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If Trump Chooses DeSantis to Replace Hegseth…

By dianeravitch
December 6, 2024 //
23

The Miami Herald noted that Trump is considering dropping Pete Hegseth as his nominee for Secretary of Defense and selecting Florida Governor Ron DeSantis instead. So it published a story reviewing DeSantis’s statements about how he would deploy the military. Read and be informed.

The Miami Herald reports:

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis repeatedly vowed during his presidential campaign to send troops to the U.S. southern border, authorize lethal force against migrants attempting to cross between ports of entry, and even consider firing missiles into Mexico — an extraordinary use of U.S. military power that has since been endorsed by President-elect Donald Trump. Now, DeSantis may have a chance to fulfill that promise, among other controversial proposals, should Trump ask him to lead the Pentagon. The Republican governor is said to be in discussions with Trump and his transition team about replacing Pete Hegseth, a Fox News television personality plagued by sex and drinking scandals, as his nominee for defense secretary….

At one of the GOP primary debates, DeSantis said he would declare a national emergency and send troops to the southern border to deploy lethal force against drug cartels attempting to smuggle drugs into the country. Throughout the campaign, DeSantis was repeatedly pressed to explain how the military would determine whether individuals crossing the border had any connection to the drug trade. “I am gonna declare a national emergency, I’m not gonna send troops to Ukraine but I am gonna send them to our southern border,” he said. “When these drug pushers are bringing fentanyl across the border, that’s gonna be the last thing they do. We’re gonna use force and we’re gonna leave them stone-cold dead….”

In another exchange during the primary, DeSantis told CBS that he would consider all available military options — including using force in Mexico itself — to combat the illegal drug trade. “The tactics can be debated,” he said, asked whether he would fire missiles into Mexico. “That would be dependent on the situation.” DeSantis has also spent millions of dollars in recent years supporting Texas in deterring migrants from entering the country through state-led border security initiatives. Florida aided in some of Texas’ efforts that have come under scrutiny, including reports that officers were ordered to push small children and nursing babies back into the Rio Grande.

DOMESTIC DEPLOYMENTS

DeSantis, as governor, has already demonstrated a willingness to deploy state troops under his control for unconventional purposes, often unrelated to the immediate needs of the state. He sent members of the Florida State Guard to aid Texas’ state efforts to police the border — despite questions over their coordination with federal border patrol — and, in 2020, sent 500 Florida National Guardsmen to Washington in response to protests following the death of George Floyd….

RECRUITMENT CHALLENGES

DeSantis also promised to purge the military of “woke” policies, such as highlighting diversity, equity and inclusion and allowing transgender personnel to serve as their preferred sex, claiming the policies were undermining military effectiveness and suppressing recruitment. “It is time to rip the woke out of the military and return it to its core mission,” DeSantis said during the campaign. “We must restore a sense of confidence, conviction, and patriotic duty to our institutions — and that begins with our military….”

On the campaign trail, DeSantis also frequently questioned the value of sending financial and military support to Ukraine to help it defend itself against Russia. He opposed its membership bid to NATO and questioned the mission of NATO itself during the primary, calling on the transatlantic alliance to focus on the growing threat from China.

A 2021 study commissioned by the Pentagon on recruitment strategies found that “wokeness” did not register among the top 10 reasons why Americans were enlisting at record low numbers.

“Our research shows that the top barriers to service are concerns about death or injury, PTSD, emotional issues, and leaving friends and family — not political issues,” a Pentagon official told McClatchy last year. “Concerns about vaccines and ‘wokeness’ are among the least to be raised as reasons not to join the military….”

On the campaign trail, DeSantis also frequently questioned the value of sending financial and military support to Ukraine to help it defend itself against Russia. He opposed its membership bid to NATO and questioned the mission of NATO itself during the primary, calling on the transatlantic alliance to focus on the growing threat from China.

“I think NATO was fine for the Cold War. It made sense,” he said. “Now we’re in a situation where a lot of those countries aren’t doing their fair share in terms of their defenses, and yet we’re supposed to provide blanket security for that, where our interests may diverge around the world.”

At one point, DeSantis called the war between Ukraine and Russia a “territorial dispute.” He quickly changed his message after facing criticism and said that Russia was wrong to invade Ukraine and Putin was a “war criminal.”

Ukraine, DeSantis added, has a “right to that territory.”

“If I could snap my fingers, I’d give it back to Ukraine 100%,” DeSantis told the New York Post’s Piers Morgan in March 2023. “But the reality is what is America’s involvement in terms of escalating with more weapons, and certainly ground troops I think would be a mistake. So, that was the point I was trying to make, but Russia was wrong to invade. They were wrong to take Crimea.”

Read more at: https://www.miamiherald.com/news/politics-government/article296548929.html#storylink=cpy

Categories DeSantis, Elections, Ethics, Florida, Trump

Heather Cox Richardson: Why Biden Pardoned Hunter

By dianeravitch
December 3, 2024 //
29

Heather Cox Richardson writes here about President Biden’s pardon of his son Hunter, which was condemned widely in the media, even in liberal publications like The Atlantic and The New Yorker. in her post, she wrote first about Jane Mayer’s expose of Pete Hegseth’s drunken sprees, then turned to the pardon.

She writes:

Also last night, President Joe Biden pardoned his son Hunter Biden after repeatedly saying that he would not.

Trump-appointed Special Counsel David Weiss charged Hunter Biden on firearms and tax charges, but as former U.S. Attorney Joyce White Vance made clear in her Civil Discourse, Hunter Biden would not have been charged if he had been anyone other than the president’s son. He was charged with possession of a firearm by someone who is addicted to illegal drugs, a charge that prosecutors do not usually bring. Biden owned a gun for eleven days and apparently lied on the paperwork for it by saying he was not a drug addict when he was, in fact, in the throes of addiction.

The other charges stem from Hunter Biden’s failure, while dealing with addiction, to pay about $1.4 million in federal income taxes, which he has since paid in full plus interest and penalties. Vance explains that the government usually handles cases like his with administrative or civil penalties rather than criminal prosecution, as it did in the case of Trump henchman Roger Stone, with whom the government reached a settlement in 2022 for more than $2 million in unpaid income taxes, interest, and penalties without criminal charges.

But President Biden’s pardon covers not just those charges, but also “those offenses against the United States which he has committed or may have committed or taken part in during the period from January 1, 2014 through December 1, 2024.” The pardon’s sweeping scope offers an explanation for why Biden issued it after saying he would not.

Ron Filipkowski of MeidasTouch notes that Biden’s pardon came after Trump’s announcement that he wants to place conspiracy theorist Kash Patel at the head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). Filipkowski studies right-wing media and points out that Patel’s many appearances there suggest he is obsessed with Hunter Biden, especially the story of his laptop, which Patel insists shows that Hunter and Joe Biden engaged in crimes with Ukraine and China.

House Oversight Committee chair James Comer (R-KY) spent two years investigating these allegations and turned up nothing—although Republican representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia used the opportunity to display pictures of Hunter Biden naked on national media—yet Patel insists that the Department of Justice should focus on Hunter Biden as soon as a Trump loyalist is back in charge.

Notably, Trump’s people, including former lawyer Rudy Giuliani and his ally Lev Parnas, spent more than a year trying to promote false testimony against Hunter Biden by their Ukrainian allies. Earlier this year, in the documentary From Russia with Lev, produced by Rachel Maddow, Parnas publicly apologized to Hunter Biden for his role in the scheme.

As legal commentator Asha Rangappa noted: “People criticizing the Hunter Biden pardon need to recognize: For the 1st time, the FBI and Justice Department could literally fabricate evidence, or collaborate with a foreign government to ‘find’ evidence of a ‘crime,’ with zero accountability. That’s why the pardon goes back to 2014.”

And yet, much of American media today has been consumed not with the story that Trump has appointed a deeply problematic candidate to run what could be considered the nation’s most important department, overseeing about 3 million personnel and managing a budget of more than $800 billion, or with the reality that Biden’s distrust of our legal system under Trump is a profound warning for all of us.

Instead, they have focused on President Biden’s pardon of his son, many of them condemning what they say is Biden’s rejection of the rule of law.

Some have suggested that Biden’s pardoning his son will now give Trump license to pardon anyone he wants, apparently forgetting that in his first term, Trump pardoned his daughter Ivanka’s father-in-law, Charles Kushner, who pleaded guilty to federal charges of tax evasion, campaign finance offenses, and witness tampering and whom Trump has now tapped to become the U.S. ambassador to France.

Trump also pardoned for various crimes men who were associated with the ties between the 2016 Trump campaign and the Russian operatives working to elect Trump. Those included his former national security advisor Michael Flynn, former campaign manager Paul Manafort, and former allies Roger Stone and Steve Bannon. Those pardons, which suggested Trump was rewarding henchmen, received a fraction of the attention lavished on Biden’s pardon of his son.

In today’s news coverage, the exercise of the presidential pardon—which traditionally gets very little attention—has entirely outweighed the dangerous nominations of an incoming president, which will have profound influence on the American people. This imbalance reflects a longstanding and classic power dynamic in which Republicans set the terms of public debate, excusing their own objectionable behavior while constantly attacking Democrats in a fiery display that attracts media attention but distorts reality.

The degree to which the media endorsed that abusive power dynamic today does not bode well for its accurate reporting during Trump’s upcoming term. It also leaves the public badly informed about matters that are important for understanding modern politics

Categories Accountability, Biden, Elections, Ethics, Extremism, Justice, Trump

Michelle H. Davis: Wealthy Texan Opposes Programs That Aid the Needy

By dianeravitch
December 3, 2024 //
3

Michelle H. Davis writes on her blog Lone Star Left about a rich Texan named Mayes Middleton, who inherited his wealth, as did his father and grandfather. He is now a state senator, and he votes against every program that would lift up those who inherited nothing.

She writes:

Middleton became independently wealthy from his trust fund, just like his grandfather, and his grandfather’s grandfather. After Middleton’s 4x-great-grandfather made a fortune from hundreds of acres of free land from a Spanish Land Grant, where he owned up to 57 enslaved people, he passed his wealth down to his descendants. Middleton’s great-grandfather invested his inherited wealth in Texas’s cattle business and oil industry around 1900. And the rest—as they say—was history….

Of course, there’s nothing wrong with being a multi-millionaire or spending money on the causes you believe in. But with great power and influence comes great responsibility. 

Mayes Middleton–Determined to Stay Rich

The ethical question is: 

  • What should leaders like Middleton, who hold significant political power and generational privilege, focus on in their role as public servants?
    • Should they work to advance policies that create opportunities, reduce inequalities, and uplift all their constituents? 
    • Or should they prioritize maintaining systems that benefit the privileged few while marginalizing vulnerable communities?

Unfortunately, Senator Middleton has chosen the latter.

Rather than using his influence and wealth to advance the common good, he has focused on legislation targeting vulnerable populations. 

Instead of working to expand opportunity, his actions have demonstrated a focus on preserving power and wealth for a select few. The moral imperative of public service is to act in the best interest of all constituents—not just the wealthy or privileged.

Open the link and keep reading to learn about the bills and programs that this lucky man opposes. Mayes Middleton is a hypocrite. He was born on third base, or maybe an inch from home plate, and thinks he hit a home run.

Mayes Middleton is shameless. He is supposedly a Christian but he doesn’t follow the teachings of Jesus.

Categories Accountability, Character, Cruelty, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, Poverty, Shame, Texas

Jane Mayer: Pete Hegseth’s Secret History as a Drunk and Sexual Predator

By dianeravitch
December 3, 2024 //
10

Jane Mayer, superstar writer for The New Yorker, has scored a major scoop with her detailed account of Pete Hegseth’s secret life. She has details that have thus far eluded the major daily newspapers.

Hegseth, of course, is Trump’s nominee to be Secretary of Defense. This is one of the most crucial and demanding jobs in government. The Defense Department has a budget of more than $800 billion and almost three million employees. The Secretary must be prepared to make consequential decisions of life and depth with in-depth knowledge and experience.

Pete Hegseth is not that man.

Mayer writes:

A trail of documents, corroborated by the accounts of former colleagues, indicates that Hegseth was forced to step down by both of the two nonprofit advocacy groups that he ran—Veterans for Freedom and Concerned Veterans for America—in the face of serious allegations of financial mismanagement, sexual impropriety, and personal misconduct.

A previously undisclosed whistle-blower report on Hegseth’s tenure as the president of Concerned Veterans for America, from 2013 until 2016, describes him as being repeatedly intoxicated while acting in his official capacity—to the point of needing to be carried out of the organization’s events. The detailed seven-page report—which was compiled by multiple former C.V.A. employees and sent to the organization’s senior management in February, 2015—states that, at one point, Hegseth had to be restrained while drunk from joining the dancers on the stage of a Louisiana strip club, where he had brought his team. The report also says that Hegseth, who was married at the time, and other members of his management team sexually pursued the organization’s female staffers, whom they divided into two groups—the “party girls” and the “not party girls.” In addition, the report asserts that, under Hegseth’s leadership, the organization became a hostile workplace that ignored serious accusations of impropriety, including an allegation made by a female employee that another employee on Hegseth’s staff had attempted to sexually assault her at the Louisiana strip club. In a separate letter of complaint, which was sent to the organization in late 2015, a different former employee described Hegseth being at a bar in the early-morning hours of May 29, 2015, while on an official tour through Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, drunkenly chanting “Kill All Muslims! Kill All Muslims!”

In response to questions from this magazine, Tim Parlatore, a lawyer for Hegseth, replied with the following statement, which he said came from “an advisor” to Hegseth: “We’re not going to comment on outlandish claims laundered through The New Yorker by a petty and jealous disgruntled former associate of Mr. Hegseth’s. Get back to us when you try your first attempt at actual journalism….”

The whistle-blower report makes extensive allegations. It describes several top managers being involved in drunken episodes, including an altercation at a casino and a hotel Christmas party at which food was thrown from the balcony. Hegseth, it says, was “seen drunk at multiple CVA events” between 2013 and 2015, a time when the organization was engaged in an ambitious nationwide effort to mobilize veterans to vote for conservative candidates and causes…

In October, 2014, C.V.A. instituted a “no alcohol” policy at its events. But the next month, according to the report, Hegseth and another manager lifted the policy while overseeing a get-out-the-vote field operation to boost Republican candidates in North Carolina. According to the report, on the evening before the election, Hegseth, who had been out with three young female staff members, was so inebriated by 1 a.m. that a staffer who had driven him to his hotel, in a van full of other drunken staffers, asked for assistance to get Hegseth to his room. “Pete was completely passed out in the middle seat, slumped over” a young female staff member, the report says. It took two male staff members to get Hegseth into the hotel; after one young woman vomited in some bushes, another helped him into bed. In the morning, a team member had to wake Hegseth so that he didn’t miss his flight. “All of this happened in public,” according to the report, while C.V.A. was “embedded” in the Republican get-out-the-vote effort. It went on, “Everyone who saw this was disgusted and in shock that the head of the team was that intoxicated….”

In December, 2014, the group held an office Christmas party at the Grand Hyatt in Washington. Once again, according to the report, Hegseth was “noticeably intoxicated and had to be carried up to his room.” The report stated, “His behavior was embarrassing in front of the team, but not surprising; people have simply come to expect Pete to get drunk at social events.”

Earlier in his career, in 2007, Hegseth was hired to lead a small veterans’ group called Vets for Freedom, which advocated for expanding the war in Iraq. By 2009, VFF was virtually bankrupt, with $1,000 in the bank, and nearly $500,000 in debts. The billionaire backers lost confidence in him and merged VFF with another vets’ group to minimize his role.

Mayer quotes Margaret Hoover, an advisor to VFF during Hegseth’s tenure, who said to CNN:

 “I watched him run an organization very poorly, lose the confidence of donors. The organization ultimately folded and was forced to merge with another organization who individuals felt could run and manage funds on behalf of donors more responsibly than he could. That was my experience with him.” Hoover stressed that V.F.F. was an exceedingly small organization, with fewer than ten employees, and a budget of between five million and ten million dollars. She told CNN, “And he couldn’t do that properly—I don’t know how he’s going to run an organization with an eight-hundred-and-fifty-seven-billion-dollar budget and three million individuals.”

Categories Accountability, Character, Disruption, Elections, Ethics, Extremism, Gender, Trump

North Carolina: Vouchers Are Funding Indoctrination in Religious Schools

By dianeravitch
December 2, 2024 //
6

Justin Parmentier, an NBCT-certified high school teacher in North Carolina, has been scrutinizing the nonpublic schools that receive voucher money from the state. he found that nearly 90% are religious schools where discrimination and indoctrination are commonplace.

Parmenter remembers when now-disgraced Lt. Governor Mark Robinson opened a search for public schools that indoctrinate and came up with nothing.

Public funds in NC support religious schools that openly and egregiously indoctrinate students. Not a peep from the culture warriors. It wasn’t indoctrination they objected to; it was public schools.

Parmenter wrote the following in March 2024, before Robinson was disgraced by the CNN report on his history of posting on pornography websites. To call Robinson a hypocrite would be an understatement:

With billions of dollars now on tap for North Carolina’s private schools, and 88.2% of those dollars going to religious schools, scrutiny is rising over exactly what our taxes are supporting.

Private schools are legally able to discriminate against children, and many of North Carolina’s Christian schools deny admissions to students based on religious beliefs, sexual orientation, or learning disabilities.

For example, Fayetteville Christian School, which pocketed nearly $2 million in voucher dollars this school year, expressly bans students who practice specific religions like Islam and Buddhism, and they also bar LGBTQ+ students–whom they brand “perverted”–from attending.

North Raleigh Christian Academy won’t accept children with IQs below 90 and will not serve students who require IEPs (a document which outlines how a school will provide support to children with disabilities).

If this public funding of widespread discriminatory school practices rubs you the wrong way, I have bad news for you.

It gets worse.

That harmful indoctrination Mark Robinson was howling about a couple years ago in his disingenuous attempt to generate political momentum?  Turns out it’s real.  It just isn’t happening in the traditional public schools Robinson was targeting.

The Daniel Christian Academy is a private school in Concord, NC.  This school has received public dollars through school vouchers every year since Republicans launched the controversial Opportunity Scholarship voucher program in 2014-15 for a grand total of $585,776.

Daniel Academy’s mission is to “raise the next generation of leaders who will transform the heart of our nation” by equipping students “to enter the Seven Mountains of Influence.”

The Seven Mountains of Influence (also referred to as the Seven Mountains of Dominion or the Seven Mountains Mandate) refers to seven areas of society:  religion, family, education, government, media, arts & entertainment, and business.  Dominionists who follow this doctrine believe that they are mandated by God to control all seven of society’s “mountains,” and that doing so will trigger the end times.

The Seven Mountains philosophy has been around since the 70s, but it came to prominence about ten years ago with the publication of Lance Wallnau’s book Invading Babylon:  The Seven Mountains Mandate.  Wallnau touts himself as a consultant who “inspires visions of tomorrow with the clarity of today—connecting ideas to action,” and his book teaches that dominionists must “understand [their] role in society” and “release God’s will in [their] sphere of influence.”

Wallnau does caution his followers that messaging about taking control over all seven areas of society on behalf of God might freak out non dominionists, saying in 2011 that “If you’re talking to a secular audience, you don’t talk about having dominion over them. This … language of takeover, it doesn’t actually help…”

So why should North Carolinians care that their tax dollars are subsidizing this sort of indoctrination of children through private school vouchers?

I posed that question to Frederick Clarkson, a research analyst who has studied the confluence of politics and religion for more than three decades and lately has been focusing on the violent underbelly of Christian nationalists who want to achieve Christian dominion of the United States at all costs.  Here’s what Clarkson said:

North Carolina taxpayers should be concerned that they are helping to underwrite an academy for training children to become  warriors against not only the rights of others, but against democracy and its institutions.  The idea of the Seven Mountain Mandate is for Christians of the right sort to take dominion — which is to say power and influence — over the most important sectors of society. It is theocratic in orientation and its vision is forever. 

This is not something that is about liberals and conservatives . Most Christians including most evangelicals, Catholics, and mainline Protestants are deemed not just insufficiently Christian, but may be viewed as infested with demons, and standing in the way of the advancement of the Kingdom of God on Earth. And they will need to be dealt with.

Categories Bigotry, Democracy, Disruption, Equity, Ethics, Extremism, North Carolina, Religion, Separation of church and state

President Biden Gives Hunter a “Full and Unconditional” Pardon

By dianeravitch
December 1, 2024 //
27

President Joe Biden pardoned his son Hunter, who was targeted by House Republicans, convicted for tax evasion, and buying a gun without admitting that he was a drug addict at the time.

Biden was immediately criticized for pardoning Hunter because he had said in the past that he would not do it.

The Washington Post reported:

President Joe Biden on Sunday pardoned his son Hunter, a controversial decision that reverses his long-standing pledge to not use his presidential powers to protect his only surviving son, who was found guilty of gun-related charges in Delaware and pleaded guilty to tax evasion in California.

Using his executive authority in the waning days of his presidency, Biden lifted the legal cloud that has hung over his son for several years. While the president had pledged several times not to pardon or commute Hunter Biden’s sentences for federal crimes, many close to him had expected the pardon would come, given the president’s loyalty to his family. The move also comes at a time when Biden will face few political ramifications, given that he is a lame duck and voters have already rendered their verdict on his administration by sending Donald Trump back to office.

In a lengthy statement on Sunday night, released just as he was preparing to depart for Africa, the president said that his son had been “being selectively, and unfairly, prosecuted.” He said that he did not interfere with the cases but that the cases were brought about because of political pressure on federal prosecutors.

“No reasonable person who looks at the facts of Hunter’s cases can reach any other conclusion than Hunter was singled out only because he is my son — and that is wrong,” he said. “There has been an effort to break Hunter — who has been five and a half years sober, even in the face of unrelenting attacks and selective prosecution. In trying to break Hunter, they’ve tried to break me — and there’s no reason to believe it will stop here. Enough is enough….”

“I believe in the justice system, but as I have wrestled with this, I also believe raw politics has infected this process and it led to a miscarriage of justice,” Biden said in his statement. “I hope Americans will understand why a father and a President would come to this decision.”

Hunter was prosecuted by Special Counsel David Weiss, Weiss, a Republican who started investigating Hunter in 2018. Republicans demanded that Merrick Garland appoint him, and Garland did. But then Republicans complained that Weiss was not strong enough. They wanted to drag Hunter through the mud, destroy his reputation, and hoped that Hunter’s tribulations hurt his father.

Can you imagine Trump’s Attorney General appointing a Democrat to investigate another Democrat?

The Republicans went after Hunter with a passion that would have been more appropriate for a mass murderer.

Hunter served years of humiliation and anxiety because he was a stand-in for his father.

It is just and right that his father pardoned Hunter.

A father owes it to his son to take care of him.

Categories Biden, Equity, Ethics, Justice

What You Need to Know About Charles Kushner and Kash Patel: Kakistocracy

By dianeravitch
December 1, 2024 //
7

Jeff Tiedrich posted this illuminating explanation of Trump’s latest nominations.

Is Charles Kushner qualified to hold one of the most prestigious ambassadorships? No. But what qualifies him is that he is the father of Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law. The French will be polite but they will laugh at Kushner, at Trump, and at us, for electing the Insurrectionist. From The NY Times: “Mr. Kushner, 70, pleaded guilty in 2004 to 16 counts of tax evasion, a single count of retaliating against a federal witness and one of lying to the Federal Election Commission”

Is Kash Patel qualified to lead the FBI? A thousand times no. The Republicans who worked for Trump hated him. In the post, you will see that Patel said that if he ran the FBI, he would close down its headquarters on Day 1 and disperse the 7,000 people who work there to be cops and catch bad guys. He would then turn the FBI headquarters into “a museum of the deep state.” A total Trump lackey. A typical Trumpian view of government service.

Trump is rapidly creating a true kakistocracy. The definition is in the post.

Categories Accountability, Character, Disruption, Elections, Ethics, Extremism, Fraud, Ignorance, Trump

“Democracy”: How Pam Bondi Protected Foreclosure Fraud

By dianeravitch
December 1, 2024 //
3

Our reader, self-named “Democracy,” wrote an introduction to an article about Pam Bondi that appeared in The American Prospect. Please read the introduction and the article. We are only now learning about Bondi’s record as Florida Attorney General. Perhaps Trump nominated Matt Gaetz first to enable Bindi to skate through as everyone breathed a sigh of relief that Gaetz was out.

Democracy wrote:

More on Pam Bondi here:

“June Clarkson and Theresa Edwards were attorneys in the Economic Crimes division of the Florida attorney general’s office, based in Fort Lauderdale. They joined the government to prevent companies from ripping off their customers. In 2010, they heard from an oncology nurse named Lisa Epstein, who delivered information about how law firms across the state were using hundreds of thousands of phony documents to foreclose on homeowners. Lisa knew this because the banks tried to do it to her.

A group of foreclosure victims had found documents that were literally signed ‘Bogus Assignee.’ They had documents dated 9/9/9999. They had documents notarized on dates before they were allegedly created. They traced these documents back to Florida’s ‘foreclosure mills,’ law firms that churned out foreclosures the way a factory churns out sweaters. The false documents were necessary because banks and lenders, striving during the housing bubble to sell mortgages and deliver them to investors, securitized the loans without maintaining chain of title, botching the true ownership records. Instead of rectifying the situation, the banks had the foreclosure mills concoct false evidence and present it in courts to dispossess people.

Within months, the attorney general’s office had opened investigations into Lender Processing Services, Florida Default Law Group, the Law Office of David J. Stern, Marshall C. Watson, Shapiro & Fishman, and other components of Florida’s great foreclosure machine. In the course of the investigation, Clarkson and Edwards deposed Tammie Lou Kapusta, a former paralegal with David J. Stern, who testified that the firm employed offshore foreclosure document shops in Guam and the Philippines, receiving fake documents that the paralegals would sign. Notary stamps were sitting around the office, and anyone on the team would use them and forge the signatures of the notaries.

By October 2010, all of the leading banks stopped pursuing foreclosures in Florida and across the country, because they could no longer do it legally. It was an incredible example of citizen activism making a real difference, aided by Clarkson and Edwards, the first two law enforcement officials who were actually willing to investigate the fraud.

The system was working, until Pam Bondi came to town.”

https://prospect.org/justice/2024-11-22-when-pam-bondi-protected-foreclosure-fraudsters/

Categories Corruption, Elections, Ethics, Failure, Florida, Fraud, Trump

Trump Nominates MAGA Warrior Kash Patel to Lead the FBI

By dianeravitch
November 30, 2024 //
23

Trump is demonstrating his intention to purge the FBI by naming his close associate Kash Patel as FBI Director. Patel has said repeatedly that the FBI is loaded with “Deep State” enemies, and he plans to fire them.

The FBI is supposed to be an independent agency, not a vengeance weapon belonging to the President. Patel has made clear that he will find and punish Trump’s enemies. He will run the FBI, if confirmed, as Trump’s man, serving Trump, not justice and not the American people. He will be Trump’s avenger, as he destroys the reputation of the FBI.

Politico described him:

President Donald Trump announced Saturday night that he has picked staunch Trump loyalist Kash Patel as the next director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Patel, a Trump transition insider, has been one of Trump’s most visible and vocal allies, showing up at his criminal trial in Manhattan, perpetuating conspiracy theories about the 2020 election. He worked as chief of staff to the secretary of Defense during the first Trump administration, and has been outspoken about calling for a purge of Trump’s enemies from the Justice Department, FBI and other intelligence agencies.

The New York Times wrote:

President-elect Donald J. Trump said on Saturday that he wants to replace Christopher A. Wray, the F.B.I. director, with Kash Patel, a hard-line critic of the bureau who has called for shutting down the agency’s Washington headquarters, firing its leadership and bringing the nation’s law enforcement agencies “to heel.”

Mr. Trump’s planned nomination of Mr. Patel has echoes of his failed attempt to place another partisan firebrand, Matt Gaetz, atop the Justice Department as attorney general. It could run into hurdles in the Senate, which will be called on to confirm him, and is sure to send shock waves through the F.B.I., which Mr. Trump and his allies have come to view as part of a “deep state” conspiracy against him.

Mr. Patel has been closely aligned with Mr. Trump’s belief that much of the nation’s law enforcement and national security establishment needs to be purged of bias and held accountable for what they see as unjustified investigations and prosecutions of Mr. Trump and his allies.

Mr. Patel “played a pivotal role in uncovering the Russia, Russia, Russia Hoax, standing as an advocate for truth, accountability and the Constitution,” Mr. Trump said in announcing his choice in a social media post….

Mr. Patel, a favorite of Mr. Trump’s political base, has worked as a federal prosecutor and a public defender, but has little of the law enforcement and management experience typical of F.B.I. directors.

He served in a series of administration positions at the tail end of Mr. Trump’s first term, including posts on the National Security Council and in the Pentagon. Before leaving office in early 2021, Mr. Trump floated the idea of making Mr. Patel deputy director of either the C.I.A. or the F.B.I. William P. Barr, the attorney general at the time, wrote in his memoir that Mr. Patel would have become deputy F.B.I. director only “over my dead body.”

FBI directors are appointed for a 10-year term, so their tenure is allegedly nonpolitical. Although Trump appointed Christopher Wray as FBI Director, Trump soured on him after the FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago to recover hundreds of top/secret documents. Trump made clear to Director Wray that he should resign or be fired.

Current and former law enforcement officials have worried that a second Trump term would feature an assault on the independence and authority of the F.B.I. and the Justice Department, and for many of them, Mr. Patel’s ascension to the director’s role would confirm the worst of those fears.

Mr. Patel laid out his vision for wreaking vengeance on the F.B.I. and Justice Department in a book, “Government Gangsters,” calling for clearing out the top ranks of the bureau, which he called “a threat to the people.” He also wrote a children’s book, “The Plot Against the King,” telling through fantasy the story of the investigations into Mr. Trump’s 2016 campaign’s possible ties to Russians.

He has vowed to investigate and possibly prosecute journalists once he is back in government, adding that he would “follow the facts and the law.”

“Yes, we’re going to come after the people in the media who lied about American citizens, who helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections — we’re going to come after you,” he said last year. “Whether it’s criminally or civilly, we’ll figure that out.”

An article in the New York Times in October described how deeply hated Patel was by other high-level members of the Trump administration. He was considered a boastful self-promoter.

After Mr. Trump lost the 2020 election and staff members began an exodus from the White House, Mr. Patel’s upward trajectory continued. Mr. Trump named him to one of the most important jobs at the Pentagon: chief of staff to Christopher Miller, the acting defense secretary.

Gen. Mark A. Milley, then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was shocked when Mr. Patel presented him a document signed in Sharpie by the outgoing Mr. Trump ordering a full withdrawal of all American troops from Afghanistan by Jan. 15. General Milley, the top military adviser to the president, had never even seen the order, and neither had several other senior advisers. It turned out it was drafted by Douglas Macgregor, a retired colonel named as an adviser to the Pentagon after he impressed Mr. Trump with his appearances on Fox News, according to an account in “The Divider,” a book by Peter Baker and Susan Glasser.

Mr. Trump backed away from the Afghanistan plan, but soon sought to again elevate Mr. Patel by making him deputy director of either the C.I.A. or the F.B.I. Only after Gina Haspel, the C.I.A. director, and William P. Barr, the attorney general, both threatened to quit — Mr. Barr vowed that Mr. Patel would become F.B.I. deputy only “over my dead body”— did Mr. Trump abandon the idea.

Mr. Patel stayed at the Pentagon for three months, crediting himself in his book with leading “the biggest transition’’ of the Defense Department “in U.S. history.”

Categories Bias, Disruption, Elections, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, Injustice, Trump

Trump Names Jared Kushner’s Father as Ambassador to France: All in the Family

By dianeravitch
November 30, 2024 //
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Donald Trump believes in nepotism. He has never hesitatated to shower favors on the members of his family. In his first term, he issued a pardon to son-in-law Jared’s father, Charles Kushner, who spent two years in federal prison. Now, Kushner goes from ex-felon to Ambassador to France, if confirmed.

Does Mr. Kushner know anything about France or NATO or Europe? Probably not. Who cares?

The New York Times reported:

President-elect Donald J. Trump announced on Saturday that he would name Charles Kushner, the wealthy real estate executive and father of his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, to serve as ambassador to France, handing one of his earliest and most high-profile ambassador appointments to a close family associate.

The announcement was the latest step in a long-running exchange of political support between the two men. Mr. Kushner received a pardon from Mr. Trump in the final days of his first term for a variety of violations and then emerged as a major donor to Mr. Trump’s 2024 campaign.

“I am pleased to nominate Charles Kushner, of New Jersey, to serve as the U.S. Ambassador to France,” Mr. Trump wrote in a social media post announcing his choice. “He is a tremendous business leader, philanthropist, & dealmaker, who will be a strong advocate representing our Country & its interests.”

Mr. Kushner, 70, pleaded guilty in 2004 to 16 counts of tax evasion, a single count of retaliating against a federal witness and one of lying to the Federal Election Commission in a case that became a lasting source of embarrassment for the family. As part of the plea, Mr. Kushner admitted to hiring a prostitute to seduce his brother-in-law, a witness in a federal campaign finance investigation, and sending a videotape of the encounter to his sister.

Categories Elections, Ethics, Trump
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