Delay, lie, destroy evidence, attack patriots, burn his friends and family, ANYTHING to escape
By David Cay Johnston, DCReport
Editor-in-Chief
The damning Oct. 29 testimony by a decorated Army officer who
revealed misleading White House edits to the infamous rough transcript of Donald Trump’s “perfect” call to Ukraine’s
leader fits perfectly Trump’s lifelong abuse of records.
Altering, destroying, fabricating and hiding records is Trumpian
behavior going back decades that the late Wayne Barret and others including me
have thoroughly documented, but that rarely makes the mainstream news.
Trump has repeatedly, and falsely, said that the memorandum of
the July Ukraine call is a “word for word,
comma for comma” perfect transcript.
Yet on its first page, the document warns that it “is not a verbatim transcript.” Trump acolytes, especially Fox News viewers, can hardly be blamed for believing the president since the “fair and balanced” cable channel has become TrumpTV, a Moscow-like propaganda outlet that distorts nightly the verifiable record.
Yet on its first page, the document warns that it “is not a verbatim transcript.” Trump acolytes, especially Fox News viewers, can hardly be blamed for believing the president since the “fair and balanced” cable channel has become TrumpTV, a Moscow-like propaganda outlet that distorts nightly the verifiable record.
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| Roy Cohn (right) was chief counsel to infamous Sen. Joe McCarthy. Cohn spent years as Donald Trump's friend and mentor. |
Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, the top Russo-Ukraine expert on the
White House national security staff, told House investigators the transcript
was misleadingly edited to protect Trump from proof of wrongdoing.
He said Trump clearly sought Kyiv’s interference in domestic American politics. Vindman said he tried twice—unsuccessfully—to make the record accurate by filling in words replaced with ellipses.
He said Trump clearly sought Kyiv’s interference in domestic American politics. Vindman said he tried twice—unsuccessfully—to make the record accurate by filling in words replaced with ellipses.
Vindman’s testimony only increases the reasons Americans should
see the accurate and full records of a call between Trump and Chinese President
Jinping Xi in which a similar request to dig up dirt on Joe Biden and his son
was discussed.
The concerns flowing from Vindman’s testimony, since confirmed
by other witnesses, go far beyond Trump soliciting foreign intervention in
American electoral politics, which is a serious crime. They raise questions
about Trump’s disloyalty, threats to our national security and the integrity of
official records on which future administrations must rely.
Trump and his supporters, including John Yoo, a
former deputy attorney general, have attacked the patriotism and loyalty of
Vindman, a Soviet Jewish émigré who came
to America as a toddler.
Vindman is a decorated combat officer while Trump was a draft
dodger. Vindman is also one of only 1,200 or so elite military Foreign Area
Officers, a specialist in the politics of the former Soviet empire who holds a
master’s degree in public administration from Harvard.
The attacks on Vindman reek not only of trying to make a loyal
officer, who walks around with shrapnel in his body from Iraq combat duty, they
are also part of Trump’s anti-Semitism, itself part of a larger animus to
people who are not white and claiming to be Christian.
Writer Julia Ioffe, like Vindman a Soviet Jew émigré, detailed
this in a smart article this week.
“While Trump has a history of attacking anyone who questions his
power,” she writes, “there is a particularly insidious history to
questioning the loyalty of Jewish émigrés.
Rich, but little known, public records establish that throughout
Trump’s career as a white-collar criminal posing as a businessman, he has
profited and avoided prosecution by misleading law enforcement investigators,
deceiving auditors, tricking investors.
His Taj Mahal casino was also fined $10 million for money laundering, the kind of crime he is suspected of having performed for Russian criminal interests for decades.
His Taj Mahal casino was also fined $10 million for money laundering, the kind of crime he is suspected of having performed for Russian criminal interests for decades.
Trump knows how to use the criminal justice system to subtly
inform those who pose a danger to him to keep their mouths shut if they want a
future reward. He now has the almost unlimited power to pardon, a power he
claims he can even apply to himself, though it is of no value in impeachment,
which is a non-criminal matter.
Roy
Cohn’s Advice
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| Vanity Fair |
The notorious lawyer, whom Trump has said he regarded as a
second father, taught that when law enforcement and other government officials
suggest anything is amiss, you turn the tables and attack their integrity and
legitimacy.
What we could call “Roy Cohn’s Lying Without Consequences
Playbook” includes:
Trump has always torn up his desk calendar at the end of the month, a classic Roy Cohn technique. In legal disputes, a consistent practice weighs less against you than destroying records only when convenient.
- Throw up every obstacle you can use or fabricate.
- Toss legal brickbats with novel and bizarre legal claims.
- Be nasty.
- Be accusatory.
- Challenge the legitimacy of government.
- Attack the integrity of individual officials.
- Make claims of government action that bear no relationship to the actual issue.
- Insist that records are confidential.
- Claim records no longer exist because some random, low-level employee accidentally erased them or tossed them out.
- Claim that a broken water pipe flooded the accounting file room.
- Blame an act of God.
- And always delay, delay, delay in the hope that the salaried government officials will grow weary and move on to easier tasks.
Trump has always torn up his desk calendar at the end of the month, a classic Roy Cohn technique. In legal disputes, a consistent practice weighs less against you than destroying records only when convenient.
Another Cohn trick: make dirty payments in cash. Checks, like
credit cards, leave a trail that the federal Financial Crimes Enforcement Network or FinCen can track anywhere in the world, given enough time
and analysts. But cash, even million-dollar payoffs, is much harder to trace.
Trump has been suspected of laundering money for Russian-speaking criminals, based on deals that make no economic sense.
Trump has been suspected of laundering money for Russian-speaking criminals, based on deals that make no economic sense.
Trump
Helped Cocaine Trafficker
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| Trump with the mob guy he said he didn't know |
He also denied writing a letter praising the drug trafficker, and manager of Trump’s personal helicopter, a credit to the community.
Only when casino detectives showed him the letter did he acknowledge his signature, but nothing more.
Trump should have lost his casino license under New Jersey law, but protecting casino owners by never asking hard questions that would force such actions was an unstated but de facto mission of the New Jersey Attorney General’s offices, as my book Temples of Chance detailed at length in 1992.
Trump wrote a letter, ostensibly to a judge but in reality signaling the
mobster that if he kept his mouth shut he would be taken care of. The third
time felony loser did as Trump asked, got an extremely light sentence after his
case passed through the courtroom of Trump’s sister, federal Judge Maryanne Trump
Barry, and Trump escaped further scrutiny.
Part of Trump’s strategy in that matter was to claim he didn’t
recall writing the letter. That’s odd
since candidate Trump told voters he enjoys “one of the world’s greatest
memories,” something he now says he
doesn’t remember saying. Transcripts of
testimony show that Trump has used this trick many times.
Candidate Trump declared he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue
and not lose a vote. That hubris has grown. On Oct. 23 Trump’s lawyers asserted
in court that even if Trump
actually shot someone no federal or state law enforcement agency could
investigate.
As we can see daily from his attacks on Vindman and his claims
of a witch hunt and hoax, Trump has no scruples about anything. And he will say
or do anything to protect his delusional self-image as the world’s smartest,
most expert, most deserving leader who is so perfect that as a claimed
Christian he doesn’t even need to ever ask God for forgiveness.
Kremlin
Blackmail
Federal law requires Trump to preserve all presidential records,
but he thumbs his nose at that law.
Trump illegally
deletes Tweets in violation of the
1978 Presidential Records Act, which makes the tweets public property.
The National Archives assigned an
employee to go through Trump’s Oval
Office wastebasket to reconstruct shredded papers.
Trump snapped at his then-national security adviser, General H.
R McMaster, for taking notes in
an Oval Office meeting.
Without notes, disputes devolve into “he said, she said” squabbles, while courts generally treat notes and memos written at the time a conversation takes place as solid evidence.
That’s why Trump hates note-taking.
Without notes, disputes devolve into “he said, she said” squabbles, while courts generally treat notes and memos written at the time a conversation takes place as solid evidence.
That’s why Trump hates note-taking.
Trump seized and
destroy the notes of American
government translator Marina Gross after they met in Helsinki with Vladimir
Putin. No other Americans attended.
Normally such meetings involve a half dozen or more American officials with deep expertise to safeguard American national security and look for clues into the behavior of Putin or any leader of a foreign power, friendly or hostile.
Normally such meetings involve a half dozen or more American officials with deep expertise to safeguard American national security and look for clues into the behavior of Putin or any leader of a foreign power, friendly or hostile.
Later Trump held a second and
unannounced meeting with Putin that
relied solely on the Kremlin’s translator, leaving no American record of what
was discussed, what promises may have been made.
This conduct means Trump made himself vulnerable to blackmail by the Kremlin, which has the only record of what was said. Trump’s actual words and promises, or a Russian fabrication, could be used to force Trump to play ball on Kremlin initiatives and poses a danger to American national security.
Whether such blackmail has already been used is unknown, but given some Trump’s bizarre pro-Kremlin behavior concern is reasonable.
Hiding Records
When New York City auditors sought records after Trump slashed his annual rent payments on the Grand Hyatt hotel from about $3 million to $60,000, Trump did his best to evade scrutiny.
The first response was to say the time limit for audits had passed, a fabrication. Next was a claim that the city had no right to see the books even though the contract between Trump and the city explicitly granted that authority. Then auditors were told that a broken water pipe in the new building destroyed the books.
When auditors learned of an electronic copy in Chicago, they
were told someone had accidentally erased the files the night before auditors
were to inspect the records.
Finally, in a New Jersey warehouse, auditors found enough of the records to show Trump had cheated the city out of close to $3 million.
Finally, in a New Jersey warehouse, auditors found enough of the records to show Trump had cheated the city out of close to $3 million.
Vindman and others told House members in both parties that the
records of the Ukraine and China calls, and presumably others, are stored in a
super-safe White House computer.
That lets Trump hide the records far more effectively than the games he tried to play with the New York City auditors. What we should hope is that others kept their own records of these calls and give them to Congress.
That lets Trump hide the records far more effectively than the games he tried to play with the New York City auditors. What we should hope is that others kept their own records of these calls and give them to Congress.
Forgetting
Eyeglasses
Trump is notorious for cheating small business vendors and
workers and then lying under oath to escape responsibility for his misdeeds.
After a long trial U.S. District Court Judge Charles E. Stewart
Jr., ruled in a lengthy opinion that Trump engaged in a conspiracy to cheat the
workers, as I recount in The Making of
Donald Trump.
Trump didn’t fully pay about 200 illegal immigrants from Poland
who for $4 an hour (about $11 today) literally tore down by hand the landmark
12-story Bonwit Teller Department Store, where Trump Tower now stands.
At trial, Trump denied knowing the workers were illegally in America and failing to fully pay them.
At trial, Trump denied knowing the workers were illegally in America and failing to fully pay them.
Judge Stewart, in a lengthy opinion, found that Trump’s
testimony lacked credibility. He noted that Trump visited the site and had an
office with a view from across the street.
In stealing the wages, Trump violated his duty of loyalty, also
known as fiduciary duty, to the workers and to a union. This “breach involved
fraud and the Trump defendants knowingly participated in this breach,” Judge
Stewart ruled.
At times Trump relies on cheap tricks to avoid answering
questions, which may be asked of him in a Senate trial.
Just three years ago, in a videotaped
deposition involving the hotel that
Trump illegally operates a short
walk from the White House, he used an old trick to avoid answering questions
about a document he was shown.
“I am at a disadvantage because I didn’t bring my glasses,” he
testified, a problem of his own creation that benefited only Trump.
As events unfold in the weeks and months ahead keep all of this in mind. And beware it is just a sampling of the voluminous record showing how Trump will lie, fabricate, destroy, conceal and accuse without regard for fact or even, as we see in the baseless attacks on the patriotism of Lt. Col Vindman, basic human decency.
Think about what life will be like for you if we abandon more
than two centuries of the rule of law and choose to enable a dictatorship under
a man whose only operative principle is self-preservation.
And what if you adore Trump, what if you think it would be good to have him just takeover? Think about what he wrote in his book Think Big and said in numerous public talks Trump declared that his life’s philosophy boiled down to a single word: revenge.
His specific story in the book is about deriving increasing
pleasure in the miseries of a Trump Organization executive he held in high
esteem until she declined to make a phone call that would have been unethical
and possibly illegal.
Never forget that all it would take for Trump to turn on on you
and use the powers of our government against you is just a modest slight.