ProPublica reports about what appears to be another non-prosecutable white collar crime that DJT is actively engaged in:
Nine witnesses in the criminal cases against former President Donald Trump have received significant financial benefits, including large raises from his campaign, severance packages, new jobs, and a grant of shares and cash from Trump’s media company.
The benefits have flowed from Trump’s businesses and campaign committees, according to a ProPublica analysis of public disclosures, court records and securities filings. One campaign aide had his average monthly pay double, from $26,000 to $53,500. Another employee got a $2 million severance package barring him from voluntarily cooperating with law enforcement. And one of the campaign’s top officials had her daughter hired onto the campaign staff, where she is now the fourth-highest-paid employee.
These pay increases and other benefits often came at delicate moments in the legal proceedings against Trump. One aide who was given a plum position on the board of Trump’s social media company, for example, got the seat after he was subpoenaed but before he testified.
Significant changes to a staffer’s work situation, such as bonuses, pay raises, firings or promotions, can be evidence of a crime if they come outside the normal course of business. To prove witness tampering, prosecutors would need to show that perks or punishments were intended to influence testimony.White-collar defense lawyers say the situation Trump finds himself in — in the dual role of defendant and boss of many of the people who are the primary witnesses to his alleged crimes — is not uncommon. Their standard advice is not to provide any unusual benefits or penalties to such employees. Ideally, decisions about employees slated to give evidence should be made by an independent body such as a board, not the boss who is under investigation.
[Former U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan, Barbara McQuade] said these cases are difficult to prove, even if the intent were actually to influence testimony, because savvy defendants don’t explicitly attach strings to the benefits and would more likely be “all wink and a nod, ‘You’re a great, loyal employee, here’s a raise.’”
One Trump aide who plays a key role in multiple cases is a lawyer named Boris Epshteyn, who became an important figure in Trump’s effort to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
In early August 2023, the special counsel charged Trump with conspiracy to defraud the United States and conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding as part of an effort to overturn the 2020 election. A couple weeks later, the Georgia grand jury handed down an indictment accusing Trump of racketeering as part of a plot to overturn the election results in the state. From November 2022 to August 2023, the Trump campaign had paid Epshteyn’s company an average of $26,000 per month. The month after the indictments, his pay hit a new high, $50,000, and climbed in October to $53,500 per month, where it has remained ever since.
Epshteyn is a contractor with the campaign and the payments go to his company, Georgetown Advisory, which is based at a residential home in New Jersey. The company does not appear to have an office or other employees. Campaign filings say the payments are for “communications & legal consulting.”
Criminals easily avoid culpability for witness tampering by offering easy excuses, e.g., increased pay or benefits to witnesses were for taking on more work or new duties. It is easy to come up with excuses.
The article goes no to describe multiple examples of what appears to be witness tampering by DJT, either directly or via discrete wink and nod, indirectly through other employees. That inference is based mostly on DJT's public business and criminal track record and his public record of open contempt for the rule of law as applied to himself and his supporters. For example if he is re-elected, he plans to pardon the traitors in his 1/6 coup attempt. But of course, DJT is more than happy to apply the law against his enemies.
Given (1) Merrick Garland's track record of stunning gutlessness and incompetence, and (2) the near-impossibility of proving criminal intent for witness tampering, there is little chance the DoJ will investigate this, and less chance of an indictment(s) being filed. If Trump's activities applies to possible state prosecutions, the chance of state investigation and indictment might be somewhat higher.
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Alex Jones, owner of the InfoWars lies, slanders and crackpot conspiracy theory website has been forced to sell his assets. The assets are worth about $9 million. The proceeds will be used to pay a fine of $1.5 billion for defamation about Dec. 2012 the Sandy Hook Elementary school shooting. Twenty children and six school staff were murdered in the mass shooting. Jones falsely called the horrendous slaughter things like a staged, red flag, deep state hoax. He called the murdered children and their parents crisis actors in the hoax. The New Republic writes about Jones' callous lack of remorse and his insulting, reality-detached MAGA-bullshit mindset:
After a weekend full of crisis-actor-level tears from right-wing conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, he has officially moved to liquidate all of his assets in order to pay the $1.5 billion he owes to the families of children murdered at Sandy Hook Elementary.
The “hoax”-pushing supplement hawker, who was found guilty of defamation in 2022, filed for bankruptcy under Chapter 11 that same year, ....The decision came after Jones posted several videos of himself in hysterics, in which he wailed over the prospect of selling his media company. “All we’re trying to do is save America, and they’re fucking us over, over and over again,” he sobbed in an “emergency broadcast” on Saturday. “And it’s just so sick—it’s sick, it’s sick. I want to leave—because it’s going to be over, folks.”
A unique detail of Jones’s case is that he can’t skirt payments by declaring bankruptcy. The judge who presided over Jones’s bankruptcy filing last year made his debt “non-dischargeable” through bankruptcy, meaning he has to continue paying the families until he has fully settled the $1.5 billion debt.
As a result, Jones will likely be “basically broke now for the rest of his life,” Harry Litman, a former U.S. attorney, told MSNBC at the time.
What a disgusting person. He is a revolting disgrace to the human species. And this sub-human filth is from an arrogant, unrepentant guy who is not in a mental institution or jail. What he has does and still does qualifies for sufficient sanity and legality to be free to operate in our society. And exactly who are the people who listen to morally degenerated garbage that people like Jones shamelessly spew at us?
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By now, most Disqus users will have noticed that they get now ads in their profile page with their comments. My ad blocker does not block the annoying ads. But, if you buy a Disqus Plus account for $11/mo, you can turn the ads off.
So, it is worth $11/mo to the Disqus corporation to shield you from ads. Guess we should charge $11/mo for them to advertise to us, with or without selling our private information to advertisers.
The internet is broken. It should never have been left to private sector, for-profit companies to ravage us with. Or, is that too harsh or irrational an assessment?
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