Trump’s Legal Outlook Continues to Look Grim, Matthew Calamari Edition

As part of its criminal investigation into Donald Trump, the Manhattan district attorney’s office has, for many months now, been trying to get Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg, who knows where all the bodies are buried and could likely put the dots together for a jury, to flip. Thus far, it doesn‘t appear as if he’s done so, but the fact that Weisselberg could reportedly face charges this summer presumably ups the chances he’ll cooperate to save himself. In the meantime, though, Cyrus Vance Jr.’s office is apparently looking into another figure who may have some extremely helpful information to share.

The Wall Street Journal reports that New York prosecutors are investigating Matthew Calamari, Trump’s bodyguard turned chief operating officer, and the question of whether or not he was the recipient of “tax-free fringe benefits,” as part of their probe into the company possibly giving out such perks to employees as a way to avoid paying taxes. Calamari has reportedly lived for years in an apartment at the Trump Park Avenue building on the East Side and driven a Mercedes leased through the Trump Organization. His son, Matthew Calamari Jr., also lives in a company-owned building (Junior joined the family business in 2011 right after graduating high school and was named corporate director of security in 2017, according to a LinkedIn profile.) While neither Calamari has been accused of wrongdoing, prosecutors recently advised both men to hire lawyers, sources told the Journal, which is generally not a great sign.

Receiving benefits—such as free apartments, subsidized rent or car leases—from an employer, and not paying taxes on such benefits, can be a crime, although experts said prosecutors rarely bring cases on such perks alone…. Such a recommendation is often a sign that prosecutors’ interest in a subject is intensifying, but doesn’t mean the Calamaris will be charged with wrongdoing.

In 2019 testimony before the House Oversight Committee, former longtime Trump lawyer Michael Cohen mentioned the elder Mr. Calamari as among employees who could attest to what Mr. Cohen described as Mr. Trump’s practice of inflating his assets to insurance companies. The elder Mr. Calamari has worked at the Trump Organization for nearly four decades. He began working for Mr. Trump as his bodyguard after he tackled hecklers at a 1981 U.S. Open women’s semifinal, Mr. Calamari told Bloomberg in 2015. He said Ivana Trump, Mr. Trump’s wife at the time, asked for his name on her husband’s behalf. Mr. Calamari was ultimately promoted to chief operating officer.

In his 2004 book, Trump: How to Get Rich, Mr. Trump wrote, “After getting to know Matthew, I realized he had a lot more to offer than his job title warranted.” He described both Mr. Calamari and Mr. Weisselberg, among others, as “home-run, grand-slam people” in the acknowledgments section.

Weisselberg has not been accused of wrongdoing. Last month, The Washington Post reported that Vance’s office had assembled a grand jury that had already begun hearing evidence, a development that suggests the probe had “reached an advanced stage” after more than two years, and that charges against the ex-president could be coming.

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Sheldon Whitehouse is sorry about the rather white beach club he belongs to

Not enough to resign as a member, as he reportedly said he would when first running for Senate in 2006, but sorry this issue is coming up again nevertheless! Per The Washington Post:

Whitehouse and his family are longtime members of Bailey’s Beach Club. which is formally known as Spouting Rock Beach Association. The private club is located on Ocean Avenue in Newport, R.I., and has been described as a haven for the Vanderbilts, the Astors, and other members of America’s “ruling class.” In an interview Friday with local news site GoLocal Providence, Whitehouse was asked whether the club has any non-white members. “I think the people who are running the place are still working on that, and I’m sorry it hasn’t happened yet,” Whitehouse replied. Pressed on whether he believes such clubs should continue to exist, he told the news outlet: “It’s a long tradition in Rhode Island, and there are many of them. We just need to work our way through the issues.”

According to GoLocal Providence, during his 2006 Senate run, Whitehouse had pledged to leave the elite club. But instead, he remained a member and reportedly transferred his shares in the club to his wife, who is also a member and now one of the club’s largest shareholders…. Whitehouse, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, is among the Senate’s most liberal members and has been vocal on issues of racial equity. In a statement earlier this month commemorating the 100th anniversary of the Tulsa race massacre, he said, “We must remember the lives and livelihoods lost in that horror, and continue to strive toward racial justice.”

A spokesperson for Whitehouse, Richard Davidson, told the Post on Monday that Bailey’s Beach Club has “no such restrictive policy” regarding the race or ethnicity of its members and that it “has had and has members of color.”

Report: The American wing of the Catholic Church is pretty terrible

Its leadership—which has made a cottage industry of covering up the abuse of children—wants to block Joe Biden from receiving communion because he believes a woman shouldn’t be forced to carry a pregnancy to term. Per The New York Times:

The Roman Catholic bishops of the United States, flouting a warning from the Vatican, have overwhelmingly voted to draft guidance on the sacrament of the Eucharist, advancing a push by conservative bishops to deny President Biden communion because of his support of abortion rights. The decision, made public on Friday afternoon, is aimed at the nation’s second Catholic president, perhaps the most religiously observant commander in chief since Jimmy Carter, and exposes bitter divisions in American Catholicism. It capped three days of contentious debate at a virtual June meeting of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. The measure was approved by a vote of 73 percent in favor and 24 percent opposed.

The Eucharist, or holy communion, is one of the most sacred rituals in Christianity, and bishops have grown worried in recent years about declining Mass attendance and misunderstanding of the importance of the sacrament to Catholic life. But the move to target a president, who regularly attends Mass and has spent a lifetime steeped in Christian rituals and practices, is striking coming from leaders of the president’s own faith, particularly after many conservative Catholics turned a blind eye to the sexual improprieties of former President Donald J. Trump because they supported his political agenda. It reveals a uniquely American Catholicism increasingly at odds with Rome and Pope Francis.

Asked about the bishops’ decision on Friday, Biden said it was “a private matter and I don’t think that’s going to happen.” On Monday, White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters, “Joe Biden is a strong man of faith…. It’s personal to him, he doesn’t see it through a political prism, and we’re not going to comment otherwise on the inner workings of the Catholic Church.”

In other Trump comings and goings

On Sunday, the former president wished a “Happy Father’s Day to all, including the Radical Left, RINOs, and other Losers of the world. Hopefully, eventually, everyone will come together!” The message was reminiscent of an equally thoughtful tweet he sent in 2013 commemorating 9/11, in which he wrote: “I would like to extend my best wishes to all, even the haters and losers, on this special date, September 11th.”

Remember Ammon Bundy?

The anti-government militant who helped lead an armed occupation of federal land in 2016, which followed a separate 2014 occupation and armed standoff with federal agents alongside his father, Cliven Bundy, who’d refused to pay grazing fees? Well he’s running for governor of Idaho and sounds extremely sane:

Bundy…said he wants to defend Idaho from “Joe Biden and those in the Deep State that control him” because they “are going to try to take away our gun rights, freedom of religion, parental rights, and more and further violate the constitution in unimaginable ways even more than they’ve already done.” There is little evidence to back up Bundy’s sentiments which reflect paranoid ideas common on the US far right. Idaho, which has long had a tradition of anti-government and pro-militia sentiment, is seen as being one of the most rightwing Republican states in the U.S., especially in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic which has seen rightwing groups fight health measures like wearing masks.

Not surprisingly, Bundy was arrested twice in 2020 for leading a protest of Idaho’s stay-at-home orders at the state Capitol and was subsequently charged with criminal trespass for disrupting a meeting of the legislature. In April 2021, he was arrested again over a similar incident (pleading not guilty in one case and not yet entering a plea in the other). Earlier this month, the Idaho Republican Party said Bundy is not welcome inside the Idaho GOP, writing in a statement: “We do not support his antics or his chaotic political theater. That is not the Idaho Republican Party, and we will not turn a blind eye to his behaviors.”