#Mazars USA
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Donald Trump and his accounting firm have reached an agreement with the House Oversight Committee for lawmakers to receive key financial records as part of a long-running probe into his disclosures and conflicts of interest.
“After numerous court victories, I am pleased that my Committee has now reached an agreement to obtain key financial documents that former President Trump fought for years to hide from Congress,” committee chair Carolyn Maloney announced on Thursday (1 September).
The agreement follows a 2019 subpoena for financial records to his accounting firm Mazars USA, which will help the committee “get to the bottom of former President Trump’s egregious conduct and ensure that future presidents do not abuse their position of power for personal gain,” according to congresswoman Maloney.
Under the agreement announced on Thursday, Mr. Trump has agreed not to challenge an appeals court ruling from July that granted the committee access to documents under the scope of the subpoena, holding that the former President’s financial records would “advance the committee’s consideration of ethics reform legislation” – including proposed rules related to disclosing conflicts of interests and establishing safeguards against foreign interference.
The notice from Mr. Trump’s legal team filed on 30 August does not disclose terms of the agreement, only that attorneys have reached a deal with the committee. The agreement also does not affect a separate congressional probe between Mr. Trump and the House Ways and Means Committee, which is seeking tax returns from the Internal Revenue Service. Mr. Trump has fought that case, too, though a federal appeals court said earlier this month that he must hand them over.
A probe from the House Oversight Committee followed testimony from Mr. Trump’s former counsel Michael Cohen, who provided several financial statements to the committee raising questions about Mr. Trump’s debts, disclosures and alleged hush-money payments during his 2016 presidential campaign.
In March 2019, the committee sent a letter to Mazars seeking records related to the allegations raised in testimony, and a subpoena was issued the following month, triggering a three-year legal battle between lawmakers and Mr. Trump’s attorneys.
News of the agreement comes as the former President is embroiled in several congressional probes as well as the US Department of Justice investigation into his alleged mishandling of classified White House documents, potential exposure of national intelligence and “likely” obstruction, according to federal prosecutors.
A separate House Select Committee investigating the attack on the US Capitol, fuelled in part by the former President’s ongoing and baseless narrative that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him, will resume public hearings this month.
#us politics#news#donald trump#the independent#trump tax returns#internal revenue service#house ways and means committee#house oversight committee#rep. Carolyn Maloney#Mazars USA#Michael Cohen#department of justice#fbi#fbi raid#mar a lago#classified documents#top secret documents#capitol riot investigation#house select committee#2022
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Jeffrey McConney, former controller for the Trump Organization, is among the people who has testified in the bench trial for New York Attorney General Letitia James' civil fraud case against the company.
James alleges that former President Donald Trump and his company seriously exaggerated the value of its real estate assets — an allegation that Justice Arthur Engoron, assigned to the case, agreed with in a September 26 ruling. And McConney has offered testimony on the Trump Organization's operations.
Trump's legal team has claimed that McConney has insufficient knowledge where property valuations are concerned. But the Daily Beast's Jose Pagliery, in a report published on October 12, lays out some reasons why that claim is problematic.
POLL: Should Trump be allowed to hold office again?
In court, Trump lawyer Jesus Suarez told Engoron, "Objection, your honor. Mr. McConney is not a valuation expert. He's not offered as a valuation expert."
But Pagliery explains, "The idea that the Trump Organization's long-time bean counter would be oblivious to the inner workings of real estate valuations seemed implausible, given that documents presented at trial showed that he was the key conduit to getting those very valuations compiled into Trump's annual statements of financial condition. That paperwork, which was signed off by outside accountants at the firm Mazars USA, was the reason that financial institutions like Deutsche Bank and Ladder Capital extended hundreds of millions of dollars in loans to Trump."
Pagliery continues, "Those funds allowed his company to seal several marquee deals, including the purchase of the Doral golf course in South Florida and the acquisition of the Old Post Office in Downtown Washington, which briefly became a Trump hotel. The inherently contradictory nature of Trump lawyers' stance on McConney underscored the sharp contrast on display at the ongoing bank fraud trial, where James is trying to bolster a case the judge has already decided has merit while Trump lawyers combat the very premise of the investigation. When investigators point to spreadsheets, the defense either shrugs, appears confused, or claims vastly inflated values are mere differences of opinion."
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In The Soup
Director Alexandre Rockwell Stars Steve Buscemi, Seymour Cassel, Jennifer Beals, Will Patton USA 1992 Language English 1hr 36mins Black & white
Buscemi! Cassel! Pre-gentrified NYC! Black & white!
If I told you that Seymour Cassel was one of great figures in the history of American independent cinema, going all the way from working on (not acting in) John Cassavetes’ directorial debut Shadows back in 1958 up to the three films he made with Wes Anderson, that would be both true and potentially give you a misleading idea of how he paid the bills. Because while people like me remember Cassel for, say, The Royal Tenenbaums, his very extensive filmography takes in lots of episodes of TV shows (Matlock, Star Trek: The Next Generation, ER etc), garish blockbusters (Dick Tracy) and a lot very ropey-looking stuff I’ve never heard of and most likely you neither (Motel Blue? Emma’s Wish?) In short, he was a working actor, and took jobs in most of the genres, budget scales and levels of artist pretension there were in the US movies and TV in the late 20th century.
But I would be surprised if many of those shows or films created as much space for him as In The Soup.
The narrator of In The Soup - and the character who the events here happen to – is Adolfo Rollo (Steve Buscemi), who less-than-coincidentally shares his initials with the film’s writer-director Alexandre Rockwell. But the character who makes those things happen, the life and heart of In The Soup, is Cassel’s Joe.
Adolfo is a would-be director with a grand sense of his own importance and little else. He lives in a grotty Manhattan apartment and scrapes together rent money doing odd jobs and – when that doesn’t cover it – ringing his mom.
And then along comes Joe. Joe, improbably, offers to finance Adolfo’s film, despite dozing off when Adolfo tries to read him the script. Joe is middle-aged, charismatic, hedonistic. He has a sex-mad much younger girlfriend. The hitch? His many enterprises aren’t entirely legit and he wants Adolfo to help him out in return for putting up the money for the movie.
In The Soup is and isn’t the comedy that the gangster-recruits-hapless-aspiring-film-maker plot suggests. It is, in that Joe does get Adolfo involved in any number of scrapes, and some of this stuff is pretty funny. Isn’t, well, because as much as the film uses Joe to mock Adolfo’s aspirations and his constant evocations of Renoir and Tarkovsky, it also is aiming for something along else along with those laughs… and gets there at least some of the time.
It’s shot in lovely black & white - quite common for indie movies in those days because it was cheaper than colour while also signalling that you were making something distinct from Hollywood product.
The cast is a good one: Cassel and Buscemi I’ve already mentioned. There’s also Will Patton as Joe’s thuggish brother, a cameo from Jim Jarmusch (with Carol Kane). New York downtown staples Rockets Redglare and Debi Mazar* both turn up, as does Sam Rockwell, a frequent presence in his namesake Alexandre’s movies although they are not related.
Maybe the weak link is Jennifer Beals as Angelica, the neighbour Adolfo is obsessed with. This is not the fault of Beals – who was married to the director at the time (and would have been the most famous person in the cast) – but she’s doing a strong Latina-in-NYC accent (she’s not a Latina nor a New Yorker) and it’s distracting.
Still, that’s a minor gripe. I’m not sure how I didn’t see this at the time: in the 1990s I watched endless black & white indie comedies. (Not to mention films with Jim Jarmusch cameos.) The other movie with Buscemi as a frustrated low-budget filmmaker – Living In Oblivion – was a huge favourite of mine. I definitely knew of In The Soup, but guess it never turned up in the Crystal Palace branch of Blockbuster nor ran at 1am on BBC2 or Channel 4. But I’m very glad I finally caught up with it, it's ace.
*Cassel, Kane, Mazar and Rockets Redglare plus Elizabeth Bracco, who is in In The Soup but I haven't mentioned, all also appear in Buscemi's directorial debut Trees Lounge, made four years later.
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"Read this report and come back and tell me if you think Donald Trump did the right thing in converting the White House into a for profit operation.
No other President in American history has come anywhere close. And you ask why he's so determined to stay in office that he would unleash violence against his own Vice President! The brother of your colleague, of our colleague.
Why would he do that? Because it was a money making operation and it was a great business grift for a guy who went bankrupt several times. Yet out of some misguided partisan loyalty you are gonna stick with him.
I don't know why you stick with him. He was a Democrat longer than a Republican. He wanted to run for President for the Reform Party.
You guys have been taken over by an absolute con man!
And, now you guys are acting like members of a religious cult who don't even remember how you got there in the first place!"
(January 4, 2024)— Rep. Jamie Raskin, Ranking Member of the Committee on Oversight and Accountability, released a new staff report and new documents produced by Donald Trump’s former accounting firm, Mazars USA LLC, establishing that while former President Trump was in office, he received at least $7.8 million from 20 governments, including the governments of China, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Kuwait, and Malaysia, through his businesses.
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Jared Kushner & Ivanka Trump reported between $172 million and $640 million in outside income while working in the White House.
A Sordid Family Affair - Boston Globe
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Congress releases report proving Trump pocketed millions from at least 20 foreign governments as President
Trump turned the Presidency into a family grift?
WASHINGTON, D.C. —On January 4, 2024, Rep. Jamie Raskin, Ranking Member of the Committee on Oversight and Accountability, released a new staff report and new documents produced by Donald Trump’s former accounting firm, Mazars USA LLC, establishing that while former President Trump was in office, he received at least $7.8 million from 20…
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New Post has been published on https://massispost.com/2024/01/oversight-report-trump-profited-from-20-foreign-governments-including-turkey-and-azerbaijan/
Oversight Report: Trump Profited from 20 Foreign Governments, Including Turkey and Azerbaijan
WASHINGTON, DC — Rep. Jamie Raskin, Ranking Member of the Committee on Oversight and Accountability, released a new staff report and new documents produced by Donald Trump’s former accounting firm, Mazars USA LLC, establishing that while former President Trump was in office, he received at least $7.8 million from 20 governments, including Turkey and to a lesser extend Azerbaijan. This may explain the silence of the Trump administration during the second Artsakh war, where Turkey supported Azerbaijan politically and militarily. Trump had substantial pre-existing business interests in Turkey, and records from Mazars indicate continued patronage of Trump-owned properties by the…
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Mazars USA delivered an initial set of documents related to the former president’s finances to the House Oversight Committee as part of a settlement.
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THE TALIBAN
1994 TALIBAN - (Taleban) is an Islamic political movement in Afghanistan, it ruled from 1996 to 2001 – it only gained recognition from 3 states: Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. Mohammed Omar was the founder of the Taliban until his death in 2013. Mullah Akhtar Mansoor was his replacement. While in power, it informed Sharia Law (Islamic Law), they treated women with much brutality. Pakistan has been accused of continuing to support the Taliban; Pakistan states it dropped support for the Taliban after the 11 September attacks. Al-Qaeda also supported the Taliban. Saudi Arabia provided the Taliban with financial support. The Taliban and their allies committed massacres against Afghan civilians, denied food supplies to civilians, and destroyed thousands of homes. Hundreds of thousands of people were forced to flee. After the 11 September attacks, the Taliban were overthrown by the American invasion of Afghanistan. The Taliban has been using terrorism to further their ideological and political goals.
The Taliban movement's origins go back to the Pakistan-trained mujahideen in North Pakistan, during the Soviet war in Afghanistan. When Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq became President of Pakistan he feared that the Soviets would invade, so he sent Akhtar Abdur Rahman to Saudi Arabia to gain support for the Afghan resistance against forces. The US and Saudia Arabia joined with Afghanistan to stop Soviet occupation forces and helped them with funds. Zia-ul-Haq aligned with Pakistan’s Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam and later picked General Akhtar Abdur Rahman to lead the insurgency against the Soviet Union inside Afghanistan. 90,000 Afghans were trained by ISI during the 80s. The USA and UK gave aid of about 20 billion dollars in the 80s to Pakistan to train Taliban personnel and also provided them with arms and ammunition. After the fall of the Soviet regime of Mohammad Najibullah in 1992, several Afghan political parties agreed on peace. Saudi Arabia and Iran supported the Afghan militia's hostility towards each other. Iran assisted the Shia Hazara Hezb-I Wahdat forces of Abdul Ali Mazari, as Iran attempted to maximize Wahdat’s military power and influence. Saudi Arabia supported the Wahhabite Abdul Rasul Sayyaf and his Ittihad-I Islami faction. The conflict between the 2 soon escalated. These forces saw an opportunity to press their own political agendas. The Taliban emerged in south Afghanistan in Kandahar in 1994. Due to the sudden civil war, the government, and the police did not have time to form. Crimes were committed by criminals and individuals. The Red Cross (ICRC) collapsed within days.
The Taliban, while trying to control northern and western Afghanistan, committed systematic massacres against civilians. There were 15 massacres between 1996 and 2001. Arab and Pakistani support troops were involved in these killings. Bin Laden’s 005 Brigade was responsible for the mass-killings of Afghan civilians. Arab fighters went around with long knives and slit people’s throats and skinned people. Taliban’s former ambassador to Pakistan, Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef, in 2001 said that the cruel behaviour by the Taliban had been “necessary”. The Taliban denied emergency food to 160,000 hungry and starving people due to political and military reasons. In 1998, the Taliban attacked Mazar-I Sharif. Out of 1500 defenders, only 100 survived. The Taliban gained controland started to kill people randomly. They started shooting people in the street, and began to target Hazaras. They raped women, and they put thousands of people in containers and locked them in and left them to suffocate to death. This left 5,000 to 6,000 dead. 10 Iranian diplomats and one journalist were also killed. They burned orchards, crops and destroyed irrigation systems, and forced more than 100,000 people from their homes with hundreds of men, women and children still unaccounted for. The Taliban killed civilians. Istalif, was home to 45,000 people – the Taliban gave all of these people just 24 hours' notice to leave. In 1999, Bamian was taken, people – men, women, and children were all executed. There was another massacre in the town of Yakalang in 2001. 300 people were murdered. In 1999, the Taliban forced thousands of people from the Shomali Plains and other regions and burned their homes, farmland, and gardens.
Taliban and al-Qaeda ran human trafficking, abducting women and selling them into sex slavery in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The Taliban argued that the strict restrictions they placed on women were to protect them. The behavior of the Taliban made a mockery of that claim. There were women who committed suicide over slavery. In 1999 in Shomali Plains, more than 600 women were kidnapped, the women were forced into trucks and buses. The women were penned up inside a camp in the desert. The more attractive women were selected and taken away. They were sold into brothels or to private household to be kept as slaves. Not all involved with the Taliban were for human trafficking, many in the Taliban were opposed to it. One Taliban commander and his men freed women who were abducted.
The Taliban forced women into house arrest, and if they left their homes they were punished physically. The Taliban stopped women from being educated, and girls were not permitted to go to school or college. If a woman went shopping she had to be accompanied by a male relative and had to wear the burqa. If any woman disobeyed she was publicly beaten into submission. Any woman who was in public with someone who was not a relative was accused of adultery – which involved public flogging in the stadium – 100 lashes. The religious police carried out abuse on women. Women could not work, unless it was in the medical sector, because male medical personnel were not allowed to treat women and girls. The Taliban also closed down primary schools, not only female schools but male schools as well, due to teachers being female. In 1998, religious police forced all women off the streets of Kabul and issued all homes to blacken their windows, if women lived inside so women could not be seen from the outside.
The Taliban were responsible for 76% of civilian casualties in Afghanistan in 2009 and 80% in 2011. In 2008, the Taliban increased its use of suicide bombers and targeted unarmed civilians and aid workers. Female suicide bombers have become increasingly common. Schools and homes were booby-trapped, snipers shelter in houses deliberately filled with women and children. The Taliban targeted health officials that work to immunize children against polio due to fears of the vaccine. Taliban banned the vaccine and the Taliban assassinated 4 female UN polio-worker in Pakistan because they accused them of being spies.
The Taliban has a strict and anti-modern ideology, they also go by Sharia Law. They are a militant Islam group and extremist jihadists of Osama bin Laden. They are inspired by the mystical Sufis, traditionalists, and radical Islamicists inspired by the Muslim Brotherhood (Ikhwan). Under the Taliban, Islam Law – Sharia Law prohibited pork, many different technologies, alcohol, and forms of art including paintings and photos, and was against women playing sport. Men were forbidden to shave their beards and required to wear a head covering.
The Bamyan Buddhas at Bamyan were 2 6th-century monumental statues of standing buddhas carved into the side of a cliff in the Bamyan valley in the Hazarajat region of central Afghanistan. In 2001, The Taliban destroyed them with dynamite. The Taliban believed that worshiping anything outside of Islam was unacceptable and that the statues had to be destroyed.
90s 1990s THE TIME MACHINE
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New York, Trump's tax accountant is on trial
A Day in the Courtroom: The Trump Civil Fraud Trial Begins
On the inaugural day of the $250 million civil fraud trial involving former President Donald Trump in New York, the courtroom was abuzz with anticipation. The proceedings promised to unveil a wealth of insights into the financial intricacies of the former president and his business empire.
Immersed in Trump’s Financial World: The Accountant’s Testimony
The day’s spotlight shone on the first witness, Donald Bender, a seasoned tax accountant who had previously been a partner at Mazars USA. Bender’s testimony revealed the depth of his involvement in all matters concerning Donald Trump’s financial affairs.
Beyond Tax Returns: Bender’s Crucial Role
Intriguingly, Bender’s role extended far beyond the routine preparation of tax returns. He estimated that an impressive 45% to 55% of his professional hours from 2011 until his retirement were dedicated to Trump-related financial work. This encompassed not only the meticulous examination of tax documents but also a comprehensive oversight of corporate entities closely tied to Trump and his children…Read More
Source — US Business News
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..."The Constitution gives no express power to our national legislature to engage in investigations. But it has been understood since the very first Congress that the legislative body has such implied powers within Article I. The limits of those powers have been emphasized ever since — including by Trump himself.
Willis has every reason to believe any of these sensitive matters could be leaked to Trump or the public.
During his presidency, Trump and his allies, including Jordan, loudly insisted on those limitations. For example, when Congress tried to obtain Trump’s tax and financial records, Jordan proclaimed it “an unprecedented abuse of the committee’s subpoena authority.”
An emboldened Trump fought a legal battle all the way to the Supreme Court in Trump v. Mazars USA — only for the court to rule against him in a 7-2 decision. In the majority opinion, Chief Justice John Roberts noted that the “congressional power to obtain information is ‘broad’ and ‘indispensable.’” But in an important qualification directly applicable to Jordan’s demand to Willis, the court’s majority noted that a congressional information request (in that case a subpoena) is valid only if it is “related to, and in furtherance of, a legitimate task of the Congress.” Interfering with a state prosecution is not such a task.
The court also noted that such requests — when they intrude on an area of unique constitutional significance — must meet three other standards: They must not be overly broad, unsubstantiated by evidence or unduly burdensome on the recipient to comply with.
How do Jordan’s specific demands to Willis stack up under the Mazars ruling? He asks for a broad array of confidential or internal documents and communications that would not normally see the light of day, including information that could reveal strategy, witness information, internal deliberations and contacts with special counsel Jack Smith, other prosecutors and government officials. As if that weren't enough, Jordan also wants information about the office’s federal funding streams, much of which is likely completely unrelated to the Trump investigation. And given congressional Republicans’ handling of other sensitive documents, Willis has every reason to believe any of these sensitive matters could be leaked to Trump or the public.
If the House asked a federal prosecutor to provide detailed internal information about an open investigation or prosecution, the Justice Department would not comply, citing constitutional separation of powers. There are innumerable examples of such hard nos, most recently the refusal to provide information about the ongoing Hunter Biden investigation. It should not be any different for a local district attorney under principles of constitutional federalism — due regard for the states as co-equal sovereigns. The Supreme Court has repeatedly backed that up by declaring the “fundamental policy against federal interference with state criminal prosecutions.”
Jordan’s Georgia fishing expedition runs afoul of each of the four specific requirements set out by the court in Mazars. First, there is no legitimate congressional purpose here; as the timing makes clear, this letter is an effort by Jordan to support his favored presidential candidate by disrupting a good-faith prosecution on a legitimate legal basis. Although the defense is entitled to extensive discovery —as it should be — neither the defense, Congress, nor the public is entitled to information that might reveal the detailed thoughts and impressions of the lawyers investigating and prosecuting a case.
Second, the request is far broader than necessary for any legitimate legislative purpose. It requests a breathtaking swath of documents containing confidential and sensitive information that has little to do with the business of Congress — and everything to do with providing political cover for Trump, starting with counter programming his arrest.
Third, rather than being supported by “detailed and substantial” evidence, it relies primarily on unsubstantiated conclusions from dubious sources. For example, Jordan draws a nefarious inference from the fact that “the Fulton County Superior Court’s Clerk publicly released a list of criminal charges against President Trump reportedly hours before the vote of the grand jury.” But as one of us immediately recognized and wrote that day, and as the clerk has since confirmed, this was an innocent mistake. It came as a result of testing the electronic filing system to make sure it could withstand the onslaught that lay ahead in connection with this large case. These kinds of mistakes happen all the time. It just so happens that this one occurred in an exceptionally high-profile matter.
Fourth, it is entirely unclear what legislative action Congress could take in relation to the evidence Jordan seeks, other than to impede the Georgia prosecution. That would, among other things, run afoul of the 10th Amendment, which reserves such powers to the states. The Fulton County and Georgia legislative bodies have oversight over Willis, not Congress."
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Accounting Firms In Maryland
Accounting Firms in Maryland have a lot of accounting firms which facilitate many services among the Businessmen & the clients. Basically all the firms provide services like audit , tax , assurance , financial consultancy ,etc. These accounting firms have great experiences in their areas like real estate , healthcare services & many technologies. There are many Online Accounting Service Providers in Maryland State. Maryland is basically a State in the United States Country. They Hire the best accountants in the State. They also have a great emphasis on continuity of education and their members are professional in educational requirements. They fulfill the requirements independently and with professional standards. Some Accounting Firms which come in Top 20 Accounting Firms in Maryland like BDO USA in Maryland , Mazars in Maryland , Withumsmith Brown in Mayland , RSM in Maryland and Cohen & Company in Maryland,etc.
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