All posts tagged "Grift"

President Donald Trump's grift has gotten so big, he's actually selling off access to the United States itself, columnist Brian Karem claimed in a new column for Salon.

Karem quoted a former Trump official saying, "If you think Trump is holding a yard sale, I would remind everyone that the United States is the yard that is for sale and everything, including security secrets, defensive initiatives, private data, and secrets most people don’t know about are for sale. And no one in this administration is going to call him out," the official added. "The new Trump regime is becoming increasingly insulated while his activities grow more outrageous. Everything he does is pay to play.”

Enter the $400 million luxury Qatari airliner "gifted" to the Defense Department, but which Trump will get for his own use. ...

During a segment on MSNBC's Deadline: White House this Wednesday, the panel discussed a new report from The New York Times that states Donald Trump has "spent more than $100 million on lawyers and other costs related to fending off various investigations, indictments and his coming criminal trials" -- money that has come "almost entirely on donations made in an attempt to fight the results of the 2020 election."

Speaking during the segment, political strategist Tim Miller acknowledged that soliciting donations to pay down legal bills is legal, but "like everything else, Donald Trump has exacerbated it and expanded it and done it in the griftiest and most over-the-top way imaginable to benefit himself."

Nevertheless, paying down legal bills with supporter donations opens Trump up to a "political vulnerability," according to Miller. While many of his supporters are happy to give Trump money, "there are some that he's defrauded," he said, giving the example of the "automatic check button" where voters think they're "giving him $10 but actually you're giving him $10 recurring every month and you have to uncheck it to not give him the $10."...

Donald Trump's grievance "grift" to flush funds into his campaign coffers has already begun its whimpering end, legal experts said on MSNBC Wednesday night.

Lisa Rubin took to the airwaves to discuss an email exchange between Trump's attorney Chris Kise and Justice Arthur Engoron, the civil court judge overseeing his $370 million fraud trial who Wednesday blocked, in a testy exchange, the former president's bid to present closing arguments.

Engoron initially agreed to allow Trump to speak, then rescinded his offer when Trump wouldn't agree to limit his speech to the facts of the case, court records show. ...

One legal analyst predicts that Donald Trump will continue to use his lawyers to push the envelope in court to make more money from his supporters.

Trump's lawyers in the New York fraud case submitted their motion for a mistrial Wednesday, attacking Judge Arthur Engoron and his law clerk. The accusation is about political contributions they say were made by the staff of the judge and their claim that the judge is "biased" against them, as evidenced by his decisions on objections and motions.

Glenn Kirschner, a former federal prosecutor and host of the "Justice Matters" podcast that explains complex legal issues to laypeople, spoke to MSNBC Wednesday about the "why" part of the motion. ...