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Chuck Grassley Provides Proof of the Terrible Fraud Trump Perpetrated on MAGAts
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It’s hard, these days, to figure out how much 93-year old Chuck Grassley understands about the things his staffers script him to release. Even years ago, he would release things that actually proved what a corrupt man Donald Trump was. He gets increasingly befuddled when describing the things he does release. And in the recent Jack Smith hearing, he left for a period without leaving anyone else in charge of the high profile hearing, resulting in chaos.At best anymore, the so-called whistleblower releases he makes are simply distractions — like John Solomon’s releases, bullshit propaganda that takes just a few minutes to debunk. That’s the case of yesterday’s release, a memo describing what Jack Smith obtained when he tried to investigate two known prongs of the investigation into Donald Trump: the money Trump raised in the guise of fighting election fraud which actually went to pay off the flunkies who remained loyal to him and Melania’s dress designer, and the funding from Trump’s PAC for lawyers in the stolen documents case.
Recently reviewed subpoena returns show Jack Smith’s Special Counsel Office (SCO) and the Biden Justice Department obtained information for at least 639,000 Republican donors, voters and supporters. The earliest donor contribution captured dates back to 2005. The data included:
- Names;
- Dates of birth;
- Physical addresses (encompassing most states and U.S. territories, including the home states of every Judiciary Committee member);
- Email addresses;
- Whether the individual was a registered Republican;
- Individuals’ congressional district and state legislature;
- Individuals’ occupation and place of employment (sample occupations listed include janitor, doorman, pool tech, driver, logger, safety manager and retired);
- Individuals’ donation amount (as low as $1; generally, donation amounts were under $1,000);
- Individuals’ credit card information (including last four digits of credit card numbers); and
- Donor analysis data (such as one-time versus recurring donations and the amount of the donation).
With the exception of small dollar donors, much of the same information is readily available on the FEC website and would be easy to purchase from vendors.
All this tells us the sheer number of people Trump may have defrauded when lying about his use for fundraising.
Grassley’s other conspiracy theory stems from a list of the 100-so people who bought MAGAt hats on November 16, 2020, something clearly covered by known–and defensible–subpoenas.
But the 4,782 checks Grassley released on September 29, largely from people who donated to Trump during the period he was raising money based on claims he knew to be false, are something else entirely.
Scores of them include annotations that tell poignant stories about the people who responded to Trump’s lies — of the faith they had in an all-time con men.
Release the Kraken
For example, on November 20, 2020 — the day after one of the conspiratorial press conferences Rudy had with Sidney Powell — someone from Greenville, NC sent a $300 check with the memo, “Release the Kra[c]ken,” a clear reference to Powell.
But, as the January 6 Report notes (an episode matched in Trump’s criminal indictment), even Trump responded to Powell’s claims by calling them crazy.
On November 19th, Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell, and Jenna Ellis held apress conference at the Republican National Committee (RNC) headquartersin Washington, DC. Powell asserted that there was “massive influence of communist money through Venezuela, Cuba, and likely China in the interference with our elections here in the United States.”186 She pointed a finger at Dominion, claiming its software was “created in Venezuela at the direction of Hugo Chavez to make sure he never lost an election,” and Giuliani echoed her claims.187
Hope Hicks told the Select Committee how that press conference was received in the White House. The day after the press conference, President Trump spoke by phone with Sidney Powell from the Oval Office. During thecall, Powell repeated the same claims of foreign interference in the electionshe had made at the press conference. While she was speaking, the President muted his speakerphone and laughed at Powell, telling the others inthe room, “This does sound crazy, doesn’t it?”188
Trump cashed the check anyway.
Go get em Rudy!
Even after claiming to ditch Powell from his team, Rudy Giuliani continued to spread conspiracy theories, many of them targeted at Georgia — for example in a state hearing on December 3.
As I laid out in this post, by that point the campaign was already trying to prevent journalists from confirming they were raising money fraudulently, yet cashing checks premised on such fraud.
On December 8, the campaign continued to complain among itself about the bullshit Rudy was spewing. That day, for example, Jason Miller called Rudy’s lies, “conspiracy shit beamed down from the mothership.”
In frustration regarding the [State Farm] claim and others like it, [P4]–who spoke with [Trump] on a daily basis and had informed him on multiple occasions that various fraud claims were false–wrote, “When our research and campaign legal teams can’t back up any of the claims made by our Elite Strike Force Legal Team, you can see why we’re 0-32 on our cases. I’ll obviously hustle to help on all fronts, but it’s tough to own any of this when it’s all just conspiracy shit beamed down from the mothership.”
That same day, someone from Burien, WA sent the campaign $50 with a shout out to Rudy: Go get em Rudy!
The campaign cashed this check in spite of knowing Rudy was spinning “conspiracy shit beamed down from the mothership.”
Counterfeit Elector Certificates
The Trump campaign continued to collect and cash checks asking them to act in ways they were specifically defying.
For example, after Trump got senior state Republicans in seven states to sign onto counterfeit Elector Certificates on December 14 — depending on the state, one of the most obvious crimes Trump committed, for which Ken Cheseboro pled guilty in Georgia — they got checks demanding that Trump fight election corruption.
Trump cashed those checks and used it to fund election corruption.
Save the Senate
There were also checks sent specifically instructing Trump to use it to win the Senate.
Trump’s shenanigans and selfishness, of course, gave Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock the opening they needed to win their seats and with it, precarious control of the Senate.
Preying on retirees and the unbanked
And like a slew of the other checks that Chuck Grassley released, the annotations make it clear that Trump was preying on retirees.
There are still more sent on postal cashier’s checks, suggesting that unbanked people, usually people with very little money, were sending what money they had to a billionaire so he could cheat in an election. Others identified the sender as blue collar workers. Others were sent from poorer towns in rural areas.
Trump, a billionaire, was cheating people who needed the money.
More stories from the people Trump defrauded
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