Author: clearandpresentdanger
Republicans, the IRS, and another Republican lie
If today ends in a “Y”, Republicans are lying.
So many lies, so little time.
Let’s consider the lie, endlessly repeated by Republicans and the Fox News-led echo chamber, that new legislation enacted by Democrats funds the hiring of “87,000 armed IRS agents.” Like the “death panel” fabrication during the Obamacare debate, this is a whole-cloth invention designed to stoke paranoia.
Sen. Rick Scott (Fla.), head of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, sent an open letter last week warning Americans not to work for the IRS. He falsely claimed that the Democrats’ climate, energy and tax bill would add “roughly 87,000 agents” at the IRS, creating “an IRS super-police force”.
“The IRS made it very clear that one of the ‘major duties’ of these new positions is to ‘be willing to use deadly force.’ … The IRS is making it very clear that you not only need to be ready to audit and investigate your fellow hardworking Americans, your neighbors and friends, you need to be ready and, to use the IRS’s words, willing, to kill them.”
Where to begin?
The IRS certainly isn’t adding 87,000 armed agents. It isn’t even adding 87,000 agents. In fact, it’s not even adding 87,000 employees.
When you figure in attrition (current funding doesn’t let the IRS fill all vacancies), Treasury officials tell me, the expected increase in personnel would be more like 40,000, over the course of a decade — which would merely restore IRS staffing to around the 117,000 it had in 1990.
Only about 6,500 of the new hires would be “agents.” The rest would be customer-service representatives, data specialists and the like.
And fewer than 1 percent of the new hires would be armed. (The IRS job posting Scott cited, which predated the new law, was specifically for such law-enforcement personnel.) Such officers, who go after drug rings and Russian oligarchs, have been part of the IRS for more than a century.
As for the IRS coming after “hardworking Americans,” Treasury says the new law will result in a “lower likelihood of audit” for ordinary taxpayers, because technology upgrades will enable the IRS to target the actual tax cheats — the super-rich — for more audits. The wealthiest 1 percent defraud the government, and fellow taxpayers, of more than $160 billion a year.
So here we have a Republican Party leadership figure generating false hysteria about armed government agents, hysteria that has increased threats against the people who collect the funds for the U.S. military, among everything else. And he’s dishonestly fomenting antigovernment fury in the service of protecting filthy-rich tax cheats. (Scott’s office didn’t respond to a request for comment.)
It isn’t just Scott who is lying.
Sen. Ted Cruz (Tex.), fantasizing about an “army of 87,000 IRS agents,” proclaimed that “we WILL NOT FUND these 87k armed new IRS agents who will target the American people.”
Sen. Chuck Grassley (Iowa) mused on Fox News about “a strike force that goes in with AK-15s [sic] already loaded ready to shoot some small-business person.”
House GOP leader Kevin McCarthy (Calif.) warned that “Democrats’ new army of 87,000 IRS agents will be coming for you.”
Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel saw an “IRS ‘SWAT team’ ” invading “your kids’ lemonade stand.”
Fox News’s Brian Kilmeade imagined that IRS agents would “hunt down and kill middle class taxpayers that don’t pay enough.”
Rep. Thomas Massie (Ky.) envisioned “87,000 new agents, AR-15s and 5 million rounds of ammunition.”
Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) and Sen. Marco Rubio (Fla.) claimed “87,000 new IRS agents.” Reps. Andy Biggs of Arizona and Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia alleged “87,000 armed IRS agents.”
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis called it a “middle finger to the American public.” (COMMENT: Okay, Gov., you want to see a middle finger?)
The media startup Grid found that Republican members of Congress tweeted the “87,000 agents” falsehood hundreds of times, while Fox News has repeated it more than 90 times this month, according to the Stanford Cable TV News Analyzer — all unmoved by fact checks repeatedly debunking the nonsense.
Grid traced the 87,000-agents lie to Grover Norquist’s Americans for Tax Reform, which in May 2021 took a Treasury Department proposal to add 86,852 positions at the IRS by 2031 (again, a gross figure that didn’t account for attrition) and wrongly concluded: “Biden Plans to Hire 87,000 New IRS Agents.” Sen. Joni Ernst (Iowa) repeated the misrepresentation, and Republicans were off to the races.
Instead, they could have told the truth: that the administration plans to add a few thousand IRS agents over 10 years, and a few hundred armed officers, to go after super-rich tax cheats. But the lie is so much scarier.
As the classified document saga continues, Trump piles the bullshit higher and higher
Trump wants “my” classified documents back.
On Tuesday, Rolling Stone reported that former President Donald Trump is privately demanding that his lawyers help him get “my” classified documents back from the Justice Department, after they were seized in an FBI search of his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida.
“Trump wasn’t merely referring to the alleged trove of attorney-client material that he insists was scooped up by the feds, two people familiar with the matter tell Rolling Stone,” reported Asawin Suebsaeng and Adam Rawnsley. “The ex-president has been demanding that his team find a way to recover ‘all’ of the official documents that Trump has long referred to as ‘mine’ — including the highly sensitive and top secret ones.”
“Sources close to Trump agree with outside legal experts that such a sweeping legal maneuver would be a long-shot, at best. ‘I hate to break it to the [former] president, but I do not think he is going to get all [the] top-secret documents back,’ says one Trump adviser. ‘That ship has probably sailed,'” said the report. “Further, several longtime Trump advisers say they want absolutely nothing to do with the now-infamous boxes of documents, fearing that any knowledge of them could invite an unwanted knock on the door from the feds. ‘Who would want any of that back? … If it is what they say it is, keep them the hell away,’ a second adviser says.”
According to previous reports, some of the documents are classified at the highest level, and may involve nuclear weapons secrets.
Another recent report indicated that Trump had over 300 classified documents stashed at Mar-a-Lago — and that he personally sorted through all the documents to determine which ones he wanted to hold back from the National Archives, a potential sign he was aware of the risk to national security but went through with it anyway.
“The former president’s office claimed recently that Trump had issued a so-called ‘standing order’ to automatically declassify any materials taken from the West Wing in order to facilitate a flexible work schedule for the then-president,” said the report. “Thus far, no Trump administration veterans have come forward to attest to the existence of the legally questionable order. But it has prompted, as Rolling Stone reported last week, FBI agents to begin questioning former members of the Trump National Security Council about whether they have any recollection of such an order.” So far, no one has ever heard of such an order.
Trump=appointed judge laughs at Trump’s attempt to stop DOJ investigation
Last week, after Fox News host Laura Ingraham beat up his new attorney, Donald Trump teased that a “major motion pertaining to the Fourth Amendment will soon be filed concerning the illegal Break-In of my home.” On Monday his lawyers filed a lawsuit against the federal government that was deemed “incompetent” by well-respected attorneys, with one calling it “shitty on every level.”
Late Tuesday afternoon the judge assigned to the case appeared to agree.
“In a brief order on Tuesday afternoon, U.S. District Court Judge Aileen Cannon signaled some confusion about the motion Trump’s attorneys filed on Monday asking for an outsider to sift through materials the FBI seized from Trump’s home and resort in Palm Beach, Fla., earlier this month pursuant to a search warrant,” Politico reports.
Politico’s Kyle Cheney on social media adds, “Judge Aileen Cannon responds to Trump lawsuit re: FBI search with a list of more questions for Trump’s team about what, precisely, they’re asking for.”
He attached a screenshot of the judge’s order, which reads in part, “on or before August 26, 2022, Plaintiff shall file a supplement to the Motion further elaborating on the following: (1) the asserted basis for the exercise of this Court’s jurisdiction, whether legal, equitable/anomalous, or both; (2) the framework applicable to the exercise of such jurisdiction; (3) the precise relief sought, including any request for injunctive relief pending resolution of the Motion; (4) the effect, if any, of the proceeding before Magistrate Judge Bruce E. Reinhart; and (5) the status of Plaintiff’s efforts to perfect service on Defendant.”
Apparently mocking the former president, attorney, legal analyst, and MSNBC anchor Katie Phang “translated” the legal-speak into this: “Judge asking Trump: ‘How can you be here? Why are you here? What is this filing? Why aren’t you before the other judge? Have you bothered to comply with the service of process rules?’”
Judge Cannon is a Trump-appointee who is a member of the right wing Federalist Society.
Just to be clear about Donald J. Trump
Trump is a buffoon, a caricature of a self-made man, a fraud in every sense of the word.
He’s a liar, a cheat, a cardboard persona.
He’s corrupt to the bottom of his mean, shriveled, little heart.
So what is it that makes millions of people willing to follow him to the gates of hell or into an insurrection against their own country?
In a word, the “Media”. He is a media made creature. He is fake. He is make believe. He is not real.
For decades he put himself in the New York papers by making late-night telephone calls to reporters, telling them fantastic things about about Mr. Trump, posing as the fictional “John Barron”.
Then came The Apprentice. That piece of garbage ran for 15 seasons. Fifteen years of the ‘fake’ billionaire making deals and firing people on television.
The big man with the big jet, the beautiful women, and the golden palace in Trump Tower. Oh, to be him or the woman with him, his ardent watchers thought.
All the while he’s scamming everyone he comes in contact with: contractors, vendors, employees, customers. He’s playing ‘find the money’ with the IRS, and making deals with Russian oligarchs awash in cash. And isn’t he fortunate that every AG anywhere in New York (until recently) can’t seem to find any crimes to charge him with?
Then, for reasons still not fully known, he decides to slither down his golden escalator for a run for President of the United States, and to his surprise and the world’s chagrin, the lying, cheating, corrupt buffoon ‘wins’. Then the crimes really begin. He couldn’t help himself, there was a smorgasbord of stuff to steal, so many corrupt deals to be made. Money flowed into his golden coffers.
He didn’t want it to ever end. And that is when he decided that he would be President Forever.
Truth in pictures
MAGAts are threatening violence because they are terrified
It is an angry reaction.
They are not so angry that he stole the documents, only that he got caught stealing them. The aura of invincibility has been deeply tarnished.
They understand the seriousness of the crimes. They know the penalty for stealing state secrets that might threaten the lives of our young people in the military. They know that if those documents were found in the basement of Barack Obama’s home, they would be calling for his execution.
So they react in anger. It is the liberal’s fault. It is the FBI’s fault. It is Merrick Garland’s fault. It is the Judge’s fault. But they know that the real fault is with themselves. They put their faith in a con-artist and a grifter and they are getting their just reward.
Now, they threaten violence against everyone else. They want to kill all the FBI. They want to destroy the government, which has been so good to them. They have been deeply hurt and disappointed. The person they worshiped may be guilty of espionage? He may be a traitor to his country. It is not an easy reality with which to come to grips.
They are shattered. And they are reacting the only way they know how — with threats, bluster, and violence.
Trump is on the verge of losing his entire NY empire
Donald Trump may lose his Trump Organization empire following the disposition of a legal case in Manhattan.
Longtime Trump Organization Chief Financial Officer Allen Weisselberg pleaded guilty on Thursday to 15 charges stemming from a tax avoidance scheme at the former president’s company.
Weisselberg attorney Nicholas Gravante Jr. told The New York Times, “rather than risk the possibility of 15 years in prison, he has agreed to serve 100 days.”
CNN’s Erin Burnett interviewed Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist David Cay Johnston about Weisselberg agreeing to testify in the Trump Organization trial. Johnston, who has taught taxes at Syracuse Law, is one of the few journalists who has obtained parts of Trump’s tax returns.
“What happens to the Trump Organization, to the real estate company here, when this is all said and done?” Burnett asked.
“Well, it’s possible in this case or the Letitia James civil case, that the Trump Organization at the top will be extinguished,” Johnston replied.
“Donald can still own his properties, but own them directly and the liability shield from having a corporation goes away,” he explained. “So something horrible happens, his liability personally goes way up. This is bad news for him.”
“Now that Weisselberg has confessed that he’s a thief, a felon, a serial felon, there may be difficulty with banks and trying to get any new financing,” Johnston noted.
A word of explanation is due:
- Trump’s “empire” consists of a number of small companies or corporations. Entities such as these are taxed differently from individuals. Trump has used the money earned by these corporations to finance his lifestyle.
- The New York Attorney General is investigating the Trump corporations for bank, insurance, and tax fraud because Trump would claims the various corporations and their holdings are worth a lot when applying for a bank loan, but not worth much when reporting them for tax purposes.
- Recently Trump made a deposition for the NY AG in which he took the Fifth Amendment over 400 times. In a criminal case, if you take the Fifth, that cannot be used against you. However, in NY, in a civil case, taking the Fifth can be used as an admission that you are guilty.
- Several reports from NY suggest that the NY AG plans to use Trump’s use of the Fifth in his deposition as a reason to seize all his properties because he is guilty of fraud.
- Weisselberg will testify against the Trump Organization, testifying to the massive tax, insurance, and bank fraud that has gone on for 40 years or more, thereby giving the NY AG more ammunition with which to put Trup out of business and possibly in jail.
NYT reviews Jared Kushner’s memoir . . . did he write a memoir?
I did not realize that Jared Kushner had written a memoir of his days in the White House. Based on this NYT review, it’s not likely to become a best seller.
BREAKING HISTORY
A White House Memoir
By Jared Kushner
492 pages. Broadside Books. $35.
The United States Secret Service isn’t known for its sense of humor, but when it gave Jared Kushner the code name “mechanic,” was someone betting that he’d call his memoir “Breaking History”?
It’s a title that, in its thoroughgoing lack of self-awareness, matches this book’s contents. Kushner writes as if he believes foreign dignitaries (and less-than dignitaries) prized him in the White House because he was the fresh ideas guy, the starting point guard, the dimpled go-getter.
He betrays little cognizance that he was in demand because, as a landslide of other reporting has demonstrated, he was in over his head, unable to curb his avarice, a cocky young real estate heir who happened to unwrap a lot of Big Macs beside his father-in-law, the erratic and misinformed and similarly mercenary leader of the free world. Jared was a soft touch.
“Breaking History” is an earnest and soulless — Kushner looks like a mannequin, and he writes like one — and peculiarly selective appraisal of Donald J. Trump’s term in office. Kushner almost entirely ignores the chaos, the alienation of allies, the breaking of laws and norms, the flirtations with dictators, the comprehensive loss of America’s moral leadership, and so on, ad infinitum, to speak about his boyish tinkering (the “mechanic”) with issues he was interested in.
This book is like a tour of a once majestic 18th-century wooden house, now burned to its foundations, that focuses solely on, and rejoices in, what’s left amid the ashes: the two singed bathtubs, the gravel driveway and the mailbox. Kushner’s fealty to Trump remains absolute. Reading this book reminded me of watching a cat lick a dog’s eye goo.
The tone is college admissions essay. Typical sentence: “In an environment of maximum pressure, I learned to ignore the noise and distractions and instead to push for results that would improve lives.”
Every political cliché gets a fresh shampooing. “Even in a starkly divided country, there are always opportunities to build bridges,” Kushner writes. And, quoting the former White House deputy chief of staff Chris Liddell: “Every day here is sand through an hourglass, and we have to make it count.” So true, for these are the days of our lives.
Kushner, poignantly, repeatedly beats his own drum. He recalls every drop of praise he’s ever received; he brings these home and he leaves them on the doorstep. You turn the pages and find, almost at random, colleagues, some of them famous, trying to be kind, uttering things like:
It’s really not fair how the press is beating you up. You made a very positive contribution.
I don’t know how you do this every day on so many topics. That was really hard! You deserve an award for all you’ve done.
I’ve said before, and I’ll say again. This agreement would not have happened if it wasn’t for Jared.
Jared did an amazing job working with Bob Lighthizer on the incredible USMCA trade deal we signed yesterday.
Jared’s a genius. People complain about nepotism — I’m the one who got the steal here.
I’ve been in Washington a long time, and I must say, Jared is one of the best lobbyists I’ve ever seen.
A therapist might call these cries for help.
“Breaking History” opens with the story of Kushner’s father, the real estate tycoon Charles Kushner, who was imprisoned after hiring a prostitute to seduce his brother-in-law, having the encounter filmed and sending the tape to his sister. He was a good man who did a bad thing, Jared says, and Chris Christie, while serving as the United States attorney for New Jersey, was cruel to prosecute him so mercilessly.
There is a flashback to Kushner’s grandparents, Holocaust survivors who settled in New Jersey and did well. There’s a page or two about Kushner’s time at Harvard. He omits the fact that he was admitted after his father pledged $2.5 million to the college.
If Kushner can recall a professor or a book that influenced him while in Cambridge, he doesn’t say. Instead, he recalls doing his first real estate deals while there. He moved to New York, and bought and ruined a great newspaper (The New York Observer) by dumbing it down and feting his friends in its pages.
His wooing of Ivanka Trump included a good deal of jet-setting. Kushner briefly broke up with her, he writes, because she wasn’t Jewish. (She would later convert.) Wendi Murdoch, Rupert’s wife, reunited them on Rupert’s yacht. Kushner describes the power scene:
On that Sunday, we were having lunch at Bono’s house in the town of Eze on the French Riviera, when Rupert stepped out to take a call. He came back and whispered in my ear, “They blinked, they agreed to our terms, we have The Wall Street Journal.” After lunch, Billy Joel, who had also been with us on the boat, played the piano while Bono sang with the Irish singer-songwriter Bob Geldof.
With or without you, Bono.
Once in the White House, Kushner became Little Jack Horner, placing a thumb in everyone else’s pie, and he wonders why he was disliked. He read Sun Tzu and imagined he was becoming a warrior. It was because he had Trump’s ear, however, that he won nearly every time he locked antlers with a rival. Corey Lewandowski — out. Steve Bannon — out.
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who begged Kushner to stop meddling internationally — out. (Kushner cites Tillerson’s “reclusive approach” to foreign policy.) By the end, Tillerson was like a dead animal someone needed to pull a tarpaulin over.
Kushner was pleased that the other adults in the room, including the White House chief of staff Reince Priebus, the White House counsel Don McGahn and the later chief of staff John Kelly, left or were ejected because they tried, patriotically, to exclude him from meetings he shouldn’t have been in. The fact that he was initially denied security clearance, he writes, was much ado about nothing.
The bulk of “Breaking History” — at nearly 500 pages, it’s a slog — goes deeply into the weeds (Kushner, in his acknowledgments, credits a ghostwriter, the speechwriter Brittany Baldwin) on the issues he cared most about, including prison reform, the Covid response and the Middle East, where he had a win with the Abraham Accords.
This book ends with Kushner suggesting he was unaware of the events of Jan. 6 until late in the day. He mostly sidesteps talking about spurious claims of election fraud. He seems to have no beliefs beyond carefully managed appearances and the art of the deal. He wants to stay on top of things, this manager, but doesn’t want to get to the bottom of anything.
You finish “Breaking History” wondering: Who is this book for? There’s not enough red meat for the MAGA crowd, and Kushner has never appealed to them anyway. Political wonks will be interested — maybe, to a limited degree — but this material is more thoroughly and reliably covered elsewhere. He’s a pair of dimples without a demographic.
What a queasy-making book to have in your hands. Once someone has happily worked alongside one of the most flagrant and systematic and powerful liars in this country’s history, how can anyone be expected to believe a word they say?
It makes a kind of sense that Kushner is likely to remain exiled in Florida. “The whole peninsula of Florida was weighted down with regret,” as Cynthia Ozick put it in “The Shawl.” “Everyone had left behind a real life.”
Rudy testifies . . . as a target of a criminal investigation
Before reading this article, remember: Rudy was Mayor of New York City, and was US District Attorney for the Southern District of New York. Now, he’s a rambling drunk whose hair dye runs down his face, whose law license has been suspended, and who can’t get his old client Donald Trump to pay him.
When Rudolph W. Giuliani traveled to Georgia’s capital city in December 2020 to make fanciful public accusations of election fraud on behalf of President Donald J. Trump, he was greeted in a manner befitting the emissary of the most powerful man on earth, and posed for photos with admirers and sympathetic state politicians.
On Wednesday morning, Mr. Giuliani was back in Atlanta, this time under very different circumstances.
The former New York City mayor, who was serving as Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer after the November 2020 election, showed up shortly before 8:30 a.m. to appear before a Fulton County special grand jury conducting a criminal investigation into postelection meddling by Mr. Trump and his associates. Local prosecutors informed Mr. Giuliani’s lawyers this week that he was a “target” in that investigation, meaning that his indictment was possible.
Instead of visiting the elegant gold-domed State Capitol — where he and a pro-Trump group made a number of false claims about election fraud, raising concerns about untrustworthy voting machines and suitcases of illegal ballots — Mr. Giuliani appeared a few blocks away at the Fulton County court complex, where Atlantans go to resolve real estate disputes, file for divorce or be arraigned for armed robberies.
Video link: https://nyti.ms/3pmUbyS
Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/17/us/giuliani-trump-atlanta-ga.html
No respectable attorney wants to represent Trump, so, he’s stuck with fourth-rate mouthpieces
On Tuesday, The Washington Post reported that former President Donald Trump is struggling to find reputable lawyers to assist him as the FBI investigates his unusual retention of highly classified information at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida.
“The struggle to find expert legal advice puts Trump in a bind as he faces potential criminal exposure from a records dispute with the National Archives that escalated into a federal investigation into possible violations of the Espionage Act and other statutes,” reported Isaac Arnsdorf, Josh Dawsey, Carol D. Leonnig, Jacqueline Alemany, and Rosalind S. Helderman. “‘Everyone is saying no,’ said a prominent Republican lawyer, who like some others spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss confidential conversations.”
“Ordinarily, the prestige and publicity of representing a former president, as well as the new and complex legal issues at stake in this case, would attract high-powered attorneys. But Trump’s search is being hampered by his divisiveness, as well as his reputation for stiffing vendors and ignoring advice,” said the report. “‘In olden days, he would tell firms representing him was a benefit because they could advertise off it. Today it’s not the same,’ said Michael Cohen, a former lawyer for Trump who was convicted of tax evasion, false statements, campaign finance violations and lying to Congress in 2018. ‘He’s also a very difficult client in that he’s always pushing the envelope, he rarely listens to sound legal advice, and he wants you to do things that are not appropriate, ethically or legally.'”
According to the report, the legal team Trump is stuck with is less than prepared to help him with such a high-profile legal battle.
“People familiar with the search for legal help said the effort includes Susie Wiles, a close adviser to Trump, and attorney Christina Bobb, who was present at Mar-a-Lago during the search and signed for the list of documents taken,” said the report. “Former campaign adviser Boris Epshteyn is taking a prominent role, and former White House aide Kash Patel is advising informally. Patel is raising money for a ‘legal offense’ fund by selling merchandise such as tank tops and beanies emblazoned with the logo ‘K$H.'”
“Trump’s other lawyer currently based in Florida is Lindsey Halligan, whose practice, according to a professional biography, focuses on insurance claims at residential and commercial properties,” said the report. “She was admitted to the Florida bar in 2014. A search of federal court records found no filings under her name. She did not respond to requests for comment.”