What the Manafort Guilty Verdict Means

Even with yesterday's guilty plea by Michael Cohne, Trump's long time fixer and consigliere, and the federal jury conviction of Trump campaign chair, publicly, Trump continues to bleat and shout that the entire Russiagate investigation is a "witch hunt" and that there is no proof of "collusion" with Russia.  The growing list of indictments, guilty pleas and now Manafort conviction underscore that the investigation is anything but a witch hunt and on the issue of collusion, its a case of "not yet," but the trend in that direction is growing.  Cohen  has already implied that Trump had prior knowledge of the hacking of the DNC and Hillary Clinton's emails.  If he can provide documentation and/or audio tapes, Trump's goose could well be cooked.  Meanwhile, one cannot help but wonder what is wrong with Trump's base.  Is their racial hatred and terror over perceived loss of white privilege that they will continue to believe Trump's lies simply because he stokes their resentments and hate? Trump has operated for years as little better than a crime boss, yet evangelical Christians remain his strongest supporters.  What is wrong with them.  What does Mike Pence know and when did he learn it?  An article in the New York Times looks at what the Manafort guilty plea means and where Trump's legal woes may be headed.  Here rare excerpts:

With Tuesday’s convictions in the criminal trial of President Trump’s former campaign chairman Paul Manafort, the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, has struck another blow in his investigation: five guilty pleas, 32 indicted individuals, 187 charges revealing startling evidence of Russia’s 2016 attack on our democracy, and now the conviction of one of the top operators in the Trump campaign orbit. Mr. Manafort’s conviction on eight separate counts means he could spend the rest of his life in prison.

The conviction conclusively and publicly demonstrates what many of us have said since the start of the investigation: This is no “witch hunt.” It instead is one of the most successful special counsel investigations in history. Coming alongside the guilty plea by Michael Cohen, the president’s former lawyer, implicating the president in campaign finance violations, it was a very bad day for Mr. Trump.

Mr. Manafort’s conviction cannot be diminished by arguing, as Mr. Trump and his coterie are fond of doing, that the misconduct was unrelated to the Trump campaign or Russian “collusion.” On the contrary, the trial evidence included Mr. Manafort’s close ties to pro-Russia forces and his desperate financial straits as he “volunteered” his time for the next president. The trial revealed how willing Mr. Manafort was to corruptly leverage his position of influence over Mr. Trump during the campaign for his own personal benefit. He offered briefings to a pro-Russia Ukrainian oligarch and dangled a position in the Trump administration in front of a banker who provided him a loan for which he would not otherwise have qualified.

The conviction also shows the caliber of the foe that President Trump is facing as he decides whether or not to sit for an interview with Mr. Mueller focusing on obstruction of justice. While we had already believed that Mr. Trump was unlikely to voluntarily sit for an interview, Tuesday’s verdict makes that interview even less probable.

[Mueller’s] win in the Manafort case sends Mr. Trump the message that the special counsel and his team have the will and the ability to win a battle over a subpoena. Like in the Manafort case, the law is on their side. In United States v. Nixon, the Supreme Court unanimously held that a president cannot use executive privilege to withhold tape recordings of his words. There is no reason that the same principle should not also apply to their live utterance.

Mr. Manafort’s conviction should also send chills down the spines of other potential defendants, possibly including the president’s son Donald Trump Jr. and his informal adviser Roger Stone. . . . They would be wise to study the Manafort trial as a preview of the prosecutions that could emerge next. As the legal pressure builds on these major figures, there could well be a corresponding increase in their desire to cooperate with the investigation. This pressure has already paid dividends to Mr. Mueller's investigation: Mr. Cohen entered a plea agreement on Tuesday afternoon on charges related to campaign-finance violations and bank and tax fraud.

The conviction is also bad news for [Trump] the president because it increases the pressure on Mr. Manafort to cooperate with investigators. He has a second trial coming shortly in Washington, D.C., which could add even more time to what will likely be a substantial sentence — and Mr. Mueller reportedly has much more evidence to present to jurors in that trial than he did in the trial that just concluded.

Nor can Mr. Manafort simply wait for a presidential pardon.  . . . But should Mr. Trump pardon him, Mr. Manafort should expect state attorneys general to pick up under applicable state laws the threads of corruption and tax fraud that Mr. Mueller has already woven together. Unlike the federal crimes for which he has been convicted, state crimes cannot be wiped away with a presidential pardon. The risk of state charges maintains the pressure on Mr. Manafort to cooperate — especially after Tuesday’s conviction revealed what jurors think of his questionable business practices and other activities.

A pardon for Mr. Manafort could also end up inflicting more harm on the Trump presidency than any of the other allegedly obstructive acts Mr. Trump has so far undertaken. The Constitution and the laws of our country do not allow Mr. Trump to dangle the possibility of, or explicitly offer, pardons with corrupt intent. . . . . If he or his representatives had gone further and actually promised or offered pardons to Mr. Manafort or other potential Mueller witnesses to prevent or change their testimony, as some reports suggest, that could support bribery charges as well.

I find Trump morally disgusting.  I look forward to the day when his supporters will be forced to face that they have supported a foul and dangerous individual and that their pretense of patriotism through their support of him is nothing more than bullshit masking their own foul motivations.

It's Time to Follow the Russian Money

I have worked with the FBI on several occasions in the past.  All of these cases involved real estate and financial improprieties and what ultimately constituted wire fraud and receipt of illicit funds.  On one occasion I was a witness in a federal court trial and in the others, I was the real estate expert that literally gave FBI special agents and .attorneys in the U. S. Attorneys office a tutorial, if you will, on real estate transactions and who money and document recordings should be done if a transaction is above board. One of the targets received a 30 year sentence. When all else fails, often wire fraud can be the hook to take down crooked real estate players.

All of this brings me to the topic of Russian money and how it flowed into numerous Trump properties - a post from  roughly a week ago noted the almost $100 million that had flowed into Trump properties in South Florida - and how Trump associates are alleged to have been swimming in Kremlin directed monies.  As in the cases I worked on with the FBI, often the flow of monies can build a fuller picture of what is really going on and who is receiving illicit funds, often knowingly by those who viewed themselves as smarter than everyone else and above the law.  Sound like Donald Trump?  A column in the Washington Post looks at the need for the FBI and IRS to "follow the money."  Here are excerpts:

As the Watergate probe was heating up in the summer of 1973, the special prosecutor’s office gained a silent partner: the Treasury Department’s Internal Revenue Service. The Watergate scandal had engulfed the activities of corporations and corporate officials. An IRS investigation found tax violations committed with campaign contributions to the 1972 presidential campaign of Richard M. Nixon.

With information gained from the IRS, the special prosecutor’s probe resulted in 18 corporate officials and 17 corporations pleading guilty to violations of campaign contribution laws.

This week, FBI Director James B. Comey told Congress that the bureau is “investigating the nature of any links between individuals associated with the Trump campaign and the Russian government, and whether there was any coordination between the campaign and Russia’s efforts.”

Based upon what has come to light thus far, expect the FBI to be joined by Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network and the IRS. They are the agencies best equipped to conduct financial investigations into any possible crimes dealing with or motivated by money — as in money laundering.

Case in point: The Post’s March 21 article on a Ukrainian lawmaker’s release of financial documents allegedly showing that former Trump aide Paul Manafort laundered payments from the party of an ex-leader of Ukraine with ties to Russia using accounts in Belize and Kyrgyzstan.

If the financial documents are accurate and, as alleged by Ukrainian lawmaker Serhiy Leshchenko, Manafort falsified an invoice to a Belize company to legitimize a $750,000 payment to himself, then the FBI and Treasury may come calling. . . . . Treasury agents, the Associated Press reported , have already obtained information about offshore transactions involving Manafort in connection with a federal anti-corruption investigation into his work in Eastern Europe.

The Financial Times reported in October that an investigation that it conducted had turned up evidence of ties between one Trump venture and an alleged international money-laundering network. Title deeds, bank records and correspondence showed that a Kazakh family accused of laundering hundreds of millions of dollars bought apartments in a Manhattan building part-owned by Trump and pursued business ventures with one of his partners.

Real estate provides a safe haven for overseas investors. It has few reporting requirements and is a preferred way to move cash of questionable provenance. Amid the turmoil, buyers found a dearth of available projects. Trump World Tower, opened in 2001, became a prominent depository of Russian money.”

Trump may be correct when he says he has no money in Russia and has never invested there. He can’t say, however, that Russians haven’t invested in his real estate properties.

His son Donald Jr. said no less, claiming in 2008 that Russian investments were “pouring in” to Trump’s business ventures.

So the feds must “follow the money trail” wherever it leads. Check records, bank accounts and real estate files where laundered money can ooze like water through a sponge. Who gave it, who got it, and when? Where is it now? And what was received in return?

Can federal agents under Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin count on Mnuchin’s defense against outside interference?

Congress strongly protected the integrity of federal investigations into Watergate. What about now?

Pharma-Douche Martin Shkreli Arrested By The FBI

Martin Shkreli being taken away in handcuffs

Few individuals personify the epitome of vulture capitalism and pharmaceutical company greed more than Martin Shkreli, a former hedge fund operator and douche bag who purchased a pharmaceutical company and then promptly raised the price of a drug used to treat infections that can be devastating for babies and those with AIDS from $13.50 a pill to $750 a pill.  Today, the lime ball and arrogant bastard (who seems to have studied the art under Donald Trump) got his just deserves and was arrested by the FBI on securities fraud and wire fraud charges.  The New York Times has details.  Here are highlights:

It has been a busy week for Martin Shkreli, the flamboyant businessman at the center of the drug industry’s price-gouging scandals.

He said he would sharply increase the cost of a drug used to treat a potentially deadly parasitic infection. He called himself “the world’s most eligible bachelor” on Twitter and railed against critics in a live-streaming YouTube video.

Then, at 6 a.m. Thursday morning, federal authorities arrested Mr. Shkreli, 32, at his Murray Hill apartment. He was arraigned in Federal District Court in Brooklyn on securities fraud and wire fraud charges.

Mr. Shkreli has emerged as a symbol of pharmaceutical greed for acquiring a decades-old drug used to treat an infection that can be devastating for babies and people with AIDS and, overnight, raised the price to $750 a pill from $13.50. His only mistake, he later conceded, was not raising the price more.

Those price increases combined with Mr. Shkreli’s jeering response has made him a lightning rod for public outrage and fodder for the presidential campaign. His company, Turing Pharmaceuticals, and others, like Valeant Pharmaceuticals, have come under fire from lawmakers and consumers for profiting from steep price increases for old drugs.

But the criminal charges brought against him actually relate to something else entirely — his time as a hedge fund manager and when he ran his first biopharmaceutical company, Retrophin. Federal officials described his crimes as a quasi-Ponzi scheme in which he used money from his company to pay off money-losing investors in his hedge funds. An F.B.I. official called his business schemes a “securities fraud trifecta of lies, deceit and greed.”

Still, for many of his critics, Mr. Shkreli’s arrest was a comeuppance for the brash, irreverent executive who has seemed to enjoy — relish, even — his public notoriety.

“Personally, I think Martin Shkreli has become wealthy at the expense of the public good. I don’t believe for a second that his manipulation of drug prices fuels valuable research as he has claimed,” said Katie Uva, a 2006 alumni of Hunter College High School in Manhattan where Mr. Shkreli attended, in an email response to questions. This fall, Ms. Uva started an online fund-raising campaign to match a $1 million donation from Mr. Shkreli to Hunter in the hope of persuading the school to return the donation.

MSMB’s performance wasn’t nearly as hot as Mr. Shkreli let on. From 2009 through 2012, Mr. Shkreli lost millions of dollars trading in the market, according to the accusations contained in the indictment. But he hid those losses, telling investors instead that the funds had strong double-digit returns.

In 2011, Mr. Shkreli started Retrophin, which quickly adopted a controversial business strategy, acquiring old, neglected drugs used for rare diseases and quickly raising their prices.

Soon, however, Mr. Shkreli was embarking on a plan to use Retrophin assets to pay off MSMB investors. . . . When seven MSMB investors threatened to sue in 2013, Mr. Shkreli and Evan Greebel, the lead outside counsel for Retrophin, used $3.4 million in Retrophin funds and stock to settle the investors’ claims, even though Retrophin had no responsibility, the indictment says.

[W]hen Retrophin’s auditor raised questions about the settlements, Mr. Shkreli and Mr. Greebel created fraudulent consulting agreements for the investors, thinking they could pay the money back without upsetting the auditor, the indictment states. From September 2013 to March 2014, they created fake consulting agreements for four investors, paying $7.6 million in cash and stock. Retrophin’s board did not approve of the consulting agreements, the indictment says.

In September 2014, Retrophin ousted Mr. Shkreli as its chief executive. A lawsuit filed this summer by the company mirrors many of the same accusations contained in the federal charges.

There is more, but the take away is that this guy is disgusting.  I hope he gets convicted and ends up being someone's bitch in prison.  It would be all too sweet of a divine justice.  Of course, if you believe Ben Carson's lunatic theories, Shkreli will be gay when he gets out of prison.