Reply With Quote
"Scrub the email server? You like with a cloth or something?? " - Killary Rhoundass Klinton
That Defense Department Trump Tower Rental
President Donald Trump’s most iconic property is about to get a new tenant: the Department of Defense. According to CNN, the Pentagon, hewing to a longstanding policy of establishing an offshoot headquarters near the president’s private, non-White House residence, is planning to lease space in Trump Tower in New York City to maintain close proximity to Trump should he choose to spend time there instead of Washington, D.C..
The Department of Defense’s decision is yet another example of how Trump’s decision to hold onto his business interests is rewriting norms surrounding the presidency and creating problems in what were once uncontroversial procedures. As mentioned above, the Department of Defense’s decision is not unique to Trump’s presidency: They took up residence in Chicago, for example, during Barack Obama’s two terms for the exact same reason.
The difference, as is true in so many of the stories surrounding Trump and his family’s conflicts of interest—the Red Cross’s decision to hold its annual ball at Mar-a-Lago, for example, or Eric Trump’s business trip to Uruguay—is that the president himself is now making money off of routine governmental functions. Exactly how much money remains unknown, as the Department of Defense has yet to publicly state how much space they will be renting and for how long. However, details of the Secret Service’s decision to do the same are instructive as to the general scope of the bill. When that news first broke back in November 2016, the New York Post used publicly available information regarding rents at Trump Tower to deduce that, at a cost of up to $105 per square foot, the Secret Service’s decision to occupy two 3,000- to 5,000-square-foot floors of the building could cost taxpayers more than $3 million a year, a significant portion of which would be going to the Trump Organization, and, by extension, the president himself.
Just how much the DoD will be paying the Trump Organization for the privilege of working out of the president’s property is not the only outstanding question. Trump’s protestations to the contrary aside, scientific evidence shows that the mere knowledge that one has profited from a relationship in the past often leads to preferential behavior, which could lead Trump to favor the Pentagon in his decision-making. As a result, beyond the overarching problem of a government agency paying the president himself a large sum of money to set up shop in the president’s property, the Department of Defense’s decision to rent space in Trump Tower could have significant ramifications for how the Trump White House operates.
"Scrub the email server? You like with a cloth or something?? " - Killary Rhoundass Klinton
That Red Cross Ball
The web of President Donald Trump’s conflicts of interest has grown to encompass the American Red Cross, which held its annual ball on Saturday, February 4, at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach, Florida. By hosting the ball, the Trump Organization accepted money from an organization that, while not a federal agency per se, is subject to federal oversight that at some point in the next four years will likely involve President Trump.
Unlike a number of the events at Trump properties that have been featured in this list of Trump’s conflicts of interest, the Red Cross Ball, which celebrated the organization’s centennial anniversary, appears to have been scheduled before Trump even received the Republican nomination for president; a calendar listing on the website of the Coastal Star, a local newspaper covering events in the Palm Beach area, is recorded as having been placed in April 2016. Additionally, though the event has been held elsewhere in the past, this was not the first time it has taken place at Mar-a-Lago: Not only was last year’s ball held there, but the very first Red Cross Ball was hosted there by the property’s prior owner, the famous socialite Marjorie Merriweather Post.
Given all that, there is no indication that the decision to hold the event at Mar-a-Lago had anything to do with Trump’s election, and the fact that Trump will likely be attending the event is not unusual—President Barack Obama also attended as the honorary chairman of the organization while in office. Nevertheless, the ball perfectly encapsulates why Trump’s continued refusal to relinquish his business interests complicates even situations that would have taken place had he not become president.
Thanks in part to the makeup of the Red Cross’s leadership and its unique relationship with the federal government, the ball creates a particularly complicated situation. According to its website, the Red Cross “is not a federal agency, nor [does it] receive federal funding on a regular basis to carry out our services and programs,” instead relying on donations and fees for services like health-and-safety training courses. However, the organization operates under a federal charter as a “federal instrumentality … to carry out responsibilities delegated to [it] by the federal government.” The best-known of these duties include overseeing blood-donation drives and disaster-relief efforts; according to its website, it is also the Red Cross’s duty “to fulfill the provisions of the Geneva Convention” and “provide family communications and other forms of support to the U.S. military.” Further, the organization has a chairperson appointed by the president; currently, the chairwoman is Bonnie McElveen-Hunter, who was appointed by President George W. Bush in 2004. The charter also periodically comes before Congress for review and amendments to be signed into effect by the president.
On multiple occasions in recent years, the Red Cross has come under scrutiny for how it handles its multi-billion-dollar budget, most of which comprises donations from the American public. Prompted in part by reporting on the organization’s inadequate response to Hurricane Sandy, misleading statements about how it uses its money, and a September 2015 report by the Governmental Accountability Office, two congresspeople—one Democrat and one Republican—have independently introduced measures to increase the organization’s transparency. Neither has been enacted, but there will likely be another push to improve the relationship between the federal government and the Red Cross during Trump’s presidency, whether via a review of the Red Cross’s charter, the need to appoint a new chairperson, or the introduction of reform-minded legislation. If and when Trump is called upon to weigh in on these decisions, he will be asked to do so having directly profited from the organization while in office, which could limit his ability to act in the best interests of the American people.
That D.C. Labor Dispute
One month before he took office, President Donald Trump managed to sidestep a potential conflict of interest at his hotel in Las Vegas. In the fall of 2015, several hundred employees at the city’s Trump International Hotel had voted to join the local branch of the Culinary Workers Union, only to find their efforts stalled by Trump and the hotel’s co-owner, Phil Ruffin. The case languished for more than a year until, after the National Labor Relations Board found Trump and Ruffin in violation of federal law, the workers successfully negotiated their first collectively-bargained contract. If this hadn’t been resolved, a conflict of interest would have arisen: The case would have gone to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, to which Trump will soon be able to appoint members.
Now, the same issue is cropping up at the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C. Already a centerpiece of the controversy over the likely violation of the Cons ution’s Emoluments Clause, the property may soon be the site of another legal tussle: According to The Washington Post, 40 workers at the hotel have also voted to unionize, the first group to do so at a Trump-owned establishment since his election.
As was true in Las Vegas, the push for unionization in D.C., if it’s met with resistance from the hotel, would create an opportunity for the president to place his own financial interests above those of the hotel’s workers. In Las Vegas, the dispute appears to have been resolved partly because of the NLRB’s intercession; if the Trump Organization similarly contests the case in D.C., the NLRB may once again be asked to weigh in. And now that Trump is president, he will be appointing new board members to fill two vacancies on the agency’s five-seat panel, which could very well tip it from its current left-leaning, labor-friendly composition to a more conservative, pro-owner bent. If, as in Las Vegas, the NLRB finds in favor of the workers, but the Trump Organization chooses to continue its opposition, there is a possibility that the case could come before a federal appeals court, where judges who Trump himself may have appointed will be asked to review the NLRB’s decision. And if the conflict continues even beyond the Court of Appeals, it will fall to the Supreme Court, to which Trump recently nominated Judge Neil Gorsuch, to render a final verdict. (It should be added that each appointee will be faced with the possibility of ruling against the financial interests of the infamously vindictive man to whom they owe their position.)
Appointing labor-unfriendly officials and justices might fairly be said to be in keeping with Trump’s long history of questionable labor practices, but this does not mean that the conflict-of-interest question will dissipate. It’s difficult, if not impossible, to determine how much his pro-business stances are dictated by a sincere belief in their efficacy rather than an understanding that he himself has benefited from them in the past and will likely continue to do so in the future. As such, Trump’s motivations will continue to occupy an ethical and legal gray area until he eliminates the overlap between his roles as a businessman and as president.
China buying off for-sale Trash
China has granted preliminary approval for 38 new Trump trademarks
China has granted preliminary approval for 38 new Trump trademarks, paving the way for President Donald Trump and his family to develop a host of branded businesses from hotels to insurance to bodyguard and escort services,
Trump's lawyers in China applied for the marks in April 2016, as Trump railed against China at campaign rallies, accusing it of currency manipulation and stealing US jobs. Critics maintain that Trump's swelling portfolio of China trademarks raises serious conflict-of-interest questions.
http://www.businessinsider.com/ap-ch...demarks-2017-3
'SNL' Predicted This: Eric Trump Inadvertently Spills the Beans on His Unethical Relationship with His Father
Alex Moffatt's depiction of Eric Trump as a simpleton who accidentally tells the truth was sharper than we thought.
http://www.alternet.org/right-wing/s...hip-his-father
==============
After Promising Not To Talk Business With Father, Eric Trump Says He'll Give Him Financial Reports
https://www.forbes.com/sites/danalex.../#71501bed359a
TRUMP KLEPTOCRACY WATCH: AN UPDATE
Although the latest developments aren’t particularly surprising, they add to the picture of a supposedly populist Administration that is actually the richest, most conflicted, and least transparent in living memory.
ProPublica, the investigative news site, reported that someone had changed the terms of the trust that Trump established before he entered the White House.
The trust controls the four hundred or so businesses that Trump owns, and a new clause says that its trustees—Trump’s two sons, Eric and Don, Jr., and a family lawyer, Allen Weisselberg—
“shall distribute net income or principal to Donald J. Trump at his request, as the Trustees deem necessary for his maintenance, support or uninsured medical expenses, or as the Trustees otherwise deem appropriate.”
That language reads like a license for the President to extract as much money as he wants from his businesses, with no public disclosure, while he’s still in the White House.
legal experts consulted by ProPublica said that the language in the trust was so broad that it was almost unheard of.
a tally made by the Washington Post showed that twenty-seven of the wealthiest White House aides, at the time that they joined the Administration, together had financial assets worth at least $2.3 billion.
But the richest White House employees are members of Trump’s family: Ivanka Trump, his daughter, and Jared Kushner, his son-in-law. Together, according to the disclosure forms, the couple owns assets worth roughly seven hundred and forty million dollars.
These figures don’t just make a mockery of the claims from Trump and Bannon that this is a populist Administration—they also have legal implications. Although the President is spared the burden of complying with federal conflict-of-interest laws, White House aides aren’t. They are obliged to recuse themselves from areas where they might have a personal interest.
“Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump have so many potential conflicts of interest that if they abide by ethics laws and past White House practices, they won’t be able to advise the president on three of his top priorities: Trade, tax reform and Wall Street deregulation,”
in late February, China granted preliminary approval for thirty-eight trademarks that the Trump business empire had applied for in the country, opening the way for the company to develop a range of Trump-branded businesses, including hotels and condominiums.
intellectual-property lawyers who know China said that it was unusual, and noted that it came just a couple of weeks after Trump, in a telephone conversation with Xi, said he would honor Beijing’s “One China” policy regarding Taiwan—a key demand of the Chinese.
Doubtless, this was all a coincidence.
Just as it is a coincidence that Trump has sold a lot of property to wealthy Russians, and that his revised trust places virtually no restrictions on his ability to take out money from his businesses.
In kleptocratic regimes, coincidences of this sort tend to be common.
http://www.newyorker.com/news/john-c...E0MDI5NDUxNAS2
Don the Con is Loser Lawless Trash
This week in Donald Trump’s conflicts of interest: He’s not even pretending to divest anymore
Trump hobnobs with a Chinese leader while creating a de facto plug for his Florida resort
1. Trump’s trust is essentially meaningless
2. Trump’s meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping at his Mar-a-Lago resort is a perfect ad for his “Winter White House”
3. Trump International Hotel gets a glowing public review from a foreign ambassador
Lest you think this is an isolated incident, remember that Trump allegedly pressured the Kuwaiti Embassy to move a party to its D.C. hotel back in December.
If nothing else, Trump’s unwillingness to divest from his various conflicts of interest has sent a signal that it makes more sense to stay on his good side by cozying up to his businesses.
http://www.salon.com/2017/04/08/this...ivest-anymore/
Trump’s For-Profit Presidency Takes Ugly Turn as He Makes Money by Attacking Syria
Trump owns stock in Raytheon, the manufacturer of the Tomahawk missile. When he fired them at Syria, Raytheon's stock rose
http://www.politicususa.com/2017/04/...iticus+USA+%29
Trump-Kushners Get Sweet D.C. Townhouse Deal From Mining Magnate
What does this have to do with Luksic’s townhouse rental to the Trump/Kushner family? Trump and Kushner reportedly remain blissfully unaware that some might find the rental arrangement unseemly.
Chilean mining magnate Andrónico Luksic saw an opportunity in purchasing a $5.5 million townhouse in Kalorama, a posh section of Washington D.C., immediately after President Donald Trump’s election, according to The Wall Street Journal.
The exact details of that opportunity remain murky.
His representatives and the Ivanka Trump/Jared Kushner camp insist it is purely coincidental that Ivanka, daughter and assistant to President Trump, and her husband Jared Kushner, senior advisor to President Trump, are Luksic’s first tenants.
Luksic, whose family owns Anto asta PLC and Twin Metals Minnesota, is embroiled in a lawsuit with the federal government over development of what would be one of the world’s largest copper, nickel and platinum mines in the pristine Boundary Waters Canoe Area (BWCA) in Northern Minnesota.
The lawsuit seeks to protect the company’s mineral rights and invalidate a September 2016 opinion by U.S. Department of the Interior Solicitor Hilary Tompkins allowing the Bureau of Land Management discretion in denying Twin Metals’ leases.
https://rewire.news/article/2017/04/...ality+Check%29
Trash's BLM will obviously give let this mining foreigner up the American environment
With Trump Appointees, a Raft of Potential Conflicts and ‘No Transparency’
WASHINGTON — President Trump is populating the White House and federal agencies with former lobbyists, lawyers and consultants who in many cases are helping to craft new policies for the same industries in which they recently earned a paycheck.
The potential conflicts are arising across the executive branch, according to an analysis of recently released financial disclosures, lobbying records and interviews with current and former ethics officials by The New York Times in collaboration with ProPublica.
In at least two cases, the appointments may have already led to violations of the administration’s own ethics rules. But evaluating if and when such violations have occurred has become almost impossible because the Trump administration is secretly issuing waivers to the rules.
https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/04/1...conflicts.html
the corruption is unpresidented.
Trump's Mar-a-Lago visits are the ultimate grift: The more he vacations, the more he profits
Yes, 28 percent of the time:
… since his January inauguration, President Trump has spent seven of 13 weekends at his Palm Beach, Florida estate.
According to NBC News' estimates by Sunday Trump will have spent 28 percent of his term traveling to or staying at Mar-a-Lago.
Trump hosted his second world leader at the "winter White House" last weekend, with Chinese President Xi Jinping joining Trump for meetings Thursday and Friday.
Trump stayed the rest of the weekend, frequenting his nearby golf club on both days.
And that doesn’t cover Trump’s trips to his Virginia golf club or his Washington, D.C., hotel—not “vacations” as such, but opportunities to promote his own properties, from which he is still profiting.
That, more than the amount of time he is spending away from the White House, is the important issue:http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2017...-left-fox-news
"It's just another example of his consistent efforts to exploit public office for private gain," ethics expert Steve Schooner told NBC News.
"He's using his official office and the fact that people have to travel with him, meet him, and follow him to promote his commercial enterprise, in this case his privately owned club." [...]
"This is a privately owned club that for all intents and purposes was just another golf property in Florida before, that almost now is something that Americans immediately recognize," Schooner continued.
"Imagine what you would have to pay to get that kind of brand recognition. That's extraordinary."
Going to guess TSA won't even bother.
This isn't going away, and gets worse with each passing day.
Still waiting. Maybe a few links in the threads he is paying attention to will help.
Wonder why he might be ignoring this thread?
Anyone who has been paying the slightest attention knows by now that this president and this White House intend to play by their own set of rules — rules that in some cases come close to breaking the law and, at the very least, defy traditions of conduct and transparency Americans have come to expect from their public servants. We know that Donald Trump has refused, unlike other presidents, to release his tax returns; that his trust agreement allows him undisclosed access to profits from his businesses; and even that he clings to a profitable lease on a hotel only a stone’s throw from the White House when divesting himself of that lease is not only the obvious but the right thing to do.
But just when you think you’ve seen enough there’s more. On Friday, the administration announced it would no longer release White House visitors’ logs that have been available for years. (It cynically said posting these records would cost taxpayers $70,000 by 2020. Compare that with the multimillion-dollar tab estimated for every weekend trip Mr. Trump takes to Mar-a-Lago.) Meanwhile, news trickled out that on the very day that two of Ivanka Trump’s and Jared Kushner’s children were serenading the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, at Mar-a-Lago, the People’s Republic of China approved new trademarks allowing Ivanka to peddle jewelry, bags and spa services to a nation of 1.4 billion where she is a role model for aspirational oligarchs.
In the great scheme of things, neither the visitor blackout nor Ms. Trump’s commercial coup seems a big deal. Yet both symbolize larger problems. One is an almost total absence of openness in an administration that is already teeming with real and potential conflicts and that has decided it can grant secret waivers to ethics requirements. The other is a culture of self-enrichment and self-dealing in which corporate C.E.O.s, lobbyists and foreign officials seeking the first family’s favor hold parties at Mar-a-Lago and at the Trump International Hotel in Washington, a couple of blocks from the White House. On Tuesday, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a government watchdog group, expanded a lawsuit charging that the hotel violates the Cons ution’s emoluments clause, which prohibits the president from taking payments from foreign nations.
One has to ask when this seamless meshing of statesmanship and merchandising will stop, if ever. Mr. Trump struggled for years to close deals across the Middle East; now that he’s president, doors are opening. His family is seeking or holds trademarks in Egypt, Israel, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates, where the president’s sons just opened a golf course in Dubai, and in Jordan, whose King Abdullah II just visited the White House to discuss joint efforts against ISIS.
But Americans who expect that their government will stop this grotesque flouting of rules and traditional norms have been deeply disappointed. The Office of Government Ethics received 39,105 public queries and complaints about Trump administration ethics over the past six months, compared with 733 during the same period eight years earlier at the start of the Obama administration. But the office has no investigative or subpoena power: Its authority rests on the willingness of a president to take transparency in public service seriously, which this president does not.
That leaves Jason Chaffetz, the Utah Republican who is chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, which has the legal authority and the resources to investigate and hold the administration to account. Anyone familiar with Mr. Chaffetz’s record of partisan, ineffectual witch-hunting won’t be surprised to learn that he’s done nothing.
Walter Shaub Jr., chief of the ethics office, and his team have been working nights and weekends trying to rein in what they can of the Trump entourage’s abuses, combing through the financial disclosures of administration appointees and ringing alarm bells. They’ve had a few successes: So far the Senate has refused to confirm nominees whose financial disclosures don’t earn approval from the ethics office, which has unearthed potential conflicts and led several nominees to shed assets that pose problems. But that’s hardly a match for an administration filled with people who seem determined to wring every last dollar and ounce of trust from the American people.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/18/o...ft-region&_r=0
With new trademarks, Ivanka Trump's business grows alongside political influence
Despite controversy surrounding her global business empire and position at the White House, first daughter Ivanka Trump continues to enjoy high popularity among voters. But she won't necessarily be the most powerful first daughter to date
Last November, she was taken to task for seemingly promoting her brand by wearing an expensive bracelet from her line during a "60 Minutes" interview.
When she earned status as an unpaid government employee with an office in the West Wing some critics saw it as a form of nepotism.
And this week, when China granted her approval for five new trademarks for her line of handbags, jewelry, and spa services, questions of favoritism were raised.
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/2017/0420/With-new-trademarks-Ivanka-Trump-s-business-grows-alongside-political-influence
"The Corruption Will Be UnPresidented"
I don't even get this 's problem.
Trump condos worth $250 million pose potential conflict
LAS VEGAS — President Trump’s companies own more than 400 condo units and home lots whose sale could steer millions of dollars to Trump, a USA TODAY investigation has found.
USA TODAY spent four months cataloging every property Trump's companies own across the country. Reporters found that Trump’s companies are sitting on at least $250 million of individual properties in the USA alone. Property records show Trump’s trust and his companies own at least 422 luxury condos and penthouses from New York City to Las Vegas, 12 mansion lots on bluffs overlooking his golf course on the Pacific Ocean and dozens more smaller pieces of real estate. The properties range in value from about $200,000 to $35 million each.
Unlike developments where Trump licenses his name to a separate developer for a flat fee, profits from selling individual properties directly owned by his companies ultimately enrich him personally.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/...one/100566302/
while you rightwingnutters are duped into ing about voter fraud!
The biggest FAKE and FRAUD is the asshole you elected.
The Corruption Will Be UnPresidented.
That just limits it to what he controls directly.
You can still have a conflict of interest to a project that you license your name to.
That didn't take long.'SNL' Predicted This: Eric Trump Inadvertently Spills the Beans on His Unethical Relationship with His Father
Alex Moffatt's depiction of Eric Trump as a simpleton who accidentally tells the truth was sharper than we thought.
http://www.alternet.org/right-wing/s...hip-his-father
==============
After Promising Not To Talk Business With Father, Eric Trump Says He'll Give Him Financial Reports
https://www.forbes.com/sites/danalex.../#71501bed359a
Trump Adviser Jared Kushner Didn’t Disclose Startup Stake
Investments show ties to Goldman Sachs, George Soros and Peter Thiel as well as a number of loans
May 2, 2017 5:30 a.m. ET
Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and senior adviser, didn’t identify on his government financial disclosure form that he is currently a part-owner of a real-estate finance startup and has a number of loans from banks on properties he co-owns, according to securities filings.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-a...gn=pubexchange
And where is Trash's extensive health checkup by US Navy/Bethesda docs?
The corruption will be unpresidented
Strange how quiet the usual crew is on this.
TSA tlongII DarrinS etc don't seem to want to touch this thread.
Why is that?
Trump son in China selling green cards for $500K - $1M for Chinese to invest NJ Trash project
Those Reelection-Campaign Funds
For President Donald Trump, it pays to be in constant campaign mode.
Metaphorically, at least, this isn’t unusual; the idea of the “permanent campaign,” a reference to how politicians consider their reelection chances from almost the moment they take office, has been around for decades. Such is the case for Trump, who filed a letter with the Federal Election Commission establishing his eligibility to run for a second term in 2020 just hours after taking the oath of office. Though the letter declares only that he can run, not necessarily that he will run, it gives broad coverage for the president to begin fundraising and holding campaign events, and to do so far earlier in his first term than have previous presidents.
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