A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things.
Okay, let’s jump right into the Tom Barrack scandal. We’ll break it into two parts: key takeaways from the unsealing of the case + what the implications might be. Still a lot to unpack on this story.
- Curious Timing : The charged conduct took place from 2016-18. Barrack allegedly lied to investigators in an interview in June 2019. It took more than two years after that for an indictment. Was this case bottled up in the Trump Justice Department?
No need to ask a rhetorical question.
Comprehensive!
The truth will out.
Wow…today’s summary is chock full. I love the comment on Pompous. Come to think of it, he has been awfully quiet since Who?'s departure. I think this story could actually open up a serious crack in the Orange one’s Teflon coating. Fingers crossed.
Rotten To The Core: The contours of the case suggest a thorough and deep corruption of U.S. foreign policy under Trump. Duh, I know.
I hope TFG does run in 24.
He’ll be bled and gutted.
No need to ask…
That said - it gives me a bit of hope for our country’s future that even after RepubliQans purged decency from every government department - there were still patriots left who kept this out of the hands of Barr, the fixer.
Trump never does anything for nothing.
He is operating at full-grift, 24/7/365
So, the prosecutors weren’t looking hard enough at the money-trail.
This wasn’t just started under Garland. This was slow-walked for years, and then shit-walked by Barr, I’m sure.
[EDIT] - “In late November 2008, the Trump International Hotel & Tower was one of three “landmark projects” to be delayed by Nakheel, as it was struggling with the global financial crisis.”
Bush’s tanking of the economy ruined Trump’s hopes. Trump’s top priorities as prez were always to benefit his own bank account.
At what dollar amount lies the inflection point in real estate, between big money con artists kiting laundered checks back and forth while skimming just enough for a new Porsche every six hours, and the town I live in, where housing is so scarce that traveling hospital nurses live at the Holiday Inn for six months and high school graduates either keep on living with their parents or move away by the 4th of July?
The Saudi intervention in Yemen began in 2015, during the Obama presidency. It quickly got very expensive, about $50 billion a year. The US played a support role. Apparently there was a UAE contingent of rich Yemeni expats eyeing coastal and island real estate development. Maybe Tom could have helped with that? Anyway, the mess seems to have been a godsend for the Iranians, the ostensible bad guys, as they have had to spend very little.
I don’t get the part of them dancing around implicating Trump unless they were doing that to keep Barr from shutting down the investigation. Trump was clearly in this up to his neck and his slimy son-in-law was probably in even deeper. A real investigation should explain a lot of what happened early in the Trump administration and if they flipped Barrack there will be a lot of misery forthcoming to Trump, his family, and many of his toadies.
Suddenly realized it’s not good to have a large chunk of their base die before the '22 mid terms?
To be fair to Barr (a phrase I never thought I would type), it was probably hard to keep track of all the corruption investigations so that he would know which ones needed to be stopped. If he was also deliberately avoiding knowledge of the extent of the corruption it would have been difficult to guess which cases would lead back to TFG. (Hint: all of them, Katie.)
It sure took them a long time to figure it out. What is interesting is that a lot of them flipped at the same time. It almost looks like they are all taking orders from some unknown uberboss.
That’s been the gop since that Lincoln guy’s values ended. Sometime after President Grant I expect.
Slightly OT, and an actual question: Has Qev McQarthy formally nominated the five insurrectionists for the January 6 Select Committee, or was that list just leaked as a trial balloon?
I haven’t heard that he actually submitted them.
Just a reminder to TPM and those reading this blog:
From: Timeline on Jared Kushner, Qatar, 666 Fifth Avenue, and White House Policy (justsecurity.org)
When the Kushner Companies purchased 666 Fifth Avenue in midtown Manhattan in early 2007 for a record-breaking price of $1.8 billion, it was supposed to be a center of their real estate portfolio. Instead, the Kushners have struggled to cover their debt on the troubled building since shortly after its purchase on the eve of the financial crisis. As Jared Kushner’s father-in-law, Donald J. Trump, was running for President, the Kushners were pitching Qatari investors to help bail out the building. And just weeks after his father Charles reportedly failed to reach a deal with Qatar’s minister of finance, Jared Kushner, in his capacity as a senior adviser to President Trump, reportedly played a central role in supporting a blockade of Qatar by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Kushner never disclosed his meeting with Saudi Arabia and the UAE on the blockade to Secretary of State Rex Tillerson at the time. Later, a financial company tied to Qatar brokered an especially valuable deal to rescue the Kushner Companies’ property at 666 Fifth Avenue.
Trump a victim? Is this what a victim looks like?
It’s what 4 idiots look like.