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

[47of74]

Fuck nugget is insane. 

Quote

Then-President Donald Trump told a number of his advisers in 2020 that whoever leaked information about his stay in the White House bunker in May of that year had committed treason and should be executed for sharing details about the episode with members of the press, according to excerpts of a new book, obtained by CNN, from Wall Street Journal reporter Michael Bender.

Trump, along with then-first lady Melania Trump and their son, Barron, were all taken to the underground bunker for a period of time during the protests spurred by the police killing of George Floyd as protesters gathered outside the building. Bender writes in the book, titled "Frankly, We Did Win This Election: The Inside Story of How Trump Lost, that Trump, in the days following his time in the bunker, held a tense meeting with top military, law enforcement and West Wing advisers, in which he aired grievances over the leak.

"Trump boiled over about the bunker story as soon as they arrived and shouted at them to smoke out whoever had leaked it. It was the most upset some aides had ever seen the president," Bender writes.

'Whoever did that, they should be charged with treason!' Trump yelled. 'They should be executed!'" the book reads.

Normal person talked the way aforementioned fuck nugget does they'd probably get their asses dragged down to the nearest hospital and getting lots of Thorazine pumped in their veins..

[47of74]

You mean more than the golden showers?

Quote

For years, there have been whispers that the Russian government holds compromising materials on Donald Trump. Now, an alleged leak from the heart of the Kremlin appears to show them boasting about kompromat.

The supposed leak obtained by The Guardianreportedly states that President Vladimir Putin personally approved a nefarious plan to throw Russia’s support behind Trump’s 2016 campaign. The document states that Putin, his spy chiefs, and top ministers agreed that a victory for a “mentally unstable” Trump would permanently weaken the United States.

The document also reportedly states that the Kremlin has so-called kompromat on Trump. It cryptically refers to “certain events” that happened during “non-official visits to Russian Federation territory.” The purported leak doesn’t explain what those events involved—only referring to an appendix that wasn’t attached the obtained document.

Trump is known to have visited Moscow on multiple occasions in the decades before he was elected as president. One memorable section of the Steele dossier threw up some extraordinary but unsubstantiated claims about the former president and some Russian prostitutes in a Moscow hotel room when he jetted into Russia for the 2013 Miss Universe pageant.

Not surprising at all when it comes to Assolini. 

[Howl]

There is zero chance that the Russians didn't gather kompromat on Trump by filming him with prostitutes/honey pots. It is standard KGB/Soviet Union operating procedure. 

Two new books abt Trump's last daze in the WH.  

Landslide: The Final Days of the Trump Presidency by Michael Wolff.  Love this review on SLATE:  Michael Wolff’s Latest Page-Turner Gives Trump’s Final Year the Trashy Treatment It Deserves   The administration’s gruesome climax pitted entertainment vs. reality. Few understand this tension like Wolff.

I Alone Can Fix It: Donald J. Trump's Catastrophic Final Year by Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker, will be released on Tuesday, July 20.  Lots of preview quotes dealing with the time between Trump's loss and Biden's inauguration, related to head of Joint Chiefs of Staff General Milley's fears that Trump would attempt a coup. 

[formergothardite]

That “leak” from Russia makes me think Putin is sending Trump a message that his usefulness is coming to an end and Putin will cheerfully spill all the beans unless Trump can quickly prove he can remain a Russian asset. Right now he is just a rambling old man in legal trouble who keeps repeating the same stories over and over. There are other republicans Putin can use to gain power over America. He doesn’t need Trump. 
 

ETA: I feel like whatever Putin has on Trump is truly so awful it will turn even his most devoted followers against him so they will go running towards the next Russian asset Putin wants to be in charge. The pee-pee tape wouldn’t do that. Trump has no shame, he could laugh that off. Whatever it is Trump knows it will turn his fan base against him. Trump has always seemed terrified of Putin. 

 

Edited July 15, 2021 by formergothardite

[Xan]

22 minutes ago, formergothardite said:

That “leak” from Russia makes me think Putin is sending Trump a message that his usefulness is coming to an end and Putin will cheerfully spill all the beans unless Trump can quickly prove he can remain a Russian asset. Right now he is just a rambling old man in legal trouble who keeps repeating the same stories over and over. There are other republicans Putin can use to gain power over America. He doesn’t need Trump. 
 

ETA: I feel like whatever Putin has on Trump is truly so awful it will turn even his most devoted followers against him so they will go running towards the next Russian asset Putin wants to be in charge. The pee-pee tape wouldn’t do that. Trump has no shame, he could laugh that off. Whatever it is Trump knows it will turn his fan base against him. Trump has always seemed terrified of Putin. 

 

I agree.  I'm pretty sure that Trump has been compromised by laundering Russian mafia money but I doubt that would bother the true believers.  However, he is very afraid of people knowing that he isn't as financially successful as he says he is.  He wouldn't want the flock to know that he's been propped up by Russian money for years.

The dalliance with the porn star didn't affect him either so I doubt a story about Russian hookers and urine would be enough to frighten Trump.  That pretty much leaves the Jeffrey Epstein-type stories.  And I've seen some floated about Trump before now.  That might be what Putin is dangling over Trump's head.

[formergothardite]

I think it has to be an Epstein type thing because from my experience with Trump supporters they would cheer him on for any financial shadiness and just say it is evidence he is a business genius. I am sure this is something that can’t be spun in anyway and will repulse pretty much everyone. 
 

Putin needs Trump destroyed if he wants to put someone else in place. Trump supporters won’t turn to anyone else as long as he is still an option. So I think it is just a matter of time. My fear is the next Putin Puppet won’t be nearly as dumb. 

[Dandruff]

28 minutes ago, formergothardite said:

That “leak” from Russia makes me think Putin is sending Trump a message that his usefulness is coming to an end and Putin will cheerfully spill all the beans unless Trump can quickly prove he can remain a Russian asset.

I suspect Trump is worried about the potential for more than beans being spilled.  We know the sort of promises he made to people in the US, and how well they turned out.  Can't imagine his behavior has been substantially different internationally and certain folks may not be so inclined to let things slide.

[fraurosena]

Whatever it is, it's something Trump is deathly afraid of coming out. It doesn't have to be anything egregious or horrible, in theory it might even be something we would find rather benign, or something his followers will forgive him for or label 'fake news' (although to be honest, no matter what it is, this will probably be how they react). But it most definitely is something Trump believes to be devastating to him. And that's why it works.

Edited July 15, 2021 by fraurosena

[Alisamer]

39 minutes ago, formergothardite said:

I think it has to be an Epstein type thing because from my experience with Trump supporters they would cheer him on for any financial shadiness and just say it is evidence he is a business genius. I am sure this is something that can’t be spun in anyway and will repulse pretty much everyone. 

Yep. You could tell a Trump supporter he stole a whole nursing home's worth of elderly peoples' money, and theyd say it was some sort of great business plan and evidence he's a genious. He's rich, isn't he? (No, I think he's not. The richer people think you are, the less money you have to actually have, as long as you can convince banks to give you credit and other people to treat you to freebies.)

36 minutes ago, Dandruff said:

I suspect Trump is worried about the potential for more than beans being spilled.  

I think so too - we all know what happens to Russian assets who are no longer useful. 

I think his biggest concern, however, has nothing to do with that or with his supporters. He could literally do ANYTHING and his supporters would claim it's faked, even if they were standing right there and saw him do it. Jesus himself could float down out of heaven with angels on each side of him and proclaim Trump the antichrist and half his followers would claim it was a democrat deep-state plot. 

I think what he's really afraid of is the few banks left that will deal with him noping out and calling in all his debts. OR, it's something that will send him straight to prison, do not pass go, it doesn't matter what your "base" thinks. 

But I really think it's something that will sink him financially. Trump cares about himself and money. That's it. 100% of his attention and care. He doesn't really care what his supporters think, they're bamboozled enough he CAN'T lose most of them. But he can lose his money, his lifestyle, and possibly his freedom. 

 

[47of74]

The military genuinely feared Assolini would try a coup

Quote

The most chilling implication from new reports that America's top military officer feared Donald Trump would try to order the armed forces to stage a coup is not how close the nation came to a post-election disaster last year.

It's the extreme danger that the US system of government, Constitution and cherished freedoms would face if an ex-President even now trying to revive his demagogic political career ever gets anywhere near the Oval Office again.

In the latest staggering glimpse into Trump's crazed, final days in office from a flurry of new books, it emerged Wednesday that the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Mark Milleywas so shaken by Trump's refusal to concede defeat that he feared he might attempt a coup or other illegal gambit to stay in power.

Milley saw himself and the armed forces as a bulwark against any presidential mutiny against the Constitution and the nearly two-and-a-half centuries of democratic transfers of power.

 

[fraurosena]

12 minutes ago, 47of74 said:

Milley saw himself and the armed forces as a bulwark against any presidential mutiny against the Constitution and the nearly two-and-a-half centuries of democratic transfers of power.

This does not surprise me one bit. Trump was aiming for a dictatorship from the get go, and he only got more authoritarian the longer he remained in office. It would only have been a matter of course that he would attempt to use the military to remain in power. Thank your lucky stars that Milley and the rest of the military top supported democracy, or right now you would be living under a Trump dictatorship.

[Alisamer]

1 hour ago, fraurosena said:

This does not surprise me one bit. Trump was aiming for a dictatorship from the get go, and he only got more authoritarian the longer he remained in office. It would only have been a matter of course that he would attempt to use the military to remain in power. Thank your lucky stars that Milley and the rest of the military top supported democracy, or right now you would be living under a Trump dictatorship.

Also thank goodness Trump didn't manage to pull out a win in the past election. Can you imagine the crazy of a second-term Trump? Not having to care at all about re-election? Not even having to pretend anymore? It's terrifying.

[Cartmann99]

2 hours ago, Alisamer said:

He could literally do ANYTHING and his supporters would claim it's faked, even if they were standing right there and saw him do it. Jesus himself could float down out of heaven with angels on each side of him and proclaim Trump the antichrist and half his followers would claim it was a democrat deep-state plot. 

Sunk cost fallacy. His most ardent fans have too much invested in him to walk away, so they create conspiracy theories to explain everything.

[danvillebelle]

Oh please Vlad, please please please.  SPILL ALL THE DIRT.  I so want to see the flaming pile of shit....go down in flames.

[SPHASH]

JR Ewing on Dallas once said "never get caught in bed with a live man or a dead woman".  Maybe that's the case with Assholini.

[Smee]

Anyone else watching what’s happening in South Africa as a terrifying taste of what might happen in the US when TFG is finally jailed? 

[Ozlsn]

1 hour ago, Smee said:

Anyone else watching what’s happening in South Africa as a terrifying taste of what might happen in the US when TFG is finally jailed? 

It's possible certainly. I am still dubious that he'll be jailed - I think he'll die first. His children and some hangers on/employees on the other hand I think may be screwed, and no one will riot for them.

[fraurosena]

 Don't get all excited by this headline, it's Jennifer Weisselberg, not one of the Failsons, Javanka or Melania. 

Still, it's pretty damning as she has physical evidence to back up her claims.

Prosecutors 'astonished' after family member directly implicates Trump in 'explosive interview'

 

Quote

A witness directly implicated Donald Trump in the tax fraud scheme that landed his family business and longtime accountant under indictment.

Jennifer Weisselberg, the former daughter in law to indicted Trump Organization chief financial officer Allen Weisselberg, told investigators last month in New York that Trump personally guaranteed he would pay school tuition for her two children instead of increasing a salary that could be taxed, reported The Daily Beast.

"Weisselberg [on June 25] provided key details for investigators," the website reported. "In January 2012, inside Trump's office at Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue, Jennifer Weisselberg watched as Trump discussed compensation with her husband and her father-in-law, both company employees. Her husband wouldn't be getting a raise, but their children would get their tuition paid for at a top-rated private academy instead."

"Weisselberg allegedly relayed to prosecutors that Trump turned to her and said: 'Don't worry, I've got it covered,'" the report added. "Prosecutors were astonished, according to one source."

The Trump Organization was indicted five days after Jennifer Weisselberg's interview on tax fraud charges related to unreported fringe benefits like those she described, and her claims would directly tie the twice-impeached one-term president to the running scheme.

Some of the charges were based on sworn testimony from Jennifer Weisselberg's divorce from Barry Weisselberg, which showed that Trump himself signed a check for tuition payments that she would hand deliver to the school.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

Good: "Ticket sales are moving slowly for the coming Trump-O’Reilly stadium tour"

Quote

Donald Trump is having trouble selling advance tickets for his upcoming speaking tour with conservative pundit Bill O’Reilly, according to interviews with ticketing officials for the venues.

Early last month, Trump and O’Reilly, the one-time top Fox News host, announced a joint “History Tour” featuring four stops in December. O’Reilly said his conversations with Trump “will not be boring,” while the former president promised “fun, fun, fun for everyone who attends.”

Tickets went on sale for the events on June 14. While most seats are priced between $100 and $300, a “VIP Meet & Greet Package” goes for more than $8,500 and includes getting pictures taken with Trump and O’Reilly and a pre-show, 45-minute reception.

The events are not until the end of the year, Trump’s camp notes. But so far, the pace of purchases has been slow compared to other acts, arena officials say.

In Orlando, where the duo is hosting an event at the 20,000-capacity Amway Center on Dec. 12, a box office employee for the arena said, “There’s still a lot of tickets open.” The person, who like others for this story insisted on anonymity to share confidential sales data, added: “We have concerts that are doing a lot better than this.” A Bad Bunny concert being held next March recently sold out within two days, for example, and the majority of seats for a Dec. 3 Kane Brown concert have been sold already.

At the 20,000-seat American Airlines Center in Dallas, home to the NBA’s Dallas Mavericks and NHL’s Dallas Stars, a large number of seats remain open for the Dec. 19 Trump-O’Reilly event, according to a stadium employee who works in ticket sales.

For Trump’s Houston event with O’Reilly at the 19,000-seat Toyota Center, home to the NBA’s Houston Rockets, 60 to 65 percent of seats remain unsold, an employee with access to ticket sales information estimated. And in Sunrise, Florida, a box office employee at the BB&T Center said that they would have expected sales for the Trump-O’Reilly event there to have been “definitely higher” by now.

“It hasn’t been [selling] like crazy,” the person added, noting that events for comedian Katt Williams and podcast star Joe Rogan have done “significantly” better than the Trump-O’Reilly duo thus far.

As of Thursday evening, Ticketmaster pages for the Orlando, Dallas and Sunrise events and the Axs page for the Houston event show wide swathes of available seats, with some large sections only having sold a few tickets.

The difficulty Trump and O’Reilly appear to be having in filling up stadiums may be a reflection of the times. After a year-plus on lockdown, Americans seem eager to reengage culturally while disengaging politically. Cable news ratings, for example, are down substantially.

But former presidents — and even their spouses — don’t usually encounter hurdles in selling out their appearances and speeches. Tickets for Michelle Obama’s “Becoming” book tour in 2018, for example, sold quickly, with most tickets for her Chicago United Center stop selling out within minutes and the cheapest tickets for all the venues selling out in less than two days. Her average venue size was similar to Trump’s, although Trump’s four venues have a slightly higher capacity.

Bill and Hillary Clinton’s joint Live Nation tour in 2018 and 2019, meanwhile, saw events sell out within a week or two weeks, according to a person familiar with that tour, although the venues were smaller than the four Trump events.

For Trump, who is famously crowd-obsessed, lagging ticket sales numbers complicate the image he promotes of himself as a top draw. The tour represents a chance to speak to devoted fans, many of whom still consider him to be the legitimate president. It also provides him an opportunity to earn money and lay more groundwork for a potential 2024 bid. For O’Reilly, the tour represents a return to the limelight after he was pushed out of Fox News following a sexual harassment scandal that led to about $45 million in settlements being paid to at least six women. More recently, O’Reilly has hosted a nightly show called “No Spin News” on the conservative platform The First.

Both Trump and O’Reilly pushed back aggressively at the notion that ticket sales are not robust. A Trump aide noted that the former president hasn’t promoted the events very much since they went on sale, and said that “many tickets” haven’t yet been made available.

“The History Tour has already sold over $5 million of tickets, and the excitement and enthusiasm is unlike anything we’ve seen before,” Trump spokesperson Liz Harrington said in a statement. “Come December, the sold out shows will be a memorable night for all.”

But in a sign that sales numbers may not be where the former president wants them, the National Republican Congressional Committee on Monday morning sent a text message to its list advertising tickets. “Love Trump? Want to see him speak live? Enter now to win 2 tickets to Trump’s tour with Bill O’Reilly. Link to enter expires in 1 hour,” the solicitation read.

O’Reilly, in a phone interview after Trump had told him to call this reporter, denied that ticket sales are lagging, calling it “false” and “totally ridiculous” and provided a dollar figure that was $2 million higher than Harrington’s.

“We have more than $7 million in the bank,” O’Reilly said. “We haven’t spent a nickel on marketing, nothing. All those 7 million for four shows were done on the announcement. Marketing will start in about a week. Nobody has sold tickets this fast at this price, and VIPs are sold out at 3 of the 4 venues.”

O’Reilly said he and Trump had sold $2 million worth of tickets for Dallas and that the Sunrise, Florida, event was almost 75 percent sold out. He noted that not all of the 19,000 seats at the Houston event will be available for purchase. And he also said that it was “bullshit” that ticket sales for Orlando have been lackluster. But when asked how many tickets have been sold at the venue, he said he didn’t know.

“I don’t have that information,” he said. “I do grosses. I’m not the ticket counter.”

O’Reilly threatened to sue this reporter, saying, “You put one word in there that’s not true, I’ll sue your ass off and you can quote me on that. You’re just a hatchet man and that’s what you are.”

Trump’s Save America PAC put out a statement late Wednesday quoting O’Reilly saying that the “tour will be one of the most lucrative of all time.” And in O’Reilly’s “Message of the Day” on Thursday, he said “Politico is trying to denigrate the Trump History Tour.”

Asked to confirm O’Reilly’s Dallas numbers, a spokesperson for the American Airlines Center said she could not comment on ticket sales for any event per company policy and referred questions to the tour publicist. A spokesperson for the BB&T Center in Sunrise did not respond to a request for comment when asked to confirm O’Reilly’s Sunrise numbers.

Kirk Wingerson, the marketing director for the Amway Center, said in a text message: “The box office person you talked with did not provide an accurate assessment nor do they speak for us.” Wingerson referred POLITICO to the Orlando city clerk’s office, which did not provide numbers in time for publication. Wingerson did not respond when asked for specific numbers of tickets sold.

A spokesperson for the Toyota Center declined to comment due to a policy of not disclosing attendance numbers prior to an event.

Trump’s high-dollar tour with O’Reilly coincides with the reemergence of his signature MAGA rallies. During those rallies, he has hit on familiar themes — false claims of a “stolen” election, boasts about his record and harsh criticism of his successor.

They’ve been big draws. An earlier Save America rally in Wellington, Ohio, attracted some 28,000 to 30,000 people, according to the Lorain County Fair board. But they don’t pay.

It’s not clear how much money Trump is making for his appearances with O’Reilly. Paid speeches were lucrative in the former “Apprentice” star’s pre-presidential days. In financial disclosure documents, he reported making $1.75 million in seven addresses from May 2014 to April 2015.

Past presidents have cashed in by charging corporations and associations hefty fees for appearances, with Barack Obama earning as much as $400,000 per speech. Bill Clinton has been known to command as much as $750,000 for a speech, while George W. Bush has often received between $100,000 to $175,000 per paid event.

But Trump’s often toxic rhetoric and his false claims of a stolen election make this more conventional buck-raking approach uniquely challenging for him.

“For the past administration, there has been very little demand for former members, starting from the top, and it’s largely because it’s a very polarizing environment,” said a leader at one of the country’s top speaking agencies, speaking on condition of anonymity. “Companies don’t want to get associated with anything that smells like Jan. 6 or questioning the election. That doesn’t help them at all.”

The idea that Obama outsold him must make TFG crazier than usual.

[Cartmann99]

Spoiler

 

[AmazonGrace]

On 7/15/2021 at 10:55 PM, Cartmann99 said:

Sunk cost fallacy. His most ardent fans have too much invested in him to walk away, so they create conspiracy theories to explain everything.

At this point it's not even all about TFG anymore but Trumpkins have spent so much mental energy defending him from everything under the sun, believing all his lies,  making him the all American patriot messiah and the savior of all they hold dear,  telling themselves black is white and bad is good  and otherwise twisting the reality to suit TFG's purposes that if they stopped for one second and considered that TFG might be a bad guy after all, the resulting existential crisis  would destroy more than TFG,  it could nuke entire worldviews and self images, and they're obligated to keep defending him till the cows come home because otherwise they'd have to admit they're stupid bigoted fascists who are wrong about absolutely everything, and they will never allow themselves to become so self-aware.

[fraurosena]

This excerpt from the book "I alone can fix it" is a bit of a long read, so you might want to save it for later.

"I'm Getting The Word Out": Inside The Feverish Mind Of Donald Trump Two Months After Leaving The White House

Quote

Seventy days had passed since Donald Trump left Washington against his will. On March 31, 2021, we ventured to Mar-a-Lago, where he still reigned as king of Republican politics. We arrived late that afternoon for our audience with the man who used to be president and were ushered into an ornate sixty-foot-long room that functioned as a kind of lobby leading to the club’s patio. A model of Air Force One painted in Trump’s proposed redesign—a flat red stripe across the middle, a navy belly, a white top, and a giant American flag on the tail—was proudly displayed on the coffee table facing the entrance. It was a prop disconnected from reality.  Trump’s vision never came to be; the fleet now in use by President Biden still bears the iconic baby blue-and-white livery designed by Jacqueline Kennedy.

“Used to be” is not a phrase anyone dares use to describe the president inside his Palm Beach castle. Here, beneath the gold-leaf ceiling of winged griffins and crystal chandeliers, Trump still rules, surrounded day and night by applauding fans, obsequious courtiers, and dutiful servants. At the perfectly manicured Mar-a-Lago, none of the disgrace that marked the end of his presidency pierces Trump’s reality. Here, he and his aides work to maintain the gospel according to Trump, with the most important revelations being that Donald Trump was the greatest president of all time and was unjustly denied a second term.

Trump had invited us to Mar-a-Lago to interview him for this book. He had declined an interview for our first book about his presidency, and when A Very Stable Genius was published in January 2020, attacked us personally and branded our reporting a work of fiction. But Trump was quick to agree to our request this time. He sought to curate history.

As we sat for the interview, the former president’s press secretary presented us copies of a bound volume: 1,000 Accomplishments of President Donald J. Trump: Highlights of the First Term. On the back cover is an American flag, the presidential seal, and Trump’s thick, jagged signature. The book totals 92 pages and is organized with chapters dedicated to the economy, tax cuts, deregulation, trade, and so on.

Trump walked into the room flanked by a couple of plainclothed Secret Service agents, a much smaller detail than he once had as president. He wore his customary dark suit and tie, his face covered with bronze makeup. He sat in his preferred position, a plush armchair of ivory brocade facing the entrance where guests arrive, with us on a sofa to his right. Behind him was a huge window looking out to the Atlantic Ocean; in front of him, the patio facing Lake Worth.

“This is the biggest, the best, the most acreage, the most everything—the ocean, the lake, it fronts both,” the ever-boasting Trump said. “Mar-a-Lago is ocean-to-lake. Did you know that? Mar-a-Lago, ocean to lake. It’s the only place. See that window? That window, when that was built, is the largest pane of glass in the world, okay?”

Trump started the interview by pointing out his enduring and unrivaled power within the Republican Party. He explained that he didn’t intend to follow the path of former presidents, who largely bowed out of the nitty-gritty of party politics. He was proud to say he genuinely enjoys this sport he found so late in life, and believes he plays it better than anyone else. The parade of Republican politicians flocking to Mar-a-Lago all spring to kiss his ring had both energized him, he said, and proved the value of his stock.

“We have had so many, and so many are coming in,” Trump said. “It’s been pretty amazing. You see the numbers. They need the endorsement. I don’t say this in a braggadocious way, but if they don’t get the endorsement, they don’t win.” 

But future elections were not front and center in his mind. A past election was. Trump was fixated on his loss in 2020, returning to this wound repeatedly throughout the interview. 

“In a certain way, I had two presidencies,” he said. In the first, when the economy was roaring, Trump argued that he had been unbeatable, never mind that his approval rating was never higher than 46 percent in the Gallup poll during his first three years as president.

“I think it would be hard if George Washington came back from the dead and he chose Abraham Lincoln as his vice president, I think it would have been very hard for them to beat me,” Trump said.

Then, he lamented, came his second presidency: the pandemic killed his chances.

Trump seemed determined as well to convince us that he actually had won, and handily, had it not been for the many people who had wronged him—the “evil people” who conspired to deny him his rightful second term.

“The greatest fraud ever perpetrated in this country was this last election,” Trump said. “It was rigged and it was stolen. It was both. It was a combination, and Bill Barr didn’t do anything about it.”

Trump faulted not only his attorney general, but Vice President Pence for lacking the bravery to do what was right.

“Had Mike Pence had the courage to send it back to the legislatures, you would have had a different outcome, in my opinion,” Trump said.

“I think that the vice president of the United States must protect the Constitution of the United States,” he added. “I don’t believe he’s just supposed to be a statue who gets these votes from the states and immediately hands them over. If you see fraud, then I believe you have an obligation to do one of a number of things.”

The irony was lost on Trump, however, that one of the central reasons he had prized Pence as his number two was his resemblance to a statue standing adoringly at his side.

Trump then invoked the nonanalogous example he had latched on to: “Thomas Jefferson was in the exact same position, but only one state, the state of Georgia. Did you know that? It’s true. ‘Hear ye, hear ye . . .’—was much more elegant in those days. It was, ‘Hear ye, hear ye, the  great state of Georgia is unable to accurately count its votes.’ Thomas Jefferson said, ‘Are you sure?’ They said, ‘Yes, we are sure.’ ‘Then we will take the votes from the great state of Georgia.’ He took them for him and the president.”

Trump continued, “So I said, ‘Mike, you can be Thomas Jefferson or you can be Mike Pence.’ What happened is, I had a very good relationship with Mike Pence—very good—but when you are handed these votes and before you even start about the individual corruptions, the people, the this, the that, all the different things that took place, when you are handed these votes...right there you should have sent them back to the legislatures.”

Later in the conversation, Trump again expressed his disappointment in Pence. “What courage would have been is to do what Thomas Jefferson did [and said], ‘We’re taking the votes,’” he said. “That would have been politically unacceptable. But sending it back to these legislatures, who now know that bad things happened, would have been very acceptable. And I could show you letters from legislators, big-scale letters from different states, the states we’re talking about. Had he done that, I think it would have been a great thing for our country.” But, he surmised, “I think he had bad advice.”

Trump argued that he stands apart from the presidents before him by the loyalty and intensity of his supporters. “There’s never been a base that screams out, with thirty-five thousand people, ‘We love you! We love you!’” he said. “That never happened to Ronald Reagan. It never happened to anybody. We have a base like no other. They’re very angry. That’s what happened  in Washington on the sixth. They went down because of the election fraud. The one thing that nobody says is how many people were there, because if you look at that real crowd, the crowd for the speech, I’ll bet you it was over a million people.”

What was Trump’s goal on January 6? What did he hope his supporters would do after he told them to march on the Capitol?

He chose to remark again on the size of the crowd. “I would venture to say I think it was the largest crowd I had ever spoken [to] before,” Trump said. “It was a loving crowd, too, by the way. There was a lot of love. I’ve heard that from everybody. Many, many people have told me that was a loving crowd. It was too bad, it was too bad that they did that.”

Pressed again, Trump said he had hoped his supporters would show up outside the Capitol but not enter the building. “In all fairness, the Capitol Police were ushering people in,” Trump said. “The Capitol Police were very friendly. They were hugging and kissing. You don’t see that. There’s plenty of tape on that.”

Trump didn’t mention the countless accounts of horrific violence—that of a riotous mob shoving a police officer to the ground, later threatening to shoot him with his own gun, or that of an insurrectionist bashing a flagpole into another police officer’s chest, or that of yet another officer howling in pain as he was compressed in a closing door.

“Personally, what I wanted is what they wanted,” Trump said of the rioters. “They showed up just to show support because I happen to believe the election was rigged at a level like nothing has ever been rigged before. There’s tremendous proof. There’s tremendous proof. Statistically, it wasn’t even possible that [Biden] won. Things such as, if you win Florida and Ohio and Iowa, there’s never been a loss.”

He was referring to conventional wisdom that historically the winner of the presidential election has carried that same trio of states that Trump won. This was one of the traits that had led Trump to the White House on full display: his extraordinary capacity to say things that were not true. He always seemed to have complete conviction in whatever product he was selling or argument he was making. He had an uncanny ability to say with a straight face, things are not as you’ve been told or even as you’ve seen with your own eyes. He could commit to a lie in the frame of his body and in the timbre of his voice so fully, despite all statistical and even video evidence to the contrary. 

At various points in our interview, Trump presented other examples of what he called proof the election had been stolen from him.

“Take all of the dead people that voted, and there were thousands of them, by the way. We have lists of obituaries,” Trump argued. “If you take the illegal immigrants that voted. If you take this—Indians that got paid to vote in different places. We had Indians getting paid to vote! Many, many different things, all election-changing.”

Trump zeroed in on large cities in Michigan and Pennsylvania, both of which he lost to Biden, that are home to many Black people and historically vote heavily Democratic. “Look, everyone knows that Detroit was so corrupt. Everyone knows that they literally beat up people there, they hurt people to get the vote watchers out, our vote watchers, Republican vote watchers,” he said. He added, “Philadelphia, highly corrupt in terms of elections. There were tremendous irregularities that went on there, including the fact that you had more votes than you had voters.”

He was still fixated on the debunked water main conspiracy in Fulton County, Georgia. “They say, ‘Water main break!,’ everyone leaves—everyone leaves—and then you have these people go in with two or three other people, all their people, run to the table where ballots are...this table which had a skirt on it, opened the skirt and took out the ballots and started stuffing the ballot boxes,” he said. “It was reported on every newscast.”

In his discussion of the “stolen” election, Trump grew more animated and specific about the long list of advisers and allies he considered disloyal. He said that Barr failed him as attorney general for not buying the conspiracy and for not dispatching the FBI to investigate Fulton County’s vote-tallying  process. To Trump’s mind, Barr had become too exhausted to act in his final months on the job. Trump also posited that Barr had grown too sensitive to media criticism, worried about his depiction as a loyal marionette who did the president’s bidding, that he backed away from properly investigating voter fraud.

“Bill Barr changed a lot,” Trump said. “He changed drastically, and in my opinion, he changed because of the media. The media is brilliant. I give them credit. I get it better than anybody that’s ever lived. Bill Barr came in because he was really legitimately incensed at what they were doing to me and the presidency on the Mueller hoax. He did a good job on the Russian hoax, right? And then as time went by, and what I should have done is said, ‘Bill, thank you very much. Great job.’”

The Department of Justice, he continued, “is loaded up with radical left, and Bill Barr was being portrayed as a puppet of mine. They said he’s my ‘personal lawyer,’ ‘he’ll do anything,’ and I said, ‘Here we go...’ He got more and more difficult, and I knew it. You know why? Because he’s a human being. Because that’s the way it works.”

Trump listed Barr’s sins: He didn’t charge James Comey or Andrew McCabe; he didn’t announce an investigation into Hunter Biden; and he didn’t bring an end to John Durham’s probe of the origins of the Russia investigation before the election. Trump speculated that Barr was motivated by personal pique rather than reality when he announced on December 1 that the Justice Department had uncovered no evidence of widespread voter fraud that could change the election outcome.

“Barr disliked me at the end, in my opinion, and that’s why he made the statement about the election, because he did not know,” Trump said. “And I like Bill Barr, just so you know. I think he started off as a great patriot, but I don’t believe he finished that way.”

Trump said he was also disappointed by federal judges—especially the three conservative justices he had nominated to the Supreme Court—for ruling against his campaign in the scores of lawsuits it filed or, in the case of the high court, declining to take the case. When we asked whether he needed better lawyers, considering so many courts had ruled there was not substantiated evidence of fraud nor merit to the cases brought before them, Trump said his legal team was not to blame.

“I needed better judges. The Supreme Court was afraid to take it,” Trump said, suggesting that justices might have declined to intervene in the election out of fear of stoking violence. Referring to the election result, Trump added, “It should have been reversed by the Supreme Court. I’m very disappointed in the Supreme Court because they did a very bad thing for the country.” 

Trump singled out Justice Brett Kavanaugh, suggesting that he should have tried to intervene in the election as payback for the president standing by his nomination in 2018 in the face of sexual assault allegations. “I’m very disappointed in Kavanaugh,” he said.

Trump’s chagrin was evident in many of his answers. He emphasized his feelings of victimhood.

“I had two jobs: running our country, and running it well, and survival,” Trump said. “I had the Mueller hoax. I had the witch hunt. It’s one big witch hunt that’s gone from the day I came down the escalator,” a reference to his 2015 campaign launch event in the lobby of New York’s Trump Tower.

“Nobody’s ever gone through what I have,” Trump added. “They got me on all phony stuff.”

Trump found fault with most of his fellow Republican leaders, past and present. Still clearly vexed by the ghost of the late Arizona senator John McCain, Trump without prompting brought up the party’s 2008 presidential nominee, whom he had attacked for years.

“John McCain was a bad guy,” he said of the decorated prisoner of war. “He was a bully and a nasty guy, bad guy. A lot of people disliked him. Last in his class in Annapolis. All that stuff, but he was a bad guy. I say it to you. I don’t care. Does it affect me? I won Arizona, okay? By a lot. Didn’t turn out that way in terms of the vote, but I won Arizona. Everyone knows it. He didn’t affect me. I won the first time. I won it the second time.”

Trump, who in fact lost Arizona to Biden, continued with this fix. “You know, I did three rallies in Arizona,” he said. “I never had an empty seat.” Governor Doug Ducey, who withstood Trump’s pressure to overturn the result, was “not a loyal party member,” according to the former president. “I think Ducey is a terrible Republican,” he said. “Ducey did everything he could to block voter integrity, to block people from making sure the vote was accurate.”

Trump also complained about former House Speaker Paul Ryan, whom he labeled a “super-RINO”—Republican in name only. And he said Mitch McConnell has “no personality” nor a killer political instinct. He faulted McConnell for refusing to eliminate the filibuster to ram through Republican legislation and for not persuading Senator Joe Manchin, the moderate Democrat from West Virginia, to switch parties. 

“He’s a stupid person,” Trump said of McConnell. “I don’t think he’s smart enough.”

“I tried to convince Mitch McConnell to get rid of the filibuster, to terminate it, so that we would get everything, and he was a knucklehead and he didn’t do it,” Trump said.

Trump said he wished he had had partners in Congress like Meade Esposito, who was the head of the Democratic Party machine in Brooklyn from the late 1960s to the early 1980s. Esposito, who was close to Trump and his late father, Fred Trump, was known for his patronage and commanded respect.

“Nobody would ever talk back to Meade Esposito. Meade Esposito didn’t have a RINO like a Mitt Romney, you know, or as I said, Ben Sasse, who’s a lightweight,” Trump said, invoking two Republican senators who sometimes criticized him. He added, “Mitch McConnell compared to Meade Esposito, it’s like a baby compared to a grownup football player with brains on top of everything else.”

Esposito had run a citywide patronage system that doled out important jobs to loyalists and people providing gifts and favors. The party boss gained a fearsome reputation for his intimidation tactics and connections to organized crime. Amid an investigation of his work, Esposito retired in 1983; he was convicted of offering a gratuity and interstate travel charges in 1987.

Other presidents attend to philanthropic interests, write memoirs, and curate presidential libraries after leaving office. But not Trump. Many of his Palm Beach days have followed the tempo and style he set back in Washington, a reflection of his addiction to the twenty-four-hour news cycle and appetite to maintain political relevance. In the morning hours, he spends time alone in his private quarters watching television and making phone calls to allies and friends. Many days he plays a round of golf at one of his nearby clubs. And in the afternoons, he puts on his suit, applies his makeup, and emerges for meetings with whichever politicians or acolytes have made the pilgrimage to Mar-a-Lago. By early 2021, Trump had turned his club into a political base camp for his potential comeback.

Trump made no secret of his interest in perhaps running for president in 2024. Would he choose Pence again as his running mate?

“Well, I was disappointed in Mike,” Trump said. “But, you know, I’ll be making a decision at some point. I will say this: Based on the polls, those polls are great, the Republican Party loves Trump. Ninety-seven percent!”

When we pointed out that Pence is said to be interested in running for president, too, Trump seemed to welcome the competition. “It’s a free country, right?” he said. “It’s a free country.”

But Trump all but ruled out running with Chris Christie, who had been runner-up to Pence in his 2016 veepstakes, and Nikki Haley, the former ambassador to the United  Nations, who had criticized Trump’s attempts to subvert the vote in repeated interviews with Tim Alberta of Politico.

“Chris has been very disloyal, but that’s okay,” Trump said. “I helped Chris Christie a lot. He knows that more than anybody, but I helped him a lot. But he’s been disloyal.”

As for his former ambassador, Trump said he was rebuffing her outreach. “Nikki Haley wants to come here so badly,” he said. “She did a little nasty couple of statements...She has been killed by the party. When they speak badly about me, the party is not happy about it. It’s pretty amazing. There’s not been anything like this.”

Over the years, Trump rarely has expressed misgivings. But he regrets his response to protests last summer in Minneapolis, Portland, Seattle, and other cities. “I think if I had it to do again, I would have brought in the military immediately,” he said.

Trump had no such second thoughts about his handling of the pandemic. He said he had been “very tough” in protecting the country by restricting travel, first from China and then from Europe. He said he did so against the wishes of his top medical advisers; in fact, most of them agreed with the restrictions before he made his decision, according to participants in the discussions and their contemporaneous notes. But he correctly said he pushed scientists at the FDA “at a level that they have never been pushed before” to get vaccines approved in record time.

“I think we did a great job on COVID and it hasn’t been recognized,” Trump said, noting that other countries saw spikes in COVID-19 infections in the months after he left office. “The cupboards were bare. We didn’t have gowns. We didn’t have masks. We didn’t have ventilators. We didn’t have anything...We brought in plane loads. We did a great job.”

When we asked Trump why he encouraged people to believe things that weren’t true or to distrust science and the media, he delighted in talking about the scientific smarts in his family’s genes.

“First of all, I’m a big person,” he said. “Do you know this? My uncle, Dr. John Trump, I think he was at [the Massachusetts Institute of Technology] longer than any other professor. Totally brilliant man. He had numerous  degrees. So that’s in the genes. I always go with that stuff. But it’s a little bit in the genes and Dr. John Trump, he was a great guy. My father’s brother. No, I’m a big believer in science. If I wasn’t, you wouldn’t have a vaccine. It depends. Are you talking about disinformation or are you talking about lies? There is a more beautiful word called disinformation.” 

When we pressed him on whether a president should be expected to be honest all the time, given his long record of exaggerating successes, downplaying pitfalls, and spreading misinformation, Trump said, “I want to be somebody that’s optimistic for our country. I think it’s very important.”

Trump ridiculed Anthony Fauci as a self-promoter and lamented the doctor’s popularity. He said the widespread praise for Fauci was undeserved, and mocked Fauci’s frequent request of people to call him by his first name.

“A highly overrated person,” Trump said. “He’s a nice guy. I got along great with him. ‘Please call me Tony,’ I call him. ‘Please call me Tony.’ He’s a great promoter, but he was wrong on everything.”

Trump also trashed Deborah Birx and said she was far too restrictive. 

“She was a lot of work, a real diva with the scarves and shit,” he said.

“If it were up to her, we wouldn’t be meeting tonight. This place would be totally closed. You wouldn’t have three hundred people having dinner outside and schools open. If it were up to her, everything would be closed forever.”

“She’s a woman I always liked, but in the end I jettisoned her and I didn’t take her advice,” he said, adding: “She loves publicity almost as much as Fauci. I got some real beauties.”

Trump credited himself with turning government officials into household names, but said it also had a negative consequence. The incredible excitement of his administration, he said, drove media interest in chronicling disputes and differences of opinion among his staff, creating a false impression that his administration was chaotic.

“You have people that have never been stars before and all of a sudden the Washington Post is calling. New York Times is calling. CNN would love to have lunch with you. ‘Come up and meet our editorial staff!,’” Trump said. “All of these people are calling. You are a regular person in government. If you were [in the] Jimmy Carter [administration], you’re not calling these people. If you were [in the] Bush [administration], you’re not calling these people. With Trump, everybody becomes a star. I’m the greatest star-maker in history.”

Our interview with Trump was scheduled for one hour but stretched to two and a half. His press secretary chimed in every thirty minutes to let him know how long we had been speaking and to give him an opening to end it, but Trump seemed to enjoy the conversation and kept talking. Clusters of club members traipsed through the room before dinner on the Moorish-tiled patio overlooking the lagoon. Service staff gingerly arranged tables around the room’s perimeter for the buffet—a spread of jumbo gulf shrimp and fresh Wellpoint oysters over ice here, a bananas Foster station there.

Some of Trump’s friends breezed past to greet him, interrupting the interview. Laura Ingraham stopped by and urged the former president to tune into her Fox show that night at 10:00. She said she would be talking about his former medical advisers. A few nights earlier, CNN had aired a documentary featuring critical comments by Birx, Fauci, and other members of Trump’s coronavirus task force.

“We’re really going to put it to the doctors. You should watch,” Ingraham told Trump. Dressed in the classic Palm Beach attire of a bright striped blouse and sherbet-colored slacks, Ingraham was one of the few women at the club that night wearing pants; the vast majority wore cocktail dresses and stiletto heels.

Then Kimberly Guilfoyle, the girlfriend of Trump’s eldest son, paraded through, with a full face of makeup. She told her small clutch of guests to go out to the patio to take their seats and she would join them soon. Then she hovered nearby our interview to say hello to the former president.

Guilfoyle’s approach seemed cautious and formal, unlike someone greeting her boyfriend’s father. She had recently bought a mansion with Donald Trump Jr. in nearby Jupiter, but she had other reasons to claim good standing in Trump’s world. Guilfoyle had been a major fundraiser for Trump’s campaign and promoted the claim that the election had been rigged. She asked Trump to please come by her dinner table later, where she would sit with Trump Jr., so she could introduce her friends to him. 

“They’re huge supporters of yours,” Guilfoyle stressed. Trump nodded and smiled, telling her he would swing by.

Congressman Dan Crenshaw, a Texas Republican and former Navy SEAL, also came by, interrupting the interview to tell Trump that life in Palm Beach was obviously agreeing with him.

“You look great, sir,” Crenshaw said. “What’s your secret?”

As more dinner guests with plates began queuing up in the room to visit the raw bar and other food stations, Trump finally decided it was time to wrap up our conversation. He invited us to stay for dinner and instructed the maître d’ to find us a table. Then the former president stepped onto the veranda and into the last of the day’s sun. Right on cue, the dinner guests immediately stood up at their tables to applaud him. He took it all in, smiling. Just another Wednesday night at Mar-a-Lago. And off he went, table by table, to greet friends.

Later in the evening Trump returned to check on us. He wanted to make sure we were comfortable. His gallantry seemed genuine.

“Good conversation,” Trump said. “I’m getting the word out.”

The interview, he said, was “a great honor.” He offered to do another if we needed to ask anything else and shrugged off the mention of how many hours he had already spent answering our questions.

“I enjoyed it actually,” Trump said, a twinkle in his eye. “For some sick reason I enjoyed it.”

 

[AmazonGrace]

 

[fraurosena]

Soon Trump will be saying he barely knew the guy.

Tom Barrack charged with illegally lobbying then-President Trump on behalf of UAE

Somehow I can’t get the link to the article to work, so here’s a Reddit post linking to it instead:

Spoiler

 

Quote

Thomas Barrack, a private equity investor who is a close friend of former President Donald Trump, was arrested Tuesday morning in Los Angeles on federal charges of illegally lobbying Trump on behalf of the United Arab Emirates.

Barrack, who was charged with two other men in a seven-count indictment in Brooklyn, New York, federal court, was chairman of Trump’s 2017 inaugural fund.

The Santa Monica, California, resident is accused with the other defendants of secretly advancing the interests of the UAE at the direction of senior officials of that country by influencing the foreign policy positions of Trump’s 2016 campaign, and then those positions of the U.S. government during Trump’s presidency through April 2018.

Barrack, who never registered with the American government as an agent for the UAE, also is charged with obstruction of justice and making multiple false statements during a June 2019 interview with federal law enforcement agents.

The indictment noted that Barrack, 74, during that time covered by the indictment informally advised American officials on Middle East policy, and also sought appointment to a senior role in the U.S. government, including as special envoy to the Middle East.

The evidence against Barrack includes thousands of emails, text messages, iCloud records, flight records and social media records, prosecutors separately said in a detention memo.

Prosecutors said the “evidence of [Barrack’s] guilt in this case is overwhelming.”

Prosecutors also said that Barrack had met with and assisted senior leaders of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, which is a close UAE ally, and that he “provided UAE government officials ‘with sensitive non-public information about developments within the Administration, including information about the positions of multiple senior United States government officials with respect to the Qatari blockade conducted by the UAE and other Middle Eastern countries.’”

Charged with Barrack are Matthew Grimes, 27, of Aspen, Colorado, and a 43-year-old UAE national, Rashid Sultan Rashid Al Malik Alshahhi, who remains at large.

Grimes, who worked directly for Barrack at the Barrack-founded private equity firm Colony Capital, was arrested in California on Tuesday.

Grimes has a “close personal relationship” with Barrack, has taken more than 50 international trips on Barrack’s private plane, and lists Barrack’s $15 million home in Aspen as his primary residence, prosecutors said in a court filing.

“On multiple occasions, Barrack referred to [Al Malik] as the UAE’s ‘secret weapon’ to advance its foreign policy agenda in the United States,” the Justice Department said in a press release.

“In furtherance of the alleged criminal conspiracy and conduct, Barrack and Grimes, with the assistance of [Al Malik], acquired a dedicated cellular telephone and installed a secure messaging application to facilitate Barrack’s communications with senior UAE officials,” the department said.

Acting Assistant Attorney General Mark Lesko of the Justice Department’s national security division said: “The defendants repeatedly capitalized on Barrack’s friendships and access to a candidate who was eventually elected President, high-ranking campaign and government officials, and the American media to advance the policy goals of a foreign government without disclosing their true allegiances.”

“The conduct alleged in the indictment is nothing short of a betrayal of those officials in the United States, including the former President,” Lesko said in a statement.

Prosecutors in a memo seeking Barrack’s detention in Los Angeles pending his bail hearing in Brooklyn at a later date said that Barrack in communications with Al Malik “framed his efforts to obtain an official position within the Administration as one that would enable him to further advance the interests of the UAE, rather than the interests of the United States.”

“When the defendant sought a position as either U.S. Ambassador to the UAE or Special Envoy to the Middle East, he advised Al Malik that any such appointment ‘would give ABU DHABI more power!’ the memo said referring to the capital city of the UAE.

“Al Malik concurred that, if the defendant successfully obtained an appointment to such an official position, it would make the defendant ‘deliver more’ for the UAE, making their efforts a ‘[v]ery effective operation.’  The defendant agreed.”

Prosecutors noted that Barrack, who holds Lebanese citizenship, is extremely wealthy, has access to a private jet on which he flew to UAE in March, and has “deep and longstanding ties to countries that do not have extradition treaties with the United States” Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

A spokeswoman for Trump did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Barrack’s arrest.

Matthew Herrington, an attorney for Barrack, told CNBC that his client was arrested in Los Angeles “despite the fact that we’ve cooperated with this investigation from the outset.”

A spokesman for Barrack said: “Mr. Barrack has made himself voluntarily available to investigators from the outset. He is not guilty and will be pleading not guilty.”

Barrack stepped down as CEO of Colony Capital in 2020. He resigned as executive chairman of the firm in April.

Federal prosecutors have been investigating Barrack’s alleged work on behalf of the UAE for at least two years. 

One of the events that caught their attention was a speech about energy policy that Trump gave as a candidate for president in May 2016. 

The indictment charges that Barrack “inserted language praising the UAE” into the speech, and “emailed an advance draft of the speech to [Al Malik] for delivery to senior UAE officials.”

For the next two years, prosecutors allege, Barrack “sought and received direction and feedback, including talking points, from senior UAE officials in connection with national press appearances Barrack used to promote the interests of the UAE.”

“During this time, Barrack never registered as a lobbyist for the UAE, as required under the Foreign Agents Registration Act,” the indictment says.

The indictment said that in December 2016, a month after Trump’s election, Barrack attended a meeting with Grimes, Al Malik and senior UAE government officials, where he advised them to create a “wish list” of U.S. foreign policy items that the UAE wanted to be accomplished during different time spans in the new administration.

The indictment also said that in the following March, Barrack and the other two men agreed to promote the candidacy of a person favored by top UAE officials for the position of U.S. ambassador to that country.

And in September 2017, Al Malik “communicated with Barrack about the opposition of the UAE to a proposed summit at Camp David to address an ongoing dispute between the State of Qatar, the UAE and other Middle Eastern governments, after which Barrack sought to advise the President of the United States against holding the Camp David summit,” the Justice Department noted in its press release. “The summit never happened.”

The UAE, where Trump maintained business ties before becoming president, established a key relationship to the U.S. during the Trump administration.

The UAE signed onto the 2020 Abraham Accords, which took steps toward normalizing relations between a handful of Middle East nations, including Israel.

Last November, then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced that the Trump administration would sell more than $23 billion worth of military equipment to the UAE “in recognition of our deepening relationship” and the nation’s “need for advanced defense capabilities to deter and defend itself against heightened threats from Iran.”

A friend of Trump’s for decades, Barrack emerged as an early backer of Trump’s presidential bid long before many on Wall Street considered the real estate developer a serious contender for the White House.

By the spring of 2016 when Trump began to sweep primaries, Barrack and Trump’s daughter, Ivanka Trump, convinced him that he needed to hire a real campaign manager.

Barrack pressed Trump to bring on Paul Manafort, a longtime Washington fixture and Republican lobbyist.

Manafort eventually rose to the position of Trump campaign chairman before he was forced to step down in August 2016 following reports of foreign lobbying he did on behalf of Ukrainian politicians. Both Manafort and Barrack hoped their cooperation in 2016 would accrue to each man’s benefit.

Barrack wanted to be appointed Middle East envoy in a future Trump administration. But after Trump won the White House, Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, intervened, and Barrack did not get the job.

Manafort, meanwhile, had hoped that Barrack’s connections in the Middle East would translate into lucrative business for Manafort’s lobbying practice.

But the yearslong investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller put an end to the hopes of Barrack and Manafort to rise to positions of prominence in the Trump White House. 

Questions about Barrack’s foreign lobbying first came to light during Mueller’s investigation, according to prosecutors. 

By the end of his probe, Mueller had referred a total of 14 criminal cases to prosecutors, most of which remain sealed to this day. 

In 2018, Manafort was found guilty by a jury of eight felonies related to foreign lobbying and tax evasion. He served just under two years in prison and was released in June of last year.

Trump later pardoned Manafort shortly before leaving the White House.

 

[fraurosena]

Rachel Maddow on Barrack's indictment: