You know what it is when you recognize it: It's a scam. It's a con job. It's the same con job that Donald Trump has been playing since the beginning.
In 2016 he used rumors, innuendo, and blatant smears to sully Hillary Clinton's reputation and defeat her in the Electoral College with ardent help from Russia—and reluctant, half-hearted help from then-FBI director James Comey.
Trump did this while he was caught up in a scandal of numerous sexual assault allegations, while he was attempting to forge a secret deal to build a billion-dollar Trump Tower in Moscow, and also was secretly paying off two former mistresses not to reveal his secret in the 11th hour of the election.
Each time, he's corrupt as a crooked scarecrow. He's violated security protocols, clearances, and rules of sketchy foreign entanglements while pointing the finger the other way.
He's a hustler. He's a grifter. And he been caught red-handed, again and again and again.
Let me start this discussion off with my favorite YouTuber, Steve Shives, as he expertly explains exactly why Trump absolutely deserves to be impeached and removed.
Shives points out exactly what it was that Rep. Adam Schiff said which Trump claimed was worthy of being charged with "treason" when he paraphrased the content of what Trump said in a phone call to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky during the hearing with
Schiff: Shorn of it's rambling character and in not so many words this the essence of what the President communicates.
"We've been very good to your country, Very Good. No other country has done was much as we have. But you know what? I don't see much reciprocity here. I hear what you want. I have a favor I want from you ,though. And I'm gonna say this only seven times, so you better listen good. I want you to make up dirt on my political opponent, understand? Lots of it. On this and on that. I'm gonna put you in touch with people, not just any people. I'm gonna put you in touch with the Attorney General of the United States, my attorney General Bill Barr. He's got the whole weight of the American law enforcement behind him. And I'm gonna put you in touch with Rudy, You're gonna love him, trust me. You know what I'm asking, so I'm only going to say this a few more times, in a few more ways. By the way don't call me again, I'll call you when you've done what I've asked."
This is, in sum and character, what the president was trying to communicate with the president to Ukraine.
For this, Trump has demanded that Schiff be kicked out of Congress. Schiff never claimed this was a word-for-word quote of what was said—not like Trump himself, who has claimed that the Ukraine call record was a "word for word" quotation of what was said when that's not what it was.
That's a point that is made in this next video by MSNBC’s Chris Hayes, as he discusses how experienced diplomat Bill Taylor argued with a high-dollar Trump donor who had been installed as ambassador to the United Nations, Gordon Sondland, who took five hours to respond to Taylor's text: "As I said on the phone, I think it's crazy to withhold security assistance for help with a political campaign."
It's not just that Trump is himself personally corrupt: It's that this influence has spread corruption throughout our government processes. He's like a virus: patient zero for the infection.
Just as he did with Clinton, Trump is playing the same scam. He's distorted our government processes, which are not supposed to be warped for personal gain, and twisted them specifically and directly for his own benefit.
He argues that he "had to do this" in order to protect taxpayer money from being spent on a “corrupt nation." Oh really? And exactly where else has he had such overriding concern not to spend U.S. tax dollars on a corrupt country?
The Pentagon had already specifically cleared Ukraine of corruption allegations in May, before the phone call with Zelensky even took place. But then Rudy Giuliani got into Trump’s ear after hanging around with his two Russian pals Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, who were just this week arrested for campaign finance violations. We got the crazy story that instead of Russia attacking our past election, as the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee just determined; and we have this crazy theory that the company that examined the DNC servers, Crowdstrike, was owned by a Ukrainian who somewhere had hidden the "real" copy of the server after framing Russia for the attack, and also Hunter Biden and something something.
And here's he kicker, Trump got ultimately just what he wanted. President Zelensky’s newly appointed prosecutor general has re-opened the investigation into natural gas firm Burisma.
Ukraine’s Prosecutor General Ruslan Ryaboshapka announced Friday that his office plans to reopen several cases tied to Hunter Biden’s business dealings in the country. He said and his team are set to audit all high profile cases closed or reviewed by his predecessors.
Recent reports said at least 15 of the cases are disputes involving the energy company where Joe Biden’s son previously served as a board member. The top prosecutor said his office is seeking “to make a decision on cases…where illegal procedural decisions were taken.”
“From the proceedings we have reviewed, there are over 15 proceedings where Burisma, (Hunter) Biden or other Burisma founders might be involved,” Ryaboshapka said. “We will let you know as soon as we have an understanding of the situation.”
And lo, we are back where we were before. Trump has achieved exactly what he wanted. A prosecutor is investigating Hunter Biden in Ukraine, just as the election begins to heat up. And of course he refuses to cooperate with the House's impeachment Inquiry and will block all witnesses and subpoenas for documents, using this ridiculous "trash"letter from his attorneys. Awesome.
A previous whistleblower from Cambridge Analytica reminds us that while Trump has been whining about Christopher Steele and his dossier being "foreign collusion," the Trump organization was itself working with CA during the election.
He was working with a largely foreign company while attacking Hillary Clinton and the DNC for working with Steele, who was a subcontractor to entirely U.S. company Fusion GPS. And again, this was a company that essentially stole personal private information from tens of millions of Americans, compared to Steele, who wrote about what may have happened in the presidential suite of the Ritz Carlton Moscow.
While all this is going on, Trump suddenly decided last week to withdraw U.S. forces from Syria after a heated phone call with Turkey's President Erdogan. Immediately after that, Turkey began launching attacks on northern Syria, which threaten to turn the situation into a literal blood bath.
The question, of course, is why?
Well, if we are to believe the words of former White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci, it's because Erdogan is essentially blackmailing Trump.
Anthony might have a point, because it turns out that the 119 Trump businesses are deeply enmeshed with Turkey.
“There are several ways in which this is true. The most visible one are those Trump Towers where he got $10 million payday for that, while the royalties for that have decreased over time, Ayman, because he’s now president, he receives less money for that, there are many other ways in which he’s invested in Turkey,” she explained.
“We found as part of a lawsuit, that is an active lawsuit right now, that Turkey has the highest number of foreign ventures in which the Trump family is at least a partial owner, at 119. NBC News has also found, exclusively, according to a report that was put together for us by an outside group, that the Turkish officials are the top patrons at Trump properties worldwide,” she continued.
“Now, let me stress that no one is saying that this is why the president made the decision that he made. But what we are saying is nobody understands why he made the decision, and he has these business interests. This is the first time we’re really in this position of having to ask some of these tough questions, because the fact is that there’s a pattern here, specifically with Erdoğan,” she noted.
That's in addition to two Trump Towers in that nation.
And that's on top of the F-35 contracts we have with Turkey.
“So many people conveniently forget that Turkey is a big trading partner of the United States, in fact they make the structural steel frame for our F-35 Fighter Jet,” the president wrote in defense of his actions.
So since the Kurds didn't fight in World War II, that's a perfect reason to leave them high and dry right now, right? So what if Erdogan is threatening Europe with 3 million refugees if they bother to squawk about the Syria attacks?
Maybe, just maybe, this might be enough to get the GOP off the Trump Train. We'll see.
We have to recall that while Trump is throwing shade at Hunter Biden for making $50,000 per month on the board of Burisma, his son Don Jr. has been making deals in Indonesia.
On August 13th, Don Jr. attended a pre-launch event to kick off the development of two Trump-brand properties in Lido and Bali, Indonesia. While Donald Trump Jr. denied claims that his trip to Indonesia this week posed any conflicts of interest between his business and the Trump Administration, social media posts from the event show two Indonesian government officials and several other people with close ties to the Indonesian government seized the opportunity to attend an event with the son of the United States president.
Those officials in attendance were the Minister of Maritime Affairs and Fisheries Susi Pudjiastuti and Governor of Jakarta Anies Baswedan. Among the other high-profile guests was the projects’ developer Hary Tanoesoedibjo’s daughter, Angela Tanoesoedibjo, who has reportedly been considered for a position with President Joko Widodo’s cabinet. Also in attendance were former Ambassador to the United States Dino Patti Djalal, Golkar Party Chairman Aburizal Bakrie, and Dede Yusuf, who served as Vice Governor of West Java, home to the future Lido resort.
And his own daughter Ivanka and son-in-law Jared made $82 million last year while working in he White House, which is a bit more than $50K per month.
Financial disclosure forms released Monday show that Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner made at least $82 million last year from multiple streams of outside income while they were senior White House advisers, according to the Washington Post.
Despite public scrutiny of their finances amid questions of conflicts of interest, a spokesman for the couple’s lawyer said Trump and Kushner have followed the rules.
The couple is making huge amounts of money while serving in government, though there have been some changes to their revenue streams. The money Trump receives from limited liability companies associated with the Trump Organization has been restructured into annual fixed payments of $1.5 million, “a change made in consultation with Office of Government Ethics officials to reduce her ‘interest in the performance of the business’” according to the Post.
She also made $3.9 million from the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C. and more than $2 million from severance from the Trump Corp. last year. Her book Women Who Work netted her a $289,300 advance from Penguin Random House.
Kushner, however, failed to report multiple stakes in a handful of companies, with the documents showing he did not report those assets because of an “accounting oversight,” despite divesting his stakes before taking up his position in the White House, the
Post said. He is not involved in managing Kushner Co., his family’s real estate company, but had $2 billion worth of transactions during 2016 and 2017, according to the
Post.
A different
Post analysis also pointed out that around 90% of his real estate holdings were still under his control, though he sold his stake in 666 Fifth Avenue, the beleaguered midtown building for which
he famously paid $1.8 billion at the height of the real estate bubble. He also took in $5 million from an apartment complex in New Jersey run by the family business.
That's right: Kushner sold his stake in 666 Park Avenue, which was bought by a subsidiary of the Qatari Investment Fund, after he and Trump supported a blockade against Qatar by Saudi Arabia and the UAE. That blockade was based on false Russian-planted emails,
which had been opposed by then Secretary of State Rex Tillerson.
Kushner Cos. directly solicited investment from Qatari Finance Minister Ali Sherif al-Emadi for its 666 Fifth Avenue luxury tower in April 2017, two sources in the finance industry told The Intercept. No deal came of it.
Kushner Cos. spokeswoman Chris Taylor denied such brokering attempts occurred. "To be clear, we did not meet with anyone from the Qatari government to solicit sovereign funds for any of our projects," Taylor told Newsweek in an email. "To suggest otherwise is inaccurate and false."
The following month, Kushner and the White House supported a blockade of Qatar organized by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Due to the crisis, alliances in the region have shifted, with Qatar—which holds the largest U.S. military base in the Middle East—aligning more closely with Iran and Turkey.
In June, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson sought a "calm and thoughtful dialogue" to bring resolution to the clash between Qatar and its neighbors. But President Donald Trump echoed Saudi talking points and called Qatar a "funder of terror at a very high level," The New York Times reported.
Additionally, recent reports are that Trump had also requested that Tillerson intervene with the Department of Justice investigation of Iranian-Turkish gold trader Reza Zarrab, who was a client of Giuliani and Mike Mukasey at the time. Zarrab was convicted in a billion-dollar bribery scheme with the Turkish finance minister, in attempt to evade sanctions on Iran in 2017. Also, Michael Flynn and his son had secretly met with Turkish government officials in December 2016 to talk about having Zarrab transferred to Turkey after Trump took power in January of that year. Fortunately, that didn't happen.
It's not like Trump and his company had previously been involved in deals with funding linked to the Iranian Republican Guard and connected to a proposed Trump Tower that was built in Azerberjan.
Newsweek‘s Kurt Eichenwald reported in September that Trump’s financial filings show he’s partners in the Baku deal with the son of Azerbaijan’s transportation minister.
U.S. officials believe that official, Ziya Mammadov, laundered money for the Iranian military, although no formal charges were brought against him or his son, Anar Mammadov — who is Trump’s partner in the Baku hotel venture.
The New Yorker examined Trump’s ties to Ziya Mammadov — one of the wealthiest and most powerful oligarchs in one of the world’s most corrupt nations — and his brother, Elton Mammadov, an influential member of the Azerbaijani parliament, who signed contracts for the project and founded Baku XXI Century, which owns the tower.
The Mammadov family, described by Foreign Policy magazine as “The Corleones of the Caspian,” has a reputation for using their government positions to enrich themselves and their partners — which includes construction firms tied to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard.
Whether it's gaining more than a dozen trademarks in China; dealing with Qatar; dealing with Saudi Arabia and the UAE, Turkey, and the Kurds; or setting up deals with Ukraine, it's the same story every time. The Trumps mix and match their personal interests and their personal business with their official positions—and then point fingers at their opposition.
It's the same scam, and the same long con. This man needs to be impeached and removed immediately.