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The Trump Inauguration Fund/Committee Investigation.
Viskod
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The Inauguration Committee and Fund is now under criminal investigation stemming from documents and a recording that investigators received from Cohen.
Quinta Jurecic the managing editor of Lawfare Blog points out that not only is SDNY investigation but it seems EDNY is also investigating. Not only are investigators looking at how the committee spent its funds, but also who contributed and what they may have gotten in return for those contributions.
Natasha Bertrand of the Atlantic links a ProPublica piece on the "how the money was spent" side of things that cites email exchanges of how Ivanka directed committee funds to be spent at Trump properties with inflated rates.
So the event planner thought $85k was more appropriate, down from $175k, which itself was down from another undisclosed figure.
Lawyer and Yahoo contributor Luppe B Lupen (nycsouthpaw) goes right into the heart of the matter with the 990s on the Trump Inauguration.
Both Obama and GWB used Hargrove Inc for their inaugurations. But whereas Trump seemingly paid them an even $25,000,000 Obama paid them $5,082,698 in 2009 and just $450k in 2013.
More importantly, what else happened in January of 2017?
This fund is just an obvious treasure trove of illegally spent funds, stolen funds, and illegally donated funds.
So this should be, fun.
President Donald Trump's inaugural committee is under criminal investigation by federal prosecutors in Manhattan for pay to play and misspending some of the $107 million it raised from donations, The Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday.
The probe was launched by the U.S. attorney's office in Manhattan, the paper said, citing people familiar with the investigation.
The investigation, which is reportedly in its early stages, is looking into whether some of the committee's top donors gave money to gain access to the incoming Trump administration to influence policy positions, which could be a violation of anti-corruption laws.
Quinta Jurecic the managing editor of Lawfare Blog points out that not only is SDNY investigation but it seems EDNY is also investigating. Not only are investigators looking at how the committee spent its funds, but also who contributed and what they may have gotten in return for those contributions.
Notably, EDNY appears to have entered the fray: NYT references "United States attorney's offices in Manhattan and Brooklyn"
Natasha Bertrand of the Atlantic links a ProPublica piece on the "how the money was spent" side of things that cites email exchanges of how Ivanka directed committee funds to be spent at Trump properties with inflated rates.
! "Ivanka Trump was involved in negotiating the price the hotel charged...A top inaugural planner emailed Ivanka and others at the company to 'express my concern” that the hotel was overcharging for its event spaces, worrying of what would happen 'when this is audited.'"
Emails show that Ivanka Trump connected Gates with Mickael Damelincourt, managing director of the hotel. Damelincourt responded with a new rate of $175,000 per day for use of the Presidential Ballroom and meeting rooms, offering a $700,000 charge for four days of use.
It is not clear what the earlier price was, but Damelincourt’s revised rate did not satisfy one of the lead organizers of the inauguration, Stephanie Winston Wolkoff.
In an email to Ivanka Trump and Gates, Wolkoff, who had previously managed the Metropolitan Museum’s annual gala and fashion shows at Lincoln Center, expressed discomfort with the price.
“I wanted to follow up on our conversation and express my concern,” Wolkoff wrote in the December email.
“These events are in PE’s [the president-elect’s] honor at his hotel and one of them is for family and close friends. Please take into consideration that when this is audited it will become public knowledge,” she wrote, noting that other locations would be provided to the inaugural committee for free.
“I understand that compared to the original pricing this is great but we should look at the whole context,” Wolkoff wrote, suggesting a day rate of $85,000, less than half of the Trump hotel’s offer.
So the event planner thought $85k was more appropriate, down from $175k, which itself was down from another undisclosed figure.
Lawyer and Yahoo contributor Luppe B Lupen (nycsouthpaw) goes right into the heart of the matter with the 990s on the Trump Inauguration.
Here's the 990 for the Trump inaugural committee: http://990s.foundationcenter.org/990_pdf_archive/814/814463688/814463688_201710_990O.pdf …
Kinda funny: Trump paid $25 million to a production co called Hargrove Inc. to put on the show. There's ZERO mention of it on Hargrove's website. They do, however, prominently show off Obama's 2013 event.
Both Obama and GWB used Hargrove Inc for their inaugurations. But whereas Trump seemingly paid them an even $25,000,000 Obama paid them $5,082,698 in 2009 and just $450k in 2013.
More importantly, what else happened in January of 2017?
Days before President-elect Donald Trump is set to take the oath to uphold the Constitution, he has followed through on a more painful obligation: coughing up $25 million to settle litigation over his defunct Trump University real estate seminar program.
Trump University — now known as the Trump Entrepreneur Initiative — transferred the funds Tuesday night, according to two sources involved.
The $25 million will be put into escrow until a judge makes a decision on whether to approve the settlement.
This fund is just an obvious treasure trove of illegally spent funds, stolen funds, and illegally donated funds.
So this should be, fun.
Viskod on
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That could be a coincidence, but with Trump, it kinda seems like there are no coincidences.
Since Hargrove is a legit business, it should be pretty easy to see if they actually received any payment.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/15/us/politics/trumps-inaugural-committee-paid-26-million-to-first-ladys-friend.html
I remember Maddow talking about how the numbers just didn’t add up back when the inauguration was happening, and I still never grasped the sheer scale of what happened. I can’t believe they thought they were going to get away with this. But then I can’t believe they almost did.
The inaugural committee was staffed entirely by coffee boys and neither Trump nor Melania knew any of them really.
Jennifer is the White House reporter for Bloomberg.
And in essence a huge party celebrating how great he is. Yeah, no way Trump would have been involved with that.
I mean, if he wants us to throw this book at his children instead of him, sure, why not? There's plenty of books to go around.
Let's open that sucker back up.
New York state outright sued the Trump Foundation charity back in June. The suit is still awaiting its court date, if I'm not mistaken; the most recent news on it I can find is from back in November.
Natasha Bertrand is a staff writer for the Atlantic and MSNBC contributor
So tired
Just stop doing crimes for a minute. Just one goddamn minute don't do a crime.
We're going to be discovering new and exciting crimes for years to come.
There is a reasonable chance that Trump is committing a crime literally right this moment, and we won't find it about it until the investigation gets launched in 2027.
It's just... is this like a plee for help? Is trump subconsciously trying to sabotage himself because some tiny corner of his psyche recognizes what kind of monster he is and is trying to take him down?
Like, how the fuck did you think you were going to get away with this?
Look at his Foundation, or his university.
Dude has been grifting people for ages, and at worse he pays a settlement if he gets caught out. He's literally not had to seen any personal consequences for the shit he does. It's just an investment that pays off more often than not.
Trump thinks this is how things work normally. Hell, republicans in general think this is how things work normally. This didn’t happen as a result of the establishment republicans never having took bribes. All the donors knew where and how to go and thought it was normal enough. Trump just didn’t realize that it was possible to get caught* and didn’t know how to hide it.
*and for the most part there are only two ways to get caught. 1) be a Democrat. Democrats have to follow the law 2) be mindlessly incompetent.
It’s still probably illegal though.
They're a bunch of spoiled stupid fucks that have only gotten as far as they have living off of their late patriarchs wealth and because the Russian mob found them to be useful in laundering money and no one really cared enough about them to pay attention.
Well people are paying attention now so yes, this Presidency will absolutely be the worst thing that's ever happened to them.
Which says something about our society that no one cares about vast money laundering and white collar crime, until it begins to impact people's bottom lines (tariffs/destroying our international diplomacy/chaos and uncertainty in markets).
To them, and to an apparently ever-widening circle of other parasitic shitbags.
Imagine the NRA being investigated for conspiracy with the Russian secret service to defraud the USA.
Go back a few years and imagine trying to persuade people that this would actually happen
I suspect it's always been this way to some degree and they got greedy and dialed it up a little too much.
Or like, it was low key one of the reasons he liked them in the first place
A lot of them were probably in positions where there wasn't much scrutiny so they could get away with it until journalists started paying attention.
Oh yeah thats been one of the oddest things about the trump years. Bush and Obama got so much deference from the media and population that all kinds of terrible stuff was allowed to slide but now the hounds are loose and what was routine is now rightly scandalous.
One of the hidden benefits I guess.
Democrats want a 'return to the norms' once Trump is out of office and I really hope they don't get it, because a lot of the norms are actually horrible.
It's perhaps worth remembering that the Slippery Slope To Derptown started when 'Pork' - riders to bills - stopped being a thing.
I think the people who were quick to “support” Trump and ended up in his cabinet did so specifically because he’s a giant corrupt boob who they didn’t give a shit about but knew they’d likely be able to grift like nobody had grofted before
Or people who were too racist for 1986 but not anymore for 2016 and saw an opportunity to metaphorically step in brown people
The Obama people constantly mention that Obama felt that you set the tone at the top and I think he's entirely correct there. Trump basically sets the tone that he's in this for the money and it's ok to grift and so the people below him think they aren't gonna take any heat for it and look at all the people around them doing all this grifting and what could a little more hurt.
Trump also attracted both the dregs of the right-wing ecosystem and a bunch of people from the private sector who have no idea how the public sector works or what you are allowed to do. And frankly, given the politics of these people, they probably actually believe the bullshit "government is wasteful and corrupt" shit the right peddles and so they figure they aren't doing anything out of the ordinary.