The Russia Investigations and other Trump-related cases

[RoseMorninStar]

I have a very low opinion of Trump, however he has a gift for marketing, which is what makes him so effective at promoting himself regardless of reality or decency. It's not a good leadership trait as it only applies to what is good for him as an individual.

[N.E. Brigand]

This morning police responded to a (fortunately phony) bomb threat at Judge Engoron's house.

Edited to add this:

[N.E. Brigand]

As an aside: the RNC's three deputy finance chairs at the time were Donald Trump's personal lawyer Michael Cohen (who later pleaded guilty to campaign finance crimes), venture capitalist Elliott Broidy (who pleaded guilty to being a foreign agent of China and Malaysia, for which he later was pardoned by Trump, and who also allegedly paid more than $1 million to his Playboy-model girlfiend to have an abortion, in a deal arranged by Cohen using the same alias for Broidy that Cohen used for Trump in the deal with Stormy Daniels), and shipping magnate Louis DeJoy (who was later named as the director of the U.S. Postal Service, which he seems to have undermined both to help his personal interests and Trump's 2020 election chances; this week, after a long delay, Joe Biden's nominees to the USPS board of directors were finally confirmed, so DeJoy's time may be up).

"U.S. Entertainer Convicted of Engaging in Foreign Influence Campaign."

The story is from NBC, but the headline I used is how the Dept. of Justice announced the result in a press release. The entertainer, Pras Michel, is as Wikipedia says, "best known as a member of the hip hop group the Fugees, alongside Wyclef Jean and Lauryn Hill. After the Fugees, he earned two Top 40 hits on the Billboard Hot 100, the Grammy-nominated song 'Ghetto Supastar (That Is What You Are)' featuring Ol' Dirty Bastard and Mýa from the film Bulworth, and 'Avenues' with Refugee Camp All-Stars and Ky-Mani Marley. He also collaborated with Jean and rock band Queen on the 1998 remix of 'Another One Bites the Dust', which reached the top five on the UK Singles Chart. In 2017, he won a Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Digital Daytime Drama Series, as a producer on the web series The Bay."

A jury found Michel today of "orchestrating an unregistered, back-channel campaign beginning in or about 2017 to influence the then-administration of the President of the United States and the Department of Justice to drop the investigation of Jho Low and others for embezzlement and other offenses in connection with the international strategic and development company known as 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB), and to send a Chinese national back to China, as well as conspiring to make and conceal foreign and conduit campaign contributions during the 2012 U.S. presidential election."

As the press release notes, this is the same scheme for which Elliott Broidy pleaded guilty. Broidy was pardoned by Donald Trump. Michel is unlikely to be pardoned by anyone.

Pras Michel filed a motion alleging that his lawyer, David Kenner, was incompetent. And apparently Michel has shown that part of Kenner's closing argument was generated by AI.

[N.E. Brigand]

And the entirely predictable result.

[Brandi Buchman: "Judge bars Trump from giving fraud trial closing argument after he refuses to stick to ‘relevant’ issues."]

And yet!

Donald Trump's attorney, Christopher Kise, asked during today's proceedings if Trump could speak for five minutes. The judge asked Trump if he would follow the rules he previously laid out. "Trump defied the judge and simply launched into his speech. ... Judge Arthur Engoron — who earlier denied Trump's extraordinary request to give his own closing statement — let him continue almost uninterrupted for what amounted to a brief [six-minute] personal summation, then cut him off for a scheduled lunch break."

[N.E. Brigand]

Based on Lisa Rubin's reporting, it appears that Trump's attorneys leaned heavily on the idea that DeutscheBank was kind of in on the fraud. Plus:

"They are living in this crazy world of Executive Law 63(12) because of one person," [Trump attorney Alina] Habba says, attacking Tish James for bringing in a cup of Starbucks to the courtroom and taking off her shoes this morning. Engoron questions the relevance of her weird attack on the Attorney General, but the AG’s own team is silent.

[N.E. Brigand]

Based on Lisa Rubin's reporting, it appears that Trump's attorneys leaned heavily on the idea that DeutscheBank was kind of in on the fraud.

And in the state's closing argument, a point was made that I missed during reports on the trial (although I'm sure it was mentioned then): even if you were to accept that argument, the Trump Org. by 2016 was in a cash crunch that threatened to exceed the liquidity limits DeutscheBank had set and worked to hide that fact: "It was so bad that they borrowed $12 million from Ladder Capital to pay the Trump University settlement [and] sold a penthouse in which Ivanka Trump had lived for 60 cents on the dollar. The interest rates were critical to them; without those savings, there wasn’t enough cash to do it all."

[N.E. Brigand]

Apparently Judge Engoron was skeptical of the state's arguments that Donald Trump Jr.'s and Eric Trump's intent to defraud can be inferred, but the attorney general's office then explained at some length how this is shown, among other things, by the fact that despite being the acting CEOs of the Trump Org., they kept the company's CFO in the dark about certain valuations (and how the company has no CFO or comptroller at all).

[N.E. Brigand]

Judge Engoron says he expects to issue his decision by the end of the month.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

And the entirely predictable result.

[Brandi Buchman: "Judge bars Trump from giving fraud trial closing argument after he refuses to stick to ‘relevant’ issues."]

And yet!

Donald Trump's attorney, Christopher Kise, asked during today's proceedings if Trump could speak for five minutes. The judge asked Trump if he would follow the rules he previously laid out. "Trump defied the judge and simply launched into his speech. ... Judge Arthur Engoron — who earlier denied Trump's extraordinary request to give his own closing statement — let him continue almost uninterrupted for what amounted to a brief [six-minute] personal summation, then cut him off for a scheduled lunch break."

Donald Trump, king of the "and yet!"

[N.E. Brigand]

Based on Lisa Rubin's reporting, it appears that Trump's attorneys leaned heavily on the idea that DeutscheBank was kind of in on the fraud.

And in the state's closing argument, a point was made that I missed during reports on the trial (although I'm sure it was mentioned then): even if you were to accept that argument, the Trump Org. by 2016 was in a cash crunch that threatened to exceed the liquidity limits DeutscheBank had set and worked to hide that fact: "It was so bad that they borrowed $12 million from Ladder Capital to pay the Trump University settlement [and] sold a penthouse in which Ivanka Trump had lived for 60 cents on the dollar. The interest rates were critical to them; without those savings, there wasn’t enough cash to do it all."

Maybe that detail wasn't reported before, because I also don't recall Marcy Wheeler previously making a connection (as she did today) to a story that was referenced in this thread in 2022 and more recently in the Israel-Gaza thread: in 2016, Donald Trump donated $10 million to his presidential campaign, which was short on cash. In 2020, CNN reported that the Department of Justice, before, during, and after Robert Mueller's investigation, spent much time and effort, without success (despite some secret court victories), trying to determine whether that money came from Egypt's sovereign wealth fund (either directly or as a pass-through) and perhaps, whether Donald Trump gave anything to Egypt in return.

Wheeler points to a tweet about today's closing arguments from Forbes reporter Dan Alexander, which reads (with my emphasis) as follows: "The attorney general's office then shows a slide suggesting that, if Trump had been forced to pay higher interest rates, he would have either (a) run out of cash or (b) had to cut back some of his expenditures, like funding a presidential campaign. Super interesting."

It seems this New York trial may be more deserving of its inclusion in this Russia Investigations thread than had seemed to be the case!

[N.E. Brigand]

I had not heard until today that Melania Trump's mother, Amalija Knavs, passed away Tuesday in Miami at the age 78. May she rest in peace. I had vaguely heard something about Melania not being at her husband's New Year's Eve event; it turns out that the reason is that she was visiting her mother in the hospital.

(I learned this because Rep. Claudia Tenney, Republican of New York, wrote that it was "contemptible" for Judge Engoron to proceed with today's closing arguments rather than let Donald Trump be with his grieving wife. But I hadn't heard that Trump asked for a delay. And as others have noted, Trump was not required to attend today's closing arguments, and he's been to several campaign events yesterday and today.)

[N.E. Brigand]

"Donald Trump ordered to pay The New York Times and its reporters nearly $400,000 in legal fees."

Trump had sued the Times and its reporters Susanne Craig, David Barstow and Russell Buettner, along with his niece Mary Trump, over the newspaper's Pulitzer Prize-winning 2018 reporting on his financials. A judge dismissed the suit against the Times and reporters in May, but the suit against Mary Trump is ongoing.

[N.E. Brigand]

This is merely Trump-related. The Miami Herald reports that:

A Russian-American businessman based in Miami is suspected of making nearly $23 million from alleged insider trading involving former President Donald Trump’s media company, according to federal court records. The businessman, Anton Postolnikov, is the owner of a Caribbean bank that caters to the porn industry and also reportedly loaned $8 million to Trump’s media company. Postolnikov, who owns a few residences on exclusive Fisher Island in Miami, is the nephew of a former high-ranking Russian government official who at one time was a staffer for Russian President Vladimir Putin, according to media reports. The insider trading allegations surfaced in court documents filed last month in a New York securities fraud case brought last year against three South Florida men: Michael Shvartsman, 52, of Sunny Isles Beach; Gerald Shvartsman, 46, of Aventura; and Bruce Garelick, 54, of Fort Lauderdale. They are accused of making about $23 million from insider trades on the Trump Media merger with a Miami-based company, Digital World Acquisition Corp., and sharing non-public information with friends and business associates about the impending deal so they could profit, according to an indictment.

Trump, who is the front-runner to win the Republican nomination for president this year, has not been accused of any wrongdoing in the case. The former president is the chairman of Trump Media and Technology Group, the parent company of social media platform Truth Social, and he indicated in an April 2023 financial disclosure that he owns 90% of the company. He pegged the value of his stake as between $5 million and $25 million.

Postolnikov himself is not charged with any crimes.

[N.E. Brigand]

[Tweet from Andrew Weissmann: "I suspect this civil case will eventually settle. Trump will never want all this dirty laundry aired publicly. But it wd be nice to have a public trial for precisely that reason."]

Just noting that this didn't happen. Tish James sued Trump, the Trump Org., and his kids a week later. In a week or so from now, we'll know whether James made the right call by going to trial rather than settling with Trump.

Former U.S. Attorney General William Barr says that not only is it unlikely that New York Attorney General Letitia James has a solid case against Trump, but he thinks this suit is a "political hit job . . . [because] she grossly overreaches when she tries to drag the children into it. Yes, they had roles in the business, but this was his personal financial statement. It was prepared by the CFO, accounting firms were involved in it -- the children aren't going to know the details of that. Nor are they expected in the real world to do their own due diligence and have it reviewed independently. And so, this looks to me like gross overreach which I think will end up backfiring on them, because I think it will make people sympathetic for Trump, that this is another example of people piling on because of Trump Derangement Syndrome, you know, this strong desire to punish him."

Just noting that Barr was slightly (and accidentally) onto something here in as much as Ivanka Trump was dropped from this case due to the statute of limitations.

More from the new book, this time directly related to the Russia scandal: the authors report that following the resignation of Donald Trump's Attorney General Jeff Sessions in 2018, Trump offered the job of A.G. to his EPA Administrator, Scott Pruitt, and to his Secretary of Labor, Alex Acosta, but in both cases with the provision that upon being confirmed in that role, they would fire Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who was investigating Trump's ties to Russia.

I didn't mention this at the time, but this seems like yet another example of Donald Trump obstructing justice. Robert Mueller didn't include it in his report, which probably means he was unaware of it.

[N.E. Brigand]

Judge Engoron says he expects to issue his decision by the end of the month.

Yesterday I thought I saw reporting that the special master monitoring Trump Org. finances (to make sure he doesn't transfer the assets away before the decision in New York's lawsuit against the firm) had noted discovered some inappropriate activity, but I can't find it now.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Yes, it was something about a $50 million loan not being reported. Let me see if I can find it.

ETA:

[N.E. Brigand]

Yes, it was something about a $50 million loan not being reported. Let me see if I can find it.

ETA: [Tweet from Roger Sollenberger: "Did Trump lie on his financial disclosures (and taxes?) for years about a $50 million loan that the Trump Org now claims never existed? ..."]

Thanks! I've seen references to that mysterious loan -- and I see it's actually $48 million -- somewhere before, and now I realize it must have been from a report on one of Trump's financial disclosure statements that he was required to file as president.

And now this morning, counsel for the Trump Org. has responded to the letter from retired federal judge Barbara Jones, the special master in this case (and before that in two other cases involving Donald Trump), in a filing that includes this line: "Further oversight is unwarranted and will only unjustly enrich the monitor as she engages in some 'Javert' like quest ... That the monitor seeks to now perpetuate this folly is beyond the pale".

Jones's letter Friday said this about the $48 million: "When I inquired about this loan, I was informed that there are no loan agreements that memorialize the loan, but that it was a loan that was believed to be between Donald J. Trump, individually, and Chicago Unit Acquisition for $48 million".

The Trump filing today says "The Trump entities of course never said the loan did not exist. Rather, they provided a copy of an internal memorandum reflecting simply that 'no liabilities or obligations are outstanding' under the loan at that time" and says Jones made a "deliberate mischaracterization".

However, it turns out that the proof is "an unsigned and vague 'inter-office memorandum' sent by the 'legal department' to 'file' last month," explicitly written only after Jones started asking about it, and what's more, the memo "describes an entirely different loan arrangement." Instead of a loan from Trump personally to the "Chicago Unit Acquisitions LLC," this one describes that LLC having loaned the $48 million to something "401 Mezz Venture LLC." It says there are "no amounts ... due or payable" but it doesn't actually say whether 401 Mezz Venture paid Chicago Unit Acquisitions back, or whether Chicago Unit Acquisitions forgave the loan, or what. And as recently as Sunday, Alan Garten, who is counsel for the Trump Org., was telling The Daily Beast that it was a loan from Trump to Chicago Unit Acquisitions, but the memo which says otherwise also says that Garten explained this all to Jones.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

It looks like the $48 million dollar loan issue might be delaying a decision in the fraud case, which had been expected by the end of January.

Trump civil fraud verdict now expected by mid-February

[N.E. Brigand]

It looks like the $48 million dollar loan issue might be delaying a decision in the fraud case, which had been expected by the end of January.

Trump civil fraud verdict now expected by mid-February

I wonder if Judge Engoron is also aware of and contemplating this:

"Trump’s Former Finance Chief in Negotiations to Plead Guilty to Perjury" (from the New York Times courtesy of Allison Gill's feed).

"Allen H. Weisselberg would admit to lying on the stand during the former president’s civil fraud trial, according to people familiar with the talks," possibly because (as we've previously discussed here), he claimed on the stand a couple months ago not to be aware of efforts by Donald Trump and other associates to overvalue triplex apartment by reporting its size as 30,000 rather than 10,000 square feet. And then Forbes published material showing that Weisselberg was lying.

But while the plea is news, Judge Engoron was already aware of the allegation that Weisselberg lied under oath.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

While the Weisselberg news is potentially a big deal and could lead to more charges against Trump by Bragg's office (I'll believe it when I see it), I doubt it has anything to do with the delay in Ergoron's decision.