Tag Archives: Trump

News, Observation, Politics

Biden Urged to Fire Entire USPS Board for Complicity in ‘Devastating Arson’ by Trump and DeJoy

This article originally appeared at Common Dreams. It is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License. Feel free to republish and share widely.

Democratic Congressman Bill Pascrell, Jr. of New Jersey on Monday urged President Joe Biden to terminate all six sitting members of the U.S. Postal Service Board of Governors for their “silence and complicity” in the face of Postmaster General Louis DeJoy and former President Donald Trump’s full-scale assault on the beloved government mail agency.

“Through the devastating arson of the Trump regime, the USPS Board of Governors sat silent,” Pascrell wrote in a letter to Biden.

“Their dereliction cannot now be forgotten. Therefore, I urge you to fire the entire Board of Governors and nominate a new slate of leaders to begin the hard work of rebuilding our Postal Service for the next century.”

–Bill Pascrell, Jr

While the president does not have the authority under current law to fire DeJoy—a Republican megadonor to Trump who was unanimously appointed by the USPS Board of Governors last May—Biden does have the power to remove postal governors “for cause.” At present, the board consists entirely of Trump appointees—two Democrats and four Republicans.

Pascrell argued Monday that “the board members’ refusal to oppose the worst destruction ever inflicted on the Postal Service was a betrayal of their duties and unquestionably constitutes good cause for their removal.”

Election season chaos comes back to haunt

Far from opposing DeJoy’s sweeping operational changes—which resulted in massively disruptive, nationwide mail delays that persisted through the November election and holiday season—USPS governors publicly praised the postmaster general, with one Republican board member gushing in September that “the board is tickled pink, every single board member, with the impact” DeJoy was having on the agency.

That glowing assessment of DeJoy’s performance during his first several months on the job did not comport with the experiences of postal workers—who in some cases resisted DeJoy’s policies—or the agency’s own internal evaluations, which showed that widespread delays followed the postmaster general’s changes.

DeJoy put his damaging policy moves on hold in August amid nationwide outrage and accusations that he was working to disrupt the election for Trump’s benefit. With the presidential election now in the past, DeJoy has recently signaled he plans to push ahead with his agenda.

In his letter to Biden, Pascrell wrote that the “continued challenges in preserving our Postal Service to survive and endure are gargantuan, and so demand bold solutions to meet them.”

“To begin that work,” Pascrell added, “we must have a governing body that can be trusted to represent the public interest.”

There are currently four vacancies in top leadership positions at USPS, including three governor spots and the deputy postmaster general role. If Biden fills the remaining vacancies—USPS governors must be confirmed by the Senate—Democrats will have a majority on the board and potentially the votes needed to remove DeJoy from office.

“Trump confessed he was wrecking USPS to rig the election. His toady Postmaster General DeJoy carried out that arson. It’s time to clean house,”

Pascrell tweeted Monday. “DeJoy should be fired but also prosecuted.”

Asked about Pascrell’s demand during a briefing on Monday, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said, “It’s an interesting question.”

“We all love the mailman and mailwoman,” said Psaki. “I don’t have anything for you on it. I’m happy to check with our team on it and see if we have any specifics. I’m not aware of anything, but we’ll circle back with you.”

Read Pascrell’s full letter:

Dear President Biden:

After several years of unprecedented sabotage, the United States Postal Service (USPS) is teetering on the brink of collapse. Through the devastating arson of the Trump regime, the USPS Board of Governors sat silent. Their dereliction cannot now be forgotten. Therefore, I urge you to fire the entire Board of Governors and nominate a new slate of leaders to begin the hard work of rebuilding our Postal Service for the next century.

According to a report by the USPS Office of Inspector General, operational changes imposed by Postmaster General Louis DeJoy “negatively impacted the quality and timeliness of mail service nationally” and were “implemented quickly and communicated primarily orally,” resulting in confusion and inconsistent application across the country. As DeJoy’s efforts to dismantle mail sorting machines, cut overtime, restrict deliveries, and remove mailboxes slowed mail nationally, Donald Trump himself openly admitted that his administration was withholding funding for the Postal Service in order to make it harder to process mail-in ballots.

Things became so bad that on August 14, 2020, I filed a complaint with our state’s Attorney General calling on him to seek indictments against your predecessor and the Postmaster General for election subversion. Postal operations have continued to severely lag benchmark levels under DeJoy and this slate of Governors. This holiday season, USPS reported an unprecedented level of mail disruption, with only 64 percent of first-class mail delivered on time in late December. Through it all, the Governors were either silent or in support of DeJoy’s havoc.

The members of the USPS Board of Governors have but one central responsibility: “represent[ing] the public interest.” Members may be removed by the President “only for cause.” The board members’ refusal to oppose the worst destruction ever inflicted on the Postal Service was a betrayal of their duties and unquestionably constitutes good cause for their removal.

As America’s perhaps most enduringly trusted institution, a central economic and social engine for every community in America, and a vital vanguard of the democratic tradition, the Post Office must play an essential role in our national life for generations to come. The continued challenges in preserving our Postal Service to survive and endure are gargantuan, and so demand bold solutions to meet them. To begin that work, we must have a governing body that can be trusted to represent the public interest. Thank you for your continued dedication to saving our Post Office.

Sincerely,

Bill Pascrell, Jr.

Member of Congress

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Business, Elon Musk, Observation

WtF is a Centibillionaire? New Video from Robert Reich

Video

A very real problem vividly illustrated for the rest of us

In a new video from Robert Reich, former secretary of labor and accomplished author, an extremely timely, entertaining and absolutely crazy subject is front and center.

The need to create an actual word for a human being with more than $100 billion is a strange problem to have in a world where so many struggle merely to survive.

Just as is the case, but even more, so with trillion dollar market cap big tech firms, that happened to be the source of this insanely huge amount of money being attributed to a single individual.

There is a very human inability to comprehend such massive numbers that is at the heart of our struggles to understand the meaning of this phenomenon.

An example would be a company such as Amazon which is hundreds, if not thousands, of times larger in terms of market cap then what used to be considered massive international corporations.

And being thousands of times larger than what is already considered to be an unwieldy massive behemoth can create problems not so much for the company but for the rest of us.

How do you control if you are the government or the people something so massive that it is virtually untouchable. too big to fail? Too big to reign in, absolutely.

Although attempts are being made, such as the many antitrust actions in the US, or the recent new regulations in Europe, but somehow they always seem like a tiny pittance, or annoying mosquito on a battleship.

In the video below there are some fantastic examples of how the massive wealth of these individuals can be measured in terms that actual humans can understand.

“Are they really 100 times smarter than the typical billionaire?”

Perhaps, more accurately, it enables us to understand how absolutely unbelievable and insane this level of wealth and power actually is.

Although the subject may be too large and complicated, it would be great to see a follow on video illustrating the size of the companies that bestowed such massive amounts of cash on these ridiculously overvalued individuals.

And, of course, how those companies grew through the same kinds of favoritism and maneuvering in the public realm that the centi-billionaires themselves directly benefit from.


How Much is $100 Billion, Really?

The word “‘billionaire” didn’t even exist until 1844. Fifty years later, we got “multibillionaire.” And for the next 127 years, that was enough. 

But in 2020, while the working class faced near-record unemployment during the pandemic, the wealthiest Americans faced a different problem.

Some of them had gotten so rich, there was no longer a word to describe just how rich they were. 


That’s why today I want to bring you one of the newest additions to the English language: “centibillionaires,” people with $100 billion or more.  

What’s it like being one of history’s first centibillionaires? It’s hard to even imagine, but let’s try it by comparing them to the less fortunate.

By which I mean just … regular … billionaires. 
If you’re a regular billionaire, you can afford a private jet. If you’re a centibillionaire, you can afford a brand-new Gulfstream jet every single day for more than ten years.


Not sure what you’d do with a new Gulfstream every day — maybe give one to each of your closest 4,000 friends?

A regular billionaire would struggle to buy their own professional baseball team. Sad, I know. But a centibillionaire could easily buy every team in the entire major league. 

If you’re a regular billionaire, you can donate to your alma mater and get your name on a building. If you’re a centibillionaire, you could single-handedly give every teacher in America an $8,000 raise for 5 straight years. 


Of course, that’s not all you could do. $100 billion is enough to wipe out all the medical debt in the United States.

Or provide permanent shelter for every homeless person in America. Or buy Covid-19 vaccines for the entire world.


Basically what I’m saying is, $100 billion is a lot of money. More than two and a half million times what the average American worker makes in a year.


So here’s the big question. Are these centibillionaires so rich because they work two and half million times harder than the average American?

Are they really 100 times smarter than the typical billionaire?


I don’t think so.

The reason for the rise of centibillionaires is that for decades, wealth hasn’t trickled down, it’s gushed up, all the way to the very top. That’s not an accident. As it turns out, the system that the super-rich themselves carefully crafted and lobbied for, benefits… the rich!

And while you may not own more private jets than your average centibillionaire, you probably do pay a higher tax rate. And thanks to legal loopholes and the Trump tax cuts, when the wealthiest Americans die, they get to pass on most of their centibillions to their kids tax-free. 


We’ve got two choices as a country. We can tax the richest Americans fairly, and invest that money in ways that benefit all of us.


Or we can keep doing what we’re doing, and watch as centibillionaires get even richer while the rest of us get left behind.

If you think wealth and power are too concentrated in the hands of a privileged few now, just imagine what a few more years of trickle-down nonsense will bring.


Of course, it won’t be all bad. At least “trillionaire” is easy to say.

Breaking News, News, Politics

New Documentary by Frontline and ProPublica Reveals Origins of the Stolen Election Myth

by ProPublica

ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign up for The Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox.Series: The Insurrection The Effort to Overturn the Election

Tonight, PBS stations across the U.S. will premiere “Plot to Overturn the Election,” a collaboration between ProPublica and Frontline. (The documentary will also appear at pbs.org/frontline.) “Plot to Overturn the Election” examines the roles and impact of key members of the movement to spread the belief that the 2020 U.S. presidential election was rigged. The documentary also explores how members of the movement helped launch and fund the audit of Arizona’s vote count and how they are working to influence future elections, in part by supporting secretary of state candidates who share their views that America’s voting systems are irredeemably corrupt.

Correspondent A.C. Thompson, along with reporters Doug Bock Clark, Alexandra Berzon and Kirsten Berg, obtained new information that helps explain why two-thirds of Republicans believe President Donald Trump won the 2020 election. In the coming weeks, ProPublica and Frontline will publish stories that further examine the movement’s past and ongoing efforts to find evidence of election fraud.

Part of the Frontline and ProPublica project focuses on a group that gathered in the weeks after the 2020 election on a South Carolina plantation owned by conservative defamation attorney Lin Wood. Using the property as a temporary headquarters, a team of lawyers and cybersecurity experts gathered and synthesized what they claimed was evidence of election fraud. This group, which included Michael Flynn, the retired three-star Army general and former national security adviser to Trump, and Patrick Byrne, the former CEO of Overstock.com, became a key originator of the since-discredited idea that foreign communist governments had hacked voting machines made by Dominion Voting Systems. The belief was central to justifying the efforts of Trump and his allies to reverse the results of the election.

The reporting on the group’s activities draws on more than a thousand private emails, photos and videos, hundreds of text messages and dozens of hours of audio recordings, none of which have been previously reported on.

“It was almost like finding a key to understanding, you know, why much of the country believes that the election was stolen,” Clark tells Thompson in the documentary.

republished under Creative Commons license (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0)

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Breaking News, News, Politics

Watchdogs Say if Clarance Thomas Resign, ‘Congress Must Move to Impeach’

Above: Photo Collage / Lynxotic Pixels / Adobe Stock

Fresh calls for the Supreme Court justice’s removal came amid “damning” new evidence of his wife’s involvement in efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election.

JAKE JOHNSON March 25, 2022 first published on Common Dreams

Calls for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas to resign—or face impeachment proceedings—mounted late Thursday after text messages revealed that his wife urged former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows to aggressively pursue efforts to overturn the 2020 election results.

The Washington Post and CBS News obtained dozens of texts that Ginni Thomas, a long-time far-right activist who attended the January 6 rally that preceded the Capitol assault, sent to Meadows in the wake of Trump’s election loss, which she characterized as fraudulent while her husband was hearing election-related cases.

“Clarence Thomas must immediately resign from his seat on the Supreme Court.”

“Release the Kraken and save us from the left taking America down,” Thomas wrote in a November 19 message to Meadows, echoing a slogan that served as a rallying cry for pro-Trump groups.

All but one of the texts between Thomas and Meadows, most of which were written by Thomas, were sent between November 4 and November 24, 2020. One text was sent on January 10, 2021 in the wake of the Capitol insurrection.

“Clarence Thomas must immediately resign from his seat on the Supreme Court.”

Justice Thomas, who is currently hospitalized with an infection, has thus far declined to recuse himself from Supreme Court cases in which his wife’s right-wing activism could pose a conflict of interest.

Thomas was the only justice to publicly argue that the high court should have granted former President Donald Trump’s motion to block the National Archives from handing White House documents over to a congressional panel investigating the January 6 attack. The Supreme Court ultimately rejected Trump’s request.

Sarah Lipton-Lubet, executive director of the Take Back the Court Action Fund, said in a statement Thursday night that “if one thing is clear” from the newly revealed text messages, “it’s that there’s much more to the story of Ginni Thomas’ participation in the January 6 attack that the House Select Committee and the American public deserve to know.”

“Given that Justice Thomas has already made known he won’t recuse himself from cases related to his wife’s right-wing activism, and the damning evidence of his wife’s involvement in this attack on our democracy, Thomas is clearly unfit to serve on the nation’s highest court,” said Lipton-Lubet. “Clarence Thomas must immediately resign from his seat on the Supreme Court.”

“If he refuses, Congress must move to impeach him,” she added. “The integrity of the court, our judicial system, and our democracy as a whole depends on it.”

At least one member of Congress, Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), echoed the call for Thomas’ impeachment. The House can impeach a Supreme Court justice with a simple-majority vote, but a two-thirds majority is required in the Senate for conviction and removal.

At the very least, the new revelations demonstrate why Thomas “must recuse from any Supreme Court cases or petitions related to the January 6 Committee or efforts to overturn the election,” argued Gabe Roth, executive director of the nonpartisan advocacy group Fix the Court.

“Democrats should be loudly drawing attention to the fact that the wife of a sitting Supreme Court justice supported Trump’s coup attempt.”

“Ginni’s direct participation in this odious anti-democracy work, coupled with the new reporting that seems to indicate she may have spoken to Justice Thomas about it, leads to the conclusion that the justice’s continued participation in cases related to these efforts would only further tarnish the court’s already fading public reputation,” Roth said.

“Democrats should be loudly drawing attention to the fact that the wife of a sitting Supreme Court justice supported Trump’s coup attempt.”

The New Yorker‘s Jane Mayer reported in January that Ginni Thomas has in recent years aligned herself “with many activists who have brought issues in front of” the Supreme Court.

“She has been one of the directors of CNP Action, a dark-money wing of the conservative pressure group the Council for National Policy,” Mayer noted. “CNP Action, behind closed doors, connects wealthy donors with some of the most radical right-wing figures in America. Ginni Thomas has also been on the advisory board of Turning Point USA, a pro-Trump student group, whose founder, Charlie Kirk, boasted of sending busloads of protesters to Washington on January 6th.”

Mayer also observed that Ginni Thomas received payments from the Center for Security Policy (CSP), a right-wing anti-Muslim think tank. Despite disclosure requirements, Justice Thomas failed to report his wife’s income from CSP in 2017 and 2018.

In an op-ed published before the text messages between Ginni Thomas and Meadows surfaced, MSNBC‘s Mehdi Hasan cited Mayer’s reporting to argue that “Democrats should be loudly drawing attention to the fact that the wife of a sitting Supreme Court justice supported Trump’s coup attempt.”

“There is a clear value in holding impeachment hearings to draw attention to Thomas and his wife and their inappropriate behavior, especially as an increasingly partisan, conservative-majority court guts voting and reproductive rights,” Hasan wrote. “What would Republicans be doing if they had held a House majority and, say, Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s spouse had supported attempts to block a duly elected GOP president from taking office and she refused to recuse herself from related cases?”

This article was first published on Common Dreams and republished under Creative Commons license (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0)

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Hot-Lynx

Federal Prosecutor: Trump ‘guilty of numerous felony violations’

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According to Mark F. Pomerantz, a former federal prosecutor that came out of retirement to work on the Trump investigation and then resigned last month, Trump is ‘guilty of numerous felony violations’.   A copy of his resignation letter obtained by the New York Times read “The team that has investigated Mr. Trump harbors no doubt about whether he committed crimes — he did” which is a direct criticism of the lack of further prosecution to date.  

Anger over lack of prosecution now confirmed

Pomerantz submitted his resignation after Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg stopped pursuing an indictment of Donald Trump.  He believed the former president was “guilty of numerous felony violations” as well as it being “a grave failure of justice” not to pursue charges.

Read More at:

NEW YORK TIMES

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Economics, News, Observation, Politics

The Real Reason Congress Gets Nothing Done

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How do things really get done (or more often not) in Washington D.C.?

In a new video from Robert Reich, former secretary of labor and accomplished author, the sad subject of so-called ’gridlock’ in government is addressed. This perspective is particularly useful and helpful to consider since this year is an election year.

There’s an unfortunate lack of understanding regarding how things actually work and, more importantly what can be done about it.

Inequality Media, the Org, led by Robert Reich, that is responsible for this content, is putting out clear and incisive messages on topics like this on a weekly, sometimes daily basis. Getting these kinds of valuable messages out to places like YouTube, TikTok and social media is important at anytime. Now, in such a critical moment in our history, it’s essential.

Why doesn’t Congress get anything done?

Well, one chamber actually does. Hundreds of bills have been passed by the House of Representatives, but have been blocked from even getting a vote in the Senate. Bills like The Freedom to Vote Act, The John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, The Equality Act, Background checks for gun sales, Reauthorizing the Violence Against Women Act, The Protecting the Right to Organize Act, The Build Back Better Act. The list goes on.

So why aren’t these crucial bills getting a vote in the Senate? Because the filibuster makes it impossible.

All told, the House passed over 200 bills in 2021 that have not been taken up in the Senate. Everything from investing in rural education to preventing discrimination against pregnant workers to protecting seniors from scams – bills that have real, tangible benefits for the public; bills that have widespread public support.

So don’t believe the media narrative that Congress is trapped in hopeless gridlock and both sides are to blame. One chamber of Congress, led by Democrats, is passing important legislation and delivering for the people. But Republicans in the Senate, and a handful of corporate Democrats, are hell-bent on grinding the gears of government to a halt.

Why are Senate Republicans doing this? Because their midterm strategy depends on it. Republicans are blocking crucial legislation so they can point to Democrats’ supposed inability to get anything done, and claim they’ll be able to deliver if you give them majorities.

Don’t fall for it.

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Business, Economics, News, Observation, Politics

700 US Billionaires Got $1.7 Trillion Richer During Two Years of Pandemic

A new analysis finds that the 704 billionaires in the U.S. now own more wealth than the bottom half of Americans—roughly 165 million people.

During the first two years of the coronavirus pandemic, the collective wealth of billionaires in the United States grew by a staggering $1.7 trillion as Covid-19 killed millions of people across the globe and threw entire nations into turmoil, worsening extreme poverty, hunger, and other preexisting crises.

“We can’t accept an economy and tax code that allows billionaires to hoard trillions while working families struggle.”

Released Friday to coincide with the second anniversary of the World Health Organization’s official pandemic declaration for Covid-19, the latest billionaire fortune analysis by Americans for Tax Fairness (ATF) finds that the 704 billionaires in the U.S. now own more combined wealth than the 165 million people in the bottom half of the country’s wealth distribution.

“For billionaires, it’s been two years of raking in the riches, while for most families it’s been two years of fear, frustration, and financial worry,” ATF executive director Frank Clemente said in a statement.

The new analysis stresses that billionaires’ pandemic windfall “may never be taxed” because it consists of unrealized capital gains, which are not subject to taxation under current U.S. law. As one possible solution, ATF voices support for Sen. Ron Wyden’s (D-Ore.) proposed Billionaires Income Tax, legislation that would impose an annual levy on ultra-wealthy Americans’ unrealized gains from tradable assets such as stocks.

“The rising asset values billionaires have enjoyed over the past two years are not taxable unless the assets are sold,” ATF explains. “But billionaires don’t need to sell assets to benefit from their increased value: they can live off money borrowed at cheap rates secured against their rising fortunes. And when all those wealth gains are passed along to the next generation, they entirely disappear for tax purposes.”

While Democrats in Congress considered a tax on billionaires as part of their Build Back Better package, that legislation was tanked by a handful of corporate Democrats—including Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.)—and a unified Republican caucus.

“Why should our economic system allow billionaires to hoard wealth unchecked, letting almost all of it go tax-free?”

Earlier this month, Manchin floated a further watered-down version of the Build Back Better proposal that calls for tax reforms targeting the wealthy and corporations, but it’s unclear whether the West Virginia Democrat would accept a tax on billionaires.

“Working families pay what they owe in taxes each paycheck. Billionaires generally pay little or nothing in taxes on these extraordinary gains in wealth,” Clemente said Friday. “Congress should enact a Billionaires Income Tax to directly tax these wealth gains as income each year, so that billionaires begin to pay their fair share of taxes. Such a reform is not yet part of President Biden’s investment and tax legislation now being revised by Congress, but it should be.”

According to ATF’s new analysis, the biggest billionaire winners during the coronavirus pandemic’s first two years were:

  • Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, who saw his net worth skyrocket by $209 billion;
  • Google co-founder Larry Page, whose fortune grew by $63 billion; and
  • Google co-founder Sergey Brin, whose wealth increased by $60 billion.

“Not one of the 15 richest U.S. billionaires gained less than $10 billion,” ATF noted on Twitter, pointing out that during the same two-year period 80 million Americans were infected by Covid-19 and nearly a million were killed by the virus.

“We can’t accept an economy and tax code that allows billionaires to hoard trillions while working families struggle to afford healthcare, childcare, education, and housing,” the group added. “It’s wrong, and we can do better.”

Originally published on Common Dreams by JAKE JOHNSON and republished under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0

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Earth and Ecology, Lifestyle, News, Observation, Politics

Petition Calls on Biden to Go Beyond Reversing Trump Policies to ‘Save Life on Earth’

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“Extinction is not inevitable—it is a political choice,” says a new petition calling for bold changes to the Endangered Species Act.

The Center for Biological Diversity on Tuesday laid out a comprehensive case for the Biden administration to go far beyond simply mending the damage done by President Donald Trump to the Endangered Species Act, calling on officials to strengthen the law “to save life on Earth from the extinction crisis.”

In a legal petition, the organization made the case that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Marine Fisheries Service must not only fully implement the Endangered Species Act (ESA) but also add new provisions to the law to counter “years of overt political and industry pressure designed to weaken the Act.”

The petition argues erosion of the landmark legislation has left implementation of the Act “no longer primarily driven by the best science or conservation principles” but instead “by avoiding political controversy.”

“Combating the extinction crisis and restoring our natural heritage are monumental challenges that will require the services to be more visionary than any other administration in history,” said Stephanie Kurose, senior policy specialist at CBD. “We challenge Interior Secretary Deb Haaland and the Biden administration to change the status quo and do whatever it takes to protect our planet for future generations.”

Under the Trump administration, CBD said in the 50-page legal filing, officials “caused unprecedented damage to the Act” by gutting a rule which provided threatened species and endangered species with the same level of protection and issuing guidance which said the USFWS need not tell landowners that they need a permit if their activities will harm species, among other rollbacks.

“The United States can prevent future extinctions, but it must take swift action that matches the extent and scale of the problem.”

The Biden administration has taken “sluggish” steps to restore the protections stripped by former President Donald Trump, said CBD, including rescinding two regulations which limited habitat protections for endangered species.

However, wrote the group, “the extensive damage done during Trump’s four years in office must be put in the context of a law that was already not being fully enforced.”

“We need a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service that holds the line, not one that compromises in the face of political pressure,” tweeted Noah Greenwald, endangered species program director for CBD.

Federal agencies must strengthen enforcement of the ESA, ensure accountability for extractive industries that harm habitats, and “holistically address the threat of climate change,” said the group.

Specifically, the petition calls for:

  • Empowering career scientists to make science-based decisions without fear of political reprisal;
  • Guaranteeing that federal agencies can no longer ignore the impacts of greenhouse gas emissions from their actions on climate change and climate-imperiled species;
  • Strengthening protections for critical habitat to protect key areas where species can live;
  • Creating a scientifically defensible definition of recovery;
  • Defining “significant portion of its range” to fulfill Congress’ intent that species be protected before they are threatened with worldwide extinction;
  • Requiring all federal agencies to have proactive conservation programs in place for listed species harmed by their actions;
  • Requiring habitat conservation plans to confer a net benefit whenever development activities harm endangered species;
  • Strengthening protections for foreign listed species;
  • Strengthening the regulations governing the reintroduction of experimental populations; and
  • Revamping the enhancement permitting program to address dubious trophy hunting practices overseas that do not actually enhance the survival or propagation of species.

“Extinction is not inevitable—it is a political choice,” wrote CBD. “The United States can prevent future extinctions, but it must take swift action that matches the extent and scale of the problem.”

Originally published on Common Dreams by JULIA CONLEY and republished under  a Creative Commons license (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0)

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Climate Solutions, News, Observation, Politics

Groups Urge Biden to Invoke Defense Production Act to Counter Putin, Accelerate Green Transition

“A renewable energy future,” the groups wrote, “is a peaceful and ultimately more prosperous one.”

Above: Photo / Adobe Stock

A coalition of over 200 groups on Wednesday called on President Joe Biden to leverage his authority under the Defense Production Act to simultaneously “produce alternatives to fossil fuels, fight the climate emergency, combat Putin’s stranglehold on the world’s energy economy, and support the transition to a renewable and just economy.”

“With one fell swoop, you would reduce energy costs and move the world away from fossil fuel markets that are all too easily manipulated by bad actors.”

The demand was delivered in a letter to Biden—signed by groups including the Center for Biological Diversity, Global Witness, and Stand.earth—and follows the administration’s move Tuesday to ban U.S. imports of Russian fossil fuels in response to Russia’s ongoing military attack on Ukraine.

The groups thank Biden for that immediate ban and say it must be followed not by “short-sighted policies” like ramping up domestic drilling, as the U.S. fossil fuel lobby and industry supporters like Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) have called for, because that would worsen the climate emergency and “deepen our dependence on fuels that lead to global instability.”

“Oil and gas constitute 40% of Russia’s national revenue, meaning Russian exports of oil and gas are literally funding this invasion,” the letter states.

Ramping up fossil fuel extraction and use would also worsen the climate crisis, the groups note, referencing the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report releasedlast week showing that “natural and human systems” are being driven “beyond their ability to adapt.”

What is needed instead, the letter states, is a massive surge in the deployment of renewable energy.

Biden can lead that effort by utilizing the Defense Production Act (DPA), with specific actions on three fronts, all of which should center communities most impacted by the current fossil fueled-based system. The letter calls on the president to:

  • Rapidly scale up production, manufacturing, and deployment of renewable energy technologies, heat pumps, storage, and weatherization technologies here and abroad. These green technologies can be exported to Ukraine, the rest of Europe, and the Global South to help wean them off of their dependence on Russian fossil fuels. And they should be simultaneously deployed across the United States to jumpstart the renewable energy revolution and prioritize construction in climate-vulnerable communities. With one fell swoop, you would reduce energy costs and move the world away from fossil fuel markets that are all too easily manipulated by bad actors.
  • Create millions of long-term, high-paying domestic jobs and position the U.S. to be a global leader in showcasing the economic benefits of the just and renewable energy transition. Investments by the federal government can create high-quality, family-supporting jobs; and build worker power by including high-road labor standards.
  • Accelerate the transition to zero-emission public transportation, alternatives to car based transportation and related infrastructure domestically, and deploy it nationwide, prioritizing communities who are most vulnerable to the climate emergency. These steps will reduce the burden of higher gas prices at the pump for U.S. residents.

“A renewable energy future,” the groups wrote, “is a peaceful and ultimately more prosperous one.”

Climate advocates have previously linked Russia’s military attack on Ukraine with reliance on fossil fuels.

American author and climate activist Bill McKibben, for example, wrote last month in his newsletter The Crucial Years that “it is a war underwritten by oil and gas” and urged Biden to invoke the DPA to produce “electric heat pumps in quantity, so we can ship them to Europe where they can be installed in time to dramatically lessen Putin’s power. “

Fridays for Future youth activists also took to the streets of cities across the globe last week to #StandWithUkraine and heed a call from the Ukrainian arm of the global climate movement.

In a series of tweets last Thursday, the day of the demonstrations, the global group called this “an eye-opening moment for humanity to see that the world is aflame with new and old wars caused by fossil fuels.”

“We want to call out the era of fossil fuel, capitalism, and imperialism that allows these systemic oppressions,” they said. “We demand a world where leaders prioritize #PeopleNotProfit.”

Originally published on Common Dreams by ANDREA GERMANOS and republished under  a Creative Commons license (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0)

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Health, Lifestyle, News, Observation

Is ‘headline stress disorder’ real? Yes, but those who thrive on the news often lose sight of it

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It began with a basic “news you can use” feature from National Public Radio. Titled “5 ways to cope with the stressful news cycle,” producer Andee Tagle’s piece, published in late February, offered tips on how to cope with anxiety caused by news consumption in tense times.

Among Tagle’s tips: “Do something that feels good for your body and helps you get out of your head.” Also: “The kitchen is a safe space for a lot of us. Maybe this is the weekend that you finally re-create Grandpa’s famous lasagna … or maybe just lose yourself in some kitchen organization.”

Tagle’s simple self-help counsel quickly ignited social media scorn, seemingly touching a nerve among numerous commentators.

National Review’s Dan McLaughlin tweeted that the piece indicated that NPR employees “really do not envision their audience as grown adults.”

“I’m all for mental health awareness and therapeutic care,” tweeted Daily Beast editor Anthony Fisher, before ultimately dismissing Tagle’s article as “a lifestyle guide for narcissists.”

The piece and its condemnation raise issues involving research about the mental and psychological toll of everyday news consumption that’s gone largely unnoticed by the public over the last few years. Recent surveys and research on the subject have only occasionally been publicized in the general press. The COVID-19 global pandemic – and the doomsday news reports it sparked – attracted a bit more attention to this research.

Yet the mental and psychological toll of news consumption remains largely unknown to the general news consumer. Even if the research isn’t widely known, the emotions felt by what one Northwestern University Medical School article called “headline stress disorder” probably exist for an certain unknown proportion of news consumers. After all, if these feelings didn’t exist for at least some of their listening audience, NPR would never have published that piece. Nor would Fox News have published a similar article to help its viewers cope.

News threatens mental stability

The idea that more news, delivered faster through new and addicting technologies, can cause psychological and medical harm has a long history in the United States.

Media scholars like Daniel Czitrom and Jeffrey Sconce have noted how contemporaneous research linked the emergence and prevalence of neurasthenia to the rapid proliferation of telegraphic news in the late 19th century. Neurasthenia is defined by Merriam-Webster as “a condition that is characterized especially by physical and mental exhaustion usually with accompanying symptoms (such as headache and irritability).” Early 19th-century scientific exploration in neurology and psychiatry suggested that too much news consumption might lead to “nervous exhaustion” and other maladies.

In my own research into social psychology and radio listening, I noticed the same medical descriptions recurring in the 1920s, once radio became widespread. News reports chronicled how radio listening and radio news consumption seemed to threaten some people’s mental stability.

One front-page New York Times article in 1923 noted that a woman in Minnesota was divorcing her husband on the then-novel grounds that he suffered from “radio mania.” The wife felt her husband “paid more attention to his radio apparatus than to her or their home,” which had apparently “alienated his affection” from her.

Similar reports of addiction, mania and psychological entanglement spawned by new media emerged again as television proliferated in the American home in the 1950s, and again with the proliferation of the internet.

The public discussion of psychological addiction and mental harm caused by new technologies, and the ensuing moral panics they spawn, appears periodically as new communication technologies emerge. But, historically, adjustment and integration of new media occurs over time, and disorders such as neurasthenia and “radio mania” are largely forgotten.

Anxious about frightening news

“Headline stress disorder” might sound ridiculous to some, but research does show that reading the news can make certain subsets of news consumers develop measurable emotional effects.

There are numerous studies looking into this phenomenon. In general, they find some people, under certain conditions, can be vulnerable to potentially harmful and diagnosable levels of anxiety if exposed to certain types of news reports.

The problem for researchers is isolating the exact subset of news consumers this happens to, and describing precisely the effect that occurs in response to specific identified news subjects and methods of news consumption.

It is not only probable, but even likely, that many people are made more anxious by the widespread distribution of frightening news. And if a news consumer has a diagnosed anxiety disorder, depression, or other identified mental health challenge, the likelihood that obviously distressing news reports would amplify and inflame such underlying issues seems almost certain.

Just because popular culture manages to pathologize much of everyday behavior doesn’t mean identified problems aren’t real, as those skewering the NPR story implied.

We all eat; but some of us eat far too much. When that occurs, everyday behavior is transformed into actions that can threaten health and survival. Likewise, most of us strive to stay informed, but it’s likely that in certain situations, for certain people, staying informed when the news is particularly frightening can threaten their mental health.

Therefore, the question is not whether the problem is real, but how research might quantify and describe its true prevalence, and how to address the problem.

And that’s precisely why the NPR article caused such a stir. Many people who consume news without problem couldn’t fathom why others might benefit from learning how to cope with “headline stress disorder.”

In reality, the criticism aimed at NPR says nothing about those who find our current run of bad news particularly anxiety provoking. It does say a lot about the lack of empathy from those who would scoff at the idea.

Michael J. Socolow, Associate Professor, Communication and Journalism, University of Maine

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Lifestyle, News, Observation, Politics

‘Signed. Sealed. Delivered.’ Senate Sends USPS Reform Bill to Biden’s Desk

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“This long-overdue legislation will strengthen the Postal Service so it can better serve the American people.”

Postal reform advocates on Tuesday welcomed the U.S. Senate’s passage of House-approved bipartisan legislation that was held up last month by GOP Sen. Rick Scott of Florida.

A day after overcoming a filibuster, the Postal Service Reform Act passed the evenly split Senate in a 79-19 vote, with several Republicans joining Democrats to send the bill to President Joe Biden’s desk.

“Every day tens of millions of Americans rely on the post office for their daily essentials—seniors and veterans, small business owners, small-town rural Americans, people waiting for wedding invitations, birthday cards, letters—so we know that the Postal Service is really beloved,” said Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) at a press conference after the vote.

The U.S. Postal Service is “an important institution in American life” and was long in need of a revamp, he added, calling the bill’s passage a win for bipartisanship, postal workers, and the public.

“Every day the Postal Service faithfully delivers for the American people and today the Senate is finally delivering for the post office,” declared Schumer, flanked by Democratic and Republican colleagues.

National Association of Letter Carriers (NALC) president Fredric Rolando said in a statement that “this is a monumental victory for letter carriers and all Americans who depend on the Postal Service for affordable and high-quality universal service.”

“I want to congratulate and thank all the NALC members who lobbied their members of Congress to win passage in the Senate and the House,” he added. “Thanks to your support, dedication, and action, bipartisan postal reform, that was 12 years in the making, has finally passed in both chambers.”

The $107 billion compromise package, which the House advanced with a 342-92 vote in February, will make future Postal Service retirees enroll in Medicare—ending a costly mandate forcing the USPS to prefund health benefits—and require the creation of a new online mail tracking system.

“This long-overdue legislation will strengthen the Postal Service so it can better serve the American people,” tweetedSen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.).

The bill was even supported by Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, an appointee of former President Donald Trump who has faced multiple scandals.

The Senate vote comes as DeJoy is under fire for a USPS plan to buy gas-powered delivery trucks in spite of President Joe Biden’s proposed transition to zero-emission government vehicles.

“DeJoy’s environmental review is rickety, founded on suspect calculations, and fails to meet the standards of the law,” said Earthjustice senior attorney Adrian Martinez last month. “We’re not done fighting this reckless decision.”

Originally published on Common Dreams by JESSICA CORBETT and republished under  a Creative Commons license (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0)

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Business, News, Observation, Politics, Tech

House Panel Calls for DOJ Probe of Amazon Over Alleged Obstruction of Congress

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“Amazon repeatedly endeavored to thwart the committee’s efforts to uncover the truth about Amazon’s business practices,” the House Judiciary Committee wrote to Attorney General Merrick Garland. “For this, it must be held accountable.”

A U.S. House committee on Wednesday asked the Department of Justice to investigate Amazon and some of its executives for possible criminal obstruction of Congress, accusing the e-commerce giant of lying under oath and refusing to provide certain information requested by lawmakers during an antitrust probe.

That’s according to The Wall Street Journal, which first obtained a letter sent to U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland by Democratic and Republican members of the House Judiciary Committee. Signatories said they are alerting the DOJ to “potentially criminal conduct” by Amazon and some of its executives, though the letter doesn’t name specific individuals.

As the Journal reported:

The letter accuses the Seattle-based tech giant of refusing to provide information that lawmakers sought as part of an investigation by the body’s Antitrust Subcommittee into Amazon’s competitive practices. The letter alleges that the refusal was an attempt to cover up what it calls a lie that the company told lawmakers about its treatment of outside sellers on its platform.

The alleged lie came, according to the Washington Post, during “sworn testimony to the committee in 2019 about whether it uses data that it collects from third-party sellers to compete with them.”

The newspaper, which is owned by Amazon founder and ex-CEO Jeff Bezos, continued:

“[C]redible investigative reporting” and the committee’s investigation showed the company was engaging in the practice despite its denial, the letter said.

Subsequently, as the investigation continued, Amazon tried to “cover up its lie by offering ever-shifting explanations” of its policies, the letter said.

Furthermore, “after Amazon was caught in a lie and repeated misrepresentations, it stonewalled the committee’s efforts to uncover the truth,” according to the letter.

Throughout the investigation, “Amazon repeatedly endeavored to thwart the committee’s efforts to uncover the truth about Amazon’s business practices,” states the panel’s letter. “For this, it must be held accountable.”

The Judiciary Committee, chaired by Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.), conducted a 16-month antitrust investigation into Amazon, Apple, Google, and Facebook. The probe resulted in an October 2020 report that criticized all four tech giants and stimulated legislative proposals designed to limit their power.

However, the Journal noted that “lawmakers’ interaction with Amazon has been particularly contentious, according to people involved, and the new letter makes it the only one of the four companies that Judiciary Committee members have accused of illegal obstruction.”

Reuters reported that Wednesday’s “referral to the DOJ follows a previous warning from members of the U.S. committee in October in which they accused Amazon’s top executives, including founder Jeff Bezos, of either misleading Congress or possibly lying to it about Amazon’s business practices.”

According to the Journal, committee members at the time “sent a letter to Amazon Chief Executive Andy Jassy urging the company to provide ‘exculpatory evidence’ surrounding its private-label business practices. Lawyers representing Amazon met with legal counsel for the committee following the letter but didn’t produce the requested evidence, saying the investigation Amazon had conducted was privileged information between attorney and client, according to people familiar with the matter.”

Wednesday’s letter, the newspaper reported, says that Amazon “has refused to turn over business documents or communications that would either corroborate its claims or correct the record.”

“It appears to have done so to conceal the truth about its use of third-party sellers’ data to advantage its private-label business and its preferencing of private-label products in search results—subjects of the committee’s investigation,” the letter continues.

“As a result, we have no choice but to refer this matter to the Department of Justice to investigate whether Amazon and its executives obstructed Congress in violation of applicable federal law,” adds the letter.

It was signed by Nadler; Rep. David Cicilline (D-R.I.), chair of the panel’s subcommittee on antitrust, commercial, and administrative law; and subcommittee members Reps. Ken Buck (R-Colo.), Pramilia Jayapal (D-Wash.), and Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.).

Originally published on Common Dreams by KENNY STANCIL and republished under  a Creative Commons license (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0)

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News, Observation, Politics

House Committee Issues Subpoena to Top Trump Fundraiser Kimberly Guilfoyle

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The U.S. House of Representatives select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol issued a subpoena on Thursday to Kimberly Guilfoyle, a top fundraiser for former President Donald Trump and the fiancee of his son, Donald Trump Jr.

The subpoena cites a text message Guilfoyle sent to former Trump campaign adviser Katrina Pierson, in which Guilfoyle claims to have raised millions of dollars for the rally that preceded the Capitol riot. The text exchange was first reported in November by ProPublica.

In the text, Guilfoyle wrote that she “raised so much money for this. Literally one of my donors Julie at 3 million.” She was referring to Julie Jenkins Fancelli, a Publix supermarket heir and the biggest known funder for the Jan. 6 rally. Fancelli previously did not respond to ProPublica requests for comment on the matter.

The subpoena, which seeks to force Guilfoyle to hand over documents and appear for a deposition, also stated that she “communicated with others” about the speaking lineup for the Jan. 6 rally and met with Trump and members of his family in the Oval Office that morning.

Guilfoyle is the first member of the Trump family circle to be subpoenaed by the select committee. Guilfoyle and Trump Jr. announced their engagement in January. She was appointed national chair of the Trump Victory finance committee in January 2020 and was put at the helm of the former president’s super PAC last fall.

The subpoena is another indication that the committee is becoming increasingly aggressive in its investigation into the Capitol attack. In documents filed in a civil case in a California district court on Wednesday, the committee said for the first time that it had evidence that could potentially lead to criminal charges against the former president for his actions leading up to the Jan. 6 attack, including obstructing an official proceeding of Congress and conspiracy to defraud the United States. The committee would refer any potential criminal charge to the Justice Department to decide whether to prosecute. Trump has denied any wrongdoing.

The step comes almost a week after Guilfoyle walked out of a meeting with the committee after initially agreeing to answer questions about the events of Jan. 6. According to a statement from her lawyer last week, Guilfoyle left the meeting because she was concerned members of the committee would leak information from the interview to the press.

In September, citing ProPublica reporting, the committee sent subpoenas to Pierson and Caroline Wren, a Republican fundraiser who served as Guilfoyle’s deputy during the 2020 campaign. The committee subsequently issued subpoenas to threecloseadvisers to Trump Jr. and Guilfoyle.

In a statement, Joe Tacopina, Guilfoyle’s attorney, said the subpoena was a politically motivated abuse of power and that Guilfoyle will answer questions truthfully. “She has done nothing wrong,” he said. In November, Tacopina said the texts to Pierson were not about the Jan. 6 rally and threatened to “aggressively pursue all legal remedies available” against ProPublica. At the time, Pierson declined to comment and Trump Jr. did not respond to emailed questions.

ProPublica previously reported that Wren told another rally organizer that she raised $3 million for the Jan. 6 rally and “parked” the funds in several dark money organizations.

Wren previously sent a statement to ProPublica from her attorney that did not address how much money was raised for the rally or how it was spent, but stated that to her “knowledge, Kimberly Guilfoyle had no involvement in raising funds for any events on January 6th.”

Guilfoyle developed a professional relationship with Fancelli during the 2020 campaign, according to documents obtained by ProPublica, and Fancelli donated $250,000 to Trump Victory shortly after receiving a call from Guilfoyle.

ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign up for The Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox.Series: The Insurrection The Effort to Overturn the Election

Originally published on ProPublica by Joaquin Sapien and Joshua Kaplan and republished under a Creative Commons License (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0)

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News, Politics

Trump Just Endorsed an Oath Keeper’s Plan to Seize Control of the Republican Party

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The “precinct strategy” widely promoted by Steve Bannon has already inspired thousands of Trump supporters to fill local GOP positions, intent on preventing a “stolen election.”

Former President Donald Trump has officially endorsed a plan, created by a man who has self-identified with the Oath Keeper militia, that aims to have Trump supporters consolidate control of the Republican Party.

The plan, known as the “precinct strategy,” has been repeatedly promoted on Steve Bannon’s popular podcast. As ProPublica detailed last year, it has already inspired thousands of people to fill positions at the lowest rung of the party ladder. Though these positions are low-profile and often vacant, they hold critical powers: They help elect higher-ranking party officers, influence which candidates appear on the ballot, turn out voters on Election Day and even staff the polling precincts where people vote and the election boards that certify the results.

“Just heard about an incredible effort underway that will strengthen the Republican Party,” Trump said Sunday in a statement emailed to his supporters. “If members of our Great movement start getting involved (that means YOU becoming a precinct committeeman for your voting precinct), we can take back our great Country from the ground up.”

Trump’s email named Dan Schultz, an Arizona lawyer and local party official who first developed the precinct strategy more than a decade ago. Schultz spent years trying to promote his plan and recruit precinct officers. In 2014, he posted a callout to an internal forum for the Oath Keepers militia group, according to hacked records obtained by ProPublica.

“Why don’t you all join me and the other Oath Keepers who are ‘inside’ the Party already,” Schultz wrote under a screen name. “If we conservatives were to do that, we’d OWN the Party.”

Federal prosecutors in January charged the leader of the Oath Keepers and 10 of its other members with seditious conspiracy in last year’s attack on the U.S. Capitol. One of them pleaded guilty, as have several members of the group in related cases who are cooperating with the investigation. The group’s leader, Stewart Rhodes, pleaded not guilty.

There is no indication that Schultz had any involvement in the Capitol riot.

Schultz told ProPublica he never became a formal member of the Oath Keepers organization. “I have taken oaths to support and defend the Constitution as a West Point cadet, as a commissioned U.S. Army officer and as a practicing attorney,” Schultz said in a text message. “Those oaths do not have expiration dates, by my way of thinking, and I have kept my oaths. In that sense, I am an ‘oath keeper.’”

According to experts on extremist groups, the Oath Keepers recruit military and law enforcement veterans using the idea that their oath to defend the Constitution never expired. The group then urges people to resist what they say are impending orders to take away Americans’ guns or create concentration camps.

“I don’t ever want to be pulling the trigger on an AR-15 in my neighborhood,” Schultz said in a 2015 conference call with fellow organizers, referring to the semi-automatic rifle. “Oath Keepers, I love them for instilling the oath. But what they need to do also, I think, is spread the message that hey, we can do stuff politically so we never get to the cartridge box.”

In more recent interviews on right-wing podcasts and internet talk shows, Schultz has repeatedly described his precinct strategy as a last alternative to violence.

“It’s not going to be peaceful the next go-round, perhaps,” Schultz said in a June interview with the pro-Trump personality David Clements. “But it ought to be, and the way to ensure that it will be is we’ve got to get enough of these good decent Americans to take over one of the two major political parties.”

It was not clear whether Trump or his aides were aware that Schultz has self-identified with the Oath Keepers. Trump’s spokesperson, Liz Harrington, did not respond to requests for comment.

Schultz has spent months trying to get his idea in front of Trump. Steve Stern, a fellow movement organizer, told ProPublica that he met a former Trump administration official for lunch at Mar-a-Lago, the ex-president’s private club in Palm Beach, in December. While there, Stern said, he got a chance to briefly mention the project to Trump.

Then, last month, Schultz and Stern landed an interview on a talk show hosted by Mike Lindell, the MyPillow CEO who promotes conspiracy theories about the 2020 election. Lindell said he would discuss the plan with Trump personally. Schultz and Stern followed up with a conference call with Harrington and Bannon, according to Stern. Harrington previously worked at Bannon’s “War Room” website.

“I know the president’s very jacked up about it,” Bannon said on his podcast, speaking with Schultz after Trump released the endorsement. “Help MAGA, help the America First movement, right? Help the deplorables, help President Trump, help yourself, your country, community, your kids, grandkids, all of it. Put your shoulder to the wheel.”

Bannon, who led Trump’s 2016 campaign, originally lifted the precinct strategy to prominence in a podcast interview with Schultz last year. After the episode aired, thousands of people answered Bannon’s call to become precinct officers in pivotal swing states, according to data compiled by ProPublica from county records and interviews with local party officials.

As of last August, GOP leaders in 41 counties reported an unusual increase in sign-ups since Bannon’s first interview with Schultz, adding a total of more than 8,500 new precinct officers. The trend appears to have continued since then. New precinct officers started using their powers to remove or censure Republican leaders who contradicted Trump’s election lies and to recruit people who believe the election was stolen into positions as poll watchers and poll workers.

Bannon received a last-minute pardon from Trump after the former adviser was charged with financial fraud. He has pleaded not guilty to contempt of Congress for defying a subpoena from the committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack. Bannon’s spokesperson did not respond to requests for comment.

In addition to Bannon and Lindell, the precinct strategy has won support from pro-Trump figures such as former national security adviser Michael Flynn, who urged Trump to impose martial law, and lawyers Sidney Powell and Lin Wood, who led some of the lawsuits seeking to overturn the election results. Right-wing groups such as Turning Point Action, which organized buses to transport rallygoers on Jan. 6, also joined the effort to recruit precinct officers.

While Stern said he’s thrilled about Trump’s written statement endorsing the precinct strategy, he said he hopes to hear it from Trump’s own lips at an upcoming rally. Stern said he plans to be there with tables to sign more people up.

ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign up for The Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox.

Originally published on ProPublica by Isaac Arnsdorf and republished under a Creative Commons License (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0)

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News, Observation, Politics

House January 6 Panel Accuses Trump of ‘Criminal Conspiracy to Defraud’ US

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The committee alleges that Trump and his allies engaged in a “corrupt scheme to obstruct the counting of Electoral College ballots and a conspiracy to impede the transfer of power.”

The House select committee investigating the January 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol said in a federal court filingWednesday that former President Donald Trump and his campaign allies committed crimes as they attempted to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

While it is not conducting a criminal investigation and does not have the power to bring charges on its own, the House panel told the U.S. District Court in the Central District of California that lawmakers have “a good-faith basis for concluding that the president and members of his campaign engaged in a criminal conspiracy to defraud the United States in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 371.”

The Justice Department is currently investigating the January 6 attack and has charged more than 225 people for taking part, but it “has not given any indication that it is considering seeking charges against Trump,” the Associated Press notes.

The House committee’s filing was submitted in response to a lawsuit by former Trump lawyer John Eastman, who is fighting the panel’s request for thousands of emails related to efforts to pressure former Vice President Mike Pence to unilaterally scrap electoral votes from states President Joe Biden won.

Eastman has cited attorney-client privilege to justify withholding the emails from the select committee, but the panel’s filing argues that the documents Eastman is shielding are not privileged.

“Communications in which a ‘client consults an attorney for advice that will serve him in the commission of a fraud or crime’ are not privileged from disclosure,” the filing states. “The evidence supports an inference that President Trump, [Eastman], and several others entered into an agreement to defraud the United States by interfering with the election certification process, disseminating false information about election fraud, and pressuring state officials to alter state election results and federal officials to assist in that effort.”

The filing points specifically to an email it obtained showing that Eastman urged Pence’s lawyer to violate the law in an attempt to block congressional certification of Trump’s electoral loss.

“I implore you to consider one more relatively minor violation [of the Electoral Count Act] and adjourn for 10 days to allow the legislatures to finish their investigations, as well as to allow a full forensic audit of the massive amount of illegal activity that has occurred here,” Eastman wrote to Pence attorney Greg Jacob on the night of January 6, 2021.

In a statement late Wednesday, select committee chair Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) and vice chair Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) said the panel’s filing “refutes on numerous grounds the privilege claims Dr. Eastman has made to try to keep hidden records critical to our investigation.”

“Dr. Eastman’s privilege claims raise the question whether the crime-fraud exception to the attorney-client privilege applies in this situation,” the lawmakers wrote. “We believe evidence in our possession justifies review of these documents under this exception in camera. The facts we’ve gathered strongly suggest that Dr. Eastman’s emails may show that he helped Donald Trump advance a corrupt scheme to obstruct the counting of Electoral College ballots and a conspiracy to impede the transfer of power.”

Trump and his former aides have sought to impede the select committee’s investigation at every turn, obstructing the panel’s efforts to obtain White House documents—which the former president was notorious for destroying—and testimony from key witnesses.

Last month, the U.S. Supreme Court formally ended Trump’s attempt to prevent the committee from examining more than 700 pages of White House records related to the January 6 attack.

Originally published on Common Dreams by JAKE JOHNSON and republished under a Creative Commons license (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

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News, Observation, Politics

Let’s Recall What Exactly Paul Manafort and Rudy Giuliani Were Doing in Ukraine

Above: Photo Collage Lynxotic / ProPublica

Though Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine is just days old, Russia has been working for years to influence and undermine the independence of its smaller neighbor. As it happens, some Americans have played a role in that effort.

One was former President Donald Trump’s campaign chairman Paul Manafort. Another was Trump’s then-lawyer Rudy Giuliani.

It’s all detailed in a wide array of public documents, particularly a bipartisan 2020 Senate report on Trump and Russia. I was one of the journalists who dug into all the connections, as part of the Trump, Inc. podcast with ProPublica and WNYC. (I was in Kyiv, retracing Manafort’s steps, when Trump’s infamous call with Ukraine’s president was revealed in September 2019.)

Given recent events, I thought it’d be helpful to put all the tidbits together, showing what happened step by step.

Americans Making Money Abroad. What’s the Problem?

Paul Manafort was a longtime Republican consultant and lobbyist who’d developed a speciality working with unsavory, undemocratic clients. In 2004, he was hired by oligarchs supporting a pro-Russian party in Ukraine. It was a tough assignment: The Party of Regions needed an image makeover. A recent election had been marred by allegations that fraud had been committed in favor of the party’s candidate, prompting a popular revolt that became known as the Orange Revolution.

In a memo for Ukraine’s reportedly richest man, Rinat Akhmetov, Manafort summed up the polling: Many respondents said they associated the Party of Regions with corruption and considered it the “party of oligarchs.”

Manafort set to work rebranding the party with poll-tested messaging and improved stagecraft. Before long, the Party of Regions was in power in Kyiv. One of his key aides in Ukraine was, allegedly, a Russian spy. The Senate Intelligence Committee report on Trump and Russia said Konstantin Kilimnik was both “a Russian intelligence officer” and “an integral part of Manafort’s operations in Ukraine and Russia.”

Kilimnik has denied he is a Russian spy. He was indicted by Special Counsel Robert Mueller for obstruction of justice for allegedly trying to get witnesses to lie in testimony to prosecutors in the Manafort case. Kilimnik, who reportedly lives in Moscow, has not been arrested. In an email to The Washington Post, Kilimnik distanced himself from Manafort’s legal woes and wrote, “I am still confused as to why I was pulled into this mess.”

Manafort did quite well during his time in Ukraine. He was paid tens of millions of dollars by pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych and other clients, stashing much of the money in undeclared bank accounts in Cyprus and the Caribbean. He used the hidden income to enjoy some of the finer things in life, such as a $15,000 ostrich jacket. Manafort was convicted in 2018 of wide-ranging financial crimes.

“We Are Going to Have So Much Fun, and Change the World in the Process”

In 2014, Manafort’s plum assignment in Ukraine came to an abrupt end. In February of that year, Yanukovych was deposed in Ukraine’s second uprising in a decade, known as the Maidan Revolution, in which more than a hundred protesters were killed in Kyiv. He fled to Russia, leaving behind a vast, opulent estate (now a museum) with gold-plated bathroom fixtures, a galleon on a lake and a 100-car garage.

With big bills and no more big checks coming in, Manafort soon found himself deep in debt, including to a Russian oligarch. He eventually pitched himself for a new gig in American politics as a convention manager, wrangling delegates for an iconoclastic reality-TV star and real estate developer.

“I am not looking for a paid job,” he wrote to the Trump campaign in early 2016. Manafort was hired that spring, working for free.

According to the Senate report, in mid-May 2016 he emailed top Trump fundraiser Tom Barrack, “We are going to have so much fun, and change the world in the process.” (Barrack was charged last year with failing to register as a foreign agent, involving his work for the United Arab Emirates. He has pleaded not guilty. The case has not yet gone to trial.)

A few months later, the Trump campaign put the kibosh on proposed language in the Republican Party platform that expressed support for arming Ukraine with defensive weapons.

One Trump campaign aide told Mueller that Trump’s view was that “the Europeans should take primary responsibility for any assistance to Ukraine, that there should be improved U.S.-Russia relations, and that he did not want to start World War III over that region.”

According to the Senate report, Manafort met Kilimnik twice in person while working on the Trump campaign, messaged with him electronically and shared “sensitive campaign polling data” with him.

Senate investigators wrote in their report that they suspected Kilimnik served as “a channel for coordination” on the Russian military intelligence operation to hack into Democratic emails and leak them.

The Senate intel report notes that in about a dozen interviews with Special Counsel Robert Mueller, Manafort “lied consistently” about “one issue in particular: his interactions with Kilimnik.”

Manafort’s attorney did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Manafort didn’t make it to Election Day on the Trump campaign. In August 2016, The New York Times revealed that handwritten ledgers recovered from Yanukovych’s estate showed nearly $13 million in previously undisclosed payments to Manafort from Yanukovych and his pro-Russian party. Manafort was pushed out of his job as Trump’s campaign chairman less than a week later.

After Trump won the election, the Senate report says, Manafort and Kilimnik worked together on a proposed “plan” for Ukraine that would create an Autonomous Republic of Donbas in separatist-run southeast Ukraine, on the Russian border. Manafort went so far as to work with a pollster on a survey on public attitudes to Yanukovych, the deposed president. The plan only would need a “wink” from the new U.S. president, Kilimnik wrote to Manafort in an email.

Manafort continued to work on the “plan” even after he had been indicted on charges of bank fraud and conspiracy, according to the Senate report. It’s not clear what became of the effort, if anything.

“Do Us a Favor”

With Manafort’s conviction in 2018, Rudy Giuliani came to the fore as the most Ukraine-connected person close to President Trump. Giuliani had long jetted around Eastern Europe. He’d hung out in Kyiv, supporting former professional boxer Vitali Klitschko’s run for mayor. One of Giuliani’s clients for his law firm happened to be Russia’s state oil producer, Rosneft.

By 2018, Giuliani had joined Trump’s legal team, leading the public effort to discredit Robert Mueller’s investigation. Giuliani saw that Ukraine could be a key to that effort.

Giuliani ended up working with a pair of émigré business partners, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, to make contacts in Ukraine with corrupt and questionable prosecutors, in an effort to turn up “dirt” on Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, who had served on the board of a Ukrainian energy company. Giuliani also worked to sow doubt about the ledger that had revealed the secret payments to Manafort, meeting with his buddies in a literally smoke-filled room.

Parnas and Fruman told the president at a donor dinner in 2018 that the U.S. ambassador in Kyiv was a liability to his administration.

Trump recalled Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch, who had been a vocal opponent of corruption in Ukraine, from Kyiv in May 2019.

Two months later, Trump had his infamous call with Ukraine’s new President, Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

Zelenskyy asked Trump for anti-tank Javelin missiles. You know what happened next. Trump said he needed Zelenskyy to first “do us a favor” and initiate investigations that would be damaging to Joe Biden. He also pressed Zelenskyy to meet with Giuliani, according to the official readout of the call:

These events became publicly known in September 2019, when a whistleblower complaint was leaked.

“In the course of my official duties, I have received information from multiple U.S. Government officials that the President of the United States is using the power of his office to solicit interference from a foreign country in the 2020 U.S. election,” the whistleblower wrote.

In December 2019, as an impeachment inquiry was at full tilt, Giuliani flew to Ukraine and met with a member of Ukraine’s parliament, Andrii Derkach, in an apparent effort to discredit the investigation of Trump’s actions. Derkach, a former member of the Party of Regions, went on to release a trove of dubious audio “recordings” that seemed to be aimed at showing Biden’s actions in Ukraine, when he was vice president, in a negative light.

Within months, the U.S. Treasury Department sanctioned Derkach, describing him as “an active Russian agent for over a decade” who tried to undermine U.S. elections. Derkach has called that idea “nonsense.”

In a statement, Giuliani said, “there is nothing I saw that said he was a Russian agent. There is nothing he gave me that seemed to come from Russia at all.” Giuliani has consistently maintained that his actions in Ukraine were proper and lawful. His lawyer did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Where They Are Now…

Many of Trump’s allies have been charged or investigated for their work in and around Ukraine:

Paul Manafort:convicted of financial fraud — then pardoned by Trump

Rick Gates: a Manafort aide who pleaded guilty to conspiracy and lying to the FBI

Sam Patten: another Manafort associate convicted for acting as a straw donor to the Trump inaugural committee on behalf of a Ukrainian oligarch

Rudy Giuliani:reportedly under criminal investigation over his dealings in Ukraine; his lawyer called an FBI search of his home and seizure of electronic devices “legal thuggery”

Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman:convicted for funneling foreign money into U.S. elections; Parnas’ attorney said he would appeal

Key Documents

Originally published on ProPublica by Ilya Marritz and republished under Creative Commons License (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0)

ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign up for The Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox.

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LA Local, News, Observation

Los Angeles’ long, troubled history with urban oil drilling is nearing an end after years of health concerns

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Los Angeles had oil wells pumping in its neighborhoods when Hollywood was in its infancy, and thousands of active wells still dot the city.

These wells can emit toxic chemicals such as benzene and other irritants into the air, often just feet from homes, schools and parks. But now, after nearly a decade of community organizing and studies demonstrating the adverse health impacts on people living nearby, Los Angeles’ long history with urban drilling is nearing an end.

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In a unanimous vote on Jan. 26, 2022, the Los Angeles City Council took the first step toward phasing out all oil and gas extraction in the city by declaring oil extraction a nonconforming land use. That came on the heels of a unanimous vote by Los Angeles County supervisors to phase out oil extraction in unincorporated county areas.

As environmental health researchers, we study the impacts of oil drilling on surrounding communities. Our research shows that people living near these urban oil operations suffer higher rates of asthma than average, as well as wheezing, eye irritation and sore throats. In some cases, the impact on residents’ lungs is worse than living beside a highway or being exposed to secondhand smoke every day.

LA was once an oil town with forests of derricks

Over a century ago, the first industry to boom in Los Angeles was oil.

Oil was abundant and flowed close to the surface. In early 20th-century California, sparse laws governed mineral extraction, and rights to oil accrued to those who could pull it out of the ground first. This ushered in a period of rampant drilling, with wells and associated machinery crisscrossing the landscape. By the mid-1920s, Los Angeles was one of the largest oil-exporting regions in the world.

A 1924 photo shows the oil derricks on Signal Hill. Water and Power Museum Archive
The view across The Pike amusement park and downtown Long Beach, California, in 1940 shows a forest of oil derricks in the background. Water and Power Museum Archive

Oil rigs were so pervasive across the region that the Los Angeles Times described them in 1930 as “trees in a forest.” Working-class communities were initially supportive of the industry because it promised jobs but later pushed back as their neighborhoods witnessed explosions and oil spills, along with longer-term damage to land, water and human health.

Tensions over land use, extraction rights and subsequent drops in oil prices due to overproduction eventually resulted in curbs on drilling and a long-standing practice of oil companies’ voluntary “self-regulation,” such as noise-reduction technologies. The industry began touting these voluntary approaches to deflect governmental regulation.

Increasingly, oil companies disguised their activities with approaches such as operating inside buildings, building tall walls and designing islands off Long Beach and other sites to blend in with the landscape. Oil drilling was hidden in plain sight.

Beverly Hills High School earned money from an oil well, hidden behind walls covered with flower drawings, that operated until 2017 but raised health concerns. Luis Sinco/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images

Today there are over 20,000 active, idle or abandoned wells spread across a county of 10 million people. About one-third of residents live less than a mile from an active well site, some right next door.

Since the 2000s, the advance of extractive technologies to access harder-to-reach deposits has led to a resurgence of oil extraction activities. As extraction in some neighborhoods has ramped up, people living in South Los Angeles and other neighborhoods in oil fields have noticed frequent odors, nosebleeds and headaches.

Closer to urban oil drilling, poorer lung function

The city of Los Angeles has no buffers or setbacks between oil extraction and homes, and approximately 75% of active oil or gas wells are located within 500 meters (1,640 feet) of “sensitive land uses,” such as homes, schools, child care facilities, parks or senior residential facilities.

Despite over a century of oil drilling in Los Angeles, until recently there was limited research into the health impacts. Working with community health workers and community-based organizations helped us gauge the impact oil wells are having on residents, particularly on its historically Black and Hispanic neighborhoods.

Oil drilling in Los Angeles.

The first step was a door-to-door survey of 813 neighbors from 203 households near wells in Las Cienegas oil field, just south and west of downtown. We found that asthma was significantly more common among people living near South Los Angeles oil wells than among residents of Los Angeles County as a whole. Nearly half the people we spoke with, 45%, didn’t know oil wells were operating nearby, and 63% didn’t know how to contact local regulatory authorities to report odors or environmental hazards.

Next, we measured lung function of 747 long-term residents, ages 10 to 85, living near two drilling sites. Poor lung capacity, measured as the amount of air a person can exhale after taking a deep breath, and lung strength, how strongly the person can exhale, and are both predictors of health problems including respiratory disease, death from cardiovascular problems and early death in general.

We found that the closer someone lived to an active or recently idle well site, the poorer that person’s lung function, even after adjusting for such other risk factors as smoking, asthma and living near a freeway. This research demonstrates a significant relationship between living near oil wells and worsened lung health.

People living up to 1,000 meters (0.6 miles) downwind of a well site showed lower lung function on average than those living farther away and upwind. The effect on their lungs’ capacity and strength was similar to impacts of living near a freeway or, for women, being exposed to secondhand smoke.

Using a community monitoring network in South Los Angeles, we were able to distinguish oil-related pollution in neighborhoods near wells. We found short-term spikes of air pollutants and methane, a potent greenhouse gas, at monitors less than 500 meters, about one-third of a mile, from oil sites.

When oil production at a site stopped, we observed significant reductions in such toxins as benzene, toluene and n-hexane in the air in adjacent neighborhoods. These chemicals are known irritants, carcinogens and reproductive toxins. They are also associated with dizziness, headaches, fatigue, tremors and respiratory system irritation, including difficulty breathing and, at higher levels, impaired lung function.

Vulnerable communities at risk

Many of the dozens of active oil wells in South Los Angeles are in historically Black and Hispanic communities that have been marginalized for decades. These neighborhoods are already considered among the most highly polluted, with the most vulnerable residents in the state.

A state app called Well Finder locates active oil wells, including in Los Angeles County. State of California

In its landmark vote in January, the City Council moved to draft an ordinance that would ban all new oil wells, and it ordered a study to determine how to phase out and decommission existing wells over the next five years.

The state, meanwhile, has proposed a 3,200-foot setback rule for new wells, but this has not yet gone into effect and does little to address health concerns for residents who live near existing wells. Gov. Gavin Newsom has also proposed to phase out oil extraction, but the proposal would allow oil wells to continue operating until 2045.

Our research shows why a variety of policies, including buffers, phaseouts and emissions controls in existing wells will need to be considered to protect public health and accelerate the transition to cleaner energy sources.

This updates an article originally published June 2, 2021.

Jill Johnston, Assistant Professor of Preventive Medicine, University of Southern California and Bhavna Shamasunder, Associate Professor of Urban and Environmental Policy, Occidental College

This article is republished from The Conversation by Jill Johnston, University of Southern California and Bhavna Shamasunder, Occidental College under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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News, Observation, Politics

New Legal Filing Reveals Startling Details of Possible Fraud by Trump Organization

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A new legal filing by New York’s attorney general this week accused former President Donald Trump’s company of misleading lenders about the financial health of its landmark downtown Manhattan skyscraper, 40 Wall Street, while seeking to renew the building’s mortgage.

Though the Trump Organization called 40 Wall Street “one of the great success stories post 2008,” lender Capital One found the company’s estimates of the building’s worth so unbelievable that the bank declined to refinance the tower’s loan in 2015, the filing alleges.

“Capital One harbored great skepticism regarding the Trump Organization’s valuations,” says the filing, which was submitted by Attorney General Letitia James in response to Trump’s efforts to block her from questioning him and his children as part of an ongoing investigation by her office.

The new accusations offer startling details about possible financial fraud involving 40 Wall Street — one of the subjects of a 2019 ProPublica story that highlighted conflicting financial documents the Trump Organization had filed for the building.

ProPublica’s story documented how income, expense and occupancy numbers cited in the eventual refinance for 40 Wall Street and another Manhattan building sometimes didn’t match those the company had filed with city tax authorities. A lower valuation for the city would produce a lower tax bill, while a higher valuation for lenders would make it easier to get a new mortgage.

One expert said it appeared like the Trump Organization was keeping “two sets of books.”

“It feels like a set of books for the tax guy and a set for the lender,” said Kevin Riordan, a financing expert and real estate professor at Montclair State University, at the time.

In her filing, James asserts that Trump Organization employees, including Trump’s children, took part in a pattern of deception in which they misled lenders, insurers and the Internal Revenue Service by vastly overstating values for 40 Wall Street and a host of other Trump properties, including golf courses in Scotland, Los Angeles and Westchester and his buildings on Fifth and Park avenues.

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The Trump Organization on Thursday lashed out at James, a Democrat, via a statement emailed by a spokesperson, saying, “The only one misleading the public is Letitia James.

“She defrauded New Yorkers by basing her entire candidacy on a promise to get Trump at all costs without having seen a shred of evidence and in violation of every conceivable ethical rule,” the organization’s statement said. It asserted that James “has no case” and that the “allegations are baseless and will be vigorously defended.”

Alan Futerfas, a lawyer for Trump’s children Donald Jr. and Ivanka Trump, also criticized James, accusing her of making “repeated threats to target the Trump family” and ignoring legal protections for “the very people she is investigating.”

James is seeking to compel testimony and obtain documents from Trump, Donald Jr. and Ivanka, who she said have not cooperated with her investigation.

The filing says that property valuations formed the heart of statements of financial condition that the Trump Organization used to demonstrate its net worth. The statements, which James said contained inaccuracies, were compiled by an outside accounting agency from a data spreadsheet and backup material provided by the Trump Organization.

Trump’s personal guarantees to some banks and insurers required him to certify that his financial statements were correct, according to James’ filing. The documents say her office has evidence Trump was “personally involved in reviewing and approving” the statements.

If the company or its employees are found to have deliberately provided misleading valuations, they could face civil or criminal penalties. The company is under investigation by both James and Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg.

With its classic Gothic Revival style and signature green spire, 40 Wall Street gave Trump a presence in the most famous financial district in the world. His company doesn’t own it, but rather purchased in 1995 the right to act as the landlord for its office and retail space. Finding tenants for that space, however, particularly in the building’s narrow tower, proved a challenge, especially after 9/11, when occupancy sagged and the entire financial district struggled, the ProPublica investigation found.

James’ filing says that as early as 2009, Capital One, which held the mortgage on the property, “raised substantial concerns about cash flow” at 40 Wall Street, prompting in-person meetings with Trump, longtime Trump Organization Chief Financial Officer Allen Weisselberg and others. Donald Trump Jr. was also involved in the discussions, the filing says.

The conversations led to a loan modification in 2010, with bank personnel harboring doubts about the Trump Organization’s representations of the building’s financial standing. During those discussions, the Trump Organization provided the bank with profit numbers for 2010 of $12.3 million, which bank personnel described as “very optimistic.”

More startling were the differences between valuations that appeared on Trump’s statements of financial condition and those prepared by appraisers for Capital One. The Trump Organization set the value of the building at $601.8 million in 2010, while the appraisals for Capital One done by Cushman & Wakefield set it at just less than one-third of that, $200 million.

Weisselberg shared one of the company’s higher valuations for the building with the bank in early 2015, boasting of “considerable capital investment” and “a much improved cash flow.” He wanted Capital One to restructure its loan and waive a principal payment of $5 million due in November.

But Capital One declined to refinance the mortgage, referencing its own internal estimate that the building was only worth $257 million a few months before.

That year, 40 Wall Street’s $160 million mortgage was a thorn in Trump’s side, representing his then-largest single debt as he launched his campaign for the presidency.

After Capital One’s rejection, the Trump Organization turned to Ladder Capital Finance, where Weisselberg’s son Jack was a director. Ladder commissioned its own appraisal. Though Ladder used the same Cushman & Wakefield team that had estimated the building was worth $220 million in 2012, the team this time more than doubled the value to $540 million, legal filings said. Ladder approved the refinance.

James’ filing said that evidence her office obtained suggests the 2015 Cushman valuation “appears to have used demonstrably incorrect facts and aggressive assumptions” to arrive at the higher estimate, which the document said “did not reflect a good faith assessment of value.”

On Thursday, Cushman & Wakefield defended its practices, saying it took “great issue with mischaracterizations concerning the work performed and believe they are not supported by the evidence.

“The referenced Cushman & Wakefield appraisals were undertaken and completed in good faith based upon the material information made available,” the company said in a statement emailed by a spokesperson. “We stand behind the appraisers and the referenced appraisals which reflect fair valuations based upon the underlying facts and market dynamics.”

In 2015, the Trump Organization’s statement of financial condition listed the value of the building as $735.4 million.

Ladder Capital and Capital One did not immediately respond to requests for comment Thursday. Allen Weisselberg and Jack Weisselberg could not immediately be reached.

ProPublica’s 2019 story found several instances of the Trump Organization reporting much lower expenses to its lender, Ladder Capital, than to city tax authorities — including 40 Wall Street’s insurance costs and ground lease. Jack Weisselberg declined to comment at the time on Ladder’s loans or his relationship with the Trump Organization. Executives with Ladder also declined to be quoted for the story then.

In 2019, former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen testified before Congress that the Trump Organization inflated valuations at times to appear more profitable and deflated them to achieve a lower real estate tax bill.

Originally published on ProPublica by Heather Vogell and republished under a Creative Commons License (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0)

ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign up for The Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox.Series: Trump, Inc. Exploring the Business of Trump

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News, Observation, Politics

Know This, Trump’s Attempted Coup on Jan. 6 Was Just Practice

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What are the institutions—public and civic—that could roll back this fast-approaching U.S.-style fascism with the snarling visage of serial criminal and constitutional violator, Donald J. Trump?

“Trump’s Next Coup Has Already Begun…” is the title of an article in the Atlantic, just out, by Barton Gellman, a Pulitzer Prize winner and author of many groundbreaking exposés. He describes the various maneuvers that Trump-driven Republican operatives and state legislators are developing to overturn elections whose voters elected Democrats from states with Republican governors and state legislatures. Georgia fit that profile in 2020—electing two Democratic senators in a state with a Republican legislature and governor.

Tragically, a majority of the U.S. Supreme Court Justices—three selected by Trump—has no problem with his usurpation of the American Republic.

Getting ready for 2024, the Georgia GOP legislature has stripped the election-certifying Secretary of State, Brad Raffensperger, of his authority to oversee future election certifications. The legislature has also given itself the unbridled authority to fire county election officials. With Trump howling his lies and backing his minion candidates, they created a climate that is intimidating scores of terrified election-precinct volunteers to quit.

Added to this are GOP-passed voter suppression laws and selectively drawn election districts that discriminate against minorities—both before the vote (purges, arbitrary disqualifications), during the vote (diminishing absentee voting, and narrowing dates for their delivery), and after the election in miscounting and falsely declaring fraud.

The ultimate lethal blow to democratic elections, should the GOP lose, is simply to have the partisan GOP majority legislators benefiting from demonically-drawn gerrymandered electoral districts, declare by fiat the elections a fraud, and replace the Democratic Party’s voter chosen electors with GOP chosen electors in the legislature.

Now take this as a pattern demolishing majority voters’ choice to 14 other GOP-controlled states, greased by Trumpian lies and routing money to his chosen candidate’s intent on overturning majority rule, add Fox News bullhorns and talk radio Trumpsters and you have the apparatus for fascistic takeovers. Tragically, a majority of the U.S. Supreme Court Justices—three selected by Trump—has no problem with his usurpation of the American Republic. All this and more micro-repression is broadcast by zillions of ugly, vicious, and anonymous rants over the Internet enabled by the profiteering social media corporations like Facebook.

Anonymous, vicious, violent email and Twitter traffic is the most underreported cause of anxiety, fear, and dread undermining honest Americans working, mostly as volunteers, the machinery of local, state, and national elections, with dedicated public servants. These people are not allowed to know the names behind the anonymous cowardly, vitriol slamming against them, their families, and children.

What are the institutions—public and civic—that could roll back this fast-approaching U.S.-style fascism with the snarling visage of serial criminal and constitutional violator, Donald J. Trump?

1. First is the Congress. Democrats impeached Trump over the Ukraine extortion but left on the table eleven other impeachable counts, including those with kitchen-table impacts (See Congressional Record, December 18, 2019).

All that is going on to deal with Trump’s abuses in any focused way on Capitol Hill, controlled by Democrats, is the House’s January 6th investigation. So far as is known, this Select Committee is NOT going to subpoena the star witnesses—Donald Trump and Mike Pence. So far, the Congress is feeble, not a Rock of Gibraltar thwarting the Trumpian dictators.

2. The federal courts? Apart from their terminal delays, it’s Trump’s Supreme Court and his nominees fill many chairs in the federal circuit courts of appeals. The federal judiciary—historically the last resort for constitutional justice—is now lost to such causes.

3. The Democratic Party? We’re still waiting for a grand strategy, with sufficient staff, to counter, at every intersection, the GOP. The Dems do moan and groan well. But where is their big-time ground game for getting out the non-voters in the swing states? Are they provoking recall campaigns of despotic GOP state legislators in GOP states having such citizen-voter power? Why aren’t they adopting the litigation arguments of Harvard Law School’s constitutional expert, Professor Larry Tribe? Where are their messages to appeal to the majority of eligible American voters who believe that the majority rules in elections? Why aren’t they urgently reminding voters of the crimes and other criminogenic behavior by the well-funded Trump and his political terrorists?

Bear in mind, the Democrats are well-funded too.

4. The Legal Profession and their Bar Associations. Aren’t they supposed to represent the rule of law, protect the integrity of elections, and insist on peaceful transitions of power? They are after all, not just private citizens; they are “officers of the court.” Forget it. There are few exceptions, but don’t expect the American Bar Association and its state bar counterparts to be the sentinels and watchdogs against sinister coup d’états under cover of delusional strongarming ideologies.

5. Well, how about the Universities, the faculties, and the students? Weren’t they the hotbeds of action against past illegal wars and violations of civil rights in the Sixties and Seventies? Sure. But that was before the Draft was eliminated, before the non-stop gazing at screens, and before the focus on identity politics absorbed the energy that fueled mobilizations about fundamental pursuits of peace, justice, and equality.

6. How about some enlightened corporate executives of influential companies? Having been given large tax reductions, sleepy law enforcement regulators, and a corporatist-minded federal judiciary, while the war contracts and taxpayer bailouts proliferate, why should they make waves to save the Republic? The union of plutocratic big business with the autocratic government is one classical definition of fascism.

7. The Mass Media. Taken together, they’ve done a much better job exposing Trumpism than has the Congress or litigation and the judiciary. However, their digging up the dirt does not come with the obvious follow-ups from their reporting and editorializing.

Covering the Ukraine impeachment, but not covering at least eleven other documented impeachable offenses, handed to them by credible voices, left them with digging hard but never hitting pay dirt. Trump has escaped all their muckraking as he has escaped all attempts by law enforcers who have their own unexplained hesitancies. If reporters do not dig intensely into just how Trump and his chief cohorts have escaped jail time and other penalties, their usual revelations of wrongdoings appear banal, eliciting “what else is new?” yawns by their public.

What’s left to trust and rely upon? Unorganized people organizing. What else! That’s what the farmers did peacefully in western Massachusetts in 1774 (See: The Revolution Came Early—1774—to the Berkshires) against the tyrant King George III and his Boston-based Redcoats?  By foot or by horse, they showed up together in huge numbers at key places. These farmers collectively stopped the takeover of local governments and courts by King George’s wealthier Tories. Their actions can teach us the awesome lessons of moral, democratic, and tactical grit—all the while having to deal with nature and their endangered crops.

What are our excuses?

Originally published on Common Dreams by RALPH NADER and republished under a Creative Commons license (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0)

News, Observation, Politics

How Steve Bannon Has Exploited Google Ads to Monetize Extremism

Video

by Craig Silverman and Isaac Arnsdorf

ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign up for The Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox.

Almost a year ago, Google took a major step to ensure that its ubiquitous online ad network didn’t put money in the pocket of Steve Bannon, the indicted former adviser to Donald Trump. The company kicked Bannon off YouTube, which Google owns, after he called for the beheading of Anthony Fauci and urged Trump supporters to come to Washington on Jan. 6 to try to overturn the presidential election results.

Google also confirmed to ProPublica that it has at times blocked ads from appearing on Bannon’s War Room website alongside individual articles that violate Google’s rules.

But Bannon found a loophole in Google’s policies that let him keep earning ad money on his site’s homepage.

Until Monday, the home page automatically played innocuous stock content, such as tips on how to protect your phone in winter weather or how to improve the effectiveness of your LinkedIn profile.

The content likely had no interest for War Room visitors, especially since it was interrupted every few seconds by ads. But the ads, supplied through Google’s network, came from such prominent brands as Land Rover, Volvo, DoorDash, Staples and even Harvard University.

Right below that video player was another that featured clips from Bannon’s “War Room” podcast, which routinely portrays participants in the Jan. 6 Capitol riot as patriots and airs false claims about the 2020 election and the COVID-19 pandemic.

The video player running Google ads amid innocuous clips disappeared from Bannon’s website on Monday, after ProPublica inquired with Google, Bannon and advertisers. The change was not Google’s doing: Google spokesperson Michael Aciman said the player did not break the company’s rules. He said Google’s policies were effective in preventing ads from ending up on sites with “harmful content.”

“We have strict policies that explicitly prohibit publishers from both promoting harmful content and providing inaccurate information about their properties, misrepresenting their identity, or sending unauthorized ad requests,” Aciman said. “These policies exist to protect both users and advertisers from abuse, fraud or disruptive ad experiences, and we enforce them through a mix of automated tools and human review. When we find publishers that violate these policies we stop ads from serving on their site.”

A spokesperson for Bannon, who was indicted this month for stonewalling Congress’ bipartisan investigation into the Jan. 6 insurrection, declined to answer questions for this article.

Zach Edwards, the founder of Victory Medium, a consulting firm that advises companies on online advertising, said the digital ad industry, including Google, is rife with loopholes and bad behavior, and its complexity prevents advertisers from understanding what they’re funding. “A lot of times ad buyers just shrug their shoulders and are like, ‘It’s video ads, what can you do?’” he said.

Of Bannon’s dodge and Google’s acquiescence to it, Edwards added, “Nothing about this is aboveboard.”

The vast majority of online ads aren’t purchased through direct relationships with the sites on which they appear. Instead, brands use automated ad exchanges like Google’s that rely on real-time auctions to automatically place ads in front of people who fit a brand’s target audience. As long as Google keeps the War Room website in its network, and as long as brands don’t specifically block it from their ad buys, Bannon’s site can keep collecting money. Warroom.org draws between 450,000 and 1 million visits a month, according to traffic tracker SimilarWeb.

And Google takes a cut of each dollar from ads it places on the War Room site.

“For most advertisers, having an ad placed on a Steve Bannon-affiliated outlet is the stuff of nightmares,” said Nandini Jammi, the co-founder of Check My Ads, an ad industry watchdog. “The fact that ad exchanges are still serving ads should tell brands that their vendors are not vetting their inventory, and I wouldn’t be surprised if advertisers who have found themselves on War Room request refunds.”

Companies contacted by ProPublica said they didn’t intend to advertise on War Room’s site and would take steps to stop their ads from appearing there. Land Rover called the ad “an error.” Harry Pierre, a spokesperson for Harvard’s Division of Continuing Education, said the school is working with its ad buyer to update its list of unwanted websites. Adobe said its ad was a violation of its brand safety guidelines. “We worked with the ad partner to remove the ads from the site,” a spokesperson said.

DoorDash also blamed a third-party vendor. “DoorDash’s mission is to empower local communities and provide access to opportunity for all, and we stand against the spread of disinformation that undermines those principles,” the company said in a statement.

Spokespeople for Volvo did not respond to requests for comment.

Meanwhile, Google may have banned a different site affiliated with Bannon. Until recently, the site Populist Press earned money via Google’s ad network. The site, styled to imitate the Drudge Report, was prominently linked on the War Room homepage and draws roughly 5 million visits a month, according to SimilarWeb.

According to an online disclosure from a former advertising partner, Populist Press is affiliated with August Partners, a Colorado company registered to Amanda Shea, whose husband, Tim Shea, was a partner of Bannon’s in We Build the Wall initiative. Bannon and allies used We Build the Wall to solicit money to fulfill Trump’s campaign promise of a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border. Federal prosecutors accused Bannon, Tim Shea and other associates of misusing the money, and Trump pardoned Bannon before leaving office. An attorney for Tim Shea, who is awaiting trial, declined to comment, and Amanda Shea did not respond to a request for comment.

At some point during the week of Nov. 15, Populist Press stopped showing Google ads — and it stopped being promoted on the War Room homepage. Aciman, the Google spokesperson, declined to comment on whether Google had banned Populist Press, but said that the site “is not monetizing using our services.”

Bannon’s “War Room” podcast draws a massive audience, with more than 100 million total downloads across more than 1,000 episodes, available on platforms including Apple’s. A sort of far-right “Meet the Press,” it’s the go-to talk show for pro-Trump influencers and Republican hopefuls. Frequently using violent imagery, Bannon and his guests promote new ways of trying to overturn the election, such as demanding “audits” of the 2020 ballots. Since February, Bannon has inspired thousands to take over local-level Republican Party committees, unlocking influence over how elections are run from the ground up.

On his podcast in 2020, Bannon called for the beheading of Fauci and FBI director Chris Wray. On the eve of Jan. 6, Bannon said, “We’re on the point of attack” and “all hell will break loose tomorrow.” Bannon was also reportedly involved in the Trump team’s command center on the day of the riot, which is part of congressional investigators’ interest in his testimony and records. Since the insurrection, Bannon has taken up the cause of people held on charges related to the Capitol riot.

In addition to his podcast, Bannon has spun a complex web of political and business ventures. He co-founded a training academy for right-wing nationalists that got mired in a legal dispute with the Italian government over control of a medieval monastery near Rome. A media company he launched with Guo Wengui, a fugitive Chinese billionaire on whose yacht Bannon was arrested in 2020, was part of a $539 million settlement with the Securities and Exchange Commission in September for illegally marketing digital currency. Before advising Trump, Bannon had a wide-ranging career in finance and movies, and his pardon from Trump lifted a $1.75 million lien against his house in Laguna Beach, California.

Bannon’s megaphone is not just influential. It’s also lucrative. His show and website have promoted fellow election fraud evangelist Mike Lindell’s MyPillow business, as well as a cryptocurrency investing newsletter called TheCryptoCapitalist. (The marketers of an unproven COVID-19 treatment that Bannon promoted were sued by the Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission in April. The chiropractor behind the treatment denies the government’s accusations.) The War Room site also contains ads from MGID, a network that places content ads that look like links to related articles and sometimes promote dubious health or financial products.

It’s not clear how much money Bannon makes from online ads. But industry data shows that the links placed by MGID are much less profitable than the video ads facilitated by Google. (MGID did not respond to a request for comment.)

The issue is that major brands likely have no idea that they’re advertising on the site of one of the biggest perpetrators of bogus election fraud claims. That disconnect between brands and where their ads and money end up is a failure of digital advertising and a concern for consumers, according to industry experts.

“Over the past few years, consumers have become really vocal about buying from brands that are aligned with their values,” said Jammi of Check My Ads. “When they find out a brand is funding toxic content, that matters to them.”

A similar scenario has played out with ads that aired during Bannon’s podcast airing on a right-wing website called Real America’s Voice. In March, for instance, an ad for prescription coupon company GoodRx appeared on Bannon’s show.

“We take the trust and reputation of our brand very seriously and have strict advertising standards in place, which include not participating in heavily editorialized news programming,” the company said in an emailed statement to ProPublica. “This placement was an error in the media buying policies.”

Bannon’s show also airs on Pluto TV, a streaming service owned by ViacomCBS that is available on Roku and other devices. This month, the show on Pluto featured ads for such major companies as Men’s Wearhouse, Lexus and Procter & Gamble, according to monitoring by the liberal watchdog Media Matters. As with the Google video ads on the War Room website, these ads are not placed directly, and companies were at a loss to explain why they had appeared on Bannon’s show. (Bannon’s podcast is available in the Google Podcasts app, but the company does not place ads in it.) A Lexus spokesperson said the company’s ad was briefly on Bannon’s site and taken down. A spokesperson for Procter & Gamble did not respond to a request for comment.

“Our marketing spend follows targeted customers, rather than choosing specific programs we want to appear alongside,” said Mike Stefanov, a spokesperson for Tailored Brands, which owns Men’s Wearhouse. “The team continually refines the criteria used, but the appearance of advertising on a specific program does not necessarily mean the company agrees with or endorses the views espoused.”

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Business, Climate Solutions, News, Observation, Politics

“They’re Lying”: Lots of Climate Misinformation Detected During Testimony of Big Oil CEOs

Video

Above: Photo Collage / Lynxotic / Adobe Stock

“There is no longer any question: These companies knew and lied about their product’s role in the climate crisis, they continue to deceive, and they must be held accountable.”

Fossil fuel executives who testified Thursday at a U.S. House of Representatives hearing focused on decades of coordinated industry misinformation refused to pledge that their companies will stop lobbying against efforts to combat the climate emergency driven largely by their businesses.

That joint refusal came in response to a challenge from Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.), chair of the House Committee on Oversight and Reform—who at the end of the hearing announced subpoenas for documents the fossil fuel companies have failed to provide.

Earlier in the hearing, Maloney had asked if the Big Oil CEOs would affirm that their organizations “will no longer spend any money, either directly or indirectly, to oppose efforts to reduce emissions and address climate change.”

Advocates for climate action pointed to the moment as yet another example of major polluters impeding planet-saving policy.

“The silence, non-answers, and repeated deflections from Big Oil’s Slippery Six exposed once and for all that the fossil fuel industry won’t back off its commitment to spreading climate disinformation and lobbying against climate action in order to protect their bottom line,” Richard Wiles, executive director of the Center for Climate Integrity, said in a statement.

“For the first time ever, fossil fuel executives were confronted under oath with the evidence of their industry’s decadeslong efforts to deceive the American people about climate change,” Wiles continued. “They not only refused to accept responsibility for lying about the catastrophic effects of their fossil fuels—they refused to stop funding efforts to spread disinformation and oppose climate action.”

“There is no longer any question: These companies knew and lied about their product’s role in the climate crisis, they continue to deceive, and they must be held accountable,” he added. “Today’s hearing and the committee’s ongoing investigation are important steps in those efforts.”

Maloney and Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), who chairs the panel’s Subcommittee on the Environment, had threatened to subpoena the industry leaders—collectively dubbed the #SlipperySix—if they declined to join the hearing, entitled, “Fueling the Climate Crisis: Exposing Big Oil’s Disinformation Campaign to Prevent Climate Action.”

The historic event included testimony from four industry executives—ExxonMobil CEO Darren Woods, BP America CEO David Lawler, Chevron CEO Michael Wirth, Shell Oil president Gretchen Watkins—and leaders from industry trade groups: American Petroleum Institute (API) president Mike Sommers and U.S. Chamber of Commerce president and CEO Suzanne Clark.

Kyle Herrig, president of the watchdog group Accountable.US, warned that “lawmakers should be wary of testimony from executives who have consistently put their industry’s bottom line over the health of the climate and the American people, no matter their rhetoric.”

Geoffrey Supran and Naomi Oreskes, a pair of climate misinformation scholars at Harvard University, have warned of a “fossil fuel savior frame” that “downplays the reality and seriousness of climate change, normalizes fossil fuel lock-in, and individualizes responsibility.”

Both Oreskes and Fossil Free Media director Jamie Henn observed the presence of such framing during the hearing. Henn said that “it’s striking how much all these Big Oil execs come across as hostage-takers: ‘You need us. You can’t live without us. You’ll never escape.”

The fossil fuel witnesses’ initial remarks and responses to lawmakers’ questions were full of industry talking points. They advocated for “market-based solutions” like carbon taxes while failing to offer specifics. They also highlighted carbon capture, utilization, and storage (CCUS) technology and hydrogen—both of which progressive green groups have denounced as “false solutions”—as key to reaching a “lower-carbon future.”

While suggesting a long-term need for oil and gas, the executives claimed to believe in anthropogenic climate change and said fossil fuel emissions “contribute” to global heating. Some critics called them out for using that term, rather than “cause” or “drive.”

Using the the word “contribute” rather than cause, saidHuffPost environment reporter Chris D’Angelo, “downplays/dismisses the science, which shows they are the primary driver… Frankly, it’s climate denial—the very topic of this hearing.”

After inquiring about how long all four executives had been in their current roles, the panel’s ranking member, Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), asked whether they had ever signed off on a climate disinformation campaign. They all said no—which experts and activists promptly disputed.

While progressives on the panel grilled the executives, Republicans repeatedly apologized to the CEOs for Democrats’ supposed “intimidation” efforts. Blasting the GOP lawmakers’ actions as “pathetic,” Henn said that “they really do see themselves as servants to Big Oil.”

The panel’s GOP members also tried to redirect attention to planet-heating activities of other countries, particularly China, and complained about President Joe Biden’s move to block the controversial Keystone XL pipeline, even inviting Neal Crabtree, a welder who lost his job when the project was canceled, to testify.

“The GOP’s strategy at this hearing is clear: It will not attempt to claim Big Oil *didn’t* mislead on climate,” tweeted climate reporter Emily Atkin of the HEATED newsletter. “Instead, the GOP is claiming Democrats are wasting time by focusing on climate change, and that it isn’t important to ‘everyday Americans.'”

Thanking Atkin for spotlighting the Republicans’ strategy, ClimateVoice noted that new polling shows the U.S. public does care about the issue. According to survey results released this week, a majority of Americans see climate as a problem of high importance to them and support Congress passing legislation to increase reliance on clean electricity sources.

Maloney, in her closing remarks Thursday, lamented that the hearing featured “much of the denial and deflection” seen in recent decades. She also called out the companies for not turning over requested documents, refusing to “take responsibility” for their contributions to the climate crisis, and continuing to fund groups like API. The chair vowed that her committee will continue its investigation.

Originally published on Common Dreams by JESSICA CORBETT and republished under Creative Commons License (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0

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News, Observation, Politics

Burr’s Brother-in-Law Called Stock Broker, One Minute After Getting Off Phone With Senator

Above: Photo Collage / Lynxotic

According to the SEC, Sen. Richard Burr of North Carolina, then chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, had material nonpublic information about coronavirus impact. He and his brother-in-law dumped stock before the market dropped in March 2020.

After Sen. Richard Burr of North Carolina dumped more than $1.6 million in stocks in February 2020 a week before the coronavirus market crash, he called his brother-in-law, according to a new Securities and Exchange Commission filing.

They talked for 50 seconds.

Burr, according to the SEC, had material nonpublic information regarding the incoming economic impact of coronavirus.

The very next minute, Burr’s brother-in-law, Gerald Fauth, called his broker.

ProPublica previously reported that Fauth, a member of the National Mediation Board, had dumped stock the same day Burr did. But it was previously unknown that Burr and Fauth spoke that day, and that their contact came just before Fauth began the process of dumping stock himself.

The revelations come as part of an effort by the SEC to force Fauth to comply with a subpoena that the agency said he has stonewalled for more than a year, and which was filed not long after ProPublica’s story.

In the filings, the SEC also revealed that there is an ongoing insider trading investigation into both Burr and Fauth’s trades.

It had previously been reported that federal prosecutors had decided not to charge Burr.

Burr’s spokesperson did not immediately respond to questions. Fauth’s lawyer and the SEC did not respond to questions. Fauth hung up on a ProPublica reporter.

According to the SEC, Fauth has cited a medical condition for why he cannot comply with the subpoena, even as he has been healthy enough to continue his duties at the National Mediation Board. In its filings, the SEC accuses Fauth of engaging in “a relentless battle” to dodge the subpoena.

In 2017, President Donald Trump appointed Fauth to the three-person board, a federal agency that facilitates labor-management relations within the nation’s railroad and airline industries. President Joe Biden reappointed him to the board.

On the day he received the call from Burr, Fauth sold between $97,000 and $280,000 worth of shares in six companies — including several that were hit particularly hard in the market swoon and economic downturn. According to the SEC, the first broker he called after hearing from Burr was out of the office, so he immediately called another broker to execute the trades.

In its filings, the SEC also alleges, for the first time, that Burr had material nonpublic information about the economic impact of the coming coronavirus crisis, based on his role at the time as chairman of the intelligence committee, as a member of the health committee and through former staffers who were directing key aspects of the government response to the virus.

The week after the trades, the market began its crash, falling by more than 30% in the subsequent month.

Burr came under scrutiny after ProPublica reported that he sold off a significant percentage of his stocks shortly before the market tanked, unloading between $628,000 and $1.72 million of his holdings on Feb. 13 in 33 separate transactions. The precise amount of his stock sales, more than $1.6 million, is also a new detail from this week’s SEC filings. In his roles on the intelligence and health committees, Burr had access to the government’s most highly classified information about threats to America’s security and public health concerns.

Before his sell-off, Burr had assured the public that the federal government was well prepared to handle the virus. In a Feb. 7 op-ed that he co-authored with another senator, he said “the United States today is better prepared than ever before to face emerging public health threats, like the coronavirus.”

That month, however, according to a recording obtained by NPR, Burr had given a VIP group at an exclusive social club a much more dire preview of the economic impact of the coronavirus, warning it could curtail business travel, cause schools to be closed and result in the military mobilizing to compensate for overwhelmed hospitals.

Burr defended his actions, saying he relied solely on public information, including CNBC reports, to inform his trades and did not rely on information he obtained as a senator.

Alice Fisher, Burr’s attorney, told ProPublica at the time that “Sen. Burr participated in the stock market based on public information and he did not coordinate his decision to trade on Feb. 13 with Mr. Fauth.”

ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign up for The Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox.

Originally published on ProPublica by Robert Faturechi and republished under a Creative Commons License (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0)

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