So, Ivanka Trump gets lucrative Chinese trademarks for her clothing line on the same day she dines with the Chinese president. Would this deal have happened if her father wasn’t in the midst of breaking a promise to hold China as a currency manipulator? Why did Trump’s travel ban not include Muslim-majority countries where the family has extensive business ties? And why did Trump congratulate a Turkish tyrant for consolidating his dictatorial powers?
.. The last question, at least, Trump has answered. “I have a little conflict of interest because I have a major, major building in Istanbul,” he said in 2015.
.. The family has extensive entanglements in China, the Philippines and Turkey, to name just a few “conflicts.”
.. Trump makes money every time a foreign diplomat or favor-seeking industrialist stays at one of his hotels or becomes a tenant in one of his buildings. On top of that, influence peddlers pay him through his campaign. In the first three months of the Trump presidency, his 2020 campaign spent almost $500,000 on hotels, golf clubs and restaurants owned by the Trump family.
Mr. Trump Plays by His Own Rules (or No Rules)
the very day that two of Ivanka Trump’s and Jared Kushner’s children were serenading the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, at Mar-a-Lago, the People’s Republic of China approved new trademarks allowing Ivanka to peddle jewelry, bags and spa services to a nation of 1.4 billion where she is a role model for aspirational oligarchs.
.. a culture of self-enrichment and self-dealing in which corporate C.E.O.s, lobbyists and foreign officials seeking the first family’s favor hold parties at Mar-a-Lago and at the Trump International Hotel in Washington
.. Mr. Trump struggled for years to close deals across the Middle East; now that he’s president, doors are opening. His family is seeking or holds trademarks in Egypt, Israel, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates, where the president’s sons just opened a golf course in Dubai, and in Jordan, whose King Abdullah II just visited the White House to discuss joint efforts against ISIS.
.. That leaves Jason Chaffetz, the Utah Republican who is chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, which has the legal authority and the resources to investigate and hold the administration to account. Anyone familiar with Mr. Chaffetz’s record of partisan, ineffectual witch-hunting won’t be surprised to learn that he’s done nothing.
.. But that’s hardly a match for an administration filled with people who seem determined to wring every last dollar and ounce of trust from the American people.
Calling Successor a ‘Traitor’, Afghan Ex-Leader Denounces U.S. Bombing
Hamid Karzai .. accused the American military of using the presence of Islamic State militants to turn his country into a laboratory for testing its weapons.
.. they believed it was carried out for American domestic political reasons and as a way to send a message to other countries at odds with the United States, rather than strictly to fight terrorism in Afghanistan.
.. “The goal of this attack was for beyond Afghanistan — it was for showing American power to North Korea, Syria and some other countries; it was for scaring these countries,”
.. “The conclusion is that Daesh was a U.S. contractor, like DynCorp, like other U.S. companies, that they used to empty an area of its population and create a cause, create an environment, a psychological environment in which the U.S. can then test its weapon.”
.. analysts say they believe the latest American bombing has given him another political pretext to mobilize against the government.
.. The current Afghan authorities forcefully blame him for the corrupt institutions they inherited and are trying to peel away the layers of patronage that once made him a powerful player.
After Campaign Exit, Manafort Borrowed From Businesses With Trump Ties
Papers were recorded that same day creating a shell company controlled by Mr. Manafort that soon received $13 million in loans from two businesses with ties to Mr. Trump, including one that partners with a Ukrainian-born billionaire and another led by a Trump economic adviser. They were among $20 million in loans secured by properties belonging to Mr. Manafort and his wife.
.. Mr. Manafort never filed lobbying registrations for his work in Ukraine that would have disclosed his compensation. Such registrations are necesssary for activities that involve influencing policy and public opinion in the United States, and some of Mr. Manafort’s Ukraine work appeared to fall into that category. Anti-corruption officials in Ukraine say $12.7 million in “off the books” cash payments were earmarked for him
.. Mr. Manafort has previously claimed the ledger is a fake. On Wednesday, he issued a statement that did not dispute the ledger entries, but suggested that any payments he received were legal because they were not made in cash.
.. In one text written in 2015, Ms. Manafort, a lawyer, called her father’s activities in Ukraine “legally questionable,”
.. “Don’t fool yourself,” Ms. Manafort wrote. “That money we have is blood money.”
.. The New York Times reported in February that Mr. Artemenko worked behind the scenes with Michael D. Cohen, President Trump’s personal lawyer, and Felix H. Sater, a former business associate of Mr. Trump’s, to relay a proposed Ukrainian-Russian peace plan to the White House.