Is there another type of Giuliani?
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I think this is good news:
A Jan 6 panel member says Trump raising money off bogus election claims was ‘a big rip-off’
In the realm of “Did Trump really believe there was massive fraud?”, this fund raising and lack of spending seems like an obvious indicator. Trump raised enough money to hire an army of private investigators to chase down any credible examples of fraud. But, as far as I knew, he didn’t actually hire anyone. That seems like a clear indicator of his disbelief in the allegations.
It seemed that nobody was following this line of reasoning. I guess the committee has been looking at it all along.
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The current back and forth between the committee and Loudermilk is interesting. IIRC Loudermilk claimed he gave no tours on 1/5. Now he says he did bring visitors in other buildings in the Capitol complex but not the Capitol itself.
The Capitol police released a letter backing Loudermilk’s later statement, but it was interestingly worded to me. It said “At no time did the group appear in any tunnels that would have led them to the US Capitol”
The committee wants to know why the group was photographing areas in the office tunnels not of typical tourist interest, like staircases, hallways, and security checkpoints. While they did not enter the tunnel to the Capitol they were taken by the entrance to the tunnel. Not clear if that’s the checkpoint they took photos of or not.
Video of a guy on Loudermilk’s “tour” photographing checkpoints on 1/5, with footage of him on 1/6 talking about his intentions:
I thought it was a known shortcoming of campaign finance laws that funds raised through certain means (such as those being used by You-Know-Who) can be used for just about any purpose.
It may be fradulent for conversational purposes, but I suspect it’s probably not actually illegal (or at least is no worse than in a gray area that a competent lawyer can provide protection from).
That’s … going to be a problem for Trump.
Not the “is it illegal?” thing. The “having a competent lawyer who can provide protection” thing.
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Hopefully Loudermilk fries for this. Prison time if he had any inkling what they were up to (which I assume he did).
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Two different instances of “fraud” here. First, did Trump believe his own claims of massive felonies such as dead people voting or fake ballots counted? The appearance that he didn’t spend any of the $200 million he raised with claims he was going to fight that type of fraud suggests he didn’t actually believe these allegations.
Second, did he commit fraud on his donors by claiming he needed money to root out the voting fraud and then not spending it on that?
My post was about the first, yours seems to be about the second.
I agree with your that that for “conversational purposes” the second can be called fraud. But, I don’t see it resulting in a criminal case. As you point out, campaign finance laws are lax, I’m sure other candidates don’t earmark money very well. Even more likely, if we asked the donors if they are bothered by Trump’s decision, I’ll bet most of them say that they were just donating to Trump’s efforts to MAGA. They trust him to use it effectively.
As incompetent as the people around him sometimes seem, he has shown a knack for avoiding serious punishment for the various skeezy things he’s done.
The lawyer for one of the proud boys filed a document in legal proceedings about a plan for the 1/6 seditionists to occupy the congressional office buildings and the Supreme Court
Part of that is … there’$ rea$on$, but I’m not $ure what tho$e are. But there’s also a large lack of willingness by various entities to prosecute those deemed to be rich and have sufficient power. And that’s not even getting into but is this really illegal, or was it just shitty luck? where (IMO) way too often, wrongdoing is misattributed to shitty luck.
I’m watching this with someone who’s an ex-friend of Mrs. Hoffman, who took in money from various government programs to start a small business / keep open a business “negatively impacted by the pandemic” who’s really just using it to lavish themselves with gifts, take vacations, etc. and the authorities are more or less doing a giant shoulder shrug instead of pursuing criminal charges. because … well, technically it might not be illegal per se, it all looks bad and it’s probably not ethical, but we’re not going to pursue that - we’re going after the real scourages of the community, like the illegal voters and the people carrying drugs on their person.
When you start letting that shit go, it’s a green light for everyone else to do it. And that’s what has happened with Trump for decades: his actions have been enabled by multiple people, and so he doubles down expecting (correctly) no one’s going to do a goddamn thing about it.
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On the topic of a DOJ investigation, it is worthwhile looking at the legal elements for fraud
In the United States, common law generally identifies nine elements needed to establish fraud: (1) a representation of fact; (2) its falsity; (3) its materiality; (4) the representer’s knowledge of its falsity or ignorance of its truth; (5) the representer’s intent that it should be acted upon by the person in the manner reasonably contemplated; (6) the injured party’s ignorance of its falsity; (7) the injured party’s reliance on its truth; (8) the injured party’s right to rely thereon; and (9) the injured party’s consequent and proximate injury.
So the statements made by multiple witnesses do indicate that Trump was told the election was not stolen. Barr was pretty adamant that Trump knew it was bullshit. Nw, will Trump defend himself asserting he was delusional? I doubt that very much.
And the ball moves to Garland now. Congress cannot indict. But they can lay out evidence of a crime, strong enough to precipitate an investigation.
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Eh, there were programs out there to pay money to small business owners, and one of the (many) legitimate uses of the money was owner compensation.
If she might have actually earned that money through her business were it not for the pandemic then using it to compensate herself is 100% legit. And once she’s used the money to compensate herself then she is obviously free to spend it on champagne & caviar or hookers & blow (if legal) or whatever else she wants.
Without knowing more I doubt she did anything illegal, or really even immoral. The government was wanting to infuse cash into the economy that people would spend, which is what she did.
In particular the first PPP “loan” (which does not have to be repaid if she’d been properly paying self-employment tax on her business income all along) had virtually no strings attached. The second one was a little more stringent.
Disclaimer: I’m a 1099 contractor and I took the first PPP loan, which I applied toward owner compensation. I disclosed that this is what I was going to do and it’s what I did, and when I applied for loan forgiveness I said it was what I did.
The money was direct deposited into my/hubby’s joint checking account and was instantly indistinguishable from the rest of our money.
I do think that my hours were reduced due to Covid, so my income was a bit lower than it otherwise would have been. I mean, I can’t prove it, but I think my client would have used me more were it not for the pandemic. 
Wow
I’ve got a lot of thoughts on your comments, but I’m going to keep it short:
I’m going to vociferously disagree with you on this entire sentence, for a multitude of reasons which I can’t get into at the moment.
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I mean you didn’t give a lot of details, so I don’t know exactly what she did. But it sounds like a PPP loan. If it is, I stand by my statement.
If it was something else then I have no idea without knowing more details.
You’re right. I didn’t give a lot of details. Let’s just say there’s a difference between what you did - an assertion that you can reasonably back up - and what I’m talking about.
That is, unless you believe in Schrödinger’s Business.
Ok, fair enough.