“The Storm”

Moderators: Elvis, DrVolin, Jeff

Re: “The Storm”

Postby seemslikeadream » Mon Apr 09, 2018 8:08 am

Michael Avenatti

Stephanie Clifford @StormyDaniels with Lois Gibson, the foremost forensic artist in the world.

Image

Here is the renewed motion we just filed seeking to depose Mr. Trump and Mr. Cohen, as well as an expedited jury trial.
Image
Image
Image




Stormy Daniels’ Motion to Depose Trump Is On Stunningly Solid Legal Footing

Jeremy Stahl April 09, 20182:00 AM
The Slatest

Stormy Daniels arrives to perform at the Solid Gold Fort Lauderdale strip club on March 9, 2018 in Pompano Beach, Florida.

If you listen to Michael Avenatti’s opponents, the attorney for Stormy Daniels is a fame-seeking extortionist without any case.

“Michael Avenatti is in it for the press and the money,” Michael Cohen’s attorney, David Schwartz, said last month during an interview with Good Morning America. Avenatti’s case is “completely wrong on the merits,” Schwartz added to the Los Angeles Times in an interview published on Saturday.

On Sunday, Avenatti issued a powerful rebuke to these criticisms in the form of a 27-page legal filing that requests the chance to depose both President Donald Trump and Cohen as part of Daniels’ lawsuit against them.

As I’ve reported, Daniels’ legal challenge to a contract made with Cohen’s Essential Consultants LLC for her to stay quiet about an alleged affair with Trump is stunningly strong.
Her case rests on the claim that Trump never agreed to the deal, which would mean the contract was never actually formed. Trump’s lack of signature on the contract, his own statements, as well as those of his representatives in the White House and those of Cohen support that very argument.

In Sunday’s memorandum of points accompanying his motion for a jury trial and limited discovery, Avenatti effectively used Trump’s and his surrogates’ own words against them.

Exhibit C as part of the motion are statements the president issued on Thursday denying that he had any knowledge of the agreement. As I pointed out then, and as Avenatti hammers home in his filing, how could Trump have agreed to the essential terms of the contract foreswearing his right to contact or sue Daniels if he hadn’t been aware of its existence? “[B]y failing to sign the Agreement, Mr. Trump failed to supply essential consideration to Plaintiff in the form of a release, covenant not to sue, and representations and warranties,” Avenatti notes.

“[I]f Mr. Trump was completely unaware of Mr. Cohen’s actions, the question naturally arises as to how it would be possible for a ‘meeting of the minds’ to have occurred between parties where one of the parties does not even know about the existence of the agreement?” the filing continues.

Avenatti goes onto argue that Cohen’s motion to compel arbitration per the terms of the contract is moot until this fundamental question of Trump’s knowledge of the agreement can be sorted out via limited discovery, including depositions of the president and Cohen. He also cites previous cases where arbitration agreements have been nullified because courts have determined that a contract was never formed.

Again, this argument is incredibly solid. As Loyola Law School professor and arbitration expert Adam Zimmerman told me over email:

Avenatti’s argument that the Court set aside the arbitration agreement is well-grounded in federal arbitration law. … [C]ourts generally determine questions about whether an arbitration agreement was initially formed at all. That should make sense, as a general principle, too. If someone never even signed an agreement to arbitrate, for example, what business does some random person have deciding rights between total strangers. That’s what Avenatti argues here: that there’s a genuine factual dispute over whether one of the critical parties to this agreement–in this case, President Trump–ever agreed to be bound by arbitration. In such cases, the Federal Arbitration Act provides for a summary jury proceeding to decide whether a contract exists. And accordingly, Avenatti is pursuing limited factual discovery to that end.

While this argument alone should get him out of arbitration for the time being, Avenatti added an additional novel and clever argument.

Avenatti says that the arbitration clause itself is a mechanism to avoid federal campaign laws by whoever paid Daniels $130,000 for her silence.

“Plaintiff intends to prove the arbitration clause was entered with the purpose of keeping facts concerning federal campaign contributions and expenditures secret and hidden from public view by using a confidential arbitration proceeding in violation of FECA’s mandates to publicly report campaign contributions and expenditures,” Avenatti writes.

If the arbitration clause itself was formed for an illegal purpose, it might be considered invalid.

“Ordinarily, [moving to set aside an arbitration agreement on the ground that it is simply illegal is] a tough hurdle to overcome,” Zimmerman told me. “But here, the parties distinguish [recent] case law by arguing the arbitration agreement itself violates federal law, not just the entire contract.”

As Zimmerman also notes, Avenatti cites “well-established contract law that generally find political contracts to suppress information for money as void against public policy.”

The brief directly cites the epochal legal treatise, the Restatement of Contracts, and points out “remarkably” similar circumstances:

A, a candidate for political office, and as such advocating certain principles, had previously written letters to B, taking a contrary position. B is about to publish the letters, and A fearing that the publication will cost him his election, agrees to pay $1000 for the suppression of the letters. The bargain is illegal.

Even if Trump is able to convince a judge that he was actually party to the contract, despite all of the evidence and his statements to the contrary, he could lose on these grounds alone.

“It’s a novel argument, but then again, these are novel circumstances,” Zimmerman said.https://slate.com/news-and-politics/201 ... l_dt_tw_ru
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
User avatar
seemslikeadream
 
Posts: 32090
Joined: Wed Apr 27, 2005 11:28 pm
Location: into the black
Blog: View Blog (83)

Re: “The Storm”

Postby American Dream » Mon Apr 09, 2018 3:27 pm

Former Chicago gossip columnist Liz Crokin is now a star among far-right conspiracy theorists

Over the last year and a half, colleagues and former friends of Crokin say, her social media posts began to become more "delusional" ("I had to hide her posts because they were so crazy," said one friend).

Image

A large percentage of Crokin's posts, interviews, and conversations are tied to a theory that "one-third of the government" is part of a satanic Illuminati-like cult that sexually enslaves, kills, and even eats children. And to maintain power, they draw on Project MK Ultra, an experimental CIA program from 1953 to 1973 in which the agency used LSD and other drugs for mind control, information gathering, and psychological torture. Last month Barr tweeted the words "MK Ultra"—which would have been well-known to those deep in the QAnon world.


More at: https://www.chicagoreader.com/Bleader/a ... -theorists
American Dream
 
Posts: 19946
Joined: Sat Sep 15, 2007 4:56 pm
Location: Planet Earth
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: “The Storm”

Postby American Dream » Mon Apr 09, 2018 7:24 pm

Jerome Corsi Is Overwhelmed By His Calling To Expose Rampant Satanic Pedophilia

By Kyle Mantyla | April 9, 2018 3:39 pm

Jerome Corsi, the Washington bureau chief for the right-wing conspiracy theory outlet Infowars, appeared on “The SGT Report” over the weekend to discuss his efforts to promote the QAnon/The Storm conspiracy theory, which alleges that President Trump is secretly working to take down a massive satanic pedophile ring that involves untold numbers of elite political, business and entertainment leaders.

Corsi said that it is only through the grace of God that he is able to maintain his sanity as he works tirelessly to expose the terrible truth about the rampant satanic pedophilia that is taking place and that he often finds himself unable to sleep over the thought that he may be missing an opportunity to get the word out and “red pill” one more person.

“The corruption, the evil of devoting yourself to Lucifer ends up in satanic sacrifices, children abused, human rights kidnapping, just incredible human torment, torture, snuff films,” Corsi said. “The evil depths and corners of this are so abhorrent to me, and should be to every right-thinking American, that we need to expose this, we need to bring it out, we need to show it the light of day despite how many people it’s going to be disturbing to.”

“Those of us who are going to know every aspect of it are ourselves going to have to pray to God that we come out not so damaged that we become somewhat dysfunctional,” he added. “We are going to have to make sure that we pray and approach this with the light of God and the help of God in order to get through this crisis.”

“These days, I am overwhelmed with hundreds of emails and I barely have time to function,” Corsi said, wearily. “But I can’t sleep thinking that there may be one more radio show, one more opportunity to get the word out, one more mind to red pill. That’s what drives me is the desire to serve God and to have the Constitution of the United States restored to its rightful position.”


http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/jero ... edophilia/
American Dream
 
Posts: 19946
Joined: Sat Sep 15, 2007 4:56 pm
Location: Planet Earth
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: “The Storm”

Postby American Dream » Tue Apr 10, 2018 3:47 pm

Liz Crokin: Elite Satanic Pedophiles ‘Are Trying To Kill Us Off’

By Kyle Mantyla | April 10, 2018 12:17 pm

Fringe right-wing conspiracy theorist Liz Crokin appeared on the “Disputed Lands” program last night, where she asserted that the cabal of elite satanic pedophiles who rule the world are trying to kill everyone through vaccines and chemtrails so that they can sexually abuse and eat children without anyone “pestering” them.

“That’s why they are all about abortion, depopulation, contaminating our food supply, the chemtrails, the vaccines,” Crokin said. “They are trying to kill us. They are trying to kill us off because they know the only way they can run their sick one-world government where they worship Moloch, rape kids, and do it without anyone like me pestering them is if they kill most of us off and that’s what they’re trying to do.”

Crokin said that, in the meantime, “they are trying to hard to normalize this because they know eventually this is going to come out” and so they are working to “get raping kids and eating kids to be cool and normal” by using celebrities like Lady Gaga, Katy Perry and Drew Barrymore to promote “cannibalism and satanic rituals and child sex trafficking.”

Crokin went on to assert that, without fail, every celebrity who is critical of President Trump has ties to satanism or pedophilia.

“It never fails,” she declared. “The people who are screaming the loudest against Trump—Jimmy Kimmel, Eminem, Robert DeNiro—they are all tied to this sick stuff. Every single one of them.”

“Every single time there is some celebrity that is going off about President Trump, like unhinged,” Crokin said, “I’ll do like two minutes of research and it’s like, oh, they’re tied to satanism, oh, they’re tied to child sex trafficking. It never fails.”


http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/liz- ... ll-us-off/
American Dream
 
Posts: 19946
Joined: Sat Sep 15, 2007 4:56 pm
Location: Planet Earth
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: “The Storm”

Postby seemslikeadream » Tue Apr 10, 2018 5:21 pm

:)

Stormy Daniels is cooperating with Federal investigators in Cohen probe

Michael Avenatti

Due to the FBI raids of Mr. Cohen’s office/home and a subsequent request we received this morning to delay the release of the forensic sketch of the thug that threatened Ms. Clifford to “leave Trump alone”, we will not be releasing the sketch or reward details today. Timing TBD.


Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
User avatar
seemslikeadream
 
Posts: 32090
Joined: Wed Apr 27, 2005 11:28 pm
Location: into the black
Blog: View Blog (83)

Re: “The Storm”

Postby American Dream » Tue Apr 10, 2018 7:39 pm

Red Pill Rally In DC Unites Far-Right Conspiracy Theories and Apocalyptic Religion

By Peter Montgomery | April 10, 2018 11:18 am

Image
Banner leading Operation Justice march in Washington DC April 7, 2018 (Photo: Peter Montgomery / Right Wing Watch)

A group of just over 100 right-wing conspiracy theorists met in front of the White House on Saturday, marched down Pennsylvania Avenue past the Justice Department and FBI buildings, and gathered on Freedom Plaza for an open mic rally.

Several marchers brandished copies of Infowars Washington bureau chief Jerome Corsi’s latest book, “Killing the Deep State.” Corsi promotes the conspiracy theory known as The Storm, which is based on anonymous postings by someone known as Q, supposedly from deep within the government. “I see Q people,” read a sign at the march. Others yelled at tourists and pedestrians, “Who is QAnon? Look it up!”

Adherents believe that the dispatches from Q—or QAnon—are signaling that the Trump administration is getting ready to blow the lid off major conspiracy theories, including one that posits that leading Democratic political operatives are engaged in child sex trafficking.

In January, Corsi warned that eventually videos would come out showing “global elites” making children plead for their lives before “butchering” them. The related “Pizzagate” conspiracy theory nearly turned fatal when one adherent showed up at a restaurant that conspiracy theorists claimed was the center of a sex-trafficking ring and started shooting. At the Saturday march, one participant’s sign read, “Arrest Luciferian Pedophiles NOW.”

Image

“Red pills, white hats,” chanted marchers at one point. “Red pills” is a reference to the movie “The Matrix,” in which a taking of a red pill meant being willing to open your eyes to the horrible truth about the hidden machinations that underlie visible reality.

One speaker, who introduced herself as RedpillTheWorld, described herself as having been a moderator on Reddit before the forum “Calm Before The Storm” was shut down. She promoted FreedomForceNews, a new online venue for conversation and document-sharing she said was housed in Iceland, where they “hate the globalists so bad.” She encouraged people to join the forum and share their “research.”

Image

RedpillTheWorld described QAnon as “leading the charge” in fighting for the country, and she talked about current events as the fulfillment of biblical prophecy. “Y’all know that Trump is not in that White House because of our smarts,” she said, “He’s in there by God’s hand. God put him there to rescue us because he is a fighter!.”

She read from the biblical book of Habakkuk denunciations of leaders who have plundered nations—she paused to refer to the conspiracist-favorite Rothschilds—and warned that people now living in mansions outside D.C. will be sent to Gitmo “or worse.” She saw these happenings not as signs of the end of the world, but the end of our current wicked era.

“Q said 2018 is gonna be glorious,” said RedpillTheWorld, in the midst of quoting from the Book of Revelation.


http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/red- ... -religion/
American Dream
 
Posts: 19946
Joined: Sat Sep 15, 2007 4:56 pm
Location: Planet Earth
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: “The Storm”

Postby seemslikeadream » Thu Apr 12, 2018 7:49 am

However, six current and former A.M.I. employees, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they feared legal retaliation by the company, said that Sajudin had told A.M.I. the names of the alleged mistress and child. Reporters at A.M.I. had spent weeks investigating the allegations, and Sajudin had passed a lie-detector test, during which he testified that high-level Trump employees, including Trump’s head of security, Matthew Calamari, had told him the story.




Image

Nothing to See Here, Feb. 27, 2017 Stormy, April, 23, 2018 Illustrations by Tim O'Brien for TIME

The April 23 TIME cover, depicting the growing chaos within the Trump White House, may look familiar to some readers: We asked longtime TIME collaborator Tim O’Brien to reimagine a cover he did for us just over a year ago.
 With his inventive style and fine hairline brush, Tim’s updated piece shows the rising water from the storms swirling inside the Oval Office.

“When I painted the ‘Nothing to See Here’ cover art, like many, I assumed the level of chaos could not last, that patriots on both sides of the aisle would step forward to control much of what transpired in the past year,” says O’Brien,
http://time.com/5236647/donald-trump-stormy-time-cover/



David Cay Johnston

Trump has a 6th, maybe more children, documents in another hush money deal suggest. Expect more — and worse — to come out as @AP and others dig.

$30,000 rumor? Tabloid paid for, spiked, salacious Trump tip
The Associated Press confirmed the details of the Enquirer’s payment through a review of a confidential contract and interviews with dozens of current and former employees of the Enquirer and its parent company, American Media Inc. Sajudin got $30,000 in exchange for signing over the rights, “in perpetuity,” to a rumor he’d heard about Trump’s sex life — that the president had fathered an illegitimate child with an employee at Trump World Tower, a skyscraper he owns near the United Nations. The contract subjected Sajudin to a $1 million penalty if he disclosed either the rumor or the terms of the deal to anyone.

https://www.apnews.com/f37ecfc4710b468db6a103a245146172


The National Enquirer, a Trump Rumor, and Another Secret Payment to Buy Silence

How the media organization protected the Presidential candidate early in his campaign.

Ronan FarrowApril 12, 2018 3:19 AM
Image
David Pecker, the chairman and C.E.O. of A.M.I., has spoken publicly about his friendship with President Trump.
Photograph by Mark Peterson / Redux for The New Yorker

Late in 2015, a former Trump Tower doorman named Dino Sajudin met with a reporter from American Media, Inc., the publisher of the National Enquirer, at a McDonald’s in Pennsylvania. A few weeks earlier, Sajudin had signed a contract with A.M.I., agreeing to become a source and to accept thirty thousand dollars for exclusive rights to information he had been told: that Donald Trump, who had launched his Presidential campaign five months earlier, may have fathered a child with a former employee in the late nineteen-eighties. Sajudin declined to comment for this story. However, six current and former A.M.I. employees, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they feared legal retaliation by the company, said that Sajudin had told A.M.I. the names of the alleged mistress and child. Reporters at A.M.I. had spent weeks investigating the allegations, and Sajudin had passed a lie-detector test, during which he testified that high-level Trump employees, including Trump’s head of security, Matthew Calamari, had told him the story.

The New Yorker has uncovered no evidence that Trump fathered the child. A spokesperson for the Trump Organization denied the allegations, including the assertion that Calamari told Sajudin the story. When I reached out to the alleged daughter, she declined through a representative of her employer to answer questions. Her mother did not respond to repeated requests for comment. I spoke with the father of the family, who said that Sajudin’s claim was “completely false and ridiculous” and added that the Enquirer had put the family in a difficult situation. “I don’t understand what they had to pay this guy for,” he said. The New Yorker is not disclosing the family members’ names, out of respect for their privacy. Regardless of the veracity of Sajudin’s claims, legal experts said that A.M.I.’s payment to Sajudin is significant because it establishes the company’s pattern of buying and burying stories that could be damaging to Trump during the Presidential campaign.

Sajudin met the A.M.I. reporter at the McDonald’s that winter night to sign an amendment finalizing the transaction and adding a million-dollar penalty if the ex-doorman were to disclose the information without A.M.I.’s permission. According to a source with knowledge of the meeting, the two of them signed the amendment—an unexecuted copy of which was obtained by The New Yorker—and Sajudin remarked that it was going to be “a very merry Christmas.” Shortly after the company paid Sajudin, the chairman and C.E.O. of A.M.I., David Pecker, who has spoken publicly about his friendship with Trump, ordered the A.M.I. reporters to stop investigating, the sources told me. One of the employees involved said, “There’s no question it was done as a favor to continue to protect Trump from these potential secrets. That’s black-and-white.”

A.M.I.’s thirty-thousand-dollar payment to Sajudin appears to be the third instance of Trump associates paying to suppress embarrassing stories about the candidate during the 2016 Presidential race. In August, 2016, A.M.I. paid Karen McDougal, a former Playboy model, a hundred and fifty thousand dollars for her story about a nine-month affair with Trump, and then never published an article about it. (A.M.I. said her story was not credible.) In October, 2016, Trump’s personal attorney, Michael Cohen, paid Stephanie Clifford, an adult-film actress who performs under the name Stormy Daniels, a hundred and thirty thousand dollars to keep her account of an affair with Trump secret. (Clifford’s agreement was distinct from McDougal’s in that it was arranged directly with Cohen. A.M.I. was not party to the contracts between Cohen and Clifford that have been released.)

Two of the former A.M.I. employees said they believed that Cohen was in close contact with A.M.I. executives while the company’s reporters were looking into Sajudin’s story, as Cohen had been during other investigations related to Trump. “Cohen was kept up to date on a regular basis,” one source said. Contacted by telephone on Wednesday, Cohen said that he was not available to talk. Subsequent efforts to reach him were unsuccessful. On Monday, F.B.I. agents raided Cohen’s hotel and office. The Times reported that the agents were looking for records related to the payments to McDougal and Clifford, as well as correspondence between Cohen, Pecker, and Dylan Howard, A.M.I.’s chief content officer.

The White House declined to comment. A source close to the White House said that Trump “did not have an affair. This is a totally false accusation. And I’d refer you to A.M.I.”

Texts and e-mails from November of 2015 show that, before reporting was halted, the National Enquirer team was pursuing leads and trying to confirm Sajudin’s story. Reporters had staked out the homes of the alleged mother and daughter. The company had also hired an outside private investigator named Michael Mancuso, a former criminal investigator and the owner of Searching for the Truth Investigative Services, who administered the lie-detector test. (Mancuso declined a request for comment.) Lie-detector tests are notoriously flawed, and the test assessed only whether Sajudin had heard the story, not whether there was truth to the underlying claim.

Sharon Churcher, one of the lead A.M.I. reporters on the story, told me, “I do not believe that story was true. I believed from the beginning it was not true.” Other employees at A.M.I. had questions about Sajudin’s credibility. In 2014, a Web site registered through a service that obscures the identity of the author claimed that Sajudin had made similar accusations against a Trump Tower resident named Lawrence Penn III, and that those accusations were false. (Penn could not be reached for comment. In 2015, he pleaded guilty to securities fraud, and he is currently serving a six-year prison sentence. Penn’s lawyer did not respond to a request for comment.) When I reached out to Sajudin, he responded, in an e-mail, “My time is valuable. What’s your offer??” After being told that The New Yorker does not pay sources, Sajudin declined further requests for an interview.

Although many of the A.M.I. sources I spoke with expressed skepticism about Sajudin’s claims, all six agreed that A.M.I. made a concerted effort to shut down the story. Several said that they believed the coverup, rather than the story itself, was of public importance. One told me that, after the polygraph came back positive, “the decision was made at a high level to pay this source those funds and to put this thing to rest without an investigation taking place.” A.M.I.’s decision was unusual even in the context of the company’s other efforts to purchase stories in order to bury them, a practice known as “catch and kill.” Another source, who believed that A.M.I. suppressed the story to help Trump, said of Sajudin, “It’s unheard of to give a guy who calls A.M.I.’s tip line big bucks for information he is passing on secondhand. We didn’t pay thousands of dollars for non-stories, let alone tens of thousands. It was a highly curious and questionable situation.”

A.M.I. later attempted to prevent other outlets from reporting on the story or the company’s payout. In the summer of 2017, the Associated Press began investigating A.M.I.’s suppression of the story. At one point, reporters were hours away from posting a piece, but A.M.I. assembled a legal team to lobby against publication. The team included Lanny Davis, a crisis manager and longtime confidant of Bill and Hillary Clinton who did similar work on behalf of Harvey Weinstein. Davis and Howard met with a reporter, an editor, and a lawyer from the Associated Press. Citing attorney-client privilege, Davis said that he could not reveal the legal advice he gave Howard, but he described some of what happened in the meeting. Davis told me that Howard presented the A.P. with claims that cast doubt on Sajudin’s character, including the allegations on the anonymous Web site. “When Dylan told me he had these documents and he hoped he would kill the story, my opening statement was, ‘I am not here to kill any story. That’s not what I do for a living,’ ” Davis told me. “I encouraged my client, Mr. Howard, to reveal what he had about the source of the story.” Davis said he told the A.P., “It’s up to you to decide whether to write the story as a ‘he says, he says’ or not.” At the time, the A.P. did not run the story.

On Wednesday, thirty minutes after The New Yorker contacted A.M.I. for comment about the payment to Sajudin, Radar Online, an A.M.I. publication, posted a story acknowledging the thirty-thousand-dollar payment but saying that the former doorman’s story was false. The Radar Online piece quoted Howard saying, “When we realized we would be unable to publish, and other media outlets approached the source about his tale, we released Sajudin from the exclusivity clause that had accompanied his $30,000 payment, freeing him to tell his story to whomever he wanted.” Two A.M.I. employees told me that they’d never seen such a release during their time at the company. A.M.I. has said that Karen McDougal, the former Playboy model, has a similar amendment to her contract, but McDougal argues that the company continues to try to prevent her from talking to the press.

Early Thursday morning, shortly after the Radar Online piece, the A.P. ran a story describing the payment to Sajudin and the legal obstacles it encountered. “During AP’s reporting, AMI threatened legal action over reporters’ efforts to interview current and former employees and hired the New York law firm Boies Schiller Flexner, which challenged the accuracy of the AP’s reporting,” the story said.

On the surface, it seems surprising that A.M.I. would pay a substantial sum of money for an unverified story. The National Enquirer’s circulation numbers suggest that the payouts to Sajudin and McDougal came at a time of declining circulation for the publication. Two A.M.I. sources said they believed that the catch-and-kill operations had cemented a partnership between Pecker and Trump, and that people close to the President had subsequently introduced Pecker to potential sources of funding for A.M.I. One A.M.I. source told me, “Pecker’s not going to take thirty thousand dollars from company funds to shut down a potentially damaging story about his buddy without making sure it got back to him so he could get credit.” In 2017, the company began acquiring new publications, including Us Weekly and Men’s Journal. According to the Times, last July Pecker visited the Oval Office and dined at the White House with a French businessman known for brokering deals with Saudi Arabia. Two months later, the businessman and Pecker met with the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman.

McDougal is now suing A.M.I. Her complaint states that she was not aware that A.M.I. consulted with Cohen during her negotiations with the company, as was later reported by the Times, and argues that A.M.I. was attempting to “illegally influence the 2016 presidential election.” (A.M.I.’s lawyers, in a response, argued that the company’s actions were protected by the First Amendment and that it was being unfairly penalized for its editorial decision not to run a story.) Stephanie Clifford is suing Cohen for defamation and for a release from her nondisclosure agreement. Her suit alleges that Cohen’s payment was a violation of campaign-finance law, because it suppressed speech “on a matter of public concern about a candidate for President.” (Cohen has said that Clifford’s story is false and that he made the payment with his own money to protect Trump and his family. Trump has said that he did not know of the payment.)

A nonprofit watchdog organization and a left-leaning political group have filed formal complaints requesting that the Justice Department, the Office of Government Ethics, and the Federal Election Commission examine whether the payments to Clifford and McDougal violated federal election law, since Trump did not include them on his financial-disclosure forms. Federal election law bars individuals from making contributions of more than five thousand four hundred dollars to a candidate during an election cycle.

Richard L. Hasen, a professor of law and political science at the University of California, Irvine, said of the payment to Sajudin, “As with the payment to Stormy Daniels and the McDougal matter, there’s certainly enough smoke here to merit further investigation. However, there are questions of both fact and law that would be relevant before concluding that there’s a likely campaign-finance violation.” One question would be whether the intent was to help the campaign. The timing, months after Trump announced his Presidential candidacy, could be “good circumstantial evidence” of that. Hasen added that the cases involving A.M.I. raised difficult legal questions, because media companies have various exemptions from campaign-finance law. However, he said, “If a corporation that has a press function is being used for non-press purposes to help a candidate win an election, then the press exemption would not apply to that activity.”

Stephen Braga, a white-collar-criminal-defense professor at the University of Virginia’s law school, told me that the payment had potential ramifications for ongoing criminal probes of Trump, particularly given the claims of Cohen’s involvement. “Now with this third event it looks more and more like there’s a pattern developing. That may be one of the things that the F.B.I. was trying to find evidence of with the search warrant,” he said. “The pattern seems to be ‘We use third-party intermediaries to pay off individuals with adverse information that may harm the President.’ That is just a shade away from what the special counsel will be looking for in terms of intent on the obstruction-of-justice investigation.”

In 2011, a federal grand jury in North Carolina indicted the former Democratic Presidential candidate John Edwards for violating campaign-finance laws by “secretly obtaining and using” nearly a million dollars of political donations to conceal his mistress and their baby while he was running for President in the 2008 election. Edwards denied that the payments violated federal election law. A jury acquitted Edwards on one of the charges brought against him and deadlocked on the rest. Federal prosecutors dropped the case, but Edwards never returned to politics. Edwards’s affair, and the existence of his illegitimate child, were first reported by the National Enquirer.

https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-des ... ssion=true
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
User avatar
seemslikeadream
 
Posts: 32090
Joined: Wed Apr 27, 2005 11:28 pm
Location: into the black
Blog: View Blog (83)

Re: “The Storm”

Postby seemslikeadream » Sat Apr 14, 2018 7:35 pm

Michael Avenatti

David Schwartz (Mr. Trump's lawyer's lawyer) is missing. He has not been seen since his @megynkelly interview 2 weeks ago. I wonder if he is in the audio/docs that were seized from Mr. Cohen by the FBI? If you see him, please give him a hug (not to be confused with "thug") #basta
https://twitter.com/MichaelAvenatti?ref ... r%5Eauthor



The Other Woman in the Stormy Daniels-Trump Saga: ‘He Knows What He’s Done’

Alana Evans, an adult actress who says she was invited to join Trump and Daniels in a hotel-room romp, opens up about the extreme harassment she’s received since coming forward.

When The Wall Street Journal first reported on the $130,000 in hush money that President Donald Trump’s longtime lawyer, Michael Cohen, paid porn star Stormy Daniels, all parties involved maintained an air of deniability. At the time, Cohen even provided a letter allegedly signed by Daniels denying any “hush money” payment or any “sexual and/or romantic affair” with Trump. They weren’t counting on the other woman—the one Daniels and Trump invited over for that first encounter in Tahoe during the July 2006 American Century Championship gold tournament—to come forward.

Porn star Alana Evans, a close friend and Daniels’ then-neighbor, happened to be in Tahoe at the same time. Evans recounted exclusively to The Daily Beast the conversations she’d had with Daniels at the time, thus corroborating the Trump affair claim.

“Stormy calls me four or five times, by the last two phone calls she’s with Donald [Trump] and I can hear him, and he’s talking through the phone to me saying, ‘Oh come on Alana, let’s have some fun! Let’s have some fun! Come to the party, we’re waiting for you.’ And I was like, ‘OMG it’s Donald Trump!’” Evans previously recalled. “Men like him scare me because they have so much power and this was way before his presidential nomination. So I bailed on them and turned my phone off.” The next day Evans apologized for bailing, and asked Daniels how her night was. “She tells me, ‘All I’m going to say is: I ended up with Donald in his hotel room. Picture him chasing me around his hotel room in his tighty-whities.’”

As an AVN Hall of Famer with over a decade in the porn business, Evans is accustomed to being a public figure. But when the statements she made about Trump went viral, the type of notoriety she encountered was shocking—some might even say life-changing. With one interview, she became “the other woman,” and the one person who could confirm the affair because she hadn’t signed an NDA or been paid off.

In a new interview, Evans opens up to The Daily Beast about life now, the death threats she’s received, and the extreme lengths some Trump fans will go to harass her. She’s also trying to take advantage of the platform she has now to educate fellow performers, attempting to make the adult industry a safer, healthier place to work.

When your statements about Trump and Stormy were first published, how did people in the adult industry handle it?

At the time this all happened, I’d been fighting to get our testing procedures updated, and I wasn’t well-liked at that moment because I was the voice speaking out, taking on the system with my union team. I went to a party and people I’d known for decades gave me the cold shoulder and didn’t want to be seen talking to me.

“They’d pay ten dollars just to get my phone number, and then pay by the minute. They were calling just to harass me. They were also paying to text me!”

— Alana Evans

What about now, is that still happening?

It’s funny to me how all the media attention has made me likable again by performers who, only months before, acted like they didn’t like me—pretending to be my best friends again because they’re watching me on the news.

Has this kind of exposure had any other negative impacts?

I get death threats, threats about people coming to get me, emails that say I’ll be shown what happens to whores like me, and messages that I’m going to die. It’s amazing when you see someone’s profile on Twitter touting them as a Christian mom with children, who works in a library and pro Trump…and then they call me a piece of shit traitor whore whose mother should be ashamed of me. That’s common, and one of the nicer ones.

That has to be difficult, even knowing they’re trolls. How are you handling it?

Most of the time I can take it but some days are harder than others. I saw an ex member of the union engaging in conversations with my trolls because they enjoyed what the trolls were doing…that was brutal. I took pictures of it, because it was so awful. That brought me to tears. You really learn how nasty people are.

Have you had any other experiences like that from people you’ve worked with?

I had one performer call me tacky for talking about Stormy’s business. Another performer told me all I did was turn down a lucrative private and I needed to shut my mouth. That was rough. I couldn’t believe this was coming from women in the industry.

Has this new level of notoriety impacted your business at all?

When the story first broke I started getting calls from weird user names—it was from my SextPanther page, which is the only site I use for texting and phone call services. They’d pay ten dollars just to get my phone number, and then pay by the minute. They were calling just to harass me. They were also paying to text me!



What was the strangest experience you’ve had with people paying to contact you this way?

I had one guy who wanted me to role-play, and he asked me to make up the details about what happened between Stormy and Trump. At that point I was thinking it was some sort of setup…I’m exclusive with Cams.com and I have people come into my chat room just to talk to me about it. More often than not I hear from my fans that they were at home watching the news with their family or friends and when my face popped up on MSNBC or CNN, they’d say, “Oh I know her,” without thinking about it and then have to explain.

So has this been financially beneficial in some ways?

I’ve gained more Twitter followers but I’m not really seeing much of a financial gain. It’s not what people think—I don’t get paid for any of the TV interviews. I’m not doing appearances or feature dancing because I just don’t feel safe. I am so thankful to have a job with Cams.com so I don’t have to leave my house. I couldn’t feel safe.

How else has this impacted your life? Are you taking other precautions now?

It’s changed how I deal with my life on social media. I don’t tweet about where I’m going. Sure, the death threats suck but I’m also thankful it is so public, so now any ideas about making us disappear isn’t going to happen. That’d be noticed.

Have there been any upsides to reaching a larger audience?

I’m using my new platform to get the message out about August Ames and what led to her suicide. I’m also using it to educate performers about industry testing, and now there’s an entire new group of people getting involved in these causes. It’s brought me an audience of performers—of women who may not have been noticed before, and now I can help be a voice for them.

How do you think this has changed the public perception of the adult industry?

There were a lot of deaths in our industry right around the time this was happening and the media was painting a picture of the problems in our industry. Let’s be real: we have these same mental health and addiction problems in society, and the industry is a reflection of that. That was the focus then but there’s been a shift. Now there’s this perception that porn stars could save the country from this presidency by speaking the truth.

Have you noticed any changes in how people seem to view women in the adult business?

It’s shifted how people are thinking about women in the industry. I get so many comments from people who say I am well spoken and intelligent, and they seem surprised. They see me as a person and I don’t think we are always viewed in that light.

Do you think people are rooting for Stormy?

People want Stormy to win. As far as they’re concerned, she’s the underdog. She represents so many women that have been mistreated or bullied and harassed by this particular person, so this is giving justice to many of those women.

Are you surprised to see how this story has blown up?

Back then, it was just a funny story; it wasn’t a big deal. Obviously. Stormy was telling people, Seth Rogen even knew about it. Now it may change the status of things happening in our country, and that’s overwhelming…

What are your thoughts on how Trump has handled it?

Lying and doing everything he could to cover it up made it a big deal—that’s what created this monster. I hope men in that position think about this. Trying to buy your way out of it will do nothing but cause trouble. He knows what he’s done and the women he’s paid but the funny thing is so do lots of other people.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-other ... itter_page
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
User avatar
seemslikeadream
 
Posts: 32090
Joined: Wed Apr 27, 2005 11:28 pm
Location: into the black
Blog: View Blog (83)

Re: “The Storm”

Postby seemslikeadream » Tue Apr 17, 2018 11:31 am

But he did an interview with Julian Assange in January 2017 that helped seed the narrative that Russia didn’t hand the DNC files to Wikileaks. More grotesquely, Hannity fed the conspiracy theories about Seth Rich (I hope the multiple entities that are suing Hannity over that will demand discovery on any claimed privileged conversations about the topic with Trump’s lawyer).




IT’S NOT HANNITY’S PEE TAPE THAT MATTERS


April 17, 2018/42 Comments/in 2016 Presidential Election, Mueller Probe, WikiLeaks /by emptywheel

Image

Late afternoon on Sunday, Margaret Sullivan wrote a column arguing that Donald Trump might survive his own Saturday Night Massacre of firing Rod Rosenstein or Robert Mueller. The reason Trump might survive where Nixon didn’t, she argues, is Sean Hannity.

Nixon didn’t have Fox News in his corner.

President Trump does — and that might make all the difference if he were to fire Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein or even special counsel Robert S. Mueller III.

The pro-Trump media, led by Fox, would give cover, and huge swaths of Americans would be encouraged to believe that the action was not only justified but absolutely necessary.

You can see it coming.

Night after night — for many months — Trump’s sycophant-in-chief, Sean Hannity, has been softening the ground. And his message is sinking in.

In a recent Reuters/Ipsos poll, three of four Republicans said they believed the Justice Department and the FBI are actively working to undermine Trump.

“Hannity has been poisoning the well for Mueller’s ‘deeply corrupt’ investigation and laying the groundwork to support the president if he seeks an authoritarian recourse,” wrote Matthew Gertz, of the progressive watchdog group Media Matters for America. That was back in October.

Six months, five convictions and more than a dozen indictments later, that poison has done its job.


Less than 24 hours later, Michael Cohen’s lawyer revealed the name of the third client to whom Cohen claimed to have provided legal advice he wanted to protect under attorney-client privilege, a person who — Cohen had claimed in a brief Sunday, hadn’t wanted his name disclosed. “The client’s name that is involved is Sean Hannity.

In response to the ensuing uproar over learning he was the hidden Client 3, Hannity offered a series of contradictory statements, presumably designed to tamp down any speculation that Cohen had negotiated a hush payment for the star, but which only served to make Cohen’s legal claims more specious.

Michael Cohen has never represented me in any matter. I never retained him, received an invoice, or paid legal fees. I have occasionally had brief discussions with him about legal questions about which I wanted his input and perspective.

I assumed those conversations were confidential, but to be absolutely clear they never involved any matter between me and a third-party.

In response to some wild speculation, let me make clear that I did not ask Michael Cohen to bring this proceeding on my behalf, I have no personal interest in this proceeding, and, in fact, asked that my de minimis discussions with Michael Cohen, which dealt almost exclusively about real estate, not be made a part of this proceeding.

As I joked, Hannity said he had eight lawyers. I wonder which three different lawyers wrote these statements, and whether one of them was the other lawyer he shares with Donald Trump, Jay Sekulow.

So Cohen advised Hannity “almost exclusively about real estate,” which in this crowd sometimes means money laundering, and not about buying off Playboy bunnies.

But what are the other conversations about?

Hannity has played even more of a role in protecting Trump than Sullivan makes out. It’s not just that he fed the uproar over Trump’s lawyer being raided. But he did an interview with Julian Assange in January 2017 that helped seed the narrative that Russia didn’t hand the DNC files to Wikileaks. More grotesquely, Hannity fed the conspiracy theories about Seth Rich (I hope the multiple entities that are suing Hannity over that will demand discovery on any claimed privileged conversations about the topic with Trump’s lawyer).

Sure, the matters on which Cohen purportedly gave legal advice to Hannity might be about buying a condo.

But given the effort Cohen made to protect those conversations from the eyes of the FBI, they also might involve coordination on some of the more insidious pushback on the Russian story.
https://www.emptywheel.net/2018/04/17/i ... t-matters/
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
User avatar
seemslikeadream
 
Posts: 32090
Joined: Wed Apr 27, 2005 11:28 pm
Location: into the black
Blog: View Blog (83)

Re: “The Storm”

Postby American Dream » Tue Apr 17, 2018 12:36 pm

Not very smart:


Liz Crokin: The Shooting At Comet Ping Pong Was A Deep State ‘False Flag’

By Kyle Mantyla | April 17, 2018 11:15 am

In late 2016, a man walked into a Washington pizza restaurant carrying a loaded assault rifle and a handgun and fired off several shots after being convinced by the right-wing conspiracy theory known as “Pizzagate” that the restaurant, Comet Ping Pong, was a front for a massive pedophile ring operated by high-ranking Democratic politicians.

Last night, ardent Pizzagate promoter and radical right-wing conspiracy theorist Liz Crokin appeared on “The Pete Santilli Show,” where she asserted that this incident was nothing more than a deep-state “false flag” meant to discredit those who are trying to spread the truth about the existence of a global pedophile ring that murders and eats children.

Crokin told Santilli, who is himself an extremist right-wing radio host who once declared that he wanted to shoot Hillary Clinton “right in the vagina,” that the real goal of this attack was to destroy a computer server that could have proven that Pizzagate is real.

“That was a false flag,” Crokin said. “What the deep state did is they created a false flag even that tried to make people like me and anyone researching Pizzagate look hysterical and they said that anyone that is saying that Pizzagate is real, they’re responsible for this gunman coming to the pizza parlor and trying to hurt people.”

“The gunman went to Comet Ping Pong and conveniently didn’t hurt anyone,” she added, “but the gunman shot up the computer server, conveniently where allegedly there was graphic content on this computer server that may indeed prove that child trafficking went on at this restaurant.”


http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/liz- ... alse-flag/
American Dream
 
Posts: 19946
Joined: Sat Sep 15, 2007 4:56 pm
Location: Planet Earth
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: “The Storm”

Postby seemslikeadream » Tue Apr 17, 2018 12:46 pm

Michael Avenatti

$100,000 reward for information leading to the positive identification of the man that threatened Ms. Clifford in Las Vegas. Send all leads to idthethug@gmail.com.

Image
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
User avatar
seemslikeadream
 
Posts: 32090
Joined: Wed Apr 27, 2005 11:28 pm
Location: into the black
Blog: View Blog (83)

Re: “The Storm”

Postby elfismiles » Tue Apr 17, 2018 12:48 pm

ugh ... exopolitics crowder Salla is apparently onboard with the Qanon crapola ...

Bombshell QAnon Posts Link Clintons & CIA to JFK Jr Plane Crash
Written by Dr Michael Salla on April 10, 2018
https://www.exopolitics.org/bombshell-q ... ane-crash/
User avatar
elfismiles
 
Posts: 8511
Joined: Fri Aug 11, 2006 6:46 pm
Blog: View Blog (4)

Re: “The Storm”

Postby BenDhyan » Tue Apr 17, 2018 8:19 pm

seemslikeadream » Wed Apr 18, 2018 2:46 am wrote:
Michael Avenatti

$100,000 reward for information leading to the positive identification of the man that threatened Ms. Clifford in Las Vegas. Send all leads to idthethug@gmail.com.
Image


Image

Image

There appears to be a some resemblance to her husband/boyfriend?
Ben D
User avatar
BenDhyan
 
Posts: 867
Joined: Wed Apr 12, 2017 8:11 pm
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: “The Storm”

Postby seemslikeadream » Tue Apr 17, 2018 8:28 pm

^^^^^ :roll:


Matthew Calamari Jr, trump Organization Director of Security?

Image
Image
Image

Not sure he's old enough. BUT, his daddy works for Trump too
Image
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
User avatar
seemslikeadream
 
Posts: 32090
Joined: Wed Apr 27, 2005 11:28 pm
Location: into the black
Blog: View Blog (83)

Re: “The Storm”

Postby seemslikeadream » Tue Apr 17, 2018 9:19 pm

Image


Polly Sigh


Talk about a loyalty pledge. Trump to longtime Trump Org security & surveillance chief, Matthew Calamari: “Would you kill for me, Matty?”
Calamari: “Yes, sir, Mr. Trump!”
Trump to journo: “See. Matty would kill for me.”

Image

Image


Inside Donald Trump’s Surveillance Operations

Sources: Trump’s little-known home near Washington, DC, has security cameras inside and outside, monitored from New York, according to insiders. Politicians have stayed there for “safe haven.” Ubiquitous surveillance equipment is also threaded throughout his Trump National Golf Club.

Aram RostonOctober 1, 2016, at 9:02 a.m.


The suburban house on Water Mark Place in Sterling, Virginia, doesn't look like a Donald Trump residence: no classical columns, no gold accents. But sources say it has one feature, common to many Trump properties, which opens a window onto the candidate’s worldview: an extensive and closely-monitored surveillance system.

The interior is monitored by multiple surveillance cameras, according to three former Trump employees familiar with the house. The video is watched remotely by Trump’s security team 250 miles away in New York City, the sources said.

Trump’s adjacent golf club, the Trump National Golf Club, also has an extensive web of surveillance cameras, these former employees said. The technology includes a license plate reader to record who comes and goes from the club, two of the sources said.

The extent of the video surveillance is far beyond what is routine for a golf club, said the three former employees, all of whom are familiar with the industry. Two of them said that the cameras were monitored intently, almost invasively. Workers, they said, would occasionally get called by security in New York if they were in an unexpected place.

The elaborate surveillance arrangement is consistent with a pattern: BuzzFeed News previously reported that in his bedroom at his Mar-a-Lago estate, Trump had a switchboard that allowed him to eavesdrop on any landline there, according to people who worked at the estate. Unlike at Mar-a-Lago, there is no allegation of phone eavesdropping capabilities at Trump’s golf operations near the nation’s capital.

Image
Matthew Calamari (right) with Donald Trump Jr.

Overseeing Trump’s surveillance operations is Matthew Calamari, a powerful behind-the scenes figure who has been in Trump’s world for 35 years. Calamari reportedly came to Trump’s attention when he tackled hecklers at a tennis match. According to one Trump biography, the large and imposing Calamari, a former college linebacker, said he would be willing to kill for his boss.

Trump is seeking the presidency when surveillance — and concern about it — is more pervasive in American life than ever before. Just this month, the Oliver Stone film Snowden opened, depicting Edward Snowden’s revelations of how the NSA collects huge amounts of data on all Americans, and FBI director James Comey said it would be “sensible” for most people to cover their laptop cameras. Meanwhile, the FBI and other federal agencies are filming Americans from the skies, and surveillance cameras have become ubiquitous in airports, stores, and many city streets. In workplaces, employers track more and more of their employees’ activities, and web cameras are increasingly common in people’s homes.

Calamari reportedly came to Trump’s attention when he tackled hecklers at a tennis match.
As a candidate, Trump has called for surveillance of mosques and has supported reauthorizing the Patriot Act, including the NSA’s bulk collection of data on telephone calls, emails, and other digital communication. "I tend to err on the side of security,” he told radio host Hugh Hewitt in June.

Asked about surveillance at Trump’s Virginia home and adjacent golf club, a Trump Organization spokesperson said in an emailed statement, “We do not comment on the specific security procedures that are put in place at our properties. That said, there are numerous inaccuracies outlined in your ‘findings’ and your allegations of surveillance are simply untrue.”

The spokesperson declined a request to specify what was inaccurate or untrue, and to answer questions about other aspects of this story, such as Calamari’s role. A spokeswoman for the campaign declined to comment on any aspect of this story, saying the response from the Trump Organization was “perfectly adequate.”

When BuzzFeed News previously revealed that Trump had a switchboard in his Mar-a-Lago bedroom and that sources said he used it to listen in on conversations, a Trump spokeswoman denied it.

This story is based mainly on five sources: four former employees of the golf resort, and one person close to the campaign. All but one said they plan to vote for Trump. The former employees spoke on condition of anonymity because, like virtually all Trump employees, they had signed sweeping nondisclosure agreements. The person close to the campaign said he isn’t authorized to speak to the press.

Politicians believed Trump’s home was “a safe place to go.”
On some occasions, Trump’s home in Virginia has also been used by special guests, two sources said. There were “politicians that would stay there,” said one former club worker, who claimed to have seen them. This person recalled Trump saying, “Anything they need, make sure they have.” Sometimes, this person said, the guests “would come there for a safe haven.”

“People stay there,” said the source familiar with the Trump campaign. Politicians, he said, believed it was “a safe place to go.” This source emphasized that no one except Trump ever stayed in Trump’s actual bedrooms.

A third source, who used to work at the golf club, said he was unaware of politicians staying there but said other members of Trump’s family and some officials of the Trump Organization did. Two other sources said they were unaware of anyone except Trump staying in his private residence in recent years.

Trump’s house has a two-car garage, a bit of lawn, and a myrtle tree planted amid some hedges. From the exterior, the place looks like the home of a retired orthodontist rather than that of a billionaire real estate tycoon and presidential candidate.

Still, records confirm that Donald Trump purchased it in 2009, through a company called Trump Marks Asia, LLC. Trump uses this little-known and subdued private residence very rarely, sources say, just a few times a year when he visits his golf course. There’s one entrance from the public street, and a separate entrance from the fairway attached to the Trump National Golf Club.

From the exterior, Trump’s house looks like the home of a retired orthodontist.
In addition to his home, Trump’s club has another private residence, a row house, available for club guests or members to rent. Like Trump’s personal home, it is accessible from two entrances, either the golf club greens or the street. This home is sometimes rented to members or guests who need overnight stays.

Trump’s home, according to three former employees, is equipped with multiple cameras throughout. One of the sources said that the cameras covered the entire home, including hallways, with the exception of bedrooms and bathrooms.

Another source confirmed this. “At his home, there were exterior and interior views,” the former club official said. Another former employee who said he has been to the house repeatedly said that “from what I understand there were cameras everywhere.”

Three sources said the cameras in Trump’s home are constantly monitored by Trump Organization security officials back in New York City, rather than by security at the next-door club. The sources said the Trump video cameras operate on a web-based system, and each camera feed is assigned a different IP address.

To watch the video feed, said one former club employee, “All you need was an IP address.”

Three former employees said that they believe the extensive surveillance system inside Trump’s home was installed out of concerns for Trump’s safety.

As for surveillance at the golf club near Washington, it is also extensive. Trump first bought the Virginia golf club in 2009, when it was called Lowes Island Golf Club, and quickly made dramatic changes to the grounds and the surroundings. As he redid the grounds, for example, his workers cut down hundreds of trees that had interfered with the view of the river. “[N]ow we have unobstructed views of the Potomac River,” he later told the Washington Post.

Another change was an extensive upgrading of surveillance equipment and an increase in cameras on the property. “When he first took over, there weren’t many,” said one longtime former worker. “Now there are.” This person said the rationale for the cameras at the club was theft. “The club was losing money. There was theft. Liquor. Things were stolen from the service carts.” This person said, “There are cameras everywhere, now.”

In fact, this former Trump employee said, the club installed license tag readers so Trump security personnel would know which cars were coming and going.

He said the surveillance features are far more elaborate than other golf clubs he’s familiar with. “Trump security can look up any camera,” the former employee said. “They have a strong monitoring system.” If workers are in a spot where they are not supposed to be, this person said, the office in New York would call: “They will call and say, ‘What are you doing there?’”

Another former club official said that did indeed occur.

Security and surveillance at the Trump Organization is a family affair. For years, Trump’s head of security has been Matthew Calamari. Some described the beefy Calamari as daunting and even intimidating, while others said he is an efficient and quiet professional. Soon after he took down two men disrupting a tennis game at the US Open, he began working as the mogul’s bodyguard.

In Lost Tycoon, the 1993 biography of Trump, author Harry Hurt III describes a scene where Trump calls to Calamari from the back of his limousine, playfully testing his loyalty.

“You’d do anything for me, wouldn’t you, Matty?” Donald called out from the rear of the limousine.

“Yes, sir, Mr. Trump,” Calamari assured him.

“Anything at all?”

“Yes, sir, Mr. Trump.”

“Would you kill for me, Matty?” Donald pressed.

“Yes, sir.”

“Would you kill for me, Matty?” Donald repeated, as if he were a cheerleader inciting a crowd to riot.

“Yes, sir, Mr. Trump!”

“Would you kill for me, Matty?” Donald said again in an even louder voice.

“Yes, sir, Mr. Trump!”

“See.” Donald grinned, turning back toward Fitzsimmons. “Matty would kill for me.”

Calamari is now listed as the executive vice president and chief operating officer of the Trump Organization, though numerous sources said his duties chiefly involve security. Though he works for the Trump business, he was briefly paid by the Trump presidential campaign, according to Federal Election Commission reports, which say he received $4,322.15 in July, as well as expense reimbursements in March.

Calamari’s son, Matt Calamari Jr., also works for the Trump Organization. “He picked up the security business from his dad,” explained one former security official at the Trump Organization, who said the younger Calamari is remarkably good at the technical end of security, in spite of his young age.

Public records indicate that he is 23 years old. Calamari Jr. lists his title on LinkedIn as the Trump Organization’s “Director of Surveillance.”

Indeed, four sources said the younger Calamari seems to be the expert in surveillance technology and supervises these operations for Trump at all his properties. “His son handles surveillance,” said a former Trump official at the golf club.

Neither of the Calamaris responded to requests for comment.

One major surveillance equipment contractor for the Trump Organization is AISG — American Integrated Security Group — which has touted its work on a separate Trump golf course, the Trump National Doral course in Florida. In a four-page case study it posted online, AISG writes that it dealt with both Matt Calamari Sr. and Jr.

The company also describes 360-degree “low profile cameras that look like smoke detectors” and an internet server system for storing and monitoring video. It says the “first phase” of its contract involved installing over 100 cameras, and it continued later with even more video surveillance.

The case study quotes Trump officials praising the cameras for allowing high-quality zooms on people’s faces, and for license plate recognition.

Officials at the security company said the Calamaris wanted to make sure that they had the very best and that they could thoroughly monitor employees at the golf course.

It is unclear which contractor installed the cameras at Trump’s Virginia home and the golf club it is attached to.

While Trump’s visits to his home occur just a few times a year, the staff of the golf club are expected to always keep the fridge stocked, everything immaculate, and the temperature in the house just right.

These details are no laughing matter. When Trump showed up one June, according to three sources, the air conditioning unit was off and the heat was on, making the home uncomfortably warm. Trump fired the club’s general manager.
https://www.buzzfeed.com/aramroston/don ... .afNKYgAno
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
User avatar
seemslikeadream
 
Posts: 32090
Joined: Wed Apr 27, 2005 11:28 pm
Location: into the black
Blog: View Blog (83)

PreviousNext

Return to General Discussion

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 52 guests