Ex Staffer Alleges Trump Misused Funds, Set Up Fake Company

Source: Huffington Post

A former Donald Trump campaign staffer says in response to a Trump lawsuit against him that the campaign may have broken laws against mingling corporate and campaign funds.

Sam Nunberg, in a legal answer to a $10 million lawsuit claiming Nunberg violated a confidentiality agreement, said Trump may have illegally funneled corporate money into the campaign, and created a fictitious company that was listed as a plaintiff in the lawsuit.

Nunberg was fired from Trump’s presidential campaign last summer, after it was revealed that he had posted racist messages on Facebook. Trump’s lawsuit against him, made public on Wednesday, claims Nunberg in May told the New York Post about a public screaming match between two top Trump staffers: campaign spokeswoman Hope Hicks, and Trump’s then-campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski. Nunberg vehemently denies leaking the story. . . .

Nunberg says in his answer to the lawsuit that the Trump campaign illegally created a fictitious company, called Trump 2012 PCA. The company is listed as a plaintiff in the suit against Nunberg, along with Trump’s formal campaign.


Read more: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/sam-nunberg-donald-trump-lawsuit_us_5786a9d1e4b08608d332d58d

Spokesman: Bernie will NOT be fighting platform at convention. No minority report either.

Good news for a positive event!

http://www.miamiherald.com/entertainment/celebrities/article89282362.html

Bernie Sanders has opted against picking a fight over the party platform at the Democratic National Convention.

A spokesman for the Vermont senator said Wednesday that Sanders will not seek more platform changes in Philadelphia, after winning significant concessions during a meeting in Orlando over the weekend.

Sanders succeeded in pushing the Democratic platform in a more liberal direction. The draft, which will be voted on at the convention, includes a $15 federal minimum wage, steps to break up large Wall Street banks and support for an end to the death penalty. Sanders failed to add language explicitly opposing the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal, but that issue is thorny because even though Clinton has also come out against it, President Barack Obama favors the deal.

http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2016/07/13/bernie-sanders-wont-pursue-minority-report-in-philadelphia/

In another sign that Bernie Sanders has made peace with Hillary Clinton, his campaign is choosing to accept the Democratic Party platform and to drop the fight for language that more closely tracks his liberal political agenda.

The Vermont senator had the option to prepare what’s called a “minority report” and present it to delegates for approval at the Democratic convention later this month in Philadelphia. He opted not to do that, campaign aides say. They cited two reasons: Mrs. Clinton has enough delegates to defeat any new language, and Mr. Sanders is satisfied with the success he has had in shaping the platform.

In standing down, Mr. Sanders demonstrated how far he’s moved since the final throes of the Democratic primary race. Battling Mrs. Clinton through the spring he said the convention in Philadelphia would be “contested.” As the race wound down, Sanders aides said that if they didn’t get a platform to their liking they might carry the fight to the convention.

But the rapprochement between Mr. Sanders and Mrs. Clinton is complete, cemented Tuesday by a joint campaign appearance in New Hampshire

Today's new message from Bernie: Why I endorsed Hillary Clinton

Anonymous donor pledges $5 million to charity if Trump releases tax returns.

The charity to be chosen by Trump.

http://www.politico.com/story/2016/07/donald-trump-tax-returns-225446

An anonymous donor has promised to give $5 million to a veterans charity of Donald Trump’s choosing if the presumptive Republican presidential nominee releases his tax returns, political operative and Clinton backer David Brock plans to announce Wednesday.'

The Manhattan billionaire has long refused to release his tax returns, arguing that he cannot do so because he is currently being audited by the Internal Revenue Service. Trump has said he will release the tax documents after his audit is complete, although the IRS said in February that there is no rule prohibiting the real estate mogul from doing so earlier than that.

A release previewing a conference call with Brock scheduled for Wednesday says the $5 million challenge “represents an opportunity to fill in some of the unknowns about Trump including how much he has made off of potentially fraudulent ventures and how much he’s actually paid in taxes.

"What we do know about Trump’s taxes shows that he’s gone to great lengths to pay as little as possible,” the release continues. “Meaning that he is avoiding paying his fair share and shifting that burden to other taxpayers.”


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Jill Stein claims Obama is "Bush on steroids." IOW, much worse than George W.

One more reason no real progressive should consider supporting her.

http://nzagainstthecurrent.blogspot.com/2016/02/rejecting-lesser-evil.html

"We had Bush and all the terrible things under Bush. Then we had Obama, even with the Democratic Congress in both houses for two years. And what did we get under Obama? It was Bush on steroids."

538 is the best source for compiling results of multiple polls

conducted in individual states. If you follow 538, you're less likely to overreact to the latest poll results in a particular state.

Here are its current combined poll results by state:

http://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2016-election-forecast/?ex_cid=rrpromo

538 also rates pollsters

http://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/pollster-ratings/



realclearpolitics reports national polls, Clinton vs. Trump

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2016/president/us/general_election_trump_vs_clinton-5491.html

And realclearpolitics also reports national results of polls that also include Johnson and Stein

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2016/president/us/general_election_trump_vs_clinton_vs_johnson_vs_stein-5952.html

Trump declines invitation to speak at the NAACP convention in Ohio.

He isn't even pretending to care about support from African Americans.

http://www.cnn.com/2016/07/12/politics/donald-trump-naacp-convention/

Washington (CNN)Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump will not be speaking at the NAACP Annual Convention in Ohio next week, the civil rights organization's president and CEO said Tuesday.

After days of speculation, NAACP's Cornell William Brooks told CNN that Trump had declined the group's invitation to address its members in Cincinnati at their conference, which is being held this weekend.

Hillary Clinton, the presumptive Democratic nominee, is scheduled to speak, Brooks told CNN's Wolf Blitzer on "The Situation Room."

TIME: Texts of both Bernie and Hillary's speeches today.

TIME on Black Lives Matter: "Save the Whales" doesn't mean "Screw the Eagles"

The choice isn't binary.

http://time.com/4400811/all-lives-matter/?xid=homepage


Let’s stipulate first that it would be hard to imagine a movement with a more heart-breakingly modest purpose than one making the case that the lives of the people it’s trying to look after aren’t better or more worthy than anyone else’s, but merely that they count.

That, however, hasn’t stopped the critics from pouncing. The go-to criticism—and we’re looking at you Rudy Giuliani, though you’ve had plenty of company—is the disingenuous question: “Hey! What about other lives?” On CBS’s Face the Nation, Giuliani went through the usual riff: “Black lives matter. White lives matter. Asian lives matter. Hispanic lives matter,” the idea being that all lives matter just the same, and that there must be something terribly elitist and wrong with you if you care only about black ones.

But nobody said those other lives don’t matter; no one even said that black lives matter a tiny bit more. Pretending that the choice is binary—and then acting as if it’s the other side that framed it that way—is a handy dodge but a dishonest one. If I say “Save the whales,” it does not mean, “Screw the eagles.”

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The breakthroughd that SoS Clinton helped the US make in transgender and gay rights

When marriage equality for LGBT was still a dream, Hillary quietly took a step at the State Department that made a huge difference for the transgender community, allowing them to get passports in their preferred gender, without needing surgery.

And four months after she arrived at State, she made another key change, putting into place changes that would treat the partners of LGBT people the same way married spouses were treated.

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/07/hillary-clinton-2016-transgender-rights-passport-policy-state-department-lgbt-equality-214007

Jackie Richter is the foul-mouthed, frank-talking owner of Heels and Hardhats, a small construction company near Rockford, Illinois. For almost half a century, she lived as a man—an existence the 58-year-old transgender woman told me felt fundamentally wrong, like always having to wear her right shoe on her left foot. But in the summer of 2010, a few years after she finished transitioning, she applied for a United States passport saying she was female. That September, she got it. This, she said recently, was the first time she felt the full support of the federal government. The document saved her business, saved her family, and—she believes—saved her life.

And for this, she credits Hillary Clinton.

“None of it would have been possible without what she did,” Richter said. “She was a forerunner on this.”

It’s not a label typically associated with the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee. Over her quarter-century of national public life, Clinton mostly has enjoyed broad support from LGBT voters, donors and activists, but many of them considered her a laggard on the litmus-test issue of marriage equality, which she didn’t endorse until 2013. And during her surprisingly drawn-out primary fight with Senator Bernie Sanders, Clinton consistently was cast as the more centrist candidate. Sanders, not Clinton, was the full-throated social revolutionary.

But five years before the Supreme Court ruled in favor of same-sex marriage and President Obama lit up the White House in the colors of the rainbow, Hillary Clinton and her staff at the State Department made a change that for thousands of people was exactly that—revolutionary. Clinton enacted a new rule making it easier for transgender people to register their identities on their passports. Sexual reassignment surgery was no longer necessary; all that was required was a doctor’s note. At the time, this was the most pro-transgender action by the federal government ever, and—coming a full six years before the Pentagon announced transgender troops could serve openly—it stands as one of the most progressive things Clinton has ever done. In a single stroke, she made the passport the best way—for some, the only way—for American citizens to prove they were who they were. For transgender people, it was—according to recent conversations I have had with gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender experts and advocates—“huge,” “enormous,” “monumental.”


SNIP

In May of 2009, four months after Clinton took over at the State Department, Kerry Eleveld, a reporter for The Advocate, the LGBT newspaper, got a copy of a draft of a letter Clinton had written that was to be sent to GLIFAA employees. “Historically, domestic partners of Foreign Service members have not been provided the same training, benefits, allowances, and protections that other family members receive,” the document said. “These inequities are unfair and must end. … [T]he Department will provide these benefits for both opposite-sex and same-sex domestic partners because it is the right thing to do.”

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