Raw Story

Several criminal defense organizations believe former President and convicted felon Donald Trump received cushy treatment.

Various defense attorneys and legal advocacy groups cried foul following Trump's pre-sentencing interview, in which he was permitted to have attorney Todd Blanche present and allowed to virtually answer questions, rather than the more commonplace in-person conditions.

"This is just another example of our two-tiered system of justice," read the statement issued by The Legal Aid Society, The Bronx Defenders, New York County Defender Services, and Neighborhood Defender Service of Harlem, according to Business Insider.

The four New York City-based public-defender organizations said Monday: "All people convicted of crimes should be allowed counsel in their probation interview, not just billionaires."

Blanche's attendance raised Thomas Eddy's eyebrows.

"In fairness, at least when clients are detained pending sentence, it will be a procedural nightmare to permit attorneys to attend," Rochester, New York defense attorney Thomas Eddy, told Business Insider. "How much trouble do you think Trump would get into today if Blanche wasn't there to muzzle him?".

Ivette Davila-Richards, deputy press secretary for Mayor Eric Adams' office, denied to the outlet that Trump was given white glove treatment, stating: "It's common — it's not unusual, and it's been an option from even before COVID."

"No exceptions are being made because it's President Trump," Davila-Richards said.

The president was said to have answered questions for less than 30 minutes with a probation officer.

“Earlier today, President Trump completed a routine interview with [the] New York Probation Office. The interview was uneventful and lasted less than thirty minutes,” a source familiar with the proceedings told CNN, adding: “The President and his team will continue to fight the lawless Manhattan DA Witch Hunt.”

The interview is part of a fact-finding process to build a case for the recommendation of punishment for Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan to use when he's expected to sentence the former president and presumptive Republican nominee for president on July 11.

Trump was found guilty of all 34 counts of falsifying business records for scheming to hide payments to porn star Stormy Daniels who alleged a tryst with him back in 2006 inside of a Lake Tahoe, California, hotel room.

Trump denies the affair and has vowed to appeal.

The night Sen. Bob Menendez and his wife Nadine met three Egyptian men at a ritzy steakhouse in Washington, D.C., Terrie Williams-Thompson was sitting nearby, straining to hear.

The dinner companions were talking “low,” barely above a whisper, said Williams-Thompson, an undercover FBI investigator spying on them. But the conversation grew louder as the wine flowed, and before long, Williams-Thompson heard one thing clearly.

“What else can the love of my life do for you?” Nadine Menendez said.

On the 13th day of Menendez’s bribery trial in Manhattan, that proclamation was, in one way, the most damning of the day — federal prosecutor Lara Pomerantz‘s questioning of Williams-Thompson suggested it was a bald offer to foreign officials on behalf of Menendez, then one the most powerful politicians in the U.S. as ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

But Williams-Thompson told jurors she otherwise couldn’t hear what the men were talking about. And neither Williams-Thompson nor FBI special agent Chase Hunter Mills, who was secretly surveilling the gathering from a van parked on the street, knew the identities of the Menendezes’ guests during that May 21, 2019, dinner at Morton’s The Steakhouse, a posh eatery on D.C.’s famed K Street, where many lobbyists and special-interest groups are located.

So while Menendez’s meetings at Morton’s were briefly mentioned in previous testimony, it’s unclear if Tuesday’s testimony packed the punch prosecutors hoped it would.

Still, Williams-Thompson and her partner secretly recorded a video showing Menendez refilling the men’s wine glasses and the couple laughing and talking animatedly with the men, showing the dinner party was a friendly one, despite defense attorneys’ insistence otherwise.

Edgewater businessman Wael Hana, who’s Egyptian-American; Gen. Ahmed Helmy, a top Egyptian intelligence official; and Egyptian diplomat Nader Moussa were the three men at the Morton’s dinner.

Hana was one of three businessmen indicted alongside the Menendezes last September. Prosecutors say Hana secured exclusive rights to certify beef exports to Egypt by persuading the senator — through bribes of cash and gold bars given to Nadine — to release millions in military aid and arms to Egypt and share sensitive staffing details about the U.S. embassy in Cairo.

On cross-examination, defense attorneys said no one at the dinner party showed any concern they’d be seen or overheard, suggesting nothing nefarious was underway.

Attorney Adam Fee told jurors the senator ate at Morton’s “about 250 times” a year, indicating it was a routine outing for him. He also sought to deflate the “love of my life” comment by showing jurors there was an eight-day delay between the dinner and an official FBI report on the surveillance mission, where the comment was first documented.

A fortune in the bank

Jurors also heard Tuesday from FBI special agent Anna Frenzilli, who led a search of Nadine Menendez’s safe deposit box at an Englewood bank.

A locksmith pried the 10-by-10 box open at the FBI’s command, and inside, agents found 10 envelopes packed with $79,760 in cash, several passports, and piles of jewelry, Frenzilli testified. Agents seized the cash and other contents and sent it to the FBI’s headquarters in Quantico, Virginia, for forensic testing, she added.

Defense attorneys tried to distance the senator from the box, trotting out what has become their favorite strategy in the trial’s three weeks so far — blaming his wife.

Defense attorney Avi Weitzman, through questioning, pointed out that Nadine and her father, Garbis Tabourian, first leased the box in May 2016 — two years before she began dating Menendez. Frenzilli conceded that the bank had no record of the senator accessing the box. And several envelopes bore Nadine’s name, while much of the trinkets appeared to be women’s jewelry.

“Do you see the name Bob on any envelope?” Weitzman asked Frenzilli. “Do you see the name Menendez on any envelope?”

Next up was Charity Davis, a forensic data examiner who works at Quantico. She testified for over two hours in questioning that was so dry that at least five jurors and several spectators nodded off, while others fidgeted or doodled in notebooks.

Ultimately, prosecutor Catherine Ghosh showed through questioning that Davis and her evidence technicians found that two envelopes bore the DNA of Edgewater real estate developer Fred Daibes, a co-defendant who’s accused of bribing the Menendezes with cash and gold bars to help him land the investment of a member of Qatar’s royal family.

Disputes and delays

The day started and ended with arguments between the attorneys about exhibits and late filings.

Prosecutors last week warned Judge Sidney H. Stein that the trial was running behind schedule; Stein initially told jurors he expected it would not go beyond the first week of July.

But plenty of things have slowed it down since then. Jurors have arrived late, got stuck in the elevator, and temporarily relocated to a farther jury assembly room after a sink left running over the weekend flooded theirs. Bickering between the attorneys has prompted daily interruptions for the judge to call private “sidebar” huddles to settle conflicts at the bench, while mini hearings often bookend each day for Stein to decide disputes outside jurors’ earshot.

Tuesday started with prosecutors complaining to Stein about defense attorneys’ lengthy cross-examinations and tendency to ignore Stein’s three-day advance deadline for new court filings by either side.

It ended with a small victory for prosecutors when Stein agreed they could introduce evidence showing that the Menendezes traded thousands of emails, including on the day Nadine Menendez was at a car dealership picking up a new $60,000 Mercedes Benz convertible, which prosecutors say co-defendant Jose Uribe gave her as a bribe. Uribe, who pleaded guilty in March, is expected to testify against the couple.

“I’m still here,” she texted the senator from the dealership.

That exchange, along with the couple’s frequent emails and texts, belie defense attorneys’ contention that the couple largely led separate lives and that the senator wasn’t aware of the valuables his wife took or her related activities.

“This shows how they were in constant contact on rather quotidian issues,” Stein said in allowing prosecutors to introduce such messages.

The jury, though, will not hear that the reason Nadine Menendez needed a new car was because she wrecked hers by fatally hitting a pedestrian in Bogota. The judge agreed that was prejudicial and ordered attorneys to avoid detailing the crash or showing photos of her damaged car.

The trial is scheduled to resume at 9:30 a.m. Wednesday, with testimony from another FBI agent.

New Jersey Monitor is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. New Jersey Monitor maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Terrence T. McDonald for questions: info@newjerseymonitor.com. Follow New Jersey Monitor on Facebook and Twitter.

In fall 2021, D.C.-area restaurant owner Naeem Mohd was presented with an unbelievable investment opportunity.

Two political operatives-turned-venture capitalists would triple Mohd’s money in just 18 months if he invested $300,000 in their new California winery.

The pair had been paid in grapes by a former client and had hired a well-respected Sonoma winemaker to turn those grapes into profit. They promised if they didn’t pay Mohd the full $900,000 on time, they would tack on 10% monthly interest on any outstanding balance, according to the contract shared with the Reformer.

The offer might have seemed suspicious if not for the person making it: Tim Mynett, a well-connected political consultant and husband to U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar, whom he married in 2020.

Mynett came recommended by Mohd’s attorney, Faisal Gill, a former Democratic operative himself who knew Mynett from his days working on Keith Ellison’s congressional campaigns. Mynett and Gill had been friends since. Omar endorsed Gill in his unsuccessful bid for L.A. County Attorney, and Gill donated $1,000 to Omar’s campaign in 2021.

“I trusted Tim,” Gill said in an interview. “If it was not for Tim, the deal would have never happened.”

Mohd wired the $300,000 to Mynett and his long-time business partner Will Hailer, with whom he founded a political consultancy called E Street Group in 2018.

But 18 months came and went without Mohd receiving the 200% return he was promised from the winery, eStCru.

Mynett and Hailer only returned Mohd’s $300,000 — about a month late — according to a lawsuit Gill filed on behalf of Mohd in California last fall seeking at least $780,000.

The complaint, which has not been previously reported, claims the pair “fraudulently misrepresented … that estCru, LLC was a legitimate company.”

Hailer and Mynett deny they defrauded Mohd. Rather, they say they simply struggled to build a successful business in a challenging industry during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“ESTCRU LLC like many wineries is living invoice to invoice, sale to sale to stay afloat given the economic conditions of the industry,” Hailer wrote in response to a list of questions from the Reformer. Hailer declined requests for an interview on the phone.

The winery’s struggling finances represent a significant change in fortune for Mynett and Hailer since Omar announced she would no longer use their firm E Street Group on her campaigns after paying them around $3 million in the 2020 election.

Still, Hailer defended the potential for large returns in the wine business, writing, “If any investor put $X dollars in to allow the company to purchase grapes and we turned those grapes into bottles of wine that we sold you would see a 3 or 4x return.”

Within minutes of Hailer sending responses to the Reformer’s questions, lawyers for Mynett and Hailer followed up with a three-page letter saying they had been retained to “help ensure that defamatory falsehoods are not published about them.”

“Any suggestion that Will or Tim deliberately defrauded investors or otherwise consciously conspired to rip people off would be false and defamatory,” wrote attorneys Mark Thomson and Andy Phillips with the law firm Meier Watkins Phillips Pusch.

eStCru did produce a line of wines with names like Blockchain, Overt and The Devil’s Lie with their winemaker Erica Stancliff, who left a job at a prestigious vineyard to work with Hailer and Mynett.

Hailer sent the Reformer a brochure listing eStCru’s accolades and noted Wine Business Monthly called eStCru a hot brand of 2022.

Stancliff said things were going well from her point of view until early 2023, when she stopped getting paid.

“It happened very abruptly,” Stancliff said. “I couldn’t even tell you exactly how it happened other than we hit a wall and the reserve was no longer there.”

She said she continued working without pay for several months hoping things would turn around for her and her coworkers, but eventually she couldn’t afford to wait any longer and resigned.

Hailer said eStCru has never had any employees working without pay. When asked about Stancliff, he clarified that “As the economic conditions wreaked havoc on the industry we had a few former employees who wanted to stay with the company and weather the storm as contractors.”

Hailer acknowledged that Stancliff is owed money: “I do believe that as a contractor she may have invoices that may not be current.”

Mynett and Hailer say they are now working to sell the intellectual property and trademarks associated with the brand.

$1.2 million for weed ventures goes up in smoke

A short-lived winery isn’t the only source of financial trouble and litigation for companies connected to Hailer and Mynett.

In April 2023, soon after Stancliff said she stopped getting paid and Mohd was due a big payday that never came, three of Hailer and Mynett’s other companies agreed to pay $1.7 million to three South Dakota marijuana entrepreneurs to settle a lawsuit alleging fraud and breach of contract.

The companies — eSt Ventures, Badlands Fund GP and Badlands Ventures — only paid $500,000. That led to a confession of judgment last fall, not previously reported, which was signed by Hailer, with the companies admitting they still owe $1.2 million.

The marijuana entrepreneurs and their investors are now suing Hailer and the companies in Nebraska, where Hailer lives, for the remainder.

Mynett was mentioned in the lawsuit but not named as a defendant. He wrote in an email that he withdrew from eSt Ventures in early 2022, “because I wasn’t active in any of the work (securing investment, placing investment or even structure).” The company is now listed as “inactive” because it’s delinquent on its business filing fee in Nebraska.

Consistent with Mynett’s response, the companies don’t appear on Omar’s 2023 disclosure.

Although the business is typically called eSt Ventures, Omar lists an “EstVenture LLC” on her disclosures in previous years. She reported spousal income from EstVenture of $5,001-$15,000 in 2021 and $15,001-$50,000 in 2022.

In her latest congressional financial disclosure filed in May, Omar reported spousal income in 2023 of $201-$1,000 from eStCru and $15,0001-$50,000 from Rose Lake Capital, a venture capital management firm founded by Mynett and Hailer.

The modest sums stand in stark contrast to the income Omar reported when she was paying her husband’s political consulting firm millions for campaign work.

Omar reported spousal income from E Street Group ranging from $100,001 to $1 million in both 2020 and 2021.

In an email to the Reformer, Mynett said he and Will began to pivot from politics to business in order to test advertising strategies that could then inform political strategies. He said they were “incredibly successful” at digital advertising and targeting — skills that could be transferred to business success.

Mynett said he was also confronted with a barrage of harassment and intimidation by “MAGA extremists” since marrying Omar and felt it was in his best interest to get out of politics.

In the beginning, Mynett said he and Hailer agreed to a 50-50 split between eSt Ventures and other business prospects.

Hailer and Mynett were also co-managers of a company called Born to Run GP LLC, which purported to control a $50 million investment fund, according to a management services contract between eSt Ventures LLC and Born to Run obtained by the Reformer. Born to Run does not appear on Omar’s financial disclosures.

Hailer said the fund did not end up having $50 million but does have active investments. Mynett said he withdrew from Born to Run at the same time he left eSt Ventures in early 2022 and never received any compensation from the company.

Omar’s office has not yet responded to a list of questions the Reformer sent last week. A spokesperson for the congresswoman said they would respond on Monday and then said the answers would come on Tuesday morning.

From OFAC to missing zeroes

Around the time Mynett said he left eSt Ventures is when the cannabis entrepreneurs say they were lured into business with Hailer with similarly fantastical promises made to the winery investor.

605 Cannabis Founder Ned Horsted said Hailer approached him with an offer to raise millions for his cannabis venture. Horsted and another cannabis business — led by Josh Wood and Bekki Engquist-Schroeder — had already raised $3.54 million from friends, acquaintances and even grandparents to capitalize on the state’s new medicinal marijuana program.

If the three turned over their $3.54 million, Hailer told them, eSt Ventures could more than triple their capital within days or weeks to fund two grow operations and a testing facility. Hailer said eSt Ventures had secured $6 million from outside South Dakota and another $1.5 million was expected from within the state, according to the lawsuit settled in Minnesota.

Horsted, who also had a brief career as a political operative, had met Hailer at the Minnesota DFL headquarters in 2010, and was impressed with Hailer’s connections and convinced by his pitch.

“He tells a great story,” Horsted said of Hailer in an interview. “It made sense in my mind. If you’re well connected, you could pick up the phone and get someone to give $100,000 to a campaign, you could probably get that same kind of money for a business venture.”

The three cannabis entrepreneurs turned over everything they had to a new affiliate of eSt Ventures called Badlands Ventures LLC.

All through the summer of 2022, Hailer told the entrepreneurs and their investors that the millions in investments were just weeks away from being secured for their two marijuana companies, Dakota Natural Growers and 605 Cannabis. As the excuses began piling up, Horsted said he tried to reach out to Mynett via direct messages on LinkedIn and Twitter, but got no reply.

Horsted and his business partners said in their lawsuit they don’t believe that Badlands Ventures brought in any other money to capitalize the companies.

In August 2022, according to court documents, Badlands returned $1.86 million of the entrepreneurs $3.54 million “in exchange for promissory notes convertible into equity units in their cannabis businesses.” In other words, Hailer used the entrepreneurs’ own money to buy a stake in their businesses.

Later that month, Hailer promised to wire hundreds of thousands of dollars to Dakota and 605 but couldn’t at the moment because the Office of Foreign Assets Control had placed a hold on the funds.

That explanation confused the owners of Dakota and 605. The Office of Foreign Assets Control is a federal agency under the U.S. Treasury Department that enforces economic and trade sanctions. It investigates and penalizes companies for illegally dealing with foreign adversaries like Russia, Iran and North Korea.

Hailer, citing the settlement agreement, declined to comment on the Treasury Department hold on their money.

Through September, Hailer assured them the money was just days away. He told them on Sept. 6 that he was “waiting on a call back from the bank that we can move the money today.” On Sept. 26, Hailer said, “I just landed a call into the bank. I personally hit send on wires Friday afternoon.” The money didn’t arrive.

In October, Hailer said he had to go to the hospital but continued his assurances that the money would be transferred right away, according to the lawsuit. He said he tried to wire $1 million to each company but it ran up against the bank’s limit so he would wire them the money in chunks.

“Rest assured — $500k min will be to you tomorrow and the other $500k if not tomorrow [then] the next day,” Hailer said, according to the lawsuit.

Each company received just $50,000, which Hailer attributed to the bank forgetting a zero. But they never received another transfer.

In November 2022, through an attorney, Dakota and 605’s founders and investors requested to see Badlands Ventures’ bank accounts. They were entitled to see the company’s books as a part of their contract, but Hailer’s attorney refused, according to the lawsuit.

Horsted, his business partner and their investors filed that lawsuit in Minnesota the following month seeking the rest of their $3.5 million. Now they are hoping to win back their $1.2 million through the lawsuit they filed in Nebraska, while they continue to grow the medical marijuana businesses on a shoestring.

“We’re surviving but it’s been very difficult.” Horsted said.

‘The prowess to execute the right opportunities’

But discovery documents in that case show Hailer’s businesses have little in their bank accounts. According to answers Hailer provided in court documents in February this year, eSt Ventures had 5 cents in its bank account.

Rose Lake Capital had $42.44 and Rose Lake Inc. had $10. ESTCRU had $650. Hailer’s personal checking account had $3.05.

“Running a business is hard and I’ve learned that the hard way,” Hailer wrote in an email to the Reformer. “In all my business struggles, though, I’ve always tried to put my employees, contractors, and investors first.”

Hailer said he could have taken the easy route, by declaring bankruptcy, but has stuck it out for the best outcomes for his investors and workers.

While Mynett says he withdrew from eSt Ventures in early 2022, he and Hailer didn’t stop doing business together. The pair incorporated Rose Lake Capital, the international venture capital firm, in Delaware later that year.

Hailer said Rose Lake Capital is now a “dormant entity” because they transitioned the company from an LLC to a public benefit corporation called Rose Lake Inc., which focuses on socially responsible investing.

The company’s website touts “exclusive partnerships for global operators” and “on-the-ground experience in more than 75 countries.”

The website lists Hailer and Mynett as co-founders with Democratic political consultant Alex Hoffman and an impressive lineup of advisors, including a former U.S. ambassador to Bahrain, a former CEO of Amalgamated Bank, and former U.S. Rep. Collin Peterson.

“From distressed assets to buying publicly traded companies – our team has the prowess to execute the right opportunities,” its website says.

Minnesota Reformer is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Minnesota Reformer maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor J. Patrick Coolican for questions: info@minnesotareformer.com. Follow Minnesota Reformer on Facebook and Twitter.

The attorney for former president and convicted felon Donald Trump says he dropped 8 pounds dodging what he described as a "plethora" of unhealthy food daily toted into court by his client.

Todd Blanche described Trump's fast food feasts during his criminal hush money trial to For the Defense podcaster David Oscar Markus.

“Was it McDonald’s for lunch every single day?” Markus asked.

"There would just be this plethora of, like, just food everywhere," Blanche said of the legal team's war room. "There’s pizza and there’s other non-healthy alternatives to McDonald’s.

"Everybody gets food — there's a lot of food."

Blanche's description of the daily meals — which he skipped — is visually confirmed by a TikTok post from Donald Trump Jr. last week, in which he beams with unbridled delight after his father says, "My son's doing well on social media and I'm proud of him."

The video shows Trump and his son seated before a table topped with chips, soda, boxes of movie theater candy and what an eagle-eyed Daily Beast reporter describes as "what appeared to be four Hostess SnoBalls."

Jose Pagliery quipped that while Blanche suffered a defeat in Justice Juan Merchan's Manhattan criminal courtroom and says he sprouted a few grey hairs, "at least he dodged Trump’s junk food."

ALSO READ: Inside the 'irregular warfare' campaign fascists are conducting against America

Trump's McDonald's order typically includes two Big Macs, two fish filet sandwiches and a chocolate malt, according to a Washington Post report on former campaign manager Corey Lewendowski's book published in 2017.

"On Trump Force One there were four major food groups: McDonald’s, Kentucky Fried Chicken, pizza and Diet Coke,” the authors wrote. “The orchestrating and timing of Mr. Trump’s meals was as important as any other aspect of his march to the presidency."

According to the Post, "The plane’s cupboards were stacked with Vienna Fingers, potato chips, pretzels and many packages of Oreos."

Watch the interview below or click here.

During an interview on CNN's "State of the Union," RNC co-chair Lara Trump raised her voice and yelled over guest host Kasie Hunt when she was asked about the Manhattan jury unanimously finding Donald Trump guilty on 34 felony counts.

The interview with the convicted felon Trump's daughter-in-law started calmly enough until Hunt contradicted her by pointing it was a jury that convicted the former president and not President Joe Biden or Judge Juan Merchan.

That set off Lara Trump who went into a furious rant while at the same time refusing to answer the host's questions or even acknowledge them

ALSO READ: Trump just endorsed this Virginia congressional candidate whose social media isn’t so MAGA

Midway through Lara Trump's breathless rant, host Hunt managed to fit in, "I asked you about the jury," which led the RNC co-chair to snap "I'm not done!"

Moments later, Hunt interrupted once more, asking, "Again, I asked you about the jury; the normal Americans who are part of this. Do you think it's not possible for anyone to get a fair trial by a jury?"

"I think that this judge should have never been presiding over this case. he weighed the entire case in the eyes of the jury, and then he gave the jury instructions that were incredibly leading," Trump parried. "And you can't blame the jury they were doing what he told them to do. So from the beginning, this case, whether you're talking about the judge, the venue, the instructions given, or the fact that a key witness that would have exonerated Donald Trump and shown what a waste of time this entire case ultimately was, the judge wouldn't allow in.".

Watch below or at the link.

CNN 06 02 2024 09 02 51 youtu.be

NBC guest host Peter Alexander pushed back against Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) after he suggested Donald Trump's conviction in a New York hush money trial was rigged.

Alexander began the Sunday interview on Meet the Press by correcting Cotton.

"So let me just clarify a couple things for our audience right now," Alexander said. "As you know well, this was a state case. Donald Trump was indicted by a grand jury in New York. He was convicted by a jury of 12 New Yorkers beyond a reasonable doubt."

"They didn't seek this responsibility," the host added. "Joe Biden, as you know, had nothing to do with this case, senator. In fact, the Manhattan DA's investigation, this case began in 2018 when Joe Biden wasn't even the party's, the Democratic Party's presidential nominee."

Cotton, however, insisted, "The jury got it wrong."

"Again, you had a judge who is literally a donor to Joe Biden's campaign in 2020 so he could stop Donald Trump," the senator continued. "He should have never been presiding over this case. He introduced evidence that was highly, highly inflammatory and prejudicial. He didn't allow President Trump to put on certain evidence and witnesses."

ALSO READ: Donald Trump has unclaimed property and abandoned money in at least 16 states

Alexander deflated Cotton's talking point.

"You're talking about the judge, Juan Merchan," the host pointed out. "He did give $20 to Democrats, gave $15 to Joe Biden in 2020. But the appeals court, Senator, affirmed his decision to stay on the case."

"And as it relates to the rules, the instructions, Trump's lawyers passed on the opportunity to argue that the charges should be considered misdemeanors in the jury instructions," he noted.

Watch the video below from NBC or at the link.