riversedge
riversedge's JournalTenants Sue Trump Over Scheme That Drove Up Their Rents
Source: nytimes
The latest legal front against the outbound president involves a maneuver that earned him and his siblings millions while lowering their taxes.
Dec. 3, 2020, 5:13 p.m. ET
President Trump will face a raft of potential legal challenges when he leaves office — from, among others, the Manhattan district attorney, the New York attorney general and perhaps the United States Justice Department.
.............................
Ms. Green is among a group of tenants in rent-regulated apartments once owned by Mr. Trump’s father who have filed a lawsuit against the president and his siblings, accusing the Trumps of a decade-long fraud to win artificially high rent increases through an invoice-padding scheme.
The scheme, first revealed in a 2018 investigation by The New York Times, involved tacking at least 20 percent onto the cost of materials purchased for the apartments, with Mr. Trump, his siblings and a cousin splitting the extra proceeds. The maneuver generated millions of dollars for each sibling, with no work required. While the siblings were still liable for income taxes, the maneuver allowed them to evade far-higher gift and estate taxes on part of the fortune they received from their father.
But the tenants paid a price. New York laws governing rent-regulated apartments allow owners to increase rents based on the costs of major capital improvements. The Trumps based their applications for rent hikes on the artificially increased invoices, so a boiler that actually cost $50,000 would generate a rent increase as if it had cost $60,000.......................................
Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/03/nyregion/trump-lawsuit-tenants.html?smid=tw-share
Joyous
https://twitter.com/JJohnsonLaw/status/1334628259246510083?s=20
The Shore Haven Apartments in Brooklyn is one of more than 30 complexes named in a lawsuit that accuses the Trumps of fraud.Credit...Dave Sanders for The New York Times
Ex-US Attorney Asks GA Officials To Probe Graham's Alleged Ballot-Toss Scheme
Source: TPM
Senate Judiciary Chairman Lindsey Graham (R-SC) presides during the fourth day of confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominee Judge Amy Coney Barrett on October 15, 2020. (Photo by Jonathan Ernst-Pool/Getty Images)
December 3, 2020 1:24 p.m.
Former U.S. Attorney Michael Moore on Thursday sent the Georgia State Election Board and Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger a request for an investigation into Senate Judiciary Chair Lindsey Graham (R-SC), who allegedly asked Raffensperger about throwing away legal ballots in the state.
“Based upon the public comments made by Secretary Raffensperger and given that the telephone call in question has been corroborated by both Secretary Raffensperger’s staff and Senator Graham, I request that the matter be fully investigated to determine if a violation of Georgia law occurred,” Moore wrote in his letter, which was first obtained by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, to the officials.
“I am particularly concerned that the chairman of the United States Senate Judiciary Committee would make any attempt to interfere with the Georgia Secretary of State as he endeavored to lawfully perform his constitutional duties in overseeing the 2020 election and the counting, and re-counting, of the votes cast in the state of Georgia,” he continued.
The attorney warned that “time is of the essence” for a potential investigation, given the upcoming Georgia Senate runoffs on January 5 early next year...............
Read more: https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/ex-us-attorney-asks-ga-officials-to-probe-grahams-alleged-ballot-toss-scheme
well, at least something is being done. Now for the Election Board to do its job.
https://twitter.com/joshtpm/status/1334581065500028928?s=20
https://twitter.com/kylegriffin1/status/1334573115683168264?s=20
Wisconsin Supreme Court Rejects Trump's Latest Election Fraud Suit
Source: daily beast
Published Dec. 03, 2020 3:26PM ET
Jonathan Ernst/Reuters
The Wisconsin Supreme Court has turned down President Trump’s request to immediately hear arguments for throwing out more than 200,000 absentee ballots from largely Democratic jurisdictions—forcing the campaign to take the more tortuous route through lower courts.
The lame-duck president had taken his fight to junk the Milwaukee and Madison postal votes straight to the Badger State’s highest bench, hoping its conservative majority would find in his favor. But four of the seven justices, despite signaling they might be receptive later to arguments that ballots were improperly submitted and counted, asserted Thursday he must file his suit in county-level courts first.
The Trump campaign announced it intended to pursue that direction immediately. On Monday, Wisconsin certified its 10 electors for President-elect Joe Biden, who carried the state by more than 20,000 votes. On Wednesday, Trump filed a separate action to overturn the state’s results in federal court. Even in the unlikely event the outgoing president’s suits succeed, Biden would still have sufficient votes in the Electoral College to become commander-in-chief next year.
Read it at FOX6
Read more: https://www.thedailybeast.com/wisconsin-supreme-court-rejects-trumps-latest-election-fraud-suit?via=twitter_page
https://twitter.com/thedailybeast/status/1334595242486607880?s=20
Why GOP's instant dismissal of Barr's election fraud denial is so concerning
Why GOP's instant dismissal of Barr's election fraud denial is so concerning
After four years of Trump, ignoring reality is no longer a reflex; it's at the center of the right’s political culture.
https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/why-gop-s-instant-dismissal-barr-s-election-fraud-denial-n1249746?cid=sm_npd_ms_tw_ma
Image: Two elephants, one black and white and the other red, interlock their trunks against red and black backgrounds.
Trump’s consistent lies are forcing the GOP into an existential crisis.Anjali Nair / MSNBC; Library of Congress
Dec. 2, 2020, 2:42 PM CST By Charlie Sykes
On Tuesday, President Donald Trump’s loyal attorney general, Bill Barr, said he has “not seen fraud on a scale that could have effected a different outcome in the election.”
If this is going to be yet another test of the GOP’s integrity, it’s probably best to keep your optimism in check.
This would have been disastrous for Trump if facts actually mattered. Fortunately for the president, the grievance movement he is building rests more on raw belief than any actual evidence that would hold up in a court of law.
Cults, after all, are built and sustained on faith, not data.
On cue, much of Trump’s supporters denounced the attorney general. Lou Dobbs of the Fox Business Network lashed out at Barr, saying he is “either a liar or a fool,” while other Trump-friendly media outlets labelled the one-time loyalist “just another card-carrying swamp rat.”
None of this is especially surprising, since actual evidence of fraud is beside the point for much of Trump’s base. They simply cannot believe that it is possible that he lost. “Does anyone believe that Biden got 15 million more votes than Obama in 2012?” Eric Trump tweeted. “This from a candidate who would go days/weeks while hardly campaigning.”
In the pro-Trump publication “American Greatness,” the theft of the election is treated as a matter of uncontestable fact. “The question is not whether the Democrats tried to steal the election; they did,” writes author Bruce Bawer. “At this point, there’s no honest question about that. The only question is whether there’s enough time to prove it in court, and whether the judges involved will dare to make honest rulings.”
DOJ has not found widespread election fraud, attorney general Barr says
Dec. 2, 202002:46
The conservative website RedState published a piece that stated “without a doubt, this election was stolen,” based on “circumstantial evidence.”
“The enthusiasm for the Trump team seemed insurmountable,”’ the author insists. “There is no way Biden and Harris jumped over that by holding rallies for 10 people at a time. I’ll die on that hill.”
This would have been disastrous for Trump if facts actually mattered.
For Republicans, the long nightmare of Trump is not even close to being over. Despite his defeat, it seems increasingly likely that Trump will continue to hold the GOP hostage, insisting that they continue to support his claim that the election was stolen from him.
...................................
Parents of 628 migrant children separated at border still have not been found, court filing says
Source: CNN
Updated 8:17 PM ET, Wed December 2, 2020
U.S. Border Patrol agents take a father and son from Honduras into custody near the U.S.-Mexico border on June 12, 2018 near Mission, Texas.
(CNN)The parents of 628 migrant children separated from their families due to Trump administration policies at the US-Mexico border between 2017 and 2018 have still not been located, according to a Wednesday court filing.
The filing from the Justice Department and the American Civil Liberties Union is part of an ongoing effort to identify and reunite families more than two years after the so-called "zero tolerance" policy was created.
As of early November, the parents of 666 children had not yet been found, according to ACLU attorney Lee Gelernt.
Since then, the parents of 38 of those children whose whereabouts were previously unknown have been found, according to Wednesday's filing. Of the 628 children whose parents haven't been found, attorneys have been in touch with another family member for 168 of them.................................
Read more: https://www.cnn.com/2020/12/02/politics/family-separation-us-border-children/index.html
another horrible mess that Biden will have to tackle.
Hiring falls off in November to slowest rate since July
Source: cnbc.com
Published Wed, Dec 2 20208:15 AM EST Updated Wed, Dec 2 202010:28 AM EST
Key Points
Private payrolls grew by 307,000 in November, a decline from the 404,000 the previous month, ADP reported.
The total was well below the Dow Jones estimate of 475,000.
Hospitality led the way in job creation, adding 95,000 positions despite increasing pressure on bars and restaurants as coronavirus cases rise.
ADP: Company hiring continues to slow in November, hitting lowest rate since the summer
Private payrolls grew at their slowest pace since July amid a deceleration in large business hiring for November, ADP’s monthly payrolls report said Wednesday.
Companies hired 307,000 workers last month, well below the 475,000 estimate from a Dow Jones survey of economists.......................................
Read more: https://www.cnbc.com/2020/12/02/private-payrolls-rose-by-307000-in-november-vs-475000-estimate-adp-says.html
This is the ad #LootingLoeffler doesn't want you to see. Retweet it far and wide.
This is the ad #LootingLoeffler doesn’t want you to see. Retweet it far and wide.
https://twitter.com/MeidasTouch/status/1332399977390166017?s=20
Oh drats!! @KLoeffler
had her lawyers write a super scary letter to us demanding we take down this video exposing her corruption. I am shaking in my boots! Please don’t retweet! #LootingLoeffler
https://twitter.com/BMeiselas/status/1332409177927401474?s=20
@MeidasTouch
Breaking: Looting Kelly Loeffler’s law firm is sending this letter threatening Georgia station managers to stop airing our #LootingLoeffler ad. The Loeffler criminal cartel is exposed and scared. We will not back down.
https://twitter.com/MeidasTouch/status/1332398861776613376?s=20
"All of you who have not said a damn word, ----Congressional #Republicans, #mitchMcConnell etc ---a
https://twitter.com/moonbreeze2/status/1334070205291565057?s=20
Is American Healing Even Possible? In an extended interview, the Reverend William J. Barber II expl
https://twitter.com/Alyssa_Milano/status/1334064039031291910?s=20
Is American Healing Even Possible?
In an extended interview, the Reverend William J. Barber II explains why healing the soul of the nation will take more than returning to “normal.”
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2020/11/william-barber-biden-trump/617235/
Adam Harris November 29, 2020
On November 7, after four days of counting votes, Democrats celebrated the end of a “long national nightmare.” And when former Vice President Joe Biden took the stage in Wilmington, Delaware, to deliver his victory speech that Saturday night, he quickly extended a hand to President Donald Trump’s supporters, who may have felt demoralized by the loss.
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“I understand the disappointment tonight,” Biden said. “I’ve lost a couple of times myself. But now let’s give each other a chance... This is a time to heal in America.” Prior to the November election, Trump and Biden supporters alike argued that if the other candidate were to be elected, “it would result in lasting harm to the country,” according to a survey from the Pew Research Center.
A week after Biden’s victory address, as the Trump campaign worked to challenge and discredit the election results while trying to get hundreds of legally cast votes thrown out on outlandish claims of fraud, the Reverend William J. Barber II took a different tack.
Read: The evangelical reckoning begins
On November 15, Barber—a co-chair of the Poor People’s Campaign, a movement based on the idea that America is in need of a moral revival—stood in the pulpit at Greenleaf Christian Church, in Goldsboro, North Carolina, preaching to a live-stream audience about unity. But his idea of healing looks different from Biden’s. “Don’t think I’ve come to make life cozy for you,” he preached, reading from the Book of Matthew. “I’ve come to cut—make a sharp knife-cut between son and father, daughter and mother, bride and mother-in-law—cut through these cozy domestic arrangements and free you for God.” It seems a strange place to start, but that’s the point, he said. “There has to be division for healing.”
I called Barber five days later to chat about that sermon, and the way he emphasized the difference between a cure and healing. We spoke about why it’s not always a good thing that when Christians are asked how they’re doing, many simply say, “Blessed and highly favored.” He said America cannot afford to go back to the “normal” it knew before Trump. “If we don’t have a politics that can have earnest conversation and debate on how your policies are going to impact the least of these, then we are in trouble,” he told me. We were scheduled to speak for 30 minutes; we ended up speaking for more than an hour.
After our initial conversation, he called me back. He had just watched Vice President Mike Pence deliver a speech in Canton, Georgia. “We are gonna keep fighting until every legal vote is counted. We are gonna keep fighting until every illegal vote is thrown out,” Pence told a cheering crowd. Barber’s vision is one of racial and economic progress, and he has risen to national prominence during the Trump administration because of his push to restore morality to the public sphere. But, I asked, how did those people cheering Pence factor into that vision? “They have been sold a bill of goods that their way of life is being threatened by the others,” he replied....................................................
DeVos knocks free college push as 'socialist takeover of higher education'
Source: USA Today
By Justine Coleman - 12/01/20 04:16 PM EST
Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos knocked the push for free college as a “socialist takeover of higher education” during an online conference Tuesday.
DeVos criticized the push during the Federal Student Aid office’s virtual conference, cautioning that a free college program would ruin the American economy. Her comments regarding the “truly insidious notion of government gift giving” come as President-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration looms 50 days away.
“We’ve heard shrill calls to cancel, to forgive, to make it all free,” she said during the conference. “Any innocuous label out there can’t obfuscate what it really is: wrong. The campaign for free college is a matter of total government control.”
“Make no mistake: It is a socialist takeover of higher education,” she continued. “Now, depending on your personal politics, some of you might not find that notion as scary as I do. But mark my words: None of you will like the way it will work.”............
Read more: https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/528219-devos-knocks-free-college-push-as-socialist-takeover-of-higher
Here's an idea: How about we close the tax loopholes that the DeVos family uses for their yachts to help fund tuition-free college?
https://twitter.com/RBReich/status/1333915628932100096?s=20
Julián Castro
@JulianCastro
·
6h
Billionaire Betsy DeVos and her family own ten yachts. She has inherited everything she owns.
But she doesn’t believe students should be able to get an education without a mountain of debt. In 50 days, our students will be better represented by a new Education Secretary.
Ricky Davila
@TheRickyDavila
·
13h
I remember GOPer @JohnCornyn
tweeting out himself drinking a beer at a bar as people were dying from a deadly virus as his protest against safety measures & voting to confirm pervert Kavanaugh, Demoness Betsy DeVos and Steven Mnuchin. He can shove his hypocrisy right up his ass.
https://twitter.com/TheRickyDavila/status/1333861393238433792?s=20
https://twitter.com/JulianCastro/status/1333963393456279552?s=20
The outgoing education secretary --Billionaire @BetsyDeVosED --- called proposals like free college and the cancellation of student loan debt ‘truly insidious.’
https://www.usnews.com/news/education-news/articles/2020-12-01/devos-blasts-bidens-higher-ed-agenda-in-last-major-policy-speech?src=usn_tw
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