The "Great Unraveling" continues.

New York sues Donald Trump, company and family members over widespread fraud claims, seeks at least $250 million in penalties

New York Attorney General Letitia James on Wednesday sued former President Donald Trump, the Trump Organization, three of his adult children, and others for allegedly widespread fraud involving false financial statements related to the company.

The lawsuit filed in Manhattan Supreme Court seeks at least $250 million in damages.

The complaint says that Trump’s personal financial statements “for the period 2011 through 2021 were fraudulent and misleading in both their composition and presentation.”

″ The number of grossly inflated asset values is staggering, affecting most if not all of the real estate holdings in any given year. All told, Mr. Trump, the Trump Organization, and the other Defendants, as part of a repeated pattern and common scheme, derived more than 200 false and misleading valuations of assets included in the 11 Statements covering 2011 through 2021.”
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/09/21/new...-seeks-at-least-250-million-in-penalties.html

Another legal front opens up for the Trump crime family.

 

DOJ Escalates Effort To Get Govt Docs From Navarro’s Private Email

The Justice Department’s starting to play hardball in its bid to take back the government records that ex-White House adviser Peter Navarro continues to clutch onto via his non-official email account.

Prosecutors filed a request in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia on Monday requesting that the judge order Navarro to hand over the records — which are “rightly the property of the United States” under the Presidential Records Act — that he sent and received on his personal ProtonMail server.

“There is no genuine dispute of fact that Dr. Navarro used at least one unofficial email account to conduct official business, that those records are the property of the United States, and that Dr. Navarro has refused to return the records to the United States,” the DOJ’s filing stated. “Indeed, his counsel has expressly admitted as much.”

The request focused on Navarro’s emails as they relate to the Trump administration’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/doj-judge-order-navarro-documents-emails

What is it with Trump admin officials and wanting to hold on to documents they have no legal right to?

 

Trump deposition in Carroll defamation lawsuit set for October 19 as fate of case remains in limbo

Former President Donald Trump is scheduled to be deposed in the defamation lawsuit brought by a former magazine columnist on October 19.

The timing was revealed in a new court filing Friday as lawyers for Trump and E. Jean Carroll spar over whether the depositions should proceed after a federal appeals court ruling earlier this week.

Carroll’s attorneys suggested they may also seek to question Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and former senior adviser, after Trump said Kushner was one of only a handful of people who he had spoken with about the allegations.
https://www.cnn.com/2022/09/30/politics/trump-e-jean-carroll-deposition-scheduled/

It takes the fingers on two hands to count the number of cases the former Grifter-in-Chief is defending himself in.

 

Trump objects to expediting appeal in special master case -court documents

Why?

The department said its inability to access the non-classified documents is still hampering significant aspects of its investigation on the retention of government records at Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate.
https://www.aol.com/news/trump-objects-expediting-appeal-special-142657231-170836071.html

 

Trump asks Supreme Court to intervene in Mar-a-Lago documents dispute
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/10/04/tru...ntervene-in-mar-a-lago-documents-dispute.html

This is breaking news. Please check back for updates.

 

Then you have not a clue as to what authoritarian rule would look like.

 

Trump, in a court filing, asked Justice Clarence Thomas to vacate last week’s ruling by the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, which allowed the DOJ to resume using classified documents seized in the raid as part of its ongoing criminal probe of Trump.

What a surprise. Don asks his SC bagman to follow in Cannon's footsteps. If Thomas goes along with this it's time to impeach him.

 

We all do. There are examples all over the world. Ones Trump has tried to emulate.

 

Trump Hotels Charged Secret Service Exorbitant Rates, House Inquiry Finds

WASHINGTON — The Trump Organization charged the Secret Service up to $1,185 per night for hotel rooms used by agents protecting former President Donald J. Trump and his family, according to documents released on Monday by the House Oversight Committee, forcing a federal agency to pay well above government rates.

The committee released Secret Service records showing more than $1.4 million in payments by the department to Trump properties since Mr. Trump took office in 2017. The committee said that the accounting was incomplete, however, because it did not include payments to Mr. Trump’s foreign properties — where agents accompanied his family repeatedly — and because the records stopped in September 2021.

The records the panel managed to obtain provided new details about an arrangement in which Mr. Trump and his family effectively turned the Secret Service into a captive customer of their business — by visiting their properties hundreds of times, and then charging the government rates far above its usual spending limits for their protectors to follow.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/17/...te=1&user_id=fecdfdffdaaa11107b72f0f4f6e429cc

The former Grifter-in-Chief fleeced the American people in more ways than one.

 

Trump’s CDC Changed Weekly Reports, House Covid Panel Finds

The CDC bowed to the Trump administration’s demands to change the editorial process of its weekly scientific journal after warnings from then health secretary Alex Azar to “get in line,” a House investigation found.

The pressure faced by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to change the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report‘s procedures was one of several instances of political interference by former President Donald Trump’s aides that the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis identified in a report released Monday. The report was provided to Bloomberg Law ahead of the official release.

The latest subcommittee report details widespread attempts by Trump-era political appointees within the Department of Health and Human Services to interfere with the CDC, including tampering with the science and misuse of the agency’s quarantine authority in a way an agency division director described as “morally wrong.”

The CDC declined to comment on the report.

“This prioritization of politics, contempt for science, and refusal to follow the advice of public health experts harmed the nation’s ability to respond effectively to the coronavirus crisis and put Americans at risk,” Rep. James E. Clyburn (D-S.C.), chairman of the subcommittee, said in a statement.
https://news.bloomberglaw.com/healt...hanged-weekly-reports-house-covid-panel-finds

Playing politics with public health policy? Yet another example in an endless list of examples of why Trump was unfit to be prez.

 

CA Judge Finds Trump Likely Lied To Court In Georgia Big Lie Case

President Trump knew that data supposedly showing voter fraud in the 2020 election was false, but signed a court document attesting to it regardless, a federal judge said on Wednesday.

U.S. District Judge David Carter for the Central District of California found that Trump likely lied to a Georgia federal court in December 2020, when he claimed that Fulton County had counted the votes of the dead, convicted felons, and unregistered voters.

Trump had already filed a lawsuit making the claims in Georgia state court.

But when the former President’s legal team began to consider moving the state court case to federal court, Trump attorney John Eastman realized that the data was flawed, Carter found.

“Although the President signed a verification for [the state court filing] back on Dec. 1, he has since been made aware that some of the allegations (and evidence proffered by the experts) has been inaccurate,” Eastman wrote in a Dec. 5, 2020 email cited by Carter. “For him to sign a new verification with that knowledge (and incorporation by reference) would not be accurate.”
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/ca-judge-finds-trump-likely-lied-to-court-in-georgia-big-lie-case

If something similar happened in a case involving Joe Biden the reaction on the Right would be to scream about it for weeks. Non stop. At the top of their lungs. 24/7.

 

Sen. Lindsey Graham loses appeals court bid to stall testimony in Trump election interference probe

A federal appeals court on Thursday rejected a request by Sen. Lindsey Graham to block a subpoena for his testimony before a Georgia grand jury investigating former President Donald Trump for election interference.

Graham, R-S.C., had asked the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals to stay an order compelling his testimony issued by a federal district judge in Georgia pending his appeal of that decision.

“Senator Graham has failed to demonstrate that he is likely to succeed on the merits of his appeal,” the 11th Circuit said in its ruling Thursday.
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/10/20/sen...ony-in-trump-election-interference-probe.html

Another Repub who thought he was above the law is put in his place.

 

Steve Bannon set to be sentenced for contempt of Congress

Former top Trump White House advisor Steve Bannon is set to be sentenced Friday for defying a subpoena from the congressional probe of the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot.

The proceeding, set for 9 a.m. ET in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., could make Bannon one of the highest-profile figures to be locked up on charges related to the insurrection. He is expected to appeal his conviction.

Federal prosecutors want the court to sentence Bannon to six months in jail — the top end of the federal sentencing guidelines range — and the maximum fine of $200,000.
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/10/21/ste...fter-ex-trump-aide-defied-jan-6-subpoena.html

As a lawbreaker, he is seen as a martyr in Trumpworld.

 

Jan. 6 Capitol riot committee subpoenas former President Donald Trump

Former President Donald Trump was issued a subpoena Friday by the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol.

The committee, which voted unanimously on the move, is demanding Trump’s testimony under oath and records relevant to the probe into the attack on the Capitol and its causes.

Committee Chairman Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., and Republican Vice Chairwoman Liz Cheney of Wyoming in a letter to Trump cited what they called his central role in a deliberate effort to reverse his loss in the 2020 presidential election, and to remain in power.

“As demonstrated in our hearings, we have assembled overwhelming evidence, including from dozens of your former appointees and staff, that you personally orchestrated and oversaw a multi-part effort to overturn the 2020 presidential election and to obstruct the peaceful transition of power,” the letter said.
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/10/21/jan-6-capitol-riot-probe-subpoenas-donald-trump.html

He says he wants to testify. But his lawyers will advise against it. They know he will lie under oath since he can't help himself from lying.

 

From the letter sent to Trump accompanying the subpoena compelling the production of documents and his testimony.

Chairman Thompson and Vice Chair Cheney wrote:

“As demonstrated in our hearings, we have assembled overwhelming evidence, including from dozens of your former appointees and staff, that you personally orchestrated and oversaw a multi-part effort to overturn the 2020 presidential election and to obstruct the peaceful transition of power.”

The letter underscored that Mr. Trump pursued efforts to overturn the election despite that claims of fraud were overwhelmingly rejected by the courts and refuted by his campaign staff and senior advisors.

“You took all of these actions despite the rulings of more than 60 courts rejecting your election fraud claims and other challenges to the legality of the 2020 presidential election, despite having specific and detailed information from the Justice Department and your senior campaign staff informing you that your election claims were false, and despite your obligation as President to ensure that the laws of our nation are faithfully executed. In short, you were at the center of the first and only effort by any U.S. President to overturn an election and obstruct the peaceful transition of power, ultimately culminating in a bloody attack on our own Capitol and on the Congress itself.”
https://january6th.house.gov/news/p...-trump-bolton-ms-wilson-wy-pursuant-unanimous

 

Justice Dept. Seeks to Force Trump White House Lawyers to Testify in Jan. 6 Inquiry

The Justice Department has asked a federal judge to force the two top lawyers in Donald J. Trump’s White House to provide additional grand jury testimony as prosecutors seek to break through the former president’s attempts to shield his efforts to overturn the 2020 election from investigation, according to two people familiar with the matter.

Prosecutors filed a motion to compel testimony from the two lawyers, Pat A. Cipollone and Patrick F. Philbin, last week. They told Beryl A. Howell, a judge in Federal District Court in Washington who oversees grand jury matters, that their need for the evidence the men could provide should overcome Mr. Trump’s claims that the information is protected by attorney-client and executive privilege, the people said.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/25/us/politics/jan-6-trump-cipollone.html

The Pat's hid behind attorney-client and executive privilege when giving their depositions to the 1/6 committee. The DoJ is questioning the dubious claim. Precedent is on their side. They need to know what Trump said about Pence being in danger and about staff requests to have him make a forceful statement telling his mob to leave the Capital.

 

Former Trump aide Mark Meadows ordered to testify in Georgia election-meddling probe

A South Carolina judge on Wednesday ordered former Trump White House chief of staff Mark Meadows to comply with a Georgia grand jury subpoena demanding his testimony in a probe into potential criminal meddling in the 2020 presidential election.

The order came a day after a lawyer for the former South Carolina congressman Meadows said the subpoena issued by the Fulton County grand jury should be blocked for multiple reasons.

Meadows’ attorney reportedly said he will appeal the ruling, which was issued after a hearing in South Carolina’s Court of Common Pleas.

The grand jury is investigating efforts by former President Donald Trump and his allies to get Georgia election officials to effectively reverse the 2020 victory in that state by President Joe Biden.
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/10/26/for...stify-in-georgia-election-meddling-probe.html

Mark joins Lindsey in being told thinking they are above the law, while being a closely held belief of Repubs, doesn't hold up in the real world.

 

Prosecutors Seek Testimony on Trump’s Claims to Have Declassified Documents

Federal prosecutors investigating former President Donald J. Trump’s handling of national security documents want to question one of his confidants about a claim that Mr. Trump had declassified national security documents he took when he left the White House.

That claim has hovered over the investigation since the confidant, Kash Patel; Mr. Trump himself; and other allies said publicly that Mr. Trump had declassified the documents while still president.

No evidence has emerged that Mr. Trump did so, and Mr. Trump’s lawyers have not repeated the claim in an ongoing court dispute with prosecutors over materials seized by the F.B.I. during a search of Mar-a-Lago, his Florida estate, in August.

But the Justice Department’s interest in questioning Mr. Patel about the claim shows that prosecutors see it as potentially relevant to their investigation into the handling of the documents and whether Mr. Trump or his aides obstructed the government’s efforts to reclaim them.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/26/us/politics/trump-declassified-documents-testimony.html

If Trump's claim is true why won't his lawyers say so in court?

 

Eastman Begs Judge To Reconsider Crime-Fraud Ruling

John Eastman asked a federal judge on Thursday to please take back his finding that the Trump lawyer likely misled a federal judge during the effort to overturn the 2020 election.

Eastman, via attorneys, asked U.S. District Judge David Carter for the Central District of California to either “reconsider” his order demanding Eastman hand over records to the January 6 Committee, or halt it until he could file an appeal.

Carter ruled last week that Eastman — and his client Donald Trump — likely misled an Atlanta federal court in referencing data about voter fraud that they knew to be inaccurate. Carter held on that basis that some emails relevant to the lawsuit could be sent to the January 6 Committee, finding that they were likely not subject to attorney secrecy because they were potential evidence of a criminal act, known as the crime-fraud exception.
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/muckraker/eastman-begs-judge-to-reconsider-crime-fraud-ruling

You should have thought about the consequences of conspiring to commit a crime against the US before you did it, John.

 

Despite Eastman appeal, Jan. 6 committee accesses 8 disputed emails

Congressional investigators have obtained eight disputed emails that attorney John Eastman — a key architect of Donald Trump’s effort to subvert the 2020 election — had asked a federal appeals court to shield from lawmakers.

Eastman revealed in a Sunday court filing that he delivered a link to the Jan. 6 select committee providing access to the eight emails last week — an effort to comply with a federal district court judge’s order — but asked the committee to refrain from reviewing the records while he mounted an appeal.
https://www.politico.com/news/2022/10/30/eastman-appeals-jan6-committee-disputed-00064166

These are the e-mails the judge considered to be evidence Trump and Eastman conspired to commit a crime.

 

Supreme Court temporarily blocks Congress from getting Trump income tax returns

Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts on Tuesday temporarily blocked the House Ways and Means Committee from obtaining years of federal income tax returns of former President Donald Trump and related business entities from the IRS.

Roberts’ order came a day after Trump’s lawyers filed an emergency application with the Supreme Court requesting the delay, and two days before the IRS was set to give the committee the Republican’s tax returns.

The chief justice gave the Ways and Means Committee until Nov. 10 to respond to Trump’s application for the delay.

Trump wants the Supreme Court to block the committee from getting his tax returns and those of the related entities for the years 2015 through 2020 until he formally asks the high court to allow him to appeal lower court rulings that cleared the way for the records to be handed over.
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/11/01/sup...tax-records-from-being-given-to-congress.html

IOW, Roberts is facilitating Trump's attempt to run out the clock.

 

Supreme Court denies Sen. Lindsey Graham’s request to avoid testifying in Georgia election interference case
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/11/01/sup...ng-in-georgia-election-interference-case.html

The Supreme Court on Tuesday denied a bid by Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., to block a subpoena demanding his testimony before a Georgia grand jury investigating possible criminal interference in that state’s 2020 presidential election.

The court in its ruling said a federal judge’s earlier order upholding the subpoena adequately protected Graham from being questioned about legislative activity during his testimony, as provided for by the Constitution’s Speech or Debate Clause.

The Fulton County special grand jury is probing efforts by former President Donald Trump and his allies to overturn Georgia’s 2020 election, which was won by President Joe Biden.

 

Former Trump aide Kash Patel set to testify in Mar-a-Lago docs probe: report

Former Trump aide Kash Patel is set to testify before a federal grand jury about the classified documents recovered from former President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home after being granted immunity for any information, The Wall Street Journal reported.

Patel — who has claimed that Trump had declassified the documents found at Mar-a-Lago — previously refused to provide information to the grand jury, instead invoking his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.
https://thehill.com/regulation/cour...t-to-testify-in-mar-a-lago-docs-probe-report/

I wonder what he'll say.

 

Donald Trump’s attorneys saw a direct appeal to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas as their best hope of derailing Joe Biden’s win in the 2020 presidential election, according to emails newly disclosed to congressional investigators.

“We want to frame things so that Thomas could be the one to issue some sort of stay or other circuit justice opinion saying Georgia is in legitimate doubt,” Trump attorney Kenneth Chesebro wrote in a Dec. 31, 2020, email to Trump’s legal team. Chesebro contended that Thomas would be “our only chance to get a favorable judicial opinion by Jan. 6, which might hold up the Georgia count in Congress.”
https://www.politico.com/news/2022/...-to-stop-2020-election-certification-00064592

Emails Show Eastman’s Central Role In Allegedly Fraudulent Lawsuit

Trump attorney John Eastman expected that filing a Big Lie lawsuit seeking to overturn Biden’s win in Georgia might just lead to criminal investigation, new messages show.

The messages, first reported by Politico and revealed via a still-active Dropbox link referenced in a Tuesday night court filing, show what Eastman has furiously been trying to hide: that he appears to have known that information he included in a Georgia federal lawsuit, whose accuracy President Trump swore to, was inaccurate.

Eastman’s apparent decision to file the lawsuit and verification by Trump has been seen as a potentially stunning violation of attorney ethics since portions of the message were first revealed last month by U.S. District Judge David Carter for the Central District of California. But the new messages, made public apparently by accident on Tuesday evening after being provided to the January 6 Committee, make clearer that Eastman and the attorneys around him seem to have understood the complaint’s problems with precision.
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/muckr...-central-role-in-allegedly-fraudulent-lawsuit

Eastman was in deep.

 

Judge agrees to appoint monitor for Trump Organization assets, prohibits transfer of assets without prior notice

A state judge Thursday granted a request by the New York attorney general for an order appointing a monitor to oversee the finances of the Trump Organization, and prohibited any proposed transfers of substantial assets without prior notice to the court, the AG and the monitor, while a state lawsuit against the company moves forward.

New York Attorney General Letitia James' office was seeking a preliminary injunction, alleging in a court filing that the company "appears to be taking steps to restructure its business to avoid" liability and payment of any damages in a massive lawsuit filed by her office in September. The suit alleges a widespread effort to manipulate property valuations by former President Donald Trump and his eponymous company. It seeks $250 million and an end to the company's operations in the state.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-...es-monitor-new-york-attorney-general-request/

Seriously? Did he think they wouldn't notice? Can you imagine the uproar if the presumptive Dem candidate for prez did such a thing?