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The Next Trump Indictment: Missing Gifts
House Democrats have issued a report stating that $250,000 worth of foreign gifts to Trump are unaccounted for. I reached out to my brother for an expert opinion on the matter–he was a young staffer in the Reagan White House in the gift office.
He said that the procedure is that it is the State Dept that first catalogs the gifts before the White House does. An appraisal is required because the President, Vice President, family, and WH employees cannot keep any gift worth more than $400 under current law (less in the 1980s) pursuant to the Foreign Gifts and Decorations Act.
The location of the item is cataloged (White House, museum, presidential residence, archive, etc). An annual report is done accounting for every item. When my brother was there, the report was done by a young WH attorney named John Roberts. The Reagans always deferred to the people enforcing those rules without exception. Some senior staff griped about being denied some items.
My expert expressed surprise that the location of any major items was not on record or known within the first months of Biden’s tenure. If any items were in the White House during Trump’s tenure, their absence in subsequent reports would have been immediately noticed. If they were in a Trump residence at the time he left office, then that would be the location. Nothing should ever be “missing.”
I would not be shocked to learn that Mr. Trump was not a stickler for following the rules. But the processes that are supposed to be in place would make it hard to walk off with what White House counsel almost certainly would have expressly advised against. Protecting POTUS against precisely that kind of scandal is what those lawyers are for.
Also, given the process, it seems unlikely that it took three years for anybody to notice. Accounting for White House property, including foreign gifts, would be a basic function of transition team handoffs. But maybe it is a case of a marginally competent WH staff belatedly doing their jobs following up on records from chaotic predecessors. I don’t know. But I desperately hope that President Trump did not really hang onto any of those items, gets caught, claims persecution, and insists that we rally against likely overreach by insanely hateful Democrats using their DOJ. I am all drama-ed out and hate that death-struggle script which seems to be on perpetual rewind.
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This is exactly what they want you to be . So you vote for someone else to end their torment of you . See what they did their ?
I would assume the transition team and later the WH staff messed up here, not the Trump administration who was well ensconced at that point. It’s a procedural issue and problem. I’m sure the Trump family did not walk out with precious gifts to our country. It’s absurd to even consider it.
And Democrats want to bring this topic up as we’re getting documentation concerning millions of foreign dollars flowing into the Biden family? Practitioners of corruption might want to be careful about making claims of corruption against others.
I seem to recall that the Clintons were credibly challenged for walking off not only with gifts, but with furnishings……. Lamps, rugs and the like. In a moving van. My vote is on the question of credible current reporting on this issue: as you say, “it seems unlikely.”
How on earth has this remark, so far, escaped comment?
The Bush team knew what was taken. No mystery or inventory discrepancy. They just chose to do the Republican thing and let it go.
Why can’t I want an end to needless drama AND vote out the Dems? It is the Democrats who are desperate to keep Trump front and center as their sole organizing principle. Without him, attention will shift to what they have wrought. Another GOP nominee will still be Hitler, of course, but a far less convincing one after years of anti-Trump hysteria.
I would vote for Trump if he is the nominee but I would rather not have to do so.
Your free to want that . However , you will have been successfully worked on by their psyops . This is how they end up influencing who our side abandons . The list is not short .
Hope you are right but I can envision Trump reasoning that custom golf clubs or some other item was a personal gift he should allowed to keep or be allowed to be responsible for. Or some other exception or sloppy handling. His former WH lawyers seem to share a saga of frustration. Is this another area of rejected advice?
Its not psyops. It’s 2018, 2020 and 2022. Since he beat the only candidate he could possibly beat, HRC, The Don has been an electoral drag on us. Besser aus!
So the Psy-Op is working. Here’s a spoiler alert, even if Trump goes away the Democrats will never end the drama. As your comment proves, it works very well for them.
Kevin, you might feel encouraged that Jonathan Turley is griping about the idiocy of New York DA Bragg trying to Frankenstein some life into a criminal charge that was declared dead years ago.
I don’t know that Turley voted for Trump. In fact it is unlikely.
But here is his commentary:
Jonathan Turley
@JonathanTurley
·
The damage to the legal system is immense whenever political pressure overwhelms prosecutorial judgment. The criminal law system is a terrible weapon when used for political purposes. (Jonathan Turley Tweet March 20th 2023 2Pm)
Then from JonathanTurley.org
“Although it may be politically popular, the case is legally pathetic. Bragg is struggling to twist state laws to effectively prosecute a federal case long ago rejected by the Justice Department against Trump over his payment of “hush money” to former stripper Stormy Daniels. In 2018 (yes, that is how long this theory has been around), I wrote how difficult such a federal case would be under existing election laws. Now, six years later, the same theory may be shoehorned into a state claim.
“It is extremely difficult to show that paying money to cover up an embarrassing affair was done for election purposes as opposed to an array of obvious other reasons, from protecting a celebrity’s reputation to preserving a marriage. That was demonstrated by the failed federal prosecution of former presidential candidate John Edwards on a much stronger charge of using campaign funds to cover up an affair.”
My comment: Many people think that Turley is one of the more exceptional legal minds now active in the USA. This is because as no matter what, he has never been known to pander to either party. What he says about a case is an opinion arrived at by virtue of his knowledge and his understanding of both the law and justice.
####
I like Turley . He is sane and fair.
I tire of the PsyOps notion that anything less than complete devotion to Donald Trump is symptomatic of having fallen victim to the schemes of the other side. I don’t do devotion. I want to win with the most conservative candidate possible. Instead of attaching his image to specific issues, Trump has made personal loyalty and entitlement to retribution the sole issue. I loathe his enemies and I want them displaced from power. I don’t think a reprise of 2016 is doable and I think that Trump’s acquired negatives are dispositive. It is not fair or just. But I am not willing to set us up for a leftist win in 2024 in a quixotic quest for his personal vindication.
Trump won narrowly almost on novelty and sheer shock value for daring to speak the truth about HILLARY! and what she represented. The commies immediately went all out with impeachment nonsense, the end of even a pretense of journalistic integrity and spectacular new forms electoral cheating. The weaponization of COVID to replace prosperity with fear was also politically devastating. But even with all that, Trump’s loss of the suburbs was the ultimate reason for defeat. The inability to adopt a transcendent, presidential persona and target suburban women was politically fatal. Punching down at losers lowers the tone and that actually matters even if it is kinda fun for the base (It was). The combative stance that was useful (and fun) against Hillary in 2016 was not a winning way to govern, especially with a majority in both houses and open running room to create a statesman persona, strong yet avuncular, above the fray except when it really mattered.
Trump did not lead on COVID. He punted to Pence’s absurd task force with Birx and Fauci while appearing to mostly resent that the blow to the economy was unfair to him. Atlas and Bhattcharya were invited to the White House but shut out. Any chance to fight the mandate zombies, open the debate and rally the people against the tyrants was lost.
As for the suburbs… I loathe the political drudgery of catering to soccer moms, a demographic that had no clue about the actual import of the SCOTUS abortion decision, is easily herded in woke guilt and into celebrations of sexual deviants and a bloc that cannot be moved by arguments about taxation and spending unless and until taxes and inflation threaten acquisition or retention of a vacation property. Letting them simmer in echoed messaging from The View and Hollywood without a fight is political death. They (and their cupcake husbands) are the current swing vote whether we like it or not. Vastly better policy on substance is not enough. The selling requires much conscious effort, an effort that was not made, and now perceptions of Trump in that demographic are baked.
There is an abundance of stupid out there. Forty-two percent still have a favorable view of Joe Biden. How the hell is that possible unless (a) literacy rates are actually well below 50% and/or (b) the anti-Trump cult is so strong they feel the need to back Biden even in the face of utter and complete failure. Perceptions of Trump are baked. And his style does nothing to change that and he lacks the range as a performer to add to his support. He can tap the rightful resentments of people like me and almost all of us on Ricochet brilliantly but that also creates an opposite knee-jerk response in an equal or larger number of people.
God bless Donald Trump for crystallizing the struggle and for keeping Hillary out of office. But he needs to get off the stage so we can win. It cannot be just about him anymore.
I can understand your frustration with Trump and what can be seen as weakness over the COVID issue.
That as been my major frustration with him as well.
But as far as his “narrowly winning over Hillary Clinton” – that matter is up for debate.
He understood the entire issue of the Electoral College. That the winner of the electorate votes wins the Oval Office.
Hillary did not.
I could never understand why Hillary went into hiding after her loss in 2016.
But after knowing how much cheating went on in the Nov 2020 election, I have come to surmise that Hillary was upset in Nov 2016 because she knew that if her party election officials had cheated just a little tiny bit more in PA and Michigan and several other states, she would have won.
Can this be proven? No, it can’t. But I think that the anger which she and her top supporters & highly placed Dem election officials went on to nurture for 3 years led to the manipulation of the public via the COV situation such that the mail in ballots & drop boxes for ballot became part and parcel of the COV protocols for the next election in Nov 2020.
A quick glance at the amount of new voters each election since 2000 shows that an unreasonable number of new voters coming aboard between 2016 and 2020 somehow existed to bring Biden his victory.
Fauci was part of this mess. He not only made up the protocols that were used – he was totally happy to accept a one million dollar tax free prize offered to him by an org out of Israel. When he accepted the award, the main speaker let him know that he had received it for speaking truth to the corrupt & evil president who had actively been trying to hamper “Mr Science’s” efforts to save America.
It would be good to get DeSantis for two terms. However, even though my vote won’t matter because I am in a blue state, if Trump’s on the ballot, I plan to vote for him, to say thank you and to stubbornly refuse to give the Democrats and Never Trumpers a win. The number and nature of the assaults on him, his family, and his friends these past six years have been diabolical. I just can’t condone them.
Does 10% for the big guy count as a gift?
If a pile of yuan on the bedside table the morning after is a gift, then yes.