Tag Archives: The Trump Organization

Pettiness On Parade

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Mayor de Blasio will be leaving office soon. His term in office has not been without some pretty major scandals (generally ignored by the media). In March 2019, The Federalist Papers reported that the Mayor’s wife, Chirlane McCray, was given $850 million for a mental health program she was spearheading. The second major scandal involved the horse-drawn carriages in Central Park.

The article reports:

The program, ThriveNYC, has fallen far behind its goals and appears to be a massive failure for the city.

But even in spite of that the city has decided to increase the budget of the program which is expected to spend $5 billion in the next five years.

The program was set up to screen 78,000 new mothers for post-natal depression. What actually happened between 2016 and 2018 was that slightly more than 28,000 patients were screened and 570 were offered help. Narcan kits were also handed out, but there are no statistics saying how many were used. When an attempt was made to acquire a budget, they received two budgets with very different numbers. No one seems to know exactly how the money was spent.

There was also the matter of the horses in Central Park (article here). In early 2014, Mayor de Blasio announced that he was going to put a high priority on removing the horse-drawn carriages from Central Park. After all, asking horses to pull carriages in a world of automobiles is cruel. Animal rights groups backed him up. Well, not so fast. It seems that Steve Nislick, chief executive officer of a New Jersey-based real-estate development company, Edison Properties, has an interest in removing the horses–Edison Properties owns multiple properties in the area where the stables for the horses are located. New development of those lots could be quite profitable.

Now to today’s scandal. Mayor de Blasio wants to break the Trump organization’s contract to run the Ferry Point golf course in the Bronx by Nov. 14 – a move that could cost the city over $30 million. As if the city didn’t have enough financial challenges.

Red State reported yesterday:

Former President Donald Trump got a reprieve from the city’s efforts to evict his company from the Ferry Point golf course.

Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Debra James granted the Trump Organization a temporary stay from Mayor de Blasio’s effort to break the company’s contract to run the Bronx course by Nov. 14 – a move that could cost the city over $30 million.

After the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, de Blasio ended contracts for Trump’s company to operate the Central Park Carousel, the Wollman and Lasker ice rinks in the park, and the Bronx golf course.

The city’s Parks Department quickly picked new operators for the ice rinks and eventually found a new company to run the the carousel. It also awarded a new license for the golf course to a Georgia-based company, Bobby Jones Links.

The Trump Organization sued over the golf contract, maintaining in court papers that the deal was nixed over politics.

Judge James granted a stay…

Stay tuned for more foolishness out of New York City.

 

Who Is Felix Satar?

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On September 16th Judicial Watch posted the following:

Judicial Watch announced today it filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the Department of Justice seeking all records of communications, including FBI 302 interview reports and offer agreements between former Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s office and Felix Sater, a former Trump organization official who was recently confirmed to be an informant for the FBI and CIA. Sater reportedly pushed a Russian real estate deal in 2016 while working at the Trump organization.

Sater reportedly “began working with the Federal Bureau of Investigation in 1998, after he was caught in a stock-fraud scheme.” It was Andrew Weissmann who, as supervising assistant U.S. attorney, signed the agreement that brought Sater on as a government informant. Federal prosecutors wrote a letter to Sater’s sentencing judge on August 27, 2009, in an effort to get him a lighter sentence: “Sater’s cooperation was of a depth and breadth rarely seen.”

Sater also was reportedly a CIA informant in the mid-2000s for the CIA during his undercover work with Russian military and intelligence officers.

The Mueller report mentions Sater more than 100 times but fails to mention that he was an active undercover informant for the FBI/CIA for more than two decades. In 2017, Sater was the subject of two interviews conducted under a proffer agreement with Mueller’s office according to page 69, footnote 304 of Mueller’s report on his Russian collusion investigation.

Judicial Watch filed the lawsuit in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia after Mueller’s office, a component of the DOJ, failed to respond to a June 12, 2019, FOIA request for FBI “302” interview reports of Sater that are referred to in the Mueller report; any offer agreements between Sater and the U.S. government; and records of communications between Sater and government employees (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of Justice (No. 1:19-cv-02568)).

In a June 25, 2019 report, Judicial Watch chief investigative reporter Micah Morrison highlighted that:

Beginning in late 2015, Sater repeatedly tried to arrange for [Trump attorney Michael] Cohen and candidate Trump, as representatives of the Trump Organization, to travel to Russia to meet with Russian government officials and possible financing partners.

Though his proposal appears to have been rejected by the Trump campaign, Sater persisted. “Into the spring of 2016,” the Mueller Report notes, “Sater and Cohen continued to discuss a trip to Moscow.” Sater emails Cohen that he is trying to arrange a meeting between “the 2 big guys,” Putin and Trump.

Sater’s re-emergence “suggests the possibility of a more sinister counter-narrative: that someone may have been trying to lure Trump into a trap—a politically damaging entanglement with Moscow money,” Morrison wrote.

Sater reportedly testified for eight hours in a closed-door session before the Schiff-led intelligence committee on July 9, 2019. Sater previously said he believes the Trump Tower Moscow project was no different from other Trump real estate projects that were also in the works. “I have worked on probably five or six Trump Tower projects in the United States and at least that many internationally….”

“Was a Russian real estate deal being pushed on the Trump Organization part of a set-up by a FBI/CIA informant?” Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said. “The new Judicial Watch lawsuit attempts to shed light on what could be another aspect of Deep State abusive Spygate operation targeting President Trump.”

This is just ugly. As more of this information comes out, I hope there is a huge outcry from the public to put the people responsible for misusing government agencies in jail. If that does not happen, we no longer have a justice system in America.

George Washington Didn’t Have These Problems

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When George Washington became President, he was a very wealthy man. He had been a successful land surveyor who used his profits to buy land in Virginia. He was a successful farmer, and eventually grew his Mount Vernon farm from 2,000 acres to 8,000 acres. Because America was a very different place then, he was allowed to enjoy the profits of his farm by putting other people in charge of it during his time in the White House. Class warfare had not yet reared its ugly head, and Americans were working together to build their country. Unfortunately, we seem to have lost that spirit.

On Thursday, Townhall.com posted an article about the Senate Confirmation Hearings for Ben Carson as Secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren spent a large part of her questioning wanting to make sure that no company connected with Donald Trump would be involved in any HUD projects during the time that Donald Trump was President. I agree that no company connected with Donald Trump should be given preferential treatment, but should they be discriminated against if they are the lowest bidder on a project?

The article reports:

Warren repeatedly pressed Carson over whether he could assure the American people that not a single taxpayer dollar would go towards contracts with any real estate companies linked to the president-elect.

“Can you assure me that not a single taxpayer dollar you give out will financially benefit the president-elect or his family?” Warren asked Carson.

The retired neurosurgeon promised he would not “play favorites.”

“I can assure you that the things that I do are driven by a sense of morals and values,” he said.

“It’s not about your good faith,” she replied. “My concern is whether or not, among the billions of dollars you will be responsible for handing out in grants and loans, can you just assure us that not $1 will go to benefit either the president-elect or his family?”

The article concludes:

“The problem is that you can’t assure us that HUD money — not of $10 varieties but of multimillion-dollar varieties — will not end up in the president-elect’s pockets,” Warren responded.

Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown, the lead Democrat on the banking panel, echoed concerns raised by Warren.

Trump has an interest in at least one low-income hosing development — Starrett City — which Brown said posed an inherent conflict for the new leader of HUD.

Starrett City is a massive development in Brooklyn that sends Trump millions in revenue through rent. In his financial disclosures filed as president, Trump lists his 4 percent share in the asset as being worth between $5 million and $25 million. 

Brown pressed Carson to stay in contact with the committee if he — or anyone at HUD — has communications with anyone in the Trump Organization or the White House about development projects.

Carson said he would be happy to set up a process that identifies conflicts.

This is an example of why Ben Carson, as smart and honest as he is, should never be President. He was just too nice to this awful lady. I am not supporting corruption, but if Trump Enterprises can do a job better and cheaper than another company, Trump Enterprises should get the job. All you need is a blind bidding process. This is much ado about nothing.

One thing we all need to remember about having Donald Trump in the White House is that he is very rich. He doesn’t need to cheat to get rich. He doesn’t need to take donations to a foundation from foreign countries that want favors. He doesn’t need to take million dollar vacations on the taxpayers’ money. He doesn’t need to take items out of the White House when he leaves (if you doubt that the Clintons did that, read the GAO report (link and article here). There are also enough Trump resorts around the world to accommodate his vacations.

Senator Warren wasted her time during the confirmation hearings. She should have asked Dr. Carson how he plans to help poor families escape poverty. He is certainly an example of the fact that it can be done. If the government were more concerned about helping people escape poverty rather than simply adding to the bloated bureaucracy that only continues if they remain in poverty, the federal deficit would be considerably lower. It will be refreshing to see a HUD Secretary who wants to decrease the number of people dependent on government rather than grow the government infrastructure that benefits the government more than the poor.