DonViejo
DonViejo's JournalProsecutors say spreadsheets from Trump Organization offer a road map for its indictment....
Prosecutors say spreadsheets from Trump Organization offer a road map for its indictment. Where the investigation goes now is the question.
David Fahrenthold, Jonathan O'Connell, Shayna Jacobs, Josh Dawsey 1 day ago
In prosecutors’ telling, the Trump Organization provided a road map for its own indictment.
In documents filed in the New York Supreme Court last week, prosecutors claimed that the company had spent 15 years paying its chief financial officer “off the books,” giving him cars, an apartment, tuition payments and cash that were hidden from income tax authorities.
But at the same time, according to allegations included in the indictment, the Trump Organization also was keeping internal spreadsheets that tallied the payments that were being hidden.
Prosecutors treated the spreadsheets as the accounting equivalent of a confession. They said the ledgers themselves showed the size of the fraud, estimating that the CFO alone had avoided paying more than $900,000 in taxes. And that concealment, they said, showed that the Trump Organization knew it was wrong.
more/NO PAYWALL
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/prosecutors-say-spreadsheets-from-trump-organization-offer-a-road-map-for-its-indictment-where-the-investigation-goes-now-is-the-question/ar-AALKWhF
Trump is asking random Mar-a-Lago visitors to recommend lawyers to help with his legal issues, ...
Trump is asking random Mar-a-Lago visitors to recommend lawyers to help with his legal issues, Wolff book saysmjankowicz@businessinsider.com (Mia Jankowicz) 46 mins ago
Trump has no "real" lawyers working with him, a new book about him says.
The former president asks Mar-a-Lago visitors if they have any recommendations, the book says.
Trump has several legal threats hanging over him.
Former President Donald Trump is asking passers-by for legal help as he finds himself in increasing jeopardy, according to a new book.
An excerpt of "Landslide: The Final Days of the Trump Presidency" by Michael Wolff published by The Times of London Monday describes Trump's life surrounded by followers at his Florida home of Mar-A-Lago.
In it, Wolff says that as of spring 2021 Trump had no "real" lawyers working with him, "going so far as to ask random visitors if they know any good ones" to help with the many legal threats looming over him.
Insider's C. Ryan Barber and Tom LoBianco reported in April that, with the big law firms shying away, Trump calls on a stable of lawyers, many of whom were involved in his efforts to challenge the 2020 election result.
Some of the legal threats over Trump have begun to take shape.
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https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/trump-is-asking-random-mar-a-lago-visitors-to-recommend-lawyers-to-help-with-his-legal-issues-wolff-book-says/ar-AALNnsL
Opinions - I've prosecuted Trump. Documents matter more than Weisselberg now.
Tristan Snell 23 hrs ago
Allen Weisselberg’s indictment on Thursday brought an especially intense focus on the man everyone seems to agree is the star witness in the prosecution of the Trump Organization for alleged tax and bank fraud. He is, after all, the company’s chief financial officer, and even that lofty title understates his role: He micromanaged the finances of hundreds of Trump Organization subsidiaries and acted as the hatchet man, shutting down lines of business that were underperforming. Weisselberg was the single most indispensable figure in the company other than its namesake.
This has led many observers to conclude that without Weisselberg’s cooperation, prosecutors will be unable to make a case against former president Donald Trump.
But what if Weisselberg is not the star witness, the sine qua non without whom the case will fall apart? What if the star witness here is not a witness at all, but rather a collection of emails, spreadsheets and other corporate files?
The dramatization of the American courtroom centers on its dialogues and soliloquies — the heat of a witness being cross-examined, the oratory of a closing argument. Yet just as most cases never go to trial, most cases are not won or lost on witness testimony, but instead on documents, especially in white-collar cases where there’s usually a trove of business records. Witnesses make great TV, but it’s the “receipts” that make great cases.
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https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/opinion/opinions-i-e2-80-99ve-prosecuted-trump-documents-matter-more-than-weisselberg-now/ar-AALJz3d
Rudy Giuliani Facing Inquiry Into Whether He Lobbied Trump for Turkey
Source: Bloomberg
By Christian Berthelsen, Greg Farrell, and Chris Strohm
June 29, 2021, 8:57 AM EDT
DOJ inquiry is separate from criminal probe of Ukraine work
U.S. could order ex-NYC mayor to register as foreign lobbyist
Rudy Giuliani is the subject of a Justice Department inquiry into possible foreign lobbying for Turkish interests separate from a criminal probe of his activities in Ukraine, according to people familiar with the matter.
For almost a year, the former New York mayor and personal lawyer to Donald Trump has been fielding questions about whether he was acting for Turkey when he pushed the Trump administration in 2017 to drop money-laundering charges against gold trader Reza Zarrab and deport exiled Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen. Zarrab later pleaded guilty and implicated Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in a sanctions-evasion scheme, while Erdogan claims Gulen was behind a failed 2016 coup against his government.
The Turkey inquiry, which has not been previously reported, is not criminal, in contrast to the Ukraine investigation, which resulted in the Federal Bureau of Investigation seizing Giuliani’s electronic devices in April 28 raids on his Manhattan home and office. Though both matters focus on whether Giuliani lobbied the Trump administration on behalf of foreign interests, the Justice Department usually takes a softer approach when it thinks failure to register wasn’t intentional.
Giuliani has denied lobbying for either Turkish or Ukrainian interests, and the government has not accused him of wrongdoing in either matter. In the Turkey inquiry, if the government decides that Giuliani acted for a foreign interest, it could issue a determination letter requiring him to register as a lobbyist and also disclose all details of contacts he had with U.S. and Turkish officials concerning Zarrab and Gulen.
Read more: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-06-29/giuliani-facing-inquiry-into-whether-he-lobbied-trump-for-turkey
Trump supporter warns CNN reporter of 'civil war' if former president not reinstated 'soon'
BY DOMINICK MASTRANGELO - 06/29/21 09:56 AM EDT
CNN reporter Donie O'Sullivan spoke with several supporters of former President Trump ahead of his first post-presidential rally on Saturday, many of whom told him they fully expect the real estate mogul to be reinstated before the end of the summer and warned of potential political violence in America if he is not.
"He didn't lose, I know he didn't lose," one woman told O'Sullivan, indicating she believes unfounded claims made by Trump and other Republicans that widespread voter fraud led to an unfair election that swung in President Biden's favor.
Many of the supporters who gathered for the Saturday rally in Wellington, Ohio, wore memorabilia and carried signs with slogans like "Trump won" and "Biden sucks" displayed across them.
"It's about all of them, and 2020 and the next one," another woman told O'Sullivan about her "Trump won" T-shirt.
more
https://thehill.com/homenews/media/560681-trump-supporter-warns-cnn-reporter-of-civil-war-if-former-president-not
Biden will visit Florida condo tower collapse site on Thursday
PUBLISHED TUE, JUN 29 202110:56 AM EDT
Christina Wilkie
@CHRISTINAWILKIE
KEY POINTS
President Joe Biden and First Lady Jill Biden will travel to Surfside, Florida, on Thursday to visit the site of a deadly condominium tower collapse.
The White House had said Biden would wait to visit until he was certain that presidential security and logistics would not interrupt search, rescue and recovery efforts underway at the Champlain Towers.
Search and rescue operations continued at the site, north of Miami Beach, five days after the 12-story condominium tower collapsed suddenly early Thursday morning.
WASHINGTON – President Joe Biden and First Lady Jill Biden will travel to Surfside, Florida, on Thursday to visit the site of a deadly condominium tower collapse.
Biden told reporters of the upcoming trip as he boarded Marine One on Tuesday morning, en route to Wisconsin.
Search and rescue operations continue at the site, north of Miami Beach, five days after the 12-story Champlain Towers South condominium tower collapsed suddenly early Thursday morning.
As of Tuesday, eleven people were confirmed dead and 150 were unaccounted for, according to local officials.
more
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/06/29/biden-will-visit-surfside-florida-condo-tower-collapse-site-on-thursday-.html
WaPost fact-checker shoots down GOP 'fiction' on Biden and 'defund the police'
BY DOMINICK MASTRANGELO - 06/29/21 10:51 AM EDT
Washington Post fact-checkers have shot down claims from members of the Republican Party in recent months that President Biden supports defunding or disbanding police departments in America.
"During the 2020 election, the Trump campaign desperately tried to claim that Joe Biden was a supporter of the 'defund the police' movement advocated by some elements of the Democratic Party," fact-checker Glenn Kessler wrote Tuesday, before adding, "Biden firmly rejected calls from left-wing activists to defund police and in fact said he would double funding for a community policing program that would put more officers on the street."
Citing comments from Sen. Ted Cruz, (R-Texas) and Rep. Jim Banks (R-Ind.), Kessler reported that members of the GOP "are still making this false claim," even after Trump relentlessly tried to tie Biden to calls for radical police reform following the murder of George Floyd and other African Americans who have died in recent months at the hands of police.
“The problem isn’t guns and it isn’t COVID either. It’s violent rioting and the Defund the Police movement, both of which were supported, financially and rhetorically, by the Biden admin," Banks tweeted last week.
more
https://thehill.com/homenews/media/560693-wapost-fact-checker-shoots-down-gop-fiction-on-biden-and-defund-the-police
Bill Barr wants his legacy to be his mumbled opposition to Trump on fraud, not his shouted agreement
Philip Bump 1 day ago
The first time that Donald Trump blamed voter fraud for his failure to get more votes than his opponent was on Nov. 27 … of 2016. Two weeks after his presidential win over Hillary Clinton had been confirmed, his anguish over having lost the popular vote was manifested in a claim on Twitter that there had been “serious voter fraud in Virginia, New Hampshire and California.”
Then, as now, there was no evidence of fraud, but nevertheless he persisted. He hyped random, obviously noncredible allegations and, after being inaugurated, leveraged the presidency to try to bolster his rhetoric. The White House task force focused on fraud soon collapsed both because of its sweeping demands for voter data and for the same reason that a concentrated effort to capture the Loch Ness monster might not last long: There’s not a lot to work with.
What is important about this bit of history is that, over the 14 months between his election loss and the abandonment of his fraud commission, no member of his own party challenged Trump in any significant way on his claims. This was in keeping with how Trump had been handled since late 2015: The fervor of his base and his own penchant for throwing mud disinclined Republicans to push back on the obviously false or dangerous things Trump was saying, with Republicans generally preferring to either try to quietly undermine Trump or simply wait him out. This is a central story of the Trump era, that his putative allies were almost never interested in challenging him and his dishonesty. And on voter fraud, that pattern began before he was even president.
Trump alleged fraud in the Iowa caucuses in 2016, without repercussion. He alleged fraud after the 2016 election, with his party humoring him. He alleged fraud in Florida in 2018, echoing false and inflated claims made by Gov. Rick Scott (R). On that occasion, he was asked to curtail his rhetoric by incoming governor Ron DeSantis (R). But that, according to the New York Times, was only done quietly and “through intermediaries.” (That article also reports that “Mr. DeSantis, 40, is intent on turning down the temperature in perpetually overheated Florida,” which does not seem to be the approach that DeSantis has since employed.)
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https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/bill-barr-wants-his-legacy-to-be-his-mumbled-opposition-to-trump-on-fraud-not-his-shouted-agreement/ar-AALxzB4
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Name: DonGender: Male
Hometown: Massachusetts
Home country: United States
Member since: Sat Sep 1, 2012, 03:28 PM
Number of posts: 60,536
