47 et al CORRUPTION

mickeyrat

This was the Tipping Point for me although I really did reach it several several months ago. The volume of  corruption of the admin and those its orbit is astounding. 

Who is “Bitcoin Jesus”?

In 2024, billionaire fugitive Roger Ver — nicknamed “Bitcoin Jesus” — was facing federal criminal charges for tax evasion in one of the largest crypto tax fraud cases ever. Prosecutors were confident they had a strong case and that Ver was likely facing prison time.

That was, until he sought the services of a select club of President Donald Trump’s former personal attorneys who have easy access to top Justice Department appointees.

Ver’s case remains the only tax prosecution the administration has killed outright.

Listen to ProPublica reporter Molly Redden talk about the story of “Bitcoin Jesus” and what it reveals about the extent to which white-collar criminal enforcement has eroded under the Trump administration.

➡️ Read the full story: https://propub.li/4rqsbbT

Bentleyspop

This is the single most corrupt regime in American history.
He is the most corrupt President ever.

Add to that Congress and the DoJ are too impotent to do anything about it.

Whats worse is the 77 million brainwashed cultists, some of whom are on here, who continue to support him and the regime and don't care about the obvious corruption. 

gimmesometruth27

remember when the gop were the law and order party?

they think they are now with this ice bullshit, but look at the rotten head at the top of this fish now.

Bentleyspop

gimmesometruth27 said:

remember when the gop were the law and order party?

they think they are now with this ice bullshit, but look at the rotten head at the top of this fish now.

Remember when they would throw tantrums yelling and screaming that President Joe Biden  had weaponized the dOJ?

OnWis97

gimmesometruth27 said:

remember when the gop were the law and order party?

they think they are now with this ice bullshit, but look at the rotten head at the top of this fish now.

I remember when the GOP and conservatives were a lot of things. Law and order. Less federal influence. Small government. "Stop being so soft." "Get over it." "Life isn't fair." "Don't be a snowflake."

Turns out they were never any of these things.

mickeyrat

I'll put this here

The Trump administration told Congress it won’t share with lawmakers the classified intelligence that led to a whistleblower complaint against U.S. spy chief Tulsi Gabbard, citing presidential claims of executive privilege.

In an email to Democratic congressional staffers sent on Feb. 13 and reviewed by The Wall Street Journal, Gabbard’s office said it was unable to provide the unredacted intelligence that underpinned the complaint “due to the assertion of executive privilege to portions” of the intelligence itself.

In a Tuesday letter to Gabbard, Sen. Mark Warner and Rep. Jim Himes, the top Democrats on the congressional intelligence committees, asked who asserted privilege over the intelligence report and on what basis. 

The intelligence at issue was assembled in a report by the National Security Agency early last year and relates to a conversation two foreign nationals had about Donald Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, the Journal has reported.

Senior Trump administration officials have said the claims about Kushner were demonstrably false, but declined to offer more specifics on grounds that doing so could expose a highly sensitive surveillance method.

Read more: https://on.wsj.com/4uaos4a

Gern Blansten

I cannot fucking wait for the House to flip...the Senate would be icing on the cake 

josevolution

Gern Blansten said:

I cannot fucking wait for the House to flip...the Senate would be icing on the cake 

As long as he’s alive I don’t share the enthusiasm that the house will flip or the Senate. But I hope your words come true 

mickeyrat

Use this database to explore potential conflicts of interest for President Donald Trump and his team. The documents disclose positions officials have held outside government, their assets and their debts, among other things.

➡️ Check it out: https://propub.li/3OMpenM

Bentleyspop

Is he the most corrupt president in American history?
Yup
Is this the most corrupt regime in American history?
Yup
Are there 77 million Americans who could care less, some of whom are on here, as long as the rich get richer and their own taxes and daily costs go up?
Yup

Every single 🍊 🤡 💩  supporter/voter is complicit in the corruption. 

mickeyrat

Bentleyspop said:

Is he the most corrupt president in American history?
Yup
Is this the most corrupt regime in American history?
Yup
Are there 77 million Americans who could care less, some of whom are on here, as long as the rich get richer and their own taxes and daily costs go up?
Yup

Every single 🍊 🤡 💩  supporter/voter is complicit in the corruption. 

found this a straightforward explainer that has loads of truth...

I used to wonder how it was possible that Trump could have won in 2016, and then again in 2024, given how emotionally toxic and depraved he is.

I don’t wonder anymore. I think he won for that exact reason. Because he carried at least one broken shard to reflect the broken shards in millions of others.

If you’re a racist, you found your guy. If you’re a misogynist, you found your guy. If money is your only religion, you found your guy. If your heart is armored shut, you found your guy. If you mock the disabled, you found your guy. If intelligence makes you insecure, you found your guy. If you’re a sexual predator, you found your guy. If you trade in humiliation and conspiracy and filth, you found your guy. If you’ve never done a single hour of emotional inventory, you found your guy. If you cheat, stiff contractors, bankrupt your obligations, and call it savvy, you found your guy. If you lie as easily as you breathe, you found your guy. If cruelty feels like strength, you found your guy. If white grievance is your comfort food, you found your guy. If your ego is a black hole no title can fill, you found your guy. If warmongering fuels your ego, you found your guy, If empathy feels like weakness and dominance feels like oxygen, you found your guy.

If he’d only carried one or two of these pathologies, he might have been dismissed as just another loud, damaged man. But he carried a buffet of them. That was the appeal. Millions could locate themselves somewhere in the wreckage. They didn’t have to agree with all of it. They just had to recognize a piece of themselves in it.

It was never really about him. It was about the validation. The absolution. The permission. He didn’t invent the resentment; he amplified it. He didn’t create the cruelty; he normalized it. He gave millions the intoxicating relief of hearing their ugliest impulses echoed back at rally volume.

Trump is a symptom. The deeper illness is collective. If there’s one sentence that defines his power, it’s this: “He says the things I’m thinking.”

And that’s the part that should chill us.

Because what does it say about us that so many were thinking those things? That tens of millions of Americans harbored resentments so deep, so seething, that they were simply waiting for a demagogue to baptize them as virtue? That after decades of supposed progress on race, gender, and equality, so many white men felt so threatened, so displaced, so furious, that cruelty became a political platform?

Maybe we were living in a fool’s paradise, mistaking silence for healing, politeness for progress.

Now the mask is off. Now we know.

And knowing is a far more dangerous place to stand.

– Michael Jochum, Not Just a Drummer: Reflections on Art, Politics, Dogs, and the Human Condition.

mickeyrat

random adbook post

Marco Rubio is the U.S. Secretary of State. He's also going to have to sit down in a Miami federal courthouse and testify against his best friend of 20 years in a national security trial involving a $50 million Venezuelan lobbying scheme. That's the situation right now. And somehow it's not all over the news.

Here's the background, because this cast of characters requires some setup.

David Rivera is a former South Florida congressman who shared a house in Tallahassee with Rubio back when they were both young Florida legislators. They were so inseparable people called them Batman and Robin. Rivera was the Robin who handled the dirty work - the "enforcer" who helped Rubio whip votes for the speakership. After Rivera's one term in Congress ended in 2013, he launched a consulting firm called Interamerican Consulting, registered to his Miami home address.

In 2017, that firm signed a $50 million contract with PDV USA - the American subsidiary of Venezuela's state-owned oil company, PDVSA. Prosecutors say the whole thing was a cover for a secret campaign to cozy up to the incoming Trump administration on behalf of Nicolas Maduro's government. Rivera allegedly pocketed at least $20 million before the contract fell apart. He was arrested in 2022, indicted again in 2024, and his trial starts March 16 in Miami.

Now here's where it gets good.

Rivera's defense strategy is to argue that everyone else was doing the same thing he was doing - and that if he's a foreign agent, so are several of the most powerful people in Trump's current White House. To prove it, his lawyers have subpoenaed Marco Rubio, who as a senator met privately with Rivera and sanctioned Venezuelan media tycoon Raúl Gorrín at a Washington hotel in 2017. They also subpoenaed Susie Wiles, Trump's current White House chief of staff.

Wiles was a partner at Ballard Partners, a Florida lobbying powerhouse, when she personally registered to lobby the White House on behalf of Globovision - a Venezuelan TV network owned by Gorrín. Federal lobbying records show Ballard was paid $800,000 for that work. Gorrín has since been charged by the U.S. Justice Department in an alleged $1.2 billion money laundering scheme and sanctioned by the Treasury Department. Wiles lobbed access to the Trump White House for a guy who was eventually sanctioned by the Trump administration. That's not a minor detail.

Rivera's lawyers pointed out there are roughly 400 pages of documents connecting Wiles' firm to the key players in this case. A federal magistrate judge recently admitted in writing that "no one disputes that Ballard Partners registered under FARA and dealt with Gorrín openly." FARA is the Foreign Agents Registration Act - the same law Rivera is on trial for allegedly violating. The judge let Wiles avoid testifying anyway, and those documents stay sealed.

Wild - right?

The court documents also show Rivera tried to arrange a private jet ride and meeting with Kellyanne Conway in June 2017 - the day she happened to be in Miami for a Republican fundraiser. Conway says she flew commercial with the Secret Service and had no part in any of this. There's also Pete Sessions, a Texas congressman, who Rivera allegedly roped in to set up a meeting with Venezuela's foreign minister and Exxon executives. Sessions then flew to Caracas in April 2018, sat across from Maduro, and agreed to personally hand-deliver a letter from Maduro to President Trump. Oil executive Harry Sargeant, who is now actively advising Trump on Venezuela policy, is in the documents too.

The whole crew was apparently working a charm offensive on behalf of a sanctioned Venezuelan oligarch at the exact same time the Trump administration was publicly denouncing Maduro as a socialist dictator. The lobbying ultimately failed - Trump went the other direction and recognized the opposition. But not before Gorrín got a photo with Vice President Mike Pence at a Florida event.

Now Rubio is scheduled to testify as a government witness - meaning prosecutors think his testimony helps their case against Rivera. That's his best friend of two decades. Rivera's lawyers, for their part, argue that the whole point of the Rivera-Rubio meetings was to undermine Maduro, not help him. If that's true, the government's case has a hole in it. If it's not true, Rubio helped facilitate exactly what he built his entire political career railing against.

Either way, the Secretary of State is about to testify in a foreign influence trial while the White House chief of staff's related documents sit under seal and the DOJ - which Rubio's administration controls - fought to keep her off the witness stand.

The thing that should bother everyone regardless of politics is the structure of it. A Florida lobbying network with direct access to the White House was being paid by a Venezuelan oligarch who the U.S. would later sanction for money laundering. That same network is now running the country. The trial that could shine a light on how that works starts in four days.

#ratcclips

Rubio’s testimony looms at trial of ex-Florida congressman and his Venezuelan deal
https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/ex-florida-congressman-facing-trial-160805428.html

gimmesometruth27

i wonder if he wore his big trumpdaddy shoes.

PJ_Soul

mickeyrat said:

Bentleyspop said:

Is he the most corrupt president in American history?
Yup
Is this the most corrupt regime in American history?
Yup
Are there 77 million Americans who could care less, some of whom are on here, as long as the rich get richer and their own taxes and daily costs go up?
Yup

Every single 🍊 🤡 💩  supporter/voter is complicit in the corruption. 

found this a straightforward explainer that has loads of truth...

I used to wonder how it was possible that Trump could have won in 2016, and then again in 2024, given how emotionally toxic and depraved he is.

I don’t wonder anymore. I think he won for that exact reason. Because he carried at least one broken shard to reflect the broken shards in millions of others.

If you’re a racist, you found your guy. If you’re a misogynist, you found your guy. If money is your only religion, you found your guy. If your heart is armored shut, you found your guy. If you mock the disabled, you found your guy. If intelligence makes you insecure, you found your guy. If you’re a sexual predator, you found your guy. If you trade in humiliation and conspiracy and filth, you found your guy. If you’ve never done a single hour of emotional inventory, you found your guy. If you cheat, stiff contractors, bankrupt your obligations, and call it savvy, you found your guy. If you lie as easily as you breathe, you found your guy. If cruelty feels like strength, you found your guy. If white grievance is your comfort food, you found your guy. If your ego is a black hole no title can fill, you found your guy. If warmongering fuels your ego, you found your guy, If empathy feels like weakness and dominance feels like oxygen, you found your guy.

If he’d only carried one or two of these pathologies, he might have been dismissed as just another loud, damaged man. But he carried a buffet of them. That was the appeal. Millions could locate themselves somewhere in the wreckage. They didn’t have to agree with all of it. They just had to recognize a piece of themselves in it.

It was never really about him. It was about the validation. The absolution. The permission. He didn’t invent the resentment; he amplified it. He didn’t create the cruelty; he normalized it. He gave millions the intoxicating relief of hearing their ugliest impulses echoed back at rally volume.

Trump is a symptom. The deeper illness is collective. If there’s one sentence that defines his power, it’s this: “He says the things I’m thinking.”

And that’s the part that should chill us.

Because what does it say about us that so many were thinking those things? That tens of millions of Americans harbored resentments so deep, so seething, that they were simply waiting for a demagogue to baptize them as virtue? That after decades of supposed progress on race, gender, and equality, so many white men felt so threatened, so displaced, so furious, that cruelty became a political platform?

Maybe we were living in a fool’s paradise, mistaking silence for healing, politeness for progress.

Now the mask is off. Now we know.

And knowing is a far more dangerous place to stand.

– Michael Jochum, Not Just a Drummer: Reflections on Art, Politics, Dogs, and the Human Condition.

Yup, this. Add to all that the whole crazy evangelical, Christian nationalist movement.... America's in big trouble. 

mickeyrat

Translation: they are doing it.

https://finance.yahoo.com/economy/policy/articles/white-house-warns-staff-insider-002016289.html

gimmesometruth27

mickeyrat said:

Translation: they are doing it.

https://finance.yahoo.com/economy/policy/articles/white-house-warns-staff-insider-002016289.html

who is going to stop them? the culture of grift has to stop from the top. and you know dump doesn't give a fuck.

mickeyrat

putting tbis here because I'm willing to bet a donation to something was given by these lenders...

The Biden administration sued a Texas land developer accused of duping tens of thousands of Hispanic residents. Trump’s DOJ is now offering an unprecedented settlement that experts say could target the very people who were harmed by the developer.

Read our full investigation: https://propub.li/4mxs7Wf

mickeyrat

he's  a grifter in my considered opinion...

Joe Rogan is a coward and a fake who would sell us out again and promote whatever garbage gets him the most clout and sponsorship.

Poncier

They should have gotten Rogan a step stool for the photo op.

Bentleyspop

Poncier said:

They should have gotten Rogan a step stool for the photo op.

gimmesometruth27

there has never been a cringier pic from the oval office.

since maybe last month.