Trump Corruption

Posted last night to Trump’s Truth Social account: Arrived in Florida last night and had a long and detailed chance to check out the scene of yet another government “crime,” the FBI’s Raid and Break-In of my home, Mar-a-Lago. I guess they don’t think there is a Fourth Amendment anymore, and to them, there isn’t. In any event, after what …

Axios reports: Raymond Dearie’s appointment as special master to review records the FBI seized from Mar-a-Lago was a positive development for former President Trump, whose lawyers recommended him. But their call for the low-profile New York judge was befuddling given Dearie has no apparent connection or loyalty to Trump. Two sources with direct knowledge of the closely held deliberations now …

CNN reports: Jury selection begins Monday in the trial of a former Donald Trump adviser whom authorities allege was involved in a two-year effort to try to influence the policy decisions of the Trump campaign and administration to benefit the United Arab Emirates. Tom Barrack, a wealthy businessman who served as the chair of Trump’s Presidential Inaugural Committee and an …

Rolling Stone reports: In recent days, Trump has privately voiced his anger over DeSantis sending planeloads of migrants to Martha’s Vineyard. Trump’s displeasure, however, has nothing to do with moral revulsions at the governor using human beings as unsuspecting pawns for a political attack. Instead, Trump is telling allies and confidants he’s outraged that DeSantis seems to think he’s allowed …

Mediaite reports: At his rally in Ohio on Saturday,  Trump said that he invented using the word “caravans” for the mass movement of migrants from one place to another. He told the crowd that when he decided to cut off money to those countries that wouldn’t take back planes with deportees they relented. Trump reenacted those phone calls, playing both …

The New York Times reports: Mazars USA, the longtime accounting firm for former President Donald J. Trump that cut ties with him and his family business this year, has begun turning over documents related to his financial dealings to Congress. After a yearslong legal fight, the House Oversight Committee has received a first trove of documents from the firm, which …

ABC News reports: The New York attorney general’s office rejected an offer this month to resolve a civil investigation into former President Donald Trump and his family real estate business, sources familiar with the matter tell ABC News. For more than three years, New York Attorney General Letitia James has been investigating whether Trump fraudulently adjusted the value of his …

The Insider reports: Former President Donald Trump and his aides repeatedly tried to persuade AT&T to sell CNN to Fox News owner Rupert Murdoch while also threatening to block the company’s merger with Time Warner, CNN’s parent company, according to a new book. The revelation comes from Peter Baker and Susan Glasser’s “The Divider.” The book said that Trump summoned …

Reuters reports: The U.S. Justice Department on Friday asked a federal appeals court to let it resume reviewing classified materials seized in an FBI search of former President Donald Trump’s Florida estate. In the filing before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, the Justice Department said the circuit court should halt part of the lower court decision …

The Washington Post reports: Months before National Archives officials retrieved hundreds of classified documents in 15 boxes from former president Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club, they were told that none of the material was sensitive or classified and that Trump had only 12 boxes of “news clippings,” according to people familiar with the conversations between Trump’s team and the Archives. During …

Vanity Fair reports: In their forthcoming book, The Divider: Trump in the White House, 2017-2021, authors Peter Baker and Susan Glasser report that while it might have seemed like Trump just woke up one day and thought to himself, “I’d like to buy Greenland,” the idea was actually put in his head by billionaire Ronald Lauder, after which the president …

Mediate reports:  CNN anchor Chris Wallace warned that Trump supporters will hear a “call to arms” in former President Donald Trump‘s recent comments about the prospect he’ll be indicted. Trump told radio host Hugh Hewitt that he couldn’t “imagine” he’ll be criminally indicted, but made a rather ominous prediction if that were to happen. “He didn’t say it explicitly, but …

Reuters reports: A senior federal judge with experience handling U.S. national security matters was named on Thursday as an independent arbiter to vet records seized by the FBI from former President Donald Trump’s Florida estate in an ongoing criminal investigation. Senior U.S. District Judge Raymond Dearie, based in Brooklyn, was appointed by Florida-based U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon to serve …

The Wall Street Journal reports: The Florida lawyer brought on to defend former President Donald Trump against potential government prosecution over sensitive documents stored at Mar-a-Lago secured an upfront payment of $3 million, according to people familiar with the terms. The deal reached by Chris Kise, who had been a partner at Foley & Lardner LLP, reflects the high-profile, unprecedented …

Gothamist reports: Members of the City Council called on Mayor Eric Adams to end the city’s contract with the Trump Organization on Thursday. The current arrangement allows former President Donald Trump’s company to manage a public golf course in the Bronx. In January 2021, then-Mayor Bill de Blasio announced he was ending the city’s contract with the Trump Organization over …

And the MAGA rubes are thrilled to do it: Donald Trump’s outside spending arm has paid $3 million to cover attorney Chris Kise’s legal work representing the former president, according to three people familiar with the arrangement. The $3 million paid by Save America PAC is a significant sum, and comes as Trump faces a number of federal and state …

The Washington Post reports: Former president Donald Trump warned that if he were indicted on a charge of mishandling classified documents after leaving the White House, there would be “problems in this country the likes of which perhaps we’ve never seen before.” Trump, speaking Thursday to conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt, added, “I don’t think the people of the United …

The Guardian reports: Donald Trump’s White House chief of staff secretly bought a book in which 27 mental health professionals warned that the president was psychologically unfit for the job, then used it as a guide in his attempts to cope with Trump’s irrational behavior. News of John Kelly’s surreptitious purchase comes in a new book from Peter Baker of …

Law & Crime reports: Former Assistant Attorney General Jeffrey Clark, who tried to subvert the 2020 election results for Donald Trump, claims that he’s immune from ethics charges stemming from that effort — and that his superiors engaged in “dereliction of duty” for rejecting his conspiracy theories. Those superiors, former Acting Attorney General Jeffrey A. Rosen and ex-Acting Deputy Attorney …

CNN reports: Former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows has complied with a subpoena from the Justice Department’s investigation into events surrounding January 6, 2021, sources familiar with the matter tell CNN, making him the highest-ranking Trump official known to have responded to a subpoena in the federal investigation. Meadows turned over the same materials he provided to the …