Amid reports of classified docs at Trump Tower and Bedminster, experts express concerns about Trump as a national-security risk, and that points to Trump and treason, which might be bigger now than ever before

Trump Tower: Home to classified documents (Business Insider)

Donald Trump kept classified documents at two other locations besides his Mar-a-Lago estate, according to a report at Newsweek. The information comes from court documents recently filed in Trump's classified-documents case before Judge Aileen Cannon in Florida. The revelations raise questions that are both curious and alarming.

On the curious side, we have these questions:

(1) Why did Trump store or hide documents at locations other than Mar-a-Lago, where documents have been known to be stored for months now?

(2) What was Trump planning to do with these newly disclosed documents? To whom was he planning to show them, to whom has he already shown them? 

These questions fit under the category of "alarming," especially since several experts have expressed concerns that Trump is a national-security risk, especially with his finances in a state of disarray. Would Trump sell, or give, sensitive documents to foreign adversaries? Would he be open to bribery from international bad actors as a way of upgrading his personal treasury? Experts suggest the answer to these questions is yes, and that raises the issue of treason, which has hung over Trump like a specter, especially give his apparent fondness for Russia and other authoritarian regimes.

Newsweek provides background on the newly discovered documents under the headline "Donald Trump Kept Classified Documents in Trump Tower, Lawyers Reveal." Reporter Sean O'Driscoll writes:

Donald Trump held classified documents at both Trump Tower and his New Jersey estate, his lawyers have revealed in court documents.

Trump held the documents there, as well as in his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, even before his inauguration in 2017, according to the filings. The contents of the classified documents remain unclear.

Trump is facing trial in Florida for allegedly retaining classified documents from his presidency, keeping them in various parts of Mar-a-Lago—including a bathroom—and obstructing federal officials' attempt to retrieve them.

The location of Trump's classified documents beyond the Florida resort had been redacted in previous court filings.

The locations were revealed in proposed jury instructions filed by Trump's lawyers to U.S. District Court Judge Aileen Cannon.

The discovery of documents at Trump Tower and Bedminster dovetails with other recent news in the classified-documents case, O'Driscoll reports:

The new information appears to confirm revelations by Trump's former valet, Brian Butler, that he helped load boxes of presidential records onto the Trump private plane in Florida while the former president and his family were flying to their Bedminster, N.J., mansion for the summer two years ago.

Butler told CNN last month that the plane was loaded on June 3, 2022, which was the same day Trump and his lawyer met with the Justice Department at Mar-a-Lago to discuss the missing classified documents.

Butler said he later realized that the white boxes of documents were at the center of the federal indictment against Trump.

Until he went public, Butler had only been known as "Trump Employee 5" in court documents filed to Cannon.

Butler is expected to testify against Trump in the Florida trial. His version of events may have been bolstered by the latest filing in the case.

Cannon has been criticized by chief prosecutor Jack Smith for suggesting that the jury may be allowed to consider that Trump had held presidential records as his personal belongings that he was allowed to keep after leaving the White House.

Trump's claim that he designated presidential files as personal items before leaving the White House is a fundamental part of his defense in the classified documents case.

In the coming weeks, we will examine the concerns of national-security experts about Trump and the issue of treason, which continues to hang over Trump -- perhaps now more than ever.

Donald Trump's plot to prosecute Joe Biden without probable cause is based on a lie and ignorance, as MSNBC analyst Joyce White Vance makes clear

MSNBC's Joyce White Vance

 

Donald Trump and his allies are plotting to prosecute President Joe Biden if Trump wins the November election, according to a report from Axios. After months of Congressional inquiries, no evidence of wrongdoing by Biden has surfaced, so it is unclear what would form the basis of a Trump-fueled prosecution. But this much appears to be clear: Trump apparently wants to prosecute Biden because he believes Biden had him prosecuted -- even though Trump has offered no evidence to support that claim. One prominent legal analyst has stated that Biden did not have Trump prosecuted and could not have done so. Those matters come down to grand jurors; more on that in a moment.

Also, the Axios report suggests Trump has no problem violating roughly 40 years of U.S. policy that holds the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) is to operate independently of the White House -- that presidents are not prosecutors, and they are to be excluded from decisions to charge or not charge suspected wrongdoers.

Trump might be determined to seek revenge against Biden, and other perceived political enemies -- as Trump repeatedly has said he intends to do in a possible second term. But for now, Trump only has managed to make himself look bad, adding to the substantial evidence we already had that he is wildly unfit to serve as president. In this instance, Trump's unfitness manifests itself in this indisputable fact -- he simply has no idea how government works, even after spending four years in the White House during a chaotic and dysfunctional administration that numerous experts have described as a failed presidency. 

The plot to wrongfully prosecute Biden, and perhaps members of his family, goes beyond Trump to include members of the Republican Party, as reporter Stephen Neukam writes under the headline "Scoop: Trump, GOP plot 2025 criminal probe of Bidens":

Republicans' impeachment probe of President Biden is unraveling because of a lack of evidence — but their work could become the basis for federal investigations and even prosecutions of the Biden family if Donald Trump wins re-election, Axios has learned.

Why it matters: Trump has vowed retribution against his enemies if he wins in November. House Republicans have struggled to show Biden has done anything illegal, but people close to Trump are still plotting to use the Justice Department against Biden and his family.

• A source close to the Trump campaign said that "everything you have seen from the Biden DOJ," in terms of the charges against Trump, "you can expect to see from the Trump DOJ."
• One Trump ally argued that there is precedent for a second Trump administration to investigate and prosecute the Bidens: the current federal charges against Trump.

Reality check: Those charges stem from allegations that Trump led a conspiracy to try to overturn the 2020 election, and that he illegally kept classified documents and then schemed to conceal that he'd taken them.

• Biden was found to have some classified documents from his vice presidency, but cooperated with authorities in returning them.
• The special counsel who investigated Biden's case, a former Trump appointee to the Justice Department, decided not to prosecute.

Driving the news: House Republicans have alleged that Biden should be impeached because he illicitly benefited from lucrative foreign deals arranged by his son Hunter.

• Despite their difficulty proving that, Trump has said he thinks Biden should be prosecuted anyway — because Trump is being prosecuted now.
• "By weaponizing the DOJ against his Political Opponent, ME, Joe has opened a giant Pandora's Box," Trump posted on Truth Social in January.

The items highlighted in blue above get to the heart of the matter -- Trump wants to prosecute Biden because he believes, contrary to evidence, that Biden is having him prosecuted. In other words, Trump is playing a tit-for-tat game. Prosecutions, however, are serious matters, and it helps to understand at least a few basics of criminal procedure. For example, a criminal investigation is not to begin until there is evidence of a crime.That seems simple enough, but Trump apparently cannot grasp it. The standard to meet is called probable cause. The link in the previous sentence notes that probable cause is found in the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, in the Bill of Rights. But apparently Trump is ignorant when it comes to key provisions of our founding documents. Still, chunks of the American electorate, particularly the MAGA chunks, claim to support a presidential candidate who is clueless about a concept as simple as probable cause, which is front and center in the Bill of Rights. That tells me a lot of GOPers who claim to support Trump aren't taking the 2024 election seriously -- and themselves have no idea what Trump does, or does not, stand for. (Hint: Trump has made it clear he does not know, or intend to abide by, the U.S. Constitution. And some on the right seriously think he is fit to be president.)

Here is an example of how ignorance can get a president in trouble: Bringing a criminal case against Biden without probable cause could lead to all kinds of legal problems for Trump and his GOP henchmen. One problem could be a lawsuit against Trump & Co., brought by Joe Biden or his family members, for something called malicious prosecution. Here is a brief description of that tort from the Cornell University Legal information Institute:

Malicious prosecution is the filing of a lawsuit for an improper purpose, and without grounds or probable cause. The improper lawsuit may either be civil or criminal in nature. To remedy an act of malicious prosecution, an alleged victim files a malicious prosecution action. A malicious prosecution action is a civil tort claim for damages caused by malicious prosecution.. . . 

There is no cause of action for malicious prosecution under federal law but malicious prosecution in federal cases may still be tried under state tort claims. Malicious prosecution refers to previous improper civil or criminal proceedings in most jurisdictions.

Here is an article about the elements of malicious prosecution and a related tort called abuse of process. If Trump and his cohorts are found liable for one of these torts, or perhaps both, they could experience a severe lightening of their wallets. Anyone who has served as president, and been involved in numerous courtroom scuffles as Trump has, should know about these relatively simple legal concepts. But Trump seems incapable of grasping them. I'm hesitant to call Trump stupid, but he often appears to be lacking in knowledge and goes off half-cocked without thinking things true -- on matters that can be costly to him personally, of if he is president, to the country. In short, Trump thinks and acts recklessly, and that is a big reason he is unfit to be president.

Here is an example: Almost every issue raised in the Axios article grows from the idea that Joe Biden is having Trump prosecuted. In Trump's diseased, narcissistic brain, that has to be true because Trump cannot be responsible for anything that goes wrong. But this is a lie, one Trump apparently is convinced his MAGA followers are gullible enough to believe. But here is the truth, as stated by MSNBC legal analyst and former Alabama U.S. Attorney Joyce White Vance:

Joyce White Vance, former U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Alabama and current legal analyst for MSNBC, stated in a recent tweet: "Joe Biden didn't indict Trump. Prosecutors must go before a grand jury, made up of citizens, including Republicans & Democrats. These citizens hear evidence & vote on whether a defendant should be charged. Different grand juries have now done that with Trump 91 times."

So it all comes down to grand jurors. But Trump apparently realizes there are too many grand jurors to keep track of, and their deliberations generally are conducted in private, so Trump has to blame one guy, Biden.This is the kind of thinking that, in a president, could cause the U.S. to bomb Iran for a supposed wrong that Saudi Arabia committed. That is the kind of mishap that could spark a world war. But Trump displays that kind of rattled thinking on an almost daily basis.

How did it come to be U.S. policy that the DOJ will act independently of the White House, that the president will have no role in charging or non-charging decisions? Let's take a brief look at the history behind this policy. President Jimmy Carter, acting in the aftermath of Richard Nixon's Watergate scandal, played a key role. This is from a Legal Schnauzer post dated 9/19/23:

Since the late 1970s, during the post-Watergate era when our country still was reeling from Richard Nixon's scandal-riddled administration, U.S. policy has been that the Department of Justice (DOJ) will operate independently of the White House -- that the president will have no say in the DOJ's charging or non-charging decisions. The Jimmy Carter administration produced the first memorandum spelling out this policy -- and it has been followed by almost every president (of both political parties). From Ronald Reagan to Barack Obama, every president has signed off on the idea that the White House should not influence DOJ decision-making. The only exception might be Donald Trump; it is unclear if the Trump White House followed the law on DOJ independence during his first term -- and he clearly has no intention of following the law during a second term.

Merrick Garland, current U.S. attorney general, provides more background from the most recent memorandum on the subject. This comes from a 2017 report at protectdemocracy.org:

The promise that every American will be treated equally under the law and that none is above the law is a bedrock principle of American democracy. The freedom from political influence — real or perceived — on law enforcement underpins all of our other freedoms. By contrast, political influence or interference in law enforcement has been a clear hallmark distinguishing authoritarian regimes from true democracies around the globe.¹

For decades, to prevent even the appearance of political meddling in federal law enforcement, Republican and Democratic administrations alike have had written policies governing White House contacts with agencies and offices within the executive branch that have investigatory and enforcement responsibilities. To ensure the impartial application of the laws, these policies have extended to White House contacts with any executive branch agency or office regarding investigations, enforcement actions, regulatory decisions, grants and contracts involving specific parties.

To date, the Trump Administration has not articulated publicly a White House policy on agency contacts. Further, multiple reported contacts between senior political staff at the White House and enforcement officers at the Department of Justice (DOJ) appear to have violated 40 years of accepted, bipartisan policy. In light of the questions that its actions have raised, and in order to demonstrate its commitment to upholding the rule of law, the Trump White House must release and abide by an agency contacts policy that is consistent with accepted, bipartisan norms.

In recent weeks, a number of reports have raised questions regarding whether the White House has in place and is abiding by an agency-contacts policy like ones that have governed White House agency contacts for the past 40 years in both Democratic and Republican administrations. This past weekend, The New York Times reported that White House Counsel Donald McGahn “was working to secure access to what Mr. McGahn believed to be an order issued by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court authorizing some form of surveillance related to Mr. Trump and his associates.” (The White House later attempted to walk back claims of such an effort). Last month, multiple publications reported that the White House asked the FBI to refute reports that Trump campaign advisors had contacts with Russia during the presidential campaign. A week prior to that, the New York Daily News reported that White House senior Adviser Stephen Miller, who is not a lawyer, called the home of Robert Capers, the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, to dictate how he should defend the Administration’s travel ban.

There is a long-standing and bipartisan belief that the laws of the United States should be administered and enforced in an impartial manner and, accordingly, that there should not be an appearance that politics plays any part in the Department of Justice’s investigative and enforcement operations. This is because the effectiveness of the Department of Justice rests on the public’s confidence — and the reality — that DOJ is above ideology and partisanship in its enforcement of the law.

The need for the Department of Justice to be insulated from the reality and the appearance of politics is reinforced in federal law. The Hatch Act places restrictions on the political participation of government employees in certain agencies where it is particularly important that there is no appearance of politicization, like the military and intelligence agencies. These restrictions apply to career and political appointees in the Department of Justice and FBI.

Stemming from this basic principle that the investigative and prosecutorial powers of the DOJ should be free of partisan influence, it has been consistent policy for 40 years to limit communications between the White House and the DOJ, including the FBI.

Here is a bit more history from a Legal Schnauzer post dated 7/20/17, drawing on a February 2017 article at lawfareblog.com: 

After Watergate, Jimmy Carter campaigned on the promise to establish "as far as constitutionally possible, an independent Department of Justice,” and in 1978 his attorney general, Griffin Bell, sought to make good on that pledge by instituting procedures to insulate the Justice Department from political pressures. But what became the customary rules governing interaction between the White House and Justice were relaxed most recently under the George W. Bush administration, in a set of episodes the administration came to regret. As recounted by Politico in January, Bush's first attorney general, John Ashcroft, expanded the number of White House officials permitted to contact the Justice Department on non-national security matters from four to 417; his second attorney general, Alberto Gonzalez, further increased the number to 895 (according to findings by Senate Judiciary Committee member Sheldon Whitehouse, a former U.S. attorney). These changes ended in scandal: among other things, under Gonzalez, seven U.S. attorney generals were abruptly fired in 2006 for political reasons that, according to a subsequent report by the Justice Department Inspector General, "raised doubts about the integrity of Department prosecution decisions." Michael Mukasey reinstituted more traditional guidelines in 2007, and Eric Holder replaced them with his own substantively similar variant in 2009.

The heart of the [Holder] memo is a set of prescriptions limiting the Justice Department’s communications with the White House and Congress regarding pending or potential criminal or civil investigations or cases. The Department will advise the President on such investigations or cases “when—but only when—it is important for the performance of the President's duties and appropriate from a law enforcement perspective.”

The Axios article indicates Trump is not the only Republican scheming to "get" Biden because of "offenses" that do not appear to involve probable cause. Writes Stephen Neukam:

• House Oversight Committee chair James Comer (R-Ky.) said in a fundraising email last month that "when President Trump returns to the White House, it's critical the new leadership at the DOJ have everything they need to prosecute the Biden Crime Family and deliver swift justice."
• Comer also said on Fox News recently that if Attorney General Merrick Garland's Justice Department won't accept criminal referrals from House Republicans, "then maybe a Donald Trump Department of Justice will."

Zoom in: House Republicans' investigation is unlikely to end in impeachment articles this year, but the GOP has used it to sling mud at the president and his family in the run-up to the Nov. 5 election.

• Mike Davis, former chief counsel for nominations to then-Senate Judiciary chair Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) — whom Trump has suggested as a possible interim attorney general — claims the Bidens participated in "illegal foreign corruption."
• "The Biden Justice Department will not do anything about it, so the Trump 47 Justice Department should," Davis said. Did Davis provide any specifics? No.
  

State of play: A spokesperson for the House Oversight Committee told Axios that "impeachment is 100% still on the table."

• The spokesperson said the investigation is ongoing and that a final report with recommendations will be released at the end of the probe.
• That report is expected to include criminal referrals.

Neukam's reporting suggests a GOP conspiracy could be in play, and that conjures up even more memories of Richard Nixon. Neukam turns to a voice of sanity in U.S. Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD):

The other side: Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), the top Democrat on House Oversight, told Axios that Republicans are eyeing this course of action only because their impeachment inquiry has not turned up any crimes committed by the president.

• "Now, in saying that they are going to enable Donald Trump's criminal vengeance campaign, they are taking this from a farce to tragedy," Raskin said.

Trump's win in securing a bond for NY business-fraud case appears to be crumbling, turning into a loss as court rejects bond company's filing due to defects

(dailyboulder.com)

Earlier this week, Donald Trump seemed to nail down a major courtroom win when he secured an appeal bond in his New York business-fraud case. It  did not take long for Trump's bond to look, well . . . not so secure. And Trump's legal team did not help matters by flubbing standard courtroom procedure for handling related documents. For good measure, the supposed billionaire who helped secure the bond leads a company with some sketchy activity in its background -- and it apparently is not even licensed to engage in the surety business in New York.

In short, a big win for Trump now looks like it might turn into an even bigger loss, and as Liz Dye of the Above the Law (ATL) legal website explains, that's the way things tend to go when Trump gets involved in a transaction.  Under the headline "Trump NY Bond Just As Kosher As His Financial Statements; Everything Trump touches turns to LULZ," Dye provides background:

On Monday Donald Trump announced that he’d found someone to front the $175-million bond to stave off collections during appeal of the massive civil-fraud judgment won by the New York Attorney General. Apparently some rando billionaire from California, who made his fortune in subprime car loans, was willing to vouch for Trump through his company, Knight Specialty Insurance.

“I’ve just posted a 175 Million Dollar Bond with the sadly failing and very troubled State of New York,” Trump whined on Truth Social, adding that the civil-fraud case against him and his business was nothing but “a fabricated ELECTION INTERFERENCE con job, so bad for New York, where businesses are fleeing & violent crime is flourishing.” 

He complained that he’d “Also posted a 91 Million Dollar Bond on another New York Fake Case, money I can’t use on my campaign. Just what Crooked Joe wanted. WITCH HUNT!”

One explanation for this evolving mess is that Trump apparently has no clue how bonds work. His legal team, meanwhile, is proving to be of little or no use. Dye writes:

We might be tempted to make fun of Trump for not understanding how bonds work. Isn’t the point of paying Chubb to underwrite the note so that you don’t have to hand all your cash over to the State of New York? But engaging with Trump’s digital logorrhea as a representation of facts is like trying to assemble a jigsaw puzzle in an open sewer — you wind up with a lot of missing pieces and probably worms.

And anyway, who the hell understands what’s actually going on with the bond he’s supposed to have posted to stop Attorney General Letitia James from auctioning off Trump Tower to pay the judgment? Not us! And apparently, not Knight Specialty Insurance, either.

On Wednesday, the court rejected the bond because it had not one but three defects, including no attached financial statement from Knight.

Perhaps it hasn't been established that Knight is a "fly by night" outfit. But Dye is not convinced the company is on the "up and up" either. She writes:

The company duly amended its disclosure, but it’s not clear that the fix will help. As lawyers on Bluesky noted immediately, the language of the note appeared to guarantee that the defendants themselves would pay in the event of an unsuccessful appeal, not the guarantor, as provided by law.

There was also the pesky matter that Knight’s balance sheet shows just $26.8 million in cash on hand, and a net worth of just $138 million, both of which are substantially less than the $175 million the company claimed to be guaranteeing on Trump’s behalf.

And not to get too technical, but providing a surety bond requires a certificate of qualification from New York State Department of Financial Services under Insurance Law § 1111, and the NYAG is just wondering if Knight has got one.

Except for those minor details, everything seems to be going swimmingly for Trump's bond deal. Dye writes:

In comments to CBS News, Knight’s CEO Amit Shah seemed to suggest that the company was exempt from the surety capitalization requirements as an out-of-state entity.

“Knight Specialty Insurance Company is not a New York domestic insurer, and New York surplus lines insurance laws do not regulate the solvency of non-New York excess lines insurers,” he told the network. “So we don’t believe we need the 10% surplus.”

HUH.

 Well, that seems on the up and up! Surely Justice Arthur Engoron will be completely understanding about these unique financial arrangements at the April 22 hearing.

As Trump Media stock heads over a cliff, Trump goes on a rant apparently designed to shield his followers from the truth -- that his public company is a flop

(Associated Press)

 

Donald Trump's Truth Social stock is cratering, and the presumptive GOP presidential nominee responded in his usual off-the-rails way, according to a report at The New Republic (TNR). Under the headline "Donald Trump Freaks Out as Truth Social Value Tanks; The former president wants you to know that his social media platform is doing just fine, OK?" TRN social-media editor Hafiz Rashid writes:

Donald Trump’s social media company has seen its value plummet after a series of bad news this week, and the former president is throwing a tantrum about it online.

In two long-winded posts on Truth Social -- which is part of Trump's social-media venture -- Trump ranted about how great he thinks the platform is, attacking Democrats and other social-media platforms that have banned him.

“I THINK TRUTH IS AMAZING! First of all, it is very solid, having over $200,000,000 in CASH and ZERO DEBT,” Trump posted Thursday morning. “More importantly, it is the primary way I get the word out and, for better or worse, people want to hear what I have to say, perhaps, according to experts, more than anyone else in the World.”

Does anyone believe a single word of that last paragraph? If you do, God bless you -- and you might need to get some help, given Trump's documented history as a liar of epic proportions. Rashid provides more details about the Trump rant:

[Trump[ went on to brag about his TV ratings, about how other social media platforms want him back, and how the “FAKE NEWS” shouldn’t be believed because, “They are all on TRUTH because they have to be [sic].”

The rant comes after two of Trump Media and Technology Group’s (TMTG) top investors pleaded guilty to insider trading on Wednesday, after they traded securities using private knowledge of a shell company that later merged with Trump’s company ahead of its initial public offering. That revelation came just days after Trump Media’s SEC filings were released, showing staggering losses of $58 million, with only $4.1 million in revenue, sending investors bailing.

As of this writing, TMTG’s stock is trading at $46.49, below its peak of $79.38 per share on March 26, the day of its IPO. Trump has to wait six months before he can cash in and start selling some of his 72 million shares, or get approval from the company’s board. He may decide to do that sooner as his legal bills pile up.

When Trump Media was struggling in 2022, a businessman arranged a series of loans to save it -- and the savior has clear ties to, you guessed it, Russia

Trump Media saved by Russian-American under criminal probe

 

How much has Donald Trump benefited from connections to Russia? That question is back on the front burner after The Guardian broke a story yesterday about a Russian-American businessman who arranged for a series of loans in 2022 that kept Trump Media and Technology Group (TMTG) alive to become public last week. For good measure, TMTG's savior has ties to Vladimir Putin, and he is under criminal investigation. In a particularly bizarre twist, the story even has ties to the international pornography industry.

Under the headline "Exclusive: Trump Media saved in 2022 by Russian-American under criminal investigation; Trump’s social media company went public relying partly on loans from trust managed by person of interest to prosecutors," Reporter Hugo Lowell writes:

Donald Trump’s social media company Trump Media managed to go public last week only after it had been kept afloat in 2022 by emergency loans provided in part by a Russian-American businessman under scrutiny in a federal insider-trading and money-laundering investigation.

The former US president stands to gain billions of dollars – his stake is currently valued at about $4bn – from the merger between Trump Media and Technology Group and the blank-check company Digital World Acquisition Corporation, which took the parent company of Truth Social public.

But Trump Media almost did not make it to the merger after regulators opened a securities investigation into the merger in 2021 and caused the company to burn through cash at an extraordinary rate as it waited to get the green light for its stock market debut.

The situation led Trump Media to take emergency loans, including from an entity called ES Family Trust, which opened an account with Paxum Bank, a small bank registered on the Caribbean island of Dominica that is best known for providing financial services to the porn industry.

This is where Trump Media's savior enters the picture, Lowell reports:

Through leaked documents, The Guardian has learned that ES Family Trust operated like a shell company for a Russian-American businessman named Anton Postolnikov, who co-owns Paxum Bank and has been a subject of a years-long joint federal criminal investigation by the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) into the Trump Media merger.

The existence of the trust has previously been reported by The Guardian and The Washington Post. However, who controlled the account, how the trust was connected to Paxum Bank, and how the money had been funneled through the trust to Trump Media was unknown.

The new details about the trust are drawn from documents including: Paxum Bank records showing Postolnikov having access to the trust’s account, the papers that created the trust showing as its settlor a lawyer in St Petersburg, Russia, and three years of the trust’s financial transactions.

The concern surrounding the loans to Trump Media is that ES Family Trust may have been used to complete a transaction that Paxum itself could not.

Paxum Bank does not offer loans in the US as it lacks a US banking license and is not regulated by the FDIC. Postolnikov appears to have used the trust to loan money to help save Trump Media – and the Truth Social platform – because his bank itself could not furnish the loan.

Postolnikov, the nephew of Aleksandr Smirnov, an ally of the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, has not been charged with a crime. In response to an email to Postolnikov seeking comment, a lawyer in Dominica representing Paxum Bank warned of legal action for reporting the contents of the leaked documents.

There is no indication that Trump or Trump Media had any idea about the nature of the loans beyond that they were opaque, nor has the company or its executives been accused of wrongdoing. A spokesperson for Trump Media did not respond to a request for comment.

There are signs, however, that Trump Media is uneasy about the story going public. Lowell writes:

After this story was published, a lawyer representing Trump Media said in a statement: “The Guardian continues to propagate its false narrative that TMTG has these fake connections to Russia. It is a hoax. Litigation will continue on this point and we are confident that The Guardian will ultimately be held responsible for its defamation and this story should be retracted.”

The lawyer called the story of Trump connections to Russia a "fake" and a "hoax"? Gee, it sounds like Trump himself wrote that statement. But, Lowell reports, the story has legs and cannot be easily dismissed: For one thing, a whistleblower, a former Trump insider, now is involved:

Postolnikov has been under increasing scrutiny in the criminal investigation into the Trump Media merger. Most recently, he has been listed on search warrant affidavits alongside several associates – one of whom was indicted last month for money laundering on top of earlier insider-trading charges.

Postolnikov and the trust

In late 2021, Trump Media was facing financial trouble after the original planned merger with Digital World was delayed indefinitely when the Securities and Exchange Commission opened an investigation into the merger, Trump Media’s since-ousted co-founder-turned-whistleblower Will Wilkerson recounted in an interview.

Part of the problem was that Trump Media struggled to get financing because traditional banks were reluctant to lend millions to Trump’s social media company in the wake of the January 6 Capitol attack, Wilkerson said.

Trump Media eventually found some lenders, including ES Family Trust, but the sequence of events was curious.

ES Family Trust was established on 18 May 2021, its creation papers show. Postolnikov’s “user” access to the account was “verified” on 30 November 2021 by a Paxum Bank manager in Dominica. The trust was funded for the first time on 2 December 2021.

Trump Media then received the loans from ES Family Trust: $2m on 23 December 2021, and $6m on 17 February 2022.

The loans came in the form of convertible promissory notes, meaning ES Family Trust would gain a major stake in Trump Media because it was offering the money in exchange for Trump Media agreeing to convert the loan principal into “shares of Company Stock”.

Oddly, the notes were never signed. But the investment in Trump Media proved to be huge: While precise figures can only be known by Trump Media, ES Family Trust’s stake in Trump Media is worth between $20m and $40m even after the sharp decline of the company’s share price in the wake of a poor earnings report.

The ES Family Trust account also appears to have benefited Postolnikov personally. As the criminal investigation into the Trump Media deal intensified towards the end of last year, the trust recorded several transfers to Postolnikov with the subject line “Partial Loan Return”.

The current status of ES Family Trust is also unknown. The trust’s address is listed as a residential home in Hollywood, Florida. But, according to the property website Redfin, the six-bedroom home appears to have been sold in December 2023.

The creation papers also contained something notable: a declaration that, if the original trustee – a Paxum employee named Angel Pacheco – stepped down from the role, his successor would be a certain individual named Michael Shvartsman.

That leads to a money laundering investigation that has ties to Trump Media and Truth Social, Lowell reports:

Sprawling money-laundering investigation

Last month, federal prosecutors charged Michael Shvartsman, a close associate of Postolnikov, with money laundering in a superseding indictment after previously charging him and two others in July with insider-trading Digital World shares. Shvartsman and his co-defendants pleaded not guilty.

At least part of the evidence against Shvartsman came from a confidential informant for the DHS, court filings show: in one March 2023 meeting with the informant and an associate, Shvartsman mentioned a friend who owned a bank in Dominica and made bridge loans to Trump Media.

“[Shvartsman] stated that a friend of his owns a bank in the island of Dominica and would be able to provide banking services to Russian and Ukraine Nationals if the [confidential informant] had other clients in need of that service,” the DHS report said.

“[Shvartsman’s associate] told the [confidential informant] that he does not think the SEC would be able to go after [Shvartsman] for his part in the investment but mentioned that [Shvartsman] essentially provided ‘bridge financing’ for the firm behind the Truth Social media platform,” it said.

The unredacted parts of the DHS report do not specify whether the “friend” was Postolnikov and what the “bridge financing” referred to – but the report left open the possibility that Shvartsman also had a role with the trust.

A lawyer for Shvartsman declined to comment on his client’s relationship with Postolnikov. A spokesperson for the US attorney’s office for the southern district of New York also declined to comment.

It is unclear whether federal prosecutors are aware that Trump Media was propped up by Postolnikov via ES Family Trust. At the same time, the money-laundering investigation surrounding the Trump Media merger and the scrutiny on Postolnikov appears to have ballooned in recent months.

The investigation into potential money laundering appears to have started after Wilkerson’s lawyers --  Phil Brewster, Stephen Bell and Patrick Mincey -- alerted the US attorney’s office in the southern district of New York to the ES Family Trust loans in October 2022.

Months later, in June 2023, the FBI expanded its investigation to work jointly with the Department of Homeland Security’s El Dorado task force, which specializes in money laundering, and its Illicit Proceeds and Foreign Corruption group, which targets corrupt foreign officials who use US entities to launder illicit funds.

Public companies require truth and transparency; so no wonder Trump is driving Truth Social into the ground, as he's done with other public ventures

(moneycontrol.com)

 

Donald Trump has an ugly history when it comes to operating publicly held companies. As his Trump Media stock seems to be falling off a cliff, history could be repeating itself, according to a post by Timothy Noah of The New Republic. Under the headline "Trump’s Truth Social Play Is Already Failing; In one week, the former president is down a billion dollars—courtesy of the SEC," Noah writes:

On the day after Easter, Donald Trump, who likes to compare himself to Jesus Christ, told the truth about his social network platform, Truth Social, and the truth did not set him free. It cost him about $1 billion as Truth Social’s stock price dropped 21 percent.

Noah then addresses one of the problems Trump has with public companies. Such entities are required to file certain documents about their financial status, and fudging, concealing, or "adjusting" the truth is a bad idea.  Noah provides details about the Trump stock plunge, which can't be spun to make it look better::

The bad news was delivered in an 8-K form filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, and accompanying documents. These materials reveal that Truth Social, which was valued at about $8 billion when the stock debuted last week, lost $58 million last year. Revenues were only about $4 million, and Truth Social “expects to continue to incur operating losses and negative cash flows from operating activities for the foreseeable future.” At the end of trading Monday, Truth Social’s value was marked down to (a still wildly inflated) $6.7 billion.

That brings us to details about Trump's ugly history with public companies. Evidence suggests Trump is not cut out to run such a company (just as he isn't cut out to be president) because they must operate with a certain level of transparency -- and Trump is not good with transparency. Noah writes:

Well, that’s what Trump gets for taking a business public. The SEC is an agency with which Trump seldom interacts because his businesses are almost always privately held. It’s easier to keep secrets at a private business. The last company Trump took public, in 1995, was Trump Hotels and Casino Resorts, of which Trump was chief executive from 2000 to 2005. It didn’t end well. Under Trump, the company lost money every year; its stock price fell from $35 to 17 cents, according to a 2016 investigation by Drew Harwell in The Washington Post; and in 2004, Trump Hotels and Casino Resorts filed for bankruptcy. On the plus side, Trump walked away with $44 million in accumulated salary, bonuses, and other compensation.

It’s much harder to lie to the SEC than it is to lie to a bank or insurance company about a privately held business. That’s because reporting requirements for publicly held companies are sufficiently extensive that if you make stuff up there’s a much better chance somebody will notice, and if somebody notices there’s a much better chance you’ll be punished. The SEC’s success rate is about 90 percent in administrative law proceedings and about 69 percent in court proceedings. (There is also the possibility of a criminal referral to the Justice Department.) Indeed, in 2002 the SEC nailed Trump for submitting questionable earnings numbers on Trump Hotels and Casino Resorts. Trump settled the matter for an undisclosed sum.

To make matters worse in the case of Truth Social, Trump appointed a CEO who apparently knows even less about public companies than does Trump. Noah writes:

Truth Social’s chief executive is Devin Nunes, a former Republican representative from California who defended Trump in his first House impeachment. Judging from the SEC filing, Nunes would not appear to be a very skillful businessman. Even before the bad news spilled out from Monday’s SEC filings, it was known that the company lost more than half its monthly active users over the previous year, falling to fewer than half a million at a time when Facebook, Twitter, and Threads all exceed 100 million. As I observed last week, customers seem to prefer Trump’s stock, which last week cost $70 per share, to Trump’s product, which is given away free of charge. If you think of Truth Social less as a business proposition and more as a political movement, the public is keener to own it than to join it.

Maybe that's because the company essentially is worthless and does not provide a product or service that anybody seems to want. It's hard to write a story about Trump without using the word "lie," as we did in the seventh paragraph above. It's also hard to write a story about Trump without using the word "scheme," as Noah does below. And Truth Social boils down to a scheme to benefit Trump -- and the hell with investors -- Noah writes:

It’s perhaps unfair to blame Nunes for Truth Social’s failure when you consider that—as with Trump Hotels and Casino Resorts (which bore the same stock symbol, DJT)—Truth Social was never intended to be much more than a scheme to enrich Donald Trump. At Truth Social, Trump holds no management position, even though he owns a 57-percent majority of stock in its parent company, Trump Media & Technology Group. The stock does not represent any investment on Trump’s part; he was given it free of charge, mostly for the use of his name. If Truth Social has failed to succeed as a social-media platform, that’s probably because, like the Trump Shuttle, Trump Vodka, Trump Steaks, and the infamous Trump University, it’s really just a branding opportunity to score Trump a quick buck.

Trump does little to disguise this. Will Wilkerson, a former executive at Trump Media & Technology Group, told The Washington Post’s Drew Harwell that in October 2021 he was chatting with company co-founder Andy Litinsky, a onetime contestant on The Apprentice, when Trump rang up Litinsky’s cell phone. Give some of your shares to Melania, Trump told Litinsky. (At the time Trump owned not 57 percent of all shares but 90 percent.) Litinsky did not comply, and five months later, he was kicked off the company’s board. In an email to Wilkerson, Litinsky said this was retaliation, plain and simple. Last month Litinsky sued Trump, demanding a bigger stake.

Truth Social’s failure as a business (as opposed to a stock) was preordained. One poll cited in the SEC filing says that only one-third of all voters would use a social-media site associated with Trump. Another says that nearly 40 percent of all Republicans would avoid the platform. “If President Trump becomes less popular,” the company says in the SEC filing, “or there are new controversies that damage his credibility or the desire of people to use a platform associated with him, and from which he will derive financial benefit, [Truth Social’s] results of operations could be adversely affected.” That makes it sound as though Truth Social is succeeding now, while Trump is the presumptive Republican nominee, and of course it is not, except as a stock bubble from which the air has already started to go out. Further threats to the business model cited in the filing are Trump’s possible death, incarceration, or “incapacity.” (On this last, it may already be too late.)

Last week I noted that Trump would be sorely tempted to cash out his holdings in Truth Social—to, in effect, Trump and dump. Knowing what I know now, I’m surprised he hasn’t done so already. Trump is not a guy who likes to leave $1 billion on the table, and before this week is out he could lose another $4 or $5 billion. Maybe he really is losing his fastball.

As Trump Media's stock plummets, and Truth Social looks like a loser, small retail investors (like the MAGA types) could be left holding a smelly, worthless bag

(Business Insider)

Former President Trump's net worth fell by about $1 billion yesterday as shares in his social-media company plummeted, according to a report at Axios

Bottom line: Having Trump as your president is bad; having Trump as owner of a company in  which you invested might be even worse -- at least on an individual level. That's especially true when you consider that the SEC-fueled deal that helped create Trump's public social-media company emitted an overwhelming stench of corruption from the outset.

Under the headline "Truth Social faces harsh reality as a public company," Dan Primack and Sara Fischer write:

Truth Social — the Trump-owned social-media platform that started trading yesterday — currently has far fewer users and less income than any social network that has gone public before.

Why it matters: While the app does sell some ads, its business is practically nonexistent.

• Truth Social earned $3.4 million in revenue for the first nine months of 2023 and it lost around $49 million.
• By comparison, Facebook (now Meta) earned $3.71 billion in revenue the year before it went public and was profitable.

Between the lines: Truth Social's user base is still very small, niche and not very global compared to its publicly traded social media rivals.

Trump Media and Technology Group, the company that owns Truth Social, carries all kinds of negative baggage that might have eluded the everyday, casual investor, such as Trump's MAGA followers. What will happen to those types of investors. Online observers have a variety of answers to that question, so it's probably too early to say. This much seems clear, at least to folks who are not totally detached from reality: Following Donald Trump, either politically or financially, can come with repercussions that are damaging, even ruinous. At the moment  it appears MAGA investors, who probably just wanted to give a financial boost to their "Orange Idol," will be left holding the proverbial bag -- with no sign that Trump is able, or willing, to bail them out.

Today's harsh lesson in reality: Follow Donald Trump at your own substantial risk -- and brace yourself for bad news that likely is coming right around the corner.

How does Trump Media compare to its social-media competitors? The answer is not pretty, as Axios makes clear: 

Between the lines: Truth Social's user base is still very small, niche and not very global compared to its publicly traded social media rivals.

• SimilarWeb estimates it had 5 million monthly website visits globally in February 2024 and roughly 1 million monthly active app users in the U.S.
• The company has not reported the actual metrics, which is unusual for a social-media company going public.
• Facebook had 845 million monthly active users (MAU) at its IPO in 2012. Twitter (now X), had 215 million when it went public in 2013.

In other words Truth Social, is a lousy business, like most every venture Trump touches -- including the presidency. No one in his right mind would invest in such a shaky business -- unless, perhaps it was on a "quick, in and out, basis." Then again, perhaps Trump knew many MAGAs are not in their right minds, and he was counting on that to reel them in.

More bad news could be on the horizon. Trump Media now holds the designation of a "meme stock," and that should not provide comfort to investors.  Axios explains: 

Zoom in: For now, Truth Social is trading like a meme stock, meaning its market value is completely divorced from its financial reality.

• But once retail investors tire of the penny stock, its fate will be left to institutional investors who want to see high-growth opportunities and profit margins.
• Meme stocks like GameStop and AMC that soared during the pandemic-era retail investor bump have since crashed. In short, the future looks anything but bright for Truth Social investors. From the Axios report;

Reality check: Truth Social has yet to outline to investors its latest product plans or business strategy. The company has been plagued by business and legal challenges since it went public, including a now-settled SEC investigation and a lawsuit from former employees.

• Ahead of its launch, the company touted grand plans to start a subscription streaming service and a technology arm that would provide alternatives to internet services like Stripe and Amazon's AWS. Neither of those ideas has materialized.

Between the lines: Social media firms haven't always had their financials in order before going public. But their user bases were compelling enough to entice institutional investors for years until they started making real money.

• Twitter only ever turned a profit for two of the eight years it was public, but it had 215 million monthly active users at its IPO. Snapchat has yet to post a full year of positive net income, but it went public with 158 million daily active users and posted revenues of $4.6 billion last year.

Truth Social is nowhere near that level, and the chances it ever will join that league appear iffy -- at best.

To "celebrate" Easter, Donald Trump sweeps Jesus off the stage and regales followers with a rant about his own legal woes. So this is the "holy" man MAGAs adore

(Quora)

How does Donald Trump, noted Bible salesman, celebrate Easter? He does it in typical narcissistic fashion by removing any apparent reference to the resurrection of Jesus Christ and making it all about . . . Donald Trump. That raises this question: Do MAGA Republicans see Easter the way Donald Trump apparently sees it? By frequently comparing himself to Jesus Christ, even referring to himself as the "Chosen One," Trump seems to see Easter as a secular holiday for worshiping Donald Trump. Is this how MAGA Republicans view Easter, as an opportunity to worship Trump by sweeping that guy we know as Jesus Christ completely off the stage? If that is the case, do MAGA Republicans have mental-health problems equal to, or even greater than, those that plague Trump himself? Does that mean Trump and his followers are, to put it in everyday lingo, "a few bricks shy of a load"?

Is that why MAGAs don't seem to care about Trump's prodigious and obvious character deficits. Speaking of character, perhaps no one has better described Trump's than former Sports Illustrated writer Rick Reilly, who recently wrote at Twitter:

Does the Trump Bible tell you how to bang a porn star at a golf tournament while your third wife is home with an infant?

(I don't think Reilly is making a joke here. Few people know the ins and outs of professional golf like Rick Reilly, and I'm betting this is exactly how the ins and outs of the Trump-Stormy Daniels relationship transpired.)

Reilly is an insightful, funny guy, and I highly recommend any of his works. In addition to writing for Sports Illustrated and ESPN The Magazine, Reilly has  written 14 books and several screenplays. If you are new to Reilly's work, and considering the topic of today's post, I recommend that you start with Commander in Cheat: How Golf Explains Trump (Hatchette Books, 2019). (See image at the end of this post.)

The book will make you LOL and provide loads of insight on the man who wants to be president of our country, despite his overwhelming unfitness for the job.

So how did Trump celebrate Easter 2024? He did it mostly via a series of posts on Truth Social, with his own legal troubles being the primary topic. Was there any mention of  Jesus, the resurrection, religion, or faith? Not that we could tell. Is this the kind of man the MAGA crowd admires, one who presents Easter as a Jesus-free, secular festival, one that he turns into a self-centered, fact-free pile of political puke? The answer to this question seems to be yes, suggesting MAGA types, like Trump himself, are not serious about either faith or politics. In other words, there seems to be no substance to Trump or his followers.

Let's turn to Amanda Yen, of The Daily Beast, for details about a Donald Trump Easter. Under the headline "Trump Rages Against His Legal Foes in Unhinged Easter Screed; “HAPPY EASTER TO ALL, INCLUDING CROOKED AND CORRUPT PROSECUTORS AND JUDGES,” he declared.," Yen writes:

In a lengthy holiday temper tantrum posted to Truth Social, Trump went after several of his favorite courtroom targets, accusing them of doing “EVERYTHING POSSIBLE” to derail his 2024 re-election effort.

“HAPPY EASTER TO ALL, INCLUDING CROOKED AND CORRUPT PROSECUTORS AND JUDGES THAT ARE DOING EVERYTHING POSSIBLE TO INTERFERE WITH THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION OF 2024, AND PUT ME IN PRISON,” the former president began in his 166-word rant. 

How's that for getting into the Easter spirit? Here is more from Yen:

He then listed off his enemies, including “DERANGED” Special Counsel Jack Smith, who has twice indicted Trump on federal charges, and Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, who is prosecuting him on election interference charges in Georgia.

But Trump saved the brunt of his ire for Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg. He accused the D.A. with zero evidence of working “WITH CROOKED JOE’S DOJ THUGS” to indict him in the looming hush-money case involving alleged payments to Stormy Daniels. The hush-money trial is set to kick off April 15.Bragg on Thursday asked the presiding judge in the hush-money case to expand the gag order Trump was issued earlier that week, which prevents him from attacking court staff, prosecutors, and their families. It remains to be seen whether the judge—who has also been targeted—will tighten the gag on the former president.

 

 “HAPPY EASTER EVERYONE,” Trump grumbled.

Doesn't it make you look forward to 2025 when we can celebrate another Donald Trump Easter? With any luck, he'll be in prison by then.