Dispatches

TRUMP CONTINUES TO SLANDER HUNTER BIDEN, BUT HE’S UNCONCERNED ABOUT HIS OWN SON-IN-LAW.

Donald Trump continues to lie about the business activities of Hunter Biden. In his July 14 harangue in the White House Rose Garden, among many false and misleading statements about former Vice President Joe Biden, the Great Misleader said, “His son [Hunter Biden] walked out [of China] with $1.5 billion of money to invest, where he’ll make hundreds of thousands of dollars — maybe millions of dollars a year. Walked out with $1.5 billion. I asked one of the biggest people on Wall Street — maybe the biggest — ‘Is that possible?’ He said, ‘No.’ He’s never seen it. They don’t do that.”

The Washington Post’s Fact Checker, which has tallied more than 20,000 “false and misleading statements” Trump has made since he took office, noted, “Trump’s Wall Street friend may be onto something — because there is no evidence to support these statements.”

In December 2013, Hunter Biden and one of his daughters flew from Japan to China with Joe Biden on Air Force Two as the vice president embarked on a diplomatic mission. Twelve days after he flew to Beijing, Hunter Biden joined an advisory board of a fund called BHR Partners, which announced it would try to raise $1.5 billion. While Joe Biden was vice president, Hunter Biden was only on the board of the advisory firm and did not directly invest, but instead advised those who did.

George Mesires, a lawyer for Hunter Biden, told the Post the younger Biden only took an equity stake in 2017, after Joe Biden was no longer vice president. Mesires told the Fact Checker that the investment management company “was capitalized from various sources with a total of 30 million RMB [Chinese renminbi], or about $4.2 million, not $1.5 billion.” Because Biden acquired a 10% minority interest, his “capital commitment is approximately $420,000,” Mesires said. “To date, Mr. Biden has not received any return or compensation on account of this investment or his position on the board of directors,” Mesires added.

Hunter Biden, an attorney, resigned from the board of BHR on Oct. 31, 2019 and promised that if his father were elected president, he would not serve on boards or work on behalf of any foreign-owned companies.

Meanwhile, Republicans have expressed in hauling Hunter Biden to the Senate to grill him about his business activities, but neither Trump nor Republicans have expressed interest in probing Jared Kushner’s activities that may have helped his family business while he’s been a senior adviser to President Trump.

The Kushner Companies had been struggling financially since early 2007, when it purchased 666 Fifth Ave in Manhattan for $1.8 billion. The Kushners seemed to have trouble getting financing before Jared became top emissary to the Middle East for father-in-law Trump.

As noted by Ryan Goodman and Julie Brooks of JustSecurity.org (3/11), just weeks after Jared’s father, Charles Kushner, reportedly failed to reach a deal with Qatar’s minister of finance to help bail out the building, Jared, who had resigned his position with the family company, reportedly played a central role in supporting a blockade of Qatar by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, which started June 5, 2017, with Trump expressing support for the blockade.

The Kushners’ fortunes improved in November 2017, as the company got a $184 million loan from Apollo Global Management, with the Qatar Investment Authority one of Apollo’s largest investors, to refinance a building in Chicago.

In April 2018, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told the Saudis it was time to end the blockade.

The Kushners got their big break on Aug. 3, 2018, when they reached a deal to bail out 666 Fifth Ave. with a 99-year lease to Brookfield Asset Management for about $1.1 billion in rent, paid up front, easing the Kushners’ financial troubles by allowing them to pay off most of what they owe lenders on the building. The Qatar Investment Authority is the second-largest investor in Brookfield, but Qatar insisted it had “absolutely no involvement in the 666 Fifth Avenue development.”

Two days earlier, on Aug. 1, 2018, Brookfield closed a deal to acquire 100% of Westinghouse Electric Co.. In February 2019, the House Committee on Oversight and Reform released an interim staff report, based on whistleblower revelations, raising grave concerns over the Trump administration’s efforts to transfer sensitive nuclear technology to Saudi Arabia without congressional review. The report noted that Westinghouse, which builds nuclear reactors, stands to benefit greatly from such a deal, and that Jared Kushner has been centrally involved.

Meanwhile, the Saudis have not stopped the blockade of Qatar, but Qatar, which has been an important base for US military forces in the Middle East, has opened trade with Iran and Turkey. Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman has recently indicated a willingness to compromise.

TRUMP CRONY BEGINS POSTAL SERVICE SABOTAGE. Postal workers and their allies in Congress are vowing to fight back after the new head of the US Postal Service—a major donor to President Donald Trump and the Republican Party—moved in July to impose sweeping changes to the popular government agency as it faces a financial crisis manufactured by lawmakers and exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, Jake Johnson reported at CommonDreams (7/15).

The Washington Post reported (7/14) that Postmaster General (PMG) Louis DeJoy, who took charge in June, issued memos announcing “major operational changes” to the USPS “that could slow down mail delivery, warning employees the agency would not survive unless it made ‘difficult’ changes to cut costs.”

“Analysts say the documents present a stark reimagining of the USPS that could chase away customers—especially if the White House gets the steep package rate increases it wants—and put the already beleaguered agency in deeper financial peril as private-sector competitors embark on hiring sprees to build out their own delivery networks,” the Post noted.

According to the internal USPS memos obtained by the Post, “DeJoy told employees to leave mail behind at distribution centers if it delayed letter carriers from their routes,” a change critics said could threaten access to absentee ballots at a time when vote-by-mail is more important than ever.

“If the plants run late, they will keep the mail for the next day,” reads a document titled, “New PMG’s expectations and plan.”

“The deliberate delaying of Americans’ mail delivery would be a stunning act of sabotage against our Postal Service,” Rep. Bill Pascrell, Jr. (D-N.J.) said. “If these reports are accurate, Trump and his cronies are openly seeking to destroy the Post Office during the worst public health crisis in a century.”

“With our states now reliant on mail voting to continue elections during the pandemic, the destabilizing of the post office is a direct attack on American democracy itself,” Pascrell added. “It has been 59 days since the House passed $25 billion to keep USPS alive. The Senate must pass it now. Democracy hangs in the balance.”

With the USPS at risk of running out of cash by the end of September without an infusion of emergency funding, postal workers and members of Congress have warned that the Trump administration could attempt to exploit the agency’s financial struggles to advance the longstanding right-wing goal of privatizing USPS, which could threaten mail service in rural areas.

In March, Congress approved a $10 billion emergency USPS loan, but the Treasury Department has yet to release the funds as the Trump administration attempts to use the money as leverage to force changes to the agency’s finances and operations.

Mark Dimondstein, president of the 200,000-member American Postal Workers Union, said that his group will vigorously oppose the operational changes sought by DeJoy.

“I would tell our members that this is not something that as postal workers we should accept,” Dimondstein said. “It’s not something that the union you belong to is going to accept.”

US Mail Not for Sale, a worker-led coalition dedicated to protecting the Postal Service from right-wing privatization efforts, is urging Americans to urge the Senate to approve desperately needed financial relief for USPS.

TRUMP STILL BRAGGING ABOUT PASSING DEMENTIA SCREENING TEST. Donald Trump continues to hold up his 2018 success on a medical screening test measuring cognitive decline as evidence of his “perfect” genius. He returned to the point again in an interview with Chris Wallace (7/19), suggesting he and challenger Joe Biden be given the same test, and was very insistent, though Wallace noted, “It’s not that hard a test.”

Wallace pressed, ”They have a picture and it says ‘what’s that’ and it’s an elephant.” So Trump once again was using his ability to pass a test usually used to check dementia or brain damage due to a stroke as go-to evidence of his brilliance, telling his interviewer, who took the same test on a lark, that he could not possibly match his own clock-drawing, elephant-identifying brilliance..

Trump and his supporters continue to question Biden’s mental fitness for the job, but that attack is risky, given the questions about Trump’s own fitness for the job. A national poll from Monmouth University (7/2) found 52% of voters saying they believe Biden has the mental and physical stamina to be president vs. 45% for Trump.

Biden also has moved ahead among voters 65 or older in several national surveys, including a significant 14-point advantage in a Quinnipiac University poll (7/15), helping him gain double-digit leads nationally. Trump won seniors by 7 percentage points in 2016 over Hillary Clinton, according to exit polls, with white senior voters a key part of his coalition.

Biden’s deputy campaign manager Kate Bedingfield in a campaign memo said polls show voters aren’t buying Trump’s smears, but they are raising concerns about Trump’s fitness. “Trump literally suggested Americans inject disinfectant to cure COVID-19,” she noted.

TRUMP PROMISES TO REPLACE OBAMACARE BY EXECUTIVE ORDER. While Donald Trump’s Justice Department pursues the Supreme Court overturning the Affordable Care Act, Trump said he will sign a complete replacement plan for the ACA (also known as Obamacare) in two weeks!

“We’re signing a healthcare plan within two weeks, a full and complete healthcare plan,” Trump told Chris Wallace on Fox News (7/19). “We’re going to sign an immigration plan, a healthcare plan, and various other plans.” Oh, yeah, immigration, too. Might as well throw in infrastructure. In two weeks, Joan McCarter noted at DailyKos (7/20). That’s after he said (7/16) that he was soon “going into the world of health care—very complete health care, and we have a lot of very exciting things to discuss.” Very complete health care. In two weeks. While Congress is fighting over the next phase of coronavirus relief—and it’s going to be a fight—and the national defense authorization.

McCarter added, “In case you’re wondering, no, the Republicans have not broken their decade-long logjam and do not have a plan, of any kind, to replace Obamacare. It’s safe to say at this point that they will never have a plan to replace Obamacare. If Trump has a plan, it will be the same as how he decided to tackle coronavirus: Do nothing and blame the governors.”

BAHAMAS JOINS E.U., CANADA AND MEXICO IN BANNING US VISITORS. While the US continues to downplay the severity of the coronavirus pandemic, countries around the world are closing their doors to American tourists and travelers to avoid the risk of spreading COVID-19, Aysha Qamar noted at DailyKos (7/20).

In June, the European Union removed the US from its exclusive list of 15 countries tourists can visit from. Canada and Mexico also have closed their borders to most visitors. As the US approaches the four million mark in COVID-19 cases, out of 14.6 million confirmed cases worldwide, countries have begun closing their doors, including popular US tourist spot the Bahamas.

In a national address (7/19), Prime Minister Hubert Minnis announced that Americans are among tourists banned from entering the Bahamas. Minnis added that the country’s national airline, Bahamasair, will cease flights to the US immediately, but outgoing commercial flights will be permitted to accommodate departing tourists.

The Bahamas reported 49 new cases since reopening its borders on July 1. According to USA Today, it now has a total of 153 cases. The situation in the Bahamas worsened “at an exponential rate” since international borders were reopened. 

MEMORIES OF A HEDGE FUND GONE BAD MAY HAUNT REPUBLICAN SENATE NOMINEE IN ALABAMA. Donald Trump’s favored Senate candidate in Alabama, Tommy Tuberville, beat former Sen. Jeff Session by 21.4 points in the Republican runoff (7/14). Sessions was hoping to get back in the Senate after serving as Trump’s first attorney general, but Trump resented Sessions for not shutting down Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian election interference. Tuberville will face Doug Jones, considered perhaps the most vulnerable Democrat in the battle for control of the Senate.

Jones narrowly beat former Judge Roy Moore in a 2017 special election to replace Sessions after Moore faced accusations of sexual assault and misconduct against teenage girls.

Tuberville was a popular football coach at Auburn University. But he also had a brief stint as co-owner of a hedge fund that turned out to be a financial fraud.

A little more than a decade ago, after departing from Auburn, Danny Hakim reported in the New York Times (7/5), Tuberville entered into a partnership with a former Lehman Brothers broker named John David Stroud. Their ventures, which included TS Capital Management and TS Capital Partners — T for Tuberville and S for Stroud — turned out to be a financial fraud. Stroud was sentenced to 10 years in prison and Tuberville was sued by investors, who accused him of fraud and violating his fiduciary duty to take care of their investments; he reached a private settlement in 2013.

Asked about the hedge fund venture on the campaign trail in February, Tuberville described himself as “an investor like the rest of them,” much as he had in media reports at the time of the accusations.

Investors in the fund included friends of Tuberville, some of whom had connections to the football programs at Auburn and Texas Tech. Old clients of Stroud also invested, as well as employees of the small firm. One couple, a bookkeeper and a retired teacher, invested more than $800,000.

Lawyers for the plaintiffs, in court filings, called it a “sad irony that one of the escorts that Stroud frequented performed more due diligence on Stroud than Tuberville did,” adding, “She asked for references, confirmed contact numbers and websites, and refused to meet him until he provided the information she required.”

Tuberville settled the suit, averting a trial.

FOX NEWS COVID-19 COVERAGE MISINFORMED 253 TIMES IN JUST FIVE DAYS. Fox News hit viewers with an “avalanche of misinformation” in its weekday coverage of the coronavirus crisis from July 6-10, according to a national media watchdog group that documented at least 253 instances of the network’s coverage undermining science, politicizing the pandemic, emphasizing economic issues, and promoting other lies or problematic positions in those five days alone, Jessica Corbett noted at CommonDreams (7/16).

Media Matters for America (MMFA) noted in a statement that its new analysis released Thursday follows Yahoo News reporting from earlier this month which claims that Fox News’ messaging on Covid-19 was undergoing a “remarkable turn” from its earlier coverage to “acknowledge ... that the coronavirus is a far graver threat.”

In contrast with the kind of shift reported by Yahoo, MMFA revealed that:

• Nearly half of Fox’s coronavirus misinformation was about the science of coronavirus and health recommendations from experts (115 instances).

• Fox politicized recommended public health measures, such as face masks usage and business closures, 63 times.

• Fox emphasized the economy and reopening schools 46 times despite public health concerns.

• Fox’s “The Ingraham Angle” was responsible for a quarter of all coronavirus misinformation on the network.

• Fox’s “straight news” shows accounted for more than one-third of all coronavirus misinformation.

Fox host Laura Ingraham and her prime-time show ‘The Ingraham Angle’ traded in coronavirus misinformation far more often than other Fox personalities and shows during the week of July 6,” MMFA research analyst Rob Savillo explains in the report.

“Ingraham herself pushed coronavirus misinformation 38 times, which included 21 instances of undermining and misrepresenting the science on the coronavirus and 13 instances of politicizing the response to the pandemic,” he continues. “Fox personalities and guests on ‘The Ingraham Angle’ were responsible for an astonishing 63 instances of misinformation.”

ASHEVILLE, N.C. APPROVES REPARATIONS PLAN THAT FOCUS ON LONG-TERM SYSTEMIC CHANGE. As people continue to protest for racial justice and against police brutality, efforts to make long-term, systemic change are gaining speed in the mainstream conversation. The Asheville, N.C., City Council (7/14) unanimously passed a resolution to offer reparations to Black residents, Marissa Higgins noted at DailyKos (7/15). The resolution does not provide direct payments to descendants of enslaved people but instead invests in Black communities. Some examples of this in action, as reported by The Root, include strategies to build intergenerational wealth and “increasing minority homeownership,” as well as career and business opportunities. The resolution also points to ending gaps in education, healthcare, and even “neighborhood safety and fairness within criminal justice.”

The resolution apologizes for Asheville’s role in slavery and encourages those at the state and federal level to put forward their own resolutions on reparations. In the short term, the city will create a Community Reparations Commission.

KENTUCKY DEMONSTRATORS ON KY. AG’S LAWN CHARGED WITH FELONIES. A estimated 200 people protested for justice for Breonna Taylor on the lawn of Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron, but 87 of them ended up facing a felony charge of intimidating a participant in a legal process. According to NBC News, people are also facing disorderly conduct and criminal trespassing charges, which are misdemeanors, Marissa Higgins noted at DailyKos (7/15). 

The crowd was calling for justice for Taylor, a 26-year old Black woman who was shot and killed by plainclothes Louisville police officers who entered her home with a no-nock warrant in mid-March. Officers entered the apartment Taylor, who worked as an EMT, shared with her boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, and Taylor was killed by police gunfire while she was asleep in her bed. As the police later learned, the person they were looking for didn’t live in Taylor’s home and was already in police custody.

Since then, a 911 call from Walker on the night of the shooting seems to back up his claim that the police did not identify themselves upon entering the apartment. Louisville police released an incident report from that night that was “almost entirely blank.” Attorneys for Taylor’s family complain that the raid was tied to a gentrification plan.

Out of the three officers involved in the shooting, only one has been fired. The other two were put on administrative leave pending an internal investigation. Protesters want the officers to face charges.

Sgt. Lamont Washington of the Louisville Metro Police Department (LMPD) said: “All were given the opportunity to leave, were told that remaining on the property would be unlawful, and chose not to leave.” As reported by local outlet WKMS, demonstrators were on the lawn for less than one hour before police arrived. Arrests included reality TV star Porscha Williams (of the Real Housewives of Atlanta series), as reported by CNN, as well as NFL athlete Kenny Stills, who plays for the Houston Texans, as reported by local outlet WAVE. 

The police statement continues: “Due to their refusal to leave the property and their attempts to influence the decision of the Attorney General with their actions, each person was charged with Intimidating a Participant in a Legal Process (Class D felony), Disorderly Conduct 2nd Degree (Class B misdemeanor), and Criminal Trespass 3rd Degree. (Violation).” Demonstrators who were arrested were reportedly arrested without incident.

The ACLU of Kentucky tweeted about the felony charges: “This is an overblown, outrageous, and inappropriate reaction to a community that is rightfully upset with govt delay in holding the police accountable. The only purpose these charges serve is to potentially chill the free speech rights of protesters.”

‘BRIDGEGATE ALUM’ GETS TOP JOB IN TRUMP CAMPAIGN SHAKEUP. As Trump continues to tumble in the polls, he demoted campaign manager Brad Parscale (7/15) and replaced him with Bill Stepien, a longtime GOP operative who was deputy chief of staff to then-New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) during the “Bridgegate Scandal.”

Stepien was fired after Christie’s aides were found to have orchestrated a massive traffic jam in Fort Lee, N.J., in September 2013 by closing down several lanes on the George Washington Bridge to punish the Democratic mayor of Fort Lee, N.J., for refusing to endorse Christie’s re-election. Stepien was never charged, despite his name being brought up nearly 700 times in the 2016 trial of his former associates, as prosecutors argued Stepien created a culture in Christie’s office that led to the scandal, including the testimony of the mastermind, David Wildstein, in 2016 that he told Stepien about the plan before he put it in motion.

Stepien was brought into the Trump campaign in 2016 by Jared Kushner, who is from New Jersey and follows state politics there closely, according to Politico. After Trump was elected president, Stepien was brought on to work in the White House as political director, focusing on winning over Republicans to support the president’s agenda. After the Republican midterm losses in 2018, he returned to the Trump campaign as a senior political adviser and was promoted to deputy campaign manager in May.

From The Progressive Populist, August 15, 2020

Populist.com