Tag: Trump graft

Manhattan D.A. Intensifies Investigation of Trump

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Prosecutors have recently interviewed employees of President Trump’s lender and insurance brokerage, in the latest indication that he still faces the potential threat of criminal charges once he leaves office.

State prosecutors in Manhattan have interviewed several employees of President Trump’s bank and insurance broker in recent weeks, according to people with knowledge of the matter, significantly escalating an investigation into the president that he is powerless to stop.

The interviews with people who work for the lender, Deutsche Bank, and the insurance brokerage, Aon, are the latest indication that once Mr. Trump leaves office, he still faces the potential threat of criminal charges that would be beyond the reach of federal pardons.

It remains unclear whether the office of the Manhattan district attorney, Cyrus R. Vance Jr., will ultimately bring charges. The prosecutors have been fighting in court for more than a year to obtain Mr. Trump’s personal and corporate tax returns, which they have called central to their investigation. The issue now rests with the Supreme Court. Continue reading.

Trump reversed course on hosting G-7 at his club after learning that impeachment-weary Republicans were tired of defending him

Washington Post logoPresident Trump was forced to abandon his decision to host next year’s Group of Seven summit at his private golf club after it became clear the move had alienated Republicans and swiftly become part of the impeachment inquiry that threatens his presidency.

In a round of phone calls with conservative allies this weekend, Trump was told Republicans are struggling to defend him on so many fronts, according to an administration official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal matters.

Democrats, meanwhile, continued to blast Trump for awarding the massive government contract to his own company and said they might add the alleged “emoluments” violation to the articles of impeachment they are preparing.

View the complete October 20 article by Toluse Olorunnipa, Josh Dawsey and David A. Fahrenthold on The Washington Post website here.

‘Nothing To Defend’ As Republicans Avoid Ukraine Questions

CNN’s Jake Tapper on Sunday revealed that in the middle of one of the defining scandals of Donald Trump’s administration, no one from the president’s administration or Republican leadership was willing to answer questions on “State of the Union.” And, according to former Republican congressman Joe Walsh, the reason is because “there is nothing to defend” of Trump’s actions.

“Confronted with the president’s own words prominent Republicans struggle to come up with ways to dismiss them,” Tapper explained. “After the president attacked one GOP critic will the bulk of his party toe the line?”

Detailing the president’s growing Ukraine scandal, Tapper told his audience “the lawyer for the first whistle-blower now tells me he is also representing a second whistle-blower who has spoken to the intelligence community inspector general,” noting the development “could play into the impeachment inquiry into President Trump” and “is the latest in a stream of new evidence this week backing up the original whistle-blower complaint against President Trump — including, notably, the president’s own public call for not only Ukraine, but for China, to investigate his potential 2020 rival.”

View the complete October 7 article by Elizabeth Preza from AlterNet on the National Memo website here.

Trump has been keeping close tabs on the Mar-a-Lago books during his presidency

AlterNet logoDonald Trump has not given up control of his for-profit businesses as he pretends at the task of playing president. Members of Trump’s transition team or, more likely, government ethics officials were at least able enough to convey how grotesquely improper that was, to the point where Trump was obliged to pantomime handing those companies’ management over to his adult children, but he did not financially divest from those companies, as literally every other modern president was expected to do as a matter of basic norms.

The whole thing has been a charade. A fraud. And as we hear, every month, of new instances in which government agencies, the military, the Secret Service, or the thoroughly toadying vice president have been forced to put government money into Trump’s businesses and therefore his own pockets, the pretense that Trump is somehow uninvolved with this grift of his own making is at this point barely pretensed-at.

The New York Times cites current and former White House officials to report that Trump “spends more time talking about his properties in private than he does in public, and even as president, remains intimately involved with club minutiae, like knowing all the names on his Mar-a-Lago membership roll.” To spell that out: Trump’s private business invites well-heeled supplicants to pay cash to Donald’s for-profit club. Trump is intimately involved with learning all the names that have given him those cash infusions.

View the complete September 10 post from the Daily Kos not he AlterNet website here.

Air Force leaders order probe of Trump resort stays

Stopovers at Scotland airport have tripled since 2015 and overnight stays in the area are up five-fold.

The U.S. Air Force has ordered a world-wide review of how it chooses overnight accommodations on long flights following revelations that air crews had occasionally stayed at President Donald Trump’s Scotland resort while refueling at a small commercial airport nearby.

The review comes as additional instances of military personnel staying at Trump properties have been uncovered. The C-17 crew’s overnight stay at Trump’s Turnberry resort in Scotland earlier this year, first reported by POLITICO on Friday, was not an isolated incident.

In September 2018, on its way back to the U.S. from Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar, a unit of the Maine Air National Guard landed at Prestwick Airport, the airport closest to Trump’s luxury waterfront resort. The crew and their passengers then spent the night at his hotel, according to one person who was present, an Instagram post and a voucher detailing the crew’s itinerary reviewed by POLITICO.

View the complete September 8 article by Bryan Bender and Natasha Bertrand on the Politico website here.

Ethics experts warn of ‘partisan appropriation of a public event’ as RNC gives donors tickets to Trump’s Fourth of July event

AlterNet logoFourth of July celebrations in Washington, D.C. have a long history of being adamantly nonpartisan and not including speeches by sitting presidents — that is, until 2019. In addition to the usual fireworks and Independence Day celebrations in the U.S. capital, this Fourth of July will include an event featuring a speech by President Donald Trump along with military displays. And the Republican National Committee (RNC), HuffPost reports, has been offering tickets to the event to major GOP donors.

Exactly what type of military display Trump’s event will feature remains unclear. Flyovers by military planes are planned, and according to the Washington Post, Trump has pushed for tanks and other military vehicles to be featured on the National Mall — although there are concerns that such vehicles could damage the roads and the grass.

Critics of Trump’s Fourth of July event are warning that it will, in effect, be a campaign rally for the president. And Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a history professor at New York University, noted that showing off military vehicles at such an event is characteristic of authoritarian dictatorships.

View the complete July 2 article by Alex Henderson on the AlterNet website here.

‘He always brings them up’: Trump tries to steer border wall deal to North Dakota firm

President Trump has personally and repeatedly urged the head of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to award a border wall contract to a North Dakota construction firm whose top executive is a GOP donor and frequent guest on Fox News, according to four administration officials.

In phone calls, White House meetings and conversations aboard Air Force One during the past several months, Trump has aggressively pushed Dickinson, N.D.-based Fisher Industries to Department of Homeland Security leaders and Lt. Gen. Todd Semonite, the commanding general of the Army Corps, according to the administration officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive internal discussions. The push for a specific company has alarmed military commanders and DHS officials.

Semonite was summoned to the White House again Thursday, after the president’s aides told Pentagon officials — including Gen. Mark Milley, the Army’s chief of staff — that the president wanted to discuss the border barrier. According to an administration official with knowledge of the Oval Office meeting, Trump immediately brought up Fisher, a company that sued the U.S. government last month after the Army Corps did not accept its bid to install barriers along the southern border, a contract potentially worth billions of dollars.

View the complete May 23 article by Nick Miroff and Josh Dawsey on The Washington Post website here.

After Lending Trump $11.2 Million, Banker Was Appointed To Atlanta Federal Reserve

A top bank executive received an appointment to the Federal Reserve after his bank approved millions in loans to Trump in 2018.

Mother Jones reported that Professional Bank granted Trump a loan of $11.2 million in May of 2018, according to his recently filed financial disclosure forms. That money was used to finance the purchase of a mansion next to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago from his sister, Maryanne Trump Barry.

Trump’s company is currently offering the property for rent for $81,250 a month (down from $100,000).

View the complete May 22 article by Oliver Willis on the National Memo website here.

Here’s how taxpayers covered a $1,000 liquor bill for Trump staffers at Mar-a-Lago

A top-shelf, closed-door drinking session. $546-a-night hotel rooms. A special government credit card for Mar-a-Lago. Taxpayers foot the costs — and the president profits.

Find “Trump, Inc.” wherever you get your podcasts. This week’s episode examines the intersection of money, presidential access and security, and the push and pull between government spending and private profits at Mar-a-Lago.

In April 2017, Chinese President Xi Jinping visited Mar-a-Lago, President Donald Trump’s Palm Beach, Florida, estate and club, for a two-day summit. While Xi and his delegation stayed at a nearby hotel, Trump and his advisers stayed at the peach-colored, waterfront resort.

That evening, Trump and a dozen of his closest advisers hosted Xi and the Chinese delegation in an ornate dining room where they ate Dover sole and New York strip steak. Those sorts of lavish, formal gatherings are expected for a major bilateral summit.

View the complete May 1 article by Derek Kravitz of ProPublica on the AlterNet website here.