Tag: Trump

Categories
Politics

Liz Cheney vows to maintain preventing Trump election lies

Liz Cheney vows to keep fighting Trump election lies

GOP MP Liz Cheney, likely stripped of leadership by her Republican counterparts, has no plans to end former President Donald Trump’s explosion for repeating the lie that the 2020 election was stolen from him.

Cheney, a staunch Conservative, has told key donors and supporters behind the scenes that she will continue to hold Trump and the Republican Party responsible for what she called the “big lie,” these people said.

Her father, former Vice President Dick Cheney, was also involved in these talks.

These people declined to be included in this story to discuss any private matter.

Your demeanor will likely cost Liz Cheney her place as the GOP conference leader in the house. Kevin McCarthy, House Minority Chairman, R-Calif., Has told members to expect a vote on Wednesday to remove Cheney from the position. MP Elise Stefanik, RN.Y., is in line to take this post. Trump, who fooled Cheney as a “warmonger”, recommended Stefanik for the role.

During a call with her allies and top donors late last month, Cheney said she had no intention of withdrawing from Trump, according to one of the people with direct knowledge of the matter. She has publicly linked Trump’s false claims about the election to the deadly January 6 riot on Capitol Hill.

Cheney, like every other member of the House, is up for re-election next year. Numerous Republicans have announced primary campaigns against them.

Cheney was one of ten Republicans in the House who voted to indict Trump in the weeks following the deadly riot. Many of their top donors told CNBC last week that despite the Republicans move to oust them from their leadership roles, they would like to stay with Cheney.

The April appeal included a small group of supporters, including former Vice President Cheney, one person said. While Dick Cheney was involved in his daughter’s campaigns in the past, he is now in the midst of the battle over a party he once led with former President George W. Bush.

According to people familiar with the appeal and other recent private meetings with him, Dick Cheney has indicated that he supports his daughter’s stance on Trump and the Capitol uprising.

The April discussion came before the Republicans withdrew and before McCarthy publicly targeted Cheney in an interview with Fox News and other cases.

Liz Cheney recently told allies in several private meetings that she is likely to speak about Trump’s campaign claims. She has also acknowledged that convincing at least some Republicans in her state that Trump’s claims are, in fact, lies could be a challenge.

Former Vice President Dick Cheney watches as his daughter, Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., Takes the oath of office on the floor of the house on Tuesday, January 3, 2017.

Bill Clark | CQ Appeal, Inc. | Getty Images

Trump defeated Democrat Joe Biden in Wyoming by over 43 percentage points in 2020. Cheney was recently censored by the Wyoming Republican Party for her voice on charges against Trump.

Representatives from Liz Cheney and Trump did not respond to requests for comment. Wyoming lawmakers recently wrote a comment on the Washington Post urging the party to deviate from Trump.

“We Republicans must stand up for genuinely conservative principles and turn away from the dangerous and anti-democratic Trump personality cult,” Cheney wrote.

Still, the apparent unity between Cheney, her father, and her coworkers against Trump and his policies is an attempt to maintain the power of a faction that appears to have lost influence in a party largely led by the former commander-in-chief.

Dick Cheney has not publicly condemned Trump’s stance on the election. People close to him say there is no sign that he is actively campaigning for members of Congress to help his daughter keep her leadership position.

According to Politico, Liz Cheney has not made any calls to other Republican officials that could help maintain her position as GOP chairman of the House.

Categories
Politics

Former Trump lawyer owned shell firm

Hometown International, NJ deli owner, worth millions in stock

Your Hometown Deli in Paulsboro, N.J.

Google Earth

Shell companies sure make strange bedfellows.

A New York real estate tax lawyer — who did work for former President Donald Trump decades ago — in 2011 purchased a shell company whose creators later became key investors in a mystery $100 million company that owns just a small New Jersey deli, records show.

The shell company — Europa Acquisition I Inc. — was one of eight shell entities set up in 2010 by Peter Reichard and Peter Coker Sr., the North Carolina-based investors in deli owner Hometown International.

After Reichard and Coker sold them, most of those shell companies — including the one later purchased by Trump’s former real estate tax lawyer Allan Schwartz — ended up having their registrations revoked by the Securities and Exchange Commission for failing to keep current in their disclosure filings, records show.

More about the $100 million NJ deli

Your Hometown Deli in Paulsboro, N.J., is no mere neighborhood delicatessen. Despite racking up less than $40,000 in sales over the past two years, the deli’s parent company has a $100 million valuation on the over-the-counter stock market.

CNBC has done some digging into the deli and the mysterious firms and investors linked to it. Here are some recent stories:

The shell companies were named in numerical sequence, starting with Europa Acquisition I and ending with Europa Acquisition VIII.

Schwartz, the former Trump lawyer, told CNBC in a phone interview that he knew nothing about Coker Sr. and Reichard, Hometown International, or its deli in Paulsboro, New Jersey, which has minuscule sales. Coker Sr. and Reichard sold the Europa shell months before Schwartz bought it from other entities.

Schwartz, 73, is the latest person with an eyebrow-raising history to pop up in financial records linked to the deli company investors or to entities they were involved in.

Schwartz laughed Monday when a reporter told him details about Hometown International, including its market valuation of $100 million despite owning a South Jersey deli that had sales of less than $37,000 for the past two years.

“I know nothing about it,” Schwartz chuckled after being told that key investors in Hometown International had created a shell company he once owned.

‘Buyer beware’

Schwartz is in good company.

A lot of people have laughed or made jokes about Hometown International since last month, when hedge fund manager David Einhorn first highlighted the deli owner’s preposterous market capitalization, and used it as a warning to retail investors.

“The pastrami must be amazing,” Einhorn racked in an oft-quoted line from that letter.

In recent weeks, CNBC has detailed criminal and regulatory sanctions imposed on people and entities linked to Coker Sr. and Reichard, reported on the investments by Duke and Vanderbilt universities in Hometown International, and revealed details about the opaque nature of a group of Macao-based investors in that company.

Articles also have explored the incongruous professional backgrounds of Hometown’s two executive officers — both of whom are public high school administrators — and the existence of a related shell company. That shell company E-Waste, like the deli owner, has a sky-high stock market capitalization that is not justified by any meaningful business operations.

Those articles led to the termination of consulting agreements in which Hometown International and E-Waste had paid thousands of dollars per month in fees to a firm controlled by Reichard and Coker Sr.

Another firm controlled by the two men, Europa Capital Investments, remains a major investor in Hometown International, as does Coker Sr. as an individual. Coker Sr.’s son, Hong Kong-based Peter Coker Jr., is the deli company’s chairman.

Peter Reichard, a top Perdue aide, takes the oath before his apearance in Wake County Court, Wednesday, December 14, 2011 in Raleigh, N.C.

John Rottet | The News & Observer | AP

A crooked pedigree

Records reviewed in recent days by CNBC show that a now-disbarred lawyer — who last year pleaded guilty to federal criminal charges related to a shell company factory scheme — also was involved in the creation of the Europa Acquisition shells for Coker Sr. and Reichard. That same lawyer three years later played a similar role in the creation of Hometown International and later securities filings for that company.

SEC records show that the accounting firm involved during the registration of the Europa Acquisition shell companies was an earlier incarnation of a Florida-based firm that handled accounting work for Hometown International.

The Florida firm itself was censured last year by an accounting oversight board last year for lack of oversight in work for a company that is not connected to either the deli owner or to the Europa shell companies.

CNBC last week obtained from the Raleigh, North Carolina, Police Department a record of Coker Sr.’s arrest on April 30, 2010, on a charge of soliciting a prostitute, who herself was arrested that day.

That arrest came nearly 18 years after Coker Sr. was reportedly arrested in Allentown, Pennsylvania — where he had been a high school basketball star — on prostitution and other charges. The Morning Call newspaper at the time reported that the then-49-year-old Coker was nabbed by police after allegedly exposing himself to three girls, one as young as 10 years old, and trying to proposition them.

Peter Lee Coker mugshot from the Raleigh/Wake City-County Bureau of Identification (CCBI).

Source: Raleigh/Wake City-County Bureau of Identification

“Yes,” Coker Sr. said when he answered his phone Monday and told that a reporter was calling.

“Thanks, but no,” he said when told that CNBC was preparing to publish another article about him. He then hung up after a reporter asked if he would listen to details of that article.

Coker, 78, previously was accused in lawsuits of hiding assets from a bank that he owed nearly $900,000, and also sued for business-related fraud. He has denied those allegations at the time of the lawsuits.

The 64-year-old Reichard, who was sued along with Coker Sr. in 2019 in a now-settled case regarding alleged business fraud involving a specialty foods retailer in North Carolina, did not return repeated requests for comment. His lawyer in the lawsuit had denied the plaintiff’s claims of wrongdoing at the time the case was filed.

In late 2011, Reichard was convicted in North Carolina court of a criminal scheme that illegally contributed thousands of dollars to the successful campaign of Bev Perdue, a Democrat, for governor of that state in 2008. The scheme involved the use of bogus consulting contracts with Tryon Capital, a firm controlled by Reichard and Coker Sr. The elder Coker was not charged in that case.

Tryon Capital is the same firm that until last month was being paid $15,000 a month by Hometown International for a consulting agreement, and $2,500 per month by E-Waste for a similar agreement.

In financial filings, Hometown International and E-Waste have indicated that they are marketing themselves as candidates for reverse mergers or other financial maneuvers, which would have them effectively taken over by a private company that wants to become publicly traded in the United States.

Shell game

Investments by outside entities in the past year, including ones linked to Duke and Vanderbilt that were placed by a Hong Kong-based investment firm, in both companies were meant to bolster that effort.

But the investments do not explain the bizarre steep rise of share prices of both Hometown International and E-Waste in the past year, particularly since E-Waste has no actual business.

Both stocks are thinly traded, at best, each day. They also, despite having millions of common stock shares outstanding, have relatively few shareholders, the largest of which are entities involved in the plan to have the companies merge with other firms.

If that plan is successful, shareholders are expected to receive a return on their investment that bears little, if any, resemblance to the current share prices of either company.

All of those facts raise the question of why anyone would pay so much now to buy shares of the companies on the open market.

Adding to the oddness is the fact that the CEO of the deli owner, 62-year-old Paul Morina, is the principal of Paulsboro High School, and the head coach of the school’s renowned wrestling team. The only other executive is Christine Lindemuth, 46, an administrator and a teacher at the same high school, which is close to the deli.

Paulsboro coach Paul Morina cheers on George Worthy as he takes on Bergen Catholic s Wade Unger in the 152-pound bout during a wrestling match at The Palestra in Philadelphia,

Joe Warner | USAToday

E-Waste’s only executive, 66-year-old New Jersey resident John Rollo, is a Grammy-winning music recording engineer who last year worked as a patient transporter at a New Jersey hospital.

The eight Europa Acquisition shell companies themselves were set up by Reichard and Coker Sr. as so-called blank check companies to become vehicles for transactions like those being sought by Hometown International and E-Waste according to SEC filings.

Several of the shells actually ended up being used for that purpose, in transactions that ended with them being controlled by China-based companies.

Those filings show that Europa Acquisition I was incorporated in Nevada in June 2010, and a month later filed a registration of securities with the SEC, as did four other Europa shells.

The three highest-numbered Europa shells were registered with the SEC in December 2010.

In 2020, Gregg Jaclin, the lawyer named on the Europa Acquisition company filings, pleaded guilty to federal criminal charges related to his creation of shell companies to sell to individuals “who use those shell companies as publicly traded vehicles for market manipulation schemes,” court records show.

None of the companies involved in that scheme were the Europa Acquisition shells.

Nor were they Hometown International, whose first SEC filings lists Jaclin as a lawyer for that corporation.

Jaclin, who was disbarred as a lawyer and sanctioned by the SEC for his actions, did not return requests for comment.

The Schwartz story

The July 2010 registration filing for Europa Acquisition I said that Reichard, who served as its president and director, held 60,000 shares of the company, while Coker Sr. held the remaining 40,000 shares.

That share split between the business partners was mirrored in other initial filings by Europa shells.

Less than three months later, Reichard and Coker sold all of their shares for $15,000 to two companies, Beige Holdings and Marlin Financial Group, filings show.

One of Schwartz’s sons, Gregory, then was appointed as president of Europa Acquisition I, filings state.

Then, in January 2011, Allan Schwartz himself paid $18,750 for 90%, or 90,000 shares, of the company, while Beige Holdings retained 10,000 shares.

“I had no doubt that I bought a quiet, clean shell company,” Allan Schwartz said in a phone interview.

Schwartz said that he purchased Europa Acquisition I — his first and only shell company — “with the hope that we could do something with it,” along the lines of a merger with a small company and possibly an additional issuance of stock.

But, he noted, “it never did anything,” after several years of Schwartz paying thousands of dollars annually to maintain the existence of the company, which at some point he had renamed Wintahenderson International.

“At a certain point, I said that’s the end of it,” recalled Schwartz. “We just let the company go out of business.”

Wintahenderson last filed a required quarterly report with the SEC in 2017, according to the regulator’s online database.

Last September, the SEC revoked Wintahenderson’s registration for failing to file required periodic reports. The SEC had taken similar action for the same reason against most of the other Europa Acquisition shells years earlier.

Working for Trump

Schwartz currently is senior counsel and senior managing partner at the Manhattan firm of Podell, Schwartz, Schecter & Banfield, which represents property owners seeking to reduce their property taxes.

Schwartz’s current firm, which is a leader in real-estate tax work, merged in 1997 with his prior firm, Schwartz & Weiss.

“At one point in time our firm did represent Trump, but that’s going back 27 years or more,” Schwartz said.

“I don’t think I represented Trump for more than two, three years,” Schwartz said. “I think I met him once in his office at Trump Tower … 99% of the time I was dealing with someone in his office.”

At some point, Schwartz said, Trump “switched real estate tax attorneys.”

“Sometimes clients choose to go with another firm,” Schwartz said. “Maybe he wasn’t happy, and he changes lawyers.”

Schwartz said that decades ago a former New York City tax assessor and city Tax Commission hearing officer named Thomas McArdle may have done some work for his law firm after becoming a consultant.

But Schwartz said that he had “zero recollection” of McArdle performing any work in connection with Trump’s properties for Schwartz’s firm

In 2002, The New York Times reported that McArdle was a key figure in a federal indictment filed against 18 other then-current and former city tax assessors, who were charged in a decades-long scheme with accepting millions of dollars of bribes in exchange for lowering property taxes for commercial property owners.

Prosecutors said at the time that the scheme had cost New York City $160 million in lost tax revenue during the prior four years alone.

McArdle, who died in 2013, was never charged in that case but was identified in news reports as a cooperating witness in the investigation.

In a 2002 Times article, Schwartz’s then-lawyer, Benjamin Brafman, acknowledged that Schwartz had worked for Trump in the past, but added that “it did not involve Mr. McArdle, to our knowledge.”

”McArdle was an industrywide consultant who was used by the most prominent and well-respected law firms and real estate firms in the city,” Brafman said at the time. Brafman also said Schwartz was “not aware of any wrongdoing by McArdle” or anyone else.

The Times reported at the time that Trump told the newspaper that “he stopped using Mr. Schwartz in the early 1990s because he seemed ineffectual.”

Jason Miller, a spokesman for Trump, did not return a request for comment from CNBC.

Echoes of scandals past

Schwartz on Monday told CNBC that he was aware nearly two decades ago that “there was a scandal” around McArdle. But he also said that he was not personally aware of any wrongdoing by McArdle in connection with his work for Schwartz’s firm.

In March 2020, an article by ProPublica and WNYC radio reported that five former city tax assessors and city employees, as well as a former Trump Organization employee, had said that the Trump Organization paid bribes, using middlemen to city tax assessors to lower its property tax bills for several Manhattan buildings in the 1980s and 1990s.

The city employees interviewed for that article were among those 18 who all pleaded guilty in the scheme said to involve McArdle.

CNBC has reached out for comment to the Trump Organization.

Last year, the Trump Organization’s chief legal officer, Alan Garten, denied the allegations. “To be clear, at no time did the Trump Organization or any of its employees or principals ever pay anyone for the purpose of unlawfully obtaining a lower tax valuation,” he told ProPublica and WNYC for their article.

“This was corroborated by multiple investigations which found no evidence of any wrongdoing by the company or any of its principals. … If anything, the Trump Organization was a victim of the scandal,” Garten said.

Trump and his company currently are the subjects of a criminal investigation by Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr.

Vance’s office among other things is eyeing allegations that the Trump Organization manipulated the valuation of certain real estate properties to lower their tax bill and insurance costs, and to receive more favorable terms from lenders.

New York State Attorney General Letitia James is conducting a civil investigation of the Trump Organization that is focused on those same allegations. The claims were first raised during testimony to Congress in 2019 by Michael Cohen, Trump’s former personal lawyer, who is cooperating with Vance’s investigation.

Trump, a Republican, has denied any wrongdoing and also has claimed that both investigations are “witch hunts” by Vance and James, both of whom are Democrats.

Among the Trump properties being eyed in both probes is 40 Wall Street, a skyscraper in lower Manhattan.

Schwartz said that he represented the owners of 40 Wall Street before it was sold to Trump. He also said that he never represented Trump in connection with that building.

The lawyer said that no one from either Vance’s or James’ office has contacted him to ask about his work for Trump.

Schwartz said he has no reason to believe that Trump or his company misstated the incomes of their properties in their appeals of city assessment rulings, which if successful led to a reduction in tax liabilities.

He noted that property owners “must submit certified statements of income and expenses on their tax commission forms.”

“That’s the basis on which real estate attorneys argue” for lower assessments, he said.

“Do I think he submitted phony statements?” Schwartz added. “I would suspect no, but I have no idea. I don’t know, nor would I have any reason to suspect that he did.”

Schwartz was bemused and spoke matter-of-factly about his link to Trump.

“I can’t dispute the facts, but it’s funny that there are so many facts that are related to each other,” Schwartz said. “Everything that you discussed is in the public record.”

He added: “Of all the characters you’ve mentioned, the only one I can tell you that I knew was Trump, for a short period of time. And McArdle.”

In addition to having worked for Trump, Schwartz at one point had an office in the Villard Houses in Manhattan, a historic landmark owned by the Sultan of Brunei, on land leased from the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York.

Schwartz’s office there was one floor below the office of the mysterious money manager Jeffrey Epstein, a convicted sex criminal who killed himself in 2019 while in a Manhattan jail awaiting trial on federal child sex trafficking charges.

Epstein was a former friend of Trump’s, as well as of another former president, Bill Clinton.

“Never met him,” Schwartz said of Epstein. “I never saw him in the building.”

Categories
Politics

Trump Nonetheless Has Iron Grip on Republicans

Trump Still Has Iron Grip on Republicans

Donald J. Trump, who was banned from Facebook, stranded in Mar-a-Lago and mocked for an amateurish new website, went largely out of sight this week. However, the Republican Party’s surrender to the former president has become clearer than ever, as has the damage to American politics he has caused by his lie that his election was stolen.

In Washington, Republicans moved to remove Representative Liz Cheney from her leadership position in the House of Representatives. This was punishment for denouncing Trump’s false claims of electoral fraud as a threat to democracy. Florida and Texas lawmakers have taken sweeping new measures that would restrict voting and reiterated Mr Trump and his allies’ fictional narrative that the electoral system had been rigged against him. And in Arizona, the state Republican Party began a bizarre November election results review looking for traces of bamboo in last year’s polls.

The tumultuous dramas clearly demonstrated the extent to which, six months after the elections, the nation is still grappling with the aftermath of an attack by a lost presidential candidate on a fundamental principle of American democracy: that the nation’s elections are legitimate.

They also provided clear evidence that the former president not only managed to quell dissent within his party, but also persuaded most of the GOP to make a gigantic bet: the surest way to regain power is by his Accepting combative style, racial divisions and acceptance Beyond the pale conspiracy theories, rather than wooing the suburban swing voters who are costing the party the White House and who may be following substantial policies on the pandemic, the economy and other issues search.

Loyalty to the former president persists despite his role in inciting his supporters prior to the January 6 uprising at the Capitol, with his supporters either ignoring, redefining, or in some cases tacitly accepting the deadly attack on Congress.

“We’re just so far from any reasonable construction,” said Barbara Comstock, a longtime party official who was swept out of her Virginia suburb of Congressional headquarters in the 2018 medium-term backlash against Mr. Trump. “It’s a real disease that infects the party on all levels. We’re just going to say that black is now white. “

Yet while Republicans wrap themselves in the fantasy of a stolen election, Democrats are entrenched in the day-to-day business of running a nation still struggling to get out of a deadly pandemic.

Strategists from both parties say that a mismatched dynamic – two parties operating in two different realities – is likely to determine politics in the country for years to come.

At the same time, President Biden faces a bigger challenge: what to do with that large part of the public who questions its legitimacy and a Republican party that is wooing support for this segment by putting forward bills that restrict voting and, possibly, confidence in them Would further undermine the future? Elections.

A CNN poll released last week found that nearly a third of Americans, including 70 percent Republicans, said Mr Biden did not legitimately win enough votes to win the presidency.

White House advisors say Mr Biden believes the best way to restore confidence in the democratic process is to show that the government can provide tangible benefits to voters – whether vaccines or stimulus measures.

Dan Sena, a Democratic strategist who oversaw the Democratic Campaigns Committee’s strategy to win the house during the recent midterm elections, said the Republican focus on cultural issues like bans on transgender athletes was a “win-win” situation for his party. Many Democrats will only face scatter-shot attacks on their agenda as they continue to stand up against the polarizing rhetoric of Mr. Trump, which helped the party flip suburban swing districts in 2018 and 2020.

“I would much rather have a record of my side by side with the Americans in recovery,” said Sena. “What story does the American public want to hear – what have Democrats done to get the country moving again, or Donald Trump and his culture war?”

Mr Biden predicted during the election campaign that if Mr Trump were gone, Republicans would have a “revelation” and be back to the party he knew during his decades in the Senate. When asked about Republicans this week, Mr Biden complained that he no longer understood them and seemed a little baffled by the “mini-revolution” within their ranks.

“I think Republicans are further from figuring out who they are and what they stand for than I thought they’d be at that point,” he said.

But for much of the past week, Republicans have been vividly portraying exactly what they stand for now: Trumpism. Many have adopted his approach of paying homage to white grievances with racist utterances, and Republican-led legislatures across the country are imposing restrictions that would restrict electoral access in ways that disproportionately affect color voters.

There are also high-level electoral considerations. With his highly polarizing style, Mr Trump motivated his grassroots and critics alike and urged both parties to register the turnout in the 2020 election. His total of 74 million votes was the second highest ever, after just 81 million from Mr Biden, and Mr Trump has demonstrated the ability to turn his political supporters against any Republican who opposes him.

That convinced Republicans they had to show unwavering loyalty to a late president in order to keep the voters he won.

“I would just say to my Republican colleagues, can we move forward without President Trump? The answer is no, ”Senator Lindsey Graham said in an interview with Fox News this week. “I’ve found that we can’t grow without him.”

In some ways, the former president is downsized more than ever. Defeated in the polls, he spends his time at his Florida resort playing golf and entertaining visitors. He is missing the presidency bullying pulpit, has been banned from Twitter and was unable to restore his account from Facebook this week. He left with an approval rating of less than 40 percent, the lowest final rating for the first term of president since Jimmy Carter.

Still, its dominance over Republicans is reflected in everything from Congress to the state houses. Local and federal lawmakers who have urged their party to accept the election results, and with them the loss of Mr Trump, have faced a steady drumbeat of criticism and primary challenges. Those threats seem to be having an impact: the small number of Republican officials who have been critical of Mr Trump in the past, including the ten who voted for his impeachment in February, was largely silent this week, declining interview requests and offering little public support for Mrs. Cheney.

Her likely successor, Rep Elise Stefanik, has publicly applied for the post and has sought to establish her Trump as bona fide by giving credibility to his baseless allegations of electoral fraud in interviews with die-hard supporters of the former president.

The focus on the elections has displaced almost any discussion of politics or party orthodoxy. The Heritage Action Scorecard, which is used to rate lawmakers based on their conservative voting results, earned Ms. Cheney a lifetime score of 82 percent. Ms. Stefanik, who has a more moderate vote, but is a much louder supporter of the former president, scored 52 percent.

Ms. Stefanik and many other Republican leaders are betting that the way to maintain Trump-era election wins is to bolster their base with populist politics, which is central to the president’s brand, even if it is swing- Fending off voters.

After months of feeding lies the conservative news media about the elections, much of the party has come to believe them to be true.

Sarah Longwell, a Republican strategist who has led focus groups of Trump voters for years, said she had found an increased openness since the election to what she calls “QAnon curious,” a willingness to share conspiracy theories about stolen elections and a deep one to entertain state. “Many of these grassroots voters live in a nihilism for the truth, where you don’t believe in anything and think anything could be wrong,” said Ms. Longwell, who spoke out against Mr. Trump.

Some Republican strategists fear the party will have no opportunity to attack Mr Biden, who has proposed the most comprehensive spending and tax plans in generations.

“Republicans need to get back to the kitchen table issues that voters really care about, sprinkling a bit of culture here and there but not getting carried away,” said Scott Reed, a seasoned Republican strategist who helped create this last election has to destroy right-wing populists. “And some of them make an industry out of getting carried away.”

While sticking with Mr. Trump could help the party increase voter turnout in its base, Republicans like Ms. Comstock argue that such a strategy will harm the party with key demographics, including younger voters, color voters, women and suburbanites.

Intraparty battles are already cropping up in the emerging primaries as candidates accuse each other of infidelity to the former president. Many party leaders fear that doing so could result in die-hard candidates coming out victorious and eventually losing parliamentary elections in conservative states, where Republicans like Missouri and Ohio were supposed to gain the upper hand.

“To declare Trump the winner of a shrinking minority, this is not an area you want to go to,” said Ms. Comstock. “The future of the party will not be for a 70-year-old man in Mar-a-Lago to speak in the mirror and all these sycophants to come down and levitate to get his approval.”

However, those who have objected to Mr. Trump and paid the price say there is little political incentive to tackle the flood. Criticizing Mr. Trump, or even defending those who do so, can leave elected officials in a kind of political no man’s land: viewed as treasonable to Republican voters, but still too conservative on other issues to be accepted by Democrats and Independents .

“It seems like it’s getting harder and harder for people to go down the stump and defend someone like Liz Cheney or Mitt Romney,” said former Senator Jeff Flake, who endorsed Mr Biden and was censored by the Arizona Republican Party during one this year Panel appearance at Harvard this week. “About 70 percent of Republicans likely genuinely believe the election was stolen, and that is debilitating. It’s really.”

Categories
Business

The Inventory Market Loves Biden Extra Than Trump. So Far, at Least.

The Stock Market Loves Biden More Than Trump. So Far, at Least.

From the moment he was elected president in 2016 through his failed re-election campaign, Donald J. Trump cited the stock market as a report on the presidency.

The market loved him, said Mr Trump, and he hated Democrats, especially his opponent Joseph R. Biden Jr. During the presidential debate in October, Mr Trump warned of Mr Biden: “If he is elected, the market will collapse. ”In a variety of situations, he said that Democrats would be a disaster and that a victory would create“ a depression ”for them that would“ crumble ”the stock market.

So far it has not happened that way.

To the extent that the Dow Jones industrial average measures the stock market’s affection for a president, its early report states that the market loves President Biden’s first terms far more than President Trump’s.

Mr. Biden would get an A for this early period; Mr Trump would get a B for market performance in his early days as president, though he would get a higher grade for much of the rest of the term in office.

From election day to Thursday, the Dow rose 26 percent from 14 percent over the same period four years ago. Given the signs that the United States is making a swift recovery from the pandemic, the early returnees for Mr Biden’s actual tenure have also been exceptional. The rise in the stock market from its inauguration day close to Thursday’s close was the best start to a presidency since that of another Democrat, Lyndon B. Johnson.

For those too young to remember the terrible day of November 22, 1963, Johnson, the vice president, was sworn in as president that afternoon after President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas. If we measure the performance of the stock markets from the end of the day they all took office, we can include both Johnson and Theodore Roosevelt, who became president on September 14, 1901 after President William McKinley died of gunshot wounds.

The Republican Party has long claimed that it is the party of business and that Republican rule is better for stocks. However, historical record shows that the market has generally performed better under Democratic presidents since the beginning of the 20th century.

Overall, the market ranks third for all presidents during a comparable term since 1901 under President Biden. This comes from a balance sheet by Paul Hickey, co-founder of the Bespoke Investment Group, until Thursday (109th day of the Biden administration).

These are the top performers:

  • Franklin D. Roosevelt, inaugurated March 4, 1933: 78.1 percent.

  • Johnson, inaugurated November 22, 1963: 13.8 percent.

  • Mr. Biden, inaugurated on January 20, 2021: 10.8 percent.

  • William H. Taft, inaugurated March 4, 1909: 9.6 percent.

Note that three of the top four – Roosevelt, Johnson, and Mr. Biden – were Democrats. That fits an obvious pattern. Since 1900, the average stock market profit for Democrats at the beginning of their presidency has been 7.9 percent; for Republicans only 2.7 percent.

In contrast, the Dow rose 5.8 percent in Mr. Trump’s early days as president. That was a strong return for a Republican, but not quite able to sniff for a Democrat.

Updated

May 8, 2021, 12:17 p.m. ET

Now look at longer-term returns – how the Dow performed over the course of all presidencies from 1901 onwards. Again, the market fared better among Democrats, with an annual gain of 6.7 percent compared to 3.5 percent among Republicans.

With this metric, the Trump administration looks much better and ranks fourth among all presidencies.

These are the annualized returns for the senior presidents:

  • 25.5 percent under Calvin Coolidge, a Republican, in the twenties.

  • 15.9 percent under Bill Clinton, a Democrat.

  • 12.1 percent under Barack Obama, a Democrat.

  • 12.0 percent under President Trump.

That’s an extraordinarily good market performance under Mr. Trump if you remember that it includes the stock market collapse in late February and March last year when the world was hit by the coronavirus.

The market rebounded quickly when the Federal Reserve stepped in on March 23, 2020 and responded to the emergency relief programs passed by Congress. But neither the market, nor the economy, or the pandemic improved enough in 2020 to win President Trump for another term.

President Biden is undoubtedly benefiting from the uptrend in the economy and markets that began under his predecessor – just as President Trump benefited from the growing economy that President Obama left him with.

It doesn’t always work that way. In the Great Depression, the market roared for Franklin Roosevelt’s first 100 days. It offered a hopeful contrast – and a stark break – from its immediate predecessor Herbert Hoover, who led the worst stock market crash in modern history at the time. During Hoover’s four-year tenure, the Dow lost 35.6 percent on an annualized basis, by far the worst performing by any president.

The recent boom in the market can easily be explained. Back in July, I quoted an investment analysis that suggested that the stock market could do reasonably well in a Biden presidency, despite claims to the contrary by Mr Trump. These factors included more forceful and efficient management of the coronavirus crisis, which would fuel economic recovery and corporate profits. generous fiscal stimulus programs with the possibility of building a colossal infrastructure; Return to international engagement while reducing trade friction; and a renewal of America’s global commitments to climate change.

So far this analysis has continued. But will it produce strong returns from the Biden government?

I have no idea. Unfortunately, nothing tells us where the stock market is going. All we know is that in the long run it has risen more than it has fallen, but has moved fairly randomly day in and day out and has sometimes fallen into long falls. Another decline could happen at any time, regardless of what a president does.

The only approach to investing that I would actively use is passive: use inexpensive equity and bond index funds to build a well-diversified portfolio and stay long-term. And I would try to ignore the admonitions from politicians, especially those who would tie their own voting power to the performance of the stock market.

Categories
Politics

F.E.C. Drops Case Reviewing Trump Hush-Cash Funds to Girls

F.E.C. Drops Case Reviewing Trump Hush-Money Payments to Women

The Federal Election Commission said Thursday that it passed a case investigating whether former President Donald J. Trump had violated the electoral law with a payment of $ 130,000 just before the 2016 election to become a porn actress had officially dropped his attorney at the time. Michael D. Cohen.

The payment was never reported in Mr Trump’s campaign submissions. Mr Cohen would go on to say that Mr Trump directed him to arrange payments to two women during the 2016 race and apologized for his involvement in a hush money scandal. Mr. Cohen was sentenced to prison for violating campaign finance laws, tax evasion and lying by Congress.

“It was my own weakness and a blind loyalty to this man that led me to choose a path of darkness over light,” said Mr. Cohen in 2018 in court about Mr. Trump.

While Mr. Cohen was in jail, Mr. Trump had no legal ramifications for the payment.

“The hush money was paid on instructions and in favor of Donald J. Trump,” Cohen said in a statement to the New York Times. “Like me, Trump should have been found guilty. How the FEC committee could decide otherwise is confusing. “

In December 2020, the FEC published an internal report from its Office of General Counsel on how to proceed with its review. The office said it had “reason to believe” that campaign finance violations were “knowingly and willfully” committed by the Trump campaign.

However, the electoral commission, which was split evenly between three Republicans and three Democrat-minded commissioners, declined to attend a closed session in February. Two Republican commissioners voted to reject the case, while two Democratic commissioners voted to move forward. There was an absence and a republican rejection.

This decision was announced on Thursday.

Two of the FEC’s Democratic commissioners, Shana Broussard, the current chair, and Ellen Weintraub, declined not to pursue the case after agency staff recommended further investigation.

“To conclude that a payment made 13 days prior to election day to cover up a suddenly newsworthy 10-year story was not campaign related without even conducting an investigation is contrary to reality,” they wrote in a letter.

Republican Commissioners Trey Trainor and Sean Cooksey, who voted not to investigate, said the prosecution of the case was “not the best use of the agency’s resources”, that “the public record is already complete” and that Mr Cohen Have already done so was punished.

“We voted to reject these matters as an exercise of our prosecutor’s discretion,” wrote Cooksey and Trainor.

A spokesman for Mr Trump did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The Cohen case caught public attention in 2018 after the FBI searched his office, apartment and hotel room and picked up boxes of documents, cell phones and computers. Months later, Mr. Cohen pleaded guilty to campaign funding violations, among other things.

He said in court that he arranged payments – including $ 130,000 to film actress Stormy Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford – “primarily for the purpose of influencing the election.”

The payment was well above the legal limit for individual presidential contributions, which was then $ 2,700.

Mr. Cohen went on to say he arranged a payment of $ 150,000 through American Media Inc. to Karen McDougal, a former Playboy playmate, in early 2016.

Mr Cohen later turned on Mr Trump and wrote his own book about how he acted as a businessman as the ex-president’s enforcer. The book was called “Disloyal: A Memoir”.

Categories
Politics

Rep. Liz Cheney urges Republicans to reject Trump ‘cult of character’

Rep. Liz Cheney urges Republicans to reject Trump 'cult of personality'

Republican Conference Chair Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., Speaks during a press conference following a House Republican meeting in Washington on Tuesday, April 20, 2021.

Caroline Brehman | CQ Appeal, Inc. | Getty Images

The GOP must “turn away from the dangerous and anti-democratic Trump personality cult,” argued Rep. Liz Cheney, the No. 3 Republican in the house, on Wednesday.

“The Republican Party is at a turning point and Republicans have to choose whether to vote for truth and allegiance to the Constitution,” Cheney wrote in the Washington Post.

The Cheney clear-up call came as a flurry of House Republicans, including Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy and Minority Whip Steve Scalise, saying they are done with serving as Chair of the House Republican Conference.

CNBC policy

Read more about CNBC’s political coverage:

But in the statement, Wyoming’s Cheney appeared to be addressing concerns about her status in the party.

“History is watching. Our children are watching. We must be brave enough to defend the fundamental principles that underpin and protect our freedom and our democratic process. I am determined to do so regardless of the short-term political consequences.” Cheney wrote.

Cheney was the only member of the Republican leadership to vote for the impeachment of former President Donald Trump following the January 6th invasion of the Capitol by a crowd of his supporters. Trump “called this mob, gathered the mob and lit the flame of this attack,” Cheney said at the time.

Trump was acquitted in the Senate for instigating a riot.

Since Trump left office, Cheney has set himself apart from many of her Republican counterparts in her willingness to continue speaking out against Trump, who continues to falsely insist on beating President Joe Biden and spreading unsubstantiated conspiracy theories about widespread electoral fraud.

On Tuesday, McCarthy reportedly said of Cheney, “I’ve had it with her. You know, I’ve lost confidence.” A Scalise spokeswoman said the whip had pledged its support to Rep. Elise Stefanik, RN.Y., who emerged as a passionate defender of Trump during his first impeachment.

Trump and other Republicans also supported Stefanik.

Cheney’s comment claimed that it was not enough to simply look away from Trump’s unsubstantiated election claims.

“Trump is trying to unravel critical elements of our constitutional structure that make democracy work – confidence in the outcome of elections and the rule of law. No other American president has ever done this,” Cheney said.

“While accepting or ignoring Trump’s statements may seem attractive to some for fundraising and political causes, this approach will cause profound damage to our party and our country in the long term,” she wrote.

She noted that after the attack on the Capitol, McCarthy said Trump “was responsible” for the attack and “should have denounced the mob as soon as he saw what was going on”.

McCarthy has now “changed his story,” said Cheney.

Cheney rejected Trump’s persistent claims about a “rigged” election that cast doubt on US institutions. “This is immensely harmful as we are now on the world stage against communist China and its claims that democracy is a failed system,” she wrote.

Republicans, Cheney said, should support the Justice Department’s ongoing investigation into the Jan. 6 invasion. More than 400 people are now charged with the attack.

The GOP should also support a “parallel bipartisan review” of the invasion “by a summoning commission to seek and find facts,” she said.

After all, Republicans must “stand up for truly conservative principles and turn away from the dangerous and anti-democratic Trump personality cult,” Cheney said.

Citing the memory of former President Ronald Reagan, a Republican icon, she said he had “formed a broad coalition from across the political spectrum to bring America back to its senses, and we must do the same now”.

“But that will not happen if Republicans choose to abandon the rule of law and join Trump’s crusade to undermine the foundation of our democracy and reverse the legal outcome of the last election,” she said.

Read the full comment The Washington Post.

Categories
Business

Trump Ban From Fb Upheld by Oversight Board

Trump Ban From Facebook Upheld by Oversight Board

SAN FRANCISCO – A Facebook-appointed panel of journalists, activists and lawyers confirmed the social network’s ban on former President Donald J. Trump on Wednesday, ending any immediate return of Mr Trump to mainstream social media and renewing one Debate on the technical power of the Internet speech.

Facebook’s oversight board, which acts as the court for the company’s substantive decisions, ruled that the social network rightly banned Mr. Trump after the Washington uprising in January, saying that he had “created an environment in which to serious risk of violence is possible. ” The panel said the persistent risk “justified” the move.

The board has also thrown the case back on Facebook and its top executives. An indefinite suspension was “not appropriate” as it was not a punishment set out in Facebook’s policies and the company should apply a standard punishment such as a temporary suspension or a permanent ban. The board gave Facebook six months to make a final decision on Mr Trump’s account status.

“Our only job is to hold this extremely powerful organization, Facebook. accountable, ”Michael McConnell, co-chair of the Oversight Board, told reporters on a call. Mr. Trump’s ban “did not meet these standards,” he said.

The decision makes it difficult for Mr Trump to re-enter mainstream social media, a major source of clout that he used during his years in the White House to directly appease his tens of millions of followers, take advantage of their abuses, set guidelines and criticize opponents. Twitter and YouTube also cut Mr Trump off after the Capitol uprising in January, saying the risk and potential for violence he created was too great.

While Mr Trump’s Facebook account remains banned, he may be able to return to the social network once the company reviews its actions. Mr Trump still has a tremendous influence on Republicans, and his false claims of a stolen election continue to be mirrored. On Wednesday, House Republican leaders moved to expel Wyoming Representative Liz Cheney for criticizing Mr. Trump and his election lies.

In a statement, Mr. Trump did not directly address the board’s decision. But he slammed Facebook, Google, and Twitter – some of which were important fundraising platforms for him – and called them corrupt.

“The President of the United States has been denied freedom of speech because radical left-wing madmen are afraid of the truth,” he said.

Mr. Trump’s continued Facebook suspension gave new fuel to the platforms for Republicans who have accused social media companies of suppressing conservative voices. Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Facebook, testified several times in Congress whether the social network had shown bias towards conservative political views. He denied it.

Senator Marsha Blackburn, Republican from Tennessee, said the decision was made by the Facebook board “extremely disappointing ”and it was“ clear that Mark Zuckerberg sees himself as the arbiter of freedom of speech ”. And Ohio Republican Rep. Jim Jordan said Facebook, which is under antitrust scrutiny, should be disbanded.

Democrats were unhappy too. Frank Pallone, chairman of the House’s Energy and Trade Committee, tweeted, “Donald Trump has played a huge role in spreading disinformation on Facebook, but whether he’s on the platform or not, Facebook and other social media platforms do too The same business model will find ways to highlight divisive content in order to generate ad revenue. “

The decision underscored the power of tech companies to determine who can say what online. While Mr. Zuckerberg has said that he doesn’t want his company to be “the arbiter of truth” in social discourse, Facebook has become increasingly active on the type of content it allows. To prevent the spread of misinformation, the company has been cracking down on QAnon conspiracy theories, polling loopholes, and anti-vaccination content for the past few months before Trump’s lockdown in January.

“This case has dramatic implications for the future of online language as the public and other platforms examine how the Board of Directors will deal with a difficult controversy that will recur around the world,” said Nate Persily, professor at Stanford University Law School .

He added, “President Trump has moved the envelope beyond the allowable language on these platforms and set the outer boundaries so that if you are not willing to pursue it, you will allow a great deal of incitement and hate speech and disinformation online others will spread. “

In a statement, Facebook said it was “pleased” that the board recognized that Mr Trump’s January lockdown was warranted. It said it would examine the judgment and “determine an act that is clear and proportionate”.

The case of Mr Trump is the most prominent one that the Facebook Oversight Board, conceived in 2018, has dealt with. The board, made up of 20 journalists, activists and former politicians, reviews and evaluates the company’s most controversial decisions regarding the moderation of content. Mr. Zuckerberg has repeatedly referred to it as the “Facebook Supreme Court”.

Although positioned as independent, the body was founded and funded by Facebook and has no legal or enforcement agency. Critics were skeptical of the board’s autonomy, saying it gave Facebook the ability to make tough decisions.

Each of his cases is decided by a five-person panel chosen from the 20 members of the Board of Directors, one of whom must be from the country from which the case originates. The committee examines the comments on the case and makes recommendations to the entire board, which decides with a majority of votes. After a decision is made, Facebook has seven days to respond to the board’s decision.

Since the board began issuing decisions in January, it has overturned Facebook’s decisions in four of the five cases it examined. In one case, the board asked Facebook to restore a post in which Joseph Goebbels, the Nazis’ head of propaganda, made a reference to the Trump presidency. Facebook had previously removed the post for “promoting dangerous people,” but it was in line with the board’s decision.

In another case, the board ruled that Facebook had gone too far by removing a post from a French user who falsely suggested that the drug hydroxychloroquine could be used to cure Covid-19. Facebook restored the post but also said it would continue to remove the wrong information, as directed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the World Health Organization.

In Trump’s case, Facebook also asked the board for recommendations on how to deal with the accounts of political leaders. On Wednesday, the board suggested that the company publicly explain when it would apply special rules for influential people, although it should set specific deadlines in doing so. The board also said Facebook should clarify its strike and punishment process and develop and publish a policy regulating responses to crises or novel situations in which its regular processes would not prevent impending harm.

“Facebook was clearly abused by influential users,” said Helle Thorning-Schmidt, co-chair of the Oversight Board.

Facebook doesn’t have to accept these recommendations, but has said it will “examine them carefully”.

For Mr. Trump, Facebook has long been a place to gather his digital base and support other Republicans. He was followed by more than 32 million people on Facebook, although this was far fewer than the 88 million+ followers he had on Twitter.

Over the years, Mr. Trump and Mr. Zuckerberg had an irritable relationship. Mr Trump regularly attacked Silicon Valley executives for suppressing conservative language. He also threatened to revoke Section 230, a legal shield protecting companies like Facebook from liability for what users post.

Mr Zuckerberg on occasion criticized some of Mr Trump’s policies, including how to deal with the pandemic and immigration. But as calls from lawmakers, civil rights activists, and even Facebook’s own staff increased to contain Mr Trump on social media, Mr Zuckerberg declined to act. He said the speeches given by political leaders, even if they are telling lies, were timely and in the public interest.

The two men appeared cordial at occasional meetings in Washington. Mr Zuckerberg visited the White House more than once and dined privately with Mr Trump.

The courtesy ended on January 6th. Hours before his supporters stormed the Capitol, Mr Trump used Facebook and other social media to cast doubts on the results of the presidential election he lost to Joseph R. Biden Jr. Trump wrote on Facebook, “Our country has had enough, them will not take it anymore! “

Less than 24 hours later, Mr Trump was banned from the platform indefinitely. While his Facebook page stayed active, she slept. His last Facebook post on January 6th read: “I ask everyone in the US Capitol to remain peaceful. No violence! “

Cecilia Kang contributed to coverage from Washington.

Categories
World News

Fb upholds Trump ban however will reassess choice over coming months

Facebook upholds Trump ban but will reassess decision over coming months

Former US President Donald Trump speaks at the Conservative Political Action Conference on February 28, 2021 in Orlando, Florida, USA.

Joe Skipper | Reuters

Facebook’s independent board of directors decided on Wednesday to uphold the company’s January decision to suspend former President Donald Trump’s Facebook and Instagram accounts.

However, the indefinite time frame for the suspension is “not appropriate”. The board has effectively relayed the decision on the length of the suspension to Facebook, stating that it insists that the company look into this matter to identify and justify an appropriate response that is in line with the rules in place for other users of its platform be valid. “”

The board asked Facebook to complete the review within six months and made suggestions on how to create clear guidelines that balance public safety and freedom of expression.

“We will now examine the decision of the board and determine a measure that is clear and proportionate,” said Facebook in a blog post after the announcement. “In the meantime, Mr. Trump’s accounts remain suspended.”

The case

Facebook blocked Trump’s accounts after the January 6 riot in the U.S. Capitol. The suspension was Facebook’s most aggressive move against Trump during his four-year tenure.

“We believe that the risk that the president can continue to use our service during this time is simply too great,” wrote Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg at the time in a post on his Facebook page.

Facebook referred the decision to its board of directors a few weeks later, saying that given the importance of the decision, “it is important for the board to review it and make an independent judgment as to whether it should be upheld”.

The decision to maintain Trump’s suspension is the most important action taken by the board of directors so far, which was initiated in October as the de facto “supreme court” for the company’s decisions on content moderation.

The Board is an independent body made up of experts in the fields of citizenship, technology, freedom of speech, journalism and human rights from around the world. A randomly selected but diverse group of five board members was selected to deliberate on the case, and the recommendation had to be approved by a majority of the entire 20-member board of directors.

Facebook had previously agreed to abide by the decisions of the board of directors, although Zuckerberg still has undisputed control over the company and the majority rule over the company’s shares.

The results of the board

The board found that Trump’s January 6th post “seriously violated” Facebook’s community standards. However, the platform “tries to evade its responsibilities” by imposing a vague penalty and then sending it to the board for review.

Trump’s statements on Facebook: “We love you. You are very special,” referring to the people who hang around the US Capitol, who rioters called “great patriots” and told them to “stay forever.” remember this day, “violated the rules of Facebook prohibiting the praise of people who are involved in violence, wrote the board of directors.

“The board noted that by maintaining an unfounded portrayal of electoral fraud and persistent calls to action, Mr Trump has created an environment where there is a serious risk of violence,” the board wrote, adding that Trump was posting his testimony there , immediate risk of harm and his words of support for those involved in the riots legitimized their violent actions. “

However, Facebook’s decision to issue the ban indefinitely was not justified, the board found, because it “did not follow a clear, published procedure.”

“By imposing a vague, standard-less penalty and then referring this case to the board for resolution, Facebook is trying to evade its responsibilities,” the board wrote. “The board rejects Facebook’s request and insists that Facebook apply and justify a defined penalty.”

Speaking to reporters after the decision, co-chair Helle Thorning-Schmidt said the group basically told Facebook that they can’t just invent new unwritten rules if they see fit. Co-chair Michael McConnell said it was far from the first time Facebook had made ad hoc rules.

The co-chairs admitted Facebook’s decision might get back to their desks, but McConnell said the decision could be easier if Facebook followed its recommendations for creating clear guidelines.

The board said that while Facebook should apply the same rules to all members, the company should consider context when assessing the harm, even if posts are made by “influential users”. It added that timeliness considerations “should not be a priority when urgent action is needed to prevent significant harm”.

Facebook should publicly explain the rules by which users are banned for specific periods of time and assess whether the risk of harm has changed before the ban is lifted, the board wrote. Still, the board said that deleting an account or page might be appropriate in certain circumstances.

Categories
Politics

Biden says not instructed upfront, Trump defends lawyer

Biden says not told in advance, Trump defends lawyer

New York police officers are investigating the building that houses former President Donald Trump’s personal attorney and former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani after the FBI issued a search warrant on Giuliani’s Manhattan apartment in New York City in April, USA, issued 28, 2021.

Tayfun Coskun | Anadolu Agency | Getty Images

President Joe Biden said he was not given advance notice of the FBI’s execution of search warrants on the home and office of Rudy Giuliani, one of former President Donald Trump’s personal lawyers.

“I give you my word, I was not informed,” Biden previously told MSNBC’s Craig Melvin in an interview that aired Thursday.

“I found out about it last night when the rest of the world found out, my word about it,” Biden said of the raids early Wednesday in which FBI agents seized electronic equipment from the former New York City Mayor and former federal attorney.

“Little did I know this was on the way.”

Biden also underlined that he had not been briefed on the Giuliani probe – which focuses on their business in Ukraine – or any other criminal investigation by the Ministry of Justice. The department is known to be investigating the tax affairs of Biden’s son Hunter.

“I made a promise not to interfere, order, or attempt to stop the Justice Department’s investigation in any way,” Biden said

Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, US President Donald Trump’s personal attorney, wipes his sweat during a press conference on the results of the 2020 US presidential election on November 19, 2020 at the headquarters of the Republican National Committee in Washington, USA from the face.

Jonathan Ernst | Reuters

“I’m not asking for information. This is the Justice Department’s independent judgment,” said the president.

Biden beat Trump for his efforts to get the Justice Department to investigate certain people and issues, and for his repeated criticism of the Department’s investigation against people connected to Trump, including his former personal attorney, Michael Cohen, his former Campaign chairman Paul Manafort and GOP agent Roger Stein.

CNBC policy

Read more about CNBC’s political coverage:

“This last administration politicized the Justice Department so heavily, so many [prosecutors]”So many left because that’s not the role – that’s not the role of a president saying who should be prosecuted, when to prosecute, who should not be prosecuted,” Biden said.

“That is not the role of the president. The Justice Department is the advocate of the people, not the advocate of the president.”

For months after Biden’s loss to Trump in the 2020 election, Giuliani falsely claimed that Biden only won because of widespread electoral fraud. Trump’s own attorney general, William Barr, said there was no evidence of such extensive fraud that resulted in Trump’s loss.

During an interview with Fox Business on Thursday, Trump condemned the raid on Giuliani’s property, calling it “a very, very unfair situation.”

“He just loves this country. And they raid his apartment, it’s so unfair and so double – like a double standard, as if I’ve never seen anyone,” said Trump.

“Rudy is a patriot who loves this country and I don’t know what they’re looking for, what they’re doing.”

Craig Melvin interviews President Joe Biden TODAY.

Source: TODAY

The investigation of Giuliani by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York – a law firm he once ran – began when Trump was president and while his hand-picked attorneys general ran the Department of Justice, which oversees U.S. law firms.

Trump himself is facing a serious criminal investigation by the Manhattan prosecutor.

The New York Times reported in December that Giuliani had spoken to then-President Trump about a preventive pardon that would have protected the attorney from federal criminal prosecution. “Not true,” Giuliani told CNBC after the report was released.

Giuliani retweeted a tweet Thursday from John Cardillo, the so-called establishment Republicans who did not publicly defend Giuliani, blew up and called them “feckless cucks”.

On Wednesday, Giuliani’s attorney Robert Costello accused the so-called “Biden Justice Department” of “corrupt double standards” harshly treating its Republican clients while investigating the alleged “blatant crimes of senior Democrats like Biden, Hunter Biden and the former secretary ignored by state Hillary Clinton.

“You didn’t see Hunter Biden’s house being searched by the FBI,” said Costello, a former senior US attorney general at SDNY. Decades ago, Costello had overseen criminal cases there using search warrants and early morning raids by FBI agents.

“This Justice Department behavior, enabled by compliant media and challenging the constitutional rights of everyone involved in or defending former President Donald J. Trump, is becoming the rule rather than the exception.”

In 2019, Giuliani made efforts to gather harmful information about Hunter Biden’s business relationships in Ukraine as part of a strategy to harm Joe Biden’s campaign for the Democratic nomination for president.

Trump was indicted later that year after pressuring the President of Ukraine to announce an investigation into the Bidens. Trump was acquitted by the GOP-controlled Senate.

Categories
Politics

Rudy Giuliani condominium searched by federal investigators in probe of Trump lawyer

Rudy Giuliani apartment searched by federal investigators in probe of Trump lawyer

Federal investigators carried out search warrants on Wednesday morning in the home and office of Rudy Giuliani in Manhattan, former New York City mayor who was former President Donald Trump’s personal attorney, NBC News reported.

The searches were part of a criminal investigation into Giuliani’s business in Ukraine, the New York Times reported on Wednesday, citing three people with knowledge of the matter.

FBI agents were taken to Giuliani’s apartment by his doorman, a source close to the former mayor told CNBC.

Outside of Rudy Giuliani’s home in New York, April 28, 2021.

And manganese | CNBC

They handed Giuliani an arrest warrant and requested “all electronic devices,” the source said.

Giuliani gave them a cell phone, iPad, and laptop, according to the source. The agents left after about 45 minutes, the source added. The arrest warrant for Giuliani’s office also authorized the seizure of electronic devices.

CNBC policy

Read more about CNBC’s political coverage:

A source told NBC that FBI agents had also executed a search warrant in the home of Republican attorney Victoria Toensing near Giuliani, near Washington.

Toensing, who is married to and works with former top Washington, DC prosecutor Joseph diGenova, represented Ukrainian oligarch Dmytro Firtash, who is himself the subject of indictment in the United States.

The source said no other arrest warrants other than those against Toensing and Giuliani were carried out on Wednesday.

The diGenova-Toensing law firm released a statement early Wednesday evening saying it was not a target in the investigation.

“Ms. Toensing is a former federal prosecutor and an official of the Ministry of Justice. She has always behaved and her legal practice according to the highest legal and ethical standards,” the statement said. “She would have liked to hand over all relevant documents. All they had to do was ask. Ms. Toensing was informed that she is NOT a target of the investigation.”

Giuliani is a retired United States attorney for the Southern District of New York, the same bureau that is investigating him.

The New York prosecutor’s office last year obtained approval from top Justice Department officials to request a search warrant for Giuliani’s electronic communications, NBC reported.

A source familiar with the investigation told NBC on Wednesday that prosecutors had sufficient grounds to obtain a search warrant late last year.

But the source said it was “just a matter of timing,” suggesting the Department of Justice – which oversees individual US law firms – may want to wait until the Trump administration ended in January.

A Giuliani attorney, Robert Costello, said authorities arrived at the Upper East Side apartment at 6 a.m. and confiscated electronic devices during the search, the Wall Street Journal reported.

The investigation is investigating possible violations of foreign lobbying rules, and the search warrant looked for communications between Giuliani and others, including conservative columnist John Solomon, Costello told The Journal.

Costello called the search “Legal Thuggery,” according to The Journal.

Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, U.S. President Donald Trump’s personal attorney, speaks in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on November 7, 2020.

Eduardo Munoz | Reuters

Giuliani tweeted Wednesday that he would be making a live statement on WABC-AM radio in New York at 3 p.m. ET. But he didn’t appear on that station as planned, and the show, hosted by Dominic Carter at the time, was discussing the Mayor’s race in New York City.

Giuliani also deleted his tweet.

In a detailed statement to NBC late Wednesday, Costello accused the Justice Department of “corrupt double standards” and compared his treatment of Giuliani to “high-ranking Democrats whose blatant crimes are ignored, such as Hilary Clinton, Hunter Biden and Joe Biden.”

Costello’s statement also alleged that the extracted materials were “loaded” with information that is protected under the rights of an attorney or client.

A Trump spokesman did not immediately respond to CNBC’s comments. The Justice Department and a spokesman for the SDNY declined to comment.

Giuliani attempted to gather harmful information about Hunter Biden in connection with the younger Biden’s business relationships in Ukraine in 2019.

Efforts by Giuliani, Trump, and others in his orbit to pressure Ukrainian officials to investigate the Bidens – or at least announce an investigation – prompted House Democrats to indict the former president for the first time. Democrats argued that Trump’s re-election ambitions sparked the dirt-seeking efforts.

The Senate, which was held by Republicans at the time, acquitted Trump.

Prosecutors in Manhattan were known to be reviewing Giuliani’s bank records in connection with an investigation into his activities in Ukraine.

Giuliani responded to the investigation last winter, claiming in an angry tweet that federal investigators were acting as “secret police” to aid Biden.

“You want to confiscate my e-mails. No reason. No wrongdoing. Attorney-client privilege.?” Giuliani tweeted on December 22nd.

The search was the second time SDNY investigators raided the property of someone who was serving as Trump’s attorney.

The first was Michael Cohen, whose office and home were raided three years ago this month.

Cohen, once a Trump loyalist, later turned on his former boss and pleaded guilty to several crimes related to the ex-president and the Trump organization. Trump and Giuliani both annoyed Cohen after his plea in November 2018.

Cohen is currently partnering with an ongoing criminal investigation into Trump and his business conducted by the Manhattan District Attorney’s office, Cyrus Vance Jr. This investigation focuses, among other things, on possible banking and insurance fraud related to Trump Organization real estate assets.

In a tweet on Wednesday, Cohen responded enthusiastically to news of the raid on Giuliani’s property.

“Here we go people !!!” Cohen tweeted.

Andrew Giuliani, the son of the former mayor and former Trump administration official, told CNN last week that he would be traveling to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida to meet with the ex-president Discuss New York gubernatorial offer.

Andrew Giuliani speaks to the press outside the home of his father Rudy Giuliani, former President Donald Trump’s personal attorney and former Mayor of New York City, after the FBI issued a search warrant in Manhattan, New York City, United States, April 28, 2021 .

Tayfun Coskun | Anadolu Agency | Getty Images

Meanwhile, in Manhattan, journalists and spectators were still gathered in front of Rudy Giuliani’s apartment building early Thursday evening when “It’s the Hard Knock Life” from the musical “Annie” was blown from a nearby car.

A passing man asked who the crowd was waiting for. “Steve Bannon,” one woman replied jokingly, referring to Trump’s former top advisor and campaign manager. Before stepping down, Trump pardoned Bannon, who had been on federal charges.

When he was told that the reporters and photographers were waiting for Giuliani, the man cracked: “Giuliani was attacked today? Over time.”

– CNBC’s Amanda Macias and Shepard Smith contributed to this report.