Swamp Watch News

[_Icarus]

Randy Perkins donated $500,000 to a pro-Trump super PAC a day after his company won federal money as part of a contract. The same PAC was dubbed "Committee 1" in a federal indictment alleging illegal donations from Giuliani's associates.

https://www.propublica.org/article/the- ... ign=buffer

[_canpakes]

“THERE IS DEFINITE HANKY-PANKY GOING ON”: THE FANTASTICALLY PROFITABLE MYSTERY OF THE Trump CHAOS TRADES

The president’s talk can move markets—and it’s made some futures traders billions. Did they know what he was going to say before he said it?

BY WILLIAM D. COHAN
OCTOBER 16, 2019


In the last 10 minutes of trading at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange on Friday, September 13, someone got very lucky. That’s when he or she, or a group of people, sold short 120,000 “S&P e-minis”—electronically traded futures contracts linked to the Standard & Poor’s 500 stock index—when the index was trading around 3010. The time was 3:50 p.m. in New York; it was nearing midnight in Tehran. A few hours later, drones attacked a large swath of Saudi Arabia’s oil infrastructure, choking off production in the country and sending oil prices soaring. By the time the CME next opened, for pretrading on Sunday night, the S&P index had fallen 30 points, giving that very fortunate trader, or traders, a quick $180 million profit.

It was not an isolated occurrence. Three days earlier, in the last 10 minutes of trading, someone bought 82,000 S&P e-minis when the index was trading at 2969. That was nearly 4 a.m. on September 11 in Beijing, where a few hours later, the Chinese government announced that it would lift tariffs on a range of American-made products. As has been the typical reaction in the U.S. stock markets as the trade war with China chugs on without any perceptible logic, when the news about a potential resolution of it seems positive, stock markets go up, and when the news about the trade war appears negative, they go down.

The news was viewed positively. The S&P index moved swiftly on September 11 to 2996, up nearly 30 points. That same day, President Donald Trump said he would postpone tariffs on some Chinese goods, and the S&P index moved to 3016, or up 47 points since the fortunate person bought the 82,000 e-minis just before the market closed on September 10. Since a one-point movement, up or down, in an e-mini contract is worth $50, a 47-point movement up in a day was worth $2,350 per contract. If you were the lucky one who bought the 82,000 e-mini contracts, well, then you were sitting on a one-day profit of roughly $190 million.

A week earlier, three minutes before the CME closed on September 3, someone bought 55,000 e-mini contracts, with the index at about 2906. At around 9 p.m. in New York—9 a.m. in Hong Kong—the market started moving and kept rallying for the next six hours or so, reaching 2936. Around 2 p.m. in Hong Kong—2 a.m. in New York—Carrie Lam, the Hong Kong leader, announced that she would be withdrawing the controversial extradition bill that had been roiling the city in protest for months. Whoever bought those e-mini contracts a few hours earlier made a killing: a cool $82.5 million profit.

But these wins were peanuts compared to the money made by a trader, or group of traders, who bought 420,000 September e-minis in the last 30 minutes of trading on June 28. That was some 40% of the day’s trading volume in September e-minis—making it a trade that could not easily be ignored. By then, President Trump was already in Osaka, Japan—14 hours ahead of Chicago—and on his way to a roughly hour-long meeting with China’s President Xi Jinping as part of the G20 summit. On Saturday in Osaka, after the market had closed in Chicago, Trump emerged from his meeting with Xi and announced that the intermittent trade talks were “back on track.” The following week was a good one in the stock market, thanks to the Trump announcement. On Thursday, June 27, the S&P 500 index stood at about 2915; a week or so later, it was just below 3000, a gain of 84 points, or $4,200 per e-mini contract. Whoever bought the 420,000 e-minis on June 28 had made a handsome profit of nearly $1.8 billion.

Traders in the Chicago pits have been watching these kinds of wagers with an increasing mixture of shock and awe since the start of the Trump presidency. They are used to rapid fluctuations in the S&P 500 index; volatility is common, of course. But the precision and timing of these trades, and the vast amount of money being made as a result of them, make the traders wonder if all this is on the level. Are the people behind these trades incredibly lucky, or do they have access to information that other people don’t have about, say, Trump’s or Beijing’s latest thinking on the trade war or any other of a number of ways that Trump is able to move the markets through his tweeting or slips of the tongue? Essentially, do they have inside information?

Theoretically, market regulators are supposed to be keeping an eye on big trades such as these, to try to figure out whether they are just happy coincidences or whether there is something more nefarious afoot. And they say they do. But calls to the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, where the trades takes place, the Securities and Exchange Commission, which regulates the equity markets, and to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which regulates futures contracts, such as e-minis, were answered in different ways. Christopher Carofine, at the SEC, declined to comment. The CFTC did not respond to my inquiries, while a spokeswoman for the CME says the trades in question did not originate from a single source and they were of no concern.

There is no way for another trader, let alone an outsider such as me, to know who is making these trades. But regulators know or can find out. One longtime CME trader who has been watching with disgust says he’s never seen anything quite like these trades, not at least since al-Qaida cashed in before initiating the September 11 attacks. “There is definite hanky-panky going on, to the world’s financial markets’ detriment,” he says. “This is abysmal.”

In the case of Trump, market manipulation also yields political dividends. Perhaps the most obvious example dates to late August, when Trump, desperate to reignite trade talks with China, boasted during the G7 summit that his counterparts in Beijing had come back to the table. “We’ve gotten two calls—very, very good calls,” he told reporters. “They mean business.” The market rose more than 900 points over the next few days. But a spokesperson for the Chinese foreign ministry said he was not aware of any such calls. An editor at the Global Times, the state-controlled newspaper, tweeted that he knew of no calls made in the days leading up to the G7 meeting and that “China won’t cave to US pressure.” Two U.S government officials later told CNN that Trump misspoke and “conflated” comments from China’s Vice Premier Liu He with direct communication from the Chinese. According to CNN, the officials said Trump was “eager to project optimism that might boost markets.”

Indeed, this single Trump lie briefly inflated domestic markets by hundreds of billions of dollars. “What this describes is, quite literally, market manipulation that constitutes criminal violations of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934,” commented George Conway, the conservative attorney and Trump critic.

Whether Conway is right or wrong is a matter of legal opinion, but given how fishy and coincidental the trading in e-minis seems to be these days, the SEC or CFTC would be doing a great service (and their job) for the American people by investigating who is behind these lucrative trades, and what they knew before they placed them. At the moment, what we’re getting from them is an indifferent shrug.

Federal regulators might start here: In the last 10 minutes of trading on Friday, August 23, as the markets were roiling in the face of more bad trade news, someone bought 386,000 September e-minis. Three days later, Trump lied about getting a call from China to restart the trade talks, and the S&P 500 index shot up nearly 80 points. The potential profit on the trade was more than $1.5 billion.

[_Doctor CamNC4Me]

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald ... e-n1070711

Carey Dunne, New York District Attorney Cy Vance Jr.'s general counsel, said the president's position is too absolute.

There could be examples in which a state should be able to conduct a criminal investigation of a sitting president, "if, for example, he did pull out a handgun and shoot someone on Fifth Avenue."

Asked about that, Consovoy said a president could be charged with such a crime once he was out of office or if he was impeached and removed from office. "This is not a permanent immunity," he said.

"I'm talking about while in office. Nothing could be done? That's your position?" Judge Denny Chin asked.

"That is correct," Consovoy said.

During the 2016 campaign, Trump first raised the scenario about what would happen if he shot someone, but not with any reference to legal immunity.

Trump said at the time: "My people are so smart. And you know what else they say about my people? The polls? They say I have the most loyal people. Did you ever see that? Where I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn't lose any voters, OK? It's like incredible.”

Even assuming a president cannot be indicted, the appeals court judges questioned whether that immunity applies to earlier stages in the criminal justice process and noted that President Richard Nixon turned over White House tapes in 1974 in response to a grand jury subpoena.

I get that people lack abstract reasoning and asymmetrical planning skills, but HOLY “F”. Do any of these people understand what kind of precedent they're setting? Lol. If they get their way, the President can literally do anything he wants while in office with zero consequence.

damned crazy, man.

- Doc

[_EAllusion]

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/trump-s-lawyers-argue-he-can-t-be-charged-while-n1070711

Carey Dunne, New York District Attorney Cy Vance Jr.'s general counsel, said the president's position is too absolute.

There could be examples in which a state should be able to conduct a criminal investigation of a sitting president, "if, for example, he did pull out a handgun and shoot someone on Fifth Avenue."

Asked about that, Consovoy said a president could be charged with such a crime once he was out of office or if he was impeached and removed from office. "This is not a permanent immunity," he said.

"I'm talking about while in office. Nothing could be done? That's your position?" Judge Denny Chin asked.

"That is correct," Consovoy said.

During the 2016 campaign, Trump first raised the scenario about what would happen if he shot someone, but not with any reference to legal immunity.

Trump said at the time: "My people are so smart. And you know what else they say about my people? The polls? They say I have the most loyal people. Did you ever see that? Where I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn't lose any voters, OK? It's like incredible.”

Even assuming a president cannot be indicted, the appeals court judges questioned whether that immunity applies to earlier stages in the criminal justice process and noted that President Richard Nixon turned over White House tapes in 1974 in response to a grand jury subpoena.

I get that people lack abstract reasoning and asymmetrical planning skills, but HOLY ____. Do any of these people understand what kind of precedent they're setting? Lol. If they get their way, the President can literally do anything he wants while in office with zero consequence.

____ crazy, man.

- Doc

So long as he or she has a small minority of Senators willing to back them, that is. (Which he or she almost certainly will, especially if they are a Republican.)

The cool part about this is that is specifically in an environment where the President is engaging in a mixture of illegal and extremely corrupt behavior to influence elections he and his party are subject to. There's a word for the head political executive who has impunity from criminal investigation -- who can violate laws to manipulate elections and engage other behavior that is criminal for ordinary people.

Let's have a King George, but even more unaccountable = definitely what the framers had in mind.

[_EAllusion]

Another extremely cool thing is the Republican party recently has been dedicated to making sure people who think that is actually a good argument get to be the judges who decide if that is a good argument. That trend shows zero signs of stopping even in a post-Trump world.

[_Icarus]

When @realdonaldtrump made a side trip to his Irish golf club this summer, dozens of Irish cops were sent to protect him. Then Trump’s company charged the cops more than $100K for food and coffee.

Here’s the bill: https://Twitter.com/Fahrenthold/status/ ... 28801?s=20

[_canpakes]

From Amy Klobuchar today:

On Senate floor Sen. Blackburn objected to passage of my election security bills saying they have to go through Rules committee. Here’s the weird (sad) part: A committee mark-up was scheduled on the bipartisan bill & the White House made calls to stop it.

[_canpakes]

President Donald Trump’s education secretary, Betsy DeVos, and the Education Department were held in civil contempt by a federal judge on Thursday for violating an order to stop collecting loan payments from now-defunct Corinthian College.

The U.S. Department of Education had been ordered to stop collecting on the federal loans of students who attended the school, which closed in 2015. However, the department disclosed it had continued to garnish wages and seize tax returns of thousands of borrowers. Others had erroneously paid money toward loans.

The federal judge also imposed a $100,000 fine for violating the order. The government will pay the fine, not DeVos personally, Politico reported.

Sallie Kim, a federal magistrate judge in California, said, “Defendants have not provided evidence that they were unable to comply with the preliminary injunction, and the evidence shows only minimal efforts to comply with the preliminary injunction,” she issued in 2018, which ordered the Department stop collecting the loans.

"Here, there is no question that Defendants violated the preliminary injunction,” the court order reads. “There is also no question that Defendants’ violations harmed individual borrowers who were forced to repay loans.”

Kim said she was leaving open the possibility that if DeVos and the Education Department “fail to comply” with the order, the court would “impose additional sanctions, including the appointment of a Special Master to ensure compliance with the preliminary injunction.”

In a written order issued earlier this month, Kim said: "I am not sending anyone to jail yet, but it’s good to know that I have that ability.”
C

[_moksha]

If they get their way, the President can literally do anything he wants while in office with zero consequence.

____ crazy, man.

- Doc

Mayor Bill de Blasio said Trump would be arrested and charged, just like anyone else who commits murder on Fifth Avenue. However, Trump would be eligible for the cell with the gold plated toilet at Rykers and Evangelicals could bring him burgers and cakes throughout extended visiting hours.

[_Doctor CamNC4Me]

Kellyanne Conway mocks and threatens reporter for mentioning her husband

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news ... band-audio

"Let me tell you something, from a powerful woman. Don’t pull the crap where you’re trying to undercut another woman based on who she’s married to. He gets his power through me, if you haven’t noticed. Not the other way around. And if these are the quote standards unquote at the Washington Examiner, then yes I’d be happy to talk to your editor. But I’ve known your editor since before you were born."

This reporter repeatedly suggested Conway speak to her editors, naming the breaking news editor and the managing editor, who are both men. Conway mockingly referred to this reporter's relationship with her editors as having "to rely on the men in your life."

She said: "You’re still not telling me what compels you to characterize my feelings in your story having never talked to me. You can answer that question without your editors. You don’t have to rely upon the men in your life and pretend somehow by way of reporting that I rely on the men in my life, which clearly isn’t the case.

"Do you think you could have written in there, first, only woman, first woman to run a successful presidential campaign? Do you think you could have described me as somebody who wears red a lot, or is a mother of four, who has been here from day one and has survived all these other people? Or maybe you have an obligation to tell people, well as far as you know, I’m not a leaker, let alone the leaker."

Conway continued: "When I was young and starting in my career, I was in the friend-making business. And I’ve worked super hard. You could have put that in paragraph two also. But I’m not caught in the middle of anything except trying to understand somebody whose title is breaking news reporter, what that means."

This reporter responded: "I don’t know that that is characterizing your feelings to say you’re put in the middle if your husband and your boss are attacking each other."

Before ending the call, Conway threatened that the White House would delve into the personal lives of reporters if they wrote about her husband. "Listen, if you’re going to cover my personal life, then we’re welcome to do the same around here," she said. "If it has nothing to do with my job, which it doesn’t, that’s obvious, then we’re either going to expect you to cover everybody’s personal life or we’re going to start covering them over here."

I wonder what kind of meltdown the Right would be having if a Democratic campaign manger flipped their crap on a reporter, talked about their 'power', and threatened to levy the 'power' of the federal government to investigate them?

Deep state? Government overreach? Isn't this the Right's worst nightmare, that the government would leverage its considerable resources to destroy political enemies?

Inb4 some degenerate blathers something out and hits enter.

- Doc