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  • The Legal & Financial Problems of Donald Trump & Family

    AP Exclusive: Woman who says Trump raped her seeks his DNA

    NEW YORK (AP) — Lawyers for a woman who accuses President Donald Trump of raping her in the 1990s are asking for a DNA sample, seeking to determine whether his genetic material is on a dress she says she wore during the encounter.

    Advice columnist E. Jean Carroll’s lawyers served notice to a Trump attorney Thursday for Trump to submit a sample on March 2 in Washington for “analysis and comparison against unidentified male DNA present on the dress.”

    Carroll filed a defamation suit against Trump in November after the president denied her allegation. Her lawyer, Roberta Kaplan, then had the black wool coat-style dress tested. A lab report with the legal notice says DNA found on the sleeves was a mix of at least four people, at least one of them male.

    Several other people were tested and eliminated as possible contributors to the mix, according to the lab report, which was obtained by The Associated Press. Their names are redacted.

    While the notice is a demand, such demands often spur court fights requiring a judge to weigh in on whether they will be enforced.

    The Associated Press sent a message to Trump's attorney seeking comment.

    Carroll accused Trump last summer of raping her in a Manhattan luxury department store dressing room in the mid-1990s.

    In a New York magazine piece in June and a book published the next month, Carroll said she and Trump met by chance, chatted and went to the lingerie department for Trump to pick out a gift for an unidentified woman. She said joking banter about trying on a bodysuit ended in a dressing room, where she said Trump reached under her black wool dress, pulled down her tights and raped her as she tried to fight him off, eventually escaping.

    “The Donna Karan coatdress still hangs on the back of my closet door, unworn and unlaundered since that evening,” she wrote. She donned it for a photo accompanying the magazine piece.

    Trump said in June that Carroll was “totally lying” and he had “never met this person in my life.” While a 1987 photo shows them and their then-spouses at a social event, Trump dismissed it as a moment when he was “standing with my coat on in a line.”

    “She is trying to sell a new book — that should indicate her motivation,” he said in one of various statements on the matter, adding that the book “should be sold in the fiction section.”

    Carroll sued Trump in November, saying he smeared her and hurt her career as a longtime Elle magazine advice columnist by calling her a liar. She is seeking unspecified damages and a retraction of Trump’s statements.

    “Unidentified male DNA on the dress could prove that Donald Trump not only knows who I am, but also that he violently assaulted me in a dressing room at Bergdorf Goodman and then defamed me by lying about it and impugning my character," Carroll said in a statement Thursday.

    Her lawyer, Kaplan, said it was “standard operating procedure” in a sexual assault investigation to request a DNA sample from the accused.

    “As a result, we’ve requested a simple saliva sample from Mr. Trump to test his DNA, and there really is no valid basis for him to object,” she said.

    Trump’s lawyer has tried to get the case thrown out. A Manhattan judge declined to do so earlier this month, saying the attorney hadn’t properly backed up his arguments that the case didn’t belong in a New York court.

    The Associated Press typically does not name people who say they have been sexually assaulted, unless they come forward publicly.

    Carroll said she didn’t do so for decades because she feared legal retribution from Trump and damage to her reputation, among other reasons. But when the #MeToo movement spurred reader requests for advice about sexual assault, she said, she decided she had to disclose her own account.

    Trump, a Republican, isn’t the first president to face the prospect of a DNA test related to a woman’s dress.

    Former President Bill Clinton, a Democrat, underwent such a test during an independent counsel investigation into whether he had a sexual relationship with onetime White House intern Monica Lewinsky and then lied in denying it under oath.

    After Clinton’s DNA was found on the dress, he acknowledged an "inappropriate intimate relationship" with Lewinsky.

    Clinton was impeached by the House in December 1998 and later acquitted by the Senate.
    _________________

    Yeah, pretty sure she won't be getting anything from Donald Trump. And Trump's apologists certainly don't care one way or the other if he raped a woman. They're already comfortable with his self-admission of being a serial sex predator.
    “He was the most prodigious personification of all human inferiorities. He was an utterly incapable, unadapted, irresponsible, psychopathic personality, full of empty, infantile fantasies, but cursed with the keen intuition of a rat or a guttersnipe. He represented the shadow, the inferior part of everybody’s personality, in an overwhelming degree, and this was another reason why they fell for him.”

  • #2
    US Supreme Court to take on Trump taxes and presidential immunity

    Washington (AFP) - Can Donald Trump refuse to turn over his tax returns and financial records to Congress and New York prosecutors? The Supreme Court takes up this politically charged question on Tuesday, and it may use the occasion to better define the limits of presidential immunity.

    The high court's nine justices, confined at home by the novel coronavirus pandemic, will question lawyers for both sides by telephone in a highly anticipated session to be broadcast live.

    The hearing, initially set for late March, is being held now to allow time for the justices to render a decision before the presidential election in November, as Trump seeks a second term.

    The former real estate magnate, who used his fortune as an argument in his 2016 election campaign, is the first president since Richard Nixon in the 1970s to refuse to release his tax returns -- prompting speculation about his true worth and his possible financial entanglements.

    "There is clearly something in these documents that the president does not want us to see," Steven Mazie, an author and educator, said during a webinar.

    Since retaking control of the House of Representatives in midterm elections in 2018, the Democratic opposition has been eager to find out just what that "something" might be.

    Several congressional committees have issued subpoenas to Trump's longtime accounting firm, Mazars, as well as to Deutsche Bank and Capital One bank, demanding Trump's financial records for the 2011-2018 period.

    Manhattan prosecutor Cyrus Vance, a Democrat, meantime made a similar demand to Mazars as part of an investigation into payments to the porn actress known as Stormy Daniels to buy her silence about an alleged liaison with the billionaire.

    Trump immediately sued to block the documents' release.

    "What they are doing is not legal," he said on Twitter, adding, "the Witch Hunt continues."

    Having lost his argument in the lower courts, Trump turned to the nation's highest legal body. With two conservative Trump appointees on the nine-justice panel, the high court has taken a clear turn to the right.

    - 'To torment the president' -

    The justices will devote the first hour of Tuesday's oral arguments to the congressional subpoenas, highlighting a fierce battle over the legislature's investigative powers.

    "Unleashing each and every House committee to torment the president with legislative subpoena after legislative subpoena is a recipe for constitutional crisis," the president's lawyers said in a brief to the court.

    Yet such requests are nothing new, House lawyers responded in their own brief, citing examples involving presidents Richard Nixon, a Republican, and Jimmy Carter, a Democrat.

    "What is unprecedented," they added, "is the extraordinary breadth of the arguments that President Trump and the solicitor general make about the supposed power of a president to thwart investigations."

    The high court may be tempted to sidestep the central issue. In late April, it asked both sides to respond in writing to the question of whether the matter was political and not legal in nature. If the former is true, justices can close the file without taking a position.

    "No," both sides said on Friday, clearly hoping for resolution by the high court.

    - Murder on Fifth Avenue -

    In a second phase of Tuesday's session, the justices will take up the case involving the Manhattan prosecutor, which raises the critical question of the extent of presidential immunity before the law.

    Trump's attorneys argue that a president enjoys total immunity so long as he is in the White House.

    One Trump lawyer even argued before an appeals court that Trump could shoot someone dead on New York's Fifth Avenue and face no legal penalty -- while in office.

    "Nothing could be done?" a skeptical judge asked.

    "That is correct," the president's attorney replied.


    To Trump's legal team, the need for immunity is "particularly acute when it comes to state and local prosecutors."

    "The president must be allowed to execute his official functions without fear that a state or locality will use criminal process to register their dissatisfaction with his performance," they wrote in their brief.

    But law professors Claire Finkelstein and Richard Painter say this vision is contradicted by the record of the Supreme Court itself. The high court required Richard Nixon to turn over secret White House recordings to the special prosecutor investigating the Watergate scandal.

    The two professors added in a friend-of-the-court brief that an expansive interpretation of presidential immunity poses a "grave threat to the rule of law."

    If the Supreme Court accepts the Trump team's arguments, they added, "it will fundamentally alter the basic principles of accountability on which our democracy depends."
    _________________

    Folks, let that sink in real good:

    Donald Trump believes himself immune to all law, up to and including prosecution for murder...and the issue will be decided in a matter of day or weeks.

    That's what's at stake here. The Supreme Court is about to decide if the the Constitution is still valid, as Congress has the right of oversight according to that document

    Unless of course the SCOTUS dodges the issue altogether...but even that I would assume that all of those lower court decisions would stand.

    It's a shame that surfgun kept dodging and deflecting whenever I asked his opinion on Trump's supposed immunity from the law. I would've liked to have had a Trump follower's take on it.
    “He was the most prodigious personification of all human inferiorities. He was an utterly incapable, unadapted, irresponsible, psychopathic personality, full of empty, infantile fantasies, but cursed with the keen intuition of a rat or a guttersnipe. He represented the shadow, the inferior part of everybody’s personality, in an overwhelming degree, and this was another reason why they fell for him.”

    Comment


    • #3
      OP-ED: I've Seen Trump's Tax Returns and You Should, Too

      (Bloomberg Opinion) -- President Donald Trump took to Twitter early Sunday morning, elated: “So great to see our Country starting to open up again!”

      He shared that sentiment with nearly 80 million followers and attached it to a tweet from one of his golf clubs, Trump National, in Rancho Palos Verdes, California. “Game on! We are thrilled to announce the reopening of @trumpgolfla beginning Saturday May 9th!,” the club tweeted. “We look forward to welcoming you back. Book your tee time now!”

      Sometimes a tweet is just a tweet. And sometimes it’s an advertisement for your business. And sometimes, when the president of the United States promotes his business on Twitter while overseeing the federal response to a pandemic gutting the economy, it’s a financial conflict of interest.

      Is Trump pushing businesses to reopen despite ongoing perils attached to the coronavirus because it’s best for the country? Or is it because Covid-19 has battered his family’s fortunes? Or is it simply because he has the upcoming presidential election in mind? Who knows. But we are more than three years into this presidency and the same questions that have hung over Trump from the moment he launched his bid for the White House still linger: What are the contours of his personal finances and how do they inform his actions and policies?

      On Tuesday, the Supreme Court will help shape our understanding of some of this when it hears arguments involving efforts by Congress and a New York prosecutor to get access to Trump’s tax returns, bank documents and bookkeeping records. Trump’s lawyers and the Justice Department contend that the president shouldn’t have to comply with subpoenas — or can block his financial advisers from complying — because the requests are overly intrusive or undermine the sweeping immunity from criminal investigations he should enjoy while in office.

      Congress says it wants Trump’s tax returns so it can craft legislation modernizing federal ethics and disclosure laws and protecting the 2020 election from foreign interference. Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. is conducting a probe into the Trump Organization’s efforts to mask hush money paid to two women who said they had sexual encounters with Trump. He wants to explore whether Trump’s team falsified business records as part of those maneuvers.

      While the Supreme Court’s decision will likely touch on crucial Constitutional matters such as the separation of powers and the legislative branch’s ability to monitor the executive branch, the animating force guiding the court in this matter may be even more basic: whether or not any president is above the rule of law. If the court’s decision pivots off of that, then you’d do well to read George Conway’s recent op-ed in the Washington Post. “The Constitution is concerned with protecting the presidency, not the person who happens to be the president,” Conway writes. “That’s because no one in this country is above the law.”

      The Constitution also makes it clear that presidents can’t use the most powerful office in the land to line their wallets. Articles I and II forbid presidents from accepting what the 18th century called “emoluments” and what the 21st century calls “bribes” from foreign or domestic sources. The Constitution’s ban on emoluments in and of itself requires presidents to be transparent about their finances and circumspect about their business dealings.

      While federal conflict-of-interest laws dating from the Civil War era and updated in 1978 in the wake of the Watergate scandal also require presidents to disclose assets and business interests – and to have potential conflicts monitored by a federal ethics watchdog — much of the disclosure remains voluntary. Presidents remain exempt from federal conflict-of-interest statutes, so practices like placing assets in a blind trust (which Lyndon B. Johnson, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, both of the Bushes and Bill Clinton did) or releasing personal income tax returns (which every president since Carter has done) is essentially voluntary. Financial transparency in the White House is a tradition but not a requirement.

      Trump chose to buck tradition, of course. He hasn’t released his tax returns and the trust controlling his business interests is anything but blind — it’s overseen by his two eldest sons and his longtime accountant. Litigants typically aren’t hesitant to release information or documents that reflect well on themselves, so the natural question arising from Trump’s stonewalling in the matters the Supreme Court will hear is, “What’s he hiding?”

      Trump sued me for libel in 2006 for a biography I wrote, “TrumpNation,” claiming the book unfairly and intentionally misrepresented his track record as a businessman and lowballed the size of his fortune. The suit was dismissed in 2011.

      During the course of the litigation, Trump resisted releasing his tax returns and other financial records. My lawyers got the returns, and while I can’t disclose specifics, I imagine that Trump is hesitant to release them now because they would reveal how robust his businesses actually are and shine a light on some of his foreign sources of income.

      Deutsche Bank AG, one of the firms Trump’s lawyers are trying to stifle in their arguments before the Supreme Court, also turned over documents in my case — including its own assessment of Trump’s wealth that pegged his fortune at $788 million in 2004, well below the $3 billion he told them he had at the time. Deutsche is the only major global bank to have continued doing business with Trump since the early 1990s and is conversant with his financial comings and goings since then.

      Mazars USA is Trump’s outside accounting firm. Trump’s lawyers will argue before the Supreme Court that it too shouldn’t comply with subpoena requests for documents. Mazars, which boasts a history ProPublica recently described as “colorful,” turned over documents in my litigation with Trump as well (through a predecessor company with which Mazars later merged). That trove included a financial statement Trump routinely used to substantiate his claims to fabulous wealth. The document, it turned out, was drafted without regard for standard accounting practices or other factors that might have diminished the future president’s claims.

      If all of this information from Trump’s taxes, bankers and accountants was good enough for me over a decade ago, it’s certainly good enough for Congress and the Manhattan district attorney today. It’s also good enough for the American people. If we’ve learned one thing from the Trump presidency it’s that it’s no longer enough to rely on tradition when it comes to the Oval Office and financial transparency. Financial transparency should be a requirement for all presidents going forward — and the Supreme Court would do well to help pave the way.

      This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

      Timothy L. O'Brien is a senior columnist for Bloomberg Opinion.
      ____________________
      “He was the most prodigious personification of all human inferiorities. He was an utterly incapable, unadapted, irresponsible, psychopathic personality, full of empty, infantile fantasies, but cursed with the keen intuition of a rat or a guttersnipe. He represented the shadow, the inferior part of everybody’s personality, in an overwhelming degree, and this was another reason why they fell for him.”

      Comment


      • #4
        Explainer: What's at stake in Supreme Court fight over Trump financial records

        WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday considers three blockbuster cases concerning efforts by the Democratic-led House of Representatives and a grand jury working with a prosecutor in New York City to obtain copies of President Donald Trump's financial records.

        Unlike recent presidents, Trump has refused to disclose his tax returns and other materials that would shed light on the scope of his wealth and his family-run real estate business. The cases test the limits of presidential power in relation to Congress and state prosecutors.

        Here is a look at what is at stake in the cases.


        WHAT ARE THE THREE CASES?

        Two of the three cases concern attempts by House committees to enforce subpoenas seeking Trump's financial records from three businesses: Trump's longtime accounting firm Mazars LLP and two banks, Deutsche Bank and Capital One.

        The Supreme Court has consolidated these two cases and will hear them together in a scheduled one-hour argument.

        The other case concerns another subpoena issued to Mazars for similar information, including tax returns, but this one was issued as part of a grand jury investigation into Trump being carried out in New York City. The justices will hear a second one-hour oral argument in this case.

        Rulings are due by the end of June.

        In all three cases, lower courts in Washington and New York ruled against Trump.


        WHAT DOES THE HOUSE SUBPOENA TO MAZARS SEEK?

        The House Oversight Committee in April 2019 issued a subpoena to Mazars seeking eight years of accounting and other financial information in response to the testimony before Congress of Michael Cohen, Trump's former lawyer. Cohen said that Trump had inflated and deflated certain assets on financial statements between 2011 and 2013 in part to reduce his real estate taxes. The committee said it wanted to find out whether illegal actions had taken place. Cohen was sentenced to prison after pleading guilty to charges including violating campaign finance law, bank fraud, tax evasion and lying to Congress.


        WHAT ABOUT THE HOUSE SUBPOENAS TO THE BANKS?

        The House Financial Services Committee has been examining possible money laundering in U.S. property deals involving Trump. In a separate investigation, the House Intelligence Committee is investigating whether Trump's dealings left him subject to the influence of foreign individuals or governments.

        The two committees issued 12-page subpoenas in April 2019 requiring Deutsche Bank to hand over the banking records of Trump, his children and his businesses. Lawmakers requested documents that identify "any financial relationship, transaction or ties" between Trump, his family members and "any foreign individual, entity or government," according to the subpoena.

        Investigators hope the records will reveal whether there are any financial links between Trump and Russia's government, sources familiar with the probe said. That would include whether any loans to Trump by Deutsche Bank were back-stopped by Russian entities - a financial arrangement that can be considered a form of insurance, the sources said.

        Senior sources within Deutsche Bank have denied any Russian connections to loans it made to Trump.

        Deutsche Bank was the only major lender to conduct business with Trump in recent years - doing so despite the fact that he defaulted on loans worth hundreds of millions of dollars the German bank made to him between 2004 and 2008.

        At the time of his January 2017 inauguration, Trump owed Deutsche Bank around $350 million, according to sources. Many of the loans were granted through Deutsche Bank's New York-based private banking division, which also lent to Trump's son-in-law and adviser Jared Kushner.

        The Financial Services Committee also issued a subpoena to Capital One, which also had maintained a long-term relationship with Trump and has come under scrutiny for some of its business practices.


        WHAT IS AT STAKE IN THE HOUSE SUBPOENAS CASES?

        If Trump loses, the material would need to be handed over to Democratic lawmakers, most likely before the Nov. 3 election in which Trump is seeking a second four-year term. The ruling would make clear that a president, at least when it comes to information held by third parties, cannot block House subpoenas.

        Trump's lawyers have advanced several arguments, including that Congress had no authority to issue the subpoenas, a broad assertion of presidential power. No sitting president has ever had his personal records subpoenaed, they said. They also said that even if Congress could issue the subpoenas, it lacked a valid legislative reason for doing so and had not stated with sufficient detail why it needed the documents.

        If the court were to embrace Trump's broadest arguments, it would severely weaken the ability of Congress to conduct oversight of a president.


        WHAT IS THE NEW YORK PROSECUTOR INVESTIGATING?

        The office of Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance, a Democrat, in September 2019 sought nearly a decade of tax returns. It is part of a criminal investigation that began in 2018 into Trump and the Trump Organization, the president's family real estate business, spurred by disclosures of hush payments made to two women who said they had past sexual relationships with him. Those women are pornographic film actress Stormy Daniels and former Playboy model Karen McDougal. Trump and his aides have denied the relationships.


        WHAT IS AT STAKE IN THE NEW YORK CASE?

        Trump's lawyers argue that his records cannot be handed over because of his authority as president under the Constitution, contending he is immune from any criminal proceeding when in office. They have downplayed prior Supreme Court rulings regarding limits on the reach of presidential authority and point instead to Justice Department guidance that asserts that a sitting president cannot be indicted or prosecuted. In a lower court hearing, Trump's lawyers went so far as to argue that law enforcement officials would not have the power to investigate Trump even if he shot someone on New York's Fifth Avenue.

        Vance has countered that his investigation is at an early stage and that there is a risk that documents would be lost if prosecutors cannot access them now.
        __________________
        “He was the most prodigious personification of all human inferiorities. He was an utterly incapable, unadapted, irresponsible, psychopathic personality, full of empty, infantile fantasies, but cursed with the keen intuition of a rat or a guttersnipe. He represented the shadow, the inferior part of everybody’s personality, in an overwhelming degree, and this was another reason why they fell for him.”

        Comment


        • #5
          Originally posted by TopHatter View Post
          [B][SIZE=3]
          - Murder on Fifth Avenue -

          In a second phase of Tuesday's session, the justices will take up the case involving the Manhattan prosecutor, which raises the critical question of the extent of presidential immunity before the law.

          Trump's attorneys argue that a president enjoys total immunity so long as he is in the White House.

          One Trump lawyer even argued before an appeals court that Trump could shoot someone dead on New York's Fifth Avenue and face no legal penalty -- while in office.

          "Nothing could be done?" a skeptical judge asked.

          "That is correct," the president's attorney replied.


          To Trump's legal team, the need for immunity is "particularly acute when it comes to state and local prosecutors."

          "The president must be allowed to execute his official functions without fear that a state or locality will use criminal process to register their dissatisfaction with his performance," they wrote in their brief.

          But law professors Claire Finkelstein and Richard Painter say this vision is contradicted by the record of the Supreme Court itself. The high court required Richard Nixon to turn over secret White House recordings to the special prosecutor investigating the Watergate scandal.

          The two professors added in a friend-of-the-court brief that an expansive interpretation of presidential immunity poses a "grave threat to the rule of law."

          If the Supreme Court accepts the Trump team's arguments, they added, "it will fundamentally alter the basic principles of accountability on which our democracy depends."
          So let's take this immunity that he claims a little bit further. Suppose Trump decided to turn a little bit Franco or Pinochet and order a few journalists to disappear. God knows he would love to. Is he then immune for ordering their disappearance and cannot be prosecuted?

          That is pretty much what his lawyers are saying as it is only a very short step from Murder on Fifth Avenue to Murder of the Fifth Estate

          Comment


          • #6
            If US law is derived from English law then the English Civil War was fought for the cause that even the King must be constrained by law and it derives not from the title, the anointment of the Church or office but from the people as it started as custom among the people (and still does in English law in England).



            Last edited by snapper; 11 May 20,, 22:57.

            Comment


            • #7
              Trump’s attorney says president is ‘temporarily immune’ from investigation

              Trump’s private attorney, Jay Sekulow, emphasized that Trump is temporarily immune from investigation while he is in the White House and urged the court to invalidate the New York grand jury subpoena.

              If the court upholds the Manhattan district attorney’s subpoena, it “weaponizes 2,300 local district attorneys” throughout the country to “harass, distract and interfere” with a sitting president, said Sekulow, who was Trump’s lead attorney during the Senate impeachment trial.

              Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. asked why the president’s argument allows the grand jury to continue to investigate but not use a subpoena, its most effective, traditional device. Roberts noted the court in 1997 unanimously required President Bill Clinton to respond to a sexual harassment lawsuit brought by a former Arkansas state employee, Paula Jones.

              “I would have thought the discovery in a case like Clinton v. Jones would be similarly distracting,” Roberts said.


              Sekulow said the Clinton case was a civil lawsuit in federal court, not a state criminal investigation.
              _____________

              Interesting how Trump's attorney is distinguishing between a civil lawsuit in federal court and a state criminal investigation.

              I suppose if there was a civil lawsuit in federal court against Trump, Sekulow would suddenly change his tune and claim immunity for Trump in that area as well.
              “He was the most prodigious personification of all human inferiorities. He was an utterly incapable, unadapted, irresponsible, psychopathic personality, full of empty, infantile fantasies, but cursed with the keen intuition of a rat or a guttersnipe. He represented the shadow, the inferior part of everybody’s personality, in an overwhelming degree, and this was another reason why they fell for him.”

              Comment


              • #8
                Supreme Court Appears Likely To Reject Trump Immunity Claim

                WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Tuesday appeared likely to reject President Donald Trump's claim that he is immune from criminal investigation while in office. But the court seemed less clear about exactly how to handle subpoenas from Congress and the Manhattan district attorney for Trump's tax, bank and financial records.

                The court's major clash over presidential accountability could affect the 2020 presidential campaign, especially if a high court ruling leads to the release of personal financial information before Election Day.

                The justices heard arguments in two cases by telephone Tuesday that stretched into the early afternoon. The court, which includes six justices age 65 or older, has been meeting by phone because of the coronavirus pandemic.

                There was no apparent consensus about whether to ratify lower court rulings that the subpoenas to Trump's accountant and banks are valid and should be enforced. The justices will meet by phone before the end of the week to take a preliminary vote on how those cases should come out, and decisions are expected by early summer.

                On the same day Trump’s lawyers were telling the court that the subpoenas would be a distraction that no president can afford, Trump found the time to weigh in on a long string of unrelated issues on Twitter, about Elon Musk reopening Tesla’s California plant in defiance of local authorities, the credit he deserves for governors’ strong approval ratings for their handling of the virus outbreak, the anger Asian Americans feel “at what China has done to our Country,” oil prices, interest rates, his likely opponent in the November election and his critics.

                The justices sounded particularly concerned in arguments over congressional subpoenas about whether a ruling validating the subpoenas would open the door to harassing future presidents.

                “In your view, there is really no protection against the use of congressional subpoenas for the purpose of preventing the harassment of a president,” Justice Samuel Alito said to Douglas Letter, the lawyer for the House of Representatives.

                Justice Stephen Breyer said he worried about a “future Sen. McCarthy,” a reference to the Communist-baiting Wisconsin senator from the 1950s, with subpoena power against a future president.

                But in the case involving Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr.'s subpoena for Trump's taxes, the justices showed little interest in the broadest argument made by Jay Sekulow, Trump's lawyer, that a president can't be investigated while he holds office.

                Trump had said he would make his tax returns public but hasn't done so, unlike every other president in recent history.

                “President Trump is the first one to refuse to do that,” Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said early in the arguments.

                The cases resemble earlier disputes over presidents’ assertions that they were too consumed with the job of running the country to worry about lawsuits and investigations. In 1974, the justices acted unanimously in requiring President Richard Nixon to turn over White House tapes to the Watergate special prosecutor. In 1997, another unanimous court allowed a sexual harassment lawsuit to go forward against President Bill Clinton.

                In those cases, three Nixon appointees and two Clinton appointees, respectively, voted against the president who chose them for the high court. The current court has two Trump appointees, Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh.

                Trump's lawyers drew on law review articles Kavanaugh wrote to buttress their arguments that the president needs to be protected from investigations.

                The justice, though, seemed more interested in how to balance the competing interests at play. “And the question then boils down to, how can we both protect the House’s interest in obtaining information it needs to legislate but also protect the presidency?" Kavanaugh asked.

                Appellate courts in Washington and New York have ruled that the documents should be turned over, but those rulings have been put on hold pending a final court ruling. The appellate decisions brushed aside the president’s broad arguments, focusing on the fact that the subpoenas were addressed to third parties asking for records of Trump’s business and financial dealings as a private citizen, not as president.

                House committees want records from Deutsche Bank and Capital One, as well as the Mazars USA accounting firm. Mazars also is the recipient of a subpoena from Vance.

                Two congressional committees subpoenaed the bank documents as part of their investigations into Trump and his businesses. Deutsche Bank has been one of the few banks willing to lend to Trump after a series of corporate bankruptcies and defaults starting in the early 1990s.

                Vance and the House Oversight and Reform Committee sought records from Mazars concerning Trump and his businesses based on payments that Trump’s then-personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, arranged during the 2016 presidential race to keep two women from airing their claims of extramarital affairs with Trump.

                Trump sued to block the subpoenas. He is being represented by personal lawyers at the Supreme Court, and the Justice Department is supporting the high-court appeal.
                ____________

                Kavanaugh makes an excellent point: How to maintain the checks and balances between the two branches?

                I'm frankly stunned that the Republicans are tacitly backing Trump's claim of complete immunity while in office.
                Because sooner or later a Democrat will take office and enjoy whatever pro-Executive Branch decision comes out of this.

                They can't see 2 inches past their nose.
                “He was the most prodigious personification of all human inferiorities. He was an utterly incapable, unadapted, irresponsible, psychopathic personality, full of empty, infantile fantasies, but cursed with the keen intuition of a rat or a guttersnipe. He represented the shadow, the inferior part of everybody’s personality, in an overwhelming degree, and this was another reason why they fell for him.”

                Comment


                • #9
                  The Supreme Court decision on Trump's tax records just became more urgent than ever

                  (CNN)Reports that the Russians bribed the Taliban with bounties for killing US service members were stunning -- and not just because of the alleged targeting of American soldiers, but because the Trump administration apparently did nothing to retaliate against Russia.

                  The White House insists that President Donald Trump was never briefed on the intelligence reports -- begging the question why, if true, that could be the case. However, on Tuesday night, the New York Times reported that President Trump had, indeed, been briefed on the Russian bounties in February -- three months before he unilaterally offered to invite Russia to the G7 meetings.

                  At the very least, it fits a long pattern of Trump and his team avoiding confrontation with Vladimir Putin, despite constant provocations.

                  It also provides just the latest, most urgent, example of why so much rides on the Supreme Court's decision on whether Trump's taxes and business records can be turned over to members of the House of Representatives and the New York district attorney. The ruling is expected this week.

                  This is perhaps the most closely watched Supreme Court decision of this session, with massive implications for the separation of powers and the ability of American voters to make a fully informed decision in the November presidential election.

                  Trump has, of course, broken with decades of precedent in refusing to release his tax returns, often making up phony excuses for why he can't do it (among them, that he is subject to what would be the longest tax audit in recorded history). The truth is that he's done everything possible to avoid showing his finances to the American people, with Attorney General Bill Barr's Department of Justice now acting like the President's personal lawyer.

                  As CNN legal analyst Elie Honig points out "In total, six different federal courts -- three district courts and three courts of appeals panels -- have heard these cases, and all six have ruled against Trump." Moreover, court cases stemming from corruption in the administration of Warren G. Harding -- known as the Teapot Dome scandal -- would seem to directly apply. A subsequent 1924 law states that the Treasury Secretary "shall furnish" such tax information requested by relevant congressional committee, which Trump's Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin refused to do, citing no "legitimate legislative purpose."

                  But there is a clear public and legislative interest in finding out whether Trump has hidden business dealings with the Russians, which might explain his strange but persistent reluctance to confront Vladimir Putin on clear matters of US national interest.

                  Before Trump's political career, his son Eric repeatedly bragged about being able to bypass American banks -- many of which refused to do business with the Trump organization -- because the company could get all the money it needed from Russia. In 2008, his son Don Jr. told a real estate conference "Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets ... we see a lot of money pouring in from Russia." And Reuters has reported that 63 Russians invested nearly $100 million in Trump buildings.

                  Russia has a notorious reputation for money laundering and two frequent destinations are luxury real estate and casinos -- both of which the Trump organization has operated in the past.

                  This is far from an academic concern. CNN has tallied no less than 25 times President Trump has been strangely soft on Russia -- from denying Moscow interfered in US elections to his benefit, to suggesting it could keep the conquered Ukrainian province of Crimea, to undermining Obama-era sanctions, to withdrawing US troops from Syria, to praising pro-Russian leaders in Europe, to railing against NATO.

                  In addition, we've seen a pattern of administration officials being told not to bring up Russia and allegations of election interference to the President. The former Department of Homeland Security head Kirstjen Neilsen was told not to bring up current concern of 2020 election meddling by the Russians to the President because he would react badly. The former chief of staff Mick Mulvaney told another senior administration official that it "wasn't a great subject and should be kept below his level."

                  True to form, when news of the Russian bounties erupted, the White House ignored the substance and declined to speak of retaliation against Russia. Instead, as CNN's Marshall Cohen pointed out in a Fact Check analysis of the White House press secretary's comments: "Throughout her news conference, (Kayleigh) McEnany spent more time criticizing American journalists than condemning Russia for its aggressive moves against US interests, which includes the bounties in Afghanistan, election interference in 2016, and military actions in Syria and Ukraine."

                  "This smells like the WH trying to mislead the public," added CNN national security analyst Susan Hennessey regarding the administration's pushback. "It is common for different intel agencies to attach different degrees of confidence based on the manner on underlying intel; that isn't the same as there being disagreement over whether something happened."

                  Court-watchers caution that there is no guarantee that President Trump's business records or taxes will be viewed by the public any time soon even if he loses both cases in the court decision. New York District Attorney Cy Vance, for example, has issued subpoenas for Trump's taxes in the context of a Grand Jury investigation and that information would be closely held by the court. But accountability will lead to more transparency than we've had in the past on an urgent matter that continues to confound even some Trump allies: why does Trump keep praising Putin despite constant provocations?

                  The American people deserve to know the truth about Trump and Russia. And to find the truth we need to follow the money. The Supreme Court could soon decide whether the truth -- or partisan politics -- will win out before the American people go to the polls this November.
                  __________________

                  I have no particular desire to see Trump's tax records and I don't think they should be made public by this ruling. Trump should've done that himself, which as we all know is a laughable prospect.

                  What I want is for Trump to be held accountable to the rule of law. No one is above the law, despite what his lawyers have proclaimed and argued before 6 lower courts and the Supreme Court of the United States.

                  If the United States Constitution means anything, the SCOTUS will rule against Donald Trump and in favor of law, in favor of precedent, and in agreement with those 6 lower courts.

                  So will it come down to one man, Chief Justice John Roberts? Or will Alito, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and Thomas also vote in favor of law, precedent and in agreement with the 6 lower courts.

                  Or will they all chicken out and send it back down to a lower court, thus needlessly prolonging this man's criminality.

                  "President of Law and Order" my ASS.
                  “He was the most prodigious personification of all human inferiorities. He was an utterly incapable, unadapted, irresponsible, psychopathic personality, full of empty, infantile fantasies, but cursed with the keen intuition of a rat or a guttersnipe. He represented the shadow, the inferior part of everybody’s personality, in an overwhelming degree, and this was another reason why they fell for him.”

                  Comment


                  • #10
                    Trump slams Supreme Court rulings on his finances, says he'll continue to fight release of records
                    WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump said he will continue fighting the release of his financial records to Congress and New York prosecutors after the Supreme Court issued a pair of rulings Thursday.

                    "The Supreme Court sends case back to Lower Court, arguments to continue," he tweeted. "This is all a political prosecution. I won the Mueller Witch Hunt, and others, and now I have to keep fighting in a politically corrupt New York. Not fair to this Presidency or Administration."

                    The Supreme Court ruled Trump cannot keep his tax returns and financial records away from a New York City prosecutor pursuing possible hush-money payments. At the same time, it temporarily blocked congressional investigators from gaining access to many of the same records.

                    "Courts in the past have given 'broad deference,'" he tweeted. "BUT NOT ME!"

                    The release of the records would enable investigators to look into Trump's business practices and dealings with other governments, perhaps including Russia.

                    The president, acting through his lawyers, has refused to comply with subpoenas for his financial records from three congressional panels and New York investigators who say the records may reveal evidence of criminal wrongdoing.

                    The Manhattan district attorney – Cyrus Vance, a Democrat – is seeking the president's business and personal tax records in connection with an investigation into alleged "hush money" payments to two women who said they had affairs with Trump.

                    In Congress, three House committees are seeking financial records from Mazars, the Trump organization's longtime accounting firm, plus two banks that have loaned money to Trump businesses, Capital One and Deutsche Bank.

                    Trump has denied wrongdoing, and said Democratic opponents are simply out to get him. Trump's lawyers have argued House Democrats were harassing the president with demands for their records.

                    As for the request from prosecutors, Trump's attorneys argued presidents should be immune from grand jury investigations while they are in office.

                    The Trump legal team lost its arguments in the lower courts.

                    Trump became the first major presidential candidate since the 1970s to refuse to release his tax returns, a tradition that began after the Watergate scandal of the early 1970s.

                    Trump maintained that he could not release his returns because they were under audit, a claim he has been making for years without evidence.

                    The New York Times has, over the years, obtained parts of past Trump returns. One set indicated that, in the early 1990s, he used a maneuver to avoid paying taxes at all.

                    Another set of records showed the significant financial help Trump received over the years from his father. The New York Times also reported the Trump company had a tendency to undervalue its property in order to reduce its tax bills.

                    Trump's former personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, told Congress in 2019 that the New York businessman routinely overstated or understated his holdings for financial gain.
                    ______________

                    7-2...Even Trump's handpicked justices ruled against him: No, you are not above the law.

                    Alito and Thomas seem to think that he is though.

                    The only downside is that none of his records are likely to be made public before the election. I never expected them to be made public though, and I doubt anything negative about them would affect his base anyway.
                    “He was the most prodigious personification of all human inferiorities. He was an utterly incapable, unadapted, irresponsible, psychopathic personality, full of empty, infantile fantasies, but cursed with the keen intuition of a rat or a guttersnipe. He represented the shadow, the inferior part of everybody’s personality, in an overwhelming degree, and this was another reason why they fell for him.”

                    Comment


                    • #11
                      Originally posted by TopHatter View Post
                      Trump's former personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, told Congress in 2019 that the New York businessman routinely overstated or understated his holdings for financial gain.
                      ...and so has Mary Trump implied exactly something similar in her upcoming book.

                      Comment


                      • #12
                        Rudy Giuliani Just Destroyed Trump's Excuse For Not Releasing Tax Returns

                        Donald Trump has been saying since his 2016 campaign that he would love to release his tax returns to the public ― as candidates and presidents do — but he’s being audited by the IRS.

                        His personal attorney Rudy Giuliani blew that excuse out of the water Sunday when he revealed the audits have been completed.

                        “All these tax returns have been by and large — maybe not the last one — but all of them have been audited, all of them have either been passed on or settled,” Giuliani told Maria Bartiromo on Fox News.

                        “There should be some finality in tax returns,” Giuliani added. “We get audited, we make a deal, we pay the government, you don’t come after me forever for that.”

                        Just days earlier, White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany insisted that ongoing audits were the reason Trump was not releasing any of his tax returns.

                        “The media’s been asking this question for four years, and for four years, the president has said the same thing: His taxes are under audit, and when they’re no longer under audit, he will release them,” said an annoyed McEnany.

                        The audit excuse has always been a lie. Nothing prevents anyone from releasing their tax return, even if they’re being audited.

                        So will Trump release his returns now?

                        Don’t hold your breath. Giuliani has cooked up a wacky conspiracy theory that “Soros-elected anarchist district attorneys” are out to “undermine the law,” so he won’t let them get Trump’s taxes. He was referring to progressive Jewish billionaire philanthropist George Soros, a frequent target of Trump, the far right and anti-Semites.

                        Giuliani vowed to “fight them right down to the wire” to keep Trump’s returns secret.

                        The battle seems already past the wire. The Supreme Court ruled 7-2 on Thursday that Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance Jr. has the right to subpoena the president’s tax and business records as part of his criminal investigation into Trump misdealings.
                        _________________

                        Oh lordy...I can't believe that Trump lets Rudy on TV anymore. He needs to be stashed in the White House bunker and kept them.

                        And I can't believe they're still trying to push the "the returns are under audit" bullshit. It's like they're not even trying anymore.
                        “He was the most prodigious personification of all human inferiorities. He was an utterly incapable, unadapted, irresponsible, psychopathic personality, full of empty, infantile fantasies, but cursed with the keen intuition of a rat or a guttersnipe. He represented the shadow, the inferior part of everybody’s personality, in an overwhelming degree, and this was another reason why they fell for him.”

                        Comment


                        • #13
                          Prosecutor seeks Trump tax returns ‘due to extensive criminal conduct’

                          A Manhattan prosecutor trying to get President Donald Trump’s tax returns has told a judge he was justified in demanding them due to public reports of “extensive and protracted criminal conduct at the Trump Organisation”.

                          Mr Trump’s lawyers last month said the grand jury subpoena for the tax returns was issued in bad faith and amounted to harassment of the president.

                          Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance is seeking eight years of the Republican president’s personal and corporate tax records but has disclosed little about what prompted him to request the records, other than part of the investigation relates to pay-offs to women to keep them quiet about alleged affairs with Mr Trump.

                          In a court filing on Monday, though, attorneys for Mr Vance said Mr Trump’s arguments that the subpoena was too broad stemmed from “the false premise” that the probe was limited to so-called “hush-money” payments.

                          “This court is already aware that this assertion is fatally undermined by undisputed information in the public record,” Mr Vance’s lawyers wrote.

                          They said that information confirms the validity of a subpoena seeking evidence related to potentially improper financial transactions by a variety of individuals and entities over a period of years.

                          They said public reporting demonstrates that at the time the subpoena was issued “there were public allegations of possible criminal activity at Plaintiff’s New York County-based Trump Organisation dating back over a decade”.

                          “These reports describe transactions involving individual and corporate actors based in New York County, but whose conduct at times extended beyond New York’s borders. This possible criminal activity occurred within the applicable statutes of limitations, particularly if the transactions involved a continuing pattern of conduct,” the lawyers said.

                          The lawyers urged Judge Victor Marrero to swiftly reject Mr Trump’s arguments, saying the baseless claims were threatening the investigation. Judge Marrero, who ruled against Mr Trump last year, has scheduled arguments to be fully submitted by mid-August.

                          “Every day that goes by is another day Plaintiff effectively achieves the ‘temporary absolute immunity’ that was rejected by this Court, the Court of Appeals, and the Supreme Court,” Mr Vance’s lawyers said.

                          “Every such day also increases the prospect of a loss of evidence or the expiration of limitations periods — the precise concerns that the Supreme Court observed justified its rejection of Plaintiff’s immunity claim in the first place.”

                          The Supreme Court last month rejected claims by Mr Trump’s lawyers that the president could not be criminally investigated while he was in office.

                          Mr Vance’s lawyers said Mr Trump was not entitled to know the scope and nature of the grand jury investigation.

                          But they said information already in the public domain about Mr Trump’s business dealings provided satisfactory support for the subpoena of his tax records.

                          They cited several newspaper articles, including one in the Washington Post examining allegations that Mr Trump had a practice of sending out financial statements to potential business partners and banks that inflated the worth of his properties by claiming they were bigger or more potentially lucrative than they were.
                          ___________
                          “He was the most prodigious personification of all human inferiorities. He was an utterly incapable, unadapted, irresponsible, psychopathic personality, full of empty, infantile fantasies, but cursed with the keen intuition of a rat or a guttersnipe. He represented the shadow, the inferior part of everybody’s personality, in an overwhelming degree, and this was another reason why they fell for him.”

                          Comment


                          • #14
                            The Footnote That Could Lock Trump Up in 2021

                            Donald Trump enters the final months of the 2020 campaign under a dark new cloud: public confirmation that he, his companies and his family are the focus of a wide-ranging criminal investigation by Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance.

                            As Attorney General William Barr ramps up his scheme to misuse the Department of Justice to interfere with yet another presidential election in Trump’s favor, Vance publicly confirmed on Monday that Trump is in the crosshairs of a wide-ranging grand jury investigation—but only because Trump himself all but begged Vance to make that announcement.

                            Enterprising reporters, aided by public records and occasional leaks— including of old tax records by Trump’s niece, Mary Trump—have spent the past several years piecing together a sordid tale of potential tax and insurance fraud (not to mention frauds upon disfavored family members, like Mary) stretching back decades in the Trump Organization. Unsurprisingly, prosecutors took an interest in the same transactions, leading Vance’s office to seek Trump’s financial records. For over a year, Trump’s been engaged in a litigation campaign focused on preventing a grand jury Vance empanelled from obtaining those records from Trump’s accountants. Now, that campaign has backfired.

                            Things had already been going badly for Trump in this legal fight but he bought time as the case made its way up to the Supreme Court, which ultimately rejected his argument, reasoning that “the public has the right to every man’s evidence.” The high court then returned the matter to a district court, while affording Trump with little remaining basis to object, in the absence of any reason to conclude that the subpoena will interfere with his official duties.

                            It is well established that grand juries have wide latitude to conduct investigations. As Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson put it, a grand jury “can investigate merely on suspicion that the law is being violated, or even just because it wants assurance that it is not.” Therefore, if Trump had been astute, he would have accepted the high court’s decision and given up on his effort to block Vance’s subpoena. But Trump chose to overplay his hand. Last month, the president’s lawyers declared that the nature and scope of Vance’s investigation is limited to an inquiry into Trump’s illicit efforts to funnel hush money payments to former sexual partners during the months leading up to the 2016 election through his fixer, Michael Cohen, and contended that the purported narrowness of the inquiry meant that Vance had no right to make a broad demand for Trump’s financial records.

                            Yet Trump had no basis to make declarations about the scope of the DA’s investigation; indeed, the only detailed explanation Vance has offered to date is contained in a (properly) secretly filed portion of a declaration by one of his prosecutors that has been reviewed only by the court. Furthermore, by making uninformed assertions about the scope of the investigation, Trump was all but daring Vance to comment about the nature of an ongoing investigation in the run up to an election.

                            And that is just what Vance’s attorneys did, albeit obliquely and with careful attention to grand jury secrecy rules, in a brief filed Monday in opposition to Trump’s desperate last-ditch effort to prevent disclosure of his financial records.

                            After noting that the DA has no obligation to disclose the nature or scope of an ongoing criminal investigation in response to a challenge to a subpoena—let alone improperly disclose grand jury evidence – Vance’s office stated that Trump’s claims about the supposedly limited scope of the investigation “is fatally undermined by undisputed information in the public record.” The DA’s brief then went on to quote the judge himself, who months ago—after reading Vance’s secret account of the matters under review—observed that it is related to “alleged insurance and bank fraud by the Trump Organization and its officers.”

                            But Vance’s office did not end there. In a significant footnote, the filing cited articles from The Washington Post and Wall Street Journal that address some of the wide-ranging evidence of fraud by the Trump Organization that journalists have uncovered over the past several years, which have included allegedly overvaluing assets to defraud investors, bank lenders and insurers (as well as allegedly undervaluing them to defraud disfavored heirs like Mary Trump). Vance’s lawyers did not expressly say that Trump is under investigation for this smorgasbord of financial crimes. Yet Vance can hardly be blamed for creating an inference of potentially wide ranging illegality by the president. After all, Trump’s lawyers all but demanded it by challenging the DA to explain why his grand jury’s subpoena was not overbroad.

                            As a result of his own lawyers’ bad strategy, Trump enters the final stretch of the campaign with the cloud of a broad criminal investigation hanging directly over his head. That investigation is highly unlikely to end before Nov. 3; indeed, Trump’s continued, and all but certainly futile, efforts to stymie the DA’s inquiry make it all the more certain that the investigation will continue for months, regardless of whether Trump, or any of his companies and associates, are ultimately charged, let alone found guilty.

                            All of that would have been properly kept confidential as the grand jury continued its work if Trump’s own lawyers hadn’t opened this can of worms. It’s a can of worms that Trump is familiar with, given how Comey’s serial misconduct in commenting on the FBI’s investigation of Clinton, in contravention of department of justice policy, may well have cost her the election. Notably, it was Comey’s mistreatment of Clinton, rather than any supposed conspiracy against Trump, that Rod Rosenstein cited in recommending Comey’s dismissal to an approving then attorney general Jeff Sessions, with Rosenstein calling Comey’s conduct “gratuitous,” and a breach of the “traditions of the Department and the FBI.”

                            One person who disagreed with that judgment, however, was then private citizen William Barr, who declared in October 2016 that Comey “did the right thing” by reaching out to taint a presidential candidate on the eve of an election. After taking office as attorney general, Barr has made his contempt for the longstanding DOJ policy against using ongoing investigations to engage in political theater even clearer.

                            Trump’s own effort to replay his success of 2016 by ginning up a public announcement that his current opponent, Joe Biden, was the subject of an investigation by Ukraine for a non-existent crime not only failed, but ultimately resulted in his own impeachment. But Barr has since stepped into the breach, repeatedly peppering his public statements with hints that his own personally designated investigator, Connecticut U.S. Attorney John Dunham, may soon be releasing a report, and possibly indictments, calling into question the bona fides of the FBI’s (as well as Robert Mueller’s) investigation of Russian criminal interference in the 2016 election, and the Trump campaign’s welcoming thereof.

                            Asked how he reconciles his repeated promos for potential dirt on the DOJ’s investigation of Russian crimes committed during the last election in the midst of the 2020 campaign with his department’s policies, Barr disingenuously asserts that it’s OK, because Biden himself is not the target of the investigation. But the policy (which Barr recently adopted himself) provides that the department “may never select the timing of public statements (attributed or not), investigative steps, criminal charges, or any other action in any matter or case for the purpose of affecting any election, or for the purpose of giving an advantage or disadvantage to any candidate or political party.” Furthermore, as Joshua A. Geltzer and Ryan Goodman, recently observed, based on Barr’s record, we can count on Barr to “distort [Durham’s] conclusions in a way favorable to President Trump’s political ambitions,”

                            While Hillary Clinton may have lost her bid for the White House because of an investigation that fully cleared her of claims of criminality, the public is now so inured to Trump’s parade of misconduct that Vance’s court filing was not even front-page news. Yet the fact that Trump has now been publicly identified as the focus of a law enforcement investigation of potentially systematic criminality will make it all the more difficult for the president and his DOJ consigliere Barr to effectively employ innuendo to taint Biden.

                            After all, as Vance just told a court, the president himself is now fully embroiled in an investigation of “possibly extensive and protracted criminal conduct at the Trump Organization.”
                            _________________

                            I seriously doubt that Trump will see actual jail time, though I'll be happy to be proven wrong. On the other hand, I don't doubt that Trump Family members are probably sweating bullets at their potential time in the pokey.

                            All in all, this is just one more reason why Trump hideously miscalculated when he decided to run for President

                            “He was the most prodigious personification of all human inferiorities. He was an utterly incapable, unadapted, irresponsible, psychopathic personality, full of empty, infantile fantasies, but cursed with the keen intuition of a rat or a guttersnipe. He represented the shadow, the inferior part of everybody’s personality, in an overwhelming degree, and this was another reason why they fell for him.”

                            Comment


                            • #15
                              Originally posted by TopHatter View Post

                              I seriously doubt that Trump will see actual jail time, though I'll be happy to be proven wrong. On the other hand, I don't doubt that Trump Family members are probably sweating bullets at their potential time in the pokey.

                              All in all, this is just one more reason why Trump hideously miscalculated when he decided to run for President
                              I would be glad just for Trump to be gone. Infact, I wouldn't even mind if Biden would give him a full pardon, if he would just promise to go quietly after the election, and not raise any crap about fraud, mail in ballots, Russia and witch hunts.
                              Last edited by InExile; 08 Aug 20,, 23:30.

                              Comment

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