Swamp Watch News

[_Chap]

“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.

From the White House, October 10:

Remarks by President Trump Before Marine One Departure

I really love the line "I don’t know if there’s anybody I don’t have pictures with." Fertile meme creation territory there ...

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.

But see this:

https://www.politicususa.com/2019/10/10 ... iates.html

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.”

So there was great conversation at a dinner with Trump in the White House, and then they gave money to his super PAC ... but Trump has no idea who these people might be. Figures.

Yeah, I know. Just another hair-fire. I mean, where in the Constitution does it say that the President can't lie to the American people on air whenever it suits him? Hey? Tell me that ...

[_MeDotOrg]

Fiona Hill, Trump's advisor for Russian affairs, testified for eleven hours today behind closed doors. I heard from someone that she has an eidetic memory, and has amazing recall.

When huge ice floes melt in the springtime, sometimes there are loud booms from the ice cracking (Cryoseism). With respect to impeachment, that's what it feels like right now, like you're hearing booms crackling through the air as the ice melts.

The next few months will be some of the most momentous in our country's history.

[_moksha]

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.

[_canpakes]

From ProPublica today:

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.”

[_canpakes]

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.

[_subgenius]

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....or maybe just every leftist protestor outside a Trump event...but then when they weren't spitting on maga hat wearer, sucker punching old white guys, and cussing out teenagers ...it was clearly make believe (a.k.a. all things Liberal Hair Fire).

[_canpakes]

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....

I haven’t seen any ‘antifa’ folks wearing masks that look like names of media outlets. Where have you seen this? And is the recommended response then to don a Trump mask and gun down those folks? ; )

[_canpakes]

Another day, more Swamp ...

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.

[_Doctor CamNC4Me]

https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/16/politics ... index.html

Trump's top China adviser appears to have made up expert he regularly quoted

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."

Ha. Ha ha. Yeah.

- Doc

[_Jersey Girl]

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.

The video that is linked to in the article has been removed. There's at least one other copy that I've seen. It shows Trump in the "Church of Fake News", as mass shooter no less, assassinating various news outlets (placards over faces) and physically assaulting Sanders, Obama and I don't know who the first person was that he shot, it also shows John McCain but I see no violence against him in the copy that I viewed.

It is vile and irresponsible.