Clear and Present Danger

Ivanka Trump — terrified of NY AG — throws the rest of the family under the bus

 

Ivanka Trump, daughter of former President Donald Trump, broke with her father’s defense in a New York fraud case.

Bloomberg News correspondent Erik Larson reported that Trump had joined her father and brothers in asking for a trial delay, but she offered a very different reason.

According to Larson, Trump’s lawyer has argued that the case is “not simple” because she left the Trump organization in 2017 and has a “unique” defense because she has not been accused of lying about the company’s finances.

“The Complaint does not contain a single allegation that Ms. Trump directly or indirectly created, prepared, reviewed, or certified any of her father’s financial statements,” Trump’s attorney said in a court filing this week.

The document alleges “that other individuals were responsible for those tasks.”

Earlier this week, attorneys for the former president requested a delay to push the fraud trial from Oct. 2 to deeper into the 2024 presidential campaign.

New York Attorney General Letitia James has accused Donald Trump and his children of fraudulently manipulating real estate values for profit.

Judge Arthur Engoron previously said that the trial would be held on Oct. 2 “come hell or high water.”

Trump Org. suddenly goes silent about their finances

Two months after the Trump Organization was fined $1.6 million dollars over tax fraud, the company headed by Donald Trump has suddenly gone dark on its financial situation which could be a sign it is in trouble.

According to a report from the Daily Beast’s Jose Pagliery, a report that was released last week by a retired judge who was assigned to “babysit” the embattled company stated the company and its executives have “…not provided a 2022 statement of financial condition to any third parties, and do not intend to do so.”

As the Daily Beast report notes, the “statement of financial condition” is a legal document that lists the “company’s assets and liabilities. But notably, it must also include disclosures describing how the numbers were put together. These are the very documents the Trumps are accused of faking for years, padding the numbers with nonexistent real estate space in Trump Tower and hyperinflated values for undeveloped land.”

The lack of transparency will likely set off alarms.

“The Trump Organization’s financial statements are now the center of the New York attorney general’s massive fraud investigation; and any large real estate company would have to regularly make financial condition statements anytime it seeks to borrow money for a project from a reputable lender,” Pagliery wrote before adding, “That means that, either the Trump Organization has fallen on hard times, found a bank willing to do business without responsible paperwork, or isn’t telling the truth.”

The Beast report also adds that the information black-out could also be a sign that the company has found a “sketchy” financial partner to help it stay afloat which could be an object of a future investigation.

You can read more here.

 

 

Background:

• For weeks after the 2020 Presidential election, Fox continued to support Trump’s claims that the election had been stolen.
• Trump’s group of attorneys filed almost 80 suits, trying to overturn the election results in several states.  Every one of these suits was tossed out of court.
• Many of Fox’s lies focused on Dominion Voting Systems (a manufacturer of voting machines) and Smartmatic (their software is used in some Dominion machines).  Fox and Trump’s attorneys claimed that Dominion’s voting machines were changing votes from Trump to Biden as well as many other specious claims.
• Dominion is now suing Fox for $1.6 BILLION, claiming the Fox reports hurt Dominion’s reputation.
• Fox was required to release internal documents for the trial.  In those documents, it is clear that Fox on-air personalities and Fox executives knew their claims were false yet they persisted in broadcasting these lies.

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Fox News continues to vehemently deny the allegations made against them in Dominion Voting Systems’ $1.6 billion lawsuit against their network, claiming that they were only trying to report both sides of a controversy.

But to the contrary, argued former federal prosecutor Joyce Vance on MSNBC’s “Deadline: White House” on Tuesday, Dominion has ample evidence that Fox was willfully spreading false information, putting on claims they rigged the 2020 presidential election while executives and top on-air personalities privately admitted to knowing it was all false. And this, she said, is a degree of evidence you don’t usually see in defamation cases.

“I want to understand, Joyce, what the significance is, again, of Sidney Powell was only on TV because she was peddling the lie that these hosts knew to be just that, a lie,” said anchor Nicolle Wallace. “They also understand that their viewers believed it. How do those sorts of peeks into their inner understanding of the facts play as this lawsuit goes forward?”

“So this is absolutely the key point in this lawsuit for Fox. This is the hurdle that they face,” said Vance. “So the defamation here would be Fox defamation of Dominion and their voting machines, not their perpetration of the Big Lie. But ultimately, it’s just one big ball of wax, because if the Big Lie isn’t true, then the claims against Dominion aren’t true. And in a libel case where you have a public figure as the plaintiff — and for better or worse, the courts have decided that little Dominion Voting Machines is a public figure — they have to prove that Fox acted with actual malice. That the statements that Fox made were made with knowledge of their falsity, or with reckless disregard for their truth.”

“Usually when you have this sort of a defamation case, you’re in that reckless disregard sort of prong,” said Vance. However, “that is not what is going on here. The evidence that Dominion has is that Fox absolutely knew that it wasn’t true, that their internal communications proved that ... a long time ago in Washington, D.C. as a young lawyer, I participated in a defamation case involving Pat Robertson, who was then a presidential candidate, and this burden of proof was so high, this need that he had to prove that the people who he said had defamed him, had acted with actual malice. And the burden is even higher than in most civil lawsuits whereas we know from your explanations daily, the burden of proof is usually the preponderance of the evidence. But here for actual malice, it is clear and convincing evidence, it is something that almost approaches the standard in the criminal justice system, you just don’t see that in these sorts of defamation cases.”

“Here at Dominion, I think it has it,” Vance added. “These internal communications make it very clear that they knew there was falsity. That they acted with actual malice. The only thing left for anyone to decide is damages. You don’t see that in these cases. I think we might see it as to some claims here.”

Source: ABC News

Two people charged in a coordinated attack on police officers during the Jan. 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol now appear to be on the lam and a judge issued warrants for their arrest just as one of them was set to go on trial this week, court records show.

U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols unsealed bench warrants last week for Olivia Pollock and Joseph Hutchinson, both of Florida, who along with three others are accused of a series of assaults on law enforcement outside the Capitol during the Jan. 6 riot.

After his arrest, Hutchinson was ordered to remain on home detention while Olivia Pollock was ordered to have a GPS monitor on her ankle.

FBI officials in Lakeland, Florida told the Associated Press that both Olivia Pollock and Hutchinson are believed to have tampered with and removed their ankle monitors before they vanished.

Read more: https://abcnews.go.com/US/jan-6-defendants-apparently-disappear-eve-trial-court/story?id=97670591

On Saturday night, America’s most prominent conservative love-in, the Conservative Policy Action Conference (CPAC), closed with an apocalyptic message. Dystopian nightmares replaced the sunny optimism of “Morning in America” as Trump lumbered through a two-hour long, policy-light invective before a smaller-than-hoped-for crowd.

As the Guardian put it, “There was no doubt that former president Trump remained the big fish at the National Harbor in Maryland – but in a smaller pond.”

This observation illustrates the ridiculous media opinion of Trump. On the one hand, the talking heads deny Trump is toast. On the other hand, they cannot ignore that Trump 2023 is a shadow of Trump 2015. The common wisdom is that Trump will win the primaries and lose the general.

That seems reasonable. A neutral analyst has to ask where Trump will find the additional votes to win a presidential election. Even if the MAGAs remain loyal, who will vote for Trump in 2024 that did not vote for him in 2020? What has Trump done in the last two years to convert a never-Trumper into a Trump enthusiast?

Neither he nor the GOP has come up with a single new policy. They continue to run on the unhinged insults that led to two disappointing elections. And that strategy will condemn the GOP to underwhelming results until they return, if they are still able, to their dismal roots.

In 1980, the election of Ronald Reagan, and his marriage of convenience with the Moral Majority, ushered in modern mainstream American conservatism. It was a political philosophy dedicated to the proposition that:

• the rich were not yet rich enough
• the Soviet Union was an existential threat
• Americans should be denied the right to marry or even have sex with the people they wanted to — unless they were straight and waited for marriage
• real Americans were white and lived in the country
• government was evil
• Christianity was the one true faith
• immigrants were paradoxically both job stealers and too lazy to get a job
• and drug addiction could be cured by just saying “no”

Today’s conservative is similar — except they believe that Russia is not so bad, that immigrants are also criminals, and the solution to drug addiction is a border wall.

The difference between a Reagan Republican and a MAGA Republican is that, back in the day, the GOP had a plan. They worked to pass legislation. They negotiated and compromised with Democrats (Tip O’Neill) when they had to. They even increased taxes when the failure of their absurd ‘deficit reduction through tax cuts’ philosophy became too obvious.

Today, the push by Republicans to enact their beliefs has taken a back seat to performative politics. In 2022, the GOP told the voters that inflation and a looming recession were crises. Yet after they clawed out a victory in the House, their energies have been dedicated to investigating Hunter Biden and slamming papa Joe for not taking a day trip to visit a train crash site.

Jim Jordan has used his leadership role to demonize the FBI, fret about the origin of COVID, and claim the Dems are gun grabbers (the GOP has been saying that since Obama in 2008 — no guns grabbed). Yet when pollsters ask voters which issues matter, gun policy is #8, the scope of the federal government #13, and COVID #18.

The economy is the #1 concern. Yet all the GOP does is complain about it without offering any solutions.

MT Greene has enthusiastically backed white nationalism and secession. Why? For the attention. She is merely gaslighting. This cracked actor has not even a pretense of a plan.

When they do have a strategy — as Rick Scott does for destroying Social Security and Medicare — they pick the wrong side in the one thing regular Republicans and Democrats agree on, leaving traditional Medicare and Social Security alone.

The GOP has one plan that bears fruit — bowdlerizing school curriculums to protect white kids’ feelings and punish children for being outside the bigender/heterosexual norm. Their strategy helped flip the Virginia governorship and elevated the leading non-Trump candidate, Ron DeSantis.

Not that DeSantis will cure what ails them. Never-Trumpers have promoted the Florida Governor as “Trump without the drama”. The problem is that he is just that. The base needs theatrics in their candidates. Jeb Bush’s candidacy collapsed in 2016, not because he had no ideas, but because he was dull.

Republicans paid attention, beat their chests, and sacrificed ideas on the altar of outrage. It makes them look good at CPAC, but non-MAGA Americans — who are the vast majority — are tired of it. And there seem to be more non-MAGAs every year.

Like a small child, the base wants fairy stories — entertainment without effort. There is little difference between today’s GOP, professional wrestling, and superhero movies. All are enjoyable — if you like that sort of thing —  but it is no way to run a railroad.

 

 

 

 

Former New York Times columnist Bari Weiss recently founded a publication called The Free Press, and several weeks ago it published an account from a woman named Jamie Reed. Reed, who worked as a case manager at a Washington University gender clinic in St. Louis, made inflammatory accusations (with more in a sworn affidavit) that numerous children at the clinic were being carelessly shoved into irreversible gender treatment en masse.

Reed’s article went viral on social media, and was cited by numerous conservatives and transphobes as conclusive proof that too many kids are getting transition care. A couple of prominent liberals joined in as well. Matthew Yglesias cited it as credible on Twitter and Substack. “The picture she paints of the clinic’s treatment of children is ghastly. The affidavit she signed is even worse,” wrote Jonathan Chait at New York magazine. (It’s of a piece with an ongoing trend in liberal and centrist publications of writing anxious articles raising questions about youth transition care.)

There is just one problem. Reed’s account is a pile of garbage.

Even when it was first published, any sensible person should have seen some obvious red flags. Reed was not involved either in treatment or management, and her lawyer founded an openly transphobic organization. As Evan Urquhart pointed out at Assigned Media, she made several wildly mistaken claims about the side effects of some gender treatments. In her affidavit, Reed claimed that children came into the clinic identifying as “mushroom,” “rock,” or “helicopter,” only to be quickly given puberty blockers or hormones. This is not only facially preposterous, but in the last case suspiciously lines up with a common right-wing transphobic “joke.”

Sure enough, subsequent reporting has demolished Reed’s story. A woman named Danielle Meert whose child worked with Reed told a local NBC affiliate: “Saying that kids walk in and get hormones right away has not been our experience. It was about nine months until we had a puberty blocker implanted.” Another trans boy treated at the clinic contradicted her assertion that hormones were prescribed after just a couple of meetings with a therapist: “That’s not possible at all because a therapist has to see a patient for six months consistently, before they can even start writing the letter [of recommendation].” The Missouri Independent also interviewed numerous patients, who reported “any treatments were only undertaken after long consultations with doctors and mental health professionals.” Finally, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch recently interviewed numerous parents whose children had gone to the clinic, who “reported a well-defined, step-by-step approach that could be halted at any time.”

https://prospect.org/blogs-and-newsletters/tap/2023-03-02-right-wing-transphobia-panic/

One Republican strategist has a blistering opinion of the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) as the annual event produces a lacking response from the political party.

On Friday, March 3, Mike Murphy appeared on MSNBC News where he weighed in during a discussion with news anchor Alex Wagner.

The host aired a clip that featured Don Trump Jr. appealing to the CPAC crowd to consider using a Christian-based mobile provider as opposed to a major carrier that might be embracing the “woke” agenda.

Wagner kicked off the discussion with his take on the remarks from the former president’s son.

“The amazing part about the cell phone service – Patriot Mobile – that Don Jr. is hawking here, is that the whole premise is to stop spending your money at woke cell phone companies,” Wagner said. “But here is the thing. The Christian conservative carrier doesn’t have its own national infrastructure. So, it just rents excess capacity from woke cell phone companies like T-Mobile and AT&T.”

Wagner, who also highlighted the devolution of CPAC also asked, “What does CPAC tell us about the modern Republican Party? Is it just one big grift?”

He added, “But it is kind of a professional grassroots huckster wing of the GOP. So, the good news is, it’s an outlier. It’s not the sampling it used to be.”

Murphy also noted the changes in CPAC over the years emphasizing the atmospheric decline.

“This thing now is a scam,” he said. “Pure and simple, top to bottom.”

Now, Murphy believes CPAC is comprised of the “hobbyist wing of the right-wing.”

“CPAC now is like the 25 Japanese troops in a cave somewhere in 1953 waiting for the emperor to tell them to attack,” he said. “It is a symptom of the weakness of the Trump thing, not the strength that he owns this shrinking island.”

Just as he did in his first campaign, Donald Trump painted an incredibly bleak picture of a nation in a “communism state of mind” that’s grinding into oblivion without him in his speech at CPAC Saturday.

He blasted America as a “socialist dumping ground for criminals, junkies, thugs, Marxist radicals and dangerous refugees that no other country wants.” He claimed that people in the country illegally are staying in the U.S. in “beautiful hotel suites.”

He wasn’t much easier on traditional Republicans, whom he ripped as “freaks, neocons, globalist open borders zealots — and fools.”

Trump, who has a close relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin, claimed he has the “personality to keep us out of war.”

He vowed: “We are never going back to a party that wants to give unlimited money to fight foreign wars that are endless wars, that are stupid,” apparently referring to Ukraine’s fight against the Russian invasion.

He told his supporters: “I am your warrior. I am your justice. For those who have been wronged and betrayed, I am your retribution.”

The man who constantly seeks contributions told the crowd he doesn’t “need money.”

Trump added: “Our enemies are lunatics and maniacs. They cannot stand that they do not own me, I don’t need them … I don’t need their money. They cannot steer me, they cannot shake me, and they will never, ever control me.”

Trump started out low-key, thanking and introducing several in the audience, including defeated right-wing Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro, “great guy” Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) and former White House doctor Rep. Ronny Jackson (R-Texas).

“He said I’m the healthiest president ever by far,” Trump bragged. He also quipped about “low-key” Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) who was also in the audience.

He was introduced at CPAC as the “next president of the United States, President Donald Trump.”