Category: Business

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Business Donald Trump The Trump Organization

Now That Trump Has Pled The Fifth, New York AG Can Impose The ‘Corporate Death Penalty’ On His Company

Earlier today, disgraced, one-term former president Donald Trump raised his hand, swore to tell the truth, and then repeatedly exercised his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination, which was in complete accord with the United States Constitution.

According to the Washington Post:

Former president Donald Trump arrived at the office of the New York attorney general Wednesday morning to give sworn testimony in a long-running civil probe of his business dealings, specifically his representations to lenders and tax agencies about the value of his assets.

In a lengthy statement, Trump denied wrongdoing, accused the U.S. government of unfairly targeting him and said he would refuse to answer questions, citing his Fifth Amendment right not to incriminate himself.

However, while Trump didn’t have to testify, his refusal to do so in the civil case being pursued against him and Trump Organization by New York Attorney General Letitia James could mean that his company vanishes from the face earth if James decides to pursue what’s known as the “corporate death penalty” against his real estate and branding business.

Business Insider notes that James can now ask a court for a variety of penalties:

In the coming weeks or even days, the AG is expected to file a massive, long-threatened ‘enforcement action’ — essentially a multi-hundred-page lawsuit against the Trumps and his Manhattan-based business. Fines and back taxes, however, may be the least of what Trump’s facing. James has signaled she will also seek the dissolution of the business itself under New York’s so-called corporate death penalty — a law that allows the AG to seek to dissolve businesses that operate ‘in a persistently fraudulent or illegal manner.’

Tristan Snell, who was able to get Trump University shut down under New York’s corporate death penalty law, noted:

“This cuts right to the crown jewel of his real estate portfolio.

“It’s everything, because at issue is Trump Tower [where the Trump Organization is headquartered in Manhattan], at issue is 40 Wall Street, which is one of his most beloved properties and probably one of the more valuable ones. All of his golf courses are also at stake, so it’s a big deal.”

Snell explained further on Twitter:

In other words, this has been the week from hell for Donald Trump. His residence was searched by the FBI, he’s on the verge of seeing his company liquidated, and he facing the prospect of being not only broke, but on his way to federal prison.

Lock him up!

 

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Business Congress GOP

Lauren Boebert’s Shooters Grill Has Gone Belly Up

Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) loves to brag about how she managed to start a small business even though she didn’t graduate from high school. To hear her tell it, she pulled herself up by the bootstraps and got her piece of the American dream.

But that dream — which Boebert named Shooters Grill — is now a failure and a little more than a bad memory, according to Colorado Pols:

As readers know, Shooter’s Grill lost hundreds of thousands of dollars during its few years of operation according to tax filings, and the eatery never lived down the 2017 incident in which Boebert’s food truck sickened dozens of spectators at a local rodeo. Quality food and service was never the draw of Shooter’s Grill, of course, bringing in customers (at least once for the novelty) with their armed and generally young female wait staff.

Boebert reportedly waited until after the June 28th primary to make the decision about closing Shooter’s Grill after the building’s landlord signaled his intention to cancel Boebert’s lease at the end of August. With Boebert’s Republican primary opponent dispatched, Boebert’s cash flow from her newfound fame looks secure enough to dispense with the dirty work of running a small-town greasy spoon–management of which Boebert had reportedly already farmed out to political supporters.

Join the good citizens of Rifle in wishing Shooter’s Grill a fond covfefe.

You probably recall one of the things that made Shooters so unique (not to mention absurd) is that all of the employees were encouraged to openly carry weapons in keeping with the right-wing belief that guns were given to us by God and therefore deserve to be worshiped like some sort of fire-breathing idol.

The closing of Shooters also deprives Boebert of her talking point about being a successful businesswoman. Instead, she’s a miserable failure, just like her tangerine lord and savior, Donald Trump.

Now that karma is catching up with Lauren in such a big way, we can also hope that voters in her district will kick her to the curb come November.

 

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Business Social Media

Elon Musk Says He’s Terminating His Purchase Of Twitter – But Legally He Can’t

After today, Elon Musk may want to change his last name to Mush, because his self-hyped proffer to buy Twitter is now on the rocks, and his attempt to extract himself from the deal is likely to cost him a cool fortune and may not happen at all, according to legal experts.

On Friday, attorneys for Musk filed paperwork with the Securities and Exchange Commission to void the $44 billion deal. They also sent a letter to Twitter’s board of directors announcing termination of the deal. Musk and his lawyers maintain that he has every right to pull the plug on acquiring the social media giant because the company hasn’t provided enough information about the company, writing:

“Sometimes Twitter has ignored Mr. Musk’s requests, sometimes it has rejected them for reasons that appear to be unjustified, and sometimes it has claimed to comply while giving Mr. Musk incomplete or unusable information.”

Twitter was in no mood to debate Musk and made it clear they will force him to go through with the deal by taking him to court, with board chairman Bret Taylor noting:

“The Twitter Board is committed to closing the transaction on the price and terms agreed upon with Mr. Musk and plans to pursue legal action to enforce the merger agreement. We are confident we will prevail in the Delaware Court of Chancery.”

Legal experts, the Washington Post reports, agree with Twitter that Musk cannot just void the deal and get off the hook for the $44 billion he pledged to pay:

His April agreement to buy the company included a commitment to go through with the acquisition unless there’s a major change to the business, and legal experts say nothing has happened to meet that threshold. Musk has previously threatened to scuttle the deal if Twitter didn’t give him more data to run his own analysis on how many spam bots it has, while Twitter has said it can’t give up personal information on its users like their names, emails and IP addresses, which it uses to come up with its own bot numbers.

Musk, according to those familiar with corporate law, agreed to buy the company as is, not some version of it after it met certain conditions that were never part of the original agreement.

Some suspect the real reason for Musk’s reluctance to complete the purchase is that he no longer has the capital needed due to significant losses of Tesla shares on the stock market. Those shares were a major portion of the money Musk put down to guarantee he was serious about the acquisition.

In the first six months of 2022, Musk’s wealth has plunged by $62 billion, and further reversals in the Dow Jones and Nasdaq indexes could more than double that amount by the end of the year.

Elon Musk is starting to sound like he’s almost as bad of a businessman as former president Donald Trump. But then again, no one is that incompetent.

 

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Business Donald Trump Trump Supporters WTF?!

MAGA Faithful Are Threatening To Boycott Walmart For Being Too ‘Woke’

If you had to guess, where would you suspect the vast majority of the MAGA faithful (i.e. hardcore Trump supporters) do most of their shopping?

Did you say Walmart? I’m guessing you did, and you’re absolutely correct.

However, it now appears that some Trumpers are ready to dump Walmart and find another place to shop simply because the company isn’t carrying the shitty, overpriced pillows manufactured by Mike Lindell, the CEO of MyPillow.

Dr. Gina Loudon (who claims to have a PhD in psychology even though she doesn’t), is a right-wing radio host who called for the Walmart boycott, announcing on Twitter that she had deleted the Walmart app and instead would be shopping at Publix:

Walmart couldn’t be reached for a comment, but here’s betting it was something like this: Gina who?! We don’t need her business anyway. Good riddance.

Other Twitter users couldn’t resist mocking Loudon, and some of their comments are pure gold. Take a look.

https://twitter.com/soyeahbasically/status/1543398136378523648?s=20&t=7noXUCVibkWpngFhpF8J_g
https://twitter.com/Democracy_Spot/status/1543354579617808387?s=20&t=7noXUCVibkWpngFhpF8J_g
https://twitter.com/NotferU2Know/status/1543385294484955138?s=20&t=je4mTNLfpN-RaJ4URu8gTw

https://twitter.com/PentUpPower/status/1543381178601832448?s=20&t=GgvavZHjHGByvAJG3ulzUw

MAGAts boycotting Walmart? Yeah, and pigs are flying coast to coast just for the hell of it.

 

Categories
Business

Elon Musk Loses $10 Billion In A Single Day After New Allegations Of Sexual Misconduct Surface

Even though he’s reportedly the richest man in the world, Tesla CEO Elon Musk is watching as large chunks of his fortune spiral down the proverbial toilet, costing him billions of dollars and threatening to turn him into a former billionaire.

According to Business Insider, Musk lost $10 billion in a single day after allegations of sexual misconduct were lodged against him:

Tesla CEO Elon Musk lost $10 billion in just a single day after claims of sexual misconduct against him emerged.

He was worth about $212 billion on Thursday, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. After news of the allegations broke on Thursday night, his wealth fell to around $201 billion, the index showed.

According to Insider’s report, SpaceX, the aerospace firm founded by Musk, paid a flight attendant $250,000 to settle a sexual misconduct claim against Musk in 2018. Musk has denied the claim.

In recent weeks, Musk has been at the center of the business and media world as a result of his offer to buy Twitter for the price of $44 billion, with a large part of the purchase price expected to be covered by Musk’s stock holdings in Tesla.

But Tesla stock has tanked over the past week or so, leading some financial experts to suggest that Musk’s complaints about Twitter being filled with bots is merely a face-saving way for him to back out of the deal now that his cash reserve is running low:

Tesla’s stock performance in public markets has the most significant impact on Musk’s wealth. Musk owns about 15% of the electric carmaker, per BBC. After news of the allegations emerged, Tesla’s share price tanked 6.4%.

But Musk’s sexual misconduct news and related financial fallout is just the latest incident in a protracted wealth decline since the start of this year. Per Bloomberg’s estimate, he is now more than $69 billion poorer year-to-date. That’s partly because Tesla’s stock price was pulled down amid a global stock-market selloff as investors worried about the health of the global economy. 

Ironically, the Twitter deal could wind up sinking Musk’s overall financial standing:

Last week alone, the carmaker’s stock was down 14%, wiping out about $110 billion from its market valuation, Bloomberg reported. “As long as the Twitter deal is out there, and as long as Tesla’s stock is falling, people worry that Musk will have to sell more stock and would get distracted and not pay as much attention to Tesla as he should,” Gary Black, founder and managing partner at the actively-managed ETF Future Fund LLC, told Bloomberg.

Considering some of the vile things Musk has been spewing on social media lately, many are wondering if perhaps he’s losing it mentally, too.

Recently, Musk announced he was putting together a “hardcore litigation department” at Tesla, adding, “There will be blood.”

The blood appears to be red ink hemorrhaging from the accounts of Elon Musk.