Roger Stone tries to auction off 'Trump autograph NFT' to pay for his legal bills

Sky Palma
December 22, 2021



Shutterstock


Longtime Donald Trump ally Roger Stone is auctioning off a copy of a 1990s magazine cover he says was signed by Trump in an effort to pay his legal bills, POLITICO reports.

If a bidder exceeds $20,000 dollars, the bidder will get the physical version of the magazine along with “one of only one” digital copy, which Stone calls an NFT (non-fungible token).

While POLITICO was unable to confirm the magazine with Trump's signature is real, Stone insists that it is.

As of this Wednesday, there were no bids.



“Between the cost of defending myself in 6 remaining merit-less but sensationalized harassment civil suits and the J-6 [January 6th] Witchhunt my legal expenses are formidable,” he told POLITICO. He added that the “cancer therapies not covered by insurance for my wife are also not inexpensive.”

Read the full report over at POLITICO.

https://www.rawstory.com/roger-stone-legal-bills/

 

Donald Trump and his family fleeced America: Why aren’t they being held accountable?

Dean Obeidallah, Salon
December 31, 2021



President Donald Trump and Ivanka Trump, official White House Photo by Joyce N. Boghosian.



Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist David Cay Johnston is not giving up on exposing how Donald Trump and his family fleeced America while he was in the White House. To that end, the bestselling author is back with a meticulously researched new book, "The Big Cheat: How Donald Trump Fleeced America and Enriched Himself and His Family."

I recently spoke to Johnston about his new book for "Salon Talks" and one thing is clear: His enthusiasm to see Trump held accountable has not waned just because the Trump presidency is over. In "The Big Cheat," he uncovers details on Trump's scams that began with his inaugural committee and ran straight through his "Stop the Steal" fundraising grift. In between, Johnston notes a range of corruption by Trump, such as stopping in front of his Washington hotel during the inaugural parade in 2017 to send a clear message: "If you want something from the Trump administration, you will first pay tribute to Donald." As Johnston writes, spending money at Trump's hotel was one way to do just that.

Johnston also takes aim at Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, who saw their collective wealth rise by somewhere between $200 million and $600 million while working in the White House. This wasn't by happenstance, as Johnston details: It was because Javanka cashed in on Trump's presidency, with sweetheart deals from the Chinese government, the United Arab Emirates and more.

In our conversation, which you can watch or read below, the nearly 50-year veteran reporter also lays out safeguards that Congress should enact to prevent Trump, or another morally bankrupt president, from ever repeating this Trumpian fleecing of America again. But one of the best deterrents to future corruption, Johnston argues, would be the criminal prosecution of Donald Trump himself. "I would be eternally in favor of a long prison sentence," he told me.

The following conversation has been lightly edited for clarity and length.

Your book has granular details about Trump, some I knew and some I had no idea about. Let's start at the beginning: You go into great detail about the inaugural committee. Trump raised double the amount Obama did, and there are questions about where that money is. The D.C. attorney general is suing the Trump campaign right now about this very thing. Tell us more.

Well, Donald Trump raised $107 million for his inaugural, that we know of. The previous record was Obama in his first inaugural: $53 million. The inaugural for Obama had eight or nine balls. It had lots of events. They had numerous headline musical acts whose expenses had to be paid. Donald Trump had the skimpiest, cheapest possible thing you can imagine. Two balls, with almost nobody around, and yet all that extra money: $107 million. One of the key stories I tell is about Stephanie Wolkoff, who was Melania's best friend, and who is someone who puts on events. She's the person who puts on the biggest social event for the American elite each year, the Met gala in New York. And she was pulled aside and asked by Rick Gates, the corrupt deputy to the corrupt Paul Manafort, to take money off the books because they didn't want to report it, meaning foreign money.

It took her a second. She was so stunned by this. And then she said, "No, I'm not going to do anything like that." So that's why I say they took in $107 million, that we know of. I think they took in more money than that. And I hope we find out through the attorney general's investigation — but also the Trump White House dirtied up Stephanie when they knew this was going to become public. They said, "Well, you got $26 million." No, she got $480,000, which for the kind of work she did may sound to most Americans like a big fee. But that's, in that business, a more than reasonable fee. And all the rest of the money was directed to Trump cronies. She was told, "Here's the money. Now write checks to these people." And that's how the people around Trump were profiteering right at the start. That very moment, at the inauguration, they've got their fingers in there to grab the money.

Not only that, Trump used the inaugural parade to do a commercial for his hotel. I think people have forgotten it, but it was right in our face all the time.

None of the TV networks explained when this happened what was going on. I was astonished by that. When Obama was elected, the crowds lining the road to the White House were curb to building, packed thick as sardines. When Trump came, in many places there were more law enforcement and military guards than there were cheers. But when they got to a place about five blocks from the White House, the motorcade stopped and everybody got out, Melania in that beautiful ice blue dress that she was wearing. The family took a two-minute turn on the pavement.

What every lobbyist, every foreign agent, knew was they did it in front of the Trump Washington Hotel, the old post office. And Trump, by law, should not have had that lease. It should have been taken away from him. And I explained this, how the bureaucrats avoided this in the book and were later taken to task for it, though nothing happened to their careers.

But the message was very clear. If you want something from the Trump administration, you will first pay tribute to Donald. And his restaurant, in the first 90 days, took in money at the rate of $25 million a year. Anybody in the restaurant business knows the thought of being able to take in $25 million in a single restaurant is mind boggling. The Saudi government took out two floors at rack rates. When the head of T-Mobile's American division wanted Trump to approve the merger with Sprint, he made a big show of repeatedly going there, sending his executives there, spending money there. There are parts of three chapters that talk about the $26 billion favor Trump did for this guy who made a big show of going there.

Right until the very end, it doesn't end and it continues to this day. Tell people about how Stop the Steal turned into a scam to enrich Donald Trump.

Donald Trump has raised somewhere close to a half a billion dollars at this point, through his "Stop the Steal" claims that the election was stolen. Of course there's no evidence of that and all sorts of Republicans have said there was nothing improper. We've had lots of audits and recounts and recounts. It's all nonsense, but he's raised a lot of money off it. He said, "I need the money to hire lawyers to stop the steal." He spent $9 million on lawyers. Well, that's a lot of money, except that he took in close to a half a billion. And Donald can spend that money on himself under our laws. So I call Donald today America's "beggar in chief." I don't know if you get these, but every day I get texts and emails from Donald Trump asking for money. I love the ones from Don Jr. that start off: "I just spoke to my father. You're the only person in America who didn't respond to my note earlier today, and Dad asked me to call you since you've been such a generous supporter in the past." It's just a con.

And we're supposed to believe that Donald Trump Jr. didn't tell his dad about the meeting with the Russians in Trump Tower, with the person who announced that they were there on behalf of the Kremlin to help Trump defeat Hillary Clinton. It isn't just that they were Russians, They said they were proposing a criminal scheme under American law in which — you're a lawyer, you know what I'm about to say! The duty of any American made that offer by a foreign power, especially a hostile foreign power, is to pick up the phone, call the FBI and say, "I need to speak to someone in counterintelligence."

The lack of accountability in all of Trump World is what is so concerning going forward. You document that Jared and Ivanka had unpaid jobs in the White House, but they made somewhere between $200 million and $600 million while in the White House. As you know, Jared was not a good businessman going into the White House. Let's start with him: How did Jared make all this money while in the White House?

Well, before Donald Trump took office, Jared had this problem with 666 Fifth Avenue, which is right down the street from Trump Tower. He paid $1.8 billion, 99 percent of it borrowed money. And the building two years later was worth maybe only $600 million. Talk about being underwater in a disaster. So he goes to the government of Qatar. America's most important military base in the Middle East is in Qatar. Our central command base is there. And he says, "Wouldn't you loan me $800 million under very favorable terms?" And the Qataris said, "No, we're not that stupid." What happens next? Donald Trump is president. He turns against Qatar. He begins arguing in favor of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, who are scared to death of the Qatar government. Trump accuses the Qataris of financing terrorism. They finance two terrorist groups, they absolutely do. But the Saudis finance 60 of them, the State Department says, and with vastly more money. So this is absurd, and it's indicative of Donald Trump's total ignorance about these matters.

But in Jared's case, he got people from the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia to bail him out of his problem, and that's why they went on the attack against Qatar. Later, the Kushner family — who are very much like the Trumps, they're both white-collar organized crime families — got 18 sweetheart loans guaranteed by a federal loan agency. You or I would never have gotten such loans, interest-only for 10 years, which increased the Kushner cash flow and increased your and my risk as taxpayers.

We would never have gotten these deals, and nor would they but for Donald Trump being in the White House. And, Dean, to make a point here, these facts that I report all came out, one way or another. But something was in the Washington Post, and then the Wall Street Journal, the L.A Times, the Seattle Times. But you never saw pictures. So I took all these threads and wove them into a tapestry, a narrative, so you could understand it. In fact, the Washington Post gave me a rave review on Dec. 5, including the line pointing out that I long ago predicted Donald Trump would not leave the White House peacefully. I was told it was crazy for me to say that. I was vindicated.

I think with what we went through with Trump, that at this point if anyone says you're being over the top, they're denying reality. Your book is one-stop shopping for some of these scandals. Share a little more about Ivanka. It seems to me she has escaped the spotlight out in the post-Trump world, but she may have profited more than anyone beyond Donald.

Well, Ivanka, with whom Donald has an incredibly close relationship, got these trademarks in China in rapid time. If you want a trademark, a service mark, a patent from the Chinese government, you have to spend a fortune on the right Chinese lawyers who are members of the Communist Party, and then you still might not get it. When President Xi was coming to meet with Donald at Mar-a-Lago, there was just rapid-fire approval of these things, the functional equivalent of overnight. And among the patents and other intellectual property rights Ivanka got, some were for voting machines. What a strange thing to get from a country that's a dictatorship, not a democracy! Now, she had a clothing business, and my younger daughters who are in their 30s tell me that her dresses were actually quite nice, but they weren't selling in the department stores. So they were all taken out of the stores, they tore out the labels and put in different labels and put them back in the stores. And they all sold, because they were basically good dresses.

But most of her business enterprises failed because she's incompetent. There have been lots of reports, especially in Vanity Fair, that she thinks she's going to become president of the United States. And there's a wonderful YouTube video of her with Christine Lagarde, the head of the European Central Bank, and several women who are foreign ministers or finance ministers of foreign governments. It's very clear, when she tries to walk into their crowd that their body language says, "You have no reason to be with us. We're accomplished women. Go away."

"The Big Cheat" also discusses how Trump and his family cheated not only in terms of personal profit, but cheated us out of things. One that jumped out is Steve Bannon. As you know, we didn't get justice for Steve Bannon. Could you remind people, who may have forgotten completely that he was charged with federal crimes by the Justice Department. He earned his pardon for what he did in the post-election stuff.

One of the very first organizations to report about this charity scam was the one I run, DC Report. There was a seriously disabled veteran of the Middle East wars named Brian Kolfage who was raising money to build the wall: "Congress is not going to fund the wall, we'll raise the money." Never mind that it would cost tens of billions of dollars. There's no possibility of that. His promise was, "Not one dollar will go to me or anyone else. It'll just be to build the wall." Donald Trump Jr. and his girlfriend, Kimberly Guilfoyle, fly out to New Mexico to a fundraiser for this, to raise more money. They show off this thing they've built, which is inconsequential garbage that wouldn't stop anybody on the Rio Grande. Steve Bannon is involved and Steve Bannon steals $1 million from the charity. The government has the documentation. Kolfage bought himself a yacht and jewelry and spent $350,000 on himself.

The Justice Department indicted these people, and Donald Trump gave Steve Bannon a pardon for his million-dollar theft from charity. Of course Donald Trump stole from charity, as I show in the book repeatedly. And the other three guys, by the way, the ones who weren't part of Donald's coterie, they're going to go on trial and they're probably going to get prison time once they're convicted. But there's no shame among these people. Absolutely no shame. Donald Trump, if he steals money from a baby, would say, "Well, it's my money. What are you complaining about? It's my money." Donald creates his own reality. In his own mind, he shouldn't just be president for life with total powers. He talked about that: "I have the power to do anything as president." He believes he should run the whole world, because everybody else is an idiot.

Be glad you're not Donald Trump, Dean, because I've known the man for 33 years, and he is a miserable human being. Try to find him laughing when it isn't forced or for dramatic effect. It doesn't happen. I've tried to get him to tell jokes in the past. He can't tell a joke. He's a miserable, sad story.

It's a lack of humanity, when you can't tell jokes and can't laugh at jokes about yourself. I think it's great that you point on the book that Steve Bannon stole from Trump supporters, who sincerely were giving money to build a wall because they believed in it. We could debate the policy there, but it doesn't matter. They were giving money because they believed in the wall, and Steve Bannon stole it. We know from other reporting now that Bannon played a huge role from Election Day in November to the insurrection on Jan. 6. He earned that pardon, and this was a quid pro quo relationship if you ever saw one. Trump only pardoned one guy in that scam, his BFF.

Donald is even more corrupt than Steve Bannon, hard as it is to believe that. During his campaign, there were people who sent in money. Rush Limbaugh told the story of one man, Stacy Blatt. He's dying. He's in hospice care, his monthly income is $1,000. He sends $500 to Donald Trump, after Rush Limbaugh says Trump needs money to overturn the election. The next thing that happens is the Trump people tap his bank account again and again and again and again until they take every penny the dying man has. He meant to give one contribution, a very generous one. They did this to thousands of people, thousands of them. If you or I did that, we would be arrested. I don't know why Donald Trump and the people around him haven't been arrested for this. This was thievery, plain and simple.

It's like RICO. This is a racketeering plot. It's remarkable. What happens if Donald Trump somehow gets back in the White House? Based on you knowing him for 30 years and writing about him, what do you think he does?

Oh, this time around he will not be holding back at all. He will put people in place and it will be the end of American democracy. He will make himself our dictator, which I've been warning about since 2015, when he first announced. He won't need the support of the military to pull it off, because he'll do it in a soft way. But he will see to it that all your rights are gone. And right now, you're seeing the Republican Party — which is no longer the Republican Party, it's the Trump party — passing all these laws, including, in some states, where if Republicans in control and don't like an election because Democrats won, they can throw out the results. That's inherently anti-American. At the same time, Donald keeps pressing about why he should be back in the White House, and making up ridiculous lies about what's going on.

And in all this, we shouldn't lose sight of the fact that the Mueller report, even with all the shackles put on Mueller — which most people, I don't think appreciate, where he disclosed that they were not allowed to pursue lots of things — the opening line of that report says what they found was systematic interference in the 2016 election by the Russian government. It's the very first thing they say. And Don Jr. and Trump's campaign manager and his son-in-law and others took part in a meeting with someone who declared they were an agent of the Kremlin trying to win the election for Donald Trump.

There's a foreign power here that has benefited. And it's not that Vladimir Putin wanted Donald Trump. That's not his goal. He didn't want Hillary Clinton, because she was going to make him give up Crimea if she could, the only violent takeover of property in Europe since World War II. But he wants to get rid of democracy. And he's on the record all over the place about this. Vladimir Putin believes all countries should be run by dictators, and Donald Trump was an instrument to help Putin. And by the way, Russian state TV, which is totally controlled by the Kremlin, said that Donald Trump was Putin's puppet. And the hosts on that show, the producers, they're all still doing really well, which tells you that was just fine with Vladimir Putin. Donald Trump is his puppet.

Are you surprised the Justice Department has not charged Donald Trump? And if he's ultimately not charged, what is the message that sends to Donald Trump and Trump-like Republicans going forward?

Well, I am very troubled by this, because if the law applies equally to everyone, then it shouldn't matter that he was president. On the other hand, it's pretty clear that Merrick Garland has taken the position that, absent something he has to act on, he doesn't want to get in the business of indicting a former president, because that road leads to a lot of problems we don't have. But Israel indicted Benjamin Netanyahu, the French have indicted former presidents, and a number of democratic governments have put former leaders in prison.

With Donald Trump, I think they should pursue the case that Michael Cohen went to prison for. They have a perfect case. I don't know how a jury would do anything but convict Donald Trump. My guess is, though, that the internal argument is, "Well, it's relatively small potatoes." They brought the case against Michael Cohen to punish him for breaking with Donald Trump, as part of the effort to control him.

I'm confident, however, that the Manhattan district attorney — who has hired the best expert on RICO in the country — will indict Trump under the New York state RICO law. A tax charge he can get out of by saying, "I didn't understand what was going on," even though he claims to be the world's greatest expert on taxes. But a state RICO charge — ordinary people can understand racketeering. They've got plenty of evidence of it, so why haven't they done it yet? Well, when they got the document dump, Trump held it up for four years, and it turns out it wasn't a million pages — it was 5 million pages. And you know, as a lawyer, they've got to look at every single page. So something doesn't hit them as a surprise at trial. That's a lot of research.

That's a lot of Bates stamping, as we used to say.

A very little story about this. Thirty years ago, after I revealed Donald was not a billionaire, there was a particular document I knew he was going to have to put in the public record. And the morning of the day that was to happen, a bunch of guys wheel in an entire wall of banker's boxes, the whole wall, like six high. And Donald taps me on the shoulder and says, "Lots of luck, pal." So anyhow, I go to the men's room at one point, when I see one of the detectives go there. We stand in the urinals and he says, "Box 14, J69." Because everybody knows what I'm looking for.

So when the meeting ends, I go to the flack for the Casino Control Commission and said, "I want to look at the files." He said, "Oh, it's going to take us months to sort through." I said, "No, no. I just want this." I pulled out box 16 and said, "I just want to look at J69." He looked at me and said, "Oh God, you're going to make my life miserable today." I said, "Sorry about that." That's what Donald does. He dumps all sorts of stuff to avoid you seeing the thing you wanted.

And he hopes you don't find it. What's your reaction to Trump's media platform, Truth Social. It's gotten a billion dollars from investors. Does it smell like another scam to you?

I think it is. In fact, the news just broke that the SPAC, the special purpose acquisition corporation that they're using, is under investigation. A lot of these SPACs have turned out to be frauds. Why doesn't Donald just do it an upfront way? In fact, why doesn't he just fund it himself, given all the money he's taken in? Well, he's going to need that money to pay criminal defense lawyers when he's indicted, and to live on. But I also don't think it's going to be successful.

Donald's audience is in fact shrinking. His audience is intense, people are willing to die for him. Somebody said the other day that the difference between a religion and a cult is that in a religion your savior dies for you and in a cult you die for your savior. But it is shrinking, and over time will continue to shrink, barring some unexpected development. But the people who remain, they're intense and some of them are dangerous, as we saw on Jan. 6. They will literally kill people in Donald's name.

One last thing, David: After Watergate, there were a vast amount of reforms put into place by Congress, ethics reforms, campaign finance reforms. As of now, there have been some introduced, but nothing really passed. First of all, are you surprised by that? And second, what would you like to see, in broad strokes, to prevent Trump himself — or another Trump — from doing what he did in office?

Yeah, I've been at this so long. After Watergate I was covering the reforms and they've all backfired. They made our campaign finance situation vastly worse than it was when Nixon was in office. They weren't carefully thought through in how they would be manipulated. In the end of the book, I provide solutions for a whole variety of issues. And many of them are actually quite simple. I'll give you one example. There are people who say, "We should pass a law making people who run for president reveal their tax returns." You can't do that. The Constitution doesn't allow that. What we can do is pass a law saying that once you reach some threshold — let's say you came in first or second in two primaries — the IRS is required to release your tax return. Congress has the power to do that. That's an easy, simple solution which we should impose, and we should release six years at least of tax returns, plus any record of audits that resulted in additional payments being due.

On campaign finance, there are all these side ways that foreign governments put money into our political system. We ban foreign corporations and foreign individuals from donating money, but Toyota USA contributes because it's an American company. We've got to fix that. We have to tighten up those laws and we need absolute transparency. And we also need to take away many of the defenses. Let's say you took in money and it turns out it came from Vladimir Putin's lackey. OK, if you promptly go to the government, tell them you found out and give it right back or, better, give it to the government, then you should pay a fine. But if you lie, deny, hide and collaborate, you should go to prison and we should take away most of the defenses for that.

If you say, as the Trump people would say, shove off — well, I would be eternally in favor of a long prison sentence. And I generally don't like long prison sentences, I think they're bad policy. But these are threats to national security. This administration, as I show in the book, again and again submarined our national security for money. Nobody did that before, nobody. We didn't have any president who's ever done that. Remember, Jimmy Carter had to put his little two-bit peanut warehouse into a trust. He didn't run his business. We should never again have someone in the White House who is operating a business.

https://www.rawstory.com/david-cay-johnston-books/

 

The hypocrisy is exceeded only by the lies.

But then, what should we expect from the one who insists that America is a "shithole country".

 

Trump Hotel charged $8,000 for cheapest room one year ago on Jan. 6 — today it is $446: report

Bob Brigham
January 06, 2022



Gage Skidmore.
Trump International Hotel Washington, D.C. is charging $7,500 less that it charged a year go.

Despite losing the election, in December of 2020 Trump began urging his supporters to travel to the nation's capital on Jan. 6 as part of his efforts to overturn the vote.

"Statistically impossible to have lost the 2020 Election," Trump falsely claimed in a Dec. 19 tweet. "Big protest in D.C. on January 6th. Be there, will be wild!"

A week later he tweeted, "Never give up. See everyone in D.C. on January 6th." A day later, Trump said "See you in Washington, DC, on January 6th. Don’t miss it. Information to follow!"

READ MORE: Trump lashes out after Biden calls out his lies in blistering Jan. 6 speech

A large contingent of his MAGA base traveled to D.C. and his hotel took full advantage of the influx.

"Almost immediately, rates surged from $476 to $1,999. A week later, they climbed to $3,600, before peaking at $8,000 for the least-expensive room. The house was apparently packed. A manager for the hotel later boasted that room service enjoyed record numbers that week," Zach Everson reported for Forbes.

This week the cheapest room is $446.

"Plenty of Republican bigwigs showed up at the hotel around Jan. 6, 2021. Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.), former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn, Donald Trump Jr., Eric Trump, Qanon promoter Juan O. Savin and one of Rudy Giuliani’s election experts, Phil Waldron, all showed up at the property last year. In 2022, they don’t seem as interested in visiting," Everson noted.

Read the full report.

https://www.rawstory.com/trump-hotel-washington-dc-2656245773/

 

Rent free
Tax free

 

A lot of word salad here. Democrats are low information voters see Juicy Smollett fooled the entire DNC electorate haha

 

Must be a cold winter for some to be wearing this many pairs of socks.

 

I am a fan of Trump, i admit, i actually am a fan of persons who worked in private companies and not for the state (in public functions) ... like, come on, has JB ever worked for instance at a shop ? No ... he was always working for the state ... LOL ... Two more years and DT is back in business (i am not american, i dont have any american roots, so i am purely objective)

 

Trump under fire for forcing New York school district to subsidize one of his golf courses

Bob Brigham
January 10, 2022



Donald Trump plays golf at Trump National Doral (screen grab)



Taxpayers in New York are effectively subsidizing one of Donald Trump's golf courses after he was successful in dramatically lowering his tax bill.

"Former President Donald Trump and his business empire always fight aggressively to come out on top—and this time, the sucker on the other end of the deal is a public school district," The Daily Beast reported Monday. "For seven years, the Trump National Golf Club Westchester just north of New York City battled with the local government to lower its property tax bill—while simultaneously inflating its value elsewhere by millions. Then in August, emboldened by another golf club’s victory in court, the Trump club pressured locals to strike a deal and cut its assessed value by a third."

The three schools in the Briarcliff Manor Union Free School District — an elementary school, middle, and high school — were forced to refund Trump $588,155.12.

One local official, who wasn't authorized to speak publicly, blasted the former president.



“This is freaking annoying that a scoundrel won’t pay taxes. My taxes are higher because his taxes are lower,” the official said.

Briarcliff only has 2,399 parcels on the tax roles, meaning the average taxpayer will pay $245 more next year.

Fernando Gonzalez, the tax assessor for the local town of Ossining, explained that locals may not have allowed Trump's golf courses if they'd know they would get stuck with the bill.

“It's significant in the sense that this has to be made up by all the other residents that pay taxes, and most of them would not have approved a golf course that they would eventually have to subsidize,” Gonzalez said.

Trump's own financial disclosure bills suggest his course may be worth five times as much as the $9.5 million at which it is now assessed.

"For example, in 2016, the company challenged its government-assessed value of $15.1 million, arguing that the real value was actually $7.5 million. Local governments refused to budge and let the sitting U.S. president reduce his tax bill—while claiming on presidential disclosure forms that his club was actually worth at least a whopping $50 million," The Beast reported.

Trump is under investigation in New York for allegedly inflating or deflating the value of his assets to receive financial advantages.

Read the full report.


https://www.rawstory.com/trump-westchester-golf-course/

 

Now that is a masterful job of spin.
So property owners pay property taxes that, in most cases, are used to fund schools.
A good process.
Now, property owners can and do apply for lower taxes, lower valuations and tax credits to lower their tax cost, which, in the case of a golf course, can be sizeable. All just part of the process.
Schools are paid for using property taxes.
Property taxes are paid for by property owners.
Property owners naturally prefer to pay the minimum possible tax.
Schools naturally prefer that property taxes be as high as will be tolerated.
Pretty straightforward isn't it?

Along comes wrong story and our American hating minion, Stumbler, with the headline;

Trump under fire for forcing New York school district to subsidize one of his golf courses

Now of course, the problem here is that trump has no power to "force" anyone to subsidize anything trump owns. And of course, the reality is, the schools aren't "subsidizing" trump's golf course, its the other way around; trumps golf course is subsidizing the school.

No matter to our American hating member;
Whatever it takes, eh Stumbler?

 

By now we know beyond reasonable doubt that actually the great "revolutionary" is strongly in favor of all manner of corruption and self dealing just as long as its Trump and treasonous conservative/Republicans doing it. To this very day I cannot stop laughing at the "revolution."


Trump appointee appears to have used old campaign cash to buy personal website — and could face legal troubles

Sarah K. Burris
January 11, 2022



Rep. John Ratcliffe (Photo: Screen capture)


Former Rep. John Ratcliffe (R-TX) quit his job in Congress to join former President Donald Trump's administration as the Director of National Intelligence, but he could be facing some campaign finance problems.

Forbes on Tuesday provided evidence that Ratcliffe used campaign cash leftover from his days in office to build a personal online presence.

"More than a year after stepping down from his role in Congress ... he dipped into that stash to pay a company named Telegraph Creative. But Forbes found no evidence that Telegraph Creative did work on behalf of Ratcliffe’s old campaign. Instead, it seems more likely that the money went toward the cost of creating a personal website for Ratcliffe—even though federal regulations prohibit candidates from using campaign money for personal expenses."

Ratcliffe spent $11,000 for what was labeled "website design," but the date of the expenditure was over a year after he left Congress.



The new revelations come six months after Ratcliffe was outed for paying his wife $3,000 a month to maintain the books for his campaign that was no longer active even after he was no longer in the Trump administration.

Forbes showed a screen capture (below) of Ratcliffe's personal website showing his "private sector" experience and promoting his latest appearances on the Fox network as a former Trump official. There's nothing on the site to indicate it's paid for by the campaign, nor does it ask for campaign donations or cite a district.

The report also revealed that the domain name for Ratcliffe's website was registered just 12 days after he left office. The first payment for the website design was $4,250 in July, and the other two disbursements were the exact same amount in Aug. 2021 and Nov. 2021.

Read the full report from Forbes.

See the site screen capture below:

https://www.rawstory.com/john-ratcliffe-illegal-website-scandal/

 

Trump kids' refusal to pay their bills is coming back to haunt them in DC investigation: report

Tom Boggioni
January 17, 2022



Donald Trump, Jr. with Ivanka Trump and Eric Trump (Twitter)


According to a report from the Daily Beast, the Trump Organization -- and by extension Don Jr., Ivanka and Eric Trump -- may have created another legal headache for themselves due to their history of not paying their bills.

As reported by the Beast's Jose Pagliery, Washington D.C, District Attorney Karl Racine is incorporating a dispute between the family's business and a D.C. hotel over an unpaid $49,358 bill into his investigation over the misuse of inauguration funds dating back to 2017.

At the center of the dispute was the Trump Org's refusal to pay for the block of rooms they booked at the Loews Madison Hotel after 13 people didn't show up -- which then led to the bill being sent to a collection agency.

According to Pagliery, that financial dispute put Trump and family back in the "crosshairs in an ongoing investigation into how the Trump kids used the Presidential Inauguration Committee to throw lavish parties of their own."



Lending credence to the charges is Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, who help coordinate the inaugural festivities and now is working with investigators.

According to Winston Wolkoff, "It was their friends. It should never have been sent to the PIC. That’s misuse of funding. The Trump Organization being involved in any way and getting the PIC to pay any sort of balance anywhere on their behalf? It just doesn’t seem legitimate."

While the bill was eventually "paid by the Presidential Inaugural Committee at the direction of Rick Gates," the investigation has turned up a series of communications that show that Don Jr's aides were in the loop over the fight over the money.

"In the typical fashion of an aggressive collections agency, Campbell Hightower & Adams in Arizona started bombarding the company with phone calls and emails in June 2017, picking up where the Loews Madison Hotel had left off," the report states. "A collector, identified only as 'Sherie,' jotted down notes when she repeatedly communicated with Don Jr.’s executive assistant, Kara Hanley," which led Hanley to deny the company had anything to do with the bill.

That, in turn, led to another Don Jr. aide to enter the conversation, with the report noting, "A few weeks later, Sherie notified the Trump Organization that she had just found out that yet another Don Jr. executive assistant, Lindsey Santoro, had initially requested the rooms and added [Don Jr. college buddy Gentry] Beach as the main contact for the deal. That information seemed to cement even further that the company was indeed involved."

According to the report, that raised red flags.

"The District of Columbia’s AG hopes this evidence proves that the Trump Organization should remain part of the lawsuit, which seeks to seize money it deems was misused and divert it instead to another nonprofit. Otherwise, the civil investigation would continue only against the PIC (which is no longer active) and the Trump International Hotel Washington (which is being sold anyway)," the Beast reports, adding, "When approached by The Daily Beast, the AG’s office pointed to the arguments it made in court. The Trump Organization’s lawyer didn’t respond to a request for comment. The collection agency didn’t return calls on Friday.

Notably, none of these documents described yet another layer of Trump Organization involvement: how company chief financial officer Allen Weisselberg puzzlingly assumed the responsibility of auditing the nonprofit PIC’s finances. Last summer, D.C. investigators wanted to interview him under oath, but he was then indicted for criminal tax fraud in New York City."

You can read more here.

https://www.rawstory.com/trump-kids-2656419059/?cx_testId=22&cx_testVariant=cx_1&cx_artPos=0

 

BLAH...BLAH...BLAH...just another butt hurt partisan hack fuck jumping on the anti-US./Anti Trump/Anti-individual citizen band wagon.

 

This is getting interesting again.

Also whenever you see treasonous conservative/Republicans and especially great revolutionaries railing against political corruption and government waste just laugh in their phony lying hypocritical faces. The do not and can not be taken seriously. They love corruption and government waste as long as Trump is the one doing it.

Former Melania Trump pal says she's been cooperating with prosecutors 'for years'

Sarah K. Burris
January 17, 2022



Stephanie Winston Wolkoff and Melania Trump (ABC)


Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, the former friend of first lady Melania Trump, is now claiming that the Trump family tried to tie her to corruption on the Presidential Inaugural Committee (PIC) because she refused to go along with what she describes as their "grifting."

Taking to Twitter on Monday, Wolkoff responded to a Daily Beast report about the Trump committee noting that they tried to make her the fall gal for the corruption.

"It was their friends. It should never have been sent to the PIC. That’s misuse of funding. The Trump Organization being involved in any way and getting the PIC to pay any sort of balance anywhere on their behalf? It just doesn’t seem legitimate,” said Wolkoff, who did inaugural events.



"I never went along with their grift or lies so they punished me by making me the New York Times covergirl of their graft for the Presidential Inauguration. I’ve been working with prosecutors for over 3 years," Wolkoff said in response to the article on Twitter. She tagged former federal prosecutor Glenn Kirschner.

"Thank you Stephanie @SWinstonWolkoff for taking the kind of principled stand that weak, sycophantic individuals like Meadows, Jordan, Perry, McCarthy & other members of #TheCoverUpCaucus will never take," Kirschner responded.

See the comments below:

Glenn Kirschner
@glennkirschner2
Thank you Stephanie @SWinstonWolkoff for taking the kind of principled stand that weak, sycophantic individuals like Meadows, Jordan, Perry, McCarthy & other members of #TheCoverUpCaucus will never take.

Stephanie Winston Wolkoff
@SWinstonWolkoff
I never went along with their grift or lies so they punished me by making me the @nytimes covergirl of their graft for the Presidential Inauguration. I’ve been working with prosecutors for over 3 years. #JusticeMatters @glennkirschner2 https://twitter.com/unpaintedmelody/status/1483175927500607488
2:04 PM · Jan 17, 2022

https://www.rawstory.com/trump-corruption-inaugural-committee/

 

First let's review the kind of guy great revolutionaries and treasonous conservative/Republicans back to the hilt.

George Nader: Ex-Trump adviser and ‘lifelong paedophile’ pleads guilty to sex crimes
Middle East specialist who served as president's informal foreign policy adviser admits to possessing child pornography

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/...le-mueller-russia-investigation-a9283756.html

Hey he's a good guy on Trump's team. Just ask them.


Trump associate George Nader pleaded guilty to felony conspiracy to defraud the US government: report

Bob Brigham
January 17, 2022



George Nader and Donald Trump (screengrab)


One of Donald Trump's allies pleaded guilty to making illegal campaign contributions to Hillary Clinton during the 2016 presidential race.

"George Nader, an American adviser to the government of the United Arab Emirates, convicted sex offender, and frequent visitor to the White House during President Donald Trump’s first year in office, has pleaded guilty for his role in helping the UAE pump millions of dollars in illegal campaign contributions into the U.S. political system during the 2016 presidential election," Matthew Cole reported for The Intercept.

The guilty plea has not been previously reported but was disclosed in a December sentencing memo in which prosecutors sought a five yer sentence.

"Nader’s guilty plea opens a new window into the efforts of the United Arab Emirates and its de facto ruler, Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed, known as MBZ, to influence the outcome of the 2016 election and shape subsequent U.S. policy in the Gulf," The Intercept reported. "Prosecutors have alleged that Nader took his instructions from the UAE crown prince and that he regularly updated MBZ on his progress as he sought to get close to Clinton."

Matthew Cole
@matthewacole
Scoop: Last year, UAE adviser George Nader quietly plead guilty to pumping $3.5M for Gulf Crown Prince MBZ into Clinton's 2016 campaign while also working the Trump team for UAE

theintercept.com
UAE Adviser Illegally Funneled Foreign Cash Into Hillary Clinton’s 2016 Campaign
George Nader also cultivated key Trump advisers on behalf of his Gulf clients, prosecutors say.
10:29 AM · Jan 17, 2022

https://www.rawstory.com/trump-pal-...to-illegal-contributions-from-the-uae-report/

 

About as long as it will take America to stop with the covid panic.

 

Trump uses official presidential seal to promote his newly renovated golf course

Sarah K. Burris
January 17, 2022



President Donald Trump golfing (Twitter)


The Office of Former President Donald Trump on Monday pushed out promotional materials for his Florida golf course.

The former president's office is granted $1 million annually to navigate anything necessary to run an office for a former president. Generally, however, tax-payer funded operations aren't used to promote personal money-making schemes.

"I have just spent millions of dollars on the Blue Monster golf course at Trump National Doral in the heart of Miami," the official statement read. "Incredible what has been created. The Blue Monster is one of the greatest courses in the world, and a favorite of PGA tour players. Check it out! Also, will be applying for 2,300 units of luxury housing, retail, and commercial space in Phase 1 at Doral. This is perhaps the most exciting development in the Country—and the Blue Monster course coupled with the Red, Gold, and Silver, are setting records!"



Ahead of the pandemic, Doral wasn't doing very well. According to company documents obtained in 2019 by the Washington Post, the resort's net operating income had fallen by 69 percent since Trump's election.

And due to the coronavirus crisis, all of Trump's properties took a major financial hit. Forbes reported last year that Doral revenue crashed more than 40 percent in 2020, according to financial disclosures.

His document show "golf resort related revenues" of $44.2 million, which is a decrease from $77.2 million the property got in 2019.

It's unclear if that's the reason that Trump is urgently using his presidential powers to promote the property.

https://www.rawstory.com/trump-doral-statement-begs-membership/

 

Apparently no one was fooled and Ivanka is still on the shit list. But hell as long as she's in New York might as well show up to get deposed by AG Letitia James about that fraud thingy.

Ivanka Trump blasted for trying to ‘rehab image’ with 'stylized photos’ from food drive

John Wright
January 18, 2022



Ivanka Trump (Twitter)
Ivanka Trump broke her eight-month Instagram and Twitter silence on Tuesday when she posted photos of herself participating in a food drive in Rochester, New York, last week.

"Thank you to our many incredible partners and volunteers who helped feed tens of thousands American families across Idaho and NY, with fresh, nutritious, locally-sourced produce and dairy this holiday season," the former first daughter and White House adviser wrote.

According to the New York Post, Trump teamed with Chobani founder Hamdi Ulukaya to deliver food to needy families.

“This really evolved out of a discussion Hamdi and I had over lunch once day as the holidays were approaching and the dollar is going less far due to inflation,” Trump told the Post, using the opportunity to take a dig at the Biden administration. “The need is very real and certainly no one program is going to fulfill it but every little bit we can do helps and Hamdi and I were both really happy to give back a little bit during the holidays."



After Trump posted photos from the event on social media several days later, Vanity Fair's Bess Levin blasted her for "pretending to be a good person."

According to Levin, former President Donald Trump's time in the White House "really hurt" his daughter.

"Whereas she and Jared Kushner moved to Washington reportedly believing it would be just a few short years before she’d become the first woman president, those plans have been put on hold thanks to, among other things, her dad lying to the public about a virus that has now killed more than 5.5 million people worldwide, and that business of encouraging his supporters to attack the U.S. Capitol and overturn the election," Levin wrote.

This forced Ivanka Trump to "lay low" for most of the last year, Levin wrote, but this week she "apparently felt a pull too strong to stay away."

"You know the pull we’re talking about: the one whispering, 'Don’t even think about doing something good for others without posting about it in an attempt to start rehabbing your image.'"

Levin called the food drive "obviously a worthy thing to do" but added: "Less clear is how posting several stylized photos of the event after the fact—and with no information for people who may still be looking for food assistance—helps anyone but herself."

A few more responses from Twitter below.


Ivanka Trump
@IvankaTrump
·
Jan 18, 2022
Replying to @IvankaTrump
God Bless and Happy New Year!


JustOneVoice
@JustOneVoiceNow
Did you arrange those to be given out? What's the name of the organization? Where is this picture taken? Where can people take advantage of these "free food boxes"? With no additional information, these boxes might as well be hidden in bushes. Is this photo just a about YOU?



Ivanka Trump
@IvankaTrump
·
Jan 18, 2022
Replying to @IvankaTrump
God Bless and Happy New Year!


Jennifer
@jerseymom473
Too soon, maybe?

Michael Beschloss
@BeschlossDC
Remember January 6:

10:10 AM · Jan 18, 2022



https://www.rawstory.com/ivanka-trump-2656430267/

 

Ivanka Trump
@IvankaTrump
·
Jan 18, 2022
Replying to @IvankaTrump
God Bless and Happy New Year!


Jennifer
@jerseymom473
What are you hiding from? Time for your deposition. No one is above the law.

The Beat with Ari Melber on MSNBC
@TheBeatWithAri
"The problem is that [Ivanka Trump] was an employee and then also getting money as an independent contractor so that the Trump Organization could avoid paying payroll taxes," @TristanSnell explains why NY prosecutors may be focusing on her. "The problem here is the tax evasion"
9:39 AM · Jan 18, 2022