The Progressive Populist Today Blog: 2024-02-25

Friday, March 1, 2024

There's a Senator in the Punch Bowl

Ex senator Joe Lieberman’s “No Labels” Unity Party is considering candidates to run in the 2024 election - possibly throwing the election to Trump. With our nation hanging in the balance, can we risk it?

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Trump's Cult

Donald Trump’s cult like followers continue to worship and send money to his campaign, in spite of the indictments and multi million dollar judgments against him.

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Netanyahu: His Day of Reckoning

By continuing to prosecute war in Gaza with Hamas and Hezbollah, Prime Minister Netanyahu is putting off his day of reckoning. He missed the cues that might have spared Israel the horrors of Oct 7.

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Editorial: Bill for Trump’s Lies Comes Due

Donald Trump has been lying about his businesses for his entire career and now he’s squealing like a stuck pig since a New York court called him on it.

Manhattan Justice Arthur F. Engoron ruled Feb. 16 that Trump engaged in a yearslong conspiracy with top executives at the Trump Organization to deceive banks and insurers about the size of his wealth and the true value of such properties as Trump Tower in Manhattan and his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida.

Engoron ordered the disgraced former president to pay $355 million of his fortune, plus interest, which makes a total of $454 million. And that’s on top of $88.3 million he owes E. Jean Carroll for lying about his 1996 sexual assault of the writer. That includes $5 million in damages a federal jury in Manhattan assessed in May 2023 for the sexual assault, and $83.3 million by another jury in January for continuing to defame Carroll after the original verdict.

Trump said the civil fraud decision was “election inference” and “weaponization against a political opponent,” complaining to reporters at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida that he was being penalized for “having built a perfect company, great cash, great buildings, great everything.”

New York Attorney General Leticia James sued Trump in 2022 under a New York statute that gives the attorney general wide scope to investigate and prosecute corporate fraud. She alleged that he lied for years about his wealth on financial statements he used to secure loans and make deals as he built the real estate empire that vaulted him to fame and the presidency. Trump has said repeatedly the loans were paid back and the banks he dealt with made money, and he accused James of singling him out for political reasons.

Trump claims he was singled out for prosecution, but the New York Times noted that the New York attorney general’s office has relied on the law for years in high-profile cases, including against UBS, ExxonMobil and Juul — as well as Trump University and the Trump Foundation, which forced Trump to shut down both scams and pay $25 million to Trump U clients.

It is a federal crime to make false statements on loan applications, but because James sued Trump and his business associates under the state law, the claims were decided in a bench trial — one decided by a judge, as the state law requires, rather than by a jury.

Trump disregarded that explanation and complained that he was denied a jury trial. Still, knowing that Engoron would decide the case, Trump showed contempt for the 74-year-old judge throughout the trial, in an apparent attempt to provoke Engoron.

Engoron started the trial in late September 2023 with a summary judgment that ruled the Trump Organization had committed fraud by inflating property values by as much as $2.2 billion to get better loan and insurance terms. The bench trial began in October to examine other counts and determine penalties.

Engoron let Trump boil through the three-month trial with insults at the judge and Attorney General James, though Engoron fined Trump $15,000 for disparaging remarks about the judge’s clerk. Finally, on Feb. 16, Engoron ordered the former president and his company to pay $355 million, which he determined were savings from the lower interest rates and windfall profits from the recent sale of two properties, as “ill-gotten gains” that should be paid to the state, with interest.

“The frauds found here leap off the page and shock the conscience,” Engoron wrote in a 92-page decision. “The English poet Alexander Pope first declared, ‘To err is human, to forgive is divine.’ Defendants apparently are of a different mind,” he continued. “Their complete lack of contrition and remorse borders on pathological.”

He said the “defendants are incapable of admitting the error of their ways … Indeed, Donald Trump testified that, even today, he does not believe the Trump Organization needed to make any changes based on the facts that came out during this trial.”

Engoron added, “the Court intends to protect the integrity of the financial marketplace and, thus, the public as a whole. Defendants refusal to admit error — indeed, to continue it, according to the Independent Monitor — constrains this Court to conclude that they will engage in it going forward unless judicially restrained.”

Among other things, the court bans Trump and the Trump Organization and its affiliates from applying for loans from any financial institution chartered by or registered with the New York State Department of Financial Services for three years, and Eric and Don Jr. can’t serve as an officer or director of any New York corporation or other legal entity for two years.

Meanwhile, Trumpublicans who narrowly control the House of Representatives continue to look for pretexts to impeach President Joe Biden, based on imagined corrupt relationships of the president to his son Hunter and brother Jim, even after a sketchy FBI informant, Alexander Smirnov, on whom the Trumpers were basing their case, was indicted on charges that he lied to federal investigators about the Biden family’s business dealings.

These lies included claims that Joe Biden and his son each sought $5 million bribes from Ukrainian energy company Burisma when Biden was vice president, in exchange for protecting the firm from scrutiny by Ukraine’s national authorities. Now, Smirnov, a 43-year-old Israeli American, has admitted that “officials associated with Russian intelligence” fed him that information.

Republicans have based their attacks on President Biden on that apparent Russian disinformation. Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), partnered with House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) in May 2023, demanding the Justice Department release an FBI-generated Form FD 1023, which could reveal a “criminal scheme involving then-Vice President Joe Biden … involving an exchange of money for policy decisions.” That form contained statements that the FBI warned were unverified, but the Republicans insisted it be published.

“That to me is really the heart of this matter,” House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) said Jan. 11 on Fox “News.” “The most corroborating evidence we have is … from this highly credible, confidential human source.” On Feb. 21, after the source of the information was disclosed, Jordan insisted the revelations about Smirnov’s Russian connection don’t “change the facts.”

But other witnesses have sworn under oath that President Biden wasn’t involved in any of his son’s or his brother’s schemes.

The facts that need to be established now include when Grassley, Comer and Jordan discovered that Smirnov, their “star witness,” was a Russian agent, and whether the Republican inquisitors suborned perjury during the investigation. For people who claim to be Christians, they sure do seem to bear a lot of false witness.

Republicans need to swear off the lies, the bullying and unfounded slurs about the “Biden Crime Family” and instead straighten up, drop the impeachment nonsense and pass the budget that should have made it through Congress six months ago. — JMC