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Digby's Hullabaloo Posts
People need to understand why Trump’s massive fraud matters to them. Dan Pfeiffer has some ideas about how to talk about this in his substack today:
Yesterday’s trial verdict was civil, not criminal. So technically, Trump has not been convicted of a crime, but that’s a distinction without a difference for most voters. He has been declared a fraud by the state of New York and can no longer conduct business there. We should also assume most voters won’t hear a single word about the fine, unless we tell them. Judge Engoron rendered his verdict the Friday before a holiday weekend. Back when I worked in political communications, this was the sort of timing I would suggest to dump bad news so the fewest people would notice. Therefore, the onus to spread the word is on us.
I view this verdict as a way to do three things:
Be Clear About What Trump Did: Ultimately, Trump was found guilty of lying to banks and insurance companies to line his own pockets with hundreds of millions of dollars.
Connect it to the Kind of President Trump Will Be: I would like to believe that electing someone found guilty of fraud (and sexual assault) would be a non-starter, but I fear we will have to make the case that his past transgressions tell a story about the kind of president Trump will be. Here’s one way to make the case:Can we really trust someone guilty of massive financial fraud and banned from doing business in New York to protect consumers from corporations that price-gouge, Wall Street banks playing fast and loose with the rules, and Big Tech companies hoarding our data and exploiting our children? Trump cares more about lining his own pockets than helping you make ends meet.
Make it Part of a Larger Narrative: Trump’s legal troubles should be disqualifying, but to make them stick, we must connect them to a larger narrative about Trump. Here is one suggested way to do it based on polling from Navigator Research.These investigations were conducted by law enforcement professionals. The decision to bring the indictments were made by career prosecutors and approved by a jury of Donald Trump’s peers. No politician is above the law, not even a President or a former President. A jury will render a judgment in each case, but Donald Trump cannot and should not return to the White House. The record is clear: he is more focused on protecting himself, helping his rich, politically connected friends and punishing his enemies than lowering costs, raising wages or protecting your family.
This verdict is a reminder that Trump is more politically vulnerable than the prevailing narrative suggests and that it is imperative to frame this election as a choice between a decent, experienced man who cares about you and a chaotic criminal who only cares about himself. We must take the opportunity to make that case every time it arises.
I think Democrats and others should also work to counter his “I’m your Jesus” nonsense in which he claims that he’s being persecuted for his followers. People need to be reminded that if they were caught lying on mortgage applications or insurance applications they could go to jail. In fact, they should be specifically reminded of this, which many people who may not follow politics are surely familiar with:
Two of the stars of the Bravo TV television show “The Real Housewives of New Jersey” today admitted committing a string of crimes as part of a long-running financial fraud conspiracy, U.S. Attorney Paul J. Fishman announced.
Teresa Giudice, 41, and Giuseppe “Joe” Giudice, 43, both of Towaco, N.J., pleaded guilty before U.S. District Judge Esther Salas in Newark federal court to several counts of the superseding indictment returned against them in July 2013. The Giudices each pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud, one count of bankruptcy fraud by concealment of assets, one count of bankruptcy fraud by false oaths, and one count of bankruptcy fraud by false declarations. Giuseppe Giudice also pleaded guilty to one count of failure to file a tax return.
“Teresa and Giuseppe Giudice used deception and fraud to cheat banks, bankruptcy court and the IRS,” said U.S. Attorney Fishman. “With their guilty pleas, they admitted the schemes with which they were charged. Having now confessed their wrongdoing, the Giudices face the real cost of their criminal conduct.”
“The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) Office of Inspector General (OIG) is pleased to join our law enforcement colleagues in announcing these guilty pleas today,” A. Derek Evans, Special Agent in Charge of FDIC-OIG, New York Region, said. “We are committed to combating bank fraud and bringing to justice those who engage in criminal conduct that undermines the integrity of our nation’s financial institutions.”
“Tax violations have been erroneously referred to as victimless crimes, which is a far cry from reality,” Acting Special Agent in Charge Jonathan D. Larsen, IRS-Criminal Investigation, Newark Field office, said. “Every time someone in America cheats on their taxes there are over 300 million victims. Tax fraud and bankruptcy fraud are real crimes with serious consequences as evidenced today by the guilty pleas of Giuseppe and Teresa Giudice.”
According to documents filed in this case and statements made in court:
From September 2001 through September 2008, Giuseppe and Teresa Giudice engaged in a mail and wire fraud conspiracy in which they submitted fraudulent applications and supporting documents to lenders in order to obtain mortgages and other loans. The Giudices falsely represented on loan applications and supporting documents that they were employed and/or receiving substantial salaries when they were either not employed or not receiving such salaries.
In September 2001 Teresa Giudice applied for a $121,500 mortgage loan for which she submitted a loan application falsely claiming she was employed as an executive assistant. She also submitted fake W-2 forms and fake pay stubs purportedly issued by her employer. For a $361,250 mortgage loan that Teresa Giudice obtained in July 2005, she and Giuseppe Giudice prepared a loan application which falsely stated she was employed as a realtor and that she made a monthly salary of $15,000. In reality, Teresa Giudice was not employed at the time.
[…]
The conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud count to which the Giudices each pleaded guilty carries a maximum potential penalty of 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine. Each of the bankruptcy fraud counts carries a maximum potential penalty of five years in prison and a $250,000 fine. Teresa Giudice’s plea agreement requires her to pay $200,000 to the government at the time of sentencing, which is scheduled for July 8, 2014.
Joe Giudice did almost four years in federal prison. Teresa did 15 months and Joe, who came to America as a baby, was deported when he came out of jail.
Donald Trump was found liable for lying about his net worth to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars to obtain loans at favorable interest rates. He’s not going to jail but he’s being asked to pay hundreds of millions in fines and penalties for what he did.
He got off easy.
That was Wednesday. Friday he posted this:
I have a sneaking suspicion those flattering photos aren’t exactly on the up and up.
Considering the grotesque comments he makes about other people, he deserves to be criticized for his looks. Personally, I don’t think his weight is a big deal. But the near-blackface and the full Flock of Seagulls hairdo is worth mentioning. Doesn’t anyone notice how fucking weird that is?
Trump is going to restrict abortion even more if he becomes president. We’ve heard he is thinking about endorsing a 16 week abortion ban to keep his evangelicals happy. (He likes the 16 week as opposed to the 15 week ban because it’s an even number. I kid you not…)
Anyway the following isn’t really news since it’s been out there for a while. I’ve written about it as have others. But the NY Times publishing it can make it real for a lot of people:
Behind the scenes, specific anti-abortion plans being proposed by Mr. Trump’s allies are sweeping and legally sophisticated. Some of their proposals would rely on enforcing the Comstock Act, a long-dormant law from 1873, to criminalize the shipping of any materials used in an abortion — including abortion pills, which account for the majority of abortions in America.
“We don’t need a federal ban when we have Comstock on the books,” said Jonathan F. Mitchell, the legal force behind a 2021 Texas law that found a way to effectively ban abortion in the state before Roe v. Wade was overturned. “There’s a smorgasbord of options.”
Mr. Mitchell, who represented Mr. Trump in arguments before the Supreme Court over whether the former president could appear on the ballot in Colorado, indicated that anti-abortion strategists had purposefully been quiet about their more advanced plans, given the political liability the issue has become for Republicans.
“I hope he doesn’t know about the existence of Comstock, because I just don’t want him to shoot off his mouth,” Mr. Mitchell said of Mr. Trump. “I think the pro-life groups should keep their mouths shut as much as possible until the election.”
[…]
Policies under consideration include banning the use of fetal stem cells in medical research for diseases like cancer, rescinding approval of abortion pills at the F.D.A. and stopping hundreds of millions in federal funding for Planned Parenthood. Such an action against Planned Parenthood would cripple the nation’s largest provider of women’s health care, which is already struggling to provide abortions in the post-Roe era.
The organizations and advocates crafting these proposals are not simply outside groups expressing wish lists of what they hope Mr. Trump would do in a second administration. They are people who have spent much of their professional careers fighting abortion rights, including some who were in powerful positions during Mr. Trump’s administration.
In his first term, Mr. Trump largely outsourced abortion policy to socially conservative lawyers and aides. Since he left office, some of those people have remained in Mr. Trump’s orbit, defending him in court, suggesting policy plans well beyond issues like abortion and attending events at Mar-a-Lago, his private club and residence in Florida.
These zealots are woven so tightly into MAGA world that it is impossible to separate them from the political opportunists and the grifters at this point. They will get what they want.
Tucker Carlson apparently thinks so too:
He did say, “sorry” afterwards. Now he’s backtracking:
Tucker Carlson has turned on Vladimir Putin in the wake of the shocking death of Alexei Navalny, just days after releasing a softball interview with the Russian president and a series of ‘tourism board style’ videos about the country’s clean train stations and cheap groceries.
In an exclusive statement to DailyMail.com, Carlson said: ‘It’s horrifying what happened to Navalny. The whole thing is barbaric and awful. No decent person would defend it.’
The former Fox News host told DailyMail.com that he was on a plane traveling from Dubai when Navalny’s death was announced.
‘I didn’t even know it happened till I saw the Daily Mail story,’ Carlson explained.
The conservative pundit has faced backlash over his bizarre sit-down with Putin last week after critics say he failed to challenge the Russian president.
When quizzed about the limitations of his interview at the World Government Summit on Monday, days before Navalny’s tragic death, Carlson made the comment: ‘every leader kills people, leadership requires killing people.’
He told DailyMail.com Friday: ‘It had zero to do with Navalny. I wasn’t referring to him, which is obvious in context, and I certainly wasn’t making excuses for killing people. I’m totally opposed to killing as I said.’
Of course he was. How ridiculous. He didn’t say he was opposed to it. He said “Leadership requires killing people, that’s why I don’t want to be a leader” clearly indicating that he thinks it’s a necessary thing but he just doesn’t want to be the one doing it. And he said it in the context of a question in which Navalny was specifically mentioned. Please.
Meanwhile, Ivanka’s husband is still defending the murderous MBS:
That’s nothing of course. Trump himself loves Kim Jong Un, murderous dictator, Xi Jinping, murderous dictator, Rodrigo Duterte, former murderous dictator etc. And we know how he feels about Vlad.
This is who they are:
The irony of Trump using those words is just too much.
This is from 2016, no one cared, and it’s been memory holed. The man is a chiseler and always has been:
During the Atlantic City casino boom in the 1980s, Philadelphia cabinet-builder Edward Friel Jr. landed a $400,000 contract to build the bases for slot machines, registration desks, bars and other cabinets at Harrah’s at Trump Plaza.
The family cabinetry business, founded in the 1940s by Edward’s father, finished its work in 1984 and submitted its final bill to the general contractor for the Trump Organization, the resort’s builder.
Edward’s son, Paul, who was the firm’s accountant, still remembers the amount of that bill more than 30 years later: $83,600. The reason: the money never came. “That began the demise of the Edward J. Friel Company… which has been around since my grandfather,” he said.Donald Trump often portrays himself as a savior of the working class who will “protect your job.” But a USA TODAY NETWORK analysis found he has been involved in more than 3,500 lawsuits over the past three decades — and a large number of those involve ordinary Americans, like the Friels, who say Trump or his companies have refused to pay them.
At least 60 lawsuits, along with hundreds of liens, judgments, and other government filings reviewed by the USA TODAY NETWORK, document people who have accused Trump and his businesses of failing to pay them for their work. Among them: a dishwasher in Florida. A glass company in New Jersey. A carpet company. A plumber. Painters. Forty-eight waiters. Dozens of bartenders and other hourly workers at his resorts and clubs, coast to coast. Real estate brokers who sold his properties. And, ironically, several law firms that once represented him in these suits and others.
Trump’s companies have also been cited for 24 violations of the Fair Labor Standards Act since 2005 for failing to pay overtime or minimum wage, according to U.S. Department of Labor data. That includes 21 citations against the defunct Trump Plaza in Atlantic City and three against the also out-of-business Trump Mortgage LLC in New York. Both cases were resolved by the companies agreeing to pay back wages.
In addition to the lawsuits, the review found more than 200 mechanic’s liens — filed by contractors and employees against Trump, his companies or his properties claiming they were owed money for their work — since the 1980s. The liens range from a $75,000 claim by a Plainview, N.Y., air conditioning and heating company to a $1 million claim from the president of a New York City real estate banking firm. On just one project, Trump’s Taj Mahal casino in Atlantic City, records released by the New Jersey Casino Control Commission in 1990 show that at least 253 subcontractors weren’t paid in full or on time, including workers who installed walls, chandeliers and plumbing.
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. In some cases, the Trump teams financially overpower and outlast much smaller opponents, draining their resources. Some just give up the fight, or settle for less; some have ended up in bankruptcy or out of business altogether.
Trump and his daughter Ivanka, in an interview with USA TODAY, shrugged off the lawsuits and other claims of non-payment. If a company or worker he hires isn’t paid fully, the Trumps said, it’s because The Trump Organization was unhappy with the work.
“Let’s say that they do a job that’s not good, or a job that they didn’t finish, or a job that was way late. I’ll deduct from their contract, absolutely,” Trump said. “That’s what the country should be doing.”
To be sure, Trump and his companies have prevailed in many legal disputes over missing payments, or reached settlements that cloud the terms reached by the parties.
However, the consistent circumstances laid out in those lawsuits and other non-payment claims raise questions about Trump’s judgment as a businessman, and as a potential commander- in- chief. The number of companies and others alleging he hasn’t paid suggests that either his companies have a poor track record hiring workers and assessing contractors, or that Trump businesses renege on contracts, refuse to pay, or consistently attempt to change payment terms after work is complete as is alleged in dozens of court cases.
People who defend this grotesque mobster’s fraud as “just doing business” are chiselers too.
And, by the way, I watched this is real time and was stunned that no one answered that the people who were hurt by Trump’s fraud were all the honest people who didn’t lie and had to pay higher interest rates! That’s why you punish fraudsters like Trump — it’s on behalf of the people who play by the rules.
MAGA says ‘break’
Rep. Abigail Spanberger (D-Va.) visited Ukraine this month and met with President Volodymyr Zelensky, who she describes as “clear-eyed and clear-voiced.” But he’s faced with a “make or break moment” in his country’s fight to remain a free country. Donald Trump wanted (and failed) to build a wall on our southern border. Vladimir Putin wants to rebuild the Iron Curtain.
Spanberger shared her thoughts with Jennifer Rubin (Washington Post):
Spanberger is candid about the Biden administration refusing the initial request from Ukraine for critical equipment, waiting for Europeans to act and then, finally, acceding. “Initially, I was willing to concede they were being careful,” she said. The risk of elevating the war to a major-power war is not zero. However, “we have demonstrated that Ukraine is abiding by the parameters” we set, she argued. The rigmarole leaves us consistently at least “a few months behind” Ukraine’s urgent requests.
Intelligence Committee Chairman Michael R. Turner (R-Ohio) pledged to Zelensky that the aid bill would “get done.” Just how to pass it over MAGA Republican objections is the question.
MAGA Republicans’ indifference to Ukraine — evidenced by their shrug at Trump’s recent invitation for Russia to invade Europe — incensed Spanberger. “What are they missing? We saved the world from fascism. We ended the Holocaust. We freed Europe. That was us,” she said, her voice rising with emotion. Now, these Republicans “want to remove America from the world,” she says. Russian President Vladimir Putin, she continued, “is on the precipice of destroying the world order we put in place through the deaths of thousands of Americans.” And, yet, it seems, they cannot be bothered to “explain this to their constituents or fend off a primary challenge” to defend our vital interests, she declared. Instead, they meekly follow their isolationist cult leader.
She recalled that the day after 9/11, our NATO allies invoked Article 5 for the first time. “They went to war for 2o years for us. For our war.” In a word, she said, she finds Republicans’ disregard of America’s vital interests “shameful.”
Spanberger’s being diplomatic.
Ah, remember the days when the Bushies told us we needed to invade Iraq? How they fed us a flood of raw (and bogus) intelligence about it? Iraq was a clear and present danger to our national security? We needed to fight them over there so we didn’t have to fight them over here?
Ukraine’s ask is not even that. We’re being asked to supply Ukraine with weapons to sustain their fight so We don’t end up in WWIII over there. France supplied the Colonies with weapons in their fight against the British, so it’s a kind of pay-freedom-forward ask, and a damn sight cheaper and cleaner (for us) than a war between NATO and Russia. Not to mention a jobs program for American arms manufacturers. You’d think the party of big business would consider it a sound investment with a yuge ROI.
But that was before the Christian right’s crush on Putin, and before white nationalists discovered Russia as their “beacon of salvation” in a diversifying West. Because Russia-so-white, Christian, and anti-gay. The extremist’s ditching freedom and all that predates Trump’s flowering bromance with Putin. Almost makes one miss Cold War Republicans.
Re: Spanberger. My last Democratic congressperson was a Blue Dog. We’ve had a string of rather notorious Republicans since January 2013, including Mark Meadows and Madison Cawthorn. So while others may give side-eye to centrist Democrats, my view of Spanberger is tempered by that experience.
Spanberger has chosen not to return to Congress so she can run for Virginia governor in 2025 instead. So I wish former former CIA agent, former Blue Dog, and current Problem Solver Caucus member bon courage.
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Just thank you
@pete.dominick Here are my comments at our last school board meeting where a few bad faith actors have tried to create a controversy in our schools with no regard to the students safety or best interest. We have a generally welcoming student body when it comes to LGBT issues. I would dare to say the kids are all right – it’s the parents who are the problem. John Lewis asked us to make good trouble. And Dr. King told us not to be silent. #LGBT #transgender #trans #BOE #humanrights #schoolboardmeetings #transrights #boardofeducation #turningpointusa #momsforliberty ♬ original sound – Pete Dominick
@pete.dominick Here are my comments at our last school board meeting where a few bad faith actors have tried to create a controversy in our schools with no regard to the students safety or best interest. We have a generally welcoming student body when it comes to LGBT issues. I would dare to say the kids are all right – it’s the parents who are the problem. John Lewis asked us to make good trouble. And Dr. King told us not to be silent. #LGBT #transgender #trans #BOE #humanrights #schoolboardmeetings #transrights #boardofeducation #turningpointusa #momsforliberty ♬ original sound – Pete Dominick
What is there to add?
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For The Win, 5th Edition is ready for download. Request a copy of my free countywide GOTV planning guide at ForTheWin.us.
Beautiful kitties…
Snow leopard cub pestering his mom 🐆 pic.twitter.com/apawg9fVBM
— Apurv Anand (@apurv_anand) February 14, 2024
Snow lepoardpic.twitter.com/fpr9C0iwkD
— Vibrant Visuals (@veona_roamer) February 14, 2024
And Joe Lieberman is very sad
I’m not sure why he felt the need to tease this for the past year but it’s good that he finally pulled the plug on this nonsense. (Actually, I know why he did it. He’s a diva and he loves attention so he always preens and poses before he finally agrees to do the right thing.)
Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., announced Friday that he is not running for president after spending months mulling a bid that would have shaken up the 2024 campaign.
“I will not be seeking a third-party run. I will not be involved in a presidential run,” Manchin said during a speech. “I will be involved in making sure that we secure a president that has the knowledge and has the passion and has the ability to bring this country together.”
Manchin said that a third party could be viable down the road, but that a bid this year would have been “very challenging.” He added that he didn’t want to be a “deal-breaker” or a “spoiler.”
“I just don’t think it’s the right time,” Manchin said. “We’re on a real teetering situation here that could go either way. Democracy is at stake right now.”