Category: Corruption

Categories
Corruption Supreme Court

Democrats Have Plenty Of Options For Dealing With Corrupt Judges – Here’s Some Of Them

While the scandal surrounding Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas continues to expand, there have been new calls for Congress to do something (anything!) as a way of punishing Thomas and making sure a justice never again engages in such unethical behavior.

But what can Congress do? Well, quite a lot, based on what the Constitution allows, as explained in an incredibly informative article in The Washington Post from Jesús Rodríguez, who explains there’s an “arsenal of tactics at their disposal to police the Supreme Court.”

They could threaten to drain the court’s budget during its yearly review. They could urge the Department of Justice to appoint a special counsel to investigate potential charges. They could consolidate support for impeaching a member of the bench, as some members of the House have unsuccessfully tried to do with respect to Thomas.

Or Congress could do what the Constitution specifies it should do: Pass legislation.

On Tuesday, an eagle-eyed photographer captured an image of notes belonging to Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) that suggested that Feinstein could return as soon as next week — in which case the committee could move legislation to the Senate floor more quickly. (Any bill would face steep odds in the GOP-controlled House.)

There’s also the path that Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) and his colleague in the House, Rep. Hank Johnson (D-GA) have done: Refer the matter to another official body that has the power to bring Thomas to heel:

(Whitehouse and Johnson) sent a letter urging the Judicial Conference of the United States, the agency charged with administering the courts, to refer Thomas to the attorney general for investigation. A top official in the conference forwarded the letter to an internal committee for further action.

Something has to be done. All it takes is political will and a desire to make sure the highest court in the country doesn’t become a laughingstock.

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
Congress Corruption Elections

Madison Cawthorn Is Flat Broke, Hundreds Of Thousands Of Dollars In Debt And Facing Criminal Charges: Report

North Carolina GOP Congressman Madison Cawthorn’s life is in complete shambles, and it’s hard to feel sorry for him considering the bad shit he’s done over the past couple of years.

First and foremost, Cawthorn is broke and cannot pay his campaign debts, which, it just so happened, he incurred for illegal purposes, meaning that in addition to soon being unemployed, he’s also facing indictment and time in prison if found guilty.

Roger Sollenberger of The Daily Beast reports that everything that can go wrong for Cawthorn is doing exactly that

With two weeks to go until a primary election he was fated to lose, Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-NC) was already underwater. His campaign held more than twice as much debt as it had cash on hand, the donor well was dry, and he and his staff were months into a madcap spending streak that one campaign source called “baffling.”

And now, after indeed losing that primary, there’s no money to pay the piper.

Specifically, there’s no money to repay the supporters who donated hundreds of thousands of dollars in advance to Cawthorn’s election efforts beyond the primary—to the general election he now won’t be competing in.

That shuffling of money is illegal, and that complicates matters considerably for the soon-to-be ex-congressman, who is going to be hard-pressed to find an attorney who will represent him without a retainer:

The breach of fiduciary obligations follows a string of personal and professional embarrassments that hounded the one-term congressman across the weeks and months leading up to his primary defeat—accusations of insider trading, multiple alleged ethics violations, unforced public gaffes, and photo and video leaks designed to humiliate him.

But the campaign’s financial washout is more than another embarrassment; it’s against the law.

To borrow a phrase from Homer Simpson, D’oh!

But perhaps most confounding and embarrassing for Cawthorn is the spending reports which show how he managed to burn through so much cash so quickly. The details in federal reports sound like something a college frat boy would have done:

This person pointed to a spree of frivolous charges over the last year that all accelerated into 2022, such as $1,500 in “egregiously” frequent trips to Chick-Fil-A, almost $3,000 at a place called Papa’s Beer, three separate charges at a high-end cigar shop, $21,000 for lodging in Florida and—the biggest drain—hundreds of thousands of dollars in sky-high consulting and fundraising fees, including for Cawthorn’s friend and campaign manager, Blake Harp, who was drawing a salary beyond federal limits.

Jordan Libowitz, communications director for Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, says Cawthorn is screwed:

“There are few more ironclad rules in campaign finance than you can’t spend general election funds in a primary. There are strict limits on how much may be given and spent in each. If Cawthorn spent funds raised for the general during the primary and made no attempt to refund the general donations, he’ll likely be in a lot of trouble with the FEC.”

Beginning in January of next year, Cawthorn will no longer have his congressional salary, so he’s quite literally going to be jobless, penniless, and facing the prospect of legal action against him.

Sometimes karma is a very beautiful thing.

Categories
Corruption Crime Donald Trump Elections

Special Grand Jury Likely For Racketeering Investigation Of Donald Trump: Report

While grand juries meeting in New York have drawn most of the attention of the national media, a move on the horizon in the state of Georgia could wind up presenting the greatest legal threat to failed, one-term former President Donald Trump, according to the New York Times.

The Times reports that Fulton County, Georgia, District Attorney Fani Willis is on the verge of impaneling a special grand jury to investigate Trump on charges of racketeering for his attempts to have the results of the 2020 election in the Peach State overturned:

A special grand jury, which by Georgia statute would include 16 to 23 members, could focus solely on the potential case against Mr. Trump and his allies. Ms. Willis is likely to soon take the step, according to a person with direct knowledge of the deliberations, speaking on the condition of anonymity because the decision is not final. Though such a jury could issue subpoenas, Ms. Willis would need to return to a regular grand jury to seek criminal indictments.

A recording of Trump’s phone call with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (in which Trump asked Raffensperger to “find 11,780 votes”) is one of the most compelling pieces of evidence against the former president and proves that Trump’s intent was to ignore the will of Georgia voters so that he could be declared the victor, setting up a pattern that could then be repeated in other states such as Arizona and Pennsylvania, which also went for President Joe Biden.

Willis has already said that she may well prosecute Trump for racketeering:

Ms. Willis has said a racketeering charge is on the table. Such cases are often associated with prosecutions of mob bosses, using the federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, known as RICO, and Georgia has its own state version of the law.

“I always tell people when they hear the word racketeering, they think of ‘The Godfather,’” Ms. Willis said earlier this year, explaining that the concept could also extend to otherwise lawful organizations that are used to break the law. “If you have various overt acts for an illegal purpose, I think you can — you may — get there.”

One of her best-known prosecutions came in 2014 when, as an assistant district attorney, she helped lead a racketeering case against a group of educators involved in a cheating scandal in the Atlanta public schools.

Since there is physical evidence in the form of tapes and recordings of Trump and others inside the administration and his inner circle, Willis would appear to have a slam-dunk case against the former president, who has already admitted his voice is indeed on the recording with Georgia’s secretary of state. Other efforts made by the ex-president’s personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, also point to a larger conspiracy which strengthens Willis’ hand if she goes after Trump on racketeering charges. Such charges also carry enhanced sentences for those convicted under the statute.

For now, Manhattan will continue to explore Trump’s business and finances, but in the end it may well be a black woman in Atlanta who winds up bringing down the nefarious Mr. Trump. How’s that for irony?

 

Categories
Corruption GOP U.S. Senate

Ted Cruz Caught Using Taxpayer Money To Employ Family Members

Proving that he’s just as corrupt as almost every member of the GOP, Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz has been caught employing members of his family with taxpayer money in direct violation of federal law.

According to Business Insider:

“Cruz employed the daughter of his first cousin in his Senate office as a paid press assistant and gave his cousin’s son a coveted Senate internship. Cruz put his cousin on the payroll for his 2016 presidential campaign and later for his Senate campaign, records show.”

Federal law could not be more clear. U.S Code § 3110 states:

“A public official may not appoint, employ,
promote, advance, or advocate for appointment,
employment, promotion, or advancement, in or
to a civilian position in the agency in which he
is serving or over which he exercises jurisdiction
or control any individual who is a relative of the
public official. An individual may not be appointed, employed, promoted, or advanced in or
to a civilian position in an agency if such appointment, employment, promotion, or advancement has been advocated by a public official,
serving in or exercising jurisdiction or control
over the agency, who is a relative of the individual.
(c) An individual appointed, employed, promoted, or advanced in violation of this section
is not entitled to pay, and money may not be
paid from the Treasury as pay to an individual
so appointed, employed, promoted, or advanced.”

When confronted with the information about his employment of relatives with taxpayer funds, members of his staff resorted to the ad hominem attack line used so often by failed, one-term former President Donald Trump, calling the article “fake news” and refusing further comment.

How do you suppose Cruz and his fellow Republicans in the Senate would act if say the son or daughter of President Joe Biden’s first cousin was suddenly given a plum job in the White House and drew a salary paid for with tax dollars? There’d likely be a hue and cry not heard since the days of the bogus Benghazi hearings, and it’s even safe to suggest that some extremists in the GOP (like Sen. Cruz) would recommend impeachment.

Ted Cruz is a liar, a fraud, and a man who gave aid and comfort to insurrectionists by refusing to certify the results of the 2020 presidential election even though he had no proof of any irregularities in the balloting.