SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
ivanka trump
The Naked Political Corruption of the GOP Is Destroying US Democracy
Lacking any core beliefs or principles other than obeisance to billionaires and the fossil fuel industry, the Republican Party has become one giant grift, and the USA is its mark.
May 18, 2023
A former employee of Rudy Giuliani, who was hired to help him drum up business for his law firm, has sworn under oath and penalty of perjury that he told her one of the “business opportunities” she could exploit was to sell pardons to felons for $2 million each. Giuliani, she alleges in a lawsuit filed Monday, told her he’d be splitting the money with Trump 50/50.
It’s an echo of a mostly-forgotten story in The New York Times from over two years ago: The $2 million figure matches what John Kiriakou told reporters and the FBI (which appears not to have followed up) that Giuliani quoted him as the cost to buy a pardon from Trump. (Kiriakou turned the offer down, noting that he didn’t have $2 million even if he were inclined, which he wasn’t.)
As far as I can tell, not a single elected Republican has commented on the news: Corruption is now officially the GOP’s brand. The ideals of America are, to them, nothing more than a joke.
If America is as much an idea as it is a place, this naked political corruption is destroying our nation.
Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump made $640 million while working in the Trump White House, and then apparently sold U.S. intelligence and their defense of the Khashoggi murder to the Saudis for over $2 billion the month after Trump left office.
Trump himself is now taking “a huge amount of money” from the Saudis, laundered through the LIV Golf Tournament they began when Joe Biden became president. At the same time, he continues to mimic Putin’s positions on everything from Ukraine and NATO to their shared dislike of liberal democracy.
This is what the Republican Party has come to. Lacking any core beliefs or principles other than obeisance to billionaires and the fossil fuel industry, the GOP has become one giant grift, trying at every turn to convert whatever is in front of it into money, power, or both.
All while essentially telling the rest of us Americans to go screw ourselves. They really don’t appear to care how many of our kids die from guns, how many of our queer children die from suicide, or how many women die from pregnancy.
At the same time Democrats are trying to reduce student debt, expand Medicaid coverage, strengthen Social Security and Medicare, and expand coverage for food stamps and housing support, Republicans are demanding more deregulation for dirty industries and to make Trump’s tax cuts for billionaires permanent.
For example, fully 275 of the 315 pages of the GOP’s “Limit, Save, Grow Act”—House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s legislation that would lift the debt ceiling and avert a worldwide financial crisis—are exclusively devoted to a wish list for the fossil fuel industry and the billionaires it’s produced.
They include ending all the green energy provisions of and subsidies in the Inflation Reduction Act, fast-tracking new fossil fuel infrastructure, reinstating the Keystone XL pipeline permits, blocking Biden or any future president or governor from banning fracking, and selling off federal lands to drillers for pennies on the dollar.
The part of that bill that lifts the debt ceiling is only 31 words long.
Virtually across-the-board, Republicans in Congress (and a handful of “Corporate Problem Solver” Democrats) are eagerly on the take.
Since five corrupt Republicans on the Supreme Court legalized political bribery with their Citizens United decision, lobbyists and right-wing billionaires are bestowing cash, campaign donations, dark money, and luxury trips on members of Congress and state legislatures.
Last year, federal lobbyists spent over $4 billion showering gifts and attention on Congress, while over at the Supreme Court billionaire interests are similarly indulging Republican appointees.
Leonard Leo, who parlayed his assembly line of hard-right and neofascist judges into $1.65 billion, was recently revealed to have been secretly funneling cash from a group with business before the Court straight into Ginni Thomas’s pocket.
He’s alleged to have laundered at least $100,000 from the Judicial Education Project (JEP) to Mrs. Thomas through Kellyanne Conway’s polling company way back in 2012, asking her to make sure there was “No mention of Ginni, of course.” The JEP was, at the time, arguing in an amicus brief before the Supreme Court that the justices should use the Shelby County v. Holder case to gut the Voting Rights Act.
Her husband, Clarence Thomas, not only did not recuse himself from the case: he cast the tie-breaking vote in Shelby County that allowed Republicans nationwide to go on a decades-long spree of voter suppression directed largely against Black people.
Since that decision, Republican governors shut over 2,000 voting locations in mostly minority districts, gerrymandered numerous Black elected officials out of both state and federal office, and purged over 16 million mostly Black and Hispanic voters from the rolls, resulting in states like Texas, Georgia, Ohio, and Florida moving suddenly from purple to bright red.
Billionaire Harlan Crow was allegedly an early innovator in the effort to corrupt the Supreme Court, hooking up with the Thomas family back in the 1990s after Clarence was put on the Court by President George H.W. Bush. He’s since bestowed upon the couple millions of dollars’ worth of gifts, including luxury vacations, Frederick Douglass’s bible, Clarence’s mother’s home, and tuition to a high-end school for the child the couple was raising as their own.
Sam Alito takes luxury “speaking trips” to Europe, Brett “Beer Bong” Kavanaugh gets his debts and credit cards paid off, Amy Coney Barrett won’t recuse herself from cases before the Court involving her father’s employer, and John Roberts’s wife earns over $10 million helping get friendly lawyers into top-drawer law firms that sometimes argue before the Court. All can claim huge speaking fees from right-wing groups, often totaling hundreds of thousands of dollars a year.
As David Sirota and Andrew Perez note, much of this largess directed toward the Court is not as clear a bribe around a specific decision as the money given to Ginni Thomas appears but, instead, is designed to prevent Republican appointees from drifting to the left as has happened so often in the past. It’s essentially a form of “golden handcuffs”:
“From Earl Warren to William Brennan to John Paul Stevens to David Souter, the Republican Supreme Court appointees who ended up becoming liberals haunt the psyche of the right’s judicial activists. It is this dynamic that conservative puppet masters most want to prevent, because it has not been an anomaly.”
Meanwhile, the morbidly rich spent over a billion dollars in the 2022 election buying seats in Congress and state legislatures, according to Americans for Tax Fairness, and just in Ohio, North Carolina, and Wisconsin (Vance, Budd, Johnson):
“Republican billionaires outspent the much smaller pool of Democratic billionaires by at least nine-to-one in each race.”
If America is as much an idea as it is a place, this naked political corruption is destroying our nation. Speaking with me after five Republicans on the Supreme Court handed down their corrupt 2010 Citizens United decision, President Jimmy Carter said:
“[Citizens United] violates the essence of what made America a great country in its political system. Now it’s just an oligarchy, with unlimited political bribery being the essence of getting the nominations for president or to elect the president… So now we’ve just seen a complete subversion of our political system as a payoff to major contributors, who want and expect and sometimes get favors for themselves after the election’s over.”
So, when do we officially declare that the GOP has killed America?
Black people are afraid to vote, the Supreme Court is corrupted, three presidential elections were stolen through treason, one Republican president tried to overthrow our democracy and is now running for reelection, another lied us into two needless and criminal wars, and President Ronald Reagan begin the process of gutting the middle class and establishing an overlord oligarchy.
As a result, even the basic infrastructure of a modern republic—our schools and healthcare system—no longer works for average people.
One after another Republican-controlled state is ghettoizing their public-school systems with statewide voucher subsidies for upper-middle-class and wealthy children, while Republicans filibustered a continuation of the pandemic-era Medicaid expansion this year, losing health insurance for tens of millions of low-income working families.
Biden’s effort to reduce student debt is being fought by Republican attorneys general all the way to the Supreme Court, red states are awash in guns and concomitant gun deaths, and queer children and adults are under both legal and physical attack.
Openly Nazi Republican-aligned militias stalk the streets of our cities, while GOP-donor Wall Street hedge funds could own as many as 40% of all single-family rental homes in America by the end of the decade.
Climate change is killing thousands of Americans every year, and the numbers are climbing. Working people struggle to pay their bills because the GOP refuses to raise the minimum wage, the rights of women are under attack in states controlled by Republicans, and our kids are dying in an epidemic of suicide at the hands of massive, unregulated GOP-leaning social media companies.
This is the tragic consequence of a once-great political party that saved America from a fascist Confederacy having been seized by billionaires, adopting a money-hoarding mentality, and sacrificing their principles to the almighty dollar. It is killing America, and threatens democracy across the world.
Next year we’ll have what may well be our last chance to reclaim the values of democracy, pluralism, and egalitarianism that have animated this country since her founding.
And nobody can say they weren’t warned about the stakes.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Judge Grants NY AG's Request for Independent Monitor to Oversee Trump Organization
New York Attorney General Letitia James said the ruling means "Donald Trump and his companies cannot continue the extensive fraud that we uncovered."
Nov 03, 2022
A New York judge on Thursday granted the state Attorney General Letitia James' request for an independent monitor to supervise the businesses of former U.S. President Donald Trump, who is a defendant in a fraud lawsuit recently filed by James.
"Time and time again, the courts have ruled that Donald Trump cannot evade the law for personal gain."
New York Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron issued an order approving James' motion for the appointment of an independent monitor to oversee Trump's dealings with financial institutions, as well as any major asset sales.
In a statement welcoming Thursday's order, James said that "time and time again, the courts have ruled that Donald Trump cannot evade the law for personal gain."
"Today's decision will ensure that Donald Trump and his companies cannot continue the extensive fraud that we uncovered and will require the appointment of an independent monitor to oversee compliance at the Trump Organization," she added. "No number of lawsuits, delay tactics, or threats will stop our pursuit of justice."
James accuses the former president and other members of his business organization of "engaging in ongoing and extensive acts of fraud in the preparation of Mr. Trump's annual statements of financial condition" in violation of state executive and criminal laws.
In September, James' office sued Trump and three of his children--Donald Jr., Ivanka, and Eric Trump--for what the lawsuit called "staggering" fraud.
According to James, "Trump, his family, and the Trump Organization used fraudulent and misleading asset valuations over 200 times in 10 years on his annual financial statements."
"Since Mr. Trump and the Trump Organization became aware of [the attorney general's] investigation, they have continued to engage in many practices they knew to be improper or fraudulent," James' office asserted, "including on Mr. Trump's 2021 statement of financial condition."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Trumps Agree to Be Questioned Under Oath Unless NY Court Intervenes
The pending depositions relate to the state attorney general's civil probe of the family business.
Jun 08, 2022
Former President Donald Trump and his two eldest children, Donald Jr. and Ivanka Trump, have agreed to be questioned under oath next month by lawyers with New York Attorney General Letitia James' office unless the state's highest court intervenes, a filing revealed Wednesday.
The deal to begin the questioning on July 15 comes after a New York appeals court last month upheld a lower court's ruling that the trio must sit for depositions as part of James' civil investigation into the Trump Organization's business practices.
Trump attorney Alina Habba "said soon after that ruling that she would appeal the matter to the Court of Appeals," The New York Times reported, noting that it's not clear if the state's top court "will agree to hear the case, but if it does, the three Trump family members may still have a hope of avoiding the interviews."
The Associated Press noted Wednesday that "the former president had plenty of experience with such questioning during his business career, and he gave a deposition just this past October in a lawsuit filed by protesters who said his security team roughed them up during his first presidential campaign."
His other adult son, Eric Trump, was deposed for the New York probe in 2020 and invoked the Fifth Amendment more than 500 times in six hours to avoid answering questions.
Separate from the deposition deal on Wednesday, a New York state judge--who previously held the ex-president in civil contempt for failing to comply with a subpoena related to James' investigation--ordered Trump to provide her office with additional information.
"Leaving the contempt order in place is the simplest, most effective way to get the job done," said Judge Arthur Engoron, according to CNN--which noted that Trump now has "until June 17 to submit affidavits from the Trump Organization's accounting, marketing, hotel, golf, and legal departments explaining the units' document destruction and retention policies."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Congress Pushed to Pass Fix After Watchdog Finds 13 Ex-Officials Illegally Campaigned for Trump
"Senior Trump administration officials showed an open contempt for the law meant to protect the American people from the use of taxpayer resources and government power for partisan politics."
Nov 09, 2021
As federal investigators announced Tuesday that at least 13 senior Trump administration officials violated the Hatch Act--a key law restricting campaign activities by government employees--a leading ethics advocacy group responded by calling on Congress to pass the Protecting Our Democracy Act.
"There are significant enforcement challenges to enforcing the Hatch Act. Legislation like the Protecting Our Democracy Act would fix that."
In a 59-page report, the U.S. Office of Special Counsel (OSC) said the Trump administration exhibited a "willful disregard for the Hatch Act" that was "especially pernicious considering the timing of when many of these violations took place."
"The report outlines how the 13 officials used their official authority or influence to interfere with or affect the result of the 2020 presidential election," OSC said in a statement. "Taken together, the report concludes that the violations demonstrate both a willingness by some in the Trump administration to leverage the power of the executive branch to promote President [Donald] Trump's reelection and the limits of OSC's enforcement power."
Noah Bookbinder, president of the government watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility & Ethics in Washington (CREW), said in a statement Tuesday that "this report confirms that there was nothing less than a systematic co-opting of the powers of the federal government to keep Donald Trump in office. Senior Trump administration officials showed an open contempt for the law meant to protect the American people from the use of taxpayer resources and government power for partisan politics."
The 13 former Trump administration officials named in the OSC report are: Energy Secretary Dan Brouillette, senior presidential counselor Kellyanne Conway, White House Communications Director Alyssa Farah, U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman, Trump senior adviser Jared Kushner, White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany, White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, White House adviser Stephen Miller, White House Deputy Press Secretary Brian Morgenstern, National Security Adviser Robert O'Brien, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, chief of staff to Vice President Mike Pence Marc Short, and Acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf.
"In each of these instances, senior administration officials used their official authority or influence to campaign for President Trump," the report states. "Based upon the Trump administration's reaction to the violations, OSC concludes that the most logical inference is that the administration approved of these taxpayer-funded campaign activities."
Violations include Pompeo addressing the 2020 Republican National Convention live from Jerusalem, Wolf administering oaths to newly naturalized U.S. citizens in a broadcast during the convention, and Conway, Miller, and others promoting Trump's reelection during television appearances.
It was an especially rough day for McEnany and Miller, who were also served subpoenas Tuesday by a congressional committee investigating the deadly January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Related Content
McEnany, McEntee, Miller, and More: Latest Jan. 6 Subpoenas Go Out for Trump Inner Circle
The OSC investigation also found that presidential adviser Ivanka Trump violated the Hatch Act by using her Twitter account "for substantial official government activity and also to promote numerous candidates for partisan political office."
"However," it added, "the lack of any regulations or examples addressing the use of social media accounts for political activity," and the fact that the former president's eldest daughter used her personal Twitter profile, kept her off the list of 13 violators.
The report lists "statutory amendment" as a possible way to overcome significant barriers to enforcement enumerated in the paper. Proponents argue the Protecting Our Democracy Act--a measure introduced by Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) and backed by over 150 groups that would prevent future presidential abuses of power, restore checks and balances, and protect elections from foreign interference--would do just that.
"OSC notes that there are significant enforcement challenges to enforcing the Hatch Act," said Bookbinder. "Legislation like the Protecting Our Democracy Act would fix that. Congress must act now so that this never happens again."
Keep ReadingShow Less
House Oversight Chair Says 'Grave Concerns' Trump Team Trashing White House Records
In a letter to the U.S. government archivist, Rep. Carolyn Maloney says her committee "has no visibility into what is happening" in terms of record-keeping for administration documents.
Dec 20, 2020
House Oversight Committee chair Rep. Carolyn Maloney expressed "grave concerns" Monday that the outgoing Trump administration "may be disposing" of presidential records in violation of federal law.
"Every bit of this information belongs to the American people and the White House cannot deprive the public of this information."
--New York AG Letitia JamesMaloney (D-N.Y.) voiced her concerns in a letter to Archivist of the United States David Ferriero. She referenced the Presidential Records Act and the requirements the post-Watergate statute imposes on President Donald Trump and the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), which Ferriero heads.
The law says that the president can't get rid of presidential records, including memos, emails, and notes, without first getting "the views, in writing, of the Archivist concerning the proposed disposal." The archivist must "request the advice" of several congressional committees--including the House Oversight Committee--regarding such proposals to see if the records in question "may be of special interest to the Congress" or if congressional consultation may be "in the public interest."
And yet, wrote Maloney, her committee "has no visibility into what is happening at the White House in terms of archiving and transferring records to NARA." What's more, in light of Covid-19, "NARA has not detailed any employees to the White House to assist or oversee this process, as it has in past transitions."
The Democratic congresswoman also pointed to reporting indicating that Trump has not been compliant with record-keeping obligations, citing a 2018 report from Politico indicating that White House staffers were forced--in the face of Trump's habit of ripping papers and throwing them in garbage or on the floor--to reassemble pieces with Scotch tape.
Maloney added that "our existing laws may need review and revision to strengthen oversight and compliance."
She demanded answers by January 5, 2021 to a number questions including whether any Trump administration official has disposed of records since Inauguration Day and "What efforts, if any, have you made to determine whether President Trump and White House officials are disposing of presidential records without" adhering to PRA requirements.
The congresswoman's demands to Ferriero follow a letter sent last week by a coalition of state attorneys general to White House Counsel Pat Cipollone reminding the administration of its "record preservation obligations."
Led by New York's Letitia James and dated December 16, the 15 AGs wrote that they "have serious concerns about compliance by White House personnel with their Presidential Records Act obligations, including preservation of records and proper use of non-official electronic message accounts."
Beyond the reported ripping of papers, fueling concerns about record-keeping are Trump son-in-law and senior advisor Jared Kushner's communications via WhatsApp and first daughter and adviser Ivanka Trump's use of personal email for White House business.
"The Trump administration shouldn't have to be told that they need to comply with the law and keep all records of official business, but the last four years have shown that the president needs to be constantly reminded what the law is and how he must comply with it," James said in a statement Wednesday.
"Even the president's tweets, the private conversations he had with Russian President Putin, and Ivanka's private email server must be archived," added James. "Every bit of this information belongs to the American people and the White House cannot deprive the public of this information."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Jared Kushner Eviscerated as 'Face of White Privilege and Nepotism' After Mocking Racial Justice Protesters
President Donald Trump's son-in-law—some of whose wealth comes from being what one user called "the highest-ranking slumlord in the country"—also implied that Black people do not want to succeed.
Oct 26, 2020
Senior White House adviser Jared Kushner--who like his boss and father-in-law President Donald Trump is a product of his family's fortune--was mercilessly lambasted on social media on Monday after he mocked Black Lives Matter activists and suggested that many Black people don't want to be successful.
"Jared Kushner is the face of white privilege and nepotism. He doesn't want to change our racist, broken system because he benefits from it."
--Rep. Barbara Lee
Appearing on the Fox News morning show "Fox & Friends," Kushner--some of whose $1.8 billion family fortune was amassed off the misfortune and suffering of Black people--and the hosts discussed economic issues facing the Black community. Racism was not mentioned. Kushner did touch upon the subject, albeit in a decidedly derisive fashion. After mentioning George Floyd, the unarmed Black man killed in May by Minneapolis police, Kushner accused people who expressed support for Black lives of "virtue signaling."
"They'd go on Instagram and cry or they would put a slogan on their jersey or write something on a basketball court," he said. "And quite frankly, that was doing more to polarize the country than it was to bring people forward."
While admitting that Black Americans overwhelmingly vote for Democrats, Kushner asserted that Trump's "Platinum Plan"--which seeks to help Black people through capitalism-based solutions without acknowlegding the existence of racism as an obstacle to opportunity--and other policies "can help people break out of the problems that they're complaining about, but he can't help them be successful more than they want to be successful."
The Democratic National Committee released a statement blasting Kushner for demeaning racial justice protests as mere "complaining."
"This dismissive approach to the issues that Black voters care about is indicative of Trump's callousness and disregard for the lives of Black people," the statement said.
Reaction to Kushner's remarks came fast and fierce on social media:
Keep ReadingShow Less
Donald Trump Makes the Swamp Bigger
Donald Trump brought a whole new world of corruption to Washington.
Oct 04, 2020
Donald Trump promised to "drain the swamp" of corruption in Washington, DC. Instead, he not only brought his own corruption and that of his family to the nation's capital. He also opened the door of his administration to a whole slew of influence-peddlers, scam artists, and sleazy lobbyists.
Here are just a few of the worst examples:
Rot Starts at the Top: Donald Trump has violated the U.S. Constitution by using his office to enrich himself. He took from taxpayers more than a million bucks alone for the rooms the Secret Service detail used at his hotels. In his first two years of office, the president raked in $73 million from his foreign businesses and deals with autocratic countries like the Philippines and Turkey. Despite all the profits, the president paid virtually no income tax.
Where's Jared and Ivanka? Since Trump took office, the firm that his son-in law Jared Kushner founded earned more than $90 million from foreign sources channeled through off-shore accounts. While Jared worked on a Middle East peace deal, he tried to get the Qatari government to bail out his father's teetering real estate empire. Ultimately, a Qatar-linked fund provided over a billion dollars. In 2018, as her father was negotiating with the Chinese, Ivanka Trump acquired 34 trademarks from Beijing to sell her apparel and bling in China.
Profiting from the Pandemic: In the government bailout package to help businesses weather the pandemic-induced economic crisis, 27 clients of Trump-connected lobbyists received up to $10.5 billion. And as much as $273 million went to more than 100 companies owned or operated by major donors to Trump's election efforts.
Cabinet Corruption Scandals: Several Trump administration officials have resigned under a cloud. Scott Pruitt stepped down as head of the Environmental Protection Agency during several ethics investigations over his cozy relations with lobbyists. Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke resigned over corrupt real estate deals. Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price was forced out for using almost $1 million in taxpayer money for traveling on private jets and military planes instead of cheaper commercial flights.
They're Corrupt and They Haven't Resigned! At the Department of Transportation, Elaine Chao has orchestrated deals to help her family's Hong-Kong-based shipping business as well as the state of Kentucky, which husband Mitch McConnell represents in the Senate. Interior Secretary David Bernhardt, once a lobbyist for western mining, oil, and gas companies, has taken at least 25 actions favorable to the interests of former clients. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross profited from foreign holdings - Chinese state-owned enterprises, a Russian shipping company - even as he was involved in negotiations with those countries.
For more details on the administration's corruption, check out this map of Trump's swamp.
Keep ReadingShow Less
'No Question' Trump and Daughter Ivanka Could Face Jail Time for Tax Fraud After Leaving White House, Says Legal Expert
"The only thing saving him at this point is the Department of Justice's guideline that says you can't indict a sitting president."
Sep 29, 2020
Both President Donald Trump and his daughter Ivanka are liable to face jail time due to tax fraud should the president lose his reelection bid in November, a former Watergate prosecutor told CNN on Tuesday.
Nick Akerman, who investigated former President Richard Nixon's tax activities as part of the Watergate investigation, told anchor Erin Burnett that Nixon was a "rookie amateur" compared to Trump's maneuvers which allowed him to pay no federal income taxes for at least 11 years and just $750 in 2016 and 2017.
While the New York Times gave its bombshell story about Trump's tax records from the past two decades a headline referring to his "tax avoidance," Akerman said the article actually describes several instances of tax fraud that both the president and his eldest daughter participated in.
Ex-Watergate prosecutor Nick Akerman says the NYT's report on Trump's taxes shows that both he and his daughter, Ivanka could face legal liabilities. "The only thing saving him at this point is the Department of Justice's guideline that says you can't indict a sitting president." pic.twitter.com/kOytMsQTgQ
-- CNN (@CNN) September 29, 2020
"Tax avoidance is simply taking the tax code and getting the most deductions you can get under the code that is perfectly legal," Akerman told Burnett. "Tax fraud, however, is lying about what your income was, lying about what your deductions are, and there's a couple of items that just stand out in that report from the New York Times that really appear to go beyond tax avoidance."
Akerman pointed to a particular revelation about consulting fees that the Trump Organization paid to an outside consultant for hotel projects in Hawaii and Vancouver, British Columbia, totaling $747,622. Ivanka Trump, who at the time was an executive at the Trump Organization, reported that she received that exact amount in 2017 through a consulting firm she co-owned.
"There is no legitimate reason for her to get those consulting fees since she was being paid already as a Trump employee," Akerman said. "The only possible reason for doing this was to somehow move money around so that it wouldn't be taxed to Donald Trump but would in effect go on Ivanka Trump's tax return, who probably had certain losses that she could take against it. So in the end, the government gets zero dollars."
According to the law, there is "no question" the president and Ivanka Trump could face at least five years in prison for tax evasion, Akerman said.
"It is a pretty serious crime and the more money that is stolen the longer you go to jail for," he said, adding, "The only thing saving him at this point is the Department of Justice's guideline that says you can't indict a sitting president."
The DOJ is currently guided by a 2000 Office of Legal Counsel memo stating that a sitting president cannot be indicted--guidance that is "far from being definitive" and could be reconsidered by the department, according to Lawfare.
As it stands, should Trump lose the general election in November, "any decent prosecutor looking at this evidence would be able to put together a pretty viable tax case," Akerman said, adding that Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance, Jr. is currently probing Trump's financial records.
Keep ReadingShow Less
'Beans for Brains': Critics Say Trump Photo Promoting Goya Makes Clear Ivanka's Tweet Was No Mistake
"This is an official campaign by the Trump administration to support Goya."
Jul 15, 2020
President Donald Trump on Wednesday expressed his support for Goya Foods after his daughter Ivanka came under fire for promoting the company in the wake of boycott threats over comments made by CEO Robert Unanue at a White House event last week.
In a photo posted to his Instagram account, the president is seen giving two thumbs up as he sits at the Resolute Desk with an assortment of Goya products in front of him. Ivanka, also a senior White House advisor, on Tuesday night posed for a picture posted to her Twitter holding a can of the company's black beans.
As Common Dreams reported earlier Wednesday, Ivanka Trump tweeting in support of the company was seen as a likely violation of ethics by a number of observers, including Open Secrets researcher Anna Massoglia.
"White House advisor Ivanka Trump promoting Goya seems like it could raise potential ethics issues," Massoglia tweeted, "since executive branch employees other than the president are prohibited from using public office 'for the endorsement of any product, service or enterprise.'"
Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington executive director Noah Bookbinder agreed, noting on Twitter Wednesday afternoon that the move by the president's daughter seems clearly a violation of ethics rules.
"Everything about Ivanka Trump's tweet praising Goya, which faced backlash after its CEO praised the president, suggests a violation of the rule against promoting private business with an official position," said Bookbinder.
With the president posting a similar message to Instagram, said former director of the United States Office of Government Ethics Walter Shaub, the message from the White House is unmistakable.
"This is an official campaign by the Trump administration to support Goya, making it all the more clear that Ivanka's tweet was a violation of the misuse of position regulations," tweeted Shaub.
Keep ReadingShow Less
'If It's Trump, It Has to Be Corrupt': Critics Say Goya Bean Tweet by Ivanka Is Clear Ethics Breach
"Ethics rules do not allow" such behavior, noted one political reporter, calling the tweet "pretty much unimaginable in previous administrations."
Jul 15, 2020
Critics are charging that senior White House advisor Ivanka Trump likely violated ethics rules with a Tuesday night tweet promoting Goya beans, the latest example of administration officials using their positions to boost private companies friendly to the president.
"White House advisor Ivanka Trump promoting Goya seems like it could raise potential ethics issues," tweeted Open Secrets researcher Anna Massoglia, "since executive branch employees other than the president are prohibited from using public office 'for the endorsement of any product, service or enterprise.'"
Trump posted to Twitter Tuesday night a photo of herself displaying a can of the beans with the company's tagline, "If it's Goya, it has to be good," in both English and Spanish. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez fired back with a tweet declaring "Si es Trump, tiene que ser corrupto," or, "If it's Trump, it has to be corrupt."
Trump's Goya tweet was the latest salvo in a controversy around the company that began on July 9 when CEO Robert Unanue said the U.S. was "truly blessed" to have Donald Trump as president, leading critics of the White House to call for a boycott of the brand. Despite those calls, no major movement against the company has materialized.
As a number of critics noted, Ivanka Trump is not the first administration official to run into ethics rules for social media posts promoting private companies.
According to HuffPost:
The Trump administration has run afoul of the code before, including in 2017 when counselor to the president Kellyanne Conway urged Americans to buy Ivanka Trump-branded products. Conway did not face any known disciplinary action, which drew a rebuke from the Office of Government Ethics.
Walter Shaub, then director of the office, wrote: "Disciplinary action serves to deter future misconduct. Not taking disciplinary action against a senior official under such circumstances risks undermining the ethics program."
NBC News reporter David Gura pointed out that Trump's tweet also served to show just how out of touch the White House is with regular Americans.
"FWIW, this outfit costs about PS5,000), or $6,000, or 3,174 cans of Goya black beans,"" tweeted Gura.
Keep ReadingShow Less
See More
Most Popular
To inform. To inspire. To ignite change for the common good.
News & Opinion
Trending
Common Dreams, Inc. Founded 1997. Registered 501(c3) Non-Profit
Privacy Policy