Political Incest

It's like everybody's got their hands in everybody else's pants.

My silly theory about a global effort to push the whole thing into a worldwide plutocracy isn't getting any thinner.

And this is just the shit we get to see once in a while when we luck out and somebody fucks up so bad that whoever's "in charge" of the project has to say "Yeah, OK, we'll throw ya a bone."

GOP operative convicted in scheme to funnel Russian money into Trump campaign

A former senior aide to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) was convicted Thursday after being found guilty of helping to funnel illegal foreign campaign contributions from a Russian national into former President Trump's 2016 campaign.

Driving the news:

Jessie Benton, 45, orchestrated a scheme to conceal the illegal foreign donation with another GOP operative, per the Justice Department. Benton, the husband of Paul's niece and a veteran Republican staffer, faces up to 20 years in prison. His attorney told the Washington Post Benton "maintains his innocence and plans to appeal."

Federal prosecutors say Benton arranged for the Russian national to attend a political fundraising event for Trump's campaign and take a photo with Trump.

For the record:

Neither Trump nor his campaign was aware of the Russian person's nationality, the DOJ said.

Zoom in:

The Russian national wired $100,000 to Benton's political consulting firm to make an illegal foreign contribution, but Benton allegedly pocketed $75,000 and gave $25,000 to the campaign, falsely identifying himself as the donor.

He faced six criminal charges, including conspiracy and abetting illegal foreign political contributions.

Flashback:

Benton was previously convicted of filing false statements as part of a scheme to funnel money from Ron Paul's 2012 presidential campaign to an influential Iowa politician who backed Paul in the state's presidential caucus.

Trump pardoned Benton shortly before leaving office.

Go deeper: Pro-Trump PAC fined over foreign money offer

The War Of Economics

Exclusive: Top U.S. Treasury official to warn UAE, Turkey over sanctions evasion

WASHINGTON, Jan 28 (Reuters) - The U.S. Treasury Department's top sanctions official on a trip to Turkey and the Middle East next week will warn countries and businesses that they could lose U.S. market access if they do business with entities subject to U.S. curbs as Washington cracks down on Russian attempts to evade sanctions imposed over its war in Ukraine.

Brian Nelson, undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, will travel to Oman, the United Arab Emirates and Turkey from Jan. 29 to Feb. 3 and meet with government officials as well as businesses and financial institutions to reiterate that Washington will continue to aggressively enforce its sanctions, a Treasury spokesperson told Reuters.

"Individuals and institutions operating in permissive jurisdictions risk potentially losing access to U.S. markets on account of doing business with sanctioned entities or not conducting appropriate due diligence," the spokesperson said.

While in the region, Nelson will discuss Treasury's efforts to crack down on Russian efforts to evade sanctions and export controls imposed over its brutal war against Ukraine, Iran’s destabilizing activity in the region, illicit finance risks undermining economic growth, and foreign investment.

STRAINED RELATIONS

Nelson's trip coincides with a period of strained ties between the United States and Turkey as the two NATO allies disagree over a host of issues.

Most recently, Turkey's refusal to green-light the NATO bids of Sweden and Finland has troubled Washington, while Ankara is frustrated that its request to buy F-16 fighter jets is increasingly linked to whether the two Nordic countries can join the alliance.

Nelson will visit Ankara, the Turkish capital, and financial hub Istanbul on Feb. 2-3. He will warn businesses and banks that they should avoid transactions related to potential dual-use technology transfers, which could ultimately be used by Russia's military, the spokesperson said.

Dual-use items can have both commercial and military applications.

Washington and its allies have imposed several rounds of sanctions targeting Moscow since the invasion, which has killed and wounded thousands and reduced Ukrainian cities to rubble.

Turkey has condemned Russia's invasion and sent armed drones to Ukraine. At the same time, it opposes Western sanctions on Russia and has close ties with both Moscow and Kyiv, its Black Sea neighbors.

It has also ramped up trade and tourism with Russia. Some Turkish firms have purchased or sought to buy Russian assets from Western partners pulling back due to the sanctions, while others maintain large assets in the country.

But Ankara has pledged that international sanctions will not be circumvented in Turkey.

Washington is also concerned about evasion of U.S. sanctions on Iran.

The United States last month imposed sanctions on prominent Turkish businessman Sitki Ayan and his network of firms, accusing him of acting as a facilitator for oil sales and money laundering on behalf of Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps.

While in the United Arab Emirates, Nelson will note the "poor sanctions compliance" in the country, the spokesperson said.

Washington has imposed a series of sanctions on United Arab Emirates-based companies over Iran-related sanctions evasion and on Thursday designated a UAE-based aviation firm over support to Russian mercenary company the Wagner Group, which is fighting in Ukraine.

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.

Grifting Grifters Gonna Grift

Ain't nuthin' new. Everything has its origin in something that's gone before.

IOW - same shit, new day.

Learning an old lesson from the Tudors: Grifters gonna grift

The Met’s fascinating exhibition of Tudor splendor explores the construction of power

NEW YORK — As I was processing the rich display of tapestries, paintings, armor and metalwork on view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Tudors exhibition, the world was buzzing over a photograph taken at the World Cup in Qatar. It showed Jared Kushner, son-in-law to Donald Trump, standing in a stadium with Elon Musk, the billionaire owner of Twitter, and Mansoor Bin Ebrahim Al-Mahmoud, head of the Qatar Investment Authority.

The image seemed to capture the essence of 21st-century power, a nexus of fossil-fuel wealth, control of digital resources, old-fashioned illiberal politics and ruthless self-promotion. Kushner’s stance was revealing: The immaculately coifed young man looks down his nose at the viewer, and it’s a cold, hard, suspicious look. You wouldn’t want to be on the receiving end of this supercilious glance.

Courtier Robert Cheseman, Henry VIII’s falconer, gives the same look in a 1533 portrait by Hans Holbein the Younger, one of several magnificent Holbeins on view in “The Tudors: Art and Majesty in Renaissance England.” The exhibition documents the Tudor dynasty’s efforts to create a royal court, which is not just a household with servants, or a political power center, but an idea and an image that consolidates authority at the cultural and emotional level. Courtiers sound like respectable people, basking in the reflected glory of the kings and queens they serve. But they were also politicians, self-serving and ambitious, often well-born mediocrities flying high above their general level of talent.

Robert Cheseman

Kushner is a courtier just as much as Cheseman was, and the look he gives the camera is exactly what you would expect from an ambitious modern-day courtier. His eyes register annoyance — a person of enormous privilege being inconvenienced by the intrusive gaze of curious onlookers — with the same intensity that the king stares down the unwanted presence of the artist or the audience in another, chilling Holbein portrait on view in the exhibition.

“The Tudors” is a smart and fascinating exhibit that will also be seen at the Cleveland Museum of Art (beginning Feb. 26) and the Legion of Honor in San Francisco (beginning June 24) after it closes in New York on Jan. 8. It raises a question that haunts other blockbuster museum displays of human treasure: Why is power in the past tense so interesting and alluring, while the powers that govern us today are so repellent? Put another way, why is art so effective at washing away the gritty, noxious reality of human ambition, despite the obvious fact that the pharaohs, kings and courtiers of the past were no more substantial than the posers and parvenues of today?

The same questions arose with other recent shows about the construction of power, including an exhibition of Holbein portraits at the Getty and the Met’s survey of Medici portraits, both in 2021. All of these exhibitions leave one feeling slightly guilty: The curators try to anatomize how power works, the strategies of mythmaking and image management, but the material on view is so seductive one forgets the larger intellectual construct. The Tudors are a classic case, deeply fascinating to audiences despite their excesses and cruelty. They ruled England for only three generations, but have cast an enormously long shadow, with their two most important figures — Henry VIII and Elizabeth I — among the most romanticized figures in history.

I am as susceptible to their surreal charisma as anyone. I felt slightly giddy to see Henry VIII’s own psalter — a 1540 illustrated Book of Psalms — in which the king’s distinctly porcine features have been transposed onto the biblical King David. Henry’s ego was capacious: He imagined himself as both a new Hercules (in classical contexts) and a new David, slayer of Goliath, in Old Testament settings.

When he wanted a New Testament alter ego, he compared himself to Saint Paul, a foil to Saint Peter, the founder of the Catholic Church, from which Henry broke England’s allegiance when he divorced the first of his six wives. In one enormous tapestry, “Saint Paul Directing the Burning of the Heathen Books,” we see Henry’s preferred apostle engaged in a favorite Tudor pastime, religious persecution. It’s a jarring image. Men heap basketfuls of human knowledge and spiritual endeavor onto a smoking fire, while in the background classical columns, arches and pediments define the surrounding architecture as distinctly of the Renaissance.

The exhibition is as disillusioning about any reflexive association of the Renaissance with pervasive humanism as it is about the Tudors themselves. But the extravagance of Tudor self-aggrandizement is almost comical, and it wasn’t limited to the orotund Henry plastering his face onto biblical kings.

At the Met, powerful portraits of the Medicis

Images of Elizabeth have intrigued us for centuries, as canny studies in self-fashioning or proto-feminist image curation. But royal portraiture takes a serious, regressive turn when Elizabeth comes to power. The Renaissance naturalism of Holbein is thrown out the window, and instead we get naked exercises in stylized flattery. With the National Portrait Gallery in London closed until June 22 for renovation, some of its greatest icons are on the road, including the Ditchley portrait of Elizabeth, in which the magnificently accoutered queen stands on a map of Southern England as if it’s her personal bathmat.

Is there any difference between these strategies of self-promotion and images that recast Trump as muscular prizefighter or Photoshop his face onto the body of a superhero? There is contemporary evidence that foreigners who encountered the Tudors in their preening glory found it vulgar, impressive and perhaps a bit ridiculous. But what must the Tudor courtiers have thought, to see the strength and beauty of their all-too-human monarchs so shamelessly inflated?

And why does it enrage us to see these kinds of lies played out in real time today, while it merely amuses us to see the relics and artifacts of power’s dishonesty from half a millennium ago?

It’s dangerous, of course, to be moralistic about history. One key strength of this exhibition, curated by Elizabeth Cleland and Adam Eaker, is that it disillusions Tudor hagiography without making them seem uniquely brutal or awful. They came to power after a long period of civil war and brought with them a kind of peace — albeit at a terrible cost for anyone who crossed or opposed them. The Renaissance in Tudor England was no golden age, but it did bring the insular realm into greater contact with Italy and Europe. When Holbein came to England, he bore powerful letters of recommendation from Erasmus, the greatest intellectual of the age.

It also gave us Shakespeare, who effectively rewrote English history to make the Tudors seem inevitable, necessary and legitimate. When we say that something in our contemporary politics — say, a minor thane with murderous aspiration to absolute power — is Shakespearean, we are essentially saying it has the character of something from the Tudor age.

There is, of course, one fundamental difference between Tudor power and the power of men like Kushner and Musk. And that is, Tudor power is spent. It is in the past and can no longer harm us directly. The power that matters to us, the power that can corrupt democracy and poison our public square, is the power on view in photographs like that one from the World Cup.

And that is power that requires vigilance and resistance, two skills sharpened by close study of exhibitions such as the Tudors. It isn’t just a matter of becoming alert to the techniques of constructing power. It demands self-discipline, actively resisting the ensorcelling power of luxury goods bought with riches that should have belonged to everyone, not just the king and queen and their courtiers. It requires us to be not just amused but angry at Robert Pyte’s 1546 drawing “The Apotheosis of Henry VIII,” an architectural fantasy which presents Henry as a saintly savior figure, his form carved into an enormous classical arcade with columns and a coffered ceiling.

It’s worth remembering that there was nothing special about the Tudor’s need for legitimacy. Yes, they must have seemed like arrivistes when they came out on top after a long period of civil war. But all royal dynasties are illegitimate. And that includes the Plantagenets and the Windsors. Time absolves nothing. It is our duty to resist the allure of the “big lie,” no matter when it happened.

Short Brief

Good news / Bad news

Gas prices could drop below $3 a gallon by Christmas.

What to know:

Filling up now is as cheap as it was in February, just before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Why is this happening? (It’s not necessarily a good sign)

Demand for gas is falling as countries prepare for an economic downturn, among other factors.

What else?

The U.S. central bank may slow its interest rate hikes, starting this month, because of signs that inflation is slowing down.

The cost of gasoline is falling so fast that it is beginning to put real money back in the pockets of drivers, defying earlier projections and offering an unexpected gift for the holidays.

Filling up is now as cheap as it was in February, just before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine touched off a global energy crisis. AAA reported the average nationwide price of a gallon of regular Wednesday was $3.50, and gas price tracking company GasBuddy projected it could drop below $3 by Christmas. And all of that relief probably helped drive robust shopping over Thanksgiving weekend.

“People are realizing that they might be back to spending $50 to fill their tank instead of $80,” said Emma Rasiel, a professor of economics at Duke University. “It is the main signal consumers notice on inflation. It is the one thing they are likely to track, how much it has gone up or down, because every week they need to fill up their car.”

But Rasiel cautioned that less-expensive gas can also give consumers the wrong idea. Prices of other goods and services are much less volatile, and there is no indication that this moment of more-affordable fuel is pushing the cost of other things down.

Even as the plunge in prices at the pump helps fuel a national holiday shopping spree, it is a reflection of the financial strain consumers and businesses are confronting worldwide. Prices are going down because demand for oil and gas is falling as countries brace for recession, coronavirus outbreaks in China threaten major financial disruption and drivers cut back on gas-guzzling as they try to save money to cover skyrocketing mortgage payments and stock market losses.

Earlier worries that sanctions on Russian oil would create a shortage in supply and send prices soaring toward the end of the year have, for now at least, given way to ailing economies and jittery financial markets.

- more -

On Slavery & War

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Human Trafficking Hotline

Slavery and war are tightly connected – but we had no idea just how much until we crunched the data

Some 40 million people are enslaved around the world today, though estimates vary. Modern slavery takes many different forms, including child soldiers, sex trafficking and forced labor, and no country is immune. From cases of family controlled sex trafficking in the United States to the enslavement of fishermen in Southeast Asia’s seafood industry and forced labor in the global electronics supply chain, enslavement knows no bounds.

As scholars of modern slavery, we seek to understand how and why human beings are still bought, owned and sold in the 21st century, in hopes of shaping policies to eradicate these crimes.

Many of the answers trace back to causes like poverty, corruption and inequality. But they also stem from something less discussed: war.

In 2016, the United Nations Security Council named modern slavery a serious concern in areas affected by armed conflict. But researchers still know little about the specifics of how slavery and war are intertwined.

We recently published research analyzing data on armed conflicts around the world to better understand this relationship.

What we found was staggering: The vast majority of armed conflict between 1989 and 2016 used some kind of slavery.

Coding conflict

We used data from an established database about war, the Uppsala Conflict Data Program (UCDP), to look at how much, and in what ways, armed conflict intersects with different forms of contemporary slavery.

Our project was inspired by two leading scholars of sexual violence, Dara Kay Cohen and Ragnhild Nordås. These political scientists used that database to produce their own pioneering database about how rape is used as a weapon of war.

The Uppsala database breaks each conflict into two sides. Side A represents a nation state, and Side B is typically one or more nonstate actors, such as rebel groups or insurgents.

Using that data, our research team examined instances of different forms of slavery, including sex trafficking and forced marriage, child soldiers, forced labor and general human trafficking. This analysis included information from 171 different armed conflicts. Because the use of slavery changes over time, we broke multiyear conflicts into separate “conflict-years” to study them one year at a time, for a total of 1,113 separate cases.

Coding each case to determine what forms of slavery were used, if any, was a challenge. We compared information from a variety of sources, including human rights organizations like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, scholarly accounts, journalists’ reporting and documents from governmental and intergovernmental organizations.

Alarming numbers

In our recently published analysis, we found that contemporary slavery is a regular feature of armed conflict. Among the 1,113 cases we analyzed, 87% contained child soldiers – meaning fighters age 15 and younger – 34% included sexual exploitation and forced marriage, about 24% included forced labor and almost 17% included human trafficking.

A global heat map of the frequency of these armed conflicts over time paints a sobering picture. Most conflicts involving enslavement take place in low-income countries, often referred to as the Global South.

About 12% of the conflicts involving some form of enslavement took place in India, where there are several conflicts between the government and nonstate actors. Teen militants are involved in conflicts such as the insurgency in Kashmir and the separatist movement in Assam. About 8% of cases took place in Myanmar, 5% in Ethiopia, 5% in the Philippines and about 3% in Afghanistan, Sudan, Turkey, Colombia, Pakistan, Uganda, Algeria and Iraq.

This evidence of enslavement predominately in the Global South may not be surprising, given how poverty and inequality can fuel instability and conflict. However, it helps us reflect upon how these countries’ historic, economic and geopolitical relationships to the Global North also fuel pressure and violence, a theme we hope slavery researchers can study in the future.

Strategic enslavement

Typically, when armed conflict involves slavery, it’s being used for tactical aims: building weapons, for example, or constructing roads and other infrastructure projects to fight a war. But sometimes, slavery is used strategically, as part of an overarching strategy. In the Holocaust, the Nazis used “strategic slavery” in what they called “extermination through labor.” Today, as in the past, strategic slavery is normally part of a larger strategy of genocide.

We found that “strategic enslavement” took place in about 17% of cases. In other words, enslavement was one of the primary objectives of about 17% of the conflicts we examined, and often served the goal of genocide. One example is the Islamic State’s enslavement of the Yazidi minority in the 2014 massacre in Sinjar, Iraq. In addition to killing Yazidis, the Islamic State sought to enslave and impregnate women for systematic ethnic cleansing, attempting to eliminate the ethnic identity of the Yazidi through forced rape.

The connections between slavery and conflict are vicious but still not well understood. Our next steps include coding historic cases of slavery and conflict going back to World War II, such as how Nazi Germany used forced labor and how Imperial Japan’s military used sexual enslavement. We have published a new data set, “Contemporary Slavery in Armed Conflict,” and hope other researchers will also use it to help better understand and prevent future violence.

The Daddy State Shows Up

This is pretty simple.

Crapo is saying we can expect to be punished by employers and bankers and Wall Street crooks for demanding tax equity.

Daddy State Awareness, rule 3:

Every prediction of some dire consequence is a threat.

Either they intend to do some shitty thing, or cause some shitty thing to happen in an attempt to coerce us into doing what they want.

Money Money Money

Cryptocurrencies aren't quite completely in the shitter - although I think that's where they belong, cuz shit goes in the shitter - but there's plenty of Bearish gloom and doom going around, with more than just a hint of "you ain't seen nuthin' yet".

Reuters:

The crypto winter is into its ninth week and bitcoin can't shake the chills.

From technicals to turnover, market indicators are flashing red or amber for the biggest cryptocurrency, which has lost a third of its value in just two months.

So what now?

Bitcoin's limited history isn't much of a guide on crypto winters, which we're defining as prolonged bearishness for a month or more.

There have been five since 2017 and three since 2021. Last year's two crashes lasted 14 and 10 weeks and caused bitcoin to lose 45% to 47%. If they were typical, bitcoin's latest drop - 36% shed in eight weeks - has road left to run.

"Bitcoin is just not attractive to retail investors right now. Nobody really sees that potential for bitcoin to give out 10 times (return)," said Joseph Edwards, head of financial strategy at fund management firm Solrise Finance.

Indeed the macro background is far from supportive for an asset class now firmly seen as volatile, risky - plus vulnerable in the face of inflation. As worries over rising global rates and geopolitics bring U.S. stocks (.SPX) close to confirming a bear market, cryptocurrencies aren't on anyone's shopping list.

Yet even in the icy wilderness, there are some signs that the crypto king is plotting its comeback.

Bitcoin is drawing strength from the rest of the crypto market, for example, its relative stature providing some comfort for investors fleeing altcoins such as stablecoins deemed ultra-risky after the collapse of TerraUSD in early May.

Bitcoin dominance, a measure of the ratio between its market cap to the rest of cryptocurrency markets, has jumped to a seven-month high of over 44% even as its price has decreased.

"Institutional investors particularly are fleeing to safety, to a certain extent, to bitcoin, which has the most institutional adoption," said Marcus Sotiriou, analyst at UK-based asset broker GlobalBlock.

Last week, bitcoin futures saw their largest net long position since the contract was launched in 2018, CFTC data showed, indicating traders are increasing positioning for a rise in the price of the cryptocurrency.

Scary times, though.

Bitcoin has lost half its value since a Nov. 10 peak of $69,000. This week, it is flirting with $30,000, after touching a 17-month low of $25,401 on May 12. It remains the largest digital asset by market cap, but the market value of all cryptocurrencies now stands at $1.3 trillion, less than half the $3 trillion peak in November.

Data platform Coinglass's bitcoin Fear & Greed index of market sentiment - where 0 indicates extreme fear and 100 extreme greed - is hovering at 13.

Ether , the No. 2 token by market value, has hovered near the $2,000 mark, and is down about 60% from a peak of $4,868 on Nov. 10.

Bilal Hafeez, CEO at research firm Macro Hive, pointed to $2,300 and $2,500 as key levels and warned that failure to hold above either of those marks in the near term would be a bearish signal.

The crypto market is cowed.

Total spot market volume for all cryptocurrencies at major exchanges had fallen to $18.4 billion as of Monday - less than half of the $48.2 billion seen on May 14, which was the highest volume for 2022, according to news and research site The Block.

Blockchain analytics firm Glassnode said on May 9 that bitcoin at $33,600 puts 40% of investors underwater on their holdings.

"Many folks are left wondering what they should do with their coins – keep holding on for dear life or book losses and move on?" said Lindsey Bell, chief markets and money strategist at Ally Invest.

"It's a good reminder that crypto probably shouldn't be more than, say, 1-2% of your portfolio."

I don't think it's unreasonable to see this whole thing as either a tempest in a tea pot, or the wrangling of some big players to consolidate power, and to dominate the marketplace - to pick a winner and crown it King of Crypto.

Paranoid Mike's main worry though is that whoever is driving this shit could easily be angling for a takeover - looking to squeeze meatspace money out and replace it with this other cyber thing.

If disruption is all the rage, what better way to disrupt pretty much the whole world than to fuck up the money structure - the whole system of debit & credit?

And if you remove the old players (Dollars, Pounds, Euros, Yuan, etc) then you've removed a very important system of boundaries - the things that help us decide where one country stops and another begins. Borders.

Reminiscent of the Ned Beatty character's speech in Network.

And then, along comes Christine Lagarde to defend the current regime.

Politico:

Crypto assets are ‘worth nothing,’ says ECB’s Christine Lagarde

ECB president also signals preference for interest-rate hike of 25 basis points in July

FRANKFURT — European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde is making no bones about her feelings toward the value of crypto assets — namely, there isn't any.

"I have said all along the crypto assets are highly speculative, very risky assets," Lagarde told Dutch television show College Tour in an interview to be aired on Sunday. "My very humble assessment is that it is worth nothing. It is based on nothing, there is no underlying assets to act as an anchor of safety."

The comments come as the crypto market, more broadly, is taking a beating. Earlier this month, Bitcoin lost 20 percent of its value in a single week.

Lagarde revealed she had never invested in crypto assets, but her son had — with little luck.

A digital euro, however, would be an entirely different ball game, Lagarde explained.

"The day when we have the central bank digital currency, any digital euro, I will guarantee it," she said. "So the central bank will be behind it. I think that is vastly different from any of those things."

Lagarde also addressed monetary policy, signaling again that the ECB is ready to hike interest rates in July to fight raging inflation in the eurozone. However, she appeared to downplay the chance of a 50 basis-point move — a more radical option that Dutch central bank chief Klaas Knot had recently floated. Current market expectations see a 25 basis-point increase.

"We are going to follow the path of stopping net [bond] purchases and then sometime after that — which could be a few weeks — hike interest rates," Lagarde said. ECB bond buys are currently expected to be phased out early in the third quarter, opening the door for a rate hike in July.

A 50 basis-point hike "is not something that I can tell you at this point here today," she added.

Instead, she signaled that she may favor a slower tightening path, cautioning that the ECB doesn't want to put the brakes on a "car that is moving." Its goal is to "lift the accelerator ... to slow inflation."

Who do you trust?

Last Week Tonight

Q: "What on Earth am I here for?"

A: "To be scapegoated in a generations-long morality war that has nothing to do with you and everything to do with how we, as a society view money, sex, and power."

John Oliver - Sex Work

Jan6 Stuff

This is all I need to know to confirm the obvious about not trusting business to run things.

There's no heart, and no soul in business decisions that account for nothing but short-term profit-n-loss.

And when any company supports any politician who won't stand up and condemn The Big Lie, that company is dead to me.

MSNBC:

Several large corporations that previously condemned the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, including some who pledged not to fund its sympathizers in Congress, have resumed donating to Republican lawmakers who tried to overturn the 2020 election.

That’s according to a report from the corporate watchdog Accountable.US, the same group that previously outed corporations for similar hypocrisy on voting rights. The new report, titled “In Bad Company,” includes Boeing, UPS, FedEx, Cigna, Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson among a list of companies that claimed to support democracy in public only to quietly continue funding its biggest opponents.

“CEOs were quick to forgive and forget the election objectors’ rhetoric and actions that were a major escalation factor in the lead up to the assault on democracy,” the report says. “The question is, did these companies honestly care about preserving our democracy in the first place?”

The report profiles 20 large corporations and found they “donated over $8.1 million to the 147 members of the Sedition Caucus,” a label given to Republicans who voted against the certification of President Joe Biden's 2020 election win.

Cigna, for example, may have had some people fooled in the wake of the attack. Last year, the insurance giant vowed to stop donating to Republicans who “hindered the transfer of power” on Jan. 6. They went on to donate tens of thousands of dollars to Republican lawmakers who voted to overturn the 2020 election results.

Duke Energy is another one. After last year’s attack, a spokesperson for the energy giant said the organization was “shocked and dismayed” by the insurrection attempt, and claimed they were “taking this very seriously.” But surprise: The shock and dismay didn’t last long. In 2021, Duke Energy reportedly donated more than $50,000 to Republicans who voted to overturn the 2020 election.

These donations shouldn’t be interpreted as American industries playing political games as usual. Republicans who objected to certifying the 2020 election did so intent on denying Americans their duly-elected president in favor of a handpicked Republican. Any corporation funneling money to those lawmakers is sponsoring that anti-democratic mission, which hasn’t subsided in the wake of the Jan. 6 attack.

Overt pro-Trump benefactors, like pillow-pusher Mike Lindell and former Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne, have rightly become pariahs for their continued support of the conservative conspiracy theories that spurred last year’s insurrection attempt.

But all of the companies listed in the latest Accountable.US report deserve similar scrutiny now. Their donations equal permission for Republicans to continue their efforts, and these unscrupulous companies will bear responsibility for the attacks on democracy that have happened and will follow — regardless of the statements they release.

Dirty Fuels Plus Dirty Money

... makes for dirty politicians.

WaPo: (pay wall)

Manchin cites a blind trust to justify climate votes. But much income from his family’s coal company isn’t covered.

In Sen. Joe Manchin III’s hilly West Virginia home county, his family’s business has made millions by taking waste coal from long-abandoned mines and selling it to a power plant that emits air pollution at a higher rate than any other plant in the state.

That enterprise could have taken a hit under a key part of President Biden’s climate agenda, a $150 billion plan to push coal plants toward cleaner energy. One lawmaker, though, played a central role in killing that proposal: Manchin, who has earned hundreds of thousands of dollars annually from the family coal company while using his role as a Democratic swing vote in a 50-50 Senate to dictate Biden’s policies.

When pressed about whether he has a conflict of interest, Manchin bristles. “I have been in a blind trust for 20 years. I have no idea what they’re doing,” the senator told reporters in September, referring to his family’s coal firm. “You got a problem?”

But contrary to his public statements, documents filed by the senator show the blind trust is much too small to account for all his reported earnings from the coal company, as of his latest financial disclosure report, which covers 2020 and was filed in May.

Manchin’s latest financial disclosure report says that the West Virginia family coal business that he helped found and run, Enersystems, paid him $492,000 in interest, dividends and other income in 2020, and that his share of the firm is worth between $1 million and $5 million. He signed a sworn statement saying he is aware of these earnings, underscoring that he is not blind to them.

Excerpts from Manchin's financial disclosure reports.

By contrast, Manchin set up a blind trust with $350,000 in cash in 2012. In his latest financial disclosure report, the senator reported that the Joseph Manchin III Qualified Blind Trust earned no more than $15,000 last year and is worth between $500,000 and $1 million. By design, it is not possible to know precisely what’s in the blind trust. But the financial disclosure records show that it doesn’t include all of Manchin’s income from Enersystems.

If Manchin’s coal interests are not in a blind trust, ethics experts said, it calls into question the impartiality of a senator who in October forced Biden to drop the plan in his Build Back Better bill to phase out the same kinds of coal plants that are key to his family company’s profitability.

The senator’s effort to dismiss questions about his coal interests by declaring he has a blind trust is “misleading and at worst it’s just not true,” said Don Fox, a former general counsel and acting director of the Office of Government Ethics in the Obama administration, who examined Manchin’s financial records at The Washington Post’s request. He cited the vast difference between Manchin’s reported income from the trust and his family’s coal business.

“The question I would ask him would be, when he says it’s in a blind trust, ‘Well, your public financial disclosure report that you sign and swear is true does not have Enersystems in the blind trust,’ ” Fox said. “And if the blind trust is truly blind, how do you know what’s in it?”

Manchin declined an interview request. The Post sent his spokeswoman, Sam Runyon, a list of detailed questions and a copy of the document establishing the blind trust. She did not directly respond to queries about the blind trust and conflict of interest.

Instead, she emailed a statement that said in full: “Senator Manchin is in full compliance with Senate ethics and financial disclosure rules. He continues to work to find a path forward on important climate legislation that maintains American leadership in energy innovation and critical energy reliability, as exemplified by the many provisions to address climate change in the Energy Act of 2020 and the bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.”

It is legal for Manchin to make millions of dollars from his coal interests even as he chairs the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee and legislates on matters affecting the industry. That is because members of Congress are not required to divest their assets to avoid a potential industry conflict.

Senate rules prohibit members from using their position to pass legislation in which “the principal purpose” is to benefit themselves or family members. There is no evidence Manchin has taken action solely to benefit himself or the family company, though critics say that by killing the clean electricity provision in Biden’s agenda, he is helping all coal-related companies — potentially including Enersystems.

Ed Note: Aye, there's the rub - Manchin hasn't pushed for legislation or regulation that could benefit his portfolio, he's just blocked legislation and regulation that might decrease his portfolio. That is some top flight smarmspace fuckery right there.

Congressional rules are more lenient than, for example, those governing many top executive branch officials, whose assets would be reviewed by the Office of Government Ethics for potential conflicts of interest, making them subject to a requirement to divest, recuse or seek a waiver.

Craig Holman, an ethics expert at Public Citizen, said that regardless of the congressional rules, Manchin’s declaration in the trust that he wants to “avoid any conflict of interest, or any appearance of such a conflict” is undercut by his simultaneous earnings from a coal business and his work against climate policies.

“It is a very blatant conflict of interest,” Holman said, citing the senator’s financial disclosures. “Manchin is not only very wealthy, but most of his assets and wealth are invested in a single industry, coal.”

Holman said Manchin’s financial position is one of the most conflicted of any member of Congress he has studied because so much of the senator’s financial stake is in the coal industry while he is playing a key role on climate policies. Nonetheless, he said, “what Manchin is doing is not illegal. The conflict of interest code for Congress is just way too weak.”

Sen. Tina Smith (D-Minn.), who sought for months to convince Manchin to support the plan to transition power companies to cleaner forms of energy, said the West Virginia senator ultimately balked. Manchin’s opposition effectively killed one of the most far-reaching climate policies in the bill, outraging environmentalists and leading to an increased focus on his family’s coal business and his own earnings.

“After working on the Clean Electricity Performance Program, which I think is the strongest and best way of getting the utility sector to net-zero emissions as quickly as possible, Sen. Manchin ultimately said he just couldn’t get there,” Smith said in an interview. “And I think that was a mistake — I think the [program] would have been a powerful tool to get the emissions reductions we need, while keeping utility rates low.”

She stressed that she is still having “good conversations” with Manchin and is negotiating on other parts of the bill affecting climate change, but she has “no expectation that any kind of clean electricity plan will be included.”

Manchin could further scale back Biden’s climate change efforts. The senator has also objected to a measure in the Build Back Better bill designed to reduce emissions of methane, the main component of natural gas, and a tax credit for electric cars. He has not yet announced his support for the Democrats’ spending bill.

Questions about a conflict between Manchin’s coal interests and his government service go back decades, a review by The Post found.

Manchin helped found and became president of Enersystems, a coal brokerage firm, in 1988. One of its customers since 1993 has been a power plant in Grant Town, W. Va., that uses waste coal to produce energy.

In the mid-1990s, when Manchin was a state senator, he backed legislation that gave plants such as the one in Grant Town a property tax break. When a group of local citizens complained that Manchin had a conflict of interest, he responded that he had avoided any ethical problem by giving the break to all similar projects.

Had the bill only benefited the Grant Town plant, Manchin said at the time, “I would have excused myself from voting,” according to a contemporaneous account in the Charleston Gazette. But by backing a broad measure, Manchin said ethics officials told him it was allowed, notwithstanding the benefit for Grant Town.

After Manchin was elected West Virginia’s secretary of state in 2000, he gave control of Enersystems to his son Joseph Manchin IV, who still runs it. The younger Manchin did not respond to a request for comment.

After Manchin was elected governor in 2005, he said he put his company shares in a blind trust. He reported receiving hundreds of thousands of dollars from his coal business on a state financial disclosure form in 2009 and 2010, and told the news service Greenwire in 2011 that his holdings had “absolutely not” affected his policies, adding, “I have been in a blind trust for a long time.”

In his successful 2010 bid for the U.S. Senate, Manchin ran an ad that showed him shooting at President Barack Obama’s proposed legislation to address climate change “because it’s bad for West Virginia.” Between 2011 and 2020, Manchin earned $4.8 million from Enersystems, according to a tally by the Center for Responsive Politics. His net worth as of 2020 was between $4.4 million to $12.8 million, the center said.

Enersystems is a private company based in Fairmont, W. Va., near Manchin’s hometown of Farmington. Public records show that the business is among those that benefit from federal programs to clean up long-shuttered coal mines, where mountains of mining debris, known as waste coal, have been piled and abandoned. The company sells the waste coal to the only power plant in the state that still burns it: the Grant Town Power Plant, an 80-megawatt electricity-generating facility in Manchin’s home county of Marion.

Compared with ordinary coal plants, power plants that burn waste coal, or what the industry calls “gob,” are dirtier and don’t generate as much electricity. The Grant Town plant emits more greenhouse gases and the main components of acid rain — nitrogen oxides and sulfur dioxide — into the air per megawatt-hour of electricity produced than any other power plant in West Virginia, according to the Environmental Protection Agency’s most recent data. Only a handful of waste coal-burning plants still operate nationally. They are such heavy polluters that the Trump administration created a separate category for them, weakening the air pollution standards they had to meet.

“Burning waste coal, like burning trash, turns pollution on the ground into pollution in the air,” said Eric Schaeffer, executive director of the Environmental Integrity Project, a nonprofit founded by former EPA officials. The environmental benefits of clearing waste coal from mining sites are questionable, he added. Although removing the piles of gob can reduce acid runoff, the process of burning it creates an enormous amount of ash that can release toxins into streams or groundwater.

The Manchin family doesn’t own or operate the Grant Town plant, which is run by American Bituminous Power Partners, a limited partnership registered in Delaware. But records of coal transactions from last year suggest the power plant is Enersystems’ primary customer. It is the only publicly recorded buyer of Enersystems’ waste coal.

In response to written questions from The Post, American Bituminous Power Partners Executive Director Ken Niemann said the Grant Town plant “is in full compliance with all its state and federal air emissions controls and limitations.”

As the economics of burning coal have become less favorable, the Grant Town plant has come close to shutting down at least twice. In 2006, when Manchin was governor, the state’s Public Service Commission rescued the plant by approving rate increases, which the utility passed on to customers. The commission’s chair at the time was a Manchin appointee.

Those higher prices were supposed to be temporary until 2017. But by 2015, the power plant’s owners were back before the commission, claiming financial difficulties. The commissioners sided with the plant, and the higher rates became permanent.

The Grant Town plant faced a new threat this year: Democrats’ plans to rapidly shift the electricity sector away from coal and toward cleaner sources of energy. The clean electricity program would have rewarded utilities for purchasing more electricity from wind, solar and other emissions-free sources — and penalized those that did not.

If the program had become law, the power company that buys electricity from the Grant Town plant would have faced growing financial pressure to shift away from coal power, increasing the odds that Grant Town would eventually close, said James Van Nostrand, director of West Virginia University law school’s Center for Energy and Sustainable Development.

The clean electricity program “would have helped us out a lot,” Van Nostrand said. West Virginia’s embrace of coal power over less expensive alternatives like gas, wind and solar has contributed to a decade of rising electricity bills. According to Van Nostrand’s analysis, between 2010 and 2019 West Virginians’ electricity costs increased about five times more than the national average.

“By definition, if the federal government is going to help us transition to cheaper, cleaner electricity, then our electricity bills would either go down or wouldn’t go up as fast as they are now,” he said.

In 2019, Manchin co-authored an op-ed with Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) in The Post that said, “There is no question that climate change is real or that human activities are driving much of it. We are seeing the impact in our home states.” They said they were working to find “pragmatic policies that can draw strong and enduring support” and pinned much of their hope on what they called “the next scientific breakthrough” for “game-changing technology.” They opposed what they called “drastic, unattainable measures to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions.”

Manchin’s role as the potentially decisive vote in the Senate and his opposition to efforts at abandoning the filibuster have given him outsize power, which he’s used in part to reduce the Build Back Better bill from more than $3 trillion to $1.75 trillion.

Manchin has argued that the clean electricity plan he insisted on removing from the bill is unnecessary because coal companies are already moving toward other energy sources. “The only thing they want us to do is pay $150 billion for what’s already happening,” Manchin told reporters in September in explaining his opposition to the measure. “We’ve transitioned.”

The legislation that passed the House last month still contains $555 billion in tax credits, grants and other efforts to lower planet-warming greenhouse gases, which would be the largest clean energy investment in U.S. history. The bill’s tax incentives would make it easier to install solar panels, build wind turbines and retrofit buildings with energy-saving upgrades. Electric vehicles would become less expensive, reducing a barrier that has prevented many Americans from purchasing them.

Around the time Manchin helped kill the clean electricity provision, he was asked during a walk with reporters on Capitol Hill about whether he has a conflict of interest and was pressed on the fact that his son runs the family coal company. Manchin responded, “I’m very proud of my son. He does a good job. You’d do best to change the subject now.”

Manchin’s critics said that while the senator was not violating any law, he is violating the premise of his promise to avoid the appearance of conflict of interest.

Dylan Hedtler-Gaudette, manager of government affairs at the Project on Government Oversight, said the best way to prevent such a conflict of interest would be to require members of Congress to divest most investments. If that was adopted, Manchin would be required to liquidate his shares in the coal company and put the assets in a blind trust, and authorize a trustee to invest the money in any way deemed appropriate, and without his knowledge.

“Under the current framework, you are not required to divest anything,” he said. “I think there should be someone in Congress who introduces a bill that says, ‘Look, if you become a member of Congress, you have to divest basically everything except for a widely diversified mutual fund.’ ”

But Hedtler-Gaudette said he has not found a single member of Congress willing to sponsor such legislation. As a result, he hopes Manchin’s case will prompt legislators to consider requiring divestment of any asset — not just publicly traded stock — that could be perceived as a conflict of interest.

“If you don’t like it, that’s fine,” Hedtler-Gaudette said. “There’s isn’t anyone who requires you to be a member of Congress.”

Congress Critters

I want the Government Ethics Office to put up a website that posts all the financial info of every member of congress, and every government official above the rank-n-file, and I want to be able to get a notification every time one of these fuckers makes a trade.

Every

Fucking

Time

This shit has to stop.

Business Insider:

48 members of Congress have violated a law designed to stop insider trading and prevent conflicts-of-interest

(Ed Note: 28 Republicans and 20 Democrats)

Insider and other media have identified numerous US lawmakers not complying with the federal STOCK Act.

Their excuses range from oversights, to clerical errors, to inattentive accountants.
Ethics watchdogs — and even some in Congress — want to ban lawmakers from trading individual stocks.

Insider and several other news organizations have this year identified 47 members of Congress who've failed to properly report their financial trades as mandated by the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge Act of 2012, also known as the STOCK Act.

Congress passed the law in 2012 to combat insider trading and conflicts of interest among their own members and force lawmakers to be more transparent about their personal financial dealings. A key provision of the law mandates that lawmakers publicly — and quickly — disclose any stock trade made by themselves, a spouse, or a dependent child.

But many members of Congress have not fully complied with the law. They offer excuses including ignorance of the law, clerical errors, and mistakes by an accountant.

While lawmakers who violate the STOCK Act face a fine, the penalty is usually small — $200 is the standard amount — or waived by House or Senate ethics officials. Ethics watchdogs and even some members of Congress have called for stricter penalties or even a ban on federal lawmakers from trading individual stocks, although neither has come to pass.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, a Democrat from California

Feinstein was months late disclosing a five-figure investment her husband made into a private, youth-focused polling company.

Sen. Tommy Tuberville, a Republican from Alabama

Tuberville was weeks or months late in disclosing nearly 130 separate stock trades from January to May.

Sen. Roger Marshall, a Republican from Kansas

Marshall was up to 17 months late disclosing stock trades for one of his dependent children.

Sen. Rand Paul, a Republican from Kentucky

Paul was 16 months late in disclosing that his wife bought stock in a biopharmaceutical company that manufactures an antiviral COVID-19 treatment, the Washington Post reported.

Sen. Mark Kelly, a Democrat from Arizona

Kelly, a retired astronaut, failed to disclose on time his exercising of a stock option on an investment in a company that's developing a supersonic passenger aircraft, Fox Business reported.

Sen. Cynthia Lummis, a Republican from Wyoming

Lummis was several days late reporting a purchase in August of up to $100,000 in bitcoin, CNBC reported.

Rep. Tom Malinowski, a Democrat from New Jersey

Malinowski failed to disclose dozens of stock trades made during 2020 and early 2021, doing so only after questions from Insider.

The independent Office of Congressional Ethics, in part citing Insider's reporting, found "substantial reason to believe" that Malinowski violated federal rules or laws designed to promote transparency and defend against conflicts. It voted 5-1 to refer its findings to the Democrat-led House Committee on Ethics, which confirmed on October 21 that it will continue reviewing the matter.

Rep. Pat Fallon, a Republican from Texas

Fallon was months late disclosing dozens of stock trades during early- and mid-2021 that together are worth as much as $17.53 million.

Rep. Diana Harshbarger, a Republican from Tennessee

Harshbarger failed to properly disclose more than 700 stock trades that together are worth as much as $10.9 million.

Rep. Katherine Clark, a Democrat from Massachusetts

Clark, one of the highest-ranking Democrats in the House, was several weeks late in disclosing 19 of her husband's stock transactions. Together, the trades are worth as much as $285,000.

Rep. Blake Moore, a Republican from Texas

Moore in early- to mid-2021 did not properly disclose dozens of stock and stock-option trades together worth as much as $1.1 million. He was late again disclosing trades made in August.

Rep. Mikie Sherrill, a Democrat from New Jersey

Sherrill was months late disclosing two sales of vested stock her husband earned as part of his employment. The trades were worth up to $350,000 and Sherrill paid a $400 late fee.

Rep. Mo Brooks, a Republican from Alabama

Brooks, who is running for US Senate, failed to properly disclose a sale of Pfizer stock worth up to $50,000.

Rep. Dan Crenshaw, a Republican from Texas

Crenshaw was months late disclosing several stock trades he made in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Daily Beast reported.

Rep. Susie Lee, a Democrat of Nevada

Lee failed to properly disclose more than 200 stock trades between early-2020 and mid-2021. Together, the trades are worth as much as $3.3 million.

Rep. Kevin Hern, a Republican from Oklahoma

Hern did not disclose nearly two-dozen stock trades in a timely manner, in violation of the STOCK Act. Taken together, the trades are worth as much as $2.7 million.

Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a Democrat from Florida

Wasserman Schultz was months late reporting four stock trades made either for herself or her child.

Rep. Michael Guest, a Republican from Mississippi
Guest was more than eight months late disclosing trades in the stock of two oil companies held by a family trust benefitting his wife.

Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney, a Democrat from New York

Maloney was months late in disclosing he sold eight stocks he inherited in mid-2020 when his mother died.

Rep. Brian Mast, a Republican from Florida

Mast was late disclosing that he had purchased up to $100,000 in stock in an aerospace company. The president of the company had just testified before a congressional subcommittee on which Mast sits.

Rep. Lori Trahan, a Democrat from Massachusetts

Trahan was months late disclosing the sale of stock shares in a software company.

Rep. John Rutherford, a Republican from Florida

Rutherford failed to properly disclose five individual stock transactions he made in late 2020.

Rep. Kathy Castor, a Democrat of Florida

Castor was late disclosing the purchase of tens of thousands of dollars worth of stock shares throughout 2021.

Rep. August Pfluger, a Republican from Texas

Pfluger was several months late disclosing numerous stock purchases or sales made in January or March either by himself or by his wife.

Rep. Brian Higgins, a Democrat from New York
Higgins was about 11 months late disclosing three stock trades he made in late 2020.

Rep. Cheri Bustos, a Democrat from Illinois

Bustos was months late in disclosing that she had sold up to $150,000 worth of stocks in March.

Rep. Steve Chabot, a Republican from Ohio

Chabot was months late disclosing a stock share exchange he held in early 2021.

Rep. Victoria Spartz, a Republican from Indiana

Spartz was two weeks late disclosing a purchase of up to $50,000 worth of stock in a commercial real-estate firm.

Rep. Rick Allen, a Republican from Georgia

Allen, a four-term Republican who represents a large southeastern region of Georgia, appears to have improperly disclosed the purchases and sales of several stocks during 2019 and 2020.

Rep. Mike Kelly, a Republican from Pennsylvania

Kelly was more than seven weeks late reporting a stock purchase made by his wife.

Rep. Chris Jacobs, a Republican from New York

Jacobs was months late filing various transactions made throughout early- to mid-2021, Forbes reported.

Rep. Bobby Scott, a Democrat from Virginia

Scott was months late in disclosing a pair of stock sales from December 2020, Forbes reported. NPR also reported several other late transactions, as first identified by the nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center.

Rep. Austin Scott, a Republican from Georgia

Scott, a Republican from Georgia, was a week late reporting a handful of transactions conducted by his spouse.

Rep. Pete Sessions, a Republican from Texas

Sessions was a month late in reporting a purchase of stock in Amazon.com.

Rep. Ed Perlmutter, a Democrat from Colorado

Perlmutter ran a few days late in filing disclosures for as much as $30,000 in stock trades his wife made in June.

Rep. Kim Schrier, a Democrat from Washington

Schrier was more than two months late disclosing that her husband purchased up to $1 million in Apple Inc. stock, Sludge and Forbes reported. Schrier's office told Insider that the congresswoman was initially unaware of the transaction.

Rep. Tom Suozzi, a Democrat from New York

Suozzi failed to file required reports on about 300 financial transactions, NPR reported, citing research from the Campaign Legal Center.

Rep. Cindy Axne, a Democrat from Iowa

During 2019 and 2020, Axne didn't file required periodic transaction reports for more than three-dozen trades, reported NPR, citing research by the Campaign Legal Center.

Rep. Warren Davidson, a Republican from Ohio

Davidson didn't properly disclose the sale of stock worth up to $100,000, reported NPR, citing Campaign Legal Center research.

Rep. Lance Gooden, a Republican from Texas

Gooden failed to file mandatory periodic transaction reports for a dozen stock transactions, per the STOCK Act, reported NPR, citing Campaign Legal Center research. Gooden's office disputed to the Dallas Morning News that the lawmaker did anything wrong.

Rep. Chuck Fleischmann, a Republican from Tennessee

Fleischmann, a Republican from Tennessee, was late in disclosing a pair of stock transactions together worth up to $30,000.

Del. Michael San Nicolas, a Democrat from Guam

San Nicolas did not properly disclose two trades — one in 2019 and another in 2020, reported NPR, citing Campaign Legal Center research.

Rep. Peter Welch, a Democrat from Vermont

Welch, an outspoken environmentalist, was late disclosing the sale of his wife's ExxonMobil stock.

Rep. Jim Banks, a Republican from Indiana

Banks was a week late reporting a handful of stock transactions.

Rep. Rob Wittman, a Republican from Virginia

Wittman was a few days late in disclosing four of his stock transactions that included pharmaceutical company Johnson & Johnson.

Rep. Alan Lowenthal, a Democrat from California

Lowenthal was late disclosing his wife's purchase of a corporate bond in cloud computing and technology company VMWare, worth between $15,001 and $50,000, Forbes reported. "We have no comment," Lowenthal spokesman Keith Higginbotham told Insider on November 18.

Rep. Roger Williams, a Republican from Texas

Williams did not properly report three stock transactions his wife made in 2019, reported NPR, citing Campaign Legal Center research.

Rep. Dan Meuser, a Republican from Pennsylvania

Meuser was about one year late disclosing hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of stock purchases his wife and children made during March 2020, LegiStorm reported.