Trump Administration - Festering Skidmarks

[goldenvalley]

Mr. Trump, when you've lost Marc Thiessan at the WaPo you've really screwed up Mr Trump.  

Fellow conservatives, it’s time to move on — because Trump is unstable, and because he cannot win. With his behavior since losing office, Trump has made himself irreversibly toxic to swing voters. A new Marquette Law School national poll finds that his unfavorable rating has surged to 66 percent — with about one-third of Republicans and independents now viewing him negatively.

Ask yourself: Why was Democrats’ anti-MAGA strategy so effective in the midterm elections? Because Trump, the supposed branding genius, has irretrievably tarnished his own brand. For swing voters, “MAGA” no longer means all the great Trump policies that a majority of Americans approved of while he was in office. It means election denial, the refusal to graciously concede or preside over a peaceful transition, the incitement of the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol — and now his public call to suspend the U.S. Constitution.

[LFC]

Guilty on 17 counts!

[indy]

Because of course they were. A fricking storage unit. Next they'll find them under the bed of whoever the hell Trump is currently banging.

Items with classified markings found at Trump storage unit in Florida

[goldenvalley]

Dec 7, 2022 18:59:20 GMT indy said:

Because of course they were. A fricking storage unit. Next they'll find them under the bed of whoever the hell Trump is currently banging.

Items with classified markings found at Trump storage unit in Florida

Trump had quite the competent staff around him. Trump appears to have squirreled all kinds of stuff away and the staff was told to pack it up and send it to storage.  But surely staff in the White House that handles classified material should never have allowed it to be mingled with his photos of Celine Dion.

And I wonder at the security agencies that didn't seem to be aware of the location of classified material that was sent to the White House...surely there should be chain of custody processes that would have flagged when material was not returned to its proper place.

[goldenvalley]

Dec 6, 2022 21:19:33 GMT LFC said:

Guilty on 17 counts!

David Frum sums it up.

Once in office, Trump was determined never to leave again—not only because of his crazed ego needs, but also as a matter of personal survival. As long as he held the presidency, he could resist tax scrutiny; he could benefit from the Department of Justice rule against the indictment of a serving president. But should he lose office, he would forfeit those protections and the full force of the law would bear down on him. He must not lose, no matter what.

The jury verdicts in the Trump Organization criminal trial help us understand something that otherwise seemed murky in the January 6 plot. Even Trump had to grasp on some level that the “magic words” aspect of the plot was not very solid. Could he really expect that the 81 million people who had voted against him would quietly submit? Joe Biden won the 2020 election by the second-largest popular-vote percentage of the century, next only to Barack Obama’s in 2008. As they later testified to Congress’s committee investigating the January 6 attack, Trump’s own advisers told him that the plan was illegal, futile, and absurd.

But lurking within the January 6 plot to stop the election, I suspect, was a potentially more effective Plan B:

Create a ruckus. Get Pence into a Secret Service limo and away from the Capitol. Rapidly call the most senior senator into the presiding chair in Pence’s stead. Persuade that senator, Charles Grassley of Iowa, to do Trump’s bidding and send the electoral count back to Republican-controlled state legislatures—and hope that all of this chaos produces enough doubt about the election to buy some legal impunity after 2021.

In the second-best case, Biden would enter the presidency not as the legal winner, but only after a negotiation with Trump supporters, much like the scenario for Rutherford B. Hayes in 1877. “No prosecution” would be something Trump might have aspired to negotiate for. Although Biden’s team could not have guaranteed that individual states would take no legal action against Trump, a sufficiently convulsive crisis in 2021 might have deterred any government official from trying to apply the law to Trump in 2022.

[indy]

I suspect---along with plenty of other people--that Trump's main reason for running again is twofold. First, to continue to fleece the gullible and second, to keep the hounds at bay a little longer.

[LFC]

Dec 7, 2022 20:33:32 GMT indy said:

I suspect---along with plenty of other people--that Trump's main reason for running again is twofold. First, to continue to fleece the gullible and second, to keep the hounds at bay a little longer.

And a big dose of ego stroking.

[andydp]

Create a ruckus. Get Pence into a Secret Service limo and away from the Capitol. Rapidly call the most senior senator into the presiding chair in Pence’s stead. Persuade that senator, Charles Grassley of Iowa, to do Trump’s bidding and send the electoral count back to Republican-controlled state legislatures—and hope that all of this chaos produces enough doubt about the election to buy some legal impunity after 2021.

I remember reading in stories that came out in the aftermath, at one point VP Pence was going to be evacuated from the Capitol for his own safety. (Remember the gallows) To his credit he refused to leave.  I'm suspecting he had heard the plan and wanted no part of it.

[goldenvalley]

Dec 7, 2022 21:25:02 GMT andydp said:

Create a ruckus. Get Pence into a Secret Service limo and away from the Capitol. Rapidly call the most senior senator into the presiding chair in Pence’s stead. Persuade that senator, Charles Grassley of Iowa, to do Trump’s bidding and send the electoral count back to Republican-controlled state legislatures—and hope that all of this chaos produces enough doubt about the election to buy some legal impunity after 2021.

I remember reading in stories that came out in the aftermath, at one point VP Pence was going to be evacuated from the Capitol for his own safety. (Remember the gallows) To his credit he refused to leave.  I'm suspecting he had heard the plan and wanted no part of it.

Gee Pence apparently didn't discuss that in his book.  Perhaps he's still afraid.  The book written by The Washington Post reporter went into more detail about Pence's words...something about ending up in Alaska or someplace.  I wonder if some of the Secret Service's deleted texts could offer more detail on the planning.

[indy]

Dec 7, 2022 19:58:16 GMT goldenvalley said:

Dec 7, 2022 18:59:20 GMT indy said:

Because of course they were. A fricking storage unit. Next they'll find them under the bed of whoever the hell Trump is currently banging.

Items with classified markings found at Trump storage unit in Florida

And I wonder at the security agencies that didn't seem to be aware of the location of classified material that was sent to the White House...surely there should be chain of custody processes that would have flagged when material was not returned to its proper place.

There are controls and procedures in place even in the white house and there is a person responsible for tracking all the documents...but that position was empty after mid-December because the person resigned. No one knows who, if anyone, then took over the responsibility.

However, ultimately, everybody attempting to enforce those protocols reports to the president anyway, so he can change them, ignore them, or do whatever.

My guess is that they know what documents are missing but likely can't track them because the white house was essentially in chaos after the election and even more so after many people resigned Dec. 6. Also, I would guess there are files that they simply don't know the contents of because nobody below the level of the white house is cleared to look at them.

[andydp]

Dec 8, 2022 14:00:24 GMT indy said:

Dec 7, 2022 19:58:16 GMT goldenvalley said:

And I wonder at the security agencies that didn't seem to be aware of the location of classified material that was sent to the White House...surely there should be chain of custody processes that would have flagged when material was not returned to its proper place.

There are controls and procedures in place even in the white house and there is a person responsible for tracking all the documents...but that position was empty after mid-December because the person resigned. No one knows who, if anyone, then took over the responsibility.

My guess is that they know what documents are missing but likely can't track them because the white house was essentially in chaos after the election and even more so after many people resigned Dec. 6. Also, I would guess there are files that they simply don't know the contents of because nobody below the level of the white house is cleared to look at them.

All classified documents have a file number to ID them. I'm sure in this day and age there would be bar codes or RFID chips. I agree about the chaos.  If you've ever moved your office, you have experience "losing stuff".  In this case, I'm betting some documents got into the wrong file. It would not surprise me if it was intentional.

[LFC]

Some news sources seem to be giving the incomplete report that the latest documents were found by private investigators hired by Trump's lawyers. The failed to mention that this was done due to a court order. TPM has a list of how much obstruction Trump has been involved in. Personally I think this is contempt and he should be sent to prison for a month or so, just to clear his head.

Let’s focus on the top line news: The former president had at least two more classified documents in his possession that had not previously been turned over to investigators!

They were reportedly “found” by a third-party contractor hired by Trump to look for additional government documents in his possession. The newly found documents were at at a storage facility in West Palm Beach. To be clear, this search doesn’t appear to reflect a decision by Trump to finally come clean, but was ordered by the chief federal judge in DC who oversees the grand jury investigating the matter.

This comes after:

• The federal grand jury subpoenaed Trump for any and all classified records
• The FBI executed a search warrant at Mar-a-Lago
• Extensive efforts by the National Archives to retrieve documents from Trump.
• Months of wrangling in court over what documents Trump had and whether he was entitled to them.

In true Trump fashion, this shocking news was hardly surprising.

If you’re catching up, the bigs were in the loop to one degree or another on what seems like self-serving leaks from the Trump Team: WaPo, NYT, WSJ and CNN.

[indy]

Dec 8, 2022 14:39:17 GMT andydp said:

Dec 8, 2022 14:00:24 GMT indy said:

There are controls and procedures in place even in the white house and there is a person responsible for tracking all the documents...but that position was empty after mid-December because the person resigned. No one knows who, if anyone, then took over the responsibility.

My guess is that they know what documents are missing but likely can't track them because the white house was essentially in chaos after the election and even more so after many people resigned Dec. 6. Also, I would guess there are files that they simply don't know the contents of because nobody below the level of the white house is cleared to look at them.

All classified documents have a file number to ID them. I'm sure in this day and age there would be bar codes or RFID chips. I agree about the chaos.  If you've ever moved your office, you have experience "losing stuff".  In this case, I'm betting some documents got into the wrong file. It would not surprise me if it was intentional.

People are people. When I worked developing software for a DoD contractor, the person responsible for handling the classified documents was suppose to return everything to the safe when not checked out to someone which was a pain in the ass so they didn't always do that and when they went to the bathroom, they 'hid' them under a phone book.

People are always the soft spot in security procedures and Trump is a soft spot in every procedure.

[LFC]

I really enjoy the idea that he's sitting in his tacky gilded palace, just feeling wronged all the time. If they're not going to put him in prision I hope that's how he spends the rest of his days, pacing, shouting, screaming, fuming, and occasionally throwing ketchup.

Ever since ex-President Donald Trump launched his plan to run for president in 2024, he’s become “increasingly isolated” and only hunkered further down at Mar-a-Lago, according to The Washington Post. Slammed with court cases and various controversies, the former president has made video appearances and only sporadically left his resort to play golf at the nearby Lake Worth Lagoon. The only events he has attended have been at Mar-a-Lago, like his dinner with hate-mongers Kayne West and Nick Fuentes. The Post reports he has become more isolated within the Republican Party after being called out for comments like calling for the termination of the Constitution. “The former president presents our biggest risk of losing for 2024, and conservatives are tired of losing,” Bob Vander Plaats, head of the Family Leader, an Iowa social conservative group, told the Post.

[LFC]

Judge Loose Cannon does the right thing because a higher court ordered her to.

Monday marked the end of an era as U.S. district judge Aileen Cannon officially dismissed Donald Trump’s civil lawsuit following the raid on Mar-a-Lago to seize government documents. 

“This case is dismissed for lack of jurisdiction,” she wrote in the brief order. “Any scheduled hearings are canceled, any pending motions are denied as moot, and all deadlines are terminated. The Clerk of Court shall close this case.”  

Months after the raid, the Justice Department is finally able to resume its investigations into Trump’s handling of the documents, some of which were designated with the highest classification levels. 

Cannon was instructed to dismiss the case by the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, which ripped her decisions to shreds in a ruling earlier this month.

The three-judge panel, dominated by Trump appointees, repudiated the amenable district judge for attempting to create out of thin air a new standard of solicitude for former presidents, for filling in arguments when Trump’s camp failed to think of any and for trying to create a blueprint that, if successful, would have mapped out how subjects of criminal investigations could stymie their probes.

The judges struggled to keep their disdain under wraps during oral arguments in the case last month.

[goldenvalley]

I have no words....

[andydp]

Dec 15, 2022 16:33:28 GMT goldenvalley said:

I have no words....

It gets better.  They are DIGITAL CARDS !!

[pnwguy]

Dec 15, 2022 16:33:28 GMT goldenvalley said:

I have no words....

What we all have is projectile vomiting...

[LFC]

There was already a more appropriate Trump card.

[LFC]

And heeeere they come!

[LFC]

Trump trading cards made from stolen internet downloaded images? Say it ain't so!

The images were so lazy that based on reverse image searches they were edited photos scraped off the internet. It’s unclear if they were edited by hand or perhaps crafted using AI image generation, though the one image of Trump in hunter garb bears a very distinct resemblance to waders crafted by Banded, a hunting apparel company.

Trump’s cowboy outfit appears to match a leather duster imported to shops like Scully Sportswear, a California-based costume and western garb shop. The same duster, with an image of a white duster, is also available on Amazon.

Gizmodo reached out to both companies to see if they had had any agreement with the NFT project to seemingly use their products, but we did not immediately hear back.

But Trump doesn't own the NFTs that are being sold. It's another licensing deal like Trump Steaks and Trump Vodka.

And while your first assumption would be that all this money would go toward supporting Trump’s reelection campaign, you would be wrong, at least according to the company’s page. NFT INT LLC, the company listed as hosting the NFT auction, wrote:

“These Digital Trading Cards are not political and have nothing to do with any political campaign. NFT INT LLC is not owned, managed or controlled by Donald J. Trump, The Trump Organization, CIC Digital LLC or any of their respective principals or affiliates. NFT INT LLC uses Donald J. Trump’s name, likeness and image under paid license from CIC Digital LLC, which license may be terminated or revoked according to its terms.”

[LFC]

More on just how sketchy NFT International LLC is. Spoiler Alert: It's VERY sketchy.

So, let’s begin delving into the shady world of NFT International. Start with the simple part: NFT International is licensing Trump’s name and likeness from a company called CIC Digital LLC, a limited liability corporation formed just nine months ago and registered in Delaware. Many corporate entities and partnerships form in Delaware because the state offers unique legal protections that are not as well established in other states: Primarily, privacy is protected. Any business entity filed in Delaware does not have to disclose its officers and directors to the public or the state, which allows for complete anonymity. Even better for Trump, the state allows for a slimmed down corporate structure, where just one person to hold the role of officer, director, and shareholder. Trump has hundreds of LLC’s that were revealed in his financial disclosure when he ran for president, almost all of them created in Delaware and with him as the sole officer, director, and shareholder. If he has created CIC using his standard practice, that means Trump is completely in control of the partnership. This also creates a legal protection for Trump and his companies, because as a partnership, no one filing suit can “pierce the corporate veil” as the term goes, and reach Trump’s pockets or that of his company, the Trump Corporation.

The registered agent for CIC - the entity that registered the partnership with the state - is also hidden from view. It is called “National Registered Agents, Inc.” and its ownership is also undisclosed. However, it has registered and incorporated many business entities, including an Austrian aerial camera company, an Arizona computer security business, a dental partnership, a real estate partnership and scores more.

But the fun really starts with unraveling NFT International. It is spread out all over the place. Anyone who purchases one of the Trump Trading Cards (and perhaps feels like they have been scammed - which they have) would obviously reach out to NFT International through its contact listing on the Collecttrumpcards.com website. The address they will receive is 6300 Sagewood Drive, Suite 427, Park City, UT. But that's not where NFT International really is. In fact, there are no offices there. Rather, the address provided to purchasers as the contact site for NFT International is a mailbox at a UPS Store in a strip mall. A nice strip mall, but a strip mall, nonetheless.

So where is NFT International? Not even close to Park City. Instead, according to its partnership registered (in Delaware of course), it is registered 480 miles away in Cheyenne, Wyoming, at the address 1712 Pioneer Avenue.

When I saw the Pioneer Avenue address, my mouth dropped. I know that address. I have seen it before. It is connected to some of the sleaziest entities to be found in this country, including international criminals.

NFT International was set up by Wyoming Corporate Services, a company that registers shell companies. Wyoming Corporate says it acts legally but has no idea who is running the secret entities that it registers. “We recognize that business entities (whether aged, shell or traditional) may be used for both good and ill,” the owner of Wyoming Corporate Services, Gerald Pitts wrote in an email to Reuters in 2011.

Oh, but it gets worse. So much worse. The final address of NFT International - along with scores of other companies - is 2710 Thomes Avenue, Cheyenne, Wyoming. And here it is.



Among the many companies based at 2710 Thomes Avenue and registered by through Wyoming Corporate Services at this tiny brick house are forty established by Pitts in which he is listed as a director, president, or principal. Those companies have been named as defendants in more than a dozen civil lawsuits charging that they had failed to pay taxes and engaged in both securities fraud and trademark infringement.

The companies registered by Wyoming Corporate at 1712 Pioneer, ending up with the final address at 2710 Thomes Avenue, includes a number operated by a rogue’s gallery of criminals. They have included a New Jersey company (strangely called New York Machinery) that sold military car and tractor trailer parts to the Defense Department. While NYM contracted to and confirmed it had sold the military parts conforming with Pentagon specifications, it didn’t. Instead, in more than three dozen military contracts, according to court documents, it provided parts produced by a Turkish company owned by Hace Galip Dedekarginoglu - also the owner of NYM.

[goldenvalley]

Somehow the IRS didn't get around to auditing Trump while he was president.

The Internal Revenue Service failed to audit former President Donald J. Trump during his first two years in office despite a program that makes the auditing of sitting presidents mandatory, a House committee revealed on Tuesday after an extraordinary vote to make public six years of his tax returns.

Mr. Trump filed returns in 2017 for the two previous tax years, but the I.R.S. began auditing those filings only in 2019 — the first on the same day in April the Ways and Means Committee requested access to his taxes and any associated audits, a report by the panel said. The I.R.S. has yet to complete those audits, it said, and the agency started auditing his filings covering his income while president only after he left office.

There are a lot of tax records about to be released after sensitive material is redacted. Meanwhile:

But a Joint Committee on Taxation staff report released Tuesday night included some details from his tax filings.

When combined with tax records previously obtained by The New York Times, the records show that in 2018, Mr. Trump had positive taxable income for the first time in more than a decade. That change occurred largely because he had sold properties or investments at a gain of $22 million, and he appears to have exhausted the business losses he had been rolling over year after year. As a result, he paid $999,466 in federal income taxes for 2018. But his long-term pattern of reporting negative income returned by 2020, and he paid no federal income taxes for that year.

The rich really are different, aren't they?  Or is he really rich?  I've always wondered if Trump was really as wealthy as he wanted everyone to believe; if it was smoke and mirrors transactions that were loaded with debt that he kept shifting around from lender to lender.

[LFC]

The USPS is going to buy a lot more electric vehicles. Judging from Louis DeJoy's track record I suspect he was pretty brutally strong-armed into this and already has a plan to f*** it up. "Past returns are not a guarantee of future results" but it's foolish to ignore history.

The U.S. Postal Service will buy 66,000 vehicles to build one of the largest electric fleets in the nation, Biden administration officials announced Tuesday, turning to one of the most recognizable vehicles on American roads — boxy white mail trucks — to fight climate change.

Postal officials’ plans call for buying 60,000 “Next Generation Delivery Vehicles” from defense contractor Oshkosh, of which 45,000 will be electric, Postmaster General Louis DeJoy told The Washington Post. The agency will also purchase 46,000 models from mainstream automakers, of which 21,000 will be electric.

The Postal Service will spend $9.6 billion on the vehicles and associated infrastructure, officials said, including $3 billion from the Inflation Reduction Act, President Biden and congressional Democrats’ landmark climate, health-care and tax law.

[goldenvalley]

Dec 21, 2022 22:13:41 GMT LFC said:

The USPS is going to buy a lot more electric vehicles. Judging from Louis DeJoy's track record I suspect he was pretty brutally strong-armed into this and already has a plan to f*** it up. "Past returns are not a guarantee of future results" but it's foolish to ignore history.

Postal officials’ plans call for buying 60,000 “Next Generation Delivery Vehicles” from defense contractor Oshkosh, of which 45,000 will be electric, Postmaster General Louis DeJoy told The Washington Post. The agency will also purchase 46,000 models from mainstream automakers, of which 21,000 will be electric.

Oshkosh???  Did a double take on that one.  Oshkosh makes overalls that my granddad always wore and kids' clothing.  But this is a different company that just happens to be in Oshkosh Wisconsin too.