Trump's Rump
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Broken_Erika
Play with me.
Ruby Garcia's family found Trump's comments about her killing 'shocking'
The family of a murdered woman has angrily disputed Donald Trump's claim that he spoke to them.At a Tuesday rally, Mr Trump used the alleged killing of 25-year-old Ruby Garcia by an undocumented immigrant to illustrate his strong stances on immigration and crime.
"She lit up that room, and I've heard that from so many people," Mr Trump said. "I spoke to some of her family."
But Ms Garcia's sister said they never talked to Mr Trump or his campaign.
"He did not speak with us, so it was kind of shocking seeing that he had said that he had spoke with us, and misinforming people on live TV," she said in an interview with local news network Target 8. "The focus should be on my sister right now, who she was in life."
According to authorities, Ruby Garcia was found shot dead on a highway near the city of Grand Rapids in Michigan on 22 March.
A Mexican national in the US illegally, Brandon Ortiz-Vite - who was the victim's boyfriend - was arrested days later and allegedly confessed. Authorities later said he entered the country as a child and had previously been deported in September 2020, when Mr Trump was still in office.
In his speech in Grand Rapids, Mr Trump used the murder to highlight what he termed President Joe Biden's "border bloodbath".
Mavi Garcia said she wishes that Mr Ortiz-Vite had "stayed in Mexico", but that she does not tie her sister's death to immigration.
"It's always been about illegal immigrants," she added. "Nobody really speaks about when Americans do heinous crimes, and it's kind of shocking why he would just bring up illegals. What about Americans who do heinous crimes like that?"
The BBC has contacted the Trump campaign for comment.
Border security, as well as immigration and a perception - not supported by statistics - that it is tied to violent crime, are common features of Mr Trump's rallies and campaign speeches.
On Tuesday, for example, he referred to undocumented immigrants as "animals" and "not humans".
Polls show that immigration, including the border, is a primary concern for many American voters.
Some 61% of Americans in a recent Monmouth survey listed illegal immigration as a "very serious problem", with a majority of respondents for the first time saying they support Mr Trump's proposal of building a US-Mexico border wall.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-68725473
Exclusive: Trump Media saved in 2022 by Russian-American under criminal investigation
Trump’s social media company went public relying partly on loans from trust managed by person of interest to prosecutorsDonald Trump’s social media company Trump Media managed to go public last week only after it had been kept afloat in 2022 by emergency loans provided in part by a Russian-American businessman under scrutiny in a federal insider-trading and money-laundering investigation. The former US president stands to gain billions of dollars – his stake is currently valued at about $4bn – from the merger between Trump Media and Technology Group and the blank-check company Digital World Acquisition Corporation, which took the parent company of Truth Social public. But Trump Media almost did not make it to the merger after regulators opened a securities investigation into the merger in 2021 and caused the company to burn through cash at an extraordinary rate as it waited to get the green light for its stock market debut.
The situation led Trump Media to take emergency loans, including from an entity called ES Family Trust, which opened an account with Paxum Bank, a small bank registered on the Caribbean island of Dominica that is best known for providing financial services to the porn industry. Through leaked documents, the Guardian has learned that ES Family Trust operated like a shell company for a Russian-American businessman named Anton Postolnikov, who co-owns Paxum Bank and has been a subject of a years-long joint federal criminal investigation by the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) into the Trump Media merger....
The existence of the trust has previously been reported by the Guardian and the Washington Post. However, who controlled the account, how the trust was connected to Paxum Bank, and how the money had been funneled through the trust to Trump Media was unknown.
The new details about the trust are drawn from documents including: Paxum Bank records showing Postolnikov having access to the trust’s account, the papers that created the trust showing as its settlor a lawyer in St Petersburg, Russia, and three years of the trust’s financial transactions. The concern surrounding the loans to Trump Media is that ES Family Trust may have been used to complete a transaction that Paxum itself could not.
Paxum Bank does not offer loans in the US as it lacks a US banking license and is not regulated by the FDIC. Postolnikov appears to have used the trust to loan money to help save Trump Media – and the Truth Social platform – because his bank itself could not furnish the loan. Postolnikov, the nephew of Aleksandr Smirnov, an ally of the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, has not been charged with a crime. In response to an email to Postolnikov seeking comment, a lawyer in Dominica representing Paxum Bank warned of legal action for reporting the contents of the leaked documents.
There is also no indication that Trump or Trump Media had any idea about the nature of the loans beyond that they were opaque, nor has the company or its executives been accused of wrongdoing. A spokesperson for Trump Media did not respond to a request for comment.
After this story was published, a lawyer representing Trump Media said in a statement: “The Guardian continues to propagate its false narrative that TMTG has these fake connections to Russia. It is a hoax. Litigation will continue on this point and we are confident that The Guardian will ultimately be held responsible for its defamation and this story should be retracted.” But Postolnikov has been under increasing scrutiny in the criminal investigation into the Trump Media merger. Most recently, he has been listed on search warrant affidavits alongside several associates – one of whom was indicted last month for money laundering on top of earlier insider-trading charges.
Postolnikov and the trust
In late 2021, Trump Media was facing financial trouble after the original planned merger with Digital World was delayed indefinitely when the Securities and Exchange Commission opened an investigation into the merger, Trump Media’s since-ousted co-founder-turned-whistleblower Will Wilkerson recounted in an interview. Part of the problem was that Trump Media struggled to get financing because traditional banks were reluctant to lend millions to Trump’s social media company in the wake of the January 6 Capitol attack, Wilkerson said.Trump Media eventually found some lenders, including ES Family Trust, but the sequence of events was curious. ES Family Trust was established on 18 May 2021, its creation papers show. Postolnikov’s “user” access to the account was “verified” on 30 November 2021 by a Paxum Bank manager in Dominica. The trust was funded for the first time on 2 December 2021. Trump Media then received the loans from ES Family Trust: $2m on 23 December 2021, and $6m on 17 February 2022.
The loans came in the form of convertible promissory notes, meaning ES Family Trust would gain a major stake in Trump Media because it was offering the money in exchange for Trump Media agreeing to convert the loan principal into “shares of Company Stock”.
Oddly, the notes were never signed. But the investment in Trump Media proved to be huge: while precise figures can only be known by Trump Media, ES Family Trust’s stake in Trump Media is worth between $20m and $40m even after the sharp decline of the company’s share price in the wake of a poor earnings report.
The ES Family Trust account also appears to have benefited Postolnikov personally. As the criminal investigation into the Trump Media deal intensified towards the end of last year, the trust recorded several transfers to Postolnikov with the subject line “Partial Loan Return”. In total, the documents showed that the trust transferred $4.8m to Postolnikov’s account, although $3m was inexplicably “reversed”.
(On 17 July 2023, Postolnikov received $300,000. On 17 October 2023, Postolnikov received $1.5m, before it was reversed the next day; later the same day, Postolnikov again received $1.5m, which was also reversed. On 19 October 2023, Postolnikov received the $1.5m for a third and final time.)
The reason for the trust’s creation remains unknown. Aside from the money that went to Trump Media, the trust’s statements show the trust has directly invested money with only two other companies: $10.8m to Eleven Ventures LLC, a venture capital firm, and $1m to Wedbush Securities, a wealth management firm. The current status of ES Family Trust is also unknown. The trust’s address is listed as a residential home in Hollywood, Florida. But, according to the property website Redfin, the six-bedroom home appears to have been sold in December 2023. The creation papers also contained something notable: a declaration that, if the original trustee – a Paxum employee named Angel Pacheco – stepped down from the role, his successor would be a certain individual named Michael Shvartsman.
Sprawling money-laundering investigation
Last month, federal prosecutors charged Michael Shvartsman, a close associate of Postolnikov, with money laundering in a superseding indictment after previously charging him and two others in July with insider-trading Digital World shares. Shvartsman and his co-defendants pleaded not guilty. At least part of the evidence against Shvartsman came from a confidential informant for the DHS, court filings show: in one March 2023 meeting with the informant and an associate, Shvartsman mentioned a friend who owned a bank in Dominica and made bridge loans to Trump Media.“[Shvartsman] stated that a friend of his owns a bank in the island of Dominica and would be able to provide banking services to Russian and Ukraine Nationals if the [confidential informant] had other clients in need of that service,” the DHS report said. “[Shvartsman’s associate] told the [confidential informant] that he does not think the SEC would be able to go after [Shvartsman] for his part in the investment but mentioned that [Shvartsman] essentially provided ‘bridge financing’ for the firm behind the Truth Social media platform,” it said.
The unredacted parts of the DHS report do not specify whether the “friend” was Postolnikov and what the “bridge financing” referred to – but the report left open the possibility that Shvartsman also had a role with the trust. A lawyer for Shvartsman declined to comment on his client’s relationship with Postolnikov. A spokesperson for the US attorney’s office for the southern district of New York also declined to comment. It is unclear whether federal prosecutors are aware that Trump Media was propped up by Postolnikov via ES Family Trust. At the same time, the money-laundering investigation surrounding the Trump Media merger and the scrutiny on Postolnikov appears to have ballooned in recent months.
The investigation into potential money laundering appears to have started after Wilkerson’s lawyers Phil Brewster, Stephen Bell and Patrick Mincey alerted the US attorney’s office in the southern district of New York to the ES Family Trust loans in October 2022.
Months later, in June 2023, the FBI expanded its investigation to work jointly with the Department of Homeland Security’s El Dorado taskforce, which specializes in money laundering, and its Illicit Proceeds and Foreign Corruption group, which targets corrupt foreign officials who use US entities to launder illicit funds.
Exclusive: Trump Media saved in 2022 by Russian-American under criminal investigation
Trump’s social media company went public relying partly on loans from trust managed by person of interest to prosecutors
John Eastman wants to keep practicing law, representing Matt Gaetz and Marjorie Taylor Greene – and paying his own bills
By Katelyn Polantz, CNNPublished 7:00 AM EDT, Fri April 5, 2024
Former Trump attorney John Eastman is trying to get his law license back so that he can represent Reps. Matt Gaetz and Marjorie Taylor Greene in a political speech fight – and pay his own legal bills as he fights charges stemming from his efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
Eastman is asking a judge in California to reactivate his license following a disciplinary decision last month that rendered him unable to practice law for now. According to a court filing this week, Eastman estimates he already owes more than $1 million to his lawyers and could face a bill of more than $3 million “even if he is fully exonerated” in the Georgia election subversion case. He is one of 15 remaining defendants, including former President Donald Trump. A trial isn’t yet scheduled. The filing provides a rare window into the growing legal costs for Trump’s allies and into the scope of Eastman’s legal work since he promoted false information about the 2020 vote and tried to persuade then-Vice President Mike Pence to block the presidential transfer of power from Trump to Joe Biden.
The fallout Eastman faces from his 2020 election work was compounded last week, when Judge Yvette Roland, who serves as a judge overseeing state bar proceedings in California, decided he should be disbarred because of his court filings and other efforts on behalf of Trump. That decision prompted his law license to be made inactive over the weekend, meaning he can’t have legal clients while he appeals the decision. Disbarment would ultimately have to be affirmed by the California Supreme Court. “If the Order placing Dr. Eastman on inactive enrollment were not stayed, Dr. Eastman would lose his ability to make a living as an attorney at a time when other matters arising out of his representation of the former President of the United States … have already caused him to incur more than $1 million in legal fees,” his attorneys wrote in his request this week to the judge in California.
“The loss of income from the practice of law in the face of such necessity would be highly prejudicial to Dr. Eastman’s ability to defend himself in Fulton County,” they wrote. Eastman says his legal fees could increase to $3 million or more as he faces a criminal trial in Fulton County, Georgia, in the state-level conspiracy case alongside Trump related to the 2020 election. Eastman also told the judge he no longer represents Trump in election challenges, thus is no longer a threat to the public or his client.
To pay his legal fees, Eastman has continued to work as a lawyer after the 2020 election — picking up influential clients such as Republicans Gaetz and Greene as well as the Republican Party of Colorado in various lawsuits.
Until his law license was made inactive, Eastman represented about a half-dozen clients on constitutional issues, including relating to elections. He represented the Colorado Republican Party in a challenge to the state’s open primaries. He also represented Gaetz and Greene in their lawsuit against local officials who cancelled their political rallies in Anaheim and Riverside, California, in 2021. A federal judge has allowed their lawsuit to move forward, after the cities attempted to have it dismissed.
Eastman also regularly pens Supreme Court amicus briefs for conservative-leaning groups.
Those prominent clients are now going to bat for him in his request to continue his legal work. The clients know of Eastman’s disciplinary fallout with the bar in California and still want him to represent them, according to a sworn statement Eastman provided to the judge.
“I write today to urge you to enable him to continue to represent me in that matter, so as not to compound one First Amendment violation with another. I have a right to the counsel of my choice, and I know there is no other competent, qualified attorney whom I can trust in this matter,” Gaetz wrote in a letter to the State Bar of California.
Greene’s campaign committee and the joint fundraising committee “Put America First” have paid Eastman’s law partnership about $25,000 for legal services since 2021, according to campaign finance records. Eastman’s other clients also have filed sworn statements to the California judge saying they’d like him to still represent them, including the mother of a middle schooler whom Eastman now represents in a First Amendment lawsuit, after the child was asked to leave his middle school for bringing a backpack with patches on it that included the “Don’t tread on me” Gadsden flag, according to the court filings.
The disciplinary judge hasn’t yet ruled on Eastman’s request, and the California bar disciplinary prosecutor has more than a week to respond.
Comrade Ceasefire
Simmer slowly
He's got a cult and his own Bible - time to start a new tax-exempt religion?
"There is no God but Trump and Trump is his prophet"?
Comrade Ceasefire
Simmer slowly
There is no God and Trumpism is his non-profit.
Ziggy Stardust
Absolutely Sane
The father
The son
And the ... holy $^#@!
Amen
The son
And the ... holy $^#@!
Amen
Comrade Ceasefire
Simmer slowly
Several times now, I've tried to finish writing a joke involving a "Quartet", but before I can I imagine an unseen all-powerful being about to invoke a ban macro.Amen
Same with the one about Melania, Barron and Pontius the pilates instructor.
Trump has run several non-profits over the years. The latest trading as DJT.
