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March 24, 2017
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Former Donald Trump lawyer Michael Cohen went to prison for making the hush money payments to adult film star Stormy Daniels, but National Enquirer chief David Pecker never had any consequences for his hush-money payments to other affairs Trump was trying to cover up.
The New York Times revealed today that the New York grand jury is beginning to navigate Trump's personal expenditures and his role in sketchy business practices that resulted in more than a dozen guilty verdicts against his companies. Cohen explained that he's been working with the Manhattan DA recently on the case, meeting with Alvin Bragg specifically. Until the guilty convictions, Bragg was ignoring many of the things that Cohen had been telling his office about Trump's potentially illegal behavior.
Cohen told Raw Story in Oct. 2022 that Trump took the hush-money payments to Daniels as a tax write-off. Trump biographer David Cay Johnston explained in Dec. 2022 it was just the tip of the iceberg of Trump's tax losses that he knew were fraudulent.
The Times' Suzanne Craig has said that they have been unable to find the things Cohen is referring to and asked while the two appeared on MSNBC together how he knows about the tax write-off and how it may have been hidden.
IN OTHER NEWS: Trump used an unusual method to get a behind-the-scenes look at IRS tax investigation: report
"He said Trump didn't declare it in the way he should have, he didn't record the payment in the way he should have, I'm curious what Michael knows about it," she asked.
Cohen explained that he had heard about some of the things in conversations with prosecutors about things that were not properly disclosed in Trump's tax forms. "Somehow," Cohen said of Trump, "he believed that you can take this as a deduction, which obviously you can't."
"But your understanding is somewhere put in as a business expense?" Craig asked and Cohen agreed, noting that it was either categorized as a legal expense or reimbursement.
"That's why every single month they'd have me do this as a legal retainer, to which then days or weeks later I would receive the check for that month," said Cohen. "It's not as if he was paying me legitimately."
"The payment was buried through your legal fees that you were getting after 2017?" Craig asked.
"The alleged legal fees. Basically, what he did and this was in conjunction with Allen Weisselberg, they took the money owed to me and divided it by 12. They gave me $35,000 per month, and that $35,000 was supposed to represent legal fees and obviously, they knew exactly in advance what they intended to do and to deduct the legal fees as a business expense."
Craig said that what it will come down to is making sure the documents are gathered to prove this, and the evidence to prove this. She noted that she's keeping an eye on Weisselberg specifically because he's been uncooperative thus far.
While Cohen was unable to speak about a lot of what the DA has, he made one thing clear: "Donald will ultimately be held accountable for this Stormy Daniels payment and I've always said that this investigation that was to be brought by Alvin Bragg's office is the most detrimental to him, his freedom, his livelihood, his business, et cetera, because it's the easiest to prove. The checks are the checks. We know a lot. There are recordings, which have been released in the past. This is an easy one."
There are other cases, he said, like the one in Georgia, which seems more difficult.
See the discussions below or at the link here.
Michael Cohen 1 www.youtube.com
Michael Cohen and Suzanne Craig discuss Trump's taxes www.youtube.com
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Principal ordered librarian to take down Holocaust survivor’s famous quote just days before Holocaust Remembrance Day
January 30, 2023
A Pennsylvania principal drew criticism last week after telling a Bucks County school librarian to take down posters with a famous quote by Elie Wiesel, the Nobel Peace Prize winning human rights activist, professor, and Holocaust survivor, just days before Holocaust Remembrance Day. The Central Bucks School District reportedly has ties to an organization that appears on the Southern Poverty Law Center’s list of anti-LGBTQ hate groups.
Despite being under investigation by the U.S. Dept. of Education’s Office of Civil Rights after an ACLU complaint, the Central Bucks School District earlier this month voted 6-3 to pass “a contentious policy that bans teachers from engaging in ‘advocacy activities’ and displaying inclusive symbols like Pride flags in their classrooms,” WHYY reported earlier this month.
Citing that new rule, known as Policy 321, the school principal told Central Bucks High School South librarian Matt Pecic to take down four posters that displayed Wiesel’s famous quote from his 1986 Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech, WHYY reports.
“I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented,” Wiesel said.
The principal reportedly told Pecic if he did not comply human resources would have to get involved. Pecic, who has worked for the school district for three decades, met with the principal accompanied by his union representative.
“If I didn’t take it down, I knew there would be consequences that could impact me,” Pecic said. “It’s a horrible feeling. And you feel like you have to do something that you don’t agree with.”
Making the issue even more difficult, “Pecic’s ninth-grade daughter, a Central Bucks student at Holicong Middle School, originally emailed him the quote,” WHYY reports.
“This is where I get choked up,” Pecic said. “She said that ‘this quote reminds me of you.’”
Pecic describes himself as someone who often speaks up, “if I disagree with something, especially if I think it’s not for the benefit of students, I will say something.”
On Thursday, after uproar from the community, the district stepped in and allowed the posters with Wiesel’s quote to be put back up.
“We regret that the decision was made to remove it,” the district said in a statement, The Philadelphia Inquirer reported, “and in a manner that promotes not only the importance of the novel, but continued awareness and education surrounding the Holocaust and its National Day of Remembrance this coming Friday. The district apologizes for any hurt or concerns this has caused, particularly for those in the Jewish community.”
The Central Bucks School District hired a public relations firm, Devine + Partners, at the cost of $15,000 a month, “in an attempt to repair strained public relations and improve the school district’s image,” The Buck’s County Herald reported last summer.
Devine + Partners was hired to help after “a series of executive decisions made by the Central Bucks School District, most of which appear targeted towards the LGBTQ+ student body.”
“This includes the removal of Pride Flags in the classroom, under the justification that they were political symbols, and as such, not fit for the classroom. It also includes only allowing students to attend Human Growth and Development classes that matched with their assigned genders at birth, and pausing said classes shortly after they began, effectively outing these students to their teachers and peers.”
WHYY is a separate report notes on Monday that the Central Bucks School District has ties to an anti-LGBTQ hate group, the Family Research Council.
The district is currently reviewing five books after rolling out a new, harsh policy “which aims to keep books that a yet-to-be-determined group might deem ‘inappropriate’ for unspecified ‘sexualized content’ out of school libraries,” WHYY reported in July.
“Recent updates to the policy were reviewed by a conservative Christian law firm, Independence Law Center, as first reported by the Bucks County Courier Times,” WHYY adds. “The Independence Law Center is the legal arm of the Pennsylvania Family Institute, which is a statewide branch of the national organization Family Research Council, an anti-LGBTQ Christian nationalist group designated as an extremist hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.”
Earlier this month NBC 10 Philadelphia reported on the passage of Policy 321 by the school board.
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WASHINGTON — House Oversight and Accountability Committee Chair James Comer on Monday previewed his priorities for this Congress, which he says will include a heavy focus on the handling of classified documents, the origins of the COVID-19 virus, and what he described as possible “influence peddling” by Hunter Biden.
The Kentucky Republican addressed reporters and the public at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., taking audience questions and vowing to lead a “substantive committee.”
The panel will begin its work this session with a hearing Wednesday that will examine potential fraud and abuse of federal pandemic relief dollars, including small business loans and unspent funds left over in federal accounts.
“Unfortunately, over the last two years, there hasn’t been a single hearing in the Oversight Committee dealing with the pandemic spending, even though [the federal government] spent record amounts of money. That’s very concerning. I feel like we’re two years behind in oversight. So we’re gonna have to go back two years to try to get caught up,” Comer said.
The Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis under Democratic control during last Congress held hearings including on efforts to prevent pandemic relief fraud and examining anti-poverty pandemic initiatives.
For example, issues have surfaced after the Paycheck Protection Program, or PPP loans, that were meant to keep struggling business owners afloat during the economic tumult of the global pandemic.
About 92% of those loans have been forgiven partially or in full, including the funds given to wealthy companies, according to an analysis of Small Business Administration data by NPR.
Classified documents
Reflecting on recent scandals involving classified government material found in the homes and personal offices of former and current U.S. leaders, Comer said Republicans and Democrats alike “all agree there’s a problem.”
After disclosures this month that classified documents were located in President Joe Biden’s think tank office and home, Comer sent letters to the White House and the U.S. Secret Service, requesting more information about who might have had access to the material.
Comer told the press Monday that the White House and the committee have not yet discussed a time to meet about the matter.
“We have to reform the way that documents are boxed up when they leave the president and vice president’s office and follow them in the private sector,” he said.
The committee, as soon as this week, plans to meet with the general counsel for the National Archives and Records Administration, the agency tasked with managing presidential documents.
Comer said he “wasn’t alarmed” by the news that Biden had classified documents in his Penn Biden Center office dating back to his vice presidency and in his Delaware home dating back to his days in the Senate. Department of Justice officials searched Biden’s home earlier this month, in what the president said was a voluntary search.
“I just thought it was ironic that the president was quick to call Donald Trump irresponsible for his handling of classified documents, and then he has the same thing happen,” Comer said.
The FBI in August executed a search warrant at Mar-a-Lago, former President Donald Trump’s Florida home and private club, and found about 100 documents with classified markings out of thousands searched.
“When Mar-a-Lago was raided, I went on TV… and I said ‘Look, this has been rumored to have been a problem with many former presidents about inadvertently taking documents,’” Comer said.
Biden family probe
However, Comer repeatedly said his committee will be taking aim at Biden — not solely over classified documents, but over whether the president benefited from his Yale-educated lawyer son Hunter’s business dealings with foreign powers.
Hunter Biden once sat on the board of the Ukrainian energy company Burisma and became connected with a Chinese energy tycoon who was later reportedly detained as part of an anti-corruption investigation.
“We’re investigating the president — this isn’t a Hunter Biden investigation, he’s a person of interest in the investigation of Joe Biden,” Comer said.
The White House has characterized the investigation as a conspiracy theory.
COVID origins
Another issue that Comer said he hopes will be bipartisan: the origins of the COVID-19 virus.
A select committee to examine the topic will be housed under the Committee on Oversight and Accountability.
“No Republicans are accusing Democrats of starting COVID-19. We’re wondering if COVID-19 started in the Wuhan (China) lab, so no one said ‘Oh, that was started by a Democrat.’ But for whatever reason there were never any bipartisan hearings on the origination of COVID,” Comer said. “… It should be bipartisan. Hopefully this won’t be a select committee like (the) January 6th (select committee), which was considered overtly partisan.”
A March 2021 report by the World Health Organization found that it was “likely to very likely” that an animal host carried the virus and transmitted it to humans, but a source was not definitively identified. The United States and several other countries expressed concern about delays and access to data used in the report.
For all of its wide-ranging examinations, there are two topics the Oversight Committee won’t be raising: the 2020 election results and police reform.
“At the end of the day, we’ve got our plate full with excessive spending and public corruption,” Comer said.
In light of this month’s brutal beating and death of Tyre Nichols by Memphis police, Comer said any discussion of police reform remains under the Judiciary Committee.
“We don’t want to reach into other committees’ areas of jurisdiction,” Comer said. “… Certainly there are bad apples in every profession, bad politicians, bad police officers, and they need to be held accountable.”
The Committee on Oversight and Accountability will hold its first full committee organization meeting at 11 a.m. Tuesday.
Iowa Capital Dispatch is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Iowa Capital Dispatch maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Kathie Obradovich for questions: info@iowacapitaldispatch.com. Follow Iowa Capital Dispatch on Facebook and Twitter.
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