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Crime Donald Trump

E. Jean Carroll’s Attorney Has A Warning For Trump That’s Certain To Infuriate Him

Ever since a New York jury found that failed one-term, twice-impeached former president Donald Trump did indeed sexually assault and defame writer E. Jean Carroll and awarded her $5 million in damages, the disgraced ex-head of state has been lashing out on social media, and that could wind up leading to him being charged with defamation yet again.

Carroll’s attorney, Roberta Kaplan, spoke with Dahlia Lithwick of Slate, and she made it clear that Trump had best shut his trap and stop making inflammatory postings.

Lithwick asked Kaplan about Trump’s disgusting comments during his CNN town hall, where he called Carroll a “wack job,” said the trial had been a “rigged deal,” and asked the studio audience, “What kind of a woman meets somebody, and brings them up, and within minutes you’re playing hanky panky in a dressing room?”

Kaplan replied, “I knew he would continue to deny it. But once the jury came back and the CNN Town Hall was on, we knew they were going to ask about it. And we knew he wasn’t going to say, ‘OK, now I admit it, I was wrong.”

She added:

“I’m so sorry E. Jean, that I did that to you. We knew that wasn’t gonna happen. I think I was a little stunned that he used exactly the same language. He basically repeated the defamation in ways that make it very easy for us to not have to prove a future case on the merits, because we’re gonna get what’s called collateral estoppel or issue preclusion. So that wasn’t maybe wisest thing for him to do.”

“I’m watching to see if he keeps doing it, though. I mean, I think the threat of [losing] more and more money may ultimately tone down what he says at some point,” Kaplan explained.

Though he’s clearly ignorant when it comes to the law, Kaplan noted, he understands what it means to be on the hook for a $5 million judgment.

“I think he understands money. One thing Donald Trump understands is money, and $5 million for Donald Trump is not nothing. And there’s really no viable appellate argument. So he’s going to have to pay that $5 million with interest sooner than he thinks he’s gonna have to pay it. He’ll have to pay interest from the time of the judgment. Yeah. That’s 9 percent … I’m not even sure he’s got $5 million in liquidity. He may have to sell something to pay you the $5 million.”

 

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Gun Crime

Judge Allows Wrongful Death Suit Against Kyle Rittenhouse To Move Forward

A federal judge in Madison, Wisconsin has ruled that a wrongful death lawsuit filed against Kyle Rittenhouse by the father of a man shot and killed by Rittenhouse in August 2020 can proceed as planned.

According to PBS, attorneys for Rittenhouse had sought to have the suit dismissed.

U.S. District Judge Lynn Adelman on Wednesday dismissed motions filed by Rittenhouse and the government defendants seeking to dismiss the civil rights lawsuit.

In allowing the case against Rittenhouse and the others to proceed, the judge said that Anthony Huber’s death “could plausibly be regarded as having been proximately caused by the actions of the governmental defendants.”

Rittenhouse had argued that the case against him should be dismissed because he wasn’t properly served with the lawsuit. Adelman dismissed that, saying that Rittenhouse “is almost certainly evading service.”

Attorneys for Huber said they spent over 100 hours trying to locate Rittenhouse so he could be served, with Judge Adelman noting in his ruling, “Rittenhouse has been deliberately cagey about his whereabouts. Although he denies living in Florida, he does not identify the place that he deems to be his residence.”

Anand Swaminathan, an attorney for the Huber family, said the judge’s ruling means his clients are now “one step closer to justice for their son’s needless death.”

“The Kenosha officials that created a powder keg situation by their actions tried to claim that they cannot be held accountable for their unconstitutional conduct; that argument was soundly rejected today.”

Rittenhouse was criminally charged with homicide and reckless endangerment for the shooting deaths of Anthony Huber and Joseph Rosenbaum. He traveled to Kenosha from his home in Illinois, complete with an AR-15 style assault rifle. He later said he had done so to protect businesses that were at risk when riots began after a white Kenosha police officer shot Jacob Blake, a black man.

In November of 2021, Rittenhouse was acquitted on all charges after he claimed he acted in self-defense. Since his acquittal, he has become a darling of right-wing media and gun rights groups.

 

Categories
Donald Trump Foreign Policy

Trump Owed $20 Million To A Company Allied With North Korea While He Was President

To many, it seemed odd that Donald Trump would be interested in trying to make peace with North Korea while he was president. After all, he had once threatened the hermit nation with “fire and fury” if they continued to test nuclear weapons and long-range ballistic missiles that could one day reach the United States.

What was with Trump’s bizarre fascination with North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un? Did he truly believe he could talk Kim out of his nuclear ambitions?

A report from Forbes suggests that Trump might have been operating out of his own financial interest on behalf of a company that has extensive business ties to North Korea.

Buried in a heap of recently released financial paperwork sits a surprising revelation: Donald Trump had a foreign creditor he failed to disclose while running for president in 2016 and after assuming office in 2017.

The documents, compiled by the Trump Organization and obtained by the New York attorney general, show a previously unreported liability of $19.8 million listed as “L/P Daewoo.” The debt stems from an agreement Trump struck to share some of his licensing fees with Daewoo, a South Korean conglomerate that partnered with Trump on a project near the United Nations headquarters in New York City.

Trump eliminated the debt five-and-a-half months into his tenure as president, according to the documents. He seems to have acted with some urgency to wipe the liability off his balance sheet. From 2011 to 2016, the documents show that the balance stayed static at $19.8 million. Paperwork capturing Trump’s financial picture as of June 30, 2017, five months into his presidency, appears to show that the balance had dropped to $4.3 million, $15.5 million less than it had been a year earlier. Trump got rid of the debt altogether shortly after that. “Daewoo was bought out of its position on July 5, 2017,” the documents say, without specifying who exactly paid off the loan.

Did Daewoo pay off Trump’s debt as some sort of quid pro quo? Such an arrangement might have gone something like this: Trump would agree to hold talks with Kim and ratchet down the incendiary rhetoric he had once used in exchange for the $19.8 million disappearing from the Trump debit sheet.

Amazingly, the fact that Trump owed such a huge sum to a company that does business with North Korea (which U.S. companies are prohibited from doing under federal law and sanctions) may not have actually been illegal, just unethical as hell, Forbes notes.

Although the debt appeared on the Trump Organization’s internal paperwork, it did not show up on Trump’s public financial disclosure reports, documents he was required to submit to federal officials while running for president and after taking office. Trump’s former chief financial officer, Allen Weisselberg, told the New York Times in 2016 that his boss disclosed all debt connected to companies in which Trump held a 100% stake on the documents. That was not true.

There is a chance that Trump’s omission may have been legal, nonetheless. Although officials have to list personal loans on their financial disclosures, the law does not require them to include loans to their companies, unless they are personally liable for the loans. The Trump Organization documents do not specify whether the former president, who owned 100% of the entities responsible for the debt, personally guaranteed the liability, leaving it unclear whether he broke the law or merely took advantage of a loophole.

How many other countries does Trump and the Trump Organization have with other nations hostile to the United States? It’d be nice to know that before the disgraced former president runs again in 2024, but as of this moment, there is no law requiring him to release a full accounting of his business dealings, meaning that he could be an ever bigger threat to American national security than we ever imagined.

 

Categories
Donald Trump Eric Trump Joe Biden The Trump Adminstration

Lara Trump: Why Is Hunter Biden Allowed To Profit From His Father’s Presidency?

Lara Trump has virtually no accomplishments other than being married to failed, one-term, twice-impeached former President Donald Trump’s son, Eric, who is ostensibly the “executive vice president” of the Trump Organization, which is reportedly hemorrhaging millions of dollars and could well be on the verge of complete financial collapse.

Despite her lack of any real credentials except marrying into the Trump family, Lara has been hired as a Fox News contributor and often shows up to pontificate on subjects she has zero knowledge of.

Such was the case when she was speaking with host Ainsley Earhardt on the topic of President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter, daring to sell artwork he’s produced, according to Mediaite:

The controversial son of President Joe Biden has been selling artwork for five and six-figure sums, despite the fact that he has little experience, training, or standing in the art world. This has raised a reasonable set of ethical questions regarding his ties to the White House, which has taken pains to set up “safeguards” in an attempt to avoid the appearance of impropriety.

That led Lara to remark:

 “The reality is, Ainsley, we know that people would be going absolutely crazy about this, there’d be investigation after investigation. They would try to impeach my father-in-law over something like this, gosh, seems like any chance they got they did that while he was in office.”

Actually, Donald Trump was impeached for blackmailing the Ukrainians for dirt on Joe Biden and then for inciting an insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6.

Lara then added this bit of head-shaking stupidity:

“But you’ll never see that happen to Hunter Biden or the Biden family, because there is a very clear double standard, and at a certain point it’s not just about liking personality. It’s about the safety and security of the United States of America.”

What Lara Trump neglected to mention is that Ivanka Trump was given trademark privileges by the Chinese government while there was a trade war taking place between the U.S. and China. At the time, she was serving as a senior White House adviser.

Oh, and let’s not forget that Eric and Don Jr. were running the Trump Organization while their father was president and that the ex-president never divested himself from his company.

There can be a legitimate debate about Hunter Biden and his paintings, but Lara Trump sure as hell isn’t the person who needs to lead that discussion.

 

Categories
Crime GOP Sex Scandals

Court Says Ohio State Sex Abuse Suits Will Proceed – That’s Bad News For Jim Jordan

Ohio Congressmnan Jim Jordan (R) may be even angrier and more on edge than usual in the days ahead as the result of a Supreme Court ruling handed down that leaves in place a prior decision allowing over 230 men to sue Ohio State University for sexual abuse committed by Richard Strauss, a deceased former doctor who was employed by the university.

 

According to the Associated Press:

Two cases involving the abuse were on a list of many cases the court said it would not hear. And, as is typical, the court did not comment in saying it would not hear the cases.

Ohio State University had urged the court to review a ruling by the Sixth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that revived lawsuits that had been dismissed. The men who sued are among hundreds of former student-athletes and other alumni who say they were abused by Strauss, who worked at the school from 1978 to 1998.

They say university officials failed to stop him despite complaints raised as early as the late 1970s. Many of them allege Strauss abused them during required physicals and other medical exams at campus athletic facilities, a student health center, his home and an off-campus clinic.

Jordan’s connection to the scandal involves his role as an assistant coach for the OSU men’s wrestling team during the time of the alleged sexual assaults.

Six former wrestlers say Jordan knew they were being abused by Dr. Strauss but did nothing to stop or even report what was taking place.

As CNN noted in 2020, the wrestlers allege that “Jordan heard or responded to sexual misconduct complaints about team doctor Richard Strauss. Eight others say Strauss’ inappropriate behavior was an open secret in the athletic department and that Jordan, among others, must have known about it.”

Jordan has repeatedly denied he knew anything about the abuse, but one of the former wrestlers, Tito Vasquez, says the congressman is lying:

“When these complaints come and he pretends now that he had no knowledge of it, that’s betrayal in the highest level.”

The Supreme Court decision could also have repercussions for Jordan, if only by placing the matter back in the public eye with the congressman seeking reelection 2024 and drawing strong criticism for his hearings on what he calls the “weaponization” of the FBI and Justice Department by the Biden administration.

Additionally, Jordan is facing the prospect of being further damaged by an upcoming HBO documentary being compiled by actor George Clooney’s Smokehouse Pictures, with Clooney remarking, “It’s a devastating story about people in power abusing and then covering up their criminal actions against students. The fact that it hasn’t been resolved as of yet is deeply disturbing.”

Be afraid, Gym. Be very afraid.