Now that Donald Trump has Won

That executive order is basically a direct violation of the 1st and 14th amendments. It’s fucking disgusting.

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This is what she wrote: "OLC’s review does not take account of statements made by an administration or its surrogates close in time to the issuance of an Executive Order that may bear on the order’s purpose. "

Speech from a surrogate is not official speech of the administration. Such speech would clearly fall under hearsay rules.

Edit: it’s not worth it. Trying to get some of you (not all) to see past your political blinders is pushing me into defending Trump, a position I find to be defenselessness.

RE: The disastrous and bizarrely angry and aggressive call to Australia’s Prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, from trump, there’s a theory brought up by Karin Robinson on Twitter that is incredibly plausible considering the circumstance.

So, when he made the call, he didn’t have anyone from the State department present. He only had Bannon and his son-in-law Kushner there. The theory is that he heard Turnbull was from “The Liberal party of Australia”, and being an ignorant fucking idiot, he thought this meant Turnbull was a Left-wing politician, instead of being the head of the Right-wing party. It’s also thought that he may have heard Turnbull had been part of immigration controversies in this country, and just ran with the idea that he was left wing due to the party name, without ever bothering to learn which side Turnbull had fallen on in that debate.

Think about it, with how Trump behaves towards basically anyone in the left wing - He brags, insults, and bullies, then whines on twitter. Think about how he behaved on the call - a bragging, insulting bully, and followed it up by whining about it on twitter.

Go on, tell me it doesn’t make exact and total sense, I dare you.

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Know your audience and pick your battles ¯_(ツ)_/¯

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We should be able to discuss a topic of what does or does not contribute to hearsay without assuming one of us is secretly hilter…

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I’ve watched enough Law and Order to know that’s impossible. Someone’s always hitler.

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Via ProPublica: Turns out that the trust that Trump placed his companies in is for the “Exclusive Benifit” of Donald Trump, and uses his SSN for the official ID number.

Do you have any analysis on whether that is good/bad or normal/abnormal?

Guys…

Did anyone ever call Sean Hannity?

Quick take, since I’ve still got a bunch of work to do with US corporate law before I have much else to say - It’s certainly not normal, and doesn’t resolve conflicts of interest in the slightest. The lawyer I was speaking to about this earlier today called it, and I quote, “an attempt to end-around the Emoluments clause”, as he’s not giving up his profits from the company, he’s simply deferring them until such a time that he’s legally able to collect them without risking being removed from office.

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Is there any way for him to legally extract himself from Trump Industries without incurring a tax issue? Is it even possible for him to do a blind trust when everyone knows what would be in the blind trust?

Most politicians own stocks and bonds. Such investments are easy to hand over to a blind third party to manage. The politician knows what is in the portfolio in the beginning but there is no guarantee those same investments will be there when they regain control.

In the case of Trump he owns hard tangible asetts. Even if he gives up control (board seat) everyone still knows what the asetts are. If the blind trust divests itself of a tangible asetts, again, everyone will know.

I don’t think Asetts such as Trump owns can work in a blind trust situation.

As for this particular instance, don’t all blind trusts simply defer the profits from the asetts until the blind trust is disolved? Or do they periodically pay out the profits? Asking for clarity sake.

I honestly don’t have much of an answer for you at this time, I’ll have to get back to you on that when I know more.

I’m pretty sure the legal option for Trump to avoid conflicts of interest is to sell off all his company stakes to other investors (and give up operations, of course), and then invest the proceeds in a blind trust. That’s how past Presidents have done it with their holdings, although it is much more difficult for Trump. But any situation where he can trivially get back ownership of his companies destroys the purpose of the trust being blind.

I had a friend once who had a collection of magic cards worth thousands. He decided (good for him) that he wanted out of magic. Just took too much time and money. So logically he decided he wanted to sell off his collection for, more or less the actual value of the cards contained within.

This never happened. Selling off all his cards for their value wasn’t happening. The buyer didn’t exist. People offered left and right to take individual cards and such off his hands. But getting rid of it all wasn’t happening. This guy still plays.

Trump would probably see himself in a similar situation except it’s harder to get rid of buildings and rights. Also agreeing what his assets are worth is a problem that would take longer than the duration of his presidency to solve.

I guess conflicts of interest are just no an impediment to presidency anymore. Business people of the US take note. You want to profit? Run for president and win.

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Unsolicited advice from someone who used to regularly buy and trade Magic cards for profit: If he still wants to get out, he should spend the time trading his collection up into cards people are willing to pay sticker for. Cards like Power 9, Imperial Seal, etc.; really, any card that is on the never reprint list that costs $200+ would be a good investment. Also, I hope he didn’t try to sell his collection to a store–they always buy low (50% at best)–so his best bet would be to connect with someone on MTGSalvation or another Magic forum and meet in person at an event or con.

I don’t know the details of how we went about trying to sell. Just the story he told me after the fact. One thing I’m sure of is that he definitely is no longer looking to get out. He gave up on that. I’d relay this info but we haven’t stayed in touch. The bit where I told the story left out the “Many years ago” bit.

If only this was the end goal all along…

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The Bowling Green Massacre Victims Fund