President Trump’s ex-longtime personal attorney Michael Cohen worked with an FBI informant known as “The Quarterback” to negotiate a deal for Trump Tower Moscow during the 2016 US election, according to BuzzFeed News.
“The Quarterback,” Felix Sater – a longtime FBI and CIA undercover intelligence asset who was busted running a $40 million stock scheme, leveraged his Russia connections to pitch the deal, while Cohen discussed it with Putin’s press secretary, Dmitry Peskov, according to BuzzFeed, citing two unnamed US law enforcement officials.
Sater told BuzzFeed News today that he and Cohen thought giving the Trump Tower’s most luxurious apartment, a $50 million penthouse, to Putin would entice other wealthy buyers to purchase their own. “In Russia, the oligarchs would bend over backwards to live in the same building as Vladimir Putin,” Sater told BuzzFeed News. “My idea was to give a $50 million penthouse to Putin and charge $250 million more for the rest of the units. All the oligarchs would line up to live in the same building as Putin.” A second source confirmed the plan. –BuzzFeed
The Trump Tower Moscow plan is at the center of Cohen’s new plea agreement with Special Counsel Robert Mueller after he admitted to lying to congressional committees investigating Trump-Russia collusion.
According to the criminal information filed against Cohen Thursday, on Jan. 20, 2016 he spoke with a Russian government official, referred to only as Assistant 1, about the Trump Tower Moscow plan for 20 minutes. This person appears to be an assistant to Peskov, a top Kremlin official that Cohen had attempted to reach by email.
Cohen “requested assistance in moving the project forward, both in securing land to build the proposed tower and financing the construction,” the court document states.
Cohen had previously maintained that he never got a response from the official, but in court on Thursday he acknowledged that was a lie. –BuzzFeed
While the deal ultimately fizzled, “and it is not clear whether Trump knew of the intention to give away the penthouse,” Cohen has said in court filings that Trump was regularly briefed on the Moscow negotiations along with his family.
Sater and Cohen “worked furiously behind the scenes into the summer of 2016 to get the Moscow deal finished,” according to BuzzFeed – although it was claimed that the project was canned in January 2016, before Trump won the GOP nomination.
Sater, who has worked with the Trump organization on past deals, said that he came up with the Trump Tower Moscow idea, while Cohen – Sater recalled, said “Great idea.”
“I figured, he’s in the news, his name is generating a lot of good press,” Sater told BuzzFeed earlier in the year, adding “A lot of Russians weren’t willing to pay a premium licensing fee to put Donald’s name on their building. Now maybe they would be.”
So he turned to his old friend, Cohen, to get it off the ground. They arranged a licensing deal, by which Trump would lend his name to the project and collect a part of the profits. Sater lined up a Russian development company to build the project and said that VTB, a Russian financial institution that faced US sanctions at the time, would finance it. VTB officials have denied taking part in any negotiations about the project. –BuzzFeed
Two FBI agents with “direct knowledge of the Trump Tower Moscow negotiations” told BuzzFeed earlier this year that Cohen had been in frequent contact with foreigners about the potential real estate project – and that some of these individuals “had knowledge of or played a role in 2016 election meddling.”
Meanwhile, Trump reportedly personally signed the letter of intent to move forward with the Trump Tower Moscow plan on October 28, 2015 – the third day of the Republican primary debate.
Cohen is scheduled to be sentenced on December 12. By cooperating with the DOJ, he is hoping to avoid prison.
Someone I care about got into some trouble the week before Thanksgiving. They asked for my help, and I wasn’t raised to say “no” in such situations. What ensued were a series of unfortunate events that staggered my mind and challenged my previously naive vision of a moderately benevolent universe.
By any definition, any knowledgeable neutral party would say I did everything right, in spite of the dire turn of events that, fortunately, resulted in only a minor loss of time and money on my part; with a still positive outcome for the party I helped.
Even now, looking back, I realize I’d have made all the same decisions with the same information I had at the time. Yet, the mostly-positive denouement of the entire affair resulted in a conclusion I never dreamed possible at the start.
It had to do with a car accident, an insurance claim, buying a lemon, and ultimately enjoying some fine lemonade in the end. The party who I helped is now better off than if my original plans were realized. I will say, however, it was darkest before the dawn, and things should have ended much worse.
I don’t know why it happened; only that it did. And, in spite of my minor loss of time and funds, I now realize I was changed for the better because of understanding, and appreciating, certain solutions of which I was prejudiced against prior. In short, my mind has been opened in ways which will benefit this blogger far more than some money ever could; and my lessons learned resulted in a new willingness to explore every room before locking any doors.
It’s been said wisdom comes from experience. I believe that now more than ever. It’s also true that time is a teacher that kills all of the students. Indeed. The inevitableness of reality requires honesty and acceptance.
Here is reality:
It’s bigger than me. It washes over like time-drops raining moments on my face. I can’t grasp anything outside of my reach; or control what’s not mine.
Here is wisdom:
When you’re in the shit, the next-right-move is all that matters.
Judge Bernard Friedman of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan ruled that Congress did not have the authority to pass the law against female genital mutilation…
Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts issued a rare rebuke over Donald Trump’s attacks on the federal judiciary, saying ‘we do not have Obama judges or Trump judges, Bush judges or Clinton judges’.
….Roberts said on the day before Thanksgiving that an ‘independent judiciary is something we should all be thankful for.’
Consider which U.S. president appointed which judge compared to the deciding opinions of every historical case, and the reader would realize the hilarity, or malice, behind Robert’s contention of an “independent judiciary”. Yes, it would be funny if wasn’t so sad, and dangerous.
If America were to be made great again, the indictments of Deep State criminals (and particularly those in the Justice Department) would have had to have fallen prior to the 2018 Midterm Elections. They did not. So, now, it’s become a matter for future historians to sort out.
Maybe Trump wasn’t real. Perhaps he didn’t have the power, maybe he was hoping for a Red Wave that never happened. In any event, we hear whispers of former FBI Director James Comey, and the Clinton Foundation, being investigated by the now Lame-Duck House, but that’s all. At the same time, judges are reigning in Trump in at every turn; even his own appointees.
Jim Acosta’s White House press pass — stripped from him after a heated exchange between the CNN correspondent and President Trump last week — must be temporarily reinstated, a Trump-appointed federal judge ruled
Of course, the Surveillance State knows where all of the skeletons are buried in every closet, and all they need to do is press the right buttons, at the just right times, to steer the future in whatever direction they want; like reality TV.
The Phony Witch Hunt continues, but Mueller and his gang of Angry Dems are only looking at one side, not the other. Wait until it comes out how horribly & viciously they are treating people, ruining lives for them refusing to lie. Mueller is a conflicted prosecutor gone rogue….
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 27, 2018
And, furthermore, in complete collusion with a complicit Orwellian Fourth Estate:
….The Fake News Media builds Bob Mueller up as a Saint, when in actuality he is the exact opposite. He is doing TREMENDOUS damage to our Criminal Justice System, where he is only looking at one side and not the other. Heroes will come of this, and it won’t be Mueller…
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 27, 2018
Hillary Clinton now smiles like an aging Cheshire cat as Julian Assange is trapped like a tiny mouse; prior to the rats taking over the U.S. House.
Harvard Law Professor, Alan Dershowitz, warns Robert Mueller’s report will be “politically very devastating” to Trump; even in the absence of any crimes committed:
When I say devastating, I mean it’s going to paint a picture that’s going to be politically very devastating. I still don’t think it’s going to make a criminal case
How could that happen in America, if not for the propaganda spewed by the Orwellian Media? To be sure, with every morsel savored, and swallowed, by the vapid dullards of a dying nation.
The state of Maryland has gone to court against the Trump administration, seeking to remove Matthew Whitaker as acting attorney general and install Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein as the acting head of the Justice Department.
In another era, that would be yuge news. But not so, currently, with the Propagandic Arm of the Surveillance State desiring to win hearts and minds instead of reporting facts.
In the meantime, hypnotized MK Ultra-type loners, high on psychotropic chemicals and under psychiatric care, will continue to break from their prolifically bizarre social media postings in order to shoot little children in gun free zones; as the Orwellian Media paints emotionally manipulative and contrived photo narratives of cartoon-clad illegal invaders using children as pawns in a political scam:
We’re a nation of hollow men, straw men, empty men. A land of therapists, pill dispensaries, coffee houses, fitness facilities, yogurt shops, and hot yoga dens. A people living on imaginary, and regurgitated, green paper vapers for so long, we only know how to recycle anymore. It’s why we build new retail outlets on streets overrun with vacancies and going-out-of-business signage; like a rimfire, and in the center, ashes.
As the plunderers, looters, and slumlords have transitioned American cities into third-world shitholes, the online Titans have created hi-tech online checkpoints. Papers please.
Just as Amazon has monopolized retail, so, too, has Google cornered the market on information, as monopolistic social media mutants sell censorship trademarked under “fairness” and “protection”.
It’s become difficult, if not impossible, to escape these cannibals, because we’re caught in their world-wide web; an inter net. Certainly, we’ve signed our birthrights away via “accept tabs” and to the sound of mouse-clicks.
If we fight, what will we win? If we run, or hide, where will we go?
….. prepare the way for the Lord; make straight in the desert a highway for our God.
– Isaiah 40:3
“Though it’s a bit like discovering Zuul in your refrigerator…”
Bible scholars claim prophecy predicted ten economic regions of the world: Ten kings over ten kingdoms who give their power to a beast; and the United Nations has engaged in such plans:
In 1992 the UN formed a Commission on Global Governance charged with devising a system of future global management. …After several years of “extension consultation” with “world leaders, philosophers, and futurologists” the Commission produced a report entitled “Our Global Neighbourhood.”
….This strategy appears to be based on the Club of Rome’s proposal to divide the earth into 10 administrative regions which they outlined in their report “Mankind at the Turning Point”. … Interestingly the UN is currently in the process of reviewing and reforming the organization, with particular emphasis on the Security Council…
Clean Water Restoration Act – Reaffirms federal jurisdiction over all waters of the United States and overturns the decisions of the United States Supreme Court in Solid Waste Agency of Northern Cook County v. United States Army Corps of Engineers and Rapanos v. United States.
Amends the Federal Water Pollution Control Act (commonly known as the Clean Water Act) to replace the term “navigable waters” that are subject to such Act with the term “waters of the United States,” defined to mean all waters subject to the ebb and flow of the tide, the territorial seas, and all interstate and intrastate waters, including lakes, rivers, streams (including intermittent streams), mudflats, sandflats, wetlands, sloughs, prairie potholes, wet meadows, playa lakes, and natural ponds, all tributaries of any of such waters, and all impoundments of the foregoing.
Is it still conspiracy if it’s all been published by the United Nations and passed into law in the United States?
As stated by this blogger before, President Donald Trump is the manifestation of one of the following three possibilities:
A.) The Real Thing
B.) Serving the agenda of the global financial elite unwittingly
C.) Controlled opposition as a Judas Goat or Trojan Horse
In any scenario above, there remains the possibility that Trump and his Deplorables were merely the bleeding of the brake-lines before the Big Stop. Or, it could be holy water will soon rain down over the baleful, bastard beast and it’s abominable, bloody feast.
The only plan I can think of is to do the next necessary thing in any given moment and to turn over all that’s bigger than me; and that not belonging to me. To hell with the man, his black horse, and every one by his side.
The table is set and the main course is on the way.
Whether whatever-comes-next is delivered by the hand of God, the devil’s power, or via mathematics by the multiplications and divisions of ordinary men – when it’s time to eat, care not over what is being served but, rather, more importantly, who shows up for dinner.
After they allowed Harvey Weinstein to donate millions of dollars to political campaigns and host dozens of gala black-tie fundraisers in support of their candidates, it appears the California State Democratic Party is finally learning to take allegations of sexual assault seriously.
Three days after taking a “leave of absence” from running the state Democratic Party – and just a few hours after Governor-Elect Gavin Newsom called on him to quit – California Democratic Party Chairman Eric Bauman resigned Thursday afternoon.
Rumors that multiple victims were preparing to come forward to accuse Bauman of sexual harassment and sexual assault began circulating on social media Friday night, prompting Daraka Larimore-Hall, the state party’s second-vice chair, to file paperwork on Saturday to initiate the process to have Bauman removed. In a letter sent to the party that was reported by the Sacramento Bee, Larimore-Hall alleged that he had learned of the incidents after speaking with two of the victims and a witness who accused Bauman of intimidation.
On Wednesday, the Los Angeles Times published a report detailing the allegations against Beuman from 10 party staffers and political activists, who accused Bauman of transgressions ranging from making crude sexual comments to engaging in unwanted touching or physical intimidation.
Following Newsom’s calls for Bauman to resign, a party spokesman said sexual harassment would not be tolerated.
“Sexual harassment shouldn’t be tolerated – no person or party, no matter how powerful, is above accountability,” Newsom spokesman Nathan Click said in a statement.
Bauman said in a statement on Thursday that he recognized that “it was in everyone’s best interest” for him to resign.
“I have made the realization that in order for those to whom I may have caused pain and who need to heal, for my own health, and in the best interest of the Party that I love and to which I have dedicated myself for more than 25 years, it is in everyone’s best interest for me to resign my position as chair of the California Democratic Party,” Bauman said.
And so another virtue signaling Democrat is felled by their own hypocrisy.
The FBI raided the City Hall office of Chicago Alderman and former Trump tax accountant of 12 years Edward Burke on Thursday morning, according to the Chicago Tribune. It is unknown whether the raid has anything to do with Trump, however Burke’s tax office was not raided.
Some have questioned whether the raid was political in nature, as Burke is standing for reelection in some 90 days, while his wife, Anne Burke, was just sworn in Thursday morning to another term on the Illinois Supreme Court.
After arriving at City Hall, federal agents told employees to leave before papering over the glass windows to obstruct what was going on inside, before walking out with boxes and computers. The agency has been tight lipped about the operation.
By 1:30 p.m., federal agents had left Burke’s ward office with boxes, at least three monitors and what appeared to be a computer.
…
The agency’s Chicago office later confirmed the searches. In response to questions about the raid at Burke’s City Hall office, FBI Special Agent Jeanine Wheeler issued a one-sentence statement: “Agents from the FBI are executing search warrants at multiple locations today.”
Burke issued a statement following the raid, predicting that he would not be taken down by the federal investigation.
“As you are aware, there have previously been several other investigations such as this. In every instance we cooperated fully. And in every instance nothing has been found,” said Burke. “So once again we will be cooperating fully and I am completely confident that at the end of the day nothing will be found amiss in this instance either.”
No arrests have been made, or are imminent, according to the Tribune, citing a law enforcement source, while confirming that agents did not search Burke’s law office.
Burke has been the longtime chairman of the City Council’s Finance Committee – where he has controlled a large degree of City Hall’s legislative purse strings since 1969. He is running for re-election for a record 14th term, according to the Tribune.
Ald. Howard Brookins, who has offices next to Burke’s at City Hall, said he didn’t know what was going on behind the brown paper covering Burke’s office doors. But he questioned whether federal agents would conduct raids of an official set to stand for re-election in February.
“I listen to the news and read the papers, and I thought they didn’t do anything that close to an election, so it’s shocking to me as to how you, or why something like this would happen some 90 days before an election,” Brookins told a scrum of reporters.
Burke’s wife, Anne Burke, just won retention to another term on the Illinois Supreme Court. She was sworn-in during a private ceremony Thursday morning in Chicago.
Burke, who is celebrating his 50th year on the council, holds the record for Chicago’s longest-serving alderman.
Burke follows in the footsteps of his father, Ald. Joseph P. Burke, who died of lung cancer while in office – and has held the position ever since.
As Trump’s former tax attorney of 12 years, Burke negotiated savings of more than $14.1 million in taxes by convincing the city to lower the value of condos, hotel rooms and retail spaces owned by Trump.
Burke’s firm also handles appeals on property taxes on the AT&T building, 225 W. Randolph, now owned by Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner. The telecommunications giant sold the property to Kushner and leases it back from him under an agreement that calls for AT&T to pay the real estate taxes. AT&T uses Burke’s firm to seek property tax cuts on the building. –Chicago Sun Times
Burke, 74, parted ways with Trump in June, citing “Irreconcilable differences.”
Gonzaga University will not allow its chapter of the College Republicans to host conservative pundit Ben Shapiro.
An administrator of the private, Catholic school in Spokane, Washington, cited safety concerns and the potential for Shapiro’s visit to create a “hostile environment” on campus.
“Gonzaga’s events policy requires us to consider whether an event would pose substantial risk to the safety of any member of our campus community,” wrote Judi Biggs Garbuio, according to Campus Reform.
It’s not clear whose safety Biggs Garbuio believes is threatened by Shapiro’s presence. Her message to the College Republicans seems to suggest concern about both disruptive leftist protesters and what Shapiro might say. Neither are good reasons to deny students a chance to hear from Shapiro: One gives veto power to the mob, the other conflates words with violence.
Gonzaga is a private university and can do as it pleases, of course. I will note, however, that Gonzaga’s broad conception of public safety is selective. Concerns about a hostile environment and unspecified risks to members of the community did not stop the administration from hiring former Mizzou professor Melissa Click.
It is incredibly important to understand that as the weather turns bitterly cold in the north, people will begin to migrate south. This not merely caused the ancient Greeks to become the Sea Peoples, but during the Year without a Summer in 1816. In the United States when in 1816 six inches of snow fell in June and every month of the year had a hard frost, people began to migrate. The temperatures had dropped to as low as 40 degrees in July and August in New York City during 1816. People also called it ‘Eighteen Hundred and Froze to Death’ and the ‘Poverty Year.’
This is what I keep pointing out that cold is what kills society and creates poverty – not warming.
The Year without a Summer sent people fleeing from New England states in search of warmer weather and fertile soils both south and west. It was the weather that began to cause migration in the United States outside of the 13 original states. Thousands of New England families gave up their farms, packed their belongings into wagons and joined the throngs traipsing over rivers and mountains to Pennsylvania and the Ohio River Valley, which includes Ohio, West Virginia, Indiana, Illinois, and Kentucky.
Indeed, between 1810 and 1820, Maine lost as many as 15,000 people. Sixty Vermont towns lost population during that decade as well. The population of 60 other towns in Vermont stayed the same while the U.S. population grew 32%. When we examine Massachusetts, we can see that this state gained only 50,000 people from 1810-20, while Ohio gained five times as many. The Massachusetts Legislature tried to hold on to its citizens by passing a homestead act that gave settlers 100 acres of land for $5.
Even during the American Revolution, when John Adams set out to travel to Philadelphia, it was bitterly cold and there was a foot or more of snow covered the landscape which had blanketed Massachusetts from one end of the province to the other. Beneath the snow, after weeks of severe cold, the ground was frozen solid to a depth of two feet. Packed ice in the road made the journey very hazardous. In a letter to his wife, John Adams wrote:
“Indeed I feel not a little out of Humour, from Indisposition of Body. You know, I cannot pass a Spring, or fall, without an ill Turn — and I have had one these four or five Weeks — a Cold, as usual. Warm Weather, and a little Exercise, with a little Medicine, I suppose will cure me as usual. … Posterity! You will never know, how much it cost the present Generation, to preserve your Freedom! I hope you will make a good Use of it. If you do not, I shall repent in Heaven, that I ever took half the Pains to preserve it.”
On September 8th, 1816, Jefferson described the weather during the Year without a Summer in a letter to Albert Gallitan:
We have had the most extraordinary year of drought and cold ever known in the history of America. In June, instead of 3¾ inches, our average of rain for that month, we had only 1/3 of an inch; in August, instead of 9 1/6 inches our average, we had only 8/10 of an inch; and it still continues. The summer too has been as cold as a moderate winter. In every state North of this there has been frost in every month of the year; in thisstate we had none in June and July but those of August killed much corn over the mountains. The crop of corn through the Atlantic states will probably be less than 1/3 of an ordinary one, that of tobacco still less, and of mean quality.
It is Global Cooling – not Global Warming, that we should fear the most. While 1816 was the year we had a major volanic eruption, it also came during the Little Ice Age with Solar Minimum.
Former FBI Director James Comey has challenged a subpoena from House Republicans demanding he appear for a closed-door testimony in federal court.
According to court records, Comey filed a motion to quash – following through on his vow to fight the order unless his testimony was in a public forum – where lawmakers would be significantly restricted as to the scope of questions they might ask.
“Happy Thanksgiving. Got a subpoena from House Republicans,” Comey tweeted on Thanksgiving day. “I’m still happy to sit in the light and answer all questions. But I will resist a “closed door” thing because I’ve seen enough of their selective leaking and distortion. Let’s have a hearing and invite everyone to see.”
Happy Thanksgiving. Got a subpoena from House Republicans. I’m still happy to sit in the light and answer all questions. But I will resist a “closed door” thing because I’ve seen enough of their selective leaking and distortion. Let’s have a hearing and invite everyone to see.
>@comey, who leaked official memos to his friend to give to NYT in order to spark the special counsel’s probe, says he doesn’t want to testify to Congress behind closed doors because of the threat of leaks. https://t.co/AdyE1GYzMD@dailycaller
Comey rejected an October request by the House Judiciary Committee to appear at a closed hearing to testify in the GOP probe into allegations of political bias at the FBI and DOJ, according to Politico.
“Mr. Comey respectfully declines your request for a private interview,” said Comey’s attorney, David Kelly, in a response to the request.
The Judiciary Committee, chaired by Bob Goodlatte (R-VA) didn’t appreciate Comey’s response.
“We have invited Mr. Comey to come in for a transcribed interview and we are prepared to issue a subpoena to compel his appearance,” said a committee aide.
A funny thing happened on the way to stringing razor wire, splitting up families, and sending the military to police the United States’ border with Mexico: The number of illegal immigrants—especially from Mexico—in America continued its decade-long decline. Via Pew Research:
The number of unauthorized immigrants in the U.S. fell to its lowest level in more than a decade, according to new Pew Research Center estimates based on 2016 government data. The decline is due almost entirely to a sharp decrease in the number of Mexicans entering the country without authorization.
Note that we reached peak illegals (and peak illegal Mexicans) back in 2006 or 2007, right around the time the housing bubble popped and what eventually become the financial crisis started kicking into high (low?) gear. Between 2007 and 2016, the number of unauthorized Mexican immigrants declined from about 6.9 million people to 5.5 million people. These days, illegals are most likely to come from Asia (especially China and India) and to enter the country with legal documents, such as a tourist, student, or work visa and then overstay. Deportations peaked in 2013, when Barack Obama was running the show.
Why has illegal immigration from Mexico declined? According to Pew’s Jeffrey Passel and D’Vera Cohn, illegals missed their families. One also presumes that the sluggish U.S. economy presented fewer opportunities.
According to Mexican government survey data [from 2009 to 2014], most returnees said they left the U.S. of their own accord, and the majority cited family reunification as the main reason for going to Mexico. However, 14% said they came back because they were deported.
At the same time, the number of illegals from Central America (chiefly Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala) has increased over the past decade, from 1.5 million people to about 1.85 million.
Why might more Central Americans’ be heading north? Mostly because those countries have gotten poorer over time, often due to U.S. intervention. Reason‘s Shikha Dalmia explains, in the 1980s,
President Ronald Reagan, eager for a showdown with the [Soviet Union, funded]…the Contra insurgency against the Nicaraguan Sandinistas and paramilitary operations to prop up the U.S.-friendly regimes of El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala.
The upshot was civil war and a complete social breakdown from which these countries have never recovered.
As Princeton’s Doug Massey noted at a recent immigration conference (that I co-organized on behalf of Reason Foundation), in the 1960s, the GDP of these “frontline countries” was equivalent to those of “non-frontline states” such as Costa Rica, Belize, and Panama. Now the latter cohort’s GDP is almost three times greater. Likewise, while the homicide rate of non-frontline states is 19.7 per 100,000, it is 43.5 per 100,000 for the frontline states. San Pedro Sula, the Honduran city where the caravan started, has become the murder capital of the world.
Prior to Reagan’s intervention, migration from Central America was negligible.
People troubled by illegal immigration may find comfort in the trend line of the past decade. But to me, the decline is worrisome. Our problems are only beginning when people stop choosing to come here, whether legally or not. Increased living standards follow economic growth, which follows population growth. And population growth follows immigration. Contra nativist Rep. Steve King (R–Iowa), the only proven way you can maintain your “civilization” is with somebody else’s babies. And for all the fears of literal and figurative invasions by supposedly unassimilable Mexicans and Central Americans, crime and most other social pathologies have been declining regardless of the flow and ebb of immigration (both legal and illegal). The real immigration crisis is when newcomers stop showing up.
One year after the SEC warned against celebrity endorsements of shady ICOs, the Securities and Exchange Commission announced on Thursday that it had settled charges with boxer Floyd “Money” Mayweather Jr. and music producer DJ Khaled for failing to disclose payments they received to promote ICOs on their social media feeds.
According to the Commission’s press release, Mayweather was found to have failed to disclose payments from three ICO sponsors while Khaled failed to disclose a $50,000 payment from Centra Tech Inc. Mayweather agreed to pay a $300,000 penalty and return $300,000 he made pitching Centra, while Khaled agreed to pay $100,000 plus forfeit the $50,000 paid to him for the promotions. In addition, Mayweather agreed not to promote any crypto products for 3 years, while Khaled agreed to a similar ban for 2 (Mayweather is also continuing to cooperate with investigators).
In one post advertising Centra, Floyd joked that his followers should start calling him Floyd “Crypto” Mayweather.
Mayweather and Khaled were among a rash of celebrities, including Paris Hilton, Ghostface Killa, Jamie Foxx and Dennis Rodman, who struck deals to sponsor ICOs – and were subsequently warned by the SEC that they were violating securities laws. Two of the founders of Centra Tech were arrested by federal authorities back in April for violating anti-fraud and registration provisions of federal securities laws, according to cryptoglobe. The company raised $32 million during the height of the ICO frenzy in 2017.
“We allege that Centra sold investors on the promise of new digital technologies by using a sophisticated marketing campaign to spin a web of lies about their supposed partnerships with legitimate businesses. As the complaint alleges, these and other claims were simply false,” an SEC spokeswoman said in a statement about Centra.
In its release announcing the settlements, the SEC advised that investors should be “skeptical of investment advice posted to social media platforms.”
“These cases highlight the importance of full disclosure to investors,” said Enforcement Division Co-Director Stephanie Avakian. “With no disclosure about the payments, Mayweather and Khaled’s ICO promotions may have appeared to be unbiased, rather than paid endorsements.”
“Investors should be skeptical of investment advice posted to social media platforms, and should not make decisions based on celebrity endorsements,” said Enforcement Division Co-Director Steven Peikin. “Social media influencers are often paid promoters, not investment professionals, and the securities they’re touting, regardless.”
They aren’t the first celebrities to be targeted by the SEC over ICO promotion (though they are undoubtedly the most famous). Earlier this year, John McAfee claimed he had stopped pitching ICOs due to SEC threats.
Given the sheer insanity at the height of the ICO frenzy, and the fact that hundreds of millions of dollars in “market cap” have already vanished, we imagine Mayweather and Khaled won’t be the only celebrities to pay fines to the SEC.
With many establishments moving away from accepting physical currency, a New York City councilman has proposed legislation that would prohibit businesses from going cash-free.
New York City Councilman Ritchie Torres (D–15) introduced a bill Wednesday that would make it “unlawful” for restaurants and retailers “to refuse to accept payment in cash from consumers.” Businesses found to be in violation would have to pay a $250 fine the first offense, and a $500 fine for each repeated offense.
Torres told Grub Street he sees cash-free policies as “racially exclusionary in practice.” According to a 2015 study from the Urban Institute, 11.7 percent of New York households had no bank accounts. The survey did not break down its results by race, though a national survey released last month by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) did: Roughly 6.5 percent of American households were unbanked last year, the FDIC said, including 16.9 percent of black households and 14 percent of Hispanic households.
Cashless businesses “gentrify the marketplace,” Torres told Grub Street. “On the surface, cashlessness seems benign, but when you reflect on it, the insidious racism that underlies a cashless business model becomes clear,” he added.
Torres’ legislation, cosponsored by six other councilmembers, is actually pretty mild, all things considered. A similar bill proposed in Washington, D.C., earlier this year would have made it illegal for companies to either refuse cash or offer discounts for paying in cash, with both violations punishable by fines ranging from $1,000 to $8,000. A cash-free business ban introduced in Chicago last October, meanwhile, threatened daily fines of $2,500, as well as the potential revocation of offending businesses’ licenses.
Both bans have yet to be enacted. In fact, cash-free businesses are largely legal in 49 states. Only Massachusetts has a law on the books banning establishments from refusing cash.
Yet the rise of cash-free businesses can be explained without resorting to accusations of racism. For one thing, there’s a lot of time, effort, and money that goes into accepting and processing cash. “Cash has to be handled. It has to be stored in a [point of sale] system. It has to be counted at least every shift. At the end of the day it has to counted and tallied into a sales report,” John Gordon, founder of Pacific Management Consulting Group, a restaurant consulting firm, told Reason‘s Christian Britschgi in October 2017, around the time that Chicago’s ban was proposed. Gordon also explained that cash can be miscounted or stolen, and that some businesses need to pay for armored trucks to take their cash to the bank.
Many companies launch with cash-free payment models to protect their employees; the absence of cash transactions has long been cited as a safeguard for Uber drivers, for instance.
Going cash-free is easier for many types of businesses, but it can also make things easier for consumers. Non-cash forms of payment are getting faster by the day, meaning cash-free establishments can offer faster service. Plus, consumers can more easily keep track of what they’re spending.
But what about the alleged discrimination against poor people and minorities? Well, as Britschgi argued in July, it’s not as if retail businesses want to turn away paying customers. It is conceivable, though, that the businesses going cash-free are the ones where people rarely pay in cash anyway. For those establishments, it just makes more sense to eliminate cash transactions altogether.
It’s also worth noting that cash-free establishments tend to be on the pricier side. Is going cash-free, then, a form of price discrimination? Maybe, but I don’t see very many politicians trying to regulate how much restaurants can charge for food.
Moreover, statistics suggest the number of people without bank accounts is steadily decreasing. The 6.5 percent of unbanked households in the country as of 2017 is down from 7 percent in 2015, 7.7 percent in 2013, and 8.2 percent in 2011. In New York, meanwhile, the unbanked rate dropped from 14.3 percent in 2011 to 11.7 percent in 2013.
Businesses owners, not politicians, should decide what forms of payment they’ll accept, and consumers who prefer to pay in cash can take their business elsewhere. The market is pretty good at these kinds of transactions, especially since private establishments have to compete to stay in business.
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With many establishments moving away from accepting physical currency, a New York City councilman has proposed legislation that would prohibit businesses from going cash-free.