Donald Trump asked advisors and lawyers to look into how “Saturday Night Live” and other late-night shows could be punished by the DOJ, the FCC, and courts after they mocked him.
The thinnest skin in America hides under that orange rind he sprays on.
Note: this hearkens back to an older story:
Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Mark Milley repeatedly pushed back on then-President Donald Trump’s argument that the military should intervene violently in order to quell the civil unrest that erupted around the country last year.
That’s how you’re supposed to handle these people," Trump told his top law enforcement and military officials, according to Bender. “Crack their skulls!”
Trump also told his team that he wanted the military to go in and “beat the f–k out” of the civil rights protesters.
Well, look at this.
Responding to interest from President Donald J. Trump, White House aides drafted a proclamation last year to invoke the Insurrection Act in case Mr. Trump moved to take the extraordinary step of deploying active-duty troops in Washington to quell the protests that followed the killing of George Floyd, two senior Trump administration officials said.
The aides drafted the proclamation on June 1, 2020, during a heated debate inside the administration over how to respond to the protests. Mr. Trump, enraged by the demonstrations, had told the attorney general, William P. Barr, the defense secretary, Mark T. Esper, and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of staff, Gen. Mark A. Milley, that he wanted thousands of active-duty troops on the streets of the nation’s capital, one of the officials said.
Mr. Trump was talked out of the plan by the three officials. But a separate group of White House staff members wanted to leave open the option for Mr. Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act to call in the military to patrol the streets of the capital.
They decided it would be prudent to have the necessary document vetted and ready in case the unrest in Washington worsened or the city’s mayor, Muriel Bowser, declined to take measures such as a citywide curfew, which she ultimately put in place.
According to one former senior administration official, Mr. Trump was aware that the document was prepared. He never invoked the act, and in a statement to The New York Times he denied that he had wanted to deploy active-duty troops. “It’s absolutely not true and if it was true, I would have done it,” Mr. Trump said.
But the new details about internal White House deliberations on a pivotal day in his presidency underscore the intensity of Mr. Trump’s instinct to call on the active-duty military to deal with a domestic issue. And they help to flesh out the sequence of events that would culminate later in the day with Mr. Trump’s walk across Lafayette Park to St. John’s Church so he could pose in front of it holding a Bible, a move that coincided with a spasm of violence between law enforcement and protesters camped near the White House.
Although the main elements of what happened in and around the White House on June 1, 2020, have been well established, some aspects remain a subject of dispute. A federal watchdog concluded this month that the United States Park Police had been planning to clear protesters from Lafayette Park well before they learned that Mr. Trump was going to walk through the area. And a federal judge this week partly dismissed claims in a civil suit accusing the Trump administration of abusing its power in clearing the park.
A Trump adviser, echoing the former president’s insistence he did not want to deploy active-duty troops, said that Mr. Trump rejected the option when presented with it by advisers, and maintained that had he done so, he would have “owned the problem” politically.
Despite being convinced not to invoke the act, Mr. Trump continued to bring up the idea of deploying active-duty military in the weeks that followed, as unrest unfolded in major cities including New York, Chicago, and Portland, Ore., the officials said.
Their accounts comport with others, including one in a forthcoming book by the Wall Street Journal reporter Michael Bender that says Mr. Trump repeatedly urged General Milley and other top military and law enforcement officials throughout the summer to confront the protesters physically, according to excerpts from Mr. Bender’s book published by CNN.
The basic facts of Mr. Trump’s deliberations about how to respond to the protests that broke out after the killing of Mr. Floyd have been widely reported. NBC News reported on June 1, 2020, that Mr. Trump was considering invoking the Insurrection Act.
CNN later reported the White House wanted to deploy 10,000 troops onto the streets but that Mr. Esper and General Milley pushed back on the idea.
But the new details help illustrate the intensity of Mr. Trump’s demands for militaristic action to curb the protests.
In the Oval Office on the morning of June 1, 2020, Mr. Trump was furious about the televised images he had seen of the unrest in Washington and elsewhere.
For roughly 20 minutes, according to the former officials, Mr. Trump went on about how to contain the protests. General Milley and Mr. Esper appeared particularly stunned by Mr. Trump’s eruption, according to one of the officials.
Throughout Mr. Trump’s presidency, he had a broad view of his powers as president, claiming that he could take an array of aggressive actions using federal authorities and military personnel to handle problems typically left to local authorities.
But invoking the Insurrection Act, a rarely used authority allowing presidents to use active duty military for law-enforcement purposes, would have been a dramatic escalation. The act has only been invoked twice in the past 40 years — once to quell unrest after Hurricane Hugo in 1989, and once during the 1992 Los Angeles riots.
“We look weak,” Mr. Trump said, according to one of the officials. He complained about having been taken to the bunker below the White House on the night of May 29 when the barricade outside the Treasury Department was pierced. The New York Times had reported the bunker visit a day earlier, infuriating Mr. Trump.
But all three officials pushed back against the idea of invoking the Insurrection Act. Mr. Barr, who had been Mr. Trump’s attorney general for a year and a half and had been increasingly clashing with the president, told Mr. Trump that civilian law-enforcement authorities had enough personnel to manage the situation and that a drastic move like invoking the Insurrection Act could spawn more protests and violence. Mr. Esper agreed, according to the two former officials.
Mr. Trump’s meeting with Mr. Barr, Mr. Esper and Mr. Milley was marked by his rage at being embarrassed on the world stage, according to two of the officials.
Mr. Trump grudgingly went along with their counsel not to deploy active-duty troops, according to the officials. Immediately after the meeting, Mr. Trump joined a call with governors around the country, some of whom were seeing protests increase in their states. Mr. Trump urged them to “dominate” the protesters, as he said the National Guard in Minnesota had.
Mr. Esper told associates that he was so concerned that Mr. Trump would deploy active-duty troops that he echoed the need for them to get control of their states, hoping he could encourage governors to deploy the National Guard to head off federal action. Using Pentagon terminology that he later told associates he regretted, Mr. Esper told the governors to “dominate the battle space,” a sentiment stemming from concern about Mr. Trump’s intentions.
But one backdrop for the drafting of the Insurrection Act proclamation was that discussions between the White House and city officials about containing the protests remained contentious throughout the day. At one point, White House officials suggested taking over the city police force to tamp down the unrest and impose order. That idea stunned Washington city officials.
Mr. Esper — who, associates said, so feared the situation was spinning out of control that two days later he publicly said he opposed invoking the Insurrection Act — later tried to again communicate the gravity with which he feared Mr. Trump would act when he held a handful of private calls with specific governors that afternoon, according to the former senior administration official.
Mr. Trump delivered a Rose Garden address later that evening, saying he was prepared to deploy the military if the rioting did not cease.
“If the city or state refuses to take the actions that are necessary to defend the life and property of their residence, then I will deploy the United States military and quickly solve the problem for them,” Mr. Trump said.
Active-duty military, including from the 82nd Airborne Division, were airlifted to bases outside Washington, but Mr. Esper mobilized a National Guard deployment in the city in an effort to thwart them being deployed. By June 5, they were all ordered to return to their home bases.
Prosecutors in New York have given former president Donald Trump’s attorneys a deadline of Monday afternoon to make any final arguments as to why the Trump Organization should not face criminal charges over its financial dealings, according to two people familiar with the matter.
That deadline is a strong signal that Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance Jr. (D) and New York Attorney General Letitia James (D) — now working together, after each has spent more than two years investigating Trump’s business — are considering criminal charges against the company as an entity.
Earlier this year, Vance convened a grand jury in Manhattan to consider indictments in the investigation. No entity or individual has been charged in the investigations thus far, and it remains possible that no charges will be filed.
Prosecutors have shown interest in whether Trump’s company used misleading valuations of its properties to deceive lenders and taxing authorities, and in whether taxes were paid on fringe benefits for company executives, according to court documents and people familiar with the investigations.
The two people familiar with the deadline set for Trump’s attorneys spoke on the condition of anonymity to disclose private conversations. Under New York law, prosecutors may file charges against corporations in addition to individuals.
Last Thursday, lawyers working for Trump personally and for the Trump Organization met virtually with prosecutors to make the case that charges were not warranted. Meetings like these are common in financial investigations, allowing defense attorneys a chance to present evidence before prosecutors make a decision on whether to seek charges.
Thursday’s meeting was first reported by the New York Times.
Spokespeople for Vance and James declined to comment on Sunday, as did an attorney for Trump, Ronald Fischetti, and an attorney for the Trump Organization, Alan Futerfas.
People familiar with the probe confirmed to The Washington Post that prosecutors were looking at charging the Trump Organization as an entity, as well as Trump Organization chief financial officer Allen Weisselberg, following Weisselberg’s refusal to assist in the investigation.
Fischetti, who took part in the Thursday meeting, said Friday that prosecutors are going forward with a case against the company because Weisselberg wasn’t “cooperating and saying what they want him to say” with respect to whether Trump had personal knowledge about his CFO’s alleged use of cars, apartments and other compensation that prosecutors think may not have been reported properly to tax authorities, according to people with knowledge of the case.
Trump, who on Saturday night kicked off a planned series of rallies to boost his and favored Republicans’ future election prospects, still owns his businesses through a trust managed by his adult sons and Weisselberg. He gave up day-to-day management of the company while in the White House, but it is unclear what role he plays in the company’s operations now.
Last month, Trump called the investigations a “witch hunt” run by Democrats seeking to damage his future political prospects.
“It began the day I came down the escalator in Trump Tower, and it’s never stopped,” Trump said in a news release, referring to the start of his presidential campaign in 2015.
In recent months, according to people familiar with the investigation, prosecutors began investigating Weisselberg’s personal finances, in the hopes that Weisselberg might be persuaded to offer testimony against his boss. But prosecutors have grown frustrated with what they see as a lack of cooperation from Weisselberg, according to a person familiar with the case. This month, Post reporters observed Weisselberg driving into work at Trump Tower — home to both Trump’s Manhattan apartment and his company’s headquarters office — on a day when Trump was staying at the tower.
An attorney for Weisselberg, Mary Mulligan, declined to comment Sunday.
Trump’s business uses a web of hundreds of individual limited liability companies, most of which are ultimately controlled by a trust whose beneficiary is Trump himself.
The Trump family has trouble with depositions. In 2007 testimony, Donald Trump was repeatedly shown to be a liar. In February, Donald Trump Jr. was deposed in the Trump inauguration scandal lawsuit, and on several key points, under oath, he provided false testimony. A review of documents filed in that case and other material obtained by Mother Jones shows that Ivanka Trump also testified inaccurately during her deposition in this lawsuit.
The inauguration probe was launched last year by Karl Racine, the attorney general of Washington, DC. He has alleged that Trump’s inauguration committee misused charitable funds to enrich the Trump family. As Racine put it, the lawsuit maintains “that the Inaugural Committee, a nonprofit corporation, coordinated with the Trump family to grossly overpay for event space in the Trump International Hotel… The Committee also improperly used non-profit funds to throw a private party [at the Trump Hotel] for the Trump family costing several hundred thousand dollars.” In short, the attorney general accused the Trump gang of major grifting, and he is seeking to recover the money paid to the Trump Hotel so those funds can be used for real charitable purposes.
During a December 1 deposition—in which she swore to tell the truth—Ivanka Trump, the eldest daughter of Donald Trump who was an executive at the Trump Organization before becoming a White House adviser to her father, was asked if she had any “involvement in the process of planning the inauguration.” She replied, “I really didn’t have an involvement.” Ivanka testified that if her “opinion was solicited” regarding an inauguration event, she “would give feedback to my father or to anyone who asked my perspective or opinion.” And that was as far as her participation went.
But this wasn’t accurate, according to the documents, which indicate she was part of the decision-making for various aspects of the inauguration, including even the menus for events.
One email chain shows that Ivanka Trump was directly involved in the planning of at least one proposed event for the inauguration. On November 29, 2016, Rick Gates, then the deputy chairman of the Presidential Inauguration Committee (known as the PIC), emailed her the current schedule of inauguration events. He noted that Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, a lead producer working with the PIC, “is going to call you to discuss some additional ideas she has about some other events that we would like to see if you would be willing to do based on our meetings.” Ivanka replied to Gates and Winston Wolkoff, “Great. I am looping in my assistant Suzie who can coordinate a time for us to connect.”
A few days later, Winston Wolkoff sent a long “Dear Ivanka and Jared” email to Ivanka Trump and her husband. She thanked them for “our meeting yesterday” and presented them with a “high-level summary” of the inauguration plans “for your review.” This was a detailed report on the assorted events and themes being created for Trump’s inauguration. The “overarching strategic objective,” she reported, was “reinforcing” the theme “With the People: Making America Great.” She laid out “key” messages, including “Our greatest strength is our people” and “Americans deserve to be heard, and their government needs to listen.” She noted that in their recent meeting, she and Ivanka Trump had discussed how to include Donald Trump’s “constituency” in the events, and Winston Wolkoff referred to proposals for doing so. This included inviting “families from all 50 states to attend official functions” and provide them “Airfare. Accommodations. Hair & makeup.”
In this email, Winston Wolkoff also asked Ivanka to confirm that she would host a “Women’s Entrepreneurs Reception/Dinner” as part of the inauguration. “Please let me know who…you would like invited,” she added. And she asked whether Ivanka Trump would prefer for the event to be hosted at the National Museum of African American History or the National Gallery of Art. Winston Wolkoff also attached to the email the communications strategy for the inauguration, the proposed event schedule, and a list of the “100 most influential women in Business, Philanthropy, Fashion, Politics and Finance.” She ended the note saying she would “follow up” with them “at TT”—a reference to Trump Tower.
Kushner replied the next day in a brief email to Winston Wolkoff and told her, “Thanks, Stephanie – looks like it’s going to be a special event! So glad you are involved!” Ivanka Trump responded, too, later that day, with a more elaborate email, stating, “As mentioned, my interest in hosting [the dinner or reception for women entrepreneurs] depends on the quality and theme of the event. ” She added, “I would love to bring together an incredible group of female entrepreneurs and thought leaders and integrate young girls in the programing. If we can make it an impactful event, I would love to do it.” She asked Winston Wolkoff to work with Abigail Klem and Rosemary Young, respectively the president and marketing head of Ivanka’s company. “It would be great to have a cross section of industry and also invite top female cabinet members and lawmakers,” she wrote. Ivanka also volunteered to help Winston Wolkoff if she had any problems coordinating with Reince Priebus, whom Trump had picked to be his White House chief of staff, and Katie Walsh, his deputy: “please let me know if you don’t get the direction that you need from Reince and Katie and I will step in.”
That same day, Klem emailed Winston Wolkoff to set up a time to discuss the Ivanka Trump event, and she cc’d Ivanka and Kushner. On December 6, Winston Wolkoff met with Ivanka and her business associates regarding the women’s event to be hosted by Ivanka, according to Winston Wolkoff. In her book, Melania and Me: The Rise and Fall of My Friendship with the First Lady , which chronicles a host of internal problems within the PIC, Winston Wolkoff recalls that this meeting caused her to wonder “why was the PIC planning an event for Ivanka at all ? And how had I gotten roped into it?”After the meeting, Tom Barrack, the billionaire pal of Donald Trump who was chairing the PIC, texted her, “We have so much to do for each of them,” referring to Trump family members.
The gathering of women entrepreneurs was eventually scuttled, but Ivanka Trump remained involved in other components of the inauguration planning. In late December 2016—after news reports noted that Donald Trump could not draw big-name entertainment figures for his inauguration events—Matthew Hiltzik, a public relations consultant, sent her an email under the subject heading, “Here is the point i was going to share earlier…” He told her that the “narrative surrounding inauguration is going awry.” Referring to Mark Burnett, the television producer who had created The Apprentice and who was working on the inauguration, Hiltzik wrote, “Mark B and i were talking and he specifically suggested/requested that i raise this issue with you and he and i discussed the situation. Basically – in order to better control the narrative, you should have stephanie [Winston Wolkoff] be front and center on this and there needs to be clear direction expressed publicly about what the inauguration plan IS (celebration of talent of lesser known but incredibly gifted Americans) as opposed ot [sic] being defined by what it is NOT (no – or few – hollywood and top mainstream musical talent). Always best to be defined by what you are, vs. what you are not.”
As Winston Wolkoff wrote in her book, Hiltzik “was warning Ivanka to distance herself from the bad inauguration press and pushing me to the top of Shit Mountain.” Ivanka forwarded this email to Winston Wolkoff with a simple message: “I agree.”
Other emails show that Ivanka did participate in discussions about the talent being recruited for the inauguration. On December 23, Jon Reynaga, a producer working on the event, emailed Gates and Sara Armstrong, a top PIC official, with a list of musical artists being booked for inauguration events. “They are all somewhat known acts but non-are A-listers,” he observed. (The roster included Fantasia, a female soul singer, Big and Rich, a country act, and Katharine McPhee, an American Idol runner-up.) Armstrong replied, “Well I’m worried this gets into the lower level that Ivanka didn’t want.” Gates responded that Barrack had okayed this list, and he added, “The entertainment is coming in at cost/expenses which is one of the most important points for DJT – he will like that.”
In a December 16 text to Reynaga, Winston Wolkoff reported that Trump “DID NOT APPROVE THE BEACH BOYS and he nor Ivanka want them.” Asked about this during her deposition, Ivanka Trump said, “I don’t recall that. I love the Beach Boys.”
According to text messages between them, Ivanka Trump instructed Winston Wolkoff to make sure there would be “tons” of reporters at the celebratory candlelight dinner being held the evening before the inauguration and at the inauguration balls. When Winston Wolkoff told her that the communications team for the Trump transition was not sending out information on these events to all the media, Ivanka took action. She communicated with Sean Spicer and texted back to Winston Wolkoff, “He is on it and will circle up with…you.”
One PIC planning document noted that Ivanka had a say in the catering. Winston Wolkoff, it reported, “needs to get menus approved by IT and DJT.”
In her book, Winston Wolkoff recounts a mid-December meeting in Donald Trump’s office during which she presented to him and Ivanka the plans for eighteen inauguration events. “I grabbed my binder, went over to Donald’s side of his desk, and sat with my knees on the floor…Ivanka hovered over me…[and] made comments and asked questions.” (“I want tanks and choppers. Make it look like North Korea,” Donald Trump said.) Days later, Winston Wolkoff tells Mother Jones , she attended a meeting at Ivanka Trump’s office at Trump Tower where she provided Ivanka and other family members “a run-through of the entire inauguration,” which included slides on events, the communications strategy, and its branding.
During her deposition in the inauguration case, Ivanka Trump downplayed her relationship with Winston Wolkoff. She described Winston Wolkoff as “a person I knew in New York who does events,” adding, “I didn’t know Stephanie Winston that well. I just knew she was very good at planning. I just knew her in that capacity.” Winston Wolkoff, she said, was no more than “an acquaintance.” But emails between her and Winston Wolkoff obtained by Mother Jones indicate that in previous years, Ivanka Trump and Winston Wolkoff had been friends. In 2012, Ivanka emailed Winston Wolkoff, “Jared and I are having a few friends over for dinner next Monday night (Nov 12th) and would love to have you and David join us. It will be a very casual, small group and I promise good food and conversation. If not, let’s catch up soon.” In another email exchange, the two women texted about family matters when they set up a lunch date.
Ivanka Trump was instrumental in landing Winston Wolkoff a top spot at the PIC. Days after Trump was elected president, she emailed Barrack, “Per our conversation, I want to connect you with Stephanie, cced. She would be great for you to speak with about the planning of the inauguration—as mentioned, i have no doubt she will be invaluable to you!”
But Ivanka Trump may now have reason to distance herself not only from the messy inauguration scandal but also from Winston Wolkoff, who became something of an internal whistleblower. During the planning process, Winston Wolkoff raised an important matter within the PIC: whether the Trump Hotel was overcharging Trump’s inauguration committee. (This matter is at the heart of Racine’s lawsuit against the Trump Organization and the PIC.) The first cost estimates were high, and Ivanka Trump interceded to obtain a better rate. But Winston Wolkoff believed this new estimate—$700,000 for meeting and banquet rooms reserved for four days—was still twice the market rate. On December 17, 2016, she emailed Gates, Ivanka Trump, and others to express her concern. “Please take into consideration,” she warned, that the PIC’s spending would eventually be audited and this deal with the Trump Hotel would “become public knowledge.” Winston Wolkoff is now a lead cooperating witness in Racine’s lawsuit against the Trump Organization and the PIC.
Mother Jones sent lawyers for Ivanka Trump and the Trump Organization a list of questions about her deposition testimony and its accuracy. They did not respond. Racine’s office declined to comment on Ivanka Trump’s deposition.
In her own deposition in the inauguration scandal case, Winston Wolkoff testified that she was worried “it would look [that] members of the Trump family or the Trump Organization or the Trump Hotel financially profited from the inauguration.” During that deposition, she was asked whether it seemed “improper” to her that Ivanka Trump was “involved at times in decision-making about some of the events that were part of the inaugural festivities.” She replied, “I think it was questioned…It was out of the ordinary.”
Donald Trump is no stranger to legal trouble, but it’s never been anything he couldn’t solve with his checkbook. Just after he won the White House, Trump agreed to pay $25 million to settle charges that Trump University swindled thousands of students. He later paid another $2 million for misusing his charitable foundation, which was shuttered after authorities documented a “shocking pattern of illegality” and “repeated and willful self-dealing.”
But Trump isn’t going to be able to buy his way out of criminal charges, which he could soon be facing now that he’s the subject of an array of serious criminal investigations — including over shady business dealings and real-estate tax arrangements, as well as his incitement of the January 6th siege of the Capitol. (Trump has made light of the probes against him, writing: “There is nothing more corrupt than an investigation that is in desperate search of a crime.”)
Trump also faces myriad civil actions, ranging from allegations he violated the Voting Rights Act and the Ku Klux Klan Act (which prohibits the intimidation of public officials), to multiple claims that he defrauded people, including a family member, an investor that bought into his troubled hotel ventures, and “economically marginalized people” looking to “pursue the American Dream.”
The prosecution of a former president would be unprecedented, and the notion that Trump could face dire consequences is hard to fathom given his ability to elude them. As president, he was shielded from prosecution; this is no longer the case. “This is a significant concern for him because he’s no longer in office,” says Rebecca Roiphe, an a professor at New York Law School and former assistant DA in Manhattan. “If he committed a crime like anyone else, I don’t exactly understand how he could escape it.”
Trump will still be able to cry “witch hunt” as the investigations continue to develop, leading some to believe his legal trouble could actually help him should he decide to run again in 2024. And in case you’re wondering, a federal conviction would not disqualify him from doing so.
Below, we cover the waterfront of Trump’s legal troubles:
CRIMINAL INVESTIGATIONS
Manhattan District Attorney
Manhattan DA Cyrus Vance battled all the way to the Supreme Court to obtain eight years worth of Trump’s tax returns and other records — reportedly comprising millions of pages of documents. Vance now has a team poring over these records, and the two-year investigation that began over hush-money payments to Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal ahead of the 2016 election now appears to include potential bank and insurance fraud, as well as other potential financial crimes.
In May, a grand jury convened to hear evidence from prosecutors, a signal that the investigation could be entering its final stages. The DA’s office is reportedly zeroing in on longtime Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg, probing whether he failed to pay taxes on fringe benefits he received from Trump — including cars, apartments, and private school tuition for his grandchild. The DA’s office has reportedly seized Weisselberg’s personal financial records, and he could be facing charges as soon as this summer, according to The New York Times .
Prosecutors are also investigating whether Trump Organization COO Matthew Calamari enjoyed similar tax-free benefits, indicating the alleged illicit activity could be a company-wide issue. (Neither Weisselberg nor Calamari have commented on the probes or been formally accused of wrongdoing.)
In late June, the Times reported that the DA’s office informed Trump’s lawyers that the entire Trump Organization could be charged in connection with the fringe benefits allegedly provided to Weisselberg. “If this is the way the entire organization is run, then I think we’re getting into the realm where it’s far more dangerous for Trump himself,” says Roiphe, the former assistant DA. “As long as it’s rogue actors and he can push it off on them, then he’s fine. The more pervasive it is and the more people who have high-level responsibility are included, the more likely it is that he’s in some way involved.”
The question now is whether Weisselberg, Calamari, or anyone else the DA’s office may be probing will flip on Trump. Weisselberg has so far refused to do so, but that could change if he’s indicted. “It’s one thing to be loyal to somebody, up until the point where you’re doing jail time for them,” says Roiphe. “It’s quite another when you’re facing that reality.”
New York Attorney General
The state of New York began investigating a civil fraud case against the Trump Organization for its real estate business practices in 2019. But in May of this year, the office of Attorney General Letitia James announced a serious evolution: “We have informed the Trump Organization that our investigation into the company is no longer purely civil in nature,” said spokesperson Fabien Levy. “We are now actively investigating the Trump Organization in a criminal capacity, along with the Manhattan DA.”
Collaboration between the two offices is unusual, but it makes sense considering the overlap in their probes. According to The New York Times , two assistant AGs from James’ office have joined the DA’s team, and James’ office is not conducting its own independent criminal investigation.
In addition to the Weisselberg issues, James has reportedly been investigating potential financial fraud relating to several Trump Organization properties, including the Seven Springs estate in Westchester County, New York. Trump bought the estate for $7.5 million in 1995, failed to turn it into a golf resort, and later claimed a $21 million tax break for conserving its grounds as open space. Trump is infamous for inflating the paper value of his assets, and he reportedly secured an appraisal that valued the full estate in excess of $56 million. Local authorities, by contrast, believed the entire property, Tudor-style mansion and all, was worth only $20 million, less than the deduction Trump claimed for the protected land.
James’ office is also said to be scrutinizing the Trump Tower in Chicago. One of Trump’s lenders reportedly forgave a debt of $100 million on the property in 2012, and authorities are looking into whether Trump paid the necessary taxes on the debt forgiveness. The finances of Trump Organization properties in Los Angeles (Trump National Golf Club) and New York City (40 Wall Street) also appear under the AG’s microscope.
It may seem like Trump is a sitting duck, but Roiphe, the former assistant DA, stresses the difficulties prosecutors will face. “There are a lot of these sorts of crimes that go unpunished,” she says. “There are times when you can be convinced 100 percent as a prosecutor that a crime has been committed, you can know who committed that crime, and you are incapable of bringing that case. It’s frustrating, but it’s the way it works.”
The greatest challenge is not demonstrating wrongdoing, but criminal intent. “It is extremely hard and extremely resource intensive to prove,” Roiphe adds. “There is still a chance that even if he did all of this, and orchestrated a company that was corrupt through and through, he might get away with it.”
ELECTION TAMPERING
Georgia (criminal)
In his crusade to overturn the results of the 2020 election and promote the Big Lie that Joe Biden’s victory was illegitimate, Trump turned up the pressure on Georgia election authorities. Fulton County DA Fani Willis is now investigating whether Trump pressuring Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger on a recorded phone call to “find” sufficient Trump votes to overturn the election violated state law, specifically: election fraud conspiracy, criminal solicitation of election fraud, and/or interference with elections duties.
Read letters sent by the DA announcing the investigation.
Michigan/NAACP (civil)
Voting rights activists in Michigan, joined by the NAACP, are suing Trump for conduct alleged to violate the Voting Rights Act. Trump’s Big Lie pressure campaign included lobbying Wayne County Republican officials against certifying the election totals for the jurisdiction that includes Detroit. The Voting Rights Act forbids the intimidation of voting officials. “[B]y exerting pressure on state and local officials,” the complaint reads, “defendants attempted to and did intimidate and or coerce state and local officials from aiding Plaintiffs and other residents of Detroit, Milwaukee, and other major cities with large Black populations from having their votes ‘counted properly and included in the appropriate totals of votes cast.’”
The suit seeks a declaration that Trump violated the Voting Rights Act and a restraining order forcing the former president to obtain court approval “prior to engaging in any activities related to recounts, certifications, or similar post-election activities.”
Read the complaint.
JANUARY 6th INCITEMENT
Washington, D.C., Attorney General (criminal)
The Attorney General for the District of Columbia announced a criminal investigation into the 45th president’s activities on January 6th, and is reportedly looking at bringing charges against Trump under a local statute that makes it “unlawful for a person to incite or provoke violence where there is a likelihood that such violence will ensue.” The charge reportedly carries a sentence of up to six months in jail.
U.S. Capitol Officers (civil)
Two Capitol police officers who were beaten, maced, poked with flag poles, and pinned against the doors of the Capitol have filed a civil suit against Trump for inciting the violence they endured. “As the leader of this violent mob,” their complaint reads, “Trump was in a position of extraordinary influence over his followers, who committed assault and battery“ on the officers. Conspiracy claims added to the suit allege Trump was in cahoots with the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers, violent groups whose members stormed the Capitol. “Defendant Trump conspired with the Proud Boys and others to, among other things, incite an unlawful riot on January 6 with the goal of disrupting congressional certification of President Biden’s electoral victory,” it reads. The suit seeks compensatory and punitive damages.
Read the complaint.
Members of Congress (civil)
Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) and the NAACP have filed a civil suit alleging a “violation of the Ku Klux Klan Act” — passed during Reconstruction after the Civil War to beat back violent white supremacists in the South — which forbids conspiracies “to prevent, by force, intimidation, or threat” U.S. officeholders from discharging their duties or forcing them to leave the location where those duties must be performed. Thompson and the NAACP claim that “Defendants Trump, Giulini, Proud Boys and Oath Keepers plotted, coordinated and executed a common plan to prevent Congress from discharging its official duties in certifying the results of the presidential election.” The suit seeks a declaration that Trump violated the KKK Act and an order enjoining him from future violations.
Read the complaint.
Former presidential candidate Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.) has also sued Trump for inciting the insurrection. “Trump directly incited the violence at the Capitol that followed and then watched approvingly as the building was overrun,” the complaint reads. (Swalwell also names as defendants Donald Trump Jr., Rudy Giuliani, and GOP colleague Rep. Mo Brooks of Alabama, who spoke at the rally and whom Swalwell alleges “directly incited the violence at the Capitol that followed.”)
Read the complaint.
SEX AND LIES
E. Jean Carroll (civil)
In 2019, E. Jean Carroll wrote a book claiming Trump sexually assaulted her in the mid-90s in a Bergdorf Goodman department store dressing room. Trump brushed off the accusation, claiming Carroll was “totally lying,” that he didn’t know her, and that the advice columnist and magazine journalist was “not my type.” Carroll sued for defamation. Trump got the Justice Department to stand in as his legal representation, arguing the allegedly defamatory conduct was committed as part of his official duties. Last October, a federal judge ruled the DOJ shouldn’t be standing in for Trump, writing that the president wasn’t a protected “employee” of the government under the statutes in question and that, “Even if he were such an ‘employee,’ President Trump’s allegedly defamatory statements concerning Ms. Carroll would not have been within the scope of his employment.” But the Trump DOJ took the case to federal appeals court. The Biden DOJ is now defending Trump’s claim that the alleged defamation was part of the president’s official conduct.
Carroll’s lawyer Robbie Kaplan tweeted: “The DOJ’s position is not only legally wrong, it is morally wrong since it would give federal officials free license to cover up private sexual misconduct by publicly brutalizing any woman who has the courage to come forward. Calling a woman you sexually assaulted a ‘liar,’ a ‘slut,’ or ‘not my type’ — as Donald Trump did here — is NOT the official act of an American president.” The suit seeks to force Trump “to retract any and all defamatory statements” as well as to pay compensatory and punitive damages.
Read the complaint.
Summer Zervos (civil)
Summer Zervos, a former contestant on The Apprentice , filed a suit alleging Trump defamed her in 2016 when he called her a liar after she accused him of sexual assault in 2007. Zervos was one of several women who publicly accused Trump of sexually predatory behavior prior to the 2016 election, claiming that he kissed and groped her without her consent on multiple occasions. Trump called her story “phony,” prompting the lawsuit. “Donald Trump lied again, and again, and again, and again,” the complaint reads. “In doing so, he used his national and international bully pulpit to make false factual statements to denigrate and verbally attack Ms. Zervos and the other women.”
Trump tried to block the suit, arguing that as president he was immune from legal action. The suit was hung up in the courts for the remainder of Trump’s time in office, but this March the New York State Court of Appeals ruled that it could proceed. The decision could result in Trump being forced to testify under oath. “Now as a private citizen, the defendant has no further excuse to delay justice from Ms. Zervos and we are eager to get back to the trial court and prove her claims,” said Zervos lawyer Beth Wilkinson, according to the Times .
Read the complaint.
FAMILY FORTUNE FIGHT (civil)
Mary Trump, the former president’s niece and author of a tell-all book about her uncle, was an heir to the family fortune when patriarch Fred Trump died. After The New York Times ’ 2018 expose about the trajectory of Donald Trump’s fortune and how he routinely manipulated the price of his assets, Mary realized she’d been bought out of her share of the Trump fortune unfavorably. She sued Donald and others in the family, alleging they’d carried out “a complex scheme to siphon funds away from her interests, conceal their grift, and deceive her about the true value of what she had inherited.” Mary, the daughter of Donald’s brother Fred Jr., accused Donald and her other relatives of having “willfully, egregiously, and repeatedly abused their position of trust” to rob her “in order to maximize their own profits.” The suit seeks compensatory and punitive damages.
Read the complaint.
PROFITING FROM HIS OWN INAUGURATION (civil)
The Attorney General of D.C. has sued Trump over diverting 2017 inauguration funds to Trump properties, alleging that the nonprofit inaugural committee “wasted approximately $1 million of charitable funds in overpayment” to Trump businesses that charged exorbitant rates, including $175,000 for a ballroom that usually rented for $5,000. The AG alleges “the Trump Entities … unconscionably benefited from nonprofit funds required to be used for the public good.” The suit seeks to have the ill-gotten gains from the Trump properties donated to public-serving nonprofits.
Read the complaint.
MULTI-LEVEL MARKETING (civil)
In 2018, the Trump family was hit with a class-action lawsuit from a group of anonymous Americans who claimed they were duped by Trump into joining a multi-level marketing scheme — run by a third party called ACN — which Trump was secretly paid to promote. (ACN, itself, is not being sued in this litigation.) The lawsuit alleges that Trump, his company, and his offspring executives Ivanka, Eric, and Don Jr. “operated a large and complex enterprise with a singular goal: to enrich themselves by systematically defrauding economically marginalized people looking to invest in their educations, start their own small businesses, and pursue the American Dream.” The suit asks for class-action status, which would allow others to join the litigation, and for “actual, compensatory, statutory [and] consequential damages.” It also seeks the “disgorgement of all ill gotten gains” by the Trumps.
Read the complaint.
HOTEL DEALS GONE BAD (civil)
The Trump Organization managed a 70-story, sail-shaped high-rise hotel and condo complex in Panama City from 2011 to 2018. In 2019, the investment group Ithaca Capital Partners filed a suit alleging it was fraudulently induced to buy a majority stake in the business by Trump, who’d warranted that the luxury complex was well maintained and successful as a business. In fact, the suit alleges, the Trump Organization was “grossly mismanaging its operations of the former Trump International Hotel & Tower Panama including causing intentional damage to the Hotel Amenities Units and failing to pay income taxes to the Panamanian government.” The suit seeks “not less than” $17 million in damages plus attorney fees.
Read the complaint.
Here come some indictments for Trump Organizations…to be opened momentarily.
12 min ago
Attorneys for Trump Org and Allen Weisselberg arrive for arraignment
From CNN’s Kara Scannell
Trump Organization attorneys Alan Futerfas and another lawyer just arrived for the arraignment, followed by lawyers for the company’s chief financial officer Allen Weisselberg.
Indictments are expected to be unsealed shortly, two sources familiar with the matter tell CNN.
Weisselberg surrendered to the Manhattan district attorney’s office this morning ahead of expected criminal charges against him and the company in connection with alleged tax crimes, his attorney told CNN.
Here is a 40 minute NYT recap of the 1.6.21 insurrection
NYTimes:
Day of Rage: An In-Depth Look at How a Mob Stormed the Capitol
The Trump Organization, the real estate business that catapulted Donald J. Trump to tabloid fame, television riches and ultimately the White House, was charged Thursday in a 15-year-long tax fraud scheme.
The Manhattan district attorney’s office, which has been conducting the investigation, also accused Allen H. Weisselberg, Mr. Trump’s long-serving and trusted chief financial officer, of avoiding taxes on $1.7 million in income. He faced grand larceny and other charges.
The charges were revealed at an arraignment in State Supreme Court in Manhattan for the Trump Organization and Mr. Weisselberg. The specific nature of the allegations against the company and the top executive were set to be laid out in an indictment to be unsealed after the court proceeding.
The charges against the Trump Organization and Mr. Weisselberg — whom Mr. Trump once praised for doing “whatever was necessary to protect the bottom line” — emerged from the district attorney’s sweeping inquiry into the business practices of Mr. Trump and his company and ushered in an aggressive new phase of the inquiry.
As part of that inquiry, the prosecutors in the office of the district attorney, Cyrus R. Vance Jr., had been examining whether Mr. Weisselberg failed to pay taxes on valuable benefits he and his family received from Mr. Trump, including private school tuition for at least one of his grandchildren, free apartments and leased cars.
The prosecutors, who are also working with lawyers from the office of the New York State attorney general, Letitia James, have also investigated whether the Trump Organization failed to pay payroll taxes on what should have been taxable income.
“Mr. Weisselberg intends to plead not guilty, and he will fight these charges in court,” his lawyers, Mary E. Mulligan and Bryan C. Skarlatos, said in a statement before the arraignment.
The Trump Organization also issued a statement, saying Mr. Weisselberg was being used as a “pawn in a scorched-earth attempt to harm the former president.”
“The district attorney is bringing a criminal prosecution involving employee benefits that neither the I.R.S. or any other district attorney would ever think of bringing,” the statement read. “This is not justice; this is politics.”
The broader investigation into Mr. Trump and his company’s business practices is continuing. The prosecutors have been investigating whether Mr. Trump and the Trump Organization manipulated property values to obtain loans and tax benefits, among other potential financial crimes, The New York Times has reported.
The indictment follows months of an increasing pressure campaign on Mr. Weisselberg to offer information that could help that inquiry. Prosecutors had subpoenaed Mr. Weisselberg’s personal tax returns and bank records, reviewed a raft of his financial dealings and questioned his ex-daughter-in-law — all part of an effort to gain his cooperation.
Mr. Trump was not charged. But an indictment of the company that carries his name strikes a blow to the former president just as he has resumed holding rallies. Even if Mr. Trump parlays the charges into some immediate good will from his supporters — he has denounced the investigation as political persecution — he could face the costly distraction of a trial if he attempts to mount another presidential campaign.
The charges also could strain his company’s finances and jeopardize its relationship with business partners who had stood by the Trump Organization even after the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, which prompted a backlash against the former president.
Mr. Trump won the presidency by portraying himself as a political outsider with the business acumen to shake up Washington. But the company whose name he made famous on his reality television show, “The Apprentice,” might eventually be associated as much with criminal charges as it is with the hotels and golf courses that bear his name. If the company is found guilty, it could face fines or other penalties.
Mr. Trump mentioned the investigation only in passing during a Fox News town hall appearance Wednesday. As he listed his history of legal battles, he said, “New York radical left prosecutors come after me.”
“You got to always fight,” he said. “You got to keep fighting.”
An accountant who began his career working for Mr. Trump’s father nearly a half-century ago, Mr. Weisselberg has served as the Trump Organization’s financial gatekeeper for more than two decades and recently ran the business with Mr. Trump’s adult sons while Mr. Trump was in the White House.
Famously hard-working — he once said he took “no vacations” — Mr. Weisselberg gained an unparalleled view into the inner workings of the company and its bare-knuckled brawls with business partners. Mr. Weisselberg “knows of every dime that leaves the building,” Corey Lewandowski, a former Trump campaign official, wrote in the book he co-authored, “Let Trump Be Trump.”
Now that he faces charges, Mr. Weisselberg, who is 73 years old, still could cooperate with the prosecutors. If he ultimately pleads guilty and strikes a deal, he could do considerable damage to Mr. Trump, who for decades has depended on his unflinching loyalty, once declaring with “100 percent” certainty that Mr. Weisselberg had not betrayed him.
The two started working together closely in the late 1970s, with Mr. Weisselberg putting in time on nights and weekends to handle projects for Mr. Trump, the ambitious son of his boss, Fred Trump. Mr. Weisselberg said in a 2015 deposition that he had been helping with Mr. Trump’s tax returns since at least the 1990s, when Mr. Trump made him the organization’s chief financial officer.
Mr. Weisselberg has remained steadfastly loyal to the company even as his own name surfaced during congressional and federal investigations into Mr. Trump. While Mr. Weisselberg was never a target of those investigations, he has long been a central focus of the district attorney’s inquiry, which began in August 2018.
As the prosecutors have zeroed in on the benefits he and his family received from Mr. Trump, they have examined tens of thousands of dollars in private school tuition for one of Mr. Weisselberg’s grandchildren, a rent-free apartment on the Upper West Side of Manhattan and leased Mercedes-Benz vehicles. Mr. Weisselberg’s wife also received her own leased Mercedes.
Mr. Weisselberg was not the only senior company executive to receive similar perks. Until 2018, when the company reined in the benefits, it provided a number of employees with Mercedes-Benzes.
Those types of benefits are generally taxable, though there are exceptions, and the tax rules can be murky.
Even if Mr. Weisselberg declines to cooperate, the charges represent a major milestone for Mr. Vance, a Democrat who twice beat Mr. Trump at the U.S. Supreme Court in a battle to obtain the former president’s tax records. That victory reinvigorated the investigation, touching off months of grand jury subpoenas and witness testimony.
Of all the investigations that have loomed over Mr. Trump and his inner circle in the past few years — two impeachments, one special counsel inquiry into ties with Russia and criminal charges against a half dozen former aides — only Mr. Vance’s case has reached into the top rungs of the Trump Organization and taken aim at the company itself.
Still, the stakes remain high for Mr. Vance. Although he is not seeking re-election after three terms, the district attorney has faced criticism in the past for treading lightly with other powerful defendants. The Trump investigation will arguably be the most enduring part of his legacy.
When Mr. Vance’s office opened its broader investigation, it began with an examination of hush-money payments made during the 2016 presidential campaign to two women who said they had affairs with Mr. Trump. In particular, the prosecutors scrutinized how the company accounted for $420,000 it gave Michael D. Cohen, Mr. Trump’s former personal lawyer, partly as reimbursement for money he paid to buy the silence of one of the women, Stormy Daniels, a pornographic film actress who said she had an affair with Mr. Trump.
Mr. Cohen is cooperating with Mr. Vance’s investigation, which grew out of 2018 federal charges against him.
In congressional testimony two years ago, Mr. Cohen pinned blame on Mr. Weisselberg, saying that he had helped devise a strategy to mask the Trump Organization’s reimbursements to Mr. Cohen.
In his final days in office, Mr. Trump was said to have considered pardoning Mr. Weisselberg, but ultimately did not do so. Federal prosecutors never accused Mr. Weisselberg of wrongdoing.
For years, Mr. Weisselberg kept a low profile at the Trump Organization, often eclipsed by his bombastic boss. One of Mr. Weisselberg’s rare moments in the spotlight came during a cameo as a judge on “The Apprentice,” in which he discussed dog grooming.
Mr. Weisselberg’s family has also long been entwined with Mr. Trump. One of Mr. Weisselberg’s sons, Barry, has been the manager of Trump Wollman Rink in Central Park, and another son, Jack, works at Ladder Capital, one of Mr. Trump’s biggest lenders.
Mr. Vance’s office has subpoenaed Ladder Capital and spoken to some of its employees about the lending process, according to people with knowledge of the matter. There has been no indication that prosecutors suspect either of Mr. Weisselberg’s sons of wrongdoing.
Prosecutors have also questioned Mr. Weisselberg’s former daughter-in-law, Jennifer Weisselberg, who is in the midst of a contentious court battle with her ex-husband, Barry, over custody of their children.
Ms. Weisselberg has said that prosecutors had asked her about the tuition payments as well as gifts Barry Weisselberg received from Mr. Trump, including an apartment on Central Park South and several cars that were leased for him.
Six Months Since the January 6th Attack on the Capitol
Tuesday, July 6th, marks six months since the January 6th attack on the U.S. Capitol that disrupted a Joint Session of the U.S. Congress in the process of affirming the presidential election results. As estimated by the Architect of the Capitol, the attack caused approximately $1.5 million worth of damage to the U.S. Capitol building.
Under the continued leadership of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia and the FBI’s Washington Field Office, the investigation and prosecution of those responsible for the attack continues to move forward at an unprecedented speed and scale. The Department of Justice’s resolve to hold accountable those who committed crimes on January 6th has not, and will not, wane.
Based on the public court documents, below is a snapshot of the investigation as of Tuesday, July 6th. Complete versions of the public court documents used to compile these statistics are available on the Capitol Breach Investigation Resource Page at Capitol Breach Cases | USAO-DC | Department of Justice.
Arrests made: Over 535 defendants have been arrested in nearly all 50 states (this includes those charged in both District and Superior Court).
- This works out to be an average of about three defendants arrested every single day, including weekends, since January 6th.
Criminal charges:
- At least 165 defendants have been charged with assaulting, resisting, or impeding officers or employees, including over 50 individuals who have been charged with using a deadly or dangerous weapon or causing serious bodily injury to an officer.
- Approximately 140 police officers were assaulted January 6th at the Capitol including about 80 U.S. Capitol Police and about 60 from the Metropolitan Police Department.
- Approximately six individuals have been arrested on a series of charges that relate to assaulting a member of the media, or destroying their equipment, on January 6th.
- Almost 495 defendants have been charged with entering or remaining in a restricted federal building or grounds.
- Over 55 defendants have been charged with entering a restricted area with a dangerous or deadly weapon.
- Over 35 defendants have been charged with destruction of government property, and almost 30 defendants have been charged with theft of government property.
- Nearly 235 defendants have been charged with corruptly obstructing, influencing, or impeding an official proceeding, or attempting to do so.
- Approximately 40 defendants have been charged with conspiracy, either: (a) conspiracy to obstruct a congressional proceeding, (b) conspiracy to obstruct law enforcement during a civil disorder, © conspiracy to injure an officer, or (d) some combination of the three.
Pleas:
- Approximately ten individuals have pleaded guilty to a variety of federal charges, from misdemeanors to felony obstruction, many of whom will face incarceration at sentencing.
Public Assistance :
- Citizens from around the country have provided more than 200,000 digital media tips, and the FBI continues to request the public’s assistance in identifying individuals sought in connection to the January 6th attack.
- In particular, the FBI is currently seeking the public’s assistance in identifying more than 300 individuals believed to have committed violent acts on the Capitol grounds, including over 200 who assaulted police officers.
- Additionally, the FBI has released 11 new videos of suspects in violent assaults on federal officers on January 6th and is seeking the public’s help to identify them. For images and video of the attackers, please visit https://www.fbi.gov/wanted/capitol-violence. Anyone with tips can call 1-800-CALL-FBI (800-225-5324) or visit tips.fbi.gov.
Updated July 6, 2021
Yes, what is the timing on this Russian Hack to the RNC…?
They plotted the insurrection with legos. Is nothing sacred?
On the second night of his visit to Kyiv, Erik Prince had a dinner date on his agenda. A few of his Ukrainian associates had arranged to meet the American billionaire at the Vodka Grill that evening, Feb. 23, 2020. The choice of venue seemed unusual. The Vodka Grill, a since-defunct nightclub next to a KFC franchise in a rough part of town, rarely saw patrons as powerful as Prince.
As the party got seated inside a private karaoke room on the second floor, Igor Novikov, who was then a top adviser to Ukraine’s President, remembers feeling a little nervous. He had done some reading about Blackwater, the private military company Prince had founded in 1997, and he knew about the massacre its troops had perpetrated during the U.S. war in Iraq. Coming face to face that night with the world’s most prominent soldier of fortune, Novikov remembers thinking: “What does this guy want from us?”
It soon became clear that Prince wanted a lot from Ukraine. According to interviews with close associates and confidential documents detailing his ambitions, Prince hoped to hire Ukraine’s combat veterans into a private military company. Prince also wanted a big piece of Ukraine’s military-industrial complex, including factories that make engines for fighter jets and helicopters. His full plan, dated June 2020 and obtained exclusively by TIME this spring, includes a “roadmap” for the creation of a “vertically integrated aviation defense consortium” that could bring $10 billion in revenues and investment.
The audacity of the proposal fit with Prince’s record as a businessman. For nearly a quarter century, the former Navy SEAL has been a pioneer in the private military industry, raising armies in the Middle East and Africa, training commandos at his base in North Carolina and deploying security forces around the world for the State Department and the CIA. Under the Trump Administration, Prince’s family—a powerful clan of right-wing Republican donors from Michigan—saw their influence rise. Prince’s sister, Betsy DeVos, was appointed Secretary of Education, while Prince himself leveraged contacts in the White House to chase major deals around the world.
The ones he pursued in Ukraine were among the most ambitious of his long career. But with Trump out of office, the Ukrainian government has slowed the process and invited more competition for the assets Prince coveted. “Had it been another four years of Trump, Erik would probably be closing the deal,” says Novikov, one of its lead Ukrainian negotiators.
This account of Prince’s ambitions in Ukraine is based on interviews with seven sources, including current and former U.S. and Ukrainian officials as well as people who worked directly with Prince to try to realize his aspirations in Ukraine. Those business plans, which have not been previously reported, were confirmed by four of the sources on both sides of the negotiations, all of whom recalled meeting in person with Prince last year to discuss them. The documents describe a series of ventures that would give Prince a pivotal role in Ukraine’s military industry and its ongoing conflict with Russia, which has taken more than 14,000 lives since it began seven years ago.
The documents detail several previously unreported ventures that Prince and his partners wanted the Ukrainian government to approve . One proposal would create a new private military company that would draw personnel from among the veterans of the ongoing war in eastern Ukraine. Another deal would build a new munitions factory in Ukraine, while a third would consolidate Ukraine’s leading aviation and aerospace firms into a consortium that could compete with “the likes of Boeing and Airbus.”
At least one of Prince’s offers to Ukraine appeared to be in line with U.S. geopolitical interests. As the Wall Street Journal first reported in Nov. 2019, Prince has been competing against a Chinese firm to buy a Ukrainian factory called Motor Sich, which produces advanced aircraft engines. China sought those engines to develop its air force. The U.S., concerned about the rapid growth of the Chinese military, has long urged Ukraine not to complete the sale. Prince emerged as the American alternative, offering to save the factory from China’s clutches.
But the Ukrainians had serious concerns about working with Prince, according to three people involved in the negotiations. Prince’s choice of allies in Kyiv—two men with ties to Russia—raised particular alarm. His Ukrainian business partner is Andriy Artemenko, who made headlines in 2017 by offering the Trump Administration a “peace plan” for the war in Ukraine that envisioned ways for the U.S. to lift sanctions against Russia. Another Prince ally in Kyiv was Andriy Derkach, a Ukrainian legislator whom the U.S. has accused of being an “active Russian agent.” Both Artemenko and Derkach worked to advance Prince’s business ventures in Ukraine last year.
“We had to wonder: Is this the best sort of partnership we can get from the Americans? This group of shady characters working for a close ally of Trump?” says Novikov, the former aide to Ukraine’s president. “It felt like the worst America had to offer.” Those concerns only heightened when, at a pivotal moment in negotiations, one of Prince’s associates proferred in writing a “participation offer” that Novikov considered an attempted bribe.
As the deals ran into resistance from the government in Ukraine, Prince’s allies faced bigger problems in New York City, where both Artemenko and Derkach are now under criminal investigation. The U.S. Attorney in the Eastern District of New York declined to comment on the investigation, which is reportedly focused on whether the two men were involved in a suspected Russian plot to sway the 2020 presidential election.
Prince does not appear to be a focus of that investigation. But Artemenko tells TIME that federal investigators have questioned him about his relationship with Prince. In interviews with TIME in April and May, both Derkach and Artemenko denied wrongdoing and described the investigation as part of a political witch hunt against Trump’s allies. Prince did not respond to numerous requests for comment, including a detailed list of questions about the documents outlining his proposals for Ukraine.
Among the guests at the Vodka Grill was Prince’s business partner, Artemenko, a tall, clean-shaven lobbyist in his early 50s. Artemenko says he has worked with Prince in the air-cargo industry for at least six years, transporting everything from weapons to vaccines around the world. Born and raised in Kyiv, he now resides mostly in the Washington area. In text messages obtained by TIME, he refers to Prince as “the boss.”
Their relationship began not long after Prince emerged from the Blackwater scandal of 2007. That fall, a group of Prince’s soldiers-for-hire shot up a crowded square in Baghdad, killing 17 civilians and wounding 20 others. Several of the gunmen were sentenced to decades in U.S. prisons for their roles in the massacre. (Trump pardoned four of them in his final weeks in office.) Prince’s testimony in Congress about the incident drove a national debate about the privatization of war, turning him, at the age of 38, into the defiant face of the modern-day mercenary.
In the wake of those killings, Blackwater lost a $1 billion contract to guard U.S. diplomats and officials in Iraq. But the company rebranded and continued to thrive. The Obama Administration granted major contracts to Prince’s firm to provide security in conflict zones. Prince’s interests expanded well beyond the military sector. He traded oil and minerals in Africa. He assembled a private army for his friend, the crown prince of Abu Dhabi. He prepared a force in Somalia to combat pirates in the Gulf of Aden. He helped train a hit squad for the CIA. When Trump took office, Prince called on the new Administration to privatize the war effort in Afghanistan, publicly pitching a plan that would let contractors handle many of the U.S. military’s functions.
Over the years, one of Prince’s most reliable lines of business has been wartime logistics: moving people and supplies into areas of conflict. Starting in 2006, the aviation arm of Blackwater air-dropped food and weapons for U.S. troops on the front lines in Afghanistan. “If you need to transport stuff in and out of a war zone, you’re not going to call UPS,” says a person familiar with Prince’s business operations. “His company does that.”
After working as a cargo broker in the 2000s, Artemenko had founded his own transport company in 2010, AirTrans LLC, which frequently flew cargo for Prince’s operation, he tells TIME. In 2015, Artemenko says, AirTrans officially became a part of Prince’s company, Frontier Resource Group.
Around that time, Artemenko says, the partners began discussing a venture in Ukraine’s weapons industry. Russia and Ukraine had been at war since Moscow annexed Crimea in 2014, leading the one-time allies to stop selling weapons to each other. The hardware Russia needed most were engines for its helicopters and fighter jets, many of which are still produced at Soviet-era plants in eastern Ukraine.
Apart from the potential to earn billions of dollars in profit, Artemenko says he saw these factories as a way to broker an end to the war in Ukraine. “The Russians need the full complex of aviation technology, starting with the engines,” he says. “This is a reason to force them to the negotiating table and make a peace deal. We can say: ‘OK, you need these spare parts, engines and everything else from Ukraine? Fine, but we want a deal for [eastern Ukraine], and then we want an agreement on Crimea.’”
The idea did not get much traction. Ukrainian officials recoiled at the notion of lifting their arms embargo against Russia in the middle of a war. Another one of Artemenko’s peace plans gained notoriety in 2017, when a draft of it reportedly landed on the desk of Michael Flynn, Trump’s first national security adviser. That plan, like the first, went nowhere.
Around the same time, Prince held a meeting on an island in the Seychelles with Kirill Dmitriev, a Russian official. The Washington Post reported their aim was to create a “back channel” from the Kremlin to the White House, an allegation both men denied. Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report published in April 2019 devoted a few pages to the Seychelles meeting. According to the report, Prince told his Russian interlocutor that he was “looking forward to a new era of cooperation and conflict resolution.”
By the time Prince set his sights on the Ukrainian military industry, the nation’s conflict with Russia had settled into a kind of stalemate, with sporadic shelling and sniper fire along the front lines. Peace talks had stalled, and Ukraine’s government was increasingly desperate for a way out of the impasse.
The Trump Administration did little to help. Trump’s priority in Ukraine was not to make peace; it was to advance his own political fortunes. Amid his campaign for re-election, Trump asked Ukraine to investigate his opponent, Joe Biden, and held up military aid to Ukraine as a means of pressure. The campaign of coercion caused a breakdown in U.S.-Ukrainian relations.
Some advisers to President Volodymyr Zelensky saw Prince as a way to repair the damage. They wanted him to help arrange a meeting with someone in Trump’s inner circle, ideally Jared Kushner, the President’s son-in-law, says Novikov, who was Ukraine’s liaison to the Americans at the time.
Prince was unwilling to make that connection, says a person familiar with his thinking on the matter. “Erik made it very clear that he didn’t have the keys to Trump’s White House, and that he didn’t want to play that game.”
As an alternative, Prince’s team offered to line up an American lobbyist for Ukraine named Joseph Schmitz. A former Blackwater executive, Schmitz had been a foreign-policy adviser to the Trump campaign in 2016 and had contacts in the Administration. He was ready to represent Ukraine for a fee of $500,000 plus expenses, according to a proposed lobbying agreement obtained by TIME. (Schmitz did not respond to emails seeking comment.) Ukrainian officials received that agreement early last year from Artemenko’s lobbying firm but did not sign it.
Prince had sought some local assistance of his own. Among the people he met with in Kyiv was Derkach, the Ukrainian member of parliament whom the U.S. later accused of being a Russian agent .
Derkach, who confirmed to TIME that the meeting took place, was well positioned to help Prince understand the terrain. He had worked in Ukraine’s aviation sector after graduating from an elite university for spies in Moscow, the Dzerzhinsky Higher School of the KGB. In the early 2010s, when Derkach served as an adviser to Ukraine’s prime minister, one of his tasks had been to develop the aviation and machine-building sectors of the nation’s economy.
Derkach says he was intrigued by Prince’s vision for these industries. One major advantage Prince brought to the table was his list of contacts in the developing world. He had worked for many years in the Middle East and Africa, dealing with warlords and autocrats who could become new clients for Ukrainian weapons and aircraft. The main flaw in the plan, Derkach says, was the cooperation it required from Ukraine’s local factory bosses and oligarchs , who control much of the military-industrial complex.
“That’s not so much an issue with Erik,” he says. “It’s a problem of corruption in Ukraine, where you have the factory directors who do not want to sign documents and give up power.” Derkach recalled telling Prince: “‘You’ve worked everywhere. But Ukraine is special. It’s very hard to get any traction here. You have to gather a serious team of people who will move the process along.’”
Derkach says he did not join this team, and declines to say whether he was ever paid for the advice he gave Prince. But after their meeting in Kyiv, Derkach began urging Ukrainian authorities to support the deal Prince wanted. In March 2020, he invited Novikov, the presidential adviser, to a meeting to discuss the plans. “Derkach said, ‘We already have everyone on board, and still the deal is stalling,’” Novikov recalls. Derkach wanted to know who in the President’s administration was standing in Prince’s way. “That was the only thing he wanted to discuss with me,” Novikov says.
In the early summer of 2020 , Ukraine moved to cement its partnership with Prince, whose intentions had become far more detailed and ambitious. In one message to Ukrainian officials, Artemenko provided Prince’s passport information along with a summary of their agenda for an upcoming trip. In a follow-up message, he noted Prince would be in Kyiv for several days during the week of June 15, 2020, and requested meetings with senior officials in the defense and intelligence agencies, adding cryptically: “There will be no official calls to government officials, as this visit is strictly private and apolitical.”
Arriving in Kyiv on a chartered flight from Minsk, Prince held a meeting that week with Zelensky’s chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, according to messages obtained by TIME between the people who arranged Prince’s travels. (Yermak confirmed to TIME that the meeting took place but declined to discuss it in detail.)
Things appeared to move quickly from there. The President’s office put Prince in touch with a law firm in Kyiv that frequently works for the Ukrainian government. The firm prepared a legal framework for completing the deal Prince wanted. The work was complex, especially when it came to acquiring Motor Sich, says the person familiar with Prince’s thinking.
The factory had been privatized in the 1990s, during Ukraine’s chaotic transition to capitalism. In 2016 and 2017, Chinese investors bought up shares in the factory from its private owners, paying an estimated $700 million for control of Motor Sich. They were not expected to give it up without a fight in the courts. So the lawyers had to find legal grounds for Ukraine to take control of the asset before re-selling it to a new investor. Their plan relied on a regulatory snag: Ukraine’s anti-trust agency had not granted approval to the Chinese investment. “It’s this weird situation where the Chinese bought the asset, never received approval for it, and it’s basically standing still,” says the person familiar with Prince’s thinking. That could allow the Ukrainian government to say: “‘We’re going to take control of the asset because it’s basically not being properly managed,’” the person says. “In a nutshell, that’s the argument.”
In the weeks after Prince’s visit, his associates prepared two versions of a detailed business plan and sent them to officials in Zelensky’s office. The first, dated June 23, 2020, stated that the acquisition of Motor Sich would require $50 million to purchase a minority stake, and another $950 million to buy 76% of the factory . The money was meant to come from Windward Capital, an investment vehicle that Prince has reportedly used in the past.
Another business plan for Ukraine’s military industry, dated June 29, 2020, provided new details and incentives for the government to participate. It described a planned takeover of Antonov, the state-owned airplane manufacturer, by replacing its CEO with an executive from Artemenko’s company. The proposal also called for an “ultimatum” to be issued to the Chinese investors in Motor Sich, who would be forced to either accept an “immediate sale” or face the “loss of value,” the plan stated. “If Chinese remain uncooperative,” the Ukrainian government should take over the factory and transfer control to new investors, the document says.
Another element of the business plan described a partnership between Ukraine’s main intelligence service and Lancaster 6, a private military company that has previously been involved with Prince’s deals in Africa and the Middle East. This partnership, which required approval from Ukraine’s parliament, would build a “state-of-the-art training center” and a “specialized services enterprise”—industry jargon for a private military operation—that would be involved in Ukraine’s “strategic planning, logistics, risk management, security forces training and consulting concerning security risks,” according to the plan. (The head of Lancaster 6, a longtime Prince associate named Christiaan Durrant, told TIME he was not aware of any such documents and asked for a copy; after being sent one, he stopped responding.)
Three of the projects described in the documents also include a “participation offer,” or a cut of the yearly profits. The participation offers listed in the document would be worth a total of around $35 million per year if the plan were to be executed. (The documents do not make clear who would get this money or why.) Novikov, who negotiated with Prince and studied the plan closely while serving as a presidential adviser, says he understood this as a proposal for kickbacks to government officials. “It looked like a bribe,” he says.
Paul Pelletier, a former U.S. federal prosecutor, agreed that the reference to “participation offers” looks suspicious. It would be likely to cause “alarm bells,” he says, at the Justice Department, where Pelletier served for years as a senior official overseeing foreign bribery cases. “On its face, the terms suggest some sort of kickback payments to government contracting officials—a definite no-no,” says Pelletier, who reviewed the document at TIME’s request. “No money or offers of money can flow to government officials, period.”
Artemenko insists that he and Prince never acted corruptly in their dealings, in Ukraine or elsewhere. “We never paid a bribe at the table,” he tells TIME. “We don’t want to do anything wrong. Only the transparent and legal way.” (Asked directly about the purpose of the participation offers, Artemenko’s lawyer, Anthony Capozzolo, declined to comment.)
Prince’s lawyer, Matthew Schwartz, did not respond to a detailed list of questions from TIME, including specific questions about the participation offers and the allegation that they referred to kickbacks.
As Trump’s chances in the presidential race began to look less certain in the fall of 2020, so did the prospects for Prince and his contacts in Ukraine.
In September, the U.S. imposed sanctions against Derkach, accusing him of being an “active Russian agent” involved in a plot to help Trump win a second term. About a month later, four FBI agents showed up at Artemenko’s home in the Washington area, Artemenko recalls. They wanted to know about his work in Ukraine, and his relationships with Prince, Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani and others. “They asked me about my relationship with Erik, how we met, where we met,” Artemenko says. “Normal questions.”
Meanwhile, the dilemma with Motor Sich has only gotten more complex. The Chinese investors in the factory filed a $3.5 billion claim in December 2020 at an international court of arbitration, claiming that Ukraine’s decision to block the sale was illegal. The Ukrainian government responded by imposing sanctions against the Chinese investors, one of whom called the move “an abuse of state power and the suppression of normal business activity.”
Under the Biden Administration, the U.S. does not seem likely to throw its weight behind Prince’s projects in Ukraine. “The U.S. has not been very pro-Erik,” says the person familiar with his thinking. In a statement to TIME, a State Department spokesperson said the U.S. supports Ukraine’s efforts to block the sale of Motor Sich to the Chinese firm, but avoided taking a position on who should own the factory or saying anything about Prince.
That leaves the status of Prince’s plans for Ukraine unclear. Yermak, the presidential chief of staff, says the government intends to nationalize Motor Sich and keep it under state control. Private investors, including Prince and his partners, would be welcome to bid on a stake in the factory through a competitive tender, Yermak told TIME in an interview in April. “We are interested in working with all our partners,” he says. “We are interested in there being fairness.”
At that time, Prince’s business partner said the two were still interested in bidding for the factory. “We are ready to show the money and explain the plan,” Artemenko says.
Tucker Carlson was talking to U.S.-based Kremlin intermediaries about setting up an interview with Vladimir Putin shortly before the Fox News host accused the National Security Agency of spying on him, sources familiar with the conversations tell Axios.
Why it matters: Those sources said U.S. government officials learned about Carlson’s efforts to secure the Putin interview. Carlson learned that the government was aware of his outreach — and that’s the basis of his extraordinary accusation, followed by a rare public denial by the NSA that he had been targeted.
- Axios has not confirmed whether any communications from Carlson have been intercepted, and if so, why.
The big picture: Carlson’s charges instantly became a cause célèbre on the right, which feasted on the allegation that one of America’s most prominent conservatives might have been monitored by the U.S. intelligence community.
The backstory: Carlson told his roughly 3 million viewers on June 28 that the day before, he had heard “from a whistleblower within the U.S. government who reached out to warn us that the NSA … is monitoring our electronic communications and is planning to leak them in an attempt to take this show off the air.”
- Carlson said his source, “who is in a position to know, repeated back to us information about a story that we are working on that could have only come directly from my texts and emails.”
- “It’s illegal for the NSA to spy on American citizens,” Carlson added. “Things like that should not happen in America. But unfortunately, they do happen. And in this case, they did happen.”
- The NSA said in a tweet the next night, as Carlson’s show went on the air, that his “allegation is untrue.”
- “Tucker Carlson has never been an intelligence target of the Agency and the NSA has never had any plans to try to take his program off the air,” the statement said.
A Fox News spokesperson gave this response to our reporting: “We support any of our hosts pursuing interviews and stories free of government interference.”
- And Carlson gave this statement: "As I’ve said repeatedly, because it’s true, the NSA read my emails, and then leaked their contents. That’s an outrage, as well as illegal.”
It is unclear why Carlson, or his source, would think this outreach could be the basis for NSA surveillance or a motive to have his show canceled.
- Journalists routinely reach out to world leaders — including the leaders of countries that are not allied with the U.S. — to request interviews. And it’s not unusual to first reach out through unofficial intermediaries rather than through the leaders’ official press offices.
- Numerous American journalists have interviewed Putin in recent years, and none have faced professional repercussions. Quite the contrary: Chris Wallace earned Fox News its first Emmy nomination for his 2018 Putin interview.
On Wednesday, Carlson told Maria Bartiromo on Fox Business that only his executive producer knew about the communications in question and that he didn’t mention it to anybody else, including his wife.
- But, of course, the recipients of Carlson’s texts and emails also knew about their content. And we don’t know how widely they shared this information.
Between the lines: The NSA’s public statement didn’t directly deny that any Carlson communications had been swept up by the agency.
- Axios submitted a request for comment to the NSA on Wednesday, asking whether the agency would also be willing to categorically deny that the NSA intercepted any of Carlson’s communications in the context of monitoring somebody he was talking to in his efforts to set up an interview with Putin.
- An NSA spokesperson declined to comment and referred Axios back to the agency’s earlier, carefully worded, statement. In other words, the NSA is denying the targeting of Carlson but is not denying that his communications were incidentally collected.
What’s next: Experts say there are several plausible scenarios — including legal scenarios — that could apply.
- The first — and least likely — scenario is that the U.S. government submitted a request to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to monitor Carlson to protect national security.
- A more plausible scenario is that one of the people Carlson was talking to as an intermediary to help him get the Putin interview was under surveillance as a foreign agent.
- In that scenario, Carlson’s emails or text messages could have been incidentally collected as part of monitoring this person, but Carlson’s identity would have been masked in any intelligence reports.
- In order to know that the texts and emails were Carlson’s, a U.S. government official would likely have to request his identity be unmasked, something that’s only permitted if the unmasking is necessary to understand the intelligence.
In a third scenario, interceptions might not have involved Carlson’s communications. The U.S. government routinely monitors the communications of people in Putin’s orbit, who may have been discussing the details of Carlson’s request for an interview.
- But under this scenario, too, Carlson’s identity would have been masked in reports as part of his protections as a U.S. citizen, and unmasking would only be permitted if a U.S. government official requested that his identity be unmasked in order to understand the intelligence. And it’s not clear why that would be necessary here.
The intrigue: Two sources familiar with Carlson’s communications said his two Kremlin intermediaries live in the United States, but the sources could not confirm whether both are American citizens or whether both were on U.S. soil at the time they communicated with Carlson.
- This is relevant because if one of them was a foreign national and on foreign soil during the communications, the U.S. government wouldn’t necessarily have had to seek approval to monitor their communications.
DALLAS —White nationalist and Unite the Right attendee Nicholas Fuentes, de facto leader of the ultra-far-right “groyper” movement, has announced that he plans to attending a Conservative Political Action Conference gathering this weekend in Dallas, although he has not been welcomed at previous CPAC events.
A years-long feud between Fuentes and CPAC organizers appeared to escalate on Wednesday after Fuentes’ declaration.
“I’m going to CPAC in Dallas on Saturday,” he tweeted to his loyal “groyper army,” many of whom responded with excitement. “Well, most likely, I’ll be getting physically removed from CPAC in Dallas on Saturday, but you can come watch if you want,” he added.
“I will be there! Can’t wait!” one follower responded to Fuentes’ tweet. Another wrote, “groyper swarm incoming.” In other online forums reviewed by Salon, many of Fuentes’ followers posted plans to attend CPAC and partake in a “White Boy Summer” meetup in the Dallas-Fort Worth area.
Since 2019, Fuentes has made a point of showing up at CPAC gatherings, likely to create friction and push the bounds of acceptable rhetoric at the American Conservative Union’s events, at times making participants and organizers distinctly uncomfortable.
This year will apparently be no different. At CPAC gatherings both last year and this year, Fuentes has staged his own competing event, dubbed the America First Political Action Conference (AFPAC), designed to make the more “mainstream” conservatives of CPAC appear to be RINOs or “cucks.”
During the CPAC convention in Florida earlier in 2021, Fuentes attempted to enter the event along with a group of 25 or so fellow white nationalists. They were denied entry.
Fuentes didn’t return a Salon request for comment on this story.
Jared Holt, a resident fellow at Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab and a former reporter for Right Wing Watch, discussed the fraught relationship between Fuentes and CPAC in an interview with Salon this week. “Nick Fuentes and his followers seem to only go to those conferences to antagonize other participants,” Hold said in a phone interview. “It creates situations that have resulted in them being kicked out of the conference. I imagine if they have similar plans in Dallas … their time inside the conference will be short-lived.”
Holt added that Fuentes and the “groypers” see CPAC as a way to “boost their own visibility” and attempt to “siphon off” attendees from more mainstream conservative groups.
More mainstream Republican and conservative pundits, including fervent Donald Trump supporters, generally want nothing to do with Fuentes’ overtly racist rhetoric, while he derides them as “shills.” Some degree of confrontation is more than likely this weekend in Dallas, where Trump himself will deliver the keynote address on Sunday afternoon.
When somebody shows you who they are, believe them.
Former President Trump on Sunday said he “became worse” after he was impeached by the House of Representatives twice during his four years in office.
Trump, during a speech at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), compared calls for his impeachment to calls for former Attorney General William Barr’s impeachment.
Two ethics groups in October called on the House to begin impeachment proceedings against Barr, arguing that he used his position for political reasons to help Trump.
Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.), who sits on the House Judiciary Committee, called for Barr to be impeached last June, alleging that he was not following the rule of law.
Trump, during his speech to a crowd of Republican supporters in Dallas, said Barr “became a different man” following the calls for his impeachment, while the former president “didn’t become different.”
“He became a different man when the Democrats viciously stated that they wanted to impeach him. They went wild. We want to impeach him. We’re gonna impeach Bill Barr. We’re gonna impeach him. He became different. I understand that. I didn’t become different. I got impeached twice. I became worse,” Trump said, garnering applause from the crowd.
“I became worse,” he emphasized.
Trump was impeached by the lower chamber twice during his four-year tenure in the White House, first in December 2019 and then again in January 2021, making him the first president in U.S. history to be impeached twice.
The House first impeached the former president on two articles, abuse of power and obstruction of Congress, in connection with his dealings with Ukraine.
In the final days of his presidency, he was impeached again, that time for incitement of an insurrection, following the deadly Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.
He was acquitted on all charges by the Senate.
Trump, following his second acquittal in February 2021, said the impeachment effort was “yet another phase of the greatest witch hunt in the history of our Country.”
“It is a sad commentary on our times that one political party in America is given a free pass to denigrate the rule of law, defame law enforcement, cheer mobs, excuse rioters, and transform justice into a tool of political vengeance, and persecute, blacklist, cancel and suppress all people and viewpoints with whom or which they disagree,” Trump wrote in a statement.
“I always have, and always will, be a champion for the unwavering rule of law, the heroes of law enforcement, and the right of Americans to peacefully and honorably debate the issues of the day without malice and without hate,” he added.
During his speech at CPAC, the former president also opined on the surge of migrants at the border, protecting the Second Amendment and the lawsuit he recently filed against Big Tech companies.
He did not reveal if he will wage another bid for the presidency in 2024, but he did vow to take back control of the House, Senate and the White House.
A lot of people are staring at this new info about Trump ranting about Kavanaugh and wondering just what he means…
Former President Donald Trump, in a book out Tuesday by Michael Wolff, says he is “very disappointed” in votes by Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, his own hard-won nominee, and that he “hasn’t had the courage you need to be a great justice.”
Driving the news: “There were so many others I could have appointed, and everyone wanted me to,” Trump told Wolff in an interview for the cheekily titled “Landslide.”
- "Where would he be without me? I saved his life. He wouldn’t even be in a law firm. Who would have had him? Nobody. Totally disgraced. Only I saved him."
Between the lines: After the election, as Axios’ Jonathan Swan reported in his “Off the Rails” series, Trump saved his worst venom for people who he believed owed him because he got them their jobs.
- He would rant endlessly about the treachery of Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, reminding people of how he shot up in the primary polls after Trump endorsed him.
- Over lunches in the private dining room adjoining the Oval Office, Trump used to reminisce about how he saved Kavanaugh by sticking by him.
- For Kavanaugh to not do Trump’s bidding on the matter of ultimate importance — overturning the election — was, in Trump’s mind, a betrayal of the highest order.
Wolff writes that Trump feels betrayed by all three justices he put on the court, including Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett, but “reserved particular bile for Kavanaugh.”
- Recalling the brutal confirmation fight , Trump said: “Practically every senator called me … and said, ‘Cut him loose, sir, cut him loose. He’s killing us, Kavanaugh.’ … I said, ‘I can’t do that.’”
- "I had plenty of time to pick somebody else," Trump continued. “I went through that thing and fought like hell for Kavanaugh — and I saved his life, and I saved his career. At great expense to myself … okay? I fought for that guy and kept him.”
"I don’t want anything … but I am very disappointed in him, in his rulings," Trump said.
- "I can’t even believe what’s happening. I’m very disappointed in Kavanaugh. I just told you something I haven’t told a lot of people. In retrospect, he just hasn’t had the courage you need to be a great justice. I’m basing this on more than just the election."
Wolff gives an entertaining account of what it was like for the book authors who were given Trump interviews at Mar-a-Lago:
It’s called the Living Room, but it’s in fact the Mar-a-Lago lobby, a vaulted-ceiling rococo grand entrance, part hunting lodge, part Renaissance palazzo. But it is really the throne room. … He sits, in regulation dark suit and shiny baby-blue or fire-red tie, on a low chair in the center of the room, his legs almost daintily curled to the side, seeing a lineup of supplicants or chatting on the phone, all public conversations.
And why would Trump talk to Wolff, who wrote two earlier bestsellers with devastating accounts of Trump dysfunction?
- "The fact that he was talking to me might only reasonably be explained by his absolute belief that his voice alone has reality-altering powers," Wolff writes.
- Trump told Wolff: “I don’t blame you. I blame my people.”
