Trump’s Most *Blatantly* Corrupt Action? (Paramount)

[Philo Sofee]

The Steven Colbert Show is the top late-night show. But it is also at the top of Trump's most disliked list.

Trump never has been good about the truth concerning himself.

[Philo Sofee]

I Think it is likely that Trump would even sign an executive order declaring that the world is flat if he thought it would gain him enough additional voters. He already obstinately denies the reality and the probable adverse consequences of anthropomorphic climate change if we fail to transition to green technology, despite the conclusions of nearly 99% of the world's climate scientists. This is approximately on the same cognitive level as denying that the world is a rotating globe that is a relatively tiny component of a vast heliocentric solar system.

Or that the wind from windmills cause cancer - shudder!

[Doctor Steuss]

Or that the wind from windmills cause cancer - shudder!

I miss the days when "tilting at windmills" was much more metaphorical.

[Philo Sofee]

Or that the wind from windmills cause cancer - shudder!

I miss the days when "tilting at windmills" was much more metaphorical.

(I'm sorry I missed seeing your picture. It had a 2 day limit on it, and I was late to the party.

[canpakes]

Here’s a fun twist on this Administration’s grift. We’ll be spending millions on Cybertrucks to use them as target practice.

I guess that’s one way to help Elon out with the truck’s slow sales and excess inventory.

[canpakes]

A corruption update:

Donald Trump said Larry and David Ellison are giving him millions in free ads as part of their recently finalized deal to acquire Paramount.
Is that true?

We still don't know — in part because David Ellison, who is now Paramount's CEO, has refused to directly address the question.

But a new report in The New York Times says an Ellison lawyer has previously denied that there's a side deal.

In July, after Fox News reported that Skydance — the Ellison-owned studio that wanted to buy Paramount — would provide millions to Trump via "advertisements, public service announcements, or other similar transmissions," an attorney for Skydance privately called the story "unmitigated false bullsh!t," per the Times.

The Times also reports that a Trump rep continues to insist that "there was an unwritten understanding between the president and the owners of Skydance."
A Paramount rep declined to comment. I've also asked the White House for comment. Prior to the Ellisons' purchase of the company, Paramount executives had said they had "no knowledge of any promises or commitments made to President Trump other than those set forth in the settlement " that they agreed to.

That's a lot of back-and-forth that ultimately doesn't clear anything up.

We do know that Shari Redstone, Paramount's previous owner, gave Trump $16 million to settle a suit we can kindly describe as a legal long shot, where he accused Paramount's "60 Minutes" of interfering in the 2024 election because of the way it edited an interview with Kamala Harris.

We also know that days after that payment, the Federal Communications Commission, headed by Trump appointee Brendan Carr, signed off on Skydance's acquisition of Paramount.

Beyond that, for now, we have only Trump's claim that he "anticipate/s receiving $20 Million Dollars more from the new Owners, in Advertising, PSAs, or similar Programming."

As I've noted before, it's understandable that David Ellison doesn't want to address the he-said — or no-one-said — issue here: If Trump is wrong and Ellison contradicts him, he'll anger a President who routinely inserts himself into ostensibly privately run businesses. If Trump is right and Ellison says so, he'll have all kinds of other trouble.

This shouldn't be fuzzy. Either one of the richest families in the world promised to give the president of the United States millions of dollars in free ads, so they could get the go-ahead to buy a major American media company — or they didn't.

We shouldn't be left guessing.

https://www.businessinsider.com/donald- ... eal-2025-8

[canpakes]

.

As reported in National Review -


What to Make of the Tom Homan Bribery Allegation?

By ANDREW C. MCCARTHY
September 21, 2025 9:39 AM

We don’t have enough information yet to form a legal judgment about how bad the Tom Homan bribery allegation is. The story was apparently first reported by Carol Leonnig and Ken Dilanian at MSNBC, and has now been followed up by the New York Times and other outlets.

What’s reported sounds bad.

Homan was running a consulting business during the late phase of Biden’s term, but he was active in supporting Trump and it was widely believed — not least due to things Homan himself was saying — that he’d have a very consequential post in homeland security and immigration enforcement if Trump won. A suspect the FBI was investigating in Texas was overheard claiming that Homan was soliciting payments in exchange for border security business contracts to be awarded if Trump was elected president, according to “an internal Justice Department summary of the probe” that someone allowed the reporters to review.

Sometime afterwards, the FBI arranged an Abscam-style sting operation: An undercover agent posing as a potential contractor is said to have met with Homan and paid him $50,000 in cash, with the meeting covertly recorded on video.

The report says the investigation of Homan has been shut down by the Trump Justice Department. The following joint statement on the matter was provided to MSNBC by Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche and FBI Director Kash Patel:

This matter originated under the previous administration and was subjected to a full review by FBI agents and Justice Department prosecutors. They found no credible evidence of any criminal wrongdoing. The Department’s resources must remain focused on real threats to the American people, not baseless investigations. As a result, the investigation has been closed.

This is carefully worded. The qualification of “credible” suggests that there was evidence of criminal wrongdoing but that the Trump investigators assessed it to be unconvincing. The fact that the matter originated under the Biden administration does not make it inherently untrustworthy — it was apparently a field investigation in Texas, not a case put together by political appointees in Washington, D.C.; and note: the Biden DOJ and FBI did not leak this pre- or post-election. Plus, the fact that the Biden people were running the DOJ would not change what’s on the video.

Moreover, even if evidence of criminal wrongdoing is lacking, Homan holds an influential post in the government. Plainly, there is more at issue here than whether a criminal case could be made against him. That’s why you can be certain that Democrats will be demanding that the video be produced to Congress, which will put the Trump-allied Republicans in a tight spot.

On the other hand, there could be significant legal problems with the case from a criminal-prosecution perspective.

Obviously, if Homan accepted $50,000 in cash, that would be very suspicious. People in legitimate consulting transactions typically write checks or transfer money in a similarly transparent manner because they know they’re not doing anything wrong. Nevertheless, it’s not a crime to accept cash (of course, it must be properly accounted for). Homan was not a government official at the time of the alleged payment. The MSNBC report indicates that the DOJ and FBI – prudently in my view – did not take immediate action because they wanted to see if Homan followed through by arranging contracts; had he done so, the investigators might have established solid quid pro quo evidence. But Homan was evidently kept out of such business in the transition and in his administration job, and, in any event, no such evidence emerged.

Meantime, MSNBC consulted Randall Eliason, a former DOJ public corruption prosecutor and now a law professor. He theorizes that Homan could not have been charged with bribery since he was now a public official at the time of the alleged payment, but he could have been charged with conspiracy to commit bribery, because conspiracy “is the agreement to commit a criminal act in the future.” But that omits a crucial principle of law: A person cannot conspire with an undercover government operative.

A conspiracy, as Eliason suggests, is the meeting of the minds to commit a criminal offense; you cannot have a meeting of the minds with a government agent because the agent does not actually intend to commit a crime — the agent is investigating potential crime. To have a conspiracy, there must be at least two people in the criminal agreement who were not undercover government agents. (To be clear, I am not faulting Eliason here. This is a rudimentary conspiracy-law tenet, so for all I know he may have explained it to MSNBC, only to have the reporters miss the significance of it, or otherwise decide not to include it in their story.)

We can’t evaluate the case against Holman until we know what was said in the recording, why he took the money (if he did), and why the transaction was in cash. Homan hasn’t been charged and he’s presumed innocent. But Congress should look into this, including whether it weighed into President Trump’s decision to give Homan an administration job that did not require a Senate confirmation process rather than nominate him for a cabinet post.

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/w ... ation/amp/

[Doctor CamNC4Me]

One will note that none of this will keep Ceeboo up at night, and spur phone calls to his children.

[canpakes]

One will note that none of this will keep Ceeboo up at night, and spur phone calls to his children.

I missed the phone calls thing. What’s that all about?

[Doctor CamNC4Me]

One will note that none of this will keep Ceeboo up at night, and spur phone calls to his children.

I missed the phone calls thing. What’s that all about?

viewtopic.php?p=2908350#p2908350

Once again we see Ceeboo being very worried about things as it affects his team, but when terrible things happen to Others he can’t seem to muster the same concern. In other news, the sunrises in the east.

- Doc