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Marjorie Taylor Greene: Informants who sparked FBI's raid on Trump's resort are 'traitors'
August 11, 2022
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) said in a recent episode of her show that the informants who helped the FBI in their raid on Donald Trump's Florida resort are "traitors," Newsweek reports.
Greene was reacting to a Newsweek report from Wednesday based on an inside source who said an informant told FBI agents where to find alleged classified documents Trump had taken from the White House at the end of his presidency.
"We now know that there was an FBI informant at Mar-a-Lago, who is that and how many other FBI informants are around President Trump on a daily basis, working at his clubs, working at Mar-a-Lago, or maybe Bedminster, or on his staff?" Greene asked.
"These are the things I want to know, because they're traitors, they are traitors and they're helping the deep state," she said. "These are the enemies within, these are the real enemies, and they are there to purposely create something against President Trump that is not there."
IN OTHER NEWS: Glenn Youngkin received 'unusual' $8.5 million payout from former employer — and paid no taxes on it: lawsuit
Greene went on to say that the FBI agents made sure they found evidence against Trump because if they "come up empty handed, then they know they're going to jail."
"That is why it's the most dangerous time for President Trump and his family and anyone in its orbit, me included, because these people will stop at nothing. They don't want a second President Trump term," Greene said. "Here's why; because he is dead serious, and he knows who his enemies are and he is going to finish the job he started in his first four years."
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Mar-A-Lago search reveals a screw-up by same Trump lawyer who repped Bannon at recent trial: legal experts
August 11, 2022
The FBI raid of Mar-A-Lago puts a big target on the back of one of Donald Trump's attorneys, according to legal experts.
According to three sources, Trump defense attorney Evan Corcoran -- who also represented Steve Bannon at his trial for contempt of Congress -- had been handling negotiations with the Department of Justice about the location of classified and sensitive material the former president took home with him from the White House, and experts agreed the search reveals a breakdown in those negotiations, reported The Daily Beast.
“It's not unusual for DOJ to try to reach out and get as much dialogue as possible,” said Miami attorney Kendall Coffey, a former U.S. attorney. “But if DOJ has at some level decided there is going to be a search, they are not going to tell the attorney for the subject of the search.”
“A search warrant — while you are in discussions — signals significant adversity,” Coffey added. “Prosecutors can be cordial and polite, even when they're planning to indict your client.”
One attorney briefed on the discussions said Corcoran had been in talks with the Justice Department for at least two months before FBI agents executed the search warrant, and attorney Alan Dershowitz said Corcoran and other Trump lawyers had failed their client so far.
“That’s what the Justice Department will use it for: to get rid of a lawyer, to create distrust between a client and their lawyer,” said Dershowitz, who served on Trump’s defense team during his first impeachment trial.
“He has to be very aggressive, and he has to go to court, and he has to not trust negotiations with the Justice Department," Dershowitz added. "He has to seek injunctions. He has to seek to have a special master appointed to look at the docs. There should have been a lawyer in front of a judge at 10 a.m. yesterday.”
Experts say the move shows investigators felt the discussions weren't going anywhere or even feared evidence would be destroyed, and John W. Carlin, who oversaw the National Archives during the Bill Clinton and George W. Bush administrations, said the Justice Department was right to make an aggressive move.
“I would be shocked if they were nonconsequential classified records," Carlin said. "There’s a reason why those boxes were taken. We’re talking about national security, we’re talking about protecting records that should not be routinely available to the public -- period. Classified records are very strictly managed. As archivist, even I couldn’t just walk in and see classified records at a spur-of-the-moment."
“Just because you sit behind the [Resolute] desk doesn't mean you can casually have classified records sitting around the Oval Office. That's just not the way they’re handled,” he added. “Casually taking two or three boxes from the White House with no permission … there’s no way that’s right."
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Glenn Youngkin received 'unusual' $8.5 million payout from former employer — and paid no taxes on it: lawsuit
August 11, 2022
On Thursday, NBC News reported that a shareholder of a private equity firm is alleging in a lawsuit that an unusual deal gave Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin $8.5 million in stock benefits at the expense of police and firefighters — and he paid no taxes on it.
"A complex corporate transaction had gone through at the Carlyle Group, the powerful private equity company that Youngkin led as co-chief executive. Under the deal, approved by the Carlyle board and code-named 'Project Phoenix,' he began receiving $8.5 million worth of Carlyle stock, tax-free, according to court documents," reported Gretchen Morgenson. "The Project Phoenix payout came on top of $54 million in compensation Youngkin had received from Carlyle during the previous two years, regulatory records show. Youngkin retired from Carlyle on Sept. 30, 2020; he won the governor’s election in November 2021."
According to the report, Youngkin was one of several Carlyle executives who benefited from the deal, with eight other officials, including Carlyle founder David Rubenstein, receiving more than $200 million worth of combined shares.
"Now, that transaction is under attack by a Carlyle shareholder in Delaware Chancery Court. The suit, filed last week by the city of Pittsburgh Comprehensive Municipal Pension Trust Fund, says the $344 million deal harmed Carlyle’s stockholders, who received nothing in return when they funded the payday," said the report. "Meanwhile, the Carlyle insiders who received the payouts escaped a tax bill that would have exceeded $1 billion, according to the complaint, which accuses Rubenstein, Youngkin and other Carlyle officials of lining their own pockets at the expense of people like police officers and firefighters."
"Carlyle’s 2020 $344 million tax-free payout to its insiders cited in the lawsuit is a new twist on a type of contract known as a tax receivable agreement, or TRA. Companies and their founders typically create such agreements in conjunction with initial public offerings of the companies’ shares," said the report. "Under normal circumstances, TRA payouts can be a win-win for both a company and its insiders, market participants say, because both parties get something of value — the insiders get stock, and the company gets a tax benefit when they sell it. But in a highly unusual move that was unfair to Carlyle’s shareholders, lawyers for the Pittsburgh pension fund say, Carlyle structured its payout as tax-free, generating no tax benefits to the company even as it enriched insiders."
Private equity firms, which specialize in extending capital to businesses and organizations that might struggle to secure conventional loans in exchange for some controlling stake in those organizations and are often criticized for predatory destruction of healthy businesses, already get heavily preferential treatment in the tax code, including a controversial loophole on "carried interest" that allows the managers of such firms to cut their top marginal rate almost in half.
At the demands of Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ), the Democratic climate and health care bill not only preserved this loophole but also exempted private equity firms from the new minimum "book tax" that ensures large corporations pay a minimum 15 percent on their profits.
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