After his father-in-law left the White House, Jared Kushner got a $2 billion golden parachute—from the crown prince of Saudi Arabia. Kushner predictably started a private equity firm despite his lack of experience in private equity, and went to the main Saudi sovereign wealth fund, the Public Investment Fund (PIF), asking for an “investment.”
The professionals in charge of screening possible investments for the PIF raised a series of objections only to be overruled days later by the fund’s board, which is led by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, with whom Kushner became close during his time as a senior White House adviser, Laura Clawson noted at DailyKos 4/11).
The objections to investing in Kushner’s private equity firm, Affinity Partners, included “’the inexperience of the Affinity Fund management’; the possibility that the kingdom would be responsible for ‘the bulk of the investment and risk’; due diligence on the fledgling firm’s operations that found them ‘unsatisfactory in all aspects’; a proposed asset management fee that ‘seems excessive’; and ‘public relations risks’ from Mr. Kushner’s prior role as a senior adviser to his father-in-law, former President Donald J. Trump, according to minutes of the panel’s meeting last June 30,” the New York Times reports.
The reason given internally was that Kushner was worth the risk despite his inexperience and potential public relations problems, in order to “capitalize on the capabilities of Affinity’s founders’ deep understanding of different government policies and geopolitical systems.” That’s a lot of words when you could just say “buying access and influence.”
As a measure of how much the eventual bin Salman-led decision to hand over $2 billion to Kushner was driven by relationships, Steven Mnuchin, the former Trump treasury secretary, also started a private equity firm and went to Saudi Arabia asking for money. He got $1 billion despite having relevant experience in the field. Kushner is also getting a higher asset management fee from the PIF than Mnuchin is.
Few other investors have bought what Kushner was selling. According to public filings, the main fund at Affinity Partners had just $2.5 billion invested. It sounds like he’s basically owned by Saudi Arabia at this point. But then, he did a lot to earn this kind of loyalty when he was in a position to do so.
In a side note on the brokenness of the traditional media, check out this framing: “Ethics experts say that such a deal creates the appearance of potential payback for Mr. Kushner’s actions in the White House — or of a bid for future favor if Mr. Trump seeks and wins another presidential term in 2024.”
WHICH ONE IS THE PARTY OF PEDOPHILES? It would be unfair to joke that GOP stands for “Gang of Pedophiliacs,” Dick Polman wrote in a column (4/11). But he noted, “current Republican cultists … seem determined to smear Democrats as pro-pedophiliac despite the incontrovertible fact that their own ranks have long been tainted by pedophiliacs. … [S]eriously, would it not have been wise for the GOP to take a close look at its own ranks before trying to tag the opposition – most notably, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson – as soft on pedophiliacs? Does the cult have no shame? (You know the answer.)”
He recalled that “former Republican House Speaker Dennis Hastert – devout evangelical Denny, with his 100% rating from the Christian Coalition – landed in jail a few years ago after pleading guilty to making illegal hush money payments while trying to conceal his history of sexually abusing high school wrestlers. This is the same guy who, during his long stint as Speaker, had publicly declared that it was ‘important to put repeat child molesters in jail for the rest of their lives … We’ve all seen the disturbing headlines about sex offenders and crimes against children. These crimes cannot persist.’”
Other Republicans who have run afoul of the law:
• A Republican congressman named Mark Foley was outed in 2006 for sending sexually explicit messages and propositioning teenage congressional pages.
• More recently, House Republican leaders are fine with having Matt Gaetz serving on the chamber’s Judiciary Committee – the committee that monitors the Department of Justice – even though Gaetz is an active target of a sex-trafficking investigation (including allegations that he had sex with an underage girl) that’s being conducted by the selfsame Department of Justice.
• Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore (R) in 2018 was credibly accused of serial-preying on underage girls (he was even banned from a local mall because he was always trying to pick up high schoolers), but the lowlife in the White House actually endorsed his candidacy, and the Republican National Committee fell into line for Moore, because, as the RNC declared, “We stand with the president.”
• In 2015, when longtime Republican ally and religious right leader Josh Duggar confessed to molesting five young girls, Republican politician Mike Huckabee said that even though Josh’s actions were “inexcusable,” they were not “unforgivable.” Then, last year, Duggar was arrested and later convicted of receiving and possessing child pornography. He’s due to be sentenced in May. “Maybe I missed it, but lately I haven’t heard a peep from Republicans about this guy,” Polman noted.
• Trump’s 2016 Oklahoma campaign chair, Republican state senator Ralph Shortey, was later sentenced to 15 years in jail after being convicted for child sex trafficking. Shortey used Craigslist to cruise for underage boys; according to his ads, the “younger the better.”
• Trump ally George Nader, who’d worked behind the scenes with Jared Kushner and Steve Bannon, was sentenced to 10 years in prison on child sex charges. In 2020, when Nader was spirited away, the federal prosecutor said that “Mr. Nader has had a sexual interest in minors for over 35 years.”
• Last summer, a Republican strategist and Fox News guest named Anthony Lazzaro was charged with 10 counts of underage sex trafficking. He’s been in custody ever since. His new team of lawyers says he’s innocent.
And a real gem: Digital strategist Ruben Verastigui, who worked for the Trump reelection campaign and the Republican National Committee, was arrested and convicted in another federal child sex probe. According to investigators, Verastigui messaged fellow pervs about his preferences. For instance (and you might not want to read this), “Babies are some of my biggest turn-ons.” He was sentenced to 12.5 years in prison on the same day that Ketanji Brown Jackson was confirmed for the Supreme Court.
Also, Richard Hine of The Daily Edge noted (5/10/21) that former wrestling coach Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), a Trump-defending thug frequently seen on Fox News, is accused of turning a blind eye to a “cesspool of deviancy” at Ohio State University, to the point of even telling one referee alarmed at the rampant abuse by the team doctor, Richard Strauss, “Yeah, that’s Strauss.” According to the AP, 2,200 instances of fondling and 127 instances of rape attributed to Strauss have been tallied.
DESPITE BIG OIL ROADBLOCKS, POLL SHOWS MAJORITY IN US SUPPORTS CLIMATE ACTION. Most adults in the US support six proposals to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions that lead to rising temperatures and increasingly frequent and intense extreme weather, a finding that comes as congressional lawmakers who own tens of millions of dollars worth of fossil fuel industry stocks continue to undermine climate action, Kenny Stancil reported at CommonDreams (4/11).
Gallup’s annual environment poll, conducted by telephone from March 1 to 18, measured public support for a half-dozen policies designed to mitigate the fossil fuel-driven climate emergency.
It found that support for specific measures “ranges from 59% in favor of spending federal money for building more electric vehicle charging stations in the US up to 89% for providing tax credits to Americans who install clean energy systems in their homes.”
“Americans are most supportive of tax credits or tax incentives designed to promote the use of clean energy,” Gallup noted. “They are less supportive of stricter government standards or limits on emissions and policies that promote the use of electric vehicles.”
While President Joe Biden signed a fossil-fuel friendly bipartisan infrastructure bill into law last November, a reconciliation package that includes many of the green investments backed by solid majorities of U.S. adults has yet to reach his desk due to the opposition of all 50 Senate Republicans plus right-wing Democratic Sens. Kyrsten Sinema (AZ) and Joe Manchin (WV), who was the target of protests over the weekend.
Manchin, who rakes in roughly half a million dollars per year from his family’s coal empire and is drowning in political contributions from oil and gas corporations while his constituents are projected to soon face the worst flood risks in the US, has frequently inveighed against his party’s Build Back Better Act by asserting that the nation’s so-called “brutal fiscal reality” makes further federal spending unwise—skyrocketing Pentagon expenditures excepted.
Democrats and Republicans diverge significantly on this question. Roughly two-thirds of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents (68%) think the risk of economic harm, including a larger deficit, from policies seeking to limit emissions is greater than the risk of cascading, life-threatening disasters that scientists warn are virtually guaranteed in the absence of robust decarbonization efforts. Just 22% of Democrats and Democratic leaners share that view.
VOTERS WHO RECEIVED CHILD TAX CREDIT IN 2021 NOW FAVOR GOP, THANKS TO JOE MANCHIN. Voters really liked President Biden’s expanded child tax credit, which was part of his economy-boosting American Rescue Plan that was enacted in March 2021. But those warm, fuzzy feelings appear to have evaporated since Republicans colluded with Democratic Sens. Joe Manchin (WV) and Kyrsten Sinema (AZ) to kneecap Biden’s Build Back Better plan, which would have taken a permanent bite out of child poverty, Aldous Pennyfarthing noted at DailyKos (4/7).
Voters who received expanded child tax credits payments in 2021 ended the year more likely than not to support Democratic candidates for Congress in this year’s midterm elections. But months after that benefit expired, a new Morning Consult/Politico survey shows Republicans have made up that ground.
• Among parents or guardians with at least one child under 18 in the household who received the expanded child tax credit payments, 46% said they are most likely to vote for a Republican congressional candidate this year while 43% said they’re inclined to back the Democratic candidate.
• The narrow GOP advantage among this group stands in contrast with Democrats’ lead of 12 percentage points in late December, before the benefit expired. It also continues a trend first captured in a survey conducted in February.
“Of course, if you liked the child tax credit and want it back, it would only make sense to elect more Democrats so that two selfish, corporate-aligned quislings would no longer be able to scuttle President Biden’s best-laid plans,” Pennyfarthing noted. “The alternative is electing candidates from a party that has vowed never to help parents pay for anything, ever.
“But, to be brutally honest, most people don’t think things through that much. All they saw was a vital benefit being taken away and Democrats, who technically control two branches of government, failing to deliver on their most aspirational promises.
“So by this time next year, we may very well be stuck with a Republican-controlled Congress, which will gut families’ hopes and dreams for another two years at least.”
Among all voters, Pennyfarthing noted, Democrats are now tied with Republicans on the generic ballot—which suggests pulling the rug out from under voters hurts you more than never lifting a finger for them in the first place. No wonder Republicans are so giddy about their midterm prospects.
“Of course, our message on this should be simple: If you want some breathing room for yourself and other families, you’d be mad to vote for a Republican. Democrats are promising to help you, and Republicans are promising not to. But so much gets lost and distorted in the fog of a congressional campaign. Who/what will be the light that breaks through?”
PAYING FOX VIEWERS TO WATCH CNN MAKES THEM LESS GULLIBLE. Viewers of Fox News Channel who were paid to watch CNN for 30 days ultimately became more skeptical and less likely to buy into fake news. The study, conducted by David E. Brockman and Joshua L. Kalla, found that after just three days, viewers were already starting to change.
The experiment used content analysis comparing the two networks during September of 2020, Sarah K. Burris reported for Raw Story (4/3).
It was “far from obvious,” the researchers surmised, that viewing different networks would affect the beliefs and attitudes of the viewer. In fact, It wasn’t so much that viewers were tuning in because they already felt that way, but that their attitudes were actually being formed from the Fox network.
Fox viewers were nearly all very conservative and strong Republicans, the study explained. “Of 763 qualifying participants, we then randomized 40% to treatment group. To change the slant of their media diet, we offered treatment group participants $15 per hour to watch 7 hours of CNN per week, during Sept. 2020, prioritizing the hours at which participants indicated they typically watched Fox News.”
At the three-day mark, the viewers took a survey. “We found large effects of watching CNN instead of Fox News on participants’ factual perceptions of current events (i.e., beliefs) and knowledge about the 2020 presidential candidates’ positions,” they found. They discovered changes in attitudes about Donald Trump and Republicans as well as a large effect on their opinions about COVID.
The viewers also evolved to believe that if Donald Trump made a mistake, “Fox News would not cover it — i.e., that Fox News engages in partisan coverage filtering.”
The findings might suggest that the most cost-effective way for Democrats to win elections is to start running their own infomercials or commercials on the Fox News channel.
DELUSIONAL TRUMP SAYS HE’S ‘THE MOST HONEST HUMAN BEING GOD EVER CREATED.’ Whenever Donald Trump stages one his traveling salvation shows, there is certain be an avalanche of flagrant falsehoods foisted on his gullible cult followers. For the most part they are regurgitations of the litany of lies that he has been unleashing for months and years. And that was true Saturday night (4/9) in North Carolina where Trump dissembled about everything from the 2020 election to the border wall to gender studies and more, News Corpse noted at DailyKos (11/10).
The North Carolina rally was ostensibly an opportunity for Trump to pump up local Republican candidates, such as Ted Budd and Madison Cawthorn. But like all other Trump affairs, he made it about the only person he really cares about — himself. And on this occasion, like so many others, Trump portrayed himself in saintly terms for his worshipful disciples.
When Trump reached the part of his speech where he whined about being investigated for the multitude of crimes he has committed, he offered up praise for his own divine honesty. He began by complaining, “You know, you’ve been investigated years and years, millions and millions of pages of documents, they found nothing. ... I’ve been investigated by the Democrats more the Billy the Kid, Jessie James, and Al Capone combined.”
First of all, Trump’s assertion that nothing incriminating was found in the probes of his criminality is utterly delusional. There has been abundant evidence of his wrongdoing revealed in the Mueller Report, the House Select Committee on the Jan. 6 insurrection, and investigations by both federal and state legal authorities. There’s a reason that Trump has ordered his minions to refuse to testify, and why those who showed up took the 5th Amendment.
What’s more, the former reality TV game show host is now putting himself in the company of notorious outlaws who, like him, got away with many of their crimes before justice eventually prevailed. Undaunted, Trump made sure to impress upon his flock that he is the infallible messiah that they have been waiting for. After griping pathetically about what a victim he is, Trump declared that that “I think I’m the most honest human being, perhaps, that God ever created.”
Really? The guy who has been documented to have told more than 30,000 lies during his occupation of the White House? The guy who has been promulgating the “Big Lie” that the 2020 election was “rigged,” despite being unable to produce a shred of evidence? The guy who has brazenly lied about the COVID pandemic, his numerous sexual assaults, his taxes, his unsavory and treasonous Russian associations (that he is still engaged in), and his role in inciting riots in Washington, D.C. to subvert democracy? That guy?
It’s astonishing that Trump can still pretend to be a holy messenger of God, and that his devotees can still buy it. After all, Trump once blasphemously claimed that “I don’t have to ask God for forgiveness. … Why do I have to repent? Why do I have to ask for forgiveness if you’re not making mistakes?”
And now he exalts himself as “the most honest human being that God ever created”? Is he serious? A “human being”? That still needs to be proven.
GUY WHO RAISED MILLIONS TO BUILD BORDER WALL PLEADS GUILTY TO FRAUD CHARGES. Brian Kolfage took it upon himself to raise money for Donald Trump’s Border Wall via a “We Build the Wall” Go Fund Me page. And he did raise money—more than $25 million, in fact. The problem was that not much wall got built, and now Kolfage is pleading guilty to fraud charges after ripping off his donors, BuzzFeed News reported (4/11).
Kolfage, a veteran who earned a Purple Heart after losing both of his legs and right arm while serving in Iraq in 2014, faces charges of attempt and conspiracy to commit wire fraud, along with federal charges of falsifying his income on his 2019 taxes, according to BuzzFeed.
“As alleged, the defendants defrauded hundreds of thousands of donors, capitalizing on their interest in funding a border wall to raise millions of dollars, under the false pretense that all of that money would be spent on construction,” Acting US Attorney Audrey Strauss wrote in 2020. “While repeatedly assuring donors that Brian Kolfage, the founder and public face of We Build the Wall, would not be paid a cent, the defendants secretly schemed to pass hundreds of thousands of dollars to Kolfage, which he used to fund his lavish lifestyle.”
The Department of Justice’s Southern District of New York (SDNY) indictment lists the defendants as Kolfage, Stephen Bannon, Andrew Badolato, and Timothy Shea. They all are charged with one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering.
The indictment says Bannon collected $1 million “through a non-profit organization under his control,” while Kolfage and the others funneled the money through nonprofits and a shell company. The indictment reads:
“They did so by using fake invoices and sham ‘vendor’” arrangements, among other ways, to ensure, as KOLFAGE noted in a text message to BADOLATO, that his pay arrangement remained “confidential” and kept on a “need to know” basis.”
In the last hours of his presidency, Trump issued a pardon for Bannon, but left the other defendants to face the charges.
Kolfage did manage to put some money toward a wall. According to BuzzFeed, in Sunland Park, New Mexico, a wall about a half-mile long was built—with a gate. The result is a structure that is inconvenient but not impossible to simply walk around. And much of the building happened without proper permits and through hotly contested federal land, BuzzFeed reports.
The second wall in Mission, Texas, launched a defamation lawsuit by the National Butterfly Center alleging the wall violated an “international water treaty between the United States and Mexico” due to its proximity to the Rio Grande, according to Border Report.
In February, the sanctuary was forced to close after it became the target of a false conspiracy alleging the site was being used for child trafficking the Los Angeles Times reports.
“The defendants allegedly engaged in fraud when they misrepresented the true use of donated funds,” Inspector-in-Charge Philip R. Bartlett wrote in the SDNY’s indictment.
“As alleged, not only did they lie to donors, they schemed to hide their misappropriation of funds by creating sham invoices and accounts to launder donations and cover up their crimes, showing no regard for the law or the truth. This case should serve as a warning to other fraudsters that no one is above the law, not even a disabled war veteran or a millionaire political strategist.”
From The Progressive Populist, May 1, 2022
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