The master of fraud. From yours - "‘THE BIG RIPOFF’
Members of the committee and an investigative counsel detailed how Trump and his allies raised hundreds of millions off of Trump’s false claims after the election. An “election defense fund” to contest the outcome actually ended up retiring debt, replenishing the RNC and starting the massive campaign war chest that Trump now has.
Much of that money went to the newly-created Save America PAC, not election-related litigation, an investigative counsel said in a video produced by the committee and aired at the hearing. The panel detailed how some of the dollars went to entities that directly benefitted Trump’s family and friends.
Trump campaign aide Gary Coby told the panel in a clip of a video interview that emails to small-dollar donors asking them to donate to the “official election defense fund” was a “marketing tactic.” The panel did not air his full interview.
“Not only was there the Big Lie, there was the Big Ripoff,” said Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif."
How Jared Kushner Washed His Hands of Donald Trump Before Jan. 6
"Takeaways: Trump’s mind ‘made up’ on fraud ahead of Jan. 6"
Mr. Kushner’s role in the final months of the Trump White House could come into sharp relief once the committee investigating the attack on the Capitol opens hearings.
Jared Kushner’s decision to withdraw from the most consequential moment of the Trump presidency left few effective counterweights to plotters looking to subvert the 2020 election. Erin Schaff/The New York Times
By Peter Baker Published June 8, 2022Updated June 9, 2022
WASHINGTON — On Thursday, Nov. 5, 2020, barely 24 hours after President Donald J. Trump claimed in the middle of the night that “frankly, we did win this election,” Jared Kushner woke up in his Kalorama mansion and announced to his wife that it was time to leave Washington. “We’re moving to Miami,” he said.
The election had not even been called for Joseph R. Biden Jr., but as Mr. Kushner later told the story to aides and associates, the White House’s young power couple felt no need to wait for the official results. They saw which way the votes were going and understood that, barring some unforeseen surprise, the president had lost his bid for a second term. Even if he refused to accept it himself.
No matter how vociferously Mr. Trump claimed otherwise, neither Mr. Kushner nor Ivanka Trump believed then or later that the election had been stolen, according to people close to them. While the president spent the hours and days after the polls closed complaining about imagined fraud in battleground states and plotting a strategy to hold on to power, his daughter and son-in-law were already washing their hands of the Trump presidency.
[...]
Mr. Kushner’s activities in his final months in the White House are now also coming under the scrutiny of another Democratic-run House committee investigating whether he used his position to secure a $2 billion investment in his new private equity firm from a prominent Saudi Arabian wealth fund. Mr. Kushner has said he abided by all legal and ethical guidelines while in public service.
[...[
To Mr. Kushner, his father-in-law’s decision to turn once again to Mr. Giuliani was a red flag. As far as Mr. Kushner was concerned, Mr. Giuliani was an erratic schemer who had already gotten Mr. Trump impeached once because of his political intriguing in Ukraine, and nothing good would come of the former mayor’s involvement in fighting the election results. But instead of fighting Mr. Giuliani for Mr. Trump’s attention, Mr. Kushner opted out entirely, deciding it was time to focus on his own future, one that would no longer involve the White House.
He and Ms. Trump began making plans. They quickly ruled out returning to New York. Like Mr. Trump, who had officially become a Florida resident in 2019, they had soured on their former home just as it had soured on them. Miami, on the other hand, seemed exciting and new.
While Mr. Trump huddled with Mr. Giuliani and others telling him that he could still win, Mr. Kushner and his wife began thinking about where they would live, what schools they could send their three children to and what business ventures they would pursue. They had to be discreet about it. The last thing they wanted to do was make it look as if they were moving on because that would produce headlines embarrassing to Mr. Trump. Indeed, Ivanka Trump would text her father’s top advisers that same day just after the election and prod them to “Keep the faith and the fight!”
But she and Mr. Kushner were soon scouting properties in Florida, and within weeks they were buying a $32 million lot formerly owned by the Spanish singer Julio Iglesias on the private island of Indian Creek near Miami, an exclusive haven for a couple dozen wealthy families that tabloids called the “Billionaire’s Bunker.”
In what remaining time he had in the White House, Mr. Kushner wanted to focus on expanding the Abraham Accords, the agreement establishing diplomatic relations between Israel and several Arab states, an achievement that he felt validated his whole time in Washington. Two other countries, Morocco and Sudan, signed on to the accords during the period between the election and Mr. Biden’s inauguration.
As his father-in-law refused to authorize transition cooperation with Mr. Biden’s incoming team, Mr. Kushner quietly began working with aides to the president-elect like Jake Sullivan and Jeffrey Zients to prepare for their takeover. And although Mr. Trump might not have been thinking about his legacy yet, Mr. Kushner was.
While still in the White House, he began writing a memoir focused on Middle East peacemaking. In the weeks to come, as Mr. Trump would continue to insist that he would remain for a second term, Mr. Kushner set about chronicling the first. He even took an online MasterClass on how to write a book, taught by the prolific best-selling novelist James Patterson. In the course of a two-week stretch after the election, he secretly batted out 40,000 words of a first draft. The final version is set to be published in August.
While Mr. Kushner was often called a shadow chief of staff, the man who held the actual title, Mr. Meadows, was encouraging the conspiracy theorists seeking to overturn the election. Doug Mills/The New York Times
A Coming Collision
The postelection fraud claims quickly exposed a rift within the Trump family. On the same day Mr. Kushner woke up to declare it was time to move to Miami, his brother-in-law Donald Trump Jr. was already pushing the president’s team to fight to stay in power. He sent a text to Mark Meadows, the White House chief of staff, outlining a plan to override the verdict of the voters by having Republican legislatures in states won by Mr. Biden invalidate the results and send Electoral College votes for Mr. Trump when Congress counted them on Jan. 6.
How much Mr. Kushner knew about that at the time remains unclear, but he did not express serious concern about how far the effort to hang on to power would go. He sent word to Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican majority leader, that Mr. Trump would eventually accept the reality that he lost.
“We’ll get through it, bear with us,” Mr. Kushner told Josh Holmes, a former chief of staff and campaign manager for Mr. McConnell who would pass along the message. “We’ve got a couple of challenges that have some merit, we’ll see how they go, but there’s a pretty good chance we come up short.” And once the Electoral College voted on Dec. 14, he suggested, that would be the end of it. Mr. Trump just needed time to come to terms with his defeat.
While Mr. Kushner was often called the president’s shadow chief of staff, the man who held the actual title, Mr. Meadows, was actively encouraging the conspiracy theorists seeking to overturn the election, acting less as a gatekeeper than a door opener, letting practically anybody who wanted to come into the Oval Office.
Among them were lawyers and others arguing that Vice President Mike Pence could unilaterally stop Mr. Biden from being formally recognized as the winner in his role overseeing the counting of the Electoral College votes in Congress. Mr. Pence concluded he had no such power and it would be unconstitutional for him to do so, but that did not stop Mr. Trump from keeping up the pressure.
Finally, seeing the collision that was coming, Marc Short, the vice president’s chief of staff, tried to enlist help from Mr. Kushner, calling him over the holidays to ask him to get his father-in-law to stand down. “Look, can you help us with this?” Mr. Short asked.
Qatar’s emir, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, and Jared Kushner in Doha, Qatar, in December 2020. Leading up to Jan. 6, 2021, Mr. Kushner was in the Middle East brokering a rapprochement between Saudi Arabia and Qatar. Qatar News Agency/EPA, via Shutterstock
But Mr. Kushner brushed him off. “Look, when Rudy got involved, I stopped being involved,” he told Mr. Short. The vice president “is a big boy,” and if he disagreed with the president on a legal issue, he should bring in his lawyers. “I’m too busy working on Middle East peace right now, Marc.”
Indeed, in the days leading up to Jan. 6, Mr. Kushner was in the Middle East brokering a rapprochement between Saudi Arabia and Qatar to end a three-year blockade of the small Gulf state. He was on a plane back to Washington when Mr. Trump’s mob stormed the Capitol. Key Revelations From the Jan. 6 Hearings
[...]
An unsettling narrative. During the first hearing, the committee described in vivid detail what it characterized as an attempted coup orchestrated by the former president that culminated in the assault on the Capitol. At the heart of the gripping story were three main players: Mr. Trump, the Proud Boys and a Capitol Police officer.
Creating election lies. In its second hearing, the panel showed how Mr. Trump ignored aides and advisers as he declared victory prematurely and relentlessly pressed claims of fraud he was told were wrong. “He’s become detached from reality if he really believes this stuff,” William P. Barr, the former attorney general, said of Mr. Trump during a videotaped interview.
Pressuring Pence. Mr. Trump continued pressuring Vice President Mike Pence to go along with a plan to overturn his loss even after he was told it was illegal, according to testimony laid out by the panel during the third hearing. The committee showed how Mr. Trump’s actions led his supporters to storm the Capitol, sending Mr. Pence fleeing for his life.
Fake elector plan. The committee used its fourth hearing to detail how Mr. Trump was personally involved in a scheme to put forward fake electors. The panel also presented fresh details on how the former president leaned on state officials to invalidate his defeat, opening them up to violent threats when they refused.
Strong arming the Justice Department. During the fifth hearing, the panel explored Mr. Trump’s wide-ranging and relentless scheme to misuse the Justice Department to keep himself in power. The panel also presented evidence that at least half a dozen Republican members of Congress sought pre-emptive pardons.
The surprise hearing. Cassidy Hutchinson, ??a former White House aide, delivered explosive testimony during the panel’s sixth session, saying that the president knew the crowd on Jan. 6 was armed, but wanted to loosen security. She also painted Mark Meadows, the White House chief of staff in the Trump administration, as disengaged and unwilling to act as rioters approached the Capitol.
After arriving home in the afternoon, Mr. Kushner was in the bathroom with the shower already running and about to jump in when his phone rang. Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the House Republican minority leader, was on the line asking Mr. Kushner to persuade the president to do something. “We need help!” Mr. McCarthy insisted. Mr. Kushner turned off the shower and rushed to the White House.
Ivanka Trump had spent much of the day trying to keep her father from going too far. She had refused to address the rally on the Ellipse but at the last minute was so concerned by her father’s anger toward Mr. Pence that she decided to accompany him there in hopes of avoiding a worse clash. Over the following hours, as rioters rampaged through the Capitol, she ran up and down the stairs in the West Wing from her office to the Oval Office hoping to persuade her father to issue stronger statements calling off the attackers.
By the time Mr. Kushner finally arrived at the White House, his wife had gotten her father to release a video telling supporters to go home. But even then, he repeated his lies about the “fraudulent election” and expressed solidarity with the rioters, telling them, “We love you, you’re very special.” Mr. Kushner quickly concluded there was little more he could do at that point.
In the days that followed, Mr. Kushner tried to broker peace between the president and vice president. On Jan. 11, he asked Mr. Short to come to his office. Would the vice president be willing to get together with the president?
“He’s always willing,” Mr. Short replied. “But that’s not his responsibility to reconcile this relationship. That invitation should come from the other end of the hall.”
“That’s what I’m doing, Marc,” Mr. Kushner said.
At Kushner’s arrangement, Mr. Trump and Mr. Pence sat down that afternoon with no staff for an hour and a half. Mr. Pence reported back to aides that it was somewhat warm. But it was only a bandage over a gaping wound.
Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner attended a farewell ceremony for the outgoing president on January 20, 2021, and were moving out of Washington the next day. Pete Marovich for The New York Times
On Jan. 20, Mr. Kushner and Ms. Trump attended the farewell ceremony for the outgoing president at Joint Base Andrews and accompanied him on Air Force One to Florida. Mr. Trump was heading into exile, prepared to keep waging war on Mr. Biden and the system, insisting he really won.
Mr. Kushner and Ms. Trump would have nothing to do with that. The next day, two moving trucks showed up at their Kalorama house to load up the furniture and a Peloton bike for the journey south to a luxury multilevel condo they had rented to live in while waiting for their new mansion to be built.
Trump Says It’s Defamation To Call His Lying About The Results Of The 2020 Election ‘The Big Lie’
"Takeaways: Trump’s mind ‘made up’ on fraud ahead of Jan. 6"
Defamation from the oh-child dept
Fri, Jul 29th 2022 10:43am - Mike Masnick
Donald Trump, whose supporters still pretend is a “free speech” champion, has regularly been known to sue news organizations that are mildly critical of him. You may recall that back in 2020 he hired notorious-lawyer-for-suing-media-companies (yes, he once was the lawyer in a case against us), Charles Harder, and sued both the NY Times and the Washington Post. The NY Times case was dismissed easily. The Washington Post case appears to somehow still be alive, though not much has happened in a while. It was, initially, assigned to Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, who has since received two separate promotions, which took her off the case. Somewhere along the way, Harder left the case and was replaced by Harmeet Dhillon, who has been a favorite lawyer of perpetually aggrieved culture warriors.
Now Trump is again threatening to sue media orgs — but not via either Harder or Dhillon. Instead, he’s hired James Trusty of the formerly reputable Ifrah Law firm in DC to threaten CNN with a defamation lawsuit for… calling Trump a liar. The threat letter is all kinds of nonsense, but the underlying basic claim undermines the very argument of the lawsuit. It claims that you can’t call Trump a liar because he believes everything he says.
---- In this instance, President Trump’s comments are not lies: He subjectively believes that the results of the 2020 presidential election turned on fraudulent voting activity in several key states. ----
Yeah, so here’s the thing: by noting that it’s subjective as to whether or not he’s lying, that means it’s an opinion. And an opinion is not defamation. Only statements of fact are. So, we’re already kind of off to a bad start.
But, more importantly, for the most part, calling someone a liar is not defamatory. There are lots of cases where it’s been tried. And mostly failed. A few years back, there was an interesting law review article .. https://ir.lawnet.fordham.edu/iplj/vol27/iss2/2/#:~:text=Depending%20on%20the%20context%2C%20calling,also%20implicates%20the%20First%20Amendment. .. tracing the history of “the defamatory impact” of calling someone a “liar.” And it found cases going back centuries that say that calling someone a liar isn’t defamatory. Again, that’s not to say it’s universally the case, but in the rare cases where the word “liar” was found defamatory, there are usually some pretty distinguishing characteristics that imply something much more nefarious — or, more commonly, imply some level of specific knowledge, rather than just commenting on publicly available information.
This is… not that.
Perhaps the most well known case on this question is Milkovich .. https://www.oyez.org/cases/1989/89-645 , It more or less set the modern standards (though some have argued they’re a bit muddled) for separating fact from opinion in determining what counts as defamation and what does not. It requires that the claims be specific, rather than “loose, figurative, or hyperbolic.” But the references cited in this threat letter are pretty clearly opinion, figurative, or rhetorical speech.
And that’s not even getting to the question of truth.
Whether or not Trump “subjectively believes” something is really not the issue. CNN reporters may subjectively believe he’s lying. And saying so is their opinion — which is not defamatory.
And that’s not even touching on the question of actual malice.
Donald Trump is a public figure. A very public figure. To win a defamation case, he needs to prove actual malice. And as we’ve said many, many times before, that does not mean that “CNN hates Trump.” It means Trump will need to prove that CNN knew or at least greatly suspected that Trump was not lying. And, um, that’s not going to happen.
Perhaps there’s some statement in the 282 page (?!?!?) threat letter (with exhibits…) that might somehow meet the definition of defamation, but if there was, you’d think that super lawyer James Trusty would, you know, lead with that, and not lead with claiming it’s defamation to call Trump a liar because he actually believes the false things he says.
Either way, this is laughable. And embarrassing for both Trusty and Trump.
---- As mentioned above, CNN is estimated to have used the “Big Lie” phrase or to characterize President Trump as lying roughly 7,700 times during broadcasted television shows and repeats of those shows. These defamatory comments have continued even after the new CEO of CNN apparently urged production teams to stop.
Accordingly, I hereby demand on behalf of President Donald Trump that CNN (1) immediately take down the false and defamatory publications, (2) immediately issue a full and fair retraction of the statements identified herein in as conspicuous a manner as they were originally published, and (3) immediately cease and desist from its continued use of “Big Lie” and “lying” when describing President Trump’s subjective belief regarding the integrity of the 2020 election. ----
I mean, that’s just pathetic and weak. Have some self-respect.
Assuming this actually proceeds to a lawsuit, which seems decently likely, it’s unlikely to work out very well for Trump (or Trusty).
---- It does not matter that the President used strident language (“nonexistent,” “con job,” and “fake news”) in expressing his opinion doubting the veracity of Plaintiff’s allegation rather than using more genteel terminology. Rhetorical hyperbole is not actionable as defamation. Neely v. Wilson, 418 S.W.3d 52, 83-84 (Tex. 2013). Courts throughout the United States have routinely held that terminology similar to that used by the President is constitutionally protected opinion and non-actionable. See e.g., McCabe v. Rattiner, 814 F.2d 839, 843 (1st Cir. 1987) (“scam” not defamatory); Oilman v. Evans, 750 F.2d 970, 987 (D.C. Cir. 1984) (en banc) (political columnist labeling a political figure a “Marxist” not defamatory); Letter Carriers v. Austin, 418 U.S. 264, 282-83 (1974) (use of term “scab” in labor dispute not defamatory); Buckley v. Littell, 539 F.2d 882, 893-94 (2d Cir. 1976) (labeling political writer a “fascist” not defamatory); Greene v. State, 21 So.3d 348, 352 (La. App. 2009) (labeling state employee “pathological liar” not actionable).
Any finding by the Court that the Comment has a defamatory meaning and is not protected opinion could have a chilling effect on political debate throughout the United States forever. Politicians frequently express their opinions about their political adversaries, often in strident and blunt terms. In 1964, for instance, Lyndon Johnson ran an advertisement that implied his opponent, Barry Goldwater, would start a nuclear war. John Kennedy campaigned against incumbent Vice President Richard Nixon in 1960 based on claims of a “missile gap” with the Soviet Union that turned out to be grossly misleading. Bill Clinton allegedly misstated the budget deficit in his 1992 campaign against George H.W. Bush. None of these statements were anything more than opinions, and none could or should form the basis of a defamation suit.
Indeed, since the founding of our republic, politicians have often expressed their opinions by branding their opponents as “liars.” Doing so does not subject every such politician to a defamation claim. President Trump himself has expressed his opinions regarding multiple adversaries, sometimes referring to his opponents by colorful names such as “Lyin’ Ted” and “Crooked Hillary.” A defamation standard that turns typical political rhetoric into actionable defamation would chill expression that is central to the First Amendment and political speech. ----
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