Tag: Trump Organization

…meanwhile…

TRUMP’S PERP WALK – Does Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg have a case against Donald J. Trump? Read our center-column analysis of Bragg’s 34-count indictment charging the ex-prez with “Falsifying business records…” scroll down this center column, then read right- and left-column opinions.

Congress remains on Easter/Passover/Ramadan break. Both chambers return Monday, April 17, with the House in session through Thursday, April 20, and the Senate in session through Friday, April 21. The Hustings returns that week.

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FRIDAY 4/7/23

Economy Adds a Cool 236k Jobs – The Labor Department counted 236,000 new jobs added in March, compared with 326,000 jobs in February, indicating a cooling economy, finally; a sign the Federal Reserve’s efforts to bring down inflation with nine consecutive interest rate increases is taking hold. Despite the new jobs number released by the Labor Department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics Friday, the unemployment rate fell slightly from 3.6% in February to 3.5% in March, and average hourly earnings were up 4.2% last month, “also easing from recent months” according to The Wall Street Journal.

Job growth continues in leisure and hospitality, government, professional and business services, and health care, the BLS reports.

Lingering question: Will the Fed’s interest rate increases lead the economy to a “soft landing,” or are we headed for a recession?

--TL

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Does Bragg Have a Case?

By Todd Lassa

New York County Indictment #71543-23 had Democratic pundits, anti-Trump-leaning independents and never-Trump Republicans feeling anxious about the solidity of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg Jr.’s 34-count case against the former president. 

Was it the wrong case to come first – or at all -- considering Fulton County, Georgia’s recording of Donald J. Trump calling on the secretary of state for 11,780 more votes in his favor after the 2020 election, last year’s investigation by the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, and a stash of classified documents stored at Mar-a-Lago after Joe Biden was sworn in as the 46th president? 

Bragg’s indictment accuses Trump of “Falsifying Business Records in the First Degree in violation of Penal Law 175.10.”

“The defendant, in the County of New York and elsewhere, on or about February 14, 2017, with intent to defraud and intent to commit another crime and aid and conceal the commission thereof, made and caused a false entry in the business records of an enterprise, to wit, an invoice from Michael Cohen dated February 14, 2017, marked as a record of the Donald J. Trump Revocable Trust, and kept and maintained by the Trump Organization.”

Repeat – no rinse – 34 times.

Former attorney and Trump “fixer” Michael Cohen already has served time for perjury in relation to his falsifying records. Cohen paid adult film star Stormy Daniels $130,000 in “hush money” prior to the 2016 presidential election to silence her story of having sexual relations with Trump, who then allegedly reimbursed Cohen after winning the election, for “attorney’s fees.” Bragg’s case also draws in $150,000 paid to former Playboy model Karen McDougal via the National Enquirer by former publisher of the tabloid and Trump ally David Pecker in a “catch and kill” scheme to suppress salacious stories.

In a statement on the indictment, DA Bragg said he is charging the former president “for falsifying New York business records in order to conceal information and unlawful activity from American voters by and after the 2016 election. During the election, Trump and others employed a “catch and kill” scheme to identify, purchase and bury negative information about him and boost his electoral prospects. Trump then went to great lengths to hide his conduct, causing dozens of false entries in business records to conceal criminal activity, including attempts to violate state and federal election laws.”

But is a business records fraud case based on suppression of a political sex scandal enough?

Justice Juan Merchan has given Trump more than seven months to hone and repeat his 2024 presidential campaign, setting December 4 for his next court date, just two months before the Iowa GOP caucuses and the New Hampshire primary, according to The Hill. Trump added Merchan to his long list of grievances in his Tuesday night echo-chamber speech at Mar-a-Lago, attended by such acolytes as Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) and Matt Gaetz (R-FL) and MyPillow guy Mike Lindell. 

On CNN, former Obama advisor David Axelrod likened Trump’s airing of grievances at Mar-a-Lago to “a guy on a barstool telling you about his bad divorce.”

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COMMENTS: editors@thehustings.news

Follow the Money

By Stephen Macaulay

Jesse—Big Daddy—Unruh, California politician during the 1950s, ‘60s, ‘70s and, yes, ‘80s, famously said: “Money is the mother’s milk of politics.”

He also said regarding lobbyists, “"If you can't eat their food, drink their booze, screw their women and then vote against them you've got no business being up here.”

So the question is whether Unruh was a cynic or a realist. I’ll go for the second choice.

Even in cases where there is what is generally accepted “normal” behavior by the men and women who hold higher office, in point of fact their insatiable need for money to keep the wheels of their careers well oiled often puts them in positions wherein temptation is at an intensity that most of us will never experience.

And when you have the Trump Family, things are really off the rails.

What is surprising is the number of individuals and corporations Team Trump have, to put it indelicately, screwed. Whether it was contractors who didn’t get paid or hotels that had to send invoices to a collection agency, the Trumps, led by the paterfamilias, have had a thing for other people’s money. Getting into the Oval Office was hitting the jackpot. Presidents don’t need to carry wallets.

One reason why we have heard ad nauseum about how the election was stolen, rigged, etc., about how he “won in a landslide,” probably has more than a little something to do with dead presidents—and I don’t mean Bush 41, Reagan, Johnson, etc.—than any concern with the well-being of the polity.

Remember those tax returns we’ve only seen by fits and starts? Or the return that showed Trump paid $750 in taxes in 2017?

Odds are good that Trump is going to realize that he’s going to make more money being out of office than would back in office (remember that he is 74 and although his parents lived long lives — his father to 93 and his mother to 88 — according to the Social Security actuarial table he has an average 11.76 years left, so he might as well optimize his earnings, such as they may be). What about the kids? Don Jr., Eric, Ivanka? Might they try a run? Anything is possible, but fealty seems to be to Senior, and there is less likelihood that they could pull it off with the bold bluster of the Old Man. And if there is a — and I use this term technically — a shit-storm of lawsuits that come raining down on Trump, the brand is going to be largely besmirched for all but the most dedicated, so the money won’t come raining with it.

So if not Trump, then who? Marco Rubio — a.k.a., “Lil’ Marco” — will probably give it another run. And Mike Pence hasn’t exactly covered himself in glory during his tenure in the White House, nor endeared himself to the Base, so there doesn’t seem to be a path for him to take, so odds aren’t good there. (And that second Unruh quote would undoubtedly be too upsetting to him to contemplate.)

It could be that the Republicans try to do a bit of a reset and go for a more “normal” Ben Sasse — although it should be noted that while Nebraska has been a reliably Republican state, in the last presidential, for only the second time in its history, it awarded one of its five electoral votes to someone else, in this case, Joe Biden.

It should not be forgotten that before the chairman and CEO — then, as now — of The Trump Organization won the Republican nomination, there were Rubio, John Kasich, Ted Cruz, Ben Carson, Jeb Bush, Jim Gilmore, Chris Christie, Carly Fiorina, Rick Santorum, Rand Paul, Mike Huckabee, George Pataki, Lindsey Graham, Bobby Jindal, Scott Walker, and Rick Perry all in the game at one point.

Politics is a nasty game and corporations play hard ball. Make no mistake: they’re not going to put their efforts behind people supported by grown-ups who wear Viking garb — and I don’t mean the Minnesota team — when it isn’t Halloween.

Follow the money.

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