Another thing conservative/Republicans proved with Trump is far from opposing government corruption they love and will support government greed and corruption as a long as its a fellow conservative/Republicans. The most c0rrupt party in US History.

How Elaine Chao used her Trump cabinet post to help her family make millions


Trump's 'nasty shot' at Mitch McConnell's wife is a preview of ...
www.rawstory.com

https://www.rawstory.com/elaine-chao-2651322743/

 

Nancy Antoinette and the power rangers. Now, there's a corrupt bunch of robbers.

 

REVEALED: Former Trump official was a foreign agent for Nigerian billionaire


Twitter.

https://www.rawstory.com/mark-corallo/

 

'Major league all-star of grifting': Trump slammed by former staffer for ripping off hospice patient


www.rawstory.com

Appearing on MSNBC early Easter Sunday morning, a former official in Donald Trump's administration claimed he was appalled at a New York Times report that showed that Donald Trump's 2020 re-election campaign was scamming supporters out of cash with a deceptive recurring payment scheme.

Speaking with host Kendis Gibson, former Homeland Security chief of staff Miles Taylor expressed disgust with the former president.

With Gibson pointing out, "One person in the New York Times reporting was a cancer patient in hospice who couldn't afford utilities or rent," Taylor lashed out at Trump.

"My mother is a hospice nurse, you see how difficult life is for people at end of life and to raid someone of their money at the end of their life has to add onto that hardship for the whole family," he explained. "Look, this is what it made me think of when I saw the New York Times report: Donald Trump one time said he was glad there was a coronavirus pandemic because it meant he didn't have to shake the hands of his disgusting supporters."

"So, on the one hand, Trump doesn't want to shake their hands but he wants to raid their pocketbooks," he continued. "This shouldn't surprise us because this is who the man has always been; he's a major league all-star of grifting. A con artist, as my fellow guest noted; promoting Trump casinos, Trump Universities, Trump mortgages, and the Trump administration which ended up being a scam and we know the Trump campaign was a scam."

"Donald Trump once told me in office -- in an Oval Office meeting that he believed even if he didn't have a reason to sue someone, it was good to sue them because you got them to settle and do what you wanted," he added. "My suggestion for people who have been affected by this is maybe they should consider using Donald Trump's own advice and suing him back."

Watch below:



https://www.rawstory.com/trump-grift-2651363306/

 

I thought Trump was supposed to clean up Washington..........him and his cronies just cleaned up!



Thinskin

 

Without bidding ............. little scrutiny ..............
Clearly, they don't understand government procurement. Just innuendo and anonymous source bullshit.

 

David Fahrenthold
@Fahrenthold
Officially, the max rate that the government could pay for hotel rooms in Palm Beach was $205/night. Trump charged the Secret Service $396.15/night at Mar-a-Lago — and got away with it, b/c agents had no choice. They had to be there w/him.

David Fahrenthold
@Fahrenthold
New documents show that — while Trump was trying to overturn the election in December— he was still charging the Secret Service $396.15 a night for their hotel rooms at Mar-a-Lago. By spending 8 nights at the club over Xmas, Trump brought himself another $15,846 from taxpayers.


9:49 AM · Apr 5, 2021

 

President Trump is the only President in recent history who lost money while serving as president. Estimates are $700 Million.

Thank you President Trump for your service.

 

The lies just roll off your tongue!

I have seen estimates of how much money Trump made from the Presidency too.

How did you arrive at your figure?

Mystic Meg?

Thinskin

 

There should actually be dozens of people convicted of violating the Hatch Act. Trump and the people around him really did believe they were above all laws and the Constitution and could do anything they wanted. And I hope the Biden Administration and the Democrats make sure that is not the case.


Former Trump official fined and temporarily banned from holding office over Hatch Act violations


www.rawstory.com

On Tuesday, Forbes' Andrew Solender reported that Lynne Patton, a former official in ex-President Donald Trump's Department of Housing and Urban Development, has been sanctioned for violating the Hatch Act — the rule that prohibits most executive officials from campaign activity.

Her penalty includes a fine of $1,000 and a ban on holding federal employment for four years.

The punishment stems from her using her official office to create a video for the 2020 Republican National Convention, working to help the Trump campaign using federal resources.

Andrew Solender
@AndrewSolender
NEW: ex-Trump official Lynne Patton fined $1000 and barred from federal employment for 48 months for violating the Hatch Act by using her HUD role to create a video for the 2020 RNC.

8:43 AM · Apr 6, 2021

Patton, a former wedding planner and one of the only high-ranking Black officials in the Trump administration, has faced repeated allegations of misconduct. In 2019, she was accused of skipping a key HUD meeting to attend former Trump attorney Michael Cohen's testimony — an allegation she disputes.

https://www.rawstory.com/lynne-patton-hatch-act-violation/

 

Keith Boykin
@keithboykin
Bill Barr’s law firm won’t rehire him. Mike Pompeo can’t find a corporate gig. Headhunters don’t see any interest for Elaine Chao. And no Trump Cabinet officials from the final quarter of his term have been picked to join S&P 500 boards. Oh well.


Corporate America isn’t welcoming former Trump Cabinet officials with open arms, headhunters say
Major companies aren't offering former Trump Cabinet officials lucrative positions serving on their boards, as the toxicity of the former president's brand chokes off traditional money-making...
washingtonpost.com
7:47 AM · Apr 7, 2021

 

The despicables warned companies there would be "consequences " if they hired any Trump administration people, didn't they?

 

Trump put far-right radio barker Michael Savage in charge of a national park -- and disaster ensued


www.rawstory.com

https://www.rawstory.com/michael-savage-presidio-trust/

 

Meanwhile, over at Hunters Point in San Francisco, Nancy Antoinette and her crime family continue the conversion of a former military base into a residential enclave worth BILLIONS to the crime family and their minions.

 

Dems race to address, preempt stimulus fraud claims

Hans Nichols, Kadia Goba

Illustration: Aïda Amer/Axios

Biden officials are working to root out the systematic fraud in unemployment and Paycheck Protection Program claims that plagued the Trump administration’s efforts to boost the economy with coronavirus relief money, Gene Sperling told House committee chairmen privately this week.

Why it matters: President Biden just signed another $1.9 trillion of aid into law, with Sperling tapped to oversee its implementation. And the administration is asking Congress to approve another $2.2 trillion for the first phase of an infrastructure package.

• Organized efforts to steal the COVID-19 money — or partisan efforts to spin tales of waste — could not only hurt the infrastructure plan but Democrats at the polls in 2022.
• Congressional Democrats also expect Republicans to repeat the claims of "waste, fraud and abuse" they used against President Obama's 2009 stimulus package.

What we're hearing: Crime syndicates have used data readily available online, as well as information from identity theft, to claim or intercept billions in pandemic unemployment benefits during the past year.

• With more money headed out the door — including six monthly checks of $250 per child ages 6-17, and $300 for each under 6 starting in July — even more theft is possible.
• Several of the chairmen on the call — which is held at 8:15 a.m. each Wednesday by House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer — said Sperling welcomed their oversight and wanted their help in preventing fraud, Axios was told.
• Sperling is a veteran Democratic economic aide.

The big picture: Democrats know they risk political scandal if stories of graft dominate the coverage of Biden’s signature legislative package.

• Sperling explained the White House’s commitment to transparency, both before House committees and various agency inspectors general.
• The Justice Department also has been aggressive in pursuing pandemic fraud cases.

Rep. John Yarmuth, the Kentucky Democrat who heads the House Budget Committee, said he was a victim himself of COVID-19 relief fraud.

• He said Sperling was "very focused" on mitigating abuse during the next round of funding.
• "He basically said that, 'It's on me,'" Yarmouth told Axios.
• Sperling explained about 40 separate agencies will have some responsibility for implementing the American Rescue Plan.

https://www.axios.com/fraud-unemployment-ppp-stimulus-e88a027b-1973-4564-9e54-49e3108db199.html

 

So, biden/harris are proactive in stopping fraud eh?
Unemployment fraud is something Shooter happens to know a lot about. You know, cause he consulted on this stuff for most of his life.

So here's how it works.
Some rascal gets someone's social security number, and address, and date of birth and what not, and they go to a state unemployment claim site and they file a claim in the name of the victim. To do this, you need only minimal information and most states have never been big on preventing fraudulent claims because they figure they'll catch up with it pretty quickly.

Couple of problems with this.
First, once the claim is filed and the rascal has changed the mailing address, you know, for checks, or the bank routing, you know, for auto deposit, he's guaranteed at least 2 checks, probably 4, before the system catches up with him. But by then, he's closed the account, if there was one, or cashed the checks and has moved on.

Because of the way claims are processed. See, Federal rules require states to pay claims or deny them within 14 days of filing, but they usually can't make decisions that fast. In fact, most states don't even look at a claim filing for about 10 days, cause they have to give the employer a chance to respond and that's usually 10 days at least.

And then, what with the pandemic and panic and shutting down the economy, unemployment claims went from maybe 200,000 a week filings to over a million filings a week. And the states collapsed under the weight. Bottom line, most states started paying claims "provisionally" almost from the beginning. Provisionally by the way, means "we're paying you but we may want our money back".

And how much money is involved? Well, what with the average pandemic unemployment check worth $800 a week, and an average of 4 weeks paid before the state finds out something is wrong, and your average rascal able to file 8 claims a day, you know, if they're being lazy, we're talking $25,000 A DAY, you know, once the thing gets rolling.
Really. $25,000 a day. Maybe more, if you know, the rascal is not being lazy.

So, how are biden/harris gonna stop this?
They won't.

See, to actually stop it, the states have to have some kind of ID verification process, you know, before the claim is filed.
And that will take a lot of time and money to implement.
And by the time the states figure this out, and get the money and issue the contracts to amend the web pages and actually work the bugs out of it we'll be months down the road.

To the tune of $25,000 a day times however many rascals are out there.
Just ask Colorado how much; $16 MILLION in Colorado alone.
And California, ever the leader, has, so far, paid out $11 BILLION in fraudulent unemployment claims
California paid out $11 billion in fraudulent jobless claims in 2020, officials say - CBS News

But really. Does anyone think Nancy Antoinette or Feinstein or Harris or any of the power rangers are afraid because of this?
Or are outraged?
Or give a flea fart?

Hell no, they don't.
Not their money, you see.

 

Mike Pompeo Used Taxpayer Dollars to Make Restaurant Reservations, Watchdog Finds

A new report reveals that former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and his wife asked state employees to run their personal errands over 100 times, Politico reports. Mike Pompeo and his wife, Susan, asked state employees to book hair appointments and restaurant reservations, pick up their dog, and send out Christmas cards, among many more tasks, according to a report by the State Department's inspector general. The errands all add up to a huge amount of time of employees paid by taxpayer dollars. In assigning these tasks to state employees, Pompeo violated a federal regulation that states that, “an employee shall not use his public office for his own private gain,” the IG report noted. Pompeo’s lawyer placed the blame on Susan, saying that she was the one who often made the requests. However, records show that both Mike and Susan have asked state employees for help in “making restaurant reservations for personal lunches and dinners with Pompeo family members or friends.”

Read it at Politico


https://www.thedailybeast.com/mike-...lars-to-make-restaurant-reservations?ref=home

 

REVEALED: How Trump’s DHS Cozied Up To The Allegedly Fraudulent We Build The Wall Gambit

By Tierney Sneed
|
April 20, 2021 2:03 p.m.
9
At first, when We Build The Wall hosted a flashy event on May 30, 2019 near the U.S.-Mexican border, the Department of Homeland Security had no interest in participating.

El Paso’s chief patrol agent Aaron Hull emailed a superior to flag the invitation he had received from Kris Kobach, the group’s general counsel, while clarifying that “We were not involved in any way in the effort.”

“We are declining this invitation,” Hull wrote. “However, I suspect that they will say that we helped/supported/whatever their effort in their press conference today.”

It would take only three months for the DHS to change its tune on the pro-Trump group, which had launched in 2018 to construct sections of border wall on private land with crowdsourced funding. That August, Mark Morgan, then the acting commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection, hosted Kobach and two other emissaries from the group for a meeting in Washington with several other top CBP officials.

Morgan, according to an internal readout of the August 27, 2019 meeting, thanked We Build The Wall for the “positive interaction they have had with CBP.” He elaborated on the “enhanced safety” the group’s wall-building project provided CBP agents.

When the group asked about the possibility of constructing more border fence and then donating it to CBP, its deputy commissioner, Robert Perez, “expressed that CBP is interested in exploring all available options if an offer were made,” according to the summary.

Kobach and his associates were sent on their way with several pages of instructions on how to submit such a “donation” proposal and with a promise that CBP would be back in touch in a few weeks, according to the internal account of the meeting.

The readout was among hundreds of pages of documents TPM obtained Monday through a Freedom of Information Act request laying out the extent to which, in 2019 and early 2020, Trump’s DHS welcomed We Build The Wall’s offer to privately finance construction of a border wall. Trump himself was struggling to fund his own oft-promised expanded border wall through government appropriations, and there was no hope that, as Trump claimed on the 2016 campaign trail, Mexico would pay for it.

The gambit, despite DHS’ encouragement, did not get very far, and came crashing to a halt last August when several people involved with We Build The Wall — including former Trump advisor Steve Bannon — were charged by a federal grand jury for allegedly defrauded the group’s donors. (Kobach himself was not among those indicted and has not been accused of any illegal activity.)

When the charging documents were unsealed, DHS tried to distance itself from the effort, with then acting DHS Secretary Chad Wolf claiming that he never endorsed their gambit.

But at least through fall of 2019 and into that winter, top officials at the CBP were in regular contact with Kobach as they walked him through the process of offering the construction of a section of border wall as a donation to DHS. Once that donation was formally proposed in Feb. 2020, at least some agency officials had given the proposal their informal approval.

Much of this back-and-forth occurred while the federal investigation into We Build The Wall’s fundraising tactics was well underway — and even after some involved in the group were allegedly told that their conduct was being probed by federal investigators.

A ‘Positive Operational Impact’
The lack of interest Agent Hull expressed in May 2019 in participating in We Build The Wall’s endeavor was not shared — at least, not for long — among colleagues at the Department of Homeland Secretary.

Just a week after the May 30 event, Kobach managed to pique the interest of then-acting DHS Secretary Kevin McAleenan. Kobach sent McAleenan a letter requesting permission, on behalf of We Build The Wall, to build border fencing at a site in New Mexico.



McAleenan passed along the letter to several CBP officials, asking them for an “assessment of this communication” as well as “the details on the prior project referenced.” Within a few days, background materials — assembled with the help of DHS counsel, engineers and environmental experts — were prepared for McAleenan, covering both a fence construction project the group had already undertaken near the border, as well the new project We Build The Wall was now proposing. (The five-page briefing paper itself was redacted.)

On July 8th and 9th, DHS conducted a visit of the border barrier We Build the Wall had already built and concluded that it has had a “positive operational impact,” according to a separate analysis of We Build The Wall’s work.

On the afternoon of July 9, Kobach was informed via email that U.S. Customs and Border Patrol was sending him a letter from Deputy Commissioner Perez. Perez’s letter itself was not among the documents TPM obtained, but it led to an offer for an in-person meeting, which was then scheduled for August 27.

In the weeks leading up to the meeting, Kobach apparently had multiple phone calls with Perez, according to the documents, as well as email exchanges with Brian Martin, then CBP’s directorate chief of strategic planning and analysis.

‘No Issue With The Donation’
Per the DHS document summarizing the August 27 meeting, We Build The Wall’s “challenges” with GoFundMe were among the topics discussed.

Indeed, the GoFundMe account that We Build The Wall founder Brian Kolfage had set up in Dec. 2018 was suspended by the platform that same month. According to the grand jury’s indictment, GoFundMe warned Kolfage that it would return the more than $20,000 his We Build The Wall fundraising page had already attracted unless a “legitimate” non-profit organization was identified as the recipient of the fundraising. Kolfage, working with Bannon and others, then launched We Build The Wall as a non-profit.

That was just the beginning of the sketchy fundraising tactics that culminated in the conduct that prosecutors now say was illegal.

The fraud scheme alleged by prosecutors began in January of 2019, weeks after when We Build The Wall was launched. Kolfage, along with several other leaders of the group, “misled” We Build The Wall donors about where the contributions were going, according to the charging papers, as they worked to “misappropriate” hundreds of thousands of dollars to their own personal use. (President Trump pardoned Bannon of the charges he faced for his involvement in the scheme, but the case against the other defendants is proceeding.)

One key accusation that prosecutors have made is that around Oct. 2019, the defendants were informed by a financial institution that they may be under investigation. At that point, Kolfage and another co-defendant began using encrypted messaging and took other steps, according to prosecutors, to conceal their scheme.

Kobach’s collaboration with the DHS continued even after his associates allegedly became aware of the probe. Kobach did not respond to TPM’s inquiry about the DHS documents and whether he was told by his associates that the group was under investigation. Kolfage makes only a brief appearance in the documents DHS produced this week, chiming in on an email exchange in Feb. 2020 to ask that he, as president of the We Build the Wall, be looped in on future correspondence,

With CBP having given Kobach instructions in August 2019 for submitting a border wall proposal, his group got to work that fall pulling together the paperwork. Kobach exchanged several emails with Martin that were also apparently supplemented by phone conversations, according to the documents.

The communications went beyond just the proposal materials themselves.

In late October, Martin, at Kobach’s request, provided Kobach with a point of contact to help We Build The Wall with an issue it was having with a railroad company that was apparently impeding its access to one of its construction sites. In mid-November, Martin was emailing with a lawyer for We Build The Wall (whose identity has been redacted) about a gate that the group had built and then turned over to the agency. During that exchange, Martin praised the “infrastructure system” on the site as “impactful.”

According to a document leaked to the Nation, a DHS counterterrorism official had done her own analysis in November of the construction work We Build The Wall was seeking to do on the border. She said that the construction contractor the group used (which was headed by a Republican donor) tended to inflate it abilities. Her memo raised several other complications that the offer to donate a portion of the wall posed: from the types of cameras We Build The Wall put on its fencing to doubts that the group would build its fencing high enough for DHS’ standards.

By the time the holidays rolled around, Martin was still counseling Kobach on drafting the submission, while Perez continued to inquire about the status of the offer to donate a section of wall.



A version of the proposal submitted in early Jan. 2020 was ultimately deemed “incomplete” in an email from Martin to Perez. Kobach, meanwhile, asked to come visit Martin at DHS’ headquarters on January 27, after a meeting he had planned at the White House. (It’s unclear from the email whether that January DHS meeting happened.)

Kobach’s next attempt at submitting the border wall proposal seemed to go more smoothly. After an order from an official, whose name was redacted, for an “expeditious” review, several CBP officials weighed in.



Martin said he had “no issue” with the package, as did another official, whose identity was also redacted.



It’s unclear whether CBP gave We Build The Wall the final okay on the proposed donation. The communications produced in TPM’s FOIA end abruptly in mid-February and the CBP’s press shop did not answer by publication time TPM’s question about where the agency landed on We Build The Wall’s offer.

However, by that time, DHS was also preparing talking points on the We Build The Wall project, which were included in the FOIA production in a highly redacted form.

It also included a special note for “C1” — DHS parlance for CBP commissioner, who at the time was Mark Morgan. That portion of the memo was also redacted.




https://talkingpointsmemo.com/muckraker/kobach-we-build-the-wall-dhs-cbp

 

Shoulda just built the wall when Trump wanted to. Cheaper, and joe wouldn't be dealing with such a huge crisis now.

 

One question we will probably never see any conservative/Republicans answer, at least they sure haven't yet, why didn't conservative/Republicans fund and build Trump's wall when they controlled both Houses of Congress? There was nothing stopping them.

Groups see new openings for digging up dirt on Trump


Public interest groups determined to stay focused on the Trump administration say they have new openings for unearthing information now that the past government’s political appointees have departed.

Various groups that flooded the government with Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests say the departures have greased the wheels of various agencies’ public records shops.

Requests ranging from the pandemic response and the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol are moving forward, potentially aiding activists eager to bring new dirt to light.

“I think there's a ton left to understand about what went wrong during the Trump administration and what norms were broken, what ethical violations occurred, and I do think we’ve only scratched the tip of the iceberg,” said Lisa Gilbert with Public Citizen, who organizes the Not Above the Law coalition of more than 100 different interest groups.

And representatives of whistleblowers who spoke out against the Trump administration are optimistic additional witnesses will step forward without the same fears of retaliation.

“This is the ideal time to step forward — while the facts are still fresh, before memories fade, while the evidence is readily available, while public interest remains high,” said David Seide with the Government Accountability Project.

Seide represents current and former government workers who blew the whistle on the forced hysterectomies of women detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), as well as workers at Voice of America and its oversight agency who complained of political interference by Trump appointees.

“People should come out now if nothing else to provide leads for investigators. They know where the bodies are buried. They know who participated in these events. They know where the emails are. They know what records exist and don't exist,” he said.

“The Trumpites know that too, but they don't control the archives anymore.”

What hasn’t been revealed by personnel could still be revealed by documents. Critics say the roadblocks put in place by the Trump administration are coming down.

“There was this massive, massive issue during the Trump administration with compliance with public records laws. They put in political appointees to review public records requests,” said Jordan Libowitz, communications director with Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW).

“They’d give it to you once you sued. But most people can't sue.”

The pace has changed with Biden officials in public record offices.

“Things that were blocked are suddenly no longer being blocked. All kinds of information is about to come out, and we’re not letting go of that,” he said.

CREW’s big focus has been on any attempts by the Trump administration to interfere with the special election in Georgia as well as how agencies responded in the lead up to the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.

Austin Evers, executive director of American Oversight, which has made “Trump accountability” one of their top priorities, said his group is starting to get FOIA requests back on Ukraine, the response to the pandemic, and former Attorney General William Barr’s final months in office.

“Losing an election is not actually accountability for some of that conduct,” he said. “And our philosophy is that if we don't expose what happened and the way that administration hurt people and violated laws and norms then they will transform that lack of accountability into impunity, and others will copy what they did.”

Still, even if groups uncover additional ethical lapses, they could face challenges in forwarding their findings.

“Ethics laws don't attach to somebody in perpetuity so it can be hard to hold the individual actors accountable when they leave office,” said Delaney Marsco, an ethics expert with the Campaign Legal Center.

And even if they discover untoward behavior, they may hit a familiar roadblock: while unethical, actions uncovered may not be illegal.

Marsco said Trump cast aside a number of government norms, such as refusing to divest from his businesses.

“The reason it's so bad isn't that he broke the law, it’s that there wasn't a law and he was allowed to do it and he did it,” she said.

Still, Evers suggested the probes and investigations could lead to new information being brought to light.

“Former President Trump is facing criminal and civil liability for his misconduct around the insurrection and actions around the election so that moment of accountability is still available for him,” he said.

“And other appointees are fanning out around the country working at companies and biding their time before they can join the government. And they would like nothing more than for evidence to never come out about what they did.”

Beyond digging into the past, public interest groups are also putting their efforts behind codifying some of those norms into rules while shoring up other democracy measures, like protections for whistleblowers and ensuring that presidential nominees must release their tax returns.

Many are coalescing behind a bill from Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), the Protect Our Democracy Act, which is set to be reintroduced in the coming weeks. It would strengthen Congress’s subpoena power, bolster protections of inspectors general, and increase penalties for those that violate the Hatch Act.

Gilbert said the idea is to focus on “norms that people didn’t realize were only norms until Trump broke them.”

“Compliance with subpoenas by the executive branch was something we took for granted would happen even if it took a while. The other stonewalling we saw during the Trump administration was completely unprecedented. It shows we didn't have enough on the books to protect that congressional prerogative,” she said.

“This is more narrowly thinking about where a president that is unscrupulous can abuse the system.”

https://thehill.com/homenews/admini...see-new-openings-for-digging-up-dirt-on-trump