Times Reveals Trump Secured Massive Windfall Then Poured Millions Into 2016 Campaign, Sparking Calls for Federal Probe

"The more we learn about what Trump is hiding in his tax returns, the worse it looks."



by
Jessica Corbett, staff writer



https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/10/09/times-reveals-trump-secured-massive-windfall-then-poured-millions-2016-campaign




The New York Times continued its explosive reporting on President Donald Trump's tax records on Friday by divulging that he engineered an eight-figure windfall shortly before contributing $10 million to his "self-funded" 2016 presidential campaign—which sparked fresh calls for probing the president's tax and business practices.


The latest piece for the Times' investigation into Trump tax documents obtained by the newspaper—which kicked off last month with a bombshell exposé detailing how he paid little-to-no federal income taxes in the years leading up to his presidency—generated concerns the president illegally funded his campaign with a business loan."The more we learn about what Trump is hiding in his tax returns, the worse it looks," Tax March tweeted Friday with a link to the report. The group is leading a coalition of progressive organizations behind the #WePaidMore campaign to raise awareness about the country's "utterly rigged" tax system, as demonstrated by Trump's actions.

Times journalists Susanne Craig, Mike McIntire, and Russ Buettner report that as Trump struggled to raise money for his White House run in 2016, he secured "more than $21 million in what experts describe as highly unusual one-off payments from the Las Vegas hotel he owns with his friend the casino mogul Phil Ruffin."

As the trio of journalists detail:


The tax records, by their nature, do not specify whether the more than $21 million in payments from the Trump-Ruffin hotel helped prop up Mr. Trump's campaign, his businesses, or both. But they do show how the cash flowed, in a chain of transactions, to several Trump-controlled companies and then directly to Mr. Trump himself.

The bulk of the money went through a company called Trump Las Vegas Sales and Marketing that had little previous income, no clear business purpose and no employees. The Trump-Ruffin joint venture wrote it all off as a business expense.

The report raises concerns about potential legal problems related to both claiming the tax deduction and whether the payments are technically campaign contributions.

Just weeks before the 2016 election, "the Trump-Ruffin partnership borrowed $30 million from City National Bank in Los Angeles," according to the Times. "Mr. Trump signed the loan documents in New York City, but tax records show that Mr. Ruffin personally guaranteed nearly the entire amount, should the company ever be unable to pay."

"The partnership was not required to disclose on its tax returns how the borrowed money would be spent," the reporters note. "But the timing of the loan, combined with the partnership's lack of available cash that year, strongly suggests that the loan funded the millions of dollars in payments to Mr. Trump."


Campaign Legal Center (CLC) president and former Republican chairman of the Federal Election Commission Trevor Potter said in a statement Friday that "if Trump took out a bank loan in the LLC's name for the purpose of financing his election, then the Trump campaign violated its legal reporting requirements by failing to disclose the loan, and failing to disclose that Trump's Vegas property was used as collateral."

"If Trump secretly financed his 2016 campaign using an undisclosed bank loan backed by a billionaire developer, then voters have been illegally deprived of important information about the true sources of Trump's financial support," he said. "Additionally, if the LLC took a tax deduction for the payments to Trump, it would mean that Trump secretly relied on taxpayers to help subsidize his 2016 campaign."

"Disclosure to voters in 2016 would have been important, since Trump's claim that he was self-financing his campaign was central to his campaign message, and created a veneer of credibility for him to accuse rivals of being beholden to wealthy special interests," Potter added. "Voters had a right to know where Trump was getting the money for his campaign."

The Times report goes on to detail Ruffin's friendship with the president and years serving as a "wingman for Mr. Trump's political ambitions." Jennifer Renzelman, a spokesperson for Ruffin, told the newspaper that the 85-year-old was not involved in the day-to-day operations of the hotel in question and that "all tax statements go to the people who work on his taxes."

White House spokesperson Judd Deere called the report "yet another politically motivated hit piece inaccurately smearing a standard business deal," and said that "during his years as a successful businessman, Donald Trump was longtime partners with Phil Ruffin and earned whatever payments he received."

Meanwhile, tax and campaign finance experts, reporters, and other political commentators highlighted the legal concerns raised and called for further investigation:

The Fully Pathological Narcissist

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wbh6eJGc9yw&ab_channel=SurvivingNarcissism

Donald Trump Must Be Held Responsible for the Michigan Terrorist Plot

This plot is no accident. It is the essence of Trumpism.
by
Jeffrey C. Isaac



https://www.commondreams.org/views/2020/10/09/donald-trump-must-be-held-responsible-michigan-terrorist-plot

“Liberate Michigan!”

Thus Tweeted Donald Trump on April 17, as armed militia groups and so-called “patriots” assembled outside the Michigan capitol building and then occupied the capitol itself, denouncing the pandemic response of Democratic Governor Gretchen Whitmer as “tyranny,” intimidating state legislators, and forcing the legislative session to adjourn.

“There’s no middle ground anymore”

Thus spoke “Steve,” a member of the Michigan Militia Corps’ Wolverines, quoted in an April 1, 2019 Irish Times feature on the group.

Today five men from Michigan and one from Delaware apparently linked to the group were criminally charged by federal authorities for their involvement in a multi-state conspiracy to kidnap the Democratic Governor of Michigan, Gretchen Whitmer, and to kill “tyrants.” At the same time apparently twelve men were separately charged with criminal conspiracy by the state of Michigan.

The details of this conspiracy will surely be disclosed in the days to come, as will the extent of the network to which these particular alleged conspirators are linked—and we can be certain that they are linked to an extensive network.

What is clear now is that the conspiracy was identified and infiltrated by the F.B.I., and that the arrest and charging of the conspirators was a joint effort of the F.B.I., the U.S. Attorney’s office, Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel, and the Michigan state police.

As the Detroit Daily News reports:

“U.S. Attorney Andrew Birge of the Western District of Michigan said each faces a sentence of up to life in prison, if convicted. “All of us standing here today want the public to know that federal and state law enforcement are committed to working together to make sure violent extremists never succeed with their plans, particularly when they target our duly elected leaders,” Birge said.”

It is good that law enforcement authorities have been so proactive in dealing with this threat. For we will need honest and fair law enforcement if we are going to have a free and fair election next month.


Trump has enjoined these armed protestors to “liberate” their state, at times explicitly linking the call for “liberation” to the Second Amendment, clearly invoking and even inciting violence. Back on April 17, I called attention to this in a piece entitled “Trump’s Tweets Incite Civil War and Public Health Disaster.” In recent years various iterations of Michigan militia groups have been prominently featured in reports about “hate groups” by the Southern Poverty Law Center and other such organizations. In recent months, as similar groups have descended on the state capitols of Democratic-run states such as Virginia and Minnesota, the Michigan groups have loomed especially large, because of the extent to which they have been able to publicly threaten and intimidate. And as Governor Gretchen Whitmer has assumed a leading role in organizing a state-level pandemic response with a high national profile, she has become the target of particular hostility by these right-wing groups, and by their inspiration: Donald Trump.

In the months since, Trump has doubled-down on his attacks on Democratic governors and has been particularly relentless in his attacks on the three Democrats, all women, who hold the top executive positions in the Michigan government: Governor Whitmer, Attorney General Nessel, and Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson. Trump’s attacks have centered on election administration and public health, tagging these “Democrat” officials with trying to “rig” the election and to steal the liberties of “patriotic citizens.” As Audrey Andrews has pointed out in Ms. Magazine, in “Trump Attacks “Those [Women] from Michigan,” Trump’s nasty Tweets and denunciations appeal to both authoritarianism and misogyny. (Trump is indeed a world-class intersectional hater!)

Is it really any surprise that there would be a conspiracy like the one exposed today, and that Gretchen Whitmer would be its prime target?

The militias have been calling her a tyrant for months. A sign from the April Michigan protests, posted on Twitter by journalist Craig Mauger, indeed declares “Tyrants Get The Rope.”

And Trump has incited these attacks, all the while accusing Democratic Governors of joining with the Biden/Harris ticket to plan an “anarchist” takeover of the country.

The Michigan militiamen have apparently drawn exactly the conclusions to which Their Leader has led them.




They heard last week when Trump refused to denounce “white supremacist” groups, and they have heard for years, and at least since 2017 and Charlottesville, as Trump has offered succor to his far-right supporters. And they have also heard the silence from Trump when his own FBI Director has stated repeatedly, for the past six months, that the primary threat of “domestic terror” comes from right-wing extremist groups.

They know that Trump is “their” President, just as he knows that they are his most unshakeable base.

This “Wolverine” plot, and the broader efforts at violence and disruption to which it is surely linked, represents the culmination of Trumpism in crisis, the desperate effort of angry, paranoid, and racist extremists to “defend themselves” in the face of the imminent defeat of their angry, paranoid, and racist Leader.

Trump must not be let off the hook for this. For these are his proverbial chickens coming home to roost.

Journalists and media commentators must not offer him softball opportunities to “pivot” and shed a few false crocodile tears. He cannot take back his hate-filled and incendiary words of the past many years. He cannot take back his appeal to “Second Amendment solutions” and his call to “liberate Michigan.” It does not matter what he says now. He is responsible for this. Period.

Investigative journalists must pursue every lead in this story. How many of the indicted conspirators, and how many of their close associates, have attended Trump rallies or displayed Trump signs or worn MAGA hats? How many of them were involved in this spring and summer’s armed protests threatening the Michigan Governor?

Every link between Trump and these Trump followers must be followed, exposed, and highlighted. And this story must not be allowed to fade away. For the threat of violence in the coming weeks remains very real. And the source of this threat must be kept vividly obvious—Donald Trump.

“Law and order” has always been a reactionary slogan designed to enjoin repression. And Trump has made the most of this.

At the same time, Trump’s entire existence is a performative contradiction, for there is nobody who has done more to undermine the rule of law and to incite violence against civil order than Donald Trump.

Now it is not a matter of the FBI alleging the danger of far-right groups. For the FBI has now arrested men who have been doing the figurative and perhaps even literal bidding of Donald Trump. Other arrests are sure to follow.

Trump’s campaign is dying. This dangerous and outrageous plot against democracy needs to be the final nail in its coffin.

The manifest danger that Trump poses, as epitomized by this terrorist plot, needs to be highlighted.

Citizens need to understand how dangerous his candidacy is.

And law enforcement officials need to be put on notice as well, to guard against the dangers to a free and fair election that Trump threatens.

This plot is no accident. It is the essence of Trumpism. And all who are committed to democracy must take its full measure, and use it to mobilize Trump’s decisive and irretrievable defeat in November.

We must elect Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, and we must retake the Senate, and we must put this interminable nightmare behind us, learning its lessons, and charting a way forward to a better future.

Pennsylvania AG Says Trump Is Trying To Suppress The Vote

Democratic Attorney General Josh Shapiro tells The Daily Poster that Trump is trying “to make it harder for people to vote” and he says his office is “preparing for all kinds of scenarios.”


David Sirota
Oct 10




Pennsylvania is expected to be one of the key battleground states that could decide the presidential election. That is why — as a yesterday’s Daily Poster report detailed — Donald Trump and his Republican allies have been trying to change election laws in ways that critics say could suppress turnout and deter voters from going to the polls. Meanwhile, Republican operatives have reportedly been exploring ways to use the GOP’s control of the state legislature to shift Pennsylvania’s Electoral College electors to Trump.

Pennsylvania’s Democratic Attorney General Josh Shapiro has been in court against the Trump campaign and against the U.S. Postal Service to try to protect voters’ rights. In an interview with The Daily Poster, he says that he believes Trump is actively trying “to make it harder for people to vote in our democracy” — and he discussed what his office is doing to try to fight back.

He also talked about the state of the 2020 race, and what Democrats have to do to win back states like Pennsylvania.

"For Che, the revolution was intrinsically international"

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QKuiRmhdGHo&ab_channel=PeoplesDispatch

We All Deserve The Health Care Trump Received At Walter Reed

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2X_dMMzoY_k&ab_channel=BernieSanders

Prof. Richard Wolff: A Post-Capitalist Economy || Mexie

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ppQp0_2dFQc&ab_channel=Mexie