The Russia Investigations and other Trump-related cases

[Sunsilver]

Gee, why am I not surprised? Stories like this are a dime a dozen: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/pol ... /85297274/

And it's the small businesses that get hurt when he refuses to pay.

[RoseMorninStar]

Gee, why am I not surprised? Stories like this are a dime a dozen: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/pol ... /85297274/

And it's the small businesses that get hurt when he refuses to pay.

When Trump was running for president in 2015/2016 stories like this came out, I don't know why people didn't believe them. Stories about him paying pennies on the dollar, if at all, knowing people didn't have the money or where-with-all to sue him. More likely than not people were reading/listening to limited news sources that didn't include negative stories.

Edited to add: Oh, I see this story is from 2016. I recall reading a story specifically about pianos that were not paid for and the man went bankrupt. It had been a long standing family business.

[Sunsilver]

Rose, I recall that story, too! If you read the USA Today article, you will see similar things happened to many of the other companies he stiffed!

During the Atlantic City casino boom in the 1980s, Philadelphia cabinet-builder Edward Friel Jr. landed a $400,000 contract to build the bases for slot machines, registration desks, bars and other cabinets at Harrah's at Trump Plaza.

The family cabinetry business, founded in the 1940s by Edward’s father, finished its work in 1984 and submitted its final bill to the general contractor for the Trump Organization, the resort’s builder.

Edward’s son, Paul, who was the firm’s accountant, still remembers the amount of that bill more than 30 years later: $83,600. The reason: the money never came. “That began the demise of the Edward J. Friel Company… which has been around since my grandfather,” he said.

[N.E. Brigand]

In other news, the Dept. of Justice issued a superseding indictment in the case of Donald Trump's friend, Tom Barrack. Maybe this was noted in the earlier version of the indictment, which alleges that Barrack was an unregistered foreign agent for the United Arab Emirates (and indirectly Saudi Arabia), but apparently the UAE's sovereign wealth fund paid Barrack $374 million to promote their preferred policies with the Trump administration.

Remember how there was a change to the language Republican platform during their 2016 convention to weaken language about supporting Ukraine? Robert Mueller investigated that but couldn't quite pin down why the change, which benefited Russia, was made.

Well, It turns out that another change has a dubious origin as well: at Barrack's request, Trump's campaign chair Paul Manafort arranged to have language removed that would have called for the publication of the redacted portion of the 9/11 Commission report concerning Saudi Arabia's involvement in 9/11.

Barrack's defense continues to be that Donald Trump knew what he was doing for Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, so Barrack didn't have to register as a foreign agent.

Barrack will be tried in the Eastern District of New York (that encompasses Brooklyn -- where the trial will be held -- Staten Island, Queens, and the rest of Long Island). His lawyers suggest that Donald Trump might be called as a witness. Questions put to prospective jurors included one about Donald Trump. Some of the results:



I don't think any of these jurors should be disqualified based on these responses. I loathe Trump at least as much as any of them, but if I were a juror, I would give Trump or his associates a fair hearing and would consider only what was presented at trial.

(Also, Saudi Arabia's crown prince did kill an American journalist, and thus it's perfectly rational to view that country with contempt while he remains in power. In fact, if you know that MBS killed Khashoggi and don't feel that way, I would suggest you lack a moral compass and might not be fit to serve on a jury.)

[elengil]

Rose, I recall that story, too! If you read the USA Today article, you will see similar things happened to many of the other companies he stiffed!

During the Atlantic City casino boom in the 1980s, Philadelphia cabinet-builder Edward Friel Jr. landed a $400,000 contract to build the bases for slot machines, registration desks, bars and other cabinets at Harrah's at Trump Plaza.

The family cabinetry business, founded in the 1940s by Edward’s father, finished its work in 1984 and submitted its final bill to the general contractor for the Trump Organization, the resort’s builder.

Edward’s son, Paul, who was the firm’s accountant, still remembers the amount of that bill more than 30 years later: $83,600. The reason: the money never came. “That began the demise of the Edward J. Friel Company… which has been around since my grandfather,” he said.

I worked for a custom home builder for a few years. I still remember one customer didn't want to pay for the wood flooring because of one scratch that was in it. The super said he'd send out a crew to redo that section of flooring - just sand it out and refinish it. Nope, that was unacceptable, customer wanted full cost of floor refunded. Super said, "Okay, no problem. I'll have my crew out there to remove the entire floor in no time." Suddenly customer was perfectly fine with having just that portion sanded and refinished.

I realize that is a very different situation but honestly I think my initial reaction to anything resembling this is always "Okay, you don't have to pay the bill, but I'll be taking the product back."

[RoseMorninStar]

I worked for a custom home builder for a few years. I still remember one customer didn't want to pay for the wood flooring because of one scratch that was in it. The super said he'd send out a crew to redo that section of flooring - just sand it out and refinish it. Nope, that was unacceptable, customer wanted full cost of floor refunded. Super said, "Okay, no problem. I'll have my crew out there to remove the entire floor in no time." Suddenly customer was perfectly fine with having just that portion sanded and refinished.

I realize that is a very different situation but honestly I think my initial reaction to anything resembling this is always "Okay, you don't have to pay the bill, but I'll be taking the product back."

Good for him!

I looked up that piano story. Evidently Trump paid 70% and stiffed the piano man $30,000 which was a lot to his family.

[N.E. Brigand]

Donald Trump's eccentric campaign foreign policy advisor, Carter Page, was electronically surveilled for a year as per the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) as part of the FBI's "Crossfire Hurricane" investigation into possible connections between the Trump 2016 campaign and the Russian government. That investigation later was subsumed into Robert Mueller's investigation of Donald Trump's possible coordination with Russia and his possible obstruction of justice. Page had a history of interacting with Russian spies. At times in the past, he had reported on his Russian contacts to the CIA. At other times, he apparently discussed his CIA contacts with the Russian agents. But those Russian agents seemed to have viewed him as unstable. Once the FBI learned in July 2016 that another Trump campaign advisor, George Papadopoulos, had told an Australian diplomat -- prior to news breaking about Russian leaks of Democratic emails -- that Russia was clandestinely aiding the Trump campaign, Page was a natural subject for the FBI to investigate. Besides Page and Papadopoulos, the other initial subjects of the investigation were Michael Flynn, Paul Manafort, and Roger Stone, all of whom had known connections both to Donald Trump and to either Russia or Wikileaks, which was the conduit Russia used to disseminate stolen Democratic emails. According to the Mueller Report, the FBI never was able to fully understand what exactly it was that Page was doing with Russia. To me, Page seems either like the kind of person who acts suspiciously even if he's innocent.

A subsequent examination into the Crossfire Hurricane investigation by the Dept. of Justice's Inspector General, Michael Horowitz, found that the investigation was properly predicated but also that (1) there were errors in the initial FISA warrant on Carter Page and/or its renewals -- these errors were significant enough that the Dept. of Justice later determined that two of the renewal warrants were invalid -- and (2) that a lawyer working for the FBI, Kevin Clinesmith, had misrepresented to his superior an email about Page from a CIA agent in such a way as to minimize Page's sometime work reporting on Russian contacts to the CIA. (That said, Clinesmith's misleading quotation of the email was itself undercut by the fact that he also sent his superior the original email.) For this, Clinesmith was later charged by yet another investigator, Special Counsel John Durham, with falsifying an official document. Clinesmith pleaded guilty. He was sentenced to probation and community service, and the judge in the case said that while Clinesmith's alteration represented "an inappropriate shortcut," Clinesmith probably believed that his paraphrased description of Page's history was factually accurate and that Clinesmith didn't change the text for political reasons. Inspired by Horowitz's report on "Crossfire Hurricane," a subsequent Dept. of Justice examination into the FISA process found that many FISA warrants contained significant errors and that better procedures should be in place. In other words, there was no malicious targeting of Page (I believe the FISA renewal warrants that were later thrown out were both signed off by Trump appointees), but operations generally under FISA are problematic.

Nonetheless, in November 2020, Carter Page sued a bunch of former FBI employees for having violated his rights, including Director James Comey, Assistant Director Andrew McCabe, Deputy Assistant Director Peter Strzok, FBI Special Agent Stephen Somma, and Clinesmith, among others. Today, Judge Dabney Friedrich, who was appointed by President Donald Trump, dismissed Page's suit, but arguably she did so for the wrong reasons. She appears to believe the specious conspiracy theories pushed by Page, Trump, and others about the nature of the "Crossfire Hurricane" investigation; and she found that Comey and the other defendants could not cite I.G. Horowitz's finding that the investigation was not political in nature; but she dismissed the suit because she determined that there's no provision in FISA to sue someone for securing a warrant on them under false pretenses: you can only sue if your communications are surveilled without any warrant at all having being obtained (or if the information thus obtained is improperly shared).

[Voronwë the Faithful]

I'll put this here, though it technically doesn't apply. Remember that Trump pardoned Steve Bannon after he was charged for fraudulently stealing money from Trump supporters wanting to "build that wall?" Well,

Trump ex-adviser Bannon faces state indictment in New York - Washington Post

Steve Bannon, a key associate of former U.S. President Donald Trump, is expected to face a new criminal indictment and surrender to state prosecutors on Thursday, the Washington Post reported on Tuesday, citing people familiar with the matter.

Bannon's prosecution will likely mirror aspects of the federal case in which Bannon was pardoned, the paper reported.

Note that the pardon that was found in the recent search of Mar-a-Lago reportedly was a completely different pardon.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

To give a little context to this, this lawsuit was filed in attempt to get on the docket of the newly Trump-appointed judge (wait for it) Aileen Cannon (yes, her). Instead, they ended up with Judge Donald Middlebrooks, who was appointed by Bill Clinton. Trump's attorney's then tried to get Judge Middlebrooks to recuse himself on the grounds that he was appointed by Bill Clinton and Trump was suing Hillary Clinton, but Judge Middlebrooks refused, saying that he had never even met either Clinton.

ETA:

[Sunsilver]

Hmmm...seems to me that should also apply to Judge Cannon!

[Voronwë the Faithful]

This is almost certainly meaningless, but I'll put it here anyway, just for the hell of it.

[Sunsilver]

Voronwë, I am curious to know why you think this might be related to the Russia investigations, and not the Jan 6 riots investigation or Trump hoarding classified flies?

[Voronwë the Faithful]

It's probably not related to anything; I put it here because we don't know what if anything it is related to.

ETA: And, it turns out to be nothing. He is golfing at his Sterling, VA golf course.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

According to his former lawyer/fixer/designated felon:

[N.E. Brigand]

This guy says it's much ado about nothing:



One of the people seen meeting with Trump today is apparently the guy in charge of the course grounds.

[N.E. Brigand]

(In light of this decision, it has been noted that Donald Trump fired Preet Bharara, the U.S. Attorney for the southern district of New York (the office likeliest to have jurisdiction over anything Trump did prior to becoming president), despite having previously told Bharara that he would remain in that role. And then Trump never appointed anyone to replace him. It was acting USAs at SDNY for Trump's entire term.)

To add a little context to this, after Trump fired Bharara, Joon Kim served as acting U.S Attorney from March 11, 2017 – January 5, 2018 and Geoffrey Berman served as acting U.S. Attorney from January 5 to April 25, 2018. But then Berman was appointed to an indefinite term by the judges of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York pursuant to their authority under 28 U.S.C Section 546(d). From that time until Berman was forced out by Trump and Barr on June 20, 2020, Berman was not really an "acting U.S. Attorney" he was a "court-appointed U.S. Attorney."

That's from a different thread, but it appears to be the most recent reference in this forum to Geoffrey Berman, who, as V notes, was appointed the the federal court as U.S. Attorney in the Southern District of New York in April 2018 -- because President Trump never appointed anyone to that position after firing Preet Bharara in March 2017 -- until Trump fired Berman as well in June 2020. The way Berman was fired was notable: Attorney General William Barr announced that Berman was resigning, named the U.S. Attorney from another district as Berman's interim successor, and said that Trump would be nominating the director of the Securities and Exchange Commission as Berman's permanent replacement. Then Berman announced that he hadn't resigned. (And there were questions raised about whether the President could actually fire a court-appointed U.S. Attorney without having a Senate-confirmed successor in place.) So Barr then announced that Trump had fired Berman, and that he would be succeeded by Berman's deputy, Audrey Strauss, so Berman announced that he would indeed step down.

Berman testified to a closed session of the House Judiciary Committee the following month about his time leading SDNY and the pressure he felt from Dept. of Justice leadership (either acting on Trump's direction or on what was perceived to be his wishes), and now he has published a book about those experiences. One newly revealed detail is that the charging document for Trump's personal attorney, Michael Cohen, was rewritten at DOJ behest to remove the allegations that the person referred to as Individual-1 -- who was obviously Donald Trump -- acted "in concert with" and "coordinated with" Cohen. Berman notes that Cohen himself would say these things in court and in testimony to Congress, but by removing that language from the Information itself, the possible case against Donald Trump was weakened. And now the statute of limitations has passed.

The Senate Judiciary Committee has announced it will investigate this DOJ pressure campaign on SNDY.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

The Senate Judiciary Committee has announced it will investigate this DOJ pressure campaign on SNDY.

For all the good it will do (spoiler alert: none).

[RoseMorninStar]

I heard about Berman's book last night and it seems the information should be very important for the integrity of our Justice system. I don't know how readable it would be for an average person not versed in law. The corruption shouldn't be allowed to be swept under the rug.

[N.E. Brigand]

Agreed. One major lesson of the Trump years is that if the President of the United States is a criminal and a Republican, and if Republicans control both houses of Congress, then even the appointment of a nominally independent prosecutor will be insufficient to bring him to justice.

[Voronwë the Faithful]