Elliot Broidy-- One Of The Worst Trumpists America Has Offered The World-- Has Agreed To An Inconsequential Guilty Plea Covering Up His Real Crimes-- And Trump's

 

It seems this case should have closed years ago-- but this isn't a TV show like The Balcklist and well-connected, crooked multimillionaires have a way of drawing these things out forever. No doubt Broidy expects to be eventually pardoned by Trump. Broidy is going to plead guilty to relatively minor crimes involved in failure to disclose that he was a lobbyist attempting to stop a US criminal investigation into a multi-billion dollar fraud at a Malaysian investment fund, while protecting Trump and the Mercer family from far more serious charges involving the Saudis and Emeratis. Broidy gets to pleas to one count of criminal conspiracy... and the rest all disappears. Unfuckingbelievable!!

"Broidy," reported CNN, "is expected to plead guilty to the conspiracy charge later this month in a deal with the Justice Department to resolve its investigations of him, according to a person familiar with the investigation." Yes, the Trump Justice Department-- William Barr's Justice Department, a hive of corruption and grotesque swamp-enlargement.

The idea is to disappear the serious Broidy cases in lieu of this pipsqueak of a case. It's a smoke screen:

According to a court filing, Broidy and others used encrypted messaging services to conceal a two-pronged lobbying effort and the millions of dollars in payments they received from Jho Low, a Malaysian businessman whom the Justice Department later charged with looting 1Malaysian Development Berhad of billions of dollars. Low has denied the allegations.

Broidy was also charged with illicitly lobbying the Trump administration for the removal of a Chinese national living in the US who is wanted by the Chinese government. According to the criminal charges, Broidy attempted to facilitate meetings between a Chinese minister and top officials in the Trump administration, Justice Department and Department of Homeland Security during a May 2017 visit. Neither lobbying effort was successful.

The investigation into the lobbying campaign has resulted in charges against at least two other individuals, including a former Justice Department employee. It is also the culmination of a multi-year investigation into Broidy and marks a fall for the former Republican fundraiser who had risen to the top of GOP circles with access to the President.

Broidy, a Los Angeles businessman and longtime Republican, had helped the Trump inaugural committee raise a record $107 million. He also served as deputy finance chair of the Republican National Committee from 2017 until April 2018 when he resigned in the wake of disclosures that Cohen, Trump's former personal attorney, had facilitated a $1.6 million payment to a former Playboy model who says she became pregnant by Elliot Broidy.

At the time, Broidy admitted to the relationship, but he did not address whether he impregnated the woman.

While serving in those top positions, prosecutors allege, Broidy was simultaneously looking to cash in on his access to the President and administration officials. It was then, prosecutors allege, that he began the lobbying campaign on behalf of Low.

Prosecutors have been investigating the covert lobbying effort nearly from its start. In 2018 the Justice Department's public integrity unit announced criminal charges against George Higginbotham, a Justice Department employee, for helping arrange bank accounts to facilitate the transfer of money from Low to the lobbyists. Higginbotham has pleaded guilty.

Last year federal prosecutors in Brooklyn, which is also investigating the fraud at 1MDB, subpoenaed the inaugural committee for information about Broidy's contacts with foreign leaders and businesses, sources familiar with the investigation told CNN. The subpoena sought records relating to Broidy, five companies associated with him, and foreign politicians-- including the presidents of Angola and the Republic of Congo and two Romanian politicians, the sources said.

By August, Nickie Lum Davis, an associate of Broidy, pleaded guilty to aiding and abetting the secret lobbying effort.

The criminal charges are not Broidy's first brush with the law. In 2009 Broidy pleaded guilty to New York state charges, admitting he paid nearly $1 million as part of a pay-to-play scheme to win an investment for his private equity fund from the state's pension fund. He avoided jail time by cooperating with authorities.

Angola? The Congo? The real Broidy story is about Broidy using cash from the Saudis and the United Arab Emirates to bribe Trump. But there is not a peep about either in the CNN report. How is that even possible? No mentions of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Erik Prince, Robert Mercer (and his Secure America Now SuperPAC) and Broidy's business partner, repeat child sex abuser George Nader, currently serving a 10 ten year prison term. Someone wants the Elliot Broidy story to just be about Malaysia, the Fugees and a Chinese billionaire.

Back in May of 2018, the Business Insider reported that after Broidy spent a year cultivating a couple of the corrupt princes from Arabian Peninsula, he "thought he was finally close to nailing more than $1 billion in business. He had ingratiated himself with crown princes from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, who were seeking to alter US foreign policy and punish Qatar, an archrival in the Gulf that he dubbed 'the snake.' To do that, the California businessman had helped spearhead a secret campaign to influence the White House and Congress, flooding Washington with political donations. Broidy and his business partner, Lebanese-American George Nader, pitched themselves to the crown princes as a backchannel to the White House, passing the princes' praise-- and messaging-- straight to the president's ears... Broidy and Nader sought to get an anti-Qatar bill through Congress while obscuring the source of the money behind their influence campaign... Broidy's campaign to alter US policy in the Middle East and reap a fortune for himself shows that one of the president's top money men found the swamp as navigable as ever with Trump in office."

Saudi Arabia was finding a new ascendancy following Trump's election. Broidy sought to claim credit for it, emails show, and was keen to collect the first installment of $36 million for an intelligence-gathering contract with the UAE.

It all might have proceeded smoothly save for one factor: the appointment of Robert Mueller as special counsel to look into allegations of Russian interference in the 2016 election.

In many ways, the partnership between Broidy, 60, and Nader, 59, embodies the insider influence that has given contractors in D.C. the nickname "beltway bandits."

Both of their careers were marked by high-rolling success and spectacular falls from grace-- and criminal convictions. The onset of the Trump administration presented an opportunity: a return to glory.

Broidy, who made a fortune in investments, was finance chairman of the Republican National Committee from 2006 to 2008. But when a New York state pension fund decided to invest $250 million with him, investigators found that he had plied state officials with nearly $1 million in illegal gifts while collecting $18 million in management fees.

In 2009, Broidy pleaded guilty to a felony charge of rewarding official misconduct.

"In seeking investments from the New York State Common Retirement Fund, I made payments for the benefit of high-ranking officials at the Office of the New York State Comptroller, who had influence and decision-making authority over investment decisions," Broidy said in his plea and cooperation agreement. ...Mueller's team was interested in two meetings that took place before Donald Trump's inauguration. One was in the Seychelles, a tropical archipelago in the Indian Ocean, which drew scrutiny because it included Prince, an informal adviser to Trump, and Russian investor Kirill Dmitriev, who has close ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin. The meeting has prompted questions about whether it was an attempt to establish a backchannel between Russia and the incoming Trump administration.

The other meeting was at Trump Tower in New York.

Nader and MBZ [UAE's Prince Mohammed bin Zayed] were at both.

...In late September, Broidy arranged for the most coveted meeting for any lobbyist in Washington: an audience for himself with the president in the Oval Office.

In advance of the meeting, Nader wrote Broidy a script, an email shows. There were several objectives: to sell the idea for a Muslim fighting force, to keep the president from intervening on Qatar and to arrange a discreet meeting between Trump and the crown prince of Abu Dhabi.

The princes "are counting on you to relate it blunt and straight," Nader wrote.

Nader told Broidy the meeting was potentially historic and to "take advantage of this priceless asset."

And there was one more thing. Nader asked Broidy to tell the president about his connections with the crown princes, using code names for all three.

"Appreciate how you would make sure to bring up my role to Chairman," Nader emailed. "How I work closely with Two Big Friends."

After the Oct. 6 meeting, Broidy reported back to Nader that he had passed along the messages and had urged the president to stay out of the dispute with Qatar. He also said he explained Circinus' plan to build a Muslim fighting force.

"President Trump was extremely enthusiastic," he wrote. Broidy said Trump asked what the next step would be and that he told the president he should meet with the crown prince from the UAE, adding, "President Trump agreed that a meeting with MBZ was a good idea."

...Despite that successful readout, Nader wanted more: He wanted a photo of himself with the president-- a big request for a convicted pedophile.

Broidy was co-hosting a fundraiser for Trump and the Republican National Committee in Dallas on Oct. 25. The Secret Service had said Nader wouldn't be allowed to meet the president. It was not clear if the objections were related to his convictions for sexually abusing children.

Broidy drafted an email to Trump's chief of staff, John Kelly, asking him to intervene on behalf of his friend, whom he oddly called "George Vader"-- a misnomer that appears elsewhere in the emails.

"One of my companies does deep vetting for the US government," he wrote. "We ran all data bases including FBI and Interpol and found no issues with regard to Mr. Vader."

There was another issue. RNC officials had decreed there would be no photos with the president without payment. Broidy suggested that Nader meet the suggested threshold with a donation between $100,000 and $250,000.

It's unclear exactly how the two issues were resolved. Records from the Federal Election Commission show no donations from either George Nader or "George Vader," but on Nov. 30, Broidy gave $189,000 to the RNC-- more than he had given to the RNC in over two decades of Republican fundraising.

The result: a picture of Nader and Trump grinning in front of the American flag.

Broidy met Trump once again on Dec. 2. He reported back to Nader that he'd told Trump the crown princes were "most favorably impressed by his leadership." He offered the crown princes' help in the Middle East peace plan being developed by Jared Kushner. He did not tell Trump that his partner had complete contempt for the plan-- and for the president's son-in-law.

"You have to hear in private my Brother what Principals think of 'Clown prince's' efforts and his plan!" Nader wrote. "Nobody would even waste cup of coffee on him if it wasn't for who he is married to."

Days after Broidy's meeting with Trump, the UAE awarded Broidy the intelligence contract the partners had been seeking for up to $600 million over 5 years, according to a leaked email.

...The FBI raided the premises of Trump's personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, seeking information on hush money paid to porn actress Stormy Daniels, who said she'd had an affair with the president.

Broidy, it turned out, was also a Cohen client. He'd had an affair with Playboy bunny Shera Bechard, who got pregnant and later had an abortion. Broidy agreed to pay her $1.6 million to help her out, so long as she never spoke about it.

"I acknowledge I had a consensual relationship with a Playboy Playmate," Broidy said in a statement the day the news broke. He apologized to his wife and resigned from the RNC. There is no indication Broidy is under investigation by Mueller's team.

In the end, Nader and Broidy's anti-Qatar operation lost its momentum. There has been no traction on the effort to get the base in Qatar moved to the UAE. In late April, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo called for an end to the bickering among Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Qatar during a trip to the Gulf.

Is it any wonder that the overwhelming majority of citizens of America's European allies want to see Trump lose in November? YouGov polled people in Britain, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Denmark and Sweden. And Trump does best-- with a miserable 20%-- in Italy, where both fascism and mobsterism still have some popular support. In Denmark, on the other hand, just 6% want to see Trump win another term. [Just 6%??? Sure, watch the Danish TV version of The West Wing, now on Netflix, Borgen and you'll see why.] In general, Europeans say they would rate Trump as a terrible president-- 81% in Denmark, 75% in Germany, 70% in both the U.K. and Spain, 68% in Sweden, 63% in France and 60% in Italy.

Remember The Swamp? Trump Fished Louis DeJoy Out Of It To Run The Post Office (Into The Ground)

Can this crooked, rich, ugly man with an obscene watch give Trump 4 more years via the USPS?

Louis DeJoy personally contributed over a million dollars to the NRC and to Trump's campaign, $32,300 to the North Carolina Republican Party, tens of thousands more to Republican congressional candidates and thousands to official Republican Party committees in Florida, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, Missouri, Arizona, Minnesota, Iowa, Maine, Arkansas and Washington. That's all perfectly legal and he was then hired by Trump to destroy the U.S. Postal Service, which he's been busy doing. Reporters Aaron Davis, Amy Gardner and Jon Swaine of the Washington Post looked into another kind of fundraising De Joy did that is perfectly illegal and which could and should, but won't, send him to prison.

"DeJoy’s prolific campaign fundraising," they wrote, "which helped position him as a top Republican power broker in North Carolina and ultimately as head of the U.S. Postal Service, was bolstered for more than a decade by a practice that left many employees feeling pressured to make political contributions to GOP candidates-- money DeJoy later reimbursed through bonuses, former employees say. Five people who worked for DeJoy’s former business, New Breed Logistics, say they were urged by DeJoy’s aides or by the chief executive himself to write checks and attend fundraisers at his 15,000-square-foot gated mansion beside a Greensboro, N.C., country club. There, events for Republicans running for the White House and Congress routinely fetched $100,000 or more apiece. Two other employees familiar with New Breed’s financial and payroll systems said DeJoy would instruct that bonus payments to staffers be boosted to help defray the cost of their contributions, an arrangement that would be unlawful."

That's the illegal part, but widely practiced-- if not quite as systematically-- in the sewer known as corporate America. Politically-engaged CEOs and chairmen do it almost routinely... and, I'm sure you've noticed, no CEOs ever go to prison for funneling illegal cash to politicians. Not all their wives become the ambassador to Estonia and Canada though. Still, funny how that works.

“Louis was a national fundraiser for the Republican Party. He asked employees for money. We gave him the money, and then he reciprocated by giving us big bonuses,” said David Young, DeJoy’s longtime director of human resources, who had access to payroll records at New Breed from the late 1990s to 2013 and is now retired. “When we got our bonuses, let’s just say they were bigger, they exceeded expectations-- and that covered the tax and everything else.”

Another former employee with knowledge of the process described a similar series of events, saying DeJoy orchestrated additional compensation for employees who had made political contributions, instructing managers to award bonuses to specific individuals.

“He would ask employees to make contributions at the same time that he would say, ‘I’ll get it back to you down the road,’ ” said the former employee, who, like others interviewed for this report, spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear of retribution from DeJoy.

In response to a series of detailed questions from the Washington Post, Monty Hagler, a spokesman for DeJoy, said the former New Breed chief executive was not aware that any employees had felt pressured to make donations.

After repeatedly being asked, Hagler did not directly address the assertions that DeJoy reimbursed workers for making contributions, pointing to a statement in which he said DeJoy “believes that he has always followed campaign fundraising laws and regulations.”

...A Washington Post analysis of federal and state campaign finance records found a pattern of extensive donations by New Breed employees to Republican candidates, with the same amount often given by multiple people on the same day. Between 2000 and 2014, 124 individuals who worked for the company together gave more than $1 million to federal and state GOP candidates. Many had not previously made political donations, and have not made any since leaving the company, public records show. During the same period, nine employees gave a combined $700 to Democrats.

Although it can be permissible to encourage employees to make donations, reimbursing them for those contributions is a violation of North Carolina and federal election laws. Known as a straw-donor scheme, the practice allows donors to evade individual contribution limits and obscures the true source of money used to influence elections.

Such federal violations carry a five-year statute of limitations. There is no statute of limitations in North Carolina for felonies, including campaign finance violations.

The former employees who spoke to The Post all described donations they gave between 2003 and 2014, the year New Breed was acquired by a Connecticut-based company called XPO Logistics. DeJoy remained at XPO briefly in a leadership role, then retired at the end of 2015. By a year after the sale, several New Breed employees who had stayed on with XPO were giving significantly smaller political contributions and many stopped making them altogether, campaign finance records show.

...Democrats have accused DeJoy, who has personally given more than $1.1 million to Trump Victory, the joint fundraising vehicle of the president’s reelection campaign and the Republican Party, of seeking to hobble the Postal Service because of the president’s antipathy to voting by mail. As states have expanded access to mail voting because of the coronavirus pandemic, Trump has repeatedly attacked the practice and claimed without evidence that it will lead to rampant fraud.

The Postal Service chief emphasized to House lawmakers last month that the agency will prioritize election mail. Responding to questions about his fundraising, DeJoy scoffed. “Yes, I am a Republican. . . . I give a lot of money to Republicans.” But he pushed back fiercely on accusations that he was seeking to undermine the November vote. “I am not engaged in sabotaging the election,” DeJoy said. “We will do everything in our power and structure to deliver the ballots on time.”

During his testimony, DeJoy was asked by Rep. Jim Cooper (D-TN) if he had repaid executives for making donations to the Trump campaign.

“That’s an outrageous claim, sir, and I resent it... The answer is no,” DeJoy responded angrily.

DeJoy had retired from XPO management by 2016. He hosted Trump at his Greensboro estate, known locally as The Castle, for a birthday party and fundraiser in June 2016.

Earlier this year, DeJoy was leading fundraising for the Republican National Convention in Charlotte when he was selected by the Postal Service’s Board of Governors in May.

DeJoy was not originally on a list of prospective candidates for the job, Robert M. Duncan, chairman of the USPS Board of Governors, told House lawmakers in testimony last month. Duncan, a longtime GOP fundraiser, said he submitted DeJoy’s name as a candidate after his “interest, or availability, became known to me.”

Multiple New Breed employees said DeJoy’s ascent in Republican politics was powered in part by his ability to multiply his fundraising through his company, describing him as a chief executive who was single-minded in his focus on increasing his influence in the GOP.

...As DeJoy’s profile as a Republican bundler grew, his wife, Aldona Wos, won presidential and gubernatorial appointments-- first as an ambassador to Estonia in 2004, then as head of North Carolina’s health and human services agency in 2013. Trump appointed her in May 2017 to serve on the president’s commission on White House fellowships, and earlier this year, he nominated her to be ambassador to Canada.

DeJoy and trusted aides at the company made clear that he wanted employees to support his endeavors-- through emails inviting employees to fundraisers, follow-up calls and visits to staffers’ desks, many said.

“He would put pressure on the executives over each of the areas to go to their employees and give contributions,” one former employee said.

While some employees told The Post that they were happy to make the donations, others said they felt little choice, saying DeJoy had a heavy-handed demeanor and a reputation for angering easily.

Plant managers at New Breed said they received strongly worded admonitions from superiors that they should give money when DeJoy was holding fundraisers. A program manager said that when he was handed his first company bonus, a New Breed vice president told him he should buy a ticket to DeJoy’s next fundraiser.

Several employees said New Breed often distributed large bonuses of five figures or higher. Bonuses did not usually correlate with the exact amount of political contributions, but were large enough to account for both performance payments and donations, according to the two people with knowledge of company finances.

Five former employees said DeJoy’s executive assistant, Heather Clarke, personally called senior staffers, checking on whether executives were coming to fundraisers and collecting checks for candidates.

Trump insulted Trudeau by selling DeJoy the ambassadorship to Canada for his crazy right-wing wife

Clarke, who now works alongside DeJoy at the Postal Service as his chief of staff, did not respond to repeated requests for comment. Phone messages left with Clarke’s husband were returned Friday by Hagler, who said she would have no comment.

Clarke was among several nonexecutive employees who gave substantial political donations, public records show: She alone contributed $47,000 from 2002 to 2014. Clarke has continued to donate since then, but at about half the annual rate as when she worked at New Breed.

Another longtime senior official in DeJoy’s company, Joe Hauck, also routinely contacted company employees urging them to contribute, former workers said.

In an interview, Hauck denied that the company reimbursed New Breed employees for political contributions. He said he never received any bonuses for that purpose, nor was he offered any. “That’s illegal-- you can’t do that,” said Hauck, who was vice president for sales, marketing and communications when the company was sold.

Hauck did acknowledge approaching employees and asking them to contribute, but disputed that he pressured anyone.

“I created a list of people that had indicated that they were interested. And whenever there was an event coming up, I would let them know about the event and they would either say, ‘Yeah, I want to participate’ or ‘No, I don’t,’ ” he said.

Hauck said he sometimes did collect checks for candidates in the office, but only because some employees “happened to have their checkbooks on them.”

...Steve Moore, who took a job as plant manager of a New Breed facility in Bolingbrook, Ill., in 2007, said he felt pressured to contribute just a few months into his job. DeJoy sent managers an email announcing a fundraising event at his house for former New York mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, then a candidate for president.

Moore said his manager, Philip Meyer, soon followed up, telling him that making a contribution was “highly recommended,” even if he would not attend.

“I took that to mean my job is on the line here, or things won’t go smooth for me here at New Breed if I didn’t contribute,” Moore said in an interview. He donated $250. “I didn’t really agree with what was going on,” he said. Moore said he was terminated in 2008 after a dispute with his supervisors.

In a text message, Meyer declined to comment.

One of the biggest beneficiaries of donations from New Breed employees has been GOP Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina, whose campaign committees collected nearly $300,000 from people at the company in 2014, campaign finance records show.

When asked for comment on the accounts of employees who said they were pressured to donate to DeJoy’s favored candidates, Andrew Romeo, a spokesman for Tillis’s campaign, said in an email: “Neither Senator Tillis nor our campaign had knowledge of these findings.”

...Young, the retired director of human resources, said it was during the 2004 Bush reelection campaign that he saw DeJoy begin to “take advantage” of his power as CEO to move money for politics.

“No one was ever forced to or lost a job because they didn’t, but if people contributed, their raises and their bonuses were bumped up to accommodate that,” said Young, who gave more than $19,000 in donations while he worked at New Breed.

...By 2007, DeJoy was carving his own path politically. With Giuliani leading in early polls for the Republican nomination for president, DeJoy signed on as co-chair of the former mayor’s North Carolina finance committee.

New Breed employees quickly followed.

DeJoy kicked off his fundraising effort by inviting a group of senior New Breed executives who had previously donated to Republicans while at the company to contribute, according to one of those who wrote a check. Campaign finance records show that New Breed employees gave Giuliani’s campaign more than $27,000 in one day.

Giuliani did not respond to a request for comment.

Less than a month later, when Giuliani made a swing through North Carolina, DeJoy invited a broader group of New Breed employees to contribute and take part in a fundraiser, according to people familiar with his outreach. The second effort netted about $40,000 from employees, campaign finance records show.

Moore, the plant director in Illinois, said he received the email inviting employees to give-- and he donated reluctantly.

Another middle manager at another New Breed facility said he received the solicitation, too, as well as encouragement in person from Meyer during a plant visit.

“He would come to me and say, ‘Louis is having this thing, and he really wants all the managers there, and you need to contribute,’ ” said the former employee, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, saying he fears DeJoy could sue him.

The former employee said he recalled Meyer saying that not contributing was “not going to have any bearing on your job.”

But he worried that the reverse was true, he said. “You feel the pressure. They tell you it’s not there, and then they put it on you,” he said.





...After Giuliani’s campaign faltered, DeJoy pivoted and put his energy into backing the 2008 McCain-Palin ticket, organizing and hosting multiple fundraisers over the next year. Again, New Breed employees followed. Along with DeJoy, they contributed more than $180,000, FEC records show.

Four years later, an additional $193,000 flowed from DeJoy and other New Breed employees to the 2012 presidential campaign of Mitt Romney, now a U.S. senator from Utah.

Before the 2012 election, more than $170,000 in contributions from DeJoy and New Breed employees would also go to help lift McCrory to the North Carolina governor’s mansion, state campaign finance records show.

The following month, McCrory named Wos, DeJoy’s wife and a retired physician, as his choice for state health secretary.

In an interview, McCrory said Wos’s appointment had no connection to campaign contributions he received. “She was the most qualified person and I had to beg her to take the job,” he said.

Told of The Post’s findings, McCrory said: “I’m not aware of any of these claims.”

During her tenure, Wos drew scrutiny from Democrats after awarding a $310,000 state contract to Hauck, the New Breed employee who colleagues said had urged them to support DeJoy’s fundraising efforts.

At the time, Wos defended her pick, saying Hauck worked on a major restructuring of the department’s bureaucracy.

Hauck said he took a pay cut by going on leave from New Breed to work for Wos for 11 months. “I looked at it as serving,” he said in an interview.

ACTIVISM!

D.C. organizers figured out where DeJoy lives-- this condo in Kalorama-- so they're holding a "No Joy for DeJoy" noise demonstration at his building and stuffing mock absentee ballots into the gates.

The Trump Swamp Rears Its Ugly Head Again-- Elliott Broidy

I believe the first time I heard of Elliott Broidy was when the NY Times revealed him to be working with a very right-wing shady Mercer family SuperPAC, Secure America Now (SAN), which Broidy was using to leverage the Trump regime into filling key positions with individuals favorable to-- meaning, like Broidy himself, bought off by-- the Saudi and UAE governments. Mercer was one of just 4 uber-wealthy far-right and very crooked contributors providing SAN with the millions of dollars it needed for its entirely nefarious projects. The 3 other scumbags besides Mercer funding SAN are top Best Buy freaks Brad Anderson and Richard Schulze plus neo-fascist Estee Lauder heir Ronald Lauder.

Yesterday, Washington Post reporters Matt Zapotosky, Carol Leonnig and Rosalind Helderman wrote how now-- over two years later-- Broidy is finally about to be charged "in connection with efforts to influence the U.S. government on behalf of foreign interests, according to people familiar with the matter, a result of a sprawling, years-long investigation that involved a figure who helped raise millions for Donald Trump’s election and the Republican Party." By "influence the U.S. government," the meaning is clearly using Saudi and Emirati cash to bribe Señor Trumpanzee, who isn't being charged, at least not while he's living at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

In fact this investigation had steered completely clear of Broidy's Saudi and Emerati paymasters-- a deal to protect Trump-- and is instead about Broidy's role as an unregistered lobbyist in "a campaign to persuade high-level Trump administration officials to drop an investigation of Malaysian government corruption, as well as for his attempt to push for the extradition of an outspoken Chinese dissident back to his home country." This gigantic mess is going to resulting a plea deal and, in all likelihood, an informal understanding with Trump that there will eventually be a pardon.

The case has intensified in recent weeks, with prosecutors securing a guilty plea Monday from one of Broidy’s business associates, Nickie Mali Lum Davis, who admitted to taking part in what prosecutors have described in charging documents as a “back-channel lobbying campaign” to end the Malaysian corruption investigation and to return Chinese exile Guo Wengui to his home country.

Guo is a vocal online critic of the Chinese government who was once allied with that country’s government elite but is now wanted by authorities in Beijing on charges of fraud, blackmail and bribery. He has denied those charges and said they are politically motivated.

According to a charging document filed in her case, Davis admitted she aided and abetted the efforts of two others involved in the influence campaigns, identified only as Person A and Person B. People familiar with the matter identified them as Fugees rapper Pras Michel and Broidy, respectively.





During a virtual hearing Monday before a federal judge in Honolulu, where Davis entered her guilty plea, prosecutors told a judge that charges may be filed against additional defendants in the case.

...The investigation puts a renewed focus on efforts by people close to the president to shape the fate of Guo, who has succeeded in remaining in the United States.

In the past few years, the Chinese billionaire has been closely aligned with Stephen K. Bannon, Trump’s former campaign chief and top White House strategist. Bannon was on Guo’s yacht off the coast of Westbrook, Conn., when he was arrested last month for allegedly fleecing donors who supported a group that claimed to be building a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border.

The investigation of Broidy has its roots in a massive probe of theft from a Malaysian government development fund that has come to be known by the shorthand “1MDB.” In previous civil and criminal cases, federal prosecutors have alleged that stolen funds that made their way into the United States were used to buy pricey real estate and even fund the award-winning movie The Wolf of Wall Street. Malaysia’s former prime minister Najib Razak was accused of being involved in the corruption. He was convicted in July and sentenced to 12 years in prison.

At the center of the case is a Malaysian businessman named Low Taek Jho, who was indicted in 2018 and accused of funneling tens of millions of dollars into the United States in part to get the Malaysian corruption investigation dropped. Low, who is facing multiple federal indictments, is believed to be in China, outside the reach of U.S. authorities. He has denied the allegations and said they are politically motivated.

According to court documents filed in association with Davis’s guilty plea this week, Broidy allegedly lobbied to have Guo removed from the United States at the request of Low and a Chinese government official.

Davis admitted that she met with the Chinese official-- who people familiar with the matter identified as Sun Lijun-- and the two people identified as Broidy and Michel in a Hong Kong hotel suite in May 2017, and Broidy soon launched a campaign that reached the top of the administration, court filings show.

According to the documents and people familiar with the matter, Broidy allegedly made various entreaties to people in the administration or close to it, including President Trump’s then-chief of staff, Reince Priebus; his former deputy campaign chairman, Rick Gates; and the president himself.

At one point, Broidy also tried to enlist the help of casino magnate and Trump friend Steve Wynn, according to the documents and the people with knowledge of the case. In August 2017, Broidy and Wynn called Trump from Wynn’s yacht and asked about Guo’s status.

Davis also admitted in court that she connected multiple calls between Wynn and Sun.

Reid Weingarten, an attorney for Wynn, declined to comment but said his client has been cooperating with investigators and continues to do so.

Wynn and Broidy worked closely together to get Trump elected in 2016 while they served as finance chairman and deputy finance chairman of the Republican National Committee.

Wynn made his own attempt to pass a message about Guo directly to Trump from Chinese President Xi Jinping, according to two people with knowledge of the episode. In a private meeting around June 2017, Wynn told Trump why Xi felt so strongly about the United States returning Guo to China, handing Trump two pictures of Guo, the people said.

At the time, Wynn had significant business interests involving China, operating a major casino in Macao.

Trump was eager to extradite Guo, as the Chinese wished, telling aides in an Oval Office meeting that he supported the plan, according to a former administration official familiar with his views.

Priebus passed along the extradition request to the National Security Council, where it was vetted by a senior White House lawyer, John Eisenberg, who conferred with then-White House Counsel Donald McGahn, the official said.

White House lawyers agreed that extradition, which was opposed by the Justice Department, would not be appropriate, according to the official. McGahn later told aides who asked about the status request, “We killed that,” the official said.

McGahn did not response to requests for comment. A White House spokesman referred questions about the episode to the National Security Council. An NSC spokesman declined to comment and referred questions to the Justice Department.

During the 2016 campaign, Broidy, a Los Angeles-based investor, helped corral big donors to support Trump’s campaign. After the election, he was appointed to serve as a national deputy finance chairman for the Republican National Committee.

Broidy resigned from that post in April 2018 in the wake of a report that he had paid a former Playboy model $1.6 million in exchange for her silence about a sexual affair. Trump’s personal attorney Michael Cohen-- another RNC fundraiser-- helped arrange the settlement, Broidy acknowledged at the time.

As part of the Malaysian corruption probe, the U.S. government has previously alleged that Michel and a former Justice Department employee, George Higginbotham, opened U.S. accounts to move Low’s money into the United States and fund the lobbying effort.

Davis acknowledged that she helped route an $8 million retainer to Broidy for the influence campaign and that Low offered to pay a $75 million “success fee” as part of a contract with Broidy’s wife’s law firm if the 1MDB case was resolved within 180 days.

Higginbotham pleaded guilty in November 2018 to illicitly facilitating the transfer of tens of millions of dollars into the United States to finance the lobbying effort.

According to Davis’s criminal information and people familiar with the matter, Broidy met with Trump at the White House in October 2017 and told others that he raised the subject of the 1MDB investigation.

A former attorney for Broidy told the Wall Street Journal in 2018 that at no time did Broidy, his wife, “or anyone acting on their behalf, discuss Mr. Low’s case with President Trump, any member of his staff, or anyone at the U.S. Department of Justice.”

Text messages and emails quoted in Davis’s plea documents show that Broidy messaged Gates, Trump’s former deputy campaign chairman, and Priebus in 2017 about arranging a visit for Malaysia’s prime minister and a possible golf outing with Trump. An attorney for Gates declined to comment.

Priebus responded but was noncommittal, saying the NSC was working on the matter, according to court filings and the people. Priebus declined to comment.

The prime minister did visit, but he did not golf with Trump, according to the court documents. The meeting was meant in part so the Malaysian prime minister could press Trump about ending the 1MDB case, according to the documents.

How many mentions of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Broidy's business partner (and a repeat child sex abuser and Erik Prince and UAE lobbyist), currently serving a 10 ten year prison term, George Nader in that Post report? How many mentions of Robert Mercer or SAN? Just the Fugees and Malaysia. Back in May of 2018, the Business Insider reported that after Broidy spent a year cultivating a couple of the corrupt princes from Arabian Peninsula, he "thought he was finally close to nailing more than $1 billion in business. He had ingratiated himself with crown princes from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, who were seeking to alter US foreign policy and punish Qatar, an archrival in the Gulf that he dubbed 'the snake.' To do that, the California businessman had helped spearhead a secret campaign to influence the White House and Congress, flooding Washington with political donations. Broidy and his business partner, Lebanese-American George Nader, pitched themselves to the crown princes as a backchannel to the White House, passing the princes' praise-- and messaging-- straight to the president's ears... Broidy and Nader sought to get an anti-Qatar bill through Congress while obscuring the source of the money behind their influence campaign... Broidy's campaign to alter US policy in the Middle East and reap a fortune for himself shows that one of the president's top money men found the swamp as navigable as ever with Trump in office.

By December of last year, the partners were riding a wave of success in their campaign to create an anti-Qatar drumbeat in Washington.

Saudi Arabia was finding a new ascendancy following Trump's election. Broidy sought to claim credit for it, emails show, and was keen to collect the first installment of $36 million for an intelligence-gathering contract with the UAE.

It all might have proceeded smoothly save for one factor: the appointment of Robert Mueller as special counsel to look into allegations of Russian interference in the 2016 election.

In many ways, the partnership between Broidy, 60, and Nader, 59, embodies the insider influence that has given contractors in D.C. the nickname "beltway bandits."

Both of their careers were marked by high-rolling success and spectacular falls from grace-- and criminal convictions. The onset of the Trump administration presented an opportunity: a return to glory.

Broidy, who made a fortune in investments, was finance chairman of the Republican National Committee from 2006 to 2008. But when a New York state pension fund decided to invest $250 million with him, investigators found that he had plied state officials with nearly $1 million in illegal gifts while collecting $18 million in management fees.

In 2009, Broidy pleaded guilty to a felony charge of rewarding official misconduct.

"In seeking investments from the New York State Common Retirement Fund, I made payments for the benefit of high-ranking officials at the Office of the New York State Comptroller, who had influence and decision-making authority over investment decisions," Broidy said in his plea and cooperation agreement.

...Mueller's team was interested in two meetings that took place before Donald Trump's inauguration.

One was in the Seychelles, a tropical archipelago in the Indian Ocean, which drew scrutiny because it included Prince, an informal adviser to Trump, and Russian investor Kirill Dmitriev, who has close ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin. The meeting has prompted questions about whether it was an attempt to establish a backchannel between Russia and the incoming Trump administration.

The other meeting was at Trump Tower in New York.

Nader and MBZ were at both.

...In late September, Broidy arranged for the most coveted meeting for any lobbyist in Washington: an audience for himself with the president in the Oval Office.

In advance of the meeting, Nader wrote Broidy a script, an email shows. There were several objectives: to sell the idea for a Muslim fighting force, to keep the president from intervening on Qatar and to arrange a discreet meeting between Trump and the crown prince of Abu Dhabi.

The princes "are counting on you to relate it blunt and straight," Nader wrote.

Nader told Broidy the meeting was potentially historic and to "take advantage of this priceless asset."

And there was one more thing. Nader asked Broidy to tell the president about his connections with the crown princes, using code names for all three.

"Appreciate how you would make sure to bring up my role to Chairman," Nader emailed. "How I work closely with Two Big Friends."

After the Oct. 6 meeting, Broidy reported back to Nader that he had passed along the messages and had urged the president to stay out of the dispute with Qatar. He also said he explained Circinus' plan to build a Muslim fighting force.

"President Trump was extremely enthusiastic," he wrote. Broidy said Trump asked what the next step would be and that he told the president he should meet with the crown prince from the UAE, adding, "President Trump agreed that a meeting with MBZ was a good idea."

...Despite that successful readout, Nader wanted more: He wanted a photo of himself with the president-- a big request for a convicted pedophile.

Broidy was co-hosting a fundraiser for Trump and the Republican National Committee in Dallas on Oct. 25. The Secret Service had said Nader wouldn't be allowed to meet the president. It was not clear if the objections were related to his convictions for sexually abusing children.

Broidy drafted an email to Trump's chief of staff, John Kelly, asking him to intervene on behalf of his friend, whom he oddly called "George Vader"-- a misnomer that appears elsewhere in the emails.

"One of my companies does deep vetting for the US government," he wrote. "We ran all data bases including FBI and Interpol and found no issues with regard to Mr. Vader."

There was another issue. RNC officials had decreed there would be no photos with the president without payment. Broidy suggested that Nader meet the suggested threshold with a donation between $100,000 and $250,000.

It's unclear exactly how the two issues were resolved. Records from the Federal Election Commission show no donations from either George Nader or "George Vader," but on Nov. 30, Broidy gave $189,000 to the RNC-- more than he had given to the RNC in over two decades of Republican fundraising.

The result: a picture of Nader and Trump grinning in front of the American flag.

Broidy met Trump once again on Dec. 2. He reported back to Nader that he'd told Trump the crown princes were "most favorably impressed by his leadership." He offered the crown princes' help in the Middle East peace plan being developed by Jared Kushner. He did not tell Trump that his partner had complete contempt for the plan-- and for the president's son-in-law.

"You have to hear in private my Brother what Principals think of 'Clown prince's' efforts and his plan!" Nader wrote. "Nobody would even waste cup of coffee on him if it wasn't for who he is married to."

Days after Broidy's meeting with Trump, the UAE awarded Broidy the intelligence contract the partners had been seeking for up to $600 million over 5 years, according to a leaked email.

...The FBI raided the premises of Trump's personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, seeking information on hush money paid to porn actress Stormy Daniels, who said she'd had an affair with the president.

Broidy, it turned out, was also a Cohen client. He'd had an affair with Playboy bunny Shera Bechard, who got pregnant and later had an abortion. Broidy agreed to pay her $1.6 million to help her out, so long as she never spoke about it.

"I acknowledge I had a consensual relationship with a Playboy Playmate," Broidy said in a statement the day the news broke. He apologized to his wife and resigned from the RNC. There is no indication Broidy is under investigation by Mueller's team.

In the end, Nader and Broidy's anti-Qatar operation lost its momentum. There has been no traction on the effort to get the base in Qatar moved to the UAE. In late April, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo called for an end to the bickering among Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Qatar during a trip to the Gulf.

On A Scale Of 1 To 10, Would You Agree That The Pure Evil Embodied By Erik Prince Is A Million? A Billion?

Forget for a moment that Erik was inculcated at any early age into treason and evil by his older sister, Betsy DeVos. Instead, just recall that over 2 decades ago Prince set up Blackwater-- an international mercenary operation-- that has been lobbying for war ever since... and getting billions of dollars in U.S. government contracts, much of his businesses' work hidden from public scrutiny, for fighting and spying all over the world. Prince finally started facing some semblance of accountability-- though not much-- in 2007 when his mercenaries in Baghdad indiscriminately started shooting into crowds of Iraqi civilians murdering 17 and wounding dozens of others, some critically. It took until 2014 for 3 of Prince's men to be convicted for manslaughter and until last year for another one to be convicted for murder. But Prince, who worked for Bush, Obama and Trump has been personally immune from prosecution. He sold Blackwater to foreign investors in 2010, at which time he moved to Abu Dhabi to organize an elite force of mercenaries to protect the monarchy from people desiring to move out of the 14th century. And, of course, he has been deeply involved with the Trumpist regime, even before Trump was elected. He has kicked back around a half a million dollars-- that we know of-- to politicians who have helped him, including $150,000 to a Ted Cruz SuperPAC, almost $200,000 to the RNC, about $50,000 to state Republican parties in 21 states and maxed out donations to Trump, Dan Rohrabacher, Kris Kobach, Mike Pence and other neo-fascist Republicans.

Would it surprise you to know he was also using the immense sums of money funneled to him by conservative politicians to infiltrate Democratic campaigns and progressive groups? It shouldn't-- and New York Times reporters Mark Mazzetti and Adam Goldman exposed the whole thing on Saturday. Trump, who has sent him considerable money, had him assemble a pack of spies to illegally infiltrate groups Trump considered his enemies, like Democrats and labor unions (such as the teachers' union).

One of the former spies, an ex-MI6 officer named Richard Seddon, helped run a 2017 operation to copy files and record conversations in a Michigan office of the American Federation of Teachers, one of the largest teachers’ unions in the nation. Mr. Seddon directed an undercover operative to secretly tape the union’s local leaders and try to gather information that could be made public to damage the organization, documents show.

Using a different alias the next year, the same undercover operative infiltrated the congressional campaign of Abigail Spanberger, then a former C.I.A. officer who went on to win an important House seat in Virginia as a Democrat. The campaign discovered the operative and fired her.

Both operations were run by Project Veritas, a conservative group that has gained attention using hidden cameras and microphones for sting operations on news organizations, Democratic politicians and liberal advocacy groups. Mr. Seddon’s role in the teachers’ union operation-- detailed in internal Project Veritas emails that have emerged from the discovery process of a court battle between the group and the union-- has not previously been reported, nor has Mr. Prince’s role in recruiting Mr. Seddon for the group’s activities.

Both Project Veritas and Mr. Prince have ties to President Trump’s aides and family. Whether any Trump administration officials or advisers to the president were involved in the operations, even tacitly, is unclear. But the effort is a glimpse of a vigorous private campaign to try to undermine political groups or individuals perceived to be in opposition to Mr. Trump’s agenda.

Mr. Prince, the former head of Blackwater Worldwide and the brother of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, has at times served as an informal adviser to Trump administration officials. He worked with the former national security adviser Michael T. Flynn during the presidential transition. In 2017, he met with White House and Pentagon officials to pitch a plan to privatize the Afghan war using contractors in lieu of American troops. Jim Mattis, then the defense secretary, rejected the idea.

Mr. Prince appears to have become interested in using former spies to train Project Veritas operatives in espionage tactics sometime during the 2016 presidential campaign. Reaching out to several intelligence veterans-- and occasionally using Mr. Seddon to make the pitch-- Mr. Prince said he wanted the Project Veritas employees to learn skills like how to recruit sources and how to conduct clandestine recordings, among other surveillance techniques.

...Prince is under investigation by the Justice Department [LOL-- think William Barr] over whether he lied to a congressional committee examining Russian interference in the 2016 election, and for possible violations of American export laws. Last year, the House Intelligence Committee made a criminal referral to the Justice Department about Mr. Prince, saying he lied about the circumstances of his meeting with a Russian banker in the Seychelles in January 2017.

Once a small operation running on a shoestring budget, Project Veritas in recent years has had a surge in donations from both private donors and conservative foundations. According to its latest publicly available tax filing, Project Veritas received $8.6 million in contributions and grants in 2018. Mr. O’Keefe earned about $387,000.

Last year, the group received a $1 million contribution made through the law firm Alston & Bird, a financial document obtained by the New York Times showed. A spokesman for the firm said that Alston & Bird “has never contributed to Project Veritas on its own behalf, nor is it a client of ours.” The spokesman declined to say on whose behalf the contribution was made.

The financial document also listed the names of others who gave much smaller amounts to Project Veritas last year. Several of them confirmed their donations.

The group has also become intertwined with the political activities of Mr. Trump and his family. The Trump Foundation gave $20,000 to Project Veritas in 2015, the year that Mr. Trump began his bid for the presidency. The next year, during a presidential debate with Hillary Clinton, Mr. Trump claimed without substantiation that videos released by Mr. O’Keefe showed that Mrs. Clinton and President Barack Obama had paid people to incite violence at rallies for Mr. Trump.

In a book published in 2018, Mr. O’Keefe wrote that Mr. Trump years earlier had encouraged him to infiltrate Columbia University and obtain Mr. Obama’s records.

Last month, Project Veritas made public secretly recorded video of a longtime ABC News correspondent who was critical of the network’s political coverage and its emphasis on business considerations over journalism. Many conservatives have gleefully pounded on Project Veritas’s disclosures, including one particularly influential voice: Donald Trump Jr., the president’s eldest son.

The website for Mr. O’Keefe’s coming wedding listed Donald Trump Jr. as an invited guest.

Mr. Prince invited Project Veritas operatives-- including Mr. O’Keefe-- to his family’s Wyoming ranch for training in 2017, The Intercept reported last year. Mr. O’Keefe and others shared social media photos of taking target practice with guns at the ranch, including one post from Mr. O’Keefe saying that with the training, Project Veritas will be “the next great intelligence agency.” Mr. Prince had hired a former MI6 officer to help train the Project Veritas operatives, The Intercept wrote, but it did not identify the officer.

Mr. Seddon regularly updated Mr. O’Keefe about the operation against the Michigan teachers’ union, according to internal Project Veritas emails, where the language of the group’s leaders is marbled with spy jargon.

They used a code name-- LibertyU-- for their operative inside the organization, Marisa Jorge, who graduated from Liberty University in Virginia, one of the nation’s largest Christian colleges. Mr. Seddon wrote that Ms. Jorge “copied a great many documents from the file room,” and Mr. O’Keefe bragged that the group would be able to get “a ton more access agents inside the educational establishment.”

The emails refer to other operations, including weekly case updates, along with training activities that involved “operational targeting.” Project Veritas redacted specifics about those operations from the messages.

In August 2017, Ms. Jorge wrote to Mr. Seddon that she had managed to record a local union leader talking about Ms. DeVos and other topics.

“Good stuff,” Mr. Seddon wrote back. “Did you receive the spare camera yet?”

As education secretary, Ms. DeVos has been a vocal critic of teachers’ unions, saying in 2018 that they have a “stranglehold” over politicians at the federal and state levels. She and Mr. Prince grew up in Michigan, where their father made a fortune in the auto parts business.

AFT Michigan sued Project Veritas in federal court, alleging trespassing, eavesdropping and other offenses. The teachers’ union is asking for more than $3 million in damages, accusing the group of being a “vigilante organization which claims to be dedicated to exposing corruption. It is, instead, an entity dedicated to a specific political agenda.”

Project Veritas has said its activities are legal and protected by the First Amendment, and the case is scheduled to go to trial in the fall.

Other Project Veritas employees on the emails include Joe Halderman, an award-winning former television producer who in 2010 pleaded guilty to trying to extort $2 million from the comedian David Letterman. Mr. Halderman was copied on several messages providing updates about the Michigan operation, and in one message, he gave instructions to Ms. Jorge. Project Veritas tax filings list Mr. Halderman as a “project manager.”

Two other employees, Gaz Thomas and Samuel Chamberlain, were also identified in emails and appeared to play important roles in the Michigan operation. Efforts to locate Mr. Thomas were unsuccessful. A man named Samuel Chamberlain who matched the description of the one employed by Mr. O’Keefe denied he worked for Project Veritas. He did not respond to follow-up phone messages or an email.

...Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, said in a statement: “Let’s be clear who the wrongdoer is here: Project Veritas used a fake intern to lie her way into our Michigan office, to steal documents and to spy-- and they got caught. We’re just trying to hold them accountable for this industrial espionage.”

In 2018, Ms. Jorge infiltrated the congressional campaign of Ms. Spanberger, posing as a campaign volunteer. At the time, Ms. Spanberger was running to unseat a sitting Republican congressman in a race both parties considered important for control of the House. Ms. Jorge was eventually exposed and kicked out of the campaign office.

It was unclear whether Mr. Seddon was involved in planning that operation.

Mr. Seddon was a longtime British intelligence officer who served around the world, including in Washington in the years after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. He is married to an American diplomat, Alice Seddon, who is serving in the American consulate in Lagos, Nigeria.

Mr. O’Keefe and his group have taken aim at targets over the years including Planned Parenthood, The New York Times, The Washington Post and Democracy Partners, a group that consults with liberal and progressive electoral causes. In 2016, a Project Veritas operative infiltrated Democracy Partners using a fake name and fabricated résumé and made secret recordings of the staff. The year after the sting, Democracy Partners sued Project Veritas, and its lawyers have since deposed Mr. O’Keefe.

In that deposition, Mr. O’Keefe defended the group’s undercover tactics, saying they were part of a long tradition of investigative journalism going back to muckraking reporters like Upton Sinclair. “I’m not ashamed of the methods that we use or the recordings that we use,” he said.

He was asked whether he had provided any of the group’s secret recordings of Democracy Partners to the Republican National Committee or any member of the Trump family. He said that he did not think so.

In 2010, Mr. O’ Keefe and three others pleaded guilty to a federal misdemeanor after admitting they entered a government building in New Orleans under false pretenses as part of a sting.

As you may have noticed, Blue America endorsed Tom Guild for the Oklahoma City congressional seat on Friday. Tom also noticed the explosive NY Times piece and told us that Prince "needs to make better use of his time rather than trying to find dirt on congressional campaigns, labor organizations, and other groups hostile to Donald Trump. Hell, tens of millions of Americans and billions of folks worldwide are hostile to the Donald. As they say, paranoid people have enemies, too. For someone who said he was going to drain the swamp, there is an awful lot of new dirty water in the Tidal Basin these days. If Mr. Trump would spend more time governing, go legit, and up his game, he could at long last give Americans an ounce of confidence in his administration. But as the old song says, he loves that dirty water in the River Charles (channel Potomac). E pluribus Unum gives way to a new national motto... You get your dirt and I’ll get mine... We’ll get together and have a bad time! This is definitely no way to run a railroad!!"

Midnight Meme Of The Day!

by Noah

Congratulations Roger Stone! You are now the 6th member of the Trump Crime Family to receive a jail sentence for what amounts to a crime against America. May you have the same kind of guards Jeffrey Epstein had. May your sheet be tied tightly, very, very tightly.

Extremely light sentence for witness intimidation and obstructing the Russia investigation aside (40 years or a firing squad would better fit his crimes against the United States on behalf of Putin's Treason Puppet), if Roger Stone ever actually does serve time in prison, he will need some protective friends. I'm hoping they're all named Bubba and they like gazing at the Nixon tattoo on Roger's back. That's a karma thing in more ways than one.

Meanwhile, as soon as Stone was sentenced, he whimpered and publicly asked his buddy Trump for his pardon. Trump, who earlier shared a clip of FOX's Tiki Torch Tucker pleading for him to pardon Stone, took a bash at the jury forewoman, whined about the very existence of the trial, spouted conspiracies, and disingenuously claimed to the press that he would watch the process carefully. In other words, yes, I will pardon anyone who has the goods on me as long as they keep quiet but I will chose the time because I am the all powerful orange menace to society.

In any event, the folks in Las Vegas who lay odds on such things wasted no time accepting bets on when the pardon from Trump would be forthcoming. These are the times we live in. this is our own sentence. How long will the unstable Trump think Stone can remain silent? What happens if Trump thinks he won't? Stone knows a lot of the really bad stuff about his boss. Technically, acceptance of a pardon is an admission of guilt and once you accept the pardon, you can be compelled to talk. Obviously, Stone will ignore subpoenas like most Trump Crime Family members do, but what if Godfather Trump gets too nervous that Stone will talk, pardon or not?