Two Stories Today Show Just How Sleazy Trump Really Is

There are two more stories today that illustrate just how sleazy Donald Trump is. The first is from the indefatigable David Farenthold that tells the story of how Donald Trump simply showed up at a charity event and pretended that he was a major donor. The charity, Association to Benefit Children, had a grand opening of a nursery school designed to serve children with AIDS. Trump had never given a dime to the charity but he showed up at the opening and took a seat reserved for one of the charity’s prime benefactors. As the late Frank Gifford, a real donor, asked, “Why is he here?”. It was apparently merely to get the photo-op that would make it look like he supported the charity. Meanwhile, the charity had to spend months placating the major donor whose seat Trump filled at the event. This is just a more egregious example of Trump taking credit for charitable giving he never really made.

Over at Newsweek, Kurt Eichenwald describes the perpetual pattern of delay and evasion during his multiple lawsuits. The pattern includes the withholding and destruction of documents and emails that courts had ordered to be produced during those suits. The takeaway from the Eichenwald article is as follows, “Over the course of decades, Donald Trump’s companies have systematically destroyed or hidden thousands of emails, digital records and paper documents demanded in official proceedings, often in defiance of court orders. These tactics—exposed by a Newsweek review of thousands of pages of court filings, judicial orders and affidavits from an array of court cases—have enraged judges, prosecutors, opposing lawyers and the many ordinary citizens entangled in litigation with Trump. In each instance, Trump and entities he controlled also erected numerous hurdles that made lawsuits drag on for years, forcing courtroom opponents to spend huge sums of money in legal fees as they struggled—sometimes in vain—to obtain records…Trump’s use of deception and untruthful affidavits, as well as the hiding or improper destruction of documents, dates back to at least 1973.” Eichenwald documents specific instances where Trump employees provided untruthful affidavits, deleted emails and shredded documents while under a court-ordered discovery process, and how Trump entities always managed to have a poor or nonexistent email retention system that meant important documents could not be found. Please read the whole article for some of the shocking details about how Trump would impede and delay these lawsuits while at the same time destroying emails and documents that might be relevant.