Tag: trump organization
Bad News For Trump's New (Made In China) Smartphone Venture

Bad News For Trump's New (Made In China) Smartphone Venture

Earlier this week, the Trump Organization (President Donald Trump's family-run business) unveiled its latest business venture – a smartphone that the company says is made in the United States. But that's an impossible feat, according to one American smartphone manufacturer.

ABC News reported that Trump Mobile will soon roll out a new phone dubbed the "T1," which its selling for $499 apiece. The company is offering plans for $47.45 per month (a nod to Trump being the 45th and 47th president of the United States) and promises to use the same communication networks that the biggest three cell service providers rely on for their coverage (Verizon, T-Mobile and AT&T). CNBC reported that the phones will likely be made in China.

And according to Todd Weaver, who is the founder and CEO of Purism — the only smartphone manufacturer based in the U.S. — there's no way to end-run China in the supply chain. Weaver told NBC News on Wednesday that making a phone entirely in the United States costs a lot more than what the Trump Organization is aiming to get for the T1 phones.

Purism's Liberty phone, which costs $2,000, has a higher price tag than the iPhone 16 Pro, and only half of its memory capacity. It's also significantly thicker, and users are somewhat limited in the number of apps they can install on the device. And Weaver said that while approximately 90 percent of the phone's components come from the United States, Canada and Europe, a crystal that makes the device's motherboard work is only available in China.

"There just isn’t a company yet providing that single crystal," Weaver told NBC.

Weaver also said that it took approximately six years from the time Purism was founded in 2014 to the point where it could start manufacturing phones, whereas Trump Mobile has promised to build a phone from scratch in the United States and begin selling it this August. The Purism CEO added that Trump's mercurial approach toward imposing tariffs makes it very difficult for business owners like him to adapt to an economic climate that's constantly in flux.

“It’s terrible,” Weaver said. “If you have no idea, and you can’t predict [the policy], it’s very hard for any company, for any business owner. From t-shirts, textiles, to high tech, it is very hard to make a long term business decision when you’re in a whipsaw.”

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

Trumps Grifting Off New Saudi Golf Deal While America Isn't Looking

Trumps Grifting Off New Saudi Golf Deal While America Isn't Looking

Many critics of President Donald Trump accuse him of using the presidency to promote his business interests — a claim that Trump and his allies vehemently deny, insisting that Trump maintains a strict separation between the White House and the Trump Organization. President Trump's defenders maintain that he is careful to distance himself from the Trump Organization, now being run by his son, Eric Trump.

But Mohamad Bazzi, a journalism professor at New York University and former Middle East bureau chief for Newsday, argues that a proposed deal between two rival golf tournaments — PGA Tour in the United States and the Saudi Arabia-funded LIV Golf — is a "potential conflict of interest" for the U.S. president.

Bazzi, in an op-ed published by The Guardian on February 28, argues, "If concluded, the deal would directly benefit Trump's family business, which owns and manages golf courses around the world. And it would be the latest example of Trump using the presidency to advance his personal interests.

Bazzi notes that on February 20 at the White House, Trump hosted a meeting between PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan and LIV Golf Chairman Yasir al-Rumayyan. The LIV head, Bazzi adds, also manages Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund.

"A day before his latest attempt at high-level golf diplomacy," Bazzi observes, "Trump travelled to Miami to speak at a conference organized by the Saudi Public Investment Fund — which is managed by Al-Rumayyan but ultimately controlled by the kingdom's de facto ruler and crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman. Trump's sports diplomacy in the Oval Office and cozying up to Saudi investors in Miami did not get much attention compared with his whirlwind of executive orders and new policies. But these incidents encapsulate Trump's transactional and corrupt approach to governing — and the ways that wealthy autocrats, including Prince Mohammed, will be able to exploit the U.S. president."

The NYU journalism professor points out that in December, the Trump Organization "announced several real estate projects in Saudi Arabia, including a Trump Tower in the capital, Riyadh, and another $530m residential tower in the city of Jeddah."

"Today, the president is trying to reap more benefits based on his protection of Prince Mohammed — beyond what Kushner and the Trump Organization have already amassed from Saudi investments during Trump's time out of office," Bazzi argues. "Trump is corrupting the presidency by using it to negotiate international golf agreements and other deals that will ultimately enrich his family — and hardly anyone is objecting."

Reprinted with permission from Alternet

Ivanka Trump Tried To Dodge Her Court-Appointed Financial Monitor

Ivanka Trump Tried To Dodge Her Court-Appointed Financial Monitor

Ivanka Trump, daughter and ex-aide of former President Trump, tried and failed to keep her finances — and hers only — away from the prying eyes of a court-appointed financial monitor tasked with scrutinizing the Trump Organization’s transactions and those of entities connected to it, The Daily Beast reported Monday, citing anonymous sources.

According to the Beast, Ivanka Trump’s attorneys sent private letters to Justice Arthur Engoron, the New York state judge who ordered the financial supervision in the state’s ongoing lawsuit against the Trump company, asking to be exempt from the monitor’s scrutiny, a step her brothers, Don. Jr. and Eric, didn’t take.

Engoron summarily ignored Ivanka’s private plea and — in a bold ruling on Thursday — said the Trump Organization had just two weeks to provide "a full and accurate description of the corporate structure” to the monitor, retired judge Barbara Jones, giving her a window into the company’s “financial disclosures to any persons or entities."

The Trump family must also provide the judge a 30-day advance notice before moving any assets, Engoron ruled, citing the audacious founding of a Trump Organization II in Delaware, “the shell company capital of the country,” according to the Beast.

New York Attorney General Letitia James requested a monitor to supervise the Trump family company’s finances until her civil suit against the organization — the culmination of her three-year-long investigation into its business practices — goes to trial.

In her over 200-page-long filing, James’ office alleged widespread fraud by Trump, his company, and the offspring he made its executives — participants in an over ten-year-long effort to bloat the former president’s finances to get favorable loan agreements.

Seeking $250 million in penalties from the Trump Organization, in a motion filed last month, James asked for the company to be barred from offloading its assets ashore and conducting any kind of “significant fraudulent and illegal business,” ensuring that “funds are available to satisfy any disgorgement award.”

Ivanka Trump — who has sought to distance herself from her father’s political operations, most recently his announcement of a 2024 presidential bid— is a defendant in James’ suit even though her name hasn’t come up in recent court hearings, the Beast noted.

“I love my father very much. This time around, I am choosing to prioritize my young children and the private life we are creating as a family,” Ivanka told Fox News, excusing her absence from her father’s announcement. “I do not plan to be involved in politics.”

In the Trump family’s attempt to stave off Engoron’s ruling via appeal filing, Ivanka’s lawyers made a personal argument to get her off the hook, saying that she had not been involved with the company for over five years.

“Ms. Trump submits this separate affirmation to set forth with specificity the reasons why the trial court erred in including Ms. Trump in the Order in her individual capacity… there was no legal or factual basis to issue the Order against Ms. Trump,” her lawyers argued.

“Ms. Trump has had no involvement for more than five years… Ms. Trump has had no role as an officer, director, or employee of the Trump Organization or any of its affiliates since at least January 2017… NY AG never intended to impose an injunction against Ms. Trump,” the attorneys added.

In her tenure as a White House adviser, Ivanka Trump raised myriad ethics red flags, and as a Trump Organization executive before that, she was — as described by James in a court filing for Ivanka’s refusal to testify in January — a "key player in many of the [Trump company’s] transactions."

Weisselberg Will Testify Against Trump Companies in Reported Plea Deal

Weisselberg Will Testify Against Trump Companies in Reported Plea Deal

Allen Weisselberg, the ex-Trump Organization CFO who has worked for the former president’s family since 1970, is expected to plead guilty to 15 felonies and “criminally implicate” the real estate empire.

“The Trump Organization’s longtime chief financial officer will admit to conspiring with the Trump Organization and Trump Payroll Corporation in a 15-year tax fraud scheme while head of the company’s finances at a Manhattan Supreme Court hearing on Thursday,” the Daily News reports. “Allen Weisselberg is expected to criminally implicate Trump’s family real estate business when he pleads guilty to criminal tax fraud charges, a source familiar with the matter told The News on Wednesday.”


Weisselberg is also expected to agree to testify against the Trump companies, and agree to a five-month sentence at Rikers Island, the horrific New York City jail that is slated to be shut down by 2026.

Rolling Stone adds that Weiselberg “will say in Manhattan court Thursday that he conspired with several of the ex-president’s companies when he pleads guilty to state tax crimes.”

The New York Times calls the impending plea deal “a serious blow to the company that could imperil its chances in an upcoming trial.”

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

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