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PostPosted: 12/13/18 4:44 pm • # 1 
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Waiting for the next scandal to drop? ~ here ya go! ~ :tearhair ~ Sooz

Trump’s inaugural committee reportedly facing criminal scrutiny
12/13/18 05:03 PM
By Steve Benen

There’s Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation. There’s the campaign-finance scandal in which Donald Trump has already been implicated in felonies. There’s the Trump Foundation, which is also under investigation.

And in case that weren’t quite enough, the Wall Street Journal reports this afternoon that Trump’s inaugural committee is also facing a criminal investigation.

Quote:
Federal prosecutors in Manhattan are investigating whether President Trump’s 2017 inaugural committee misspent some of the record $107 million it raised from donations, people familiar with the matter said.

The criminal probe by the Manhattan U.S. attorney’s office, which is in its early stages, also is examining whether some of the committee’s top donors gave money in exchange for access to the incoming Trump administration, policy concessions or to influence official administration positions, some of the people said.

Some of this scrutiny, the article added, is the result of information gleaned from Michael Cohen, the president’s former attorney/fixer, who was sentenced yesterday to three years in prison.

Giving money in exchange for political favors could run afoul of federal corruption laws. Diverting funds from the organization, which was registered as a nonprofit, could also violate federal law.

As regular readers know, by many metrics, Trump’s inaugural fund was a great success. After his election, the Republican eliminated caps on individual contributions – caps that George W. Bush and Barack Obama both utilized – and sold “exclusive access” for seven-figure contributions.

The result was a fundraising juggernaut: Trump’s inaugural committee took in nearly $107 million, much of which went unspent during poorly attended festivities.

The trouble is, the president’s team has struggled for months to explain exactly where all of that money went.

The original plan was for the inaugural committee to donate excess funds to charity, and Trump World planned to release details about those contributions in April 2017. That never happened.

Tom Barrack, a friend of the president’s who led the inaugural committee, told the Associated Press last year that there’s already been an audit of the committee’s finances, but it “would not share a copy with AP or say who performed it.”

And as a rule, when these guys act like they have something to hide, it’s because they have something to hide.

The story took another turn earlier this year when we learned the inaugural committee paid nearly $26 million to an event planning firm run by one of Melania Trump’s friends – which seemed problematic, though it still didn’t explain where the rest of the pot of money went.

The Wall Street Journal’s report added that Richard Gates, the Trump campaign’s former deputy chairman, who’s already pleaded guilty to charges brought by Mueller, has faced questions from prosecutors, “about the fund’s spending and its donors.”

Donald Trump and his operation didn’t need another criminal investigation. It looks like they have one anyway.

Postscript: Remember when voters were told they couldn’t vote for Hillary Clinton because the country would have to endure four years of scandals and investigations?

http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/trumps-inaugural-committee-reportedly-facing-criminal-security#break


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PostPosted: 12/13/18 5:23 pm • # 2 
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i have been wondering about this for a long time

the campaign only spent about 10% of these funds on the inauguration.


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PostPosted: 12/13/18 5:58 pm • # 3 
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Between Mueller and the NY Attorney General they are leaving no tern unstoned. They're going after his middle eastern connections too:

https://www.thedailybeast.com/get-ready ... connection

All the best people he's surrounded himself with must be wetting their diapers.


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PostPosted: 12/13/18 6:05 pm • # 4 
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Looks like Mueller is gonna be the one draining the swamp. This could implicate Dems, ya know.


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PostPosted: 12/13/18 7:41 pm • # 5 
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it could, except for the fact that there is no evidence that Democrats were targeted.


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PostPosted: 12/14/18 10:34 am • # 6 
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IF [big "if"] some Dems get outed during this process, so be it ~ party/belief designation is not, and should NOT be, any sort of "protection" for any crimes committed ~

Sooz


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PostPosted: 12/14/18 10:38 am • # 7 
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sooz06 wrote:
IF [big "if"] some Dems get outed during this process, so be it ~ party/belief designation is not, and should NOT be, any sort of "protection" for any crimes committed ~

Sooz


Agree.


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PostPosted: 12/14/18 3:14 pm • # 8 
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This is extremely damning ~ the numbers at the DiC's properties are simply stupidly gouging in the extreme ~ :ey ~ "live links" in original ~ Sooz

REVEALED: Trump’s inaugural committee paid the Trump Organization — and Ivanka negotiated the price
Pro Publica / 14 Dec 2018 at 14:43 ET

When it came out this year that President Donald Trump’s inaugural committee raised and spent unprecedented amounts, people wondered where all that money went.

It turns out one beneficiary was Trump himself.

The inauguration paid the Trump Organization for rooms, meals and event space at the company’s Washington hotel, according to interviews as well as internal emails and receipts reviewed by WNYC and ProPublica.

During the planning, Ivanka Trump, the president-elect’s eldest daughter and a senior executive with the Trump Organization, was involved in negotiating the price the hotel charged the 58th Presidential Inaugural Committee for venue rentals. A top inaugural planner emailed Ivanka and others at the company to “express my concern” that the hotel was overcharging for its event spaces, worrying of what would happen “when this is audited.”

If the Trump hotel charged more than the going rate for the venues, it could violate tax law. The inaugural committee’s payments to the Trump Organization and Ivanka Trump’s role have not been previously reported or disclosed in public filings.

“The fact that the inaugural committee did business with the Trump Organization raises huge ethical questions about the potential for undue enrichment,” said Marcus Owens, the former head of the division of the Internal Revenue Service that oversees nonprofits.

Inaugural workers had other misgivings. Rick Gates, then the deputy to the chairman of the inaugural, asked some vendors to take payments directly from donors, rather than through the committee, according to two people with direct knowledge. The vendors felt the request was unusual and concerning, according to these people, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they signed confidentiality agreements. It is not clear whether any vendors took him up on his request.

The revelations about the inauguration’s finances show how Trump blurred the lines between his political and business lives, as the real estate mogul ascended to the presidency.

On Thursday, The Wall Street Journal reported that federal prosecutors in New York have opened a criminal investigation into whether the inaugural committee misspent money and whether donors gave in return for political favors, citing people familiar with the matter. In addition, The New York Times reported that prosecutors are examining whether foreigners illegally funnelled money to the inauguration.

Peter Mirijanian, a spokesman for Ivanka Trump’s ethics lawyer, said: “When contacted by someone working on the inauguration, Ms. Trump passed the inquiry on to a hotel official and said only that any resulting discussions should be at a ‘fair market rate.’ Ms. Trump was not involved in any additional discussions.”

Mirijanian did not provide evidence that Ivanka Trump sought a fair market rate.

A spokeswoman for the inaugural committee said it “is not aware of any pending investigations and has not been contacted by any prosecutors. We simply have no evidence the investigation exists.” The White House and a lawyer for Gates did not immediately respond to requests for comment. A spokesman for the Manhattan federal prosecutors’ office declined to comment. The Trump Organization did not comment.

“That doesn’t have anything to do with the president or the first lady,” White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told reporters on Thursday night, when asked about the story in the Journal.

President-elect Trump was repeatedly briefed on inaugural planning and specific events, according to one committee worker with direct knowledge. WNYC and ProPublica have seen presentations that were shown to the president-elect, complete with renderings and floor plans.

Trump’s 2017 inauguration committee, which was chaired by his friend the businessman Tom Barrack, raised nearly $107 million from donors including the casino magnate Sheldon Adelson and AT&T. The January 2017 festivities cost almost twice President Obama’s 2009 inauguration, previously the most expensive. The nonprofit that planned Trump’s inauguration booked many spaces in the Trump International Hotel, located in the Old Post Office building near the White House, including a ballroom, hotel rooms and work spaces, as well as paying for meals there, according to several people who worked on the inauguration.

How the inaugural committee managed to spend all the money it raised remains a mystery, nearly two years after the event. While groups that support political candidates or issues must publicly detail their spending, an inaugural committee is required to list only its top five contractors. That leaves about $40 million unaccounted for.

Greg Jenkins, who led George W. Bush’s second inauguration, was perplexed by the Trump team’s mammoth fundraising haul. “They had a third of the staff and a quarter of the events and they raise at least twice as much as we did,” Jenkins told WNYC and ProPublica this year. “So there’s the obvious question: Where did it go? I don’t know.”

As planning for the inauguration was underway in December 2016, Ivanka Trump was still an executive vice president at the Trump Organization. But she was reportedly preparing to move to Washington and take on a greater public role. She now serves as an adviser to the president.

Around the middle of the month, with Inauguration Day scarcely a month away, Ivanka Trump was asked to help resolve a dispute between inaugural planners and her family’s Washington hotel, according to emails.

The problem: Organizers thought the hotel was charging too much money.

Emails show that Ivanka Trump connected Gates with Mickael Damelincourt, managing director of the hotel. Damelincourt responded with a new rate of $175,000 per day for use of the Presidential Ballroom and meeting rooms, offering a $700,000 charge for four days of use.

It is not clear what the earlier price was, but Damelincourt’s revised rate did not satisfy one of the lead organizers of the inauguration, Stephanie Winston Wolkoff.

In an email to Ivanka Trump and Gates, Wolkoff, who had previously managed the Metropolitan Museum’s annual gala and fashion shows at Lincoln Center, expressed discomfort with the price.

“I wanted to follow up on our conversation and express my concern,” Wolkoff wrote in the December email.

“These events are in PE’s [the president-elect’s] honor at his hotel and one of them is for family and close friends. Please take into consideration that when this is audited it will become public knowledge,” she wrote, noting that other locations would be provided to the inaugural committee for free.

“I understand that compared to the original pricing this is great but we should look at the whole context,” Wolkoff wrote, suggesting a day rate of $85,000, less than half of the Trump hotel’s offer.

A former Trump hotel staffer confirmed that the inaugural committee paid for inaugural week events at the hotel. It’s not clear what price the committee ultimately paid. Previous media coverage has focused on spending by outside groups at the Trump hotel but it was not known that the official inaugural committee itself spent significant sums there.

Wolkoff also raised concerns about spending in a conversation with then-Trump attorney Michael Cohen, according to the story in the Journal. Federal prosecutors have a recording of that conversation, according to the Journal. The Times story suggests that conversation took place well after the inauguration.

Wolkoff, who is a friend of first lady Melania Trump, did not respond to a request for comment. Wolkoff’s firm, WIS Media Partners, was the inauguration’s highest-paid contactor, according to the committee’s tax filing. Wolkoff was scrutinized in media accounts this year because the firm received nearly $26 million. Most of that of the money was passed on to subcontractors, according to a person familiar with the spending. It is possible that payments to the Trump hotel were included in that sum.

If the Trump hotel charged the inaugural committee above-market rates, it could violate tax rules, according to Owens, the nonprofit tax expert who is now a partner at the law firm Loeb & Loeb.

If a person with “substantial influence” over a nonprofit group charges the group above-market rates in a transaction with their outside business, the IRS can impose steep fines. In this case, Donald Trump could qualify as a person with such influence. Should the tax agency find that a violation occurred, the Trump Organization would have to refund any overcharge and the inaugural committee would be hit with a 25 percent tax on the money, Owens said.

Owens added that IRS audits of nonprofits are increasingly rare. Since the inaugural committee was incorporated in Virginia, the state attorney general there could also have standing to investigate its operations.

A spokeswoman for the inaugural committee said its finances “were fully audited internally and independently and are fully accounted. … These were funds raised from private individuals and were then spent in accordance with the law and the expectations of the donors.”

The inaugural committee spent money at the Trump International in Washington in other ways as well. Many workers came from California and New York and stayed at the hotel, eating their meals there and holding meetings. Receipts reviewed by WNYC and ProPublica show they typically paid about $350 a night. According to an inaugural worker, 15 to 20 inaugural workers stayed at the hotel most nights for roughly a month in the run-up to the inauguration, at a total cost of what could be more than $200,000.

The professional resumes of top Trump hotel staffers indicate they worked closely with the presidential inaugural committee. The hotel’s director of food and beverage says on his LinkedIn profile that he was “working with PIC [Presidential Inaugural Committee] during the 2017 Inauguration” and a “related series of very special events.”

The day before Trump’s swearing in, the inaugural committee hosted a Leadership Luncheon in the hotel’s Presidential Ballroom, featuring his cabinet nominees and major donors. “This is a gorgeous room,” the president-elect told the crowd. “A total genius must have built this place.” And the night of the inauguration itself, Trump’sfamily and close allies such as Sean Hannity celebrated into the early morning at an exclusive after-party in the Trump hotel’s grand lobby. Thousands of red, white and blue balloons were released from the rafters.

Some vendors for the inauguration became concerned when Gates, a top inaugural committee official, asked them to take payments outside of the normal committee invoicing process, according to two people with knowledge of what happened. He proposed that they be paid for their work directly from a would-be donor rather than by the committee. Gates told the vendors that the inaugural committee had received pledges of more money than was initially targeted, and, therefore, he wished to reduce the publicly reported sum raised.

Gates did not respond to a request for comment. Last February, he pleaded guilty to unrelated charges of lying to the FBI and conspiracy, as part of special counsel Robert Mueller’s inquiry.

Over the summer, Gates was cross examined about his work for the inauguration in the trial of his former boss, Paul Manafort. Gates conceded that he might have charged personal expenses to the committee. “It’s possible,” he said.

In a separate episode this year, a U.S. lobbyist pleaded guilty to helping a Ukrainian businessman and member of Parliament buy tickets to the inauguration, in violation of rules barring the committee from taking foreign money. The inaugural committee was not accused of wrongdoing in that case.

https://www.rawstory.com/2018/12/revealed-trumps-inaugural-committee-paid-trump-organization-ivanka-negotiated-price/


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PostPosted: 12/14/18 3:26 pm • # 9 
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Ivanka is before the Grand Jury, maybe?


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PostPosted: 12/14/18 3:32 pm • # 10 
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oh man. this is so juicy.


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PostPosted: 12/14/18 7:02 pm • # 11 
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About par for the course at Grabem facilities, though. Membership fees at Camp Marinara doubled at the same time. When you're influence peddling you have to make hay while the sun shines. Four years max - less if you're impeached or in jail - means you have to get out there and hustle.


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PostPosted: 02/05/19 8:14 am • # 12 
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Still slogging thru the deep muck that is the DiC's "hallmark" ~ :eek ~ "live links" in original ~ Sooz

Prosecutors subpoena Trump inaugural committee as scandal intensifies
02/05/19 08:00 AM—Updated 02/05/19 08:10 AM
By Steve Benen

[Video, The Rachel Maddow Show, 2/4/19, 9:23 PM ET, "Trump inaugural committee subpoenaed by federal prosecutors: WSJ", accessible via the end link.]

When someone says, “A controversial part of Donald Trump’s operation is facing scrutiny from federal prosecutors as part of an intensifying criminal investigation,” and we’re not immediately sure which scandal this refers to, it’s safe to say the president has a problem.

We know, of course, about Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation. We also know about the campaign-finance scandal in which Trump has already been implicated in felonies. There’s also the Trump Foundation, which is facing its own investigation.

And then there’s Trump’s inaugural committee.

Quote:
Federal prosecutors have issued a subpoena for documents from President Donald Trump’s inaugural committee, a representative of the committee said Monday night.

The U.S. attorney’s office in the Southern District of New York is investigating allegations that the committee misspent some of the tens of millions it raised from donations and that some donors gave money in exchange for access to influence Trump administration policy positions.

According to a report in the Wall Street Journal, which saw a copy of the subpoena, federal prosecutors have requested information “related to the committee’s donors and spending.” The article added that subpoena specifically asked for documents regarding donations to the committee “made by or on behalf of foreign nationals, including but not limited to any communications regarding or relating to the possibility of donations by foreign nationals.”

Though it hasn’t been reported elsewhere, the New York Times’ reporting on this raised the prospect of possible money laundering and fraud.

As regular readers know, by many metrics, Trump’s inaugural fund was a great success. After his election, the Republican eliminated caps on individual contributions – caps that George W. Bush and Barack Obama both utilized – and sold “exclusive access” for seven-figure contributions.

The result was a fundraising juggernaut: Trump’s inaugural committee took in nearly $107 million, much of which went unspent during poorly attended festivities.

The trouble is, the president’s team has struggled to explain exactly where all of that money went.

The original plan was for the inaugural committee to donate excess funds to charity, and Trump World planned to release details about those contributions in April 2017. That never happened.

Tom Barrack, a friend of the president’s who led the inaugural committee, told the Associated Press soon after that an audit of the committee’s finances was complete, but it “would not share a copy with AP or say who performed it.”

And as a rule, when these guys act like they have something to hide, it’s because they have something to hide.

The story took another turn last year when we learned the inaugural committee paid nearly $26 million to an event planning firm run by one of Melania Trump’s friends – which seemed problematic, though it still didn’t explain where the rest of the pot of money went.

As for the White House’s response to all of this, Sarah Huckabee Sanders in December criticized Democrats for the scrutiny – which was odd, since the investigation is being conducted by federal prosecutors, not elected partisans – and insisted that the president’s inaugural committee “didn’t have anything to do with the president.”

Team Trump may need to come up with a better pitch.

http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/prosecutors-subpoena-trump-inaugural-committee-scandal-intensifies


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PostPosted: 02/05/19 11:45 am • # 13 
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This is the one that will tickle Ivanka's fancy. She was in charge of spending the money.

(If both she and Kushner go to jail are they still able to get together and conjugate or will Daddy finally get his big chance?)


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PostPosted: 02/08/19 8:37 am • # 14 
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This explains the focus on the inaugural funds ~ and supports the fact that it's impossible for anyone to both "know everything" and "know nothing" about anything at the same time ~ :eek ~ Sooz

Why Trump’s Inauguration Was So Sleazy, Even For Washington
By Allegra Kirkland and Josh Kovensky / February 8, 2019 6:00 am

Presidential inaugurations can seem like a parody of D.C. influence-peddling. Corporate lobbyists, foreign dignitaries and political mega-donors converge on the capitol for days of glitzy events, waltzing alongside incoming administration officials at inaugural balls and networking with members of the U.S. Congress over plates of lobster.

As reports proliferate about New York prosecutors’ investigation into President Trump’s 2017 inaugural committee, it can be difficult to tease out the standard swamp sleaze from activities that cross a line—or possibly break the law.

Former high-level inauguration staffers and ethics experts told TPM that Trump’s team stretched the boundaries of acceptability, potentially opening the door to the kind of self-dealing and illegal foreign donations that prosecutors are reportedly probing.

“It’s become fairly common for these events to be an influence-buying free-for-all, but it seems like Trump took this to another level,” Brendan Fischer, director for federal reform at the Campaign Legal Center, told TPM.

A 2017 inaugural inaugural spokeswoman did not respond to TPM’s requests for comment by press time.

Some degree of fly-by-night sketchiness is baked into the nature of the inauguration, a multi-part event that has to be pulled together in a matter of weeks. As Rufus Gifford, finance chair for Barack Obama’s 2013 inauguration told TPM: “It all happens very, very quickly. You win an election and then you have to raise ‘x’ number of millions of dollars in just a couple of months to ensure that you can pull off these enormous festivities.”

Inaugural committees also exist in a bizarre legal void in campaign finance law. They are formed as non-profits, and, unlike campaigns, are not required to adhere to contribution limits or certain reporting requirements.

The few congressional regulations in place ban foreign donations to inaugural committees, and force the organization to disclose every donor to the FEC while also filing a non-profit tax form in line with Internal Revenue Service guidelines.

“If you’re not willing to be transparent, then don’t contribute,” Stephen Kerrigan, executive director of Obama’s 2013 inaugural, told TPM. “The inaugural is supposed to be part of the country coming together, and not enriching a few people.”

This week’s reporting on the subpoena prosecutors served to the committee sheds light on both how routinely the inauguration is used as an avenue to buy access, and where Trump’s inaugural committee may have legal exposure.

Earlier inaugural staffers and ethics experts mostly shrugged off as business-as-usual a confidential memo prepared by inaugural deputy chair Rick Gates and obtained by WNYC. The memo showed inaugural committee chairman Tom Barrack’s investment firm gaming out a consulting plan involving a $500 billion-$1 trillion infrastructure project that was then in the works while “avoiding any appearance of lobbying,” a hair-fine but common D.C. distinction.

Imaad Zuberi, the only donor mentioned by name in the subpoena, may have captured the prevailing mores of presidential inaugurals when he openly admitted to the New York Times that the $900,000 he donated to the inauguration was intended “to open doors.” The fact that his donation bought access to meetings with Michael Cohen and inaugural chairman Elliott Broidy was “just fortunately or unfortunately how it works,” Zuberi said.

Prior president-elects have set self-imposed limits on contributions to try to reduce the appearance—if not the practice—of influence-peddling. George W. Bush capped individual donations at $100,000 for his 2001 inauguration and $250,000 for the 2005 event. Obama imposed rigid restrictions for his 2009 event, capping individual donations at $50,000 and banning donations from corporations, super PACs and lobbyists. For his 2013 inauguration, Obama nixed the donation limit and chose to accept corporate funds.

Trump’s inaugural committee took no such steps.

Inaugural committees face fewer regulations than other forms of political spending. There are no contribution limits on inaugural committees, but other restrictions — like bans on foreign financing or using a third party to act as a “straw donor” — remain in force. While the FEC places the obligation on the donor not to misrepresent itself to the committee, inaugurals have, in the past, informed donors of the relevant regulations and maintained internal vetting processes to prevent fraud.

Gifford, Obama’s 2013 finance chair, told TPM that rooting out possible improper donations to the campaign and inauguration required special vigilance.

“I can’t tell you how many people who weren’t allowed to give us money because they were foreign nationals or didn’t fit the bill somehow tried to give us money,” Gifford said. “This is not hard, and that’s the issue. Vetting and compliance is a process and you need to have those procedures in place. But it’s not a fundraiser’s job to necessarily know whether someone is an American citizen, or a foreign corporate entity is trying to illegally give you money.”

Holtzman Vogel Josefiak Torchinsky PLLC, the staunchly Republican law firm who worked with Trump’s inaugural committee, did not respond to TPM’s request for comment on any guidance they provided on rejecting foreign funds.

Prosecutors are reportedly investigating the use of so-called “straw donors,” or U.S. citizens who purchase inauguration tickets to disguise money that’s coming from foreign individuals or governments. D.C. lobbyist and admitted foreign agent W. Sam Patten acknowledged last year as part of his guilty plea that he helped a Ukrainian oligarch attend Trump’s inauguration by using a straw donor to front the $50,000 ticket price.

Then there’s the matter of potential self-dealing. During Paul Manafort’s August 2018 trial, his onetime protégé Rick Gates admitted it’s “possible” that he stole money from the inaugural committee while serving as its deputy director. Accounts from the time of the inauguration indicate that Gates was managing the affair on a day-to-day basis.

Gates reportedly told multiple donors that they could circumvent committee reporting requirements by paying vendors directly for inaugural events and services—another potential violation of the few laws that govern inaugural committees.

That detail also goes to an enduring mystery of the committee: How did it spend so much money? Previous inaugurals with more events than those held at Trump’s maxed out at around $60 million total in expenditures. Of the record $104 million that Trump’s inaugural committee spent, the committee spent $60 million on its top five vendors alone, which, under non-profit law, it has to disclose. The remaining $4o-something million to lower-tier vendors was not subject to disclosure requirements.

Greg Jenkins, the executive director of Bush’s 2005 inaugural, told TPM last month that Trump could have “raised less than we did” — around $40 million — and pulled off his inauguration.

Questions abound about how costs were allocated within the committee, and about possible self-dealing on the part of Trump’s family and friends.

The New York Times detailed how the $26 million that went to WIS Media Partners— a firm set up 40 days before the inaugural by Melania Trump associate Stephanie Winston Wolkoff — was spent, which included $10,000 in makeup purchases.

ProPublica obtained emails which appear to show inaugural officials charging above-market rates to stay at the Trump D.C. hotel.

As Jim Bendat, an expert on presidential inaugurations told TPM, “There was no Obama hotel. There was no Bush hotel. There was no Abraham Lincoln hotel. This is all new territory that’s being investigated because of the nature of this particular president.”

Even the pre-inaugural concert emerged as a miniature scandal-within-a-scandal: at $25 million, it remains a mystery what the money was spent on, particularly given that previous pre-inaugural concerts boasted far more performers.

Jo Howard, the booker for pre-inaugural concert singer Sam Moore and a producer at the Lee Atwater Celebration For Young Americans event at George H. W. Bush’s 1989 inaugural, told TPM that Moore was booked at the last minute.

“Jennifer Holliday was supposed to sing at the pre-inaugural the night before, out at the Lincoln Memorial, but she got intimidated and terrorized so badly that she backed out,” Howard recalled.

The inaugural committee’s shoddy reporting practices make it harder to track where the money went, and who was behind it. Tracing the real identities of dozens of donors remains nearly impossible, even after reporting from journalist Christina Wilkie forced the committee to file an amended report to the FEC last year.

As Wilkie documented, the committee made novel use of special online access codes to access tickets, which were then resold on Ebay and forwarded to recipients’ friends. But the code was only tied to the original recipients’ address, creating errors in the FEC report and leaving the true donors’ identities unclear.

Wilkie said no legitimate listed addresses existed for, for example, a Singapore resident named Frank A. Rodriguez who is recorded as having given $25,000 to the inaugural fund, or Anaheim, California donor David Durrant, who reportedly gave $100,000.

The code system “creates an obvious opportunity for foreign nationals to give,” said Fischer of the Campaign Legal Center, whose organization filed a complaint with the FEC over these apparent violations of reporting requirements.

The federal investigation remains in its early stages. It’s not clear how far liability extends in any direction, or if the committee could be a victim itself as a legal entity.

While the White House has stated that the subpoena “has nothing to do with” the President, Barrack himself had a different perspective in remarks to the New York Post, five days before Trump took office.

“He’s into every detail of everything,” the tabloid quoted Barrack as saying. “I beg him all the time to go back to running the free world and let me focus on setting the tables.”

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/muckraker/trump-inauguration-criminal-probe-fundraising-finances


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PostPosted: 04/06/19 12:52 pm • # 15 
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Greed and graft intentionally ignore all boundaries, legal and/or moral ~ :ey ~ "live links" in original ~ Sooz

Trump’s ‘illegal’ inauguration was a hotbed of corruption and campaign finance violations
Common Dreams / 06 Apr 2019 at 13:47 ET

I’ve been working on campaign finance issues for fourteen years. I’ve never seen an illegal inaugural. Until now, potentially.

Presidential inaugurations are at the very edge of campaign finance regulations. That means most of the typical campaign finance restrictions during an election, including on the size and sources of donations, simply don’t apply to an inaugural committee.

For example, during an election, a U.S. citizen can give $2,800 to a candidate running for president. But once that candidate wins, a U.S. citizen can give an unlimited amount to an inaugural committee to celebrate their candidate’s assumption of power. Here’s another example: Corporations cannot give directly to a federal candidate during an election, but they can give an unlimited amount to an inaugural committee.

Plenty of wealthy people and corporations took advantage of this increased ability to spend in 2017. NBC News found that 14 individual donors to the inaugural, who gave around $350,000 on average, were nominated to be ambassadors by President Trump. Many companies gave at the $1 million mark to the Trump 2017 inaugural. Many of the same companies also gave to Obama’s inaugural. Corporations with regulatory matters pending before the federal government often use such donations to butter up the new guy in charge. It’s a little unnerving from the outside since it looks like currying favor, but generally it’s perfectly legal.

Federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York are looking into what was going on in the Trump inaugural committee, including asking one of the vendors, a friend of Melania Trump named Stephanie Wolkoff, about the committee’s expenditures according to press reports.

So why are there criminal investigations into the Trump inaugural? Because it looks like the committee may have violated some of the few campaign finance regulations that still apply. For instance, inaugural committees are not allowed to accept money from foreign nationals. As the controlling regulation states:

Quote:
A foreign national shall not, directly or indirectly, make a donation to an inaugural committee. …No person shall knowingly accept from a foreign national any donation to an inaugural committee.

This regulation appears to have been violated at least once by Sam Patten, who acted as a straw donor for a Ukrainian who paid $50,000 for tickets to the 2017 inaugural. (We know about this because of a plea by Mr. Patten.) Then there is the CITGO donation of half a million dollars, which raises another potential foreign donor issue. CITGO is owned by Venezuela. While the FEC doesn’t have a particularly strong record for enforcing election laws, it did recently rouse from its slumber to hit Jeb Bush’s super PAC Right to Rise with a hefty $1.3 million fine for accepting money from a foreign-owned company. And because federal prosecutors already investigating, any alleged malfeasance may actually have some legal consequences.

The other basic requirement for an inaugural committee is transparency. While there are not many restrictions on where the money comes from, there is a requirement to report accurately to the FEC where the money came from 90 days after the inauguration. And here the Trump inaugural committee seems to have failed again. When the committee first filed its report, it had a number of bogus entries, which were fact-checked by a crowd-sourced effort spearheaded by journalist Christina Wilkie.

The most striking “error” filed by the Trump inaugural committee was an alleged donation from Hidden Figures star, and real-life person, Katherine Johnson, which listed NASA as her address. The real Katherine Johnson is 90 and doesn’t, you know, live at NASA. Also, when reporters tracked down the real Katherine Johnson’s family, they said she had not given $25,000 to the Trump fête. Another bogus entry for $400,000 listed an empty lot in New Jersey as the address. Prosecutors may be investigating whether these bogus entries were masking illegal donations.

Then there’s the allegation that the Trump inaugural committee deputy chair Rick Gates was trying to get donors to directly pay vendors, as reported by Pro Publica. This would be another way to short-circuit the required disclosures to the FEC, since the committee only reports money that it received.

On top of all that, there’s the open issue of where the money went. There has been reporting that the Trump Organization was benefiting from the inaugural by overcharging for event space at the direction of Ivanka. That’s just one more potential conflict of interest that could have easily been avoided.

Not only are the feds looking into what happened to the $107 million donated to the Trump inaugural committee, where it really came from and where it was spent, the D.C. attorney general Karl Racine is also checking to see if any local laws were violated.

After these investigations are over, America may discover something nearly unheard of and hard to pull off—an illegal inaugural.

https://www.rawstory.com/2019/04/trumps-illegal-inauguration-hotbed-corruption-campaign-finance-violations/


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PostPosted: 04/06/19 1:14 pm • # 16 
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Joined: 01/16/09
Posts: 14234
I doubt this is his biggest scam ever. just another day in the life of DT.


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