Steve Bannon Indicted

[Hank Kingsley 21785]

The GOP and Trump administration is basically a Ponzi scheme that asks its constituents to throw away their money, morals, and values in exchange for...absolutely nothing. 

Not sure how we every socially recover from this. It's gonna take self-reflection and I don't think most people have it in them. 

 

[Chooky 13340]

Part of Bannon's defense will be that he's unsafe in typical incarceration on account of having so many open, wet sores.

[BrickHorn 18447]

Meanwhile, in a postal interrogation room...

[RDCanecutter 26894]

3 hours ago, 406W30th said:

I'm not sure I could've come up with a better list of people I want to see thrown in the clink. That's just *chef's kiss*.

 

Crom, I have never prayed to you:

Please have list include Tommy Tuberville

If not, then to hell with you.

[Guest Lobo]

6 minutes ago, Chooky said:

Part of Bannon's defense will be that he's unsafe in typical incarceration on account of having so many open, wet sores.

When you took my cigar, how did you know my leprosy was dry and not the wet kind?  

[WhatTheBuck 28930]

5 minutes ago, BrickHorn said:

Meanwhile, in a postal interrogation room...

I'm quite comfortable. 

[Chooky 13340]

 

 

[wildcat09 29579]

3 minutes ago, Chooky said:

 

 

When you take to sea to avoid getting arrested but have to stay in range of a cell tower because you can't log off.

[Todd Gack 448]

4 minutes ago, Chooky said:

 

 

Looks like a fatter Rosie O'Donnell.

[Jiggy-Z 3509]

20 minutes ago, Degenerate Gardner said:

 

 

 

Looks like the Disco Volante.  They really are Bond villains.

[Al Czervik 1261]

15 minutes ago, Chooky said:

Part of Bannon's defense will be that he's unsafe in typical incarceration on account of having so many open, wet sores.

<Red, from Pineapple Express>

[Goredho 17657]

42 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

Ironic, isn't it?

The one man who would be thrilled to be sentenced to life in an institution where regular buttsex is the order of the day, and he can't even get arrested.  Ain't life a bitch?

We all have our cross to bear.

[Jiggy-Z 3509]

5 minutes ago, Goredho said:

We all have our cross to bear.

[SydneyCarton 49505]

38 minutes ago, Degenerate Gardner said:

 

 

 

Someone explain to me the logic behind some paparazzi staking out a yacht with Bannon on it in the first place. Guy hoping for newdz?

[Judge Roybeanbag 11860]

22 minutes ago, Chooky said:

 

 

Keel hauling a sack of morals in pretty on brand.

[SizzleChest 8314]

1 hour ago, Nice Guy Eddie said:

Guo and Bannon launched a new Chinese govt in exile 2 months ago. Seems fitting they would be on a yacht that looks like it's meant for a Bond villain.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_Federal_State_of_China

The Chinese guy fled the CCP after he was accused of fraud.  His nom de guerre is Miles Kwok.  He was part of a Bannon doc called The Brink.

When I saw him in The Brink, this is who I instantly thought of:

 

[BrickHorn 18447]

I wonder if the Chinese know that Steve Bannon, an exiled billionaire, and a soccer player and his badminton “star” wife are running their country from a yacht in Connecticut.

[SizzleChest 8314]

https://www.propublica.org/article/steve-bannon-guo-wengui-private-jet-campaign-finance-law

Quote

Steve Bannon’s Use of Private Jet Linked to Chinese Businessman Could Violate Campaign Finance Law

The former Trump adviser used a plane apparently owned by businessman Guo Wengui. Americans are barred from receiving services for campaigns donated by foreign nationals.

by Justin Elliott

 Feb. 26, 5 a.m. EST

• 

Steve Bannon greeting Guo Wengui at a news conference in November 2018. (Don Emmert/AFP via Getty Images)

Former Donald Trump campaign CEO and chief strategist Steve Bannon used a private jet apparently owned by a wealthy Chinese businessman to fly to events to promote Republican congressional candidates in 2018.

The previously unreported flights could run afoul of a campaign finance lawthat bars foreign money from U.S. elections, according to campaign finance experts, though it depends on several factors that are not known. One of the unknowns is whether Bannon paid Guo Wengui — the Chinese businessman, who is a vocal critic of the Chinese regime, and with whom he has other reported financial ties — for the use of the jet.

Bannon flew on the jet, a Bombardier Global Express that can seat up to 13 people, to 2018 events supporting Republican candidates in New Mexico and Arizona. He also flew on it to Mexico City and New York, and possibly to other cities. The flights were confirmed by footage taken for “The Brink,” a 2019 documentary about Bannon, and by videos of Guo on the plane, interviews and FAA flight records obtained through the Freedom of Information Act.

“The foreign-national prohibition is the broadest prohibition in the Federal Election Campaign Act,” said Brett Kappel, a government affairs partner at the Akerman law firm, speaking generally. “It prohibits foreign nationals from making any contribution or donation in connection with any election in the United States. It also precludes foreign nationals from making in-kind contributions, such as paying for campaign-related travel.”

The same law also prohibits receiving such a donation. Bannon’s one-way trip from New York to New Mexico alone would be worth around $35,000, according to public jet charter rates.

Lawyers for Bannon and Guo (who is also known as Miles Kwok) did not dispute that Bannon used the Chinese businessman’s plane for trips. But Cleta Mitchell, an attorney representing Bannon’s nonprofit, Citizens of the American Republic, wrote in an email, “The meetings and rallies hosted by COAR in 2018 were to promote the film, Trump@War, and to encourage Trump supporters to vote in 2018. These were not candidate or campaign rallies.” Guo’s attorney said in a statement that “Mr. Guo has not participated in or supported, directly or indirectly, any political activity or party in the United States or elsewhere. To the contrary, Mr. Guo has consistently emphasized that he has no desire to participate in politics anywhere.”

Nothing about the trips appears to have been disclosed to the Federal Election Commission, either by Bannon or the congressional candidates he traveled to support.

Guo told Vice in 2017 that he owns two private jets. Han Lianchao, a Guo associate, told ProPublica, “I know he allowed Steve to use his private jet from time to time.” Han said he did not know the specifics of their arrangement. A Bannon aide also told Alison Klayman, the filmmaker who made “The Brink” and flew on the jet, that it belonged to Guo, Klayman told ProPublica.

In one scene in the film, Bannon is shown on the plane praising Guo’s analysis of Chinese politics while on a flight from New York to Dallas in October 2018.

 

A still from "The Brink," top, shows Bannon on a jet that closely resembles one in which Guo is seen on his YouTube channel, bottom.

Official records don’t identify the ultimate owner of the jet, which bears the tail number T7-GQM. The jet is registered in the tiny Republic of San Marinoto Whitecroft Shore Limited. That, in turn, is incorporated in the British Virgin Islands, an offshore dominion known for secrecy. There are multiple videos online of Guo that appear to be taken on the plane that match independent photos of the interior and exterior of the jet with the same tail number. Other articles link the jet to Guo.

Bannon left the Trump White House in the summer of 2017 and has spent the past couple of years jetting around the country and the globe to promote right-wing causes, candidates and his own brand. It is a continuing mystery who is supporting his efforts. His use of the Guo plane helps fill out the picture.

The unlikely relationship between Bannon and Guo is one of the defining features of Bannon’s post-White House career. It continues through the present, with Bannon and Guo frequently appearing together on Bannon’s podcast and Guo’s news site commenting on Trump, China and the coronavirus, among other topics.

Guo, who has described himself as a successful real estate developer and investor, left China for the U.S. in 2015 and is reportedly seeking asylum. He is a critic of Chinese leaders, churning out a stream of online videos commenting on the news of the day, from the coronavirus to his “crusade against communism.” The Chinese government has, in turn, sought Guo’s arrest on corruption allegations, which he has denied. Guo frequentlyappears in videos with Bannon, who has predicted a war between the U.S. and China and says he is currently producing a “takedown” film about Chinese President Xi Jinping.

The New York Times recently reported that Bannon’s relationship with Guo began with a $150,000 loan to Bannon shortly after his 2017 departure from the Trump administration. Axios reported that a company linked to Guo had contracted with Bannon for at least $1 million for “strategic consulting services,” beginning in August 2018. (A Guo spokesman told Axios that the contract was for media investment and other consulting, and that Guo “had no involvement in [Bannon] being retained.”)

In fall 2018, Bannon and his dark money organization, Citizens of the American Republic, were pushing to keep Republican control of Congress during the midterm elections. A Bannon aide told ABC at the time that the group had an election war room focused on “explaining that a vote for any House Republican is a vote to stop the Democrats.”

Bannon made the trips to promote GOP candidates on the Bombardier jet in October 2018, under the aegis of Citizens of the American Republic. (The organization raised a total of $4.5 million in 2018 from a handful of donors, according to its filing with the IRS. But as a “social welfare” nonprofit organized under section 501(c)4 of the Internal Revenue Code, it is not required to reveal its donors.)

One of the trips was to Arizona in support of congressional candidate Wendy Rogers. Bannon told the Arizona Daily Star at the time: “If she can beat [Rep. Tom] O’Halleran, we’ll hold the House. We’ll hold the House by one or two seats. And that’s why it’s so important, and that’s why I wanted to come down here.”

Rogers, who ultimately lost the race, didn’t respond to requests for comment.

The trip to Roswell, New Mexico, featured U.S. Senate candidate Mick Rich and a screening of Bannon’s film “Trump@War.” According to video from the Roswell event viewed by ProPublica, Bannon and Rich strategized about the campaign before Bannon’s public remarks. “Tell me about this race,” Bannon said in the video. “How are we going to win this thing? I’ll come back here as many times as — ” Rich interjected: “Getting you out here is number one.” Rich also asked if Bannon could get President Trump to tweet about the race, and Bannon said he would try.

During the public event, Rich introduced Bannon, who in turn praised the Senate candidate as a “real populist.” Bannon urged the audience members to vote for pro-Trump candidates.

Rich lost the 2018 race and is running again this year. A spokesman told ProPublica in a statement that “Mick and his campaign had no knowledge of Bannon’s transportation to or from the event. Mick and his campaign had no coordination of any kind with Steve Bannon or any Steve Bannon group before, during, or after this event.”

Craig Holman, a campaign finance expert at Public Citizen, said that the New Mexico event “could well implicate Chinese billionaire Guo Wengui for violating the law that prohibits foreign nationals from paying for campaign activities,” if the Federal Election Commission deemed the event to be an “independent expenditure” by Bannon’s group, or a Rich campaign event.

The FEC doesn’t currently have a quorum and it, along with the IRS, have historically done little to scrutinize political nonprofits like Bannon’s.

Apart from the use of the jet, there’s also the question of whether the event would run afoul of the rules barring an outside group like Bannon’s from coordinating with the candidate, Rich.

Adav Noti of the Campaign Legal Center said political nonprofits are operating in a grey area because of the FEC’s failure to outline rules for what sort of contact they are permitted to have with a candidate. “To any rational person that looks at this, of course it’s a campaign event. But it might be allowed, which is the scandal.”

In a March 2018 filing in an unrelated lawsuit, an attorney for Guo noted the prohibition on Guo making expenditures in connection with U.S. elections. He wrote that “Because Plaintiff Guo is a foreign national, he is prohibited, by 52 U.S.C. 30121, from making any contributions, monetary donations or expenditures in connection with any federal, state or local election in the United States.”

 

[Ghost of LL 15698]

This just further demonstrates the need for criminal-justice reform in this country.  An admirable act like scamming stupid racists out of their money shouldn't be criminal.

[RDCanecutter 26894]

2 hours ago, Chooky said:

I would but it'd end up in a victimization conversation about the deep state, what about ..., blah blah blah.  Accountability and the acknowledgement of reality isn't a thing with these people.  This is a man who never stops complaining about how hard it is to be a white male in America.

It probably is hard to be a white male in America if you are also a gullible dumbass. In fact, I'd say being a gullible dumbass is 99% of the problem.

Oh, and @FondrenRoad, my televangelist uses that private jet to airdrop food packets and bibles to the orphan children stranded inside the Hollow Earth. Something you'll never hear about from the mainstream "Solid" Earth charlatan media.

[Bama Chick 28596]

[Brisketexan 106902]

1 minute ago, Bama Chick said:

 

Based on his track record, anything that connects the name "Curt Schilling" with the words "investment" or "fundraising" is probably something you should run from at Usain Bolt-type speed.

[Nice Guy Eddie 13732]

It must be mind-blowing for some Trumpkins to wrap their head around the fact that this is Trump's DOJ and his appointees that are leading this effort to arrest Trump's people. I imagine Trump is the most confused since he consider the DOJ as his personal lawyers.

Kobach, Clarke, Prince, etc. must be burning up the phone lines with their lawyers today. When everyone around you starts to get arrested, I assume its worrying.

Edited August 20, 2020 by Nice Guy Eddie

[triplehorn 2664]

all of it, not just the tip ? what else do the feds know lol.

[RDCanecutter 26894]

2 hours ago, Nivek said:

Maybe with defund the police catching on, we can just shift that responsibility to the Post Office.  

They already have a mail truck driving through the neighborhood every day. Just attach an old-timey zoo trailer to the back, with local arrested miscreants paraded through the route until they're dropped off into the Criminal Sorter back at the main office.

[Hank Kingsley 21785]

7 minutes ago, Bama Chick said:

 

[Nice Guy Eddie 13732]

5 minutes ago, triplehorn said:

all of it, not just the tip ? what else do the feds know lol.

Trump has been able to help his lackeys by claiming they their crimes were a hoax. This seems to be theft of millions of dollars. Makes it tougher for Trump to pardon them, not that he wouldn't consider it.

[Red Five 41739]

10 minutes ago, Bama Chick said:

 

[SydneyCarton 49505]

Am I the only person excited about the prospect of getting Curt Schilling in front of a microphone and reporters?

[The Royal We 3100]

Schilling got pinched too!?  Oh man, this day just keeps getting better.  I'm going to break out my rosary beads in hopes that Prince and Kobach are on deck.  The grifting Sheriff would be a nice quail egg on top of this turd burger. 

[DaysOff 8210]

Schilling lost the bulk of his baseball earnings in some shitty production company; now he lost his freedoms. If some NY Yankees can get arrested, today would be fabulous.

[triplehorn 2664]

"A media company linked to former Trump political adviser Steve Bannon and exiled Chinese businessman Guo Wengui raised more than $300 million in a private offering this spring that is now being investigated by federal and state authorities, say people familiar with the matter.

JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Wells Fargo & Co. have frozen accounts tied to fundraising for the company, GTV Media Group, some of these people said. Bank of America Corp. also closed an account for GTV Media’s parent company shortly after it was opened in recent months, another person with knowledge of the situation said.

The federal probe is being conducted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Securities and Exchange Commission, people familiar with the investigation said. The investigators have been examining whether GTV Media or associates of Mr. Guo violated securities laws through the private share placement. The New York state attorney general’s office has also been examining the matter, these people said."

per WSJ

[Pescado_Rojo 19587]

3 minutes ago, The Royal We said:

Schilling got pinched too!?  Oh man, this day just keeps getting better.  I'm going to break out my rosary beads in hopes that Prince and Kobach are on deck.  The grifting Sheriff would be a nice quail egg on top of this turd burger. 

Prince probably took his helicopter with a cabin shaped like a giant skull to his flat-black jet powered hydroplane boat and is already ensconced in his lair, hidden inside an active volcano  in the middle of the ocean. 

[RDCanecutter 26894]

4 minutes ago, Pescado_Rojo said:

Prince probably took his helicopter with a cabin shaped like a giant skull to his flat-black jet powered hydroplane boat and is already ensconced in his lair, hidden inside an active volcano  in the middle of the ocean. 

And the Sheriff will call up his Knights of the Golden Circle (he's the current leader, you didn't see that coming, because YOUR EYES ARE BLIND, SOY BOY) and they will ravage the blue cities from the backs of their steam-powered clockwork Tyrannosauri.

[Biff Tannen 46168]

Sadly, none of this will get back to dotard.  He is protected from up on high by the prince of darkness.

Edited August 20, 2020 by Biff Tannen
accuracy

[kevwun 16438]

13 minutes ago, DaysOff said:

Schilling lost the bulk of his baseball earnings in some shitty production company; now he lost his freedoms. If some NY Yankees can get arrested, today would be fabulous.

Video game company I believe.  This couldn't happen to a nicer asshole.  Fingers crossed that Erik Prince's time is coming.

Edited August 20, 2020 by kevwun

[Red Five 41739]

3 minutes ago, kevwun said:

Video Game company I believe.

 

[Nice Guy Eddie 13732]

19 minutes ago, The Royal We said:

Schilling got pinched too!?  Oh man, this day just keeps getting better.  I'm going to break out my rosary beads in hopes that Prince and Kobach are on deck.  The grifting Sheriff would be a nice quail egg on top of this turd burger. 

not to jinx it, but this scandal might be getting close to Hannity as well. These are all characters that he associates with or has on-air. Does anyone know if he ever highlighted this Build the Wall group on his show? If so, I imagine he would have been expecting a kickback at some point.

[SizzleChest 8314]

Plead not guilty, $5MM bond, had to surrender his passport.

[Francisco 2.0 32597]

2 hours ago, Constant said:

Any chance Bannon thought he was going to a pirate-themed boat party?

 

 

Edited August 20, 2020 by Francisco 2.0

[The Royal We 3100]

No mention of Hannity himself in this article, but Fox News shilled for these crooks a ton:

Quote

No right-wing cause célèbre would be complete without some on-air boosting from Fox News. And in the case of Steve Bannon’s allegedly fraudulent “We Build the Wall” fundraiser, the conservative cable channel obliged.

Bannon, a former chief strategist to President Donald Trump, was arrested Thursday morning on charges of using that border wall fundraising campaign to enrich himself and the fund’s founder Brian Kolfage, a triple-amputee Air Force veteran who was also arrested.

According to federal prosecutors, Bannon and Kolfage, along with two others, defrauded the hundreds of thousands of donors who gave $25 million to their effort to privately fund a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border. The alleged wall scammers used those funds—despite publicly claiming “All money donated to the campaign goes directly to the wall!”—to line their own pockets and purchase luxury items, the indictment claimed.

Since the viral fundraiser launched in late 2018, Bannon and Kolfage separately appeared across Fox News on more than a few occasions to tout their efforts to the network’s audience and its uncritical, often credulously supportive on-air personalities. While the effort garnered some mainstream media attention, few outlets were as openly supportive of Kolfage and Bannon in their endeavor.

“A story of the can-do American spirit in action,” Fox News primetime host Laura Ingraham beamed about the fundraiser before interviewing Kolfage during her Dec. 20, 2018 broadcast.

During their chat, Ingraham repeatedly praised Kolfage and teed him up to bash critics who argued against a border wall or called the fundraiser a publicity stunt. “I’d say they’re full of crap. And this is the United States and we can do anything we want,” Kolfage said. “And if people want to donate to that wall and give their money, they can do it. I mean, what’s 80 bucks for 60 million people? The common person can give that kind of money.”

That same month, Fox Business Network host David Asman heaped praise on Kolfage in an interview, declaring that the veteran is “a terrific person and I really appreciate what you’re doing for the country.” 

Fox has also repeatedly played host to Bannon—an already controversial, fringe figure—for segments touting his border-wall effort. For example, the former Breitbart chief received a particularly big boost for his allegedly fraudulent scheme in an August 2019 interview with Fox host Maria Bartiromo, who fawned over the project.

 

“This private group is ‘We Build the Wall,’ that the triple-amputee hero Brian Kolfage, the Air Force veteran, has founded,” Bannon said from the border area. “We have raised about $25 million. I’m down in Arizona. We’re in the Rio Grande Valley. We have had about 30 different private landowners approach us now.”

After insisting their mission was to “to actually help” the government build a border wall, Bannon added that the fundraiser was filling “niches” outlayed by the Army Corps of Engineers as Trump builds “long runs of wall” along the border. 

“This, of course, is a campaign promise that the president is keeping,” Bartiromo excitedly responded.

In another friendly interview, this time in May 2019 with Fox News anchor Martha MacCallum, the former Trump campaign chief boasted that he was “already cutting deals” along the border to privately build sections of the wall.

“There’s certain aspects [the feds] are not going to build,” Bannon added, further touting the fundraiser’s credibility. “Brian Kolfage and Kris Kobach and others have raised this money. We are going to go around, we are already cutting deals all up and down the border on private property where the government is not going to build, we are going to be there and try to build the wall.” The former Trump strategist then noted they were nearly done building a three-quarter stretch of wall near El Paso. (A year later, however, the president would trash the group’s wall, noting it had already shown signs of erosion and claiming it was “only done to make me look bad.”)

MacCallum, in return, called the We Build the Wall effort a “very interesting project.”

Similarly, in Jan 2019, Fox News anchor Shannon Bream interviewed Kris Kobach—a We Build the Wall advisory board member who was not among those indicted Thursday—and called the project “an interesting concept” and asked the former Kansas secretary of state to “keep us updated. We would like to know how it’s going as you get this done.”

Kobach also appeared on overtly pro-Trump morning show Fox & Friends in early 2019 to present an “exclusive” update on the fund’s progress to a very impressed and supportive host Pete Hegseth.

Elsewhere, the project got an on-air Fox boost from a popular conservative lawmaker in Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH). Seated beside Rep. Mark Meadows (now Trump’s chief of staff), Jordan praised Kolfage’s fundraiser to Hannity fill-in host Jason Chaffetz, also a former congressman, and said that congressional Republicans were working on a way to funnel such fundraiser cash to the feds in order to pay for a wall.

“Those are the kind of things that Americans—because that’s good common sense, that makes good sense, let’s continue to make the case and let’s get this done for the American people,” Jordan said. 

Overall, outside of the occasional due diligence—e.g., several hosts asked the basic-level question “Where will the money go?”—Fox was overwhelmingly supportive of Bannon and Kolfage’s effort. A new compilation video from liberal watchdog Media Matters shows We Build the Wall receiving positive press from the above Fox programs, as well as shows like Lou Dobbs Tonight, Cavuto: Coast to Coast, and Fox & Friends First.

And though it is highly unlikely Fox’s anchors and hosts were aware of the allegedly fraudulent scheming behind-the-scenes, they had plenty of warning signs about Kolfage’s past.

On the same day as Ingraham’s interview with him, in which she praised We Build the Wall as embodying the “can-do American spirit,” NBC News reported how Kolfage had withheld from donors information on his previous schemes, which included running a conspiracy theory-churning network of ad farms and fake social-media accounts.

And even before he began promoting the wall project on Fox, the network had already given Kolfage a free platform to spread misinformation about his past. In late 2018, for example, he appeared on Ingraham and Tucker Carlson’s shows complaining that Facebook had unfairly removed several of his pages after he claimed to have raised $300,000 in support of Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court confirmation fight.

Of course, while he was painted as an aggrieved victim of censorship by “liberal” tech companies, the reality was much simpler: In January 2019, BuzzFeed News reported how former employees said Kolfage pushed fake news to get rich, and was booted from Facebook after repeatedly encouraging staff to create photoshopped images misrepresenting news stories. 

BuzzFeed also reported that Kolfage had previously raised money for a veteran mentorship program that claimed to have partnerships with three medical centers, which all denied having any record of any peer-mentoring programs involving Kolfage. 

Not that this seemed to matter much to some people on Fox. On the same day BuzzFeed published its deep-dive into Kolfage’s questionable ventures, he appeared on then-Fox Business Network host Trish Regan’s show to promote his wall fundraising efforts.

 

 

https://www.thedailybeast.com/how-fox-news-helped-boost-steve-bannons-we-build-the-wall-fiasco

[Francisco 2.0 32597]

This.....seems important.

 

 

 

[DigglerontheHoof 21552]

Demand answers in one hand, shit in the other...

[The Royal We 3100]

I'm reading on twitter that the Schilling news is bogus - I don't think he was named in the indictment that was unsealed this morning and a SDNY spokesman said the story is false.  Bummer.

[Pig Bellmont 8887]

47 minutes ago, Nice Guy Eddie said:

It must be mind-blowing for some Trumpkins to wrap their head around the fact that this is Trump's DOJ and his appointees that are leading this effort to arrest Trump's people. I imagine Trump is the most confused since he consider the DOJ as his personal lawyers.

Kobach, Clarke, Prince, etc. must be burning up the phone lines with their lawyers today. When everyone around you starts to get arrested, I assume its worrying.

Not really in this case. Trump fired Preet Braha and took so long to nominate someone, the courts appointed Geoff Berman. When Barr (not Trump) tried to fire  Berman and replace him with the SEC Commissioner, Berman raised holy hell saying only Trump himself could fire Berman. Trump, trying to distance his public involvement would not admit to any involvement. Berman only backed down and left when Barr agreed to replace him with Berman’s deputy. SDNY is fiercely independent and not really Trump appointed. 

[Beau Vine 55867]

 

 

[bolverk 30331]

Sorry to be the bearer of bad tidings, guys.

 

[Brisketexan 106902]

31 minutes ago, SizzleChest said:

Plead not guilty, $5MM bond, had to surrender his passport.

Yeah.....that will be TOTALLY effective when he has a chinese-owned private plane that doesn't give a rat's ass about our passport requirements.

Edited August 20, 2020 by Brisketexan

[Tuco 5093]

46 minutes ago, triplehorn said:

"A media company linked to former Trump political adviser Steve Bannon and exiled Chinese businessman Guo Wengui raised more than $300 million in a private offering this spring that is now being investigated by federal and state authorities, say people familiar with the matter.

JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Wells Fargo & Co. have frozen accounts tied to fundraising for the company, GTV Media Group, some of these people said. Bank of America Corp. also closed an account for GTV Media’s parent company shortly after it was opened in recent months, another person with knowledge of the situation said.

The federal probe is being conducted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Securities and Exchange Commission, people familiar with the investigation said. The investigators have been examining whether GTV Media or associates of Mr. Guo violated securities laws through the private share placement. The New York state attorney general’s office has also been examining the matter, these people said."

per WSJ

Yeah, I don't think this is a coincidence.  I think Guo is likely the big fish here.  I'm guessing it was that investigation that was keeping Bannon "at sea."

[Hugo Stiglitz 23367]