trump and His Cronies Aren't Even Hiding the Theft Anymore

This is how corrupt trump's administration is: he sued his own government for billions of dollars so he could then weasel out of the lawsuit and claim an imaginary settlement for a mere billion to pay off his foot soldiers among the insurrectionist ranks (from Katherine Faulders, Peter Charalambous, and Alexander Mallin at ABC News):

The Justice Department announced Monday that as part of a settlement agreement in President Donald Trump's $10 billion lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service, the attorney general is establishing an $1.776 billion "Anti-Weaponization Fund" to compensate those who allege they were wrongly targeted under the Biden administration. 

The announcement came after attorneys representing Trump informed a federal judge in a court filing earlier Monday that the president was dropping his suit against the IRS.

The judge overseeing the case, U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams, subsequently ordered the case closed -- signaling that she does not plan to challenge the controversial settlement. 

In a brief order issued Monday, Judge Williams said she was "stripped of jurisdiction" to continue overseeing the case. She noted that the settlement agreement was never docketed in the case, so there is no "settlement of record" -- leaving her with no authority to adjudicate the private settlement. 

Do you see it? There's no official settlement of record. There's no paper trail the legal system is supposed to rely on. And yet, there's a billion dollars that Congress never approved of getting set up in a slush fund that I doubt will have any real oversight to where it gets turned into a funnel of illegality where even more money gets siphoned off to gods know where.

As thought making the payment amount symbolic to make it say 1776 like it's for FREEDOM on our nation's 250th birthday is going to patch things over. GODDAMN THIS IS CORRUPT.

This is Paul Krugman over at the National Memo:

So the Trump administration is creating a $1.776 billion slush fund — 1776, get it? — to pay off victims of “lawfare and weaponization.” Just to be clear, if you’re a U.S. taxpayer, this action means that almost $1.8 billion of your money will be handed out to whomever a panel appointed by Donald Trump decides to reward. The beneficiaries are likely to include January 6 insurrectionists, as well as Trump, his family, and his allies.

Few things shock me these days, but this development — in which a Justice Department that works for Trump is paying a vast sum to “settle” a lawsuit brought by Trump himself — is a new nadir in self-dealing, further revealing Trump’s utter contempt for the American people.

Now, massive corruption on the part of Trump and his minions isn’t new. But the shamelessness of this latest episode of looting takes it to a new level. Until now, we’ve seen a combination of crony capitalism and insider trading. Plutocrats and corporations have been enriching Trump through back channels, especially crypto, in return for government contracts and policy favors, while Trump himself and people close to Trump have been making hugely profitable market bets thanks to advance knowledge of government policies.

But now Trump has eliminated the middlemen, effectively telling his officials to pay money directly to him or anyone else he favors.

Granted, we already knew that Trump was, by orders of magnitude, the most corrupt president in U.S. history. But now Trump is the most explicitly corrupt leader in today’s world. After all, Vladimir Putin has obviously stolen billions, but never this brazenly. Even Third World dictators normally try to mask their corruption.

If there's any true justice, trump's move here should get tied up in the courts - especially over that fact that there's no judge-approved agreement on record - long enough for the Democrats to win back Congress this midterms well enough to guarantee they will use their Article I constitutional powers to block trump and his cronies from stealing one more nickel from our nation's coffers.

This is why the Republicans are so desperate to gerrymander the hell out of congressional districts, this is why the Republicans are so desperate to suppress voter turnout to keep their Senate seats safe from statewide anger. They're not that stupid to ignore the polls showing how unpopular they've gotten among even independent voters (and even enough registered Republicans willing to flip their ballots).

Voter turnout still matters: that's the good news. The Republicans can't rig enough barricades and tip enough scales to stop all of us angry at them and trump. Everyone needs to understand the mission this midterms: GET THE DAMN VOTE OUT FOR DEMOCRATS. VOTE EVERY REPUBLICAN OUT AT EVERY LEVEL OF THE BALLOT.

We can save this nation from an eternal void of Far Right grifting and greed, if we show up and vote goddammit.

The Constant trumpian Grift: Shilling Worthless Watches Edition

donald trump really only knows how to do one thing: market himself as a fucking brand.

Not just putting his name in gold on buildings, golf courses, steaks, fake universities: In the past few years even in the midst of fighting criminal charges and running for President (again) trump's been out here shilling NFTs, his own publicly traded media stock, overpriced golden sneakers, trump-themed Bibles (!) that alone should be an epic form of blasphemy, cryptocurrency, and now - what the actual fuck - overpriced watches (Alistair Charlton at Wired shared my horror):

Celebrities partnering with watch brands is nothing new. Sometimes a bona fide watch enthusiast like John Mayer partners with Audemars Piguet, or Ed Sheeran (owner of a unique Patek Philippe, no less) teams up with Casio. Then there's the other end of the scale, where controversial Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy and his own watch company resides.

Now, however, there’s a new nadir: the Trump Watch. Announced this week by former US president Donald Trump, the collection consists of two pieces. One is called “Fight Fight Fight” and is priced from $499, and the other is the “Victory Tourbillon.” The latter is claimed to be made from solid 18-karat gold, with 122 diamonds and a tourbillon automatic movement. It’s priced at a nice, round $100,000—about three times the price of an equivalent Rolex Submariner—and, yes, crypto payment is available.

The watches are claimed to feature “premium, Swiss-Made materials and intricate details,” but so far as we can tell, the Fight Fight Fight uses a movement by Japanese company Seiko, while the Victory Tourbillon has a movement alleged to be partially built from Chinese components...

Everything we know about trump and his business empire is that he will cut corners, buy cheap with no care for quality, and sell to excess (and try to trick his suckers customers into spending even more). This watch will be no different.

But don’t just take our word for it. WIRED Watch expert Tim Barber told us: “Trump evidently has some cut-through among certain watch fans, since the gold sneakers he auctioned earlier this year were bought by Roman Sharf, one of the most prominent gray-market watch dealers, with a sizable YouTube following." (Incidentally, the companies that made the gold sneakers and the new Trump Watches were established by the same register agent, Andrew Pierce of Cloud Peak Law, Wyoming.)

“Having said that, I doubt these hideous pieces will increase his equity among most watch collectors. As it happens, all-gold watches being very on trend in the luxury market at the moment, he joins Rolex in producing a gold dive watch this year. But I would be less confident of this sharing any other qualities with a Rolex...”

Now for the Tourbillon, the $100,000 flagship of the Trump watch collection. “This isn’t just any watch,” the former president said. “It’s one of the best watches made,” he adds without context...

This is Trump as Used Car Salesman: he's going to tell you "this is the best ever" and "everybody's talking about" (that part is right, although laughing/screaming in horror is more apt). The kind of fake oversell for shoddy product that led to a ton of Lemon Laws. I digress.

The watch is claimed to use a “TX07 Tourbillon” with 105 hours of power reserve, but finding any record of such a movement online is tricky. Watch commentator Nico Leonard van der Horst said in an Instagram post: “This is hilarious … the manufacturer of this movement is Olivier Mory, who ironically is known for making very affordable Tourbillons half made in China, half made in Switzerland.” Van der Horst added: “If you were to buy this movement and put it in your own watch, you would be able to buy it for under $3.5k...”

Why even sell a watch so much that your average MAGA voter - most of them middle-class/self-employed (car salesmen themselves more likely) - can't afford one? It's a watch meant for the oligarch class, the foreign millionaires and billionaires still looking to curry favor with trump should he ever cheat his way back into the White House. It doesn't help that trump is encouraging people to use crypto as a way to purchase these watches, because that kind of money can't be tracked.

trump is not just violating the Emoluments Clause, he's mocking it: because he knows Congress can't touch him and the courts have no idea how - or no willingness - to enforce it.

Hell, why I am sitting here whining about what trump's doing? If trump is out here shilling overpriced watches to gullible buyers reasonable markets, I can be doing that too!

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If I can get oh 12 million people to buy the ebook versions that will allow me to buy a Big Mac next Tuesday, hmmmm yum.

P.S. for the LOVE OF GOD do not let that grifter trump anywhere near the White House again.

The Scent of Desperation

I feel like getting married, or committing suicide, or subscribing to L'Illustration. Something desperate, you know.
-- Albert Camus, A Happy Death

Facing an imminent criminal trial in New York for his hush money payments, trump isn't just getting annoying he's getting DESPERATE.

he's getting his lawyers to file last-minute demands to move the trial venue out of Manhattan as yet another means of delaying the start, and he's trying to file a lawsuit directly against the judge to force a recusal. With regards to the venue, well this is how the upper court handled it (via ML Nestal at Raw Story): 

Judge Lizbeth Gonzalez denied the former president's request to move the venue out of New York City without explanation in a one-sentence order, according to multiple reports.

I bet the one-sentence order went along the lines of "sucks to be you, donald."

Trump's lawyers attempted to sway an intermediary appellate court pause the upcoming date suggesting it would be impossible to find an impartial jury.

"In terms of prejudicial pretrial publicity in this county, this case stands alone," wrote defense attorney Emil Bove, arguing there had not been a case with so much attention since the 1999 police killing of Amadou Diallo.

All things considered, it's trump's own fault he draws this much attention to himself. There are remote tribes in the Gobi Desert who've heard of him. There's no place to move a venue, so he might as well face a jury of fellow New Yawkers where he stands.

With regards to trump's attempt to sue Judge Merchan, there's more detail with Charles R Davis at Salon:

Trump, who is accused of falsifying business records to cover up a 2016 “hush” payment to adult film star Stormy Daniels, has spent weeks now railing against Judge Juan M. Merchan. One ex-prosecutor likened his attacks on Merchan — and Merchan’s daughter — to the behavior of a “mob boss.”

That behavior led Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg to seek a revised gag order barring such attacks on the judge’s family. Now, with the trial set to begin April 15, Trump is again trying to stall the case against him, this time with a legal filing that directly targets Judge Merchan.

According to the Times, the filing constitutes an “Article 78”  action, a proceeding that can be used to challenge decisions by state officials and judges in New York. While it remains under seal, the former president has claimed that the gag order against him violates his right to free speech...

There's been long debates about gag orders violating free speech rights, but if the Supreme Court precedence is viewed properly they're meant primarily to ensure the fair rights and safety of the defendants: There's nothing there about the defendant using speech to threaten the rights and safety of the judges, prosecutors, and juries. If defendants had the power to issue threats and insults towards judges in every other trial, we'd never see justice done.

trump, for all we know, intentionally went on the attack against Merchan - and the judge's daughter - precisely to trigger a gag order that trump could then use was denying his free speech. It's behavior that shouldn't be tolerated or allowed.

One way or another, trump is desperate to delay this criminal trial like he's delayed all the others.

Because he knows - despite all his claims of innocence, and despite all his bravado that he's happily being martyred (seriously, comparing himself to Mandela???) - the second a trial gets a jury empaneled, the second the witnesses start testifying under oath, the second every nasty little detail comes out that trump can't debunk where it matters (because he dare not go on the stand under oath) he becomes even more a political liability to GOP party leaders than he already is.

trump knows the second a jury comes back with even one Guilty verdict, his presidential campaign is doomed. While the legal experts are saying DA Bragg's case here is the weakest trump faces - due to Bragg using unconventional interpretations of records laws - there's still solid evidence against him, and the jury will be hearing from witnesses like Michael Cohen, who will point out he'd plead out to similar charges on the same hush money matter, implying trump should face his justice as well.

trump may claim that his followers will accept him even if he's found guilty - and there are a lot of them who will vote for a convicted trump - he has to know there's a solid faction of Republican (and No Party Affiliate) voters who will never vote for a convicted felon. There's already signs at least 20 percent of the existing GOP voting base won't accept trump under any circumstance, and he can't afford - even with all the plotting he's doing to disqualify the Electoral Count this 2024 - to lose that many across most of the states.

This is why trump is desperate to delay every criminal trial he's facing well past November.

This is why the courts shouldn't indulge him.

Let Justice be done. Bring trump to trial.

trump Can't Stop from Grifting

Even after getting found liable for multiple acts of business fraud, donald trump can't stop himself running more cons. Just look at the latest lawsuit by his would-be business partners with his personal social media app (via Dan Mangan at CNBC News): 

Former President Donald Trump was accused in a lawsuit on Wednesday of trying to “drastically dilute” the value of stock shares in his social media company held by the firm’s co-founders, potentially depriving them of hundreds of millions of dollars in profits.

The partnership, United Atlantic Ventures, alleges that Trump Media & Technology Group engaged in “wrongful 11th hour … maneuvering” to dilute UAV’s minority stake in the media company, a court filing says.

The Delaware Chancery Court lawsuit comes in advance of the planned merger of TMTG with a shell company called Digital World Acquisition Corp, which would result in the shares of the combined entity being publicly traded.

If DWAC shareholders approve the merger next month, Trump’s 90% stake in TMTG could be valued at more than $3 billion, given DWAC’s current share price...

Dear DWAC shareholders: Don't. A deal with a devil like trump is no deal at all.

I'm no expert on stocks and market manipulations, so I hope there's an explanation for what trump was attempting to pull at his end of this "deal":

UAV is a partnership of Andy Litinsky and Wes Moss, who initially pitched Trump the idea of creating Trump Media in February 2021, after the former president was banned from Twitter and Facebook following the deadly Jan. 6 Capitol riot...

The planned merger comes as Trump, who is the leading candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, has been ordered to pay more than $500 million in civil judgments in New York, related to trial verdicts for business fraud and the defamation of writer E. Jean Carroll.

“The attempt here is to deprive them of the deal,” said Christopher Clark, the lawyer for UAV in the partnership’s Delaware lawsuit against TMTG.

“It’s not like they went out and bought a lottery ticket,” Clark said of the co-founders. “They actually went out and did the work, they created Truth Social, and now the beneficiary of that, Donald Trump, doesn’t want to pay.”

“Not a unique story, unfortunately,” Clark said, referring to Trump’s infamous practice of contesting bills from contractors and lawyers...

So trump was attempting to devalue whatever stocks Litinsky and Moss held in the Trump Media corporation, to where they'd get nothing from the buyout while he took it all.

Their lawyer Clark is pointing - if you'll recall - back to trump's infamous history of being a cheapskate and thief to anybody who did contractual work for him. Decades of trump undercutting and underpaying - if at all - his "people" to where it's a mystery why ANYBODY still wants to do business with this grifter.

It should be telling that trump allegedly hasn't even paid his best mob lawyers - his personal Roy Cohns - as Giuliani is out here telling the public trump owes him $2 million at least.

Oh, wait, NOW I get the diluting stock scheme. THAT scene from the Social Network:

Seriously, who wants to risk working for a con artist - trump, not the guy "who invented Facebook" although the jury's still out on him - who keeps ripping his underlings off?

And trump Keeps Losing Like the Drunken Gambler He Is

The news broke earlier tonight, and I've been feasting on the schadenfreude ever since. The judge overseeing the New York case vs. donald trump and his Trump Org issued a summary judgment that apparently nukes his corporate empire from orbit (via Michael R Sisak at AP News): 

Judge Arthur Engoron, ruling in a civil lawsuit brought by New York Attorney General Letitia James, found that Trump and his company deceived banks, insurers and others by massively overvaluing his assets and exaggerating his net worth on paperwork used in making deals and securing loans.

Engoron ordered that some of Trump’s business licenses be rescinded as punishment, making it difficult or impossible for them to do business in New York, and said he would continue to have an independent monitor oversee Trump Organization operations...

Engoron’s ruling, days before the start of a non-jury trial in James’ lawsuit, is the strongest repudiation yet of Trump’s carefully coiffed image as a wealthy and shrewd real estate mogul turned political powerhouse.

Beyond mere bragging about his riches, Trump, his company and key executives repeatedly lied about them on his annual financial statements, reaping rewards such as favorable loan terms and lower insurance costs, Engoron found.

Those tactics crossed a line and violated the law, the judge said, rejecting Trump’s contention that a disclaimer on the financial statements absolved him of any wrongdoing.

“In defendants’ world: rent regulated apartments are worth the same as unregulated apartments; restricted land is worth the same as unrestricted land; restrictions can evaporate into thin air; a disclaimer by one party casting responsibility on another party exonerates the other party’s lies,” Engoron wrote in his 35-page ruling. “That is a fantasy world, not the real world.”

trump is, obviously, railing on social media that the ruling is "unfair" and "un-American," but the judge isn't going by trump's words he's going by trump's actions, and trump kept acting fraudulent enough to earn this summary judgment (link to court papers).

There's still a trial: This ruling covered a portion of AG James' case against trump. The imposition of more penalties - to the tune of $250 million - is up to a jury to decide, and it's looking like that part of the case starts this October 2nd.

(breaks out the celebratory whiskey) Wait, I don't drink. Anybody else like whiskey...?

From what I gather, this ruling - and whatever comes of the penalty phase - means trump and his sons - Ivanka somehow avoided getting meshed into this civil case - will be blocked from any and all business dealings in the state of New York. An inability to maintain a financial corporate empire would/should/could undercut any attempt by trump and his lackeys to perpetuate any grifts and con games. I'm not fully versed on the law, so obviously I will follow up with someone - likely Emptywheel - who is.

In the meantime, trump once again lost a major judicial matter. He's not made of Teflon when it comes to the law, and his failings will continue to pile up as his sins are an affront to all of Heaven and Humanity.

More whiskey?

Running Out of Ways To Finance the Ongoing Con of trump's Empire

Overlooked by all the recent criminal indictments imposed on donald trump are the civil trials he's already scheduled to face later this year.

A big one is the New York state's civil case involving tax fraud from trump's alleged (and repeated) fraud when it came to trump's property values. This past week the state Attorney General Letitia James petitioned the courts for a summary ruling on parts of the civil proceedings, which would be a huge bomb to drop ahead of the scheduled October 2023 trial, via Nia Prater at the New York Intelligencer (paywalled):

State attorney general Letitia James has alleged in a new court filing that Donald Trump lied about the value of his assets for financial gain, inflating his net worth by as much as $2.2 billion in one year.

The New York Times reports that court papers filed Wednesday accuse Trump of misrepresenting the value of his assets in order to obtain more favorable financial loans. His supposed net worth ballooned as a result, at a rate of $812 million to $2.2 billion every year over a ten-year period ending in 2021, per CNN.

James’s office is also seeking a summary judgment in the ongoing financial-fraud case against the former president, his eldest sons, and his company, the Trump Organization, arguing that a trial is not necessary to determine that fraud had been perpetrated...

I'm not a lawyer so I'm not sure what the chess move here is aiming for. Given the scope and severity - and serious political ramifications - of the case, I wouldn't think a judge would decide against taking this matter to a jury. Granted, the evidence IMHO does show a ton of fraud especially when you consider the AG's office uncovered 200 separate instances of trump's financial deceit, but you kind of want the seal of approval from a jury of trump's peers (or at least a jury of people who couldn't beg their way out of jury duty). Back to Prater:

In past filings, James has alleged that Trump overstated the value of his various properties, including Mar-a-Lago, 40 Wall Street, and his penthouse apartment in Trump Tower. The attorney general’s office initially sought to charge Ivanka Trump alongside her brothers Donald Jr. and Eric for signing off on some of the financial statements, but the court dismissed the case against Trump’s eldest daughter, ruling that the statute of limitations had run out on the specific allegations against her.

Trump’s legal team is looking to have the entire case dismissed, citing the narrowed time frame established by the ruling on Ivanka’s charges, Reuters reports. A hearing in the case is expected for September, prior to the planned trial start date of October 2. James is seeking to bar Trump and his sons permanently from operating a business in the state as well as $250 million in fines...

One of the observations I keep making about donald trump's political career is that it's all part of his ongoing financial grift. trump needs to campaign not only to get back into political office to avoid jail, but also to keep his personal coffers as full of money as possible.

The thing is, he never has "enough." It's not that his greed is limitless - it is - it's that trump's borrowed so much and is stuck paying so many loans off that he can't keep up staying above a profit margin. There's a lot of signs that trump is desperately out of money by the fact his own lawyers - and some of his closest allies like Giuliani - aren't getting paid and desperate for money themselves as they face legal troubles stemming from trump's electoral fraud schemes.

Getting hit with a $250 million fine from the state of New York is one thing, and can well expose the financial straits trump and his family are in. What's really going to hurt is if AG James can effectively bar trump and co. from operating any business out of New York.

Shutting down the Trump Organization would put a halt to any ongoing business deals trump is scheming, like the buyout deal for his Truth Social app that's fallen apart and facing its' own bankruptcy. It would certainly put under scrutiny the financial ties trump's company has to the many PACs and fundraisers involved in trump 2024 campaigning.

Granted, trump and his sons can try to re-incorporate in another state - they already tried to do that in Delaware where the legal code is more relaxed, only for James to shut it down arguing it was their attempt to dodge the New York case - but being blocked from any dealings in the literal financial capital of the world in New York City is going to hurt (Okay, Tokyo and London also top the list but I doubt the nations of Japan and the UK will let trump and his family bring their corruption to their shores like that).

What will happen if trump loses his Trump Organization altogether would disrupt any funneling he's doing from the campaign fundraising into that corporation. I would imagine that if James is successful in the civil trial, she and the courts would insist on someone performing a kind of third-party receivership/guardianship on trump's finances to ensure he both pays his fines and ends all business dealings in New York (and likely sell all the properties that makes up his financial empire). A watchdog on his wallet is the last thing trump wants. That would seriously put a crimp in trump's attempts - such as borrowing even more from overseas creditors and banks who would have every legal reason (and maybe legal requirement) to cut him off - to continue lying/defrauding about his own worth.

And trump is all about lying about his own worth. Even to himself.

trump could still campaign and gaslight his own followers - and his Far Right media allies - into believing he's a successful businessman, the illusion of success he'd used since campaigning from 2016 to now. But to the real world, the ones outside that cult, the ones who would have to do business with him: Everyone else would see him as the "clown living on credit" he's been all along

I doubt the judge will issue a summary ruling. The sensible move is to put to jury (jury rulings are harder to appeal successfully) and figure trump and his eldest sons will face the financial consequences.

Let justice be done.

Let trump's worthlessness be exposed for all to see.

A Very Short Con Caught

Even the longest con was never more than an assortment of moments that were in themselves very very short.
-- Ally Carter, Uncommon Criminals

While most of America lauded Carroll's civil courtroom victory over con artist donald trump, another political con artist faced his own gauntlet of justice in another part of New York. Remember old George "What's My Real Name" Santos who got exposed for lying about his resume, his biography, his marriage history, his non-profit scams, his (skip a bit Brother), right after winning a congressional seat from Long Island? 

Well, the Federales finally charged Santos on some serious felonies Wednesday morning. Via Brian Mann at NPR: 

Republican Rep. George Santos surrendered to federal authorities at a courthouse in suburban Long Island on Wednesday facing 13 counts of criminal wrongdoing.

Federal prosecutors say he allegedly "devised and executed a scheme" aimed at defrauding donors to his 2022 political campaign.

"This indictment seeks to hold Santos accountable for various alleged fraudulent schemes and brazen misrepresentations," said U.S. Attorney Breon Peace in a statement...

According to the criminal indictments, Santos claimed money donated to his 2022 campaign would fuel his bid for office, paying for TV advertisements.

Instead, he allegedly spent the cash on luxury designer clothes and to make a car payment and pay personal credit card bills.

Santos also faces a charge that in 2020, he fraudulently applied to receive unemployment benefits when he was employed and running for Congress in his first bid for public office...

I've seen a number of people online question "why the hell commit unemployment benefits fraud when he was making more money with his actual job?" Because, as any con artist will tell you, it's all a game. Many conservatives already viewed unemployment aid as a rip-off committed by lazy freeloaders, why NOT jump in on that "scam" when the federal aid was increased to help during a global pandemic? Also wik, con artists love to have different revenue streams to line their pockets in case one scheme goes dry. Back to the shenanigans:

Long before these charges were filed, it was clear the freshman lawmaker had pushed the boundaries of conventional political scandal. After his victory in last November's midterms, it was revealed that he fabricated most of the persona presented to voters.

Santos lied in interviews and campaign documents about his education, his professional accomplishments, his record as a champion volleyball player and his family's experiences in the Holocaust.

He also faced multiple investigations into how he raised and spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign cash, including a mysterious $700,000 gift he made to his own election effort.

It remains unclear where that money came from...

Which is why I've seen other people online imply that the federal prosecutors are not done filing charges on Santos. THESE are the matters they can present right now in a criminal trial to a judge and jury.

Why Santos - whose provable history underscores a lifetime of check fraud, charity rip-offs, and other low-scale cons - decided to move up to the major leagues to pull off scams he wasn't ready to run only makes sense when you step back and recognize that the entire modern Republican Party has happily turned itself into a massive money-making scheme.

The distance between a novice still-young con artist roughly a decade into the Game and an aging bloated con artist like donald trump who's been at this grifting for fifty years has now closed thanks to the unethical state of the GOP. As David A Graham noted at The Atlantic (paywall):

For Santos to be indicted the same day that a jury in Manhattan found former President Donald Trump liable for sexual assault and defamation against the writer E. Jean Carroll is a fitting symmetry. Both men engaged in ceaseless chicanery for years before entering politics, and both found immediate and unexpected success in their first runs for office. But both men are now also wrestling with the realization that although you can get away with a lot in private life, the political spotlight can sometimes light the way for litigants and prosecutors...

In this way, his story resembles a shorter, smaller-time imitation of Trump’s. In his life as a real-estate developer, entertainer, and self-promoter, Trump was often ensnared in scandals, but he was able to escape serious scrutiny and personal criminal consequences for them. Trump’s methods were not quite so brazen, though they were sometimes pretty blunt: inflating and deflating the value of assets in different filings, for example, or simply inventing square footage for buildings. For decades, he got away with this, but entering politics brought attention he didn’t want...

This is, once again, an indictment of a legal system that continually overlooks white collar crime until it's at a scale of disastrous proportions. It's also a massive indictment of a political environment - thanks to the odious Citizens United ruling by a Republican-shaped SCOTUS - of billions of campaign dollars tempting the grifters into more brazen public acts that cannot be ignored.

My mother just mentioned this to me while driving to and from my nephew's college graduation this weekend: "We jailed Martha Stewart for less." (Now I know where I got that attitude from) Even she gets how troubling all this corruption has gotten.

I hope Santos get exposed for more of the fraud he's committed (especially that $700,000 mystery loan). I hope trump gets nailed to the wall by the New York attorney general for his financial crimes.

Let all the con artists answer for their sins. It is high time we held white collar criminals to stern measures.

All Of This Could Have Been Avoided

All of this could have been avoided if the right people in the positions of power made the honest, honorable decisions.

This all could have been avoided if enough Republican voters recognized they were offered a choice to support and defend a known business fraud and unrepentant liar like donald trump, and said No.

This all could have been avoided if enough Republican Party leaders - the elected Senators, Congressperons, Governors, esteemed elders, deep-pocket funders - admitted the trap that donald trump put them in back in 2016, when he threatened to run a third party vanity campaign that could have split Far Right voters and guaranteed a Hillary Clinton victory, and decided that Hillary was the devil they could deal with instead of trump.

This all could have been avoided if that Republican leadership admitted to themselves their Culture War bullshit that they've fed to their voter base - the racism, the sexism, the rage towards immigrants, the violence towards those they deemed Other - created a toxic situation where sensible, practical conservative leadership (yes, that can exist) was untenable, and washed themselves clean of that destructive dogma in order to deny trump his racist/sexist platform.

This all could have been avoided if the political parties - not just the Republicans but also the Democrats and Libertarians and Greens and other parties out there - set for themselves ethical standards for their Presidential candidates to swear to before allowing them to campaign. If they had a screening process where the candidate had to release all their tax returns to public review for the past 20 years, where the candidate had to sell all properties and businesses that would violate the Emoluments Clause before a single primary vote took place, where the candidate had to accept the legitimate results of any vote if they lost. Any single one of those requirements would have stopped trump before he could even start a fake fundraiser for himself.

This all could have been avoided if the Republicans gave up their fetish / worship of business leaders as potential Presidents. The idiotic belief that "Government can be run like a business," which is false as the objectives of a government - uphold laws and serve the public trust - goes against the objectives of a business - to sell products/services and build a profit. That false belief helped trump bluff his way onto the political stage even as a failed businessman.

This all could have been avoided if our American legal system took financial fraud and other white collar crimes more serious. There had been reports and allegations of trump committing money laundering well back into the 1980s. His near-constant appearances in bankruptcy court should have triggered red flags to federal investigators that trump was committing some kind of fraud with all his property developments and failed marketing schemes. There should have been greater effort to track down all the lawsuits and settlements that followed trump everywhere as he bilked and bullied other companies and contractors out of their fair earnings. Instead of going after trump on his fraudulent tax filings today, the district and federal prosecutors should have been doing all this back (1980s) before trump even threatened (1990s) to make a political run.

This all could have been avoided if all the allegations since the 1990s of sexual assault and misconduct trump inflicted towards women were taken more serious. trump should have been a confirmed sex offender well before 2016, and it would have made a reasonable excuse then for the Republican Party to deny him a spot.

This all could have been avoided if enough Americans said "Enough" and denied donald trump even the opportunity to scam and grift us. If enough of us set aside partisan bias - both conservative and liberal - and just recognize the lump of inhuman soulless flesh that trump really is.

Gods help us. This all could have been avoided.

Fiscal Injustice On Display

In the follow-up to the guilty verdicts dropped on donald trump's corporation about a month ago, today we see the justice imposed for trump's fraudulent tax schemes. The judge imposed the largest possible fine allowed under the law... and yet the fine was honestly not enough. Via Ilya Marritz, Andrea Bernstein, and Brian Mann at NPR:

A state court in New York has ordered two companies owned by former President Donald Trump to pay $1.61 million in fines and penalties for tax fraud.

The amount, the maximum allowed under state sentencing guidelines, is due within 14 days of Friday's sentencing.

"This conviction was consequential, the first time ever for a criminal conviction of former President Trump's companies," said Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg.

Bragg said he thinks the financial penalty for decades of fraudulent behavior wasn't severe enough.

"Our laws in this state need to change in order to capture this type of decade-plus systemic and egregious fraud," he said...

In context, the level of fraud trump and his corporation committed was in the hundreds of millions of dollars. Business listings - via AtoZ Databases, which is behind paywalls - put the Trump Organization's yearly revenue around $1.6 billion . Forbes magazine estimated in 2022 the value of trump's personal holdings around $3.2 billion. trump may not be the richest duck in Duckberg, but he's still rolling in enough cash that $1.61 million is literally pocket change to him. It is roughly a tenth of a percent to trump.

This is where we run into the problem with the American legal system: The limitation - nay, inability - to effectively punish wrong-doers proportional to the crimes they've committed.

In terms of massive fines or penalties to discourage would-be reckless never-do-wells from committing those crimes, there will never be a fine large enough to do so. Greed is too much a motivation for those who think they will never get caught.

Punishment itself is not an effective deterrent to stop crime. Poor people who commit crimes do it because they have to. Rich people who commit crimes do it because they want to get richer. The sad thing is, we can't walk away entirely from the penalty system we have to uphold the laws. We still need some form of a penalty for law-breakers, so those of us who are law-abiding can keep faith in the legal system.

The injustice comes into play when we look at the burden of punishment we inflict on the guilty (and sadly on the falsely accused). Poor criminals are often hit with fines in the thousands of dollars that they can't afford to pay, forcing them deeper into poverty (SEE the unjust fine system that decimated the Ferguson MO community) and more likely to commit more crimes to escape the trap. Rich criminals are often hit with fines in the thousands of dollars, which barely puts a dint in their wallets as they head out to another part of the financial industry to run another fraudulent scam.

Fine a petty thief who tried to sneak off with a flatscreen TV worth $500 with a $10,000 fine and watch that thief lose his bank account, lose any legal means of employment to pay it off, lose any property his family owned (because they'll get sucked into the debt), and never get out of that spiral. Fine a white collar criminal who set up a scam fundraiser for $10 million with a $1 million fine, and watch that rich crook walk away with $9 million that his victims can't even sue to get back except for pennies on every dollar. There are thousands more victims of white collar crime than there are grocery stores bemoaning the loss of $3 bread loaves to shoplifting.

The income inequality adds onto the injustice of a legal system that punishes the poor too much and fails to punish the rich at all.

If there were any justice in this system, the criminal trial involving the Trump Organization should have included felony charges on donald trump (and the rest of the upper management like his elder kids who were part of the scams) instead of just the company itself. The fines shouldn't be capped to an arbitrary number - which is set at a level decades ago no longer reflecting the insane wealth of the few today - but scaled to the level of revenue/income the guilty actually have, so that the rich pay a greater burden for their sins compared to the poor struggling to get food on their tables. Any criminal act that defrauded people directly should require all money stolen from them recouped and given back, supplanting any civil court attempt to recover those funds.

One of the greatest open scandals of our legal system is how law enforcement fails to take financial fraud seriously as a problem. It comes up every time there's a stock market crash or bank run or "too big to fail" failures. The damage caused by white collar crimes are far greater and far reaching than anything a poor crook can pull off, and yet we punish the poor crook with a jail cell while the rich crook goes sailing to the Caribbean on whichever yacht the IRS didn't impound.

When you look back on the terrible history of going after white collar crime in this country: We jailed Martha Stewart because she was a bitch, not a criminal mastermind. And we jailed Martha Stewart for less than what the investment firms did to our housing market in 2007, for less than what donald trump and his corporate lackeys did with their tax dodging schemes.

Any legal reforms need to start with the reality that we must hold the wealthy criminals accountable, no more walking away, no more slaps on the wrist. Send the rich to jail like they were pot dealers (and free all those who are only guilty of pot dealing or other misdemeanor petty-ante shit). 

Where the Grifting Takes the GOP

You follow drugs, you get drug addicts and drug dealers. But you start to follow the money, and you don't know where the fuck it's gonna take you.
-- Lester Freamon, The Wire

In a followup to last week's bombshell that a New York Republican Representative-Elect was a gaslighting fraud, I need to note that the authorities are finally paying attention to George Santos and opening criminal investigations on him. O the irony of grifting your way into elected office letting prosecutors find out you were grifting in the first place.

While the mainstream media is busy assigning blame on who's responsible for Santos getting as far as he has - blaming Democrats for not doing enough Oppo Research, blaming local press for not digging into Santos' bogus resume - the most blame should be aimed at Santos himself for setting himself up for this exposure and ridicule (if not future jail time). After that, most of the blame should be aimed at a Republican Party that is not only vulnerable to con artists buying their way into their ranks, but happily defending the grifters even when their scandals threatens to expose all the other corrupt sins hiding in the GOP closets.

As Jill Dennison notes at her blog:

I could point to so many, such as Marge Greene who was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives despite being a follower of QAnon, despite believing that Jewish space lasers (hint, in case any Republicans are reading this, there ain’t no such thing as Jewish space lasers) started the California wildfires.  Or the pistol-totin’ barhop, Lauren Boebert who proudly put a photo of all her children holding big guns on her Christmas cards.  And then, there’s Kevin McCarthy, vying to be the next Speaker of the House, whose only platform is revenge against any and all liberal democratic policies and those of us who support those policies.  But for now, I want to focus on one incoming member of the House, a person who will be seated in the House of Representatives next Tuesday, a person who has broken the boundaries of dishonesty:  George Santos...

This is a new low even for the Republican Party and if, in fact, they allow him to be seated in the House on Tuesday, it will be the most definitive statement yet that there is no conscience, no morals, no values, and no integrity within the Republican Party.  One lie of any substance would have disqualified any Democratic candidate, but Mr. Santos told lies about every single aspect of his entire 34 years!!!  I imagine there are some Republicans who are wishing they could crawl under a rock right about now – Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, Mitt Romney – but the rest seem to be scratching their heads and wondering how to get this out of the news, how to make it disappear.  Not a single word from the otherwise garrulous Kevin McCarthy… funny that.

This is, for the Republicans, as bad a nightmare as the former guy, an egomaniac, planning to run for the Oval Office again.  I would pity the Republicans, but … they brought this mess on themselves when they first began letting unqualified circus clowns run for office.  It seems to me that a person who cannot even be relied upon to tell the truth about where he went to college (he didn’t), property he claims to own (but doesn’t), where he has worked, his ancestry, his criminal past, where he lives, cannot possibly be trusted to be an honest lawmaker!  I thought Herschel Walker told some mighty big lies, but Santos even makes him look like an amateur.  Santos is right up there with the former guy, who wouldn’t recognize the truth if it smacked him upside the head!  This is NOT what this nation needs … lawmakers who cannot ever be trusted, whose words and actions must always, always be fact-checked!  But alas, this is the new GOP – which, by the way, no longer stands for “Grand Old Party”, but rather for “Gaslight Or Perjure...”

Dennison - and others - are calling on the Republican leadership to do the right thing, the ethical thing, but the likes of Kevin McCarthy cannot afford to kick Santos to the curb because their control of the US House is on a precarious - 5-seat margin - footing already. McCarthy himself is facing an unheard-of fight of his life for the Speakership, and he needs all the grifters he can find to save his own ass in this moment. Even though Santos will condemn McCarthy - and the rest of the GOP - down the road.

This scandal with Santos is exposing the reality that the Republican Party for all historic purposes is no longer a political party, it's an ongoing criminal conspiracy. As Amanda Marcotte points out at Salon, entire decades of lusting after power has turned a once-proud Party into a haven for grifters: 

One thing was dead certain within moments of the New York Times publishing its exposé on the many lies of George Santos: There was zero chance that this brand new Republican congressman-elect from New York would be shamed into giving up his seat. Perhaps that didn't seem obvious to everyone at first, especially those with lingering memories of the pre-Trump era, when we all pretended to believe that Republican voters cared about hypocrisy, lying, overt racism, sexual abuse or any of the other personal or professional scandals that used to take politicians down routinely. But I never doubted for a moment that Santos would move onward toward being seated and that the incoming Republican House majority would allow it...

Despite all this, the only way he doesn't join Congress as an esteemed member of the Republican caucus is if New York prosecutors can nail him for something first. I believe this in the way I believe that chocolate is delicious and cats are cute. After all, what is the modern GOP, if not a holding station for every two-bit criminal and grifter who wants the job security that can only come with exploiting the endlessly credulous Republican base? The party can no more start kicking out the fraudsters than it can stop trying to cut taxes for the rich. This is just who they are and what they do. George Santos is in no sense an anomaly. He is the Republican present and, even more to the point, the Republican future...

This is what gets delicately described as "negative partisanship" in mainstream media and political science textbooks, and all too often treated as an equal problem on both sides. Of course it's true that both parties include some voters who are more motivated by dislike of the opposing party than by support for their own. But with Democrats, that at least has some basis in real-world concerns, given that Republicans are the party of abortion bans and the Jan. 6 insurrection. But on the other side, Republican voters mostly coast on hyperbolic vitriol about the evils of Democrats, which are at best vague insinuations of corruption, and at worst outright lies and QAnon-style conspiracy theories. 

Convincing Republican voters to believe that Democrats are literally the worst people imaginable certainly helps Republicans win elections. But it's also destabilizing the party from within, because shady characters of all flavors now understand that no sin or crime is so great that it cannot be wiped away by running for office as a Republican. The result is a party full of cranks, chronic liars and petty criminals, a situation that gets worse every election cycle, as demonstrated by the Santos fiasco...

We still don't know where George Santos got the money that allowed him to run and win a congressional election in a pivotal swing district. But he's still likely to be seated next week with no serious impediment, offering America's swindler class another reason to believe that going into Republican politics is like getting a license to commit fraud. There's no real chance of political backlash in a situation like this, with the GOP voter base heavily dosed up on Fox News hate. Worse yet, it seems increasingly clear that federal law enforcement is too afraid of looking "partisan" to prosecute Republican politicians over anything, so there are no serious legal consequences either. Sam Bankman-Fried may be kicking himself for getting into cryptocurrency instead of GOP politics, if what he wanted was the ability to defraud whoever you like with impunity...

I wrote in 2015 that the Republican Party was dead in spirit, with only a decaying body shambling about going through the motions of politics in order to keep all the money and power in their undead uncaring hands. With the 2016 election of donald trump, the Republicans were stuck with the reality that he paved the way for all the other grifters to yell and scream enough on Far Right media outlets to win offices in safe gerrymandered districts (or safe Red states full of Culture War angst). 

With these political offices in their hands, they can con their way to put more government funds in their own pockets. They can then campaign and fundraise to their hearts' desires, sucking up every last penny from the suckers who buy their vitriol and eat it like caviar. This is the new con game, where the liars can make money even if they lose by declaring themselves victims and fundraising off of that.

This is where the modern GOP is. A party filling up with George Santos and a hundred other grifters. Now literally "trumps all the way down." 

trump can't go to jail for his crimes fast enough. Here's hoping he shares a cell block with Santos sooner rather than later. Along with the other Republican grifters thriving off of fear and hate and greed.

Who IS This Guy?

So a rather bizarre scandal reared its head this week - in a month, nay a life cycle of utter madness ever since 2016 Gods help us, so this being cray-cray is saying something - when the New York Times started looking at the newly elected people from this midterms cycle, and discovered this George Santos who won a US Congressional seat in the Long Island part of New York was, well, lying about his entire goddamn resume and parts of his personal biography.

Since the Times is definitely behind a firewall for me, I'm pilfering much of the info from Raw Story so do help a blog out and donate or subscribe to Raw Story please and thanks. Oh, the report via Travis Gettys (I can't see who the Times reporters are, my bad):

George Santos, a son of Brazilian immigrants who presented himself as a "seasoned Wall Street financier and investor" who owned 13 properties and operated an animal rescue charity, became the first openly gay Republican to win a House seat as a non-incumbent, but a New York Times review of public documents and court filings called into question his résumé.

Both Citigroup and Goldman Sachs told the newspaper they had no record of Santos working there, as he had claimed, and Baruch College found no record that he had graduated in 2010, also as he claimed.

The Internal Revenue Service also found little evidence that his animal rescue group, Friend of Pets United, was a tax-exempt organization.

It gets crazier.

Santos loaned more than $700,000 to his campaign and donated thousands of dollars to other candidates in the past two years, but his company, the Devolder Organization, has virtually no online presence and his financial disclosures don't reveal any clients -- which election law experts say could be a problem if those clients actually exist.

The Times also could not find any records of the properties his family allegedly owns.

This part of the story quickly raises a ton of red flags. If Santos doesn't have a verified source of employment or income (if he's not earning money from the properties he claims to have, for example), then where the hell did that $700,000 he "loaned" to his own campaign come from? This reeks of money laundering. I mean, for all of the fakery surrounding trump's questionable finances, at least he actually owns stuff he can use as collateral to get loans. 

All anyone can confirm at the moment is that George Santos was caught committing checking fraud in Brazil back in 2010, and that Santos had been evicted from residences several times for missing rent payments. 

With a hot scandal to follow, there's been denials and recriminations and further exposure of Santos' falsehoods. He claimed he lost employees in the tragic Orlando Pulse mass shooting, but nobody can tie any of the fallen to his alleged businesses.  The latest report is that Santos may be lying about his family's Jewish background that they fled due to the coming Second World War and Holocaust. 

There's open questions now if Santos is really gay. After all, he's lied about everything else about himself. (Update: Santos was married to a woman before divorcing in 2019. It could just mean he was bi/closeted and came out afterward. It happens. But he never mentioned the marriage when he campaigned, so... Lie of Omission.)

This story is exposing a lot of sins right now, and not just Santos'. 

The Republican Party at the New York level has to deal with the reality one of their bright new stars is a goddamn fake, not to mention the thousands of campaign dollars they've gotten from this guy puts everyone's ledgers under scrutiny. The entire GOP party in that state has a lot of answering to do.

The Democratic Party at the New York level is also getting yelled at. In this day and age of extreme partisan politics, Oppo Research should be Campaigning 101. This wasn't Santos' first attempt at elected office, and one thing you're supposed to do is go through your opponent's work history and background to find ANY questionable acts and weak spots in their narratives to exploit. While Santos' opponent reportedly did some digging, and then tried to get the papers to follow up, nobody really paid attention until he'd actually won (and ironically getting the attention as a "future GOP star" in a mostly-Dem state). There's a growing push to remove the current party head in New York - who's floundered at keeping the party organized already, this is one more faux pas on him - and this could get ugly.

This is also a massive indictment of our electoral process, especially for the Congressional and state legislative offices. I've complained about this before, that our choices for candidates are barely - if ever - vetted for qualifications to the jobs we're supposed to elect them to. The parties are so desperate to draft celeb candidates - or too beholden to the religious and cultural extremists to allow the more unhinged and vulgar - that they don't care about actual QUALITY of that candidate until it's too late. You would think a stronger background check would be run on these candidates - especially to make sure you don't get anyone like Rick "Medicare Fraud" Scott embezzling from your own party's funds - to guarantee you're presenting the Best and the Brightest to reflect your party's ethos. Guess what Republicans, someone like Santos - and so many others - are proving your party has no ethics at all.

It does not help that the only ones who can even put their names on the ballots for consideration are the only ones who can AFFORD - by clean money or laundered - to run in the first place. It costs money to file for an election primary, it costs thousands of dollars to run any kind of campaign. You can see it with Santos working to buy a win with $700,000 that nobody can confirm came from honest business. Elections have turned into a racket, a billion dollar industry that buys you a lot of political influence that can siphon even more taxpayer money into your own pockets later on. Gods help us with that open scandal.

Everything about Santos demands a full criminal investigation.

Hell, we need to run a criminal investigation to find out who George Santos really IS.

Let the Guilty Verdicts Be Read: trump Is Toast December 2022 edition

Let the Schadenfreude be served. Let the people celebrate. Send some to the common pulpits, and cry out "Liberty, Freedom, and an End to trump franchises!"

I want to hug the army of the Potomac investigators into trump's tax schemes. I want to get the whole of the army of Vicksburg Manhattan District Attorney's office drunk at my own expense. I want to fight some small trump and thrash him.
-- paraphrasing/updating the celebratory words of Henry Adams

Ah, just in case you didn't hear the joyous cheers this afternoon, that New York City criminal trial on the Trump Organization's tax mischief had the jury verdict returned, and the jury found trump's corporate empire guilty on ALL counts (via Andrea Bernstein, Ilya Marritz, and Brian Mann at NPR):

A jury in Manhattan has found former President Donald Trump's company guilty of a long-running criminal tax fraud scheme that lasted into his presidency.

Though Trump and his company have repeatedly faced criminal investigations, this case marks the first time his company has been charged, tried, and convicted on criminal charges.

Trump built his political brand, in large part, on his claim that he was an aggressive and successful businessman...

Considering the number of bankruptcies trump filed over the decades, he was gaslighting about the "successful businessman" bit, and this court verdict confirms it. I digress, let's return to the report:

In all, the jury found two entities controlled by Trump guilty on 17 counts of criminal tax fraud and falsifying business records. The maximum penalty is $1.6 million.

"This was a case about lying and cheating, false documents to the aid of evading taxes for the benefit of individuals and the corporation," Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg said, speaking with reporters after the verdict was delivered.

In a statement, the Trump Organization criticized the verdict and promised to appeal, arguing that blame should fall on the company's executives and not on the firm itself.

"The notion that a company could be held responsible for an employees' actions, to benefit themselves, on their own personal tax returns is simply preposterous," the statement read...

This is trump trying to shift the blame on his handlers, on the people who answered to him when it came to running his corporation. If that was true, then it undercuts any claim trump makes about being the guy who makes all the tough decisions, of being in control of anything. trump can't run from being held accountable here: the company getting convicted has his name on it.

At issue in this trial was whether Weisselberg and another top executive, Trump Organization comptroller Jeffrey McConney acted "in behalf of" the corporate entities when they compensated Weisselberg and other top executives by paying for the apartments and luxury benefits that did not get reported to the tax authorities.

Well, issue resolved. The jury believed that Weisselberg and McConney acted in behalf of and on orders from the company executives... which is pretty much trump and half his family.

If there's any damper on the festivities happening tonight, it's the reality that donald trump himself - nor his eldest sons and daughter who were part of these schemes - will not face direct punishment for these crimes. For reasons I still don't fathom, the Manhattan DA's office decided not to pursue trump himself, focusing on the corporate entity itself as though the evidence they had was sufficient only for that.

Thing is, the swiftness of this jury decision, and the fact the jurors convicted on ALL counts, underscores the possibility that even one criminal charge - say, the First Degree charge on Scheme to Defraud - could have been proven in court today. It seems a shame that the DA refused to risk that.

The good news: With the wrap-up on this case - even before the jury verdict was read - DA Bragg had decided to reconsider a criminal matter that should directly imperil trump. Remember the Stormy Daniels Hush Money payoff that sent trump's bagman lawyer Michael Cohen to the slammer? Bragg reportedly is looking into using the information revealed in the tax fraud convictions to reopen the Daniels affair. If you'll recall, trump squeaked out of that matter as "Unindicted Co-Conspirator Individual One." All things being equal, with Cohen and Daniels likely to testify against him, trump won't stay unindicted for long.

A more direct impact from this verdict is that trump's business empire faces dire financial disruptions from here on. Not just the fines - which honestly aren't that severe for even a middling operation like trump's - but the reality that banks, lenders, and other corporations may be restricted in doing any business with the Trump Organization at all. trump's ability to keep grifting is going to take a huge hit.

And this criminal trial has ties to an even bigger headache for trump: The New York State's civil case against trump and his corporation for tax fraud and other financial shenanigans on a grander scale than what the City Attorney could pursue. Not only facing $250 million in fines, the civil case headed by State AG Letitia James could impose harsh sanctions that could pretty much shut the Trump Org completely down. James had a strong case going before this verdict, she has a stronger case going forward.

The best possible thing we can see now is how this jury conviction hurts trump's political chances heading into 2024. Before all this, trump could brazenly strut about claiming he was a great businessman, the best, successful at everything, untouchable. This conviction is the first real dent into trump's illusory gaslighting. All his "success" came from cheating, from evading taxes. trump is not really a success at all.

trump may not be directly convicted, but his empire, the one with his name on it, is convicted. This becomes an albatross around trump's neck he cannot remove. Every political rival he'll face will be able to kick him on these jury rulings and he won't be able to bluff and lie his way out of it.

We can say it truthfully: trump is a tax fraud.

trump is vulnerable now.

trump is toast.

Revel in the Schadenfreude, America.

The Long Wait for Justice Upon trump

I wrote earlier this month that my impatience over the handling of donald trump's legal woes - especially into the matter of him stealing hundreds if not thousands of classified documents when he left the White House in 2021 - would hopefully get satisfaction once the Midterms were over and his fate wouldn't affect the decision-making of American voters.

Well, damn the Man. It's pretty much the end of November. We're all still waiting for that hammer to drop.

Even as every day after the votes have been counted, there is more movement towards making trump accountable for all the crimes he's committed in violation of our voting rights and in violation of our national security.

Just this Tuesday before Turkey Day, trump faced a number of legal defeats that all signal his time running out (via Robert Katzberg at Slate):

On Tuesday, a three-judge panel from the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals heard oral argument on the federal government’s contention that Judge Aileen Cannon overstepped her authority in limiting the Justice Department’s access to and use of the documents seized earlier this year at Donald Trump’s home in Florida, Mar-a-Lago. Despite the technical nature of the hearing’s dialogue—one that covered, among other things, the nature of interlocutory appeals, the scope of Rule 41 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, and the limits of equitable jurisdiction—it appears that the government’s position will, at least in part, win the day. Throughout the session, counsel for the former president was unable to satisfactorily respond to skeptical questions from all three panel members. Ignoring the wisdom that one can never predict what a court will do based upon oral argument, it seems that the panel will either rule that Judge Cannon had no jurisdiction to rule on the investigation in the first place, and will vacate all of her prior rulings, or it will severely curtail the review process that she created. In sum, the government had a good day...

If the 11th Circuit does what now seems likely, once the newly appointed special counsel gets up to speed, an indictment of the former president for unlawful possession of the materials found at Mar-a-Lago should quickly follow. The case is both a prosecutorial “slam dunk” and the most effective way to begin prosecuting all matters related to the Jan. 6 riot and the attempts to overturn the 2020 election.

As has been noted by a number of legal observers, the Mar-a-Lago prosecution is much like a simple drug possession case. Donald Trump was in possession of something proscribed by law: not a controlled substance like heroin, but documents that were legally required to remain with the government. The materials in question did not even have to have been classified for their removal to have broken federal law...

Given that there's been already 100 documents deemed classified that shouldn't have been in trump's possession, and trump is facing more than just the Presidential Records Act he violated. Back to Katzberg:

And speaking of the defense, as someone who prosecuted and defended federal white-collar criminal cases for more than four decades, there is none. The ongoing absurdities the former president and his supporters have put forth—whether his undocumented, magical declassification of the top-secret materials; the alleged planting of the documents at his home by the FBI; or any of the other risible claims made—may have provided helpful fodder in the right-wing media, but none of it will help the former president in a court of law.

Everything trump's argued about in social media can't stand in a courtroom under oath. trump nor his lawyers can't prove planted evidence, especially when he's been complaining that the documents in his possession are his to begin with. Gaslighting the media is easy: Gaslighting a judge leads to perjury.

The only rational way trump can get out of his blatant violation of the Presidential Records Act is to argue the law itself is Unconstitutional. trump's only defense is that Executive Privilege extends even to former Presidents, but to do so would grant ex-Presidents powers that would conflict with the authority of the current Chief of State. Would this Far Right Supreme Court even go THAT far to protect trump?

For the Justice Department to dig this long - and fight this hard against trump's delaying tactics via judge-shopping for Cannon's help - it would be folly to not follow through on this case. That trump is at least facing a courtroom for his theft of these documents - at the earliest by 2023, to avoid his presumed Presidential run for 2024 - has to be a settled thing. It's now a question of when (it just better be SOON dammit).

For all that happened this past Tuesday, the Reuters newswire documented more:

The conservative-leaning U.S. Supreme Court cleared the release of Trump's tax returns to the House of Representatives Ways and Means Committee...

The committee in its request invoked a federal law that empowers its chairman to request any person's tax returns from the tax-collecting Internal Revenue Service (IRS).

Trump's lawyers have said the committee's real aim is to publicly expose his tax returns and unearth politically damaging information about Trump...

Although Reuters didn't go into the reason(s) why the Ways and Means were looking at trump's taxes, if I recall from other sources it was because the Committee was digging into trump's many violations of the Emoluments Clause. trump had been using his properties to entice and squeeze as much money out of the government (forcing the Secret Service to reside at his hotels at double-billing!) and foreign lobbyists since Day One. It had been this long going after trump on this open grift - delayed either by Republican control of Congress or trump's control of the Justice Department - that only now have the courts cleared this matter.

Problem is, the current Democratic control of Ways and Means is going to end in a month: Republicans won a narrow victory to control the House, and there is no way the MAGA wingnuts running the GOP caucus is going to expose their God-Emperor trump to public scrutiny. If there's anything the current committee can use the tax returns info they now have, they better make it quick before Christmas.

If there's anything else that should get resolved before Christmas, well the New York criminal trial into the Trump Organization got a lot of testimony during the first half of the month, leading up to the prosecution resting their case with the defense resuming matters after Turkey Day (via the Guardian and the AP newswire):

Prosecutors in the Trump Organization’s criminal tax fraud trial rested their case on Monday earlier than expected, pinning hopes for convicting Donald Trump’s company largely on the word of two top executives who cut deals before testifying that they schemed to avoid taxes on company-paid perks.

Allen Weisselberg, the company’s longtime finance chief, and Jeffrey McConney, a senior vice-president and controller, testified for the bulk of the prosecution’s eight-day case, bringing the drama of their own admitted wrongdoing to a trial heavy on numbers, spreadsheets, tax returns and payroll records...

The Trump Organization’s lawyers opened their defense by calling to the witness stand the accountant who handled tax returns and other financial matters for Trump, the Trump Organization and hundreds of Trump entities since the 1980s.

Donald Bender, a partner at Mazars USA LLP, said McConney would call him “numerous times” a week about various tax issues and that he got emails from Weisselberg so often, he even made time to respond while away in the mountains or vacationing in Paris.

Bender said he interacted far less frequently with Trump, his biggest client, attending his 2005 wedding, but otherwise talking to him maybe a couple times a year.

Once Trump became president in 2017, Bender said he would visit him twice a year at the White House so he could sign his tax extensions and returns but those trips ended when the Covid-19 pandemic began.

Trump blamed Bender and Mazars for the company’s troubles, writing on his Truth Social platform last week: “The highly paid accounting firm should have routinely picked these things up – we relied on them. VERY UNFAIR!”

trump's defense is obviously an attempt to dodge accountability for himself, but considering trump himself was the company CEO - had sold himself for years as a great decision-maker and leader - it's kind of hard to tell a jury and the world that he was kept out of the loop for major financial decisions that kept his businesses afloat. Harder still to admit his own business "savvy" didn't clue trump into the many tax dodges happening under his authority.

While trump himself won't face criminal liability here - by a quirk in the law, it's his corporation that's on trial - if the New York legal system can prove guilt here and issue judgment on Trump Organization to where trump can't use it to manage his ongoing cons, this would be a huge victory for holding the corrupt in high office accountable for their sins.

All of this going on while trump jumps into the 2024 Presidential campaign two years early in an obvious attempt to use his status as a "candidate" to avoid any criminal prosecution heading his way. In spite of Attorney General Garland hiring a Special Prosecutor to take over not only the Mar-A-Lago investigation but a multitude of other trump-related investigations as a response.

All we can hope for, all we've been able to hope for since 2015, is the long arc of justice to find trump guilty of the crimes he's openly committed for decades. If justice can be done by the time we're gathered at the Christmas trees to open the presents, please and thank you.

Here's hoping for a festive Saturnalian season.

Quick Update on trump's Legal Woes As We Head Into October 2022

The past week has been a little busy for donald trump's lawyers, so let's recap.

You might remember that trump had found a district judge he appointed to throw up roadblocks to the FBI's digging into all the classified materials they caught him with, when Judge Cannon agreed to his demands for a Special Master to delay everything. Well, the Justice Department appealed that, going to the 11th Circuit to allow the feds to continue their work. The judges at the 11th - including two who were appointed by trump - threw a smackdown on Cannon and trump in response (via Emptywheel):

While reserving judgment on the merits question, the opinion was nevertheless fairly scathing about Cannon’s abuse of discretion. Some of this pertained to her jurisdictional analysis... But two important implicit admonishments of Cannon’s actions pertain to the deference on national security that courts give to the Executive.

The opinion calls the scheme that Cannon had set up — allowing the Intelligence Community to continue its intelligence assessment but prohibiting any investigation for criminal purposes — untenable. In support, the opinion notes that there’s a sworn declaration from FBI Assistant Director Alan Kohler (the only one in this docket) debunking Cannon’s distinction between national security review and criminal investigation. It notes, twice, that courts must accord great weight to the Executive, including an affidavit. The opinion notes that “no party had offered anything beyond speculation” to undermine this representation...

In another section, the opinion makes a finding that goes beyond where the dispute before Cannon has gone (but not beyond where the dispute before Special Master Raymond Dearie has). Even former Presidents can only access classified information if they have a Need to Know. (Italics for the appellate decision)

[W]e cannot discern why Plaintiff would have an individual interest in or need for any of the one-hundred documents with classification markings. Classified documents are marked to show they are classified, for instance, with their classification level. Classified National Security Information, Exec. Order No. 13,526, § 1.6, 3 C.F.R. 298, 301 (2009 Comp.), reprinted in 50 U.S.C. § 3161 app. at 290–301. They are “owned by, produced by or for, or . . . under the control of the United States Government.” Id. § 1.1. And they include information the “unauthorized disclosure [of which] could reasonably be expected to cause identifiable or describable damage to the national security.” Id. § 1.4. For this reason, a person may have access to classified information only if, among other requirements, he “has a need-to-know the information.” Id. § 4.1(a)(3). This requirement pertains equally to former Presidents, unless the current administration, in its discretion, chooses to waive that requirement. Id. § 4.4(3).

Plaintiff has not even attempted to show that he has a need to know the information contained in the classified documents. Nor has he established that the current administration has waived that requirement for these documents. And even if he had, that, in and of itself, would not explain why Plaintiff has an individual interest in the classified documents...

In short: trump had no privilege to claim.

And then there was the 11th Circuit ruling about Cannon's authority to intervene in the first place. Back to Emptywheel:

The summary of this case is a really remarkable description of what has already happened (I’m sure it helped the clerks on that front that they had no page limits). Ominously for Trump’s case, the opinion starts the narrative from the time he left the White House and lays out several moments where Trump failed to invoke privilege or declassification. Trump likes to tell the story starting on August 8 when the FBI arrived at his house out of the blue...

This means trump can't stick to his story that he always had the right to possess these documents when he really didn't. I digress, back to good part:

In Trump’s reply to DOJ’s argument that he couldn’t own these documents, the opinion notes, he specifically disclaimed having filed a Rule 41(g), which is where someone moves to demand property unlawfully seized be returned...

Cannon, the opinion notes, claimed to be asserting jurisdiction under equitable jurisdiction even while treating Trump’s request (in which he had not made a Rule 41(g) motion) as a hybrid request...

Half that page of the opinion consists of footnotes, recording that Trump’s claims about Rule 41(g) have been all over the map...

trump and his lawyers are wary of filing actual paperwork - that Rule 41(g) - on ownership because if they do, and the courts rule he had no right to classified materials in his possession, he'll basically be confessing to breaking that particular federal law. Instead, they claim everything and anything just on say-so in the hopes a favorable court will buy that defense. Oh, right. I'm interrupting. Back to Emptywheel.

The opinion doesn’t come to any conclusions about all this nonsense from a jurisdictional position. It doesn’t have to. But it did capture conflicting claims that Trump made and Cannon’s reliance on a “hybrid” claim to avoid pinning Trump down.

The reason the 11th Circuit didn’t have to resolve all this is because, regardless of which basis Cannon claimed to have intervened, Richey governs (which is exactly what Jay Bratt said in the hearing before Cannon, as I laid out here).

And the first prong of Richey — and the most important one — is whether there has been a Fourth Amendment violation. Cannon says there has not. That should be game over...

While this is an appellate ruling, trump can arguably push the matter further up the chain - is SCOTUS next? - but one interesting development from this ruling was how Cannon went back and revised parts of her court ruling to fit the demands of the 11th Circuit... which apparently makes it harder for trump to appeal those parts. Interesting.

Meanwhile, the Thing Cannon Set Up - the Special Master situation involving a court-approved arbitrator over the documents in question - settled on Judge Raymond Dearie to serve in that capacity, and he promptly kicked trump's lawyers in the collective tuckus in ways that showed trump wasn't getting an easy out (the AP News but quoted via the Guardian):

The independent arbiter tasked with inspecting documents seized in an FBI search of Donald Trump’s Florida home said on Tuesday he intends to push briskly through the review process and appeared skeptical of Trump lawyers’ reluctance to say whether they believed the records had been declassified.

“We’re going to proceed with what I call responsible dispatch,” Raymond Dearie, a veteran Brooklyn judge, told lawyers for Trump and the Department of Justice in their first meeting since his appointment last week as a so-called special master...

Though Trump’s lawyers requested the appointment of a special master, they have resisted Dearie’s request for more information about whether the seized records had been previously declassified – as Trump maintains. His lawyers have consistently stopped short of that claim even as they asserted in a separate filing on Tuesday that the department of justice had not proven that the documents were classified. In any event, they say, a president has absolute authority to declassify information...

But Dearie said that if Trump’s lawyers will not actually assert that the records have been declassified, and the department of justice makes an acceptable case that they remain classified, he will be inclined to regard them as classified.

“As far as I’m concerned,” he said, “that’s the end of it.”

In a letter to Dearie on Monday night, the lawyers said the declassification issue might be part of Trump’s defense in the event of an indictment. Trusty said the Trump team should not be forced at this point to disclose details of a possible defense.

He denied that the lawyers were trying to engage in “gamesman-like” behavior but said it was a process that required “baby steps”. He said the right time for the discussion is whenever Trump presses forward with a claim to get property back.

Dearie said he understood the position but observed: “I guess my view of it is, you can’t have your cake and eat it...”

A US district judge, Aileen Cannon, a Trump appointee who granted the request for a special master, had set a 30 November deadline for Dearie’s review and instructed him to prioritize classified records.

Dearie, a Ronald Reagan appointee, made clear during Tuesday’s meeting that he intended to meet the deadline...

Other reports have it that Dearie is looking to wrap up by October, likely because he already sees the reality that there's not much to separate between the classified documents and anything trump claims as privileged. Granted, that's my speculation. No matter what, trump's traditional gaming of the legal system - delay, delay, delay - isn't going to work here.

The other big bombshell from last week was the breaking development in the state of New York's civil case against trump, trump's family, and their corporation. As mentioned earlier when I looked at the big four legal matters dogging trump, AG Letitia James had wrapped up her interviews for the grand jury, and apparently had enough to take it all to court seeking major damages and a long-overdue crippling of trump's crooked financial empire (via John Cassidy at the New Yorker (paywalled)): 

The lawsuit that her office filed in State Supreme Court alleges that, from 2011 to 2021, the Trump Organization’s financial statements systematically exaggerated the value of at least twenty-three of his properties and other assets—from his Fifth Avenue triplex apartment and his daughter’s penthouse on Park Avenue to his estate in Mar-a-Lago, Florida, and his far-flung network of golf courses. “The number of grossly inflated asset values is staggering, affecting most if not all of the real estate holdings in any given year,” the lawsuit states. It also says that Trump’s alleged deceptions reaped him and his co-defendants financial benefits worth up to an estimated $250 million, and asked the court to force him to repay these gains, plus interest.

In addition to Trump, the lawsuit names his children Donald, Jr., Eric, and Ivanka as defendants. In 2014, the complaint says, Ivanka was granted an option to buy a penthouse at Trump Park Avenue for $14.3 million, but the apartment was valued in the Trump Organization’s 2014 “Statement of Financial Condition” at $45 million. According to the lawsuit, Trump’s son Eric was “taking the lead” on Seven Springs estate, a large property in Westchester County, New York—which Trump bought for $7.5 million, in 1995, but between 2011 and 2021 valued at up to $291 million. The complaint also alleges that, in 2016, the Trump Organization misled an outside appraiser that prepared a valuation of the Seven Springs property, which it then submitted to the Internal Revenue Service in support of an application for a conservation easement “that ultimately, and fraudulently, reduced Mr. Trump’s tax liability by more than $3.5 million...”

In short: trump lied about how valuable his properties were when it came time to profit from them, and then lied that the properties were valueless when it came time to pay taxes on them.

Where Trump and his businesses crossed the legal line, the complaint alleges, was in producing false financial statements that grossly inflated his net worth to “induce banks to lend money to the Trump Organization on more favorable terms than would otherwise have been available to the company, to satisfy continuing loan covenants, and to induce insurers to provide insurance coverage for higher limits and at lower premiums.” The complaint identifies numerous loans and insurance policies that it said were granted at least partly on the basis of claims Trump made about his wealth in a “Statement of Financial Condition”—a list of his assets and liabilities that the Trump Organization produced annually...

This is where there's more good news:

James said her office is also referring her case to federal prosecutors in Manhattan and the I.R.S. In the absence of actions by those agencies, the potential sanctions facing the Trumps, if James wins her case, are a big financial penalty, the appointment of an independent monitor to oversee the Trump Organization for at least five years, a prohibition on Trump or the Trump Organization buying any new commercial real estate in New York during the same period, and a ban on any of the Trumps named in the lawsuit serving as an officer or director in any businesses licensed or registered in the state.

Effectively, James is trying to banish Trump and his family from doing business in their longtime home state...

James apparently uncovered criminal acts in all of the fraud trump and his people committed during their shell games with property values. It would be pretty to think that despite the City of New York's failure to bring more criminal charges against trump, the IRS will go after him for tax evasion like they've done to every mob boss since Al Capone. 

It could be argued that even after all this, trump and co. could simply relocate their business efforts to a more favorable state and restart, except that James is looking to keep trump from doing any business with any entity in New York. That covers New York City, and THAT - the financial capital of the world - covers nearly every bank on the planet. Meaning if James wins her case, there will be no way for trump and his adult progeny to do business they way they've done - through sketchy loans to pay off other sketchy loans - for at least five years.

It would kill trump not to run any kind of con job at all. trump has no actual value outside of his scams, he's a clown living on credit. A victory by AG James would be a fate worse than death for trump.

Bring it. Bankrupt the bastard. Send him into financial exile for the rest of his short life. And be rid of trump forever.