February 17, 2024

Saturday, February 17, 2024. Annette’s News Roundup.

I think the Roundup makes people feel not so alone.

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Top News of Friday.

Trump’s fraud Case in NYC ended. . . with a bang.

Trump Ordered to Pay $355 Million and Barred From New York Business.

The ruling in Donald J. Trump’s civil fraud case could cost him all his available cash. The judge said that the former president’s “complete lack of contrition” bordered on pathological.

A New York judge on Friday handed Donald J. Trump a crushing defeat in his civil fraud case, finding the former president liable for conspiring to manipulate his net worth and ordering him to pay a penalty of $355 million that could wipe out his entire stockpile of cash.

The decision by Justice Arthur F. Engoron caps a chaotic, yearslong case in which New York’s attorney general put Mr. Trump’s fantastical claims of wealth on trial. With no jury, the power was in Justice Engoron’s hands alone, and he came down hard: The judge delivered a sweeping array of punishments that threatens the former president’s business empire as he simultaneously contends with four criminal prosecutions and seeks to regain the White House.

Not only did Justice Engoron impose a three-year ban preventing Mr. Trump from serving in top roles at any New York company, including his own, but the judge also applied that punishment to the former president’s adult sons for two years and ordered that they pay more than $4 million each. One of the sons, Eric Trump, is the Trump Organization’s de facto chief executive, and the ruling throws into doubt whether any member of the family can run the business in the near term.

In his unconventional style, Justice Engoron criticized Mr. Trump and the other defendants for refusing to admit errors for years. “Their complete lack of contrition and remorse borders on pathological,” he said.

He noted that Mr. Trump had not committed violent crimes and that “Donald Trump is not Bernard Madoff.” Still, he wrote, “defendants are incapable of admitting the error of their ways.”

Mr. Trump will appeal the financial penalty — which could climb to $400 million or more once interest is added — but will have to either come up with the money or secure a bond within 30 days. The ruling will not render him bankrupt, because most of his wealth is tied up in real estate.

Mr. Trump will also most likely ask an appeals court to halt the restrictions on him and his sons from running the company while it considers the case.

“This verdict is a manifest injustice — plain and simple,” Alina Habba, one of Mr. Trump’s lawyers, said in a statement. She added that “given the grave stakes, we trust that the Appellate Division will overturn this egregious verdict.”

But there might be little Mr. Trump can do to thwart one of the judge’s most consequential punishments: extending for three years the appointment of an independent monitor who will be the court’s eyes and ears at the Trump Organization, and strengthening her powers to watch for fraud and second-guess transactions that look suspicious.

Mr. Trump’s lawyers have railed against the monitor, Barbara Jones, saying that her work has already cost the business more than $2.5 million; the decision to extend her oversight of the privately held family company could enrage the Trumps, who see her presence as an irritant and an insult.

The attorney general, Letitia James, had sought those consequences and more, asking for Mr. Trump to be permanently barred from New York’s business world. In the 2022 lawsuit that precipitated the trial, she accused Mr. Trump of inflating his net worth to obtain favorable treatment from banks and other lenders, attacking the foundation of his public persona as a billionaire businessman.

Even though the lenders made money from Mr. Trump, they were the purported victims in the case, with Ms. James arguing that absent his fraud, they could have made even more. The financial penalty reflects those lost profits, with nearly half of the $355 million — $168 million — representing the interest that Mr. Trump saved, and the remaining sum representing his profit on the recent sale of two properties, money that the judge has now clawed back.

Before the trial began, Justice Engoron ruled that the former president had used his annual financial statements to defraud the lenders, siding with the attorney general on her case’s central claim. The judge’s Friday ruling ratified almost all of the other accusations Ms. James had leveled against Mr. Trump, finding the former president liable for conspiring with his top executives to violate several state laws.

The judge’s decision for now grants Ms. James, a Democrat, a career-defining victory. She campaigned for her office promising to bring Mr. Trump to justice, and sat calmly in the courtroom during the trial as the former president attacked her, calling her a corrupt politician motivated solely by self-interest.

Her win is Mr. Trump’s second major courtroom loss in two months, following a January jury verdict in a defamation case brought by E. Jean Carroll, a writer whom he was found liable of sexually abusing. The jury penalized him $83.3 million.

And the civil fraud ruling comes as Manhattan prosecutors are set to try Mr. Trump on criminal charges late next month. He is also contending with 57 other felony counts across three other criminal cases.

But none of his legal troubles seem to have anguished Mr. Trump quite like the fraud case. During the trial, he protested its premise, pleading, “This has been a persecution of somebody that’s done a good job in New York.”

Throughout the trial, Mr. Trump’s lawyers emphasized that the fraud did not have a victim in the traditional sense, daring the attorney general to find someone who was harmed. They called as witnesses the president’s former bankers, who testified that they had been delighted to have Mr. Trump as a client. Several of them said that they had not relied on his annual financial statements, but had independently assessed his wealth.

Eric Trump and his brother Donald Trump Jr. testified as well, but their effort to distance themselves from their father’s financial statements fell flat with the judge. Justice Engoron found them liable for most of Ms. James’s accusations as well, and barred them from running any New York business for two years, a decision that will likely strike a nerve with the Trump family.

However, nothing will hurt quite as much as the financial penalty.

If upheld on appeal, it could erase the cushion of liquidity — cash, stocks and bonds — that Mr. Trump built in his post-presidential life. Mr. Trump claimed under oath last year that he was sitting on more than $400 million in cash, but between Justice Engoron’s $355 million punishment and the $83.3 million payout to Ms. Carroll, that might all be gone. If so, Mr. Trump might have to sell one of his properties or another asset to cover the payouts, in what would be a remarkable blow to the former president.

The judge’s other punishments of Mr. Trump — the three-year bar on his running a company in New York and a prohibition on his obtaining loans from the state’s banking system for the same time period — is unlikely to take a major financial toll on the former president. He can still own the Trump Organization. And although Mr. Trump has kept a hand in the family business in recent years, he has been otherwise focused on his political career.

Before the trial, the fallout from the case seemed to threaten the Trump Organization’s very existence. When Justice Engoron first ruled that Mr. Trump had committed fraud, he ordered that much of the former president’s New York empire be dissolved. But legal experts have questioned the judge’s ability to do so, and in his ruling on Friday, Justice Engoron pulled back that edict.

Instead, the judge said any “restructuring and potential dissolution” would be up to Ms. Jones, the independent monitor.

The judge also granted Ms. Jones new authority as part of an “enhanced monitorship,” and asked her to recommend an independent compliance director who will oversee the company’s financial reporting from within its ranks.

(New York Times).

Judge Engoron’s decision. 👇 92 pages.

https://static01.nyt.com/newsgraphics/documenttools/ef72526861902856/1e996397-full.pdf

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Putin murders his opposition as the world watches.

Putin killed Navalny.

Alexei Navalny, galvanizing opposition leader and Putin’s fiercest foe, died in prison, Russia says.

Alexei Navalny, who crusaded against official corruption and staged massive anti-Kremlin protests as President Vladimir Putin’s fiercest foe, died Friday in the Arctic penal colony where he was serving a 19-year sentence, Russia’s prison agency said. He was 47.

The stunning news — less than a month before an election that will give Putin another six years in power — brought renewed criticism and outrage from world leaders toward the Russian president who has suppressed opposition at home.

After initially allowing people to lay flowers at monuments to victims of Soviet-era repressions in several Russian cities, police sealed off some of the areas and started making arrests.

About 30 were detained in St. Petersburg, according to local media. Shouts of “Shame!” were heard as Moscow police rounded up more than a dozen people — including one with a sign reading “Killer” — near a memorial to political prisoners, according to the OVD-Info monitoring group. The group said arrests occurred in several other cities.

But there was no indication Navalny’s death would spark large protests, with the opposition fractured and now without its “guiding star,” as an associate put it.

Russia’s Federal Penitentiary Service reported Navalny felt sick after a walk Friday and lost consciousness at the penal colony in the town of Kharp, in the Yamalo-Nenets region about 1,900 kilometers (1,200 miles) northeast of Moscow. An ambulance arrived, but he couldn’t be revived; the cause of death is “being established,” it said.

Navalny had been jailed since January 2021, when he returned to Moscow to face certain arrest after recuperating in Germany from nerve agent poisoning he blamed on the Kremlin. He was later convicted three times, saying each case was politically motivated.

After the last verdict, Navalny said he understood he was “serving a life sentence, which is measured by the length of my life or the length of life of this regime.”

Hours after his death was reported, Navalny’s wife, Yulia Navalnaya, made a dramatic appearance at a security conference in Germany where many leaders had gathered.

She said she had considered canceling, “but then I thought what Alexei would do in my place. And I’m sure he would be here,” adding that she was unsure if she could believe the news from official Russian sources.

“But if this is true, I want Putin and everyone around Putin, Putin’s friends, his government to know that they will bear responsibility for what they did to our country, to my family and to my husband. And this day will come very soon,” Navalnaya said.

Praise for Navalny’s bravery poured in from Western leaders and others opposing Putin. Navalny’s health has deteriorated recently and the cause of death may never be known, but many of them said they held Russian authorities ultimately responsible — particularly after the deaths of many Kremlin foes.

U.S. President Joe Biden said Washington doesn’t know exactly what happened, “but there is no doubt that the death of Navalny was a consequence of something Putin and his thugs did.”

Navalny “could have lived safely in exile” but returned home despite knowing he could be imprisoned or killed “because he believed so deeply in his country, in Russia.”

In Germany, Chancellor Olaf Scholz said Navalny “has probably now paid for this courage with his life.”

Standing beside Scholz, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy — whose country is fending off Russia’s invasion — said: “Putin doesn’t care who dies in order for him to hold onto his position.”

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Putin was told of Navalny’s death. The opposition leader’s spokeswoman, Kira Yarmysh, said on X, formerly known as Twitter, that the team had no confirmation yet.

Russia’s main state TV channel interrupted its newscast to announce the death, while other broadcasters carried only terse reports.

The Russian SOTA social media channel shared video of Navalny — reportedly in a prison courtroom on Thursday — laughing and joking with the judge via video link on one of several hearings about conditions in jail.

Navalny was moved in December from a central Russia penal colony to the “special regime” facility — the maximum security level. His allies decried the transfer to the remote Arctic colony as yet another attempt to isolate and silence Navalny.

Before his arrest, Navalny campaigned against official corruption, organized major anti-Kremlin protests and ran for public office.

In Putin’s Russia, political activists often faded amid factional disputes or went into exile after imprisonment, suspected poisonings or other repression. But Navalny grew consistently stronger and reached the apex of the opposition through grit, bravado and an acute understanding of how social media could circumvent the Kremlin’s suffocation of independent news outlets.

He faced each setback — whether a physical assault or imprisonment — with intense devotion and sardonic wit. When authorities put Navalny in a tiny cell because of minor infractions — allowing access to a narrow exercise yard only in the early morning — he joked: “Few things are as refreshing as a walk in Yamal at 6:30 in the morning.”

Navalny ally Lyubov Sobol told The Associated Press that Russia’s repressive climate makes any rallies over his death risky, and “people could get long prison terms for taking part in a peaceful protest.”

In the absence of a ”guiding star” like Navalny, she said, “people will have an even greater fear of repressions, seeing the government’s impunity.”

A woman laying flowers for Navalny at a Moscow memorial said he was “the last beacon of hope for anything to change, and that hope died today. So the only thing I want to do now is cry, I have no more words.” She identified herself only by her first name, Elmira, for fear of repression.

Navalny was born in Butyn, about 40 kilometers (25 miles) outside Moscow. He received a law degree from People’s Friendship University in 1998 and did a fellowship at Yale in 2010.

He gained attention by focusing on corruption in Russia’s murky mix of politicians and businesses; one of his early moves was buying a stake in oil and gas companies to become an activist shareholder and push for transparency.

His work had pocketbook appeal to Russians’ widespread sense of being cheated, carrying stronger resonance than abstract concerns about democracy and human rights.

He was convicted in 2013 of embezzlement on what he called a politically motivated prosecution and was sentenced to five years in prison, but the prosecutor’s office surprisingly demanded his release pending appeal. A higher court later gave him a suspended sentence.

A day before the sentence, Navalny registered as a candidate for Moscow mayor. The opposition saw his release as the result of large protests over his sentence, but many observers attributed it to a desire by authorities to add a tinge of legitimacy to the race.

Navalny finished second, an impressive performance against an incumbent who was backed by Putin’s political machine and was popular for improving Moscow’s infrastructure.

Navalny’s acclaim increased after the leading charismatic politician, Boris Nemtsov, was shot and killed in 2015 on a bridge near the Kremlin.

Whenever Putin spoke about Navalny, he made it a point to never utter his name, referring to him as “that person” or similar wording, in an apparent effort to diminish his importance.

In opposition circles, Navalny was often viewed as having a overly nationalist streak for supporting the rights of ethnic Russians — he backed the annexation of the Crimean Peninsula by Moscow in 2014 although most nations viewed it as illegal — but he was able to mostly override those reservations via investigations conducted by his Fund for Fighting Corruption.

Although state-controlled TV ignored Navalny, his investigations resonated with younger Russians via YouTube and posts on his website and social media accounts. The strategy helped him reach the hinterlands far from the political and cultural centers of Moscow and St. Petersburg and establish a strong network of regional offices.

His work broadened from focusing on corruption to criticism of the political system under Putin. He was a galvanizing figure in protests of unprecedented size against dubious national election results and the exclusion of independent candidates.

Navalny got attention using pithy phrases and a potent image. His description of Putin’s power-base United Russia as “the party of crooks and thieves” gained instant popularity.

In 2017, after an assailant threw green-hued disinfectant in his face, seriously damaging an eye, Navalny joked that people were comparing him to the superhero, The Hulk.

Much worse was to come.

While in jail in 2019 for an election protest, he was hospitalized for what authorities called an allergic reaction, but some doctors said it appeared to be poisoning.

A year later, he fell severely ill on a flight to Moscow from the Siberian city of Tomsk. The plane made an emergency landing in the city of Omsk, where he spent two days in a hospital before being flown to Germany for treatment.

Doctors there determined he had been poisoned with a strain of Novichok – similar to the nerve agent that nearly killed former Russian spy Sergei Skripal in 2018. Navalny was in a medically induced coma for about two weeks.

The Kremlin vehemently denied it was behind the poisoning, but Navalny challenged that with an audacious move: releasing the recording of a call he said he made to an alleged member of the Federal Security Service, or FSB, who purportedly carried out the poisoning and then tried to cover it up. The FSB called the recording a fake.

Russian authorities then announced that while in Germany, Navalny had violated the terms of a suspended sentence in one of his convictions and that he would be arrested if he returned home.

Navalny and his wife nevertheless flew to Moscow on Jan. 17, 2021. On arrival, he told waiting journalists he was pleased to be back, walked to passport control and into custody.

Last month, he explained why he returned, saying: “I don’t want to give up either my country or my beliefs.”

Just over two weeks after his return, he was tried, convicted and sentenced to 2½ years in prison. That sparked massive protests reaching to Russia’s farthest corners and saw police detain over 10,000 people.

As part of a massive opposition crackdown that followed, a Moscow court in 2021 outlawed Navalny’s Foundation for Fighting Corruption and about 40 regional offices as extremist, a verdict that exposed members of his team to prosecution.

When Putin sent troops to invade Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022, Navalny strongly condemned it in social media posts from prison and during his court hearings.

Less than a month after the war began, he received another nine-year term for embezzlement and contempt of court in a case he said was fabricated. Last August, he was convicted of extremism and sentenced to 19 years in prison.

When a film called “Navalny” about his story won an Academy Award for best documentary in 2023, his wife told the ceremony: “My husband is in prison just for telling the truth. My husband is in prison just for defending democracy. Alexei, I am dreaming of the day you will be free and our country will be free.”

Besides his wife, he is survived by a son and a daughter.(Associated Press).

Touch to watch the President.👇

President Biden - “Make no mistake, Putin is responsible for Navalny’s death.”

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As American support falters, Ukraine signs security agreements

Ukraine’s Zelenskyy in Paris to sign security agreement with France after similar deal with Germany.

PARIS (AP) — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Friday signed a 10-year bilateral security agreement with France hours after he officialized a similar one with Germany. The agreements send a strong signal of long-term backing as Kyiv works to shore up Western support nearly two years after Russia launched its full-scale war.

Zelenskyy was greeted in Paris at the Elysee presidential palace by President Emmanuel Macron.

The agreement provides an additional package worth 3 billion euros ($3.2 billion) in military aid this year, the largest annual amount France has given to Ukraine since the war began.

“The outcome of Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine will be decisive for our interests, our values, our security and our model of society,” Macron said.

”Yes, we must further invest” to support Ukraine “at a greater scale and in the long term,” he added. Macron said he would travel to Ukraine by mid-March.

Zelenskyy’s stop in France comes after he met earlier in the day in Berlin with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who said Berlin was providing another 1.1 billion-euro ($1.2 billion) package of military aid, including 36 howitzers, 120,000 rounds of artillery ammunition and two more air-defense systems.

Ukraine signed last month its first such bilateral agreement with the U.K.

“These three agreements ... give me confidence as president that we are not alone,” Zelenskyy said in Paris.

“It’s very important that we have specific agreements with all our partners. But I would like to emphasize that this is not an alternative to the United States, we are all together,” he said.

Zelenskyy earlier said more deals were in the works with other countries. “Ukraine has never yet had more valuable and stronger documents,” he said.

The security agreements appear aimed primarily at sending a message of long-term solidarity as Ukraine has gone back on the defensive in the war, hindered by low ammunition supplies and a shortage of personnel.

“Two years after the beginning of this terrible war, we are sending a crystal-clear message today to the Russian president: we will not ease off in our support for Ukraine,” Scholz said. He put his country’s deliveries and pledges of military aid so far at a total 28 billion euros.

Macron said the agreements also show Europe’s commitments amid concerns that former U.S. President Donald Trump might return to the White House and allow Russia to expand its aggression on the continent.

“Europe’s future cannot depend on the American election,” Macron said. “This is my idea of sovereignty and strategic autonomy.”

Both the French and the German agreements, valid for 10 years, underscore Paris and Berlin’s intention to provide “long-term” military support to Ukrainian security. They say Ukraine and its partners “will work together on ensuring a sustainable force capable of defending Ukraine now and deterring future aggression in the future.”

In case of future Russian aggression, Germany, like France, “would provide Ukraine as appropriate, with swift and sustained security assistance” and modern military equipment as needed, as well as seeking agreement on imposing “economic and other costs on Russia,” the agreements state. They go on to state that Ukraine “will continue to implement an ambitious reform program,” which is essential to its ambitions to join the European Union and NATO.

The agreements follow commitments made by the world’s most advanced economies at a NATO summit in Vilnius, Lithuania, in July.

Zelenskyy’s trip came on the same day that Russia’s prison agency announced the death of Alexei Navalny, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s fiercest foe.

“Putin has already become one of the bloodiest dictators in European history, but unfortunately his journey is not over,” Zelenskyy said in Paris. “We will work with everyone in the world who is able to bring him to justice.”

On Saturday, Zelenskyy is set to attend the Munich Security Conference, an annual gathering of high-ranking security and foreign policy officials, where he plans meetings with U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris, among others.

European allies are appealing to the U.S. Congress in recent days to approve a package that includes aid for Ukraine, a $60 billion allotment that would go largely to U.S. defense entities to manufacture missiles, munitions and other military hardware that are being sent to the battlefields in Ukraine. The package faces resistance from House Republicans.

Scholz traveled to Washington a week ago to underscore the urgency of releasing U.S. funding. After meeting Zelenskyy, he renewed his appeal for Congress to release the aid.

“The U.S. is a great power, and its support is essential to the security of Ukraine and its ability to defend itself,” the German leader said. “We are making our contribution, too, but that of the U.S. should not be underestimated.”

Zelenskyy said he thinks the majority of the American population supports his country’s cause. “I expect that the United States will not ‘drop out,’” he said. “I expect that in all of this a pragmatic American approach to us, protecting the security of the world, will be found.”

Germany is now the second-biggest supplier of military aid to Ukraine after the U.S., and Scholz has called recently for other European countries to step up with more weapons deliveries.

France announced last month more planned deliveries of its Caesar artillery system to Ukraine and committed to deliver 3,000 155mm shells per month this year as well as around 40 additional long-range Scalp cruise missiles.

(Associated Press).

Navalny’s death and MAGA’s refusal to support Ukraine are now intertwined.

Touch to watch. 👇

The Guardian reported this - The apparent death of Russian anti-corruption activist Alexei Navalny has brought new urgency to the need for Congress to approve tens of billions of dollars of aid for Ukraine, Joe Biden said on Friday.

The US president put the blame for Navalny’s death squarely on Vladimir Putin, adding “I hope to God it helps” push US lawmakers to send more aid to Ukraine.

Biden said “history is watching” lawmakers in the House of Representatives, who have not moved to take up a Senate-passed bill that would send a $60bn military aid package to Ukraine, whose troops US officials say are running out of critical munitions on the battlefield.

“The failure to support Ukraine at this critical moment will never be forgotten,” Biden said. “And the clock is ticking. This has to happen. We have to help now.”

He also criticized House Republicans for letting the chamber enter a two-week recess without moving on the Ukraine funding.

“What are they thinking? My God,” Biden said. “This is bizarre, and it’s just reinforcing all of the concern – I won’t say panic but real concern – about the United States being a responsible ally.” Meanwhile, some leading Republican politicians also decried Navalny’s death, while pointing the finger at some in their own party for appearing to appease the Russian leader.

In his address on Friday, Biden said that “history is watching the House of Representatives” and a “failure to support Ukraine at this critical moment will never be forgotten. It will go down in the pages of history. It’s consequential, and the clock is ticking. This has to happen. We have to help now.”

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The hearing in Georgia.

If you watched Fani Willis’s father, the retired international lawyer John Lloyd, you know this attempt to remove Fani Willis is over but the Trump crying.

Here are the facts.

John Lloyd moved in with Fani in 2019. She had a disc jockey boyfriend then. The racist (N word), misogynist (B word) crowd threatened her at her own home. She moved, and ever since she lives her life with body and protection. Her daddy has only seen her 13 times since then because of the threats they live under. Her daddy first met Nathan Wade in 2023. John Lloyd taught her the importance of keeping cash.

Touch to watch the short version of what Fani Willis’ father said. 👇

John Lloyd, “hiding cash is a black thing”.

After Trump’s lawyers got completely DESTROYED by Fani’s father, they had the nerve to ask the judge to strike his entire testimony from the record.

He said NO.

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