Trump 30: Donald Trump and the Deathly Comb-Over

[47of74]

A conservative columnist pointed out how fuck face isn't even hiding being submissive to his sugar daddy anymore. 

Quote

President Trump did not follow specific warnings from his national security advisers Tuesday when he congratulated Russian President Vladi­mir Putin on his reelection — including a section in his briefing materials in all-capital letters stating “DO NOT CONGRATULATE,” according to officials familiar with the call.

Trump also chose not to heed talking points from aides instructing him to condemn the recent poisoning of a former Russian spy in Britain with a powerful nerve agent, a case that both the British and U.S. governments have blamed on Moscow.

Even if Trump didn’t read the briefing (always a strong possibility), one is struck by Trump’s reflexive deference to the Russian autocrat. At a time he lashes out at everyone from special counsel Robert S. Mueller III to our trading partners to the FBI, he nevertheless bends over backward to avoid confronting the Russian tyrant. Instead of standing up for the United States, Trump rolls over for Russia.

This behavior “sends a message to the American people that President Trump doesn’t care about Russian interference in our election, that President Trump doesn’t care about fair elections, and that what President Trump does care about is pleasing Putin,” says former FBI special agent Clinton Watts. “Also congratulating Putin’s electoral win, and then not challenging Putin on the nerve agent attack in the UK is the equivalent of telling Putin he can do whatever he wants.”

 

[fraurosena]

I Aunt Crabby!

 

[GreyhoundFan]

Dumpy is going to be very busy stiffing his lawyers for legal expenses: "Playmate, porn star and reality TV contestant in court over Trump"

Spoiler

A judge ruled Tuesday that a former “Apprentice” contestant’s defamation lawsuit against President Trump may proceed, potentially allowing her lawyers to begin collecting evidence to support her claim that he forcibly kissed and groped her years ago.

The decision in the case brought by Summer Zervos came on the same day a former Playboy playmate, Karen McDougal, sued the publisher of the National Enquirer for the right to break her silence about the 10-month affair she says she had with Trump more than a decade ago.

The nearly simultaneous developments added to the political and legal challenges for the president, who has faced weeks of reports about his alleged affair with another woman, porn star Stormy Daniels, and his attorney’s effort to buy her silence.

All three women are now seeking to tell their stories on their own terms. McDougal is scheduled to give an interview Thursday to CNN’s Anderson Cooper, while “60 Minutes” is scheduled to air an interview with Daniels on Sunday.

As she rejected Trump’s effort to block Zervos’s lawsuit from proceeding, New York Supreme Court Justice Jennifer G. Schecter cited precedent from the Paula Jones case against President Bill Clinton, which led to his impeachment in 1998.

“No one is above the law,” Schecter wrote. “It is settled that the President of the United States has no immunity and is ‘subject to the laws’ for purely private acts.”

Zervos has said that Trump kissed her against her will when she visited him at Trump Tower in December 2007, after she had left his show, and that he kissed her, groped her breast and “began to press his genitals against her” when they met for dinner later that month in a bungalow at the Beverly Hills Hotel.

She first spoke publicly in October 2016 at a news conference with other women accusing Trump of misconduct. She filed the defamation suit the following January, after Trump called the women “liars” and vowed to sue them.

Zervos’s attorneys have said that, in the legal process known as discovery, they would seek a deposition from Trump. It is likely, though, that Trump’s attorneys will appeal Schecter’s ruling, and a deposition, if there ever is one, could be months or years away.

“We are grateful for the opportunity to prove that the Defendant falsely branded Ms. Zervos a phony for telling the truth about his unwanted sexual groping,” Mariann Meier Wang, co-counsel for Zervos with Gloria Allred, wrote in an email.

Marc Kasowitz and Michael Cohen, two of Trump’s personal attorneys, did not respond to requests for comment. The White House also did not respond to a request for comment.

Trump’s attorneys had argued that the president cannot be sued in state court and also that his comments were political opinion and, as a result, “squarely protected by the First Amendment.” Schecter dismissed those arguments.

McDougal’s lawsuit is against American Media Inc., the publisher of the National Enquirer, which she says paid her $150,000 in exchange for her silence.

McDougal is asking the court to declare her contract with AMI void, saying her story about the president “is core political speech entitled to the highest protection under the law.”

AMI did not respond to a request for comment.

The lawsuit, in Los Angeles Superior Court, comes two weeks after Daniels sued Trump to invalidate her own confidentiality agreement. Daniels’s deal was with Cohen, who has said he “facilitated” a payment of $130,000 using his own money. Cohen has sought to keep Daniels quiet through private arbitration, alleging in a court filing that she could owe as much as $20 million for violating the agreement.

In an effort to build anticipation for the interview, her attorney, Michael Avenatti, on Tuesday released a 2011 report on the results of a polygraph test that Daniels took as part of a magazine interview about the alleged affair. The report says Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, was being “truthful” in saying she and Trump had unprotected sex.

In an interview, Avenatti said he recently paid $25,000 for video footage of the polygraph exam “in order to avoid one or more third parties from obtaining the information and destroying it or using it for nefarious means.”

He posted an image from the video on Twitter of Daniels sitting in a chair and strapped to a polygraph machine.

“I am not going anywhere,” Daniels wrote on Twitter Tuesday.

McDougal’s lawsuit in some respects echoes a complaint made to the Federal Election Commission by the government watchdog group Common Cause alleging that AMI coordinated with the Trump campaign when it negotiated a “catch and kill” agreement to ensure McDougal’s story was quashed. The complaint says the payments were intended to influence the election and should have been reported as in-kind campaign donations.

“Her complaint today reinforces what we alleged in our complaint,” Paul S. Ryan, a Common Cause vice president, said of McDougal’s lawsuit.

McDougal’s 10-month relationship with Trump remained a secret until May 2016, the lawsuit says, when another Playboy playmate alluded to the affair on Twitter, prompting McDougal to explore how she might tell her story about the Republican presidential nominee.

McDougal hired Keith Davidson, a Los Angeles lawyer. Over a dinner involving “multiple bottles of wine,” the suit says, Davidson told her that AMI had put $500,000 in an escrow account and that a seven-figure publishing deal awaited her.

He later acknowledged that there had been no such escrow payment, according to the complaint. The lawsuit alleges that Davidson was working with AMI executives to fool McDougal into signing a contract that was not in her interest, falsely allowing her to believe the tabloid would publish regular fitness columns under her name. It also alleges that Cohen was briefed on the deal.

“We are confident that the so-called contract will be invalidated, and are eager for Ms. McDougal to be able to move forward with her life with the privacy she deserves,” said McDougal’s lawyer, Peter K. Stris.

In a statement Tuesday, Davidson said he “fulfilled his obligations and zealously advocated for Ms. McDougal to accomplish her stated goals at that time.”

AMI’s offer to buy her story for $150,000 was not to publish it but to bury it. By then, McDougal had “cold feet” about telling the story publicly, the lawsuit says. Davidson also told her that the deal meant she would appear on two magazine covers and she would write dozens of fitness columns for AMI’s print and online magazines, the suit says.

But the agreement did not actually guarantee that AMI would publish her columns, according to the complaint.

Still, the company was swift to threaten McDougal with legal action should she speak about the agreement, the suit says, as it did after she gave an interview to the New Yorker last month. AMI’s general counsel emailed McDougal’s attorney to threaten her with “considerable monetary damages” if she said anything more.

“Ms. McDougal thought (naively) that such a deal could give her the best of all worlds — her private story could stay private, she could make money, and she could revitalize her career,” the suit says. “What she did not realize was that she would end up treated as a puppet by powerful men colluding to achieve their own financial and political ends.”

In a statement Tuesday, McDougal said, “I just want the opportunity to set the record straight and move on with my life, free from this company, its executives, and its lawyers.”

 

[onekidanddone]

26 minutes ago, fraurosena said:

I Aunt Crabby!

 

OneKid hates when people talk about in the third person. Talking in the third person annoies OneKid, because of of it being annoying to OneKid

[AmazonGrace]

About the lawyers and bonus: Ivanka as Science Barbie.

[AmazonGrace]

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"Why is Trump fighting his new female accusers so hard?"

Spoiler

“Donald Trump has a problem with women” is hardly news, but at the moment, the president is being bedeviled by three different women taking various forms of legal action against him.

These cases might be momentary irritants or they might be serious threats to his presidency. But Trump seems determined to turn them into the latter.

The question is why? Why is Trump fighting against them so hard? Wouldn’t it be better to just say, “It’s all fake news, folks,” and pretend they don’t exist?

After all, Trump weathered this storm during the 2016 campaign when more than a dozen women accused him of various forms of sexual misconduct — and he still got elected. These new accusers could tell their stories, Trump could deny them, and it might pretty much end there. The people who don’t like him would believe the women, the people who do like him would believe him (or even if they couldn’t bring themselves to do that, would at least decide it doesn’t really matter), and we’d all put it in that corner of our minds occupied by things like Trump University: Appalling behavior on his part that doesn’t really affect how we’ll think about tomorrow’s news.

Here are the women currently aiming their lawyers at the president, and where their cases stand:

Stormy Daniels: The adult-film actor and director says — as she has for many years — that beginning in 2006, just after the birth of Trump’s son Barron, she had a sporadic affair with Trump that lasted about a year. During the 2016 campaign, Trump’s personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, arranged a payment of $130,000 to her (it remains unclear whose money was actually used). In exchange, she signed a nondisclosure agreement requiring her silence.

While Daniels has been somewhat coy in her recent public statements, she has been talking about the affair, and her lawyer just released the results of a 2011 polygraph test she took at the request of In Touch magazine, to which she had given an interview detailing the affair. Daniels has now filed suit against Trump to be released from the NDA, and is offering to return the $130,000 so she can speak candidly.

Karen McDougal: The former Playboy model says she had an affair with Trump around the same time as Daniels. In 2016, she entered into a $150,000 agreement with the parent company of the National Enquirer, which has been supportive of Trump, in a tactic known as “catch and kill,” in which it buys a story about a celebrity, but keeps it under wraps instead of publishing it. McDougal is now suing the company, American Media, Inc., saying it was secretly working with Cohen, and deceived her about the nature of the agreement she had signed. She, too, seeks to be free to discuss her relationship with Trump.

Summer Zervos: A former contestant on “The Apprentice,” Zervos later was in contact with Trump while looking for a job. She alleges that, on multiple occasions, he kissed her and groped her against her will. She has filed suit against Trump — not for the sexual harassment, but for defamation, because he called her a liar. On Tuesday, a New York Supreme Court judge denied a request from Trump’s lawyers that Zervos’s case be dismissed.

These cases pose different kinds of legal and political issues. With Daniels and McDougal, the alleged behavior in question was consensual; not so with Zervos. The payment to Daniels may have violated campaign finance laws. Since Trump has, in various ways, denied all the claims, he may not want to do anything that would be seen as admitting that he lied.

Even so, there would seem to be ways Trump could make these cases go away with the least fuss possible. He could release Daniels and McDougal from their nondisclosure agreements and tell them, “Say whatever you want, I don’t care.” There might be a brief bit of prurient interest in their stories, but it would quickly fade. He could reach a settlement with Zervos that gave her a payout without admitting any guilt on his part; the money wouldn’t matter to him.

But instead, he’s fighting them all. He even has his lawyers saying Daniels now owes him $20 million for violating her NDA. Why is he fighting so hard? Here are some theories:

This is just how Trump does business. As he wrote in one of his books, “When someone crosses you, my advice is ‘Get Even!’ That is not typical advice, but it is real life advice. If you do not get even, you are just a schmuck! . . . If you’re afraid to fight back people will think of you as a loser, a ‘schmuck!’ They will know they can get away with insulting you, disrespecting you, and taking advantage of you.” When somebody goes after Trump, he will try to destroy them. That may be about his personal pride, but it’s also a means of deterrence to others who might think of crossing him.

• He’s worried there are secrets that could come out. This is particularly true in Zervos’s case, since she was on “The Apprentice.” Since the case is going forward, she can demand documents and information as part of the discovery process, and who knows what might be revealed. Particularly tantalizing is the possibility that behind-the-scenes tapes of the show’s production — which some involved with the show have said would show Trump making appalling racist and sexist remarks — might become public. But that would be more reason to settle quickly with Zervos. In the other cases, however, Trump could be concerned about embarrassing personal revelations — not just that he had affairs with a porn star and a Playboy model (which pretty much everyone accepts is true), but something more humiliating that might strike at Trump’s carefully constructed image as a macho ladies’ man, which he maintains with a kind of desperate insecurity.
• There are other women he wants to keep from coming forward. When a dozen women accuse you of sexual misconduct, it’s a good bet that there are more than a dozen out there somewhere. In fact, former Trump strategist Stephen K. Bannon told author Michael Wolff as he was writing “Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House” that Trump lawyer Marc Kasowitz had silenced many more women. “Look, Kasowitz has known [Trump] for twenty-five years. Kasowitz has gotten him out of all kinds of jams,” Bannon said. “Kasowitz on the campaign — what did we have, a hundred women? Kasowitz took care of all of them.” Bannon (who has not disputed this quote) may have been exaggerating when he said “a hundred,” but it suggests that there are more women out there whom Trump would like to keep quiet.
• It’s all about the NDAs. Not just the nondisclosure agreements that Trump has made women sign, but all of them. The Post’s Ruth Marcus reported this week that Trump took the unprecedented step of making White House senior staff sign NDAs. But this is nothing new for him. Throughout his career, Trump has been a prolific user of NDAs with people who worked for him. “I have reviewed confidentiality agreements in international, family-run hospitality organizations and . . . I have never seen a loyalty code to a family like this,” said one expert who reviewed them. An untold number of people have signed NDAs with Trump over the years, and if women like Daniels and McDougal walk away from theirs, it could give those people ideas. We could learn all sorts of interesting things about Trump’s personal and business history.

These are just theories; it is difficult to know for sure what’s going on here. None of them could be what’s really motivating Trump, or they might all be playing a role. If there are particular secrets Trump is trying to keep under wraps, he might succeed. But the controversy over his treatment of women is certainly not going away.

 

[fraurosena]

 

It's pretty clear the presidunce did NOT write these tweets. Not just because of a lack of spelling mistakes, but because we all know that the stable genius has no idea what the word 'excoriate' means, let alone knows how to correctly use it in a sentence. My guess it's probably somebody who's close to him and agrees with his bromance with Putin.

[GreyhoundFan]

"‘Elected to lead, not to proofread’: Typos, spelling mistakes are commonplace in Trump’s White House"

Spoiler

President Trump boasted during the campaign that he has the “best words.” If the past 14 months in the White House are an indication, he and his team also have the worst spelling.

Among the many casualties of Washington’s protocols in the Trump era has been a lack of rigor to the accuracy of the printed word — whether it’s the president’s typo-filled tweets or the White House’s error-prone news releases.

“Special Council is told to find crimes, wether crimes exist or not,” Trump wrote on Twitter on Wednesday morning to start off a posting in which he misspelled “counsel” three times and had five errors in the span of 280 characters.

As journalists and others poked fun at the mistakes, the president quickly deleted the tweet and posted an edited version. He successfully changed “wether” to “whether” and eliminated an inadvertent repeat of the word “the” — but he failed to correct the three inaccurate references to the title of his nemesis, Robert S. Mueller III.

“If Trump directs Rosenstein to fire the special ‘council,’ I think we might be ok folks,” cracked former U.S. attorney Preet Bharara of New York, whom Trump fired last summer, referring to Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein.

Amid all the chaos in the White House — including West Wing personnel drama, the Stormy Daniels scandal and Mueller’s Russia investigation, some wayward spellings and inaccurate honorifics might seem minor. But the constant small mistakes — which have dogged the Trump White House since the president’s official Inauguration Day poster boasted that “no challenge is to great” — have become, critics say, symbolic of the larger problems with Trump’s management style, in particular his lack of attention to detail and the carelessness with which he makes policy decisions.

On Monday, for example, the White House rolled out an executive order from Trump aimed at cutting off U.S. investment in Venezuela’s digital currency as a way to pinch strongman Nicolás Maduro’s regime. But in the headline on the public news release, the White House wrote that Trump was taking action to “address the situation in America.”

“Freudian slip????” wondered Rosiland Jordan, a reporter for Al Jazeera.

“It echoes a political quote I tell people a lot from [Ralph Waldo] Emerson: The institution is lengthened by the shadow of one man,” said Rick Wilson, a Republican political consultant who has been highly critical of Trump. “The sloppiness and the looseness and the chaos and lack of rigor across all areas of Trump world reflects Trump. They do not care. They don’t give a damn. But everybody needs an editor.”

In Trump’s world, Air Force One became “Air Force Once” 0n the president’s public schedule. The White House sought “lasting peach” in a news release touting efforts to broker a deal between Israel and Palestinian territories. And another release announced the departure of an East Wing aide to work for Republican Rep. Will Hurd of Texas, who was reincarnated as Rep. Hill in the next sentence.

Last week, in a tweet, the commander in chief lauded his visit to the “Marine Core Air Station Miramar” in San Diego, prompting “veterans everywhere to facepalm,” according to a headline in the Marine Times.

The steady stream of errors has prompted outlets as disparate as People magazine and Fox News to compile the White House’s greatest hits — or whiffs, as the case may be.

Jason Silverstein, a political reporter, had been posting a “running list of typos” at the New York Daily News, noting in his introduction that Trump was “elected to lead, not to proofread.” He reached 32 entries before departing the paper last October.

Asked Wednesday whether he had a favorite, Silverstein pointed to Trump’s tweet in December 2016 in which the president-elect denounced the seizure of a U.S. Navy underwater glider by a Chinese warship as “unpresidented. ”

“I always told our [editor] that that should be our front-page headline if Trump gets impeached,” Silverstein said in an email.

Inside the West Wing, however, it was another mistake in January 2017, by a junior White House aide, that caused the most consternation — just a week after Trump took office. Announcing the visit to the White House of British Prime Minister Theresa May, the official schedule misspelled her name three times as “Teresa May,” which the London-based Independent newspaper drolly noted is the stage name of a British pornographic movie actress whose oeuvre includes “Whitehouse: The Sex Video” and “Leather Lust.”

The mistake reverberated throughout the West Wing and prompted then-Chief of Staff Reince Priebus to implement new procedures, building in extra layers of sign-offs before news releases were made public, according to a former White House official familiar with the fallout who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private matters. The main change was that official announcements would have to be cleared by the Office of the Staff Secretary, led by Rob Porter, who resigned last month amid accusations of abuse from two former wives.

“There was a lot of head-desk,” said the former official, when asked how the White House press office reacted to errors that became public. Snarky reaction on Twitter “was usually the first indication that something got missed. Even having the staff secretary look at it was not foolproof. We’re humans.”

The mistakes hardly abated. The White House screwed up the titles of foreign leaders and their countries. It called Prime Minister Shinzo Abe the “president” of Japan. After Trump held a high-stakes bilateral meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping at Mar-a-Lago in July, the White House readout referred to the “Republic of China,” which is the official name of Taiwan. Xi is the leader of the People’s Republic of China.

In a sign that the sloppiness might be infecting other parts of Washington, tickets to Trump’s address to a joint session of Congress in January, distributed by the Office of the Sergeant at Arms and Doorkeeper, touted the “State of the Uniom.”

White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders did not respond to a request for comment.

Liz Allen, who served as White House deputy communications director under former president Barack Obama, said in an interview that the press office under the 44th president sought to be as rigorous as possible. Releases typically were proofread for accuracy and content by at least four or five people. Announcements that dealt with domestic policy issues and foreign affairs were vetted by experts at federal agencies and the National Security Council, she said.

“We felt a burden and responsibility to get it right,” Allen said. “We were acutely aware of the integrity of our platform. We took it seriously. No one should meet a higher bar than the White House. They are the ultimate voice.”

That voice was a bit garbled last month when, according to the White House daily guidance, Trump was planning to address the Conservative Political Action Conference at the Gaylord National Resort & Convention Center in “Oxen Hill.”

The proper spelling of the suburban Maryland jurisdiction is Oxon Hill, a mistake made more pronounced by the fact that the Gaylord resort is the home of the National Spelling Bee.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

I don't know if this is real, but if it is, WTAF?

 

[Snowless]

8 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

Dumpy is going to be very busy stiffing his lawyers for legal expenses: "Playmate, porn star and reality TV contestant in court over Trump"

  Reveal hidden contents

A judge ruled Tuesday that a former “Apprentice” contestant’s defamation lawsuit against President Trump may proceed, potentially allowing her lawyers to begin collecting evidence to support her claim that he forcibly kissed and groped her years ago.

The decision in the case brought by Summer Zervos came on the same day a former Playboy playmate, Karen McDougal, sued the publisher of the National Enquirer for the right to break her silence about the 10-month affair she says she had with Trump more than a decade ago.

The nearly simultaneous developments added to the political and legal challenges for the president, who has faced weeks of reports about his alleged affair with another woman, porn star Stormy Daniels, and his attorney’s effort to buy her silence.

All three women are now seeking to tell their stories on their own terms. McDougal is scheduled to give an interview Thursday to CNN’s Anderson Cooper, while “60 Minutes” is scheduled to air an interview with Daniels on Sunday.

As she rejected Trump’s effort to block Zervos’s lawsuit from proceeding, New York Supreme Court Justice Jennifer G. Schecter cited precedent from the Paula Jones case against President Bill Clinton, which led to his impeachment in 1998.

“No one is above the law,” Schecter wrote. “It is settled that the President of the United States has no immunity and is ‘subject to the laws’ for purely private acts.”

Zervos has said that Trump kissed her against her will when she visited him at Trump Tower in December 2007, after she had left his show, and that he kissed her, groped her breast and “began to press his genitals against her” when they met for dinner later that month in a bungalow at the Beverly Hills Hotel.

She first spoke publicly in October 2016 at a news conference with other women accusing Trump of misconduct. She filed the defamation suit the following January, after Trump called the women “liars” and vowed to sue them.

Zervos’s attorneys have said that, in the legal process known as discovery, they would seek a deposition from Trump. It is likely, though, that Trump’s attorneys will appeal Schecter’s ruling, and a deposition, if there ever is one, could be months or years away.

“We are grateful for the opportunity to prove that the Defendant falsely branded Ms. Zervos a phony for telling the truth about his unwanted sexual groping,” Mariann Meier Wang, co-counsel for Zervos with Gloria Allred, wrote in an email.

Marc Kasowitz and Michael Cohen, two of Trump’s personal attorneys, did not respond to requests for comment. The White House also did not respond to a request for comment.

Trump’s attorneys had argued that the president cannot be sued in state court and also that his comments were political opinion and, as a result, “squarely protected by the First Amendment.” Schecter dismissed those arguments.

McDougal’s lawsuit is against American Media Inc., the publisher of the National Enquirer, which she says paid her $150,000 in exchange for her silence.

McDougal is asking the court to declare her contract with AMI void, saying her story about the president “is core political speech entitled to the highest protection under the law.”

AMI did not respond to a request for comment.

The lawsuit, in Los Angeles Superior Court, comes two weeks after Daniels sued Trump to invalidate her own confidentiality agreement. Daniels’s deal was with Cohen, who has said he “facilitated” a payment of $130,000 using his own money. Cohen has sought to keep Daniels quiet through private arbitration, alleging in a court filing that she could owe as much as $20 million for violating the agreement.

In an effort to build anticipation for the interview, her attorney, Michael Avenatti, on Tuesday released a 2011 report on the results of a polygraph test that Daniels took as part of a magazine interview about the alleged affair. The report says Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, was being “truthful” in saying she and Trump had unprotected sex.

In an interview, Avenatti said he recently paid $25,000 for video footage of the polygraph exam “in order to avoid one or more third parties from obtaining the information and destroying it or using it for nefarious means.”

He posted an image from the video on Twitter of Daniels sitting in a chair and strapped to a polygraph machine.

“I am not going anywhere,” Daniels wrote on Twitter Tuesday.

McDougal’s lawsuit in some respects echoes a complaint made to the Federal Election Commission by the government watchdog group Common Cause alleging that AMI coordinated with the Trump campaign when it negotiated a “catch and kill” agreement to ensure McDougal’s story was quashed. The complaint says the payments were intended to influence the election and should have been reported as in-kind campaign donations.

“Her complaint today reinforces what we alleged in our complaint,” Paul S. Ryan, a Common Cause vice president, said of McDougal’s lawsuit.

McDougal’s 10-month relationship with Trump remained a secret until May 2016, the lawsuit says, when another Playboy playmate alluded to the affair on Twitter, prompting McDougal to explore how she might tell her story about the Republican presidential nominee.

McDougal hired Keith Davidson, a Los Angeles lawyer. Over a dinner involving “multiple bottles of wine,” the suit says, Davidson told her that AMI had put $500,000 in an escrow account and that a seven-figure publishing deal awaited her.

He later acknowledged that there had been no such escrow payment, according to the complaint. The lawsuit alleges that Davidson was working with AMI executives to fool McDougal into signing a contract that was not in her interest, falsely allowing her to believe the tabloid would publish regular fitness columns under her name. It also alleges that Cohen was briefed on the deal.

“We are confident that the so-called contract will be invalidated, and are eager for Ms. McDougal to be able to move forward with her life with the privacy she deserves,” said McDougal’s lawyer, Peter K. Stris.

In a statement Tuesday, Davidson said he “fulfilled his obligations and zealously advocated for Ms. McDougal to accomplish her stated goals at that time.”

AMI’s offer to buy her story for $150,000 was not to publish it but to bury it. By then, McDougal had “cold feet” about telling the story publicly, the lawsuit says. Davidson also told her that the deal meant she would appear on two magazine covers and she would write dozens of fitness columns for AMI’s print and online magazines, the suit says.

But the agreement did not actually guarantee that AMI would publish her columns, according to the complaint.

Still, the company was swift to threaten McDougal with legal action should she speak about the agreement, the suit says, as it did after she gave an interview to the New Yorker last month. AMI’s general counsel emailed McDougal’s attorney to threaten her with “considerable monetary damages” if she said anything more.

“Ms. McDougal thought (naively) that such a deal could give her the best of all worlds — her private story could stay private, she could make money, and she could revitalize her career,” the suit says. “What she did not realize was that she would end up treated as a puppet by powerful men colluding to achieve their own financial and political ends.”

In a statement Tuesday, McDougal said, “I just want the opportunity to set the record straight and move on with my life, free from this company, its executives, and its lawyers.”

 

That headline sounds like the beginning of a bad joke: “A Playmate, a porn star, and a reality TV contestant walk into a courtroom...”

Holy shitshow...

[JMarie]

8 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

All three women are now seeking to tell their stories on their own terms. McDougal is scheduled to give an interview Thursday to CNN’s Anderson Cooper, while “60 Minutes” is scheduled to air an interview with Daniels on Sunday.

Thanks for the heads up.  I've got my DVR ready!

[AmazonGrace]

4 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

I don't know if this is real, but if it is, WTAF?

 

If every kid responds I don't know he will receive the highest kindness score

[WiseGirl]

12 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

I don't know if this is real, but if it is, WTAF?

 

I know I wasn't asked to do this but I'm feeling more anti Trump than ever this morning.....

Kind? 0 because he is a narcissist orange fuck face that demeans women, well really everybody, but Putin.

Safe? 0 because if he could make money on it, he would sell everyone out except maybe Ivanka. Oh wait, maybe he already did sell us out. Oh and the mob connections I'm sure Mueller has uncovered. Oh and being in the NRA's pocket. Shit, I'm turning this into an essay response.

Elect again? Hell no! Because he has been the worst President ever in our history. Years from now they will wonder how the fuck we let this happen.

And teacher dear, if you attempted to give this to my child that would result in a big old call to the superintendent and the news and not necessarily in that order. So inappropriate for any school child. Wtf.

[fraurosena]

Uhm... is he admitting to using Cambridge Analytica? The very same organization that admits to cheating in order to win elections? 

He doesn't have a clue how incredibly bad that looks, does he? 

[fraurosena]

Finally! About time too...

Summons issued to Trump in case alleging he is violating Emoluments Clause

Quote

A summons has been issued to President Trump in a lawsuit filed alleging he is violating the Emoluments Clause of the Constitution.

The lawsuit — filed by the attorneys general in Washington D.C. and Maryland — alleges that Trump is violating the clause, which prevents elected officials from receiving gifts or benefits from foreign governments without Congress’s approval, WAMU reported.

The lawsuit is filed against Trump in his "official capacity and in his individual capacity," according to the Washington, D.C. radio station.

The lawsuit also argues that businesses in Maryland and D.C. have been hurt because groups instead choose to stay at Trump's properties in attempts to get in his good favor.

Last year, a federal judge dismissed a lawsuit from a liberal watchdog organization arguing that Trump was violating the Emoluments Clause of the Constitution.

Judge George Daniels of the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland dismissed the case on “lack of standing,” agreeing with Trump’s lawyers’ argument that the claims do not fall within the interests of the Emoluments Clause, and should be resolved through the “political process," according to the ruling.

Trump has said his business interests would be put in a blind trust managed by his sons, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump.

Critics and watchdog groups have expressed concerns that foreign officials can patronize Trump's business to curry favor with the president.

Trump's lawyers must respond to the summons three weeks, according to WAMU.

 

[AmazonGrace]

27 minutes ago, fraurosena said:

Uhm... is he admitting to using Cambridge Analytica? The very same organization that admits to cheating in order to win elections? 

He doesn't have a clue how incredibly bad that looks, does he? 

It sure sounds like he's bragging that he was so clever to use stolen Facebook data

For the record I never said that Trump gives great speeches so whoever "they" is they're not me.

He gave rambling disjointed fearmongering monologues, as far as I'm concerned.

[fraurosena]

The lyrics are genius.

 

[AmazonGrace]

If anyone has John Dowd in their White House resignations bingo you can check him out in your card now.

[AnywhereButHere]

Exit Dowd -

Enter diGenova -

It's like a very scary ballet.

 

[Cartmann99]

50 minutes ago, AmazonGrace said:

If anyone has John Dowd in their White House resignations bingo you can check him out in your card now.

Fox & Friends should start a new daily segment where they showcase lawyers willing to work for Trump. Make the lawyers compete for the position by performing humilating tasks like licking a floor clean or cleaning toilet bowls with their bare hands. Trump then hires whoever survives the challenges to represent him for one week. 

 

[JMarie]

26 minutes ago, Cartmann99 said:

Fox & Friends should start a new daily segment where they showcase lawyers willing to work for Trump. Make the lawyers compete for the position by performing humilating tasks like licking a floor clean or cleaning toilet bowls with their bare hands. Trump then hires whoever survives the challenges to represent him for one week. 

 

Good luck with that

https://www.cnn.com/2018/03/22/politics/politics-latest/

Quote

At least four defense attorneys at major law firms were approached to join Trump’s legal team in recent weeks, according to multiple sources familiar with the inquiries.

The lawyers include...

Former US Solicitor General Ted Olson

Emmet Flood, who’s worked for multiple presidents

Robert Bennett, Bill Clinton’s attorney in the Paula Jones litigation.

All turned Trump down, for various reasons, including concern that the President doesn’t listen to his lawyers and that their law firms represented other clients that would pose conflicts, according to multiple sources familiar with the inquiries.

 

[47of74]

5 hours ago, WiseGirl said:

I know I wasn't asked to do this but I'm feeling more anti Trump than ever this morning.....

Kind? 0 because he is a narcissist orange fuck face that demeans women, well really everybody, but Putin.

Safe? 0 because if he could make money on it, he would sell everyone out except maybe Ivanka. Oh wait, maybe he already did sell us out. Oh and the mob connections I'm sure Mueller has uncovered. Oh and being in the NRA's pocket. Shit, I'm turning this into an essay response.

Elect again? Hell no! Because he has been the worst President ever in our history. Years from now they will wonder how the fuck we let this happen.

And teacher dear, if you attempted to give this to my child that would result in a big old call to the superintendent and the news and not necessarily in that order. So inappropriate for any school child. Wtf.

Filled mine out for that orange bastard.  

[Cartmann99]

1 hour ago, JMarie said:

All turned Trump down, for various reasons, including concern that the President doesn’t listen to his lawyers and that their law firms represented other clients that would pose conflicts, according to multiple sources familiar with the inquiries.

Oh, I know that no lawyer with a lick of sense will work for him, but I bet that some of the "Call 1-800-Cash4Me to learn how many billions I can get you in a settlement!" type lawyers would do it for the exposure. 

[47of74]

59 minutes ago, Cartmann99 said:

Oh, I know that no lawyer with a lick of sense will work for him, but I bet that some of the "Call 1-800-Cash4Me to learn how many billions I can get you in a settlement!" type lawyers would do it for the exposure. 

Yeah if my professional responsibility professor wanted, she could make what fornicate face's lawyers do a case study of what lawyers should not do for class.  Of course the conservative students in the class would crucify her immediately.