Category Archives: Donald Trump

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The New York attorney general is investigating the former president for manipulating the value of his properties in ways that benefit him. Its something were familiar with at Forbes, because Trump tried to mislead us about his financial information for decades. This is the third in aseriesof stories digging deeper into the numbers.

H

igh on a cliff overlooking the Pacific Ocean sits a patch of land offering 18 award-winning holes of golf, a cluster of multimillion-dollar mansionsand a potential headache for its developer, Donald Trump.

New York Attorney General Letitia James is investigating Trumps dealings at the property, called Trump National Golf Club Los Angeles, as part of her probe into whether Trump exaggerated the value of his holdings to his lenders, insurers and the Internal Revenue Service.

One of James claims: that Trump valued unsold lots at the property at $4.5 million, even after getting an appraisal valuing lots there at $1.1 million.

Thats not surprising, given what Trump claimed to Forbes over the years. Trump bought the 261-acre property for a reported $27 million in 2002, after a landslide wiped out part of the golf course and the previous owners declared bankruptcy. He had big plans to rebuild the course and surround it with mansions. In 2005, Trump said he had 75 lots at the property and planned to sell 75 homes on them for $10 million each. By 2009, things were going so well at Trump Los Angelesdespite the nationwide real estate crashthat Trumps chief financial officer, Allen Weisselberg, said buyers were snapping up houses for around $10 million and empty lots for $8 million. Later that year, a mega deal: Weisselberg revealed Trump had sold a home there for $28 million.

Except most of that didnt happen. Trump didnt really have 75 lotshe had 36, plus two other tracts of land that had yet to be approved for development. One of those tracts is still stuck in the approval process, two decades after Trump bought the property. The second is now a driving rangeand a subject of James investigation.

And those supposed sales? Lot buyers were never shelling out $8 millionor anything close to itaccording to an analysis of property records. Trump offloaded two of his best lots for about $4 million each in 2007, near the height of the real estate bubble, but didnt sell the rest until years later, collecting less than $2 million apiece for most of them. There was no $28 million mega home sale either. Property records show Trump built and sold a half dozen houses at Trump Los Angeles, including four for between $3.2 million and $4.2 million and one for $7.2 million. His biggest sale, by far: When billionaire Phil Ruffin, Trumps close friend and business partner, laid out $12.5 million for a mansion to kickoff sales at the property in 2006. Ruffin sold the place nine years later, taking a $5.8 million loss.

The Trump Organization did not respond to a request for comment for this story. Trump has filed suit against the New York attorney general and has criticized her investigation as a partisan witch hunt. (James is a Democrat who is running for reelection after a brief campaign for New York governor.)

The lies extended beyond Forbes, apparently to Trumps lenders and insurers, who received personal balance sheets from the Trump Organization. According to the New York attorney general, Trumps 2012 balance sheet valued lots at the property at $4.5 million apiece, even though a Trump-commissioned appraisal had valued lots at a quarter of that price. In fact, Trump was never able to sell a single lotnot even one of his biggest parcels with the best ocean viewsfor $4.5 million, according to property records. The average sale price for a Trump Los Angeles lot: $1.9 million.

He also seems to have misled lenders and insurers about how many lots he had. A note accompanying Trumps 2012 balance sheet, submitted to Congress in 2019 by former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen, says the club is presently zoned for 75 home sites, including 52 home sites available for sale as of June 2012no mention that more than half the propertys lots were actually years away from being approved for sale, or that 16 of them were currently being used as a driving range with little chance of ever being converted into homes. The real numbers, according to the records: Trump had about 30 sites available for sale at the time, including two completed homes that had failed to sell for years.

Its the patch of 16 lots that Trump never tried to sell that has become a major focus of James investigation. Trump spent years fighting for approval to build homes on the parcel, which was considered at risk of another landslide. In the meantime, he got permission to use the area as his golf courses driving range and putting green.

It would likely take years, and millions of dollars, to make the land safe enough to be approved for home development. So, Trump came up with a different way to cash in on his troubled piece of land: He used it to cut his tax bill. In 2014, he struck a deal with a local land conservancy. Trump donated a conservation easement over the tract, promising to keep it as green space instead of trying to turn it into homes. In exchange, he could deduct the value of the giftwhich he had appraised at $25 millionon his taxes. Another perk: He got to keep using the property as a driving range for his paying customers. A good deal, even if the optics made his lawyer nervous.

Some could argue that as long as he is operating the golf course, he would continue to keep the driving range, Trump attorney Sheri Dillon wrote at the time, in an internal email obtained by James. Effectively, the US taxpayers are paying him to do exactly what he would already do anyway.

The New York attorney general, meanwhile, is taking aim at a different aspect of the deal: how Trump arrived at $25 million for the value of his gift. The higher the value of the land Trump agreed not to develop, the more he could deduct on his taxes. According to James, the Trump Organization and the appraisers it hired used a number of tactics to inflate their estimate, including downplaying the time and cost required to make the lots safe and lowballing the value of Trump keeping the driving range.

According to court filings, Trump submitted the questionable appraisal to the IRS and got more than $5 million in federal tax benefits between 2014 and 2018, thanks to the conservation easement at Trump Los Angeles and a similar agreement Trump made at a property he owns in New York state.

Trump, one appraiser wrote to another, according to the court filings, is fighting for every $1.

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How Donald Trump Inflated The Value Of His Los Angeles LandAnd Got A Tax Break - Forbes

Whatever else it is, this old honor culture has deepened todays identity politics. Ostracized from the genteel establishment, many working-class Wyomingites see themselves in these new shows of Trumpian bravado. Like other Americans, they feel a sense of kinship with those who act like them. As Ms. Stubson lamented, We had never been able to connect to the larger community. Her husband, Tim Stubson, a former Wyoming representative, admitted that there was a current there that we were not aware of.

Honor culture isnt about just identity, though. This primitive code also seems indispensable to those Republicans radicalized by todays polarized politics. If one is persuaded that the left is on the verge of destroying American civilization, then electing as many fearless fighters and strongmen as possible is the order of the day. That is why a prominent MAGA donor like Tom Klingenstein said he sees Mr. Trump as just what the doctor ordered in these revolutionary times.

Enter Harriet Hageman, Mr. Trumps proxy candidate in his war against Ms. Cheney. A lawyer who once aligned with the old guard, Ms. Hageman broke from Ms. Cheneys clique to pursue power. Attuned to Wyomings new right, her first campaign ad is already appealing to the states deeply rooted honor culture. It accuses Ms. Cheney of breaking the code of the West, one that requires loyalty, honor and a willingness to fight for compatriots.

Ms. Cheney, though, is fighting on behalf of her own code of honor. Hers is driven by a fidelity to what the Yale political theorist Steven Smith calls enlightened patriotism, one that insists on loyalty to a particular constitutional form that we call liberal democracy or constitutional democracy.

Such patriotism has always been in tension with the motto my country, right or wrong, because it is beholden to abstract, creedal principles, such as equality, individualism and the rule of law. And because these principles are open to interpretation, patriotism in the United States has long had a distinctly critical, questioning character. Mr. Smith even suggests that it birthed the nation, since the American revolutionaries regarded themselves as the true British patriots, not traitors.

Not unlike those British subjects facing a subversive king, Ms. Cheney had no real choice when faced with Mr. Trumps assault on our constitutional order. To Ms. Cheney and her Republican supporters in Wyoming it would have been shameful to remain loyal to Mr. Trump. This is why, on the first anniversary of the Capitol invasion, she admonished on Twitter, Anyone who denies the truth of what happened on January 6th ought to be ashamed of themselves.

Beneath the surface of their honor feud lurk clashing understandings of political ambition. Unlike Mr. Trump, Ms. Cheney is seeking the esteem of future generations by doing whats in the public interest even if she is cast out of office for doing so. Ms. Cheney told a Wyoming paper that just moments before her fellow Republicans pushed her out of House leadership, she warned them that history was watching.

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Opinion | Why Donald Trump and Liz Cheney Are Locked in an Endless Feud - The New York Times

A series of new remarks by Donald J. Trump about the aftermath of the 2020 election and new disclosures about his actions in trying to forestall its result including discussing the use of the national security apparatus to seize voting machines have stripped away any pretense that the events of Jan. 6, 2021, were anything but the culmination of the former presidents single-minded pursuit of retaining power.

Mr. Trump said on Sunday that Mike Pence could have overturned the election, acknowledging for the first time that the aim of the pressure campaign he focused on his vice president had simply been to change the elections result, not just to buy time to root out supposed fraud, as he had long insisted. Those efforts ended at the Capitol with a violent riot of Trump supporters demanding that Mr. Pence block the Electoral College vote.

Over the weekend, Mr. Trump also dangled, for the first time, that he could issue pardons to anyone facing charges for participating in the Jan. 6 attack if he is elected president again the latest example of a yearslong flirtation with political violence.

And, ignoring what happened the last time he encouraged a mass demonstration, Mr. Trump urged his supporters to gather in the biggest protests we have ever had if prosecutors in New York and Atlanta moved further against him. The prosecutor examining Mr. Trumps efforts to overturn the election in Georgia immediately asked the F.B.I. to conduct a risk assessment of her buildings security.

The events of Jan. 6 played out so publicly and so brutally the instigating speech by Mr. Trump, the flag-waving march to the Capitol, the violent clashes with the police, the defiling of the seat of democracy and have since been so extensively re-examined that at times it can seem as if there were little more to be discovered about what led up to that day.

Then, The New York Times reported this week that Mr. Trump himself had directed his lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani, to ask the Department of Homeland Security whether it could legally seize voting machines in three key swing states. Mr. Trump also raised, in an Oval Office meeting with Attorney General William P. Barr, the possibility of the Justice Departments seizing the machines.

Both ideas quickly fizzled.

But historians say the episodes and Mr. Trumps new comments acknowledging his determination to stay in power and his effective embrace of the Jan. 6 rioters at the Capitol, who he said must be treated fairly have newly underscored the fragility of the nations democratic systems.

Jeffrey Engel, director of the Center for Presidential History at Southern Methodist University, said voters were understandably desensitized, if not numb, after a year in which Mr. Trump methodically sought to undermine faith in the electoral process.

I actually think the American public is dramatically underplaying how significant and dangerous this is, he said, because we cannot process the basic truth of what we are learning about President Trumps efforts which is weve never had a president before who fundamentally placed his own personal interests above the nations.

Already, Mr. Trump is gearing up for a potential third run for the White House, announcing on Monday that his political accounts had banked $122 million a show of financial force as some polls show his support softening among Republicans.

In the year since he left office, he has systematically tried to remove those who were obstacles to him in 2020 and its aftermath: seeking to drive out of office the Republicans who voted to impeach him on charges of inciting the riot, recruiting challengers to Republican officials who certified the 2020 vote, and backing new candidates to serve as election administrators and legislators in key states.

Mr. Trump has made clear he is not necessarily seeking more Republican officials. He wants more election-denying Republican officials.

On Tuesday, Mr. Trump appeared in a new television ad attacking Gov. Brian Kemp, Republican of Georgia, with whom he has feuded for refusing to overturn the result there. He also hosted a fund-raiser at Mar-a-Lago for Joe Kent, a Republican in Washington who is challenging one of the House Republicans who voted to impeach him.

And on Wednesday, Tudor Dixon, a Republican candidate for governor of Michigan, where Mr. Trump lost and sought to undermine the results, is holding a Mar-a-Lago fund-raiser of her own.

Meanwhile, congressional investigators with the Democratic-led Jan. 6 commission are busily examining what took place inside the White House in the weeks and months leading up to that day, interviewing senior administration officials and issuing subpoenas. A central focus of their inquiry is the attempt by Mr. Trumps legal team and advisers to persuade him to use his presidential powers to deploy national security agencies to seize voting machines.

It has been known for months that some advisers, including the lawyer Sidney Powell and Mr. Trumps former national security adviser, Michael T. Flynn, pitched Mr. Trump in December 2020 on using the military to seize the machines in order to check the validity of their tallies. But new accounts suggest that Mr. Trump was more receptive to this even taking steps to act on some ideas than previously understood.

Donald Trumps a constitutional wrecking ball, said Representative Jake Auchincloss, a freshman Democrat from Massachusetts, who saw the mob overrun his workplace in his first days on Capitol Hill. To borrow a term from the financial markets, thats priced in. So his revelations and his rhetoric are important. They are a clear and present threat to our democracy. But theyre also priced in.

The real question is for congressional Republicans, Mr. Auchincloss said: They know as well as we do what threat he poses to our constitutional order. Are they going to stand up to him?

Mr. Trumps discussion of pardons and of Mr. Pences potential to overturn the election, as well as his encouragement of another mass rally against law-enforcement officials were met mostly with a shrug among Capitol Hill Republicans.

Im just glad that there were people in the right places and that the system worked I mean, obviously, people who had positions of responsibility held their ground even when being asked to do things that they knew they shouldnt do, said Senator John Thune of South Dakota, the No. 2 Republican, who has occasionally clashed with Mr. Trump. Things may have been bent a little bit, but they didnt break.

Senator Kevin Cramer, Republican of North Dakota, said that at the end of the day, as contentious as Jan. 6 was, as confrontational as that whole process was, the process worked.

A rare voice of dissent was Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming, one of the few outspoken Republican critics of Mr. Trump and the top Republican on the Jan. 6 committee.

He has acknowledged he was trying to overturn the election, Ms. Cheney wrote on Twitter on Tuesday. He is making clear he would do this all again if given the chance.

Long before the Capitol riot, Mr. Trump spoke approvingly of political violence among his supporters.

In 2015, he said of a protester at one of his rallies, Maybe he should have been roughed up. In 2016, he floated the idea of paying the legal fees of supporters who turned violent.

While president, he said on Twitter, When the looting starts, the shooting starts, in a warning to demonstrators after the police killing of George Floyd. And in the first 2020 presidential debate, Mr. Trump famously declined to condemn white supremacist groups like the Proud Boys for their role in creating violence.

Stand back and stand by, Mr. Trump had urged the Proud Boys. Members of the far-fight group cheered for what they took as encouragement from the commander in chief.

He is using his supporters as his own kind of militia, said Douglas Brinkley, a professor of history at Rice University. Mr. Trump, he said, was essentially telling his followers to be ready because this could end up being the new civil war.

He is just wanting to have people angry and ready to take up arms if need be, Mr. Brinkley added. And that feeds into the fantasy-scape of every militia group in the country.

The district attorney in Fulton County, Ga., Fani T. Willis, took Mr. Trumps rally comments seriously, she wrote to the F.B.I., because his statements were undoubtedly watched by millions. She added that she had already taken extra security precautions because of people unhappy with our commitment to fulfill our duties.

Ms. Willis vowed to press ahead: My staff and I will not be influenced or intimidated by anyone.

Oren Segal, vice president of the Center on Extremism at the Anti-Defamation League, said that far-right groups had reacted eagerly and sometimes threateningly to similar calls by Mr. Trump in the past.

In April 2020, for example, Mr. Trump tweeted Liberate Michigan! a reference to early coronavirus restrictions put in place in the state. Within a month, heavily-armed protesters gathered at the statehouse in Lansing to denounce the governors stay-at-home order.

Extremists, in Trumps case, found a champion for their cause in the highest office, Mr. Segal said, because Mr. Trump mirrored their sense of grievance, anger and rage. He sounds like them, he added. Thats why they react.

Alan Feuer and Emily Cochrane contributed reporting.

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Trumps Words, and Deeds, Reveal Depths of His Drive to Retain Power - The New York Times

Theres a lot going on here. Lets start with the fact that its really quite something to watch Trump, an abject racist, accuse three Black prosecutors of racism against him. But mostly, Trumps fevered performance suggests that hes completely terrified of the consequences that might be coming for him. If you havent been keeping up with the various developments across all of the investigations into the ex-president, as a reminder, Letitia James has been looking into alleged wrongdoing by the Trump Organization for more than two years, and earlier this month, said in a court filing that her office had found significant evidence of fraud committed by the family business. Announcing legal action against them, James said in a statement that Donald Trump, Donald Trump, Jr., and Ivanka Trump have all been closely involved in the transactions in question, so we wont tolerate their attempts to evade testifying in this investigation, a turn of events that the ex-president flipped out over, suggesting that his children should be off limits despite the fact that they are in their 40s and have both been senior executives at the Trump Organization, including during the time being examined by James.

As for Trumps claims during the rally in regards to Jamess investigation, it may not surprise you to learn theyre extremely Trumpian in that theyre total bullshit. For example, when he speaks of the millions of pages of documents the Trump Organization has turned over, he conveniently leaves out the fact that, per James, the company has not made anything approaching a complete production of documents for Mr. Trump, including the handwritten notes the famously email and computer-averse Trump used to communicate with employees. When he talks about it supposedly being improper for James to have campaigned on holding him accountable, he does not mention that approximately 63% of his 2016 campaign was about locking Hillary Clinton up (the other 37% arguably being about racism and making Mexico pay for the wall).

Meanwhile, in an incredible tell that Trump is soiling himself over what might come out of Jamess investigation, he already appears to be offering himself an out by suggesting that he relied on other people, namely, major law firms and accounting firms and other professionals. (Incidentally, this preemptive deflection of blame is reminiscent of the statement Trumps lawyer gave to The New York Times after it uncovered evidence of outright fraud by the then president and his siblings, in which his attorney said: There was no fraud or tax evasion by anyone. The facts upon which theTimesbases its false allegations are extremely inaccurate. President Trump had virtually no involvement whatsoever with these matters. The affairs were handled by other Trump family members who were not experts themselves and therefore relied entirely upon the aforementioned licensed professionals to ensure full compliance with the law. In other words, there was no fraud or tax evasion, but just in case there actually was, Donald Trump is completely innocent and the licensed professionals he paid and/or his siblings are to blame.)

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Trump Lashes Out at Prosecutors Like a Man Who Knows Hes About to Be Held Accountable for the First Time in His Life - Vanity Fair

To the Editor:

Re Trump Sought Ways to Seize Vote Machines (front page, Feb. 1):

New accounts that show that former President Donald Trump was directly involved in plans to use security agencies, including the military, to seize control of voting machines in swing states some six weeks after Election Day confirm how perilously close the nation came to a burgeoning autocracy.

Were it not for some of Mr. Trumps trusted advisers, including the clownish, conspiracy-theory-peddling Rudy Giuliani, Americans might have witnessed armed military personnel rolling into their communities, crushing democracy along the way.

That Rudy Giuliani might have been a voice of reason during this moment is in itself a weird and chilling commentary on just how fragile our electoral system is.

Cody LyonBrooklyn

To the Editor:

Re Trump Suggests He May Pardon Jan. 6 Rioters if He Has Another Term (news article, Jan. 31):

If these radical, vicious, racist prosecutors do anything wrong or illegal, I hope we are going to have in this country the biggest protests we have ever had in Washington, D.C., in New York, in Atlanta and elsewhere because our country and our elections are corrupt. So spoke Donald Trump at a recent rally.

Mr. Trumps strategy to prevent his indictment is to threaten riots. Indeed, with many millions of cultlike true believers, his indictment surely would cause mass civil unrest and perhaps civil war, especially given that many of his most ardent supporters are well armed.

And one might well ask: Which side would the police and members or ex-members of the military be on? Many of them are ardent Trumpists. Would any prosecutor be willing to risk this?

Mr. Trumps strategy is clear, and those of us who want to rescue our country from this would-be autocrat need a clear strategy, too. And that, unfortunately, cannot include the liberal fantasy of Mr. Trump in the dock or jail. Trump and Trumpism must be defeated at the ballot box. Its the only way.

Gerald Lee VogelGermantown, Md.

To the Editor:

If Donald Trump runs for re-election as president, it would take me a ream of printer paper and 8-point type to list the reasons for not voting for him. And I am a registered Republican.

But now a new reason has arisen that takes its place at the top of the list. On Saturday, at a rally in Texas, Mr. Trump said that if he is re-elected as president, he would consider pardoning those prosecuted for what they did at the Capitol on Jan. 6. Somehow Mr. Trump feels that the people being charged with crimes are being treated unfairly.

I was at home on Jan. 6 and spent most of the day watching news coverage. It took our former president almost three hours to ask the crowd to disperse and go home, telling them, Go home, we love you, youre very special. Several of his aides, including his daughter Ivanka, as well as legislators and conservative media reporters, begged him earlier to ask the rioters to disperse and go home. That did no good.

It boggles my mind that anyone who watched even part of what happened on Jan. 6 and saw Mr. Trumps reaction to it could in any way support or vote for him. I certainly cannot. Mr. Trump may have thought the people who overtook the Capitol deserved our love and were very special. I did not.

Gerald S. TanenbaumCharleston, S.C.

To the Editor:

Re Trumps Aim: Keep Power at All Costs, by Shane Goldmacher (news analysis, front page, Feb. 2):

The prospect of Donald Trumps bid for another term as president has the media in a tizzy. The same media that allowed Mr. Trump to control the narrative during the 2016 presidential campaign may be overcompensating for its past failures by sounding the alarm bell with headlines predicting the demise of freedom as we know it. With Mr. Trumps unfitness for office well documented and his waning ability to use the media as a conduit to deceit, why such angst?

Have you forgotten how soundly Mr. Trump was defeated just 15 months ago? President Biden received the most votes ever cast for a U.S. presidential candidate and won by a margin of more than seven million votes.

The media can rest assured in the knowledge that the electorate is democracys safe harbor.

Jane LarkinTampa, Fla.

To the Editor:

Re National Debt Breaks Record at $30 Trillion (front page, Feb. 2):

Well, the national debt wouldnt be so high if big money corporations and individuals were paying its fair share of taxes.

To the Editor:

Re The Case for Writing Longhand (Inside The Times, Jan. 21):

As a retired teacher, I found that your article brought back many memories. I am from the time when the nuns converted left-handers like me into writing right-handed by some encouragement and some strapping.

Most of the first two decades of my teaching career, the 1980s and 90s, saw all of the student work handwritten and most of my notes and tests handwritten and then copied; I loved the smell of a mimeograph machine early in the morning.

The next two decades saw the increase in typing and the decrease in handwriting skills, including my own. There was a time when many people were illiterate, but now they are illegible.

Many students were surprised to know that if examiners couldnt read your answers they couldnt give them marks, and they wouldnt spend time trying to translate the scribbles into words.

Its time to bring back pen licenses that confirm that young children can write neatly enough to now use a pen, and make sure the kids deserve them.

Dennis FitzgeraldMelbourne, Australia

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Opinion | Donald Trump and the Peril to Democracy - The New York Times

Throughout his time in the White House, Donald Trump collected a number of exceedingly reliable footstools. There was Attorney General William Barr, who basically served as the former presidents personal lawyer. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, who regularly shredded his dignity on the guys behalf. Mike Pence, other than that one time. And, of course, the vast majority of the Republican Party, which lived in constant fear of getting on the wrong side of the then president.

One member of the GOP who consistently stood out from the bunch in his fealty to 45 was Senator Lindsey Graham. Afterdeclaringin June 2016 that he wouldnt support Trumps bid for office,referringto the then Republican candidate as a jackass, a kook, a race-baiting bigot, and the most flawed nominee in the history of the Republican Party, Graham subsequently became one of Trumps most ardent and obsequious fans.

When Democrats were getting ready to impeach the guy the first time around, over his attempt to extort another country for his personal gain, Grahamtoldreporters the whole thing should be disposed of very quickly by the Senate. When people brought up the fact that Trump regularly slandered Grahams friend John McCaineven after McCain was dead, the senator from South Carolina said he was willing to overlook the attacks because when we play golf, its fun. Two months after a literal insurrection, GrahamtoldAxios: Donald Trump was my friend before the riot and Im trying to keep a relationship with him after the riot. I still consider him a friend. Pressed on the fact that hed already been reelected for another six years, so politically, he didnt have to keep this relationship going, Graham doubled down, telling reporterJonathan Swanit would be too easy to simply dump the guy, before claiming, in a highly worrisome way, that while there was a dark side to the man who incited a violent attack on the U.S. Capitol, there was also some magic there.

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In short, Graham has more than proved his servility to Trump over the last six years, and should probably be inducted into some kind of Hall of Fame for bootlicking hacks, or given a key to Mar-a-Lago. Unfortunately, Graham forgot the cardinal rule of serving at the pleasure of Trump, which is that one must vigorously and without fail agree with every single thing the guy does and says, at all times, forever and always. Instead, God help him, the Republican lawmaker expressed an independent thought, and this happened:

Yes, Trump dubbed Graham, a lifelong Republican, a Republican in Name Only, in an interview with Newsmax that aired Tuesday night. That may not sound so bad to some people, but as Trump made clear in 2020, its among the worst things he can think to accuse someone of. (Do you know what RINO is? heaskeda crowd in Arizona. A RINO may be the lowest form of human life.) Why is Graham, in Trumps eyes, a RINO? Because Graham had claimed it was inappropriate for Trump to say over the weekend that he might pardon some of the January 6 rioters if reelected in 2024, a move that effectively would allow Trump supporters to get away with waging a violent insurrection.

Lindsey Graham doesnt know what the hell hes talking about if he says that, Trump added to NewsmaxsRob Schmitt.

Which is not a very nice thing to say about someone whos basically had his head lodged inside your ass for over half a decade now! Though if we know Lindsey, and we think we do, itll all be water under the bridge by the end of the month. Last week, the South Carolina senatorsaidin an interview with Foxs Brian Kilmeade that hed spent the whole weekend with Trump and suggested that the ex-president apparently has total control over the Republican Party. He will be the nominee in 2024 if he wants it. Stay tuned, Graham said, adding: From my point of view, theres nobody thats going to beat Donald Trump if he wants to run.

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Lindsey Graham Spent Six Years With His Head Up Trumps Ass for Nothing - Vanity Fair

Former President Donald Trump will headline the annual Conservative Political Action Conference due to take place in Orlando later this month.

The 45th president made the announcement in a video posted by Matt Schlapp, the head of the American Conservative Union, on his Twitter account.

Ill be attending CPAC again this year in Orlando, Florida, Trump said. I will see you soon. Going to be a fantastic crowd lets have fun.

Trump, who has been a regular at CPAC since his first appearance in 2011, said he urged Schlapp and the organizers to get a bigger ballroom this year.

Last year it was packed and there were thousands of people outside, and they said were going to get a real big one,' he said.

Other scheduled speakers at CPAC include Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio).

The annual gathering could function as an early preview of a potential 2024 Republican presidential primary between DeSantis and Trump.

Neither has announced a formal intention to run, but DeSantis is widely expected to throw his hat in the ring and Trump has teased a political comeback as he holds campaign-style rallies around the country.

The two Florida Republicans have also been indirectly critical of each other in public.

DeSantis became a GOP star during the COVID-19 pandemic by playing up his opposition to lockdowns as well as mask and vaccine mandates, selling the Sunshine State as freedoms vanguard.

In an interview on the Ruthless podcast last month, the Florida governor said he regrets not having been much louder in opposition when then-President Trump called for widespread lockdowns in the early days of the pandemic.

I never thought in February, early March [2020], that [coronavirus] would lead to locking down the country, he said on the podcast. I just didnt. I didnt think that was on the radar.

Trump, meanwhile, recently blasted politicians who refuse to admit whether they got a coronavirus booster shot as gutless, in what many see as a veiled attack against DeSantis, who wont divulge that information.

I watched a couple politicians be interviewed and one of the questions was, Did you get a booster? Because they had the vaccine, and theyre answering like in other words, the answer is yes but they dont want to say it, because theyre gutless, Trump told One America News Network.

A recent poll of Florida voters by Suffolk University/USA Today shows that Trump would defeat DeSantis by 47 percent to 40 percent in a 2024 primary race in the Sunshine state.

The 2022 edition of CPAC is scheduled to take place Feb. 24-27.

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Trump, DeSantis confirmed to speak at CPAC in Orlando later this month - New York Post

The BDN Editorial Board operates independently from the newsroom, and does not set policies or contribute to reporting or editing aticles elsewhere in the newspaper or onbangordailynews.com.

Almost exactly one year ago, former President Donald Trumps legal team bumbled its way through his impeachment trial defense. A record numberof senators from his own party voted to convict him, but not enough to reach the two-thirds threshold. He was acquitted.

As part of that underwhelming but ultimately successful defense, Trumps lawyers sought to distance him from the rioters who attacked the U.S. Capitol.

You will not hear any member of the team representing former President Trump say anything but in the strongest possible way denounce the violence of the rioters and those that breached the Capitol, Trump attorney Bruce Castor said in his opening remarksto senators.

Someone might want to remind Trump about that.

Rather than continually denounce that violence, the former president has repeatedly downplayedand even appeared to excuse it. He has doubled down on his disprovenclaims of election fraud, and insistedthat in actuality the Big Lie was the Election itself. He has indicated that he in fact wanted former Vice President Mike Pence to overturn the resultsof that election.

And now, hes talking about potentially pardoning Jan. 6 rioters should he run for president again and win.

Another thing well do, and so many people have been asking me about it, if I run and if I win, we will treat those people from Jan. 6 fairly, Trump said during a rally on Saturday. We will treat them fairly. And if it requires pardons we will give them pardons. Because they are being treated so unfairly.

There has been some deserved, if tepid, pushback from fellow Republicans. Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina called Trumps pardon suggestion inappropriate. Maine Sen. Susan Collins, who voted to impeach Trumpa year ago, told ABC Newsthis weekend that he should not have made the pledge about pardons.

Sen. Kevin Cramer of North Dakota,however,had a somewhat different response to the former presidents comments. Many other Republicans in Congresshavent said much, if anything, in response to Trumps remarks about pardons and overturning the election.

The obsession with the former president is becoming obnoxious to me, Cramer said Monday when asked about Trump and the pardons, as reported by HuffPost.

Its sort of interesting, but considering what were dealing with here every day, its low priority, Cramer said while suggesting reporters should focus on President Joe Bidens administration and the economy.

Sort of interesting is an interesting choice of words. We think a different word is more appropriate: alarming.We and lawmakers should be able to discuss Bidens shortc omingswithout losing perspective about just how dangerousTrumps actions were and continue to be.

Recent polling indicatesthat Trump unfortunately remains the Republican frontrunner should he seek election again. Two years ago, we might have expected someone to become politically irrelevant after fueling, failing to quelland striking a celebratory toneabout a violent attack on Americas elected representatives. Maybe that was a naive assumption on our part.

While Trumps lawyers tried to distance him from rioters in the presentation to senators a year ago, their client has now done the opposite. If more Republicans could agree on a basic level that this is bad, then maybe we wouldnt have to keep pointing it out.

More articles from the BDN

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We'll stop talking about Donald Trump when he stops saying alarming things - Bangor Daily News

To anyone who was watching the events of January 6 unfold live on television, one thing was quite clear: Donald Trump was excited and proud about the violence he incited.

As the timeline of his actions that day shows, he was so wound up tweeting invective at Congress and his vice president, Mike Pence, that he barely slept the night before. Once the riot was underway, Trump spent hours resisting the pressure to call off his dogs, instead tweeting more invective and ass-covering calls to "stay peaceful" that the crowd knew not to take seriously. He was also reportedly gleefully entranced by the footage of the insurrection. After three hours of rioting, he finally told the crowd to "go home" but only after it was clear that the riot wasn't going to overturn the election.

The blood was still being mopped off the floors when the great GOP gaslighting began. Republicans fell in line behind this narrative that the riot was not incited by Trump, but that it was an entirely self-directed action of a few thousand kooks and that it was only a wild coincidence it started after Trump's incendiary speech. Trump has always clearly chafed at the expectation that he go along with this narrative, wanted to instead publicly gloat about this demonstration of the power he has over people. Now, a year after the riot, Trump appears to be done with pretending to disapprove of the riot. He's circling back to his initial instinct, which was to celebrate it as the glorious MAGA revolution he always wanted it to be.

RELATED:Donald Trump's having an awful week and it's only Wednesday

This was most obvious in Trump's promise over the weekend to consider pardoning the January 6 rioters if he regains the White House in 2024. Politico soon reported that this was hardly some new urge of Trump's. He spent the two weeks between the riot and Joe Biden's inauguration asking advisors if he could issue a blanket pardon for everyone involved. He was waved off the idea, because it conflicted with the GOP's strategy of denying Trump's role. Trump, forever the coward,went along with the demands, even though it meant not getting to take the credit for the mayhem he unleashed. But, by making this promise of pardons to a cheering crowd of thousands of supporters he is sending a strong signal that he's done pretending to feel anything but beaming pride over inciting an insurrection.

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Which isn't to say that Trump is no longer torn between wanting to celebrate the insurrection openly and worried about the legal jeopardy that might flow from that stance.

Over the weekend, he released an unhinged statement in which he outright said that he had wanted to "overturn" the election. But when members of the January 6 committee pointed out that was tantamount to a confession, Trump tried to walk it back with another statementabout how he meant to say he just wanted to send "back the votes for recertification or approval."

RELATED:Donald Trump's lackeys failed him and saved democracy

The pardon promise also could create legal problems for Trump. As January 6 committee member Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., told MSNBC Wednesday night, the rally speech is "very important evidence as to his intent" that Trump desired and condoned the violence. No doubt Trump's lawyers are advising him of the same danger. And yet, he can't or won't stop trying to publicly recast the insurrectionists as heroes. In a Newsmax interview this week, Trump falsely insisted "nobody died on Jan. 6" except Ashli Babbitt, who he described as "one young, fine woman." Making a martyr of Babbitt, who was shot because she was trying to lead a charge to run down fleeing members of Congress, is central to the pro-insurrection narrative.

Trump may feel hemmed in by legal concerns, but his political instincts clearly tell him that recasting the Capitol insurrection as a glorious revolution is the right move. Certainly, the cheers he got for promising pardons underscores that the base is with him. But many other Republican leaders aren't so sure, and really want to stick with the B.S. story that the riot was just a random thing that happened and Trump had nothing to do with it. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has been surprisingly outspoken about this,telling reporters that the riot was "an effort to prevent the peaceful transfer of power" and insisting that people who participated should be punished.Even Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Tex. who is always trying to be on the vanguard of right-wing nuttery has been queasy about celebrating the riot itself, preferring to hide behind conspiracy theories blaming the violence on the FBI instead.

But Trump's instinct to simply come out in favor of the storming of the Capitol sadly makes a lot of sense, politically, if not legally. The current GOP position, which amounts to disapproving of the rioters while supporting their larger anti-democratic aims, is incoherent. The vast majority of Republicans, both voters and leaders, have decided to embrace the Big Lie, largely because it creates the pretext to pass a bunch of laws and seize electoral offices in such a way that the next coup, in 2024, is successful. Trying to be for the Big Lie, but against the violence that flows from it, is too delicate a needle to thread. It's easier and simpler to stand for the whole kaboodle the Big Lie, the insurrection, the ongoing coup. And Trump understands better than anyone that "easy" and "simple" are huge advantages in political messaging.

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Plus, as Heather "Digby" Parton has been arguing at Salon, Trump is clearly worried that the walls are closing inand that it will be impossible to successfully hide the evidencethat he was both attempting to overturn the election and that he deliberately called on a violent mob in order to make that happen. This is a fairly standard Trump strategy when he realizes he can't cover up a crime. Instead, he simply owns it, says it was a good thing, and dares anyone to do anything about it. So far, that's worked beautifully for him, and the continued inability of Attorney General Merrick Garland to arrest Trump for one of his many public crimes suggests it will continue to work for Trump.

The only question is how long it will take for the rest of the GOP to fall in line?

They also have a pattern when it comes to Trump's crimes, from his admitted sexual assault to his efforts to steal the election: First, there is resistance and disapproval, but soon they give in and either excuse or, in most cases, outright defend Trump's behavior. There's growing political pressure within the Republican ranks to go along with the "January 6 was good, actually" narrative. A proposal to formally kick Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming and Rep. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois out of the party has 50 Republican House co-sponsors already. It's not because these two support free and fair elections, as they are fully on board with the voter suppression efforts going on at the state level. It's just that they sit on the January 6 committee and are appalled with the violence of the riot that has put them at odds with their party. Kicking them out amounts to a symbolic vote of confidence for the the insurrection itself.

For most Republicans, it would probably be easier to "move on" from the insurrection, which is to say talk about anything else while quietly supporting legislative efforts to make the next coup stick. But Trump isn't going to let them. As long as the January 6 committee and media keeps pushing out evidence of how deeply involved Trump was and how extensive the coup efforts were, Trump is going to keep circling back to the idea that every action he took, no matter how violent or criminal, was justified and noble. As long as he does that, Republicans are going to be forced to choose between pandering to the Trump base and trying to distance themselves from the violence that turns off moderate voters. But we always know how this story ends. Republicans always cave to Trump. And so it will be when it comes to the story of whether the riot was bad or good. It's just a matter of time.

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Donald Trump is done pretending. He is now openly celebrating the Capitol riot - Salon

Fifteen days after Election Day in 2020, James R. Troupis, a lawyer for the Trump campaign in Wisconsin, received a memo setting out what became the rationale for an audacious strategy: to put in place alternate slates of electors in states where President Donald J. Trump was trying to overturn his loss.

The memo, from another lawyer named Kenneth Chesebro, may not have been the first time that lawyers and allies of Mr. Trump had weighed the possibility of naming their own electors in the hopes that they might eventually succeed in flipping the outcome in battleground states through recounts and lawsuits baselessly asserting widespread fraud.

But the Nov. 18 memo and another three weeks later are among the earliest known efforts to put on paper proposals for preparing alternate electors. They helped to shape a crucial strategy that Mr. Trump would embrace with profound consequences for himself and the nation.

The memos show how just over two weeks after Election Day, Mr. Trumps campaign was seeking to buy itself more time to undo the results. At the heart of the strategy was the idea that their real deadline was not Dec. 14, when official electors would be chosen to reflect the outcome in each state, but Jan. 6, when Congress would meet to certify the results.

And in that focus on Jan. 6 lay the seeds of what became a pressure campaign on Vice President Mike Pence to accept the validity of a challenge to the outcome and to block Congress from finalizing Joseph R. Biden Jr.s victory a campaign that would also lead to a violent assault on the Capitol by Trump supporters and an extraordinary rupture in American politics.

It may seem odd that the electors pledged to Trump and Pence might meet and cast their votes on Dec. 14 even if, at that juncture, the Trump-Pence ticket is behind in the vote count, and no certificate of election has been issued in favor of Trump and Pence, the Nov. 18 memo said. However, a fair reading of the federal statutes suggests that this is a reasonable course of action.

Both federal prosecutors and the House committee investigating the events of Jan. 6 have recently confirmed that they are examining the effort to submit alternate slates of electors to the Electoral College. On Friday, congressional investigators issued subpoenas to 14 people who claimed to be official Trump electors in states that were actually won by Mr. Biden.

The two memos, obtained by The New York Times, were used by Mr. Trumps top lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani, and others like John Eastman as they developed a strategy intended to exploit ambiguities in the Electoral Count Act, according to a person familiar with the matter.

The memos were initially meant to address Mr. Trumps challenge to the outcome in Wisconsin, but they ultimately became part of a broader conversation by members of Mr. Trumps legal team as the president looked toward Jan. 6 and began to exert pressure on Mr. Pence to hold up certification of the Electoral College count.

Neither Mr. Troupis nor Mr. Chesebro responded to requests for comment about the memos. Even before they were written, legislative leaders in Arizona and Wisconsin sought advice from their own lawyers about whether they had the power to alter slates of electors after the election took place and were effectively told they did not, according to new documents obtained by American Oversight, a nonprofit watchdog group.

Mr. Trump has long embraced the scheme. Just this past weekend, he issued a statement reiterating that he was justified in using the process in Congress on Jan. 6 to challenge the outcome and asserting that Mr. Pence could have overturned the election.

The plan to employ alternate electors was one of Mr. Trumps most expansive efforts to stave off defeat, beginning even before some states had finished counting ballots and culminating in the pressure placed on Mr. Pence when he presided over the joint congressional session on Jan. 6. At various times, the scheme involved state lawmakers, White House aides and lawyers like Mr. Chesebro and Mr. Troupis.

In the weeks after the election, Mr. Troupis oversaw the Trump campaigns recount effort in Wisconsin, which ultimately showed that Mr. Biden had won by more than 20,000 votes. In early December 2020, Mr. Troupis filed a lawsuit on behalf of the Trump campaign that sought to invalidate the use of absentee ballots in Milwaukee and Dane Counties, which both have large numbers of Black voters.

At a hearing in front of the Wisconsin Supreme Court, one justice, Rebecca Dallet, noted that Mr. Troupis had not sought to invalidate votes in Wisconsins 70 other counties but had focused only on the most nonwhite, urban parts of the state. Another justice, Jill Karofsky, echoed that sentiment, telling Mr. Troupis that his lawsuit smacks of racism.

In late December, Mr. Chesebro joined Mr. Troupis in asking the U.S. Supreme Court to review the question of whether competing slates of electors in Wisconsin and six other contested states could be considered on Jan. 6. The high court denied their request.

The language and suggestions in the memos from Mr. Chesebro to Mr. Troupis closely echo tactics and talking points that were eventually adopted by Mr. Trumps top lawyers.

The November memo, for example, called Jan. 6 the hard deadline for settling the results of the election and advised that the Trump campaign had nearly two months for judicial proceedings to challenge the outcome. It also suggested that Trump-friendly electors in Wisconsin needed to meet in Madison, the state capital, on Dec. 14, 2020, the day the Electoral College would be voting.

The second memo was dated Dec. 9, 2020, and expanded on the plan. It set forth an analysis of how to legally authorize alternate electors in six key swing states, including Wisconsin. It noted that the scheme was unproblematic in Arizona and Wisconsin, slightly problematic in Michigan, somewhat dicey in Georgia and Pennsylvania, and very problematic in Nevada.

Representative Pete Aguilar, Democrat of California and a member of the committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, said the panel was examining the origins of the plans to put forward alternate electors. The panel already has in its possession memos that were written by Mr. Eastman and another Trump lawyer, Jenna Ellis, in late December 2020 and early January 2021; those memos laid out steps for Congress to take to cast aside Mr. Bidens electors in key swing states.

We know this was a coordinated effort on behalf of the former president and those around him to overturn a free and fair election, Mr. Aguilar said. We continue to learn new and more details. Its incredibly troubling to know the lengths they went to support these efforts in multiple states.

Mr. Aguilar said that he and others on the panel believed the plan to use the electors was connected to other aspects of Mr. Trumps effort to remain in power, such as proposals to seize voting machines and to put intense pressure on Mr. Pence to throw out legitimate electoral votes.

We need to know the depth of that plan, and we need to know the different ways in which they sought to operationalize their theory, he said.

Read more from the original source:

Memos Show Roots of Trumps Focus on Jan. 6 and Alternate Electors - The New York Times