Yesterday was truly a momentous day in the Trump saga. Trump has been hit a damaging blow to his identity as a successful businessman.
Judge Arthur Engoron ordered him to pay $355 million dollars penalty for defrauding banks, insurance companies, and taxpayers. In addition, he will have to pay 9 percent interest on the disgorgement. Nearly $100 million in interest is already owed and the interest will continue to accrue as long as he hasn’t paid up.
On top of the financial judgement, Trump will not be able to do business in New York, including borrowing from banks, for 3 years.
Jonah E. Bromwich and Ben Protess at The New York Times: Trump Fraud Trial Penalty Will Exceed $450 Million.
A New York judge on Friday handed Donald J. Trump a crushing defeat in his civil fraud case, finding the former president liable for conspiring to manipulate his net worth and ordering him to pay a penalty of nearly $355 million plus interest that could wipe out his entire stockpile of cash.
The decision by Justice Arthur F. Engoron caps a chaotic, yearslong case in which New York’s attorney general put Mr. Trump’s fantastical claims of wealth on trial. With no jury, the power was in Justice Engoron’s hands alone, and he came down hard: The judge delivered a sweeping array of punishments that threatens the former president’s business empire as he simultaneously contends with four criminal prosecutions and seeks to regain the White House.
Justice Engoron barred Mr. Trump for three years from serving in top roles at any New York company, including portions of his own Trump Organization. He also imposed a two-year ban on the former president’s adult sons and ordered that they pay more than $4 million each. One of them, Eric Trump, is the company’s de facto chief executive, and the ruling throws into doubt whether any member of the family can run the business in the near term.
The judge also ordered that they pay substantial interest, pushing the penalty for the former president to $450 million, according to the attorney general, Letitia James.
In his unconventional style, Justice Engoron criticized Mr. Trump and the other defendants for refusing to admit wrongdoing for years. “Their complete lack of contrition and remorse borders on pathological,” he said.
He noted that Mr. Trump had not committed violent crimes and also conceded that “Donald Trump is not Bernard Madoff.” Still, he wrote, “defendants are incapable of admitting the error of their ways.”
Mr. Trump will appeal the financial penalty but will have to either come up with the money or secure a bond within 30 days. The ruling will not render him bankrupt, because most of his wealth is in real estate, which altogether is worth far more than the penalty.
Mr. Trump will also ask an appeals court to halt the restrictions on him and his sons from running the company while it considers the case. In a news conference from his Palm Beach, Fla., home, Mar-a-Lago, on Friday evening, he attacked Ms. James and Justice Engoron, calling them both “corrupt.”
The bond he has to post would be greater than the total judgment plus the interest. The same requirement holds if Trump wants to appeal the $18.3 million judgment in the E. Jean Carroll case.
Trump will also be under the thumb of Barbara Jones, the independent monitor the judge appointed to oversea the Trump Organization’s business. He will have get her permission for any large transfers of money.
But there might be little Mr. Trump can do to thwart one of the judge’s most consequential punishments: extending for three years the appointment of an independent monitor who is the court’s eyes and ears at the Trump Organization. Justice Engoron also strengthened the monitor’s authority to watch for fraud and second-guess transactions that look suspicious.
Mr. Trump’s lawyers have railed against the monitor, Barbara Jones, saying that her work had already cost the business more than $2.5 million; the decision to extend her oversight of the privately held company could enrage the Trumps, who see her presence as an irritant and an insult.
Mark Joseph Stern and Alexander Sammon at Slate: Trump and His Family Are Fined $355 Million for Fraud—and a Lack of Remorse That “Borders on Pathological.” The ruling, if upheld, marks the end of the Trump Organization as we know it.
New York Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron ordered Donald Trump to pay $355 million in fines for business fraud in an excoriating decision on Friday that also imposes major penalties on the former president’s family and business associates. Both Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr. are each liable for $4 million, while former CFO Allen Weisselberg is on the hook for $1 million.
The ruling, if upheld, marks the end of the Trump Organization as we know it: Engoron barred Trump from serving as an officer in any New York corporation or legal entity for three years, and prohibited him from applying for loans from any financial entity in the state. The judge has effectively hobbled the entire Trump corporate empire….
During trial, members of the Trump family took the stand to defend their father’s business dealings, with little success; Engoron declined to credit their testimony in his Friday opinion, noting that Eric Trump actually reversed himself on the stand after evidence emerged that he had lied under oath. Trump himself took the stand, as well, assuming a combative and antagonistic pose toward the judge, whom he publicly derided as a partisan hack. The former president, Engoron wrote in his Friday opinion, “rarely responded to the questions asked, and he frequently interjected long, irrelevant speeches on issues far beyond the scope of the trial. His refusal to answer the questions directly, or in some cases, at all, severely compromised his credibility.”
This theme of mendacity and impenitence ran throughout Engoron’s ruling. In a remarkable passage, he wrote that the Trump family’s “complete lack of contrition and remorse borders on pathological. They are accused only of inflating asset values to make more money. The documents prove this over and over again. … Defendants are incapable of admitting the error of their ways. Instead, they adopt a ‘See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil’ posture that the evidence belies.” This refusal to admit to their unlawful misdeeds persuaded Engoron that they “will engage in [fraud] going forward unless judicially restrained.” He therefore affirmed his earlier decision to have an independent monitor, the retired judge Barbara Jones, oversee the business’s finances and assets.
The $355 million penalty is, to put it mildly, substantial, and not the first time this year Trump has been ordered by a court to cut a check with two commas and at least seven zeroes on it. Just last month he was ordered to pay out over $83 million after losing the defamation case brought by the writer E. Jean Carroll. That was actually the second penalty Trump was compelled to pay her: A New York jury previously found that Trump sexually assaulted and defamed Carroll, awarding her $5 million in damages.
Some quick back-of-the-envelope math here shows just how dire the self-proclaimed multibillionaire’s financial situation is getting. Reporting from late October pegged Trump’s cash holdings at $425 million. This most recent penalty from New York state, combined with the two verdicts in the Carroll cases, tally to $438 million. And actually, it’s worse than that, since Engoron stipulated that Trump is prohibited from borrowing money from any New York bank for the next three years. That ban will handicap his attempt to appeal. Moreover, New York law could force him to pay a hefty 9 percent interest rate on the judgment, which would push the original $355 million north of $450 million.
Trump will undoubtedly appeal Friday’s decision, and he is not required to post bond while he does so. However, if he fails to post bond, the state can begin collecting on the judgment in 30 days’ time. At that point, Attorney General James can seize Trump’s assets, including real property; in other words, his real estate holdings in New York, like Trump Tower, are vulnerable to seizure and potential sale.
Can Trump raise this kind of money without selling one of his properties? From Erica Orden at Politico: Can Trump pay? What if he doesn’t? Here’s what to know about Trump’s massive civil judgments.
A seven-figure verdict, an eight-figure verdict and, now, a nine-figure verdict.
Donald Trump has been hit with all three in the past nine months, with Friday’s $354 million penalty for New York business fraud by far the most massive.
He is now on the hook for over $440 million in civil judgments as he heads toward the Republican nomination — and as he prepares for one or more criminal trials this year….
Trump’s company isn’t public, and he has famously refused to disclose his tax returns, so his cash flow situation is shrouded in mystery.
Even if he has $440 million in cash on hand — and it’s far from clear that he does — paying the judgments could wipe out his accounts, since Trump himself has placed his cash reserves in the ballpark of that amount.
Trump claimed in a deposition last year that he had “substantially in excess” of $400 million in cash on hand….
But it’s unclear whether that number is accurate. That deposition, after all, was part of the very lawsuit in which a judge found that Trump has repeatedly inflated his net worth.
If he doesn’t have enough cash on hand, would he have to sell properties?
Trump would likely have to sell something, although it wouldn’t necessarily have to be property. He could sell investments or other assets.
But what if he outright refuses to pay up?
In the civil fraud case, which is in New York state court, if Trump can’t post the funds or get a bond, then the judgment would take effect immediately and a sheriff could begin seizing Trump’s assets.
The rules are slightly different in federal court, which is the venue for the $83.3 million judgment that Trump owes for defaming the writer E. Jean Carroll after she accused him of raping her. (He also owes Carroll an additional $5 million from a separate verdict last year.) Carroll could pursue post-judgment discovery under the jurisdiction of the judge who oversaw the trial. Through that process, the judge could order Trump to produce his bank account records, place liens or garnish his wages.
“I think he’s going to have to pay. And whether it requires him to sell or to put a lien on something to get a loan, that’s his problem, not ours. He’s going to pay,” Carroll’s attorney Roberta Kaplan said on CNN last month.
The judge, Kaplan added, will use “judgment enforcement mechanisms” to “make sure that he pays.”
If Trump truly can’t afford the judgments, he would have to declare bankruptcy.
He also can’t postpone payments while he appeals. He would have to post bond of 120-125 percent of the total owed first. In other words, Trump is totally screwed. The only thing that could help him is that he can use PAC money to pay. But can his MAGA morons afford that much?
What does this financial disaster mean for Americans? After all, Trump is running for the Republican presidential nomination. Abdallah Fayed at Vox: Trump is suddenly in need of a lot of cash. That’s everyone’s problem.
Two recent verdicts have now left Donald Trump on the hook for nearly half a billion dollars….
For a well-connected billionaire, that might usually amount to nothing more than a temporary inconvenience; after all, Trump could always liquidate some of his assets or borrow even more money to cover his short-term obligations.
But Trump isn’t just one of the country’s richest men, with an estimated net worth in the low billions; he’s also running to serve a second term as president of the United States. And for any candidate for public office — let alone the presidency — being cash-strapped while owing such significant amounts of money could be a serious liability.
“It’s pretty scary from an ethics perspective,” said Virginia Canter, the chief ethics counsel at the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a nonpartisan watchdog group that has chronicled Trump’s abuses of power and filed lawsuits against him.
You don’t have to look far to find the reasons why. Trump’s first term was riddled with conflicts of interest, and that’s in no small part because of his financial well-being (or lack thereof, depending on how you look at it). At the time that he tried to overturn the 2020 election, he was hundreds of millions of dollars in debt, largely stemming from loans to help rehabilitate his struggling businesses, and most of which would be coming due over the subsequent four years. Throughout his presidency, he refused to divest from his businesses, which made millions of dollars in revenue from taxpayers and continued to do work with other countries while he was in office — a practice he indicated he would repeat in a second term.
The fact that he has so many entanglements with big businesses and other nations leaves plenty of room for things to go awry. That’s why a 2020 New York Times exposé uncovering his staggering debt during his first term wasn’t just embarrassing for Trump, who has a tendency to claim he’s richer than he actually is. It also raised fears about how his debt could implicate national security.
As the former head of the Justice Department’s National Security Division told Time magazine in 2020, “For a person with access to U.S. classified information to be in massive financial debt is a counterintelligence risk because the debt-holder tends to have leverage over the person, and the leverage may be used to encourage actions, such as disclosure of information or influencing policy, that compromise U.S. national security.”
Read the rest at Vox.
Finally, if you’d like a deep dive on Trump and how he took the vast fortune his father left him and fucked up so badly, there’s a fascinating article at The Guardian by Sidney Blumenthal: Trump’s hubris has brought about the downfall of his family’s business empire.
More stories to check out today:
The New York Times: Trump Allies Plan New Sweeping Abortion Restrictions.
The Washington Post: Trump’s anger at courts, frayed alliances could upend approach to judicial issues.
Press Release from DOJ: Justice Department Transfers Approximately $500,000 in Forfeited Russian Funds to Estonia for Benefit of Ukraine.
Politico: Biden, lawmakers hammer Ukraine aid holdouts after Navalny death.
The Hill: GOP House chair: Johnson has no way out of Ukraine floor vote.
Los Angeles Times: Opinion: I’m an American doctor who went to Gaza. What I saw wasn’t war — it was annihilation, by Ifran Galaria
The Milwaukee Journal: Wisconsin fake elector tells ‘60 Minutes’ he was afraid of Trump supporters.
What do you think about all this? What other stories have captured your interest?
Hugo Scheiber, Man Reading Newspaper, 1918
Yesterday was a huge news day. The top story was the decision by the DC Circuit Court ruling stating that Trump does not have immunity from prosecution for crimes committed as president. Now Trump must decide by Monday whether to take the case to the Supreme Court.
On Thursday, the Supreme Court will hear arguments regarding the Colorado case arguing that the 14th Amendment makes Trump ineligible to appear on the state’s primary ballot.
Trump is also awaiting a decision from Judge Engoron in the New York fraud case that could potentially bankrupt him.
In addition, Republicans in the House and Speaker Mike Johnson failed miserably as he lost two votes he put on the floor: aid to Israel and impeachment of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. On top of that, the head of the RNC announced her resignation.
In the Senate, Mitch McConnell knifed Senator James Lankford in the back after assigning him to negotiated a border bill that included aid to Ukraine and Israel. Democrats gave Republicans everything they wanted, but they backed down on Trump’s orders.
I’ll get to as many of these stories as I can.
Kyle Cheney and Josh Gerstein at Politico: Trump is not immune from prosecution for bid to subvert the 2020 election, appeals court rules.
Former President Donald Trump — and indeed any other former president — may be prosecuted for alleged crimes they committed while in office, a federal appeals court panel ruled Tuesday.
The unanimous 57-page decision from a three-judge panel of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals is a major win for special counsel Jack Smith, who is seeking to put Trump on trial this year on federal felony charges stemming from his efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
Trump quickly vowed an appeal, which could be at the Supreme Court by Monday.
“For the purpose of this criminal case, former President Trump has become citizen Trump, with all of the defenses of any other criminal defendant,” the D.C. Circuit judges wrote. “But any executive immunity that may have protected him while he served as President no longer protects him against this prosecution.”
The ruling affirms U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan’s historic conclusion that former presidents may be prosecuted for crimes they committed in office, even if those alleged crimes arguably related to their official duties. Trump had argued that former presidents could not be prosecuted for such actions without first being impeached and convicted by Congress.
The judges put their decision on hold only until Monday to allow Trump to ask the Supreme Court to take up the immunity fight on an emergency basis. If he does so, the decision won’t take effect until the high court acts on his request, the appeals panel decreed.
Trump could also ask the D.C. Circuit to rehear the case. But the panel said doing that won’t delay the return of the case to Chutkan, the trial judge, unless the full bench of the D.C. Circuit agrees to a rehearing, which requires a majority of the 11 active appellate judges.
The force of Tuesday’s unanimous ruling Tuesday, backed by two liberal judges and one staunch conservative, may have been worth the wait for Smith. Rather than a splintered decision that could be picked apart more easily, the ruling lays out a groundbreaking legal and political framework for bringing a former president to trial.
The Newspaper, by Aldo Luongo
At The Atlantic, George Conway writes: An Airtight Ruling Against Trump. In a masterful opinion, the D.C. Circuit rejected the former president’s bid for immunity.
On July 24, 1974, when the Supreme Court issued its decision in United States v. Nixon, ordering President Richard Nixon to produce the Watergate tapes, the president turned to his chief of staff, Alexander Haig, to understand what had just happened. He later recounted the exchange in his memoirs:
“Unanimous?” I guessed.
“Unanimous. There’s no air in it at all,” he said.
“None at all?” I asked.
“It’s tight as a drum.”
These words echoed through my mind today, nearly 50 years later, as I read the historic opinion of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in United States v. Trump, holding that former President Donald Trump does not enjoy immunity from prosecution for any crimes he committed in attempting to end constitutional democracy in the United States.
The result was no surprise. As I said last month, no one who attended the oral argument could have believed Trump had any chance of prevailing. The question was timing: How long would an appeal delay Trump’s trial, originally scheduled for March 4? Many of us thought that the decision might come sooner, perhaps within days of the argument, given how quickly the court had scheduled briefing and argument. And by the end of last week, some commentators had, by their own reckoning, reached the “freakout stage” as to why the decision was taking so long.
They—and we—needn’t have worried. Issued exactly four weeks after the argument, the court’s decision came plenty fast. It’s not that often that you get a unanimous 57-page decision on novel questions of law in 28 days. And you almost never get an opinion of this quality in such a short period of time. I’ve read thousands of judicial opinions in my four decades as a law student and lawyer. Few have been as good as this one.
Unanimous. No air. Tight as a drum. The court’s per curiam opinion—per curiam meaning “for the court,” in that no individual judge authored it—is all that and more. It’s a masterful example of judicial craftsmanship on many levels. The opinion weaves together the factual context, the constitutional text, the judicial precedent, history, the parties’ concessions, and razor-sharp reasoning, with no modicum of judicial and rhetorical restraint, to produce an overwhelmingly cohesive, and inexorably convincing, whole. The opinion deserves a place in every constitutional-law casebook, and, most important—are you listening, members of the Supreme Court?—requires no further review.
The opinion far exceeds any commentator’s poor power to add or detract, so I’ll mostly let it speak for itself. The bottom line:
For the purpose of this criminal case, former President Trump has become citizen Trump, with all of the defenses of any other criminal defendant. But any executive immunity that may have protected him while he served as President no longer protects him against this prosecution.
I shared this as a gift link (see above), so you should be able to read the whole piece without a subscription.
You can also check out this article at Just Security: How Long Will Trump’s Immunity Appeal Take? Analyzing the Alternative Timelines.
On the Colorado case, Anne E. Marimow writes at The Washington Post: In Trump’s Colorado case, Supreme Court will make and face history.
The Supreme Court on Thursday will confront the critical question of Donald Trump’s eligibility to return to the White House, hearing arguments in an unprecedented case that gives the justices a central role in charting the course of a presidential election for the first time in nearly a quarter-century.
By Peter Harskamp
There’s a crazy Qanon-related event going on in Pennsylvania right now that is getting very little media coverage. I only learned about it from Twitter posts by Ron Filipkowski, a “Fmr Fed Prosecutor & Repub; now Defense Att & Democrat” from Florida who focuses his Twitter feed on on exposing the insanity of the far right.
The event is part of Michael Flynn’s “Reawaken America Tour.” The guests include a “who’s who” of crazy right wing religious nuts and Trump followers. Eric Trump is appearing at the meeting that is going on now in Lancaster, PA, and Trump himself even made a brief appearance by phone.
From yesterday’s PennLive: ReAwaken America tour hits Lancaster, and the audience finds uplift amid the angst.
If you’ve never been it’s hard to explain exactly what the “ReAwaken America” tour, which rolled into Spooky Nook event center outside Lancaster Friday, actually is.
It is part political rally for sure, especially in the month before a national mid-term election: Attendees repeatedly were reminded of the need to create a political wave coming that drives Democrats and weak Republicans from office this fall.
They even delighted in a minute or so with former President Donald J. Trump, who took a cellphone call from his son, Eric, during Eric’s mainstage presentation.
“We love you all,” the former president said to his unseen fans and followers. “And we’ll be back doing things that… We’re going to bring this country back because our country’s never been in such bad shape as it is now.”
It is part Christian crusade: The program is peppered with charismatic pastors from around the country, all of whom in one way or another called on the audience to take up arms – metaphorically speaking – in a spiritual war between good and evil.
By Vladimir Dunjić – Serbian painter, 1957
Good, in this barnstorming roadshow produced by Oklahoma entrepreneur Clay Clark, is the vision of an America built on its traditional Judeo-Christian heritage; one where there are only two genders, schools stick to Reading, Writing and Arithmetic, and everyone has the freedom to get vaccines or wear masks if, when and where they want.
The mantle of Christian Nationalism was repeatedly and lustily cheered Friday….
Evil, generally speaking, is assigned to a loosely-organized coalition of tech, business, media and government leaders whose success is determined by their ability to make money and lord over a passive population.
PBS’s Frontline and AP have been investigating this right-wing “christian” movement and filming a documentary: Michael Flynn’s ReAwaken Roadshow Recruits ‘Army of God.’
By the time the red, white and blue-colored microphone had been switched off, the crowd of 3,000 had listened to hours of invective and grievance.
“We’re under warfare,” one speaker told them. Another said she would “take a bullet for my nation,” while a third insisted, “They hate you because they hate Jesus.” Attendees were told now is the time to “put on the whole armor of God.” Then retired three-star Army general Michael Flynn, the tour’s biggest draw, invited people to be baptized….
Flynn warned the crowd that they were in the midst of a “spiritual war” and a “political war” and urged people to get involved.
ReAwaken America was launched by Flynn, a former White House national security adviser, and Oklahoma entrepreneur Clay Clark a few months after the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol failed to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. Attendees and speakers still insist — against all evidence and dozens of court rulings — that Donald Trump rightfully won.
Fabrice Backes, 1968, French artist
Since early last year, the ReAwaken America Tour has carried its message of a country under siege to tens of thousands of people in 15 cities and towns. The tour serves as a traveling roadshow and recruiting tool for an ascendant Christian nationalist movement that’s wrapped itself in God, patriotism and politics and has grown in power and influence inside the Republican Party.
In the version of America laid out at the ReAwaken tour, Christianity should be at the center of American life and institutions. Instead, it’s under attack, and attendees need to fight to restore the nation’s Christian roots. It’s a message repeated over and over at ReAwaken — one that upends the constitutional ideal of a pluralist democracy. But it’s a message that is taking hold.
A poll by the University of Maryland conducted in May found that 61% of Republicans support declaring the U.S. to be a Christian nation.
This is from PBS News Hour, September 7, 2022: Former Trump adviser Michael Flynn ‘at the center’ of new movement based on conspiracies and Christian nationalism.
BATAVIA, N.Y. (AP) — The crowd swayed on its feet, arms pumping, the beat of Twisted Sister’s “We’re Not Gonna Take It” thumping in their chests. The people under the revival tent hooted as Michael Flynn strode across the stage, bopping and laughing, singing the refrain into his microphone and encouraging the audience to sing along to the transgressive rock anthem….
The retired lieutenant general, former national security adviser, onetime anti-terrorism fighter, is now focused on his next task: building a movement centered on Christian nationalist ideas, where Christianity is at the center of American life and institutions.
Flynn brought his fight — a struggle he calls both spiritual and political — last month to a church in Batavia, New York, where thousands of people paid anywhere from a few dollars to up to $500 to hear and absorb his message that the United States is facing an existential threat, and that to save the nation, his supporters must act.
Flynn, 63, has used public appearances to energize voters, along with political endorsements to build alliances and a network of nonprofit groups — one of which has projected spending $50 million — to advance the movement, an investigation by The Associated Press and the PBS series “Frontline” has found. He has drawn together election deniers, mask and vaccine opponents, insurrectionists, Proud Boys, and elected officials and leaders in state and local Republican parties. Along the way, the AP and “Frontline” documented, Flynn and his companies have earned hundreds of thousands of dollars for his efforts.
The AP and “Frontline” spoke with more than 60 people, including Flynn’s family, friends, opponents, and current and former colleagues, for this story. The news organizations also reviewed campaign finance records, corporate and charity filings, social media posts and similar open-source information, and attended several public events where Flynn appeared. Reporters examined dozens of Flynn’s speeches, interviews and public appearances. Flynn himself sat down for a rare on-camera interview with what he calls the mainstream media.
Click the link to read about the Flynn interview and some of what he had to say.
Dreaming, by Didier Lourenço, Spanish
On October 19, The Philadelphia Inquirer published an op-ed by Rev. Jennifer Butler, who attended one of these crazy events: ReAwaken America proves that Christian nationalism isn’t Christian.
It was August, and I was in the midst of thousands of far-right faithful who had flocked to Batavia, N.Y., halfway between Buffalo and Rochester, for a two-day event. The headliners were Christian nationalist pastors and former Trump official, Michael Flynn.
The ReAwaken America Tour is currently working its way across America to reawaken Christian nationalism, and it will stop just before midterms in Manheim, Pa., fromOct. 21-22, and feature Pennsylvania’s gubernatorial candidate, Doug Mastriano.
As a Christian pastor who went to Batavia at the invitation of deeply concerned local faith communities, the clerical collar and cross around my neck were my passport into this strange world. I was deeply concerned by what I saw.
The ReAwaken America speeches touted antisemitic, racist, sexist, and homophobic beliefs in the name of Christianity. Speeches were rife with apocalyptic and polarizing predictions of God’s vengeance befalling a wide range of opponents, including the founder of the World Economic Forum, President Joe Biden, and New York Attorney General Leticia James, who had written a letter to the tour’s local host, Pastor Paul Doyle, voicing concern that this event could spur violence. In the parking lot, I spotted a bus painted with the words “Patriot Street Fighter,” along with an image of a man in body armor with a bludgeon in his hand and the words “Get in the Fight” written in the red font of horror movies.
These ReAwaken “revivals” are one of the increasing attempts to mainstream Christian nationalism, a radical political ideology built on the myth that the American republic was founded as a Christian nation and must remain that way. The message is taking hold: 61% of Republicans now support declaring the U.S. a Christian nation.
Christian nationalism is not new. It has been present since our nation’s founding. Its resurgence in recent years is buoyed by politicians like Donald Trump, and business and political allies who seek to consolidate power by manipulating large swaths of mostly white Christians, sowing division and discontent. And violence.
Its recycled conspiracy theories have motivated recent deadly domestic terrorist attacks that targeted Jews in a Pittsburgh synagogue, African Americans at a bible study in Charleston, S.C., and a grocery store in Buffalo, N.Y., Latinos shopping in El Paso, Texas, and Sikhs at worship in Oak Creek, Wisc.
Read the rest at the link.
In other news, the justice system is closing in on Trump.
The Washington Post: Fraud-related criminal trial against Trump Organization to start Monday.
NEW YORK — Trump Organization, former president Donald Trump’s namesake company, is set to go on trial Monday for alleged tax crimes — the result of a lengthy investigation into the company and its executives related to fraud and other potentially illegal business practices.
Trump is not charged personally and the portion of the investigation for which he still could face criminal charges is not yet concluded by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s investigators….to date, the only charges filed have been against the Trump Organization, its subsidiary Trump Payroll Corporation and its longtime Chief Financial Officer Allen Weisselberg.
Weisselberg in August pleaded guilty to 15 countstied to an alleged longtime fraud scheme within the organization and is required to testify in the criminal trial as part of a plea agreement.
Prosecutors say the case focuses on what they describe as a 15-year tax cheating scheme involving untaxed benefits like luxury cars and expensive apartments for company executives including Weisselberg, who has been painted as the linchpin to the tax avoidance operation. Weisselberg began his employment at the Trump Organization in 1973.
Before rising to chief financial officer, Weisselberg, a career Trump Organization employee, was an accountant and comptroller. Weisselberg was among a set of executives who “received substantial portions of their income through indirect and disguised means,” according to an indictment that was filed on July 1, 2021….
Weisselberg, who had been slated to stand trial alongside the corporate entity, was promised a sentence of five months in jail if he testifies against the company. He had been facing up to 15 years in prison.
The company is alleged, under Weisselberg’s supervision, to have maintained two sets of books in an effort to conceal the perks that he and others received as compensation. He personally avoided paying $900,000 in taxes based on underreporting of compensation.
There’s more information at the link.
This is from Raw Story–a summary of a Bloomberg story that is behind a paywall: Revealed: Trump employee agreed to plead guilty and tell the truth in Trump Org case — to avoid prison
Weisselberg — who was responsible for the company’s finances during the period being examined — accepted a guilty plea in an effort to stay out of prison for an extended time, but is expected to spill the beans on how the company operated, with a focus on perks provided to top executives provided in such a way as to avoid federal taxes at the behest of Donald Trump.
As Bloomberg’s Greg Farrell wrote, “Trump is not on trial in the case, brought by the Manhattan district attorney’s office, and if the company is found guilty, it would have to pay back taxes and fines totaling about $1.6 million. A conviction of Trump Corp. and Trump Payroll Corp., the two entities charged, wouldn’t put the parent company out of business. But it will be the first trial involving the firm since Trump left office.”
According to former U.S attorney Barbara McQuade, “The world is about to see just how the Trump Organization ran its business.”
She added, “This is a significant case. The criminal charges are against Trump’s corporation, which is a small private company, but Donald Trump is the Trump Organization.”
Noting that Trump is already involved in a $250 million real estate fraud case filed by New York Attorney General Letitia James, Farrell added that, in this case, “Weisselberg, 75, agreed this summer to plead guilty to 15 charges in exchange for a maximum jail term of five months. He is required to testify truthfully, or the deal is off and he could face years in prison.”
By Natsuo Ikegami, Japanese artist
It looks like Trump is in deep trouble in the election interference case against him in Georgia. From Jonathan Swan at Axios: Exclusive: Emails reveal warning to Trump team about fraud claims.
A senior White House lawyer expressed concerns to President Trump’s advisers and attorneys about the president signing a sworn court statement verifying inaccurate evidence of voter fraud, according to emails from December 2020obtained by Axios.
Why it matters: The emails shed new light on a federal judge’s explosive finding Wednesday that Trump knew specific instances of voter fraud in Georgia had been debunked, but continued to tout them both in public and under oath.
— While the judge’s opinion stemmed from litigation related to the House’s Jan. 6 committee, the Justice Department is also conducting a criminal investigation into Trump and his allies’ scheme to stop Congress from certifying Joe Biden’s Electoral College victory.
— Eric Herschmann, the former White House lawyer who cautioned Trump’s outside attorneys about the inaccurate allegations of voter fraud in Georgia, was subpoenaed this summer to testify in the DOJ investigation.
You’re likely already familiar with this:
Background: U.S. District Court Judge David Carter is presiding over the House Jan. 6 committee’s attempt to subpoena communications from conservative lawyer John Eastman, one of the architects of the scheme to overturn the election.
— After a review of hundreds of emails that Eastman claimed were privileged, Judge Carter determined some should be turned over to the Jan. 6 committee — finding they were “sufficiently related to and in furtherance of a conspiracy to defraud the United States.”
— In one email cited in Judge Carter’s opinion, Eastman told Trump’s team that the president had been made aware that some of the allegations and evidence of voter fraud used in a Georgia election lawsuit were inaccurate.
— That suit was later moved to federal court. “For him to sign a new verification with that knowledge (and incorporation by reference) would not be accurate,” Eastman wrote, according to the judge’s order.
This is a very long article for Axios, so head over there if you want to know more.
That’s all I have for you today. Have a great weekend everyone!!
Kat’s Book Nook, Bemidji, MN
Today is a pretty busy news day for a Saturday. The building collapse in Florida is looking worse the more we learn about it. The Delta variant is still in the news and looking more dangerous by the day. Trump will begin holding his revenge rallies tonight in Ohio and then continue his pity party in Florida over the Fourth of July Weekend. The Trump Organization may be criminally charged in New York next week. But the scariest news was broken last night in The New York Times by Trump whisperers Michael Schmidt and Maggie Haberman: Trump Aides Prepared Insurrection Act Order During Debate Over Protests
Responding to interest from President Donald J. Trump, White House aides drafted a proclamation last year to invoke the Insurrection Act in case Mr. Trump moved to take the extraordinary step of deploying active-duty troops in Washington to quell the protests that followed the killing of George Floyd, two senior Trump administration officials said.
The aides drafted the proclamation on June 1, 2020, during a heated debate inside the administration over how to respond to the protests. Mr. Trump, enraged by the demonstrations, had told the attorney general, William P. Barr, the defense secretary, Mark T. Esper, and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of staff, Gen. Mark A. Milley, that he wanted thousands of active-duty troops on the streets of the nation’s capital, one of the officials said.
Mr. Trump was talked out of the plan by the three officials. But a separate group of White House staff members wanted to leave open the option for Mr. Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act to call in the military to patrol the streets of the capital.
They decided it would be prudent to have the necessary document vetted and ready in case the unrest in Washington worsened or the city’s mayor, Muriel Bowser, declined to take measures such as a citywide curfew, which she ultimately put in place….
the new details about internal White House deliberations on a pivotal day in his presidency underscore the intensity of Mr. Trump’s instinct to call on the active-duty military to deal with a domestic issue. And they help to flesh out the sequence of events that would culminate later in the day with Mr. Trump’s walk across Lafayette Park to St. John’s Church so he could pose in front of it holding a Bible, a move that coincided with a spasm of violence between law enforcement and protesters camped near the White House.
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More details from the story:
…invoking the Insurrection Act, a rarely used authority allowing presidents to use active duty military for law-enforcement purposes, would have been a dramatic escalation. The act has only been invoked twice in the past 40 years — once to quell unrest after Hurricane Hugo in 1989, and once during the 1992 Los Angeles riots.
“We look weak,” Mr. Trump said, according to one of the officials. He complained about having been taken to the bunker below the White House on the night of May 29 when the barricade outside the Treasury Department was pierced. The New York Times had reported the bunker visit a day earlier, infuriating Mr. Trump….
Mr. Trump’s meeting with Mr. Barr, Mr. Esper and Mr. Milley was marked by his rage at being embarrassed on the world stage, according to two of the officials.
Mr. Trump grudgingly went along with their counsel not to deploy active-duty troops, according to the officials. Immediately after the meeting, Mr. Trump joined a call with governors around the country, some of whom were seeing protests increase in their states. Mr. Trump urged them to “dominate” the protesters, as he said the National Guard in Minnesota had.
Mr. Esper told associates that he was so concerned that Mr. Trump would deploy active-duty troops that he echoed the need for them to get control of their states, hoping he could encourage governors to deploy the National Guard to head off federal action. Using Pentagon terminology that he later told associates he regretted, Mr. Esper told the governors to “dominate the battle space,” a sentiment stemming from concern about Mr. Trump’s intentions.
On the upcoming Trump rallies, Asawin Suebsaeng writes at The Daily Beast: Trump’s Underlying Rally Message Is Clear: Fear Me.
Early this month, as Donald Trump delivered his keynote address to the North Carolina Republican Party’s annual convention, the former U.S. president noticed something: His greatest crowd-pleaser of the night didn’t come when he attacked President Joe Biden, trashed Dr. Anthony Fauci, or repeated his lies about the 2020 election being stolen from him. It came when he railed against critical race theory, declaring that it should be banned from being taught to schoolchildren and government staff….
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The coming days and months should prove no different, with Trump planning on delivering yet another red-meat-hurling speech on Saturday evening, with plenty of time devoted to dumping accelerant on the flames of the culture wars and asserting his continued, solidified sway over the GOP.
But his return to the rally circuit also serves another purpose: scaring off potential competition for holding dominant power over the Republican Party, and keeping himself positioned as the 2024 GOP frontrunner.
“In [recent] conversations that I’ve had with him, he has said that he wants to be everywhere to remind people, not just Republicans, that he’s still in charge,” a person close to the former president said, paraphrasing Trump. “The message is a pretty straightforward one: I am still leading this party, and if you want to try to challenge me for that, it will get ugly.”
More details at the link.
The condo collapse in Florida looks to be a horrific tragedy, as rescue workers are found no survivors yesterday. The New York Times: Frustration Mounts in Search for Survivors of Condo Collapse Near Miami.
After an initial two rescues, only bodies had been recovered, three of them overnight. The number of people unaccounted for rose to more than 150 — dozens more than officials had estimated a day earlier — and their families were losing their last threads of hope.
Family members of the missing were asked to provide DNA swabs in case they were needed to identify remains. President Biden said federal mortuary services would be available if needed.
Underneath the parking garage of the exposed building at 8777 Collins Ave., search-and-rescue teams drilled through concrete and inserted probes with cameras to peer through the rubble. Specialized hearing devices alerted them to any sounds that could indicate a person was waiting for help — tapping, scratching, falling debris, twisting metal.
On Thursday, crews briefly heard the voice of a woman trapped somewhere under the wreckage, but it went silent before they could find anyone. On Friday, crews were still using dogs trained to sniff out the scent of a living person; the dogs that come later find cadavers.
From the outside, in the stifling humidity and amid intermittent thunderstorms, little of the tunneling work going on below could be seen. Heavy machinery arrived at the site on Thursday night, but some of the families of the missing wondered why they could not see more action atop the mountain of rubble.
“We’re frustrated because we feel as if they are alive,” said Toby Fried, a family friend of Harry Rosenberg, a man missing from Unit 212. “We offered to bring more manpower — professional searchers. There’s nobody to talk to. We are waiting. We want to help out.”
Jack at Copperfield’s, Sonoma County, CA
More stories on this topic:
The New York Times: Engineer Warned of ‘Major Structural Damage’ at Florida Condo Complex.
The Washington Post: Before condo collapse, rising seas long pressured Miami coastal properties.
Could the Trump Organization really be indicted soon? CNN: Trump Organization could face criminal charges in New York as soon as next week.
The Manhattan district attorney’s office has informed lawyers for the Trump Organization that it could face criminal charges in connection with benefits it has provided to company employees, a Trump attorney confirmed Friday.
The charges, which could come as soon as next week, would likely involve allegations of a company effort to avoid paying payroll taxes on compensation it provided to employees, including rent-free apartments, cars and other benefits, a person familiar with the matter said….
Prosecutors are also likely to announce charges against Allen Weisselberg, the Trump Organization chief financial officer, as soon as next week, people familiar with the matter said.
Weisselberg’s lawyers recently informed prosecutors that he would not cooperate in the investigation, the people said, although that could change in the future.
Weisselberg is under scrutiny for benefits he received, including a company-funded apartment and car. Prosecutors are also looking into similar benefits given to Matthew Calamari, the chief operating officer of the company. One source familiar with the matter said it’s possible he could also face charges.
Finally, the Delta variant of Covid-19 is spreading rapidly, and WHO recommends that fully vaccinated people should continue wearing masks to protect against it. CNBC: WHO urges fully vaccinated people to continue to wear masks as delta Covid variant spreads.
The World Health Organization on Friday urged fully vaccinated people to continue to wear masks, social distance and practice other Covid-19 pandemic safety measures as the highly contagious delta variant spreads rapidly across the globe.
“People cannot feel safe just because they had the two doses. They still need to protect themselves,” Dr. Mariangela Simao, WHO assistant director-general for access to medicines and health products, said during a news briefing from the agency’s Geneva headquarters.
“Vaccine alone won’t stop community transmission,” Simao added. “People need to continue to use masks consistently, be in ventilated spaces, hand hygiene … the physical distance, avoid crowding. This still continues to be extremely important, even if you’re vaccinated when you have a community transmission ongoing.”
The health organization’s comments come as some countries, including the United States, have largely done away with masks and pandemic-related restrictions as the Covid vaccines have helped drive down the number of new infections and deaths.
More Delta news:
The Wall Street Journal: Delta Variant Outbreak in Israel Infects Some Vaccinated Adults.
CNN: Missouri becomes hot spot for Delta variant fueling hospitalizations while vaccination efforts lag.
The Wall Street Journal: Delta Coronavirus Variant Prompts Limits in Australia, Israel, as India Warns of New Mutation.
ABC15.com: COVID-19 Delta variant on the rise in Arizona.
ABC16.com: Delta variant COVID-19 cases increasing in Mississippi.
As I said, there’s a lot of news out there. What stories are you following?
By Arne Kavli
We appear to be inching closer to the possibility that Trump and his minions could actually be prosecuted. It hasn’t happened yet, but news has broken over the past few days that suggests that real accountability could be coming for the Trump crime family.
Bill Chappelle, Andrea Bernstein, and Ilya Marritz at NPR: What We Know So Far About The Trump Organization Criminal Investigation.
New York Attorney General Letitia James is investigating former President Donald Trump’s business, the Trump Organization, “in a criminal capacity,” her office says, ratcheting up scrutiny of Trump’s real estate transactions and other dealings.
The state attorney general is joining forces with Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr., who has been conducting a separate criminal inquiry into Trump’s business practices and possible insurance or financial fraud as well as alleged hush money payments to two women who said they had affairs with Trump before he became president….
Dorothy Weir Young, “Seated Girl Reading Newspaper,” 1930
The new collaboration between the state and local offices is an unusual event in itself: In New York, the attorney general and the district attorney have historically been rivals. But in this case, they’re working together.
Two assistant attorneys general have now joined the district attorney’s team of prosecutors. They’re all trying to unravel troves of complicated information, including millions of pages of tax returns and other documents related to how the Trump Organization operates in the U.S. as well as its sprawling international enterprises.
With the shift in focus from James’ office, we now know that both of these prosecution teams are making a determined and coordinated effort to sift through evidence of possible crimes.
Read the whole article. It’s a good summary of where things stand right now. Here’s the latest breaking news on the investigations:
The New York Times: Top Trump Executive Under Criminal Investigation Over Taxes.
The New York attorney general’s office has been criminally investigating the chief financial officer of former President Donald J. Trump’s company for months over tax issues, according to people with knowledge of the matter.
The office of the attorney general, Letitia James, notified the Trump Organization in a January letter that it had opened a criminal investigation related to the chief financial officer, Allen Weisselberg, the people said. The investigators have examined whether taxes were paid on fringe benefits that Mr. Trump gave him, including cars and tens of thousands of dollars in private school tuition for at least one of Mr. Weisselberg’s grandchildren….
Auguste Macke, Woman reading
The focus on perks and Mr. Weisselberg overlaps with the Manhattan district attorney’s long-running criminal fraud investigation of Mr. Trump and his family business. The district attorney’s office has been investigating the extent to which Mr. Trump handed out fringe benefits to some of his executives, including Mr. Weisselberg, and whether taxes were paid on those perks, The New York Times previously reported.
In recent weeks, Ms. James’s office suggested to the company in a new letter that it had broadened the criminal investigation beyond the focus on Mr. Weisselberg, one of the people said. It was unclear how the inquiry had widened.
In general, fringe benefits — which can include cars, flights and club memberships — are taxable, though there are some exceptions. Companies are typically responsible for withholding such taxes from an employee’s paycheck….
In addition to the fringe benefits, Ms. James and the district attorney, Cyrus R. Vance Jr., have examined whether Mr. Trump’s company inflated the value of his properties to obtain favorable loans and lowered the values to reduce taxes.
The New York attorney general’s office has opened a criminal tax investigation into top Trump Organization officer Allen Weisselberg, increasing the legal pressure on the long-time aide to former President Donald Trump, people familiar with the investigation say.
The pressure on Weisselberg is mounting from two directions with the attorney general looking into his personal taxes, while prosecutors in the district attorney’s office are digging into his role at the Trump Organization, his personal finances, and benefits given to his son Barry, a long-time employee of the Trump Organization.
Prosecutors are seeking to find leverage that could sway Weisselberg into cooperating with authorities, people familiar with the investigation said, potentially raising the legal stakes for Trump and his family. It’s a common tactic used by prosecutors to try to get individuals to “flip” to help build a case higher up the corporate ladder. Vance’s office is coordinating with James’ office on its criminal investigation into Weisselberg….
Mary Cassatt, Woman reading
The tax investigation into Weisselberg’s personal finances by New York attorney general Letitia James was opened several months ago and is being handled by a small unit within the office that has authority to bring criminal charges, people familiar with the investigation said.
Those investigators have been coordinating with prosecutors in the Manhattan district attorney’s office led by Cyrus Vance Jr, which has been investigating the Trump Organization, going through Trump’s tax returns, and recently has been examining perks the company gave to employees, Weisselberg’s finances, and benefits he and his son received, people familiar with the inquiry said.
And a bit more on the AG’s investigation from The New York Daily News:
James’ office announced late Tuesday that her long-running civil investigation into Trump’s alleged financial wrongdoing had evolved into a full-fledged criminal inquiry, but did not spell out when or why that significant upgrade was made.
Duncan Levin — an attorney for Jennifer Weisselberg, the estranged daughter-in-law of a top Trump Organization executive — shed some light on that omission Wednesday, telling the Daily News that his client has been cooperating in the criminal component of James’ investigation since March.
“We’ve been aware of the attorney general’s criminal investigation for several months now, since March, and have been in touch with prosecutors in the criminal division and have provided them with evidence,” Levin said….
James’ exact line of criminal inquiry is unclear, but the fact that she’s conducting it with [New York District Attorney] Vance’s help suggests it could also be focused on allegations of fraud. A source familiar with the matter told The News that two assistant attorneys general from James’ office have been specifically tapped to spearhead coordination with Vance….
Jennifer Weisselberg, whose estranged father-in-law is Allen Weisselberg, Trump’s longtime chief financial officer, has been asked by prosecutors from James’ criminal division about a Trump-owned Midtown apartment overlooking Central Park that she and her ex-husband lived in rent-free for years, Levin said.
Paritosh Sen, Woman reading a newspaper
Levin said his client has also provided James’ investigators with documents about her family’s finances.
Another key cooperator in both the James and Vance probes is former Trump attorney Michael Cohen, who has met with the DA’s team nearly a dozen times.
James’ criminal announcement, Cohen said Wednesday, shows “the troubles for Donald Trump just keep on coming.”
“Soon enough, Donald and associates will be held responsible for their actions,” Cohen said. “Now that you see the [Manhattan] district attorney and the attorney general’s offices working in concert, I do believe that indictments will be issued shortly, and definitely before summer’s end.”
At The Atlantic, Professor of Law at the University of Baltimore, offers even more details on possible charges: The Country Is on the Cusp of a New Era.
Yesterday evening, New York State’s attorney general, Letitia James, announced, “We have informed the Trump Organization that … We are now actively investigating the Trump Organization in a criminal capacity.” According to The New York Times, James will be sending two of her office’s prosecutors to join the team of Cyrus Vance Jr., the Manhattan DA. With this news, Donald Trump, those around him, and the country as a whole inch closer to the prospect that a former president could face criminal charges, and possibly even prison time. The country has not been through anything like this before.
The ongoing investigation is sweeping. James began it as a civil investigation following the 2019 congressional testimony of Trump’s former attorney, Michael Cohen, that the Trump Organization had lied about the value of its assets in order to secure loans and insurance and to reduce its tax liability. Her focus includes the Trump Organization’s valuation of Seven Springs, a 213-acre estate in Westchester County, which it used to claim a $21.1 million tax deduction for a conservation easement on the property in 2015. James is also looking into a $160 million loan on a property at 40 Wall Street in Manhattan, which Trump personally guaranteed for $20 million, as well as “large portions of debt owed by the Trump Organization” relating to the Trump International Hotel and Tower, in Chicago, that were claimed as taxable income, and the valuation of Trump National Golf Club, in Los Angeles.
Vance’s municipal-level, criminal grand-jury investigation adds other areas of possible criminality to the scope of James’s state-level inquiry, including possible bank and tax fraud. Vance is also reportedly looking into hush money paid to Stormy Daniels and other women on Trump’s behalf—a maneuver that sent Cohen to jail for campaign-finance violations….
By Arne Kavli
By law, grand juries operate in secret, but it’s publicly known that Vance has also subpoenaed Mazars USA LLP, Trump’s personal accounting firm, for financial records relating to the former president and his businesses. In July 2020, the Supreme Court rejected a bid to protect those records from disclosure on presidential-immunity grounds, and Vance finally obtained Trump’s returns in February of this year. Vance’s office has reportedly interviewed Cohen at least eight times, and Cohen has stated that: “Unfortunately for Trump, I have backed up each and every question posed by the district attorney’s office” with “documentary evidence.” Vance has also sought records from two of Trump’s largest creditors, Deutsche Bank AG and Ladder Capital Corp, and from Columbia Grammar & Preparatory School, which is attended by the grandchildren of the Trump Organization’s CEO, Allen Weisselberg, who has worked for the Trump family since 1973. In 2017, he became the only nonfamily member to serve with Trump’s sons, Eric and Don Jr., to manage the trust established to hold Donald Trump’s business assets while president.
According to the grandchildren’s mother, Jennifer Weisselberg, more than $500,000 in tuition was paid through checks signed by either Allen Weisselberg or Trump himself as part of compensation for Allen Weisselberg’s son, Barry, from 2012 to 2019. Vance’s office has been trying to get Allen Weisselberg to cooperate with the investigation.* He was also involved in reimbursing Cohen for the $130,000 payment made to Stormy Daniels before the 2016 election.
For her part, James has also subpoenaed the Trump Organization for records relating to “consulting fees” it paid to Ivanka Trump, in addition to documents regarding the various properties implicated in the investigation. In October, Eric Trump sat for a deposition by lawyers in James’s office. The Trump Foundation dissolved amid an investigation by James’s predecessor, Barbara Underwood, into whether it violated laws in connection with Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and whether its charity work was otherwise legitimate.
Head over to The Atlantic to read Whele’s assessment of how much trouble Trump and his family could be in.
More stories to check out today:
Paul E. Peletier at The Atlantic: How to Actually Prosecute the Financial Crimes of the Very Rich.
Politico: Grand jury subpoena lists previously unknown person in Gaetz probe.
Politico: Inside Trump’s push to oust his own FBI chief.
The Washington Post: Inspired by Arizona recount, Trump loyalists push to revisit election results in communities around the country.
The Daily Beast: Surreal GOP ‘Audit’ in Arizona Is Off the Rails—and Just Getting Started.
Max Boot at The Washington Post: Opinion: Why Republican opposition to a Jan. 6 commission could be a blessing in disguise.
Politico: GOP defections over Jan. 6 commission deliver rebuke to McCarthy.
Greg Sargent at The Washington Post: Opinion: Republicans are likely to kill the Jan. 6 commission. But we have other options.
CNN: US Capitol Police officer’s letter blasts Republican opposition to January 6 commission.
What stories have you been following on this busy news day? As always, this is an open thread.
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The Sky Dancing banner headline uses a snippet from a work by artist Tashi Mannox called 'Rainbow Study'. The work is described as a" study of typical Tibetan rainbow clouds, that feature in Thanka painting, temple decoration and silk brocades". dakinikat was immediately drawn to the image when trying to find stylized Tibetan Clouds to represent Sky Dancing. It is probably because Tashi's practice is similar to her own. His updated take on the clouds that fill the collection of traditional thankas is quite special.
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