DiscussMormonism.com

moksha wrote:

canpakes wrote:“I don’t know those gentlemen,” ...

Turns out Trump has met with them a number of times throughout the years. Saw a photo of Trump together with one of the Russian bagmen, earlier today, taken back in 2014.

Q Mr. President, what conversations have you had with Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman?

THE PRESIDENT: I don’t know those gentlemen.

Q You were in pictures with them.

THE PRESIDENT: Now, it’s possible I have a picture with them, because I have a picture with everybody. I have a picture with everybody here. But somebody said there may be a picture or something where — at a fundraiser or somewhere. And so — but I have pictures with everybody.

Q Have you talked with them?

THE PRESIDENT: I don’t know if there’s anybody I don’t have pictures with.

I don’t know them. I don’t know about them, I don’t know what they do. But, I don’t know, maybe they were clients of Rudy. You’d have to ask Rudy. I just don’t know.

The Wall Street Journal reported that the two men had dinner with Trump last year…..in the WHITE HOUSE, “Messrs. Parnas and Fruman had dinner with Mr. Trump at the White House in early May 2018, shortly before they donated to the pro-Trump super PAC, according to since-deleted Facebook posts captured in a report published by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, a nonprofit U.S.-based media organization.”

Documents obtained by ProPublica show stark differences in how Donald Trump’s businesses reported some expenses, profits and occupancy figures for two Manhattan buildings, giving a lender different figures than they provided to New York City tax authorities. The discrepancies made the buildings appear more profitable to the lender — and less profitable to the officials who set the buildings’ property tax.

For instance, Trump told the lender that he took in twice as much rent from one building as he reported to tax authorities during the same year, 2017. He also gave conflicting occupancy figures for one of his signature skyscrapers, located at 40 Wall Street.

Lenders like to see a rising occupancy level as a sign of what they call “leasing momentum.” Sure enough, the company told a lender that 40 Wall Street had been 58.9% leased on Dec. 31, 2012, and then rose to 95% a few years later. The company told tax officials the building was 81% rented as of Jan. 5, 2013.

A dozen real estate professionals told ProPublica they saw no clear explanation for multiple inconsistencies in the documents. The discrepancies are “versions of fraud,” said Nancy Wallace, a professor of finance and real estate at the Haas School of Business at the University of California-Berkeley. “This kind of stuff is not OK.”

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump’s personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, was paid $500,000 for work he did for a company co-founded by the Ukrainian-American businessman arrested last week on campaign finance charges, Giuliani told Reuters on Monday.

The businessman, Lev Parnas, is a close associate of Giuliani and was involved in his effort to investigate Trump’s political rival, former Vice President Joe Biden, who is a leading contender for the 2020 Democratic Party nomination.

Giuliani said Parnas’ company, Boca Raton-based Fraud Guarantee, whose website says it aims to help clients “reduce and mitigate fraud”, engaged Giuliani Partners, a management and security consulting firm, around August 2018. Giuliani said he was hired to consult on Fraud Guarantee’s technologies and provide legal advice on regulatory issues.

Federal prosecutors are “examining Giuliani’s interactions” with Parnas and another Giuliani associate, Igor Fruman, who was also indicted on campaign finance charges, a law enforcement source told Reuters on Sunday.

moksha wrote:A video shown at a pro-Trump event at Mar-a-Lago:

https://heavy.com/news/2019/10/violent-trump-parody-vs-original-kingsman-video/

This is probably too violent for a work environment. Save it for your next Trump rally.

subgenius wrote:

moksha wrote:A video shown at a pro-Trump event at Mar-a-Lago:

https://heavy.com/news/2019/10/violent-trump-parody-vs-original-kingsman-video/

This is probably too violent for a work environment. Save it for your next Trump rally.

weird, because at first I thought it was an Antifa rally....

BRUSSELS — Gordon Sondland, the U.S. ambassador to the European Union and a central figure in the House impeachment inquiry of President Trump, is overseeing a nearly $1 million renovation of his government-provided residence, paid for with taxpayer money, that current and former officials have criticized as extravagant and unnecessary.

The work on the ambassador’s home on the outskirts of Brussels includes more than $400,000 in kitchen renovations, nearly $30,000 for a new sound system and $95,000 for an outdoor “living pod” with a pergola and electric heating, LED lighting strips and a remote-control system, government procurement records show.

The State Department also has allocated more than $100,000 for an “alternate” residence for Sondland for September and October, while work is performed.

Sondland, a hotel developer and major Trump fundraiser who had no diplomacy background before he was confirmed by the Senate in June 2018, was pivotal to the administration’s efforts to pressure the government of Ukraine to investigate Trump’s political rivals, according to text messages and testimony from current and former officials.

He is scheduled to be deposed by impeachment investigators on Thursday and plans to say that a text message he sent Sept. 9 to the senior U.S. diplomat in Kyiv denying any quid pro quo with Ukraine, which was desperate for U.S. military aid and diplomatic support, was relayed to him directly by Trump, according to a person familiar with his testimony.

In his 2011 book "Death by China," President Donald Trump's senior adviser Peter Navarro quoted a China hawk named "Ron Vara" to prove his point on the threat posed by Beijing to the American economy.

...

There's just one problem -- Vara doesn't appear to exist, according to an investigation by an Australian academic, who determined that Vara is actually Navarro. Ron Vara is even an anagram of Navarro's last name.

In a statement to The Chronicle, Navarro had admitted to inventing the character of Ron Vara, describing it as a "whimsical device and pen name," purely for "entertainment value."

moksha wrote:A video shown at a pro-Trump event at Mar-a-Lago:

https://heavy.com/news/2019/10/violent-trump-parody-vs-original-kingsman-video/

This is probably too violent for a work environment. Save it for your next Trump rally.