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Organ FairchildSaturday, October 25, 8 pm at Sportsmens Tavern,...

Where the Bands Are: This Week in Live Music and Concert News

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Whoopi Goldberg dabs tears from eyes at thought of Trump being unable to pay his debts



Whoopi Goldberg began a Wednesday segment of "The View" pretending to shed tears for Donald Trump after his lawyers told a New York court he didn't actually have the money to pay his bills.

"I'm so sorry," she said, pretending to be emotional. "So, as it turns out, you-know-who says he cannot come up with the cash to cover his $400 million-plus bond in his New York fraud case."

"You need a tissue?" asked colleague Joy Behar, pulling a purse-sized packet from her pocket.

The panel questioned why Trump has so much support from millionaires and billionaires, but no one is rushing to put up a bond for him. One of those people is his own son-in-law, Jared Kushner, the hosts said.

"That was surprising Jared is not going to give him part of his $2 billion cache he probably got only because he worked in the Trump administration," said Sunny Hostin. "But I will say this, to reiterate: the reason people will not lend him money is because he is notorious for stiffing people who work for him."

"Who loses money on casinos?" asked Behar.

"Because he had three casinos together, two to three, and his actuary said they would cannibalize each other. He did it anyway; 100 contractors weren't paid because of it and lost their homes and livelihoods. It happened in 2016." said Hostin.

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"There is no way anybody is going to lend money to him, and I can't wait to see the chains on trump tower on Fifth Avenue. I'm kind of excited about it."

Former Trump White House communications director Alyssa Farah Griffin brought up Fox hosts who are also unwilling to help him.

"Can we talk about some of these folks at Fox News who are raging that billionaires are not stepping up to give the money to Trump?" she asked. "One of them was Mark Levin, somebody who refers to himself as 'the great one,' so that tells you all you need to know about him. [He] has a reported net worth of $50 million, but he's not ponying up" [for Trump].

See the panel discussion in the video below or at the link here.



Letitia James could swoop on Trump’s properties as soon as Monday: report



New York Attorney General Letitia James could swoop in and seize former President Donald Trump's properties as soon as Monday, a CNN analyst reported Wednesday.

"They are ready to move forward to try to seize some of his assets, and possibly properties," CNN reporter Kara Scannell said.

Monday is the deadline set in Trump's fraud trial for him to secure a bond for the $464 million payout ordered by New York civil court judge Arthur Engoron earlier this year.

Trump, who denies wrongdoing and plans to appeal, first tried to negotiate the payment down to $100 million then, on Monday, filed notice that he'd been unable to secure a bond for the whole amount.

James swiftly filed a response urging the appeals court to ignore his pleas for a stay on the payment, noting he has other options for finding the money.

"He could post his own property to the court," Scannell summarized. "He could turn over real estate to the court to satisfy this judgment. "

This isn't the first time James has hinted that she will take ownership of Trump's buildings.

ALSO READ: Trump campaign hit with new warning about taking illegal donations

James referenced a Trump property in downtown Manhattan when she said in a statement last month, "We are prepared to make sure that the judgment is paid to New Yorkers, and yes, I look at 40 Wall Street each and every day."

The looming deadline, and this potential dire solution, has seen panic mount among Trump's campaign, sources tell CNN. Specifically, because Trump consider some of his properties "his babies."

Stephanie Grisham, Trump's one-time White House communications director, told CNN Monday that there are several such "babies" he does not want to lose.

"I think if it were to happen, 40 Wall Street is probably the one that he would, I mean, he would hate it,' Grisham said. "But I think if she tried to seize Mar-a-Lago or Bedminster or Trump Tower even, I mean, those are his babies."

Accusations of Satan worship fly in wild California GOP election fight



Shasta County, California has long been a hotbed for far-right Republican politics -- but it seems that even many voters in this deep-red county are getting fed up with local officials who have been running on denying the results of the 2020 presidential election.

The Los Angeles Times reports that Shasta County voters chose to oust gun store owner Patrick Jones from the local Board of Supervisors after he spearheaded a campaign to remove Dominion Voting Systems machines and relentlessly promoted false claims about Trump's loss in the 2020 race.

And Jones wasn't the only hardcore election-denying Republican facing a tough election cycle, as his ally, Supervisor Kevin Crye, is currently winning his race by less than four dozen votes.

Added to this, voting totals show that Allen Long, a retired Redding police lieutenant, with a significant lead over Laura Hobbs, a candidate who describes herself as "100% MAGA and America First."

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Long tells the LA Times that he was motivated to run for the board because he thought local officials had become too extreme, particularly in their embrace of MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell's conspiracy theories about voting machines.

"I was watching the politics here in our county, and I thought, ‘Wow, this has really become extreme,’” he said. “I wanted to guide us back to the middle.”

As if to illustrate Long's point about extremist, the LA Times report notes that Hobbs, his opponent, labeled Shasta County Republican Supervisor Mary Rickert a Satan worshipper because her car's license plate happens to have the number "666" on it.

Trump smacked down by E. Jean Carroll’s lawyer for trying to delay payment



E. Jean Carroll's attorneys fended off Donald Trump's attempt to stall two more months in paying the massive defamation judgment imposed against him.

The $91.6 million bond floated by Federal Insurance Company contained some fine print that would have given the former president 30 additional days to come up with the money he owed Carroll, in addition to 30 days for the insurer to come up with the money if Trump failed to pay – essentially giving him two months to stall, reported The Daily Beast.

But Carroll's attorney Roberta Kaplan spotted that loophole over the weekend and alerted U.S. District judge Lewis Kaplan, who immediately responded in a handwritten note that indicated Trump's lawyers must agree to drop the gambit.

“The parties shall submit revised documentation promptly,” the judge wrote on Kaplan's letter.

The surety firm FIC, which is a subsidiary of Chubb Insurance Company, essentially fronted money for Trump to give themselves some extra time to make good on his debt, but Trump and the insurer gave themselves an unusually generous amount of time to pay up.

READ MORE: Trump and the Republicans will do anything to win — even collude with Russia

“From what I can see, there’s no basis for it," said Neil Pedersen, who owns a bond agency in New York. "If you have to pay, there’s no reason to give Trump another 30 days. There’s no reason to give a company with billions upon billions of assets a 30-day grace period."

However, other experts say FIC may have been protecting themselves from a client notorious for stiffing contractors and stalling his legal obligations.

“These corporations are big battleships that take a long time to turn around,” N. Alex Hanley, an expert in how companies appeal enormous judgments.

‘His conduct gets much worse’: Impeachment lawyer has a warning about Trump



Former chief impeachment lawyer Barry Berke brought up the former staff of Donald Trump on Friday, taking to the media to sound the alarm that a second term would be dangerous.

The conversation began about the Trump trials and the notion that Americans deserve to see the evidence against him before the November election. MSNBC's Nicolle Wallace asked Berke whether those conversations should happen in the context of court or the presidential campaign. Berke said both, and everywhere.

"Ideally, it will happen in the courtroom, but these issues should be amplified publicly as well," said Berke. "The evidence is overwhelming, as someone who spends my time defending charges and the like, it is hard to imagine a case stronger than the January 6th case. Stronger than the confidential document obstruction case. It is overwhelming, and it's challenging because not everybody — most voters don't follow it like you follow it and like I follow it."

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He told Wallace he hopes that she, as a television host, can take the evidence and help Americans understand it if there is no trial.

"Make sure that the American people understand what's at stake here, what conduct happened," Berke continued. "And I'll tell you, from me, in particular, here's what I feel most strongly: This is a movie series in which the sequel has already been written. Every time Donald Trump gets away with something, his conduct gets much worse."

He went on to blast Republicans who failed to stop Trump when they had the opportunity.

"You see somebody like Liz Cheney — I don't think I agree with her on a single issue except about the importance of democracy," Berke explained. "When I was there for the second impeachment she encouraged us to use her words and that's leadership and that is courage. My hope is, because Donald Trump's not going to get any better. His positions in this election are only going to get more extreme."

Berke called on more conservative Republicans to show the courage Cheney and others have shown.

See the discussion in the video below or at the link.

The more Trump gets away with something 'he gets much worse': Impeachment lawyer www.youtube.com

Trump admits he’ll have to sell buildings to come up with $450M in cash



Real estate mogul and former president Donald Trump admitted Wednesday he'd have to sell off properties to pay the $450 million he owes in damages after a ruling in his civil fraud trial.

Trump filed a more than 1,790-page emergency motion to a New York appeals court requesting a stay on Judge Arthur Engoron's verdict which he said would cause "irreparable harm," and offering to hand over a $100 million bond instead.

"In the absence of a stay on the terms herein outlined, properties would likely need to be sold to raise capital under exigent circumstances," Trump's attorneys wrote. "And there would be no way to recover any property sold following a successful appeal and no means to recover the resulting financial losses."

As attorney Bradley Moss summarized it, "He doesn’t have the cash."

Moss also noted this contradicts a previous boast of Trump's that he has "$400 million liquid." He made the claim during deposition for the trial involving E. Jean Carroll. He was ultimately found liable for defamation in that case.

The New York Attorney General's office, which brought the massive civil fraud case, believes the appeals court judge will issue a decision by the end of Wednesday, the Daily News reports.

ALSO READ: ‘America First’ is Trump first, Russia close second

Trump was found liable for fraud after exaggerating the value of his properties to secure favorable rates for loans and insurance, Engoron found. He hit him with the damages and also ruled that the former president could not conduct business in New York for three years.

Trump filed an intent to appeal, but cannot begin that appeal until the damages are paid or an agreed upon bond is secured. Trump has the difficulty that he is not allowed to loan money from any banks doing business in New York, as another term of Engoron's ruling.

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