Trump supporters and conspiracy theory - Part 2

[Rick Plant]

'It was all made up!' Maddow reveals bombshell Rudy Giuliani testimony about origins of Trump's big election lie

MSNBC anchor Rachel Maddow on Tuesday examined the origins of former President Donald Trump's "Big Lie" of election fraud, which she described as the "current animating force" in the Republican Party.

"I mentioned a few days ago that a Colorado lawsuit was about to become a font of information about where all this stuff came from, about how these lies and conspiracy theories about the election got invented, how they came up with this stuff, how they started propagating it," she said. "I may be wrong, and I'll correct myself if I am, but so far this has not been previously reported on TV."

Maddow noted a deposition of Rudy Giuliani, where he was "under oath explaining the due diligence he did as a lawyer, as an officer of the court, when he decided he needed to go public with these claims that the election was stolen."

Maddow explained Giuliani was asked, "As I'm hearing your testimony, in terms of eyes-on information about your claims about Dominion Voting Systems, we've got some media reports that you generally described, and then you looked at some Facebook postings that you described?"

"I don't remember if it was Facebook," Giulian replied. "Those social media posts get all one to me — Facebook, Instagram, Twitter."

"Anything else you laid eyes on?" Giuliani was asked.

"Right now, I can't recall anything else that I laid eyes on," he replied.

At another point in the deposition, Giuliani revealed that he had no evidence to back up his claim that a witness was credible. He went on to deny he was holding a trial by press conference, arguing it was actually just an investigation by press conference.

Giuliani, a former associate attorney general of the United States, argued he would be a "terrible lawyer" if he verified unfounded claims before repeating them.

"Again, this deposition from Rudy Giuliani, filed in a defamation cates, but that story he admits was just concocted is what ultimately led to the attack on the U.S. Capitol building on January 6," Maddow noted. "It's all made up."

Watch:

[Rick Plant]

Donald Trump Built a National Debt So Big (Even Before the Pandemic) That It’ll Weigh Down the Economy for Years

The “King of Debt” promised to reduce the national debt — then his tax cuts made it surge. Add in the pandemic, and he oversaw the third-biggest deficit increase of any president

Jan. 14, 2021

One of President Donald Trump’s lesser known but profoundly damaging legacies will be the explosive rise in the national debt that occurred on his watch. The financial burden that he’s inflicted on our government will wreak havoc for decades, saddling our kids and grandkids with debt.

The national debt has risen by almost $7.8 trillion during Trump’s time in office. That’s nearly twice as much as what Americans owe on student loans, car loans, credit cards and every other type of debt other than mortgages, combined, according to data from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. It amounts to about $23,500 in new federal debt for every person in the country.

The growth in the annual deficit under Trump ranks as the third-biggest increase, relative to the size of the economy, of any U.S. presidential administration, according to a calculation by a leading Washington budget maven, Eugene Steuerle, co-founder of the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center. And unlike George W. Bush and Abraham Lincoln, who oversaw the larger relative increases in deficits, Trump did not launch two foreign conflicts or have to pay for a civil war.

The National Debt Increased Under Trump Despite His Promise to Reduce It

Daily total national debt from 2009 to present.




Economists agree that we needed massive deficit spending during the COVID-19 crisis to ward off an economic cataclysm, but federal finances under Trump had become dire even before the pandemic. That happened even though the economy was booming and unemployment was at historically low levels. By the Trump administration’s own description, the pre-pandemic national debt level was already a “crisis” and a “grave threat.”

The combination of Trump’s 2017 tax cut and the lack of any serious spending restraint helped both the deficit and the debt soar. So when the once-in-a-lifetime viral disaster slammed our country and we threw more than $3 trillion into COVID-19-related stimulus, there was no longer any margin for error.

Our national debt has reached immense levels relative to our economy, nearly as high as it was at the end of World War II. But unlike 75 years ago, the massive financial overhang from Medicare and Social Security will make it dramatically more difficult to dig ourselves out of the debt ditch.

The Debt to GDP Ratio Is the Highest It's Been Since World War II

Federal debt held by the public as a percentage of gross domestic product since 1900.



Falling deeper into the red is the opposite of what Trump, the self-styled “King of Debt,” said would happen if he became president. In a March 31, 2016, interview with Bob Woodward and Robert Costa of The Washington Post, Trump said he could pay down the national debt, then about $19 trillion, “over a period of eight years” by renegotiating trade deals and spurring economic growth.

After he took office, Trump predicted that economic growth created by the 2017 tax cut, combined with the proceeds from the tariffs he imposed on a wide range of goods from numerous countries, would help eliminate the budget deficit and let the U.S. begin to pay down its debt. On July 27, 2018, he told Sean Hannity of Fox News: “We have $21 trillion in debt. When this [the 2017 tax cut] really kicks in, we’ll start paying off that debt like it’s water.”

Nine days later, he tweeted, “Because of Tariffs we will be able to start paying down large amounts of the $21 trillion in debt that has been accumulated, much by the Obama Administration.”

That’s not how it played out. When Trump took office in January 2017, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office was projecting that federal budget deficits would be 2% to 3% of our gross domestic product during Trump’s term. Instead, the deficit reached nearly 4% of gross domestic product in 2018 and 4.6% in 2019.

There were multiple culprits. Trump’s tax cuts, especially the sharp reduction in the corporate tax rate to 21% from 35%, took a big bite out of federal revenue. The CBO estimated in 2018 that the tax cut would increase deficits by about $1.9 trillion over 11 years.

Meanwhile, Trump’s claim that increased revenue from the tariffs would help eliminate (or at least reduce) our national debt hasn’t panned out. In 2018, Trump’s administration began hiking tariffs on aluminum, steel and many other products, launching what became a global trade war with China, the European Union and other countries.

By early 2019, the national debt had climbed to $22 trillion. Trump’s budget proposal for 2020 called it a “grave threat to our economic and societal prosperity” and asserted that the U.S. was experiencing a “national debt crisis.” However, that same budget proposal included substantial growth in the national debt.

By the end of 2019, the debt had risen to $23.2 trillion and more federal officials were sounding the alarm. “Not since World War II has the country seen deficits during times of low unemployment that are as large as those that we project — nor, in the past century, has it experienced large deficits for as long as we project,” Phillip Swagel, director of the CBO, said in January 2020.

Weeks later, COVID-19 erupted and made the financial situation far worse. As of Dec. 31, 2020, the national debt had jumped to $27.75 trillion, up 39% from $19.95 trillion when Trump was sworn in. The government ended its 2020 fiscal year with the portion of the national debt owed to investors, the metric favored by the CBO, at around 100% of GDP. The CBO had predicted less than a year earlier that it would take until 2030 to reach that approximate level of debt. Including the trillions owed to various governmental trust funds, the total debt is now about 130% of GDP.

Normally, this is where we’d give you Trump’s version of events. But we couldn’t get anyone to give us Trump’s side. Judd Deere, a White House spokesman, referred us to the Office of Management and Budget, which is a branch of the White House.

OMB didn’t respond to our requests. The Treasury directed us to comments made by OMB director Russell Vought in October, in which he predicted that as the pandemic eases and economic growth rebounds, the “fiscal picture” will improve. The OMB blamed legislators for deficits when Trump submitted his proposed 2021 budget: “Unfortunately, the Congress continues to reject any efforts to restrain spending. Instead, they have greatly contributed to the continued ballooning of Federal debt and deficits, putting the Nation’s fiscal future at risk.”

Still the deficit growth under Trump has been historic. Steuerle, of the Tax Policy Center, has done a comparison of every American president using a metric called the “primary deficit.” It’s defined as the deficit minus interest costs, because interest is the only budget expense that presidents and Congress can’t control unless they want to do the unthinkable and default on the debt. Steuerle examined the records of 45 presidents to see how the primary deficit had shrunk or grown relative to the size of the economy between the first and final years of each president’s administration.

Trump had the third-biggest primary deficit growth, 5.2% of GDP, behind only George W. Bush (11.7%) and Abraham Lincoln (9.4%). Bush, of course, not only passed a big tax cut, as Trump has, but also launched two wars, which greatly inflated the defense budget. Lincoln had to pay for the Civil War. By contrast, Trump’s wars have been almost entirely of the political variety.

Our national debt is now at its highest level relative to our economy since the end of World War II. After the war ended, the extraordinary military expenses disappeared, a postwar recovery began and the debt began to fall rapidly relative to the size of the economy.

But that’s not going to happen this time. When World War II ended 75 years ago, Social Security was in its infancy and Medicare didn’t exist. Today, many of our biggest and most rapidly growing expenses, especially Social Security and Medicare, are baked into the budget because of our nation’s aging population. These outlays are slated to rise sharply. Steuerle recently calculated that Social Security, health care and interest costs are projected to absorb 122% of the total growth in federal revenues from 2019 to 2030.

What's more, our investment in the future — things like research and development, education, infrastructure, workforce training and such — is declining as a proportion of the budget. OMB data shows that in 1970, mandatory spending (such as Social Security and Medicare, but not including interest on the debt) and investment each made up around 30% of total federal spending. But as of 2019, the most recent available year, mandatory spending had doubled to around 61% of total federal spending while investment fell by more than half, to around 12.5%.

Mandatory Spending Outstrips Investment in the Future

Mandatory and investment spending as a percentage of total U.S. government spending from 1970 to 2019. Mandatory (also known as nondiscretionary) spending includes programs such as Social Security and Medicare, while investment includes infrastructure, research and development, education and training.



Spending more and more on past promises and shrinking the proportion of spending for the future doesn’t bode well for our kids and grandkids. Had Trump done what he said he’d do and paid off part of the national debt before COVID-19 struck rather than adding significantly to the debt, the situation would be considerably less dire. And had Trump done a better job of coping with COVID-19, the economic and human costs would’ve been greatly reduced.

In addition to forcing us to reduce the proportion of the budget spent on the future to help pay for the past, there’s a second reason that huge and growing budget deficits matter: interest costs.

Bigger debt ultimately means bigger interest costs, even in an era when the Federal Reserve has forced down Treasury rates to ultralow levels. The government’s interest cost (including interest paid to government trust funds) was around $523 billion in the 2020 fiscal year. That outstrips all spending on education, employment training, research and social services, Treasury data shows.

Interest costs are way below where they’d be if the Fed hadn’t forced rates down to try to stimulate the economy and mitigate the impact of the pandemic. One-year Treasury securities cost taxpayers a minuscule 0.10% in interest at year-end, down from 1.59% at the end of 2019. The 10-year Treasury rate was 0.93%, down from 1.92%.

In late December, the Fed reported boosting its Treasury holdings by more than $2 trillion from a year earlier. The increase is primarily in longer-term securities. That has kept the federal government from having to raise trillions of dollars in the capital markets, and therefore has kept longer-term interest rates way below where they would otherwise be.

But unless something changes, even the Fed’s promise to keep interest rates near current levels for several years won’t fend off future problems. Most of the government’s borrowing to fund pandemic relief has been shorter-term borrowing that will have to be refinanced in the coming years. If rates rise, so will the government’s interest expense.

Even with rates where they are, interest on the debt is already going to be the fastest-growing budget category this decade, according to the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, which tracks the issue. Annual net interest costs are projected to double in 10 years and grow so large beyond 2030 that interest will become a driving factor in annual deficit growth, according to Peterson estimates.

Listen to what CBO Director Swagel had to say on the subject in a report to congressional Republicans in December: “Although the current low interest rates indicate that the debt is manageable for now and that the United States is not facing an immediate fiscal crisis, in which interest rates abruptly escalated or other disruptions occurred, the risk and potential budgetary consequences of such a crisis become greater over time.”

Trump was asked about this risk during a virtual discussion with the Economic Club of New York last October. “If we have another stimulus bill out of Congress, are you worried that the entire amount of federal debt will be too large for us to pay off in a sensible way?” asked David Rubenstein, a private equity executive.

Trump answered by falsely claiming that the U.S. was starting to pay off the national debt before the pandemic, and he claimed that future economic growth would let it do so. “I think you’re going to see tremendous growth, David, and the growth is going to get it done,” Trump said.

Two months later, when Congress finally approved $900 billion of economic stimulus that is being financed with debt, Trump challenged Congress to spend — and borrow — even more. Then he went golfing.

https://www.propublica.org/article/national-debt-trump

[Rick Plant]

NYT unmasks researchers who discovered Trump computers talking to Russian bank in 2016

One of the largest unanswered questions about former President Donald Trump and Russia came into sharper focus on Thursday after The New York Times published a bombshell new report by Charlie Savage and Adam Goldman.

The story focused on the mystery of Trump Organization computer servers communicating with "Kremlin-linked" Alfa Bank in Russia.

Interest in the case has grown since special counsel John Durham indicted Hillary Clinton 2016 campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann for allegedly lying to the FBI when he came forward to alert them to the unusual traffic.

On Thursday, CNN reported Durham had issued new subpoenas in the case and noted it was "an indication that Durham could be trying to build a broader criminal case, according to people briefed on the matter."

The researchers who uncovered the traffic were not identified by Durham in the indictment, but were unmasked by The Times.

"Originator-1" is April Lorenzen, the chief data scientist at Zetalytics. "Researcher-1" is Georgia Tech computer scientist Manos Antonakakis. "Researcher-2" is David Dagon, a Georgia Institute of Technology data scientist.

The researchers are standing by their findings.

Dagon's lawyer told the newspaper the results "have been validated and are reproducible. The findings of the researchers were true then and remain true today; reports that these findings were innocuous or a hoax are simply wrong."

The newspaper noted what was going on remains a mystery.

"The F.B.I., which had already started its Trump-Russia investigation before it heard about the possible Trump-Alfa connections, quickly dismissed the suspicions, apparently concluding the interactions were probably caused by marketing emails sent by an outside firm using a domain registered to the Trump Organization," the newspaper reported. "A 2018 analysis commissioned by the Senate, made public this month, detailed technical reasons to doubt that marketing emails were the cause."

And the report noted the Alfa Bank server traffic was not the only thing discovered and taken to the federal government.

"Their other set of concerns centered on data suggesting that a YotaPhone — a Russian-made smartphone rarely seen in the United States — had been used from networks serving the White House, Trump Tower and Spectrum Health, a Michigan hospital company whose server had also interacted with the Trump server," the newspaper reported. "Mr. Sussmann relayed their YotaPhone findings to counterintelligence officials at the C.I.A. in February 2017, the people said. It is not clear whether the government ever investigated them."

The newspaper also reported on how the Pentagon helped discover the traffic.

"The involvement of the researchers traces back to the spring of 2016. Darpa, the Pentagon's research funding agency, wanted to commission data scientists to develop the use of so-called DNS logs, records of when servers have prepared to communicate with other servers over the internet, as a tool for hacking investigations," the newspaper reported. "Darpa identified Georgia Tech as a potential recipient of funding and encouraged researchers there to develop examples."

While sifting through the data, Lorenzen "noticed an odd pattern: a server called mail1.trump-email.com appeared to be communicating almost exclusively with servers at Alfa Bank and Spectrum Health."

https://www.rawstory.com/trump-alfa/

[Rick Plant]

Uh oh they got caught.

Newly unearthed emails undercut key charge made in Bill Barr-appointed prosecutor's indictment: NYT

Emails unearthed by the New York Times undercut a key allegation made by John Durham, the prosecutor appointed by former Attorney General Bill Barr to investigate the FBI's 2016 probe of the Trump campaign.

Specifically, the indictment alleged that former Hillary Clinton attorney Michael Sussman alerted the FBI to allegedly suspicious computer traffic between a Trump Tower server and a server connected to a Russian bank despite the fact that the people who uncovered the traffic did not think it was anything nefarious.

However, the Times report shows that emails between the researchers suggest that they took the possibility of Trump officials having back-channel communications with the Russian bank very seriously at the time of their investigation.

As evidence, the indictment cited an email from one researcher that said "it was 'plausible' in the 'narrow scope'" that the Trump campaign and the bank had used the servers to obfuscate their communications.

However, the full email obtained by the Times puts the quotes cited in the Durham indictment in a much different context.

"In the narrow scope of what you have defined above, I agree wholeheartedly that it is plausible," wrote the researcher. "If the white paper intends to say that there are communications between at least Alfa and Trump, which are being intentionally hidden by Alfa and Trump I absolutely believe that is the case."

Another example comes from an email written by David Dagon, a Georgia Institute of Technology data scientist who was one of the researchers investigating the server traffic.

"The indictment also suggests Mr. Dagon's support for the paper's hypothesis was qualified, describing his email response as 'acknowledging that questions remained, but stating, in substance and in part, that the paper should be shared with government officials,'" writes the Times. "The text of that email shows Mr. Dagon was forcefully supportive. He proposed editing the paper to declare as 'fact' that it was clear 'that there are hidden communications between Trump and Alfa Bank,' and said he believed the findings met the probable cause standard to open a criminal investigation."

Read the whole report here:

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/30/us/politics/trump-alfa-bank-indictment.html

[Rick Plant]

'MAGA defectors' threaten to expose Trump's 'unhinged' behavior in wake of Omarosa decision

A New York arbitrator's decision last week, in a lawsuit involving former White House adviser and Apprentice contestant Omarosa Manigault Newman, could open the floodgates for Donald Trump's staff and associates to publicly discuss his "unlawful, unethical, unhinged" behavior, according to Manigault Newman.

Trump has for years used "scary-sounding, multimillion-dollar" non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) to bar staff and associates from divulging information about his political and corporate empires, the Daily Beast reported Monday.

However, New York arbitrator Andrew Brown ruled that in Newman's case, the NDA was too expansive to enforce.

"But this ruling is notable for far more than its implications for Omarosa," the Daily Beast reported. "Namely, it could provide a precedent for MAGA defectors and other spurned associates who, intimidated by the vengefully litigious former president, have kept quiet about some of their inside knowledge."

Manigault Newman told the Daily Beast she believes the arbitrator's decision will have a "massive impact" due to "the way Trump treats people when he's done with them," pointing to public humiliations such as getting fired by tweet.

"I really do feel that folks who have been mistreated or embarrassed, who certainly have information to share will go, 'Hmm—well they haven't heard this story,'" Manigault Newman said. "There were so many people in the room when he was doing things that were so clearly unlawful, unethical, unhinged—whatever 'un-' you want to use—especially people in the White House. It's not because they're unloyal or don't care about the office or the country; it's because of how he treated people."

Miles Michael, who worked as an art director on The Apprentice, told the Daily Beast he already feels empowered to speak out despite the NDAs he signed.

"Why should people be stopped from talking about such a public figure based on an NDA that is ostensibly protecting a completely irrelevant TV show?" Michael said.

Brown's ruling follows a federal judge's decision earlier this year in the case of former Trump campaign staffer Jessica Denson, who is also alleging sexual discrimination. In Denson's case, the judge similarly ruled that the NDA she signed was too expansive.

"Although both decisions were specific to the campaign's NDA, the ripples could hit other parts of Trumpland, because of one fact of convenience that has now become extraordinarily inconvenient for Trump: The campaign's agreement was essentially a boilerplate copy of the NDAs for both the Trump Organization and the White House during his administration," the site reports. "The Trump administration's NDA program also appeared unique in that incoming interns were threatened with 'criminal prosecution' and a cartoon image of a jailhouse, according to Trump White House documents and slides from a PowerPoint-type presentation reviewed by The Daily Beast."

https://www.rawstory.com/donald-trump-ndas/


Trump’s Sprawling Use of NDAs Now Threatens to Humiliate Him
https://www.thedailybeast.com/donald-trumps-sprawling-use-of-ndas-now-threatens-to-humiliate-him-non-disclosure-agreement-omarosa?ref=scroll

[Rick Plant]

Good. More court appearances for Criminal Donald. Nobody is above the law.   

Trouble for Trump as court calls for depositions to take place by year’s end

Former President Donald Trump will be deposed by the end of 2021 as part of a defamation case against him by a former contestant on his reality TV show.

Former "The Apprentice" contestant Summer Zervos had accused Trump of kissing her against her will at Trump Tower in New York and later groping her in a California hotel. Zervos sued Trump for defamation in 2017 after he denied the allegations during the 2016 presidential campaign.

On Monday, a law clerk for New York State Judge Jennifer Schechter instructed lawyers for both Trump and Zervos to complete the factual discovery phase – including depositions -- by December 23, according to Insider.

"I do want to have an order entered and have the close of that discovery before Christmas," said law clerk Michael Rand.

Rand "said that there was no more reason for delay, now that a prior stay on the case has been lifted during Trump's post-presidency," reported Law & Crime. "Before Trump left office, the court had to accommodate the time demands involving a sitting president."

A trial date will be set for the early part of 2022.

https://www.rawstory.com/trouble-for-trump-as-judge-says-theres-no-reason-he-cant-be-deposed/

[Rick Plant]

Trump's Georgia election meddling puts him 'at substantial risk of charges predicated on multiple crimes': legal experts



Donald Trump is still being investigated by law enforcement officials in Georgia for his efforts to get Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

However, a group of seven legal experts published an analysis for the Brookings Institute on Monday arguing that Trump's actions in Georgia leave him "at substantial risk of possible state charges predicated on multiple crimes."

The officials then outlined exactly what Trump could potentially be charged with.

"These charges potentially include: criminal solicitation to commit election fraud; intentional interference with performance of election duties; conspiracy to commit election fraud; criminal solicitation; and state RICO violations," they write. "Our conclusion is based entirely on publicly available reporting and evidence, including the recording of Trump's call to Raffensperger."

During the infamous phone call, Trump asked Raffensperger if he could "find" the 11,779 votes that he would need to overtake President Joe Biden's lead in the state.

The legal experts say that this is relevant because it ties into Trump's broader scheme to overturn the election results in other key swing states won by Biden, and shows a corrupt intent to simply manipulate voting totals to remain in power.

This, they argue, is why prosecutors should give serious consideration to charging Trump criminally.

"Georgia state prosecutors certainly have the power to investigate and charge a former president for willfully reaching into their jurisdiction to allegedly transgress their laws and interfere with their officials on a matter of utmost state interest: the administration of Georgia's election procedures," they write.

The group of legal experts includes former Obama administration ethics attorney Norm Eisen and former Reagan administration deputy solicitor general Donald Ayer.

Read the full report here (PDF).

https://www.rawstory.com/trump-2020-election-crimes/