'So many lies': Trump attacks McCabe over explosive CBS interview
Donald Trump returned to the attack against Andrew McCabe on Monday, in response to an interview in which the former deputy FBI director discussed his new book and made claims damaging to the president.In the interview, broadcast by CBS 60 Minutes on Sunday night, McCabe addressed, among other matters: How the deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein was told by Trump to write a memo justifying the firing of FBI director James Comey in May 2017. How, following the firing of Comey, McCabe ordered investigations of whether it was done to impede the investigation of Russian election interference and whether Trump was acting on behalf of the Russian government. How he believes that is why he himself was fired. Discussions about whether Trump could be removed from office under the 25th amendment. Discussions about whether Rosenstein should wear a wire to record the president. How Trump ignored US intelligence advice on North Korea’s nuclear capability and said: “I don’t care. I believe Putin.” Trump attacked McCabe on Twitter on Thursday, when CBS released excerpts of the interview, and again on Sunday night, when it was broadcast in full. Before dawn on the Presidents’ Day holiday, he returned to the offensive.“Wow,” the president tweeted. “So many lies by now disgraced acting FBI director Andrew McCabe. He was fired for lying, and now his story gets even more deranged. He and Rod Rosenstein, who was hired by [former attorney general] Jeff Sessions (another beauty), look like they were planning a very illegal act, and got caught.“There is a lot of explaining to do to the millions of people who had just elected a president who they really like and who has done a great job for them with the military, vets, economy and so much more. This was the illegal and treasonous ‘insurance policy’ in full action!”Trump’s reference to an “insurance policy” was to a text message sent by Peter Strzok, an FBI agent, to a bureau lawyer, Lisa Page, about the Russia investigation and Trump’s chances of winning the White House.On CBS, McCabe said Rosenstein brought up the possibility of removing Trump using the 25th amendment, which allows the vice-president and a majority of the cabinet to deem a president unfit to perform his duties.“It was an unbelievably stressful time,” he said. “I can’t even describe for you how many things must have been coursing through the deputy attorney general’s mind at that point. So it was really something that he kinda threw out in a very frenzied chaotic conversation.”The deputy attorney general also offered to wear a wire to record conversations with Trump, McCabe said.“He said, ‘I never get searched when I go into the White House. I could easily wear a recording device. They wouldn’t know it was there.’ Now, he was not joking. He was absolutely serious.”On Thursday, the Department of Justice said in a statement Rosenstein rejected McCabe’s version of events as “inaccurate and factually incorrect”.“The deputy attorney general [DAG] never authorized any recording that Mr McCabe references,” the statement said. “As the DAG previously has stated, based on his personal dealings with the president, there is no basis to invoke the 25th amendment, nor was the DAG in a position to consider invoking the 25th amendment.”McCabe was fired by Sessions in March 2018, just short of retirement and after repeated attacks by Trump, including on his wife, a former Democratic candidate in Virginia. He was found to have “made an unauthorized disclosure to the news media and lacked candor” during an internal review of an investigation into the Clinton Foundation.McCabe denies that charge, over which he may yet be prosecuted. He told CBS he followed Department of Justice protocol in providing information to the Wall Street Journal, and said he believes he “was fired because I opened a case against the president of the United States”.In his book, he offers an unflattering portrayal of Sessions, who resigned after the midterm elections.The Guardian obtained a pre-publication copy of McCabe’s book, The Threat: How the FBI Protects America in the Age of Terror and Trump. He writes that Rosenstein complained Trump forced him to write a now notorious memo justifying the firing of Comey.He told CBS: “Rod was concerned by his interactions with the president, who seemed to be very focused on firing the director and saying things like, ‘Make sure you put Russia in your memo.’ That concerned Rod in the same way that it concerned me and the FBI investigators on the Russia case.“If Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein listed the Russia investigation in his memo to the White House, it could look like he was obstructing the Russia probe by suggesting Comey’s firing. And by implication, it would give the president cover.”Rosenstein, McCabe said, “explained to the president that he did not need Russia in his memo. And the president responded, ‘I understand that, I am asking you to put Russia in the memo anyway.’”Publicly, shortly after Comey’s firing, Trump told NBC he had done it because of “this Russia thing”. He also invited a group of Russian diplomats into the Oval Office and told them: “I just fired the head of the FBI. He was crazy, a real nut job. I faced great pressure because of Russia. That’s taken off.”McCabe told CBS: “The president had gone to Jim Comey and specifically asked him to discontinue the investigation of [the former national security adviser] Mike Flynn, which was a part of our Russia case. The president, then, fired the director.“In the firing of the director, the president specifically asked Rod Rosenstein to write the memo justifying the firing and told Rod to include Russia in the memo. Rod, of course, did not do that. That was on the president’s mind.“Then, the president made those public comments that you’ve referenced both on NBC and to the Russians, which was captured in the Oval Office. Put together, these circumstances were articulable facts that indicated that a crime may have been committed.“The president may have been engaged in obstruction of justice in the firing of Jim Comey.”The special counsel Robert Mueller, appointed after the Comey firing, is believed to be close to issuing his final report on Russian election interference, links between Trump aides and Moscow and possible obstruction of justice by the president.He has charged and convicted Trump aides, including Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort, former national security adviser Michael Flynn and former lawyer Michael Cohen.Trump denies collusion with Russia and has repeatedly called the investigation a “witch-hunt”. On Sunday he alleged “real collusion” among TV networks producing critical or mocking coverage of him, specifically in Alec Baldwin’s impersonation of him on Saturday Night Live.In Congress, the political battle is intensifying. Democrats in the House are promising to investigate the president. Republicans in the Senate are vowing to fight back.On Tuesday morning, for the third day in a row, Trump travelled to his golf club in Florida.On CBS, McCabe was asked how he could remember conversations with Trump well enough to put them in a book. Like any good FBI agent, he said, he had written memos at the time.Asked where those documents were now, he said: “Those memos are in the custody of the special counsel’s team.”• This article was amended on 18 February 2019. An earlier version erroneously said that Rod Rosenstein had denied discussing the 25th amendment or suggested wearing a wire. In addition the article has been amended to correctly reflect the justice department’s response to McCabe’s allegations.
Macy's Seattle star shines bright thanks to unlikely saviour: Amazon
For more than six decades, the iconic 160ft-tall star suspended from the Macy’s department store in downtown Seattle has been a central feature of the city’s annual winter holiday decorations. This year, however, the beloved piece of art was at risk of being lost forever – until it found an unlikely saviour.Macy’s, which has been the home of the star and its 3,860 light bulbs for at least 14 years, was shutting its doors – seemingly ending the building’s 90-year history as a department store (it was previously home to the Bon Marché department store).In the fall, a company spokesperson announced that it would not be lighting the star, which was in desperate need of repairs. Many in the community worried about the future of the holiday tradition, and the family of Bob James, who designed the piece, created a Save the Macy’s Star page on Facebook.In the end, it was neither an art enthusiast nor a not-for-profit that stepped in to rescue the star – it was online mega-retailer Amazon. Days before Thanksgiving, it was revealed that the trillion-dollar company, headquartered in Seattle, which has more than 2,000 of its employees working out of six of the building’s eight stories, would spend $250,000 on the restoration of the star and its installation in time for the holidays.Wendy James, 57, said she was ecstatic to hear the news about the star, which her father, Bob James, who died in 2011, designed while working in the display department at the Bon Marché. She said she sent an email to Amazon in the fall, asking the company to consider stepping in to save the piece of art. She had never received a response.“I think this was a really good move for Amazon because they are big, big, big in this town and they needed to do something to kind of help us out with something other than making money,” she said.The move was also celebrated by James Sido, media relations senior manager for the not-for-profit organization Downtown Seattle Association. He said the company helped save an important holiday tradition that brings together tens of thousands of community members each year in the heart of the city.But at a time when bricks-and-mortar stores like Macy’s are fighting to stay relevant as consumers increasingly shift to shopping at Amazon and other online retailers, the irony of the goodwill gesture was not lost on some.The building has long been seen as the epicenter for retail in Seattle, and now as its department store moves out and Amazon offices settle into the space, the change, literally and symbolically, speaks to a broader, nationwide shift.Jeffrey Shulman, a University of Washington marketing professor who has researched Amazon’s impact and relationship with Seattle, explained that after innovating for over two decades, the tech company’s success has had an effect on Macy’s and other retailers. But its decision to save the star could be viewed in very different ways.“On the one hand you could see kind of an irony and the symbolism of Amazon’s takeover, that they’re in the building where Macy’s was and they’re now paying for the star on the building,” he said. “On the other hand you could see it as, there’s change and Amazon’s kindly saving a bit of a history that’s important to the community in which they reside.”According to a report by investment firm UBS, in the next seven years, as many as 75,000 clothing, electronics and furniture stores could close in the US as consumers increasingly shift to online shopping. Amazon accounted for at least 38% of US online commerce in 2019. By 2026, online shopping could account for a quarter of retail sales. Amazon disputes findings indicating that it’s contributing to the decline of bricks-and-mortar stores.Of course, that doesn’t mean brick-and-mortar stores are going away anytime soon. The IHL Group, a research and advisory firm, recently offered a more positive take on the industry, reporting that in 2019 more retail stores opened than closed.The real estate firm Starwood Capital Group, which bought the downtown Seattle building, has also agreed to pay about $250,000 to rebuild a new holiday star for the 2020 season, according to Amazon. The two companies also agreed that if Starwood ever quits installing the star, Amazon will take over.It’s unclear what the street-level part of the building will be used for once Macy’s closes in February, but Amazon said it expects it be “dedicated to retail”.This is not the first time Amazon’s influence on Seattle has extended beyond the bounds of the retail industry. In recent years, it has used its financial might to try to influence policy and elections.Earlier this year, Amazon funneled $1.5m into the local city council elections through a political action committee that backed seven candidates considered to be business-friendly (only two of them won).And last year, Amazon contributed financially to a campaign to kill the “head tax”, a per-employee tax on corporations making more than $20m each year. With more than 45,000 workers in Seattle, Amazon would have potentially had to pay millions each year through the tax. The tax was repealed.“We’re seeing a more concerted effort to shape the city that they’re currently relying on to keep tens of thousands of their employees happy,” said Shulman.
Michael Flynn was first. Can Trump pardon himself, his children, and Rudy Giuliani?
Outgoing President Donald Trump kicked off what will likely be the first in a series of pardons of his associates last week, with his pardon for former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn.Flynn pleaded guilty to making false statements to investigators back in 2017 — but that’s not all Trump pardoned him for.The typical way pardons work is that the recipient is pardoned for specific crimes. But Flynn’s stands out because it also has preemptive aspects — that is, it’s written broadly to try to pardon Flynn for possible crimes he hasn’t even been charged with.Preemptive pardons aren’t unprecedented, but they are unusual, and come far closer to a sort of presidential declaration that the president’s associates should be above the law. And Trump’s use of the tactic for Flynn hints at just how far he could go in his final weeks in office.Several of Trump’s former top campaign advisers — Steve Bannon, Paul Manafort, and Roger Stone — have been charged with or convicted of specific crimes, for which they could be pardoned. (Trump already commuted Roger Stone’s sentence but has not yet granted him a full pardon.)The universe of potential preemptive pardons, though, is far broader. For while many Trump associates have been charged with crimes, an even greater number have been investigated but have not faced any charges.For instance, there’s the president’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani. The New York Times’s Maggie Haberman and Michael Schmidt reported Tuesday morning that, “as recently as last week,” Giuliani discussed “the possibility of receiving a pre-emptive pardon” from Trump (though Giuliani denied this on Twitter). Federal prosecutors in New York have probed Giuliani’s business activities and indicted two of his associates.And some of Trump’s allies are urging him to take preemptive pardons even further. “I’d tell President Trump to pardon yourself and pardon your family,” Fox host Sean Hannity said Monday. It remains unclear whether Trump will try to go that far (particularly, a self-pardon may not be legal and the president can’t pardon state crimes), but it’s clear enough that his lame-duck pardon shenanigans are only getting started. In December 2017, Michael Flynn, Trump’s former national security adviser, pleaded guilty to one count of making false statements (lying to the FBI about his conversations with the Russian ambassador). Since then, his case has become a protracted legal saga — first Flynn tried to withdraw his plea, then a new Justice Department team sought to have the case against Flynn thrown out, and the judge in the case, Emmet Sullivan, has been weighing whether he should permit this latter move.Last week, Trump announced that he had pardoned Flynn, but no documentation for that pardon clarifying its parameters was released until Monday night. Here’s what it looks like:The pardon begins by listing the crime to which Flynn pleaded guilty: making false statements to federal investigators. But it covers a whole lot more than that. Flynn is also pardoned for: “any and all possible offenses arising from the facts set forth in” the charging documents in his case (Flynn also admitted making false statements in Foreign Agents Registration Act filings about his work for the government of Turkey) any offenses “that might arise, or be charged, claimed, or asserted in connection with the proceedings” in his case (for instance, there has been some discussion about whether Flynn could be charged with perjury by admitting his guilt under oath in court and then changing course) “any and all possible offenses within the investigatory authority or jurisdiction” of special counsel Robert Mueller, and “any and all possible offenses arising out of facts and circumstances known to, identified by, or in any manner related to” Mueller’s investigation (that is, if Mueller found anything else that Flynn could be criminally charged for, the pardon is meant to cover that) So this is not a typical pardon, targeted at crimes someone has actually been charged with or convicted of. It’s a preemptive pardon, designed to shield Flynn from being charged in the future.In that respect, it’s similar to the unconditional preemptive pardon President Gerald Ford granted his former boss and predecessor Richard Nixon — a sweeping pardon for any criminal offenses Nixon may have committed during the course of his presidency. The Flynn pardon is not quite as broad as that, but it’s clearly tailored to try to wipe out the possibility that Flynn will face any further charges connected to the current case against him, or in any way related to the Mueller investigation.The New York Times has already confirmed that one preemptive pardon is under discussion — for Giuliani.Late last year, news broke that federal prosecutors in the US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York (SDNY) were scrutinizing Giuliani’s business and finances, exploring his contacts with former top Ukrainian officials, and investigating a host of potential crimes (including obstruction of justice, money laundering, serving as an unregistered agent of a foreign government, mail fraud, and wire fraud). Two of Giuliani’s associates, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, were indicted on charges of campaign finance violations that October. The pair allegedly had been helping Giuliani make connections with Ukrainian officials who claimed to know of scandalous information about the Biden family, that could be helpful to Trump. (The revelation of Trump and Giuliani’s efforts to get dirt on Biden from Ukrainian officials eventually resulted in Trump’s impeachment.)This year, there have been few new developments in the matter. CNN reported that the investigation into Giuliani “was upended by the coronavirus pandemic, limiting prosecutors’ ability to interview witnesses, collect further evidence, and meet with the grand jury.” Giuliani has not been charged, but if this investigation is serious and still underway, he’d obviously be hoping for a pardon while his client is still in charge of the executive branch.There has also been some discussion — at least from Sean Hannity — about preemptive pardons for members of the Trump family. Trump’s son Donald Trump Jr. faced scrutiny in the Mueller investigation but ultimately wasn’t charged. Trump himself also was probed for obstructing justice, but Mueller opted not to charge him, in part because Trump was the sitting president. President Trump could attempt to pardon himself, but it’s unclear if that would be legal (a popular theory among the #Resistance is that Trump will resign early and let newly installed President Mike Pence pardon him). One issue here, though, is that the president has no power to pardon state crimes — and he is currently under investigation for potential bank and insurance fraud in New York state. Now, if Trump truly does plan to run for president again in 2024, he might have political reasons to hold back on the broadest assertions of his pardon powers. Then again, he might feel he’s appropriately laid the groundwork to defend those moves, having disparaged any investigations of himself or anyone close to him as “witch hunts.” Finally, there’s been a notable pattern among some who are likely seeking pardons: They’ve tended to champion Trump’s lies and conspiracy theories that the 2020 election was stolen from him.Giuliani, of course, has been in charge of Trump’s post-election legal fight, spreading false claims of widespread voter fraud while reportedly seeking a preemptive pardon. Attorney Sidney Powell — Flynn’s lawyer — stood up with Giuliani at a press conference two weeks ago making particularly bizarre claims of fraud. (She asserted that the voting systems company Dominion rigged the vote against Trump, in part because there was “communist money” involved and that the company had ties to the late Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chávez.) Powell has filed lawsuits as well filled with similarly false claims. (Flynn himself has said “there is no doubt in my mind” that Trump won in a “landslide.”)Bannon, too, has been spreading false information advancing Trump’s stolen election narrative, and has been advising Giuliani behind the scenes, according to the Washington Post. Whether or not there was any explicit quid pro quo involved here, it’s clear that all these people were interested in pardons (in Powell’s case, for her client), and that all these people knew the importance of pleasing the man who could issue those pardons. Indeed, the main champions of Trump’s post-election fraud lies have been people who wanted Trump to pardon somebody — which is revealing of how much bad faith is at play here. Support Vox's explanatory journalism Every day at Vox, we aim to answer your most important questions and provide you, and our audience around the world, with information that empowers you through understanding. Vox’s work is reaching more people than ever, but our distinctive brand of explanatory journalism takes resources. Your financial contribution will not constitute a donation, but it will enable our staff to continue to offer free articles, videos, and podcasts to all who need them. Please consider making a contribution to Vox today, from as little as $3.
Losers in Amazon Sweepstakes Aren’t Ready to Throw In the Towel
Now it may be all for naught.While Amazon has not officially said so, the technology giant is nearing a deal on where it is expanding next, according to people briefed on the discussions.After 20 finalist cities went to considerable lengths to lure Amazon to build a second headquarters within their boundaries — from promises of huge tax incentives and land deals to glitzy dinners with the cities’ dignitaries — Amazon appears ready to increase its already sizable presence around New York, two of the people said. The company is also nearing a deal to expand in the suburbs of Washington in Northern Virginia, one of them said.When officials from most of the 18 other cities were contacted on Tuesday, they were reluctant to answer a simple question: Was all that a waste of time? In fact, many still held out hope that they have a shot.“We are in the ninth inning of this process with no finalist having scored yet,” said Aisha Glover, who helped lead the pitch from Newark, N.J. “It’s not over until it’s over.”Ten officials said they were still pursuing Amazon or had not yet heard from the company about a decision, even though media outlets reported that their city was an also-ran. The officials said they wanted to avoid angering the nation’s No. 2 private employer, after Walmart, which could still decide to open an office in their town someday.The cities had also signed extensive nondisclosure agreements with Amazon. When Maureen Krauss, the chief economic development officer for the Indianapolis Chamber of Commerce, declined to comment, she noted, “I have 37 NDAs in my office.”Some officials were talking, however, as news leaked out about Amazon’s plans, and company executives did not seem pleased.“Memo to the genius leaking info about Crystal City, VA as #HQ2 selection. You’re not doing Crystal City, VA any favors,” Mike Grella, a director of economic development and policy at Amazon, tweeted on Saturday. “And stop treating the NDA you signed like a used napkin.”An Amazon spokesman said Mr. Grella was not involved in the headquarters search. The spokesman also said that the company had added more than 6,000 jobs this year in cities that applied for the headquarters but did not make the list of finalists, and that Amazon expected similar hiring in finalist cities that were not selected.Business & EconomyLatest UpdatesUpdated Jan. 8, 2021, 4:48 p.m. ETFord will idle a Kentucky factory as the auto industry grapples with a semiconductor shortage.The I.R.S. is trying to redirect millions of stimulus payments that went to unused accounts.To compete with Tesla, G.M. will promote its electric cars and adopt a new logo.Officials from the finalist cities spent more than a year compiling thousands of pages of documents, producing slick videos and hosting Amazon officials for tours and dinners at some of their area’s best restaurants. Many proposals included billions of dollars in tax incentives. New Jersey offered $7 billion in tax breaks if Amazon chose Newark. Atlanta’s mayor said the city had offered more incentives to attract Amazon than it did for the Summer Olympics in 1996.In a 218-page proposal, Boston pitched a recently closed thoroughbred racetrack as a site, as well as mass-transit extensions and an “Amazon task force” of city officials to act as the company’s contacts at City Hall.The Columbus Dispatch obtained more than 1,300 pages of documents prepared for the Ohio city’s pitch, which detailed “everything from the size of sewer lines on sites it was pitching to detailed hate crime rates in the city.” Columbus also said Amazon would not have to pay property taxes for 15 years.Toronto did not offer tax incentives but told Amazon that it would save billions of dollars because of Canada’s universal health care, lower cost of labor and lower overall taxes. And Denver pitched a site near its airport and more than $100 million in incentives.New York’s most recognized landmarks even turned orange for Amazon for a night.In recent years, the AOL founder Steve Case has toured the country promoting the “rise of the rest,” the idea that the tech boom will eventually spill out into smaller cities in the middle of the country. But in focusing on two coastal megacities, Amazon may have called that narrative into question.“It actually is deflating that maybe in this environment, there isn’t a lot of opportunity for midsize cities,” said Amy Liu, director of the Metropolitan Policy Program at the Brookings Institution.Mark Zandi, chief economist for Moody’s Analytics, said Amazon’s choice showed that big tech companies still cared more about talent pools than costs.“The kind of people you’re trying to attract are very diverse and globally oriented,” Mr. Zandi said. “That’s a very difficult thing to find in a place like Indianapolis.”Local media from the left-out cities on Tuesday analyzed what losing meant for their hometowns. “Even if Amazon played us, Dallas can learn from the HQ2 search” was the headline of a Dallas Morning News editorial that said the city was better off with broad-based growth, which “is more stable than being a one-horse town.”The Boston Globe columnist Scott Kirsner made the case that “being stiffed by Amazon is a good thing.” He wrote that the company could have sucked up much of the city’s talent and “is one of the most insular, secretive and uncharitable companies I’ve ever encountered.”Many cities also enlisted their top elected officials, business leaders and athletes to assist in their bids. Todd Carmichael, chief executive of Philadelphia-based La Colombe Coffee Roasters, aided his city’s lobbying and said it was all worth it.“We swung at the ball and we didn’t necessarily knock it out of the park, but it was great to have that opportunity,” he said in an interview. “And I’ll never visit those cities ever again.”
Georgia's millionaire senators won't drain the swamp. They are the swamp
Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue, the two Republican Senate incumbents from Georgia facing runoff elections on 5 January, are trying to nationalize their respective races. They have spent much of their time saying that if their opponents win, thereby giving Democrats a narrow majority in the Senate, the country will be unrecognizably altered. They spin horror stories about a liberal dystopia, focusing particular ire on Loeffler’s Democratic challenger, a Black Atlanta pastor named the Rev Raphael Warnock, and mostly ignoring Perdue’s opponent, the white former investigative journalist Jon Ossoff. The incumbents have tried to mimic Donald Trump’s rhetoric, making poorly veiled racist overtures to the white grievance voters whose turnout they will need in order to keep their seats. Loeffler has gone on conservative media to scaremonger about Black Lives Matter; Perdue pulled a juvenile stunt at a Trump rally in which he pointedly and deliberately mispronounced Kamala Harris’s first name.The high stakes of their races, as well as these kinds of theatrics from Loeffler and Perdue, have functioned, maybe intentionally, to distract from their own conduct in office, which has raised questions and sparked investigations from the justice department, congressional ethics authorities and the US Securities and Exchange Commission. Loeffler and Perdue, two of the Senate’s richest members, have each been accused of using their office to get privileged information that they used to make advantageous stock trades. (The cases against Perdue and Loeffler were closed without charges this summer.)The investigation was centered on stock trades made after the senators attended a closed-door Senate briefing on the coronavirus in January 2020 – before the severity of the coronavirus and its economic repercussions were clear to most Americans. Both Loeffler and Perdue made windfalls in financial transactions, dumping stocks that were damaged by the pandemic and investing in stocks that later soared in value as a result of new restrictions.It’s important to note that both Loeffler and Perdue have denied wrongdoing, and that a Senate ethics committee investigation into senators’ trades following the January coronavirus briefing ultimately cleared all senators save one – Republican Richard Burr, of North Carolina. Although it is unusual for senators to trade in individual stocks, it is not illegal for Loeffler and Perdue to do so. Both senators claim that they do not make decisions about stock trades on their own, but rely on their financial advisers to make trading decisions.Loeffler and Perdue are campaigning on a message that their opponents are culturally out of step with everyday Georgians, and political analysts say that Loeffler, in particular, was appointed by Kemp as part of a bargain to appeal to ordinary suburban women, voters who might be put off by Trump’s vulgarity and excess. But the senators’ obscene wealth and use of the stock market to gain even more money, coupled with a seeming indifference to the ways that their actions are perceived by Georgia voters, strains this premise past the point of credulity.Loeffler owns a private jet. Perdue lives in an island gated community. Both are trading vast sums of money in a financial market to which most Americans do not have anything like their access. These are not ordinary Georgians. If anything, Loeffler and Perdue’s financial antics have underscored the degree to which the Republican party is part of the very swamp that Donald Trump decries. The question now is whether voters will see them for what they really are. Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist
Syria: dozens killed in Isis bus attack
At least 37 people in Syria have been killed in one of the biggest attacks carried out by Islamic State since the fall of the self-proclaimed caliphate last year.The assault on Wednesday reportedly targeted a convoy of Syrian regime soldiers and militiamen returning from leave to their posts in Deir ez-Zor province, a mainly desert area on the border with Iraq.The official state news agency, Sana, reported that a terrorist attack on a bus on the main highway killed 25 civilians and wounded 13. Other sources, including local residents, a military defector and the UK-based monitor Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), put the toll higher and claimed soldiers were onboard. One source told Reuters that the men were from Bashar al-Assad’s elite Fourth Brigade.According to SOHR, the bus was ambushed in a well-planned operation near the village of Shula by jihadists who set up a checkpoint to stop the convoy and detonated bombs before opening fire. Two more buses managed to escape.“It was one of the deadliest attacks since the fall of the Isis (self-proclaimed) caliphate” last year, the Observatory head, Rami Abdel Rahman, told AFP.There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the incident.Founded amid the chaos of Syria’s civil war, Isis declared its so-called caliphate in 2014 and at one point controlled an area of Syria and Iraq as big as the UK and home to around 8 million people.The group lost control of the last slivers of its territory in the Deir Ez-Zor desert in March 2019 after five years of offensives conducted mostly by the US and its regional allies to oust the militants from both countries.Jihadist sleeper cells have continued to launch ambushes and hit-and-run attacks from caves and bases in Syria’s vast desert, and Isis militants and Assad’s troops often clash in the area.There has been a marked surge in the violence in recent months, residents say. In April, 27 fighters loyal to the Damascus government and allied Iranian militiamen were killed in an Isis attack near the desert town of al-Sukhna.Local tribes have also voiced anger over executions carried out by regime-allied Iranian militias of dozens of nomads suspected of affiliation to the militants.In the north of the country in recent days, rebel fighters backed by Turkey have clashed with Kurdish forces near Ain Issa, a town on a strategic highway that has been patrolled by Russian and Turkish troops since US forces withdrew from the area in 2019.Turkish forces and their Syrian insurgent allies capitalised on the US drawdown to seize territory previously controlled by the Kurdish-led SDF militia, which fought alongside the US against Isis.Ain Issa, east of the Euphrates river, also has a sprawling camp for displaced people, where the SDF has held families of Isis fighters, including foreigners.The violence has led Russia to send military police reinforcements to the area.A decade of civil war in Syria has drawn in foreign powers, killed an estimated 500,000 people, and driven more than half of the pre-war population from their homes.
Hathras gang rape: Four charged over death of 19
Rape and sexual violence have been under the spotlight in India since the 2012 Delhi bus rape and murder case, which led to huge protests and changes to the country's rape laws. But there has been little sign of crimes against women and girls abating.
Cory Booker Isn’t Yet Running for President. But a Supporter is Launching a Super PAC to Back Him.
Mr. Booker has not yet even formed a formal presidential exploratory committee, though he has flirted with running and said he would consider it over the coming holidays. He has traveled extensively in 2018, visiting two dozen states including Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina. Mr. Phillips said he knew people who interviewed for Booker campaign jobs.The decision to side with Mr. Booker so early is notable given that Mr. Phillips also has been supportive of Ms. Harris, who is also seen as a likely candidate in 2020. An independent campaign tied to Mr. Phillips spent nearly $400,000 boosting Ms. Harris’s 2010 bid for California attorney general, state records show.Mr. Phillips named two early donors supportive of his pro-Booker 2020 effort: his wife Susan Sandler, a philanthropist who is the daughter of the billionaire Democratic donor, Herb Sandler, and Dr. Gary Michelson, a billionaire philanthropist and surgeon in Los Angeles.By announcing first, Mr. Phillips appears to be trying to corner the market on having the main pro-Booker super PAC.“It’s more efficient for the donor world for there to be one point of contact so we’re setting up to play that role,” he said.Asked about concerns among some Democrats that a super PAC could backfire, Mr. Phillips said, “I don’t think it’s going to be a detriment in South Carolina, Georgia, Virginia, Mississippi and Alabama,” states where he could be involved.In 2018, other super PACs affiliated with Mr. Phillips spent more than $2 million on Mike Espy in his failed bid for Senate in Mississippi and millions more for Stacey Abrams in her losing bid for Georgia governor.
Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt has applied to become a citizen of Cyprus
The former CEO of Google, Eric Schmidt, is finalizing a plan to become a citizen of the island of Cyprus, Recode has learned, becoming one of the highest-profile Americans to take advantage of one of the world’s most controversial “passport-for-sale” programs.Schmidt, one of America’s wealthiest people, and his family have won approval to become citizens of the Mediterranean nation, according to a previously unreported notice in a Cypriot publication in October. While it is not clear why exactly Schmidt has pursued this foreign citizenship, the new passport gives him the ability to travel to the European Union, along with a potentially favorable personal tax regime. A screenshot from the Cypriot publication Alithia, announcing Schmidt’s citizenship application. Alithia The move is a window into how the world’s billionaires can maximize their freedoms and finances by relying on the permissive laws of countries where they do not live. Schmidt’s decision in some ways mirrors that of another famous tech billionaire, Peter Thiel, who in 2011 controversially managed to secure citizenship in New Zealand.Interest from Americans in non-American citizenship has been spiking during the coronavirus pandemic, which has sharply limited Americans’ ability to travel overseas. Experts say some of that increase is also due to concerns about political instability in the United States. But it is still uncommon to see Americans apply to the Cyprus program, according to published data and citizenship advisers who work with the country. The program is far more popular with oligarchs from the former Soviet Union and the Middle East, and it has become mired in so many scandals that the Cypriot government announced last month that it was to be shut down.A representative for Schmidt declined to comment on the move or Schmidt’s thinking.The Cyprus program is one of about a half-dozen programs in the world where foreigners can effectively purchase citizenship rights, skirting residency requirements or lengthy lines by making a payment or an investment in the host country. They have become the latest way for billionaires around the world to go “borderless” and take advantage of foreign countries’ laws, moving themselves offshore just like they might move their assets offshore, a phenomenon documented by the journalist Oliver Bullough in the recent book Moneyland.Small, financially struggling countries — beginning with St. Kitts and Nevis in the Caribbean — have embraced the idea over the last few decades, raking in money that they would otherwise never see in exchange for citizenship papers. But what can be good for one country can be bad for the world: Anti-corruption activists have grown deeply worried about a race to the bottom with these programs, concerned that criminals can purchase foreign citizenship to escape prosecution in their home countries, or to funnel drugs through friendly borders, or to hide their assets from tax authorities.The Cyprus program in particular — despite helping save the country after its 2013 bankruptcy by bringing in $8 billion since then — has become notorious.The lion’s share of the 4,000 Cypriot citizenship recipients since 2013 have been wealthy individuals from Russia, according to people who advise these individuals on obtaining Cypriot citizenship. It has historically not even been marketed to Americans, whose passports usually allow them to travel freely in Europe. It is not unheard of, however, for Americans to take advantage of the program, and advisers say it has been happening more frequently over the last few months.An Al Jazeera investigation discovered the identities of 2,500 people who had bought Cypriot citizenship between 2017 and 2019 — and only 32, or about 1 percent, were Americans.That investigation helped spell the end of the program, which had drawn scrutiny for years. Undercover journalists found that Cyprus government officials were saying they could arrange a passport for someone despite being told that the person was a criminal, a scandal that ended up leading to the officials’ resignations. Cyprus announced in mid-October that due to “abusive exploitation,” it was shutting the program down. (Which is also, coincidentally, around when Schmidt’s approval was published.)“European values are not for sale,” a European Union official said.It isn’t known what role the coronavirus and new travel restrictions might have played in Schmidt’s decision to apply to Cyprus. Schmidt likely applied between six months ago, when the pandemic was raging, and about a year ago, when it had yet to begin, according to advisers. Schmidt’s wife, the philanthropist Wendy Schmidt, and his daughter, the media executive Sophie Schmidt, have also applied and been approved, according to the listing in the Cypriot publication, Alithia.Theo Andreou, who heads the Cyprus program for Astons, an “investment immigration firm,” said that 90 percent of the firm’s clients seek Cyprus citizenship either as a backup plan or an insurance policy due to concerns in their home country, such as the coronavirus, or for financial reasons. Andreou speculated that Schmidt could be making the move for two possible reasons.“One reason is to have a Plan B during Covid. The other reason is that they are expanding their business in Europe,” he said.Nuri Katz, the founder of Apex Capital Partners and who has advised the Cypriot government on immigration matters, guessed that Schmidt “feels the need to diversify his citizenship.”“Eric Schmidt cannot travel to Europe,” Katz noted. “He’s like everybody else — like a lot of other high-net-worth people who want to have options.”Individuals who claim Cyprus citizenship can also be attracted by a reduction in their tax burden, especially if they’re willing to renounce their US citizenship. Immigration attorney Andy Semotiuk said that his only American client who had claimed Cypriot citizenship did so to avoid paying US income tax.The way the program works is that once a foreigner lays down between $2 million and $3 million worth of investment in Cyprus, typically through a real estate purchase, they can apply to what is technically called the “Citizenship by Investment” program. After the government reviews the applicant’s background, conducts a security check, and hosts a visit from the foreigner, their application can be approved.Schmidt, with a net worth of $15 billion and many homes around the US, is a titan of the technology industry: The longtime CEO of Google helped make the company into an international powerhouse and served as the tip of the spear of the company’s US lobbying program. While he stepped down as CEO in 2011 and left the board last year, he still serves as a technical adviser to the company and is one of its largest shareholders. These days, he spends most of his time as a philanthropist, investor, and Democratic political donor at Schmidt Futures, the organization that gives away his and his wife’s money, and speaking out on issues like competition with China and how Silicon Valley can cooperate with the US military.At Google, Schmidt was a proponent for the company paying as little in taxes as possible, even if that meant capitalizing on foreign countries’ tax rules. The company has long been dogged by allegations that it was not paying its fair share of American taxes by utilizing foreign tax rules in places like Bermuda or the United Kingdom.“I am very proud of the structure that we set up. We did it based on the incentives that the governments offered us to operate,” Schmidt told one interviewer in 2012. “It’s called capitalism.” Support Vox's explanatory journalism Every day at Vox, we aim to answer your most important questions and provide you, and our audience around the world, with information that empowers you through understanding. Vox’s work is reaching more people than ever, but our distinctive brand of explanatory journalism takes resources. Your financial contribution will not constitute a donation, but it will enable our staff to continue to offer free articles, videos, and podcasts to all who need them. Please consider making a contribution to Vox today, from as little as $3.
Trump Pardons Roger Stone, Paul Manafort And Charles Kushner : NPR
Enlarge this image President Trump emerges from the Oval Office on Wednesday as he departs the White House en route to Florida's Mar-a-Lago, where he will spend Christmas and New Year's Eve. Samuel Corum/AFP via Getty Images hide caption toggle caption Samuel Corum/AFP via Getty Images President Trump emerges from the Oval Office on Wednesday as he departs the White House en route to Florida's Mar-a-Lago, where he will spend Christmas and New Year's Eve. Samuel Corum/AFP via Getty Images Updated 11 p.m. ETPresident Trump issued dozens more pardons on Wednesday evening to many wealthy and well-connected convicts with ties to his innermost circles, including former campaign chairman Paul Manafort, Republican operative Roger Stone and Charles Kushner, the father-in-law of Ivanka Trump.In total, Trump pardoned 26 people and commuted the sentences of three more people — the second consecutive night of what is expected to be a flurry of acts of clemency before he leaves office.The pardons and commutations to such close allies showcase Trump's willingness to flout the norms of presidential conduct.Paul ManafortManafort, who was sentenced to more than seven years in prison after being convicted of bank and tax fraud in addition to other crimes, was released in May from a minimum-security federal lockup and moved to home confinement over concerns about the coronavirus."As a result of blatant prosecutorial overreach, Mr. Manafort has endured years of unfair treatment and is one of the most prominent victims of what has been revealed to be perhaps the greatest witch hunt in American history," the White House press secretary said in a statement announcing the pardon. Analysis What's At Stake With Trump's Threat: COVID-19 Relief And A Government Shutdown Shortly after the announcement, Manafort expressed his gratitude to the President on Twitter. "Mr. President, my family & I humbly thank you for the Presidential Pardon you bestowed on me. Words cannot fully convey how grateful we are," he wrote.Manafort spent his career as a high-level power broker and advocate for some of the most infamous clients in the world, including dictators Ferdinand Marcos and Mobutu Sese Seko.In the 2000s, Manafort connected with Viktor Yanukovych, a Russia-friendly strongman who served as president of Ukraine until he was thrown out of power in a popular revolt. Manafort made millions of dollars working for Yanukovych, but his work in Ukraine set the stage for Manafort's eventual prosecution and imprisonment.Manafort and his protege, Rick Gates, hid from authorities the money they earned in Ukraine and came to the attention of U.S. investigators before the two went to work in 2016 for then-candidate Donald Trump. Politics Trump Grants Slew Of Pardons, Including To George Papadopoulos And Duncan Hunter Politics Shock And Dismay After Trump Pardons Blackwater Guards Who Killed 14 Iraqi Civilians Charles KushnerCharles Kushner is the father of Jared Kushner, who serves as a senior advisor to the president and is married to Ivanka Trump. The real estate billionaire served two years in prison for tax evasion and retaliating against a federal witness — his brother-in-law.After making a fortune in New Jersey, the developer came under investigation in 2003 by then-U.S. Attorney Chris Christie for making illegal campaign contributions.Kushner's brother-in-law and former employee, William Schulder, eventually became a witness for federal prosecutors. In a move to exact revenge on him for the perceived betrayal, Kushner devised a bizarre blackmail plot: He hired a prostitute to sleep with Schulder, secretly video-taped the encounter, then mailed a tape of it to his own sister.But the move backfired. Schulder and his wife turned the tape over to prosecutors.Christie later called the case, "one of the most loathsome, disgusting crimes," he'd ever prosecuted.In the end, Kushner pleaded guilty to 16 counts of tax evasion, one count of retaliating against a federal witness, and another count of lying to the Federal Election Commission.On Wednesday, the White House cited Kushner's philanthropy as one of the reasons for Trump's pardon."Since completing his sentence in 2006, Mr. Kushner has been devoted to important philanthropic organizations and causes, such as Saint Barnabas Medical Center and United Cerebral Palsy," said the president's statement. "This record of reform and charity overshadows Mr. Kushner's conviction and 2 year sentence for preparing false tax returns, witness retaliation, and making false statements to the Federal Election Commission."Roger StoneThe case against Stone was brought by then-special counsel Robert Mueller as part of his probe into Russia's interference in the 2016 election and possible ties between Moscow and the Trump campaign.Stone was indicted on charges of lying to Congress about what he and then-candidate Trump knew about Russian efforts to discredit Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential campaign, witness tampering and obstruction. The charges related to his efforts during the 2016 presidential race to act as an intermediary between the Trump campaign and WikiLeaks.But days before Stone, who is Trump's longtime friend and political confidant, was to report to prison in July, the president commuted the 40-month prison sentence.Democrats were so outraged by Trump's July decision, that it prompted House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to call for legislation that would limit the presidential pardon powers and prevent future leaders from granting clemency to individuals who acted to shield that president from prosecution. Pelosi called it "an act of staggering corruption." House Intelligence Committee chairman Rep. Adam Schiff of California called it "a real body blow to the rule of law in this country."Mark SiljanderTrump granted a full pardon to Mark Siljander, a former Republican congressman from Michigan and once a deputy U.S. ambassador to the UN.In 2010, Siljander pleaded guilty and was convicted of lying to FBI agents probing his ties to the now-defunct Islamic American Relief Agency of Columbia, Mo.The U.S. Attorney in Kansas City, Beth Phillips, who prosecuted the case, accused the former congressman of engaging "in illegal lobbying for a charity suspected of funding international terrorism.""He then used his own charities to hide the payments for his criminal activities," Phillips said. "Siljander repeatedly lied to FBI agents and prosecutors investigating serious crimes related to national security."The FBI raided the offices of the IARA in 2004, shutting down operations. That same year, the U.S. government designated the group a terrorist organization due to its ties to Maktab al-Khidamat, the precursor of al-Qaeda, as well its financial support for Bin Laden and Hamas.Several high-profile former lawmakers urged Trump to grant Siljander's pardon, including former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, and Alabama Congressman Robert Aderholt.The White House noted Siljander's commitment to anti-abortion causes, calling him "one of Congress' most stalwart defenders of pro-life principles." He was also the namesake of the "Siljander Amendment," which prohibits U.S. funds from being used to lobby for or against abortion.The pardons come one day after Trump granted full pardons to 15 individuals and commuted part or all of the sentences of an additional five. Those pardons included three Republican former members of Congress, those involved in the Russia investigation and contractors convicted in the killings of civilians in Iraq.Activists have lobbied Trump to help prisoners who are serving long sentences.Ahead of the most recent announcement, Trump had issued more than 40 pardons and more than 30 commutations during his time in office.He has pushed the limits of the presidential pardon in that time, pardoning close allies involved in politically sensitive cases. But there are few limits on a president's power to issue pardons.
The next decade of growth will come from solving societal issues
For much of the time that software has been “eating the world,” new and established firms alike have been focused on technological solutions to the problems faced by individual users—a profitable formula that Amazon famously described as “customer obsession.”But the world is changing, and so is the nature of change itself. Today, societal issues including income inequality, racial injustice, gender bias, environmental degradation, and the coronavirus pandemic are defining and driving disruption. This shift has significant implications for innovation and growth, starting with the types of problems that successful firms will seek to solve in the first place.By and large, technology-led innovation understands customers primarily as users—that is, as individual people seeking solutions to highly specific problems.In this paradigm, innovative firms that use technology to offer better solutions to more users can enjoy remarkable growth, while firms that are unable to do so often stumble. In solving the user problem of how to watch movies at home, for example, streaming services such as Netflix and Disney+ have succeeded and are thriving, while their predecessors—the videocassette rental stores—have almost entirely disappeared.Startup and tech ecosystems have led the way with this approach, creating some of the world’s most valuable companies. Seeing this fast-growing competition, incumbents and non-tech companies across many sectors have also been deeply influenced, embarking on transformation initiatives to become more user-focused and tech-driven.Today, however, the tech toolkit of seeing and serving customers as individual users is proving to be too narrow. Customers must also be understood as citizens, with additional problems to be solved that are aligned with their needs as members of society.The rising relevance of these problems is being fueled by a major, inexorable demographic shift: In America, more than half of the nation’s citizensnow are millennials or younger. These problems differ from the ones addressed by the customer-as-user mindset in three important ways:They are collective and public, not individual and private. Think sustainability, gender parity, and racial equity.They are systemic and not reducible to single product solutions. By extension, progress against them often depends on companies acting in concert with each other and with the public sector.They are driven by unpredictable societal factors, not predictable product adoption curves. Sexual harassment and inequities in criminal justice, for example, are longstanding social ills, but the #MeToo and #BlackLivesMatter movements have galvanized large numbers of people to urgently seek solutions at all levels of society, business, and government.Firms traditionally have not viewed their customers as citizens seeking to live in a better society, nor have they made that goal a central element of their profit models and growth strategies. Instead, they largely have left positive social outcomes to the public sector, nonprofits, or corporate social responsibility efforts managed away from the core business.Addressing society’s new demands doesn’t mean abandoning technological solutions that address the needs of customers as users, nor does it mean neglecting one’s core businesses in order to engage in costly and unprofitable do-gooding. On the contrary, it means expanding the set of problems companies seek to solve—and the means by which they solve them—in order to create innovative and profitable goods and services that meet the unfulfilled demands of modern customers.The ability of companies to create positive social outcomes will be a competitive advantage. The ability of companies to create positive social outcomes will be a competitive advantage. To get there, companies will need new toolkits to help them identify problems and develop solutions. Product development teams, for example, will need to understand the drivers of societal well-being and learn how to position and price offerings that advance social progress. (Sustainability initiatives that emphasize measuring environmental impact are a model for this way of doing business.) We already know that customers who want a safer, fairer, and less discriminatory world are eager to support companies that share their values—and are willing to pay for products that uphold those values, especially when they fulfill their individual desires. Tesla’s electric luxury cars, for example, are powerful, attractive, and better for the environment than gas-burning alternatives. The company has the largest market cap of any carmaker. Similarly, the film Black Panther celebrated Black culture and diversity, and was a highly entertaining superhero adventure; in 2018, it was the top-grossing movie in America.Because the business world is only beginning to catch up to 21st-century customers, profitable ventures that produce positive social outcomes remain outliers for now. But for innovative first-movers, an untapped market awaits.
New round of Trump clemency benefits Manafort, other allies
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump on Wednesday pardoned more than two dozen people, including former campaign chairman Paul Manafort and Charles Kushner, the father of his son-in-law, in the latest wave of clemency to benefit longtime associates and supporters.The actions, in Trump’s final weeks at the White House, bring to nearly 50 the number of people whom the president has granted clemency in the last week. The list from the last two days includes not only multiple people convicted in the investigation into the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia but also allies from Congress and other felons whose causes were championed by friends.Pardons are common in the final stretch of a president’s tenure, the recipients largely dependent on the individual whims of the nation’s chief executive. Trump throughout his administration has shucked aside the conventions of the Obama administration, when pardons were largely reserved for drug offenders not known to the general public, and instead bestowed clemency on high-profile contacts and associates who were key figures in an investigation that directly concerned him.Even members of the president’s own party raised eyebrows, with Republican Sen. Ben Sasse of Nebraska issuing a brief statement that said: “This is rotten to the core.”The pardons Wednesday of Manafort and Roger Stone, who months earlier had his sentence commuted by Trump, were particularly notable, underscoring the president’s desire to chip away at the results and legacy of special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation. He has now pardoned five people convicted in that investigation, including four associates such as former national security adviser Michael Flynn and campaign adviser George Papadopoulos.“The pardons from this President are what you would expect to get if you gave the pardon power to a mob boss,” tweeted Andrew Weissmann, a Mueller team member who helped prosecute Manafort.Manafort, who led Trump’s campaign during a pivotal period in 2016 before being ousted over his ties to Ukraine, was among the first people charged as part of Mueller’s investigation into ties between the Trump campaign and Russia. He was later sentenced to more than seven years in prison for financial crimes related to his political consulting work in Ukraine, but was released to home confinement last spring because of coronavirus concerns in the federal prison system.Though the charges against Manafort did not concern the central thrust of Mueller’s mandate — whether the Trump campaign and Russia colluded to tip the election — he was nonetheless a pivotal figure in the investigation. His close relationship to a man U.S. officials have linked to Russian intelligence, and with whom he shared internal campaign polling data, attracted particular scrutiny during the investigation, though Mueller never charged Manafort or any other Trump associate with conspiring with Russia.Manafort, in a series of tweets, thanked Trump and lavished praise on the outgoing president, declaring that history would show he had accomplished more than any of his predecessors.Trump did not pardon Manafort’s deputy, Rick Gates, who was sentenced last year to 45 days in prison after extensively cooperating with prosecutors, or former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen, who pleaded guilty to campaign finance crimes related to his efforts to buy the silence of women who said they had sexual relationships with Trump. Both were also convicted in the Mueller probe.ADVERTISEMENTNew York City prosecutors, meanwhile, have been seeking to have the state’s highest court revive state mortgage fraud charges against Manafort after a lower court dismissed them on double jeopardy grounds. A spokesman for District Attorney Cy Vance said the pardon “underscores the urgent need to hold Mr. Manafort accountable for his crimes against the People of New York.”Manafort and Stone are hardly conventional pardon recipients, in part because both were scolded by judges for effectively thumbing their nose at the criminal justice system as their cases were pending. Manafort was accused of witness tampering even after he was indicted and was accused by prosecutors of lying while trying to earn credit for cooperation.Stone, who was convicted of lying to Congress about his efforts to gain inside information about the release by WikiLeaks of Russia-hacked Democratic emails during the 2016 campaign, was similarly censured by a judge because of his social media posts.In a statement Wednesday, Stone thanked Trump and alleged that he had been subjected to a “Soviet-style show trial on politically-motivated charges”Kushner is the father of Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and a wealthy real estate executive who pleaded guilty years ago to tax evasion and making illegal campaign donations. Trump and the elder Kushner knew each other from real estate circles and their children were married in 2009. Prosecutors allege that after Kushner discovered that his brother-in-law was cooperating with authorities, he hatched a revenge and intimidation scheme. They say he hired a prostitute to lure his brother-in-law, then arranged to have a secret recording of the encounter in a New Jersey motel room sent to his own sister, the man’s wife. Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie has called it “one of the most loathsome, disgusting crimes” he ever prosecuted as U.S. attorney.Trump’s legally troubled allies were not the only recipients of clemency. The list of 29 recipients included people whose pleas for forgiveness have been promoted by people supporting the president throughout his term in office, among them former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi, Newsmax CEO Christopher Ruddy and Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky.One recipient was Topeka Sam, whose case was promoted by Alice Johnson, a criminal justice advocate whom Trump pardoned and who appeared in a Super Bowl ad for him and at the Republican National Convention.“Ms. Sam’s life is a story of redemption,” the White House said in its release, praising her for helping other women in need.Others granted clemency included a former county commissioner in Florida who was convicted of taking gifts from people doing business with the county and a community leader in Kentucky who was convicted of federal drug offenses.____Associated Press writers Jill Colvin in Palm Beach, Florida, and Michael Balsamo in Washington contributed to this report.
Paul Manafort, Roger Stone, Charles Kushner among those pardoned by Trump
The latest list grants 26 full pardons and commutes all or part of the sentence of three additional individuals, after Trump on Tuesday issued 15 pardons and five commutations.Wednesday's list also includes several people recommended by former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi, who was part of Trump's impeachment defense team, and Ike Perlmutter, the former CEO of Marvel Entertainment and a member of the president's private Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach, Florida, according to a statement from the White House.On Tuesday, Trump granted pardons to a group that included two former Republican members of Congress, two targets of special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigation, and four military contractors convicted in the 2007 killing of more than a dozen unarmed Iraqi civilians -- a move that could upend U.S. policy in the region.In past administrations, late-term pardons have hardly been uncommon. President Barack Obama, for example, in his final months in office granted hundreds of pardons, mostly to those who committed nonviolent drug-related offenses.But the nature of Trump's controversial executive actions -- which have overwhelmingly benefitted his friends and loyalists -- have attracted the ire of his administration's political foes.Ahead of this week's announcements, Trump had already granted pardons to several close friends and political backers over the course of his presidency. Earlier this year, the president pardoned Michael Flynn, his former national security adviser, and commuted the sentence of Roger Stone, a longtime friend and confidant -- both of whom were indicted by Mueller in the Russia probe.Past presidents have also taken advantage of sweeping powers to pardon friends and associates in their final weeks in office. President George H.W. Bush, for example, issued pardons to several Reagan-era officials caught up in the Iran-Contra scandal prior to his departure from office. On his last day in office, President Bill Clinton granted clemency to Marc Rich, a fugitive businessman whose ex-wife was a longtime Clinton donor.But critics say Trump has gone further than his predecessors. Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee and a frequent critic of the Trump administration, accused the president on Tuesday night of "doling out pardons, not on the basis of repentance, restitution or the interests of justice, but to reward his friends and political allies."Here are some of the notable pardons on Wednesday's list:Former Trump 2016 campaign chairman Paul Manafort received the toughest sentence of any Trump associate entangled in special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election. Manafort, who has a long roster of foreign clients and has worked for many Republican presidential candidates -- including George H. W. Bush and Ronald Reagan -- was charged and found guilty of multiple counts of false income tax returns, failure to file reports of foreign bank accounts, and bank fraud related to activity from before he joined the Trump campaign. He was sentenced by a federal judge to seven years but was released to home confinement in early 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Manafort joined the Trump campaign in March 2016 as the campaign's convention manager. He served as Trump's campaign chairman from May 2016 until he resigned in August 2016."Mr. President, my family and I humbly thank you for the Presidential Pardon that you bestowed on me today. Words cannot adequately convey how grateful we are," Manafort said in a statement following the pardon. "History will record that your Presidency accomplished more in 4 years than any of your modern-day predecessors. You truly did 'Make America Great Again.'"Manafort, however, still faces the possibility of fraud charges in New York. Following Wednesday's pardon, Manhattan District Attorney spokesperson Danny Frost told ABC News, "This action underscores the urgent need to hold Mr. Manafort accountable for his crimes against the People of New York as alleged in our indictment, and we will continue to pursue our appellate remedies."Veteran GOP political operative Roger Stone -- a decades-long friend and former campaign adviser to Donald Trump -- had his 40-month prison sentence commuted in July by the president, days before he was scheduled to report to a federal penitentiary. The self-described political "dirty trickster" was charged and convicted on a seven-count indictment of obstructing justice, witness tampering and multiple counts of lying to Congress in special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election. Trump's full pardon nullifies Stone's conviction entirely."On behalf of my family and myself, I wish to praise God and give my deepest thanks to President Donald J. Trump for his extraordinary act of justice in issuing me a presidential pardon, " Stone said in a statement following the announcement.Charles Kushner, the father of President Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, pleaded guilty in 2005 to tax evasion, witness tampering and making illegal campaign contributions. He was sentenced to two years in prison but served only 14 months of that term. A nasty argument between Charles Kushner and his brother Murray led to charges of violations of campaign-finance rules as part of the same case. That led prosecutors to open an investigation into Charles' conduct. Charles then tried to keep his sister from cooperating with prosecutors by setting up her husband with a prostitute, recording the encounter, and then threatening her with it. But that backfired when the sister handed over the tape. The elder Kushner had been one of the New York-New Jersey area's leading Democratic donors and a key backroom political player in the late 1990s and early 2000s.Former California Republican Rep. Duncan Hunter's ex-wife Margaret cooperated with the U.S. Attorney's office in the prosecution of her husband on charges that he misused $250,000 in campaign donations for personal expenses such as family vacations and oral surgeries. Hunter, who was sentenced to 11 months in prison in March, was pardoned by Trump on Tuesday.Assistant U.S. Attorney Phil Halpern, who helped prosecute Hunter, blasted Trump following Tuesday's announcement, saying, "As a person who cares about equality, I'm disgusted by Trump's apparent failure to pardon Hunter's former wife, Margaret -- who admitted her guilt and cooperated with the United States to bring Hunter to justice."Jesse Benton is a Kentucky political operative who married into the family of Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., and was convicted in 2016 on charges tied to campaign finance violations. Benton and an associate, John Tate, were involved in an effort to pay bribes to an Iowa state senator in exchange for the lawmaker's endorsement for Ron Paul's 2012 presidential bid. Both men were handed a six-month home confinement and two years of probation. Tate was also pardoned on Wednesday.ABC News' Soorin Kim, Ali Dukakis and Josh Margolin contributed to this report.This report was featured in the Thursday, Dec. 24, 2020, episode of “Start Here,” ABC News’ daily news podcast."Start Here" offers a straightforward look at the day's top stories in 20 minutes. Listen for free every weekday on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, the ABC News app or wherever you get your podcasts.
Trump Pardons Charles Kushner, Former Campaign Chairman Paul Manafort, Roger Stone
President Donald Trump unleashed another wave of pardons for his allies on Wednesday night, including his son-in-law’s father, Charles Kushner, and his former campaign chairman Paul Manafort, who lied to investigators looking into Russian election interference.The lame-duck president—who in recent days has appeared determined to cause as much shock and confusion as he can before he leaves office on Jan. 20—also pardoned Roger Stone, whose sentence he commuted in July, and the wife of disgraced former Rep. Duncan Hunter, whom he pardoned on Tuesday.The slew of Christmas week pardons—which included former Blackwater guards charged with war crimes, two border agents accused of covering up a shooting, and some more traditional candidates—appeared designed to reward devoted loyalists at a time when Trump has lost Republican support for his bid to subvert the election and is busy butting heads with Congress. “In pardoning Paul Manafort, Roger Stone, and Charles Kushner, President Trump has made it clear that he believes the purpose of the pardon is to bail out rich white men connected to him,” Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington executive director Noah Bookbinder said in a statement. “Trump has turned an instrument of mercy and justice into just another way for him to be corrupt.”Trump’s actions were also denounced by his former lawyer, Michael Cohen, who was sentenced to jail time for fraud despite his cooperation with the Mueller investigation into possible collusion by the Trump campaign with Russia to interfere in the 2016 election.U.S. Sen. Ben Sasse (R-NE), a Trump critic, was succinct in his assessment: “This is rotten to the core.”Trump’s pardon of Manafort had largely been expected in light of his repeated praise for the convicted fraudster and complaints that he’d been victimized by the Russia “hoax.”According to two sources with direct knowledge of the matter, for more than a year now, Trump has sporadically brought up in private conversations how “cruel” and unfair it was that Manafort was held in solitary confinement. In his mini-rants on the subject, Trump would suggest it bordered on “torture” of a political prisoner—even though he has never made the inhumanity of solitary lockup a policy priority or even tweeted about lesser-connected prisoners who endure it.In a statement late Wednesday, the White House drilled down on the idea that Manafort had been punished because of his association with the president.“As a result of blatant prosecutorial overreach, Mr. Manafort has endured years of unfair treatment and is one of the most prominent victims of what has been revealed to be perhaps the greatest witch hunt in American history,” it said.Manafort reacted to his pardon by writing his first tweet in years to praise Trump. “Mr. President, my family & I humbly thank you for the Presidential Pardon you bestowed on me. Words cannot fully convey how grateful we are,” he wrote, telling Trump that he “truly did ‘Make America Great Again’” and had “accomplished more in 4 years than any of your modern-day predecessors.”Some commentators were quick to note that the pardons could have a downside.“Be careful what you wish for—the people getting pardons no longer enjoy 5th Amendment privilege. Meaning they can be compelled to testify about anything. Get your popcorn...” Rep. David Cicilline (D-RI) tweeted.In that vein, Andrew Weissman, who was one of special counsel Robert Mueller’s deputies, tweeted: “Easy enough to beat Trump at his game: put Stone and Manafort in the grand jury after 1/20/21 to get at what they have hidden from the government about Trump- and if they then lie, they can be prosecuted for perjury and obstruction.”Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance, who obtained an indictment against Manafort on state charges last year and is appealing its dismissal under the double-jeopardy rule, said the pardon for his federal crimes makes the New York case all the more crucial.“This action underscores the urgent need to hold Mr. Manafort accountable for his crimes against the People of New York as alleged in our indictment, and we will continue to pursue our appellate remedies,” Vance said in a statement.Just as it did with Manafort, the White House tried to justify Stone’s pardon by painting the unrepentant dirty trickster as a helpless victim “treated very unfairly” by Mueller’s investigators. Trump’s longtime confidant was convicted of lying to Congress, witness tampering, and obstructing the House investigation into Russian election meddling. The president had commuted his 40-month sentence over the summer. “Pardoning him will help to right the injustices he faced at the hands of the Mueller investigation,” the White House said.Charles Kushner, White House senior adviser Jared Kushner’s father, was released from prison in 2006 after serving two years for tax evasion and witness tampering. He was accused of hiring a prostitute to seduce his brother-in-law so he could videotape the encounter and then send it to his sister to scare her off from testifying before a grand jury.His prosecution was overseen by then-U.S. Attorney Chris Christie, who of course became one of Trump’s biggest supporters. Christie, who believes Jared Kushner orchestrated his ouster from Trump’s transition team as payback for the prosecution, has long insisted that the father deserved what he got.“It’s one of the most loathsome and disgusting crimes that I prosecuted,” Christie, who could not be reached for comment on the pardon, has said in the past.On Dec. 22, Trump pardoned a slew of others, including former campaign aide George Papadopoulos, who pleaded guilty to lying to Mueller’s team during the Russia probe; former U.S. Reps. Chris Collins (insider trading) and Steve Stockman (campaign fraud); and four Blackwater mercenaries found guilty of slaughtering more than a dozen Iraqi civilians in 2014. Just before Thanksgiving, the president granted clemency to Michael Flynn, his first national security adviser who pleaded guilty—twice—to lying to the FBI. The pardons were cheered in Trumpworld. “Paul has paid a price for his crimes,” Ed Brookover, a former senior adviser on Trump's 2016 campaign who worked with Manafort, told The Daily Beast. “Unfortunately Paul was also unfairly accused and convicted by the media for much else during the unwarranted Mueller investigation.”Manafort, 71, was convicted of myriad financial crimes linked to his lobbying work for pro-Russian political entities in Ukraine, and he pleaded guilty in a case that revolved around obstruction of the Mueller investigation. He was sentenced to seven and a half years but in May was given permission to serve the remainder of his term in home confinement due to COVID-19 fears in prison.Over the course of several years, which overlapped in part with his running of Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, Manafort made millions advising Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych. In 2016, Ukrainian investigators found handwritten ledgers showing more than $12 million in undisclosed cash payments for Manafort from Yanukovych’s party for work related to influencing the elections in favor of Yanukovych. The ledgers were first made public by a Ukrainian investigative journalist and then by the country’s National Anti-Corruption Bureau. Records obtained by the Associated Press in 2017 showed that at least $1.2 million in payments from 2007 and 2009 listed in one of those ledgers—known as the “black ledger”—were received by his consulting firm.Despite these documents, Manafort continued to question the ledger’s authenticity publicly after it was exposed. There were some in the media—particularly right-leaning columnist John Solomon, who is known to have peddled unverified theories about Ukraine—who claimed that the ledger had been forged and that George Soros was somehow behind the original leak. Solomon’s stories on Ukraine were closely aligned with the narratives pushed by Rudy Giuliani at the time. Others followed Solomon’s lead. Republican lawyer Joe DiGenova, who at one point repped Solomon, accused Soros in Fox Business interviews of controlling the State Department and FBI in an attempt to sway the politics in Kyiv.At his 2019 sentencing on the obstruction charges, which added 43 months to the four years handed down for the financial fraud, Manafort told Judge Amy Berman Jackson, “I am sorry for what I’ve done. Let me be very clear, I accept the responsibility for the acts that caused me to be here today.”Jackson was largely unmoved.“It is hard to overstate the number of lies and the amount of fraud and the extraordinary amount of money involved,” she told him, adding, “Saying ‘I’m sorry I got caught’ is not an inspiring plea for leniency.”Trump is reportedly considering further pardons on his way out the door and is said to have discussed pardoning not only members of his family to head off any possible future prosecutions but also himself. While virtually all U.S. presidents from both parties have granted pardons and sentence commutations before stepping down, Trump has been stunningly brazen about using his pardon powers to help friends and repay associates he sees as having been personally loyal.As his White House departure nears, Trump is reportedly fielding countless requests from hopeful pardon-seekers. Those looking to be let off the hook for past crimes reportedly include Joe Exotic, the incarcerated Tiger King star, and former Trump campaign adviser Rick Gates, who pleaded guilty to financial fraud and lying to investigators during the Russia probe. Former Trump campaign strategist Steve Bannon, who was indicted by a grand jury in New York for financial fraud, is also thought to be among the contenders for a potential pardon. Trump is also said to have weighed granting preemptive pardons to some of his own family members facing legal scrutiny, as well as his lawyer Rudy Giuliani.
With Pardon, Paul Manafort Gets His Reward for Saving Donald Trump from Special Counsel Robert Mueller
Pardonpalooza continued on Wednesday, with President Trump’s grants of clemency to his former campaign advisor, Roger Stone, his son-in-law’s father, Charles Kushner, and his former campaign manager, Paul Manafort, signalling that he is now moving to protect people even closer to his inner circle.And in the case of Paul Manafort, Trump is also helping himself: Manafort, after all, was the linchpin for Russia’s election interference efforts in 2016, and his refusal to cooperate with the Special Counsel’s investigation into the same—at a high price to himself—is what kept the full details of the Trump campaign’s collusion with Russia from coming to light.In addition to these emails—which were obtained by the Special Counsel during its Russia probe—Manafort had additional sketchy contacts related to Russia’s interference efforts. Manafort was part of the June 9 Trump Tower meeting, along with Jared Kushner and Donald Trump Jr., in which they expected Russian government lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya, to offer them “dirt” on Hillary Clinton. Manafort also met in person with Konstantin Kilimnik at least twice in person, and on one of those occasions, passed campaign polling data to him, asking him to share it with Deripaska and other Russian oligarchs. This was during the same time that Russia was engaging in a disinformation campaign attacking then-candidate Hillary Clinton which targeted towards undecided voters in key areas. Manafort resigned from the campaign that same month, when his work for the Party of Regions was publicly reported.In short, when Manafort was arrested in October 2017 along with his deputy, Rick Gates, he held the answers to a lot of questions concerning any links between Russia’s election interference and the Trump campaign. In particular, Manafort could have shed light on what individuals connected to Putin, like Deripaska and other oligarchs, hoped to achieve in return from boosting Trump’s election efforts, and whether any promises or exchanges had been made along these lines with members of the campaign. He could have answered the purpose of sharing polling data with Russian intelligence agents, and whether these were connected to or helping to inform Russia’s disinformation operation. Most importantly, Manafort could have clarified the extent to which Trump himself was aware of Manafort’s contacts and Russia’s activities, and the role, if any, he played in them.“Another major beneficiary of Manafort’s actions is Vladimir Putin himself, who the intelligence community concludes directed the 2016 attack on the U.S. presidential election—but who can maintain plausible deniability as long as Manafort doesn’t spill the beans.”This is why the slew of criminal charges Manafort faced—which included money laundering, tax evasion, bank fraud, and acting as an unregistered foreign agent for Ukraine—are important. Although these charges were not directly related to Russia’s election interference efforts, they carried stiff penalties and increased the pressure for Manafort to cooperate and provide information on the counterintelligence front, i.e., what Russia was up to in 2016 and who else was involved. Initially, Manafort appeared to be cooperating with the Special Counsel in exchange for a plea deal. However, that ended when the Special Counsel discovered that Manafort had lied to them repeatedly about his ongoing contacts with Kilimnik, monetary debt payments he was making to unspecified individuals, and his ongoing communication with Trump and his lawyers, in violation of the cooperation agreement. (This came several months after Manafort had already been sanctioned for violating the terms of his bail by tampering with witnesses in asking them to lie to the Special Counsel and had ghost-written an op-ed in a Ukrainian newspaper.) Manafort’s refusal to cooperate with Mueller’s team came at a price, as he would face the full weight of the sentences for any charges on which he was convicted.And here’s where Trump’s pardon comes into play. As detailed by the Special Counsel’s final report, following Manafort’s arrest, Trump expressed concern that Manafort could reveal damaging information to the Special Counsel. Precisely because Manafort’s charged offenses were unrelated to Russian election interference and predated his work on the campaign, Trump’s worry about Manafort’s cooperation suggests that Manafort had the potential to implicate him in activities related to Russia (otherwise, why would he care?). During this same time, Trump publicly floated the idea of pardoning Manafort, as did his personal lawyer, Rudy Giuilani. The message to Manafort was that Trump had the power to let Manafort off the hook, if Manafort stayed loyal. Manafort got this message, telling Gates right after their arrest that they should just “sit tight” and that they would be “taken care of.”The Special Counsel, and now the most recent pardons, reveal that this implicit agreement worked out for both men in the end. The Special Counsel writes in its report that due to Manafort’s repeated lies to both its office and the grand jury, it was unable to get a full picture of what happened to the information passed between Manafort and Kilimnik, or what was provided back to Trump, his campaign, or the administration once he took office. For Trump’s part, Mueller’s inability to uncover this evidence—which would have illuminated the extent of any collusion—helped him promote his narrative that there was “no collusion” and that the entire Russia investigation was a “hoax.” And, it’s worth underscoring that another major beneficiary of Manafort’s actions is Vladimir Putin himself, who the intelligence community concludes directed the 2016 attack on the U.S. presidential election—but who can maintain plausible deniability as long as Manafort doesn’t spill the beans.Still, Manafort may not be entirely in the clear. For one thing, some of Manafort’s financial shenanigans could also form the basis for state charges, which a federal pardon doesn’t reach. In addition, unless his debts to his Russian benefactors have somehow been forgiven, Manafort will remain caught up in their tentacles, making him an ongoing counterintelligence target for the FBI. That means they can continue to question him about his past or future behavior, and any lies would be new crimes which won’t be covered by his pardon and for which he could be prosecuted.The story isn’t over for Manafort, but for now, his implicit bargain with Trump appears to have paid off.
With Paul Manafort's Pardon, Kleptocracy Won
But before prosecutors could achieve that revelation, the president made his move. Trump began to tease the prospect of a pardon for Manafort. While the Mueller report is a maddening document, deadened by its steadfast unwillingness to draw conclusions, it is unambiguous about Trump’s treatment of Manafort. It describes how his tweets and statements about a pardon might have shaped Manafort’s strategic calculus.The head of the family had sent an unambiguous signal. Just then, the instincts from Manafort’s old neighborhood kicked in.The president clearly intended to obstruct justice. By implicitly promising a pardon, he thwarted Manafort’s cooperation with Mueller, and wrecked the probe. Manafort might well have advanced Mueller’s investigation to an even more damning conclusion. Instead, the stymied investigation ended prematurely. Rather than burying Trump, the final report contained enough hedging and ambiguities that it permitted the president to deem the whole enterprise a “hoax.” Having lost its star witness, the Russia scandal—the most perilous threat to the Trump presidency—quickly faded from conversation.Trump saved himself, and, in the end, so did Manafort. While he likely didn’t enjoy his brief sojourn in prison, his silence has finally earned him a pardon. Even if he had cut a deal to cooperate, prosecutors would have likely forced him to serve a far longer sentence than he did; by obstructing the investigation, he has almost certainly come out ahead. At the beginning of the pandemic, a judge released him from prison. With the protective armor of his pardon, there’s no chance of the feds sending him back.Whatever the shortcomings of the Mueller investigation, prosecutors could always trumpet the convictions they’d won in the Manafort cases. During his long career in Washington, Manafort had worked to win acceptances for the world’s authoritarian goons. He lobbied Congress to send foreign aid to their governments. With his public-relations campaigns, he scrubbed their images, so that the media ignored the assassinations of their enemies. Manafort was the architect of K Street in its most grotesque modern incarnation. By convicting Manafort for his work in Ukraine—where he served the oligarchs who looted the country and crushed democratic stirrings—prosecutors showed that even the slickest, most powerful influence peddlers could be brought to justice. They won a rousing triumph over the forces of kleptocracy.But tonight, with Manafort’s pardon, kleptocracy has successfully waited out its enemies. Under Donald Trump, the corruption of New Britain, the symbiosis of a criminal syndicate and government, has gone national. After years of omertà, Paul Manafort is howling for joy.
Why investors say bitcoin's 2020 surge is not like 2017's
It has been an annus horribilis, but not for bitcoin.The cryptocurrency is up over 200% this year and has been on a steady tear over the past few months. At press time, a single bitcoin was valued at about US $23,300. Only 90 days ago, it was trading just above $10,000.For many bitcoin doubters, the sudden spike is reminiscent of the 2017 holidays, when, as one of my Quartz colleagues recently observed, “you could not stand in a group of three or more dudes and not talk about bitcoin.” That was the year bitcoin hit its previous all-time high, just over $19,700, before plummeting by 30%. Naysayers are watching for another drastic correction now.However, investors and traders who believe bitcoin is more than a Ponzi scheme say that the 2020 surge is different, mainly because of who is shopping for it. Three years ago, the enthusiasm for the digital coin came from retail investors. This time, some major institutional investors have decided to join the market.In May, Paul Tudor Jones, the billionaire hedge fund manager and founder of Tudor Investment Company, made a splash by buying bitcoin, still a fringe asset to investors of his stature.Jones was actually dipping in for the second time. In 2017, his fund bought and sold bitcoin, exiting near the asset’s all-time high, Bloomberg reports. This year, watching central banks spend billions to offset losses from the coronavirus pandemic, Jones went looking for a reliable hedge, according to a market outlook note he wrote in May, and bitcoin met his criteria.“I am not a hard-money nor a crypto nut,” he also stated in the note. “The most compelling argument for owning Bitcoin is the coming digitization of currency everywhere, accelerated by Covid-19.”(Jones has said he holds between 1-2% of his fund’s total assets under management—pegged at $9.2 billion in 2020—in bitcoin.)Just days ago, Michael Saylor, CEO of Microstrategy, a business intelligence firm, splurged on a $650 million bitcoin purchase by issuing debt, “a bold bet for any publicly traded company, especially for one whose business model does not even center on cryptocurrencies,” a CoinDesk writer opined, but Saylor “has brushed aside all criticism nonetheless.” In all, Microstrategy has spent $1.1 billion on bitcoin to date, at an average price of just less than $16,000 per coin, Saylor announced in a tweet. Earlier this week, the CEO also sparked a Twitter frenzy when he dared Elon Musk to make a similar bet with the US dollars on Tesla’s balance sheet. Astonishingly, Musk signaled curiosity about the prospect.Other 2020 bitcoin landmarks have been tied to household brands that have attracted small, individual investors. Paypal announced that it would allow its customers to buy and sell bitcoin on its site in October, following the payments company Square and Robinhood, a stock trading platform, which both entered the cryptocurrency market two years ago. Last month, a study by Pantera Capital found that Paypal and Square users were snapping up the majority of new bitcoin entering the market daily, and presumably driving up the price, too. Then, at the beginning of December, Visa joined forces with BlockFi to launch a credit card that rewards customers with bitcoin.None of this is a guarantee that bitcoin isn’t in a bubble or that it won’t crash to zero. For every buyer who claims bitcoin can rise to $100,000 or $400,000, there are still several other respected investors, bankers, and economists who call the digital currency garbage, valueless, and a scam, even if more traders and investors are counting on its survival and wide adoption.Big firms that can afford to take chances may be warming up to digital coins, but it is still one of the riskiest investments out there. Even Jones called it a “great speculation.”
Bitcoin surges past $20,000, erasing 3 years of deep losses
CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- The price of bitcoin rose above $20,000 for the first time Wednesday, as the speculative digital currency topped its previous peak reached shortly after it became tradable on Wall Street three years ago this month.Like other instruments used to store value in times of uncertainty, bitcoin has benefited from the pandemic that has pushed other commodities like gold, silver, platinum to multiyear highs. Because of bitcoin's structure, few coins are being created anymore and there is relative scarcity.Here’s a brief look at bitcoin:———HOW BITCOINS WORKBitcoin is a digital currency that is not tied to a bank or government and allows users to spend money anonymously. The coins are created by users who “mine” them by lending computing power to verify other users’ transactions. They receive bitcoins in exchange. The coins also can be bought and sold on exchanges with U.S. dollars and other currencies. Some businesses also accept bitcoin, but its popularity has stalled out in recent years.———WHAT HAPPENED?Bitcoins got their big Wall Street debut in December 2017, when bitcoin futures became tradable on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange and the Chicago Board of Trade. The fervor and interest in bitcoin heading into its trading debut pushed the digital currency to record highs. The currency, which was worth less than $1,000 at the beginning of 2017, climbed up to $19,783 by the end of the year.But once the trading began, bitcoin futures fell sharply over the course of several months. A year later, the currency was worth less than $4,000. Investors and bitcoin enthusiasts at the time said the 2017 jump was largely caused by speculative interest and media attention.———HOW MUCH IS IT NOW WORTH?One bitcoin is worth roughly $20,700, according to Coinbase, a major digital currency exchange that also trades other tokens and currencies.But the value of bitcoin is volatile and moves hundreds or even thousands of dollars in the course of a week. A month ago, it was worth less than $17,000 and a year ago it was worth less than $7,000.Bitcoin is a highly speculative investment and has not performed as well as more traditional forms of investing, like stocks or bonds, unless a buyer was in the currency years before it caught on. For example, three years ago The Associated Press bought $100 worth of bitcoin to keep track of the currency and to possibly build stories about how businesses were accepting it. That portfolio only broke even this month.———WHY BITCOINS ARE POPULARBitcoins are basically lines of computer code that are digitally signed each time they travel from one owner to the next. Transactions can be made anonymously, making the currency popular with libertarians as well as tech enthusiasts, speculators — and criminals.Bitcoins have to be stored in a digital wallet, either online through an exchange like Coinbase, or offline on a hard drive using specialized software. While the bitcoin community knows how many bitcoins exist, where they all are is anyone's guess.———WHO’S USING BITCOIN?Some businesses have jumped on the bitcoin bandwagon. Overstock.com accepts payments in bitcoin, for example.The currency has become popular enough that more than 300,000 transactions typically occur in an average day, according to bitcoin wallet site blockchain.info. Still, its popularity is low compared with cash and credit cards, and most individuals and businesses won’t accept bitcoins for payments.———HOW BITCOINS ARE KEPT SECUREThe bitcoin network works by harnessing individuals’ greed for the collective good. A network of tech-savvy users called miners keep the system honest by pouring their computing power into a blockchain, a global running tally of every bitcoin transaction. The blockchain prevents rogues from spending the same bitcoin twice, and the miners are rewarded for their efforts by being gifted with the occasional bitcoin. As long as miners keep the blockchain secure, counterfeiting shouldn’t be an issue.———HOW BITCOIN CAME TO BEIn 2016, An Australian entrepreneur stepped forward and claimed to be the founder of bitcoin, only to say days later that he did not “have the courage” to publish proof that he is. No one has claimed credit for the currency since.
Trump's Pardon of Manafort Realizes the Founders' Fears
Just so. Obviously, Mason never met Trump. But clearly he had someone like Trump in mind. Trump’s pardon of Manafort and Stone, especially when added to his pardons of Michael Flynn, is of exactly the sort Mason feared—in which an apparent connection exists between the president’s personal acts and those of the people whose crimes he has excused. Manafort, Stone, and Flynn, in different ways, were connected to Trump and allegations of criminality. Their pardons may, in part, be rewards for their refusal to help in holding Trump to account—at least that is how it appears to many observers.The Manafort and Stone pardons are part of a postelection pardon spree. Recent news reports suggest that Trump is also considering broad preemptive pardons for Rudy Giuliani, and three of his adult children—Don Jr., Ivanka, and Eric. And, most notably, public speculation swirls around the possibility that Trump might pardon himself before he leaves office, or, alternatively, resign a day early so that Vice President Mike Pence can assume the presidency and issue him a pardon.The pardons (even if issued as part of a deal with the vice president) reflect a confluence of interests between the president personally and those he might pardon. Trump’s possible pardons may be tied to his fear that New York will initiate prosecutions of him after he leaves office. By issuing federal pardons now, he hopes that he can render any future federal or state prosecutions more difficult. The pardons are, in that way, an effort to avoid accountability, or, as Mason put it, to “stop inquiry and prevent detection.”But even extremely troubling pardons are not necessarily unlawful. As adopted by the Founders, the presidential pardon power is subject to only two clear limits—it cannot be used to excuse cases of impeachment and it covers only “offences against the United States,” which is to say only federal crimes (so potential criminal liability for all pardon recipients in, say, a New York state prosecution remains). Some scholars additionally argue that a self-pardon is implicitly also prohibited—the text says that the president may “grant” pardons, and “granting” oneself a benefit of some sort is a strained linguistic construction.But that’s about it. Everything else about these pardons, including the incentive they give the president’s allies to withhold evidence of criminality, is, unfortunately, within the anticipated scope of the pardon power. Indeed, the Constitutional Convention, having heard and rejected Mason’s prediction, can reasonably be said to have accepted the possibility of pardon abuse as the collateral cost of having a pardon power in the first place.And why exactly would the delegates have done that? Why did they disregard Mason’s prediction? In the end, his concerns were rejected by his fellow convention delegates because, in their judgment, there were adequate remedies for that type of presidential misbehavior. As James Madison put it: “There is one security in this case [of misused pardons] to which the gentlemen [i.e., Mason and his supporters] not have adverted: If the President be connected, in any suspicious manner, with any person, and there be grounds to believe he will shelter him [with a pardon], the House of Representatives can impeach him; they can remove him if found guilty.”
Donald Trump's latest wave of pardons includes Paul Manafort and Charles Kushner
Donald Trump has pardoned another 26 people in his second big wave of clemency actions since Tuesday, marking yet another audacious application of presidential power to reward loyalists.The US president pardoned his former campaign chairman Paul Manafort, his longtime adviser Roger Stone, and Charles Kushner, the father of his son-in-law and adviser Jared Kushner.Stone, a longtime friend and associate, had his sentence for a series of charges related to the Russia investigation commuted by the president in July.In total, Trump pardoned or issued commutations to 29 people on Wednesday, including Margaret Hunter, the wife of Duncan Hunter, the former Republican representative of California, who was pardoned yesterday.Trump’s latest set of pre-Christmas pardons follows a brazen round of pardons and commutations granted on Tuesday. The president issued 15 pardons and five commutations to allies, including two figures who plead guilty in special counsel Robert Mueller’s inquiry on Russian interference in the 2016 US elections.On Tuesday, the president pardoned George Papadopoulos, a former adviser who pleaded guilty to lying to federal officials during the Russia investigation, and Alex van der Zwaan, a Dutch lawyer and son-in-law of the Russian billionaire German Khan. Van der Zwaan had pleaded guilty to similar charges.Papadopoulos and Van der Zwaan were the third and fourth people pardoned for charges in connection to the Russia inquiry. In November, Trump pardoned his first national security adviser, Michael Flynn, who pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about contacts with a Russian official. The president, who has long derided the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election as a “hoax”, has been expected to dole out pardons to those implicated in the inquiry.Tuesday’s rash of pardons was also bestowed upon four former Blackwater contractors who were convicted on charges related to a 2007 massacre in Iraq. The four men, part of a security convoy, fired indiscriminately at civilians, killing 14 people – including a nine-year-old child. The move drew harsh criticism, including from the families of those who were killed. Adil al-Khazali, whose father Ali was killed in the attack, said in response: “Justice doesn’t exist.”Under the US constitution, the president has broad, unilateral pardon powers, but pardons are traditionally reviewed by the justice department. Many of Trump’s pardons, however, seem to clash with department standards – and are instead bestowed as a means to reward allies or act on grudges. Only five of 65 pardons and commutations Trump issued before Wednesday were recommended by the justice department pardon attorney, according to a tally by the Harvard law professor Jack Goldsmith.Manafort, 71, was sentenced for convictions including unregistered lobbying, tax fraud, bank fraud and money laundering. Stone, 68, was convicted of lying to Congress and obstructing a congressional investigation into whether the Trump campaign colluded with Russia to win the 2016 election. “Mr President, my family & I humbly thank you for the Presidential Pardon you bestowed on me. Words cannot fully convey how grateful we are,” Manafort tweeted on Wednesday night.A presidential pardon does not shield someone from state charges, and the Manhattan district attorney, Cyrus Vance Jr, is still looking to prosecute Manafort for state crimes. Trump’s pardon “underscores the urgent need to hold Mr Manafort accountable for his crimes against the People of New York as alleged in our indictment, and we will continue to pursue our appellate remedies”, Danny Frost, a spokesman for Vance, told CNBC. A judge had previously blocked Vance from advancing his case, to protect Manafort from being prosecuted twice for the same crimes.A Trump lawyer reportedly offered pardons to Manafort and Flynn as they were approached by federal investigators – raising suspicions that the pardons were proffered in exchange for loyalty to Trump. The New York Times first reported the news in 2018. In his report following the investigation, Mueller wrote: “Many of the president’s acts directed at witnesses, including discouragement of cooperation with the government and suggestions of possible future pardons, occurred in public view.”Adam Schiff, the Democratic representative of California who prosecuted the impeachment trial of Trump, said: “During the Mueller investigation, Trump’s lawyer floated a pardon to Manafort. Manafort withdrew his cooperation with prosecutors, lied, was convicted, and then Trump praised him for not ‘ratting’. Trump’s pardon now completes the corrupt scheme.”“Lawless until the bitter end,” Schiff tweeted.The congressman also noted that many serving time in federal prisons had been convicted of non-violent crimes and deserved a reprieve. “But who does Trump pardon? Those who lie, cheat or steal for him and his family,” Schiff said.Charles Kushner, 66, pleaded guilty to tax evasion and lying to the Federal Election Commission. He also pleaded guilty to witness tampering, after he retaliated against his brother-in-law William Schulder, who was cooperating with federal investigators. Kushner was accused of hiring a sex worker to seduce Schulder, videotaping the encounter and sending the tape to Schulder’s wife – Kushner’s sister.Another twist: Kushner was prosecuted by Chris Christie, a former US attorney and New Jersey governor who has been a Trump loyalist.The executive director of the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics, said: “In pardoning Paul Manafort, Roger Stone and Charles Kushner, President Trump has made it clear that he believes the purpose of the pardon is to bail out rich white men connected to him. Trump has turned an instrument of mercy and justice into just another way for him to be corrupt.”Ben Sasse, a Republican senator of Nebraska, issued a more succinct statement in reaction to the pardons: “This is rotten to the core.”It is unclear whether the president will issue more pardons, which the White House has discussed handing out “like Christmas gifts”, Axios has reported. The White House, which daily shares the president’s public schedule with media, said that on Christmas Eve Trump will be in Florida and “as the Holiday season approaches, President Trump will continue to work tirelessly for the American People. His schedule includes many meetings and calls.”