Trump Administration - Festering Skidmarks

[goldenvalley]

Sept 20, 2021 11:38:34 GMT andydp said:

Look like Leningrad Lindsey didn't buy Pres Trump's claims of "fraud".

Lindsey Graham and Mike Lee personally vetted Trump’s fraud claims, new book says. They were unpersuaded.

Graham and Lee, both of whom ultimately voted to certify the results, took the claims of election fraud seriously enough to get briefed on the details, involve their senior staff and call state officials throughout the country. But privately, Graham gave the arguments a withering assessment, according to the book, saying they were suitable for “Third grade.”

The episode illustrates how strenuously the president’s legal team sought to nullify the results of the election; how flimsy even their more serious claims were; and what little stock the president’s own allies placed in his objections, even as they stood steadfastly with their standard-bearer.


www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/lindsey-graham-and-mike-lee-personally-vetted-trump-e2-80-99s-fraud-claims-new-book-says-they-were-unpersuaded/ar-AAOCY9m?ocid=uxbndlbing

It looks like people offered theories about how to manipulate an election but no proof that the theory was put into practice. It's easy to theorize in the absence of knowing just what steps elections officials take to guard against that sort of thing...audits, hand counts, etc.  The practicalities of large scale manipulation make accomplishing it pretty impossible. Thousands of dead people voting, thousands of people voting twice, seeking more than one absentee ballot...just not really possible to do on that scale without some elections officials noticing it.   That's probably why they resorted to the Kracken theory that the machines flipped the votes.  

[pnwguy]

Next up: Millions of would-be Trump voters were intercepted by Sargon and his fellow luminous spheres to telepathically force them to mark their ballots for Biden without their knowledge. Sargon controls Biden and he will be turning over Americans to be host bodies. The vaccine will be the first step in making complaint bodies for their new beings.

[goldenvalley]

Sept 20, 2021 15:56:44 GMT pnwguy said:

Next up: Millions of would-be Trump voters were intercepted by Sargon and his fellow luminous spheres to telepathically force them to mark their ballots for Biden without their knowledge. Sargon controls Biden and he will be turning over Americans to be host bodies. The vaccine will be the first step in making complaint bodies for their new beings.

Well actually Trump supporters put the claims of Russian interference in the 2016 election into the telepathically force voters to vote for Trump category.  And in a way, they are right but with the wrong means of influence.  Mis and disinformation transmitted by social media and right wing media replaced the telepathic part of the plan.

[LFC]

Sept 20, 2021 11:38:34 GMT andydp said:

Graham and Lee, both of whom ultimately voted to certify the results, took the claims of election fraud seriously enough to get briefed on the details, involve their senior staff and call state officials throughout the country. But privately, Graham gave the arguments a withering assessment, according to the book, saying they were suitable for “Third grade.”

The episode illustrates how strenuously the president’s legal team sought to nullify the results of the election; how flimsy even their more serious claims were; and what little stock the president’s own allies placed in his objections, even as they stood steadfastly with their standard-bearer.

Tighten up the race significantly and tell me how you think Lindsey & Lee would have reacted. Their assessment wasn't just that the claims were bogus, it was that they were bogus and couldn't work.

[LFC]

More skidmarks for the CFO of the Trump Organization.

The lawyer representing Allen Weisselberg, the Trump Organization’s chief financial officer, is prepared for prosecutors to hand down even more criminal indictments in addition to the 15 fraud charges he’s already facing.

Bryan Skarlatos, Weisselberg’s attorney, told the New York State Supreme Court during a pre-trial hearing on Monday that “We have strong reason to believe there could be other indictments coming,” per CNN.

Weisselberg has been slapped with 15 criminal charges ranging from tax fraud, conspiracy, grand larceny, and falsification of records in what Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance’s office alleges to be a 15-year long tax evasion scheme with the Trump Organization, which was also indicted in the criminal case against the executive.

Vance, who has been investigating the Trump Organization for three years, alleges that Weisselberg and the company worked to dodge paying taxes by giving the executive huge perks, which included an apartment at a luxury building in Manhattan and two Mercedes-Benz cars, in addition to a salary.

[LFC]

People revolving in Planet Trump's orbit have had more actual connections to individual Russians than the Bolshoi Ballet. It sounds like these two were basic grifters.

Two Republican operatives were charged this month with a scheme to funnel money from a Russian businessman into former President Trump’s 2016 campaign, a document unsealed on Monday reveals.

D.C. federal prosecutors allege that Jesse Benton, who was campaign manager for Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY)’s 2014 re-election run, conspired on the scheme with Doug Wead, a conservative author who once co-wrote a book with former President George H.W. Bush and who helps manage a multi-level marketing firm in Russia.

The 19-page indictment was filed nearly five years after some of the conduct alleged in the document. The pair are charged with six counts related to the allegations, including conspiracy, false record-keeping, making political contributions by a foreign national, and acting as an illegal straw donor.

The charging document reveals an alleged scheme that, if uncovered in fall 2016 or for the following two years, would likely have shocked the political world, if only because it accused two Republican political operatives of funneling money from a Russian businessman into Trump’s presidential campaign, just as the country was focused on Russian ties to the former president.

Prosecutors say in the indictment that Benton and Wead “concealed” the alleged scheme from Trump, which involved taking $100,000 from an unnamed Russian businessman in exchange for a photo op with Trump himself.

The photo op, prosecutors say, took place in Philadelphia on Sept 22, 2016.

But Benton and Wead allegedly only siphoned off $25,000 of the Russian’s money into an unnamed political committee. Federal elections records show an Oct. 27, 2016 contribution to Trump Victory by “Jesse Bentor,” a misspelling referenced in the indictment.

One was tied to several prominent Republicans who sure do like their criminals. And Trump liked to pardon them.

This isn’t Benton’s first run-in with the law. An experienced Republican operative in Kentucky, Benton has spent years in the orbit of Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) and his father. Benton is married to Ron Paul’s granddaughter.

Benton was forced to resign from managing McConnell’s re-election campaign in 2014 over allegations around a pay-for-votes scam in 2012 in Iowa. Rand Paul then hired him, before Benton was indicted the next year on charges relating to the Iowa scandal.

The Kentucky operative allegedly worked on the Russian straw donor scheme as he faced sentencing for the Iowa bribery scandal.

President Trump pardoned Benton for those crimes in December 2020.

[goldenvalley]

Trump campaign lawyers wrote a memo about Dominion before Giuliani and Powell staged their press conference.  Guess what it said.  

By the time the news conference occurred on Nov. 19, Mr. Trump’s campaign had already prepared an internal memo on many of the outlandish claims about the company, Dominion Voting Systems, and the separate software company, Smartmatic. The memo had determined that those allegations were untrue.

Even though the memo was hastily assembled, it rebutted a series of allegations that Ms. Powell and others were making in public. It found:

    That Dominion did not use voting technology from the software company, Smartmatic, in the 2020 election.

• That Dominion had no direct ties to Venezuela or to Mr. Soros.
  
  And that there was no evidence that Dominion’s leadership had connections to left-wing “antifa” activists, as Ms. Powell and others had claimed.

It remains unclear how widely the memo was circulated among Trump campaign staff members. According to the court documents, Mr. Giuliani said in a deposition that he had not seen the memo before he gave his presentation in Washington, and he questioned the motives of those who had prepared it.

“They wanted Trump to lose because they could raise more money,” Mr. Giuliani was quoted as saying in the deposition.

But at the time that the internal report was prepared, Mr. Giuliani and Ms. Powell were both “active supervisors,” as he put it in his deposition, in the Trump campaign’s broader plan to challenge the election results — an effort that eventually included more than 60 failed lawsuits filed across the country. While Ms. Powell soon went her own way in claiming that Dominion had conspired to steal the election, Mr. Giuliani continued working closely with Mr. Trump and his campaign, ultimately changing strategies and seeking to persuade state legislatures to overturn the popular vote.

You'd think the people that put the memo together would notice that Giuliani and Powell were saying this stuff and bring up the memo...hey didn't you folks see this?

[LFC]

On the Russian campaign cash scheme TPM asks the right question.

It’s Been 5 Years Since Russian Cash Was Allegedly Funneled Into The Trump Campaign. Why Wasn’t It Charged Until Now?

[LFC]

Trump's best lawyers are bolting. I wonder what the total of overdue billing is.

Civil and criminal investigations in New York and Georgia. Defamation suits from two women. A civil suit over misuse of inauguration funds. A number of complaints related to the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. And a new lawsuit related to the disclosure of the former president’s taxes.

Donald Trump is facing even more legal challenges than normal—which is saying something for a man so litigious and familiar with legal duress. But even though he is someone who tends to keep the same people around him for longer than he should, a number of the ex-president’s longtime, high-profile lawyers have recently parted ways with Trumpworld.

When Trump sued The New York Times and his niece Mary earlier this week, the attorney who filed the lawsuit was a relatively unknown lawyer. Alina Habba, based in the same town as the Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, New Jersey, comes with a résumé far less ostentatious than the legal CVs that the twice-impeached former president has come to expect. But Trump appears to be leaning on Habba now to take on his niece and the Times reporters who disclosed some of Trump’s previous tax filings.

At the same time, Habba’s ascension in Trump’s legal hierarchy comes alongside the conspicuous fall of another: the Gawker-killing celebrity lawyer Charles Harder, whom the ex-president and members of his family have relied upon for years to go after journalists, authors, and major book publishers Trump felt had crossed the line.

In previous years, a case against New York Times reporters and a family member who Trump alleged was the source for the journalists would have easily fallen to Harder, a lawyer the 45th U.S. president once lauded as a hard-charging attack dog of the rich and the powerful.

But according to two people with knowledge of the matter, Trump said he wanted to fire Harder earlier this year, having grown frustrated with what he viewed as his famous lawyer’s insufficient number of recent “wins,” and the good amount of money Trump had sent Harder’s way.

Not long after Trump began privately demanding Harder’s exile this summer, court documents began noting his replacement as the former president’s counsel of record.

For months, Trump has been bleeding or discarding top legal talent, according to court records and various interviews. And this comes at a time when the ex-president and his inner sanctum are drowning in criminal investigations, and lawsuit after lawsuit after lawsuit.

The reasons for some of the individual departures from the MAGA legal orbit remain unclear. Trump, who often detests paying his bills and legal fees, has a track record of essentially turning his back on former lawyers (including Rudy Giuliani), having tempestuous falling-outs with one-time confidants and attorneys (such as Michael Cohen), and aggressively turning on multiple U.S. attorneys general who he himself had nominated.

During Trump’s time in the White House, his administration and his legal teams were known for a high turnover rate. In his first year out of power, the pattern appears to be holding.

Earlier this month, Trump alerted New York state’s highest court that his longtime lawyer Marc Kasowitz was no longer acting as his attorney in a high-profile legal dispute between the former president and Summer Zervos, a former Apprentice contestant who is suing Trump for defamation after he denied her claims that he made unwanted sexual advances against her, including groping and kissing her without her consent in 2007.

For years, Kasowitz has had his hands in numerous legal cases on Trump’s behalf, representing him in divorces, casino disputes with billionaire Carl Icahn, and campaign- and Russia-related matters. Earlier this year, Reuters noted that the Trump campaign had paid his firm $1.6 million between November 2020 and February 2021 alone.

[LFC]

The New York AG's office is still looking to tear down the wall protecting Trump's criminal enterprise.

As the dual civil and criminal New York investigations into the Trump Organization roll on, a New York state judge unsealed a court order on Friday giving Donald Trump’s company and some of his top lieutenants an ultimatum: Either turn over all the documents to comply with subpoenas from the New York Attorney General’s office, or you’ll have to pay for a third party to do it for you.

In the filing, the Trump Organization agreed that if the NYAG believes the company has not fully complied with its requests—as prosecutors have long complained—the business will hire a firm to go through electronic records belonging to its top executives, including ex-President Donald Trump and his family.

New York Attorney General Letitia James put out a statement on Friday morning noting that this agreement caps a long-running effort to get the company to comply with her office’s demands for key documents in its ongoing investigation.

“For more than a year now, the Trump Organization has failed to adequately respond to our subpoenas, hiding behind procedural delays and excuses. Once again, the court has ordered that the Trump Organization must turn over the information and documents we are seeking, otherwise face an independent third-party that will ensure that takes place. Our work will continue undeterred because no one is above the law,” she said in the statement.

The order regards key documents from 25 people with ties to the company, including Trump himself, three of his children (Don Jr., Eric, and Ivanka), his personal assistant Rhona Graff, and top officers who are already under the microscope in the DA and AG criminal investigation. Some of those names likely to turn heads include chief operating officer Matthew Calamari, company controller Jeffrey S. McConney, and longtime chief financial officer Allen Weisselberg, who was indicted in July by Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance on charges of tax fraud.

The agreement was originally filed on Sept. 3, but was sealed 10 days later—one day before an attorney for Eric Trump withdrew from the case. The judge unsealed the agreement on Friday following a request from legal news outlet Law360.

[goldenvalley]

Sept 24, 2021 19:20:38 GMT LFC said:

The New York AG's office is still looking to tear down the wall protecting Trump's criminal enterprise.

As the dual civil and criminal New York investigations into the Trump Organization roll on, a New York state judge unsealed a court order on Friday giving Donald Trump’s company and some of his top lieutenants an ultimatum: Either turn over all the documents to comply with subpoenas from the New York Attorney General’s office, or you’ll have to pay for a third party to do it for you.

In the filing, the Trump Organization agreed that if the NYAG believes the company has not fully complied with its requests—as prosecutors have long complained—the business will hire a firm to go through electronic records belonging to its top executives, including ex-President Donald Trump and his family.

New York Attorney General Letitia James put out a statement on Friday morning noting that this agreement caps a long-running effort to get the company to comply with her office’s demands for key documents in its ongoing investigation.

“For more than a year now, the Trump Organization has failed to adequately respond to our subpoenas, hiding behind procedural delays and excuses. Once again, the court has ordered that the Trump Organization must turn over the information and documents we are seeking, otherwise face an independent third-party that will ensure that takes place. Our work will continue undeterred because no one is above the law,” she said in the statement.

The order regards key documents from 25 people with ties to the company, including Trump himself, three of his children (Don Jr., Eric, and Ivanka), his personal assistant Rhona Graff, and top officers who are already under the microscope in the DA and AG criminal investigation. Some of those names likely to turn heads include chief operating officer Matthew Calamari, company controller Jeffrey S. McConney, and longtime chief financial officer Allen Weisselberg, who was indicted in July by Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance on charges of tax fraud.

The agreement was originally filed on Sept. 3, but was sealed 10 days later—one day before an attorney for Eric Trump withdrew from the case. The judge unsealed the agreement on Friday following a request from legal news outlet Law360.

It'll be years before some concise sense is made of all these records.  It's why white collar crime gets a pass and/or plea bargains out.  Prosecutors know a jury won't sit still long enough to get a long complicated set of facts presented and put into context.  Much easier to go after someone who pulls out a gun in a convenience store, plus that sort of defendant doesn't have money to pay for lawyers to confuse the issues.

[LFC]

Nice dig, Liz.

Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) on Sunday hit back at former President Trump ahead of her upcoming fundraiser that former President George W. Bush will headline, following the Arizona sham election “audit” that unsurprisingly confirmed Joe Biden’s victory once again.

On Thursday night, Trump’s Save America PAC blasted out an email to its subscribers with the subject line: “ICYMI: Must-See Photo.” The email, which was issued a day after news broke of Bush’s scheduled appearance at a fundraiser for Cheney next month, only contained a Photoshopped image of Bush’s face on Cheney’s head.

A few days later, Cheney shot back at Trump by tweeting a picture of Bush with the caption: “I like Republican presidents who win re-election.” Cheney posted her tweet days after the sham “audit” of Maricopa County, Arizona merely proved that Biden earned more votes than the official result.

[LFC]

Stephanie Grisham, the infamous White House Press Secretary who never held a press conference, wrote her book and is now on her rehabilitation tour.

Stephanie Grisham was grilled on Good Morning America about her tenure in former President Trump’s White House—and admits she regrets “enabling” the administration’s lies. George Stephanopoulos asked her: “You are talking about this cultural culture of casual dishonesty at the White House, so you were, as press secretary, even if you weren't getting briefings, enabling that culture, weren't you?” “I’ve reflected on that, and I regret that,” replied Grisham, who didn’t quit until the last two weeks of the administration. “Especially now when watching him, and so many people, push the false election narrative. I now want to, in whatever way I can, educate the public about the behaviors within the White House because it does look like he’s going to try to run in 2024.”

[LFC]

Looks like Trump went overboard with the NDAs.

Just last week, the Trump NDA regime suffered its most stinging defeat, with a New York arbitrator ruling against Trump in a case that his campaign had fought for three years.

The case stemmed from a 2018 lawsuit the campaign brought against former White House adviser and The Apprentice contestant Omarosa Manigault Newman for her tell-all book, Unhinged. In a massive blow to Trump, the arbitrator ruled that the campaign’s NDA was too expansive and vague to enforce, ordering the campaign to reimburse Manigault for three years of legal fees.

The arbitrator, Andrew Brown, said in his decision that the campaign’s NDA went too far by forcing Manigault “to never say anything remotely critical of Mr. Trump, his family or his or his family members’ businesses for the rest of her life.” Brown ruled that “such a burden is certainly unreasonable.”

But this ruling is notable for far more than its implications for Manigault. Namely, it could provide a precedent for MAGA defectors and other spurned associates who, intimidated by the vengefully litigious former president, have kept quiet about some of their inside knowledge.

“This is going to have a massive impact, and it’s because of the way Trump treats people when he’s done with them,” Manigault told The Daily Beast on Sunday, pointing to public humiliations such as getting fired by tweet.

“I really do feel that folks who have been mistreated or embarrassed, who certainly have information to share will go, ‘Hmm—well they haven’t heard this story,’” Manigault said. “There were so many people in the room when he was doing things that were so clearly unlawful, unethical, unhinged—whatever ‘un-’ you want to use—especially people in the White House. It’s not because they’re unloyal or don't care about the office or the country; it’s because of how he treated people.”

Miles Michael, who worked as an art director on Trump’s NBC reality series, The Apprentice, told The Daily Beast on Sunday that he felt empowered to talk publicly and on the record about his former boss, despite the NDA he and many other staffers had signed.

“Politics aside, the way he uses NDAs seems exorbitant,” Michael said. “I last signed one on The Apprentice probably [around] 2015. Why should people be stopped from talking about such a public figure based on an NDA that is ostensibly protecting a completely irrelevant TV show? But ultimately I think it’s about sharing my personal experience about Trump and Family and how I personally feel like their morals are selective and Trump himself is [an] opportunist.”

[LFC]

Once again Trump's CFO is claiming ignorance. It's becoming a pattern.

When Donald Trump’s charity was caught making an illegal political donation years ago, his longtime right-hand finance man, Allen Weisselberg, signed a letter to law enforcement that chalked it up as a mere mistake. In reality, as The Daily Beast recently revealed, employees were well aware that the money was going to a Florida politician.

When the Trump Foundation made its annual tax filings with New York state that incorrectly listed that donation—making it seem like it was going to a legitimate nonprofit—Weisselberg signed off on the document, he said, without actually reviewing it.

By scribbling his signature with a thin black pen, he affirmed that he’d “reviewed this report” to make sure it was “true, correct, and complete.” As Weisselberg would later say, the truth was he hadn’t even read it.

“I may have just glanced through it,” he told investigators during a sworn interview in October 2017.

In fact, Weisselberg claimed to not even realize he was one of only three board members of the multimillion-dollar charity for 15 years.

“I'm not a director,” he swore. “I’m just a treasurer.”

Such is the standard operating procedure of the now-indicted chief financial officer of the Trump Organization. Although his current legal strategy in his tax fraud case has yet to be revealed—with his lawyers merely describing the prosecution as “flawed”—this past behavior shows that his primary defense has basically been gross negligence. A disregard for oversight. Carelessness. Incompetence.

[LFC]

Sidney Powell is now persona non MAGAt.

Being Sidney Powell is harder than it used to be.

Once, she was a key player in Donald Trump’s inner circle. These days, she might have trouble just getting in the front door.

The “Kraken” queen long ago removed herself from acceptability among the more respectable GOP circles with a constant stream of bizarre election conspiracy theories. But knowledgeable sources tell The Daily Beast that the places she’s unwelcome now include Trump properties, where advisers look to keep the former president away from her.

Her unrelenting antics have put her on an informal list of people to intercept should they ever appear, or if they even just try to call the 45th U.S. president.

Powell is facing a number of legal headaches. She and her nonprofit, Defending the Republic, are both named as defendants in a billion-dollar defamation suit by Dominion Voting Systems. She’s been sanctioned by a Michigan judge for filing a frivolous election suit in the state, faces calls for her disbarment in Texas, and her nonprofit is still waiting to find out its punishment for running afoul of Florida’s rules for charity fundraising. Despite the mounting challenges, Powell was still posting new election conspiracy theories to her nonprofit’s website as recently as Wednesday.

MAGAworld and the conservative movement have shown themselves to be disturbingly fertile ground for election-related conspiracy theories and lies, particularly those used to crack down on voting rights. And yet Powell’s behavior and some of her debunked claims have—nearly a full year after Election Night 2020—continued to alienate her from other leading Trump loyalists, MAGA celebs, and the broader movement.

And yet, Powell’s conduct has somehow proven just a little too embarrassing for many of them—including, it appears, Donald Trump himself.

Two lawyers who currently work for Trump or in the former president’s inner orbit say they want absolutely nothing to do with her and have cautioned others in MAGAland to do the same. One said they’d recently deleted her phone number.

[LFC]

"Daddy, make me the president of the World Bank. Please daddy! Pleeeeaaaaase! I've been such a good girl!"

In January 2019, Jim Yong Kim threw the global financial development sector into a state of disarray: The former academic and health official announced he would be stepping down the following month from his role as president of the World Bank, opting instead for a cushier gig at a Wall Street private equity firm. For an institution that was already struggling with heightened competition from China and private capital, Kim’s departure — which came as a total surprise — was seen as a setback, as it handed an opportunity to choose a new leader to President Donald Trump, creating worries that the America First champion would pick somebody ill suited for the global role.

As the White House moved to select its new leader, one name very dear to Trump’s heart kept floating around: his daughter Ivanka Trump. That never came to fruition, though, with Ivanka later telling reporters that though her father had raised the subject, she declined to pursue the position as she was “happy with the work” she was doing as his senior adviser.

Ivanka Trump did, however, aid Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney in the selection process. When the Treasury Department announced Under Secretary of the Treasury for International Affairs David Malpass as the World Bank’s new president, Ivanka released a statement predicting Malpass would be “an extraordinary leader of the World Bank.” (Malpass was in fact a controversial pick, due in large part to his past criticisms of the World Bank.)

And no, I don't believe for a second that she willingly declined the position. Where the hell would Trump have gotten such a lame-brained idea in the first place? The most obvious source is his lame-brained offspring. I suspect multiple people told Trump he and Ivanka would be torn apart if they tried it.

[LFC]

This is just so ... Trumpy.

The Saudi royal family showered Donald J. Trump and his entourage on his first trip abroad as president with dozens of presents, including three robes made with white tiger and cheetah fur, and a dagger with a handle that appeared to be ivory.

Little that followed went right.

A White House lawyer determined that possession of the furs and dagger most likely violated the Endangered Species Act, but the Trump administration held onto them and failed to disclose them as gifts received from a foreign government.

On the last full day of Mr. Trump’s presidency, the White House handed them over to the General Services Administration — the wrong agency — rather than the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which seized the gifts this summer.

At that point, there was a surprise.

The furs, from an oil-rich family worth billions of dollars, were fake.

“Wildlife inspectors and special agents determined the linings of the robes were dyed to mimic tiger and cheetah patterns and were not comprised of protected species,” said Tyler Cherry, a spokesman for the Interior Department, which oversees the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Officials at the Saudi Embassy in Washington declined to comment.

The tale of the furs is but one example of how gift exchanges between the United States and foreign leaders — a highly regulated process intended to shield administrations from questions of impropriety — devolved into sometimes risible shambles during the Trump administration.

[Bact PhD]

Unreported gifts to Trump and his cohorts? I’m shocked, SHOCKED I tell you!

The furs turn out to be phony (assuming what was turned in to the GSA weren’t constructed after the initial gift for the express purpose of throwing the bureaucrats off the trail)? HAHAHAHA (I’m reminded of an opening line from many a Classic Match Game ‘7x question: Dumb Donald was soooo dumb…)

[goldenvalley]

Oct 12, 2021 18:16:21 GMT Bact PhD said:

Unreported gifts to Trump and his cohorts? I’m shocked, SHOCKED I tell you!

The furs turn out to be phony (assuming what was turned in to the GSA weren’t constructed after the initial gift for the express purpose of throwing the bureaucrats off the trail)? HAHAHAHA (I’m reminded of an opening line from many a Classic Match Game ‘7x question: Dumb Donald was soooo dumb…)

I like this line of thinking.  Trump has the real furs and had the fake ones made to give to the GSA! 

[jackd]

That might even be true.  Some people are saying, as the Donald might say.

[pnwguy]

Oct 12, 2021 23:07:00 GMT jackd said:

That might even be true.  Some people are saying, as the Donald might say.

I figure the Saudis assumed their "glowing orb" routine was enough to keep Dumpster unaware of any fakery.  After all, they assumed dozens of women have been faking orgasms with him for decades.

[AnBr]

Attorneys general take aim at DeJoy's USPS service slowdowns

[andydp]

Ed note: Has anyone considered changing the thread from "Final" skid marks to Festering Skid Marks  ?  Nothing seems final from that administration.  Peel off one layer and another slimier one is right below it.

I guess its a case of "everyone else in this place is doing it".

The State Department is investigating whether Trump appointees stole gift bags intended for foreign leaders from the canceled 2020 G7 summit, report says

The State Department's internal watchdog is investigating whether Trump-era appointees stole gift bags on their way out the door that were meant for foreign leaders attending the 2020 G7 summit, which was canceled, The New York Times reported.

The Times uncovered the previously unreported inquiry from the Office of the Inspector General at the State Department as part of a larger investigation, published on Monday, into missing gifts from foreign leaders and items that were intended to be given to them during the Trump administration.

Nonpartisan career officials said they saw their political-appointee colleagues making off with the bags, paid for at taxpayers' expense, from the department's gift vault during the transition to the Biden administration, The Times said.


www.businessinsider.com/state-dept-probing-if-trump-officials-stole-g7-gift-bags-report-2021-10

[LFC]

Oct 19, 2021 11:46:35 GMT andydp said:

I guess its a case of "everyone else in this place is doing it".

But across administrations nobody did it like the Trumpies. The grift was vast.

In all, Politico reported in August that the department took inventory of the gift vault after the transition and found that at least 20 "types" of missing items from the vault, with the exact number unknown. The number of missing items stands in contrast to the Bush and Obama administrations, after which there were no items missing from the vault or unaccounted for, The Times said.