It starts with mention of the Trump pay-for-play scandal involving the Florida attorney general, Pam Bondi. Her department was examining the possibility of joining New York State in a fraud prosecution of Trump University, and Bondi was up for re-election when she solicited a donation from her old friend Donald Trump. She received a $25,000 donation from the Trump Foundation (an illegal donation, because non-profit foundations are not allowed to donate to political committees). Shortly thereafter, a decision was made to drop the Trump University investigation. Then there's the attempt to cover up the donation, which resulted in a $2,500 fine by the IRS, but that's another story.
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The story of something like the Clinton Foundation gets stretched out over months and months with repeated tellings, always with the insistence that questions are being raised and the implication that shady things are going on, even if there isn’t any evidence at a particular moment to support that idea.
When it comes to Trump, on the other hand, we’ve seen a very different pattern. Here’s what happens: A story about some kind of corrupt dealing emerges, usually from the dogged efforts of one or a few journalists; it gets discussed for a couple of days; and then it disappears. Someone might mention it now and again, but the news organizations don’t assign a squad of reporters to look into every aspect of it, so no new facts are brought to light and no new stories get written.
But the truth is that you’d have to work incredibly hard to find a politician who has the kind of history of corruption, double-dealing, and fraud that Donald Trump has. The number of stories which could potentially deserve hundreds and hundreds of articles is absolutely staggering. Here’s a partial list:
Trump’s casino bankruptcies, which left investors holding the bag while he skedaddled with their money Trump’s habit of refusing to pay contractors who had done work for him, many of whom are struggling small businesses.
Trump University, which includes not only the people who got scammed and the Florida investigation, but also a similar story from Texas where the investigation into Trump U was quashed.
The Trump Institute, another get-rich-quick scheme in which Trump allowed a couple of grifters to use his name to bilk people out of their money.
The Trump Network, a multi-level marketing venture (a.k.a. pyramid scheme) that involved customers mailing in a urine sample which would be analyzed to produce for them a specially formulated package of multivitamins.
Trump Model Management, which reportedly had foreign models lie to customs officials and work in the U.S. illegally, and kept them in squalid conditions while they earned almost nothing for the work they did.
Trump’s employment of foreign guest workers at his resorts, which involves a claim that he can’t find Americans to do the work.
Trump’s use of hundreds of undocumented workers from Poland in the 1980s, who were paid a pittance for their illegal work.
Trump’s history of being charged with housing discrimination.
Trump’s connections to mafia figures involved in New York construction.
The time Trump paid the Federal Trade Commission $750,000 over charges that he violated anti-trust laws when trying to take over a rival casino company.
The fact that Trump is now being advised by Roger Ailes, who was forced out as Fox News chief when dozens of women came forward to charge him with sexual harassment. According to the allegations, Ailes’s behavior was positively monstrous; as just one indicator, his abusive and predatory actions toward women were so well-known and so loathsome that in 1968 the morally upstanding folks in the Nixon administration refused to allow him to work there despite his key role in getting Nixon elected.
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