If you haven’t been keeping up with the legal affairs of Donald Trump of late, what you should know is that the guy is very likely f--ked. With the ex-president facing no fewer than 29 lawsuits and three criminal investigations, his tax returns are currently in the hands of Manhattan district attorney Cyrus Vance Jr., whose team is also working to flip the Trump Organization employee who knows where all the bodies are buried and has both (1) cooperated with prosecutors in the past and (2) made some rather interesting comments about the company’s legal dealings.
At the same time Rudy Giuliani had his home and office raided by the feds last week, a turn of events that former U.S. attorney Preet Bharara has said is very, very bad news for the NYC mayor turned Trump lawyer/cautionary tale. All of which reportedly has the rest of the 45th president’s inner circle extremely concerned about their own legal exposure.
CNN reports that the raids on Giuliani’s Madison Avenue apartment and Park Avenue office have “left allies of the former president feeling uneasy about what could come next,” according to sources close to Trump. “This was a show of force that sent a strong message to a lot of people in Trump’s world that other things may be coming down the pipeline,” one adviser told CNN.
According to that person, the seizing of Giuliani’s electronic devices has “ignited a sense of fear” inside Trump’s orbit “that Justice Department officials may be more willing to pursue investigations of the 45th president or his inner circle than many Trump allies had previously believed.” The same person opined to CNN that they couldn’t believe “you would need to send seven FBI agents to go and collect a cell phone and laptop,” calling the raid “overkill.”
Of course Giuliani and the rest of Trump’s allies may still be operating under the false sense of security provided by the last administration’s Justice Department, run by Bill Barr, wherein alleged criminals were shielded from consequences thanks to their proximity to the equally shady president.
As The New York Times reported last week, political appointees at the DOJ blocked prosecutors from obtaining the Giuliani warrants last summer and again after the election. (They were only granted once Merrick Garland took over, which, as Bharara noted, was a delay that could have accidentally cost Giuliani a Trump pardon.)
And speaking of Trump’s inner circle, last week his former “fixer,” Michael Cohen, claimed that Giuliani would ultimately turn on Trump to save himself. And not just Trump, but the entire family. “There’s no doubt that [Giuliani is] nervous…. And it’s rightfully so that he’s nervous, because he knows the power of the SDNY is unlimited, and they use that power,” Cohen said.
Noting that Giuliani presumably “has no interest in going to prison and spending the golden years of his life behind bars,” Cohen said, “Do I think Rudy will give up Donald in a heartbeat? Absolutely.
He certainly doesn’t want to follow my path down into a 36-month sentence.” He added: “What’s ironic here is the fact that these tactics of the Southern District of New York, in terms of bullying you into a plea deal, were created by Rudy Giuliani going back 30 years ago.
And it’s just as ironic that the tactics that he created for that office are now going to be employed against him, in terms of making him plead guilty and, certainly, at the least, turning over information about Jared, Ivanka, about Don Jr., about Donald himself, about all of these individuals in that garbage can orbit of Donald Trump.” A person close to the 45th president concurred that Giuliani would end up cooperating with prosecutors, telling CNN: “Even the most loyal people have their breaking point,” adding that Giuliani flipping “wouldn’t shock me at all.”
In an email to CNN, the former NYC mayor’s attorney said Giuliani “has done nothing wrong” and that the raids demonstrated a “corrupt double standard” by Joe Biden’s DOJ in its treatment of Trump’s associates versus Democrats, seemingly a reference to the fact that Hunter Biden has not been prosecuted for the fictitious crimes Giuliani has claimed the president’s son committed in Ukraine.
Not acknowledged by Giuliani, of course, is the other inconvenient fact that many of Trump’s allies are criminals. So, y’know, there’s that.
Robert Mueller, James Comey, Christopher Wray and Rod Rosenstein are among the most corrupt "law enforcement" officials in the history of our nation.
They, along with traitors, Brennan, Clapper and others, have conducted operations to cover up their own crimes, which include sedition, obstruction of justice, weapons, drug and uranium smuggling, along with admitted unconstitutional surveillance.
These activities are not only illegal, they stand in stark contrast to the values shared by the vast majority of decent people everywhere. Even with the "mockingbird" media working hard to hide these facts, the treachery is well documented.
The FBI is a criminal enterprise and it has been for a LONG time, it is nothing more than a tax payer funded, organized racketeering syndicate, authorized by consent of its victims, we the people, who seem to be suffering from a collective Stockholm syndrome.
The patience of the ppl who know is wearing dangerous thin...
Donald Trump’s history of corruption: a comprehensive review
"A rap sheet for a former president Trump and father charged with racist housing discrimination back about the '70s. Refused to pay contractors and workers what they were owed. Trump university settlement. Fraud is criminal. Stormy Daniels payoff. Understating property value to avoid tax. Overstating property value to gain loans. Fraud is still criminal. Abuse of the Hatch Act. Bribery. Obstruction of justice."
Since investigations into Trump' corrupt practices continue today this blast from the past is entirely relevant. Even more so, since we still have his supporters here claiming he is not corrupt anything on Trump is entirely appropriate.
By Andrew Prokopandrew@vox.com Updated Oct 31, 2016, 10:47am EDT
David A. Grogan/CNBC/NBCU Photo Bank via Getty
In the big-picture conversation around the 2016 presidential election, the major negative narratives about Donald Trump have tended to focus on his racism, his temperament, or his tendency to tell lies.
Yet there’s another important Trump trait that’s gotten some attention but really needs to get much more — he’s corrupt, and in a consistent way.
Whenever Trump has been in positions of power or authority, he has demonstrated a pattern of trying to enrich himself by abusing the trust others have placed in him — whether it’s creditors, contractors, charitable givers, Trump University students, regulators, or campaign donors.
Over the past several months — and, indeed, the past few decades — reporters have unearthed many alarming stories that show this. They’ve reported on Trump’s many shady business practices. His shady charity. His shady fake university scam. His shady campaign spending. His many shady associates. And, last but by no means least, there is Trump’s refusal to release tax returns or other financial information that would shed further light on his business practices, associates, and philanthropic undertakings.
Now, sometimes Trump’s abuses of trust entail breaking the law, and sometimes they’re within the bounds of the law. And sometimes the legality of Trump’s actions isn’t yet clear — as in the case of Trump University, which will face a fraud trial shortly after the election, and with some of the controversies around the Trump Foundation.
But the common thread is that Trump screws people over to benefit himself. And despite the plethora of excellent reporting on this topic, many voters seem to be unaware of his troubling history here, and may view him primarily as a successful businessman who says some offensive things. A recent NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll .. https://twitter.com/TheFix/status/778965488697212928 , for instance, found that Trump had a 10-point advantage over Clinton on “being honest and straightforward.”
Indeed, he is betting his campaign on his hopes that he can frame himself as an independent outsider free of special interest influence, to contrast with Hillary Clinton, whom he has dubbed “crooked.”
But Trump’s record makes it crystal clear that he’s more interested in rapaciously extracting what money he can and doing what he wants, with little regard to laws, rules, or people who aren’t Donald Trump. Furthermore, he’s repeatedly proven willing to violate norms .. http://www.vox.com/2016/6/7/11872834/donald-trump-norms .. about what sort of behavior is acceptable and ethical.
And most importantly of all, if elected president, Trump would wield incredible power. Yet if you look at what he’s done with power in the past, suddenly this theme in his biography — his corruption — becomes among the most troubling of his many troubling qualities. There are many, many reasons to be concerned about a Trump administration’s ethics and potential to abuse power. Here are just a few.
Trump has a history of shady business practices
Trump in his helicopter in 1987. Mob-connected Robert LiButti was wiretapped bragging that Trump took him for a helicopter ride. Joe McNally / Hulton Archive / Getty
First off, the way Trump has run his businesses for the past few decades should raise grave doubts about how he’d run the federal government — he’s allegedly been willing to break rules, break promises, and discriminate against nonwhite people.
And recently, Republican consultant Brian James Walsh further corroborated these accusations with his own personal story:
- True story - my Dad's company was stiffed by Trump on a six figure telecom job in the 1980's. Trump told them it would cost more to sue him. — Brian Walsh (@brianjameswalsh) September 27, 2016 -
Next, there’s the housing discrimination case against him from the 1970s. The Department of Justice alleged that Trump and his father discriminated against black applicants for apartments in Trump-owned buildings. One superintendent said he had been instructed to write “C” (for “colored”) on every application from a prospective black tenant, and others described similar racial “codes,” as the Daily Beast’s Gideon Resnick .. http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/12/15/doj-trump-s-early-businesses-blocked-blacks.html .. has written.
The government argued that black applicants would repeatedly be told there were no vacancies in Trump-owned buildings, but white applicants would then inquire and get offers. The Trumps denied the claims and fought back in court, but eventually settled — “with no admission of guilt,” Trump pointed out during Monday’s debate, which is not exactly saying he was innocent.
And there’s the matter of Trump’s alleged contacts with the mob. Now, to be fair to the GOP nominee, the Mafia’s influence was pervasive in the New York City construction industry at the time. Still, when reputed mobster Robert LiButti was a high-dollar gambler at the Trump Plaza in Atlantic City, the Trump Plaza worked very hard indeed to keep him happy, as Michael Isikoff of Yahoo News reported .. https://www.yahoo.com/news/trump-challenged-over-ties-to-mob-linked-gambler-100050602.html :
- * When LiButti demanded that women or black card dealers not be allowed on his games, the Trump Plaza kept them away from him — and it was later fined $200,000 for violating state nondiscrimination laws.
* The Trump Plaza also gave LiButti nine luxury cars as gifts, all of which he quickly exchanged for a total of $1.65 million in cash. But cash gifts from casinos to high rollers were then illegal in the state, so the Trump Plaza was slapped with another fine — this one for $450,000.
* LiButti was wiretapped bragging that he was “very close with” Trump and that he rode in Trump’s helicopter. -
And Trump’s reputed mob contacts didn’t stop there. “I’ve covered Donald Trump off and on for 27 years, and in that time I’ve encountered multiple threads linking Trump to organized crime,” reporter David Cay Johnston wrote in Politico Magazine .. http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/05/donald-trump-2016-mob-organized-crime-213910 .. in May. “No other candidate for the White House this year has anything close to Trump’s record of repeated social and business dealings with mobsters, swindlers, and other crooks.”
Trump has used other people’s donations to his charity to benefit himself
Donald Trump has a charitable family foundation .. http://www.vox.com/2016/9/13/12888492/trump-foundation .. to which, in recent years, he has given hardly any money, instead raising the vast majority of its funds from others. That’s rather dishonest of him, since he constantly claims that the foundation’s donations are from his own pocketbook. But the more serious problem is that he’s then used several hundred thousand dollars of that foundation money in deeply questionable ways that may well have run afoul of laws against “self-dealing” with charity money.
- * First, in 2007, Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club was fined $120,000 by the town of Palm Beach, Florida, because the height of its flagpole violated town rules. An eventual settlement entailed the town waiving the fines and Trump committing to donate $100,000 to a veterans charity. But Trump used his foundation, not any of his businesses, to make the donation.
* Second, in 2010, a guy named Martin Greenberg sued Trump’s golf course, claiming he was cheated out of a promised million-dollar prize for getting a hole in one during a charity tournament. The golf course agreed to settlement in which it would donate to Greenberg’s charitable foundation — but the $158,000 sent over was instead from the Trump Foundation, not any of Trump’s businesses. -
And those are just the latest Trump Foundation controversies. Fahrenthold has also reported on an illegal $25,000 donation .. 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/ .. the foundation made to Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi’s political group around the time she was weighing whether to investigate Trump University, for which the foundation was hit with an IRS penalty. (The Trump campaign claims this was a mistake.) There was also that time Trump spent $12,000 of the foundation’s money to buy a football helmet autographed by Tim Tebow, plus a jersey, at a charity auction. And much more.
Donald Trump establishes Trump University in 2005. Carvalho/FilmMagic
Repeatedly during the campaign, Trump has admitted .. http://www.dailywire.com/news/3005/donald-trump-says-greed-good-aaron-bandler# .. that he has been “greedy” in business — but he’s argued that as president, he would channel that trait to benefit the American people. “I want to grab all that money. I’m going to be greedy for the United States,” he’s said.
It’s a dubious claim, made even more dubious by his behavior in the matter of Trump University. This was the GOP nominee’s seminar business that purported to be able to teach its students secrets of real estate investing. Former students sued Trump, claiming they were bilked out of their money, and he’s set to face a trial for fraud in the matter shortly after the election. The New York attorney general’s office has also sued, claiming Trump University made deceptive claims.
"[The instructors] were unqualified people posing as Donald Trump's 'right-hand men,'" Jason Nicholas, a former employee, said in one deposition .. http://money.cnn.com/2016/03/08/news/trump-university-controversy-donald-trump/ . "They were teaching methods that were unethical, and they had had little to no experience flipping properties or doing real estate deals. It was a façade, a total lie."
The business model was, apparently, to try to hook the gullible with a free seminar and pressure them into signing up for more and more expensive installments that promised to teach students how to invest in real estate.
Trump won’t release his tax returns, which is unprecedented for a recent presidential candidate
Trump signing his tax return in 2015. He refuses to publicly release his tax returns, breaking with decades of precedent for presidential nominees. Trump’s Twitter account
Trump says .. http://www.vox.com/2016/5/12/11662316/donald-trump-says-tax-records-audit .. he won’t release his returns because he’s currently under an IRS audit. But as the IRS has confirmed, being audited doesn’t mean he has to keep his returns secret. Furthermore, Trump has many previous years of tax returns that are no longer being audited that he could release — but he refuses to.
So there has naturally been a lot of speculation on what Trump is trying to hide here. Do the returns show he’s not as rich .. http://www.vox.com/2016/5/14/11671650/how-rich-is-trump .. as he says he is? That he’s given far less to charity than he claims? That he’d rarely even paid taxes? That he has a lot of money offshore?
Trump has spent millions of dollars of campaign funds on Trump businesses
Donald Trump meets Laredo, Texas officials during a campaign trip to the US/Mexico border in 2015. Matthew Busch/Getty
As of August, the Trump campaign had allotted 7 percent of its total spending so far — more than $8.2 million — to companies owned by Trump or his children, according to an analysis by Politico’s Ken Vogel .. http://www.politico.com/story/2016/09/donald-trump-business-campaign-trail-228500 . Payments went to various Trump venues, an aviation company Trump owns, Trump Tower for office space, his corporate staff, and various other vendors.
Now, it’s not as if Trump should have donated his company’s stuff for free — indeed, that would have been a prohibited corporate contribution. And the Trump campaign tends to respond by emphasizing that Trump put $54 million of his own money into the campaign. Still, he has deliberately chosen to spend his campaign money (which includes millions raised from other people) on companies he or his children own rather than on independent vendors.
Meanwhile, taxpayers are chipping in too — the US Secret Service has paid $1.6 million to travel on a plane operated by one of Trump’s companies, according to another report by Vogel and Isaac Arnsdorf .. http://www.politico.com/story/2016/09/donald-trump-secret-service-campaign-travel-payments-228553 . Again, Secret Service reimbursement to a campaign for travel is common. But as the authors write, since Trump owns the aviation company, “the government is effectively paying him.”
And about that Trump Tower rent — shortly after the Trump campaign shifted from a largely self-funded model to one more reliant on donors, Trump nearly quintupled the rent that Trump Tower was charging the campaign for office space, according to the Huffington Post’s S.V. Dáte. This came at a time when the campaign didn’t expand its staff size, though Trump’s team later told CNN that they were paying for two new floors “in anticipation of more staff.”
Donald Trump has surrounded himself with shady people during this campaign
Trump transition chief Chris Christie, whose aides are on trial for Bridgegate, and Trump adviser Roger Ailes, who stepped down from Fox News after sexual harassment allegations. David A. Grogan/CNBC/NBCU Photo Bank via Getty, Drew Angerer/Getty
Instead, he has surrounded himself with people who’ve not only demonstrated a history of unethical behavior but also abused their past power, often to try to intimidate critics or opponents.
Trump appointed New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie to head his transition, giving him a key role in recommending candidates for hundreds if not thousands of federal jobs. Yet two of Christie’s job appointees in New Jersey are currently facing trial .. http://www.vox.com/2016/9/19/12972690/chris-christie-bridgegate-trump .. for their involvement in the Bridgegate .. http://www.vox.com/cards/chris-christie-scandals-explained/what-is-bridgegate-fort-lee-traffic-scandal .. scandal — prosecutors say they conspired to cause a serious traffic jam in Fort Lee, New Jersey, to punish the town’s mayor for refusing to endorse Christie’s reelection campaign. Another aide, David Wildstein, has already pled guilty in the matter.
Furthermore, prosecutors also asserted in court in September — and Wildstein testified — that Christie knew about both his aides’ actions and their motivations while the scheme was being carried out. (Christie has long denied this.) Wildstein tesitfied that he bragged to Christie about what he was doing when he saw him at an event, and that Christie laughed .. http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/28/nyregion/bridgegate-trial-chris-christie.html?_r=0 .. and responded with jokes.
Craziest of all, Donald Trump himself has long said that Christie “totally knew about .. http://www.nj.com/politics/index.ssf/2015/12/trump_unloads_on_christie_he_knew_about_bridgegate_and_much_more.html ” his aides’ actions in Bridgegate. Yet this suspicion that Christie was fine with his aides’ abuse of power in a petty revenge plot seems to have been no obstacle for Trump in his determination that Christie is the best-qualified person to help him staff the federal government.
And then there is Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, who by some accounts has effectively been running the Trump campaign for a few months. Kushner is a real estate heir who took over his father’s company after his father was sent to prison for tax evasion, making illegal campaign contributions, and witness tampering. When Kushner’s holdings ran into some financial trouble in the wake of the economic crisis, he asked fellow mogul Richard Mack .. http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a47697/jared-kushner-trump-campaign/ .. for a write-down on a loan Mack had extended him — but Mack refused.
Not long afterward, Kushner apparently wanted revenge on Mack, and he sought to get it by using the newspaper he owned — the New York Observer. Kushner had heard a rumor about Mack, and he wanted his reporters to publish a story about it. “There's a guy named Richard Mack, and we've got to get this guy,” Kushner told one reporter, according to Esquire’s Vicky Ward .. http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a47697/jared-kushner-trump-campaign/ . Reporters were put on the case and failed to corroborate the rumor, but Kushner kept pushing to move the story forward anyway, as the Observer’s then-editor, Elizabeth Spiers .. http://www.elizabethspiers.com/the-big-dick-mack-story/ , recounts. It never saw the light of day, but it’s deeply concerning about how Kushner operates.
What’s most troubling of all, though, is that Trump is surely aware of everything I’ve mentioned in this section but doesn’t seem to mind. He puts a man whose appointees are facing trial in charge of government appointments. He invites an alleged serial sexual harasser who tries to intimidate critical journalists to be a key adviser. This should set off alarm bells.
Trump’s corruption is a threat to our norms of governance
Christopher Polk/NBC/NBCU Photo Bank via Getty Images
“Americans pride themselves on our politicians' respect for the rule of law, on the checks and balances that protect us from the powerful,” Ezra Klein wrote .. http://www.vox.com/2016/6/7/11872834/donald-trump-norms .. earlier this year. “But as often as not, our real protection is found not in laws but in norms.”
And that’s the deeper problem underlying all this — that Trump has repeatedly shown he has little respect for norms of ethical or acceptable behavior.
There’s been much discussion about how Trump has repeatedly violated political norms .. http://www.vox.com/2016/6/7/11872834/donald-trump-norms .. of acceptable behavior — with his proposed Muslim ban, his constant vicious attacks on critics, his attempts to discredit a judge because he happens to be Mexican-American, and countless other actions.
But his decades-long track record in the business sector and the nonprofit world, and his management of his current campaign, suggests he’s willing to violate ethical norms too. He treats rules or laws as inconveniences. He ignores conflicts of interest. He takes what he wants, regardless of who gets hurt. And all this is when he is simply a wealthy businessman.
Yet if Trump wins in November, he becomes the most powerful person in the world, with a nuclear arsenal, the US military, and thousands of government appointees who can carry out his wishes at his disposal.
No one can say for sure what will happen then. But we can’t say we weren’t warned.
VIDEO - Donald Trump hates lies, but can't tell the truth
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