And Yet They Stay Silent

Posted by historymaniacmegan on December 11, 2022

Now that Donald Trump is no longer president, I often don’t feel the need to pay as much close attention to him as I once did during those nightmare four years in office. Although he has announced his candidacy for the 2024 presidential election, I still remain wary. Since I still remember how we all underestimated him during the 2016 election campaign to our great detriment. If there’s one thing I don’t want to see in my life, it’s seeing another Trump presidency. Even though their disastrous showing in the 2022 midterm elections have led the Republican Party to reevaluate their relationship with Trump, we must not rejoice that they’ve turned away from their cult leader completely. Even if the GOP establishment has, the fact I still see Trump signs within my area shows that he still has his loyal fans and still has influence. Besides, whenever Trump says or does something that hurts the GOP’s image, most Republican politicians will do this dance where they’ll openly condemn Trump for his inexcusable conduct or try to distance themselves from him. Only to keep crawling back to him once they believe the scandal has gone away. And if Trump does well enough to win the GOP primary in 2024, I can guarantee that the Republicans will have his back.

On Saturday, December 3, 2022, Donald Trump for the termination of the US Constitution to overturn the 2020 election and reinstate him to power. Writing on his personal bully pulpit Truth Social, Trump said, “Do you throw the Presidential Election Results of 2020 OUT and declare the RIGHTFUL WINNER, or do you have a NEW ELECTION? A Massive Fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution. Our great ‘Founders’ did not want, and would not condone, False & Fraudulent Elections!” According to CNN, Trump’s post came after a release of internal Twitter emails showing deliberation in 2020 over a New York Post story about material found on Hunter Biden’s laptop. But really, who gives a shit about Hunter Biden’s laptop besides right wing news outlets and their viewers? For God’s sake the only thing about Hunter Biden’s laptop that I care about is when I’ll stop hearing about it. Nevertheless, when a public figure calls to do away with foundational blueprint to our democracy, we absolutely need to take that person seriously. Particularly if that figure is a former president who once swore to preserve, protect, and defend that very document. Especially if that former president has been willing to pander to white supremacists, undermine decades of political precedents and democratic norms while in office, refused to accept the results of a presidential election two years ago that he’s still bitching about, constantly pushes conspiracy theories to his cadre of cult followers who’d believe anything he says, and incited violent insurrection at the US Capitol in an attempt to overthrow the federal government. Not to mention, stole thousands of classified documents away to Mar-a-Lago, which spurred an FBI raid on the resort this summer. And certainly if that former president still has supporters to make Republican politicians hesitant to take a cue from Liz Cheney on January 6 and ditch Trump for good.

I am not surprised that Donald Trump believes in ditching the US Constitution in order to overturn the 2020 presidential election and have his own power reinstated. The man is a textbook, narcissistic psychopath who believes he’s above the law as well as not bound to the same rules and norms as everyone else. Not to mention, sees the world as his personal playground where he can do whatever the fuck he wants and profit from it. Nor does he believe that he should be held accountable for his very egregious actions. Besides, back in 2016, I wrote a blog post on why you shouldn’t vote for Trump. Among the reasons I listed were that he has no respect for America, its values, or its people. Not to mention, linked to US enemies and dictators and had his campaign tamper with the political process. Nor does he have any respect for American democracy or the rule of law. You might think I might’ve sounded alarmist at the time. However, what has transpired since Trump won the presidency during that dark November of 2016 has unfortunately confirmed that I was absolutely right. When Trump solemnly swore to preserve, protect, and defend the US Constitution during his inauguration, I knew that was all a sham. Because Trump is a man with no conscience who will always put his own interests first, including that of the country’s. Always was. Always will be. Now that he’s subject to multiple criminal investigations, the January 6 Committee has convened, the FBI has raided Mar-a-Lago, and Congress can now look into his tax returns, Trump is trying to use his influence over the Republican rank-and-file to evade facing accountability for his egregious actions. Especially since the Trump Organization has been found guilty of all counts of tax fraud and financial crimes. And the fact he’s willing to do away with the very foundation to our national government in order to be president again and do whatever the hell he wants with no consequence.

Nonetheless, covering Donald Trump when he spouts such fascist rants like this is a double-edged sword. On one hand, it gives him more time airtime in the news media which will only boost his notoriety and possibly support among voters. The last thing we need right now is another major Trump media circus just so he can spend more time in the spotlight. Especially since he’s still a clear and present danger to our American democracy as well as still has his cult of deplorables and the Republican Party behind him. On the other hand, Trump is such a powerful and destructive influence in our politics and our country that we can’t just turn a blind eye towards all the egregious shit he says and does. Especially when public knowledge of all the horrible stuff he’s said and done will usually be the only lasting consequence he’ll ever receive. Given that he’s a rich psychopath who never learns his lessons or doesn’t care about anyone or anything but himself. While he’ll often use all the power and privileges his wealth gives him to escape from any consequences that come his way. And especially if his words and actions have inflicted very real damage on our democracy, our public discourse, and our way of life. To ignore him only enables him to get away with his shit and at the American people’s expense.

Fortunately, the Biden White House treated such incendiary comments with a quick and decisive response. On that very day, White House spokesman Andrew Bates stated:

“The American Constitution is a sacrosanct document that for over 200 years has guaranteed that freedom and the rule of law prevail in our great country. The Constitution brings the American people together – regardless of party – and elected leaders swear to uphold it. It’s the ultimate monument to all of the Americans who have given their lives to defeat self-serving despots that abused their power and trampled on fundamental rights. Attacking the Constitution and all it stands for is anathema to the soul of our nation and should be universally condemned. You cannot only love America when you win.”

In other words, to call for the termination of something so sacred and foundational to what our nation is nothing short of a national heresy. Do away with the US Constitution, then you might as well do away with everything America stands for. If not, then America itself. And such a statement deserves nothing less than universal condemnation regardless of what side you’re on. Or whether you win an election or not.

Democratic leaders were also quick to condemn Donald Trump’s remarks. Senate Majority leader Chuck Schumer told reporters, “If America doesn’t extricate itself from Donald Trump and his MAGA ideology, it will undercut our American way of life.” Meaning that as long as support for Trump and Trumpism is deemed acceptable within American society, the cancer of Trump and Trumpism will continue to undermine American democracy and the public discourse. As someone who’s had to put up with people in her life and community who support this fucking piece of shit, I couldn’t agree more. In many respects, to support Donald Trump is to accept the unacceptable, the excuse the inexcusable, to defend the indefensible, to believe the unbelievable, and to deny the undeniable. That was true back in 2016. And it remains true to this day. Since Trump became the GOP’s standard bearer, he has made it a party without basic principles aside from white supremacy, unfettered capitalism, unchecked dominance by corporations and the 1%, gutting social programs, unionbusting and eroding workers’ rights, and the ever-empty pursuit of retaining and expanding political power. Their allegiance to Trump has rotted GOP standards of acceptable behavior from politicians, empowered some of the worst elements of our society, and has allowed deeply repugnant notions spread to the mainstream. And even when Trump says or does something beyond the pale, Republicans might rebuke him and hope the matter quietly goes away so they can silently crawl back to him.

However, when it came to Republican politicians, only Wyoming Representative Liz Cheney issued a statement, tweeting, “Donald Trump believes we should terminate ‘all rules, regulations and articles, even those found in the Constitution’ to overturn the 2020 election. That was his view on 1/6 and remains his view today. No honest person can now deny that Trump is an enemy of the Constitution.” Now I may not support Cheney’s politics, but I think it’s a shame that she’s seen as a hero. Instead of a normal politician who’s fulfilling basic expectations relating to her job. Sure, Cheney’s willingness to denounce Trump after the January 6 insurrection on the US Capitol was certainly brave. But it shouldn’t have been. Nor should her vote to impeach Trump a second time and her vice chairmanship of the January 6 Committee. And none of what she’s done since January 6 should’ve alienated her from her party’s establishment and cost her a congressional seat to a primary challenger. Because when a president incites an attempted coup on the US government, a politician is supposed to break with that leader and put their country first. Doesn’t matter if that president leads their own party. Nor how popular and influential he is within your party’s ranks. A politician’s foremost duty is to the Constitution and the American people. Not their party establishment and not their voters. And yet, Cheney’s considered a hero mainly because most of her Republican colleagues haven’t done the same. In fact, most have done what they could to ensure that Trump won’t be held accountable for his actions on January 6, the exact opposite of what they should. All because they want to retain and expand their political power.

The only other sharp condemnation comes from Illinois Representative Adam Kinzinger, tweeting, “With the former President calling to throw aside the constitution, not a single conservative can legitimately support him, and not a single supporter can be called a conservative. This is insane. Trump hates the Constitution.” Although he hasn’t been primaried like fellow January 6 committee member Liz Cheney, he’s retiring from Congress. Because his stance against Donald Trump over January 6 has pissed of his own constituents who’d almost certainly replace him with a primary challenger if he ran for reelection. And he’s closer to my age than hers. Had it not been for Trump and January 6, he would’ve had a long promising political career ahead of him. Instead, his political career’s been cut short in his prime, which is a damn shame. All because he put his country over his own party. All because he opposes Trump. Still, Kinzinger is absolutely right. Although to fair, Trump has always hated the Constitution whenever it doesn’t let him get his way. Also, his affinity for dictators makes it pretty clear that he’s a fascist authoritarian who dreams about being an autocratic president who do whatever the hell he likes without question or consequence. Especially if it means crushing political opposition with an iron fist. And yet, other Republicans remain silent.

Incoming Democratic House leader Hakeem Jeffries told George Stephanopoulos on This Week, “The Republicans are gonna have to work out their issues with the former president and decide whether they’re gonna break from him and return to some semblance of reasonableness or continue to lean into the extremism, not just of Trump, but of Trumpism. Suspending the Constitution is an extraordinary step, but we’re used to extraordinary statements being made by the former president.” Unfortunately, his statement proves to be just prophetic. While many of the Republicans have and will issue mild condemnations for fear of Donald Trump’s political clout and retaliation from his most violent supporters. For many of them speaking against Trump will only incur the wrath of the conservative constituents who’ll rally behind a Trump-supporting primary challenger. Sure, Republicans blame Trump for their 2022 lackluster performance in the mid-terms, but he’s still the party’s central figure. And many people in my area still have their Trump signs out on their lawns in full display. So don’t tell me that the Republican establishment has finally turned their backs on him for good. Because once you think they have, they keep crawling back They may condemn Trump for inciting January 6. But don’t be surprised if you see Representative Kevin McCarthy pictured with the guy at Mar-a-Lago only a month later.

Aside from Cheney and Kinzinger, the toughest Republican response came from Ohio Congressman Mike Turner who “There is a political process that has to go forward before anybody is a frontrunner or anybody is even the candidate for the party. I believe people certainly are going to take into consideration a statement like this as they evaluate a candidate.” Although Turner suggests Republicans will take Trump’s incendiary fascist remarks into consideration and throw their support behind an alternative candidate. Unfortunately, guess who else had the naïve idea that voters wouldn’t seriously vote for Trump for the presidency? This girl back in 2016. Also, even though Trump’s popularity may not be what it used to be in the Republican Party, he’s got millions of supporters still willing to vote for him. But a more typical response comes from Ohio Congressman David Joyce whose answers frustrated George Stephanopoulos to no end. When Stephanopoulos pressed Joyce to disavow someone who openly wants to overthrow the US Constitution, he told him not to worry about it. “He says a lot of things,” the congressman said of Trump. “But that doesn’t mean that it’s ever going to happen. So you got to [separate] fact from fantasy—and fantasy is that we’re going to suspend the Constitution and go backward.” Uh, didn’t he incite an insurrection on the US Capitol in order to overturn the 2020 presidential election results? What makes you think that he won’t at least try to suspend the US Constitution? Although I agree there are times we shouldn’t take Trump’s words too seriously, whenever he suggests a possible overthrow of the US government isn’t one of them. Because he’s tried that before on January 6. And when Stephanopoulos asked Joyce the ever-famous question of whether he’d support Trump in 2024, he replied “I will support whoever the Republican nominee is.” Unfortunately, Trump is the current front-runner and from how he campaigns, he’s likely to remain so.

And yet, incoming House Speaker Kevin McCarthy remains silent. Mainly because disavowing Donald Trump might cost him his party’s leadership position in the House. Bad enough that five of those Republicans in the incoming majority said they won’t vote for McCarthy because he doesn’t kiss Trump’s ass enough. Even though I’d consider showing up at Mar-a-Lago within a few weeks after condemning the January 6 insurrection as Trumpish enough. That may be enough to deny the overall majority he needs. Also, during the GOP leadership balloting 31 other Republicans voted against McCarthy’s candidacy. All were Trumpers. The fact that so many Republicans don’t want McCarthy as their leader because he doesn’t love Trump enough says all you need to know about the Republican Party’s relationship with that fucking piece of shit. Not only that, but a recent poll by Marquette Law School shows that 32% of Americans view him favorably.

Nonetheless, the fact Republicans and a sizeable contingent of the American public still stick with Donald Trump despite all the things he’s said and done is deeply damaging to our country. It’s one thing to just turn a blind eye to Trump’s incendiary rhetoric suggesting to overthrow the government. But it’s another to continuously obstruct efforts to investigate and bring justice to what happened on January 6, 2021. All just to stay in Trump’s base’s good graces and remain in power. Even more infuriating is that thanks to Trump’s influence on the GOP, just merely stating that this fucking piece of shit is responsible for January 6 will absolutely ruin any Thanksgiving dinner. Which is a shame because a terrorist attack on the US Capitol should’ve been able to unite the country against Trump. And even though Republicans are starting realize that their cult leader is a political liability after the 2022 midterms, don’t expect the GOP to bolt just yet. Sure, they may not be thrilled that he’s running for president for a third time. But he’s the current front-runner and we must not expect him to lose the GOP’s full support if he should remain if he should become their party’s nominee. Still, the fact that the GOP by and large has chosen what they believe what’s best for themselves over what’s best for the country is a national shame. And it doesn’t help there are currently January 6 insurrectionists holding elected office or were even allowed to stand in the midterms like Doug Mastriano. Now Trump calls for another coup and yet, Republicans remain silent.

Now I may not live in the most liberal area in Pennsylvania. Far from it, in fact. However, my own feelings toward Donald Trump and his loyalists have only intensified. I understand this is a free country. However, the fact people still support this fucking piece of shit despite his presidency being a living nightmare, his role inciting the January 6 insurrection at the US Capitol, and his calls to terminate the US Constitution only makes me deeply appalled. Especially if they believe the Big Lie or embrace any batshit Qanon conspiracy theories. As much as I want to give them the benefit of the doubt, their continued support for their cult leader has only inspired me to look upon them with disdain and disrespect. Apparently, after all what Trump has said and done, I can no longer be sure whether anyone supporting this either understands what siding with the guy entails or simply doesn’t care. Nonetheless, the fact people in my community still support this fucking piece of shit, some even passionately, makes me want to storm onto a podium in front of a large crowd of MAGAts and scream into the microphone:

“What the fuck is wrong with you? Do you have any idea of what this fucking piece of shit has said and done since 2016? Do you know what supporting this unrespectable man says about you? May not mean that you’re willing to storm the US Capitol. But that even inciting an attempted coup of the US government isn’t enough to convince you that he nowhere near the flag-hugging patriot he portrays himself to be. And you still side with this traitor who called for this attack on our nation’s lawmakers and representatives all in order to overturn an election that he didn’t win. And yet, you still support him, sometimes believing his brazen lies and manipulations. Well, if you still stick with him despite his clear disdain for American democracy when it turns against him, either your patriotism is just as much a sham or you’re a fool to his myriad of political con games. Either way, I’ve had enough of you seeing this narcistic psychopath as your hero while the United States suffers for his sins. And if you can’t see your dear leader as the clear and present danger to America he is, then you have no right to question my patriotism. Especially if your allegiance to him above all else makes me question yours.”

Let Us Not Vote for Those Involved in Treason

Posted by historymaniacmegan on June 16, 2022

With the 2022 mid-term elections in full-swing, we must take heart the lessons of the 2016 and 2020 elections that what you and others decide at the ballot box lead to policies that have an impact on your life. While most of the races are for US Congress, Senate, and state legislatures, there are plenty of races for other state and local offices as well. In my home state of Pennsylvania, there is a race to decide the state’s next governor between current state attorney general Josh Shapiro and State Senator Doug Mastriano. Now I’m all in for the Democratic nominee, Shapiro given his illustrious term where he released the infamous Grand Jury Report on sex abuse within the Catholic Church as well as issued a report on the state government’s complicity in siding with natural gas companies that I used in my post promoting my novel, The Trouble at Deacon Hill. However, even if you don’t care for this guy, I strongly urge all of my fellow Pennsylvanians to vote for Shapiro because at least he’s not his opponent, GOP gubernatorial nominee, Doug Mastriano.

I may identify as a progressive Catholic SJW who thinks politicians opposing universal healthcare shouldn’t hold political office and thus will be voting for Democratic candidates until the day I die. I may also disagree with Doug Mastriano on practically everything. However, if my beef with this guy was just over his positions on issues I cared about, I wouldn’t be writing this urging everyone in my state to vote for Josh Shapiro. In fact, Shapiro could be the sleaziest and most incompetent state attorney general we ever had and I’d still think he was the better candidate than Mastriano. Mainly because my issues with Mastriano as a liberal Catholic considerably pale in comparison to mine as an American citizen of this great state that throughout my life, I have called my home.

Pardon my liberal bias but my main issue with Doug Mastriano has everything to do with his support of the Big Lie and his involvement in the January 6 insurrection at the US Capitol. Now when a candidate loses, the also-ran gracefully concedes, congratulates the victor for a well-run race, and encourages their supporters to accept the results before everyone moves on. But because Donald Trump is a narcissistic psychopath who can’t accept the reality of his defeat, he spouted conspiracy theories and false allegations that the 2020 election was rigged for Joe Biden. In fact, he still insists the election is rigged to this day. During the last months of his presidency, he did practically everything he could to try and overturn the results of an election he clearly lost fair and square. Yes, he threw Twitter tantrums and held rallies rallying his most devoted cultists to “stop the steal.” But he also had plenty of political allies in both houses of Congress and throughout the country who tried to undermine the results in his favor. One of these people is Pennsylvania State Senator Doug Mastriano.

From November 5, 2020, Doug Mastriano has led state efforts to overturn the 2020 election in Pennsylvania, a state that proved crucial in securing Joe Biden’s victory over Donald Trump. On November 27, he and three other state senators announced they’d introduce a resolution to permit the General Assembly to appoint delegates to the Electoral College instead of following the presidential vote results in the state. As circulated in a memo seeking additional co-sponsorships, this proposal claimed that, “officials in the Executive and Judicial Branches of the Commonwealth infringed upon the General Assembly’s authority by unlawfully changing the rules governing the November 3, 2020 election in the Commonwealth” and declares that “based on the facts and evidence presented and our own Board of Elections data, that the Presidential election held on November 3, 2020, in Pennsylvania is irredeemably corrupted.” Keep in mind that Pennsylvania’s General Assembly has a Republican majority mainly because the legislature’s usually in charge with redistricting state’s map which is heavily gerrymandered to favor them. And if you think US Congressional map was so gerrymandered to be struck down and redrawn. Well, it has nothing with what the state legislature map looks like. Anyway, this is just something to keep in mind with how well the PA legislature represents the interests of the state’s people. Even so, you can clearly see this as Mastriano wanting to use the legislature to surpass the will of the people in regards to deciding a presidential election. All because Pennsylvania voters chose electors for a candidate that Mastriano really didn’t want to win.

On December 2, 2020, the York-Dispatch‘s editorial board wrote an article describing the state senator as a guy who “regularly spouts his love of freedom” but has a relationship to Donald Trump that had been “exposed as nothing more than a vassal doing his master’s bidding.” They also state his action were that of a “craven oligarch” making “a shocking call for tyranny” in a “campaign to undercut democracy itself for a generation.” Nine days later, Doug Mastriano published an op-ed in the York Daily Record accusing Governor Tom Wolf, PA Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar, and PA’s Supreme Court of taking advantage of the Covid 19 pandemic to abuse and contravene 2019’s Pennsylvania Act 77, claiming they “have been making up rules on the fly and unconstitutionally rewrote the law, which compromised our election.” He also stated that he joined two lawsuits seeking to overturn the 2020 election results, which were both struck down due to lack of standing. It’s one thing when a politician takes positions on issues and supports candidates that you don’t like. But it’s a far more serious matter when a politician is willing to undermine the whole system in order to overturn election when he doesn’t like the results. The fact Mastriano tried to this in 2020 should deeply disturb any Pennsylvanian who believes in American democracy.

Of course, if you’ve been paying attention, Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election would eventually culminate in the events of Wednesday, January 6, 2021. On a day when a joint session of Congress was set to certify the results 2020 presidential election and formalize Joe Biden’s victory, a violent mob of 2,000-2,500 Trump supporters stormed the US Capitol Building in order to overturn his defeat. In the days leading up to the insurrection, Donald Trump called his supporters into action by stating that the 2020 election had been “stolen by emboldened radical-left Democrats” and to demand that then Vice-President Mike Pence and Congress reject Biden’s victory. Starting at noon at a “Save America” rally on the Ellipse, Trump repeated his lies on election irregularities and stated “If you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.” During his speech as Congress began the vote count, more than 2,000 people broke into the building, occupying, vandalizing, and looting it, assaulting reporters and Capitol Police officers, and attempting to locate lawmakers with intent to capture and harm. West of the Capitol, insurrectionists erected a gallows where they chanted, “Hang Mike Pence” after he rejected Trump’s and others lies that he could overturn the election results. Rioters looted and vandalized various congressional offices, most notably House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s. With building security breached, Capitol Police evacuated and locked down both chambers and several Capitol Complex buildings. While rioters occupied the empty Senate chamber, federal law enforcement officers defended the evacuated House floor. There were pipe bombs found at both Democratic and Republican National Committee and a Molotov cocktail in a vehicle near the complex. At the White House, Trump resisted sending the National Guard to quell the mob. Later that afternoon in a Twitter video, he reasserted that the election was “fraudulent” but told his supporters to “go in peace.”

Doug Mastriano helped organize bus rides to Washington D.C. for 130 Trump supporters to the rally that would culminate into the insurrection. During the protest, he claimed that he and his wife left the rally area when it turned violent, which he called “unacceptable.” However, a crowdsourced video analysis from May 2021 later identified Mastriano and his wife watching a rioter tear a Capitol Police barricade before passing through it. Thus, contradicting his previous claims that he wasn’t with the rioters. Mastriano said he was following police directions and dismissed the accusations as the work of “angry partisans” who were “foot soldiers of the ruling elite.” The video evidence doesn’t support this. He then went on stating that he was in the “second row, watching the Trump rally,” hoping that Congress would legally stop the election’s certification. “Once I realized all the speaking events were off we left and that’s a darn shame… I was there to cheer on Congress, the House and the Senate, not to disrupt it.” Sure, whatever you say (sarcasm). Still, despite receiving calls to resign from his Democratic colleagues, Mastriano has experienced no negative consequences for his actions. Aside from submitting rented bus receipts and tickets for the 130 who went with him to Washington D.C. for the whole thing to the January 6 Committee nearly a year and a half later.

Now that he’s won the 2022 Republican gubernatorial primary in Pennsylvania, it’s very possible that this guy who tried to undermine democracy in my state and participated in an attempt to overturn the federal government might be the next governor of Pennsylvania. Based on what he’s done to hurt American democracy in both my state and beyond, it’s bad enough that he’s able to keep his job and run for governor in the first place. When Pennsylvania’s General Assembly should’ve expelled him for his role in the insurrection and be faced with criminal charges, like 725 of his fellow seditionists as of June 2022. Possibly serving jail time. It’s equally disgraceful that Doug Mastriano used his actions in trying to overturn the 2020 election and undermine democracy in order to raise his profile so he could run for governor. However, it’s very scary that Pennsylvanian Republicans saw nothing wrong with his candidacy and voted to make him their nominee. Sure, Josh Shapiro ran ads against him beefing his wacko far-right views and Christian nationalism in hopes that Mastriano’s nomination would give him an easy race. But Mastriano was frontrunner before he did this. While Pennsylvania’s Republican Party isn’t too happy that he’s their guy now.

Nonetheless, even though Josh Shapiro thinks he’s in a good place, he needs to know the lessons of the 2016 presidential election. Although Shapiro is in a better position to win against Mastriano than Hillary Clinton was over Donald Trump, he must remember that the nomination of an extremist opponent doesn’t always guarantee one a sure victory. When Trump received the GOP presidential nomination, the RNC wasn’t happy about it. But they eventually got behind him by convention time. I expect the PA GOP to do the same in regard to Mastriano. And like many of my fellow liberals, I thought that many of my fellow Americans would come to their senses and vote for Hillary over Trump, regardless of how unlikeable she was. Unfortunately, I was wrong and heartbreakingly so. Now that I see Mastriano signs go up in people’s yards in my area, I’m reminded of the catastrophe of 2016 and the fucked-up mess those four years of Trump left behind. Because of Mastriano’s election denialism and role in the January 6 insurrection, to elect him as the next governor of Pennsylvania would be a statewide disaster for the next four years. Even worse, given Republican control of the legislature, it’s likely that with Mastriano in the governor’s chair, it’s even more of a possibility that he’ll get a lot of his ideas on the 2020 election passed. Not to mention, be more likely to cooperate with Trump’s team should he run again in 2024. And keep in mind that Pennsylvania is a critical swing state, which helped secure Biden’s victory in 2020. Regardless of your political views, would you want this guy in charge of Pennsylvania in the next presidential election?

Tragically, the worst part about speaking against Doug Mastriano’s nomination for governor of Pennsylvania is that I shouldn’t have to come off as a liberal partisan. Although I don’t deny myself as a bleeding-heart liberal, I also strongly think that trying to overturn an election and participating in an attempted coup should be enough to disqualify a candidate from public office. And I shouldn’t have to sound like a partisan hack to get this point across. And it’s not just Mastriano either. Various state legislators all over the country participated in the attack on January 6, 2021. While US Congressmen such as Marjorie Taylor Greene, Mo Brooks, Lauren Boebert, Paul Gosar, Louie Gohmert, and Madison Cawthorn were said to participate in “dozens of briefings” and were involved in efforts to overturn the 2020 election. None of them have been expelled for their actions. While Cawthorn has lost to his primary challenger due to some unrelated incidents, almost all of them are slated to remain in office after this election. Some may even run unopposed. Then there are Senators Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley who were all too happy to repeat the Big Lie more than their colleagues. Hawley even made a fist showing his support for the rioters. Neither one has yet to face any consequences. To have these people still in power after they dishonored their sacred oaths to the Constitution is absolutely sickening. If we want to prevent another January 6, we need to hold the political figures involved accountable for their actions regarding the riot itself and the events leading up to it. To let them keep their seats or seek a higher office is nothing worse than dishonorable to our democracy.

Since Donald Trump’s presidential candidacy began in 2015, the Republican Party has shown itself to be significantly less invested in the preserving the democratic process. Especially if that process doesn’t give them the results they like in order to preserve their power. Now I’m not going to say this about every Republican. However, reports about red states using REDMAP gerrymandering, passing voter suppression laws, and enacting anti-protest measures show that this is a systemic problem within the party. Even worse, the Republican Party seems to have no interest in holding its own members accountable for their actions regarding January 6. In fact, since January 6, the Republican Party establishment still remains firmly behind Trump as its leader to this day, which deeply disgusts me on so many levels. As of June 2022, to my knowledge, no politician has faced any consequences for helping to incite or participating in the attack on the US Capitol. When Donald Trump was impeached for inciting the insurrection on January 6, he evaded consequences because almost every GOP US Senator voted to acquit him despite obvious evidence that he was responsible. When the measure to create a 9/11-style Commission for the January 6 insurrection, Republicans blocked it. When the January 6 Committee formed, only Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger are the only Republicans on it. Mainly because both put their country over their party when it mattered. While right-wing media outlets either try to spin the incident for something other than what it was or try to pretend that it never happened. Despite the fact that Fox News hosts like Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity were responsible for encouraging the violence. Still, the fact one major political party has been resisted efforts to bring justice for January 6 should really distress anyone who believes in the sanctity of American democracy. Is anyone surprised why Fox News refused air the January 6 hearings on prime time while going commercial free?

Things get worse in the state houses. In Pennsylvania, The Penn-Capital Star reported that 40 of its Republican state legislators are part of far-right Facebook groups. I suppose Doug Mastriano is one of these guys, given that he’s a far-right Christian Nationalist. Nationwide, it’s 1 out of 5. These far-right groups range from white supremacists, QAnon, Covid 19 conspiracy theorists, and others promoting Donald Trump’s Big Lie. Across the country many of these far-right legislators have been at the forefront of pushing anti-democracy and anti-human rights bills. These includes measures like attacks on women’s reproductive rights, attacks on immigrant rights, attacks on LGBTQ+ rights, “Don’t Say Gay” bills, CRT bans, anti-protest bills, and the ever classic, voter suppression. The rate of sponsorship on these bills among this group of right-wing nutjobs was particularly high. In Idaho, Amon Bundy’s running to become the state’s governor. For those who remember my post about how the media covers terrorism, I basically have him as the epitome of white privilege in regards of covering terror. I mean this guy and his pals stage an armed takeover of an Oregon wildlife refuge for 3 weeks and face no long term consequences. He also served time in prison for an unrelated incident. Nonetheless, the last thing we should do with anyone who’s involved in treasonous activities is to let them run for office. But somehow, as long as they’re able to remain in power and pass their measures that will make life in the US a draconian hellscape for the rest of us, Republicans don’t seem to care.

Regardless of office, when an elected official begins their term, they always swear to uphold the US Constitution. But when an elected official helps incite or participates in an insurrection attempting to overthrow the federal government they swear to protect, they break that oath and betray the American people’s trust placed on them. I don’t care if it was over an election where their candidate didn’t win. Nonetheless, the attack on the US Capitol of January 6 should’ve united the American people like 9/11 or Pearl Harbor. Let us not forget that this was a terrorist attack on a major national symbol of the US government as well as an attempted coup. Even though Donald Trump was obviously behind it all from the start, his supporters should’ve been able to turn their backs to him and anyone else involved in the insurrection. Both parties should’ve gotten behind investigating the insurrection. Both parties should’ve backed prosecuting anyone responsible for what happened that fateful day. The fact that all of this didn’t is a national tragedy. Because if a politician is behind staging a coup, it shouldn’t matter whether you like them, whether you voted for them, or whether you agree with them on certain issues. The fact Trump was behind inciting the January 6 insurrection should be enough to denounce him. Same goes for any other politician involved, even if within your own political party. Because any politician involved in encouraging or participating in the attack should be removed from office and face criminal charges. The fact none of them is a great stain on our democracy. Make no mistake, those involved in the January 6 insurrection weren’t taking their country back. They were staging a coup to overthrow the federal government. The fact that our country has to be divided over investigating the whole incident is a national disgrace.

That Doug Mastriano is able to run for governor of my state instead of facing legislative expulsion and criminal charges shows how short we’ve fallen as a country to hold people like him accountable for their actions on that horrible day. Especially because Donald Trump continues to be the GOP’s undisputed leader and the party wants to quickly move past it so you won’t see the blood on his hands. Mitt Romney, Adam Kinzinger, and Liz Cheney shouldn’t be heroes for putting their country over their party but somehow, they are. While their colleagues in the House and Senate who are responsible for encouraging the attack remain unpunished thanks to the Republican Party’s protection. Same goes for all the state legislators and elected officials who participated in the January 6 insurrection, including Mastriano. That Mastriano can seek higher office after committing treason is a national disgrace that no good Pennsylvanian should tolerate. As he has absolutely no business in leading Pennsylvania if he’s willing to overthrow the federal government over unfavorable election results. Because no politician should be willing to do that. And who knows the damage he might inflict on the state once he’s in the governor’s chair? In the name of our country and what it stands for, please don’t cast a vote for Doug Mastriano or any other politician associated with January 6.

Insane in the Ukraine

Posted by historymaniacmegan on September 24, 2019

In mid-September 2019, according to The New York Times, an unidentified internal Trump administration whistleblower filed a complaint about “multiple acts” by a shitty excuse for a president Donald Trump. The whistleblower in question is part of the US intelligence community and filed this complaint back in August, which was passed to their inspector general. That inspector general determined it credible and a matter of “urgent concern” – legal standard normally requiring notifying congressional oversight committees. He then concluded the complaint, “relates to one of the most significant and important of the DNI’s responsibilities to the American people.” However, Trump’s acting national intelligence director stepped in to block key congressional committee chairs from receiving the whistleblower complaint’s details, which remain murky. An act some legal analysts claim is breaking the law.

Now despite the murky details, the whistleblower’s complaint reportedly involves a broader set of events than a single phone call. But not surprisingly, the Trump administration is trying to prevent further info from coming to light. For some time, it’s been rumored Donald Trump tried pressuring Ukraine’s government into launching an investigation of former Vice President and current Democratic presidential frontrunner Joe Biden, possibly by withholding military aid to the country unless they complied. On August 28, 2019, Politico reported that the Trump administration was, “slow-walking $250 million in military assistance to Ukraine.” According to the site, Trump had personally asked his national security team to review the program, supposedly to ensure the money was being spent on American interests, writing, “The funds for Ukraine can’t be spent while they’re under review and the money expires at the Sept. 30 end of the fiscal year.” Now it’s not confirmed if the whistleblower complaint has anything to with this Ukranian debacle, but both cases seem closely related.

Naturally given Donald Trump’s affinity for Russian President Vladmir Putin and Russia’s war with Ukraine, critics instantly accused him of supporting Putin’s policies again. On September 5, 2019, Washington Post editorial claimed they’ve been told that Trump was trying to force the Ukranian government to investigate Joe Biden. They write:
“Some suspect Mr. Trump is once again catering to Mr. Putin, who is dedicated to undermining Ukrainian democracy and independence. But we’re reliably told that the president has a second and more venal agenda: He is attempting to force Mr. Zelensky to intervene in the 2020 U.S. presidential election by launching an investigation of the leading Democratic candidate, Joe Biden. Mr. Trump is not just soliciting Ukraine’s help with his presidential campaign; he is using U.S. military aid the country desperately needs in an attempt to extort it.”

During a September 2 press conference in Warsaw, Associated Press’ Jill Colvin asked Vice President Mike Pence, “Can you assure Ukraine that the hold-up of that money has absolutely nothing to do with efforts, including by Rudy Giuliani, to try to dig up dirt on the Biden family?” Pence conspicuously didn’t make that kind of assurance. Instead, he replied, “as President Trump had me make clear, we have great concerns about issues of corruption.” However, the notion that the Trump administration has any great concern about corruption issues is basically akin to Pig Pen having any concern about personal hygiene. Because we all know that Trump and his cronies engage in corruption on a regular basis that the swamp he’s promised to drain has now become a reeking cesspit of hazardous waste. Hell, the only time the Trump administration shows any concern about corruption is when it pertains to someone they don’t like because it makes them look bad. So naturally, they’re looking for dirt.

On Friday, September 20, 2019, The Wall Street Journal reported that, during a July phone call with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky, Donald Trump pressured him “about eight times” to work with his sell out lawyer Rudy Giuliani on an investigation into Biden’s son, Hunter. That Thursday, Giuliani tweeted that if Trump told Ukraine to “investigate corruption that affects US” he’d just be “doing his job,” and complaining that “the Biden Family… bilked millions from Ukraine.” He even later confirmed that he himself has been trying to get Ukraine to investigate Biden. Strange Trump didn’t call the Ukrainian government to investigate his own campaign manager Paul Manafort back in 2016, because he actually bilked millions from the Ukraine and is serving prison time for it. However, if Trump did this as president, it would be a shockingly corrupt use of his foreign policy powers. Since he’s basically demanding a foreign country intervene in the 2020 election by digging up dirt on a potential opponent, or have its security put at risk.

The idea that Donald Trump’s team would try getting the Ukranian government to investigate Joe Biden’s family isn’t just theoretical. Even Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani has openly admitted he’s been doing just that. As he told the New York Times in May, “We’re not meddling in an election, we’re meddling in an investigation, which we have a right to do.” Ukraine-related corruption has already played an outsized role in Trump scandals. Paul Manafort’s prosecution for financial and lobbying crimes related to his work for a former Ukranian regime was a major part of the Mueller probe. And during the summer of 2016 back when Manafort was Trump’s campaign chair, he was plagued by reports that the Ukranian government was looking into his payments. So Donald Trump’s team apparently has the idea to try and cook up a similar scandal involving Joe Biden.

The details relate to Joe Biden’s ne’er-do-well son Hunter who joined a Ukrainian natural gas company Burisma’s board in 2014. Now the company’s owner was under investigation for corruption and money laundering. Two years later, Ukraine’s prosecutor general Viktor Shokin was fired, after pressure from Vice President Biden and other Western officials along with many Ukrainian officials and citizens. Biden just happened to have the loudest voice. Shokin has reportedly claimed he was pushed out because he was investigating Burisma’s payments to Hunter Biden. However, the New York Times writes, “there is no credible evidence that Biden sought Shokin’s removal in order to protect Hunter.” Instead, the rationale was said he wasn’t doing enough to investigate the corruption. Now, in an effort to cause political problems in Biden’s 2020 campaign, Giuliani has been pushing the new Ukrainian government to open an investigation into the Biden matter, as well as whether there was any foul play in the earlier Ukrainian Manafort investigation. Giuliani confirmed he was doing all this to the Times back in May. The effort continued through August. But Giuliani was cagey in Trump’s personal role in the scheme. He told the Times in May that Trump supports his endeavors and “he basically knows what I’m doing, sure, as his lawyer.” In August, he told the Times he was just acting as a private citizen. Despite that State Department officials were involved in Giuliani’s communications with Ukrainian officials for some reason.

Now that Donald Trump has all but openly admitted that he pushed Ukranian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter, Congress must impeach him. Impeaching Trump over Robert Mueller’s findings in the Russia investigation would’ve been an attempt to address past offenses. Impeaching Trump over these calls would be an attempt to halt what surely resembles an ongoing attempt to hijack American foreign policy in service of his reelection. Democrats are obligated to stop this before it gets any further. Sure, impeachment is virtually guaranteed to fail in the Republican-controlled Senate so there’s no real chance of actually removing Trump from office. Public opinion about the Russian scandal became more set along partisan lines as time went on, making it unlikely that drawing attention to it would galvanize the public against Trump in 2020. Since that would risk distracting Democrats on which Trump is genuinely unpopular like on healthcare and climate change and jeopardize the House Democratic majority with marginal gain.

But the new Ukraine scandal challenges this logic. There is now an obvious and immediate pragmatic upside to impeachment: stopping an ongoing abuse of presidential power that could undermine the 2020 election’s integrity. Thanks to an intelligence community whistleblower, investigative journalists, and Donald Trump’s own public statements, Trump seems to have repeatedly attempted to convince the Ukranian government to open an investigation into Hunter Biden’s Ukraine business dealings and Joe Biden’s alleged involvement in protecting his son from prosecutorial attention. But there’s no evidence of illegal conduct by either Biden in the Ukraine dealings. Hunter’s partnership with a corrupt Ukranian oligarch was arguably unethical. But there’s no reason to believe his dad was involved in it. Still, even if either Biden was implicated in anything illegal, Trump’s actions would still be as impeachable. Because he’s trying to get a foreign power to investigate a potential political opponent on the pretense of turning Biden’s fake Ukraine scandal into “her emails” 2.0. Thus, he actively working to weaponize the presidency to boost his political fortunes.

Hell, it may be even worse. Donald Trump himself has linked the Biden issue to US to Ukraine aide. On Sunday, he told reporters, he “had every right” to push Ukraine about Joe Biden because “we don’t want a country that we’re giving massive aid to be corrupting our system.” If Trump threatened to condition aid to Ukraine on its Biden investigation, then he’s been nakedly twisting US foreign policy to suit his own ends. This is a grotesque and seemingly ongoing abuse of power with potential implications for an election’s integrity next year. Whereas the Russia investigation an attempt to find out exactly what happened in a prior election, the Ukraine scandal reflects Trump’s contemporary and future-looking behavior. Given that the goal is no longer retrospective accountability, this dramatically changes the logic of impeachment. Since it’s now about stopping his current behavior. The hope would be that impeachment would bring so much attention and scrutiny to Trump’s Ukraine push that he can’t get away with undermining another election.

Any impeachment proceeding would be the story in American politics, sucking up media attention and congressional investigative resources. A House majority vote to impeach would lead to a trial in the Senate, attracting more scrutiny even if Majority Leader Mitch McConnell refuses to take the proceedings seriously. The aim would be to prevent Trump from making some kind of shady, behind-the-scenes agreement with some Ukrainian authorities and make him think twice about any other similar scheme for using his powers for electoral gain. Such level of attention seems like the best available tool for preventing Donald Trump from continuing his efforts to undermine the 2020 election. Moreover, such high levels of press coverage and partisan furor would also make it harder to imagine the Ukrainian government would make any corrupt deal with Trump. Democratic posturing would serve as a counterweight to Trump’s pressure on Ukraine, signaling the country’s leadership that any cooperation with Trump’s inappropriate demands could seriously fray relations with the US in the next administration. Under this logic, it doesn’t matter if impeachment will invariably fail in the Senate. Just shining a light on Trump’s misbehavior will limit his freedom to act. Because if you have a president actively trying to abuse his power in order to invite foreign meddling in the next presidential election, you need to do what you can to stop him. Impeachment is the biggest and most powerful tool in the Democrats’ inventory. Because impeaching Trump is about signaling that his conduct is unacceptable as well trying to impose accountability on him and setting a standard for future ones.

Should impeachment be used not only to signal disapproval but actually work to head off an ongoing threat to American democracy, then the normative power of the proceedings might be reestablished. They won’t just be futile raging at American politics’ debased nature under Donald Trump, but an effective means of actually changing these politics for the better. For Trump’s impeachment to actually serve as a means of accountability to show future officeholders that misbehavior carries costs, there needs to be actual bite to them. Otherwise, they really risk sending the opposite intended signal that nothing really matters and that the president can do whatever he wants as long as at least 34 senators support him. But if impeachment can plausibly constrains Donald Trump, preventing him from engaging in abuse of power for political gain, then the Trump administration’s lesson would be that actions carry consequences, that Congress’ ultimate constitutional power can still be used to rein in a president even in a political environment seemingly defined by extreme partisanship. Furthermore, impeachment sends the strongest and most high-profile signal possible that Trump’s actions are unacceptable, both now and to future presidents.

Nonetheless, Donald Trump’s behavior in this Ukraine situation should worry anyone who cares about the health of American democracy. If this isn’t impeachable behavior, then I don’t know what is. Could impeachment potentially rein in Trump? I’m not sure since Trump never learns from his misconduct. But it will limit him on what he can get away with. Will a formal impeachment inquiry hurt the House Democrats’ chances to retain the House? Who knows. But seeing how the Ukraine scandal drove a painful reality home of an emboldened Trump appearing to meddle in an upcoming US election again, right before our eyes, Congress must impeach.

This Is Not Okay

Posted by historymaniacmegan on July 22, 2019

I know well that America is a democracy and I should respect people’s political opinions and their choice of candidate. After all, they are in their right on what to believe and who to vote for. If they disagree with me, it’s not big deal. However, while I am perfectly fine with people being conservative and Republican, I am absolutely not okay with them supporting a demagogue like Donald Trump. Now given that I have friends, family, neighbors, and other people in my life who support this fucking piece of shit, I try to think of them as decent people. Besides, while I may disagree with them, my hostility to Trump has nothing to do with how I view them or their beliefs. When I attack Trump, I don’t intend to attack them personally save their own blind allegiance to this Cheeto-faced fascist and willingness to let him get away with shit that would put an average American in jail. Let alone a president.

Rather, I don’t respect Trump as president because I don’t respect him as a man. Based on my research on him, I think he’s a sociopath with dangerous authoritarian impulses while he’s said and done many indefensible things. He’s an incompetent president who expects lavish praise without working for it and responds viciously to criticism. He doesn’t care about anything but his own interests and has no concern for how many bridges he burns to fulfill them. He takes no responsibility for his actions and will go out of his way to avoid the consequences. He’s a pathological liar who shows no affinity for the truth, democracy, American values, or the rule of law. And I know full well his racist Twitter tirades and rallies are part of his con to enact pro-corporate policies to satisfy his rich corporate donors and screw us all. Furthermore, he’s basically the epitome of America’s worst and bring out the worst in his acolytes. To have him in the White House is not okay.

But given that Donald Trump’s approval rating is sky high among Republicans who stand by him despite all the horrible stuff he’s done, I’m not so sure anymore. And given that Republicans have violated democratic norms to remain in power, I’m not sure if they believe in the rule of law and democracy. Or at least the rule of law and democracy when it’s not advantageous for them. Nonetheless, since Trump has assumed de facto leadership of the Republican Party, he’s somehow made the party into his own image and has led his supporters down to the point of no return. The fact Republicans are willing to excuse Trump’s loathsome conduct and actions greatly disgusts me. Because like I said before, supporting Trump in any capacity means accepting the unacceptable, defending the indefensible, excuse the inexcusable, tolerating the intolerable, denying the undeniable, and justifying the unjustifiable.

No more did my mantra ring true than on Sunday, July 14, 2019 when Donald Trump issued a series of racist tweets claiming that 4 Democratic congresswomen of color should “go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came.” He then tweeted, “So interesting to see ‘Progressive’ Democrat Congresswomen, who originally came from countries whose governments are a complete and total catastrophe, the worst, most corrupt and inept anywhere in the world (if they even have a functioning government at all), now loudly and viciously telling the people of the United States, the greatest and most powerful Nation on earth, how our government is to be run.” This is wrong in so many ways. For one, 3 of the 4 of these congresswomen were born in the US. One of them being New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez who’s spent most of her life not far from where Trump lives. While Somali refugee and Minnesota US Representative Ilhan Omar came to this country at 6 and has been a US citizen for most of her adult life. Second, they’re Congresswomen so telling people how our government should be run is like a cop telling people how police should behave. Because that’ basically part of their job. Third, there’s nothing wrong with discussing what’s wrong with our country and what we can do better. Still, we can dissect from these tweets that Trump really doesn’t like having people of color in elected offices who don’t kneel down and kiss his ass.

Donald Trump’s attacks on these congresswomen extended into Monday, July 15, claiming that they owe the country an apology for their “horrible & disgusting actions.” Since what did these women do to him that was so bad besides having darker skin and hurting his ego? During a press conference later that day, Trump claimed he wasn’t concerned about backlash against his racist remarks or his use of a long-known racist trope saying, “It doesn’t concern me because many people agree with me. And all I’m saying — they want to leave, they can leave. Now, it doesn’t say, ‘Leave forever.’ It says, ‘Leave if you want.’” Just because many people may agree with what you say, doesn’t mean you need not be concerned. This is especially the case when some of those people wear white hooded robes and red swastika armbands, like many Trump supporters do.

Though Donald Trump’s ire targets have mostly gone unnamed, but the remarks clearly address Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib, Ayanna Pressley, and Ilhan Omar. All are freshman progressive women of color who’ve attracted considerable attention for their outspoken critiques of DC politics in general and Trump, in particular. Called “the squad” by reporters, some of the women have been locked in a fight with Democratic leadership on a recent border bill and the Democratic Party’s direction. But Trump’s comments have shifted attention away from that fight and to his longstanding racism and frequent attacks on high-profile people of color, which has not only drawn criticism from Democratic Party officials and foreign political leaders. While Trump’s remarks fit a broader pattern of attacks against his critics of color, with him regularly questioning their patriotism in an effort to undercut their arguments. Ultimately in his worldview and approach to the presidency, Trump sees his ability to inflame cultural and racial tensions as a political strength.

The media’s mixed reactions to these inflammatory remarks raised questions, with some outlets hesitating (namely Fox News) to call Donald Trump’s comments or actions as racist. Despite that their blatantly obvious. But even if some in the media don’t want to clearly acknowledge it (cough, cough, Fox News, talking to you), Trump has long positioned American identity as something only whites naturally inherit and conditionally granted to other races. While he often wields patriotism and citizenship as a cudgel he uses against people of color. His comments on the Democratic congresswomen show he’ll keep relying on this argument.

As I said, Minnesota US Representative Ilhan Omar is a Somali refugee, a naturalized US citizen, and one of the few Muslim women in Congress. Elected in 2018 by an overwhelming majority, Omar’s story embodies elements of the American Dream. Naturally, Donald Trump has repeatedly criticized her. Particularly, he’s framed her critiques (especially of Israel), as nothing more than open hate for the country and its main ally, the United States. As Trump said in the spring, “She’s been very disrespectful, frankly, to Israel,” adding that he believed Omar has been, “extremely unpatriotic and extremely disrespectful to our country.” Soon after, Omar reported receiving death threats. That week, Trump signaled out Omar again, claiming she “hates Jews” and has praised al-Qaeda. Except she doesn’t hate Jews and never praised al-Qaeda at all. She may have said something that could be interpreted as anti-Semitic, but she apologized for it. Nonetheless, the criticism closely mirrors Fox News host Tucker Carlson’s recent critique that Omar is “living proof that the way we practice immigration has become dangerous to this country.” The other women included in Trump’s tirade have also faced heavy criticism during their time in Congress. In addition to Ilhan Omar, Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez and Rashida Tlaib “have been three of the most scrutinized, most frequently attacked new members of Congress,” according to Vox.

Two days later at an evening rally in Greenville, North Carolina, Donald Trump’s fans expressed their full-throated agreement with their cult leader. Trump himself spent on an extended Ilhan Omar rant:

“Representative Omar blamed the United States for the terrorist attacks on our country, saying that terrorism is a reaction to our involvement in our people’s affairs. … Omar laughed that Americans speak of al-Qaeda in a menacing tone and remarked that ‘you don’t say America with this intensity. You say al-Qaeda makes you proud. Al-Qaeda makes you proud! You don’t speak that way about America.’ And at a press conference just this week, when asked whether she supported al-Qaeda — that’s our enemy, that’s our enemy, they are a very serious problem that we take care of, but they always seem to come along somewhere — she refused to answer. … [S]he looks down on contempt on the hard-working Americans, saying ignorance is pervasive in many parts of this country. And obviously and importantly, Omar has a history of launching vicious anti-Semitic attacks.”

Except that none of that is true. Ilhan Omar didn’t do any of that. Furthermore, if there is anyone who looks down hard-working Americans with contempt, it’s Donald Trump given what I know about his shady business practices. Still, it’s the “anti-Semitic attacks” that promoted chants of “send her back.” Trump basked in them. Soon after, he told the audience, “if they don’t love it, tell them to leave it.” This moment arguably represents a new low in Trump’s long history of racial demagoguery. That Trump’s fans are fully on board with his racist remarks is no surprise. Polling conducted following Trump’s racist attacks among Republicans rose after he made them. But the moment indicates how ugly the 2020 campaign might get, especially amid reports that Trump thinks making racist attacks on Democratic women of color as a way of driving up turnout among white grievance voters, and thus a key part of his reelection strategy. Furthermore, Trump believes painting the Squad as representative (which isn’t the case), will effectively prove the Democrats are unhinged Socialists bent on destroying America.

Yet, that chant demanding that a naturalized citizen and congresswoman be “sent back” to her native Somalia booming through thousands in the audience, disturbingly illustrates the particular fusion of racism and authoritarianism that defines Trumpism as a political movement. “Send her back” isn’t the first such chant to break out at a Donald Trump event. We remember “lock her up” when Trump supporters demanded jailing Hillary Clinton during the 2016 presidential election. Well, “lock her up” and “send her back” together demonstrate beyond doubt that the Trumpian view sees the law is a vehicle for punishing political enemies and minority groups. In the Trumpian imagination, political opponents aren’t mere rivals but existential threats aligned with anti-American elements (like immigrants and minority groups) in a bid to undermine everything they love and cherish about America. As such, Hillary Clinton and Ilhan Omar shouldn’t merely be electorally defeated, they must be crushed. If that means abusing the state’s power and twisting the law, so be it. Cross-bred with bigotry, the authoritarian impulse has helped birthed some of the Trump era’s worst excesses from the Muslim ban to family separations to the failed attempt to circumvent the courts and place a citizenship question on the census. The Republican Party has permitted and made such behavior possible. While its leaders either willingly tolerate Donald Trump’s white revanchism in exchange for tax cuts and Brett Kavanaugh, or worse, actively agree with it. Nonetheless, Trump’s attack on Omar appears to be a preview of his broader 2020 strategy and there’s every reason to expect things to get worse.

According to The Atlantic, Donald Trump’s “go back to your country” argument continues a line of racist attacks that people of color have faced for generations. As Adam Serwer writes, “When Trump told these women to ‘go back,’ he was not making a factual claim about where they were born. He was stating his ideological belief that American citizenship is fundamentally racial, that only white people can truly be citizens, and that people of color, immigrants in particular, are only conditionally American.” The comments also continue a pattern since the Department of Justice indicted him and his father for racist housing discrimination in the 1970s, Trump’s racism has been well documented for decades. One notable example was when he called for the executions of the Central Park Five, a group of black and Latino teenage boys who were wrongly convicted (and later exonerated) for raping a white female jogger. Trump has still not apologized for a decade after the men’s exoneration. The closest analogue to Trump’s most recent remarks can be seen in his support for birtherism, the completely baseless conspiracy theory that then-President Barack Obama wasn’t an American citizen. It was one of Trump’s most potent efforts to tie race to citizenship and national identity, with Trump arguing that the nation’s first black president wasn’t simply just outside of the American political mainstream, but stood outside American national identity entirely. Since then, Trump has honed his argument and deployed it against different groups. At his 2015 presidential campaign launch, he referred to Mexican immigrants as “rapists” and “criminals.” In 2016, he claimed US-born athlete and then-49ers backup quarterback Colin Kaepernick should “find a country that works better for him” rather than protest police violence during NFL games. From a black college basketball dad to a grieving Muslim Gold Star family, Trump has painted his critics of color as un-American instigators.

Donald Trump has often and openly argued that that he views whiteness as a core feature of American identity. While his theory of nationalism’s automatically applied to white Americans, those with other identities like African Americans, Latinos, Muslim Americans, and recent immigrants have been quickly ostracized and treated as “other.” During his presidency, Trump has only further refined his white supremacist message. When a person of color criticizes him, Trump often presents them as ungrateful, disrespectful, and most importantly for his argument, unpatriotic. Whether it’s San Juan’s mayor, black women, or kneeling NFL players, and anyone in between, Trump has argued that their criticism is tantamount to openly hating America and its ideals. Despite that his critics of color don’t hate America while their criticism of Trump is deeply based on US ideals and how our country often fails to fulfill them. Rather, their criticism of Trump isn’t about hating America but wanting it to be a better place. They also just hate Trump and how he’s an anathema to these American ideals, especially when spouting his white supremacist rhetoric.

Alongside these arguments, Donald Trump has pursued policies that have punished many of these same groups. His 2018 tirade of “shithole countries” (a reference to places like Haiti and several countries in Africa), came as he fought to limit diversity visas and worked to end temporary protected status for several countries. While at the same time, Trump has conversely praised immigrants from predominantly white countries like Norway and previously called an all-white but mostly non-American NHL team “incredible patriots.” Trump’s attacks the perceived lack of patriotism of kneeling NFL players’ protest against police violence followed the Justice Department’s move away from enforcing police reform agreements with agencies that have a history of police misconduct. More recently, Trump’s attacks on 4 congresswomen came as these brave lawmakers criticized the US border migrant detention camps’ brutal conditions and as Trump ended his fight to get a citizenship question onto the 2020 US Census.

In doing so, Donald Trump has amplified a practice of using racist attacks on people of color that’s long occurred in American politics. But unlike in prior years when politicians would subtly deploy these attacks via dog whistles, Trump has largely abandoned coded language in favor of overt taunting, even as he argues using policy targeting specific minority groups as not racist or discriminatory. Despite being obviously otherwise. As the New York Times writes, “Much of Trump’s agenda rests on this idea that the boundaries of rights and citizenship are conterminous with race. Those within Trump’s boundaries enjoy the fruits of American freedom, while those outside them face the full force of American repression.”

In many ways, Donald Trump has taken advantage of America’s inability to discuss race. Even now after years of arguments that we really should, some national media outlets (like Fox News) and politicians keep hesitating to identify Trump’s remarks and actions as racist. When NYT’s Jemelle Bouie openly criticized Trump’s tweets as racist, earlier Times articles suggests his recent tweets played into a “racial fire” or used other euphemisms. Other outlets like CBS and NPR called Trump’s remarks “incendiary” or “racially charged.” When outlets called Trump’s comments racist, many hedged by relying on Democrats’ quotes criticizing him. Figures like Fox News’ Brit Hume called Trump’s remarks “nativist” and “xenophobic,” but failed to meet racism’s definition.

Meanwhile, Republican politicians looked away from the issue entirely. Much of this is due to a deeper problem on how America discusses racism. Too many Americans (particularly whites) rely on a racism definition focuses on individual acts intentionally committed by “bad” people. And it relies on a kind of racism that white people can clearly identify when they see or hear. Since I’m a Catholic leftist and a history major, I have no problem identifying Trump’s remarks as racism on this definition alone. Since Trump is a despicable person who’s used racist remarks to stir his political base or deflect attention from other scandals. And he’s done very racist things in the past that I can see as intentional. Yet, such narrow obscures the ways racism can occur even without slurs or obvious racist remarks as seen in Gentlemen’s Agreement. But I also think that many white people don’t see Trump’s comments as racist is that they don’t see him as that kind of person or agree with his comments. And I think politicians and the media pander to that audience.

Yet, it also helps explain how so many reporters and politicians can witness Donald Trump’s racism on full display and still not identify it as such. Analyzing Trump’s racist tweet coverage, the Columbian Journalism Review noted how many older outlets still struggle to see the term “racism” as a factual descriptor, adding there’s still “a residual, old-school squeamishness in newsrooms around charged words that—before Trump broke all the rules, at least—smacked of opinion or activism.” And it’s hard to separate this deep-seated belief from the media’s constant struggle to attract and maintain reporters of color. But this understanding of racism shows why some outlets and writers find it difficult to respond to Trump’s openly racist comments. In recent times, racism has come to be treated as an epithet among white people, with many arguing to be called racist is as bad as experiencing racism itself. Except that it’s not. That can really harm our ability to grasp the impact of Trump’s comments. But it also reflects a strong cognitive dissonance, a divide between what America currently looks like for marginalized communities and what America has long professed to be for all its citizens. As Adam Sewer explained, the recent discussion of racism “is not, fundamentally, a battle over facts, but a clash of values.” The question is how this clash will be understood moving forward.

Democracy depends and survives on the law’s fair and neutral application. You can’t arrest people without good reason to believe they broke the law. And you especially can’t arrest them simply because they’re a political rival. In theory, both major American parties are committed to this idea as it’s one of those “norms” you always hear about. But since Donald Trump’s rise, it’s become increasingly clear that Republicans and their voters are more willing to call for bending the system’s power to partisan, racialized ends. “Lock her up” isn’t merely an expression of a false belief that Hillary Clinton’s email scandal was criminal (it wasn’t, save maybe the overblown media coverage on it). “Send her back” isn’t the result of a bullshit theory that Ilhan Omar isn’t legally an American citizen (she is). Instead, these chants are meant to signal that Clinton and Omar are threats to the body politic who need to be purged if it’s to be preserved.

Donald Trump, along with numerous Republicans and Fox News hosts, have made this an explicit rhetoric feature. At a Florida June rally, Trump cast the Democratic Party as a threat to his supporters’ very lives. He thundered, “They want to destroy you and they want to destroy our country as we know it.” When you believe in this bullshit, there’s no longer any need to adhere to the liberal theory of law as a neutral protector of freedoms. In it’s place, you get the “send her back” legal theory: the notion that the purpose of holding legal power is defeating your enemies, an anti-democratic theory that Trump has encouraged in his rallies for years. Trump originated these chants when he openly mused about prosecuting Hillary Clinton during the 2016 campaign and has recently spent some time telling Ilhan Omar to go back to “her” country. The broader Republican apparatus including elected officials and their conservative media allies, didn’t condemn the chants or the so-called “presidential” statements encouraging them. Quite the opposite, in fact. For instance, future Trump National Security Adviser Michael Flynn led the crowd in a “lock her up” litany at the 2016 Republican National Convention. And this is not okay.

One thing we learned from Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation is that Donald Trump’s desire to prosecute Hillary Clinton isn’t an idle threat. Mueller’s report documents 3 separate occasions when Trump attempted to strong-arm then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions into launching a criminal investigation into the former Secretary of State. In March 2019, he openly hoped that current Attorney General William Barr would “do what’s fair” when it comes to going after the woman he routinely called Crooked Hillary. A deeply authoritarian attitude has taken root it one of our major parties. It manifests not just in words but also in actions. And that is not okay.

The Trump movement’s authoritarianism style can’t be fully understood without taking its racism into account. Donald Trump has labeled Mexicans “rapists,” invented stories about New Jersey Muslims celebrating 9/11 (they weren’t), and said there were “very fine people” among the white supremacists in Charlottesville. His administration has attempted to ban large numbers of Muslims from entering the country, held Latino migrant children in squalid detention centers, and gutted the Justice Department’s civil rights division. Study after study has found that Trump’s most loyal voters are defined by unusually high levels of racial resentment and animus. According to Axios, Trump himself seems to think that his 2020 reelection depends on rallying racist voters to his cause with outbursts like the one targeting Ilhan Omar. Racism powers authoritarianism. It helps identify who the enemies are, determines which people need to be crushed by Donald Trump and his Republican allies. The authoritarian idea of using the law to punish political enemies and the racist idea that a rising nonwhite population threatens something essential about America (like whiteness) have together been at Trumpism’s core almost since the get-go. And this is not okay.

Since Ilhan Omar is a black immigrant, Muslim woman, and Democratic Congresswoman is such a movement’s perfect target. Of course, she’s a naturalized citizen so Donald Trump can’t just order ICE to “send her back.” But the call for her deportation has a symbolic purpose as a rallying cry for those who feel Trump ought to be targeting people like her for legal sanction. In other words, it’s an extreme expression of fear of losing white America’s dominant status and a willingness to consider even authoritarian means to slow or reverse this decline. The campaign promise to bar Muslims from entering the United States, made manifest almost immediately after Donald Trump took office via the “travel ban” executive order. This initial policy was so broadly worded that the seemed to bar green card holders from the travel ban countries from reentering if they happen to be out of it. This is a moral absurdity: How could it be possibly fair to bar people who’ve already had permission to reside long-term in the US? But it makes sense if you view the law’s purpose through a “send her back” lens. According to that, the purpose of the legal tools isn’t to be fair but to hurt the right people like Muslims. And this is not okay.

Donald Trump had to quickly back down from the ban’s application to green card holders, and many of the other of the first travel ban’s most sweeping parts were struck down in court. But the pattern that the law be pushed and twisted as far as possible to exclude nonwhite individuals from the physical nation or its political life was set. That pattern has grown to include the Trump administration separating children from their parents at the border and making it difficult to seek asylum despite America’s commitments to openness under international and domestic laws. It explains why Trump attempted to include a citizenship question on the 2020 census, a question to suppress the number of immigrants counted in it. When the courts told him he couldn’t, he briefly tried to do it anyway. It remains to be seen what further actions Trump will take along these lines up until the 2020 election and the long-term consequences of such actions for American democracy. But the fact is that Trump appears to see the “send her back” chanters as his base, and the GOP is perfectly willing to let him court them because they care more about beating Democrats. There’s no reason to believe that any of this will end well. And this is not okay.

However, we must accept the fact that Donald Trump will eventually screw the “send her back” crowd, too if he hasn’t already. Sure loud racist chants may be music to Trump’s ears but money from corporate donors speak louder. Trump may cast himself as a champion of the typical white American Christian who’s beset by various alien forces by politically correct allies. But if you follow Trump’s business career, you’ll realize he’s actually a scam artist who profits from his fans’ misplaced trust even as president. From Paul Ryan’s speakership to Mick Mulvaney’s tenure as White House Chief of Staff and Federalist Society judiciary domination, a major agenda of the Trump administration and the Republican Party is to completely neuter or dismantle government institutions that are supposed to check the wealthy and powerful’s ability to run roughshod over the rest of us. Under Trump, polluters can pollute more, scammers can scam more, bankers can go back to running the risks that blew up the global economy, and no legislation that would impair the rich and powerful’s privileges can pass. Beyond acts of formal deregulation, Trump’s scaled back on enforcing existing laws so much that law firms seem to be panicking about the possibility that some clients won’t bother to hire them anymore.

No less than Donald Trump’s racism, this plutocratic agenda is an absolute disaster for America’s immigrants and communities of color who are generally lower-income and more vulnerable to corporate abuses and pollution than more privileged people. But critically, it’s also an absolute disaster for the vast majority of white people, too. There are few people who benefit from a combination of more pollution and less economic competition. And there’s no way for the tax cutting to balance that out unless you’re part of that tiny minority of the public whose income is mostly derived from stock ownership. Trump’s politics of racial division aren’t particularly popular. But it’s still true that framing Trump as a symbol of white privilege is almost certainly more favorable to him than framing him as a guy whose governance has concrete and material implications for Americans of all ethnic backgrounds. Racism’s function in American politics has always been in part to serve as a kind of scam. The Jim Crow South had the lowest standards of living for white people of any American region alongside even lower standards for African Americans. Trump is nothing more than a connoisseur of cons and scams. And that is not okay.

The Insidious Inauguration Committee

Posted by historymaniacmegan on March 22, 2019

In previous posts about President Cheeto Fascist, I have talked about how he manages to make almost any kind of charity or fundraising into a moneymaking scheme. And I talked about how he’s much more inclined to listen to donors willing to buy access to him through staying at his resorts and joining his clubs. Anyway, on Thursday, December 13, 2018, prosecutors in the US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York announced they were looking into Donald Trump’s inaugural committee, according to the Wall Street Journal. Apparently, investigators are interested in the committee’s spending and into the potential corruption involving favors for its donors. While the Journal reports that the criminal probe stems at least in part from material during the FBI’s April raid on Michael Cohen’s residence and office.

Even before this, multiple media outlets reported earlier in 2018 that special counsel Robert Mueller was investigating potential Russia-tied donations to Donald Trump’s inaugural committee. Yet, this news is the first confirmation of a broader probe into his inauguration and its money. After all, aside from working as Paul Manafort’s henchmen, Rick Gates also helped run it. Nonetheless, given Trump’s history involving making money off his campaign and presidency, this news shouldn’t come as a surprise. Since there have long been glaring questions behind Trump’s inauguration and where it went. Because his inaugural committee raised a truly astonishing $106.7 million, doubling the previous record Barack Obama‘s 2009 inaugural set. But what they did with it remains unclear. Nonetheless, in a 2018 ProPublica and WNYC report, former chair of George W. Bush’s second inauguration, Greg Jenkins was dumbstruck. He told ProPublica, “They had a third of the staff and a quarter of the events and they raise at least twice as much as we did. So there’s the obvious question: Where did it go? I don’t know.”

After that truly unfortunate night in November when Donald Trump unexpectedly won the 2016 presidential election, he was tasked with setting up an inauguration that would be worthy of his name and “opulent” reputation, which would be a gilded trash heap. Now the federal government pays for the swearing-in ceremony and logistics. But Trump would have to pay for all the before and after parties and events like the pre-inaugural National Mall concert, dinners and events for elite supporters, and the inaugural ball. So he needed a lot of money. Of course, raising money for one’s inauguration isn’t unusual for an incoming president. Rather than fund the festivities himself, the so-called wealthiest not-my-president-elect ever, Trump decided to follow suit raising the cash from billionaires, wealthy financiers, and corporations.

So a week after his horrifying electoral victory, Donald Trump named a murderers’ row of superrich Republicans as “finance vice chairs” for the event. These included:

Sheldon Adelson– casino billionaire known for donating to Republican causes and had his wife receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom that she didn’t seem to deserve.
Steve Wynn– casino billionaire Donald Trump might’ve screwed over in Atlantic City who was later accused of sexually abusing his employees.
Elliot Broidy– a defense contractor and well-known Republican fundraiser who was later involved in hush money payments to a Playboy model and a client to Michael Cohen. In 2009, he pleaded guilty to paying bribes to get investments from the New York state pension fund. His felony conviction was later downgraded to a misdemeanor. He’s also come under scrutiny in special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation.
Anthony Scaramucci– some corporate guy who was Donald Trump’s communications director for 10 days during the summer of 2017 and had to resign over an obscene interview with the New Yorker.

The committee’s treasurer Doug Ammerman was named by prosecutors as an unindicted co-conspirator in a tax shelter fraud during the early 2000s. He was also a partner at accounting firm, KPMG, which later admitted to criminal liability. A Senate investigation at the time include emails from Ammerman suggesting he was aware of the scheme. In addition, he’s currently accused in a shareholder lawsuit of dumping stock in a grilled chicken chain, El Pollo Loco, where he served on the board, ahead of a bad quarterly report.

The chair of the inaugural committee in charge of it all was Tom Barrack, a real estate billionaire investor and close friend of Donald Trump for 4 decades. Anyway, Barrack’s business interests have recently been concentrated in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Qatar. According to him, his goal was for the inauguration to have a “soft sensuality” and “poetic cadence.” Though I would more or less the event as akin to something between The Hunger Games and Titanic. To assist with planning and fundraising, Barrack turned to Manafort right-hand man, Rick Gates. After all, Barrack had known Paul Manafort since the 1970s and helped convince Trump to bring him on to the campaign. But to no one’s surprise, the choice raised eyebrows since Manafort had been ousted as Trump’s campaign chairman after the release of several scandal-laden stories about his work in for pro-Russian Ukranian politicians. And yet, Gates became instrumental in the committee’s activities as a possible “shadow” inauguration chair and Barrack’s “chief deputy.” As we know both Manafort and Gates have agreed to plea deals with Robert Mueller and promised to cooperate with government investigators. Gates kept his word. Manafort didn’t.

While Donald Trump’s inauguration crowd was nowhere near the largest in history, the inaugural fundraising certainly was. Tom Barrack, Rick Gates, and the team racked in more than $106 million, a jaw-dropping sum doubling the previous record set by Barack Obama’s team in 2009. However, the fundraising scheme went like this: the more you give, the more exclusive events you got access to. According to the Center for Public Integrity, listed perks with each donation target include:

$250,000 will get you a Union Station candlelight dinner with the Trumps and Pences.
$500,000 will get you a dinner with then Vice President-elect Mike Pence.
$1 million will get into the “Leadership Luncheon” at Donald Trump’s Washington DC Hotel.

OpenSecrets.org provided a donor list of those willing to fork over large sums. Among those include:

Finance Industry Big Shots (all donate $1 million each):

Robert Mercer– a rich eccentric billionaire who owns Brietbart and Cambridge Analytica that the New Yorker called “the reclusive hedge-fund tycoon behind the Trump presidency.”
Paul Singer– another hedge-fund billionaire who funds the Washington Free Beacon website which had ironically paid the opposition firm Fusion GPS to dig up dirt on Donald Trump during the primaries. Their efforts resulted in the infamous Steele Dossier which famously alleged the pee-pee tape situation. Wonder what inspired him to change his mind about the guy.
Steve Cohen– a man whose hedge fund group was closed down due to insider trading allegations.

Corporate America:

Contributed $2 million: AT&T
Contributed $1 million: Bank of America, Boeing, Dow Chemical, Pfizer, and Qualcomm
Contributed at least $500,000: JP Morgan Chase, FedEx, Chevron, Exxon, Fidelity, Citgo, and BP America.

Secret Conservative Groups (Donated $1 million each):

The American Action Network– a dark money nonprofit that’s spent tens of millions on elections since 2010.
“BH Group LLC” – a mysterious shell company whose true source remained unknown for more than a year. Only in 2018 did journalist Robert Maguire trace that contribution to a group tied to the conservative legal movement and Federalist Society executive Leonard Leo who’s found a prominent role advising Donald Trump on judicial nominations.

But these are only samples all of the donors who contributed vast sums from their bottom lists of cash reserves so they can have input in shaping policy that benefits their bottom line. After all, they didn’t just hand over their cash for the inaugural festivities. Nonetheless, they’re not the only kinds of donors who forked over their cash to Donald Trump’s inaugural committee either. For we must not forget those donors with major ties to Russia and other foreign countries who reportedly caught Robert Mueller’s eye. ABC News reported that Mueller questioned “about millions of dollars in donations to President Donald Trump’s inauguration committee” — specifically about “donors with connections to Russia, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar.” As far as the Associated Press is concerned, Mueller’s investigators have interviewed inauguration chair Tom Barrack. But the AP’s sources gave conflicting accounts on what they asked him about. One claimed they only asked him about Paul Manafort and Rick Gates. Another claimed questioning included, “financial matters about the campaign, the transition and Trump’s inauguration in January 2017.” In June 2017, another ABC News report stated that Mueller investigators why several billionaires with “deep ties to Russia” got access to “exclusive, invitation-only receptions” during the inauguration.

Nevertheless, beyond the many questions about the money Donald Trump’s inauguration committee collected, there have long been many questions about money going out of it. Though I highly suspect that much of it went straight to the Trump Organization. In the ProPublica and WNYC piece, several people involved in previous inaugurations were stumped over how Trump’s team could have possibly spent more than $100 million for what they got. Unfortunately, unlike in political campaigns, the inaugural committee isn’t required to disclose very much about its spending. Yet, in its nonprofit tax form, the committee does have to break down its expenses in broad categories. But they need not explain every line item.

In any case, according to the tax form, about half the money (more than $50 million) went to just 2 vendors. $25.8 million went to WIS Media Partners, an event production firm started by a now-former adviser to Melania Trump. Another $25 million went to Hargrove, Inc. for “event production.” What did these firms do with these massive sums? God only knows. But that leaves about $50 million remaining. From that, another $10 million in total went to another 3 vendors, $4.6 million was paid out in salaries, and $5 million was left over and given out as grants. Yet, where tens of millions more went remains a mystery, beyond the broadest categories given on the disclosure forms. For now, whether this was sloppy financial mismanagement or something shadier is unclear. Though given Donald Trump’s propensity for moneymaking schemes, it’s more likely the latter. Not to mention, if there’s anyone who knows where the money went, it’s Rick Gates. And whatever he knows, prosecutors know, too.

But whatever the case, the fundraising involved with Donald Trump‘s inauguration should show us that this unrespectable man is no savior to his white working class supporters. In fact, he just sees them as suckers gullible enough to buy into his fraudulent promises he never intends to keep. He is a man who can be bought and usually is. He may appreciate his supporters’ votes and constant praise they bestow on him at his ego boosting rallies. But if they really want his ear, then they will have to accumulate more wealth than most will ever be able to make in their lifetimes. Maybe even get a membership at his exclusive clubs and resorts that can cost thousands of dollars. If not, then millions. Besides, Trump has a well known history of screwing his employees just to enrich his own coffers. And he’s currently getting rich from the presidency with our taxpayer dollars.

Donald Trump as President Is the Real National Emergency

Posted by historymaniacmegan on February 25, 2019

After weeks of battling over funding for a worthless border wall that won’t do shit, overseeing the longest government shutdown in US history, and finally signing on to a deal to fund the government, Donald Trump has declared a national emergency over a contrived crisis at the US Mexican Border. On Friday, February 15, 2019, Trump invoked this power in a unilateral effort to make progress on the stupid border wall Congress has previously denied him. Initially, he demanded $5 billion for constructing a 200-mile barrier at the border. Naturally, congressional Democrats have repeatedly refused to go anywhere near that number. In the final deal, he got about $1.3 billion for border fencing, far less than the desired amount. So unhappy with the money and not getting his way, Trump went to declare a national emergency to get more.

So where will all this money come from? Well, Donald Trump will try cobbling together from a number of areas and redirect them for border wall construction. According to White House officials, this money would comprise of $600 million from the Treasury Forfeiture Fund or money seized by the US government, $2.5 billion from the Department of Defense’s counter-drug activities, and $3.6 billion from other military construction accounts. Though Trump won’t try to take anything from disaster relief, yet.
Now the fact Donald Trump has declared a national emergency in addition to a spending deal isn’t surprising since he’s been wavering on the idea for weeks. So why declare a national emergency when he’s already got a spending deal? Because Trump doesn’t want to admit he lost. Since he’s already getting less for border fencing than he would’ve gotten in the bill he refused to sign in December and caused a 35-day shutdown over it. So he’s going for executive action instead despite that it’s debatable whether he can since no emergency at the border exists.

Since 1976, many presidents have declared national emergencies since there were 31 before Donald Trump’s declaration. However, the National Emergencies Act of 1976 only allows presidents to declare national emergencies in specific circumstances. So Trump can only use specific powers Congress has already codified in law. And he has to say which power he’s using. Besides, thanks to a little incident called Watergate, the 1976 law was meant to rein in presidential power and how presidents declared national emergencies. But it doesn’t define what counts or doesn’t.

Despite Donald Trump’s fearmongering about an influx of dangerous undocumented immigrants and terrorists at the US Mexican border, no such crisis exists. In fact, there’s no significant shift in the situation in recent days or weeks suddenly rendering such urgent action needed. However, we do have lingering crises with healthcare, opioids, climate change, aging infrastructure, family separations at the border, economic inequality, environmental devastation, right-wing and white supremacist terrorism, and more. But no. Besides, Trump has spent 2 years of an entirely-controlled Republican Congress to do something about immigration. While there’s been no significant shift in the situation that suddenly renders urgent actions unnecessary.

This isn’t the first time that Donald Trump has invented an immigration crisis when it’s convenient. Ahead of the midterms, he warned about a dire threat from a migrant caravan, only to essentially drop the issue after the elections. Sure, asylum seekers in the US have been on the rise, but seeking asylum is legal. But Trump’s not focusing on that. Congress won’t pay for his stupid border wall. And Trump thinks he’ll lose his base if he abandons it. So he’s creating a panic and going to any length possible to get it done.
Essentially, given the context, Donald Trump’s national emergency declaration is illegal and sets a dangerous precedent if it succeeds. Under Article I of the US Constitution clearly states, “No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law.” So only Congress can make such laws relating to public funds in non-emergency situations. Thus, no one person can seize control of our nation’s public funds. And even if Trump can declare a national emergency to get the money he wants, that’s not enough to build a wall. He also needs the authority of eminent domain from numerous unwilling owners, which must be expressed by the legislature. And there’s no clear authorization here.

This also puts a test on the Republican Party’s lack of willingness to stand up to Donald Trump. After spending years of complaining about Barack Obama’s overreach, they have so far deferred to Trump and encouraged Americans to do the same. But in this case, Republicans have expressed concern that Trump’s emergency declaration might lead to future Democratic presidents doing the same on issues like healthcare or climate change. Of course, their fears are well founded, since healthcare and climate change are actual national emergencies. The fact Trump basically declared a national emergency at the border before golfing at Mar-a-Lago for the weekend, it’s clear he’s abusing his power. Thus, Trump’s emergency declaration is an obvious fraud since in a real emergency, you act fast.

As usual, Donald Trump will likely face court challenges over this declaration and he’ll probably see it as some vast radical left-wing conspiracy that’s out to get him. While he deserves to lose, it’s possible he could prevail since courts often give presidents undue deference on immigration and national security issues. But should he win, it would set a very dangerous precedents. Again, he can also see pushback from Congress, which can pass a joint resolution to override it with 2/3 majority in both houses. But that’s not going to happen since the Republicans have control of the Senate and will do whatever Trump wants. Nonetheless, the fact Trump basically declared a national emergency at the border before golfing at Mar-a-Lago for the weekend, it’s clear he’s abusing his power. Thus, Trump’s emergency declaration is an obvious fraud since in a real emergency, you act fast. In fake national emergencies, you act when the political timing is right to cover your ass because you need to back down from an ill-advised congressional fight followed from an ill-advised campaign promise.

Of course, US-Mexico border security isn’t perfect. But the world is full of problems that aren’t “emergencies” in the sense of requiring some kind of urgent extralegal repurposing of funds. Nonetheless, by robbing the nation’s drug interdiction and military construction budgets for his stupid border wall, Donald Trump will more likely make the nation’s problems worse than better. Since fencing our southern border has been ongoing for decades and is subject to diminishing returns, with valuable sections already fenced in.

In the past couple of months, the real crisis on display is Donald Trump’s total incompetence you can see from miles away. For he doesn’t understand a policy agenda or get anything done. Without Paul Ryan around to drive a legislative agenda he could rubber stamp, he’s failing. First, it’s shutting down the government and throwing millions of people’s lives into chaos. Second, it’s reopening the government having gotten nothing he could’ve had in December while adopting a “Hail Mary” scheme that will only make things worse. Though it’s better than a real shutdown, we should all be worried that Trump can’t handle a real crisis if it’s staring at him in the face.

This whole stupid wall farce began back in 2015 when Donald Trump promised to build a wall across the entire US-Mexican border and make Mexico pay for it. Even anyone with half a brain could see that this was an extremely stupid idea that was wasteful and unworkable in every way. But somehow thanks to racism and xenophobia, Trump transmogrified his opponents‘ mockery into a test of will. According to him, the political establishment didn’t want to secure the border, but Trump did. And the wall was proof. Now that Trump is in office much to our nightmares, he has been confronting the reality that his critics were right in every way. Since Mexico obviously won’t pay for his stupid border wall, he needs congressional appropriations and the cost-benefit analysis is valid. Trump has long ago conceded that he can’t build a wall across the entire border since there are places where It’s infeasible and useless. Not to mention, he’s also conceded that there won’t be a wall at all, but the previous steel bollard anti-pedestrian fencing he had previously mocked is a useful barrier and that Border Patrol prefers its see-through quality.

Thus, on a practical level, this whole dispute is simply about the spending levels and construction pace of a type of border hardening that’s been underway for years. While Republicans think it’s important, Democrats find this border hardening rightfully wasteful. Any halfway competent president would see this as the most banal political controversy imaginable. Since if you want to get money for a pet project, you have to offer something to your opponents in exchange. But Donald Trump’s problem here is that the wall is such a terrible idea that his allies and staff know it. The sort of illicit border crossings that these pedestrian fences are supposed to prevent have already fallen to very low levels and the immigration conversation has moved on to other things like the treatment of asylum-seeking families from Central America. But because the wall is bad, immigration hawks don’t want to make any meaningful concessions to get it. Anytime talks seem to take off about some swap of help for DREAMers in exchange for wall money, the hawks swoop in with a bunch of other demands having nothing to do with the wall. That conservatives don’t want to make concessions on an inherently bad idea is reasonable. But at the same time, if your allies aren’t willing to make concessions on a bad idea, it’s better to let the matter slide, not throw a tantrum. But Trump won’t do that.

First, the shutdown and now the “emergency” both stem from the basic fact that Donald Trump will neither admit the whole spiel was crock nor decide to act like someone who genuinely wants a wall and make a deal to get it. Instead, everyone’s time and money will be wasted on litigation while money will be taken away from duly authorized programs and sent to a useless construction project nobody really wants. This isn’t the worst thing anyone has done in American politics. Hell, it’s not even close to being the worst thing Trump has ever done. But it’s arguably the most absurd. Not to mention, it once again raises the fundamental question about Trump. When you have a president who can’t handle relatively banal problems like a $5 billion appropriation for a pet project, what will happen when a real crisis hits? Oh, wait, he is the crisis.

The Donald J. Trump Foundation: A Self-Dealing Charity for One

Posted by historymaniacmegan on November 21, 2018

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When it comes to rich people, there is a lot I have to criticize on how they perpetuate economic inequality through their vast sums of money and power while leaving the poorer masses with little leverage to assert themselves. But when it comes to their philanthropic foundations, I think that they at least put their own money in it and donate the money for a good charitable cause. Even if it’s just to name some sort of building after themselves. After all, many wealthy people usually contribute their money to the arts, college campuses, research facilities, libraries, and public works projects. Hell, though I think Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos treat their workers like shit, the fact they want to contribute some of their vast fortunes for going to Mars seems pretty cool.

However, despite that Donald Trump’s excessive vanity is the stuff of legend, such philanthropic endeavors don’t seem to be the case with the Donald J. Trump Foundation. Trump originally created this foundation in 1988 for his proceeds from his book Trump: The Art of the Deal to charitable causes. However, in since 2008, Trump had stopped contributing personal funds and instead solicited donations from outsiders. Though the foundation was based in New York City’s Trump Organization, with no paid staff or dedicated office space. Until its forced closure in 2017 due to an array of complaints in self-dealing, its board of directors consisted of Trump, his 3 adult children by Ivana, and Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg (though he told investigators he wasn’t aware of being a board member “at least for the last 10 or 15 years.”) In 2015, a Trump Organization spokesperson told The New York Post that Trump made all the decisions regarding the Trump Foundation money grants. Despite calling himself an “ardent philanthropist,” Trump has only donated $3.7 million to his foundation from 1990-2009.

Here’s a sheet of David Fahrenthold’s notes he showed on Twitter to prove that what he wrote about the Trump Foundation wasn’t fake news. He ended up winning a well-deserved Pulitzer Prize for his coverage in 2017.

During the 2016 presidential campaign, The Washington Post’s David Fahrenthold initiated an investigation into Donald Trump’s philanthropic activities after Trump held a fundraiser for veterans in January 2016 in lieu of a televised Republican debate appearance. Trump claimed the event raised $6,000,000 for veterans’ causes, including supposedly $1,000,000,000 of his own money. Fahrenthold began his investigation by trying to confirm the receipt and dispersal of that $6 million. All donations should’ve gone to the Trump Foundation which should’ve granted the money to others. Instead, Fahrenthold determined that, several months after the rally, the Trump Foundation had yet to send any funds to veterans-related charities. Though some of the funds went directly to causes without passing the Trump Foundation, Fahrenthold widened his search to a wider investigation.

In June 2016 as a response to this criticism, Donald Trump publicly asserted that he had given approximately $102 million to charitable causes from 2009-2015 and released a 93-page list of the money’s beneficiaries. However, subsequent reporting by the Washington Post and other news organizations found that many of the donations Trump claimed making personally over this 5-year period were made by the Trump Foundation. And by 2009, no longer held any of Trump’s money. While further investigations led to an increasing of abuse inside the foundation since its creation. David Fahrenthold’s investigation into the Trump Foundation and Trump’s history of personal charitable giving involved hundreds of calls to Trump-associated charities. It’s also notable in that Fahrenthold heavily drew support and investigative help from a larger number of his Twitter followers helping him track down leads on specific charities. The accusations against the Trump Foundation are many, including the following (which mostly comes from Wikipedia, by the way And yes, it’s most of the information comes from cited sources, including Fahrenthold).

Failure to maintain proper governance

In June 2018, the New York Attorney General office filed a petition explaining that: “…none of the Foundation’s expenditures or activities were approved by its Board of Directors. The investigation found that the Board existed in name only: it did not meet after 1999; it did not set policy or criteria for choosing grant recipients; and it did not approve of any grants. Mr. Trump alone made all decisions related to the Foundation.” Also, Trump Foundation treasurer Allen Weisselberg claimed he wasn’t even aware of his position on the foundation’s board until investigators approached him. Such signs in a foundation give a bright red flag to a charity scam.

Donation solicitation without a license

Under New York state law, a nonprofit foundation must register as a “7A Charitable Organization” if planning to solicit outside donations over $25,000. Initially, the Trump Foundation was registered as a private foundation set up solely to receive Donald Trump’s own personal donations. As long as it was registered as a private foundation and not soliciting outside funds, it didn’t have to file annual reports with the New York State Charities Bureau. Of course, given Trump’s aversion to transparency in financial matters, this might’ve been the reason why the Trump Foundation didn’t register as a “7A Charitable Organization.” But records show that Trump began soliciting donations at least as early as 2004, maybe even 1989.

Mishandling of funds raised for veterans’ causes

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Here’s that fucking piece of shit Donald Trump bestowing a large check to a veterans’ charity in Iowa in 2016. Still, I wouldn’t cash in that check if I were these ladies. Mostly because the check might bounce.

In April 2016, Fox News reported that more than 2 months after Donald Trump said he raised $6 million for veterans at a pre-Iowa Caucus fundraiser, “most of the organizations targeted to receive the money have gotten less than half of that amount.” At the same time, Trump said he contributed $1 million of his personal funds. In late May, Trump revised the figures, claiming that $5.6 million had been raised at the event and that he contributed his $1 million share only the week before after the media criticized him. He also provided a list of beneficiaries of that $5.6 million. Although a 2018 New York state lawsuit further disputes this, citing $2.8 million.

Coordinating foundation grants with Trump’s presidential campaign

It should surprise nobody that Donald Trump might’ve used Trump foundation grants to advance his presidential campaign. This violates rules barring charities from engaging in political activity. Trump at least distributed some of the funds publicly at “Donald Trump for President” political rallies, displaying large-size checks including his campaign slogan, “Make America Great Again” or a link to a campaign website. In an October 2017 deposition, Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg testified that he witnessed Trump’s campaign staff coordinate with him to use the Iowa fundraiser for the campaign’s benefit. In a larger suit against the foundation in 2018, New York State Attorney General Barbara Underwood alleged that Trump in using the foundation for campaign promotion during and after the Iowa fundraiser, had violated charities laws.

Grants to the National Museum of Catholic Art and Library

In each of 1995 and 1999, the Trump Foundation granted $50,000 to the National Museum of Catholic Art and Library. According to a 2001 Village Voice report, after visiting the East Harlem museum, the facility had “next to no art” and no official connection to the Catholic Church, despite having a 10-year track record of soliciting large-scale donations for its collection. The Voice and later, The Washington Post concluded that Trump may have directed the grants to the museum to curry favor with then museum chairman, Eddie Malloy, who was also head of the Building and Construction Trades Council of Greater New York. The Council had worked on behalf of one of the workers’ unions who worked on Trump construction projects.

Failure to make pledged 9/11 donations

An October 2016 New York City Comptroller office investigation showed that Donald Trump or the Trump Foundation might’ve failed to honor at least one pledge to charities established to provide relief to 9/11 victims. In late September 2001, Trump pledged $10,000 to the Twin Towers Fund on The Howard Stern Show. Created by then-Mayor Rudy Giuliani, the Twin Towers Fund was “to benefit the families of firefighters and police officers who died in the attacks.” During the 2016 Republican National Convention, Giuliani announced that Trump made unspecified “anonymous” donations after the September 11 attacks. Though such donations have never been identified. Ever the sycophant, Giuliani also said in support of Trump’s candidacy, “Every time New York City suffered a tragedy Donald Trump was there to help,…. He’s not going to like my telling you this but he did it anonymously.”

The New York City Comptroller’s office told the New York Daily News it manually reviewed “approximately 1,500 pages of donor records of the Twin Towers Fund and the related entity NYC Public/Private Initiatives Inc., containing the names of more than 110,000 individuals and entities that were collected as part of the audits” through August 2012. According to them, Comptroller Scott Stringer, “found that Trump and [the Trump Foundation] hadn’t donated a dime in the months after 9/11.” However, because the reviewed period only covered one year after the attacks, the Comptroller office was “unable to conclude definitively” that Trump never gave to the fund after August 2002. According to its IRS Form 990 tax filings, the Trump Foundation made no grants to the Twin Towers Fund or to the NYC Public/Private Initiatives, Inc. it’s a part of from 2002-2014. Though Donald Trump might’ve made personal donations after August 2002 that wouldn’t have shown up in the filings.

After the convention in 2016, Donald Trump’s campaign suggested that the Trump Foundation made a grant to the American Red Cross after the attacks. But no record exists in its tax filings from 2002-2014. As with the Twin Towers Fund, a personal donation by Trump wouldn’t have shown up in its filings.

Using Trump Foundation money to settle Trump Organization legal disputes

Those who read my post about Donald Trump in Mar-a-Lago may remember the outsized flag dispute with Palm Beach. Well, guess where he got the money to pay for that. Yep, his Trump Foundation slush fund.

Donald Trump might’ve used Trump Foundation money to settle his personal or business legal disputes on at least 2 occasions. In 2007, Trump used foundation money to settle his 2006 legal dispute between the town of Palm Beach, Florida and Trump’s Mar-a-Lago country club. This pertained to Trump putting up a gigantic flagpole that was too high and hoisting a flag that was too large as far as the town’s ordinances are concerned. If you read my post on Trump at Mar-a-Lago I published earlier this month, then you probably know how it goes. Anyway, settlement documents show that in return for discharging the club’s obligations to Palm Beach, Trump agreed to personally donate $100,000 to a veterans and military families charity Fischer House. However, Trump made the grant using foundation money, not his.

Donald Trump’s foundation paid $158,000 to the Martin B. Greenberg Foundation as a settlement in a lawsuit Greenberg brought against the Trump National Golf Club Westchester in Briarcliff Manor, New York. Martin Greenberg alleged that he rightfully won a $1 million prize for scoring a hole-in-one during a 2010 charity golf tournament. But the club denied the award on technical grounds, arguing the hole was shorter than the required 150 yards. He sued and both parties reached a settlement according to the Washington Post that, that “on the day that Trump and the other parties told the court that they had settled the case, the Donald J. Trump Foundation made its first and only grant to the Martin B. Greenberg Foundation, for $158,000.” In September 2016, the Post reported that the grant money was directly linked to the legal settlement, likely violating IRS self-dealing rules by using charitable funds to pay Trump’s personal or business obligations. To raise the needed money for the settlement, the Trump Foundation auctioned a prize of a Trump-owned golf course lifetime membership, with a $157,000 donation to the Trump Foundation as the winning bid. The auction winner might’ve believed they were donating to Trump Foundation charitable causes instead of Trump’s tax exempt personal piggy bank. According to the foundation’s available tax returns, Trump National Golf Club Westchester paid over $200,000 to the Trump Foundation in 2016, with $158,000 of the funds for the Martin B. Greenberg settlement.

Donation to Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi

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This is Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi. In 2013, during her office’s investigation into Trump University, Donald Trump gave her money from his foundation to make it go away. She dropped the case shortly afterwards. And she’s not the only one either.

In 2013, Donald Trump donated $25,000 in support of Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi’s election campaign while her office was reviewing fraud allegations against Trump University, a for-profit real-estate program scam Trump created. At the same time, Trump also hosted a fundraiser for Bondi at his Mar-a-Lago resort at a fee well below his normal market rate. In return, Bondi’s office ended the investigation without bringing charges. According to a Trump Foundation attorney, “the [$25,000] contribution was made in error due to a case of mistaken identity of organizations with the same name.” But Trump personally reimbursed his foundation for the $25,000. It paid a $2,500 fine for violating IRS rules against political contributions by charitable organizations. In 2016, then New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman publicly stated that the Trump Foundation was now subject to investigation by his office.

Nonprofit watchdog group, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington filed a complaint with the IRS. Obtaining a letter from the Trump Foundation’s lawyer to the New York Attorney General’s office also cast doubt on Donald Trump’s story. According to CREW Communications Director Jordan Libowitz, “We’re past the point where a reasonable person could believe this is just a never-ending series of once in a lifetime errors. This may not be anything nefarious, but if it isn’t, that would mean that the Trump operation is completely inept when it comes to running the Trump Foundation.” In October 2016, The Wall Street Journal reported details of how Trump had made campaign contributions to various US state attorneys general while reviewing cases involving the Trump Organization or himself personally, on several occasions since the early 1980s. Though the Bondi case is the only one cited as involving Trump Foundation money.

Grants allegedly made for political purposes

In 2012, Donald Trump paid $100,000 to the Reverend Billy Graham Evangelical Association. NBC News has called Graham “an early ally” of his. In 2011, Graham told ABC News, “The more you listen to him, the more you say to yourself, ‘You know, maybe the guy’s right.’” In October 2016, Graham revealed to the Charlotte Observer that he instructed Trump to make a $100,000 donation which was used for full page ads urging voters to support 2012 presidential candidates who support “biblical values.” The time and tone of the ads indicate they were placed in support of Mitt Romney as the Observer suggested. Graham also headed the Boone, North Carolina-based Samaritan’s Purse, a Christian relief agency that received $25,000 from the Trump Foundation in 2012. Graham credits then-Fox News anchor Greta Van Susteren for soliciting the donation from Trump. Van Susteren had accompanied Graham on Samaritan’s Purse trips to Hawaii and North Korea. The Charlotte Observer quoted Graham saying, “[Trump] was on her show, and [Van Susteren] said, ‘I was just in Haiti and Samaritan’s Purse is doing this down there, and Donald, you need to help.’ He sent a check out.” In 2016, several media outlets alleged that Van Sustreren had been producing overtly pro-Trump reports on her Fox News show On the Record. These donations seem to explain some of Trump’s support with some white evangelicals in the Bible Belt.

Here’s Donald Trump shaking hands with David Bossie, best known for being head of Citizens United. You know the group in that Supreme Court case that ditched a slew of campaign finance laws and allowed rich people to spend as much money they wanted on political candidates. Also Trump gave money to him via Trump Foundation funds.

In 2014, the Trump Foundation made a $100,000 grant to the Citizens United Foundation, a charitable foundation closely related to David Bossie’s conservative group, Citizens United. If that sounds familiar, Citizens United was the group behind the Supreme Court case that allowed unlimited contributions from corporate donors, Super PACs, and dark money in political campaigns. At the time, Citizens United was engaged in a lawsuit against then-New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, whose office was also pursuing a civil lawsuit against Trump University. It was the largest single grant the Trump Foundation made that year. Schneiderman’s office called the grant part of a “vendetta” by Donald Trump. While Citizens United rejected any connection between the grant and its own lawsuit against Schneiderman. The Trump Foundation’s 2014 tax filing misidentified Citizens United as a public charity (501(c)(3)) when it’s actually a social welfare organization (501(c)(4)).

From 2011-2013, the Trump Foundation donated at total of $40,000 to the Drumthwacket Foundation, a charitable organization formed to pay for renovation and historical preservation of the New Jersey governor’s mansion of the same name. In 2011, Donald Trump was trying to get permits for a personal cemetery on the fairway at Trump National Golf Club in New Jersey and may have needed political help in obtaining approval. Keep in mind that Chris Christie was governor at the time.

Donald Trump directed $100,000 in Trump Foundation money toward the National September 11 Memorial Museum days before the 2016 New York State Republican presidential primary, where he was on the ballot, mischaracterizing the foundation grant as a personal donation.

In May 2015, the Trump Foundation granted $100,000 to conservative filmmaker and conspiracy theorist James O’Keefe’s Project Veritas. In October 2016, O’Keefe released videos apparently revealing how Democrats incited violence at Donald Trump’s rallies through dubious means. Except that’s not true. During the third 2016 presidential debate, Trump claimed the new videos O’Keefe produced and released that week proved that Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama “hired people” and “paid them $1,500” to “be violent, cause fights, [and] do bad things” at Trump rallies. Despite the fact such details are utter bullshit. Besides, there are many instances where Trump has incited violence at his rallies. A Democratic National Committee spokesperson noted Trump’s donation after Project Veritas released another video on the 2016 election. A Project Veritas spokesperson responded saying, “We have a multi-million dollar budget and the cost of this video series alone is way up there. The donation Trump provided didn’t impact our actions one way or the other.” Though you have to strongly doubt that.

Then there’s the fact that Donald Trump might’ve directed Trump Foundation money to support his presidential campaign. In one case, the grants were used specifically to pay for newspaper ads. In October 2016, Real Clear Politics reported that Trump directed significant amounts of foundation money to conservative organizations, possibly in return for political support and access. They found that from 2011-2014, Trump had “harnessed his eponymous foundation to send at least $286,000 to influential conservative or policy groups…. In many cases, this flow of money corresponded to prime speaking slots or endorsements that aided Trump as he sought to recast himself as a plausible Republican candidate for president.” At least 2 of the groups are based in Republican-leaning early presidential primary states. In addition to the infamous Citizens United, groups include Iowa’s The Family Leader, the South Carolina Palmetto Family Council, the American Conservative Union, and the American Spectator Foundation. Trump’s foundation money grants could’ve violated the law if it was in return for his personal right to speak and gain access to networking events. Considering that he seemed to be an outsider early in the 2016 campaign, I wouldn’t put it past him.

The Trump Foundation’s $10,000 grant in 2013 to The Family Leader might’ve led to a speaking engagement for Donald Trump. The Family Leader is an Iowa-based organization whose stated mission is to “strengthen families, by inspiring Christ-like leadership in the home, the church, and the government.” Following the grant, the group’s leader Vader Plaats invited Trump to speak at its leadership summit. Because The Family Leader is a (501(c)(4)) corporation established “develop, advocate and support legislative agenda at the state level” and not a charity, these grants might’ve been illegal. Though Trump might’ve intended to make a grant to The Family Leader Foundation, which is a 501(c)(3) charitable foundation. Either way, it seems shady.
Donald Trump was invited to speak at the American Conservative Union’s Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in 2013 after directing $50,000 of Trump Foundation money to the organization. That same year, Trump was invited to speak at Washington’s Economic Club after the Trump Foundation made a grant there.

Partial payment of an assessment owed by the Plaza Hotel

In 1989, the Trump Foundation paid more than half for a “voluntary assessment” imposed on the Plaza Hotel by the Central Park Conservancy. The Trump Organization owned the hotel at the time and the assessment was for the renovation of the severely dilapidated Pulitzer Fountain at Grand Army Plaza directly facing the place. Toward the $500,000 assessment, the foundation granted $264,631 to the Conservancy while the Trump Organization paid between $100,000 and $250,000. The grant to the Conservancy was the Trump Foundation’s largest single grant since its inception through 2015.

Using foundation money to purchase personal or business goods or services

Here’s one of the paintings Donald Trump bought with his fake charity money. This one from Doral was discovered on TripAdvisor and a Univision reporter just had to check it out.

On 2 occasions, Donald Trump used the Trump Foundation’s money to buy portraits of himself.

In 2007, Donald Trump spent $10,000 in Trump Foundation funds to purchase a 6ft-tall portrait of himself by artist Michael Israel at a Florida benefit for a charity, the Children’s Place at Hornespace, held at his Mar-a-Lago club after his wife Melania made the highest bid. The painter’s former production manager told The Washington Post that he shipped the painting to the Trump National Golf Club Westchester in Briarcliff Manor, New York, allegedly for display in the country club’s conference room or boardroom, at Melania’s request. The charity paid half the proceeds to the artist for the painting, establishing that it had a fair market value of at least that amount. Tax experts told the Post that if it was displayed at a golf club, it could violate IRS rules prohibiting nonprofits from self-dealing (like using charity funds for noncharitable purposes). In September 2015, President Barack Obama publicly criticized Trump’s painting purchase.
In 2014 at a charity benefit for the Unicorn Children’s Foundation at his Mar-a-Lago resort, Donald Trump bought a 4ft tall painting of a 1990s version of himself by Argentine artist Havi Schanz, paying for it with $20,000 Trump Foundation funds. A photo of the portrait was found on a TripAdvisor review of Trump National Doral Miami. Later a Univision reporter went to the club, asked the various staff about the painting, and eventually discovered it hanging on at the golf resort’s Champions Bar & Grill restaurant. Trump campaign spokesman Boris Epshteyn explained on MSNBC that Trump’s use of the painting there was not only proper but beneficial to the foundation based on IRS rules allowing individuals to store items “on behalf of the foundation – in order to help with storage costs” and that its use at the restaurant is “absolutely proper” in that Trump was “doing his foundation a favor.”

During a charity auction at his Mar-a-Lago club in 2012, Donald Trump bid $12,000 for a Tim Tebow autographed NFL football helmet and a Tebow football jersey. Newspaper accounts credited Trump for his generosity. However, the purchase was made with $12,000 in Trump Foundation money, not his own. The helmet and jersey’s current whereabouts are unknown. But according to tax law experts, if Trump kept them, the purchase might’ve violated the self-dealing rule, banning private foundations from “the furnishing of goods” to their own officers.

In 2008, Donald Trump used $107,000 in Trump Foundation funds to purchase luxury trips to Paris, including a meeting with actress Salma Hayek at a charity auction for the Gucci Foundation.

In 2013, the Trump Foundation made a $5,000 grant to the nonprofit D.C. Preservation League. According to The Washington Post, the nonprofit’s support was helpful to the Trump Organization in obtaining the rights to convert Washington D.C.’s historic Old Post Office Pavilion into the Trump International Hotel. In acknowledgement for the donation, the Trump Foundation received ads in the event programs. But the ads promoted the hotel rather than the foundation, in possible violation of IRS self-dealing rules.

The Palm Beach Post has suggested that Donald Trump benefitted personally when the Trump Foundation made grants totaling $20,000 from 2011-2014 in return for band and choir performances held at his resorts.

Diverting business or personal income as donations to the foundation

Donald Trump may have directed income personally owed to him to be sent to the Trump Foundation instead of his bank account, in possible tax rules violation. In September 2016, The Washington Post reported that Trump directed that $2.3 million owed to him by various people and organizations should be paid instead as donations to his foundation. Hell, the Post found old Associated Press coverage showing that Trump may have started directing income to the Trump Foundation as early as 1989. IRS rules prohibit individuals from diverting taxable income owed to them toward charities if they benefit directly from them, unless the person declares the income on their personal tax forms. Since Trump has yet to release his tax returns as of 2018, the Post couldn’t confirm if Trump declared the income for any of the received donations.

The Trump Foundation received at least $1.9 million from ticket broker Richard Ebbers who had bought goods, services, including tickets from “Trump or his businesses.” He was allegedly instructed to pay for them to the Trump Foundation in the form of charitable contributions instead as Trump Organization income.

Donald Trump had his money from his WWE appearances directed as donations to the Trump Foundation totaling to $5 million. I guess it was to avoid taxes since he doesn’t like paying them.

In 2007 and 2009, the Trump Foundation received a total of $5 million in donations from World Wrestling Entertainment owner Vince McMahon and his wife Linda. Trump appeared twice for WrestleMania events in those years. The 2007 donation was $1 million while the 2009 one was $4 million. The WWE later told The Huffington Post that, “during this period of time, WWE paid Donald Trump appearance fees separately,” and “separately, [WWE chief executives] Vince and Linda McMahon made personal donations to Donald Trump’s foundation.”

In 2007, the Celebrity Fight Night Foundation hosted a fundraiser to benefit the Muhammad Ali Parkinson’s Center in Phoenix, Arizona. According to a CFNF spokesperson, in return for Donald Trump’s appearance and his offering a New York-based dinner with himself at auction, Trump stipulated that the Parkinson’s charity share the total auction proceeds with the Trump Foundation, which totaled to $150,000 that would’ve otherwise gone to the center benefitted Parkinson’s Disease research.
Other donations made to the Trump Foundation that might’ve been in return for Donald Trump’s personal work include:

$400,000 from Comedy Central for Trump’s attendance at a celebrity roast in his honor.
$150,000 from People Magazine in return for exclusive photos of Trump’s son, Barron.
$500,000 from NBC Universal in 2012 while airing Trump’s show, The Apprentice.
$100,000 from the family of Donna Clancy, whose family law office had been renting space at the Trump Organizations 40 Wall Street building.
$100,000 in 2005, for Melania Trump’s work for Norwegian Cruise Lines on a segment later included on The Apprentice. A company spokesperson confirmed that Melania’s appearance fee was paid in a Trump Foundation donation

Granting money to charities that rented Trump Organization facilities

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These people are protesting the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute for holding events at Trump resorts. Good thing, since Donald Trump earns money from their fundraisers than what his foundation gaves to them.

Donald Trump has been accused of directing money toward several charities that in turn paid the Trump Organization to host charity events at Trump-owned resorts and golf clubs. High-profile charity events at Mar-a-Lago cost as much as $300,000. Notable examples include:

In 2010, Donald Trump was personally honored by the Palm Beach Police Foundation after the Trump Foundation donated to the charity $150,000 during the 2009-2010 period. According to the police foundation’s public tax records, the Palm Beach Police Foundation paid the Trump Organization $276,463 in rent in 2014 for it “Police Ball and Auction” held at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago hotel. The 2014 tax filings also lists $44,332 in unattributed “direct expenses” the police foundation paid for the same event along with $36,608 in “direct expenses” for its annual “Golf Classic” it holds yearly at a Trump Organization-owned golf course. For each of the 4 years prior to 2014, the police foundation’s public tax records show significant “direct expenses” incurred for both the Police Ball and Auction and the golf tournament. Though filings don’t list expense categories.
In 2013, according to The Washington Post, Donald Trump donated to the V Foundation, a cancer-fighting founded by former basketball coach Jim Valvano, in return for the V Foundation hosting a fundraiser at his Trump Winery in Virginia.
The Dana-Farber Cancer Institute paid the Trump Organization substantial fees to hold annual events at Mar-a-Lago. In turn, the Trump Foundation granted a total of $85,000 to the Institute in 2006 and 2007, among other grants in subsequent years.

Donald Trump taking personal credit for donations made using foundation money

Donald Trump often likes to boast about his philanthropy. But in reality, he often donated to charity using other people’s money from his Trump Foundation personal piggy bank. And he’s said to be one of the least charitable billionaires to date.

In 2016, both Fox News and The Washington Post reported that Donald Trump has repeatedly claimed in public to have made over “$102 million” in charitable donations “in the past five years.” The Trump Organization provided journalists with a 93-page donation list. None of the cash donations were confirmed to come from Trump personally while many were grants from the Trump Foundation, which no longer contained any of his own money.

For instance, Donald Trump took personal credit while honored for a Trump Foundation grant to the Palm Beach Police Foundation that actually came from an outside source. Though he pledge money personally before the Trump Foundation solicited $150,000 earmarked for the police foundation from an unrelated philanthropic organization, the Charles Evans Foundation. It took that money and paid it to the Palm Beach charity. The police then personally honored Trump with its annual Palm Tree Award at his Mar-a-Lago hotel during its annual fundraiser. The Washington Post wrote that, Trump had effectively turned the Evans Foundation’s gifts into his own gifts, without adding any money of his own.”

The Dana-Farber Cancer Institute has honored Donald Trump variously as “Grand Benefactor” and “Grand Honorary Chair” at its annual fundraisers held at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate. However, Trump may have also earned money from the event fees he received from the Institute than the Trump Foundation paid to them in grants. Since 2010, Trump has directed at least $300,000 in Trump Foundation grants to the Institute.
On his prime-time TV show, The Apprentice, Donald Trump has received highly visible praise for his personal generosity on multiple occasions. He’s frequently offered to make generous donations to his contestants’ charities. But records show that he ultimately directed the Trump Foundation to make a grant or instead had the show’s network, NBC Universal to make the donation instead. Examples include:

A 2008 episode where Donald Trump told mixed martial artist Tito Ortiz, “I think you’re so incredible that — personally, out of my own account — I’m going to give you $50,000 for St. Jude’s [children’s hospital].” St. Jude’s is also Eric Trump’s favorite charity. Trump then had the Trump Foundation make a $50,000 grant to the children’s hospital.
In 2012, Donald Trump promised at least 6 personal $10,000 donations each to contestants’ chosen charities on a Celebrity Apprentice episode. In another episode from the same season, he pledged $10,000 to contestant Aubrey O’Day’s chosen charity, a gift “that moved [contestant and comedienne Lisa] Lampanelli to tears.” According to The Washington Post’s review of the tax filings, Trump directed all this money to be granted to the charities out of Trump Foundation funds.
In 2013, Donald Trump promised personal $20,000 donations each to charities of basketball star Dennis Rodman, singer La Toya Jackson, Playboy Playmate Brande Roderick, and actor Gary Busey. Trump then used Trump Foundation money to make the payments. He told them, Remember, Donald Trump is a very nice person, okay?” According to a Washington Post reporter reviewing the show’s transcripts, by 2013, “contestants had come to expect these gifts — and even to demand them, when Trump didn’t offer money on his own.”
For a $14,000 gift to the Starkey Hearing Foundation, a Marliee Matlin’s chosen charity, Donald Trump was credited this this “personal donation” though it actually came from the Trump Foundation.

Other alleged examples include:

In 2009, Donald Trump appeared on Extra where he promised to pay a struggling viewer’s domestic bills. “This is really a bad time for a lot of people,” he said as the contest was announced. Trump eventually paid the winner with Trump Foundation money. A Trump representative later explained the grant was legal because the winner qualified as an “indigent” individual under Internal Revenue Code section 4945(d)(3), a contention at least one tax expert has disputed.
Donald Trump was honored with a chair and a plaque with his name at the Raymond J. Kravis Center of the Performing Arts after the Trump Foundation donated $10,000.
In 2014, Donald Trump took personal credit for a $25,000 Trump Foundation grant at a speech honoring slain journalist, James Foley. At the time The New Hampshire Union Leader published an article titled Trump leads tribute for slain journalist James Foley. Foley was posthumously awarded the 12th annual Nackey S. Loeb First Amendment Award, “given annually to New Hampshire organizations or residents who protect or exemplify the liberties listed in the First Amendment to the Constitution.” Trump was the ironic, “featured speaker of the event.” Compare this to how Trump regularly attacks the media for reporting negative stories about him instead of lavishing him with unearned praise like Fox News does. Or how he’s willing to defend Vladimir Putin or the Saudi Arabian Crown Prince despite that these 2 have had journalists murdered.
In 2016, Donald Trump received personal praise for a $100,000 Trump Foundation grant to the National September 11 Memorial Museum ahead of the 2016 New York State Republican primary.

Making grants to other private foundations without fulfilling IRS “expenditure responsibility” rules

By law, the Trump Foundation was responsible for ensuring that any grant it takes to another private foundation is strictly used for charitable purposes. To fulfill this IRS “expenditure responsibility” the foundation is required to attach “full and detailed” reports describing the grant money’s uses to its IRS 990 tax return for each year to a private foundation is made. Trump Foundation tax returns show it failing to do this all of the 20 grants it made to private foundations from 2005-2014. Such grants in this period totaling to $488,500 could be subject to significant fines and penalties.

Receiving donation from Ukranian oligarch during 2016 presidential campaign

In 2015, Ukrainian Victor Pichkun donated $150,000 to the Trump Foundation in return for Donald Trump’s video conference link appearance at the Yalta European Strategy Conference. The appearance was broadcast on a large screen and lasted 20 minutes, including translation and technical difficulty delays. Pichkun is the son-in-law of former Ukranian president Lionid Kuchima. In 2018, the New York Times reported that Special Counsel Robert Mueller was investigating this donation as a possible illegal in-kind foreign national campaign contribution intended to curry favor with then-candidate Donald Trump.

From Russia with Donald Trump

Posted by historymaniacmegan on November 13, 2018

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As of 2018, we don’t know whether the Trump campaign willingly colluded with Russia in its efforts to undermine the 2016 election. But we do know that Russia hacked into DNC emails and spread fake news propaganda on social networks to help Donald Trump. We know the Russians wanted Trump to win and did whatever they could to accomplish that. We know the Trump campaign was at least okay with the Russian hacking and efforts. Hell, one Trump campaign official even drunkenly bragged about the Russians hacking into Hillary Clinton’s emails. And we know that several Trumpworld figures have corresponded with Russian hackers, Russian oligarchs, and people with ties to the Russian government. Furthermore, Trump has praised Russian President Vladimir Putin in his speeches, even when he’s every opportunity to criticize the Kremlin dictator. Though collusion hasn’t been proven, what we do know of Trumpworld’s connections with Russia gives us a reasonable case for Robert Mueller to investigate.

On November 9, 2016, just a minutes after Donald Trump was elected president of the United States, a man named Vyacheslav Nikonov made a very unusual statement in the Russian State Duma. “Dear friends, respected colleagues!” he said. “Three minutes ago, Hillary Clinton admitted her defeat in US presidential elections, and a second ago Trump started his speech as an elected president of the United States of America, and I congratulate you on this.” Since Nikonov is the leader of the pro-Putin United Russia Party, his announcement that day was a clear signal that Trump’s victory was a victory for Putin’s Russia.

Longtime journalist Craig Unger has attempted to gather all the evidence we have of Donald Trump’s connections to the Russian mafia and government and lay it all out in a clear, comprehensive narrative in his book, House of Trump, House of Putin: The Untold Story of Donald Trump and the Russian Mafia. Though the book claims to tell the “untold story,” it’s not entirely unclear of how much is new. Because like a lot of the skeletons in Trump’s gilded closet, one of the hardest things to accept about the Trump-Russia saga is how transparent it is. In fact, so much evidence hides in plain sight, and somehow that’s made it more difficult to accept. In his book, Unger names 59 Russians as Trump business associates and follows the purported financial links between them and the Trump Organization, going back decades. Many of them are quite shady. Although Unger doesn’t provide any evidence that Trump gave Russia anything concrete in return for their help, the case he makes for how much potential leverage the Russians have over Trump is damning. In fact, Unger thinks Russia’s use of Trump constitutes “one of the greatest intelligence operations in history,” as he puts in his book.

As Craig Unger claims. what most Americans don’t understand is that the Russian mafia is different from the American mafia. While American crime syndicates are often targets for FBI investigation, the mafia is essentially a state actor in Russia. When asked about the mafia, former KGB Russian counterintelligence operations Gen. Oleg Kalugin told Unger, “Oh, it’s part of the KGB. It’s part of the Russian government.” In Russia, there’s no Wall Street or anything like Goldman Sachs. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, rich gangsters and government officials were able to privatize and loot state-held assets in coal, oil, minerals, and banking. In Vladmir Putin’s Russia, criminal syndicates have become increasingly intertwined with its intelligence services, blurring the line between mafia dons and spies. In fact, Russia expert Mark Galeotti would agree with Unger since he wrote in his book, The Vory: Russia’s Super Mafia that Putin’s Kremlin consolidated power by “not simply taming, but absorbing, the underworld.” Putin didn’t care what these gangsters did as long as they strengthened his power and personal financial interests. Since the 1990s, its estimated that some $1.3 trillion has flowed out of Russia.

Semion Mogilevich is one of the richest and most influential gangsters in the world. Known as the ultimate Russian mob boss, he may not have any direct connection to Donald Trump. But many of his associates and underlings do.

One of the key mob bosses is the squat Ukranian Semion Mogilevich. In Russia, he’s a big time Russian crime boss with a multibillion empire and a wide range of crimes that will make Al Capone look like an inept convenience store robber. According to the FBI, Mogilevich started out as the key money-laundering contact for the Solntsevskaya Bratva, or Brotherhood, one of the richest criminal syndicates in the world. Craig Unger believed that he could’ve been the CEO of Goldman Sachs if he was born in America. The FBI considers Mogilevich the “boss of bosses” of the Russian mafia who’s even feared by his fellow gangsters as “the most powerful mobster in the world.” He’s run drug trafficking rings at an international scale. He’s used a jewelry business in Moscow and Budapest as a front for art that Russian gangsters stole from museums, churches, and synagogues all over Europe. He’s even been accused of selling $20 million in stolen weapons to Iran. From what the FBI has on him, Mogilevich has laundered money through more than 100 front companies around the world and held bank accounts in at least 27 countries. Mogilevich is famous for designing elaborate financial schemes that are extremely difficult, even possible to detect. Since the planning and setup can take years and involve a wide range of people in various positions of power whose roles/identities are sometimes never discovered. In Russia, his influence reaches all the way to the top. Ex-Russian spy, Alexander Litvinenko said in an interview with investigators in 2005, “Mogilevich have good relationship with Putin since 1994 or 1993.” A year later Litvinenko was dead, suspiciously poisoned by Kremlin agents. Many of the Russian mobsters who bought units from Donald Trump have ties to this man.

According to Craig Unger, it probably all began as a money-laundering operation with the Russian mafia. After all, anyone who’s known about Donald Trump for a long time knows that he likes doing business with gangsters. Partly because they pay top dollar and loan money when traditional banks won’t. Essentially, for more than 30 years Trump was working with the Russian mafia. He profited from them. They rescued and bailed him out, taking him from being $4 billion in debt to becoming a multibillionaire again. And they fueled his political ambitions. And since Trump had worked with the Russian mafia, he was in bed with the Kremlin as well, whether he knew it or not.

This is a chart of the Russian-linked and notorious criminals who lived and worked at Trump Tower. Since the place has been the HQ for money laundering operations and more. Helps that during the 1980s, it was the only high-rise to accept anonymous buyers.

To Craig Unger’s knowledge, the very first documented episode he could find was in 1984 when a man named David Bogatin met with Donald Trump in Trump Tower right after it opened since it was the only high-rise in New York City at the time to accept anonymous buyers. Now Bogatin is a Russian mobster, convicted gasoline bootlegger, and close ally of major Russian mob boss and king of money launderers Semion Mogilevich. Anyway, Bogatin came to that meeting prepared to spend $6 million which is equivalent to $15 million today. At that meeting, he bought 5 condos, which the Kremlin later seized on claims they were used to launder money for the Russian mob. We don’t exactly know what was in Trump’s head at the time or what he knew. But Unger has documented 1,300 transactions of this kind with Russian mobsters. These real estate transactions were all cash purchases made by anonymous shell companies that were obviously fronts for criminal money-laundering operations. By the early 2000s, 1/3 of the buyers of Trump Tower’s most expensive condos were either Russia-linked shell companies or individuals from the former Soviet Union. In Florida, about 63 Russian buyers spent at least $98 on Trump properties while another 1/3 of the units were bought by shell companies. Since this represents a large chunk of Trump’s real estate activity in the United States, it’s difficult to argue he had no idea what was going on. Aside from Bogatin, there’s his brother Yakov, who was involved in an elaborate stock fraud with Mogilevich. Two of Trump’s Sunny Isles buyers Anatoly Golubchik and Michael Sall were convicted of taking part in a massive international gambling and money laundering syndicate run out of the New York Trump Tower.

Another Trump buyer was an Uzbek mob-connected diamond dealer named Eduard Nektalov. At the time, Nektalov was under investigation by a Treasury Department task force for mob-connected money laundering. He bought a condo in midtown Manhattan’s Trump World Tower on the 79th floor, directly below Kellyanne Conway. A month later, he sold his unit for $500,000 profit. The next year after rumors circulated of him cooperating with federal investigators, Nektalov was gunned down on Sixth Avenue.

In 1991, Semion Mogilevich paid a Russian judge to spring fellow mob boss Vyachelsav Kirillovich Ivankov, from a Siberian gulag. In Russia, Ivankov was infamous for torturing his victims and boasting about murders he arranged. After his release, Ivankov headed to New York City on an illegal business visa. Once there, he bought a Rolls Royce dealership to use “as a front to launder criminal proceeds.” One of Ivankov’s partners in the operation was Felix Komarov, an upscale art dealer who lived in Trump Plaza on Third Avenue. After receiving a briefcase filled with $1.5 million in cash, over the next 3 years, Ivankov oversaw the mob’s growth from a local extortion racket to a multibillion dollar enterprise. According to the FBI, he recruited 2 “combat brigades” of Special Forces veterans from the Soviet war in Afghanistan to run the mafia’s protection racket and kill his enemies. Feds later found out that Ivankov made frequent visit to Trump Taj Mahal in Atlantic City, New Jersey, where Russian gangsters routinely laundered huge sums of money. So much that it was repeatedly cited by the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network for having inadequate money-laundering controls. And in 2015, was fined $10 million and admitted for having “willfully violated” anti-money-laundering regulations for years. The also found that he lived in a luxury condo at Trump Tower. Though despite being Donald Trump’s neighbor, there’s no evidence they knew each other personally. But the fact a top Russian mafia boss lived and worked in Trump’s building shows just how much high-level Russian gangsters saw Trump’s properties as a home away from home.

Then there’s Russian mob leader Alimzhan Tokhtakhounov who ran an entire gambling and money-laundering network out of Unit 63A at Trump Tower (which is 3 floors below Donald Trump’s residence). In fact, Tokhtakhounov was a VIP attendee at Trump’s 2013 Miss Universe Pageant in Moscow just 7 months after the FBI busted his gambling rings and rounded up 29 suspects. The operation, which prosecutors called “the world’s largest sports book,” was run out of Trump Tower condos, including the building’s whole 51st floor. In addition, Unit 63A served as “sophisticated money-laundering scheme” moving an estimated $100 million out of the former Soviet Union, through shell companies in Cyprus, and into investments in the United States. According to the federal indictment, the money launderers paid Tokhtakhounov $10 million. A decade earlier, Tokhtakhounov was indicted for conspiring to fix the ice-skating competition at the 2002 Winter Olympics and was the only suspect to avoid arrest.

Russian mobsters and oligarchs also had ties to some of Donald Trump’s other properties outside the United States. In November 2017, NBC News reported Trump’s Panama hotel had ties to organized crime. While a Russian state-owned bank under US sanctions helped finance the construction of the 65-story Trump International Hotel and Tower in Toronto. And in December 2016, Jared Kushner met with that bank’s CEO. Since this represents a large chunk of Trump’s real estate activity in the United States, it’s difficult to argue he had no idea what was going on.

But how did Donald Trump become a “person of interest” to the Russians over 30 years ago, before his ascent to the presidency was even fathomable? It’s actually not as strange as it seems. First of all, Russians have always wanted to align with certain powerful businessman. Nor was Trump the only guy they targeted. For the Russians have a history going back to the American businessman Armand Hammer during the 1970s-80s who they turned into an asset. In fact, Russia had hundreds of agents and assets in the US. According to Gen. Kalugin, the US was a paradise for spies and they had recruited roughly 300 agents and assets in the country. Trump was one of them.

Nor were Russian operations just limited to money laundering for there was a parallel effort to seduce Donald Trump. Sometime in 1986, Russia’s ambassador to the US, Yuri Dubinin visited Trump in Trump Tower, said that his building was “fabulous,” suggested that he should build one in Moscow, and they arranged for a trip to the Russian capital. According to Gen. Kalugin, this was likely the first step in the process to recruit and compromise Trump, which they probably succeed with flying colors. Since Trump is a sucker for flattery. So we shouldn’t be the least surprised if the Russians have compromising materials on Trump’s Moscow activities. Since they’re very good at acquiring compromising stuff on just about anyone. Not that it would be hard for them.

Here’s a picture of Donald Trump with Tevfik Artif and Felix Sater. Artif would be busted for running a prostitution ring on his boat in Turkey. While Sater served as an informant while doing his Russia-linked dirty deeds to avoid prison time for racketeering.

Though we don’t have evidence whether such compromising material on Donald Trump’s Moscow activities exists and Craig Unger has tried but couldn’t find any corroboration from several people who assured him it does. But that’s all beside the point. Since Unger believes that the real evidence is already out there in the form of the Bayrock Group, a real estate development company located on Trump Tower’s 24th floor. The founder was a Kazakh man named Tevfik Arif while the managing director was Felix Sater. In 2005, Bayrock proceeded to partner with Trump and helped him develop a new business model he desperately needed. Because Trump was $4 billion in debt after his Atlantic City casinos went bankrupt that he couldn’t get a bank loan from anywhere in the West. Bayrock came in with a new business model that says, “You don’t have to raise any money. You don’t have to do any of the real estate development. We just want to franchise your name, we’ll give you 18 to 25 percent royalties, and we’ll effectively do all the work. And if the Trump Organization gets involved in the management of these buildings, they’ll get extra fees for that.” Apparently, Trump found the idea fabulously lucrative. Meanwhile, the Bayrock associates (particularly Sater) operated out of Trump Tower as well as constantly flew back and forth to Russia. In his book, Unger detailed several channels through which various people at Bayrock have close ties to the Kremlin. While he talked about Sater’s trips to Moscow even as late as 2016, hoping to build Trump Tower there.

Yet, Bayrock and its deals became quickly mired in controversy. First, Forbes and other publications reported that the company was financed by a notoriously corrupt group known as the Trio. In 2010, Turkish prosecutors arrested Tevfik Arif on charges of setting up a prostitution ring after found aboard his boat with 9 young women, 2 of whom were 16 years old. He was later acquitted since the women refused to talk. That same year, 2 former Bayrock executives filed a lawsuit alleging Artif started a firm “backed by oligarchs and money they stole from the Russian people.” In addition, the suit alleged Bayrock “was substantially and covertly mob-owned and operated.” According to them, the company’s real purpose was to develop expensive properties bearing the Trump brand and use the projects to launder money and evade taxes. Though the suit doesn’t claim that Donald Trump was complicit in the scam, The Financial Times found that Trump SoHo had “multiple ties to an alleged international money-laundering network.” In one case, a former Kazakh energy minister is being sued in federal court for conspiring to “systematically loot hundreds of millions of dollars of public assets” before purchasing three condos in Trump SoHo to launder his “ill-gotten funds.”

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Donald Trump has often denied his association with Felix Sater. Yet, in reality, the two have been quite close as this business card shows.

During his collaboration with Bayrock, Donald Trump became close to the man who ran the firm’s daily operations, Felix Sater. Sater had numerous ties to Russian oligarchs and Russian intelligence. His father was a boss for Semion Mogilevich who was convicted for extorting local restaurants, grocery stores, and a medical clinic. Sater tried making it as a stockbroker. But his career came to an end in 1991 when he stabbed a Wall Street foe in the face with a broken margarita glass during a bar fight, opening wounds requiring 110 stitches. He then lost his trading license over the attack and served a year in prison. In 1998, Sater pleaded guilty to racketeering on grounds of operating a “pump and dump” stock fraud partnership with alleged Russian mobsters that bilked investors of at least $40 million. To avoid prison time, Sater turned informer. But according to documents from the lawsuit against Bayrock, he also resumed “his old tricks.” By 2003, the suit alleges, Sater controlled the majority of Bayrock shares and proceeded to use the firm to launder hundreds of millions of dollars while skimming and extorting millions more. In addition, the suit claimed that Sater committed fraud by concealing his racketeering and that he threatened “to kill anyone at the firm he thought knew of the crimes committed there and might report it.”

By Felix Sater’s account in sworn testimony, he was very tight with Donald Trump. He flew to Colorado with him. He accompanied Donald Jr. And Ivanka on a trip to Moscow at Trump’s invitation. And he met with Trump’s inner circle “constantly.” In Trump Tower, he often dropped by Trump’s office to pitch business ideas. Trump and his lawyers claim he wasn’t aware of Sater’s checkered past when he signed on to do business with Bayrock. This is plausible since Sater’s plea deal in the stock fraud was kept secred due to his role as an informant. But even after The New York Times revealed Sater’s criminal record in 2007, Sater kept using office space provided by the Trump Organization. In 2010, he received a Trump Organization business card reading: FELIX H. SATER, SENIOR ADVISOR TO DONALD TRUMP. As of 2017, Sater apparently remains close to Trump’s inner circle. One week before National Security Adviser Michael Flynn was fired for failing to report meetings with Russian officials, Trump’s personal attorney Michael Cohen hand-delivered a “back channel plan” for lifting sanctions on Russia to Flynn’s office. According to the Times, the co-author was Felix Sater.

Nonetheless, like many of Donald Trump’s business projects, his deals with Bayrock didn’t bear fruit. International projects in Russia and Poland never materialized. A Trump Tower being built in Ft. Lauderdale ran out of money before completion, leaving behind a massive concrete shell. Trump SoHo was ultimately foreclosed and resold. But Trump’s Russian investors left him with a high-profile property he could leverage since he and Ivanka are still listed as managers. And it’s said he made $3 million from it in 2015.

But is there any evidence that Donald Trump actively sought out Russian money by making clear that his businesses could be used to hide ill-gotten gains? According to Craig Unger, it’s difficult to say. Because he’s not sure if Trump had to. From how the Russian mob transactions took place, Trump didn’t have to say anything. After all, the Trump Organization was desperate for money and knew the caliber of people they were dealing with. So they were either okay with this or deliberately chose not to do their due diligence. Other real estate developers may do this as well, but they usually don’t become president of the United States.

Donald Trump seems much more motivated by money than political ideology. But was his drift into politics in any way influenced by his financial entanglements? There’s no clear answer. Yet, Craig Unger told Vox one weird anecdote about Trump’s first wife, Ivana, whom he married in 1977. Apparently, Czech secret police had started following her and her family in the late 1980s and one of their files said that Trump was being pressured to run for president. But what does that mean? Who was pressuring him and why? How were they applying the pressure? And did it have anything to do with potentially compromising materials the Russians had on Trump during his 1987 trip to Moscow? What we do know is that when Trump returned from his first Moscow trip, he took out full-page ads in the Washington Post, New York Times, and Boston Globe which pushed anti-European and anti-NATO views that were aligned with the Soviet plan to destroy the Western alliance. Whether he always believed such things or not, it’s worth noting.

Now Craig Unger didn’t go to Russia for obvious reasons given how Vladimir Putin tends to murder critical reporters. But most of what he found out came from public sources, which is stunning. One of his sources tipped him off on the high-ranking Russian mob boss Semion Mogilevich, whom he had never heard of before. He’s even been accused of selling $20 million in stolen weapons to Iran. Anyway, that led Unger to an online database revealing home ownership in the state of New York, along with purchases and sales. So he went to the Trump properties. Every time Unger found a Russian name, he’d research it. He’d take their name and Mogilevich in Google and as he told Vox, “it was like hitting the jackpot on a slot machine, time after time after time.” Among the Russians Unger found on the Trump property listings, there were countless people either indicted on money laundering or gunned down on Sixth Avenue. He also found a huge percentage with criminal histories, which sort of got him started. He also had a research assistant who spoke Russian and helped him break the language barrier for him.

But does Craig Unger’s book about Donald Trump and Russia offer anything new? Well, the insights Unger gained from Gen. Kalugin were completely new. Yet, most of what he did was compile what was out there but haven’t been pieced together. For instance, he found a lot of the Russian-connected stories published in the crime pages of the New York Post and the New York Daily News. These were just straight-up crime stories you’d see in a tabloid. After all, Americans don’t think crime stories involving the Russian mob would have any geopolitical implications or forces behind it. Nevertheless, many of these seemingly random Russian crime stories appearing in the tabloids again and again was connected to a much larger operation ensnaring Trump and the people around him.

Still, even if Donald Trump has no idea how many deals he and his businesses made with Russian investors, he certainly didn’t “stay away” from Russia. After all, he and his organization have aggressively promoted his business there for decades, seeking to entice investors and buyers for some of his most high-profile developments. Whether he knew it or not, Russian mobsters and corrupt oligarchs used his properties not only to launder vast sums of money from extortion, drugs, gambling, and racketeering, but even as a base for their criminal activities. In the process, they propped up Trump’s business and enabled him to reinvent his image. Without the Russian mafia, Trump wouldn’t be president of the United States.

However, if Donald Trump is a Russian asset, he’s not the only one targeted. During the 1980s and 1990s, the US government saw a pattern by which criminals used condos to launder money. As former Clinton official Jonathan Winer told The New Republic, “It didn’t matter that you paid too much, because the real estate values would rise, and it was a way of turning dirty money into clean money. It was done very systematically, and it explained why there are so many high-rises where the units were sold but no one is living in them.” One of the things Craig Unger’s book shows is that there’s a new kind of global war going on in which the weapons are information, data, social media, and financial institutions. The Russian mafia is only one weapon in this global conflict and the Russians have been smartly fighting it since the fall of the Soviet Union. The Russians start businesses and front companies and commodities firms appearing legitimate but essentially work to advance the Russian state’s interests. Many of today’s Russian oligarchs seek to portray themselves as unremarkable businessmen, preferring that their life-and-death struggles for riches in the 1990s fade into history. Yet, as their influence in the west grows, it becomes more important to understand any links to the authoritarians and kleptocrats back home. The Russians are very good at getting people financially entangled and then using that leverage to get what they want. This appears what the Russians have done with Trump and now he’s president. As former top official Elsie Bean told The Financial Times, “Russia has long been associated with dirty money. Anyone getting substantial funds originating in the former Soviet Union should have known that the funds were high risk and required a careful due diligence review to ensure the money was clean.”

Nonetheless, the most troubling part of all this is that the Russians simply exploited our own corrupt system. The studied our pay-to-play culture, found its weak spots, and very carefully manipulated it. As long as our culture remains unchanged, we should expect this kind of exploitation. Sometimes the worst part about a scandal is what’s legal. The Russians studied our campaign system and campaign finance law and masterfully exploited it. They’ve used pharmaceutical companies, energy companies, and financial institutions to pour money into politics. And we really have no idea the extent of their influence. Vladimir Putin may be right in his insistence that American democracy is also corrupt while he’s showing us exactly how screwed up it is. Donald Trump is just the most glaring example. But there are others, most of who we don’t know anything about.

Whether you believe Donald Trump is owned by the Russian mob or not, Craig Unger presents a compelling case in his book. Though some of his statements in issues might read like conspiracy theories, but so much of it makes a lot of sense. Besides, Unger isn’t the only guy who thinks the Russian mafia owns Trump. Nor Trump is the only prominent figure with shady Russian ties as you can see within his administration. Nor is the Trump Organization the only entity. Trump’s longtime personal lawyer Michael Cohen had an uncle who owned a Brooklyn catering hall called El Caribe, which “for decades was the scene of mob weddings and Christmas parties,” and housed offices of “two of New York’s most notorious Russian mobsters.” Then there’s the matter with the NRA receiving money from 23 Russian donors during the 2016 campaign. Not to mention, Rep. Dana Rohrbacher was considered “Putin’s favorite congressman” long before Trump ran for president and was instrumental in killing some critical anti-Russian legislation. Thankfully, he’s lost to a Democrat this year. We may not know whether the Trump campaign colluded with Russia or the full extent of the Trump-Russian relationship. But as with many aspects of Trump’s business practices, what we know is damning. There is no doubt that Trump has taken Russian money. And when Trump receives millions of dollars from someone, he’s more likely to be beholden to them. But that doesn’t mean Trump is loyal to them, because he’s just as likely to drop his Russian backers once they prove no longer useful. Since Trump’s true loyalty is only to himself. So we must be concerned.

Donald Trump of Mar-a-Lago

Posted by historymaniacmegan on November 7, 2018

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From the moment in 1985 when Donald Trump decided to make Mar-a-Lago his personal castle, he has shattered the Palm Beach, Florida old-money conventions with the same thin-skinned, sue-you-in-a-heartbeat, self-congratulatory ethos which has made him such a mesmerizing character akin to a derailed train you want to ignore but can’t look away. As we’ve learned since 2015, you can’t write too much about Trump since he’s a narcissistic sociopath with no moral scruples and way more scandals than Henry VIII. Whether you like him or hate him, you can’t write too much about Trump since he’s an inexhaustible source of good stories.

The last of Palm Beach’s estates to stretch from the Atlantic Ocean to the Intracoastal Waterway, Mar-a-Lago was a single-family of grand design. This Mediterranean-Revival style mansion had 118 rooms, including 58 bedrooms, 33 bathrooms, 35 dining rooms, a ballroom, a theater, a 6 car garage, a 9-hole golf course, 3 bomb shelters, and a 75ft tower you could see for miles. Built in 1927 for cereal heiress and richest woman in America at the time, Marjorie Merriwether Post, she willed it to the federal government for use as a winter White House for American presidents after her death in 1973. Though the home became a National Historic Landmark, presidents didn’t use it while the federal government became sick of paying $1 million a year to maintain it. So the federal government gave the estate back to the Post Foundation who put up for sale for $20 million.

At the time, Donald Trump was a hotshot 39-year-old real estate developer who had opened his 58-story signature Trump Tower skyscraper in Manhattan. Eager to get the Florida mansion off their hands, the Post Foundation agreed to a bargain $10 million sale- $7 million for the property and $3 million for the furnishings and in a contract requiring Trump to only put down $2,812 of his own money. A Palm Beach County property appraiser later wrote in a court brief that anyone buying a “rabbit warren condo” in a lower-middle class neighborhood would’ve had to put more money down than Trump did. Nonetheless, Trump listed his purchase of Mar-a-Lago as an example of his deal-making prowess writing in The Art of the Deal, “I’ve been told the furnishings in Mar-a-Lago alone are worth more than I paid for the house.” Mar-a-Lago was “as close to paradise as I’m going to get.” Palm Beach County agreed by assessing Mar-a-Lago’s property at $11.5 million, which was 64% than he paid for it. This left Trump in a tough position of politically bragging about getting his spare mansion in Palm Beach for a bargain, while privately arguing in court filings he should get a tax deduction. He testified, “I paid the highest price for a piece of land that’s costing $2 or $2 ½ million a year to maintain. Maybe the tax assessment will force us to develop the land, which I’m sure won’t make the town very happy.” Except he didn’t. Furthermore, a 1988 Associated Press article depicts how Trump fought against a $200,000 property tax bill, which he claimed should’ve been half. Nonetheless, back in the 1980s, this was the kind of brash talk Palm Beach’s old-money aristocrats feared from Trump. Since he wasn’t the sort of genteel patrician Palm Beach’s Social-Index Directory favored. In fact, some regarded him as a gated community barbarian as well as a hustler too eager to impress. While his threat of chopping up Mar-a-Lago was an open of some rough relations on the horizon.

While Donald Trump was trying to acquire Mar-a-Lago, he launched another real estate venture called Trump Plaza of the Palm Beaches. However, he ended up selling about 100 out of 221 condo units as well as borrowed $60 million which he couldn’t pay back. In the end, Trump lost his financial stake in the project and the bank took over.

While his Mar-a-Lago investment was in doubt, Donald Trump launched another local real estate venture across the Intracoastal Waterway in West Palm Beach. The property was an ailing 33-story, twin tower complex that a Palm Beach developer had lost in foreclosure. In 1986, Trump bought it for $40 million cash which was $3.2 million less than what the Bank of New York paid to reclaim the property at a public foreclosure auction. And like Mar-a-Lago, it was becoming a deal he couldn’t afford. Trump then renamed the West Palm Beach condo project after himself while spending millions to spruce up the Trump of the Palm Beaches’ public areas and advertise the sale of its luxury condos in Northeastern newspapers. Trump said at the time, “This is not a very large deal for me, but it’s a quality deal. We expect a lot of people in Palm Beach to be buying apartments for family, et cetera.” But after 4 years of heavy promoting, he only managed to sell 100 of the 221 units, which was less than half. In addition, Trump borrowed $60 million from the Marine Midland Bank of New York to pay for the project, which he couldn’t pay back. In 1991, 2 months before filing for corporate bankruptcy on his Trump Taj Mahal in Atlantic City, Trump turned over the Trump Plaza of the Palm Beaches to Marine Midland Bank of New York for his $14 million personal guarantee on the loan. The bank unloaded the unsold units in a fire-sale auction accepting bids of $75,000 for units previously priced as high as $470,000. Yet, because he can’t admit to personal failure, Trump took a victory lap saying, “It’s great for me because I get off a guarantee. Only because of the success of the development could I have done that.”

However, Donald Trump was still trying to find a way to salvage his Mar-a-Lago deal. So he didn’t want to give his Palm Beach neighbors the notion he was really drowning in debt. So after the bank sold off units from Trump Plaza of the Palm Beaches, Trump took out a full-page ad in The Palm Beach Daily News, which read: “This is an advertisement to explain the great success of a development, Trump Plaza of the Palm Beaches, which many people, until recently, had not been fully aware. When I look at Trump Plaza from Mar-a-Lago, I am proud that even in the horrendous real estate market of the early 1990s, I was able to rescue this previously troubled and unsold development, add management, construction expertise and the name Trump … and make it into one of Florida’s greatest success stories.” It didn’t mention that he completely lost his financial stake in the condos or how the project actually achieved full occupancy. So basically, Trump took an ad bragging about his “success” of his Palm Beach condo project, which was actually a total failure that he lost to the bank. Nor did that “success” change the fact that Trump still couldn’t afford Mar-a-Lago as a single-family home. And nobody was coming along to relieve him from the deal on “paradise” he had made.

Donald Trump’s proposed solution was to chop his National Historic Landmark into something he called the Mansions of Mar-a-Lago. This was a development that would put a public road running through the middle of the estate, leading to the 10 mini-mansions he’d build on the property, including one on the front lawn. But the Palm Beach Town Council shot down all of Trump’s proposed changes to the property, even when he reduced his mini-mansion plans from 10 to 7. Instead, they encouraged Trump to find a buyer if he couldn’t afford to keep the estate intact. After all, New York packaging magnate, Nelson Peltz had spent $21 million to buy Palm Beach oceanfront estate Montsorrel, 2 years after Trump bought Mar-a-Lago. So the town council advised Trump to just buy another Nelson Peltz to take the estate off his hands. However, as we all know, Donald Trump didn’t act on the Palm Beach council’s advice. In fact, when the town government refused to bend to his demands, he sued. The lawsuit against the Town of Palm Beach would eventually cause his neighbors to lawyer up against him. One of these lawyers told The Palm Beach Post at the time, “There are rules around here, and those rules apply to everyone, whether or not you have a famous name.”

When Donald Trump’s Mansions of Mar-a-Lago plan fell through, he decided to turn it into a private club it is today. Naturally, the Palm Beach Town Council took him on it since it was an all around win-win situation.

After Palm Beach rejected his Mansions of Mar-a-Lago, Donald Trump found another way to salvage his stake in his property. He offered to drop his lawsuit if council members allowed him to convert his estate into a new private club on the island. Since so much of Palm Beach social life was dictated by club memberships, this was a tempting offer. This was especially since there hadn’t been a new club on the island for a quarter century. In the deal, the town would get to have Mar-a-Lago remain in appearance it was in the Merriwether Post days. While Trump could unburden himself of its expenses by selling off memberships while maintaining his property ownership. Membership would be capped at 500, not including spouses and children. The initiation fee would be $50,000 with $3,000 annual dues (fee is now $200,000 with $14,000 in annual dues and charges $2,000 for meals). Members would get to dine, swim in the pool, and attend private parties and special events with world-class singers, lecturers, and entertainers. The town eventually approved the club.

But many Palm Beachers were still reluctant to trust Donald Trump. Socialite Tamara Newell said at the time, “A lot of people like to think Palm Beach is a little more genteel and old money. This is a new-money idea at an old-money location.” And approval of the club only gave them more reasons to peck at him. Now a lot of these disputes in the 2016 Politico article I read about his war with Palm Beach consist of a lot stupid shit like wedding fireworks, attendance limits to an Elton John AIDS concert, or changing the coat of arms to put Trump as an advertising ploy. While Trump is known for being notoriously petty, Palm Beach is filled with petty rich people and a town government that once banned shirtless joggers for tackiness and scented its sewer water with lilac and honeysuckle fragrances. Such petty disputes between Trump and the rich set of Palm Beach don’t seem to interest me much. Mostly because I care more about Trump deliberately screwing people out of their money or using intimidation tactics to get his way.

Yet, there is a telling incident in the 2016 Politico article on Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago that’s very telling, especially on his insatiable appetite for self-promotion and the media’s role should be. In the first January after his divorce from his first wife Ivana was final, Trump’s publicist called all the local TV news and newspaper outlets in Palm Beach County to say that Trump was about to hold the party of all parties for that Winter’s Palm Beach social season. The publicist explained that one reporter from each news outlet would be allowed to attend this party-of-the-year to mingle with a guest list of invited celebrities such as Tom Selleck, Slyvester Stallone, and football star Herschel Walker. Frank Cerabino was on the guest list to cover the event for the Palm Beach Post. But it turned out his role at the party was far more complex than he imagined. Writing for Political in 2016, he recalled, “As the real guests arrived, which included busloads of fashion models from Miami, I was part of a local media contingent who wasn’t allowed to actually come into the party, but instead would form a visual tableau of over-eager reporters playing the role of gate crashers to those who would see us as their cars drove up to the portico of the mansion.” He continued, “Trump left us standing in his driveway in a little cluster. We were unaware, at first, of our role. But he couldn’t help coming over to wring out every last drop of publicity for the night.” In other words, Cerabino and the local reporters were at Mar-a-Lago to make him and his party look good as props. Going out of his way to show that he was winning divorce (like you can even do that), Trump invited a national TV reporter Judd Rose and his crew from ABC’s Prime Time Live show, into his home as guests for the weekend. Rose and his crew eventually filmed the money shot of the invitees, but shunned the local reporters yelling across the driveway to Trump to let them in. While Trump made a shooting gesture as if to wave them off and later described the reporters in the driveway as those who invited themselves to the party. Over the years, Cerabino has learned that Trump admires or despises journalists based on how useful they are to him while his sense of humor doesn’t include anything directed to him.

One of the biggest Donald Trump disputes of legend at Mar-a-Lago was when he put up an oversized American flag on a tall pole at the resort. This incident would later be lampooned on The Colbert Report.

In 2006, without getting a permit and variance, Donald Trump put up an 80ft tall flag pole with a 15 x 25ft flag flying from it on his Mar-a-Lago resort. Since Palm Beach restricts residents flying flags no bigger than 4 x 6ft and on pole no higher than 42ft, he knew he was plainly inviting a lawsuit by out-flagging his neighbors. Taking the bait, the town council cited the oversized pole and flag as town code violations and fined Trump $250 for every day the display remained on his estate. In retaliation, Trump responded, “The town council of Palm Beach should be ashamed of itself. He went on Nancy Grace’s TV show to complain about Palm Beach’s lack of patriotism. Then, ignoring the town’s violations, which grew into a $120,000 fine and counting as of 2016, he filed a lawsuit against Palm Beach for $25 million in damages to what he called an abridgement to his constitutional right of free speech. Trump eventually dropped his flag lawsuit white town waived its fines. As terms of a court-ordered mediation, he’d file a permit and be allowed to keep an oversized pole on Mar-a-Lago that was 10ft shorter and on a different lawn spot. He was also called to donate $100,000 to veterans’ charities.

Tucked into Donald Trump’s patriotic posturing was a completely unrelated legal but more important matter: a complaint about the town code requiring large commercial enterprises to be “town serving.” Under this ordinance, Palm Beach requires proof from local businesses that local residents contribute at least 50% of their business to them. For instance, when Neiman Marcus opened in Palm Beach, the town allowed it as long as it only advertised in the local newspaper, and not in publications to shoppers not living on the island. For Trump, eliminating the “town serving” requirement would mean he could offer more memberships to his Mar-a-Lago social club to people with no Palm Beach connections, making it easier for him to keep his club full. Creating a distraction on the flag issue to pursue some other angle is a classic Trump move. Though he has yet to get this particular exemption waived, Palm Beach knows that Trump’s lawsuits never get settled, they just become dormant. While one of his Palm Beach lawyers told Politico in 2016, that the “town serving” issue is still unresolved and ripe for more litigation.

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Also in West Palm Beach is the Trump International Golf Club. Donald Trump got this made out of a dispute with the county airport. Though he wanted the jail moved, which he obviously didn’t get.

While playing defense against Palm Beach’s constant attempts to rein him in, Donald Trump went on the attack against the county and its airport. Airlines routinely used a flight path in and out of Palm Beach International Airport in nearby West Palm Beach that brought the planes directly over Mar-a-Lago. This didn’t sit well with Trump, arguing that the noise and fumes were ruining his investment, and that the decent thing for the county to do was to move the airport farther west. Actually Trump had been arguing that for years, to no avail. Acting like a spoiled brat not getting his own way, he called airport director, Bruce Pelly, among other things, a “moron” and “the worst airport director in the country.” It turned out to be a useful gripe for Trump, which he could turn into a new business opportunity. For just south of the airport was a 214 acres of vacant scrub land owned by Palm Beach County, which he wanted. So like any rich spoiled adult, he sued the county for over $75 million over the airport noise. Only to negotiate to drop that lawsuit in exchange for the county giving him a 75-year lease on the nearby property for $438,000 a year. That land became the Trump International Golf Club, a $40 million, 18-hole, Jim Fazio-designed course that imported nearly 2 million cubic yards of dirt to transform the flat scrub into hilly terrain with waterfalls, rock formations, a clubhouse 4 stories above sea level. While planning to open the course with initiation fees starting at $100,000, Trump wanted the county to do one more thing for him: move the jail. Because no matter how much landscaping he brought to the course, there was no way disguising the 12-story Palm Beach County Jail towering over the course’s north side and was visible from some of the holes. So as he had done with the airport, Trump asked the county to move the jail. Naturally, they refused, while the sheriff found the idea amusing.

Yet, Donald Trump’s war with the Palm Beach International Airport hasn’t quelled. When the airport considered expanding by adding another runway, Trump threatened another lawsuit. Though the expansion never came, Trump sued the airport again in 2016 for $100 million from county taxpayers for the sooty residue left by planes flying over Mar-a-Lago. Still, perhaps his actions aren’t about the airport, which he’s using for leverage to get what he wants but can’t have at the moment. Because Trump is always at war and woe to those who stand in his way.

Over the years, Palm Beach has gradually come to accept Donald Trump’s outsized personality along with his private club as more of an asset than a potential source of trouble. Mar-a-Lago has hosted many glittering social events, charity balls, and political fundraisers. As a concert hall, it has housed Palm Beach Opera shows and performances from top-notch entertainers like Celine Dion and Tony Bennett. As town officials moved on, their successors gradually loosened their tight reins on the club, easing the restriction on the numbers of outdoor beach barbecues it would allow, permitting the construction of an outdoor pavilion, and allowing the club to build a 14,000 sq. ft. kitchen on the grounds so waiters don’t have to use golf carts for hauling food inside and outside the mansion. Trump has also figured how to pay less taxes on Mar-a-Lago. By giving up development rights on the land to the National Historic Trust for Historic Preservation, it eliminated the county property appraiser’s ability to tax the place on the “highest and best use” standard that contemplated the estate can be still chopped up into lots and sold off. Yet, while Trump has become a Palm Beach fixture, it would be wrong to say he’s mellowed for he never does.

But that doesn’t mean Donald Trump’s presence hasn’t disrupted Palm Beach life in recent years. In fact, since his election to the presidency, his stays at Mar-a-Lago have raised issues not seen since he was a private citizen. Since they involve security and the impact his visits have on people and businesses in Palm Beach. Nowadays, whenever Trump resides in the Palm Beach region, the area becomes a zone of temporary flight restrictions affecting flights and other air operations within a 30 nautical mile radius. Coast Guard and Secret Service secure the 2 waterway approaches, ocean and lake. While the Secret Service cordons off streets to Mar-a-Lago. At Latana’s Palm Beach County Park Airport, the situation is dire. Whenever Trump is at Mar-a-Lago, Federal Aviation Administration restrictions ban all flights out of that airport, which is one of the busiest of its size in the country. It doesn’t help that the airport receives most of its business on weekends and holidays, particularly during the winter at peak snowbird season, when Trump would most likely be there. For instance, by the third weekend of February 2017, the Palm Beach County Park Airport had been shut down for 3 consecutive weekends, accumulating significant financial losses for multiple businesses. So to put it this way, as president, Trump’s visits to Mar-a-Lago during the winter have basically costs Palm Beach County millions of dollars in lost revenue from tourism. The county is also worried about the police overtime it’s racking up, which could be $60,000 a day.

While Donald Trump may give plenty of things for Palm Beach locals to talk about, there are other aspects we should discuss. First, since Trump became president, his visits have cost taxpayers millions of dollars for federal security detail, which has gone to the Trump Organization’s coffers. But it’s very clear that he’s making money off his presidency. Nonetheless, Mar-a-Lago club members enjoy the fact having Trump president gives them personal access to political power during his visits. In fact, since his inauguration, guests have been flocking to Mar-a-Lago to catch a glimpse of him. But the fact access to a president can be bought for thousands of dollars at his private club should worry every American. And it should make it alarmingly clear that Trump is a man of and for the 1%. Already, ProPublica claimed that a trio of ultrawealthy Mar-a-Lago members are effectively running the Department of Veterans Affairs in influencing policy and making personnel decisions. In fact, a veterans’ group has sued the VA over it.

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Here is Donald Trump with Melania and Barron posed with Mar-a-Lago’s employees. Most of them have HB-1 visas despite that Palm Beach locals were perfectly willing to do those jobs.

Second, despite Donald Trump’s self-promotion as a “champion” for US workers (which he isn’t), Mar-a-Lago has consistently hired a predominantly foreign workforce. He claims the local workforce is unwilling to do the work and that his foreign employees are best suited for the jobs. Except that’s not true. In 2016, The New York Times reported that over 200 locals had applied to work as cooks, waiters, and housekeepers since 2010. Only 17 of them were ever hired. Also, as with many Trump enterprises, there are plenty of wage theft complaints from contractors and employees. Given that foreign workers are easier to exploit since they can be threatened with deportation if they don’t toe the line, perhaps that’s why Trump prefers to employ them over locals.

Furthermore, The Palm Beach Post reported that Trump scored visas to hire 70 foreign workers at Mar-a-Lago for the 2017-18 tourist season. Third, in January 2017, Mar-a-Lago’s kitchens were hit with 13 health and safety violations, including 3 that were called “high priority.” Inspectors claimed that meat wasn’t properly refrigerated and could be unsafe for consumption, undercooked or raw fish that hadn’t undergone proper parasite destruction, and not maintaining coolers in proper working order. Another inspection in November resulted in 15 more health citations, according to the Miami Herald. In January 2018, Mar-a-Lago was cited for maintenance violations which could’ve posed a threat to public health, safety, and welfare like broken staircases, improper food storage, and inadequate smoke detectors.

Then there’s Mar-a-Lago’s security and cybersecurity woes. In recent years, Gizmodo reported that hackers found 3 of its networks as so weak that they could’ve breached the systems within 5 minutes. The 3 hackers behind the article claim they made the discovery using a 2ft wireless antenna from on board a 17ft motor boat parked offshore. Though Donald Trump’s company has expressed confidence in its cybersecurity as spokeswoman Amanda Miller told Gizmodo, “Our teams work diligently to deploy best in class firewall and anti-vulnerability platforms with constant 24/7 monitoring.”

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In April 2017, we have Donald Trump and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe receiving news of North Korea launching a nuclear missile in Japan’s direction. Note the classified information being shown in the cell phone screen.

Speaking of security breaches, Donald Trump’s trips to Mar-a-Lago afford an unprecedented opportunity for eavesdropping and building dossiers on his routines and habits along with those in his inner circle around him. Add that with each repeated visit, the security risk escalates. As former Obama official David Kris told TIME, “The president is the biggest, richest intelligence target in the world, and there is almost no limit to the energy and money an adversary will spend to get at him.” According to former Secret Service agents, the security setup at Mar-a-Lago and Trump’s other private clubs presents challenges to the agency wasn’t built to deal with. Since the Secret Service’s main job is to protect the president from physical threats and monitoring for wiretaps and other listening devices. Not from the kinds of counterespionage challenges presented by the president’s choice to eat, sleep, and work at a club accessible to anyone who can get a member to invite them in. White House visitors must go through a rigorous background screening before they’re let in the door. Agents scan every visitor’s full name, birth date, Social Security number, city of residence, and country of birth. Gaining entry at Mar-a-Lago doesn’t require that degree of disclosure. Sure guests entering the club have to pass multiple security checkpoints staffed by Secret Service agents looking for weapons or other immediate threats. But there’s only one requirement to produce a photo ID, while the club doesn’t ask guests to provide their names or other information as they enter through the main wrought-iron gated door. At public events, attendees are only asked to provide their name. Since has Trump has become president, the lax security measures can make Mar-a-Lago a free-for-all for spies.

Hell, spies don’t even need to go to Mar-a-Lago to do their work. In early 2017, lists of the club’s nearly 500 exclusive dues-paying members were leaked to the news media, giving foreign intelligence names of potential targets for surveillance, bribes, or blackmail that could help them get closer to Donald Trump. In addition, a page on Mar-a-Lago’s website (which is accessible to the public with just a little search engine sleuthing), reveals the names, work email addresses, and phone numbers for more than a dozen critical club employees, including the managing director, the housekeeping director, the official in charge of food and beverage services, and the chief of security. All would be obvious targets for operatives trying to get information on Trump or others in his entourage.

Mar-a-Lago may be a winter White House for Donald Trump. But since his inauguration, it has become another political arena where one with wads of cash can have access to political power. Indeed, plenty of these guests are rich people from old money. Though others can be politicians, foreign dignitaries, and corporate heads wanting something in exchange for their service. This can be donations, but it can also be policy that could affect our lives and not for the better. Yet, it’s another arena that can be prone to spy infiltration from eavesdroppers listening into conversations which can compromise our national security. Since it’s already happened in 2017. Nonetheless, we must be wary when Trump goes there since his visits are marketing events and he’s used his trips to make money off the presidency, which is a very clear conflict of interest.

Born in a Golden Cradle

Posted by historymaniacmegan on October 5, 2018

We all know full well how Donald Trump repeatedly paints his start in business as an up-by-the bootstraps, riches-to-slightly-more-riches tale. He’s cast himself as a New York real estate Oliver Twist with only his name and a $1 million loan from his dear old dad to keep him company. Only to become a self-made billionaire real estate mogul. Trump not only used this description to promote his image as a skilled businessman, but also portray himself as a “self-made man” during his presidential candidacy.

Despite the image Donald Trump projects to his base at his ego boosting rallies, he has actually spent 5 decades pretending not only that his father never rescued him from financial dire straits, but played a minimal role in his business success. When he said that Fred only gave him a $1 million loan, Trump glossed over how central his dad was to his career. When Trump entered the Manhattan real estate business in the mid-1970s, Fred cosigned bank loans for tens of millions of dollars. These loans made it possible for Trump to develop early projects like the Grand Hyatt hotel. When he targeted Atlantic City’s casino market, Fred loaned him about $7.5 million to get started. When he floundered there during the 1990s, Fred sent a lawyer to a Trump casino to buy $3.5 million in chips so his son can use the funds for a bond payment and avoid filing for corporate bankruptcy. In other words, Trump’s wealth has always been “deeply intertwined with, and dependent on” on his father’s wealth.

On Tuesday, October 2, 2018, the New York Times published investigation results into Donald Trump’s wealth and tax practices. They revealed a pattern of tax evasion and business practices that allowed him to receive at least $413 million in today’s dollars from his father. According to the report, Trump and his siblings got hundreds of millions of dollars in today’s money from their dad’s real estate empire, starting from their childhoods. As they write:

“Much of this money came to Mr. Trump because he helped his parents dodge taxes. He and his siblings set up a sham corporation to disguise millions of dollars in gifts from their parents, records and interviews show. Records indicate that Mr. Trump helped his father take improper tax deductions worth millions more. He also helped formulate a strategy to undervalue his parents’ real estate holdings by hundreds of millions of dollars on tax returns, sharply reducing the tax bill when those properties were transferred to him and his siblings.”

In sum, Donald Trump’s parents transferred more than $1 billion to their children and paid about $52.2 million in taxes. Given the relevant tax rates on gifts and inheritances, they should’ve paid $550 million, which is 10 times more. The IRS didn’t really notice it. While the Times didn’t see Trump’s own tax returns, their reporting was based on documents, records, and interviews pertaining to Fred Trump’s financial empire. These included, “tens of thousands of pages of confidential records — bank statements, financial audits, accounting ledgers, cash disbursement reports, invoices and canceled checks” along with more than 200 tax returns from Fred and various companies and trusts he set up. Even though he can’t be prosecuted for them due to statute of limitations expiration, evidence suggests that Donald’s actions on paying taxes weren’t always above the fray.

When Donald Trump’s finances were “crumbling” during the 1980s and 1990s, Fred Trump’s companies increased distributions to him and his siblings. From 1989-1992, Fred created 4 entities paying Donald $8.3 million in today’s money. When Donald’s finances were at their worst in 1990, Fred’s income shot up $49,638,928 and earned him a $12.2 million tax bill. According to the New York Times report, there are indications Fred, “wanted plenty of cash on hand to bail out his son if need be.” A former Trump Organization told Tim O’Brien in 2005, “We would have literally closed down. The key would have been in the door and there would have been no more Donald Trump. The family saved him.” Of course, it wasn’t really Trump’s family who saved him from personal bankruptcy, it was his dad. On another occasion, Trump allegedly gave his dad a $15.5 million share of the Trump Palace condo skyscraper in New York to square off some debts with his loans. But Fred then sold the shares back to his son for $10,000, making the whole exchange of $15.49 a taxable gift. Fred never declared it as such.
But it wasn’t always rich dad bailing out his son. Fred and Donald Trump worked together. As the elder man aged, his kids had to continue the tax schemes their parents put in place. In 1997, Donald and his siblings gained control of most of their dad’s empire. They significantly undervalued the properties, claiming they were worth $41.4 million and selling them off for 16 times the amount.

Nonetheless, the wealth transfer between Fred Trump and Donald Trump (along with his siblings) was a lifetime affair. As the New York Times notes:

“By age 3, Mr. Trump was earning $200,000 a year in today’s dollars from his father’s empire. He was a millionaire by age 8. By the time he was 17, his father had given him part ownership of a 52-unit apartment building. Soon after Mr. Trump graduated from college, he was receiving the equivalent of $1 million a year from his father. The money increased with the years, to more than $5 million annually in his 40s and 50s.”

As the Times writes, there’s a fine line between tax evasion and tax avoidance. Rich people employ all kinds of tricks to lower their taxes all the time. But since Donald Trump has refused to release his tax returns, these journalistic investigations raise questions of what he’s hiding in his finances. For what the publication doesn’t have is what the American people have become accustomed to getting from their presidents like recent tax returns. Instead, the Times gave close scrutiny Fred Trump’s businesses which reveal the range of apparent illegal activity. Yet, everything the Times has is fairly old since Fred passed nearly 20 years ago while his years in business ended before that. So they no longer reflect the current state of Trump’s financial affairs. Furthermore, any illegal activity the Times sources revealed in this article can’t be prosecuted due to statute of limitations expiration.

The New York Times’ investigation is exhaustive and, to some extent, defies summary. But it’s worth recounting the most egregious thing they found as an illustrative example of the scope of crimes that serious forensic accounting can reveal. Basically, this was a 2-scams-for-the-price-of-one-caper, in which Fred Trump formed a shell company his children secretly owned. The company pretended to perform useful services for rent-stabilized buildings Fred owned, allowing to gift money to his children without paying a gift tax. Then, its bogus accounting was used to justify rent increases to regulators. As the Times wrote:

“The most overt fraud was All County Building Supply & Maintenance, a company formed by the Trump family in 1992. All County’s ostensible purpose was to be the purchasing agent for Fred Trump’s buildings, buying everything from boilers to cleaning supplies. It did no such thing, records and interviews show. Instead All County siphoned millions of dollars from Fred Trump’s empire by simply marking up purchases already made by his employees. Those millions, effectively untaxed gifts, then flowed to All County’s owners — Donald Trump, his siblings and a cousin. Fred Trump then used the padded All County receipts to justify bigger rent increases for thousands of tenants.”
This is a particularly shocking crime because of the way it was used to defraud thousands of tenants as well as tax authorities. But this wasn’t the only time Fred cheated the public. After all, he got his start in profiteering in millions from programs to help returning GIs receive housing, prompting President Dwight D. Eisenhower to throw a fit. In 1954, he was called before the Senate to testify about how he overcharged the federal government by inflating costs associated with a taxpayer-subsidized housing development in Brooklyn. As a result, Fred was banned from bidding on federal housing contracts. So he focused on state-subsidized projects. However, in 1966, Fred was called before a state investigations board to sit through embarrassing public hearings exploring how he overbilled New York State for equipment and other costs. These hearings essentially marked the end of Fred’s career as a major developer in public subsidized housing. Donald Trump would say that the government essentially reached in and took his dad’s business away from him. But this explanation ignores the fact that Fred’s business wouldn’t have gotten off the ground without government subsidies in the first place.

However, in terms of Donald Trump cheating on his taxes, it’s far from unique. In 1983, he’s admitted to sales tax fraud. He’s lost 2 income tax civil fraud trials. Hell, his own tax lawyer testified that Trump’s 1984 tax return was fraudulent. More strikingly, even before the Times’ investigation, we had numerous examples of Trump operating as a habitual criminal. While Trump would like to American people to forget about this, he got his start as a celebrity after the New York Times published an article detailing federal housing discrimination charges brought against him and his father. Ultimately, the charges were settled without admission of fault, which would be a pattern for Trump over the years. Even so, the fact his first foray into the real estate business involved criminal acts didn’t stop him from continuing in that business. When Trump branched out into casinos, he got caught accepting an illegal loan from his dad to stay afloat and got off with a slap on the wrist. He was even allowed to continue with the business as well.

From empty-box tax scam to money laundering at his casinos, racial discrimination in his apartments, Federal Trade Commission violations for his stock purchases, and Securities and Exchange Commission violations for his financial reporting, Donald Trump has spent his entire career breaking various laws, getting caught, and then essentially plowing ahead unharmed. Caught engaging in illegal racial discrimination to please a mob boss? Paid a fine. There was no sense this was a repeated pattern of violating racial discrimination law (despite being caught before in a housing discrimination case by the federal government). Nor there was certainly any desire to take a closer look at Trump’s various personal and professional connections to the Mafia. In New York, Trump Tower’s construction employed hundreds of undocumented Polish immigrants, paid them laughably low wages, and worked them beyond legal limits. Though Trump denied knowledge of the situation, a judge said his testimony wasn’t credible. Court records show that Trump and his children misled investors in failed condo projects in Baja California and Florida. Even as late as the post-election transition, Trump was allowed to settle a lawsuit about defrauding customers at his fake university for $25 million rather than truly face the music like a potential prison term. But he still insisted he did nothing wrong despite evidence to the contrary.

One of Donald Trump’s real insights in life was to see a bug in the system. When it comes to these white-collar crimes, it’s typically the government officials’ interest to agree to a settlement giving them positive headlines, raise some cash, and move on to the next investigation. But while these decisions can make sense individually, they let serial offenders repeat their crimes over and over again. After all, you wouldn’t want police to solve other crimes this way. Meanwhile, throughout the decades of Trump’s rise, the legal climate has only gotten more permissive.

The fact that Donald Trump appears to have been involved in serious financial crimes in the past is the most likely reason for his unprecedented lack of transparency. He didn’t magically stop committing them in the mid-1990s. Rather he’s just been getting away with it in an era of reduced law enforcement and fears his documents wouldn’t stand up to scrutiny. As a candidate, Trump promised to release his tax returns. Now that he’s in office, he has refused to do so. In response to the Times’ investigation, the White House released a statement full of bluster about the “wonderful” things Trump has achieved as president. But it didn’t deny any of the alleged facts. Instead, press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders merely observed that “many decades ago the IRS reviewed and signed off on these transactions.”

It’s not entirely clear if the IRS reviewed all of these transactions. But it’s unquestionably true that Donald Trump got away with it. Because lots of people get away with a lot of crimes and that doesn’t make it okay. The IRS is no more perfect in its work than any other law enforcement agency. To make matters worse, the IRS has been starved of resources, making it even harder to catch rich tax cheats. To be clear, this wasn’t caused by austerity by budgetary necessity. Based on macroeconomic estimates, the IRS believes that business owners like Donald Trump underpay their taxes by $125 million a year. Investing more in catching these tax cheats would pay off easily. But congressional Republicans haven’t wanted to do it because they think it’s good that rich business owners can get away with cheating on their taxes. Yet, this also gives tax-cheating businesses a very good reason to fear transparency and disclosure. While the IRS is relatively unlikely to get a hard, rigorous look at any particularly rich person’s complicated tax submissions. But since Trump is president, he’d find Congress and the press heavily scrutinizing his finances. Trump got away with tax evasion during an era of generally more rigorous enforcement. It’s very unlikely that he simply stopped doing it during the more recent years when enforcement got laxer. If he disclosed his tax returns, we’d find out about the scams he’s running. Because that’s why Trump doesn’t want us to see them. And why we absolutely need to. We won’t really know why Donald Trump hides his tax returns until he stops concealing them. But the New York Times’ investigation sends a clear message that he’s got a track record of doing illegal stuff with his taxes.

However, though Donald Trump won’t release his tax returns as president, Congress can make him. But congressional Republicans have steadfastly refused to do so. Nonetheless, the American people have a right to know whether or not the man in the White House is a crook. Though the case for oversight became stronger once Trump became president, Republicans who once distanced themselves from him became uniformly devoted to covering up for him. In addition, Republicans have totally resisted Democratic efforts to force disclosure.

While congressional Republicans may tell themselves these returns are no big deal, they have no idea how serious the crimes are they’re helping Donald Trump hide. Mostly because Republicans decided it’s good when rich people cheat on their taxes despite that it’s not. In fact, cheating on taxes contributes to inequality, higher interest rates, weaker public services, and a range of social news. And despite the Republicans’ best efforts, it’s still illegal. Though the tax code currently has minimal taxes on inheritances and gifts as well as large loopholes for the wealthiest of the wealthy. The New York Times investigation into the Trump family’s wealth demonstrates how wealthy families wiggle out of taxes through licit and illicit means. Thus, starving the government of tax revenue, making the tax code less progressive than it’s designed to be, and effectively increasing the tax burden on low-income families and their businesses. The richer the family, the more likely they engage in tax evasion. In fact, one study shows that the richest .01% were shown to evade 25% of taxes, several times the rate seen among the general public. Because Trump is president, we need to know if he’s been breaking the law. All we need to do is have a congressional committee vote. But to get it, we need a new Congress.

Of course, since I’ve conducted extensive research on Donald Trump since he ran for president, the fact he’s not the self-made man he portrays himself to be doesn’t surprise me. I long knew that he never would’ve become what he is today if he hadn’t been born into wealth and privilege. And I knew about his dad vouching for him on his early projects and helping him out of his financial problems. Yet, millions of Americans still believe Trump as a modern Midas who’d lift them out of hard times as the super-rich flourish while everyone else’s incomes remain mostly flat. But the truth is that the man in the Oval Office isn’t the wealth-building entrepreneur he claims to be. In fact, he’s a financial vampire extracting cash from enterprises while leaving behind unpaid workers, vendors, and governments. And if you want to know what that will lead to, just take a visit to Atlantic City.

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The Lone Girl in a Crowd

The thoughts and perceptions of an aspiring writer on life and the world around her

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