TUESDAY 1/24/23

Pence Gets Ahead of the Story – Show of hands. Who among ex-presidents and ex-veeps did not take classified documents home? An attorney for Mike Pence says a search instigated by the former vice president found “a small number” of documents in his Indiana home bearing classified markings, The Washington Post reports. Pence is a likely candidate for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination.

WaPo’s story quotes a letter to the National Archives by Gregory Jacobs, a designated representative for Pence’s vice-presidential records, who said the FBI collected the classified documents from his home last Thursday, January 19. In the letter, Jacobs said he would deliver the documents to the National Archives on Monday, June 23. 

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Ex-FBI Agent Indicted – Former FBI spy hunter Charles McGonigal was indicted in a Manhattan federal court Monday of taking $225,000 to try to get Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska off a U.S. sanctions list, while he was investigating the close confidant of Vladimir Putin, The Washington Post reports. McGonigal, now 54, retired from the FBI in September 2018. He was indicted on charges of money laundering and violating U.S. sanctions, and other counts from his alleged ties to Deripaska, whose indictment of sanction violations was unsealed last September.

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All the Best Golf Buddies – How well does Donald J. Trump know Philadelphia mob boss Joseph “Skinny Joey” Merlino? The former president’s 2024 presidential campaign won’t say in response to a photo that turned up in The Philadelphia Inquirer showing Trump and “Skinny Joey” giving the thumbs-up, along with an unidentified friend of Merlino. The newspaper published a “slightly blurry” photo from an unidentified source showing a hatless Merlino posing for the camera with Trump and the unidentified friend, both wearing red MAGA hats, early in January at the Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach. 

One of the three, “Skinny Joey,” has served a decade in prison for a 2001 racketeering conviction and reportedly works as a maitre d’ in a Boca Raton Italian restaurant named for him, according to the Inquirer.

--TL

MONDAY 1/23/23

Gallego to Challenge Sinema in ’24 – Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-AZ) has announced he will run against incumbent Sen. Krysten Sinema in 2024 (per The Guardian). Progressive Democrat Gallego, who has served his Phoenix-area district since 2015, had been hinting at the run at least since Sinema left the party to become an independent after Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-GA) won a runoff last December for a full term resulting in a Democratic Party net gain of one Senate seat after the midterms.

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Zients to Replace Klain as Chief of Staff -- Jeff Zients, who led the Biden administration’s pandemic response until last April, will replace Ron Klain as the White House chief of staff, likely after the president’s February 7 State of the Union address, according to multiple news outlets. The White House has not confirmed the reports, which were backed by statements from unnamed sources.

Zients returned to the White House last autumn to help Klain prepare for staff turnover following the midterms, according to The Washington Post, which notes that few staff members have left the administration. Klain, who will be the first of Biden’s inner circle to leave, assigned Zients various projects to prepare him for the chief of staff job, sources told WaPo.

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This Week – The Senate is in session Monday through Friday. The House is in session Tuesday through Friday.

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ICYMI, More Confidential Docs – It’s not easy to keep track of the number of separate searches for confidential documents found in President Biden’s possession, but we’ll try. Last Friday, the FBI conducted a search of Biden’s sprawling Wilmington, Delaware home to find additional confidential documents dating back to his vice presidency (2009-2017), and even earlier, when he was senior senator from the state. NPR’s Morning Edition referred to this as the “drip, drip” of such documents discovered, and it marks the fourth time since November that classified documents have been found at one of Biden’s properties, CNBC says.

The Difference, Again … Between Biden’s mishandling of confidential government documents and ex-President Trump’s stash at Mar-a-Lago is that Trump appears to have absconded with a stash of papers from Biden’s inauguration day, and he continuously told the Justice Department and National Archives he had returned everything. This culminated in a search warrant allowing the FBI to comb through Mar-a-Lago some 18 months after Biden’s inauguration. The FBI’s 13-hour search of Biden’s home last Friday reportedly was “consensual.”

But: Revelations of the initial discovery, just before last November’s midterms but not revealed until CBS News reported on the confidential papers earlier this month has exposed Biden to criticism from Republicans and right-wing media, while at least partially deflating the case against Trump. --Compiled and edited by Todd Lassa

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COMMENTS: editors@thehustings.news

(WED 9/21/22)

New York State Attorney General Letitia James (center, above) announced a $250-million-plus civil suit against ex-President Trump, his family and his company. The suit seeks to permanently bar Donald J. Trump, sons Don Jr. and Eric, and daughter Ivanka from doing business in the state, James announced in a press conference Wednesday. 

The former president also would be barred for five years from entering any commercial real estate acquisition in the state and from applying for any loans from New York-registered financial institutions.

The suit alleges Trump falsely inflated his net worth by billions of dollars over the years. The investigation covered 2011-2021. Of her many examples of alleged over-value, one included the former president’s own apartment at Trump Tower Manhattan, which was listed at 30,000 square-feet, roughly three times its actual size. As a result, the likely value of $127 million was inflated to $317 million in 2012, still more than any apartment sold in Manhattan.

Mar-a-Lago revenue should have been valued at less than $25 million per year, and no higher than $75 million per year – Trump valued his Florida residence and private club at $739 million, she said. No word on the value of Trump’s golden escalator.

The suit also includes these remedies:

 An independent monitor to oversee compliance, financial reporting, valuations and disclosure to tax authorities for no less than five years. 

Generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP)-compliant audited statements, showing Trump’s net worth, for five years.

Replacement of current trustees of Donald Trump’s revocable trust with independent trustees.

The suit also seeks to permanently bar former Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg and controller Jeffrey McConney from serving in financial control of any New York corporation or similar entity in the state. James said former Trump fixer Michael Cohen’s testimony before Congress sparked her office’s investigation. Such alleged white-collar fraud is not “victimless” crime, she said.

“When the well-connected break the law it reduces resources to working people, to regular people, to small businesses and to taxpayers,” James remarked. 

“Claiming you have money that you do not have is not the Art of the Deal. It is the art of the steal.”

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Biden Speaks to UN – President Biden did not have to alter his speech much, before the 77th meeting of the United Nations General Assembly in New York in light of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s bellicose statement about extending his attack on Ukraine.

“This war is about extinguishing Ukraine’s right to exist as a state,” Biden said, “plain and simple. And Ukraine’s right to exist as a people. Whoever you are, wherever you live, whatever you believe, that should make your blood run cold.”

Biden equated the fight for Ukraine’s sovereignty as a democratic nation with the struggle to maintain democracy everywhere, including the U.S.

“The only country standing in the way of that is Russia,” he said. While Biden was expected to alter his remarks after Putin announced his “partial military call up” CNN reports the president’s speech written before that announcement held up.

Extending the UN Permanent Security CouncilBiden noted that 141 nations share the United States’ condemnation of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. He called on the UN to expand its permanent Security Council, which since its inception consists of China, France, the Russian Federation (previously Soviet Union), the United Kingdom and the U.S. Currently, any single country among these five may veto a UN resolution.

Global food security: Biden also announced $2.9 billion in federal funding to strengthen global food security. He disputed Putin’s statement that current global food insecurity is the result of Western sanctions against Russia for its invasion of Ukraine. 

“Our sanctions explicitly allow Russia the ability to export food and fertilizer,” Biden said.

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Putin’s Not Bluffing? – Russian President Vladimir Putin announced a “partial military call-up” mobilizing up to 300,000 reservists – falling just short of a draft -- to hold its border with Ukraine, the AP and NPR report. This has set Russians “scrambling” to buy airline tickets out of their country. In his seven-minute address Wednesday, Putin “also warned the West he isn’t bluffing about using all the means at his proposal to protect Russia’s territory,” a veiled reference to the country’s nuclear capability. 

But Russian nukes, as always, are held in-check by Western nations’ capabilities, Sergey Radchenko, professor of Russian history at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, told NPR’s Morning Edition, so Putin’s claim his sabre-rattling is not a bluff hints it is indeed a bluff. And U.S. ambassador to Ukraine Bridget Brink tweeted that Russia is showing “weakness” and “failure” after its escalation of the war. She vowed that the U.S. will never recognize Russia’s scheme to claim Ukrainian territory.

Radchenko said plans announced Tuesday by eastern and southern regions of Ukraine currently controlled by Russia to hold votes on becoming an integral part of Russia – which Ukrainian President Vlodomyr Zelenskyy has called a “sham” – is a ploy for Putin to claim that it is Ukraine doing the invading when the country tries to take back those territories.

Biden’s UN Speech: Coming up Wednesday morning, President Biden speaks before the United Nations General Assembly (which Putin will not attend, despite Russia’s membership). The White House is scrambling to rewrite Biden’s speech in light of Putin’s announcement from Moscow, MSNBC’s Morning Joe reports.

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No Cake in Mar-a-Lagogate – Special Master Raymond Dearie, the candidate of the two candidates named by Donald J. Trump’s attorneys who was agreed to by the Justice Department, “appeared skeptical” about the former president’s claim he “declassified” classified documents recovered in the FBI’s August 8 search of Mar-a-Lago, as Time put it Wednesday morning. On Tuesday, Judge Dearie told Trump’s attorneys “You can’t have your cake and eat it.” 

Upshot: Trump’s attorneys have avoided arguing that Trump had declassified the documents for fear of breaching ethics standards with an untruth.

--Edited by Todd Lassa

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COMMENTS: editors@thehustings.news