State Of Texas Subpoena Form Financial Records: Fill & Download for Free

Back in the early 90’s, I had a lawsuit against two giant insurance companies who had a very bad agent. We represented the plaintiffs, 7 regular individuals who’d been duped by this guy. Our folks had claims with statutory damages exceeding $100,000,000 and we filed the case down in far South Texas.It was brutal in every respect. Two insurance behemoths have massive amounts of money and, when faced with the prospect of mind-boggling damages, they get very excitable.Add in the fact that this was the early ‘90’s when juries in South Texas had been hammering corporate America with huge verdicts on a regular basis, and the stage was set for a full-on, battle to the death.Co. B and its law firm are the bad guys in this story. Insurance companies have bad reputations to begin with, but what Co. B and its lawyers did in this case was truly despicable.Original lead counsel got sick and Lawyer “U” took over. In 30+ years of practice, he still tops my list as the MOST unpleasant, untrustworthy, and unprofessional lawyer I’ve had the misfortune to deal with.With Lawyer U at the reins, Co. B took positions, filed motions, and made arguments so ridiculous it would make a normal lawyer weep and hide his eyes. They pursued the most abusive defense strategy I’ve seen - all without even a slap on the wrist.Every time we got a trial setting, Co. B asked for a continuance - the reasons went from half-assed to absurd, but the Judge kept granting them. On their 4th try, the Judge grew a spine, denied it, and set a “final” trial date - August 12th.In June, I filed our final Amended Petition. In my list of Agent D’s fraudulent representations, I threw in a sentence about how he told our clients his “arbitrage” business and insurance went hand in hand to produce profits, etc., etc. Everything except the word “arbitrage” had appeared in all our previous petitions.A week later (31 days before trial) Co. B filed a “Notice of Removal” claiming this was now a federal case. Why? - based the word “arbitrage” Lawyer U argued the suit now involved federal securities laws.Lawyer U did this for two reasons:First, it stopped the case from going to trial - filing that Notice automatically transferred jurisdiction to the federal court, the state court couldn’t do anything; andSecond, getting a case sent back (remanded) from federal to state court could easily take months and maybe longer -Federal courts in South Texas were packed with criminal cases and those took precedence. Getting a hearing in a civil matter was a nightmare.Co. B’s lawyer knew that and thought he was buying his client an indefinite amount of time by putting this case on ice in federal limbo.I went berserk - my partner had to lock me in a conference room to keep me from driving to San Antonio and doing grievous bodily injury to Lawyer U and his minions.Whether he came up with it himself or at his client’s behest - Lawyer U and Co. B were both equally guilty of using this unethical, sleazy, abusive defense “strategy.”Now, for the good news. The lawyer that brought us in to this case was a heavy-hitting, well-known PI attorney down in the Valley and he had lots of powerful friends. I called him to tell him the trial was off and explained why. All he said was - “Get your motion ready and get it down here.”The next morning, I flew down and filed my rather vehemently worded Motion for Remand. By the time my return flight landed - there was a Notice from the Court - our Motion was set for hearing the next week.I wasn’t going to bribe anyone or buttonhole the court clerk in the grocery store, but I certainly wasn’t going to stop our co-counsel from telling his golfing-buddies* about this horrendous abuse of the system.The South Texas legal community is a close-knit group and they don’t appreciate being played. By the time I filed my motion, every lawyer in McAllen had probably heard the story.End of the story - At the hearing, we argued first. The judge didn’t look happy, asked lots of questions, and seemed hostile to our position. I was sitting next to a lawyer and I guess I looked nervous.He leaned over and said “I’ve seen him do this lots of times - it means he’s about to fuck the OTHER lawyer.” And that’s just what happened. Before Lawyer U even introduced himself, the judge looked up and said:“What were you thinking? One word DOES NOT give you the right to add this case to MY busy docket - it’s a ridiculous argument and if you came up with it, you need to go back to law school. Motion for remand granted - I’ll let Judge H know and tell him you’re anxious to start trial as soon as possible.”*None of whom were federal judges, staff, or otherwise connected with the federal court in McAllen.UPDATE - 10/26 - The true extent of Co. B’s “bad behavior” went way beyond just filing bullshit pleadings, but that didn’t come to light for a few more years. It involved our state court judge (I’ll call him “Judge B”):Our trial dragged along for 7 months - 2–4 hours a day. Then, Judge B said we’d “recess” for 6 weeks and one of our client’s spun out - claimed he was “on the take,” the Texas Rangers were called in and there was a grand jury investigation. Judge B was “cleared”, but it pissed him off - he declared a mistrial, flushed 7 months down the drain and withdrew from our case. (An assigned judge tried it 6 months later - the “real” trial only took 4 weeks).About a year later, Judge B’s alleged “corruption” came up for doing something else (don’t remember what). This time, he and his entire court staff were investigated. They subpoenaed financial records from the judge’s clerk - that’s when things got interesting.Turns out, Judge B’s clerk and her husband owned an extremely successful landscaping company. Her husband was such a good salesman that, right around the time our trial started, he’d persuaded Insurance Co. B to purchase $25,000* of trees, bushes, and plants. Down in South Texas, $25,000 buys A LOT of greenery.The clerk’s husband “couldn’t find” his receipts, “didn’t remember” who he bought it from or where he’d delivered it. Now, Insurance Co. B’s main office was in NY, the closest regional office was in Houston (it didn’t get any plants) and no records turned up showing where any of it went.They never managed to link Judge B directly to any shady deals and he dodged the corruption charges. But the locals knew he was dirty and it cost him the next election - so at least he wasn’t a judge after that.I thought about it alot and my theory is this - Judge B’s scam, if I’m right, was pretty smart - I don’t think Insurance Co. B “bought” a result, I think they “bought” delay and that’s what Judge B provided - 2–4 hour days, never a full week of trial, and stopping in the middle for a 6 week “recess”? WTF?The jury was already falling apart - 7 months out of work, no end in sight, and then 6 weeks off - I think lots of the jurors would just disappear, not come back, and “bingo” - mistrial. Have to start all over again when Judge B ‘found’ the time - what a deal for Insurance Co. B! Scumbags.*That’s about $43,000 today.

Back in his halcyon days, trump would purchase stock in an organisation, then publicly state he was considering a ruthless takeover of same. The interest would have stock values ascending, and then trump, instead of purchasing more stock to follow through on his takeover threat, would sell his stocks that would yield a tidy profit.That kind of bullshit takeover talk earned trump $57 million by 1988. However, in the end, financial investors quit being bulldozed. They recognised his game. When trump purchased stock in American Airlines and discussed another hostile takeover bid, the market didn't bite. There was not even a nibble. Consequently, trump lost $34.9 million on short term momentary stock exchanges that year.He then reported a detailed $1.17 billion misfortune to the IRS somewhere between 1985 and 1994. It harboured a monstrous line of red ink that acted to shield him from paying income tax during the greater part of that period. The extent of those misfortunes was to such an extent that, year after a seemingly endless year, trump seemed to have lost more cash than almost any other American individual who paid taxes.Albeit a 1924 law gives Congress the express capacity to demand such returns, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said he would not consent to a solicitation from a House council to turn over duplicates of more recent trump tax returns.That was then.This is now.The White House has pronounced the organisation would decline to consent to Democrats “requests as they speed ahead in their impeachment efforts”, saying the proceedings were 'illegitimate’. Effectively various heads have waived their protective rights signalling they’re happy to sever connections with trump's demand to cooperate in the examination. While the organisation has attempted to banish authorities from showing up, they appear unable to prevent them from accommodating subpoenas that persuade them to appear.What's more, having been "asked" by trump not to show up in last week’s legal gathering to which he made a special trip, US Ambassador to the European Union, Gordon Sondland plans to appear next Thursday in the wake of being subpoenaed by congressional examiners.And so, inside snapshots of one another, the pattern loses no haste as another one bites the dust! trump lost his appeal in a government federal appeals court to prevent a House subpoena of his tax reports, which he has savagely protected since belligerently declining to make them public as a runner for office.And the man responsible for executing Homeland Security, Secretary Kevin McAleenan presented his resignation as trump’s legal misfortunes multiplied. The procedure, in any case, provides a sensation of an organisation in transition. McAleenan is the fourth individual to serve in that post since the trump administration.A federal judge in Texas ruled the president's national crisis assertion to manufacture a wall, unlawful and prepared to obstruct the utilisation of those assets set aside for military use. trump's wall was one of his central crusade guarantees and his legal tortures are worsening as they commence a historical rollback. trump remains rebellious saying he would win at last. "We'll win," he said. "You know how many cases I've lost and then we win?"Be that as it may, even as he stood there spouting, the torturous misfortunes continue to surface. The organisation officials opting to support Congress over the White House is a momentous decision. As though they’re opting for a mutiny, for a president who routinely demands loyalty from those who work for him, the tables are finally turning.trump may make many appeals to the Supreme Court to prevent the arrival of his tax records, yet the courts, including the Supreme Court, have already refused to rein in Congress' subpoena control.It's apparent, at the end of the day, that the House examination can accumulate plentiful proof of trump's maltreatment of power Without his participation. Nevertheless, it would be astute for House Speaker, Nancy Pelosi to offer trump a chance to descend from his destructive throne.

I asked this question a few days ago, and I’ll take a shot at answering it. Trump came into office saying he would appoint THE BEST PEOPLE. What we have seen instead is incompetence, turmoil, serial turnovers, numerous corruption scandals and many crucial government positions left unfilled. We have lots of “acting” heads of this or that, but looking at the people who have actually been confirmed is a good way to gauge the depth of the cynicism and the contempt that Trump and Republicans feel for the United States of America.A lot of the inadequate staffing is inevitable. Smart, thoughtful, qualified people tend to believe in the fact-based universe. Donald Trump is a narcissistic sociopath who lies all the time, ignores intelligence and informed opinions, governs via tweets and uses public office to enrich himself — so, quality people in every field are going to think twice about going to work for someone that rude and insulting, that dishonest and that likely to stain and compromise, forever, the reputations of those who serve in his administration.But a lot of the incompetence of the administration is deliberate — intentional. Just as fewer and fewer Republicans believe in American democracy (it’s “mob rule!” they insist), fewer and fewer of them believe in government, in the traditional sense. They prefer the Russian model of oligarchs running a gangster state. They see the entire Federal government as some kind of commie plot. They sneer at public service, and consider people who devote their lives to it, serving both Democratic and Republican administrations in a nonpartisan, dedicated way, to be suspect. They refer to these people who keep government running, and maintain continuity in our agencies over time, as the Deep State. Career civil servants have, indeed, kept things functioning even with Kaos Agent Trump in charge, for over two years … but every month there are fewer of them, as they leave our government in droves, pushed out by this administration. They are replaced by — a vacuum. And that will be a very bad thing if Trump’s threatened trade wars crash the economy, or if his efforts to generate high ratings for himself by threatening wars and then making friendly gestures results in a real war. In a time of national emergency, there may well be no grown-ups left in the room.Besides hating good government in general, Republicans feel special enmity for those who insist science is real. They humiliate and harass top scientists, transferring them around, forbidding people in government to publish real science papers, discouraging them from using terms like “science-based” and “evidence-based,” delaying and burying government reports and research with conclusions that contradict the administration’s lies, and barring people from attending international conferences where established, proven concepts like harmful man-made climate change are discussed.Since this administration’s assault on the reality-based universe is focused on science, it’s no surprise Trump put Scott Pruitt in charge of the Environmental Protection Agency. Pruitt was saturated in fossil fuel money, (he’s a Koch brothers pet), hates the EPA, had sued it fourteen times — so, he was a natural to run it, since Republicans like to have a fox running every government hen house.In a little over a year, there were fourteen investigations by different government agencies into Pruitt’s corrupt/illegal practices. He gave illegal raises to cronies. He had an obsession with secrecy and lack of transparency, liberally spending money on items like his Get Smart-type “cone of silence” booth. He told his security people in cars to use flashing lights and sirens, regularly, to get him through DC traffic to places like his favorite restaurant. He had a mania for hiring extra security people. He had security people pick up his dry cleaning, and go out to look for his special moisturizer. He slavishly worked to empower the industries the EPA keeps tabs on and is supposed to impose fines on, for violations. He fired scientists and replaced them with fossil fuel industry people. He used taxpayer money to fly everywhere first class or business class or on private jets and stay at luxury hotels, costing us hundreds of thousands. He set up a sweetheart rental deal for himself and his daughter in a DC lobbyist’s condo.Pruitt’s level of corruption was breathtaking, even for the Trump administration, and he was pressured to resign in 2018. Now we have former coal lobbyist Andrew Wheeler continuing Pruitt’s job of running/dismantling the EPA. It probably goes without saying, but Wheeler does not believe science is real, either. A lot of Trump’s people are so incompetent and so focused on self-enrichment, it limits the damage they do, but Wheeler is a busy boy; he is better than Pruitt at changing Obama-era policy and perverting the mission of the EPA, so that not only does more carbon spew into our atmosphere, but also more methane, plus mercury and other things that sicken and kill a lot of Americans. Here are some pieces on him and on what our EPA has been up to:Opinion | This Coal Lobbyist Should Not Run the E.P.A.E.P.A. Rule Change Could Let Dirtiest Coal Plants Keep Running (and Stay Dirty)Trump Administration Wants to Make It Easier to Release Methane Into AirPresident Trump’s Retreat on the Environment Is Affecting Communities Across AmericaTrump Administration Hardens Its Attack on Climate ScienceAnother notable Trump administration Swamp Dweller was Tom Price, whom Trump made our Secretary of Health and Human Services (and of course Republicans in the Senate confirm Trump’s stinking nominees of this kind). He’s a Tea Party guy, so naturally, as a doctor, he worked on a healthcare plan as an alternative to the ACA that would cover far fewer people and give them shoddier coverage. He doesn’t think it’s important that parents vaccinate their children. He not only opposes abortion, he has claimed no woman has ever struggled to pay for basic contraception. He made stock market decisions affected by policy he was involved in. As head of HHS, he fought for repeal of the individual mandate: “repeal” with no “replace,” of course — though Republicans pretended as they took power that they had a health plan of their own.Price pretended getting rid of the individual mandate wouldn’t result in millions of people losing coverage. Like Pruitt, Price had a penchant for private chartered planes, and he also liked to take military flights — to get to cities that are easily accessible from DC by car or train. He cost tax payers one million with this nonsense, and offered to pay back $50,000. Eventually, he had to resign. Now, our HHS Secretary is Alex Azar, a former head of Eli Lilly and a pharmaceutical industry lobbyist. He is, naturally, also focused on repealing the ACA with no “replace.”Betsy DeVos is married to the heir of the incredibly lucrative, Christian Fundamentalist pyramid-scheme company Amway. She has spent years promoting school vouchers and charter schools and undermining the American system of public education. Her efforts have had a dismal effect on the schools of Michigan; the charter school program she championed there is a disaster. So, naturally, she is now our Secretary of Education. She has no degree in the subject. Her Senate confirmation hearings were eye-opening, as she read quotes plagiarized from Obama administration people, expressed bewilderment over some basic rubrics for measuring how students and schools are doing, and said people might need guns in schools to fight off grizzly bears.Even Republican Senators had trouble voting for her, and Mike Pence had to step in and break the tie. DeVos seems to think that historically black colleges are examples of “school choice” — not understanding what caused them to be founded. She has suggested it’s okay for private schools to refuse to accept LGBT kids or black kids — since it’s all about “choice.” She has worked to take away protection for students who take out loans, and standards to protect students from gimmicky for-profit colleges. She appointed a former dean of DeVry to supervise investigations into scam colleges like DeVry. She does her best to cut funding for the Special Olympics and for programs for kids with disabilities — she has sabotaged their rights that were protected under law.Rick Perry was a governor of Texas who wanted to be president. He memorably ran a campaign ad talking about how it was wrong that President Obama was preventing children from celebrating Christmas (?!) and wrong that gays could serve openly in the military, and how Perry wanted to bring America back to Christian values, and end the “war on religion.” Ironically, the background music of this ad ripped off Appalachian Spring, by gay Jewish New York communist atheist composer Aaron Copland, whose parents were immigrants to Brooklyn:Also when he was running for president in 2011/2012, Perry said in a debate that the US should eliminate three government departments. He mentioned the Department of Education, the Department of Commerce, and as for the third one? "I can't. The third one, I can't. Sorry. Oops.” The department he wanted to eliminate but was too dumb to remember the name of later turned out to be the Department of Energy. So, in a nice little joke on America — a way to give the finger to us all — Trump and the Republicans have made Rick Perry our nation’s Secretary of Energy, leading that department! Energy has to do with science, so from the GOP perspective it’s great that Perry is a Fundamentalist who doesn’t think science is real, and would like to see Creationism taught in schools. Perry pooh poohs concerns about climate change. He says “the science is still out” on whether people cause it. He says African countries should use fossil fuels to create better lighting; it would lead to fewer rapes. He goes after the Sierra Club for "exploiting the struggle of those most affected by climate change." He remains on the board of a huge energy company. (Holy conflict of interest, Batman!) He may be leaving soon, to find ways to make more money.Rick Perry Is Done Pretending to Know What the Energy Department DoesWilbur Ross is our Secretary of Commerce. He’s a big believer in Trump’s trade wars; he thinks tariffs on China will modify their behavior, instead of causing them to buy soybeans elsewhere, screwing American farmers. Ross also is a fan of trade wars with Europe. Ross lied to the Department of Ethics, in writing, and said he had divested all of his financial holdings. For most of 2017 he owned stakes in companies that were in China, tied to Putin’s son-in-law and involved in other areas it was now his job to regulate. He has diddled with stocks and engaged in insider trading while in office. He met with Chevron execs to discuss oil and gas in 2018 while his wife owned $250,000 in Chevron stocks. When Trump threw a tantrum and shut down our government over his wall (“I own the shutdown! Except I don’t! Except I do! Except I don’t!”) Ross suggested that Federal workers who were in crisis because they were not receiving paychecks should just go take out loans from the bank, and pay a little interest later. He couldn’t understand why they were going to food banks.Ross and Trump recently had a big defeat; they can’t include a question on the census about citizenship that was designed to intimidate Latino citizens who have loved ones who are undocumented — it was intended to keep those citizens from responding, so the places where they live won’t receive adequate Federal funding, for healthcare and roads and education, in terms of how many people live there. Roberts’ conservative Supreme Court is fine with Republican gerrymandering, which distorts our democracy — but they found Ross’s lying as he made the case about the census so lame and so blatant, they just couldn’t sign off on it.Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen left her job recently. She will not be missed. Her lies for Trump extend way beyond pretending not to know whether Norway is a predominantly white country. (Trump had said in a meeting that we get too many immigrants from sh*thole countries — why can’t we have more from places like Norway?) She pretended not to know, in May of 2018, that the intelligence community had concluded that the Russians interfered in the 2016 elections to help Trump win. (This is our Secretary of Homeland Security talking.) Months later, she said she didn’t think Russia had been trying to help either side — after Putin had said he’d wanted Trump to win. Nielsen was the one who started implementing Trump’s policy of family separation in 2018 — and she lied about it, again and again, sometimes under oath to Congress. She said they had no such policy when they had already separated 2,000 children from their families, and Jeff Sessions and others were bragging about the innovative approach. She said Trump could not sign an executive order ending family separations, then was at the ceremony where he signed the meaningless order he had no intention of respecting. Nielsen expressed to Congress that she did not know how many children and how many people apprehended at the border had died in custody during her tenure.There is now even more incoherence and chaos in the DHS. The current Acting Secretary has appointed Mark Morgan to run Customs and Border Protection. According to the New York Times, Morgan won over Trump on TV in 2017. “In one appearance on Fox News, Mr. Morgan said that when he looked into the eyes of detained migrant children, he saw a ‘soon-to-be MS-13 gang member.’” Now, there’s the guy to turn around the problem of children dying and being traumatized in custody, and our national honor being stained by inhumane abuses!‘A Constant Game of Musical Chairs’ Amid Another Homeland Security Shake-UpIn another Times piece, by Gail Collins in January about this stinking, putrid cabinet, we learn that: “Kenneth T. Cuccinelli II, who once advocated an end to birthright citizenship and policies that would require employees to speak English, was picked last month to oversee United States Citizenship and Immigration Services, the agency responsible for legal immigration.”Opinion | Help Pick the Worst of TrumpJeff Sessions was Trump’s Attorney General until the 2018 elections. Sessions is a good-old-boy racist who lost the chance to be a Federal judge in 1986 due to a letter from Coretta Scott King calling him out for his racist behavior as an attorney in Alabama. Senator Elizabeth Warren cited what Ted Kennedy had said about that earlier nomination, and started to read Coretta Scott King’s letter, which had been read into the Congressional record in 1986. Republicans objected, “nevertheless, she persisted,” and McConnell and Republicans shut Warren down — they voted to silence her. Jeff Sessions perjured himself before the Senate during his confirmation hearings, saying he’d never talked to the Russians during the campaign and didn’t know of anyone else in the Trump campaign who had. Once this lie was exposed, he had to come back to the Senate to do some ‘splaining, talking about his honor as a Southern gentleman or some such, and wound up recusing himself from supervising the Mueller Investigation. Trump never forgave him for it, and Trump liked to publicly humiliate him, regularly.Sessions hung on because being AG allowed him to pursue policies dear to his heart — policies otherwise in tune with the Trump administration. He was the one who proudly unveiled the policy of hurting refugee children on purpose, to punish and deter their parents who brought them here, seeking asylum! There was a good deal of bi-partisan consensus that we need criminal justice reform, that people shouldn’t go to jail for decades for marijuana charges when pot is legal in many states, and that people who are addicted need treatment rather than to be treated like criminals. But Sessions did away with all those ideas. He’s against even medical marijuana. He was proud that we’re the most incarcerated country, he was into mandatory sentencing rules and against consent decrees for police departments found to be chronically racist. He was into cops seizing property from people who were suspected but not convicted, and fining the poor to the max. Our Attorney General seemed not to see Hawaii as a real state, saying, of Trump’s proposed racist Muslim Ban, that he was "amazed that a judge sitting on an island in the Pacific can issue an order that stops the President of the United States from what appears to be clearly his statutory and Constitutional power," though the Supreme Court, it turned out, had issues with the original version of the Travel Ban also.Trump has said he wants an Attorney General who will be his “Roy Cohn.” Roy Cohn broke the law, talking privately to the judge and getting the death sentence for both Julius and Ethel Rosenberg who died in the electric chair. He was the right-hand man of Senator Joe McCarthy who called everyone who opposed him a communist; though gay himself, Cohn helped enhance the Lavender Scare. Cohn threatened to “wreck the Army” if they didn’t give his friend David Schine cushy treatment once he was drafted, which led to the Army-McCarthy hearings and Joseph Welch standing up to McCarthy: "Have you no decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?" Later as a lawyer in NYC, Cohn represented Mafiosos like John Gotti, and Donald Trump, and the guys who ran Studio 54, and he and they were part of that Studio 54 partying scene. Cohn represented Trump when the government went after him and his father for their racist rental policies — not showing apartments to black applicants, marking black people’s applications with a “C” for “Colored,” etc. Cohn got Trump off. He introduced Trump to Rupert Murdoch. As Cohn was with the young rat-f*cker and self-described dirty trickster Roger Stone, Roy Cohn was key in teaching Donald Trump to have no morals whatsoever.How Donald Trump and Roy Cohn’s Ruthless Symbiosis Changed AmericaSessions obeyed the laws sometimes, and was capable of feeling shame, and so, even though he advanced the racist agenda of Trump, Stephen Miller and Steve Bannon, Trump became disgusted with him. Trump got rid of Sessions and brought in Scott Whitaker as acting Attorney General — a guy who’d auditioned for the job by writing an op ed piece saying Mueller’s investigation into Trump was going too far, and retweeted a piece calling the investigation a “lynch mob.” Whitaker had run a shady, opaque group that pretended to be non-partisan with the Orwellian acronym name FACT that urged investigations of Hillary Clinton. He’d also been involved with a group supposedly promoting inventions — a group that rivals Trump University and Trump Model Management for the rancidness of its sleazy, dishonest practices. It created a false impression that some inventions it promoted were successful. Whitaker threatened people who were out to expose the company. It sold deep, “masculine toilets” to manly men with penises so long, they’d land in the water in a toilet bowl of the normal height, and it claimed to have Bigfoot’s DNA, or proof that it had been collected.So many people had a problem with the endlessly acting, never confirmed Whitaker, that Trump brought in William Barr to be our AG. And now, at last, the Donald has his Roy Cohn! He has, in Barr, both a Mafia Don’s lawyer and a consigliere to him. Barr is a longtime proponent of mass incarceration, ending parole, new laws to monitor people’s phone records without getting proper vetting of these laws — and he helped orchestrate George Herbert Walker Bush pardoning a bunch of Bush’s Iran/Contra co-conspirators. Like Whitaker, Barr auditioned for the job of AG, letting Trump know he’d get him off in relation to Mueller in 2017 by saying it was fine for Trump to fire Sally Yates, there’s more point to investigating Hillary and Uranium One than there is to investigating Russia’s interference in the 2016 elections, and the Mueller Investigation into obstruction of justice was “asinine”; it was looking like a plot “to overthrow the president.” Barr lied about the contents of the Mueller Report months before releasing it, lied under oath to Congress about whether Mueller had communicated to him what Mueller thought of Barr’s representation of the report … and Barr is fine with using the word “spying” for those in our intelligence community who, after presenting evidence to FISA judges, conducted authorized investigations of what happened between Trump and Russia in 2016. He says the term “spying” isn’t pejorative. Senator Kamala Harris made mincemeat of Barr for his squishy, dishonest testimony in the Senate:After that, Barr blew off a subpoena to testify before the House Oversight Committee, and they held him in Contempt of Congress.It’s not good for the United States to have an Attorney General who is a liar, a perjurer, a man with contempt for firewalls, and contempt for the Separation of Powers and the system of Checks and Balances, and who forgets that he is America’s lawyer, not the president’s. But that’s Bill Barr.Alexander Acosta is our Secretary of Labor. He is in the news right now for the sweetheart deal he gave child predator Jeffrey Epstein back in Florida. The prosecution lawyers met with Epstein’s lawyers in the spirit of good ol’ boy camaraderie, and cut a deal where he only got a slap on the wrist; for thirteen months, Epstein had to sleep in a Federal facility but he could go work in his office six days a week … We’re talking about a man who molested multiple children, and trafficked in children. But then, rich white men in this country are above the law. The deal also protected his co-conspirators, known and unknown from prosecution. Of course, President Trump has been accused of having sex with a little girl at one of Epstein’s parties, (there is a corroborating witness, a woman who said she recruited the child to come to the party and witnessed the rape) and has joked about how Jeff is a great guy, they both like beautiful women, Jeff likes them really young …Alex Acosta saw to it that important information was withheld from the judge in the case — and crucial information was also illegally withheld from the many young women who had been abused as children by Epstein. They did not even know the deal had been cut. They never had a chance to appear at his sentencing hearing and say what they thought of Epstein’s light sentencing for a charge of “prostitution.” At last, Epstein (along with, possibly, his co-conspirators) is being prosecuted properly, by New York and Federal authorities. July 12th Update: Alex Acosta is gone. Yay!Ben Carson is a doctor, a neurosurgeon, a man with some impressive credits and also some very odd comments and actions on his scorecard, a sometime presidential candidate … and he had no experience, over the course of his career, in managing a big agency or dealing directly with policies involving housing and urban development. So, why did Trump choose Carson to run HUD? Was it that our president saw the word “urban” and thought … oh, urban … I better give it to the black guy …? With Donald Trump, who knows? It’s also possible that Trump liked how Carson had opposed HUD’s long-term anti-discrimination policies. Another fox to run another hen house! Carson seemed open, during his confirmation, to steering government money to Trump’s businesses. His son, Ben Carson Jr, has been cashing in on his father’s position. The Trump administration keeps eliminating HUD money that Dr. Carson promises the public will be part of infrastructure spending. In his testimony before Congress over the last few years, Dr. Carson has repeatedly made it evident that he doesn’t understand basic things HUD does. Here he is in 2019:He said after this hearing that Democrats were using “Saul Alinsky” tactics.Carson fired a career HUD official for refusing to spend more than $5,000, the legal limit, on new office furnishings for him. He went on to spend $31,000 of tax-payer dollars on a new dining set. He lied about whether he’d had input in choosing it.The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is the brain child of Elizabeth Warren. It was authorized by Dodd-Frank and it was meant to protect average people against predatory lenders and others who had screwed us and had led to the 2008 crash. Richard Cordray, a Warren ally, ran it well, He appointed a person who should have taken it over when he left — but Trump trashed the protocol and put in Mick Mulvaney to run it. Mulvaney is supposedly fiscally cautious, but running the Office of Management and Budget, he was fine with Trump dramatically swelling the deficit with tax cuts for the rich. Now he says “nobody cares” about the deficit. Mulvaney told Trump to cut Social Security and Medicare. He introduced himself to Gary Cohn saying: “Hi, I’m a right-wing nutjob.” He got confirmed at OMB despite the fact that he failed to pay payroll taxes for years on his kids’ nanny. As a Congressman, Mulvaney attacked the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau non-stop, calling it “sick” and “sad” and “a joke.” He co-sponsored legislation to get rid of it. So, of course, he was the perfect guy to run it for Trump! By 2019 he had undermined its enforcement and regulatory powers. It lets banks and businesses get away with screwing consumers once again, no problem! It has dropped investigations of predatory payday lenders. A leading business group praised Mulvaney for his “passivity.” But he fired all 25 members of the CFPB’s Consumer Advisory Board after eleven of them criticized him — he wasn’t passive about that! Now Mulvaney is Trump’s Chief of Staff.Donald Trump spent the 2016 campaign bellowing about how he was going to “Drain the Swamp!” He cheerfully admitted he’d been handed that slogan, he thought it was stupid and meaningless, but crowds loved it so he kept yelling it. He criticized Hillary Clinton for being too close to Goldman Sachs — and then brought Gary Cohn and Steve Mnuchin into his administration. Let’s talk about Mnuchin. He is our Secretary of the Treasury. He says his number one priority is dismantling parts of Dodd-Frank. When asked about the threat of AI taking jobs away from people, he says oh, don’t worry, that’s 50 or 100 years off. Mnuchin had a “Mnuchin Rule,” saying they wouldn’t give the rich a big tax break. He walked it back. He said Trump’s tax cut for the rich would finance itself. Budget deficits rose 17% by the next year. Mnuchin had not ordered the Treasury to do any analysis of the proposed huge tax cuts and their impact. The Treasury ultimately issued a one-page document acknowledging that the tax cuts would not pay for themselves. Mnuchin has ignored Congress’s subpoena of Trump’s tax records, saying they didn’t want them for legitimate reasons, even though the law clearly states that the Secretary of the Treasury “shall furnish” requested tax records of any individual to Congress. What are laws worth, after all? He can be remarkably rude when talking to Congress, especially when speaking to House Financial Services Chair Maxine Waters.He told parents to take their kids to the Lego Batman Movie he executive produced, right after acknowledging, in the same interview, it was unethical for him to promote things he’s involved in. Mnuchin is another Swamp Dweller who loves him some plane rides: government planes, military planes … he reimbursed us for his wife’s part in one plane jaunt, nearly $600, in a trip that cost tax payers nearly $27,000. He wanted a military jet for their honeymoon, but later said: "I'm very sensitive to the use of government funds. I've never asked the government to pay for my personal travel ... The story was quite misreported.”Eleanor Chao likes to ride some of the same planes as Mnuchin. When she was George H.W. Bush’s Secretary of Labor, she was famous for sticking it to the American workers whose rights she was supposed to uphold, and siding with those who exploit them. She did not defend laws protecting wages and hours and workplace safety. She was fine with people being underpaid, and with mines that ignored safety rules — which led to a number of miners’ deaths. Chao is now our Secretary of Transportation. She labels a lot of her time on the job “private,” avoiding transparency in terms of what she does with it. But she does lots of public interviews, as Secretary of Transportation, with her father, a shipping tycoon with ships that go to China. Her sister now runs the family business. The company gets lots of very unusual deals worth hundreds of millions of dollars in China; Chao is using her position to help her family’s business cash in, as the Trumps do. Chao pledged in 2017 to sell her stock in a road-paving company, but she lied; only when newspapers exposed her lie in 2019 did she sell the stock. Chao is married to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell — the man who delights in undermining our Constitution by not letting President Obama’s Supreme Court nominee get considered by the Senate as the Constitution stipulates, etc. In 2017, Chao had her aide Todd Inman become a special envoy between the Department of Transportation and Kentucky, the state McConnell represents in the Senate. This led to $78 million in sweetheart deal projects for pro-McConnell counties in Kentucky. (No conflict of interest there!) Inman had worked for McConnell’s campaigns in the past. Now he’s Chao’s Chief of Staff. Chao’s father and family have given millions to McConnell and his campaigns.Mike Flynn was President Trump’s National Security Adviser for several weeks when Trump first came into office. Before that, Flynn had an Army career: a Lieutenant General. He led our Defense Intelligence Agency for a while under Obama. He was forced out, perhaps because his close relations with a Russian woman made him seem potentially compromised, or because of his apoplectic views about Muslims, or his nutty management style, abusive treatment of staff, and truth-challenged pronouncements that caused his staff to talk about “Flynn facts.” He retired from the military soon after. He became a consultant, and got $45,000 for a speech at an RT dinner in Russia where he was seated next to Putin. He criticized Erdogan in Turkey during the attempted coup there. But then he went to work for the Turkish government. He wrote an op ed attacking Erdogan’s opponent, Gulen, without disclosing that he worked for a Turkish company. In March 2017 he registered as a foreign agent who had received over $500,000 in lobbying money. But that was after the election — and after he had left the Trump White House.During the 2016 campaign Flynn was an adviser to Trump. He gave a keynote speech at the Republican National Convention, attacking Hillary Clinton and leading/encouraging the chants of “Lock her up!” He said if he’d done a tenth of what she’d done, he’d be in jail. He re-tweeted Pizza-gate garbage. President Obama when he met Trump after the election warned him not to hire Flynn to hear sensitive national security information. Trump ignored it. Chris Christie also warned Trump not to hire Flynn. Flynn himself told people he was under investigation. Before Jeff Sessions was confirmed, Sally Yates was Acting Attorney General. She warned Trump that Flynn should not be his National Security Adviser anymore because there was proof Flynn had lied to Pence and others when he said his phone call to Sergei Kislyak before Trump took office was just to wish Kislyak Merry Christmas. In fact, Flynn told Kislyak that Russia should ignore the sanctions imposed on Russia by Obama, who was still president, because Trump would come in and repeal them — did this in violation of the Logan Act, which says a private citizen should not negotiate with foreign powers in US government disputes. Because Flynn had lied about the call, he was compromised — the Russians could blackmail him. Trump ignored Yates’ warning and kept Flynn around hearing highly classified intelligence for two more weeks. Trump fired Yates. Flynn had to resign when his lie became publicly known. Trump leaned on FBI Director James Comey to “let Flynn go,” and when Comey would not pledge that the FBI would not investigate Flynn and Trump, Trump fired Comey over “the Russia thing,” as he told Lester Holt in an interview on national television and told the Russians in the Oval Office the next day. This led to the Mueller Investigation.Mueller went after Flynn (and his son) for, among other things, plotting to kidnap Gulen, the enemy of Erdogan in Turkey; Gulen lives here. Flynn pled guilty to lying to the FBI, but got into trouble because he kept on lying when he said he was cooperating. The Trump administration improperly contacted him to try to learn what he was saying, and dangled indirect offers of a pardon. Michael Flynn was one of 34 people indicted in the course of the Mueller Investigation, which according to Republicans has uncovered nothing.Mueller's investigation is done. Here are the 34 people he indicted along the wayOther criminal people from the Trump campaign and administration exposed by the investigation include Trump’s lawyer Michael Cohen who illegally paid off women Trump slept with during the campaign and is now in jail (court papers call Trump aka “Individual One” Cohen’s un-indicted co-conspirator) and fellow Roy Cohn protege and campaign adviser Roger Stone who is also in jail, for lying to Congress and witness tampering. Former Trump Campaign Chairman Paul Manafort took the Trump Tower meeting with Jared and Don Jr to get dirt from the Russians on Hillary Clinton. (An invitation to collude with the Russians? “I love it!”) Manafort had groomed Russia’s stooge leader in Ukraine before grooming one here, and gave the Russians the Trump campaign’s internal polling data. (No, collusion, though, right?) Manafort had a plea deal he violated, continuing to lie to investigators and to coordinate with the Trump team. Now he’s in jail, for tax fraud and bank fraud. He’s another foreign lobbyist who registered as one a little “late.”George Papadopoulos was a Trump campaign aide who only served fourteen days in prison for lying to the FBI. He bragged to an Australian diplomat in 2016 about how the Trump campaign was colluding with the Russians, which helped lead to the FBI investigation into the matter. He also offered more substantiation that Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ lied to Congress. Attorney Alex Van Der Swann only served thirty days in jail for lying. Rick Gates, like Michael Flynn, has had his sentencing delayed, as he continues to cooperate and provide more dirt. Richard Pinedo served six months for identity fraud. He helped the Russian cyber trolls get onto Facebook and influence the election. The other people indicted are Konstantin Kilimnik, whom Manafort gave the polling data to, and a bunch of other Russians.Compare that nest of crooks to Bill Clinton’s campaigns and administration. Compare it to the Obama campaigns and administration.Here’s one more Trump Swamp creature, one very close to the Swamp Lord — Jared Kushner! His father is a sleazy real estate developer. Because his father’s brother-in-law was cooperating with Feds against him, Jared’s dad hired a prostitute, had her go sleep with his brother-in-law and taped the encounter to send to his sister. He went to jail for that witness tampering, plus illegal campaign contributions, plus tax evasion. Jared came away from the experience furious on his father’s behalf — and made sure Chris Christie, who negotiated his father’s plea agreement, did not serve in Trump’s administration. He was indignant that his father didn’t get out of prison early, and he has no sense that what his father did was wrong. In other words, Jared Kushner, like his father-in-law Donald Trump, is a princeling con man raised to break the law without batting an eye. Jared’s father’s donations to Harvard may have helped Jared get in. The two of them made the disastrous $1.8 billion purchase of 666 Fifth Avenue just before the 2008 crash. Jared worked closely with Manafort during Trump’s campaign on media strategy, and together they hired Steve Bannon’s Cambridge Analytica. Once Trump was elected, Jared lied multiple times on his security clearance forms, omitting hundreds of meetings with foreign nationals. He’d re-submit them and lie again. (To lie intentionally even once on those forms is a felony that can lead to jail time.) A person as compromised as Jared would never be granted clearance to hear sensitive intelligence — except Trump over-rode all the professionals and got him clearance anyhow. Trump said he had no role in getting Jared clearance, but then, Trump lies all the time.So, what is Jared Kushner in charge of ? What isn’t he in charge of! He’s been in charge of peace between Palestine and Israel; apparently his plan is stuff seen many times before, and a non-starter. He’s in charge of solving the opioid crisis (how’s that going?) and information-technology contracting. He was heavily involved in us selling weapons to Saudi Arabia for $100 billion. All government correspondence is supposed to be over official systems (do you remember Hillary getting criticized for using private email for government work? Guess what Jared has used?) and there is supposed to be a record kept of it, for history. (Again, do you remember Hillary getting in trouble because people thought some of her official emails might not have been saved? It was for the historical record.) Jared communicates with MBS of Saudi Arabia via encrypted apps with no record. He tipped off MBS about guys in Saudi Arabia who might be a threat to MBS, and they were rounded up and taken to a hotel. They’re not a threat to Adnan Khashoggi’s murderer anymore. Jared owes a billion dollars in debt. Our nation’s foreign policy of punishing our ally Qatar, and our policy toward Saudi Arabia, seem at least partially to have been geared over the last two years toward finally getting someone to pay for the 666 Fifth Avenue boondoggle that Jared is still saddled with.During the campaign, Jared also had calls with Kislyak, and of course went to the Trump Tower meeting, and may have leaned on Flynn to talk to people in the Middle East to undermine Obama’s policies after Trump was elected but Obama was still in office. He may have told Flynn to talk to Kislyak. Jared was very keen on getting Comey fired — he figured Democrats would be great with it because Comey had violated the Hatch Act several times to make Hillary look bad. But, it turned out Democrats had a problem with Trump firing him for the reasons he did. Jared and Ivanka cash in on their position in various obvious and offensive ways, and their conflicts of interest are pretty straightforward.That’s not the whole Rogues’ Gallery, but it’s an intro to a lot of the key ones. I feel like we should be aware of them. Their faces should haunt our nightmares. I’m sorry it took so long — sorry there was so much to write about. But no, none of those Trump appointees is focused on making the agencies and departments they run, and the US government overall, succeed. These are not THE BEST PEOPLE. These are THE WORST PEOPLE. Either they actively seek to destroy the organizations they head, or they are primarily focused on making a buck. Yes, that’s often true when Republicans are in office. But Trump likes to talk about how the things he does are unbelievable, amazing, nobody’s ever seen anything like it before — and in this case, the hyperbole is justified. The graft of these grifters, the idiocy of some of the drivel that comes out of their mouths, the slimy, wormy filth that they have reduced our government to … is simply unprecedented. Trump has not drained The Swamp. Trump is The Swamp Lord. Trump has widened and deepened The Swamp, and added extra scum. Again, we’ve been relatively lucky so far, as we were during the first eight months under W. But luck can run out, and things can go seriously wrong. We could get in a situation where we need statesmen, not con men, and wisdom, not smug, self-satisfied ignorance. And even if no seismic national emergency arises, the policies that do not seem to have done too much damage yet will continue to hurt us (and the whole planet) for a long, long time to come.