So Much Grifting, And Yet Trump Is Still Not Tired Of Grifting
"If my father travels, they stay at our properties for free," Eric Trump whined in 2019. "So everywhere that he goes, if he stays at one of his places, the government actually spends, meaning it saves a fortune because if they were to go to a hotel across the street, they’d be charging them $500 a night, whereas, you know we charge them, like $50."
Turns out, not so much. Here's one of many variance approvals for Eric and Lara Trump's protective detail to stay at the Trump Hotel in DC for $1,100, four and a half times the approved standard lodging rate of $242.
“Given the longstanding concerns surrounding the former President’s conflicts of interest and efforts to profit off the presidency, the Committee has a strong interest in obtaining a complete accounting of federal government spending at Trump properties," Oversight Chair Carolyn Maloney wrote to Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle. "The Committee continues to examine potential legislation to prevent presidential self-dealing and profiteering, as well as to curb conflicts of interest by ensuring that future presidents are prevented from exercising undue influence on Secret Service spending."
(And New York just turfed her out,grumblegrumble.)
Trump's Truth Social SPAC
When you have a moment, you really must treat yourself to this Washington Post story (gift link) from the weekend about the whistleblower at Trump's Truth Social SPAC. A Special Purpose Acquisition Company is a basically a publicly traded sack of cash ready to swallow up a private company and spare it having to go public itself. Digital World Acquisition Corp. (DWAC) is the SPAC created to take the Trump Media and Technology Group (TMTG) public. DWAC has been under investigation by the SEC and the Justice Department for a year because it appears to have violated the prohibition on negotiating with the target company before going public. And now TMTG is also in the SEC's crosshairs thanks to a whistleblower named Will Wilkerson.
Wilkerson was a producer for conservative talkshow host Andy Litinsky in January of 2021 when Trump got booted off of all the normal social media platforms. Litinsky had a connection to Trump from his brief stint on "The Apprentice" in 2004. Wilkerson, Litinsky, and two other "Apprentice" alums, Wes Moss and Bradford Cohen, approached Trump with the idea of starting his own media empire that would be “resilient to cancel culture and the impact of bias against the right.”
They gave Trump a 90 percent stake, but that was apparently not enough. The Post reports that in October of 2021, the former president called Wilkerson and demanded that he "gift" some of his own shares to Melania. When Wilkerson demurred, saying that it would cause a huge tax bill for him, Trump told him "Do whatever you need to do." And when the transfer didn't happen, Wilkerson found himself removed from the board of TMTG, in what he says was a violation of company policy.
Since then, Wilkerson filed a whistleblower complaint with the SEC, turned over a bunch of internal TMTG docs to the Post, and got himself You're Fired, in what he characterizes as an illegal act of retaliation. Anyway, the whole article is delightful, particularly the parts about what an absolute fucking disaster Devin Nunes has been at the helm of the company. Also, Don Jr. and Eric have apparently been sniffing around asking for a slice, too. But Trump getting a 90 percent stake for nothing, and then demanding a kickback for Melon is, as they say, chef's kiss.
The PAC Valet
And finally, let's flag one fun detail from the Poststory last week revealing that Trump's White House Diet Coke valet followed him to Florida, from which vantage point he saw Trump order the removal of boxes of documents from the pool locker during the time the National Archives and the Justice Department were trying to get them back. We're not going to name him, although the Post did, but that guy is allegedly the source for the DOJ's information that Trump was moving classified documents around.
But check out the last graf of that article:
Campaign finance records show that [the valet] was placed on the payroll of a Trump political action committee, Save America, last year. He was on payroll as recently as August, making $5,227.81 a paycheck, or about $135,000 a year, according to Federal Election Commission filings.
That's right, Trump is using PAC money grifted from the rubes to pay his personal valet who works at Mar-a-Lago. And then that guy sold him out to the feds. LOL forever.
[Oversight Committee / WaPo / WaPo]
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