It Sure Sounds Like Donald Trump Jr. Lied to Prosecutors Investigating the Trump Organization

When you hear about Donald Trump’s multitudinous legal woes these days, it’s typically in the context of the criminal probe being led by Manhattan district attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. Of course, that‘s with good reason—in the case of Vance, the D.A. has crucially been granted access to Trump’s much sought after tax returns, which could help his office uncover who knows how many crimes, and is reportedly working on flipping longtime Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg. But it’s important to remember that the former president is actually the subject of two other criminal investigations as well, and is facing no fewer than 29 lawsuits. And in at least one of the cases, it appears his eldest son has not been entirely straight with prosecutors.

According to Mother Jones reporter David Corn, during a February 11 video deposition in which Donald Trump Jr. swore to tell the truth, he seemingly made what one might call inaccurate claims at best and outright lies at worst. Deposed as part of a lawsuit filed by D.C. attorney general Karl Racine against the Trump Organization, the Trump International Hotel, and Trump’s 2016 inaugural committee, in which Racine alleges the groups funneled large amounts of inauguration cash into the first family’s pockets via its hotel, Mother Jones notes that Trump Jr. frequently responded to questions with “I don’t recall,” in addition to downplaying his own involvement in the preparation for his dad’s big day. Which doesn’t seem to track with the actual truth.

Per Mother Jones:

One of the clearest instances of Trump Jr. not testifying accurately came when he was asked about [Stephanie] Winston Wolkoff [a top producer for the inauguration committee]. As the lawsuit notes, during the organization of the inauguration, Winston Wolkoff, then a close friend of Melania Trump, had raised concerns with the president-elect, Ivanka Trump, and [Rick] Gates [the committee’s former deputy chair] about the prices the Trump Hotel was charging the inauguration committee for events to be held there. This included a written warning to Ivanka Trump and Gates that Trump’s hotel was trying to charge the committee twice the market rate for event space. (Gates ignored the warning, the lawsuit notes, and the committee struck a contract with the Trump Hotel for $1.03 million, an amount the lawsuit says was far above the hotel’s own pricing guidelines.) 

During his deposition, Trump Jr. was asked about Winston Wolkoff: “Do you know her?” He replied, “I know of her. I think I’ve met her, but I don’t know her. If she was in this room I’m not sure I would recognize her.” He added, “I had no involvement with her.”

Which might be a reasonable answer if not for the fact that in a video obtained by Mother Jones, Don Jr. is seen at a dinner held the night before the inauguration lavishing praise on Winston Wolkoff (and inauguration committee chair Tom Barrack) for the “incredible” work they did preparing for the event.

In fact, the dinner came up during the deposition. Asked if he attended the soirée, Junior replied, “I don’t know.” Which is pretty strange given that, in the video, he declares that it will “will go down in history.”

Of course, there’s more:

…documents obtained by Mother Jones shows there’s evidence that Trump Jr.’s claim of having “no involvement” with Winston Wolkoff was false. On January 17, 2017, an assistant for Ivanka Trump texted Winston Wolkoff and said that Trump Jr. wanted to speak to her, providing Winston Wolkoff with his cell number. That same day, Trump Jr. emailed Winston Wolkoff and asked if they could talk. He said he had a contact who “seems to have some very big talent lined up, if we wanted it” for the inauguration events. Winston Wolkoff responded in an email, saying that the inauguration committee was “locked and loaded” for all its events. And Trump Jr. replied, “Thank you Stephanie, I wanted to see if you were still possibly looking for talent. Some friends of mine that are quite big in the industry have been asking around and would be able to put together a pretty impressive roster.”

Moreover, Trump Jr. shared private moments with Winston Wolkoff during the inauguration stretch, according to Winston Wolkoff’s book Melania and Me, which chronicles her stint working for the inauguration and later for Melania on her White House staff. Two days after Trump was sworn in as president, Winston Wolkoff writes, she toured the White House with Melania (as the new first lady complained about the condition and decor of the executive mansion), and then she joined the Trumps for a celebratory dinner in the Old Family Dining Room. Around the table sat Trump, Melania, and Trump Jr. and Eric [Trump] and their wives. The new president greeted Winston Wolkoff warmly and said, “Isn’t this great. Look at this!” After the dinner, she flew home to New York City with the Trump family, minus Donald, Ivanka, and Jared Kushner. Yet Trump Jr. testified he might not recognize her. 

Junior also seemed to have trouble remembering attending an inaugural party at the Trump hotel that was apparently set up specifically for him and his adult siblings and which he allegedly overrode concerns to hold:

Regarding this particular party, Trump Jr. was asked, “There has been testimony in the record [of this case] that this event was for friends and family of the Trump children. Meaning you, Eric, Ivanka, and Tiffany [Trump]. Does that sound familiar?” He replied, “No, it doesn’t.” But then he hedged a bit: “I can only say, again, we’re probably some of the only family to ever be involved in any significant fashion in a campaign of that sort. So again the relationships that we had with donors were probably rather unique. So if there was an element of exclusivity associated, okay, it’s an event for the [Trump] kids and their friends who helped the political process, I guess that’s possible. But I don’t actually recall it, you know, being dubbed that specifically.” That is, Trump was stating that this event at the hotel he co-owned with his father, Ivanka, and Eric—financed by the nonprofit funds of the inauguration committee but not open to the public and not attended by the new president—was not really a party for him and his siblings.

But an email Gates sent to Ivanka Trump on January 11, 2017, that was obtained by Mother Jones shows that the party was indeed organized for Trump Jr., Eric, and Ivanka. “There will be an after party at the OPO [the Old Post Office, a.k.a the Trump Hotel] following the inaugural balls on Friday,” Gates wrote. “DJT is not expected to attend but was more for you, Don and Eric.”

In recently submitted legal filings in the case, Racine provides more evidence this was indeed a private affair for the Trump children and hotel guests. “Attendance was by invitation only, and guests were limited to friends and family of the President-elect and guests of the Hotel,” he maintains in one filing. And he adds, “Incredibly, the final decision to proceed with the event was not even made by the [inauguration committee], but by Donald Trump, Jr.”

Junior also indicated during the deposition that he had not worked with the inaugural committee’s fundraising arm, despite the fact that Sara Armstrong, who served as the CEO of the inauguration committee, said in a deposition that Don Jr. was “loosely connected with our finance committee” and attended “at least one” meeting of its meetings. Neither Trump Jr., his lawyers, nor the Trump Organization responded to Mother Jones’s requests for comment. When the lawsuit was filed in January 2020, a spokesperson for Trump Hotels said in a statement that “the rates charged by the hotel were completely in line with what anyone else would have been charged for an unprecedented event of this enormous magnitude.”

Last December, after the news had broken that she had sat for a five-hour deposition, an extremely testy Ivanka Trump took to Twitter to insist that the D.C. suit was a politically motivated witch hunt, to which Racine responded: “We filed suit after gathering evidence that the Presidential Inaugural Committee knowingly entered into a grossly overpriced contract with the Trump Hotel. Any claim to the contrary is incorrect. DC law requires nonprofits to use funds for stated public purposes, and to avoid unreasonable, wasteful expenses. Our investigation revealed the Committee willfully used nonprofit funds to enrich the Trump family. It’s very simple: They broke the law. That’s why we sued.”

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Florida private school accidentally makes the argument that students’ tuition would be better spent elsewhere

Like, say, a place where the people in charge understand basic science. Per The New York Times:

A private school in the fashionable Design District of Miami sent its faculty and staff a letter last week about getting vaccinated against COVID-19. But unlike institutions that have encouraged and even facilitated vaccination for teachers, the school, Centner Academy, did the opposite: One of its cofounders, Leila Centner, informed employees “with a very heavy heart” that if they chose to get a shot, they would have to stay away from students. In an example of how misinformation threatens the nation’s effort to vaccinate enough Americans to get the coronavirus under control, Ms. Centner, who has frequently shared anti-vaccine posts on Facebook, claimed in the letter that “reports have surfaced recently of non-vaccinated people being negatively impacted by interacting with people who have been vaccinated.”

“Even among our own population, we have at least three women with menstrual cycles impacted after having spent time with a vaccinated person,” she wrote, repeating a false claim that vaccinated people can somehow pass the vaccine to others and thereby affect their reproductive systems. (They can do neither.)

Per the Times, Centner, who cofounded the school with her husband despite seemingly having spent little to no part of her career in education, told employees their options were to (1) tell the school if they have already been vaccinated to ensure they will be physically distanced from students, (2) inform the school if they plan to get the vaccine before the end of the school year “as we cannot allow recently vaccinated people to be near our students until more information is known,” or (3) wait until the school year is over to get their shot(s). According to the letter, teachers who choose to get vaccinated over the summer will not be allowed to return until clinical trials are completed, and then only “if a position is still available at that time.” (A form teachers are required to fill out threatens legal action if they do not answer questions about their vaccinations accurately.)

In a statement, Centner’s publicist told the Times, “We are not 100 percent sure the Covid injections are safe and there are too many unknown variables for us to feel comfortable at this current time.” Of course, as the Times notes, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the World Health Organization, the Food and Drug Administration, and many other authorities on the matter have already concluded that the COVID-19 vaccines authorized for emergency use in the U.S. are both safe and effective.

Not surprisingly, per the Times, the Centners are Trump supporters whose school, which opened in 2019, supports “medical freedom from mandated vaccines” and invited famed anti-vaxxer Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to speak to students this past February. Also, these are the Centners:

Who are you gonna trust—leading medical professionals or blue eye shadow over here? It‘s a tough call!

Capitol rioter makes curious case for why he should be released on bail

Stop us if you’ve heard this one before (you’ve never heard this one before). Per Insider:

An Arkansas man arrested and charged in connection to the Capitol insurrection is arguing slang semantics in a new request for bail. Richard “Bigo” Barnett, a self-described white nationalist who posed for a now infamous photo in House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office during the January 6 insurrection, denied allegations that he left a note on Pelosi’s desk calling the California lawmaker a certain offensive name, in a filing for bail modification made last week. Barnett says he called Pelosi a “biatch,” a “less offensive” slang word for “bitch,” according to his attorneys.

In the Friday filing, Barnett’s defense team accused federal prosecutors of misquoting the defendant’s note to Pelosi in a “deliberate attempt to mislead the Court” to ensure Barnett remains detained ahead of his trial. In the government’s opposition memorandum filed earlier this month, prosecutors quoted the letter Barnett is accused of leaving for Pelosi: “Nancy, Bigo was here, you bitch.” Barnett’s attorneys claimed the government misrepresented the defendant’s message to Pelosi.

“The written note, however, says, ‘Hey Nancy Bigo was here biatd,’” the bail motion said. “It does not say ‘you’ or ‘bitch’ or have any commas; and the word ‘Hey’ is intentionally omitted. A footnote in the filing went on to say that the “d” in the word in question was meant to be two letters, “c” and “h,” with the two connected to spell the word “biatch.”

In the filing, Insider notes, the defense insists that “biatch” is a “less offensive word for bitch,” and includes a link to idioms.thefreedictionary.com/biatch, which defines the term as “rude slang” and a “variant of ‘bitch,’ used as a term of endearment or disparagement for another person.“ Unfortunately for ole Bigo, in a video taken the day of the insurrection, he is seen literally telling New York Times reporter Matthew Rosenberg, “I left her a note on her desk that says ‘Nancy, Bigo was here you bitch’.”

In addition to the threatening message, prosecutors have argued that Barnett, who has pleaded not guilty, is a danger to the public and should be held in jail pending his trial, based on the stun gun he brought to the Capitol on January 6, allegations that he destroyed evidence once he returned to his Arkansas home, and “provocative and dangerous conduct” leading up to the riot.

Take notes, Mr. Oscar!

Elsewhere!

CDC says fully vaccinated Americans can go without masks outdoors, except in crowded settings (Washington Post)

U.S. to share up to 60 million vaccine doses amid pressure to aid desperate countries (Washington Post)

“This Is a Catastrophe.” In India, Illness Is Everywhere (NYT)

Biden to sign executive order raising federal contractors’ minimum wage to $15 an hour (NBC News)

Google’s and Microsoft’s Profits Soar as Pandemic Benefits Big Tech (NYT)

Biden Seeks $80 Billion to Beef Up I.R.S. Audits of High-Earners (NYT)

Super League backer JPMorgan admits it “misjudged” reaction from fans (NYP)

“WW2 bomb” found in Bavarian forest was sex toy, say officials (Guardian)

For Extra Days Off, Officials Say, Couple Had 4 Weddings and 3 Divorces (NYT)

“Nobody’s food was safe when Luciano Pavarotti was around” (NYP)

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