Trump's world....

[Warrior]

4 minutes ago, DBP66 said:

it's not a conspiracy...it actually happened....the guy is an American/Russian spy....see the difference??....probably not.

Who? Trump…lol

[Wildcat Will]

8 hours ago, Warrior said:

When "Common Knowledge" is used as a source your ignorance is glaring. But please continue.

I know your issue is the knowledge portion of the phrase. Common you know all to well as the singularity that is Republican thought.

[Warrior]

Don’t make the mistake I did. I claimed Ukraine as a dependent on my taxes last week. My return was audited 10 minutes later because I forgot to file my name as The Big Guy.

[Wildcat Will]

8 hours ago, Warrior said:

Don’t make the mistake I did. I claimed Ukraine as a dependent on my taxes last week. My return was audited 10 minutes later because I forgot to file my name as The Big Guy.

That would be a life long list.

[DBP66]

Stormy's revenge??....

 

Manhattan Prosecutors Will Begin Presenting Trump Case to Grand Jury

 

 

William K. Rashbaum, Ben Protess and Jonah E. Bromwich

Mon, January 30, 2023 at 1:59 PM EST

 

 

 

Then-President Donald Trump with reporters before boarding Air Force One at Joint Base Andrews, Md, Jan. 12, 2021. (Doug Mills/The New York Times)

The Manhattan district attorney’s office on Monday will begin presenting evidence to a grand jury about Donald Trump’s role in paying hush money to a porn star during his 2016 presidential campaign, laying the groundwork for potential criminal charges against the former president in the coming months, according to people with knowledge of the matter.

The grand jury was recently impaneled, and witness testimony will soon begin, a clear signal that the district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, is nearing a decision about whether to charge Trump.

On Monday, one of the witnesses was seen with his lawyer entering the building in lower Manhattan, New York, where the grand jury is sitting. The witness, David Pecker, is the former publisher of The National Enquirer, the tabloid that helped broker the deal with the porn star, Stormy Daniels.

As prosecutors prepare to reconstruct the events surrounding the payment for grand jurors, they have sought to interview several witnesses, including the tabloid’s former editor, Dylan Howard, and two employees at Trump’s company, the people said. Howard and the Trump Organization employees, Jeffrey McConney and Deborah Tarasoff, have not yet testified before the grand jury.

The prosecutors have also begun contacting officials from Trump’s 2016 campaign, one of the people said. And in a sign that they want to corroborate these witness accounts, the prosecutors recently subpoenaed phone records and other documents that might shed light on the episode.

A conviction is not a sure thing, in part because a case could hinge on showing that Trump and his company falsified records to hide the payout from voters days before the 2016 election, a low-level felony charge that would be based on a largely untested legal theory. The case would also rely on the testimony of Michael D. Cohen, Trump’s former fixer who made the payment and who himself pleaded guilty to federal charges related to the hush money in 2018.

Still, the developments compound Trump’s mounting legal woes as he faces an array of law enforcement investigations: A district attorney in Georgia could seek to indict him for his efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss in the state, and he faces a special counsel investigation into his removal of sensitive documents from the White House.

Bragg’s decision to impanel a grand jury focused on the hush money — supercharging the longest-running criminal investigation into Trump — represents a dramatic escalation in an inquiry that once appeared to have reached a dead end.

Under Bragg’s predecessor, Cyrus R. Vance Jr., the district attorney’s office had begun presenting evidence to an earlier grand jury about a case focused not just on the hush money but on Trump’s broader business practices, including whether he fraudulently inflated the value of his real estate to secure favorable loans and other financial benefits. Yet in the early weeks of his tenure last year, Bragg developed concerns about the strength of that case and decided to abandon the grand jury presentation, prompting the resignations of the two senior prosecutors leading the investigation.

One of them, Mark F. Pomerantz, was highly critical of Bragg’s decision and has written a book that is scheduled to be published next week, “People vs. Donald Trump,” detailing his account of the inquiry. Bragg’s office recently wrote to Pomerantz’s publisher, Simon & Schuster, expressing concern that the book might disclose grand jury information or interfere with the investigation.

For his part, Trump has denied all wrongdoing and chalked up the scrutiny — as he has many times before — to a partisan witch hunt against him. If he were ultimately convicted, Trump would face a maximum sentence of four years, though prison time would not be mandatory.

A spokesperson for Bragg’s office declined to comment. Pecker’s lawyer, Elkan Abramowitz, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. A lawyer for Trump, Ronald P. Fischetti, declined to comment, as did a lawyer for McConney and Tarasoff.

The panel hearing evidence about the hush money is likely what’s known as a special grand jury. Like regular grand juries, it is made up of 23 Manhattan residents chosen at random. But its members are sworn in to serve for six months to hear complex cases, rather than the routine 30-day panels that review evidence and vote on whether to bring charges in cases of burglary, assault, robbery, murder and other crimes.

The district attorney’s investigation, which has unfolded in fits and starts over the past four years, began with an examination of the hush money deal before expanding to include Trump’s property valuations. Last summer, Bragg’s prosecutors, working with the office of New York Attorney General Letitia James, returned to the hush money anew, seeking to jump-start the inquiry after the departures of Pomerantz and Carey R. Dunne, the other senior prosecutor in the investigation.

The district attorney’s office is also continuing to scrutinize the way that the former president valued his assets, the people with knowledge of the matter said.

Over the course of the lengthy inquiry into Trump and the conduct of his business, the hush money inquiry resurfaced within the district attorney’s office with such regularity in recent years that prosecutors came to refer to it as the “zombie theory” — an idea that just won’t die.

The first visible sign of progress for Bragg came this month when Cohen appeared at the district attorney’s office in lower Manhattan to meet with prosecutors for the first time in more than a year. Now, he is expected to return for at least one additional interview with the prosecutors in February, one of the people said.

The lawyer who represented Daniels in the hush money deal, Keith Davidson, is also expected to meet with prosecutors in the coming weeks.

Trump’s company was instrumental in the deal, court records from Cohen’s federal case show.

Although McConney and Tarasoff were not central players, they helped arrange for the Trump Organization to reimburse Cohen for the $130,000 he paid Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford.

Allen H. Weisselberg, the company’s former chief financial officer, was also involved in reimbursing Cohen. And, according to Cohen, Weisselberg was involved in a discussion with Trump about whether to pay Daniels.

Weisselberg is currently serving time in the Rikers Island jail complex after pleading guilty to a tax fraud scheme unrelated to the hush money deal, a case that also led to the conviction of the Trump Organization in December. Although he was the star witness for the district attorney’s office in that case — testifying against the company that had employed him for decades — he has never implicated Trump in any wrongdoing.

Without his cooperation, prosecutors could struggle to link Trump directly to the misconduct.

In 2018, when Cohen pleaded guilty to federal campaign finance charges stemming from his role in the hush money payments, he pointed the finger at Trump, saying the payout was done “in coordination with, and at the direction of” the president. Federal prosecutors agreed that Trump was behind the deal but never charged him or his company with a crime.

Unless Weisselberg agrees to cooperate, corroborating Cohen’s account could present a challenge for prosecutors. Trump’s lawyers will most likely argue that Cohen, a convicted criminal who pleaded guilty to lying to government officials, has an ax to grind against Trump.

Still, there is some circumstantial evidence suggesting that Trump was involved in the deal. Cohen and Trump spoke by phone twice the day before Cohen wired the payment to Daniels’ lawyer, according to court records in the federal case.

For Bragg’s prosecutors, the core of any possible case is the way in which the Trump Organization reimbursed Cohen for the $130,000 he paid Daniels and how the company recorded that payment internally. According to court papers in Cohen’s federal case, the company falsely identified the reimbursements as legal expenses.

The district attorney’s office now appears to be focusing on whether erroneously classifying the payments to Cohen as a legal expense ran afoul of a New York law that prohibits the falsifying of business records.

Violations of that law can be charged as a misdemeanor. To make it a felony, Bragg’s prosecutors would need to show that Trump falsified the records to help commit or conceal a second crime in what prosecutors would argue was a violation of a New York state election law. That second aspect has largely gone untested, and would therefore make for a risky legal case against the former president.

Pecker’s testimony could bolster the prosecution’s argument, however. As a longtime ally of Trump, the publisher agreed during the 2016 campaign to be on the lookout for potentially damaging stories about Trump.

That October, Daniels’ agent and lawyer discussed the possibility of selling exclusive rights to her story to The National Enquirer, which would then never publish it, a practice known as “catch and kill.”

But Pecker, who two months earlier had spent $150,000 to buy and kill a former Playboy model’s story of an affair with Trump, refused to make a payment to Daniels as well. He and the tabloid’s editor, Howard, agreed that Cohen would have to deal with Daniels’ team directly.

When Cohen was slow to pay, Howard pressed him to get the deal done, lest Daniels go public with their discussions about suppressing her story. “We have to coordinate something,” Howard texted Cohen in late October 2016, “or it could look awfully bad for everyone.”

Two days later, Cohen transferred the $130,000 to an account held by Daniels’ attorney.

© 2023 The New York Times Company

[concha]

[DBP66]

Trump's Well-Worn Legal Playbook Starts to Look Frayed

 

 

Maggie Haberman

Tue, January 31, 2023 at 2:19 PM EST

 

 

 

Former President Donald Trump during an event in Dayton, Ohio, Nov. 7, 2022. (Maddie McGarvey/The New York Times)

The expanding legal threats facing former President Donald Trump are testing as never before his decades-old playbook for fending off prosecutors, regulators and other accusers and foes, with his trademark mix of defiance, counterattacks, bluffs and delays encountering a series of setbacks.

In other legal maneuvering and in seeking to shape public opinion about cases involving him, Trump has experienced regular reversals in court in recent months even as he begins his campaign for another term in the White House.

“Mr. Trump is a prolific and sophisticated litigant who is repeatedly using the courts to seek revenge on political adversaries,” Judge Donald M. Middlebrooks of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida wrote this month in fining the former president and one of his lawyers nearly $1 million for filing a frivolous civil suit against Hillary Rodham Clinton and FBI officials. “He is the mastermind of strategic abuse of the judicial process, and he cannot be seen as a litigant blindly following the advice of a lawyer.”

That fine appeared to lead Trump to quickly drop a similar suit he had filed against Letitia James, the attorney general of New York, who is pressing ahead with a $250 million suit claiming widespread financial fraud by the former president, his oldest children and his company.

The Manhattan district attorney’s office began presenting evidence on Monday to a grand jury about his role in paying hush money to a porn star during his 2016 presidential campaign — the latest in a series of investigations and legal proceedings that are grinding on despite Trump’s efforts to block or undercut them.

The Justice Department is investigating his handling of classified documents and his role in the efforts to reverse the outcome of the 2020 election, and he is facing a potential indictment from the prosecutor in Fulton County, Georgia, in connection with his efforts to remain in power after his election loss.

Two suits against Trump brought by E. Jean Carroll, a New York-based writer who has accused him of raping her in the 1990s in a department store dressing room, are moving ahead despite his threats to sue her.

“Trump views the judicial system as he sees everything else: corrupt, ‘fixable’ and usable as a bullying tactic,” said Alan Marcus, a consultant who worked for the Trump Organization in the 1990s.

Marcus recalled Trump calling lawyers who had filed suit against him to try to convince them that “it was a waste of time and money,” then ultimately trying to get the case in front of a judge he perceived to be friendly.

A spokesperson for Trump did not respond to an email seeking comment about his history of handling legal threats.

For all that he remains popular with many Republican voters, Trump, according to people who have spoken with him, is concerned about facing a criminal charge, something he has worked to avoid since the late 1970s. And he remains dedicated to the techniques for dealing with such threats — tactics he learned from his former lawyer Roy M. Cohn, who favored attacking the legal system while trying to work insider connections.

In the Georgia investigation, Trump has called Fani T. Willis, the district attorney leading the inquiry, as well as other Black prosecutors investigating him, “racist.”

He has relentlessly denounced the Justice Department as partisan and attacked Alvin L. Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney who recently brought a successful fraud prosecution against Trump’s company and is now pursuing potential criminal charges in the Stormy Daniels hush money case.

On Monday, Trump filed suit against journalist Bob Woodward, saying that Woodward had released recordings of interviews with him as an audiobook without his permission. Woodward and his publisher, Simon & Schuster, called the suit, which seeks $49 million in damages, “without merit.”

But while it is not clear that Trump will ever be charged with a crime or found liable in the civil cases, that approach appears less effective for him than it has ever been in fending off investigations and potential legal peril.

“You can wear down a private party if they do not have the same resources as you, or you can settle a civil case and make it go away, but criminal cases are not about money,” said Chuck Rosenberg, a former U.S. attorney and FBI official. “Criminal cases are about liberty and justice, and it is really rather difficult — if not impossible — to wear down federal prosecutors and the FBI and make them go away.”

In purely political terms, Trump remains a force in the Republican Party, even as a diminished figure whose support has eroded from its highs of 2020. Several polls still show him with a plurality or a majority of support among Republican voters, for whom he is the only declared presidential candidate for 2024.

And part of his approach to his own difficulties over many years has been capitalizing on the misfortunes of his critics and his opposition. That has once again become a toll, as a special counsel is investigating how documents with classified markings came to be stored at President Joe Biden’s home and an office he used after his vice presidency, a fact that Trump has used to try to obscure how hundreds of classified documents came to be held at his club, Mar-a-Lago.

Victor A. Kovner, a prominent First Amendment lawyer and Democratic activist in New York, attributed Trump’s approach to legal matters to what he learned from Cohn, who died of AIDS in 1986 and whom Kovner despised for his tactics.

“Always distraction, and apparent scorched earth and counterattacks at the start, and after much passage of time, settlement as quietly as possible,” Kovner said of Trump’s behaviors in what were primarily civil suits. “And the counterattacks as scurrilous as possible. Mostly from the Roy Cohn playbook.”

Since the 1970s, Trump has alternately denounced prosecutors or investigators or cajoled, schmoozed and tried to work an inside track to head off an investigation or inquiry. And he established relationships with the power elite in New York, many of whom also happened to be in positions that could be threatening to a businessman.

In the 1980s, Trump began cultivating what would become a decadeslong connection to Robert M. Morgenthau, the powerful Manhattan district attorney in whose jurisdiction Trump’s company was located, by getting involved in the charity Morgenthau cherished, the Police Athletic League. Trump announced in 1988 that he would raise money for Rudy Giuliani, then seen as a prospective mayoral candidate as he served as the U.S. attorney in the Southern District of New York (Giuliani was the Republican nominee the following year).

In 1979, as Trump was endeavoring to become a more significant player in Manhattan real estate after an initial foray — refurbishing a decrepit East Side hotel into the Grand Hyatt — his acquisition of a different parcel of land was under investigation by the Brooklyn federal prosecutor, Edward R. Korman.

Korman, following the road map laid out in reporting by Wayne Barrett, The Village Voice muckraking journalist, investigated whether Trump had agreed to sign onto a landlord suit against an oil company being filed by a lawyer whose help he needed to acquire a large for-lease parcel of undeveloped land in Manhattan. Trump met with federal investigators, with no lawyer present, according to Barrett.

It was a roughly six-month investigation with a weak witness, according to people familiar with the work, with a statute of limitations approaching, making charges less likely to be brought. Still, the lesson that Trump appeared to take from it was that he had the ability to get himself out of difficult situations by persuading his antagonists.

When Eric T. Schneiderman, the New York attorney general at the time, began an investigation in 2011 into Trump University, looking into whether Trump’s for-profit classes claiming to instruct people on how to succeed in business were a scam, Trump first tried flattery and relationship building.

He hired Avi Schick, who had been the director of Schneiderman’s inauguration. But no deal with Schneiderman was negotiated, and eventually Trump accused Schick of being part of a ploy by Schneiderman to pressure Trump into donating money to his campaign in exchange for dropping the investigation. Trump bitterly complained that one of his company’s lawyers complied with Schneiderman’s for documents, Michael D. Cohen, Trump’s former fixer, recalled in a 2021 interview.

Trump fought the case until he abruptly settled it just after he was elected in 2016.

Since becoming president, Trump has been in search of his next Roy Cohn. When he was in the White House and a special counsel was appointed to investigate whether his campaign conspired with Russians in the 2016 election and whether he had obstructed justice, one of Trump’s first impulses was to meet with the people investigating him. He told his lawyers he wanted to sit with the special counsel, Robert Mueller, at the outset.

Those lawyers declined to follow the president’s impulses. But some of his recent lawyers have given in to his desires, most often to attack aggressively.

“I think he thinks that everything can be bought or fought,” Rosenberg said, “and that is just not true.”

[DBP66]

could it be possible he feels bad this dumb woman who got shot for listening to him???...

Trump Whines After McCarthy Praises Capitol Officer

 

 

William Vaillancourt

Fri, February 3, 2023 at 12:08 AM EST

 

 

 

Shannon Stapleton/Reuters

In a racially tinged Truth Social post Thursday night, former President Donald Trump once again smeared the Capitol police officer who shot Jan. 6 rioter Ashli Babbitt.

Trump wrote that he disagreed with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), who told a reporter earlier in the day that Lt. Michael Byrd “did his job.”

Despite having been exonerated by the Capitol Police, the D.C. Metropolitan Police and the Justice Department, Byrd was nevertheless branded a “coward” and a “thug” by Trump.

“Despite trying to keep him anonymous, shielded, and protected, this MISFIT proudly showed up on NBC Fake Nightly News ‘bragging’ about the killing,” Trump complained.

 

Byrd told NBC in August 2021 that he and his family had received death threats in the preceding months. He used his firearm as a “last resort,” he said, adding that he “saved countless lives.”

[DBP66]

Trump Org Pays $1.6 Million Fine for Tax Fraud Conviction

 

 

Jose Pagliery

Fri, February 3, 2023 at 11:15 AM EST

 

 

 

REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton/File Photo

Former President Donald Trump’s family company—notorious for stiffing contractors and dodging bills—has paid the $1.6 million fine it received for its tax fraud conviction in December.

The New York County Clerk received the payment in two separate checks on Jan. 24, according to a clerk who confirmed matter-of-factly that the checks didn’t bounce.

In recent days, according to a court spokesman, the clerk’s office notified Justice Juan Merchan, the judge who sentenced the Trump Corporation and Trump Payroll Corporation in January to the maximum financial penalty allowed by the state.

The companies, which are part of the overall Trump Organization, were convicted in early December by a New York jury that was deeply offended at the way Trump’s businesses cooked the books to shower top executives with untaxed benefits.

[DBP66]

Trump's election fraud schemers keep getting caught lying — on tape

Opinion by Charlie Sykes • 1h ago

They knew right from the start.

Donald Trump during a presidential rally at Southern Wisconsin Regional Airport in Janesville, Wis., on Oct. 17, 2020.© Provided by MSNBC

The Trump campaign knew it had lost Wisconsin to Joe Biden in the 2020 election. But new audiotapes first published by the Associated Press confirm Trump operatives decided to ignore reality and instead “fan the flame” by spreading false allegations of fraud.

Those fraud allegations were repeatedly debunked and discredited, even as Donald Trump repeatedly demanded that the Wisconsin election be overturned, demanded costly recounts and then sued (and lost) multiple times in court. No evidence of significant fraud was ever found.

The audio tapes obtained by the AP show that on Nov. 5, 2020, two days after the election, Trump operatives acknowledged that Biden had won the Badger State by about 21,000 votes. Yet more evidence, as if we even needed more evidence.

On the tapes, the head of Trump’s Wisconsin campaign, Andrew Iverson, is heard saying:

“Here’s the drill: Comms is going to continue to fan the flame and get the word out about Democrats trying to steal this election. We’ll do whatever they need (inaudible) help with. Just be on standby in case there’s any stunts we need to pull.”

No one on the conference call suggested that Trump had actually won, or that the election had been stolen.

[concha]

[DBP66]

7 hours ago, concha said:

LOL...resistance??...LOL...we saw what that looked like on 1-6-21....brainwashed morons following Trump's orders..😪

[DBP66]

Trump, Christie exchange fire after gloomy 2024 prediction

Story by Julia Mueller • Yesterday 4:51 PM

Former President Trump and former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) sparred online Sunday after Christie predicted that Trump couldn’t beat President Biden if they run against each other in the 2024 presidential election. 

Trump, Christie exchange fire after gloomy 2024 prediction© Provided by The Hill

Christie, who endorsed Trump in 2016 after dropping his own campaign for the presidency but has since become a vocal Trump critic, made the 2024 forecast Sunday on ABC News, where he is now a contributor. 

Trump fired back on Truth Social. “‘Sloppy’ Chris Christie, the failed former Governor of New Jersey, spent almost his entire last year in office campaigning in New Hampshire for the Republican Nomination for President. Much like his term in office, where he left with an Approval Rating of just 9%, his Presidential campaign was a complete disaster,” Trump wrote.

“He endorsed me the following day, later recommended Chris Wray for the FBI (how did that work out?), went down in flames, and then was SALVAGED by ABC FAKE NEWS. I never wanted him!” the former president said of his former transition team chief. 

[DBP66]

Well it looks like the fun has begun....this should be good!

Trump amplifies posts claiming DeSantis was 'grooming high school girls'

The former president reposted a photo purporting to show DeSantis drinking and partying with high school students when he worked as a teacher.

 

 

David Knowles

·Senior Editor

Tue, February 7, 2023 at 6:34 PM EST

 

 

 

Former President Donald Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis speak at midterm election rallies in Dayton, Ohio, on Nov. 7, 2022, and Tampa, Fla., respectively, on Nov. 8, 2022. (Gaelen Morse, Marco Bello/Reuters)

Former President Donald Trump escalated his attacks on Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis Tuesday, seizing on a story that his rival for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination partied with underage students when he worked as a teacher at a Georgia high school.

In five successive posts Tuesday to his social media site, Truth Social, Trump went after DeSantis. Two of them referenced a story published by the far-right website Hillreporter.com that claimed DeSantis had been photographed "partying with underaged students" at the Darlington School, a private K-12 school in Rome, Ga., where DeSantis taught from 2001-02.

Trump reposted a photograph originally posted by a Truth Social member who goes by the handle Dong-Chan Lee, and who uses a profile photo of the alt-right meme Pepe the Frog, featuring Trump's signature hairdo. The image showed what appeared to be DeSantis flanked by three young women that had been captioned, "Here is Ron DeSanctimonious grooming high school girls with alcohol as a teacher."

 

Trump, who so far is the only Republican to have formally declared himself a candidate for the 2024 presidential election, added his own commentary to go with the photo. "That’s not Ron, is it?" Trump wrote. "He would never do such a thing!"

In another repost, Trump added more sarcastic commentary, writing "No way?" when highlighting further commentary from the same Truth Social user who posted the photo of DeSantis.

"Ron DeSantis was having a 'drink' party with his students when he was a high school teacher. Having drinks with underage girls and cuddling with them certainly look [sic] pretty gross and ephebophiliaesque," Trump posted.

There are few issues that resonate with the far-right wing of the Republican Party more than an accusation of sexual relations with a minor. Adherents of the QAnon conspiracy theory network, for instance, believe that the government, especially members of the Democratic Party, are made up of Satan-worshiping pedophiles. Trump has also shared QAnon memes on Truth Social.

DeSantis, who is widely believed to be planning to announce his own presidential candidacy, has so far adhered to a strategy of ignoring Trump's attacks on him, such as his coining the nickname "Ron DeSanctimonious." But Tuesday's posts may test that strategy.

Trump went on to promote three more messages posted by Lee that took aim at DeSantis for his 2018 vote on a border security bill when he was a House member in 2018, for not sharing Trump's false belief that the 2020 election was stolen and a story in which DeSantis was quoted as saying he was glad that violent Jan. 6, 2021, rioters had been arrested.

A poll released Monday by the conservative Club for Growth showed that DeSantis leads Trump by 9 percentage points in a hypothetical head-to-head primary match-up. Trump fares better when the field is expanded to include multiple candidates. When the Club for Growth poll added to the mix former Vice President Mike Pence, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, Trump came in first, with 37%, and DeSantis came in second with 33%.

[DBP66]

Trump Rages Over Being Left Out of Conservative Event

Story by Katherine Fung • Yesterday 2:29 PM

 

Former President Donald Trump blasted the Club for Growth on Tuesday after his name was left off the guest list for the conservative anti-tax organization's annual donor retreat.

Former President Donald Trump speaks at the New Hampshire Republican State Committee's Annual Meeting on January 28, 2023 in Salem, New Hampshire.© Scott Eisen/Stringer

"The Club For NO Growth, an assemblage of political misfits, globalists, and losers, fought me incessantly and rather viciously during my presidential run in 2016," Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social. "They said I couldn't win, I did, and won even bigger in 2020, with millions of more votes than '16, but the Election was Rigged & Stollen."

[concha]

https://news.gallup.com/poll/469898/half-say-worse-off-highest-2009.aspx

Half in U.S. Say They Are Worse Off, Highest Since 2009

 

[concha]

BIDEN: "There weren't enough chips. Car prices went up. People got laid off. So did everything from refrigerators to cell phones."

[Blueliner]

43 minutes ago, concha said:

https://news.gallup.com/poll/469898/half-say-worse-off-highest-2009.aspx

Half in U.S. Say They Are Worse Off, Highest Since 2009

 

2009

Obama was POTUS. Dems controlled House (pelosi was speaker), dems controlled the Senate. That’s odd 🤔

[concha]

[DBP66]

After Shouts of 'Liar' and Worse, Biden Takes on His Detractors in Real Time

 

 

Katie Rogers

Wed, February 8, 2023 at 7:45 AM EST

 

 

 

RowVaughn and Rodney Wells of Memphis, Tenn., the mother and stepfather of Tyre Nichols, stand as President Joe Biden recognizes them as he delivers the State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, on Tuesday

WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden was about midway through a speech of about 7,218-words on Tuesday when a Republican lawmaker tried to shut him down with a single one: “Liar!”

It was Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, whom the president had baited by accusing Republicans of wanting to threaten entitlement programs like Social Security.

Later in the speech, when Biden called for an end to the fentanyl crisis in the United States, another lawmaker yelled out, “It’s your fault!” — a reference to the amount of drugs that are smuggled across the U.S.-Mexico border. Another lawmaker yelled out an expletive.

His second State of the Union address was punctuated by outbursts, jeers and peals of mocking laughter, but Biden turned the tables on his Republican opponents and argued in real time with the insurgents. It appeared to be the start of his reelection campaign.

When the Republicans shouted back that no, they were not threatening Social Security, Biden smiled, appearing to relish the scrimmage, and ad-libbed that he was pleased they all agreed.

“I’m glad to see — no, I tell you, I enjoy conversion,” Biden said. He is unlikely to win over a large number of Republicans to support legislation, but his reply to the contingent led by Greene was meant as an unsubtle reminder that he spent 36 years as a senator working to win Republican votes for his legislative efforts.

Biden walked into his speech facing low approval ratings and flashing-red polling numbers that suggest Americans do not feel that his economic policies have helped them. He also entered a chamber full of people who have quietly (and not so quietly) questioned how an 80-year-old president could run for reelection.

Yet Biden appeared in control as he took his time “How are ya, man”-ning down the aisle of the House chamber before reaching the dais, where Vice President Kamala Harris and Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., were waiting. Breaking from the combative mood of the chamber, Harris and McCarthy engaged in small talk, and the speaker greeted Biden warmly.

The president had a shaky start on the teleprompter as he raced through his remarks and mangled some lines, although he had plenty of energy. He got an even bigger burst once the Republicans heckles and boos began, and was most animated when he veered off the teleprompter and addressed them directly before a live television audience of millions. At times, the House floor seemed like the British Parliament, where catcalls and shouted insults from the opposing party are tradition.

In 2009, it was considered a travesty when Rep. Joe Wilson, R-S.C., shouted “you lie” at President Barack Obama during a joint address to Congress. Back then, Wilson was formally rebuked by the whole House.

Times have changed. Republican lawmakers shouted both “liar” and “bullshit” at parts of Biden’s speech, and no one appeared shocked. After the speech, Rep. Andy Ogles of Tennessee defended yelling out “it’s your fault” as Biden described the fentanyl crisis, telling reporters it was “a visceral response.”

Though McCarthy appeared willing to play peacemaker at moments when tensions threatened to boil over — the speaker shushed Republicans who yelled at Biden for calling to codify citizenship for Americans brought to the United States as children — his role over the next months will be to oppose virtually all of Biden’s agenda.

On Tuesday, Republicans spent much of their time signaling that they would help in that mission. Some lawmakers even prepared to mock Biden in advance: Greene carried a white helium balloon around the Capitol, mocking Biden’s response to a giant Chinese spy balloon that traversed the United States this past week before an American F-22 blew it up off the coast of South Carolina.

At points, Biden turned down the volume, calling for police reform by spotlighting the grieving parents of Tyre Nichols, who died after a brutal beating on Jan. 7 at the hands of Memphis police officers. The president emphatically called for more research to end cancer. And he spoke directly to “forgotten” Americans who are struggling financially.

“Jobs are coming back,” Biden said. “Pride is coming back, because of choices we made in the last several years.”

When asked if Biden was prepared for the jeers from Republicans, a senior administration official said the news media had underestimated him — a common refrain from Biden’s advisers.

Jeff Nussbaum, a former Biden speechwriter, praised Biden for “doing a great job of seeking common ground and defining sacred ground.”

Much of the president’s speech was vintage Biden, full of well-worn phrasing he has used since the beginning of his first campaigns a half-century ago. The familiar seemed to help his comfort in taking on the Republicans.

“There are some good things about doing something for 50 years,” said Greg Schultz, Biden’s first 2020 campaign manager. “He’s got some riffs that are just not going to ever change.”

When the president returned to the White House late Tuesday night, the staff stood and applauded him.

[DBP66]

Michael Cohen to meet NY investigators for 15th time in ongoing Trump probe

 

Zach Schonfeld

Tue, February 7, 2023 at 4:24 PM EST

 

 

Michael Cohen, former President Trump’s long-time personal attorney, said he will meet with the Manhattan district attorney’s office on Wednesday as investigators appear to be nearing a decision on whether to seek charges against Trump.

Cohen said on his podcast “Political Beatdown” that the meeting with District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s (D) office will mark Cohen’s 15th appearance during several investigations.

“It’s now the 15th time that I’m heading in to discuss this and other several matters with the DA’s team tomorrow, and I’m looking forward to it, to be very honest with you,” Cohen said.

A spokeswoman for Bragg declined to comment.

[DBP66]

Michael Cohen says Manhattan DA case against Trump is ‘ready to take off’

 

Bebeto Matthews/AP Photo

 

Zachary Schermele

Wed, February 8, 2023 at 4:15 PM EST

 

 

NEW YORK — Former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen expressed confidence Wednesday about the Manhattan district attorney’s criminal investigation into the former president’s hush-money payment to Stormy Daniels.

“I believe that there is a case,” Cohen told reporters outside Manhattan Supreme Court before meeting with prosecutors for District Attorney Alvin Bragg.

The “seriousness of the prosecutorial team” was “evident by their in-depth knowledge of all the information,” he told POLITICO in a text following the two-and-a-half hour meeting.

Cohen declined to give specifics about the sit-down, which he said was his 15th time talking with the district attorney’s office. He did say another meeting is planned.

 

“A 16th meeting has already been set, which indicates to me DA Bragg’s resolve in not allowing this matter to be forgotten,” he said in the text.

Cohen’s appearance comes as former Trump prosecutor Mark Pomerantz is promoting his book, “The People vs. Donald Trump: An Inside Account,” that criticizes his former boss Bragg for dropping a similar grand jury probe last year.

Cohen said he agreed with Bragg’s decision to stop pursing the case because there wasn’t enough evidence to charge Trump.

“The plane wasn’t ready,” he said outside the courthouse Wednesday of last year’s probe.

But things have changed.

“I think the plane may be right now on the tarmac and ready to take off,” Cohen said.

He was continuing a metaphor used by Pomerantz in the book, which says Bragg led the 2022 probe “into the legal equivalent of the plane crash.”

The revived investigation centers around whether the former president covered up money The Trump Organization paid to Daniels during the 2016 presidential election over an alleged affair, which he has denied having. Cohen has admitted to paying $130,000 to Daniels, which he said was at Trump’s direction.

[DBP66]

Chrissy Teigen's Trump diss takes center stage at hearing meant to discuss Hunter Biden

Story by Dareh Gregorian and Summer Concepcion and Sarah Fitzpatrick and Zoë Richards • 1h ago

 

The House Republicans' hearing on Twitter's “role in suppressing the Biden laptop story” took some unexpected twists Wednesday — including one witness testifying that the White House had requested the platform remove a Chrissy Teigen tweet insulting then-President Donald Trump.

Chrissy Teigen's Trump diss takes center stage at hearing meant to discuss Hunter Biden© Provided by NBC News

In questioning during the House Oversight Committee hearing focused on Hunter Biden, Rep. Gerry Connolly, D-Va., asked Anika Collier Navaroli, a former employee of Twitter’s content moderation team, about a September 2019 exchange between Trump and Teigen. The president had tweeted about "boring" musician John Legend and his "filthy-mouthed" wife.

Teigen responded with a crude tweet insulting Trump, which included a word he notoriously used in the "Access Hollywood" tape.

"The White House almost immediately thereafter contacted Twitter to demand the tweet be taken down. Is that accurate?" Connolly asked.

"I do remember hearing we'd received a request from the White House to make sure we evaluated this tweet, and they wanted it to come down because it was a derogatory statement directed at the president," Navaroli said. The tweet, however, was not taken down.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., used the hearing to push back against Republican claims that Twitter is biased against conservatives. She asked Navaroli about the company's response to a 2019 Trump tweet where he called for Ocasio-Cortez and three other Democratic congresswomen of color to "go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came.”

Navaroli said her team reviewed the tweet and found it was in violation of Twitter's policies against abuse of immigrants, which explicitly barred the phrase "go back to where you came from."

Navaroli said her assessment was overridden, and Ocasio-Cortez asked if the policy was changed "a day or two later."

"Yes, that trope, go back to where you came from, was removed from the content moderation guidance as an example," Navaroli said.

"So Twitter changed their own policy after the president violated it in order to essentially accommodate his tweet?" Ocasio-Cortez asked. "Yes," Navaroli said.

"So much for bias against right wing on Twitter," the congresswoman said.

[concha]

[DBP66]

The great "grift" lives on....

Trump Put Nearly $1 Million Of Donor Money Into His Own Pockets Since Leaving Office

 

 

S.V. Date

Thu, February 9, 2023 at 8:00 AM EST

 

 

WASHINGTON — Donald Trump failed to spend much of the money he raised over the past two years fighting his 2020 election loss or helping Republicans win two Georgia Senate seats or funding a “red wave” in 2022, but he did manage to put nearly $1 million of his donors’ contributions right back into his own cash registers.

From the day he left office through the end of last year, the coup-attempting former president’s various political committees spent $905,570 at his properties, according to a HuffPost analysis of new Federal Election Commission filings.

From $94,462 that Trump’s Save America “leadership PAC” dropped at Trump’s hotel on Central Park West in Manhattan on Dec. 10, 2021, to $1,122 his newly reformed presidential campaign spent at his West Palm Beach golf course on Dec. 12, 2022, to twin $48 tabs the campaign spent at his Mar-a-Lago social club on Nov. 18, 2022, it all represents a conversion of donor money into revenues at Trump businesses, with the profits flowing directly to him personally.

Trump’s campaign did not respond to a HuffPost query on this matter.

However, his pattern of spending large amounts from committees he controls to benefit himself is not new.

During his 2016 campaign, he established his headquarters at his own mixed-used building in Manhattan, turning un-rented office space into cash. Then, when he secured the nomination, and the source of the money became the Republican National Committee’s fundraising operation rather than his own campaign, Trump quintupled the rent he was charging himself.

Trump Tower, in fact, remained the single biggest target for Trump committee spending over the past two years, receiving a total of $412,958 from the “Make America Great Again PAC,” his renamed and reconstituted 2020 campaign committee, in the form of $37,542 monthly payments for 11 months.

Although the payments were described as “rent” in FEC filings, no political committee work occurred there. The practice stopped immediately after HuffPost published an article about it.

Trump’s New York City hotel received $336,218 in Trump committee money, and Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida, where Trump also lives during the winter months, received $137,272. That amount includes $68,988 the business received after it became the locale for Trump’s 2024 campaign announcement on Nov. 15.

Trump began aggressively raising money for Save America shortly after losing his re-election bid in 2020. In a barrage of fundraising emails and text messages to his list of some 20 million supporters, he claimed he would use the money to pursue legal challenges to his losses in states narrowly won by Democrat Joe Biden and help the two Republican senators in Georgia in their runoff elections. In fact, he spent none of Save America’s money for either purpose.

Last summer, after other Republicans criticized him for collecting such a large proportion of small-dollar donations that could have flowed instead to GOP candidates actually on the ballot, Trump transferred much of Save America’s cash hoard to a new super PAC run by a former aide, which wound up spending $15 million on behalf of Republican candidates that Trump favored because they were willing to spread his lies about a stolen election.

Most of those candidates ended up losing. And a much larger chunk of that cash, $54 million, remains with the super PAC, Make America Great Again Inc., which can now use it to boost Trump’s 2024 candidacy — something that Save America is not legally allowed to do.

Trump did give 152 House and Senate candidates $5,000 each for their campaigns, totaling $760,000. But his spending on candidates was dwarfed by the $27.3 million he has paid to lawyers, most of whom appear to be handling his various personal legal troubles.

Despite facing multiple criminal investigations over his attempted coup to remain in power and his refusal to turn over classified documents in defiance of a subpoena, Trump remains the leading candidate for the 2024 Republican nomination in many polls.