Done a corruption?

[GreyhoundFan]

What a lovely woman /sarcasm "Sex, loud guitars and drinking in the courthouse: A Kentucky judge could face impeachment for misconduct charges"

Spoiler

A Kentucky judge is facing potential removal from office after a judicial watchdog agency charged her with a buffet of misconduct, ranging from allowing alcohol and a loud guitar in the office to having sex with her staff in the courthouse — a scandal that has led some lawmakers to consider impeachment.

The Kentucky Judicial Conduct Commission recently filed nine counts of misconduct against Kenton County Family Court Judge Dawn M. Gentry, alleging that she abused her power to solicit both sex and campaign donations from court staff and attorneys, and retaliated against them if they didn’t do what she asked. Gentry has denied those allegations.

“It’s all an abuse of power, a disregard for the rule of law — which is not what we’re looking for in a judge,” state Rep. Adam Koenig, a Republican from Kenton County, told the Cincinnati Enquirer on Monday.

The case broke open last week after the Enquirer obtained documents detailing Gentry’s collection of alleged misdeeds and the state’s investigation. After the November 2018 election, Gentry allegedly hired a case specialist with whom she was having a sexual relationship — the guitarist in her rock band, South of Cincy — and pushed out one courtroom employee to make room for him on the staff, according to the charges. She allegedly had sex with the case specialist and another woman at the courthouse. And she allegedly asked an attorney for abused children to join her in a threesome — retaliating against her when she refused, the Enquirer reported, citing an affidavit.

Other attorneys alleged they were retaliated against after not making maximum campaign donations to Gentry before last year’s election.

“Any of the Counts described below, on their own, constitute sufficient grounds for disciplinary action,” the commission wrote. “But examined as a whole, the allegations in this Notice demonstrate a pattern of misconduct in office.”

Neither Gentry nor her attorney could immediately be reached for comment late Tuesday. But in filings to the state Judicial Conduct Commission, Gentry’s attorney denied most of the allegations on her behalf, emphasizing in capital letters that she never had a sexual relationship with her case specialist, and never had sex with anyone in the courthouse.

She admits other things, such as inadvertently allowing her children to witness confidential hearings involving a child they knew, or allowing guitar practice in her chambers. The case specialist she hired “did play guitar on occasion and she did not realize it was a distraction,” Gentry’s attorney, Stephen P. Ryan, wrote in the Dec. 2 answer to the complaint. “There is no longer guitar playing in her office.” She’s also been accused of drinking at work. In her response, she said she didn’t know her employees were drinking at work.

Gentry is expected to face a disciplinary hearing within the next couple months, but on Monday, Koenig told the Enquirer that lawmakers might not want to wait that long. As an alternative, they’re weighing another possibility: impeachment.

Only four officials have ever been impeached in Kentucky state history, while two were convicted by the state Senate, the Enquirer reported. A Kentucky judge has not been impeached since 1916. One lawmaker who sits on the judiciary committee, Republican Rep. Jason Nemes, told the paper that if the serious allegations are true, he would “certainly recommend that Judge Gentry be impeached.”

Gentry was appointed to replace a retiring judge in 2016 by then-governor Matt Bevin (R). She was elected to another term in November 2018 — but the commission charges that the victory came with allegedly coerced help from court staff.

The commission said Gentry coerced staff and members of her guardian ad litem panel, which helps the court assess the best interests of neglected children, to participate in her judicial campaign. She allegedly pressured them to “donate the maximum amount to your campaign and to use personal time to engage in campaigning on your behalf,” the commission wrote. During work hours, court staff had to deliver campaign yard signs and write thank-you notes, the commission said.

For guardians ad litem or court staff who didn’t sufficiently help or donate, the commission says they faced retaliation. One attorney, Mike Hummel, says he was removed from the guardian panel and replaced with a significantly more generous donor. (Hummel also represented Gentry’s husband in their divorce, the Enquirer reported.) Gentry denied all these allegations and said the staff members who did assist in her campaign were only supposed to be working in their personal time, not at work.

But for others, discomfort with Gentry went beyond alleged forced campaigning.

According to the charges, Gentry made “inappropriate and unwanted sexual advances” toward one female attorney on Gentry’s panel for abused or neglected children. In an affidavit obtained by the Enquirer, the attorney said that she developed a casual friendship with the judge during the 2018 campaign — but things would soon escalate on Snapchat.

The attorney alleged that Gentry asked her to seduce the judge’s husband in exchange for a higher-paying position on the panel, the Enquirer reported. The woman thought it was a joke until Gentry continued to bring it up — at which point the attorney thought perhaps it was part of the judge’s plan to blame her husband for their looming divorce, according to the affidavit.

Later, the attorney said, Gentry asked her to join a threesome with the case specialist at a legal conference. To all of her alleged solicitations, the attorney said no.

“After I declined the request for the threesome encounter, I feared my panel position might be in jeopardy,” she wrote in the affidavit, according to the Enquirer.

The attorney filed motions seeking Gentry’s recusal in her cases, but she refused, according to the commission. Gentry later sent an attorney to question her about why she was “gossiping” about the judge — something the woman could have inferred as a warning to remain silent about the sexual advances, the commission noted. She ultimately resigned from the panel.

The state commission also charged that the case specialist Gentry hired — the guitarist from her band — wasn’t qualified for the job. He, Gentry and the judge’s secretary allegedly “engaged in sexual activity … in the courthouse, during work hours,” the commission charged.

“You hired [him] because you were engaged in a personal sexual relationship with him, not on the basis of merit,” the commission wrote. “You terminated [another employee] by forcing her to resign to create a job opening for [him]."

Gentry denied these allegations, insisting he was qualified based on his job experience in another county court.

Gentry now awaits the disciplinary hearing before the Kentucky Judicial Conduct Commission. According to the commission, she faces a range of discipline possibilities, including a public or private reprimand, suspension without pay or removal. She could also face disbarment.

The attorney who resigned from Gentry’s guardian ad litem panel wrote in the affidavit that she wanted to see an apology from Gentry to all those she harmed, according to the Enquirer.

“It is time for you to make amends,” she wrote. “To the voters, the community, to the people you have hurt, and displaced, and mistreated and abused, and left to feel worthless and small, and the people you intentionally instilled fear in because you feel so small.”

 

[GreyhoundFan]

 

[GreyhoundFan]

 

[47of74]

Our Justice Dept is the finest money can buy

Quote

The Department of Justice (DOJ) is under fire after a whistleblower complaint revealed that the department had given over $1 million in anti-human trafficking grants to two groups, Hookers for Jesus and the Lincoln Tubman Foundation, rather than highly recommended, established groups.

A September 12 internal DOJ memo recommended that the grant money go to the Catholic Charities of the Diocese of Palm Beach and Chicanos Por La Causa of Phoenix, according to an exclusive report by Reuters. The recommendations were based on reviews from outside contractors. Instead, the grant money went to two organizations the contractors gave lower ratings: Hookers for Jesus and the Lincoln Tubman Foundation.

The funding decision was made in order to "distribute funding across as many states as possible," according to a September 23 memo obtained by Reuters. Head of the Office of Justice Programs, Katharine Sullivan, approved the decision, telling Reuters, "Our funding decisions are based on a merit-based review system."

Hookers for Jesus is a Christian organization founded by former sex worker and sex trafficking victim Annie Lobert in 2007. The organization operates Destiny House, a one-year safehouse program for sex-trafficking victims and women who want to leave sex work, as well as a number of other outreach programs.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

The Repugs love the corruption, don't they?

 

[GreyhoundFan]

Gee, what a surprise. /sarcasm "Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.), head of powerful committee, sold large amount of stocks before sharp declines in market"

Spoiler

Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr (R-N.C.), who had expressed confidence in the country’s preparedness for the coronavirus outbreak, sold a significant share of his stocks last month, according to public disclosures.

The sales included stocks in some of the industries that have been hardest hit by the global pandemic, including hotels and restaurants, shipping, drug manufacturing and health care, records show.

Until about a week ago, President Trump and GOP leaders had projected optimism in the country’s ability to manage the global outbreak of the coronavirus.

As head of the powerful Intelligence Committee, Burr reportedly was receiving daily briefings on the threat of the virus. In mid-February, he sold 33 stocks held by him and his spouse, estimated at between $628,033 and $1.72 million, Senate financial disclosures show. It was the biggest number of stocks he had sold in one day since at least 2016, records show. The Feb. 13 stock sales were first reported by ProPublica.

Then at a Feb. 27 luncheon, Burr compared the potential impact of the novel coronavirus to the unusually deadly 1918 flu pandemic. His remarks at the private event were obtained by NPR and aired Thursday.

His remarks prompted scrutiny over whether Burr had offered a more frank warning at a Capitol Hill event sponsored by North Carolina business leaders than he and his colleagues were sharing more broadly.

“There’s one thing I can tell you about this: It is much more aggressive in its transmission than anything we have seen in recent history,” Burr said, according to the NPR recording, which was not disputed by his staff. “It’s probably more akin to the 1918 pandemic.”

Burr’s office declined to answer specific questions about his stock sales. About a week after those sales, the stock market sharply declined.

“Senator Burr filed a financial disclosure form for personal transactions made several weeks before the U.S. and financial markets showed signs of volatility due to the growing coronavirus outbreak,” read a statement from Burr’s office.

“As the situation continues to evolve daily, he has been deeply concerned by the steep and sudden toll this pandemic is taking on our economy. He supported Congress’ immediate efforts to provide $7.8 billion for response efforts and this week’s bipartisan bill to provide relief for American business and small families,” the statement read.

Federal officials are barred by federal law from using the nonpublic information they learn in their positions for their private financial gain.

Insider trading prohibitions apply to all members of Congress, congressional staff and other federal officials, under the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge (STOCK) Act of 2012. Burr was among three senators who voted against the legislation at the time.

Under the law, officials must publicly disclose stock sales within 45 days after the transaction. Though the reported date of the 33 transactions in Burr’s financial disclosure is Feb. 13, it is unclear whether all the stocks were sold on that date, and Burr’s office declined to clarify.

Government watchdogs said they were concerned about Burr’s comments and stock sales, which they said deserve closer scrutiny and should prompt a Senate ethics investigation.

“We have huge concerns with this ethically. As a senator, he has a responsibility to his constituents first. The idea that he might be profiting off insider information is problematic,” said Lisa Gilbert, vice president of legislative affairs of the good-government group Public Citizen.

On Feb. 7 — less than a week before the reported date of those sales — Burr played down the virus’s threat, co-writing a column arguing that while Americans are right to be worried, the United States was “better prepared than ever before to face emerging public health threats, like the coronavirus, in large part due to the work of the Senate Health Committee, Congress, and the Trump Administration.”

Even three weeks later, GOP lawmakers and Trump continued to project confidence that the virus’s outbreak was being managed.

On Feb. 27, Trump publicly predicted that the coronavirus would one day disappear “like a miracle.”

Yet on the same day, Burr attended the private event and warned attendees of some consequences of the coronavirus that have since materialized.

“Every company should be cognizant of the fact that you may have to alter your travel,” he told the gathering, according to the NPR report. “You may have to look at your employees and judge whether the trip they’re making to Europe is essential or can be done on videoconference.”

Burr’s office disputed characterizations that the senator’s public and private comments at the time were at odds.

“Senator Burr has been banging the drum about the importance of public health preparedness for more than 20 years,” Burr spokeswoman Caitlin Carroll said Thursday. “His message has always been, and continues to be, that we must be prepared to protect American lives in the event of a pandemic or bio-attack. Since early February, whether in constituent meetings or open hearings, he has worked to educate the public about the tools and resources our government has to confront the spread of coronavirus. At the same time, he has urged public officials to fully utilize every tool at their disposal in this effort.”

In another statement highlighted by Burr’s office, he reacted on March 3 to the first reported coronavirus case in North Carolina.

“The U.S. is in a better position than any other nation to handle a public health emergency like coronavirus,” Burr said. “But Congress must continue working to make sure first responders have the resources they need and the federal government is using all the tools at its disposal to stem the problem.”

 

[Xan]

Add in Ron Johnson (R-WI), Jim Inhofe (R-OK), and Kelly Loeffler (R-GA) to the Burr corruption scandal.  They all dumped stock when they got the bad news about the virus.

[fraurosena]

Burr is attempting to clear himself from the NPR piece published yesterday. Safe to say his tweets are backfiring spectacularly. The comments are absolutely brutal and worth a read.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

Whoa: "‘There is no greater moral crime’: Tucker Carlson calls for Sen. Richard Burr’s resignation over stock sell-off"

Spoiler

After news broke Thursday evening that Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.) sold off a significant share of stock just weeks before the market crashed because of the coronavirus pandemic, many horrified critics called for the Senate Intelligence Committee chairman to resign.

Perhaps the loudest among those detractors was Fox News host Tucker Carlson, who called on Burr to resign if he was unable to explain his actions.

“Now maybe there’s an honest explanation for what he did. If there is, then he should share it with the rest of us immediately,” Carlson said on Thursday. “Otherwise, he must resign from the Senate and face prosecution for insider trading.”

Carlson, whose nightly show reportedly has significant sway on President Trump’s thinking, continued condemning the Republican senator, whose estimated $628,033 to $1.72 million in stock market sales were described by many as “stomach-churning” and “personal corruption.”

“There is no greater moral crime than betraying your country in a time of crisis, and that appears to be what happened,” he added.

Burr reportedly received daily briefings on the threat posed by the growing epidemic. Publicly, Burr downplayed coronavirus concerns, co-authoring a Fox News op-ed last month that said the United States was “better prepared than ever before to face emerging public health threats, like the coronavirus, in large part due to the work of the Senate Health Committee, Congress, and the Trump Administration.” Privately, as NPR reported Thursday, Burr warned attendees at an event that the virus would likely disrupt the American economy in significant ways.

The North Carolina senator has disputed the characterization of a disconnect between his public and private warnings, claiming the comments he made at an event on Feb. 27 should be considered public because it was “publicly advertised and widely attended.” His office also denied to The Washington Post the allegation that the senator decided to sell his stocks because of prior knowledge that the economy would suffer losses because of the pandemic.

“Senator Burr filed a financial disclosure form for personal transactions made several weeks before the U.S. and financial markets showed signs of volatility due to the growing coronavirus outbreak,” Burr’s office said in a statement. “As the situation continues to evolve daily, he has been deeply concerned by the steep and sudden toll this pandemic is taking on our economy. He supported Congress’ immediate efforts to provide $7.8 billion for response efforts and this week’s bipartisan bill to provide relief for American business and small families.”

Another Senate Republican faced insider trading allegations on Thursday. Sen. Kelly Loeffler (R-Ga.) reportedly began selling off stocks on Jan. 24, the same day she attended at Senate Health Committee hearing on coronavirus, the Daily Beast reported. Loeffler called the allegation a “ridiculous and baseless attack,” and said she does not personally make decisions about her investment portfolio.

Many observers, including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), echoed Carlson’s concerns about Burr.

“It’s stomach-churning that the first thoughts these Senators had to a dire & classified #COVID briefing was how to profit off this crisis,” Ocasio-Cortez tweeted, calling on both Burr and Loeffler to resign.

Joining Ocasio-Cortez in speaking out against the senators was a who’s who of prominent Democrats. Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Tex.) called for Burr to step down as chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee pending an ethics investigation into his investments. His brother, former housing secretary Julián Castro, made a similar appeal.

Entrepreneur Andrew Yang said on Twitter that any lawmaker who adjusted their personal stock portfolios before warning the American people about the threat posed by the coronavirus “should probably not be in a job that serves the public interest.”

Many other political commentators on the left also sided with Carlson, much to their surprise.

“I completely agree with Tucker Carlson is something I thought I would never say," tweeted CNN commentator Keith Boykin. “2020 is totally crazy.”

 

I can't believe I agree with Carlson on anything.

[GreyhoundFan]

What a surprise...NOT: "Sen. Richard Burr, who sold stock before pandemic, voted in 2012 against banning insider trading for Congress"

Spoiler

Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.) thought little of the 2012 bill that would ban insider trading for Congress, congressional staff and other federal officials.

“It’s ludicrous,” Burr said in a February 2012 radio interview about the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge (Stock) Act.

The bill, aimed at prohibiting stock trading based on nonpublic information gleaned on Capitol Hill, overwhelmingly passed in the Senate by a 96-3 vote before being signed into law by President Barack Obama. Burr, one of the three senators to vote against the measure, described himself as a “brave soul” for going against the bill, according to a transcript of the radio interview posted to his Senate website.

“I mean, it’s insane,” he said of the insider trading legislation for members of Congress.

His sentiments from eight years ago have become relevant again following Thursday’s report that Burr sold a significant share of his stocks last month before the coronavirus outbreak upended the markets.

According to public disclosures, the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee sold 33 stocks held by him and his spouse, estimated at between $628,033 and $1.72 million, in some of the industries hit hardest by the global pandemic. Those disclosures, first reported by ProPublica and the Center for Responsive Politics, were coupled with a recording obtained by NPR from a private luncheon last month in which Burr compared the potential impact of covid-19 to the deadly 1918 flu pandemic. Burr denied the NPR report, saying the outlet “knowingly and irresponsibly misrepresented” his speech at the luncheon.

“Senator Burr filed a financial disclosure form for personal transactions made several weeks before the U.S. and financial markets showed signs of volatility due to the growing coronavirus outbreak,” Burr’s office said in a statement to The Washington Post’s Michelle Ye Hee Lee and John Wagner.

On Thursday night, there were widespread calls for Burr to resign, ranging from Fox News host Tucker Carlson to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.). Those calls were also directed toward Sen. Kelly Loeffler (R-Ga.) after the Daily Beast reported that she sold off a large amount of stock in the time before the novel coronavirus crushed the market. (Loeffler refuted the report, tweeting that the claim was a “ridiculous & baseless attack.”)

Many of Burr’s critics were quick to reference the Stock Act, with “#InsiderTrading” trending into early Friday. Among them was Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D), who helped champion the bill during his time in the House of Representatives.

“I authored the Stock Act in Congress to call out this exact type of unconscionable behavior,” Walz tweeted. “I take comfort in knowing it’s being put to good use.”

During his State of the Union address in 2012, Obama urged Congress to pass the Stock Act, stressing that its members and staff had to play by the same rules as everyday Americans and not use any inside knowledge for personal profit.

Burr rejected the idea that specific legislation was needed for Congress, pointing to existing federal laws from the Securities and Exchange Commission to prevent insider trading.

“The laws that are currently on the books apply to all members of Congress and all staff, not limited staff,” he said before the vote.

But when it comes to Congress and the stock market, there has been skepticism about how strongly the laws are enforced. In a 2004 paper published in the Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, researchers found that senators who made stock trades outperformed the market by an average margin of 12 percent. A 2010 Wall Street Journal investigation later found that congressional staffers had stock in companies benefiting from legislation that the staffers were supporting.

It got the attention of Luigi Zingales, a professor at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. In 2011, Zingales wrote for CNN that the senators’ savvy market trading meant they “either are better than hedge-fund managers, or that they benefit from privileged information.”

Burr’s position came up again during his 2016 Senate campaign. In a debate leading up to the election, Democrat Deborah Ross called out Burr for his “brave vote” in opposing the legislation. Again, Burr didn’t back down.

“It is illegal, in law, even for Congress, to trade on insider trading,” Burr said in response to Ross, according to PolitiFact. “That’s the reason I opposed the Stock Act. North Carolinians did not send me to Washington to duplicate existing law, and that’s in fact what the Stock Act did.”

On social media, Norman J. Ornstein, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, pointed out how Burr’s reported stock dump before the outbreak was a situation that the Stock Act was supposed to prevent. Others, such as former labor secretary Robert B. Reich, were left baffled over the public disclosures.

“This kind of self-serving behavior from a sitting senator at a time of unprecedented crisis is unacceptable,” tweeted Reich, a professor of public policy at the University of California at Berkeley.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

 

[GreyhoundFan]

A helpful analysis: "Three big takeaways from the stunning GOP stock-selling revelations"

Spoiler

We already know President Trump spent weeks misleading the country by playing down the potential impact of the coronavirus, at a time when many officials in his government surely knew what a dire threat it posed to our social arrangements, to the economy, and to the health and well-being of the American people.

Now the focus is shifting to what Republican elected officials knew and when — which means the stain of this story may now spread to the GOP writ large.

That’s the immediate significance of the stunning news that Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.) dumped a large share of his stocks last month.

The revelations raise questions about whether private briefings that Burr, the chair of the Intelligence Committee, received from Trump officials about the scale of the threat might have influenced the financial move. As The Post summarizes:

Burr reportedly was receiving daily briefings on the threat of the virus. In mid-February, he sold 33 stocks held by him and his spouse, estimated at between $628,033 and $1.72 million, Senate financial disclosures show. It was the largest number of stocks he had sold in one day since at least 2016, records show.

Making this potentially worse, that same month, Burr privately advised a group of well-connected players that the coronavirus threat was very alarming — “akin to the 1918 pandemic” — even as Trump was publicly downplaying it.

Meanwhile, similar revelations are now ensnaring Sen. Kelly Loeffler (R-Ga.), who also dumped stocks worth millions not long after she and other senators were briefed by administration officials on the coronavirus threat. Loeffler is claiming such decisions are made by a third party.

Here are three takeaways:

Burr’s ‘defense’ actually indicts Trump. One of Burr’s claims in his and Trump’s defense is that it’s unfair to claim daylight between Burr’s private warnings about the coronavirus and Trump’s downplaying of it.

Burr is pointing to a briefing that Trump and administration officials gave in late February, suggesting that this showed that they warned Americans about the need to “begin making plans” for serious inconveniences to come.

But that very same briefing from Trump and his officials actually shows them vastly downplaying the threat and vastly inflating the success of their own efforts.

In it, Trump declared that their strategy was already having “tremendous success, beyond what people thought.” And multiple other officials also hailed the “success” of their containment strategy.

We now know this was the opposite of the truth — the threat was not remotely contained, and the administration’s failures were to blame for it. Burr’s own defense actually shows that the administration was dramatically misleading the public, even as Burr privately warned that the situation was far more dire.

Burr is declining to directly answer questions about the stock sales. But even if you grant that his motives were pure, that cannot expunge the other problem here: that Republicans like him knew in real time that things were surely much worse than Trump was publicly allowing, and likely knew that the administration’s strategy was not remotely matched to the threat.

One Democratic senator — Dianne Feinstein of California — also sold stock. Her spokesman claims that all of her assets are in a blind trust. But for all we know, more Democrats may have done this.

The point here for our purposes, though, is that the stock sales are only one piece of this story. The other thing that makes this story scandalous is that officials knew things were far worse than Trump was saying publicly. And Burr is clearly on the hook for that.

This illustrates the need for serious reform. One big question is whether Burr violated federal laws against lawmakers using inside information to profit. But that aside, it’s clear that this story underscores the case for new laws that limit the degree to which federal lawmakers are permitted to own stocks at all.

Progressives in Congress have already introduced legislation that would ban stock ownership by members of Congress, top congressional staff and Cabinet secretaries while serving.

Noah Bookbinder, the executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, told me these revelations illustrate the scale of the problem — and why the current ban on trading on inside knowledge isn’t enough to ensure public confidence that officials are acting in the public interest, rather than in their own.

“If members simply don't own or trade assets that could conflict with their jobs or be related to non-public briefings,” Bookbinder said, “there will be no temptation for them to profit from information they learn on the job, and no reason for the public to doubt their motivations.”

It’s time to figure out what lawmakers knew, and when. Another big question raised by this story is this: What, exactly, were lawmakers told in their private administration briefings, and when were they told it?

Burr reportedly got daily briefings from the administration on the coronavirus threat. Surely this is one reason he was able to privately warn that things were dire. Yet Burr was also publicly claiming at the time that the United States was “better prepared than ever before” to handle threats such as this one.

Obviously that was false — and the question is what Burr had been told by the administration to the contrary.

Similarly, the Senate health committee, which Loeffler sits on, also hosted a private all-senators briefing from the administration early on. What did all those senators learn?

This line of inquiry goes far beyond Burr and Loeffler. It’s time to dig deeper into what the administration privately told lawmakers in real time about how bad things were going to get — and into how sharply at odds that was with what administration officials and those lawmakers were telling the rest of us.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

The Onion's take on Burr:

 

[fraurosena]

15 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

“If members simply don't own or trade assets that could conflict with their jobs or be related to non-public briefings,” Bookbinder said, “there will be no temptation for them to profit from information they learn on the job, and no reason for the public to doubt their motivations.”

This. So much this. The very fact that Congressmen can in some way profit off their positions enables all the corruption going on. And this is why lobbyists are actually running the country.

[fraurosena]

Justice Department reviews stock trades by lawmakers after coronavirus briefings

Quote

The Justice Department has started to probe a series of stock transactions made by lawmakers ahead of the sharp market downturn stemming from the spread of coronavirus, according to two people familiar with the matter.

The inquiry, which is still in its early stages and being done in coordination with the Securities and Exchange Commission, has so far included outreach from the FBI to at least one lawmaker, Sen. Richard Burr, seeking information about the trades, according to one of the sources. 

Public scrutiny of the lawmakers' market activity has centered on whether members of Congress sought to profit from the information they obtained in non-public briefings about the virus epidemic.

Burr, the North Carolina Republican who heads the Senate Intelligence Committee, has previously said that he relied only on public news reports as he decided to sell between $628,000 and $1.7 million in stocks on February 13. Earlier this month, he asked the Senate Ethics Committee to review the trades given "the assumption many could make in hindsight," he said at the time. 

There's no indication that any of the sales, including Burr's, broke any laws or ran afoul of Senate rules. But the sales have come under fire after senators received closed-door briefings about the virus over the past several weeks — before the market began trending downward. It is routine for the FBI and SEC to review stock trades when there is public question about their propriety.

In a statement Sunday to CNN, Alice Fisher, a lawyer for Burr, said that the senator "welcomes a thorough review of the facts in this matter, which will establish that his actions were appropriate." 

"The law is clear that any American -- including a Senator -- may participate in the stock market based on public information, as Senator Burr did. When this issue arose, Senator Burr immediately asked the Senate Ethics Committee to conduct a complete review, and he will cooperate with that review as well as any other appropriate inquiry," said Fisher, who led the Justice Department's criminal division under former President George W. Bush.

Congress passed the Stock Act in 2012, which made it illegal for lawmakers to use inside information for financial benefit. 

Under insider trading laws, prosecutors would need to prove the lawmakers traded based on material non-public information they received in violation of a duty to keep it confidential. 

Burr's committee has received periodic briefings on coronavirus as the outbreak has spread, but the committee did not receive briefings on the virus the week of Burr's stock sales, another source familiar with the matter told CNN earlier this month. 

Spokespeople for the Justice Department, the FBI and the SEC declined to comment.

In an interview with CNBC on Monday morning, SEC Chairman Jay Clayton would not confirm the inquiry, but sent a warning about trading with private information.

"Anyone who is privy to private information about a company or about markets needs to be cautious about how they use that private information. That's fundamental to our securities laws and that applies to government employees, public officials, etc, and the Stock Act codifies that," Clayton said.

Burr's sales represent a sizable share of his portfolio of stocks, according to his latest Senate financial disclosure documents filed in May 2019, although exact numbers aren't possible because lawmakers only report trades as a range of dollar values.

Several other senators from both parties also sold and bought stock ahead of the market downturn that resulted from the coronavirus pandemic, although it's not clear who else the Justice Department is looking at and no other senator said they have been contacted by law enforcement. Burr is the only lawmaker to have asked for an Ethics Committee review.

GOP Sen. Kelly Loeffler of Georgia and her husband sold 27 stocks valued between $1.275 million and $3.1 million from January 24 through February 14, according to Senate records.

They also purchased three stocks at a value of $450,000-$1 million, including shares in Citrix, a software company that's gained approximately 15% in value since Loeffler and her husband bought the stock last month.

Loeffler, who was appointed to her seat in December and was sworn in in early January, has denied having any knowledge of the stock sales, saying she uses a third-party financial adviser and did not learn of the trades until later. Loeffler's husband, Jeffrey Sprecher, is chairman of the New York Stock Exchange.

A Loeffler spokesperson confirmed Loeffler has not been contacted by the FBI and said the senator "has acted in accordance with the letter and the spirit of the law." 

Others who traded relatively smaller amounts or sold fewer stocks than Burr and Loeffler have also faced public scrutiny. 

Stock sales were reported last month by Sens. Dianne Feinstein, a California Democrat, and Jim Inhofe, an Oklahoma Republican. Both Feinstein's and Inhofe's offices said the senators had not been contacted by the FBI.

Feinstein herself did not sell any stock, according to Senate records. Her husband sold between $1.5 million and $6 million in stock of Allogene Therapeutics, a biotech company, in January and February. Feinstein said earlier this month that she has no involvement in her husband's financial decisions.

"I have no input into his decisions. My husband in January and February sold shares of a cancer therapy company. This company is unrelated to any work on the coronavirus and the sale was unrelated to the situation," she said in a statement.

Inhofe sold five stocks, worth between $180,000 and $400,000, in January, and another for $50,000-$100,000 in February. But he said in a statement earlier this month that he had no involvement in his investment decisions.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

13 minutes ago, fraurosena said:

Justice Department reviews stock trades by lawmakers after coronavirus briefings

 

I hope something comes of the investigation, but with Barr in charge of the DOJ, I have a feeling it's just a show.

[GreyhoundFan]

No big surprise: "Matt Gaetz rents office space from longtime friend and donor — at taxpayer expense"

Spoiler

Florida GOP Rep. Matt Gaetz has spent nearly $200,000 in taxpayer funds renting an office from a longtime friend, adviser, campaign donor and legal client.

Both men said in separate interviews Gaetz paid below market rent for the space — although Gaetz later shifted, saying the rent was “at or below market rate.” House rules explicitly state such arrangements are not allowed.

The agreement between Gaetz and Collier Merrill, a Pensacola real estate developer and restaurateur, highlights how a decades-long relationship can become intertwined with a lawmaker’s congressional duties. On top of being Merrill’s tenant, Gaetz attended fundraisers at Merrill’s restaurants, sought his counsel on policy matters and tapped him as a validator for his work in Washington.

Gaetz — who represents a conservative swath of the Florida Panhandle — has paid more than $184,000 to Merrill’s Empire Partners LLC to rent the entire sixth-floor in the Seville Tower, a historic building in downtown Pensacola, according to House disbursement records. Gaetz has rented from Merrill since he got to Congress in 2017.

House rules state that all leases for district offices must be “at fair market value as the result of a bona fide, arms-length, marketplace transaction. The Lessor and Lessee certify that the parties are not relatives nor have had, or continue to have, a professional or legal relationship (except as a landlord and tenant).”

Merrill said in an interview that Gaetz approached him saying he wanted to rent space in his building. Merrill then dispatched his leasing director to give Gaetz’s staff a “range to see what they can get” and the private negotiation yielded a price in the middle.

The rental agreement was approved by the House’s Administrative Counsel. Gaetz, through a spokesman, said that he did not feel he needed to disclose his long relationship with Merrill to the House.

A Gaetz aide said the office occupied by his predecessor, Jeff Miller, that he could have moved into did not have adequate security infrastructure. Gaetz’s office said he received death threats after voicing support for abolishing the EPA. His office also said Gaetz has returned more than a half-million dollars in his allotted expense money back to the Treasury.

Gaetz's office space in Merrill's building is more than 3,000 square feet.

“I love the idea of … having a state rep, having a congressman — we’re right across from the courthouse,” Merrill said.

Merrill, who has also advised Gaetz on policy issues, said: “I probably be damned if I do, damned if I didn't. If I [set the rent] too cheap, I'm probably doing him a favor, if I do it too expensive, he’s doing me a favor.”

Gaetz — a close ally of President Donald Trump — has been outspoken in recent weeks about ethics controversies involving Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.). He called Burr to resign after news reports revealed the North Carolina senator dumped a large chunk of a stock portfolio after a classified briefing on the coronavirus. Burr also sold his Washington home to a lobbyist at a price that some real estate consultants cited in the story characterized as above market price.

On Thursday, Gaetz’s office asked for more time to respond to the story because of a “call … with the White House.” Minutes later, Gaetz tweeted out his version of events.

Gaetz, in an interview Wednesday, first suggested POLITICO was “shilling for Burr.” The Florida Republican then defended his relationship with Merrill and denied he had done anything improper.

“Every member of Congress has relationships with their donors,” Gaetz said in the interview. “The question is whether or not those relationships are improper or illegal.”

Gaetz said “every layer” of his relationship with Merrill was appropriate.

The relationship between Gaetz and Merrill is much deeper than just renting an office. It stretches back decades, to 1994 when Gaetz was on the campaign trail following Joe Scarborough, the MSNBC host who was then running to represent the district in Congress. Merrill and Scarborough are close friends. Merrill even urged Gaetz’s father, Don Gaetz, to run the University of West Florida in Pensacola.

When Gaetz notched one of his chief legislative achievements — an amendment to a fishery legislation called the "Reef Assassination Act" — Merrill was included in Gaetz's press release praising the congressman. The legislation encouraged "the elimination of lionfish" from the waters off Pensacola, which have seen an explosion of the invasive fish.

“I am grateful to have someone in Washington willing to take on issues that affect us here locally. The lionfish is thriving — at the expense of our native fish and reefs. It is time for us to stop monitoring the situation, and start addressing it,” Merrill, who owns several restaurants, said of the proposal. Gaetz told POLITICO the legislation would’ve equally benefited every restaurant owner in his district.

Gaetz had also attended fundraisers at one of Merrill’s Florida restaurants. The school-age children who Gaetz selected as winners of a congressional art contest got gift certificates to the Fish House and at Gulfarium — Merrill owns both. Gaetz said Merrill offered the gift certificates when he heard of Gaetz’s work.

“It’s not difficult all for me to explain to you that I get rent at below market rate in an agreement approved by the House of Representatives, a friend of mine donates gift certificate to high-achieving students and I seek the counsel of a former Chamber of Commerce president on business issues and I happen to cite that person in a press release about legislation that would help all restaurants in my district equally,” Gaetz said, speaking of Merrill’s involvement in his official duties. “There is nothing difficult about any of that.”

Politics is Gaetz’s family business. His father Don was running for the Okaloosa County School Board in 1994 when the congressman first met Merrill. The elder Gaetz made his way to the Florida senate in Tallahassee in 2006. Later, he became the senate president.

In 2016, when Don Gaetz was on the brink of retirement from public office, Merrill had a job in mind: he suggested Matt Gaetz’s father throw his name in the mix to run the University of West Florida in Pensacola. Merrill — a member of the search committee — told POLITICO at the time that he was “crazy about Don Gaetz. ... I certainly hope Senator Gaetz does apply.” Gaetz didn’t get the job, after former Gov. Rick Scott intervened on behalf of his opponent.

In 2009, when Matt Gaetz was just two years out of law school and one year away from taking a seat in the statehouse in Tallahassee, he represented Merrill’s restaurant company in a lawsuit against a group of women who called themselves the “red fish chix.” The women bought a boat from Merrill in exchange for cash and a commitment to do promotional events. Merrill — through Gaetz — alleged the women did not pay for the boat, and sold it to a third party without his consent. Gaetz also said he represented Merrill personally in a noise complaint "nearly five years ago."

When Gaetz finally got to Congress, it was Merrill who was his biggest advocate.

“He goes up there and hits it right off the bat,” Merrill told a reporter writing a story for the Naples Daily News. “Matt’s not going to sit there and wait for the fight to come to him. If there’s a fight that needs fighting, he’s going after it.”

Merrill put it this way to the Washington Post, speaking of Gaetz and his father Don: "They are workers." Merrill observed that Gaetz — like his father — was "rising quickly in the ranks."

I am not a violent person, but when I see pictures of Gaetz, I have a urge to punch something.

[47of74]

Inside former Governor Scottie Wanker's Great Wisconsin Foxconn Fuckup

Quote

Hopes were high among the employees who joined Foxconn’s Wisconsin project in the summer of 2018. In June, President Donald Trump had broken ground on an LCD factory he called “the eighth wonder of the world.” The scale of the promise was indeed enormous: a $10 billion investment from the Taiwanese electronics giant, a 20 million-square-foot manufacturing complex, and, most importantly, 13,000 jobs.

Which is why new recruits arriving at the 1960s office building Foxconn had purchased in downtown Milwaukee were surprised to discover they had to provide their own office supplies. “One of the largest companies in the world, and you have to bring your own pencil,” an employee recalls wondering. Maybe Foxconn was just moving too fast to be bothered with such details, they thought, as they brought their laptops from home and scavenged pencils left behind by the building’s previous tenants. They listened to the cries of co-workers trapped in the elevators that often broke, noted the water that occasionally leaked from the ceiling, and wondered when the building would be transformed into the gleaming North American headquarters an executive had promised.

The renovations never arrived. Neither did the factory, the tech campus, nor the thousands of jobs. Interviews with 19 employees and dozens of others involved with the project, as well as thousands of pages of public documents, reveal a project that has defaulted on almost every promise. The building Foxconn calls an LCD factory — about 1/20th the size of the original plan — is little more than an empty shell. In September, Foxconn received a permit to change its intended use from manufacturing to storage.

Even the handful of jobs the company claims to have created are less than real: many of them held by people with nothing to do, hired so the company could reach the number required for it to get tax subsidy payments from Wisconsin. Foxconn failed at that objective, too: last week, Wisconsin rejected the company’s subsidy application and found it had employed only 281 people eligible under the contract at the end of 2019. Many have since been laid off.

That's why I'm getting to be a real hardass about government incentives for business because it's turning into a fucking gravy train more than a tool to help improve the economic life of a community.  Hell if I had the energy I'd move up in to town just to run for city council on the platform that the gravy train is coming to an end.

[Audrey2]

3 hours ago, 47of74 said:

Inside former Governor Scottie Wanker's Great Wisconsin Foxconn Fuckup

That's why I'm getting to be a real hardass about government incentives for business because it's turning into a fucking gravy train more than a tool to help improve the economic life of a community.  Hell if I had the energy I'd move up in to town just to run for city council on the platform that the gravy train is coming to an end.

I agree. It seems like when a town or state gives a company tax breaks and incentives to move in, either the company doesn't follow through with the jobs or what it is supposed to do, or it stays just as long as the incentives last, then it moves to another place.

[47of74]

3 hours ago, Audrey2 said:

I agree. It seems like when a town or state gives a company tax breaks and incentives to move in, either the company doesn't follow through with the jobs or what it is supposed to do, or it stays just as long as the incentives last, then it moves to another place.

Yeah.  I've pretty much told the city council and the county supervisors that they need to start clamping down and stop with the wheeling and dealing cause it's the employees who get caught in the middle and fucked over then.  I'm not totally opposed to these incentives but they need to tightly controlled and any agreements need to have clawback clauses to allow the governments to take back their investments when the Foxconns of the world come to town.

[AmazonGrace]

 

Womp womp.

[AmazonGrace]

On 12/17/2020 at 6:22 PM, AmazonGrace said:

 

Womp womp.

Ah, never mind, he just got pardoned.

[AmazonGrace]

Because of course he did.

 

[47of74]

Oh lookie here, #CovidKim sold an afternoon of access to her to a pork baron.

Quote

It’s a striking example of the Republican governor’s close relationship with Iowa’s powerful pork industry. The 2019 auction surfaced recently when her office released emails detailing her alliance with Iowa Select Farms, which is among the nation’s largest pork producers.

Pork executive and Reynolds donor Gary Lynch won the auction with a $4,250 bid.

Jesus Fucking Christ.  Can she be anymore brazen about corrupt she is?  For fuck sake, is she trying to outdo her hero the orange fuck face?