WTF Community

Day 769

Powerful rebuttal to DJT

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Meeting has been adjourned.

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That was intense, thanks everyone for the running commentary with a special thanks to you and Dragonfly for the links and details.

Edit: And a big big thank you to Matt, the work you do is infinitely more valuable than I could express!

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:clap::clap::clap:

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WSJ disagrees at least partially (for ident of exec 2)

BlockquoteThe Journal has previously identified “Executive-1” as Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg. Mr. Cohen testified today that “Executive-2” in the charging document was Donald Trump Jr.

However, according to people familiar with the matter, the second executive was Trump Organization controller Jeffrey McConney, not the president’s son. Mr. McConney previously referred requests for comment by the Journal to a Trump organization representative, who declined to comment.

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I’m sure many stories will be written about this after today. Put a pin in it. :pushpin:

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A couple of powerful remarks from Obama AG Eric Holder

These two are the kicker…

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Listening to the GOP questioning just now reminded of this song:
Replace all “grown ups” with …
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LcvoC3u__xs

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Merging this thread into today’s main post, y’all!

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Yes, in a matter of minutes AOC brought to the Oversight Committee’s attention several new inquiries with which this committee may pursue further.

She’s smart, knows the system, and takes no prisoners. She is a force to be reckoned with.

Nice job AOC.

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One more thing… image

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@dragonfly9 Glad you spotted this intriguing story in the middle of today’s tsunami of news. Wow, this makes three separate investigations into Trump’s Inaugural Committee: By the Feds in Manhattan, the Attorney General in New Jersey, and now the Attorney General in Washington, D.C. If anyone on the committee did commit crimes, they must be really sweating it. :sweat:

Your lead took me to NYT’s reporting. The paragraph below jumped out at me.

The subpoena requests documents identifying what role three of Mr. Trump’s adult children — Ivanka Trump, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump — played on the committee. None of them had any official role in running the committee, which was overseen by Thomas J. Barrack Jr., a billionaire and friend of Mr. Trump.

So Ivanka, Don Jr., and Eric were not listed anywhere on the official org chart, yet the D.C. Attorney General is now asking what role they played on the committee!? An AG doesn’t randomly pursue lines of inquiry like this; his investigators must have some inkling of clandestine (and possibly illegal) activities by Trump’s kids related to the committee – no fire here yet, but there’s a lot more smoke billowing out of the White House.

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Enjoying this sum up piece from The Atlantic: Uncontradicted

Michael Cohen’s testimony to the House Oversight Committee was uncontradicted. The former personal attorney of the president of the United States today accused him of a litany of crimes, improprieties, immoralities, and betrayals of national security. And not one Republican member of the committee breathed one word in defense of the leader of their party.

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Good catch, I just want pull this neat little list out of that article

Those Republicans have learned the hard way never to trust President Donald Trump’s denials.

(…)

Did he direct payoffs to a porn star? Trump denied it. It was true.

Was the Trump Organization pursuing a hotel project in Moscow while he was running for president? Trump denied it. That was true too.

Did his campaign meet with someone claiming to be an agent of the Russian state to seek dirt on Hillary Clinton? Denied. True.

Was there fraud at the Trump Foundation? Denied. True.

Thanks for the extra linkage @Keaton_James and further details on this other ‘area’ of deep exploration. The kids are all being lined up (I believe) for some kind of indictments and this is just another layer of how devious they have been.

That Junior and Eric were up to something of course is not surprising. It is the big windup for what I believe will be a :boom: moment for the T kids. They are in deep.

There’s been some written on Ivanka and how she had the cost of renting any of the T properties rooms/ballrooms way up during the Inaugural period.

According to reporting by WNYC and ProPublica, President Donald Trump’s inaugural committee paid large sums of money to the Trump organization to host events at the Trump-owned property, and the president’s daughter discussed charging $175,000 per day for the space, despite organizers’ concerns that it would look like the Trumps were lining their pockets.

During the planning, Ivanka Trump, the president-elect’s eldest daughter and a senior executive with the Trump Organization, was involved in negotiating the price the hotel charged the 58th Presidential Inaugural Committee for venue rentals. A top inaugural planner emailed Ivanka and others at the company to “express my concern” that the hotel was overcharging for its event spaces, worrying of what would happen “when this is audited.”

If the Trump hotel charged more than the going rate for the venues, it could violate tax law. The inaugural committee’s payments to the Trump Organization and Ivanka Trump’s role have not been previously reported or disclosed in public filings.

…

As planning for the inauguration was underway in December 2016, Ivanka Trump was still an executive vice president at the Trump Organization. But she was reportedly preparing to move to Washington and take on a greater public role. She now serves as an adviser to the president.

Around the middle of the month, with Inauguration Day scarcely a month away, Ivanka Trump was asked to help resolve a dispute between inaugural planners and her family’s Washington hotel, according to emails.

The problem: Organizers thought the hotel was charging too much money.

Emails show that Ivanka Trump connected Gates with Mickael Damelincourt, managing director of the hotel. Damelincourt responded with a new rate of $175,000 per day for use of the Presidential Ballroom and meeting rooms, offering a $700,000 charge for four days of use.

…

The inaugural committee spent money at the Trump International in Washington in other ways as well. Many workers came from California and New York and stayed at the hotel, eating their meals there and holding meetings. Receipts reviewed by WNYC and ProPublica show they typically paid about $350 a night. According to an inaugural worker, 15 to 20 inaugural workers stayed at the hotel most nights for roughly a month in the run-up to the inauguration, at a total cost of what could be more than $200,000.

https://www.wnycstudios.org/story/trump-inc-trump-inauguration-paid-trumps-company-with-ivanka-middle

and all the money that the Inaugural Committee was pulling in…for a total of $107 Million

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Ocasio-Cortez says bartending prepared her to cross-examine Michael Cohen

Bartending + waitressing (especially in NYC) means you talk to 1000s of people over the years," the freshman congresswoman tweeted. "Forces you to get great at reading people + hones a razor-sharp BS detector.

“Just goes to show that what some consider to be ‘unskilled labor’ can actually be anything but.”

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From NYT reporter - read the insert

(and someone must be lying…)

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Yes! This is what a real voter fraud investigation looks like. Dowless undoubtedly will flip in a heartbeat on the Republican candidate who hired him. That candidate, Mark Harris, lied at the public hearing, saying he had no idea that Dowless was known for committing voter fraud. We know he lied because his own son, an assistant U.S. attorney, took the stand and testified how he warned his father about Dowless; his warnings are documented in emails. Now, assuming Dowless starts singing (he has every motivation to do so), we’ll find out if he spoke directly to Harris about his voter fraud schemes.

The political operative at the center of allegations of ballot-tampering in a congressional race in North Carolina has been indicted on seven felonies, the start of what is expected to grow into one of the most sweeping criminal investigations ever of fraud in a federal election.

Leslie McCrae Dowless, who worked for Mark Harris, the Republican nominee in the state’s 9th Congressional District last year, was arrested and charged with three counts of obstruction of justice, two counts of conspiracy to commit obstruction of justice and two counts of possession of absentee ballots, according to the Wake County district attorney’s office in Raleigh.

The charges reflect a swift transition to the criminal phase of an investigation of mail-in ballot irregularities in the 9th District, following hearings last week before the State Board of Elections…

Wake County District Attorney Lorrin Freeman’s decision to seek indictments almost immediately after the close of those hearings sent a “clear signal,” she said, “that we take seriously the public’s confidence in the electoral process and that we intend to pursue this case vigorously and see that justice is done.”

More charges are likely, Freeman said. She said her office’s “very large-scope” investigation will examine “who was aware of and helped finance these fraudulent absentee ballot activities” — a sign of potential legal peril for Harris, who hired Dowless. She also plans to determine whether anyone else besides Dowless allegedly tried to obstruct either the criminal or state board investigations…

Harris has claimed no knowledge of Dowless’s methods and said there were no red flags before he hired him in 2017. However, he was contradicted during last week’s hearings by his son John, an assistant U.S. attorney who testified that he warned his father in conversations and emails in 2017 against hiring Dowless because he suspected the operative had used illegal tactics to win votes in a previous election.

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This bananas news day is not yet over:

Stone is grasping at straws. He called for a hearing in which he hoped to prove that the FBI leaked details of his impending arrest. After examining all the facts, Judge Jackson said no such hearing is warranted. In other words, Stone didn’t even get to square one with this bogus allegation/distraction.

A D.C. federal judge rejected a motion Wednesday from GOP operative Roger Stone claiming that special counsel Robert Mueller’s team tipped off CNN before his Jan. 25 morning arrest.

Stone had petitioned Judge Amy Berman Jackson to hold a hearing demanding that prosecutors “show cause” for why they were not in contempt of court for allegedly leaking a copy of the indictment to the press. A CNN news crew captured Stone’s arrest on video, after having a team stake out the spin artist’s Florida home.

But exhibits Stone provided “supplied no reason to believe that any contempt of court had occurred,” Berman Jackson wrote in the order, adding that evidence and filings he introduced into the record “demonstrate that there is no basis” to issue a contempt order.

:balance_scale:

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