Subterms
Donald Trump
President on tape: ‘I wanted to always play it down’
Republican chair: ‘History will look back on him well’
Rage: Will Bob Woodward’s tapes bring down Donald Trump? More
Now that the paycheck protection program (PPP) has ended, there’s a new story evolving. It seems like millions of dollars meant to prop up small businesses were fraudulently received by a bunch of bad people. Surprised? Not if you run a small business.In a press conference this week, acting assistant attorney general Brian Rabbitt announced that the Department of Justice has already charged 57 people who were trying to steal approximately $175m from the program. “The money these defendants stole was taxpayer money,” Rabbitt said. “Every dollar received was a dollar drawn from the American people’s account. Even worse, every dollar they took was a dollar we had set aside to help our fellow Americans weather one of the worst national crises in recent history. As we allege, these defendants tried to steal these funds for themselves.”The cases are something out of The Wolf of Wall Street. There’s money stolen to pay for Rolls-Royces, luxury yachts, homes and visits to strip clubs. A group in South Carolina is accused of laundering PPP money through casinos and probably using some of it to pay for heroin and methamphetamines. The Washington Post reports that an NFL player was charged with fraudulently using PPP funds to pay for Gucci and Dior items. Politico says that Rolex watches, Lamborghinis and a $3,750 diamond pinky ring were among the items confiscated from alleged abusers of the program.My goodness, who knew? Oh, that’s right. I knew. You knew. We all knew.Of course there was fraud. Anyone who applied for a PPP or an economic injury disaster loan knew this was going to happen. I have countless clients who mentioned to me just how easy it was to get approved for these grants and loans. Any business owner who claimed they were “affected” by Covid-19 could get relief, regardless of whether they were truly affected now or just worried about the future. “I could’ve told the bank anything,” one client said to me. “They didn’t care. My banker just told me to get the paperwork in and I’ll get my money.”Waiting around for government bureaucrats to come up with detailed rules and procedures would have cost much, much moreBut despite these very real scandals these government programs worked. Millions of loans were extended to small businesses that really needed them. Billions of dollars were made available – quickly – to keep many companies afloat, or at the very least provide them with a cushion to operate through these very unprecedented times.The fraud – hundreds of millions – sounds like a lot. But as a percentage of the overall program it’s probably no more or less than what my allowance is for overdue invoices that will likely not be paid. Could the fraud have been less with better policies? Sure. But waiting around for government bureaucrats – secure in their jobs – to come up with detailed rules and procedures would have cost much, much more.Of course, the political show will continue. Democrats will accuse Republicans of wasting taxpayers’ money. Republicans will argue that their actions saved the economy. Investigators will root out more celebrities and one-percenters who took advantage and present them on a platter to a hungry media looking for a tasty story.But there are bigger fish to fry … like propping up a very damaged economy. And let’s also hope that this finger-pointing circus doesn’t stop Congress from doing another round of PPP or some other type of stimulus for those businesses that really need it. Because many businesses really, really do need it. More
Donald Trump
Rage review: Will Bob Woodward’s tapes bring down Donald Trump?
The Watergate reporter offers a jaw-dropping portrait of a president he deems ‘the wrong man for the job’. But Trump’s electoral fate is far from clear
Woodward: allies tried to rein in ‘childish’ foreign policy
Opinion: Trump has spilled his biggest secret More
The fight to vote
Census
Decision, which found president acted unlawfully, is likely to be appealed to the US supreme court More
They say money can’t buy you happiness, but it can buy you a really expensive girls’ night – which is exactly what Seema Verma, the Trump administration’s top Medicaid official, has been spending on – and charging the taxpayer for it too.In 2018, Verma spent $2,933 organizing a “girls’ night” at a reporter’s house and charged it to expenses, according to a 17-month investigation conducted by congressional Democrats.Maybe the head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) needed a little self-care, after all, the backlash she got for making it harder for poor Americans to access healthcare can’t be good for one’s complexion (which could explain this $345 moisturizer that Verma charged taxpayers for in 2018).But that’s just the problem: Verma has been in the spotlight for her expenses for a while – last year she also came under fire for expensing $50,000 for luggage she lost on a three-day trip. Then again, considering that practically the entire Trump family, including the president himself, have made a habit of expensing random stuff to the American taxpayer (remember Donald Trump Jr’s $76,000 Mongolian shooting trip?) perhaps it shouldn’t be surprising (heck, a $3,000 party seems paltry in comparison).But that’s not all that she spent. In fact, the congressional inquiry has revealed that Verma has spent more than $3.5m in expenses, spent at times improperly, to pay for consultants who helped her to pitch op-eds and wrote her Twitter posts. Her other expenses include a $977 consultancy fee, paid to a consultant who helped her to get an op-ed about Obamacare on the Fox News website; and over $13,000 on consultants who spent months helping her to win awards.Verma has rejected the idea that her expenses have been improper: she told a House committee in October 2019 that “all the contracts we have at CMS are based on promoting the work of CMS” and her expensing habits were “consistent with how the agency has used resources in the past”.Plus, she seems like a nice person. Verma’s father once described her as having sympathy for the poor because she used to pull over and give cash to the same homeless man on her way to work every morning – something he said he was “amazed” by. Let’s just hope she wasn’t expensing that too. More
Trump administration
Brian Murphy says he was demoted for refusing to accept fabrication of intelligence to match Donald Trump’s rhetoric More
Michael Cohen is no saint. Aside from the obvious, Donald Trump’s former fixer has never entered into a formal cooperation agreement with federal prosecutors, a fact duly noted by the US attorneys’ office for the southern district of New York in its sentencing memorandum. Because of that, the “inability to fully vet his criminal history and reliability impact his utility as a witness”.On top of that, Cohen boasts in his memoir of his exposure to the mob as a teenager, and even compares his reception in federal prison to that accorded to Al Capone and El Chapo.Yes, it’s easy to distrust Cohen. On that score, Disloyal should be taken with more than a grain of salt. Its author is no hero.But that doesn’t make the book any less interesting. For all its black-hearted opportunism and self-aggrandizement, it delivers a readable and bile-filled take on Trump and his minions.What the book lacks in genuine contrition is made up for with score-settling and name-calling. Like Omarosa Manigault Newman before him, Cohen entertains, albeit at the expense of others: Don Jr, Jared Kushner, Roger Stone and Steve Bannon, for starters.Right off the bat, Cohen shares that the president lacks respect for his namesake. According to Cohen, Trump Sr would repeatedly tell him Donnie possessed the “worst fucking judgment” of anyone he had ever met. That’s saying something.Organized crime pervades the book, and Cohen does not sound at all disapprovingLikewise, asked by his oldest son if he is nervous about appearing in a televised wrestling match with the WWE impresario Vince McMahon, Trump Sr banishes him and comments: “What kind of stupid fucking question is that?”Humiliation is central to Trump and Cohen’s MOs – and it doesn’t end there.Shown a photo of his sons’ hunting escapades, Trump is angered, and again tears into his hapless offspring: “You think you’re a fucking big man? Get the fuck out of my office.” He sounds a lot like Tony Soprano. More important, he shared Melania’s displeasure over junior’s penchant for big-game hunting.As it happens, an earlier book by Ivana Trump recorded that it was she who wanted to call their son Donald Jr, to which Donald Sr replied: “You can’t do that!”His explanation: “What if he’s a loser?”Ivanka Trump is immune from the president’s derision. After all, Donald once told Howard Stern that if he weren’t her father, he’d have dated her. Cohen is not her dad, though, so is less hesitant in tattling on the favorite child.After writing about how Ivanka once joined him and his wife for lasagne dinners, Cohen recalls a brush with the law in connection with Trump Soho, an ill-fated condominium hotel in Manhattan, and Ivanka’s elaborate plans for Trump Moscow. Once again, the Trumps are caught in the headlights of the Manhattan district attorney.In Cohen’s telling, after first adopting a “hands-off policy” to the Russia project, Ivanka became enthusiastic when she learned the building would contain a health and wellness center named for her. She was prepared to hire the architect Zaha Hadid, discarding drawings supplied by Cohen.William Barr’s efforts to be Roy Cohn 2.0 – Trump’s consigliere in corridors of power Cohen could never reach – are realIn the end, Cohen laments, “all three kids were starved for their father’s love”.Jared Kushner also emerges worse for wear. Words like “inexperienced” and “unqualified” tumble on to the page. Cohen observes that “Kushner was supremely arrogant, a real snob” with an “exaggerated sense of his importance and intelligence”.Elsewhere, however, Cohen expresses admiration for macho swagger and strut. So confusing.Speaking of which, Disloyal offers a window into the president’s views of Vladimir Putin. Cohen records that on numerous occasions Trump told him the Russian president was “the richest man in the world by a multiple”.Trump is quoted explaining: “If you think about it, Putin controls 25% of the Russian economy … imagine controlling 25% of the wealth of a country. Wouldn’t that be fucking amazing.”Consistent with that take, Trump muses that a Russian oligarch who bought property from him was actually doing Putin’s bidding.“The oligarchs are just fronts for Putin,” Trump purportedly said. “That’s all they are doing – investing Putin’s money.” More
As the US election draws closer, the Guardian’s Ed Pilkington hears from civil leaders on their fears for the integrity of the process and the future of their democracy
How to listen to podcasts: everything you need to know
When Barack Obama spoke at the Democratic national convention recently he had as his backdrop a facsimile of the US constitution. He spoke pointedly about the importance of that document and criticised Donald Trump, a reality TV star who had damaged the reputation of the United States with “our democratic institutions threatened like never before”. It is a concern shared by many across the US and the Guardian’s Ed Pilkington tells Anushka Asthana that he was alarmed by what he heard in interviews with some of the most prominent figures in civil rights, the law and academia on the state of democracy in America. He spoke to Michael Waldman, the head of the Brennan Center for Justice; Derrick Johnson, the president of the NAACP; Deirdre Schifeling, the campaign director of Democracy For All 2021; K. Sabeel Rahman, the head of Demos, and Vanita Gupta, the president and chief executive of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights. All told him versions of the same story: democracy in America is in peril like never before. More
