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.

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.”

The Trouble With SCOTUS

Right now, no one can make a solid point that the Supreme Court is somehow the very picture of "judicial independence". Not when billionaires can shape the court(s) to their liking, dole out lavish gifts to certain SCOTUS justices - and almost certainly to others in the lower courts - and then argue their interests before the federal courts, all the way up to the Supreme Court, expecting everybody to sit around and accept it all as perfectly legit.

Wanna talk about how people with very narrow interests can go Judge Shopping, pick a venue where they know their side will be heard loud and clear, and stand an extraordinarily good chance to get a very favorable decision?

This is nine kinds of fucked up, and Roberts "respectfully declines" to talk about it with the Senate Judiciary Committee - the committee tasked with oversight of the whole fucking Judicial Branch.

Maybe Roberts will suddenly become a more standup guy, and see the error of his ways, but since Mrs Roberts has snagged a shit ton of "commissions" by helping to recruit lawyers for legal firms that litigate before the federal bench - including the top court where her hubby is the top boss - I won't be holding my breath on that one.

The Polite Disdain of John Roberts Finds a Target

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Although the three branches of the American government were designed to be coequal, the structure of the Constitution tells us something about the relative power of each branch, as envisioned by the framers.

Article I establishes the Legislature. Article II establishes the executive branch. And Article III establishes the federal judiciary. It is true that the branches share powers and responsibilities. But it’s also true that the framers trusted Congress — the representative branch — with far more authority than it did the president or the Supreme Court.

Congress makes laws. Congress spends money. Congress approves the president’s cabinet and says whether he can appoint a judge or not. Congress structures the judiciary and Congress sets the size of the Supreme Court and the scope of its business.

The upshot of all of this is that when Congress calls, the other branches are supposed to answer — not as a courtesy, but as an affirmation of the rules of the American constitutional order. The modern Congress might be weak and the presidency might be, against the expectations of the framers, the center of American political life, but it’s still newsworthy when a member of the executive branch says he or she won’t meet with the Legislature.

John Roberts, the chief justice of the United States, is from a different branch of government, the Supreme Court. But he — a constitutional officer confirmed to his seat by the Senate — is still subject to the power of Congress to question and investigate his conduct. When Congress calls, he too should answer.

Last week, Congress called the chief justice. In the wake of revelations concerning the friendship between Justice Clarence Thomas and Harlan Crow, a billionaire Republican donor, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois, invited Roberts to testify at an upcoming hearing on Supreme Court ethics rules.

“There has been a steady stream of revelations regarding justices falling short of the ethical standards expected of other federal judges and, indeed, of public servants generally,” Durbin wrote in his letter to the chief justice. “These problems were already apparent back in 2011, and the Court’s decade-long failure to address them has contributed to a crisis of public confidence.”

“The time has come for a new public conversation on ways to restore confidence in the Court’s ethical standards,” Durbin went on to say. “I invite you to join it, and I look forward to your response.”

This week Roberts answered. He said, in a word, no.

“I must respectfully decline your invitation,” Roberts wrote. “Testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee by the chief justice of the United States is exceedingly rare as one might expect in light of separation of powers concerns and the importance of preserving judicial independence.”

This deceptively polite reply sounds reasonable for as long as you can manage to forget the fact that it is questions about the ethical conduct of the court and its members that have compromised the independence of the court. Was Thomas influenced by the largess of his billionaire benefactor? Was Justice Samuel Alito influenced by an explicit campaign to curry favor with the conservative justices? Was Justice Neil Gorsuch influenced by the lucrative sale of a Colorado property, in the wake of his confirmation, to the head of a powerful law firm with ample business before the court?

It is with real chutzpah, in other words, that Roberts has claimed judicial independence in order to circumvent an investigation into judicial independence.

More striking than this evasion is the manner in which Roberts ended his reply. Faced with serious questions about the integrity of the court, Roberts pointed to a nonbinding ethics document that has done almost nothing to prevent these situations from arising in the first place. “In regard to the Court’s approach to ethics matters,” he wrote, “I attached a Statement of Ethics Principles and Practices to which all of the current members of the Supreme Court subscribe.”

Roberts did not write an aggressive or confrontational letter. And yet, he is quietly making an aggressive and confrontational claim about his own power and authority and that of the court’s. “Separation of powers,” in Roberts’s view, means the court is outside the system of checks and balances that governs the other branches of government. “Judicial independence,” likewise, means neither he nor any other member of the court has any obligation to speak to Congress about their behavior. The court checks, according to Roberts, but cannot be checked.

A number of legal scholars have remarked on the judicial power grab of the last several years, in which courts across the federal judiciary have seized key governing decisions from the legislative and executive branches and disparaged the ability of elected officials to, as Josh Chafetz of Georgetown University Law Center writes, “engage in principled, competent governance.”

As one of the architects of this development in American politics, Roberts is essentially using this letter to make plain to Congress the reality of the situation: I will not speak, and you cannot make me. And he’s right, not because Congress doesn’t have the power, but because it doesn’t have the votes. In the absence of a majority of votes, the Senate Judiciary Committee cannot subpoena a justice. In the absence of 218 votes, the House cannot impeach a justice. And in the absence of 67 votes, the Senate cannot remove a justice.

There are steps Congress could take to discipline the court — shrinking its budget, reducing the scope of its docket, imposing ethics rules itself, even making it “ride circuit” à la the 19th century — but those require a majority in the House and a supermajority in the Senate because of the filibuster, as well as a consensus among lawmakers (and specifically, Democrats) to follow through if they ever have the chance to do so.

It is not especially dramatic, but this exchange with Chief Justice Roberts over the court, its ethics and its responsibility to the public and its representatives has done more than almost anything else in recent memory to illustrate a key reality of American politics in this moment: that our Supreme Court does not exist in the constitutional order as much as it looms over it, a robed tribunal of self-styled philosopher-kings, accountable to no one but themselves.

One thing we have to keep in mind is the probability that the people running the show may have reason to dismiss our suspicions out of hand. The corruption may be part of the long-game intention to dismantle our little experiment in democratic self-government. We have to allow for that probability, no matter how small we may think it is.

"Shit happens" is not something that really applies to major league politics. Yes, coincidence is a thing, but in politics, coincidence is almost always engineered by someone for some specific reason.

This Is The GOP

It's old and crusty, and it's started to sound very stale, but:

ladies and gentlemen, this is the GOP -

the party of law-n-order

Ex-Florida lawmaker behind the 'Don't Say Gay' law pleads guilty to COVID relief fraud

Former Florida lawmaker Joseph Harding has pleaded guilty to federal fraud charges related to COVID-19 relief funds. The 35-year-old is scheduled for sentencing in July.

A former Florida lawmaker who sponsored a bill dubbed the "Don't Say Gay" law by critics has pleaded guilty to fraudulently obtaining COVID-19 relief funds.

Joseph Harding entered a guilty plea on Tuesday in federal court in the Northern District of Florida to one count of wire fraud, one count of money laundering and one count of making false statements, according to court records.

Harding faces up to 35 years in prison, including a maximum of 20 years on the wire fraud charge. A sentencing hearing is scheduled for July 25 at the federal courthouse in Gainesville.

The former Republican lawmaker shot to notoriety last year as one of the sponsors of a controversial Florida law that outlawed the discussion of sexuality and gender in public school classrooms from kindergarten through grade 3.

The legislation became a blueprint for similar laws in more than a dozen other conservative states.

"This bill is about protecting our kids, empowering parents and ensuring they have the information they need to do their God-given job of raising their child," Harding said when Gov. Ron DeSantis signed the bill into law last March.

Critics from Democrats to LGBTQ groups took to calling it the "Don't Say Gay" law and condemned Republicans for chilling speech in schools.

In December, a federal grand jury returned an indictment against Harding, 35, who was accused of lying on his applications to the Economic Injury Disaster Loan program, which gave out loans to businesses impacted by the coronavirus pandemic. He resigned from Florida's House of Representatives one day later.

Harding fraudulently obtained more than $150,000 from the Small Business Administration, portions of which he transferred to a bank and used to make a credit card payment, prosecutors said.

In his bio on the Florida House Republicans website, Harding is described as a "serial entrepreneur" who started several businesses related to "boarding and training horses, real estate development, home construction, and landscaping."

He was first elected to public office when he won the state House seat in November 2020.

Another Shoe

It's raining shoes. Again. Or Still. Or something.

It's going to take years to sort thru all of the shit that we haven't dealt with over the last several decades. Some of which we've just kinda needed to ignore because it made us feel a little paranoid. Some of which we've been manipulated into feeling weird about. Some of which just seemed too "political thriller" -ish - and dammit, maybe I've been watching too many old movies about intrigue at the palace.

We get lulled into a belief that democracy is something we get to have, instead of something we have to do. And suddenly, our little experiment in self-government is looking pretty shaky.

ie: "Suddenly" over the last 40 years or so

If we learn nothing else, let's hope we're learning how toxic fake news is - how toxic the politics of faking news can be - and which outfits are putting out all that fake news, and which politicians are lying to us about which news is the fake news.

It makes my head hurt, and I've been into the politics thing for a good long time - so I have some sympathy for people who just wanna live their lives without having to worry a whole lot about it. I don't have a lot of patience with them, but I do understand the desire to go about your business and trust that things will work out.

Anyway, the worse it gets on one side, the better it can be on the other - if we can figure out which side it's best to be on.

Fox News producer alleges sexism, coached testimony, in new lawsuit

Abby Grossberg, who alleges discrimination and a hostile workplace, says she was ‘coerced, intimidated, and misinformed’ while preparing for her deposition in the $1.6 billion Dominion defamation case.

On the eve of a key hearing in a defamation lawsuit against Fox News, an employee who was deposed in the case sued the company, alleging that its lawyers coached her to shift blame for decisions to air Trump allies’ false claims of election fraud.

The lawsuit from producer Abby Grossberg came late Monday, hours after Fox sought a restraining order to keep her from disclosing in-house legal discussions.

Grossberg’s suit could create an opening for Dominion Voting Systems — which is also suing Fox, for airing unfounded claims that it rigged the 2020 election — to question the credibility of her testimony and that of other Fox employees deposed in the matter.

In a federal civil suit, filed in the Southern District of New York, Grossberg alleges that she was “isolated, overworked, undervalued, denied opportunities for promotion, and generally treated significantly worse than her male counterparts, even when those men were less qualified than her,” and that she was retaliated against after she complained.

Her suit also details claims that she was subjected to “vile sexist stereotypes.” It describes a male senior producer scolding her for sharing too much information with Maria Bartiromo, the popular opinion host for whom they both worked at the time. The senior producer and another male executive described the host in terms such as “menopausal,” “hysterical” and “a diva,” Grossberg alleged.

A spokesperson for Fox called Grossberg’s suit “baseless,” saying, “We will vigorously defend these claims.”

Grossberg’s account of a sexist environment at Fox News echoes stories shared by several female employees in 2016 and 2017, when powerful network co-founder Roger Ailes and prime-time star Bill O’Reilly were forced out by allegations of sexual harassment.

But it is the producer’s allegations that Fox lawyers “coerced, intimidated, and misinformed” her as they prepped her to testify in Dominion’s $1.6 billion defamation suit that are poised to further complicate that roiling legal battle.

A little-known staffer at Fox News for the past four years, Grossberg this month emerged as a key behind-the-scenes player at the center of the blockbuster case. Dominion argues Fox knowingly aired spurious claims that it rigged its voting machines in favor of Joe Biden; Fox argues that it was simply reporting on newsworthy claims made by a sitting president.

Both sides are appearing in Delaware Superior Court on Tuesday to argue for the judge to rule in their favor — probably the last major hearing before the case is expected to go to trial next month.

Grossberg was subpoenaed by Dominion last year to discuss her work on televised segments in which Bartiromo and guests discussed far-fetched and unproven claims of election fraud. But in her deposition prep sessions, the producer claims, Fox lawyers “were displeased with her being too candid” and took extra time “to make sure she got her story straight and in line with [Fox’s] position.”

She said she was urged to give generic answers such as “I do not recall” and discouraged from offering explanations of how Bartiromo’s understaffed team was unable to keep up with warnings from Dominion about false statements they had aired.

By giving what she calls “false/misleading and evasive answers” that she said were encouraged by Fox’s legal team, Grossberg says she put herself at risk of committing perjury, while “subtly shifting all responsibility for the alleged defamation against Dominion onto her shoulders, and by implication, those of her trusted female colleague, Ms. Bartiromo, rather than the mostly male higher ups at Fox News.”

Fox lawyers, in their request for a restraining order, said Grossberg’s plan to share details from her conversations with lawyers was “a transparent attempt to gain leverage over Fox News.” They also wrote that Grossberg “proved unable to perform adequately” after a recent promotion and that she had been issued a written warning.

Late Monday, a company spokesperson said that Fox “engaged an independent outside counsel to immediately investigate the concerns raised by Ms. Grossberg, which were made following a critical performance review.”

In an interview with The Washington Post late Monday, Grossberg’s attorney, Parisis G. Filippatos, called Fox’s restraining order an “attempt to chill her,” adding that “her suit will reveal the truth, not the selected version of sanitized events that Fox is famous for.”

Fox placed her on leave Monday from her current job as a booker for Tucker Carlson’s prime-time show, he said.

Grossberg also filed a defamation suit against Fox in Delaware Superior Court that claims the company induced her to make statements in her deposition that made her look “inept” and harmed her reputation.

Details of Grossberg’s suits were first reported late Monday by the New York Times.

In Grossberg’s September deposition, Dominion lawyers asked her about the circumstances surrounding a Nov. 8, 2020, appearance by Trump-affiliated attorney Sidney Powell, who told Bartiromo on air that there had been “computer glitches” during the election and “fraud … where they were flipping votes in the computer system or adding votes that did not exist.”

Grossberg defended the decision to air claims like those that Powell was promoting, according to segments of her deposition made public this month. “We bring on people and they give their opinions,” she said. “Maria asked questions. The guests responded and gave their points of view, and it was up to the audience to decide.”

She told Dominion’s lawyers that the fraud claims were aired because her production team “thought the public deserved to hear what the current administration was saying.”

Grossberg first gained public notice in February, when Dominion filed a widely publicized brief that described one of its lawyers asking Grossberg if it’s important to correct falsehoods uttered on the show — and Grossberg replying, simply, “No.”

This, Dominion argued, was more evidence that Fox staff knew Trump election-fraud claims were false but did not convey that to viewers.

In fact, Grossberg said in her suit, she did not want to give that answer, but “she had been conditioned and felt coerced to give this response that simultaneously painted her in a negative light as a professional.”

After “writers at prominent media outlets called Ms. Grossberg’s ethics as a journalist and her professional judgment into question,” she alleges, she suffered anxiety and stress.

While Grossberg’s testimony and internal emails were cited prominently in briefs that Dominion has filed in its defamation suit, Fox’s lawyers made only a single, fleeting reference to her in their own defense filings, in which they cited an email of Grossberg’s to demonstrate that Bartiromo “reached out to sources and conducted research into the President’s claims.”

But Fox representatives have cited Grossberg’s testimony in communications with journalists to dispute some of Dominion’s legal claims.

Earlier this month, exhibits were unsealed showing that Powell had forwarded Bartiromo an email from a Minnesota artist that spun theories about an elaborate vote-flipping scheme and supposed connections between Dominion and top Democrats, as well as bizarre claims about murder and time-travel. Dominion lawyers have sought to draw a connection between this email — which its own author deemed “wackadoodle” — and the election-fraud claims that Bartiromo and Powell discussed on the air.

Fox spokespeople, though, countered this argument in an email to reporters by pointing to Grossberg’s explanation, drawn from her testimony: “We never used [the email.] So this is just all hypothetical really. … This isn’t something that I would use right now as reportable for air.”

According to Fox’s complaint, first reported by the Daily Beast, the network’s lawyers advised Grossberg in meetings before her deposition that “they represented Fox News and not her in her individual capacity” and that their discussions with her “were subject to the attorney-client privilege” and must be kept confidential.

The complaint stated that Fox first realized Grossberg intended to share details of those conversations when the company received a draft of Grossberg’s potential legal filing against the company last month.

Grossberg, the complaint stated, told the network that she was not subject to the company’s attorney-client privilege.

Because Of Course

How do you launder 12 million dollars?

How do you pay off a crooked politician without making it obvious that you're paying off a crooked politician?

American politics has come to look like an open sewer - at least on the Republican side.

I'm not saying there are no Democrats making bank on selling their influence - Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema being the most noticeable examples - it's just that Republicans are making far less effort to cover their shit.

So now it's up to Kevin McCarthy to figure out how to spank the more obvious offenders like Santos - making it seem as though McCarthy is "taking a firm hand" - without losing the support of the plutocrat assholes who put guys like Santos in office in the first place.

But of course, McCarthy will be weighing his options even then. Does he get more out of it by smacking Santos, or by using the threat of smacking Santos to rein him in, which sets the example of a "strong Speaker" who'll allow the shenanigans as long as he gets his cut?

Sold: Yacht With a Waterfall. Price: $19 Million. Broker: George Santos.

Just before his House election, Mr. Santos helped two of his largest donors reach a private deal on a $19 million boat, mixing his political and personal interests.

Representative George Santos brokered the sale of a yacht that sleeps 12 guests and seven crew, and boasts an infinity pool, a waterfall and an outdoor shower.

A $19 million luxury yacht deal brokered by Representative George Santos between two of his wealthy donors has captured the attention of federal and state authorities investigating the congressman’s campaign finances and personal business dealings.

The sale, which has not been previously reported, is one of about a dozen leads being pursued by the F.B.I., the U.S. attorney’s office in Brooklyn and the Nassau County district attorney’s office, people familiar with the investigation said.

Prosecutors and F.B.I. agents have sought in recent weeks to question the new owner of the 141-foot superyacht — Raymond Tantillo, a Long Island auto dealer — about the boat and his dealings with Mr. Santos, including his campaign fund-raising efforts.

Mr. Tantillo bought the boat from Mayra Ruiz, a Republican donor in Miami. Mr. Santos negotiated the payment — $12.25 million up front, with $6.5 million more in installments — and advised the two on the logistics of turning over the yacht, according to a person familiar with the sale, which took place a few weeks before his election in November.

It is not clear what laws, if any, may have been broken in the transaction. Several election law experts said that if the sale was designed to inject money into Mr. Santos’s campaign, it may be in violation of federal law governing caps on campaign contributions. It could also be illegal if Mr. Santos tied any commission he received on the sale to previous or future donations.

But even if Mr. Santos broke no laws, the deal serves as further evidence of an emerging narrative given by people in his political orbit — that Mr. Santos seemed to use his campaign not only to win elected office but also as a networking exercise to ingratiate himself with rich donors and enrich himself from those contacts.

Mr. Santos has denied wrongdoing. Joe Murray, a lawyer representing Mr. Santos in potential criminal matters, declined to comment, as did spokesmen from the F.BI., the United States attorney’s office in Brooklyn, and the Nassau County district attorney, who is working with federal authorities on the investigation.

More on George Santos

• House Committees: Representative George Santos said that he would temporarily recuse himself from sitting on congressional committees as he faces multiple investigations over his lies.
• Signaling a Re-election Bid: Mr. Santos filed paperwork indicating his intent to seek re-election in 2024. The move does not guarantee that Mr. Santos will run for office, but it allows him to continue fund-raising and spend campaign funds.
• A.T.M. Fraud Scheme: Mr. Santos's former roommate, who pleaded guilty to a federal fraud charge in 2017 and was deported to Brazil, sent an affidavit to federal authorities accusing the representative of running a card-skimming operation.
• His First Bill: Mr. Santos wants to raise the cap on the so-called SALT deduction — a move that would partly undo President Donald J. Trump’s tax plan that limited how much homeowners could deduct in state and local property taxes.
• Mr. Santos’s campaign finances and personal business dealings have been under scrutiny following revelations by The New York Times in December that Mr. Santos had fabricated or embellished most of his résumé. The Times has since reported on curious omissions in his campaign filings, an unregistered fund connected to him, and other irregularities in his finances.

A central mystery is Mr. Santos’s sudden, unexplained jump in income, and where he got the money to loan himself roughly $700,000 over the course of his 2022 campaign.

During his first bid for Congress in 2020, he reported an income of $55,000; two years later, he reported a $750,000 salary and over $1 million in dividends from his company, the Florida-based Devolder Organization, which Mr. Santos described as a “capital introduction” business.

Mr. Santos, a Republican, has said publicly that his company brokered deals between high net-worth clients. In an interview with Semafor in December, he sought to explain his work by saying that if a client wanted to sell a plane or a boat, he would “put that feeler out there” among his contacts, adding that he had landed a couple of million-dollar contracts.

“If you’re looking at a $20 million yacht,” he told Semafor, “my referral fee there can be anywhere between $200,000 and $400,000.”

As it turns out, there was, in fact, a yacht worth nearly $20 million.

In 2019, records show, John H. Ruiz, a Miami lawyer and businessman, bought a superyacht made by the Italian yacht builder Mangusta. The yacht, which was listed at the time for 18 million euros, or $20 million, sleeps 12 guests and seven crew, and featured an infinity pool, a waterfall and an outdoor shower. It was called “Namaste,” a greeting in Hindi.

Mr. Ruiz, a Coral Gables lawyer who specializes in health care and malpractice claims, gained notoriety last year when he took his data analytics company public in a reverse merger with a special purpose acquisition company. The company, MSP Recovery, briefly had a record-setting valuation of nearly $33 billion, making Mr. Ruiz a billionaire many times over.

But the stock promptly plummeted to a dollar a share and, in June 2022, he and the firm’s co-founder lent the company $113 million to plug a cash shortfall.

Mr. Ruiz did not donate to Mr. Santos’s campaign, but his wife, Mayra, was a particularly generous supporter. Campaign finance records show that on March 31, 2022, Mayra Ruiz gave $10,800 to Mr. Santos’s joint fund-raising committee. Later, she was among the first to give Mr. Santos money after he won the election.

Mr. Santos has failed to disclose any of his Devolder clients. But in December, the Tantillo Auto Group — Mr. Tantillo’s network of car dealerships on Long Island — and two organizations tied to Mr. Ruiz’s family were identified by The Daily Beast as Devolder clients. The Daily Beast quoted Mayra Ruiz saying the family had hired Devolder in early 2022, but did not provide more detail.

Ms. Ruiz did not respond to requests for comment. Christine Lugo, a lawyer for Mr. Ruiz, said her client was “not interested in making any statement other than the fact that he has already publicly disclosed that he does not know who George Santos is and has never contributed to his campaigns and has never done any business with him.”

Mr. Santos, by many accounts, mingled campaign fund-raising with personal business opportunities. Several donors have described encounters with Mr. Santos at fund-raisers in which he would describe deals he could broker with other donors in industries including insurance and pharmaceuticals, or he would tell them about donors who were seeking to sell businesses or luxury items.

Mr. Santos would offer to bring people together, with the implicit understanding that he would take a cut, they said. The pitches were often paired with requests for donations. None of the other potential arrangements described to The Times appear to have resulted in deals.

Among the donors he courted, Mr. Santos seems to have grown close to Mr. Tantillo, according to people familiar with their relationship.

Mr. Tantillo gave more than $17,000 to Mr. Santos’s campaign and affiliated committees; his estranged wife is recorded as giving at least $5,000 more, as is another ex-wife. (Contribution limits in New York congressional races in 2022 were slightly altered after a state court ruling scuttled an electoral map and forced an August primary; the Federal Election Commission held that candidates could raise additional funds.)

In August, Mr. Santos approached Mr. Tantillo with an offer to sell him the yacht. The agreement was hammered out in late September in Coral Gables, and Mr. Santos suggested moving the boat into a free-trade zone at the port, the person said.

It is common for boat sales to take place in a free-trade zone before going overseas — often, the Bahamas — and returning with a new owner, according to another person familiar with the sale and with the Miami port system.

As negotiations progressed, Mr. Santos pressed Mr. Tantillo for additional donations and financial help for his campaign and for other Republicans as Election Day drew near, the person said. Mr. Tantillo did not provide additional funds.

“I have every reason to believe that Mr. Tantillo will not be charged for anything, including the purchase of a boat or campaign contributions,” said Robert Curtis Gottlieb, a lawyer for Mr. Tantillo.

At least one other large donor was asked for a major contribution weeks before the election, The Times has reported.

After weeks of negotiations, Mr. Tantillo agreed in September 2022 to buy the yacht, according to a person familiar with the sale. The deal was brokered by Mr. Santos with Ms. Ruiz, according to emails described to The Times.

On Nov. 3, 2022, “Namaste” left for the Bahamas from its berth in West Palm Beach, Fla. Fifteen days later, port records show, the boat returned to Florida under a new flag — the Cayman Islands — a different name and a new owner.

Mr. Tantillo rechristened the boat “Neverland.”

Today's Non-Accountable Accountability

House Republicans Quietly Halt Inquiry Into Trump’s Finances

G.O.P. leaders are declining to enforce a court-supervised settlement for Mazars, Donald J. Trump’s former accounting firm, to turn over records in an investigation into whether he profited from the presidency.

WASHINGTON — House Republicans have quietly halted a congressional investigation into whether Donald J. Trump profited improperly from the presidency, declining to enforce a court-supervised settlement agreement that demanded that Mazars USA, his former accounting firm, produce his financial records to Congress.

Representative James R. Comer, Republican of Kentucky and the chairman of the Oversight and Accountability Committee, made clear he had abandoned any investigation into the former president’s financial dealings — professing ignorance about the inquiry Democrats opened when they controlled the House — and was instead focusing on whether President Biden and members of his family were involved in an influence-peddling scheme.

“I honestly didn’t even know who or what Mazars was,” said Mr. Comer, who was the senior Republican on the oversight panel during the last Congress, while Democrats waged a lengthy legal fight over obtaining documents from the firm.

“What exactly are they looking for?” Mr. Comer added in a brief statement to The New York Times on Monday. “They’ve been ‘investigating’ Trump for six years. I know exactly what I’m investigating: money the Bidens received from China.”

He confirmed the end to the inquiry into Mr. Trump after Democrats wrote to Mr. Comer raising concerns about the fact that Mazars, the former president’s longtime accounting firm that cut ties with him last year, had stopped turning over documents related to his financial dealings. The top Democrat on the panel suggested that Mr. Comer had worked with Mr. Trump’s lawyers to effectively kill the investigation, an accusation the chairman denied.

“It has come to my attention that you may have acted in league with attorneys for former President Donald Trump to block the committee from receiving documents subpoenaed in its investigation of unauthorized, unreported and unlawful payments by foreign governments and others to then-President Trump,” Representative Jamie Raskin of Maryland, the top Democrat on the panel, wrote on Sunday evening to Mr. Comer.

Mr. Comer on Monday denied knowledge of any attempt to coordinate with Mr. Trump’s lawyers to block the investigation, but he made it clear he did not plan to keep it going. His committee has issued no subpoenas concerning Mr. Trump’s finances.

Democrats fought in court for years to get financial documents from Mr. Trump’s former accounting firm, and only last year — after entering into a court-ordered settlement — began receiving the documents and gaining new insights into how foreign governments sought influence using the Trump International Hotel. The company has been delivering the documents to the committee in batches.

A Divided Congress

• The 118th Congress is underway, with Republicans controlling the House and Democrats holding the Senate.
• I.R.S. Commissioner: The Senate voted to confirm Daniel Werfel to be the commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service, filling a critical position at the agency as it starts an $80 billion overhaul.
• F.B.I. Surveillance: The revelation by Representative Darin LaHood, Republican of Illinois, that he was the target of surveillance material searches conducted by the F.B.I. put a twist on a murky incident that has loomed over a debate on reauthorizing an expiring surveillance law.
• D.C. Crime Law: The Senate voted overwhelmingly to block a new criminal code for the District of Columbia, with Democrats bowing to Republican pressure to take a hard line on crime.
• A Freshman Republican on the Road: As Representative Josh Brecheen travels his district in eastern Oklahoma, his pitch to constituents reflects how the party has intertwined its spending fight with cultural battles.
• In the letter, Mr. Raskin wrote that he had reviewed communications between Patrick Strawbridge, Mr. Trump’s counsel, and a lawyer for Mazars in which the Trump lawyer indicated he had been told that House Republicans would no longer insist on additional document production. On Jan. 19, Mr. Strawbridge wrote, “I do not know the status of Mazars production, but my understanding is that the committee has no interest in forcing Mazars to complete it and is willing to release it from further obligations under the settlement agreement.”

Mr. Raskin wrote that Mr. Strawbridge had confirmed that assertion had been made to him twice by the acting general counsel of the House of Representatives, who at the time was Todd Tatelman.

Mr. Tatelman did not respond to a request for comment, nor did Mr. Strawbridge or lawyers for Mazars.

Democratic staff aides on the committee said they had repeatedly sought written confirmation from Mazars that House Republicans had agreed to release the firm from its obligations under the subpoena and court-supervised settlement agreement. But Mazars said it had not received such a release nor was any filed with the court, which has retained jurisdiction over the matter.

Even so, Mazars informed Democratic staff members that, as a result of Mr. Strawbridge’s assertions, it would cease production after the delivery of a small tranche of documents that it had already identified as responsive to the subpoena, the letter states.

Enforcement of a court-supervised settlement agreement made with one Congress during a subsequent Congress under new leadership remains a legally murky gray area. Subpoenas in cases involving the House expire at the end of each Congress, but Mazars had continued to produce documents even after the House changed hands into Republican control. Still, a judge would be unlikely to enforce the settlement if the parties involved were no longer interested in enforcement, according to lawyers in both parties.

The documents from Mazars have thus far provided new evidence about how foreign governments sought to influence the Trump administration. In November, for instance, documents the committee received from Mazars detailed how officials from six nations spent more than $750,000 at Mr. Trump’s hotel in Washington when they were seeking to influence his administration, renting rooms for more than $10,000 per night.

“In the face of mounting evidence that foreign governments sought to influence the Trump administration by playing to President Trump’s financial interests, you and President Trump’s representatives appear to have acted in coordination to bury evidence of such misconduct,” Mr. Raskin wrote to Mr. Comer.

At the same time that Mazars has stopped producing documents about Mr. Trump’s finances, Mr. Comer has ramped up his investigation into Mr. Biden and his relatives.

Mr. Comer has issued a broad subpoena to obtain bank records of associates of the Biden family, requiring Bank of America to produce “all financial records” for three private individuals from Jan. 20, 2009, to the present — a 14-year period, Mr. Raskin wrote.

He has focused in particular on John R. Walker, an associate of Hunter Biden, the president’s son, whose business dealings are under investigation by the Justice Department. Mr. Walker was involved in a joint venture with CEFC China executives, a now-bankrupt Chinese energy conglomerate.

Mr. Raskin accused Mr. Comer of using a “wildly overbroad subpoena” to conduct “a dragnet of political opposition research on behalf of former President Trump.”

Mr. Comer responded that Mr. Raskin was trying to distract “from the real issue here, and that is the Biden family money trail from China.”

“I now possess documents to prove it; Raskin knows it, and Raskin has had a meltdown,” Mr. Comer added.

When Congress was in Democratic hands, the House Oversight Committee waged a yearslong battle to obtain Mr. Trump’s financial records from Mazars in one of the major legal sagas of the Trump presidency.

Mazars cut ties with the Trump Organization in 2022, saying it could no longer stand by a decade of financial statements it had prepared.

Today's Crooked Politician

It's not always a Republican, because it can't always be a Republican.

But it seems like it's always a Republican, because something like 95% of the time, it's a Republican.

So yeah - for all practical purposes, it's always a fucking Republican.

Former Ohio House speaker convicted in $60 million bribery scheme

Former state House Speaker Larry Householder and former Ohio Republican Party Chair Matt Borges were convicted Thursday in a $60 million bribery scheme that federal prosecutors have called the largest corruption case in state history.

A jury in Cincinnati found the two guilty of conspiracy to participate in a racketeering enterprise involving bribery and money laundering, after about 9.5 half hours of deliberations over two days.

U.S. Attorney Kenneth Parker said the government's prosecution team showed that "Householder sold the Statehouse, and thus he ultimately betrayed the people of the great state of Ohio he was elected to serve." He called Borges "a willing co-conspirator."

"Through its verdict today, the jury reaffirmed that the illegal acts committed by both men will not be tolerated and that they should be held accountable," Parker said.

Attorneys for Householder and Borges did not immediately respond to messages left by The Associated Press on Thursday.

Prosecutors alleged that Householder orchestrated a scheme secretly funded by Akron-based FirstEnergy Corp. to secure his power in the Legislature, elect his allies — and then to pass and defend a $1 billion nuclear power plant bailout benefiting the electric utility. They alleged that Borges, then a lobbyist, sought to bribe an operative for inside information on the referendum to overturn the bailout.

Householder, 63, had been one of Ohio's most powerful politicians — and twice elected speaker — until the Republican-controlled House ousted him after his indictment from his leadership post, and then in a bipartisan vote, and with Householder vigorously objecting, from the chamber. It was the first such expulsion in 150 years.

He took the stand in his own defense, contradicting FBI testimony and denying that he attended swanky Washington dinners where prosecutors allege he and executives of FirstEnergy hatched the elaborate scheme in 2017.

Borges, 50, did not testify at trial but has insisted that he's innocent. Both men face up to 20 years in prison.

The verdict comes two-and-a-half years after Householder, Borges and three others were arrested. Over the past seven weeks, jurors at the trial were presented with firsthand accounts of the alleged scheme, as well as reams of financial documents, emails, texts and wiretap audio.

"... alleged ..." ? - it was proven beyond a reasonable doubt, to the satisfaction of 12 regular everyday people who returned a unanimous verdict. It's not fucking "alleged" anymore.

The prosecution called two of the people arrested — Juan Cespedes and Jeff Longstreth, who pleaded guilty — to testify about political contributions that they said are not ordinary, but bribes intended to secure passage of the bailout bill, known as House Bill 6.

Householder's attorneys described his activities as nothing more than hardball politics.

Jurors also heard taped phone calls in which Householder and another co-defendant, the late Statehouse superlobbyist Neil Clark, plotted a nasty attack ad — and, in expletive-laced fashion, contemplated revenge against lawmakers who had crossed Householder.

Householder testified that he never retaliated against those who voted counter to his wishes or who donated to his rivals.

Under a deal to avoid prosecution, FirstEnergy admitted using a network of dark money groups to fund the scheme and even bribing the state's top utility regulator, Sam Randazzo.

Randazzo resigned as chair of the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio after an FBI search of his home, but he has not been charged and denies wrongdoing.

When Tyrants Embrace

Settle in - it's a long one.

After helping prince’s rise, Trump and Kushner benefit from Saudi funds

An investment fund overseen by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is backing ventures that profit the former president and his senior adviser, raising questions of conflict

In early 2021, as Donald Trump exited the White House, he and his son-in-law Jared Kushner faced unprecedented business challenges. Revenue at Trump’s properties had plummeted during his presidency, and the attack on the U.S. Capitol by his supporters made his brand even more polarizing. Kushner, whose last major business foray had left his family firm needing a $1.2 billion bailout, faced his own political fallout as a senior Trump aide.

But one ally moved quickly to the rescue.

The day after leaving the White House, Kushner created a company that he transformed months later into a private equity firm with $2 billion from a sovereign wealth fund chaired by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Kushner’s firm structured those funds in such a way that it did not have to disclose the source, according to previously unreported details of Securities and Exchange Commission forms reviewed by The Washington Post. His business used a commonly employed strategy that allows many equity firms to avoid transparency about funding sources, experts said.

A year after his presidency, Trump’s golf courses began hosting tournaments for the Saudi fund-backed LIV Golf. Separately, the former president’s family company, the Trump Organization, secured an agreement with a Saudi real estate company that plans to build a Trump hotel as part of a $4 billion golf resort in Oman.

The substantial investments by the Saudis in enterprises that benefited both men came after they cultivated close ties with Mohammed while Trump was in office — helping the crown prince’s standing by scheduling Trump’s first presidential trip to Saudi Arabia, backing him amid numerous international crises and meeting with him repeatedly in D.C. and the kingdom, including on a final trip Kushner took to Saudi Arabia on the eve of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack.

New details about their relationship have emerged in recently published memoirs, as well as accounts in congressional testimony and interviews by The Post with former senior White House officials. Those revelations include Kushner’s written account of persuading Trump to prioritize Saudi Arabia over the objections of top advisers and a former secretary of state’s assertion in a book that Trump believed the prince “owed” him.

They also underscore the crucial nature of Trump’s admission that he “saved” Mohammed in the wake of the CIA’s finding that the crown prince ordered the killing or capture of Post contributing opinion columnist Jamal Khashoggi.

Now, with Trump running for president again, some national security experts and two former White House officials say they have concerns that Trump and Kushner used their offices to set themselves up to profit from their relationship with the Saudis after the administration ended.

“I think it was an obvious opportunity for them to build their Rolodexes,” John Bolton, who was Trump’s national security adviser, said in an interview. “And I think they were probably hard at work at it, particularly Jared.”

“Why should Jared be worried about the Middle East?” Bolton said. “It’s a perfectly logical inference was that had something to do with business.”

Kushner declined to comment.

In his memoir, Kushner did not mention his new equity firm or the Saudi investment, and he has not publicly addressed whether he talked to Mohammed during the administration about doing business with him afterward. It is not known whether Kushner discussed business deals with Mohammed while in office.

A former administration official allied with Kushner, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak about the matter publicly, said there are numerous examples of top former government employees doing business with people they once dealt with while in public service. Kushner had such a broad agenda that it would be unfair to block business relationships with those he knew from his White House days, the former official said.

Trump declined to comment. His spokesman, Steven Cheung, said in response: “President Trump is the most pro-America president in history and used his superior negotiating skills to ensure this country is never beholden to anyone.” Eric Trump, Trump’s son who is also the executive vice president of the Trump Organization, said in a statement that “LIV is doing incredible things for the game of golf and it should be no surprise that we were asked to host these amazing events.” Trump has also previously said he did tens of millions of dollars of business with Saudis before becoming president.

The Saudi Embassy in Washington and a spokesman for the Saudi Public Investment Fund did not respond to requests for comment.

Democrats who have launched congressional investigations into Trump’s and Kushner’s ties to Saudi Arabia said there is no precedent for how the two have relied so significantly on Saudi investments in their businesses after directly helping Mohammed while in office. The lawmakers expressed concern that such business ties could leave them beholden to the crown prince if they return to the White House.

“The financial links between the Saudi royal family and the Trump family raise very serious issues,” said Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), who chairs the Senate Finance Committee and for several years has been investigating various ties between the Saudis, Trump and Kushner, “and when you factor in Jared Kushner’s financial interests, you are looking right at the cat’s cradle of financial entanglements.”

Those concerns come at a high-stakes moment in the fraught U.S.-Saudi relationship. The investments by the Saudis came as the U.S. State Department said in a 2021 report that there continued to be “significant human rights issues” in Saudi Arabia, citing “credible reports” of torture and executions for nonviolent offenses. President Biden, who has backed away from a campaign pledge to hold the kingdom to account for human rights abuses, clashed openly with Riyadh in the fall over cuts in oil production. Trump, if he is reelected, may be less likely to confront the Saudi regime in future crises due to his financial entanglements, experts say.

Retired military personnel are required under ethics rules to obtain approval to work for foreign governments like Saudi Arabia. But there’s no requirement for Trump, a former commander in chief, nor for former senior White House officials such as Kushner, to disclose if they have financial ties to foreign governments, according to Don Fox, former acting director of the Office of Government Ethics. He said their work has exposed a glaring shortfall in ethics laws that needs to be fixed by Congress.

“I think the Congress had a certain vision in mind for what the post-presidency looks like, such as creating a library and museum and some speaking and writing a memoir,” Fox said. “I don’t think it ever occurred to the drafters of these ethics laws that a former president would actually try to cash in on his years of office this way.”

A beneficial relationship

Shortly after Trump’s election in 2016, Kushner connected with Mohammed for the first time.

Both were ascendant young scions of powerful families. Kushner, a 35-year-old with no foreign policy experience, was tapped by Trump to work toward Middle East peace; Mohammed, a 31-year-old deputy crown prince, was eyeing a path to the throne that seemed blocked by the reigning crown prince.

Over the next four years, that relationship would prove extraordinarily beneficial to both men.

Mohammed would reap arms sales, a presumed green light to blockade his neighboring nation of Qatar — despite a major U.S. military base there — and a hands-off policy when he imprisoned an array of leading Saudi citizens for months in a high-end hotel, reportedly demanding billions in funds from some in exchange for their release.

Trump and Kushner would get Mohammed’s support for an anti-terrorism center, arms purchases, and a deal normalizing relations between Israel and the United Arab Emirates and other nations.

Kushner was the key, making regular trips to Saudi Arabia and staying in close contact with Mohammed — to the concern of some White House colleagues. Two former senior administration officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal matters, said they often felt they were in the dark on sensitive diplomatic issues on which Kushner took the lead.

“I didn’t really know what Jared was doing with the Saudis,” one former administration official said. “That was part of the problem. We didn’t know what Jared was doing generally. And, you know, other governments had decided that you want to get close to Trump, the way to do it is through Jared.”

At the outset, the Saudis had decided the incoming Trump administration could offer a reset to U.S. relations with the kingdom, despite Trump’s campaigning by saying that “Islam hates us” and calling for a “Muslim ban” of immigrants, Kushner wrote in his memoir.

Kushner “was learning diplomacy on the fly,” he wrote in his memoir. Mohammed’s associates sensed Kushner’s inexperience during a post-election meeting. In a summary of the 2016 talk by Saudi officials reported by the Lebanese publication Al Akhbar, Mohammed’s advisers wrote: “Kushner made clear his lack of familiarity with the history of Saudi-American relations.”

It soon became clear that Kushner effectively was running foreign policy on Saudi Arabia.

In March 2017, Mohammed arrived in Washington and had lunch with Kushner and Trump at the White House. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson didn’t attend, and the meeting went against advice from Trump’s National Security Council. Tillerson could not be reached for comment.

That same month, Kushner asked Trump to make Saudi Arabia the site of his first foreign trip. Kushner said it could jump-start the administration’s Middle East policy by cultivating Mohammed to help forge a diplomatic breakthrough with Saudi Arabia and Israel.

Tillerson opposed rewarding the Saudis with the first trip, and Trump told Kushner that he planned to follow the secretary of state’s advice. As Kushner continued to push, he wrote, Trump told him, “Jared, read my lips: we’re not going to Saudi Arabia. Take no for an answer!”

It didn’t matter. As Kushner told it, he had seen Trump change his mind on other matters, so “I didn’t interpret his words as a hard no.”

Kushner wrote that he called Mohammed and told the prince, “Everyone here is telling me that I’m a fool for trusting you,” but after receiving assurances from the prince, he outlined a proposal to Trump: The Saudis would denounce terrorism in the region, sign deals that were supposed to create American jobs and purchase U.S. arms. Trump changed his no to a yes. The trip was on.

It was the first of Kushner’s many boons to Mohammed, who used Trump’s visit to aid his sudden rise over a rival to become crown prince later that year. At a dinner, Mohammed told Kushner about a Saudi plan to blockade Qatar, which has a large U.S. military base. Tillerson later told Congress that the conversation made him “angry” because he didn’t have a say, but Trump essentially endorsed the move on Twitter.

One of the starkest tests of the Trump administration’s relationship with Mohammed came as a result of the prince’s ire with Khashoggi, a prominent journalist with ties to the royal family who had called for changes in the kingdom. Shortly after Trump’s election, Mohammed’s aides had ordered him to stop writing critically about the U.S.-Saudi relationship, but he refused and later relocated to the Washington area and became a columnist for The Post.

In October 2018, an assassination team that had flown from Riyadh to Istanbul aboard two planes owned by the Public Investment Fund killed Khashoggi inside the Saudi consulate there. After Turkey said Saudi Arabia was responsible, Kushner talked with Mohammed about how to respond.

The next month, the CIA concluded that Mohammed had “approved an operation” to kill or capture Khashoggi, which the prince denied. Mohammed’s years-long effort to rise to power was in grave danger.

But, as Trump later put it in a recorded interview, “I saved his ass,” according to “The Trump Tapes” by Post associate editor Bob Woodward. Trump refused to endorse the CIA’s conclusion, equivocated about Mohammed’s involvement, opposed releasing of the report and vetoed a congressional bill to block arms sales to the kingdom. The president sent Mike Pompeo, who had replaced Tillerson as secretary of state, to meet with the prince and remind him of his debt.

“My Mike, go and have a good time. Tell him he owes us,” Pompeo recalled in his 2023 memoir, “Never Give An Inch.” Pompeo did not respond to a request for comment.

It was a pivotal moment that halted efforts to isolate Mohammed, who is known as MBS, in Congress and around the world. “Without the absolute protection of Trump and Kushner, MBS would definitely have fallen,” said Abdullah Alaoudh, the director for the Gulf at Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN), a group founded by Khashoggi. Hatice Cengiz, Khashoggi’s fiancee, said in a statement to The Post that Trump and Kushner “covered for the Crown Prince.”

Before Trump left office, Kushner flew to Saudi Arabia in early January 2021 for his final official meeting with Mohammed. On the public agenda was finalizing an agreement to end Riyadh’s blockade against Qatar.

Kushner flew home on the morning of Jan. 6, 2021, and rushed to the White House.

Troubled businesses

As his administration ended, Trump’s brand was troubled. His family’s hotels, resorts and other properties had lost $120 million in revenue in 2020 thanks to the pandemic and his polarizing presidency. He faced multiple investigations into his business practices and actions seeking to overturn his 2020 defeat; then in December 2022, the Trump Organization was convicted of tax fraud.

Kushner, meanwhile, faced potential difficulties because of both his association with Trump and his own failings. Kushner’s family company had already required a bailout in 2018 from a Canadian firm because of his decision to buy a $1.8 billion office building in New York. An ongoing congressional investigation is looking into whether the bailout was partially financed by Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund. Now, despite having no experience running a private equity fund, Kushner was in search of billions of dollars for his new venture.

Saudi Arabia, however, soon invested in both men.

The day after the Trump administration ended, Kushner created a company called A Fin Management and used that as a springboard to create a private equity fund later that year called Affinity Partners. Such funds typically use investor money to buy into emerging companies.

Kushner has not said when he first sought $2 billion from the Saudi’s Public Investment Fund. The four members of a five-person panel of the fund’s advisers who attended a meeting about the matter were “not in favor” of the investment, citing Kushner’s inexperience in private equity and the fact that the Saudis would bear most of the risk, the New York Times reported, citing confidential minutes of the panel’s meeting in June 2021 that have not been made public.

Shortly after that meeting, however, Mohammed led the full board in approving the investment, according to the Times report.

In March 2022, the Kushner-run company filed an investment adviser registration document called Form ADV with the SEC that requires only a vague report on where its money came from. Kushner’s company declared that $2.51 billion out of its total $2.54 billion in assets under management came from “non-United States persons.”

The form also asks whether the “type of client” is “sovereign wealth funds and foreign official institutions.” Kushner’s firm left that box blank, instead describing its client as pooled funds operated by his company, which subsequently confirmed the Times report that $2 billion had come from the Saudis.

Chad Mizelle, an adviser to Kushner’s company, said in a statement to The Post that “Affinity Partners’ Form ADV, like numerous other private equity firms, correctly states that it has pooled investment vehicles as clients.” An SEC spokesman declined to comment.

Kushner’s company stands to receive a $25 million management fee annually from the Saudi investment plus a share of the profits.

Kushner has made his work with Mohammed while in the White House a selling point for his business. In a presentation to investors, first reported by the Intercept, Kushner notes his work “managing Middle East peace efforts” and specifically cites the result of his Jan. 5, 2021, meeting with Mohammed, saying they had discussed lifting the Qatar blockade.

There’s little transparency in private equity firms like Kushner’s. Such funds are allowed to keep secret the names of their investors, which has led Wyden, the Oregon Democrat who chairs the Senate Finance Committee, to push for legislation requiring more disclosure of foreign investments. The FBI said in 2020 that “threat actors likely use private placement of funds, including investments offered by hedge funds and private equity firms, to launder money.”

Kushner’s company, which is staffed by a number of former top administration officials, has so far allocated only about 15 percent of its available cash — a strategic move as it waits for the economy to improve, according to a person familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal business decisions.

Information about Trump’s possible Saudi payments is even more opaque. Before his political career, Trump had long claimed a profitable history of dealmaking with the Saudis.

On the day he launched his campaign at Trump Tower in 2015, he said, “I love the Saudis. Many are in this building.” Later that year, he said at a campaign rally that “they spend $40 million, $50 million” buying his apartments. In August 2015, The Post reported, he established eight shell companies that included the name “Jeddah,” apparently referring to Saudi Arabia’s second-largest city, and four mentioned a hotel — but there’s no record that anything resulted, The Post reported.

Starting last year, LIV Golf hosted two tournaments at Trump properties, with recent court proceedings revealing that the Public Investment Fund covers 100 percent of tournament costs, according to coverage of the case.

A LIV Golf spokesman declined to comment, and a Public Investment Fund spokesman did not respond to requests to comment.

LIV Golf, which was set up as a competitor to the PGA Tournament, has struggled to attract top golfers. After the PGA pulled a tournament from a Trump course following the Jan. 6 insurrection, Trump boosted the LIV tour, calling it a public relations coup worth billions of dollars for Saudi Arabia and urging golfers to “take the money” and join LIV. He has not said how much he earned from the arrangement.

Ted Bishop, a former PGA president, said in an interview that a major tournament typically pays $2 million to $3 million to play on a course, not counting other revenue such as sponsorships, merchandise, and food and beverage.

Critics of LIV Golf have called the Saudi funding an effort at “sportswashing,” meant to divert attention from the killing of Khashoggi and its record on human rights. “I think the vast majority of golf fans oppose LIV Golf because it is a moral question,” Bishop said.

The Trump Organization in November signed a deal with a Saudi Arabian firm, Dar Al Arkan, to develop Trump-branded villas, a hotel and a golf course in Oman with the support of that country’s government. Such branding was once the mainstay of Trump’s international business, but the Oman agreement was the first such international deal publicly announced after he left office.

Eric Trump said in a statement that “Trump Oman is an exceptional project, in an exceptional location and we are excited to enter that rapidly growing market with an incredible hotel, world class golf course and much much more.”

Democrats have continued to push for more details about Donald Trump’s and Kushner’s deals.

The House Oversight Committee said in a June 2 letter to Kushner that it wanted to know if he had “improperly traded” on his government position to get the investment and whether he influenced U.S. policy to do so.

The committee’s investigation has stalled as a result of the Republican takeover of the House, but Wyden’s Senate Finance Committee may request the same documents as part of a broader inquiry in whether there is a connection between what Trump and Kushner did during the administration and the subsequent Saudi deals.

“Following the money is the premier issue,” Wyden said. “That’s how you understand potential conflicts of interest.”

Mohammed, meanwhile, has continued his rise to power and is expected to become king when the current monarch dies or steps down.

Biden, who vowed during his 2020 campaign to make Saudi Arabia “the pariah that they are” over Khashoggi’s murder, traveled to Saudi Arabia in July and fist-bumped Mohammed. Then his administration said that under international law, Mohammed was immune from a lawsuit in the Khashoggi killing because he had been named the sitting head of his government.

Sarah Leah Whitson, the executive director of the Khashoggi-founded group DAWN, has called on Congress to pass legislation to prohibit all former senior U.S. officials from working for, or financially benefiting from, a foreign government. Without such a law, she said in a statement, former U.S. officials can “monetize their work for our government into lucrative contracts with foreign governments.”

Meanwhile, the financial benefits of the Saudi relationship with Trump and Kushner continue.

Trump is slated to hold three more LIV tournaments on his properties this year.

And Kushner reportedly has raised at least another $500 million for his company from international investors since he filed the SEC form last year, bringing the total to around $3 billion.

He has not identified the source of that additional money.