Thread by @Will_Bunch

1. Insurance fraud

Pretty boring, huh?

But what if I told you there were allegations of an $18 million insurance scam at one of America's best-known mansions? More interested?

What if I told you it involved the scam involved the president of the United States?

Pull up a chair

2. This week, the House Judiciary Committee dropped a bombshell on Trump World when it requested info from 81 players like Trump's campaign, the Trump Org, his sons, his son-in-law, etc.

Hard to believe but one name should be added to the list.

America: Meet Pamela J. Newman

3. Pamela Newman is little known outside of the insurance world - where she's a star. She rose through the ranks to become an executive veep at one of the world's biggest firms, Aon.

She also had a superstar client: Donald J. Trump.

Much more on her later. Let's go back to 2007

4. In the mid-2000s, Trump did a very dumb thing (shocking, huh?). He was infuriated over a book by @TimOBrien alleged Trump's net worth was much, much lower than Trump claimed -- so he sued. Which allowed O'Brien's lawyers to conduct discovery.

5. This included a rare chance to review some of Trump's financial records, where the lawyers learned that in 2005, Trump had received $18.3 million from an insurance carrier, brokered by Aon Plc. The money was for damage to Mar-a-Lago and other Florida properties,

6. O'Brien's lawyers deposed Trump in 2007. He admitted that not all of the money had been plowed back into Mar-a-Lago, even though he insisted “the hurricane really did tremendous damage.” bloomberg.com/opinion/articl…

7. You may remember that 2005 was a year that Florida was indeed raked by several large hurricanes, including Wilma which passed near Palm Beach. Surely Trump would remember millions of dollars in damage. So what did he say when he was asked about it?

8. “I don’t remember that; I really don’t,” Trump replied. “They did appraisals.” In fact, Trump insisted that he wasn't the one involved with appraising the damage. So who was?

This guy.

Matthew Calamari

9. Fast forward to October 2016. In just days, America would vote on whether to elect Trump our 45th president. Two investigative reporters for the Associated Press -- Jeff Horwitz and Terry Spencer -- started digging into the story of Trump's fishy insurance claim.

10. The AP quoted Trump's longtime butler, Anthony Senecal, who said Mar-a-Lago had never suffered major storm damage, that even Wilma only knocked down a few trees and took off a few roof tiles. apnews.com/f4df8c9beb1740…

11. There was more. Donald Trump Jr.'s wedding was just 3 weeks after Wilma and extensive photos showed no damage. $!7-18 million in repairs would have required extensive permits and scores of workers, but there was no record of that, or any permit fees.

12, The only relevant permits, according to the AP, were for $3,000 (!) in repairs to outdoor lights and for vacuuming sand from a swimming pool. Officials like town planners and historians who were there for the storm were shocked to learn of Trump's claim.

13, The AP tracked down the insurance adjuster, Hank Stein of VeriClaim, who struggled to remember any details but did believe there was some water damage from observation windows that blew open.

14. All of this raises questions about Aon Plc. and their role in this The AP actually failed to learn the identity of the insurer whose name is on the check, but Trump said in the deposition the lead broker involved in obtaining the payment was Aon's Pamela Newman.

15. Newman wouldn't talk to the AP. The news service reported unnamed Aon sources said -- and you'll shocked, shocked to learn this -- that Trump's businesses were usually late on their payments and threatened to take their business elsewhere. As for Newman...

16. ... "Representing Trump allowed Newman to bring up her work on behalf of Trump in sales pitches to wealthy clients, sometimes offering him as a reference, the employees said." Trump and Newman were clearly close. How close? Check this out...

17. Newman was the absolute FIRST person, ever, to donate to Trump's presidential campaign. Her check for $2,700 -- the maximum -- arrived 2 weeks BEFORE Trump came down the escalator and announced he was running revealnews.org/article/these-…

18. Newman also hosted a fundraiser for Trump, according to Bloomberg News, and she later gave a whopping $25,000 to the Make America Great Again PAC. The Donald was a fan. In 2001, he told CNBC: “There’s something about Pam where she just gets in there and kicks ass.”

19. One more thing about Trump and AON -- his presidential campaign spent more than $300,000 on insurance with the company freebeacon.com/politics/trump…

20. Newman isn't big on talking about her relationship with Trump. She told Politico in 2016, "I don’t have to talk to you about anything,” politico.com/story/2015/08/…

21. Maybe a letter or a subpoena from Rep. Nadler's House Judiciary Committee would change that, especially after Michael Cohen's testimony raised suspicions about Trump's complex dealings with his insurance broker news.vice.com/en_us/article/…

22. Last week, the New York State Department of Financial Services served a detailed subpoena on the Trump Organization in Manhattan seeking any and all records about its dealings with Aon -- a new front in the endless Trump corruption probes,

23. But why didn't Florida authorities follow up on the AP's report in 2016? The attorney general at the time was Pam Biondi, who famously received a $25,000 donation from Trump and failed to investigate multiple claims about Trump University nytimes.com/2016/09/15/us/…

24. So will insurance fraud bring down Trump's presidency the way that income tax evasion took down Al Capone? Even if criminality is shown here, it's hard to imagine that this Congress would impeach and remove the president over a pre-White House financial matter.

25. But assume the massive circumstantial evidence that Trump's claim is at best grossly over-inflated and at worst utterly fraudulent can be proved out. Pennsylvania runs radio ads claiming you'll go to jail if you fake a fender bender...so what of an $18 million scheme.

26. Trump once claimed he could shoot someone in the middle of 5th Avenue and voters wouldn't care. Do we care whether the president of the United States pocketed money from a bogus $18 million insurance claim. I do.

27. We have two systems of justice in the country - one for the rich and privileged and one for everybody else. (The ridiculous Manafort verdict is another example.) Is the president really above the law? A big insurance claim from 2005 would be a good test for finding out. -30-

Typo alert -- the Trump quote about Pamela Newman was 2011, not 2001