Why Florida AG Pam Bondi Supports Trump…

Thanks to Sunlight Foundation who does remarkable work.

Donald Trump’s history of paying to sway attorneys general

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Donald Trump speaking at a rally
Donald Trump in Reno, Nevada. (Photo credit: Darron Birgenheier/Flickr)

Donald Trump defends his past political donations as a means to further his business endeavors. He frames his contributions as good business. What better way to close such loopholes than to elect someone who knew how to exploit them best?

“I was a businessman, I give to everybody,” Trump said at the first Republican debate. “When they call, I give. And you know what? When I need something from them, two years later, three years later, I call them, and they are there for me.”

Questions about Trump University

In March of this year, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) filed a complaint with the IRS against the Donald Trump Foundation, alleging it violated its tax status. The foundation, a 501(c)(3) that is barred from political activities, donated $25,000 to “And Justice for All,” a 527 political organization associated with supporting Florida GOP Attorney General Pam Bondi’s re-election.

In 2013, the Florida Attorney General’s Office — led by Bondi — reportedly contemplated suing Trump University alongside New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman in a multi-state lawsuit over complaints by former students. Three days after the Orlando Sentinel wrote about the Floridians who felt scammed by Trump University, the Trump Foundation contributed money to And Justice for All. And just days after that, Bondi rescinded the investigation, citing insufficient grounds to proceed.

Trump University now connotes a Ponzi scheme more than an educational institution. Due to the inflated tuition, former employees labeling the school as a “scheme” or a “lie” and a lack of return on investment for the students, the university is now mired in controversy. Some former students say the system was a con and many claim the classes they enrolled in were either worthless or nonexistent. The Better Business Bureau gave Trump University a D-minus in 2010.

Take the state of Texas as an example: According to the Dallas Morning News, “267 Texans paid more than $425,000 to attend Trump University’s three-day seminar, 39 purchased Trump’s “Gold Elite” package of additional classes and other perks costing $35,000 each, and 150 others spent more than $826,000 on other goods and services.”

The Orlando Sentinel obtained 8,491 documents from Bondi’s office which detailed her staff urging those affected by Trump University to hire their own attorneys if they wanted their money back – deflecting any need for her office to take action.

“Visit an Internet search engine such as http://www.yahoo.com or http://www.google.com to search for information on any class action lawsuits you may benefit from,” according to page 5,449 of Bondi’s document dump. Several discrepancies were made by Bondi’s staff, including the number of complaints received (her office originally said they only received one complaint) and a lack of effort to investigate the claims.

While Trump never detailed his motivations for the political donations, he called Bondi “a fabulous representative of the people” and Schneiderman, who didn’t back down from the suit, “a political hack.” While Schneiderman recently decried Trump University as an example of “straight-up fraud,” he still received $12,500 from Trump six years ago.

Bondi now says she personally solicited the money from Trump after complaints to her office had been filed. If this is the case, then it seems plausible to view Florida’s decision not to investigate Trump University as a possible quid pro quo exchange.

CREW recently issued a statement doubling down. “Attorney General Bondi’s admission that she personally solicited a donation from Donald Trump directly contradicts the Trump camp’s version of events. … This reaffirms the need for an immediate and thorough investigation.”

Spitzer, Cuomo, Pirro took Trump cash

Map of state contributions
Trump’s political donations to state candidates top $800,000 in nearly 15 states. Graphic credit: National Institute on Money in State Politics)

Bondi’s not the only attorney general who’s received Trump’s money. According to the National Institute on Money in State Politics, Trump collectively gave to attorneys general nine times in Florida, California and New York for a total of $134,015.

  • 1998
    • Dennis Vacco, R-N.Y., $27,965
  • 2002
    • Eliot Spitzer, D-N.Y., $11,000 Spitzer resigned one year after serving as governor of New York in 2008
  • 2006
    • Walter Campbell Jr., D-Calif., $1,000
    • Edmund Brown Jr., D-Calif., $1,000 Brown now serves as the governor of California
    • Andrew Cuomo, D-N.Y., $20,000 Cuomo now serves as the governor of New York
    • Jeanine Pirro, R-N.Y., $10,000 Pirro is currently a television personality on Fox News
  • 2010
    • Kathleen Rice, D-N.Y., $19,050 Rice now serves as Representative to New York’s 4th district
    • Eric Schneiderman, D-N.Y., $12,500
    • Daniel Donovan, R-N.Y., $5,000 Donovan now serves as Representative to New York’s 11th district
  • 2014
    • Pamela Bondi, R-Fla., $500
    • Kamala Harris, D-Calif., $6,000
    • John Cahill, R-N.Y., $20,000

Current Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, investigated Trump University when Abbott served as Texas attorney general. After Abbott dropped the investigation, Trump donated $35,000 to his gubernatorial campaign.

According to The Huffington Post, former Deputy Chief of Consumer Protection John Owens, who worked closely with the Trump University investigation, called the probe “an extremely strong case” — only to have the case dropped.

Abbott’s successor, Ken Paxton (who remains in the spotlight for a number of other fraudulent charges), issued a cease-and-desist letter to Owens after he made copies of a 14-page internal summary detailing Trump University scamming millions of dollars from Texas students. “The decision not to sue was political,” Owens later told the Dallas Morning News. The scheduled meeting between Texas officials and Trump representatives for the $5.4 million settlement never even occurred.

Larger legal issues

501(c)(3) charitable organizations, such as the Donald Trump Foundation, are barred from any and all political activities. In exchange, they are tax exempt from the IRS. 527 organizations, such as Bondi’s And Justice for All group, are vehicles specifically for political activities.

A larger problem, aside from the illegal donations, is linking attorneys general (which are elected officials in 43 states) to lobbyists, gifts and other forms of non-quid pro quo arrangements, more or less, blatant bribes. Attorneys general are essentially the main legal advisor to the government, issuing formal opinions to state agencies, proposing legislation, instituting civil suits on behalf of the state and representing the public’s interests in charitable trust and solicitations.

Whether or not the two cases of Bondi and Abbott are illegal, the dubious timing of the donations and their actions to halt their investigations give off the appearance of a quid pro quo arrangement. These officials are voted by their constituents and are responsible for representing the public. Their interests should never be questioned.

Both Bondi and Abbott have endorsed Donald Trump for president.

Soros and Black Lives Matters

Soros is a dual citizen of Hungary and the United States and the term sedition comes to mind. But then too there is Barack and Hillary as a protector.

  Related reading: Soros, Gore among W.H. visitors

“George Soros going to bat for Hillary Clinton”.

Politico Jump up ^ “Priorities USA Action Contributors, 2016 cycle – OpenSecrets”.

Rush Limbaugh Exposes Who’s Funding Black Lives Matter Anti-Cop Protests

Who the heck is funding Black Lives Matter’s protests?

That’s a question many of us have often wondered. Who has time to protest for days on end in the streets, blocking off highways, among other activities? I’d resort to my default explanation, that they’re all unemployed with nothing better to do, but there are so many of them. Someone must be paying them to protest.

 

A caller into Rush Limbaugh’s show the other day posed that question, and he had an answer that probably won’t surprise you. To quote:

RUSH: The largest benefactor of Black Lives Matter is George Soros.

CALLER: Yes, sir.

RUSH: You know what that is?

CALLER: I do.

RUSH: Well, he’s a very extreme, angry and mean-spirited liberal who is doing his best to destroy capitalism wherever it is in the world. And, of course, since we are the greatest, largest capitalist outpost —

CALLER: He wants to collapse this country.

RUSH: Wants to collapse the country, exactly right.  Don’t ask me why.  My ability to understand these people in that sense, I’ve never understood why people want to tear down the greatest economic engine that has ever been, that enables everything they believe. It enables all their welfare benefits. It enables all of their whatever.  I’ve never understood why they want to tear it down, but they do, and George Soros, the amount of money, I was stunned last week, I’ve learned George Soros has given these people $33 million in the last three or four years, $33 million.

CALLER: That’s a drop in the bucket to what’s coming in for Hillary’s campaign.

And he’s right. The Daily Mail reported back in 2015 on Soros’ $33 million in funding of BLM, noting that “Liberal billionaire George Soros donated $33 million to social justice organizations which helped turn events in Ferguson from a local protest into a national flashpoint. The handouts, revealed in tax filings from Soros’s private foundation, were given to dozens of different groups which weighed in on the crisis.”

Snopes rated the claim as “half-true,” acknowledging that Soros funded a network of groups, some of which engaged in Ferguson-related protest activities. They rated “false” the half of the statement about funds going exclusively to fund Ferguson-related protests, but that seems like a minor quibble.

…. And for some bonus entertainment, Donald Trump had a few brief comments about Soros funding BLM back in March.

Related reading: George Soros, Godfather of the Left Gives $550 Million to Liberal Causes

The Baton Rouge Cop Killer Terrorist, Legally Changed his Name

The probability is high that the FBI cultivated this information but due to the saturation point of agents working higher radical and militant people across the country had to prioritize cases. If true and this assessment is accurate, we have a real problem in America and worse a resource problem. Even law enforcement is overwhelmed and data from Fusion Centers may be in question. Nonetheless….here are new facts:

  Courtesy of Heavy    

Baton Rouge Gunman Created Alternate Identity Prior to Shooting

WSJ: Gavin Eugene Long, the gunman who killed three Baton Rouge, La., police officers Sunday, had legally changed his name to Cosmo Setepenra after pledging allegiance to a group of black Americans who claim to be part of a sovereign nation.

Long filed a notice on May 16, 2015, stating that he had joined Washitaw Nation and would change his name to Cosmo Augur Setepenra, according to court documents filed with the Jackson County, Mo., recorder of deeds office.

The declaration that he joined the separatist group had no legal force, but it is evidence that he sympathized with the sovereign-citizens movement, which law-enforcement officials consider to be an extremist threat.

Cosmo is a name that he had also used as his online persona in recent years, according to his tweets and other social-media posts. In a series of rants connected to Cosmo in the weeks before the shooting, Long, who was black, talked of his willingness to die for what he believed was an injustice aimed at him.

Long, 29 years old, was killed by police following Sunday’s shooting.

Police concerns about the sovereign-citizens movement have intensified over the past decade. Law-enforcement officers perceive the sovereign-citizens movement as the top threat, ahead of jihadists, among extremist groups in the U.S., according to a 2013-2014 survey by the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism.

Officers had ranked the movement as the seventh biggest threat in a similar survey published in 2009.

Adherents to the antigovernment sovereign-citizens movement believe the federal government underwent a secret transformation that made slaves of all Americans, according the Southern Law Poverty Center, which has tracked the movement.

The Washitaw Nation is a related group that believes the Louisiana Purchase, in which the U.S. acquired land from France in 1803, was fraudulent. Its members claim to be part of an indigenous culture that rightfully owns the land, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center.

To join Washitaw Nation, a person needs to file a series of written documents with a local court, or county clerk’s office. Long submitted eight pages of documents into the official record three days after his May 2015 filing. Washitaw Nation isn’t a Native American tribe.

Long argued that, under a United Nations statute granting rights to indigenous people, he was giving up his birth name and his allegiance to the U.S., including his Social Security number, to join the group.

The man who fatally shot three police officers in Baton Rouge on Sunday before being killed has been identified as a former Marine sergeant. Mark Kelly reports. Image: AFP

The link between Long and Cosmo is also shown by a website that tracks internet-domain registration. A Gavin Long from Kansas City registered a website called “Convos With Cosmo,” which is very similar to others used for his business dealings and audio and video posts. The website was registered in April.

On July 4, in an audio file posted to one of these sites, “Cosmo” tells the story of joining the Marines in 2005 and then being stationed in Japan and California before an attempt to deploy him to Iraq in 2008. Cosmo said he was a data-network specialist, which he said made him responsible for his group’s network.

The Pentagon said Long joined the Marines in 2005 and said he had a similar rotation to the one described above.

Cosmo said the military tried to deploy him to Iraq before all of his gear had arrived from Japan, and he fought the order.

Sovereign citizens deny they are subject to most taxes and many laws. Members of the movement have harassed government officials by filing liens against officials’ property. They have been prosecuted in dozens of tax-avoidance and other financial schemes, according to a research brief by the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism.

People associated with the sovereign-citizens movement have also been linked to the deaths of several law-enforcement officers, with the Federal Bureau of Investigation describing them as part of “domestic terrorist movement.”

Two police officers in West Memphis, Ark., were shot and killed during a 2010 traffic stop by a father and son identified by the Southern Law Poverty Center and the Anti-Defamation League as sovereign citizens. Suspects in the 2012 shooting deaths of two sheriff’s deputies in St. John the Baptist Parish, La., also described themselves as members of the movement.

Long began using the Twitter account “Convos with Cosmo” in October 2015. The account was used primarily for motivational messages, boasts about himself or links to some of his ideas on issues like sex. They took a more militaristic turn in recent weeks, though, following recent police shootings that killed two black men, one in Baton Rouge and another in Minnesota.

On July 8, one day after Micah Johnson killed five law-enforcement officers in Dallas, Cosmo posted a video suggesting that he could do something that would make people speculate about his motivations.

That same day, Long sent an email to 13 people whom he described as his “Peace Family” and told them “that if anything may happen to me or with me, I am NOT affiliated with anybody, any group, nationality, association, religion, corporation, business, etc.”

He said that for him “as a Man (Protector and Provider) (And Spiritual Being) and me knowing my role as a Man, my duties as a Man, and that I determine my destiny and no one else, I am taking this Earth Plane existence day by day and even hour by hour because anything is possible from here on out.”

The email was sent less than 24 hours after the Dallas shooting that killed five law enforcement officers.

The day after the Dallas law-enforcement officials were shot, Cosmo tweeted: “The Shooter was NOT WHITE, He was one of us!”

In his most recent video posted on his YouTube page Thursday, he is in his car, promoting a book and talking about “wanting my people to succeed.” It isn’t clear where the video is set, but he mentions the protests in Baton Rouge and says he wasn’t able to participate.

“I just got here. I came for my people I am not really into the protesting. I do education,” he said, arguing that the protesters will be gone in the next month.

By Sunday night the video had been viewed more than 11,000 times and was filled with hundreds of comments condemning the shootings.

Cosmo claimed that he dropped out of school, sold his cars, gave away his material possessions and packed two suitcases and headed to Africa, a place he called his “ancestral home.”

He posted videos of his journey, including a stay at what he called a “mid-level” guesthouse in Accra, Ghana, in a clip titled “African-Americans this is what Africa really looks like.”

On July 13, six days after the Dallas shooting, he tweeted: “Violence is not THE answer (its a answer), but at what point do you stand up so that your people dont become the Native Americans…EXTINCT?”

His final tweet, sent just hours before the Baton Rouge police officers were killed, suggested he knew that he was about to die as well: “Just bc you wake up every morning doesn’t mean that you’re living. And just bc you shed your physical body doesn’t mean that you’re dead.”

—Jim Oberman contributed to this article

Why is Trump Against Ukraine and Siding with Russia?

Are we to expect the Trump agenda as president is to normalize all relations with the Kremlin? Is this the first official foreign policy disaster? Below are a handful of factual conditions that Trump is already wrong where the RNC Convention policy was right, but Trump objects. Something else smells here.

We have not even addressed how Russia is not cooperating with the West on Islamic State and the Defense Department refuses to collaborate with Russia on war missions or intelligence.

 

Even The Treasury Department has reasons to apply sanctions to Russia.

Directives 1 and 2 Pursuant to EO 13662 (Issued July 16, 2014)

Important Advisories


OFAC issues advisories to the public on important issues related to the sanctions programs it administers.  While these documents may focus on specific industries and activities, they should be reviewed by any party interested in OFAC compliance.

Due to the invasion of Crimea and Ukraine, Russia was eliminated from the G8 making it the G7 and sanctions remain.

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The Kremlin has a full blown internet troll operation against the United States

So, That Cyber Caliphate is Not ISIS, it is Russian!

General Dunford Tells Congress Russia Poses Greatest Threat to US Security

G7 summit: Obama and Merkel firm on Russia sanctions

BBC: Moscow is the target of European Union and US sanctions over its role in support of Ukrainian rebels.

Russia has been excluded from what was previously known as the G8, since the annexation of Crimea last year.

The West accuses Russia of sending military forces into eastern Ukraine to help the rebels – a charge echoed by analysts. Moscow denies this, saying any Russian soldiers there are volunteers. More from BBC

Trump campaign guts GOP’s anti-Russia stance on Ukraine

Rogin/WashingtonPost: The Trump campaign worked behind the scenes last week to make sure the new Republican platform won’t call for giving weapons to Ukraine to fight Russian and rebel forces, contradicting the view of almost all Republican foreign policy leaders in Washington.

Throughout the campaign, Trump has been dismissive of calls for supporting the Ukraine government as it fights an ongoing Russian-led intervention. Trump’s campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, worked as a lobbyist for the Russian-backed former Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych for more than a decade.

Still, Republican delegates at last week’s national security committee platform meeting in Cleveland were surprised when the Trump campaign orchestrated a set of events to make sure that the GOP would not pledge to give Ukraine the weapons it has been asking for from the United States.

Inside the meeting, Diana Denman, a platform committee member from Texas who was a Ted Cruz supporter, proposed a platform amendment that would call for maintaining or increasing sanctions against Russia, increasing aid for Ukraine and “providing lethal defensive weapons” to the Ukrainian military.

“Today, the post-Cold War ideal of a ‘Europe whole and free’ is being severely tested by Russia’s ongoing military aggression in Ukraine,” the amendment read. “The Ukrainian people deserve our admiration and support in their struggle.”

Trump staffers in the room, who are not delegates but are there to oversee the process, intervened. By working with pro-Trump delegates, they were able to get the issue tabled while they devised a method to roll back the language.

On the sideline, Denman tried to persuade the Trump staffers not to change the language, but failed. “I was troubled when they put aside my amendment and then watered it down,” Denman told me. “I said, ‘What is your problem with a country that wants to remain free?’ It seems like a simple thing.”

Finally, Trump staffers wrote an amendment to Denman’s amendment that stripped out the platform’s call for “providing lethal defensive weapons” and replaced it with softer language calling for “appropriate assistance.”

That amendment was voted on and passed. When the Republican Party releases its platform Monday, the official Republican party position on arms for Ukraine will be at odds with almost all the party’s national security leaders.

“This is another example of Trump being out of step with GOP leadership and the mainstream in a way that shows he would be dangerous for America and the world,” said Rachel Hoff, another platform committee member who was in the room.

Of course, Trump is not the only politician to oppose sending lethal weapons to Ukraine. President Obama decided not to authorize it, despite recommendations to do so from his top Europe officials in the State Department and the military. The United States has provided Ukraine with non-lethal equipment and aid.

Trump’s view of Russia has always been friendlier than most Republicans. He’s said he would “get along very well” with Vladimir Putin and called it a “great honor” when Putin praised him. Trump has done a lot of business in Russia and has been traveling there since 1987. Last August, he said of Ukraine joining NATO, “I wouldn’t care.” He traveled there in September, and he told Ukrainians their war is “really a problem that affects Europe a lot more than it affects us.”

For Trump, the biggest threat to Europe is not Russia, according to people familiar with his thinking. He believes the United States should focus on helping Europe fight Islamist terrorism and open borders, not confronting Putin. He has called for a reduction of the U.S. commitment to NATO. He simply doesn’t see Russia as a dangerous threat.

For Denman, the Trump campaign’s actions betrayed the U.S. commitment to supporting struggling democracies around the world, which she considers a core Republican value.

“The Ukrainian people are trying to come out of the past and stay free. We owe to those who are fighting for freedom still to give them a helping hand,” she said.

“I’m very passionate and supportive of the Reagan foreign policy of peace through strength.”

Trump too often invokes Ronald Reagan when talking about America’s role in the world. But although Reagan negotiated with the Soviet Union, he also stood up to Russian aggression in Europe and defended democratic principles abroad.

When the platform comes out, Republicans will see how far from the Reagan doctrine their party has drifted, thanks to Trump.

Russia Makes Olympic Athletes with Proven Doping Program

Wada Report is here.  

WADA Calls For Russian Ban From Rio Olympics After Report Confirms ‘Unprecedented’ Doping Scheme

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Russia ‘Directed’ Athlete Doping For Years

A report says that Russia’s government and secret service directed systematic cheating in sports since 2011.

SkyNews: Russia has systematically covered up doping in “all sporting disciplines” since 2011, an official report has found.

The sports ministry and secret service “directed and oversaw” the manipulation of urine samples, the World Anti-Doping Agency said.

It resulted in at least 312 falsified results up until at least last year’s world swimming championships, WADA said.

The state-sponsored cheating happened after an “abysmal” medal count at the Vancouver Winter Olympics in 2010, according to the report.

The cheating involved clean urine being frozen and switched for doped urine, often passed through secret holes in laboratories.

As well as the Sochi Winter Olympics in 2014, Russia’s cheating also included the 2013 track world championships in Moscow.

The doping continued in the 2015 swimming world championships in Kazan, chief investigator Richard McLaren said.

Russia’s track and field athletes are already banned from the Olympic Games in Rio, beginning this summer.

The independent findings will increase pressure for all Russians – not just those in track and field events – to be banned from the games.

The report was commissioned following claims made by a Russian whistleblower, former director of anti-doping Dr Grigory Rodchenkov.

He claimed that dozens of athletes, including at least 15 medalists in Sochi, were part of an extensive state-run doping programme.

 

Reuters:

An independent commission report, led by Canadian law professor and sports lawyer Richard McLaren, published on Monday revealed evidence of widespread state-sponsored doping by Russian athletes at the 2014 Sochi Olympics.

McLaren, who was a member of WADA’s independent commission which last year exposed widespread doping and corruption in Russian athletics, said the Russian Ministry of Sport oversaw the manipulation of athletes’ analytical results and sample swapping.

Here are some reactions from the world of sport:

TRAVIS TYGART (CEO of USADA)

“The McLaren Report has concluded, beyond a reasonable doubt, a mind-blowing level of corruption within both Russian sport and government that goes right to the field of play… and most importantly, our hearts go out to athletes from all over the world who were robbed of their Olympic dreams.

“Looking forward, we must come together as an international community — comprised of those who truly believe in the spirit of Olympism — to ensure this unprecedented level of criminality never again threatens the sports we cherish.”

IOC PRESIDENT THOMAS BACH

“The findings of the report show a shocking and unprecedented attack on the integrity of sport and on the Olympic Games. Therefore, the IOC will not hesitate to take the toughest sanctions available against any individual or organization implicated.”

PHILIP CRAVEN, PRESIDENT OF THE INTERNATIONAL PARALYMPIC COMMITTEE (IPC)

“We are truly shocked, appalled and deeply saddened at the extent of the state sponsored doping program implemented in Russia ahead of Sochi 2014. The findings of the McLaren report mark a very dark day for sport.

“Once we have the further details we have requested from both parties, the IPC Governing Board will convene for a telephone conference. The Board will discuss the findings of the report and decide what relevant action needs to be taken to protect clean athletes competing in Paralympic sport.

“This may include provisional measures and sanctions with regards to the Rio 2016 Paralympic Games.”

SCOTT BLACKMAN, UNITED STATES OLYMPIC COMMITTEE CEO

“The McClaren Report confirms what we have stated previously: the current anti-doping system is broken and urgently requires the attention of everyone interested in protecting clean athletes.

“We look forward to working with the IOC, WADA and the entire Olympic family to address the flaws in the current system so that a uniform approach to anti-doping can be implemented and enforced around the world.

“In the meantime, we are focused on preparing Team USA to compete at the upcoming Rio Games and will rely on the IOC, WADA and the international federations to impose sanctions that are appropriate in relation to the magnitude of these offenses, and that give clean athletes some measure of comfort that they will be competing on a level playing field in Rio.”

NICOLE SAPSTEAD, CEO OF UK ANTI-DOPING

“Now is the time for the entire sporting community to come together to find a way forward and ensure that the right processes, legislation and safeguards are in place to protect the rights of all athletes to clean, fair and honest competition.”