Oops: The Trump Organization Kept Literal Spreadsheets of Its Crimes

In life, a good rule of thumb is to not engage in the sort of behavior that could result in being charged with numerous felonies; in other words, don‘t do crimes. But if you’re going to ignore that rule, and you don’t want to spend years in prison, another piece of advice is to not leave such an obvious paper trail of said crimes that you might as well have stuck a Post-it note on a stack of files that reads, “Hey, everybody, come check out all the laws I’ve been breaking! It’s all right here! Get the handcuffs ready!” Which, based on the indictment unsealed in a Manhattan courtroom today, is basically what the Trump Organization and its longtime CFO did, for more than a decade. Whoops!

Yes, in a turn of events perhaps unsurprising given Donald Trump‘s frequent pronouncements that he‘s “like, really smart,” it appears that not only did the Trump Organization and Allen Weisselberg engage in so many scams that they were hit with a whopping 15 criminal charges—including conspiracy, grand larceny, and multiple counts of tax fraud and falsifying records—but they were really, really stupid about it. Despite the fact that Weisselberg and the company were very effective at (allegedly) hiding all sorts of income from the Internal Revenue Service—largely through fringe benefits like apartments, cars, and private school tuition the Trump Org paid for that were never declared as income—they apparently never envisioned a scenario in which they would be investigated, hence the decision to keep meticulous records of all the taxes they were allegedly dodging. (In total, Weisselberg was accused of dodging taxes on $1.7 million worth of perks.)

As one delightful section of the indictment reads:

Weisselberg caused the Trump Corporation to issue corporate checks made payable to a Trump Organization employee who cashed the checks and received cash. The cash was given to Weisselberg for his personal use. The Trump Corporation booked this cash as “Holiday Entertainment,” but maintained internal spreadsheets showing the cash to be part of Weisselberg’s employee compensation.

Oops! Great work, dummies! Here’s another fun example:

For certain years, the Trump Organization maintained internal spreadsheets that tracked the amounts it paid for Weisselberg’s rent, utility, and garage expenses. Simultaneously, the Trump Organization reduced the amount of direct compensation that Weisselberg received in the form of checks or direct deposits to account for the indirect compensation that he received in the form of payments of rent, utility bills, and garage expenses. The indirect compensation was not included on Weisselberg’s W-2 forms or otherwise reported to federal, state, or local tax authorities, and no income taxes were withheld by the corporate defendants in connection with the indirect compensation.

Weisselberg, who pleaded not guilty on Thursday alongside the ex-president‘s business, is now facing more than a decade in prison, if convicted on all charges. And while prosecutors are presumably still hoping he’ll flip and testify against Trump, according to former Trump Organization attorney Michael Cohen, the government will still be able to make its case without him:

If you would like to receive the Levin Report in your inbox daily, click here to subscribe.

The Supreme Court gives voter suppression the green light

Nothing to see here, just the high court‘s conservative justices declaring it‘s A-OK for states to disenfranchise minority voters. Per The Washington Post:

The Supreme Court on Thursday upheld two Arizona voting restrictions that a lower court had said discriminated against minority voters, a ruling that suggests that it will be harder to challenge a spate of new laws passed by state legislatures in the aftermath of the 2020 election. Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. wrote the opinion in the 6-to-3 ruling, with the court’s conservative majority in charge. The court’s liberals joined an opinion by Justice Elena Kagan protesting that the decision weakens the shield provided by the Voting Rights Act (VRA), first passed in 1965 to forbid laws that result in discrimination based on race.

Liberal election law experts said the decision is part of a pattern in which the Supreme Court has systematically weakened legal protections for minority voters. “The conservative Supreme Court has taken away all the major available tools for going after voting restrictions,” said Richard Hasen, an election-law expert at the University of California at Irvine. “This at a time when some Republican states are passing new restrictive voting laws.” He said the court “makes it harder to prove intentional racial discrimination in passing a voting rule,” which is likely to affect the Biden Justice Department’s newly filed complaint about Georgia’s new voting laws.

Responding to the news, Joe Biden said in a statement: “I am deeply disappointed in today’s decision by the United States Supreme Court that undercuts the Voting Rights Act, and upholds what Justice Kagan called ‘a significant race-based disparity in voting opportunities.’ In a span of just eight years, the Court has now done severe damage to two of the most important provisions of the Voting Rights Act of 1965—a law that took years of struggle and strife to secure.”

Team Trump rolls out strangely named social media network that looks a lot like Twitter but worse

Will GETTR be scrubbed from existence as quickly as Trump’s blog? Stay tuned! Per Politico:

The site, called GETTR, advertised its mission statement as “fighting cancel culture, promoting common sense, defending free speech, challenging social media monopolies, and creating a true marketplace of ideas.” The app is currently in beta form and will be officially launched on July 4 at 10 a.m.

Trump’s former spokesman, Jason Miller, is leading the platform, he confirmed via text. Former Trump campaign spokesperson Tim Murtaugh is involved as a consultant on the app. Trump’s involvement with the project is unclear as is whether or not he will set up an account on GETTR and use it. “The former president is going to make his own decision, it’s certainly there and ready for him should he make the decision—we would welcome that. There is an account reserved for him and waiting for him but that’s a decision for him to make,” said a person involved with the app.

In an interview, Miller told Fox News that GETTR uses “superior technology” and, even more hilariously, that the conservative hellscape will “be the envy of the social media world.”