Trump scandels and controversies

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Arguably worse than Hillary's email server:

House Oversight and Reform Committee Chairman Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) on Monday released a memo detailing “grave” national security concerns raised by a White House staffer over the Trump administration’s security clearance process and announced plans to subpoena a former White House official as part of an ongoing investigation into security clearances. The whistleblower, Tricia Newbold, participated in a transcribed interview with Democratic and Republican committee staff in late March “to expose grave and continuing failures of the White House security clearance system, including the security clearance adjudications of senior White House officials,” according to a memo detailing her accusations released by Cummings on Monday.  Among her allegations, Newbold told the committee that Trump administration officials overruled her and other career officials in more than two dozen instances in order to grant clearances to officials and contractors despite there being “disqualifying issues” in their backgrounds.

White House staffer tells Oversight Committee of 'grave' concerns with security clearances | TheHill

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“I don’t need anybody’s money. It’s nice. I don’t need anybody’s money. I’m using my own money. I’m not using the lobbyists. I’m not using donors. I don’t care. I’m really rich.” That was one of his very earliest lies to the American people. He then created a marketing machine that peddled hokey red baseball caps, t-shirts, and anything else he could scribble his name and slogans onto. He also mined donations from a vast email list by appealing to the fear and ignorance of his Deplorable supporters who he taunted with threats of invasions from south of the border and promises of tax cuts for all. Which were just more lies.

Now ABC News is reporting that Trump’s campaign committee has spent an extraordinary amount of money on his own legal fees. And since this is a president who is drowning in criminal complaints, investigations, and even civil lawsuits by women he’s assaulted, his lawyers are among the busiest in the nation. According to ABC News: “Since President Donald Trump took office in 2017, his re-election campaign has spent more than $8 million in legal fees, according to ABC News’ analysis of campaign finance records through last month, with record-breaking quarterly expenditures doled out in the last three months of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian meddling during the 2016 presidential campaign.” 

ABC also reveals that Trump’s campaign has been paying the legal bills for others in his inner circle, such as his son, Donald Trump Jr., and son-in-law Jared Kushner. Even his former personal attorney, Michael Cohen, had some bills paid prior to his cooperation with the office of special counsel, Robert Mueller. 

Trump’s sleazy reelection campaign is stealing millions of his donors’ dollars for his — and his family members’ — legal bills – Alternet.org

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American presidents before Donald Trump had some record of public achievement in politics, government or the military before they were elected. Donald Trump lacked any of those credentials, but brought his astounding history of involvement in thousands of lawsuits to the nation’s highest office. This trove of cases from more than 45 years reflects Trump’s contempt for ethical standards and for the US Constitution and the rule of law, the foundation of American democracy. As a perennial litigant, Trump weaponized the law to devastate perceived enemies, to consolidate power, to frustrate opposing parties, as former federal prosecutor and acclaimed author James D. Zirin illuminates in his compelling and disturbing history of Trump’s use and abuse of the law, Plaintiff in Chief: A Portrait of Trump in 3,500 Lawsuits (All Points Books). Mr. Zirin is a distinguished veteran attorney who spent decades handling complex litigation. He is also a self-described “middle of the road Republican.” Plaintiff in Chief stands as his response to Trump’s disrespect for law and our legal system. He stresses that the book is a legal study, not a partisan takedown.

Sadism, crime and a love of lies: What 3,500 lawsuits reveal about Trump’s true nature – Alternet.org

• Some details and interview with the author in the linked article.
  

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O’Brien also has a personal stake in this story. His book TrumpNation, a 2005 biography that raised doubts about Trump’s actual wealth in eerily similar terms to the James and Bragg investigations today, so irked the real estate developer that he sued O’Brien for billions of dollars. O’Brien’s lawyers deposed Trump as part of his defense. Over two days they managed to do something that has rarely been done before or since – they got the celebrity to acknowledge, no fewer than 30 times, that he had lied. “My lawyers were so well prepared that when he sat down for the deposition we had documentary evidence at hand that showed the reality of what he had lied about or exaggerated. We simply pushed those over the table at him,” O’Brien recalled.

Many of the misleading elements – the value of his golf clubs, real estate assets in New York – were virtually identical to the details contained in this week’s filing. Which is why O’Brien feels confident in saying that the patterns that James outlines in her court document extend far back. “This is behaviour that Trump has been engaging with since he was a toddler, frankly,” O’Brien said. The libel suit was dismissed in 2009. The author was surprised that despite the mass of detail he had exposed in TrumpNation of potential malfeasance, no prosecutor showed interest. “There was ample fodder in my book for prosecutors to pursue, but nobody picked it up. Law enforcement simply didn’t take Donald Trump seriously until it was too late.”

Trump continues to resist giving testimony, as do his two children, on grounds that the investigations are politically motivated witch hunts (both James and Bragg are Democrats). A third child, Eric, who runs the day-to-day work of the Trump Organization, was deposed but pleaded the fifth more than 500 times. The family’s best hope is that the prosecutors will struggle to meet the high bar that is set for criminal cases. That is especially so when it comes to the critical issue of intent, said Robert Mintz, a former federal prosecutor. “The criminal case is more dangerous since it involves potential incarceration. But it requires criminal intent and that is difficult to prove, particularly in complex financial frauds involving organizations,” Mintz, now a partner at McCarter & English, LLP told the Guardian.

‘House of Trump is crumbling’: why ex-president’s legal net is tightening | Donald Trump | The Guardian

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Donald Trump absconded with countless documents, some possibly classified, and other items of worth when he left the White House hours before Joe Biden was sworn in as president. The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), which by law is tasked with maintaining presidential records, has just revealed the magnitude of the misappropriated items: 15 boxes – and counting. "In mid-January 2022, NARA arranged for the transport from the Trump Mar-a-Lago property in Florida to the National Archives of 15 boxes that contained Presidential records, following discussions with President Trump's representatives in 2021," the National Archives has just told The Washington Post in a statement Monday afternoon. The Post broke the story Monday morning. That's not all. There are still missing items and Trump apparently does not know where they are.

Trump's archives scandal gets worse: More than a dozen boxes retrieved -- and there are more missing - Alternet.org

• Russia, if you're listening..
  
• Trump also had the habit of tearing up documents, which his flunkies then had to put together with tape
  

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Donald Trump doesn’t like to read, and, apparently, he doesn’t want other people to read either. A series of reports this week have revealed how extensively the former president destroyed documents produced by his  administration, in defiance of federal laws. When the House committee investigating January 6 and Trump’s attempts to overturn the election received documents it had requested from the National Archives, some of them had been ripped up and then taped back together—the work, respectively, of Trump, who has long handled papers that way, and staffers, who were trying to comply with federal laws requiring records preservation. When he didn’t try to destroy documents, Trump absconded with some of them. In January, The Washington Post reports, the National Archives and Records Administration had to collect 15 boxes of records that Trump had improperly taken with him to his estate at Mar-a-Lago...

“Trump’s shredding of paper was far more widespread and indiscriminate than previously known and—despite multiple admonishments—extended throughout his presidency,” the Post reported. Crews would come behind the president, sweep up the remains, and then try to reassemble them. Some of these documents could be essential to understanding a singularly corrupt and dangerous administration, whether by congressional investigators today or historians in the future.

The Incredible Vanishing Trump Presidency - The Atlantic

• And it's not that he didn't know he wasn't supposed to do that as he admonished Hillary multiple times for her emails and argued it was criminal to delete them.
  

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The co-founder of Donald Trump’s beleaguered social media company has turned whistleblower, alleging the firm violated federal securities laws and that the former president pressured executives to hand over lucrative shares to his wife. Will Wilkerson, a former Trump Media and Technology Group executive, has told the US government’s financial watchdog that the company’s bid to raise more than $1bn via an investment vehicle known as a special purpose acquisition company (Spac), relied on “fraudulent misrepresentations … in violation of federal securities laws.” Trump Media and Technology Group is the company that launched Trump’s Truth Social platform after Twitter and Facebook banned the ex-president for his role in the deadly January 6 attack on the Capitol... 

Among the emails is an exchange between Wilkerson and fellow co-founder Andy Litinsky, who was allegedly fired as payback for refusing to hand over some of his shares, worth millions of dollars, to former first lady Melania Trump, according to the Post. Trump had already been given 90% of the company’s shares in exchange for the use of his name and some minor involvement.

Whistleblower Trump Media executive says firm violated federal securities laws | Donald Trump | The Guardian

• Can this even be a surprise?
  

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The US Secret Service was made to pay as much as $1,185 a night to stay at properties belonging to former president Donald Trump, a congressional committee said on Monday as it released documents that appeared to show the former president profiting from his protection details in and out of office. All told, the Secret Service, which is mandated by law to protect the president and his family, spent $1.4m at Trump-owned properties in the US, according to records obtained by the Democratic-led House oversight committee as part of its investigation into Trump conflicts of interest... 

The documents contradicted statements from the former president’s son Eric Trump. In 2019, he claimed the Secret Service was charged “like, $50” for hotel rooms. The following year, he said: “We provide the rooms at cost and could make far more money renting them to members or guests.” According to the House committee, between January 2017 and September 2021 there were at least 40 instances where the government paid room fees in excess of normal rates. The charges could be up to three times as much the per diem rate, Maloney wrote in a letter to the Secret Service director, Kimberly Cheatle.

Secret Service made to pay up to $1,185 a night for Trump hotel stays, files show | Secret Service | The Guardian

• More "surprises"..
  

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About six months ago, Will Wilkerson was the executive vice president of operations for former president Donald Trump’s media business, a co-founder of Trump’s Truth Social website and a holder of stock options that might have one day made him a millionaire. Today, he is a certified barista trainer at a Starbucks inside a Harris Teeter grocery store, where he works 5:30 a.m. shifts in a green apron and slip-resistant shoes, making Frappuccinos for $16 an hour. “It’s an honest day’s work,” he says, sitting near the flower kiosk of the supermarket in a North Carolina suburb, which he asked not be named due to fears of harassment. “I love what I do.”

Wilkerson, 38, has become one of the biggest threats to the Trump company’s future: a federally protected whistleblower whose attorneys say has provided 150,000 emails, contracts and other internal documents to the Securities and Exchange Commission and investigators in Florida and New York. Wilkerson last year publicly accused Trump Media and Technology Group of violating securities laws, telling The Washington Post he could not stay silent while the company’s executives gave what he viewed as misleading information to investors, many of whom are small-time shareholders loyal to the Trump brand.

The company fired him shortly after, saying he had “concocted psychodramas” but not responding to the specifics of his claims. This month, the company’s chief executive, the former Republican congressman Devin Nunes, sued Wilkerson for defamation in a Florida circuit court, claiming he had been subjected to “anxiety,” “insecurity,” “mental anguish” and “emotional distress” as a result of Wilkerson’s comments. Wilkerson’s whistleblowing case has gained little of the attention the other legal challenges facing the Republicans’ presumptive presidential nominee have gotten, including the criminal charges Trump faces related to hush money payments to the adult-film actress Stormy Daniels..

He blew the whistle on Trump’s Truth Social. Now he works at Starbucks.

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After struggling to find any scandal they could link to President Joe Biden, House Oversight Committee chairman Rep. James Comer (R-KY) asked for a 90-day extension on his investigation. The last thing they uncovered was several different LLCs owned by several president's family members. It prompted analysts to question the significance, given Donald Trump's family has control over 500 of LLCs, all inter-linked, and in many different countries, CNBC reported in 2018.

Analyst accuses Fox News of keeping Oversight Republicans’ sketchy 'FBI whistleblower' claim alive - Alternet.org