Trump scandels and controversies

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Terrific set of links by Media Matters, some homework for the debate moderators:

• NY Times Reported Trump Could Have Avoided Paying Income Taxes For Nearly Two Decades
  
• RealClearPolitics Found Trump Used His Charity To Help His Presidential Aspirations In Potential Violation Of Law
  
• WSJ Found Trump Donated To Attorneys General Who Could Have Impact On His Businesses
  
• Associated Press Investigated Trump’s Sexism On The Apprentice
  
• Investigative Journalists Found Trump Did Business With An Iranian Bank Linked To Terrorism
  
• [i]Newsweek Reported That Trump’s Company Violated The U.S. Embargo Against Cuba[/i]
  
• [i]LA Times Reported Trump Wanted Women He Thought Were Less Attractive Fired From His Golf Course[/i]
  

But of course it's easier to simply accuse the moderators of bias (here for a selection, here, and here).

True to form, basically delegitimizing all institutions. whatever works..

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Just words? Well, maybe not..

Four women accused Donald Trump of groping or kissing them without their consent in news reports published Wednesday, just days after the Republican presidential nominee insisted in a debate that he had never engaged in such behavior.

One of the women alleges that Trump grabbed her breasts and tried to put his hand up her skirt during a flight more than three decades ago, the New York Times reported. Another says he kissed her on the mouth outside an elevator in 2005, according to the same report. A third woman says Trump groped her rear end at his Mar-a-Lago resort 13 years ago, the Palm Beach Post reported. The fourth, then a People magazine reporter, says Trump kissed her without her assent when the two were alone in 2005 right before an interview she was about to conduct with Trump and his wife.

Four women accuse Trump of forcibly groping, kissing them - The Washington Post

Will Hillary line these up in a press conference an hour before the third debate? Somehow, we don't think so..

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If you wonder why there are so many Trump scandals and controversies...

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump rebuffed political aides’ requests to research his past, people familiar with the matter said, a decision that contributed to his campaign being caught unprepared for the past week’s barrage of claims he mistreated women.

Corey Lewandowski, Trump’s first campaign manager, requested that Trump submit himself to a forensic evaluation that is traditional for any public figure seeking office, according to people granted anonymity to speak freely about the campaign’s start-up days last year. Opposition research would allow Trump’s new political team to prepare for potential attacks on his candidacy. Paul Manafort and his team made a similar request when they took over the reins after Lewandowski, who was ousted this June.

Trump declined, the people said, and the issue became a point of contention among his closest political advisers and some long-time employees at the Trump Organization. Trump spokespeople Jason Miller and Hope Hicks didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.
Now, Trump is fighting an onslaught of scrutiny of his behavior toward women, less than one month before voters cast final judgment on him and Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. Some of the scrutiny is a result of Trump’s own words, including in a 2005 video that surfaced Friday where he bragged about being able to do “anything” to women because of his fame.

Trump Said to Block Campaign’s Requests to Do Self-Opposition Research - Bloomberg Politics

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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

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And yet another one..

A leading campaign group supporting Donald Trump should face an official probe into its role in a fundraising scandal exposed by the Telegraph, one of the US’s most senior election lawyers said. Lawrence Noble, who was general counsel at the US Federal Election Commission (FEC) for 13 years, said Jesse Benton, former chief strategist at the Great America PAC, was clearly “soliciting foreign national money” from a fictitious Chinese donor in recordings by undercover reporters. His actions demonstrated “clear violations” of the Federal Election Campaign Act, which the PAC and Eric Beach, its co-chair, who referred Mr Benton to the reporters, could also have breached. Mr Noble reviewed recordings of discussions with Mr Benton, who said he was acting as a “consultant” to the Great America PAC, one of the leading "independent" groups organising television advertisements and grassroots support for the Republican nominee.  On Monday the Telegraph exposed how Mr Benton had sought to channel $2 million (£1.6 million) from a Chinese donor into the PAC, one of the leading “independent” organisations supporting Mr Trump’s campaign.  He said he had previously helped US donors conceal donations..

Exclusive: Pro-Trump campaign group should face inquiry over 'foreign donor’, leading election lawyer states

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A new one, from Newsweek (a long and sad story):

Over the course of decades, Donald Trump’s companies have systematically destroyed or hidden thousands of emails, digital records and paper documents demanded in official proceedings, often in defiance of court orders. These tactics—exposed by a Newsweek review of thousands of pages of court filings, judicial orders and affidavits from an array of court cases—have enraged judges, prosecutors, opposing lawyers and the many ordinary citizens entangled in litigation with Trump. In each instance, Trump and entities he controlled also erected numerous hurdles that made lawsuits drag on for years, forcing courtroom opponents to spend huge sums of money in legal fees as they struggled—sometimes in vain—to obtain records.

Donald Trump’s Companies Destroyed Emails in Defiance of Court Orders

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Yes, you read that right, 75 legal court cases running for our new President..

When he moves into the White House in January, Donald Trump will bring with him some unusual baggage: a long list of pending lawsuits in which he is either a plaintiff or a defendant. And just because he'll be president doesn't mean these cases are going away. For this, Trump can thank Paula Jones and the husband of his campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway.

By USA Today's count, Trump is involved in at least 75 ongoing cases. They include the numerous fraud lawsuits targeting the president-elect's now-defunct Trump University, which encouraged students to take out hefty loans in order to enroll in its get-rich-quick real estate seminars. A trial in a class-action lawsuit against Trump University is scheduled to begin in California on November 28, though Trump's lawyers have asked to postpone the case until after his inauguration. During his presidency, Trump won't be able to avoid potentially embarrassing court proceedings, depositions, and even the possibility of appearing as a witness in court. The law is clear that a sitting president can be sued for private conduct—which brings us to the Paula Jones story.

In 1994, Jones—who was among a group of Bill Clinton accusers Trump assembled at a press conference before the second presidential debate—sued then-President Clinton for sexual harassment. Ann Coulter, a major supporter of Trump's presidential bid, was reportedly the ghostwriter of Jones' legal complaint. Clinton tried to fend off the suit by asserting presidential immunity, which protects the president from lawsuits over conduct while in office. But Jones argued that her case involved actions that had occurred before Clinton took office. Jones' lawsuit resulted in a 1997 Supreme Court decision in her favor that now ensures that all the civil suits currently pending against Trump—and any that may yet be filed concerning his business or private life—can go forward while he's in office. Because of this ruling, Trump can be forced to testify, produce evidence, submit to depositions, and ultimately pay judgments in cases he loses.

Jones' Supreme Court victory was due in part to the work of George Conway III, a Republican lawyer who is married to Trump's campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway. When Jones' case first became public in May 1994, Conway was a 30-something lawyer at the law firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz and a member of the Federalist Society, a conservative legal group. Conway penned an op-ed in the Los Angeles Times arguing that Clinton was relying on dubious legal arguments. "In a case involving his private conduct, a President should be treated like any private citizen," he wrote. "The rule of law requires no more—and no less."

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More funny business..

Friday evening, the Washington Post reported that about 100 foreign diplomats gathered at President-elect Donald Trump’s hotel in Washington, DC to “to sip Trump-branded champagne, dine on sliders and hear a sales pitch about the U.S. president-elect’s newest hotel.” The tour included a look at the hotel’s $20,000 a night “town house” suite. The Post also quoted some of the diplomats saying they intended to stay at the hotel in order to ingratiate themselves to the incoming president.

“Why wouldn’t I stay at his hotel blocks from the White House, so I can tell the new president, ‘I love your new hotel!’” said one diplomat from an Asian nation. “Isn’t it rude to come to his city and say, ‘I am staying at your competitor?’”

The incoming president, in other words, is actively soliciting business from agents of foreign governments. Many of these agents, in turn, said that they will accept the president-elect’s offer to do business because they want to win favor with the new leader of the United States.

In an exclusive exchange with ThinkProgress, Richard Painter, a University of Minnesota law professor who previously served as chief ethics counsel to President George W. Bush, says that Trump’s efforts to do business with these diplomats is at odds with a provision of the Constitution intended to prevent foreign states from effectively buying influence with federal officials.

Trump poised to violate Constitution his first day in office, George W. Bush’s ethics lawyer says

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New York state attorney general Eric Schneiderman announced that Donald Trump has agreed to a $25 million settlement in the lawsuits against Trump University. In a statement, Scheinderman called the settlement "a stunning reversal by Donald Trump and a major victory for the over 6,000 victims of his fraudulent university."

In a March debate with his Republican primary opponents, Donald Trump was unequivocal: The fraud accusations against him for his involvement with Trump University were completely false and he would never settle the case. Even as Marco Rubio taunted Trump about the case and Fox News moderator Megyn Kelly pressed him on the facts—there were more than 5,000 plaintiffs in the class-action lawsuit, she noted—

Trump dismissed the idea there was anything to the case or that he would settle it. "I don't settle cases," Trump said. "I don't do it because that's why I don't get sued very often, because I don't settle, unlike a lot of other people." He added, "You know what, let's see what happens in court."

Trump's insistence that he would never settle the case extended far beyond that presidential debate. Before the debate, Trump had taken to Twitter to assail the idea he would settle.

Donald Trump, the Man Who Never Settles, Agrees to Settle Trump University Lawsuits | Mother Jones

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A little summary of Trump's business dealings, from Vox:

Business norms say that if you hire someone to do some work for you, you ought to pay them. Trump doesn’t follow those norms. He stiffs contractors everywhere he goes and is happy to wade into litigation rather than pay, knowing that many people can be bullied into accepting less than 100 percent of what they are owed to avoid high legal bills.

Before Trump became a major political figure, I would have thought you couldn’t practice business this way because nobody would work for you. But Trump just moves on to newer places. There’s no Trump Hotel in New York, but he does have a brand new one here in DC, and DC-area contractors are learning what contractors in Atlantic City learned long ago — Trump doesn’t pay up. He defaults on his debts, rips off his shareholders, and defrauds the students at his fake university.

Trump was able to keep making more and more money and becoming more and more famous acting this way, and so he did. By the same token, all his political norm breaking — from his bizarre tweets to refusing to release his tax returns to suggesting Ted Cruz’s father was involved in JFK’s assassination — didn’t derail, and may at times have helped, his election. He’s going to do what he’s going to do, and the reality is he’s right: He won.