Trump scandels and controversies

[Admin]

Sigh.. Hillary isn't about to disarm the US, just introduce some sensible restrictions, but anyway..

Donald Trump accused Hillary Clinton of pushing an anti-gun agenda during a campaign rally in Miami on Friday night, and suggested his Democratic presidential rival was a hypocrite for being under Secret Service protection. “She goes around with armed bodyguards like you have never seen before,” Trump said, “I think that her bodyguards should drop all weapons. They should disarm.” Trump wondered how Clinton would fare under those circumstances. “Take their guns away. She doesn’t want guns. Let’s see what happens to her,” Trump said. Both Trump and Clinton are receiving Secret Service protection. The Trump campaign requested it in October last year.

Donald Trump suggests Hillary Clinton's bodyguards drop their weapons - Business Insider

[Admin]

The Washington Post's David Fahrenthold on Tuesday published a series of stunning revelations about Donald Trump's charitable foundation, reporting that the Republican presidential nominee used money from the Trump Foundation to pay legal fees related to his businesses.

The report, citing tax records, said Trump had not made a single donation to his charity since 2008 and sometimes used money from others through the foundation to pay off legal expenses.

The money relating to those expenses, which reportedly amounted to $258,000 from the Trump Foundation, may have violated "self-dealing" laws that prohibit nonprofit leaders from using charity money for self-benefit or the benefit of their for-profit businesses, according to The Post.

"I represent 700 nonprofits a year, and I've never encountered anything so brazen," Jeffrey Tenenbaum, who advises charities at the Venable law firm in Washington, told The Post, later describing the details as "really shocking."

Trump used foundation money to pay legal fees, report says - Business Insider

[BobL]

It was a million dollar shot until it wasn’t.
Donald Trump once refused to pay a winner of a hole-in-one contest $1 million during a 2010 golf tournament, prompting the competition’s angry winner to sue the mogul, recently unearthed documents from the lawsuit show.
And when the GOP nominee finally settled the suit for $158,000, he did so with money from his charitable foundation, which is illegal.
The claims add to mounting allegations surrounding Trump’s ethics as a businessman as well as the legal and ethical questions surrounding his charity, the Donald J. Trump Foundation.

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics...-1.2799475

Looks like more trouble for the Don.  With these legal controversies concerning his charity mounting -- how is it he can still remain a viable presidential candidate?  Granted, a lot of the rules don't seem to apply to Trump -- but we're talking about outright crimes using a non-profit charity for personal expenses.

[Admin]

Yea, it's absolutely stunning. He's supposed to be the champion of the masses, defending people against the self-dealing and self-perpetuating elites, but his records (insofar as they are open) has left a trail of scams. And of course he's very much a part of that self-dealing elite, which his tax plans heavily favor as well..

Amazing stuff

[Admin]

But Trump's new allegation that it was all Clinton's fault is as untrue as his original lie. The public record over the past decade undermines his attempt to blame the Democratic nominee for the origins of a conspiracy Trump peddled for years.

People in Clinton's orbit did discuss Obama's background during their bitter primary struggle in 2008. But as nasty as that campaign got at times, it was not an anything-goes affair. And it appears that when Clinton got wind of smears about Obama's roots or religion, she either shut down that line of argument or ignored it. There is no evidence that Clinton herself has ever said Obama wasn't born in America.

Trump, meanwhile, was for the past five years the primary propagator of the falsehood that Obama was not born in Hawaii in 1961, even though there was no serious question about Obama's birthplace even before the president produced his birth certificate in 2011.

On Sunday, Trump's campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway, cited three pieces of evidence to support her boss' claim that Clinton was the original "birther." Here's a closer look at evidence that is dubious at best, fails to tie the falsehood conclusively to Clinton, and cannot compete with Trump's multiyear effort to undermine the legitimacy of the nation's first African-American president.

Did Hillary Clinton start the birther movement? - Business Insider

[Admin]

Very long article, a collection of Trump's shady deals, worth a visit..

Whenever Trump has been in positions of power or authority, he has demonstrated a pattern of trying to enrich himself by abusing the trust others have placed in him — whether it’s creditors, contractors, charitable givers, Trump University students, regulators, or campaign donors. Over the past several months — and, indeed, the past few decades — reporters have unearthed many alarming stories that show this They’ve reported on Trump’s many shady business practices. His shady charity. His shady fake university scam. His shady campaign spending. His many shady associates. And, last but by no means least, there is Trump’s refusal to release tax returns or other financial information that would shed further light on his business practices, associates, and philanthropic undertakings.

Now, sometimes Trump’s abuses of trust entail breaking the law, and sometimes they’re within the bounds of the law. And sometimes the legality of Trump’s actions isn’t yet clear — as in the case of Trump University, which will face a fraud trial shortly after the election, and with some of the controversies around the Trump Foundation. But the common thread is that Trump screws people over to benefit himself. And despite the plethora of excellent reporting on this topic, many voters seem to be unaware of his troubling history here, and may view him primarily as a successful businessman who says some offensive things. A recent NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, for instance, found that Trump had a 10-point advantage over Clinton on “being honest and straightforward.”

There are the hundreds of accusations that Trump refused to pay contractors and workers what they were owed, which the Wall Street Journal and USA Today compiled this year. “The actions in total paint a portrait of Trump’s sprawling organization frequently failing to pay small businesses and individuals, then sometimes tying them up in court and other negotiations for years,” USA Today’s Steve Reilly wrote. “In some cases, the Trump teams financially overpower and outlast much smaller opponents, draining their resources.” (Trump told Reilly that if he ever didn’t pay, it must have been because he was unhappy with the work.)

Donald Trump’s history of corruption: a comprehensive review - Vox

The whole article is a rather compelling (and depressing) read

[Admin]

And then there is Deutsche Bank..

Deutsche Bank is in deep trouble. Its stock price has plummeted in recent days after the Justice Department demanded the gigantic German bank pay $14 billion to settle claims regarding its sale of bad mortgage-backed securities in the the run-up to the 2008 financial crisis. The bank's shares fell to a new low on Tuesday over reports it might be seeking a bailout from the German government—which Deutsche Bank has denied. The crisis has exposed the fragile state of one of the world's largest banks, but it also highlights a potential massive conflict of interest for Donald Trump.

In the past few years, Trump obtained $364 million in loans from Deutsche bank via four mortgages on three of his prized properties: Miami's Doral National golf course, Chicago's Trump International Hotel and Tower, and the newly opened Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C., a few blocks from the White House. A foreign entity holding so much of Trump's debt—financial leverage that could affect the decision-making of a future commander in chief—has raised alarms among ethics watchdogs. But with Deutsche Bank floundering, the possible conflicts posed by Trump's loans are compounding.

The financial health of Deutsche Bank is important for Trump's corporate empire. Because of Trump's history of failed projects and repeated bankruptcies, many of the world's top banks have long stopped doing business with him. 

Deutsche Bank was one of the only major banks—perhaps the only—that would work with him, and their relationship has been rocky. Trump wore out his welcome with Deutsche Bank's corporate banking arm in 2008, when he attempted to get out of paying $40 million he personally owed the bank after his company failed to make a payment deadline on a larger $640 million loan for his Chicago project. But Trump has maintained his relationship with Deutsche's so-called "private bank"—an arm of the bank that caters to wealthy people and has more flexibility in its lending standards than the corporate side. The four loans Trump currently has with Deutsche Bank are each from the private bank, a Deutsche Bank official told Mother Jones.

Trump's Huge Conflict of Interest With a Big Foreign Bank Keeps Getting Worse | Mother Jones

[Admin]

And potentially another (minor) one..

A company controlled by Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump secretly conducted business in Cuba in the late 1990s in violation of the long-running trade embargo, Newsweek will report on Friday, citing interviews with former executives, internal company records and court filings. That was according to an MSNBC report which aired late on Thursday. Documents indicated that the Trump company, then called Trump Hotels & Casino Resorts, spent at least $68,000 in 1998, with Trump's knowledge, funnelling the cash through a consulting firm so that it could appear legal by tying it to an after-the-fact charitable endeavour, the report said.

US election news: Republican candidate Donald Trump’s company allegedly violated Cuba trade embargo, Newsweek says

[Admin]

It's never ending..

Donald Trump’s charitable foundation has been ordered to suspend its fundraising immediately for violating state law, the New York attorney general’s office said on Monday. The Trump Foundation was served with a cease-and-desist letter on Friday, in which James Sheehan, the head of the attorney general’s charities bureau, wrote that the New York-based organization “must immediately cease soliciting contributions or engaging in any other fundraising activities in New York”.

New York orders Trump Foundation to stop taking donations in state | US news | The Guardian

[Admin]

Not again..

During their meeting in Trump’s office, they discussed Christian faith and religious liberty. Smith was struck by “a different Donald Trump than I expected.” On his way out the door, Smith asked that Trump consider donating to the Palmetto Family Council. “He was never heavy-handed about any quid pro quo,” Smith said. But Trump delivered. “It was a quiet donation that came with a simple cover letter,” Smith said. It read: “Great meeting with you and your wife in my office,” dated May 6, 2011. Enclosed was a check for $10,000 from the Donald J. Trump Foundation. 

That check is one of at least several donations to suggest Trump used his private foundation, funded by outside donors, to launch and fuel his political ambitions. Such contributions, if they were made solely for Trump’s benefit, could violate federal self-dealing laws for private foundations.  From 2011 through 2014, Trump harnessed his eponymous foundation to send at least $286,000 to influential conservative or policy groups, a RealClearPolitics review of the foundation’s tax filings found. In many cases, this flow of money corresponded to prime speaking slots or endorsements that aided Trump as he sought to recast himself as a plausible Republican candidate for president.

Trump Used Foundation Funds for 2016 Run, Filings Suggest | RealClearPolitics