New York AG Opens "Inquiry" into Trump Foundation

In the wake of a growing number of improper political donations by the Trump Foundation and stories of Donald Trump using foundation funds for his own uses, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman has opened an inquiry into the Trump Foundation, investigating possible wrongdoing and/or violation of restrictions applicable to charitable foundations.  Schneiderman is already involved in litigation involving Trump's alleged scam operation, "Trump University."The inquiry further spotlights Trump's history of questionable activities that skirt the letter of law and violate ethical business practices.  A piece in Politico looks at this new boil on Trump's wide ass.  Here are highlights:

New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman has opened an investigation into the Donald J. Trump Foundation “to make sure it’s complying with the laws governing charities in New York," he said Tuesday.

A source familiar with the matter confirmed Schneiderman’s remark and said the New York Attorney General’s office “has opened an inquiry into the Trump Foundation based on troubling transactions that have recently come to light.”

Schneiderman — who for months has tangled with Trump over a fraud lawsuit his office filed against Trump University, the Manhattan billionaire’s real estate seminar program — told CNN’s “The Lead” that the GOP nominee’s charitable foundation is also under scrutiny.

“My interest in this issue really is in my capacity as regulator of nonprofits in New York state. And we have been concerned that the Trump Foundation may have engaged in some impropriety from that point of view,” Schneiderman told host Jake Tapper. “And we’ve inquired into it, and we’ve had correspondence with them.

Trump’s charity has faced growing questions in the wake of a damaging series of stories by The Washington Post and The Associated Press. A Post story published over the weekend cited tax records showing that Trump had not donated to his own foundation since 2008, and had, among other allegations, "spent $20,000 of money earmarked for charitable purposes to buy a six-foot-tall painting of himself."

The foundation also made an illegal donation of $25,000 to Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi in 2013 as she was considering joining Schneiderman in pursuing a fraud case against Trump University. Bondi and Trump have denied any connection between the money and her office's decision not to pursue an investigation, though Trump paid a $2,500 penalty to the IRS for making a political donation through his charitable foundation. Although Schneiderman, a Democrat who supports Hillary Clinton, has said that his suit against Trump University is not politically motivated, the New York attorney general has not shied away from publicly discussing the case.

Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee, meanwhile, are calling on Attorney General Loretta Lynch to investigate the Trump Foundation's donation to Bondi.

In a letter signed by all Democratic members on the committee and sent to Lynch, they cited the reports by the AP and Post, which they said "indicates that these payments may have influenced Mrs. Bondi’s official decision not to participate in litigation against Mr. Trump."

"A number of criminal statutes would appear to be implicated by this course of conduct," the Democrats wrote, pointing to bribery and tax laws governing nonprofit organizations.

They also noted comments Trump made at a rally last January in Iowa, in which he boasted of his donations to politicians: “I’ve given to everybody. Because that was my job. I gotta give to them. ... Because when I want something, I get it. When I call, they kiss my ass.”

Donald Trump gives sleazy a whole new meaning.

Donald Trump Is Winning Because the Media Is Failing the American People

I have frequently lamented the manner in which the so-called mainstream media is failing to do its job.  The same type of failure allowed Bush/Cheney to lie and take America in an unnecessary war in Iraq that cause the circumstances that gave birth to ISIS.  Now, by largely kissing Donald Trump's very wide ass (that doesn't match is very small hands) and worrying more about creating sensation and page views, the same mainstream media is furthering Trump's campaign.  It never demands answers from him about is plan free agenda to make the changes he promises in his sound bites or asks the simple question "how?"  Likewise, other than bogus Trump University and his questioned veterans donations, there is far too little focus on Trump's sleazy and tawdry past dealings.  A piece in Huffington Post indicts the media on the manner in which it is failing the American people.  Here are excerpts:

[T]the rationale behind this refusal [of the media to do its job] is simple self-interest on the part of journalists who know that they can “ask any question about Trump, Trumpism or anti-Trumpism except the existential ones, because the existential ones could lead him to stop calling in to [their] morning show and providing [them] with [their] highest-rated hour for free.”

After outlining the absurd inability of the press to question Trump when he blatantly and repeatedly contradicts himself on the record, he relented in his criticism somewhat, acknowledging that it’s difficult to “examine what’s going on inside of a man who could first pretend to be his own media spokesman, then boast about his own sexual conquests in the third person, then admit the deception to a reporter, then again admit it on the legal record, then deny it on national television, then when pressed about it by The Washington Post simply hang up the phone.”

With their own jobs hanging in the balance, who in the American media of 2016 could invoke not the politics of reproductive rights but question if there’s something far more than inconsistency involved when a candidate says he believes women who have abortions should be in some way punished, then weeks later insists he meant they should punish themselves? Or in that environment, who can ask not about religious intolerance but instead what is amiss with the thought process of a candidate whose campaign pivoted from the fringes to a hateful lane in the mainstream the day he insisted Muslims be banned from entering this country, yet who could manage to later seriously claim all that was “just a suggestion”…

The mainstream media betrayed the American people in the lead up to the Iraq War and it truly seems to be doing the same thing - all with no regard for what a Trump presidency would do towards destroying America.  

PS, I also cannot refrain from yet again condemning the evangelical Christians who are supporting Trump.  If their claimed beliefs and religiosity are real - as opposed to modern day Pharisee displays of hypocrisy - they ought to be running screaming from Trump.

Ted Cruz Failed to Disclose $1 Million in Campaign Loans

The ever slimy (and in my view, highly dishonest) Ted Cruz has had another welcomed wrinkle thrown into his campaign: a $1 million Wall Street loan that was not disclosed as required by election laws.  Cruz is ludicrously claiming that the failure to disclose the loan was "inadvertent."   As if a $1 million dollars is so easily over looked.  Making the disclosure failure all the more suspect is the way in which Cruz has railed against Wall Street and big banks even as his wife holds a position as managing member of Goldman Sachs.  In short, the Cruz excuses lack any credibility and the goal seems to have been to hide Cruz's Wall Street ties.  Here are highlights from the New York Times:

As Ted Cruz tells it, the story of how he financed his upstart campaign for the United States Senate four years ago is an endearing example of loyalty and shared sacrifice between a married couple.

“Sweetheart, I’d like us to liquidate our entire net worth, liquid net worth, and put it into the campaign,” he says he told his wife, Heidi, who readily agreed.

But the couple’s decision to pump more than $1 million into Mr. Cruz’s successful Tea Party-darling Senate bid in Texas was made easier by a large loan from Goldman Sachs, where Mrs. Cruz works. That loan was not disclosed in campaign finance reports.

Those reports show that in the critical weeks before the May 2012 Republican primary, Mr. Cruz — currently a leading contender for his party’s presidential nomination — put “personal funds” totaling $960,000 into his Senate campaign. Two months later, shortly before a scheduled runoff election, he added more, bringing the total to $1.2 million — “which is all we had saved,” as Mr. Cruz described it in an interview with The New York Times several years ago.

A review of personal financial disclosures that Mr. Cruz filed later with the Senate does not find a liquidation of assets that would have accounted for all the money he spent on his campaign. 

What it does show, however, is that in the first half of 2012, Ted and Heidi Cruz obtained the low-interest loan from Goldman Sachs, as well as another one from Citibank. The loans totaled as much as $750,000 and eventually increased to a maximum of $1 million before being paid down later that year. There is no explanation of their purpose.

Neither loan appears in reports the Ted Cruz for Senate Committee filed with the Federal Election Commission, in which candidates are required to disclose the source of money they borrow to finance their campaigns.

Kenneth A. Gross, a former election commission lawyer who specializes in campaign finance law, said that listing a bank loan in an annual Senate ethics report — which deals only with personal finances — would not satisfy the requirement that it be promptly disclosed to election officials during a campaign.

“They’re two different reporting regimes,” he said. “The law says if you get a loan for the purpose of funding a campaign, you have to show the original source of the loan, the terms of the loan and you even have to provide a copy of the loan document to the Federal Election Commission.”

All told, the value of their cash and securities in 2012 saw a net increase of as much as $400,000 — even as the Cruzes were supposedly liquidating everything to finance Mr. Cruz’s Senate campaign.

The biggest change in the Cruzes’ finances in 2012 was the addition of the two bank loans, each valued at $250,000 to $500,000, during the first half of the year.

The federal guide to campaign finance reporting for congressional candidates makes it clear that if the original source of money for a candidate’s personal loan was a margin loan or a line of credit, it must be disclosed.

“Bank loans to candidates and loans derived from advances on a candidate’s brokerage accounts, credit cards, home equity line of credit, or other lines of credit obtained for use in connection with his or her campaign must be reported by the committee,” according to the guide.

I suspect that Donald Trump will rightly have a field day with this new disclosure of Cruz's seemingly deliberate dishonesty and failure to disclose his Wall Street loans.  

Ted Cruz: Anti-Gay Marriage Crusader? Not Always

Cruz - a two faced pandering whore?

Ted Cruz is already in trouble with some elements of the Christofascist base of the Republican Party for having dined - and presumably begged money from - gay New York hoteliers, Mati Weiderpass and Ian Reisner.  Weiderpass and Reisner meanwhile are experiencing their own blowback from the insanely stupid soiree.  Now, Bloomberg is reviewing some of Cruz's past that indicates that he has not always been the anti-gay crusader that he is trying to convince the unwashed Christofascist masses he claims to be.  I admit that I despise Cruz, and one can only hope his past two faced conduct comes back to bite him in his very ample ass.  Here are excerpts from Bloomberg:

Senator Ted Cruz, who wants to be the Republican Party's lead crusader against gay marriage, ducked the opportunity to play a critical role in turning back the movement in its infancy.

In 2003, the year Cruz became Texas's top government litigator, the state lost a crucial case as the U.S. Supreme Court decided that state laws banning homosexual sex as illegal sodomy were unconstitutional. The decision in Lawrence v. Texas paved the way for the court's consideration of gay marriage. "The final victory for gay rights was foreshadowed when the court decided Lawrence v Texas," predicted Walter Dellinger, a former U.S. assistant attorney general and solicitor general who’s argued numerous cases before the Supreme Court.

Cruz is making the gay marriage debate the cornerstone of a bid to rally conservatives to his 2016 presidential bid, but same-sex issues haven't always been the top priority for a lawmaker who built his profile as a limited-government, Tea Party-aligned conservative.

As Texas solicitor general when the Lawrence v. Texas case came before the Supreme Court, Cruz was "very much in the middle of all this drama," . . . . Yet "Cruz remained absolutely silent," Katine said. The case remained assigned instead to a Harris County district attorney. 
"One would expect the state solicitor to argue a case of this magnitude," said Dellinger. 

Interviews with a dozen former fellow law students, professors, lawyers and government officials show that his lack of involvement in the Lawrence case is part of a broader narrative about the Texas senator's relationship with the gay community: While he has consistently opposed gay rights, he has often stayed away from the front lines of the fight and even courted gay donors.
.
Religious conservative voters who care more about religious liberty and social issues are now the linchpin of Cruz's candidacy, and many of them believe the gay marriage debate is at a tipping point as the nation's moral fabric unravels.

But when the opportunity came to make that case to the nation's highest court, Cruz appears to have demurred. Bill Delmore, then chief of the Harris County appellate division, said the lead attorney had asked the attorney general--Cruz' boss--to take over the case as it headed to the Supreme Court. That request was rejected . . .

While Democrats accuse Cruz of being anti-gay, he has been friendly with gay donors.

Recently, as the New York Times first reported, Cruz attended a fundraising reception at a gay couple's home in in Manhattan. In his brief 2009 bid to be elected Texas attorney general, a large portion of the money Cruz collected came from donors with ties to the gay rights movement.

He accepted $250,000 from gay donor Peter Thiel, the co-founder of PayPal, who is also a top contributor to the national gay conservative group GOProud. Thiel also gave $2 million to Club for Growth, a super political action committee that put $705,657 toward Cruz's Senate run.

[U]nlike a number of Texas legislators and public officials, Cruz was not a leader in opposing gay rights and marriage equality, said Glen Maxey, the first openly gay Texas legislator who founded the state's gay and lesbian rights lobby, now called Equality Texas, in 1985.

There's more, but the take away seems to be that Cruz is trying to scam the Christofascists to further his own interest.  In the process, he is rewriting history.  I hope the Christofascist wake up to the reality that Cruz is trying to take them for a ride. 

Mitch McConnell's Romney Like Moment

It will not surprise readers that I don't like Mitch McConnell who I view as a nasty, lying sleaze bag most of the time.  Thus it was delicious to see a secret audio tape of a meeting among McConnell and his campaign aids which ridiculed would-be political rival, actress Ashley Judd, and plotted tactics to undermine her, including depicting her as mentally ill.  Thankfully, more of the public will now know just how down and dirty and sleazy McConnell is in fact.  Sadly, he's the typical Republican who talks "values" and integrity yet tosses both out the window in his obsession to retain power.   The Washington Post looks at how Mother Jones scored this second coup and suggests that others may follow.  I find it a good thing that some people are finally disgusted with the GOP's hypocrisy and nastiness and willing to help expose it.  Here are article highlights:

David Corn says one good scoop may have led to another. And might even lead to still others, too.  The Mother Jones magazine reporter and MSNBC pundit was busy Wednesday handling the fallout from, and some fawning over, his latest revelation about a prominent Republican. Corn unearthed the audiotape of a private meeting in which Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) and his aides mocked a would-be political rival, the actress Ashley Judd, and plotted tactics to undermine her. An unidentified source leaked the surreptitious recording of the February meeting to Corn.

And just like that, Corn and Mother Jones had their second major bombshell in seven months. The first, of course, was one of the most consequential scoops of the presidential campaign — a leaked video recording of Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney saying at a small fundraiser last May that “47 percent” of voters were “dependent” on the government. (Corn will receive the prestigious Polk Award for Political Reporting for the Romney story on Thursday.)

Corn, 54, says the two career-making stories might have been linked. He guesses that his source on the McConnell recording — whom he won’t reveal — came to him because of the way he handled the Romney recording and the firestorm it ignited.

[I]n the wake of the Romney revelation, Corn has received a mini-flood of would-be audio and video leaks about Washington figures. Some of these have looked promising, but none have become public — yet. Corn said he hasn’t been able to vet them to his satisfaction or work out terms for making them public. He has “passed” on several of the offers for a variety of reasons.

Not so of the McConnell recording, which Corn said he received two weeks ago. He spent several days authenticating it, ensuring that it wasn’t faked, doctored or taken out of context. He tried to get a response from McConnell’s camp a day before publication but received nothing.

Despite ample criticism, including from McConnell, that the audio recording is an invasion of privacy, Corn argues that its newsworthiness trumps those concerns. “I think voters and citizens have a tremendous right to know almost as much as possible of the elected officials who come before them and ask for their votes,” he said. “I think people can decide for themselves how outrageous [McConnell’s] behavior is, but it gives you a glimpse inside his campaign’s thinking.”

“What’s wonderful about this story and ‘47 percent’ story is that no one needs to listen to me or any commentator to know what it means,” he said Wednesday. “It’s all there. It’s journalism verite. You can listen to it and come to your own conclusion. I would encourage people to come forward with more tapes.”

We once saw investigative reporting in the main stream media.  Sadly, the MSM now largely only echos the sound bites of politicians.  Thankfully, Mother Jones and other alternative sources are stepping in to take up the slack.  I want to see more of it.

Romney's Attempt to Politicize the Benghazi Aattacks Bomerangs

While watching the presidential debate on Tuesday night I took some delight when Candy Crowley set the record and Mitt Romney straight on the nature of Barack Obama's statements soon after the horrible attack on the American consulate in Benghazi, Libya.  Now, it seems that Romney's transparent political gamesmanship is biting him in the ass even more as CIA documents are released that support the Obama administration's initial reactions and statements on the incident.  All of which underscores Romney shameless willingness to say anything to try to get elected.  A column in the Washington Post looks at how Romney is hopefully going to get his just deserves.  Here are some highlights:

The Romney campaign may have misfired with its suggestion that statements by President Obama and U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice about the Benghazi attack last month weren’t supported by intelligence, according to documents provided by a senior U.S. intelligence official.

“Talking points” prepared by the CIA on Sept. 15, the same day that Rice taped three television appearances, support her description of the Sept. 11 attack on the U.S. Consulate as a reaction to Arab anger about an anti-Muslim video prepared in the United States. According to the CIA account, “The currently available information suggests that the demonstrations in Benghazi were spontaneously inspired by the protests at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo and evolved into a direct assault against the U.S. Consulate and subsequently its annex. There are indications that extremists participated in the violent demonstrations.”

The CIA document went on: “This assessment may change as additional information is collected and analyzed and as currently available information continues to be evaluated.” This may sound like self-protective boilerplate, but it reflects the analysts’ genuine problem interpreting fragments of intercepted conversation, video surveillance and source reports.
 
The senior intelligence official said the analysts’ judgment was based in part on monitoring of some of the Benghazi attackers, which showed they had been watching the Cairo protests live on television and talking about them before they assaulted the consulate. 

“We believe the timing of the attack was influenced by events in Cairo,” the senior official said, reaffirming the Cairo-Benghazi link.  .  .  .  . “It was a flash mob with weapons,” is how the senior official described the attackers. The mob included members of the Ansar al-Sharia militia, about four members of al-Qaeda in the Maghreb, and members of the Egypt-based Muhammad Jamal network, along with other unarmed looters.

The official said the only major change he would make now in the CIA’s Sept. 15 talking points would be to drop the word “spontaneous” and substitute “opportunistic.” He explained that there apparently was “some pre-coordination but minimal planning.” 

The Benghazi attack produced a swirl of intelligence reporting, some of it contradictory. The Associated Press reported Friday that within 24 hours of the assault, the CIA station chief in Libya cabled headquarters that eyewitnesses said the attack had been carried out by militants. But the analysts evidently didn’t feel that they had any single report that allowed them to make a definitive determination about the nature of the attack.

 
Ironically, the Sept. 15 talking points that were the basis for Rice’s televised comments were requested by the House intelligence committee. Ideally, the congressional oversight committees would provide bipartisan support for intelligence officials who are probing the attack. But in the heat of the final pre-election weeks, the murky details of what happened in Libya have instead become political assault weapons.