Slouching Towards Oblivion

Showing posts with label corruption. Show all posts
Showing posts with label corruption. Show all posts

Tuesday, February 20, 2024

Uncle Vlad To The Rescue (?)


Have you been wondering how and when the Russian &/or Saudi money was going to show up and pull Trump's fat outa the fire?

I have nothing but my own suspicions and speculation on this, but we're talking Donald-fucking-Trump here, and that should be enough to throw the rosiest-thinking Pollyanna into a deep and dark purple funk.

Maybe Trump did a deal on some of those state secret thingies before the feds caught him (?)


The stock linked to Donald Trump's Truth Social platform is flying high.
Read this before you invest.

You know you're buying a quality stock when the prospectus reads like a police blotter

Donald J. Trump has a long record of business failures and bankruptcies.

But after getting kicked off Twitter in 2021 he launched Truth Social, a social-media site.

Truth Social, his would-be Twitter rival, is a high-risk, speculative operation with few hard numbers behind it. It's already the subject of subpoenas, from regulators and a grand jury, even though it's barely off the ground. Oh, and Trump is not required to use the social-media site much - if at all - to communicate with the public, notably if voters were to return him to the White House. You buy the stock at your own peril.

That's not me talking. That's ... er ... the new stock-market prospectus for Truth Social. It has just been filed here with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

In case you missed it, yes: Donald Trump is trying to come back to Wall Street.

He's in advanced talks to list Truth Social on the stock market by merging its parent company, Trump Media & Technology Group, with a publicly traded shell company, Digital World Acquisition Corp. (DWAC).

See: DWAC up over 15% as it moves to buy Trump Media & Technology Group - but here's a potential snag

Trump faces mounting legal woes, as well as having a presidential campaign to manage. Meanwhile, Digital World has been in trouble with the Securities and Exchange Commission, and recently agreed to pay $18 million to settle fraud charges relating to this potential merger.

But never mind all this. Digital World Acquisition Corp.'s stock is suddenly flying high, as Trump heads toward the presidential nomination for the Republican Party - for a third straight time. The stock has tripled in price since the Iowa caucuses in January to $48, potentially valuing the business at $6.5 billion.

Opinion: Cha-ching! Trump makes $4 billion from his election campaign

But the prospectus for the deal, which runs to nearly 600 pages, is a doozy.

It reveals all the reasons investors jumping on the MAGA train might want to think twice, or even three times, before taking the plunge.

"A number of companies that were associated with President Trump have filed for bankruptcy," the prospectus reminds investors. "There can be no assurances that TMTG will not also become bankrupt. ... A number of companies that had license agreements with President Trump have failed. There can be no assurances that TMTG will not also fail."

In case you've forgotten, "The Trump Taj Mahal, which was built and owned by President Trump, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 1991," recalls the stock-market prospectus. "The Trump Plaza, the Trump Castle, and the Plaza Hotel, all owned by President Trump at the time, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 1992."

Trump Hotels & Casino Resorts, founded by Trump in 1995, "filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2004," it continues. "Trump Entertainment Resorts, Inc., the new name given to Trump Hotels & Casino Resorts after its 2004 bankruptcy, declared bankruptcy in 2009."

You know what gamblers say, that the house always wins? Well, Donald Trump and his failed casino operation are your refutation.

Trump Hotels & Casino Resorts had trouble with the law on the way down, too. "On January 16, 2002, the SEC issued a cease and desist order against Trump Hotels & Casino Resorts, Inc. (THCR) for violations of the anti-fraud provisions of the Exchange Act," the prospectus reveals.

I've written about Trump Hotels & Casino Resorts before. Ordinary investors, drawn to the stock by the perceived, by them, allure of the Trump name, ended up relieved of their shirts, pants and shoes and were left standing on the Atlantic City boardwalk in their undergarments.

Yes, Trump himself pocketed millions. Stockholders pretty much lost everything.

From the archives (July 2015): Donald Trump was a stock-market disaster


"Trump Shuttle, Inc., launched by President Trump in 1989, defaulted on its loans in 1990 and ceased to exist by 1992," the prospectus continues, referring to the short-haul airline. "Trump University, founded by President Trump in 2005, ceased operations in 2011 amid lawsuits and investigations regarding that company's business practices."

This, let me remind you, is not the fake-news liberal media talking. It's the stock-market prospectus for Trump's own, current business.

"Trump Vodka, a brand of vodka produced by Drinks Americas under license from The Trump Organization, was introduced in 2005 and discontinued in 2011," it goes on. "Trump Mortgage, LLC, a financial services company founded by President Trump in 2006, ceased operations in 2007. GoTrump.com, a travel site founded by President Trump in 2006, ceased operations in 2007. Trump Steaks, a brand of steak and other meats founded by President Trump in 2007, discontinued sales two months after its launch." Two months.

But Truth Social will be different, right?

There is also a long section in the prospectus listing all of the former president's current legal troubles (while eschewing that word, former). You always know you're buying a quality stock when the prospectus reads like a police blotter.

Then there's the Truth Social deal itself.

Trump Technology & Media Group "aspires to build a media and technology powerhouse to rival the liberal media consortium and promote free expression," the prospectus reads.

Total Truth Social sign-ups to date? Er... 8.9 million people.

In the nine months to September 2023, the business suffered a $10.6 million operating loss on just $3.4 million in sales.

Meanwhile, somehow. it racked up $37.7 million in interest expenses.

If you want more financial details about Truth Social before investing, you are not alone. The board of Digital World, the would-be merger partner, admits that it, too, would like more financial details.

Alas, Trump's business "did not provide the Digital World Board with TMTG's financial projections in connection with the Digital World Board's bring-down due diligence process," the board reveals.

Oh, well. Can't have everything.

Some of this may be because the people running Truth Social - led by CEO Devin Nunes, formerly a Trump-aligned member of the U.S. House of Representatives from rural south-central California - don't actually have too much data. "[I]nvestors should be aware that since its inception, TMTG has not relied on any specific key performance metric to make business or operating decisions," the prospectus reports. "Consequently, it has not been maintaining internal controls and procedures for periodically collecting such information, if any." My italics.

The Trump operation has chosen not to track these metrics. It reports: "At this juncture in its development, TMTG believes that adhering to traditional key performance indicators, such as signups, average revenue per user, ad impressions and pricing, or active user accounts including monthly and daily active users, could potentially divert its focus from strategic evaluation with respect to the progress and growth of its business."

Which is to say Truth Social didn't want numbers distracting it from the business. You could call this the Alternative Facts School of Business Administration.

But the real peach here is that, although investors are buying this stock in the hope that Donald Trump will do for Truth Social what he did for Twitter, there is actually no guarantee he will use it much, or at all. Even if he is elected president.

That's because, the prospectus reveals, Donald Trump's agreement with Truth Social is limited. Yes, he is required to post certain of his social-media messages there first. But only nonpolitical ones, made from his "personal (i.e., non-business)" accounts. And the Truth Social exclusivity on each post only lasts for six hours.

Oh, and Trump can even cancel this agreement with 30 days' notice, "at any time on or after February 2, 2025." In other words, shortly after Inauguration Day.

And even until then, who is to decide which social-media posts are political, and therefore exempt from the exclusivity agreement? Guess.

"President Trump ... may post social media communications from his personal profile that he deems, in his sole discretion, to be politically-related on any social media site at any time," the prospectus warns. My italics.

It adds: "As a candidate for president, most or all of President Trump's social media posts may be deemed by him to be politically related."

As a result, it warns, investors "may lack any meaningful remedy if President Trump minimizes his use of Truth Social."

Trump will own at least 58% of the stock in the new company, giving him total control and minority investors nothing but hope. What could possibly go wrong?

Tuesday, January 09, 2024

Today's (Alleged) Fuckery


I use the word "alleged" because even a small-potatoes blogger should at least try to follow the rules.

That said, no one paying any attention at all can dismiss the real potential for disaster here.

These assholes ain't playin'.


Exclusive: Roger Stone Spoke With Cop Pal About Assassinating Eric Swalwell and Jerry Nadler

Weeks before the 2020 presidential election, infamous political operative Roger Stone sat across from his associate Sal Greco at a restaurant in Florida.

At the time, Greco was an NYPD cop working security for Stone on the side. Their conversation, at Caffe Europa in Fort Lauderdale, focused on two House Democrats for whom Stone harbors particular animosity, Jerry Nadler and Eric Swalwell.

In audio of the conversation obtained exclusively by Mediaite, Stone made threatening comments about the two lawmakers.

“It’s time to do it,” Stone told Greco. “Let’s go find Swalwell. It’s time to do it. Then we’ll see how brave the rest of them are. It’s time to do it. It’s either Nadler or Swalwell has to die before the election. They need to get the message. Let’s go find Swalwell and get this over with. I’m just not putting up with this shit anymore.”

A source familiar with the discussion told Mediate they believed Stone’s remarks were serious. “It was definitely concerning that he was constantly planning violence with an NYPD officer and other militia groups,” the source said.

Both Nadler and Swalwell serve on the House Judiciary Committee. At the time of the Caffe Europa conversation, Nadler had announced the committee would be investigating then-President Donald Trump’s decision to commute Stone’s sentence after he was convicted of federal crimes in Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia probe.

“A jury found Roger Stone guilty,” Nadler wrote on Twitter in July 2020. “By commuting his sentence, President Trump has infected our judicial system with partisanship and cronyism and attacked the rule of law. @House Judiciary will conduct an aggressive investigation into this brazen corruption.”

The source told Mediaite of Stone: “Stone had been at war with Nadler and Swalwell for years. He just hates them.”

“He just wanted to get Trump back into office so these things would stop,” the source added.

Stone was convicted of obstruction, witness tampering, and lying to Congress in the Mueller investigation. Prosecutors sought a nine-year prison sentence for the longtime Republican operative, but Trump’s Justice Department reportedly intervened to impose a less severe sentence. Stone’s sentence was eventually commuted by Trump days before reporting to prison.

The intervention from the Justice Department prompted Aaron Zelinsky, the prosecutor and Mueller deputy who led the case against Stone, to recuse himself from the case in protest. Mediaite reported last week that Stone was caught on tape in December 2020 urging Greco to “punish” Zelinsky.

“He needs to be punished,” Stone told Greco in the audio. “You have to abduct him and punish him. That has to be done. It will be easy to abduct him because he is a weakling.”

Stone denied making those comments, claiming they were generated by AI. He has previously claimed videos of his comments are actually “deep fakes.” In response to a request for comment on the remarks aimed at Swalwell and Nadler, Stone said, “Total nonsense. I’ve never said anything of the kind more AI manipulation. You asked me to respond to audios that you don’t let me hear and you don’t identify a source for. Absurd.”

Greco did not deny the comments, but said in a text to Mediaite: “I don’t think your reader is interested in ancient political fodder.”

Greco, who acted as security for Stone and was with the operative during the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol soon after the 2020 election, was fired by the NYPD over his association with Stone. An NYPD spokesperson confirmed to Mediaite that Greco was terminated in August 2022.

Nadler and Swalwell did not respond to requests for comment.

Friday, November 03, 2023

Due Process

George Santos is a total scumbag grifter, who should be breaking rocks at a federal lockup.

He was up for expulsion from the House, but he eked it out. Most of his GOP "buddies" voted to give him the boot, but a buncha Dems voted against the resolution because he's not stood trial, and he's not been convicted of anything.

So he wrote letters to the guys who "supported" him.

Jamie Raskin (D-MD08) marked it up and sent it back to him.

"Dear Congressman Santos:
I appreciate your note and only wish someone had proofread it first.
Meantime, you should apologize to the people of New York for all of your lies and deceit.
I know you must have thought you could get away with it all in the party of Trump, but the truth is resilient."

Tuesday, October 10, 2023

Both Sides Don't


Bob Menendez is under indictment (again) for some pretty heinous shit.

If he was a Republican, there'd be no question - that whole fucking party would be jumping in to prop him up.

After totally screwing the pooch 8 years ago, the Dems are going for a little redemption, and mostly telling him to get lost.


Bob Menendez flirting with reelection worries Democrats about future seat

Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ) is weighing reelection, prompting the majority of Senate Democrats to call on him to resign.

While the indicted senator is being coy about his intentions, his Democratic colleagues believe that a reelection bid would hand a Senate seat to the Republican Party in a tight 2024 race.

"There is something like a 0 percent chance he would be able to get the nomination," an anonymous senator told Politico. "He's a dead man walking, politically."

Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH), the second senator to call for Menendez to resign, said, "I hope he doesn't run, but if he does run, it's his choice. And I think he will lose."

While more than half of Senate Democrats have called for the embattled senator from New Jersey to resign, Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) has been the only one to encourage candidates to challenge Menendez in the primary.

"If he would be foolish enough to run for reelection," Fetterman said, "I will be actively assisting anyone that's running against him in the primary."

( ⬆︎ Why I'm good with John Fetterman ⬆︎ )

The Pennsylvania senator submitted a fundraising appeal for South Jersey's Rep. Andy Kim (D-NJ), a current front-runner to challenge Menendez in the Democratic primary.

Asked about his timeline for a decision on the 2024 election, Menendez told Politico, "I don't have to answer to you people ... I will tell the people of New Jersey when I'm ready."

If the indicted senator ignores warnings from his constituents in the Senate, he faces what National Republican Senatorial Committee Chairman Steve Daines (R-MT) says "could become a competitive race."

Rep. Jeff Van Drew (R-NJ) is one of the leading names in the New Jersey Republican Party who might challenge for the Garden State's up-for-grabs Senate seat. Van Drew is a former Democrat who switched parties in 2019.

Menendez was indicted, alongside his wife Nadine Menendez, on allegations of accepting bribes and gifts from businessmen in exchange for aid to the Egyptian government. Investigators found approximately $500,000 in cash and $100,000 in gold bars stuffed in various places in their Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, estate.

One of the gifts Menendez allegedly received included a brand-new $60,000 Mercedes-Benz convertible, given to the Menendez family just months after Nadine Menendez damaged her car in a fatal crash involving a pedestrian.

The couple and businessman pleaded not guilty to federal charges.

Wednesday, September 20, 2023

Take What's Good

... and make it look like something bad - in order to score a few points for a "political party" that's bent on tearing down every tradition of American democratic self-government so they can replace it with a corporate plutocracy.

These are very bad people. They know they don't make any real progress if they tell us what they're actually doing. They have to hide it - dress it up and make it look like something it isn't.

Mr Hitler didn't pop up saying, "Hello, my name is Adolph - I'll be your führer this evening - can I start you off with killing all the Jews?"

Almost exactly the way somebody (not Sinclair Lewis BTW) described it - when fascism comes to America, it'll be wrapped in the stars and stripes, carrying a crucifix, and waving the bible.


When Ken Buck sounds like the voice of reason, you know we've got some serious fucking trouble.

Thursday, August 10, 2023

Clarence Thomas Is Dirty



Clarence Thomas’ 38 Vacations:
The Other Billionaires Who Have Treated the Supreme Court Justice to Luxury Travel

The fullest accounting yet shows how Thomas has secretly reaped the benefits from a network of wealthy and well-connected patrons that is far more extensive than previously understood.

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’ decadeslong friendship with real estate tycoon Harlan Crow and Samuel Alito’s luxury travel with billionaire Paul Singer have raised questions about influence and ethics at the nation's highest court.

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they’re published.

During his three decades on the Supreme Court, Clarence Thomas has enjoyed steady access to a lifestyle most Americans can only imagine. A cadre of industry titans and ultrawealthy executives have treated him to far-flung vacations aboard their yachts, ushered him into the premium suites at sporting events and sent their private jets to fetch him — including, on more than one occasion, an entire 737. It’s a stream of luxury that is both more extensive and from a wider circle than has been previously understood.

Like clockwork, Thomas’ leisure activities have been underwritten by benefactors who share the ideology that drives his jurisprudence. Their gifts include:

At least 38 destination vacations, including a previously unreported voyage on a yacht around the Bahamas; 26 private jet flights, plus an additional eight by helicopter; a dozen VIP passes to professional and college sporting events, typically perched in the skybox; two stays at luxury resorts in Florida and Jamaica; and one standing invitation to an uber-exclusive golf club overlooking the Atlantic coast.

This accounting of Thomas’ travel, revealed for the first time here from an array of previously unavailable information, is the fullest to date of the generosity that has regularly afforded Thomas a lifestyle far beyond what his income could provide. And it is almost certainly an undercount.

While some of the hospitality, such as stays in personal homes, may not have required disclosure, Thomas appears to have violated the law by failing to disclose flights, yacht cruises and expensive sports tickets, according to ethics experts.

Perhaps even more significant, the pattern exposes consistent violations of judicial norms, experts, including seven current and former federal judges appointed by both parties, told ProPublica. “In my career I don’t remember ever seeing this degree of largesse given to anybody,” said Jeremy Fogel, a former federal judge who served for years on the judicial committee that reviews judges’ financial disclosures. “I think it’s unprecedented.”

This year, ProPublica revealed Texas real estate billionaire Harlan Crow’s generosity toward Thomas, including vacations, private jet flights, gifts, the purchase of his mother’s house in Georgia and tuition payments. In an April statement, the justice defended his relationship with Crow. The Crows “are among our dearest friends,” Thomas said. “As friends do, we have joined them on a number of family trips.”

The New York Times recently surfaced VIP treatment from wealthy businessmen he met through the Horatio Alger Association, an exclusive nonprofit. Among them were David Sokol, a former top executive at Berkshire Hathaway, and H. Wayne Huizenga, a billionaire who turned Blockbuster and Waste Management into national goliaths. (The Times noted Thomas gives access to the Supreme Court building for Horatio Alger events; ProPublica confirmed that the access has cost $1,500 or more in donations per person.)

Records and interviews show Thomas had another benefactor, oil baron Paul “Tony” Novelly, whose gifts to the justice have not previously been reported. ProPublica’s totals in this article include trips from Crow.

Each of these men — Novelly, Huizenga, Sokol and Crow — appears to have first met Thomas after he ascended to the Supreme Court. With the exception of Crow, their names are nowhere in Thomas’ financial disclosures, where justices are required by law to publicly report most gifts.


The total value of the undisclosed trips they’ve given Thomas since 1991, the year he was appointed to the Supreme Court, is difficult to measure. But it’s likely in the millions.

Huizenga sent his personal 737 to pick Thomas up and bring him to South Florida at least twice, according to John Wener, a former flight attendant and chef on board the plane. If he were picked up in D.C., the five-hour round trip would have cost at least $130,000 each time had Thomas chartered the jet himself, according to estimates from jet charter companies. In February 2016, Thomas flew on Crow’s private jet from Washington to New Haven, Connecticut, before heading back on the jet just three hours later. ProPublica previously reported the flight, but newly obtained U.S. Marshals Service records reveal its purpose: Thomas met with several Yale Law School deans for a tour of the room where they planned to display a portrait of the justice. (Crow’s foundation also gave the school $105,000, earmarked for the “Justice Thomas Portrait Fund,” tax filings show.)

Don Fox, the former general counsel of the U.S. Office of Government Ethics and the senior ethics official in the executive branch, said, “It’s just the height of hypocrisy to wear the robes and live the lifestyle of a billionaire.” Taxpayers, he added, have the right to expect that Supreme Court justices are not living on the dime of others.

Fox, who worked under both Democratic and Republican administrations, said he advised every new political appointee the same thing: Your wealthy friends are the ones you had before you were appointed. “You don’t get to acquire any new ones,” he told them.

Thomas and Novelly did not respond to a detailed list of questions for this story. Huizenga died in 2018 and his son, who is the president of the family’s holding company, also did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

In a statement to ProPublica, Sokol said he’s been close friends with the Thomases for 21 years and acknowledged traveling with and occasionally hosting them. He defended the justice as upright and ethical. “We have never once discussed any pending court matter,” Sokol said. “Our conversations have always revolved around helping young people, sports, and family matters.”

“As to the use of private aviation,” he added, “I believe that given security concerns all of the Supreme Court justices should either fly privately or on governmental aircraft.”

The justices have said they follow court rules prohibiting them from accepting gifts from a group of people so frequently that “a reasonable person would believe that the public office is being used for private gain.” But what actually constitutes a gift under those rules is ambiguous and, in practice, justices have few restrictions on what they can accept. Other members of the court have accepted travel underwritten by wealthy businessmen and speaking invitations at universities. Stephen Breyer accepted a flight to a Nantucket wedding from a Democratic megadonor. Ruth Bader Ginsburg took a tour of Israel and Jordan paid for by an Israeli billionaire. Those gifts are public because Breyer and Ginsburg disclosed them.

Thomas, however, is apparently an extreme outlier for the volume and frequency of all the undisclosed vacations he’s received. He once complained that he sacrificed wealth to sit on the court, though he depicted the choice as a matter of conscience. “The job is not worth doing for what they pay,” he told the bar association in Savannah, Georgia, in 2001, “but it is worth doing for the principle.”

To track Thomas’ relationships and travel, ProPublica examined flight data, emails from airport and university officials, security detail records, tax court filings, meeting minutes and a trove of photographs from personal albums, including cards that Thomas’ wife, Ginni, sent to friends. In addition, reporters interviewed more than 100 eyewitnesses and other sources: jet and helicopter pilots, flight attendants, airport workers, yacht crew members, security guards, photographers, waitresses, caterers, chefs, drivers, river rafting guides and C-suite executives.

ProPublica has not identified any legal cases that Huizenga, Sokol or Novelly had at the Supreme Court during their documented relationships with Thomas, although they all work in industries significantly impacted by the court’s decisions.

In a small-circulation biography given to Huizenga’s friends and family, Thomas acknowledged that he and Huizenga discussed some of the billionaire’s companies but said their relationship was never transactional. “It wasn’t that kind of friendship,” he told the interviewer. The justice said they’d prefer to go to a small restaurant in a strip mall or sit on the billionaire’s lawn and drink tea or diet soda.

“We are in a society where everything is quid pro quo,” Thomas said, but not with the Huizengas. “I don’t do anything for them and they can’t do anything for me.”

“Four Lucky Couples”

On Labor Day weekend 2019, Thomas boarded a private plane in Washington, D.C., for the first leg of a sojourn out West. The vacation had been months in the making and, thanks to Sokol, it was all taken care of. He’s hosted the Thomases virtually every summer for a decade.

The first stop was the Great Plains. It was the home opener at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, which Ginni Thomas had attended before transferring. The Thomases were joined there by other couples, including one of the justice’s most vocal advocates, Mark Paoletta, who then worked for the federal government, and his wife.

Sokol, a major university donor who graduated from the Omaha campus, arranged for the group to attend the football and volleyball games with all-access passes. Clarence Thomas met with the football team the day before the game. The group walked out of the tunnel before kickoff. During halftime, they stood on the sidelines to watch the marching band perform, at one point posing for a picture in the end zone: “The Sokols took four lucky couples to the first Nebraska football game of the season,” Ginni Thomas wrote in one of the card captions.

Sokol runs a private equity firm and now also chairs a holding company that owns large international shipping and power utility corporations. He resigned from Berkshire Hathaway in 2011 amid an internal investigation by the company that found he had violated its insider trading policy. (At the time, Sokol denied wrongdoing and said his resignation was unrelated to the episode; he was never indicted.)

That Saturday, the group watched both the football and volleyball games from luxury suites. The football skybox, which typically costs $40,000 annually, belonged to Tom Osborne, a former Republican congressman who was also the head coach of the team for 25 years. Hosting the Thomases had ripple effects. A local priest requested a ticket for his 87-year-old mother, but the volleyball coach had to tell him none was available. “All of our tickets have been taken for Clarence Thomas and his group,” the coach wrote.

The Thomases have been treated to at least seven University of Nebraska-Lincoln games — five arranged by Sokol — in recent years. The Times first reported on Thomas’ appearances at some of them.

Thomas has never reported any of those tickets on his yearly financial forms. Judiciary disclosure rules require that most gifts worth more than $415 be disclosed. “It’s so obvious,” said Richard Painter, former chief White House ethics lawyer for President George W. Bush. “It all has to be reported.” ProPublica identified more than 60 federal judges who disclosed tickets to sporting events between 2003 and 2019. In 1999, Thomas disclosed private flight and accommodations for the Daytona 500 but hasn’t reported any other sporting events before or since.

In a statement, Osborne confirmed Thomas has “watched a couple of football games” in his suite, which the university had given to him. He said he is “taxed” for the use of the suite but did not answer whether Thomas has ever reimbursed him. The University of Nebraska-Lincoln did not respond to requests for comment.On Labor Day weekend, 2019, the group sat in former football coach and ex-congressman Tom Osborne’s suite. Osborne told ProPublica he and the justice became friends years ago, when he was in office. Credit:Obtained by ProPublicaThe day before the football game, Thomas met with the team. Sokol arranged these visits in emails with the athletic department. Credit:Twitter

On Sunday, the morning after the football game in Nebraska, Sokol flew with Thomas by private jet to Sokol’s Paintbrush Ranch just outside Jackson Hole, Wyoming. The property, valued in the low eight figures, sits in the foothills of Shadow Mountain. A local radio personality said of the estate: “This is the ultimate home and it has the most iconic view of the Tetons I’ve seen. Ever.”

Sokol also owns a waterfront mansion in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, currently worth $20.1 million, where he’s hosted the Thomases as well, according to photos of the visits. The 12,800-square-foot property includes a home theater, elevator, walk-in wine cellar and yacht docking. (In addition, Sokol and Thomas have shared an opulent lodge together while vacationing at Crow’s private lakeside resort, Camp Topridge, in the Adirondacks.)Sokol’s ranch outside Jackson Hole, Wyoming, which he sold in 2020, is a sprawling, 9,000-square foot estate in the foothills of Shadow Mountain, designed like a lodge. Credit:Realtor Website. Personal information redacted by ProPublica.The Thomases and others spent several days at the ranch in late summer 2019. Credit:Realtor Website. Personal information redacted by ProPublica.

In Wyoming, the Thomases fished, rafted on the Snake River and sat by a campfire overlooking the Teton Range with the other couples. At one point, the Paolettas serenaded the justice with a song they wrote about him.

Like Thomas, Paoletta did not disclose the trip on his yearly financial filings. At the time, Paoletta was general counsel and the designated ethics official at the Office of Management and Budget. In a statement, Paoletta said he wasn’t required to disclose the trip because he had reimbursed Sokol, but he did not say how much or provide documentation of those payments. “I complied with all ethics laws and regulations,” Paoletta said.
After the football game in Nebraska, Sokol flew the group, including the Thomases, to his opulent ranch overlooking the Teton Range. They rafted, fished and sat by a campfire. At one point, Mark Paoletta and his wife serenaded the justice. Credit:Obtained by ProPublica

Details of the vacation to Nebraska and Wyoming were drawn from photographs, trip planning emails and social media posts, as well as interviews with airport workers, local residents and others familiar with the travel, including river raft guides.

Since 1990, Sokol and his wife have donated more than $1 million to Republican politicians and groups, along with smaller amounts to Democrats. Last October, in New Orleans, Sokol made a direct reference to a pending Supreme Court case while addressing a group of former Horatio Alger scholarship recipients. (Thomas was not in attendance.)

The speech veered into territory that made many of those in attendance uncomfortable and left others appalled, emails and others messages show. Sokol, who has written extensively about American exceptionalism and the virtues of free enterprise, minimized slavery and systemic racism, some felt. He then criticized President Joe Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan, arguing Biden had overstepped the government’s authority, according to a recording of the speech obtained by ProPublica.

“It’s going to get overturned by the Supreme Court,” Sokol predicted, echoing a common legal commentary.

He was right. This summer, the court struck down Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan. Thomas voted in the majority.Sokol has also hosted the Thomases and others at his mansion in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. The waterfront property, which comes with yacht docking, has a private movie theater, among other luxuries. Credit:Obtained by ProPublica

Deep Sea Fishing in the Caribbean


Nearly every spring, Novelly, a billionaire who made his fortune storing and transporting petroleum, takes his two yachts on a fishing expedition to the Bahamas’ Exuma Islands. Photographs from the trips show porcelain beaches, cerulean waters and fresh mahi-mahi. Friends and family come and go for days at a time.

Three of Novelly’s former yacht workers, including a captain, told ProPublica they recall Thomas coming on board the vessels multiple times in recent years. Novelly’s local chauffeur in the Bahamas said his company once picked Thomas up from the billionaire’s private jet and drove him to the marina where one of the yachts, Le Montrachet, frequently docks.

Le Montrachet, named after the premium French wine, is a 126-foot luxury vessel complete with a full bar, multiple dining areas, a baby grand piano, accommodations for 10 guests and a handful of smaller fishing boats and jet skis. Novelly charges about $60,000 a week to outsiders who want to charter it.Novelly often takes his luxury yacht, Le Montrachet, on fishing expeditions around the Bahamas’ Exuma Islands. The billionaire’s former yacht workers said Thomas was one of his guests. Credit:CharterWorld Website

Another past guest on Novelly’s yacht is “Alligator” Ron Bergeron, one of the biggest land and roadway developers in Florida. Around 2018, Novelly and Thomas went to Bergeron’s private ranch on the edge of the Everglades — a sprawling, gated estate with centuries-old cypress trees and an 1800s-style saloon on site. He described Novelly as a man who likes to share his success with others. “He’s very generous with all his friends,” Bergeron told ProPublica.

Bergeron said his conversations with Thomas at the ranch were strictly about charity work and not business. “You’re talking about a great man,” Bergeron said, “who gives his time to make a difference for America.”

Since 1999, Novelly’s family and companies have publicly disclosed at least $500,000 to conservative causes and Republican candidates in federal elections. (Before then, he had given to both parties.)

Novelly, who recently stepped down from his CEO roles, ran his business affairs aggressively, ending up on the wrong side of the government in at least two cases. He spends much of his time between St. Louis and Boca Raton, Florida, where he has a 23,000 square-foot palatial estate appraised at $22.2 million. In 2002, Novelly established residency and a holding company in the Virgin Islands. During a hearing with local officials, Novelly described the arrangement there as a “quid pro quo,” meaning the U.S. territory received a boost to the local economy in return for offering substantial tax breaks. The IRS would later call it an “abusive tax avoidance scheme” and pursued Novelly for millions in back taxes and penalties. Novelly denied the characterization and eventually settled with the government for a negotiated amount.

There’s no evidence his friendship with Thomas helped Novelly in one of his most significant disputes. In 2005, the Justice Department sued Novelly’s company, Apex Oil, because its corporate predecessor had contributed to a massive groundwater contamination beneath an Illinois village and then Apex refused to help with the cleanup. Apex argued the spill had occurred before the company went through a bankruptcy years earlier. Several judges ruled against Apex, which eventually appealed to the Supreme Court in 2010. The justices declined to hear the case, and the company had to pay about $150 million to help remove oil from the soil.

It’s not clear how Thomas voted in the case because such votes are not typically public. The vacations ProPublica identified appear to have occurred after the case was resolved.

In 2020, Apex Oil, Sokol and Crow helped fund a documentary defending Thomas as a response to an HBO film that was critical of the justice. Sokol called the HBO movie a “Molotov cocktail into our homes” and a prime example of America’s eroding civility.

The “Most Coveted” Invitation in the World


Thomas’ first billionaire benefactor is likely H. Wayne Huizenga, believed to be the only person in American history to build three separate Fortune 500 companies. One of the three was AutoNation, which Huizenga founded in 1996 before building it into the largest car dealer in the country. Between 1998 and 1999, Huizenga’s holding company spent $500,000 lobbying federal agencies that regulate the automotive industry, according to OpenSecrets data. Over the years, the Huizenga family and companies gave millions to state and federal Republican candidates and once threw a fundraiser for the Florida GOP that helped keep the party afloat for months.

The billionaire was known to regularly lavish gifts and perks on those in his orbit. He routinely took friends on opulent vacations. He paid his employees handsomely and sometimes covered their bills and personal expenses. On a whim, Huizenga once handed box tickets for the opera, which were worth thousands, to his caterer, Bob Leonardi.

“I led the life of a multimillionaire without being one,” Leonardi said.Huizenga’s employees frequently saw Thomas around the billionaire’s mansion in Fort Lauderdale. Bob Leonardi, middle, was Huizenga’s caterer for years and said his boss liked to share his wealth with friends and employees. Credit:Obtained by ProPublica

For 20 years, Thomas benefited from Huizenga’s attention as well, availing himself of the billionaire’s fleet of aircraft and other luxuries. Huizenga took Thomas to see the Miami Dolphins and Florida Panthers several times between the mid-’90s and mid-2000s, according to interviews and photographs. Huizenga owned both teams at the time.

Executives saw Thomas around Huizenga’s office often. Richard Rochon, the former president of Huizenga Holdings, said Thomas once shadowed the billionaire during meetings. “He just wants to see what I do every day,” Rochon recalled Huizenga saying.

On at least two occasions, Thomas attended Huizenga’s birthday and Christmas parties, which the billionaire held inside his private hangar at the Fort Lauderdale airport. Van Poole, a lobbyist and former chairman of the Florida GOP, recalled riding down the elevator at the nearby Hyatt Pier 66 hotel — which Huizenga also controlled — when the Thomases stepped in with a security detail. The group discussed college sports and then traveled to the party together, Poole said.

Thomas occasionally flew on Huizenga’s helicopters, sometimes taking off from the roof of the corporate headquarters, and at least one of his Gulfstream jets around Florida, according to his former pilots. But the billionaire’s most luxurious planes were a pair of 737 jets he had retrofitted like a lounge, complete with recliners, love seats, mahogany dining and card tables and gourmet food.

At least two times in the mid 2000s, Huizenga sent one of them to pick up Thomas and deliver him to Fort Lauderdale, said John Wener, the flight attendant on board.Huizenga owned a fleet of aircraft that he kept in a private hangar at the Fort Lauderdale airport. Two of the planes were 737 jets he had retrofitted to look like lounges. He sent those planes to pick up Thomas at least twice and deliver him to South Florida, according to a flight attendant on board. Credit:Lynne Sladky/AP Photo

Wener recalled chatting with the justice about his nomination to the Supreme Court and the tumultuous Senate confirmation hearings after Thomas’ former aide, Anita Hill, accused him of sexual harassment. “He said, ‘Just imagine a job interview and you’re in front of 100 people that hate you,’” Wener recalled Thomas remarking. “‘How would that interview go?’”

In the early 2000s, Huizenga gave Thomas something that was priceless at the time: a standing invitation to his exclusive, members-only golf club, the Floridian. Designed by golf legend Gary Player, the course was lined with cottages for Huizenga’s friends, a yacht marina for them to dock and a helipad if they wanted to fly in. One family friend told the Huizenga family biographer that the Floridian was “the most coveted private golf invitation in the world.” Those who worked and played there said the membership rolls were a Rolodex of the rich, famous and powerful: From Michael Douglas and Rush Limbaugh to Michael Bloomberg and former Vice President Dan Quayle. Donald Trump once asked to be a member but Huizenga spurned him, according to three of Huizenga’s former employees.

All 200-plus members were “honorary” and didn’t pay dues — Huizenga covered everything. “It was a little slice of heaven, a magical place,” former media personality Matt Lauer told the biographer. “You drove through the gates and it was this fairytale land that he had created.”One of the crown jewels of Huizenga’s business empire was the Floridian golf and yacht club. When Huizenga owned the property, he gave honorary invitations to some 200 close friends without charging them an initiation fee or dues. Thomas was seen by several employees at the club over the years. Credit:Floridian Website

It’s unclear if Thomas was a member or Huizenga’s frequent guest with similar privileges. The billionaire’s former personal photographer and two former golf pros at the club recalled seeing Thomas there multiple times over the years. One of Huizenga’s helicopter pilots said he had picked the justice up from the property. And a fifth employee, a former waitress and concierge, said she once served Thomas and Huizenga, who were wearing golf attire, as they dined alone in the enormous waterfront clubhouse for lunch. “Have you met a Supreme Court justice?” Huizenga asked the waitress before she took their order. “This is Clarence Thomas.”

Today, the Floridian, which the Huizenga family sold in 2010 before it underwent renovations, has a $150,000 initiation fee.

Paying for Access to the Supreme Court Chambers

Thomas first met Huizenga at a formal gala in Washington, D.C., in 1992, when they were both inducted into the Horatio Alger Association. Henry Kissinger and Maya Angelou were among the other honorees that year. The organization, named after the 19th-century novelist who popularized rags-to-riches folklore, gives millions in college scholarships each year and also brings together some of the country’s wealthiest, self-made business tycoons for opulent events. (In real life, Alger was a minister on Cape Cod who resigned from his parish after he was credibly accused of molesting boys.)

“We were proud to honor Justice Thomas more than 30 years ago,” an association spokesperson said in a statement, “and remain grateful for his continued involvement in our organization.” She said Thomas spends countless hours mentoring scholarship recipients.Thomas met Huizenga in 1992 at their induction ceremony in Washington, D.C. They became close friends for decades afterward and the billionaire, who died in 2018, regularly hosted Thomas in Florida. Thomas acknowledged the pair occasionally talked about business but said their relationship was never transactional. Credit:Obtained by ProPublica

Thomas appears to have met Huizenga, Sokol, Novelly and Bergeron through the organization. Several of Thomas’ trips to Florida in the 2000s appear to have been connected with the association. In that time period, he joined Huizenga at Horatio Alger scholarship ceremonies in South Florida, travel that the justice disclosed in several of his yearly financial filings.

However, he never identified Huizenga in any of his disclosures. The association spokesperson confirmed to ProPublica that the billionaire hosted those events “and covered all costs involved.”


Experts said that means Thomas’ disclosures would be, at a minimum, incomplete and misleading because the rules require federal judges to identify the source of the gifts they receive. “Source means the person or entity that paid for it,” said Kathleen Clark, a legal ethics authority at Washington University in St. Louis.

Belonging to the association has had its privileges. As part of a board meeting, the Thomases once went on a lavish trip to Jamaica, where they were hosted by a wealthy donor who owned a luxury hotel atop a former sugar plantation. Johnny Cash performed. Horatio Alger Association membership itself is worth at least $200,000, according to the organization’s meeting minutes in 2007, a sum that those who nominate a new member are responsible for raising in that person’s honor. The association spokesperson said there was no requirement to raise money for new members back when Thomas was inducted.

Thomas has likely helped the group earn many times that figure since then. Every year, the justice hosts an event for members inside the Supreme Court’s Great Hall. The Times previously reported that the event afforded the Horatio Alger Association unusual access to the court.Membership into the Horatio Alger Association itself comes with a price tag. The association requires members to donate at least $200,000 on behalf of new inductees. A spokesperson said that when Thomas was inducted there wasn’t a donation requirement. Credit:Obtained by ProPublica. Highlights by ProPublica

ProPublica examined boxes of the association’s historical archives, including financial records that show the group has required donations of at least $1,500 — $7,500 for nonmembers — to attend the Supreme Court event. In 2004, those who donated $100,000 for a table at the main ceremony got 10 seats inside the Supreme Court. In the judiciary’s code of conduct — which is general guidance that does not apply to Supreme Court justices, though they say they consult it — there is explicit language advising federal judges against using their position to fundraise for outside organizations.

But that’s what Thomas has done, said Virginia Canter, a former government ethics lawyer who served in administrations of both parties and reviewed the association’s financial records at ProPublica’s request.

“To use the Supreme Court to fundraise for somebody’s charity is, to me, an abuse of office,” she said. Canter acknowledged the organization may do good work, but that’s besides the point, she said, because wealthy donors aren’t supposed to be able to pay thousands of dollars to visit a justice inside the courthouse walls.

“It’s pay to play,” Canter added, “isn’t it?”

Sunday, July 09, 2023

It Can't Always Be A Republican

... but somehow, it's always a Republican. And it kinda makes sense that it's always a Republican, cuz how else are these buttheads going to get laid if they don't force somebody into it?

Jesus take me now.

Seriously - would you
have sex with this putz
if you didn't have to?


North Carolina GOP House speaker 'engaged in group sex with people seeking political favor': lawsuit

The Republican speaker of the North Carolina House of Representatives is being accused of using his position to secure sexual favors.

As WSOC-TV reports, a new lawsuit filed by former Apex City Councilman Scott Riley Lassiter claims that North Carolina House Speaker Tim Moore had an affair with Lassiter's wife, Jamie Liles Lassiter, "despite knowing that she was married to Plaintiff."

When Lassiter confronted his wife about this, she confessed to the affair and said that she feared ending it would anger Moore, whom she feared would try to put her out of a job.

The couple have since separated and are in the process of getting a divorce.

In addition to the alleged affair with Lassiter's wife, the lawsuit also says that Moore "engaged in group sex with other people seeking political favor," writes WSOC-TV.

An attorney representing Moore denied the accusations and felt confident that a full court hearing would refute Lassiter's charges.

"I look forward to meeting Mr. Lassiter in the courtroom," they said. "We are confident the Speaker will be vindicated."

Jamie Liles Lassiter also denied the allegations and accused her estranged husband of highlighting it in the lawsuit as an act of revenge for their impending divorce.

"Our marriage was a nightmare, and since I left him it has gotten worse," she said. "We are reaching the end of our divorce process and this is how he’s lashing out.”

Monday, May 22, 2023

Shenanigans

"Conservatives" start out bitching about how left-loonie-liberal something is (which it almost never is), then use the ensuing shift in public opinion to cover their shittiness as they take over something that's a good tool to push for, establish, and defend democracy, and turn it into a different kind of propaganda tool that serves their drive towards a global corporate plutocracy.



Federal inquiry details abuses of power by Trump's CEO over Voice of America

On the day after his confirmation as chief executive of the U.S. Agency for Global Media in June 2020, Michael Pack met with a career employee to discuss which senior leaders at the agency and the Voice of America should be forced out due to their perceived political beliefs.

"Hates Republicans," the employee had written about one in a memo. "Openly despises Trump and Republicans," they said of another. A third, the employee wrote, "is not on the Trump team." The list went on. (Firing someone over political affiliation is typically a violation of federal civil service law.)

Within two days, Pack was examining ways to remove suspect staffers, a new federal investigation found. The executives he sidelined were later reinstated and exonerated by the inspector general's office of the U.S. State Department. Pack ultimately turned his attention to agency executives, network chiefs, and journalists themselves.

The report, sent to the White House and Congressional leaders earlier this month, found that the Trump appointee repeatedly abused the powers of his office, broke laws and regulations, and engaged in gross mismanagement.

USAGM oversees the Voice of America and other international broadcasters funded by the federal government, such as Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Free Asia and Radio Television Martí. The networks are charged with providing straight news for societies where independent news coverage is either repressed or financially unfeasible and with modeling the value of pluralistic political debate within that coverage.

"It just takes one's breath away."


"This report is remarkable in its breadth and depth and detail of the wrongdoing that was underway at these agencies in the last six months of the Trump administration," says David Seide, an attorney with the Government Accountability Project, a nonprofit public interest law firm which has represented more than 30 whistleblowers at USAGM, VOA and its sister networks since Pack took office. "It just takes one's breath away."

Taken together, they depict Pack's brief tenure as an ideologically driven rampage through a government agency to try to force its newsrooms and workforce to show fealty to the White House.

Pack punished executives who objected to the legality of his plans, interfered in the journalistic independence of the newsrooms under his agency, and personally signed a no-bid contract with a private law firm to investigate those employees he saw as opposed to former President Donald Trump. The law firm's fees reached the seven figures for work typically done by attorneys who are federal employees.

In Trumpian flourish, Pack promised "to drain the swamp"

In a conversation with the conservative news outlet The Federalist, Pack characterized his moves with a Trumpian flourish: "to drain the swamp, to root out corruption and to deal with these issues of bias." Pack did not respond to NPR's requests for comment.

Pack is a conservative documentarian and former official at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. His appointment was held up for two years in the U.S. Senate over concerns about his highly ideological approach and whether he had been candid over the finances of his business. (His production company ultimately agreed to transfer $210,000 back to a nonprofit that he also controls, which was itself subsequently compelled to dissolve under a legal settlement he reached last year with the D.C. Attorney General's office.)

Pack, a slight man with an unassuming manner, had tight ties to major conservative figures. He briefly led the Claremont Institute in California, which is influential in Republican circles; he previously developed two documentaries for public television that Steve Bannon helped to produce. Bannon later became Trump's campaign manager and chief White House political strategist.

In early 2020, his nomination still languishing, Pack released his documentary about U.S. Justice Clarence Thomas, based on extensive interviews with the jurist and his wife, the conservative activist Ginni Thomas. He reportedly became friends with the Thomases, writing a book with the former White House attorney who helped smooth Thomas' path to confirmation in 1991.

Pack's own prospects for confirmation revived in spring 2020 when Trump's White House attacked the Voice of America, in almost unprecedented fashion. The White House publicly alleged the news service uncritically relayed Chinese propaganda about the nation's efforts to combat the outbreak of the Covid-19 coronavirus.

A litany of abuses substantiated by federal investigation

The inquiry was conducted by three outside consultants hired by USAGM and endorsed by the U.S. Office of Special Counsel, the agency that investigates federal whistleblower complaints. The report concludes that Pack:
  • Violated the independence of journalists working for newsrooms at the Voice of America and other international broadcasting networks funded by the government and "exercised oversight in a manner suggestive of political bias."
  • Wrongly retaliated against career executives by suspending their security clearances after they filed whistleblower complaints. Their allegations were later substantiated by the State Department's inspector general's office.
  • Engaged in "gross mismanagement and gross waste" when he paid a politically-connected Virginia law firm $1.6 million in agency money to investigate his executives in a confidential, no-bid contract. A former Supreme Court clerk for Thomas, John D. Adams, was the senior partner who oversaw the McGuireWoods contract with Pack at USAGM.
  • Imperiled the independence of several of the international networks, politicizing them by stacking their boards with a full slate of ideological appointees all at once. He also abused his powers in trying to make their tenures irrevocable except in the case of a felony conviction.
  • Broke privacy laws by releasing dossiers compiled by the law firm, McGuireWoods, on those executives he suspended to five right-wing journalists whom he had appointed to various networks funded by the boards. McGuireWoods strongly advised against releasing the dossiers publicly. They were ultimately made public by a sympathetic member of Congress.
  • Sought to prevent the Open Technology Fund from receiving federal funds for three years because of his animus toward the outfit, "rather than a desire to protect the public interest." The fund helped to subsidize the development of Tor and Signal, technologies that let people access the Web and communicate securely and privately, even in repressive countries. Bannon was among those with ties to figures promoting rival technologies that sought greater subsidies from the fund.
  • "[P]ut numerous internet freedom projects at risk, including in countries that are State Department priorities" by seeking to block federal dollars from flowing to the tech fund.
Violations found of journalistic independence and the civil workforce's professionalism

Not all of the actions under investigation amounted to an abuse of power, a gross waste of federal funds, or a violation of the law. For example, the inquiry found that it was within Pack's authority to remove the heads of the networks, despite objections and protests.

Even in some of those instances, however, Pack was found to have acted improperly, as when he fired the head of Radio Free Asia and directed her replacement to force her out of her subsequent, contractually protected position of executive editor at the network. "CEO Pack's actions were inconsistent with the statutory mandate that he respect the networks' journalistic integrity and independence," the report states.

U.S. Agency Targets Its Own Journalists' Independence

Nearly every outfit overseen by the USAGM was affected by his actions — or, at times, his inactions. Pack remained mute when his newly installed VOA leaders demoted a reporter who covered the White House for pressing then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo for answers about the January 6th, 2021 siege of the U.S. Capitol; he took no action when the acting chief of the Office of Cuba Broadcasting provided a Trump political aide with a link to its content to distribute to a U.S. audience shortly before the 2020 elections, despite laws preventing such dissemination; and he failed to assign a standards editor for Voice of America after reassigning the longtime news executive for four months.

That last maneuver, the report found, constituted gross mismanagement.

NPR has previously reported on many of the matters under investigation, and some others that did not receive official scrutiny.

Based on exchanges among USAGM staffers, NPR previously reported that McGuireWoods intended to charge hundreds of thousands of dollars more than the $1.6 million billed but stopped invoicing the agency late that fall. Pack was about to lose his perch and his patron, as Joe Biden won election in November. Biden would order Pack to resign as one of his first formal acts in office. A spokesperson for McGuireWoods did not return a detailed message seeking comment.

Trump Appointee Unconstitutionally Interfered With VOA, Judge Rules

The inquiry itself was instigated by the U.S. Office of Special Counsel. It received the whistleblower complaints and directed USAGM to conduct the investigation.

In one of his final actions in office, Pack wrote that he did not accept the agency's authority to instruct him to initiate the investigation. He called the agency's structure "unconstitutional" and said of those who lodged complaints against him, "They have an axe to grind." That refusal, too, was seen as a breach of Pack's duties.

The Office of Special Counsel appointed a panel of three outside experts, including the former acting chief of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, a former senior executive of the Export-Import Bank, and a former investigative reporter who has worked for the special counsel's office.

NPR spoke to seven current and former staffers at USAGM and outlets and outfits it funds. Each said the report reflected a climate of crisis, fear and reprisal.

In sum, Pack's seven-and-a-half month stint running the agency exemplified Trump's contempt for the press and for the professional federal workforce that prides itself on nonpartisanship. (Pack echoed Trump's designation of that workforce as the "Deep State.")

Defined By Scandal At Voice of America, CEO Resigns At Biden's Request
Yet the people with whom NPR spoke also, independently, noted this account of Pack's tenure may not represent only a past era.

On May 10, Congressman Andy Ogles, a Republican from Tennessee, introduced legislation to prohibit any federal funding for the Open Technology Fund, as Pack had sought to do. Trump announced his support for Ogles' 2024 re-election bid on the next day.

And the conservative Heritage Foundation has drawn up proposals for whom should be hired at federal agencies, should Trump or another Republican win the White House in 2024.

Among the project's leaders is John McEntee, the former personnel chief in the Trump White House who helped set up the cadre of partisans that formed Pack's inner circle at USAGM.





Sunday, May 14, 2023

Daddy State Awareness, Rule 1



House Republican Report Finds No Evidence of Wrongdoing by President Biden

After months of investigation and many public accusations of corruption against Mr. Biden and his family, the first report of the premier House G.O.P. inquiry showed no proof of such misconduct.

So sad

After four months of investigation, House Republicans who promised to use their new majority to unearth evidence of wrongdoing by President Biden acknowledged on Wednesday that they had yet to uncover incriminating material about him, despite their frequent insinuations that he and his family have been involved in criminal conduct and corruption.

At a much-publicized news conference on Capitol Hill to show the preliminary findings of their premier investigation into Mr. Biden and his family, leading Republicans released financial documents detailing how some of the president’s relatives were paid more than $10 million from foreign sources between 2015 and 2017.

Republicans described the transactions as proof of “influence peddling” by Mr. Biden’s family, including his son Hunter Biden, and referenced some previously known, if unflattering, details of the younger Mr. Biden’s business dealings. Those included an episode in which he accepted a 2.8-carat diamond from a Chinese businessman. G.O.P. lawmakers also produced material suggesting that President Biden and his allies had at times made misleading statements in their efforts to push back aggressively against accusations of wrongdoing by Hunter Biden.

But on Wednesday, the Republicans conceded that they had yet to find evidence of a specific corrupt action Mr. Biden took in office in connection with any of the business deals his son entered into. Instead, their presentation underscored how little headway top G.O.P. lawmakers have made in finding clear evidence of questionable transactions they can tie to Mr. Biden, their chief political rival.

It has not stopped them from accusing the president of serious misconduct.

“I want to be clear: This committee is investigating President Biden and his family’s shady business dealings to capitalize on Joe Biden’s public office that risks our country’s national security,” said Representative James R. Comer, Republican of Kentucky and the chairman of the Oversight Committee. He emphasized that the president — not just his son — would be the target of his investigation, which he said would now “enter a new phase,” in which he would subpoena specific financial information based on material learned through bank records.

Federal prosecutors have examined Hunter Biden’s international business activities as part of a criminal investigation. But the only charges they are considering, according to people familiar with the case, are unrelated to his work abroad. They include tax charges related to his failure to file his tax returns over several years, and a charge of lying about his drug use on a federal form he filled out to purchase a handgun.

To date, Mr. Comer’s committee has issued four bank subpoenas, obtained thousands of financial records and spoken with several people he describes as whistle-blowers. Mr. Comer has also hired James Mandolfo, a former federal prosecutor who has experience investigating foreign corruption, to oversee the inquiry.

Here’s what we know so far.

Businesses connected to Hunter Biden received more than $10 million from foreign companies, some with criminal ties.

The House Oversight Committee report focused on payments made to companies connected to Hunter Biden from businesses and individuals in Romania and China. Bank records obtained by the committee show the receipt of money from a foreign company connected to Gabriel Popoviciu, who was the subject of a criminal investigation and prosecution for corruption in Romania.


In 2015, Mr. Popoviciu retained Hunter Biden, who is a lawyer, while his father was vice president, to help try to fend off charges. That effort was unsuccessful and, in 2016, Mr. Popoviciu was convicted on charges related to a land deal in northern Bucharest, the Romanian capital.

A Shanghai-based company, State Energy HK Limited, that was affiliated with CEFC China Energy sent millions to Robinson Walker LLC, a company associated with Mr. Walker, who then made payments to Hunter Biden and other Biden family members.

Hunter Biden had cultivated a business relationship with Ye Jianming, the founder of CEFC, who has been investigated by the Chinese authorities on suspicion of economic crimes. In 2017, Mr. Ye gave Hunter Biden a 2.8-carat diamond as a thank-you for a meeting.

“What would they be bribing me for? My dad wasn’t in office,” Hunter Biden told The New Yorker in 2019, adding that he gave the diamond to his associates. “I knew it wasn’t a good idea to take it. I just felt like it was weird.”

CEFC had hoped to invest in a liquefied natural gas venture in Louisiana, but that deal ultimately flopped.

Representatives of Hunter Biden characterize his business offerings at the time as providing legal and consulting services.

The payments came at a time when Hunter Biden’s life and finances were spiraling amid his drug addiction, and after the death of his brother, Beau Biden, from brain cancer. Hunter Biden had begun a romantic relationship with his brother’s widow. His business partner, Mr. Walker, and his uncle James Biden were pursuing international business work.

Abbe Lowell, a lawyer for Hunter Biden, said in a statement that House Republicans had revealed nothing new in their report.


“Today’s so-called ‘revelations' are retread, repackaged misstatements of perfectly proper meetings and business by private citizens.” Mr. Lowell said.

President Biden has falsely denied his son had ties to Chinese businesses.

None of the payments detailed in the report went to President Biden himself, nor has Mr. Comer’s investigation produced any evidence that Mr. Biden ever took a corrupt action in connection with his son’s business dealings.

But Mr. Biden has made several false or misleading statements about the matter.

During the 2020 presidential debate, Mr. Biden claimed that no one in his family had received money from China.

“My son has not made money in terms of this thing about — what are you talking about, China,” Mr. Biden said, turning the charge on his opponent, President Donald J. Trump. “The only guy who made money from China is this guy. He’s the only one. Nobody else has made money from China.”

This year, Mr. Biden also claimed that it was “not true” that family members received more than $1 million from a Chinese firm.

Aides to Mr. Biden said he was speaking colloquially and was pushing back generally on claims that his administration had been corrupted by Chinese money.

Presidents’ families have long made money off the family name.

During his news conference, Mr. Comer acknowledged that Hunter Biden would have been far from the first relative of a president or vice president to try to make money off the family name.

He invoked Billy Carter, the brother of former President Jimmy Carter, who visited Libya and received a $220,000 loan; and Jared Kushner, Mr. Trump’s son-in-law whose firm has received hundreds of millions from Persian Gulf nations.

“This has been a pattern for a long time,” Mr. Comer said. “Republicans and Democrats have both complained about presidents’ families receiving money.”

However, Mr. Comer has conceded that he has no interest in investigating Mr. Kushner’s conduct.

Officials allied with Mr. Biden played a role in wrongly discrediting Hunter Biden’s laptop.
The report from Mr. Comer came as a second Republican-led House committee is investigating a related issue. The House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday released a report about a letter from 51 former intelligence and security officials in 2020 that questioned materials — substantial portions of which were later verified as authentic — from a laptop Hunter Biden abandoned at a Delaware repair shop and suggested they might be part of a Russian disinformation campaign.


The Republicans argue that the letter influenced the public to discount the materials on the laptop, which contained evidence of Hunter Biden’s drug use and sex life, which they believed would harm his father’s electoral chances against Mr. Trump.

The Judiciary Committee report detailed the role played by Antony J. Blinken, now the secretary of state and then a Biden campaign official, in spearheading the letter, and said a C.I.A. employee had been involved in soliciting at least one signature for it.

The intelligence officials maintain their letter stated they had no evidence of a Russian disinformation campaign, and that they were merely stating an opinion.

Mark Zaid, a lawyer who represents seven signatories to the letter, said on Twitter that the report merely proved that “private citizens lawfully exercised 1st Amendment rights” and added that there was not “even one falsehood” in the letter.

“I know of no signatory who retracts a single word,” Mr. Zaid wrote.

It's classic. Spend months on DumFux News spouting off about the Biden Crime Family, then spend lots of time and money and effort finding nothing to support your suspicions, and then issue your findings, claiming to have found all kinds of shady shenanigans on the part of every relative of every American politician since the dawn of the republic - and so "we've proven what a scum that Biden guy is - and his demon spawn too!"

Some things:
  • "Everybody does it" is a way to tear down government in general, which is what the basic plan has been for a long time. So when their latest Blockbuster Investigation du Jour fizzles - as they always do - the fallback position is "Both Sides", and they know they can count on the Press Poodles to run with it (as the NYT just did) 
  • They need to gaslight the shit outa the rubes. ie: "The fact that there's no evidence of wrongdoing is itself evidence of wrongdoing, because it just goes to show you how diabolically clever those guys are"
  • GOP accusations are confessions (Daddy State Awareness Guide, Rule 1) - because they can't believe it's possible for anyone to live his life while not breaking the law
This stoopid shit ends only when we smarten up enough to vote these fuckers out. So let's do that.

Thursday, May 04, 2023

Clarence Thomas Is A Crook


Clarence Thomas Had a Child in Private School. Harlan Crow Paid the Tuition.

Crow paid for private school for a relative Thomas said he was raising “as a son.” “This is way outside the norm,” said a former White House ethics lawyer.


Series:Friends of the Court
Clarence Thomas’ Beneficial Friendship With a GOP Megadonor

Update, May 4, 2023: This story has been updated to reflect that Mark Paoletta, a longtime friend of Clarence Thomas who has also served as Ginni Thomas’ lawyer, acknowledged Harlan Crow’s tuition payments.

In 2008, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas decided to send his teenage grandnephew to Hidden Lake Academy, a private boarding school in the foothills of northern Georgia. The boy, Mark Martin, was far from home. For the previous decade, he had lived with the justice and his wife in the suburbs of Washington, D.C. Thomas had taken legal custody of Martin when he was 6 years old and had recently told an interviewer he was “raising him as a son.”

Tuition at the boarding school ran more than $6,000 a month. But Thomas did not cover the bill. A bank statement for the school from July 2009, buried in unrelated court filings, shows the source of Martin’s tuition payment for that month: the company of billionaire real estate magnate Harlan Crow.

The payments extended beyond that month, according to Christopher Grimwood, a former administrator at the school. Crow paid Martin’s tuition the entire time he was a student there, which was about a year, Grimwood told ProPublica.

“Harlan picked up the tab,” said Grimwood, who got to know Crow and the Thomases and had access to school financial information through his work as an administrator.

Before and after his time at Hidden Lake, Martin attended a second boarding school, Randolph-Macon Academy in Virginia. “Harlan said he was paying for the tuition at Randolph-Macon Academy as well,” Grimwood said, recalling a conversation he had with Crow during a visit to the billionaire’s Adirondacks estate.

ProPublica interviewed Martin, his former classmates and former staff at both schools. The exact total Crow paid for Martin’s education over the years remains unclear. If he paid for all four years at the two schools, the price tag could have exceeded $150,000, according to public records of tuition rates at the schools.

Thomas did not report the tuition payments from Crow on his annual financial disclosures. Several years earlier, Thomas disclosed a gift of $5,000 for Martin’s education from another friend. It is not clear why he reported that payment but not Crow’s.

The tuition payments add to the picture of how the Republican megadonor has helped fund the lives of Thomas and his family.

“You can’t be having secret financial arrangements,” said Mark W. Bennett, a retired federal judge appointed by President Bill Clinton. Bennett said he was friendly with Thomas and declined to comment for the record about the specifics of Thomas’ actions. But he said that when he was on the bench, he wouldn’t let his lawyer friends buy him lunch.


A July 2009 bank statement for Hidden Lake Academy
shows a wire from Crow Holdings LLC.
Credit: Excerpt from court records. Highlights added by ProPublica.

Thomas did not respond to questions. In response to previous ProPublica reporting on gifts of luxury travel, he said that the Crows “are among our dearest friends” and that he understood he didn’t have to disclose the trips.

ProPublica sent Crow a detailed list of questions and his office responded with a statement that did not dispute the facts presented in this story.

“Harlan Crow has long been passionate about the importance of quality education and giving back to those less fortunate, especially at-risk youth,” the statement said. “It’s disappointing that those with partisan political interests would try to turn helping at-risk youth with tuition assistance into something nefarious or political.” The statement added that Crow and his wife have “supported many young Americans” at a “variety of schools, including his alma mater.” Crow went to Randolph-Macon Academy.

Crow did not address a question about how much he paid in total for Martin’s tuition. Asked if Thomas had requested the support for either school, Crow’s office responded, “No.”

Last month, ProPublica reported that Thomas accepted luxury travel from Crow virtually every year for decades, including international superyacht cruises and private jet flights around the world. Crow also paid money to Thomas and his relatives in an undisclosed real estate deal, ProPublica found. After he purchased the house where Thomas’ mother lives, Crow poured tens of thousands of dollars into improving the property. And roughly 15 years ago, Crow donated much of the budget of a political group founded by Thomas’ wife, which paid her a $120,000 salary.

“This is way outside the norm. This is way in excess of anything I’ve seen,” said Richard Painter, former chief White House ethics lawyer for President George W. Bush, referring to the cascade of gifts over the years.

Painter said that when he was at the White House, an official who’d taken what Thomas had would have been fired: “This amount of undisclosed gifts? You’d want to get them out of the government.”

A federal law passed after Watergate requires justices and other officials to publicly report most gifts. Ethics law experts told ProPublica they believed Thomas was required by law to disclose the tuition payments because they appear to be a gift to him.

Justices also must report many gifts to their spouses and dependent children. The law’s definition of dependent child is narrow, however, and likely would not apply to Martin since Thomas was his legal guardian, not his parent. The best case for not disclosing Crow’s tuition payments would be to argue the gifts were to Martin, not Thomas, experts said.

But that argument was far-fetched, experts said, because minor children rarely pay their own tuition. Typically, the legal guardian is responsible for the child’s education.

“The most reasonable interpretation of the statute is that this was a gift to Thomas and thus had to be reported. It’s common sense,” said Kathleen Clark, an ethics law expert at Washington University in St. Louis. “It’s all to the financial benefit of Clarence Thomas.”

Martin, now in his 30s, told ProPublica he was not aware that Crow paid his tuition. But he defended Thomas and Crow, saying he believed there was no ulterior motive behind the real estate magnate’s largesse over the decades. “I think his intentions behind everything is just a friend and just a good person,” Martin said.

[After this story was published, Mark Paoletta, a longtime friend of Clarence Thomas who has also served as Ginni Thomas’ lawyer, released a statement. Paoletta confirmed that Crow paid for Martin’s tuition at both Randolph-Macon Academy and Hidden Lake, saying Crow paid for one year at each. He did not give a total amount but, based on the tuition rates at the time, the two years would amount to roughly $100,000.

Paoletta said that Thomas did not have to report the payments because Martin was not his “dependent child” as defined in the disclosure law. He criticized ProPublica for reporting on this and said “the Thomases and the Crows are kind, generous, and loving people who tried to help this young man.”]

Crow has long been an influential figure in pro-business conservative politics. He has given millions to efforts to move the law and the judiciary to the right and serves on the boards of think tanks that publish scholarship advancing conservative legal theories.

Crow has denied trying to influence the justice but has said he extended hospitality to him just as he has to other dear friends. From the start, their relationship has intertwined expensive gifts and conservative politics. In a recent interview with The Dallas Morning News, Crow recounted how he first met Thomas. In 1996, the justice was scheduled to give a speech in Dallas for an anti-regulation think tank. Crow offered to fly him there on his private jet. “During that flight, we found out we were kind of simpatico,” the billionaire said.

The following year, the Thomases began to discuss taking custody of Martin. His father, Thomas’ nephew, had been imprisoned in connection with a drug case. Thomas has written that Martin’s situation held deep resonance for him because his own father was absent and his grandparents had taken him in “under very similar circumstances.”

Thomas had an adult son from a previous marriage, but he and wife, Ginni, didn’t have children of their own. They pitched Martin’s parents on taking the boy in.

“Thomas explained that the boy would have the best of everything — his own room, a private school education, lots of extracurricular activities,” journalists Kevin Merida and Michael Fletcher reported in their biography of Thomas.

Thomas gained legal custody of Martin and became his legal guardian around January 1998, according to court records.

Martin, who had been living in Georgia with his mother and siblings, moved to Virginia, where he lived with the justice from the ages of 6 to 19, he said.

Living with the Thomases came with an unusual perk: lavish travel with Crow and his family. Martin told ProPublica that he and Thomas vacationed with the Crows “at least once a year” throughout his childhood.

That included visits to Camp Topridge, Crow’s private resort in the Adirondacks, and two cruises on Crow’s superyacht, Martin said. On a trip in the Caribbean, Martin recalled riding jet skis off the side of the billionaire’s yacht.

Roughly 20 years ago, Martin, Thomas and the Crows went on a cruise on the yacht in Russia and the Baltics, according to Martin and two other people familiar with the trip. The group toured St. Petersburg in a rented helicopter and visited the Yusupov Palace, the site of Rasputin’s murder, said one of the people. They were joined by Chris DeMuth, then the president of the conservative think tank the American Enterprise Institute. (Thomas’ trips with Crow to the Baltics and the Caribbean have not previously been reported.)

Thomas reconfigured his life to balance the demands of raising a child with serving on the high court. He began going to the Supreme Court before 6 a.m. so he could leave in time to pick Martin up after class and help him with his homework. By 2001, the justice had moved Martin to private school out of frustration with the Fairfax County public school system’s lax schedule, The American Lawyer magazine reported.

For high school, Thomas sent Martin to Randolph-Macon Academy, a military boarding school 75 miles west of Washington, D.C., where he was in the class of 2010. The school, which sits on a 135-acre campus in the Shenandoah Valley, charged between $25,000 to $30,000 a year. Martin played football and basketball, and the justice sometimes visited for games.

Randolph-Macon was also Crow’s alma mater. Thomas and Crow visited the campus in April 2007 for the dedication of an imposing bronze sculpture of the Air Force Honor Guard, according to the school magazine. Crow donated the piece to Randolph-Macon, where it is a short walk from Crow Hall, a classroom building named after the Dallas billionaire’s family.

Harlan Crow and Clarence Thomas attended the 2007 dedication of a statue gifted by Crow to Randolph-Macon Academy. Credit:The Sabre Magazine
Martin sometimes chafed at the strictures of military school, according to people at Randolph-Macon at the time, and he spent his junior year at Hidden Lake Academy, a therapeutic boarding school in Georgia. Hidden Lake boasted one teacher for every 10 students and activities ranging from horseback riding to canoeing. Those services came at an added cost. At the time, a year of tuition was roughly $73,000, plus fees.

The July 2009 bank statement from Hidden Lake was filed in a bankruptcy case for the school, which later went under. The document shows that Crow Holdings LLC wired $6,200 to the school that month, the exact cost of the month’s tuition. The wire is marked “Mark Martin” in the ledger.

Crow’s office said in its statement that Crow’s funding of students’ tuition has “always been paid solely from personal funds, sometimes held at and paid through the family business.”

Grimwood, the administrator at Hidden Lake, told ProPublica that Crow wired the school money once a month to pay Martin’s tuition fees. Grimwood had multiple roles on the campus, including overseeing an affiliated wilderness program. He said he was speaking about the payments because he felt the public should know about outside financial support for Supreme Court justices. Martin returned to Randolph-Macon his senior year.

Thomas has long been one of the less wealthy members of the Supreme Court. Still, when Martin was in high school, he and Ginni Thomas had income that put them comfortably in the top echelon of Americans.

In 2006 for example, the Thomases brought in more than $500,000 in income. The following year, they made more than $850,000 from Clarence Thomas’ salary from the court, Ginni Thomas’ pay from the Heritage Foundation and book payments for the justice’s memoir.

It appears that at some point in Martin’s childhood, Thomas was paying for private school himself. Martin told ProPublica that Thomas sold his Corvette — “his most prized car” — to pay for a year of tuition, although he didn’t remember when that occurred.

Billionaire Harlan Crow Bought Property From Clarence Thomas. The Justice Didn’t Disclose the Deal.

In 2002, a friend of Thomas’ from the RV community who owned a Florida pest control company, Earl Dixon, offered Thomas $5,000 to help defray the costs of Martin’s education. Thomas’ disclosure of that earlier gift, several experts said, could be viewed as evidence that the justice himself understood he was required to report tuition aid from friends.

“At first, Thomas was worried about the propriety of the donation,” Thomas biographers Merida and Fletcher recounted. “He agreed to accept it if the contribution was deposited directly into a special trust for Mark.” In his annual filing, Thomas reported the money as an “education gift to Mark Martin.”