10 October 20
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09 October 20
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Elizabeth Warren | We Know Exactly How Amy Coney Barrett Feels About Abortion. Don't Let Republicans Pretend Otherwise.
Elizabeth Warren, The Cut
Warren writes: "Without access to high-quality reproductive health care - including contraception and safe, legal abortion - we cannot have true equality."
he decision whether or not to bear a child is “central to a woman’s life, to her dignity. It is a decision she must make for herself. When Government controls that decision for her, she is being treated as less than a fully adult human responsible for her own choices.”Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said that 30 years ago, at her Supreme Court confirmation hearing. She understood that reproductive freedom is foundational to equality, and critical to women’s health and economic security. Without access to high-quality reproductive health care — including contraception and safe, legal abortion — we cannot have true equality.
But President Trump, Senate Republicans, and their extremist allies don’t care. They’ve spent almost four years of the Trump administration — and the many years before — undermining health care and turning back the clock on reproductive rights. That’s why they nominated Amy Coney Barrett to sit on the Supreme Court. She’s the ticket for a desperate, right-wing party that wants to hold onto power a little longer in order to impose its extremist agenda on the entire country.
President Trump and his Republican enablers have tried to deny this obvious fact. The president recently said that he “didn’t know” how Barrett would rule on reproductive rights, and Republicans in the Senate have fallen in line. The Republican Party knows the large majority of Americans don’t support overturning Roe v. Wade. They benefit when we stay on the sidelines — and they want us to sit back and stay quiet while our fundamental freedoms are on the line.
But we see right through their radical play.
President Trump picked Barrett as his Supreme Court nominee to take us back in time. Roe v. Wade established the constitutional right to safe and legal abortion and has been the law of the land for over 47 years. But over, and over, and over again, President Trump has bragged about his plans to appoint judges who would “automatically” overturn Roe. The Affordable Care Act expanded access to reproductive health care — like no-co-pay birth control — for millions. But President Trump has promised to overturn the Affordable Care Act in its entirety, and sent his Department of Justice to ask the Supreme Court to do just that.
Barrett is Trump’s ideal candidate to accomplish his plans. In 2006, she signed a newspaper ad calling for the end of Roe and describing the decision as “barbaric.” She was a member of an anti-choice group while on the University of Notre Dame faculty. She’s also been critical of the Affordable Care Act and the Supreme Court’s past decision to uphold the law in court. Her position on abortion and other reproductive rights are clear: She believes women cannot be trusted to make decisions about their own bodies.
If Barrett’s nomination makes you scared and angry, you’re right to be: 17 abortion-related cases are already one step away from the Supreme Court. Twenty-one states have laws that could be used to restrict abortion in the event Roe is overturned. And if Barrett’s confirmation is rammed through quickly, she’ll have the opportunity — on November 10 — to hear a case about overturning the Affordable Care Act, and a lifetime on the nation’s highest court to undermine the rights and values we hold dear.
Access to birth control has changed the economic futures of millions of women, and access to safe abortion care is an economic issue, too. For a young couple with modest wages and piles of student loan debt, the decision to start or expand a family is a powerful economic issue. For a woman working two jobs with two kids in day care, an unplanned pregnancy can upend budgets already stretched too far. For a student still in high school or working toward a college degree, it can derail the most careful plans for financial independence. Indeed, one of the most common reasons that women decide to have an abortion is because they can’t afford to raise a child.
And let’s be explicitly clear: If these attacks succeed, they will have disproportionately negative consequences for women of color, who are already facing some of the most insurmountable barriers to abortion care. Rich women will still have access to abortion and reproductive care, but it will be Black and Brown women, women with low incomes, women who can’t afford to take time off from work, and young women who were raped or molested by a family member who will be the most vulnerable.
But this isn’t a moment to back down. Already, it’s inspiring to see so many women and friends of women coming off the sidelines in this fight — and we must continue to speak up, call your senators, and make sure this conversation is grounded in our real experiences. Men must speak up, too, because reproductive freedom affects us all.
Voting is already underway across the country, and there are only 26 days before the election is completed. And the data shows most Americans want to wait until after the election for a new justice to be confirmed. Justice Ginsburg gave us our marching orders: Do not fill this Supreme Court seat until after the election when the next president is installed. We will fight hard together to honor her wish.
Governor Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan: 'This White House has a duty to call it out and they won't do it - in fact, they encourage it.' (photo: AP)
Gretchen Whitmer Accuses Donald Trump of Inciting Domestic Terror
Adam Gabbatt, Guardian UK
Gabbatt writes: "The Michigan governor who was the target of a foiled rightwing kidnapping plot said on Friday that Donald Trump's rhetoric 'incites more domestic terror,' after the president posted a series of aggressive tweets overnight that sought to shame the victim of the plot."
Thirteen men have been charged over a plan to kidnap Gretchen Whitmer, the Democratic governor of Michigan, whom Joe Biden considered naming as his running mate for the November election before picking Kamala Harris.
The men, some of whom were members of a rightwing, self-styled militia group, discussed blowing up a bridge and bundling Whitmer into a boat. Another plan involved killing Whitmer on her doorstep, according to the authorities.
The fallout from the thwarted kidnapping – which was set to take place before the 3 November election – has further pulled back the curtain on the ideological polarization in US society, and descended into a growing political row.
On Friday Biden accused Trump of “giving oxygen to the bigotry and hate we see on the march in our country”, as Trump attacked Whitmer hours after the plotters were named.
Trump, who has spent months criticizing Whitmer and other Democratic governors over measures to try to control the coronavirus pandemic as it surged across America, on Thursday said Whitmer had “done a terrible job” in Michigan, and complained that she was yet to thank him for the FBI stopping the plot.
Speaking on Friday morning, Whitmer said Trump was “creating a very dangerous situation”.
“Each time he has tweeted about me, each time that he has said ‘liberate Michigan’ and said I should negotiate with the very people who are arrested because they’re ‘good people’, that incites more domestic terror,” Whitmer told ABC News.
“And I am not the only governor going through this. Certainly it’s been worse for me than most, but it is not unique to me, it is not even unique to Democrats. This White House has a duty to call it out and they won’t do it – in fact, they encourage it.”
Whitmer became a hate figure for rightwingers throughout the spring, when she was among a number of state governors to issue stay-at-home orders in an attempt to stop the spread of Covid-19.
In April, thousands of protesters, many armed, besieged the Michigan state capitol, in Lansing, to demonstrate against Whitmer’s order.
From the White House, Trump cheered the mostly white protesters, tweeting: “LIBERATE MICHIGAN!” as he repeatedly attacked Whitmer.
The FBI said on Thursday that the plan to kidnap Whitmer began around the time of those demonstrations, and was months in the making.
“Snatch and grab, man,” Adam Fox, one of the conspirators, unwittingly told an FBI informant in July.
“Grab the fuckin’ governor. Just grab the bitch. Because at that point, we do that, dude – it’s over.”
Plotters twice surveilled Whitmer’s vacation home, including in mid-September, as they developed plans to take her hostage.
The men attempted to construct explosive devices and held combat drills, and planned to blow up a bridge to Whitmer’s home to slow down police.
Seven of those arrested are backers of the so-called boogaloo movement, NBC News reported. Experts say boogaloo is a far-right, violent anti-government movement, and some adherents are also tied to neo-Nazi groups.
Of the president’s response to the revelations, Whitmer said on Friday: “A decent human being would pick up the phone and say, ‘Are you OK? How’s your family doing?’
“That’s what Joe Biden did. And I think it tells you everything you need to know about the character of the two people that are vying to lead our country for the next four years.”
Biden, who is leading Trump in opinion polls in several key swing states – including Michigan – criticized the president in the early hours of Friday morning.
“When Governor Whitmer worked to protect her state from a deadly pandemic, President Trump issued a call to “LIBERATE MICHIGAN!” Biden said in a tweet.
“That call was heard. He’s giving oxygen to the bigotry and hate we see on the march in our country – and we have to stop it.”
Pro-Whitmer demonstrators held a gathering of support for the governor outside the state capitol building in Lansing on Thursday evening.
Border Patrol officers. (photo: Marianna Treviño-Wright)
Butterfly Sanctuary Says Border Patrol's Dogging Her, Has Audio to Prove It
Justin Rohrlich, The Daily Beast
Rohrlich writes: "The head of a Texas butterfly sanctuary says she and her family are being harassed by the U.S. Border Patrol for flipping off a boat full of agents."
Marianna Treviño-Wright says she’s paying the price for speaking out against a crowdfunded border wall.
And she has a tape recording she says proves it.
Marianna Treviño-Wright told The Daily Beast that she and her son have been pulled over by the Border Patrol with increasing frequency. She says her husband has been stopped unnecessarily while boating, and claims that both she, her son, and her husband have been “nearly run off the road” recently by speeding Border Patrol agents. Agents often use their official cars to block access to her property and lock and unlock her gates at inappropriate times, she says.
Once, a Border Patrol helicopter hovered low above the butterfly center for 2.5 hours straight, “to harass [us] and flatten [our] vegetation,” says Treviño-Wright, who points out that $100,000 worth of solar panels on the center’s roof were potentially put at risk by the chopper. And when she and her husband are out taking wildlife photos on a small pontoon boat they bought in July, Treviño-Wright says, Border Patrol boats “zip back and forth, creating wake, to mess with us and make it harder to get good pictures.”
Treviño-Wright says she is sure this is retribution because a Border Patrol officer told her she’s on their shit list.
In a May 2020 phone call that she recorded and provided to The Daily Beast, a high-ranking Border Patrol official that Treviño-Wright has known for eight years conceded that Michael Banks, the senior Border Patrol official in the area, was upset with her over “flipp[ing] off our boat guys” months earlier.
“I’ll tell you one thing, Marianna, just so you know…[he’s] a little, how would you say—a little taken aback,” the official said. “Like, we all had that meeting and everything, you talked about, both of y’all I guess, talked about, you know, trying to make amends and forge a different path forward and so forth, and then I think it was a few days later, if I’m not mistaken, I think you were out on the river with Father Roy on the boat there and thought you were flipping off somebody else but you were flipping off our boat guys. And Mr. Banks didn’t appreciate that, so…”
Treviño-Wright responded that she wasn’t directing her ire towards the agents, but rather toward a right-wing news crew, wearing blue FBI-style raid jackets with “MEDIA” printed in large yellow letters across the back, who were also on the boat.
“Yeah, but you know, the agents don’t know that, the liaison replied. “They just saw a woman in a boat flipping them off, and so… it was caught on video and Mr. Banks saw that and was like, ‘Oh, my God.’”
“So what you’re telling me is that the agents and Banks both got butthurt because they expect respect?” responded Treviño-Wright.
“I don’t know about the agents, but Mr. Banks, after having had that conversation with you, was taken aback by that... You know, you had just had a conversation about wanting to make amends and change things [and] whatever, you know... to him, if you flip off the agents you’re flipping him off, so he was taken aback by that.”
To this, Treviño-Wright suggested to her Border Patrol liaison that “your grown-ass men on the boat should grow a pair.”
While the official did not say that Treviño-Wright was being punished, she has no doubt that’s the case. She told The Daily Beast that she was making the recording public to “help expose this sort of conduct and abuse of authority basically, or what I would even call dereliction of duty.”
Speaking out has already gotten Treviño-Wright banned from the Border Patrol’s regular community meetings with landowners in the area. When she last tried to show up, she claims, she was threatened with arrest for trespassing.
“I mean, supposedly we're living in a state of emergency and America is being invaded by rapists and terrorists,” said Treviño-Wright, referencing common right-wing scare rhetoric. “And these guys have nothing better to do than fuck around with me and my staff.”
Reached by telephone, Banks declined to comment, referring The Daily Beast to the sector public affairs officer, who deferred to Customs and Border Protection (CBP), Border Patrol’s parent agency. CBP provided a written statement saying that the National Butterfly Center is located in “one of the busiest zones in the nation for both illegal alien crossings and narcotic smuggling,” which is “lacking much needed border infrastructure to prevent and deter incursions.” “The views of the property manager have no bearing on the decision to place law enforcement resources in the area,” said the CBP statement.
(Treviño-Wright pushed back, saying the butterfly center is “sandwiched between tactical infrastructure—an 80-ft tall raid tower with audio and video surveillance, both manned and unmanned, on the east side of the property. On the west side of the property are Border Patrol stables; the mounted patrol deploys from right next to us. So the statement that the infrastructure here is lacking is complete bullshit.”)
The bad blood dates to late 2019, when Treviño-Wright spoke out against a privately funded section of President Donald Trump’s long-promised border wall. The project’s financial backers—four of whom, including former White House strategist Steve Bannon, have now been indicted for fraud—launched a public smear campaign against the activist. She was a supposed “cartel operative” using the butterfly preserve to traffic women into sex slavery, according to We Build The Wall founder Brian Kolfage, who spread the unfounded accusation on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and in interviews with right-wing media.
The National Butterfly Center is home to more than 200 species of butterflies, and hopes to “cultivate meaningful understanding of the processes that create sustainable ecosystems” through its programs. Yet, experts say the private border wall construction happening a short distance upriver from the center threatens to erode the riverbank, causing permanent and irreparable damage to the property.
Kolfage, a 37-year-old U.S. Air Force veteran and triple amputee, founded We Build the Wall Inc. in 2019. A Florida nonprofit “social welfare group” that is permitted by law to engage in political activities, the organization reportedly raised more than $25 million rom half a million donors. Bannon, who was the chairman of We Build The Wall’s advisory board, illegally siphoned at least $1 million from the nonprofit into his and Kolfage’s pockets, according to federal prosecutors. Kolfage allegedly used his cut to finance a “lavish lifestyle,” including “home renovations, payments towards a boat, a luxury SUV, a golf cart, jewelry, cosmetic surgery, personal tax payments, and credit card debt.”
Bannon claims he is the victim of a “political hit job.” Kolfage, whose attorneys did not respond to a request for comment, has called the accusations “blatantly false.”
Treviño-Wright said the death threats and visits from out-of-state militia groups from as far away as Wyoming after Kolfage falsely painted her as a criminal were disturbing. But what she didn’t see coming was the Border Patrol’s reaction.
During the early days of Treviño-Wright’s battle against We Build The Wall’s wall, she went out on the Rio Grande to observe wall-building progress with a local priest, Father Roy Snipes. She fully admits that when they passed the vessel that carried border agents and reporters she believed were affiliated with Steve Bannon, she flipped them the bird.
“That was when everything went south,” Treviño-Wright said.
The butterfly center has long accommodated the Border Patrol, and until We Build the Wall came along, had a good relationship with local agents, according to Treviño-Wright. They are welcome to come on the property and use the restroom, and she says the staff often provides refreshments. Beginning around 2014, the center has organized and hosted community potlucks for Border Patrol agents and National Guard deployed to the area who were working on Thanksgiving and Christmas. Still, Treviño-Wright says one agent told her that the rank-and-file consider her to be “the most hated woman” in the area, and that “they had my photo up in the break room so they could throw darts at it.”
Treviño-Wright’s situation is all too familiar to Jenn Budd, a former senior Border Patrol agent who now works as a pro-immigration advocate.
“Border Patrol is nothing but a locker room,” Budd told The Daily Beast, “and the station is nothing but a locker room. So once one agent maybe sees her get into it with another agent, or she’s not as pliable as to what they want, then they start talking. And now all of a sudden they’re pulling her over and saying, ‘Well, we got a report of a suspicious vehicle.’ And those are all just lies.”
Property owners that caused problems for agents trying to enter their land, or seeking to install Border Patrol cameras, sensors, or other surveillance equipment, were always looked at sideways by members of the force, said Budd. “It quickly became, ‘If they don’t like us, then they must be involved in something.’”
Today, the three-mile structure erected by We Build The Wall, which is not contiguous with the government’s wall—something Treviño-Wright points to as proof of its overall folly—is already in danger of collapsing.
President Trump's Seven Springs estate covers 212 acres, including rolling woodlands that spread over three Westchester county towns. (photo: Johnny Milano/The Washington Post)
Trump Got a $21 Million Tax Break for Saving the Forest Outside His NY Mansion. Now the Deal Is Under Investigation.
Joshua Partlow, Jonathan O'Connell and David A. Fahrenthold, The Washington Post
Excerpt: "Five years ago, Donald Trump promised to preserve more than 150 acres of rolling woodlands in an exclusive swath of New York suburbia prized for its luxury homes and rural tranquility."
In exchange for setting aside this land on his estate known as Seven Springs, Trump received a tax break of $21.1 million, according to court documents.
The size of Trump’s tax windfall was set by a 2016 appraisal that valued Seven Springs at $56.5 million — more than double the value assessed by the three Westchester county towns that each contained a piece of the property.
The valuation has now become a focal point of what could be one of the most consequential investigations facing President Trump as he heads into the election.
New York Attorney General Letitia James (D) is investigating whether the Trump Organization improperly inflated the value of Seven Springs as part of the conservation easement on the property, according to filings in the case in August. The investigation also scrutinizes valuations, tax burdens and conservation easements at Trump’s holdings in Los Angeles, Chicago and New York City.
Trump’s son Eric, who now helps run the Trump Organization, sat for a deposition in the case Monday.
The Seven Springs appraisal, obtained by The Washington Post, appears to have relied on unsupported assertions and misleading conclusions that boosted the value of Trump’s charitable gift — and his tax break, according to two independent appraisers who reviewed the document at The Post’s request.
The appraisal was written by Cushman & Wakefield, a commercial real estate firm that has worked with Trump over many years and whose New York City headquarters are in a building co-owned by Trump.
The firm established the value of the 212-acre estate by assuming a future buyer could build and sell 24 mansions on the land, without providing evidence that such a subdivision would meet local regulations. Over two decades, Trump himself tried and failed to build on Seven Springs — first a golf course and later various housing developments — but the projects were stymied amid local opposition and environmental disputes.
The appraisal also claimed the land preserved under the easement had no economic value of its own, which one independent appraiser described as “crazy.” The tax break is calculated by subtracting the value of the conserved property from the value when it could be developed.
“This is not a good appraisal, and it’s misleading, and it’s thin as all get out,” said the first independent appraiser, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to preserve relationships in the industry. “What you get is appraised values for these 24 hypothetical lots that appear to be much higher than they ought to be.”
If the conservation easement transaction was ever litigated, the appraiser said, “they’d tear it apart.”
A spokesman for Cushman & Wakefield said: “We do not comment on ongoing litigation.” One expert who reviewed the appraisal at The Post’s request said he thought the firm did a “competent” job.
The Trump Organization’s chief legal officer, Alan Garten, said that he could not comment on the Seven Springs appraisal or respond to specific allegations made by James’s office because the investigation is ongoing, but that “the allegations are categorically untrue.”
In a statement last month, Garten accused James of “continued harassment of the company as we approach the election.”
“This investigation is all about politics,” he added.
The president’s taxes and financial dealings are also part of a separate inquiry by Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. (D). Vance has offered less detail in court documents than James, citing grand-jury secrecy. A three-judge panel in a federal appeals court Wednesday ruled that Vance can enforce a subpoena that seeks financial documents from Trump, including his tax returns.
In addition to the conservation easement tax break, Trump in 2014 also classified Seven Springs as an investment property rather than a personal residence, and wrote off $2.2 million in property taxes as a business expense, the New York Times recently reported.
Trump’s family members have described the home as a family retreat in the past, and the Trump Organization’s website still characterizes Seven Springs that way.
“Today, Seven Springs is used as a retreat for the Trump family,” the website says.
If it has been used as a rental property, it hasn’t brought much financial return, at least recently. On the public financial disclosures Trump is required to file annually as president, he said Seven Springs has produced only between $5,000 and $10,000 in total income since 2015.
Neither the James or Vance investigation may make much headway before the election, according to legal experts. But both appear to be issues the president and his family will have to deal with whether he wins in November or not.
Lake manor
Seven Springs, with its 60 rooms and three swimming pools, has become a prime example of how Trump found tax benefits even in projects where he failed to achieve his original vision.
The home was built in 1919 by Eugene Meyer, former owner of The Washington Post. The pink sandstone manor house was designed in the style of a French chateau, and it is perched over Byram Lake, a reservoir for the area. The property was eventually passed on to Yale University and then to Rockefeller University, which used it as a conference center.
Trump bought the property in 1995 for $7.5 million with the intention of transforming it into an exclusive private golf course, with a stately clubhouse and luxury residences nearby, according to Trump’s public statements at the time.
But Trump’s building plans never came to fruition.
His project met with stiff resistance from neighbors and local officials who worried about traffic problems as well as environmental degradation, according to planning documents obtained through a public records request and news coverage at the time. Many feared that chemicals from the golf course would pollute Byram Lake and taint drinking water for the nearby village of Mount Kisco. Trump also faced a complicated tangle of planning rules, as the property is spread over three neighboring towns: Bedford, North Castle and New Castle.
By 2004, the Trump Organization had given up on the golf course and instead proposed building 15 homes on the site, what Trump described to the New York Times at the time as “super-high-end residential, the likes of which has never been seen on the East Coast.”
But his subdivision plans also bogged down amid local opposition and a multiyear legal battle where Trump sued to gain access to a closed portion of a local road that ran through an adjacent Nature Conservancy preserve.
Even Trump’s personal lawyer Marc Kasowitz, who happened to live directly across the street from Seven Springs, at one point sent a letter to the Bedford planning director to voice concerns that headlights from the construction site would shine into the family home “where they frequently entertain.”
“Please note that their mail box has recently been knocked down on two separate occasions by speeding vehicles on Oregon Road,” an attorney at Kasowitz’s firm wrote on his behalf in the 2008 letter, obtained through a public records request.
Kasowitz did not respond to a request for comment.
In one bizarre episode from 2009, Trump rented out Seven Springs to the former Libyan dictator Moammar Gaddafi, who was in New York for the United Nations General Assembly. Gaddafi’s staff pitched a Bedouin-style tent, complete with camel-print drapery, in Trump’s yard.
But even tent-building was doomed at Seven Springs. Bedford officials issued a stop-work order — the tent was deemed a temporary residence, and it had no permits — and Gaddafi didn’t end up moving in.
“We are outraged that this known criminal would attempt to set up camp in our community, and we intend to do everything in our power to deny them temporary residence,” Bedford Town Supervisor Lee Roberts said at the time.
Gaddafi still “paid me a fortune,” Trump told CBS in 2016.
By the time Ralph Mastromonaco was hired by the Trump Organization to develop site plans for Seven Springs in 2010, the difficulties of building on the property were well established. Mastromonaco said he advised the Trump Organization to avoid attempting to build across all three towns but rather to limit the effort to one. The plans he drafted involved nine residential lots, all confined to the Bedford portion of the property.
“If you want to try to build something here, it’s quite a nightmare,” Mastromonaco, a civil engineer who has worked in Westchester since 1977, said in a recent interview.
This was Trump’s last attempt to build houses on the property. By May 2013, the Bedford planning board passed a resolution giving Trump’s company “final plat approval” to develop the residential lots — pending a list of 26 conditions that the Trump Organization would have to meet within 180 days. The Trump Organization did not complete that process, and those conditions were never met, according to Joel Sachs, the town attorney.
In particular, the Trump Organization failed to reimburse the town for the cost of hiring engineers and consultants to evaluate the Seven Springs proposal.
A copy of an invoice dated Nov. 11, 2019, reviewed by The Post shows the Trump Organization owes Bedford $46,976.63.
“They’ve never paid it,” Sachs said. “I don’t expect they’re going to pay it.”
Mastromonaco, who has given a deposition to New York prosecutors, said he did not know why the Trump Organization stopped pursuing the subdivision at Seven Springs.
“It started to look like they were just losing interest in it,” he said. “It just wasn’t a hot item for them to keep going.”
Conservation easement
By the end of 2015, Trump had signed an agreement with the North American Land Trust, a nonprofit based in Pennsylvania, promising not to develop 158 acres of Seven Springs, or about three-quarters of the property.
The mature deciduous forest of oak, maple and hemlock on Trump’s land stood adjacent to another nature preserve and clearly held ecological value, according to one person involved in the conservation easement who spoke on the condition of anonymity to address a matter involving the president.
“That’s not even a question,” the person said. “This totally fits into land that gets preserved for conservation easements.”
But the key question was its monetary value — and how much Trump would get to deduct from his taxes by agreeing not to develop it.
In recent years, conservation easements have come under greater scrutiny from the IRS, tax experts and both parties in the Senate — because of abuses by some landowners who artificially inflated the worth of the land they preserved.
Dozens of cases have been litigated in recent years in which the IRS challenged the underlying valuation of conservation easements. Of those, the North American Land Trust has been involved in at least eight high-profile cases, including four involving golf course easements, said Nancy McLaughlin, a University of Utah law professor and expert in conservation easements who tracks these cases.
Shortly after launching his 2016 campaign, Trump sent the group $32,000 from his now-defunct charitable foundation, which was later ruled a misuse of charitable funds.
The North American Land Trust did not respond to a request for comment.
As the Seven Springs deal was being set up, appraisers from Cushman & Wakefield valued the property at $56.5 million, claiming that if it weren’t to be preserved, 24 homes, each worth an average of $2.1 million, could be built on the vacant part of the property, according to the document.
But the two independent appraisers who reviewed the document found significant problems with that report.
For one, they said, the appraisal does not mention Trump’s history of difficulties developing Seven Springs or offer much beyond unsubstantiated assertions that such a subdivision would comply with local planning rules. Several conservation easement experts said the development history is relevant to the value of the property.
“Imagine that we were wealthy developers and we were interested in purchasing that property from him,” said McLaughlin. “We would take into account that history. And we would say, ‘Well, gee, if we buy this property today, how likely is it that we are going to be able to develop it if he had all this problem trying to get the approvals?’ ”
One independent appraiser also flagged concerns about a “sleight of hand” technique that compared nearby sales on a price-per-acre basis, then applied it to much larger lots on Seven Springs. The appraiser also noted the claim that the 158 acres after conservation has “no economic value of its own,” when conserved land is in fact often bought and sold.
“The theme throughout this appraisal is: There is very little actual work done to collect data and analyze specific data,” he said. “It’s a lot of arm-waving and reference to national surveys.”
The second appraiser also flagged the lack of value after conservation — despite the fact that the conservation easement allows Trump many rights on the land, including hunting, driving off-road vehicles, building storage facilities and dividing it up into three parcels to sell off. Only two of the eight comparable sales in the appraisal were similar in size to Seven Springs. But the report values Seven Springs at more than $100,000 per acre higher than those other properties, the second appraiser noted.
“There is absolutely no support for all the adjustments,” the second appraiser said. “They don’t even show how much fairy dust it took to make up those adjustments.”
“This is barely a 50-page report, and ours are usually 150 or more sans fairy dust,” the second appraiser added.
A third person who reviewed the appraisal, Timothy Lindstrom, a Virginia attorney and conservation easement expert, cited some areas where the document might be “vulnerable” but found fewer problems with it.
“While there are no appraisals that are immune from IRS quibbling, my overall reaction to this appraisal was that it was competently done and provided realistic values supported by proper analysis and data,” he said.
During the easement process, Eric Trump also relied on Sheri Dillon, a longtime Washington attorney.
According to correspondence disclosed by James’s office, Dillon repeatedly pressured the appraisers at Cushman & Wakefield to increase their valuations.
According to filings by the New York attorney general, Dillon gave sworn testimony in August but declined to answer numerous questions about her role and withheld some documents. Dillon did not respond to requests for comment.
During the appraisal process, one of the Cushman appraisers wrote in an email that Dillon had reported that “the client blew up at her” and that Dillon began “trying to convince us to restore” a $2.1 million valuation each of the home parcels and “anything else that would push it up,” according to the court filings.
In another message, the Cushman appraisers ask Dillon to back off: “We’ve been over these issues and there is no point in dredging them up again. It’s time to agree to disagree and move on.”
Pro-democracy protesters hold up the three-finger 'hunger games' salute next to the Grand Palace in Bangkok, Sept. 20, 2020. (photo: Lillian Suwanrumpha/Getty)
Twitter Removes Nearly 1,000 Accounts Linked to Thai Military
Anthony Esguerra, VICE
Esguerra writes: "Twitter said it dismantled nearly 1,000 accounts linked to the Thai army that were used to target opposition figures, as pro-democracy protests against the military-backed establishment gather force in the kingdom."
The internet is fast becoming a new battleground in the Southeast Asian country's turbulent political history.
The social media giant said Thursday the network of 926 accounts violated its terms of service by "partaking in information operations that we can reliably link to the Royal Thai Army."
The accounts also amplified pro-military and pro-government content, though a study by Stanford University's Internet Observatory called the effort "low-impact" and pointed out that the majority of tweets received no engagement.
The internet has become a new battleground in Thailand's turbulent politics as young protesters test laws restricting criticism of the powerful monarchy and demand that the generals running the country allow democratic reforms.
Thailand's deputy army chief of staff denied any link with the information operations during an interview, calling its social media presence open and transparent.
The take down, which also involved similar operations in Cuba, Russia, Iran and Saudi Arabia, comes weeks after Thailand's digital economy minister filed legal complaints against Facebook and Twitter over failures to comply with a government order to remove content.
The pro-democracy protests that erupted earlier this year sparked an unprecedented level of discussion over the role of the ultra-rich Thai King Maha Vajiralongkorn, who is protected by harsh royal defamation laws that carry a maximum sentence of 15 years.
But that discussion has also started moving beyond Thailand to Germany, where the king spends most of his time.
On Wednesday, German foreign minister Heiko Mass said Vajiralongkorn cannot make political decisions from the European country, though the impact of his statement on the king's residence there remains unclear. Parliamentarians cited the monarch's unprecedented move to oppose his sister's attempt to run for prime minister in 2019 elections.
Workers carry aid provided by the World Food Programme (WFP) for distribution in Pissila, Burkina Faso, January 24, 2020. (photo: Anne Mimault/Reuters)
World Food Program Awarded 2020 Nobel Peace Prize
Al Jazeera
Excerpt: "The Nobel Committee said the coronavirus pandemic has worsened a hunger crisis faced by millions of people around the world and called on governments to ensure that WFP and other aid organizations receive the financial support necessary to feed them."
WFP wins 2020 Nobel Peace Prize for efforts to combat hunger and food insecurity around the world.
he World Food Programme on Friday won the 2020 Nobel Peace Prize for its efforts to combat hunger and food insecurity around the globe.
The announcement was made in Oslo by Berit Reiss-Andersen, the chair of the Nobel Committee.
Tomson Phiri, WFP spokesperson in Geneva, said: “This is a proud moment, the nomination was itself enough, but winning the Nobel Prize is nothing short of a feat.
“During the pandemic we were the biggest airline in the world when all commercial airlines were grounded, we moved assistance and delivered assistance through our global common services and so our staff were able to stay and deliver in communities where people were at risk of the infection and hunger.”
“The WFP has consistently warned of dangers of COVID-19, and not just because of the health pandemic, but as the head of the WFP called it – the hunger pandemic” Al Jazeera’s Diplomatic Editor James Bays reported from New York.
There was no shortage of causes or candidates on this year’s list, with 211 individuals and 107 organisations nominated before the February 1 deadline.
However, the Norwegian Nobel Committee maintains absolute secrecy about whom it favours for arguably the world’s most prestigious prize.
The award comes with a 10 million krona ($1.1 million) cash prize and a gold medal to be handed out at a ceremony in Oslo, Norway, on December 10, the anniversary of prize founder Alfred Nobel’s death. This year’s ceremony will be scaled down due to the pandemic.
It is the twelfth Nobel prize for a UN organisation or member.
“Where you have conflict, food assistance becomes inadequate, sometimes it gets delayed or even suspended, the issue of severe malnutrition is not only due to food, but also other factors come into play like access to clean water, diseases and so forth, you need peace and stability to address hunger,” said Phiri.
On Monday, the Nobel Committee awarded the prize for physiology and medicine for discovering the liver-ravaging hepatitis C virus. Tuesday’s prize for physics honoured breakthroughs in understanding the mysteries of cosmic black holes, and the chemistry prize on Wednesday went to scientists behind a powerful gene-editing tool.
The literature prize was awarded to American poet Louise Gluck on Thursday for her “candid and uncompromising” work.
Still to come next week is the prize for outstanding work in the field of economics.
A wolverine in the Bridger Mountains north of Bozeman, Montana. A federal court ruling revived the debate over whether the animal, a member of the weasel family, is endangered. (photo: Daniel J. Cox/NationalExposures.com)
Green Groups Set to Sue After Trump Administration Declines to Protect Wolverines
Rebecca Beitsch, The Hill
Beitsch writes: "Environmental groups immediately pledged to file suit after the Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) on Thursday removed protections for the wolverine."
The rare creature — there are an estimated 300 living in pockets of Idaho, Montana, Washington, Wyoming and northeast Oregon — is the largest member of the weasel family. It resembles a cross between a bear and a honey badger, with long claws used to take down its prey.
“New research and analysis show that wolverine populations in the American Northwest remain stable, and individuals are moving across the Canadian border in both directions and returning to former territories. The species, therefore, does not meet the definition of threatened or endangered under the Endangered Species Act (ESA),” FWS wrote in a press release.
But environmentalists say the low numbers indicate the species is deserving of protection.
“With fewer than 300 wolverines left in the contiguous United States, there is no justification for the FWS' decision to deny protection. Listing wolverines as threatened or endangered would trigger new, badly needed conservation efforts,” Earthjustice said in a release.
A coalition of groups sent a letter Thursday giving FWS the required 60 day notice that they intend to sue.
“Recent scientific information makes clear that wolverines face threats from destruction of their snowy habitat due to climate change,” Earthjustice attorney Timothy Preso said in a release. “We intend to take action to make sure that the administration’s disregard of the real impacts of climate change does not doom the wolverine to extinction in the lower-48 states.”
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