In office less than four months, Mr. Trump has already undermined the rule of law in myriad small ways.
He allowed his daughter and son-in-law to work in the White House in arguable violation of an anti-nepotism statute.
- He did not divest himself of his business holdings and
- did not release his tax returns.
- His sons have continued pursuing deals with jillionaires closely linked to unsavory foreign regimes.
- He and his daughter have accepted valuable trademark protections from China.
- His son-in-law’s family sought to trade on their connections to sell American citizenship to rich Chinese.
.. The president made clear his intent to shut down the investigation on Monday when he tweeted, “The Russia-Trump collusion story is a total hoax, when will this taxpayer funded charade end?”
.. Mr. Trump himself now links his decision to fire Mr. Comey to his conviction that “this Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made up story.”
Kushner Family Apologizes for Mentioning Jared’s Name at EB-5 Visa Investor Meeting in China
Nicole Kushner Meyer is apologizing for mentioning her brother, Jared Kushner, a senior White House adviser and son-in-law to President Donald Trump, during an investment conference in China over the weekend.
“In 2008, my brother Jared Kushner joined the family company as CEO, and recently moved to Washington to join the administration,” Meyer said at the conference aimed at encouraging Chinese developers to invest in a New Jersey real estate project, according to CNN.
.. The program has come under intense scrutiny by both Republicans and Democrats.California Democrat Sen. Dianne Feinstein opposes the EB-5 visa program, arguing that it allows monied foreign nationals to use their wealth to buy visas and U.S. citizenship.
The program — which was extended and sneakily slipped into the latest spending bill — is rife with abuse, leading to fraud convictions
.. GreenTech Automotive, the electric car manufacturer co-founded by Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe — funded in-part by EB-5 visas granted to Chinese investors, and pushed through the politically-driven approval process by Tony Rodham, Hillary Clinton’s brother — failed to make its first payment on a $3 million loan from the state of Mississippi. The company shuttered its Mississippi factory earlier this year.
Kushner Cos. Pushes Investor Visas to Wealthy Chinese in Skyscraper Pitch
Trump adviser’s sister leading campaign for investors in $1 billion U.S. project, offering chance of green card
New York property developer Kushner Cos. launched a weekend marketing campaign for a New Jersey development, targeting major Chinese cities for wealthy individuals to invest a combined $150 million for the chance to secure U.S. immigration rights.The developer, owned by the family of Trump administration senior adviser Jared Kushner, is trying to draw investment into twin 66-floor commercial-and-residential towers called One Journal Square that would cost almost $1 billion to build, according to marketing materials. Up to 300 individuals who put $500,000 each into the project could be eligible for green cards under a U.S. investment-for-immigration program called EB-5, the materials said.
The China marketing push, being led by Mr. Kushner’s sister, Nicole Meyer, began in Beijing on Saturday and shifted to Shanghai on Sunday.
These Guys Really Like Trump
an unshakable faith in Donald Trump .. the outsider too rich to bribe and too strong to intimidate.
.. “When Joe first told me about Trump, I said no, that guy’s a bragger,” Mr. Paslow said. “Then I started listening to him, and I noticed, he’s a billionaire. If somebody comes along and says, ‘President Trump, I want to keep my plant in China and I want to close my plant here, here’s $50 million,’ he says, ‘I don’t need your money, mister.’ ”
.. They had both been out of work for more than a year, laid off from their jobs in oil and gas exploration with two weeks’ notice, no severance, no pension and no unemployment insurance — like many American workers, they were independent contractors, without the protections of full employment
.. offered them hope. He pledged to the crowd that he would bring back the oil and gas industry
.. They are quick to suspect conspiracy and corruption, in their state and in Washington. They thought even Mr. Trump might have his price — but luckily, it would be too high for most to afford.
.. They dismiss protesters as sore losers, and pundits who attack policy swings as establishment voices bent on sabotage. Where critics point to promises unfulfilled, they see obstacles that are not their president’s fault.
.. When fact checkers pounce, the two men see an insistence on petty detail when they know what their president really meant.
.. Even though Mr. Paslow welcomed the cleanup of a Pittsburgh once so polluted that streetlights went on by noon, he and his friend criticized Obama-era rules they saw as helping scuttle the shale gas boom and putting them out of work.
“There were thousands of rules; you had to wait six, eight months just for paperwork,” Mr. Peterson said. “It cost millions of dollars.”
“You couldn’t drill because the owls were mating,” Mr. Paslow said. Or the bats, Mr. Peterson added.
.. “The things that made this country great are disappearing — factories, jobs, education,” Mr. Paslow said. “Someone could get a job at the mill and live happily ever after. Now it’s Walmart and Best Buy. Come on — a job at Walmart when you could have had a nice life working at a factory?”
.. Mr. Paslow is grateful to have work, but he chafes at all the software he has to use, and misses the secretaries who used to help him input data. “It’s giving me headaches,” he said. “Now we’re typists.”