{"id":175714,"date":"2020-12-18T19:20:00","date_gmt":"2020-12-19T00:20:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2020\/12\/18\/definitely-getting-a-pardon\/"},"modified":"2020-12-18T19:20:00","modified_gmt":"2020-12-19T00:20:00","slug":"definitely-getting-a-pardon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2020\/12\/18\/definitely-getting-a-pardon\/","title":{"rendered":"Definitely Getting a Pardon"},"content":{"rendered":"

It turns out that Jared Kushner skimmed campaign funds which went to insiders<\/a>. <\/p>\n

I rather expect to see Trump pardon him, and Ivanka, and Don, Jr., and Eric, on his way out of the door. <\/p>\n

In fact, my guess is that Melania and Baron will be the only ones not getting pardons:<\/p>\n

\n

President Donald Trump’s most powerful advisor, Jared Kushner, approved the creation of a campaign shell company that secretly paid the president’s family members and spent almost half of the campaign’s $1.26 billion war chest, a person familiar with the operation told Insider.<\/span> <\/p>\n

The operation acted almost like a campaign within a campaign. It paid some of Trump’s top advisors and family members, while shielding financial and operational details from public scrutiny.<\/span> <\/p>\n

When Kushner and others created the company in April 2018, they picked Trump’s daughter-in-law Lara Trump to become its president, Vice President Mike Pence’s nephew John Pence as its vice president, and Trump campaign Chief Financial Officer Sean Dollman as its treasurer and secretary, said the person, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations about the shell company.<\/span> <\/p>\n

\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/span><\/p>\n

The shell company \u2014 incorporated as American Made Media Consultants Corp. and American Made Media Consultants LLC \u2014 allowed Trump’s campaign to skirt federally mandated disclosures. The tactic could attract scrutiny from federal election regulators.<\/span> <\/p>\n

Campaign-finance records showed Trump’s reelection effort and its affiliated committee with the Republican National Committee spent more than $600 million through American Made Consultants since its formation.<\/span> <\/p>\n

\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/span><\/span> <\/p>\n

<\/span> <\/p>\n

From January 2019 through the middle of November, the Trump campaign and an affiliated political committee together spent $617 million through American Made Media Consultants.<\/span> <\/p>\n

<\/span> <\/p>\n

It was almost half of everything they spent in the failed effort to reelect Trump, according to an Insider review of Federal Election Commission records and analysis provided by the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics. <\/span> <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span> <\/p>\n

Campaign-law experts have long accused the Trump team of using a corporate pass-through to hide payments.<\/span> <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span> <\/p>\n

If the federal government suspects a “knowing and willful” violation of election law has occurred, the Department of Justice has the power to open a criminal investigation into a political actor. <\/span> <\/p>\n

<\/span> <\/p>\n

While such investigations are relatively uncommon, several former Justice Department and FEC officials previously told Insider that Justice Department officials may already be discreetly investigating<\/a> Trump’s reelection activity. <\/span> <\/p>\n

<\/span> <\/p>\n

Some of Trump’s campaign leaders even seemed stumped by the AMMC arrangement. Generally, they knew that AMMC was being used to buy pro-Trump TV, radio, and digital advertising and pay for other media. <\/span> <\/p>\n

<\/span> <\/p>\n

But they couldn’t discern precisely how much each AMMC vendor was keeping for itself. <\/span> <\/p>\n

The person familiar with AMMC said the rates its vendors charged the Trump campaign were often cheaper than what an outside political firm would have demanded. Using the shell company also allowed Parscale to keep Lara Trump and Kimberly Guilfoyle [As an interesting aside, Guilfoyle is the ex-wife of California Governor Gavin Newsom, and got fired from Fox for sexual harassment]<\/span> \u2014 the girlfriend of Donald Trump Jr. \u2014 on his payroll, the person familiar said. <\/span> <\/p>\n

\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/span><\/p>\n

“Nothing was done without Jared’s approval<\/span><\/b>,” the former Trump campaign advisor said. “What<\/span><\/b> [Trump campaign manager Stephen]<\/span> Stepien doesn’t know is because Jared doesn’t want him to know<\/span><\/b>.”<\/span> <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Something clearly corrupt was going on here, but Trump cheating his investors\/campaign\/contractors\/wives\/etc is pretty much par for the course.<\/p>\n

That being said, I would expect an investigation, which is why I also expect a very broadly worded pardon before January 20.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It turns out that Jared Kushner skimmed campaign funds which went to insiders. I rather expect to see Trump pardon him, and Ivanka, and Don, Jr., and Eric, on his way out of the door. In fact, my guess is that Melania and Baron will be the only ones not getting pardons: President Donald Trump’s …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[513,368,573,375,575,405],"class_list":["post-175714","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-campaign-finance","tag-corruption","tag-donald-trump","tag-elections","tag-fraud","tag-presidential-campaign"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175714"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=175714"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175714\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=175714"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=175714"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=175714"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}