Welcome to the Coatesville Dems Blog

Public Corruption in Chester County, PA

I believe an unlikely mix of alleged drug trafficking related politicos and alleged white nationalist related politicos united to elect the infamous “Bloc of Four” in the abysmal voter turnout election of 2005. During their four year term the drug business was good again and white nationalists used Coatesville as an example on white supremacist websites like “Stormfront”. Strong community organization and support from law enforcement, in particular Chester County District Attorney Joseph W. Carroll has begun to turn our community around. The Chester County drug trafficking that I believe centers on Coatesville continues and I believe we still have public officials in place that profit from the drug sales. But the people here are amazing and continue to work against the odds to make Coatesville a good place to live.

Wednesday, July 28, 2021

US Senate Infrastructure Bill - Public/private partnerships is whispered as a way to pay for it. That’s "Déjà vu all over again” for me. Former Coatesville City Manager Harry Walker was the public/private partnership guy who watched Coatesville burn.

Co-Chaired By Former Mayors Mick Cornett & Michael Nutter


"Alexandria, Va.  --- As the debate over the infrastructure bill continues to dominate Capitol Hill, a bipartisan pair of former mayors today joined forces to launch “Let’s Build Infrastructure,” a coalition committed to raising awareness about utilizing public-private partnerships (P3s) to finance infrastructure projects.


Mick Cornett, the former mayor of Oklahoma City (2005-2018), and Michael Nutter, the former mayor of Philadelphia (2008-2016) will serve as co-chairs of “Let’s Build Infrastructure”, a 501(c)(4) non-profit organization.  A P3 is an agreement between a governmental entity and a private sector company to build an infrastructure project, including but not limited to roads, bridges, schools, using private capital for the project’s upfront costs."

 MORE AT:

Bipartisan “Let’s Build Infrastructure” Coalition Launches To Promote Public-Private Partnerships



I think because we both like Jazz Harry Walker and me could be friends. But he did terrible things to Coatesville PA. 


Private/public investments in buildings can work out to improve communities. 


But Harry Walker & Andrew Lehr proposed gas powered electric generation plant that would entail the creation of a public/private Coatesville Power Authority, had no real payback to the people of the City of Coatesville. 


 I suspect that Andrew Lehr & Harry Walker intended to be on the board of the Coatesville Power Authority. 


I believe that Florida Power & Light was trolling for a black community as a place for a power plant and found willing Andrew Lehr & Harry Walker to be willing partners. Or possibly the other way around. That is Andrew Lehr and Harry Walker looking for a get rich quick scheme and found Florida Power & Light. 


SEE:


Tuesday, July 27, 2021


What concerns me is now the US Senate is creating massive public/private partnerships across the USA to pay for infrastructure instead of the tried and true tax wealthy people for infrastructure that created the interstate highway system and fed what we now call "back in the day" times when we all had good paying jobs that would pay for a good life. 


I'm concerned that the public/private "Let's Build Infrastructure" is a way to bilk people into paying the wealthy along with building infrastructure so the wealthy that pay ZERO taxes can ride penis shaped rockets into space and wag their dicks at suckers on the earth that actually pay taxes. 



FACT SHEET: President Biden Announces Support for the Bipartisan Infrastructure Framework

June 24, 2021T


Proposed Financing Sources for New Investment


  • Reduce the IRS tax gap
  • Unemployment insurance program integrity 
  • Redirect unused unemployment insurance relief funds 
  • Repurpose unused relief funds from 2020 emergency relief legislation 
  • State and local investment in broadband infrastructure 
  • Allow states to sell or purchase unused toll credits for infrastructure 
  • Extend expiring customs user fees 
  • Reinstate Superfund fees for chemicals 
  • 5G spectrum auction proceeds 
  • Extend mandatory sequester 
  • Strategic petroleum reserve sale 
  • Public-private partnerships, private activity bonds, direct pay bonds and asset recycling for infrastructure investment 
  • Macroeconomic impact of infrastructure investment

Tuesday, July 27, 2021

Environmental Racism projects proposed in the City of Coatesville PA. After a long treacherous odyssey a happy ending for the City of Coatesville in the form of a regional sports center & velodrome is coming to Coatesville PA.

There is a fog surrounding events as they occur. You can look back with clear vision.


I believe the Saha family was scammed regarding the land dispute between the City of Coatesville & Sahas going back to 2005.


The election of the Bloc of Four, cutting the Coatesvillle PD in half with the resulting arsonist rampage burning the City of Coatesville revolved around a scheme to build a gas fired power plant in the center of the City of Coatesville and the funds that could be syphoned from a required Coatesville Power Authority.


I believe that:


 John Birch Society Chapter Leader 2 times candidate for U.S. Congress 6th District Pat Sellers apparently now living in Edinburgh Scotland, Attorney Andrew Lehr, “Accomplished business strategist, corporate finance manager, economic development strategist” Harry Walker and Ernie Campos have decades long histories of what I believe are scams to acquire public funding projects that they could syphon cash out of. 

 

 "The sale of 26.3 acres of land in Coatesville, Pennsylvania, has been approved by the local city council toward a future site that will include an indoor velodrome as part of a $50 million National Sports and Events Center.


Coatesville’s Redevelopment Authority, after a series of public meetings, project reviews and negotiations, recommended the sale to IDG Development LLC, a Coatesville-based company comprising a joint venture between New Heritage Properties and Activated Capital. IDG’s plan calls for development of the NSEC, which with its indoor cycling facility will both serve regional needs and become an international center for cycling.


Wednesday, July 14, 2021

Within the City of Coatesville it’s mostly unknown that a world class Velodrome & National Sports Center is coming to downtown Coatesville.


We should thank the undying perseverance and courage of the volunteer City of Coatesville RDA members dedicated to serving the people of the City of Coatesville. 


REDEVELOPMENT AUTHORITY



Saturday, July 15, 2017

Killing the City of Coatesville RDA is back. Which environmental racism company waits in the wings?


I don't know which company specializing in environmental racism is waiting in the wings, but if the RDA is disbanded the City of Coatesville is required by law to sell to the highest bidder. FPL is now a subsidiary of  NextEra Energy, Inc. (NEE)


Some Coatesville City Council members are talking about scrapping the RDA. 


To me that means some company specializing in putting toxin-spewing factories in Black neighborhoods has found gullible Black politicians in Coatesville with their hands open. 


The former G.O. Carlson Steel Company land dividing Coatesville in half has a business/commercial zoning OVERLAY. 

 UNDERNEATH IT’S STILL ZONED HEAVY INDUSTRY. 

Every company that builds toxic plants in failing Black towns has Coatesville in its sights.

So far we have seen these proposals for the "Flats" the former G.O. Carlson Steel Company property now owned by the City of Coatesville Redevelopment Authority:

  • A gas fired electric generation plant. 
  • proppant plant (part of the toxic mix of chemicals injected into gas fracking wells) 
  • And a trash to steam plant. 

 

Thursday, October 7, 2010

Mr. Morton, “It’s got to go somewhere.”It just happens that they want a fracking chemical plant in a black neighborhood.



Everything swirls around Hennessy's Coatesville Office


State Representative Tim Hennessey was allegedly censured by the PA House Republican Caucus for his long time Coatesville Office Business Manager Lisa Johnson having a crack cocaine manufacturing business operating under Hennessey's nose for about decade. 

Wednesday, January 21, 2015

CrakPowerVille Did PA Rep. Hennessey have a role in the Coatesville Power Plant Plan?




Happy ending,  However: 


There’s a sordid environmental racism history concerning “The Flats”, the former G.O. Carlson Steel Company land that was sold to the Redevelopment Authority of Coatesville, PA.  


Physical threats, SLAPP lawsuits & defamation of character were used to coerce individuals fighting for the people of Coatesville. 


"The Flats" was recently sold to be a regional sports center & velodrome:


Harry Walker and Andrew Lehr planned with Florida Power & Light to build a gas fired electric generation plant. It would sell electricity over Exelon power lines by way of a "Coatesville Power Authority". Would Walker and Lehr would be members of the "Coatesvile Power Authority" that would sell electricity at millions of dollars per hour?

Coatesville RDA Joe DiSciullo, “I will say this, as far as the negotiations with the power company; I WAS STUNNED TO FIND OUT THAT THE CITY SOLICITOR AND MR. WALKER HAD BEEN TALKING TO THE POWER COMPANY AND MR. O’DONNEL WAS NOT INVITED TO TAKE PART.  THAT WAS EYE OPENING TO ME!” 
Allegedly Andrew Lehr blurted out “we can’t do that” when the RDA wanted to proceed with Robert McNeil and Penguin Industries offer to buy the Flats. Lehr allegedly told the RDA in executive session that Walker and he were in serious negotiations with the power plant executives and that revealing it in public would be a breach of confidence. 
I believe that those negotiations were blatantly illegal and that Lehr and Walker had no authority to make a deal in secret with RDA property at The Whip Tavern.

Mr. Walker is correct in stating that, "I did not talk to power company officials in my office." The alleged discussions with power companies took place at the "Whip Tavern in Southern Chester County".  
The money in a community power generation plant is not from the taxes they would pay. Tax benefits to communities from these power plants are negligible. The real money flows through a public / private power authority that must be formed so that the power company can sell electricity on their competitors lines.



At the City of Coatesville Redevelopment Authority Meeting May 16, 2011:




Mr. Pawlowski, “Thank you; I got a call from Mr. DiSciullo a couple of weeks ago about basically for a review for ---material. That Pat O’Donnell who was our previous solicitor for this group had some files from RDA in his possession and I guess he returned them back to the city.


And Mr. DiSciullo called me at home and asked me if I would be willing to go through those boxes along with Mr. Givler and see what should maybe stay as a matter of record and what possibly could be expunged with a solicitor’s or somebody’s approval.


And Mr. Givler and I talked for about 3 or 4 minutes over the phone. Just to say; did you get a call? I said, yes I did.  No discussion of should we shouldn’t we help.


I would just simply like to make this suggestion; those 8 boxes that Mr. Barry has, I would say for the time being speaking for myself I have looked through that and I can’t speak for Mr. Givler but I would strongly, strongly recommend that not one sheet of paper be taken out of those boxes.


Here’s why; Going back, going back to, this is how fate, this is how fate has things… going back to the election City Council Election year of 2005, the Redevelopment Authority was not appreciated by a lot of people as a matter of fact it still isn’t. You can just look around the room and see the size of people here besides the newspaper reporter.


Back then Mr. Givler and I were part of the initial 5 people on the RDA and while we were working on the list we had $700 million of redevelopment coming into Coatesville. The question is, what happened since? How much do we have coming into Coatesville today? Not because of mismanagement, not because of lack of ability just circumstances.


And the reason I’m suggesting, the reason I’m suggesting not to take anything out of those boxes is there were times particularly during the campaign of the 2005 election where it was a very bad time in Coatesville. Particularly when the City Council was involved with building the golf course here in Coatesville the RDA had nothing to do with that. That was not an RDA function. It was a City Council function. Eminent domain was a factor and consequently there was a lot of hatred. And I do not use that word loosely I mean it in the way I’m saying it. There was a lot of hatred toward some council members not everyone but to a few. Basically against the few who favored the golf course and the eminent domain process.


Those people were even accused of taking pay to play money from developers for these projects. Consequently if that were the case, am I boring you guys with all this? Consequently I took that rather personally. I personally was never accused of pay to play. I’m not speaking for Mr. Givler. Just for myself. I was never accused of pay to play but the fact I supported the golf course and the eminent domain issue, I was kind of drawn into that because now I was part of it with some of the City Council people. Do you follow me? In other words If they were to use pay to play then John Pawlowski was through them also. Friends, friends.”


Mr. DiSciullo, “By association.”


Mr. Pawlowski, “Friends by association, guilty by association.”


This guy in Coatesville who was very, very vocal about all this, his name was Pat Sellers…Everything should be documented here sometimes minutes, recordings…As fate would have it, Pat produced a little flyer sent around town and I was hit in that pretty hard as being senile, not taking my medicine, blah, blah blah and other things, to the point where I said, this is wrong accuse me of what you want to but now you’re, you’re influencing my reputation, my family, and on and on and on."



You might remember Pat Sellers for his “Referendum” designed to protect the “Saha Farm” from eminent domain and as a rigorous campaigner for the infamous “Bloc of Four” Coatesville City Council. Pat Sellers allegedly has a connection to Larry Pratt.



 Larry Pratt is mentioned in "Land of the Paranoid" in today’s Washington Post:


“As much of the right sees it, the government is planning to incarcerate its enemies (see Beck and Erickson, above), socialize the economy and take away everyone's guns. At the fringe, we have figures like Larry Pratt, executive director of the Gun Owners of America, who told a rally in Washington last April that, ‘We're in a war. The other side knows they are at war, because they started it. They are coming for our freedom, for our money, for our kids, for our property. They are coming for everything because they are a bunch of socialists.”


FROM:

Land of the paranoid


HAROLD MEYERSON

Wednesday, January 12, 2011; A15  


Pat Sellers ran for PA 6th District US Congress twice; once in 1996 and again in 2010. Below is an excerpt form the Lancaster Intelligencer Journal concerning Sellers' run for Congress in 1996:




Lancaster Intelligencer Journal


Lancaster, PA Thursday April 11, 1996

House hopeful charged in fight with teenager


“Sellers, an electrical worker who trails his opponent in the race, has also come under fire recently for seeking the support of Larry Pratt, a former aide to presidential candidate Pat Buchannan.


 Pratt is executive director of Gun Owners of America. He left the Buchanan Campaign after the media reported on his ties to the Ku Klux Klan and the white supremacist group Aryan Nation.


 Pratt has indorsed Sellers and will be the keynote speaker at a fund-raising dinner for Sellers next week.


 Sellers said the allegations against Pratt are untrue and that he sought Pratt’s support because of his expertise on gun issues.”


See: 

WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 12, 2011 

 Larry Pratt and Coatesville's Pat Sellers




BACK TO MR. PAWLOWSKI 


"I talked with a local lawyer about it. I showed him these things. ‘What can I do with this?’ He says, ‘John, I agree with you these things are terrible, blah, blah, blah; but I’m not going to help you, I’m not going to work with you. Walking out the door and he said, ‘By the way, please don’t tell anybody that you talked to me.


I talked with another lawyer that suggested recommended.


This is a long thing, this is why I am saying Mr. DiSciullo do not touch those papers don’t delete anything. You know what I mean? Even if Mr. Mancini is willing to come over and say, OK… let it in there. This is a long story.

I talked to another; I talked to attorney, my wife and I, in West Chester. They said yes we’ll take you case but a deposition will cost you a minimum of $8,000. That’s to return back my reputation. The problem is when we’re done with all this, you’re cost to us will be around $62,000. And we still may not get the results that you want. So we went and talked to a 3rd attorney didn’t get too far there.


The reason I say this is all come back today by coincidence in today’s Daily Local News is a newspaper article by Pat Sellers. And the 3rd Attorney I talked to Sam Stretton I have a copy of his letter to me, John these things are libelous yeah, blah, blah, blah well…Called me the other day on the phone, wants me to vote for him for district attorney. All tied in with today.


So what I’m saying is in 2005 we had a couple of city council people got elected because they said the RDA wasn’t moving fast enough and getting enough done. They wanted the city to move faster. But that election set the city back 6 years.


There’s a candidate running for this election right now who’s saying things aren’t moving fast enough in Coatesville, we got to speed it up.  It’s like déjà vu all over again.


So what I’m saying is as much progress has been made, I will not want anybody, I don’t want this board put itself in a position where somebody could say, ‘One sheet was taken out, I wonder what was on there? And if one was taken out, many others were taken out. Do you follow my point?”


Mr. DiSciullo, “Yes John, and we discussed that and are very concerned about that. That’s why we discussed the idea of, if you gentlemen would be kind enough to get some imagery of what’s there we would let an attorney make that decision, so that it’s not you or us that destroyed anything… The reason that we want to get this is John, I’ll be honest with you. You know these guys here, it’s not cheap to pay them to go look through paper through these boxes and of course we’re on some issues that go back. The Flats, some of these other projects, Comfort Care; they’ve got to dig through those files and I don’t know what’s in the boxes. Rob doesn’t know what’s in the boxes. Rob and I went to West Chester, Pat said come this day, we just loaded it all up and we all loaded it up brought it back and they were all on the floor in his office."



MORE AT:


Sunday, May 29, 2011


"You know, we’re at the RDA and we’re looking at deals that are millions of dollars for the city. And nobody comes..City Council is arguing over a basketball ring somewhere and the room is full. You know it’s just, it’s sad that’s what it is"



At the City of Coatesville Redevelopment Authority Meeting May 16, 2011




***



COATESVILLE PLANNING COMMISSION

May 10, 2006 at 6:00 pm


Harry Walker and Patsy Ray were at this meeting; Kurt Schenk rode in on his Harley and was sitting at the table. Ernie Campos was sitting at the table. Richard Legree remained standing behind Ernie. Richard appeared to be very reluctant to be there. Ernie waited patiently until the regular meeting was over and then addressed the Planning Commission. Saying, “I’m going to sit down and talk like we do in Mexico.”


This is from the Minutes of the meeting:


“Mr. Campos then expressed his feeling that all of the committees, commissions, and council need to work together.  He stated he “wanted to make peace P.E.A.C.E. or P.I.E.C.E. it doesn’t matter to me it is up to you.  This is your last chance and the last time I will say this.”  At this time Mr. Pitcherella asked Mr. Campos if he had brought Mr. Legree with him to try and intimidate the Planning Commission.  Mr. Legree seemed offended by the comment at which point many people started speaking.  Mr. Kahler stopped the arguments by stating he wanted to adjourn the meeting.  Mr. Campos asked if Mr. Kahler meant that he didn’t want to speak to him.  Mr. Kahler stated very clearly he would speak with Mr. Campos on matters concerning Planning Commission business only.  Mr. Campos felt he comments were just that.  Mr. Kahler did not agree and immediately called for a motion to adjourn.


When I SHOUTED “ARE YOU THREATENING US” Harry Walker, Kurt Schenk and Patsy Ray stumbled over each other running out of the room.


I filed a police report and called some prosecutors that I knew.



The Planning Commission Meetings at that time were approximately two weeks apart. When I came into the next Planning Commission Meeting District Attorney Joe Carroll was seated at the table. I found out he arrived about an hour before the meeting started. He was still there after the meeting was over.


I asked Joe why he was at the meeting. He told me that what Campos said was not quite enough to charge him with terroristic threats. But if he so much as came to the next Planning Commission Meeting he would charge Campos.

Saturday, July 24, 2021

"the FBI received over 4,500 tips,” about Kavanaugh that went straight to Trump. Like murder witnesses going to ChesCo Courthouse with information for detectives & their names getting back to the Coatesville murderers.


Lots of money in drugs. A Coatesville street dealer might do $1M in sales a year. The real money comes to people further up the chain who can buy off public officials. 



Former Chester County District Attorney Joe Carroll said “A murder could happen in a room with eight people in Coatesville and nobody saw anything.”


When Joe Carroll snuck into Coatesville alone at night people would talk to him. Nobody from Coatesville would go to his West Chester office. Witnesses to murder knew if they were seen at the courthouse it would get back to Coatesville.


SEE:

Friday, December 15, 2017

Want to solve Coatesville's unsolved murders? Find out how information goes from inside the Chester County PA Courthouse to drug dealers.


The FBI can be corrupted. 

All of this was back in the "French Connection" days. President Carter ordered a special investigation of the FBI in the Delaware Valley area. 

SEE:

Friday, October 14, 2011




Does billionaire real estate investor Tom Barrack, now in federal handcuffs, do the time? Or does he spill the beans on Kushner, Trump, the UAE & Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman & risk winding up dismembered in a suitcase?


Six months into the Biden Administration the DOJ is beginning to make public what was going on here:


The White House from Washington, DC, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons











“US prosecutors in California asked that Barrack be held without bail, calling him “an extremely wealthy and powerful individual with substantial ties to Lebanon, the UAE, and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia” who poses a serious flight risk, according to the Associated Press.


MORE AT:

ALJAZERRA

US charges Trump ally with undisclosed lobbying for UAE


Thomas Barrack did not publicly disclose influence work for UAE during the Trump presidency, Justice Department says.


20 Jul 2021



As a young lawyer, Mr. Barrack once negotiated drilling rights with Ambassador Otaiba’s father, who was then the Emirati oil minister.  The emails show that Ambassador Otaiba later worked with Mr. Barrack to help seal a 2009 deal in which his private equity firm sold the L’Ermitage Raffles hotel in Beverly Hills to a joint venture half owned by an Abu Dhabi investment fund for $41 million. Three years later, Ambassador Otaiba invested $1 million in a fund that Mr. Barrack had set up to buy homes on the cheap after the real estate crash, according to the emails."



In today's Washington Post:


"NEW YORK — A California judge on Friday set bail at $250 million for the billionaire investor and longtime friend of former president Donald Trump indicted on a charge of breaking foreign lobbying laws, ordering him to appear in federal court in New York next week.


Thomas J. Barrack, 74, who waived his court appearance for discussion of the prearranged release agreement, was freed from a jail in Los Angeles later Friday. His ex-wife Rachelle and son Thomas Barrack III were suretors on the bond.


Jonathan Grunzweig, an executive at Colony Capital, the investment firm Barrack founded, was the third person to endorse the major bond. Grunzweig is now chief investment officer for other equity and debt at DigitalBridge, which absorbed Colony Capital in 2015.


Barrack’s co-defendant, Matthew Grimes, 27, was freed on a $5 million bond. Both men must wear GPS monitoring devices and were ordered to travel to New York for an afternoon proceeding on Monday in federal court in Brooklyn...


A third defendant, 43-year-old Rashid al-Malik, had been living in California but fled the country days after the FBI interviewed him in 2018. He is a citizen of the UAE."


MORE AT:

Washington Post

Indicted Trump ally Thomas Barrack to be released on $250 million bond, must appear in New York next week

Shayna Jacobs

6:26 p.m. EDT




It all seems airtight, right?


There’s a good chance corporate Washington DC & Washington DC corporate news will treat this as just another white collar crime. Too many people in DC have their fingers in foreign investments. 



Paul Ryan with Ambassador Yousef al-Otaiba in 2018:


Seems like as far as corporate news goes, Tom Barrack might become just another member of the Trump 11 (so far.)


Trump's "best friend" Tom Barrack wearing an ankle cuff in NYC is already winding up in corporate news archives.



I can’t find news about Barrack on the front web page of today’s (July 23rd) Washington Post or even The Guardian. 


Today’s New York Times has an opinion article:


A Foreign Agent in Trump’s Inner Circle?

July 23, 2021, 5:00 a.m. ET

OPINION

MICHELLE GOLDBERG





Who knows? If the DOJ keeps the public informed. If the press makes it clear that Barrack really could wind up dismembered in a suitcase if he gives up Trump. Maybe the story stays alive. 




***



FROM VANITY FAIR:


“On Tuesday morning, billionaire Thomas Barrack, one of Trump’s closest friends, was arrested in the Los Angeles area and charged with violating foreign-lobbying laws, making false statements, and obstructing justice. According to the Post, the financier was indicted on charges related to his dealings in the United Arab Emirates. He and two other defendants have reportedly been accused of “acting and conspiring to act as agents of the UAE between April 2016 and April 2018.” Officials also claimed that Barrack lied to FBI agents in 2019 while being questioned about his dealings with the UAE


The 45-page indictment charges Matthew Grimes, an employee of Barrack’s investment firm, with helping in the lobbying effort. Grimes was also arrested, officials said. A third man charged in the scheme, Rashid Alshahhi, is a citizen of the UAE who lived for a time in California. Attorneys for Barrack and Grimes did not immediately respond to messages seeking comment. Officials said Alshahhi remains at large; an attorney for him could not immediately be identified.


Officials said that the lobbying effort began as Trump was sewing up the GOP primary nomination in the spring of 2016 and that Barrack “took steps to establish himself as the key communications channel for the United Arab Emirates to the Campaign.” A real estate titan who became wealthy buying out-of-favor assets, Barrack was one of Trump’s closest associates during the campaign and in office, regularly speaking to the former president, visiting him, and channeling him to others, including business officials and leaders in foreign countries.... Federal prosecutors say Barrack capitalized on his access to Trump and other high-ranking government officials, and his relationships with U.S. journalists, to “advance the policy goals of a foreign government without disclosing their true alliances.” On a number of occasions, the Justice Department alleged, Barrack pushed the interests of the UAE to the Trump administration without disclosing that he was working on the country’s behalf.


On a seemingly unrelated but crucial note, Barrack chaired Trump’s 2016 inaugural committee, which is currently under criminal investigation by D.C. attorney general Karl Racine. Racine sued the Trump Organization, the Trump International Hotel, and the inaugural committee in January 2020, alleging the groups funneled large amounts of inauguration cash into the first family’s pockets via the hotel. Both Donald Trump Jr. and Ivanka Trump have sat for depositions related to the probe, seeming to have misled investigators about their involvement in the planning of the inaugural events. After the lawsuit was filed, the Trump Organization said in a statement that it was “a clear P.R. stunt” and that ‘the rates charged by the hotel were completely in line with what anyone else would have been charged for an unprecedented event of this enormous magnitude and were reflective of the fact that [the] hotel had just recently opened, possessed superior facilities, and was centrally located on Pennsylvania Avenue.”




MORE AT:


Donald Trump’s Best Friend and Inauguration Chair, Thomas Barrack, Arrested on Federal Charges | Vanity Fair


BY BESS LEVIN

JULY 20, 2021




Most of Barrack’s alleged crimes were done in plain sight:


"During the Trump campaign, Mr. Barrack was a top fund-raiser and trusted gatekeeper who opened communications with the Emiratis and Saudis, recommended that the candidate bring on Paul Manafort as campaign manager — and then tried to arrange a secret meeting between Mr. Manafort and the crown prince of Saudi Arabia. Mr. Barrack was later named chairman of Mr. Trump’s inaugural committee…


Mr. Barrack’s company, known as Colony NorthStar since a merger last year, has raised more than $7 billion in investments since Mr. Trump won the nomination, and 24 percent of that money has come from the Persian Gulf — all from either the U.A.E. or Saudi Arabia, according to an executive familiar with the figures. Colony NorthStar has not disclosed the investors in its funds…


Mr. Barrack’s closeness to Mr. Trump extends to the president’s family. By 2010, he had Mr. Barrack’s closeness to Mr. Trump extends to the president’s family. By 2010, he had acquired $70 million of the debt owed by Mr. Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, on his troubled $1.8 billion purchase of a skyscraper at 666 Fifth Avenue in New York. After a call from Mr. Trump, Mr. Barrack was among a group of lenders who agreed to reduce Mr. Kushner’s obligations to keep him out of bankruptcy…


Prince Mohammed was widely seen as an ambitious protégé of the Emirati rulers, and in an email to the Emirati ambassador, Mr. Barrack presented a Manafort meeting as a prelude to a meeting with Mr. Trump.


“I would like to align in Donald’s mind the connection between the U.A.E. and Saudi Arabia which we have already started with Jared,” Mr. Barrack wrote to Ambassador Otaiba on June 21, 2016. “I think it is important that you be the center pin!!”


A few weeks later, on July 13, Mr. Barrack informed Ambassador Otaiba that the Trump team had also removed a proposed Republican platform provision inserted to “embarrass” Saudi Arabia. The provision had called for the release of redacted pages about the kingdom in a report on the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 200…


They celebrated again in May 2017, when Mr. Trump made his first foreign trip as president, to Riyadh in Saudi Arabia for an Arab summit meeting.


“It all started with you and JK and I so congratulations on a great beginning,” Mr. Barrack wrote to Ambassador Otaiba, referring to Mr. Kushner by his initials.


Two weeks after the Riyadh meeting, Mr. Trump began to align himself firmly with the Saudis and Emiratis against their rivals around the region. When those two states imposed an embargo on their neighbor Qatar — home to a major United States air base — Mr. Trump broke with his own administration to throw his weight squarely behind the Saudis and Emiratis.


He quickly congratulated Prince Mohammed when he assumed the title of crown prince — and commended him again when he summarily detained about 200 businessmen and rivals in a consolidation of his power. This spring, Mr. Trump handed the Saudis and Emiratis an even greater victory by pulling out of the nuclear deal with their nemesis, Iran. In turn, the gulf monarchs have made only pro forma protests against Mr. Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel…



The linkages between Mr. Trump and the Saudis and Emiratis have come under new scrutiny. A few months after Mr. Barrack arranged the initial introductions, George Nader, a Lebanese American businessman and a top adviser to the de facto ruler of the U.A.E., met with the candidate’s son Donald Trump Jr. at the Trump headquarters in New York. In that Aug. 3, 2016, meeting, Mr. Nader reported that the rulers of both Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates supported the Trump campaign and offered their assistance, according to people familiar with the discussion.


Such help would have violated campaign laws, and Mr. Nader is now cooperating with the special prosecutor, who is examining that meeting as well as a string of others that followed, according to people familiar the matter.


Mr. Manafort has pleaded not guilty to charges of financial fraud and lying to federal investigators in connection with his work for Russian-backed interests in Ukraine. Mr. Gates, whom Mr. Barrack hired to help run the inauguration and then as a Washington consultant, has pleaded guilty to making false statements to investigators and agreed to cooperate with the special prosecutor.


Mr. Kushner has also given testimony to the special prosecutor."