Because It Works

If a play works, keep running it until the defense makes you stop.

The fact that you can win a national election by peeling off a few thousand votes from the various factions that make up any given voter coalition tells me there's something wrong with the way we're doing things.

Duh - really, Mike?

Look, I don't know how to fix it. My default is just to bitch about the willingness of Americans to choose ignorance, and then in the most Dunning-Kruger-y kinda way, to insist to themselves that by staying ignorant they're actually achieving some level of superior wisdom.

It's just too fuckin' weird.

The army of political consultants and operatives are going to fly-speck the thing:

• Harris didn't go hard enough
• Harris went too hard
• Dems failed the messaging challenge
• They talked about policy too much
• Harris was too pro-Biden
• Harris wasn't pro-Biden enough
• Harris was vague about Biden
• Dems don't relate to regular Americans
• Harris is a woman
• Harris is a black woman
• Harris is an angry black woman
• Harris isn't angry enough
• etc
• etc
• etc

... and then they ignore the fact that a multinational propaganda machine is hard at work, and it's a real bitch to countervail that shit - especially when all your high-paid gurus and Press Poodles barely even acknowledge the fucking thing even exists.

Inside the Republican false-flag effort to turn off Kamala Harris voters

A multipronged dark money effort by advisers to Elon Musk targeted liberals, Jews, Muslims and Black voters with ads that were not quite what they seemed.

Muslims in Michigan began seeing pro-Israel ads this fall praising Vice President Kamala Harris for marrying a Jewish man and backing the Jewish state. Jews in Pennsylvania, meanwhile, saw ads from the same group with the opposite message: Harris wanted to stop U.S. arms shipments to Israel.

Another group promoted “Kamala’s bold progressive agenda” to conservative-leaning Donald Trump voters, while a third filled the phones of young liberals with videos about how Harris had abandoned the progressive dream. Black voters in North Carolina were told Democrats wanted to take away their menthol cigarettes, while working-class White men in the Midwest were warned that Harris would support quotas for minorities and deny them Zyn nicotine pouches.

What voters had no way of knowing at the time was that all of the ads were part of a single, $45 million effort created by political advisers to Tesla founder Elon Musk who had previously worked on the presidential campaign of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), according to a presentation about the group’s efforts obtained by The Washington Post.

The project, funded with anonymous donations, micro-targeted messages across the battleground states, often with ads that appeared to be something they were not — a tactic the organizers sometimes referred to internally as “false positives.”

With digital spots, direct mail, text messages, influencer marketing and mobile billboards, the overall project was a high-tech experiment in misdirection — an old political tactic that has been sharpened in recent decades with increasingly precise targeting techniques.

Ads tested better if Muslims felt they were seeing a message meant for Zionists, “Bernie bros” felt they were hearing from the far left, and “Zyn bros” felt they were hearing from activists who wanted “a world without gas-powered vehicles,” a ban on fracking and affordable housing for undocumented Americans — policies Harris did not actually support during her campaign.

“The worst part is Kamala Harris talks out of both sides of her mouth,” said one of the ads, which was designed by Trump supporters to look as if it was advocating for leftist priorities like “free health care” and a “break on tuition.”

The entire effort grew out of research by Building America’s Future, a conservative political nonprofit that was founded during the first Trump administration by Republican consultants Generra Peck and Phil Cox. With others at P2 Public Affairs, Peck and Cox, former advisers to DeSantis, were top strategists for a separate effort, America PAC, the super PAC funded by Musk to support Trump. Musk donated to Building America’s Future in 2022, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal. The group’s leaders have declined to comment on their donors.

Starting in February, Ryan Tyson, a former pollster for DeSantis, began holding a series of about 25 focus groups with specific communities of targeted voters, with most of the research effort focused on likely Democrats who were uncertain about voting. The goal was to figure out how to help Donald Trump win during a campaign in which Democrats were vastly outspending Republicans on digital advertising.

“Clearly, you had a White liberal demographic that hated Donald Trump. That was without question. You could see that coalition everywhere. But once you get past White progressives, every other historical demographic stronghold from the Democrats just started to drop off,” Tyson said about the effort. “What did exist was a tremendous amount of voters on the left that were disaffected. And the only persuasion question was whether they could be persuaded to vote.”

The effort worked in concert with a separate project by the Trump campaign to depress turnout for Harris — knowing that Trump would be unlikely to drastically expand his vote totals. In 2020, Trump received about 74 million votes to Joe Biden’s 81 million votes. In 2024, Trump received a little less than 76 million votes to Harris’s 72.6 million votes. In other words, Trump’s total went up slightly, while Harris dropped about 8 million votes.

“The entire goal of the campaign was to push her numbers down,” said a top Trump campaign adviser, who like others interviewed for this story spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe internal strategy.

Building America’s Future tried to focus its spending where the Trump campaign’s top advisers publicly signaled an interest, investing heavily in Muslim communities that the campaign was targeting and seeking to magnify the candidate’s appearances on podcasts with significant White male audiences.

“We studied the strategy that was put in place by Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita and James Blair very closely,” Peck said. “And we did what outside groups can do. We tried to amplify and support the direction in which they were taking the earned and paid media.”

They also deployed multiple brands to place the ads, concealing their common origin — Future Coalition PAC, Duty to America PAC, Americans for Consumer Protection and Progress 2028, according to people involved.

Democrats grew alarmed in the final weeks of the campaign as the ads started appearing on Facebook and Google. Priorities USA, a Harris-backing super PAC, made efforts to get spots taken down from both platforms because of their deceptive nature. Google eventually struck at least one spot in which one of the Building America’s Future groups took footage from a Harris ad in Pennsylvania targeting Jews and began targeting it to Muslims with the words “This is a real Kamala Harris ad” superimposed.

Other efforts to get ads taken down were not successful. Facebook, which has pared back its ad restrictions since 2020, declined to act on a number of requests to take down ads from Progress 2028 that praised the Harris agenda while also describing policies she did not support in 2024, like mandatory gun buybacks, universal health care for undocumented immigrants and “the most progressive Green New Deal yet.”

“There is plenty of blame to go around for another election cycle riddled with misinformation online,” Priorities USA executive director Danielle Butterfield said in a statement. “Big Tech is still unwilling to hold bad actors accountable, Congress is unwilling to step in and write new rules for the 21st century, and Republicans will continue to slander and lie to voters to make their case. Because of all of this, Democrats lose, and we need to acknowledge this reality and figure out new ways to communicate with voters on today’s internet.”

The Harris campaign also responded to the spots being geo-targeted to Dearborn, Michigan, where many Muslims live, by running their own digital ads showing the vice president discussing her concern about the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.

Andrew Romeo, who led the creative strategy for Building America’s Future and also worked as a spokesman for Musk’s America PAC, said they decided to simply ignore their detractors during the campaign.

“People were upset on both sides of the aisle on it, said it was dishonest, disingenuous, we shouldn’t be running ads that look like Harris’s. But it worked and the numbers are undeniable,” Romeo said. “We had a ton of inquiries on these efforts from the media. We didn’t answer any of them. We just ran our strategy and we didn’t care what anyone said. I think that we learned from the Trump campaign in that respect.”

One part of the effort, under the banner of Americans for Consumer Protection, targeted 2.7 million voters with more than 247 million ads and 70 million video completions. That effort also advertised about Biden administration support for a ban on menthol cigarettes to Black voters in Ohio, where Republicans successfully defeated Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown. Building America’s Future also hosted 18 events around the country, including a gathering of farmers in Pennsylvania that aimed to promote Republican Senate candidate Dave McCormick, who was projected by the Associated Press as winning that race against Sen. Bob Casey (D), who has declined to concede. A recount effort was launched Thursday.

“The key to most of our creative was homing in on the idea that the Biden-Harris administration had misplaced priorities,” the group wrote in an after-action report obtained by The Post. “Instead of banning menthols, our ads argued, Biden and Harris should be focused on lowering costs and fixing the chaos of the country.”

We Ain't Even

First, nobody gets to pretend "our side" is always the greatest, and "their side" is always nothing but dog-ass liars and thieves.

Second, I have to say I've allowed this Adams guy too much leeway - suspecting he's a dirtbag, but not knowing much about him, and thinking there's a possible "vast right wing conspiracy" angle to it.

Nope. Apparently the guy's just a fuckin' dirtbag.

And while we have to wait for the system to run its course, if they put all their little ducks in a row, and a jury turns him up guilty, then I hope they burn that fucker to the ground.

There's nothing worse than some dick in public office indulging himself in whatever corruption Adams is being accused of - which could include accepting campaign money from a foreign government - which could easily be a money laundering scheme.

Money is power, and power makes the corruptible more corruptible.

But - like I said - waiting.

New York City Mayor Eric Adams has been indicted

The charges against Adams are expected to be made public Thursday.

Eric Adams calls federal charges 'entirely false' after indictment

NEW YORK — Federal prosecutors have indicted New York City Mayor Eric Adams, making him the first mayor in city history to be charged while in office.

The dramatic move comes after a lengthy investigation that has dogged the moderate Democrat for nearly a year. The revelation — along with several other law enforcement probes that have led to a spate of high-level resignations — stand to imperil Adams’ 2025 reelection prospects.

Shortly after news of the indictment broke, nearly all of Adams’ competitors called on him to resign.

The investigation is being led by the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Damian Williams. A spokesperson for his office declined to comment.

The specific charges in the sealed indictment were not yet known. Williams is expected to make the charges public Thursday.

Adams huddled with close aides, including former Chief of Staff Frank Carone, in the mayor’s official residence of Gracie Mansion on Wednesday evening, figuring out how to respond to the monumental news, which was rumored for most of the day, people familiar with the matter told POLITICO. As he exited the mansion late Wednesday night, Carone said Adams had not been informed by federal authorities of the pending indictment by the time news broke. Asked to describe Adams’ mindset, Carone replied, “very strong.”

“Sad day for the mayor and for the city,” he said.

Carone said Adams should “never” step down. “He deserves a day in court and he’ll have it,” he added.

After The New York Times first reported the indictment, the mayor preempted Williams’ expected announcement with a statement released Wednesday night in which he proclaimed his innocence and vowed to fight the charges.

“I always knew that if I stood my ground for New Yorkers that I would be a target — and a target I became,” he said. “If I am charged, I am innocent and will fight this with every ounce of my strength and spirit.”

In a subsequent video released by his office, Adams sought for a second time to get ahead of the details set to be released by prosecutors.

“It is now my belief the federal government plans to charge me with crimes. If so, these charges will be entirely false, based on lies,” Adams said.

“For months, leaks and rumors have been aimed at me in an effort to undermine my credibility and paint me as guilty,” Adams continued, referencing the FBI raid on the home of his newly installed interim police commissioner, who took over after the resignation of former NYPD Commissioner Edward Caban.

Caban stepped down after his phone was seized as part of a separate federal investigation.

“I will fight these injustices with every ounce of my strength and my spirit,” Adams said.

His declarations did not sway a suite of candidates looking to challenge him for the mayoralty next year.

“The most appropriate path forward is for him to step down,” City Comptroller Brad Lander said in a statement posted on X.

State Sen. Zellnor Myrie said the city needs “a leader who is fully focused, without distraction.”

“Today I am calling on him to resign,” he said.

Former Comptroller Scott Stringer made similar remarks.

“There is simply zero chance that the wheels of government will move forward from this full steam ahead. Instead, we are left with a broken down trainwreck of a municipal government,” Stringer said. “The mayor needs to resign for the good of the city.”

State Sen. Jessica Ramos stopped short of calling on Adams to step down, but suggested he has lost the ability to govern.

“Over the past two and a half years, this administration has made the city more expensive, while those close to the mayor have benefited financially,” she said in a statement posted to X. “That’s a betrayal of every hardworking New Yorker.”

While investigations around him have reached a fever pitch, Adams has insisted he will not resign.

“The people of this city elected me to fight for them, and I will stay and fight no matter what,” he said in a statement earlier Wednesday, responding to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s earlier call for his resignation.

If he did step down, New York City’s Public Advocate Jumaane Williams would become acting mayor, and a nonpartisan special election would be held to fill the seat.

“The news of this indictment is itself incredibly serious,” Williams’ spokesperson William Gerlich said in a statement. “As the facts emerge, the public advocate will have more to say.”

Calls for his resignation should come as no surprise. Aside from the obvious political calculations his rivals are applying, there is no precedent in New York City’s history for a mayor to be criminally charged while in City Hall.

“We’ve had some unseemly mayors who have left office before their terms have actually ended,” said Doug Muzzio, a retired Baruch College political science professor. “We’ve never had a mayor with criminal charges. The law-and-order mayor broke the law — allegedly. But they’re not going to indict a sitting mayor unless they have an airtight case.”

Adams and his campaign have maintained the mayor’s innocence for months following a series of FBI raids that targeted figures close to the mayor’s 2021 campaign.

On Nov. 2, federal agents fanned out to multiple locations around the city where they conducted raids and interviews at the homes of several people tied to Adams, including his former campaign treasurer, an aide focused on Turkish relations and a former Turkish Airlines executive who served on Adams’ transition team. Days later, the feds stopped Adams himself on the street and confiscated several electronic devices.

Throughout the process, Adams has maintained he broke no rules.

“It takes a great deal of discipline to defend yourself when you know you have done nothing wrong,” Adams said Aug. 16, a day after The Times reported a second round of subpoenas had gone to the mayor and City Hall earlier in the summer. “But I trust my team.”

That team includes attorneys from WilmerHale — including the mayor’s former chief counsel, Brendan McGuire — who did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

But his allies were defending him late Wednesday night. Adams has maintained support among prominent Black New Yorkers, including NAACP New York State Conference President Hazel Dukes.

“This is just unreal, and I am angry, and I will stand with him all the way,” said the 92-year-old Wednesday night, who has known Adams for three decades. “He should not resign. He should have his day in court.”

In the past, Adams’ allies had sought to characterize the investigation by Williams, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District, as somehow politically or racially motivated. (Both Adams and Williams are Black.)

“I’ve been telling other people that I thought this was a witch hunt and the FBI’s going too far,” state Sen. Leroy Comrie told POLITICO weeks after the initial FBI raids.

People close to Adams, such as former Gov. David Paterson, have theorized the investigation run by President Joe Biden’s Justice Department is meant as political punishment for Adams’ criticizing Biden’s border policy.

That the U.S. Attorney’s office would bring an indictment within just weeks of a presidential general election is remarkable. It is common practice within the Department of Justice to not take any overt investigative steps in political cases in the run-up to an election — typically known as the 60-day rule.

As POLITICO has previously reported, Adams has traveled to Turkey numerous times and has deep ties to the Turkish diaspora in Brooklyn, where he served as a state senator and then in the largely ceremonial role of Brooklyn borough president before he assumed the mayoralty in 2022.

Adams has already raised millions of dollars for his reelection campaign, and the effect this indictment will have on his efforts remains unclear. Several challengers have already opened campaign accounts, while former Gov. Andrew Cuomo has been watching from afar and may enter the fray should Adams be severely weakened by the forthcoming case.

Sign Of The Times

Because of course.

Trump told the Dirty Fuels Cartel that if they "donated" a billion dollars to his "campaign", he'd make sure they got to do whatever they wanted.

Now apparently, he's made the same kinda deal with the Pro Lung Disease Consortium.

Why Big Tobacco is betting on Trump

As the industry fights a ban on menthol cigarettes, a Reynolds American subsidiary has become the largest corporate donor to the main pro-Trump super PAC.

America’s top tobacco regulator was on a work trip in the Netherlands in September 2019 when he got wind of President Donald Trump’s plan to take abrupt action on vaping, the booming business offering a substitute for smokers but presenting hazards of its own.

“This was coming out of left field,” said Mitch Zeller, at the time the director of the Food and Drug Administration’s tobacco center.

Zeller supported the plan Trump put forward the next day in the Oval Office: removing mouthwatering flavors, such as mango and mint, that were making e-cigarettes so popular with teenagers. But he feared that Trump’s hasty rollout would doom the effort, he said in a recent interview.

Indeed, Trump soon shelved the proposal amid pressure from lobbyists and political advisers who warned the move could endanger his 2020 reelection campaign because of the popularity of vaping, the heating of nicotine to make an inhaled aerosol.

Four years later, the tobacco industry is banking on Trump’s chaotic approach to public health — and pliable views on policy — as it confronts a new challenge to its bottom line: efforts by regulators in the Biden administration to ban menthol cigarettes, which represent 36 percent of the cigarette market.

The top corporate donor to the main pro-Trump super PAC is a subsidiary of Reynolds American, the second-largest tobacco company in the United States and the maker of Newports, the No. 1 menthol brand in the country. The subsidiary, RAI Services Company, has given $8.5 million to the super PAC, called Make America Great Again Inc., federal records show. The company does not appear to have contributed money to groups backing Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee.

Big Tobacco’s bet on Trump shows how corporate interests believe the former president can be swayed by campaign donations — and brought into line even on issues where he has shown some independence from GOP orthodoxy, said former U.S. officials and industry lobbyists. The contributions represent a muscular move by the company into presidential politics. A Reynolds PAC funded by employee contributions donated just $25,000 to a Trump campaign committee in 2016, and the company contributed $1 million to Trump’s inauguration in 2017. These entities do not appear to have made contributions in the presidential race in 2020. A Reynolds representative did not respond to detailed questions about the company’s political giving or its interactions with Trump.

Over the past three decades, political contributions by the industry have declined, especially at the federal level, as companies focused their efforts on state and local controversies over higher cigarette taxes and smoking prevention. Reynolds’s major pro-Trump move bucks that trend.

Brian Ballard, a prominent Trump-aligned lobbyist whose firm has represented Reynolds since 2017, suggested the company make the donations, according to a person familiar with the activity. Reynolds executives have met with Trump on multiple occasions in 2023 and 2024, including a lengthy meeting earlier this year in New York where they emphasized their concerns about a menthol ban, said the person, who, like some others interviewed for this story, spoke on the condition of anonymity to reveal sensitive details. The executives also raised other subjects with the former president, especially counterfeit vaping pens they said were flooding in from China through the Port of Los Angeles and cutting into their profits. Ballard did not respond to an email seeking comment.

Former company employees and lobbyists, as well as former Trump aides, said Reynolds sees Trump as its best hope of achieving a range of objectives, including fending off a proposed ban on menthol cigarettes, which is in limbo. The Biden administration has delayed a final decision after political advisers warned the president that it could cost him votes among Black smokers who studies show favor the products. The delay may give Trump authority over the ultimate policy if he returns to the White House.

The issue is now a thorny one for Harris. She has previously supported efforts to limit the products, though her campaign did not respond to questions about her current position. A Trump spokesman also did not respond to questions about his view. Conservatives believe the issue can be used to erode Black support for Harris: A Republican-aligned group is spearheading a $10 million ad campaign tying her to the administration’s proposed ban.

The advertising blitz is a further illustration of the political significance of Big Tobacco and its causes this November. The industry’s influence could carry over into policymaking next year.

Stephanie Grisham, who witnessed the back-and-forth over tobacco regulation as an aide to both Trump and his wife, Melania, said the GOP standard-bearer will see the Reynolds donations as a sign of “loyalty” and look to return the favor if elected.

“It would absolutely weigh on his thinking,” said Grisham, who has publicly disavowed Trump.

‘Bully him’

Trump is no fan of smoking.

“I tell people, ‘No drugs, no drinking, no cigarettes,’” he said in a podcast interview last month.

For years, he has expressed revulsion for the habit. “I watch people smoke; it looks terrible to me,” Trump said on the campaign trail in 2015. “It’s terrible.”

When he was elected, the teetotaling, cigarette-averse president seemed like a natural ally for antismoking advocates. In 2017, Trump’s FDA commissioner, Scott Gottlieb, put forward a comprehensive tobacco strategy calling for reduced nicotine levels in cigarettes.

A year later, health officials received alarming new data that focused their attention on e-cigarettes. Vaping by minors was skyrocketing, driven by the popularity of products offered by Juul Labs that came with a range of flavors, such as mango and menthol. In 2018, Gottlieb labeled teen vaping an “epidemic” and proposed ways of curbing flavored e-cigarettes, saying he wanted to ban menthol cigarettes and flavored cigars as well.

The issue caught the attention of Kellyanne Conway, senior counselor to the president and Trump’s onetime campaign manager, according to Grisham, Trump’s press secretary at the time and also an aide to the first lady.

According to Grisham, Conway brought her concerns about flavored e-cigarettes to Melania Trump, knowing the first lady wanted to work on issues involving children.

“She knew Mrs. Trump would be able to influence her husband,” Grisham said.

Conway said she never favored banning flavors but “protecting kids,” including a proposal to raise the age to 21 for e-cigarette sales and other tobacco products, which Trump signed into law in December 2019. Conway said she doesn’t favor prohibiting products including vapes and menthol cigarettes, adding, “The Democrats are the party of bans.”

But when Trump gathered his top health officials in the Oval Office in September 2019 to act on the issue of teenage vaping at the urging of his wife and Conway, senior officials framed their action as a sweeping ban. Alex Azar, the health secretary, said the aim was to “clear the market” of flavored e-cigarettes, including mint and menthol, allowing the products to be sold only once they gained formal approval from federal regulators.

Zeller, the top tobacco regulator, who was in the Netherlands when the hasty meeting was called back in Washington, said he believed right away that Trump’s approach was a mistake. His staff hadn’t drafted anything, Zeller said; they weren’t prepared with regulations or policies to make good on the announcement.

“I knew there would be a vacuum in the aftermath of the announcement that would be filled by all those who oppose a flavor ban, creating a political nightmare for the White House,” said Zeller, who is now retired from government and advising a pharmaceutical start-up developing technology to treat tobacco dependence.

Within two months, Zeller’s prediction had come to pass. As health officials readied plans to take most flavors off the market, Trump’s campaign advisers presented him with data showing that vaping was popular among his supporters. On Nov. 4, the day before a planned news conference to launch the decisive action, Trump balked, refusing to approve a one-page memo advancing the policy.

Conway was frustrated, as was the first lady, recalled Grisham, though she said Melania Trump understood how her husband would view the matter. “I think Mrs. Trump threw up her hands because she knew that if anything was going to impact a potential second term, he wasn’t going to do it.”

A Trump spokesman did not respond to questions about the former first lady.

Looking back, Grisham added, the policy was bound to fail because of the chaotic way it came about.

“We rarely did things through a process with agencies as you should,” she said. “So this was more of, ‘Let’s get him in a room, let’s convince him or bully him with his wife there, let’s get him to say yes and say it publicly.’”

Early the following year, the Trump administration moved forward with a scaled-back plan to limit flavored e-cigarettes, notably exempting the popular menthol flavor from the regulation. Public health groups were incensed. The American Lung Association said the lack of more decisive action would “compromise the health of our nation’s children.”

Alienating the base

Public health experts turned their hopes to Joe Biden, who had emerged as a major advocate for cancer prevention in the waning days of the Obama administration.

“If I could be anything, I would have wanted to have been the president that ended cancer, because it’s possible,” Biden said in October 2015, as he announced that he would not seek the presidency that cycle while grieving his son Beau’s death from brain cancer.

Biden oversaw the Obama administration’s cancer moonshot and, after leaving office, stood up his own cancer initiative in 2017, in which he repeatedly warned about the risks of smoking. Biden also signaled that fighting cancer would be a presidential priority, vowing on the 2020 campaign trail to renew his efforts to address the disease.

“Once we beat covid, we’re going to do everything we can to end cancer as we know it,” Biden said in February 2021, several weeks after taking office. Two months later, federal regulators announced their intention to ban menthol products, and, in April 2022, the FDA released its proposed rule.

The political sensitivities of banning menthol were immediately apparent, with some Black lawmakers and advocates saying it represented an unfair crackdown on products favored by the Black community. White House aides, meanwhile, stressed that Biden was deferring to public health experts, as the administration asserted that the planned ban could prevent as many as 654,000 deaths in the United States — including as many as 238,000 among African Americans — over the next 40 years.

Menthol, a chemical found in mint plants that can also be made in a lab, provides a cooling sensation when added to cigarettes, making smoking less harsh. A study based on Canada’s experience outlawing menthol cigarettes in 2017 concluded that a similar ban in the United States would lead 1.3 million Americans to quit smoking and save hundreds of thousands of lives.

According to two current U.S. officials and one former senior official, Biden had support for his cancer efforts inside the White House from Harris, the daughter of a cancer researcher, who as a senator had signed a 2018 letter supporting a ban on menthol cigarettes. Fighting cancer “is an issue of personal significance to so many and for me,” Harris said in February 2022 remarks, reflecting on her mother’s death from breast cancer. “You see, after a lifetime working to end cancer, cancer ended my mother’s life.”

The vice president’s office declined to address her position on the menthol ban. A Harris aide said that the issue “is being taken very seriously” but that no decision had been reached.

But as regulators worked to finalize the administration’s menthol rule, warnings of the political blowback became more acute. Cornell Belcher, a Democratic pollster, issued a memo last year arguing that a ban risked alienating Biden’s “base supporters” in the 2024 election, citing his own polling in battleground states. Belcher’s poll and analysis were funded by Altria, a tobacco company. Neither Belcher nor Altria responded to requests for comment.

There has been effectively no progress on the menthol ban over the past year, officials said, with the White House repeatedly missing its self-imposed deadlines to finalize it. In April, Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra released a terse, two-sentence announcement that the administration needed “significantly more time” to consider debate over the ban. Asked this month about the status of the ban, federal officials referred back to Becerra’s statement.

Even if Biden belatedly moves to finalize the rule, it could now be blocked or rolled back by a newly elected Trump because it requires one year to be fully implemented.

Meanwhile, Harris is already facing well-funded attacks over the administration’s proposed ban.

A memo circulated by a group called Building America’s Future — which is staffed by veterans of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’s unsuccessful bid for the Republican presidential nomination — describes menthol as “The Niche Message That Can Reverse Harris’ Consolidation of Black Voters.” The nonprofit is part of an effort to spend $10 million on ads linking her to the stalled rule and targeting Black voters in the battleground states of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina and Wisconsin.

Changing the debate

Black smokers have similarly been at the heart of a lobbying campaign undertaken by Reynolds, according to internal documents obtained by The Washington Post.

One document, marked “confidential,” outlined the “objectives” of the company’s influence efforts. Among them: “Change the debate on menthol in DC.”

Advocates for prohibition say banning menthol would reduce chronic disease and save lives, especially among Black Americans. Reynolds has sought to flip that argument on its head. In another memo circulated to company lobbyists, Reynolds argued that a ban would weaken relations between communities of color and law enforcement. The one-page memo bluntly warns of an “increased likelihood the police will use force on a person of color” if police were required to enforce a ban, which it calls “counter to progressive policing principles.”

The memo includes statements from prominent civil rights activists, including the Rev. Al Sharpton, who is quoted in the memo arguing that any consideration of banning menthol cigarettes must “include a candid discussion about racial disparities and selective prosecution in communities of color.” The National Action Network, which Sharpton founded, has received donations from Reynolds, as both the civil rights leader and the company have acknowledged. They have declined to detail the amount. Sharpton’s organization did not respond to a request for comment.

The company has used a similar argument on Capitol Hill, telling lawmakers that a menthol ban would “create another Eric Garner situation,” said a former Reynolds lobbyist, referring to the 43-year-old Black man killed in 2014 by police after he was stopped on suspicion of illegally selling single cigarettes.

Public health advocates and policymakers have dismissed those arguments as false and inflammatory, noting that the crackdown targets retailers, wholesalers, distributors and other businesses — not individual smokers.

Claims that a menthol ban would lead to abusive policing in Black communities are “unfounded,” 21 attorneys general wrote to Biden in January. “The FDA plainly states that federal authorities will not enforce the proposed menthol ban against individual consumers.”

At the same time, Reynolds has been eyeing what the former lobbyist said the company views as a more potent tool to prevent prohibition of menthol cigarettes: putting Trump back in the White House.

When he was first elected in 2016, Trump wasn’t seen as friendly to the industry, said a former Reynolds executive. “We all knew his profile: doesn’t drink, never smoked,” the former executive said.

The company gave little to his campaign but donated to Trump’s inauguration, which secured executives a spot at a dinner with the newly minted president, said a person who attended. In 2017, Reynolds also put $1.5 million into the pro-Trump nonprofit America First Policies, according to a corporate disclosure.

Though the company has made bipartisan political donations, senior leaders appreciate that Republicans are more lenient with the industry than are Democrats, said a former longtime employee. “The mindset of the organization was, ‘If we can get a conservative leader in place — at the local level, at the state level and at the federal level — it would benefit the industry,’” this person said.

That preference became more pronounced as the Biden administration pursued its menthol ban, said the former lobbyist. The issue is critical for Reynolds: A ban would spoil one of the company’s most significant recent ventures — the acquisition in 2015 of the Lorillard Tobacco Company, which makes the Newport brand of menthol cigarettes.

“The whole reason they bought this company is about to be banned,” said the former lobbyist.

Reynolds executives feel they narrowly escaped a ban under Biden and can’t count on their good fortune should Harris win the presidency, said the former lobbyist and other former employees. They said the aim now is not just to help elect Trump but also to deepen the company’s relationship with him.

Zeller, the former top tobacco regulator, said the company’s plan could work. Trump’s expressed disinterest in the fine points of public policy and the anti-regulatory agenda of the people likely to staff his potential second term would make him “susceptible to outside interests, financial or otherwise,” he argued.

Regulators made modest but surprisingly significant gains in antismoking efforts when Trump was last in the White House, Zeller said. A second Trump term, he predicted, would be different.

“Those days are long gone,” Zeller said.

The Trump Scam

Republican Donors, Do You Know Where Your Money Goes?

We long ago blew past any meaningful controls on political giving in American elections. Now we should focus on the rules governing political spending, which are in equally terrible shape. For that we can blame the Trump campaign and the federal government’s feeble enforcement efforts.

Anyone who has spent time reviewing Donald Trump’s campaign spending reports would quickly conclude they’re a governance nightmare. There is so little disclosure about what happened to the billions raised in 2020 and 2024 that donors (and maybe even the former president himself) can’t possibly know how it was spent.

Federal Election Commission campaign disclosure reports from 2020 show that much of the money donated to the Trump campaign went into a legal and financial black hole reportedly controlled by Trump family members and close associates. This year’s campaign disclosures are shaping up to be the same. Donors big and small give their hard-earned dollars to candidates with the expectation they will be spent on direct efforts to win votes. They deserve better.

During the 2020 election, almost $516 million of the over $780 million spent by the Trump campaign was directed to American Made Media Consultants, a Delaware-based private company created in 2018 that masked the identities of who ultimately received donor dollars, according to a complaint filed with the F.E.C. by the nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center. How A.M.M.C. spent the money was a mystery even to Mr. Trump’s campaign team, according to news reports shortly after the election.

All but 18 of the 150 largest expenditures on a Trump campaign’s 2020 F.E.C. report went to A.M.M.C. None of the expenses were itemized or otherwise explained aside from anodyne descriptions including “placed media,” “SMS advertising” and “online advertising.” F.E.C. rules require candidates to fully and accurately disclose the final recipients of their campaign disbursements, which is usually understood to include when payments are made through a vendor such as A.M.M.C. This disclosure is intended to assure donors their contributions are used for campaign expenses. Currently, neither voters nor law enforcement can know whether any laws were broken.

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A.M.M.C.’s first president was reported to be Lara Trump, the wife of Mr. Trump’s son Eric. The New York Times reported that A.M.M.C. had a treasurer who was also the chief financial officer of Mr. Trump’s 2020 presidential campaign. Mr. Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner signed off on the plan to set up A.M.M.C., and one of Eric Trump’s deputies from the Trump Organization was involved in running it.

Ms. Trump is now a co-chair of the Republican National Committee, which, soon after her arrival, announced it would link up with the Trump campaign for joint fund-raising. The joint entity prioritizes a PAC that pays Mr. Trump’s legal fees over the R.N.C., The Associated Press has reported, making assurances from Mr. Trump’s campaign co-manager that R.N.C. funds wouldn’t be used to pay Mr. Trump’s legal bills seem more hollow.

This election, the Trump campaign and four of its PACs have paid Red Curve Solutions, another private company, at least $18 million. The Campaign Legal Center says Red Curve appears to pay Mr. Trump’s legal bills and then gets reimbursed by the PACs. (The law is murky on what types of legal bills can be paid by campaigns, but some are allowed.) The head of Red Curve also serves as the treasurer for the Trump campaign as well as the affiliated PACs.

What percentage of donor contributions go to lawyers defending Mr. Trump? It’s impossible to know.

In June, NBC revealed the existence of a new mystery company, called Launchpad Strategies. Launchpad took in almost $15 million in Trump political cash via the Trump Save America Joint Fundraising Committee and the Trump National Committee. Little is known about this new group. It was created in 2023 and the Trump campaign says it is related to fund-raising. We don’t know who owns it, who runs it or where the $15 million went.

It seems likely Mr. Trump is keeping close tabs on donations flowing through campaign vehicles controlled by family members and loyalists. But from early March through July of this year, the Biden and now Harris campaign outspent the Trump campaign three to one on advertising. By late May, the Democratic campaign had opened 200 field offices and hired 1,000 staff members in key states. The Trump campaign didn’t open its first office in the crucial battleground of Pennsylvania until June. The Biden campaign had 24 there in April.

Mr. Biden’s campaign also spent donor cash on legal bills, though apparently in far smaller quantities. It paid over $1 million for attorneys during a special counsel probe of the president’s handling of classified documents, The Associated Press reported in April.

Maybe the Trump campaign is saving up for a post-Labor Day blitz to the finish line. Or perhaps Brad Parscale, whose strategy firm took in $94 million from Trump-affiliated groups in the 2016 campaign, spent every cent of that to re-elect the president. We know he seems to have paid himself handsomely. He bought a $2.4 million Fort Lauderdale waterfront property, a BMW X6, a Range Rover and a Ferrari. When Mr. Trump learned of Mr. Parscale’s high-rolling lifestyle, he reportedly exclaimed, “That’s my money!” according to Michael Bender’s book on the Trump campaign. Concerns about Mr. Parscale reportedly drove Mr. Kushner to ensure A.M.M.C. was fully controlled by the Trump family and trusted lieutenants.

Donors should demand more information about how their money is spent. But that would most likely offend the Trump family and confidants running the campaign. And the whole point of donating to Mr. Trump is to get on his good side.

And — just hypothetically, of course — if Vice President Kamala Harris opens up her lead in the polls and the odds fall that Mr. Trump could win, who would be surprised if the unknown owners of the mystery companies paid themselves more while the campaign spigots are blasting cash and the future uncertain?

The Federal Election Commission should demand that all campaigns disclose recipients of more than $200 in campaign cash. At least that’s what the law says. Campaign Legal Center tried to get the F.E.C. to enforce disclosure rules on the Trump campaign. The commissioners voted 3 to 3 to dismiss the matter, and federal courts have declined to step in. The legal center has appealed the case to the full U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

The commission, long famous in Washington for its dysfunction, now seems incapable of its most basic enforcement role. The agency reportedly had only three open investigations in June despite the proliferation of hundreds of new campaigns and PACs. Congress should demand it better police the recipients of campaign contributions. And if the law is inadequate, Congress should make new ones.

That Dark Money Thing

As long as the bad guys can hide the amounts, and the recipients, and the donors, we're going to have bigger and bigger problems with getting good decent people elected, and with understanding just what the fuck is wrong when we know with near certainty that everybody voted one way, but somehow the result went in the other direction.

AN EGYPTIAN BANK CLAIMED DETAILS OF A SUSPECTED $10 MILLION PAYMENT TO TRUMP MIGHT BE IN CHINA

Back on September 19, 2018, then DC Chief Judge Beryl Howell denied a motion brought by an Egyptian bank to quash a subpoena for information on a suspected $10 million payment made to then-candidate Trump in fall 2016. That set off litigation that continued, at the District, Circuit, and Supreme Courts, for at least nine months.

As CNN described in 2020, not long after the investigation got shut down under Bill Barr, investigators had been trying to see whether Egypt (or some entity for which Egypt served as go-between) provided the money that Trump spent on his campaign weeks before the election.

For more than three years, federal prosecutors investigated whether money flowing through an Egyptian state-owned bank could have backed millions of dollars Donald Trump donated to his own campaign days before he won the 2016 election, multiple sources familiar with the investigation told CNN.

The investigation, which both predated and outlasted special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe, examined whether there was an illegal foreign campaign contribution. It represents one of the most prolonged efforts by federal investigators to understand the President’s foreign financial ties, and became a significant but hidden part of the special counsel’s pursuits.

The investigation was kept so secret that at one point investigators locked down an entire floor of a federal courthouse in Washington, DC, so Mueller’s team could fight for the Egyptian bank’s records in closed-door court proceedings following a grand jury subpoena. The probe, which closed this summer with no charges filed, has never before been described publicly.

Prosecutors suspected there could be a link between the Egyptian bank and Trump’s campaign contribution, according to several of the sources, but they could never prove a connection.

It took months of legal fight after Judge Howell denied that motion to quash before the Egyptian bank in question complied, and once they got subpoena returns, prosecutors repeatedly complained that the bank was still withholding information, which led prosecutors to reopen the investigation with a new grand jury.

That much we know from documentation unsealed back in 2019 (part one, part two, part three), in response to a Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press request for unsealing.

On August 17, 2023, while she was still Chief Judge, Beryl Howell ordered the government to post newly unsealed sets of some of the orders she issued during the litigation. On Thursday, Chief Judge Boasberg ordered that newly redacted set of opinions to be released. While Howell released six opinions in June 2019 along with the other materials from the case — with redactions done digitally, thereby hiding the length of redactions — just three new versions of her orders got released last week:

• September 19, 2018 memorandum denying motion to quash
• January 15, 2019 memorandum regarding sanctions
• January 30, 2019 memorandum limiting ability to refer to proceedings

These may be limited to orders incorporated as appendices in prior appeals, which might also explain why the first two appear twice in the newly-released materials.

Much of the newly unsealed material pertains to a fight over how much Alston & Bird, the law firm representing the Egyptian bank, could say about the litigation publicly. Among other things, prosecutors under Robert Mueller objected to their own names appearing publicly, out of a desire to tie this litigation to the narrow scope of Mueller’s investigation into interference in 2016.

One thing made clearer by a redaction in that January 2019 opinion on public comments is that the DC Circuit considered what public comments the two sides could make, in addition to SCOTUS, as part of its denial of cert.

It’s possible that the DC Circuit has weighed in, secretly. Among the details newly unsealed in the original opinion are the names of two of the bank’s other lawyers: Ashraf Shaaban (who appears to be or have been in-house counsel) and Mona Zulficar (who runs a Cairo corporate law firm). Those lawyers were named in conjunction with declarations they submitted arguing some part of the claim that Egyptian Anti-Money Laundering law would prohibit compliance with the subpoena as would unspecified law in a third country, described as Country B.

Howell described that Alston & Bird are relying on,

conclusory declarations by [redacted] own Country A in-house and retained counsel, which themselves cite no legal authority on this question of [redaction] See Decl. of Ashraf Shaaban,, Mov’s Group Legal Counsel (“Shaaban Decl.”)¶7, ECF No. 3-6; Suppl. Decl. of Mona Zulficar, “Suppl. Zulficar Decl.”)¶ 4, ECF No. 12. The Court gives these declarations little weight. [bold newly unsealed, compare this passage with this one]

So if we can figure out who Shaaban works or worked for to ID the bank.

It’s the unspecific third country, Country B, that is the most interesting new disclosure, however.

The newly unsealed passages do not identify which country, described as Country A and which CNN identified as Egypt, owns this bank. But they do show that the bank or its lawyers wanted to share the subpoena with personnel in Cairo.

The newly unsealed passages do identify which third country’s laws, unspecified laws, might prohibit lawyers from searching for responsive documents in that country: China.

In other words, a bank owned by Egypt said it couldn’t comply with a subpoena seeking information on a suspected payment to Trump during the 2016 election, in part, because China’s laws would prevent that.

Today's 🤬

If billionaires (along with their coin-operated politicians and judges) aren't in fact above the law, then somebody needs to step up and prove it.

Start putting these assholes in prison.

Sick to fucking death of this shit.

Billionaire Leonard Leo rejects Senate subpoena over supreme court gifts

Progressive groups hail long-brewed move against influential donor but protest lack of summons for Harlan Crow

The big-money rightwing donor Leonard Leo said he would not comply with a subpoena issued by the US Senate judiciary committee, as it investigates undisclosed gifts to conservative supreme court justices that have stoked an ethics crisis at a court already held in historically low public esteem.

Referring to Dick Durbin, the Illinois Democrat who chairs the committee, Leo said: “I am not capitulating to his lawless support of Senator Sheldon Whitehouse [a Democrat from Rhode Island] and the left’s dark money effort to silence and cancel political opposition.”

Democrats on the judiciary committee are concerned with rightwing dark money and its effects on a court stacked 6-3 in favour of conservatives since Donald Trump installed three justices in just four years in power.

Multiple reports, led by the non-profit newsroom ProPublica, have described undisclosed gifts including luxury travel and resort stays given to Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, long-serving hardline court rightwingers.

Thomas and Alito deny all wrongdoing. The chief justice, John Roberts, has refused to testify in Congress. The court issued a new ethics code but it is enforceable only by the justices themselves.

In November, the Senate committee voted on party lines to subpoena Leo and the Texas billionaire Harlan Crow, a collector of Hitler memorabilia with close links to Thomas. On Thursday, more than four months later, Leo said he had received a subpoena but a spokesperson for Crow said he did not.

In a statement to the Washington Post, Durbin said: “Since July 2023, Leonard Leo has responded to the legitimate oversight requests of the Senate judiciary committee with a blanket refusal to cooperate. His outright defiance left the committee with no other choice but to move forward with compulsory process. For that reason, I have issued a subpoena to Mr Leo.

“Mr Leo has played a central role in the ethics crisis plaguing the supreme court … This subpoena is a direct result of Mr Leo’s own actions and choices.”

Progressive groups welcomed the Leo subpoena but protested about the lack of one for Crow.

Caroline Ciccone, president of Accountable.US, which has focused on drawing attention to Leo’s coordination of billions of dollars in rightwing political spending, said: “Thanks to … Leo, a full-blown corruption crisis has plagued the high court for over a year, undermining its credibility …

“Today’s subpoena is a critical step toward accountability, and toward ensuring that our high court adheres to the highest possible ethics standards. As a result of the strong leadership of Chairman Durbin and the judiciary committee, we can now begin to get to the bottom of the corruption crisis pervading the supreme court.”

But Ezra Levin, co-executive director of Indivisible, said that though the Leo subpoena was “a long overdue first step towards ensuring accountability” it was also “far from enough”.

“The entire country has been waiting too long for Durbin to take action, and subpoenaing Leonard Leo without simultaneously subpoenaing Harlan Crow is a half-baked attempt at doing his job as judiciary chair.”

Pointing to epochal rulings from the rightwing court including removing the federal right to abortion, loosening gun control and ending race-based affirmative action in colleges, Levin added: “Democrats cannot let this corrupt and compromised supreme court continue to have a strong hold on our fundamental rights without any form of accountability.

“Durbin cannot ignore the overwhelming calls and pressure from his own base. He must continue to exercise his authority … by subpoenaing Harlan Crow, holding the justices and their accomplices accountable, and unrigging a court that was packed by Trump and his Maga supporters.”

- MORE -

The king of dark money effectively controls the US supreme court now

‘Conservative justices? Yeah, in what way?’ Key senator on a supreme court in thrall to special interests

Vote Your Values

... and recognize that your values guide your interests - but sometimes it has to go the other way, and your interests drive your values.

Don't abandon your belief in your better self. Just understand that you have a lesser chance to be that better self if you don't survive some of the more mundane - even crass and distasteful - things in life along the way.

It may involve issuing a few fat lips and bloody noses.

In the meantime, the plutocracy is rollin' along, singin' a song.

We're told that publicly disclosed campaign money is a determinant factor in an election. And there's still some truth to that, but this is not 2009 (ie: before Citizens United v FEC), and we've drifted away from being the kind of democracy we keep telling ourselves we are.

Press Poodles need to start looking beyond what a candidate (particularly a GOP candidate) has in their "campaign war chest".

Any given Republican running for any given office can be pretty sure that whatever they spend on ads and such will be supplemented 3- or 5- or 10-fold by private (and anonymous) "donors" who are basically buying that candidate's vote at whatever level of government they're going to "serve".

And while there's a good bit of that on the Dems' side as well, I estimate a very large majority of it goes to the benefit of the GOP.

Today's Beau

Has has to know there's little chance for it, so it makes me wonder if Hawley is signaling his intention to directly challenge McConnell.

Curiouser

We have to figure out how to deal with this shit. Either we go on allowing foreign money to influence elections and buy favor with the politicians who are being installed with the help of that money, or we get back to trying to "form a more perfect union".

There will not be both.

New details link George Santos to cousin of sanctioned Russian oligarch

The New York congressman once claimed Andrew Intrater’s company was his “client,” while another Intrater company allegedly made a deposit with a firm where Santos worked

George Santos, the freshman Republican congressman from New York who lied about his biography, has deeper ties than previously known to a businessman who cultivated close links with a onetime Trump confidant and who is the cousin of a sanctioned Russian oligarch, according to video footage and court documents.

Andrew Intrater and his wife each gave the maximum $5,800 to Santos’ main campaign committee and tens of thousands more since 2020 to committees linked to him, according to filings with the Federal Election Commission. Intrater’s cousin is Russian billionaire Viktor Vekselberg, who has been sanctioned by the U.S. government for his role in the Russian energy industry.

The relationship between Santos and Intrater goes beyond campaign contributions, according to a statement made privately by Santos in 2020 and a court filing the following year in a lawsuit brought by the Securities and Exchange Commission against a Florida-based investment firm, Harbor City Capital, where Santos worked for more than a year.

Taken together, the evidence suggests Santos may have had a business relationship with Intrater as Santos was first entering politics in 2020. It also shows, according to the SEC filing, that Intrater put hundreds of thousands of dollars into Santos’ onetime employer, Harbor City, which was accused by regulators of running a Ponzi scheme. Neither Santos nor Intrater responded to requests for comment. Attorneys who have represented Intrater also did not respond.

The congressman, whose election from Long Island last year helped the GOP secure its narrow House majority, has apologized for what he called “résumé embellishment” while rebuffing calls for his resignation. He is under scrutiny by prosecutors in New York and Rio de Janeiro.

Ties between Santos, 34, and Intrater, 60, reflect the ways Santos found personal and political support on his path to public office.

While Intrater is a U.S. citizen, his company, the investment firm Columbus Nova, has historically had extensive ties to the business interests of his Russian cousin. As recently as 2018, when Vekselberg was sanctioned by the Treasury Department, his conglomerate was Columbus Nova’s largest client, the company confirmed to The Post that year.

⬆︎ That may be perfectly legit, but c'mon - really?

Intrater’s interactions in 2016 and 2017 with Michael Cohen, who at the time was working as a lawyer for Donald Trump, were probed during special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election and possible links between Trump and the Kremlin.

Intrater’s company paid the lawyer and self-described Trump fixer to identify deals for his business, and court records show they exchanged hundreds of texts and phone calls. Neither Intrater nor Vekselberg was accused of wrongdoing in Mueller’s investigation.

In 2020, when Santos was tasked by Harbor City with locating investors in New York, he claimed in a Harbor City meeting held over Zoom that Intrater’s investment firm, Columbus Nova, was a “client” of his, according to footage obtained by The Washington Post.

He made the comment during a discussion of the difficulties of residential real estate investing, in particular for investors who put money into the 1,400-foot tall tower at 432 Park Avenue in Manhattan, which for a time was the tallest residential building in the world. Intrater did not respond to a question about whether he or Columbus Nova was involved in the project.

“You might know who they are,” Santos added in the company meeting, referring to Columbus Nova. “They’ve made the news on several occasions. They were heavily involved with the Russia probe. Unjustified.”

“But they’re a real estate company,” Santos added. “They’re legitimate.”

Santos did not respond to a text message seeking comment. Intrater did not respond to an emailed question about whether his firm was Santos’s client as claimed or about the deposit with Harbor City.

The congressman has falsified substantial aspects of his work experience. And, in the Harbor City Zoom meetings reviewed by The Post, he recounted dealings with other prominent investors or moneyed organizations that those entities denied took place.

But Harbor City was able to land a $625,000 deposit from a company registered in Mississippi that identifies Intrater as its lone officer, according to an exhibit included in the SEC’s complaint against Harbor City. The alleged deposit, which is undated, is included in a chart that lists several entities that the SEC says made payments to Harbor City.

The Mississippi company, FEA Innovations, is registered to Intrater, according to secretary of state records. Registration documents include no other officers or directors and identify Intrater’s address as the same one used by Columbus Nova on Madison Avenue in Manhattan. Columbus Nova is now known as Sparrow Capital.

In the SEC action, initiated in April 2021, regulators accused Harbor City and its founder of running a “classic Ponzi scheme” — promising investors reliable profit and instead bilking them out of millions.

The SEC complaint did not name Santos, who has denied knowledge of the alleged wrongdoing, although he had been told by a prospective investor that the firm was using a fraudulent bank document, as The Post previously reported.

Harbor City’s founder, J.P. Maroney, has denied the SEC allegations, which were brought in federal court in Florida. The company itself has not responded in court. Maroney did not respond to a text message about the alleged deposit from Intrater’s firm. The exhibit that identifies the alleged deposit from Intrater’s company does not elaborate on its purpose or suggest that Intrater had knowledge of purported wrongdoing at Harbor City.

After Harbor City’s assets were frozen, and with assistance from a fellow former Harbor City employee, Santos in 2021 formed a company, the Devolder Organization, that paid him at least $3.5 million over the next two years, according to Florida business records and financial disclosure forms he filed as a candidate. Santos loaned his campaign more than $700,000 but did not report any income from Harbor City despite having been paid by the company as recently as April 2021.

Details of Santos’s tenure at Harbor City were confirmed by a court-appointed lawyer overseeing liquidation of the company’s assets.

Columbus Nova became a subject of interest for the Mueller investigation as prosecutors probed the ties forged by Intrater and his company with Cohen, a confidant of Trump’s at the time.

Intrater donated $250,000 to Trump’s inaugural committee, according to campaign finance records, and attended the 2017 inaugural, along with Vekselberg. The Washington Post has reported that the two men encountered Cohen at the inauguration. Not long after, Columbus Nova began paying Cohen as part of a contract to recruit new investors for the company, The Post reported. Court records show the payments totaled $583,000.

Court records also show that Cohen and Intrater exchanged more than 1,000 calls and text messages between November 2016 and November 2017. Intrater donated $35,000 to attend a 2017 fundraiser for Trump’s reelection, attending at Cohen’s invitation, The Post has reported.

Federal officials questioned both Intrater and Vekselberg during the probe, interviewing the latter after his private airplane made a stop in the United States in 2018, people familiar with the investigation said.

Cohen ultimately pleaded guilty to campaign finance violations, tax and bank fraud and lying to Congress — matters unrelated to his interactions with Columbus Nova. Intrater told the New York Times in 2019 that his omission from Mueller’s final report “confirms what I knew all along — that I’ve done nothing wrong.”

Cohen later turned on Trump, criticizing him in a 2019 congressional hearing and cooperating with investigations into his former boss’ business practices.

Vekselberg and his company, Renova, were sanctioned by the Treasury Department in April 2018, cited for benefiting from Russian President Vladimir Putin’s “malign activity around the globe.” In April 2022, following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Vekselberg’s $90 million yacht was seized by Spanish authorities at the request of the United States.

Columbus Nova has long been described as closely associated with the Renova Group, a Russian conglomerate run by Vekselberg. As recently as 2017, a website for Renova Group listed Columbus Nova as one of its companies, and Columbus Nova confirmed to The Post in 2018 that Vekselberg’s conglomerate was at that time its largest client. However, the firm said at the time that it was owned by Americans and had never been controlled by Renova Group or Vekselberg.

Today's Broken Shit

Our shit is broken - just not in the way Republicans keep screaming about.

And that's one of the shitty little insidious tricks that shitty little insidious pricks use to amp up the rubes while kinda freezing the rest of us in place. We can't just run to the opposite extreme and proclaim everything's peachy, and also dandy - because we know politics is pretty fucked up. So we have to agree - in part.

But the rubes have been conditioned to think in Manichean terms. Everything has to be all one way, or all one other way. So if you acknowledge the tiny kernel of truth in whatever their assertion is, they take it as your being in total agreement, and if you argue otherwise, you're either a hypocrite or a wishy-washy liberal who can't even be on his own side in a fight.

So anyway, along comes George Santos to show us Dark Money isn't so dark anymore, and to demonstrate the standard GOP shuffle - deny, double down, counterattack.

The Mysterious, Unregistered Fund That Raised Big Money for Santos

A review of records and newly uncovered documents reveals that efforts to elect George Santos may have run afoul of campaign finance rules.

A month before George Santos was elected to Congress, one of his large donors received a call asking him to consider making another sizable contribution.

The request came from a Republican loyalist calling on behalf of RedStone Strategies, which was described in an email to the donor as an “independent expenditure” group that was supporting Mr. Santos’s bid to flip a Democratic House seat in New York. The group had already raised $800,000 and was seeking to raise another $700,000, according to the email, which was reviewed by The New York Times.

The donor came through: Days later, on Oct. 21, he sent $25,000 to a Wells Fargo Bank account belonging to RedStone Strategies.

Three months later, Mr. Santos is now in Congress, but where the donor’s money went is unclear. The Federal Election Commission said it had no evidence that RedStone Strategies was registered as a political group, and there do not appear to be any records documenting its donors, contributions or spending.

Mr. Santos and his lawyer refused to answer questions about RedStone’s fund-raising efforts and whether Mr. Santos was involved in them. But he did have ties to a Redstone Strategies LLC, registered to an address in Merritt Island, Fla., in November 2021, as Mr. Santos was preparing his second run for Congress. The firm listed the Devolder Organization, a company owned by Mr. Santos, as one of its managing officers.

A company website describes that Redstone as being run by “experters in marketing and others in politics” whose services in ad creation, communications and fund-raising have value “no matter if you are in a local race or if you are going to be the next president of the United States.”

Yet the firm’s body of work — at least for candidates and committees that are required to file campaign expense reports — appears limited. A Times search of campaign finance records uncovered payments from a failed House candidate on Long Island and two groups tied to New York legislative candidates.

It also shows a payment from a PAC called Rise NY, run by Mr. Santos’s sister, Tiffany. State records show the group sent a wire transfer for $6,000 in April 2022 to Red Stone Strategies. It listed a Wells Fargo Bank branch on Merritt Island as its address.

The murkiness around the fund-raising operations on behalf of Mr. Santos makes it difficult to know whether any laws were broken. But a close examination of available records suggest RedStone may have skirted the law.

The email to the donor described it as an “independent expenditure committee under federal campaign finance law” with the “singular purpose” of electing Mr. Santos.

Such groups, also known as super PACs, can support candidates by raising vast sums of money far beyond strict campaign donor limits. Even so, there are rules: They must register with the Federal Election Commission and disclose their donors. And they must not coordinate directly with campaigns.

Yet the F.E.C. has no record of RedStone Strategies. The Daily Beast has reported that Redstone Strategies LLC of Florida had a connection to Mr. Santos, but the existence of a group operating under the name RedStone raising large sums of money for his election has not previously been revealed.

“I don’t see a record by a committee of that name registered with the F.E.C., and our regulations would be if a political group raises more than $1,000 for the purpose of influencing a federal election, they would be required to register with the F.E.C. within 10 days,” said Christian Hilland, an F.E.C. spokesman.

The person who solicited the donor said he was asked by Mr. Santos in the weeks leading up to the campaign to approach donors, some of whom had already given the maximum allowed to Mr. Santos’s election campaign, and to help coordinate their donations to RedStone, according to a person familiar with the arrangement who wished to remain anonymous.

A lawyer for Mr. Santos declined to respond to The Times’s questions about RedStone, saying that “it would be inappropriate to respond to anything related to this apparent investigation of my client’s campaign finances.”

Mr. Santos’s finances have come under scrutiny after The Times reported last month that his successful run for Congress in New York was built on lies, including fabrications of real estate fortune, academic distinction and a glittering career on Wall Street.

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Much about his web of personal and political entities — and whether or how they are in fact interrelated — is still unknown and has attracted interest from local state and federal investigators. His sudden claim to wealth has also raised questions.

According to financial disclosures that he filed as a candidate, Mr. Santos claimed that he went from earning $55,000 to running a company worth more than a million dollars in just a few years. That ostensibly enabled him to lend his campaign more than $700,000 — slightly less than the amount that RedStone Strategies claimed to have raised.

Mr. Santos’s campaign spending has also come under question, with scores of expenses for $199.99 — exactly one cent below the threshold for requiring receipts. The suspicious spending pattern served as a partial basis of a complaint that the Campaign Legal Center filed on Monday with the Federal Election Commission, accusing Mr. Santos of not only using campaign funds for personal use and misrepresenting spending but also of scheming to obscure the true source of his campaign funding.

The fund-raising efforts by RedStone Strategies seem equally opaque.

The person who solicited the $25,000 donation to RedStone has been active in the Queens Republican Party and described himself as Mr. Santos’s friend.

The donor, who did not wish to be identified, confirmed that he was told by the Queens Republican operative that the $25,000 that he gave to RedStone in October would be used as part of a large ad buy for Mr. Santos.

But the donor said he did not hear anything back on how the funds were spent. A review of spending by the company AdImpact does not show the group making any ad buys on Mr. Santos’s behalf, nor did it show any spending for Mr. Santos from other independent groups in the months leading up to Election Day.

If a group raised money under false political pretense, that activity could lead federal election officials to regard it as what is commonly known as a “scam PAC” — a group that raises money without spending it on the stated political purpose, a practice that is increasingly a concern of the F.E.C., Mr. Hilland said.

Redstone Strategies LLC of Florida listed one other manager in its incorporation records: Jayson Benoit, a business partner of Mr. Santos and former colleague at Harbor City Capital, which shut down after the S.E.C. filed a lawsuit accusing it of operating as a Ponzi scheme. (Neither Mr. Santos nor Mr. Benoit, who did not respond to requests for comment, were named in that suit.)

Mr. Santos was sworn in over the weekend, despite pressure from some Democrats, including Assemblyman Charles Lavine, to resign.Credit...Dave Sanders for The New York Times

Mr. Santos ultimately acknowledged having misled voters about his educational and work history, saying that his sins were embellishing his résumé and nothing more. He was sworn in last weekend, even as colleagues in Congress have called for ethics inquiries into his behavior, and Republican leaders in New York, including four first-term congressmen, have called for his resignation. Prosecutors at the local, state and federal level have indicated they are looking at Mr. Santos.

Another potential area of concern about RedStone Strategies was the way it was described in its donor solicitation email as a 501c4 — a type of tax-exempt group organized for the promotion of social welfare. These entities pay no federal taxes and may engage in politics so long as their major purpose is not electing candidates to office.

“They can spend up to 49.9 percent of their budget on candidate election work,” explained Paul S. Ryan, an expert in federal election law, who added that political spending was allowed as long as it was not the group’s primary purpose.

But while the donor email describes the group as a 501c4, it also pledges to dedicate “all its resources” to electing Mr. Santos — language that Mr. Ryan suggested was troubling.

“You can get away with it if you are not foolish enough to put in writing that you’re all about candidate elections,” Mr. Ryan said.

RedStone Strategies was not the only group whose activity raised warning flags among campaign finance experts.

Rise NY is a state PAC created in December 2020 by Mr. Santos’s campaign treasurer, Nancy Marks, and his sister. A Twitter profile of the group describes its purpose as “new voter registration & education as well as raising election awareness & voter enthusiasm.” The PAC raised vast sums from donors who had otherwise maxed out donating to Mr. Santos’s campaign, as reported by Newsday. One donor contributed $150,000, according to New York State Board of Election records, well beyond the limits of $2,900 per election placed on federal campaign contributions for direct campaign activity.

Social media posts show that Rise NY organized demonstrations and voter registration events on Long Island. In a Twitter post from August 2021, Rise NY claimed it had “pulled in 7800+ new Republican voters on LONG ISLAND, NY alone.”

A close examination of the group’s spending, however, reveals that many of Rise NY’s actions would be considered unusual, if not a violation. PACs like Rise NY are allowed under New York State law to give directly to candidates or authorized committees, but may not spend in other ways to help a campaign.

Yet Rise NY issued payments for wages and professional services to Santos campaign workers, including Mr. Santos’s press secretary. It also directed $10,000 in payments to a company run by Ms. Marks, the campaign treasurer. And Ms. Santos earned $20,000 for her work as the PAC’s president. She did not respond to a request for comment.

Its expenditures took place at many of the spots that Mr. Santos’s campaign filings show he liked to frequent, including Il Bacco, a restaurant in Queens where his campaign spent roughly $14,000, and an Exxon Mobil gas station that is a two-minute drive from his former apartment in Whitestone, Queens.

One donor said that he gave to the PAC after being contacted by Samuel Miele, who said in an email that he was the vice president of Rise NY. Mr. Miele was also working directly for Mr. Santos, but was later fired after he was caught impersonating a staffer for Representative Kevin McCarthy, at the time the Republican minority leader, in a fund-raising appeal, several people close to the campaign said.

A company that Mr. Miele manages, the One 57 Group, was paid $43,000 by the Santos campaign and nearly $10,000 from Rise NY PAC. Mr. Miele did not respond to requests for comment.

Two former consultants to the Santos campaign who requested anonymity in order to speak freely about their former client said that they were concerned about the close arrangement between the campaign and Rise NY, and told Mr. Santos that he should shut it down. A third former consultant turned down what it described as a lucrative offer from Mr. Santos to fund-raise for the PAC, citing legal concerns.