Swamp Watch News

[_canpakes]

Now we’ll get to watch Republicans and ‘conservatives’ fall all over themselves defending the idea that a President should be able to unilaterally approve arms sales for ‘emergency’ reasons where no such emergency actually exists...

President Donald Trump was set to activate an emergency loophole that would allow him to bypass Congress in selling weapons to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

Lawmakers, some of whom had previously hinted that the move was coming, officially found out Friday when Secretary of State Mike Pompeo informed them Trump would invoke a clause in the 1976 Arms Export Control Act, which gives oversight of the president's weapons sales authority unless an "emergency exists which requires such sale in the national security interests of the United States."

Support for Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates has proven controversial among members of Congress.

The two Arab monarchies have been accused of war crimes in their conflict against Yemen's Zaidi Shiite Muslim rebel group Ansar Allah, or the Houthis, which they—along with the U.S.—accused of receiving direct support from Iran. The latest sale came at a time of heightened tensions between Washington and Tehran, which the Trump administration has accused of plotting to attack U.S. interests in the region, a charge it denied.

Senator Bob Menendez, a Democrat from New Jersey who sat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and sponsored the 2019 Saudi Arabia Accountability and Yemen Act that attempted to block U.S. weapons sales to Saudi Arabia was among those to criticize the White House's decision. In a statement, he said he was "disappointed, but not surprised, that the Trump Administration has failed once again to prioritize our long term national security interests or stand up for human rights, and instead is granting favors to authoritarian countries like Saudi Arabia."

"In trying to explain this move, the Administration failed to even identify which legal mechanism it thinks it is using, described years of malign Iranian behavior but failed to identify what actually constitutes an emergency today, and critically, failed to explain how these systems, many of which will take years to come online, would immediately benefit either the United States or our allies and thus merit such hasty action," Menendez added, calling on both parties to come together in opposition to the move as "the lives of millions of people depend on it."

[_canpakes]

Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao has retained shares in a construction-materials company more than a year after the date she promised to relinquish them, federal disclosure forms show.

Shares of the company, Vulcan Materials Co., the country’s largest supplier of the crushed stone, sand and gravel used in road-paving and building, have risen nearly 13% since April 2018, the month in which Ms. Chao said she would be cashed out of the stock, netting her a more than $40,000 gain, corporate and government filings show.

The shares, now worth nearly $400,000, were paid out to Ms. Chao in April 2018, as deferred compensation for the roughly two years she served on Vulcan’s board of directors before being confirmed as secretary of transportation, the company said.

Ms. Chao’s 2017 ethics agreement, which she signed before her confirmation, said she would receive a cash payout in April 2018 in exchange for the deferred share units she earned while serving on the board, effectively severing her financial ties to the company.

Until that payout, the agreement says, Ms. Chao “will not participate personally and substantially in any particular matter that to my knowledge has a direct and predictable effect on the financial interests of Vulcan Materials.”

A Department of Transportation spokesman said the ethics agreement was flawed, because Vulcan’s policy calls for directors’ deferred share units to be paid out in shares of company stock. A Vulcan spokesman confirmed the shares were paid to Ms. Chao last year.

The DOT’s top ethics official has determined that owning the shares doesn’t present a conflict of interest for Ms. Chao, who has disqualified herself from participating in matters involving Vulcan and will continue to do so, the DOT spokesman said. The spokesman said the language of the 2017 ethics agreement “is being clarified to avoid confusion.”

Ms. Chao is married to Sen. Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.), the Senate majority leader. Details of Ms. Chao’s holdings come from her own financial disclosures as well as from Senate disclosures filed by Mr. McConnell.

Ms. Chao’s decision to retain the shares and recuse herself from matters that might affect Vulcan stands in contrast to the way previous transportation secretaries have handled potential conflicts of interest

[_canpakes]

The Swamp’s gotta protect itself and it’s tender opinions on things ...

White House officials barred a State Department intelligence staffer from submitting written testimony this week to the House Intelligence Committee warning that human-caused climate change could be “possibly catastrophic” after State officials refused to excise the document’s references to the scientific consensus on climate change.

The effort to edit, and ultimately suppress, the written testimony of a senior analyst at the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research comes as the Trump administtion is debating how best to challenge the idea that the burning of fossil fuels is warming the planet and could pose serious risks unless the world makes deep cuts in greenhouse gas emissions over the next decade. Senior military and intelligence officials have continued to warn climate change could undermine America’s national security, a position President Trump rejects.

Officials from the White House’s Office of Legislative Affairs, Office of Management and Budget and National Security Council all raised objections to parts of the testimony that Rod Schoonover, who works in the office of geography and global affairs, prepared to present on the bureau’s behalf for a hearing Wednesday.

According to several senior administration officials, all of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity to talk about internal deliberations, Trump officials sought to cut several pages of the document on the grounds that its description of climate science did not mesh with the administration’s official stance.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate- ... xlcH3153qt

[_Kevin Graham]

Company part-owned by Jared Kushner got $90m from unknown offshore investors since 2017

A real estate company part-owned by Jared Kushner has received $90m in foreign funding from an opaque offshore vehicle since he entered the White House as a senior adviser to his father-in-law Donald Trump.

Investment has flowed from overseas to the company, Cadre, while Kushner works as an international envoy for the US, according to corporate filings and interviews. The money came through a vehicle run by Goldman Sachs in the Cayman Islands, a tax haven that guarantees corporate secrecy.

Kushner, who is married to Trump’s elder daughter Ivanka, kept a stake in Cadre after joining the administration, while selling other assets. His holding is now valued at up to $50m, according to his financial disclosure documents.

Cadre’s foreign funding could create hidden conflicts of interest for Kushner as he performs his work for the US government, according to some ethics experts, who raised concerns over the lack of transparency around the investments.

“It will cause people to wonder whether he is being improperly influenced,” said Jessica Tillipman, a lecturer at George Washington University law school, who teaches government ethics and anti-corruption laws.

Kushner resigned from Cadre’s board and reduced his ownership stake to less than 25% after he joined the White House, according to his attorneys. He failed to list Cadre on his first ethics disclosure, later adding the company and saying the omission was inadvertent. Cadre says he is not actively involved in the company’s operations.

The names of the foreigners investing in Cadre via Goldman Sachs are not disclosed by the companies, which are not required to make the information public. Two sources familiar with the firm said much of the money came to the Cayman Islands vehicle from a second offshore tax haven, while some came from Saudi Arabia.

Kushner was initially denied a security clearance by career officials when he joined Trump’s administration. A whistleblower has told Congress it was blocked due to concerns about Kushner’s outside business interests and “foreign influence”. Kushner was later granted a clearance, allegedly after a Trump appointee intervened.

The White House and Abbe Lowell, an attorney for Kushner, did not respond to questions about the foreign investors and Kushner’s stake in Cadre.

A spokesman for Cadre declined to comment on the record. A spokesman for Goldman Sachs, Patrick Scanlan, said: “Cadre does not have access to any information about the Goldman Sachs clients who have invested in these vehicles.”

Cadre was founded in 2014 by Kushner, his brother Joshua and their friend Ryan Williams, who previously worked for Goldman Sachs. The company operates from a building in Manhattan owned by the Kushner family’s real estate corporation.

The company styles itself as an online marketplace where investors can come together to buy property. But it has also built a real estate investment fund, now worth more than half a billion dollars, that is used to buy properties across the US. The fund’s value has risen fivefold since 2017, when Kushner was appointed a White House adviser, following earlier slower growth.

The offshore Goldman Sachs vehicle began collecting funds for Cadre in August 2017, according to a securities filing. The bank announced in January last year that it had struck a deal for clients to invest up to $250m in total with Cadre.

The vehicle is managed by accountants in the Cayman Islands and is owned by another offshore Goldman Sachs entity. The arrangement is legal. Offshore jurisdictions have come under increased scrutiny in recent years from international authorities concerned about their secrecy.

Funding from the Cayman Islands vehicle goes into Cadre’s real estate purchases in the US, according to sources familiar with the company’s work. Cadre charges an annual fee and takes a cut of profits made from the properties.

This funding is separate from ownership stakes in Cadre itself bought by venture capitalists in Silicon Valley and foreign billionaires, including the Chinese technology tycoon Jack Ma and the Russian investor Yuri Milner. Cadre last year held talks with a fund backed by money from the Saudi Arabian government, but no deal was done.

Trump and several members of his administration, including Kushner, have bucked precedent by retaining business interests after entering the government. George W Bush and Bill Clinton moved their wealth into “blind trusts”, while Barack Obama had few assets beyond savings accounts and investments in index funds.

Richard Painter, a former ethics lawyer in Bush’s administration who ran for the Democratic US Senate nomination in Minnesota last year, said he was troubled by the lack of disclosure around some of Cadre’s funding.

“The problem with Kushner – and with Trump – is that we have all these corporate entities, and often nobody knows who is invested in them and where those investors borrowed their money. We simply have no idea,” said Painter.

Government officials are barred by law from being involved “personally and substantially” in actions that benefit them financially, and are obliged to ensure they do not create an appearance of bias.

Kushner says he has excluded himself from government policy on real estate. A footnote to his financial disclosure form said he was recused from “particular matters in the broker-dealer, real estate, and online financial services sectors to the extent they would have a direct and predictable effect on Cadre”.

The conflict of interest law treats spouses’ financial interests as combined. Ivanka Trump has been credited by Trump with advocating for an administration policy that promises to be lucrative for real estate developers and investors. She denies any impropriety.

Kushner’s own recusal on real estate matters in front of the government would not in itself prevent him from taking actions in other policy areas that could entice foreign investors to Cadre.

In all, Cadre’s investment arm manages more than $522m in assets, according to its latest filing to the Securities and Exchange Commission, which was submitted at the end of March.

Kushner has had financial ties to several different countries. His family’s single most expensive purchase, a skyscraper on Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue, was last year refinanced by a fund backed by the Qatari government. In an article for the Washington Post defending the family’s businesses, Kushner’s father, Charles, said foreign investments were “a legal and appropriate stream of funding”.

As Trump’s special representative in the Middle East, Kushner has developed a close relationship with Saudi Arabian officials, particularly the crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman. Cadre says it does not have any sovereign wealth funds among its investors.

Sources familiar with Cadre’s setup said a small amount of money in the Goldman-Cadre vehicle, estimated at about $1m, came from Saudi Arabia. Other funding arrived through vehicles based in the British Virgin Islands, adding another layer of offshore secrecy to its origins.

Virginia Canter, the chief ethics counsel at the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, said the opaque investments in Cadre would continue raising concerns as Kushner carried out his government duties.

“It was one of the only assets that Kushner retained and it continues to collect foreign investors without transparency,” said Canter, a former White House attorney for Obama and Clinton.

Kushner owns a stake worth between $25m and $50m in a “holding company for” Cadre, according to his most recent financial disclosure form, which he filed in May 2018. Kushner and his wife estimate their total wealth at between $235m and $812m.

Cadre was one of dozens of holdings added to a revised version of Kushner’s 2017 financial disclosure form that corrected his original filing.

Williams, Cadre’s chief executive, has said the firm is “democratizing” real estate investment. The small print of its website says its offerings are intended only for people who earn at least $200,000 a year or have a net worth of $1m excluding the value of their home. The company requires a minimum investment of $50,000.

Cadre recently announced plans to raise multimillion-dollar funds to invest in real estate developments in parts of the US covered by the Trump administration’s “opportunity zones” program, which offers valuable tax breaks to developers and investors.

The program was championed by Ivanka Trump, according to her father, who said at the White House that Ivanka had been “pushing this very hard”. The remarks raised allegations that policy she worked on could benefit her husband financially. She has denied any impropriety.

[_canpakes]

Guess which side has the lobbyists?

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has proposed delaying and rescinding an Obama-era regulation that would require payday lenders to determine whether a borrower has the ability to repay the loan. That regulation, which the Trump administration has delayed until next year, was intended to prevent low-income borrowers from becoming saddled with ballooning debt because payday loans can carry annual interest rates of 300% or more. Consumer advocates say low-income individuals often have to take out new payday loans to pay off earlier ones.

The Trump administration argues that rescinding the Obama-era rule will encourage more competition in the industry and provide more options for borrowers. The public comment period on the proposed change closed May 15. It is unclear when a final rule will be issued.

https://www.reginfo.gov/public/do/eAgen ... =3170-AA95

And why is this change necessary, again? ; )

[_moksha]

Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao Streamlined Federal Grants For Husband Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell: Swamp Gets Smell of Poop and Turtle Soup Mixture -

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pfT_jz7qguo

I have that lower digestive tract touch.
-- Donald Trump

[_Kevin Graham]

Kellyanne Conway Should Be Removed From Federal Office, Ethics Agency Says

[_canpakes]

Now we hear that Ms. Sanders is leaving.

Could be that even she has her limits ... or that Fox News has a sweet deal waiting in the wings. Then, she can help the Fox team shape their daily messaging for the President to repeat.

[_MeDotOrg]

Now we hear that Ms. Sanders is leaving.

Could be that even she has her limits ... or that Fox News has a sweet deal waiting in the wings. Then, she can help the Fox team shape their daily messaging for the President to repeat.

I have to give her credit, she was very good at what she did. Somewhere between Ron Ziegler and Tokyo Rose.

I would expect a Randy Rainbow Tribute video in the next week or two.

[_Kevin Graham]

Surely It's a Coincidence That a Firm Tied to a Russian Oligarch Is Pouring Millions Into Kentucky