W. House won’t dish on 1st Fam personal emails
including “unlawful coordination with the Trump presidential campaign, repeated and willful self-dealing and much more.”
“I even got sued on a Foundation which took Zero rent & expenses & gave away more money than it had,” Trump posted. “Going on for years, originally brought by Crooked Hillary’s Campaign Chair, A.G. Eric Schneiderman, until forced to resign for abuse against women. They never even look at the disgusting Clinton Foundation.”
Schneiderman, the ex-state AG who resigned last year amid allegations of sexual misconduct, was never Hillary Clinton’s campaign chair, despite Trump’s claims.
Trump did not specify what “rent & expenses” he was referring to.
A December 2018 agreement with James’ office forced the Trump Foundation to disband and dole out the remaining $1.75 million it had left in its coffers.
Because of the foundation’s alleged widespread wrongdoing, James’ office is seeking restitution for $2.8 million in misspent cash as well as a 10year ban on Trump operating not-for-profit organizations in New York. That case remains ongoing.
In addition to the foundation investigation, James’ office has launched inquiries into Trump’s eponymous real estate empire, firing off subpoenas to Deutsche Bank and Investors Bank.
Sources familiar with the matter say the Deutsche Bank subpoena was issued in response to Michael Cohen’s testimony before Congress that Trump purposely inflated his assets while seeking loans — allegations that could amount to fraud if proven true.
Federal prosecutors for the Southern District of New York are separately looking into potential crimes relating to Trump’s inaugural committee and hush money payments to his alleged paramours. An American investor with ties to a Russian oligarch and questioned by Special Counsel Robert Mueller sued the government Monday over sanctions he says have wrecked his business.
Andrew Intrater charges in the lawsuit filed in Manhattan Federal Court that the feds violated his rights by freezing more than $50 million in his private equity firm, Columbus Nova. Intrater’s cousin and biggest investor is oligarch Viktor Vekselberg, who was hit with sanctions in April 2018.
Intrater says the money was wrongly frozen by association.
FBI search warrants revealed that investigators suspected Columbus Nova was funneling money from Vekselberg to then Trump attorney Michael Cohen.
Mueller, questioned Intrater but did not mention him in his final report.
The Department of Justice, defending the government in the suit, did not respond to a request for comment. The White House has refused to explain why and how top officials including President Trump’s family members were doing official business over personal email and web apps, and now Democrats are demanding to see all the illicit communications.
Republicans, alarmed that Trump officials appeared guilty of committing the same transgressions with email they had hardly criticized Hillary Clinton for, started a probe of the Trump advisers when they were in power, but got few answers.
Oversight Committee Chairman Rep. Elijah Cummings (DMd.) took up the investigation after Democrats retook the House, but has gotten even less — exactly nothing — out of the administration since writing in December to ask for detailed explanations.
“Unfortunately, over the past six months since I sent my letter, you have not produced a single document, you have not provided any of the requested briefings, and you have not offered any timeline by which these requests will be fulfilled,” Cummings wrote.
“The White House’s complete obstruction of the Committee’s investigation for the past six months is an affront to our constitutional system of government,” he added.
At issue are violations of the Presidential Records Act, which requires all official communications to be preserved, including those that come from personal accounts. White House policy also bars the use of personal devices to do business.
Yet Jared Kushner, Ivanka Trump (photo), former top strategist Steve Bannon, and former national security official K.T. McFarland have all been revealed to have used private systems to do work.
During Trump’s election campaign, crowd’s would routinely chant “Lock her up!” In outrage at Clinton’s use of a private email system to do State Department work.
Since then it emerged that Trump officials were doing much the same, and then some. Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner was revealed to have been using WhatsApp to communicate with officials overseas — reportedly the crown prince of Saudi Arabia among them.
The recently released Mueller report also revealed that Bannon “regularly used his personal Blackberry and personal email for work-related communications (including those with [Erik] Prince), and he took no steps to preserve these work communications.”
Prince in the brother of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos and the founder of the notorious private mercenary company Blackwater.
Since the White House has turned over nothing in half a year, Cummings says it’s up to Congress to investigate.
He wants copies of all the communications that are known about, as well as any others sent about official business via private, unsecured means.
“The purpose of this investigation is to determine why White House officials used nonofficial email accounts, texting services, and encrypted applications for official business; why they failed to forward records sent or received on nonofficial accounts to their official accounts within 20 days as required by federal law; whether there were specific topics that White House officials sought to conceal; and whether legislative changes should be made to prevent similar violations in the future,” Cummings concluded in his letter.
The message was not signed by Republicans on the committee, who did not answer a request for comment. The White House also did not immediately respond to a request for comment.