The Trump Files

Discussion in 'Politics' started by nitro, Jul 25, 2016.

  1. nitro

    nitro

    Now I understand. There is [used to be] a very subtle RE law that says you can deduct the entire loss of a business venture if it goes bad, as long as the money is borrowed and OPM writes off the loan. So Trump may have lost 1% on a business, and taken the tax loss forward on the entire 100%. That law actually encourages you to fail, borrow huge sums of OPM, and implode everyone on purpose for personal gain!

    From then on you don't pay taxes because you have a genie in the bottle. I am having a hard time biting my lips - who writes these tax laws?

    My God.
     
    Last edited: Oct 3, 2016
    #441     Oct 3, 2016
  2. nitro

    nitro

    Trump Used Foundation Funds for 2016 Run, Filings Suggest

    As Donald Trump began making noise about a possible bid for president in 2011, South Carolina conservative activist Oran Smith caught the celebrity businessman's eye as a particularly vocal and potentially influential critic.

    "Trump would get thumped here," Smith, president of the Palmetto Family Council, a social conservative public policy group, told the Christian Broadcasting Network. "He is a celebrity, but an apprentice at politics."

    Smith's comments appeared in a March 2011 CBN story alongside feedback from other key national evangelical leaders such as Ralph Reed and Tony Perkins. Shortly after the story ran, Trump called Smith and invited him to meet at Trump Tower in New York, Smith told RealClearPolitics, "to see if he could convince me those things weren't true."

    "It probably had something to do with, I was in an early primary state," Smith said. Trump was "laying the foundation for a ... campaign," Smith thought at the time, although "it was difficult trying to tell if he was serious about running for president or not."

    During their meeting in Trump's office, they discussed Christian faith and religious liberty. Smith was struck by "a different Donald Trump than I expected." On his way out the door, Smith asked that Trump consider donating to the Palmetto Family Council.

    "He was never heavy-handed about any quid pro quo," Smith said.

    But Trump delivered.

    "It was a quiet donation that came with a simple cover letter," Smith said. It read: "Great meeting with you and your wife in my office," dated May 6, 2011. Enclosed was a check for $10,000 from the Donald J. Trump Foundation...

    http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/polit...016-run-filings-suggest/ar-BBwYnVc?li=BBnbcA1
     
    #442     Oct 4, 2016
  3. nitro

    nitro

    #443     Oct 6, 2016
  4. piezoe

    piezoe

    I don't see a problem with this. If that's all there is. Trump legally renting space in a building to a foreign bank that was allowed by U.S. banking laws to have a branch here. What is the big deal? You can't expect Trump to investigate them. That's the governments job. This innuendo aimed at discrediting Trump is absurd.
     
    #444     Oct 6, 2016
  5. nitro

    nitro

    Donald Trump Has Often Donated to Prosecutors Investigating His Business
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    He gave about $140,000 to state attorneys general between 2001 and 2014

    Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has, on multiple occasions, donated to state attorneys general who were considering investigations related to his businesses.

    A review of political donation records found that Trump has given about $140,000 to a dozen people who were state attorneys general or attorney general candidates between 2001 and 2014, the Wall Street Journal reported.

    Trump recently paid a fine of $2,500 to the IRS following revelations that his charitable foundation made a $25,000donation to Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi in 2014, when she was deciding whether to investigate Trump University. Under IRS rules, the foundation is barred from using charitable funds to engage in politics.


    In other instances, Trump donated $6,000 to California Attorney General Kamala Harris while his university was part of an investigation into for-profit colleges in the state. The Journal also found that several of the donations involved state attorneys general in New York, particularly when his business was being reviewed.

    Trump has repeatedly criticized what he describes as a “rigged” political system during his bid for president, boasting that he knows how the system works because of his own experience making political contributions. “When I want something I get it,” he said at an Iowa rally in January. “When I call, they kiss my ass. It’s true.”

    In explaining the contributions to attorneys general, Alan Garten, general counsel at the Trump Organization, said the onus should be on the office of the attorney general to return contributions if necessary—which is what some prosecutors did.

    “He has always said he’s given to politicians his entire career and he thinks the system is broken,” Garten said of Trump, according the Journal. “Thinking that the system is broken doesn’t preclude him from giving to politicians when they are knocking on his door 365 days of the year.”

    http://fortune.com/2016/10/05/donald-trump-political-donations-attorney-general/
     
    #445     Oct 6, 2016
  6. nitro

    nitro

     
    #446     Oct 6, 2016
  7. #447     Oct 7, 2016
  8. The lies Trump told this week: taxes, bankruptcy and the great 'depression'

    https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/oct/07/donald-trump-lies-this-week-taxes-bankruptcy

    Taxes
    “I mean, honestly, I have brilliantly – I have brilliantly used those laws.” – 3 October, Pueblo, Colorado

    Donald J Trump did not prepare his 1995 returns, portions of which showed a $916m loss that could have let the businessman avoid 18 years of taxes. Jack Mitnick was Trump’s accountant at the time. This week, Mitnick was asked by CNN if Trump “was brilliant in the way he used the tax code? Smart and a genius?”

    “No, those returns were entirely created by us,” Mitnick replied.

    He was then asked: “So what kind of involvement did he have?”

    Mitnick: “Virtually zero.”

    Finally, the CNN hosts asked whether Mitnick, who worked for Trump for years, had “any reason to believe that he does know how to work the tax code as much as he says he does?”

    Mitnick: “Not when I dealt with him.”

    ‘Depression of the 1990s’
    “If you remember the early 90s, other than I would say 1928, there was nothing even close. The conditions facing real-estate developers in that early 90s period were almost as bad as the great depression of 1929 and far worse than the great recession of 2008. Not even close.

    “What had been a booming economy in the era of Ronald Reagan changed dramatically and the business landscape changed with it. Bank failures and collapse, the absolute total destruction of the savings and loan industry, and the implosion of the retail market and real estate in general, something we’ve never seen anything like it. Many businesspeople, including many of my competitors and some of my friends, were not able to survive.” 3 October, Pueblo

    The eight-month recession of 1990-91 does not compare in scope or severity to the recession following the 2008 financial crisis, much less the collapse of virtually the entire global economy following the stock market crash of 1929. (Trump wrongly said 1928.)

    In the first few years of the 1990s, the US lost 1.6m jobs, unemployment reaching almost 8% in June 1992. By the late 1990s, the savings and loans industry had recovered. After the 2008 financial crisis, the US lost 8.7m jobs – in October 2010, unemployment reached a peak of 10%. The recession itself lasted 18 months, officially.

    The Great Depression was far worse. In 1933, 25% of all workers and 37% of all non-farm workers were out of work. For years in the 1930s, the economy staggered into sluggish recoveries and back into downturns: the entire decade is usually referred to as part of the depression.

    Trump’s comparison of the 1990s to the great depression, which saw families across the US starving to death, is hyperbolic to a grotesque degree.

    Nor does Trump have a leg to stand on when he blames macroeconomics for his $916m loss in 1995. In the late 1980s, Trump amassed $3.4bn in debt, largely in high-interest junk bonds. His debts, paired with massive spending on Atlantic City casinos, led one of his casinos to default months before the recession began. Mismanagement led his other casinos into decline, even though New Jersey reaped increasing profits from gambling through the 1990s.


    Bankruptcy
    Some of the biggest and strongest of companies went absolutely bankrupt. Which I never did, by the way. Are you proud of me? Would have loved to use that card, but I just didn’t want to do it.” 3 October, Pueblo

    Trump’s father and family repeatedly bailed him out with millions in loans, one of them illegal. Trump has never personally filed for bankruptcy. Yet, his businesses have filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy – which allows businesses to find ways to restructure debt and operations without being liquidated – six times in the last 25 years.

    In 1991 he declared bankruptcy at his Taj Majal casino; in 1992 he declared bankruptcy at his Trump Castle casino, Trump Plaza and Plaza Hotel; in 2004 he filed for bankruptcy at Trump Hotels and Casinos Resorts; and in 2009 his Trump Entertainment Resorts declared bankruptcy.

    In a primary debate last October, Trump bragged about four of those bankruptcies.


    Catching up with Pence
    “Less than 10 cents on the dollar in the Clinton Foundation has gone to charitable organizations.” – 4 October, Farmville, Virginia

    This claim by Trump’s running mate during the vice-presidential debate is misleading. The Clinton Foundation is itself a charity and most of its funding goes to its own programs, for instance for Haiti and HIV/Aids treatment: 10% goes to third-party organizations.

    Brian Mittendorf, a professor of accounting at Ohio State University’s Fisher College of Business, told Politifact earlier this year that in 2014, 87% of the Clinton Foundation’s funds went to its own charitable works. A charity watchdog found that it spent only 12% that year on overheads.
     
    #448     Oct 7, 2016
    Spike Trader and Ricter like this.
  9. Can you imagine a US President being manipulated in this manner ?


    Report: Lobbyist For Russian Pipeline Helped On Trump Foreign Policy Speech


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    A Republican lobbyist and former Reagan administration official reportedly advised Donald Trump on his first major foreign policy speech at the same time he was promoting the interests of Vladimir Putin’s state-run energy corporation.

    According to a Politico report out Friday morning, Richard Burt received $365,000 in the first two quarters of 2016 to advocate on behalf of the Nord Stream II pipeline. Gazprom, the Russian state energy corporation, owned a 50 percent share of the company behind the pipeline, New European Pipeline AG, when it paid Burt; it later took full ownership of the company.

    In that timeframe, Burt helped shape Donald Trump’s first major foreign policy address, in which he said “I believe an easing of tensions and improved relations with Russia—from a position of strength—is possible.”

    “Common sense says this cycle of hostility must end. Some say the Russians won’t be reasonable. I intend to find out,” Trump said on April 27, as the Russian ambassador listened in the front row.

    The United States, Poland, and other European nations have taken official stances against the Nord Stream II pipeline, which would strengthen Russia’s energy presence on the continent.

    Previously, two high-level members of the Trump campaign, campaign chairman Paul Manafort and foreign policy advisor Carter Page, resigned from the campaign after details about their own dealings with a pro-Russian political party in Ukraine and top Kremlin officials, respectively, came to light.
     
    #449     Oct 7, 2016
  10. Ricter

    Ricter

    Yeah, but, Obama smoked pot in college.
     
    #450     Oct 7, 2016