So much for the Supreme Court.

Tax-deductible donations are contributions of money or goods to a tax-exempt organization such as a charity. Tax-deductible donations can reduce taxable income. To claim tax-deductible donations on your taxes, you must itemize on your tax return by filing Schedule A of IRS Form 1040 or 1040-SR.

April 7, 2008
By Grant Williams

Barack Obama, (click here) the Democratic presidential candidate, and his wife, Michelle Obama, have released their tax return for last year showing that they donated 5.7 percent of their income to charitable causes.

The tax return shows that the Illinois senator and Mrs. Obama, who reported $4.2-million in income, gave $240,370 to 33 churches and charities in 2007.

Senator and Mrs. Obama made their largest gift, of $50,000, to the United Negro College Fund. They gave $35,000 to CARE, the international relief organization, and $26,270 to Trinity United Church of Christ (whose pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. has made headlines for controversial sermons)....

Trump does not have the corner on generosity by elected presidents. These donations by Former President Obama and Mrs. Obama occurred before he was elected to office. Why the bragging? Trump doesn't put this income tax return out to the public. Evidently, President Obama never was embarrassed by it and it was where the American people learned about the couple's generosity. 

22 May 2020

By Melissa Davey

Efforts to highlight Donald Trump’s largesse (click here) during his time in office have backfired after his press secretary appeared to display the US president’s personal bank details to the world.

At a press conference on Friday, Kayleigh McEnany announced that Trump would donate his quarterly pay cheque to the Department of Health and Human Services to “support the efforts being undertaken to confront, contain and combat the coronavirus”. So far, so laudable.

However, when she held up the $100,000 cheque for White House reporters to see, it came complete with all Trump’s banking details.

An administration official told the New York Times mock cheques were never used in the briefing, with a White House statement saying, “Today his salary went to help advance new therapies to treat this virus, but leave it to the media to find a shameful reason not to simply report the facts, focusing instead on whether the check is real or not.”...

Continued from a previous entry.

Report on the investigation into the Russian interference in the 2016 Elections (click here)

Page 120 in the document and Page 128 on the PDF

c. Post-June 9 Events 

Veselnitskaya (Russian Lawyer) and Aras Agalarov (Russian billionaire real estate developer) made at least two unsuccessful attempts after the election to meet with Trump representatives to convey similar information about Browder and the Magnitsky Act.749 On November 23, 2016, Kaveladze (Georgian-American business executive Vice President of Crocus Group real estate developer with Aras Agalov) emailed Goldstone about setting up another meeting “with T people” and sent a document bearing allegations similar to those conveyed on June 9.

Once Russia gets it's hooks into you they don't let go.

750 Kaveladze followed up with Goldstone, stating that “Mr. A,” which Goldstone understood to mean Aras Agalarov, called to ask about the meeting.

July 11, 2017
By Veronika Bondarenko

Rhona Graff, (click here) the woman once nicknamed "Trump's right hand" was one of many names to come up in Donald Trump Jr.'s emails about meetings with Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya.

At 64, Graff is one of Donald Trump's most loyal and longstanding personal assistants. Before Trump was elected president, she worked as the gatekeeper to Trump Tower for nearly thirty years.....

Such assistants add to the deniability of Trump in almost any circumstance. There is a reason why his personal attorney saw prison. In this case it is questionable at this point in "the read" as to whether Aras Agalarov ever got his message to Trump and his team.

751 Goldstone emailed the document to Rhona Graff (Trump Executive Assistant), saying that “Aras Agalarov has asked me to pass on this document in the hope it can be passed on to the appropriate team. If needed, a lawyer representing the case is in New York currently and happy to meet with any member of his transition team.”752 According to Goldstone, around January 2017, Kaveladze contacted him again to set up another meeting, but Goldstone did not make the request.753 The investigation did not identify evidence of the transition team following up.

Trump instructed attorneys to contact the people at the June 9, 2016 meeting. You'll excuse me, but, that is constructive knowledge of the meeting. The attorneys just didn't pull them out of a hat, they knew who attended that meeting and these were Trump's attorneys. That is constructive knowledge of the meeting. Not only that but, there is more to come. Why contact them at all?

Alan Garten, general counsel for the Trump Organization.

Garten was all-knowing. He conducted Trump's business including covering any activities of Trump's wife and three older children. Why did Michael Cohen take the fall for Trump? Garten was clean? He has had to know about the women and the cover-up. No evidence tying him to all the off-color business of Donald John Trump?

Participants in the June 9, 2016 meeting began receiving inquiries from attorneys representing the Trump Organization starting in approximately June 2017.754 On approximately June 2, 2017, Goldstone spoke with Alan Garten, general counsel of the Trump Organization, about his participation in the June 9 meeting.755 The same day, Goldstone emailed Veselnitskaya’s name to Garten, identifying her as the “woman who was the attorney who spoke at the meeting from Moscow.”756

Garten not only knew of the meeting he had details.

Everyone got in on this one. Alan Futerfas is the man on the left. He represented Jr. after he attended the meeting with Veselnitskaya.

Angela Chen (center) (click here) hosts a celebration of Chinese New Year of the Monkey (click here)

Nicholas Platt is the gentleman on the right.

Later in June 2017, Goldstone participated in a lengthier call with Garten and Alan Futerfas, outside counsel for the Trump Organization (and, subsequently, personal counsel for Trump Jr.).757 On June 27, 2017, Goldstone emailed Emin Agalarov with the subject “Trump attorneys” and stated that he was “interviewed by attorneys” about the June 9 meeting who were “concerned because it links Don Jr. to officials from Russia—which he has always denied meeting.”758 Goldstone stressed that he “did say at the time this was an awful idea and a terrible meeting.”759 Emin Agalarov sent a screenshot of the message to Kaveladze.76

One big happy family. I find it very odd that all these people are sharing their thoughts and information with each other as if their innocence depended on it. They had to keep their stories straight. Evidently, Goldstone was blaming himself for the failure of the meeting as well as having a meeting at all. They worked him over. It sounds so Trump. Everyone else's fault. They never accept responsibility for anything. I wonder if the responsibility for the children was based on a paternity test?

The June 9 meeting became public in July 2017. 

The June 9 meeting was in 2016. It was a secret for a year. All those people nad no one talked about it but simply communicated over the net to secure their "common memory."

In a July 9, 2017 text message to Emin Agalarov, Goldstone wrote “I made sure I kept you and your father out of [t]his story,”761 and “[i]f contacted I can do a dance and keep you out of it.”762 

All that time and they kept running around scared of being caught.

Goldstone added, “FBI now investigating,” and “I hope this favor was worth for your dad—it could blow up.”763 On July 12, 2017, Emin Agalarov complained to Kaveladze that his father, Aras, “never listens” to him and that their relationship with “mr T has been thrown down the drain.”764 The next month, Goldstone commented to Emin Agalarov about the volume of publicity the June 9 meeting had generated, stating that his “reputation [was] basically destroyed by this dumb meeting which your father insisted on even though Ike and Me told him would be bad news and not to do.”765 Goldstone added, “I am not able to respond out of courtesy to you and your father. So am painted as some mysterious link to Putin.”766

The poor Russians, they caught the "Trump lying flu."

After public reporting on the June 9 meeting began, representatives from the Trump Organization again reached out to participants. On July 10, 2017, Futerfas sent Goldstone an email with a proposed statement for Goldstone to issue, which read:

Mr. Futerfas was busying manufacturing an alternative reality to protect Jr.

As the person who arranged the meeting, I can definitively state that the statements I have read by Donald Trump Jr. are 100% accurate. The meeting was a complete waste of time and Don was never told Ms. Veselnitskaya’s name prior to the meeting. Ms. Veselnitskaya mostly talked about the Magnitsky Act and Russian adoption laws and the meeting lasted 20 to 30 minutes at most. There was never any follow up and nothing ever came of the meeting.767

No follow up? Amazing. It is a neat little story. (7/19/2017)

Grand Jury  the statement drafted by Trump Organization representatives was  Grand Jury  768 He proposed a different statement, asserting that he had been asked “by [his] client in Moscow – Emin Agalarov – to facilitate a meeting between a Russian attorney (Natalia Veselnitzkaya [sic]) and Donald Trump Jr. Grand Jury the statement drafted by Trump Organization representatives was 768 He proposed a different statement, asserting that he had been the lawyer had apparently stated that she had some information regarding funding to the DNC from Russia, which she believed Mr. Trump Jr. might find interesting.”769 Goldstone never released either statement.770

The lawyers focused on Goldstone as the instigator to the meeting. No one knew anyone and of course everyone from the Trump camp was a victim. Samochornov was to parrot the words of the Russian lawyer at the Trump Tower meeting, Veselnitskaya. His reward paid legal fees. Ya just never know about Russians. The only truth-telling they do is their names.

Below is  paragraph from the FBI interview with Samochornov (click here)

On the Russian end, there were also communications about what participants should say about the June 9 meeting. Specifically, the organization that hired Samochornov—an antiMagnitsky Act group controlled by Veselnitskaya and the owner of Prevezon—offered to pay $90,000 of Samochornov’s legal fees.771 At Veselnitskaya’s request, the organization sent Samochornov a transcript of a Veselnitskaya press interview, and Samochornov understood that the organization would pay his legal fees only if he made statements consistent with Veselnitskaya’s.772 Samochornov declined, telling the Office that he did not want to perjure himself.773 The individual who conveyed Veselnitskaya’s request to Samochornov stated that he did not expressly condition payment on following Veselnitskaya’s answers but, in hindsight, recognized that by sending the transcript, Samochornov could have interpreted the offer of assistance to be conditioned on his not contradicting Veselnitskaya’s account.774

Oh, see that. Just one big misunderstanding. There was no quid pro quo. Was there? Samochornov would have his fees paid for as he told the truth to the FBI. 

Volume II, Section II.G, infra, discusses interactions between President Trump, Trump Jr., and others in June and July 2017 regarding the June 9 meeting.
...................................................................................

Footnotes are the emails, letters, text and phone calls that is EVIDENCE.

Footnote 749 Goldstone 2/8/18 302, at 11; Grand Jury
Footnote 750 OSC-KAV_00138 (11/23/16 Email, Goldstone to Kaveladze); Grand Jury
751 RG000196 (11/26-29/16 Text Messages, Goldstone & Kaveladze);  Grand Jury
752 Goldstone 2/8/18 302, at 11; Grand Jury  
DJTJR00118 (11/28/16 Email, Goldstone to Graff).
753 Grand Jury
754 Grand Jury
755 Grand Jury
756 RG000256 (6/2/17 Email, Goldstone to Garten).
757 Grand Jury
758 RG000092 (6/27/17 Email, Goldstone to E. Agalarov).
759 RG000092 (6/27/17 Email, Goldstone to E. Agalarov).  Grand Jury  
760 OSC-KAV_01190 (6/27/17 Text Message, E. Agalarov to Kaveladze).
761 RG000286-87 (7/9/17 Text Messages, E. Agalarov & Goldstone); Grand Jury
762  Investigative Technique 
763  Investigative Technique   Grand Jury 
764 OSC-KAV_01197 (7/11-12/17 Text Messages, Kaveladze & E. Agalarov); Grand Jury
765  Investigative Technique Samochornov 7/13/17 302, at 1
766  Investigative Technique 
767 7/10/17 Email, Goldstone to Futerfas & Garten.
768  Grand Jury
769 7/10/17 Email, Goldstone to Futerfas & Garten.
770  Grand Jury 
771 Samochornov 7/13/17 302, at 1;  Grand Jury 
772  Grand Jury  .
773  Samochornov 7/13/17 302, at 1.
774  Grand Jury

Continued in a following entry.

There is a madman in the White House.

If Trump wanted to create a diversion, then he succeeded. The canceling of the New Start Treaty and this mess in NEVADA is about blatant ambition by Trump and Netanyahu annexation plans of the West Bank.

November voters need to vote for peace in November. Nuclear annihilation won't stop SARS-CoV-2.

These tests have not been a matter of practice for 28 years. There is no reason to conduct this. The USA knows exactly what it needs to know for the national defense. Firing these bombs over Venezuela is idiocy. The same goes for Iran.

Trump is not asking about it, he is INTRODUCING it through a question.

May 22, 2020
By John Hudson and Paul Sonne

The last full-scale underground test of a nuclear weapon was conducted at the Nevada Test Site in September 1992. 

The Trump administration (click here) has discussed whether to conduct the first U.S. nuclear test explosion since 1992 in a move that would have far-reaching consequences for relations with other nuclear powers and reverse a decades-long moratorium on such actions, said a senior administration official and two former officials familiar with the deliberations.

The matter came up at a meeting of senior officials representing the top national security agencies May 15, following accusations from administration officials that Russia and China are conducting low-yield nuclear tests — an assertion that has not been substantiated by publicly available evidence and that both countries have denied....

Where is the Russian nuclear sub? It doesn't make sense that Venezuela needs oil. 

23 May 2020

The Iranian president, Hassan Rouhani, (click here) warned on Saturday of retaliatory measures against the US if Washington causes problems for tankers carrying Iranian fuel to Venezuela.

“If our tankers in the Caribbean or anywhere in the world face trouble caused by the Americans, they [the US] will also be in trouble,” Rouhani said in a telephone conversation with the emir of Qatar, the semi-official news agency Mehr reported.

A flotilla of five tankers carrying Iranian fuel for gasoline-starved Venezuela is approaching the Caribbean, with the first expected to reach the country’s waters on Sunday, according to Refinitiv Eikon tracking data.

“Iran will never initiate a conflict,” Rouhani said. “We have always the legitimate right to defend our sovereignty and territorial integrity and to serve our national interests, and we hope that the Americans will not commit an error.“...

Venezuela does not need domestic oil. The USA has become a menace in many countries in the world. It has the absolute worse outbreak of COVID-19 in the world and it shows no end to it in states outside the Tri-State area.

March 2, 2020
By Marianna Parraga

Venezuela’s oil exports rose 9% in February (click here) from the previous month, as some buyers rushed to take cargoes ahead of the expiration of a wind-down period as part of new U.S. sanctions on PDVSA and its trade partners, data from the state-run firm and Refinitiv Eikon showed.

Washington imposed tough sanctions on PDVSA in 2019 and launched a strategy of “maximum pressure” this year to oust Venezuela’s President, Nicolas Maduro, extending sanctions to PDVSA’s main trade partner, Rosneft Trading, while making threats on other customers. Prior to sanctions, the United States was the biggest buyer of Venezuela’s oil.

Exports increased to 1.046 million barrels per day (bpd) last month from 960,000 bpd in January, according to the data. The U.S. Treasury gave buyers of Venezuelan oil until the end of May to wind down purchases.

PDVSA and its joint ventures exported 31 cargoes of crude and fuel last month. The country’s fuel imports decreased almost 8% in the same period to 163,000 bpd....