WTF Community

Day 387

1/ U.S. inflation accelerated to 7.5% in January compared with a year ago – the steepest year-over-year increase since February 1982. It was the eighth straight month that inflation has been above 5% despite claims by Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell that inflation would only be “transitory.” On a monthly basis, prices rose 0.6% from December to January. Over the past 12 months, the U.S. economy has added nearly 7 million jobs while average hourly earnings have climbed 5.7%. On an annual basis, however, inflation-adjusted average hourly earnings fell 1.7% in January from a year earlier, marking the 10th straight decline. Biden, meanwhile, said “while today’s report is elevated, forecasters continue to project inflation easing substantially by the end of 2022” and that there are “signs that we will make it through this challenge.” (Wall Street Journal / Bloomberg / New York Times / Washington Post / Associated Press / CNBC / Politico / NBC News / CNN)


This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://whatthefuckjusthappenedtoday.com/2022/02/10/day-387/
1 Like

Some Trump records taken to Mar-a-Lago clearly marked as classified, including documents at ‘top secret’ level

The existence of documents officially labeled as classified in the trove — which has not previously been reported — raises new questions about why the materials were taken out of the White House.

2 Likes
3 Likes

Trump’s longtime accounting firm cut him off and said 10 years of his financial statements ‘should no longer be relied upon’ amid fraud allegations

  • Trump’s longtime accounting firm said that a decade’s worth of his financial statements "should no longer be relied upon."
  • Mazars USA said it came to that conclusion amid NY AG Tish James’ allegation that Trump was misleading about the value of his properties.
  • The firm also said that it will no longer work for the Trump Organization.

Former President Donald Trump’s longtime accounting firm recently informed the Trump Organization that 10 years worth of Trump’s statements on his financial worth “should no longer be relied upon.”

The determination comes after New York Attorney General Tish James’ office said last month that these “Statements of Financial Condition” repeatedly “misstated objective facts” including the size of his Trump Tower penthouse; overstated his liquidity ; deviated from general accounting principles to reach property valuations; “failed to use fundamental techniques of valuation”; and did not disclose that some of those valuations were artificially inflated to help Trump’s brand.

Mazars said that it reached its conclusion based on James’ revelations, its own internal investigation into the matter, and information it received from “internal and external sources.”

“While we have not concluded that the various financial statements, as a whole, contain material discrepancies, based upon the totality of the circumstances, we believe our advice to you to no longer rely upon those financial statements is appropriate,” the firm said in its letter to the Trump Organization.

Mazars went on to say that because of its decision regarding Trump’s statements as well as “the totality of the circumstances,” it will no longer be able to “provide any new work product to the Trump Organization.”

It also advised the company to “inform any recipients thereof who are currently relying upon one or more of those documents that those documents should not be relied upon.”

Insider has reached out to the company for comment.

The Trump Organization is the focus of multiple civil and criminal investigations into if the company inflated or deflated the value of its assets for loan and tax purposes, respectively.

James’ office is conducting a wide-ranging civil investigation looking into whether rampant fraud “permeated the Trump Organization” and wants several members of the Trump family, including the former president and his two eldest children, to sit for depositions.

The Manhattan district attorney’s office, meanwhile, is conducting a criminal investigation into the company and last year brought 15 felony counts against the Trump Organization and its longtime CFO Allen Weisselberg, including including tax fraud, grand larceny, and conspiracy.

In addition to its own civil inquiry, James’ office is also collaborating with the DA’s office on the criminal probe, which has since shifted from a tax-related focus to scrutinizing how the Trump Organization valued its assets.

Last month, the Trump Organization responded to James’ subpoena by accusing the attorney general of being “in violation of every conceivable ethical rule” by investigating him for political reasons.

Eric Trump, executive vice president of the Trump Organization, also accused James of “ethical misconduct” and called her investigation “PR move to revive a political career after your gubernatorial disaster.”

There is no evidence James has run afoul of stat ethics laws, and like the rest of the Democratic field in 2018’s New York attorney general’s race, she campaigned on prosecuting Trump.

James dropped out of the New York governor’s race in December last year, where she had been campaigning on her complicated record of taking on Trump.

3 Likes

This topic was automatically closed 15 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.