“Miriam Adelson’s Unfinished Business”

campaign finance

New York goes deep:

Money to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. Money to the Zionist Organization of America. Money to the Republican Jewish Committee. So much money up and down the ballot and across the globe that a candidate’s position on Israeli foreign policy — that is, a candidate’s position on a tiny country that most voters cared about not at all — determined the size of a campaign war chest. In 2005, trying a new tactic, Adelson gave $250,000 to President George W. Bush’s second inauguration. Sheldon did the same. The $500,000 combined got Adelson enough access to drop off at the White House literature about Islamic Jihad and tell Bush’s chief of staff, “I would like the president to see this.”

“It’s really amazing that we have this influence,” she said at the time. But the $500,000 did not get Adelson all that she wanted. Bush advocated for “two democratic states, Israel and Palestine, living side by side in peace and security.” Adelson has never believed in what she called the “useless mold of the so-called peace process.”…

Citizens United, ruled on by the Supreme Court in 2010, was, to Adelson, a matanat el, a “gift from God.” Liberated to give unlimited amounts to super-PACs, Adelson donated $46 million to GOP causes in the 2012 election cycle, more than twice as much as the next 15 women donors combined. The Republican Party platform was not a flawless fit. “I don’t agree with the Republican stance on abortion,” she told Hadassah magazine. “Religion shouldn’t be political. But nothing is perfect.”

The press often reported the Adelsons’ giving as Sheldon’s. But it was not just Sheldon’s. Over the course of their marriage, Sheldon made 848 campaign donations. Miriam made 717. Over his lifetime, Sheldon gave $273 million to political campaigns. Miriam, 12 years younger, has given $284 million to date….

Adelson had learned her lesson from Bush in 2005: $500,000 to an inauguration is useless; $500,000 is chump change. She and Sheldon donated $5 million to Trump’s inauguration. For the swearing-in, they sat up on the dais, a few rows behind Jared Kushner. Sheldon, then 83, looked spectrally pale, his peripheral neuropathy catching up with him. Miriam, 71, looked tanned, radiant, giddy, girlish. She snapped photos on her phone, her platinum-blonde hair glinting against her black camel-wool coat.

In the fourth year of his presidency, Trump announced his Middle East peace plan, which wasn’t really a peace plan at all. Kushner had designed it without any input from Palestinians. Netanyahu called it “the deal of the century.” Trump delivered a few pieces of the plan while still in office: He moved the U.S. Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, a clear insult to the Palestinians, as they, too, consider Jerusalem their capital. At the ceremony celebrating the Embassy’s move, Adelson beamed from the front row. That same day, at the Gaza border, Israeli soldiers killed 58 Palestinians protesting the Embassy move.

Many political-fundraising experts, including Craig Holman, Public Citizen’s chief ethics lobbyist, believe Adelson will be Trump’s top patron in 2024, as she was in 2020. What will she expect in return? Beyond unconditional support for the Israel-Hamas war, one can assume she’ll press for the unfinished items of Trump’s Israel agenda from last term. Top of that list: Israel annexing the West Bank and the U.S. recognizing its sovereignty there….

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“Time to Close the Hatch Act’s Escape Hatch”

conflict of interest laws, ethics investigations

Hampton Dellinger for Politico:

Since the Hatch Act was passed in 1939, government workers have faced strict limits on their political activity. And rightly so. Federal employees should be on the job for the public good, not partisan ends. Violators can be reprimanded, fined and even barred from federal service.

While the Hatch Act is broad on paper, a loophole has emerged in practice: senior White House personnel (including assistants to the president and others deemed commissioned officers) aren’t being subjected to the law’s full enforcement. Today, that changes.

I was recently nominated and confirmed to lead the Office of Special Counsel, the independent agency responsible for enforcing the Hatch Act for millions of federal workers. And after a careful review of past and present policies, I’m updating my agency’s enforcement approach to put an end to such differential treatment.

OSC brings Hatch Act violations to the Merit Systems Protection Board, an independent and quasi-judicial body, and the board can impose a range of sanctions if it determines the rules were broken.

But, in the past, OSC has declined to bring MSPB cases against White House officials. Instead, OSC has left the question of whether punishment should be imposed to the sole discretion of the president. This distinction creates separate and not automatically equal systems of accountability for violators, one where an independent adjudicator (the MSPB) can impose sanctions and another where it is left to the president to dole out — or not — any consequences….

And while I have great respect for the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel, I do not believe (as my office has suggested in recent years) that a 1978 DOJ opinion assessing draft legislation should be considered sufficient support for OSC to unequivocally exempt White House staff from the same Hatch Act enforcement regime other federal workers face.

As a result, I am announcing that prior OSC statements that White House officials cannot face Hatch Act enforcement in the same way other federal civilian employees do are no longer in effect. It is time to close the Hatch Act’s escape hatch….

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“RFK Jr. lists voting address at Westchester home — that’s in foreclosure and neighbors have never seen him”

Uncategorized

NY Post:

Presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. lists his residence to vote as a tony Westchester County address — which is in foreclosure proceedings for non-payment, court records show.

The independent candidate claims his voting address is 84 Croton Lake Road In Katonah, though he is not the owner of the million-dollar property-in-arrears, does not show up in resident searches for it, and some longtime neighbors — and even local authorities — were shocked at the notion it’s his home.

“No … he doesn’t live here,” a local cop insisted Sunday.

But RFK Jr. also has the same address listed as his “domicile” — or residence — on his presidential nomination petitions filed in New Hampshire in recent months, according to the records, which were obtained by The Post.

A review of voting records show RFK Jr. voted in primary and/or general elections using that New York address as recently as 2020 — and in 2018, 2016, 2014, 2013, 2011, 2010 and 2008. 

He voted by mail during the COVID-outbreak using the Croton Lake address, too.  

The legal owner of the property is Barbara Moss, the wife of longtime RFK pal Timothy Haydock, a Westchester doctor….

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“Trump at NRA convention floats 3-term presidency”

election subversion risk

Politico:

Former President Donald Trump on Saturday floated the idea of a third term if he wins in November.

“You know, FDR 16 years — almost 16 years — he was four terms. I don’t know, are we going to be considered three-term? Or two-term?” Trump quipped at the National Rifle Association annual meeting, speaking before a crowd of gun rights supporters.

Some in the crowd shouted in response: “Three.”

It’s not the first time Trump has mentioned extending his stay in the White House, an idea he suggested while on the campaign trail in 2020. His latest remarks provide more fodder for the Biden campaign, which seized on the comments as it tries to paint Trump as a threat to democracy and institutional norms.

But Trump has more recently shut down the proposition of seeking a third term, which is barred by the Constitution. And he told Time magazine in an April interview that he wouldn’t be in favor of challenging the 22nd Amendment, enacted after FDR’s presidency:

“I wouldn’t be in favor of it at all. I intend to serve four years and do a great job. And I want to bring our country back. I want to put it back on the right track. Our country is going down. We’re a failing nation right now. We’re a nation in turmoil,” he said.

Playbook:

The riff does exactly what Trump wants: riles up his base with excitement and freaks out people worried about his autocratic leanings.

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