Wait…the Trump trip is CANCELLED because of a COVID positive campaign member.
Guiliani hoping for preemptive pardon because of all the investigations out for him. #BuddySystem
Giuliani is said to have discussed a possible pardon with Trump
Rudolph W. Giuliani, President Trump’s lawyer who has led the most extensive efforts to damage his client’s political rivals and undermine the election results, discussed with the president as recently as last week the possibility of receiving a pre-emptive pardon before Mr. Trump leaves office, according to two people told of the discussion.
It was not clear who raised the topic. The men have also talked previously about a pardon for Mr. Giuliani, according to the people. Mr. Trump has not indicated what he will do, one of the people said.
Mr. Giuliani’s potential criminal exposure is unclear. He was under investigation as recently as last summer by federal prosecutors in Manhattan for his business dealings in Ukraine and his role in ousting the American ambassador there, a plot that was at the heart of the impeachment of Mr. Trump.
Mr. Giuliani did not respond to a message seeking comment. Christianne Allen, his spokeswoman, said, “Mayor Giuliani cannot comment on any discussions that he has with his client.”
Mr. Giuliani’s lawyer, Robert Costello, said, “He’s not concerned about this investigation, because he didn’t do anything wrong and that’s been our position from Day 1.”
A spokeswoman for Mr. Trump did not respond to an email seeking comment.
Such a broad pardon pre-empting any charge or conviction is highly unusual but does have precedent. George Washington pardoned plotters of the Whiskey Rebellion, shielding them from treason prosecutions. In the most famous example, Gerald R. Ford pardoned Richard M. Nixon for all of his actions as president. Jimmy Carter pardoned thousands of American men who illegally avoided the draft for the Vietnam War.
Mr. Trump has wielded his clemency powers liberally in cases that resonate with him personally or for people who have a direct line to him through friends or family, while thousands of other cases await his review.
Last week he pardoned his former national security adviser Michael T. Flynn broadly for potential legal troubles beyond the charge he had faced of lying to federal investigators. The move raised expectations that Mr. Trump will bestow clemency on other associates in his final weeks in office.
Revealed communications with mentions of bribes for pardon, in Aug 2019 0or 2020. Is this something for Flynn…? Stone?, Manafort? Favors for silence/pardon. 
Stone’s suit was commuted in July, 2020
The Justice Department is investigating a potential crime related to funneling money to the White House or related political committee in exchange for a presidential pardon, according to court records unsealed Tuesday in federal court.
The case is the latest legal twist in the waning days of President Donald Trump’s administration after several of his top advisers have been convicted of federal criminal charges and as the possibility rises of Trump giving pardons to those who’ve been loyal to him.
The disclosure is in 20 pages of partially redacted documents made public by the DC District Court on Tuesday afternoon. The records show Chief Judge Beryl Howell’s review in August of a request from prosecutors to access documents obtained in a search as part of a bribery-for-pardon investigation.
The filings don’t reveal a timeline of the alleged scheme, or any names of people potentially involved, except that communications between people including at least one lawyer were seized from an office that was raided sometime before the end of this summer.
No one appears to have been publicly charged with a related crime to date.
At the end of this summer, a filter team, used to make sure prosecutors don’t receive tainted evidence that should have been kept from them because it was privileged, had more than 50 digital devices including iPhones, iPads, laptops, thumb drives and computer drives after investigators raided the unidentified office
The Justice Department is investigating claims that money may have been funneled to the White House in return for a presidential pardon, according to newly unsealed court documents cited by CNN.
The investigation was revealed in a partially redacted court filing from the Washington DC district court made public on Tuesday, where it was revealed Chief Judge Beryl Howell reviewed an August request from prosecutors to review documents obtained in a search connected to the bribery investigation.
The documents don’t reveal a timeline or the names of anyone involved in any alleged plot, and no one appears to have been publicly accused of a crime in connection with the investigation so far.
What they do show, however, is that an office raid seized communications between at least two people, one of whom is a lawyer, before the end of this summer, according to CNN. The evidence seized includes more than 50 digital devices including iPhones, tablets, laptops, and computer drives.
Unredacted notes that were reviewed and released
And the children - preemptive pardons all around as well as Giuliani. Seems like T is sending up a trial balloon to test this according to various legal pundits.
President Trump has discussed with advisers whether to grant pre-emptive pardons to his children, to his son-in-law and to his personal lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani, and talked with Mr. Giuliani about pardoning him as recently as last week, according to two people briefed on the matter.
Mr. Trump has told others that he is concerned that a Biden Justice Department might seek retribution against the president by targeting the oldest three of his five children — Donald Trump Jr., Eric Trump and Ivanka Trump — as well as Ms. Trump’s husband, Jared Kushner, a White House senior adviser.
Donald Trump Jr. had been under investigation by Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel, for contacts that the younger Mr. Trump had had with Russians offering damaging information on Hillary Clinton during the 2016 campaign, but he was never charged. Mr. Kushner provided false information to federal authorities about his contacts with foreigners for his security clearance, but was given one anyway by the president.
The nature of Mr. Trump’s concern about any potential criminal exposure of Eric Trump or Ivanka Trump is unclear, although an investigation by the Manhattan district attorney into the Trump Organization has expanded to include tax write-offs on millions of dollars in consulting fees by the company, some of which appear to have gone to Ms. Trump.
Presidential pardons, however, do not provide protection against state or local crimes.
Mr. Giuliani’s potential criminal exposure is also unclear, although he was under investigation as recently as this summer by federal prosecutors in Manhattan for his business dealings in Ukraine and his role in ousting the American ambassador there. The plot was at the heart of the impeachment of Mr. Trump.
The speculation about pardon activity at the White House is churning furiously, underscoring how much the Trump administration has been dominated by investigations and criminal prosecutions of people in the president’s orbit. Mr. Trump himself was singled out by federal prosecutors as “Individual 1” in a court filing in the case that sent Michael D. Cohen, his former lawyer and fixer, to prison.
The discussions between Mr. Trump and Mr. Giuliani occurred as the former New York mayor has become one of the loudest voices pushing baseless claims of widespread fraud in the 2020 election, which Mr. Trump still proclaims publicly that he won. Many of Mr. Trump’s longtime aides have refused to do his bidding to try to overturn an election that President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. won by nearly seven million votes. But Mr. Giuliani has repeatedly thrust himself into the spotlight to cast doubt on the results, which has ingratiated him with the president.
ABC News reported earlier on Tuesday that Mr. Trump was considering pardoning family members.
A spokeswoman for Mr. Trump did not respond to an email seeking comment.
Mr. Giuliani did not respond to a message seeking comment, but after a version of this article was published online, he attacked it on Twitter and said it was false.
Christianné L. Allen, Mr. Giuliani’s spokeswoman, said Mr. Giuliani “cannot comment on any discussions that he has with his client.”
And Mr. Giuliani’s lawyer, Robert Costello, said, “He’s not concerned about this investigation because he didn’t do anything wrong, and that’s been our position from Day 1.”
The Fox News host and Trump ally Sean Hannity said on Monday that given the animosity from Democrats directed at Mr. Trump, the president should consider pardoning his entire family. “If Biden ever became president, I’d tell Trump pardon yourself and pardon your family,” Mr. Hannity told his viewers.
Mr. Trump is an avid consumer of Fox News, particularly Mr. Hannity’s show.
Such a broad pardon pre-empting any charge or conviction is highly unusual but does have precedent. In the most famous example, President Gerald R. Ford pardoned Richard M. Nixon for all of his actions as president. President George Washington pardoned plotters of the Whiskey Rebellion, shielding them from treason prosecutions. And President Jimmy Carter pardoned thousands of American men who illegally avoided the draft for the Vietnam War.
Mr. Trump has wielded his clemency powers liberally in cases that resonate with him personally or for people who have a direct line to him through friends or family, while thousands of other cases await his review.
A pardon for Mr. Giuliani is certain to prompt accusations that Mr. Trump has used his pardon power to obstruct investigations and insulate himself and his allies. Andrew A. Weissmann, a top prosecutor for Mr. Mueller, has said that Mr. Trump’s dangling of pardons for his allies impeded their work.
In July, the president commuted the sentence of his longtime adviser Roger J. Stone Jr., who had refused to cooperate with the special counsel’s investigators and was eventually convicted of seven felonies. Last week, Mr. Trump pardoned his former national security adviser Michael T. Flynn, who had backed out of his cooperation agreement with the special counsel’s office for “any and all possible offenses” beyond the charge he had faced of lying to federal investigators.
The Flynn pardon raised expectations that Mr. Trump would bestow clemency on other associates — like his former campaign chairman Paul Manafort, who refused to discuss matters from the 2016 election with prosecutors — in his final weeks in office.
Mr. Giuliani has asked Mr. Trump’s campaign to pay him $20,000 a daystrong text for his work on trying to overturn the election, a figure that would make him among the most highly paid lawyers in the world. The staggering sum has stirred opposition among Mr. Trump’s aides who worry that Mr. Giuliani has perpetuated the claims of election fraud in hopes of making as much money as possible.
Mr. Giuliani has expressed concern that any federal investigations of his conduct that appear to have been dormant under the Trump administration could be revived in a Biden administration, according to people who have spoken to him.
Legal experts say that if Mr. Trump wants to fully protect Mr. Giuliani from prosecution after he leaves office, the president would most likely have to detail in the language of the pardon what crimes he believed Mr. Giuliani had committed.
Federal prosecutors in Manhattan have since 2019 been investigating the role of Mr. Giuliani and two other associates in a wide-ranging pressure campaign directed at pushing the Ukrainian government to investigate Mr. Trump’s rivals, namely Mr. Biden’s son Hunter Biden.
The two Giuliani associates — Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman — were arrested in October 2019 as they prepared to board a flight from Washington to Frankfurt with one-way tickets. They were charged with violating campaign finance laws as part of a complex scheme to undermine the former American ambassador in Ukraine, Marie L. Yovanovitch, who Mr. Giuliani and Mr. Trump believed should have been doing more to pressure the Ukrainians.
Prosecutors in Manhattan continued to investigate Mr. Giuliani’s role in the scheme over the past year, focusing on whether he was, in pushing to oust Ms. Yovanovitch, essentially double dipping: working not only for Mr. Trump but also for Ukrainian officials who wanted the ambassador gone for their own reasons, according to people briefed on the matter.
It is a federal crime to try to influence the United States government at the request or direction of a foreign official without disclosing their involvement. Mr. Giuliani has said that he did nothing wrong and that he did not register as a foreign agent because he was acting on behalf of Mr. Trump, not any Ukrainians.
Even as Mr. Trump maintains that the election was stolen and files lawsuits aimed at delaying its certification, his White House is preparing for the final stages of his presidency. The end of any administration typically prompts a wave of pardons, particularly when a term has been engulfed in controversy like Mr. Trump’s, in which several people close to him became ensnared in federal investigations.
“The pardon power has been used by many presidents in politically self-serving ways, whether it was George H.W. Bush or Clinton,” said Jack L. Goldsmith, a professor at Harvard Law School, citing how Mr. Bush pardoned six of his associates — including the former Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger — for their role in the Iran-contra affair.
“Politically, a pardon of Giuliani would be explosive,” Mr. Goldsmith added, “but pardoning pals has been done before.”
Under previous administrations, presidents have largely granted pardons after they have gone through a formal review process at the Justice Department, where lawyers examined the convictions, discussed the ramifications of a potential pardon with prosecutors and then provided the White House with recommendations on how to proceed. On several occasions, Mr. Trump has gone against the Justice Department’s recommendations and the advice of his own White House advisers, granting pardons to political allies and celebrities.
When presidents have deviated from that process, scandals have occasionally occurred, especially after pardons in the last days of an administration. On the final day of Bill Clinton’s presidency, he granted a pardon to Marc Rich, a wealthy financier and longtime Democratic donor who was considered a fugitive as he had fled the United States to avoid tax charges.
Prosecutors in Manhattan investigated whether the pardon had been part of a quid pro quo, but no one was ever charged. At the time, Mr. Giuliani, who had helped bring criminal charges against Mr. Rich years earlier as a federal prosecutor, was deeply critical of the move, calling it “a disgrace” and declaring it “a midnight pardon.”
No president has tried to grant someone a pardon for crimes they have not yet committed — essentially a prospective get-out-of-jail-free card — and legal experts say it is unlikely to hold any weight. In the case of Donald Trump Jr., Mr. Mueller’s investigation examined questions of whether his contacts during the 2016 election with WikiLeaks and Russians offering dirt on Mrs. Clinton amounted to campaign finance violations. Donald Trump Jr. was never interviewed by the special counsel’s office and was never charged.
In the case of Mr. Kushner, he omitted several significant contacts with foreigners when he filled out a form for his White House security clearance, including ones with the Russians offering damaging information on Mrs. Clinton during the campaign. Under federal law it is a crime to provide inaccurate or incomplete information on the background check documents for security clearances.
In 2018, the White House counsel and chief of staff recommended that Mr. Kushner not receive a Top Secret security clearance because of issues that had been discovered during his background check. Over the objections of Mr. Trump’s aides, the president unilaterally granted Mr. Kushner the clearance.
Here’s Brad Parscale coming onto the media to tell everyone how he thought T lost the election…
Speculation on the redacted name portion of the released evidence judge Beryl is allowing to be seen. Because of the way the apostrophe works, the Lettter S (or perhaps Z) seems like the obvious last letter to a 5 letter name.
Choices might be: Gates, Nicjie Lum Davis (an Elliott Broidy partner)
Possibly Nunez
Rick Gates seems very obvious
But then there is this Nickie lum Davis
More shameful grifting on Kushner and Trump’s parts with over $3.85 million in PPP loans to their properties…
Sweeping data released by the Small Business Administration on who benefited from pandemic relief programs raises questions about the equitability and distribution of loans intended for small businesses, an initial analysis by NBC News shows.
The analysis found that properties owned by the Trump Organization as well as the Kushner Companies, owned by the family of Jared Kushner, President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser, profited from the program.
After months of litigation, the SBA released the dataset Tuesday night on every small business that received a Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) or Economic Injury Disaster (EIDL) loan.
The data reveals the most complete accounting to date of the more than $700 billion in forgivable loans Congress and the Trump administration introduced in the spring for allowable expenses, including payroll, rent, utilities and mortgage interest payments.
The analysis by NBC News, one of 11 newsrooms that sued for the release of data, also shows:
- Over 25 PPP loans worth more than $3.65 million were given to businesses with addresses at Trump and Kushner real estate properties, paying rent to those owners. Fifteen of the properties self-reported that they only kept one job, zero jobs or did not report a number at all.
- The loans to Trump and Kushner properties included a $2,164,543 loan to the Triomphe Restaurant Corp., at the Trump International Hotel & Tower in New York City. The company reported the money didn’t go to keeping any jobs. It later closed.
- A company called LB City Inc, which is at Kushner’s Bungalow Hotel in Long Branch, New Jersey, received a loan for $505,552.50 that it used to keep 155 jobs.
- Two tenants at 725 5th Avenue, Trump Tower, received more than $100,000 and kept only three jobs.
- Four tenants at the Kushner-owned 666 5th Avenue combined received more than $204,000, and retained only six jobs.
There were also some troubling signs of mismanagement revealed in the data. Over 100 loans were made to companies where no business name was listed, were listed as “no name available” or showed potential data entry errors, such as names that appeared to be dates or phone numbers. More than 300 companies appear to have each gotten more than $10 million in loans through their subsidiaries. Businesses were not supposed to receive more than $10 million per entity, except for those in the food, hospitality or hotels industries.
The findings immediately raised concerns with government accountability groups.
“Many months and broken promises later, the court-ordered release of this crucial data while the Trump administration is one foot out the door is a shameful dereliction of duty and flagrant mismanagement of a program that millions of workers and small businesses needed to get through this pandemic,” Kyle Herrig, president of Accountable.US, an accountability watchdog, said in a statement.
Trump to restart foreign deals, breaking a post-presidency norm
A return to overseas dealmaking raises new ethical issues no ex-president has ever confronted. Trump’s sprawling global company is private and increasingly reliant on foreign lenders.
After he leaves the White House, Donald Trump is expected to do something no president before him has done: cut multimillion dollar deals with foreign governments and companies for his own private business.
Trump’s namesake company plans to resume foreign real estate projects, likely luxury hotels, as it grapples with a tarnished brand in the United States and the need to pay off hundreds of millions of dollars of debt, according to three people familiar with the plans, not to mention past public statements from Trump’s children. Company officials have already vowed to look into more developments in India and will be expected to give a second look to projects they had considered in China, Turkey, Colombia and Brazil before Trump entered office.
The arrangement is already being criticized as one that could be used to pay back Trump for his policies as president or to influence U.S. policy through a former president — and possibly a future presidential candidate.
Other former presidents have faced allegations they were monetizing the presidency with their post-presidency ventures, including paid speeches abroad, seven-figure book advances and foreign donations to presidential libraries. Most recently, Bill Clinton raised millions of dollars from foreign governments and foreign donors for his family’s global charity.
But Trump’s return to overseas dealmaking as a private businessman raises a new set of ethical issues no ex-president has ever confronted. Trump’s company, the Trump Organization, is sprawling and extensive — it comprises more than 500 businesses, including hotels, resorts and golf clubs around the globe. And since it’s not a charity or publicly held, it has fewer financial disclosure requirements. To cap it off, few American financial firms are still willing to lend Trump money, meaning he increasingly has had to go abroad to seek financing.
“There are some boundaries that didn’t exist before, and I have no doubt that he will blow past those boundaries and not respect any of them,” said Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.), a member of the House Oversight Committee, which launched an investigation into whether Trump is violating the Constitution by profiting from foreign governments.
Trump’s decision to maintain his grip on his real estate empire while president — he handed over day-to-day operation to his children but still retained ownership — created a vast web of potential conflicts of interest that prompted accusations Trump’s business interests were driving policy decisions and that he may be breaking the law with his arrangement.
Yet Trump managed to skirt significant accountability for what critics called an abuse of power. Congress failed to secure Trump’s financial records and then declined to include financial allegations of wrongdoing in articles of impeachment approved against Trump in 2019.
Now, as he prepares for his post-presidency, Trump, like every modern president, will have to decide how to balance a political past with a desire to make money.
“I don’t think he’d be the first former president to do those things,” said Andy Card, former chief of staff to President George W. Bush. “He’ll be a citizen who was a former president. He’d have stature from the past. He wouldn’t have stature at that time.”
Trump lost his bid for a second term to Joe Biden but has yet to concede, falsely asserting voter fraud led the election to be stolen from him. Still, he has told allies he is considering running for president again in 2024, which means any foreign deals could lead to potential conflicts of interest for him both as a former president, traveling around the globe with a Secret Service entourage, and possible future president.
Presidential historian Douglas Brinkley said all former presidents have faced controversy with their post-office activities, especially after ex-President Ronald Reagan traveled to Japan to deliver a $1 million speech. But Trump’s ventures, Brinkley said, go far beyond that.
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“What Trump is doing is trying to make a vast fortune, which has never been tried before, parlaying his presidency into massive amounts of money abroad,” he said. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”
The Trump Organization did not respond to requests for comment.
After winning the presidency in 2016, Trump ignored calls to fully separate from his company. His holdings were placed in a trust that he can withdraw money from at any time, without the public’s knowledge.
When Trump became president, he pledged his company would press pause on any new foreign deals.
But the Trump Organization has continued to promote and profit from existing foreign properties.
Trump has properties and branding deals in countries around the world — from Turkey and the United Arab Emirates to the Philippines and South Korea to Ireland and Scotland. He’s building properties in Indonesia and the Dominican Republic. In some countries, Trump’s company partnered with state-owned companies on the construction. In others, governments are spending their own money on roads and other infrastructure around Trump-branded properties.
“He’ll do what he does. He’ll license his name and he will do Trump towers in different cities — Moscow, Seoul, who knows? It’s going to generate more money for him,” said Barbara Res, a longtime executive in Trump’s real estate company who recently released a new book about Trump called “Tower of Lies.” “There are two things that make him run — ego and money. Looking at it from the point of the money, he’s going to have people who give him money to build Trump towers.”
Despite Trump’s frequent boasts about his exorbitant wealth, he may be in need of a financial boon after leaving the White House.
The Trump Organization is presumed to have lost millions of dollars during the coronavirus outbreak, and Forbes estimates that Trump’s net worth dropped $1 billion during the global pandemic.
Meanwhile, Trump has to pay back $421 million in loans that he has personally guaranteed, much of it to foreign creditors, most due in the next four years, according to a New York Times examination of Trump’s personal and business tax returns. The investigation also found Trump attempted to secure a $72 million refund from the IRS in 2010 by claiming $1.4 billion in losses in 2008 and 2009, triggering a yearslong audit that could cost him millions in back taxes.
Trump’s family has made no secret about its desire to eventually pursue new overseas business ventures.
The president’s sons, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, have repeatedly said the company has lost significant amounts of money because of their father’s presidency and vowed they would be back developing properties once their dad leaves office.
Eric Trump told an Argentinian news site in January 2019 that they will start looking at foreign business ventures when his father leaves office.
“We will consider the options,” he said. “Every day we have many offers.” In June, he told The Wall Street Journal the company wants to focus on overseas luxury hotels after Trump’s presidency.
In 2018, Donald Trump Jr. spent several days in India promoting the family’s existing developments, bringing in millions of dollars in new sales.
“After politics, we would certainly look at India and other markets,” Trump Jr. told the Indian newspaper Mint in 2019. But India, he said, “would be a big focus of mine. Frankly, it would be easier for me to get going in India because of the relationships we have built up in the last decade.”
Despite Trump’s pledge not to engage in foreign deals while he was president, Trump received more than $200 million in income from his interests in foreign countries since 2016, according to an analysis from OpenSecrets, which tracks money in politics. And, the group found, Trump held up to $150 million in foreign assets at the end of 2019.
Trump’s finances are also tied up in potential court cases.
The New York Attorney General’s Office is investigating whether Trump and his company misreported assets on financial statements used to seek loans, tax breaks and economic benefits. Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance is looking into whether Trump paid off two women to keep them quiet about extramarital affairs as well as possibly tax crimes and bank and insurance fraud, according to court filings.
“The president does not feel bound by actual legal prohibitions much less merely ethical or moral ones,” said Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), a member of the House Oversight Committee. “We can expect that he will continue to operate his business in conjunction with foreign businesses and governments.”
Trump says he will veto the annual national defense funding bill unless Section 230 is terminated, according to the AP, The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post
William Barr’s Lame-Duck Execution Spree Is Unprecedented
The last outgoing administration to do anything close was in 1889, every outgoing administration since has halted the federal death penalty during the transition period.
Last week, the Trump administration announced that it would continue to carry out executions in the days and weeks leading up to the inauguration of President-elect Joe Biden, with the last one now scheduled just five days before Biden takes office on Jan. 20, 2021. This bloodthirsty decision is another and particularly grotesque way in which President Donald Trump and his Justice Department are defying the norms and conventions for modern presidential transitions.
The Death Penalty Information Center reports that the last time an outgoing administration did anything remotely similar was more than a century ago, in 1889. At that time Grover Cleveland, the first Democrat to be elected president after the Civil War and the only president ever to have served as an executioner (when he was the sheriff in Erie County, New York), permitted three executions to proceed in the period between his electoral defeat and Benjamin Harrison’s inauguration in March 1889.
Since then, every outgoing administration has halted the federal death penalty during the transition period. Trump and Attorney General William Barr are not merely failing to engage in a merciful pause: They are rushing to execute persons who might be spared by a new administration.
Indeed, the Biden administration intends to try to abolish the federal death penalty and provide incentives for states to abolish it as well. A spokesperson reaffirmed this intention on Saturday: “The president-elect opposes the death penalty, now and in the future, and as president will work to end its use.”
The changing nature of America’s death penalty politics is also reflected in the fact that the number of executions carried out at the state level has declined to the lowest number since 1983. This year, even the most pro–death penalty states have to some degree recognized the significant health risks associated with carrying out executions during the pandemic and stopped them. All told, seven men have been executed in five different states (Alabama, Georgia, Missouri, Tennessee, and Texas), with South Carolina scheduled to carry out one more before the end of the year.
At the same time, the Trump administration has moved full speed ahead with the federal death penalty. Trump and Barr have ignored the threat of COVID-19 and gone ahead with executions, forcing lawyers, religious advisers, and victims’ family members to risk their health if they choose to be present.
They carried out seven executions in a three-month period last summer. If all goes according to the administration’s newly announced plan, it will make history in yet another way.
It will be the first time that the federal government ends up carrying out more executions (10) in a single year than are carried out in all the states which retain capital punishment (8). Those 10 executions would be the most carried out by the federal government since 1896, when Cleveland’s second administration put 16 people to death.
Moreover, like many of the Trump administration’s policies and actions, the federal death penalty’s revival is inflected with racial discrimination and arbitrariness.
A Department of Justice study conducted in 2000 found significant racial disparities in the department’s own handling of capital charging decisions. It reported that from 1995 to 2000, minority defendants were involved in 80 percent of the cases federal prosecutors referred to the department for consideration as capital prosecutions. In 72 percent of the cases approved for prosecution, the defendants were persons of color.
The study also found that white defendants were twice as likely as members of racial minorities to be offered a plea deal with life in prison as the punishment.
Citing his concern about patterns of racial discrimination and other problems in the death penalty system, President Barack Obama ordered another review of the federal death penalty, but it was not completed before he left office.
Today racial minorities constitute 52 percent of the inmates awaiting execution at the federal penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana, a figure only slightly lower than the 55 percent found on state death rows.
But race is not the only source of arbitrariness in the federal system. Geography plays a key role as well in both charging and sentencing decisions. From 1995 to 2000, 42 percent of the 183 federal death cases submitted to the attorney general for review came from just five of the 94 federal districts. And federal death verdicts, like those in the states, are concentrated in states that were claimed by the former Confederacy. Three of them—Texas, Missouri, and Virginia—account for 40 percent of the total.
These facts, as well as the unprecedented nature of the Trump administration’s current execution plans, led three Democratic U.S. senators and one member of Congress to ask Barr on Nov. 13 to suspend federal executions “so the incoming Biden-Harris administration can evaluate and determine the future use of the death penalty by the federal government.”
Four days later, the Congressional Black Caucus joined this push to halt federal executions. The caucus noted what it called the “senseless and unnecessary risk to innocent persons charged with carrying out federal executions” during the current pandemic that “will make any scheduled execution a tinderbox for further outbreaks and exacerbate concerns over the possibility of miscarriage of justice.”
They got their response last week when Barr announced his intention to move ahead with already-scheduled executions and to carry out still more in the administration’s waning days.
With these plans, the administration not only thumbs its nose at precedent, it also reveals yet again its true character. New York Times columnist Linda Greenhouse rightly summed it up when she called the Trump years “mean.” As she observed, “There’s a meanness to the man and to the policies issued from the sycophantic bubble that passes for his administration.” There could be nothing meaner than Barr’s petty final-days decision to carry out these executions.
Going after the Trump family for their self-dealing and the Inaugural funds being used.
(CNN)Ivanka Trump, the President’s daughter and adviser, sat for a deposition Tuesday with investigators from the Washington, DC, attorney general’s office as part of its lawsuit alleging the misuse of inaugural funds, according to a court filing.
In January, the DC attorney general’s office sued the Trump Organization and Presidential Inaugural Committee alleging they abused more than $1 million raised by the nonprofit by “grossly overpaying” for use of event space at the Trump hotel in Washington for the 2017 inauguration.
Depositions of witnesses as part of the lawsuit have been underway over the past several weeks.
Tom Barrack, chairman of the inaugural committee, was deposed on November 17, according to the court filing.
The attorney general’s office has also subpoenaed records from Barrack, Ivanka Trump, first lady Melania Trump, and Rick Gates, the former inaugural committee deputy chairman, the filing said.
According to the lawsuit, Gates “personally managed” discussions with the Trump hotel about event space.
In December 2016, Gates wrote to Ivanka Trump that he was "a bit worried about the optics of PIC [Presidential Inaugural Committee] paying Trump Hotel a high fee and the media making a big story out of it," according to the lawsuit.
According to the lawsuit, Gates agreed with the hotel’s managing director and Trump family members to pay $175,000 per day for the committee to reserve space for four days.
The committee’s own event planner – Stephanie Winston Wolkoff – advised against the transaction, telling the committee and the Trump family that the charges were at least twice the market rate, the lawsuit states.
Wolkoff “noted unease with the offer during an in-person meeting with President-elect Trump and Ivanka Trump,” said DC Attorney General Karl Racine. She also sent a follow-up email to both Ivanka Trump and Gates to “express [her] concern,” according to the attorney general.
“The Inaugural Committee accepted the contract anyway,” the lawsuit alleges.
Wolkoff will be deposed next week, according to sources familiar with the matter.
You wonder if this is the person, Hugh Baras, a psychologist who is discussed in the bribe for pardons scheme,. Dr. Baras, was caught for misuse of social security funds.
Trump Associates Said to Have Been Scrutinized in Suspected Pardon Scheme
A billionaire from San Francisco sought clemency for a psychologist convicted of monetary crimes. The Republican donor Elliott Broidy and a lawyer who later represented Jared Kushner were enlisted.
The Justice Department investigated as recently as this summer the roles of a top fund-raiser for President Trump and a lawyer for his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, in a suspected scheme to offer a bribe in exchange for clemency for a tax crimes convict, according to two people familiar with the inquiry.
A federal judge in Washington unsealed heavily redacted court documents on Tuesday that disclosed the existence of the investigation into possible unregistered lobbying and bribery. The people said it concerned efforts by the lawyer for Mr. Kushner, Abbe Lowell, and the fund-raiser, Elliott Broidy, who pleaded guilty in October to a charge related to a different scheme to lobby the Trump administration.
A billionaire San Francisco real estate developer, Sanford Diller, enlisted their help in securing clemency for a Berkeley psychologist, Hugh L. Baras, who had received a 30-month prison sentence on a conviction of tax evasion and improperly claiming Social Security benefits, according to the filing and the people familiar with the case. Under the suspected scheme, Mr. Diller would make “a substantial political contribution” to an unspecified recipient in exchange for the pardon. He died in February 2018, and there is no evidence that the effort continued after his death.
As part of the effort, someone approached the White House Counsel’s Office to “ensure” that the “clemency petition reached the targeted officials,” according to the court documents. They did not say who made the contact or how the White House responded.
Mr. Baras did not receive clemency.
No bribe was paid, said Reid H. Weingarten, a friend of and lawyer for Mr. Lowell who confirmed his client had represented Mr. Baras in his unsuccessful efforts to avoid incarceration. Mr. Baras went to prison in June 2017 and was released in August 2019.
No one has been charged in the inquiry. No government officials are “currently a subject or target of the investigation disclosed in this filing,” a Justice Department official said. This summer, investigators sought communications related to the scheme to “confront” the people they were scrutinizing, the court documents showed.
Loyalists to T are being nominated to the Pentagon - those who believe that martial law should be applied now and that Biden was creating a ‘coup.’
President Donald Trump’s nominee to become a senior Pentagon official spread debunked conspiracies on Twitter that called Trump’s election loss to Joe Biden a “coup” attempt and shared tweets that suggest Trump should declare martial law.
Scott O’Grady, a former fighter pilot and Trump loyalist, repeatedly retweeted tweets that falsely stated Trump won the election in “landslide fashion” and that millions of votes were stolen from the President.
On November 25, O’Grady retweeted a tweet that said, “Trump won & Biden & his Comrades will now attempt a coup,” next to a photoshopped image of Biden beside Xi Jinping, the President of China.
On December 2, he retweeted an account that shared an article that said former national security adviser Michael Flynn had shared a petition that called for martial law. He then retweeted the same account which suggested that Trump should declare martial law.
“I don’t know who needs to hear this,” the account said, “But calling for martial law is not a bad idea when there is an attempted coup against the president and this country happening right now.”
Martial law
The tweet references a petition Flynn shared on Twitter calling for Trump to declare martial law and order a new presidential election. **The petition falsely called November’s presidential election “fraudulent” and called on Trump to have the military oversee a new election. Attorney General William Barr said in an interview published Tuesday that there is **no evidence that widespread fraud occurred during the election.
In the aftermath of the election, Trump himself has spread numerous conspiracies and falsehoods alleging that Democrats and other outside forces have stolen the election from him. He has also upended management in the Defense Department by making wholesale changes in the Pentagon’s civilian leadership since firing Defense Secretary Mark Esper by tweet November 9, ousting at least three other officials and replacing them with perceived loyalists.
CNN’s KFile reviewed O’Grady’s tweets and media appearances and found that O’Grady shared other debunked election conspiracies and that he also degraded top military and intelligence officials. In a radio interview, he called former President Barack Obama and military generals “sworn socialists,” and advocated that the military justice system should bring back treason charges. He retweeted a tweet that called former Defense Secretary James Mattis a “traitor.”
He tweeted that Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, a star witness during the Trump impeachment hearings, should be charged "for insurrection because he is a biased liberal political operative" and said on a radio show that it was “disgusting” for Vindman to testify against Trump. He also spread a baseless claim that the whistleblower in the impeachment saga dated the daughter of House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff.
O’Grady was nominated by the White House to become an assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs at the Pentagon, a key position within the Department of Defense’s policy shop overseeing operations in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. The position is a political appointment, and if O’Grady is confirmed, he would only fill the role until the start of the Biden administration.
Preemptive pardons…for many, many loyalists.
President Donald Trump is considering preemptively pardoning as many as 20 aides and associates before leaving office, frustrating Republicans who believe offering legal reprieves to his friends and family members could backfire.
Trump’s strategy, like much of his presidency, is nontraditional. He is eschewing the typical protocol of processing cases through the Justice Department. And he may argue that such preemptive pardons for his friends and family members are necessary to spare them from paying millions in legal fees to fight what he describes as witch hunts. Those up for clemency include everyone from Trump’s personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, to several members of his family — all people who haven’t been charged with a crime. Weighing on Trump’s mind is whether these pardons would look like an admission of guilt.
Legendary Afghan pilot in hiding after U.S. reverses decision to help him flee Taliban
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2020/12/03/afghan-pilot-naiem-asadi/
Maj. Naiem Asadi was already in his attack helicopter over Kabul when the call blared over the radio: Militants were raining down mortars near the presidential compound, and someone needed to find them.
Asadi, one of the most experienced pilots in the Afghan air force, whirled his MD-530 aircraft to scan the horizon and spotted the telltale plume of white smoke. He raked the area with a burst of rockets, killing the fighters during the 2018 mission, he said in an interview.
His actions were featured in a video by the U.S.-led coalition eager to highlight skilled Afghan troops. But the exposure helped the Taliban mark him for death threats. U.S. officials granted his request to flee to the United States but reversed their decision hours before he was to depart — leaving Asadi wondering who will track him down first.
“I found a house to hide from the Afghan government and the Taliban,” Asadi, 32, said by phone from an undisclosed location, where he has been sheltering with his 4-year-old daughter and wife after weeks of refuge at a U.S. base came to an end.
The episode, first reported by Stars and Stripes, has rallied a dozen former U.S. pilots who worked with Asadi. They said U.S. officials turned their back on him after a career that includes saving the lives of American pilots and have urged lawmakers in their states to focus on the issue. They have pledged spare bedrooms, jobs and money in hopes Asadi will be allowed to move.
The pilots describe Asadi as a talented aviator who they say has killed more militants than anyone else in the Afghan air force. His precision and willingness to fly in dangerous missions is so well-known that commanders request his support by name, said Bryan McAlister, a former Army pilot who advised Asadi.
That reputation, and U.S. highlights of his work, has drawn the eye of insurgents, Asadi said, adding that his father received a letter demanding he give up his son or face retribution.
The letter was among evidence that Asadi used to appeal to the United States, circumventing Afghan channels, he said.
Asadi is in “imminent danger of being killed by the Taliban,” according to documents signed by then-acting assistant defense secretary Ezra Cohen-Watnick on Oct. 5 that were obtained by The Washington Post. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services subsequently approved Asadi’s request to relocate to the United States, emails show.
The U.S. Embassy in Kabul told Asadi to pick up travel documents Oct. 28 but emailed him three hours before his appointment to say they were not ready. He fled to a U.S. base in Kandahar on the advice of a friend in the U.S. military, who days later told him the Pentagon reversed its recommendation to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.
A U.S. defense official said the approval was paused, then revoked, after it became clear that some Pentagon officials who would need to approve the recommendation had not been consulted.
“He’s an active-duty Afghan officer. It’s an issue for the Afghan government to work out,” said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.
The move stunned the U.S. pilots close to him.
“That’s cowardice to me,” McAlister said of the Pentagon reversal. “He completely walked away from his life because of their promises. There are real human beings on the other end of that decision.”
Army Maj. Rob Lodewick, a Pentagon spokesman, said that Asadi is in good standing but that the Defense Department “could not support the request” after a full review.
Fawad Aman, a spokesman for the Afghan Ministry of Defense, said the agency is committed to protecting Asadi and his family, along with other pilots. The agency declined to comment on whether Afghan officials had a role in the decision.
Following the reversal, Asadi said that he was ordered to visit the Afghan air force commander. He refused to report back for duty because he did not have confidence in the government and feared jail as punishment for leaving his unit, he said.
Instead, he fled to the U.S. base in Kandahar in November, where he stayed for weeks until U.S. officials forced him to leave. He went into hiding Monday.
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and the State Department declined to comment on their decision.
Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.), an Iraq veteran and member of the House Armed Services Committee, said the decision harmed national security and appeared connected to general anti-immigrant sentiment emanating from the Trump administration.
“Why else wouldn’t we take care of our partner heroes?” he asked.
Asadi isn’t the only Afghan service member facing threats, former Afghan and U.S. pilots have acknowledged. But they also point to Asadi’s record, saying he has done enough. In July, he led a mission to recover a U.S. pilot who crashed near Taliban territory, providing security as a rescue helicopter arrived, a commendation said.
Rafael Caraballo, a retired U.S. Army pilot who trained Asadi in 2012, said it was futile to keep him in the country.
“He’s marked as a dead man. He has done all he can there,” Caraballo said, echoing other pilots who say Asadi would be a hard-working American if given the opportunity.
“If anyone needs to be a U.S. citizen, it’s him,” Caraballo said.
Forcing him back into the cockpit would be unsafe, said Niloofar Rahmani, Afghanistan’s first female military fixed-wing aircraft pilot, who also endured threats and was granted asylum in 2018.
Pilots can make mistakes if they’re distracted or stressed, she said, putting civilians and other aviators at risk. The Afghan government would also generally fail to keep him safe, she said, like other pilots she knew who were assassinated.
Asadi said it was a grave cultural violation to take his family to a U.S. base, and he can’t envision a future in Afghanistan free of violence from the Taliban and neighbors alike.
“It is too late. There is no going back,” he said. “We still hope the U.S. government keeps its promise to send me there.”
No good can come from this - WTF
The Trump administration installed loyalists on a Pentagon advisory panel on Friday, naming former campaign figures Corey Lewandowski and David Bossie among the new appointees to the Defense Business Board.
The appointments were announced along with the removal of other members, at least some of whom were dismissed. Acting defense secretary Christopher Miller, appointed to his job last month following the firing of Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper, said in a statement that he was “proud” to welcome each of the new members, and looked forward to their contributions to help guide the Defense Department’s business efforts in coming years.
“These individuals have a proven record of achievement within their respective fields and have demonstrated leadership that will serve our Department, and our nation well,” Miller said in a statement.
Conservative OP ED writer David Brooks stares straight at the Mitch McConnell effect on this national crisis and natural disaster. What could go wrong withholding funds for Covid and shoring up it’s people? A lot.
McConnell holding out to protect businesses and preventing them from being liable for anything that Covid caused to it’s employees. See ND and the Tyson meat packers.
If we can’t get a Covid-19 relief package through Congress in the next week or two, we’re sunk. It means we have a legislative branch so ideologically divided it can’t address even our most glaring problems. It means we have representatives so lacking in the willingness and ability to compromise that minimally competent government will be impossible, even under a President Joe Biden.
The problems a basic relief measure would address couldn’t be more obvious. Under current law, up to 12 million Americans could lose their jobless benefits by year’s end — a wretched Christmastime for millions of families, which could spawn a wave of depression, morbidity, family breakdown and suicide.
Millions of people could be evicted from their homes. Thousands more businesses may close during the long winter months before a vaccine is widely available. These are not failing, unproductive businesses. These are good, strong businesses that would have provided jobs and opportunity for millions of Americans for decades if they hadn’t been hit by the pandemic.
Wendy Edelberg of the Hamilton Project calculates that if nothing passes, the U.S. economy will be $1 trillion smaller in 2021 and $500 billion smaller in 2022.
The means to prevent this suffering are also glaringly obvious. We did it less than a year ago with the CARES Act. All we have to do is pass a version of what we did before. How hard can this possibly be?
The $2 trillion CARES Act was one of the most successful pieces of legislation of modern times. Because of the lockdowns, U.S. economic output contracted by a horrific 9 percent in the second quarter of 2020, compared with the first quarter. But because of the CARES Act, disposable household incomes increased by 10 percent. The personal savings rate increased by 34 percent in April.
I don’t love big government, but government is supposed to step up in a crisis, and with the CARES Act, it did.
Since summer, as the economy has deteriorated, Congress has been gridlocked on how to pass a supplemental relief package. At times Nancy Pelosi has been rigidly uncompromising, as if not wanting to hand Donald Trump a victory. But the core problem is that Republicans have applied a dogmatically ideological approach to a situation in which it is not germane and is in fact ruthlessly destructive.
Some Republicans act as if this is a normal recession and the legislation in front of them is a conventional Keynesian stimulus bill. But this is not a normal recession. It’s a natural disaster. The proposals on offer are not conventional stimulus. They are measures to defend our national economic infrastructure from that disaster over the next five brutal months.
I agree with Janet Yellen, Joe Biden’s choice for Treasury secretary, who said, “The U.S. debt path is completely unsustainable under current tax and spending plans.” But that concern is for another day. Right now, we need to protect the workers and businesses that generate wealth in this society.
Either we roar out of this pandemic with the economic might and surging wages we enjoyed in 2019, or we endure another decade of grinding stagnation, more populist anger, more people losing faith in America. Microscopic interest rates make this additional debt a relatively easy lift for us.
The 2020 election results have powerfully strengthened moderates. After months of gridlock the moderates took charge this week, crafting a bipartisan $908 billion relief compromise. Led by Senators Susan Collins, Joe Manchin, Mitt Romney and Mark Warner and endorsed by a bipartisan group of House members from the Problem Solvers Caucus, it is big enough to make a real difference and includes two thorny issues, aid to the states and liability protection, which should, on the merits, be in the law.
This is how democracy is supposed to work! Partisans stake out positions and then dealmakers reach a compromise. This is a glimpse of the sort of normal-functioning democratic process that has been largely missing since Newt Gingrich walked onstage lo these many decades ago.
To their great credit, Pelosi and Chuck Schumer embraced the bipartisan framework. Mitch McConnell went on the Senate floor Thursday, pretended to soften, ignored the compromise and did not move an inch.
McConnell may think the Democrats will eventually come to him because something is better than nothing. But his proposal cannot pass. Democrats in the House will not accept a complete capitulation to McConnell on every front.
For the first time in a long time we have a core group of moderates, progressives and conservatives willing to practice politics — willing to work with the other party toward a reasonable solution.
Talks between the moderates and McConnell continue. But if McConnell won’t do a deal now, in the midst of a clear crisis and under a Republican president, there certainly won’t be one with more controversial issues under a Democratic president in 2021. If we don’t see a Covid-19 relief measure pass in the next week or two, then our democracy is existentially broken.
If that happens, McConnell should spend Christmas with people thrown out of work and witness the suffering he has caused.