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Trump 54: A Grand Jury Has Been Called For The Former Guy!


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Continued from here:

 

 

Info from last thread posted by @WiseGirl

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A little more about the grand jury:

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NEW YORK — Manhattan's district attorney has convened the grand jury that is expected to decide whether to indict former president Donald Trump, other executives at his company or the business itself should prosecutors present the panel with criminal charges, according to two people familiar with the development.

The panel was convened recently and will sit three days a week for six months. It is likely to hear several matters — not just the Trump case ­— during the duration of its term, which is longer than a traditional New York state grand-jury assignment, these people said. Like others, they spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation. Generally, special grand juries such as this one are convened to participate in long-term matters rather than to hear evidence of crimes charged routinely.

The move indicates that District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance Jr.’s investigation of the former president and his business has reached an advanced stage after more than two years. It suggests, too, that Vance believes he has found evidence of a crime — if not by Trump then by someone potentially close to him or by his company.

Vance’s investigation is expansive, according to people familiar the probe and public disclosures made during related litigation. His investigators are scrutinizing Trump’s business practices before he was president, including whether the value of specific properties in the Trump Organization’s real estate portfolio were manipulated in a way that defrauded banks and insurance companies, and if any tax benefits were obtained illegally through unscrupulous asset valuation.

The district attorney also is examining the compensation provided to top Trump Organization executives, people familiar with the matter have said.

A spokesman for Trump and an attorney for the Trump Organization did not respond to requests for comment. The former president has adamantly and repeatedly denied wrongdoing, deriding the investigation as politically motivated.

A spokesman for Vance (D) declined to comment.

While extended-length grand juries like the one selected to hear evidence in the district attorney’s investigation can hear cases out of order and to varying levels of completion, it is likely that Trump-related testimony in the secret proceeding has already begun, said one of the people familiar with the matter.

Adam S. Miller, who served as deputy bureau chief of the Major Economic Crimes Bureau in the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office before entering private practice in 2011, said such a “special grand jury” is “certainly not an uncommon thing to do with a large, technical and complicated investigation.”

“It’s really for very complicated cases that have a lot of information for a grand jury to digest,” Miller said, noting that special grand juries can be extended beyond their initial term with a judge’s approval.

It is unclear if prosecutors working under Vance intend to go through the entirety of their grand-jury presentation at once or if the proceeding may be interrupted for the panel to review other cases in between hearing from witnesses about the Trump Organization and its business dealings.

It is also unclear when or even if the grand jury will be asked to consider returning any indictments. Prosecutors handling cases such as this one can choose to present charges for the grand jury to consider — or not. A prosecutor’s grand-jury strategy is often a closely kept secret and can be subject to change.

Rebecca Roiphe, a former assistant district attorney in Manhattan who is now a professor at New York Law School, said that such investigations are always formally overseen by grand juries. In the early stages, prosecutors may just use a grand jury’s power just to subpoena documents without offering charges for consideration.

Roiphe said the recent step of seating a long-term panel shows that Vance’s investigation has progressed to the point that prosecutors will visit the grand jury, bring them evidence and witnesses, and potentially ask them to contemplate charges. They were unlikely to take that step without believing they had evidence to show there was probable cause to believe someone committed a crime, she said.

“The prosecutors are convinced they have a case. That’s at least how I read it,” Roiphe added.

Trump is facing two state-level investigations of his business practices in New York. Both appear to have begun with the same man: Michael Cohen, Trump’s longtime lawyer and attack dog, who turned on Trump after pleading guilty to making hush-money payoffs on Trump’s behalf and lying to Congress.

Vance’s criminal investigation began in 2018, after Cohen pleaded guilty to charges stemming from the hush-money payoffs, made in the last days of the 2016 campaign to women who said they had affairs with Trump years earlier — claims the former president denies. Vance’s investigation soon expanded, as the district attorney sought to examine millions of pages of Trump’s tax records.

Separately, New York Attorney General Letitia James (D) began a civil investigation of the Trump Organization in 2019 prompted by Cohen’s testimony to Congress, where he said Trump had misled lenders and taxing authorities with manipulated valuations of his assets. Asset values were inflated at times when the company was seeking favorable loan interest rates and were deflated to reduce tax liability, Cohen has alleged. He has been interviewed extensively by Vance’s team, which has added a decorated former federal prosecutor, Mark F. Pomerantz, to help with the Trump case.

In recent months, the two state-level investigations have appeared to converge. Both sets of investigators have sought documents related to a Trump estate in suburban New York, according to court records and people familiar with the efforts, where the then-future president obtained a $21 million tax break by agreeing to give up development rights, and a tower in Chicago where Trump’s lenders forgave $100 million in debt.

Another sign of convergence: James’s office said last week that its long-running civil probe had also spawned a criminal investigation, now being run in coordination with Vance. The state attorney general’s office did not explain what inspired the criminal inquiry, but veterans of the office said such shifts are often triggered by evidence that indicates a defendant intended to break the law.

Trump has attacked both investigations, pointing to comments by James during her 2018 election campaign in which she called him an “illegitimate president” and promised to investigate his family business.

Trump has never been criminally charged. No former U.S. president has ever been charged with a crime.

The Washington Post previously reported that Vance’s office has been trying to pressure the Trump Organization’s chief financial officer, Allen Weisselberg, into cooperating against his boss, a person familiar with the strategy confirmed. Weisselberg is said to know the ins and outs of every business transaction at the company over the course of his decades in employment there.

An attorney for Weisselberg declined to comment when reached Tuesday.

 

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From Rick Wilson: "Trump isn’t ‘the former guy.’ We’re stuck with him."

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Some folks in Washington, on both sides of the aisle, have developed the bad habit of calling former president Donald Trump the “former guy.” A few weeks ago, Republican Trump critic George Conway sprinkled the expression liberally throughout a Washington Post op-ed. Miles Taylor, one of the leaders of a small rump group of Republicans hoping to reform the GOP, dropped a “former guy” on Twitter this month. President Biden has done it, too: A few weeks after taking office, he referred to Trump as the “former guy,” saying he was “tired of talking about” his predecessor.

I get the temptation. It’s a convenient way to signal that even if everyone else is wringing their hands, you’ve turned the page on Trump’s destructive, sad-sack presidency — while also throwing him a well-deserved jab for tanking his reelection bid in spectacular fashion. Failed self-coup guy? Twice-impeached guy? Sorry, we’re too busy distributing vaccines and restoring democracy to think about Former Guy.

But it’s wishful thinking: My friend, ex-GOP consultant Steve Schmidt, calls this the Voldemort Strategy. Pretending you can just ignore Trump is akin to telling your oncologist, Yeah, that spot on my MRI looks bad. But let’s not talk about it. It’ll go away. Because to the Republican base, Trump isn’t the former guy, he’s the forever guy. He hasn’t left an ugly mark — past tense — on American politics. He’s still in the process of leaving it.

Yes, there are still people of goodwill in the GOP, trying to steer it away from Trump’s nationalist populism and authoritarian statism, but the Republican Party’s current iteration isn’t salvageable. There’s hardly any market for a return to core conservative principles, decency or sanity. Those values have been replaced with cruelty, caprice and ignorance — and for the most part, Republican voters are here for it.

Look at the recent Morning Consult-Politico poll: If Trump runs again, he’s the GOP’s 2024 front-runner by a wide margin, despite his age and his brewing legal troubles. The new Reuters-Ipsos poll found that more than half of Republicans say the 2020 election was rigged and that Trump is still president — ask base voters who they want next time, and don’t be surprised if they slavishly intone their readiness for Trump’s third term. They’re no longer interested in respecting the results of a democratic election, which frees them to pursue their worst instincts.

Trump is the drug they can’t kick. He’s convinced them that it’s a president’s job to provide insult comedy, not statecraft. And they’ve shown they’ll accept any level of oafishness, obstruction or dishonesty if it helps indulge their grievances and proves that they’d do anything for their gold-lamé idol.

It’s only been 204 days since Election Day and 126 days since Trump left the White House, and we’ve already seen the deadly Jan. 6 Capitol riot — with a failure by Republican leadership to thoroughly repudiate it. We’ve seen Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) tossed from House Republican leadership for trying to. We’ve seen cosplaying grifters perform a GOP-sanctioned election “audit” in Arizona. We’ve seen Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) being, well, Ted Cruz: emasculated by Trump, now trying to mimic him by praising Russian propaganda videos and suggesting that our troops can be turned into “pansies.” And we’ve now seen Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s (R-Ga.) revolting, ludicrous comparison of mask mandates to Jews being forced to wear Star of David armbands during the Holocaust, which House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (Calif.) finally condemned in an official statement Tuesday.

Greene is an avatar of the most Trump-addled reaches of Republicans’ world. And McCarthy wants to be House speaker. So, he did the (sort of) decent thing — after there was no other alternative. Not unlike former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley, Trump’s first U.N. ambassador, who’s walked back at least two attempts to distance herself from Trump, lest her likely presidential ambition gets upended by the wrath of Trump’s followers. Or Texas Land Commissioner George P. Bush, who tweeted this Monday, even though Trump trash-talked his parents during the 2016 primaries:

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Rather than taking Trump’s repudiation at the polls in November — he lost the popular and electoral college votes in a year when Republicans made gains down ballot — his supporters are using it as perverse Facebook-group fodder, doubling down on his grotesque slurry of conspiracy theories and self-pity. Craven Republican “leaders” who should know better are playing right into it.

It shows how long a shadow Trump casts. His endorsement will decide primaries. He’ll play kingmaker down to races for deputy dogcatcher; a vengeful spirit against those who oppose him, and potentially a man in complete control of the House of Representatives. Trump didn’t like Cheney, so she was benched with a cowardly voice vote. He opposed a bipartisan Jan. 6 commission, so McCarthy opposed a deal to create one that members of his own caucus had struck with Democrats. Memo to McCarthy: If the GOP wins the House in 2022 and Trump tells Republican members he wants to be chosen as speaker, there won’t be a thing you can do to stop him.

Trump toadies run the Republican National Committee and many state Republican parties. Elected Republicans fall over one another trying to show fealty to their Dear Leader in ways that would make Kim Jong Un ask his own suck-ups to dial down. For the foreseeable future, there’s no way to ignore our way out of Trump’s influence. No form of nonchalant hand-waving that changes what he is: their emperor-in-exile; their Napoleon at Elba-Lago.

For the caucus of younger, sleeker Trump wannabes, that means trying to quietly spool up 2024 primary campaigns without tripping Trump’s megalomaniacal radar. It means Cruz, Sen. Josh Hawley (Mo.) and Gov. Ron DeSantis (Fla.) will be crossing fingers, hoping that when they set an exploratory foot in Iowa, New Hampshire or South Carolina, Trump won’t make an impromptu Fox News appearance to “Low energy Jeb,” “Little Marco” or “Lyin’ Ted” them (again).

For Biden and congressional Democrats, it means congressional Republicans will refuse to be their loyal opposition, content to downplay the storming of the Capitol so they can serve as backseat-driving proxies for the world’s sorest loser. If Republicans win back either or both houses of Congress next year, it means Biden’s agenda, already an uphill fight, will be a dead letter. It means the one-time party of Ronald Reagan will replace conservatives like Cheney with Trump sycophants such as Rep. Elise Stefanik (N.Y.). It’ll mean the Twitter-less Trump will still be cackling on Sean Hannity’s air.

For the rest of America, it means figuring out how to undo his legacy — nepotism, race-baiting, trashing allies, downplaying a pandemic — in a country where nearly 75 million people wanted seconds.

The GOP is Trump’s party now. Republican loyalty to him is cult-like, almost maniacal. He was drummed out of office, sure. But tagging him Former Guy isn’t how America puts him in the rearview mirror. It’ll help him stay behind the wheel.

 

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Today is not a good day for Trump. 

 

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I might need a refresher in the brain washing induced from being a Trump supporter, but why would the GOP endorse Trump? He lost in 2020 to a pretty lukewarm opponent... And we haven’t even taken into account his legal and possible criminal problems.

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14 minutes ago, SassyPants said:

I might need a refresher in the brain washing induced from being a Trump supporter, but why would the GOP endorse Trump? He lost in 2020 to a pretty lukewarm opponent... And we haven’t even taken into account his legal and possible criminal problems.

My opinion the politicians don’t actually want him, they would just like to use his personality to elect a person they can control. The republicans base, though, those crazy people are 100 percent Trump won by a landslide. They truly don’t think he lost. They don’t believe he is in any legal trouble either. 
 

I think Trump might just fuck over the Republican Party by refusing to say he isn’t running which means they can’t spend the next four years working on their candidate. I expect he’ll wait to the last second to admit he isn’t really running but he will expect full control over the campaign of whoever ends up the republican candidate and will constantly insert himself into their campaign. 

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5 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

Memo to McCarthy: If the GOP wins the House in 2022 and Trump tells Republican members he wants to be chosen as speaker, there won’t be a thing you can do to stop him.

Does McCarthy actually know that you don't have to be a member of the House to be the speaker? Once upon a time, we trusted that our representatives knew about things like the Constitution, that it's a bad idea to have two fingers of bleach with dinner, and poking a steak knife in an electrical outlet won't end well, but nowadays? :shrug:

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Not a surprise: "Trump tried to end Spygate probe of New England Patriots by offering bribe, late senator’s son says"

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Donald Trump allegedly attempted to stop a congressional probe of the Spygate case involving the New England Patriots by offering a bribe to then-Sen. Arlen Specter, the late senator’s son claimed Wednesday.

An ESPN report detailed how Trump, nearly a decade before he became president, allegedly acted on behalf of Patriots owner Robert Kraft when he met with Specter in 2008 to offer him “a lot of money in Palm Beach” if the then-Republican senator from Pennsylvania dropped his investigation into the team. Shanin Specter, the senator’s son, said to ESPN that Trump intervened in the probe, while Charles Robbins, the senator’s longtime communications aide, told The Washington Post that he surmised Trump to be the person who offered Arlen Specter the bribe.

In a Wednesday email to The Post, Shanin Specter confirmed that his father, who died in 2012, explicitly indicated to him that Trump had attempted to bribe the senator, then the ranking Republican of the Senate Judiciary Committee, in exchange for dropping the investigation of the Patriots illegally filming an opponent’s hand signals.

“He told me it was Trump,” Specter, a personal injury and medical malpractice attorney in Philadelphia, said to The Post.

Trump spokesman Jason Miller denied the allegations in an email to The Post on Wednesday.

“This is completely false,” Miller said in a statement. “We have no idea what you’re talking about.”

Representatives with the Patriots did not immediately return a request for comment. A team spokesman told ESPN that Kraft, a longtime friend of Trump’s, “never asked Donald Trump to talk to Arlen Specter on his behalf.”

“Mr. Kraft is not aware of any involvement of Trump on this topic and he did not have any other engagement with Specter or his staff,” the spokesman said to the outlet.

NFL spokesman Brian McCarthy declined to comment to The Post.

The news comes one day after Manhattan’s district attorney convened the grand jury that is expected to decide whether to indict Trump, other executives at his company or the business itself, should prosecutors present the panel with criminal charges. As The Post reported Tuesday, convening the grand jury shows that District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance Jr.’s investigation of the former president and his business has hit an advanced stage after more than two years. The development also suggests that Vance thinks he has found evidence of a crime — if not by Trump, by someone potentially close to him or by his company.

The Patriots were found by NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell to have violated league rules when they videotaped the defensive coaches for the New York Jets from an unauthorized location in 2007. The franchise was stripped of its first-round draft pick and fined $250,000 by the league. Bill Belichick was fined $500,000, the largest amount ever handed down to an NFL coach.

The league’s relatively fast investigation raised concern from Specter, who wrote letters to Goodell to let him know he still had questions. Specter made headlines when he announced his intentions to investigate Spygate on his own.

“The NFL has a very preferred status in our country with their antitrust exemption,” Specter said to the New York Times in February 2008. “The American people are entitled to be sure about the integrity of the game.”

Even though his intentions lacked subpoena power, Specter’s focus on the case shook the NFL, ESPN reported.

Robbins, who co-authored Specter’s memoir “Life Among the Cannibals,” documented a dinner in early 2008 that the senator had with a friend in Palm Beach “at his palatial club,” according to ESPN. The topic of Spygate came up, as did Specter’s one-man investigation.

“On the signal stealing, a mutual friend had told me that ‘if I laid off the Patriots, there’d be a lot of money in Palm Beach,’” Specter wrote in the 2012 memoir. “And I replied, ‘I couldn’t care less.’”

Robbins said to The Post that Specter did not share who the man was and later brushed off his aide’s attempt at a follow-up question, but he surmised the person in question to be Trump after recognizing that the senator only knew one or two people powerful enough in Florida to make such a statement.

“When the subject comes up of Florida, my moral obligation was to have a sense of who Specter would have known in Florida,” Robbins told The Post.

Shanin Specter said to The Post that he spoke to his father within days of the conversation with Trump, adding that the senator explicitly told him it was the real estate mogul and reality TV star.

“He was still pissed, and he wanted to talk about it,” Specter said.

To that point, Trump and Arlen Specter had a friendly relationship. Federal Election Commission records show that Trump contributed more than $11,000 to the campaign committees of a person he called a “close friend” in handwritten letters, according to ESPN. In 2004, Trump hosted a fundraising luncheon for Specter at Trump Tower, the Morning Call reported at the time. Specter was being challenged in the Republican primary that year by conservative congressman Patrick J. Toomey.

“This guy is a great character,” Trump said of Specter. “Arlen is quite simply a friend of mine. He’s just someone I like.” The paper noted that Trump then glanced at Specter before adding, “I don’t know if that helps you or hurts you.”

But Shanin Specter said to ESPN the mood changed following the meeting in 2008.

“My father told me that Trump was acting as a messenger for Kraft,” he told the outlet. “But I’m equally sure the reference to money in Palm Beach was campaign contributions, not cash. The offer was Kraft assistance with campaign contributions. … My father said it was Kraft’s offer, not someone else’s.”

Around that same time, Trump reportedly co-hosted a party for the release of one of Specter’s books, “Never Give In.” Not long afterward, Trump wrote in March 2008 what would be the last campaign check to Specter for $1,300, ESPN reported.

The senator would face criticism for taking on the Spygate probe at a time when the economy was in peril and the nation was engaged in wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Critics also pointed to how he was fighting the league on behalf of Comcast at a time when the Philadelphia-based cable TV company was battling the NFL over the pricing for carrying the NFL Network.

In a speech on the Senate floor in June 2008, Specter offered his final word on the probe and defended himself against criticism. He also called for an “impartial investigation.”

“The publicity in exposing Belichick and the Patriots’ conduct has been a far greater punishment than dollars and draft choices,” he said. “History will impose the final judgment on the penalty for Belichick and the Patriots.”

Trump’s relationship with the NFL took a turn when he became president, as he often criticized Colin Kaepernick and other players who knelt during the national anthem in protest of police brutality and racism. He was, however, welcoming of the Patriots to the White House in 2017 and regularly tweeted his support for Kraft, Belichick and legendary quarterback Tom Brady.

 

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27 minutes ago, GreyhoundFan said:

An ESPN report detailed how Trump, nearly a decade before he became president, allegedly acted on behalf of Patriots owner Robert Kraft when he met with Specter in 2008 to offer him “a lot of money in Palm Beach” if the then-Republican senator from Pennsylvania dropped his investigation into the team.

I know Australians are ridiculously over-invested in sport but I don't think we've ever had a Parliamentary Inquiry into them. Sports rorts, sure, but that's more into the activities of elected members than the sports themselves. Even Bodyline and the Underarm Bowling didn't make it as far as I know (might have Questions in Question Time, but that's as far as it went). 

And why does it not surprise me that Trump (a) attempted to bribe someone, and (b) was crap at it?

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Orange Florida Man has a member of the shrub family genuflecting. This take made me laugh:

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Anyone surprised? "Trump fires back after Paul Ryan criticizes former president’s hold on GOP"

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Former president Donald Trump called former House speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) “a curse to the Republican Party” after Ryan appealed to the party not to rely on the “appeal of one personality.”

While Ryan did not explicitly name Trump in his critique of the current GOP during a speech Thursday night at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, Calif., his intended target was clear. Later, when Ryan did name Trump, it was to praise him for advancing “practical conservative policy,” according to his prepared remarks.

“Paul Ryan has been a curse to the Republican Party,” the former president said in a statement Friday morning. “He has no clue as to what needs to be done for our country, was a weak and ineffective leader, and spends all of his time fighting Republicans as opposed to Democrats who are destroying our country.”

Trump also dismissed Ryan as a Republican-in-name-only and said he does “nothing for our forward-surging Republican Party!”

Ryan left politics after three years as speaker during which Trump ascended as the de facto leader of the GOP. He attacked Trump the candidate but backed off when Trump became president. His criticisms became more cautious, and he often told reporters he had not seen Trump’s latest questionable or incendiary tweet.

“Once again, we conservatives find ourselves at a crossroads. And here’s one reality we have to face: If the conservative cause depends on the populist appeal of one personality, or on second-rate imitations, then we’re not going anywhere,” Ryan said Thursday.

But Ryan came short of denouncing Trump. Instead, he credited “the populism of President Trump in action, tethered to conservative principles” for a robust economy in early 2020 before the coronavirus pandemic.

President Donald Trump, accompanied by Vice President Mike Pence, greets House Speaker Paul D. Ryan on Jan. 26, 2017, before speaking at the Republican congressional retreat in Philadelphia. (Matt Rourke/AP)

Discussing the current struggles of the GOP, Ryan also nodded at Trump’s refusal to accept the 2020 election results.

“Even worse, it was horrifying to see a presidency come to such a dishonorable and disgraceful end,” the former speaker said.

He also seemed to swipe at his successor, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), when he said voters won’t be “impressed by the sight of yes-men and flatterers flocking to Mar-a-Lago.”

Ryan, who sits on the board of Fox Corp., which includes Fox News, also urged his party not to get “caught up in every little cultural battle.”

“Sometimes these skirmishes are just creations of outrage peddlers, detached from reality and not worth anybody’s time,” he said.

Fox News dedicates considerable airtime to the culture wars. A Ryan spokesman did not respond when asked if the former speaker has concerns about Fox’s coverage.

Ryan, the 2012 vice-presidential nominee on the GOP ticket with Mitt Romney, was once seen as a rising star in the party. He was a young, polished, policy wonk who some Republicans believed would usher in the next generation of conservatives.

Instead, like other up-and-comers, he was sidelined by Trump’s swift takeover of the Republican Party and its base. Unlike others who left politics — and even some still in, like Romney, a senator from Utah — who feel freer to say what they really think about their party’s new leader, Ryan has kept a relatively low profile.

That has not spared him from Trump’s ire though. Ryan gave interviews to Tim Alberta of Politico for a book about the GOP under Trump, where he unleashed on the president. When the book came out in 2019, Trump counterpunched Ryan.

“He had the Majority & blew it away with his poor leadership and bad timing,” Trump tweeted. “Couldn’t get him out of Congress fast enough!”

In his speech Thursday, Ryan also criticized President Biden as a “nice guy” with too-liberal policies.

“In 2020, the country wanted a nice guy who would move to the center and depolarize our politics,” Ryan said. “Instead, we got a nice guy pursuing an agenda more leftist than any president in my lifetime.”

 

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The consequences of working for Trump:

Trump appointees have been left furious after being asked to 'immediately' pay thousands of dollars in deferred payroll taxes, which they thought would be forgiven

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Some staffers from President Donald Trump's administration have reportedly seen their tax bills spike as they're being asked to pay payroll taxes deferred by the president.

Politico reported that members of Trump's administration have been receiving letters asking them to pay Social Security taxes that were deferred, with at least one bill reaching $1,500.

"If the indebtedness is not paid in full within 30 calendar days, we intend to forward this debt to the Department of Treasury, Treasury Offset Program, for further collection," said a copy of a letter sent May 18, 2021, by an accounting officer from the Office of Administration. 

Trump set the policy on August 8, 2020, in a memo to Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, directing Mnuchin to defer some payroll taxes to "put money directly in the pockets of American workers" who needed it most.

Trump sidestepped Congress to make the change because the pandemic was "of sufficient severity and magnitude to warrant an emergency declaration." 

As many as 1.3 million federal workers may have had some of their payroll taxes deferred under the measure, as Insiderreported in September. Under the plan, earners paid less than $4,000 every two weeks wouldn't have to pay the 6.2% tax out of their paychecks from September through the end of the year.

Now, the government's looking for those deferred taxes, according to Politico. The report quoted several former administration staffers who called the bills "unacceptable." One said: "It's just a very unfortunate situation." 

The letter published by Politico included a "Voluntary Repayment Agreement" as an attachment, with an option to pay via credit or debit card. 

One anonymous Trump appointee told the publication that the former president had a "good plan," but, "I just wish I had the option to opt-out."

 

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OFM is going on tour this summer. Can't make this shit up.

From CNN "It feels a little like something is missing. It's as if a screaming siren has been suddenly switched off and replaced by an unnerving silence. But don't worry. The noise is coming back. Former President Donald Trump told One America News Network he's planning a summer rally tour of Florida, Ohio, North Carolina and Georgia."

https://www.cnn.com/2021/05/31/opinions/trump-rallies-return-greivances-media-dantonio/index.html

 

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8 hours ago, WiseGirl said:

Former President Donald Trump told One America News Network he's planning a summer rally tour of Florida, Ohio, North Carolina and Georgia."

Coronalooza!

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10 hours ago, WiseGirl said:

OFM is going on tour this summer. Can't make this shit up.

From CNN "It feels a little like something is missing. It's as if a screaming siren has been suddenly switched off and replaced by an unnerving silence. But don't worry. The noise is coming back. Former President Donald Trump told One America News Network he's planning a summer rally tour of Florida, Ohio, North Carolina and Georgia."

https://www.cnn.com/2021/05/31/opinions/trump-rallies-return-greivances-media-dantonio/index.html

 

He needs to grift more money to pay for defense against charges NY will bring against him.

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I think the "Trump will be reinstated on __________ (insert date here)" and the "The world will end/Rapture will come on __________ (insert date here)" folks should co-ordinate.

Let's get organized, people.

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4 minutes ago, thoughtful said:

I think the "Trump will be reinstated on __________ (insert date here)" and the "The world will end/Rapture will come on __________ (insert date here)" folks should co-ordinate.

Let's get organized, people.

This could work.  Who needs money when you're about to be Raptured?  Of course who needs Trump either, but realizing that requires extra thinking power.

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2 hours ago, Cartmann99 said:

These people are unbelievable. At least they've abandoned the pretense of wanting to live in a democracy. 

1 hour ago, Cartmann99 said:

Well at least the box is now bright yellow so they can claim no one could have missed it and it must have been what they intended.

1 hour ago, thoughtful said:

I think the "Trump will be reinstated on __________ (insert date here)" and the "The world will end/Rapture will come on __________ (insert date here)" folks should co-ordinate.

Let's get organized, people.

As long as all it involves is standing around in groups waiting for a giant flash or something I'm for it.

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3 hours ago, Cartmann99 said:

 

Reinstated as president? Oh DEAR. He has taken leave of his senses, hasn’t he?

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1 hour ago, Destiny said:

Reinstated as president? Oh DEAR. He has taken leave of his senses, hasn’t he?

He's like homo sapien idiot spray.  Opens his mouth and MAGAs come pouring out of the woodwork.

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On 6/1/2021 at 3:02 AM, WiseGirl said:

OFM is going on tour this summer. Can't make this shit up.

From CNN "It feels a little like something is missing. It's as if a screaming siren has been suddenly switched off and replaced by an unnerving silence. But don't worry. The noise is coming back. Former President Donald Trump told One America News Network he's planning a summer rally tour of Florida, Ohio, North Carolina and Georgia."

https://www.cnn.com/2021/05/31/opinions/trump-rallies-return-greivances-media-dantonio/index.html

 

Once in a lifetime opportunity! Go now and see him because next week he could already be in jail!!

 

(One can hope, anyway.)

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"Trump’s company puts D.C. hotel lease up for sale, again"

Quote

Former president Donald Trump’s company has again hired a broker to sell the lease to its D.C. hotel, according to two people familiar with the discussions, a second attempt to unload the property after the pandemic thwarted a previous effort.

The Trump Organization previously listed the Pennsylvania Avenue hotel, in the federally owned Old Post Office Pavilion, in the fall of 2019. When covid-19 struck, many hotels closed either completely or partially due to government shutdowns, and the company pulled the property off the market.

Now, with Trump under investigation by prosecutors in New York and the economy beginning to take off, his company is trying again, hiring the brokerage firm Newmark Group to market the lease, according to the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to share private business discussions.

Representatives for the Trump Organization did not immediately respond to a request for comment. A representative of Newmark Group declined to comment.

The hotel, which Trump’s company leases from the General Services Administration, has suffered financially from both the toll covid has taken on luxury travel and the damage Trump’s brand has endured due to his politics, with many liberal, corporate and international clients unwilling to book rooms or events at the hotel.

Rooms were running nearly half empty at the hotel the last time the company put it up for sale, according to marketing documents acquired by The Washington Post. Last year revenue at the property fell by 62 percent, according to Trump’s government disclosure forms.

The newly proposed sale comes on the heels of Manhattan’s district attorney convening a grand jury expected to decide whether to indict the former president, other executives at his company or the business itself. The move indicates that District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance Jr.’s investigation of the former president and his business has reached an advanced stage after more than two years.

It’s unclear whether the D.C. hotel will be a factor in Vance’s investigation into Trump’s business or in a related inquiry by New York Attorney General Letitia James (D). The property has not been named as a target in any public filings related to either Vance’s case or the investigation by James, but the Wall Street Journal reported last week that Vance’s office is investigating the hotel in addition to other properties.

Trump called the seating of the grand jury “a continuation of the greatest Witch Hunt in American history.”

“This is purely political, and an affront to the almost 75 million voters who supported me in the Presidential Election, and it’s being driven by highly partisan Democrat prosecutors,” the former president said in a statement last week.

Vance’s office declined to comment.

Should the hotel sell, it would likely mean the name “Trump” would come down from the building, as industry experts say a new operator would probably want to capitalize on a different hotel brand to grow revenue among a broader swath of clients. In addition to the difficulty of reaching a wide array of guests, hotel management has not reopened the hotel’s outdoor bar seating out of concerns for the comfort and safety of guests.

Whether it sells will depend on what price Trump and his family are willing to consider. The Trump Organization put an estimated $200 million into renovating the property, far more than other bidders were willing to offer, and took out a $170 million loan from Deutsche Bank to finance the project. Last time it was up for sale, Eric Trump, the president’s son, said the company was looking for a sales price of around $500 million.

Another factor in the sale may be the pool of potential buyers willing to do business with Trump and his company. For months Trump has spread election falsehoods and before leaving office, he urged crowds to march to the U.S. Capitol just before the Jan. 6 attack, prompting some banks, law firms, real estate brokers and other companies to swear off working with him or his company in the future.

Trump won the deal to renovate the Old Post Office before he was elected but the hotel became a center of controversy once he entered office. Trump continued to own his business while it served corporations, foreign governments and other clients with business before the U.S. government, leading to allegations of conflicts of interest.

I hope it sells quickly, but for much less than he wants. I can't wait to see his name removed from that lovely historic building.

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1 hour ago, GreyhoundFan said:

"Trump’s company puts D.C. hotel lease up for sale, again"

I hope it sells quickly, but for much less than he wants. I can't wait to see his name removed from that lovely historic building.

But.. but.. where will all the repug sycophants stay when Trump is reinstated in August??

/s

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