The Trump Investigation(s) Thread

[malchior]

I'm sure they are going to turn up a ton of graft. And nothing will happen to any of these criminals other than a bad headline. We aren't the country we think we are. Though I'd love to be proved wrong.

[Lassr]

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.”

I wonder if any of this will eventually end up as case studies in the Gov Fraud Training I have to take every year.

[Smoove_B]

I wonder if any of this will eventually end up as case studies in the Gov Fraud Training I have to take every year.

There will eventually probably be enough for an entire week-long course. I'm confident we're going to keep hearing about more and more stuff like this ranging from small scale all the way up to insane pandemic-related graft.

[malchior]

I'm loosely categorizing this as an "investigation" but Trump's campaign grifted his own donor's through a scheme that ought to be illegal. Still I can't feel all too bad for these people.

NY Times

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 Another $500 was withdrawn the next day, then $500 the next week and every week through mid-October, without his knowledge — until Mr.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]

When you blindly support a grifter con-man you get conned. Simple as that.

[Remus West]

When you blindly support a grifter con-man you get conned. Simple as that.

Yep. I feel bad for them. I feel worse for what their blind support of him (and Republicans in general) has done to the state of our nation and world.

[Unagi]

I feel bad for us, not them.

I’m happy if they feel burned by Trump, because I love when people re-join our reality, that’s a positive thing.

[Jaymann]

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]

I read where some of them were mad they got fleeced but said they still support Florida Man 100%. The Art of the Grift.

I saw this too. Some variation of someone in the campaign was at fault. Many have little understanding of ethics/accountability.

[Skinypupy]

I read where some of them were mad they got fleeced but said they still support Florida Man 100%. The Art of the Grift.

I would assume that if someone were enough of a "true believer" to donate money to Florida Man, there not many things - including him blatantly ripping him off - that could ever steer them from that path.

[Paingod]

This is less money down the road for others in the GOP, right? Burn the Red voters by stealing from them, they either avoid you in the future or have nothing left to give. It's pure Florida Man logic.

[malchior]

Mueller missed the easy avenue to get him on the record - ask him to talk to Hannity.

[El Guapo]

Mueller missed the easy avenue to get him on the record - ask him to talk to Hannity.

eh, this was really disappointing. He's just admitting that aides asked him a lot about Russia, which is at most an admission that things looked bad with him and Russia (not that they were actually bad).

[malchior]

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.

[Jaymann]

You know many people are saying, and we have the best people, who say they know...that Putin is a fine leader, one of the best, and he is always giving advice...not that anyone really listens, since we like to give advise too... and they don't tell you this...but hardly anyone listens to good advice...and I should know because I have only the best advisors...but you know what I tell them? I tell them I have very good advice too, only the best advice, and who listens to me? Well a lot of people listen to me, 78 million people listen to me...so I don't really need any more advice...

[Holman]

Man, he's really on the orange again, isn't he?

For a while there after he left DC, pictures of Mar-a-Lago Trump would crop up where he looked like any other pasty white guy. I guess going on TV again makes him want to reach for that, um, youthful glow.

[El Guapo]

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]

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.

[Zaxxon]

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.

But he also uses it to brag about the things he didn't actually accomplish/do, as well as the things that 'people' aren't actually saying or asking. Your take could absolutely be correct--I just don't think Trump bragging about something implies anything in particular.

[El Guapo]

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!").

[Jaymann]

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!").

Well, duh. Obama couldn't take their guns, so he took their bullets.

[Grifman]

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.

[El Guapo]

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.

For someone high profile like Giuliani - yeah, they wouldn't do this if they only had speculation. Also the guy is a moron who has basically been committing crimes in broad daylight, so...

Still, promising in terms of willingness to not shy away from going after high profile Trump administration folk.

[Holman]

They seized Rudy’s electronics.

I’m sure they’ll find nothing, since Giuliani is a known master of cyber security.

[hepcat]

Yeah, this was a surprising turn.

I figured the Dominion lawsuits would be his downfall.

I have to wonder what they turned up in the Ukrainian investigation.

[Smoove_B]

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]

I think going forward, any mention of Rudy should be accompanied by this clip from his biopic.

[Jaymann]

But it wasn't actually the Ukraine, it was Ukraine Total Landscaping.

[El Guapo]

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.

Just take a minute and think about how different his legacy would be if he had dropped dead of a heart attack in 2015.

One caveat I would put specific to the Ukrainian stuff is that it's an area where the law isn't super specific. Is it illegal to try to get the Ukrainian government to provide dirt on a political rival? There's certainly no law that says that precisely. There are certainly broad laws (anticorruption, treason, etc.) that arguably apply, but they're vague enough that using them would be controversial.

Now, one big question with Guiliani is whether he clearly violated any traditional "boring" criminal laws, like fraud, bribery, etc. With him being him there's a decent chance that he did, but is the proof there.

[malchior]

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.

[malchior]

I think going forward, any mention of Rudy should be accompanied by this clip from his biopic.

I love that clip. Was there no time to just drive to a beach and film this? Instead it looks like they're standing at stock footage beach moments after the sun went supernova.

[Daehawk]

Probably seized all his video of his hookers while he was in Ukraine looking for Hunter Biden.

[Octavious]

Of course it was James Woods. That guy is such a piece of crap. To be fair when it was made nobody knew what was coming.

[hepcat]

It's the laugh at the end that just elevates it to art.

[Smoove_B]

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.

I wonder what the chatter is now, because I'm pretty sure no one saw this coming

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

If you want to know about her, from January of 2020.

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

Maybe her husband (DiGenova) will be next...

[malchior]

FWIW her lawyer says she has been told she is not the target of the investigation and would have cooperated if asked.

[Holman]

I would love to see Justice (both the department and the concept) peel this whole corrupt gang apart and pit them against each other.

[Carpet_pissr]

pit them against each other.

I think that's their default state, from everything I've read. Inside the Trump admin was apparently like a pitbull fight every day. Kill or be killed.

[malchior]

It's rich how Rudy's people are all having meltdowns about the "injustice". He did far worse to people.

[Zarathud]

No one is above the law. Rudy forgot that along the way.