Fossil fuel companies paying top law firms millions to ‘dodge responsibility’

Over the last five years, the 100 top law firms in the US represented fossil fuel clients in 358 legal cases and transactions worth $1.36tn

The world’s biggest corporate law firms have been making millions of dollars representing fossil fuel companies but, as the climate crisis intensifies, this work is coming under increasing scrutiny.

Over the last five years, the 100 top ranked law firms in the US facilitated $1.36tn of fossil fuel transactions, represented fossil fuel clients in 358 legal cases and received $35m in compensation for their work to assist fossil fuel industry lobbying, according to a “climate scorecard” published in August.

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Source: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/oct/09/fossil-fuel-companies-law-firms
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The Article Was Written/Published By: Isabella Kaminski

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How South Dakota became a global tax haven on par with the Cayman Islands

South Dakota has become the world’s foremost tax haven — right up there with the Cayman Islands, and ahead of old-fashioned locations like Switzerland. That’s one of the clear messages from the Pandora Papers leak of confidential financial information about the world’s richest individuals.

Why it matters: The hundreds of billions of dollars sequestered in South Dakota trusts generate no taxes and are effectively off limits to anybody who might have a legitimate claim on them.

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How it works: A South Dakota trust is “the most potent force-field money can buy,” in the words of the Guardian’s Oliver Bullough.

• Like most tax havens, South Dakota has no income tax, no inheritance tax and no capital gains tax. But the state has gone even further than that. South Dakota allows for extreme secrecy when law enforcement comes knocking, and protects assets from being claimed by creditors, ex-spouses, or pretty much anybody else.
• By setting up a trust, the “settlor” — think some billionaire wanting to keep his assets secure — gives those assets to a trustee in South Dakota to look after. The trustee then invests the assets for a “beneficiary” who is often a direct relative of the settlor. Neither the settlor nor the beneficiary ever needs to set foot in South Dakota, or even be able to find it on a map.
• All three parties — the settlor, the trustee, and the beneficiary — can legally claim that the money isn’t theirs. The settlor and the beneficiary can say they don’t have the money, it’s all in a trust run by someone else. The trustee can say that she is just looking after the money and doesn’t own it.

How it happened: South Dakota started carving out its position as the most laissez-faire state for financial services in 1981, when it abolished upper limits for credit-card interest rates. (That’s why the credit card in your wallet was almost certainly issued in South Dakota.)

• In 1983, South Dakota became the first state to allow perpetual trusts — money that can remain untouchable for centuries, with no one ever paying inheritance tax on it.
• Since then, South Dakota has continued to pass laws making its trusts more attractive to the world’s ultra-wealthy. It allowed trusts where the settlor and beneficiary can be the same person. It has also sealed all court documents setting up trusts, making it impossible to know — in the absence of Pandora Papers style leaks — who might have one.
• The Republican-controlled South Dakota legislature regularly rubber-stamps whatever bills are placed in front of it by the financial services industry. “Nobody understands any of them,” said Gene Abdallah, Republican chair of South Dakota’s Senate Judiciary Committee in 2007 — although it’s broadly understood that the laws help to support hundreds of financial-services jobs in Sioux Falls, as well as the lawmakers’ free-market bona fides.

Context: Since 2010, almost every country in the world has signed onto the Common Reporting Standard (CRS), whereby governments inform each other about assets held by foreigners. The United States is the only major country not to sign on to the CRS, making it much more attractive as a tax haven than places like the Bahamas or Panama.

• Who’s in: Ecuadoran President Guillermo Lasso, Chinese real-estate billionaire billionaire Sun Hongbin, and dozens of other high-profile tax optimizers — both foreigners and Americans —are sheltering their assets in South Dakota.

By the numbers: A decade ago, South Dakotan trust companies held $57 billion in assets. The current figure is about $360 billion — with similar trusts in other states bringing the total for the U.S. close to $1 trillion.

• The United States — not only South Dakota but also rival tax-haven states like Nevada and Delaware — now ranks second only to the Cayman Islands for financial secrecy.

The bottom line: “South Dakota offers the best privacy and asset protection laws in the country, and possibly in the world,” tax expert Harvey Bezozi told the Guardian.

Source: https://www.axios.com/south-dakota-global-tax-haven-5120d206-20ab-4cc1-ba91-d1d59fe22487.html
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The Article Was Written/Published By: Felix Salmon

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New Trump super PAC formed after accusations of misconduct

Allies of former President Trump have launched a new super PAC after Corey Lewandowski was removed as the head of another pro-Trump super PAC following allegations of sexual misconduct.The new group, dubbed Make Am…

Source: https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/575314-new-trump-super-pac-formed-after-accusations-of-misconduct
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The Article Was Written/Published By: Max Greenwood

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Call notes show Trump urged DOJ to declare election “corrupt” and “leave the rest to me”

Then-President Trump pressed top Justice Department officials in a December phone call to “just say that the election was corrupt and leave the rest to me” and Republican congressmen, according to handwritten notes of the call released by the House Oversight Committee on Friday.

Why it matters: It’s the latest example of how aggressively Trump publicly and privately pressured the Justice Department to overturn the results of the election, despite no evidence of widespread voter fraud.

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Driving the news: In a phone call on Dec. 27 with the acting attorney general at the time, Jeffrey Rosen, and his deputy, Richard Donoghue, Trump raised fraud claims that the department had already dismissed. Rosen told the then-president that the DOJ could not change the election outcome.

• Trump also suggested that he would receive support from some Republican members of Congress. He had referred to Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) and Reps. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and Scott Perry (R-Pa.) at other points in the phone call.
• Rosen and Donoghue told Trump that they were doing their job, had looked at the allegations, and that “[m]uch of the info you’re getting is false.”
• Trump also demanded that the Justice Department “figure out what to do” with Hunter Biden, President Biden’s son, saying that he needed to be “investigated for real,” according to the notes.

The big picture: The Democratic-led House Oversight Committee and Senate Judiciary Committee are both investigating Trump and his allies’ efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election based on conspiracy theories about voter fraud.

• Donoghue’s notes were handed to Congress as part of the investigation.
• The Fulton County district attorney is also investigating Trump’s efforts to pressure Georgia election officials to overturn his loss to Biden in the state.

What they’re saying: “These handwritten notes show that President Trump directly instructed our nation’s top law enforcement agency to take steps to overturn a free and fair election in the final days of his presidency,” House Oversight Chair Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) said in a statement.

Source: https://www.axios.com/trump-voter-fraud-doj-pressure-42191546-f6b7-4e76-a833-274dca8e2f7a.html
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The Article Was Written/Published By: Oriana Gonzalez

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Another Nicaraguan presidential hopeful arrested in crackdown

President Daniel Ortega faces international rebuke for cracking down on potential opponents ahead of November elections.

Source: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/7/24/another-nicaraguan-presidential-hopeful-arrested-in-crackdown
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Trump businesses made $2.4 billion during his presidency: Forbes

Former President Trump’s businesses raked in $2.4 billion during his tenure in the White House, according to an …

Source: https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/563735-trump-businesses-made-24-billion-during-his-presidency-forbes
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Trump DOJ seized CNN correspondent’s phone and email records

President Donald Trump’s Justice Department “secretly” obtained phone and email records from a CNN reporter, the network said on Thursday.

CNN reported that the department informed Pentagon correspondent Barbara Starr last week about the move, in which prosecutors were able to get her email and phone records for two months in 2017. Those records included both her personal and work phones and emails.

A Justice Department spokesperson, Anthony Coley, confirmed to POLITICO on Thursday night that the legal process to get the records was approved last year, but he did not explain why the records were sought.

The news comes less than two weeks after The Washington Post reported Trump’s Justice Department secretly got three Post reporters’ phone records and tried to get their email logs. The move was in an apparent bid to uncover the sources for a story in 2017 on a federal investigation into alleged links between Russia and the then-president’s campaign.

“This is a big story that just got bigger,” Bruce Brown, the executive director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, said in a statement. “That a journalist from another news organization had communications records seized by the Trump Justice Department suggests that the last administration’s efforts to intrude into reporter-source relationships and chill newsgathering is more sweeping than we originally thought.”

Brown called on the Justice Department to give a “detailed explanation” of what happened and why, and how “it plans to strengthen protections for the free flow of information to the public.” Coley told POLITICO that department leaders are convening with reporters “soon” to “hear their concerns” and “further convey Attorney General [Merrick] Garland’s staunch support of and commitment to a free and independent press.”

CNN President Jeff Zucker criticized the Justice Department’s actions.

“CNN strongly condemns the secret collection of any aspect of a journalist’s correspondence, which is clearly protected by the First Amendment,” Zucker said.

The Post’s story on Russia, which indicated then-Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak had said he discussed Russia-related topics with Jeff Sessions, a Trump campaign adviser at the time, drew the ire of Trump in the early months of his term. Two weeks after the story, Sessions — who at that time was attorney general — announced a crackdown on a supposed “culture of leaks.”

A Justice Department spokesperson, Marc Raimondi, said that the goal of the investigation involving Post reporters wasn’t to prosecute reporters.

“The targets of these investigations are not the news media recipients but rather those with access to the national defense information who provided it to the media and thus failed to protect it as lawfully required,” Raimondi said.

CNN said it was unclear when the investigation involving Starr began, whether it was under Sessions or Attorney General William Barr, and what the Trump administration might have been searching for.

Josh Gerstein contributed to this report.

Source: https://www.politico.com/news/2021/05/20/trump-doj-cnn-correspondent-490091
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The Article Was Written/Published By: Ben Leonard

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New York has begun a criminal investigation of the Trump organization

Attorney General Letitia James has notified the Trumps that the State of New York’s is now pursuing criminal charges, as well as civil, in their on-going investigation of the family’s business.

NBC:

The New York attorney general’s office said Tuesday that it is pursuing a criminal investigation into the Trump Organization, in addition to the ongoing civil probe.

— Read the rest

Source: https://boingboing.net/2021/05/19/new-york-has-begun-a-criminal-investigation-of-the-trump-organization.html?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=new-york-has-begun-a-criminal-investigation-of-the-trump-organization
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Ex-Gaetz associate admits to sex trafficking, will cooperate with federal prosecutors

Joel Greenberg, a former associate of Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), has agreed to cooperate with federal investigators and admitted to a variety of federal charges including sex trafficking a minor, the New York Times reported Friday citing court papers.

Why it matters: Investigators believe Greenberg introduced women to Gaetz for paid sex and are looking into the Florida congressman’s alleged sexual relationship with a 17-year-old girl. Greenberg could be a key witness as federal prosecutors decide whether to charge Gaetz.

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Details: Gaetz’s name does not appear in the court filing, but Greenberg admitted admitted that he recruited women for commercial sex acts and paid them more than $70,000 between 2016 and 2018, including at least one underage girl.

• Greenberg said he provided drugs to the girl and introduced her to “other adult men, who engaged in commercial sex acts” with her, per the documents.
• Prosecutors say they have evidence that backs up Greenberg’s admissions, including his communications and transactions with the girl, as well as the dates of their alleged sexual encounters.

What’s next: Greenberg is expected to plead guilty to the six federal charges in Orlando on Monday, per AP.

The big picture: Gaetz has faced a flood of backlash from both parties since the investigation became public.

• GOP Rep. Adam Kinzinger (Ill.) and others have called for him to resign.
• The House Ethics Committee launched its own investigation into Gaetz in April.
• Of note: The Florida congressman denies all accusations. “I’ve been, you know, generous as a partner,” Gaetz told Axios in March. “I think someone is trying to make that look criminal when it is not.”

Source: https://www.axios.com/gaetz-confidant-guilty-cooperate-investigation-d4ced667-8300-463b-be10-fbee5fe94db6.html
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The Article Was Written/Published By: Shawna Chen

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Ex-Trump official penalized for violating Hatch Act

The Office of Special Counsel (OSC) on Tuesday announced a settlement with former Housing and Urban Development (HUD) official Lynne Patton, a political appointee and ally of former President Trump’s, for a Hatch Act viol…

Source: https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/546657-ex-trump-official-penalized-for-violating-hatch-act
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The Article Was Written/Published By: John Bowden

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Watchdog says DeVos made nine figures in outside income during Trump years

Former Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos earned an estimated nine figures in outside income while serving in the Trump administration, according to a Washington, D.C., watchdog. Citizens for Res…

Source: https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/544565-devos-made-nine-figures-in-outside-income-during-her-four-years-in
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Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy sentenced to jail in corruption trial

Sarkozy served as president from 2007 to 2012.

Source: https://www.politico.eu/article/nicolas-sarkozy-jail-sentence-corruption/
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How billions in pandemic aid was swindled by con artists and crime syndicates

A senior federal law enforcement source said the fraud is so complex and multilayered that it will take months to develop a full accounting.

Source: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/how-billions-pandemic-aid-was-swindled-con-artists-crime-syndicates-n1257766
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Dozens of states see new voter suppression proposals after baseless fraud claims

There are at least 165 proposals under consideration in 33 states so far this year to restrict future voting access by limiting mail-in ballots, implementing new voter ID requirements and slashing registration options.

Driving the news: As former President Donald Trump’s impeachment trial begins over his role in the deadly Jan. 6 insurrection that sought to overturn President Biden’s victory — fueled by baseless allegations of voter fraud — lawmakers in states with GOP majorities are pushing new ballot obstacles based on similar baseless allegations.

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Why it matters: The 2020 election shattered minority turnout expectations, with Black and Asian-American voters in Georgia, and Latino and Navajo voters in Arizona, flipping traditionally red states to blue.

• Advocates hoped that one silver lining of COVID-19 would be a permanent expansion of absentee and early voting options and other steps to make voting safer and more accessible to all voters.
• Democrats in state legislatures are proposing bills to expand access to voting.
• At the same time, a majority of states are seeing a proliferation of efforts to make voting more difficult. Trump’s false claims of election fraud are fueling some of the arguments for these proposed obstacles.

The details: Three states at the tip of the spear are Arizona, Pennsylvania, and Georgia — states critical to Trump’s loss in November and Democrats’ takeover of the U.S. Senate last month. According to the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU Law, Arizona leads the pack with 19 proposals, followed by Pennsylvania with 14 and Georgia with 11.

• A South Carolina proposal would impose a signature matching requirement for absentee ballots.
• A New Hampshire bill would allow anyone to observe polls “without obstruction.”
• A Texas plan would strip voter registration authority from county clerks and require the Department of Public Safety to verify the citizenship of voters.

What they’re saying: Arizona Republican state Rep. Kevin Payne is seeking to abolish the state’s so-called permanent early voting list and require mail ballots to be notarized. “People don’t feel confident about the signature verification,” he said.

• Arizona state Rep. Athena Salman, a Democrat, said Republicans are “trying to stop eligible voters from voting because they don’t like the decisions voters are making.”
• One state official in Georgia, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said many of the bills are “grandstanding with the knowledge that cooler heads will prevail.”
• The ACLU is expanding resources to its southern affiliates in anticipating of fights over voting rights. Executive director Anthony D. Romero told Axios the restrictions largely represent an effort “to exclude minority and people of color voters from the polls.”

Source: https://www.axios.com/state-voter-suppression-proposals-5ee31df3-8e98-4bf5-8910-7bc6db704f15.html
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The Article Was Written/Published By: Russell Contreras

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Kushner, Ivanka Trump reported up to $640M in outside income during White House years

Former White House advisors Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner made as much as $640 million during their time in the Trump administration, according to an analysis by a government watchdog group.The …

Source: https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/537851-kushner-ivanka-trump-reported-up-to-640m-in-outside-income-during
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Supreme Court shuts down 2 Trump emoluments cases

The Supreme Court has effectively shut down two lawsuits alleging that former President Donald Trump was violating the Constitution by profiting from his public office, the court said Monday.

The announcement may indicate that the justices are looking to put the Trump era behind them and are not eager to wade into disputes about his personal or business affairs.

The outcome in the cases also signals how ineffective the courts proved to be in policing Trump’s alleged violations of the emoluments clauses, which prohibit any president from receiving funds related to their official duties from any foreign or state government.

One of the suits, brought by the group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, along with New York area restaurant owners and workers, was filed days after Trump took office in 2017. The other was filed in June of that year by the attorneys general of the District of Columbia and Maryland.

After more than three years in the courts, neither case had reached a fact-finding stage.

Formally, the justices’ decision Monday declared the two suits moot — apparently due to Trump leaving office last week. The high court also wiped out rulings that federal appeals courts in New York and Virginia had issued saying the suits could proceed to discovery.

The Supreme Court did not offer a detailed explanation of its rationale. No justice recorded any dissent. The action was announced as part of a routine orders list the court issued Monday morning.

Last October, the justices turned down review of another suit focused on Trump’s alleged profits from his presidency. That suit, brought by Democratic Senators and House members, was turned aside by a federal appeals court on standing grounds.

One strand of the D.C. and Maryland suit remains pending before the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Va., but the attorneys general filed a motion on Friday seeking to dismiss that appeal because Trump is no longer in office.

Source: https://www.politico.com/news/2021/01/25/supreme-court-trump-emolument-cases-462134
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The Article Was Written/Published By: Josh Gerstein

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Trump pardons dozens, including Steve Bannon, as he exits White House

Steve Bannon, the alt-right provocateur and former White House aide who spent recent weeks amplifying President Donald Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election was stolen, headlined a final, parting-shot pardon spree that Trump issued just hours before he leaves the White House.

The last-minute clemency grant to Bannon, a right-wing firebrand and former Trump strategist facing trial on charges of swindling donors to a private group raising money for border wall construction, may prove to be the most controversial of the 73 pardons and 70 commutations Trump granted late Tuesday.

Trump’s pardon of Bannon may also have an unintended effect on his upcoming impeachment trial in the Senate on a charge of inciting the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol. While Trump did not issue a self-pardon covering his own actions that day, and he turned aside pardon requests from others accused of inciting or participating in the assault on Congress, Bannon was also among those who stoked anger in advance of the riots.

“All hell will break loose tomorrow. It will be quite extraordinarily different. All I can say is strap in,” Bannon said on his “War Room” podcast on Jan. 5. “Tomorrow is game day. So many people said, man, if I was in revolution I would be in Washington. Well, this is your time in history.”

Bannon frequently used similar wartime imagery to urge Trump supporters to contest the 2020 election results. He has also been a frequent antagonist of Sen. Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader, most notably when he helped propel the doomed candidacy of Republican Roy Moore — derailed by sexual assault allegations — over McConnell’s preferred candidate Luther Strange in an Alabama special election.

With Trump’s impeachment trial looming, the Bannon pardon could push some Republican senators toward convicting Trump and potentially banning him from running for president again, but will probably be seen as less provocative than would a self-pardon or pardons for his closest family members.

Trump’s wave of clemency included a broad range of beneficiaries, from nonviolent drug offenders sentenced to lengthy jail terms, to the man whose relationship with Russian spy Maria Butina ignited a Washington firestorm, to the wealthy doctor accused of paying bribes to Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.). The grants of clemency mark an extended run of post-election pardons and commutations that have skewed heavily toward protecting or rewarding Trump’s political allies.

For Bannon, the pardon represents his full return into the Trump fold after a bitter falling-out in 2018. Bannon gave incendiary and damaging interviews to author Michael Wolff about the Trump family. He also provided testimony to special counsel Robert Mueller that fueled some of the obstruction of justice claims against the president during the Russia investigation.

Bannon becomes the second 2016 Trump campaign chair to receive a pardon. Paul Manafort, who was convicted of multiple financial crimes in 2018, received clemency last month.

The clemency grants late Tuesday also included a pardon for Elliott Broidy, the GOP donor and Trump inaugural organizer who was awaiting sentencing after pleading guilty in October to conspiring to violate foreign lobbying laws on behalf of Chinese and Malaysian interests.

While passing up the chance to attempt a legally dubious self-pardon, Trump also omitted from the clemency list his family members, as well as officials at the Trump Organization whose activities have been closely scrutinized by federal prosecutors. There was also no preemptive pardon for Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani, who gave an inflammatory speech before the Capitol riot and has also been investigated by the feds in connection with his work for overseas interests.

Trump did sign commutations for former Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick of Detroit, a Democrat serving a 28-year term for corruption, and the rapper Kodak Black, who was doing nearly four years in prison on weapons charges. Another rapper, Lil Wayne, received a full pardon on the gun charge on which he was to face sentencing soon.

Among other notable grants: pardons for former Rep. Rick Renzi (R-Ariz.) and former Rep. Duke Cunningham (R-Calif.), both of whom had completed prison sentences; a commutation for professional gambler Billy Walters, who was sentenced to five years in prison for insider trading; and pardons for Fashion Cafe founder Tommaso Buti, who has never returned to New York to face fraud charges filed back in 2000, and D.C. developer Doug Jemal, who was convicted of wire fraud in 2006.

Trump also granted an outright pardon to Bob Zangrillo, a Miami developer awaiting trial on charges stemming from the Varsity Blues investigation into bribery and fraud in the college admissions process. He allegedly paid $250,000 to have his daughter falsely designated as a competitive crew recruit at the University of Southern California.

Zangrillo’s “daughter did not have others take standardized tests for her and she is currently earning a 3.9 GPA” at USC, the White House’s explanation of the pardon said.

Trump also rewarded some of his congressional allies who joined his challenges to the 2020 election, like Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.). The newly elected senator sought and won a pardon for former Alabama state Rep. Ed Henry, who pleaded guilty to theft of government property last year. The president also pardoned Johnny Phillips, convicted in 2016 along with nine others, for perpetrating a $14 million Ponzi scheme.

But some grants went to allies of Trump’s political opponents. He commuted the 17-year sentence of Salomon Melgen, a South Florida eye doctor who was convicted of extensive health care fraud. Melgen is a close friend of Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J), and the two men were co-defendants in a bribery case that prosecutors eventually dropped.

Trump did not grant pardons to three men charged alongside Bannon in the same criminal case stemming from their role in the “We Build the Wall” group. Some legal experts said that while Bannon has now slipped through the hands of federal prosecutors, his actions could still face scrutiny and potential charges from state prosecutors. A presidential pardon does not preclude state charges.

While Trump did issue dozens of commutations to drug convicts serving long sentences whose cases were highlighted by criminal justice reform groups, the tally of such cases will account for just a tiny fraction of such grants by President Barack Obama, whose administration actively solicited commutation requests from prisoners.

Other presidents have similarly saved a wave of pardons and commutations for the final moments of their presidency — including Bill Clinton pardoning his half brother, Roger, for a 1985 cocaine conviction — though Trump has shown a particular zeal for doling out executive clemencies to his political allies and those with influential cheerleaders who have the president’s ear. Trump has largely circumvented the formal Justice Department process to evaluate these cases, leading many clemency-seekers to take their pitch directly to the president.

Past Trump clemencies included nearly all figures caught up in former special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election. They included former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, Trump confidant Roger Stone and former national security adviser Michael Flynn, as well as corrupt politicians like former Gov. Rod Blagojevich of Illinois and ex-Reps. Chris Collins (R-N.Y.) and Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.) — Trump’s first backers in Congress.

One figure loosely connected to the Russia probe won a full pardon in Trump’s final batch: the GOP consultant and gun-rights activist Paul Erickson. Erickson’s girlfriend, Maria Butina, pleaded guilty to acting as an unregistered foreign agent for her efforts to court the National Rifle Association on behalf of her native Russia. Erickson was never charged in that case, but he was hit with unrelated fraud charges and wound up being sentenced to seven years in prison.

Erickson’s pardon was supported by former Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway, according to a statement from the White House. “This pardon helps right the wrongs of what has been revealed to be perhaps the greatest witch hunt in American History,” the statement said.

Tuesday night’s final wave brings Trump’s total pardons granted to 143 and his commutations to 95. President Barack Obama granted 212 pardons and more than 1,700 commutations, and President George W. Bush issued 200 combined acts of clemency, though both men had two terms, compared with just one for Trump.

Nick Niedzwiadek and Quint Forgey contributed to this report.

Source: https://www.politico.com/news/2021/01/20/trump-pardons-exits-white-house-460586
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The Article Was Written/Published By: Josh Gerstein and Kyle Cheney

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Trump preparing another 100 pardons, commutations before leaving office: reports

President Trump is reportedly prepared to issue around 100 pardons and commutations on Tuesday, his final full day in office….

Source: https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/534670-trump-preparing-another-100-pardons-commutations-before-leaving
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The Article Was Written/Published By: Morgan Gstalter

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Michael Cohen interviewed by prosecutors about Trump’s finances

New York prosecutors on Thursday reportedly interviewed President Trump’s former personal attorney Michael Cohen for hours regarding the president’s finances….

Source: https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/534553-michael-cohen-interviewed-by-prosecutors-about-trumps-finances
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The Article Was Written/Published By: Celine Castronuovo

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Revealed: David Perdue bought bank stocks after meeting financial officials

Georgia Republican facing Senate runoff bought significant shares in US bank after meeting with financial policy makers

David Perdue, the Georgia Republican facing a Senate runoff election on Tuesday, has twice bought a significant number of shares in a US bank shortly after meeting with financial policy makers, raising more questions about his prolific stock trading while in office.

In one case, in May 2015, Perdue bought between $15,000 and $50,000 worth of shares in Regions Financial Corporation two days after a 10-minute phone call with then treasury secretary Jack Lew.

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Source: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jan/04/republican-david-perdue-georgia-senate-runoff-traded-bank-stocks
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The Article Was Written/Published By: Stephanie Kirchgaessner in Washington

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