Oh, @JennaEllisEsq, remember when you said Trump's values were "not American" & linked to a post calling him an "American fascist." Now you say there was a massive conspiracy to steal an election from him. What to believe? Who's running this conspiracy? Rudy can't name a perp.
1. I was at the White House Correspondents Dinner in 2011 when @obama lacerated @realDonaldTrump, and the entire crowd laughed *at* Trump. It was akin to a bully being humiliated in the schoolyard in front of everyone.
2. The moment seemed a total repudiation of Trump. He seethed. And people who know him have said that his 2016 presidential bid was motivated in part by a desire for revenge.
3. He did get his vengeance when he beat HRC in 2016 (with the help of Vladimir Putin). And he must have loved that—and assaulting Obama’s legacy. After all, nothing fuels Trump more than spite.
1. It's been overshadowed by other matters (the pandemic, impeachment), but @realDonaldTrump's betrayal of the United States related to Putin's attack on American democracy should not be overlooked or forgotten on this Election Day. Here is a thread with some basics.
2. In 2016, Putin mounted a covert op to sow discord, hurt Clinton & help Trump. When this plot became public—when WikiLeaks dumped DNC emails and documents stolen by Russian hackers—the Trump campaign (inc. Paul Manafort & @DonasldJTrumpJr) denied the Russian attack.
3. The Trump campaign aided & abetted the Russian attack by providing cover for Moscow and by echoing Putin's false denials. The campaign did this even though it had tried to collude with a Kremlin operative as part of what it was told was a secret Moscow plot to help Trump.
I just spoke with John Paul Isaac, the Wilmington computer repair store owner who ended up with Hunter Biden's laptop and gave it to the FBI and Giuliani. He would not explain how a copy of the hard drive was passed to Rudy Giuliani. "No comment," he said.
Isaac said he first went to the FBI and there were "many, many steps" between the laptop going to the bureau and the copy of the hard drive being sent to Giuliani: "I don't feel like talking about it now."
Did he want to see this become a big story? "The outcome I wanted was the FBI doing the right thing. Confiscating the equipment—that was the right thing to do….I gave it to them and expected them to do something. They sounded like they wanted it for an investigation...."
Guess what. Karfunkel, it turns out, is the *president* and *CFO* of this low-profile synagogue. So he got a mega-tax deduction by transferring his Kodak shares--when the value was pumped up--to a new charity that he runs. See the UPDATE based on WSJ reporting.
From the Congregation Chemdas Yisroel charity registration filing. This billionaire "donated" stock worth up to $180m to the low-profile synagogue he runs, which doesn't seem to do all that much. He and the two other officers refused to answer my questions about it. I wonder why.
By the way, as I reported, Karfunkel has at least two long-standing foundations that support synagogues. They file IRS 990 tax returns. Why didn't he donate this stock to one of those? Congregation Chemdas Yisroel, per all religious charities, does not have to file a 990.
You want to get into this? Did the FBI say anything publicly about the Trump-Russia investigation during the 2016 campaign? What did it do re the HRC investigation? Even when Comey was asked by House Dems in late Sept., he refused to say whether or not there was a Russia probe.
When the NY Times asked the FBI about the investigation in October, the bureau downplayed the probe. When I asked the FBI, it did not comment. It took no steps to use this investigation against Trump during the campaign.
Meanwhile, the last four weeks of the campaign were dominated by anti-Clinton leaks orchestrated by Putin's operation (which was mounted in part to benefit Trump).
In his May 10, 2019, letter to President-elect Zelensky, @RudyGiuliani asked for a meeting as "personal counsel" representing Trump "as a private citizen." So his efforts to get dirt on Biden had NOTHING to do with US policy.
This is all the evidence needed to see Rudy's pressure campaign on Zelensky and his aides was a PRIVATE endeavor waged for Trump's PERSONAL benefit.
But it was a private endeavor that leveraged public assets: a White House meeting and, then nearly $400 million in US assistance to Ukraine. That is arguably not legal.