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What are the chances employees take action to trigger lawsuits against their employer? Trump so far has won/settled probably 50% of his defamation cases with a few still in progress that he'll likely win.Trump is suing the Wall Street Journal for $10 Billion for LIBEL !!! over a Birthday card WSJ alleges he sent to Epstein. According his (sockpuppet) lawyers its either non existent or a fake. (Could it be both at teh same time ? Certainly in Trumpland anything is possible..
The fact that the Wall Street Journal is deeply conservative and a flagship for Rupert Murdoch makes this even more interesting.
What are the chances this Birthday doesn't exist or is a fake ? This analysis kills this pretty comprehensively.
1. Enigmas and Secrets
Before we start, a few thoughts about the WSJ story on Trump’s alleged letter to Jeffrey Epstein.
Trump has three possible defenses:
Until yesterday, Trump had held to #1, insisting that he barely knew Epstein. The Journal story makes that inoperable, so he’s moved on to #2.
- The letter doesn’t exist.
- The letter is a fake.
- The letter doesn’t mean anything.
“The letter is a fake” line can’t hold up, for the following reasons:
Which means that at some point Trump will have to pivot to claiming that his alleged letter doesn’t mean anything.
- It’s part of a collection of similar letters, which are in the process of being authenticated. If the entire book was a bunch of fakes, that would be one thing. But the proposition that Trump’s is the only fake in the bunch? Dog won’t hunt.
- Who is supposed to have done the forgery? Ghislaine Maxwell? Why? What was her motive? Or does Trump mean to suggest that Maxwell was duped by someone else who forged the fake letter and passed it off to her as genuine? Which would mean it was someone in Trump’s office—a trusted assistant or secretary—who claimed to have been delivering a Trump letter to Maxwell, but who instead had concocted a forgery? This also makes no sense.
- The only other possibility is that it’s the Wall Street Journal that faked the letter. This won’t hold, either. There are too many sources for this story and too much evidence.1
Will he get away with it?
I don’t know. The fact that he’s shifted his story rather than telling the whole truth is a problem. Also a problem is that this story comes from a Rupert Murdoch-owned newspaper.
Fox News is a key part of Trump’s defensive perimeter. I trust that Fox will ignore the story as hard as it possibly can. But will Rupert’s Fox attack the credibility of Rupert’s Journal? I doubt it.2
So the next phase of this story will be the Trump pivot to insist that the “secrets” and “enigmas” he mentions in the alleged letter don’t have any meaning. That they’re just poetic nonsense, or locker-room talk.
Sarah and I taped a Secret Podcast about all of this at Zero Dark Thirty. It’s pretty good. I even have my own little conspiracy theory as to who might be behind this story.
The show is here for Bulwark+ members.
1
For example: The Journal reports that the letter was part of a collection bound by New York City bookbinder, Herbert Weitz, according to people who were involved in the process. Weitz, who died in 2020, listed Epstein as a client on his website in 2003.
This kind of third-party involvement will be hard to discredit.
2
This is a funny example of how Fox is a propaganda outlet and not a news organization. I suspect that many of the “journalists” at Fox will want to defend Trump by attacking the WSJ. But they understand what their owner expects and they recognize that they have zero independence from ownership.
America Is a Good Place and Worth Fighting For
Plus: Trump's letter to Jeffrey Epstein.www.thebulwark.com
I agree they were abandoned - but I think they why is more directly because they have no backbone and can't make decisions unless management consultants and lobbyists tell them what to think. Europe coulda smashed Russian aggression in Ukraine with what they had...if they wanted to... Poms love dark Russian money in London too much to do anything.Well Europe has at least publicly been exposed by Russia, as being unable to do anything to curb Russia's expansionary policies and the EU has committed to improving its defensive capabilities.
That in itself, is a whole lot better than what has been happening for the last 3 years, where Ukraine has been basically abadoned by its neighbours, because they are in no position to apply any pressure on Russia.
Well it is a lot better, than was happening pre Trump.I agree they were abandoned - but I think they why is more directly because they have no backbone and can't make decisions unless management consultants and lobbyists tell them what to think. Europe coulda smashed Russian aggression in Ukraine with what they had...if they wanted to... Poms love dark Russian money in London too much to do anything.
Still I hand it to Trump. Looks to me like he's just getting them to pay for more American weapons rather than the American taxpayer? But that feels too easy of a deal.
Columbia agrees to pay more than $300m to settle Trump fight
Protesters wave Palestinian flags on the West Lawn of Columbia University in April 2024. Picture: AFP
Columbia University has reached a deal with the Trump administration, ending a high-stakes confrontation that disrupted the US higher-education industry and sparked a contentious renegotiation of academia’s relationship to the federal government.
As part of the deal, Columbia will pay $US200m ($302m) to the federal government over three years to settle allegations that the school violated antidiscrimination laws.
The school also agreed to settle investigations brought by the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission for $US21m.
In return, the Trump administration will restore nearly all of the hundreds of millions of dollars in research grants it had pulled from Columbia in March. The school will also be able to access federal funding in the future.
The deal does not include a consent decree, which the Trump administration initially pursued.
That would have given a federal judge responsibility for ensuring Columbia changes its practices.
Instead, a “jointly selected independent monitor” will assess Columbia’s compliance with the terms of the resolution.
The federal government cancelled $US400m in grants and contracts in March, charging that the university had violated civil-rights laws by ignoring what it determined was harassment of Jewish students after the Hamas attacks against Israel on October 7, 2023.
The Trump administration’s battle with Columbia was the first of a series of broadsides against elite research universities that depend on federal funds to operate.
It helped fulfil a campaign promise made by President Donald Trump to rein in the progressive ideas at elite universities that he said amounted to a “Marxist assault on our American heritage and Western civilisation itself”.
Still unresolved is the White House’s fight with Harvard University. On Monday, a federal judge heard arguments from Harvard, which contended the government had no basis to cut $US2.2bn in research funding.
Lawyers for the government insisted it had the power to cancel contracts with universities that no longer align with government priorities.
The Trump administration’s moves to reshape higher education have torpedoed a half-century-old university business model, up-ending research and scrambling the careers of thousands of scientists whose work the federal government funds.
Columbia became a target for the Trump administration after pro-Palestinian protests in 2024 led the school to move classes online, while a campus rabbi warned Jewish students against returning to campus after Passover break because he feared the climate was not safe.
Former Columbia University president Nemat Minouche Shafik. Picture: AFP
Columbia’s then-president Minouche Shafik was unable to reconcile the factions and resigned in August 2024 after just 13 months on the job.
This year, interim president Katrina Armstrong stepped down after playing down commitments she had made to the federal government in closed-door meetings with faculty.
The university board’s co-chair, Claire Shipman, was named acting president.
The Wall Street Journal
Option 1: Pay $0- get $0 and deal with constant Trump barrage and lawsuits for the next 3.5 years.In my world, an individual or an organisation with a lot of money and resources that pays a fine is an admission of guilt.
Columbia University has reached a deal with the Trump administration, ending a high-stakes confrontation that disrupted the US higher-education industry and sparked a contentious renegotiation of academia’s relationship to the federal government.As part of the deal, Columbia will pay $US200m ($302m) to the federal government over three years to settle allegations that the school violated antidiscrimination laws.The school also agreed to settle investigations brought by the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission for $US21m.
Triangle.. the post you responded to starts with 'in (his) world' ... he lives in an incredibly small world.
I wish that I lived in a world of moral stability and righteousness; equating close to utopia, that never had need for term 'Shake down'.
but I don't ... mines not a very big world but it's big enough to know that.
they have done for decades, to think Biden, Obama only difference is those people were invisible,Musk gloating over sacking employees calling them parasites etc totally unnecessary deserves every thing he gets
The New Yorker wrote an article last year that included this description: "...the billionaire who wields more power than almost any other person on the planet but seems estranged from humanity itself."
I read today on Facebook that ICE brutally murdered 77 million American patriots this week.Meanwhile the Brown Shirt Masked Thugs known as ICE continue their violent attacks on American citizens….. where are the so called “patriots” standing up for citizens rights…. Crickets
Good thing no one cares except the Russian and CCP troll factories in Ukraine.
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