the violence faced by inner city communities every day.

— Ivanka Trump (@IvankaTrump) August 6, 2019

It shouldn't surprise us that she's ever eager to protect and please her daddy by pointing to the "inner city" of Chicago (why are the dogs barking?) and its bloody weekend as a distraction from his part in inciting violence. With her daddy's inherited dishonesty, she also manages to lie about the event she describes: 7 weren't killed near a playground, it was the weekend total for Chicago, etc. She ignores the fact that the El Paso and Dayton massacres were carried out by young white males -- one with a clear xenophobic, white nationalist/ Trumpian agenda -- with assault rifles that her daddy refuses to curb. 

Chicago's Mayor Lori Lightfoot saw the diversionary nonsense that the princess was spewing and had a sharp rejoinder:

“It wasn’t a playground, it was a park. It wasn’t seven dead. It wasn’t 52 wounded in one incident, which is what this suggests. It’s misleading. It’s important when we’re talking about people’s lives to actually get the facts correct, which one can easily do if you actually cared about getting it right...That’s the danger of somebody with a platform and audience … that doesn’t know what they’re talking about and getting the fundamental facts wrong that they can easily figure out if they had the decency to actually reach out to us if they wanted to be a constructive and engaged partner.”

Not knowing what they're talking about is part of the Trump brand, along with bigotry and lying. She needs to focus on how she's going to escape criminal liability for her involvement in various Trump Organization scams and money laundering.

(photo: "Baby help me out on the massacre stuff. By the way, if you weren't my daughter, I'd be dating you.")

Vid Of The Day -- Infested

Drop everything you're doing and watch this....

cc: @VictorBlackwell pic.twitter.com/N9ZWttHSzd

— Yashar Ali 🐘 (@yashar) July 27, 2019

The racist pig- man just can't help himself.  If he's interested in cleaning out crime- infested areas, he should start by vacating the White (Supremacist) House and taking all his grifting swamp creatures with him.

BONUS:

Mr. President, I go home to my district daily. Each morning, I wake up, and I go and fight for my neighbors.

It is my constitutional duty to conduct oversight of the Executive Branch. But, it is my moral duty to fight for my constituents.

— Elijah E. Cummings (@RepCummings) July 27, 2019

Elijah Cummings grew up facing racist bullies like Trump and learned to confront them with qualities unknown to Trump: courage and integrity. The great people of Baltimore have something Trump craves but will never have as he degrades the Office of the President: dignity.

— Chris Van Hollen (@ChrisVanHollen) July 27, 2019

It’s completely unacceptable for the political leader of our country to denigrate a vibrant American City like Baltimore, and to viciously attack U.S. Representative Elijah Cummings a patriot and a hero. pic.twitter.com/TJdbST6Md9

— Mayor Bernard C. Jack Young (@mayorbcyoung) July 27, 2019

Not Fade Away: The Crimes Of Donald Trump

Has the certainty over time that we have a serial sexual predator/ rapist in the White (Supremacist) House deadened us to new revelations criminal behavior?  Is that one reason why E. Jean Carroll's account of child concentration camp landlord Donald "Rump" Trump's raping her 20 years ago faded so quickly?

Melinda Henneberger

"Joe Biden accused of standing too close" is apparently a way bigger story than "Donald Trump accused of raping a public person in a public place." Unlike most women, men and children who are sexually assaulted, Carroll told two friends at the time, and they back her up.

Why then is White House counselor Kellyanne Conway’s husband so lonely in noting the credibility of this 16th sexual assault allegation against the 45th president of the United States?

Yes, we’re exhausted by the sheer volume of Trump scandals, and yes, we’re bored with rape, too, because that is so last year.

Maybe if he had been accused of swiping a sweater from Bergdorf’s, that would be new and different? Because allegations of slamming a woman against a wall and penetrating her is same old, same old at this point. [snip]

To Trump’s faithful, his denials and claims that “I’ve never met this person in my life” are in no way undercut by a photo of them chatting at a party. But for those who know better but can’t be bothered, I’m sorry to see the extent to which this man and this topic have worn us down and worn us out.

And to those who purport to support women but wish this particular woman had said something sooner, later or not at all, I say: What else is new?  (our emphasis)

Megan Garber

... The sheer number of women who have accused the president of misconduct seems to have helped diminish the impact of her accusation. The notion of a president who is a sexual predator is profoundly familiar at this point, in part because Trump himself has been caught bragging on tape about the predation. (I moved on her like a bitch. Grab ’em by the pussy. When you’re a star, they let you do it.)

That explains, in part, how a famous woman could make, it is worth reiterating, a credible claim that the president of the United States raped her and see that claim dissolved within a weekend’s news cycle: A news media that is so efficiently calibrated to report that which is new isn’t fully sure how to report on that which is manifestly not new. The numbers give way to a numbness. He said and she said and she said and so did she, and the many, many shes, rather than amounting at least to the sum of their parts, end up canceling one another out. Defeatism sets in. The women’s stories tell us what we already know, and so they fade away.  (our emphasis)

This effect also has worked in Trump's favor in the exposés of his financial corruption and ineptitude, his repeated efforts to do Putin's bidding, the multiple and public efforts to obstruct justice during the Mueller investigation and, of course, just the firehose of lies that come from him every moment of every day.  As much as many in the media would like to portray it otherwise, there is no equivalence to this supernova of criminality, immorality, ignorance, and treasonous behavior.

Yes, he's worn us down over the past 2 1/2 years (it seems much longer).  And we have no words of wisdom on how to deal with this vicious malignancy, other than to redouble our resolve to see to it that this will end through our common efforts, our voices and our votes.

BONUS:  Totally in (rotted out) character, as a "defense," Trump says Ms. Carroll is "not my type." So, he has a "type" in mind when he goes out to rape and assault?  Good to know.

(Photo:  Trump's  "grab 'em by the pussy" moment.)