Month: January 2020

Categories
Corruption Donald Trump Impeachment

Trump Impeachment Attorney Jay Sekulow Has A Long History Of Shameless Grifting

During the Senate impeachment trial of Donald Trump, we’ve all seen a lot of Jay Sekulow, a member of the president’s legal defense team.

And yet it’s very likely that you know very little about Sekulow, who serves as the chief counsel for the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ), which was founded by televangelist Pat Robertson and subscribes to an extreme far right Christian fundamentalist view of the world and legal jurisprudence, including calling for taxpayer funding of religion and trying to mandate that Christianity is taught in public schools as if it’s proven fact.


But it turns out that Sekulow — much like his most famous client, the president — is also fond of feathering his own nest, participating in all sorts of questionable financial practices that reek of fraud and grift.

As The Guardian first noted in an article it published about Sekulow, most of the attorney’s efforts have been on his own behalf and focused on enriching himself and members of his family. Here’s just a few of highlights from The Guardian’s informative reporting, which blew the whistle on Sekulow’s non-profit, Christian Advocates Serving Evangelism (CASE):

“For years, the nonprofits have made a notable amount of payments to Sekulow and his family, which were first reported by Law.com. Since 2000, a law firm co-owned by Sekulow, the Constitutional Litigation and Advocacy Group, has been paid more than $25m by the nonprofits for legal services. During the same period, Sekulow’s company Regency Productions, which produces his talk radio show, was paid $11.3m for production services.”


But that’s only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Sekulow and his questionable way of steering “contributions” into his own bank accounts and those of the people closest to him:

  • Sekulow received compensation exceeding $3 million from the nonprofits. His wife Pam received more than $1 million for serving as treasurer and secretary of CASE.
  • Sekulow’s brother Gary serves as chief operating officer of both the ACLJ and CASE. He has been paid more than $9 million in salary since 2000. In a filing with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), Gary Sekulow claimed that he works 40 hours per week for each group.
  • Jay Sekulow’s two sons and Gary Sekulow’s daughter have also done work for the ACLJ and CASE, earning nearly $2 million since 2000.


All of those payments are highly unusual and unethical, according to Arthur Rieman, an expert on nonprofit law, who noted:

“I can’t imagine this situation being acceptable. That kind of money is practically unheard of in the nonprofit world, and these kinds of transactions I could never justify.”

So why exactly did Donald Trump add Jay Sekulow to his legal team? Probably because he’s just as ethically-challenged as the impeached president.

Categories
Corruption Crime The Trump Adminstration

Jared Kushner Under Scrutiny For Secret Meetings With Chinese Real Estate Investors

Since Donald Trump became president three years ago, members of his administration have repeatedly suggested in both word and deed that they believe they’re above the law, beyond congressional oversight, and not subject to the rules that apply to everyone else.

Take, for example, senior White House adviser Jared Kushner, who is drawing scrutiny for a meeting he held with Chinese investors at a time when he was working as a member of the administration while also seeking funding for some of his real estate projects, CNBC reports.


In November 2017, as President Trump was on a 12-day tour of Asia, a meeting was held that didn’t appear on White House or State Department agendas: A meeting with Chinese private equity investors that was arranged by Jared Kushner and U.S. Ambassador Terry Branstad. And that meeting just so happened to coincide with the fact that Kushner was trying to lure investors for two multi-billion dollar deals the president’s son-in-law was desperate to arrange because he needed such large sums of money:

“At the time of the meeting, the Kushner family was under fire for its pursuit of overseas investors while Jared Kushner occupied a senior role advising the president on foreign policy ranging from Middle East peace to trade with China and Mexico. Kushner reported divesting his stake in the family company, and his siblings took the reins of the business and its search for foreign investment.”


That’s not the only questionable thing Kushner’s company did in order to assure that they got investors hot for the business deals they were trying to consummate:

“In the months immediately prior to the meeting, Kushner’s sister Nicole Kushner Meyer referred to Jared at an event urging wealthy Chinese investors to buy $500,000 visas to come to the United States and participate in an upcoming New Jersey project. The Washington Post and New York Times reported that investors at the Beijing sales pitch saw Jared Kushner’s celebrity status as a draw. Meyer later issued a formal apology, saying it was not her intention to use Jared to ‘lure investors.'”

It wasn’t her intention to lure investors? Are we supposed to believe that bullshit line?


When public interest groups and the media began asking questions about Jared’s attempt to make business deals while also serving in the White House, the State Department declined to expedite those requests, saying they could release the documentation no sooner than July 2021, months after the 2020 election is over with.

This whole thing stinks to high heaven. It’s time for congressional committees to get involved and see what they can dig up. And if that doesn’t work, then subpoenas from the Attorney General for the state of New York should start flying.

Categories
Politics WTF?!

Former Classmate Of Donald Trump Jr. Says Junior Hated His Father, Who Beat Him

If you’ve ever wondered what kind of a parent Donald Trump was, we now have some information which will likely confirm your worst fears: The guy was an asshole to his children, too.


Scott Melker is a DJ now living in Miami. He attended college with Donald Trump Jr. at the University of Pennsylvania, and he posted a memory on Facebook about the time that Donald Sr. showed up at the Penn dormitory to pick up his son and take him to a baseball game:

“There were quite a few students standing around watching, trying to catch a glimpse of the famed real estate magnate. Don Jr. opened the door, wearing a Yankee jersey. Without saying a word, his father slapped him across the face, knocking him to the floor in front of all of his classmates. He simply said ‘put on a suit and meet me outside,’ and closed the door.”


Melker also recalls that Donald Jr. was known by the nickname “Diaper Don” because he was frequently drunk, and whenever he would drink heavily and pass out, he often soiled himself:

“Every memory I have of him is of him stumbling around campus falling over or passing out in public, with his arm in a sling from injuring himself while drinking. He absolutely despised his father, and hated the attention that his last name afforded him.”


While this is only one man’s recollection of the past, ask yourself this question: Do you have any trouble imagining Donald Trump slapping his son and verbally abusing him? I don’t. As a matter of fact, I have more trouble imagining him being a loving and nurturing father. The man is a vile, crude cretin and self-absorbed narcissist who will walk over or mistreat anyone because he knows he can get away with it. He does not have a heart or soul. In place of them is a cesspool of human excrement.

Categories
Impeachment

Turns Out Lindsey Graham Has His Own Corrupt Connection To The Ukraine Scandal

Ever since the Ukraine scandal first became public knowledge back in mid-September of last year, Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) has repeatedly tried to minimize the fact that President Donald Trump sought to extort the government of Ukraine for dirt on former Vice President Joe Biden in exchange for military aid that had been appropriated on a bipartisan basis by Congress.


For example, as recently as January 15, here’s what Graham had to say about the Senate impeachment trial:

“The best thing for the American people is to end this crap as quickly as possible, to have a trial in the Senate, bipartisan acquittal of the president. And on Feb. 4, when the president comes into the House chamber to deliver the State of the Union, he will have been acquitted by the Senate.”

And now it’s clear that Graham wants to get impeachment off the front burner of the news cycle because he has something of his own to hide when it comes to Ukraine.


The Daily Beast reports that Trump’s personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, gave a letter to Senator Graham back in 2018:

“In late 2018, Rudy Giuliani said he delivered an unusual missive to Sen. Lindsey Graham, according to the lawyer of one of his ex-associates: a letter calling for sanctions on a host of Ukrainian government officials, including one widely viewed in the West as a brave reformer and another who helmed the company where Hunter Biden was a board member.”

The important line in that paragraph is this one: “A letter calling for sanctions on a host of Ukrainian government officials, including one widely viewed in the West as a brave reformer and another who helmed the company where Hunter Biden was a board member.”

Why would someone working for the president want sanctions on a Ukrainian reformer and a person who had connections to Hunter Biden?


Probably because a reformer would be likely to blow the whistle on any wild schemes Giuliani was trying to hatch and someone heading the company Hunter Biden served on the board of might have been able to report back to Ukrainian authorities that Giuliani and his henchmen were going around Kyiv looking for dirt on the Bidens. If that company bigwig were under sanctions, Giuliani might be able to use that as leverage.

Much of Graham’s full connection to the Ukraine scandal remains unclear at this point , but with more information coming out daily, we’ll probably know more very soon.

Categories
Donald Trump Impeachment Uncategorized

Senate Democrats Now Have The 51 Votes Needed For Impeachment Witnesses

The news which broke Sunday regarding the draft of an upcoming book by former National Security Adviser John Bolton which alleges that Donald Trump did indeed hold military aid to Ukraine hostage until he got investigations of former Vice President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter, has completely changed the landscape of Trump’s Senate impeachment trial.


Before the Bolton news broke, it seemed highly unlikely that there would be any witnesses called because Senate Republicans — operating in lockstep with the White House — wanted to get this entire impeachment trial over with so Trump could declare victory and get back to his attempts to rig the 2020 election the way he did the one that supposedly “elected” him four years ago.


Now, however, at least four senators have changed their minds and want to at least give the appearance that the trial isn’t rigged, according to PBS News Hour reporter Lisa Desjardins, who sent out this tweet Monday evening:

So, if the votes are there, who might be called to testify? Here’s the most likely names you’ll be hearing:

  • Former National Security Adviser John Bolton
  • Acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney
  • Rudy Giuliani
  • Lev Parnas

As you might expect, Senate Republicans are now saying that they want some witnesses of their own, specifically the Bidens, with Lindsey Graham (R-SC) whining that he will make sure the Bidens are raked over the coals and slagged in a desperate effort to muddy the water and divert attention away from Trump’s endless parade of crimes.


But witnesses would be a big victory for the Democrats, and if they get them, that would be very bad news for Trump, even if only because it will drag the trial out even longer, making him more politically vulnerable.

There’s no guarantee that any member of the GOP can grow a spine, if only temporarily, but things are looking bad for Trump and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) at the moment.