Forum: World Events
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15 Jun 21 6:28 am
#OlderArticles.
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+ January 21, 2021 - 02:47 PM EST
Florida bank says it has closed Trump's accounts
BY JOSEPH CHOI
A Florida bank announced Thursday that it has closed down former President Trump's account, joining a growing list of entities that have cut ties with the former president following the deadly Jan. 6 Capitol riot.
In his financial disclosures, Trump had stated he had two money-market accounts with Banks United, The Washington Post reports. The accounts held somewhere between $5.1 million and $25.2 million.
"We no longer have any depository relationship with him," said Banks United, without giving reasons for its decision to shutter the accounts.
Another Florida bank, Professional Bank, last week announced that it would be cutting ties with Trump, saying it would no longer conduct business with the former president or his organizations.
Signature Bank in New York and Deutsche Bank have also said they will no longer be conducting future business with Trump. Signature Bank notably took a strong stance against Trump and his allies in Congress, calling for him to resign and saying it would not conduct business with lawmakers who had objected to certifying the presidential election.
Deutsche Bank is seeking to resolve more than $300 million in loans, reportedly looking to offload the loans onto another lender due to the negative press their dealings with Trump has caused. Deutsche Bank's relationship with the Trump Organization is under a civil investigation by New York attorney general Letitia James.
Forum: World Events
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15 Jun 21 6:28 am
#OlderArticles.
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+ More of Trump’s Banks Cut Ties as Backlash Grows Over Violence
By Shahien Nasiripour
January 12, 2021, 2:45 PM CST
Deutsche Bank and at least two U.S. lenders retreat over riot
Others such as JPMorgan, Capital One haven’t signaled decision
Donald Trump’s tumultuous relationship with the financial industry is once again under pressure after his top creditor, his hometown bank and even his mortgage lender spurned him in the wake of riots at the U.S. Capitol.
The question is whether his other banks and financial backers -- including giants Capital One Financial Corp. and JPMorgan Chase & Co. -- plan to keep him as a client.
Fresh strains in Trump’s relationship with the industry began emerging late Monday. Deutsche Bank AG decided not to conduct more business with Trump or his family company while waiting for him to pay off roughly $300 million in loans in years ahead, a person with knowledge of the situation said. Manhattan-based Signature Bank, a mere 10-minute walk down Fifth Avenue from Trump Tower, announced it’s closing Trump accounts holding about $5.3 million.
Then on Tuesday, Professional Bank, which once gave him an $11 million mortgage, said it won’t do more deals with the Trump Organization and “will be winding down the relationship effective immediately.”
Eric Trump, one of the president’s sons running the family business while his father is in the White House, didn’t respond to a request for comment.
With New York City joining an onslaught of companies and entities looking to pull back from doing business with Trump after he encouraged a mob of supporters to storm the Capitol, here’s a look at the firms that provide him with credit or hold his money, and what they have said about those ties:
Forum: World Events
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15 Jun 21 6:28 am
+ The Odds Of Donald Trump’s CFO Flipping and Helping Send Him to Prison Just Shot Up
BESS LEVIN
MAY 20, 2021 4:14 PM
One of the key figures in prosecutors’ quest to actually put Donald Trump behind bars is Allen Weisselberg, the longtime Trump Organization chief financial officer. With the company for decades, Weisselberg has described himself as Trump’s “eyes and ears” at the firm and presumably, in the event that any laws had ever been broken, would know about them. In fact, as his ex-daughter-in-law, Jennifer Weisselberg, put it to Air Mail earlier this year, “Allen knows every bad thing [Trump] ever did.” That kind of witness would obviously prove invaluable to the government officials trying to make their case, which is why, unsurprisingly, Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. has been working for months to “flip” Weisselberg and get him to cooperate against the ex-president. And while it’s not clear where Vance’s office is in its efforts, it appears the Trump Organization CFO may soon be under intense pressure to cooperate with the office of New York Attorney General Letitia James, which just happens to be collaborating with the D.A.
The New York Times reports that Weisselberg is officially under criminal investigation by James’s office, which is examining if taxes were paid on “fringe benefits” Trump gave him, including cars and thousands of dollars in private school tuition for at least one of Weisselberg’s grandchilden.
Per the Times:
The focus on perks and Mr. Weisselberg overlaps with the Manhattan district attorney’s long-running criminal fraud investigation of Mr. Trump and his family business. The district attorney’s office has been investigating the extent to which Mr. Trump handed out fringe benefits to some of his executives, including Mr. Weisselberg, and whether taxes were paid on those perks…In general, fringe benefits—which can include cars, flights, and club memberships—are taxable, though there are some exceptions. Companies are typically responsible for withholding such taxes from an employee’s paycheck.
Rather than risk bumping into each other, the two investigative offices recently began collaborating, another person with knowledge of the matter said. Two assistant attorneys general from Ms. James’s office have joined the district attorney’s team, which has been seeking to turn Mr. Weisselberg into a cooperating witness against Mr. Trump and the Trump Organization, people with knowledge of that effort said…. In addition to the fringe benefits, Ms. James and the district attorney, Cyrus R. Vance Jr., have examined whether Mr. Trump’s company inflated the value of his properties to obtain favorable loans and lowered the values to reduce taxes.
For months, Mr. Vance’s office has pursued Mr. Weisselberg as a potential cooperating witness, people with knowledge of that effort have said. Mr. Vance’s prosecutors, who have paid particular attention to Mr. Weisselberg’s fringe benefits, subpoenaed records from Mr. Weisselberg’s bank and the private school in Manhattan that his grandchildren have attended, The Times has reported. Mr. Weisselberg’s former daughter-in-law, Jennifer Weisselberg, has said that prosecutors had asked her about the tuition payments as well as gifts her ex-husband, Barry Weisselberg, received from Mr. Trump, including an apartment on Central Park South and several leased cars.
Forum: World Events
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13 Jun 21 6:44 am
+ Revealed: rightwing firm posed as leftist group on Facebook to divide Democrats
FEC investigation failed to uncover link to Rally Forge, a firm with close ties to Turning Point USA
Julia Carrie Wong in San Francisco
@juliacarriew
Fri 11 Jun 2021 06.00 EDT
A digital marketing firm closely linked to the pro-Trump youth group Turning Point USA was responsible for a series of deceptive Facebook ads promoting Green party candidates during the 2018 US midterm elections, the Guardian can reveal.
In an apparent attempt to split the Democratic vote in a number of close races, the ads purported to come from an organization called America Progress Now (APN) and used socialist memes and rhetoric to urge leftwing voters to support Green party candidates.
Facebook was aware of the true identity of the advertiser – the conservative marketing firm Rally Forge – and the deceptive nature of the ads, documents seen by the Guardian show, but the company determined that they did not violate its policies.
Rally Forge would go on to set up a pro-Trump domestic “troll farm” for Turning Point Action, a “sister” organization of Turning Point USA, in 2020, earning a permanent ban from Facebook.
“There were no policies at Facebook against pretending to be a group that did not exist, an abuse vector that has also been used by the governments of Honduras and Azerbaijan,” said Sophie Zhang, a former Facebook employee and whistleblower who played a small role in the investigation of the Green party ads.
She added: “The fact that Rally Forge later went on to conduct coordinated inauthentic behavior with troll farms reminiscent of Russia should be taken as an indication that Facebook’s leniency led to more risk-taking behavior.”
Devon Kearns, a spokesperson for Facebook, said: “We removed Rally Forge from our platforms for violating our policy against coordinated inauthentic behavior. Since the 2018 midterms, we have strengthened our policies related to election interference and political ad transparency. We continue working to make political advertising more transparent on our platform and we welcome updated regulations and help from policymakers as we evolve our policies in this space.”
The revelation that the ads were linked to a rightwing organization raises questions about the Federal Election Commission’s enforcement of campaign finance laws. APN and its ads appeared to violate federal laws that require independent expenditures to be filed with the FEC and include proper disclosures on advertisements, as ProPublica and Vice News first reported in 2018.
The non-partisan campaign finance watchdog group Campaign Legal Center (CLC) filed a complaint against APN and subsequently sued the agency in an attempt to force it to investigate the group. But in July 2020, the FEC voted to dismiss allegations that America Progress Now had violated federal law, after an individual, Evan Muhlstein, took responsibility for the ads and attributed the lack of proper disclosures and filings to his “inexperience”.
It is illegal to knowingly make false or fraudulent statements to federal agencies, and the FEC appears to have taken Muhlstein at his word that the ads were a sincere but novice attempt to support Green party candidates.
The former FEC commissioner Ann Ravel, who reviewed the case at the request of the Guardian, said that were she still on the FEC, she would now refer this “stunning” case to the justice department for investigation.
“It seems as if it’s a clear fraud,” Ravel said, noting that the FEC general counsel’s office appeared to have been “misled” by Muhlstein. “The requirement for the justice department to take on an electoral matter is that it be serious and willful, and clearly in this case it was willful, in my opinion.”
Forum: World Events
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12 Jun 21 5:42 am
+ Palmer Report
Lock him up!
Bocha Blue | 11:59 pm EDT June 11, 2021
Palmer Report » Community
We should not have been surprised. I say this regarding the bombshell news that the former guy weaponized the Department of Justice to spy on his enemies by seizing metadata from Apple and slapping a gag order on Apple. We already know of at least two prominent Democrats who were spied on. There will likely be more where that came from.
We shouldn’t have been surprised. But we were. I don’t know about you, my friends, but my jaw dropped. In retrospect, though, it makes sense. The former guy is, I believe, a sociopath. I cannot be sure. I am not a psychologist and have not diagnosed him.
But he meets all the criteria. And sociopathy is a personality disorder. There is no cure. Sociopaths cannot feel empathy. They cannot care about anyone beyond themselves. They use people. They turn on any perceived enemies in a heartbeat. They are without any conscience. They know what they are doing is wrong, and they do not care.
So, yes. The former guy did this. And I would not be surprised if there are even more horrible things he did that we don’t even know about.
