Trump Fills The Swamp

submissively speaking · Jul 5, 2018

So, Pruitt’s out.

Whaddaya bet he moves Sessions over and appoints somebody new that won’t be so shy about firing Mueller?

Anybody?

stumbler · Jul 5, 2018

submissivelyspeaking said: ↑

So, Pruitt’s out.

Whaddaya bet he moves Sessions over and appoints somebody new that won’t be so shy about firing Mueller?

Anybody?
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Pruitt is out because his scandals finally reached critical mass and Trump's new communication director, the same guy at Fox who covered up all the sexual harassment and other abuse that was going on told Trump Pruitt had to go because there is a bunch of new scandals coming out.

tenguy · Jul 6, 2018

And the beat goes on.

stumbler · Jul 6, 2018

The reason Trump finally made John Kelly fire Pruitt and then lied about it isn't really a case of the straw that broke the Camel's back. The real reason is because Pruitt could very well be headed for criminal charges.

E.P.A. Aide Questioned Deleting Sensitive Meeting Details. Then She Was Fired.

WASHINGTON — Before he resigned on Thursday, Scott Pruitt, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, was facing new questions about whether aides deleted sensitive information about his meetings from his public schedule and potentially violated the law in doing so.

Last summer one of his senior schedulers, Madeline G. Morris, was fired by Mr. Pruitt’s former deputy chief of staff, Kevin Chmielewski, who said he let her go because she was questioning the practice of retroactively deleting meetings from the calendar. Mr. Chmielewski has emerged as a harsh critic of Mr. Pruitt after a bitter falling out that led to his departure from the agency as well.

Ms. Morris, who started work as Mr. Pruitt’s scheduler in June 2017, confirmed Wednesday that she was fired after she raised objections about the deletions, which she believed were illegal, although she said that Mr. Chmielewski did not tell her his reasons for firing her. One case involved the deletion of several of Mr. Pruitt’s meetings during a spring 2017 trip to Rome, including one with a controversial cardinal then under investigation for sexual assault.

President Trump announced on Thursday that Mr. Pruitt, who had been the subject of numerous investigations into claims that he used agency resources for personal benefit, had resigned.

The E.P.A. acknowledged in a series of legal memos last year that it did in fact direct an agency scheduler — although it did not name the person — to revise Mr. Pruitt’s daily calendar retroactively. The agency said it was doing so to remove errors that had been left in the electronic record after various events were canceled or happened differently than expected.

Ryan Jackson, Mr. Pruitt’s chief of staff, dismissed Mr. Chmielewski’s criticism as a fabrication by a disgruntled former employee. “Whatever he’s telling you about altering calendars is not correct,” Mr. Jackson said.

Ms. Morris was called last July by two agency lawyers, who told her that the changes she was making to Mr. Pruitt’s schedule might be illegal, according to a person familiar with the conversation. The following month, Ms. Morris noticed that a number of changes had been made to the record of a trip Mr. Pruitt had taken to Italy. Ms. Morris questioned the legality of the changes to Mr. Chmielewski and Mr. Jackson, and a few days later was fired, he said.

A retroactive deletion of meetings and attendees from a cabinet official’s public records could violate the Federal Records Act, which requires agencies to maintain and preserve public documents, as well as a law prohibiting intentional distortion of federal records. In another potential violation of federal law, the E.P.A. continued to pay Ms. Morris for six weeks after she was fired from the agency.

Asked to explain Ms. Morris’s departure from the E.P.A., as well as his own email correspondence indicating that she was being paid for time not worked, Mr. Jackson declined to comment. He also declined to comment on whether Ms. Morris was simply being asked to reconcile calendars.

The E.P.A. spokesman and the agency’s general counsel declined to comment.

Ms. Morris had nearly a decade of experience in Washington and solid Republican credentials, according to her résumé. She worked for former Representative Denny Rehberg, a Montana Republican, as an assistant and scheduler, before working as a federal affairs specialist for Koch Companies Public Sector, the lobbying arm of Koch Industries, the conglomerate long run by the conservative brothers David H. and Charles Koch.

Ms. Morris, whose start date at the E.P.A. was June 18, was an executive scheduler with an annual salary of $90,350. She handled a variety of planning needs for Mr. Pruitt, including requests for meetings with executives from Toyota and Chevron.

The account of the calendar deletions and the aftermath is based on interviews with four people who were working at the agency at the time, including Mr. Chmielewski and three others who asked not to be identified out of concern for retaliation.

In July 2017, according to Mr. Chmielewski, Ms. Morris was instructed by him and Mr. Jackson to retroactively delete some meetings Mr. Pruitt held with lobbyists and replace them with staff meetings in the calendar, which was maintained in Microsoft Outlook. He and other people familiar with the calendar also said Ms. Morris was asked not to enter some of Mr. Pruitt’s meetings on the official calendar.

Mr. Chmielewski cited an August 2017 meeting with billionaire Denver-based businessman Philip Anschutz, a prominent donor to Republican Senate candidates and owner of an energy company regulated by the agency. Mr. Pruitt’s calendar for that day, which was publicly released, does not include the meeting.

Mr. Anschutz declined to comment, and didn’t dispute that the meeting occurred.

Three agency memos drafted last year as these changes were being made offer an alternative explanation for the work that Ms. Morris was doing.

“Scheduling staff corrected inaccurate entries by adding meetings that occurred but were not originally reflected on the schedule, removing meetings that were on the schedule but did not occur or that Administrator Pruitt did not attend,” said one memo from last September, signed by Mr. Jackson.

But the agency, as it undertook this process, realized itself that it was doing something wrong: It was deleting items from Mr. Pruitt’s calendar, meaning it was wrongly modifying a public record. Moving forward, the agency agreed to block out incorrect details, instead of deleting meetings, before it made the schedule public.

After Ms. Morris made earlier deletions, the two E.P.A. attorneys — who became aware of the issue after receiving Outlook emails notifying them that their names had been removed from a past meeting — told Ms. Morris to stop making deletions to the calendar, according to a person familiar with the call.

About a month later, Ms. Morris noticed that a number of meetings had been deleted from a trip Mr. Pruitt had taken to Italy, according to Mr. Chmielewski. The Rome events that were removed from the official calendar included a series of visits at the Vatican — including a special tour of the necropolis below St. Peter’s Basilica — as well as one meeting with Cardinal George Pell, a prominent Vatican leader who was then being investigated on allegations of sexual abuse. (He has denied the allegations.)

Mr. Jackson in May told The Times that he did not know why Cardinal Pell’s name was not on Mr. Pruitt’s calendar and denied any discussion about removing him.

But last week Mr. Jackson acknowledged to the House Oversight and Reform Committee, one of the bodies investigating Mr. Pruitt’s management practices, that he instructed staff to remove references to Cardinal Pell from the public schedule. According to a committee aide familiar with the interview, Mr. Jackson told investigators that he ordered Cardinal Pell’s name to be removed because he considered it a “personal dinner” and because no E.P.A. business was conducted. About 15 people attended the dinner at which Mr. Pruitt discussed climate change, according to agency emails.

Ms. Morris pointed out the changes and the possibility that they were illegal to Mr. Chmielewski, he said, as well as to Mr. Jackson. On Aug. 31, a few days after Ms. Morris raised these objections (and two and a half months after she had started at the agency), Ms. Morris was told that it would be her last day.

Mr. Chmielewski confirmed the sequence of events and acknowledged that by firing Ms. Morris for refusing to modify the calendars he was in effect endorsing the practice. “She refused — and I didn’t blame her — she refused to falsify the schedule,” Mr. Chmielewski said in an interview, adding, “It was me and Ryan that fired her.”

Asked why Ms. Morris was fired, Mr. Jackson said, “I don’t really think Maddy would appreciate me talking about the circumstances of her separation from here.”

After being fired, Ms. Morris stayed with her sister’s family in Pittsburgh, and described to them what had happened.

“She told us that she had alerted her chief of staff that some things had disappeared from the schedule, and that it was illegal, and that later that week she was called in and they told her she was being dismissed,” said Christopher Marshall, Ms. Morris’s brother-in-law. “She was told she would never find out why.”

He added, “Maddy thought it was probably because of the scheduling thing, but we could never be sure.”

In an unusual arrangement, Ms. Morris also continued to receive pay for six weeks after she left the E.P.A., according to agency emails that were released as part of a public records lawsuit by the Sierra Club, an environmental group, as well as a United States Office of Personnel Management document obtained by The New York Times.

The personnel record shows Ms. Morris remained on the payroll through Oct. 14. Paying a federal employee for work not performed is prohibited by federal law. Under the government’s personnel policy, neither political appointees nor employees who work for the federal government for less than 12 months are entitled to severance pay.

“We have not put in any paperwork on you so no one is aware of any actions,” Mr. Jackson wrote in a Sept. 22, 2017, email to Ms. Morris. Earlier that day, she had asked about not having received a paycheck she was expecting after she had stopped working at the agency. “I just wanted to see if something has changed since our conversation about being paid a few months,” she wrote.

“I’ve never heard of anything like this — this is highly irregular and appears to flout the rules,” said Jeffrey Lubbers, a professor of administrative law at American University, of the terms of Ms. Morris’s dismissal and payment.

Mr. Pruitt is facing 13 federal investigations over ethics and other issues, including an inquiry by the Office of Special Counsel, an independent federal investigative and prosecutorial agency, which is examining Mr. Pruitt’s personnel practices and allegations that he may have used his E.P.A. office for political purposes, people with knowledge of the investigation have told The Times.

Speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One on Tuesday, Hogan Gidley, a White House spokesman, said of Mr. Pruitt: “The reports that have come out are something the president is concerned about, and there are many of those reports.” But he added that Mr. Trump felt the administrator had done a “really good job at deregulating the government.”
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JimmyCrackPorn · Jul 7, 2018

stumbler · Jul 9, 2018

Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke’s sock tweet may have violated US campaign law

Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke on Tuesday deleted a photo of a sock he was wearing with President Donald Trump’s “Make America Great Again” campaign slogan on it after realizing he may have violated a law that prohibits federal employees from engaging in political activity.

While attending a meeting of the Western Governors Association at South Dakota’s Mount Rushmore, Zinke tweeted a photo of his leg covered with a sock with Trump’s image on it and his Make America Great Again campaign slogan

“Breaking in new socks on a hike with the governors today,” the official @SecretaryZinke Twitter account said.

Several tweeters and watchdog groups were quick to observe that donning campaign-style apparel while conducting official business is a violation of the Hatch Act.

The Campaign for Accountability responded to the @SecretaryZinke tweet with a link to a March 5 letter posted by the Office of Special Counsel (OSC), which updated its guidance on the Hatch Act in light of Trump confirming he will run for re-election.

“While on duty or in the workplace, employees may not: wear, display, or distribute items with the slogan ‘Make America Great Again’ or any other materials from President Trump’s 2016 or 2020 campaigns; use hashtags such as #MAGA or #ResistTrump in social media posts or other forums; or display non-official pictures of President Trump,” the letter said.

Later in the afternoon, Zinke replaced his earlier tweet on his official account with a photo of the same sock with “Make America Great Again” blacked out.

“Earlier I tweeted a pic of my new socks not realizing it had what could be viewed as a political slogan. I’ve deleted it and apologize for the mistake. I remain excited about all the incredible policy work POTUS is doing,” the tweet said.

Watchdog groups and Democratic lawmakers have been eying Zinke’s official and political activities.

Earlier this month, the Office of Special Counsel cleared Zinke of allegations of improper political activity under the Hatch Act when he spoke to the Las Vegas Golden Knights, a professional hockey team owned by one of his campaign donors, in June 2017.

In March, two Democratic lawmakers asked for an OSC investigation into whether Zinke violated the Hatch Act when he traveled to Pennsylvania to announce funding for a coal mine reclamation site in February. Several local Republican politicians attended, including Rick Saccone, who ran in a high-profile special election in the neighboring district just days later.

The Interior Dept. was not immediately available for comment.
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stumbler · Jul 9, 2018

Ivanka Trump’s Chinese-Made Products Conveniently Spared From Dad’s Tariffs
The first daughter doesn’t appear to believe in “made in America.”

Donald Trump’s tariffs on Chinese goods won’t touch Ivanka Trump’s foreign-made products for her fashion line.

While Trump rails at Harley-Davidson motorcycles for moving some production to Europe to dodge EU tariffs, the first daughter and senior White House adviser has never manufactured a single product for her Ivanka Trump brand on American soil.

Trump enacted tariffs Friday morning on $34 billion worth of Chinese goods, affecting hundreds of products from boats to medical devices and auto parts. Products spared include those manufactured by his daughter.

That means Chengdu Kameido Shoes in Sichuan province can continue to supply shoes for the Ivanka Trump brand as it has in the past. It’s currently bidding for a new contract to manufacture 140,000 pairs of shoes for Trump’s company, a spokesman told The South China Morning Post.

Hangzhou HS Fashion in Zhejiang province also said it’s filling orders for orders for the G-III Apparel Group, which supplies shoes to Trump’s brand.

Until January 2017 all of Ivanka Trump’s products were made in factories in China and Hong Kong, research director Chris Rogers at Panjiva, a global trade data tracking company headquartered in New York, told Politico. Since then, some manufacturing has apparently been moved to other overseas factories in Indonesia, South Korea and Vietnam.

There have been no obvious shipments from China since mid-March, but Rogers speculated shipments may now be more difficult to trace because they could be moving under code names.

Other enterprises and workers in the U.S., meanwhile, are already feeling the heat from a trade war. China’s retaliatory tariffs have targeted U.S. seafood, soybeans, dairy products, cars, apples, whiskey, pet food and cigarettes, among several other products. Farmers are fearful they won’t be able to sell products they had earmarked for China. They also worry that suppliers from other countries will pick up the valuable market — for good — that they have worked for years to cultivate.

“Soybeans are the top agriculture export for the United States, and China is the top market for purchasing those exports,” Iowa soybean grower John Heisdorffer said in a statement. “The math is simple. You tax soybean exports at 25 percent, and you have serious damage to U.S. farmers.”

Despite the president’s mantra to “buy American and hire American” the Trump family retains major business operations overseas, and the Trump Organization continues to manufacture most Trump products in foreign factories.

The president even continues to profit from partnerships involving the Chinese government through state-supported companies and investments, including in developments in Dubai and Indonesia, notes the Washington Post. Ivanka Trump won a number of valuable trademarks in China just as her father was pushing to lift U.S. sanctions against Chinese telecom company ZTE, over the objection of congressional leaders. Trump announced his support for ZTE 72 hours after the Chinese government agreed to put half-a-billion dollars into the Indonesian project. The deal raised “serious ethical issues,” the head of the U.S. Office of Government Ethics said.
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shootersa · Jul 9, 2018

Soybeans seem to be a favorite target of the unsupporters in attacking Trump's tarriff negotiations. Some facts to send them scrambling to the cry closet
*Shooter wonders; did they ever get that lock on the cry closet?

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...rd-rally-as-demand-gain-overshadows-trade-war

Futures for November delivery climbed 4.5 percent to $8.945 a bushel on Chicago Board of Trade, the biggest gain since the contract began trading in late 2014. The day before, it had touched its lowest ever after tumbling 17 percent since the end of May. Soybeans are among the American goods targeted by Chinese tariffs after the U.S. implemented duties earlier in the day and President Donald Trump threatened more action.

stumbler · Jul 10, 2018

Trump Club Members May Have Been Invited to Tour Air Force One: Report

Members of Trump’s clubs in Florida appear to have been invited to tour Air Force One, according to an invitation obtained by BuzzFeed. Two tours were scheduled at Palm Beach International Airport in West Palm Beach, Florida, in February. No organization or person is listed as being in charge of the tours. At least 14 people were scheduled to take the tours, including eight associated with a Florida car dealership. Leaders of the dealership are members of Mar-a-Lago and Trump International Golf Club.
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I don't think you can get much more elite than proviing tours of Air Force One for the people in your club.

tenguy · Jul 13, 2018

Bump for the stumb

shootersa · Jul 13, 2018

Oh, he isn't likely to respond.
Shooter thinks stumbles was embarrassed when he found out other presidents do the same thing.
Not that he spewed lies, that he wasted spew.

stumbler · Jul 14, 2018

Trump ‘Uses UK Visit as Infomercial for His Scottish Golf Resort’

President Trump may be preparing for one of the most important sit-downs of his presidency when he meets with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday, but he’s still found time to repeatedly plug his luxury golf resort in Scotland at press conferences this week, The New York Times reports. On Saturday, amid calls from lawmakers to call off his meeting with Putin following a federal indictment against 12 Russian intelligence officers, Trump took to Twitter to gush about the “incredible” Trump Turnberry resort where he’d be spending the weekend. The resort has gotten special recognition from the president in a slew of public appearances this past week, a move that has alarmed ethics experts. At a news conference in Brussels earlier this week, the president was asked for his thoughts about Brexit but instead veered off track and mentioned Turnberry, which he described as “magical.” He brought up the resort again during a news conference with British Prime Minister Theresa May on Friday. “I view this as kind of a forced subsidy of an infomercial for his properties,” Norman L. Eisen, the chairman of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, told The New York Times on Friday. “He’s attempting to utilize his trip to get beneficial P.R.”
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stumbler · Jul 15, 2018

New EPA Chief Is Already Facing 2 Ethical Problems In His First Week, Echoing Scott Pruitt

ABC News showed Darwin requested an agency job for his wife, Veronica Darwin, while negotiating the salary for his previous position last year. She ultimately got a job at the agency. Just two days earlier, Wheeler promoted Henry Darwin, the EPA’s chief of operations, to serve as acting deputy administrator, making him the agency’s new No. 2 executive. The move drew swift criticism after emails cited by ABC News showed Darwin requested an agency job for his wife, Veronica Darwin, while negotiating the salary for his previous position last year. She ultimately got a job at the agency.
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Sanity_is_Relative · Jul 15, 2018

Pence family's failed gas stations cost taxpayers $20M+

GARDEN CITY, Ind. (AP) -- Vice President Mike Pence turns nostalgic when he talks about growing up in small-town Columbus, Indiana, where his father helped build an empire of more than 200 gas stations that provided an upbringing on the "front row of the American dream."

The collapse of Kiel Bros. Oil Co. in 2004 was widely publicized. Less known is that the state of Indiana — and, to a smaller extent, Kentucky and Illinois — are still on the hook for millions of dollars to clean up more than 85 contaminated sites across the three states, including underground tanks that leaked toxic chemicals into soil, streams and wells.

Indiana alone has spent at least $21 million on the cleanup thus far, or an average of about $500,000 per site, according to an analysis of records by The Associated Press. And the work is nowhere near complete.

The federal government, meanwhile, plans to clean up a plume of cancer-causing solvent discovered beneath a former Kiel Bros. station that threatens drinking water near the Pence family's hometown.

To assess the pollution costs, the AP reviewed thousands of pages of court documents, tax statements, business filings and federal financial disclosures, as well as federal and state environmental records for Indiana, Kentucky and Illinois. The total financial impact isn't clear because Indiana officials have yet to release cost figures for 12 contaminated areas. Other records are incomplete, redacted or missing.

The public cleanup of more than 25 former Kiel Bros. sites in Kentucky and Illinois — where officials have done a better job keeping costs down — has been much less expensive, totaling about $1.7 million, according to an analysis of records obtained under each state's public records law.

Kiel Bros. has paid for only a fraction of the overall effort. In court documents , the company cited a payment of $8.8 million in "indemnity and defense costs," but also noted that $4.5 million of that amount came from the state.

A spokesman for Indiana's Department of Environmental Management, which regulates gas stations, did not respond to a detailed list of questions from the AP.

Pence spokeswoman Alyssa Farah called the findings "a years old issue" that the vice president has addressed before. She did not elaborate.

In a statement, Pence's older brother Greg Pence — who was president of Kiel Bros. when it went bankrupt and is now running for Congress as a Republican — distanced himself from the cleanup costs.

"Greg Pence has had nothing to do with Kiel Bros since 2004," campaign spokeswoman Molly Gillaspie said.

The fact that the company stuck taxpayers with the lion's share of the cleanup bill rankles some observers, especially in light of the family's reputation as budget hawks critical of government spending.

The Pence family, especially Greg Pence, has "some answering in public" to do, said A. James Barnes, an environmental law professor who served in high-ranking posts at the Environmental Protection Agency under President Ronald Reagan.

Founded by businessman Carl Kiel in 1960, the company grew, and Pence's father, Edward, rose to corporate vice president.

Mike Pence says he worked for the business — which mostly operated under the name Tobacco Road — starting at age 14. But it was his brother who took over after Edward Pence's 1988 death and eventually became president.

By the early 2000s, Kiel Bros. was swimming in debt as industry consolidation and low gas prices sapped profit margins. The business racked up environmental fines and closed stores. In June 2004, Greg Pence resigned as the company filed for bankruptcy.

"The oil and gas industry changed rapidly in the 1990s and early 2000s, and many small, independent companies like Kiel Brothers were not able to survive," said Gillaspie, Greg Pence's spokeswoman.

Many of the gas stations were sold off. Some sites were abandoned.

In the immediate aftermath of the bankruptcy, the state sought about $8.4 million from the company for cleanup and fines. After a new Republican governor, Mitch Daniels, assumed office in 2005, the state dropped that claim , which had been filed under Daniels' Democratic predecessor, Gov. Joe Kernan.

The justification for the change is a matter of debate. Citing the complexities of bankruptcy law, experts said there was no guarantee a judge would approve Indiana's claim.

Greg Pence wasn't out of work for long. Within months, Daniels appointed him deputy commissioner of the Department of Environmental Management, the same agency fighting Kiel Bros. in court. Pence stepped down after only a few months, however, and returned to the petroleum business.

Daniels spokesman Jim Bush said the Pence family's political influence played no role in Greg Pence's hire. He declined to comment on the state's decision to drop its claim against Kiel Bros. in bankruptcy court.

For some families living near Columbus, the Kiel Bros. business left behind more than debt: They smelled oil in water drawn from private wells. Nearly three decades later, the unincorporated area known as Garden City is a federal Superfund site, a designation reserved for the nation's most heavily polluted locations.

Investigators initially determined Kiel Bros. was the source of the oil, along with a plume of trichloroethylene detected decades ago under a gas station. The chemical called TCE is a solvent used to degrease metal parts. The EPA says the plume is drifting toward the aquifer that is Columbus' primary source of drinking water.

State officials seesawed over whether the company was responsible for the TCE before concluding in 2002 that it was not.

ace's n 8's · Jul 15, 2018

Sanity_is_Relative said: ↑

Pence family's failed gas stations cost taxpayers $20M+

GARDEN CITY, Ind. (AP) -- Vice President Mike Pence turns nostalgic when he talks about growing up in small-town Columbus, Indiana, where his father helped build an empire of more than 200 gas stations that provided an upbringing on the "front row of the American dream."

The collapse of Kiel Bros. Oil Co. in 2004 was widely publicized. Less known is that the state of Indiana — and, to a smaller extent, Kentucky and Illinois — are still on the hook for millions of dollars to clean up more than 85 contaminated sites across the three states, including underground tanks that leaked toxic chemicals into soil, streams and wells.

Indiana alone has spent at least $21 million on the cleanup thus far, or an average of about $500,000 per site, according to an analysis of records by The Associated Press. And the work is nowhere near complete.

The federal government, meanwhile, plans to clean up a plume of cancer-causing solvent discovered beneath a former Kiel Bros. station that threatens drinking water near the Pence family's hometown.

To assess the pollution costs, the AP reviewed thousands of pages of court documents, tax statements, business filings and federal financial disclosures, as well as federal and state environmental records for Indiana, Kentucky and Illinois. The total financial impact isn't clear because Indiana officials have yet to release cost figures for 12 contaminated areas. Other records are incomplete, redacted or missing.

The public cleanup of more than 25 former Kiel Bros. sites in Kentucky and Illinois — where officials have done a better job keeping costs down — has been much less expensive, totaling about $1.7 million, according to an analysis of records obtained under each state's public records law.

Kiel Bros. has paid for only a fraction of the overall effort. In court documents , the company cited a payment of $8.8 million in "indemnity and defense costs," but also noted that $4.5 million of that amount came from the state.

A spokesman for Indiana's Department of Environmental Management, which regulates gas stations, did not respond to a detailed list of questions from the AP.

Pence spokeswoman Alyssa Farah called the findings "a years old issue" that the vice president has addressed before. She did not elaborate.

In a statement, Pence's older brother Greg Pence — who was president of Kiel Bros. when it went bankrupt and is now running for Congress as a Republican — distanced himself from the cleanup costs.

"Greg Pence has had nothing to do with Kiel Bros since 2004," campaign spokeswoman Molly Gillaspie said.

The fact that the company stuck taxpayers with the lion's share of the cleanup bill rankles some observers, especially in light of the family's reputation as budget hawks critical of government spending.

The Pence family, especially Greg Pence, has "some answering in public" to do, said A. James Barnes, an environmental law professor who served in high-ranking posts at the Environmental Protection Agency under President Ronald Reagan.

Founded by businessman Carl Kiel in 1960, the company grew, and Pence's father, Edward, rose to corporate vice president.

Mike Pence says he worked for the business — which mostly operated under the name Tobacco Road — starting at age 14. But it was his brother who took over after Edward Pence's 1988 death and eventually became president.

By the early 2000s, Kiel Bros. was swimming in debt as industry consolidation and low gas prices sapped profit margins. The business racked up environmental fines and closed stores. In June 2004, Greg Pence resigned as the company filed for bankruptcy.

"The oil and gas industry changed rapidly in the 1990s and early 2000s, and many small, independent companies like Kiel Brothers were not able to survive," said Gillaspie, Greg Pence's spokeswoman.

Many of the gas stations were sold off. Some sites were abandoned.

In the immediate aftermath of the bankruptcy, the state sought about $8.4 million from the company for cleanup and fines. After a new Republican governor, Mitch Daniels, assumed office in 2005, the state dropped that claim , which had been filed under Daniels' Democratic predecessor, Gov. Joe Kernan.

The justification for the change is a matter of debate. Citing the complexities of bankruptcy law, experts said there was no guarantee a judge would approve Indiana's claim.

Greg Pence wasn't out of work for long. Within months, Daniels appointed him deputy commissioner of the Department of Environmental Management, the same agency fighting Kiel Bros. in court. Pence stepped down after only a few months, however, and returned to the petroleum business.

Daniels spokesman Jim Bush said the Pence family's political influence played no role in Greg Pence's hire. He declined to comment on the state's decision to drop its claim against Kiel Bros. in bankruptcy court.

For some families living near Columbus, the Kiel Bros. business left behind more than debt: They smelled oil in water drawn from private wells. Nearly three decades later, the unincorporated area known as Garden City is a federal Superfund site, a designation reserved for the nation's most heavily polluted locations.

Investigators initially determined Kiel Bros. was the source of the oil, along with a plume of trichloroethylene detected decades ago under a gas station. The chemical called TCE is a solvent used to degrease metal parts. The EPA says the plume is drifting toward the aquifer that is Columbus' primary source of drinking water.

State officials seesawed over whether the company was responsible for the TCE before concluding in 2002 that it was not.
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A business that started prior to the establshment of the EPA.

A business that was never moniteered by the States.

A business that Mike Pence was not the Acting voice of, really means nothing at this time.

Many older gas station properties have been also ''cleaned up'' due to older delapitated holding tanks, that's why the newer stations are replacing tanks with Fiberglass tanks.

As the older steel tanks became ''illegal'' in '88

stumbler · Jul 15, 2018

Commerce secretary divests from all stocks after criticism from ethics watchdog

Billionaire Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said Thursday he was selling all his stock holdings after being criticized by the Office of Government Ethics for some of his financial transactions.

"I have made inadvertent errors in completing the divestitures required by my ethics agreement," Ross said in a statement. "To maintain the public trust, I have directed that all of my equity holdings be sold and the proceeds placed in U.S. Treasury securities."

The admission came after Ross received a letter from OGE general counsel and acting Director David Apol that admonished him for failing to divest from some stocks by Jan 15, 2017, as he had indicated and more recently engaging in stock market activity that appeared aimed at belatedly correcting that error.

Apol told Ross his discrepancies “can undermine public trust in both you and the overall ethics program,” and that his positions and short sale could lead to legal jeopardy. The OGE letter contradicts what Ross has said in the past regarding the ethical and legal nature of the trades in question.

According to the independent ethics office, Ross failed to consult with them about his trades. The office called his attempts to follow ethics guidelines for avoiding conflicts of interest “ineffective.”

But the agency said one of its officials reviewed Ross’ calendars, briefing books and correspondence after potential violations had been flagged in media reports, and found no information indicating a conscious violation of the law.

“[H]owever, your failure to divest created the potential for a serious criminal violation on your part and undermined public confidence,” Apol told Ross.
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stumbler · Jul 16, 2018

Buyers tied to Russia, former Soviet republics paid $109 million cash for Trump properties

Washington

Aleksandr Burman, a Ukrainian who engaged in a health care scheme that cost the federal government $26 million and was sentenced to a decade in prison, paid $725,000 cash for a condo at a Trump Tower I in Sunny Isles Beach, Fla. in 2009.

Leonid Zeldovich, who has reportedly done extensive business in the Russian-annexed area of Crimea, bought four Trump units outright at a cost of more than $4.35 million, three of them in New York City between 2007 and 2010.

And Igor Romashov, who served as chairman of the board of Transoil, a Russian oil transport company subject to U.S. sanctions, paid $620,000 upfront for a unit at a building adorned with the future U.S. president's name in Sunny Isles Beach in 2010.

Buyers connected to Russia or former Soviet republics made 86 all-cash sales — totaling nearly $109 million — at 10 Trump-branded properties in South Florida and New York City, according to a new analysis shared with McClatchy. Many of them made purchases using shell companies designed to obscure their identities.
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“The size and scope of these cash purchases are deeply troubling as they can often signal money laundering activity," said Rep. Adam Schiff of California, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee and a former federal prosecutor. "There have long been credible allegations of money laundering by the Trump Organization which, if true, would pose a real threat to the United States in the event that Russia were able to leverage evidence of illicit financial transactions against the president."

There's nothing illegal about accepting cash for real estate. But transactions that do not involve mortgages — which account for one in four residential purchases in the country — raise red flags for law enforcement officials as it could be a way to commit fraud or launder money.

In 2016, the Treasury Department targeted Miami and New York — where cash purchases account for half of residential sales — for increased scrutiny, requiring title insurers to report the names behind the shell companies buying homes with cash. It was later expanded to include a handful of other localities, including Broward County, Fla., which includes Fort Lauderdale and its wealthy suburbs.

Special Counsel Robert Mueller has spent more than a year investigating whether Trump's campaign colluded with Russia to interfere in the 2016 presidential election, a widening probe that appears to include questions about his family business, the Trump Organization. "This is all about money laundering," former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon is quoted as saying about the Mueller inquiry in the book, Fire and Fury.

Glenn Simpson, co-founder of Fusion GPS, the firm behind a dossier alleging ties between Trump and Russians, told the House Intelligence Committee in November that his group uncovered "patterns of buying and selling that we thought were suggestive of money laundering" at Trump-branded properties around the globe. "Generally speaking, the patterns of activity that we thought might be suggestive of money laundering were ... fast-turnover deals, and deals where there seemed to have been efforts to disguise the identity of the buyer," he said.

The Trump Organization, the collective name for about 500 Trump businesses owned by the president and now run by his adult sons, did not respond to a request for comment about the data, which was compiled by the left-leaning group American Bridge 21st Century and focused on areas that the Treasury Department targeted. But company officials have previously told McClatchy that the company generally focuses on branding and management and is not involved with sales or development.

Gil Dezer, who operates six buildings that bear Trump's name on Sunny Isles Beach, which is nicknamed "Little Moscow," acknowledged that Russian buyers are attracted to the Trump name.

"They have been buying in Miami for over 20 years and love branded everything, from their Versace clothing to the Rolls Royces they buy," he said in a statement. "They buy branded quality goods and that's why they bought homes at Trump."

But he said virtually all real estate purchases between 2008 and 2013 were cash because the recession made mortgages largely unavailable. "If it wasn’t for our wealthy buyer group we would have made no sales," he said.

The all-cash buyers include Alexey Ustaev, founder of a private bank based in St. Petersburg, Russia; Igor Zorin, a government official who runs a state-owned broadcasting company; the wife of hockey player Viacheslav Fetisov; pop star Igor Nikolaev; Roman Sinyavsky, a luxury real estate broker who was one of the first to sell units at a Trump's South Florida building and Evgeny Bachurin, who Russian President Vladimir Putin fired as head of Russia’s Federal Air Transport Agency before becoming a donor to a political action committee supporting Trump, according to American Bridge.

Other news reports have looked at Russian buyers of Trump Organization properties but less attention has been paid to the all-cash purchases.

"We've long suspected that Donald Trump's businesses were a front for money laundering and our research suggests it could be true," said Harrell Kirstein, communicators director for the Trump War Room at American Bridge. "The millions of dollars in previously unreported, all-cash real estate deals we discovered raise troubling questions about who is funding his businesses, why, and what they're getting in return."

The group looked at real estate records at 2,769 condo units at 10 luxury buildings that the Trump Organization either develops or licenses in Miami-Dade and Broward counties in South Florida and New York City; three Trump Towers, Trump Palace and Trump Royale, all in Sunny Isles Beach, Fla., Trump Hollywood in Hollywood, Fla. and Trump Soho, Trump Place, Trump World Tower and Trump International Hotel & Tower in New York — offering a snapshot into the buyers of Trump properties.

In New York, deeds explicitly state if purchases lack a mortgage. But in Florida, sales were deemed all cash if the property deed lacked a corresponding mortgage document. The group did not document how many total purchases were all cash.

Some of the buyers appeared to spend above market value — one of the signs, along with a lack of information about where the money comes from and properties sitting empty — that raises suspicion, said Elise Bean, former staff director of a Senate subcommittee that investigated money laundering.

In one case, a Florida-registered LLC, Unit 1101 Holdings, tied to Vadim Sachkov, paid $1.4 million for a unit in Trump Tower I in 2016 though the assessed market value was $1.2 million, according to the Miami-Dade Property Appraiser. In another case, Natalia Sivokozova spent $1.3 million for a unit in Trump Royale in 2016, though the assessed market value was $923,803, according to the Miami-Dade Property Appraiser.

The group looked at the 69 buyers or shell companies who indicated they were from Russia or a former Soviet republic, previously lived or studied in Russia or a former Soviet republic; had done extensive business in Russia or a former Soviet republic; or purchased a unit using a shell company whose registered agent or officer was from Russia or a former Soviet republic.

Several had questionable backgrounds, including:

Anatoly Golubchik was found guilty in 2013 of operating a sports betting ring for a Russian-American organized crime group, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York. He purchased a unit in Trump Tower I for $830,000 in 2010, according to the Miami-Dade Property Appraiser.

Peter Kiritchenko, a Ukrainian businessman who prosecutors accused of laundering tens of millions of dollars alongside that country's former prime minister Pavel Lazarenko. He pleaded guilty to one count of receipt of stolen property and testified against Lazarenko, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office's for the North District of California. Kiritchenko's daughter, Lidia, paid $1.25 million for a unit in Trump Tower II in 2013, acording to the Miami-Dade Property Appraiser.

Eduard Nektalov, a Uzbeki diamond dealer was arrested on charges he laundered drug money before he was killed in New York, according to multiple news reports. He purchased a unit at Trump World Tower for $1.6 million in 2003, according to the New York City Department of Finance.

The Sivokozov family, which has ties to organized crime, according to various Russian media reports. Patriarch Vasily Sivokozov was director of a Russian bank whose license was revoked, according to the reports. His son, Igor, went into business with a Russian-American criminal who had been convicted of fraud. Igor Sivokozov and his daughter, Natalia, paid $660,000 for a unit in Trump Royale in 2015 though the assessed market value was $483,223. Natalia Sivokozova bought two units at Trump Royale, one in 2015 for $675,000 — which had an assessed market value of $534,630 — and another for $1.3 million — which had an assessed market value of $923,803 — in 2016. Her sister, Ksenia Sivokozova, paid $675,000 for a fourth unit in 2015, though it had a market value of $474,474.

Burman, who does not have a medical license, opened six clinics in Brooklyn as part of a scheme to defraud Medicare and New York State Medicaid programs of more than $26 million between 2007 and 2013, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York. It was during that time in 2009 that he paid $725,000 for a unit at Trump Tower I in Sunny Isles Beach, according to the Miami-Dade Property Appraiser. Burman, who was born in Kiev and came to the U.S. in 1992 , pleaded guilty and, in May 2017, was sentenced to 10 years in prison.

Zeldovich, who according to social media is likely from Minsk, Belarus, had a company accused of violating anti-monopoly laws and may have continued to do business in Crimea, despite U.S. prohibitions about doing business there after Russia annexed it from Ukraine, according to Russian news reports. Zeldovich and his wife, Erna, purchased two Trump Place units in 2007, one for $790,000 and another for $995,000, according to the New York City Department of Finance. They spent $750,000 for a Trump Royale unit in 2008, making them one of the first buyers, according to the Miami-Dade Property Appraiser. Zeldovich Living Trust, which lists Zeldovich as a representative , spent $1.85 million on a unit at Trump Place in 2010, according to the New York City Department of Finance.

Romashov served as chairman of the board of Transoil when it was on the Treasury Department’s sanctions list in March 2014. Transoil was founded by Russian billionaire Gennady Timchenko, who has close ties to Putin and is under U.S. sanctions. Romashov paid $620,000 cash for a unit in Trump Tower I in Sunny Isles Beach in 2010, according to the Miami-Dade Property Appraiser.

Messages left for these buyers or their attorneys at homes, businesses and Facebook were not returned. Some could not be located. Reached by phone, Zeldovich said "No thank you. We sold those" before hanging up.

Thirty-six of the 86 sales were original purchases, earning Trump a licensing fee. But most of them continue to help the president's business. The Trump Organization promotes all the buildings — except for Trump Soho, which the company no longer manages as part of a licensing agreement — as it tries to sell its brand around the world. About five of the 83 units sold were in buildings the company developed, according to the analysis.

Trump ignored calls after he was elected president to fully separate from his business interests and placed his holdings in a trust designed to hold assets for his “exclusive benefit.” He can receive money at any time without the public’s knowledge and retains the authority to revoke the trust. Trump earned at least $453 million and had assets valued at least $1.4 billion, according to his most recent financial disclosure statement, which covered the 2017 calendar year. But his licensing and management deals are private, making it difficult to determine how how much he makes from individual projects.

"Regardless of who bought these apartments, the Trump Organization received the same amount of licensing fee," Dezer said. "So if the unit was bought by a Russian or a Chinese or a Brazilian or someone from Zimbabwe, the Trump Organization received the same fee on the sale. "

Alma Angotti, an anti-money laundering consultant who worked in financial crimes enforcement for the federal government, said the South Florida and New York City markets attract all cash purchases because they offer nice places to live, stable economies and strong real estate markets.

"If you are trying to hide assets there is no safer place than London, New York and Florida," Angotti said.

The Trump Organization signed deals in the early 2000s to brand several condo towers in South Florida. Dezer downplayed the numbers in Florida, saying the 86 cash purchases don't even add up to 5 percent of the 2,000 buyers at the Trump buildings. By comparison, Brazilians bought more than 300 units in cash in 2011, he said.

"We work with real estate brokers around the world," he said. "While we sell majority to South America we have real estate professionals from Hong Kong to Paris representing our properties."

Jack Blum, a Washington lawyer and expert on financial crimes, said sellers — unlike lenders — bear little responsibility in an all cash sale unless they have information of a crime. "If you know something then you are in big trouble. You are part of the conspiracy," he said

Foreign buyers can have legitimate reasons for paying for real estate upfront, such as avoiding fees or unfavorable exchange rates, or keeping the money from being seized by rogue nations, but U.S. officials have become increasingly concerned with possible illegitimate reasons.

Since the 1970s, U.S. laws have required real estate professionals to screen clients for signs of money laundering. The Bank Secrecy Act and the Treasury Department's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network require institutions that provide financing to examine their customers and their source of wealth. But those laws don't pertain to sellers.

"Criminals can use all-cash purchases to make payments in full for properties and evade scrutiny — on themselves and the origin of their wealth — that is regularly performed by financial institutions in transactions involving mortgages," according to the Treasury Department's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network. "Many all-cash transactions are routine and legitimate; however, they also present significant opportunities for exploitation by illicit actors."

In 2001, after the 9/11 attacks, the USA Patriot Act required real estate professionals to adopt formal anti-money laundering programs, but lobbyists for the industry won a "temporary" exemption that remains in place.

“The evidence that corrupt officials, drug traffickers, and other wrongdoers are laundering criminal proceeds through cash purchases of U.S. real estate is overwhelming,” Bean said. “But Treasury continues to drag its feet on implementing the 2001 legal requirement to ensure real estate professionals aren’t taking dirty money."

The publication of the Panama Papers — the massive 2016 leak of data that shows how the wealthy move money through offshore shell companies — prompted some to call on Congress to give federal agents more power to investigate money laundering. But the United States still fails to regulate most cash purchases in real estate.

Two bills have been introduced in the Senate to stop people from using shell companies to engage in illegal activities, including money laundering. Congress has yet to pass a bill.
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deleted user 1548766 · Jul 16, 2018

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slutwolf · Jul 16, 2018

I've been thinking.

yeah , I know , high risk of brain damage there , lol

But anyway , if the trumpet keeps filling the swamp with these

View attachment
it's gonna be one hell of a job draining it ,
when somebody finally gets round to it ,
lol

and that's what happens when you ignore the signs

and try to shovel coal the wrong way

freethinker · Jul 16, 2018

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