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‘Everything has a price’: Insiders say Trump secret offer left oil barons ‘stunned’
Donald Trump made a transactional offer that reportedly "stunned" top oil executives at an event last month at his Mar-a-Lago resort.
One executive complained about environmental regulations they continued to face despite spending $400 million to lobby President Joe Biden's administration, and the former president pitched what some attendees perceived as a blunt and transactional offer, reported the Washington Post.
"Trump’s response stunned several of the executives in the room overlooking the ocean: You all are wealthy enough, he said, that you should raise $1 billion to return me to the White House," the Post reported.
"At the dinner, he vowed to immediately reverse dozens of President Biden’s environmental rules and policies and stop new ones from being enacted, according to people with knowledge of the meeting, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe a private conversation."
The presumptive Republican nominee has already asked the oil industry to help craft his environmental agenda for a possible second term that would roll back Biden's mandates on clean energy and electric vehicles, and Trump told attendees over chopped steak that he would allow new offshore drilling, fast-track permits and relax other regulations.
“You’ve been waiting on a permit for five years, you’ll get it on Day 1,” Trump told the executives, according to one attendee.
ALSO READ: Trump’s Manhattan trial could determine whether rule of law survives: criminologist
Oil executives had hoped Florida GoV. Ron DeSantis or some other Republican would challenge Biden, and so far oil donors and their allies have given only $6.4 million to Trump's joint fundraising committee in the first quarter of this year, but oil billionaire Harold Hamm and others will host a fundraiser for him later this year that's expected to generate larger amounts of money.
“Biden constantly throws a wet blanket to the oil and gas industry,” said Dan Eberhart, chief executive of the oil-field services company Canary. “Trump’s ‘drill baby drill’ philosophy aligns much better with the oil patch than Biden’s green-energy approach. It’s a no-brainer.”
Oil executives are intrigued by Trump's pitch, which Alex Witt, a senior adviser for oil and gas with Climate Power, said shows that "everything has a price" with the former president.
“They got a great return on their investment during Trump’s first term," Witt said, "and Trump is making it crystal clear that they’re in for an even bigger payout if he’s re-elected."
‘Trump was not a rubber stamp’: Experts claim Trump Org witness just destroyed key defense
A witness in Donald Trump's criminal trial Monday revealed that all personal checks from the ex-president's account were personally signed by him, reporters said.
This includes the "reimbursement" that he sent his former lawyer, Michael Cohen, after he allegedly paid adult film star Stormy Daniels $130,000 to keep quiet about a sexual relationship with Trump.
This is according to the testimony from Deborah Tarasoff, the Trump Organization employee who processed the invoices submitted by Cohen for reimbursement. She then cut the checks and stapled them to the top of the invoices.
READ ALSO: Michael Cohen claims Trump took Stormy Daniels hush-money payment as a tax deduction
Tarasoff explained that any check that Trump didn't want to pay would have VOID written over the top in Sharpie. He did it often, and it wasn't unusual. However, the checks for Cohen were signed, she said.
Checks were sent to Trump in Washington via FedEx, Tarasoff continued. An email on Feb. 14, 2017, told her to pay and post the expenses that Cohen had submitted.
This testimony weakens Trump's lawyers' possible argument that he would sign anything that came across his desk.
Speaking to MSNBC, legal analysts Charles Coleman, Tristan Snell and Joyce Vance all agreed that the information the witness provided was harmful to Trump's defense.
"That's critical because what you can't do now if you're Donald Trump's defense attorneys is say that, look, his signature had to go on everything, so he became a rubber stamp for anything and everything in front of him," Coleman explained. "It's important to understand that now we're getting closer and closer to the actual legal legality."
Thus far, he said, the case has been about salacious things — the affair and Trump's comments on the "Access Hollywood" tape, for example.
Now, the trial is turning toward the documents that prove the case.
"Donald Trump can no longer say I was paying Michael Cohen for legal services," Coleman said. "You're paying out of your own personal account. That was a big part of it. It's going to come out as more documents are presented, as well as the why, to conceal another crime. That's also what the prosecution has been doing during the testimony of other witnesses and what it's been putting out."
Vance agreed.
"That's right, she can do that, and she does even more because the real issue in this case is proving what Donald Trump knew, and she has testified that the checks are stapled to invoices, and that's how it goes to Donald Trump for approval," Vance said. "And, you know, as Tristan and Charles were saying, Trump was not a rubber stamp; he was carefully scrutinizing these things."
See the comments from the legal analysts below:
'Not a rubber stamp': Prosecutors proved Trump knowingly signed Cohen's check personally www.youtube.com
