Seth Abramson Outlines How Trump's Coronavirus Response Is Related to His Company's Business In China, Huge Loans He Owes China, And The Trade Deal

(THREAD) This thread summarizes the major-media investigative reporting on the TRUMP-CHINA SCANDAL, a bribery scandal involving Trump's hunt for dirt on Joe Biden in China, his debts to the Chinese government, and his decision to ignore life-saving COVID-19 intel. Please RETWEET. pic.twitter.com/lAe1oxRenV

— Seth Abramson (@🏠) (@SethAbramson) April 24, 2020

It's a long thread, but well worth reading.  Abramson has written two books on Trump - Proof of Collusion and Proof of Conspiracy.  He wrote both by stitching together thousands of news reports, pulling together details into a coherent story about Trump's corruption.

What's A Twitter Thread?
It's a group of Tweets linked together that allow the writer to present a longer story than a single tweet allows

The intro of this Twitter Thread goes over some of those stories to put Trump's current actions with China and the Coronavirus into context.

I guess Trump is trying to demonstrate the maxim that if you commit big enough crimes you don't get caught.




Basically, Abramson outlines when Trump learned of the Coronavirus (in November while working on a trade deal with China), that Trump (or his companies) owes China tens of millions in loans that are coming due tsoon, and how all of this adds up to a conflict of interest and using the office of the presidency for personal gain of such a magnitude that it boggles the mind.

And all his antics at the so-called press conferences are simply diversions to not only shore up his base, but also to divert attention from the most serious, but more complicated abuse of office that's going on.

Abramson's background is in law and journalism.  The story is so stupefyingly huge that Trump might just get away with it, because people aren't ready to take the time to put the pieces together.  That's why we need people like Abramson.  Like everything else he does, it's so outrageous that it seems like has to be made up.

I'll give you some of the tweets in this long thread - here's where you can just read it straight through yourself.   

16/ You can read all about Trump's conflicts of interest in China here—mind you, just a *few* of the ones we know about, as most are hidden within Trump's tax returns. The most obvious piece is scores of valuable trademarks timed to Trump policy decisions. https://t.co/LksWGDDTjb

— Seth Abramson (@🏠) (@SethAbramson) April 24, 2020

36/ But here's the rub: Trump receives intelligence on the novel coronavirus *as he's in the middle of trade negotiations* with the Chinese. And weeks after Trump learns of the virus, he makes the most stunning decision imaginable with respect to those negotiations—and the virus.

— Seth Abramson (@🏠) (@SethAbramson) April 24, 2020

38/ So at a time the Trump administration had received *and rejected* urgent U.S. intelligence on the coronavirus, it received from *China* a request for an exceptional, entirely unexplained "out" clause that would cover a pandemic. And what did Trump do? Nothing—he permitted it.

— Seth Abramson (@🏠) (@SethAbramson) April 24, 2020

42/ But it's more than this: Trump was being told by a cadre of Americans at the World Health Organization in December that there was a virus in China that could come to the U.S. and be devastating—further confirming the intel reports from 2 U.S. agencies. https://t.co/c2pupquEmM

— Seth Abramson (@🏠) (@SethAbramson) April 24, 2020

Speaking of Conspiracies - "I cannot be certain that they were all humans"

I got this email yesterday.  Generally these go straight to junk, but with the conspiracy theme in my head, I decided to look.  These people should either be getting psychiatric help and/or writing science fiction, except there's no science involved.  This is just an excerpt.

After I prayed today with a friend, our Blessed Saviour gave me several visions relative to the ebola plague, its spread in this nation and also its spread in some other nations. . .

After seeing this nation, which seemed to be covered in blood, I saw piles of dead people. The dead seemed to pile up so quickly! In great heaps, they were piled up! Then, I saw workers, who took the dead, who were stashed in plastic bags, and they began to toss the heaps of dead bodies into open box cars and onto long flat-bed trucks. Thereafter, I saw them unload masses of these dead bodies and throw them into empty houses and set afire those houses, which were stacked with dead bodies and they burned the bodies and the houses together! Then, I saw these workers take more bodies and throw them into square pits, which had concrete bottoms and concrete sides, but were otherwise open pits and on top of the bodies, they poured accelerants and set afire these bodies and burned them in this way.

After I received the above part of this vision, I then was taken into an underground base and there I saw the President of this nation. Along with him were a small group of people, though I cannot be certain that they were all humans; and I say this because of the high-reptile hybrids, who look like humans. However, they are not human, but can be up to 99% reptilian and they are very great enemies of all people.

I watched them there and I knew that they were in the midst of a plot, a very great plot, indeed; and that plot was to determine how to spread this virus among the people in this nation at a more alarming rate. I saw what they plotted, at least some of it, and firstly I saw that they were planning to put this virus into packaged meat in some of the grocery stores. Then, I saw that they were plotting to put some of this virus into open reservoirs of drinking water. Then, I saw that they were plotting to release terrorists into shopping centers, who would run quickly from one to another shopper and inject certain of these unsuspecting shoppers with the ebola virus, and thereafter flee! . . ." [emphasis added]

Yet people think the CIA raising money for Nicaraguan arms by selling drugs (see previous post)  is far-fetched and they belief this deluded fantasy.  The reptilian stuff is listed at Mother Jones' list of Obama conspiracies.  It's second from the end today as i write, but surely more will be added quickly.   The email did not ask for money or even have a link.  But I guess when I opened it they took all the information they needed from my computer.  Oh, yeah, another conspiracy. 

When Is A Conspiracy Not A Conspiracy?

It's easy for people to take a few facts and jump to conclusions.   On election day, a man came into our polling place and exited the voting booth and asked why there wasn't an Assembly race on the ballot.  We hadn't notice that and at first were concerned.  But then we realized not every Assembly seat is up for reelection this year.

But he said that his wife, who has the same address, voted early at Loussac and she'd voted for an Assembly candidate.  We couldn't explain what happened at Loussac, but we checked and found out that he lives in Patrick Flynn's district and Flynn wasn't up for reelection.

But in checking things, I found a link on the Municipal Elections webpage that got me to all the different Sample Ballots (there were about 48 different ballots to take care of all the Local Road Service Area elections) and a list of each polling place which said which ballot was to be used at each polling place.

And as I looked at the sample ballots I saw the candidates for the Assembly races and School Board races.  As you can see, the School Board races are all city wide seats, so they all show up on every ballot.  Some of the Assembly races had only one candidate. (For the sake of space I left out JOHNSON, Jennifer)

ASSEMBLY - DISTRICT 5 - SEAT H  HONEMAN, Paul Write-in SCHOOL BOARD - SEAT A SMITH, Don DAVIS, Bettye Write-in SCHOOL BOARD - SEATB NEES, David W. CROFT, Eric CORNWELL-GEORGE, Stephanie Write-in

ASSEMBLY - DISTRICT 3 - SEAT D HALL, Ernie Write-in SCHOOL BOARD - SEAT A SMITH, Don DAVIS, Bettye Write-in SCHOOL BOARD - SEATB NEES, David W. CROFT, Eric CORNWELL-GEORGE, Stephanie Write-in

ASSEMBLY- DISTRICT 2 - SEAT A  MULCAHY, Pete DEMBOSKI, Amy LUPO, SCHOOL BOARD - SEAT A SMITH, Don DAVIS, Bettye Write-in SCHOOL BOARD - SEATB NEES, David W. CROFT, Eric CORNWELL-GEORGE, Stephanie Write-in

ASSEMBLY - DISTRICT 4 -SEAT F CLARY,Andy TRAINI,Dick Write-in SCHOOL BOARD - SEAT A SMITH, Don DAVIS, Bettye Write-in SCHOOL BOARD - SEATB NEES, David W. CROFT, Eric CORNWELL-GEORGE, Stephanie  Write-in

HTML Tables

As I looked at the contested races, the candidate order on the ballot  seemed to favor Mayor Sullivan's candidates.

Don Smith was first in his race with Bettye Davis.
Nees was first in his race against Croft.
Mulcahy was first in his race.  (All seemed to be Conservatives and I wasn't sure who was endorsed by the Mayor, but Mulcahy had been appointed to the Planning and Zoning Commission by the Mayor so that seemed a safe bet.)
Clary was first in his race with Traini.

Whoa! I thought.  I knew that the first position on the ballot gets an advantage at the polls, because a certain number of people, if they aren't familiar with the candidates in the race, will just vote for the first one.  The best way to deal with that is to rotate the order on different ballots.  Then each candidate is first on an equal number of ballots.
Not only were the ballots not rotated, but the Mayor's preferred candidate seemed to be on top in each race.

This had conspiracy written all over it.   But first, some of the research on positional advantage on ballots.


From Northwestern University's Kellogg School: 

"Specialists in the mechanics of voting have long recognized that the order in which candidates’ names appear on a ballot influences voters’ decisions. Typically, candidates listed at the top of a ballot earn a greater share of the vote than they would receive in any other position, regardless of their policies and personalities. Now research on voting patterns in local state elections coauthored by a Kellogg School researcher has taken the issue a stage further. It concludes that the first listing on the ballot also increases a candidate’s chances of actually winning office—by almost five percentage points."

Stanford Professor Jon A. Krosnick describes the positional effect and how they've demonstrated it:

"How do we know this? Well, consider this: In California’s 80 Assembly districts, candidate name order is randomly assigned. In 1996, Bill Clinton’s vote tally was 4 percentage points higher in the Assembly districts where he was listed first than in the ones where he was listed last — a difference that persisted even after we took into account pre-existing Democratic registration levels in the districts.
In 2000, George W. Bush’s vote tally was 9 percentage points higher in the districts where he was listed first than in the districts where he was listed last — again, persisting with registration taken into account."

He adds this note which suggests the magnitude of the impact:

"In Florida, for instance, candidates from the governor’s party get top billing, which is why in 2000 and 2004 George W. Bush was listed first on every ballot. (His brother, Jeb, was governor.) "

Other states, he adds, order their ballots in different ways.  Some require rotated positions, some require the previous winning party to be listed first, Minnesota requires the party with the least votes in the previous election to be on top.  Some do alphabetical by party, some alphabetical by candidate's last name. Some random. 


I looked up the state law:

"(6) The names of the candidates for each office shall be set out in the same order on ballots printed for use in each house district. The director shall randomly determine the order of the names of the candidates for state representative for each house district. The director shall rotate the order of placement of the names of candidates for governor, lieutenant governor, United States senator, United States representative, and state senator on the ballot for each house district."

But this gets complicated.  There was a Supreme Court decision in 1998 where a candidate sued the Division of  Elections because he was disadvantaged by having a lower place on the ballot. [If the link doesn't work, start here at the Supreme Court site, link Alaska Case Law Service, then click "By Party Name" and write in "Sonneman"] The case said that the State had switched from rotation to random order with a 1998 amendment.  From the Court's decision:

The amendment was recommended by the Lieutenant Governor's Election Policy Transition Team. Its report stated that the amendment would save “between $150,000 and $250,000 per election cycle.” However, the actual cost of ballot rotation in the 1994 primary and general elections was $64,024. The amendment was also intended to eliminate the confusion of voters who relied on single-order sample ballots and were confused when they found a different rotation of candidates' names on their actual ballots. The team also concluded that “[r]esearch indicates that the order of candidates' names on American ballots does not significantly influence voters.”

Sonneman lost his case.  The Court decided that since the order was random, everyone had an equal chance for the coveted first spot.  I couldn't tell if it had been changed back since and that was why it said rotational in the statute I found.  I was going to see if I could call up Sonneman to see if he knew, but I got his obituary.  I don't have the app that lets me call the departed. 

So I called the Municipal Clerk's office to find out how it was done in Anchorage.  She was ready for that call.

Later, I videoed Deputy Clerk for Elections Amanda Moser explaining how the order is determined so you can listen to hear and/or read below.




Names are placed on the ballot in random order.  They have a written procedure and, in fact, the Clerk, Barb Jones, and her staff, and the Municipal Ombudsman were there as witnesses.  Here's  the procedure:

Procedure for Letter Drawing
Anchorage Municipal Code 28.40.010  Form
C.    The names of all candidates for the same office shall be on one ballot with spaces for write-ins equal to the number of offices to be filled. For each municipal election, the clerk shall determine the random alphabetical order in which the candidates' last names are placed on the ballot, regardless of the office sought, by conducting a chance selection of each letter of the alphabet. The sequence in which letters of the alphabet are drawn shall be the sequence of letters utilized in establishing the order in which the candidates' last names appear on the ballot.

1. Ensure that all 26 letters are present
2. One person will draw a letter from provided container.
3. A second person will read aloud the letter drawn.
4. A third person will record the letter drawn.
5. The fourth person is an observer.
4. Continue until all the letters are drawn.
5. After all letters are drawn the Clerk and other observers will sign sheet provided.
6. The Deputy Clerk will post on the Municipal Website.

And here's a copy of the list they made when they did the drawing.  Note, the date was January 24, 2013.  That's before people filed to run for office.

So, for each race, once they had candidate names, they went through this list.  Any Q's?  No?  M's?  etc.  In one case they had two candidates running for the same School Board seat whose names began with C - Croft and Cornwell-George.  Which should come first?  O comes before R in the alphabet, but they had to use this chart instead of the alphabet.  If you check the list, R is number 20 and O is number 24.  So Croft came first.

And when I looked further into this, I found out that in Eagle River, Demoboski, not Mulcahy was the Mayor's favorite.  And on the ballots with Ernie Hall's race, there were actually two Assembly races because Harriot Drummond had resigned to take her seat in the State House.  In that race, when I checked, Tim Steele's name was before the Mayor's candidate Cheryl Frasca.


So, you ask, if nothing was wrong, why write this post?  A reasonable question.  Here are some reasons:
1.  Don't jump to conclusions. It's always good to be reminded that one should do one's homework and get all the facts before jumping to conclusions, especially negative conclusions.  It reminds us that we see what we are looking for instead of what's actually there.  This is a good example of that and finding out there was no conspiracy, even though, at first glance, my evidence pointed in that direction.  

2.  We should write about good things as well as bad.  When the media only report things that go wrong, we get an unbalanced sense of how the world is.  The Clerk's office had thought through how they were going to do this, wrote up a procedure, and did the order randomly before they even knew who the candidates were.  And when a blogger called them up to check on what they did, they were prepared for me.  Their foresight on this should be recognized.

3.  I had all this information.  I didn't want it to go to waste.  A lame reason, but I'm trying to be honest here.


Final Thoughts

If the bump in votes due to position on the ballot is as big as the research says, then that's a pretty good argument for rotating the names.  But I think the research also needs to tell us if there is a population threshold when it rotating the ballots makes sense.  In my polling place we used less than 20% of the ballots.  Even if the names had been rotated, would we have used enough ballots to get to a different name order?  Should different parts of town get a different order for the School Board races - since they show up on all the ballots?

And I still have to find out what the current state law is - random or rotational? 

Kott Trial - Conspiracy Charge

Conspiracy

For the conspiracy charge the jury has to agree that

• First, beginning in or about September 2005, and continuing until on or about August 30, 2006, there was an agreement between Bill Allen, Rick Smith, and Peter Kott to commit at least one crime as charged in the indictment;”

So, as a juror looking at this, I have to figure out - did they come together to agree to commit a crime? At first blush, it looks like they came together to get legislation passed. That in itself is not a crime, as Wendt emphatically told the jurors. Marsh, in the rebuttal, argued strongly that they had a plan and it was an illegal plan that linked getting the legislation passed to benefits for Kott, particularly a lobbying job when he got out of the legislature.

I think it would be a lot easier for the jury if it were a conspiracy to rob a bank. In that case it would be clear they were knowingly planning to commit a crime. In this case it is much more subtle. They never said, let’s commit bribery, extortion, and wire fraud. I wonder if Pete even knew what wire fraud is. The plans they discussed were getting ppt passed at 20/20, getting a gas pipeline in the long term, getting Kott a job when he left the legislature.

The jury is going to have to not think about the plan being simply about getting ppt passed - which they clearly did plan, and which Wendt said was 'the plan' - and think of the plan that Marsh described that linked the legislative work to the $7,993 check, the $1000 cash, the poll, and the future job. Or the plan to get Allen to pay for Pete Jr. working on Pete Sr.'s campaign, by setting up invoices that say it's for doing future flooring work.

In the Tom Anderson case I think it was clearer. They all knew they were setting up a scheme to launder money so that Cornell Enterprises could pay Anderson without people knowing where the money was coming from. Of course the jury wouldn’t know those details about Anderson, so would they think this way? Before I go too far, maybe I should read the rest of the instructions:

• Second, the defendant became a member of the conspiracy knowing of at least one of its objects and intending to help accomplish it, and;

If we look at the other charges, they are bribery and extortion and wire fraud. So let me refocus. They worked out a way to get Kott money to pay for Peter Jr. to work on his campaign.

• Third, one of the members of the conspiracy performed at least one overt act for the purpose of carrying out the conspiracy with all of you agreeing on a particular overt act that was committed.

The jury has lots of evidence that Kott took actions for Veco in the legislature. And that Allen made payments to Kott. This part shouldn't be a problem


Then the judge goes on:

• A conspiracy is a kind of criminal partnership - an agreement of two or more persons to commit one or more crimes. The crime of conspiracy is the agreement to do something unlawful; it does not matter whether the crime agreed upon was committed.

• It is not necessary that the conspirators made a formal agreement or that they agreed on every detail of the conspiracy. It is not enough however, that they simply met, discussed matters of common interest, acted in similar ways, or perhaps helped one another. You must find beyond a reasonable doubt that there was a plan to commit at least one of the crimes alleged in the indictment as an object of the conspiracy with all of you agreeing as to the particular crime which the conspirators agreed to commit.

I still expect that there will be jurors who will say, "Yes, they did exchange money for legislative work, but they didn't actually plan it. It just sort of evolved from the relationship." Or they might ask, what exactly does 'plan' mean? They never sat down and said, "OK, Kott, you do our bidding and we'll get you whatever you need." But others on the jury might counter with some examples from the tapes where Smith says, for instance, "You've got a job, now get us a bill."