Not To Be Too Cynical, But...

... every time a "good-for-business" or "help-for-the-little-guy" policy gets put in place, it's almost a sure bet that one of it's main functions to be a smoke screen. 

It's dressed up to sound all fair-minded and helpful, but the probability is high that it's being done to put large chunks of cash in the pockets of a buncha dog-ass rich fucks who have used coin-operated politicians to grease the skids for them.

And if it actually does help somebody get going on a new food truck or a bookkeeping service - well, that just gives it an air of legitimacy, and the plutocrats figure they'll get around to fucking those people too eventually, so hey - win win, right?

And the kicker: By the time the "small fry fraud" starts to show up, the big guys will have had their day - laundered the money they needed to launder, or hidden the assets they needed to hide from the IRS, or whatever.

They can find cover for their own shit behind the petty fraudsters, cluck their tongues, and mutter the usual mantra: "See what happens when you try to do something nice for people? The government should just stay out of the way".

More than 15,500 business filings in Colorado deemed fraudulent were made by one guy

The Attorney General’s Office said the filings linked to one Northglenn address were made when filing fees were reduced to $1, at a cost of $765,919 to taxpayers. There could be more.

The number of new companies created in Colorado in the past two years may not have set all-time records after all, after officials discovered more than 15,500 fraudulent business filings last year by a man who used a stranger’s home address.

The Colorado Attorney General’s Office on Wednesday filed a consent judgment in Denver District Court to settle allegations against defendant Marcio Garcia Andrade for violating the Colorado Consumer Protection Act. Andrade, who doesn’t live in Colorado, was accused of filing the new business formations between February 2022 and August 2023 that were linked to a Northglenn townhome address “without the knowledge or consent of the homeowner and resident,” according to the AG’s lawsuit.

The settlement means that Andrade, who denied all allegations, is barred from filing new business registrations that don’t comply with the law. He also must dissolve the 15,660 businesses created at false addresses and pay $75,000 in penalties. Failure to do so means the AG could pursue further penalties.

“The defendant in this case is being held accountable for his conduct, and my office will continue to pursue those who attempt to defraud the state and harm consumers with false business filings,” Attorney General Phil Weiser said in a statement.

David Curt Japha, the Denver attorney representing Andrade, said his client “did not make any fraudulent business filings,” and offered Andrade’s response to the AG’s lawsuit.

In a legal filing, Andrade used a registered agent located at the same Northglenn address “since November 7, 2016” and was “not made aware of the registered agent’s change of address and had a good faith belief that they had the consent of the owner or occupant,” of the home.

“Mr. Andrade had a contract with a registered agent who resided at the address listed on the filings. However, the agent moved without informing Mr. Andrade before the filings were made. The Attorney General’s press release is not accurate and is itself deceptive,” Japha said in an email.

Andrade’s associate, Rick Steenbock at Jumpstart Incorporations Inc., named in the original complaint, was dismissed from the lawsuit.

Registering a business that has no assets or isn’t active isn’t illegal. Such so-called “shell companies” fueled the tech company trend of SPACs, or special purpose acquisition companies, to help startups go public without the usual public offering rigamarole.

But creating a business using false information can lead to all sorts of mayhem because it gives legitimacy and a public record, according to the AG’s office. It provides a credible Colorado presence for the owner to get a loan, bank account, patents and trademarks. Companies can disguise ownership, conduct real estate transactions anonymously and hide assets.

“Fraudulent business filings are dangerous tools in the hands of bad actors. The veneer of legitimacy provided by a registered corporation can be used to deceive consumers into transacting with, including extending credit to, a business that has supplied false information. And if a business filing is fraudulent, a consumer may be unable to contact the business with concerns — or legal process,” said the AG’s complaint.

But as an extra kick in the pants to the state’s business-friendly filing system, Andrade paid less than usual to start the new businesses. In May 2023, someone at the Secretary of State’s office noticed the unusual number of filings linked to the same address, just as a popular discount was about to be depleted. The discount reduced business filing fees to $1, from $50, and was part of a year-long investment approved by lawmakers to help small businesses recover from the pandemic. About 9% of the $8.4 million in taxpayer funds set aside to cover filing costs allegedly benefited Andrade and Steenbock, for a total of $765,919 in credits, according to the lawsuit.

The AG’s office said 15,433 of Andrade’s business filings were made during the fee discount period.

Weiser said his office didn’t pursue recovering the credits because it wasn’t cash that ended up in Andrade’s pocket. His team had to weigh the time and costs to go to trial for a civil case.

“Our clear conclusion is that there was fraud in terms of the registration of these businesses and all I can say is they agreed with the conclusion that they need to pay 75 grand and they have to dissolve these entities and if they didn’t feel comfortable with that settlement, they could have proceeded to let this case be litigated,” Weiser said. “Our goal was to stop this fraud and this practice and hold this individual accountable.”

Both men have had run-ins with federal authorities. In June 2019, a federal court froze the assets of Grand Teton Professionals, a Wyoming LLC behind an alleged credit-repair scheme that “bilked consumers out of at least $6.2 million, according to the Federal Trade Commission. Andrade was named as a defendant, as was Atomium Corps., a Colorado company where Steenbock was president.

The Colorado AG’s lawsuit said Andrade didn’t have a primary residence in the state, making him ineligible to be a registered agent here. Steenbock has a Parker address. Andrade is also linked to Wholesale Shelf Corp., which profits by selling “shelf corporations” or registered businesses with no activity that are resold so someone new can skip the regular business-startup process. On Tuesday, Wholesale Shelf had nearly a dozen Colorado shelf corporations listed for sale for $10,349 to $15,974. Many had the same Northglenn address.

After noticing the link to the same Northglenn address on May 10, 2023, the Secretary of State’s Office also linked Andrade and Steenbock to the filings using data logs of foreign IP addresses, as well as the same payment method.

Local economists and the Secretary of State had credited the temporary fee discount for the rise in new business filings during the period the fee was in effect. Filings hit record highs each quarter before the funding ran out. First quarter 2023 reached an all-time quarterly record of nearly 56,000 new companies. Previously, new business filings rarely rose above 40,000 a quarter, as seen in the chart below.

But there’s a good chance that some of the data could be rolled back. The Secretary of State’s Office, however, declined to comment on the latest case and did not share details of how fraud has impacted past quarters.

“I don’t think it really means anything for the real economy because a new entity filing is a prelude to activity,” said Brian Lewandowski, executive director of the Business Research Division at the University of Colorado Boulder’s Leeds School of Business. “However, if fraudulent activity is in excess of normal, then the series loses some predictive power as a leading indicator of the real economy.”

Why there’s fraudulent business filings

Authorities have been aware of business fraud for years. In 2022, the Secretary of State’s Office supported Senate Bill 34, which created a process for victims of business identity theft to complain about fraud and have complaints investigated by the attorney general. If determined fraudulent by a judge, the secretary of state must mark the business record as “fraudulent or unauthorized.”

The office’s Fraudulent Business Filings Working Group met for about five months in late 2022 and early 2023 to hash out guardrails later adopted into law.

During a session in December 2022, working group member Greg Wertsch, a Denver-based special agent with Department of Homeland Security’s Homeland Security Investigations, shared examples of how shell companies move assets to avoid paying taxes. Sometimes, it’s legal like in Delaware, where many companies choose to incorporate due to low business taxes.

But worse than evading taxes are the scammers behind shell companies that decimate victims financially (like pig-butchering scams that use flattery to romance the lonely and get them to transfer over their life savings) or cause physical harm. Wertsch said he had a counterfeit Specialized bike helmet that would break into 1,000 pieces if he jumped on it.

“This is the kind of stuff that these shells are importing into our country and that our parents and friends are buying on the internet thinking they have real products. It is a real issue to real families in our state,” Wertsch said. “Counterfeit medications we’ve seized, we have airplane parts, car parts, airbags, safety gear and so much more is being imported by these shells.”

He pulled up a list of more than 80 companies registered in Colorado with “United Nations” in their name.

“I talked to the United Nations. None of these entities are part of the United Nations. None! Yet all of these entities are here. Why do you think that is? Why do you think people are incorporating the Children’s Fund United Nations here in Colorado? You think they might be taking money from people who think they’re donating to the U.N. Children’s Fund, which might be a real thing?” he said, pointing to the United Nations fraud alert page. “It’s likely.”

In a local case, Wertsch said a young woman had difficulties selling her townhouse because pallets of bathroom products — including giant boxes holding toilets, bathtubs and appliances — would arrive daily at her home. They were customer returns sent back to the company’s corporate address.

“This woman’s house was the corporate address for this company,” Wertsch said. “Doing more investigation, there’s a lot of fraud involved with this company (and) many, many companies registered the exact same address within minutes of this company being registered here in Colorado. … This is an example of a Colorado illicit shell that has no place in our state, should not be allowed to be registered. We should not be collecting money from them.”

Business fraud complaints growing

Since then, some changes were made to business filings in Colorado. Victims can now file a complaint with the Secretary of State’s Office if a business used their name or address to register or changed an existing business information without the owner’s consent. Law enforcement can also file a complaint directly with the office, which wasn’t allowed before the new law.

As of Aug. 20, the agency said 2,208 reports of fraudulent businesses have been filed and 1,004 were referred to the Attorney General’s Office for investigation, said Jack Todd, a spokesperson for the secretary of state. Another 816 cases were resolved and the business records updated. Approximately 286 were rejected because they fell out of the office’s scope, 42 were pending an initial review and nine had no violation or evidence of fraud.

“If the subsequent investigation determines that there is evidence of fraud, the Secretary of State’s Office then redacts victim information and flags the record in our business database as suspected fraudulent activity,” Todd said in an email.

Rules went into effect Aug. 7 that prohibit registered agents from using a P.O. Box as their address. Businesses that dissolved or are late in their paperwork also can’t easily refile after a certain number of years unless they show proof of ID and an affidavit.

Some of the rules have yet to begin, such as requiring registered agents to have a Colorado driver’s license or state identification card. That doesn’t go into effect until July 1, 2025.

But without the law, the AG’s office says it couldn’t as easily pursue action to shut down fraudulent businesses or pursue penalties, unless it used the Consumer Protection Act. With the beefed-up law, law enforcement agencies can now file a complaint about fraudulent businesses directly with the state department instead of relying solely on victims.

Another'n

I can't keep track of all this shit - which I'm sure is partly the point - that's why they run around doing this all over the fuckin' place.

So, my apologies if I've hit this one before.

Turning Point Action official resigns after accusation of election-related fraud

PHOENIX — A top leader of the national conservative group Turning Point Action, which has amplified false claims of election fraud by former president Donald Trump and others, resigned Thursday after being accused of forging voter signatures on official paperwork so that he could run for reelection in the Arizona House.

State Rep. Austin Smith (R) — who was senior director at Turning Point Action, the campaign arm of Charlie Kirk’s Turning Point USA — was accused by a Democratic activist of submitting petition sheets with rows of voter names, addresses and signatures that “bear a striking resemblance” to Smith’s handwriting, according to a complaint. Smith “personally circulated multiple petition sheets bearing what appear to be forged voter signatures,” the complaint said.

The complaint was sent to the Arizona secretary of state, who forwarded it to the Arizona attorney general for review. State election officials do not assess the veracity of allegations made against candidates. A spokesperson for the state prosecutor’s office, which runs a team that focuses on claims of voter and election fraud after widespread claims following the 2020 election, declined to comment. Both state offices are overseen by Democrats.

A Fraud In So Many Ways

If Trump had to back up his threats himself, the world would see what a whiny-butt pussy he really is.

Trump ‘Glared’ At Maggie Haberman for ‘Several Seconds’ After She Reported He Fell Asleep In Court

Former President Donald Trump reportedly spent “several seconds” glaring at New York Times political reporter Maggie Haberman as he exited his criminal trial in New York City on Monday. Trump is charged with 34 felony counts of falsifying business records to hide hush money payments to cover up extramarital affairs. Jury selection began on Monday, marking the first time a former U.S. president has stood trial on criminal charges. He has pleaded not guilty.

Haberman apparently raised the former president’s ire by reporting from inside the courthouse that he fell asleep during the lengthy proceedings. “Former President Donald J. Trump seemed alternately irritated and exhausted Monday morning,” Haberman wrote on the Times liveblog, adding, “Mr. Trump appeared to nod off a few times, his mouth going slack and his head drooping onto his chest.”

“Trump has apparently jolted back awake, noticing the notes his lawyer passed him several minutes ago,” Haberman added a few minutes later.

Law360 court reporter Frank Runyeon detailed Trump’s exit from the courtroom, “After the thirty-some jurors remaining file out of the room for a brief afternoon break, Trump rises. After the jurors leave the courtroom, he stares over at DA Alvin Bragg. Then Trump turns his eyes to the press pool. As he exits, he glares at New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman for several seconds as he walks out.”

Haberman has had a famously up-and-down relationship with Trump as access to the former president during his 2016 campaign and first term in office landed her scoop after scoop. In recent years, however, she published a very critical book about his rise to power and has been a target of the former president’s anger – including being called “Maggot Hagerman” by the GOP’s presumptive nominee for president.

It's The Fraud, Stupid

• The Stormy Daniels thing - Fraud
• The Jan6 thing - Fraud
• The Georgia RICO thing - Fraud
• The NYC fuck-the-banks-thing - Fraud

Trump

is

a

fucking

FRAUD

About Those Mules

I think I'd have to use one of my three wishes in order to go back and have babies with Gina Bonnano. This is just amazingly good reporting.

Committing fraud by pimping the fear of fraud. There's something almost elegant about that.

Today's Brando

These people think the NFL is totally rigged, but pro wrestling is real.

They think Biden is a loser, but a guy who's lost a dozen businesses, a half dozen elections in a row, and soon-to-be another 4 major court cases - he's a big-time winner.

Biden

beat

Trump

Chickens And Roosts

It was pretty for Trump last week. Judge Engeron could make it worse any day now.

Last Week Was Bad for Trump. This Week Could Be Four, Five Times Worse.

The former president’s trials are starting to take a toll—and Judge Engoron could be poised to deal another savage blow possibly by Wednesday.

Think $83.3 million is a lot of money? Well, hold onto your hat, buster, because this week, New York Judge Arthur Engoron is supposed to announce the penalty he’s slapping on Donald J. Trump in the Trump Organization fraud case.

The case, brought by New York Attorney General Letitia James in 2022, accuses Trump of lying to bankers and insurers about the value of his properties. Last September, Engoron declared in a summary judgment that the evidence clearly said Trump had done so. He wrote in his ruling: “In defendants’ world: Rent regulated apartments are worth the same as unregulated apartments; restricted land is worth the same as unrestricted land; restrictions can evaporate into thin air; a disclaimer by one party casting responsibility on another party exonerates the other party’s lies. That is a fantasy world, not the real world.”

Last month, Engoron said he was aiming to announce the fine amount by January 31. That’s Wednesday. James is seeking $370 million.

Last week’s damage award in the E. Jean Carroll case was staggering. We had a little office pool going (well, just three of us, and we didn’t actually bet money). I came in highest at $40 million, so under traditional Price Is Right rules, I was the closest, but nevertheless light-years off. That rigged, deep-state jury took all of three hours to award Carroll more than three times what lawyer Roberta Kaplan was asking.

Is there a precedent there for a larger reward than was even being sought? Signs are promising. Engoron, you’ll recall, showed little patience for Trump’s courtroom antics. Earlier this month, he nixed Trump’s attempt to make a closing argument. “Not having heard from you by the third extended deadline (noon today), I assume that Mr. Trump will not agree to the reasonable, lawful limits I have imposed as a precondition to giving a closing statement above and beyond those given by his attorneys, and that, therefore, he will not be speaking in court tomorrow,” the judge wrote. Trump nevertheless managed to blurt out a few sentences of petulant nonsense. “Please control your client,” Engoron advised his counsel.

Bad? Yep. But the knife took another twist into Trump’s flesh last Friday, the same day the Carroll jury threw all that buckshot in Trump’s face. Barbara Jones was appointed last fall by Engoron to monitor some of the Trump Organization’s transactions. On Friday, Jones wrote Engoron a 12-page letter saying, in part: “I have identified certain deficiencies in the financial information that I have reviewed, including disclosures that are either incomplete, present results inconsistently, and/or contain errors.” So—what’s your bet? Maybe $400 million? What about $500? Who knows?

(See previous post)

The money isn’t even the main factor in play, especially considering that Trump probably doesn’t have it and wouldn’t pay it even if he did. No—the nuclear bomb here, the real psychological waterboarding of Donald John Trump, will come if Engoron strips him and his company of the ability to do business in New York state. This option is on the table because Trump was prosecuted under a 1956 law that allows courts the ability to issue a “permanent and plenary ban” on a company if the behavior is egregious enough to warrant it.

Sounds heavy, right? No question it would be a crushing blow to Trump’s ego. But guess what? Trump is such an accomplished con man that this isn’t even the first time the law has been used to prosecute him. Trump University set that precedent. One of Trump’s lawyers whined last week that the law was overbroad and unfair: “This is not just about President Trump. Every major bank CEO and every Wall Street participant should speak out now before the Attorney General’s shocking and tyrannical interference in the capital markets places all New York business transactions at risk.”

Quick … does that statement remind you of anything? It should. To me it sounds an awful lot like Trump’s own blubbering about presidential immunity—that all presidents need blanket immunity because someone is bound to sue them after they leave office over something they did.

Well—no: Somehow or another, we’ve had 46 presidents, and only one of them has faced this kind of legal scrutiny after he left office. That’s because only one president, so far as we know, spent his entire adult life in and out of office flagrantly ignoring the law (one other kind of did, but he resigned and retreated to a mostly quiet life of writing books, and society decided to leave him more or less alone).

So no, presidents don’t need blanket immunity. Trump keeps inventing examples—maybe an ex-president will be sued for having bombed some country. I guess any jerk can file any kind of nuisance lawsuit, but all Congress has to do is pass a law (if indeed one is not already on the books) protecting ex-presidents from legal action arising from policymaking decisions. Ex-presidents—and major bank CEOs and Wall Street “participants”—who obey the law don’t need blanket immunity!

And speaking of immunity: Where’s the ruling on that? The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit heard arguments on January 9, and a lot of people are wondering what’s taking so long. This was the hearing where one of the judges, Florence Pan, noted that under Trump’s theory, a president could order Seal Team 6 to kill a political opponent and face no consequences. It’s widely expected that the court will rule against Trump, and he will appeal.

What a way to start a year! Maybe about a half-a-billion dollars in fines, and a court ruling that is expected to torch his ridiculous immunity theory and allow other prosecutions to proceed. Speaking of which, Jack Smith is looming right around the corner. All while Trump is going to be crowned the Republican nominee. You have to believe that at least some normie Americans are going to see that something’s wrong with this picture.

More Trump Fuckery

I don't even know what to call this or how to characterize it. Is it Kiting Checks On Yourself? Is it a kind of Circular Churn?

Whatever it turns out to be called by the lawyers, it's gotta be some kind of fraud.

When do we come to our senses and put this prick behind bars?

Oh, The Fuckery

They knew what they were doing all along.

There can be no appeals of ignorance. No hiding behind a veil of legal counsel.

They fucking knew. They all fucking knew.

Today's Wacko

BKjr is not a well man. And he's a fraud, whether he knows it or not.

And even though he comes up with a few issue positions that sound about right, his lunacy on things like vaccines and Ukraine and genetically modified ethnicity-targeted bioweapons is a total disqualifier. The guy is a fucking fraud.

Now add to all that:

Mayorkas responded in under 60 days, but maybe we should wonder why Bob decided to go with the combo of 14 & 88.

Seriously tho - the guy's kinda fucked up in the head.

Little Piggies

Can we talk about maybe scrutinizing the bankers and fund managers and investment houses who're risking money that doesn't really belong to them?

Maybe we should look into how they continue to socialize that risk while privatizing the profits - if we only had the bucks to put the teeth back into the watchdog's head.

So let's not stop with blaming only those few hucksters who Trump their way thru billions of dollars in startup money that never leads to anything but losses, and lawsuits that never get filed because there's no point in going after some broke-ass clown who made you look a fool. Let's make sure we're also talking about politicians who are actually defunding the police by refusing to legislate adequate budgets for the SEC, and the IRS, and the various other entities that are supposed to be keeping these assholes in line.

In the meantime, a little disinfecting sunlight is in order, no matter who's caught pissin' in the punch bowl.

The End of Faking It in Silicon Valley

Recent charges, convictions and sentences all indicate that the start-up world’s habit of playing fast and loose with the truth actually has consequences.

SAN FRANCISCO — Faking it is over. That’s the feeling in Silicon Valley, along with some schadenfreude and a pinch of paranoia.

Not only has funding dried up for cash-burning start-ups over the last year, but now, fraud is also in the air, as investors scrutinize start-up claims more closely and a tech downturn reveals who has been taking the industry’s “fake it till you make it” ethos too far.

Take what happened in the past two weeks: Charlie Javice, the founder of the financial aid start-up Frank, was arrested, accused of falsifying customer data. A jury found Rishi Shah, a co-founder of the advertising software start-up Outcome Health, guilty of defrauding customers and investors. And a judge ordered Elizabeth Holmes, the founder who defrauded investors at her blood testing start-up Theranos, to begin an 11-year prison sentence on April 27.

Those developments follow the February arrests of Carlos Watson, the founder of Ozy Media, and Christopher Kirchner, the founder of software company Slync, both accused of defrauding investors. Still to come is the fraud trial of Manish Lachwani, a co-founder of the software start-up HeadSpin, set to begin in May, and that of Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder of the cryptocurrency exchange FTX, who faces 13 fraud charges later this year.

Taken together, the chorus of charges, convictions and sentences have created a feeling that the start-up world’s fast and loose fakery actually has consequences. Despite this generation’s many high-profile scandals (Uber, WeWork) and downfalls (Juicero), few start-up founders, aside from Ms. Holmes, ever faced criminal charges for pushing the boundaries of business puffery as they disrupted us into the future.

The funding downturn may be to blame. Unethical behavior can largely be overlooked when times are good, as they were for tech start-ups in the 2010s. Between 2012 and 2021, funding to tech start-ups in the United States jumped eightfold to $344 billion, according to PitchBook, which tracks start-ups. More than 1,200 of them are considered “unicorns” worth $1 billion or more on paper.

But when the easy money dries up, everyone parrots the Warren Buffett proverb about finding out who is swimming naked when the tide goes out. After FTX filed for bankruptcy in November, Brian Chesky, the chief executive of Airbnb, updated the adage for millennial tech Founders: “It feels like we were in a nightclub and the lights just turned on,” he tweeted.

In the past, the venture capital investors who backed start-ups were reluctant to pursue legal action when they were duped. The companies were small, with few assets to recover, and going after a founder would hurt the investors’ reputations. That has changed as the unicorns have soared, attracting billions in funding, and as larger, more traditional investors including hedge funds, corporate investors and mutual funds have entered the investing game.

“There is more money at stake, so it just changes the calculus,” said Alexander Dyck, a professor of finance at the University of Toronto who specializes in corporate governance.

The Justice Department has also been urging prosecutors to “be bold” in its pursuit of more business frauds, including at private start-ups. Thus, charges for founders of Frank, Ozy Media, Slync and HeadSpin and expectations of more to come.

IRL, a messaging app that investors valued at $1 billion, is being investigated by the Securities and Exchange Commission for allegedly misleading investors about how many users it had, according to reporting from The Information. Rumby, a laundry delivery start-up in Ohio, allegedly fabricated a story of financial success to secure funding, which its founder used to buy himself a $1.7 million home, according to a lawsuit from one of its investors.

News outlets have also reported unethical behavior at start-ups including Olive, a $4 billion health care software start-up, and Nate, an e-commerce start-up claiming to use artificial intelligence. A spokeswoman for Olive said the company has “disputed and denied” the reported allegations.

All of this creates an awkward moment for venture capital investors. When start-up valuations were soaring, they were seen as visionary kingmakers. It was easy enough to convince the world, and the investors in their funds — pension funds, college endowments and wealthy individuals — that they were responsible stewards of capital with the unique skills required to predict the future and find the next Steve Jobs to build it.

But as more start-up frauds are revealed, these titans of industry are playing a different role in lawsuits, bankruptcy filings and court testimonies: the victim that got duped.

Notice how there's nothing here about how Granny's nest egg may have gone down the shitter - the real problem is that rich people got conned.

Alfred Lin, an investor at Sequoia Capital, a top Silicon Valley firm that put $150 million into FTX, reflected on the cryptocurrency disaster at a start-up event in January. “It’s not that we made the investment, it’s the year-and-a-half working relationship afterwards that I still didn’t see it,” he said. “That is difficult.”

Venture capital investors say their asset class is among the riskiest places to park money but holds the potential for outsize rewards. The start-up world celebrates failures, and if you’re not failing, you’re viewed as not taking enough risks. But it is unclear whether that defense will hold as the scandals become more humiliating for everyone involved.

Investors are increasingly asking consultants like RHR International to help identify the telltale signs of “Machiavellian narcissists” who are more likely to commit fraud, said Eden Abrahams, a partner at the firm. “They want to tighten up the protocols around how they’re assessing founders,” Ms. Abrahams said. “We had a series of events which should be prompting reflections.”

Start-ups have many of the conditions most associated with fraud, Mr. Dyck said. They tend to employ novel business models, their founders often have significant control and their backers do not always enforce strict oversight. It is a situation that’s ripe for bending the rules when a downturn hits. “It’s not surprising we’re seeing a lot of frauds being committed in the last 18 months are coming to light right now,” he said.

When Ms. Javice was trying to sell her college financial planning start-up, Frank, to JPMorgan Chase, she told an employee not to share exactly how many people used Frank’s service, according to an S.E.C. complaint. Later, she asked the employee to fabricate thousands of accounts, assuring her staff that such a move was legal and that no one would end up in “orange jumpsuits,” the complaint said.

Ms. Javice faces four counts of fraud. This past week, JPMorgan accused her of transferring money to a shell company after the bank uncovered her alleged fraud.

Outcome Health, which sold drug ads on screens in doctors’ offices, raised $488 million from investors including Goldman Sachs, the Google-affiliated fund CapitalG and the family of Gov. J.B. Pritzker of Illinois while making public claims of breakneck growth and profitability. In reality, the company had missed its revenue targets, was struggling to manage its debt load and was overbilling its customers.

Yet investors plowed money in anyway and even allowed Outcome Health’s co-founders, Mr. Shah and Shradha Agarwal, to cash out $225 million worth of shares. One of the company’s smaller investors, Todd Cozzens of Leerink Partners, said he was not deterred by red flags like missing revenue targets and other “sloppiness,” because “they could have cleaned that up.” The company crossed into fraud when it altered a sales report, which would have been difficult for outsiders to detect, he said.

“This was a great business model and the product was working, but these founders got really greedy,” he said. “They wanted more.” Mr. Cozzens’ firm lost 90 percent of its $15 million investment.

Mr. Shah was convicted of 19 counts of fraud and Ms. Agarwal of 15. A spokesman for Mr. Shah said that the verdict “deeply saddens” him and that he plans to appeal. Ms. Agarwal’s counsel said they were reviewing the verdict and considering her options.

Slync’s founder, Mr. Kirchner, lied to investors about Slync’s business performance and used the money raised to buy himself a $16 million private jet, among other misappropriations, according to an S.E.C. complaint. When one investor dug into Slync’s finances, Mr. Kirchner told the person that Slync was in the process of switching to a new financial service provider, the complaint said. The investor wired $35 million.

A Slync spokesman said the company has appointed a new chief executive, is cooperating with the government’s investigations, and “looks forward to a just resolution of this matter.”

FTX raised nearly $2 billion from top investors including Sequoia Capital, Lightspeed Venture Partners and Thoma Bravo, giving it a valuation of $32 billion. The company was so poorly run that it didn’t even have a complete list of people who worked there, according to a report issued by the company’s new management this month. Mr. Bankman-Fried told colleagues at one point that FTX’s sister hedge fund, Alameda Research, was “unauditable” and that the team sometimes found $50 million in assets lying around that they had lost track of. “Such is life,” he wrote.

Sequoia, which commissioned a glowing profile of Mr. Bankman-Fried to publish on its website, apologized to investors after the company collapsed. It also deleted the profile.

Mr. Lin explained at the start-up event that venture capital industry was ultimately a business based on trust. “Because if you don’t trust the founders that you work with,” he said, “why would you ever invest in them?”

How Charlie Javice Got JPMorgan to Pay $175 Million for … What Exactly?
Jan. 21, 2023

Lifestyles of the Rich and Gullible: Theranos and Ozy Edition
Oct. 9, 2021

Today In Justice

So Elizabeth Holmes is going for an extended stay at the Grey Bar Hotel. Not because she fucked over part of the healthcare system and put patients lives at risk - and sent private detectives after at least one of the witnesses against her - but because she bilked rich people out of some of their investment capital, making "the smart guys" look bad. And we just can't have that.

In the end, the particulars matter slightly less than the fact that it appears she'll be pulling a good long stretch of hard time. I just really wish we'd attach more weight to the part about hurting real people and less about the fucking money.

(pay wall)

Elizabeth Holmes sentenced to more than 11 years in prison

The former Theranos CEO was convicted on four counts of fraud early this year

Former Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes was sentenced to more than 11 years in prison Friday for misleading investors regarding her blood-testing start-up.

The entrepreneur — who started Theranos as a Stanford University dropout and grew it into a company with a peak valuation of $9 billion — was convicted in January of misleading investors that her technology could run hundreds of tests from just a few drops of blood. In reality, the company was relying on technology from other companies to run the tests.

She was convicted of four counts of wire fraud and conspiracy to commit wire fraud after a four-month-long trial that featured testimony and tales of billionaire investors, former U.S. officials’ endorsement and patients who had used the company’s technology. Holmes also took the stand over the course of seven days in emotional testimony defending her actions as being in good faith and denying that she was aware of the fraud.

On Friday, Federal District Judge Edward J. Davila sentenced her to prison beginning on April 27.

“The tragedy of the case is that Ms. Holmes is brilliant,” the judge said in a lengthy statement. She fought herself into a male-dominated world and people gravitated toward her vision and drive, he said.

“She made it, she got into that world.” But the venture capital world also doesn’t condone fraud, he said.

The sentencing is the conclusion of the years-long saga of Holmes, during which she was once hailed as a hero for female entrepreneurs before a dramatic fall to become the notorious founder of a crumpled company. Now the subject of an HBO documentary, a Hulu TV series, a best-selling book and multiple podcasts, Holmes has become one of the most famous tech start-up CEOs, as well as a cautionary tale for how badly an ambitious start-up can spin out of control.

“The message to Silicon Valley and other entrepreneurs is have a dream, invest in it, but be honest with investors about where you are, and don’t commit fraud,” said Jason Linder, a former federal prosecutor, who is now a partner at corporate law firm Mayer Brown and has been following the case.

Holmes spoke before the judge handed down her sentence. She cried as she read from notes, breaking the staid composure she had held throughout the day and through most previous court appearances.

“I take responsibility for Theranos,” she said. “I regret my failings with every cell in my body.”

After her sentence was read, she stood up and was embraced by her family, burying her face in their shoulders. She then quickly left the court room as journalists and her supporters stood quietly before filing out.

Later, she and her partner left the court building through a side entrance, dodging a large group of photographers and TV camera people who had assembled outside the main door. She jumped in a black SUV, which quickly drove off.

Since Theranos crumbled, Holmes has kept a low profile. She lives in Silicon Valley with her partner and son, and has been volunteering at a crisis line for sexual assault survivors. She is pregnant with their second child.

Holmes started the company in 2003 when she was just 19 years old with the promise to develop technology that would eliminate the need for drawing tubes and tubes of blood to run diagnostic tests. She quickly drew in investors, attracting hundreds of millions of dollars in investment from prominent businesspeople and political figures including Larry Ellison, Rupert Murdoch and others. Holmes also attracted big-name statesmen such as Henry Kissinger and Jim Mattis to her board of directors.

Federal prosecutors were asking the judge to sentence her to 15 years in prison, as well as require restitution of about $800 million to pay back investors and business partners.

She leased space in a famed Silicon Valley office park and hired hundreds of employees. After her start-up went public with its ambitions roughly a decade ago, Holmes soared to fame. She was one of the few young female founders in a competitive tech world that still often features White, male CEOs.

The media took notice, putting her on the covers of magazines including, Forbes, Fortune and Inc. as well as speaking at conferences and giving a TEDMED Talk. She inked deals with Walgreens and Safeway to put her technology — a small blood-testing machine, known as the Edison, that purported to use “nanotainers” that needed just a finger prick’s worth of blood to test for everything from cholesterol to herpes.

But internally, it was a different story, according to testimony at her trial last year. Theranos’s proprietary technology could in reality run only about a dozen tests, and witnesses said it didn’t always do those reliably.

During the trial, former employees testified about growing concern within the company about how quickly Theranos was pushing to use the technology on patients. Former Walgreens and Safeway executives said they didn’t realize Theranos was using other company’s traditional machines to process blood tests. And former defense secretary Jim Mattis, who served on the company’s board, said he would have had a different view of the company if he had known the limitations of the Theranos blood-testing device.

“It would have tempered my enthusiasm significantly,” he said in court.

A Wall Street Journal investigation in 2015 revealed that Theranos was relying on traditional lab testing machines and typical blood draws to run many of its tests.

Regulators started investigating the company, and Theranos went on the defensive. Holmes’s empire and public image began to crumble.

A federal regulator of laboratories found deficiencies at the company’s lab that “pose immediate jeopardy to patient health and safety.” Holmes was eventually barred from owning or operating a medical lab for at least two years. And in 2018, she was charged with massive fraud by the Securities and Exchange Commission, which she paid a hefty fine to settle. She left Theranos that year and the company shuttered soon after.

Holmes was originally charged with her former business and romantic partner Sunny Balwani. He was convicted on 12 counts in a separate trial this summer, and is scheduled to be sentenced in December.

Prosecutor Jeff Schenk told the court during the hearing Friday that a 15-year sentence was in line with guidelines for Holmes’s crimes.

“When faced with the choice of allowing Theranos to fail, Ms. Holmes made the choice to defraud her investors,” he said.

Schenk argued that because Holmes had not apologized for the fraud or admitted wrongdoing, the court should give her a serious sentence that would act as a strong deterrent to committing new crimes.

The judge asked if any victims wanted to speak. Alex Shultz, father of Theranos whistleblower Tyler Shultz, stood up and said that Holmes hired a private investigator to follow his son when Theranos suspected Tyler Shultz had spoken to media about the company.

Perspective: Elizabeth Holmes used every trope in the book

“It was a grueling experience to go through, I feel like my family home was desecrated by Elizabeth and the lawyers,” he said.

Holmes’s defense lawyers asked the judge to sentence her to 18 months in prison, or home confinement plus community service hours.

Holmes’s defense lawyer, Kevin Downey, said in court she never cashed out when she had the chance and was deprived of her support network during much of the time she was running Theranos.

Holmes testified on the stand for more than 20 hours during the trial last year, speaking publicly for one of the first times in years and drawing a crowd of reporters and members of the public to see her in person. She told the jury that she was always acting in good faith — trying to create and sustain a technology that would help people.

Holmes admitted on the stand during her trial that Theranos was running blood tests on modified third-party machines without telling its business partners and that she added the logos of two pharmaceutical companies to studies that the company sent to investors. She said she did not intentionally mean to deceive them.

“They weren’t interested in today or tomorrow or next month,” she said. “They were interested in what kind of change we could make.”

Balwani, Holmes’s former partner, was charged together with Holmes before his case was later severed when Holmes alleged he had abused her for years. Balwani has denied the allegations.

More than 100 people wrote letters in support of Holmes for her sentencing memo, including former employees, investors and even New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker, who said he met Holmes years before she was charged.

“In the years since, I’ve always been struck by the way our conversations focused on her desires to make a positive impact on the world,” he wrote.

Holmes’s partner Evans also wrote to the judge, seeking to describe a different Holmes than had been portrayed in the media. He extolled her “willingness to sacrifice herself for the greater good is something I greatly admire in her.”

He also wrote that “earlier this year, while pregnant, she decided she wanted to swim the Golden Gate Bridge,” something that concerned Evans.

“Rain or shine she practiced, and her determination was overpowering the odds against her,” he wrote. “Two weeks before the event she made the cut off time, swimming the breaststroke. I was wrong, you would think by now I would learn to not discount her perseverance.”

Crumbling Trump

It's not a lock-his-ass-up kinda thing, but it'll do for now. At the very least, it forces him to spend even more on lawyers, and it could take some pretty big money away from him - which is almost all he's ever wanted, because money is the key to the Power Locker - plus it takes away some of his ability to make money in the Money Capital Of The World.

And, oh yeah - his kids can fuck all the way off too - if AG James can win it.

Now then, about that Kushner guy.

(pay wall)

Donald Trump, 3 of his children sued for business fraud by New York AG

Lawsuit alleges $250 million fraud, seeks to bar the Trumps from serving as executives of any company operating in New York

New York Attorney General Letitia James filed a lawsuit Wednesday accusing former president Donald Trump, three of his grown children and executives at his company of flagrantly manipulating property valuations to deceive lenders, insurance brokers and tax authorities into giving them better rates on bank loans and insurance policies and to reduce their tax liability.

The 222-page civil complaint asks the New York Supreme Court to bar Trump, as well as Donald Trump Jr., Ivanka Trump and Eric Trump, from serving as executives at any company in New York, and to bar the Trump Organization from acquiring any commercial real estate or receiving loans from any New York-registered financial institution for five years.

It seeks to recover more than $250 million in what James’s office says are ill-gotten gains received through the alleged deceptive practices. While the lawsuit itself is not a criminal prosecution, James (D) said she has referred possible violations of federal law to the Justice Department and the IRS.

Trump lawyer Alina Habba dismissed the allegations as politically motivated, saying in a statement that the attorney general’s claims are “meritless.”

Read the lawsuit filed against Donald Trump, 3 of his children and Trump Organization

The lawsuit, filed in New York Supreme Court, is the result of a more than two-year investigation by James and names 23 properties in the Trump Organization portfolio, including his Mar-a-Lago Club in Florida, his Seven Springs estate in Westchester County, N.Y., and the D.C. hotel he leased from the federal government until he sold it in May.

“The inflated asset valuations in the Statements cannot be brushed aside or excused as merely the result of exaggeration or good faith estimation about which reasonable real estate professionals may differ,” it says.

It adds to a deepening list of legal challenges that Trump faces more than 18 months after he left the White House and at a time when he remains actively involved in Republican politics and has broadly suggested he will run for president again in 2024.

In addition to naming Trump and three of his children personally, the suit names the Trump Organization and Allen Weisselberg, Trump’s longtime chief financial officer who recently pleaded guilty to tax crimes, and controller Jeffrey McConney.

The status of key investigations involving Donald Trump

Trump and his attorneys have dismissed James’s inquiry as politically motivated and have repeatedly said that Trump and his family have done nothing illegal in operating their businesses. Pointing to statements James made on the campaign trail in which she promised to investigate him, Trump has coined her investigation a “witch hunt.”

“Today’s filing is neither focused on the facts nor the law – rather, it is solely focused on advancing the Attorney General’s political agenda," Alina Habba, one of Trump’s lawyers, said in a statement on Wednesday morning. "We are confident that our judicial system will not stand for this unchecked abuse of authority, and we look forward to defending our client against each and every one of the Attorney General’s meritless claims.”

Rather than focusing narrowly on a few instances of misconduct, James’s office portrayed Trump, his family and executives of employing a wide array of fraudulent maneuvers in their dealings with lenders and regulators despite knowing that they were illegal. The suit highlights Trump’s practice of distributing statements of financial condition inflating the values of his properties and sometimes exaggerating how many acres those properties cover or how many homes could be built on them.

Defense attorneys have said in court that commercial real estate firms routinely argue for lower tax appraisals and that the company’s conduct was no different, but James said Wednesday that the misstated valuations cannot be brushed as a “good faith mistake.”

The former president and his family should be held to the same standards as everyday Americans, James said at a news conference in Manhattan, noting that it is illegal for people to lie to banks in order to secure loans to send their children to college or get a home mortgage.

“Claiming you have money that you do not have does not amount to the art of the deal. It’s the art of the steal,” James said, mocking the titled of Donald Trump’s 1987 book. "There cannot be different rules for different people in this country or in this state.”

Today's GOP Fuckery

At minimum, we've got Falsifying Records - and that "minimum could be a doozy - 20 years in federal lockup.

These GOP assholes belong in prison - starting with Jeff Clark.

Here's ol' Doc Maddow from last night:

Today's Rat-Fucking

File this one under "Awful-But-Lawful" - but hold that thought - there could be actual fraud in here somewhere.

WaPo:

Latinas for Trump founder unseated Florida Democrat after ‘shadow candidate’ with his surname entered the race

WPLG reporter Glenna Milberg approached the South Florida address listed for Alex Rodriguez earlier this week ready to pepper him with questions: Why had the 55-year-old mechanic abruptly decide to run for office? How did he win nearly 3 percent of the vote without even a campaign website? Did he live in Miami at all?

“I’m looking for Alex,” she told a white-haired man who answered the door. “Is he around?”

“Uh, no. He’ll be back tomorrow, though,” the man replied, refusing to say where Rodriguez was, how to reach him, or why a man with no history in politics — a registered Republican until a few months ago — had become an unaffiliated candidate for Florida’s 37th State Senate District.

Days later, Milberg discovered the man at the door had been lying. He was, in fact, Rodriguez, whose more than 6,000 votes may have tipped the election away from a Democratic incumbent in Miami with the same last name.

A close race was always expected between state Sen. José Javier Rodríguez (D) and Ileana Garcia (R), a well-funded Republican challenger who had worked for President Trump’s campaign and previously founded the group Latinas for Trump.

But as a recount last week confirmed Garcia’s victory by the thinnest of margins — 34 votes — the Democratic incumbent has raised alarms that Alex Rodriguez ran for just one reason: to confuse voters and siphon off ballots meant for José Javier Rodríguez.

“Democracy requires transparency,” José Javier Rodríguez said in a concession video last week. “In order to achieve that, I believe this election requires a full investigation so that those who may have violated the law are held to account and so that such tactics are not used in future elections.”

Prosecutors are now looking into Alex Rodriguez, the Miami Herald reported, and he has since retained a lawyer. That attorney, William Barzee, declined to comment in a text message to The Washington Post.

The presence of “shadow candidates” who attempt to spoil an election is no foreign concept in Florida. In 2013, a former independent candidate for U.S. Congress was convicted of four counts of campaign finance violations after allegations that he ran only to weaken a Democratic challenger.

Yet no past races appear to have been quite as razor-thin as the one between Garcia and José Javier Rodríguez, for a swing district in Miami-Dade County that had been closely targeted by national Democrats.

In South Florida, where Trump saw unexpectedly large gains after painting Democrats as socialists, Garcia, a former deputy press secretary at the Department of Homeland Security, appeared to court Cuban, Venezuelan and Nicaraguan voters with similar tactics.

“Do we defund the police and walk away from American values? Do we choose socialism and chaos out of fear?” she asked in one campaign ad, vowing to ensure that “criminals can’t take what hard-working families have earned.”

Rodríguez, a lawyer and first-term senator who had previously served in the Florida House, pitched his existing work on climate-change issues and labor.

Alex Rodriguez, meanwhile, appeared to have no campaign at all. He did not attend candidate forums, had no website, and received only a $2,000 loan from himself, the Herald reported. When WPLG sought candidate headshots to use on TV, he failed to return the station’s calls.

Yet he ran for office because “it’s always something I wanted to do,” he told the Herald.

Rodriguez is among the 10 most popular surnames in the United States, and in many parts of heavily Latino South Florida, it might as well replace top-ranked Smith. Garcia has also pointed out that an unaffiliated candidate also ran in José Javier Rodríguez’s close 2016 race.

“There was no outrage at the time,” Garcia told the news site Florida Politics. “What’s the difference now? The difference is he lost. I will not allow this temper tantrum to distract from the important work ahead.”

Florida Senate President Wilton Simpson (R) and the Florida GOP’s senate campaign arm both denied involvement in Alex Rodriguez’s campaign or candidacy in a statement to the Herald. But some Florida Democrats say the details of Alex Rodriguez’s candidacy raise questions.

Under oath, Rodriguez listed his address on campaign documents as being in Palmetto Bay, Fla., according to WLTV, even though the station reported that he had in fact been living in a rented house in Boca Raton, more than 60 miles and several state Senate districts away.

Mailers with his name were sent to voters in Miami by an untraceable political action committee whose only donor listed a UPS store in Atlanta as its address, according to Politico.

Apparent fraud #Florida Senate candidate Alex Rodriguez now tells our Herald friends, “...it’s always something I wanted to do.”
So, reposting our visit last week when he said otherwise, & even pretended to be someone else ⏩@WPLGLocal10 Background: https://t.co/0CD1L5Iagp pic.twitter.com/CfQkBrhYwb

— Glenna Milberg (@GlennaWPLG) November 19, 2020

As WPLG reported, Rodriguez’s candidacy also bears striking similarities to that of Celso D. Alfonso, another no-party Florida state Senate candidate.

Both men were registered as Republicans in 2018, and both qualified for this year’s election on the same day, with hand-delivered checks time-stamped within minutes of one another, according to the Herald. Their listed email addresses are nearly identical, too.

Reached by WPLG at his house, Alfonso said that he decided to run at 81 years old to pursue a childhood dream of public service. Asked about his campaign fliers — which were sent out by the same mysterious PAC — Alfonso said he had no such ads.

Minutes later, he changed his story.

Today's Tweet

Nobody goes broke overestimating the gullibility of the average rube.

For $45, Lance Wallnau and Jim Bakker will sell you a Trump/Cyrus coin that you can use as a "point of contact" between you and God as you pray for Trump's re-election in 2020. pic.twitter.com/EwKgGL7sNp

— Right Wing Watch (@RightWingWatch) May 14, 2019

Esquire has the full accounting of it:

More than that, though, his presidency persists despite the eruptions of public insanity and the felonies in office and the obvious corruption and the authoritarian onslaught against the institutions of our democracy because other people are making money. The market has mostly been strong, so Wall Street and Big Business have been happy, and then you throw in his trillion-dollar tax-cut giveaway to rich people and corporations. (What constitutional crisis? I'm on a yacht!) The lobbyists and special interests are thriving in the New Swamp—now headquartered at the Trump International Hotel, a beacon of the most brazen corruption—and must surely be enjoying this more direct model of crony capitalism. 

There's nothing like a televangelist to remind you this is a nation of salesmen.

Grifters from all over have greased into his Cabinet and administration, either to live high on the hog on the taxpayer dime or do some favors for industry so they'll get handed a sack of cash when they head through the Revolving Door. Fox News and conservative media and right-wing youth groups are all feeding The Base of aging Caucasians a steady diet of resentment and fear of a changing world in exchange for advertising revenue and donor cash.

And of course, the Evangelical leaders who backed Trump without regard for any discernible Christian principle are having a grand old time. There's nothing like a televangelist to remind you this is a nation of salesmen, and that more often than not, they're peddling snake oil. The latest example comes to us via the Jim Bakker Show, and an intriguing chap who goes by Dr. Lance Wallnau.

That's right: this man says The Lord—the Almighty God who created the Universe, and who exists in the realm beyond space and time—told him this coin is the "point of contact" between people praying for President Trump's success. And it's only $45! And, as luck would have it, the same guy who spoke to God Himself about this coin is also selling the coin, right now!

We are so fucked.

What We're Paying For

A typical work day for a US president is 10 or 12 hours, which means he makes about $125 per hour, and he earns every penny.

45* puts in about 3 hours a day, which means he's pulling down close to $500 per hour.

The guy might as well be Calvin Coolidge for all the time he doesn't spend doing the job he was hired to do.

Bess Levin, Vanity Fair:

Back in January, Axios obtained an inside look at Donald Trump’s schedule, revealing that the president of the United States was doing far less work than in the early days of his term, and demanding large blocks of “Executive Time,” a euphemism created by Chief of Staff John Kelly so that White House aides didn’t have to write dick around on Twitter and shout at the TV on official documents. Now, nine months later, Politico has revisited Trump’s schedule, and it turns out that the most powerful person in the world is somehow doing even less work every day than he was earlier this year. Moreover, when Trump does deign to do his job, it’s mostly in the form of signing ceremonies and shouting at aides to craft policy around something he saw on Fox & Friends.

Last Tuesday’s schedule, for instance, reportedly included a whopping nine hours of “Executive Time,” or triple the time that was allotted for actual work. Trump’s first commitment of the day came at 1 P.M., and while he had a 30-minute call with C.E.O.s here and a quick briefing and dinner with senior military leaders there, the rest of the day consisted of doing whatever the hell he wanted, sometimes for stretches as long as two hours and 45 minutes. (What he wanted, apparently, was to trash Puerto Rico’s elected officials and tweet clips of himself fear-mongering about immigrants.) And while Tuesday included more free time than any other day that week, it was in no way an outlier:

A bulk of the president’s time last week was spent traveling to and from political rallies and campaigning on behalf of Republican candidates ahead of next Tuesday’s midterm elections. On Wednesday, which began with an 11:30 A.M. meeting with John Kelly, Trump delivered brief remarks on the opioid crisis and sat for a media interview before departing for an evening rally in Wisconsin. The rest of his day, according to his schedule, was open.

Last week’s schedules are remarkably light on policy discussions. The president spent a little more than two hours of his week in policy briefings, according to the schedules, and he was scheduled to receive the President’s Daily Brief on just two of the five days reviewed.