Job openings have fallen to the lowest level in several years at 9.6 million, from a recent high of 10.3 million. The number of employees quitting jobs fell to 3.8 million from 4.1 million, while applications for unemployment fell for week ending August the 12th. Mixed signals from the labor front.
One of the more interesting stories about Mr. Trump, although we are inundated by stories about the various indictments, dealt with how he uses donations whether to his campaign or to his “PAC’s”. He is also seeking to recover from one of his PAC’s, money that had been transferred to it to the tune of $60 million. He is using the money to pay his legal bills, so you have these supporters, many of whom are not wealthy people, contributing small amounts of money that obviously aggregate to large amounts of money, and Mr. Trump is using them to pay his legal bills. He claims to be a billionaire. If that is true, what am I missing? And certainly, what are his supporters missing? This may be his worst fraud because he has convinced supporters that he will do things for them if reelected, but then isn’t using the funds to help him get reelected.
The Georgia investigation and inditement has always seemed the strongest potential case against Mr. Trump. If it is retained in state courts, as opposed to being moved to Federal Court, there is a strong likelihood that this could be the worst-case scenario for Mr. Trump for a wide variety of reasons. The case is likely to proceed quickly to trial, and if convicted he would be in a position where even if he was elected President, he could not pardon himself (assuming that is a possibility under Federal law) and he is not eligible to be pardoned in Georgia for five years. It will be also interesting to see how many indicated co-conspirators eventually take deals, whether that is full immunity or some limitation on sentencing as the pressure mounts.
As a follow-up to my comment above, the potential for removal to the Federal Courts is helpful to Mr. Trump in some ways, however, the inditement will still stand and a Federal Court will have to proceed on the inditement as drafted. The issue of whether or not these Defendants acted under the color Federal law versus their activities being criminal in nature at the State level and therefore not protected, much like many of the decisions made about the attorneys in the various Trump investigations where the attorney/client privilege was disregarded because what they were talking about was, in fact, a crime or crimes.
China’s recent disclosure of economic data caused the S&P 500 to slump, along with the Dow and the Nasdaq. The anticipated growth in the Chinese economy after the relaxing of the COVID restrictions has not come to fruition, and China has been forced to lower key interest rates, and skip the report on how many of its younger workers are unemployed. This is an issue worth following.
The Smithsonian has disclosed that they have substantial cache of human brains and other bones. The story here is that at least the brains were collected from black people, indigenous people and other minorities, all as part of a “research” project that was attempting to support a form of white supremacy and racism. It will be interesting to see how the Smithsonian deals with this, and whether, in fact, these remains will be returned to the families of the decedents that they came from. It never ceases to amaze.
The raid on the Marion County Record located in Marion, Kansas is the latest offshoot in my view of Trump mania. Trump bashed the media, the news, and in the process generally lowered the regard that his supporters have for reporting the facts with integrity. I agree he has legitimate complaints against the national news, but the rest of us have legitimate complaints against Fox News and other conservative outlets because they don’t tell the truth either. Fortunately, the District Attorney has determined that the Affidavit supporting the search warrant was insufficient as a matter of law to support it, and is thus returning “all” of the materials that were seized. The pretext under which the police operated, with apparently no evidence, was that the newspaper or its reporters were actually involved in any identity theft is very troubling. How did we get this far off the rails?
Bill Owens is a former member of Congress representing the New York 21st, a partner in Stafford, Owens, Piller, Murnane, Kelleher and Trombley in Plattsburgh, NY and a Strategic Advisor at Dentons to Washington, DC.
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