This is juicy. Business Insider reported that Jared Kushner set up a shell company that siphoned off $617 million from the Trump campaign to parts unknown. I wasn’t able to read the Business Insider article because of the popups demanding that I subscribe, but I did pull out some blurbs:
Kushner directed Lara Trump, Vice President Mike Pence’s nephew John Pence, and Trump campaign CFO Sean Dollman to serve on the shell company’s board, the person told Insider.
American Made Media Consultants became the source of consternation for Trump’s own campaign staff, who were kept in the dark about its operations.
Despite its $617 million spending through AMMC, the Trump campaign publicly disclosed little information about the company, including how it used the money.
Here is a report on what BI reported from Daily Beast:
Jared Kushner approved the creation of a shell company that operated like a “campaign within a campaign” and secretly funneled millions of dollars in campaign cash to Trump family members, Business Insider reports. The company, American Made Media Consultants Corporation and American Made Media Consultants LLC, took more than half of the Trump campaign’s massive $1.26 billion war chest and was largely shielded from having to publicly report financial details. However, a source told Business Insider that Trump’s daughter-in-law Lara Trump was the company’s president, Vice President Mike Pence’s nephew was its VP, and Trump campaign CFO Sean Dollman was treasurer and secretary.
The mysterious company caused consternation among other campaign staffers, who had no idea how it was spending money, and the Campaign Legal Center filed a civil complaint with the FEC in June accusing the Trump campaign of laundering $170 million largely through it. A campaign spokesperson denied that AMMC paid Lara Trump or Pence’s nephew for being on its board.
No wonder Trump ran short of money for television ads.
Here’s some more from Raw Story:
Trump’s top advisers and campaign staff told Insider they were unaware of how the shell company operated, and campaign officials even conducted an internal audit of its operations under former campaign manager Brad Parscale but never reported those findings, and the next campaign manager Bill Stepien had little involvement with AMMC.
“Nothing was done without Jared’s approval,” said a former advisor to Trump’s 2016 campaign. “What Stepien doesn’t know is because Jared doesn’t want him to know.”
The nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center filed a civil complaint in July with the Federal Election Commission accusing the campaign of disguising” about $170 million in spending “by laundering the funds” through AMMC.
“[It’s a] scheme to evade telling voters even the basics on where its money is really going [and a] shield to disguise the ultimate recipients of its spending,” said Brendan Fischer, the center’s director of federal reform.
Here’s the best part:
The Department of Justice may open a criminal investigation if the government suspects the payments were a “knowing and willful” violation of election law.
Several sources from the Justice Department and FEC told Insider that investigators may already be looking into the campaign’s activity.
Oddly, the New York Times also reported on the shell company but buried it several paragraphs down in another story about how much money Trump will have when he leaves the White House. Also oddly, the Times doesn’t mention Jared Kushner.
Mr. Trump has long acted with few inhibitions when it comes to spending other people’s money, and he has spent millions of campaign dollars on his own family businesses in the last five years. But new records show an even more intricate intermingling of Mr. Trump’s political and familial interests than was previously known.
Lara Trump, Mr. Trump’s daughter-in-law and a senior campaign adviser, served on the board — and was named on drafts of the incorporation papers — of a limited liability company through which the Trump political operation spent more than $700 million since 2019, according to documents reviewed by The New York Times.
The arrangement has never been disclosed. One of the other board members and signatories in the draft papers of the L.L.C., American Made Media Consultants, was John Pence, the nephew of Vice President Mike Pence and a senior Trump adviser. The L.L.C. has been criticized for purposefully obscuring the ultimate destination of hundreds of millions of dollars of spending.
Ms. Trump and Mr. Pence were originally listed as president and vice president on the incorporation papers, documents reviewed by the Times showed. Sean Dollman, the campaign chief financial officer, was the A.M.M.C. treasurer.
“Lara Trump and John Pence resigned from the AMMC board in October 2019 to focus solely on their campaign activities, however, there was never any ethical or legal reason why they could not serve on the board in the first place,” said Tim Murtaugh, a spokesman for Mr. Trump. “John and Lara were not compensated by AMMC for their service as board members.”
It sounds to me as if Lara Trump and John Pence bailed out of AMMC so as not to be caught in legal jeopardy. If AMMC was a Jared Kushner production, who knows where that money is now, and who knows if Trump himself knew what was going on?
And the Republicans think Hunter Biden is a problem? duh.
Meanwhile, as predicted, the Trump Administration is somehow screwing up vaccine distribution. Erick Lutz, Vanity Fair:
The White House reportedly turned down “multiple” offers from Pfizer over the summer to set aside additional doses for the United States. And of the vaccines the U.S. does have, a shitload are apparently just sitting in a warehouse somewhere, ready to be delivered, if only the Trump administration would give the company the word.
“This week, we successfully shipped all 2.9 million doses that we were asked to ship by the U.S. Government to locations specified by them,” Pfizer said in a statement Thursday. “We have millions more doses sitting in our warehouse but, as of now, we have not received any shipment instructions for additional doses.”
The company’s statement came after the Trump administration informed several states that they would receive up to 40 percent fewer vaccine doses next week than they’d been expecting. The White House implied the problem was on Pfizer’s end, but the company contradicted that explanation. “Pfizer is not having any production issues with our COVID-19 vaccine,” it said in the statement, “and no shipments containing the vaccine are on hold or delayed.”
This probably is just incompetence, a quality Trumpers possess in abundance. But I also wondered if Jared was involved in this somehow. Pfizer and (probably) Moderna need to be careful with inventory, or vast quantities of vaccine will somehow disappear into a deep underground black market. Along with a lot of PPE confiscated a few months ago ….
“And the Republicans think Hunter Biden is a problem? ”
If they had anything at all on him, we would have heard already.
Looks like Lara is going to be on the pardon list.
from Peter Nicholas, at the Atlantic
As we're approaching our post-tRUMP future, we have to take stock of where our poor abused country stands, and what it still stands for – if anything.
tRUMP will be leaving America in very tenuous and perilous positions in many areas. ALL of the following are just SOME of the priorities:
The Covid-19 pandemic rages on.
The hazardous economic position we're in – due largely to this pandemic.
Racial strife.
Income disparity.
Our diminished international reputation/standing.
And many, many other things tRUMP and the RepubliKKKLANS have fucKKKed-up nine ways to Sunday – and back!
And, of course, what you're focusing on here, mahs:
Corruption!
IMO: Assume everyone in this maladministration who was not already a lifelong government civil servant, is crooked. Presuppose they joined tRUMP & KKKompany to grift, based on the idea that it'll be quicker and cheaper to find the people who are not crooks!
I'm too pooped to leave a big pile of word-poops tonight.
So let me just finish by saying the following to Joe & Kamala – and all of the folks who'll soon be joining them in the "Big Fix" ("Fix" as in repair, not rig):
I DON'T WANT TO HEAR ONE DAMNGOD WORD ABOUT LOOKING FORWARD, NOT BACK!!! Investigate, charge, try, and punish the guilty. We can't let this latest Republican horde of thieves get away with all sorts of criminal activity like we did Nixon, Reagan/Bush I, and Bush II/Cheney!!!
I realize that Biden doesn't want to make a bad situation with 74 Million tRUMP voters worse, but we can't just sweep all of the tRUMP Mob's criminal, seditious, treasonous, traitorous, and treacherous actions under the bed.
They made their own beds, now it's time for them to lie down in it – and burn with it (a slight joke).
Indeed, amen, etc. And worse yet, sweep it all under the rug even as they go on a politically motivated, Benghazi style witch hunt of Hunter Biden that they know will produce nothing but the smoke they crave to pretend there's something there.
Whoever Biden's AG is needs to have the independence to go after Kushner and his shell company, Ivanka and her Chinese patents, and any grifting Lara Trump may have engaged in with the thoroughly crooked Trump Inaugural committee. There can be no talk of Hunter Biden without these several Trump elephants hovering in the room.
All of these criminals will be pardoned in January. That will be a blessing in disguise. They lose the fight to claim 5th Amendment protection. If they can defy a subpoena from the US House, the FBI can get a subpoena that they can't ignore. Jared can't be charged unless he lies to the FBI (or Congress.) EVERYTHING about the crimes of the Trump family will become a matter of public record where the most damning testimony will come from the Trump heirs.
Maha made a very astute observation in reply to a previous post. The comment pointed out that the fascists are not all beyond redemption and argued that two of the most brutal governments of the last century, Germany and Japan, joined the family of nations and have been responsible for many decades. Maha observed that they knew they had been defeated. I've been pondering since we can't napalm the hell out of Idaho, how we bring the cultists to the realization that the fascist state they salivate over can not happen!
There's an emotional state they haven't begun to reach. Would dismembering the Trump empire prove it's over for them? I'm not sure what it will take but IMO, we have to actually go after every offense that can be demonstrated, even if we can't bring it to trial. Every civil penalty needs to be applied to the max. The continual drain of dozens of cases when the state and federal governments invest infinite resources has to continue, year after year. Institutions who prop Trump up need to be investigated to give Trump a case of financial leprosy.
If more than half of Trump's base recognizes the obligation to respect the outcome of elections, that's a restoration of democracy. For the first time in my life, the concept of respecting the outcome of an honest election is under attack. For that, Trump must be destroyed to demonstrate the devastating outcome that awaits any demagogue who tried to repeat what Trump did since the November election.
In light of what the GOP is going after Hunter Biden for, and I don't believe for one minute they even believe the overblown charges anymore than they believed Hillary Clinton and Obama were somehow in league with terrorists at Benghazi, just like with that circus, this is all for the political benefit of sullying Biden's name and delegitimizing him. Remember, the not too bright Kevin McCarthy said that quiet part out loud at the time when it came to Clinton.
If I were Biden, like Sean Connery in The Untouchables, I'd let them know, you put one of ours in the hospital, we put one of yours in the morgue. And unlike you your conspiracy theory fantasies about Hunter Biden you create to keep the crazies at bay, you know we have the goods to do it because there is evidence of Trump family members actually having committed crimes. They must be willing to play hardball.
Unfortunately, I believe Biden and the democratic leadership still think they can actually “get something done” with their “friends across the aisle,” by playing nice, which is a huge miscalculation that, I believe, will cause them to lose the House in the 2022 midterms. And, sad to say, deservedly so if they’re not willing to use the power they have to hold people accountable and get things done that actually help their constituents.