Trump targets ‘young people’ in dark op-ed: Live

One of former president Donald Trump’s current attorneys told special counsel Jack Smith’s team that, within days of the Justice Department issuing a subpoena last year for all classified documents at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate, she “very clearly” warned Trump that if he failed to fully comply — but then swore he did — “it’s going to be a crime,” according to sources familiar with the matter.

Sources said the lawyer, Jennifer Little, told investigators Trump “absolutely” understood the warning, which came during a pivotal meeting at Mar-a-Lago with Trump and another attorney, Evan Corcoran, who had recently joined Trump’s legal team.

What Little allegedly told Smith’s team earlier this year may shed further light on how Smith came to accuse Trump of knowingly violating the law, saying in his June 9 indictment against Trump that the former president defied a subpoena by hiding more than 100 classified documents from the FBI and even his own legal team, and then having his legal team certify otherwise.

Andrew Feinberg writes…

Remember “repeal and replace?”

For almost a decade, that was the mantra of the various Republicans in Washington who’d tasked themselves with the mission of eradicating Obamacare, the signature accomplishment of the nation’s first Black president.

And when Donald Trump moved into the White House along with Republican majorities in both the House and Senate in 2017, it looked as if this goal was within reach, even though it was never quite clear what the GOP would do to fulfill the “replace” part of their plan.

Similarly, it was never 100 per cent clear what the Republican objection to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act was, particularly since the concept behind the legislation — mandating the purchase of private health insurance coverage in lieu of a government-run health care system like the NHS — was birthed in a GOP-aligned think tank and first implemented by then-Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney years before he and Mr Obama squared off in the 2012 general election.

To make a long story short, neither the “repeal” nor “replace” ever came together after the “repeal” part of the plan died at the hands (or more accurately, the downturned thumb) of the late Arizona Senator John McCain during one late July vote in 2017.

Read on to see how Mr Trump has revived the “long-dead, now quite unpopular GOP pipe dream”…

The president’s son called the bluff of House Republicans by agreeing to appear before the panel on 13 December at the invitation of committee Chair James Comer.

Earlier this month, Mr Comer issued subpoenas compelling testimony from Hunter Biden and his uncle, James Biden, as part of a long-running probe into President Joe Biden’s family — an investigation which has thus far produced no evidence that the 46th president violated any laws or was improperly influenced by any family member’s business interests. Mr Biden’s team has issued their own subpoenas.

The younger Mr Biden’s response, delivered via his lawyer this week, forced Republicans to quickly backtrack and insist that it was important to first have a closed-door deposition from the younger Mr Biden.

Each side took to morning cable news shows to argue their case before each party held their weekly congressional press conference to further push their point.

Read on…

Former Speaker Kevin McCarthy believed that Donald Trump had accepted his defeat in the 2020 election and was going through the “five stages of grief” in the days immediately following the contest, according to a new book by Liz Cheney.

The former House Republican conference chair is out with a new book, publishing on 5 December, revealing new insights from her time in the GOP caucus in the days leading up to and following the January 6 attack on Congress. In Oath and Honor, Ms Cheney writes that Mr McCarthy summed up then-president Trump’s mood to her after a meeting at Mar-a-Lago between the two men.

“He knows it’s over,” said the former speaker, according to excerpts published on Wednesday by CNN. “He needs to go through all the stages of grief.”

Despite that remark, Ms Cheney continues, Mr McCarthy went on national television and lied to the American people about the 2020 election results.

“McCarthy knew that what he was saying was not true,” she explained.

John Bowden reports.

Over the years, she and colleagues spoke enthusiastically among themselves about the potential for building on Deutsche Bank’s Trump ties. The bankers envisioned offering him estate planning services, presenting him investment options and netting more clients through word-of-mouth — “given the circles this family travels in, we expect to be introduced to the wealthiest people on the planet,” Vrablic wrote in a 2011 email.

She advocated within the bank for lending to Trump Organization ventures. In a 2012 email to then-Executive Vice President Ivanka Trump, Vrablic promised to ensure that a Deutsche Bank lending executive knew “how important you and your family’s business have become to the bank.”

Eventually, though, the bank started saying no. In 2016, when Donald Trump was on the campaign trail and his company sought a loan for its golf course in Turnberry, Scotland, the bank decided it didn’t “want to increase its exposure,” Vrablic testified.

“The bank felt that the increased exposure, scrutiny – it was an unprecedented situation to have a customer who was about to become president of the United States,” she said.

Judge Arthur Engoron will decide the verdict. He ruled before the trial that Trump and other defendants engaged in fraud and he ordered that a receiver take control of some of Trump’s properties, putting their future oversight in question. An appeals court has put that order on hold for now.

The trial concerns remaining claims of conspiracy, insurance fraud and falsifying business records. James is seeking more than $300 million in penalties and a ban on Trump doing business in New York.

James maintains that Trump’s allegedly inflated financial statements were critical to netting his company the Deutsche Bank loans at favorable rates, saving him many millions of dollars in interest.

Trump says the financial statements actually underestimated his wealth and that a disclaimer on them absolves him of liability for any problematic figures. Trump, the current front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024, claims that James, a Democrat, is trying to harm his prospects of returning to the White House.

Trump personally guaranteed the loans at issue — standard practice for loans made by Deutsche Bank’s division that caters to rich individuals, Vrablic said. The deals came with conditions about Trump’s net worth and, sometimes, liquidity, and they often required annual submissions of his financial statements.

Other current and former Deutsche Bank executives have testified that while they expected the information to be accurate, they came up with their own numbers.

Documents show the bank sliced Trump’s $4.2 billion estimate of his net worth to $2.4 billion when considering the Doral loan, for example. Asked Wednesday whether the cut had concerned her, Vrablic said that if the bank’s credit experts “were comfortable with it, I would be comfortable with it.”

The $125 million loan went ahead, with one banker writing in an email that Trump had “among the strongest personal balance sheets we have seen.” A top executive agreed to sign off but insisted on an “iron clad” guarantee from Trump.

Trump provided it, Vrablic said Wednesday.

Continued…

The bank’s revenue from its Trump business shot up from about $13,000 in 2011 to a projected $6 million in 2013, according to a bank document prepared for the then-co-chairman, Anshu Jain, before a lunch with Trump in early 2013.

The briefing document suggested “key asks” for Jain to make: “Obtain more deposits and investment management assets,” and “strategically discuss leveraging Mr. Trump’s personal and professional network within the real estate industry in NY” for the bank’s benefit.

And how did it go?

“It was a very, very nice, productive lunch,” Vrablic recalled on the stand.

Behind the scenes, she told a colleague at the time in an email: “It went great. Donald was low key and demure. Unbelievable. The conversation was fantastic. Not sure he could do it again for a second meeting but hey … miracles can happen.”

Adding that the two were planning to golf together that spring, she wrote: “I bet the real D shows up for that one.”

The next year, her direct boss went to lunch with Trump to thank him and “ask whether we can work on other opportunities with them,” according to a document for that meeting.

Continued…

Deutsche Bank viewed Donald Trump as a “whale” of a client, was eager to land him and eagerly cultivated a relationship that grew from $13,000 worth of revenue to $6 million in two years, according to documents presented Wednesday at the former president’s civil fraud trial.

The bank’s dealings with Trump are a key issue in New York Attorney General Letitia James’ lawsuit, which accuses Trump, his company and some executives of hoodwinking lenders and insurers by presenting them with grossly inflated statements of his asset values.

The defendants deny any wrongdoing. They have sought to show that the bank felt delighted, not deceived, by Trump and courted his business.

“We are whale hunting,” then-bank managing director Rosemary Vrablic wrote colleagues in November 2011, after she had been introduced to Trump’s son Donald Jr. but had yet to meet the elder Trump. The bankers used “whale” to refer to a very wealthy client, Vrablic testified Wednesday.

Vrablic first came into contact with the Trumps when they were looking for a loan to buy the Doral golf resort near Miami. Over the next three years, that contact blossomed into loans for that project, then two others in Chicago and Washington, as well as multimillion-dollar deposits in the bank.

Continued…

Voters of Tomorrow, a Gen Z activist group, released the following statement in response to Donald Trump’s Newsweek op-ed targeting the younger electorate.

“Donald Trump is lying to young people again, but we are not falling for it. In his deeply misguided op-ed, he writes that young people would be better off electing him rather than Joe Biden in 2024. Trump also claims that young people thrived and prospered under his administration — and will once again if he takes back the White House.

“These are flat-out lies. But here are the facts: Donald Trump failed Gen Z when he was president. He tried to take away health care and food security for millions of us, allowed corporations to pollute our environment, rolled back gun violence prevention measures, targeted immigrant communities, and only served to benefit the richest, most privileged Americans. Not to mention, the former president’s far-right judicial appointments resulted in the Dobbs decision — a loss of our reproductive freedoms that has since fueled waves of high youth voter turnout in elections across the nation.

“In case Trump forgot, young voters played a key role in Republicans losing their congressional majority in 2018 and his loss to Joe Biden in 2020. And we will give him another taste of what it feels like to lose again in 2024.”

The group then fact-checked the assertions made by the former president in the article:

• False: “Under Joe Biden, we are a nation in decline and rapidly losing the American Dream.”
• True: Earlier in 2023, youth unemployment hit its lowest point in 70 years. The Biden-Harris Administration has delivered historic investments in American education, infrastructure, environment, and mental health care.

• False: “Biden’s war on American energy is making everything more expensive.”
• True: ​​The Biden-Harris Administration’s investments in clean energy, infrastructure, and semiconductor manufacturing will create millions of good jobs, including union jobs, with fair pay and safe working conditions.

• False: “The Democrats’ radical promotion of Critical Race Theory, transgenderism, and other inappropriate racial, sexual, and political content in our schools has divided our communities and frayed the bonds of national unity.”
• True: Trump’s racist, homophobic, and transphobic rhetoric harms young Americans and incites violence. Young people instead stand behind an agenda that advances LGBTQ+ equality, racial justice, educational freedoms, and inclusivity.

• False: “Joe Biden’s unimaginable weakness on the world stage is threatening to drag the United States into World War III, which would devastate an entire generation of young Americans.”
• True: The Pew Research Center reported a “decline in America’s global image during Donald Trump’s presidency and a rebound in ratings for the U.S. following the election of Joe Biden.”

• False: “Next November, tens of millions of young Americans will be casting their vote to end Joe Biden’s failed presidency, and to finish the job of making America great again.
• True: Young Americans defeated Trump once, and then we showed up again and again to defeat his ideology in elections across the nation. We will do so again in 2024.

“Whenever I sarcastically insert the name Obama for Biden as an indication that others may actually be having a very big influence in running our Country,” Mr Trump wrote in the post on Monday.

“Ron DeSanctimonious and his failing campaign apparatus, together with the Democrat’s Radical Left ‘Disinformation Machine,’ go wild saying that ‘Trump doesn’t know the name of our President, (CROOKED!) Joe Biden. He must be cognitively impaired.”

And he added: “No, I know both names very well, never mix them up, and know that they are destroying our Country.”

Graeme Massie has the story.