Did Trump Take a Ten-Million Dollar Cash Bribe? And Did Bill Barr Cover It Up?

The answers to both questions seems to be "Yes" and "Damn skippy, he did."

Five days before Donald Trump became president in January 2017, a manager at a bank branch in Cairo received an unusual letter from an organization linked to the Egyptian intelligence service. It asked the bank to “kindly withdraw” nearly $10 million from the organization’s account — all in cash.
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Federal investigators learned of the withdrawal, which has not been previously reported, early in 2019. The discovery intensified a secret criminal investigation that had begun two years earlier with classified U.S. intelligence indicating that Egyptian President Abdel Fatah El-Sisi sought to give Trump $10 million to boost his 2016 presidential campaign, a Washington Post investigation has found.
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Within months of learning of the withdrawal, prosecutors and FBI agents were blocked by top Justice Department officials from obtaining bank records they believed might hold critical evidence, according to interviews with people familiar with the case as well as documents and contemporaneous notes of the investigation. The case ground to a halt by the fall of 2019 as Trump’s then-attorney general, William P. Barr, raised doubts about whether there was sufficient evidence to continue the probe of Trump.

Of course there's not sufficient evidence if you don't go fucking looking for the evidence.

Is anyone surprised at all that the FOFF took a ten-million dollar bribe from the dictator of Egypt? And is anyone also surprised that Bill Barr covered it up?

And is anyone surprised that most of the media is doing its level best to ignore this story?

Even Republicans Agree That Ken Paxton is a Power-Mad Crook

A Republican-led investigation on Wednesday accused Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton of committing multiple crimes in office — including felonies — during an extraordinary public airing of scandal and alleged lawbreaking that plunged one of the GOP’s conservative stars into new political and legal risk.

For more than three hours, investigators presented findings alleging Paxton sought to hide an affair, misused his office to help a donor, skirted protocols “grossly outside” norms and built a culture of fear and retaliation in his office. Investigators told the GOP-led House General Investigating Committee that there was evidence that Paxton repeatedly broke the law over the years, including by misusing official information, abusing his official capacity and retaliation.

Just another right-wing thug, like his Orange God.

Speaking of the Indicted Jefe of Mar-a-Lago, he and his cronies had the FBI and the DoJ investigating the Clinton Foundation for four years and found...(wait for it)...nothing. No convictions, no charges, just a four-year fruitless jerking off of Federal investigators, a thorough abuse of power by the TOFF, the Evil Keebler Elf and Butt-Monkey Barr.

(Yeah I know. Cue the QAnon conspiracy loons in 3....2...1.....)

It Turns Out That When the TOFF Complains About a "Politicized Justice Department," He Knows What He's Talking About, Because That's Exactly What He Was Doing. Plus Other Shit.

A new book by the Trump appointee who served as the Federal prosecutor in NYC alleges that both the Asset and Bootlicking Bill pushed to prosecute Cadet Bone Spurs's political opponents and to let Michael Cohen off the hook. And when that prosecutor wouldn't do their bidding, Buttmonkey Bill shopped the cases around to find a more willing lackey. In the case of Gregory Craig, a Democrat, Disgusting Bill shopped the case to D.C., the Federal prosecutor tried Craig and the jury tossed the case after less than a day's worth of deliberations.

Is anyone surprised by any of this?

In other news, Operation Circling the Drain may be underway in the UK.

And some clown shot up Memphis while livestreaming his murderous spree. Since this Asswipe was a violent felon, he's eligible for a faster dirt nap. He's also eligible for the same from the Feds.

It Smells Like a Summary Execution

The shooting of Michael Reinoehl by a Federal task force smells fishy. He had a handgun, which was in his pocket, and a rifle, which was cased. Most witnesses said the cops just rolled up and began shooting. Then they pretty much faked trying to save him after shooting him full of holes.

Barr and Trump wanted that guy dead and the Marshal's Service obliged.

The Image of Trump as a Successful Businessman Has Always Been a Con

What he does is come into a large sum of money, whether by inheritance or from self-promotion and, from that, he relentlessly enters into business deals where he is taken to the cleaners.

There is a lot of detail in the second story in the Times today, how Trump used his stardom from The Apprentice to enter into one shady marketing deal after another, including one company whose business model is little different from a pyramid scheme. He took the money that he made from that and bought a series of golf courses, which have been losing money hand over fist.

That has put Trump into serious financial trouble:

In 2012, he borrowed $100 million against his equity in Trump Tower in Manhattan, one of his more valuable properties. A year later, he withdrew $95.8 million from his share of a real estate partnership that owns buildings in New York and California. And in 2014, he sold $98 million in stocks and bonds.

These one-time maneuvers, coupled with the more than $427 million from “The Apprentice” and licensing deals, would probably have provided enough cash to cover his golf course investments. But they cannot be repeated, and in at least one case — the Trump Tower mortgage — they need to be paid back.

In addition, he has huge balances on loans, soon to come due, from Deutsche Bank, including $160 million on his Washington hotel in the Old Post Office building and $148 million on the Doral golf resort. Neither of those businesses is turning a profit.

One might presume that, given he's going to be getting a pension from his presidenting and the various wingnut welfare gigs he'll get, that Trump will be at little risk of living in a refrigerator carton under a highway bridge, but yesterday's story had a bit of outright tax fraud outlined. Ivanka Trump, as you may recall, was an employee of the Trump Organization, which Trump wholly controls. Trump paid large consulting fees to his daughter for work that was part of her day job to begin with:

Examining the Trump Organization’s tax records, a curious pattern emerges: Between 2010 and 2018, Mr. Trump wrote off some $26 million in unexplained “consulting fees” as a business expense across nearly all of his projects.

In most cases the fees were roughly one-fifth of his income: In Azerbaijan, Mr. Trump collected $5 million on a hotel deal and reported $1.1 million in consulting fees, while in Dubai it was $3 million with a $630,000 fee, and so on.

Mysterious big payments in business deals can raise red flags, particularly in places where bribes or kickbacks to middlemen are routine. But there is no evidence that Mr. Trump, who mostly licenses his name to other people’s projects and is not involved in securing government approvals, has engaged in such practices.

Rather, there appears to be a closer-to-home explanation for at least some of the fees: Mr. Trump reduced his taxable income by treating a family member as a consultant, and then deducting the fee as a cost of doing business.

The “consultants” are not identified in the tax records. But evidence of this arrangement was gleaned by comparing the confidential tax records to the financial disclosures Ivanka Trump filed when she joined the White House staff in 2017. Ms. Trump reported receiving payments from a consulting company she co-owned, totaling $747,622, that exactly matched consulting fees claimed as tax deductions by the Trump Organization for hotel projects in Vancouver and Hawaii.

So what Trump did was gift his daughter a shitload of money and then deduct it from his taxes as "consulting fees".

Which is, as you may well imagine, rather illegal.

That is why Trump is fighting so hard to win. He needs being president for four more years to entice others to help cover his upcoming financial hole. And he needs Bill Barr at DoJ to keep him out of federal prison.

Edited to add: Don the Con

More Stupid Shit From Trump, Mini-Trump and Billy the Butt-Monkey

Trump admitted to Bob Woodward that the threat from the coronavirus has been worse than he was telling people and that he deliberately played it down. Trump has been lying to everyone from the start because reasons.

It is not hyperbole to say that a hundred thousand people and more have died because Trump chose to lie about the dangers posed by the coronavirus. Instead of doing his job as president, he chose to turn the measures to combat the virus into another fucking culture war. People are dead because they listened to and believed his bullshit.

A man who lets a hundred thousand and more people died because he thought to gain politically is not an honorable man. he is, in point of fact, a criminal on a scale that Radovan Karadžić could have only dreamed of.

Meanwhile, Mike Pence, who is shaping up to be the second-dumbest person in the Trump Administration, is hanging out with various morons who buy into the QAnon bullshit.

And on another note, Billy the Butt-Monkey has taken even more steps to convert the Department of Justice into Trump's personal law firm:

The Justice Department moved on Tuesday to replace President Trump’s private legal team with government lawyers to defend him against a defamation lawsuit by the author E. Jean Carroll, who has accused him of raping her in a Manhattan department store in the 1990s.

In a highly unusual legal move, lawyers for the Justice Department said in court papers that Mr. Trump was acting in his official capacity as president when he denied ever knowing Ms. Carroll and thus could be defended by government lawyers — in effect underwritten by taxpayer money.

Maybe it's a coincidence that Billy Boy is making this move while the Trump campaign has been burning through cash, in part because they've hired a bunch of grifters and paying huge salaries to the mates of the Trump boys. Some of what the Trump campaign has been blowing cash on smells like hush money, as well as big payouts to Trump businesses.

I seem to recall that sometime after Palin quit being governor because she couldn't handle the heat of the job, she said that she could be president because she would use the Justice Department as her personal lawyers. People mocked her, but now Trump is doing just that, thanks to Butt-Monkey Barr.

Bill Barr Proves Himself to Be a Total Hack

Bill Barr doesn't seem to know that it's against the law to vote twice.

(It is illegal, see 52 USC 10307(e); it's a felony good for five years in stir.)

How far up Trump's ass does Barr have to be to not acknowledge that voting twice is illegal everywhere, except maybe in Trump's disease brain? If Trump said that raping and murdering children was legal, Barr would find a way to agree with him.

Kayleigh McEnany also won't say that it's illegal to vote twice.  She graduated from Harvard Law; they ought to consider revoking her degree.

Just fucking despicable.

Edited to add:

Once Again, DHS Puts Its Thumb on the Scales to Help Trump

In early July the Department of Homeland Security withheld publication of an intelligence bulletin warning law enforcement agencies of a Russian scheme to promote “allegations about the poor mental health” of former Vice President Joe Biden, according to internal emails and a draft of the document obtained by ABC News.

Why didn't they release it? Seems that ol' Chad Wolfe didn't like that the bulletin said that the Russians were helping Trump:

In a statement to ABC News, a DHS spokesperson confirmed that the product was “delayed,” explaining that it failed to meet the agency’s standards.

In other words, the bulletin didn't make Donald "the Moscow Muppet" Trump look good.

You know, Trump claims to be the candidate of law and order. But to have law, there has to be the rule of law, something that Trump and Bill Barr have actively been working to undermine, with giving Trump's allies a pass on breaking the law and attempting aggressively to use the Department of Justice and Federal cops as Trump's goon squads.

Everybody laughed when Sarah Palin said that, as president, the DoJ would be her defense counsels. it's no longer funny.

Bill Butt-Monkey Barr Is Bunker Boy's Thug. Never Forget That.

Attorney General William P. Barr on Friday night abruptly tried to fire the top federal prosecutor in Manhattan, Geoffrey S. Berman, who has investigated several of President Trump’s closest associates, but Mr. Berman said he would not leave.
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Mr. Berman, the United States attorney for the Southern District of New York, and his team have been at the forefront of corruption inquiries in Mr. Trump’s inner circle. They successfully prosecuted the president’s former personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, who went to prison, and have been investigating Mr. Trump’s current personal lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani.

Trump wants to appoint a corporate tool who is neither a prosecutor nor a litigator, just a guy who will take orders from Trump as to whom to prosecute and whom to let alone. Doesn't matter if there's probably cause to investigate or not. Donnie the Bunker Boy's cronies could be caught red-handed and let go, while Trump will use the prosecutors to harass those he dislikes.

Barr's complicity in this shows that Barr is an utter tool, lacking in ethics, morals and a sense of justice. Even Smirky the Racist Elf had more integrity.

But Butt-Boy Barr has no integrity. He has all the toughness of overcooked angel-hair pasta.

Billy Barr's "Little Green Men"

In the ranks of cops and other goons at the protests in D.C., there have been men who, from all appearances, are indistinguishable from white supremacists: Rifles, helmets, black, unmarked uniforms.

Politico has a long article about those thugs, which you may want to peruse.

Every American should ponder the fact that Trump is protecting himself with unmarked, unidentifiable, faceless storm troopers.

Butt-Boy Barr Does Trump's Bidding

Of course Trump is happy that Barr does what he wants in dropping the Flynn case.

Thing is, it's not up to Barr. Flynn pled guilty to the charge. The judge will be the one to decide whether or not to vacate the conviction; the fact that Flynn pled guilty is going to weigh in that decision.

Funny how Trump blames Obama for things that happened wholly within the pendency of the Trump Administration. He can't take responsibility for a goddamned thing. Trump probably believes that Obama made Trump look up at the Sun during the 2017 solar eclipse.

Republicans May Get What They Wish For

While a shitload of former DoJ employees are criticizing Billy Bob Barr for politicizing criminal cases, you can bet your basement that Republicans are lining up to defend ol' Billy.

Here's the thing: If Republicans allow Trump to get away with normalizing a president's use of the Department of Justice as a political tool to bring criminal charges against opponents, then they should fully expect that the next Democrat to be president will not hesitate to use that tool against them.

Is Bill Barr Greasing His Own Skids?

Attorney General William Barr publicly swiped at President Donald Trump on Thursday, declaring the president’s tweets about Justice Department prosecutors and open cases “make it impossible for me to do my job.”

Barr made the comment during an interview with ABC News just days after his Justice Department overruled its own prosecutors — who had recommended in a court filing that Trump’s longtime ally and confidant Roger Stone be sentenced to 7 to 9 years in prison — and took the extraordinary step of lowering the amount of prison time it would seek. The department didn’t offer an amended number.

First off, one would have to be a little light in the loafers to believe that, by changing the sentencing recommendation for the convicted felon known as Roger Stone, that Barr was not doing Trump's bidding.

If I were a gambler, I'd wager that Barr would have kept is Trump-kissing aperture closed if the prsecutors in the Stone case had not publicly quit the case.

Trump also slammed the judge who is hearing the Stone case. Stone could be sentenced to over 50 years in prison; it would not surprise me overly much if the judge takes the view that Stone has been completely unrepentant and sends him away for twenty years, a sentence that will end on November 4th, when Trump will pardon Stone, Flynn and the rest of his criminal cronies.

Trump's authoritarianism is on full display in both the Stone case and his recent airing of his grievances: He believes his criminal allies should be given free rein and he wants everyone he doesn't like prosecuted on trumped-up charges.

But to get back to the headline: The number one crime in Trumpland is to criticize Trump. Barr did so in public. One would reasonably expect him to be gone in the near future.

Also, this.

The Redaction Process

MOSCOW (The Borowitz Report)—After putting in what one associate called a “hellish all-nighter,” the Russian President, Vladimir Putin, is almost finished redacting Robert Mueller’s report in time for its release, on Thursday.

Trump's Poodle Yaps This Morning

[Attorney General* Billy] Barr will hold a 9:30 a.m. news conference to present his interpretation of the report’s findings, before providing redacted copies to Congress and the public.

Keep in mind that Barr's job application for AG was a nineteen-page memo attacking the Special Counsel. Trump wanted an AG whose first priority was to protect and defend The Donald; in Fat Billy, he got just that.

A professional would have released the report and then held the press conference, But that's not what Trump wants. Trump wants Barr to try and spin things so the news cycle is about what Barr says, not what the report says. So Billy Barr is going to do what Trump demands, so Billy can avoid being fired.

Fat Billy is no improvement over Smirky the Racist Elf. Billy has his own Russia problem.