Tornado Alley (PROG)

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Donald Trump and the Mob


Mr. Trump opened the opulent Taj Mahal casino in Atlantic City, N.J., in April 1990.
Photo: Mike Derer/Associated Press


For legal help Mr. Trump often looked to Roy Cohn, seen on the right here in 1984.
Photo: Bettmann Archive/Getty Images


Mr. Trump with Bayrock Group’s Tevfik Arif and Felix Sater at a 2007 launch party for the Trump SoHo condo hotel.
Photo: Mark Von Holden/WireImage/Getty Images

Donald Trump’s real-estate developments in Atlantic City and New York led him to deal with members of organized crime and people like the late Robert LiButti, a racehorse trader and gambler. WSJ’s Michael Rothfeld joins Lunch Break to discuss.

His real-estate developments in Atlantic City and New York brought the GOP nominee into regular contact with people who had ties to organized crime; he says he’s ‘the cleanest guy there is’

By Michael Rothfeld and Alexandra Berzon
Sept. 1, 2016 9:35 a.m. ET

In 1981, a young and ambitious Donald Trump sat down with federal agents and discussed his calculation in entering the mob-infested world of Atlantic City casinos.

He acknowledged it might tarnish the reputation his family built through traditional real-estate development in New York. He was aware a business partner in the New Jersey beach town knew people who might be unsavory. A Federal Bureau of Investigation agent advised Mr. Trump there were easier ways he could invest, said an FBI memo recounting the discussion.

Mr. Trump went ahead and built an Atlantic City casino [ http://www.wsj.com/articles/photos-donald-trump-through-the-years-1470346775 ], ultimately owning four.

There, as well as in his New York real-estate work, Mr. Trump, now the Republican nominee for president, sometimes dealt with people who had ties to organized crime, a Wall Street Journal examination of his career shows.

They included a man described by law enforcement as an agent of the Philadelphia mob; a gambler convicted of tax fraud and barred from New York racetracks; a union leader found guilty of racketeering; and a real-estate developer convicted in a stock scheme that involved several Mafiosi.

With one exception, these associations were long ago. Still, in the home stretch of Mr. Trump’s run for the presidency, he frequently cites his lucrative business career as a qualification for the nation’s highest office, and his past associations color that record.

Mr. Trump acknowledged in an interview he worked at times with people who might have had such ties, but said he either had only cursory relationships with them or wasn’t aware of the ties at the time.

“If people were like me, there would be no mob, because I don’t play that game,” Mr. Trump said. He called himself “the cleanest guy there is.”

Like many in the construction, real estate and gambling worlds three or four decades ago, especially those who built in Atlantic City and New York, Mr. Trump sometimes had to choose whether or not to deal with figures who had sketchy backgrounds.

People in the industry say those moments were unavoidable in the days when unions representing construction workers and supply deliverers were controlled by organized crime, which also had a presence in the casino world. That didn’t mean the developers sought out those relationships—much less that they themselves were gangsters.

Mr. Trump “wasn’t going to build Trump Tower without having those connections. Every builder in New York had to do that at that time,” said Michael Cody, the son of a mob-linked union leader Mr. Trump and other builders dealt with.

Some developers avoided working directly with unsavory figures by operating through a general contractor. Mr. Trump said he preferred to negotiate business matters personally, because he made more money that way.

Referring to a concrete contracting firm that law enforcement said was affiliated with one of New York’s Mafia families, Mr. Trump said: “That was a major contractor. You hear stories that they may have been [mob-controlled].

“In the meantime, I was a builder. I was never going to run for office.… I’d go by the lowest bid and I’d go by their track record, but I didn’t do a personal history of who they are.”

Many of the associations the Journal explored have been previously reported piecemeal. In the early 1990s, Mr. Trump’s license to operate casinos in Atlantic City was re-examined after a book by reporter Wayne Barrett alleged a number of organized-crime connections. New Jersey officials determined Mr. Trump remained eligible.

In its own examination, the Journal reviewed thousands of pages of legal and corporate documents and interviewed dozens of Mr. Trump’s business associates.

The gambling business now is largely corporate, but at the time when Atlantic City was newly opened to casinos and a family friend suggested Mr. Trump build there, many banks shunned the industry.

“Any project in the gaming arena in general is a difficult project to finance, because of the natural prohibition that a lot of institutions have,” Mr. Trump told New Jersey casino regulators in 1982.

Some of the people he dealt with in Atlantic City illustrate why the FBI agent counseled caution.

Kenneth Shapiro owned part of a site where Mr. Trump wanted to build his first casino. Mr. Shapiro was a Philadelphia scrap-metal dealer and property investor, described by law enforcement as an “agent” of Philadelphia mob boss Nicodemo “Little Nicky” Scarfo.

A co-owner of the site was Daniel Sullivan, a gregarious six-foot-five Teamster and labor consultant with a criminal record that included a weapons violation. “He knew a lot of organized-crime figures and they knew him,” said Walter Stowe, a former FBI agent.

Mr. Sullivan also was a tipster to the FBI. Gangsters “knew he was an informant. I don’t know why nobody ever tried to kill him,” Mr. Stowe said.

Mr. Trump negotiated with Messrs. Shapiro and Sullivan, now both dead, to lease their property. “They are not bad people from what I see,” Mr. Trump said at a regulatory hearing in 1982. His project nonetheless faced obstacles because of their involvement.

Mr. Sullivan, Mr. Trump and another partner had a deal to acquire an interest in a drywall company. New Jersey casino regulators told Mr. Trump any dealings with Mr. Sullivan beyond the property lease could delay casino licensing. He backed out of the drywall deal.

When the hotel-casino was near completion, the regulators said Messrs. Shapiro and Sullivan might need casino licenses too, as site owners, but could have trouble getting them. Eventually, Mr. Trump bought the two out.

Mr. Trump also used Mr. Sullivan as an adviser on New York labor issues. These included a 1980 dispute over the use of undocumented Polish workers to demolish the Bonwit Teller store on Fifth Avenue to make way for Trump Tower, Mr. Sullivan said in lawsuit testimony. Mr. Trump, in testimony of his own, said he didn’t know there were undocumented workers at the site.

Mr. Trump told the Journal he knew Mr. Sullivan and considered him “OK” because he traveled with FBI agents. He said he didn’t know of any underworld connection Mr. Shapiro might have had.

Mr. Shapiro was a conduit the Scarfo crime family used to buy influence with Atlantic City’s then-mayor, Michael J. Matthews, according to a 1984 indictment of the mayor. The late Mr. Matthews pleaded guilty to extortion. Mr. Scarfo, now in prison, didn’t agree to an interview.

Mr. Trump, as a casino owner, couldn’t legally contribute to the local politicians who controlled such matters as zoning and signs. Mr. Shapiro told a federal grand jury he secretly gave thousands of dollars to the mayor on Mr. Trump’s behalf, said people familiar with his account.

“Donald was always trying to maneuver politically to get things done,” said Mr. Shapiro’s brother Barry Shapiro.

Kenneth Shapiro said he never was reimbursed for the money given to the mayor, according to his brother and two other people. “Donald just reneged; that’s his automatic thing,” Barry Shapiro said.

Asked about this, Mr. Trump said he didn’t make contributions to the Atlantic City mayor. “I’m not interested in giving cash, OK?...The last thing I’m doing is now handing cash.”

As for Mr. Shapiro, “I never remember him asking me for money. He was always straight with me...I didn’t know Shapiro well other than to know that we did a pretty small little land transaction down in Atlantic City, which was fine.”

A major profit source at one Trump casino was a racehorse trader named Robert LiButti. His gambling losses earned Trump Plaza $11 million between 1986 and 1989, state documents show.

Mr. LiButti had been convicted of tax fraud related to horse sales in 1977 and was barred from attending races in New York for trying to conceal his horse ownership. A Trump employee told New Jersey regulators that Mr. LiButti repeatedly invoked the name of gangster John Gotti and called him “my boss,” according to a 1991 state investigative report.

“LiButti was a high-roller in Atlantic City,” Mr. Trump said in an interview. “I found him to be a nice guy. But I had nothing to do with him.”

Jack O’Donnell, who ran Trump Plaza in the late 1980s, said, “It isn’t like [Mr. Trump] saw LiButti once or twice—he spent time with him, saw him multiple times,” and even attended a birthday party for Mr. LiButti’s daughter.

The daughter declined to be interviewed but confirmed to Yahoo News that Mr. Trump attended a birthday party for her.

It was illegal in New Jersey for casinos to keep high-rollers happy by giving them cash gifts. Regulators, in a ruling that didn’t cite Mr. Trump personally, fined Trump Plaza for funneling Mr. LiButti $1.65 million via gifts of expensive cars quickly converted into cash.

Mr. Trump agreed in 1988 to buy a horse from Mr. LiButti for $250,000, Mr. O’Donnell said in a book he wrote after quitting Trump Plaza. The horse, named D.J. Trump, had cost the LiButti family just $90,000 a year earlier, according to Blood Horse magazine. Mr. O’Donnell said Mr. Trump aborted the deal after the horse had a health problem.

Mr. Trump didn’t respond to questions about the horse and the birthday party.

Mr. LiButti, who died in 2014, denied to casino regulators that he had links to organized crime.

A lawyer Mr. Trump relied on and socialized with in his early years was the hard-driving attorney Roy Cohn. Among Mr. Cohn’s clients were several gangsters, including Anthony “Fat Tony” Salerno, co-owner of a concrete company important to New York builders. Former Trump Organization executive Barbara Res said that during heated negotiations with contractors, Mr. Trump would pull out a photo of Mr. Cohn and say, “I’m not afraid to sue you and this is who my lawyer is.”

Mr. Trump called that “totally false.” He said people in the construction industry “don’t get scared by holding up a picture.”

Mr. Trump was a character witness for Mr. Cohn in proceedings that led to the lawyer’s disbarment shortly before his death in 1986.

Mr. Cohn had many clients who, like Mr. Trump, weren’t mob-affiliated, such as the late Yankees owner George Steinbrenner. “Roy was a great lawyer if he wanted to be,” Mr. Trump said in an interview.

Messrs. Cohn and Trump had a common associate in Teamsters official John A. Cody. Mr. Cody had a lengthy arrest record and was close to mob bosses Carlo Gambino and Paul Castellano, according to a Justice Department memo from 1982, when Mr. Cody was convicted of racketeering.

Mr. Cody led a powerful union local that represented drivers who delivered cement to New York construction sites.

When he called a strike, Mr. Trump still received cement for Trump Tower, said Mr. Cody’s son, Michael.

“My father wasn’t that generous, unless there was a reason,” Michael Cody said.

Referring to John Cody, Mr. Trump said, “Part of the reason I got my concrete was I didn’t put up with his bull—.”

Mr. Trump said he would bring in private cement deliverers, or threaten to. The Teamsters people “knew I didn’t play games. When I said, ‘OK, I’m going private.’... ten minutes later I’d get a phone call [saying] ‘Well, all right, we’re going to approve you. It’s settled.”

Mr. Cody was “truly a bad dude,” Mr. Trump said. “I employed a lot Teamsters, and this guy would absolutely make life miserable and…I would fight through it.” Many developers in New York had to deal with Mr. Cody to get cement, and Mr. Trump said they all hated him.

John Cody is dead, as are Messrs. Gambino and Castellano.

In the 2000s, Mr. Trump dealt with another figure who had gangland ties. It happened when a small real-estate firm called Bayrock Group rented space in Trump Tower [ http://www.wsj.com/articles/donald-trump-long-sought-a-real-estate-foothold-in-russia-1470077158 ], two floors below Mr. Trump’s offices, and negotiated deals with Mr. Trump to put his name on buildings and give him equity in them. One person Mr. Trump worked with at Bayrock was Felix Sater.

In the early 1990s, well before Mr. Trump knew him, the Russian-born Mr. Sater was a stockbroker but lost his license and went to prison after he jabbed a margarita glass into a man’s face in a bar fight.

Later in the 1990s, Mr. Sater was involved in a Mafia-linked scheme to pump up marginal stocks, dump them on unsuspecting investors and stash the profits abroad. The scheme relied on gangsters from three mob families for protection, said a Justice Department news release. It quoted the New York police commissioner at the time as saying the operation could have been called “Goodfellas Meet the Boiler Room.”

Mr. Sater pleaded guilty to racketeering, cooperated with prosecutors and had his conviction sealed. It was then, around 2000, that he joined Bayrock and sometimes dealt with Mr. Trump on real estate.

Bayrock’s projects included the Trump SoHo condos in New York [ http://www.wsj.com/articles/cim-group-to-take-control-of-new-yorks-trump-soho-hotel-condo-1416513457 ] and Trump International Hotel & Tower in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. Its marketing in Fort Lauderdale included a letter in which Mr. Trump said, “This magnificent oceanfront resort offers the finest and most luxurious experience I have ever created.”

The New York Times described Mr. Sater’s criminal history in an article in 2007. Mr. Trump, giving a court deposition days later, said he was unaware of it until then.

Two federal press releases in 2000 had referred to Mr. Sater’s past, one from the National Association of Securities Dealers and one from the Justice Department. The Justice Department one announced the indictment of 19 people in the pump-and-dump stock scheme Mr. Sater was part of, including several it identified as members of La Cosa Nostra.

The Justice Department release said a Genovese crime-family soldier, Ernest “Butch” Montevecchi, had protected Mr. Sater from an extortion effort.

Mr. Montevecchi declined to comment.

In a 2009 court proceeding, Mr. Sater described the Bayrock real-estate business, which is no longer active, as one he “built with my own two hands” and where he was probably the No. 2 person. In an interview, Mr. Sater said he had atoned for his crimes by cooperating with the government in the pump-and-dump case and on national-security matters. He declined to answer questions about Mr. Trump.

Alan Garten, general counsel of the Trump Organization, said that in business deals the organization vets a partner company and its ownership, but not the company’s employees, which Mr. Sater was. He added that since Mr. Sater’s racketeering conviction was sealed, it would be unfair to “go back and say, ‘Well, you should have known.’ ”

In 2010, well after Mr. Trump had learned of Mr. Sater’s criminal background, the Trump Organization allowed Mr. Sater to be an unpaid consultant, with space in Trump Organization offices and business cards calling him a “Senior Advisor to Donald Trump.”

In an interview, Mr. Trump said, “I just said, ‘Hey, if you have a good deal bring it up.’ He actually brought me two deals and I didn’t like them.”

Mr. Trump said Mr. Sater appeared meek and mild, and Mr. Trump didn’t see him as being connected to the mob. Dealing with gangsters is “not my thing,” he said.

“When you have those relationships, in the end, you lose,” Mr. Trump said. “You can solve some problems short term, but long term, you’ve got a disaster.”

Lisa Schwartz and Jim Oberman contributed to this article.

Copyright ©2016 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/donald-trump-dealt-with-a-series-of-people-who-had-mob-ties-1472736922 [with comments], http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0cxFcrl9uSw [non-YouTube version embedded; with comments]


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Here’s a tale of two scandals. Guess which one will get more play?


Melina Mara/The Washington Post

By Paul Waldman
September 2, 2016

Whenever some new piece of information emerges about Hillary Clinton or people close to her, we’re told that it “raises questions” of some kind, which means it’s being shoehorned into a larger narrative that says something fundamental about her: That she’s tainted by scandal, or corrupt, or just sinister in ways people can never quite put their finger on.

Yet somehow, stories about Donald Trump that don’t have to do with the latest appalling thing that came out of his mouth don’t “raise questions” in the same way. They’re here and then they’re gone, obliterated by his own behavior without going deep into question-raising territory.

To see what I mean, let’s look at a couple of stories that have come out in the last 24 hours. We’ll start with the one about Clinton. You may have heard recently about Judicial Watch, which is an organization established in the 1990s to destroy Bill and Hillary Clinton, a mission it continues to this day. Through lawsuits and Freedom of Information Act requests, they try to obtain information that can be used against the Clintons, and they’re going to be a vital player in Washington politics should Hillary become president. The group’s latest “revelation” can be found in email exchanges between Doug Band, an executive at the Clinton Foundation, and Hillary Clinton’s aide Huma Abedin, when Clinton was secretary of state.

Here’s how the New York Times reported this story, under the headline “Emails Raise New Questions About Clinton Foundation Ties to State Department [ http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/02/us/politics/emails-raise-new-questions-about-clinton-foundation-ties-to-state-dept.html ]“:

A top aide to Hillary Clinton at the State Department agreed to try to obtain a special diplomatic passport for an adviser to former President Bill Clinton in 2009, according to emails released Thursday, raising new questions about whether people tied to the Clinton Foundation received special access at the department.

The request by the adviser, Douglas J. Band, who started one arm of the Clintons’ charitable foundation, was unusual, and the State Department never issued the passport. Only department employees and others with diplomatic status are eligible for the special passports, which help envoys facilitate travel, officials said.

Mrs. Clinton’s presidential campaign said that there was nothing untoward about the request and that it related to an emergency trip that Mr. Clinton took to North Korea in 2009 to negotiate the release of two American journalists. Mrs. Clinton has long denied that donors had any special influence at the State Department.

The first sentence of that story is questionable at best. The top aide, Huma Abedin, did not “agree to try to obtain a special diplomatic passport” for Band. He emailed her asking for it, and she replied, “OK will figure it out.” It’s hard to say whether that constitutes agreeing to anything, and at any rate, Band and the other two Clinton aides who were going to accompany the former president on this mission to North Korea didn’t actually need diplomatic passports for the trip and wouldn’t be allowed to get them anyway, nothing happened. You might have missed it, but there in the second paragraph the story notes that no diplomatic passports were ever issued.

To sum up: An executive at the Clinton Foundation made a request of Hillary Clinton’s aide, and didn’t get what he was asking for. Now maybe there is some real evidence somewhere of corruption at the State Department during Clinton’s time there, but that sure as heck isn’t it.

If you as a journalist are going to say that something “raises questions,” and if you know the answer to those questions, you have to say that, too. So in this case, the question the Band email raises is, “Did an aide to Bill Clinton get a diplomatic passport from Hillary Clinton’s staff when she was Secretary of State, something he was not entitled to?” The answer is — and pay attention to make sure you grasp this answer in all its complexity — No. (If you want a fairer version of this story, here’s the Post’s [ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2016/09/01/overreach-clinton-campaign-says-conservative-groups-latest-email-release-actually-deals-with-a-successful-diplomatic-mission/ ].)

Now let me point you to another story, one you probably haven’t heard about. Yesterday we learned [ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2016/09/01/trump-pays-irs-a-penalty-for-his-foundation-violating-rules-with-gift-to-florida-attorney-general/ ] that Donald Trump paid the IRS a $2,500 penalty over a contribution his foundation made to a PAC affiliated with Florida attorney general Pam Bondi, whom you might remember from the Republican convention, where she gave a rousing speech endorsing Trump. Does this story “raise questions”? Does it ever.

Here’s the quick summary: In 2013, Bondi’s office received multiple complaints from Floridians who said they had been cheated out of thousands of dollars by a fraudulent operation called Trump University. While Bondi’s office was looking into the claims to determine if they should join New York State’s lawsuit against Trump University, Bondi called Donald Trump and asked him for a contribution to her PAC.

Now let’s pause for a moment to savor the idea that Bondi, the highest-ranking law enforcement official in the state, would solicit a contribution from someone her office was in the process of investigating. She did solicit that contribution, and Donald Trump came through with $25,000.

Or actually, his foundation paid Bondi’s PAC the $25,000, which is an illegal contribution. Trump’s people say this was just a clerical error, and Trump himself reimbursed the foundation — that’s what the IRS fine was about. But days before getting the check, Bondi’s office announced that they were considering whether to go after Trump University, and not long after the check was cashed, they decided to drop the whole thing.

Here are a few questions this story raises: How many Floridians were scammed by Trump University? When Bondi and Trump spoke, did Trump University come up? What was the basis on which Bondi decided not to join New York’s lawsuit? Why didn’t she recuse herself from the decision? Are there any other attorneys general Trump has given money to, and had any of them received complaints about Trump University, the Trump Institute [ http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/30/us/politics/donald-trump-institute-plagiarism.html ], the Trump Network [ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/03/23/the-trump-network-sought-to-make-people-rich-but-left-behind-disappointment/ ], or any of Trump’s other get-rich-quick scams that were so successful in separating ordinary people from their money?

Those kinds of questions are what spur more digging and allow news organizations to not just write one story about an issue like this and then consider it done, but return to it again and again. If they decided to, they could get at least as much material out of the issue of Trump’s scams as they do out of Clinton’s alleged corruption at the State Department. But I’m guessing they won’t. Some stories “raise questions,” and others don’t.

© 2016 The Washington Post (emphasis in original)

https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2016/09/02/heres-a-tale-of-two-scandals-guess-which-one-will-get-more-play/ [with comments]


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Clinton camp rips Trump over his foundation's IRS troubles

Donald Trump and his supporters have criticized Bill and Hillary Clinton for Clinton Foundation donations while the GOP nominee faces foundation issues of his own.
09/02/16
http://www.politico.com/story/2016/09/trump-irs-trouble-clinton-227686 [with comments]


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Guess which candidate's foundation was caught in an illegal campaign funding scheme?

Updated September 2, 2016
http://www.vox.com/2016/9/2/12759020/trump-foundation-illegal-campaign-funding [with embedded video]


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Trump Is The Corrupt Candidate With A Charity Problem Not Hillary Clinton

In 24 hours, Fahrenthold has reported that Trump's foundation is seemingly guilty of a pay-to-play scam and false claims of giving on its tax forms. These are real scandals, unlike the accusations about the Clinton Foundation.
Sep 2nd, 2016
http://www.politicususa.com/2016/09/02/trump-foundation-claimed-10000-donation-exist.html


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You Failed, Chumps



Josh Marshall
September 3, 2016

We've had a number of looks recently at how The New York Times appears to be revisiting its 'whitewater' glory days with its increasingly parodic coverage of the "Clinton Foundation" - I'm adding scare quotes to match the dramatic effect, even though of course the Clinton Foundation is a named legal entity. Beyond the 'clouds' and 'shadows' [ http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/new-york-times-cloud-shadow-clinton-coverage ] TPM Reader AR flagged to our attention, as Paul Glastris explains here [ http://washingtonmonthly.com/2016/09/02/how-the-press-is-making-the-clinton-foundation-into-the-new-benghazi/ ], the latest installment from the Times explains how Bill Clinton's request for diplomatic passports for aides accompanying him on a mission to secure the release of two US journalists held captive in North Korea [ http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/08/05/nkorea.journalists.background/ ] constitutes the latest damning revelations about the corrupt ties between the Foundation and the Clinton State Department.

The Times uniquely, though only as a leading example for the rest of the national press, has a decades' long history of being lead around by rightwing opposition researchers into dead ends which amount to journalistic comedy - especially when it comes to the Clintons. But here, while all this is happening we have a real live specimen example of direct political and prosecutorial corruption, misuse of a 501c3 nonprofit and various efforts to conceal this corruption and the underlying corruption of Trump's 'Trump University' real estate seminar scam. It's all there - lightly reported here and there - but largely ignored.

The core information here isn't new and it's definitely not based on my reporting. Much of it stems form the on-going and seemingly indefatigable work of Washington Post reporter David A. Fahrenthold [ https://www.washingtonpost.com/people/david-a-fahrenthold ] who's been chronicling Trump's long list of non-existent or promised but non-existent charitable contributions. In this case, it goes to a $25,000 contribution Trump made to the reelection campaign of Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi [ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2016/09/01/trump-pays-irs-a-penalty-for-his-foundation-violating-rules-with-gift-to-florida-attorney-general/ ] in 2013. The neglected story has only popped up again now because Trump was penalized by the IRS for a relatively technical part of the corrupt act.

This first problem was elementary and obvious, probably stemming from Trump's almost pathological cheapness. He made the campaign contribution from his Foundation. This part is straightforward. You can't do that.

But then, as Fahrenthold details, Trump or however was handling the paperwork went to great lengths to conceal the improper contribution. In this case, the efforts to conceal the contributions from the relevant federal authorities is a much bigger deal than the underlying offense since the initial contribution could conceivably have been made by someone in Trump's organization who didn't realize that funds couldn't be commingled in this way. The first step could have been based in ignorance or haste; the second clearly stems from bad faith and possibly criminal intent.

But all of these pale in comparison to the essence of the transaction itself. Trump made this substantial contribution to Bondi at just the moment when her office was evaluating whether to bring legal action against Trump's 'Trump University' real estate seminar scam. Indeed, Bondi admits she reached out to Trump to solicit the contribution [ http://www.miaminewtimes.com/news/donald-trump-makes-25k-contribution-to-pam-bondis-campaign-even-though-pam-bondi-should-be-investigating-him-6535821 ] just as the decision was on her desk. She eventually declined to take legal action against Trump, overruling the recommendations of career investigators.

A mounting legal case was also underway in Texas, by career investigators under then-Attorney General and now Governor Greg Abbott. Abbott overruled the investigators recommendation for legal action. Shortly thereafter Abbott got $35,000 from Trump [ http://www.usnews.com/news/politics/articles/2016-06-07/texas-regulator-trump-u-preyed-on-novice-investors ]. In this case Trump at least mad the contribution without the commingling of nonprofit funds that go them in trouble in Florida.

The one place where Trump's money or influence didn't make the cut was in New York State under Attorney General Eric Schneiderman. The New York State case is one of several public and private lawsuits trying to recoup damages for victims of Trump's seminar scam.

At the risk of stating the obvious, these facts are textbook examples of the sort of political and prosecutorial corruption journalists are supposed to uncover. Trump used money to buy protection from the consequences of his bad acts from friendly politicians. He then tried to cover up his payment of protection money. And on top of all that he made the either bizarre or incompetent mistake of paying the protection money out of his Foundation - the money from which mostly comes from other people beside Trump.

So here you have straight-up bad acts, political corruption to enable prosecutorial corruption to escape the consequences of fraud perpetrated on vulnerable consumers. And yet the page space gets dedicated to Clinton Foundation stories which raise 'questions' that could 'create appearances' and all other journalistic workarounds reporters use when they haven't found what they were looking for. The North Korea rescue mission Glastris pinpoints in the Times's latest salvo just gets the whole enterprise to the point of self-parody.

Now why this disjuncture?

I think there are basically three reasons, some more understandable than others but none of them good. The first is that the Times had a decades long institutional issue with the Clintons. There's no other way to put it. It goes beyond single reporters and even individual executives editors. Why this is the case I'll leave to biographers and psychologists. But that it is the case is obvious from reading a quarter century of their reporting on the topic.

The other two reasons are different. Many reporters and editors simply take it as a given that Trump's a crook. So stories about Trump's corruption amount to what journalists call dog bites man stories - not really news because it's the norm and wholly expected. The second related point is that many reporters and editors at a basic level don't take Trump seriously as a real candidate. Journalists only probed so far into Ben Carson's various multi-level marketing scams and churning through millions of dollars of small donor contributions to enrich consultants because Ben Carson was clearly never going to be president.

At some level, this is all true: Trump isn't a real or a serious candidate by numerous measures. Except one measure that is the only meaningful one: he is the Republican nominee for President and even though polls suggest it's unlikely he'll be elected President there's a very real chance he'll become the US head of state and commander-in-chief of the US armed forces next January. So by the single test that really matters, Trump is as real as a candidate can be.

I should be clear here that while the Times is possibly the worst offender because of the scale of the failure and the influence the Times exerts far beyond its own pages, it's far from alone. They're just the tip of the spear of the generalized failure to apply even a small fraction of the scrutiny to Trump that they have to the Clintons or to make an honest evaluation of the fact that the story they were sold by various right wing groups - critical ones funded by none other than Breitbart's Steve Bannon (now Trump's campaign manager) - simply didn't pan out.

In the simplest sense, they were just suckered and used and got played. It's a failure of great proportions, not at all unlike back when they were played by similar forces in the 'whitewater' era. As Trump might say, Sad!

@ 2016 TPM Media LLC (emphasis in original)

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/you-failed-chumps


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Full Show - How Gary Johnson Became A Clinton Sleeper Cell - 09/02/2016

Published on Sep 2, 2016 by The Alex Jones Channel [ http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvsye7V9psc-APX6wV1twLg / http://www.youtube.com/user/TheAlexJonesChannel , http://www.youtube.com/user/TheAlexJonesChannel/videos ]

On this Friday, September 2 edition of the Alex Jones Show, we discuss how Obama will likely use Hurricane Hermine as an excuse for more tee time at the golf course. Jon Rappoport discusses the fall of the elite as they rely too much on their dwindling influence to control world events. Also Dr. Steve Pieczenik analyzes the current state of the election and Trump’s visit to Mexico.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wrLwRll8KMo [with comments]


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New suggestions of Russian tie to hacks of U.S. vote systems

September 2, 2016
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/nation-world/national/national-security/article99653607.html [with comments]


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Conspiracy Theorist Alex Jones Boasts About Advising Donald Trump
He said in some cases Trump was “even ahead of me” in his thinking.
09/03/2016
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/alex-jones-donald-trump_us_57caea4ae4b0a22de096342e [with embedded video, and comments]


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Hey Does Anyone Find Roger Ailes’ Recent Career Trajectory Puzzling, Or Is It Just Me?

I don’t know if anyone noticed, but he went from being ousted at Fox News under scandal to advising a presidential campaign.
09/02/2016 Updated September 3, 2016
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/roger-ailes-donald-trump-adviser_us_57c9ce77e4b0a22de095fa18 [with comments]


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Inside the Republican creation of the North Carolina voting bill dubbed the ‘monster’ law


Gov. Pat McCrory, lower left, delivers his State of the State address to a joint session of the General Assembly in Raleigh, N.C., in February 2015. Lt. Gov. Dan Forest, left, applauds with House Speaker Tim Moore and Senate Leader Phil Berger, right.
(Gerry Broome/AP)


The Rev. William Barber II, president of North Carolina’s NAACP chapter, center, gestures at a podium during a news conference on voting rights on June 21 in Richmond.
(Steve Helber/AP)


Rep. David Lewis explains proposed redistricting maps during a redistricting committee meeting in February at the Legislative Office Building in Raleigh.
(Travis Long/The News & Observer)


Members of North Carolina student chapters of the NAACP and opponents of voter-ID legislation wear tape over their mouths while sitting silently in the gallery of the House chamber of the North Carolina General Assembly, where lawmakers debated and voted on voter-identification legislation in Raleigh in April 2013.
(Gerry Broome/AP)

By William Wan
September 2, 2016

RALEIGH, N.C. — The emails to the North Carolina election board seemed routine at the time.

“Is there any way to get a breakdown of the 2008 voter turnout, by race (white and black) and type of vote (early and Election Day)?” a staffer for the state’s Republican-controlled legislature asked in January 2012.

“Is there no category for ‘Hispanic’ voter?” a GOP lawmaker asked in March 2013 after requesting a range of data, including how many voters cast ballots outside their precinct.

And in April 2013, a top aide to the Republican House speaker asked for “a breakdown, by race, of those registered voters in your database that do not have a driver’s license number.”

Months later, the North Carolina legislature passed a law that cut a week of early voting, eliminated out-of-precinct voting and required voters to show specific types of photo ID - restrictions that election board data demonstrated would disproportionately affect African Americans and other minorities.

Critics dubbed it the “monster” law - a sprawling measure that stitched together various voting restrictions being tested in other states. As civil rights groups have sued to block the North Carolina law and others like it around the country, several thousand pages of documents have been produced under court order, revealing the details of how Republicans crafted these measures.

A review of these documents shows that North Carolina GOP leaders launched a meticulous and coordinated effort to deter black voters, who overwhelmingly vote for Democrats. The law, created and passed entirely by white legislators, evoked the state’s ugly history of blocking African Americans from voting - practices that had taken a civil rights movement and extensive federal intervention to stop.

Last month, a three-judge federal appeals panel struck down the North Carolina law, calling it “the most restrictive voting law North Carolina has seen since the era of Jim Crow.” Drawing from the emails and other evidence, the 83-page ruling charged that Republican lawmakers had targeted “African Americans with almost surgical precision.”

Gov. Pat McCrory (R) filed an emergency petition to restore the law, but a deadlocked Supreme Court on Wednesday refused his stay request, meaning the law will not be in effect for the Nov. 8 election. Because the lower court did not offer specific guidelines for reinstating early voting, however, local election boards run by Republicans are still trying to curb access to the polls.

In lengthy interviews, GOP leaders insisted their law is not racially motivated and their goal was to combat voter fraud. They called their opponents demagogues, who are using the specter of racism to inflame the issue.

The Rev. William Barber II, president of North Carolina’s NAACP chapter, said the policies enacted by the law speak for themselves.

“You didn’t hear about fraud in North Carolina until blacks started voting in large numbers,” said Barber, who has also led a series of large protests against the law. “Then all of a sudden, there’s a problem with how people are voting.”

“People keep asking, ‘When they passed this law, were they racist in their heart?’ It doesn’t matter,” he added. “You look at the heart of their policies. If I tell you this law is going to affect black people more than anyone else, and you still go ahead and do it, you yourself are making clear exactly what you are.”

Longtime Republican consultant Carter Wrenn, a fixture in North Carolina politics, said the GOP’s voter fraud argument is nothing more than an excuse.

“Of course it’s political. Why else would you do it?” he said, explaining that Republicans, like any political party, want to protect their majority. While GOP lawmakers might have passed the law to suppress some voters, Wrenn said, that does not mean it was racist.

“Look, if African Americans voted overwhelmingly Republican, they would have kept early voting right where it was,” Wrenn said. “It wasn’t about discriminating against African Americans. They just ended up in the middle of it because they vote Democrat.”

Barber, though, argued that Republicans are playing with words.

“You can’t expect racists to come right out and sound like racists,” he said. “They’ve substituted the word ‘racial’ with the word ‘political.’?”

***

Fights over race and voting rights are nothing new in North Carolina. Its history - like those of many Southern states - is littered with laws and policies specifically designed to deter black voters: literacy tests, poll taxes and required recitations of the preamble of the Constitution.

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 banned many of these practices. But as recently as the mid-1990s, voter turnout among African Americans here remained low, with only 37 percent voting compared with 48 percent of whites.

In the late 1990s, when Democrats controlled the legislature, the state tried to make voting easier for all residents. The new rules allowed voting before Election Day, same-day voter registration and the counting of votes cast in the wrong precinct.

The laws ended up helping black voters more because they often face more financial and logistical barriers, said Rep. Henry “Mickey” Michaux, 85, one of the state’s first black legislators, who helped pass many of the new voting rules. “Some folks don’t own a car. Some have the type of job where you can’t take a day off.”

With the new laws, voter turnout in North Carolina went from 43rd place in the nation to 11th. The increase was especially big among black voters.

Then, in 2010, North Carolina experienced a seismic political shift: Republicans took control of the House and Senate for the first time since 1898. For years, GOP legislators said, they had watched Republicans in other states such as Georgia and Indiana pass voter ID laws. Now they had the power to do the same in Raleigh.

House Speaker Thom Tillis and Senate Leader Phil Berger tapped Rep. David Lewis, a tobacco and cotton farmer from the rural center of the state, to oversee the effort to pass a voter ID bill. In 2011, legislators passed a law requiring all voters to produce a photo ID, such as a driver’s license. But the state’s governor, then still a Democrat, vetoed the bill.

In an interview, Lewis said he was driven by a deep concern about voter fraud, particularly people showing up at polls and deliberately impersonating another person. But there is little evidence that such fraud is a problem. A 2013 report by North Carolina’s Board of Elections showed that between 2000 and 2012, out of nearly 40 million votes cast, only two cases of in-person voter fraud were referred to a district attorney.

Lewis and other Republicans insist fraud could be happening all the same.

“Just because it’s not documented doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist,” he said.

So in 2012, when McCrory won the governor’s office, Lewis and others tried again.

Within months of McCrory’s victory, emails show, the state election board began receiving requests for demographic data from a top aide to Tillis named Ray Starling and a group of GOP lawmakers, including Lewis and state Reps. Tim Moore and Harry Warren.

They asked for statistics on voter behavior broken down by race: Who voted early, and who voted on Election Day? Who voted out of precinct?

They asked about what kinds of people were registered to vote but did not have a driver’s license. They asked about student ID cards - which some states allow as a form of voter ID - and how many African Americans had them.

Moore did not respond to requests for comment. Lewis, Warren and Tillis said they requested the data to make sure their bill would not violate federal laws against discrimination.

Over several email exchanges, state researchers told GOP legislators that between 318,643 and 612,955 registered voters appeared to lack IDs issued by the North Carolina Division of Motor Vehicles. And the data attached showed that the percentage of black people at risk of losing their vote under the new law was much higher than that of whites.

In another email exchange, officials at the University of North Carolina received a data request that came from Lewis.

“I was asked by a State Representative about the number of Student ID cards that are created and the % of those who are African American,” a university official says to his lower staff. No explanation is given for why Lewis needs the data, just a plea to hurry on it. “He needs it in 2 hours or less.”

But for all the keen interest Republicans expressed in emails about voting methods heavily used by minority voters, the law they drafted in April 2013 at first did not touch any of it. Instead, it focused initially only on voter IDs.

Once that early version of HB 589 passed the House, it sat for two months in North Carolina’s Senate. When reporters asked about the delay, Tom Apodaca, the Republican chairman of the Senate Rules Committee, pointed to one reason: the U.S. Supreme Court.

***

Under a decades-old provision in the Voting Rights Act of 1965 - called Section 5 - Southern states like North Carolina with a history of voter discrimination could not change election laws without the approval of federal officials.

But in the spring of 2013, as North Carolina Republicans were working on their bill, a court case - called Shelby v. Holder - was being argued before the Supreme Court that threatened the very existence of Section 5.

On June 25, 2013, the Supreme Court issued its ruling on the case, nullifying Section 5. Explaining the court’s 5-to-4 decision, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote that “history did not end in 1965” when the Voting Rights Act was passed. In the decades since then, he said, “voting tests were abolished, disparities in voter registration and turnout due to race were erased, and African-Americans attained political office in record numbers.”

In North Carolina, within hours of the court ruling, Apodaca told local reporters, “Now we can go with the full bill.” With the “legal headache” of Section 5 out of the way, he said, a more extensive “omnibus” bill would soon be introduced in the Senate.

Weeks later, at 9 p.m. on a Monday, five days before the end of the legislative session, Republican lawmakers emailed out their new version of HB 589.

Democratic state Sen. Josh Stein remembers getting the email while sitting at his kitchen table that night, already dressed for bed. “My jaw just hit the table.”

The bill had grown from 16 pages to 57, tacking on more than 50 new parts. The new bill shortened early voting by half, cutting one of the Sundays when black churches held their “Souls to Polls” drives. It eliminated same-day registration and out-of-precinct voting.

It also proposed changes that, to Stein and other opponents, made no sense unless you were purposely trying to discourage voting. For example, it canceled an existing rule that let 16- and 17-year-old high schoolers pre-register to vote in civics classes or when they got driver’s licenses. And it took away counties’ ability to extend poll hours on Election Day during extraordinary circumstances such as long lines.

On the next day, a hearing on the bill was packed. Republicans in charge began by giving the crowd one white piece of paper with 10 lines on it. Only 10 people would be given the chance to talk, they explained, with just two minutes each. That total of 20 minutes, it later turned out, would be the only public testimony Republicans allowed on the revised bill.

During the hearing, Stein read into the legislative record studies and statistics to show the bill would disproportionately hurt African American, minority and younger voters. The idea, he said, was to show that Republicans knew exactly what they were doing and lay the groundwork for the legal battle ahead.

On the Senate side, Republican Sen. Bob Rucho was tasked with defending the bill. “I don’t agree with your premise,” he told Stein and other critics, “and secondly, I don’t look at race as who’s going to vote. What we’re trying to do is make sure that we have an equal opportunity for every single person to vote, and it’s not designed on race in any manner.”

In the space of three days, Republicans managed to get HB 589 approved by the Senate Rules Committee, passed in a Senate floor vote and sent back to the House for a final vote on the second-to-last day of the legislative session.

A federal court judge would later write, “Neither this legislature - nor, as far as we can tell, any other legislature in the country - has ever done so much, so fast, to restrict [voting] access.”

On July 25, 2013, the bill passed the House, 73 to 41. Everyone who voted for the law was a white Republican, and every black member of the legislature voted against it. As the final vote was cast, Democratic representatives all stood up, held hands and bowed their heads in prayer.

Rick Glazier, a white Democratic representative at the time, was on the House floor with Michaux, the black legislator who helped pass many of the voting-access laws being dismantled by HB 589. “I’ll never forget the look on his face. To see the thing you had fought for your whole career destroyed in a matter of days,” Glazier said. “He had tears in his eyes.”

***

Lewis said he deeply resented critics who have painted the bill and its supporters as racist. “When Democrats were in power, I may not have agreed with them, but I never questioned them personally or tried to impugn their reputations,” he said.

On the day McCrory signed HB 589 into law, the state’s NAACP chapter sued over the voter ID portion of the bill, while the League of Women Voters and the Southern Coalition for Social Justice challenged its other parts, such as cutting early voting, same-day registration and out-of-precinct voting. National lawyers from groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union and the Advancement Project stepped in to help. The Justice Department later joined as well.

In January, the federal district judge overseeing the consolidated cases sided with the Republicans and kept HB 589 in place. The judge, Thomas D. Schroeder - a George W. Bush appointee - said that Republicans offered plausible explanations for why they requested racial voting data and enacted the law.

But on July 29, the three-judge panel on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit - all Democratic appointees - overturned Schroeder’s decision.

North Carolina’s Republican leaders have condemned the 4th Circuit ruling and called its judges partisan.

The stakes are high for both sides. With just weeks before early voting begins, McCrory is locked in a tight race for reelection against Roy Cooper, the state attorney general. As a swing state, North Carolina could also be pivotal in the presidential election.

The Republican state Senate and House leaders said in a statement: “We can only wonder if the intent is to reopen the door for voter fraud, potentially allowing fellow Democrat politicians like Hillary Clinton and Roy Cooper to steal the election.”

Meanwhile, the years-long fight has metastasized into a county-by-county war throughout North Carolina.

When the appellate court restored that week of early voting previously eliminated by HB 589, the judges did not specify what times or places the early voting would take place. Now, Republicans in many counties appear to be using that opening to carry out the intended cuts of HB 589 anyway.

In recent weeks, after the 4th Circuit’s ruling, the election board in Guilford County tried to cancel Sunday voting and slash the number of polling sites, especially in black and student-heavy neighborhoods. After hundreds disrupted a meeting with chants and protest songs, the board passed a scaled-back compromise plan.

Soon after, the election board in Wake County - which includes the state capital, Raleigh - tried a similar move by restricting the restored early voting days to a single location with limited parking.

And in heavily African American Lenoir County, Republican election board members are trying to eliminate Sunday voting and evening hours and slash polling sites from four to one.

When the Republican governor asked the Supreme Court to temporarily reinstate the restrictions of HB 589, he argued that the 4th Circuit struck down the law too close to Election Day, which threatened to create confusion.

He was worried, he said, about the harmful effect it could have on voters.

Julie Tate in Washington contributed to this report.

Read more:

Appeals court strikes down North Carolina’s voter-ID law
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/public-safety/appeals-court-strikes-down-north-carolinas-voter-id-law/2016/07/29/810b5844-4f72-11e6-aa14-e0c1087f7583_story.html

How North Carolina became the epicenter of the voting rights battle
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/how-north-carolina-became-the-epicenter-of-the-voting-rights-battle/2016/04/26/af05c5a8-0bcb-11e6-8ab8-9ad050f76d7d_story.html

Getting a photo ID so you can vote is easy. Unless you’re poor, black, Latino or elderly.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/courts_law/getting-a-photo-id-so-you-can-vote-is-easy-unless-youre-poor-black-latino-or-elderly/2016/05/23/8d5474ec-20f0-11e6-8690-f14ca9de2972_story.html

The ‘smoking gun’ proving North Carolina Republicans tried to disenfranchise black voters
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/07/29/the-smoking-gun-proving-north-carolina-republicans-tried-to-disenfranchise-black-voters/

The crusade of a Democratic superlawyer with multimillion-dollar backing
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/courts_law/the-crusade-of-a-democratic-super-lawyer-with-multimillion-dollar-backing/2016/08/07/2c1b408c-5a54-11e6-9767-f6c947fd0cb8_story.html

© 2016 The Washington Post

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/courts_law/inside-the-republican-creation-of-the-north-carolina-voting-bill-dubbed-the-monster-law/2016/09/01/79162398-6adf-11e6-8225-fbb8a6fc65bc_story.html [with embedded video report, and comments]


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Hate Crime Charge Considered Against White Supremacist Who Ran Over Black Teen

Russell Courtier and Colleen Hunt after their arrest on Aug. 10.

Larnell Malik Bruce Jr. died as a result of injuries sustained in a hit-and-run collision, police said.

Photos of Russell Courtier that he posted ti his Facebook page.
Police say Russell Courtier, a member of European Kindred, admitted to intentionally running over Larnell Bruce Jr.
09/02/2016
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/hate-crime-charge-considered-against-white-supremacist-who-ran-over-black-teen_us_57c9e82fe4b0a22de096146e [with related court documents ( https://www.scribd.com/document/322866557/Larnell-Bruce-Jr-Case-Court-Documents ) and a video report embedded, and comments]


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Philly Cop Accused Of Sporting Nazi-Style Tattoos

Philadelphia police officer Ian Hans Lichtermann is accused of having Nazi-style tattoos on his arm.





[ https://www.facebook.com/evan.p.matthews/posts/10154377726007778 (with comments)]
Philadelphia mayor Jim Kenney says the officer’s tats are “incredibly offensive.”
09/02/2016 Updated September 2, 2016
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/ian-hans-lichtermann-nazi-tattoos_us_57c9ac1fe4b0a22de095c968 [with comments]


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Trump Addresses Empty Church As African-American Photo-Op Backfires In Detroit

Donald Trump's appearance at an African-American church in Detroit went wrong, as the congregation rejected Trump by not showing up to hear him speak.

By Jason Easley on Sat, Sep 3rd, 2016 at 12:28 pm

Donald Trump’s appearance at an African-American church in Detroit went wrong, as the congregation rejected Trump by not showing up to hear him speak.

Here was the scene as Trump entered the church:


Nowhere near a full crowd as Trump enters (far left)
[ https://twitter.com/ShaneGoldmacher/status/772091438549139456 ]

The place was nearly empty. Donald Trump did give a speech to the few members of the congregation that were there and it was as condescending and offensive as one would imagine:

Trump told African-Americans that Abraham Lincoln was a Republican, which is why they should vote for him:

[video clip embedded]

Trump claimed that he was there to remedy injustice:

[video clip embedded]

And he quoted the Bible, rather unconvincingly:

[video clip embedded]

Trump also got a prayer shawl from Israel:

[video clip embedded]

The whole appearance was about the photo-op of Trump appearing in an African-American church. Donald Trump is not sincerely trying to get the votes of African-Americans. The Republican nominee is trying to convince white suburban voters that he is not a racist.

Trump’s publicity stunt backfired because the church congregation in large part refused to be used as political props. Donald Trump went to an African-American church, said some words that he didn’t write, and then posed for pictures.

What the Trump campaign never planned for was the rejection of their candidate by the congregation.

Related

Donald Trump Sees His Appearance Today at Black Church as a Scripted Campaign Ad
http://www.politicususa.com/2016/09/03/trump-appearance-black-church-scripted-campaign.html

Trump Kicks Media Out of Black Church While Surrogate Lashes Out at Media for Leaving
http://www.politicususa.com/2016/09/03/trump-media-church-surrogate-lashes-out-media.html

Ben Carson Aimlessly Wanders Away From Live CNN Interview To Go Find His Luggage
http://www.politicususa.com/2016/09/03/ben-carson-walks-live-cnn-interview-find-luggage.html

Church Insurance Cites ‘Act of God’ in Not Paying for Church’s Flood Damage
http://www.politicususa.com/2016/09/03/church-insurance-cites-act-god-paying-churchs-flood-damage.html

©2016, PoliticusUSA.com

http://www.politicususa.com/2016/09/03/trump-addresses-empty-church-african-american-photo-op-backfires-detroit.html , http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G8yQXP5TWuQ [with comments] [also at e.g. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i-aUqNPyc0c (with comments), http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sfZDKWo2LxE (with comments), and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L-HB6XVmHXk (with comments)]


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Anti-Trump protests outside Detroit church

Published on Sep 3, 2016 by CNN [ http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCupvZG-5ko_eiXAupbDfxWw / http://www.youtube.com/user/CNN , http://www.youtube.com/user/CNN/videos ]

Anti-Trump protesters gathered outside a church in Detroit where Donald Trump is scheduled to be interviewed by Bishop Wayne Jackson.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kVOEdnKjEZs [with comments]


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This May Be Donald Trump’s Most Shameless ‘Pivot’ Yet
“I believe we need a civil rights agenda for our time,” said the businessman whose housing projects once shut out black renters.
09/03/2016
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/donald-trump-unifier-black-voters_us_57cafba8e4b078581f134578?66xhzryopav48ia4i [with embedded video, and comments]


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Trump Met With A Few Black Leaders In Philadelphia. The Public Wasn’t Welcome.

Donald Trump speaks with Shalga Hightower, whose daughter’s tragic death links to one of his campaign themes.
Most of the leaders were Republican, too.
09/02/2016
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/donald-trump-black-voters-philadelphia_us_57c9eacee4b0e60d31df38cf [with embedded video, and comments]


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Some blacks agree with Trump on Democrats — but can’t stand the rest of his message
September 3, 2016
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/some-blacks-agree-with-trump-on-democrats--but-cant-stand-the-rest-of-his-message/2016/09/02/3d6a1d9a-6f9e-11e6-8533-6b0b0ded0253_story.html [with embedded video, and comments]


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Trump "Diversity" Advisers Push Conspiracy Theories and Fringe Ideas About Minorities


Trump, with Pastor Darrell Scott (left) CEO of the National Diversity Coalition, at Trump Tower in April.
AP/Richard Drew

Will they help win over voters?

Sarah Posner
Sep. 3, 2016 11:22 AM

Donald Trump's visit Saturday to a black church in Detroit appears aimed at boosting his dismal standing [ https://morningconsult.com/2016/08/28/trump-gains-ground-clinton-black-voters-still-wary/ ] among minority voters. But his campaign's scripted plan [ http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/02/us/politics/donald-trump-black-voters-wayne-jackson.html ] for an interview with Bishop Wayne T. Jackson drew criticism from black leaders, and the visit comes amid backlash [ http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/02/us/politics/gop-hispanic-reaction-trump.html ] to the GOP nominee's latest harsh speech on immigration—including from Trump's own Hispanic Advisory Council, one of whose members called the speech "a scam [ http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/09/hispanic-trump-surrogates-reconsider-support ]."

To expand Trump's appeal—perhaps with some white voters, at least—the Trump campaign has relied on a group of advisers from the National Diversity Coalition [ http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/08/donald-trump-minority-voter-outreach ]. Organized earlier this year [ https://www.georgiapol.com/2016/04/15/a-diverse-coalition-with-atlanta-ties-announces-support-for-donald-trump/ ], and led by Trump's Apprentice protégé Omarosa Manigault and other Trump surrogates, the coalition posted a list [ http://ndctrump.com/who-we-are/ ] of 55 advisers, most of them African American, Asian American, and Latino, to convey that Trump has attracted a broad base of supporters.

But a closer look at this group reveals at least a half dozen figures who subscribe to a range of conspiracy theories and fringe ideas—including that President Obama is in cahoots with ISIS, that a top Hillary Clinton aide is a Saudi spy, that Clinton supports "genocide of black people through abortion," and that "Jews are the wealthiest people in the world."

Late Friday, coalition member Mark Burns—a high-profile African-American pastor who backs Trump and spoke at the GOP national convention—admitted [ https://twitter.com/pastormarkburns/status/771864397627129856 ] to falsifying parts of his professional biography [ http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/presidential-races/294382-trump-surrogate-i-overstated-my-biography ], reportedly with regard to his college education [ http://www.cnn.com/2016/09/03/politics/mark-burns-donald-trump-interview/ ] and military service.

The coalition held its kickoff event [ http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2016-election/trump-diversity-coalition-holds-hectic-first-meeting-n557911 ] in April at Trump Tower. But longtime Trump lawyer Michael Cohen told me in an interview that the coalition is “completely separate” from the campaign, describing it as a “diverse group speaking on behalf of hundreds of thousands of individuals actively endorsing Mr. Trump.” Among the group's goals, Cohen said, is “to dispel the notion that the mainstream liberal media portrays Mr. Trump as racist.”

Here are some of Trump’s outspoken backers from the coalition:

Dahlys Hamilton, chair of Hispanic Patriots for Trump

Hamilton previously worked outreach for Sen. Ted Cruz in Georgia [ http://politics.blog.ajc.com/2016/04/18/meet-the-georgians-leading-donald-trumps-minority-outreach-effort/ ]; she wrote that she abandoned Cruz and became a Trump supporter after realizing that Cruz was a pawn of “globalist puppet masters [ https://www.facebook.com/dahlys.romanhamilton/posts/1108532012501893 ].”

“Everything we know is a lie,” Hamilton told me in a recent interview. “And Trump knows this. He knows this, and this is why it’s not just the Hillary camp that’s coming against him; the world is coming against him, because they’re all involved.” She says she believes 9/11, the Boston Marathon bombing, and the Sandy Hook massacre were all “false flags.” She says other people won’t speak up about these government deceptions “because, ‘Oh, then I’ll be considered a nut,’ and I’m like, ‘No!’ The whole term ‘conspiracy theorist’ was put in place by our own government after the assassination of JFK to quiet those of us who were speaking the truth.”

The daughter of a Panamanian immigrant, Hamilton describes herself as opposed to “illegals,” saying, “I’m having an issue with having to pay for all their stuff.” She is also wary of allowing “legal Hispanics" into the country, ” she says: “I mean, that takes away our jobs.”  Her group opposes [ http://www.hispanicpatriots.org/about ] bilingual education, multilingual ballots, and the Dream Act, and supports making English the official language of the United States.

In the wake of the Orlando mass shooting, when Trump implied [ http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2016/06/13/trump_obama_might_be_isis_sympathizer.html ] on Fox News that Obama had ties to ISIS, Hamilton wrote on Facebook, “Trump knows the truth about Hussein. I’ll bet he has the evidence to prove it.” She posted an altered image of Obama depicting him as an ISIS figure, with the comment “Obama De Facto ISIS Commander-in-Chief.” Hamilton also posted an image [ https://www.facebook.com/GoDahlys/photos/a.424898407633307.1073741828.424834147639733/900071800115963 (evidently since gone dark0] that read, “Keep Calm and Death To Islam.” She has also praised Trump surrogate Roger Stone’s suggestion that top Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin is a Saudi spy.



Hamilton says she attended a National Diversity Coalition meeting at Trump Tower, and another with the Republican National Committee [ https://www.gop.com/rnc-trump-diversity-coalition/ ] in Washington, D.C.  She also says she is helping to organize a fundraiser for Trump’s running mate, Mike Pence, and that her group is planning a meeting in Georgia this month on Trump’s economic policy.

Frances Rice, chair of National Black Republican Association

Rice's endorsement of Trump back in January made national news [ http://www.cnn.com/2016/01/23/politics/donald-trump-black-republicans/ ], and her talking points [ http://thegrio.com/2016/01/24/national-black-republican-association-endorses-donald-trump-for-president/ ] from then have underpinned Trump's "What the hell do they have to lose?" pitch [ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2016/08/26/clinton-turns-trumps-what-the-hell-do-you-have-to-lose-appeal-to-african-americans-into-campaign-ad/ ] to black voters. As Rice wrote: “Democrats have run black communities for the past 60 years and the socialist policies of the Democrats have turned those communities into economic and social wastelands.”

In 2008, Rice produced a series of anti-Obama radio ads [ http://www.heraldtribune.com/news/20080803/leader-of-black-republicans-sparks-a-backlash ]: One implored listeners to “look beyond Barack Obama's skin color and soaring rhetoric and see an arrogant, elitist millionaire”; others called Obama’s friends “unrepentant terrorists” and called the Democratic Party “racist.” Rice’s magazine, The Black Republican, at various times included articles headlined “Democrats embrace their child molesters” and “Democrats wage war on God,” and featured a photograph of Klansmen burning a cross, with a caption claiming that the people in the photograph were Democrats.

According to an article [id.] at the time in the Sarasota Herald-Tribune, the state GOP eventually ended its financial contributions to the National Black Republican Association, as other GOP leaders worried about Rice generating “ill will” toward the party. “If the Democrats had left us alone after the Republicans freed us from slavery we wouldn't be having this discussion today,” Rice said at the time. “They are keeping blacks in virtual slavery.”

When Trump came under pressure in February to disavow the endorsement of former Klansman David Duke, Rice wrote [ http://blackrepublican.blogspot.com/2016/02/the-truth-about-david-duke-and-ku-klux.html ], “David Duke has never been embraced by the Republican Party and it was Democrats who started the Ku Klux Klan that became the terrorist arm of the Democratic Party.”

Steve Parson, African American pastor for Trump

Parson first endorsed Trump last year and has spoken and prayed at his rallies. At a June 2016 rally in Richmond, Virginia, Parson accused the Democratic Party of playing the “race card,” insisting that Trump “loves all people. He loves African Americans, he loves Latinos, he loves Muslims, he loves everybody. He loves America.”

In an interview, Parson said that he supports Trump because the GOP nominee understands how to create wealth in African-American communities by giving people access to trade schools and helping them to start their own businesses: “You know, like the Jews. Jews are taught the skills, craft, trade, and the business from a very young age,” Parson told me. “And that’s why the Jews are the wealthiest people in the world, because they have a higher percent of them that are business owners.”

Corrogan Vaughn, congressional candidate in Maryland

Vaughn, an African-American Republican congressional candidate in Maryland's 7th congressional district, spoke on Trump’s behalf at a major rally at the Republican National Convention.  He argues that all Americans are “slaves” to the government. “Either by handouts voted on by Constitutional sellouts, or by beating us into submission through socialistic taxation and regulation, we are on their plantation,” he says [ http://vaughn4congress.com/#/layout/economy ] on his campaign website.

LaNell Babbage-Torres, director of Minorities for Trump

The Twitter feed of Babbage-Torres’s group, Minorities for Trump, includes a stream of retweets [ https://twitter.com/MinoritiesTrump ] calling Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama “traitors” and calling on Trump to “Deport illegals, deport refugees!” Babbage-Torres herself has also called on President Obama to send out the National Guard to protect Trump supporters from violence at his rallies. “During the Civil Rights days of the '60's, blacks faced angry crowds much in the same way TRUMP supports are experiencing now,” she wrote [ https://www.facebook.com/EASPORTSGolf/posts/10154422248904672 ] on Facebook in June. “There is no difference between TRUMP Supporters and the Civil Rights marchers lead by Dr. King!”

Mark Burns, pastor of Harvest Praise and Worship Center

Burns, the South Carolina pastor and televangelist, became one of Trump’s most visible African-American surrogates when he delivered a benediction in July at the Republican National Convention. Burns has a history of making controversial statements [ http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/08/31/mark-burns-trump-s-favorite-black-pastor-hillary-wants-to-murder-christianity.html ]. Last March, he charged that Hillary Clinton is “OK with the genocide of black people through abortion.” He came under fire again in late August for tweeting a cartoon image that showed Clinton in blackface, wearing a T-shirt that read “No hot sauce, no peace!” and holding a sign that said “#@!* the Police.” Burns later deleted [ http://www.cbsnews.com/news/donald-trump-supporter-pastor-mark-burns-hillary-clinton-apology-tweet-cartoon-blackface/ ] the tweet, saying, “I really am a shepherd to God’s people and the last thing I want to do is to offend people.”

In late August, Burns appeared on the Breitbart News Daily radio show to praise Trump’s black outreach efforts. “Donald Trump will be the President of all races,” he said [ http://www.breitbart.com/radio/2016/08/29/pastor-mark-burns-trump-going-to-the-black-community-to-solve-problems-not-say-see-you-in-four-years-like-democrats/ ]. “Donald Trump understands that this is an opportunity to show how this Republican Party, under Donald Trump, is not the same as the Republican Party of old.”

(Burns, Rice, Vaughn, and Babbage-Torres did not respond to interview requests. Regarding Burns' professional biography, a spokesman for the Trump campaign referred to Burns' statement [ https://twitter.com/pastormarkburns/status/771864397627129856 ] admitting he had "overstated several details" concerning his background, blaming the media for drawing attention to it, and promising he "will continue to tirelessly support Mr. Trump.”)

This article was reported in partnership with The Investigative Fund at The Nation Institute. Reporting assistance by Kalen Goodluck.

Copyright ©2016 Mother Jones and the Foundation for National Progress

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/09/trump-black-latino-voters-national-diversity-coalition [with comments]


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Take Back the House, Democrats. Please.

SEPT. 3, 2016
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/04/opinion/campaign-stops/take-back-the-house-democrats-please.html [with comments]


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