Greg Palast

Trump indicted — but will he serve time?

Trump's been indicted for mishandling classified documents. Charges include Obstruction of Justice and violation of Espionage Act — but will he serve time?
"I have now read this indictment three times — and remember I was a Justice Department investigator and I've been in many litigations on these big cases — and I've never seen such an indictment," says Greg Palast. "I don't see how Trump gets out of this unless he's Houdini... But I'm very concerned that the clock is Trump's friend."
In this week's edition of the Election Crimes Bulletin, Greg Palast and FlashPoints News host Dennis J. Bernstein discuss special counsel Jack Smith’s case, and the likelihood that it will result in jail time for Trump.

“Rev” Pat Robertson: Diamonds for the Antichrist

I did a massive investigation of the late, defrocked "Reverend" Pat Robertson, who died on Thursday at the age of 93 and was, weirdly, a fan of mine. I wrote the exposé for The Guardian and had secretly recorded Robertson admitting to several financial crimes.
He had raised millions of dollars from his flock, the 700 Club (which was named after those who donated $700 a year). They raised millions for “Operation Blessing”, supposedly to help alleviate the woes of refugees fleeing genocide in Rwanda.
“Operation Blessing” then purchased planes, ostensibly to shuttle medical supplies in and out of the refugee camp in Goma, Congo (then Zaire). However, investigative reporter Bill Sizemore of the Virginian-Pilot discovered that, except for one medical flight, the planes were used to haul heavy equipment for something called the African Development Corporation, a diamond mining operation distant from Goma. 
African Development was owned by Pat Robertson.
Get the full "Diamonds for the Antichrist" story at Greg Palast.com
In addition, as those who've seen my film The Assassination of Hugo Chavez know, the ex-Reverend called for the assassination of Hugo Chavez. Why would he care so much about removing Chavez? Because Chavez refused to give Robertson a gold mining concession in Venezuela.
Watch The Assassination of Hugo Chavez using this FREE download link. 
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Robertson also gave us the phrase "New World Order", for George Bush Senior's New World Order creation that would replace the Communist world order after the Cold War. And it was Robertson who warned us that there was a cabal of bankers, Presbyterians, the Federal Reserve, and the US Senate Finance Committee who are taking their orders directly from Satan. Now, I should note that the chairman of the banking committee who helped create the Federal Reserve was Pat Robertson's father; Absalom Willis Robertson was a Senator, was chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, and helped create the Federal Reserve Board. So, Pat Robertson basically saw his father as Satan’s Commander on Earth.
But it’s no joke, because we all paid the price for the Christian Coalition’s “good works”. The Christian Coalition illegally backed George Bush Senior for president by sending out tens of millions of pieces of mail to Born Again Christians telling them to vote for George Herbert Walker Bush.
Robertson deserves credit, if you wanna call it credit, for recreating the Republican Party as an adjunct of the Christian Coalition, and making Born Again Christians supreme — basically kingmakers — within the Republican Party.
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I spent all day with Robertson, with my concealed recorder, and because he said that God asked him to run for president, I asked him, with a campaign manager like the Lord, how could you lose? And he said, well, the Lord asked me to run for president, not to win. Out of that run, I created a mailing list of 3 million people. 
The Christian Coalition grew out of Robertson’s presidential campaign, and as Robertson said, now no Republican can run for dog catcher without the Christian Coalition's approval. So, Robertson may be gone, but the dead hand of the Christian Right is running the Republican party — and that was Robertson’s goal.
For those who want to read the full investigation, which was also in my book, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, I’m offering a FREE download of the audiobook, in which Al Franken reads the chapter about the ex-Reverend Pat.  

Trump’s Townhall Ballot-Box BS Is a Bigger Threat Than You Think

It’s easy to make fun of Donald Trump’s brain vomit unleashed on CNN Wednesday.  But one of his Big Fibs is seriously threatening the 2024 election.
Trump said: “If you look at True the Vote, they found millions of votes on camera, on government cameras, where they were stuffing ballot boxes. … Look at what happened in Atlanta, millions of votes, and all you have to do is take a look at government cameras. You will see them, people going to 28 different voting booths to vote, to put in seven ballots apiece. I mean, and they’re all on camera.”
The Palast Investigative team took on this very claim in our film Vigilante: Georgia’s Vote Suppression Hitman.
Trump’s claim of one guy stuffing ballots into “28 voting booths” (he meant, absentee ballot dropboxes) comes, as he says, from the Texas group of self-proclaimed vote fraud vigilantes True the Vote, producers of the film 2000 Mules, premiered by Trump at Mar-a-Lago.
In 2000 Mules, as sinister music plays, we see a Black man get out of his car, approach a ballot drop box—and put in his vote. 
Yes, it’s all on camera Mr. Ex-President.  It’s a lot of shots of Black men…voting, putting their ballots in the box.  One of them, Mark Andrews, an Atlanta tech exec., who was hunted down by the Georgia Bureau of Investigation because of the Trump/True the Vote claim, has now sued True the Vote for defamation—and they have not denied he was falsely accused.  (Andrews had placed his ballot in the box along with his wife’s and three adult kids’ ballots.)
It’s very satisfying to say, as the CNN pundits do, that Trump is lying, that this ballot-box stuffing claim by True the Vote has been “de-bunked.” But what preening pundits leave out is that Trump’s claims have been astonishingly effective in changing laws to coldly block Black voting. 
▶️ Get the full story at GregPalast.com

Fani Willis Flips 8 Fake Electors in Georgia Grand Jury Investigation

This week it’s been revealed that Georgia District Attorney Fani Willis has done immunity deals with at least 8 of the 16 fraudulent electors involved in the scheme to fix the 2020 presidential election in Georgia.In this week’s show investigative journalist Greg Palast and host Dennis J. Bernstein also talk about how Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell is punishing the victims with his recent interest rate hike.
 
For more on that, read "Powell’s Bag of Leeches: Hiking interest, the Medieval cure for inflation” at GregPalast.com

Dominion v. Fox, et al.

What happened in the Dominion case against Fox? What about Smartmatic, the voting machine company which Hugo Chavez helped launch that’s also suing Fox? Why has Fulton County DA Fani Willis filed a motion to remove the attorney representing 10 of the Georgia fraudulent electors? And what’s happening with Ali Alexander? Why was he banned from Twitter — again!?!

Trump indictment, even conviction, won’t bar him from Presidency

I hate to rain on the parade, but Trump’s indictment — even felony conviction — will not bar Trump from holding office. While I’ve reported on Trump as a one-man crime wave, the cold truth is, if convicted, it will be his first offense for low-level felony — so forget jail time.
Other problems with New York District Attorney Alvin Bragg's case...
The prosecutor has to prove that Trump INTENDED to hush up his affair to save his election — as opposed to saving him from the Wrath of Melania.
This is nearly identical to the case of ex-Sen. John Edwards [D-NC] who paid off the girlfriend he got pregnant during his run for President and for Vice-President (as John Kerry’s running mate). The jury didn’t buy the line that hush money was a hidden campaign contribution. The case was then dropped.
And let’s not sugar-coat the problems for prosecutors in Manhattan. Their two key witnesses are creeps: Michael Cohen, a convicted felon knuckle-breaker for Trump, and Stormy Daniels, a woman who blackmailed Trump into paying hush money. (On the other hand, Cohen and Daniels come off as sincere and contrite about their affairs with The Donald.)
A similar problem arises with the case in Georgia, which will soon go to a new grand jury. Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis will have to PROVE that Trump KNEW he’d lost the election and KNEW that he was committing a crime by promoting a bogus slate of Electors to the Electoral College.
When Trump said to the Sec. of State of Georgia, "find 11,780 votes," it was preceded by Trump’s crazy-town claims about illegal voters. Trump’s lawyers will argue, in the UNLIKELY case he’s indicted, that Agent Orange was relying on a legal memo by professor of law John Eastman. They’ll also claim that Trump truly believed the goofy BS about stuffed ballot boxes and illegal voters from grifter groups like True the Vote.
Sorry to give you the bad news about the prosecutions. But that’s why they call it LAW school and not JUSTICE school.

Election Crimes Bulletin: It’s Georgia — AGAIN!!!

Georgia is on our minds — again —this week on the Election Crimes Bulletin, with new GOP laws to eliminate absentee voting by dropbox (SB 221), to stop the use of (unfortunately) much-needed donations to support election administration (SB 222), and to create a new Georgia commission to restrict and remove prosecutors (SB 92). The later law is clearly aimed at curtailing the activities of Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, who’s investigating criminal interference in Georgia’s 2020 presidential election by Donald Trump and his cronies, and is edging ever closer to indictments.
Meanwhile the Biden Administration has joined Fair Fight, the voting rights organization founded by Georgia’s should-have-been-governor Stacey Abrams, in their legal action against True the Vote, the right wing "election integrity" organization that attempted to overturn the 2020 and 2022 elections with mass voter challenges. Earlier this month, US District Court Judge Steve C. Jones ordered True the Vote to stand trial in Atlanta. In his summary judgment, Judge Jones noted that even True the Vote’s so-called expert, Gregg Phillips, “candidly admits that there will be voters on the challenge list that are eligible to vote.” But it remains to be seen how far the Biden Administration will go to support Fair Fight’s action against True the Vote and its army of vigilante vote challengers, which we exposed before the 2022 election in on our film, Vigilante.
Also in the news is Ginni Thomas, the wife of US Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, who’s raised new ethics questions after it was revealed that Crowdsourcers for Culture and Liberty, a conservative think tank led by her, accepted anonymous donations totaling $596,000 in 2019. Much of the money, $400,000, came via Donors Trust, an organization that has long been on the radar of the Palast Investigations team. As a funnel for Koch funds, Donors Trust had a prominent role in our 2016 film, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy.
Learn all about this and more on the latest edition of the Election Crimes Bulletin with Dennis Bernstein and Greg Palast.

The legal heat is on for Donald Trump

As things heat up for Donal Trump on the legal front, we take a look at the possible indictments heading his way from New York and Georgia. Though it looks like New York District Attorney Alvin Bragg might pip Georgia District Attorney Fani Willis to the post with his case involving Trump’s payoff to adult film star Stormy Daniels, it’s perhaps the possible Georgia indictment that’s proving to be more intriguing. Especially since this past week it was revealed that the Georgia Grand Jury was played a recording of a call Trump made in December 2020 to then-Georgia House Speaker David Ralston (who since died in November 2022) asking him to convene a special session of the state legislature to overturn Georgia's presidential election results. Meanwhile New York Attorney General Leticia James has revived the case Bragg controversially dropped in February 2022 involving faked financial documents. Though James’ action is civil rather than criminal, the case extends beyond the former-president to three of his children — Donald Trump Jr., Ivanka Trump, and Eric Trump — and could see them all barred from doing business in New York.

The words that could convict Trump

“It’s in front of him” may be the words that finally send Donald Trump to the hoosegow.
 
The focus of Fulton County District Attorney, Fani Willis' Grand Jury investigation was on the scheme to present a fraudulent slate of Electors to Congress (which VP Mike Pence was supposed to select for the Electoral College). And, according to the January 6th Committee report, RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel sent an "elector recap" memo to Trump summarizing the scheme, based on a phone call between McDaniel, lawyer John Eastman, and the then President. Crucially, a Trump aide told McDaniel, "It’s in front of him."
 
Years back, I was principal investigator on a major RICO conspiracy case in Georgia, where the state's racketeering law is tougher than federal law.  I cannot see how Trump avoids state RICO charges — as the instigator of the fraud who has, apparently, signed off on the plans for the Electoral vote heist.

The Secret History of the Jan 6 Riot

The 800-page gorilla of a report from the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6 Attack on the Capitol seems strangely silent on a few matters that, apparently, were a bit too uncomfortable for the Committee to take on.
So, buckle up for a discomfiting ride with our investigative team that has been tracking the insurrectionists for years before the Insurrection in this Special Edition of the Election Crimes Bulletin with FlashPoints host Denis J. Bernstein, investigative journalist Greg Palast, and Palast Investigative Fund researcher and photojournalist Zach D. Roberts.
For more on this, read our report: The Secret History of a Riot.