Categories
Donald Trump Elections The Trump Adminstration

Michael Flynn May Be Facing A Military Court-Martial For ‘Incitement To Insurrection’

Over the past few weeks, former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn has been a vocal proponent of using the U.S. military to go into swing states that helped elect Joe Biden and conduct new elections. In other words, using martial law to guarantee that Donald Trump is given a second term in office he didn’t actually earn.

Such talk — especially coming from a former U.S. Army lieutenant general — is even more troubling, and another former officer is speaking out, suggesting that Flynn needs to be court martialed for inciting insurrection.

Col. Lawrence Wilkerson told MSNBC host Chris Hayes that Flynn is a “disgrace to his uniform,” noting:

“I have to commend all those people out there in every state who worked so hard to deliver a free and fair election. At the same time I saw that, I have to say my fears are somewhat significant with a former lieutenant general in the United States Army saying what Flynn said with regard to martial law and going to the battleground states and essentially reconducting the election. Were I the secretary of defense, I’d call him back to active duty — which is in the prerogative of the secretary of defense — and I’d court martial him.”

Wilkerson, who served as chief of staff to Colin Powell, then added:

“At a minimum, I’d cite him for incitement to insurrection. This is not something that a military officer should do…. He needs to be rebuked. He needs to be reprimanded. And it needs to be done officially.”

While he was at it, Wilkerson also referenced former White House adviser Steve Bannon and Sidney Powell, who served as an attorney for Trump’s fruitless legal appeals of the 2020 election results:

“These other people like Bannon and Powell and so forth, they’re sycophants who are seeking whatever they can gain from the magic aura of this man before it dissipates. It frightens me as to the things they could do if the 25th Amendment or something like it is not implemented and we don’t remove (Trump) from office.”

Donald Trump is a gangster masquerading as president of the United States. He and his band of underlings need to be prosecuted to the maximum extent of the law, and, if found guilty, sent to prison for the rest of their lives.

Here’s the video of Col. Wilkerson, courtesy of MSNBC:

 

Categories
Crime Donald Trump

Irregularities In Trump Organization’s Tax Documents Lead To New Criminal Investigation

Donald Trump’s questionable business practices and lack of honesty have him in serious legal jeopardy yet again, and this time he and his company, the Trump Organization, are under the legal microscope in the president’s home state.

Politico reports that New York City mayor Bill de Blasio has forwarded documents which allege possible tax fraud by the Trump Organization to the District Attorney of Manhattan:

“The de Blasio administration has referred findings from a review of the Trump Organization’s property tax filings to the Manhattan district attorney’s office, Mayor Bill de Blasio said Friday morning.”


Late last year, a blockbuster report from ProPublica and WNYC revealed that Trump’s company regularly cited lower income from its properties when reporting to New York tax authorities and then bragged about higher property values when trying to lure investors for real estate projects:

“In this case, the Trump Organization filed an appeal with the city’s Tax Commission, which handles challenges to property tax assessments made by the Department of Finance. ProPublica reviewed the contents of that appeal and compared it to a loan document that also included information about 40 Wall Street’s finances.”


As ProPublica noted in their October report, experts on taxation say there is clear evidence of wrongdoing by the Trump Organization:

“A dozen real estate professionals told ProPublica they saw no clear explanation for multiple inconsistencies in the documents. The discrepancies are “versions of fraud,” said Nancy Wallace, a professor of finance and real estate at the Haas School of Business at the University of California-Berkeley. ‘This kind of stuff is not OK.'”

The state of New York makes it clear on tax forms that any false statements can result in serious penalties:

“New York City’s property tax forms state that the person signing them ‘affirms the truth of the statements made’ and that ‘false filings are subject to all applicable civil and criminal penalties.’

“The punishments for lying to tax officials, or to lenders, can be significant, ranging from fines to criminal fraud charges.”

Trump’s former attorney, Michael Cohen, can also corroborate that Trump’s company committed fraud on numerous occasions. He has testified under oath that Trump boosted his assets when talking to investors and then turned around and devalued those same properties when it was time to pay taxes.

Quite clearly, New York is not playing around, and both Trump and the Trump Organization are on the hook for some major felonies. Even worse for Trump is the fact that he has almost no friends in high places back in his home state. Also, he cannot pardon anyone in order to buy their silence.

Time for Trump to pay a price for his crimes.

Categories
Donald Trump Elections Russia Trump-Russia

FBI Investigating Russian Efforts To Steal The 2020 Election For Trump

Russia is back, and once again they’re trying to help Donald Trump steal an election.


Bloomberg reports that the FBI is looking into Russian efforts to undermine the candidacy of Democratic front-runner Joe Biden, the former Vice President who is seen as Trump’s strongest competition if he happens to win the Democratic presidential nomination:

“U.S. intelligence and law enforcement officials are assessing whether Russia is trying to undermine Joe Biden in its ongoing disinformation efforts with the former vice president still the front-runner in the race to challenge President Donald Trump, according to two officials familiar with the matter.

“The probe comes as senior U.S. officials are warning that Russia’s election interference in 2020 could be more brazen than in the 2016 presidential race or the 2018 midterm election.”


How exactly is Russia trying to undercut Biden? The same way the president has: By suggesting his son, Hunter, had business connections in Ukraine that were enhanced during the Obama administration:

“U.S. intelligence and law enforcement officials are assessing whether Russia is trying to undermine Joe Biden in its ongoing disinformation efforts with the former vice president still the front-runner in the race to challenge President Donald Trump, according to two officials familiar with the matter.”

Trump has already been impeached for his attempt to get the government of Ukraine to investigate the Bidens in exchange for $391 million worth of military aid that was allocated by Congress but held up by the White House as leverage for the desired investigation of Joe and Hunter Biden.


The Russians, however, face no such penalties for their meddling in yet another U.S. election. But the fact that the FBI is aware of their efforts and actively trying to push back on the Kremlin is encouraging.

However, Trump’s repeated attacks on the federal law enforcement and intelligence communities that were part of the investigation into the 2016 Russian attack on the presidential election raise an issue of whether or not the White House will allow any findings to be made available to the public.

There can be no doubt that Russia wants Trump to serve a second term in office. He is, after all, their useful idiot, and he has already helped weaken the U.S. at their behest.

Categories
Corruption Crime Donald Trump Foreign Policy

Trump’s Dirty Little Secret: His Extensive Financial Connections To Iran

When Donald Trump spoke to the nation back in January, he tried desperately to pretend that his so-called “strategy” for Iran had paid dividends and that the increased tensions between the U.S. and Iran were all the fault of his predecessor, former President Barack Obama.

As is usually the case with Trump, his remarks were pure bullshit and had no grounding in either fact or reality.


There is, however, a factual reality that the president conveniently failed to disclose as he debated policy as it relates to Iran. And that’s his many financial connections to the Iranians, including deals made with shady characters who have direct ties to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, the very military agency that launched those ballistic missiles at our troops stationed in Iraq on Tuesday evening.

Russ Choma of Mother Jones has just posted a fascinating report on exactly how close the Trump Organization has been to Iranian businessmen who are in bed with the Iranian government and military:

“In 2012, Trump signed a deal to develop a luxury hotel in Baku, the capital of oil-and-gas-rich Azerbaijan.

“Trump’s partners were relatives of Ziya Mammadov, the country’s transportation minister and a former Soviet apparatchik with a $12,000 annual salary who had still managed to amass billions in personal wealth.

“And then there’s the matter of Iran. According to an excellent 2017 Adam Davidson investigation in the New Yorker, the Mammadov family appears to have had close business ties to construction companies controlled by an associate of the Revolutionary Guard.”


There’s no way that Trump or his company can claim they didn’t know the people they were doing business with in the Baku deal had ties to Iran and the Iranian military. And that’s just some of the incredibly questionable behavior exhibited by the Mammadovs:

“Including duffel bags stuffed with millions of dollars in cash paid to contractors. But the Trumps claimed never to have noticed anything amiss. A Trump executive told the New Yorker that the company did due diligence on the Mammadovs, but wouldn’t reveal who did the background check or what the results were.”


One member of the Trump Organization was intimately involved in the Baku hotel negotiations, meaning she may have violated the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. That person is Ivanka Trump, who carefully oversaw tiny details of what the interior of the building would look like:

“A subcontractor noted that Ivanka’s team was particular about wood panelling: it chose an expensive Macassar ebony, from Indonesia, for the ceiling of the lobby. The ballroom doors were to be made of book-matched panels of walnut.”

So the next time you hear Donald Trump talking tough about Iran, keep in mind he’s got his own dirty little secret that runs directly through the government in Tehran. But don’t expect him to ever mention that fact.

Categories
Impeachment The Trump Adminstration

New Evidence Suggests Mike Pence Is At The Very Center Of The Ukraine Bribery Scandal

Ever since the Ukraine scandal first broke late last year, Vice President Mike Pence has kept a very low profile, with few public appearances or interviews. It’s almost like he’s hoping we’ll forget that he too played a role in the Ukraine bribery plot which has led to Donald Trump becoming only the third president impeached for high crimes and misdemeanors.


But newly redacted documents uncovered by Just Security, witness statements from individuals who testified before the House Intelligence Committee as part of the impeachment inquiry, and a letter from a Department of Defense official, make it clear that Pence was at the very center of the Ukraine crimes, as MSNBC host Rachel Maddow laid out on her show Monday evening:

“We now know that after all those weeks of consternation and conflict and concern and CYA inside the administration, we know right before Vice President Pence went and took this meeting at the highest levels of the Defense Department, the chief of staff to the Secretary of Defense was reassuring other officials inside the Pentagon, ‘Oh, don’t worry. This is all going to be over soon. When Mike Pence takes that meeting with (Ukrainian President Volodymyr) Zelensky on Tuesday, it’s all going to get sorted.’ Why did he think it was all going to get sorted?”


Pence was the conduit for the promised meeting between the administration and President Zelensky, and that places him squarely at the apex of the bribery scheme the White House was attempting to rook Ukraine into, i.e. trading military aid for investigations of the Biden family.


Maddow then continued her recitation of the facts that implicate VP Pence:

“So it was Mike Pence who was supposed to personally get the assurance from the Ukrainian government at that meeting that they were going to announce the investigations? Because that was the deal, right? That’s what everybody was waiting on. They can’t get the military aid until they announce the investigations. ‘Don’t worry, they’ll be able to get the military aid as soon as Mike Pence has that meeting.’”

In criminal conspiracy terms, Pence was to be the “bag man” who conveyed the terms of the deal to Ukraine and was to then report back to Trump that the Ukrainians were investigating the Bidens as per the quid pro quo the president had set out when he spoke to President Zelensky on the phone back in July of last year.

Mike Pence is just as guilty as Donald Trump. An impeachment inquiry needs to be launched into his actions, too.