Octopus Overlords

Smoove_B wrote: ↑Thu Apr 01, 2021 10:07 am This should probably go here as I'm confident it was happening at the direction of his nibs:

A top adviser to former President Donald Trump pressured agency officials to reward politically connected or otherwise untested companies with hundreds of millions of dollars in contracts as part of a chaotic response to the COVID-19 pandemic, according to the early findings of an inquiry led by House Democrats.

Peter Navarro, who served as Trump’s deputy assistant and trade adviser, essentially verbally awarded a $96 million deal for respirators to a company with White House connections. Later, officials at the Federal Emergency Management Agency were pressured to sign the contract after the fact, according to correspondence obtained by congressional investigators.

...

In another communication, Navarro was so adamant that a potential $354 million contract be awarded to an untested pharmaceutical company that he told the top official at the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, or BARDA, “my head is going to explode if this contract does not get immediately approved.”

Lassr wrote: ↑Thu Apr 01, 2021 10:23 am I wonder if any of this will eventually end up as case studies in the Gov Fraud Training I have to take every year.

Stacy Blatt was in hospice care last September listening to Rush Limbaugh’s dire warnings about how badly Donald J. Trump’s campaign needed money when he went online and chipped in everything he could: $500.

It was a big sum for a 63-year-old battling cancer and living in Kansas City on less than $1,000 per month. But that single contribution — federal records show it was his first ever — quickly multiplied. Another $500 was withdrawn the next day, then $500 the next week and every week through mid-October, without his knowledge — until Mr. Blatt’s bank account had been depleted and frozen. When his utility and rent payments bounced, he called his brother, Russell, for help.

What the Blatts soon discovered was $3,000 in withdrawals by the Trump campaign in less than 30 days. They called their bank and said they thought they were victims of fraud.

“It felt,” Russell said, “like it was a scam.”

But what the Blatts believed was duplicity was actually an intentional scheme to boost revenues by the Trump campaign and the for-profit company that processed its online donations, WinRed. Facing a cash crunch and getting badly outspent by the Democrats, the campaign had begun last September to set up recurring donations by default for online donors, for every week until the election.

Contributors had to wade through a fine-print disclaimer and manually uncheck a box to opt out.

As the election neared, the Trump team made that disclaimer increasingly opaque, an investigation by The New York Times showed. It introduced a second prechecked box, known internally as a “money bomb,” that doubled a person’s contribution. Eventually its solicitations featured lines of text in bold and capital letters that overwhelmed the opt-out language.

The tactic ensnared scores of unsuspecting Trump loyalists — retirees, military veterans, nurses and even experienced political operatives. Soon, banks and credit card companies were inundated with fraud complaints from the president’s own supporters about donations they had not intended to make, sometimes for thousands of dollars.

“Bandits!” said Victor Amelino, a 78-year-old Californian, who made a $990 online donation to Mr. Trump in early September via WinRed. It recurred seven more times — adding up to almost $8,000. “I’m retired. I can’t afford to pay all that damn money.”

Scraper wrote: ↑Sat Apr 03, 2021 7:06 pm When you blindly support a grifter con-man you get conned. Simple as that.

Jaymann wrote: ↑Sun Apr 04, 2021 10:20 am I read where some of them were mad they got fleeced but said they still support Florida Man 100%. The Art of the Grift.

Jaymann wrote: ↑Sun Apr 04, 2021 10:20 am I read where some of them were mad they got fleeced but said they still support Florida Man 100%. The Art of the Grift.

malchior wrote: ↑Mon Apr 19, 2021 11:44 pm Mueller missed the easy avenue to get him on the record - ask him to talk to Hannity.

malchior wrote: ↑Tue Apr 20, 2021 10:59 am I took it more Tom's way. The question to me is why without prompting is he even telling this story? IMO he is compelled to talk about how he gets away with things. He loves it.

El Guapo wrote: ↑Tue Apr 20, 2021 11:28 am

malchior wrote: ↑Tue Apr 20, 2021 10:59 am I took it more Tom's way. The question to me is why without prompting is he even telling this story? IMO he is compelled to talk about how he gets away with things. He loves it.

I dunno - that's really reading a lot into it. He's presenting the Russia story as baffling - like, "people keep asking me about Russia, which is silly because I had nothing to do with it." Now, he's lying, but presenting this as bragging about getting away with it seems odd to me. I think Tom's filtering this through Trump's obvious guilt, instead of his penchant for lying.

malchior wrote: ↑Tue Apr 20, 2021 12:41 pm

El Guapo wrote: ↑Tue Apr 20, 2021 11:28 am

malchior wrote: ↑Tue Apr 20, 2021 10:59 am I took it more Tom's way. The question to me is why without prompting is he even telling this story? IMO he is compelled to talk about how he gets away with things. He loves it.

I dunno - that's really reading a lot into it. He's presenting the Russia story as baffling - like, "people keep asking me about Russia, which is silly because I had nothing to do with it." Now, he's lying, but presenting this as bragging about getting away with it seems odd to me. I think Tom's filtering this through Trump's obvious guilt, instead of his penchant for lying.

How so? His MO is to circumspectly brag about the things he gets away with. He does it all the time. The "people say" mechanism he uses here ("aides would say to me") have often been him substituting others for his thoughts since the John Barron days. He is hard wired for it.

malchior wrote: ↑Tue Apr 20, 2021 12:41 pm

El Guapo wrote: ↑Tue Apr 20, 2021 11:28 am

malchior wrote: ↑Tue Apr 20, 2021 10:59 am I took it more Tom's way. The question to me is why without prompting is he even telling this story? IMO he is compelled to talk about how he gets away with things. He loves it.

I dunno - that's really reading a lot into it. He's presenting the Russia story as baffling - like, "people keep asking me about Russia, which is silly because I had nothing to do with it." Now, he's lying, but presenting this as bragging about getting away with it seems odd to me. I think Tom's filtering this through Trump's obvious guilt, instead of his penchant for lying.

How so? His MO is to circumspectly brag about the things he gets away with. He does it all the time. The "people say" mechanism he uses here ("aides would say to me") have often been him substituting others for his thoughts since the John Barron days. He is hard wired for it.

El Guapo wrote: ↑Tue Apr 20, 2021 1:49 pm

malchior wrote: ↑Tue Apr 20, 2021 12:41 pm

El Guapo wrote: ↑Tue Apr 20, 2021 11:28 am

malchior wrote: ↑Tue Apr 20, 2021 10:59 am I took it more Tom's way. The question to me is why without prompting is he even telling this story? IMO he is compelled to talk about how he gets away with things. He loves it.

I dunno - that's really reading a lot into it. He's presenting the Russia story as baffling - like, "people keep asking me about Russia, which is silly because I had nothing to do with it." Now, he's lying, but presenting this as bragging about getting away with it seems odd to me. I think Tom's filtering this through Trump's obvious guilt, instead of his penchant for lying.

How so? His MO is to circumspectly brag about the things he gets away with. He does it all the time. The "people say" mechanism he uses here ("aides would say to me") have often been him substituting others for his thoughts since the John Barron days. He is hard wired for it.

His MO is also to lie and deny doing things that he obviously did. He also makes up conversations all the time ("Oh Mr. President, we in the military didn't have bullets before you came along!").

Grifman wrote: ↑Wed Apr 28, 2021 12:26 pm This is something. Federal agents just executed a search warrant on Giuliani's New York apartment:

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/28/nyre ... rrant.html

They don't do this unless they believe they have a real case.

Smoove_B wrote: ↑Wed Apr 28, 2021 1:05 pm For Rudy, I'm confident it's not a matter of finding something. It's a matter of documenting how many and how much.

What an absolute disgrace that man turned into, though I'm thankful it did get us that scene for the new Borat movie.

hepcat wrote: ↑Wed Apr 28, 2021 1:10 pm I think going forward, any mention of Rudy should be accompanied by this clip from his biopic.

malchior wrote: ↑Wed Apr 28, 2021 2:27 pm The chatter is they were pursuing a search warrant for several months. That seems to me to be an indicator some judge was being a pain in the ass because they weren't going to sign off on something weak. I have to believe there was something concrete here just based on his status. However, Guiliani was doing a lot of things relative to Ukraine; it could be so many things.

Hold the phone -- FBI now at Victoria Toensing's house. Lawyer, wife and partner of Joseph DiGenova, same circles as Rudy and Trump. This has the hallmarks of a bigger day at DOJ. And she's probably not expecting it, unlike Rudy

According to Parnas and a senior U.S. official, Firtash's lawyers, Giuliani associates Joe DiGenova and Victoria Toensing, were unable to convince Attorney General William Barr to intervene in the Firtash case

Holman wrote: ↑Wed Apr 28, 2021 5:58 pm pit them against each other.