Month: October 2022

Categories
Corruption Crime Donald Trump Social Media

New Legal Problems For Trump – Gets Busted Shaking Down His Social Media Business Partner

Already facing massive legal problems for his role in the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol and illegally hoarding classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago resort, failed former president Donald Trump is now accused of shaking down a partner in his failing social media venture, Truth Social.

The Washington Post took a deep dive into why Truth Social is sinking into financial morass and discovered that the ex-president wanted a top executive at the site to hand over some of his shares to former first lady Melania Trump.

Will Wilkerson, then an executive at former president Donald Trump’s start-up Trump Media & Technology Group, was at a Fort Lauderdale, Fla.,coffee shop with company co-founder Andy Litinsky last October when Trump called Litinsky with a question: Would he give up some of his shares to Trump’s wife, Melania?

Trump Media, the owner of the fledgling social network Truth Social, had just been boosted by a huge merger agreement and a flood of investment that had made the stake worth millions of dollars. Trump had already been given 90 percent of the company’s shares in exchange for the use of his name and some minor involvement, leaving everyone else to split the rest.

Litinsky tried to brush it off, telling Trump “the gift would have meant a huge tax bill he couldn’t pay,” Wilkerson said in an interview. “Trump didn’t care. He said, ‘Do whatever you need to do.’ ”

A few months after Litinsky refused to do as Trump had suggested, he was unceremoniously removed from the company’s board of directors, which certainly sounds like retaliation for not doing what the Donald wanted.

Though Litinsky has not spoken publicly about the incident, Wilkerson has and is now cooperating with prosecutors who are taking a close look at Truth Social, according to The Post.

Wilkerson is cooperating with investigations into Trump Media by the SEC and federal prosecutors from the Southern District of New York, said his attorneys, Phil Brewster, Patrick Mincey and Stephen Bell. Among the materials he filed with the SEC’s whistleblower office is a detailed, day-to-day computer log compiled by company co-founder Wes Moss, Litinsky and Wilkerson about their daily company-related activities.

Those investigations could serve as the end of Truth Social, which is already on the verge of financial collapse, as Trump and his partners cannot access more operating capital as long as federal regulators suspect illegal behavior by top excutives.

Wilkerson now says he believes Truth Social will fail, like so many of Trump’s business ventures have:

“We weren’t trying to be Trump Org 2.0. We always saw Trump as the rocket fuel to send this thing to space. I wanted this to succeed more than anything. … But these are glaring issues, and they’re threatening me now for calling them out. I couldn’t stay quiet anymore.”

Categories
Elections U.S. Senate

Warnock Destroys Walker In Georgia Senate Debate: Herschel ‘Has A Problem With The Truth’

The Friday evening debate between Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-GA) and his Republican opponent, Herschel Walker, wound up being a blowout, with Warnock reminding voters that Walker says one thing one day and another the next, meaning he cannot be trusted.

When he was asked if he supported gun safety legislation, Walker said he would never vote for any bill that would impact the Second Amendment and then attacked Warnock for suggesting some members of law enforcement cannot be trusted.

“And because of the name calling he’s done, the morale is down, recruitment is down, only because of what he’s done. He’s empowered criminals to think they’re better than police.

“He don’t protect the border, fentanyl is coming into this country — also into Atlanta Seventy percent of the drugs coming from the border goes to Atlanta, Georgia.”

Asked for a response, Warnock replied:

“We will see time and time again tonight, as we’ve already seen, that my opponent has a problem with the truth. And just because he said something doesn’t mean it’s true.”

Warnock then leveled his opponent with this line:

“One thing I have not done, I’ve never pretended to be a police office. And I’ve never threatened a shootout with the police.”

Rather than admit he had lied about being a police officer, Walker flashed a fake badge and was scolded by the moderator for violating debate rules by using a prop.

Among the other lies Walker has told along the campaign trail, according to The New Republic:

  • Reporting from The Daily Beast, including receipts and a “Get well” card, revealed that Walker, who opposes abortions without exceptions, in fact paid for his girlfriend’s abortion.
  • Walker’s campaign claimed last December that Walker has a bachelor’s degree in criminal justice and graduated in the top 1 percent of his class from the University of Georgia. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution looked into the claim and found it was false.
  • Walker claimed in January to be Native American on his mother’s side, stating that his grandmother was a “full-blooded Cherokee.” His own mother was unable to confirm these claims in an interview with HuffPost.
 

Categories
Elections GOP

WATCH Ron Johnson Get Laughed At By Debate Audience When He Claims ‘The FBI Set Me Up’

Wisconsin Republican Sen. Ron Johnson was laughed at Thursday evening during a debate with his Democratic opponent, Mandela Barnes, when he suggested that the FBI had set him up in order to humiliate him on the issue of Russia.

Mediaite notes that Barnes and Johnson were asked about the ongoing attack by Russia in Ukraine. Barnes said the United States should continue to support Ukraine and then referenced something Johnson had said.

In April 2021, reports circulated saying the FBI warned Johnson he may be targeted by Russia as part of an influence operation. Johnson conceded last year that the meeting had taken place.

“Regarding reports that I received an FBI briefing warning me that I was a target of Russian disinformation, I can confirm I received such a briefing in August of 2020,” Johnson told the Washington Post.

Barnes noted the briefing during the debate.

Barnes then added:

“There was also an instance where Senator Johnson had to be sat down by the FBI and warned that he may be a Russian asset. We cannot trust Senator Johnson to protect democracy abroad because we can’t even trust Senator Johnson to protest democracy here at home.”

That led Johnson to respond:

“In response to the wild charge of Lieutenant Gov. Barnes, the FBI set me up with a corrupt – with a corrupt – briefing and then leaked that to smear me.”

The led to laughter among the audience, but Johnson only doubled down, suggesting that the FBI was corrupt and he was working to “uncover and expose” that corruption.

Did the FBI “set up” Sen. Johnson when he agreed to travel to Russia on July 4, 2018, as Roll Call reported at the time?

One of the Republican senators back from a trip to Moscow is suggesting that Congress went too far in punishing Russia for meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

“I’ve been pretty upfront that the election interference — as serious as that was, and unacceptable — is not the greatest threat to our democracy,” Sen. Ron Johnson said in an interview with the Washington Examiner published over the weekend. “We’ve blown it way out of proportion.”

“We need to really honestly assess what actually happened, what effect did it have, and what effect are our sanctions actually having, positively and negatively,” the Republican from Wisconsin said.

And yet Johnson wonders why anyone would dare call him a Russian asset.

 

Categories
Capitol Insurrection Donald Trump

Trump Wanted People To Die On Jan. 6 So He Could Declare Martial Law And Stay In Office: Report

While failed, one-term, twice-impeached former president Donald Trump was desperate to stay in office long beyond January 20, 2022, could it be that he was also an accessory to murder so he could accomplish that goal?

A former Trump staffer said Thursday after the House Select Committee ended its hearings by subpoenaing the ex-president that he believes he knows exactly how Donald expected to carry out his plan of remaining president.

Miles Taylor, who served in the Department of Homeland Security during the Trump administration, said during an appearance on MSNBC that the latest hearing made an impact:

“It made my heart race to watch today’s hearing, really, because they brought up Trump’s mindset, and the question was, what was his mindset? I’m going to demystify that for America right now. I’ve spent time with the guy in the Oval Office, the White House situation room, and Air Force One. I’ll tell you what his mindset was on January 6th.”

Taylor continued:

“I believe Donald Trump wanted people to die. He wanted people to die who were elected officials, en masse, so he could call out the military, so he could invoke the Insurrection Act, so he could prevent the peaceful transfer of power. That’s not a conspiracy theory. In fact, in hindsight, it’s pretty damn clear to me this is what he had in mind from day one in office.”

Taylor then explained that he once wondered why Trump steadfastly refused to condemn right-wing domestic extremist groups, and it finally hit him one day:

 “Why did he make excuses for domestic terrorist groups? Because he was on their side.”

The former DHS official added:

“We saw in testimony the other week in courts that the January 6th plotters knew they were engaging in an insurrection, an armed insurrection. That’s what they intended. And we have people, extremists … two hops away from the president of the United States who were planning on making that happen. He wanted people to die on January 6th so that he could use those presidential powers to prevent our democracy from transitioning to a new president. And I think the committee presented that in extremely powerful passion.”

 

Categories
Capitol Insurrection Crime Donald Trump January 6

Infantile Trump Has A Social Media Meltdown After The 1/6 Committee Subpoenas Him

It’s been an especially crappy day for disgraced, one-term, twice-impeached former president Donald Trump.

First, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear his appeal for an intervention on the special master appointed to look at documents seized from Mar-a-Lago in August.

An order from the high court was handed down that read:

“The application to vacate the stay entered by the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit on September 21, 2022, presented to Justice [Clarence] Thomas and by him referred to the Court is denied.”

Even his old buddy Clarence Thomas couldn’t save him.

Later in the afternoon, the House Select Committee investigating the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol voted unanimously to subpoena the ex-president for testimony regarding his role in the insurrection.

According to The Washington Post:

The House committee investigating the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, voted Thursday to subpoena testimony and documents from former president Donald Trump, a dramatic culmination of its year-and-a-half-long investigation, and a sign that the committee wants to continue its work beyond this Congress.

“This is a question about accountability to the American people,” Chairman Bennie G. Thompson (D-Miss.) said ahead of the vote. “He must be accountable.”

The unanimous vote came at the end of a meeting that also revealed new details about warnings from the Secret Service that armed supporters of Trump would go to the Capitol, with one agent describing that morning as the “calm before the storm.”

That was all it took to trigger Donnie in a major way. But since he’s banned from Twitter and Facebook, he had to settle for a meltdown on his failing Truth Social site, which is reportedly on the verge of a complete financial collapse.

“Why didn’t the Unselect Committee ask me to testify months ago? Why did they wait until the very end, the final moments of their last meeting? Because the Committee is a total “BUST” that has only served to further divide our Country which, by the way, is doing very badly – A laughing stock all over the World?”

That was followed by this one:

“The Unselect Committee knowingly failed to examine the massive voter fraud which took place during the 2020 Presidential Election – The reason for what took place on January 6th.”

And that was followed by an attempt to blame others for Jan. 6, even though he and his ragtag bunch of would-be revolutionaries are the ones solely responsible for what took place:

“Why didn’t Crazy Nancy Pelosi call out the ‘troops’ before January 6th, which I strongly recommended that she do. It was her responsibility, but she ‘didn’t like the look.’ Crazy Nancy failed the American People!”

He’s scared. He realizes everything is falling apart.