Australian (ASX) Stock Market Forum

Donald Trump - Business and tax stories

I don't understand what Spermy Daniels testimony was for?

Isn't the case about the campaign finances?
If they had sex or not is irrelevant if the payments were dodged up by Trump. The only real thing in this case was the payment.

I really can't be bothered with checking.

Credibility of evidence by both parties comes to mind. But far more importantly the Hollywood tapes where Donald Trump had boasted about what he could get away with with women because he was a celebrity was all over the news. As Hope Hicks said it pushed a Category 4 hurricane off the front pages.

Suddenly Trump is now faced with news of a previous liaison with a pr0n star. On top of the Hollywood tapes this could swing enough votes to kill his electoral chances. He said so himself

This made it imperative to absolutely deny anything happened, kill the story, pay off Stormy Daniels and cover his tracks.

Stormy Daniels evidence was about proving that Trump was a liar. It also goes to his desperation to pay her off and cover his tracks. The cover up is the crime.
 
Effectiveness of Stormy Daniels evidence

Daniels undercut one of Trump’s defense claims. They’ve argued that he didn’t want her story about their affair to come out because he didn’t want his wife Melania to know, not because of the 2016 election. But when prosecutors asked Daniels if Trump had shown any concern about people finding out about their affair or whether he told her to keep it confidential when it first happened, she replied: “Absolutely not”.

She also offered corroborating evidence that bolstered the prosecution’s case, testifying that Trump gave her his assistant Rhona’s number, which she put into her phone as “D Trump Rona”. Rhona Graff testified last week that she had the contact information for both Daniels and former Playboy model Karen McDougal, with whom Trump also allegedly had an affair.
 
Credibility of evidence by both parties comes to mind. But far more importantly the Hollywood tapes where Donald Trump had boasted about what he could get away with with women because he was a celebrity was all over the news. As Hope Hicks said it pushed a Category 4 hurricane off the front pages.

Suddenly Trump is now faced with news of a previous liaison with a pr0n star. On top of the Hollywood tapes this could swing enough votes to kill his electoral chances. He said so himself

This made it imperative to absolutely deny anything happened, kill the story, pay off Stormy Daniels and cover his tracks.

Stormy Daniels evidence was about proving that Trump was a liar. It also goes to his desperation to pay her off and cover his tracks. The cover up is the crime.
I wonder if they will investigate Avenatti's claims about stormys own fraud to discredit testimony.

Prosecutors allowing Stormy to testify the way she did puts it in danger of an instant appeal. It only makes sense if they don't care about trial outcomes, only election ones.
Stormy and Cohen are also trash sources of witnesses as well. Between those two and Trump you would have the world's 2nd largest deficit in scruples.

This trial is for one purpose only and that is to cause as much damage to Trumps campaign as possibly. It's a mad scramble to stop Trump getting in and exacting revenge.
 
Then again, Trump remains his own worst enemy far better at the job than any of his opponents are capable of – and his defiance of gag orders might put him in jail before the things he is accused of doing. Plus he still has to pay many, many millions to settle a New York fraud case, on top of damages owed to E Jean Carroll.
 
The going price for your man in the White House.
$1Billion.


Energy

Trump pressed oil executives to give $1 billion for his campaign, people in industry say​

“This is a scandal” and “an indictment of the system” — but probably legal, one legal watchdog told POLITICO.
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump speaks in front of a large audience of supporters at a campaign event at the Waukesha County Expo Center.



Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump speaks in front of a large audience of supporters at a campaign event at the Waukesha County Expo Center on May 1, 2024 in Waukesha, Wisconsin. | Jamie Kelter Davis for POLITICO
By Ben Lefebvre
05/09/2024 07:29 PM EDT

Former President Donald Trump asked oil industry executives last month to donate $1 billion to aid his campaign to retake the White House, three people familiar with the conversation told POLITICO — a request that campaign finance experts said appeared troubling but is probably legal.

The request, first reported Thursday by The Washington Post, occurred during a meeting of industry executives at the former president’s home in Palm Beach, Florida.

The oil industry has a long list of policy actions it would want Trump to take, including dismantling parts of President Joe Biden’s green agenda and rolling back pollution regulations that threaten to crimp their profits. As POLITICO reported Wednesday, oil executives are also preparing some highly specific requests for Trump, including executive orders they hope he would sign if reelected.

 
Next week Michael Cohen will bring his evidence to bear on the knowledge Donald Trump had of the pay offs to Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal before the the 2016 election.

What brought Trumps former personal lawyer who said "he would take a bullet" for the President to become a prosecution witness in this trial ? Excellent background story on the how the hush money inquiry took shape .

Michael Cohen, the man who destroyed his own life to try to put Donald Trump in jail


... The raid​

The FBI had discovered evidence of the hush-money payments while sifting through Michael Cohen's email inbox looking for evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian government.

Their raid of his home took five hours. He and his wife Laura sat on their bed watching TV and offering the agents coffee.

The agents left with Cohen's phone, so he rushed out, bought a burner, and called the White House.

The president of the United States told him: "Stay strong, I have your back. You're going to be fine."

....The flip​


The FBI returned all of his documents after making copies and Cohen spent his time reading through them, trying to find ones which would incriminate or exonerate him.

He was increasingly suspicious about things Trump was saying in the media.

For example, when he was asked about the Stormy Daniels payments, Trump would say: "You'll have to ask Michael."

Cohen thought that this suggested the raid had been ordered by Trump to throw him under the bus — to make him a scapegoat.

Then, Trump stopped paying for Cohen's defence lawyers. Cohen suddenly was faced with a bill of more than a million dollars in legal fees.

Michael Cohen decided if the bus was coming for him, he wanted to make sure it hit Trump too.

...The guilty plea​

Michael Cohen started making offers to the investigators to help them bring down Trump, but they said they would only accept his help if he admitted to other crimes he had committed.

This included tax fraud, bank fraud, and campaign finance violations — all of which they'd seen evidence of when they'd gone through Cohen's email account.

He thought those allegations were unfair, and that he was being unfairly targeted because he was close to Donald Trump.

Then the prosecutors threatened to indict Cohen's wife for tax fraud if he didn't plead guilty. Michael Cohen cracked.

Five months after the raid, he said he was willing to plead guilty to all crimes and prosecutors prepared a document for Cohen to sign.

It said Cohen had worked "in concert with" and "coordinated with" Trump to buy the silence of Karen McDougal and Stormy Daniels, intending to help Trump's presidential campaign.

At first, it seemed like Michael Cohen's plan had come together, but something was going on behind the scenes.

There were forces at work to protect the president

....The Trump allegations​


It turns out that Trump-appointed officials at the top of the Justice Department were allegedly ordering prosecutors to cut out as many references to Trump as possible.

The following day, Cohen was presented with a 21-page document. Nineteen pages had been cut out, including key sections implicating the president.


It was Cohen's worst nightmare. Trump was going to get away with it, and Cohen was going to jail for three years.

The gloves were off. Cohen and his lawyers told anyone who would answer their phone that he was ready to tell the world everything he knew about Donald Trump.

Cohen brought all the receipts. He handed over everything he had on Trump.

He testified to the US Congress that Trump was "a racist, a con man and a cheat." He did every interview he could. He wrote two books from jail.

We now know that what he was doing was actually crucial to getting a case against Trump going.

Federal prosecutor Geoffrey Berman revealed that, under pressure from Washington, his office had stopped investigating the president for fraud and campaign finance violations.


But Cohen's constant waves of allegations and evidence against Trump were too powerful to ignore.

By the end of Trump's term in office, he had issued presidential pardons to all of his imprisoned cronies — except Michael Cohen

 
Trump is running out of lawyers who will represent him .. and the ones who do have their own legal problems.
Reminds one of the accounting firm the Trump organisation used that is on trial for systemic fraud.

Founder of Trump Defense Firm Indicted in Somali Fraud Case


OUT OF AFRICA
A name partner at the law office swooping into a Trump campaign pregnancy discrimination case stands accused of forgery and siphoning off Somali sovereign wealth.

The federal judge overseeing a pregnancy discrimination case against Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign approved a bid by the ex-president and his team to switch to new legal counsel—bringing in a Maryland law firm where a top partner stands accused of bilking millions belonging to the nation of Somalia.

Judge Katharine Parker signed off Wednesday on the replacement of the Trump camp’s old representation, LaRocca, Hornik, Greenberg, Kittredge, Carlin & McPartland, with a lawyer from the firm Schulman Bhattacharya, LLC. The previous defense team asked to abandon the ex-president and his former top advisers in the lawsuit earlier this month, citing an “irreparable breakdown in the attorney-client relationship” in the suit, which GOP operative Arlene “A.J.” Delgado first brought in 2019, alleging that campaign leadership stripped her of responsibilities after married adviser Jason Miller impregnated her.

Parker initially rejected the law firm’s abdication, but ultimately allowed the campaign to swap in Schulman Bhattacharya, LLC, which did not respond to The Daily Beast’s requests for comment. But while the firm’s attorney Jeffrey Gavenman will be defending Trump, Steve Bannon, Reince Priebus, and Sean Spicer, one of the founding partners at his firm will be fighting to keep himself out of prison.

In late 2020, the Department of Justice charged Jeremy Schulman, half the eponymous team behind the firm, with using forged documents to gain access to $12.5 million in Somali state assets that the East African nation’s central bank had ordered frozen amid the country’s incessant civil war. The feds allege that, beginning in 2009, Schulman—then a shareholder in a different firm cooperating with prosecutors—and his co-conspirators used these falsified materials to persuade financial institutions and the New York State Comptroller that they could legally take possession of the nation’s sovereign investments as representatives for its transitional government. In the process, prosecutors say Schulman skimmed off $3.3 million in fees and expenses for his firm.

 

Trump Media’s accounting firm charged with ‘massive fraud’



c_thumb,g_face,w_100,h_100.jpg


By Matt Egan, CNN

3 minute read

Updated 1:17 PM EDT, Fri May 3, 2024

The headquarters of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is seen in Washington, D.C., U.S., May 12, 2021. Picture taken May 12, 2021.


The headquarters of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is seen in Washington, D.C., U.S., May 12, 2021. Picture taken May 12, 2021.
Andrew Kelly/Reuters/File

New York CNN —

BF Borgers, Trump Media & Technology Group’s independent accounting firm, was charged by the Securities and Exchange Commission on Friday with widespread fraud and accused of operating a “sham audit mill.”

The SEC made no allegation of wrongdoing against Truth Social owner Trump Media (DJT), which is not mentioned in the charges from the regulator.

The SEC accused BF Borgers of “deliberate and systemic failures,” including “fabricating” audit documentation and falsely representing to clients its work would comply with accounting standards.

 
Bas stop advertising for Trump. I don't think leftist realise the more you complain about him, the more he stays in the front of everyone's mind. That's his whole schtick since he started.

Even the trial is national advertising for Trump. The only thing I heard this whole stupid court case was that he "banged a pornstar so hard she passed out".
 
Bas stop advertising for Trump. I don't think leftist realise the more you complain about him, the more he stays in the front of everyone's mind. That's his whole schtick since he started.

Even the trial is national advertising for Trump. The only thing I heard this whole stupid court case was that he "banged a pornstar so hard she passed out".
In the end it's a book keeping case and in the end the jury has to find the documents are falsified AND that it is a conspiracy to affect the election. Trump may win.

However everyone pretty much agrees his lawyers are pretty useless. The good ones don't want to work for him.
 
Bas stop advertising for Trump. I don't think leftist realise the more you complain about him, the more he stays in the front of everyone's mind. That's his whole schtick since he started.

Even the trial is national advertising for Trump. The only thing I heard this whole stupid court case was that he "banged a pornstar so hard she passed out".

Really MoXJO ? You'd prefer that we just ignore all the lies, the criminality , the relentless abuse of anyone who stands up to him ? Perhaps pretend that he is not that bad really ?

I notice that from your perspective "The only thing I heard this whole stupid court case was that he "banged a pornstar so hard she passed out"

So classy mate. Actually so xucking ignorant . :mad:

I agree that I would much prefer to see Trump being made accountable for his monstrous lies about the 2020 election. And also of course for his relentless efforts to undermine the inauguration of the properly elected President by geeing up his followers to attack the Congress.

I'd like to see him made accountable for trying to strongarm the Republican Secretary of State to find 11,000 votes to overthrow the Georgian State election results.

These other, far more criminal behaviours, should see Trump locked away for a long time. But Donald Trump , the absolute wizard of lawfare, has managed to slow down all these cases until, he hopes, he can lie, bully and cheat his way to the White House again. Of course if he does get in he will destroy all semblance of normality by killing these cases and prosecuting anyone who had a hand in them.

As far as I can see his supporters will think that is just fine. Will you ?

The current case is seen as the least culpable of the crop. "All he did" was pay off a couple of awkward woman he had affairs with ( lied through his teeth of course about them ) and then cover his tracks with dodgy paperwork. That was the falsification of financial records.

In reality the 2016 election was probably won as a result of Michael Cohens efforts on Trumps behalf. Trump was reeling from the Hollywood access tapes. They were shocking. Absolutely showed the world how he behaved towards woman. Trump himself said that if 5-10% of his followers believed he was unacceptable because of the tape he would lose. So when he hears a new story of his two timing his new wife with a pr0n star in 2006 and also the simulateous long term affair with the Playboy centerfold he has to stop it dead or face certain defeat.

That certainly takes his actions from merely buying silence to undermining an election.

___________________________________________

As for your comment regading Trumps "super sex skills" with pr0n stars ? Again totally and utter rubbish. For a start Donald has absolutely maintained he never, ever had sex with Ms Daniels . That says it all doesn't it ..
 
All the carping and nitpicking against him :( Trump's the one man standing up, taking punch after punch, in the biggest arena against Marxist wokeism, trying to the keep the rampaging hordes out, trying to do well by American business and so on.
 
Really MoXJO ? You'd prefer that we just ignore all the lies, the criminality , the relentless abuse of anyone who stands up to him ? Perhaps pretend that he is not that bad really ?

I notice that from your perspective "The only thing I heard this whole stupid court case was that he "banged a pornstar so hard she passed out"

So classy mate. Actually so xucking ignorant . :mad:

I agree that I would much prefer to see Trump being made accountable for his monstrous lies about the 2020 election. And also of course for his relentless efforts to undermine the inauguration of the properly elected President by geeing up his followers to attack the Congress.

I'd like to see him made accountable for trying to strongarm the Republican Secretary of State to find 11,000 votes to overthrow the Georgian State election results.

These other, far more criminal behaviours, should see Trump locked away for a long time. But Donald Trump , the absolute wizard of lawfare, has managed to slow down all these cases until, he hopes, he can lie, bully and cheat his way to the White House again. Of course if he does get in he will destroy all semblance of normality by killing these cases and prosecuting anyone who had a hand in them.

As far as I can see his supporters will think that is just fine. Will you ?

The current case is seen as the least culpable of the crop. "All he did" was pay off a couple of awkward woman he had affairs with ( lied through his teeth of course about them ) and then cover his tracks with dodgy paperwork. That was the falsification of financial records.

In reality the 2016 election was probably won as a result of Michael Cohens efforts on Trumps behalf. Trump was reeling from the Hollywood access tapes. They were shocking. Absolutely showed the world how he behaved towards woman. Trump himself said that if 5-10% of his followers believed he was unacceptable because of the tape he would lose. So when he hears a new story of his two timing his new wife with a pr0n star in 2006 and also the simulateous long term affair with the Playboy centerfold he has to stop it dead or face certain defeat.

That certainly takes his actions from merely buying silence to undermining an election.

___________________________________________

As for your comment regading Trumps "super sex skills" with pr0n stars ? Again totally and utter rubbish. For a start Donald has absolutely maintained he never, ever had sex with Ms Daniels . That says it all doesn't it ..
The one line from that wall of text that people will remember is "banged a pornstar so hard she passed out".


He is the Teflon king.

I honestly thought he would have been crushed by now.
 
Top