Month: December 2022

Categories
Donald Trump Elections Fox News

Hannity Admits Under Oath He ‘Did Not Believe For One Second’ Trump’s Claims Of Election Fraud

While he loves to say that he agrees with everything one-term, twice-impeached former president does and says, Fox News host Sean Hannity admits under oath that he actually thinks the ex-president is full of crap.

Under oath in a deposition, Hannity was asked about allegations made by attorney Sidney Powell, who said voting machines made by Dominion Voting Systems were susceptible to fraud, the New York Times reports. And his response was the direct opposite of what he said on his show when discussing the matter of the 2020 election.

At the center of this imagined plot were machines from Dominion Voting Systems, which Ms. Powell claimed ran an algorithm that switched votes for Mr. Trump to votes for Joseph R. Biden Jr. Dominion machines, she insisted, were being used “to trash large batches of votes.”

Mr. Hannity interrupted her with a gentle question that had been circulating among election deniers, despite a lack of supporting proof: Why were Democrats silencing whistle blowers who could prove this fraud?

Did Mr. Hannity believe any of this?

“I did not believe it for one second.”

That was the answer Mr. Hannity gave, under oath, in a deposition in Dominion’s $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox News, according to information disclosed in a court hearing on Wednesday. The hearing was called to address several issues that need to be resolved before the case heads for a jury trial, which the judge has scheduled to begin in April.

Yes, Fox is being sued for $1.6 billion thanks to people such as Sean Hannity, who parroted the lies from Trump and members of his campaign who tried to suggest the 2020 election had been stolen from the failed former president.

In other words, the Times notes, the testimony from Hannity “is among the strongest evidence yet to emerge publicly that some Fox employees knew that what they were broadcasting was false.”

And there’s also evidence that Fox tried to keep Powell from spreading her lies on their network, yet they continued to give her airtime.

Another previously unknown detail emerged on Wednesday about what was going on inside the Fox universe in those frantic weeks after the election. A second lawyer representing Dominion, Justin Nelson, told Judge Davis about evidence obtained by Dominion showing that an employee of the Fox Corporation, the parent company of Fox News, had tried to intervene with the White House to stop Ms. Powell. According to Mr. Nelson, that employee called the fraud claims “outlandish” and pressed Mr. Trump’s staff to get rid of Ms. Powell, who was advising the president on filing legal challenges to the results.

All of this suggests that Fox knew they were broadcasting lies yet continued to do so, which is very bad news for the network because it shows a pattern of behavior that supports the assertion they deliberately tried to defame Dominion.

Oh, and it also suggests that Sean Hannity is a lying sack of shit. But then again, some of us have known that for years.

Categories
Crime Donald Trump Taxation

Trump’s Tax Returns Suggest He May Have Committed Tens Of Millions In Fraud

The House Ways and Means Committee voted Tuesday to release one-term, twice-impeached former president Donald Trump’s tax returns, a move that he has been trying to prevent for years.

CNN reports:

The committee also released a report Tuesday that detailed six years’ worth of the former president’s tax returns, including his claims of massive annual losses that significantly reduced his tax burden.

Chairman Richard Neal and fellow Democrats said Tuesday that the records they obtained showed that the presidential audit program failed to work as intended. The Massachusetts Democrat charged that the required audit of Trump’s taxes “did not occur,” as his returns were only subjected to the mandatory audit once, in 2019, after Democrats inquired.

“The research that was done as it relates to the mandatory audit program was nonexistent,” Neal told reporters after the committee hearing.

Even though the full returns haven’t yet been made public, a member of the House Ways and Means Committee, Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-TX), said Tuesday evening on CNN that Trump had tens of millions of dollars in questionable deductions that suggest massive tax fraud, telling host Erin Burnett:

“I think you will see tens of millions of dollars in these returns that were claimed without adequate substantiation. The extent to which the IRS made an effort to get that substantiation, I invite you to look at the reports. But I think you’ll be surprised by how little there is, and I have my doubts that another taxpayer could go into audit and provide as little as was provided here and expect to have a completed audit.”

Doggett’s comments were echoed by Trump biographer Tim O’Brien in a column he wrote for Bloomberg.

What a fine mess he has gotten himself into. There are certainly more surprises to come, but a pair of summaries of the House Ways and Means Committee’s analysis of Trump’s personal and business tax records from 2015 through 2020 contained interesting revelations that will trouble the former president and certainly draw the attention of prosecutors.

O’Brien said of special interest are the deductions Trump took to reduce his taxable income:

“The records question the validity of about $300 million in tax deductions claimed by a skein of Trump holding companies for such write-offs as charitable giving, operating losses and business expenses. Both reports speculate that about $51,000 was given to his three eldest children as gifts, but may have been disguised as loans to avoid tax payments.

“As more information about his finances surfaces in coming days, it will be a reminder of the extent to which the former president played a shell game with his wealth and business interests while in power — and what he might try to get away with again if he occupies the Oval Office in the future.”

As long suspected, the reason Trump never voluntarily released his tax returns is because they contain detailed information about his financial crimes and who he does business with.

Categories
Right Wing Morons

Judge Strips Bankruptcy Protections From Alex Jones – Orders Payment Of $1.5 Billion In Sandy Hook Damages

A Texas judge ruled Monday that InfoWars host Alex Jones cannot use bankruptcy to avoid paying $1.5 billion in damages awarded to families of those killed at Sandy Hook Elementary in December of 2012.

The ruling means that Jones will indeed be forced to pay whatever he has in cash or other valuable items in order to comply with the court ruling.

In his ruling, Houston Judge Christopher M. López wrote:

“Immediately to (i) allow the Sandy Hook Post-Trial Families’ Cases to continue to proceed to entry of final judgment and (ii) once judgments are entered, to allow appeals, if any, to proceed and the Sandy Hook Post-Trial Families to pursue, respond to and participate in any such appeals without further order of the Court.”

John Craven of News 12 spelled out other details of Judge López’s ruling.

JUST IN: Sandy Hook families may proceed with $1.5 billion in judgments against Alex Jones. A bankruptcy judge just approved an agreement to lift the automatic stay that went into effect when Jones filed for bankruptcy The families agreed to not pursue collection efforts yet

Judge will consider a pay raise for Jones on January 20 Jones’ attorneys say he needs his full salary to keep doing the “Infowars” show — the program where he claimed Sandy Hook was a hoax — so he can pay off the families Attorney Vickie Driver: “He’s just out of money”

Jones’ Attorney Vickie Driver: Jones has “lots of business strategies” to get his company back to profitability

For years now Jones has attempted to delay paying the money awarded to families he accused of being “crisis actors” and part of a government conspiracy to fabricate mass shootings in an attempt to impose gun restrictions across the United States.

But Jones and his lies have finally caught up with him and he’s beginning to realize that he may soon be forced to sell whatever belongings he has to satisfy the court judgements against him and his company.

Categories
Elon Musk Jared Kushner Social Media WTF?!

Jared And Elon Set Off A Wave Of Online Chatter By Attending The World Cup Final Together

In what many are calling the greatest World Cup Final in history, Argentina defeated France today on penalty kicks.

The Athletic reports:

Lionel Messi has led Argentina to World Cup glory after the most thrilling final in the 92-year history of the tournament.

Argentina took the lead through Messi and Angel Di Maria, only for Kylian Mbappe to score a late brace. Messi restored Argentina’s lead in extra time, but Mbappe again hit back for France, completing his hat-trick and taking the game to a penalty shootout.

Argentina won the shootout 4-2, to claim the World Cup and victory in one of the sport’s all-time great games.

Shortly after the game was over, a photo began circulating online showing Twitter CEO Elon Musk and former Trump administration senior adviser Jared Kushner standing together in a private box at the stadium in Qatar, which led this posting:

What in the hell is going on there? Is Jared trying to line up another couple of billion bucks from Qatar, much the same as he did with the Saudis right after the Trump administration ended?

And why is Musk at the World Cup? Granted, he’s a billionaire and can attend any sporting event on the planet, but is he really there to try and shore up his Twitter investment? After all, a report from the Wall Street Journal suggests that Musk is desperate to sell more shares in the social media platform because he no longer has the cash on hand he needs to pay the bills for rent on office space and vendors who supply the company.

Since neither Kushner or Musk was kind enough to explain the reason for the simultaneous appearance at the World Cup, it seems only fair to let social media figure it out.

Jared and Elon make a nice couple, especially when they’re on the hunt for blood money.

Categories
Capitol Insurrection Crime January 6

Capitol Rioter Manages To Make His Sentence Much Worse With ‘Self-Inflicted Damage’

On Friday, Doug Jensen appeared in federal court to be sentenced for his role in the January 6, 2021 insurrection and rioting that took place at the U.S. Capitol which left five people — including a member of the Capitol Police Force — dead.

But while Jensen and his attorneys were hoping for a sentence of no longer than 27 months, he wound up receiving five years in prison.

Scott MacFarlane of CBS News explained how Jensen went from 27 months to five years.

“Today was sentencing day, and he was recommending a shorter sentence, just 27 months. Prosecutors were seeking more than five years. Today was Doug Jensen’s day to make his argument, to seek leniency, to do himself some good in his case. It ends up, he did just the opposite.”

Things began to turn bad for Jensen when the person he was supposed to confront, police officer Eugene Goodman, was replaced by Goodman’s supervisor.

“First of all, let me tell you about the testimony we heard today. It was actually Capitol Police Inspector Tom Lloyd, not Eugene Goodman but Goodman’s supervisor … who spoke in court. What Tom Lloyd said really seemed to land with the judge as well. Saying that, if not for Eugene Goodman luring that mob away from the evacuating U.S. senators, there would have been bloodshed, perhaps quite a bit of it. Doug Jensen might not have walked out of the Capitol after the riot. Then Lloyd spoke about all the injuries, all the trauma suffered by police that day. To balance that, or try to counter that, Doug Jensen spoke on his own behalf to seek leniency. And rather than accepting responsibility, rather than expressing remorse to the judge, Jensen said he simply wants to go home, to go back to his normal life before he became involved with politics. Jensen, who has been held in a Virginia jail pending his sentencing, got a sentence of five years.”

What led the judge to give Jensen a longer prison sentence? His lack of remorse.

“One of the things the judge said stuck with me. He said he just didn’t hear an acceptance of responsibility from Jensen, and that if he had heard that, there may have been room for a downward departure. Jensen missed the opportunity, perhaps deliberately, and after causing so much damage here on January 6, he damaged his own case.”

Doug Jensen fu**ed around and found out. He has no one to blame for his predicament but himself.