A Family Of Grifters-- The Immediate Family And The Extended Family... All Revolving Around Señor Trumpanzee

Yesterday Forbes.com had the most traffic it's ever had. The site crashed on and off all day after they published this amazing story about how Trump personally ordered Eric, one of his elephant-killing sons, to transfer money contributed for charities assisting children with cancer. $100,000 meant for St. Jude's Research Hospital, for example, wound up in Señor's Trumpanzee's serape. Eric Trumpanzee funneled cash from the charity into the Trump Organization for a decade. Much of the money-- over $800,000-- was laundered through Trump-owned golf courses and other shady Trump-owned businesses. All this crap is illegal and New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman is investigating the Trump Foundation. In his NY Times OpEd yesterday, The Lawless Presidency, David Leonhardt noted that "Democracy isn’t possible without the rule of law-- the idea that consistent principles, rather than a ruler’s whims, govern society," citing Aristotle, Montesquieu, John Locke and the Declaration of Independence as backup. "You can," he wrote, "also look at decades of American history. Even amid bitter fights over what the law should say, both Democrats and Republicans have generally accepted the rule of law. President Trump does not. His rejection of it distinguishes him from any other modern American leader. He has instead flirted with Louis XIV’s notion of 'L’état, c’est moi': The state is me-- and I’ll decide which laws to follow.

Legitimate traffic this time, not Putin's Macedonian hackers

The hideous menagerie of grifters-- collectively, "the First Family"-- is beyond anything any American alive today has ever experienced in a White House. Reporting this week from Jesse Drucker and Charles Bagli, again, in The Times, confirm what many of us who saw the news about the Kushners trading on the Trumpanzee name it sell visas in China suspected all along.

Kushner-in-law's company, they reported, is looking for a quarter billion dollars "to pay off partners and lenders in a Jersey City apartment tower [conveniently named Trump Bay Street] financed by Chinese investors through a program criticized as offering United States visas for sale."

The project was financed with about $190 million in loans, including $50 million through the EB-5 visa program. That program gives foreign investors preferential treatment in obtaining permanent residency, in exchange for investments of at least $500,000 in American development projects.

Kushner Companies must repay a $140 million construction loan from CIT Group, which is due in September. It also wants to pay off its EB-5 loans, which are all from Chinese investors, although the loans are not due for several years.

Everyone's complicit

Presumably this is related to Kushner-in-law secretly meeting with top Russian spy (fake bankster) Sergey Gorkov and then hiding the meeting from American security agencies-- a serious felony-- and with Kushner-in-law attempting to establish a means of hiding direct communications with Putin from the NSA and CIA. It is interesting to note that when Kushner-in-law made his phony divestments from the family firm, he held onto his stake in the Trump Bay Street property.

In addition to CIT and the EB-5 lenders, the Kushners’ partners in the building include Gaia, an Israeli company linked to the wealthy Steinmetz family, whose best-known member, Beny Steinmetz, is the subject of a Justice Department bribery investigation.

Mr. Kushner did divest his stake in Kushner Companies’ troubled headquarters building at 666 Fifth Avenue, which carries $1.4 billion in debt, according to financial data published by Vornado Realty Trust, a partner in the deal.

Talks over a possible $4 billion investment in that property with Anbang Insurance Group-- a Chinese conglomerate with political connections to Beijing-- ended in March after Democratic lawmakers wrote to the White House Counsel’s Office and the Treasury secretary, expressing concern that such a deal could breach federal ethics rules. Mr. Kushner’s broad White House portfolio has included relations with China.

The Kushner family’s use of the EB-5 visa program created an uproar last month when Jared Kushner’s sister, Nicole Meyer, spoke about him during a marketing trip in Beijing as part of an effort to raise another $150 million in visa funding for a separate Jersey City project. Kushner Companies said later that Kushner family members would no longer participate in such roadshows in China.

The above-mentioned Israeli criminal Kushner is in business with, billionaire Beny Steinmetz, is a notorious blood diamond character who has made his immense fortune by stealing from poor countries with corrupt governments. Perfect for the Trump family!

Trump Family Grifters-- No Apples Fall Far From The Orange

Back in 2014, Peter Elkins and Marty Jones, presaged many a scandal with a piece in Fortune, The dark, disturbing world of the visa-for-sale program. Scamming money out of this one was once the domain of two bit GOP governors; now it's front and center in the White House. Welcome to Trumpland-- Home of The Grifters. The EB-5 visa program is described as "one of the least explored of the many dark corners in America’s deeply troubled immigration process. Scientists and engineers highly coveted by technology companies may be getting thrown out of the country but rich businessmen-- overwhelmingly criminal businessmen-- who understand how to spread around the bribes... welcome, स्वागत हे, welcome, 歡迎, welcome, أهلا بك, welcome, добро пожаловать, welcome...

Increasingly, the skilled and the poor are out of luck. But the rich are another matter. The program (EB-5 is short-hand for the government’s fifth employment-based visa “preference”) allows well-heeled foreigners to leap to the front of the line by simply plunking down $500,000.

From the law’s inception in 1990, selling potential citizenship to the rich struck many as a corruption of American ideals. “Have we no self-respect as a nation?” asked Texas congressman John Bryant on the House floor that year. “Are we so broke we have to sell our birthright?”

But that powerful objection was overcome with an even more potent counterforce: The program would generate jobs where they’re needed most. Immigrants seeking EB-5 visas must invest their half-a-million dollars in a new business that creates 10 full-time U.S. jobs in a high-unemployment or rural district. (Technically, one can obtain an EB-5 visa for $1 million with no requirement that the jobs benefit a struggling area; in reality, few apply under that provision.)

...[B]ecause the EB-5 industry is virtually unregulated, it has become a magnet for amateurs, pipe-dreamers, and charlatans, who see it as an easy way to score funding for ventures that banks would never touch. They’ve been encouraged and enabled by an array of dodgy middlemen, eager to cash in on the gold rush. Meanwhile, perhaps because wealthy foreigners are the main potential victims, U.S. authorities have seemed inattentive to abuses.

And that brings us to the First Family of Grifters-- Trumpanzee's machatunim: Kushner-in-law and all his vile, insect-like, familial New Jersey garbage. These week they were hawking visas in Beijing.

Slide shown during Kushner event in Beijing identifying the father-in-law as the "key decision maker" on EB-5 investor visa program

The Kushner family came to the United States as refugees, worked hard and made it big-- and if you invest in Kushner properties, so can you.

That was the message delivered Saturday by White House senior adviser Jared Kushner’s sister to a ballroom full of wealthy Chinese investors, renewing questions about the Kushner family’s business ties to China.

Over several hours of slide shows and presentations, representatives from the Kushner family business urged Chinese citizens gathered at the Ritz-Carlton hotel to consider investing hundreds of thousands of dollars in a New Jersey real estate project to secure what’s known as an investor visa.

The EB-5 immigrant investor visa program, which allows foreign investors to invest in U.S. projects that create jobs and then apply to immigrate, has been used by both the Trump and Kushner family businesses.

But President Trump’s vow to crack down on immigration, as well as criticism from members of Congress, has led to questions about the future of a program known here as the “ golden visa.”

The EB-5 has been extremely popular among rich Chinese who are eager to get their families-- and their wealth-- out of the country, though the fact that some move their money out illegally has made the program unpopular with the Chinese government, too.

In the ballroom of the Ritz-Carlton on Saturday, Chinese investors were advised to invest sooner rather than later in case the rules change. “Invest early and you will invest under the old rules,” one speaker said.

The woman identified as “Jared’s sister” was believed to be Nicole Kushner, who is involved in the family business, not Dara Kushner, who generally stays out of the spotlight. But the woman’s face was not clearly visible from the back of the ballroom, where reporters were told to remain.

Saturday’s event in Beijing was hosted by the Chinese company Qiaowai, which connects U.S. companies with Chinese investors. The tagline on a brochure for the event: “Invest $500,000 and immigrate to the United States.”

Qiaowai is working with Kushner to secure funding for Kushner 1, a real estate project in New Jersey. Promotional materials tout the buildings’ proximity to Manhattan and note that the project will create more than 6,000 jobs.

“This project has stable funding, creates sufficient jobs and guarantees the safety of investors’ money,” one description reads.

Although there was no visible reference to Trump, the materials noted the Kushner family’s “celebrity” status. Wang Yun, a Chinese investor who attended the event, said the Kushner family’s ties to Trump, via son-in-law Jared, were a part of the project’s appeal-- but also a source of concern.

“Even though this is the project of the son-in-law’s family, of course it is still affiliated,” Wang.

Wang reasoned that the link to Trump would be a boon if the presidency goes well but could be disastrous if it does not: “We heard that there are rumors that he is the most likely to be impeached president in American history. That’s why I doubt this project.”

Many of the people who attended the event declined to be interviewed, citing privacy concerns, or they were blocked by organizers from speaking to the news media.

Indeed, though the event was publicly advertised in Beijing, the hosts were exceptionally anxious about the presence of reporters.

Journalists were initially seated at the back of the ballroom, but as the presentations got underway, a public relations representative asked The Post to leave, saying the presence of foreign reporters threatened the “stability” of the event.

At one point, organizers grabbed a reporter’s phone and backpack to try to force that person to leave. Later, as investors started leaving the ballroom, organizers physically surrounded attendees to stop them from giving interviews.

Asked why reporters were asked to leave, a public relations representative, who declined to identify herself, said simply, “This is not the story we want.”

Melania Trump Was An "Illegal Alien" Stealing American Jobs

Leave it to Mr. Trumpanzee and his evangelical allies to redefine "classy"

No legitimate news organizations have published any of the steamy testimonials from Melania Knauss' clients from when she was making her living as a call girl before she met the Trumpanzee at the Kit Kat Club and hooked the supposed billionaire. But, on the heels of the nude "modeling" photos (softcore porn) that Rupert Murdock's New York Post has been publishing, that's probably coming. But this week the focus on Melania went in a somewhat different direction. Trumpanzee fans are unlikely to have much of a beef with the racy lesbian picture of their idea of a next First Lady but... they just might think twice when they realize Melania was an "illegal alien" stealing America porn jobs, sometimes without requisite permits.

DC gossip sheet, Politico, broke the story yesterday, pointing out that the plagiarizing Melania also lied about her biography, the nonsense about her graduating from a college and, potentially more damaging to the Trumpanzee campaign, her immigration status. She and The Donald have always claimed that she came to America legally. Politico reports that "her own statements suggest she first came to the country on a short-term visa that would not have authorized her to work as a model. Trump has also said she came to New York in 1996, but the nude photo shoot places her in the United States in 1995, as does a biography published in February by Slovenian journalists. The inconsistencies come on top of reports by CBS News and GQ Magazine that [Melania] Trump falsely claimed to have obtained a college degree in Slovenia but could be more politically damaging because her husband has made opposition to illegal immigration the foundation of his presidential run."

Visa fraud would call into question a green card application and subsequent citizenship application, said immigration lawyers-- thus raising questions about Melania Trump’s legal status, even today, despite her marriage to a U.S. citizen.

Violations of U.S. visa law are hardly unusual, particularly in the modeling industry. It was a common practice in the 1990s in New York for less scrupulous agencies to bring in foreign models to work illegally on temporary business and tourist visas, according to Sara Ziff, founder of the Model Alliance, a group that advocates improved labor standards for fashion models.

...Zampolli said the models he worked with would have entered the country on either an H-1B or an O-1, a visa for foreigners who possess “extraordinary ability.” O-1 visas are frequently given to star scientists, athletes and entertainers, but because Melania Knauss (her maiden name) was an obscure model who mostly posed for advertisements and catalogs in the mid-’90s, it is highly unlikely she qualified for an O-1, which comes with an initial stay period of up to three years, said immigration attorneys. An O-1 visa would also not have required her to leave the country periodically.

...Even Melania’s use of the H-1B program would stand in contrast to her husband’s position today. Trump, who has made his opposition to illegal immigration the centerpiece of his campaign, has also vowed to crack down on the use of H1-B visas as president. In March, he said he would “end forever the use of the H-1B as a cheap labor program, and institute an absolute requirement to hire American workers first for every visa and immigration program. No exceptions.”

Like the Trumpanzee himself, the hardcore fans of his presidential run don't read to read much, but if they hear about the inconsistencies in Melania's immigration stories, they could well react very negatively. And, as the New York Times has been documenting-- watch this video below-- these Trumpists seem only marginally removed from mob mentality and ugly primitive savagery normal Americans find repugnant.

“Kill her.”

“Trump that bitch!”

“Build a wall-- kill them all.”

New York Times reporters have spent over a year covering Donald J. Trump’s rallies, witnessing so many provocations and heated confrontations at them that the cumulative effect can be numbing: A sharp sting that quickly dulls from repetition.

But what struck us was the frequency with which some Trump supporters use coarse, vitriolic, even violent language-- in the epithets they shout and chant, the signs they carry, the T-shirts they wear-- a pattern not seen in connection with any other recent political candidate, in any party.

Trumpanzee fans tend to be poorly functioning racists with very low IQs

Not everyone attending a Trump rally behaves this way. In fact, many are polite and well mannered. But while protesters are often shouted down, crowds seldom express disapproval of the crude slogans and angry outbursts by Mr. Trump’s supporters. Indeed, these displays have become inextricably bound with the Trump show itself-- as much as the snaking entrance lines and the calls to “build a wall” along the border with Mexico.

With that in mind, we set out to record the shouts, slogans, imprecations and interactions among audience members that set Trump events apart from other political gatherings. We also obtained recordings from others in attendance, who sometimes were closer to the action.

The resulting compilation gives a sense of what we saw-- from Maine to North Carolina, from Ohio to Arizona.

Now watch... but not with small children in the room:

Does Schumer Wish He Had Vetted Patrick Murphy Before He Recruited Him To Run For The Senate?

I'm not supposed to write about this but last weekend Beltway party boss Chuck Schumer schlepped down to Florida for a come-to-Jesus meeting with his-- and Wall Street's-- puppet candidate, Patrick Murphy. No one taped the meeting but Schumer was down there to tell Murphy to stop screwing up, meaning that he should stop exaggerating his nonexistent accomplishments. This means, in effect, that he wants Murphy-- who already doesn't ever debate his opponents-- to stop doing any public appearances where the media may ask him questions, which is basically where Murphy already is. When the Florida Dems had their annual meeting a week ago, Murphy ducked every caucus meeting. (There were a dozen of them.) Murphy sent a "surrogate" to at least one of them, even though he was in the building at the time, but they wouldn’t allow any surrogates to speak and people started wondering what Schumer is saddling the Florida Democratic Party with.

If Schumer imagined their meeting was going to stop the bleeding, though, he must have been very disappointed when the biggest local paper in Murphy's district ran another feature about Murphy's role in the EB-5 scandal, the scandal this blog has filed a complaint with the FEC about. Isadora Rangel reminded TCPalm readers that on Sept. 18, 2014, Murphy co-sponsored a bill to expand the controversial foreign investor program. That same day, a developer who's using the program to help fund a project in Miami gave $15,000 to a political committee affiliated with Murphy whose own company, Coastal Construction, is building the Miami Worldcenter. "Murphy's connections to developers who rely on the foreign investor program known as EB-5," she wrote, "have been called into question by his U.S. Senate race opponents, and the Democrat has had to do a lot of explaining lately. Seven developers who used EB-5, their family members and employees have given $309,000 since 2012 to Murphy and political committees that support him, a Treasure Coast Newspapers analysis found. That's more than previously reported by other media outlets. Murphy's family company, in which he owns stock, was involved at some point in at least two of those donors' projects."

Murphy's opponents accuse him of trying to benefit his family and donors when he signed onto two unsuccessful bills in September 2014 to make the EB-5 program permanent. The program allows foreigners to apply for a green card if they invest at least $500,000 and create at least 10 U.S. jobs, but there have been allegations of fraud and questions over whether it has been the economic driver its creators intended it to be.

GOP incumbent U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio and the other U.S. House member running for his seat, Democrat Alan Grayson, did not receive money from the EB-5 developers who gave to Murphy, federal campaign finance records show.

"Voters deserve to know that Patrick's own company stands to make millions off this program that he's pushed while in office," said Grayson's campaign manager Michael Ceraso.

Murphy's campaign points out the EB-5 program has received broad bipartisan support in Congress and Grayson also was a co-sponsor of one of those extension bills. The immigration reform package Rubio spearheaded, which cleared the Senate but failed to become law in 2013, also would have made EB-5 permanent and the program has received praise from Republican leaders such as Gov. Rick Scott.

"This is an absurd smear from Alan Grayson and Republicans who also support this program," Murphy's campaign spokesman Joshua Karp wrote in an email.

Developers who benefit from EB-5 have given hundreds of thousands to Congress members. Some of the donors who gave to Murphy also gave to other co-sponsors of those two bills. Former U.S. Rep. Joe Garcia, a Miami Democrat who introduced one of the bills, received the most. After leaving office in 2015, he was hired to work for an EB-5 regional center, which connects foreign investors with projects in need of capital in Florida.

Murphy told the Tampa Bay Times in April he didn't know whether his family company had done any EB-5 projects. Yet Coastal Construction's ties to the program and Murphy's ties to developers who benefit from it are inextricable.

Coastal Construction, in partnership with New York-based Tishman Construction, was picked as the Worldcenter's general contractor in February and held a groundbreaking ceremony for the retail, entertainment and housing complex in March.

Two weeks later, a company owned by the brother of Worldcenter developer Nitin Motwani gave $25,000 to a pro-Murphy super PAC. Dev Motwani also hosted a Murphy fundraiser in March 2013, according to the website Political Party Time, which tracks political fundraisers.

One of the directors of that pro-Murphy super PAC, Floridians for a Strong Middle Class, also is a registered lobbyist for SkyRise, whose developer Jeffrey Berkowitz is a Murphy family friend. Also a family friend: Murphy's top EB-5 donor, Nicholas Mastroianni II, a major player in the program and developer of Jupiter's Harbourside Place.

Coastal also served as a lead contractor for the Margaritaville Hollywood Beach Resort, which initially sought EB-5 funding but ultimately relied on other financing.

Murphy's campaign said he has "no management role in Coastal Construction, and hasn't since taking office" and said donations from EB-5 developers had no input on his decision to support the program.

"This program is a bipartisan effort to create jobs in America and it is widely supported by both Democratic and Republican leaders, including President Obama," Karp wrote.

On top of that, the investigation into all the straw donors-- straw donors are illegal-- from the Saudi's maids and in-law's grandmother to cronies of Steve Israel's-- look who else came up: Mastroianni’s former fiancée, Jennifer Genco. Before she and Mastroianni got engaged towards the end of 2011, she had never made any political contributions. And then-- suddenly-- a year and a half worth of donations to all the corrupt Dems in Patrick's circle of corruption-- $32,700 to three of Congress' most corrupt and "for sale" New Dems: Patrick Murphy, Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Joe Garcia. Genco, who lists herself as a "homemaker," is almost sure to have been given the money by Mastroianni to buy influence with these 3 notorious crooked congressmembers. Same technique Murphy has used to get the Al-Rashid family to have their associates and employees max out to Murphy's campaign. Did I mention that straw donations are illegal?

What Is Patrick Murphy's Role In Selling EB-5 Visas To Chinese Nationals?

Patrick Murphy is a rich, spoiled Republican without a single legislative or professional accomplishment that he can honestly point to. The key word being honestly. He’s been outed recently for lying about his resume and background, and he got caught doing it again this week. As we've been warning readers for 3 years, he’s worse than a liar and Wall Street sellout. I believe Patrick Murphy and his corporate cronies are breaking campaign finance, bribery and ethics laws. So this week I filed separate complaints with Department of Justice, the Office of Congressional Ethics and the Federal Elections Commission, calling for investigations into Murphy and his dirty donors. I started this blog with the express purpose of doing my part to make sure Duke Cunningham (R-CA) had his day in court. I'm proud that our work helped-- in whatever small way-- put him in prison. Let's keep our fingers crossed that the law catches up with the equally reprehensible Patrick Murphy and his cronies.

The complaints center upon the sleazy Nicholas Mastroianni II and EB-5 program Murphy has pushed in Congress. DWT has written quite a bit about this shady fundraising figure and his ties to Murphy and other corrupt corporate Democrats. Basically, I believe he’s orchestrated a scheme to funnel more than $100,000 into Murphy’s political campaign efforts by using shell companies and straw entities to hide the source of the money, which appears to be coming from Chinese nationals participating in Mastroianni’s EB-5 visa-for-sale program. Shell companies are already being broadly scrutinized for being possible illegal donor entities under the law. But more importantly in this case, Chinese nationals cannot legally make contributions in federal races.

In return for these donations to his campaign and his Super PAC, Murphy co-sponsored legislation for Mastroianni’s benefit. Namely, Murphy used his elected office to try to expand the EB-5 program and make it permanent. In return, Mastroianni has used LLC’s, businesses, family and associates to move money to Murphy, his EB-5 do boy.

As the complaint lays out [and I've included the documents I submitted to the Office of Congressional Ethics], it appears that Mastroianni used a Manhattan luxury condo and a shady LLC linked to it, to possibly funnel Chinese national money on to Murphy’s Super PAC.

Murphy’s family has been linked to dodgy campaign fundraising schemes in the past, including playing a key role in Ami Bera’s father being convicted of campaign finance fraud. But Murphy’s EB-5 antics are just too much. If investigators take these allegations seriously, it could prove to be a great federal test case for whether shell companies can be used to fund SuperPACS.

But hopefully these complaints will also draw attention to the shady fundraising that Murphy and his SuperPAC are engaging in, which appears to be directly tied to his official efforts to expand and make the EB-5 program permanent.

All of this, of course, doesn’t account for the fact that Murphy’s own family business, Coastal Construction, stands to make money off the EB-5 program. It’s been hired by high-profile EB-5 developers, and Murphy is an owner of Coastal, possibly sitting on as much as $5 million in company stock. It looks like Murphy pushed EB-5 legislation not only to pad his campaign account, but also to benefit personally through Coastal; that's just as corrupt as anything Duke Cunningham did to land him in prison. The Depratment of Justice needs to look into it, even if Murphy calls himself a "Democrat." And other developers tied to EB-5 projects have showered Murphy’s various campaigns with hundreds of thousands of dollars over the years. As the Miami Herald’ Alex Leary recently explained:

Murphy also played down questions about his support for the EB-5 visa program. His campaigns have received contributions from Florida developers who tap into the funding source. Foreigners who invest at least $500,000 are given green cards; many participants are from China. The program has enjoyed broad support but also come under scrutiny for fraud and a perception it sends the wrong message about the country's immigration system. Nicholas A. Mastroianni II, a major EB-5 player based in Florida, has along with family members given Murphy about $25,000 and he has used companies to give at least $50,000 to the pro-Murphy super PAC. Another EB-5 developer and Murphy donor is Jeffrey Berkowitz, who is developing SkyRise Miami, a $430 million entertainment and observation tower. Coastal Construction was a partner in that project but no longer is, according to Murphy campaign spokesman Joshua Karp. Company officials could not be reached. A registered lobbyist for SkyRise, Brian May, is part of the team working for the super PAC, records show. Murphy said Mastroianni and Berkowitz are friends and he gives them regular updates on the campaign. But he said he did not recall specific conversations with them about legislation he sponsored in 2014 to make the EB-5 program permanent. He also did not recall meeting with Liu Yu, a New York based lawyer who specializes in the field. The two appeared in a 2014 article on a Chinese-language website. Murphy said the EB-5 program has enjoyed bipartisan support and that it brings investment and creates jobs. ‘I'm a member of Congress and I'm not actively involved in the family business... so feel free to reach out to them and learn more about what they do,’ he told reporters on a conference call his campaign arranged last month to blast Grayson over alleged ethics issues. ‘But as far as I know, they have not done any projects to do with EB-5.’ In February, Coastal, in a partnership with Tishman Construction, was named general contractor for the Miami Worldcenter, a $1.7 billion shopping, entertainment and housing project planned for 27 acres in the city's downtown. Financing will come in part from EB-5 investors. Project developers and family have given Patrick Murphy more than $30,000 plus $25,000 to the super PAC. Murphy's campaign said Friday it was unaware Coastal was involved in the project.

Murphy and his EB-5 connections are deeply troubling and deserve a hard look by investigators. What’s more stunning is that Chuck Schumer and the Establishment didn’t vet Murphy enough to spot these or Murphy’s many other weaknesses. Maybe federal investigators will ultimately do that job for them. Meanwhile, Blue America has, once again, endorsed progressive icon, Alan Grayson, who the establishment is running Patrick Murphy against. It's the one race in the country where Harry Reid and Mitch McConnell both agree! Please help Grayson defeat party bosses Reid, Schumer and McConnell and their corrupt conservative puppet by tapping on the thermometer: