Mega-Thread: Trump Focused Discussion

[Dontrike]

What are Trump's lawyers even contesting, here? That she lied about the... details? Correct me if I'm wrong but whether or not he slept with her is not under contention, is it? It's about the nature of the hush money payments and those being illegally conducted?

And even if she signed an "NDA" about it, like... that doesn't mean it suddenly "legally didn't happen."

You can tell Trump is swaying his lawyers. I doubt they'd ask these questions normally and he hates that he's being humiliated while being unable to do his normal bullying, and he can't risk being on the stand without fucking over his entire defense further.

[Edge-]

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/10/n...suspended.html

Rudolph W. Giuliani was suspended by WABC radio on Friday and his daily talk show was canceled after he violated station policy by trying to discuss discredited claims about the legitimacy of the 2020 presidential election on air.

John Catsimatidis, the billionaire who is a major Republican donor and owns the station, said he had made the decision after Mr. Giuliani refused to comply with the policy related to the election after repeated warnings.

“We’re not going to talk about fallacies of the November 2020 election,” Mr. Catsimatidis said in a brief phone interview. “We warned him once. We warned him twice. And I get a text from him last night, and I get a text from him this morning that he refuses not to talk about it.”

“So,” Mr. Catsimatidis continued, “he left me no option. I suspended him.”

Mr. Giuliani, a former New York City mayor, was one of the leading figures in former President Donald J. Trump’s attempts to contest and overturn the 2020 election results. He was Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer at the time and helped coordinate legal challenges to Mr. Biden’s victory in several states in a bid to keep Mr. Trump in office.

Mr. Guiliani’s removal from WABC, one of his only current sources of income, could add to the mounting legal and financial woes that have accumulated since then. The suspension will also deny him what may be one of his largest public platforms.

Rudy just lost his podcast because his booze shrunken brain forgot he's not supposed to talk about his 2020 election conspiracy theories.

With this loss, it seems one of his only remaining sources of income is...Cameo.

How long until America's Mayor is on New York City street corners begging for money to pay the tens of millions he owes?

[Gorsameth]

texting your boss that you won't follow the rules really is a fast way to get fired.

[Edge-]

A sex discrimination lawsuit against Donald Trump’s campaign has triggered new accusations that Trump’s lawyers have intentionally covered up settlement payments to women in violation of federal law.

On Friday, watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission, demanding an investigation into the alleged cover-up. The complaint cites new allegations from 2016 Trump campaign aide A.J. Delgado, which she lodged in a sworn court declaration earlier this week as part of her ongoing discrimination suit against Trump’s political operation.

Delgado’s filing presented evidence of top Trump attorney Marc Kasowitz openly admitting that the campaign wanted to use a law firm to cover up a potential settlement payout in 2017. The arrangement, as Delgado described it, appears specifically designed to evade the consequences of federal disclosure laws that require campaigns to publicly report the identities of payment recipients.

“In other words, the payment would be routed through a middleman, to hide the fact that the Campaign had settled, from the public and the FEC,” Delgado stated. “I thus have direct, personal experience with the Defendant-Campaign hiding settlement payments to women, routing them through a ‘middleman law firm,’ which to the public would only appear as payments “for legal services.”

Delgado also claimed to have “information and reason to believe” that other campaign payments have hidden settlements with women “who raised complaints of gender discrimination, pregnancy discrimination, and sexual harassment.” Those payments, she said, are related to the $4.1 million that flowed to Kasowitz’s law firm over a two-month period immediately following the November 2020 election, as well as millions in mysterious legal reimbursements to the campaign’s compliance firm, Red Curve Solutions, which The Daily Beast first reported earlier this month, prompting a federal complaint.

The declaration is particularly significant in that it captures a direct admission of the campaign’s actual intentions behind this middleman arrangement—to keep the existence of a settlement from the public, and, by doing so, from the FEC itself.

In a statement to The Daily Beast, CREW president Noah Bookbinder demanded an investigation, saying that Delgado’s allegations raise serious concerns about a potentially illegal cover-up.

“The allegations made in AJ Delgado’s declaration paint a deeply troubling picture of potentially illegal activity carried out by Donald Trump’s campaign. The FEC must conduct an investigation to determine the validity of these claims and establish the degree to which any wrongdoing occurred,” Bookbinder said.

The statement added that the public has the right to know how political money is spent, and “schemes to hide that information undercut Americans’ faith in our political system.”

“Donald Trump’s admission of using pass-through payments to hide their purpose and protect his political prospects makes it even more important that the FEC investigate. No candidate or campaign is above the law, not even Trump,” the statement continued.

The Daily Beast sent comment requests to the Trump campaign, Kasowitz, and Delgado, but did not receive a reply.

Delgado’s statements come as she pursues a sex discrimination lawsuit against the 2016 campaign, where she served as a senior adviser but was back-seated when she revealed that she had become pregnant. (The father was Delgado’s then-supervisor and top Trump 2024 adviser Jason Miller, whom Delgado has also accused of raping her—a claim Miller denies.)

Delgado, a Harvard Law grad who is representing herself in the case, claims the campaign sidelined her specifically because she was pregnant, and is seeking damages for unlawful discrimination.

The Daily Beast reported last week that Trump’s previous lawyers in the Delgado case have bailed on him. The firm—LaRocca, Hornik, Greenberg, Kittredge, Carlin & McPartland—has defended Trump in other high-profile cases against women, including E. Jean Carroll, but the attorneys told the court last week that they were withdrawing, citing “an irreparable breakdown” in their relationship with the Trump campaign.

According to Delgado’s declaration, during her brief 2017 settlement negotiations with the campaign—which, according to Delgado, the campaign ultimately reneged—Trump lawyer Marc Kasowitz expressed to her that “Trump and the Campaign would need to keep this confidential” because Trump “is known for ‘not settling.’”

That proposal caught the attention of Delgado’s own lawyers, who raised the issue of federal disclosure laws.

“My attorneys expressed this would not be possible because disbursements by a Campaign are public record,” the declaration said.

Kasowitz, however, “dismissed the concerns easily,” Delgado said, telling her that disclosure was “not a problem at all,” and, “what we would do is the campaign pays me and then I cut a check to you guys.”

Now, Delgado is alleging that Kasowitz has funneled Trump campaign money to other women making discrimination claims.

In all, Kasowitz’s firm has received about $4.5 million from the Trump campaign, almost all of it coming in the two months after the 2020 election. In that time, FEC records show, the campaign issued three massive payments to Kasowitz in flat dollar amounts—$600,000 on Nov. 11, $1 million on Dec. 18, and $2.5 million on Jan. 13, 2021. Delgado now claims that those payments are related to complaints of gender discrimination, pregnancy discrimination, and sexual harassment. (At the time, Kasowitz served as Trump’s counsel in the opening stages of E. Jean Carroll’s first sexual assault lawsuit.)

Delgado also says that some of the mysterious legal reimbursements to Trump’s campaign finance compliance firm, Red Curve, appear related to discrimination complaints. (Red Curve does not provide any actual legal services.) The Daily Beast uncovered those payments this month, prompting nonprofit watchdog Campaign Legal Center to file an FEC complaint alleging that the Trump team was obscuring the nature of those payments.

As The Daily Beast previously reported, Trump has a history of shielding payouts behind law firms, including his 2016 campaign. That practice has continued through this year, with his Save America leadership PAC reporting a $392,638 “legal consulting” expense to Trump attorney Alina Habba on Valentine’s Day—the exact dollar amount that Trump was ordered to pay to The New York Times after losing his defamation case the month prior.

The CREW complaint also notes that Delgado’s claims overlap with recent events—the 2016 hush-money payments currently at the center of Trump’s criminal trial in Manhattan.

“The use of pass-throughs to hide the true purpose of payments is not unfamiliar to Mr. Trump and his businesses,” the complaint states. “For example, Mr. Trump reimbursed Michael Cohen, his former lawyer, for payments made to ‘catch and kill’ a story concerning Mr. Trump’s alleged extra-marital relations.”

CREW also notes that Trump himself made recent public remarks about that case, confirming his belief that “payments routed through attorneys could be marked ‘legal expenses’ even if they were reimbursements for expenses paid to third parties.”

“Regardless of what Mr. Trump may have experienced in the business world, federal law does not permit a political committee to report any expense routed through an attorney or any other intermediary as a payment to the intermediary for ‘legal expenses’ or otherwise,” the complaint states.

“Rather, federal law requires political committees provide detailed and truthful information about who they are paying and why they are paying them, even if doing so would reveal facts embarrassing to the campaign such as the settlement of legal claims,” the complaint states.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-...complaint-says

Are there more Stormy Daniels waiting in the wings? Women the campaign paid off, hiding those payments, to prevent their stories from hurting his candidacy?

SURE SEEMS LIKE IT!

- - - Updated - - -

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-68992293

Barron Trump is declining to serve as a delegate on behalf of his father at the Republican National Convention, according to his mother's office.

Thank goodness. The kid continues to seem to be alright, and the only potentially not-terrible Trump in the family.

Sorry MAGA folks, your best hopes for a Trump dynasty are still Donnie Jr. or Eric the dumber.

[gondrin]

texting your boss that you won't follow the rules really is a fast way to get fired.

I just waiting for the reply of "I didn't get suspended, I quit first." type nonsense.

[Breccia]

So of course, Stormy Daniels was back on the stand, being cross-examined by Team Trump.

It was a bloodbath. Don't mess with an adult entertainer, they can fuck you harder than you can.

Legal experts say lawyer grilling Stormy Daniels "made it worse" for Trump

As former U.S. Attorney Joyce Vance commented, the defense interrogation of Daniels was a “master class in how not to do” a cross examination.

For one, Daniels, an adult film star whose $130,000 hush payment is at the heart of the case, could not possibly know whether Trump engaged in a conspiracy to falsify business records in order to evade campaign finance laws.

But Necheles didn’t get around to pointing that out until nearly the end of her more than two hours of cross examination. Instead, she leaned into what analysts referred to as an almost archaic, pre-#MeToo “nutty and slutty” attack, suggesting that Daniels was a promiscuous and prolific fabulist.

“You have a lot of experience making phony stories about sex,” Necheles said at one point. At another, she was quizzing Daniels on her claim that Trump never provided her dinner at their alleged 2006 encounter.

What Necheles should have done, in the view of her critics, is just stick to what Daniels couldn’t know – the alleged conspiracy, after the claimed incident, that prosecutors claim amounts to nearly three dozen felonies – instead of re-litigating an evening of bad sex that the defendant denies ever happened.

MSNBC legal analyst Lisa Rubin said Daniels performed better under the defense team’s constant stream of attack – she quickly rebutted the accusation she’s a grifter for selling merchandise by pointing the finger back at a man selling his own Bible – than she did on her first day of testimony, when even the judge thought she went too far in describing her alleged encounter with Trump.

"Stormy Daniels is the rare witness who's better on cross-examination than she is on direct," Rubin commented. "She really held her ground.”

That has much to do with Daniels’ ability to respond under pressure, but the defense enabled it, choosing, for example, to interrogate her about her claimed reaction to seeing Trump in his underwear, which she had previously described as a shock and surprise.

"The most that Susan Necheles did was say that it was incredulous to her that Stormy Daniels, having acted in 150 to 200 pornography movies, would be scared or surprised to come out of the bathroom and find Donald Trump on the bed for her," Rubin said. "Daniels had a nice retort to that, which is to say, 'Look, if it had been my husband, I see my husband naked all the time, but to open that bathroom door and to find Donald Trump lying on the bed for me at 60 years old, more than twice my age, and much larger than me, yeah, that was surprising.’”

The judge has had a few things to say, too, specifically about Daniels' testimony earlier:

But for the life of me, I don’t know why Ms. Necheles didn’t object.

Necheles actually did move for a mistrial over the issue she didn't object over. And I believe her lack of objection helped lead to the motion being denied.

And let's throw in George Conway, why not.

“My takeaway was that the continued cross-examination of Stormy Daniels was a complete disaster and fiasco for the defense,” Conway said during a panel appearance on CNN, adding, “It just went on and on, and … they didn’t have anything on her.”

“I think what happened was they had a day off — and Necheles is a very good lawyer by reputation,” he said. “I can even tell just by the way she conducted herself, she knows how to cross-examine a witness and knows how to ask questions.”

But, he added, “her client is a narcissistic sociopath … who is obsessed with proving the lie that he didn’t have anything to do with Stormy Daniels.”

And Conway has a point. Trump, or Team Trump, doesn't seem to realize the issue isn't if Trump had sex with a porn star who wasn't his wife. By refusing to testify, he's admitted that. They need to keep him out of jail for the illegal payments, and Trump isn't letting them. Instead, he's pushing them to a strategy that cannot succeed.

Conway said it should not matter for the defense whether the affair actually happened, characterizing the current approach as “counterproductive.” He also suggested the interrogation was “just garbage” and “embarrassing.”

“By keeping your cross simple and short, you can control the witness. But the longer you go, the more the witness can pop off at you,” he said. “And this woman is way smarter than Necheles’s client.”

And of course, Trump has already proven that.

If anyone is looking for a good lawyer, I would strongly suggest that you don’t retain the services of Michael Cohen!

Most people will flip if the Government lets them out of trouble. Sorry, I don’t see Michael doing that despite the horrible Witch Hunt and the dishonest media!

These are both Trump social media posts. Obviously, the second one didn't age well. The first actually caused laughter in the courtroom when it was introduced into evidence. Because, of course, Trump had hired Cohen for decades, including for the situation for which Trump is now on trial, which Trump defended in that earlier tweet.

Oh, and this one:

Mr. Cohen, an attorney, received a monthly retainer, not from the campaign and having nothing to do with the campaign, from which he entered into, through reimbursement, a private contract between these two parties, known as a non-disclosure agreement or NDA

That's Trump admitting he knew about the payments. Which, yep, destroys his defense. Trump is a horrible client.

As expected, FOX News leapt to Trump's defense in a reasonable, logical, objective way, pointing out specific case history and other evidence.

Just kidding. They panicked and gave me my CNN point back.

Fox News host Laura Ingraham is upset that an insult against Donald Trump, “orange turd,” has been repeatedly mentioned in trial coverage, despite the fact that Trump’s own legal team entered the phrase into evidence during his hush-money trial.

“You notice that Anderson Cooper really seemed to relish saying orange turd?” Ingraham said Thursday night, referring to the CNN anchor. “How many times did he say it? Well, we didn’t have the drinking game going but we might as well have. Again, humiliation of Trump, the only goal here.”

Trump walked out of the courtroom and started repeatedly lying as per usual. MSNBC, at least, cut away to point out that he was lying as per usual.

Trump began railing against Justice Juan Merchan's gag order, which he claimed prevented him from "saying anything about anybody," and was insisting legal experts widely agree Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg's case is a "scam" when MSNBC's Chris Jansing cut the feed.

"This is a frequent complaint of Donald Trump, that the trial is a scam," Jansing said. "He blames it on people that -- all of those things are completely untrue."

After all that, Trump left the courtroom and...just read it.

So [Biden] lies and he lies about everything, including his golf game, because he can't hit a ball. He can't hit a ball 100 yards, lies about everything.

Trump, of course, has famously been called out for cheating at golf plenty of times. Also, hitting a golf ball is not mandatory to run the world's largest economy. Breaking economic laws, by contrast, is a bad sign.

But it's not like anyone else had a good day, either.

1) The gag order says Trump "making or directing others to make public statements about any juror and about any reasonably foreseeable witness’ participation"

Habba may have broken that.

On May 7, after Daniels testified about an alleged sexual encounter she had with Trump in 2006, Habba appeared on Hannity—where she was described in a Fox News chyron as Trump's legal spokesperson—and seemed to attack Daniels' credibility.

"When you have inconsistencies with any witness, it speaks volumes," Habba said. "When you pick people who are not credible, it speaks volumes."

Yes, this pre-dates Daniels completely destroying Team Trump's cross.

2) Steve Bannon loses appeal and is going to jail.

Bannon claims his lawyers told him he didn't need to comply. He has lost back-to-back appeals on this and is basically out of options. He's going to prison.

3) Donnie Dum-Dum Jr. is now begging for as little as $1 from cultists still on FB for some reason.

"It's what our lawyers are worth," he didn't say but could have.

[Dontrike]

How old is Trump? He's so old he'd edit twitter posts by having someone print them and he'd edit them by hand.

Giving evidence for the prosecution Ms Westerhout, who was eventually fired by Mr Trump, recounted her tasks as her boss prepared to enter office in 2016 and during his time in the White House.

Mr Trump's top aide, Dan Scavino also had access to the @realDonaldTrump account, she said, but added that when he was absent, Ms Westerhout would occasionally help craft a tweet.

Ms Westerhout, whose desk sat directly outside the Oval Office while Trump was president, said he would sometimes have her print out draft tweets for him to edit by hand.

Though he was an avid Twitter user, Mr Trump preferred to summon her and dictate his posts, she said.

Ms Westerhout said she would have to take notes, quickly type up the draft, and print it out for him.

Occasionally Mr Trump would have more edits. She told the court she soon learned what made a "signature" Trump tweet.

"My recollection is there are certain words he liked to capitalise. Words like 'country'. He liked to use exclamation points," she said.

"It is my understanding that he liked to use the Oxford comma," she added.

Mr Trump appeared to watch her closely as she gave evidence, leaning back in his chair as she spoke.

He did not use a computer or have an email address, to the best of her knowledge.

She also said that her former boss liked to do much of his work in a dining room, away from the actual Oval Office.

"He wanted to keep the Resolute Desk very pristine," she said of the famous wooden desk that presidents sit behind

[Edge-]

Was 50/50 on posting this here or in the Biden thread, but this seems a bit more fitting.

Anyways, remember that time Biden and Democrats secured a ton of additional funding for the IRS to focus on increased audits and enforcement on high-income individuals? Well not only is it still working, but you know exactly where this is going - https://edition.cnn.com/2024/05/11/p...ort/index.html

Former President Donald Trump could owe more than $100 million in taxes as a result of a yearslong Internal Revenue Service inquiry into claims of huge losses on his Chicago skyscraper, The New York Times and ProPublica reported Saturday.

The news organizations reported Trump claimed massive financial losses twice — first on his 2008 tax return, when he said the building, then mired in debt, was “worthless,” and again after 2010, when he had shifted its ownership into a new partnership also controlled by Trump.

The 2008 claim resulted in Trump reporting losses as high as $651 million for the year, and there is no indication it drew an IRS challenge, the outlets reported. Then, Trump’s lawyers enabled further claims of losses in 2010 by shifting the Chicago tower into another partnership, “DJT Holdings LLC,” The Times and ProPublica reported.

In the years that followed, other Trump businesses, including golf courses, would be shifted into that same partnership — which his lawyers used as the basis to claim more tax-reducing losses from the Chicago tower. That move sparked the IRS inquiry. Those losses added up to $168 million over the next decade, the report said.

The outlets calculated the revision sought by the IRS could result in a tax bill of more than $100 million.

The only public mention of the IRS audit into Trump’s Chicago tower loss claims came in a December 2022 congressional report that The Times and ProPublica reported made an unexplained reference to the section of tax law at issue in the case. That mention, the outlets reported, confirmed the audit was still underway.

“This matter was settled years ago, only to be brought back to life once my father ran for office. We are confident in our position, which is supported by opinion letters from various tax experts, including the former general counsel of the IRS,” Trump’s son Eric Trump, the executive vice president of the Trump Organization, told The Times and ProPublica in a statement.

Gosh, how much more money has Donald stole, cheated, or defrauded folks out of?

[Benggaul]

Gosh, how much more money has Donald stole, cheated, or defrauded folks out of?

Considering he started with a "modest $1 million loan" (that, it turns out, was quite actually quite a bit more than a million) I'd have to say...pretty much anything above that amount.

[Dontrike]

Was 50/50 on posting this here or in the Biden thread, but this seems a bit more fitting.

Anyways, remember that time Biden and Democrats secured a ton of additional funding for the IRS to focus on increased audits and enforcement on high-income individuals? Well not only is it still working, but you know exactly where this is going - https://edition.cnn.com/2024/05/11/p...ort/index.html



Gosh, how much more money has Donald stole, cheated, or defrauded folks out of?

I'm guessing he owes at least $500 million, considering decades of dodging taxes, various loop holes that weren't used right, and various tax fraud.

[postman1782]

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/1hbt_IFG89o

Late great Hannibal Lecter again?

[Surfd]

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/1hbt_IFG89o

Late great Hannibal Lecter again?

His brain is straight up mush. Like, seriously, the dementia is setting in hard.

[s_bushido]

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/1hbt_IFG89o

Late great Hannibal Lecter again?

Surely there's context for this beyond "he saw the movie the night before and briefly got tired of whining about how unfair everyone is to him." Surely...

[draynay]

Surely there's context for this beyond "he saw the movie the night before and briefly got tired of whining about how unfair everyone is to him." Surely...

More like he slept through it and woke up just before the end.

[Breccia]

Late great Hannibal Lecter again?

Honestly, this is actually better than the part of the rally where he, once again falsely, claimed wind power was killing whales. He offered no data because none exists.

Incidentally, does anyone know the part of any book or any movie where Hannibal Lecter dies? Anyone?

"Maybe Trump was talking about the actor who played him?"

Okay. Which one died?

"Uh...Gaspard Ulliel?"

The French guy? He never used the line Trump quoted.

So I'll admit it's possible that Trump was joking...about cannibalism for some reason...and that somehow this joke isn't obvious to us because every single video that exists doesn't show Trump saying this was a joke. I'll admit it's possible. At what point did he think Hannibal Lecter was dead? Trump was quoting the wrong movie and the character has, best of my knowledge, never died in canon. Even if Trump is a closet fan fiction reader -- I mean, we know he prefers stories where he wins the election, let's not rule that out -- surely he didn't accidentally refer to an uncredited work in place of the canon story in front of a half-filled crowd.

[DarkTZeratul]

Honestly, this is actually better than the part of the rally where he, once again falsely, claimed wind power was killing whales. He offered no data because none exists.

Incidentally, does anyone know the part of any book or any movie where Hannibal Lecter dies? Anyone?

I'm more curious to know why he said "Hannibal Lector, congratulations."

[Breccia]

I'm more curious to know why he said "Hannibal Lector, congratulations."

The only way that works is a joke. Not even Trump endorses actual cannibalism, let alone murder of rich people.

Just so we're clear, barring any part of the video we haven't seen, I don't think he's joking, and I don't think he's a cannibal. Either he's literally developmentally challenged (still not contradicted by any poster here) or he referenced a movie and got every single important detail wrong, nobody told hi, and his crowd cheered what they know is a failure of a human being because it's all they have left.

"That sounds like a joke."

No. Jokes are funny.

[Kaleredar]

Honestly, this is actually better than the part of the rally where he, once again falsely, claimed wind power was killing whales. He offered no data because none exists.

Incidentally, does anyone know the part of any book or any movie where Hannibal Lecter dies? Anyone?

"Maybe Trump was talking about the actor who played him?"

Okay. Which one died?

"Uh...Gaspard Ulliel?"

The French guy? He never used the line Trump quoted.

So I'll admit it's possible that Trump was joking...about cannibalism for some reason...and that somehow this joke isn't obvious to us because every single video that exists doesn't show Trump saying this was a joke. I'll admit it's possible. At what point did he think Hannibal Lecter was dead? Trump was quoting the wrong movie and the character has, best of my knowledge, never died in canon. Even if Trump is a closet fan fiction reader -- I mean, we know he prefers stories where he wins the election, let's not rule that out -- surely he didn't accidentally refer to an uncredited work in place of the canon story in front of a half-filled crowd.

The great part about “conservative’s ‘totally legitimate’ concerns about green energy killing wildlife” like their supposed worry about windmills killing birds is that fossil fuels and other pollutants they’re happy to ignore or even actively promote kill way way waaaay more wildlife.

[DarkTZeratul]

The only way that works is a joke

A joke has a setup and a punchline. This was just a non-sequitor. Joking or not, what was he even congratulating Hannibal Lector for?

[Breccia]

A joke has a setup and a punchline. This was just a non-sequitor. Joking or not, what was he even congratulating Hannibal Lector for?

See, that's why I'm not 100% sure the video wasn't snipped. What we saw makes the opposite of sense, like literal negative sense. Nonsequitors are closer to 0.This isn't even saying Hitler made the trains run on time, this is just bonkers. I'm not yet ruling out that we're missing either the attempted setup and attempted punchline of what was supposed to be a joke. But I'm not holding my breath. Very few jokes involve idolizing cannibals who murder people.