The Russia Investigations and other Trump-related cases

[RoseMorninStar]

I do think that the division between morality and legality is an important. Certainly there is an overlap, but I also think that there is a big danger to trying to hard to legislate morality, which like beauty is often in the eyes of the beholder. I wouldn't want Pat Robertson telling me what I can or can't do. Or Louis Farrakhan.

Agreed. I could see N.E.'s point, but thinking of the broader consequences- those are the fine points of reasoning which often sets apart those with a law degree/those who have studied such things and the average public.

[N.E. Brigand]

This likely will never affect Donald Trump directly but it is certainly Trump-related:

"The Justice Department is seeking to seize an apartment at Trump International Hotel in New York that it alleges the president of Congo bought for his daughter using $7.1 million embezzled from the state treasury." Full complaint here.

Denis Sassou Nguesso has been Congo's president for about 40 years. He is alleged to have embezzled hundreds of millions from his country, some of which he used -- via a Brazilian conglomerate and several other intermediaries -- to purchase a Trump International Tower apartment at the cost of $7.1 million in 2014 for his daughter Sassou, herself a sometime member of Congo's parliament. Payments to Trump's company apparently continued during Trump's presidency.

[N.E. Brigand]

Most reporting I've seen suggests that Donald Trump can't sell the Truth Social shares for six months....

Truth Social is on the stock market today (ticker code "DJT") and currently has a valuation of $14 billion, which is more than twice as much as Reddit -- which just had its IPO (initial public offering) last week -- even though Reddit "generated 160 times more revenue [$804 million] than Trump Media [$5 million]."

Truth Social's required 8-K filing reveals, among much else, that the company earned lost $58 million last year with just $4 million in revenue, that the company's own accountants note that there's a significant risk that it will not be able to sustain itself, and that the company won't be sharing any of the standard metrics -- like number of daily users -- that one might expect in an analysis of a social media platform. Truth Social stock fell 25% today.

[N.E. Brigand]

Donald Trump last night secured his $175 bond. It was arranged "through Knight Specialty Insurance Company, which is owned by the privately-held Hankey Group, whose chairman," Don Hankey, "told ABC News that he considers himself a Donald Trump supporter ... 'It was a relatively low number, and Donald Trump put up all the collateral in cash,' Hankey said." Hankey says he had been in talks with Trump about posting the bond even before New York's Appellate Division lowered it from $464 million.

[N.E. Brigand]

I appreciate Adam Klasfeld's visual explanation of how Judge Engoron arrived at the total in his ruling:

[N.E. Brigand]

This is merely Trump-related. (He "has not been accused of any wrongdoing" in this case.) The Miami Herald reports that a Anoton Postolnikov, a "Russian-American businessman based in Miami, is suspected of making nearly $23 million from alleged insider trading involving former President Donald Trump’s media company ... Postolnikov is the owner of a Caribbean bank that caters to the porn industry and also reportedly loaned $8 million to Trump’s media company. Postolnikov ... is the nephew of a former high-ranking Russian government official who at one time was a staffer for Russian President Vladimir Putin". However, Postolnikov hasn't been charged. Instead, the "insider trading allegations surfaced in court documents filed last month in a New York securities fraud case brought last year against three South Florida men" named Michael Shvartsman, Gerald Shvartsman, and Bruce Garelick, who "are accused of making about $23 million from insider trades on the Trump Media merger with a Miami-based company, Digital World Acquisition Corp."

Michael and Gerald Shvartsman today pleaded guilty.

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In other Truth Social news, the Associated Press reported yesterday that Donald Trump "is suing two co-founders" of the platform's parent company, Andy Litinsky and Wes Moss, "arguing that they should forfeit their stock in the company because they set it up improperly." Nine days ago, Litinsky and Moss (who had appeared on The Apprentice TV show) on sued to "prevent Trump from taking steps the two said would sharply reduce their combined 8.6% stake". in Trump Media. The pair filed their lawsuit in the Delaware Court of Chancery.

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In other insider trading news at least tangentially related to Donald Trump, Reuters reports that a "former pharmaceutical executive and his cousin" name Andrew and Gary Stiles today pled guilty to insider trading of Kodak stock which they bought low and sold high after they learned in advance in July 2020 that then-President Donald Trump was going to announce a "surprise $765 million loan . . . to make drug ingredients." The stock price went from less than $3 to more than $60 per share following that announcement, and the Stiles cousins thus illicitly earned a combined $1.2 million. They face both fines and possibly several months in prison.

I'd like to know who tipped them off.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

This thread from Lisa Rubin is very interesting.

[N.E. Brigand]

This thread from Lisa Rubin is very interesting.

Per Rubin, the bond now has been updated and refiled.

[N.E. Brigand]

This thread from Lisa Rubin is very interesting.

Per Rubin, the bond now has been updated and refiled.

But wait, there's more!



This morning's filing from Donald Trump included the financial statements for Knight Specialty Insurance Co. as of Dec. 31, 2023. Those statements show that Knight had assets of $537 million, which is more than enough to cover the $175 million bond, but the New York Attorney General's office noticed that the statements do not show that Knight has enough cash on hand to cover the bond, and thus, because Knight does not usually operate in New York and thus doesn't have verified status in that state, the A.G. wants what commentator Lisa Rubin here refers to as "justification of the surety" including some specifics about what assets Trump offered Knight as collateral.

[N.E. Brigand]

Judge Engoron has scheduled a hearing on this matter for April 22.

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Edit: Meanwhile, a man was arrested this morning for threatening both Judge Engoron and Attorney General Letitia James about this case.

[N.E. Brigand]

Truth Social is on the stock market today (ticker code "DJT") and currently has a valuation of $14 billion, which is more than twice as much as Reddit -- which just had its IPO (initial public offering) last week -- even though Reddit "generated 160 times more revenue [$804 million] than Trump Media [$5 million]."

Truth Social's required 8-K filing reveals, among much else, that the company earned lost $58 million last year with just $4 million in revenue, that the company's own accountants note that there's a significant risk that it will not be able to sustain itself, and that the company won't be sharing any of the standard metrics -- like number of daily users -- that one might expect in an analysis of a social media platform. Truth Social stock fell 25% today.

On March 26, 2024, the first day that Truth Social was on the stock market, it peaked at $74.79 per share.

At the close of business today, April 5, 2024, Truth Social was trading at $40.57 per share, which is 46% below its peak.

[N.E. Brigand]

Donald Trump last night secured his $175 bond. It was arranged "through Knight Specialty Insurance Company, which is owned by the privately-held Hankey Group, whose chairman," Don Hankey, "told ABC News that he considers himself a Donald Trump supporter ... 'It was a relatively low number, and Donald Trump put up all the collateral in cash,' Hankey said." Hankey says he had been in talks with Trump about posting the bond even before New York's Appellate Division lowered it from $464 million.

ProPublica asks: if the part I bolded above is true, does that mean that Donald Trump's lawyers lied to the Appellate Division when they said it was impossible to raise the $464 million? Those lawyers didn't respond to ProPublica's questions about whether they were aware that Hankey was prepared to pay the full amount.

Mind you, it may be that Hankey can't actually pay the reduced amount, but we won't know that for another sixteen days.

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Edited to add more about the bond:

"Businessman behind Trump's NY bond says he charged him a 'low fee'." But now Hankey says, "We probably didn't charge enough."

[N.E. Brigand]

On March 26, 2024, the first day that Truth Social was on the stock market, it peaked at $74.79 per share.
At the close of business today, April 5, 2024, Truth Social was trading at $40.57 per share, which is 46% below its peak.

And it had dropped to $37.17 at close today. Blame it on the eclipse?

[River]

Got a coworker who dabbles in stocks with mixed results. A week or two ago I asked him how to short Trump's social media company and he told me it was too expensive. But I guess those who were able to afford the stock are making bank right now.

[N.E. Brigand]

The Daily Beast reports that the "legal document from Knight Specialty Insurance Company doesn't actually promise it will pay the money if the former president loses his $464 million bank fraud case on appeal. Instead, it says Trump will pay, negating the whole point of an insurance company guarantee."

[N.E. Brigand]

Per his plea agreement, Allen Weisselberg, the former CFO of the Trump Organization, today was sentenced to five months in jail for having lied under oath a few months ago during Donald Trump's civil fraud trial in New York. It appears he was immediately remanded into custody. This is the second time that Weisselberg has been jailed.

The office New York's attorney general, Letitia James, has informed the judge in the fraud cause -- which will apparently never end even though the judgment was rendered well over a month ago -- that Weisselberg's plea agreement references emails that the Trump Organization never provided to the state.

[N.E. Brigand]

Donald Trump colluded with Russia.

I can't believe that point needs to be restated, but a National Public Radio reporter named Uri Berliner has written a column for the The Free Press titled "I’ve Been at NPR for 25 Years. Here’s How We Lost America’s Trust." In that piece, Berliner notes that NPR's audience has become much more liberal over just the past twelve years. Berliner never says this, but I think a major reason for this change is surely that NPR tries not to lie to its listeners, and in the age of Donald Trump, conservatives don't want stories that tell the truth. Instead of pointing to that possibility, Berliner opens by arguing that NPR became obsessed with the idea that "the Trump campaign colluded with Russia," and then when "the Mueller report found no credible evidence of collusion," NPR never confronted that fact and leveled with its viewers.

But the Mueller report did find plenty of evidence of collusion. (The Senate Intelligence Committee too, and they redacted what seems from context to be even more evidence of collusion.) What the Mueller report failed to find was sufficient evidence of a criminal conspiracy to charge, in part because, as Mueller wrote, Donald Trump and his associates successfully obstructed the investigation.

Berliner also feels that NPR shouldn't have "turned a blind eye" to the Hunter Biden laptop story. I agree that mainstream media outlets failed. They failed to dig into how the laptop story was connected to Russian disinformation efforts. We still don't even know whether or not Hunter Biden dropped the laptop off at the shop run by a man who was legally blind and didn't know what Hunter Biden looked like. We don't know if the laptop was tampered with. (There is evidence it was.) We only just learned in the past two months that someone with ties to Russian intelligence was feeding false stories about Hunter Biden to Republicans. The media should have figured all of that out year ago. But that's not Berliner's point of view. And while it would be wrong for NPR to have ignored the story because of an antipathy toward Trump, as Berliner claims, but the laptop story was obviously shady from the start, so much so that Fox News treated it with kid gloves.

Berliner's final example is the theory that Covid-19 may have leaked from a lab, a possibility certainly worth serious consideration, maybe more than NPR gave it.

But mostly Berliner seems to be mad about this:

Race and identity became paramount in nearly every aspect of the workplace. Journalists were required to ask everyone we interviewed their race, gender, and ethnicity (among other questions), and had to enter it in a centralized tracking system. We were given unconscious bias training sessions. A growing DEI staff offered regular meetings imploring us to “start talking about race.” Monthly dialogues were offered for “women of color” and “men of color.” Nonbinary people of color were included, too.

These initiatives, bolstered by a $1 million grant from the NPR Foundation, came from management, from the top down. Crucially, they were in sync culturally with what was happening at the grassroots—among producers, reporters, and other staffers. Most visible was a burgeoning number of employee resource (or affinity) groups based on identity.

They included MGIPOC (Marginalized Genders and Intersex People of Color mentorship program); Mi Gente (Latinx employees at NPR); NPR Noir (black employees at NPR); Southwest Asians and North Africans at NPR; Ummah (for Muslim-identifying employees); Women, Gender-Expansive, and Transgender People in Technology Throughout Public Media; Khevre (Jewish heritage and culture at NPR); and NPR Pride (LGBTQIA employees at NPR).

All this reflected a broader movement in the culture of people clustering together based on ideology or a characteristic of birth. If, as NPR’s internal website suggested, the groups were simply a “great way to meet like-minded colleagues” and “help new employees feel included,” it would have been one thing.

But the role and standing of affinity groups, including those outside NPR, were more than that. They became a priority for NPR’s union, SAG-AFTRA—an item in collective bargaining. The current contract, in a section on DEI, requires NPR management to “keep up to date with current language and style guidance from journalism affinity groups” and to inform employees if language differs from the diktats of those groups. In such a case, the dispute could go before the DEI Accountability Committee.

In essence, this means the NPR union, of which I am a dues-paying member, has ensured that advocacy groups are given a seat at the table in determining the terms and vocabulary of our news coverage.

All of this stuff is pretty regular in many workplaces these days. At some companies, it's just CYA. Some of these efforts may do more harm than good. Some of it will just fade away, either because it doesn't work or because it does and is no longer needed. Most complaints about EDIA efforts seem to come from people unhappy to have to confront what life is like for someone less privileged than them. But I'm struck by Berliner's apparent sense that striving for diversity is inherently liberal. It is definitely perceived that way by many. (And it can certainly be effectuated in ways more liberal or more conservative.)

(I'm also curious about Berliner's reference to "Latinx employees". Is that his own phrasing or is he just using NPR's preferred language there? Most Hispanics in the U.S. do not care for that term -- and as of 2020, at least, most of them didn't even know the term. As I noted [url=viewtopic.php?p=371726#p371726]here[/ur], on Election Night 2020, Rep. Ruben Gallego, Democrat of Arizona, who's now running for U.S. Senate, was asked on Twitter what Democrats should do to appeal to Latinx voters. His response: "First, stop using the term 'Latinx.'" And during some 2021 diversity training at work, I asked one of the people leading that effort about "Latinx," who deferred to a colleague who happens to be a Mexican citizen, who said the same thing as Gallego. In fact, she said she hates the term.)

[N.E. Brigand]

Donald Trump colluded with Russia. I can't believe that point needs to be restated, but a National Public Radio reporter named Uri Berliner has written a column for the The Free Press titled "I’ve Been at NPR for 25 Years. Here’s How We Lost America’s Trust." In that piece, Berliner notes that NPR's audience has become much more liberal over just the past twelve years. Berliner never says this, but I think a major reason for this change is surely that NPR tries not to lie to its listeners, and in the age of Donald Trump, conservatives don't want stories that tell the truth. Instead of pointing to that possibility, Berliner opens by arguing that NPR became obsessed with the idea that "the Trump campaign colluded with Russia," and then when "the Mueller report found no credible evidence of collusion," NPR never confronted that fact and leveled with its viewers.

Aaron Fritscher looked up the specific NPR reporting that Berliner discussed and found that Berliner is wrong about a lot of it. In fact, as regards the Trump-Russia reporting, not only did NPR not ignore the results of Mueller's report, but I would say they went too far in the other direction with headlines reading "Mueller's Report Doesn't Find Russian Collusion" and "Mueller Report Finds No Evidence of Russian Collusion." As I said in my prior post, Mueller found plenty of evidence of Trump (or members of his campaign) colluding with Russia. What Mueller didn't find was sufficient evidence to bring charges of a criminal conspiracy between Trump (or his campaign) and Russia.

In addition, Berliner claimed that all of his colleagues at NPR are registered Democrats. But Fritscher shows that's not true, either.

[N.E. Brigand]

Even if Donald Trump loses every appeal, look to the example of O.J. Simpson as a reminder that Trump may yet find a way not to pay that $464 million.

Simpson, who died a few days ago, was an athlete and actor who murdered two people in 1994 -- his ex-wife Nicole Brown and her friend Ron Goldman -- but he was famously acquitted in his criminal trial due to a combination of police misconduct and public sentiment. He pledged to devote the rest of his life searching for the real killers, a search which never seemed to get started and which I think he avoided by never again looking in a mirror. However, in 1997, Simpson was found liable for Brown's and Goldman's deaths in a civil trial brought by their families and ordered to pay the families $33.5 million. He never did. And now the executor of his estate says he is determined to keep it that way: "It's my hope that the Goldmans get zero, nothing. Them specifically. And I will do everything in my capacity as the executor or personal representative to try and ensure that they get nothing." There are lots of bad laws on the books that enable this sort of awfulness. Trump will surely do his utmost to avail himself of those loopholes.

[N.E. Brigand]

The Daily Beast reports that the "legal document from Knight Specialty Insurance Company doesn't actually promise it will pay the money if the former president loses his $464 million bank fraud case on appeal. Instead, it says Trump will pay, negating the whole point of an insurance company guarantee."

With an hour to spare, Knight Specialty filed additional documentation in support of the $175 bond, but the paperwork is at best sloppy and perhaps worse than that.