Never watched the Sopranos, so I couldn’t say.
But in the real world, the IRS says you can’t deduct illegal payments but you must report illegal income. It ain’t fair, but they’re bigger than even the Mob, so what they say goes. If you don’t and they notice, well … fuggeddaboutit! 
I’d love to set a base level for what will cause Republicans to show any kind of spine regarding pardons. Is 25 too much? Pardoning his family? Selling pardons? Where is the line drawn for Republicans?
But then I realize, they won’t. They won’t set a baseline, because there never is one. There is no point beyond which they won’t go to avoid calling out Trump (and his ability to get money from idiots). For 4 years, the Republicans have been tolerating things they said they’d never tolerate, because it was done by Trump. Hell, a direct attack on democracy barely even registers with them.
So, we’ll see dozens of pardons of all kinds of people, many likely donors to his PAC or his campaign. We’ll see his family get pardons, his lackeys, his criminals, the wealthy. And no Republican will condemn them.
That’s maybe a teeny bit strong.
In another thread it was posted that a major news outlet asked every Republican congress critter about Biden’s legitimacy. Fully 10% of R congresscritters think Biden won, and fully 2% of them say they oppose Trump’s attempts to contest the election.
So it’s not “no Republicans”; it’s 2% of elected Republicans. The other 98% are proven Treasonous Bastards.
See here and the post it relies to for more:
That is pretty misleading. The fact is that the survey received 27 replies, out of which 25 stated that Biden won and 2 said Trump won. You could just as accurately say that only 2 republicans, or less than 1% think that Trump won.
But, really you can’t extrapolate from such a small sample.
The fact that the majority did not even reply is meaningless. They could have considered it irrelevant spam, or not have seen it, or have more important things to do right now. None of them are under an obligation to reply to something like this.
Sorry Peter, but that’s pretty lol. It’s 247 people. 247 would always be a ‘small sample size’. And this isn’t the Sacramento Bee, it’s the Washington Post. And there’s no ‘not hearing about this’, that’s what your media aides are for, and WaPo has little difficulty getting any politico’s attention, especially for a well-publicized effort like this.
Regardless of the sample size, 90% of the polled Senators refused to even tell their aides ‘answer it as if Biden won’. Do you think a poll of similar Democrats in, say, December 1980 would (not) respond the same to a similar WaPo poll re: Reagan’s then-recent victory over Carter? Of course not.
(And let’s ignore the fact that WaPo didn’t feel the need to conduct such a survey in 1980… or, actually, let’s not ignore this fact, for the existence of such a survey is not a good sign.)
No, you cant deduct illegal expenses.
However, you do have to report illegal income.
You can get away with just saying “other income” , you do not have to spell out "bribes’ on your tax return.
Texas AG is under investigation for numerous felonies.
Texas AG files a completely frivoulous lawsuit in the Supreme Court challenging the election results on Trump’s behalf.
Who wants to guess who’s fishing for a pardon?
Some of the charges that Ken Paxton was indicted for were state charges, so a federal pardon wouldn’t help.
Yeah, Ken Paxton is just a lousy weasel. His lawsuit is bogus. I would think Texas has no standing to sue another state for how they conduct their own elections. I sure hope the Supreme Court slaps this down hard. Yeah, I know it’s a federal election, but the Constitution leaves the mechanisms for conducting that election at the state level.
I think Paxton is more likely fishing for Trumper support. “See, I’m a good guy, I’m fighting the evil libruls.”
It’s this. Pure political theater for the mouth-breathing demographic.
I’ve voiced this opinion before, but I don’t think Trump is particularly corrupt- at least not in the way that most corrupt politicians are corrupt, the “you do something for me and I do something for you” corruption. He’s corrupt, but in a different way,
He’s a con artist. Plus, his entire MO is that he never thinks he owes anyone anything. In his mind, people shower him with gifts and favors for the privilege of giving him stuff.
Take Elliot Broidy, for example. This man devoted years of his life to Trump. He tirelessly fund-raised for him in 2016. He worked his ass off to get Trump elected.
He was recently indicted for influence peddling, for taking 9 million dollars from the Malaysian government in exchange for getting Trump to play a round of golf with the Malaysian prime minister.
But the clincher is, he couldn’t pull it off. After everything he did for Trump, years and years worth of favors, and Trump wouldn’t spend an afternoon on the golf course helping Broidy.
It’s been often written about how Trump uses the mob boss language and tactics to invoke deniability and avoid responsibility. He’ll never tell his cronies to do anything unsavory, he’ll only talk about wanting the unsavory thing done, and he knows the message will come through.
He’s the same way when he makes his promises to cronies and donors. He’ll hint, imply, infer, that he’s going to do what they want, then he gets his quid and forgets about the quo.
Remember that news story, the secret tape of the donor dinner? Remember when he promised the fine folks at Fraud Guarantee that he would “get rid” of Marie Yovanovich and there was a debate over whether he was talking about firing her or killing her?
But he did neither. He eventually fired once that action became advantageous to him, but that was like a year later. Once again, Trump’s partners-in-crime get arrested for their side of the deal, the deal where Trump never delivered his end of the bargain.
Trump just doesn’t do quid pro quo. He takes plenty of quid, but he never hands out any quo. The “selling pardons” flavor of corruption requires a certain level of honor and trust that’s just not Trump.
Which doesn’t mean that people don’t try, although I think they should’ve figured it out by now. But Trump is a good conman.
And he’s good at a different type of corruption, the kind that makes him dangerous. He bullies and coerces his staff and political allies into breaking the law, just a little bit, just this once. Except it’s never just once, and the next time it’s not so little. Fast forward a couple of years, and the executive branch and half the legislative branch of the US government has become a criminal organization.
And, at this point, he’s using his pardon power to try and secure a second term. I hope and pray that Trump is so pissed that his enablers failed to overturn the election that he refuses to pardon them all.
That whole post is spot on. He is a conman. He’s been one his whole adult life. He contractually promises to pay companies a certain amount to do a job, then stiffs then on part of the fees. He uses grounds about quality of work and satisfaction with performance, but those are just a facade - legally acceptable excuses. He knows he has better ability to pay lawyers and uses that to ensure its not worth coming after him.
He props up his name as a brand and then sells that brand. He makes up imaginary values of his net worth based on how he feels at the moment (yes, he actually said that), inflating the value to make his brand seem better.
He convinced millions of people that he cares about them and their plight, that he is their saviour, the champion of the little guy. Mr. Privilege is going to be the one to protect the people from rich and powerful.
He used his charity as and slush fund to pay off personal debts.
Now he’s ripping off his followers, telling them to donate to his legal challenges to the election, but then putting the bulk of the money into a fund to pay off election debts, campaign for later office, or pretty much just pay himself.
You raise an interesting hope that he is as shallow and vindictive in the election challenge losses and leaves his friends hanging, no pardons. But he will likely preemptively pardon a lot and give out more pardons to folks like Flynn because it is a way to garner more political power for his next big con – the post-predidency and his campaign for 2024.
I disagree. I think Trump is the most corrupt President we’ve ever had. And I mean that in the classic sense that he takes bribes.
If somebody like Elliot Broidy wasn’t able to get Trump to follow along, it’s because he failed to make it clear to Trump how Trump stood to benefit. Trump probably just wanted more money.
I’m sure there are plenty of people who’ve been burned by Trump. He takes their money and then doesn’t deliver. But most of his potential bribers are smart enough to understand who they’re dealing with make sure to agree to “half now, half when you finish the job” terms.