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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
Rep. Tom Garrett (he's a Tea Party/Freedom Caucus type) (R-VA) will not be seeking re-election, to focus on treatment for alcoholism.
https://www.cnn.com/2018/05/28/politics/tom-garrett-virginia-election/index.html
The Democrats consider his district to be winnable, they've put over $700,000 into it and the GOP is scrambling to get a replacement ready.
Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects.![]()
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And, like I said, at the same time as those issues fester they've been asked to increase the pace and intensity of their operations. But sadly training isn't built in a factory in some congressman's district, so it gets put on the back burner.
An overhaul of the way we spend money on our military is probably necessary. For politicians to pay lip service to the troops while letting this slide is frankly criminal.
They should have sent a poet.I posted that awhile back.
Trump basically has this as his career.
- Starting up with a million dollars from his dad and all of the contacts made by his dad who was a genuine Self-Made Man.
- Getting ties with the Five Families in New York, his failed casino that was almost certainly laundering money for them but also something he was embezzling from himself (explaining how a casino can lose money in terms of cash generated) to pay off his massive debt interest. Possibly involved in the murder of his two business partners at the Taj Mahal he promptly blamed for all of its failures before bankrupting the project after transferring his debts (and the mob's) to it.
- Inheriting 200 million dollars from his dead dad. Using that to make his persona of being a super rich magnate versus actually doing business. He actually leveraged his fame from being a famous rich man to getting people to invest in him. Pizza hutt commercials, the art of the deal, and numerous shady land deals. He worked heavily with Giuliani to profit from the gentrification of New York but had been doing that for decades himself.
- Trump's reputation as a shady piece of shit had spread through the American business community and his debts were potentially in the billions. So, he started selling the Trump name as his primary resource, on crappy properties throughout the globe. This included many which were never finished and large amounts of money disappeared from, organized crime families, dictatorships, and so on.
- Trump was, at that point, the biggest way to make it seem like a project was American funded even when it was Saudi Princes at work. Trump famously sold his name for extremely small amounts even on good projects that would have been great long term investments because he needed upfront cash.
- The Apprentice years, which restored his reputation as a super businessman and allowed him to get ahead of the massive debts. The producers, notably, drew heavily from the Godfather to make Trump appear more successful and classier than he was at that time.
- The Presidency - after numerous extremely questionable deals in foreign countries that may have benefited him personally and bought out his debt.
Personal Anecdote:
My father, notably, was once president of a major Kentucky businessman's lobby (I was like 8 at the time so please forgive me if I don't remember specifics) and often met with the Governor, Senators, and got invited to a lot of George H.W. Bush's parties.
One event I do remember was he once had a meeting with Trump and basically told me afterward that Donald was a crook and that he'd advised the association not to get involved with him building a bunch of golf courses near Lexington as they'd be taking a bath on it while he reaped the benefits.
edited 28th May '18 5:57:01 PM by CharlesPhipps
Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.The Measure of Trump’s Devotion
[1]
“To care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan” is a promise not denominated only in dollars and cents. We commit spiritually, too, to do our limited human best to understand and appreciate the losses and suffering imposed by the defense of the nation.
It is the responsibility and honor of the president to speak for the nation on the solemn occasions of collective remembrance. Some presidents are endowed with greater natural eloquence than others, but that does not matter. What the country listens for is the generous and authentic message underneath the rhetoric, whether that rhetoric is graceful or clumsy. The last general to win the presidency said, “I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity.” The country heard those words, believed them, and trusted him.
The 45th president is often described—and sometimes praised—as “authentic.” That compliment, if it is a compliment, is not truly deserved. In many ways, President Trump is not the man he seems. He was not a great builder, not a great dealmaker, not a billionaire, not a man of strength and decisiveness.
But there is one way in which he truly is authentic: He is never able to play-act the generous feelings that he so absolutely lacks. “To show an unfelt sorrow is an office which the false man does easy.” In that one sense, Donald Trump is not false. He does not feel sorrow for others, and he does not try to pretend otherwise.
Happy Memorial Day! Those who died for our great country would be very happy and proud at how well our country is doing today. Best economy in decades, lowest unemployment numbers for Blacks and Hispanics EVER (& women in 18years), rebuilding our Military and so much more. Nice!
Trump’s perfect emptiness of empathy has revealed itself again and again through his presidency, but never as completely and conspicuously as in his self-flattering 2018 Memorial Day tweets. They exceed even the heartless comment in a speech to Congress—in the presence of a grieving widow—that a fallen Navy Seal would be happy that his ovation from Congress had lasted longer than anybody else’s.
It’s not news that there is something missing from Trump where normal human feelings should go. His devouring need for admiration from others is joined to an extreme, even pathological, inability to return any care or concern for those others. But Trump’s version of this disconnect comes most especially to the fore at times of national ritual.
Donald Trump cares enormously about national symbols—the flag, the anthem—when he can use them to belittle, humiliate, and exclude.
Trump has called for revoking the citizenship of those who burn the flag. He has suggested that NFL players who do not rise for the Star-Spangled Banner should be deported. He scored one of the greatest victories of his presidency when the National Football League submitted to his demand to punish players who did not stand at attention for the anthem. Vice President Pence ran the victory lap for Trump on this one.
But when it comes time to to lead the nation in its shared rituals of unity and common purpose, Donald Trump cannot do it. He is, at most, president of slightly more than half of white America, and often not even that.
What happens then if the country should find itself in a moment when national leadership is required? A mass-casualty terrorist attack, a natural disaster that takes many lives, a crisis that might lead to war, a war itself? Trump’s decisions are leading the country toward possible conflict in the Korean Peninsula and against Iran.
What if that leadership actually arrives at the brink of outright conflict? How can a president who only grabs credibly ask others for sacrifice? How can the most untrustworthy man ever to hold the office effectively summon anyone to follow him? Franklin Roosevelt in his first inaugural address spoke of “the warm courage of national unity.” There will never be any such thing under a Trump presidency, and the fault lines embittered by Trump’s ceaseless provocations will shatter in a real national crisis.
On every Memorial Day, Americans should pray for peace. On this Memorial Day and the next, and the one after that, Americans should pray with extra fervor—because war, if it comes, will come under the leadership of a man unequal to the job.
A nice sum up to end Memorial Day with.
It's currently unsubstaniated, but there are rumors going around that Melania has moved back to New York City.
Again, this is just rumor, but she wasn't at the Memorial Day cerimony today, and the geotag on her personal Twitter account was changed from D.C. to New York, which could support it.
edited 28th May '18 8:08:26 PM by megaeliz
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I've heard that. Didn't mention it there was no attached story and couldn't find one myself but here's the post I originally saw on the matter
.
- Previously unannounced stay in the hospital for several days for what should have been an outpatient procedure.
- Disappearance from public view immediately after announcing the first major initiative as First Lady
- Trump tweeting hysterically and mysteriously about "beautiful people" being driven out of DC the same day rumors are circulating that Melania has returned to NY indefinitely.
What to make of this? I don't know.
But here's two random, completely unconnected facts.
1. There is sworn testimony of Illegitimate Leader Trump committing extremely violent domestic abuse.
2. Melania went to the hospital for longer than her supposed issue would have required, then supposedly moved out of the White House without an official explanation or announcement, and as far as I'm aware hasn't been seen publicly since the hospital visit.
Just two random, unconnected facts.
edited 28th May '18 8:08:26 PM by sgamer82
Tiffany was primarily raised by her mother and it damn well shows. Here's hoping that Barron's time with his father is limited and he's mostly raised by his own mother/tutors/etc.
As for the stuff about Melania Trump being legit or not....none of the big news sites have really jumped on it yet, so i doubt there's any credible leaks regarding that yet.
edited 28th May '18 8:24:54 PM by Rationalinsanity
Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects.
although, considering some of the Frankly awful things he's said about her... (remember the, "I'd have sex with her if she wasn't my daughter", thing?).
Speaking of rumors, even more of trump/tabloid intrigue (also, Stormy Daniels isn't the first "adult film actress" to be involved with Trump.).
Inside TMZ’s Mission to Rescue Donald Trump
Instead, the celebrity gossip website went into overdrive to help Trump.
Within a week of the tape’s explosion, TMZ ran “exclusive” after “exclusive” giving Trump cover. There was a story that Bill Clinton made “disparaging remarks” about women when he played golf with Trump—as Trump claimed Clinton did when the tape dropped. Another story claimed NBC executives “had a plan to time the release” of the tape to sink Trump. There was also an item from a former Miss Teen USA saying she never had a bad experience with Trump after he was accused of leering at nude girls backstage.
It shouldn’t have been a surprise: It was the result of a cozy relationship between TMZ founder and boss Harvey Levin and Trump, who called each other throughout the campaign, seven sources told The Daily Beast.
“Leading up to the election there were many phone calls between Harvey and Trump. Harvey was in close contact with the Trump team frequently,” said a former TMZ top executive who, like others, spoken under the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution from Levin.
“There was a point Harvey would make jokes in the newsroom that he would be press secretary or in the Cabinet but we got the impression he was only half joking,” another former staffer, who had daily dealings with Levin, said. Unusually, Levin got personally involved in the story of one of the many women who accused Trump of sexual assault, according to two TMZ sources.
After Jessica Leeds accused Trump of groping her on an airplane in the late 1970s, Levin personally called airlines to determine what happened.
“I remember when that woman started making allegations against Trump, Harvey made it a mission for days to discredit her,” a former staffer said. “In that instance he called airlines to ask what kind of armrests they were using at that time as this woman had said she was assaulted by Trump on a plane after he lifted the armrest up. Harvey personally called airlines.
“Harvey was convinced that when this incident occurred armrests didn’t lift up. He wanted to find a way to say she’s a liar.”
TMZ’s head of legal affairs, Jason Beckerman, confirmed the account of Levin’s personal involvement to The Daily Beast, but stressed it was all a part of TMZ’s newsgathering.
“We heard about that story and we put the accusations to the test,” Beckerman said. “She [Leeds] gave a specific descriptor. So it was Harvey’s idea that to we go and see how these armrests work. He said, ‘Let’s go back and see what armrests look like in the 1970s and sure enough the armrests were consistent with her story.’” Indeed, TMZ published a story supporting Leeds’ claims about the armrests.
But two days after adult film star Jessica Drake accused Trump of sexually assaulting her, TMZ wrote she “might’ve pulled off the ultimate publicity stunt—announcing an online sex shop 1 day before accusing The Donald.”
“There was definitely an air in the newsroom that Harvey wanted to discredit these people,” said the former staffer.
More than a dozen former and current TMZ employees described the site’s pro-Trump transformation during the election under Levin, which they say destroyed newsroom morale and led to the departure of several key staffers. The handling of a tip about another purportedly toxic tape, on top of the Access Hollywood footage, would further demoralize staffers.
Mr. Levin Almost Goes to Washington
Levin, a 67-year-old former television reporter and practicing attorney in Los Angeles, has long held an interest in political scandal. As far back as 2007, he began fantasizing about taking his winning formula of turning gossip into news to Washington, D.C. Warner Bros. registered the domain name TMZDC.com in December 2006 and the company kept the address until it expired in 2015, domain registration records show.
One of those headhunted to be part of Levin’s D.C. operation in 2007 was filmmaker and journalist Patrick Gavin, who directed the 2015 documentary Nerd Prom: Inside Washington’s Wildest Week.
“D.C. gossip has always been boring and safe because people live there and don’t want to burn bridges. Politico falls victim to that,” Gavin, a former Politico reporter, told The Daily Beast. “Early on in the Obama administration D.C. was becoming a cooler scene.”
Gavin said Levin took him to lunch at Charlie Palmer Steak in Washington and detailed his fantasy political reporting operation.
“Harvey wanted to break that mold,” Gavin said. “He was really keen on doing that. He is really savvy and ambitious and thirsty. There is a reason D.C. gossip sucks. There are very few towns where there are more news outlets than sources.
“I recall him saying there are 20 stories in D.C. that everyone knows that are scandalous and salacious but no one has the balls to publish them. He told me, ‘I wanna be the place that publishes those stories.’” But as Gavin noted, “There is a reason those stories don’t get published—it requires a certain fuck you attitude.
“From Trump’s perspective you could certainly understand why he’d want to be close to the nation’s top gossip site.”
And he was close.
The two men have known each other since at least Trump’s Apprentice era, and Levin quickly became a “number-one Trump fan,” according to another close Trump associate, due to Levin’s attraction to power, flamboyance, celebrity, and wealth.
Even before Trump’s political ascendancy, TMZ landed “exclusives” with him, including in 2009 when Trump told the news site that rapper Kanye West’s behavior toward Taylor Swift was “disgusting.” Trump even advocated a boycott of West.
“They had this friendship for years,” another former TMZ staffer said. “Trump would come on TMZ Live [a video webcast] in 2014. Harvey and Trump have had a relationship for many years that grew closer as the election approached. I wonder how much of it was Trump exploiting Harvey.”
Fast forward to the 2016 election and Levin had developed an “incredibly close” relationship with Trump, another former senior TMZ staffer said. “He was excited at the prospect of Trump becoming president. He wanted Trump to win because he wanted to know someone in the White House,” the former staffer said.
Entertainment industry sources familiar with Levin’s thinking said he expressed some reservations about Trump’s actions privately among liberal friends. But to their horror, friends noticed that throughout the campaign, the TMZ head continued to foster his relationship with Trump. “Harvey has lost a lot of friends because of this,” an entertainment executive told The Daily Beast.
TMZ Goes #MAGA
Throughout the 2016 campaign, Levin and TMZ also maintained relationships with senior people in Trumpworld, with Levin often going out of his way to shoot the breeze with senior officials. Additional points of contact for Levin included veteran aide Hope Hicks and Trump’s longtime executive assistant Rhona Graff, three 2016 campaign sources said.
Levin also was tight with Trump’s lawyer Michael Cohen, multiple former TMZ staffers said.
“Cohen helped Harvey with his TV show and they bonded over both being a lawyer. They spoke routinely,” a source said.
As for Levin and Trump, they got tighter after Trump became the Republican nominee, according to another former TMZ employee.
“What happened a lot of the time in the second half of 2016 was everything went political and very pro-Trump… They would do stories about voter fraud which wasn’t a typical TMZ story,” the former staffer said.
“The slant of the whole website and a by product the TMZ TV show it became very political very quickly and it wasn’t something anybody seemed happy with besides Harvey,” said a former TMZ journalist. “It felt like it was a propaganda machine especially a month or two before the election.”
Multiple former TMZ staffers said they became alarmed when the website and TMZ’s Fox TV show went from covering celebrities and scandal to covering Trump in a favorable manner.
“TMZ was the Kardashians, Britney Spears, and Justin Bieber—and almost overnight it became about the election and supporting Trump,” a former staffer said. “There were so many stories the site did that were so crazy that it was so out of the scope of things TMZ would normally do.
“Every lead story we did was about politics and pro-Trump. It took on a completely different energy. It is not a conservative workplace. Some people left after the election. The place just became very dark.”
Tale of the Tape
As the Access Hollywood fallout spread, the TMZ tip line received an email from a lawyer in Los Angeles claiming to have another bombshell tape of Trump in an elevator in Trump Tower, seven sources familiar with the matter told The Daily Beast. (The Daily Beast has uncovered no proof that the tape exists after interviews with more than a dozen former and current TMZ staffers and others with knowledge of the situation. But the actions that Levin took next, these sources felt, spoke volumes about his relationship with Trump.)
Former staffers recall that Levin took an unusual personal interest in pursuing the tape tip because, they believe, it had to do with his friend.
On Oct. 13, Melissa K. Dagodag contacted TMZ claiming she represented a client with the purported Trump tape, sources said.
Dagodag is a 49-year-old attorney who specializes in trademark and copyright matters mostly for musicians.
“This attorney wasn’t a major player, which made us think it was weird. She wasn’t Keith Davidson,” a former TMZ staffer said, referring to the attorney who at the same time represented Stormy Daniels and worked with Trump’s lawyer Michael Cohen to get $130,000 in exchange for her silence about an alleged affair with Trump.
It remains unclear who Dagodag was representing when she contacted TMZ and Dagodag did not respond to multiple messages left by The Daily Beast or to visits at her Beverly Hills office and Santa Monica home from a reporter. “It’s weird to me that a lawyer who specializes in music copyright law got involved in something like this,” said another former TMZ employee who also stressed Levin’s direct involvement in the matter was highly unusual.
Mike Walters, then Levin’s top lieutenant who ran the operations newsdesk, immediately spoke with Dagodag that same day, according to a former top-level TMZ staffer who provided The Daily Beast with a hour-by-hour account of how the matter played out. Walters then passed the tip to Levin who took a private call in his office before looping in Beckerman, the source said.
“It got compartmentalized,” a former staffer said, who like others The Daily Beast spoke with, emphasized Trump’s relationship with Levin as the key factor in his direct involvement. “Only Harvey dealt with it. It was a little weird. It was out of character.”
“For Harvey to meet with someone it’s really big. Harvey took us out of it very quickly. To be removed from it like that was very weird,” the former TMZ top staffer said.
Levin moved quickly and alerted TMZ’s parent company, Warner Bros. and its parent company, Time Warner, seeking legal guidance as well as financial approval to buy the tape. Sources say even Time Warner Chairman Jeff Bewkes, was told about the purported tape and approved a significant financial amount to purchase it.
“It was on,” said a source close to the sensitive discussions. “It is not everyday Jeff is saying here is a fuck load of money to buy a tape of Donald Trump in an elevator. There was a reason for that.”
“Since when does Harvey Levin call up the food chain about a tape that he hasn’t seen from a source that he has never met? It was truly bizarre,” said an investigative reporter from a major media outlet who chased the tape story for months.
Levin arranged to meet Dagodag that same night to view the tape along with Beckerman.
For the first time Beckerman has gone on the record to confirm the account provided by multiple sources to The Daily Beast.
“Harvey and I went to meet this person late at night and we got part of the way there and the source called and said the person who has the tape wasn’t going to show. We were told that evening we could set up a meeting for the next day,” he said.
“The next morning the source said the tape was no longer for sale and it was insinuated that it had been bought by someone else. Then the source went completely dark,” Beckerman told The Daily Beast.
However, contradicting Beckerman’s account, two sources said Levin told staffers the next day that Dagodag had failed to show at the meeting and that they “needed to drop it,” meaning the tape.
“He told us he had made a call to Trump’s camp alerting them to the tip and they had said there are no cameras in the elevators at Trump Tower,” the source said. It is unclear if Levin’s supposed call to Trump’s campaign was before or after Dagodag didn’t show.
“When I look back now this is possibly something really big that went down here. If something was hidden or killed there was a reason,” said the former high-ranking TMZ staffer.
“There was an uncomfortable feel in the newsroom. His unapologetic views of Trump were gross,” said one of Levin’s most trusted former staffers.
They weren’t the only ones suspicious.
Clinton campaign officials came to believe that Levin favored Trump and was dragging his feet on finding stories that may hurt the then Republican presidential candidate. Their fears were modest compared to their views of Trump’s relationship with American Media, Inc., owner of the National Enquirer. But they still saw TMZ as playing a favorable role to the opposition.
As for the elevator video, two high-level Clinton campaign officials told The Daily Beast that they did not have any memory of looking for such a tape. Both of the officials had heard about its supposed existence. But they didn’t take it seriously—in part because they were chasing rumored Apprentice outtakes already—and didn’t inquire about it aggressively.
“I had heard rumors of that. But I did not know of any serious ‘this is who has it’ conversation,” said one official. “And I wouldn’t say we had a serious way of trying to find it. It was something I heard a lot from reporters.”
Beckerman said TMZ never had any contact with the Clinton camp that involved opposition research. “We never had an open dialogue to our knowledge with anyone connected to Hillary’s campaign,” he said.
In the end, Levin’s pursuit of the tape and his pro-Trump coverage, “contributed to the downfall of the relationship between Mike [Walters] and Harvey,” a high-level former TMZ staffer said.
Walters would depart TMZ in mid-December 2016 and go on to launch a rival celebrity gossip website The Blast.com taking with him some of TMZ’s top talent and giving his former employer a run for its money.
A Friend in the Highest Place
Levin’s relationship with Trump paid off after the election when he scored one of Trump’s first TV interviews for a special that aired Nov. 18, 2016, on Fox News Channel called, OBJEC Tified: Donald Trump. “The morning after Trump won the election we were shooting TMZ Live and Trump called Harvey on his cell,” the former top-level TMZ staffer said. Beckerman said Levin could not recall if he had received a phone call from the president-elect.
In March 2017, Levin met with Trump in the Oval Office for an hour in a meeting that was left off the president’s public schedule. The White House would later say the pair discussed “future opportunities,” while The New York Times reported that Levin had asked Trump for his help in snagging Tom Brady as a guest on OBJEC Tified.
A source told The Daily Beast that was not the only favor Levin called in to Trump.
“That is when he placed a call to Netanyahu to get him to come on Harvey’s show,” the top-level TMZ staffer said, referring to the Israeli prime minister who went on to appear on the season premiere of OBJEC Tified in October 2017.
Beckerman denied Trump played any role in helping to get the Israeli PM on Levin’s show. “Harvey never told Trump about trying to get Netanyahu as he thought he would shut it down. Trump had zero knowledge of that.”
After Trump was in office, Levin benefited with a series of “exclusives” that he published on TMZ.
When Kathy Griffin controversially tweeted a picture of her holding a bloody mask meant to look like a beheaded Trump a story soon after appeared on TMZ sourcedto a “Trump family source” and reported that his 11-year-old son “Barron was in front of the TV watching a show when the news came on and he saw the bloody, beheaded image. We’re told he panicked and screamed, ‘Mommy, Mommy!’”
As Think Progress noted last year, more Trump “scoops” followed, including one story about Ivanka Trump being accosted by a passenger on a Jet Blue flight. Last month, the site dubbed Kellyanne Conway a “D.C. Rockstar” during a “TMZ Live” segment. In another segment, a TMZ reporter asked her how she stays so beautiful and what she thinks of being parodied on Saturday Night Live.
In one of their casual chats not long before Trump was elected, he had joked with Levin that he was a “killer” and street-smart, and would do well in the nastiness and the pace of the American political arena—though “not as good as Trump,” according to two people with knowledge of their conversations.
“Trump got out of it what he wanted. TMZ is a powerful place. It has an incredibly large following when you combine the website with the TV audience and I think Trump and his team wanted to take advantage of it and they did,” said one of Levin’s former top generals.
Multiple sources close to Trump said that the pair have spoken a handful of times since Trump entered the White House. While the sources recall a warm relationship with Levin, they said that Levin does not rise to the level of unofficial Trump adviser like Lou Dobbs, Sean Hannity, or Rupert Murdoch.
“Harvey likes powerful people and having powerful friends. I think he likes feeling important. I think it made him feel good that a presidential candidate was talking to him on the phone. At the end of the day a lot of it came down to the fact he wanted a powerful ally.” As Patrick Gavin observed, Harvey’s need for TMZDC and a dedicated Washington bureau never diminished.
“I don’t think he’s ever given up on it. He kept the domain name for the longest time. He just had to be patient and wait 10 years to score the best D.C. source.”
The president.
edited 28th May '18 8:52:12 PM by megaeliz
Brought up because it's often said that black women are underappreciated despite being the Democratic Party's most reliable backers, and how things might be a bit different this year.
Donald Trump may just be the most mockable president since James Buchanan. Yes, I even think George W Bush is less ridiculous than him

this is older, but if doesn't scream "money was laundered here!", I don't know what is.
'Donald Trump's hotel in Azerbaijan linked with corruption, Iran's Revolutionary Guard [1]
Trump International Hotel & Tower Baku, a sleek 5-star hotel in the shape of a ship sail in Azerbaijan's capital, never opened despite appearing nearly complete.
Plans to build the tower began in 2008, when developers first drew up a "high-end apartment building" downtown in the capital of Azerbaijan.
In 2012, the Trump Organization and Azerbaijani developers signed off on a contract to turn the building into a luxury hotel.
Even though the hotel has Trump's name emblazoned on it and had previously been posted as a future project on Trump Organization's website, the organization's chief legal officer Alan Garten said that Trump played only a nominal role in construction of the hotel - he was "merely a licensor" who had allowed Anar Mammadov, the son of powerful Azerbaijani oligarch Ziya Mammadov, to use his name, the New Yorker reports.
Trump's own financial disclosure report showed that he earned $2.5 million in income from the project between January 2014 and July 2015 and an additional $323,000 afterwards. In 2014, Ivanka Trump visited the Baku construction site and posted photos and videos of her trip to Instagram.
But some in Azerbaijan allege the Trumps had a more active hand in the project. "We were always following their instructions," an unnamed Azerbaijani lawyer involved with the project told The New Yorker. "We were in constant contact with the Trump Organization. They approved the smallest details."
A few weeks before Trump took office as President, he cancelled construction of the nearly-finished building in Baku to avoid potential conflicts of interest even though the construction was in its final stages. Last June, The Washington Post reported that the hotel had plastic-wrapped reception desks in the lobby.
Azerbaijan consistently ranks as one of the most corrupt countries in the world by human rights watchdogs - only two weeks ago, President Ilham Aliyev named his wife to serve as the country's Vice President.
According to The New Yorker, the Trump Organization signed off on the deal with the powerful Mammadov family who, aside from regularly getting called out for exploiting political power to increase personal wealth, has reported ties with Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps - anextremist military force that has helped finance Iran's nuclear weapons program and trained terror organizations like Hezbollah.
Azerbaijan's Transportation Minister, Ziya Mammadov reportedly "awarded a series of multimillion-dollar contracts" to a construction company controlled by the IRGC in 2008, when development of the Baku Trump Tower first started.
"The entire Baku deal is a giant red flag-the direct involvement of foreign government officials and their relatives in Azerbaijan with ties to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard," Jessica Tillipman, an assistant dean specializing in government anti-corruption at George Washington University Law School told the New Yorker. "Corruption warning signs are rarely more obvious."
The 1977 Foreign Corrupt Practices Act forbids companies from "participating in a scheme to reward a foreign government official in exchange for material benefit or preferential treatment." However, Garten told The Washington Post that the organization's investigation into the Mammadov family "did not raise any red flags."
Only last week, a Reuters report indicated that Trump's administration is currently trying to label the IRGC as a "terrorist organization." But only a few years ago, Trump's company evidently had few qualms about lending his name to a project that could benefit them.
Here's the original New Yorker Article as well.
edited 28th May '18 6:22:41 PM by megaeliz