Donald Trump Jr and Ivanka Trump took part in a fraudulent scheme to sell units in a luxury New York condominium-hotel and “knew they were lying”, according to American Oligarchs: The Kushners, The Trumps And The Marriage Of Money And Power, a new book that explores how President Trump built his business empire, The Guardian reports.

“Questions have long surrounded a criminal investigation into the Trump family’s dealings around the Trump SoHo that was dropped in 2011. Public disclosure of email correspondence revealed that Don Jr and Ivanka knowingly used figures that exaggerated how well the condos were selling in a ploy to lure more buyers.”

American Oligarchs: The Kushners, the Trumps, and the Marriage of Money and Power

• Amazon Kindle Edition
• Bernstein, Andrea (Author)
• English (Publication Language)
• 491 Pages - 01/14/2020 (Publication Date) - W. W. Norton & Company (Publisher)

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David Frum: “The Trump administration and its supporters seem to have hoped for a “rally around the flag” effect from the killing of Soleimani. This did not happen. The fundamental geology of Donald Trump’s presidency remains unchanged: A large majority of Americans do not trust him, do not support him, and will not follow him…”

“Trump’s governance itself is legally in question right now. The president has been impeached. Unlike the Clinton impeachment of 1998–99, this process commands the approval of a majority of Americans. On average, more than 50 percent believe the Senate should remove Trump from office. That’s not sufficient to force the Senate to respond, especially not a Senate majority that itself was elected with the support of only a minority of Americans. But it’s certainly sufficient to deprive the president of the legitimacy to lead the nation to war.”

“The United States finds itself in the dangerous situation of having a president in power but without authority.”

“The Trump administration is seeking to delay a Democratic effort to require the Secret Service to disclose how much it spends protecting President Trump and his family when they travel — until after the 2020 election,” the Washington Post reports.

Ask during a podcast interview whether he was glad he left the administration when he did in August 2019, former National Intelligence Director Dan Coats said: “Well, yes, although I didn’t know the inspector general’s report was coming, but this was a date that the president had announced earlier would be my last day.”

“I don’t give him the benefit of the doubt because he’s lied so much about virtually everything.”

— Joe Biden, in an interview with NBC News, on giving President Trump the benefit of the doubt of justification for assassinating an Iranian general.

President Trump will make a statement about the Iran crisis at 11 a.m. ET.

Washington Post: “Inside the White House, two administration officials conceded that some of Trump’s messages over the weekend were unhelpful. The aides pointed to Trump’s threat, first issued on Twitter, that the United States military would target 52 Iranian sites, including cultural ones, if Tehran retaliated for Soleimani’s death.”

“Pentagon officials had not analyzed potential cultural site targets before the president’s tweet, said one senior administration official, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity due to the geopolitical sensitivities.”

Despite earlier reports, President Trump will not speak to the country tonight on the Iranian ballistic missile attacks on US bases in Iraq, PBS reports.

“President Trump has sought to demonstrate strong and decisive leadership in the targeted killing of Iran’s top general, but he has overseen a chaotic and mistake-prone public response since the operation — raising questions over the administration’s preparation to anticipate and deal with the consequences,” the Washington Post reports.

“The flurry of events has led to a sense of confusion in the White House and a lack of clarity around a highly sensitive operation that the administrations of his two predecessors, Barack Obama and George W. Bush, had chosen not to take due to risks that it could spark a regional war.”

CNN reports the White House is making preparations for Trump to speak to the nation tonight from the Oval Office.

Frank Rich: “Whether these enablers joined his administration in earnest, or aided and abetted it from elite perches in politics, Congress, the media, or the private sector, they will be remembered for cheering on a leader whose record in government (thus far) includes splitting up immigrant families and incarcerating their children in cages; encouraging a spike in racist, xenophobic, and anti-Semitic vigilantes; leveraging American power to promote ethnic cleansing abroad and punish political opponents at home; actively inciting climate change and environmental wreckage; and surrendering America’s national security to an international rogue’s gallery of despots.”

“That selective short list doesn’t take into account any new White House felonies still to come, any future repercussions here and abroad of Trump’s actions to date, or any previous foul deeds that have so far eluded public exposure. For all the technological quickening of the media pulse in this century, Trump’s collaborators will one day be viewed through the long lens of history like Nixon’s collaborators before them and the various fools, opportunists, and cowards who tried to appease Hitler in America, England, and France before that. Once Trump has vacated the Oval Office, and possibly for decades thereafter, his government, like any other deposed strongman’s, will be subjected to a forensic colonoscopy to root out buried crimes, whether against humanity or the rule of law or both. With time, everything will come out — it always does.”

Palm Beach police say they are conducting an “open and active criminal investigation” at Mar-a-Lago, President Trump’s South Florida estate, following an unspecified incident Monday night, the Miami Herald reports.

Conservative talk show host Howie Carr writes in the Boston Herald about his time at Mar-a-Lago as President Trump ordered the assassination of Iran Gen. Qassem Souleimani.

Trump was more interested in discussing whether ‘Bernie or Biden’ would be easier to beat in November.

Federal prosecutors recommended up to 6 months of incarceration for former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, a reversal of their request for leniency one year ago, saying he no longer accepts responsibility for his criminal conduct and that he sought to undermine prosecutors, Politico reports.

President Trump called into the Rush Limbaugh Show and briefly discussed the Mueller report:

TRUMP: Even I was impressed with how clean I am, Rush.

LIMBAUGH: You may be cleaner than any previous president we can think of.

New York Times: “Former White House officials and people close to Mr. Bolton have indicated that his testimony would likely be damning to Mr. Trump and put additional pressure on moderate Republicans to consider convicting him.”

“That could fundamentally change the dynamics around the impeachment trial in the Senate, where a two-thirds vote — 67 senators — is needed to remove Mr. Trump. Democrats, the minority party, control 45 seats.”

An investigation by the San Francisco Chronicle found that Rudy Giuliani, unlike other top members of the president’s inner circle, has not filed any financial disclosures with the White House since joining Trump’s team as a cybersecurity adviser shortly after the 2017 inauguration.

His lack of an official role or title has reportedly allowed him to sidestep the ethics protocols required of other top aides.