Trump Administration - Festering Skidmarks

[goldenvalley]

Is this what a master businessman's taxes are supposed to look like?

[andydp]

Dec 21, 2022 23:44:42 GMT goldenvalley said:

Is this what a master businessman's taxes are supposed to look like?

I’m the furthest thing from an accountant, but if you have so many free years doesn’t it imply you had a lot of losses?

[LFC]

The real Deep State, the MAGAts inside and influencing actual government positions, have succeeded in creating the environment they want. They now have put federal employees in fear for their jobs for doing their jobs. Welcome to fascism.

Inside The Mar-a-Lago Investigation

WaPo goes deep inside the apparent tensions between Justice Department prosecutors and FBI agents in the Mar-a-Lago investigation. What emerges is a disturbing picture of FBI agents tentative about being caught in the wringer of another Trump investigation. No one wants to be the next Peter Strzok, which is understandable on a personal level but difficult to square with their professional obligations. It leads to this extraordinary role reversal:

The lawyers, these people said, felt they had amassed more than enough probable cause to ask a judge to approve a search of Mar-a-Lago. Some agents at the field office weren’t certain. Eventually, the Justice Department lawyers prevailed.

Strzok himself noted how unusual this was: “It’s an exceedingly rare day when prosecutors want a search warrant and agents don’t.”

[goldenvalley]

[pnwguy]

FFS. There is never a bottom to these grifters. Will there be an Official Trump Dildo that Stone can push on Newsmax commercials? “When you need that extra power of a True Patriot. Press this button to hear the voice of Melania moaning ‘Oh Donald!’”

[andydp]

Dec 23, 2022 4:22:24 GMT pnwguy said:

FFS. There is never a bottom to these grifters. Will there be an Official Trump Dildo that Stone can push on Newsmax commercials? “When you need that extra power of a True Patriot. Press this button to hear the voice of Melania moaning ‘Oh Donald!’”

Your sales pitch is a bit worrisome.

[AnBr]

Dec 23, 2022 4:22:24 GMT pnwguy said:

FFS. There is never a bottom to these grifters. Will there be an Official Trump Dildo that Stone can push on Newsmax commercials? “When you need that extra power of a True Patriot. Press this button to hear the voice of Melania moaning ‘Oh Donald!’”

Yes, it is shaped like a small mushroom.

[LFC]

I love that Trump is getting to watch himself become less and less relevant in the crazy right-wing house that he built. Uncle Don is being left alone in his room to watch Faux News and rant, but not really getting to play the game that much anymore. In full due to paywall.

I say all the following not for a moment discounting the threat Donald Trump continues to be to the American republic. But since the announcement of his reelection bid, immediately after a discrediting electoral defeat more than two months ago, he’s seemed less a swaggering warlord planning his return than a diminishing voice less and less relevant to the political happenings of the day. His claims and attacks become more vitriolic as his volume gets turned lower and lower.

Just this week he launched a broadside against white evangelicals, the most loyal and militant portion of his political base. They were “disloyal,” he said, and he blamed some of the 2022 reverses on them: “I thought they could’ve fought much harder during the election, the ’22 election.” This after an earlier interview where he blamed no-exceptions abortion bans for the 2022 defeats. This is angry desperation, not any ability to read the room.

Now comes word that Trump is coming back to Twitter and, he hopes, Facebook too. It makes perfect sense and it’s the right read of his current predicament. He can rant on his lifestyle social network, Truth Social. And those rants are often reprinted on Twitter. But it’s not the same. He’s someone you can barely hear in the far distance. For Trump, that’s a living death.

One of the key signs came in the GOP’s humiliating first week of the January as Kevin McCarthy struggled to beg for the Freedom Caucus holdout votes to become speaker. The logjam was broken when McCarthy agreed to hand over effective control of the House to President Trump’s most ardent supporters, the biggest defenders of the Big Lie and in many cases participants in the 2020/21 coup attempt. But Trump’s name was barely mentioned. The exceptions proved the rule. Lauren Boebert name checked him once to say she was defying him. Matt Gaetz finally nominated him for speaker. But no one else voted for him. He came behind not only McCarthy and Hakeem Jeffries but even randoms like whichever other backbencher they were nominating that round.

It was the House Trump built. But Trump himself was nowhere to be seen.

He needs to be back on Twitter and on Facebook to make some stab at being relevant again, at controlling news cycles rather than disappearing from them. He’s been allowed back on Twitter since November. But in some power play with Elon Musk he’s refused to tweet. Now he knows he has to. I don’t know if it will help him at this point. But he has no choice.

I think now that the adoring crowds have gotten smaller and smaller, and his legal woes have gotten bigger and bigger, his "heart" just isn't in it.

[Bact PhD]

Jan 18, 2023 18:29:27 GMT LFC said:

I love that Trump is getting to watch himself become less and less relevant in the crazy right-wing house that he built. Uncle Don is being left alone in his room to watch Faux News and rant, but not really getting to play the game that much anymore. In full due to paywall.

I say all the following not for a moment discounting the threat Donald Trump continues to be to the American republic. But since the announcement of his reelection bid, immediately after a discrediting electoral defeat more than two months ago, he’s seemed less a swaggering warlord planning his return than a diminishing voice less and less relevant to the political happenings of the day. His claims and attacks become more vitriolic as his volume gets turned lower and lower.

Just this week he launched a broadside against white evangelicals, the most loyal and militant portion of his political base. They were “disloyal,” he said, and he blamed some of the 2022 reverses on them: “I thought they could’ve fought much harder during the election, the ’22 election.” This after an earlier interview where he blamed no-exceptions abortion bans for the 2022 defeats. This is angry desperation, not any ability to read the room.

Now comes word that Trump is coming back to Twitter and, he hopes, Facebook too. It makes perfect sense and it’s the right read of his current predicament. He can rant on his lifestyle social network, Truth Social. And those rants are often reprinted on Twitter. But it’s not the same. He’s someone you can barely hear in the far distance. For Trump, that’s a living death.

One of the key signs came in the GOP’s humiliating first week of the January as Kevin McCarthy struggled to beg for the Freedom Caucus holdout votes to become speaker. The logjam was broken when McCarthy agreed to hand over effective control of the House to President Trump’s most ardent supporters, the biggest defenders of the Big Lie and in many cases participants in the 2020/21 coup attempt. But Trump’s name was barely mentioned. The exceptions proved the rule. Lauren Boebert name checked him once to say she was defying him. Matt Gaetz finally nominated him for speaker. But no one else voted for him. He came behind not only McCarthy and Hakeem Jeffries but even randoms like whichever other backbencher they were nominating that round.

It was the House Trump built. But Trump himself was nowhere to be seen.

He needs to be back on Twitter and on Facebook to make some stab at being relevant again, at controlling news cycles rather than disappearing from them. He’s been allowed back on Twitter since November. But in some power play with Elon Musk he’s refused to tweet. Now he knows he has to. I don’t know if it will help him at this point. But he has no choice.

I think now that the adoring crowds have gotten smaller and smaller, and his legal woes have gotten bigger and bigger, his "heart" just isn't in it.

The crowds have moved on to the next, even weirder, sideshow. This carnival barker doesn’t do it for them anymore.

[andydp]

Jan 19, 2023 13:23:08 GMT Bact PhD said:

Jan 18, 2023 18:29:27 GMT LFC said:

The crowds have moved on to the next, even weirder, sideshow. This carnival barker doesn’t do it for them anymore.

I can't help but think of the line in Sunset Boulevard: "You used to be big."  "I'm still big, the movies have gotten smaller."

Feel free to chime in with a better response:

The media:  "Pres Trump, You used to be big"

Pres Trump: "I'm bigger.  The pants got smaller."


 

[pnwguy]

Jan 19, 2023 13:43:01 GMT andydp said:

Jan 19, 2023 13:23:08 GMT Bact PhD said:

The crowds have moved on to the next, even weirder, sideshow. This carnival barker doesn’t do it for them anymore.

I can't help but think of the line in Sunset Boulevard: "You used to be big."  "I'm still big, the movies have gotten smaller."

Feel free to chime in with a better response:

The media:  "Pres Trump, You used to be big"

Pres Trump: "I'm bigger.  The diaper pants got smaller."

FIFY 

[LFC]

Jan 19, 2023 13:43:01 GMT andydp said:

I can't help but think of the line in Sunset Boulevard: "You used to be big."  "I'm still big, the movies have gotten smaller."

The Media:  "Pres Trump, You used to be big"

Pres Trump: "Big is for losers. I'm YUUUUGE!"

[LFC]

Kellyanne Conway, festering skidmark.

Acyn
@acyn

Goldman: Today I’m offering the Kellyanne Conway Amendment that will allow for prison sentences for knowing and intentional violations of The Hatch Act

[LFC]

Oh, Peter.

Peter Navarro: Menace Or Fool?

Trump White House official Peter Navarro must return hundreds of emails from his time in government that he kept on a personal ProtonMail account and refused to return to the National Archives, federal judge in DC has ordered in a “brutal” opinion.

Navarro still faces criminal contempt of Congress charges for defying subpoenas from the Jan. 6 committee. No trial date has been set.

LOCK HIM UP! LOCK HIM UP!

[LFC]

Another one of Trump's "best people."

Jenna Ellis Is A Piece Of Work

After stipulating to making repeated misrepresentations as part of Trump’s 2020 Big Lie and agreeing to public censure in attorney disciplinary proceedings in Colorado, former Trump lawyer Jenna Ellis is out there claiming anyone who accuses her of lying is … lying.

[indy]

Mar 10, 2023 19:12:42 GMT LFC said:

Oh, Peter.

Peter Navarro: Menace Or Fool?

Trump White House official Peter Navarro must return hundreds of emails from his time in government that he kept on a personal ProtonMail account and refused to return to the National Archives, federal judge in DC has ordered in a “brutal” opinion.

Navarro still faces criminal contempt of Congress charges for defying subpoenas from the Jan. 6 committee. No trial date has been set.

LOCK HIM UP! LOCK HIM UP!

Why the use of the disjunctive title? Why can't he be both a menace and a fool?

[LFC]

Steve Bannon, one of Trump's stankiest skidmarks, has been buddy-buddy with a Chinese billionaire for years. (Bannon was on Guo Wengui's yacht when he was arrested.) Looks like Guo is a crook. Gee, what a shock.

Chinese billionaire Guo Wengui—a close friend of right-wing media personality Stephen K. Bannon who has long been on the FBI’s radar—has been charged in a massive, $1 billion fraud conspiracy, the feds announced Wednesday.

On Wednesday, federal prosecutors unsealed a 12-count indictment against Guo, who is also known as “Miles Kwok,” “Brother Seven,” and “The Principal,” charging the mysterious moneyman with a raft of wire fraud, securities fraud, bank fraud, and money laundering counts.

According to authorities, Guo, 52, and co-conspirator Jin Ming Je, 56, misappropriated some $1 billion in “fraudulently obtained funds during the course of their conspiracy.” Guo allegedly used the money, for, among other things, a 50,000-square-foot New Jersey mansion, upkeep on a $37 million yacht, a $3.5 million Ferrari, Chinese and Persian rugs worth nearly $1 million, a $4.4 million Bugatti sports car, a Lamborghini Aventador SVJ Roads, a $62,000 television, a $53,000 fireplace log cradle holder, and two $36,000 mattresses.

The FBI on Wednesday did not return The Daily Beast’s request for comment, nor did Guo’s various right-wing allies. Bannon didn’t mention Guo’s arrest during the opening segment of his show.

Guo and Je, a dual citizen of Hong Kong and the U.K. who prosecutors believe was the alleged scheme’s “financial architect and key money launderer,” lied to investors about where their funds were going, according to court documents.

The feds say Guo used two nonprofits he founded in 2018, the Rule of Law Foundation and the Rule of Law Society “to amass followers who were aligned with his purported policy objectives in China and who were also inclined to believe [his] statements regarding investment and money-making opportunities.”

In one instance, Guo and Je bilked investors out of more than $260 million via a “purported stablecoin” called the Himalaya Dollar, and a trading coin called Himalaya Coin, or H Coin, according to prosecutors.

[LFC]

Never forget that Republicans were OK with this.

[AnBr]

Yep, but the crazy is enabled by reich-wing disinformation. I really do not think that we will be able to set things right until we address that deafening noise.

[LFC]

Another skidmark. The big fascist guns are desperate to protect him.

This Dude Has A Lot Of Explaining To Do

A two-fer of news here so bear with me for a moment.

Trump-appointed DHS Inspector General Joseph Cuffari has been a magnet for controversy not because of his investigative work but because of his own conduct.

Cuffari is currently under investigation by a committee of inspectors general (which is who steps in when one of their own needs policing), but he and some of his top staffers have now sued to block the outside panel from investigating them.

In a very telling development, they are being assisted in their lawsuit by the New Civil Liberties Alliance, a conservative non-profit backed by among others the Koch Brothers and Leonard Leo’s network that is waging a legal war against the “administrative state.” Sarah Posner wrote about the New Civil Liberties Alliance extensively for TPM last fall.

That’s the first bit of news.

The second bit of news, also very much in our wheelhouse: It was revealed this week in the civil lawsuit that the investigation of Cuffari has “expanded … to include his role in missing Secret Service text messages from the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol,” the Washington Post reports.

On Monday, investigators demanded records related to the deleted texts from the Office of Inspector General Joseph V. Cuffari, an appointee of President Donald Trump whose office shut down an inquiry into the Secret Service messages last year amid the House’s probe of the insurrection.

The records request, which was revealed in a federal lawsuit this week filed by Cuffari and his staff against the panel of inspectors leading the probe, suggests new urgency in a high-profile investigation that began in May 2021 and has since evolved into a wide-ranging inquiry into dozens of allegations of misconduct, including partisan decision-making, investigative failures and retaliation against whistleblowers.

The missing Secret Service texts from around Jan. 6 remain a source of great interest.

[LFC]

Look, I'm not so anti-Trump that I'd expect the PPP and other programs to have been executed under the gun of the pandemic in a near perfect manner but this is nuckin' futs. Once again Republican "governance" proves itself to be utterly incompetent, not that competent governance is something they care about anymore.

With estimates indicating that as much as $560 billion, or nearly 20%, was stolen out of more than $3 trillion distributed through the three main pandemic aid programs, Mr. Jaklitsch’s case illustrates the twin challenges now facing states and the federal government as they grapple with what is likely the biggest fraud in U.S. history.

First, they are racing to catch those who committed fraud, particularly the sophisticated criminals and syndicates who saw outsize opportunity in the rapid, massive flows of pandemic relief funds. And second, they are seeking to address long-standing vulnerabilities in government benefit systems that such cases have brought into stark relief.

A range of individuals and groups, from Chinese, Nigerian, and Russian criminal syndicates, to federal prisoners applying under fake names like “Poopy Pants,” to U.S. citizens posing as other people – including someone pretending to be California Sen. Dianne Feinstein – partook in the illicit pandemic gold rush. Many did so using identity theft, buying individuals’ personal data for pennies in dark corners of the internet and circumventing traditional identity verification techniques.

Now Congress is investigating in earnest. And the White House is asking lawmakers to allocate $1.6 billion to bolster investigation and prosecution of pandemic fraud, as well as improving identity verification and other tools to prevent such theft going forward.

[goldenvalley]

Apr 11, 2023 21:05:36 GMT LFC said:

Look, I'm not so anti-Trump that I'd expect the PPP and other programs to have been executed under the gun of the pandemic in a near perfect manner but this is nuckin' futs. Once again Republican "governance" proves itself to be utterly incompetent, not that competent governance is something they care about anymore.

With estimates indicating that as much as $560 billion, or nearly 20%, was stolen out of more than $3 trillion distributed through the three main pandemic aid programs, Mr. Jaklitsch’s case illustrates the twin challenges now facing states and the federal government as they grapple with what is likely the biggest fraud in U.S. history.

First, they are racing to catch those who committed fraud, particularly the sophisticated criminals and syndicates who saw outsize opportunity in the rapid, massive flows of pandemic relief funds. And second, they are seeking to address long-standing vulnerabilities in government benefit systems that such cases have brought into stark relief.

A range of individuals and groups, from Chinese, Nigerian, and Russian criminal syndicates, to federal prisoners applying under fake names like “Poopy Pants,” to U.S. citizens posing as other people – including someone pretending to be California Sen. Dianne Feinstein – partook in the illicit pandemic gold rush. Many did so using identity theft, buying individuals’ personal data for pennies in dark corners of the internet and circumventing traditional identity verification techniques.

Now Congress is investigating in earnest. And the White House is asking lawmakers to allocate $1.6 billion to bolster investigation and prosecution of pandemic fraud, as well as improving identity verification and other tools to prevent such theft going forward.

I also expected a mess.  But when I think of several small nonprofits that I know of who struggled to find a lending institution to deal with a PPP loan for them I see nothing but red.  I guess the moral of the story is lie big...Poopy Pants must have had a lot of employees and a big payroll (all fake) to get someone to look at the application.

[LFC]

Another dipshit attorney seems hellbent on getting their law license suspended.

[andydp]

Ask me if I care the aides syphoned money off of Pres Trump's campaign fund (grift).

'That was criminal': Navarro accuses former top Trump aides of siphoning off campaign funds into their own pockets


In a previously unreleased audio tape played on MSNBC Tuesday night, former Donald Trump trade advisor Peter Navarro can be heard telling a Fox News producer that top campaign officials who worked for the former president were lining their own pockets with campaign contributions.

(It was a shame because...)

As the MSNBC host explained, Navarro was complaining that the money that was being siphoned off could have better been used to contest the results of the 2020 election.


www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/that-was-criminal-navarro-accuses-former-top-trump-aides-of-siphoning-off-campaign-funds-into-their-own-pockets/ar-AA1an3l5?ocid=msedgntp&cvid=8420c5fe6d514995b8854872accfc503&ei=27

Comment: If he had knowledge of that happening, he should have reported it to the FBI. Misuse of campaign funds is a Federal offence.  But who am I to judge ?  

Comment 2:  I was an Inspector General (IG) in the Army.  A LOT of cases referred to the IG for investigation, were started by someone who didn't get their share.  Police investigators also run into these situations.


Just askin`  

[goldenvalley]

Apr 26, 2023 20:50:41 GMT andydp said:

Ask me if I care the aides syphoned money off of Pres Trump's campaign fund (grift).

'That was criminal': Navarro accuses former top Trump aides of siphoning off campaign funds into their own pockets


****

Comment: If he had knowledge of that happening, he should have reported it to the FBI. Misuse of campaign funds is a Federal offence.  But who am I to judge ?  

Comment 2:  I was an Inspector General (IG) in the Army.  A LOT of cases referred to the IG for investigation, were started by someone who didn't get their share.  Police investigators also run into these situations.


Just askin`  

First of all I am shocked...SHOCKED...to hear that campaign funds were pocketed by those who worked on the campaign.  Second, Navarro had his hand in the funds too...I'd bet $100 on that.  He ain't too bright though so he made this admission or perhaps thought that pointing his finger at other people would divert attention from his own behavior.