The office of Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance has reviewed all 143 of the pardons and commutations issued by former President Donald Trump in his final hours in office, and it's weighing whether to bring charges against former Trump strategist Stephen Bannon and Ken Kurson, a friend of Jared Kushner, Trump's son in law, The New York Times and The Washington Post report. Presidential clemency covers only federal crimes, and both men were pardoned before their cases went to trial, meaning they almost certainly wouldn't be protected by New York State's double-jeopardy law. Bannon and three associates not pardoned by Trump were charged in August with defrauding investors in an enterprise called Build the Wall; Bannon was accused of personally receiving more than $1 million of the $25 million raised to build border wall on private land. All four men pleaded not guilty. Vance's prosecutors "have taken significant steps in their investigation" of Bannon, the Times reports, "including seeking records and requesting to interview at least one potential witness." Vance would have jurisdiction because some of Bannon's alleged victims live in Manhattan. Kurson, a former editor of The New York Observer who is also close with Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani, was arrested in October on charges of cyberstalking and harassment tied to the 2015 dissolution of his marriage, the Times reports. "He was accused of having stalked a Manhattan doctor, her colleague, and the colleague's spouse." Vance's office has been investigating Trump and his family business on tax fraud and other charges since 2019, and it is currently awaiting a second Supreme Court ruling on whether it can obtain eight years of Trump's tax returns. Vance also charged another Trump campaign official, Paul Manafort, with mortgage fraud and more than a dozen other state felonies in 2019, before Trump pardoned him, but the case was dismissed on double-jeopardy grounds. Vance has appealed that ruling to a higher state court, arguing that the lower court misread the law, the Post reports. Peter Weber
DA activision will drive away corporate headquarters in a NY minute Especially if your company is not woke The NRA had to leave along with gun manufacturers from New England The country is dividing up between red economies and blue economies
The 2020 elections, chaotic and marked by races “too close to call,” have nonetheless reaffirmed that, at least in Washington, the two parties now speak for markedly different segments of the U.S. economy. President Donald Trump carried 2,497 counties across the country that together generate 29% of the American economy, according to a new study by the Brookings Institution. President-elect Joe Biden won 477 counties that together generate 70% of U.S. GDP. Republicans represent a far greater number of smaller counties with less-educated, more-homogenous workforces that, on average, tend to rely on manufacturing, agriculture and mining. Democrats represent a smaller number of densely populated and diverse metropolitan counties fueled by service-oriented industries such as finance, professional services and software. That’s similar to the 2016 results, when Brookings showed that the nearly 2,600 counties Trump won generated 36% of the country’s output versus the 472 counties that Hillary Clinton won, which produced 64%. Brookings researcher Mark Muro put it this way: “While the election’s outcome has changed, the nation’s political geography remains rigidly divided.” “Blue and red America continue to reflect two very different economies — one oriented to diverse, often college-educated workers in professional and digital services professions and the other whiter, less-educated, and more dependent on ‘traditional’ industries,” he added. To put a point on this economic-geographic divergence, Brookings noted that Biden flipped seven of the nation’s 100-highest-output counties in the 2020 election and further cemented the link between the Democratic Party and the nation’s core economic hubs. Biden took away half of Trump’s 10 most economically significant counties from 2016, including Maricopa in Arizona, Tarrant in Texas, Duval and Pinellas in Florida and Morris in New Jersey. Blue districts have attracted the expanding segments of the U.S. population and workforce; 34% of their residents are non-White and 36% have at least a bachelor’s degree. Red districts, by comparison, are 15% non-White and 25% have at least a bachelor’s degree, Brookings found. The problem, Muro suggests, is not only that Democrats and Republicans disagree on issues of culture, identity and power but that they represent “radically different” areas of the economy. These differences, if they persist or worsen, could result in partisan gridlock for years to come, the researcher wrote. Democrats represent voters who overwhelmingly live in the nation’s diverse centers and thus tend to prioritize housing affordability, better social safety nets, transportation infrastructure and racial justice. On the other hand, Republicans represent the economies of the nation’s struggling small towns and rural areas that see little reason to weigh the needs of urban districts. “If this pattern continues — with one party aiming to confront the challenges at top of mind for a majority of Americans, and the other continuing to stoke the hostility and indignation held by a significant minority — it will be a recipe not only for more gridlock and ineffective governance, but also for economic harm to nearly all people and places,” Muro wrote. “In light of the desperate need for a broad, historic recovery from the economic damage of the COVID-19 pandemic, a continuation of the patterns we’ve seen play out over the past decade would be a particularly unsustainable situation for Americans in communities of all sizes,” he added. — Data visualizations by CNBC’s John Schoen
Thanks for posting that because a lot of people do not understand the GDP power of the ethnic minorities and immigrants. It's no longer about people of color like in prior elections...its also about the GDP of many of my friends in Dutch communities in Iowa, Norwegian in South Dakota and German communities in Minnesota that sent a lot of money out of state into other key states. In fact, although a lot of people on the right has argue with me about the support being provided to ethnic communities and immigrants in other key states... I'll predict for the 2024 elections that most of the GDP money will stay home in Iowa / South Dakota to help turn these two states into blue states. There's a political shift in the spectrum and it has a money trail into powerful communities that will easily overcome the numerous smaller rural communities that voted red in the 2020 elections. I know a lot of Norwegians in South Dakota that will try very hard to turn that state into blue. wrbtrader