Article written by Brianna Lyman in The Daily Caller
What Happens If Trump Becomes Medically Incapacitated
President Donald Trump and First Lady
Melania Trump both tested positive for the coronavirus early Friday
morning. While Vice President Mike Pence and Second Lady Karen Pence
tested negative, the president’s test results raise some concerns.
What happens if Trump becomes medically incapacitated?
The Twenty-Fifth Amendment
was written specially to handle a situation like this. This amendment
outlines specific procedures for succession of a president if the
current president is “unable to discharge the powers and duties of his
office.”
If Pence continues to test negative, then there are two options if Trump becomes medically incapacitated.
Under Sec. 3 of
the amendment, Trump can cede his power to Pence by writing a letter to
the Speaker of the House declaring he is unable to carry out his duties.
If this happens, Pence would assume the role of acting president.
Trump can then reclaim his power when he submits another letter declaring he is fit to resume his duties.
If
the president suddenly becomes incapacitated and is unable to carry out
his duties, Pence and the cabinet can send a letter to the Speaker of
the House declaring Trump is “unable to discharge the powers and duties
of his office,” and Pence would then assume the role of acting
president.
If
this occurs, Trump could then submit a letter once he’s capable of
resuming his role to a deciding group, which could be a body that
Congress designates, or the Vice President and Cabinet, that he’s no
longer unable to assume his roles.
Once Trump decides he is
capable, the deciding body has four days to disagree. If they agree that
Trump can resume his role, Trump retakes office. However, if two-thirds
of both chambers of Congress decide Trump is still unfit, then Pence
would remain in office, according to the Constitution Center.
On July 13, 1985, President Ronald Reagan became the first President to invoke Sec. 3 of the 25th Amendment, sending a letter to the Speaker of the House informing him that he was going under surgery and that Bush would assume the duties of president.
Bush
was acting president for less than a day, beginning at 11:28 a.m. and
ending at 7:22 p.m., after Reagan wrote to Bush “I am able to resume the
discharge of the constitutional powers and duties of the office of the
President,” according to The New York Times.
Perhaps
the biggest issue posed when invoking the 25th Amendment is the
ambiguous language used to describe a president that is incapable. The
amendment does not lay out any specific standard as to what counts as an
“inability,” which could raise serious concerns over the next few days.
But this looming question isn’t new.
Article II
of the Constitution lays out a more vague line of presidential
succession. If the president becomes incapacitated, then the powers of
the president “shall devolve on the Vice President.” However, “Congress
may by law provide for the Case of Removal, Death, Resignation or
Inability, both of the President and Vice President declaring what
Officer shall then act as President, and such Officer shall act
accordingly until the Disability be removed, or a President shall be
elected.”
In 1787, Delaware Delegate John Dickinson asked, according to James Madison’s notes, “What is the extent of the term ‘disability’ & who is to be the judge of it?”
His question was left unanswered, and similarly, the 25th Amendment also does not answer it.
OAN Newsroom
UPDATED 3:30 PM PT – Friday, October 2, 2020
President Trump
headed to Walter Reed Medical Center in Washington, D.C. on Friday to
undergo tests for his COVID diagnosis. According to the press pool, he
will spend the next few days working from a special suite on site.
This announcement comes as the President is reportedly experiencing
mild symptoms of the coronavirus, including a cough, nasal congestion
and a low-grade fever.
Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany released a
statement from the White House doctor, Sean Conley, which said the
President’s infection was confirmed by a PCR test.
Dr. Conley
explained that President Trump has received an eight gram dose of an
antibody cocktail. He is also being treated with zinc, vitamin D,
melatonin and aspirin.
In the meantime, the Trump campaign has changed its rally lineup.
Earlier
on Friday, the campaign announced all events that were set to feature
the President will be moved online or temporarily postponed.
The
campaign team also sent a memo to staffers, in which they urged anyone
who may have been in contact with a COVID positive person to
self-quarantine.
Campaign officials reiterated they have been
following health guidelines closely and are planning to keep the
campaign office open.
Something has happened in the Durham investigation of the origins of the Russia rumor hoax, and a rumor circulating among Washington, D.C., federal criminal defense att0rneys is that a former member of Robert Mueller’s Special Counsel’s Office (SCO) has “flipped” and is providing information to the investigators regarding the work of the SCO.
This is the earliest Tweet I can find on the subject:
RUMINT: Talk From Many DC Lawyers Saying One Of Special Counsel Robert #Mueller's Prosecutors Has "FLIPPED" & Is Now Cooperating With US Attorney John #Durham's Investigation Into The Origins Of #RussiaCollusion Investigation. A Single Name Is Being Repeated...Developing... pic.twitter.com/2ulUVGAlHU
This kind of “rumor” very often turns out to be true, because it is nearly impossible for the legal staffs involved — the Gov’t and the cooperator — to keep a lid on everything.
Earlier today, before the Basham Tweet, there was this:
Can’t say why without betraying a confidence, but I just had a BIG restoration of faith moment in AG Barr and Durham.
Cardillo is former NYPD and has 200k+ followers on Twitter. He has pretty decent connections in New York law enforcement circles.
This rumor follows on the heels of the release last week of records showing several members of the Special Counsel’s Office “wiped” their SCO-issued cell phones clean on one or more occasions.
In his book, which was released two days ago, Andrew Weissmann covers this question, writing that Jeannie Rhee cautioned everyone that everything they committed to writing during their work for the SCO would be subject to a later “investigation of the investigators” that was sure to follow, based on her years of experience working in Washington, D.C.
JUST SPECULATING, but Weissmann has been agitated almost from the moment he took to Twitter a few months ago over the investigation being conducted by Durham and AG Barr. But his agitation went into overdrive when U.S. Attorney Jensen began looking at the SCO’s handling of the prosecution of General Flynn.
It cannot be overlooked that, while most of the more senior DOJ “veterans” on the SCO went to lucrative careers in private practice after departing, several of the younger members of the SCO returned to positions in the Department of Justice. That means they have been subject to potential investigation by internal DOJ disciplinary offices like the Inspector General or Office of Professional Responsibility. Issues like “wiping” their SCO- issued phones without authorization, likely in violation of DOJ policy, might not mean much to Andrew Weissmann and Jeannie Rhee, but for younger attorneys still in DOJ like Brandon Van Grack, Aaron Zelinsky, and Adam Jed, their DOJ careers might hang in the balance — and potentially their licenses to practice law. It is possible they were directed or encouraged to take some actions they now regret, or for which they are now vulnerable to leverage by Durham or other government investigators.
I will update this story or post something new as developments warrant.
Russian army officers take the oath of allegiance to the October Revolution, 1917.
Article by Helen Andrews in The American Conservative
2020 is Tumbling Toward 1917
We think we're safe from revolution. We're wrong—it's already in the works.
When the Russian Revolution toppled
the czar and put the Bolsheviks into power, the civilized countries of
western Europe had good reason to tell themselves it could never happen
to them. Russia was a barbaric country with a lopsided social structure,
masses of peasants and no middle class to speak of. Their political
system was a relic of the past, a time when street revolutions still
happened. The rest of Europe was more modern, with constitutions and
parliaments and labor unions. Any political conflict could work itself
out through those proper channels.
Then
came the German revolution of 1918-19, and civilized Europe had to
recalibrate its sense of what was possible. Street unrest led to the
forced abdication of the kaiser, the proclamation of a republic, a
soviet government in Munich, and a near-miss of one in Berlin, only
prevented by a timely blow to Rosa Luxemburg’s head. The uprising did
not fulfill all its proponents’ hopes, in terms of ushering in a new
socialist dawn, but it decisively refuted the idea that modern
conditions had made revolution obsolete.
The
Sixties left Americans feeling equally sure that a revolution could
never happen here. An entire generation went into open rebellion, urban
unrest exploded, tanks rolled through the streets of Los Angeles and
Detroit, periodic bombings made many worry that the counterculture’s
Lenin might be out there waiting for his moment—and yet we survived the
nightmare unscathed. Americans concluded that our prosperity, or the
flexibility of our political system, or maybe just the forward march of
civilization, had transformed street rebellion from a genuine threat
into a safe pastime for earnest young idealists.
But are we really so safe? In June, the great Russian literature professor Gary Saul Morson told The Wall Street Journal that
America was starting to feel eerily familiar. “It’s astonishingly like
late 19th-, early 20th-century Russia, when basically the entire
educated class felt you simply had to be against the regime or some sort
of revolutionary,” he said. Even the moderate Kadet Party could not
bring itself to condemn terrorism against the czar, any more than a
modern Democrat could condemn Black Lives Matter: “A famous line from
one of the liberal leaders put it this way: ‘Condemn terrorism? That
would be the moral death of the party.’”
Today,
the Resistance is already signaling that they won’t accept a Trump
victory in November any more than they accepted one in 2016. After the
last election, they attempted a soft coup by means of the Russiagate
scandal and impeachment. What kind of coup will come next? By looking at
the Russian precedent, we can evaluate the risk that this country might
enact our own distinctively American version of 1917—and how close we
have come to it already.
* * *
Tocqueville
famously said that the most dangerous moment for a regime is not when
conditions are worst but just when things start to get better. Actually,
the most dangerous moment for a regime is when people are allowed out
of their houses after long months of being confined indoors.
The
weather made the Russian Revolution as much as any other factor. The
winter of 1916-17 was one of the coldest on record, forcing St.
Petersburg into semi-lockdown. Spring finally broke on March 7, which
happened to be International Women’s Day. People swarmed the streets to
enjoy temperatures near 50 degrees and, incidentally, boosted the
socialist protest’s numbers. The tsar’s abdication came exactly one week
later.
That
was the first revolution, when the Romanov dynasty was replaced by the
short-lived Provisional Government. The second revolution, which
installed the Bolsheviks, was enabled by another problem familiar to
modern readers: street crime.The
new regime rushed to establish its progressive bona fides by passing the
full wish list of liberal demands: amnesty for political prisoners,
abolition of flogging, unlimited freedom of the press and assembly. They
were less energetic about reestablishing basic law and order.
Previously safe neighborhoods of St. Petersburg became lawless, and by
July mob lynchings of petty criminals had become an almost daily
occurrence. Citizens organized to protect themselves after the
Provisional Government proved it wouldn’t or couldn’t. After that, the
Cheka’s policy of shooting criminals on sight came almost as a relief.
An
ordinary Petersburger might feel himself very far from the front lines
of the war most of the time, even in 1917, but he could not feel far
from its effects. Interruptions in the coal supply had caused more than
500 factories to shut down by 1917 and thrown more than 100,000
employees out of work in the capital city alone. Layoffs mounted every
month as the summer and autumn wore on, leaving a lot of men on the
streets with nothing to do.
These
were some of the incidental factors, the kindling that captured the
sparks. To launch a real revolution, however, more than kindling is
needed. The fire must have fuel. In that sense, the deeper cause of the
revolution was not the men with nothing to do but the men who had
important things to do but failed to do them: the liberal elite.Russia
could have been saved by means of reform short of revolution, but the
people who should have tried to accomplish that balancing act lacked any
investment in the existing order. Instead they gave their moral support
to violent terrorists. It was this moral error that brought Lenin to
power—and it is the error that Professor Morson finds so familiar today.
* * *
During
the Cold War, the joke used to be that the Soviet Union had just as
much free speech as America, since it, too, guaranteed its citizens the
right to stand in the middle of the town square and shout, “Down with
Ronald Reagan!” The joke, of course, is that the real test of a regime’s
level of freedom is usually whether you are allowed to criticize your
country’s leader. However, in certain pathological conditions, the test
becomes: can you praise him?
You
could not praise the tsar in turn-of-the-century Russia, not if you
were part of the literate elite. The question for them was not whether
they wanted the regime to fall but what degree of extreme measures they
would condone to bring that fall about. The left side of the political
spectrum stretched off into infinity; the right side stopped somewhere
around the center left. The robust tradition of intellectual
conservatism that had existed in Russia since the time of Catherine the
Great had been slowly eroded until it no longer existed.
This
was much more extreme than the usual rebelliousness that characterizes
an intelligentsia in any era. Under previous czars, a man of letters
like Dostoevsky could still carry on a lively correspondence with a
reactionary bureaucrat like Konstantin Pobedonostsev, even asking his
input on The Brothers Karamazov.
Writers and poets might bristle at interference from the censorship
bureau, but they did not want to abolish it, much less abolish the
monarchy. Had not the autocracy allowed Russia to liberate the serfs
without a civil war, as in democratic America? Better to work within the
system, even if your goals were progressive.
That
all changed around the time of Nicholas II’s coronation in 1896.
Suddenly the terrorists had the moral high ground, and it seemed as if
nothing they could do would forfeit it, even cold-blooded murder of
women and children. “It was common talk in the best families, in the
homes of generals et al., that the Empress should be killed and gotten
out of the way,” one St. Petersburg professor wrote to an American
friend. Wealthy merchants and industrialists like Savva Morozov and
Mikhail Gotz—men you might expect to be grateful to the existing order
for making their prosperity possible—gave fringe groups like the
Bolsheviks the money to publish their newspapers and support their
leaders in exile. Every time Nicholas lost a minister to assassination,
his security bureau would show him private letters between prominent
people applauding the assassins.
Even
the tsar’s own family was not immune. Russia’s brief experiment with
jury trials (introduced in 1864) had revealed that Russian juries were
abnormally reluctant to convict. Even a defendant who confessed to the
crime could frequently get an acquittal if his lawyer gave a convincing
speech about good intentions and a difficult upbringing—something about
the Orthodox approach to sin and redemption, in contrast to Western
legalism. But it was still a shock when Grand Duke Andrei, the tsar’s
cousin, was overheard to comment at the end of Grigory Gershuni’s
terrorism trial, “I realize that they are not villains and believe
sincerely in their actions.” This was a cell that had assassinated the
minister of the interior.
When
even members of the royal family shrug off terrorism, it is a sign that
something is deeply wrong. It indicates that the instincts of
self-preservation that keep a regime alive are no longer operating. When
members of an elite agree entirely with revolutionaries’ aims and
object only to their tactics, all it takes is a crisis to show just how
flimsy those procedural objections are. At that point, the only question
is when the crisis will arrive.
In
1904, Kadet Party co-founder Pavel Miliukov visited 61-year-old Prince
Peter Kropotkin in London. Kropotkin was the father of Russian
anarchism, so Miliukov was astonished to see the old man fly into a rage
when he heard of the Japanese attack on the Russian fleet at Port
Arthur. “How could the enemy of Russian politics and state-sponsored war
in general be such a flag-waver?” Miliukov wondered. He was then 45. By
the time he was in his 60s himself, he would be equally astonished to
learn how deep the hate ran in the younger generation. The loyalty to
the constitutional order that seemed so basic to him, they found
contemptible. This progression, from Kropotkin to Miliukov to the
Bolsheviks, shows how these changes build up generation by generation
until no loyalty to the existing order remains, and the regime’s
position becomes fatal.* * *
This
summer, in the first week of June, about 6,000 law enforcement officers
and National Guard troops were deployed to Washington, D.C., to keep
order during protests there, and another 1,700 troops from Fort Bragg
were held in waiting just outside the district. When President Trump
appeared in Lafayette Park that Monday, police had to clear the square
using pepper balls and smoke canisters because protesters were throwing
projectiles and the president’s safety could not be assured. At several
points during the week, the only thing preventing the White House from
being overrun was a line of armed men from the Secret Service and the
Park Police, 51 of whom were injured and 11 hospitalized by the
rioters.
This
would not necessarily have been reason for alarm—there are protests in
Lafayette Park literally every day—except that it came the same week
that former defense secretary Jim Mattis published a long interview in The Atlantic
denouncing the president and saying, ominously, “We must reject and
hold accountable those in office who would make a mockery of our
Constitution.” The chairman of the joint chiefs of staff also made a
statement that week condemning the president’s Lafayette Park appearance
and expressing his support for the protesters’ goals.
These
murmurings from prominent generals raised the question: what if the
president gave an order to clear Lafayette Park and military officers
didn’t follow it? What if they decided the order was, as Mattis said, a
threat to the Constitution? Mayor Muriel Bowser evicted some National
Guard troops from D.C. hotels on June 5 because she did not approve of
their mission, and there was nothing the National Guard could do except
try to find another hotel. Less than a week after the Mattis interview, The Atlantic ran
a piece by Franklin Foer suggesting that the color revolution model
might be a good one to follow if more American officials could be
persuaded to treat President Trump the way Ukrainians treated their
corrupt President Yanukovych in the days before he hopped a plane to
Moscow. The house magazine of the Resistance, which had done so much to
drive the Russiagate soft coup, was apparently preparing the ground for
something harder.
In
August, word was leaked that a group of government officials and
political operatives calling itself the Transition Integrity Project had
gathered a few weeks earlier to game out possible election scenarios.
In one, John Podesta, playing candidate Joe Biden, refused to concede
after winning the popular vote but losing narrowly in the Electoral
College, citing alleged voter suppression. Congress split, blue states
threatened to secede, and the hypothetical outcome was determined by the
military. Evidently, serious people on the Democratic side are thinking
in very broad terms about what the coming months will bring.
Republicans should, too, because scenarios like the ones Podesta and
Foer are imagining may be unprecedented in the United States, but they
are certainly not unprecedented in modern history.
The political elite remain puzzled—and in agony—over how Donald Trump could
still be in the race. A bullying debater! A purveyor of mistruths! A would-be
autocrat! How has our country come to this?
This
obvious truth will be missed by the left and the media, which continue to
comfort themselves with the fiction that Mr. Trump won in 2016 by preying on
the weak and ill-informed. The opposite is true. The businessman was propelled
to office on the fury of those who had seen too much. They’d watched for
decades as an insulated elected class—Democrat and Republican alike—broke
promises, failed to solve problems, and blamed it on the system.
These
voters had watched the swamp take over—IRS targeters, self-righteous
prosecutors, zealous regulators—armed with stunning powers and a mentality that
they were entitled to make the rules, to tell the little people what was best
for them. Voters fumed over the double standard. Hillary Clinton deleted government
emails with abandon, while a 77-year-old Navy veteran went to prison for
building a pond in contravention of “navigable water” rules.
Mr.
Comey personifies what enrages those Americans. His testimony this week was a
vivid reminder that the election won’t hinge only on the issues as defined by
the media elite. Tuesday’s brawl was mostly about the virus, the economy,
violence in the streets, the Supreme Court. But November’s vote for many
Americans will be a choice between an administration that believes we the
people should run Washington, and those who believe the swamp should rule the
masses. Mr. Biden wouldn’t challenge the mandarins; he’d unleash them.
Chairman
Lindsey Graham hauled the former FBI director in front of the Senate Judiciary
Committee ostensibly to answer for stunning new details in the bureau’s
Trump-Russia probe. But the hearing more broadly resurrected the breathtaking
arrogance of the swamp. This was the crew that in 2016—based on the thinnest of
tips—launched a counterintelligence investigation into a presidential campaign,
complete with secret surveillance warrants and informants. Mr. Comey triggered
the public release of the collusion accusations. He secretly kept memos of his
conversations with a president, for future leverage. He leaked them, to provoke
a special counsel and two years of hell.
FBI
agent Peter Strzok in 2018 lectured Congress that the bureau had too many
“safeguards” and “procedures” ever to allow “improper” behavior. Yet this past
week provided evidence the FBI leaders blew through red light after red light.
We already knew they based the probe on a dossier that came from a rival
campaign. We knew the bureau was warned early on that the dossier was potential
Russian disinformation. And now we know it discovered that the man who was the
dossier’s primary source had been under FBI investigation as a suspected agent
for Moscow. The bureau hid all of this from the surveillance court. It even
doctored an email to conceal exculpatory information.
Mr.
Comey highlighted the double standard again on Wednesday, as he danced around
accountability. The probe’s biggest problem was that it was run at the top with
no checks or oversight. Yet according to Mr. Comey, the top didn’t include the
FBI director. “I can’t recall.” “I don’t remember learning anything.” “I don’t
recall being informed of that.” “That’s about all I can recall.” “I don’t
know.” “That doesn’t ring a bell.” So responded Mr. Comey for hours. His claims
of obliviousness contrast with recent documents showing widespread concern in
the FBI about the probe’s problems, with agents and analysts fretting about
future “tough questions” and rushing to purchase professional liability
insurance.
Mr.
Biden has yet to be asked on the campaign trail if he approves of this FBI behavior,
including its misrepresentations to a surveillance court. Or what he thinks of
Mr. Comey, who has been excoriated in three inspector general reports. Or of
former Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, fired for leaking and for lying to
investigators. But Biden’s failure to voluntarily weigh in on such a
consequential scandal may be viewed by voters as evidence that Mr. Biden is
fine with it. And why wouldn’t he be? This all took place in Barack Obama’s and
Joe Biden’s Washington.
Those
eight years featured plenty of other swamp monsters, and don’t underestimate
the number of Americans who fear a return to that world. Lois Lerner harassing
conservative nonprofits. Supervisors at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco,
Firearms and Explosives loosing guns in Fast and Furious. The Environmental
Protection Agency minions who burned companies with ever-changing rules. The
Bureau of Land Management harassment of ranchers and farmers. Energy Department
officials steering stimulus payouts to Solyndra and other projects of Obama
donors.
No
one knows who will win this election. But the Comey testimony warns against
thinking this battle will swing on candidate personalities alone. No matter how
much the elite media wills it so.
The New York Times is drawing the attention it wants this week, claiming to have obtained a copy of the president’s personal and business tax records prior to 2018 and publishing an analysis of the contents.
In an article that ran dozens of pages, the newspaper of record outlines the litany of discoveries embedded within those coveted and until-now secret documents. It could have saved itself a lot of paper and ink, however, with a much simpler statement of the facts, which are as follows:
Trump was a risk-taking real-estate developer and investor who earned big and lost big at various times throughout his career.
He took full advantage of the laws to avoid paying more income taxes than they required.
As with most real estate developers, Trump personally guarantees significant amounts of debt, which requires periodic refinances.
The president has relationships with people all over the globe, some of whom still do business with his companies.
Like most savvy business people, Trump has employed the art of “truthful hyperbole” at times to enhance the perception of his financial strength to the greatest extent possible.
That’s it. Layered on top, though, is a thinly disguised and voluminous stack of innuendo and moralizing designed to cast a shadow on the president in the weeks before the election.
The New York Times Painted a Guilty Picture
With bated breath, the Times reported that Trump paid $750 in federal income taxes in 2016 and 2017 and no taxes in many other years. Nowhere does the article demonstrate any illegality related to those filings. Instead, it treats readers to an esoteric discussion of obscure tax laws, understood only by people who work in finance such as I do. This framing is designed to cast aspersions on Trump for his use of the tax code after sustaining large business losses at times, hoisting the idea that the president is in financial trouble.
While mocking Trump as having been “more successful playing a business mogul than being one in real life,” the Times concedes that the returns “do not reveal his true wealth.” Its suggestion is that despite hundreds of millions of dollars in reported assets, Trump is actually in financial duress.
As the statement itself revealed, however, tax returns do not provide a full picture of wealth. They do not show the market value of assets are singularly oriented toward calculating taxes. That’s all. They are not personal financial statements, nor do they include critical information such as cash on hand.
With a not-so-subtle hint of scandal, the Times also reports, “[N]or do [the returns] reveal any previously unreported connections to Russia.” Even though we now know the dossier that drove the Russia investigation was misinformation created for the Democratic National Committee, the president is still subjected to the same innuendo.
If the New York Times cannot prove guilt, the paper can at least imply it. For good measure, the Times includes a robust analysis of income to Trump from the Miss Universe Pageant in Moscow in 2013.
Although Congress enacts laws to encourage investment in certain economically distressed and historic areas, and those communities typically cheer the arrival of those projects, The New York Times claims the assertion by Trump’s attorney that he “paid [taxes] with tax credits” is “a misleading characterization of credits, which reduce a business owner’s income-tax bill as a reward for various activities, like historic preservation.” So much struggle over a distinction without a difference, but it is a distinction the Times zealously seeks in order to prove the president is a public grifter.
This is, after all, the same New York Times that reported that Trump was possibly violating the emoluments clause by benefitting from state tax credits on a project in rural Mississippi. It failed to clearly disclose, however, that Trump did not own any of that project. Like the current review of Trump’s taxes, the Times instead served up selected details to create the illusion of potential guilt.
The Times Implies Impropriety Without Finding It
The New York Times laments that Trump used a basic function of the tax code, offsetting losses against income and using excess losses in past and future years (called “carrybacks” and “carryforwards”). While no developer seeks to lose money, The New York Times frames Trump’s use of losses as a planned trick, an “alchemy of [his] finances; using the proceeds of his celebrity to purchase and prop up risky businesses, then wielding their losses to avoid taxes.” Who knew that losing a dollar to get part of it back on your tax bill could be a strategic business plan?
After the Great Recession, President Barack Obama signed legislation that extended the carryback period from two to four years to help things rebound. The New York Times, however, claimed to be aghast that Trump used it to his favor after substantial losses in 2008 and 2009.
The $72 million refund he received has been the subject of an audit, and The New York Times, assuming the role of auditor, suggested Trump failed to meet the criteria for full abandonment of his investment interest, thereby limiting his write-off to just $3,000 per year. It also conceded, however, that “the materials reviewed by The Times do not make clear whether Trump’s refund application reflected his public declaration of abandonment.” Yet one can easily infer impropriety based on the reporting.
The newspaper dives into Trump’s expense write-offs with a curiosity not seen in the Clinton Foundation returns. It nit-picks at a general and administrative expense that went up five-fold from 2016 to 2017 at one golf club, then does not reveal the number. As a CFO who reviews data like this every month, I know materiality matters. Was it $5,000 or $5 million? Small numbers easily bounce around, and financials, like statistics, can be easily distorted analytically.
The article says that “tax records do not have the specificity to evaluate the legitimacy of every business expense.” True. Legal fees related to Stormy Daniels “could have been improperly included in legal fees written off as a business expense” — or maybe not. Again, innuendo requires no burden of proof.
Then there is the allegation that Trump escapes from taxes by paying consulting fees to his children who work in the Trump Organization. But why do so when the “recipient of the fees is still required to pay income tax?” The New York Times admits “it is not clear” what the advantage is and “there is no indication that the IRS has questioned” it. So it suggests “another, more legally perilous possibility is that the fees were a way to transfer assets to his children without incurring a gift tax.” So much suggestion, so little proof.
Somewhere along the way, in the labyrinth of accusations, is that Trump has engaged in foreign influence-peddling or relations with bad actors. The consulting fees shown on the tax returns, paid on projects in Azerbaijan and Turkey, were small, however, and apparently spread over years prior to Trump becoming president.
What did the Filipino president’s appointment of a Trump associate to be his envoy to D.C. matter with respect to these tax returns? There was no financial connection, only an inference of a “conflict.”
It is also problematic for the Times that membership revenues increased at Mar-a-Lago, even though the flood of applications began in 2015 before Trump was considered a serious candidate. The paper even sees sin in the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association holding an event at the Trump Hotel in Washington.
The New York Times Also Employs ‘Truthful Hyperbole’
Trump has been subjected to claims of profiteering since he took office, but the media rarely mention the effect of a CEO deciding to step away for four years or more. Things never run as well when the captain leaves the ship. Additionally, politics has severely tarnished Trump’s “brand equity,” and nowhere does the Times’ analysis capture that.
At every step, The New York Times interprets and exaggerates data to present the president as the worst businessman ever, a guy who couldn’t run a lemonade stand and who reeks of corrupt intent. Even the description of the Trump empire as “a collection of more than 500 entities,” seems an attempt to paint the organization as a mob-like outfit headed by a dangerous Gambino.
The Times asks at the outset “what secrets might lie hidden in [Trump’s] taxes. Is there a financial clue to his deference to Russia and its president, Vladimir V. Putin? Did he write off as a business expense the hush money payment to the pornographic film star Stormy Daniels in the days before the 2016 election? Did a covert source of money feed his frenzy of acquisition that began in the mid-2000s?”
It is masterful marketing, drawing in the public like a skilled carnival barker, but the questions are all duds. The New York Times is still getting the attention it desired, and in the process, it has impugned a president with inference and innuendo. There are numbers, dates, entities, and names — all nuggets of truth — but in the end, it is nothing more than the Times’ version of “truthful hyperbole.”
House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) Ranking Member Devin Nunes appears with Lou Dobbs to discuss the 2020 U.S. election as contrast against the known weaponization of the intelligence apparatus.
Keep in mind this is a member of the United States Intelligence Oversight group, the “gang of eight” saying the U.S. election is being manipulated by the U.S. intelligence community and political allies.
Chris Wallace and Democrats can keep pretending the right is to blame for the violence. But we were in Kenosha, talking to people on the ground. Voters know who the peaceful protesters are and who the rioters are.
If Chris Wallace’s goal during Tuesday night’s debate was to deflect from the months of left-wing violence from Black Lives Matter extremists and Antifa and instead blame it on President Donald Trump and his supporters, he did an excellent job.
“You have repeatedly criticized the vice president for not specifically calling out Antifa and other left-wing extremist groups,” Wallace, the debate moderator, said to Trump. “But are you willing tonight to condemn white supremacists and militia groups, and to say that they need to stand down and not add to the violence in a number of these cities, as we saw in Kenosha and as we’ve seen in Portland?”
Ignoring for a moment that Trump’s criticism of Joe Biden was absolutely warranted and that Wallace asked Trump to condemn white supremacists but did not ask Biden to condemn Black Lives Matter arsonists and looters, the question itself was specious. The violence in Kenosha was spurred by left-wing extremist groups, not white supremacists. We know — because we were there.
It Was Left-Wing Groups that Trashed Kenosha
Kenosha was up in flames, reduced to the same lawlessness that swept Minneapolis, Portland, Atlanta, and now this small Midwest town. Monday night in Kenosha, a day after law enforcement shot Jacob Blake, men and women stood with baseball bats and guns in front of their businesses and homes, trying to defend themselves against the extremist violence of the Black Lives Matter left. Since there weren’t enough police to control the situation, officers focused on defending public buildings, such as the courthouse, while leaving citizens to fend for themselves.
A woman, who said she had lived in Kenosha for more than 40 years, broke down in tears, saying her city felt like a “war zone” and she was “terrified.”
A woman, who said she has lived in Kenosha for over 40 years, broke down in tears saying that her city felt like a “war zone” and she was “terrified”. She requested that her face not be shown. pic.twitter.com/zi9KLQc2Xz
According to locals and reporting, the violence was caused by out-of-state agitators. On Thursday, local and federal law enforcement officials stopped an out-of-state caravan of vehicles filled with fuel cans and illegal fireworks. “The vehicles contained various items, including helmets, gas masks, protective vests, illegal fireworks, and suspected controlled substances,” according to police, who arrested nine people for disorderly conduct.
The vehicles were reportedly connected to the Seattle-based Riot Kitchen, a group of radical-left protesters. While several mainstream media accounts portrayed the group as friendly helpers, the stories couldn’t explain why they were loading up so many cans of gas and why the Riot Kitchen crew fled from police.
Sam, an Indian immigrant who owns a family-run car dealership downtown, lost “every dime” he had, and the 20 people Sam employed have all lost their jobs “for nothing.” Sam said his family had been “in tears” for days after rioters burned his lot two nights in a row, destroying all the cars, and looting his office before burning that as well.
Sam is an Indian immigrant who owns a family-run car dealership that was destroyed by BLM arsonists. “What did we do to deserve all this?” said Sam. pic.twitter.com/hgDjbIq9pA
“I’m a taxpayer,” said Sam, distraught that law enforcement did nothing to protect his business, which was left to the mercy of the mob. “This is not the America I came into. … What did we do to deserve all this?” he asked. “I’m a minority too. I’m a brown person. I have nothing to do with this.”
Contrary to what Wallace implied, neither did white supremacists or militia groups. Black Lives Matter rioters were in fact proud to take credit. Sam told The Federalist that more than a week after the Blake shooting, Black Lives Matter rioters came back to his shop in broad daylight to make “music videos” in the wreckage of his business “like they were so proud of it,” taunting him with, “this is what you get.”
Desperate pleas for mercy from the rioters confirmed who was instigating the violence. If business owners were trying to avoid losing everything to white supremacists, they wouldn’t have displayed placards signaling support for BLM and signs reading “minority-owned” in their storefronts — yet that’s exactly what they did.
Kyle Rittenhouse Wasn’t a White Supremacist
Like many other media figures and Democrats, Wallace seemed to be cherry-picking one instance of violence from a demonstrator linked to the political right, at the expense of accurately covering the rampant lawlessness instigated by leftist extremists. Kyle Rittenhouse became the face of so-called right-wing violence in Kenosha.
Rittenhouse, a 17-year-old Hispanic boy who worked as a lifeguard in Kenosha, saw the destruction and violence and picked up his AR-15 to patrol the streets. In a video shot around 10 p.m., Rittenhouse explained his purpose, saying, “People are getting injured, and our job is to protect this business, and part of my job is also to help people. If there’s somebody hurt, I’m running into harm’s way. That’s why I have my rifle, because I need to protect myself, obviously. But I also have my med kit.”
Later that night, things escalated when three shootings left two people dead and another injured. Police apprehended Rittenhouse, the alleged shooter. Videos capturing the shootings suggest Rittenhouse might have been justified in self-defense.
Whether Rittenhouse, an Illinois native, belonged in Kenosha in the first place is debatable, but nothing suggests the boy was motivated by white supremacy or was part of a larger militia group. In fact, the Anti-Defamation League found no evidence he was or is connected to any extremist movements.
Yet Democrats and their friends in the corporate media, such as Wallace, have tried to paint Rittenhouse as a “white supremacist” in order to deflect all blame from the real agitators, left-wing groups such as BLM and Antifa.
The Right Didn’t Start the Kenosha Violence
Rittenhouse’s guilt has not been confirmed in a court of law, yet Wallace defamed him with gross charges of racism on national television with 29 million people watching.
Biden did the same on social media in a wholly inappropriate smear. On Monday, Biden tweeted a video featuring Rittenhouse, with the caption, “There’s no other way to put it: the President of the United States refused to disavow white supremacists on the debate stage last night.”
Wednesday it was announced Rittenhouse is pursuing a libel case against Biden and his campaign for the advertisement suggesting he is a white supremacist. Rittenhouse’s attorney, Lin Wood, said he plans to “rip Joe into shreds.”
Not only was Wallace’s debate tactic dirty, but it is factually wrong to say the violence and destruction that consumed Kenosha was spawned by “white supremacists,” given that the overwhelming majority of arrests were of left-wing rioters.
Trump pointed out that the majority of violence in places like Kenosha is coming from “the left-wing, not from the right-wing.” Democrats’ “right-wing extremists” narrative has become increasingly difficult to defend, with accounts from on-the-ground reporters shattering their talking points. A recent study found that 95 percent of riots in the United States this year have been tied to Black Lives Matter.
Taking his cues from Wallace, Biden shouted at Trump to denounce Proud Boys, a right-wing group. The only instance of Proud Boys in Kenosha, however, wasn’t during the nights of violence, but during the day. Two demonstrators sporting Proud Boys paraphernalia engaged in a verbal confrontation with three dozen BLM demonstrators, who were present to protest Trump’s visit.
Reporters said the two demonstrators did not appear to be armed and were being followed by the large group of BLM protesters. When the clash appeared volatile, law enforcement encircled the two Proud Boys demonstrators, who “appeared to be frightened,” walked them to nearby squad cars, and removed them from the area. It’s safe to say the duo didn’t “add to the violence,” to use Wallace’s words.
Democrats Keep Pushing Lies on Americans
Despite the endless accounts this summer of violence instigated by left-wing groups — which have left police officers dead, businesses and homes reduced to ashes, and communities in anarchic disarray — Democrats and the media keep pushing their “white supremacist” talking point.
Many voters and residents of these torn cities aren’t buying it. “You’re telling me you’re going to burn down my neighborhood?” Valerie, a 25-year-old black woman and former Democrat from the inner city of Milwaukee, told the Federalist in Kenosha of Black Lives Matter. “No, I don’t want to be a Democrat anymore.”
So MSNBC can keep standing in front of burning cities and calling them “mostly peaceful” protests, and Chris Wallace can keep pretending the right is to blame for the violence. But we were in Kenosha. We talked to people on the ground. Voters know who the peaceful protesters are and who the rioters are.
Former FBI Director James Comey continually feigned innocence about his involvement in the illegally obtained warrants and surveillance of a member of the 2016 Trump campaign before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday.
Comey repeated calls of “I don’t remember,” “That’s about all I can recall,” “I don’t remember it,” “I don’t remember learning anything additional about Steele’s sources,” “Not that I recall, no,” “I don’t know,” and “I don’t recall that,” to each Senator that questioned his failure as the director to properly oversee FBI procedures concerning the investigation surrounding the Russian collusion hoax.
Comey appeared to testify about his role in the FBI’s botched attempts to investigate President Trump’s now disproven collusion with Russia. The factual errors in the application warrants that Comey claims to know nothing about were obtained illegally and used to spy on Carter Page, a Trump Campaign Affiliate who was in contact with the CIA.
Despite his position in the FBI as the director, Comey claimed to know nothing over and over.
“Did you ask any questions or do any due diligence on this at all?” Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) asked.
“I don’t remember anything about the facts that have been revealed recently about the sub-source,” Comey stated, referring to the unsubstantiated Steele Dossier.
Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) reprimanded Comey for his failure to “remember” these important events and questioned his intentions behind his vague answers.
“You know, Mr. Comey, I call that selective memory,” she quipped.
Earlier in the hearing, Comey claimed that it was not his responsibility to ensure the veracity of any warrant applications submitted, choosing instead to blame the “17 significant errors and omissions” as well as the “50 errors in the FBI’s Woods process” on “whoever was signing the affidavit.”
“Does the FBI director have any responsibility to make sure the facts are right when they’re given to the court?” Chairman of the Committee Senator Lindsey Graham asked.
“Not in connection with the certification,” Comey said referring to a certification he signed off on for an affidavit related to the FISA application. “But in general the FBI director is responsible for everything that is being done underneath the FBI director.”
